Flyboys, a story of war and horror but also of friendship and honor, tells the story of those men. Over the remote Pacific island of Chichi Jima, nine American flyers-Navy and Marine pilots sent to bomb Japanese communications towers there-were shot down. One of those nine was miraculously rescued by a U.S. Navy submarine. The others were captured by Japanese soldiers on Chichi Jima and held prisoner. Then they disappeared. When the war was over, the American government, along with the Japanese, covered up everything that had happened on Chichi Jima. The records of a top-secret military tribunal were sealed, the lives of the eight Flyboys were erased, and the parents, brothers, sisters, and sweethearts they left behind were left to wonder. Flyboys reveals for the first time ever the extraordinary story of those men. Bradley's quest for the truth took him from dusty attics in American small towns, to untapped government archives containing classified documents, to the heart of Japan, and finally to Chichi Jima itself. What he discovered was a mystery that dated back far before World War II-back 150 years, to America's westward expansion and Japan's first confrontation with the western world. Bradley brings into vivid focus these brave young men who went to war for their country, and through their lives he also tells the larger story of two nations in a hellish war. With no easy moralizing, Bradley presents history in all its savage complexity, including the Japanese warrior mentality that fostered inhuman brutality and the U.S. military strategy that justified attacks on millions of civilians. And, after almost sixty years of mystery, Bradley finally reveals the fate of the eight American Flyboys, all of whom would ultimately face a moment and a decision that few of us can even imagine. Flyboys is a story of war and horror but also of friendship and honor. It is about how we die, and how we live-including the tale of the Flyboy who escaped capture, a young Navy pilot named George H. W. Bush who would one day become president of the United States. A masterpiece of historical narrative, Flyboys will change forever our understanding of the Pacific war and the very things we fight for.

    Includes a new fourteenth story which appears here for the very first time.Len Deighton's only collection of shorter fiction, this dazzling array of stories spans twenty-three centuries of warfare.From Hannibal's march on Rome - when strange, moving objects terrorise the troops of one of the toughest and most skilful armies in history - to the efforts of a belittled Civil War general to get his men to face the Confederate army; to the dawn skies above an artillery-blasted French battle-line where a dogfight unfolds, to Vietnam; where two lost American soldiers stumble across an abandoned military airfield. A bonus story, new to this edition, reveals a very different kind of war, played out in the present-day Mexican borderlands.Each story in Declarations of War explores the effects of war upon man's character, how it pushes him to act in a dehumanized, machine-like way, often leading to extraordinary deeds, both good and ill. It portrays human conflict through a series of devastating experiences and shows how great deeds are often but the smallest thread in the large fabric of war.

    Only the British Force stands between the enemy and the coast. Can one British tank which is coming up behind the German lines destroy a whole German tank division?