The Life of an American Sniper Chris Kyle : The Extraordinary life of Most Lethal American Sniper Chris Kyle


P.S. James - 2013
    Chris Kyle was a young man with a history of bravery and service to his country. The story of Chris Kyle's life and the life of his killer collided, bringing to light war and its effects on young men and women. When considered, Chris Kyle’s life brings up many of the hot button issues on the minds of Americans today. One only need turn on the television Sunday morning to hear the debate of gun violence, mental illness and the systems which fail to help those in need.Chris Kyle was a mythical figure to many who followed Chris Kyle's story. Chris Kyle was counted on as a protector to many including the wife and two children Chris Kyle left behind. Chris Kyle was a devoted family man, mentor and a lethal sniper in service to his country.Chris Kyle’s life and death peel back as an onion beginning with his birth and proceeding to Chris Kyle's harrowing war experiences culminating in his death.

Into Dust and Fire: Five Young Americans Who Went First to Fight the Nazi Army


Rachel S. Cox - 2012
    The United States remained wary of joining the costly and destructive conflict. But for five extraordinary young Americans, the global threat of fascism was too great to ignore. Six months before Pearl Harbor, these courageous idealists left their promising futures behind to join the beleaguered British Army. Fighting as foreigners, they were shipped off to join the Desert Rats, the 7th Armored Division of the British Eighth Army, who were battling Field Marshal Rommel’s panzer division. The Yanks would lead anti-tank and machine-gun platoons into combat at the Second Battle of El Alamein, the twelve-day epic of tank warfare that would ultimately turn the tide for the Allies. A fitting tribute to five men whose commitment to freedom transcended national boundaries, Into Dust and Fire is a gripping true tale of idealism, courage, camaraderie, sacrifice, and heroism.

This New Country: A Western Double


Harlan Hague - 2021
    

Hms Crusader


A.E. Langsford - 1991
    Death by fire - Death by ice.These were the twin threats confronting the seamen on the North Atlantic convoys: fire from the Luftwaffe's bombs, and from the torpedoes of the lurking U-Boats: ice in the deadly cold waters that could kill in three minutes, five minutes at most.Between these two hells lived another threat: the slow paralyzing hand of fear.

The Silver Waterfall


Kevin Miller - 2020
    Nimitz waited for him with what he had, placed exactly where he needed it.Both admirals depended on their fliers, some veterans of battle, others raw and unproven. Striking first meant decisive victory.This is the story of the men who fought the World War 2 Battle of Midway over three momentous days in June, 1942. Men uncertain, determined, fearful and courageous. Their story is one of daring and unfathomable loss."The Silver Waterfall" is a historic fiction novel of Midway told by today's master of carrier aviation fiction about those who fought in one of the most pivotal and epic naval battles in world history.

The Iron Triangle: A Novel of the Vietnam War


Douglas L. Edwards - 2019
    It is a character driven story concentrating on the soldiers of a single squad. It shows the unrelenting brutality of war and how teenage boys accepted the daily violence with stoic, grim humor. Barely out of high school, they confront their own mortality on a daily basis. It is set in the months after the Tet Offensive when combat increased dramatically producing the highest casualty rate of the war. The anti war movement was at its height creating a feeling of abandonment in those left to fight in the jungle. These men did fight out of a sense of patriotism, and in fact, scoffed at the idea of anthems and the flag waving patriots at home. They fought to protect their brothers in arms and would gladly endanger their own lives to ensure the safety of their friends. The lived and died in the isolation of a primeval jungle so dense that sunlight was a luxury. They fought for body count, a term and strategy developed by rear echelon officers, that dehumanized both the enemy and themselves. They fought to perpetuate the lies presented in daily briefings that measured the success of the war in ratios and statistics.

D-Day


Al Hine - 1962
    Here is the dramatic story of that climatic battle and the men who planned and fought in it. The Normandy invasion altered the course of World War II and led to the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of the Third Reich. It is a story of courage and fear, tragedy and determination.

Coward on the Beach, Vol. 1


James Delingpole - 2007
    World War II's answer to Flashman, only much more honourable - Dick's a coward by name but not by nature - our hero has the uncanny knack of being in just the right place at just the wrong time.

