Veteran Memoir

For nearly a decade, Brett Velicovich was at the center of America's new warfare: using unmanned aerial vehicles - drones - to take down the world's deadliest terrorists across the globe. One of an elite handful in the entire military with the authority to select targets and issue death orders, he worked in concert with the full human and technological network of American intelligence - assets, analysts, spies, informants - and the military's elite operatives to stalk, capture, and eliminate high-value targets in al-Qaeda and ISIS.

This book examines the root causes of veteran isolation, from PTSD, hyper-vigilance, and emotional numbness to the loss of identity and purpose that military life once provided. Many veterans return feeling like strangers in their own communities, struggling to connect with civilians who don’t understand their experiences. Others withdraw due to frustration with slow-moving veteran services, distrust of civilian healthcare, or the stigma of seeking help. These barriers leave many feeling unseen, unsupported, and without the camaraderie that once gave them strength.

A powerhouse fusion of pathos and humor, brutal realism and intimate reflection, Flying Through Midnight is a landmark contribution to Vietnam War literature, revealing previously top-secret intelligence on the 606's night missions. Fast-paced, thrilling, and bitingly intelligent, Halliday's writing illuminates it all: the heart-pounding air battles, the close friendships, the crippling fear, and the astonishing final escape that made the telling of it possible.

Michael Lee Lanning's journal of his first tour of duty in Vietnam provides an unvarnished daily account of life in the field. The blood, fear, camaraderie, and tedium of combat and maneuver. Fleshed out with narrative and detail years later, the pages of this memorable book, first published in 1987, show an eager young recruit growing before the reader's eyes into a proud but bloodied combat veteran. Subsequent volumes in his Vietnam Trilogy will detail Lanning's tour as a company commander and his post-war investigation into the mind of the enemy.

In this engaging audiobook, we see how an 18-year-old miner shoveling ore from deep in the ground in Utah suddenly found himself, only two years later, 30,000 feet in the air over Nazi Germany, piloting a Flying Fortress in the first wave of America's air counteroffensive in Europe. Pathfinder Pioneer gives us vivid insights into the genesis of the American air campaign, told with the humor, attention to detail, and humility that captures the heart and soul of our Greatest Generation.

This is an inspirational memoir and self-development book of a man who not only recovered from his Vietnam War wounds that blinded him but also from the force of darkness of self-pity, frustration, and despair.

On November 25, 1950, during one of the toughest battles of the Korean War, the US Eighth Army Ranger Company seized and held the strategically important Hill 205 overlooking the Chongchon River. Separated by more than a mile from the nearest friendly unit, 51 soldiers fought several hundred Chinese attackers. Their commander, Lieutenant Ralph Puckett, was wounded three times before he was evacuated. For his actions, he received the country's second-highest award for courage on the battlefield and resumed active duty later that year as a living legend.

An award-winning, beautifully written story, heartbreaking at times, about a young American who flew over the treacherous skies of Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II, as depicted in the Masters of the Air TV series from the book by Donald L. Miller. Finding Bomb Boogie is a book many cannot put down. Informative, riveting, and suspense-driven as the author searches for her father’s World War II story long after he has passed away—finally bringing understanding, acceptance, and closure to a complicated but loving relationship many decades later. This is the story of a quiet, young ...

In this riveting book - part memoir, part history - Leeds weaves a wholly new and remarkable portrait of Brown as an idiosyncratic iconoclast, determined artist, and forceful businessman. It is a rare look into a world little known to White America immediately following the Civil Rights Movement. Leeds discovers that Brown is a fascinatingly complex man, and their experiences, both business and personal, range from emotional to humorous. All the while, they navigate the complicated world of popular Black music in America, told by someone who actually lived it.

These stories from the life and medical career of a Navy SEAL turned doctor are surprising, riveting, and inspiring. A family physician delivering babies, managing disease and trauma, and dealing with death, discovers new dimensions when he goes to war in Iraq. Treating the military, civilians, and their families, "Dr. Bob" experienced tremendous joy, unbearable heartache, and deep gratitude. He shares those emotional experiences in this deeply personal memoir.

