Barbara Author:Wayne Robinson "A novel of death and survival in tank combat" — She was big, bold and beautiful as she rumbled down the streets towards Portland harbor on that rainy Saturday morning, the fourth of June, 1944. She was 34 tons of M-4 Sherman medium tank and her initial task was to hit Omaha Beach, Normandy, France. They called her a secret weapon because she had... more » been rebuilt to leave an LCT in deep water and propel herself to shore ahead of the infantry. She was not alone; she was one of thirty-two - and her name as Barbara. It took guts and brains to get onto the beaches at Normandy, and it took lives to get off. This is the story of the men of Lance Battalion who fought their way through France, Holland, Belgium and Germany - leaving milestons of death along the bloody road to victory. Barbara is a tank that became a symbol to the whole battalion: to Colonel Crandal she epitomized man's ability to endure; for Sergeant Walter Barska, Barbara was a whole new world of combat and survival; to the men she became a source of inspiration and pride in the lonely, black hours of war.
Amid the chaos of battle there is a poignantly impermanent love affair between a widowed French girl and Sergeant Barska which shows that life, however brief, is for the living and that in love, as in war, there can be no turning back.
Barbara, a first-rate combat novel with a wealth of historical fact, continuous and exciting action - the story of the men and women for whom war became, for a time, their only way of life.« less