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

By Frank Sisson and Robert L. Wise

Book Overview

"Poignant . . . Well worth the read." --Wall Street Journal

In December 1944, Frank Sisson deployed to Europe as part of General George S. Patton's famed Third Army. Over the next six months, as the war in Europe raged, Sisson would participate in many of World War II's most consequential events, from the Battle of the Bulge to the liberation of Dachau. Now 95 years old, Frank shares his remarkable story of life under General Patton for the first time.

Frank Sisson grew up in rural Oklahoma during the Great Depression. His father died when Frank was young, and so in 1944, at age eighteen, Frank, like so many other young men across America, enlisted in the Army and was deployed to France. At a traffic intersection one day, Frank caught his first glimpse of the man who would control the next six months of Frank's deployment, and whose lessons, and spirit, would shape the rest of Frank's life. General Patton could be erratic and short-tempered--but he was also a brilliant military tactician and cared deeply for the men who served under him, a credo that gave Frank and his fellow soldiers solace as they faced death every day. In this gritty, intimate account, Frank reveals what life on the ground was really like in the closing days of World War II.

After the war, Frank continued to serve in the army as a military police inspector in Berlin. When he finally returned home, he attended college and built a career in business. Like many members of the Greatest Generation, he was often reluctant to share his stories of the war, in all their glory, and terror. He was content to live and work in the nation he had fought to protect, an embodiment of the American Dream.

Patton, on the other hand, would not live to see the postwar world he helped create. In December 1945, less than a year after the conclusion of the war, he tragically died following a car accident. Now, seventy-five years later, Frank Sisson's remarkable reminiscences provide a fresh, unique look at Patton's leadership, the final days of World War II and its direct aftermath, and the experience of combat on the front lines.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0063019477
• ISBN13: 9780063019478
• Release Date: October 2020
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.13 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.1" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

This is a great read!

I didn't buy this here, a friend gave it to me recently but it is so good I wanted to encourage others to buy it & read it. You won't put it down! It is written by one of Patton's men during WW2 so its a first hand account. Has good pics also. It shows the guts & grit of the man Patton as watched everyday by his men. He didn't shrink back from the front, he was bold & decisive, doing the job however possible with his battle acumen and innate sense of how the enemy thought. He was prescient & not much could stop him. I loved this book & didn't think I could admire Patton even more, but I do. A true American hero. A soldier's soldier, a leader of men, brave, courageous, strong and he had a stature & presence that men wanted to follow him into battle & win the war! And that they did!