The Special Operations Group are Australia's most elite policing unit. They are who we turn to in times of crisis: shoot-outs, armed robberies, terrorism. And when the threat gets explosive, enter the Bomb Response Unit. John 'JT' Taylor has seen it all, from backyard blow-ups to the largest bomb to ever go off in Australia. He became the force's longest serving bomb disposal expert and one of its most distinguished members.

Growing out of President Bush's own outreach and the ongoing work of the George W. Bush Institute's Military Service Initiative, Portraits of Courage brings together 66 full-color portraits and a four-panel mural painted by President Bush of members of the United States military who have served our nation with honor since 9/11 - and whom he has come to know personally.

Between April and July 1944, Truman Smith flew 35 bombing missions over France and Germany. He was only 20 years old. Although barely adults, Smith and his peers worried about cramming a lifetime's worth of experience into every free night, each knowing he probably would not survive the next bombing mission. Written with blunt honesty, wry humor, and insight, The Wrong Stuff is Smith's gripping memoir of that time.

While serving as a crew chief aboard a US Air Force Rescue helicopter, Airman First Class William A. Robinson was shot down and captured in Ha Tinh Province, North Vietnam, on September 20, 1965. After a brief stint at the "Hanoi Hilton", Robinson endured 2,703 days in multiple North Vietnamese prison camps, including the notorious Briarpatch and various compounds at Cu Loc, known by the inmates as the Zoo.

Sherman Lead is the gripping story of a year flying the F-4 in combat during the Vietnam War, told through the eyes of a fighter pilot. Operating out of Ubon Royal Thai Air Base, Thailand in 1968-69, Gail Peck and his squadronmates in the 433rd Tactical Fighter Squadron of the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing were tasked with flying combat missions into North Vietnam and Laos. The F-4 was heavily involved in the air-to-ground mission at this time, with targets being well defended by enemy anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missiles.

A brand-new recording read by the author. The memoir of Jason Delgado, a US Marine scout sniper and MARSOC's first lead sniper instructor. The fight for Jason Delgado's life and soul began when he was just a boy. He ultimately escaped the death and drugs of a crime-riddled Bronx by way of the US Marine Corps. However, after earning his way into the esteemed ranks of the service's famed Scout Snipers, Delgado saw that old struggle reignited when he was dumped into the hell of war in Iraq.

On November 18, 1967, Private First Class Davis' artillery unit was hit by a massive enemy offensive. At 21 years old, he resolved to face the onslaught and prepared to die. Soon he would have a perforated kidney, crushed ribs, a broken vertebra, his flesh ripped by beehive darts, a bullet in his thigh, and burns all over his body. Ignoring his injuries, he manned a two-ton Howitzer by himself, crossed a canal under heavy fire to rescue three wounded American soldiers, and kept fighting until the enemy retreated.

The Battle of Iwo Jima, a major event in the Pacific Theater of World War II - and one of the bloodiest in United States history - began on February 19, 1945. But what happened two days earlier has largely been a footnote - until now.... On February 17, Landing Craft Infantry 449 was among a dozen gunboats helping to prepare the area for their invasion two days later. US military leaders thought that they had weakened Japanese forces in the area.

I commanded an infantry company during the Vietnam Tet Offensive of 1968. I got to see the magnificence of the human spirit as my men triumphed over incredible adversity. This is a story that must be told. We are a special country with a special destiny. My men showed me the way.

Karl Marlantes left University at 22 to serve in the Vietnam War. Matterhorn was the bestselling novel based on his experiences. Now Marlantes takes us back to Vietnam, but this time there is no fictional veil. It is part exorcism of Karl's own experiences of combat, part confession, part philosophical primer for the young man about to enter combat. It is also a devastatingly frank answer to the questions ‘What is it like to face death?' and 'What is it like to kill someone?'