Top Sergeant. Dieser Artikel ist nicht verfügbar.Top Sergeant

A detailed memoir of U.S. Army Sergeant Major Bill Bainbridge chronicles his humble origins as the son of an Illinois tenant farmer and his distinguished military career, which spanned more than three decades and brought him into three wars.

th his humble origins as an Illinois farm boy and son of a "dirt farmer," Bill Bainbridge's Top Sergeant is the only memoir of an enlisted man's rise to the most senior NCO position in the U.S. Army. <br>In a military career spanning more than three decades, Bill Bainbridge saw service in three wars, fought in two of them, and was captured in one. In France in World War II, Bainbridge served with A Company, 423rd Infantry of the 106th Infantry Division. Forced to surrender during the Battle of the Bulge, he spent five months in a German POW camp, weighing only eighty-six pounds when he was liberated. Discharged in December of '45, he fully expected to spend the rest of his life as a farmer. <br>But being called up for the Korean War ruined his farming prospects and, in due time, "That peculiar chemistry of training, experience, and promotion began to have its effect, and I realized that I didn't want to be anywhere else but the Army." In thirty-one years of service, Bainbridg