Description: In this fascinating memoir, William S. Triplet continues the saga begun in his earlier book, A Youth in the Meuse-Argonne: A Memoir, 1917-1918. After serving in World War I, Triplet chose to become a career military man and entered West Point in 1920. After his graduation in 1924, his assignments were routine -- to regiments in the Southwest and in Panama or as an officer in charge of Reserve Officer Training Corps units or of men sent to a tank school. All this changed, however, when a new war opened in Europe.

From 1940 to 1942, Triplet was assigned to the Infantry Board at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he engaged in testing new weapons and machines for the expanding army. He became a full colonel in December 1942. After leaving Fort Benning, he received posts with four armored forces, the Thirteenth Armored Division, and an amphibious tank group in the United States, and the Second and Seventh Armored Divisions in Europe. His extraordinary abilities as a tank commander became evident in the Seventh Armored, where he took over a four-thousand-man unit known as Combat Command A. He was soon moving from triumph to triumph as he led his unit into Germany. In the war's last days Triplet and his men fought their way to the Baltic, preventing many German troops from joining in the defense of Berlin against the advancing Soviet army.

Although Triplet was recommended for brigadier general, Dwight Eisenhower believed he had enough generals to finish the war; thus, Triplet served out the few remaining years of his career as a full colonel. After retiring from the army in 1954, Triplet moved to Leesburg, Virginia, where he soon began to mull over his military experiences. Fascinated by thehistory he had witnessed, engaged by the attraction of writing about it, he recorded his memories with a combination of verve, thoughtfulness, and harsh judgments concerning ranking officers he considered incompetent -- generals not excluded.

Through his annotations, Robert H. Ferrell provides the historical context for Triplet's experiences. Well written and completely absorbing, A Colonel in the Armored Divisions provides readers the rare opportunity to see firsthand what a real professional in the U.S. Army thought about America's preparation for and participation in the war against Germany and Japan.

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