I Marched with Patton: A Firsthand Account of World War II Alongside One of the U.S. Army’s Greatest Generals

Frank Sisson was 19 when he landed in Normandy in 1944, headed for the climactic Battle of the Bulge. At 94, he related his experiences to coauthor Wise. He’d dropped out of school in Weleetka, OK, at 16 to support his mother and siblings. His perspective on life was wholly local; when he moved west to weld ships for Kaiser, it was his first foray outside his state. Two years later, he lay shivering in the Bastogne corridor, under near constant enemy fire during Europe’s worst winter in years. The book’s title misleads—Sisson was a grunt soldier in a mammoth army. He saw Patton and revered him, but didn’t work directly for him. He was a U.S. hero, who put his life at stake repeatedly, leading a six-man unit stringing wire to advance observation posts so the guns behind knew where to shoot. Sisson’s reminiscences of his own experiences read true, but the rest of this memoir does not; Wise inserts information that soldiers that far down the decision chain wouldn’t have known, and Sisson’s story didn’t need this gussying up.