Book Alert: Tank Action: An Armoured Troop Commander’s War 1944–45

A new WWII tanker memoir is scheduled for release on October 4, 2016 according to Amazon. Tank Action: An Armoured Troop Commander’s War 1944-45 by David Render (2016-06-16) by David Render and Stuart Tootal is a hardcover book of 320 pages.  The book chronicles the experiences of David Render, who commanded a troop of British Sherman tanks following the D-day invasion.

Publisher’s Description:

In 1944 the average life expectancy of a newly commissioned tank troop officer on the frontline in Normandy was estimated as being less than two weeks. David Render was a nineteen year-old second lieutenant fresh from Sandhurst when he was sent to France to join a veteran armoured unit that had already spent years fighting with the Desert Rats in North Africa. Joining the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry five days after the D-Day landings, the combat-hardened men he was sent to command did not expect him to last long. However, in the following weeks of ferocious fighting in Normandy, in which more than 90 per cent of his fellow tank commanders became casualties, his ability to emerge unscathed from countless combat engagements defied expectations and earned him his squadron’s nickname of the ‘Inevitable Mr Render’.

In Tank Action David Render tells his remarkable story, spanning every major episode of the last year of the Second World War in Western Europe, from the D-Day landings to the fall of Germany. Ultimately it is a story of survival, friendship and measuring up to the expectations of the men he commanded.