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The Expendables by Leonard B. Scott


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Devil's Guard: The Real Story


Eric Meyer - 2010
    It's the first in the series to describe their events in the bloodthirsty combat of Indochina. Following the myths and legends about Nazis recruited by the French Foreign Legion to fight in Indochina, Eric Meyer's new book is based on the real story of one such former Waffen-SS man who lived to tell the tale. The Legion recruited widely from soldiers left unemployed and homeless by the defeat of Germany in 1945. They offered a new identity and passport to men who could bring their fighting abilities to the jungles and rice paddies of what was to become Vietnam. These were ruthless, trained killers, brutalised by the war on the Eastern Front, their killing skills honed to a razor's edge. They found their true home in Indochina, where they fought and became a byword for brutal military efficiency.

Red Phoenix


Larry Bond - 1989
    Seizing the opportunity, North Korea launches a lightning invasion, with heavy Soviet support, whose aim is to unite North and South under Communist rule. The second Korean War has begun and World War III may be imminent.

Kill Zone


Jack Coughlin - 2007
    But moments before he is rendered unconscious, the general notices that his captors speak American English. What’s going on? Gunnery-Sergeant Kyle Swanson is vacationing in the Mediterranean when he receives orders to mount a top-secret mission to rescue the general. But as the Marines prepare to land in the desert, they fall victim to a terrible accident. Swanson, the only survivor, then discovers they were flying into a deliberate ambush. But how could the enemy have details of a mission known only to a few top US government officials? Swanson takes off alone to locate the captured general and realizes he is fighting a particularly ruthless enemy: American mercenaries working for a very high-level group within the White House, whose hidden goal is total control of the US military. The fate of the captured general and that of the nation now rest solely in Swanson’s hands. 'Stunning action, excellent tradecraft, insider politics, and the ring of truth. Just about perfect' Lee Child

Gods and Generals


Jeff Shaara - 1996
    Shaara captures the disillusionment of both Lee and Hancock early in their careers, Lee's conflict with loyalty, Jackson's overwhelming Christian ethic and Chamberlain's total lack of experience, while illustrating how each compensated for shortcomings and failures when put to the test. The perspectives of the four men, particularly concerning the battles at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, make vivid the realities of war.

Resistance


Anita Shreve - 1995
    Now available in mass market paperback for the first time, this novel by the #1 New York Times bestselling author takes readers on an unforgettable journey into a harrowing world where forbidden passions have catastrophic consequences.

The Last of the Dog Team


William W. Johnstone - 1981
    But while others might have been called heroes, Terry was called something else: a man too dangerous to live.

Sympathy For The Devil


Kent Anderson - 1987
    It traces the story of a hardened Green Beret named Hanson, a college student who goes to war with a book of Yeats's poetry in his pocket and discovers the savagery within himself.In this extraordinary novel, we follow Hanson through two tours of duty and a bitter attempt to live as a civilian in between. At one with the lush and dangerous world around him in Vietnam, Hanson is doomed to survive the landscape of devastation he encounters. Sympathy for the Devil contains some of the most vivid, finely etched prose ever written about the actual process of war—from firing a weapon for the first time in battle to the moment a young man knows that he has entered a living hell and found a home....

The Four Feathers


A.E.W. Mason - 1902
    He immediately receives four white feathers—symbols of cowardice—one each from his three best friends and his fiancée. To disprove this grave dishonor, Harry dons an Arabian disguise and leaves for the Sudan, where he anonymously comes to the aid of his three friends, saving each of their lives.Having proved his bravery, Harry returns to England, hoping to regain the love and respect of his fiancée. This suspenseful tale movingly depicts a distinctive code of honor that was deeply valued and strongly promoted by the British during the height of their imperial power.

The New Recruit: Episode 1


Andy McNab - 2012
    The Army Foundation College in Harrogate is a long way from home for Liam Scott. The training is intense; has he got what it takes to stay in the game when he's faced with CS gas and the firing range?Full story available in hardback and ebook formats.

