Product Description

In this riveting book, Jack Sacco tells the realistic, harrowing, at times horrifying, and ultimately triumphant tale of an American GI in World War II as seen through the eyes of his father, Joe Sacco -- a farm boy from Alabama who was flung into the chaos of Normandy and survived the terrors of the Bulge.

As part of the 92nd Signal Battalion and Patton's famed Third Army, Joe and his buddies found themselves at the forefront of the Allied push through France and Germany. After more than a year of fighting, but still only twenty years old, Joe had become a hardened veteran. Yet nothing could have prepared him and his unit for the horrors behind the walls of Germany's infamous Dachau concentration camp. They were among the first 250 American troops into the camp, and it was there that they finally grasped the significance of the Allied mission. Surrounded by death and destruction, the men not only found the courage and will to fight, but they also discovered the meaning of friendship and came to understand the value and fragility of life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1322722 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Written in an unusual style by the son of a G.I., this episodic WWII chronicle covers the career of the author's father, Joe Sacco (no relation to the comics artist), from his induction into the U.S. Army and stateside training during 1943, overseas deployment to Great Britain in early 1944, and his experiences in combat and behind the lines at Normandy through the end of the war. The account of the liberation of Dachau concentration camp, in late April 1945, comprises only one short chapter in the book. Although the narrative is first-person, the author's father is given neither co-authorship, nor "as told to" credit. This peculiar style limits the impact of some of the writing. "They say that war is comprised of one surreal moment after another, millions of them all strung together until nothing is real anymore except for one's own mortality"-loses some punch if linked back to "a director, writer, and composer living in Los Angeles," as this debut author is credited. Yet the extensive reconstructed (or invented?) dialogue is largely successful: Sacco's barracks life and period profanity make for one of the more accurate and compelling recreations of the G.I. experience in recent years. The book is particularly good on Sacco's first few days in the service, combat action in a small German city in March 1945, and on the liberation of Dachau, but readers expecting extensive tales of armed conflict will be disappointed. While not a classic among World War II memoirs, nor particularly historically significant, this odd duck quacks convincingly.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"If you are looking for a great book about heroes in a dark place, read Where the Birds Never Sing." (James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys )

About the Author

Jack Sacco is a director, writer, and composer living in Los Angeles. His writing and directing credits include the documentaries Beyond the Fields and The Shroud, and he has composed the soundtracks for such works as TR: The Heroic Life of Theodore Roosevelt and Once Upon a Starlit Night.

Customer Reviews

A Very Captivating and Worthwhile Read
For anyone interested in the human side of war, this is an outstanding book. I felt I was walking alongside Joe Sacco from boot camp to his return home. This is the story of a young man drawn into pivotal world events and the mundane is juxtaposed with well-known historical events and characters. History texts necessarily collapse months and years into short paragraphs that tend to belie the true human costs of military engagements. Jack Sacco's account brings it home.

Reading this book has only deepened my appreciation for the "Greatest Generation" and expanded my awareness of the immense sacrifice we ask of our military--combat and support units alike. When you consider that everyone who served has a story to tell and multiply that by the thousands who did and did not come back from WWII, it is a very sobering thought. Everyone knows someone who was touched in some way by the war; reading this story may increase your understanding of those family dynamics.

Delightful insights
I discovered this book by sheer coincidence, and since I am a fan of anything related to WWI and WWII, I was instantly struck by the subtitle. I found this book to be a relatively easy read. Jack Sacco writes the stories of the the 92nd Signal Battalion as the memoir that his father, Joe Sacco, never wrote. Culled most likely from years of hearing his father's war stories, and seeing the sometimes horrific pictures his father kept in his scrapbook, Jack Sacco has paid a wonderful tribute not only to his father, but also to the men his father lived, worked, and fought with. The characters are vividly painted, and seem to come to life, if not seem a little familiar to anyone who has seen or read anything relating to WWII and combat.
I was slightly disappointed that there isn't more about Dachau in the book. (Only one chapter is devoted to the men arriving at the concentration camp and the horrors they uncover there.) For such a critical issue, it seems that Sacco could have spent more time on the soldiers' discoveries and the reaction of the townspeople of Dachau. "They had to have known" about the horrors of the concentration camp located near their homes and I, for one, would have liked for there to have been more on this topic. Nevertheless, this is an engaging account of a soldier's experiences during WWII.

A harrowing journey from innocence to hell to triumph
I just finished reading Mr. Sacco's book and am still a bit 'shell-shocked' from the experience. This is an EXCELLENT book. I read it in two days as I literally could not put it down. From the opening chapter the reader is caught up in the story of Joe Sacco (the author's father) and his journey from innocent farm boy to soldier to survivor. The narrative pulls the reader into the lives of these young men. You are virtually THERE with them as they go through training, cross the Atlantic, enter the invasion of Normandy, move through the hedgerows with the irrascible Patton and his Third Army, get bogged down in the wintry bloodbath of the Bulge, and arrive amidst the nightmarish scenes of Dachau. For anyone who ever questioned that war is sometimes a necessity, the deliverance of those tortured souls from the Inferno of Dachau will open their eyes. This book has everything - comedy, drama, action, adventure, romance, tragedy, despair, triumph. Jack Sacco has truly captured these scenes in vidid style; a simple naturalism that transforms the reader into an actual presence in the drama. It would make an excellent film, as the story is so visually well-told. I cannot recommdend this book highly enough.