Col, Iceal E. Hambleton, U.S. Air Force, has been a forgotten hero since 1972. As North Vietnam's hammer was beating out South Vietnam's submission, Hambleton was shot down 12 miles south of the DMZ. He later received the Silver Star and lesser medals. They don't seem enough. For "Bat-21" reveals a military man amidst 12 days of continuous valor, above and beyond other moments of bloody bravery. And it is certainly worth noting that Hambleton, quite out of his element as an airman ducking on the ground, was 53 years old—too ancient for such combat. A navigator aboard an EB-66 radar plane, Hambleton's body was peppered by flak and jolted by ejection after a surface-to-air missile exploded his aircraft. He parachuted, not behind North Vietnamese lines, but into the middle of a major advance. Despite injuries, Hambleton buried himself in a shallow grave while American aircraft ringed his position with gravel, lemon-sized mines to block North Vietnamese searchers. They wanted him. We wanted him. Hambleton's head was stuffed with electronic surveillance secrets. In the literal tug-of-war that followed, with helicopter rescue made impossible by enemy gunfire, Hambleton used his survival radio to call in air strikes against gun emplacements and troop movements in his area. His diet was rainwater and raw corn. He fought pain, infection and eventual dysentery. He survived earth tremors when, for the first time in the history of air search and rescue, a B-52 strike was used to sterilize hostile ground around his hideaway. His movements constantly quarterbacked by a forward air controller orbiting a light plane overhead, Hambleton was eventually ordered to crawl to freedom at night. North Vietnamese were known to be monitoring rescue frequencies, So a code was devised; he was given distances and directions toward freedom that overlaid golf courses he had played. Hazards for Hambleton's deadly 18 holes were a polluted river, leeches, snakes, exhaustion, starvation, dehydration, illness, hallucination and an encounter with a North Vietnamese soldier Hambleton killed in a knife fight. It is a tense, ascending narrative, written capably by Anderson so long after the event. He catches the jargon and humor of airmen. He has no difficulty pegging the depression and euphoria of a man in the middle, the unexpected stamina born of stubbornness and, through it all, the frustration of a 53-year-old man forcing himself to generate the vitality of a 24-year-old."

    Caputo landed at Danang with the first ground combat unit deployed to Vietnam. Sixteen months later, having served on the line in one of modern history’s ugliest wars, he returned home—physically whole but emotionally wasted, his youthful idealism forever gone.A Rumor of War is far more than one soldier’s story. Upon its publication in 1977, it shattered America’s indifference to the fate of the men sent to fight in the jungles of Vietnam. In the years since then, it has become not only a basic text on the Vietnam War but also a renowned classic in the literature of wars throughout history and, as the author writes, of "the things men do in war and the things war does to them.""Heartbreaking, terrifying, and enraging. It belongs to the literature of men at war."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

    When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is the haunting memoir of a girl on the verge of womanhood in a world turned upside down.The youngest of six children in a close-knit Buddhist family, Le Ly Hayslip was twelve years old when U.S. helicopters landed in Ky La, her tiny village in central Vietnam. As the government and Viet Cong troops fought in and around Ky La, both sides recruited children as spies and saboteurs. Le Ly was one of those children. Before the age of sixteen, Le Ly had suffered near-starvation, imprisonment, torture, rape, and the deaths of beloved family members—but miraculously held fast to her faith in humanity. And almost twenty years after her escape to America, she was drawn inexorably back to the devastated country and family she left behind. Scenes of this joyous reunion are interwoven with the brutal war years, offering a poignant picture of Vietnam, then and now, and of a courageous woman who experienced the true horror of the Vietnam War—and survived to tell her unforgettable story.

    . . an important part of the still unhealed wounds of war. Christal has given as much of her heart to this story as her father gave to his country."—Nikki Giovanni, world-renowned poet, writer, activist, and educator "Thirty Days with My Father is an important addition to the literature of trauma psychology, shining a beacon of hope for transformation and healing."  —From the Foreword by Edward Tick, PhD, author, War and the Soul and founding co-director, Soldier's Heart "To me, post-traumatic stress disorder was just a bunch of words. All I knew was that it had something to do with my father's brain, and he seemed to be going crazy. And I knew it was bad because my mom told me that if anyone found out how sick he was, they'd come and take him away forever, and they'd take me away too, and she couldn't live like that. If he had to be that sick, I wanted him to have something everybody could understand. So I picked brain cancer."—From Thirty Days with My Father When Christal Presley's father was eighteen, he was drafted to Vietnam. Like many men of that era who returned home with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), he was never the same. Christal's father spent much of her childhood locked in his room, gravitating between the deepest depression and unspeakable rage, unable to participate in holidays or birthdays. At a very young age, Christal learned to walk on eggshells, doing anything and everything not to provoke him, but this dance caused her to become a profoundly disturbed little girl. She acted out at school, engaged in self-mutilation, and couldn't make friends. At the age of eighteen, Christal left home and didn't look back. She barely spoke to her father for the next thirteen years.To any outsider, Christal appeared to be doing well: she earned a BA and a master's, got married, and traveled to India. But despite all these accomplishments, Christal still hadn't faced her biggest challenge—her relationship with her father. In 2009, something changed. Christal decided it was time to begin the healing process, and she extended an olive branch. She came up with what she called "The Thirty Day Project," a month's worth of conversations during which she would finally ask her father difficult questions about Vietnam. Thirty Days with My Father is a gritty yet heartwarming story of those thirty days of a daughter and father reconnecting in a way that will inspire us all to seek the truth, even from life's most difficult relationships. This beautifully realized memoir shares how one woman and her father discovered profound lessons about their own strength and will to survive, shedding an inspiring light on generational PTSD.

