BOOKS

Britain was facing NAZI Germany alone when David Stirling had an idea.  He imagined using the vast emptiness of the harsh North African desert to allow small bands of raiders to attack enemy airfields and overextended supply lines along the coast.  Join us for a review of Virginia Cowles "The Phantom Major" to learn how Stirling and his men lived their motto of "Who Dares Wins".

Hans Ulrich Rudel was Germany’s most decorated soldier of the Second World War.  He flew over 2,500 combat missions, destroyed over 500 Soviet tanks, sank a battleship and cruiser, was shot down more than 30 times and somehow lived through all of it.  Join us for a review of his autobiography “Stuka Pilot”. 

The 1st Marine Division landed at Wonsan on Korea's east coast in October 1953.  When the 12,000-man division started advancing north it looked like the North Korean Army was defeated and maybe the Marines would all be home by Christmas.  As they got higher into the mountains the weather turned much colder and the Marines started to get some indications the Chinese Army had entered Korea also.  The Marines' suspicions were confirmed when they reached the Chosin reservoir.  They were surrounded by 60,000 Chinese soldiers in the freezing mountains.  

The Allies kicked in the door on NAZI occupied Europe on June 6th, 1944.  The 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One, lead the way on the eastern part of Omaha beach.  John C. McManus’ book “The Dead and Those About to Die” is the story of what they did that day.

On May 2nd, 2011 the United States military conducted a raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound and killed him.  One of the people who participated in that raid and witnessed Bin Laden’s death was a Navy SEAL whose pen name is Mark Owen.  Owen’s memoir “No Easy Day” tells the story of the decade he and his teammates spent fighting America’s War on Terror.

On the night of 30-31 March 1944, 795 Royal Air Force bombers attacked the city of Nuremberg.  95 of those bombers were shot down, ten more were written off as complete losses after landing, and 545 bomber crewmen were lost.  More aircrew were lost that night than the whole of the Battle of Britain.  It is the bloodiest day in Royal Air Force history. 

The U.S. Navy started World War Two leaning towards the idea that its submarines were supposed to remain hidden and cautiously scout ahead of the surface fleet.  With the surface fleet destroyed at Pearl Harbor, a new generation of aggressive commanders rose up. They roamed the vast Pacific on independent war patrols that lasted months. William Ruhe’s “War in the Boats” offers a first-hand account of the submarine campaign in the Pacific.  We were privileged to be joined by Rear Admiral Scott Pappano for this episode. 

In April 1980, the U.S. military tried to rescue 52 Americans captured when Iranian militants seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran.  The rescue attempt was called Operation Eagle Claw and it failed.  Eagle Claw involved helicopters flying from a Navy ship and fixed-wing aircraft carrying the assault force and extra fuel flying from another country. One of the helicopters collided with one of the aircraft during ground refueling.  Eight Americans died and seven aircraft were either destroyed or captured. The U.S. formed this counter-terrorist task force in December 1980 and called it the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).  

The U.S. entered the Second World War in December 1941 when the Japanese attacked the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. In January 1942, the United States established the 8th Bomber Group. By February 1942, the 8th Bomber Group had a detachment in England, its first combat units arrived in June, and it launched its first raid on July 4th, 1942 as the 8th Air Force. During World War Two the 8th Air Force conducted over 440,000 bomber sorties over Europe and dropped 697,000 tons of bombs.  All this came with a price.  47,483 members of the 8th Air Force were killed.  A very small cog in this big machine was B-17 co-pilot Bert Stiles.  He arrived in England in March 1944 and flew with the 91st Bomb Group.  He wrote “Serenade to the Big Bird” while doing it.

The Allies landed in Normandy as the sun came up on June 6th, 1944.  A couple of hours before about 13,100 U.S. Army paratroopers from the 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions jumped into the night inland of the Utah and Omaha beaches.  The 82nd's mission was to seize the town of Saint Marie Eglise and the causeways off Utah beach.  Ed Ruggero’s “First Men In” tells the story of how they did it and what it cost. 

The Battle of Guadalcanal took place from August 1942 until February 1943.  Because Guadalcanal is an island, both the Japanese and the Americans relied on the sea to supply their forces and bring in reinforcements.    James D. Hornfischer’s “Neptune’s Inferno” tells the story of the fight to control the seas around Guadalcanal.  These sea battles cost roughly three times as many American lives as the fighting on the island and gave the American surface fleet a hard lesson in modern fleet-on-fleet action.

