Download or read book The Ghost Army of World War II written by Rick Beyer and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2023-10-10 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A riveting tale told through personal accounts and sketches along the way—ultimately, a story of success against great odds. I enjoyed it enormously.” —Tom Brokaw The first book to tell the full story of how a traveling road show of artists wielding imagination, paint, and bravado saved thousands of American lives—now updated with new material. In the summer of 1944, a handpicked group of young GIs—artists, designers, architects, and sound engineers, including such future luminaries as Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer, Victor Dowd, Art Kane, and Jack Masey—landed in France to conduct a secret mission. From Normandy to the Rhine, the 1,100 men of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, known as the Ghost Army, conjured up phony convoys, phantom divisions, and make-believe headquarters to fool the enemy about the strength and location of American units. Every move they made was top secret, and their story was hushed up for decades after the war's end. Hundreds of color and black-and-white photographs, along with maps, official memos, and letters, accompany Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles’s meticulous research and interviews with many of the soldiers, weaving a compelling narrative of how an unlikely team carried out amazing battlefield deceptions that saved thousands of American lives and helped open the way for the final drive to Germany. The stunning art created between missions also offers a glimpse of life behind the lines during World War II. This updated edition includes: A new afterword by co-author Rick Beyer Never-before-seen additional images The successful campaign to have the unit awarded a Congressional Gold Medal History and WWII enthusiasts will find The Ghost Army of World War II an essential addition to their library.
Download or read book Ghost Army of World War II written by Jack Kneece and published by Pelican Publishing. This book was released on 2001-05-31 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 23rd Headquarters Special Troops was a force of only 1,000 men who, with skilled deceptions, often masqueraded as 34,000.
Download or read book Artists of Deception written by Rick Beyer and published by . This book was released on 2011-09-18 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Ghost Army" is full of art and photographs telling the story of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, an extraordinary US Army unit that used inflatable tanks and sound effects records to stage a traveling road show of deception on the battlefields of Europe during WWII. Many who served in this to-secret unit were artists destined for illustrious post-war art careers, including a budding fashion designer named Bill Blass. In their spare time they painted and sketched their way across war-torn Europe. The book is a catalog for a museum exhibit about the unit, and a companion to the forthcoming documentary film.
Download or read book Phantom Army of the Civil War written by Frank Spaeth and published by Castle Books. This book was released on 2008-05-15 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a haunting collection of personal encounters with the spirit world as they appeared in FATE magazine. These are tales handed down over the years that have their basis in the horrors of the Civil War.
Download or read book Phantom Armies of the Night written by Claude Lecouteux and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-08-16 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the many forms of the ancient myth of the Wild Hunt and its influence in pagan and early Christian Europe • Recounts the myriad variations of this legend, from the Cursed Huntsman and King Herla to phantom armies and vast processions of sinners and demons • Explains how this belief was an integral part of the pagan worldview and was thus employed by the church to spread Christian doctrine • Reveals how the secret societies of medieval Europe reenacted these ghostly processions for soul travel and prophecies of impending death Once upon a time a phenomenon existed in medieval Europe that continuously fueled local lore: during the long winter nights a strange and unknown troop could be heard passing outside over the land or through the air. Anyone caught by surprise in the open fields or depths of the woods would see a bizarre procession of demons, giants, hounds, ladies of the night, soldiers, and knights, some covered in blood and others carrying their heads beneath their arms. This was the Wild or Infernal Hunt, the host of the damned, the phantom army of the night--a theme that still inspires poets, writers, and painters to this day. Millennia older than Christianity, this pagan belief was employed by the church to spread their doctrine, with the shapeshifters' and giants of the pagan nightly processions becoming sinners led by demons seeking out unwary souls to add to their retinues. Myth or legend, it represents a belief that has deep roots in Europe, particularly Celtic and Scandinavian countries. The first scholar to fully examine this myth in each of its myriad forms, Claude Lecouteux strips away the Christian gloss and shows how the Wild Hunt was an integral part of the pagan worldview and the structure of their societies. Additionally, he looks at how secret societies of medieval Europe reenacted these ghostly processions through cult rituals culminating in masquerades and carnival-like cavalcades often associated with astral doubles, visions of the afterlife, belief in multiple souls, and prophecies of impending death. He reveals how the nearly infinite variations of this myth are a still living, evolving tradition that offers us a window into the world in which our ancestors lived.
Download or read book Phantom Soldier written by H. J. Poole and published by Posterity Press (NC). This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Phantom Soldier" is now on the U.S. Army's most prestigious pre-deployment reading list for a reason. It won't please those who have come to believe that wars are won and casualties limited through technology, or that the victor's version of one is always correct. But, all U.S. security personnel should read it. Possibly the West's best treatise on Oriental warfare, it sheds new light on what Asian infantry can do: (1) alternate between guerrilla, mobile, and positional warfare; (2) use "ordinary forces" to engage and "extraordinary forces [infiltrators]" to defeat; and then (3) retreat to save lives. What occurred in history doesn't change, but one's perception of it does--as he comes to better understand his former foe. Here's what really happened at Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Chosin Reservoir, and Hue City. Those who believe this book's cover art to be fantasy have only to google the term "dac cong." Through how the NVA held their own without resupply, tanks, artillery, or air power, U.S. grunts could better survive the more lethal enemy weaponry of the 21st Century.