    In three tours of duty, he made combat jumps, spent months of fruitless effort looking for the enemy, watched as his budies died because of lousy leadership and lousy weapons. He saw the war as few others did, and lives to tell about the valor and sacrifice that outlived the dead.

    Army’s 240th Assault Helicopter Company and Green Beret staff sergeant Roy Benavidez, who risked everything to rescue a Special Forces team trapped behind enemy linesIn Legend, acclaimed bestselling author Eric Blehm takes as his canvas the Vietnam War, as seen through a single mission that occurred on May 2, 1968. A twelve-man Special Forces team had been covertly inserted into a small clearing in the jungles of neutral Cambodia—where U.S. forces were forbidden to operate. Their objective, just miles over the Vietnam border, was to collect evidence that proved the North Vietnamese Army was using the Cambodian sanctuary as a major conduit for supplying troops and materiel to the south via the Ho Chi Minh Trail. What the team didn’t know was that they had infiltrated a section of jungle that concealed a major enemy base. Soon they found them¬selves surrounded by hundreds of NVA troops, under attack, low on ammunition, and stacking the bodies of the dead as cover in a desperate attempt to survive the onslaught.When Special Forces staff sergeant Roy Benavidez heard the distress call, he jumped aboard the next helicopter bound for the combat zone without hesitation. Orphaned at the age of seven, Benavidez had picked cotton alongside his family as a child and dropped out of school as a teen before joining the Army. Although he was grievously wounded during his first tour of duty in Vietnam and told he would never walk again, Benavidez fought his way back—ultimately earning his green beret.What followed would become legend in the Special Operations community. Flown into the foray of battle by the courageous pilots and crew of the 240th Assault Helicopter Company, Benavidez jumped from the hovering aircraft and ran nearly 100 yards through withering enemy fire. Despite being immediately and severely wounded, Benavidez reached the perimeter of the decimated team, provided medical care, and proceed¬ed to organize an extraordinary defense and rescue. During the hours-long battle, he was bayoneted, shot, and hit by grenade shrapnel more than thirty times, yet he refused to abandon his efforts until every survivor was out of harm’s way.

    Severely wounded, 1st Lt. Jacobs took command and withdrew the unit, returning again and again to the site of the attack to rescue more men, saving the lives of a U.S. advisor and thirteen Allied soldiers. Col. Jacobs received the nation’s highest military award, the Medal of Honor. Here, with candor, humor, and quiet modesty, Col. Jack Jacobs tells his stirring story of heroism, honor, and the personal code by which he has lived his life, and expounds with blunt honesty and insight his views on our contemporary world, and the nature and necessity of sacrifice. If Not Now, When? is a compelling account of a unique life at both war and peace, and the all-too-often unexamined role of the citizenry in the service and defense of the Republic.

    With well-crafted prose that puts you into the Phantom's cockpit, Cobleigh vividly recounts the unexplainable loss of his wingman, the useless missions he flew, the need to trust his reflexes, eyesight, and aggressiveness, and his survival instincts in the heat of combat. He discusses the deaths of his squadron mates and the contradictions of a dirty, semi-secret war fought from beautiful, exotic Thailand. This is an unprecedented look into the state of mind of a pilot as he experiences everything from the carnage of a crash to the joy of flying through a star-studded night sky, from the illogical political agendas of Washington to his own dangerous addiction to risk. Cobleigh gives a stirring and emotional description of one man's journey into airborne hell and back, recounting the pleasures and the pain. the wins and the losses. and ultimately, the return.

