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Hardback. Condizione: Good. Wurst, a rifleman, spent the most of World War II in the European Theater of Operations as a squad leader or platoon sergeant in Company F, 505. He made three of the four regimental combat jumps, dropping into Italy, Normandy, and Holland. Highlights include his baptism of fire in Italy during the Battle of Arnone; the jump on D-Day and the liberation of Ste. Mere Eglise (for which he was awarded a Purple Heart); a grueling month of combat in the hedgerows of Normandy (a second Purple Heart); the ferocious battle with the SS for the highway bridge at Nijmegen, Holland (Silver Star); and survival in the Ardennes, where he found himself as point man on his twentieth birthday, in a long, bitter march toward the shoulder of the Bulge.Wurst's narrative, set against a carefully researched historical background, offers a unique view of the heat of battle as experienced by a noncommissioned officer in the 82nd Airborne Division. Initial chapters chronicle his training before mobilization, when he lied about his age (15) to the National Guard in Erie, Pennsylvania, and his later experience in a heavy weapons company of the 112th Infantry Regiment, 28th Infantry Division. In 1941, Wurst was on a truck returning from First Army maneuvers in the Carolinas to Indiantown Gap Military Reservation when he heard the news of the attack at Pearl Harbor. He recounts life at Camps Livingston and Beauregard in Louisiana, and at the newly formed Parachute School at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he was stationed in the infamous Frying Pan area. Descending from the Clouds portrays the passage from innocence to experience. Wurst begins as a 135-pound kid marching down his hometown streets in the National Guard, wearing the remnants of a World War I uniform and pulling by hand a water-cooled .30-caliber machine-gun mounted on a wooden cart. Five years later, he is a hardened platoon sergeant, leading his troopers through the frozen killing fields of Death Valley in Germany's Huertgen Forest. His story is the story of the coming of age of the American military: fewer than twenty men per company who started with the 505 in the Frying Pan returned home.REVIEWS gives a good sense of the confusion of airborne operations and close combat makes an excellent book for company level leader development on the subjects of discipline, training, and combat leadership. Army History, Winter 2010 ranks as one of the best war memoirs written by a World War II veteran.Library Journal, 2005.…

Paperback. Condizione: Good. This is the story of George L. Cooper, who flew 74 missions in B-25 strafers over the Pacific.

Hardback. Condizione: Good. First in a trilogy of books comprising a general history of war in the Asia Pacific, from the origins of enmity between Japan and China, through Japans ascendancy in the early years of World War II.

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. This is the story of George L. Cooper, who flew 74 missions in B-25 strafers over the Pacific.

Hardback. Condizione: Good. He was one of the last great foreign correspondents Larry Meredith, United Press The story of how Guard gate-crashed journalism is in itself an epic. Newspaper World magazine .rate with the best reporting of this or any other war.

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. Written by a proven combat leader and leadership expert, this book is an invaluable guide to anyone wanting to improve their leadership skills.

Hardback. Condizione: Good. The story of Yasutsune "Tony" Hirashiki's ten years in Vietnambeginning when he arrived in 1966 as a young freelancer with a 16mm camera but without a job or the slightest grasp of English and ending in the hectic fall of Saigon in 1975 when he was literally thrown on one of the last flights out.…

Hardback. Condizione: Very Good. The story of Yasutsune "Tony" Hirashiki's ten years in Vietnambeginning when he arrived in 1966 as a young freelancer with a 16mm camera but without a job or the slightest grasp of English and ending in the hectic fall of Saigon in 1975 when he was literally thrown on one of the last flights out.…

Paperback. Condizione: Good. The infamous Rape of Nanjing looms like a dark shadow over the history of Asia in the 20th century, and is among the most widely recognized chapters of World War II in China. By contrast, the story of the month-long campaign before this notorious massacre has never been told in its entirety. Nanjing 1937 by Peter Harmsen fills this gap. This is the follow-up to Harmsen's best-selling Shanghai 1937: Stalingrad on the Yangtze, and begins where that book left off. In stirring prose, it describes how the Japanese Army, having invaded the mainland and emerging victorious from the Battle of Shanghai, pushed on toward the capital Nanjing in a crushing advance that confirmed its reputation for bravery and savagery in equal measure. While much of the struggle over Shanghai had carried echoes of the grueling war in the trenches two decades earlier, the Nanjing campaign was a fast-paced mobile operation in which armor and air power played mayor roles. It was blitzkrieg two years before Hitler's invasion of Poland. Facing the full might of modern, mechanized warfare, China's resistance was heroic, but ultimately futile. As in Shanghai, the battle for Nanjing was more than a clash between Chinese and Japanese. Soldiers and citizens of a variety of nations witnessed or took part in the hostilities. German advisors, American journalists and British diplomats all played important parts in this vast drama. And a new power appeared on the scene: Soviet pilots dispatched by Stalin to challenge Japan's control of the skies. This epic tale is told with verve and attention to detail by Harmsen, a veteran East Asia correspondent who consolidates his status as the foremost chronicler of World War II in China with this path-breaking work of narrative history.…

