From Booklist
This unusual World War II book publishes the long-lost manuscript of a young Iowan who responded to FDR's call to resist the Nazis by joining the British Army in 1940. Leaving wife and family behind, Ellsworth saw combat in the desert, where he encountered General Montgomery, whom he vividly describes. Transferred to the U.S. Army, he was early ashore in Italy and in Normandy, where he was captured. He survived the ordeal of being a German POW and also a year of wandering in Europe when the Russians were either unable or unwilling to repatriate him. He pays final and moving tribute to the staunch loyalty and unfailing optimism of his wife, which survived his being listed as missing in action, and some of his most effective writing is about their reunion. Some may find Ellsworth's prose lacking in polish and his attitude lacking in perspective, but remember, this is a young man recounting how he survived when that he survived still seemed as miraculous as many readers may find it today. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Product Description
Ted Ellsworth was a young Dartmouth grad in 1941. In the years before the U.S. joined the Second World War effort, American men who wished to fight against Hitler were granted permission from President Roosevelt and the U.S. Congress to join the British army. In normal circumstance, fighting for another nation's army would be an automatic forfeiture of U.S. citizenship (as noted on U.S. passports). Yank begins with goodbyes to Ellworth's young wife and family. It covers his crossing to Britain, initial stay in London, assignment to a North African tank regiment and the campaign there, participation in the invasion of Italy and the second wave of D-Day, accounts of fierce battles, being taken prisoner by the Germans and shipped to a POW camp, the camp deprivations, liberation by the Russians, and finally, the year Ellsworth spent wandering eastern Europe with no dog-tags, after the war had ended, trying to reach a city from which he could ship back home. Ellsworth had been officially MIA for over two years, and everyone assumed he was dead. The final pages detail Ellsworth's homecoming when his wife hand-delivers the beautiful and intimate note that she'd written him when he was first reported missing.
