A member of Easy Company of Band of Brothers fame, Shames saw combat in some of the most ferocious battles of World War II. From jumping behind the lines of Normandy on D-Day with the 101st Airborne Division, to the near victory of Operation Market Garden, to the legendary stand at Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, Shames fought his way across Europe and into Germany itself.In Airborne Shames and writer Ian Gardner (Tonight We Die As Men) tell the gripping true story of what it was like to be at the spear point of World War II in Europe. Neither the book nor TV series of Band of Brothers ever showed the real Ed Shames. Although he started as a private, combat soon forged Shames into a tough and inspired leader who would win a battlefield commission in Normandy. Seeming always to be where the fighting was, his two goals were to prevail in each fight against the Germans, and to keep his men alive. “Shames, you are the meanest, roughest son of a bitch I've ever had to deal with. But you brought us home,” was what he considered to be the highest compliment he received from one of his men.Even though he was wounded in the Ardennes, Ed Shames never stopped fighting until Germany surrendered and the war was won. He has never stopped being a warrior.

     The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 had dealt a catastrophic blow to the United States Navy, but it had not knocked out all of the U.S. carriers. That was an omission that Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Japan’s fleet commander, intended to rectify by invading a site close to Pearl Harbor. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor had worked out well for the Japanese—why not try another one on Midway Island? The plan was to destroy the Americans when they launched a counterattack. Japan, then, would rule the Pacific and continue the expansion of its empire. What Yamamoto didn’t know was that Japanese fleet codes had been broken and Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Chester Nimitz, privy to what the Japanese planned to do, was able to place the American carriers where they would catch the Japanese off guard as they prepared to launch air strikes on Midway Island. Inside you will read about... ✓ Not Ready for War ✓ The Crucial Codebreaker ✓ Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief ✓ Preparing for Battle ✓ The Battle that Changed the Tide of War ✓ The Legacy of the Battle of Midway And much more! After the Battle of Midway, the Japanese were forced into the position of trying to defend the territory that they had previously taken; their dreams of expanding their acquisitions and becoming the dominant power in the Pacific were gone. The tide of war in the Pacific had shifted.

    Over a thousand of these soldiers were Australian. By the end of the war, just one-third of them had survived and Ambon became a place of nightmares, one of the most notorious of all POW camps the war had seen.Many of the men captured were massacred, and of those who initially survived, many later succumbed to the sadistic brutality of the Japanese guards. Starvation also took a fearful toll, and then there were the medical 'experiments'. It was a place almost without hope for those who held on, made worse by the fact that the savagery inflicted on them wasn't limited to their captors but also came from their own. One soldier described their hopelessness towards the end with the bleak words: 'The men knew they were dying.'Yet astoundingly there were survivors and in Ambon they speak of not just the horrors, but the bravery, endurance and mateship that got them through an ordeal almost impossible to imagine.The story of Ambon is one of both the depravity and the triumph of the human spirit; it is also one that's not been widely told. Until now.

    The chafing restrictions of a typical upbringing in upper-class, small town Alabama simply did not apply to Zelda, who was described as an unusual child and permitted to roam the streets with little supervision. Zelda refused to blossom into a typical 'Southern belle' on anyone's terms but her own and while still in high school enjoyed the status of a local celebrity for her shocking behavior. Everybody in town knew the name Zelda Sayre. Queen of the Montgomery social scene, Zelda had a different beau ready and willing to show her a good time for every day of the week. Before meeting F. Scott Fitzgerald, Zelda's life was a constant pursuit of pleasure. With little thought for the future and no responsibilities to speak of, Zelda committed herself fully to the mantra that accompanied her photo in her high school graduation book: "Why should all life be work, when we all can borrow. Let's think only of today, and not worry about tomorrow." But for now Zelda was still in rehearsal for her real life to begin, a life she was sure would be absolutely extraordinary. Zelda Sayre married F. Scott Fitzgerald on the 3rd of April 1920 and left sleepy Montgomery behind in order to dive headfirst into the shimmering, glamourous life of a New York socialite. With the publication of Scott's first novel, This Side of Paradise, Zelda found herself thrust into the limelight as the very epitome of the Flapper lifestyle. Concerned chiefly with fashion, wild parties and flouting social expectations, Zelda and Scott became icons of the Jazz Age, the personification of beauty and success. What Zelda and Scott shared was a romantic sense of self-importance that assured them that their life of carefree leisure and excess was the only life really worth living. Deeply in love, the Fitzgeralds were like to sides of the same coin, each reflecting the very best and worst of each other. While the world fell in love with the image of the Fitzgeralds they saw on the cover of magazines, behind the scenes the Fitzgerald's marriage could not withstand the tension of their creative arrangement. Zelda was Scott's muse and he mercilessly mined the events of their life for material for his books. Scott claimed Zelda's memories, things she said, experiences she had and even passages from her diary as his possessions and used them to form the basis of his fictional works. Zelda had a child but the domestic sphere offered no comfort or purpose for her. The Flapper lifestyle was not simply a phase she lived through, it formed the very basis of her character and once the parties grew dull, the Fitzgeralds' drinking became destructive and Zelda's beauty began to fade, the world held little allure for her. Zelda sought reprieve in work and tried to build a career as a ballet dancer. When that didn't work out she turned to writing but was forbidden by Scott from using her own life as material. Convinced that she would never leave her mark on the world as deeply or expressively as Scott had, Zelda retreated into herself and withdrew from the people she knew in happier times. The later years of Zelda's life were marred by her detachment from reality as, diagnosed with schizophrenia, Zelda spent the last eighteen years of her life living in and out of psychiatric hospitals. As Scott's life unraveled due to alcohol abuse, Zelda looked back on the years they had spent together, young and wild and beautiful, as the best of her life. She may have been right but she was wrong about one thing, Zelda did leave her mark on the world and it was a deep and expressive mark that no one could have left but her. Zelda Fitzgerald: The Biography

