Where the Birds Never Sing
Jack Sacco
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2003 Reganbooks
ISBN: 0060096659

The True Story of the 92nd Signal Battalion & the Liberation of Dachau.

Where the Birds Never Sing is Jack Sacco's compelling memories of his father's WWII experiences as part of the 92nd Signal Battalion & Patton's famed 3rd Army.

From Alabama farm boy to the chaos of Normandy, & on to survive the Battle of the Bulge, Joe & his unit find themselves on the forefront of the Allied push through France & Germany.

Jack Sacco is Joe's son to whom his father showed the album of black & white snapshots he took from 1942 onwards as he & his buddies, rigging lines for field telephones & keeping communications going, were moved as pawns on the chessboard that was the European Theater. Through razed towns, behind enemy lines, into the worst winter in living memory.

Joe's buddies, some of whom he met in basic training, are all from different places & cultures in America, & all newly trained for war. Put aside your recently acquired political correctness & go with the flow of how it was, how they could hurl insults, practice arch racism without turning a hair, brawl & then be there for each other as the bullets fly & bombs rattled their teeth.

After more than a year of fighting, though only twenty years old, Joe Sacco was a hardened veteran. Nothing he had yet survived, however, could prepare him for what was behind the walls of Germany's infamous Dachau. Be there when, as the first American troops to enter the concentration camp, Joe shuffles through the gate into a hell where bodies are stacked like cord wood, boots & shoes in a pile taller than a man, chimney stacks spew out a filthy stench, the barracks are full of walking, silent skeletons & not one bird sings. It is here that Joe finally grasps the significance of their mission.

Be there too, when Joe, on his way home, stops by the little town where he lost his heart to beautiful Monique, only to find that his sweetheart has died from a lethal rape committed by retreating enemy soldiers.

Where the Birds Never Sing is a riveting biography of the ordinary, sometimes hilarious, & always hair-raising adventures of one young soldier boy who did the right thing, fought the good fight, & came home a man.

Very well done!
Read my Interview with Jack Sacco.
(11/09/03)

Rebecca