In April 1968 large elements of the North Vietnamese Army’s 320th Division crossed the Demilitarized Zone into South Vietnam.  They were advancing towards the 3rd Marine Division’s command post and major logistics hub at Dong Ha when they were engaged by the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines.  Fighting raged in and around the village of Dai Do from April 30th until May 3rd.  This was some of the Vietnam War’s most intense combat.  The United States suffered 233 dead and 821 wounded.  Keith Nolan’s “Magnificent Bastards” tells the story. 

James Nelson’s “I Will Hold” tells the story of Clifton B. Cates.  Cates began serving in the Marine Corps in June 1917.  He deployed to France as part of the 6th Marine Regiment and participated in the Third Battle of Aisne, the Battle of Belleau Wood, and the Battle of Soissons.  Cates was awarded the Navy Cross, two Distinguished Service Crosses, the Star, and Purple Heart for his service during World War One.  He remained in the in Marine Corps and served during the Second World War where he lead the 1st Marine Regiment at Guadalcanal and then commanded the 4th Marine Division for the seizure of Tinian and Iwo Jima.  Cates went on to serve as the nineteenth Commandant of the Marine Corps.  He retired in 1954. 

North Korea tried to unify the peninsula by invading South Korea in June 1950.  As the U.S. advanced during late October and November they got higher into the mountains and the weather got much colder.  While this was going on there was the question of what, if anything, the Chinese Communists were planning to do. The cold, desolate hillsides were crawling with over three hundred thousand tough and committed soldiers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.  David Halberstam’s “The Coldest Winter” tells the story of what happened when the Chinese sprung their trap.

The Marine Corps grew to 485,000 Marines during the Second World War.  This was twenty-five times larger than it was in 1939.  This greatly expanded Corps attacked and captured Japanese held islands across the Central Pacific from 1942 until the war ended in 1945.  Each island landing brought the United States closer to invading the Japanese home islands.  One Marine that participated in the Pacific campaign was Eugene B. Sledge.  He was a mortarman with Company K, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines.  “With the Old Breed” tells Sledge’s story of fighting through the battles of Peleliu and Okinawa.

In 1942 the British were fighting for control of the Atlantic Ocean.  If they lost this battle they would starve and be put out of the war.  German submarines were pushing the British to their limits and they could ill afford to have the German battleship Tirpitz sortie into the Atlantic and join the fight. To stop this from happening the British determined the best way to neutralize the Tirpitz was to destroy the only dry dock on the Atlantic coast that was large enough to accommodate the battleship should it take damage fighting on the open ocean. The Great Raid of All is the the story of how a small force of British sailors and commandos sailed under the noses of the Germans and destroyed the Normandie dry dock in Saint Nazaire.

The U.S. Army’s Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division was part of the force that invaded Iraq in March of 2003.  It raced out of Kuwait in Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles across open terrain, fighting a battle for which they'd trained. Instead of encircling the city of seven million people and trying to clear it block by block with dismounted infantry, the decision was made to make a rapier armored thrust into Baghdad, seize the centers of power, and cause Saddam Hussein’s regime to collapse from within. That is what the Second Brigade did and what is chronicled in David Zucchino’s “Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad.”

Imperial Japanese Navy pilots were an elite corps.  They lead the world in developing naval aviation between the First and Second World Wars.  Although their equipment was modern and tactics were cutting edge, their values and collective identity were based in something much older.  They were the modern incarnation of Japan’s ancient warrior caste, the Samurai, and adhered to the warrior code of bushido.  Saburo Sakai was one of them.  He fought throughout the war, became a leading ace, and was one of the very few who survived to write his story.

The Navy and Marine Corps attacked the Tarawa atoll on November 20th, 1943.  It was their first objective in the drive across the Central Pacific.  The island was defended by 2,600 Japanese troops and about 2,200 Japanese and Korean laborers.  They had spent nine months fortifying the atoll.  Most of the action took place on Betio.  Betio is the largest island in the atoll but it is only covered six tenths of a square mile big.  In 76 hours it took to seize Betio, 1,009 Sailors and Marines died, along with virtually the entire Japanese garrison.  It was a battle of utmost savagery and the reason Joseph Alexander used it for the title of this book. 