Tail-End Charley: Stories from an American fighter pilot in World War II


James E. Brown - 2017
    Brown tries to fake to his flight instructor that he has flown before. On his twenty-first birthday, Brown is on his way home after logging eighty-five missions in a P-47 fighter over Italy, France, and Germany. Brown’s stories surrounding his training and combat experiences in World War II reveal brushes with death, continuous peril and, ultimately, a coming of age for a young man whose freshman year in college becomes instead a heroic engagement with one of the fiercest enemies his country has ever encountered. Ever dutiful to the mother who tells him to “write it down, Jamie,” Brown notes his experiences in the journal she provides and adds detail later to deliver a firsthand account of life as a pilot in the final months of combat within the European Theater. Serving as Tail-End Charley – the last man out – in most of the missions he flew, Brown’s job was to record results for the interrogation officers afterward. But Brown offers much more insight in this memoir. Follow his triumphs and travails with colleagues who become lifelong compatriots during an indelible period in American history.

Dustoff 7-3: Saving Lives Under Fire in Afghanistan


Erik Sabiston - 2015
    Complete opposites thrown together, cut off, and outnumbered, Chief Warrant Officer Erik Sabiston and his flight crew answered the call in a race against time, not to take lives—but to save them.   The concept of evacuating wounded soldiers by helicopter developed in the Korean War and became a staple during the war in Vietnam where heroic, unarmed chopper crews flew vital missions known to the grateful grunts on the ground as Dustoffs.   The crew of Dustoff 7-3 carried on that heroic tradition, flying over a region that had seen scores of American casualties, known among veterans as the Valley of Death. At the end of Operation Hammer Down, they had rescued 14 soldiers, made three critical supply runs, recovered two soldiers killed in action, and nearly died. It took all of three days.

Blood Trails: The Combat Diary of a Foot Soldier in Vietnam


Christopher Ronnau - 2006
    But the latter soon proved particularly pointless as the private first class found himself in the thick of two pivotal, fiercely fought Big Red One operations, going head-to-head against crack Viet cong and NVA troops in the notorious Iron Triangle and along the treacherous Cambodian border near Tay Ninh.Patrols, ambushes, plunging down VC tunnels, search and destroy missions–there were many ways to drive the enemy from his own backyard, as Ronnau quickly discovered. Based on the journal Ronnau kept in Vietnam, Blood Trails captures the hellish jungle war in all its stark life-and-death immediacy. This wrenching chronicle is also stirring testimony to the quiet courage of those unsung American heroes, many not yet twenty-one, who had a job to do and did it without complaint–fighting, sacrificing, and dying for their country. Includes sixteen pages of rare and never-before-seen combat photosFrom the Paperback edition.

The Forest of Assassins


David Forsmark - 2013
    It is must-read on every page.” ----THOMAS FLEMING: Author of A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of the Civil War“The Forest of Assassins is a great read, a novel as good as the best journalism, with vivid and accurate details driving a tale of danger and deception and betrayal during the Vietnam War. This book doesn't just feel researched, it feels lived. Whether tightening the suspense – our protagonist, Navy Lieutenant Hank Dillon eyeball to eyeball with a VC soldier and watching for the skin to whiten on the man’s finger curled around the trigger of his AK-47 – or describing the oppressive heat of an innocent afternoon on the Mekong Delta, David Forsmark and Timothy Imholt make you believe every word of it. I couldn't recommend it more highly.-ROBERT FERRIGNO, NY Times best-selling novelist, Prayers for the AssassinAs real as fiction gets. A non-stop ride into combat told with perfection.-BOB HAMER, veteran FBI undercover agent and the author of The Last UndercoverThe Forest of Assassins is a historic thriller set in the earliest days of the American involvement in the Vietnam War. It involved the earliest of Navy SEAL teams. It is set in a time when the NAVY still did not admit these men existed, much less had they determined if those units would survive until the next conflict, or if the experiment would be abandoned. The Forest of Assassins tells the story of Navy SEAL Lieutenant Hank Dillon, a squad commander, deep in the jungles of South Vietnam when America’s involvement in the war was still in the “advisor” stage. Dillon’s mission is to wreak havoc among the Viet Cong guerillas who are terrorizing the countryside.Their mission—and even their presence in the region—is top secret. But Hank has a problem even bigger than a deadly and determined enemy; he has a traitor in the ranks.Meanwhile, a suspicious NCIS cop is nosing around Hank’s mysterious operation, certain that it is a front for drug running and other illegal activities.Things are tense for the young Lieutenant who just wants to go home to his wife…intact.

