Tank and AFV News

According to Amazon, the Kindle edition of the new book Tank Action: An Armoured Troop Commander’s War 1944-45 by Captain David Render (2016-06-16) by David Render has been released. From what we can tell, print copies of the book have been released in the UK but not yet in the US.  This is a pretty substantial memoir, coming in at 320 pages.  According to the Amazon listing David Render is one of the very last surviving Second World War tank troop commanders to have participated in the D-Day landing and the entirety of the subsequent fighting in the Allies campaign to liberate Europe in 1944 and 1945.

Publishers Description:

A gripping account of the Second World War, from the perspective of a young tank commander.

In 1944 the average life expectancy of a newly commissioned tank troop officer 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 invasion of Normandy to the fall of Germany. Ultimately it is a story of survival, comradeship and the ability to stand up and be counted as a leader in combat.