Good Military Reads

[eddie372]

My son gave me a great book for Christmas: "Given Up for Dead" by Bill Sloan/ Bantam Books/ 2003.

This is the story of a relatively small contingent of U.S. Marines, Navy and civilan contractors stranded at Wake Island, a tiny speck of land about three miles long and considered one of the remotest places on earth: Out there in the mid-Pacific ocean, approximately 600 miles southwest of Midway. The story develops at the same time that Pearl Harbor is attacked, so for you WW-II literature buffs out there, this is a must read.

This rather obscure true tale of military history is a thriller by all accounts. I've hardly had time for anything else but to read this eloquent and moving story, containing all the elements that make a good story even better: Heroism, guts, perseverance, faith, endurance in the face of incredible odds.

Of particular interest to me have been the many descriptions of aerial battles, so graphically described that I can actually smell the exhaust fumes, hear the rattling guns, and feel the G-forces of the F4F-3 Wildcats as they fight the "Nellies" and "Zeros".

Maybe we can begin a thread where we share great military stories such as "Given Up for Dead". If you have any good recommendations, don't hesitate to write a brief summary, as well as your personal impressions.

[mondaytanker]

Hello Eddie,

I have found that when I post a good book on here I never get a reply.

But I agree, books contain a much more personal experience than any movie made in Hollywood. Even documentaries don't seem to get as personal.

I have three books that I really enjoy reading.

Death Traps by Belton Cooper. WWII tank warfare
Another River Another Town by John P Irwin. WWII tank warfare
The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell by John Crawford. Modern day Iraq.

I am at work and don't have time to go into detail. I hope others will enjoy these books as well.

[digger]

I have found that when I post a good book on here I never get a reply.

I have to admit I do not burn through books, but since we did it with war movies I think we should do it with books. Given to me by another board member and then me to 2 brothers:

Curahee - Short and sweet, scary matter of fact.

Inside Delta Force For a look at how it started (great description of what went wrong in the Iranian Desert).

Warplanes of The Third Reich by William Green, the definitive German AC reference book. If you could have one, I would say have this one. It's that good.

[Teamski]

Oh boy! I don't know where to start. I have over 500 military nonfiction paperbacks in my collection. These stand out:

Currahee- The classic autobiography of a 101st Abn Para at Normandy. Wrote WELL before anybody heard about the Band of Brothers. A MUST READ!

Iron Coffins- THE best U-Boat autobiography out, period!

Fly For your Life- Bio about my favorite WWII ace, Robert Stanford Tuck

The Wahoo- Autobiography of a US Sub Captain who was the XO to "Mush" Morton. Awesome!!

Over the Top- Guy Empey's classic account of his days in the trenches in WWI

Tiger Squadron- Ira Jones' account of his WWI flying

Flying Forts- Caiden's classic on the B-17

Desroyer Commander- Tameichi Hara's autobiography as commander of a Japanese Kagero class destroyer. Excellent!

God is my Copilot- Scott's excellent autobiography of his flying with the Flying Tigers even though he went over to the CBI as a transport pilot!!

Tummult in the Clouds- Goodsons excellent auto of his flying with the 4th FG.

Roll Me Over
If you Survive
To Hell an Back
Devils in Baggy Pants
Company Commander- All awesome autobios of infantry combat

Brazen Chariots- Robert Crisp- Excellent auto of tank combat in the desert.

Hit Hard- Auto of a Sherman tank platoon commander in the ETO

Stuka Pilot- Rudel's excellent auto as THE most decorated German pilot of WWII.

The list goes on and on and on!!!

-Ski

[eddie372]

Ski, that's an impressive list of books. I'll be defenitely looking into some of those titles. The U-Boat one sounds really interesting.

Have you ever considered writing a book of your own? And I'm not necessarily talking about war related books, just any subject that you'd like to write about.

Ed

[Morian Miner]

Here's one - "Be Not Afraid, for You Have Sons in America". It goes through the startup of the KLA in Kosovo thru the NATO involvement - mainly discussing how one Albanian in New York helped raise funds and buy weapons and such for the KLA. Another example of how a few people can start something that turns into a much larger conflict.

[kevrut]

I don't have much time to read books while driving over the road, but I do listen to audio books. "The Wild Blue" is a great story.
If anyone has any WWII audio books on CD to sell, I'd be interested.

[krieglok]

"Wild Blue" is the story of George McGovern as a pilot of a B24 during WW2. It was written by Stephen Ambrose. It was a very good book.

