Military Veteran

At first, they were “Lucky Lima”. Infantryman Ruben Gallego and his brothers in Lima Company—3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, young men drawn from blue-collar towns, immigrant households, Navajo reservations—returned unscathed on patrol after patrol through the increasingly violent al Anbar region of Iraq, looking for weapons caches and insurgents trying to destabilize the nascent Iraqi government. After two months in Iraq, Lima didn't have a casualty, not a single Purple Heart, no injury worse than a blister. Lucky Lima.

When you step off the landing craft into the sea, bullets flying at 0630, how do you react to your vision of your mother opening the telegram that you have been killed? When your glider crashes and breaks apart, what do you when you are shot and the Germans are bearing down on you, and you know your dog tags identify you as a Jew?

Omar Nelson Bradley was the youngest and last of nine men to earn five-star rank and the only army officer so honored after World War II. This new biography by Steven L. Ossad gives an account of Bradley’s formative years, his decorated career, and his postwar life. Bradley’s decisions shaped the five Northwest European Campaigns from the D-Day landings to VE Day. As the man who successfully led more Americans in battle than any other in our history, his long-term importance would seem assured.

I’m trapped with my best friend's grumpy brother. Running away in the middle of a snowstorm wasn’t my brightest idea. Crashing my car into a tree? Even worse. Being rescued by Jack Turner, my best friend’s broody, off-limits brother? Absolute disaster. Jack is a grumpy Former-Marine with muscles for days, a single dad with a scowl that could stop traffic. I have no memory of who—or what—I was running from, but Jack can tell I’m in trouble. Stranded in his remote cabin, he’s determined to protect me. His gruff voice makes my pulse race. His touch burns hotter than the fire ...

Dale Maharidge’s father, like many World War II veterans, never talked about “the good war”. There was just one clue to his dad’s experience as a US Marine - a portrait with a close friend that hung permanently in their home. In The Dead Drink First, Dale, now a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, recounts his 18-year quest to find and repatriate the missing remains of his dad’s buddy, Herman Walter Mulligan, 73 years after he was killed in action.

At the start of World War II, the US Army had two cavalry divisions - and no mountain troops. The German Wehrmacht, in contrast, had many well-trained and battle-hardened mountain divisions, some of whom by 1943 blocked the Allied advance in the Italian campaign. Starting from scratch, the US Army developed a unique military fighting force, the 10th Mountain Division, drawn from the ranks of civilian skiers, mountaineers, and others with outdoor experience.

The EOD - explosive ordnance disposal - community is tight-knit, and when one of their own is hurt, an alarm goes out. When Brian Castner, an Iraq War vet, learns that his friend and EOD brother Matt has been killed by an IED in Afghanistan, he goes to console Matt's widow, but he also begins a personal investigation. Is the bomb maker who killed Matt the same man American forces have been hunting since Iraq, known as the Engineer?

It was the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history, claiming a third of all marines killed in World War II. The relentless fighting on Iwo Jima lasted for 36 days, but most of us only know the iconic photo of five soldiers raising the American flag on Mount Surabachi. For Fred Haynes, a young captain in Combat Team 28, Surabachi was one marker in a ferocious blood-letting against an enemy of 22,000 warriors who were dug into caves and tunnels.

From the Great Depression to Pearl Harbor, from high school to the combat zone, from boot camp to the end of the Third Reich and Imperial Japan, here are more of the stories that we can’t afford not to hear, from a vanishing generation speaking to America today. World War II brought out the worst in humanity, but it also brought out the best; in these narratives you will draw your own lessons. Here are the stories that a special generation of Americans told us for the future when we took the time to be still, to listen, and to draw strength.

Larry Chambers was still new to Vietnam in early 1969 when the LRRPs of the 101st Airborne Division became L Company, 75th (Rangers). But his unit's mission stayed the same: act as the eyes and ears of the 101st deep in the dreaded A Shau Valley - where the NVA ruled. Relentless thick fog frequently made fighter bombers useless in the A Shau, and the enemy had furnished the nearby mountaintops with antiaircraft machine guns to protect the massive trail network that snaked through it. So, outgunned, outmanned, and unsupported, the teams of L Company executed hundreds of courageous missions.

