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.”

In the tradition of Saving Private Ryan and Bridge Over the River Kwai, bestselling author James D. Shipman delivers a powerful, action-packed novel based on the true story of General Patton’s clandestine unauthorized raid on a World War II POW camp. March, 1945. Allied forces are battle-worn but wearily optimistic. Russia’s Red Army is advancing hard on Germany from the east, bolstering Allied troops moving in from the west and north. Soon, surely, Axis forces must accept defeat. Yet for Captain Jim Curtis, each day is a reminder of how uncertain warfare can be. Captured during the Battle of the Bulge, Curtis is imprisoned at a POW camp in Hammelburg, Bavaria. But whispers say General Patton’s troops, and liberation, are on the way. Indeed, fifty miles away, a task force of three hundred men is preparing to cross into Germany. What makes Hammelburg so special they don’t know, but orders are orders. Yet hope quickly evaporates as the raid unravels with shattering losses. For inmates, the liberation becomes a struggle for survival marked by a stark choice: stay, or risk escaping into danger—while leaving some behind. For Curtis, the decision is an even more personal test of loyalty, friendship, and the values for which one will die or kill. It will be another twenty years before the unsanctioned mission’s secret motivation becomes public knowledge, creating a controversy that will forever color Patton’s legacy and linger on in the lives of those who made it home at last—and the loved ones of those who did not.

On a dark night in March 1945, Task Force Baum dashed through a break in the German Army lines created by troops of the U.S. Third Army and embarked on one of the most dramatic and dangerous rescue missions of World War II. Their target, the Allied POW camp 60 miles behind enemy lines near the German town of Hammelburg. Unknown to all but one member of the 300 men in Task Force Baum was the real reason for the rescue: the POW camp at Hammelburg contained Lieutenant Colonel John Waters -- General Patton's son-in-law! This is the gripping, true, and long-suppressed full story of what exactly happened in the desperate drive to Hammelburg.

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.

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