TJ

[MG-42]

"CROSS of IRON" ...Based on a True Story by "Willie Heidrich" about war on the "Eastern Front",...and also a major motion picture film,...which I mentioned in the Topic "War Movies". ....One of my other favorites is one mentioned by "Teamsky" is,..."Stuka Pilot" an auto' by Rudel himself. ...Their are others,...which someone else mentioned,..."and the list goes on".

[MG-42]

Oh yeah,...I almost forgot. ......An auto' By Tiger Ace,..Otto Carius,...Tigers in the Mud. ....Another highly reccommended read ! *****

[eddie372]

I just finished reading "The Great Republic" by Sir Winston Churchill. It's an abbreviated account of the history of the USA, in chronological order, with very detailed passages concering the Revolutionary War, WW-I and of course, WW-II.

What I appreciated most about this book was Mr. Churchill's perspective into the events leading up to WW-II. He makes a seamless connection between the two great conflicts, and one can't help but to see how current events are shaping up in such similar fashion, once more!

I truely enjoyed this book, especially the last two thirds of it. His description of the Revolutionary War was too extensive, including a literal tsunami of names and places that get one lost rather quicly.

Ed

[tmanthegreat]

Since no one's mentioned them yet...

Homer's Illiad,

Thucydides (sp?),

Herodotus,

as well as a host of other ancient authors such as Tacitus, Cassius Dio, and so on that recount the campaigns of old.

...and not to forget Sun-tzu's Art of War

[eddie372]

Currently in the middle of a great book: "Secret Weapons of WW-II" by William B. Breuer.

This is a very easy to read book. Subjects are kept short and to the point, which makes it easy to put the book down and go to work on your mods and dioramas.

Some of the subjects covered are the Enigma machine, the message encryption device designed and extensively used by the Germans. Then of course there is plenty of information about projects "Red" and "Purple", concerned with deciphering Japanese secret code.

The U-2, the U-Boat and project "Ultra" are also extensively treated.

So far, an excellent book to read.

Ed

[steelbonnet]

I`ve just finished reading "RULES OF ENGAGEMENT:A life in Conflict" by Tim Collins.
Former Col of the 1st Batt Royal Irish Regt.

You may recall him from his stirring speech prior to Operations Free Iraq or as had the op caller Operation Telic.
He alas as some will know during Iraq had a run in with a US national Guard officer who reported false allergations against him & caused the Lt Col (then) a lot of bad press & problems. Thankfully he was aquitted of those charges.

A former member of the SAS,The book covers :-serving in Sierra Leone,East Tyrone,Op Fresco (Army acted as firemen,when the fire brigade went on strikes) & of course Op Telic.

A Fantastic Insighted look into the 1st RIR & how a true Good Commander looks after his men,the traditions & when also in harms way.

I urge you to pick this up,it`s well worth the read :d

ja
Steel Bonnet

[pokeyjtc]

I'm a terribly slow reader, so I tend to stick to stuff that is short and has lots of pretty pictures. I did pick up two books over Christmas Bombers of WW II by Jeffrey L. Ethell and Robert T. Sand and Fighters of WWII by Jeffrey L. Ethell.

They are bascially collections of color Kodachrome photos of life in the ETO and African theater with personal commentary and stories from the men who served there. I liked it for the insight into the lives of the men in the air war and the great color photos of all the aircraft.

[JimBob55]

I'm glad you started this thread. I'll start with just a list for now, maybe come back later with a bit of a description:

"Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad" by Zuchino

"Gone For Soldiers" by Jeff Shaara (Mexican-American War)

"Gods and Generals" by Jeff Shaara

"Killer Angels" by Shaara (the father)

"The Guts to Try" about the failed Iran hostage rescue attempt; by COL J.H.Kyle

"1776" by McCullough

"Samurai!" by Saburo Sakai

"Carrier Strike, the Battle of Santa Cruz, October 1942" by Hammel

"Clash of the Carriers" (Marianas Turkey Shoot) by Barrett Tillman

"The Black Sheep, the Definitive Account of Marine Fighting Squadron 214 in WWII" by Gamble

"A Glorious Page in our History, the Battle of Midway, 4-6 June 1942" by Cressman, Ewing, Tillman, Horan, Reynolds, and Cohen

"Return to Midway" by Robert Ballard and Rick Archbold

Regards,
JimBob

[theToyFederation]

My 2 cents for whats worth.

