Download or read book Memoir of a Cold War Soldier written by Richard E. Mack and published by Kent State University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A career soldier, Richard E. Mack served in the US Army until 1976, when he retired as a colonel. In this volume he recalls his service in front-line combat units in Korea and Vietnam, commenting on the tasks, challenges, problems and concerns of all soldiers during these conflicts.
Download or read book Fighting the Cold War written by John R. Galvin and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2015-04-28 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When four-star general John Rogers Galvin retired from the US Army after forty-four years of distinguished service in 1992, the Washington Post hailed him as a man "without peer among living generals." In Fighting the Cold War: A Soldier's Memoir, the celebrated soldier, scholar, and statesman recounts his active participation in more than sixty years of international history -- from the onset of World War II through the fall of the Berlin Wall and the post--Cold War era. Galvin's illustrious tenure included the rare opportunity to lead two different Department of Defense unified commands: United States Southern Command in Panama from 1985 to 1987 and United States European Command from 1987 to 1992. In his memoir, he recounts fascinating behind-the-scenes anecdotes about his interactions with world leaders, describing encounters such as his experience of watching President José Napoleón Duarte argue eloquently against US intervention in El Salvador; a private conversation with Pope John Paul II in which the pontiff spoke to him about what it means to be a man of peace; and his discussion with General William Westmoreland about soldiers' conduct in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia. In addition, Galvin recalls his complex negotiations with a number of often difficult foreign heads of state, including Manuel Noriega, Augusto Pinochet, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Ratko Mladić. As NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during the tumultuous five years that ended the Cold War, Galvin played a key role in shaping a new era. Fighting the Cold War illuminates his leadership and service as one of America's premier soldier-statesmen, revealing him to be not only a brilliant strategist and consummate diplomat but also a gifted historian and writer who taught and mentored generations of students.
Download or read book We Were Soldiers Too written by Bob Kern and published by Bob Kern. This book was released on 2015-02-25 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for Book of the Year Military Autobiography in 2015 A GRIPPING, TRUE STORY TOLD FROM THE FRONT LINES AS THE WORLD FACED THE POSSIBILITY OF NUCLEAR WAR This is a personal account of military service and the historical events that were happening during President Reagan's time in office as the world faced the possibility of nuclear war. The author was in the US Army from November 1980 until March 1988 which coincided with President Reagan's time in office. He quickly went from a naive seventeen year old boy to a dedicated die hard soldier ready to sacrifice his life for his country. An assignment that likely would have been at Ground Zero of a nuclear war. On the verge of World War 3 and nuclear war, "We Were Soldiers Too" is about the difficult job of serving in the infantry during a very critical time of the Cold War. Serving as the first line of defense for a Soviet invasion in Germany, he found himself assigned the responsibility of defending an area in the Fulda Gap with only one objective, to hold the advancing Soviets until reinforcements arrived. Read what other veterans think of "We Were Soldiers Too" "An excellent illustration of the lives and sacrifices of our Cold War enlisted service members. I recommend it to all. It brings back memories of those days and what we did during that era." Edward A. Chesky "I highly recommend this for anyone to read, especially for anyone that has served this great Nation. I suspect that my fellow Cold War Veterans will be able to relate to a lot of what this author writes about." Tracy A Stephens "An excellent book about those men who served during the Cold War. Excellent insight into how the Army prepared for a possible Soviet invasion. I highly recommend this book." Gary E. Earls "I too am a Cold War Reagan Soldier and I Enjoyed this Book very much. I think Bob did a great job by putting in writing how we all feel. We were highly Trained and Ready to meet any Challenge and Subdue any Threat. We were part of the Strongest Army in the history of the United States. We were and Still are Soldiers. I am Proud to have served with such fine members of the Military." Curtis Nazelrod Scroll up and grab a copy today!
Download or read book Fighting the Cold War written by John R. Galvin USA (Ret.) and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2018-07-10 with total page 568 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When four-star general John Rogers Galvin retired from the US Army after forty-four years of distinguished service in 1992, the Washington Post hailed him as a man "without peer among living generals." In Fighting the Cold War: A Soldier's Memoir, the celebrated soldier, scholar, and statesman recounts his active participation in more than sixty years of international history -- from the onset of World War II through the fall of the Berlin Wall and the post--Cold War era. Galvin's illustrious tenure included the rare opportunity to lead two different Department of Defense unified commands: United States Southern Command in Panama from 1985 to 1987 and United States European Command from 1987 to 1992. In his memoir, he recounts fascinating behind-the-scenes anecdotes about his interactions with world leaders, describing encounters such as his experience of watching President José Napoleón Duarte argue eloquently against US intervention in El Salvador; a private conversation with Pope John Paul II in which the pontiff spoke to him about what it means to be a man of peace; and his discussion with General William Westmoreland about soldiers' conduct in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia. In addition, Galvin recalls his complex negotiations with a number of often difficult foreign heads of state, including Manuel Noriega, Augusto Pinochet, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Ratko Mladić. As NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during the tumultuous five years that ended the Cold War, Galvin played a key role in shaping a new era. Fighting the Cold War illuminates his leadership and service as one of America's premier soldier-statesmen, revealing him to be not only a brilliant strategist and consummate diplomat but also a gifted historian and writer who taught and mentored generations of students.
