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First Soldiers Down
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Book Synopsis First Soldiers Down by : Ron Corbett
Download or read book First Soldiers Down written by Ron Corbett and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2012-04-28 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For many in Canada, the April 18, 2002 tragedy with Alpha Company signaled the true beginning of Canada's lengthy combat mission in Afghanistan. This story recounts what happened that evening through archival material and the recollections of troops.
Book Synopsis First Soldiers Down by : Ron Corbett
Download or read book First Soldiers Down written by Ron Corbett and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2012-04-28 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On April 18, 2002, "friendly fire" killed four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, Canada’s first combat deaths since the Korean War. On April 18, 2002, Alpha Company, Third Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, was on a training exercise at Tarnak Farms, a former Taliban artillery range in southern Afghanistan. The exercise had been underway for nearly seven hours when two American fighter pilots flew overhead. One, Major Harry Schmidt, saw the artillery fire below, and thinking he was under attack, dropped a laser-guided bomb. Four Canadian soldiers died that night, the first Canadian combat fatalities since the Korean War. For many in Canada the tragedy signalled the true beginning of Canada’s lengthy combat mission in Afghanistan. First Soldiers Down recounts what happened that evening through archival material and the recollections of troops. It also tells the personal stories of the fallen Sergeant Marc Lger, Corporal Ainsworth Dyer, Private Richard Green, and Private Nathan Smith as well as what happened to the loved ones of each of the four in the decade since the incident.
Book Synopsis You Are Not Forgotten by : Bryan Bender
Download or read book You Are Not Forgotten written by Bryan Bender and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2014-05-20 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1944 Major Marion “Ryan” McCown Jr., an earnest young Marine Corps pilot, came under attack by enemy fire and went down with his plane, lost to the dense jungle of Papua New Guinea. Some sixty years later, Major George Eyster V would find himself in the same sweltering and nearly impenetrable rain forest searching for evidence of MIAs. Coming from a long line of military officers dating back to the Revolutionary War, army service was Eyster’s family legacy. After a disillusioning tour of duty in Iraq and almost ending his army career, he accepts a posting to JPAC instead, an elite division whose sole mission is to bring all fallen soldiers home to the country for which they gave their lives. While Eyster’s search for McCown proves difficult, what emerges at the end of the unforgettable mission is an inspiring true tale of loss and redemption.
Book Synopsis First Kill Your Family by : Peter Eichstaedt
Download or read book First Kill Your Family written by Peter Eichstaedt and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: &“Richard Opio has neither the look of a cold-blooded killer nor the heart of one. Yet as his mother and father lay on the ground with their hands tied, Richard used the blunt end of an ax to crush their skulls. He was ordered to do this by a unit commander of the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group that has terrorized northern Uganda for twenty years. The memory racks Richard's slender body as he wipes away tears.&” For more than twenty years, beginning in the mid-1980s, the Lord's Resistance Army has ravaged northern Uganda. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered, and thousands more mutilated and traumatized. At least 1.5 million people have been driven from a pastoral existence into the squalor of refugee camps. The leader of the rebel army is the rarely seen Joseph Kony, a former witchdoctor and self-professed spirit medium who continues to evade justice and wield power from somewhere near the Congo~Sudan border. Kony claims he not only can predict the future but also can control the minds of his fighters. And control them he does: the Lord's Resistance Army consists of children who are abducted from their homes under cover of night. As initiation, the boys are forced to commit atrocities—murdering their parents, friends, and relatives—and the kidnapped girls are forced into lives of sexual slavery and labor. In First Kill Your Family, veteran journalist Peter Eichstaedt goes into the war-torn villages and refugee camps, talking to former child soldiers, child &“brides,&” and other victims. He examines the cultlike convictions of the army; how a pervasive belief in witchcraft, the spirit world, and the supernatural gave rise to this and other deadly movements; and what the global community can do to bring peace and justice to the region. This insightful analysis delves into the war's foundations and argues that, much like Rwanda's genocide, international intervention is needed to stop Africa's virulent cycle of violence.
