War Combat

Policing Saigon isn't Platoon or Apocalypse Now, but the story of Loren W. Christensen's experience as a military policeman (MP) in a city of millions at a time when chaos and fear reigned. As a 23-year-old from a small town in Washington State, the author was plunged into a chaotic city of brawling servicemen, prostitutes, racial violence, enemy rockets, riots, and death. It was a place that would give him a unique opportunity to see up close a different side of the Vietnam War and its effect on the human condition.

As an Air Force medic, Bree Marks saw the worst the War on Terror had to dish out. Now a physical therapist, she uses her experience to help other veterans heal from their physical wounds while she battles her own emotional damage. Blaming himself for his best friend's suicide, former Army Ranger Jase Larken retreated from life. To honor his best friend's memory and assuage his guilt, he started an outdoor adventure company to help veterans with PTSD.

On October 19, 1965, American Special Forces in Vietnam came under attack at their camp at Plei Me. This marked the first major confrontation between the North Vietnamese and US armies during the war. Throughout six days of constant hostile fire, Captain Lanny Hunter sorted the seriously wounded from the dead and saved those comrades-in-arms he could. For his actions, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. In Exit Wounds, Hunter recalls his tour in the central highlands of Vietnam in 1965/66 at the bloody interface of medicine and combat.

At 6:00 a.m. on the morning of October 3, 2009, Combat Outpost Keating was viciously attacked by Taliban insurgents. The 53 U.S. troops, having been stationed at the bottom of three steep mountains, were severely outmanned by nearly 400 Taliban fighters. Though the Americans ultimately prevailed, their casualties made it one of the war's deadliest battles for U.S. forces. And after more than three years in that dangerous and vulnerable valley a mere 14 miles from the Pakistan border, the U.S. abandoned and bombed the camp.

A detailed and comprehensive study of the carrier formations of the Pacific War, including their origins, development, and key battles from the Coral Sea, through Midway and Guadalcanal to the battle of the Philippine Sea.

Sure to rank as one of the greatest aviation memoirs ever written, Viper Pilot is an Air Force legend's thrilling eyewitness account of modern air warfare. From 1986 to 2006, Lt. Col. Dan Hampton was a leading member of the Wild Weasels, the elite Air Force fighter squadrons whose mission is recognized as the most dangerous job in modern air combat. Weasels are the first planes sent into a war zone, flying deep behind enemy lines purposely seeking to draw fire from surface-to-air missiles and artillery. They must skillfully evade being shot down - and then return to destroy the threats, thereby making the skies safe for everyone else to follow.

Walk in my Combat Boots is a powerful collection crafted from hundreds of original interviews by James Patterson, the world’s number one best-selling writer, and First Sergeant US Army (Ret.) Matt Eversmann, part of the Ranger unit portrayed in the movie Black Hawk Down.

Cilka Klein n'a que 16 ans lorsqu'elle est déportée. Très vite remarquée pour sa beauté par le commandant du camp de Birkenau et mise à l'écart des autres prisonnières. À la Libération, elle est condamnée pour faits de collaboration et envoyée dans un camp de Sibérie ; c'est alors un deuxième enfer qui commence pour elle. Au goulag, où elle doit purger une sentence de quinze ans, elle se lie d'amitié avec une médecin, et apprend à s'occuper des malades dans des conditions inimaginables.

Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong.

The North American Aviation P-51 Mustang first started appearing in real numbers in 1943, at the climax of the Allied campaign in World War II. Able to fly long ranges, it would go on to provide pivotal air support on D-Day, and by the end of the war, it would be responsible for nearly half of all enemy aircraft shot down. In The Fight in the Clouds, aviation writer and EAA Warbirds of America editor James P. Busha draws on interviews conducted with dozens of veteran P-51 pilots to trace the progress of war through the men’s exciting, chronologically organized experiences.

Eugene Bullard lived one of the most fascinating lives of the 20th century. The son of a former slave and an indigenous Creek woman, Bullard fled home at the age of 11 to escape the racial hostility of his Georgia community. When his journey led him to Europe, he garnered worldwide fame as a boxer, and later as the first African-American fighter pilot in history. After the war, Bullard returned to Paris a celebrated hero. But little did he know that the dramatic, globe-spanning arc of his life had just begun.

This insightful chronicle takes listeners inside the experiences of America's fighter pilots and bomber crews, an incredible assortment of men who, in nearly four years of warfare all over the globe, suffered over 120,000 casualties, with over 40,000 killed. Their stories span the Earth, into every corner of the combat theaters in both Europe and the Pacific. And the aircraft explored are as varied, tough, and legendary as the men who flew them.

On April 10, 1970, Hill 927 was occupied by troopers of the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne Division. By July, the activities of the artillery and infantry of Ripcord had caught the attention of the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) and a long and deadly siege ensued. Ripcord was the Screaming Eagles's last chance to do significant damage to the NVA in the A Shau Valley before the division was withdrawn from Vietnam and returned to the US.

Some warriors are drawn to the thrill of combat and find it the defining moment of their lives. Others fall victim to fear, exhaustion, impaired reasoning, and despair. This was certainly true for twentieth-century American ground troops. Whether embracing or being demoralized by war, these men risked their lives for causes larger than themselves with no promise of safe return.

From Larry J. Musson comes an authentic account of combat with an airborne company in the waterlogged rice paddies and demanding jungles of South Vietnam. Share the experiences of fighting men under punishing conditions, extreme temperatures, and intense monsoon rains as they search for the enemy in the rugged mountains and teeming lowlands. Relive all the terror, humor, and sadness of one man's tour of duty with real-life action in spectacular, stunning detail.

Since World War II, the American public has become fully aware of the exploits of the 101st Airborne Division, the paratroopers who led the Allied invasions into Nazi-held Europe. But within the ranks of the 101st, a sub-unit attained legendary status at the time, its reputation persisting among veterans over the decades. Primarily products of the Dustbowl and the Depression, the Filthy13 grew notorious, even within the ranks of the elite 101st. Never ones to salute an officer, or take a bath, this squad became singular within the Screaming Eagles.

This second of three volumes of Patton’s War picks up where the first one left off, examining General George S. Patton’s leadership of the U.S. Third Army. The book follows Patton’s contributions to both the Normandy and Brittany campaigns—the closing of the Falaise Pocket in Normandy, and racing to the port cities in Brittany. It ends with Patton and his corps rescuing the besieged town of Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge. As he did in the preceding volume, Hymel relies not only on Patton’s diaries and letters, but countless veteran interviews, sur­veys, and memoirs.

Up in the mountains of Afghanistan, one of Mike Waltz's snipers watched through his scope as a young boy acted as a spotter for the Taliban mortars attacking a Green Beret position. The sniper requested permission to fire. Waltz refused, insisting on restraint. The child was spared, and the position was held. Later that same day, Waltz visited a nearby Afghan village and discovered the Taliban had hanged a boy in front of his family—because the child wasn't willing to fight for them.

The first invasion of Earth was beaten back by a coalition of corporate and international military forces and the Chinese army. China has been devastated by the Formic's initial efforts to eradicate Earth life forms and prepare the ground for their own settlement. The Scouring of China struck fear into the other nations of the planet; that fear blossomed into drastic action when scientists determined that the single ship that wreaked such damage was merely a scout ship. There is a mothership out beyond the solar system's Kuiper Belt, and it's heading into the system.

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."