American Sailors And United States Marines At War And Peace

From World War II through Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, American Sailors and United States Marines at War and Peace: Navy Sea Stories and Marine Corps Legends tells exciting stories of a sailor's and a Marine's life at sea during war and peace. Compiled from the experiences of author Donald Johnson and other American sailors and United States Marines, the book delivers a fascinating glimpse into the everyday exploits of men at war and sea. Johnson includes riveting accounts of battles in the Pacific such as Wake Island and Battle of Bunker Hill in Korea. There are personal experiences from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, and the Middle East. Patriotic stories, stories about Navy Congressional Medal of Honor recipients, and tributes are also included. With such adventures as the aftermath of the Battle of Iwo Jima as seen through the eyes of a small boat operator and Operation Desert Storm as told to the author by his sister, who was a combat stevedore. American Sailors and United States Marines at War and Peace demonstrates the rigors of war as experienced by both sailors and Marines and the humor that goes on during war and during peacetime at sea.

“Not only a just appraisal of the campaigns waged by Marines in World War II; it is a documentation of the Marine struggle to prove the feasibility of amphibious warfare....Relentlessly accurate and impartial.”—N.Y. Times Originally published in 1951, this book is a widely regarded classic on US Marine amphibious doctrine and operations employed in the Pacific during the Second World War. The authors describe in detail the development of the theoretical aspects of amphibious assault in the inter-war period, but devote the vast majority of the narrative to the various landings and their core strategies, using Japanese documents “to sketch in the background of military decisions made by the enemy.” A must for those who wish to understand the American war against Japan.

World War I was a turning point for the U.S. Navy. An American fleet of big ships designed to fight other big ships in line-of-battle formation found itself entering an unprecedented conflict in face of the U-boat. Suppression of that menace demanded radically different solutions, fresh skills, and new thinking.

How have Americans sought peaceful, rather than destructive, solutions to domestic and world conflict? This two-volume set documents peace and antiwar movements in the United States from the colonial era to the present. Although national leaders often claim to be fighting to achieve peace, the real peace seekers struggle against enormous resistance to their message and have often faced persecution for their efforts. Despite a well-established pattern of being involved in wars, the United States also has a long tradition of citizens who made extensive efforts to build and maintain peaceful societies and prevent the destructive human and material costs of war. Unarmed activists have most consistently upheld American values at home. Opposition to War: An Encyclopedia of U.S. Peace and Antiwar Movements investigates this historical tradition of resistance to involvement in armed conflict—an especially important and relevant topic today as the nation has been mired in numerous military conflicts throughout most of the current century. The book examines a largely misunderstood and underappreciated minority of Americans who have committed themselves to finding peaceful resolutions to domestic and international conflicts—individuals who have proposed and conducted an array of practical and creative methods for peaceful change, from the transformation of individual behavior to the development of international governing and legal systems, for more than 250 years. Readers will learn how individuals working alone or organized into societies of various size have steadfastly campaigned to stop war, end the arms race, eliminate the underlying causes of war, and defend the civil liberties of Americans when wartime nationalism most threatens them.

America's "small wars," "imperial wars," or, as the Pentagon now terms them, "low-intensity conflicts," have played an essential but little-appreciated role in its growth as a world power. Beginning with Jefferson's expedition against the Barbary Pirates, Max Boot tells the exciting stories of our sometimes minor but often bloody landings in Samoa, the Philippines, China, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Mexico, Russia, and elsewhere. Along the way he sketches colorful portraits of little-known military heroes such as Stephen Decatur, "Fighting Fred" Funston, and Smedley Butler. From 1800 to the present day, such undeclared wars have made up the vast majority of our military engagements. Yet the military has often resisted preparing itself for small wars, preferring instead to train for big conflicts that seldom come. Boot re-examines the tragedy of Vietnam through a "small war" prism. He concludes with a devastating critique of the Powell Doctrine and a convincing argument that the armed forces must reorient themselves to better handle small-war missions, because such clashes are an inevitable result of America's far-flung imperial responsibilities.