O’Keefe takes us on a heart-pounding journey at the sharp end of combat during the infamous Normandy campaign. More than 300 soldiers from the Black Watch found themselves pinned down, as the result of strategic blunders and the fog of war, and only a handful walked away. Thrust into a nightmare, Black Watch Highlanders who hailed from across Canada, the United States, Great Britain and the Allied world found themselves embroiled in a mortal contest against elite Waffen-SS units and grizzled Eastern Front veterans, where station, rank, race and religion mattered little, and only character won the day. Drawing on formerly classified documents and rare first-person testimony of the men who fought on the front lines, O’Keefe follows the footsteps of the ghosts of Normandy, giving a voice yet again to the men who sacrificed everything in the summer of 1944.

    Navy fighter/attack pilot from 1956 to 1980. (What it was like to fly jets off aircraft carriers in the days before smart bombs, GPS, and automated carrier landing systems.) After two years at the University of Arizona, the author entered the Naval Aviation Cadet Program in Pensacola, Florida, and became a carrier-qualified jet pilot at age twenty. As a naval aviator, he flew 3,669 hours in thirteen different types of aircraft, made 652 carrier landings (163 of them at night), and flew 183 combat missions during the Vietnam War. He was awarded the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and thirteen Air Medals. He went on to command Attack Squadron 35 aboard USS Nimitz.This is the story.

     Through the course of the next six months it would see some of the most ferocious fighting of the entire war. As soon as they landed they drove quickly into the Netherlands to prepare for an offensive into Nazi Germany. Their movements were dramatically altered as the German forces attempted to launch a momentous counter-offensive against the allies. The 84th division was sent to Belgium to plug a gap in the Allied line and fought back against the last ditch effort of Nazi forces. Draper takes the reader through every engagement that the division took part in from the first shots fired in anger through to crossing the Rhine into Germany and finally taking Hannover and making contact with Soviet forces in May 1945. Lt. Theodore Draper’s book is a unique account of the allied invasion of Germany. Rather relying on secondhand stories of the division’s actions months after the events had occurred, Draper was encouraged to go direct to the source, to the men themselves, from the commanding general to any private, for the most complete, firsthand information on every action. This book is largely based on hundreds of pages of such interviews, most of them within 48 hours of the unit’s relief and many of them while the unit was still fighting. “Though ostensibly a divisional history, Draper’s well-informed and interesting account is useful for an understanding of the war on the western front in general.” Robert Gale Woolbert, Foreign Affairs “This is the whole operation of the battle of Germany on the broad and individual level, the Siegfried Line, the fight to the Rhine, the Ardennes, the mad race to the Elbo, with credit attributed to men, companies, battalions where it is due.” Kirkus Reviews Theodore Draper was an American historian and political writer. He wrote many notable books during his career on a variety of subjects. During the Second World War he was inducted into the U. S. Army and worked in the historical section of the 84th Infantry Division. His book The 84th Infantry Division In The Battle Of Germany : November 1944-May 1945 was first published in 1946 and he passed away in 2006.

    His even younger enlisted Marines were learning to use an untested weapon, the M4A2 “Sherman” medium tank. His sole combat veteran was the company bugler, who had salvaged his dress cap and battered horn from a sinking aircraft carrier. Just six months later, the company would be thrown into one of the ghastliest battles of World War II.   On November 20, 1943 the 2nd Marine Division launched the first amphibious assault of the Pacific War, directly into the teeth of powerful Japanese defenses on Tarawa. In that blood-soaked invasion, a single company of Sherman tanks, of which only two survived, played a pivotal role in turning the tide from looming disaster to legendary victory. In this unique study, Oscar E. Gilbert and Romain V. Cansiere use official documents, memoirs, and interviews with veterans, as well as personal and aerial photographs, to follow Charlie Company from its formation, and trace the movement, action—and loss—of individual tanks in this horrific 4-day struggle.   The authors follow the company from training through the brutal 76-hour struggle for Tarawa. Survivor accounts and air-photo analyses document the movements—and destruction—of the company’s individual tanks. It is a story of escapes from drowning tanks, and even more harrowing extrications from tanks knocked out behind Japanese lines. It is a story of men doing whatever needed to be done, from burying the dead to hand-carrying heavy cannon ammunition forward under fire. It is the story of how the two surviving tanks and their crews expanded a perilously thin beachhead and cleared the way for critical reinforcements to come ashore. But most of all, it is a story of how a few unsung Marines helped turn near disaster into epic victory.

