An Army Of Stories

On Friday, November 10, 1775, the Continental Congress approved a resolution for the organization of the Corps, creating what would become the hallowed few, the proud--the Marines. Since then, the men and women of the United States Marine Corps have created the finest traditions of service and honor, and supplied a pantheon of heroes who have upheld them. In The Greatest U.S. Marine Stories Ever Told, editor Iain Martin has accumulated these marines' most amazing true tales of service and sacrifice, from the Halls of Montezuma, to the shores of Tripoli, to the conflicts where they serve today.

The first combat memoir of the War on Terrorism: the gripping story of a young man’s transformation into a twenty-first-century warrior. Born into a family with a long history of military service dating back to the Revolutionary War, Andrew Exum enrolled in Army ROTC to pay for his Ivy League education. Shortly after graduation in 2000, he joined the infantry, then endured the grueling rigors of Ranger School before becoming a platoon leader with the storied 10th Mountain Division. He thought that perhaps, if he was lucky, he and his men would see action on a peacekeeping mission. Then came the fateful events of September 11, 2001. Called to action as a twenty-three-year-old, he led his troops into Afghanistan to root out the hard-core remnants of Osama bin Laden’s forces. Thrown into the maelstrom of modern war, Exum contended with Afghani warlords, cable news correspondents, and the military bureaucracy while hunting a desperate enemy in a treacherous land—and on a mountain ridge in the Shah-e-Kot Valley he would confront and kill an al-Qaeda fighter. After returning home, Exum struggled to come to terms with the media coverage and public perception of the war while seeking to make peace with the man he had become. By turns harrowing and reflective, this powerful memoir gives voice to a generation of soldiers that has risen to confront the threats of a dangerous new world.

Experienced commanders discuss anecdotes and case studies from their past operations.

Long before she made her first trip to Afghanistan as an embedded reporter for The Globe and Mail, Christie Blatchford was already one of Canada’s most respected and eagerly read journalists. Her vivid prose, her unmistakable voice, her ability to connect emotionally with her subjects and readers, her hard-won and hard-nosed skills as a reporter–these had already established her as a household name. But with her many reports from Afghanistan, and in dozens of interviews with the returned members of the 1st Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and others back at home, she found the subject she was born to tackle. Her reporting of the conflict and her deeply empathetic observations of the men and women who wear the maple leaf are words for the ages, fit to stand alongside the nation’s best writing on war. It is a testament to Christie Blatchford’s skills and integrity that along with the admiration of her readers, she won the respect and trust of the soldiers. They share breathtakingly honest accounts of their desire to serve, their willingness to confront fear and danger in the battlefield, their loyalty towards each other and the heartbreak occasioned by the loss of one of their own. Grounded in insights gained over the course of three trips to Afghanistan in 2006, and drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews not only with the servicemen and -women with whom she shared so much, but with their commanders and family members as well, Christie Blatchford creates a detailed, complex and deeply affecting picture of military life in the twenty-first century.

Drawing on untapped new sources, the first global history of the Indian Expeditionary Forces in World War I While their story is almost always overlooked, the 1.5 million Indian soldiers who served the British Empire in World War I played a crucial role in the eventual Allied victory. Despite their sacrifices, Indian troops received mixed reactions from their allies and their enemies alike-some were treated as liberating heroes, some as mercenaries and conquerors themselves, and all as racial inferiors and a threat to white supremacy. Yet even as they fought as imperial troops under the British flag, their broadened horizons fired in them new hopes of racial equality and freedom on the path to Indian independence. Drawing on freshly uncovered interviews with members of the Indian Army in Iraq and elsewhere, historian George Morton-Jack paints a deeply human story of courage, colonization, and racism, and finally gives these men their rightful place in history.

In this ""unpretending story"" published in 1867, Sarah Palmer, known to the Union soldiers she nursed during the Civil War as ""Aunt Becky,"" tells simply and directly one woman's tale of war. Palmer, believed to have been the first woman to serve as a Union Army nurse, cared for countless sick, wounded, and dying soldiers during her three years of service. Said one soldier, ""I never knew a woman so much thought of as she was by the boys - she never showed any partiality - we all got the same attention - officers no more than privates.""

"Provides gripping accounts of Army servicemen and servicewomen who showed exceptional courage during combat"--

The Greatest Navy SEAL Stories Ever Told is the first book to place side by side extraordinary stories of SEALs who put their lives on the line, and then go out and do it again the next day. They illustrate the SEAL maxim, “The person who will not be defeated cannot be defeated.” SEALs in action - men of courage and ingenuity, from the rice paddies and hills of Vietnam to the plains and mountains of Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan - appear in these pages. These stories cover the most significant overt and covert operations conducted since the U.S. Navy established Sea Land and Air Teams (SEALs) established in January 1962. The one common denominator in these chapters is the courage and ingenuity of those who proudly call themselves Navy SEALs. Sometimes SEALs and other participants in these stories recall differing versions of the same events, as recounted here for the reader to make his own judgments. So far as I know, no previously classified or sensitive information is revealed in these pages.