Following on the heels of Custer's Best: The Story of Company M, 7th Cavalry at the Little Bighorn, Colonel (Ret) French MacLean has published The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in World War II. Maclean takes you on a wild judicial ride through unnamed gravestones in a secret cemetery in France, sealed personnel files in a government facility known as "The Vault" and the greatest unsolved mystery remaining from World War II – how 96 American soldiers in Europe and North Africa committed heinous crimes and were subsequently tried by U. S. Army courts-martial, convicted, sentenced to death, executed, and buried in a tiny cemetery in France, known to the groundskeepers as The Fifth Field.
MacLean received unlimited access to every previously secret judicial record and personnel file for all 96 men. The work is much more than a compilation of individual cases and illustrates facets of wartime Army discipline, military-civilian relations, the judicial process, thoughts of superior officers, and implications of race and class. MacLean’s approach, as a non-lawyer, was to write the book from the vantage point of a potential juror. With unimpeachable detail and a critical link from the past to today's ongoing high-profile military courts-martial and tribunals from Fort Hood to Guantanamo, The Fifth Field finally illuminates this hidden mystery of World War II.
MacLean has already given a presentation about the subject to the staff and faculty at the US Army Judge Advocate General School in Charlottesville, VA, and has scheduled another university presentation in Georgia in November. He and his publisher sent copies of the book to all Supreme Court Justices and deans of a dozen law schools, as it could have a significant impact on the national discussion of the death penalty.