The Warfighter's Lounge: A Marine's Experience of Combat in Marjah, Afghanistan


Book Description

Lance Corporal Jeff Bodell recounts his harrowing experiences as a member of a Police Mentor Team during the brutal Battle of Marjah in 2010. In the scorching Afghan heat, amidst the chaos and bloodshed, this gripping first-person narrative unveils the raw realities of war and the unbreakable camaraderie forged in the crucible of combat. Join Bodell and the resilient members of Shadow One-Four as they confront a relentless Taliban force, fighting not only for survival but for the brotherhood that binds them.




Embracing the Fog of War


Book Description

The unpredictable counterinsurgency environment challenges centralized, quantitative campaign assessment. A comprehensive examination of the centralized, quantitative approach to assessment, as described in the literature and doctrine and applied in two primary case studies (Vietnam and Afghanistan), reveals weaknesses and gaps and proposes an alternative process: contextual assessment.




Dog Company


Book Description

Now with a forward by Sean Hannity, this powerful story of brotherhood, bravery, and patriotism exposes the true stories behind some of the Army's darkest secrets. The Army does not want you to read this book. It does not want to advertise its detention system that coddles enemy fighters while putting American soldiers at risk. It does not want to reveal the new lawyered-up Pentagon war ethic that prosecutes U.S. soldiers and Marines while setting free spies who kill Americans. This very system ambushed Captain Roger Hill and his men. Hill, a West Point grad and decorated combat veteran, was a rising young officer who had always followed the letter of the military law. In 2007, Hill got his dream job: infantry commander in the storied 101st Airborne. His new unit, Dog Company, 1-506th, had just returned stateside from the hell of Ramadi. The men were brilliant in combat but unpolished at home, where paperwork and inspections filled their days. With tough love, Hill and his First Sergeant, an old-school former drill instructor named Tommy Scott, turned the company into the top performers in the battalion. Hill and Scott then led Dog Company into combat in Afghanistan, where a third of their men became battlefield casualties after just six months. Meanwhile, Hill found himself at war with his own battalion commander, a charismatic but difficult man who threatened to relieve Hill at every turn. After two of his men died on a routine patrol, Hill and a counterintelligence team busted a dozen enemy infiltrators on their base in the violent province of Wardak. Abandoned by his high command, Hill suddenly faced an excruciating choice: follow Army rules the way he always had, or damn the rules to his own destruction and protect the men he'd grown to love.




Marines


Book Description




American War Cinema and Media since Vietnam


Book Description

No other cinematic genre more sharply illustrates the contradictions of American society - notions about social class, politics, and socio-economic ideology - than the war film. This book examines the latest cycle of war films to reveal how they mediate and negotiate the complexities of war, class, and a military-political mission largely gone bad.




Combat-Ready Kitchen


Book Description

Americans eat more processed foods than anyone else in the world. We also spend more on military research. These two seemingly unrelated facts are inextricably linked. If you ever wondered how ready-to-eat foods infiltrated your kitchen, you’ll love this entertaining romp through the secret military history of practically everything you buy at the supermarket. In a nondescript Boston suburb, in a handful of low buildings buffered by trees and a lake, a group of men and women spend their days researching, testing, tasting, and producing the foods that form the bedrock of the American diet. If you stumbled into the facility, you might think the technicians dressed in lab coats and the shiny kitchen equipment belonged to one of the giant food conglomerates responsible for your favorite brand of frozen pizza or microwavable breakfast burritos. So you’d be surprised to learn that you’ve just entered the U.S. Army Natick Soldier Systems Center, ground zero for the processed food industry. Ever since Napoleon, armies have sought better ways to preserve, store, and transport food for battle. As part of this quest, although most people don’t realize it, the U.S. military spearheaded the invention of energy bars, restructured meat, extended-life bread, instant coffee, and much more. But there’s been an insidious mission creep: because the military enlisted industry—huge corporations such as ADM, ConAgra, General Mills, Hershey, Hormel, Mars, Nabisco, Reynolds, Smithfield, Swift, Tyson, and Unilever—to help develop and manufacture food for soldiers on the front line, over the years combat rations, or the key technologies used in engineering them, have ended up dominating grocery store shelves and refrigerator cases. TV dinners, the cheese powder in snack foods, cling wrap . . . The list is almost endless. Now food writer Anastacia Marx de Salcedo scrutinizes the world of processed food and its long relationship with the military—unveiling the twists, turns, successes, failures, and products that have found their way from the armed forces’ and contractors’ laboratories into our kitchens. In developing these rations, the army was looking for some of the very same qualities as we do in our hectic, fast-paced twenty-first-century lives: portability, ease of preparation, extended shelf life at room temperature, affordability, and appeal to even the least adventurous eaters. In other words, the military has us chowing down like special ops. What is the effect of such a diet, eaten—as it is by soldiers and most consumers—day in and day out, year after year? We don’t really know. We’re the guinea pigs in a giant public health experiment, one in which science and technology, at the beck and call of the military, have taken over our kitchens.




Commerce Business Daily


Book Description




Vipers in the Storm: Diary of a Gulf War Fighter Pilot


Book Description

The inside story of the Desert Storm aerial warfare, told by one of its heroes. The book inlcudes riveting you-are-there detail, complete with photos.




Assembly


Book Description




The Fields of Normandy


Book Description

The Fields of Normandy is an accessible, portable, solitaire "hex and counter" style wargame in a book. Instructions and colour game maps are included; you just need to bring a pencil, 2 standard six-sided dice and an eraser. Nothing else is needed to play. Your task is to order your rifle squads, machine gun teams, mortar teams and PIAT teams across the map to achieve your objectives, countering any enemy threat which is found along the way. The game rules reveal, position and attack with enemy units whilst you focus on your objectives. Clear rules, 15 missions across varied maps with varied enemies provides plenty of replayability as you re-create the Allied push into Normandy in World War II. Good luck, your troops await your orders... Complexity: 2/5 Players: 1 Time: 10 to 40 minutes per mission