Of the "lasts," the first I read is titled Last To Die, the story of the last American to die in combat in WWII...George Patton is said to have wished to be the last soldier killed by the last round fired in the last war fought by men, but for me that would be an ignominious honor at best...
In the case of WWII, it occurred over Japan two days after the Japanese government had accepted the unconditional terms of surrender from the allies...A group of diehard Japanese Army members decided to follow the Bushido code, and fight to the death...The final casualty turned out to be a 19 year old veteran sergeant named Anthony Marchione...
Ironically he enlisted to avoid the draft after finishing high school in 1943, and volunteered for flight duty not wanting to be assigned to infantry service, thinking the adventure and safety levels would be better...Trained as an aerial gunner, he was assigned to a bomb group flying the new trouble-plagued, and now almost unknown, Consolidated B-32 Dominator, pressed into service as a supplement to the excellent Boeing B-29 Superfortress...
Since he got to the war late, he volunteered for recon duty as a photographer after Japan's surrender, flying missions on an unarmed B-32 flying mapmaking missions over Japan in the hope of earning enough rotation points to go home early, and took the last bullet of the war from a Japanese pilot who defied his emperor by refusing to stand down...The B-32, with the rest of the crew, made it back to base, but Sergeant Marchione bled to death before he could get there...
The second book, The Last Battle, concerns the collaboration of US Army units together with members of the German Wehrmacht, fighting against fanatical and hardened Nazi SS troops to save the lives of a group of French political prisoners being held in an ancient castle near the Tyrol area of Austria...I was in the area south of Munich in '68 so I may have been near it at one time and not known it..
The French group included two former Prime Ministers who hated each other, former French military commanders, resistance fighters and even the sister of the pompous, despicable ingrate, Charles DeGaulle...Together with a group of civilians placed there as servants by the Nazis, they awaited death from the SS unless a mixed band of rescuers could get to them first...
France's defense was inept at its best...They could have stopped Hitler and his goon squad when the Huns bluffed their way into the Rhineland and the Saar Valley prior to the opening volleys in September 1939...The entire war could have been prevented at that point by a Frenchman with a backbone...
After that Hitler knew his armies would meet no more than token resistance, and proved it in short time as they advanced through the Low Countries and into upper France...The French not only surrendered, they capitulated and joined the Nazis through their puppet government in Vichy...Later as Operation Torch unfolded, they offered no resistance and even aided the Nazis in their takeover of "unoccupied France"...
After finishing The Last Battle, I found I didn't enjoy the read as much as the same author's other book, Last To Die...Both books were painstakingly researched, with great detail given to the backgrounds and after-war fates of the players...That part I liked because such details bring life to the story in my opinion...
When it got to the action parts in each book, I found I could follow the story and picture each event in Last To Die, but had a harder time of keeping up with the story in The Last Battle...In reading about the author, Stephen Harding, I found that he is not only an excellent writer and researcher, but he also walked the walk, being a combat veteran of the Vietnam War...He was wounded and permanently disabled in action there...
Having been in battle probably allowed him to accurately picture the battle scenes in words, but I became lost several times, and had to re-read many paragraphs...Having more experience with aircraft, even though I was not in combat, I was much more easily able to follow the action in his other book, Last To Die...But both books were great reads, adding to my understanding of WWII history, and they are both on the Truckman Recommended List...
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