A Soldier's Promise: The Alvin W. Shipman Story

This real life drama, "A Soldier’s Promise: The Alvin W. Shipman Story," chronicles the turbulent years of World War II as seen through the eyes of two people in love, Alvin W. Shipman and his new bride, Inez. We are witness to their eleven-day, whirlwind romance and marriage, as a young Sergeant Shipman and 15,000 other soldiers in the 65th Infantry Division leave for the front lines. Each relives these memories, as they come to grips with the reality of conflict and his division’s final assault on Nazi-controlled Europe. When he bids his farewell, Sergeant Shipman is unaware he is about to encounter an event that will change his life forever — the liberation of the previously unknown death camp, Mauthausen. As Alvin’s division repatriates those in the camp, he befriends two former prisoners, Charles Pilarski and an angelic, ten-year-old boy, Hans Schmidt. This little boy will be forever etched in his memory as he is forced to leave him behind, despite all his best efforts to arrange a new life for him in the United States. But it is the promise to Charles, that he will smuggle out a small book printed inside the prison and share it with the world, which tears at his conscience as long as he lives. The book, printed in the confines of a dark, dank cellar, contains the only deathbed confession by a Nazi camp commander known to exist. The last chapter of this book is that word-for-word deathbed confession, just as Charles Pilarski published it. Alvin W. Shipman finally keeps "A Soldier’s Promise."