Patton's Bulldog: The Life and Service of General Walton H. Walker

Rating:
Summary: 'Worth Reading' but the definitive bio remains to be written
Review: I am glad I read this book, and I recommend it to those who want to know more about George Patton's subordinates. It contains some interesting details, including many concerned with Walker's service in a World War I machine gun company. Unfortunately, it also has major deficiencies. The style is very ordinary, and dry at times. More importantly, the author fails to put Walker's accomplishments into any kind of broader historical perspective. (As a very minor historian, perhaps it was modesty on Heefner's part that led him to refrain, wisely, from even attempting this.) The quote by Alexander Haig on the dust jacket is particularly unhelpful and misleading, since Haig's partisan jab about preparedness doesn't belong on a book that makes no attempt to examine whether the funds available to Harry Truman in 1950 were really misallocated. Was money spent in Europe that should've been spent training Walker's unit in Japan, in anticipation of the North Korean attack? This book is about a brave and dedicated individual, not such broad questions of policy.
There are also some unanswered questions that are more relevant to General Walker, the soldier: Was he used as a scapegoat for American difficulties in Korea? How did the timing of his death affect how he was judged by his contemporaries? Wilson Allen Heefner has provided some raw material that will help to answer such questions, but he has also convinced me that General Walker deserves a better biography.

Rating:
Summary: 'Worth Reading' but the definitive bio remains to be written
Review: I am glad I read this book, and I recommend it to those who want to know more about George Patton's subordinates. It contains some interesting details, including many concerned with Walker's service in a World War I machine gun company. Unfortunately, it also has major deficiencies. The style is very ordinary, and dry at times. More importantly, the author fails to put Walker's accomplishments into any kind of broader historical perspective. (As a very minor historian, perhaps it was modesty on Heefner's part that led him to refrain, wisely, from even attempting this.) The quote by Alexander Haig on the dust jacket is particularly unhelpful and misleading, since Haig's partisan jab about preparedness doesn't belong on a book that makes no attempt to examine whether the funds available to Harry Truman in 1950 were really misallocated. Was money spent in Europe that should've been spent training Walker's unit in Japan, in anticipation of the North Korean attack? This book is about a brave and dedicated individual, not such broad questions of policy.
There are also some unanswered questions that are more relevant to General Walker, the soldier: Was he used as a scapegoat for American difficulties in Korea? How did the timing of his death affect how he was judged by his contemporaries? Wilson Allen Heefner has provided some raw material that will help to answer such questions, but he has also convinced me that General Walker deserves a better biography.