I Marched with Patton: A Firsthand Account of World War II Alongside One of the U.S. Army’s Greatest Generals

WWII veteran Sisson recounts his wartime experiences in this spirited yet familiar memoir. A farm boy from Weleetka, Okla., Sisson dropped out of high school to help support his family after his father’s death. Drafted when he turned 18, Sisson shipped off to Europe in 1944 as a member of the Tenth Armored Division in Gen. George S. Patton’s Third Army. His job was to string communication wires between observation points and the artillery, and to repair the wires when they were cut by German soldiers. Most of the book’s anecdotes about Patton are well-worn and add little to his legend. Still, Sisson narrates his battlefield observations and close scrapes with death in aerial assaults and artillery shelling with verve, and renders his dialogues with fellow soldiers in charmingly folksy vernacular (“When Patton took the command,” a Texan soldier tells Sisson, “he started the Third Army kicking them German’s asses like slapping fleas on a dog. Them Nazis didn’t know what hit ’em”). In the book’s most intriguing sections, Sisson details his experiences as a military police investigator in Berlin after the war and his return home to the U.S. WWII buffs will welcome this comforting snapshot of the Greatest Generation in action. (Oct.)