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cutiger83
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I sure thought so! Almost as good as meeting the vet in person!

That's really great! I have a couple of groups where the vet was interviewed for a book, and thought I was lucky at finding those, but to find a group where the vet wrote his own account is pretty amazing!

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I just finished John Ellis, Eye-Deep in Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.

This is an excellent account of not only WWI trench warfare, but of what the typical combat soldier experienced during that war.

Pete

doughboypublishing.weebly.com

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  • 1 month later...

"My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel" by: Ari Shavit

 

This book was written by a Sabra. Although I vehemently disagree with his repetitive assertion that "occupation" of lands is THE most critical barrier against peace there, this fellow has written something especially germane, not despite himself.

 

The role which America, and our military forces or policies, have undertaken apropos of Israel (not to speak of Judaism), over so many decades, is not to be dismissed.

 

This book hints at that coalition, and is worth a read.

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Danger's Hour -The Story Of The USS Bunker Hill and the Kamikaze Pilot Who Cripple Her by Maxwell Taylor Kennedy

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ParanormalTrooper

Combat WWII: European Theatre of Operations

 

I'm hoping i'll get this one done by the time school ends, the Pacific theatre version took me 3 months and its 50 pages shorter!

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willysmb44

I'm at the tail end of Dick Couch's "Sua Sponte" about the qualification courses to make it to the Rangers.
In a word; MEH.

It'd be a great book to give to someone looking to actually become a Ranger, though.

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"The Cloudbuster Nine" by Anne Keene, just released on Tuesday detailing the Navy Pre-flight training school at UNC Chapel Hill and their famous Navy baseball team with players/cadets the likes of Johnny Sain, Sam Chapman, Johnny Pesky and Ted Williams. The author's father was the team's bat boy.

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I'm in the middle of Lincoln & Churchill by Lewis Lehrman. There is some interesting stuff in the book, but I have not quite figured out what the author's point is, if any. They were alike in some ways, they were different in other ways. You could pretty much say that about any two randomly picked leaders. Hopefully the rest of the book will help clarify what he is trying to say.

Mikie

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I have actually got 4 going at once...

 

Special Forces (in Iraq) War Against Saddam Hussein by Eric Micheletti

 

and I am rereading:

No Room For Error by Colonel John T Carney Jr. & Benjamin F Schemmer

None Braver by Michael Hirsh

The Hunt for Bin Laden Task Force Dagger by Robin Moore

 

Steven

 

Steven,

How do you like Task Force Dagger?

 

Wiley

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just finished Challenge for the Pacific by Robert Leckie, and almost done with Band of Brothers. Next is either The Gun by Chivers or Hue 1968 by Bowden.

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"Wrong Place! -Wrong Time!" The 305th Bomb Group and the Second Schweinfurt Raid - October 14th, 1943" by George C. Kuhl.

Mission 115, 8th Air Force was the second attempt to knock out German ball-bearing industry. 60 B-17s were lost of which 12 belonged to the the 305th. An in-depth look at the mission, the tactics, the operational errors and the losses of this one bomber group. Very interesting look at the war in the air in the ETO. Bobgee

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Charlie Flick

I just finished "Hue 1968" by Mark Bowden. The author, a professional journalist, is perhaps best known for his book, "Blackhawk Down", about the Somalia episode.

 

I found the book very well written, as one would expect from a professional author. I had never focused on the battle of Hue. This book was an eye-opener for me on the details of the battle and, in particular, the meticulous planning of the attack by the NVA and VC cadre. To me, the book is at its best in its descriptions of the furious street to street, house to house fighting that erupted. One cannot read those accounts without being impressed by the valor of the Marines and MACV personnel in conducting an urban warfare campaign that none had been trained for. The Air Cav units outside of Hue, who were tasked with cutting off the communist's supply lines to the city, and were slow to do so, received less favorable treatment from the author.

 

Hue 1968.jpeg

 

With a few notable exceptions, the ARVN forces come off poorly in this account and are generally viewed as feckless and weakly led. General Westmoreland is pictured as badly out of touch with events on the ground in Hue insisting that the NVA's main effort would be at Khe Sanh and not at Hue. Numerous first person accounts from surviving former VC and NVA offer a valuable perspective on how their battle was fought. The enemy belief that the Tet attack would foment a national uprising against the South Vietnamese government proved as misguided as Westmoreland's frequent proclamations that victory in the War was right around the corner.

 

This is not a perfect book, in my estimation, and was not entirely satisfying to this reader. I found somewhat distracting the frequent use of Vietnamese language terms. Some were necessary and illuminating. Others just seemed like a writer's tic. The author's reliance on other journalists' accounts of the battle, most of whom were late getting to the battle, was a bit irritating. His laudatory passages on those journalists, some of whom he later worked with, came across as "inside baseball" kind of stuff and a little too admiring and uncritical. The scope of the book is not confined to the battle itself but takes the reader to LBJ's White House, inside Walter Cronkite's head and to the Pentagon. My interest waned during those pages. The author's command of important details such as the small arms and crew served weapons employed in the battle was weak, although he is generous in his praise of the Marines' very effective Ontos tracked weapon. He laments the destruction of much of the imperial city, but seems to place most of the blame on the defenders. And finally, the mass execution of thousands of civilians by the NVA and VC is mentioned in a neutral, matter of fact tone that I found surprising.

 

I now plan to explore other books on the battle at Hue, including "Marines in Hue City" and "Fire in the Streets" both by Mark Hammel, "Phase Line Green" by Nicholas Warr (a combatant at Hue), and "Battle for Hue" by Keith Nolan. Doing so will perhaps give me a somewhat more balanced perspective on what was, in fact, an American victory.

 

Regards,

Charlie

 

 

 

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Currently reading "Fight Like a Girl - The Truth Behind How Female Marines are Trained" by Lt Col Kate Germano

 

Very interesting so far...

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  • 3 weeks later...

I just started this one and as the sub title states it's really an operational assessment. It certainly isn't light reading material but if you are interested in this subject that won't matter too much. So far the emphasis has been on logistics and how they influenced Allied operations after the Normandy breakout. This book is (well to me at least) at times quite an eyeopener.

 

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Rene

 

 

 

 

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SemperParatus

A signed copy of "Yankee Skipper" by Captain Joseph Gainard, The story of Captain Gainard and the S/S CITY OF FLINT which was captured by the Germans on the way to North Russia then taken by the Norwegians who restored her to the American Flag. A fascinating story that few people know about.

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"The Land That I Show You" by: Stanley Feldstein, Anchor Books, 1979

 

A history of Jewish life in America from earliest times... including numerous passages about the contribution of Jews to our military services such as: the American Zionist Medical unit of WWI, the Touro Guards, Jewish War Veterans and the arrest of Julius Stretcher at the end of WWII.

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