Where the birds never sing

A Son's tribute to the courage of his father and to all the heroes of World War II In his riveting debut, Where the Birds Never Sing, Jack Sacco tells the realistic, harrowing, at times horrifying, and ultimately triumphant tale of an American GI in World War II. As seen through the eyes of his father, Joe Sacco -- a farm boy from Alabama who was flung into the chaos of Normandy and survived the terrors of the Bulge -- this is the heroic story of the young men who changed the course of history. As part of the 92nd Signal Battalion and Patton's famed Third Army, Joe and his buddies found themselves at the forefront of the Allied push through France and Germany. After more than a year of fighting, but still only twenty years old, Joe was a hardened veteran. However, nothing could have prepared him and his unit for the horrors behind the walls of Germany's infamous Dachau concentration camp. They were among the first 250 American troops into the camp, and it was there that they finally grasped the significance of the Allied mission. Surrounded by death and destruction, they not only found the courage and the will to fight, they discovered the meaning of friendship and came to understand the value and fragility of life. Told from the perspective of an ordinary soldier, Where the Birds Never Sing contains firsthand accounts and never-before-published photographs documenting one man's transformation from farm boy to soldier to liberator.