Military Marine History

In the glorious chronicles of the US Marine Corps, no name is more revered than that of Lt. Gen. Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller. The only fighting man to receive the Navy Cross five separate times - a military honor second only to the Congressional Medal of Honor - he was the epitome of a professional warrior.

Picking up where his previous memoir leaves off, Sledge, a young marine in the First Division, traces his company's movements and charts his own difficult passage to peace following his horrific experiences in the Pacific. He reflects on his duty in the ancient city of Peiping (now Beijing) and recounts the difficulty of returning to his hometown of Mobile, Alabama, and resuming civilian life haunted by the shadows of close combat.

You walk into a restaurant and get an immediate sense that you should leave. You are about to step onto an elevator with a stranger, and something stops you. You interview a potential new employee who has the résumé to do the job, but something tells you not to offer the position. These scenarios all represent "left of bang", the moments before something bad happens.

The vivid, fast-paced account of the siege of Khe Sanh told through the eyes of the men who lived it. For seventy-seven days in 1968, amid fears that America faced its own disastrous Dien Bien Phu, six thousand US Marines held off thirty thousand North Vietnamese Army regulars at the remote mountain stronghold called Khe Sanh. It was the biggest battle of the Vietnam War, with sharp ground engagements, devastating artillery duels, and massive US air strikes.

John Edmund Delezen felt a kinship with the people he was instructed to kill in Vietnam; they were all at the mercy of the land. His memoir begins when he enlisted in the Marine Corps and was sent to Vietnam in March of 1967. He volunteered for the Third Force Recon Company, whose job it was to locate and infiltrate enemy lines undetected and map their locations and learn details of their status. The duty was often painful both physically and mentally. He was stricken with malaria in November of 1967, wounded by a grenade in February of 1968, and hit by a bullet later that summer.

Rick Greenberg joined the Corps right out of high school because he always wanted to be a Marine. Little did he know what it would ultimately cost him to even approach earning such a title. After boot camp, "Greeny", as he was later known by his Recon team buddies, attended radio communication school in San Diego, California. As a radio operator, upon arrival in Vietnam, Greenberg was both surprised and troubled when he was arbitrarily assigned to the First Recon Battalion, generally considered to be an elite unit.

There have been many Marines. There have been many marksmen. But there has been only one Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, a legend of Marine lore. He stalked the Viet Cong behind enemy lines. His record has never been matched: 93 confirmed kills. This is his story. Powerful, chilling, and all true.

This memoir offers an unrivaled firsthand account of World War II in the Pacific - what it looked like, sounded like, smelled like, and most of all, what it felt like to one who underwent all but the ultimate of its experiences.

This is an eyewitness - and eye-opening - account of some of the most savage and brutal fighting in the war against Japan, told from the perspective of a young Texan who volunteered for the Marine Corps to escape a life as a traveling salesman. R. V. Burgin enlisted at the age of twenty and, with his sharp intelligence and earnest work ethic, climbed the ranks from a green private to a seasoned sergeant.

After Tripoli declared war on the United States in 1801, Barbary pirates captured 300 U.S. sailors and marines. President Jefferson sent navy squadrons to the Mediterranean, but he also authorized a secret mission to overthrow the government of Tripoli. He chose an unlikely diplomat, William Eaton, to lead the mission, but before Eaton departed, Jefferson grew wary of the affair and withdrew his support.

Growing up on a farm in Ohio, George always preferred being outdoors and exploring. This made school a challenge, but his hunting, fishing, and trapping skills helped put food on his family's table. As a poor teenager living in a rough area, he got into regular brawls, and he found holding down a job hard because of his wanderlust. After working out West with the CCC, he decided that joining the Marines offered him the opportunity for adventure plus three square meals a day; so he and his brother joined the Corps in 1941.

Five months after being deployed to Iraq, Lima Company's 1st Platoon became one of the first American forces to enter Fallujah, where they encountered some of the most intense hand-to-hand combat since World War II. Civilians were used as human shields or as bait to lure soldiers into buildings rigged with explosives; suicide bombers approached from every corner hoping to die and take Americans with them; radical insurgents, high on adrenaline, fought to the death.

In the Vietnam War, American "rough riders" drove trucks through hostile territory delivering supplies, equipment, ammunition, weapons, fuel, and reinforcements to troops fighting on the war's ever-shifting front lines. But, all too often, the convoys themselves became the front lines. Frank McAdams, a Marine Corps lieutenant, learned that the hard way during a tour of duty that began right after the 1968 Tet Offensive and the siege at Khe Sanh.

Every man serving in Vietnam was "Every Mother's Son". In 1968, the Marine helicopter crews during the 77-day Siege of Khe Sanh risked everything every day to keep the surrounding Marine hill positions alive and viable. The North Vietnamese Army committed more than 20,000 troops to destroying the Marine hill positions and the Khe Sanh Combat Base. The small Marine outposts were transformed into highly effective kill zones, as the enemy slammed the landing zones with rockets, mortars, artillery, and automatic weapons fire.

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.

In late June, 2005, media sources recounted the tragic story of 19 US special-operations personnel who died at the hands of insurgent/terrorist leader Ahmad Shah - and the lone survivor of Shah's ambush - deep in the Hindu Kush Mountains of Afghanistan. The harrowing events of Operation Red Wings marked an important - yet widely misreported - chapter in the Global War on Terror, the full details of which the public burned to learn. Victory Point reveals the complete, as-yet untold story of Operation Red Wings and the follow-on mission, Operation Whalers.

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.

A former captain in the Marines' First Recon Battalion, who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, reveals how the Corps trains its elite and offers a point-blank account of twenty-first-century battle. Fick's training begins with a hellish summer at Quantico, after his junior year at Dartmouth, and advances to the pinnacle, Recon, four years later, on the eve of war with Iraq.

1983: the United States Marine Corps experiences its greatest single-day loss of life since the Battle of Iwo Jima when a truck packed with explosives crashes into their headquarters and barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. This horrifying terrorist attack, which killed 241 servicemen, continues to influence US foreign policy and haunts the Marine Corps to this day.

In November 1965, some 450 men of the First Battalion, Seventh Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, were dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion was chopped to pieces. Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray and Albany constituted one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War. How these men persevered makes a vivid portrait of war at its most inspiring and devastating.