Download or read book The Forgotten 500 written by Gregory A. Freeman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-09-02 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The astonishing, never before told story of the greatest rescue mission of World War II—when the OSS set out to recover more than 500 airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia... During a bombing campaign over Romanian oil fields, hundreds of American airmen were shot down in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. Local Serbian farmers and peasants risked their own lives to give refuge to the soldiers while they waited for rescue, and in 1944, Operation Halyard was born. The risks were incredible. The starving Americans in Yugoslavia had to construct a landing strip large enough for C-47 cargo planes—without tools, without alerting the Germans, and without endangering the villagers. And the cargo planes had to make it through enemy airspace and back—without getting shot down themselves. Classified for over half a century for political reasons, the full account of this unforgettable story of loyalty, self-sacrifice, and bravery is now being told for the first time ever. The Forgotten 500 is the gripping, behind-the-scenes look at the greatest escape of World War II. “Amazing [and] riveting.”—James Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers

Download or read book The Last Mission of the Wham Bam Boys written by Gregory A. Freeman and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the famed Nuremberg Tribunal, there was Rüsselsheim, a small German town, where ordinary civilians were tried in the first War Crimes Trial of World War II. As the tide of World War II turned, a hitherto unknown incident set a precedent for how we would bring wartime crimes to justice: In August 1944, the 9- man crew of an American bomber was forced to bail out over Germany. As their captors marched them into Rüsselsheim, a small town recently bombed to smithereens by Allies, they were attacked by an angry mob of civilians -- farmers, shopkeepers, railroad workers, women, and children. With a local Nazi chief at the helm, they assaulted the young Americans with stones, bricks, and wooden clubs. They beat them viciously and left them for dead at the nearby cemetery. It could have been another forgotten tragedy of the war. But when the lynching was briefly mentioned in a London paper a few months later, it caught the eye of two Army majors, Luke Rogers and Leon Jaworski. Their investigation uncovered the real human cost of the war: the parents and a newlywed wife who agonized over the fate of the men, and the devastating effect of modern warfare on civilian populations. Rogers and Jaworski put the city of Rüsselsheim on trial, insisting on the rule of law even amidst the horrors of war. Drawing from trial records, government archives, interviews with family members, and personal letters, highly-acclaimed military historian Gregory A. Freeman brings to life for the first time the dramatic story. Taking the reader to the scene of the crime and into the homes of the crew, he exposes the stark realities of war to show how ordinary citizens could be drawn to commit horrific acts of wartime atrocities, and the far-reaching effects on generations.

Download or read book The Gathering Wind written by Gregory A. Freeman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: October 2012. A replica of the famous HMS Bounty, an eighteenth-century tall sailing ship, set a collision course with a storm that became the largest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic—a clash that proved to be one of the most unforgettable stories of Superstorm Sandy. The Bounty, crewed by an eclectic team of seafarers and led by highly respected captain Robin Walbridge, departed from Connecticut as Sandy raced north. Walbridge, whose decisions decided the fate of his ship and crew, attempted to outmaneuver the storm by heading southeast. As violent gusts tossed the wooden vessel, the crew fought to save their ship—and themselves. When the storm finally overtook the ship, the crew was tossed into the churning sea. The men and women of a Coast Guard station in North Carolina courageously flew into hundred-mile-per-hour winds to rescue the survivors of the Bounty. After hours of white-knuckle flying, they accomplished one of their most memorable rescues ever. Based on interviews with Bounty survivors and unfettered access to Coast Guard rescue team members, The Gathering Wind is the most complete account of this heartbreaking, thrilling, and inspirational story. INCLUDES PHOTOS

Download or read book The Secret Rescue written by Cate Lineberry and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The compelling untold story of a group of stranded U.S. Army nurses and medics fighting to escape Nazi-occupied Europe. When 26 Army nurses and medics-part of the 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron-boarded a cargo plane for transport in November 1943, they never anticipated the crash landing in Nazi-occupied Albania that would lead to their months-long struggle for survival. A drama that captured the attention of the American public, the group and its flight crew dodged bullets and battled blinding winter storms as they climbed mountains and fought to survive, aided by courageous villagers who risked death at Nazi hands to help them. A mesmerizing tale of the courage and heroism of ordinary people, The Secret Rescue tells not only a new story of struggle and endurance, but also one of the daring rescue attempts by clandestine American and British organizations amid the tumultuous landscape of the war.

