Customer Reviews

The Dead of Winter: How Battlefield Investigators, WWII Veterans, and Forensic Scientists Solved the Mystery of the Bulge's Lost Soldiers

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Bill Warnock has done a tremendous job with his research and search effort for the Battle of the Bulge MIA's. The book puts a "human face" on the missing soldiers from the 99th Infantry Division that were lost during the Battle of the Bulge during WWII. Searching for these lost remains in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium is a great mystery with some great success stories. The book is a must-read.

Bill Warnock's debut book is a must have not just for Bulge and WWII mavens and scholars but for any person interested in compelling life stories of these brave soldiers. Compelling, heart breaking, heart warming, exciting, informative...Mr. Warnock weaves these soldier's stories together with new (and sometimes corrected) accounts of what actually happened over 60 years ago during Germany's last push in this war.

Mr. Warnock is extremely successful at not boring the reader with information ad nauseam as one might expect from an author who has over 16 years of research into 290+ pages. He successfully caters to both audiences - the layman and the scholar. The human stories are strong as well as his summation of this work. The shear fact that some of these men were discovered after years of relic hunters digging all around them is astounding. Yet the MIA Project through their research was able to pinpoint their resting place within meters. Through eye witness accounts, photographs, maps, and unearthed clues you start to understand how much effort was involved. The bibliography alone would keep you reading for years.

The MIA Project (mis-named, by the way according to the author) should serve as a blueprint for our government to look at private individuals and organizations who have an interest in researching and processing soldiers lost overseas. All of these families have waited at least 50 years for these 8 soldiers to make their resting place either with their brothers overseas or buried here back at home.

Read this worthwhile and important account. I am looking forward to the follow up book!

"The Dead Of Winter" by Bill Warnock, Subtitled: "How Battlefield Investigators, WWII Veterans, And Forensic Scientists Solved The Mystery Of The Bulge's Lost Soldiers". Chamberlain Bros. Penguin books, New York, 2005.

The subtitle sums up the entire book. Bill Warnock, however, has written a book that combines History with story-telling, with the science of forensics, with the lives of Americans and Belgians, and with the honor of being World War II veterans who had fought and bled in the Battle of the Bulge, December 1944. The book is excellent.

While serving with the United States Air Force, the author opts for an assignment in a small corner of Europe, near some of the more important battlefields of the Second World War. His life has not been the same since. His initial curiosity becomes what appears to be a life-long obsession, as Warnock and his Belgian friends search for the remains of those soldiers long since dead on the battlefield. But, it is not enough just to find the remains, Mr. Warnock follows through with modern techniques of identification of the deceased, and documents the entire process in an interesting and understandable fashion. While working on each individual solider, Warnock develops a story-book tale of how that individual lived prior to the war, how he entered the U.S. Army, and the probable cause of his death. It is surprising to me how many of the subjects of this book were members of ASTP, Army specialized Training Program. Further, I was surprised to see that my alma mater, Manhattan College (see page 238) had ASTP training. (Manhattan College is in the Bronx.)

Warnock's book is enjoyable and well documented. For example, Appendix B, entitled, "U.S. Army Dog Tags In world War II", had me pulling out my Navy dog tag (now fifty years old) for comparison. The dog tag had "...corners rounded and edges smooth" (page 286), with blood type and religion and service number, as in the appendix, but, in the left corner, mine had the term, "USN".

One little issue: page 118 had "... Camp Myles Standish near Taunton, Massachusetts." Myles Standish is about 30 miles, or so, from Taunton. The camp, now Myles Standish State Forest, IS located in the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts, best known, I would think, for being the place where the Pilgrims came ashore in 1620.

Bills continuing endeavors with the MIA Project and his loyalty to the men of the 99th Infantry Division is inspiring. His account is well written, insightful, and absorbing. Bill has filled this book with enough detail to keep us informed, and at the same time he has given us an insight into what those brave combat soldiers experienced during that snowy winter of 1944. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the "Battle of the Bulge" or the 99th Division. I look forward to his next book.

