Summer reading: “The Death Makers,” by Glen Sire.

For those of you who will take some time off during the upcoming summer months to power down and relax, nothing beats a good read for passing the time, and here we have a recommendation passed along by D.P. Dyer, a foremost authority on early-war American armor. “The Death-Makers,” by Glen Sire, was the book that set Phil on his quest to learn more about tanks in the first place. It may sound like a pot-boiler, and to some extent it is, but it took me awhile to realize it was fiction, so true was its description of what it was like to be an American tanker during the final stages of WW2, as the Allies faced the Germans on their own soil. “Makes ‘From Here to Eternity sound like a Mother Goose story…” blares the cover, and who, in 1960, could resist? Published by Crest Books (Fawcett World Library), it has the fast-moving narrative of a movie like “Guns of Navarone,” or “Hell is for Heroes,” and I found it quite an enjoyable read. I found my copy, for a pittance, on-line.