The Foot Soldier


Mark Rubinstein - 2013
    The Foot Soldier brings you to the hell of jungle combat. Close your eyes and this novella takes you there. It conveys the terror and brutality of jungle warfare and their effect on the American riflemen--those who bore the greatest burden. It's every bit as compelling as The Things They Carried.

The Phantom Blooper


Gustav Hasford - 1990
    I am going to give you the straight skinny, because you are the biggest shitbird on the planet. Your job is to stand around and stop the bullet that might hit someone of importance. In Viet Nam nice guys do not finish at all and monsters live forever. We are teenaged Quasimodos for the bells of hell and we are as happy as pigs in shit because killing is our business and business is good. The only virtue of the stupid is that they don't live long. The Lord giveth and the M-79 taketh away. If you're lucky, you'll only get killed. There it is. Welcome to the world of zero slack.""We hump through a defoliated rain forest that is too dead even to smell dead. Ancient trees stand stark and black and stripped of leaves. The black trees are hung with limp windblown flowers that are parachutes from illumination shells. Later we see trees that are as white as bone, sun-bleached skeletons of the great hardwoods, white trees with black leaves. The trunks and branches of the trees are warped by unnatural cancerous growths that look like human faces and human hands and human fingers growing out of decaying wood. In the poisonous fields of the defoliated rain forest we see monsters, freaks, and mutants. We see a water rat with two heads and as big as a dog, birds with extra feet coming out of their backs, Siamese-twin bullfrogs joined at the stomach. The bullfrogs scurry for cover with clumsy and desperately frantic movements horrible to see, finally sinking into oozing slime inhabited by shadows that are alive and best never seen by human eyes. "There are a lot of stories about the Phantom Blooper. Below Phu Bai the Phantom Blooper is a black Marine Lieutenant who inspects defensive positions at bridge security compounds. The next night, they get hit. North of Hue City the Phantom Blooper is a salt and pepper team of snuffy grunts who guide the Marine patrols into L-shaped ambushes set by the Viet Cong. Force Recon claims a probable kill for shooting the Phantom Blooper in the Ashau Valley. The Phantom Blooper was a round-eye, tall and white, with blond hair, wearing black pajamas and a red headband, and armed with a folding-stock AK-47 assault rifle. Recon swears that—and this is no shit—the round-eyed Victor Charlie was the honcho, the leader, of the gook patrol. The Phantom Blooper has many names. The White Cong. Super-Charlie. The American VC. Moon Cusser. The Round-Eyed Victor Charlie. White Charlie. Americong. Yankee Avenger. But whatever name we use, we all know in our hearts the true identity of the Phantom Blooper. He is the dark spirit of our collective bad consciences made real and dangerous. “Go home,” the Phantom Blooper says, every night. And we want to go home, we really do, but we don’t know how. “Go home,” the Phantom Blooper says, without mercy, over and over, again and again, punctuating his sentences with explosions. "If there is a novel that illustrates the extremes to which the American soldier in Vietnam was driven, then Gustav Hasford has written it... (The Phantom Blooper) is a major contribution to our continuing examination of the Vietnam War." --John S. Nelson, professor of English at Saint Mary of the PlainsCollege"Taken individually, each is a brilliant & singular portrayal of the war. Taken together, we have a kind of Vietnam epic... If you can find The Phantom Blooper and The Short-Timers, read them both together." --Brian Siano, The Kubrick Site: Regarding 'Full Metal Jacket' This book was actually completed before Full Metal Jacket was released in 1987, but for some reason not published by Bantam until 1990, at which time Gus put out a press release, wildy attacking his editor. An excerpt of the novel was printed in the January 1990 issue of Playboy. It is a more powerful, more personal story than The Short-Timers, in its description of life among the Viet Cong and how that affects Private Joker. If The Short-Timers details the making of an American solider, this book shows the unmaking. In Hasford's original draft, Joker's conversion was so complete that he became an active VC, going out and killing his fellow Marines. As the inside cover says, "Here is another major novel of the Viet Nam experience from one of its most startlingly able chroniclers... Joker's personal odyssey exposes a searingly honest, tragic, and brutal truth about the war that damned a generation and the betrayal that scarred us all." This was supposed to be the second volume of Gus's Viet Nam trilogy, but the final novel was never finished. The Phantom Blooper is currently out of print, but you can download the entire text right here!