    Naval Reserve, joined the pre-commissioning crew of the Fletcher class destroyer USS Cotten. The new crew trained for the remainder of the summer and then sailed to Pearl Harbor in time to join the newly established Fifth Fleet. Under t he command of Admiral Raymond Spruance, the Fifth Fleet was given orders to invade Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands in November 1943. This offensive, along with naval battles in the Philippine Sea, the Leyte Gulf, and the invasion of Iwo Jima in February 1945, is chronicled from the perspective of a young deck officer and is integrated with the background of the larger conflict, including the politics of command. After Japan's surrender, the Cotten became a part of the Occupation Force anchored in Tokyo Bay. Robinson deftly narrates how he and his friends took advantage of their good luck and brought their roles in the war to a fitting conclusion.

    

    British and American troops were poised to cross the River Rhine in the west, while in the East the vast Soviet war machine was steam-rolling the soldiers of the Third Reich back towards the capital, Berlin. Even in retreat, the German Army was still a force to be reckoned with and vigorously defended every last bridge, castle, town and village against the massive Russian onslaught. Tony Le Tissier has interviewed a wide range of former German Army and SS soldiers to provide ten vivid first-hand accounts of the fighting retreat that, for one soldier, ended in Hitler's Chancellery building in the ruins of Berlin in April 1945. The dramatic descriptions of combat are contrasted with insights into the human dimension of these desperate battles, reminding the reader that many of the German soldiers whose stories we read shared similar values to the average British 'Tommy' or the American GI and were not all crazed Nazis. Illustrated with photographs of the main characters and specially commissioned maps identifying the location and course of the battles, With Our Backs to Berlin is a fascinating read for anyone who is interested in the final days of the Second World War.

    

    The Allies were determined to end the war in Europe quickly and with as little bloodshed as possible. But the Germans were by no means prepared to yield - though they could see the war was lost. Thus began one of the most crucial years in the history of the world, and its climax, the desperate battle for Berlin, brought to a close one of the darkest chapters mankind has ever witnessed. The Allied effort pushed on from all fronts. In the east, Stalin's mighty war machine began its great offensive. From out of the swirling fog and snow, the Soviet steamroller crashed through the German lines on the Vistula, 125 miles south of Warsaw. Driving across the Polish plain towards the Oder, Germany's historic frontier with the east, Russia's advancing armored columns created panic in East Prussia. In the west, Eisenhower and Montgomery joined the race to destroy the heart of Nazi Germany - and defend Europe against Stalin's vaulting ambition. Through vivid, firsthand accounts from soldiers and civilians, privates, generals, and refugees, Fallen Eagle chronicles the triumphs and tragedies of the war's closing months - from the devastating, triple air raids on Dresden to "Spring's Awakening," Hitler's last offensive, with which he planned to retake Budapest and retain its oil fields; from the legendary summit in Yalta between Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill to an extraordinary account of Hitler's last days.

    Antiquated as it was, the "Stringbag" still outmaneuvered almost any other aircraft—especially with Lamb at the controls. Go with him into the thick of the action—landing on the Courageous just before she sinks; flying 29 sorties over northern Europe; attacking E-boats through the nine days of Dunkirk. Also experience the terror of being shot down...and living to soar again, defending Malta and the Mediterranean. A rare story of courage. 5 X 7 3/4.

    On May 27, 1943, his B–24 crashed into the Pacific Ocean. Louis and two other survivors found a raft amid the flaming wreckage and waited for rescue. Instead, they drifted two thousand miles for forty–seven days. Their only food: two shark livers and three raw albatross. Their only water: sporadic rainfall. Their only companions: hope and faith–and the ever–present sharks. On the forty–seventh day, mere skeletons close to death, Zamperini and pilot Russell Phillips spotted land–and were captured by the Japanese. Thus began more than two years of torture and humiliation as a prisoner of war.Zamperini was threatened with beheading, subject to medical experiments, routinely beaten, hidden in a secret interrogation facility, starved and forced into slave labour, and was the constant victim of a brutal prison guard nicknamed the Bird–a man so vicious that the other guards feared him and called him a psychopath. Meanwhile, the Army Air Corps declared Zamperini dead and President Roosevelt sends official condolences to his family, who never gave up hope that he was alive.Somehow, Zamperini survived and he returned home a hero. The celebration was short–lived. He plunged into drinking and brawling and the depths of rage and despair. Nightly, the Bird's face leered at him in his dreams. It would take years, but with the love of his wife and the power of faith, he was able to stop the nightmares and the drinking.A stirring memoir from one of the greatest of the "Greatest Generation," DEVIL AT MY HEELS is a living document about the brutality of war, the tenacity of the human spirit, and the power of forgiveness.

