Military Veteran

As the war in Iraq continues, the idea of being a soldier in wartime is of interest to many Americans. Why Marines Fight by James Brady is a ruthlessly candid book told in the words of U.S. Marines themselves, who answer provocative questions about what drives them to fight so competently and ferociously.

Victory and defeat, love and loss are the prevalent realities of Letters from the Greatest Generation, a remarkable and frank collection of World War II letters penned by American men and women serving overseas. Here, the hopes and dreams of the greatest generation fill each minute, and their voices ring loud and clear. "It's all part of the game. But it's bloody and rough," wrote one soldier to his wife. "Wearing two stripes now and proud as an old cat with five kittens," marked another.

In the decades that followed the American Civil War, artist James E. Kelly (1855-1933) conducted in-depth interviews with more than 40 Union generals in an effort to accurately portray them in their greatest moment of glory.

The Vietnam War is largely recalled as a mistake, either in the decision to engage there or in the nature of the engagement. Or both. Veterans of the war remain largely anonymous figures, accomplices in the mistake. Critically recounting the steps that led to the war, this book does not excuse the mistakes, but it brings those who served out of the shadows. Enduring Vietnam recounts the experiences of the young Americans who fought in Vietnam and of families who grieved those who did not return.

The New Agent Orange: Comparing Dioxin Exposure in Vietnam to Gulf War Syndromes and Sicknesses by John Siegfried, narrated by Ron Garner, takes you on a compelling journey through the hidden health crises faced by our brave Veterans. This eye-opening audiobook reveals the alarming parallels between Vietnam Presumptive Diseases and Gulf War Syndromes, highlighting the urgent need for recognition and support for our heroes.

The French painter Jean Hélion’s unique and deeply moving account of his experiences in Nazi prisoner-of-war camps prefigures the even darker stories that would emerge from the concentration camps. This serious adventure tale begins with Hélion’s infantry platoon fleeing from the German army and warplanes as they advanced through France in the early days of the war. The soldiers chant as they march and run, “They shall not have me!” but are quickly captured and sent to hard labor.

A unique analysis of the moral weight of warfare today through the lenses of philosophy and psychology. Philosopher, ethicist, and psychoanalyst Nancy Sherman explores the psychological and moral burdens borne by soldiers. By illuminating the extent to which wars are fought internally as well as externally, this book expands the national discussion about war and the men and women who fight our nations' battles.

The Battle of Iwo Jima, a major event in the Pacific Theater of World War II - and one of the bloodiest in United States history - began on February 19, 1945. But what happened two days earlier has largely been a footnote - until now.... On February 17, Landing Craft Infantry 449 was among a dozen gunboats helping to prepare the area for their invasion two days later. US military leaders thought that they had weakened Japanese forces in the area.

Every war continues to dwell in the lives it touched, in the lives of those living through that time, and in those absorbed by its historical significance. The Vietnam War lives on - famously or infamously, depending on political points of view - but those who have “been there, done that” have a highly personalized window on their time of that history. Valor in Vietnam focuses on nineteen stories of Vietnam, stories of celebrated figures in the veteran community, compelling war narratives, vignettes of battles, and the emotional impact on the combatants.

Sgt. Steve Maharidge, like many of his generation, hardly ever talked about the war. The only sign he'd served in it was a single black and white photograph of himself and another soldier tacked to the wall of his basement workshop. After Steve Maharidge's death, his son Dale, now an adult, began a 12-year quest to understand his father's preoccupation with the photo. What had happened during the battle for Okinawa, and why had his father remained silent about his experiences and the man in the picture, Herman Mulligan? In his search for answers, Maharidge sought out the survivors of Love Company.

In the grand tradition of John Keegan's enduring classic The Face of Battle comes a searing, unforgettable chronicle of war through the eyes of the American soldiers who fought in three of our most iconic battles: Bunker Hill, Gettysburg, and Iwo Jima. This is not a book about how great generals won their battles, nor is it a study in grand strategy. Men of War is instead a riveting, visceral, and astonishingly original look at ordinary soldiers under fire.

Their stories needed to be told. And classmates working together, under a blanket of trust and friendship, was the only way to allow people to open up. It was a three year journey into the hearts and souls of America's youngest heroes to gather these important historical accounts, but it was worth every hour spent. Inside this book are the voices the first Annapolis graduates into a decade of war and they remind us that America is in good hands. They were walking to class on 9/11, wearing Naval Academy summer working blues, when the towers were struck.

Depuis les années 50, des enseignants ont recueilli des témoignages en s'adressant aussi bien à des anonymes qu'à des acteurs incontournables. Ces enregistrements, morceaux d'histoires vécues, constituent une mémoire orale dont le caractère humain lui confère un statut de document historique vivant. Les auteurs et l'éditeur de cette publication n'ignorent pas qu'un témoignage ne peut être transformé en objet d'histoire qu'à la condition de le croiser avec d'autres informations et de le passer au crible de la critique.

This is an excerpt from the Military Veterans in Creative Careers book. It includes only the section on writing books and video games, and interviews with veterans in video games.

When Lyle Jeremy Rubin first arrived at Marine Officer Candidates School, he was convinced that the “war on terror” was necessary to national security. He also subscribed to a strict code of manhood that military service conjured and perpetuated. Then he began to train and his worldview shattered. Honorably discharged five years later, Rubin returned to the United States with none of his beliefs, about himself or his country, intact.

In 1898 the American Regular Army was a small frontier constabulary engaged in skirmishes with Indians and protesting workers. Forty-three years later, in 1941, it was a large modern army ready to wage global war against the Germans and the Japanese. In this definitive social history of America's standing army, military historian Edward Coffman tells how that critical transformation was accomplished.

One month after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when President John F. Kennedy pressed Congress about America’s “urgent national needs”, he named expanding US special operations forces along with putting a man on the moon. Captain William Hamilton was the officer tasked with creating the finest unconventional warriors ever seen. Merging his own experience commanding Navy Underwater Demolition Teams with expertise from Army Special Forces and the CIA, and working with his subordinate, Roy Boehm, he cast the mold for sea-, air-, and land-dispatched night fighters.

Carl Lavin was a high school senior when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The Canton, Ohio, native enlisted when he turned 18, a decision that would take him with the US Army from training across the United States and Britain to combat with the 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Bulge. Home Front to Battlefront is the tale of a foot soldier who finds himself thrust into a world where he and his unit grapple with the horrors of combat, the idiocies of bureaucracy, and the oddities of life back home - all in the same day.

On November 25, 1950, during one of the toughest battles of the Korean War, the US Eighth Army Ranger Company seized and held the strategically important Hill 205 overlooking the Chongchon River. Separated by more than a mile from the nearest friendly unit, 51 soldiers fought several hundred Chinese attackers. Their commander, Lieutenant Ralph Puckett, was wounded three times before he was evacuated. For his actions, he received the country's second-highest award for courage on the battlefield and resumed active duty later that year as a living legend.

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).