Feature and Follow - Bookselling Time

The sixth book from the left on the second shelf from the top of my biggest book shelf is... Unless Victory Comes by Gene Garrison with Patrick Gilbert. I have not yet read this one. I bought it for 50 cents in a going out of business sale a couple of years ago. It is a first person account of an infantryman in the U. S. army in France in 1944-45. It is one of those histories which have been coming out recently as the last veterans of Word War II get their memoirs published before they pass on. As their numbers thin every year these issues get fewer and fewer. Soon there will be no more. These histories have the advantage that the basic story is well told; they need not provide the background detail that was necessary early on. They have the distinct disadvantage of extreme distance from the events they portray. Garrison uses narrative, with conversations presented as if they had happened yesterday. Although the story may be as he remembers it, the exact details are likely to be, shall we say, shaded. One other thing that seems to be different in these late memoirs compared to the early ones is that they often lack some of the political correctness of the early ones. I look forward to reading it.