Military Veteran

On February 20, 1945, the second day of the assault on Iwo Jima - one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific theater in World War II - Private Jack Lucas, who was only 17, and three other Marines engaged in a close-proximity firefight with Japanese soldiers. When two enemy grenades landed in their trench, Lucas jumped on one and pulled the other under his body to save the lives of his comrades. Lucas was blown into the air as his body was torn apart by 250 entrance wounds. He was so severely wounded that his team left him for dead. Miraculously, he survived.

On December 16, 1944, the vanguard of three German armies, totaling half a million men, attacked US forces in the Ardennes region of Belgium and Luxembourg, achieving what had been considered impossible - total surprise. In the most abysmal failure of battlefield intelligence in the history of the US Army, 600,000 American soldiers found themselves facing Hitler's last desperate effort of the war. The brutal confrontation that ensued became known as the Battle of the Bulge, the greatest battle ever fought by the US Army - a triumph of American ingenuity and dedication.

When Donovan Campbell's platoon deployed to Ramadi in the spring of 2004, they believed they'd be spending most of their time building schools, training police, and making friends with the citizens. But shortly after arriving, when Campbell awoke to the chilling cry of "Jihad, Jihad, Jihad!" echoing from minaret to minaret across the city, he knew they had an altogether different situation on their hands.

They were the men of the now-legendary Easy Company. After almost two years of hard training, they parachuted into Normandy on D-Day and, later, Operation Market Garden. They fought their way through Belgium, France, and Germany, survived overwhelming odds, liberated concentration camps, and drank a victory toast in April 1945 at Hitler's hideout in the Alps.

In October 1969, Captain William Albracht, the youngest Green Beret in Vietnam, took command of a remote hilltop outpost called Fire Base Kate, held by only 27 American soldiers and 150 Montagnard militiamen. He found their defenses woefully unprepared. At dawn the next morning, three North Vietnamese Army regiments - some 6,000 men - crossed the Cambodian border and attacked.

May 6, 1986: Nick Popaditch arrives at the Receiving Barracks, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California. April 9, 2003: An AP photographer captures a striking image seen around the world of the Gunny Sergeant smoking a victory cigar in his tank, the haunting statue of Saddam Hussein hovering in the background. Popaditch is immortalized forever as "The Cigar Marine."

Many of our nation's men and women exit the military without a clue of what to do next. Others pursue their passions, doing everything they can to break into the life they've always dreamed of. This book provides guidance on how to follow your passions, and includes interviews with military veterans who have gone on to creative careers.

In this strikingly original and groundbreaking audiobook, Dr. Shay examines the psychological devastation of war by comparing the soldiers of Homer’s Iliad with Vietnam veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Although the Iliad was written 27 centuries ago, it has much to teach about combat trauma, as do the more recent, compelling voices and experiences of Vietnam vets.

When a soldier leaves for war, those left behind often wonder what their loved ones are experiencing. Letters home are always cheerful and vague - no sense in worrying the family. Then upon returning home, these young soldiers do not want to talk about their experiences. Family and friends allege they are now distant, changed, and not the same person they remember from several months earlier. What causes this? Although the backdrop for this novel is the Vietnam War, "cherries" exist in every war.

Stolen valor occurs when a person lies about receiving military decorations that he or she has in fact never earned. It has become a major societal problem that has been discussed numerous times in the news and, most recently, by the US Supreme Court. According to The New York Times, the Department of Veterans Affairs paid disability benefits to more than six hundred people falsely claiming to have been POWs in the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars.

Lafayette Pool provided inspiration for Brad Pitt’s character “War Daddy” Collier in the movie Fury, but his true story is less known. Here, acclaimed author Stephen L. Moore writes the first full-length narrative to honor the valiant Texan tanker. A champion Golden Gloves boxer turned U.S. Army legend, Pool was known as the “ace of tankers” for destroying more than five enemy tanks in head-to-head combat.

The story of the indomitable American POWs who endured "Alcatraz," the Hanoi prison camp where North Vietnam locked up its most dangerous and subversive prisoners, and the wives who fought to bring them home. As these men suffered in Hanoi, their wives launched an extraordinary campaign that would ultimately spark the POW/MIA movement. When the survivors finally returned, one would receive the Medal of Honor, another became a U.S. Senator, and a third still serves in Congress.

For well over a century, traditional Civil War histories have concluded in 1865, with a bitterly won peace and Union soldiers returning triumphantly home. In a landmark work that challenges sterilized portraits accepted for generations, Civil War historian Brian Matthew Jordan creates an entirely new narrative.

Invisible Heroes of World War II documents 10 fascinating true stories of a diverse group of soldiers and noncombatants from all over the world, including African Americans, women, and Native Americans, who fought with the Allies during World War II. These heroes made significant contributions in the war effort, and sometimes gave their lives for freedom and liberty, often without much recognition or fanfare. All served with valor and distinction as part of the massive Allied forces who fought to free the world from tyranny and oppression.

Maj. Gen. Gregg Martin cut a striking figure in the Army: athletic, quick witted, devout, and studious, he was a natural leader. Thanks to his engineering and leadership knowhow, Martin was chosen to lead the thousands of combat engineers who paved the way for 100,000 Army troops to battle their way to Baghdad in 2003. Only years later would he learn how the pressure of organizing dozens of simultaneous life-or-death missions each day altered the biochemistry of his brain. Bipolar General offers a candid account of Martin's personal journey with undiagnosed mental illness.

From the beginning, it was clear that Ralph Nutter was an exceptional navigator. Rapid promotion followed when he was assigned as Maj. Gen. Curtis the Eagle LeMay's personal navigator. Later, he was picked by Maj. Gen. Haywood Possum Hansell, the 20th Air Force Commander, to be his personal navigator. The author's vivid recollections of those halcyon years make for exciting, informative listening.

Mike Hayes has lived a lifetime of once-in-a-lifetime experiences. He has been held at gunpoint and threatened with execution. He’s jumped out of a building rigged to explode, helped amputate a teammate’s leg, and made countless split-second life-and-death decisions. He’s written countless emails to his family, telling them how much he loves them, just in case those were the last words of his they’d ever read. Outside of the SEALs, he’s run meetings in the White House Situation Room, negotiated international arms treaties, and developed high-impact corporate strategies.

A classic of WWII, this is the vivid memoir of Private Bowlby, who came through the North Africa campaign only to have to battle in bitter fighting against a stubborn and skilled German defence in Italy. It is a truly authentic account of what it was like to fight your way through one of the most gruelling and dangerous campaigns of the Second World War, where so often the hunters became the hunted.

On a visit to the British National Archive in 2001, Sonke Neitzel made a remarkable discovery: reams of meticulously transcribed conversations among German POWs that had been covertly recorded and recently declassified. Neitzel would later find another collection of transcriptions, twice as extensive, in the National Archive in Washington, D.C. These were discoveries that would provide a unique and profoundly important window into the true mentality of the soldiers in the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the German navy, and the military in general - almost all of whom had insisted on their own honorable behavior during the war.

Frank Money is an angry, self-loathing veteran of the Korean War who, after traumatic experiences on the front lines, finds himself back in racist America with more than just physical scars. His home may seem alien to him, but he is shocked out of his crippling apathy by the need to rescue his medically abused younger sister and take her back to the small Georgia town they come from and that he's hated all his life. This is a deeply moving novel about an apparently defeated man finding his manhood - and his home.