Download or read book America s Forgotten Army written by Charles Whiting and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2001-02-15 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first book to examine the World War II exploits of the U.S. Seventh Army traces its initial combat in Sicily through its invasion of southern France and its capture of Hitler's "Eagle's Nest". The author also chronicles the men who risked their lives for the Seventh -- from Patton to Audie Murphy, America's most decorated fighting man -- and offers blow-by-blow accounts of the army's battles.

Download or read book Troubled Water written by Gregory A. Freeman and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gripping account of the riot aboard the USS Kitty Hawk—and the first mutiny in U.S. Naval history In 1972, the United States was embroiled in an unpopular war in Vietnam, and the USS Kitty Hawk was headed to her station in the Gulf of Tonkin. Its five thousand men, cooped up for the longest at-sea tour of the war, rioted--or, as Troubled Water suggests, mutinied. Disturbingly, the lines were drawn racially, black against white. By the time order was restored, careers were in tatters. Although the incident became a turning point for race relations in the Navy, this story remained buried within U.S. Navy archives for decades. With action pulled straight from a high-seas thriller, Gregory A. Freeman uses eyewitness accounts and a careful and unprecedented examination of the navy's records to refute the official story of the incident, make a convincing case for the U.S. navy's first mutiny, and shed new light on this seminal event in American history.

Download or read book Frozen in Time written by Mitchell Zuckoff and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2013-04-23 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A gripping true story of survival, bravery, and honor in the vast Arctic wilderness during World War II, from Mitchell Zuckoff, the author of New York Times bestseller Lost in Shangri-La On November 5, 1942, a US cargo plane slammed into the Greenland Ice Cap. Four days later, the B-17 assigned to the search-and-rescue mission became lost in a blinding storm and also crashed. Miraculously, all nine men on board survived, and the US military launched a daring rescue operation. But after picking up one man, the Grumman Duck amphibious plane flew into a severe storm and vanished. Frozen in Time tells the story of these crashes and the fate of the survivors, bringing vividly to life their battle to endure 148 days of the brutal Arctic winter, until an expedition headed by famed Arctic explorer Bernt Balchen brought them to safety. Mitchell Zuckoff takes the reader deep into the most hostile environment on earth, through hurricane-force winds, vicious blizzards, and subzero temperatures. Moving forward to today, he recounts the efforts of the Coast Guard and North South Polar Inc.—led by indefatigable dreamer Lou Sapienza—who worked for years to solve the mystery of the Duck’s last flight and recover the remains of its crew. A breathtaking blend of mystery and adventure Mitchell Zuckoff's Frozen in Time: An Epic Story of Survival and a Modern Quest for Lost Heroes of World War II is also a poignant reminder of the sacrifices of our military personnel and a tribute to the everyday heroism of the US Coast Guard.

Download or read book Lost Airmen written by Charles E. Stanley and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Late in 1944, thirteen U.S. B-24 bomber crews bailed from their cabins over the Yugoslavian wilderness. Bloodied and disoriented after a harrowing strike against the Third Reich, the pilots took refugee with the Partisan underground. But the Americans were far from safety. Holed up in a village barely able to feed its citizens, encircled by Nazis, and left abandoned after a team of British secret agents failed to secure their escape, the airmen were left with little choice. It was either flee or be killed. In The Lost Airmen, Charles Stanely Jr. unveils the shocking true story of his father, Charles Stanely-and the eighteen brave soldiers he journeyed with for the first time. Drawing on over twenty years of research, dozens of interviews, and previously unpublished letters, diaries, and memoirs written by the airmen, Stanley recounts the deadly journey across the blizzard-swept Dinaric Alps during the worst winter of the Twentieth Century-and the heroic men who fought impossible odds to keep their brothers in arms alive.

Download or read book The Forgotten Americans written by Isabel Sawhill and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sobering account of a disenfranchised American working class and important policy solutions to the nation's economic inequalities One of the country's leading scholars on economics and social policy, Isabel Sawhill addresses the enormous divisions in American society--economic, cultural, and political--and what might be done to bridge them. Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology has left a significant portion of the American workforce disenfranchised and skeptical of governments and corporations alike. And yet both have a role to play in improving the country for all. Sawhill argues for a policy agenda based on mainstream values, such as family, education, and work. Although many have lost faith in government programs designed to help them, there are still trusted institutions on both the local and the federal level that can deliver better job opportunities and higher wages to those who have been left behind. At the same time, the private sector needs to reexamine how it trains and rewards employees. This book provides a clear-headed and middle-way path to a better-functioning society in which personal responsibility is honored and inclusive capitalism and more broadly shared growth are once more the norm.