I first met Bill Warnock in the bar of the Hotel Dahmen in Bullingen Belgium many years ago. I was with the late Charles B. MacDonald and we began talking to Bill. It soon became clear he had a passionate interest in the American Soldier and his role in the Battle of the Bulge. Over the next few years Bill and myself walked this hallowed ground together in search of relics. Mr.Richard H. Byers, himself a veteran of the battle, decided to do something in order to try and solve the problem of men from his division who were listed as MIA. Bill Warnock took the bull by the horns and began serious research aimed at recovering the remains of some of the MIA's. His meticulous research has resulted in the ultimate recovery and identification of 12 of the missing soldiers. At long last, Bill has seen fit to tell his incredible story

Bill Warnock has written a spectacularly detailed and wonderfully crafted tale of which he is a main protagonist -- a selfless American who has dedicated the last 20 or more years of his life to reuniting the dead heroes of World War II with their families. I must admit to the favoritism I feel toward Bill because he and I met on the Ardennes battlefield back in the early 1980s while I was researching my first book, The Key to the Bulge. Many of the people in this great work are close friends of mine. Even with this foreknowledge, I cannot help but stand in awe of Bill's skillfully written and masterfully researched chronicle of his team's efforts to discover and return to their homes the lost heroes of the Battle of the Bulge. This book is more than a simple tale of how a group of dedicated Americans and Belgians sought the final resting places of those men who went missing during the Bulge. Instead, it is a tale of devotion, Herculean persistance, and selfless dedication. The only reward that Bill and his team sought for their actions was the satisfaction of recovering the remains of our dead heroes and giving closure to families whose pain remained unhealed for 50 or more years. This book is a gem and a lasting testimony to those who truly appreciate the sacrifice of America's fighting men and women. Thanks, Bill. Well done.

When I first started reading The Dead Of Winter I thought it would be another one of those books where there would be more boring facts and figures than personal, intimate, and emotional first hand accounts of infantrymen doing all they could do to survive the first few days of The Battle Of The Bulge. Bill Warnock, has done an outstanding job of resurrecting the fate of several infantrymen of the 99th Infantry who were killed and left behind after their positions in Belgium were overrun by the German jauggernaut of 16 December 1944. I became intimately attached to David Read, Mike Larson, Ewing Fidler, 2nd Lt Holloway, Sgt Frederick Zimmerman, and many of the others who died and were left behind to be buried in lonesome graves on the battlefield of Belgium and the Ardennes Forest. Thanks to the perserverance, tanacity, and cooperation of Carl Seel, Mr. Speider, Hans Honen, Ed Whithead, Mr. Swanson, and many others, these lost souls were found and brought home to their families, or given descent burials alongside their comrades who fought and died on the battlefields of World War II. Mr. Seel, and Mr. Speider who initially started this episode are the real heroes here too, because, as honest, caring, and loving men who cared about the American soldiers who liberated their country from the Nazi's, they took it upon themselves to try to locate, identify, and bring attention to these men who had died so gallently, but had to be left behind in the heat of battle. This is an awesome book, very well written, exactingly documented and recorded with all the facts of the men who were killed in action, and is well worth reading. I strongly urge everyone who loves freedom, history, and this great country to read this book. The men who were lost back in 1944, and the families they left behind, is a poignant reminder of just how fragile and important freedom is.

I was searching for books on the recovery of battlefield remains after seeing some sites devoted to the search for German soldiers. On a message board someone mentioned this book, which is how I stumbled across it. I've now finished about half the book, and the reviewers are correct. A great read, informative, and hard to put down. It reminds me of a book I read many years ago that was my first introduction to this facinating topic. That book was about a B-24 that went down over New Guinea during the war, and was entitled "A Missing Plane".

I collect information and write about local servicemen who died in World War II. That's how I came across this book, just typed in the name of our town and the book came up as a reference. Just the title was intriguing. Little did I know I was going to discover what may be the best book concerning WW II that I've read, and we're talking hundreds! Bill Warnock is an excellent writer. I found myself feeling, smelling and hearing the sounds of the Belgium forests as the group went about their searches. He was able to introduce us to these men who had been lost, put a face on them if you will, the way I've tried to do with our local boys over the years so that the youngsters of today will see them as real people. His passion and devotion to "the cause" as well as the other men involved in this endeavor is overwhelming. I also was fascinated by the forensic information and about how the Henri-Chappelle cemetery was built and maintained . . . I had no idea how they kept the crosses so straight! I've ordered two more of the books for others, one for a friend and another for my son who's a history teacher. I wish every high school student in the U.S. was required to read this book, to see these fallen soldiers as like themselves but also understand that sometimes our government does do something right. I was pleased at the expense and respect that was expended even 60 years after the fact.

A compelling account of the search for missing soldier remains - once you start you are drawn into the story. A great mixture of history, human drama, and scientific research, the book never gets boring. You don't have to be a military history enthusist to enjoy Warnock's first-hand account of mobilizing veterans, amateur relic hunters, and government bureaucrats into a mission of recovery bordering on obsession.