Hardback. Condizione: Good. This beautiful and evocative book gives an illustrated overview of the First World War, on land, on sea and in the air. With original drawings in full color, Steven Patricia uses 30 years' experience as a historical illustrator to give an informative and insightful account of the war, portraying the human faces of the participants and capturing moments in time with a vividness and immediacy that brings home both the emotional impact and the tragedy of war. Accompanied by soldier's diary extracts and other contemporary literature, there are many drawings of the hardware of war: aircraft and airships, submarines and ships, guns and grenades. We also get a glimpse of weary officers relaxing in an RAF mess, see panicking sailors swimming desperately away from a sinking ship, soldiers stumbling across no-man's land, and the dramatic scene of one of last great cavalry charges of any war, in Egypt. The role of animals is featured, including the importance of horses and rescue and messenger dogs. The text gives a concise introduction to the events of the war and why it started, with maps of the different fronts where fighting took place and a diagram of a trench system. Designed for readers with little familiarity of the conflict, this is a unique and unmissable book in the centenary of the 'war to end all wars'.…

Hardback. Condizione: Fair. A Selection of the Military and History Book ClubsA startling new analysis of one of America's most glorious battles . . .Contrary to movie and legend, we now know that the defenders of the Alamo in the war for Texan independence--including Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and William B. Travis--did not die under brilliant sunlight, defending their positions against hordes of Mexican infantry. Instead the Mexicans launched a predawn attack, surmounting the walls in darkness, forcing a wild melee inside the fort before many of its defenders had even awoken.In this book, Dr. Tucker, after deep research into recently discovered Mexican accounts and the forensic evidence, informs us that the traditional myth of the Alamo is even more off-base: most of the Alamo's defenders died in breakouts from the fort, cut down by Santa Anna's cavalry that had been pre-positioned to intercept the escapees.To be clear, a number of the Alamo's defenders hung on inside the fort, fighting back every way they could. Captain Dickinson, with cannon atop the chapel (in which his wife hid), fired repeatedly into the Mexican throng of enemy cavalry until he was finally cut down. The controversy on Crockett still remains, though the recently authenticated diary of the Mexican de la Pena offers evidence that he surrendered.The most startling aspect of this book is that most of the Texans, in two gallantly led groups, broke out of the fort after the enemy had broken in, and the primary fights took place on the plain outside. Still fighting desperately, the Texans' retreat was halted by cavalry, and afterward Mexican lancers plied their trade with bloodcurdling charges into the midst of the remaining resisters.Notoriously, Santa Anna burned the bodies of the Texans who had dared stand against him. As this book proves in thorough detail, the funeral pyres were well outside the fort--that is, where the two separate groups of escapers fell on the plain, rather than in the Alamo itself.PHILLIP THOMAS TUCKER earned his Ph.D. in American History from St. Louis University in 1990. The author or editor of more than 20 books on military history, several of which have won national and state awards for scholarship, he has worked as a U.S. Air Force Historian for nearly two decades in Washington, DC.…

Hardback. Condizione: Good. Personal letters detailing a soldiers analysis of the war and day-to-day life on the front line Astonishing contemporary photographs bring the many colourful characters vividly to life Though the United States was late to enter the Great War, a number of idealistic young Americans wished to take part from the beginning.…