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James D Hornfischer

The Fall of Berlin by Antony Beevor

Thunder Run by David Zucchino

The March Up by Bing West & Major General Ray Smith

Carnage and Culture by Victor Davis Hanson

Slaughter at Halbe by Tony Le Tissier

For military fiction The Master Sniper by Stephen Hunter is hard to beat

[eddie372]

Thanks for the suggestions Toy. I'll be picking up at least one of those titles.

Ed

[theToyFederation]

Ed

Just out of curiosity which one did it.

Jim

[eddie372]

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors sounds very interesting. If you have read them Jim, a brief review would be highly appreciated.

Thanks for your time and your contributions.

Ed

[theToyFederation]

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors
One of the finest WWII naval action narratives in recent years, this book follows in the footsteps of Flags of Our Fathers, creating a microcosm of the war's American Navy destroyers. Hornfischer, a writer and literary agent in Austin, Tex., covers the battle off Samar, the Philippines, in October 1944, in which a force of American escort carriers and destroyers fought off a Japanese force many times its strength, and the larger battle of Leyte Gulf, the opening of the American liberation of the Philippines, which might have suffered a major setback if the Japanese had attacked the transports. He presents the men who crewed the destroyer Taffy 3, most of whom had never seen salt water before the war but who fought, flew, kept the crippled ship afloat, and doomed ships fighting almost literally to the last shell. Finally, Hornfischer provides a perspective on the Japanese approach to the battle, somewhat (and justifiably) modifying the traditional view of the Japanese Admiral Kurita as a fumbler or even a coward-while exalting American sailors and pilots as they richly deserve. (American admirals don't get off so easily.)
The author puts you on the deck of the destroyers and destroyer escorts as they charge headlong into the fire of a superior Japanese force that included the Battleship Yamato. When it was over the Japanese knew they had been in a gunfight.

The Fall of Berlin
By December 1944, many of the 3 million citizens of Berlin had stopped giving the Nazi salute, and jokes circulated that the most practical Christmas gift of the season was a coffin. And for good reason, military historian Antony Beevor writes in this richly detailed reconstruction of events in the final days of Adolf Hitler's Berlin. Following savage years of campaigns in Russia, the Nazi regime had not only failed to crush Bolshevism, it had brought the Soviet army to the very gates of the capital. That army, ill-fed and hungry for vengeance, unloosed its fury on Berlin just a month later in a long siege that would cost hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides. But as Beevor recounts, the siege was also marked by remarkable acts of courage and even compassion. Drawing on unexplored Soviet and German archives and dozens of eyewitness accounts, Beevor brings us a harrowing portrait of the battle and its terrible aftermath, which would color world history for years to follow.
Interesting fact I learned from the book was the Russians seizing the Nazi Atomic weapons research facility in the suburbs of the city and getting their hands on a sizable quanity of uranium and heavy water.

Thunder Run
Even a very short, victorious shooting war against a disorganized, dispirited, vastly outnumbered and underequipped enemy is hell. That is the central message that Los Angeles Times correspondent Zucchino brings home startlingly well in this riveting account of the American military's lightning capture of Baghdad in April 2003. Zucchino is an experienced, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter, and he shows off his reportorial skills in this reconstruction of the "lightning armored strike" in Iraq that the military refers to as a "thunder run." The narrative focuses on the men who commanded and battled in the tank battles as the Americans fought their way to Iraq's capital city. It is often not a pretty picture, nor one for the faint of heart, because Zucchino unhesitatingly and graphically describes the violent and grisly fates that befell hundreds, if not thousands, of Iraqi Republican Guard troops and fedayeen militiamen, their Syrian allies (at the border) and the unfortunate civilians who were killed or wounded by the deadly high-tech American armored vehicles and their well-trained crews. He also does not shy away from intimately describing the deaths and injuries of American troops. The Americans who fought their way into Baghdad engaged in, according to Zucchino's account, a vicious, if short-lived, war. While the Americans overwhelmed the Iraqis on the road to Baghdad, U.S. troops faced periodic stiff resistance; rocket-propelled grenades caused death and destruction among the crews in the Bradley fighting vehicles. Zucchino tells his story primarily from the American troops' point of view, but does include a section describing the experiences of a Baath Party militia leader and some Republican Guard officers in this high-quality example of in-depth and evocative war reporting.
The chaos of street fighting really comes through in this book. Some Iraqi soldiers thought large flower planters would stop 25mm chain gun rounds -it did not.