Charles MacDonald was twenty-one yeas old when he assumed command of Company I 23rd Infantry in October 1944.  His company had been in combat sense D plus 1 and MacDonald had never been in combat.  MacDonald learns his job in a trial by fire that tests him in every imaginable way.  In the eight months he was in command he fought in Battle of the Bulge and lead his infantry company across Germany in the last months of the war.  This story of a young infantry company commander leading men is battle during World War 2 is one of the most brutally honest accounts of leadership and combat ever written. 

John Paul Vann was a career Army officer. He served in combat during the Korean War and was an advisor to the South Vietnamese Army’s IV Corps fighting the Viet Cong for a year from 1962 to 1963. Vann retired from the Army a few months after completing that assignment.  He returned to Vietnam in 1965. In 1968 he was assigned to the same position for the Fourth Corps Tactical Zone in the provinces south of Saigon. Vann died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam on June 16, 1972. During his years in Vietnam, he developed some strong views about what the United States was doing versus what he thought it should be doing. 

The German navy refitted the merchant ship Atlantis with weapons hidden in phony deckhouses and side structures.  Using its disguise as a freighter, the Atlantis stalked the ocean for over 600 days in 1940 and 1941.  She captured or sank 22 ships until cornered and sunk by the British.  Bernhard Rogge was the captain of the Atlantis throughout its service.  This is the story of what he and his crew did. 

After the United States invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein from power in spring 2003, the city of Fallujah became a hotbed of unrest. In March 2004, four American contractors were brutally murdered and mutilated there. President Bush ordered an attack to subdue the city. This attack was called off early after it sparked a media and political firestorm. With U.S. forces out of it, Fallujah became the red-hot epicenter of Iraq’s Sunni insurgency and the U.S. recommitted to taking it through large-scale offensive action.  This operation, known as Phantom Fury, lasted from November and December 2004. We are joined in this episode by Mr. Pat Carroll who spent close to four years in Iraq working in or dealing with Fallujah.

Ernst Junger was an infantry officer in the German army throughout World War One.  He served in the trenches for close to four years, was wounded fourteen times, and was the youngest recipient of Germany’s highest award, Pour le Mérite.  Somehow, he lived.  Storm of Steel is his memoir.  It was first published in 1920.

In November 1965, roughly 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry flew by helicopter into Vietnam’s Ia Drang Valley.  They were attacked by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers almost immediately.  Three days later, one of their sister battalions was unexpectedly attacked a short distance away. The U.S. lost 237 killed.  These two fights at landing zones X-Ray and Albany came on the front end of America’s build up in Vietnam and were a portent of things to come.  The two authors of this book were there.  One, Hal Moore, commanded the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry and the other, Joe Galloway, was a war correspondent.

Eight soldiers from Britain’s Special Air Service flew deep into northwestern Iraq on the night of January 22nd, 1991.  Their callsign was Bravo Two Zero.  Their mission was to destroy the SCUD missiles Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was using against Israel.  A young goat herder stumbled across the patrol after it was on the ground for less than a day.  With their cover blown and no way to call for help, the eight soldiers attempted to fight their way more than 100 miles across the desert to Syria.  Only one made it.  This book was written by Bravo Two Zero’s patrol leader and tells the story of what happened.

By the middle of 1942, the United States had recovered from the shock of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the early defeats of Japan expanding into the Pacific.  Now it started parallel offensives north and south of the equator.  By the middle of 1944, the United States had retaken the Marianas Islands and was flowing over Japan’s empire like “a conquering tide.”

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck commanded Imperial German military forces throughout the East Africa campaign during World War One.  His mostly African army of about 14,000 attacked, checked, and evaded much larger Allied forces for over four years.  When the war ended, Lettow-Vorbeck surrendered and returned undefeated to a hero’s welcome in Germany.  This book is how he remembers the experience.

The Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, was created between North Vietnam and South Vietnam in 1954. The DMZ was supposed to be a temporary buffer zone that would keep previously hostile forces away from each other. When the planned unification of North Vietnam and South Vietnam stalled out, the DMZ stayed on with an air of permanence. It was four to six miles wide and ran about 47 miles from the coast to the border with Laos. Don’t believe the label though. The DMZ was anything but demilitarized. It’s here in the DMZ that the 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines got into the fight for its life in September 1967. In four days, 3/26 lost 56 killed and 290 wounded.

