Book picks similar to
Troepie, From Call Up To Camps by Cameron Blake
fiction
south-africa
tbr-africa-south-africa
border-war
Combat Medic: A Soldier's Story of the Iraq War and PTSD
S.M. Boney IV - 2016
Private Boney joined the U.S. Army in 2003. After basic and advanced medical training, he was deployed to Iraq with the 1st Calvary Divisions 15th Forward Support Battalion in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom. Follow along as he recalls his experience as a combat medic surviving mortar attacks, assisting casualties, and a gruesome gorilla warfare fight in the Wadi-Us-Salaam cemetery; the largest in the world.
Luck of a Lancaster: 107 Operations, 244 Crew, 103 of Them Killed in Action
Gordon Thorburn - 2013
W4964 was the seventieth Lanc to arrive on squadron, in mid April 1943. She flew her first op on the 20th, by which time No 9 had lost forty one of their Lancs to enemy action and another five had been transferred to other squadrons and lost by them. A further thirteen of the seventy would soon be lost by No 9. All of the remaining eleven would be damaged, repaired, transferred to other squadrons or training units, and lost to enemy action or crashes except for three which, in some kind of retirement, would last long enough to be scrapped after the war. Only one of the seventy achieved a century of ops or anything like it: W4964 WS-J. Across all squadrons and all the war, the average life of a Lancaster was 22.75 sorties, but rather less for the front-line squadrons going to Germany three and four times a week in 1943 and '44, which was when W4964 was flying her 107 sorties, all with No 9 Squadron and all from RAF Bardney. The first was Stettin (Szczecin in modern Poland), and thereafter she went wherever 9 Squadron went, to Berlin, the Ruhr, and most of the big ops of the time such as Peenemunde and Hamburg. She was given a special character as J-Johnny Walker, 'still going strong' and on September 15 1944, skippered by Flight Lieutenant James Douglas Melrose, her Tallboy special bomb was the only one to hit the battleship Tirpitz. During her career, well over two hundred airmen flew in J. None were killed while doing so, but ninety-six of them died in other aircraft. This is their story, and the story of one lucky Lancaster.
Days of Fury: Ghost Troop and the Battle of 73 Easting
Mike Guardia - 2021
Within hours, the Kuwaiti defenses collapse under the onslaught of the Iraqi Army. In response, the US military leads a coalition of thirty-four nations in what becomes Operation Desert Storm—a violent campaign to eject the Iraqis from Kuwait. At the tip of the spear are the men of Ghost Troop in the US Army’s 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment.Commanded by Captain Joseph Sartiano, Ghost Troop was among the lead elements of the US VII Corps’ advance into Iraq. On February 26, 1991, Ghost Troop encountered a brigade-sized element of the Tawakalna Division— the elite frontline forces of Iraq’s Republican Guard. Although significantly outnumbered and outgunned, Ghost Troop won a decisive victory with minimal losses to their own ranks. History would call it the Battle of 73 Easting.Based on hours of interviews and archival research by author Mike Guardia, this minute-by-minute rendition of the battle reveals an intimate, no-holds-barred account of modern warfare…as told by the men who lived it."Days of Fury" is their story.
The Orphan Train
Brent Ford - 2013
As a resolute Bobby, teamed up with with old timer, Diggory, set off after the killers, Ella is placed at the mercy of an unscrupulous priest and soon finds herself aboard one of America's infamous, Orphan Trains. Bobby and Diggory, now accompanied by his reluctant, young schoolteacher, Miss Halfpenny, are faced with the critical dilemma of searching for his sister, or the continued quest of his parents' killer. And so, a desperate pursuit ensues across America's still untamed and perilous Wild West.
Yours
Angela Christina Archer - 2021
Knowing the Germans could invade their quiet home the resident children of Guernsey are evacuated. Among them are Amelia Ashton, and her older sister Evelyn.The promise to stay safe.Forced onto the boat by her older sister, seventeen-year-old Amelia Ashton arrives in Weymouth with hundreds of other children. Although she is placed with a kind and loving foster family in Derbyshire, her world is torn apart. With all her communication cut off from her family, and the boys at school joining to fight in the war, Amelia struggles with her own desire to help. On a whim, she lies about her age and boards a train headed to volunteer with the Woman’s Land Army. Finding solace in the work of farm life, she reconnects with William, a young man from Derbyshire, and who doesn’t waste any time asking for her hand in marriage. Can Amelia start a new life without looking over her shoulder at what she left behind in Guernsey or will the war change everything?The promise to survive.Fearing for her parents’ lives, nineteen-year-old, Evelyn Ashton stays behind, living through the German occupation plaguing her once beautiful home—the island of Guernsey. Living under German rule, the residents find a new meaning of desperation and despair, trying to survive on rations and evade the threats of being sent off to a death camp. After her parents die in a bombing, Evelyn is left alone to fend for herself against her enemy, and when German soldiers take over her house, she seeks refuge in the only family she believes she has left—Henry—the man once interested in her sister. Can they find comfort in each other or will the occupation claim not only their love but also their lives?Two sisters. Two promises. One bloody war that changes their lives forever.
