Without hesitation they chose the second option and for then next two years they remained on the run from Axis forces. They made their way from Masbate to Fanay and finally on to “Hopevale” where they joined other men and women who were determined not to surrender. Louise Reid Spencer’s memoir of that time, Guerrilla Wife provides fascinatingly personal insight into a life of exile during the Second World War. As the months rolled on Spencer explains how basic human needs like housing, clothing, food and health, became increasingly difficult to secure and how the hope of survival was the only thing driving these men and women onwards. Louise Reid Spencer eventually survived the chilling events recounted in her book and wrote her memoir Guerrilla Wife which was published in 1945. She went to live in America after the war and passed away in 1983.

    Anyone showing a slight weakness to walk was instantly bayoneted in the back. Many marchers committed suicide by leaping from bridges. Others were shot for attempting to eat or drink anything.Estimates of the number of total deaths from the march range from 5,000 to 8,000. Thousands more later died from malnutrition and disease in the abject conditions of the Japanese POW camps.One of the fortunate survivors was Sergeant Bob Reynolds who penned his combat memoir Of Rice and Men in 1947. With a cool, philosophical perspective, he details the harrowing experience, from bitterly defending Bataan on starvation rations, through the many atrocities of the March, and finally his miraculous survival in Cabanatuan POW Camp and, later, in Manila's Bilibid Prison. *Includes annotations.

    Author Eric Feldt led Operation Ferdinand, part of the build-up to the Normandy landings, in which the Coastwatchers, by this time on the US Navy's payroll, played a critical role. His intimate knowledge of Ferdinand, and his familiarity with the Coastwatchers of the Pacific islands, provides a unique perspective on this little known but important chapter of military history.

    S. Forester to dramatize the sea battles of the War of 1812, to characterize the heroes more skillfully, or to comprehend more shrewdly the world unrest that made it possible for an infant republic to embarrass a great nation rich in one hundred years of sea triumphs.

    Pollifax series, had reached a point of no return in her life. With her sons in college, Ms. Gilman was searching for something unknowable, unnameable . . . until she bought a small house in a little lobstering village in Nova Scotia, Canada.And so she began her life again, discovering talents and interests she never realized were hers, accepting the inner peace she had always fought, and most of all, understanding the untapped part of herself, almost as if it were a new kind of country, to challenge, explore, and love.

    The obstacles are many and mostly unexpected, like neighbours waving cutlasses over the wall, venomous snakes and mercenary union men at the gate, not to mention a large and complicated piece of legislation called the Coastal Regulation Zone.Obstacles, however, are meant to be overcome and so they are, with some quick thinking and a few helpful friends, an honest cop and an equally straight-talking scientist, and Excel sheets pulled up on demand to outwit corrupt builders. All of which make for a great story, filled with laughter and despair, and sharp yet good-humoured insights into the Malayali way of life.

    But far from the battlefields, Allied scientists are struggling.Intelligence reports put them a distant second behind the Germans in a competition that could determine the outcome of the war: the race to build the world's first nuclear weapon.For the Allies' top scientists, the race is deeply personal. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, and Samuel Goudsmit have known Hitler's chief atomic scientist, Werner Heisenberg, for years. A brilliant, world-renowned physicist and once a good friend, he's anti-Nazi but also a loyal German.Fear that he's put country first and is building a bomb haunts Oppenheimer and Fermi all through their months and years developing the Allied bomb. That same anxiety drives Goudsmit, now a top Allied intelligence officer, to risk his life as he attempts to track down Heisenberg and the site of Hitler's suspected atom bomb program.

    Vann Woodward recreates the gripping account of the battle for Leyte Gulf—the greatest naval battle of World War II and the largest engagement ever fought on the high seas. For the Japanese, it represented their supreme effort; they committed to action virtually every operational fighting ship on the lists of the Imperial Navy, including two powerful new battleships of the Yamato class. It also ended in their greatest defeat—and a tremendous victory for the United States Navy. Features a new introduction by Evan Thomas, author of Sea of Thunder.

    It is rather a matter of confidence. You need to be confident in what you are doing and in how to figure out what to do if things aren't going quite right. Understanding why you do certain things and why they turn out the way they do increases confidence and leads to successful crocheting. This book answers some of the most common questions crocheters have, and anticipates some questions you didn't know you had. The Crochet Answer Book will lead you down the road to gaining the confidence that makes for good crocheting.

    SURVIVING THE FATHERLAND tells the true and heart-wrenching stories of Lilly and Günter struggling with the terror-filled reality of life in the Third Reich, each embarking on their own dangerous path toward survival, freedom, and ultimately each other. Based on the author’s own family and anchored in historical facts, this story celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the strength of war children.

    Vietnam features a grunt's-eye view of the conflict - from the steaming rice paddies and swamps of the Mekong Delta, to the triple-canopy rainforest of the Central Highlands, to the forlorn Marine bases that dotted the DMZ. Like Karl Marlantes' groundbreaking novel 2010, Mattherhorn, this book will change the way we think about Vietnam. Told in uncompromising, no-holds barred language of the soldiers themselves, the stories contained within this book detail everything from heroism to fragging, from helicopters hitting the LZs to rampant drug use. It is a true and grippingly accurate portrait of the American war in Vietnam through the eyes of the men and women who fought in that far away land while a few are drawn from medics, corpsmen, nurses and widows. The book is based on rich collections housed at the National Archive, the Center of Military History, and at the Vietnam Archive at Texas Tech.