Download or read book Valleys of Death written by Bill Richardson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-12-07 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Richardson never pulls his punches in these vivid descriptions." --Publishers Weekly Caught in the Chinese counterattack at Unsan-one of the deadliest American battles of the Cold War Era-Colonel Bill Richardson led an Alamo like defense of the few survivors before being taken prisoner. The North Koreans marched them through sub-zero weather without food, shelter, or medical attention to the area known as Death Valley. Enduring torture designed to break the mind and body, Richardson remained strong enough to lead his fellow prisoners in resistance, sabotage, and new plans for escape. Valleys of Death is a stirring story of survival and determination, an intimate look at the soldiers who fought America's first battle of the cold war in the unvarnished words of one of their own.
Download or read book Crossing the River written by Victor Grossman and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faced with an accusation from the US Army's highest legal authority in 1952, Grossman left his unit stationed in Bavaria and swam the Danube to East Germany. He traces his childhood and experiences as a student, worker, and soldier; then describes life in his new home among a surprisingly large community of defectors. There is no index. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
Download or read book A Journey through the Cold War written by Raymond L. Garthoff and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2004-06-23 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this memoir, Ambassador Ray Garthoff paints a dynamic diplomatic history of the cold war, tracing the life of the conflict from the vantage points of an observant insider. His intellectually formative years coincided with the earliest days of the cold war, and during his forty-year career, Garthoff participated in some of the most important policymaking of the twentieth century: • In the late 1950s he carried out pioneering research on Soviet military affairs at the Rand Corporation. • During his four-year tenure at the CIA (1957-61), in addition to drafting national intellingence estimates, Garthoff made trips to the Soviet Union with Vice President Richard Nixon and as an interpreter for a delegation from the Atomic Energy Commission. • As a special assistant in the State Department, Garthoff worked with Secretary Dean Rusk., and he was directly involved in the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Later he served as executive officer and senior State Department adviser for the strategic arms limitation talks (SALT) delegation. • In the 1970s he served as a senior Foreign Service inspector, leading missions to a number of countries around the globe. • As U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria (1977-79), Garthoff gained first-hand knowledge of the workings of a communist state and of the Soviet bloc. • In the 1980s, Garthoff wrote two major studies of American-Soviet relations. He traveled to the Soviet Union nearly a dozen times in the final decade of the cold war, and in the early 1990s he had access to the former Soviet Communist Party archives in Moscow. Garthoff¡'s journey through the Cold War informs the views, positions, and actions of the past. His anecdotes and observations will be of great value to those anticipating the challenges of reevaluating American post-cold war security policy.
Download or read book Memoir of a Peacetime Soldier written by B. T. Smith and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-07 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Take the journey with a young adolescent as he embarks on his new life in the U.S. Army taking him around the world. From the Korean DMZ to Germany's Fulda Gap, each day was a new experience and adventure. Some funny and some sad stories are shared. Many veterans have shared similar experiences, yet few books about peacetime antics and missions have been written. You can read about them here.What made him and many others grow into men? How did the rigors of military life affect and transform him into early adulthood? This easy to read memoir shares these stories good and bad.
Download or read book Born Under an Assumed Name written by Sara Mansfield Taber and published by Potomac Books, Inc.. This book was released on 2012-01-31 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From literary journalist Sara Mansfield Taber comes a deep and wondrous memoir of her exotic childhood as the daughter of a covert CIA operative. Born under an Assumed Name portrays the thrilling and confusing life of a girl growing up abroad in a world of secrecy and diplomacyùand the heavy toll it takes on her and her father. As Taber leads us on a tour through the alluring countries to which her father is assigned, we track two parallel storiesùthose of young Sara and her Cold War spy father. Sara struggles for normalcy as the family is relocated to cities in North America, Europe, and Asia, and the constant upheaval eventually exacts its price. Only after a psychiatric hospitalization at age sixteen in a U.S. Air Force hospital with shell-shocked Vietnam War veterans does she come to a clear sense of who she is. Meanwhile, Sara's sweet-natured, philosophical father becomes increasingly disillusioned with his work, his agency, and his country. This is the question at the heart of this elegant and sophisticated work: what does it mean to be an American? In this fascinating, painful, and ultimately exhilarating coming-of-age story, young Sara confronts generosity, greatness, and tragedyùall that America heaps on the world.