Hardback. Condizione: Good. John S. 'Slew' McCain was an old-school sailor. Wiry, profane, a cusser and a gambler, he reminded more than one observer of 'Popeye.' He was also a pioneer in the hard-hitting naval tactics that brought Imperial Japan to its knees. McCain graduated from Annapolis in 1906 and served aboard an armored cruiser in World War I. Espying the future of naval warfare, he earned his aviation wings in 1936 and by 1939 was commander of the aircraft carrier, USS Ranger. He was thus well placed to provide a leading role in America's cut and thrust war with the Japanese across the broad expanses of the Pacific. In 1942 he was made commander of all land-based aircraft during the campaign for Guadalcanal. Though he took his share of blame for the disaster at Savo Island, he counterattacked with every means at his disposal, to the point of commandeering the planes of the crippled carriers Enterprise and Saratoga to reinforce U.S. strength on Henderson Field. Throughout the war, McCain prioritized fighters and single-seat dive-bombers as the best weapons to directly attack the enemy. By the time the U.S. returned to the Philippines, McCain was leading a fast carrier task force under William 'Bull' Halsey. When asked what he thought about his carrier commander, Halsey replied,Not much more than my right arm. At the Philippines, Okinawa, and finally up to the very coastline of Japan, McCain's carrier group destroyed thousands of enemy planes and hundreds of ships with aggressive, swarming tactics. When the Empire formally surrendered on the battleship Missouri, McCain was in the first row of U.S. officers looking on. After Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945, McCain flew back to his home in the U.S., and died in his bed the next day--perhaps from heart failure but more probably from exhaustion. His name has lived on, however, through his son, John S. McCain II, who became commander of U.S. naval forces in the Pacific, 1968-72 (the first father and son four-star admirals in U.S. history), and his grandson, John S. McCain III, a carrier pilot who became the one of the longest held U.S. POW during the Vietnam War and currently serves as a U.S. Senator from Arizona. Drawing upon a wealth of primary sources, including information provided by the McCain family, as well as an expert grasp of the titanic battles waged by the U.S. armed forces in the Pacific, Alton Keith Gilbert has provided the fullest account of the first Admiral John McCain's life yet written. An unconventional leader, Slew McCain's career was marked by courage and innovation, as he emerged from World War II as one of America's greatest combat leaders.…

Hardback. Condizione: Very Good. Many professional historians have recorded the actions of D-Day but here is an account of the airborne actions as described by the actual men themselves in eyewitness detail. Participants range from division command personnel to regimental, battalion, company and battery commanders to chaplains, surgeons, enlisted medics, platoon sergeants, squad leaders and the rough, tough troopers who adapted quickly to fighting in mixed, unfamiliar groups after a badly scattered drop - and yet managed to gain the objectives set for them in the hedgerow country of Normandy. D-Day with the Screaming Eagles does not attempt to glamorise the D-Day landings or apply the Hollywood gloss of recent productions. Koskimaki has interviewed thousands of veterans over many years of researching and writing about the Screaming Eagles; this book stands as a faithful record of what it was like to land on the Normandy beaches.…

Hardback. Condizione: Good. A new visceral memoir of a year of combat with Alpha Company, 1st Infantry Battalion, in Vietnam, 1966.

Hardback. Condizione: Good. Many professional historians have recorded the actions of D-Day but here is an account of the airborne actions as described by the actual men themselves in eyewitness detail. Participants range from division command personnel to regimental, battalion, company and battery commanders to chaplains, surgeons, enlisted medics, platoon sergeants, squad leaders and the rough, tough troopers who adapted quickly to fighting in mixed, unfamiliar groups after a badly scattered drop - and yet managed to gain the objectives set for them in the hedgerow country of Normandy. D-Day with the Screaming Eagles does not attempt to glamorise the D-Day landings or apply the Hollywood gloss of recent productions. Koskimaki has interviewed thousands of veterans over many years of researching and writing about the Screaming Eagles; this book stands as a faithful record of what it was like to land on the Normandy beaches.…

Condizione: Very Good. Item in very good condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc.

Condizione: Good. Item in good condition. Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc.

Condizione: very_good. Book is in very good condition and may include minimal underlining highlighting. The book can also include "From the library of" labels. May not contain miscellaneous items toys, dvds, etc. . We offer 100% money back guarantee and 24 7 customer service.

