Download or read book Steel My Soldiers Hearts written by David H. Hackworth and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2003-05-06 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The commanding officer of an infantry battalion in Vietnam in 1969 recounts how he took over a demoralized unit of ordinary draftees and turned it into an elite fighting force, and describes its accomplishments.
Download or read book Soldier s Heart written by Elizabeth D. Samet and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2004-08-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth D. Samet and her students learned to romanticize the army "from the stories of their fathers and from the movies." For Samet, it was the old World War II movies she used to watch on TV, while her students grew up on Braveheart and Saving Private Ryan. Unlike their teacher, however, these students, cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point, have decided to turn make-believe into real life. West Point is a world away from Yale, where Samet attended graduate school and where nothing sufficiently prepared her for teaching literature to young men and women who were training to fight a war. Intimate and poignant, Soldier's Heart chronicles the various tensions inherent in that life as well as the ways in which war has transformed Samet's relationship to literature. Fighting in Iraq, Samet's former students share what books and movies mean to them—the poetry of Wallace Stevens, the fiction of Virginia Woolf and J. M. Coetzee, the epics of Homer, or the films of James Cagney. Their letters in turn prompt Samet to wonder exactly what she owes to cadets in the classroom. Samet arrived at West Point before September 11, 2001, and has seen the academy change dramatically. In Soldier's Heart, she reads this transformation through her own experiences and those of her students. Forcefully examining what it means to be a civilian teaching literature at a military academy, Samet also considers the role of women in the army, the dangerous tides of religious and political zeal roiling the country, the uses of the call to patriotism, and the cult of sacrifice she believes is currently paralyzing national debate. Ultimately, Samet offers an honest and original reflection on the relationship between art and life.
Download or read book Black Hearts written by Jim Frederick and published by Crown. This book was released on 2010-02-09 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Riveting. . . a testament to a misconceived war, and to the ease with which ordinary men, under certain conditions, can transform into monsters.”—New York Times Book Review This is the story of a small group of soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division’s fabled 502nd Infantry Regiment—a unit known as “the Black Heart Brigade.” Deployed in late 2005 to Iraq’s so-called Triangle of Death, a veritable meat grinder just south of Baghdad, the Black Hearts found themselves in arguably the country’s most dangerous location at its most dangerous time. Hit by near-daily mortars, gunfire, and roadside bomb attacks, suffering from a particularly heavy death toll, and enduring a chronic breakdown in leadership, members of one Black Heart platoon—1st Platoon, Bravo Company, 1st Battalion—descended, over their year-long tour of duty, into a tailspin of poor discipline, substance abuse, and brutality. Four 1st Platoon soldiers would perpetrate one of the most heinous war crimes U.S. forces have committed during the Iraq War—the rape of a fourteen-year-old Iraqi girl and the cold-blooded execution of her and her family. Three other 1st Platoon soldiers would be overrun at a remote outpost—one killed immediately and two taken from the scene, their mutilated corpses found days later booby-trapped with explosives. Black Hearts is an unflinching account of the epic, tragic deployment of 1st Platoon. Drawing on hundreds of hours of in-depth interviews with Black Heart soldiers and first-hand reporting from the Triangle of Death, Black Hearts is a timeless story about men in combat and the fragility of character in the savage crucible of warfare. But it is also a timely warning of new dangers emerging in the way American soldiers are led on the battlefields of the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Heart of a Soldier written by James B. Stewart and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-11-24 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Pulitzer Prize winner James B. Stewart comes the extraordinary story of American hero Rick Rescorla, Morgan Stanley security director and a veteran of Vietnam and the British colonial wars in Rhodesia, who lost his life on September 11. When Rick Rescorla got home from Vietnam, he tried to put combat and death behind him, but he never could entirely. From the day he joined the British Army to fight a colonial war in Rhodesia, where he met American Special Forces’ officer Dan Hill who would become his best friend, to the day he fell in love with Susan, everything in his remarkable life was preparing him for an act of generosity that would transcend all that went before. Heart of a Soldier is a story of bravery under fire, of loyalty to one’s comrades, of the miracle of finding happiness late in life. Everything about Rick’s life came together on September 11. In charge of security for Morgan Stanley, he successfully got all its 2,700 men and women out of the south tower of the World Trade Center. Then, thinking perhaps of soldiers he’d held as they died, as well as the woman he loved, he went back one last time to search for stragglers. Heart of a Soldier is a story that inspires, offers hope, and helps heal even the deepest wounds.
