Author Description

A Truck Named Genevieve: The World War II Photographs of a Red Ball Express Driver is the true story of Anton F. Pirman, an unlikely American soldier from Chicago, who not only took part in one of the greatest military supply operations in all of human history, the legendary “Red Ball Express,” but also made a photographic record of his experiences. Using a captured German camera that he obtained in Cherbourg, France, shortly after the “D-Day” invasion began, Pirman took photographs of soldiers and the scenes of destruction they encountered in France, Belgium and Luxembourg, sometimes from the driver’s side window of his truck, which he nicknamed “Genevieve,” in honor of the young wife he had left behind in the States. This never-before-published collection, which every World War II enthusiast will want to own, also includes photographs of some the war’s lighter moments, when Pirman and his fellow G.I.s received passes to visit the then recently-liberated cities of Brussels and Paris, where they were present on V. E. (“Victory in Europe”) Day.