    At the time, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist C.L. Sulzberger received widespread praise for his authoritative account of the six-year war that involved more than fifty-six nations, resulted in the death of some 22 million people, and shaped the course of history. His work became a standard reference on the war. Stephen E. Ambrose, one of the most highly regarded historians of our time, oversaw a major revision of this classic work. Seamlessly incorporating new material and insights, Ambrose produced a comprehensive and riveting account of the war’s key characters and events. In planes and foxholes, in deserts and jungles, on ships and beaches, Ambrose shines a light on the people involved - the leaders, the fighters, the victims. He also added new chapters on the atrocities of the Holocaust and revelations about the secret war of espionage. Ambrose’s analysis also offers insight into the events that precipitated the Cold War. This book captures the courage, commitment, military genius, and horror of the war that gave birth to a new era in world politics. For students, history buffs, and fascinated readers, The American Heritage History of World War II is the definitive single-volume work on the subject and will endure as a major narrative of world history.

    After the Germans invaded Norway, many Norwegians knew that small boats were constantly sailing from the Shetland Islands to land weapons, supplies, and agents and to rescue refugees.In The Shetland Bus, David Howarth, who was second in command of the Shetland base, recounts the hundreds of trips made by fishing boats in the dark of Arctic winter to resist the Nazi onslaught.For the Norwegians who remained in Norway, The Shetland Bus fortified them both physically and spiritually. Nothing but war would have made seamen attempt such dangerous journeys. Some stretched two thousand miles in length and lasted as long as three weeks in boats only fifty to seventy-five feet long. Fishing boats crossing the North Sea were sometimes attacked and sunk in minutes, hundreds of miles from a friendly ship or shore. Their crews had no hope of being saved. But to "take the Shetland Bus" meant escape when capture became the only other option. The Shetland Bus is the amazing true-life account of storms, attacks, danger, and the heroic efforts of brave men.

    Now, after a life of bizarre and troubling circumstances, she becomes obsessed with the idea that she too will die on Midsummer's Day . . . until she meets the one man who may be able to save herAzalea Lewis's life has been dominated by coincidences-a bizarre, and increasingly troubling, series of chance events so perfectly coordinated that any sane person would conclude that only the hidden hand of providence could explain them.On Midsummer's Day, 1982, at the age of three, Azalea was found wandering a fairground in England, alone, too young to explain what had happened to her or her parents. After a brief investigation, she was declared a ward of the court, and placed in foster care. The following year, the body of a woman-her mother-was found on a nearby beach, but by then everyone had forgotten about the little girl, and no connection was ever made. The couple who adopted Azalea brought her to Africa, where-on Midsummer's Day, 1992-they were killed in a Ugandan uprising while trying to protect their children. Azalea is spared on that day, but as she grows into adulthood, she discovers that her life has been shaped by an uncanny set of coincidences-all of them leading back to her birth mother, a single mother on the Isle of Man, and the three men who could have been her father, each of whom has played an improbable but very real role in her fate.Troubled by what she has uncovered-and increasingly convinced that she, too, will meet her fate on Midsummer's Day-she approaches Thomas Post, a rational-minded academic whose specialty is debunking our belief in coincidence: the belief that certain events are linked, even predestined, by the hands of fate. Even as they fall in love, Thomas tries to help to understand her past as a series of random events-not a divinely predetermined order. Yet as the fateful date draws closer, Thomas begins to fear that he may lose her altogether, and she may throw herself into the very fate she fears.A warm and romantic, yet intellectually fascinating, story of two souls trying to make sense of the universe and our place in it, Coincidence is an unforgettable novel by a storyteller of masterful gifts.

    Przemysl, Poland. No one has explained to three-year-old Renatka what war is. She knows her Tatus, a doctor, is away with the Polish Army, that her beautiful Mamusia is no longer allowed to work at the university, and that their frequent visitors-among them Great Aunt Zuzia and Uncle Julek with their gifts of melon and clothes-have stopped appearing. One morning Mamusia comes home with little yellow six-pointed stars for them to wear. Renatka thinks they will keep her family safe.In June of 1942, soldiers in gray-green uniforms take Renata, Mamusia, and grandmother Babcia to the Ghetto where they are crammed into one room with other frightened families. The adults are forced to work long hours at the factory and to survive on next to no food. One day Mamusia and Babcia do not return from their shifts. Six years old and utterly alone, Renata is passed from place to place and survives through the willingness of ordinary people to take the most deadly risks. Her unlikely blonde hair and blue eyes and other twists of fate save her life but stories become her salvation. Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales transport her to an enchanted world; David Copperfield helps her cope on her own; and she longs for the family in Swallows and Amazons. A chronicle of the horrors of war, Let Me Tell You a Story is a powerful and moving memoir of growing up in a disturbing world, and of the magical discovery of books.