Colonel Wilson Allen Heefner, MD, USA
(ret.) is “a Great War Society member, is a retired pathologist and physician and Army colonel. He resides in Stockton,
CA. His interest in General Patrick derives from his having sailed from San Francisco as a young soldier on the transport
bearing his name.” Colonel Wilson Allen Heefner is the author of Patton's Bulldog:
The Life and Service of General Walton H. Walker and Twentieth Century Warrior: The Life and Service
of Major General Edwin D. Patrick.
According to the book description of
Patton's Bulldog: The Life and Service of General Walton H. Walker, “General Walton H. Walker died
in December 1950 while commanding the Eighth Army in Korea. A combat veteran of three wars, Walker, like his role model, General
George S. Patton, Jr., died not from an enemy bullet, but as the result of a vehicular accident. From his earliest years growing up in the rolling hills of central Texas, Walton Walker had
set his sights on an army career. Graduating from the U.S. Military Academy in 1912, Walker served in Vera Cruz, Mexico, in
1914; commanded a machine gun battalion in France in 1918; led XX Corps in the vanguard of Patton’s Third Army through
France, Germany, and Austria in World War II; and commanded the under strength, ill-equipped, and outmanned Eighth Army during
the darkest days of the Korean War.”
Publisher’s Weekly said of Twentieth
Century Warrior: The Life and Service of Major General Edwin D. Patrick, “Maj. Gen. Edwin Patrick's
27-year army career included command of a machine-gun company in WWI, an interwar stint as instructor at Georgia's Fort
Benning infantry school and command of the Sixth U.S. Division in the New Guinea and Philippine campaigns of WWII. Patrick
died of wounds received on Luzon on March 14, 1945, and was one of only three division commanders to perish as a result of
enemy action. His leadership of the Sixth Division is a textbook case history of an Old Army general officer exerting strong
personal leadership and occasionally exhibiting common command weaknesses such as impatience and over boldness. This first-class
account of the education and training of a thorough professional in the Regular Army and his validation on the field of battle
will be useful to students of American military history. Heefner retired from the army after 41 years of service as an enlisted
man, infantry leader and medical officer.”
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