    

    His childhood, marred by the loss of his father and brother, produce a young man hell bent on being the best of the best - an ambition he achieves by being selected to join the elite SAS. He survives the gut-wrenching training regime, deployment to the jungles of Asia and the horrors of genocide in Rwanda before leaving the army to embark on a career as a security adviser. His new life sees him pursuing criminals and gun-toting bandits in Papua New Guinea and the Solomons, protecting CNN newsmen as the US 7th Cavalry storms into Baghdad with the outbreak of the Iraq War, and facing death on a massive scale as he accompanies reporters into the devastated Indonesian town of Banda Aceh, flattened by the Boxing Day tsunami. During his 24 days in an Indian gaol, Paul Jordan discovers that friendship and human dignity somehow survive the filth and deprivation. This is a personal account of a tough, hardened fighter who suddenly finds himself totally dependent on others for his every need. The Easy Day was Yesterday is fast paced, brutally honest and raw, but laced with dark humour. The core of Paul Jordan's eventful life, however, is the strength of his bonds with family and friends and the ability of the human spirit to survive even the direst adversity.

    His first fighter was the famed Spitfire, hero of the Battle of Britain. By 1943, however, it was obsolescent and did not match up well against the first-line German Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs. Yet Loving survived 101 combat missions flying the Spitfire. In the spring of 1944, Loving’s 31st Fighter Group started flying P-51 Mustangs and was transferred to the new Fifteenth Air Force to escort heavy-bomber formations on long-range strategic strikes across southern Europe, including southeastern Germany. In the flak-filled skies over Ploesti, Vienna, Bucharest, Munich, and Stuttgart, where a number of the war’s fiercest air battles took place, Lieutenant Loving flew head-to-head against some of the Luftwaffe’s top fighter aces.By the time George Loving completed his 151st, and final, combat mission on August 21, 1944, he had risen from a lowly second lieutenant and untested wingman to captain, group leader, and Mustang ace. Loving’s gripping account captures the savage action he experienced in all its intensity.

    This is the wartime memories of a Marine Corpsman who served in Company B, of the 6th Battalion of the 4th Regiment. He saw 100 days of continuous combat during the Battle of Okinawa, including the Battle for Sugar Loaf, and was part of the landing force that was headed to Japan when the atomic bomb dropped. These were recorded after 60 years of reflection, and are presented to honor all veterans.

    

    He found their defenses woefully unprepared. At dawn the next morning, three North Vietnamese Army regiments—some 6,000 men—crossed the Cambodian border and attacked. Outnumbered three dozen to one, Albracht’s men held off repeated ground assaults by communist forces with fierce hand-to-hand fighting, air support and a dangerously close B-52 strike. For days, the NVA blanketed Kate in a rain of rockets, mortars, artillery, machineguns, and small arms, blocking efforts to resupply, reinforce, or evacuate the outpost. Albracht continually exposed himself to enemy fire to direct air strikes, to guide re-supply helicopters, to distribute ammunition and water to his men, to retrieve the dead and to rescue the wounded, often shielding men with his own body. Wounded by rocket shrapnel, he refused medical attention or evacuation. Exhausted from days without sleep, he continued to rally his men to beat off each new enemy attack. After five days, Kate’s defenders were out of ammo and water. Aerial resupply was suicidal, and reinforcements were denied by military commanders who had written off Kate. Albracht refused to surrender or die in place. Refusing to allow his men to surrender, Albracht led his troops, including many wounded, off the hill and on a daring night march through enemy lines. Abandoned in Hell is an astonishing memoir of leadership, sacrifice, and brutal violence, a riveting journey into Vietnam’s heart of darkness, and a compelling reminder of the transformational power of individual heroism. Not since Lone Survivor and We Were Soldiers Once, And Young has there been such a gripping and authentic account of battlefield courage.INCLUDES PHOTOS

    As a result, snipers are regarded as the elite of their units and their skills command the ungrudging respect of their fellows - and the enemy. The Author is one such man who recently served a full tour of duty with 1st Battalion the Royal Anglian Regiment in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. James describes the highs and lows of almost daily front line action experienced by our soldiers deployed on active service in arguably the most dangerous area of the world. As part of the Battle Groups crack Mobile Operations Group, Jamess mission was to liquidate as many Taliban as possible. The reader experiences sniper tactics and actions, whether in ambush or quick pre-planned strikes, amid the ever present lethal danger of IEDs. His book, the first to be written by a trained sniper in Afghanistan, reveals the psychological pressures and awesome life-and-death responsibility of his role and, in particular, the deadly cat-and-mouse games with the enemy snipers intent on their own kills. These involved the clinical killing of targets at ranges of 1,000 meters or greater. Sniper in Helmand is a thrilling action-packed, yet very human, account of both front line service in the intense Afghanistan war and first-hand sniper action. Andy McNab inspired James to join the army and has written a moving foreword.