Military Veteran

An elite British S.A.S. operative on an assassination mission gone wrong. A Jewish New Yorker injured in a Nazi ambush. An 18-year-old Gary Cooper lookalike from Mobile, Alabama. These men and hundreds of other soldiers found themselves in the prisoner-of-war camps off the Atlantic coast of occupied France, fighting brutal conditions and unsympathetic captors. But, miraculously, local villagers were able to smuggle out a message from the camp, one that reached the Allies and sparked a remarkable quest by an unlikely - and truly inspiring - hero.

August 1990: Iraqi forces under the command of Saddam Hussein invade the tiny emirate of Kuwait. Within hours, the Kuwaiti defenses collapse under the onslaught of the Iraqi Army. In response, the US military leads a coalition of 34 nations in what becomes Operation Desert Storm—a violent campaign to eject the Iraqis from Kuwait. At the tip of the spear are the men of Ghost Troop in the US Army’s Second Armored Cavalry Regiment. Based on hours of interviews and archival research by the author, this is a no-holds-barred account of modern warfare…as told by the men who lived it.

They were the final survivors of the millions who made up the American Expeditionary Forces, nineteenth-century men and women living in the twenty-first century. Self-reliant, humble, and stoic, they kept their stories to themselves for a lifetime, then shared them at the last possible moment so that they, and the war they won - the trauma that created our modern world - might at last be remembered. You will never forget them.

Three brothers. One Great Depression. One dreadful yet righteous war. Their lives shifted from a rural northern Minnesota upbringing to going their separate ways: to California, the skies over Germany, and the jungles of Leyte. Back home, their widowed mother had yet to recover from the loss of the family farm to the Tax Man. Her boys gone, dependent on their income, and haunted by premonitions, she faced the torment of incessant worries.

The British and American bomber crews of the Second World War often had to endure the most terrifying conditions. Not for them the glorious, all-or-nothing exhilaration of the Battle of Britain pilots—rather, the slow dwindling of courage as mission followed mission, the long freezing, ear-shattering journey to the target, the bursting flak, the prowling night fighters. Then, if they were lucky, the long haul home, sometimes nursing a battered, barely flyable machine, often perilously short of fuel.

In May 1999, the Kargil insurgency was still being viewed as a routine affair. No one quite understood the magnitude of the situation. However, it soon emerged that infiltrators had captured high-altitude posts vacated by Indian soldiers during the winter months and thus had a tactical upper hand, while the Indian Army struggled with intelligence. For the next month or so, Capt. Anuj Nayyar and the men of 17 Jat went on various reconnaissance missions in the boulder-strewn Drass sector where enemy troops had set up base.

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 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.

America's highest military award, the Congressional Medal of Honor, was awarded to 440 deserving members of the "Greatest Generation" that served in World War II. But in 1943, before the war was even over, Allied leaders realized they needed another kind of award to recognize a different kind of World War II hero - animal heroes. Founded in 1943, the prestigious PDSA Dickin Medal is the highest award an animal can achieve for gallantry and bravery in the field of military conflict. It was given to 55 animals who served valiantly alongside the members of the Greatest Generation.

In November 1943, Marine 1st Lt. Alexander Bonnyman Jr. was mortally wounded while leading a successful assault on critical Japanese fortifications on the Pacific atoll of Tarawa. But it was not until August 2015 that he was finally laid to rest. Bonnyman Jr. was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor and Purple Heart for his heroic actions during the bloody battle, which would ultimately claim the lives of almost 2,000 Marines and 5,000 Japanese soldiers. But the lieutenant, along with hundreds of other Marines, was buried in an unmarked grave.

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.

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.

In Charlie Mike, Joe Klein tells the dramatic story of Eric Greitens and Jake Wood, larger-than-life war heroes who come home and use their military discipline and values to help others. This is a story that hasn't been told before, one of the most hopeful to emerge from Iraq and Afghanistan - a saga of lives saved, not wasted.

The night broke open in a storm of explosions and fire. The sound of shells whizzing overhead, screeching through the night like wounded pheasants, was terrifying. When the shells exploded prematurely overhead, a rain of shrapnel fell on the men below better than when the shells exploded in the trenches...

Wiser in Battle is the first book about the war in Iraq by an on-site commander. Former Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez served as Commander of Coalition Ground Forces from June 2003 to June 2004. Wiser in Battle offers the full story of his tenure, providing a first-hand account of Saddam Hussein's capture, the battle of Fallujah, and the never-ending quest to take out Shiite Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Over the last decade, we have sent thousands of people to fight on our behalf. But what happens when these soldiers come back home having lost their friends and killed their enemies, having seen and done things that have no place in civilian life? In Aftershock, Matthew Green tells the story of our veterans' journey from the frontline of combat to the reality of return.

An extraordinary journey behind the scenes of Arlington National Cemetery, Senator Tom Cotton’s Sacred Duty offers an intimate and inspiring portrait of “The Old Guard”, the revered US Army unit whose mission is to honor our country’s fallen heroes on the most hallowed ground in America.

In the vein of Band of Brothers and American Sniper, a riveting history of Alvin York, the World War I legend who killed two dozen Germans and captured more than 100, detailing York's heroics yet also restoring the unsung heroes of his patrol to their rightful place in history - from renowned World War I historian James Carl Nelson.

Not everyone has pulled shards of another man's skull from the palm of their hand. Not everyone has stood over the bodies of friends whose lives were lost in an instant. Not everyone has struggled to face their own reflection for years on end. But anyone who has experienced trauma or adversity will resonate with Legion Rising, the unflinchingly honest account of an army officer's journey through combat in the Iraq War and rising beyond the scars that trauma leaves behind.

On October 19, 1940, the Hawaiian Air Force, later known as the Seventh Air Force, was established to provide air defense of the Hawaiian Island and to engage with threats in the Pacific. Just over a year later, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor devastated this force. Out of a total of 231 aircraft of the Hawaiian Air Force, 64 were destroyed and not more than 79 were left usable. Out of the inferno emerged the newly reformed Seventh Air Force.