A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2025
In December 1944, as German forces launched their surprise counterattack in the Ardennes, U.S. Army Private Jim Tanzer was carrying a rifle. He didn’t expect to fire it.
Jim is an enlisted entertainer in the Army’s Morale Corps (MOS 442)—one of the little-known performers sent to sustain the morale of combat infantry at the front, where the USO could not go.
Assigned to a Jeep show unit led by fellow enlisted entertainer Mickey Rooney, Jim performs for weary soldiers just a mile or two from the fighting. It’s risky duty—but still safer than combat.
Until it isn’t.
Jim is older than most privates and never expected to be there. A former show-business dropout, he could have stayed home on a fatherhood deferment. His wife is furious he enlisted—and no longer answers his letters. Now, instead of song-and-dance routines, Jim is navigating checkpoints, nervous sentries, and the creeping realization that the war may not respect his assignment.
When Jim is caught in the opening moments of the German offensive that will become the Battle of the Bulge, his war changes instantly.
Ordered to carry a captured German map back to VIII Corps Headquarters, Jim must stay ahead of advancing SS divisions—and avoid being shot by jittery American sentries along the way.
Three days later, supporting the exhausted 101st Airborne at Bastogne, Jim’s chances of surviving shrink by the hour. Then General McAuliffe orders a Christmas Day mission that becomes Jim’s ultimate test.
Sure, his marriage—and all his troubles—will be over if he’s killed in action.
But what if he’s captured? What if he runs?
The show must go on. But how long can Jim hold off the final curtain?
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"It seems odd to call a World War II novel ‘delightful,’ but that’s exactly what you get with O'Connor's mix of history and fiction as battles rage on and enlisted men entertain the troops.” — Kirkus Starred Review
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Inspired by the wartime experiences of an actual enlisted entertainer, Jeep Show brings to life a little-known chapter of the war, following soldiers who risked their lives to sustain morale at the front. Rich with historical detail and dark humor, it’s a gripping, deeply human story about morale, courage, and the American GI.
“Forrest Gump meets Band of Brothers.” — Reader Review
Robert B. O'Connor is the author of the WWII novel "Jeep Show - A Trouper at the Battle of the Bulge" and the non-fiction "Gumptionade - A Booster for Your Self-Improvement Plan." Two radically different books about morale.O'Connor lives and writes in Memphis, Tennessee. He is married to a physician-scientist and has three grown sons and a grandson.O'Connor's father, a WWII veteran, instilled in him a love of reading, his mother a love of sports. O'Connor was a die-hard Yankees fan in his youth (lean years for the Bronx Bombers), then lost interest after they regained their winning ways. Strangely, he is a supporter of Wigan Athletic, a third-tier English soccer club.Starting with "Yogi - The Autobiography of a Professional Baseball Player," O'Connor read mostly biographies in his younger years. He went through a Winston Churchill phase, including cigars. O'Connor still thinks that "The Path to Power," Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson, reads like poetry.Now O'Connor reads mostly fiction. He read "War and Peace" twice (necessary because every character has at least three different Russian names). "A Perfect Spy", "Ragtime," "Huckleberry Finn," and "Close Range: Wyoming Stories" are also at the top of O'Connor's fiction list. Recently, "North Woods" and "This Is Happiness" have delighted him.O'Connor's wrote his first book, "Gumptionade," after life punched him in the mouth. As he was helped up off the mat, O'Connor read the Stoics, the Bible, undertook psychoanalysis, and started a small business. These and other experiences and influences revealed to him the power of gumption. Willpower alone is not enough.Jeep Show began at Procter & Gamble, when O'Connor was told the Oxydol Circus legend. The promoter of that ill-fated circus, Jim Hetzer, inspired the protagonist of Jeep Show, Jim Tanzer.