Hardback. Condizione: Fair. . . . a well-wrought ground level view of daily life in hell. World War II MagazineThis is the remarkable story of a German soldier who fought throughout World War II, rising from conscript private to captain of a heavy weapons company on the Eastern Front.William Lubbeck, age 19, was drafted into the Wehrmacht in August 1939. As a member of the 58th Infantry Division, he received his baptism of fire during the 1940 invasion of France. The following spring his division served on the left flank of Army Group North in Operation Barbarossa. After grueling marches amidst countless Russian bodies, burnt-out vehicles, and a great number of cheering Baltic civilians, Lubbeck s unit entered the outskirts of Leningrad, making the deepest penetration of any German formation. The Germans suffered hardships the following winter as they fought both Russian counterattacks and the brutal cold. The 58th Division was thrown back and forth across the front of Army Group North, from Novgorod to Demyansk, at one point fighting back Russian attacks on the ice of Lake Ilmen. A soldier who preferred to be close to the action, Lubbeck served as forward observer for his company, dueling with Russian snipers, partisans and full-scale assaults alike. His worries were not confined to his own safety, however, as news arrived of disasters in Germany, including the destruction of Hamburg where his girlfriend served as an Army nurse. In September 1943, Lubbeck earned the Iron Cross and was assigned to officers training school in Dresden. By the time he returned to Russia, Army Group North was in full-scale retreat. Now commanding his former heavy weapons company, Lubbeck alternated sharp counterattacks with inexorable withdrawal to Memel on the Baltic. In April 1945 his company was nearly obliterated, but in the last scramble from East Prussia, he was able to evacuate on a newly minted German destroyer. After his release from British captivity, Lubbeck emigrated to the United States where he raised a successful family. With the assistance of David B. Hurt, he has drawn on his wartime notes and letters, Soldatbuch, regimental history and personal memories to recount his frontline experience, including rare firsthand accounts of both triumph and disaster.REVIEWS .a well-wrought ground level view of daily life in hell.WWII Magazine No 3, 06/2007 compiled with attention to details. The reader will feel as though he is alongside Lubbeck as he calls fire missions on the enemy during his three years of service. Military Trader 11/2007 a first-rate memoir The reader will find the narrative flowing. Two appendices, one on German Infantry Regiments in WW II of 1940, and another consisting of references of all places named, are added to assist the reader. City Book Review.…

Hardback. Condizione: Very Good. The battle for Europe in 1943-45 was one of the greatest military challenges in the history of the U.S. Army. Fighting against often veteran German forces from the mountains of Italy to the beaches of Normandy and the frozen forests of the Ardennes, hundreds of thousands of US infantrymen had to move quickly beyond their training and acquire real-world combat skills with extraordinary pace, if they were to raise their chances of survival beyond a few days. They fought in an age of total war, in which the enemy deployed heavy armor, artillery, air power, and their own infantry firepower in a battle of true equals. Without the drive and blood of the U.S. Army infantry, the Allies could not have defeated the Wehrmacht in Western Europe.Extensive documentation was provided for the in-theater US Army infantryman, from booklets rather misguidedly advising on how to behave in foreign countries through to field manuals explaining core combat tactics across squad, platoon, company, and battalion levels. This pocket manual presents critical insights from many of these sources, but also draws on broad spectrum of intelligence reports, after-action reports, and other rare publications. Together they give an inside view on what it was light to live and fight in the U.S. Army infantry during arguably the most consequential conflict in human history.…

Paperback. Condizione: Good. The strategic potential of the three-day attack of two NVA regiments on Kham Duc, a remote and isolated Army Special Forces camp, on the eve of the first Paris peace talks in May 1968, was so significant that former President Lyndon Johnson included it in his memoirs. This gripping, original, eyewitness narrative and thoroughly researched analysis of a widely misinterpreted battle at the height of the Vietnam War radically contradicts all the other published accounts of it. In addition to the tactical details of the combat narrative, the authors consider the grand strategies and political contexts of the U.S. and North Vietnamese leaders. …

Hardback. Condizione: Good. A new detailed account of the battle of Poitiers in 1356 which saw one of the most sensational episodes of the Hundred Years War: the capture of the French King Jean by the Black Prince.

Hardback. Condizione: Very Good. A new whole-life biography of Custer that deals with his personal history as well as his military career.

Hardback. Condizione: Fair. This new history of Stalingrad offers a radical reinterpretation of the most crucial battle in World War II. Focusing on the first half of this epic clash, it reveals new information on how nearly the Germans succeeded, and the incredible courage of the Soviet fighters who held on. Red Army chief of staff Vasilevsky called August 23, 1942, when the Germans reached the Volga, "an unforgettably tragic day." The Russians had never been able to stop a good-weather German offensive, and it appeared that Stalin's namesake city would be lost. Indeed, Soviet armies on all sides were falling back before Hitler's summer offensive, and only one, the 62nd Army, was assigned to hold out in the city to defy the Wehrmacht. Who could have guessed that this sole force, surrounded on three sides, the river at its back, hiding out in ruins, would create such a bleeding sore that the Wehrmacht was never to recover? Combining eyewitness testimony of Red Army fighters with fresh archive material, this book gives dramatic insight into the thinking of Soviet commanders and the desperate mood of ordinary soldiers. Col-General Anatoly Mereshko, a staff officer to 62nd Army commander Chuikov, worked closely with the author and provided testimony that is entirely new. His accounts of the battle are supported by other key veterans and recently released war diaries and combat journals. For three months in Fall 1942 the Germans held a preponderance of force in Stalingrad as they tried to root out the diehards of 62nd Army. The latter force was nearly annihilated on several occasions, as guns from across the river failed to stem the German attacks and the Luftwaffe plunged into the chaos, bombing at will. TheRussians could only respond by going underground, in caves near the river and in the labrynthine ruins of the city itself. Yet, as the rest of the Motherland held its breath, the small, surrounded force-motivated by inspirational leadership as well as a grave sense of the battle's vital importance-continued to deny the Nazis a victory. As we now know, Stalin was not idle while the courageous remnants of 62nd Army continued to defend his city. On November 19 and 21, new Soviet armies in overwhelming strength counterattacked across the Volga, turning the tables on the Germans to begin one of the most pitiful sagas in Western history. The more famous siege of the Germans, concluding on February 2, 1943, has dominated the literature of Stalingrad. This book reminds us that the greater time-line of the battle consisted of the Russians besieged, and just barely holding on.…