The stories of 20 combat veterans in this book tell experiences of average Americans that fought enemies of the US in World War II. They relate much previously unavailable information about the military in which they served and the battles they fought, from North Africa to Europe, where the possibility of death and permanent physical and mental injury was their common experience. This book is a "must listen" for those that think they have learned all there is to know about World War II.

Panzer Gunner is a unique memoir of a Canadian serving in a German armored division. Bruno Friesen explains what it was like to fight in a tank on the Eastern Front and provides details on the battlefield performance of the Panzer IV tank. Six months before World War II erupted in 1939, Bruno Friesen was sent to Germany by his father in hopes of a better life. Friesen was drafted into the Wehrmacht three years later and ended up in the 7th Panzer Division. Friesen experienced intense combat against the Soviets in Romania, Lithuania, and West Prussia.

NOW AVAILABLE AS AN AUDIOBOOK! Flynt Redcraft knew the Foundation wasn’t offering him freedom. Just another experiment. Another weapon to be engineered. Facing a murder charge and a life behind bars, Flynt—a homeless veteran haunted by PTSD—is forced into a secret genetic enhancement program. His memories are rewritten. His pain and addictions are erased. But when he begins waking up with blood on his hands and missing days, Flynt realizes the real experiment is far more terrifying. Why can’t his bones break? Who is the woman inside his mind, whispering warnings? And what dark ...

When Donovan Campbell's platoon deployed to Ramadi in the spring of 2004, they believed they'd be spending most of their time building schools, training police, and making friends with the citizens. But shortly after arriving, when Campbell awoke to the chilling cry of "Jihad, Jihad, Jihad!" echoing from minaret to minaret across the city, he knew they had an altogether different situation on their hands.

Ex-military mountain man Griffin Barrett likes his solitude. It keeps him from falling back into old habits. Bad habits. He’s fought too hard for his sobriety to lose control now. However, his gig as a wildlife guide presents a new kind of temptation in super-hot supermodel River Vale. Nothing the Alaskan wilderness has to offer has ever called to Griffin so badly. That can only lead to trouble....

Lafayette Pool provided inspiration for Brad Pitt’s character “War Daddy” Collier in the movie Fury, but his true story is less known. Here, acclaimed author Stephen L. Moore writes the first full-length narrative to honor the valiant Texan tanker. A champion Golden Gloves boxer turned U.S. Army legend, Pool was known as the “ace of tankers” for destroying more than five enemy tanks in head-to-head combat.

When Valhalla resident, Former Navy SEAL Mitch Anderson and his company, Paws Your Six were invited to compete in The National Police and Security K9 Trials in Arizona, he didn't hesitate to invite his love interest, Pediatric ICU nurse, Mia Shaw to come along. They'd barely arrived when an angry cartel member confronts Mia in their hotel. Then, when their K-9 dogs take mysteriously ill, Mitch suspects there might be a traitor on his team. While Mia grapples with her past, Mitch fights for her future.

Chief Petty Officer James "Patches" Watson was there at the start. One of the first to come out of the famed Underwater Demolition Team 21, he was an initial member—a "plank owner"—of America's deadliest and most elite fighting force, the U.S. Navy SEALs. Through three tours in the jungle hell of Vietnam, he walked the point—staying alert to trip wires, booby traps, and punji pits, guiding his squad of amphibious fighters on missions of rescue, reconnaissance, and demolition—confronting a war's unique terrors head-on, unprotected . . . and unafraid.

Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway revisit their relationships with 10 American veterans of the battle, as well as Lt. Gen. Nguyen Hu An, who commanded the North Vietnamese Army troops on the other side, and two of his old company commanders.

Chief Warrant Officer Gary O'Neal is no ordinary soldier. For nearly 40 years, he has fought America's enemies, becoming one of the greatest Warriors this nation has ever known. Part Native American, O'Neal was trained in both military combat and the ways of his Native people, combining his commitment to freedom with his respect for the enemy, his technical fighting skills with his fierce warrior spirit.