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No Surrender : A World War II Memoir
No Surrender is the true story of an American WWII soldier who escaped a Nazi POW train and fought in the French Resistance, rivetingly told by the man himself.
A paratrooper in the 101st Airborne, James Sheeran was just a kid when he floated into Normandy-part of the historic invasion that brought more than a hundred thousand Allied soldiers into Nazi-occupied France. He survived D-Day only to be captured by German forces. Barefoot, starved, and sleep-deprived, he was forced on a marathon march, exposed to fire from American fighter planes, and herded onto a train to Germany.
But, using his jump knife, he carved his way out of the boxcar and leaped into the countryside. Stumbling into a French village, he found his way with the aid of the underground network, and fought alongside a guerrilla faction of the French Resistance.
This gripping account of war-torn Europe is, ultimately, a story about humanity's capacity for self-sacrifice and remarkable endurance. Here Sheeran shares not only the details of his extraordinary wartime experience, but the private thoughts that guided him in his darkest moments. It is an unforgettable memoir that will speak to anyone who has faced adversity and refused to admit defeat.
A paratrooper in the 101st Airborne, James Sheeran was just a kid when he floated into Normandy-part of the historic invasion that brought more than a hundred thousand Allied soldiers into Nazi-occupied France. He survived D-Day only to be captured by German forces. Barefoot, starved, and sleep-deprived, he was forced on a marathon march, exposed to fire from American fighter planes, and herded onto a train to Germany.
But, using his jump knife, he carved his way out of the boxcar and leaped into the countryside. Stumbling into a French village, he found his way with the aid of the underground network, and fought alongside a guerrilla faction of the French Resistance.
This gripping account of war-torn Europe is, ultimately, a story about humanity's capacity for self-sacrifice and remarkable endurance. Here Sheeran shares not only the details of his extraordinary wartime experience, but the private thoughts that guided him in his darkest moments. It is an unforgettable memoir that will speak to anyone who has faced adversity and refused to admit defeat.
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First published December 21, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
August 10, 2015
This is one of the best war memoirs I have read. It's really good. The author parachuted behind enemy lines on D-Day with the 101st Airborne, was captured by the Germans, escaped, and spent months fighting with the French Resistance, before finding his way back to his unit and rejoining the fight in the Netherlands. He recounts the story in detail and with heart. His time with the French Resistance is amazing to contemplate.
Overall, this is a gripping narrative that moves forward with the pace and focus of a novel, and yet has the veracity that only a true story can convey. (The afterword says that considerable fact checking in France was done to confirm the details first described by Sheeran.)
Because this is a memoir focused on a single person's experience the book has a coherence and narrative drive that historical narratives that try to capture the experience of battalions and groups of men simply can't muster.
I'm reading this genre as part of my continuing search for books that will interest my thrill loving 18 year old son. I checked out three World War II histories and narratives, focused on the Battle of the Bulge, in which my father and his grandfather fought. This was the best of the bunch. It tells you more about World War II and the soldier's experience precisely by attempting to tell you less. Even though Sheeran was an extraordinary soldier with a most unusual experience, there is nothing like a first person narrative to put you on the ground and in the foxhole with every soldier.
Overall, this is a gripping narrative that moves forward with the pace and focus of a novel, and yet has the veracity that only a true story can convey. (The afterword says that considerable fact checking in France was done to confirm the details first described by Sheeran.)
Because this is a memoir focused on a single person's experience the book has a coherence and narrative drive that historical narratives that try to capture the experience of battalions and groups of men simply can't muster.
I'm reading this genre as part of my continuing search for books that will interest my thrill loving 18 year old son. I checked out three World War II histories and narratives, focused on the Battle of the Bulge, in which my father and his grandfather fought. This was the best of the bunch. It tells you more about World War II and the soldier's experience precisely by attempting to tell you less. Even though Sheeran was an extraordinary soldier with a most unusual experience, there is nothing like a first person narrative to put you on the ground and in the foxhole with every soldier.
April 28, 2025
A work of fiction.
I’m almost certain this book is almost completely embellished by a man who went AWOL…
1. He claims he was taken prisoner and met with Axis Sally….
2. He joins the French resistance in the village is mother is originally from…
3. He can’t understand French but apparently he was having full conversations in French and remembers these detailed conversations 70 years later….
The bull shit goes on and on and there is no credible source for any of this stuff. I assume he went AWOL as soon as he landed and maybe went to his mother’s village and hid or something. We’ll never know the truth but I am certain that this story is bull shit.
I’m almost certain this book is almost completely embellished by a man who went AWOL…
1. He claims he was taken prisoner and met with Axis Sally….
2. He joins the French resistance in the village is mother is originally from…
3. He can’t understand French but apparently he was having full conversations in French and remembers these detailed conversations 70 years later….
