Tank Driver: With the 11th Armored from the Battle of the Bulge to VE Day

Army, Sep 2003

Briefly Noted... Tank Driver: With the 11th Armored from the Battle of the Bulge to VE Day. J. Ted Hartman. Indiana University Press. 165 pages; black & white photographs; maps; bibliography; index; $24.95.

This memoir is more about tank columns speeding through the French and German countryside than it is about pitched battles. The llth Armored Division was rushed into Bastogne during the January clashes in the Battle of the Bulge. The fighting was intense and the author provides an excellent picture of the war from a tank driver's seat. After the Bulge, however, the German army began to collapse and the llth was constantly pushing forward, encountering sporadic yet deadly German resistance, concentration camps and hordes of surrendering Germans. There is an interesting endnote about the tank in McAuliffe Square in Bastogne that stands as a tribute to the 4th Armored Division's rescue of the town, but turned out to be an llth Armored Division tank.