Operation Task Force Baum.

The orders came from Patton himself: Take a strike force behind enemy lines--with no air or ground support--and liberate a POW camp at Hammelburg, where Patton's son-in-law was held. Captain Abe Baum and an armored task force answered the call, crashing through an enemy-held town, plunging into German territory, and fighting their way to Hammelburg. With the German army closing in around them, the raiders kept going, until they had liberated 1,500 prisoners of war. Baum's Raiders had just achieved an impossible objective. Now they had to get back out....RAID! Written by the men who were there, Raid! is the gripping real-life story of a controversial mission in the heart of World War II. From the belly of a Sherman Tank pelted with enemy fire to the POWs waiting behind barbed wire, this is a thrilling, you-are-there chronicle of human courage--in the face of impossible odds.

In March 1945, against the advice of his top subordinates, Gen. George Patton created a special task force to venture more than fifty miles behind enemy lines and liberate a POW camp near Hammelburg, Germany. The camp held some 1,500 American prisoners, including Patton’s son-in-law. Hampered by ambushes and a lack of fuel and even maps, the raid was a disaster, one of the worst mistakes of Patton’s legendary career. Out of some 300 men, only three dozen returned. Based on memoirs, diaries, combat reports, and interviews with survivors, Patton’s Last Gamble vividly recounts a mission Gen. Omar Bradley later said “began as a wild goose chase and ended in tragedy.”

One of the great historians of World War II offers the complete story of General George Patton's boldest and bloodiest mission.