The bull shit goes on and on and there is no credible source for any of this stuff. I assume he went AWOL as soon as he landed and maybe went to his mother’s village and hid or something. We’ll never know the truth but I am certain that this story is bull shit.
October 15, 2022
Went to my local library and suddenly came across this book. It grasped my attention and quickly became addicting. The way the story was told and the descriptions within, ugh... Nothing short of amazing. Would I call the man in the book a national hero? No. However, I would call him: a strong, brave, and courageous man. I simply could not imagine the pain, happiness, and the loss this man suffered. This should be mandatory read!
February 21, 2021
No Surrender tells James Sheeran's extraordinary story of survival during World War II. It's a pretty good, well-paced memoir. The frequent use of French and German phrases gets tedious at times though. What I found most interesting is that much of his story runs parallel to the outfit in the Band of Brothers book and miniseries, and it certainly provided me with more information about the experience of the 101st Airborne in World War II.
April 3, 2022
.An incredible true story. This guy: was in the D-Day landings, was captured by Nazis and escaped, fought with the Resistance for a couple of months, found his mom's relatives who lived in Joan of Arc's hometown, met Bing Crosby when he entertained the troops, and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 14, 2020
Written from the heart
An amazing story of a soldier who would not quit.I wish not so much French and German were used especially often with no translation.
An amazing story of a soldier who would not quit.I wish not so much French and German were used especially often with no translation.
October 11, 2021
A true first person account. More talk of war than expected, but survival account is gripping.
August 31, 2011
This was a hard-to-put-down WWII memoir. The author parachuted into France, then was captured on D-day. He escaped from his POW train and was hidden by the French underground and got involved with the Resistance. When his area was liberated, he went back to the 101st and was involved with Market Garden and then Bastogne.
The author was good at picking out the interesting details. He knew when to summarize and when to tell the story fully. He was also good at giving just enough background history to help anchor a reader that hadn't studied the era without boring someone that already knew something about the campaigns he was involved in. Good use of flashbacks, a nice element of mystery with his mom's family. His experiences were fascinating. Had this been a novel, I would have called it unrealistic (ending up in the village his French mother grew up in, showing up to rejoin the 101st airborne less than a day before they jumped into Holland)...but this was real.
I found myself asking some hard questions as I read this book. What would you do if you had the chance to escape from a train carrying you to a POW camp in Germany, knowing that the Germans had threatened to shoot 10 prisoners for every one that escaped? Or if you were a pretty French teenager, what would you be willing to do to distract a German guard so that two American escapees without the right paperwork could cross the bridge the German was guarding? I haven't come up with answers yet—I'm just glad I'm not in those situations.
I would have liked a little more of an epilogue—specifically, I wanted to know what happened to all the POWs on the train that didn't escape with the author. There was some profanity, and a few parts were on the crude side. I really enjoyed this book, but don't recommend it for younger readers. I hope someone in Hollywood is working on a movie script based on the book.
Two quotes from the book:
We're paratroopers. We're supposed to be surrounded.
and
A doctor stood beside my bed, gripping a clipboard. He held up three fingers. "How many do you see?"
"The hundred and first?" I asked him.
His eyebrows shot up, and he wrote something in my folder. Then he repeated the exercise, but with four fingers. "Well, young man? How many fingers?"
"The hundred and first," I repeated. "What happened to the 101st airborne in Bastogne? Tell me about my unit and then I'll play all the counting games you want."
The author was good at picking out the interesting details. He knew when to summarize and when to tell the story fully. He was also good at giving just enough background history to help anchor a reader that hadn't studied the era without boring someone that already knew something about the campaigns he was involved in. Good use of flashbacks, a nice element of mystery with his mom's family. His experiences were fascinating. Had this been a novel, I would have called it unrealistic (ending up in the village his French mother grew up in, showing up to rejoin the 101st airborne less than a day before they jumped into Holland)...but this was real.
I found myself asking some hard questions as I read this book. What would you do if you had the chance to escape from a train carrying you to a POW camp in Germany, knowing that the Germans had threatened to shoot 10 prisoners for every one that escaped? Or if you were a pretty French teenager, what would you be willing to do to distract a German guard so that two American escapees without the right paperwork could cross the bridge the German was guarding? I haven't come up with answers yet—I'm just glad I'm not in those situations.
I would have liked a little more of an epilogue—specifically, I wanted to know what happened to all the POWs on the train that didn't escape with the author. There was some profanity, and a few parts were on the crude side. I really enjoyed this book, but don't recommend it for younger readers. I hope someone in Hollywood is working on a movie script based on the book.
Two quotes from the book:
We're paratroopers. We're supposed to be surrounded.
and
A doctor stood beside my bed, gripping a clipboard. He held up three fingers. "How many do you see?"
"The hundred and first?" I asked him.