Book Synopsis The Secret History of Soldiers by : Tim Cook
Download or read book The Secret History of Soldiers written by Tim Cook and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-09-18 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There have been thousands of books on the Great War, but most have focused on commanders, battles, strategy, and tactics. Less attention has been paid to the daily lives of the combatants, how they endured the unimaginable conditions of industrial warfare: the rain of shells, bullets, and chemical agents. In The Secret History of Soldiers, Tim Cook, Canada's foremost military historian, examines how those who survived trench warfare on the Western Front found entertainment, solace, relief, and distraction from the relentless slaughter. These tales come from the soldiers themselves, mined from the letters, diaries, memoirs, and oral accounts of more than five hundred combatants. Rare examples of trench art, postcards, and even song sheets offer insight into a hidden society that was often irreverent, raunchy, and anti-authoritarian. Believing in supernatural stories was another way soldiers shielded themselves from the horror. While novels and poetry often depict the soldiers of the Great War as mere victims, this new history shows how the soldiers pushed back against the grim war, refusing to be broken in the mincing machine of the Western Front. The violence of war is always present, but Cook reveals the gallows humour the soldiers employed to get through it. Over the years, both writers and historians have overlooked this aspect of the men's lives. The fighting at the front was devastating, but behind the battle lines, another layer of life existed, one that included songs, skits, art, and soldier-produced newspapers. With his trademark narrative abilities and an unerring eye for the telling human detail, Cook has created another landmark history of Canadian military life as he reveals the secrets of how soldiers survived the carnage of the Western Front.
Book Synopsis The Unknown Soldier by : Neil Hanson
Download or read book The Unknown Soldier written by Neil Hanson and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-01-11 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all the million British dead of the First World War, only one - the Unknown Soldier - was ever returned to his native land. An anonymous symbol of all those lost without trace in the carnage of the battlefields, he was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey amid an outpouring of grief that brought the whole nation to a standstill, far outweighing even the emotion expressed over the death of Princess Diana over eighty years later. Inspired by this example, almost every combatant nation buried its own Unknown Soldier and the graves became the focus of a pilgrimage that still continues today. Drawing on largely unpublished letters and diaries, Neil Hanson has resurrected the lives and experiences of three unknown soldiers - a Briton, a German and an American. Every word is based on the testimony of those who fought, those who died and those who mourned. Few books have ever shown the terrible reality of warfare in such compelling, unforgettable detail, or told such a moving story of human life and loss. Amid all their sufferings, the common humanity of the men and their loved ones shines through. Each soldier lives on in the memory of his family to this day. They stand at the head of a ghost army three million strong, all of whom have no known grave. Their story is the story of the Unknown Soldier.
Book Synopsis One Soldier's Story 1939-1945 by : George S. MacDonell
Download or read book One Soldier's Story 1939-1945 written by George S. MacDonell and published by Dundurn. This book was released on 2002-10 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This story details the fateful adventures of two Canadian army regiments dispatched to the Pacific to face the Japanese.
Download or read book Horse Soldiers written by D. Stanton and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-01-06 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.
Book Synopsis When Soldiers Fall by : Steven Casey
Download or read book When Soldiers Fall written by Steven Casey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-12-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Call it the Vietnam Syndrome or Black Hawk Down blowback. It's the standard assumption that Americans won't tolerate combat casualties, that a rising body count lowers support for war. But that's not true, argues historian Steven Casey; even worse, this assumption damages democracy. Fearing a backlash, the military has routinely distorted its casualty reports in order to hide the true cost of war. When Soldiers Fall takes a new look at the way Americans have dealt with the toll of armed conflict. Drawing on a vast array of sources, from George Patton's command papers to previously untapped New York Times archives, Casey ranges from World War I (when the U.S. government first began to report casualties) to the War on Terror, examining official policy, the press, and the public reaction. Not surprisingly, leaders from Douglas MacArthur to Donald Rumsfeld have played down casualties. But the reverse has sometimes been true. At a crucial moment in World War II, the military actually exaggerated casualties to counter the public's complacency about ultimate victory. More often, though, official announcements have been unclear, out of date, or deliberately misleading--resulting in media challenges. In World War I, reporters had to rely on figures published by the enemy; in World War II, the armed forces went for an entire year without releasing casualty tallies. Casey discusses the impact of changing presidential administrations, the role of technology, the dispersal of correspondents to cover multiple conflicts, and the enormous improvements in our ability to identify bodies. Recreating the controversies that have surrounded key battles, from the Meuse-Argonne to the Tet Offensive to Fallujah, the author challenges the formula that higher losses lower support for war. Integrating military, political, and media history, When Soldiers Fall provides the first in-depth account of the impact of battlefield losses in America.
Book Synopsis The Dynamics of Doctrine by : Timothy T. Lupfer
Download or read book The Dynamics of Doctrine written by Timothy T. Lupfer and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper is a case study in the wartime evolution of tactical doctrine. Besides providing a summary of German Infantry tactics of the First World War, this study offers insight into the crucial role of leadership in facilitating doctrinal change during battle. It reminds us that success in war demands extensive and vigorous training calculated to insure that field commanders understand and apply sound tactical principles as guidelines for action and not as a substitute for good judgment. It points out the need for a timely effort in collecting and evaluating doctrinal lessons from battlefield experience. --Abstract.