Download or read book Secret Soldiers written by Philip Gerard and published by Dutton Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Secret Solders" reveals how an extraordinary group of American artists, designers, and engineering wizards became America's unsung heroes of the Second World War. Photo inserts.
Download or read book Toward Combined Arms Warfare written by Jonathan Mallory House and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 1985 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Armies of Sand written by Kenneth Michael Pollack and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the Second World War, Arab armed forces have consistently punched below their weight. They have lost many wars that by all rights they should have won, and in their best performances only ever achieved quite modest accomplishments. Over time, soldiers, scholars, and military experts have offered various explanations for this pattern. Reliance on Soviet military methods, the poor civil-military relations of the Arab world, the underdevelopment of the Arab states, and patterns of behavior derived from the wider Arab culture, have all been suggested as the ultimate source of Arab military difficulties. Armies of Sand, Kenneth M. Pollack's powerful and riveting history of Arab armies from the end of World War Two to the present, assesses these differing explanations and isolates the most important causes. Over the course of the book, he examines the combat performance of fifteen Arab armies and air forces in virtually every Middle Eastern war, from the Jordanians and Syrians in 1948 to Hizballah in 2006 and the Iraqis and ISIS in 2014-2017. He then compares these experiences to the performance of the Argentine, Chadian, Chinese, Cuban, North Korean, and South Vietnamese armed forces in their own combat operations during the twentieth century. The book ultimately concludes that reliance on Soviet doctrine was more of a help than a hindrance to the Arabs. In contrast, politicization and underdevelopment were both important factors limiting Arab military effectiveness, but patterns of behavior derived from the dominant Arab culture was the most important factor of all. Pollack closes with a discussion of the rapid changes occurring across the Arab world-political, economic, and cultural-as well as the rapid evolution in war making as a result of the information revolution. He suggests that because both Arab society and warfare are changing, the problems that have bedeviled Arab armed forces in the past could dissipate or even vanish in the future, with potentially dramatic consequences for the Middle East military balance. Sweeping in its historical coverage and highly accessible, this will be the go-to reference for anyone interested in the history of warfare in the Middle East since 1945.
Download or read book House to House written by David Bellavia and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-25 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On 8 November 2004, the largest battle of the War on Terror began, with the US Army's assault on Fallujah and its network of tens of thousands of insurgents hiding in fortified bunkers, on rooftops, and inside booby-trapped houses. For Sgt. David Bellavia of 3rd Platoon, Alpha Company, it quickly turned into a battle on foot, from street to street and house to house. On the second day, he and his men laid siege to a mosque, only to be driven to a rooftop and surrounded, before heavy artillery could smash through to rescue them. By the third day, Bellavia charges an insurgent-filled house and finds himself trapped with six enemy fighters. One by one, he shoots, wrestles, stabs, and kills five of them, until his men arrive to take care of the final target. It is one of the most hair-raising battle stories of any age -- yet it does not spell the end of Bellavia's service. It would take serveral more weeks before the Battle of Fallujah finally came to a close, with Bellavia, miraculously, alive. In the words of the author: "HOUSE TO HOUSE holds nothing back. It is a raw, gritty look at killing and combat and how men react to it. It is gut-wrenching, shocking and brutal. It is honest. It is not a glorification of war. Yet it will not shy from acknowledging this: sometimes it takes something as terrible as war for the full beauty of the human spirit to emerge."
Download or read book The Phantom Major written by Virginia Cowles and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2011-06-13 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An action-packed biography of “one of the legitimate storybook heroes of World War II” and the special forces regiment he founded (The New York Times). In the dark and uncertain days of 1941 and 1942, when Rommel’s Afrika Korps was sweeping toward Egypt and the Suez Canal, a small group of daring raiders made history for the Allies. They operated deep behind German lines, driving hundreds of miles through the deserts of North Africa. They hid by day and struck by night, destroying aircraft, blowing up ammunition dumps, derailing trains, and killing many times their own number. These men were the Special Air Service. The SAS was the brainchild of David Stirling, a deceptively mild-mannered man with a brilliant idea. Under his command, small teams of resourceful, highly trained men penetrated beyond the front lines of the opposing armies and wreaked havoc where the Germans least expected it. From Virginia Cowles, whose biographies have been praised as “splendidly readable” (Sunday Times) and “fascinating” (Kirkus Reviews), this is a classic account of these raids, an amazing tale of courage, impudence, and daring packed with action and high adventure. Her narrative, based on the eyewitness testimony of the men who took part, gives a compelling insight into the early years of the SAS.