Download or read book Heart of War written by Damon DiMarco and published by Citadel Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains the personal testimonies and first-hand accounts of the war in Iraq from eighteen soldiers on the front lines.
Download or read book The Untold War Inside the Hearts Minds and Souls of Our Soldiers written by Nancy Sherman and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2010-03-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Brilliant . . . a must read for veterans and those who seek to understand them."—Huffington Post The Untold War draws on revealing interviews with servicemen and -women to offer keen psychological and philosophical insights into the experience of being a soldier. Bringing to light the ethical quandaries that soldiers face—torture, the thin line between fighters and civilians, and the anguish of killing even in a just war—Nancy Sherman opens our eyes to the fact that wars are fought internally as well as externally, enabling us to understand the emotional tolls that are so often overlooked.
Download or read book Twice Armed written by R Alan King, Lt. R. Alan King and published by . This book was released on with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lieutenant Colonel R. Alan King and his 422nd Civil Affairs Battalion became operations central after the collapse of the Iraqi army and the beginning of the occupation of Iraq in March 2003. While under his command, these civil affairs and psychological operations soldiers were not content to stay in secure offices inside the green zone. Instead, they knew that to do their job they had to get out and make "house calls," and in the process the 422nd became the most highly decorated civil affairs unit in the history of the U.S. Army, with twenty-one individual awards for valor and five purple hearts. King was particularly well-suited for the new kind of war being waged in Iraq. Armed with his rifle, a Palm Pilot that contained an English translation of the Koran, and an informed and nuanced respect for Middle Eastern culture, King and his team captured or arranged the surrender of almost a dozen of the most-wanted villains from Saddam's regime, including several from the famous deck of cards. He became privy to secrets as weighty as those of Iraq's nuclear weapons program and as light as those behind the outlandish press briefings of the infamous Baghdad Bob. Twice Armed - its title is taken from Plato's maxim We are twice armed if we fight with faith - provides a compelling view of the Iraq war, and the experience from the Iraqi perspective, from one of the war's most decorated officers. The regional expertise that helped King negotiate with clerics and sheikhs also informs his provocative opinions about what it will take to win the battle for the hearts and minds of Iraq, an ancient, mystifying, and deeply religious culture. King has been compared to the legendary T. E. Lawrence, with the press dubbing him “Alan of Arabia,” and this book sheds light on a new and necessary component of modern warfare, one that goes far beyond artillery and armor, and instead tells King's story of cultural interaction and respect that yielded results in his area at the beginning of the war. A trenchant and necessary look at how the winning of the hearts and minds of people in Iraq is as crucial to success as the winning of tactical military goals.
Download or read book Soldier s Heart written by Carol Tyler and published by Fantagraphics Books. This book was released on 2015-10-23 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the wake of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Art Spiegelman’s Maus comes cartoonist Carol Tyler’s multigenerational graphic memoir, You’ll Never Know. The author chronicles her fraught relationship with her father, Charles, a WWII veteran, and how the war affected their lives through both childhood and adulthood. You’ll Never Know is also a tribute to servicemen and women, dramatizing the trauma of the war on the Greatest Generation and those who followed. Tyler’s ink and watercolor narrative is in turns sprawling and gimlet-eyed: compassionate and enraged. Her father’s memories are woven into her own, which span her Catholic, Midwestern childhood; her troubled marriage; her daughter’s struggles; and her efforts to care for her aging parents. Even though Tyler’s work has an accessible, homemade feel (the organizing metaphor of the book is a photo album with “snapshots” of Tyler family life), You’ll Never Know is a sophisticated graphic work about war, love, and loss.
