Military History Marine Memoirs

On October 23, 1983, a truck bomb destroyed the US Marines barracks in Beirut. Two hundred and forty-one Americans were killed in the worst terrorist attack our nation would suffer until 9/11. We're still feeling the repercussions today. When Reagan Sent In the Marines tells why the Marines were there, how their mission became confused and compromised, and how President Ronald Reagan used another misguided military venture to distract America from the attack and his many mistakes leading up to it.

This memoir tells the story of a Marine rifle platoon commander’s time in the mountainous jungle of the northernmost province of the then Republic of Vietnam. While tasked with fighting the enemy, G.M. Davis made some great friends but saw too much death. The author tracks his tour of duty in the jungle, leading Marines not against the Viet Cong but against the North Vietnamese Army, a well-trained and well-supplied professional army dedicated to unifying the two Vietnams.

From Beau Wise and Tom Sileo comes Three Wise Men, an incredible memoir of family, service, and sacrifice by a marine who lost both his brothers in combat - becoming the only "sole survivor" during the war in Afghanistan.

From historian and columnist in Leatherneck and Armor magazines, this is the exciting, personal account of a marine fighter squadron in the South Pacific during the critical days of 1943, when the tide turned against the Japanese. Based on individual interviews and wartime documents, this is a thrilling narrative of the marines who lived, and died, during the toughest battles of the entire war.

In Guadalcanal Marine, Lt. Col. Kerry L. Lane recounts the dark reality of combat experienced by the men of the 1st Marine Division fighting on Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester. With 80 gripping photographs and his text, he brings to life the struggles of his companions as they achieve these two astonishing victories.

An unprecedented new collection of true stories from the brave men and women who served in the Marine Corps. Behind one of the most established military branches in America are the riveting, untold tales of the courageous warriors who fought on the front lines.

Russell Vineyard joined the United States Marine Corps as an M1A1 Tank crewman. After USMC Boot Camp and Marine Armor School, Vineyard found himself at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Training and Education Facility Twentynine Palms with 1st Tank Battalion. In November of 2004, he learned he'd be joining the Marine Corps' 1st Tank Battalion, Delta Company as a tank gunner and headed out on the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The United States Military would send the tank platoon across the ocean to participate in a global military exercise in Egypt and to fight the War on Terror in Iraq.

"Kids like me didn't go to Vietnam", writes Jack McLean in his must-listen memoir. Raised in suburban New Jersey, he attended the Phillips Academy in Andover, MA, but decided to put college on hold. After graduation in the spring of 1966, faced with the mandatory military draft, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps for a two-year stint. "Vietnam at the time was a country, and not yet a war", he writes. It didn't remain that way for long.

Replacement Marines recounts the Iraq war for an audience that cannot be imagined. For an audience that has watched the last 20 years of America's longest war with patriotism, skepticism, and somewhat indifference. Those who have seen war do not envy the civil pomp of our wartime circumstances as anything but a test of survival. As within any large vessel, if the ship were to sink, it is those left below deck who would bear the Titanic cost of the tragedy. And we were this war's steerage who were caught below deck.

This is a captivating account of a Marine Rifle Squad as it prepared for deployment to Vietnam, and establishing the enclave south of Da Nang, Vietnam. Mentored by Korean Veterans, the Marine Riflemen become veterans tested in the rice paddies at Da Nang, Phu Bai, and the highlands of Khe Sanh.

Terry McGowan had been a beat cop, a marine captain, and a special agent for the FBI before retiring at the age of 50. But when tragedy struck the United States on September 11, 2001, Terry felt an undiminished sense of duty to protect and serve his country. Six years later he was in Iraq as a member of a team of high-ranking retired and active-duty military working for the highest level of marine military intelligence. His success in Iraq led to a position as a law enforcement professional with the marines in Afghanistan.

In November 2006, then-first-lieutenant Thomas Daly arrived as part of the surge in Ramadi to take part in Operation Squeeze Play, a division-size effort to remove al-Qaeda from Anbar province. In this powerful memoir, he describes the successful clearing of Southern Ramadi's Second Officer's district, the Qatana, and the uprising of local citizens against al-Qaeda on the eastern edge of the city (the result of an unlikely alliance between Daly's company and Thawar al Anbar).

Among them was green young Lieutenant Pat Caruso who became de facto company commander when the five officers ranking him were killed or wounded. He led his rapidly diminishing force steadily forward for the next few days, when a day's gains were measured in yards. Caruso was eventually wounded himself and was evacuated. Realizing that the heroism of his comrades would be lost by the decimation of his unit, Caruso latched onto any paper he could find and filled every blank space with his memory of the fighting.

In January 1968, the 26th Marine Regiment was ordered to a place in the far northwest corner of South Vietnam called Khe Sanh. John Corbett, an untested replacement in a clean, green uniform, and his fellow leathernecks were responsible for building and defending the combat base, and holding positions on the strategic hills overlooking the Ho Chi Minh Trail as it crossed into Laos and South Vietnam from nearby North Vietnam. Only days after Corbett arrived at Khe Sanh, some 20,000 North Vietnamese soldiers surrounded the base, outnumbering the American Marines seven to one.

Much has been written about America's war in Vietnam, and an enduring and troubling subtext is the composition of the body of soldiers that made up the US troop deployment: from the initially well-trained and disciplined group of largely elite units that served in the mid-sixties to what has been termed an "armed mob" by the end of that decade and into the early 1970s.

This is a true story of war, the story of one man's transformation as he retraces the mine-strewn roads of a land itself transformed by mankind's most shockingly inhuman practice. It is the firsthand account of a member of one of the United States Army's three-man Tactical Psychological Operations Teams, groups of men tasked with winning the hearts and minds of Iraq's civilian population through leaflets, loudspeakers, conversation, and bribery.

In the fall of 1943, armed with only his notebooks and pencils, Time and Life correspondent Robert L. Sherrod leapt from the safety of a landing craft and waded through neck-deep water and a hail of bullets to reach the shores of the Tarawa atoll with the US Marine Corps. Living shoulder to shoulder with the marines, Sherrod chronicled combat and the marines' day-to-day struggles as they leapfrogged across the Central Pacific, battling the Japanese on Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa.

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.

Richard Edward Carey came from a broken home. Enlisting in the Corps in 1946 he later earned a commission, fighting at Inchon and Chosin in Korea before becoming a pilot. During his thirty-eight-year military career he witnessed and participated in major historical events, though a high school wrestling injury would eliminate him from the Mercury-7 space program. As a second lieutenant, he tackled General Douglas MacArthur on the way to Seoul in 1950. Carey would provide critical intelligence decisions enabling the successful defense of the Chinese attack on Hagaru-ri at the Chosin Reservoir.

In 1940, native West Texan Roy H. Elrod joined the Marine Corps. By the time his unit, the 8th Marine Regiment, went into the fight at Guadalcanal, he was commanding a platoon of 37 mm gunners. They endured Japanese attacks, malarial tropical weather, and starvation rations. His combat leadership earned him a Silver Star and a battlefield promotion. Based on more than 50 hours of interviews, this book is a view of the war from the perspective of a young Marine infantry officer, a job that had an extremely low survival potential.