What are the best first person accounts of American fighting in WW2 ?
I've already read a few about Easy Company, so I'm a bit oversaturated with that. Right now I'm reading If You Survive, which seems pretty good overall.
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Actually I'm a bit burned out on the genre for now. Thanks for offering ! 
You could try Guadalcanal Diary, Richard Tregaskis; With the Old Breed, E.B. Sledge; On Valor's Side, Grady Gallant (what a name), and Helmet for My Pillow, Robert Leckie. These are well-regarded classics of war literature. (Gallant also wrote a second memoir, The Friendly Dead.) Tregaskis was a war correspondent, but he got rained on just like everyone else. The others are Marines, and deal with Guadalcanal and other campaigns.
You should also check out Ernie Pyle's books -- Pyle was a correspondent in Africa, Europe and the Pacific, and was killed during the Okinawa campaign.
A personal favorite of mine was the wartime memoir of the destroyer USS Grayson (DD435) written by her skipper, Frederick Jackson Bell. The destroyer's name and that of many other ships was censored in the wartime edition for security purposes, but you could tell it was Grayson because they didn't censor the hull number in her photograph. It's a charming book about life on a destroyer -- and it is available on Amazon Kindle as Condition Red: Destroyer Action in the South Pacific. I wonder if the
Kindle edition has the crew list appendix with the creepily-historic "n" after the names of the African-American crew members. (Navy ships had mostly black stewards and kitchen staffs, but not combat crew) Another good destroyer read is Brave Ship, Brave Men, which details the story of the short life of DM-34, the USS Aaron Ward. Second ship of that name to fight in WW 2. The book is mostly about her harrowing experiences on radar picket duty off Okinawa, 3 May 1945, during which she was struck by multiple kamikazes. Although not strictly-speaking first-person (it is drawn from the stories of survivors), it is one of the most gripping and intense accounts of naval action you'll ever read.
Of course you want to read Studs Terkel's The Good War, a landmark of oral history.
And of course Company Commander by Charles B. MacDonald, another all-time classic.
Some all-time great war novels are really autobiographies: Mailer's Naked and the Dead and Jone's From Here to Eternity being the standouts here. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut also falls into this category, with its emphasis on the firebombing of Dresden which he witnessed as a POW.
You specify US accounts, so I won't mention the abundant literature from the other participants. But you should check out the German author Willi Heinrich (Cross of Iron and a number of other novels) if you'd like to get a viewpoint from "The other side of the mountain."
There are abundant web resources for first-person accounts of WW 2. It's impossible to even scratch the surface.
-- Mal
First of all, without your father's Service Number (as in "name, rank, and serial number"
and SSN, you can't get his records from the National Archives, which is where they are stored. Prior to 1 July 1969, Army personnel were not identified by SSN, but by the Service Number.
Second of all, a lot of records were lost in a fire in 1973. As your father was in the Army, his records were probably lost if he was discharged prior to 1 January 1960. Some reconstruction has been done, but finding those records is particularly difficult and requires more information than you probably already have, e.g. date and place of discharge. It's a Catch-22 of sorts: you need the information from his records for them to locate his records.
Thirdly, if you could find the required information, you'd have to send a signed request to the National Archives (preferably using form SF-180) for them to send you a copy of the information, which would require a fee. Ranging from $25 to $70.
For more information consult the National Archives Veterans' Service Records site. You may be able to find your father's serial number by using the AAD search function -- I was able to find my father's number using it. Linky: http://aad.archives.gov/aad/
Enter your dad's name in the name field thus: #lastname#firstname and you may be able to find him. You could add another asterisk and his middle initial after firstname, if the name is somewhat common.
Link to the National Archives Veterans' Service Records site: http://www.archives.gov/veterans/ You can learn everything you need to know about the process here. There is probably a way to find his records without having his SSN, you might want to send a letter of inquiry. Just remember that the NA receives a lot of requests every year, and the gristmill of the gods grinds exceedingly fine, but also exceedingly slow.
Having said all that, the information available through the Archives may not be what you want anyway. If you want information about the battles he was in you'd need to find a good unit history for his outfit. There are a zillion of these online, and since he was in 3rd Army there's an even greater-likelihood of finding information, as that is one of the more well-discussed armies.
At the very least, you should see if you can find your father's enlistment record with the AAD search function. I did that some years ago, and it was kind of eerie seeing info from before I was born. Second only to discovering a putative ancestor mentioned in a history book.
On a different note: US soldiers who were in Europe at the end of the war received a copy of a book called Soldier's Album, which contains many contemporary photographs of the European conflict. (Similar books were published for other theatres) I still have my father's copy, it may be possible that your father's is still around somewhere. Most of the photos have been seen a million times, but it's an interesting item.
-- Mal
3rd armored division was prominent in the Battle of the Bulge. However, it was not part of 3rd Army. It was under 1st Army.
It has its own web site: http://www.3ad.org/world-war-ii/
Well, two of them, actually: http://www.3ad.com/
The second one has a lot of articles about WW2.
And the Wikipedia article is also useful.
Keep in mind a division is a big unit. Ideally you'd want to know your dad's company and battalion to get a good idea of what action he saw.
-- Mal