The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division
This very readable eyewitness history of the 1st Marine Division in the recent Iraq War was penned by two very qualified observers: both West and Smith served in Vietnam as Marines; Smith also served in Granada and Beruit, while West is a former Assistant Secretary of Defense. Unsurprisingly, their account of Marines advancing from Kuwait to Baghdad-and thereby ending up farther from the sea than any Marines in history-is far from anti-military. Perhaps more unexpectedly, though, they present their campaign history warts and all. The portrait of the division owes its breadth to interviews from several hundred sources, not all of whom survived. Two stand out: Shane Ferkovich, whose squad prevented sabotage of an oil-pumping station in the beginning of the march and helped take down Saddam's statue at the end; and General Mattis, the division commander and chief juggler of conflicting demands. An exceptional selection of photographs and better maps than most books to date on the war add to this account's appeal.
A good read that sheds some light on the "Charlie Foxtrot" in An Nasiriyah.

Carnage and Culture Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power
Many theories have been offered regarding why Western culture has spread so successfully across the world, with arguments ranging from genetics to superior technology to the creation of enlightened economic, moral, and political systems. In Carnage and Culture, military historian Victor Hanson takes all of these factors into account in making a bold, and sure to be controversial, argument: Westerners are more effective killers. Focusing specifically on military power rather than the nature of Western civilization in general, Hanson views war as the ultimate reflection of a society's character: "There is…a cultural crystallization in battle, in which the insidious and more subtle institutions that heretofore are murky and undefined became stark and unforgiving in the finality of organized killing."
Though technological advances and superior weapons have certainly played a role in Western military dominance, Hanson posits that cultural distinctions are the most significant factors. By bringing personal freedom, discipline, and organization to the battlefield, powerful "marching democracies" were more apt to defeat non-Western nations hampered by unstable governments, limited funding, and intolerance of open discussion. These crucial differences often ensured victory even against long odds. Greek armies, for instance, who elected their own generals and freely debated strategy were able to win wars even when far outnumbered and deep within enemy territory. Hanson further argues that granting warriors control of their own destinies results in the kind of glorification of horrific hand-to-hand combat necessary for true domination.
The nine battles Hanson examines include the Greek naval victory against the Persians at Salamis in 480 B.C., Cortes's march on Mexico City in 1521, the battle of Midway in 1942, and the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam. In the book's fascinating final chapter, he then looks forward and ponders the consequences of a complete cultural victory, challenging the widespread belief that democratic nations do not wage war against one another: "We may well be all Westerners in the millennium to come, and that could be a very dangerous thing indeed," he writes. It seems the West will always seek an enemy, even if it must come from within.
I bought this book for a cruise and once I started it, I did not want to put it down.


Slaughter at Halbe
Operation ‘Berlin’, the Soviet offensive launched on April 16, 1945 by Marshals Zhukov and Koniev, isolated the German Ninth Army and tens of thousands of refugees in the Spreewald pocket, south east of Berlin. Stalin ordered its encirclement and destruction and his subordinates, eager to win the race to the Reichstag, pushed General Busse’s Ninth Army into a tiny area east of the village of Halbe. To escape the Spreewald pocket, the remnants of Ninth Army had to pass through Halbe, where barricades constructed by both sides formed formidable obstacles and the converging Soviet forces subjected the area to heavy artillery fire. By the time Ninth Army escaped the Soviet pincers, it had suffered 40,000 killed and 60,000 taken prisoner.
Interesting book on a little known battle taking place 30 miles south of Berlin at the same time the Russians were planting their flag on the Reichstag.

The Master Sniper
In the spring of 1945, Lieutenant-Colonel Repp, the titular sharpshooter of this compelling thriller, has been charged by his Nazi superiors in the collapsing Third Reich to commit a particularly despicable assassination. Aided by the deadly creativity of German military engineering, Repp, a cold-blooded killer, hones his skills on hapless death camp inmates before embarking on his mission, which will imprint the dark ideals of Nazism on the postwar world. It falls to Jim Leets, an American small-arms intelligence agent, to unravel the mystery of Repp's new weaponry and sinister assignment. With his fully realized characters, from the depressed but determined sleuth Leets to the ruthlessly dutiful Repp, Hunter has crafted an engrossing and vividly written tale that touches on the nascent Zionist movement and Allied indifference to the Holocaust on its intriguing path to a tense and satisfying climax.
The weapon in question is the STG-44 modified with the Vampir. A great read.

[eddie372]

Wow Toy, thank you for the great book reviews. Now I think I may have to pick all of them!

Ed