Download or read book Maxwell Taylor s Cold War written by Ingo Trauschweizer and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2019-04-19 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: General Maxwell Taylor served at the nerve centers of US military policy and Cold War strategy and experienced firsthand the wars in Korea and Vietnam, as well as crises in Berlin and Cuba. Along the way he became an adversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's nuclear deterrence strategy and a champion of President John F. Kennedy's shift toward Flexible Response. Taylor also remained a public critic of defense policy and civil-military relations into the 1980s and was one of the most influential American soldiers, strategists, and diplomats. However, many historians describe him as a politicized, dishonest manipulator whose actions deeply affected the national security establishment and had lasting effects on civil-military relations in the United States. In Maxwell Taylor's Cold War: From Berlin to Vietnam, author Ingo Trauschweizer traces the career of General Taylor, a Kennedy White House insider and architect of American strategy in Vietnam. Working with newly accessible and rarely used primary sources, including the Taylor Papers and government records from the Cold War crisis, Trauschweizer describes and analyzes this polarizing figure in American history. The major themes of Taylor's career, how to prepare the armed forces for global threats and localized conflicts and how to devise sound strategy and policy for a full spectrum of threats, remain timely and the concerns he raised about the nature of the national security apparatus have not been resolved.
Download or read book Sailor Airman Spy written by Ted Hayes and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Crossing the River written by Victor Grossman and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faced with an accusation from the US Army's highest legal authority in 1952, Grossman left his unit stationed in Bavaria and swam the Danube to East Germany. He traces his childhood and experiences as a student, worker, and soldier; then describes life in his new home among a surprisingly large community of defectors. There is no index. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).
Download or read book Memoirs Of A Cold War Son written by Post, Jr. Gaines and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2002-04-25 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1951 Gaines Post was a gangly, bespectacled, introspective teenager preparing to spend a year in Paris with his professorial father and older brother; his mother, who suffered from extreme depression, had been absent from the family for some time. Ten years later, now less gangly but no less introspective, he was finishing a two-year stint in the army in West Germany and heading toward Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, having narrowly escaped combat in the Berlin crisis of 1961. His quietly intense coming-of-age story is both self-revealing and reflective of an entire generation of young men who came to adulthood before the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. Post's experiences in high school in Madison, Wisconsin, and Paris, his Camus-influenced undergraduate years at Cornell University, and his army service in Germany are set very effectively against the events of the Cold War. McCarthyism and American crackdowns on dissidents, American foreign and military policy in Western Europe in the nuclear age, French and German life and culture, crises in Paris and Berlin that nearly bring the West to war and the Post family to dissolution—these are the larger scenes and subjects of his self-disclosure as a contemplative, conflicted "Cold War agnostic." His intelligent, talented mother and her fragile health hover over Post's narrative, informing his hesitant relationships with women and his acutely questioning sense of self-worth. His story is strongly academic and historical as well as political and military; his perceptions and judgments lean toward no ideological extreme but remain true to the heroic ideals of his boyhood during the Second World War.
Download or read book Lost in the Cold War written by John T. Downey and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1952, John T. “Jack” Downey, a twenty-three-year-old CIA officer from Connecticut, was shot down over Manchuria during the Korean War. The pilots died in the crash, but Downey and his partner Richard “Dick” Fecteau were captured by the Chinese. For the next twenty years, they were harshly interrogated, put through show trials, held in solitary confinement, placed in reeducation camps, and toured around China as political pawns. Other prisoners of war came and went, but Downey and Fecteau’s release hinged on the United States acknowledging their status as CIA assets. Not until Nixon’s visit to China did Sino-American relations thaw enough to secure Fecteau’s release in 1971 and Downey’s in 1973. Lost in the Cold War is the never-before-told story of Downey’s decades as a prisoner of war and the efforts to bring him home. Downey’s lively and gripping memoir—written in secret late in life—interweaves horrors and deprivation with humor and the absurdities of captivity. He recounts his prison experiences: fearful interrogations, pantomime communications with his guards, a 3,000-page overstuffed confession designed to confuse his captors, and posing for “show” photographs for propaganda purposes. Through the eyes of his captors and during his tours around China, Downey watched the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and the drastic transformations of the Mao era. In interspersed chapters, Thomas J. Christensen, an expert on Sino-American relations, explores the international politics of the Cold War and tells the story of how Downey and Fecteau’s families, the CIA, the U.S. State Department, and successive presidential administrations worked to secure their release.