Download or read book Hearts of Soldiers written by Lilia Joy and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2016-02-29 with total page 65 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hearts of Soldiers is a book of poems that portray the hearts of many human beings that struggle every day with their emotional and mental thoughts. Their struggles that thrives from pain they have consumed from many hurtful events in their lives. Soldiers are people who are in the front line of battles which positions them to witness, experience and feel painful events in this world. This book shows us that everyone is a soldier fighting a battle within ourselves and what we go through gives us a whole new perspective of life and our place in this world. This book is for the people who struggle with their pain, love, insecurities and the search for their purpose but wake up hoping for a brighter day with the strength to carry on the fight. There is a poem for everyone in this book and it is open to interpretation. Find the poem that opens you and inspires your heart.
Download or read book Soldier s Heart written by Lee Burkins and published by . This book was released on 2003-02 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the government's treatment of returning combat veterans has been long absent from the public's awareness. Lately, a plethora of documentaries presenting the wounded veterans' plights are currently making their way into the American public's consciousness. After their initial treatments, the wounded service members from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan face an ongoing battle to receive appropriate care and financial assistance. The Department of Veteran Affairs has historically been drastically under funded, under staffed, and overworked. The costs and consequences of war are unpredictable. America is unprepared. A book most relevant to the current situation of our government's treatment of the homecoming warrior is Soldier's Heart by Lee Burkins. This book is possibly the most honest inquiry of war and its consequent trauma ever written by a combat soldier. Burkins, a former Green Beret, writes with the emotional firepower of an automatic weapon. Novelistic in nature, Soldier's Heart weaves and braids the grime, blood, and guts of the experience of war with the world's past historical treatment of the warrior returned home. He humorously reveals the uncompromising assault he and a handful of pugnacious veterans made upon the bureaucracy's neglect of the combatants. Sit in a Veterans rap group, walk the jungles with the tribal warriors Burkins led in combat and follow the inner world of a warrior's struggle to comprehend the reasons behind humanity's penchant for war and the government's reluctance to acknowledge the trauma now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. ( A story from Soldier's Heart
Download or read book Soldier s Heart written by Gary Paulsen and published by Laurel Leaf. This book was released on 2000-09-12 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In June 1861, when the Civil War began, Charley Goddard enlisted in the First Minnesota Volunteers. He was 15. He didn't know what a "shooting war" meant or what he was fighting for. But he didn't want to miss out on a great adventure. The "shooting war" turned out to be the horror of combat and the wild luck of survival; how it feels to cross a field toward the enemy, waiting for fire. When he entered the service he was a boy. When he came back he was different; he was only 19, but he was a man with "soldier's heart," later known as "battle fatigue."
Download or read book Heart of a Soldier written by James B. Stewart and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relates the life of Rick Rescorla, a former soldier and the head of security for Morgan Stanley, who successfully evacuated 2,700 of the company's employees from the south tower of the World Trade Center on September 11th.
Download or read book War and the Soul written by Edward Tick and published by Quest Books. This book was released on 2012-12-19 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: War and PTSD are on the public's mind as news stories regularly describe insurgency attacks in Iraq and paint grim portraits of the lives of returning soldiers afflicted with PTSD. These vets have recurrent nightmares and problems with intimacy, can’t sustain jobs or relationships, and won’t leave home, imagining “the enemy” is everywhere. Dr. Edward Tick has spent decades developing healing techniques so effective that clinicians, clergy, spiritual leaders, and veterans’ organizations all over the country are studying them. This book, presented here in an audio version, shows that healing depends on our understanding of PTSD not as a mere stress disorder, but as a disorder of identity itself. In the terror of war, the very soul can flee, sometimes for life. Tick's methods draw on compelling case studies and ancient warrior traditions worldwide to restore the soul so that the veteran can truly come home to community, family, and self.
