Veteran Memoir

In A Dog's Gift, award-winning journalist and author Bob Drury movingly captures the story of a year in the life of Paws4people and the broken bodies and souls the organization mends. The audiobook follows the journey of pups bred by the organization, from their loving if rigorous early training to an emotional event that Terry and Kyria have christened "the bump", where each individual service dog chooses its new owner through an almost mystical connection that ignites the healing process.

In November 1942, Paul Andrew Kennedy (1912-1993) boarded the St. Elena in New York Harbor and sailed for Casablanca as part of Operation Torch, the massive Allied invasion of North Africa. As a member of the US Army's 2nd Auxiliary Surgical Group, he spent the next 34 months working in North Africa, Italy, France, and Germany, in close proximity to the front lines and often under air or artillery bombardment. He was uncomfortable, struck by the sorrows of war, and homesick for his wife.

One month after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, when President John F. Kennedy pressed Congress about America’s “urgent national needs”, he named expanding US special operations forces along with putting a man on the moon. Captain William Hamilton was the officer tasked with creating the finest unconventional warriors ever seen. Merging his own experience commanding Navy Underwater Demolition Teams with expertise from Army Special Forces and the CIA, and working with his subordinate, Roy Boehm, he cast the mold for sea-, air-, and land-dispatched night fighters.

The French painter Jean Hélion’s unique and deeply moving account of his experiences in Nazi prisoner-of-war camps prefigures the even darker stories that would emerge from the concentration camps. This serious adventure tale begins with Hélion’s infantry platoon fleeing from the German army and warplanes as they advanced through France in the early days of the war. The soldiers chant as they march and run, “They shall not have me!” but are quickly captured and sent to hard labor.

Major Gerhard Engel was Hitler's army adjutant from 1938 to 1943. During his years with Hitler, Engel kept a diary. After the war, he added material to shed further light on certain events, military and political decisions, and Hitler's attitude to particular problems. His diary covers the decision-making process behind crucial military actions, including the annexation of Austria, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the war against Russia.

Falling to Grace – A Powerful Journey from Brokenness to Purpose What if the lowest point in your life was the very place you were meant to rise from? Falling to Grace is a deeply personal and inspiring testimony of transformation, redemption, and faith. From a strict and conflicted childhood to serving in the U.S. Navy, from becoming a bestselling science fiction author to finally stepping into true identity, this memoir traces a remarkable path of struggle, discovery, and healing. Told with raw honesty and heartfelt conviction, this is the story of a life that seemed to fall apart—...

This book explores the untold story of a war veteran's journey with transcranial magnetic stimulation treatment.

Much has been written about America's war in Vietnam, and an enduring and troubling subtext is the composition of the body of soldiers that made up the US troop deployment: from the initially well-trained and disciplined group of largely elite units that served in the mid-sixties to what has been termed an "armed mob" by the end of that decade and into the early 1970s.

An inside account of the South Vietnamese elites who strove to carry on the war against the Communists during the US Army’s withdrawal. The book is a personal memoir of the author’s service as a US Army advisor during the end stages of America’s involvement in Vietnam. During the period 1970–71, the US was beginning to draw down its combat forces, and the new watchword was “Vietnamization.”

First-hand reports of the most riveting anti-terror encounters in the wake of the 2016 surgical strikes, the men who hunted terrorists in a magical Kashmir forest where day turns to night, a pair of young Navy men who gave their all to save their entire submarine crew, the Air Force commando who wouldn't sleep until he had avenged his buddies, the tax babu who found his soul in a terrifying Special Forces assault on Pakistani terrorists, and many more. Their own stories, in their own words. Or of those who were with them in their final moments.

There is a point in everybody's life at which a tough decision will have to be made - a hard call. For inspiration and direction, we can look to the remarkable individuals in John McCain and Mark Salter's book, which dramatically describes the anatomy of a great decision.

When the United States declared war against Spain in 1898, Theodore Roosevelt resigned his post as Assistant Secretary of the Navy and was commissioned Lieutenant Colonel of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry - dubbed by an adoring public as "the Rough Riders." It was his recruitment and leadership of this unorthodox military unit that made "Teddy" a household name - and eventually president. The Rough Riders is Roosevelt's firsthand account of his adventures.

Marine Sgt. John Peck survived an IED during the War on Terror that left him with a traumatic brain injury, amnesia, and cost him his marriage. He survived another three years later, one that left him with three and a half limbs missing. He’s one of only two living people to survive the flesh-eating fungus he contracted in recovery at Walter Reed, one that left him as a quadruple amputee. And that’s only the beginning of his story. What followed was a recovery nothing short of miraculous.

Newlywed Bev Marshall was following her dream when she married her high school sweetheart. She would earn her English degree in three years and find a teaching job to help send her husband to law school at Ole Miss. After less than two months of married life, Butch, her husband, changed their plans when he signed up to be a pilot in the USAF. In less than two years' time he was headed to Vietnam. Bev was headed back home to live with her parents for the year Butch would be in Southeast Asia.

Volumes 1 and 2 of Combat Veterans’ Stories of Small Wars and Nation Building present 20 autobiographical stories of men and women that were in fire fights, raids, and other dangerous situations that exposed them to enemy ordnance. Their stories give listeners an understanding of warfare, as the US military has experienced it since the Vietnam War.

Carl Lavin was a high school senior when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The Canton, Ohio, native enlisted when he turned 18, a decision that would take him with the US Army from training across the United States and Britain to combat with the 84th Infantry Division in the Battle of the Bulge. Home Front to Battlefront is the tale of a foot soldier who finds himself thrust into a world where he and his unit grapple with the horrors of combat, the idiocies of bureaucracy, and the oddities of life back home - all in the same day.

With a single daring leap from an Italian train carrying prisoners of war, John Miller jumped out of the war of soldiers and into the war as lived by Italian civilians - many of whom risked their lives to help him. The year was 1943 and Captain Miller had been in captivity for over a year. Italian anti-fascists harboured and fed him, first in a remote mountain village, then in Rome itself.

Author Kyle Cozad, retired US Navy Rear Admiral and current president and CEO of the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation, tells his own personal story following a service-related spinal cord injury while he was on active duty. Insightful, honest, and frank, his account describes how he bounced back from a debilitating spinal cord injury with one overarching motivation: to "give back" and make a positive difference for others.

In 1966, just as the American military buildup in Vietnam was going into overdrive, a working-class 22-year-old from Chicago was drafted into the army. Larry Heinemann served one year of combat duty, most of it in the vicinity of Cu Chi. It was the most horrific and consequential year of his life, and it served as the raw material for his two classic war novels. This memoir chronicles a 1992 railway journey Heinemann took from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City as the guest of the Vietnam Writers' Association.

For decades, the dramatic stories of World War II soldiers have been the stuff of memoirs, interviews, novels, documentaries, and feature films. Yet the men and women who served in less visible roles, never engaging in physical combat, have received scant attention.