The Fighting Bunch: The Battle of Athens and How World War II Veterans Won the Only Successful Armed Rebellion Since the Revolution

New York Times –Bestselling Author: The true story of the men who brought their overseas combat experience to wage war against a corrupt political machine in their Tennessee hometown in 1946.

“Doggedly researched and briskly narrated, this rousing chronicle testifies to the importance of free and fair elections.”―Publishers Weekly

Bill White and the young men of McMinn County answered their nation’s call after Pearl Harbor. They won the freedom of the world and returned to find that they had lost it at home. A corrupt political machine was in charge, protected by violent deputies, funded by racketeering, and kept in place by stolen elections—the worst allegations of voter fraud ever reported to the Department of Justice, according to the U.S. Attorney General.

White and a group of GIs, “The Fighting Bunch”—men who fought and survived Guadalcanal, the Bulge, and Normandy—armed themselves and demanded a fair election. When they were refused the most basic rights they fought for, the men, all of whom believed they had seen the end of war, returned to the battlefield and risked their lives one last time.

After years of research, including conducting exclusive interviews with the remaining witnesses and reviewing archival radio broadcast and interview tapes, scrapbooks, letters, and diaries, Chris DeRose has reconstructed one of the greatest untold stories in American history.

“An astounding and rarely told story of an (eventually) successful response to police violence and voter suppression. It’s a story of a community acting with unity against an intensely oppressive and corrupt institution.” —Southern Review of Books

“This is an especially timely tale in a year of social and political turmoil. The pulse-pounding narrative of The Fighting Bunch takes us to a place in America where the struggle against evil did not end when the war did and once more people of good will had to take a courageous stand.” —Tom Clavin, bestselling author of Tombstone and Wild Bill

© 2024 St. Martin's Press (Ebook): 9781250266200

Release date

Ebook: 4 September 2024