Under Our Skin: A White Family's Journey through South Africa's Darkest Years
Donald McRae - 2012
The McRaes, like so many white people, seemed oblivious to the violent injustices of apartheid. As the author grew up, the political differences between father and son widened and when Don refused to join up for National Service, risking imprisonment or exile overseas, the two were torn apart. It wasn't until years later that the author discovered that the father with whom he had fought so bitterly had later in his life transformed himself into a political hero. Risking everything one dark and rainy night Ian McRae travelled secretly into the black township of Soweto to meet members of Nelson Mandela's then banned African National Congress to discuss ways to bring power to black South Africa. He had no political ambitions; he was just a man trying to replace the worst in himself with something better.Under Our Skin is a memoir of these tumultuous years in South Africa's history, as told through the author's family story. It offers an intimate and penetrating perspective on life under apartheid, and tells a story of courage and fear, hope and desolation and love and pain, especially between a father and his son.
Invasion USA
William W. Johnstone - 2006
Johnstone delivers an all-new action-packed series torn from today's headlines in which the greatest danger is not posed by those kept out of America-but by those let in.INVASION USALittle Tuscon, Arizona, just twenty miles north of the border, is a small town whose citizens believe in God, country, and hard work. But their peaceful existence is about to be shattered by Mara Salvatrucha-the murderous Central American gang known as M-15.Culled from the scum of the earth, M-15 runs a drug smuggling operation through the ill-protected border, terrorizing defenseless communities into submission through theft, rape, and murder.With Washington turning a blind eye to the crisis in Little Tucson, Vietnam vet Tom Brannon takes the law into his own hands and forms his own volunteer army, which he names The Patriot Project.But now all hell's about to break loose, because M-15 is coming back to take out the Patriots. Outnumbered and outgunned, with the fate of their families, their homes, and their very country at stake, Tom Brannon and his men will meet the enemy. It's high noon in Arizona-and time to take America back once more.
Caring for Her Wounded Rancher: A Western Historical Romance Book
Ava Winters - 2020
The Jerusalem Assassin
Avraham Azrieli - 2011
But when a beautiful Mossad agent is mortally wounded in Amsterdam, master spy Jerusalem Gerster pursues her attackers back to Israel, where he confronts the most powerful forces and uncovers a sinister conspiracy to perpetrate an unprecedented national catastrophe—the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin.
Marching With The Devil: My Five Years In The French Foreign Legion
David Mason - 2011
Little Bighorn
John Hough Jr. - 2014
Colonel George Armstrong Custer hires her eighteen-year-old son Allen Winslow as an aide for his 1876 campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne. Traveling west against his will, Allen finds himself in the company of Addie Grace Lord, sixteen, sister of one of Custer’s regimental surgeons. The two fall in love, and it is with foreboding that Addie Grace watches Allen and her brother George ride out with Custer’s Seventh Cavalry. Weeks later in Montana, hundreds of miles to the west, the Seventh brings its quarry to bay beside the river called the Little Bighorn.Beautifully written and filled with unforgettable characters, Little Bighorn brings to life the American West and its heartbreaking history, brilliantly portraying the flawed and tormented Custer.
A Hundred Fires in Cuba
John Thorndike - 2018
They have a ten-week affair which ends when Immigration arrests and deports him, and by then Clare Miller is pregnant. Few Americans know the name Camilo Cienfuegos. All Cubans do. He was the most charismatic of Castro's rebel commanders. But Clare, who never hears from him after he's deported, believes he has died in Fidel's invasion of the island. She marries a wealthy Cuban businessman and moves to Havana with her two-year-old daughter, only to discover that her first love is not only still alive, he's now head of the Cuban Army. Clare knows that Camilo likes to dance and drink. He likes women, and too many women like him. Though his courage is legendary, when he comes to visit at night he's afraid of his daughter's moods. He feeds her, he reads to her, he changes her diapers, but for him an all-night march would be easier. Clare worries that he'll never make a good parent, but she cannot resist him.
Dear Olivia: An Italian Journey of Love and Courage
Mary Contini - 2014
Sharing some of the recipes that they brought over, the tomatoes, the garlic, the sausage, the wine, this is a mouthwatering memoir of family and food. It is also a brilliant evocation of life between the wars, a triumphant story of survival against all the odds, that captures the sights and smells of Italian life and culture, at home and abroad.
A Sin of Omission
Marguerite Poland - 2019
But on his return to South Africa, relegated to a dilapidated mission near Fort Beaufort, he had to confront not only the prejudices of a colonial society but the discrimination within the Church itself.Conflicted between his loyalties to the amaNgqika people, for whom his brother fought, and the colonial cause he as Reverend Mzamane is expected to uphold, Stephen’s journey to his mother’s home proves decisive in resolving the contradictions that tear at his heart.
Over the Top: Alternative Histories of the First World War
Peter G. Tsouras - 2014