Download or read book The Last of the Doughboys written by Richard Rubin and published by HMH. This book was released on 2013-05-21 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Before the Greatest Generation, there was the Forgotten Generation of World War I . . . wonderfully engaging” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). “Richard Rubin has done something that will never be possible for anyone to do again. His interviews with the last American World War I veterans—who have all since died—bring to vivid life a cataclysm that changed our world forever but that remains curiously forgotten here.” —Adam Hochschild, author of To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914–1918 In 2003, eighty-five years after the end of World War I, Richard Rubin set out to see if he could still find and talk to someone who had actually served in the American Expeditionary Forces during that colossal conflict. Ultimately he found dozens, aged 101 to 113, from Cape Cod to Carson City, who shared with him at the last possible moment their stories of America’s Great War. Nineteenth-century men and women living in the twenty-first century, they were self-reliant, humble, and stoic, never complaining, but still marveling at the immensity of the war they helped win, and the complexity of the world they helped create. Though America has largely forgotten their war, you will never forget them, or their stories. A decade in the making, The Last of the Doughboys is the most sweeping look at America’s First World War in a generation, a glorious reminder of the tremendously important role America played in the “war to end all wars,” as well as a moving meditation on character, grace, aging, and memory. “An outstanding and fascinating book. By tracking down the last surviving veterans of the First World War and interviewing them with sympathy and skill, Richard Rubin has produced a first-rate work of reporting.” —Ian Frazier, author of Travels in Siberia “I cannot remember a book about that huge and terrible war that I have enjoyed reading more in many years.” —Michael Korda, The Daily Beast

Download or read book The Lost Airman written by Seth Meyerowitz and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2016 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Documents the story of a World War II American Air Force turret-gunner who was one of two escapees when his team's plane was shot down near Cognac in 1943, tracing his harrowing six-month flight to safety across the Pyrenees under constant pursuit by the Gestapo.

Download or read book The Forgotten Centuries written by Charles M. Hudson and published by University of Georgia Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Forgotten Centuries draws together seventeen essays in which historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists attempt for the first time to account for approximately two centuries that are virtually missing from the history of a large portion of the American South. Using the chronicles of the Spanish soldiers and adventurers, the contributors survey the emergence and character of the chiefdoms of the Southeast. In addition, they offer new scholarly interpretations of the expeditions of Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon from 1521 to 1526, Panfilo de Narvaez in 1528, and most particularly Hernando de Soto in 1539-43, as well as several expeditions conducted between 1597 and 1628. The essays in this volume address three other connected topics. Describing some of the major chiefdoms--Apalachee, the "Oconee" Province, Cofitachequi, and Coosa--the essays undertake to lay bare the social principles by which they operated. They also explore the major forces of structural change that were to transform the chiefdoms: disease and depopulation, the Spanish mission system, and the English deerskin and slave trades. And finally, they examine how these forces shaped the history of several subsequent southeastern Indian societies, including the Apalachees, Powhatans, Creeks, and Choctaws. These societies, the so-called native societies of the Old South, were, in fact, new ones formed in the crucible fired by the economic expansion of the early modern world.

Download or read book Sailors to the End written by Gregory A. Freeman and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aircraft carrier USS Forrestal was preparing to launch attacks into North Vietnam when one of its jets accidentally fired a rocket into an aircraft occupied by pilot John McCain. A huge fire ensued, and McCain barely escaped before a 1,000-pound bomb on his plane exploded, causing a chain reaction with other bombs on surrounding planes. The crew struggled for days to extinguish the fires, but, in the end, the tragedy took the lives of 134 men. For thirty-five years, the terrible loss of life has been blamed on the sailors themselves, but this meticulously documented history shows that they were truly the victims and heroes.

