The Last of the 357th Infantry: Harold Frank's WWII Story of Faith and Courage

by Mark Hager

Overview

For those who loved Stephen E. Ambrose's Band of Brothers and E.B. Sledge's With the Old Breed. Drawing on toughness and skills forged in hardscrabble Depression-era North Carolina, Bronze Star recipient and expert B.A.R. rifleman Harold Frank invades Normandy, fights Germans, and endures a grueling stint in a German POW camp where he witnesses the fire-bombing of Dresden.

From D-Day to Dresden with a Crack Shot B.A.R. Rifleman

D-Day 1944: twenty-year-old PFC Harold Frank had moved as one with his battalion onto the shores of Utah Beach, pushing into France to cut off and blockade the pivotal Nazi-occupied deep-water port of Cherbourg. As a recognized crack shot with WW II's iconic American automatic rifle, Frank fought bravely across the bloody hedgerows of the Cotentin Peninsula. During the most intense fighting, Frank was ambushed and wounded in a deadly, nine-hour firefight with Germans. Taken prisoner and with a bullet lodged under one arm, Frank found himself dumped first in a brutal Nazi POW concentration camp, then shipped to a grueling work camp on the outskirts of Dresden, Germany, where the young PFC was exposed to the vengeance of a crumbling Nazi regime, the menace of a rapidly advancing Russian military—and the danger of thousands of Allied bombers screaming overhead during the firebombing of Dresden.

Historian Mark Hager builds on hundreds of hours of interviews with Harold Frank, sharing the intimate and heart-pounding account of Frank’s journey as a child of the Great Depression to the bloody shores of the D-Day invasion, into the bowels of Nazi Germany, and back to the U.S. where as a young man Harold would spend years resolutely dealing with the lingering effects of starvation rations while determinedly building a new life—a life always mindful of the legacy of his POW experience and his faithful service in America’s hard-fought war against Nazi aggression.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684514045
Publisher:	Skyhorse Publishing
Publication date:	05/16/2023
Series:	World War II Collection
Pages:	324
Sales rank:	649,559
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Mark Hager, a veteran, historian, teacher, and award-winning filmmaker, co-produced the documentary The Last Gathering: The 75th Anniversary of D-Day, which led him to Harold Frank, the last of the 357th. Hager serves as president of the Forks of the Yadkin and Davie County History Museum in Mocksville, North Carolina.

Table of Contents

Foreword xiii

Chapter 1 The Construction of a Man 1

Chapter 2 "Save Everything but the Squeal." 11

Chapter 3 The Art of Turtle Meat 23

Chapter 4 Hard Times in the Cotton Patch: Christmas 1935 27

Chapter 5 Hunting with Uncle Pharris 35

Chapter 6 Faith, Sports, Walter Winchell, and That Damn T-Model 43

Chapter 7 Harold Is Drafted into the Army 69

Chapter 8 One Last Visit and Staff Sergeant Frisco 89

Chapter 9 PFC Es worthy and Joe Lewis: Harold Becomes a Cook! 95

Chapter 10 D-Day to Gourbesville: Rendezvous with the 357th Infantry 107

Chapter 11 Holding the Peninsula: "Yeah, It Doesn't Burn as Bad Now" 137

Chapter 12 "Now We're Going to See What Tough Really Is!" 149

Chapter 13 Poetic Justice 157

Chapter 14 Train to Stalag IV B 163

Chapter 15 Karl the German Supervisor 169

Chapter 16 Slingshot 175

Chapter 17 Bombing of Dresden 187

Chapter 18 The March of Death: Evacuation and Escape Attempt 193

Chapter 19 General Eisenhower and Lucky Strikes 203

Chapter 20 Coming Home 213

Chapter 21 The Love of His Life: "Hey, Red!" 221

Chapter 22 Thanks for the Memories 239

Chapter 23 A Day to Remember 251

Chapter 24 Until We Meet Again: Soaring Valor 261

Notes 290

Index 291