His eyebrows shot up, and he wrote something in my folder. Then he repeated the exercise, but with four fingers. "Well, young man? How many fingers?"
"The hundred and first," I repeated. "What happened to the 101st airborne in Bastogne? Tell me about my unit and then I'll play all the counting games you want."
January 13, 2013
I really enjoyed this book, being a gripping story of a soldier who, captured by the Germans on Operation Overlord D-Day, escaped, joined the French Resistance, and came back to fight after being liberated.
For as much as I liked reading the book, I found a couple of things that didn't seem accurate to me. I was confused, and maybe others are as well, so I'll list them.
For example, on page 11, Sheeran talks about the initial "click" of the "cricket toy", then the other soldier saying "flash" with the vocal password response of "lightning". Wasn't it one click / two clicks, or alternatively flash / thunder / welcome? I'd trust George Koskimaki, as he wrote about this in 1970 (and probably pulled from earlier sources) when it was much fresher in memory.
Also, some stories about Bastogne are confusing. He discusses two events that took place on December 23, but parts of each story didn't make sense to me. According to "Rendezvous with Destiny" by Leonard Rapport and Arthur Norwood, Jr., his battalion would have been engaged on December 20, in defense of a hill, 700m-1km south of Foy. He seems to indicate a longer ride to Foy, almost as if he's talking about Noville, a few km north. If this was December 23rd, then it seems to conflict with his jeep ride, which would have happened on the 23rd. But that jeep ride toward Foy doesn't make sense either, since on Dec 23rd, Foy would have been occupied by the Germans.
Overall, this is a great story, but there don't seem to be a lot of details in the battles, so they seem hard to follow (especially in Bastogne, as mentioned above). I couldn't really seem to get the battle around Bastogne straight, although, in war, things are often confusing. The French gave James their "Légion d'honneur" decoration in 2007, in a ceremony with his cousin, Lucette, who would have been 4 when they met. I just wish this could have been put out sooner so that some of these questions could have been answered or corroborated.
For as much as I liked reading the book, I found a couple of things that didn't seem accurate to me. I was confused, and maybe others are as well, so I'll list them.
For example, on page 11, Sheeran talks about the initial "click" of the "cricket toy", then the other soldier saying "flash" with the vocal password response of "lightning". Wasn't it one click / two clicks, or alternatively flash / thunder / welcome? I'd trust George Koskimaki, as he wrote about this in 1970 (and probably pulled from earlier sources) when it was much fresher in memory.
Also, some stories about Bastogne are confusing. He discusses two events that took place on December 23, but parts of each story didn't make sense to me. According to "Rendezvous with Destiny" by Leonard Rapport and Arthur Norwood, Jr., his battalion would have been engaged on December 20, in defense of a hill, 700m-1km south of Foy. He seems to indicate a longer ride to Foy, almost as if he's talking about Noville, a few km north. If this was December 23rd, then it seems to conflict with his jeep ride, which would have happened on the 23rd. But that jeep ride toward Foy doesn't make sense either, since on Dec 23rd, Foy would have been occupied by the Germans.
Overall, this is a great story, but there don't seem to be a lot of details in the battles, so they seem hard to follow (especially in Bastogne, as mentioned above). I couldn't really seem to get the battle around Bastogne straight, although, in war, things are often confusing. The French gave James their "Légion d'honneur" decoration in 2007, in a ceremony with his cousin, Lucette, who would have been 4 when they met. I just wish this could have been put out sooner so that some of these questions could have been answered or corroborated.
June 22, 2011
What a fascinating first person account of a paratrooper captured by the Germans during WWII. James Sheeran fought hard to be accepted by the military during the second world war and he fought the Germans just as hard. A gripping tale of a young man (only seventeen at the time of enlistment) who parachutes and is captured by the Germans; excapes from a prisoner train; unexpectedly finds his way to the French town where his Mother was born (she met James' father during WW I) and learns about the family his mother never wanted to talk about. Along the way he joins the resistence movement in France, not only fighting along side the others inside the movement, but being sheltered by them as they hand him off to help him get back to his men. It's not all fun and games: James, traveling with another serviceman who was captured and escaped with him from the train, are shot at, injured, have to travel the same roads as the enemy, are captured again (this time their boots are taken from them and when they escape, they have no shoes), meet many French who are willing to shelter them and have to make many tough decisions about who to trust and who not to. Equally important, James needs to decide how much of his mother's past he wants to learn about, and how much he will share with the rest of his siblings if, and when, he returns home. There are many war stories out there. This first hand account makes the war personal; you want to read on to find out what happened to the other men in James' unit that were captured; to find out just what James learns about his family; and about himself.