Download or read book An Anxious Peace written by Hans Mark and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-23 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By any measure, Hans Mark was a warrior of the Cold War. Born in Mannheim, Germany, in 1929, he spent his early childhood in Vienna before escaping the Nazi Anschluss in 1938 and eventually emigrating to the United States, settling in New York. He graduated from high school in 1947, went west to attend the University of California, Berkeley, and later earned a PhD in physics from MIT. His work in nuclear engineering soon set him on a path that would be shaped by aeronautics, space exploration, and national defense. It was through advanced technology that Mark believed the United States could win the Cold War. In An Anxious Peace, Mark recounts in detail his life as a twentieth-century “rocket man.” Here is the inside story of one who—in a career spanning more than six decades—was on the technological front line, from long-range bombers to the space shuttle. Along the way, Mark reveals many never-before-told stories from life at NASA and more. Readers will revel in learning the background behind the decision to place a plaque on Pioneer 10, a space probe that the NASA Ames Research Center designed to fly past the asteroid belt, Jupiter, and Saturn to collect data and images. Mark tells how he, Carl Sagan, and NASA insider John Naugle kept secret the addition of the now iconic 6x9-inch aluminum “message from humanity” until the probe had been launched. To this day Mark is pushing for a manned mission to Mars. One thing is sure: Hans Mark has left a major impact on academic and scientific communities that will be felt for decades to come.
Download or read book Potsdam Mission written by James R. Holbrook and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2008-03 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently declassified information makes it possible for the first time to tell part of the story behind the Cold War intelligence operations of the U.S. Military Liaison Mission (USMLM) to the Commander of the Soviet Army in Communist East Germany. Intelligence collection often led to dangerous encounters with the Cold War spies, Soviet and East German armies. On occasion, Allied officers and non-commissioned officers were seriously injured. Before it all ended with the collapse of the Iron Curtain, one French sergeant and one American officer had been killed. Potsdam Mission traces the development of the author into a Soviet/Russian specialist and U.S. Army intelligence officer. The author then relates his own intelligence collection forays into East Germany by taking the reader on trips that include several harrowing experiences and four arrests/detentions by the Soviets. Finally, the author describes the challenges and rewards of interpreting at USMLM and comments on the important role played by the Mission in Cold War intelligence. Readers who are searching for nonfiction espionage titles and military autobiography books wouldn't want to miss this masterpiece!
Download or read book The Cold War written by Stephen E. Ambrose and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2006-11-07 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Even fifteen years after the end of the Cold War, it is still hard to grasp that we no longer live under its immense specter. For nearly half a century, from the end of World War II to the early 1990s, all world events hung in the balance of a simmering dispute between two of the greatest military powers in history. Hundreds of millions of people held their collective breath as the United States and the Soviet Union, two national ideological entities, waged proxy wars to determine spheres of influence–and millions of others perished in places like Korea, Vietnam, and Angola, where this cold war flared hot. Such a consideration of the Cold War–as a military event with sociopolitical and economic overtones–is the crux of this stellar collection of twenty-six essays compiled and edited by Robert Cowley, the longtime editor of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History. Befitting such a complex and far-ranging period, the volume’s contributing writers cover myriad angles. John Prados, in “The War Scare of 1983,” shows just how close we were to escalating a war of words into a nuclear holocaust. Victor Davis Hanson offers “The Right Man,” his pungent reassessment of the bellicose air-power zealot Curtis LeMay as a man whose words were judged more critically than his actions. The secret war also gets its due in George Feiffer’s “The Berlin Tunnel,” which details the charismatic C.I.A. operative “Big Bill” Harvey’s effort to tunnel under East Berlin and tap Soviet phone lines–and the Soviets’ equally audacious reaction to the plan; while “The Truth About Overflights,” by R. Cargill Hall, sheds light on some of the Cold War’s best-kept secrets. The often overlooked human cost of fighting the Cold War finds a clear voice in “MIA” by Marilyn Elkins, the widow of a Navy airman, who details the struggle to learn the truth about her husband, Lt. Frank C. Elkins, whose A-4 Skyhawk disappeared over Vietnam in 1966. In addition there are profiles of the war’s “front lines”–Dien Bien Phu, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Bay of Pigs–as well as of prominent military and civil leaders from both sides, including Harry S. Truman, Nikita Khrushchev, Dean Acheson, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Richard M. Nixon, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, and others. Encompassing so many perspectives and events, The Cold War succeeds at an impossible task: illuminating and explaining the history of an undeclared shadow war that threatened the very existence of humankind.
