War Combat

After the Citadel and Officer Candidate School, Andrew Z. Adkins Jr. was sent to the 80th Infantry Division, then training in the California-Arizona desert. There, he was assigned as an 81mm mortar section leader in Company H, 2nd Battalion, 317th Infantry Regiment. Lieutenant Adkins and his fellow soldiers took part in light hedgerow fighting that served to shake the division down and familiarize the troops and their officers with combat.

Some men are born to be warriors, and Ed Shames is one of these men. His incredible combat record includes service at D-Day, Operation Market Garden, and Bastogne and finally in Germany itself.

The media and politicians have been sounding the alarm for years, and with every fresh tragedy involving a young perpetrator comes another flurry of articles about the dangers of violent media. The problem is this: Their fear isn't supported by the evidence. In fact, unlike the video game-trained murder machines depicted in the press, school shooters are actually less likely to be interested in violent games than their peers. In reality, most well-adjusted children and teenagers play violent video games, all without ever exhibiting violent behavior in real life.

In 1972, America was completing its withdrawal from the long and divisive war in Vietnam. Air power covered the departure of ground forces, and search and rescue teams from all services and Air America covered the airmen and soldiers still in the fight. Day and night these military and civilian aircrews stood alert to respond to "Mayday" calls. The rescue forces were the answer to every man's prayer, and those forces brought home airmen, sailors, marines, and soldiers downed or trapped across the breadth and depth of the entire Southeast Asia theater.

A unique joint memoir by a US marine and a conflict photographer whose unlikely friendship helped both heal their war-wounded bodies and souls.

In the wake of World War II, the Allied forces charged 28 Japanese men with crimes against humanity. Correspondents at the Tokyo trial thought the evidence fell most heavily on 10 of the accused. In December 1948, five of these defendants were hanged, while four received sentences of life in prison. The tenth was a brilliant philosopher-patriot named Okawa Shumei. His story proved strangest of all. Among all the political and military leaders on trial, Okawa was the lone civilian.

Previous books have promised to describe the combat experience of the World War II GI, but there has never been a book like Patrick O'Donnell's Beyond Valor. Here is the first combat history of the war in Europe in the words of the men themselves, and perhaps the most honest and brutal account of combat possible.

Taking its title from The Face of Battle, John Keegan's canonical book on the nature of warfare, The Other Face of Battle illuminates the American experience of fighting in "irregular" and "intercultural" wars over the centuries. Sometimes known as "forgotten" wars, in part because they lacked triumphant clarity, they are the focus of the book. War is always hell. These wars, however, profoundly undermined any sense of purpose or proportion. Nightmarish and existentially bewildering, they nonetheless characterize how Americans have experienced combat.

From April to November 1918, the American Air Service grew from a poorly equipped, unorganized branch of the U.S. Expeditionary Forces to a fighting unit equal to its opponent in every way. Hostile Skies details the actual battle experiences of the men and boys who made up the service squadrons at the front - Raoul Lufbery, Elliot Springs, Fiorello La Guardia, and, of course, Eddie Rickenbacker.

Not only was the Stonewall Brigade present at most of the major engagements in the Eastern theater, more often than not, they were positioned at the edge of the front line of battle. It can be fairly stated that while these men may not have been more heroic or courageous than any other soldiers who fought in the Civil War, they appeared in the first wave of volunteers immediately after Virginia announced secession, were better trained, were more skillfully directed, and showed greater dedication to the cause and their leader than most regiments on either side of the conflict.

My Journey as a Combat Medic is a no-holds-barred look at the modern medic in the US Army, allowing us a glimpse at the training as a soldier and as a specialist, as well as deployment and front-line duties and the impact of service on civilian life, including an honest look at PTSD, from the author's own personal experience. Rather than a technical manual, My Journey as a Combat Medic is a detailed firsthand account, concluding with a letter to new medics, providing a career's worth of advice and knowledge as they begin their journeys.

The AC-130 gunship was quickly developed in 1968 to provide fire support for ground forces in Vietnam. Twenty-eight C-130 cargo aircraft were converted into AC-130s for night attack operations. The AC-130 was crude, ugly, ad hoc, and detested by many within the USAF...but it worked, and it worked well. Likewise, AC-130 crews were deemed unruly “biker gangs” but performed magnificently in every major US military operation from 1976 to 1995. Most of these combat operations were cloaked in secrecy, but records once classified for up to 20 years have now been opened.

If you want biblical clarity concerning PTSD from God's perspective, then keep reading...In Elijah's War, journey with Dr. Carlton L. Riley into a world most Americans can't contemplate its existence. Freedom isn't free. Being placed in exceptionally stressful positions can wreak havoc on the mind of any individual. The tour of duty has become longer. The fighting has become more aggressive, and the weapons are more lethal. War is hell, but God will help you learn to rebuild your life as you search for a new normal.

Col. Mark James Alexander was the only airborne officer to lead three different battalions into combat in World War II, successively commanding the 2nd and 1st Battalions, 505 Parachute Infantry Regiment, and the 2nd Battalion, 508 PIR, of the 82nd Airborne Division. A legend in his own time, he fought in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France, and even after being seriously wounded in Normandy, insisted on playing a role in the Battle of the Bulge.

Everett Ross often feels like a fish out of water, an ex-Texas Ranger who traded his horse and six-gun for the cockpit of a pursuit aircraft in the British Royal Flying Corps. Through his inimitable West Texas narrative, Ross thrills the reader with a riveting tale of authentic aerial combat in the skies above the stalemated trenches of World War I.

On August 18, 1945, US Army Sergeant Anthony J. Marchione bled to death in the clear, bright sky above Tokyo. Marchione, a gunner in the US Air Force, died, like so many before him in World War II, quietly, cradled in the arms of a buddy. Though tragic, Marchione's death would have been no more notable than any other had he not had the dubious distinction of being the last American killed in World War II combat.

New research has uncovered deeply buried military secrets—both the Allied and Axis special operations during WWII included monsters. Did the Soviets use a dragon to win the Battle of Kursk? Did a vampire fight for the Canadians in Holland? Did the US drop the second atomic bomb on a kaiju? This collection takes real events from World War II and injects them with fantastical creatures that mirror the “unreality” of war itself. Each story—and two poems—feature mythical, mystical, and otherwise unexplainable beings that change the course of history.

On the morning of August 15, 1945, Captain Jerry Yellin flew the last combat mission of World War II out of Iwo Jima. Today, Captain Yellin is a sharp, engaging, 93-year-old veteran whose story is brought to life by best-selling author Don Brown.

Nineteen-year-old Eddie Henderson is a private in the US Army. His parents are deceased, and he has no one in his life except his platoon brothers - Porter, Rocky, and Professor. His fellow soldiers are his family now. But none share a bond as close as he and his best friend, team leader Mitch Drexler. In the heat and jungles of Vietnam, each man does the best he can to survive. Battles are fought, friends lost, and promises made to the fallen. But when the enemy fatally wounds a platoon brother in a deadly attack, the dying soldier makes Eddie promise to fulfill a final vow.

How the US Army developed historical programs since World War I―sending combat historians into the fray to interview soldiers and collect documents for the benefit of history.