By Walt Larimore and Mike Yorkey.
New York: Permuted Press, 2022.
ISBN 978-1-64293-959-0. Photographs. Map. Appendices. Notes.
Bibliography.
Pp. xvii, 459. $35.00.
Over fifteen years in the making, Walt Larimore, a family doctor and prolific writer, has co-authored an extremely compelling and very readable history of his father’s heroic World War II service fighting in the oft overlooked southern European theater, slogging through Italy and northward through France and into Germany during 1944-45.
Philip Larimore, born 1925 in Memphis, Tennessee, was commissioned as a second lieutenant shortly after he turned eighteen and was one of the youngest officers in the Army in January 1943. Phil arrived at the Anzio beachhead in Italy on 20 February 1944, and was assigned as the Ammunition and Pioneer (A&P) Platoon leader, Headquarters Company, 3d Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 3d Infantry Division, VI Corps. His exploits at the beachhead were sufficiently courageous that on 5 April he was awarded his first Silver Star. By May, Phil had been promoted to first lieutenant, and towards the end of the month the Allies had successfully broken out of the Anzio beachhead.
On 15 August 1944, Phil and 150,000 other Allied troops successfully hit sixteen French beaches along the Côte d’Azur. Three days later Phil was wounded for the first time, having been shot in the arm; he refused hospitalization claiming, “It’s a flesh wound. I’ll be fine” (p. 126). In early September, Phil’s regimental commander put him in for a Bronze Star with a “V” device for valor. After another wound in October, he was successfully evacuated to a general hospital in southern France where he met Lieutenant Audie Murphy. Later in the war Murphy would earn the Medal of Honor.
The 30th Infantry was the first American unit to reach the Rhine in November 1944. On 4 January 1945, Phil turned twenty and was awarded an oak leaf to his Bronze Star with “V” device. After its commander was wounded, Phil took charge of a company on 1 February 1. In March, the 30th was the first regiment “to completely penetrate” (p. 216) the vaunted German Siegfried Line.
On 8 April, Phil and his company were engaged in fierce combat near Rottershausen with German snipers in abundance. Some of his troops were being overrun, and as Phil was helping his men withdraw, he was shot in the leg. This time the wound was so severe that the leg required amputation above the knee. He received a third and final Purple Heart, though during the war he was wounded six times. Phil was promoted to captain at the start of May, and seven days later Hitler committed suicide. Phil was later awarded a second Silver Star and later the Distinguished Service Cross.
Prior to being wounded, Phil’s superiors offered him the chance in early April to conduct an “off the books” operation. Army intelligence had learned that the famed white Lipizzaner stallions were being stabled at a German camp in Czechoslovakia and Phil, an expert equestrian, rode by horse to confirm their presence, which later resulted in their eventual repatriation. In 1947 at the age of twenty-two, Phil was promoted to major. That same year at Fort Myer, Virginia, he was able to buy at auction a horse he had first seen at the Nazi Czech stables. Despite his wishes to the contrary Phil was medically discharged from the Army. He married in 1949, received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Geography from the University of Virginia in the early 1950s and, according to son Walt, died “a happy man” (p. 363) on 31 October 2003.
Walt’s footnotes were well composed, often explaining Army terms for a broad audience and thus helpful to those without a military background. Each chapter was preceded by a thoughtful quotation usually from a soldier or senior leader who praised the bravery and grit of the infantryman. The book was aided by the inclusion of many letters Phil wrote home. Additionally, there is plentiful dialogue that contextualizes events. As Walt explains, the phrasing “often had to be created or enhanced, but hopefully with accurate context” (p. 388).
M. Wesley Clark
Fairfax, Virginia
