Military Combat

In this compelling and meticulously researched audiobook on the Vietnam War era, David Gerhardt blends his riveting firsthand experience with documented facts. The result is a historical war memoir offering a comprehensive perspective on one of America's most notoriously divisive eras and brutal armed conflicts. Whether they fought in it, demonstrated against it, or subsisted through the tumultuous times, Vietnam belonged to the baby boomer generation.

Amidst the tension of a true historical military escalation between the USA and Libya in 1986, a Navy fighter pilot navigates his haunted past and uncertain future, discovering that true battles lie within, while a determined detective in Denver unravels a web of deceit, murder, and stolen diamonds that threatens to destroy them both.

The gripping, forgotten tale of Ira Hayes—a Native American icon and World War II legend who famously helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima but spent the latter half of his life haunted by being a war hero. Ira Hayes breaks apart the complexities of Ira’s short life in honor of all Native veterans who have been to war in the service of the United States. This is equally their story.

The remaining US aviation forces, along with the US Air Force and US Navy and Marine aviation assets, would not be easily removed from the battle. For the US forces still in-country, this is an untold story of heroism, dedication, and refusal to yield the battlefield despite being largely considered by US political leaders as "expendable."

After the Japanese military bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese Americans became the subject of racism and discrimination within the United States. Many were rounded up and put in concentration camps. But even while this was happening, there were many Japanese American soldiers who fought to ensure that all Americans were safe during the biggest conflict in world history. Facing the Mountain is the story of three Japanese American soldiers: Rudy Tokiwa, Fred Shiosaki, and Kats Miho, who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team to fight for their country in World War II.

The four stories in this audiobook are about nine men that returned to civilian life, after combat in the Korean War. They deal with different degrees of emotional injuries (PTSD) experienced after exposure to seemingly similar combat conditions and also with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The story entitled "MacKenzie and Smith" is a sequel to the military history novel Ice, Fire, and Blood, which relates experiences of a US Army infantry unit from when Chinese troops entered the war, in November 1950, until late summer 1951.

1st Lieutenant Robin Bartlett suddenly found himself at the "repo-depo" in Bien Hoa reassigned to the 1st Cavalry Division. The unit had more helicopter support than any other unit in Vietnam. Immediate support from artillery, helicopter gunships, and ARA was only minutes away to support a firefight. Wounded troops could be medevaced even in dense jungle using "jungle penetrators." It also meant that Bartlett's platoon could deploy through helicopter combat assaults into hot LZs (landing zones) at a moment's notice if an enemy force had been spotted. And they did.

Published for the first time in the United States, Combat Diary is the war story of Dog Battery, also known US Army Gun Battalion D. Originally only published in Germany in 1945, it tells the tale of 150 US soldiers as they arrive in England in July of 1944. The battalion arrives on the beaches of Normandy, fights through France—and ultimately into Germany—at the time of the fall of the Nazi regime. It is an intimate account of the actions and endurance of the soldiers over those seven months.

James Webb, author of Fields of Fire, the classic novel of the Vietnam War - and a former U.S. Senator; Secretary of the Navy; recipient of the Navy Cross, Silver Star and Purple Heart as a combat Marine; and a self-described "military brat" - has written an extraordinary memoir of his early years, "a love story - love of family, love of country, love of service" in his words.

In this book, you will find my story as a kid from Iowa who joined the military and rose to the senior most enlisted position in the entire US Armed Forces, the Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (SEAC) through an almost 38-year career. I discuss key issues of living this warrior life including leadership, combat, PTSD, resilience in the face of adversity, and the importance of family.

Combat Talons in Vietnam is a personal account of the first use of C-130s in the Vietnam War. One night, John Gargus, a mission planner, oversaw an operation in which the aircraft - carrying 11 crew members - failed to return from a nighttime mission. For 30 years, a search for the missing aircraft remained in progress. When wartime mission records were declassified, Gargus embarked on a long journey of inquiry, research, and puzzle-solving to reconstruct the events of that mission and the fate of its crew.

Sturkey, a former Marine "Bonnie-Sue" HMM-265 helicopter pilot, combines fascinating detail with grim realism in this eloquent saga of Marines at war. Weaving actual military records with personal accounts from the helicopter crews, he breathes life into the daily struggle of the soldier.

Experience the exciting combat tales of both Allied and Axis pilots around the world during World War II. Wings of War encompasses the World War II air war from late 1939 through 1945 and provides a chronological snapshot not only of famous and significant events from the global air war, but also of other lesser-known events that are equally thrilling and important. Over three dozen different Allied and Axis airplanes are featured, giving you a unique experience at the controls of a variety of World War II’s famed fighters, bombers, liaison, and jet airplanes.

Echo Among Warriors is a story of close combat between two opposing, equally committed adversaries. The powerful narrative immerses the listener in both sides of the battle, playing and replaying the same battle sequence from alternating viewpoints—through the eyes of the Marines and through the eyes of the North Vietnamese. The bullet fired from a Marine's M-16 at a silhouetted enemy solider will in the next chapter tear into the flesh of that crouched NVA trooper. The story represents just one of perhaps thousands of deadly encounters that reflect the reality of battle.

A month after her 24th birthday, Lt. Mary Elizabeth Balster collapses among the rubble of a shelled supply room. On the night of November 30, 1944, holed up in the Heinrich Himmler Barracks in Morhange, France, Lt. Balster's evac receives a typical patient load, but this time one of the admissions is a 19-year-old tanker she'd nursed back to health five months before in Normandy. The charge nurse on Surgical gently informs the lieutenant that the private is critical.

In 1993, U.S. women earned the right to fly in combat, but the full story of how it happened is largely unknown. The Fly Girls Revolt chronicles the actions of a band of women who overcame decades of discrimination and prevailed against bureaucrats, chauvinists, anti-feminists, and even other military women. Drawing on extensive research, interviews with women who served in the 1970s and 1980s, and her personal experiences in the Air Force, Eileen Bjorkman weaves together a tale of the women who fought for the right to enter combat and be treated as equal partners in the U.S. military.

A NATO reinforcement exercise held at a British airbase in West Germany brings British, American, and French fighter crews together to practice the air corridor policing mission. When a Pembroke transport aircraft engaged in a covert reconnaissance mission is intercepted by a MiG fighter and forced to land in East Germany, events escalate. Will the crew become a pawn in the relentless confrontation as the Soviets increase the rhetoric?

Young Sue Gurwell had always known that her father had been a paratrooper. And then there was the special poem in his roll-top desk she sometimes snuck a peek at, written by a member of Dad's regiment. This poem was a premonition of the sergeant's death. "Yes," her dad told her, "He was right—he died on D-Day." But it's not until 2016, after her parents had both passed away, that Susan Gurwell Talley and her husband Jack L. Talley begin to understand the true extent and significance of the wartime artifacts that had been staples of Sue's childhood.

War is hell....but sometimes it's also funny as hell.

In Soar Into Joy, Loree "Rowdy" Draude offers an introspective look into her life, highlighting both her triumphs and setbacks as a Silicon Valley executive, a startup founder, a parent ,and as one of the first women to fly combat jets in the U.S. Navy. Loree writes about contending with society's entrenched fears. She emphasizes the interconnectedness of society and how we all depend on one another. Despite her daunting achievements, like landing jets on moving aircraft carriers, her most significant fears stemmed from feelings of inadequacy.