Download or read book Thebes written by Paul Cartledge and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting, definitive account of the ancient Greek city of Thebes, by the acclaimed author of The Spartans—now in paperback Among the extensive writing available about the history of ancient Greece, there is precious little about the city-state of Thebes. At one point the most powerful city in ancient Greece, Thebes has been long overshadowed by its better-known rivals, Athens and Sparta. In Thebes: The Forgotten City of Ancient Greece, acclaimed classicist and historian Paul Cartledge brings the city vividly to life and argues that it is central to our understanding of the ancient Greeks’ achievements—whether politically or culturally—and thus to the wider politico-cultural traditions of western Europe, the Americas, and indeed the world. From its role as an ancient political power, to its destruction at the hands of Alexander the Great as punishment for a failed revolt, to its eventual restoration by Alexander’s successor, Cartledge deftly chronicles the rise and fall of the ancient city. He recounts the history with deep clarity and mastery for the subject and makes clear both the di?erences and the interconnections between the Thebes of myth and the Thebes of history. Written in clear prose and illustrated with images in two color inserts, Thebes is a gripping read for students of ancient history and those looking to experience the real city behind the myths of Cadmus, Hercules, and Oedipus.

Download or read book Attu written by John Haile Cloe and published by Government Printing Office. This book was released on 2017 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Battle of Attu, which took place from 11-30 May 1943, was a battle fought between forces of the United States, aided by Canadian reconnaissance and fighter-bomber support, and the Empire of Japan on Attu Island off the coast of the Territory of Alaska as part of the Aleutian Islands Campaign during the American Theater and the Pacific Theater and was the only land battle of World War II fought on incorporated territory of the United States. It is also the only land battle in which Japanese and American forces fought in Arctic conditions. The more than two-week battle ended when most of the Japanese defenders were killed in brutal hand-to-hand combat after a final banzai charge broke through American lines. Related products: Aleutian Islands: The U.S. Army Campaigns of World War II is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/aleutian-islands-us-army-campaigns-world-war-ii-pamphlet Aleutians, Historical Map can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/aleutians-historical-map-poster Other products produced by the U.S. Department of Interior, National Park Service can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/agency/national-park-service-nps World War II resources collection is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/world-war-ii

Download or read book Forgotten written by Linda Hervieux and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2015-10-27 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An utterly compelling account of the African Americans who played a crucial and dangerous role in the invasion of Europe. The story of their heroic duty is long overdue.” —Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation The injustices of 1940s Jim Crow America are brought to life in this extraordinary blend of military and social history—a story that pays tribute to the valor of an all-Black battalion whose crucial contributions at D-Day have gone unrecognized to this day. In the early hours of June 6, 1944, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, a unit of African-American soldiers, landed on the beaches of France. Their orders were to man a curtain of armed balloons meant to deter enemy aircraft. One member of the 320th would be nominated for the Medal of Honor, an award he would never receive. The nation’s highest decoration was not given to Black soldiers in World War II. Drawing on newly uncovered military records and dozens of original interviews with surviving members of the 320th and their families, Linda Hervieux tells the story of these heroic men charged with an extraordinary mission, whose contributions to one of the most celebrated events in modern history have been overlooked. Members of the 320th—Wilson Monk, a jack-of-all-trades from Atlantic City; Henry Parham, the son of sharecroppers from rural Virginia; William Dabney, an eager 17-year-old from Roanoke, Virginia; Samuel Mattison, a charming romantic from Columbus, Ohio—and thousands of other African Americans were sent abroad to fight for liberties denied them at home. In England and Europe, these soldiers discovered freedom they had not known in a homeland that treated them as second-class citizens—experiences they carried back to America, fueling the budding civil rights movement. In telling the story of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, Hervieux offers a vivid account of the tension between racial politics and national service in wartime America, and a moving narrative of human bravery and perseverance in the face of injustice.

Download or read book Vanished written by Wil S. Hylton and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a mesmerizing storyteller, the gripping search for a missing World War II crew, their bomber plane, and their legacy. In the fall of 1944, a massive American bomber carrying eleven men vanished over the Pacific islands of Palau, leaving a trail of mysteries. According to mission reports from the Army Air Forces, the plane crashed in shallow water—but when investigators went to find it, the wreckage wasn’t there. Witnesses saw the crew parachute to safety, yet the airmen were never seen again. Some of their relatives whispered that they had returned to the United States in secret and lived in hiding. But they never explained why. For sixty years, the U.S. government, the children of the missing airmen, and a maverick team of scientists and scuba divers searched the islands for clues. With every clue they found, the mystery only deepened. Now, in a spellbinding narrative, Wil S. Hylton weaves together the true story of the missing men, their final mission, the families they left behind, and the real reason their disappearance remained shrouded in secrecy for so long. This is a story of love, loss, sacrifice, and faith—of the undying hope among the families of the missing, and the relentless determination of scientists, explorers, archaeologists, and deep-sea divers to solve one of the enduring mysteries of World War II.