Point of Impact


Stephen Hunter - 1993
    Today, twenty years later, disgruntled hero of an unheroic war, all Bob Lee Swagger wants to be left alone and to leave the killing behind.But with consummate psychological skill, a shadowy military organization seduces Bob into leaving his beloved Arkansas hills for one last mission for his country, unaware until too late that the game is rigged.The assassination plot is executed to perfection—until Bob Lee Swagger, alleged lone gunman, comes out of the operation alive, the target of a nationwide manhunt, his only allies a woman he just met and a discredited FBI agent.Now Bob Lee Swagger is on the run, using his lethal skills once more—but this time to track down the men who set him up and to break a dark conspiracy aimed at the very heart of America.

Hornet Flight


Ken Follett - 2002
    Ken Follett follows his bestsellers Jackdaws and Code to Zero with an extraordinary novel of early days of World War II...It is June 1941 and the war is not going well for England.  Across the North Sea, eighteen-year-old Harald Olufsen takes a shortcut on the German-occupied Danish island of Sande an discovers an astonishing sight that will change the momentum of the war.  He must get word to England-except that he has no way to get there.  He has only an old derelict Hornet Moth biplane rusting away in a ruined church: a plane so decrepit that it is unlikely ever to get off the ground...even if Harald knew how to fly it.

Last of the Breed


Louis L'Amour - 1986
    It is the compelling story of U.S. Air Force Major Joe Mack, a man born out of time. When his experimental aircraft is forced down in Russia and he escapes a Soviet prison camp, he must call upon the ancient skills of his Indian forebears to survive the vast Siberian wilderness. Only one route lies open to Mack: the path of his ancestors, overland to the Bering Strait and across the sea to America. But in pursuit is a legendary tracker, the Yakut native Alekhin, who knows every square foot of the icy frontier—and who knows that to trap his quarry he must think like a Sioux.

We Stand Alone


David Lee Corley - 2018
    A deadly trap. Will Vietnamese rebels take the bait and attack French paratroopers in a winner-take-all battle? “A historical novel that reads like a modern political thriller, full of exciting action, larger-than-life characters, and unforgettable events.” —Kirkus Reviews Hanoi 1953. France struggles to retain control of its Indochina empire after World War II. Communist rebels under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh fight for freedom in Vietnam. With both sides determined, the war is developing into a stalemate until…A French general devises a plan to secure victory in one decisive battle. To achieve success the French must square off with the elusive rebels. Bait is needed. A brigade of elite paratroopers is sent into the Muong Thanh Valley far from French supply lines. A dilapidated airport is rebuilt into a fortified air bridge – the paratroopers’ lifeline and only means of escape.If Ho Chi Minh takes the bait, the French will use their artillery and aircraft to destroy the Viet Minh rebels as they attempt to overrun the garrison with their superior numbers.It seems like such a good plan…Events unfold from multiple points of view: the French General Cogny, who devises and executes the plan; the American pilot Tom Coyle, recruited by the CIA to fly for the French Air Force; the war correspondent Brigitte Friang, who jumps with the French paratroopers into the valley and Viet Minh Commanding General Giap, considered by military historians to be the most brilliant strategist of the 20th Century.We Stand Alone is the first book in the gripping Airmen historical military fiction series. If you like riveting action, accurate details, and larger-than-life characters, then you’ll love David Lee Corley’s unforgettable novel. Pick up your copy of We Stand Alone today!