Download or read book Mosquito Soldiers written by Andrew McIlwaine Bell and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2010-04 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of the 620,000 soldiers who perished during the American Civil War, the overwhelming majority died not from gunshot wounds or saber cuts, but from disease. And of the various maladies that plagued both armies, few were more pervasive than malaria -- a mosquito-borne illness that afflicted over 1.1 million soldiers serving in the Union army alone. Yellow fever, another disease transmitted by mosquitos, struck fear into the hearts of military planners who knew that "yellow jack" could wipe out an entire army in a matter of weeks. In this ground-breaking medical history, Andrew McIlwaine Bell explores the impact of these two terrifying mosquito-borne maladies on the major political and military events of the 1860s, revealing how deadly microorganisms carried by a tiny insect helped shape the course of the Civil War. Soldiers on both sides frequently complained about the annoying pests that fed on their blood, buzzed in their ears, invaded their tents, and generally contributed to the misery of army life. Little did they suspect that the South's large mosquito population operated as a sort of mercenary force, a third army, one that could work for or against either side depending on the circumstances. Malaria and yellow fever not only sickened thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers but also affected the timing and success of certain key military operations. Some commanders took seriously the threat posed by the southern disease environment and planned accordingly; others reacted only after large numbers of their men had already fallen ill. African American soldiers were ordered into areas deemed unhealthy for whites, and Confederate quartermasters watched helplessly as yellow fever plagued important port cities, disrupting critical supply chains and creating public panics. Bell also chronicles the effects of disease on the civilian population, describing how shortages of malarial medicine helped erode traditional gender roles by turning genteel southern women into smugglers. Southern urbanites learned the value of sanitation during the Union occupation only to endure the horror of new yellow fever outbreaks once it ended, and federal soldiers reintroduced malaria into non-immune northern areas after the war. Throughout his lively narrative, Bell reinterprets familiar Civil War battles and events from an epidemiological standpoint, providing a fascinating medical perspective on the war. By focusing on two specific diseases rather than a broad array of Civil War medical topics, Bell offers a clear understanding of how environmental factors serve as agents of change in history. Indeed, with Mosquito Soldiers, he proves that the course of the Civil War would have been far different had mosquito-borne illness not been part of the South's landscape in the 1860s.
Download or read book Stories from a Soldier s Heart written by Alice Gray and published by Multnomah. This book was released on 2003-05-20 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To preserve our peace of mind and our way of life, the men and women of the United States military often sacrifice their youth-and sometimes even their lives. They steadfastly guard the futures of millions of people they will never meet. Now over seventy-five riveting stories bring to life these heroes and the loved ones they have fought for. Organized in six themed sections: patriotism, inspiration, faith on the frontlines, love and family, honor and sacrifice, and dedication and courage. Stories from a Soldier's Heart honors those who carry in their warrior hearts the world's hope for freedom.
Download or read book Soldier s Heart written by Gary Paulsen and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eager to enlist, fifteen-year-old Charley has a change of heart after experiencing both the physical horrors and mental anguish of Civil War combat.
Download or read book Soldier s Heart written by William Schroder and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2007-07-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "To fully explore the lifelong effects of war trauma in the 20th century, the focus must be on Vietnam veterans, explain Schroder and Dawe, both Vietnam veterans themselves and, respectively, now a writer-businessman and a mental health counselor. Profound statements on the human condition, the narratives of the five featured veterans convey the symptoms of PTSD in non-technical language, offering emotional and intellectual comfort to millions of Americans whose relatives and friends have served the country in time of war. This book, which also includes a glossary of military terms, will be of interest to veterans and their families and friends, as well as to counselors, therapists, psychologists, veteran care workers, and students of studies in trauma, psychopathology, and treatment. These are more than war stories, because for these veterans the lingering "war" is internal - and it may never end."--BOOK JACKET.
