Customer Reviews

Patton's Bulldog

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I am glad I read this book, and I recommend it to those who want to know more about George Patton's subordinates. It contains some interesting details, including many concerned with Walker's service in a World War I machine gun company. Unfortunately, it also has major deficiencies. The style is very ordinary, and dry at times. More importantly, the author fails to put Walker's accomplishments into any kind of broader historical perspective. (As a very minor historian, perhaps it was modesty on Heefner's part that led him to refrain, wisely, from even attempting this.) The quote by Alexander Haig on the dust jacket is particularly unhelpful and misleading, since Haig's partisan jab about preparedness doesn't belong on a book that makes no attempt to examine whether the funds available to Harry Truman in 1950 were really misallocated. Was money spent in Europe that should've been spent training Walker's unit in Japan, in anticipation of the North Korean attack? This book is about a brave and dedicated individual, not such broad questions of policy.
There are also some unanswered questions that are more relevant to General Walker, the soldier: Was he used as a scapegoat for American difficulties in Korea? How did the timing of his death affect how he was judged by his contemporaries? Wilson Allen Heefner has provided some raw material that will help to answer such questions, but he has also convinced me that General Walker deserves a better biography.

Walton Walker was Patton's favorite corps commander. Patton considered Walker the easiest of his corps commanders to command and also the most aggressive. Even though in private he communicated with Eisenhower that General Mddleton(VIII Corps CG) should assume command of the 3rd Army if anything should happen to Patton.

Walker idolized Patton and would do anything to please Patton, whom he considered a great general. On the other hand during the Korean War MacArthur and Walker did not have a good relationship. Their fractured trust in each other's abilities played a large part in the diaster above the 38th parallel. It didn't help matters that while Patton was a front line general , MacArthur was a command post general.

I did not know very much about General Walker although I should having read about ever Patton book there is. This book gives a fine detail of this wonderful soldier and does a good job of introducing the reader to who General Walker is. The writing style is easy to follow and will make it intersting to readers new to General Walker. I found the book good enough that I rad it through in one day. I learned a lot about this great man and you will enjoy reading about him to. It's sad hos simular his nd Patton's deaths were.

Paul Posey