Military Marine History

Patrick K. O'Donnell has made a career of uncovering the hidden history of World War II by tracking down and interviewing its most elite troops: the Rangers, Airborne, Marines, and First Special Service Force, forerunners to Americas's Special Forces.

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.

Welcome to this tome of stories about the United States Marines. Members of the finest fighting force in the world. In this audiobook, we will look at their unique organization and the men and women who it is comprised of. Some stories are insightful, some funny—all are Marine.

The Marine Corps Way of War: The Evolution of the U.S. Marine Corps from Attrition to Maneuver Warfare in the Post-Vietnam Era examines the evolving doctrine, weapons, and capability of the United States Marine Corps during the four decades since our last great conflict in Asia. As author Anthony Piscitelli demonstrates, the USMC has maintained its position as the nation’s foremost striking force while shifting its thrust from a reliance upon attrition to a return to maneuver warfare.

With an executive order from President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941, the United States Marine Corps - the last all-white branch of the U.S. military - was forced to begin recruiting and enlisting African Americans. The first black recruits received basic training at the segregated Camp Montford Point, adjacent to Camp Lejeune, near Jacksonville, North Carolina.

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.

This second book of Sea Stories continues to follow the journey of a young Midwesterner, now Marine Lieutenant, through the rigors of Naval Flight School in Pensacola, Fatherhood, and Combat as a Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam. It also provides an interesting look at his fellow pilots and crewmen, as they fight their war from under a helicopter rotorhead.

Alexander Lemons is a Marine Corps scout sniper who, after serving multiple tours during the Iraq War, returned home seriously and mysteriously ill. Joshua Howe is an environmental historian who met Lemons as a student in one of his classes. Together they have crafted a vital book that challenges us to think beyond warfare's acute violence of bullets and bombs to the "slow violence" of toxic exposure and lasting trauma.

The Marine Special Operations Command ("MARSOC") is the newest component of the military's shift toward a fully integrated Special Operations Command structure. At first, the Marines were strongly against any Marines serving under anyone other than another Marine. Then 9/11 happened. In the years following, Marine forces found themselves growing more agreeable to inter-branch operational command, finally forming the Marine Special Operations Command in 2006.

This first audiobook of sea stories encompasses the brutal experiences of Marine Corps Boot Camp, the exotic ports of call in Asia, combat in Viet Nam, and the rigors of Marine Officer Candidate School. The author weaves the sea stories into a journey that put the listener in the moment, and allows for discovery of what it means to be a United States Marine. During the journey, the sea stories unveil a young man, like many born in the 1940s, who faced that period in their lives when the expectations of family and friends didn't match those of the individuals.

Seven years ago, newspapers across America called it "the espionage case of the century." While serving a security guard at the American Embassy, Sgt. Clayton Lonetree, a Native American marine, fell in love with a beautiful Russian woman and was recruited by a KGB officer posing as her "Uncle Sasha" to become a spy for the Soviet Union. The "sex-for-Secrets Marine Spy Scandal," as it was called by the press, had all the elements of a great novel...but it was a story.

Her Korean name was Ah-Chim-Hai, meaning Flame-of-the-Morning. Af our-year-old chestnut-colored Mongolian racehorse with a white blaze down her face and three white stockings, she once amazed the crowds in Seoul with her remarkable speed. But the star racer was soon sold to an American marine and trained to carry heavy loads of artillery shells up and down steep hills under a barrage of bullets and bombs. The marines renamed her Reckless. Reckless soon proved fearless under fire, boldly trekking alone through the fiery gauntlet, exposed to explosions and shrapnel.

When the 2nd Battalion of the 3rd Marine Regiment ("2/3") arrived in the little-known "Haditha Triad" region of western Iraq's Al Anbar Province in September of 2006, the region exploded in a storm of terrorist violence. The most battle-hardened of Al Qaeda had fled to the Triad, and, taking their last, desperate gasps for survival after years of bloody war, lashed out at the battalion with everything they could muster.

A Band of Brothers for the Pacific, this is the gut-wrenching but ultimately triumphant story of the Marines' most ferocious, yet largely forgotten, battle of World War II. Between September 15 and October 15, 1944, the First Marine Division suffered more than 6,500 casualties fighting on a hellish little island in the Pacific. Peleliu was the scene for one of the most savage struggles of modern times, a true killing ground that has all but been forgotten, until now.

Today, only 8 percent of the officers in the marines are women. We consider that an amazing accomplishment, even though it might not seem sufficient. But there’s no denying it--the Marine Corps, the last all-male fortification of the US military, has finally accepted that which they couldn’t deny any longer: Women can enlist, train, and combat with exceptional results.

The plot has been enacted, but there's been a problem. Now dire consequences await the would-be assassins.

In Lethal Tides, Catherine Musemeche weaves together science, biography, and military history in the compelling story of an unsung woman who had a dramatic effect on the U.S. Navy’s success against Japan in WWII, creating an intelligence-gathering juggernaut based on the new science of oceanography. When World War II began, the U.S. Navy was unprepared to enact its island-hopping strategy to reach Japan. Anticipating tides, planning for coral reefs, and preparing for enemy fire was new ground for them, and with lives at stake it was ground that had to be covered quickly.

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.

Catkiller 3-2 provides unique insights into the role of the tactical air controller, airborne (TACA) in I Corps as seen through the eyes of one of the pilots who flew low-flying, unarmed, single-engine aircraft in support of marine ground units during the Vietnam War. When Gen. William Westmoreland changed the marines' role in I Corps into a combat one, the Marines found themselves in need of more fixed wing aircraft to handle the TACA missions.

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.