601st Tank Destroyer Battalion Unit History

Failmezger, Victor.  American Knights: The Untold Story of the Men of the 601st Tank Destroyer 
       Battalion.  New York: Osprey Publishing, 2015.  ISBN: 978-1-4728-0935-3

American Knights is not your typical World War II history that looks at an individual battle, campaign, or the whole war.  Instead, it is a unit history of the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion during World War II.  The 601st served in North Africa, Italy, and France attached to a variety of divisions, landing across the beach in Morocco, Salerno, Anzio, and Southern France.  It helped break the Colmar Pocket and then made it all the way to Austria by the end of the war.

Victor Failmezger had a relative who served in the 601st during the war and his letters acted as a catalyst in the writing of this book.  In addition to his relative's letters, he used diaries and letters of other soldiers, official unit reports, news articles, and other sources to provide a picture of the unit in action, at rest, and at play. 

The 601st was one of the first tank destroyer battalions to see action and also one of the last.  The unit used all of the tank destroyers in the US Army inventory during the course of the war, receiving multiple individual and unit citations.  If you want to read about a different fight, you are likely to enjoy American Knights.