Customer Reviews

The View from the Turret: The 743d Tank Battalion During World War II

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Not very many people who study military history may be aware, but the 743d TB was rated the most proficient Armored unit in World War Two. They took the fewest casualties, lost the fewest tanks, destroyed a very large number of enemy vehicles, were engaged in five campaigns and collected a great number of honors from D-Day through occupation duties ending in December, 1945. This book offers an excellent narrative of actions and engagements in which the 743d took part. Having fought along side the 29th ID, 1st ID, 30th ID and XIX Corps, the 743d was in the very thick of battle throughout the war. The author makes the unit history personal, with names of people and places involved, and often very graphic. I recommend the book to any one wanting to see the true elements of combat, coming to know the people who fought so valiantly with the 743d. My father-in-law, then Capt. Edward D. Miller, was one of them. This book recognizes the human efforts and elements that makes story-telling come alive. Buy the book--you will not be disappointed.

This little book is fairly representative of that genre known as the unit history. Such accounts derived from participants in combat, or even at the far-remove of unit After Action Reports, fill a niche in the huge library of "war books." This is one of those books. It is not a general history, its references are sometimes imprecise, and it sometimes bogs down in the chronology of the European campaign, but it does chronicle the gallantry of a group of men thrown into combat in a sub-standard tank-- the M4 Sherman.

In this day and age, when the United States is possessed of a tank (the M-1 Abrams) that maximizes crew survivability and stand-off killing power, it is easy to forget that from 1941-1946 we fielded a vehicle referred to by German anti-tank gun crews as "the Ronson," after the cigarette lighter of that name.

This little book has a wealth of technical detail on the Sherman, and it offers a look at the extent to which the Sherman's flaws were known and discussed publicly in 1944-1945. Also detailed are the field expedients attempted by the tank crews to enhance the vehicle's armor. The photographs which accompany the text are rather dark, but still viewable. The lack of maps is a regrettable deficiency not uncommon in such texts.

Overall, this is a decent little volume that enhances our respect for the citizen soldiers of World War Two. It also heightens our appreciation for the improvements made over the years by the villified "military/industrial complex" to the weapons the sons of this nation must sometimes use in combat.