Tanks for the Memories

There are many books about tanks. Tanks for the Memories is about the people inside and around those tanks. People like Jim Flowers, a lieutenant who left both of his legs “on a piece of bloody French real estate” and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his role in turning the tide of the battle for Hill 122; like 18-year-old Billy Wolfe, whose last words to his sisters, 16-year-old twins Maxine and Madaline, were “So long, kids, and if I never see you again, goodbye,” and who was never seen to get out of his burning tank in the battle for Pfaffenheck, Germany; like tank commander Ruby Goldstein, who shared his recipe for cooking potatoes on the exhaust of his tank; or Max Lutcavish, whose “light” tank knocked out a Mark V Panzer. Tanks for the Memories follows the men of the 712th Tank Battalion from the Great Depression through the horse cavalry, their mechanization as part of the 10th Armored Division, from which they were broken off as an independent tank battalion; through their voyage to England on the SS Exchequer, their escapades in England, and then through 11 months of combat from the hedgterows of Normandy to the liberation of the Flossenburg concentration camp.