Hardback. Condizione: Very Good. Moments define us: moments of adversity reveal character; moments of challenge disclose courage or cowardice; moments of action uncover decision or irresolution; and defining moments reveal leadership.This book is about seven defining leadership moments from the American Revolution. 7 Leadership Lessons is not a complete study of the American Revolution; readers will have to go elsewhere for such a chronicle. Rather it is the story of seven leadership moments that helped to win liberty during the struggle for Independence. On these pages you learn about real people facing real challenges and overcoming what reasonable observers believed were insurmountable odds. These leaders, thankfully, were unreasonable for the cause of liberty.This work is a guide to learning about the leadership that created a revolution, opposed Great Britain, the greatest power of its age, and created the freest society on earth. In these pages you are able to study the leadership of a select few who changed the course of human events and helped bring about the birth of an exceptional nation. This is a compact collection of stories that retell some of the most dramatic events in the founding of the United States. These stories?for leadership is best learned by storytelling, rather than through lectures on process, style, or technique?offer you insights into the meaning of leadership and liberty that can change your life. These seven leadership lessons are as relevant today as they were essential to the birth of the United States. The stories are about the leadership that forged colonial British subjects into a nation of Americans. They define the leadership that hammered out the standard for how Americans are expected to lead. In 1775, this leadership created the flame of liberty that lit the world, and offered a beacon of freedom and human progress to all men.…

Hardback. Condizione: Good. Inherent in ?A Navy Flyer?s Creed? is the power of inspiration: ?My country built the best airplane in the world and entrusted it to me. They trained me to fly it. I will use it to the absolute limit of my power. With my fellow pilots, aircrew and deck crews, my plane and I will do anything necessary to carry out our tremendous responsibilities. When the going is fast and rough, I will not falter. I will be uncompromising in every blow I strike. I will be humble in victory. I am a United States Navy Flyer.?   In Vietnam, barely a month after the start of the Tet Offensive in 1968, one such proud United States Navy flyer applied the fundamental but sometimes forgotten maxims expressed in this creed. And he dared to risk not only his naval career, but the lives of his fellow aircrewmen in rescuing a wounded U.S. Army advisor whose time had nearly run out and whose loss of blood meant that he was only moments away from certain battlefield death.   The pilot, Lieutenant Commander Allen E. ?Wes? Weseleskey, had been assigned to the Navy?s Helicopter Attack (Light) Squadron Three, the ?Seawolves? at the Vinh Long Army Airfield. His controversial mission took place on March 9, 1968 on the outskirts of Sadec, in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam. Two ARVN companies were being overwhelmed and despite coming under heavy fire, Weseleskey decided to go in and rescue as many survivors as possible. The accompanying Seawolf is forced to turn back after taking hits, but Weseleskey with the agreement of his crew persisted in the attempt, flying so low under the treeline that the VC rocket launchers were unable to reach it. On reaching base, it was observed that the overladen helicopter "looked like it had been used as a battering ram."   Allen Weseleskey was awarded the Bronze Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Navy Cross during his service. This is his story, from early assignments, clashes with superior officers, missions and rescues during the Tet Offensive, to homecoming. It is the story of a quintessential flyer, an American hero who was prepared to speak his mind and take risks. It also encapsulates the vital role of the Seawolves in the Vietnam War.…

Paperback. Condizione: Very Good. A short introduction to the world of the medieval knight, from the years of training and the weapons he fought with, to the tournaments and culture surrounding the knightly life.

Paperback. Condizione: Good. A short introduction to the world of the medieval knight, from the years of training and the weapons he fought with, to the tournaments and culture surrounding the knightly life.

Paperback. Condizione: Good. A short history of sharpshooters, marksmen and snipers.