Seven Six One: A Novel of the Second World War

G.F. Borden seems to be an expert on tanks in World War II, having earlier written "Easter Day" about a tank crew behind enemy lines trying to get themselves and their captured Italian tank to safety. Seven Six One is about an African-American tank battalion during World War II. Interestingly, none of the characters ever expressly say that the soldiers in this unit are black, but even if you don't know anything about the Seven Six One, it is quickly apparent. Borden is familiar with the shortcomings of the Sherman tank compared to German Panthers and Tiger IIs, and portrays the courage of the men who continue to fight in inferior machines. He also shows how well the Germans fought up until the end of the war, even though it was obvious to everyone that they were going to lose. This book does not glorify war, but it justly glorifies men who willingly chose combat as a way of demonstrating that they were as good Americans as anyone else.

G.F. Borden, author of the excellent Easter Day, 1941 has outdone himself in this, another novel of WWII. Borden is not a romantic, and his works are grittily realistic, but here there's another wrinkle: the story line follows a real-life unit, the 761st Tank Battalion, an all-black outfit caught up in the grueling march through France, Luxembourg and Belgium toward Germany from November of '44, until the end of the war. The events in the novel are based on the actual combat history of the unit, and the author does not exalt shoot-'em-up heroics over the steady, quiet courage and endurance necessary to win wars. Borden is not black, but this is a story that needed to be told, and he's told it well. These black soldiers were as good as the best on either side of that conflict, as this serious novel convincingly illustrates.