For eighteen months, John L. Rotundo and Don Ericson braved the test of war at its most bloody and most raw, specializing in ambushing the enemy and fighting jungle guerillas using their own tactics. From the undiluted high of a "contact" with the enemy to the anguished mourning of a fallen comrade, they experienced nearly every emotion known to man--most of all, the power and the pride of being the finest on America's front lines.From the Paperback edition.

    Although his generals were doubtful of success, younger officers and NCOs were desperate to believe that their homes and families could be saved from the vengeful Red Army approaching from the east. Many were exultant at the prospect of striking back. The allies, taken by surprise, found themselves fighting two panzer armies. Belgian civilians abandoned their homes, justifiably afraid of German revenge. Panic spread even to Paris. While some American soldiers, overwhelmed by the German onslaught, fled or surrendered, others held on heroically, creating breakwaters which slowed the German advance.   The harsh winter conditions and the savagery of the battle became comparable to the Eastern Front. In fact the Ardennes became the Western Front’s counterpart to Stalingrad. There was terrible ferocity on both sides, driven by desperation and revenge, in which the normal rules of combat were breached. The Ardennes—involving more than a million men—would prove to be the battle which finally broke the back of the Wehrmacht.   In this deeply researched work, with striking insights into the major players on both sides, Antony Beevor gives us the definitive account of the Ardennes offensive which was to become the greatest battle of World War II.

    Then they met the German Panther, with a gun so murderous it could shoot through one Sherman and into the next. Soon a pattern emerged: The lead tank always gets hit.After Clarence sees his friends cut down breaching the West Wall and holding the line in the Battle of the Bulge, he and his crew are given a weapon with the power to avenge their fallen brothers: the Pershing, a state-of-the-art “super tank,” one of twenty in the European theater.But with it comes a harrowing new responsibility: Now they will spearhead every attack. That’s how Clarence, the corporal from coal country, finds himself leading the U.S. Army into its largest urban battle of the European war, the fight for Cologne, the “Fortress City” of Germany.Battling through the ruins, Clarence will engage the fearsome Panther in a duel immortalized by an army cameraman. And he will square off with Gustav Schaefer, a teenager behind the trigger in a Panzer IV tank, whose crew has been sent on a suicide mission to stop the Americans.As Clarence and Gustav trade fire down a long boulevard, they are taken by surprise by a tragic mistake of war. What happens next will haunt Clarence to the modern day, drawing him back to Cologne to do the unthinkable: to face his enemy, one last time.

    November '98 publication date.

    and Soviet submarines during the Cold War, Crash Dive will take you inside the silent but deadly world of the military submarine.

    For nearly half a century, from the end of World War II to the early 1990s, all world events hung in the balance of a simmering dispute between two of the greatest military powers in history. Hundreds of millions of people held their collective breath as the United States and the Soviet Union, two national ideological entities, waged proxy wars to determine spheres of influence–and millions of others perished in places like Korea, Vietnam, and Angola, where this cold war flared hot. Such a consideration of the Cold War–as a military event with sociopolitical and economic overtones–is the crux of this stellar collection of twenty-six essays compiled and edited by Robert Cowley, the longtime editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. Befitting such a complex and far-ranging period, the volume’s contributing writers cover myriad angles. John Prados, in “The War Scare of 1983,” shows just how close we were to escalating a war of words into a nuclear holocaust. Victor Davis Hanson offers “The Right Man,” his pungent reassessment of the bellicose air-power zealot Curtis LeMay as a man whose words were judged more critically than his actions. The secret war also gets its due in George Feiffer’s “The Berlin Tunnel,” which details the charismatic C.I.A. operative “Big Bill” Harvey’s effort to tunnel under East Berlin and tap Soviet phone lines–and the Soviets’ equally audacious reaction to the plan; while “The Truth About Overflights,” by R. Cargill Hall, sheds light on some of the Cold War’s best-kept secrets. The often overlooked human cost of fighting the Cold War finds a clear voice in “MIA” by Marilyn Elkins, the widow of a Navy airman, who details the struggle to learn the truth about her husband, Lt. Frank C. Elkins, whose A-4 Skyhawk disappeared over Vietnam in 1966. In addition there are profiles of the war’s “front lines”–Dien Bien Phu, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs–as well as of prominent military and civil leaders from both sides, including Harry S. Truman, Nikita Khrushchev, Dean Acheson, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Richard M. Nixon, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, and others.Encompassing so many perspectives and events, The Cold War succeeds at an impossible task: illuminating and explaining the history of an undeclared shadow war that threatened the very existence of humankind.From the Hardcover edition.

