Task Force Baum

Book excerpt: In the tradition of Saving Private Ryan and Bridge Over the River Kwai, bestselling author James D. Shipman delivers a powerful, action-packed novel based on the true story of General Patton’s clandestine unauthorized raid on a World War II POW camp. March, 1945. Allied forces are battle-worn but wearily optimistic. Russia’s Red Army is advancing hard on Germany from the east, bolstering Allied troops moving in from the west and north. Soon, surely, Axis forces must accept defeat. Yet for Captain Jim Curtis, each day is a reminder of how uncertain warfare can be. Captured during the Battle of the Bulge, Curtis is imprisoned at a POW camp in Hammelburg, Bavaria. But whispers say General Patton’s troops, and liberation, are on the way. Indeed, fifty miles away, a task force of three hundred men is preparing to cross into Germany. What makes Hammelburg so special they don’t know, but orders are orders. Yet hope quickly evaporates as the raid unravels with shattering losses. For inmates, the liberation becomes a struggle for survival marked by a stark choice: stay, or risk escaping into danger—while leaving some behind. For Curtis, the decision is an even more personal test of loyalty, friendship, and the values for which one will die or kill. It will be another twenty years before the unsanctioned mission’s secret motivation becomes public knowledge, creating a controversy that will forever color Patton’s legacy and linger on in the lives of those who made it home at last—and the loved ones of those who did not.