    The Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War pulls from many of Osprey's bestselling books on the subject in addition to the most recent research on the subject, including many sources from Japan, and is the most recent and accurate book on this fascinating force.Even after its setback at midway, the IJN remained a powerful force and inflicted sever setbacks on the US Navy at Guadalcanal and elsewhere. The Imperial Japanese Navy focuses on the Japanese ships which fought the battles in the Pacific including design details, where and when they were engaged and their ultimate effectiveness. In addition, the construction, design and service history of each ship from destroyer size on up is included. A comprehensive survey of the submarine force is also included. Modifications of each ship are covered making this a valuable reference source for Pacific War enthusiasts and historians, as well as ship modelers.A short history of the IJN during the Pacific War places all warship design and history in proper context. Finally, a chapter discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the IJN is included ultimately asking the question of whether the IJN really was a modern Navy which was fully prepared for the rigors of combat in the Pacific.

    Those selected for Bomber Command operations went on to rain devastation upon the Third Reich in the great air battles over Europe, but their losses were high. German fighters and anti-aircraft guns took a terrifying toll. The chances of surviving a tour of duty as a bomber crew were almost nil.Murray Peden's story of his training in Canada and England, and his crew's operations on Stirlings and Flying Fortresses with 214 Squadron, has been hailed as a classic of war literature. It is a fine blend of the excitement, humour, and tragedy of that eventful era.

    World War II raged in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific; President Roosevelt was seriously ill, and just a few short months from his death; Americans on the home front suffered through shortages, including a Thanksgiving without turkey or pie just days earlier. But for one day, all that was forgotten. Army’s team was ranked number 1; Navy, number 2. Army’s years of football misery had been lifted by a wartime team and a brilliant coach that made them a contender, and if they beat Navy on that day, they would be national champions. Around the world, the war stopped as soldiers listened to a broadcast of the game. Everyone everywhere forgot everything for a few short hours. Randy Roberts has interviewed surviving players and coaches for nearly a decade to bring to life one of the most memorable stories in all of American sports. For three years, Army football upperclassmen graduated and joined the fight, from Normandy beaches to Pacific atolls. For three hours, their alma mater gave them back one unforgettable performance.

     This was the first time the Americans had penetrated the “outer ring” of the Japanese Pacific sphere. From now until the end of the war the combined forces of the Navy, Marine Corps and Army would island hop their way to the Japanese mainland. Yet, the Battle of Kwajalein Atoll, particularly on the island of Roi-Namur where there were only 51 survivors of the original 3,500 garrison left, gave the Americans an insight into the fierce resistance that the Japanese would put up over the remaining months of the war. Drawn directly from the testimonies of several hundred infantrymen, Island Victory provides insight into what it was like to feel the heat of battle on the beaches of those Pacific islands. "Written accounts of war simply do not get any closer to the actions and feelings of those [who] were there. Island Victory is a highly recommended, 'must read' book." — The Midwest Book Review "The real value of Island Victory lies in the unadorned words of these soldiers, recorded so openly and methodically by Marshall after the battle. . . . The Kwajalein victors interviewed so painstakingly by Sam Marshall provide a priceless candor and authenticity, the emotional testimonies of young men still flushed with adrenalin, guilt, and relief." — Joseph H. Alexander, Journal of Military History S. L. A. Marshall was a chief U.S. Army combat historian during World War II and the Korean War. He had served on the border with Mexico during the Pancho Villa Expedition before serving in France during World War I. He wrote over thirty books about warfare. Island Victory was first published in 1944. Marshall passed away in 1977.