Re: What are you reading PtII
I just finished reading: Frankel, Nat and Smith, Larry, Patton's Best: An Informal History of the 4th Armored Division, (Hawthorne Books, Inc.: New York, 1978).
The book is the wartime memoir of Nat Frankel who served as a tank commander in the 8th Armored Bn., 4th Armored Division. The book is heavily laden with irritatingly long philosophical ramblings about war, Patton, and some of Frankel's fellow soldiers. To make matters worse these ramblings frequently devolve into disjointed psycho- babble which detracts greatly from what little of actual interest to a WWII aficionado might be found in the book. In short, the book is heavy on the prose, and very light on the descriptions of actual combat or the campaigns of the 4th Armored Division. But wait, it get worse.
Have you ever been reading a book and found yourself saying "That ain't right!" over and over again? Why would a veteran write his memoir without bothering to get his facts straight? There are so many errors that I cannot enumerate them all. Suffice it to say that according to Frankel the 4th A.D. took part in major actions that occurred not only in the 3rd Army zone of operations, but those that took place clear across the 6th Army Group in the zone of the 1st French Army. Not a single book I consulted, including The Fourth Armored Division: From The Beach to Bavaria, by Capt. Kenneth Koyen, supports this claim. Why embellish the already extraordinary combat record of the division with such outlandish claims?
Many of the technical details suffer at Frankel's hands, as well. In all my years, I've never heard a tanker refer to the tracks of his vehicle as "treadings" or for that matter, seen it written in a book. Frankel doesn't just slipup and do this once or twice, he does it over and over. According to Frankel, the American half-track had much more robust armor than the M5 tank, and as a result, could stand up to anti-tank fire much better. It makes you wonder: Was this guy ever actually in combat? The damn half-track armor worked only about half the time. It would let a heavy machinegun round, fired a close range, or a 20mm round in, but not let it out. So it just bounced around in there for a while. Twang, twang, twang!
OK, the book is a complete waste of time. The only thing new I learned while reading it was that this Frankel guy is a lying, self-absorbed jackass either that or he had early on-set senile dementia, and his co-author Smith just wrote whatever the hell he felt like.
Five-Zero-Nan
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