    However, few can match Hans Sturm in his astonishing rise from a mere private in an infantry regiment, thrown into the bloody maelstrom of the Eastern Front, to a highly decorated war hero. A young man who had displayed fearless heroism in combat, earning him some of Germany's highest military awards, Sturm hated bullies and injustice, and reacted in his normal pugnacious and outspoken manner when confronted with wrongdoing. From striking a member of the feared Sicherheitsdienst for his treatment of a Jewish woman, to refusing to wear a decoration he felt was tainted because of the treatment of enemy partisans, Sturm repeatedly stuck to his moral values no matter what the risk. Even with the war finally over, Sturm's travails would not end for another eight years as he languished in a number of Soviet labour camps until he was finally released in 1953. ** This electronic edition includes 60 black-and-white photographs **

    It was the most spectacular battle of the entire war. For 6,000 trapped marines, it was a nightmare; for President Lyndon Johnson, an obsession. For General Westmoreland, it was to be the final vindication of technological weaponry; and for General Giap, the architect of the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, it was a spectacular ruse masking troops moving south for the Tet offensive. In a compelling narrative, Robert Pisor sets forth the history, the politics, the strategies, and, above all, the desperate reality of the battle that became the turning point of the United States's involvement in Vietnam.

    As an officer in the 1st Cavalry Division during 1967/8, he saw combat in some of the fiercest encounters of the war. His gallantry earned him a chestful of medals, including the Silver Star, one of the highest decorations awarded by the American Army.During the Tet Offensive, Tom was captured by the Vietcong. The suffering he endured during his interrogation and torture tested him to the limits, and yet his daring escape into the surrounding jungle was the beginning of a new ordeal. His struggle to survive, naked and alone, would drag him down to the level of a primitive beast.After he returned to England from Vietnam, Tom made a new life. He married, became a father, and started a successful career in business. It seemed that he had forgotten the nightmare of the past. But more than thirty years later, a trivial encounter with the police began a catastrophic chain of events. He lost everything - his family, his home, his self-respect. It became all too obvious that the psychological and emotional wounds he received in Vietnam were still festering.In trying to rebuild his life, Tom had once more to confront those traumatic memories that he had buried so deep. If he were to have any chance of a future, he would have to relive the past. His terrifying yet inspiring journey is the story of this book.

    In gripping narrative accounts they bring these conflicts and eras to vivid life, detailing the cultural imperatives that led inexorably to the battlefield, the experiences of the common soldiers who fought and died, and the legendary commanders and statesmen who matched wits, will, and nerve for the highest possible stakes.   From the great clashes of antiquity to the high-tech wars of the twenty-first century, here are the stories of the twenty most consequential battles ever fought, including   • Marathon, where Greece’s “greatest generation” repelled Persian forces three times their numbers—and saved Western civilization in its infancy • Adrianople, the death blow to a disintegrating Roman Empire • Trafalgar, the epic naval victory that cemented a century of British supremacy over the globe • Saratoga, the first truly American victory, won by united colonial militias, which ensured the ultimate triumph of the Revolution • Midway, the ferocious World War II sea battle that broke the back of the Japanese navy • Dien Bien Phu, the climactic confrontation between French imperial troops and Viet Minh rebels that led to American intervention in Vietnam and marked the rise of a new era of insurgent warfare • Operation Peach, the perilous 2003 mission to secure a vital bridge over the Euphrates River that would open the way to Baghdad   Historians and armchair generals will argue forever about which battles have had the most direct impact on history. But there can be no doubt that these twenty are among those that set mankind on new trajectories. Each of these epochal campaigns is examined in its full historical, strategic, and tactical context—complete with edge-of-your-seat you-are-there battle re-creations. With an eye for the small detail as well as the bigger picture, Lacey and Murray identify the elements that bind these battles together: the key decisions, critical mistakes, and moments of crisis on which the fates of entire civilizations depended.   Some battles merely leave a field littered with the bodies of the fallen. Others transform the map of the entire world. Moment of Battle is history written with the immediacy of today’s news, a magisterial tour d’horizon that refreshes our understanding of those essential turning points where the future was decided.A MAIN SELECTION OF THE HISTORY BOOK CLUB AND THE MILITARY BOOK CLUB  “Two world-class historians present, eloquently and persuasively, twenty battles that fundamentally changed the course of history. Moment of Battle is a must acquisition for anyone seeking to understand the nature of human development—and its turning points.”—Dennis E. Showalter, professor of history, Colorado College, author of Armor and Blood  “In a single volume, James Lacey and Williamson Murray have distilled a lifetime of learning and insight into the most influential battles in world history. This is a readable and compelling primer and a feast for the student of military history.”—James D. Hornfischer, author of Neptune’s Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal

    troops slipped behind enemy lines in the Philippines. Their mission: March thirty rugged miles to rescue 513 POWs languishing in a hellish camp, among them the last survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March. A recent prison massacre by Japanese soldiers elsewhere in the Philippines made the stakes impossibly high and left little time to plan the complex operation.In Ghost Soldiers Hampton Sides vividly re-creates this daring raid, offering a minute-by-minute narration that unfolds alongside intimate portraits of the prisoners and their lives in the camp. Sides shows how the POWs banded together to survive, defying the Japanese authorities even as they endured starvation, tropical diseases, and torture. Harrowing, poignant, and inspiring, Ghost Soldiers is the mesmerizing story of a remarkable mission. It is also a testament to the human spirit, an account of enormous bravery and self-sacrifice amid the most trying conditions.