Book Synopsis Roughneck Nine-One by : Frank Antenori
Download or read book Roughneck Nine-One written by Frank Antenori and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2006-05-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description
Download or read book Waging Peace written by Diana Oestreich and published by Broadleaf Books . This book was released on 2020-09-01 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Diana Oestreich, a combat medic in the Army National Guard, enlisted like both her parents before her. But when she was commanded to run over an Iraqi child to keep her convoy rolling and keep her battle buddies safe, she was confronted with a choice she never thought she'd have to make. Torn between God's call to love her enemy and her country's command to be willing to kill, Diana chose to wage peace in a place of war. For the remainder of her tour of duty, Diana sought to be a peacemaker--leading to an unlikely and beautiful friendship with an Iraqi family. A beautiful and gut-wrenching memoir, Waging Peace exposes the false divide between loving our country and living out our faith's call to love our enemies--whether we perceive our enemy as the neighbor with an opposing political viewpoint, the clerk wearing a head-covering, or the refugee from a war-torn country. By showing that us-versus-them is a false choice, this book will inspire each of us to choose love over fear.
Download or read book First Platoon written by Annie Jacobsen and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A powerful story of war in our time, of love of country, the experience of tragedy, and a platoon at the center of it all. This is a story that starts off close and goes very big. The initial part of the story might sound familiar at first: it is about a platoon of mostly nineteen-year-old boys sent to Afghanistan, and an experience that ends abruptly in catastrophe. Their part of the story folds into the next: inexorably linked to those soldiers and never comprehensively reported before is the U.S. Department of Defense’s quest to build the world’s most powerful biometrics database, with the ability to identify, monitor, catalog, and police people all over the world. First Platoon is an American saga that illuminates a transformation of society made possible by this new technology. Part war story, part legal drama, it is about identity in the age of identification. About humanity—physical bravery, trauma, PTSD, a yearning to do right and good—in the age of biometrics, which reduce people to iris scans, fingerprint scans, voice patterning, detection by odor, gait, and more. And about the power of point of view in a burgeoning surveillance state. Based on hundreds of formerly classified documents, FOIA requests, and exclusive interviews, First Platoon is an investigative exposé by a master chronicler of government secrets. First Platoon reveals a post–9/11 Pentagon whose identification machines have grown more capable than the humans who must make sense of them. A Pentagon so powerful it can cover up its own internal mistakes in pursuit of endless wars. And a people at its mercy, in its last moments before a fundamental change so complete it might be impossible to take back.
Book Synopsis Ashley's War by : Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
Download or read book Ashley's War written by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-04-21 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, author of the New York Times bestseller The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, comes the story of a unique team of women who answered the call to get as close to the fight as the Army had ever allowed women to be, including one beloved soldier who was killed serving her country’s cause In 2010, the Army created Cultural Support Teams, a secret pilot program to insert women alongside Special Operations soldiers battling in Afghanistan. The Army reasoned that women could play a unique role on Special Ops teams: accompanying their male colleagues on raids and, while those soldiers were searching for insurgents, questioning the mothers, sisters, daughters and wives living at the compound. Their presence had a calming effect on enemy households, but more importantly, the CSTs were able to search adult women for weapons and gather crucial intelligence. They could build relationships—woman to woman—in ways that male soldiers in an Islamic country never could. In Ashley's War, Gayle Tzemach Lemmon uses on-the-ground reporting and a finely tuned understanding of the complexities of war to tell the story of CST-2, a unit of women hand-picked from the Army to serve in this highly specialized and challenging role. The pioneers of CST-2 proved for the first time, at least to some grizzled Special Operations soldiers, that women might be physically and mentally tough enough to become one of them. The price of this professional acceptance came in personal loss and social isolation: the only people who really understand the women of CST-2 are each other. At the center of this story is a friendship cemented by "Glee," video games, and the shared perils and seductive powers of up-close combat. At the heart of the team is the tale of a beloved and effective soldier, Ashley White. Much as she did in her bestselling The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, Lemmon transports readers to a world they previously had no idea existed: a community of women called to fulfill the military's mission to "win hearts and minds" and bound together by danger, valor, and determination. Ashley's War is a gripping combat narrative and a moving story of friendship—a book that will change the way readers think about war and the meaning of service.