Download or read book Hoodwinked written by Stephen Shapiro and published by Annick Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: True stories of courage and the horrors of World War Ttwo.
Download or read book The Men Who Killed the Luftwaffe written by Jay A. Stout and published by Stackpole Books. This book was released on 2010 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dramatic story of World War II in the air How the U.S. built an air force of 2.3 million men after starting with 45,000 and defeated the world's best air force Vivid accounts of aerial combat Winner, 2011 San Diego Book Awards for Military & Politics In order to defeat Germany in World War II, the Allies needed to destroy the Third Reich's industry and invade its territory, but before they could effectively do either, they had to defeat the Luftwaffe, whose state-of-the-art aircraft and experienced pilots protected German industry and would batter any attempted invasion. This difficult task fell largely to the U.S., which, at the outset, lacked the necessary men, materiel, and training. Over the ensuing years, thanks to visionary leadership and diligent effort, the U.S. Army Air Force developed strategies and tactics and assembled a well-trained force that convincingly defeated the Luftwaffe.
Download or read book Operation Phantom Fury written by Dick Camp and published by Zenith Press. This book was released on 2009-12-15 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Second Battle for Fallujah, dubbed Operation Phantom Fury, took place over an almost two-month period, from November 7 to December 23, 2004. The Marine Corps’ biggest battle in Iraq to date, it was so prolonged and fierce that it has entered the pantheon of USMC battles alongside Iwo Jima, Inchon, and Hue City. This book offers an in-depth, intimate look into Operation Phantom Fury, the single most significant battle undertaken during the occupation of Iraq. The author, a retired Marine Corps colonel with combat service in Vietnam, conducted personal interviews with combatants, from the division commander in charge of the operation down to Marine infantrymen who did the fighting. The result--illustrated with a hundred action photographs--is a rare firsthand account of the brutal reality of the war in Iraq, how this battle for a key city was fought, and how such a crucial battle looks from positions of command and from the thick of the fight.
Download or read book Phantom Warrior written by Forrest Bryant Johnson and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2007-08-07 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of John McKinney who received the Medal of Honor for his actions against a Japanese surprise attack. On May 11, 1945, McKinney returned fire on the Japanese attacking his unit, using every available weapon-even his fists-standing alone against wave after wave of dedicated Japanese soldiers. At the end, John McKinney was alive-with over forty Japanese bodies before him. This is the story of an extraordinary man whose courage and fortitude in battle saved many American lives, and whose legacy has been sadly forgotten by all but a few. Here, the proud legacy of John McKinney lives on.
Download or read book Strategy Strikes Back written by Max Brooks and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2018-05 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most successful film franchise of all time, Star Wars thrillingly depicts an epic multigenerational conflict fought a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But the Star Wars saga has as much to say about successful strategies and real-life warfare waged in our own time and place. Strategy Strikes Back brings together over thirty of today's top military and strategic experts, including generals, policy advisors, seasoned diplomats, counterinsurgency strategists, science fiction writers, war journalists, and ground‑level military officers, to explain the strategy and the art of war by way of the Star Wars films. Each chapter of Strategy Strikes Back provides a relatable, outside‑the‑box way to simplify and clarify the complexities of modern military conflict. A chapter on the case for planet building on the forest moon of Endor by World War Z author Max Brooks offers a unique way to understand our own sustained engagement in war-ravaged societies such as Afghanistan. Another chapter on the counterinsurgency waged by Darth Vader against the Rebellion sheds light on the logic behind past military incursions in Iraq. Whether using the destruction of Alderaan as a means to explore the political implications of targeting civilians, examining the pivotal decisions made by Yoda and the Jedi Council to differentiate strategic leadership in theory and in practice, or considering the ruthlessness of Imperial leaders to explain the toxicity of top-down leadership in times of war and battle, Strategy Strikes Back gives fans of Star Wars and aspiring military minds alike an inspiring and entertaining means of understanding many facets of modern warfare. It is a book as captivating and enthralling as Star Wars itself.
Download or read book Edgar Or The Phantom of the Castle written by Richard Sicklemore and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "His foot struck against something, he stumbled, and had nearly fallen; he stooped to examine what it was, and his hand rested on the face of a human being, cold, putrid, and clammy " Young Edgar's father, the noble Baron Fitz-Elmar, has been mysteriously slain, and his uncle, the scheming Sir Armine, rules in his place. Determined to retain power, Armine will stop at nothing to destroy Edgar, who stands to inherit the castle. Now Edgar must flee his tyrannical uncle and outrun the murderous army of assassins sent to kill him. His flight will lead him, on a dark and stormy night, to a ruined priory, where he will discover the horrible truth behind his father's untimely end. A gothicized retelling of Hamlet, and heavily influenced by the tragedies of Shakespeare and the Gothic romances of Walpole and Radcliffe, The Phantom of the Castle was the first of Richard Sickelmore's Gothic novels. This edition, the first since its initial publication in 1798, includes a new introduction, notes, and the complete text of contemporary reviews.