    The Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific War pulls from many of Osprey's bestselling books on the subject in addition to the most recent research on the subject, including many sources from Japan, and is the most recent and accurate book on this fascinating force.Even after its setback at midway, the IJN remained a powerful force and inflicted sever setbacks on the US Navy at Guadalcanal and elsewhere. The Imperial Japanese Navy focuses on the Japanese ships which fought the battles in the Pacific including design details, where and when they were engaged and their ultimate effectiveness. In addition, the construction, design and service history of each ship from destroyer size on up is included. A comprehensive survey of the submarine force is also included. Modifications of each ship are covered making this a valuable reference source for Pacific War enthusiasts and historians, as well as ship modelers.A short history of the IJN during the Pacific War places all warship design and history in proper context. Finally, a chapter discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the IJN is included ultimately asking the question of whether the IJN really was a modern Navy which was fully prepared for the rigors of combat in the Pacific.

    military decoration, from the Civil War through the Vietnam War, and examines what drove them to go so far above and beyond the call of duty. Among the stories is an account of the life of the only woman ever to receive the medal; of an officer who staged a daring escape from a German POW camp in WWI; and of a soldier from the legendary WWII Japanese-American 442nd, who went on to earn the medal in the Korean War. The book tells not only of astonishing military actions but also, significantly, of the recipients' lives before and after their wartime experiences.In his moving commentary, acclaimed 60 Minutes reporter Mike Wallace places these actions in historical context and relates his own personal experiences in WWII and as a journalist covering recent wars. He also meditates on the meaning of courage and shows what we can all learn from these extraordinary individuals."The President may award, and present in the name of Congress, a medal of honor of appropriate design, with ribbons and appurtenances, to a person who, while a member of the Army, Navy, or Air Force distinguished himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty." --The United States Congress

    World War II is nearly over in Europe but is escalating in the Pacific, where American soldiers face an opponent who will go to any length to avoid defeat. The Japanese army follows the samurai code of Bushido, stipulating that surrender is a form of dishonor. Killing the Rising Sun takes readers to the bloody tropical-island battlefields of Peleliu and Iwo Jima and to the embattled Philippines, where General Douglas MacArthur has made a triumphant return and is plotting a full-scale invasion of Japan.Across the globe in Los Alamos, New Mexico, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists are preparing to test the deadliest weapon known to mankind. In Washington, DC, FDR dies in office and Harry Truman ascends to the presidency, only to face the most important political decision in history: whether to use that weapon. And in Tokyo, Emperor Hirohito, who is considered a deity by his subjects, refuses to surrender, despite a massive and mounting death toll. Told in the same page-turning style of Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, Killing Patton, and Killing Reagan, this epic saga details the final moments of World War II like never before.

    One of the biggest secrets of the war, the capture of that one machine turned the tide of the war in British favour. The German U-boat attacks were crippling the nation’s ability to survive, and the key to breaking that threat was in deciphering the German’s naval Enigma code. Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley Park worked tirelessly to crack the code, and with the working Enigma machine they finally had their break-through moment. This book sets the story, and the Enigma cryptographers, in context – at the heart of the Battle of the Atlantic, when it reached its crescendo in the pursuit of the battleship Bismarck the week after U110 was taken. It sets Bletchley Park in its wider context too, at the heart of an intricate and maverick network of naval intelligence, tracking signals and plotting them to divert convoys around waiting U-boats, involving officers like James Bond’s future creator, Ian Fleming. It also sets out the most important context of all, forgotten in so much of the Enigma history: that Britain’s own naval code had already been cracked, and its signals were being read, thanks to the efforts of Turing’s opposite number, the German naval cryptographer, Wilhelm Tranow.An exciting and enthralling true story ‘Operation Primrose’ is an excellently researched piece on the race for naval supremacy in the Second World War. David Boyle's work has been widely praised. ‘The tone of the book may be gloomy but there is plenty of entertainment value …’ Anne Ashworth, The Times ‘Exhilarating’ Daily Mail ‘He tells these stories, on the whole persuasively and with some startling asides.’ New Statesman ‘A book that is engagingly sensitive to the sentiments of what is sometimes called “middle England”’ Dominic Lawson, Sunday Times David Boyle is a British author and journalist who writes mainly about history and new ideas in economics, money, business and culture. He lives in Crystal Palace, London. His books include ‘Alan Turing: Unlocking the Enigma’, ‘Rupert Brooke: England’s Last Patriot’, ‘Peace on Earth: The Christmas Truce of 1914’, ‘Jerusalem: England’s National Anthem’, ‘Unheard Unseen: Warfare in the Dardanelles’, ‘Towards the Setting Sun: The Race for America’ and ‘The Age to Come’. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher. We are always interested in hearing from our readers. Endeavour Press believes that the future is now.