The Liberator: One World War II Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau

Alex Kershaw, a British born journalist, historian, and author who has lived and worked in America for twenty years, has written an astounding book about an outstanding Army officer and his equally outstanding men. The name of the book is The Liberator: One World War II Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey From the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau. The officer's name was Felix Sparks, and Kershaw tells his story, a story that covers over 500 days of fierce combat in World War II involving four amphibious landings starting in Sicily, through Italy, into France, and ending in the hell of Dachau in Germany. Sparks started out in Sicily as an infantry captain and ultimately became a colonel of the Thunderbird division of the 157th Regiment, an outfit that saw more combat than any other regiment or division in World War II. "The men he had commanded had achieved something of lasting greatness, something of permanence. They had defeated barbarism...The graves of his men stretched across Europe, over two thousand miles. They had died in Sicily, in France, at the dark heart of Nazi Germany. There had been several hundred killed under his command, half of them buried in Europe."Kershaw is an adept researcher, and he did his homework, spending time with Sparks before he passed away to capture his gripping story. The descriptions of the firefights as Sparks and his men battled the Germans are harrowing. Kershaw has a knack for using his literary gifts to put you amid all the fierce and vicious action. You experience the pain and trauma of fighting the good fight. The famous battles of Anzio, Salerno, and Monte Cassino in Italy, the Vosges mountains in France, the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium and France, and the Siegfried Line, Aschaffenburg, and Nuremberg in Germany are all chronicled expertly. There is a heartbreaking and extremely disturbing section on the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp.Along the way, we get fascinating sketches about the major players including Churchill, Hitler, Himmler, Montgomery, Stalin, Patton, Eisenhower, and FDR. There are also not-so-famous players such as Allied generals Mark Clark ("the Germans' favorite enemy General"), Robert Frederick (awarded "eight Purple Hearts by war's end" but making a huge mistake at the town of Reipertswiller in southern France) and Henning Linden (an infuriating headline grabber at Dachau's gate), and German generals Kesselring ("arguably Germany's finest World War II field commander"), Jodl ("one of Hitler's most despicable generals"), and Lamberth (the butcher of Aschaffenburg).The staggering amount of casualties and destruction of World War II are revealed at the end of the book. The casualties also extended to the emotional life of the Americans who fought it. Audie Murphy, the most decorated Allied infantryman of World War II, who fought alongside the Thunderbird Division from Sicily to Germany, said this at the end of the war: "There is V-E Day without but no peace within." A Thunderbird infantryman Guy Prestia echoed this emotion: "People were damaged. It was like we'd been in a car crash. There was trauma. It takes a while to get over that.""It was indeed America's greatest achievement: Two highly advanced forces of immense inhumanity and destruction had been defeated in less than four years." And Felix Sparks and the men who fought with him had a huge hand in that achievement in Europe. "He [Sparks] had fought in eight campaigns and earned two Silver Stars, two Purple Hearts, and the Croix de Guerre, among many other honors." His "career in the U.S. Army [was] one of the most distinguished of any American in combat in World War II."This book is highly recommended as a fine addition to any history of World War II collection.

The book is amazing! I could not put it down! My only issue with it? I ordered multiple items and this paperback book had to ride in the same box with a hardback book. Guess which book won? I will give you a hint...it was NOT my beat up trashed paperback. I do recommend this book!! Just don't order it with other items...

The true story of Felix Sparks as he rose in rank from Lt. to Lt. Colonel with the 157 Regiment of the 5th Army in Sicialy, Italy, the invasion of Southern France and on to the gates of Dachau via Munich. This is a gritty, hard fought campaign, very costly in American lives. This campaign was never well covered, like D-Day or Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands. Montgomery, in my opinion one of the best assets the Germans ever had, was there. Hogging resources, choosing the easy beaches and operations, leaving the hard work to the American's.Sparks assignments were brutal and most of his men were lost in the battles but he persisted and took his objectives despite a lack of supplies and support.After Italy, and invasion of Southern France in the Rivera and a march up through the Vosges Mountains toward the Moselle River near Belgium. The battle portions of the book ends with 5th Army stumbling upon the Dachau Concentration Camp. No one had warned them of what they might find there. They were revolted, and some retaliated upon the SS troops running camp, summarily executing SS guards on the spot.The last fifth of the book is taken up with political infighting in Colorado after WW II. Sparks eventually becomes a General and battles the NRA and state politics.The photos and maps in the Kindle edition are too small to be of use to me. Amazon tells me this is an issue controled by the publisher.

Alex Kershaw's "The Liberator" is an excellent, well-written historical narrative in the tradition of Stephen Ambrose's "Band of Brothers." Much as Ambrose focused on the leadership career of Dick Winter, Kershaw tells the story of Felix Sparks, an American citizen soldier who served as an officer in the 157th Infantry Regiment, 45th "Thunderbird" Division. Sparks fought from the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 through the liberation of Dachau in April 1945, quickly rising in the ranks from Lieutenant to Lt. Colonel. He led some of the first soldiers to reach Dachau--his men were so enraged by what they saw there that a few began executing SS soldiers, and Sparks had to use his discipline and leadership to stop those few from compounding one war crime with another.German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, who may have been the Wermacht's most capable general officer in World War II, once said that the 45th Division was one of the two best units he had ever fought against. The Division's story deserves to be told and remembered, but its great accomplishments are often overshadowed by battles and theaters that have drawn more attention from historians. The 45th was engaged in some of the toughest fighting of the war, and the 157th Infantry Regiment was the tip of the spear. The Regiment fought in Sicily, Italy, in defense of the Anzio beachhead and in the little-remembered second invasion of France, when Allied forces landed on the French Riviera and began moving north and east into Germany, ultimately reaching the death camp of Dachau (near Munich)."The Liberator" gets high marks for telling the story of these campaigns, which deserve to be much better remembered than they are. But it also tells the story of a remarkable leader and the young men he fought with, many of whom never returned home from battlefields in Europe. "The Liberator" pulls no punches: the casualties are gruesome, the losses are personal and traumatic, the experiences are horrifying. I can only marvel at how a young man like Felix Sparks took on such enormous responsibility and bore his burdens so courageously, both during the war and for the rest of his life as a lawyer, leader and activist. This book is both a history and an inspiration.