The column “Offbase,” formally known as “Humor in Uniform,” has appeared in the Reader's Digest magazine for over half a century, and has published more than 3,500 jokes, quotes, and funny stories from the more than a million readers who have submitted them. This volume—from the world’s #1 source of humor—contains laugh-out-loud gems from one of Reader’s Digest’s most popular columns. This side-splitting collection of humor delivers hundreds of the best jokes, anecdotes, cartoons, quotes, and stories from men and women in the armed forces or their families proving that life is often funnier than fiction. Such as:·         From a Family Member: My son regaled me with stories about how they do things in the modern Air Force. Being an old Air Force man myself, I scoffed at their complicated methods. “That’s not the way we did it when I was in the service,” I said. “Yeah,” he shot back. “But when you were in, there were only two pilots, Wilbur and Orville”       — Ted Shirley·         From an Army Soldier: Our Army Unit was overseas conducting maneuvers with the Marines. On shift one night, a Marine asked my sergeant where he was from. “I’m originally from Central America,” said the sergeant. “Oh, yeah?” asked the Marine. “Kansas?”— David Denbek·         From Iraq: At the end of a tough day in Iraq, my daughter, the airman, collapsed onto the first seat in the transport truck, forcing everyone else to climb over her. “Private!” hollered the sergeant, “Skinny girls get in the back so when we men get on with our weapons and equipment, we don’t have to climb over you. Have I made myself clear?” Suddenly my daughter perked up, “Do you really think I’m skinny?”—    Margaret Culbertson·         About the Military: A soldier stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, actually got a letter addressed to “Fort Ignorance.” “How did you know where to deliver it?” she asked the mailman. “We were stumped at first,” he admitted. “But then I remembered, ignorance is bliss.”— William De Graf For yourself, a friend, or family member—what could be better than the gift of laughter?

    It encompasses politics, military history, economics, the arts, science, fashion, fads, social change, sexual mores, communications, graffiti - everything and anything indigenous that can be captured in print.Masterfully compressing four crowded decades of our history, The Glory and the Dream relives the epic, significant, or just memorable events that befell the generation of Americans whose lives pivoted between the America before and the America after the Second World War. From the Great Depression through the second inauguration of Richard M. Nixon, Manchester breathes life into this great period of America's growth.

    . . far more than a sartorial survey' The Oldie* * * * * * A vivid history of ordinary women and their extraordinary deeds through two world wars and beyond, by From Our Own Correspondent presenter Kate Adie.Uniform is universally seen as both a stamp of authority and of official acceptance. But the sight of a woman in military uniform still provokes controversy. Although more women are now taking prominent roles in combat, the status implied by uniform is often regarded as contrary to the general perception of womanhood. In association with the Imperial War Museum, this is the first book to look at the image of uniformed women, both in conflict and in civilian roles throughout the twentieth century. Kate Adie examines the extraordinary range of jobs that uniformed women have performed, from nursing to the armed services. Through contemporary correspondence and many personal stories she brings the enormous and often unsung achievements of women in uniform vividly to life, and looks at how far women have come in a century which, for them, began restricted in corsets and has ended on the battlefield in camouflage.

    

    His single mother checked into the hospital as a vibrant young woman and checked out as a full-blown opioid addict. From that day forward, Sean's life became a silent nightmare of abuse, neglect, chronic hunger, and slow, helpless withdrawal from everything and everyone he loved.In Rising Above, Green Beret Sean Rogers chronicles the toughest battle of his life: the long, painful fight to confront his darkest fears and reclaim his life. After struggling as a young man to accept the raw trauma of his past, he eventually learned to understand and embrace it, ultimately using it to become an elite Special Forces operator.Through this profoundly honest and inspiring memoir, Rogers explores what it means to make the pain of your past work for you, showing you how to harness the truth of your own reality and take control of your destiny.

    Told in the veterans' words, Mission to Tokyo is a narrative of every aspect of long range bombing, including pilots and other aircrew, groundcrew, and escort fighters that accompanied the heavy bombers on their perilous mission. Several thousand men on the small Mariana Islands of Guam, Saipan, and Tinian were trying to take the war to the Empire—Imperial Japan—in B-29 Superfortresses flying at 28,000 feet, but the high-altitude bombing wasn't very accurate. The decision was made to take the planes down to around 8,000 feet, even as low as 5,000 feet. Eliminating the long climb up would save fuel, and allow the aircraft to take heavier bomb loads. The lower altitude would also increase accuracy substantially. The trade-off was the increased danger of anti-aircraft fire. This was deemed worth the risk, and the devastation brought to the industry and population of the capital city was catastrophic. Unfortunately for all involved, the bombing did not bring on the quick surrender some had hoped for. That would take six more months of bombing, culminating in the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As with Mission to Berlin (Spring 2011), Mission to Tokyo focuses on a specific mission from spring 1945 and provides a history of the strategic air war against Japan in alternating chapters.

