The liberator

de Alex Kershaw

On 10 July 1943, Felix Sparks arrived with the Allied forces in Italy, a captain in the 157th Infantry Regiment of the 45th Division - nicknamed the Thunderbirds. Just twenty-five years old, Sparks soon proved a leader of immense fortitude and stamina, participating in four amphibious invasions and leading his men through the mountains of Italy and France before enduring intense winter combat against the diehard SS on the Fatherland's borders. Sparks' entire company had been sacrificed to save the Allied beach-head at Anzio and, tragically, his rebuilt battalion soon found themselves surrounded and overcome in the dark forests of the Vosges. Miraculously, despite numerous brushes with death, Sparks survived the long bloody march across Europe and in the last days of the Third Reich was selected to lead a final charge to Bavaria to hunt down Adolf Hitler. But what Sparks and his men would find as they finally reached the gates of Dachau, Hitler's first and most notorious concentration camp, would be a horror greater than any they had so far experienced. With victory within his grasp, Sparks had to confront the ultimate test of his humanity: after all he had faced, could he resist the urge to wreak vengeance on the men who had caused such untold suffering and misery?