Book Synopsis Where Soldiers Fear to Tread by : John Burnett
Download or read book Where Soldiers Fear to Tread written by John Burnett and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “There is going to be a shooting here and it is a toss-up who is going to get the boy’s first round. The soldier, about ten years old, is jamming the barrel of his gun hard against my driver’s face, and unless the kid decides to go for me, the relief worker, my driver is going to get his head blown off.” WHERE SOLDIERS FEAR TO TREAD John Burnett survived this ordeal and others during his service as a relief worker in Somalia. But many did not. In this gripping firsthand account, Burnett shares his experiences during the flood relief operations of 1997 to 1998. Ravaged by monsoons, starvation, and feuding warlords, Somalia continues to be one of the most dangerous places on earth. Both a personal story and a broader tale of war, the politics of aid, and the horrifying reality of child-soldiers, his chronicle represents the astonishing challenges faced by humanitarian workers across the globe. There are currently thousands of civilian workers serving in over one hundred nations. Today, they are as likely to be killed in the line of duty as are trained soldiers. In the past five years alone, more UN aid workers have been killed than peacekeepers. When Burnett joined the World Food Program, he was told their mission would be safe, their help welcomed–and they would be pulled out if bullets started to fly. When he arrived in Somalia, Burnett found a nation rent by a decade of anarchy, a people wary of foreign intervention, and a discomfiting uncertainty that the UN would remember he’d been sent there at all. From Burnett’s young Somali driver to the armed civilians, warlords, and colleagues he would never see again, this unforgettable memoir delves into the complexity of humanitarian missions and the wonder of everyday people who risk their lives to help others in places too dangerous to send soldiers. “Where Soldiers Fear to Tread is a rousing adventure story and a troubling morality tale....If you’ve ever sent 20 bucks off to a relief organization, you owe it to yourself to read this book.”--Michael Maren, author of The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity
Book Synopsis Citizen Soldiers by : Stephen E. Ambrose
Download or read book Citizen Soldiers written by Stephen E. Ambrose and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Stephen E. Ambrose, bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day, the inspiring story of the ordinary men of the U.S. army in northwest Europe from the day after D-Day until the end of the bitterest days of World War II. In this riveting account, historian Stephen E. Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller D-Day. Citizen Soldiers opens at 0001 hours, June 7, 1944, on the Normandy beaches, and ends at 0245 hours, May 7, 1945, with the allied victory. It is biography of the US Army in the European Theater of Operations, and Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war. From the high command down to the ordinary soldier, Ambrose draws on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.
Download or read book Into the Fire written by Dakota Meyer and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-09-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The story of what Dakota did . . . will be told for generations.”—President Barack Obama, from remarks given at Meyer’s Medal of Honor ceremony In the fall of 2009, Taliban insurgents ambushed a patrol of Afghan soldiers and Marine advisors in a mountain village called Ganjigal. Firing from entrenched positions, the enemy was positioned to wipe out one hundred men who were pinned down and were repeatedly refused artillery support. Ordered to remain behind with the vehicles, twenty-one year-old Marine corporal Dakota Meyer disobeyed orders and attacked to rescue his comrades. With a brave driver at the wheel, Meyer stood in the gun turret exposed to withering fire, rallying Afghan troops to follow. Over the course of the five hours, he charged into the valley time and again. Employing a variety of machine guns, rifles, grenade launchers, and even a rock, Meyer repeatedly repulsed enemy attackers, carried wounded Afghan soldiers to safety, and provided cover for dozens of others to escape—supreme acts of valor and determination. In the end, Meyer and four stalwart comrades—an Army captain, an Afghan sergeant major, and two Marines—cleared the battlefield and came to grips with a tragedy they knew could have been avoided. For his actions on that day, Meyer became the first living Marine in three decades to be awarded the Medal of Honor. Into the Fire tells the full story of the chaotic battle of Ganjigal for the first time, in a compelling, human way that reveals it as a microcosm of our recent wars. Meyer takes us from his upbringing on a farm in Kentucky, through his Marine and sniper training, onto the battlefield, and into the vexed aftermath of his harrowing exploits in a battle that has become the stuff of legend. Investigations ensued, even as he was pitched back into battle alongside U.S. Army soldiers who embraced him as a fellow grunt. When it was over, he returned to the States to confront living with the loss of his closest friends. This is a tale of American values and upbringing, of stunning heroism, and of adjusting to loss and to civilian life. We see it all through Meyer’s eyes, bullet by bullet, with raw honesty in telling of both the errors that resulted in tragedy and the resolve of American soldiers, U.S. Marines, and Afghan soldiers who’d been abandoned and faced certain death. Meticulously researched and thrillingly told, with nonstop pace and vivid detail, Into the Fire is the unvarnished story of a modern American hero. Praise for Into the Fire “A story of men at their best and at their worst . . . leaves you gaping in admiration at Medal of Honor winner Dakota Meyer’s courage.”—National Review “Meyer’s dazzling bravery wasn’t momentary or impulsive but deliberate and sustained.”—The Wall Street Journal “[A] cathartic, heartfelt account . . . Combat memoirs don’t get any more personal.”—Kirkus Reviews “A great contribution to the discussion of an agonizingly complex subject.”—The Virginian-Pilot “Black Hawk Down meets Lone Survivor.”—Library Journal