    It started like a Hollywood thriller, secretly transporting from England $25 million in British gold bullion, delivered to the ship in unguarded bread trucks, a pre-war “Neutrality Patrol” that was really an unofficial hostile search for the far bigger and more powerful German battleship Prinz Eugen, and sneaking through the Panama Canal at night with the ship’s name and hull number covered for secrecy. Now, with the ship bulging with an unusual load of fuel and supplies, in the company of a large fleet quietly passing under San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, the crew was about to learn of their latest (but not last) and most improbable adventure yet as the captain made an announcement that would change the war and their lives forever, “We are going to Tokyo!”. Over three years, scores of battles and hundreds of thousands of ocean miles later, the Nashville and her crew had earned 10 Battle Stars, served from the North Atlantic to the South Pacific, from the Aleutians to the Yangtze River, as McArthur’s flagship and suffered heavy casualties from a devastating kamikaze attack. Tokyo Rose reported her sunk, repeatedly. Earlier, with goodwill trips that included France, England, Scandinavia, Bermuda and Rio de Janeiro, the new, sleek Nashville built a pre-war reputation as a “glamour ship”. But with war came the secret missions, capturing the second and third Japanese POWs of the war, having a torpedo pass just under the stern, being strafed and bombed by Japanese planes, losing a third of the crew in a single devastating Kamikaze attack, swimming in shark infested waters protected by marines with machine guns, enjoying the beauty of Sydney and her people, planning a suicide mission to destroy the Japanese fishing fleet, and bombarding Japanese troops and airfields across the Pacific. The Nashville crew served their ship and country well. They came from Baltimore row-houses, New York walk-ups, San Francisco flats, Kansas wheat farms, Colorado cattle ranches, Louisiana bayous and Maine fishing towns. Many had never traveled more than 25 miles from home and had never seen the ocean until they joined the service. They were part Irish, part Italian, part Polish and All-American. Battered, burnt and bombed, they made the USS Nashville their home and lived and died as eternal shipmates. Historical narrative enriched with the personal stories of the crew, this is the story of a ship and crew of ordinary men who did extraordinary things.

    Espionage, in all its forms, as it evolved in the hands of both Allied and Axis agents of intelligence and counter-intelligence is the basis for these fascinating and ultimately disturbing stories.

    In March 1941, after a year of unbroken and devastating U-boat onslaughts, the British War Cabinet decided to try a new strategy in the foundering naval campaign. To do so, they hired an intensely private, bohemian physicist who was also an ardent socialist. Patrick Blackett was a former navy officer and future winner of the Nobel Prize; he is little remembered today, but he and his fellow scientists did as much to win the war against Nazi Germany as almost anyone else. As director of the World War II antisubmarine effort, Blackett used little more than simple mathematics and probability theory—and a steadfast belief in the utility of science—to save the campaign against the U-boat. Employing these insights in unconventional ways, from the washing of mess hall dishes to the color of bomber wings, the Allies went on to win essential victories against Hitler’s Germany. Here is the story of these civilian intellectuals who helped to change the nature of twentieth-century warfare. Throughout, Stephen Budiansky describes how scientists became intimately involved with what had once been the distinct province of military commanders—convincing disbelieving military brass to trust the solutions suggested by their analysis. Budiansky shows that these men above all retained the belief that operational research, and a scientific mentality, could change the world. It’s a belief that has come to fruition with the spread of their tenets to the business and military worlds, and it started in the Battle of the Atlantic, in an attempt to outfight the Germans, but most of all to outwit them.

    Each chapter introduces a new bad actor in the history of warfare, details his conquests, and features weapons and fortifications to defend against him and his minions. Clear step-by-step instructions, diagrams, and photographs show how to build a dozen projects, including “Da Vinci’s Catapult,” “Carpini’s Crossbow,” a “Crusader-Proof Moat,” “Alexander’s Tortoise,” and the “Cheval-de-frise.” With a strong emphasis on safety, the book also gives tips on troubleshooting, explains the physics behind many of the projects, and shows where to buy the materials. By the time they’ve reached the last page, at-home defenders everywhere will have succeeded in creating a fully fortified home.

    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.

    The text, based upon extensive research, describes both the battle and the campaign that preceded it in detail, drawing upon the first-hand accounts of participants on all sides in order to give the reader a vivid feeling for the experiences of those who fought upon this most celebrated of all battlefields. The many full-color maps, all specially commissioned for the book, and the numerous diagrams and photographs, the majority in color, as well as sixteen pages of original paintings, make the book a feast for the eyes and a collector's dream.

    The outcome of WWII could very possibly have been much different if Knut Haukelid & his small, but courageous band of Norwegian soldiers had not been successful in sabotaging the Nazis supply of heavy water. The heavy water produced at a facility in occupied Norway was vital to Hitler's race with the USA to develop the atomic bomb. Skis Against the Atom gives the reader an intimate account of the valiant & self-sacrificing service that the not-to-be-subdued Norwegians performed for the whole free world.

    At a time when South Africa was a place inhabited by the toughest of men, only those who lived in the saddle with a gun in their hands could possibly survive. Inside you will read about... ✓ The Creation of the Boer ✓ Growing Tensions ✓ Colley Steps In ✓ The End of the First War ✓ The Jameson Raid ✓ Stage One: The Boer Offensive ✓ Stage Two: The Empire Strikes Back ✓ Stage Three: Scorched Earth ✓ The End of the Boer Who were the Boers, and what was the conflict that would lead them into a fight to the death with England in the First and Second Anglo-Boer wars? Was this a colonial uprising? Or a freedom-fight gone horribly wrong?

    Dan van der Vat's naval histories have been acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic as “definitive,” “extraordinary,” and “vivid and harrowing.” Now he turns to the greatest naval conflict in history: the Pacific campaign of World War II. Drawing on neglected archives of firsthand accounts from both sides, van der Vat interweaves eyewitness testimony with sharp, analytical narration to provide a penetrating reappraisal of the strategic and political background of both the Japanese and American forces, as well as a major reassessment of the role of intelligence on both sides. A comprehensive evaluation of all aspects of the war in the Pacific, The Pacific Campaign promises to be the standard work on the U.S.-Japanese war for years to come.