    So valuable were the mission's findings about the North Korean-Soviet-Chinese alliance that it is no stretch to say they prevented World War III. Only one man — sworn to secrecy for a half-century—survived Operation Broken Reed. Arthur Boyd recalls his role as cryptographer on a team of Army Rangers, Navy Frogmen, Air Force officers, and CIA operatives that posed as the captured crew of a B-29 bomber in January 1952. Given cover names and cyanide capsules in case of discovery, the men were transported by Chinese Nationalists wearing Communist uniforms across North Korea, where undercover allies delivered information about troop strengths, weaponry, and intention. Fraught with danger, the mission came apart on its last day when the Americans came under fire from Chinese forces wise to the operation. The members of Broken Reed supplied Truman with proof of massive Chinese and Soviet buildups and a heavy Soviet bomber group in Manchuria, fully loaded with atomic weapons. With the potential destruction of the world outlined in front of him, Truman chose not to escalate the Korean War, saving millions of lives.

    It was not until 1942 that widely dispersed underground organizations would band together to form a united opposition to the occupying Germans. It was not until then that resistance would become the Resistance - a disciplined multi-national movement that would play a significant part in the outcome of World War II. In each occupied nation, resistance groups would grow, gathering and sending information to London, planning increasingly complex sabotage operations, and assisting thousands of people, particularly Jews, in fleeing Nazi-occupied territories. Their actions would eventually become a focused counteroffensive against the German army in 1944, when Allied troops gathered in Great Britain to prepare for the invasion of France. As their widespread activity weakened German outposts in France and other occupied countries, the Allies would gain the foothold they needed to win the war. This is their story.

    In 1985 Hans von Ohain, the scientist who pioneered Nazi Germany's efforts to build a jet plane, posed the question: 'Would World War II have occured if the Luftwaffe knew it faced operational British jets instead of Spitfires?' He immediately answered, 'I, for one, think not.'Frank Whittle, working-class outsider and self-taught enthusiast, had worked out the blueprint of a completely new type of engine in 1929, only for his ideas to be blocked by bureaucratic opposition until the outbreak of war in 1939. The importance of his work was recognized too late by the government for his revolutionary engine to play a major part in World War II. After the war Whittle's dream of civilian jet-powered aircraft became a reality and Britain enjoyed a golden age of 1950's jet-powered flight.Drawing on Whittle's extensive private papers, Campbell-Smith tells the story of a stoic and overlooked British hero, a tantalizing tale of 'what might have been'.

    

    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.

    

    The memoir tells his story starting from the ambivalence he had about being drafted through the firefights and wounds he experienced in Vietnam to the estrangement he felt as he walked out of Walter Reed hospital into a civilian world not very interested in a faraway war. It also tells a tale of the commonplace courage of the twenty-year-old infantrymen of Charley Company, 5th of the 12th, 199th Light Infantry Brigade, and of the cowardice and character flaws of a Lieutenant more interested in his own glory and advancement than the well-being of his platoon. The good, the bad, and the ugly of a country and an army fighting a distant war for unclear purposes are all on display in this account focused on nine months of war in 1969.

    It follows Eddy Nugent, a bored fifteen-year-old, living in Manchester, as he travels through the drinking, swearing and sex-obsessed world of our nation's finest.

    

    Meet the World War II bomb aimer whose plane engines failed over Hamburg during a raid, the naval signalman who patrolled heavily bombarded waters in Southeast Asia during the Korean War, and the unarmed peacekeeper who found himself standing on a road riddled with mines in Rwanda. From the young recruit who marched over thirty kilometres on what turned out to be a broken leg to prove her mettle, to the three brothers in arms who endured a summer of relentless fighting in Afghanistan, this collection captures the pain and sacrifice, the risks and rewards of standing on guard for Canada. Featuring stories of courageous rescues, bravery in the face of conflict, and camaraderie at home and overseas, Everyday Heroes is an authentic and stirring look inside the hearts and minds of the men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces. These stories will make you proud to be a Canadian.

    Smith and his principal staff officers of the 2d Marine Division, Vice Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, commanding the Central Pacific Force, flew to New Zealand from Pearl Harbor. Spruance told the Marines to prepare for an amphibious assault against Japanese positions in the Gilbert Islands in November. The Marines knew about the Gilberts. The 2d Raider Battalion under Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson had attacked Makin Atoll a year earlier. Subsequent intelligence reports warned that the Japanese had fortified Betio Island in Tarawa Atoll, where elite forces guarded a new bomber strip. Spruance said Betio would be the prime target for the 2d Marine Division. General Smith's operations officer, Lieutenant Colonel David M. Shoup, studied the primitive chart of Betio and saw that the tiny island was surrounded by a barrier reef. Shoup asked Spruance if any of the Navy's experimental, shallow-draft, plastic boats could be provided. "Not available," replied the admiral, "expect only the usual wooden landing craft." Shoup frowned. General Smith could sense that Shoup's gifted mind was already formulating a plan. The results of that plan were momentous. The Tarawa operation became a tactical watershed: the first, large-scale test of American amphibious doctrine against a strongly fortified beachhead. The Marine assault on Betio was particularly bloody. Ten days after the assault, Time magazine published the first of many post-battle analyses: Last week some 2,000 or 3,000 United States Marines, most of them now dead or wounded, gave the nation a name to stand beside those of Concord Bridge, the Bon Homme Richard, the Alamo, Little Big Horn and Belleau Wood. The name was "Tarawa."