Raiding Forces Series Boxed Set (Books 1 & 2): Those Who Dare & Dead Eagles


Phil Ward - 2017
    Meticulously researched (the author was an instructor at the Army Ranger School), the series begins with the birth of special operations—as seen through the eyes of a young American officer who has volunteered to serve with British Forces. With over 500 reviews and a 4.3 star average, Those Who Dare and Dead Eagles are sure to appeal to WWII military historical fiction fans. Two books for the price of one—$9.99. Those Who Dare (Book1) May 1940, 10th Panzer Division has decimated France and is driving on Calais a short distance from Dunkirk. Lieutenant John Randal, a veteran of the US 26th Cavalry Regiment volunteers to serve with the British Forces and arrives on the continent three days before the town falls. What unfolds is a blend of guerrilla tactics learned in the Philippian jungles, the first small-scale Commando raid, tough training at No.1 Parachute Training School, the Commando Castle, Special Operations Executive. suspense, humor and a little romance with the drop dead gorgeous widow Lady Jane Seaborn. The author—a decorated Ranger combat veteran covers the details of war extensively putting the reader right in the middle of the action. As the novel ends newly promoted Major Randal, upon returning from the first British parachute raid of the war is alerted that Raiding Forces will deploy within 48 hours via sea transport for their next mission off the Gold Coast of Africa. Dead Eagles (Book 2) U.S.Major John Randal, Commander of Strategic Raiding Forces is back, leading a crew of British Commandos, Royal Marines and Royal Navy raiders on bigger and bolder missions to foil Hitler's Third Reich. Off the Gold Coast colony in Africa, the Germans are operating a naval intelligence ring that gathers information about British convoys in the southern sea-lane. Couriers carry the data to nearby Rio Bonita, a tiny Portuguese island protectorate, whence they are broadcast to Nazi U-boats and surface raiders from a clandestine radio station onboard one of three interned enemy ships. As a result, British convoys vital to the war effort are ravaged. Major Randal and the Raiding Forces mission is to invade neutral Rio Bonita and spirit away the three ships. Failure means either imprisonment or hanging for piracy-and that Portugal will declare war on its oldest ally. Peopling Dead Eagles are colorful characters new and old. There is Wild West showman Captain "Geronimo Joe" McKoy, the stunning Special Operations Executive operator Lady Jane Seaborn, who adopts the Raiding Forces as her own pet project; and Lady Jane's bombshell of a driver, Pamala Plum-Martin. Even Commander Ian Fleming puts in an appearance, submitting a plan for "Operation Ruthless", the goal of which is to board a Luftwaffe bomber and crash it into the English Channel in order to capture an Enigma coding device from a Nazi air-sea rescue craft. This action packed adventure story features Lovat Scout Snipers, the take down of the Vichy French fleet in English ports, daring Commando raids, an epic sea battle, beautiful spies and culminates in a deadly shoot-out in a crowed bar in Occupied France.

Star Sand


Roger Pulvers - 2016
    Alongside it are the remains of three people.The journal reveals the story of Hiromi, a sixteen-year-old girl who’d grown up in the United States before living in Japan in the midst of World War II. One day, while collecting star sand—tiny star-shaped fossils—Hiromi finds two army deserters hiding in the seaside cavern—one American, one Japanese. The soldiers don’t speak the same language, but they’ve reached an agreement based on a shared hope: to cause no more harm and survive. Hiromi resolves to care for the men—feeding them and nursing their ailments—despite the risk that, if caught, she’ll die alongside them as a traitor. But when a fourth person joins in on their secret, they must face a threat from within. The diary abruptly ends, leaving everyone’s fate a mystery.Decades later, in 2011, a young female university student decides to finally determine who died in that cave and who lived. Her search will lead her to the lone survivor—and bring closure to a gripping tale of heroism at a time when committing to peace was the most dangerous act of all.

The Yompers: With 45 Commando in the Falklands War


Ian R. Gardiner - 2012
    It caught the public's imagination during this short but bitter campaign and epitomized the grim determination and professionalism of our troops...Called to action on April 2, 1982, the men of 45 Commando Royal Marines assembled from around the world to sail 8,000 miles to recover the Falkland Islands from Argentine invasion. Lacking helicopters and short of food, they "yomped" in appalling weather carrying overloaded rucksacks, across the roughest terrain. Yet for a month in mid-winter, they remained a cohesive fighting-fit body of men. They then fought and won the highly successful and fierce night battle for Two Sisters, a 1,000-foot-high mountain which was the key to the defensive positions around Stanley.More than just a first-hand story of that epic feat, this book is the first to be written by a company commander in the Falklands War. It offers a vivid description of the "yomp" and infantry fighting, and it also offers penetrating insights into the realities of war at higher levels. It is a unique combination of descriptive writing about frontline fighting and wider reflections on the Falklands War, and conflict in general."This is the real thing, from someone who gave the orders and led from the front, from beginning to bitter end. His account is articulate, poignant and precise, even though thirty years have elapsed . . . highly recommended." --Military History Monthly