January 17, 2014
A lively telling of a young man's adventures during WWII as one of the 101st Airborne tells his story. He jumped as part of the D-Day invasion. Was captured with several of fellows and escaped as they were being transported to a German POW camp with one other member of his unit. They hid/ran from the Germans for months in France finding the village where his mother grew up and connecting with some people from her life before she moved to America. They eventually reconnected with Patton's Army and returned to England to reunite with the old unit. Sheeran could have gone home for the remainder of the war but talked his commander into letting him stay. He relates his participation in Operation Market Garden and then the battle of Bastogne.
Odd fact, the Army issued each parachuter three condoms to take with them on their D-day jump.
Odd fact, the Army issued each parachuter three condoms to take with them on their D-day jump.
April 15, 2020
This is truly an underrated World War 2 memoir.
The soldier writing this novel experienced essentially all of the Western Front of the European Theatre of World War 2, along with German imprisonment. The book is well paced, interesting in every chapter (something memoirs often struggle with, as soldiers recount scraping mud off Humvees with the same amount of detail as their first battle), and not overly patriotic or biased. I actually highly prefer this novel to Unbroken simply due to the variety and the writing style.
If you want to read a World War 2 memoir that features as many aspects of the Western Front as possible, I highly suggest this book. I did not know it was as rarely read as it appears to be.
The soldier writing this novel experienced essentially all of the Western Front of the European Theatre of World War 2, along with German imprisonment. The book is well paced, interesting in every chapter (something memoirs often struggle with, as soldiers recount scraping mud off Humvees with the same amount of detail as their first battle), and not overly patriotic or biased. I actually highly prefer this novel to Unbroken simply due to the variety and the writing style.
If you want to read a World War 2 memoir that features as many aspects of the Western Front as possible, I highly suggest this book. I did not know it was as rarely read as it appears to be.
June 26, 2013
I liked this book very much. It's the first-hand account of a paratrooper, James Sheeran, and his experiences during and after the Allied invasion of Normandy in 1944. Sheeran was a member of the 101st Airborne Division, (the "Band of Brothers"). The book is fairly short but Sheeran's time in war-torn France and Belgium is filled with accounts of his survival after being captured by the Germans, his escape, fighting alongside the French Resistance and connecting with his mother's French family.
April 4, 2011
The story of Sheeran's escape following capture as a POW at D-Day was interesting, but the second half of the book lost me in standard warfare descriptions; hard to keep track of what was happening and to whom. The style of writing is not at all sophisticated, and the French and German included in the book was HORRIBLE and as such very distracting. Couldn't he have found an editor who could check the foreign content? Pretty inexcusable, especially as Sheeran is half-French himself.
May 27, 2011
Great book!
The guy joins the army during WWII, gets send to England. In the opening hours of the liberation of the continent, he is taken prisoner. He escapes a prison train, and joins the French resistance.
Once France is liberated, he rejoins his army platoon and fights his way through Germany.
After reading this book, I realized how comfy and easy my life is. The next time that I am stuck in traffic, I will not complain, because at least I not stuck on a prison train.
The guy joins the army during WWII, gets send to England. In the opening hours of the liberation of the continent, he is taken prisoner. He escapes a prison train, and joins the French resistance.
Once France is liberated, he rejoins his army platoon and fights his way through Germany.
After reading this book, I realized how comfy and easy my life is. The next time that I am stuck in traffic, I will not complain, because at least I not stuck on a prison train.
January 4, 2014
A good story but I find myself thinking it is far too over zealous and at most slightly believable. The book reads as a giant whitewash, things the author speaks of seemed to slip into place far too easily and at just the right time to always save his skin or appear to make him out as a hero wanna-be. I'm simply not sure what to make of his story.
July 16, 2014
This is a terrific first-hand account of a member of the 101st Airborne division and his action in WWII. He was captured very soon after jumping into France on D-Day. His experiences briefly as a POW and his escape are amazing to read. It is well written and you learn a great deal about this man's perseverance and desire to serve America.
July 27, 2012
I liked this book -- it was very well written memoir of the experiences of a very young airborne trooper that was captured by the Germans on D-Day+1. His escape and time spent with the Maquis really brought something different to the war memoir. I would recommend it -- it's a fast and easy read.
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April 9, 2011The man had a good memory.
He's honest about his feelings and thoughts during the ultimate nightmare and adventure of his life.
He's honest about his feelings and thoughts during the ultimate nightmare and adventure of his life.
April 13, 2011
Very interesting account of the European theater of World War II. I would recommend this book to anybody.
July 5, 2011
Call me cynical but I recommend taking this account with many grains of salt.
July 11, 2011
A must for anyone interesed in World War 2.
August 25, 2011
Although this memoir of one soldiers fighting in France against the Nazis was interesting, the book itself was just not that well written.
February 16, 2015
Reading this book made me ask if I'd be able to man-up tenfold and rise to the occassion like James Sheeran did. This retelling of his experiences in France was a fascinating read.
April 20, 2016
I can not put the book down. what a story!
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews