Sharpen Your Bayonets


Book Description

The first full-length biography of World War II general and Cold Warrior John Wilson "Iron Mike" O’Daniel, featuring "the very essence of the man... who spent more time under fire with his front-line troops than behind the safety of his office desk." — ARGunners.com John Wilson “Iron Mike” O’Daniel was one of the U.S. Army’s great fighting generals of the 20th century. He began his military career with the Delaware Militia in 1914, served on the Mexican border in 1916, received a Distinguished Service Cross in World War I, was Mark Clark’s man for hard jobs in the early days of World War II, and commanded the storied 3rd Infantry Division from Anzio to the end of the war in Europe, ending the war in Salzburg after liberating Munich, and Hitler’s Berghof and Eagle’s Nest on the Obersalzberg, Bavaria, Germany. “Iron Mike “commanded I Corps in Korea 1951–1952 and ended his career as the Chief of the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Vietnam in the early days of American involvement there. LTC Stoy paints a vivid picture of this great American warrior who played an important role in World War II, became an ardent anti-Communist crusader after duty in Moscow as Military Attaché 1948–1950 as the Cold War intensified, laid the foundation for the Army of the Republic of Vietnam, and remained an ardent supporter of President Ngo Dinh Diem while serving as Chairman of the American Friends of Vietnam from his retirement in 1956 until 1963, shortly before Diem’s assassination.




All Blood Runs Red


Book Description

Life and legends of Eugene Jacques Bullard, the first black American military aviator... from his childhood to WWI hero, 47 chapters of his life from the time he ran away from home, alone at the age of eight to find freedom and equality in France. This is based on a true life. It is a series of fictional interviews with a man whom I never met.




The Korean War


Book Description

The Korean War was a 20th Century conflict that has never ended. South Korea, a powerhouse economy and dynamic democracy sits uneasily alongside North Korea, the world's most secretive, belligerent, unpredictable and repressive totalitarian state. Today, tensions simmer and occasionally flare into outright violence on a peninsula dense with arms, munitions and nuclear warheads. Cameron Forbes, acclaimed author of Hellfire, tells the story of the war and Australia's involvement in it in a riveting narrative. From the letters and diaries of those diggers who fought across Korea's unforgiving hills and mountains to the grand strategies formulated in Washington, Moscow and Beijing, The Korean War reveals the conflict on all its levels - human, military and geopolitical. In the tradition of Les Carlyon's Gallipoli and The Great War and Paul Ham's Vietnam, Cameron Forbes has written a masterpiece that will serve as the definitive history of Australia and the Korean War. Winner of FAW National Literary Awards for Best Fiction 2010




My Comrades and Me


Book Description

Author Al Brown, like a few million others, was a civilian one day and a serviceman the next. In My Comrades and Me: Staff Sergeant Al Brown's WWII Memoirs, he gives readers a glimpse into his life as a soldier and his personal experiences during the Second World War. In My Comrades and Me, Brown takes readers through basic infantry training where they were drilled to follow the do something, even if it is wrong rule, the longest, loneliest night of his life, his first day in combat on a dark moonless morning, January 22, 1944, when he almost drowned, and more. He also shares his comrades' stories. Brown hopes that, with these memoirs, families and descendants of WWII soldiers will find answers to their questions about their soldier's combat experiences, experiences that soldiers never revealed to their families after their return or because they never returned. Rarely did the combat soldier reveal them in letters home. Sergeant Brown notes that all infantry combat experiences are fundamentally the same. Only the dates and settings are different for different soldiers.




Blood Oath


Book Description

After surviving the Battle of Culloden in 1746, young Hughie MacKim swears a blood oath to avenge the murder of his brother. Trained as an infantryman in Fraser's Highlanders, Hugh joins the Army himself and follows the trail across the horror of war in North America, through to the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in September 1759. But how can he trace the men in the anonymous ranks of the British Army? Winner, SAHR Prize for Military Fiction, 2020-2021




Hunters' Island


Book Description

A young American farm boy and a Japanese student are swept away from their lives by war and end up playing a deadly game of cat and mouse on a Pacific Island. It is a world war between with the lives and cultures of empires at stake, the largest and most vicious war to sweep across the globe. In spite of the sweep of the war around the world, in August 1942 many were focused on a rugged and brutal South Pacific island called Guadalcanal. Here, two determined nations pitted all they could spare committing every airplane, ship and soldier they could funnel into the cauldron. It was not just men viciously battling each other to the death, but inhospitable terrain, weather, disease, illness and even starvation plagued both sides. Starvation Island ‘the Canal’ was called by the Americans, and the Japanese used the same phrase, ga-to to describe gadarukanaru. Private Henrik Hahnemann was an eighteen year old Missouri farm boy growing up in the hard scrabble times of the Great Depression. Known for his hunting skills, his close-knit family often depended on him to bring home dinner. Shaken and bitter about the dastardly Japanese sneak attack, he was fixated on revenge and righting a great wrong. He chose the Marine Corps as the means for his personal retribution. Granted an early high school graduation, ‘Handyman’ Henrik struggled with the change from a peaceful farmer’s son, but his platoon came to recognize his shooting and hunting skills. When the chips were down he summoned the determination necessary to survive against hopeless odds. Superior Private Obatia Yoshiro was an average twenty year old student expected to eventually take over his father’s glass works along with the production of mysterious glass spheres for the Japanese Army. The unassuming economics student has another side seldom seen by most. In the summer months he crews his uncle’s fishing boat, exposing him to the physical and mental demands of the elements. His school plans suddenly undermined by a draft notice, he makes the best of a dismal and brutal life of absolute obligation and unquestioning obedience. Values and beliefs, discipline and obedience, massed firepower or skill at arms, which would prevail in this nightmare? Or was it a matter of the small Stars and Stripes flag carried by one or the belt of a thousand stitches—sen’ninbari—carried by the other? Would either protect or inspire? Would they see home again, or did it matter?




Love's labour [verse].


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Antiaircraft Journal


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Histories of American Army Units


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Guadalcanal Marine


Book Description

In Guadalcanal Marine, Kerry L. Lane recounts the dark reality of combat experienced by the men of the 1st Marine Division fighting on Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester. With eighty gripping photographs and his text, he brings to life the struggles of his companions as they achieve these two astonishing victories. Lane, a sixteen-year-old farm boy from North Carolina, battled the Japanese and rose to heroism powering a bulldozer to bridge "Suicide Creek" in the swamps on Cape Gloucester. There he led his Marine comrades to victory. Lane describes the trials of the common Marine serving in the first grueling island campaign. In vivid prose he tells of joining the service before the war and of training. Soon after the shocking news of Pearl Harbor, he and his trusted comrades fight the Japanese in one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific. In the tropics, Lane and his companions suffer malaria and dysentery, endure jungle rot and oppressive heat, and grapple with an enemy who fights to the death. Throughout the book, Lane bares the experience of the average Marine and his historic World War II journey, revealing how one teenager became a Corps hero and ultimately finished his military career as a lieutenant colonel.