Photographer, Paratrooper, POW: A Wyoming Cowboy in Hitler's Germany

Photographer, Paratrooper, POW: A Wyoming Cowboy in Hitler's Germany tells the story of three brothers who leave their Wyoming home to fight in World War II. Carroll started with extensive, detailed family histories assembled by Merle Harris and other genealogists, and added the voluminous collection of military records, memorabilia, photographs, war-time correspondence, and personal notes saved by Harold Carroll, who, as the title suggests, was one of America's first paratroopers, a combat photographer, and a prisoner of war who escaped repeatedly from the Nazis.

The author supplements these extensive primary-source materials with meticulous research of other published and unpublished works, all fully documented and cited for the benefit of further research.

Carroll begins by reciting the story of the discovery, in 2004, of a treasure-trove of photographs Harold took and submitted for development, in England, just before D-Day. Before he had the chance to collect the prints, he parachuted into Normandy as part of the preliminary force, hours before the "official" start of the Allied invasion of Nazi Europe now well-known as "D-Day, H-Hour."

Harold was captured and taken prisoner by the Nazis and spent the remainder of the war repeatedly escaping from their POW camps, keeping notes of the adventures along the way, as he could - sometimes only in scratches upon his Zippo lighter. After the war, Harold put those notes together with accurate maps - unavailable while on the run from the Nazis! - to trace his various paths, with results differing from other, previously-published accounts. (Harold was certain that his version, first published here, was the more accurate version.) Yes, we get a picture of the trusty Zippo.

Carroll takes the reader back to the brothers' ancestral home in Ireland, painting a vivid chronical of classic American pioneers. The appendices document events at least as far back as 1798 but the main body of the text is limited to "seven generations" - from about 1860 - with the primary focus on the period from about 1931 through the end of WWII in 1945. Even with this limitation, the result is a sweeping saga of American history.

This 441-page book: Includes the tale of the massive Scots-Irish emigration from Ireland to Scotland, back to Ireland, thence to America. Describes family connections with Davey Crockett in Kentucky. Explores the contrast between the rampant American racial prejudice against Irish immigrants, on the one hand, and, on the other, the reality of Irish slave-owners in Georgia, before, during, and after the Civil War. Demonstrates the vivid truth, in this specific family, behind the story in Larry McMurty's Lonesome Dove - true cowboys of the American West, one set of Carrolls raised cattle in south Texas, rounded them up, and drove them 1500 miles north to Wyoming, stopping the migration to settle in Sheridan.

In 1914 Sheridan, two separate, unrelated Carroll clans - both Irish, but very different in history, experience, and politics - converged in marriage. Carroll and Carroll begot three lively boys. Each of the stories is a fascinating tale in its own right. To weave them together into one unified narrative, the author has inserted her own stories of what might have happened, always scrupulously faithful to the documented facts, but clearly set apart from the factual recitations. The result is an engaging tale, one that hold the reader's attention from beginning through end. Three boys went off to war; only two returned. Two brothers fought the Nazis in Europe; the other fought the Japanese from a submarine under the waters of the South Pacific. These are their stories.