Argentina seized the Falkland Islands on April 2nd, 1982.  The British government deployed a naval task force on April 5th to take them back.  As the force steadily converged from 8,000 miles away, the rest of the world wondered if the two countries would really fight over the remote and sparsely populated islands.  They did.  By the time it was over in June, 3,336 people had been killed or wounded; sixteen ships sunk; and 134 aircraft were lost.  The Falklands campaign is considered by many as the first technologically modern war.  In some ways it is a microcosm of what major fleet actions could look like.  Martin Middlebrook’s “Operation Corporate” gives us the details of what happened.

The Sherwood Rangers were a British tank regiment during the Second World War.  They served in North Africa where they fought in the battles of Alam El Hafa and Second El Alamein and helped drive Germany’s Afrika Corps out of Tunisia.  Next, the Sherwood Rangers landed in Normandy on D-Day.  They lead the drive out of France, across Belgium, and into Germany.  It was a hard slog, and they paid a price.  The Sherwood Rangers tank crews suffered 148% casualties just in the European campaign.  James Holland tells their story at a personal level in this book. 

Adolf Hitler ruled Germany from 1933 until he committed suicide in 1945.  Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953.  Between 1933 and 1945 these two brutal dictators oversaw the killing of 14 million noncombatants in the region comprised of the Baltic states, Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine.  Timothy Snyder explains how and why the NAZI and Soviet regimes inflected such suffering in Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.

Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) was established in January 1964 to conduct unconventional warfare operations.  These included reconnoitering and disrupting North Vietnamese activities in Laos and Cambodia.  Given the sensitive nature of MACV-SOG’s work, its missions were classified.  John Plaster served three years with MACV-SOG and tells the unit’s story in “SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam.” 

By the end of 1914, World War One had stagnated into an industrial age nightmare.  The British and French sat opposite the Germans in trenches running through France from the coast to the Alps.  Things weren’t much different in the East where the early Russian advance had been defeated.  The British looked for options.  What could they do to alter the situation?  They looked at the Dardanelles Straits.  This narrow waterway connects the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea.  The Turks had mined the strait and fortified its coastline but if the British could land troops and their ships could force through the strait, they could threaten the Turkish capital.  So that’s what they tried to do.  The Australian author Les Carlyon tells the story of what happened in “Gallipoli”.

On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by a group of Arab and German terrorists.  They demanded the release of 53 terrorists and diverted the plane to Entebbe, Uganda.  On July 4th, Israeli commandos disguised as Ugandan soldiers flew over 2,000 miles, assaulted the airport, killed the terrorists, and rescued all but three of the hostages within an hour. The Israeli assault force suffered one fatality: its commander, Yoni Netanyahu (brother of Israel's current Prime Minister).  Saul David’s “Operation Thunderbolt” is a definitive account of what happened.

In June 1942, Germany’s Army Group South started an offensive called Case Blue or Plan Blue.  The idea was to sprint out off eastern Ukraine, across the Russian steppe, and into the Caucasus to capture the oil fields there.  As part of this big effort, the German Sixth Army attempted to capture the city of Stalingrad on the Volga River.  The Sixth Army reached Stalingrad in August.  The fighting was ferocious.  In November the Soviets launched offensives of their own north and south of Stalingrad.  Those two pincers linked up and trapped the Germans in a cauldron.  Fighting continued in Stalingrad but now winter was closing in.  Starvation and the cold exacted a toll as harsh as the Soviets.  Despite Hitler’s attempts to resupply the Sixth Army by air and his exhortations to fight to the last, what was left of the German Sixth Army surrendered in late January 1943.  There was no way for Hitler and his propagandists to spin this crushing defeat.  Anthony Beevor tells the story of history’s largest land battle and arguably the turning point of World War Two in “Stalingrad.”

Episode 38 - A Bridge Too Far by Cornelius Ryan

Episode 39 - Hell In A Very Small Place by Bernard Fall

Episode 40 - Operation Barras : The SAS Rescue Mission Sierra Leone 2000 by William Fowler

Episode 41 - Band Of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose

Episode 42 - With Their Bare Hands by Gene Fax

Episode 43 - Soldat by Siegfried Knapp

Episode 44 - A Savage War of Peace by Alistair Home

Episode 45 - First Force Recon Company: Sunrise at Midnight  by Dr. Bill Peters

Episode 46 - Goodbye Darkness by William Manchester

Episode 47 - Not a Good Day to Die  by Sean Naylor

Episode 48 - The Winter Fortress by Neal Bascomb

Episode 49 - Conduct Under Fire by John Glusman