Dead Men Flying

Viet Nam may be the only war we ever fought, or perhaps that was ever fought, in which the heroism of the American soldier was accompanied by humanitarianism unmatched in the annals of warfare. And the humanitarianism took place during the heat of the battle. The GI fixed as he fought, he cured and educated and built in the middle of the battle. He truly cared for, and about, those people. What other Army has ever done that? Humanitarianism was America's great victory in Viet Nam. Spearheading the humanitarian efforts were the air ambulance operations, call-sign Dust Off, the most dangerous of all aviation operations, which rescued some one million souls in Viet Nam. Dead Men Flying is the story of Charles Kelly, the father of Dust Off, who gave his life to save Dust Off—the greatest life-saver ever. His dying words—When I have your wounded—set the standard for combat medicine to this day. It is also the story of the author, Medal of Honor recipient General Patrick Brady, who learned from Charles Kelly and struggled to meet his standard. Brady led the 54th Medical Detachment as it rescued over twenty-one thousand wounded—enemy and friendly—in ten months, while sustaining twenty-six Purple Hearts. Dead Men Flying is the story of salvation in the midst of horror, courage in the face of adversity, and the miracle of faith in the heat of combat. A riveting tale from America's most decorated living soldier, this is a book that no American can afford to ignore. Now with two new chapters, Dead Men Flying provides in-depth analysis by General Brady about where the state of the military today and how we can get back on track to be the greatest nation on earth.

Presents a history of one of the most dangerous aviation operations during the Vietnam War, call-sign Dust Off, in which air ambulances spearheaded the humanitarian efforts that were being executed during the war.

None of us will survive. The arithmetic was inescapable. The squadron started with twelve A-4E Skyhawks and twenty-two pilots. After seven days, it had eight aircraft and nineteen pilots. He had over two hundred days to go. He would never see home again. Dead Men Flying is an honest, unflinching account of how Mike, the college kid, became a warrior called "Mule." It tells of his struggles to become a Naval Aviator. He masters the skills necessary to launch and land a jet fighter bomber on an aircraft carrier. He experiences the transforming state of being when his aircraft merges with his body and becomes an extension of his will; a place where time slows to a crawl; sensory awareness extends to the horizon; and thoughts flash faster than the flick of an eyelid. Within the squadron he develops the bonds of brotherhood that are forged when the pilots must trust each other with their lives. Flying mission after mission from into the heart of the North Vietnamese defenses, he pays the cost when death shatters those bonds. The descriptions of combat are immediate and immersive. They envelope the reader in the perishable art of aerial warfare, a ballet performed out of sight and mind of all but the few who were there. The descriptions are enhanced with more than seventy photographs, many taken during combat. Dead Men Flying is the story of men tested to the breaking point and beyond by unrelenting threat and losses. It tells how they stood together with unflinching resilience, courage, devotion, and sacrifice. The author flew 212 combat missions with the Ghost Riders of Attack Squadron 164 over two cruises between June, 1967 and February, 1969.

During World War II, Allied casualty rates in the air were high. Of the roughly 125,000 who served as aircrew with Bomber Command, 59,423 were killed or missing and presumed killed—a fatality rate of 45.5%. With odds like that, it would be no surprise if there were as few atheists in cockpits as there were in foxholes; and indeed, many airmen faced their dangerous missions with beliefs and rituals ranging from the traditional to the outlandish. Military historian S. P. MacKenzie considers this phenomenon in Flying against Fate, a pioneering study of the important role that superstition played in combat flier morale among the Allies in World War II. Mining a wealth of documents as well as a trove of published and unpublished memoirs and diaries, MacKenzie examines the myriad forms combat fliers' superstitions assumed, from jinxes to premonitions. Most commonly, airmen carried amulets or talismans—lucky boots or a stuffed toy; a coin whose year numbers added up to thirteen; counterintuitively, a boomerang. Some performed rituals or avoided other acts, e.g., having a photo taken before a flight. Whatever seemed to work was worth sticking with, and a heightened risk often meant an upsurge in superstitious thought and behavior. MacKenzie delves into behavior analysis studies to help explain the psychology behind much of the behavior he documents—not slighting the large cohort of crew members and commanders who demurred. He also looks into the ways in which superstitious behavior was tolerated or even encouraged by those in command who saw it as a means of buttressing morale. The first in-depth exploration of just how varied and deeply felt superstitious beliefs were to tens of thousands of combat fliers, Flying against Fate expands our understanding of a major aspect of the psychology of war in the air and of World War II.

Murder is afoot in the tropical climes of the Florida Keys--Peter Falconer, the son of wealthy parents who stands to gain a fortune in inheritance on his 30th birthday, is missing and presumed dead. Ex-Army investigator Daniel Shaw, who is currently studying law and preparing for the Bar exam, is summoned by the devious--and incredibly witty--attorney Tom Petrie to find Peter and rescue the inheritance money. The pursuit leads Daniel from the Keys to Jamaica to South America, where he tangles with the larger-than-life criminal Raven Ahriman and his partner, Charles Angleton, Peter's childhood friend who ultimately orchestrated Peter's disappearance in connection with some dubious dealings in snuff films and the death of two young girls who participated in the filming. With the assistance of Tom; Peter's sister, Susan, who is devastated to learn of her brother's shady interests; and Daniel's hired loose-cannon "bodyguard" Leroy, Daniel tracks Raven through the Mosquito Keys and onto the high seas, where the small group is left for dead on a ship. But after the discovery of Peter Falconer and a heroic escape, Daniel must ultimately face Raven in a battle for his life in this superbly crafted novel by thriller-writer Faust.? From the Paperback edition.

In the North African desert, during the closing years of the nineteenth century, a warrior chieftain appeared from out of the sands themselves, claiming to be the incarnation of the Prophet. He called himself the Mahdi, and he pledged to sweep the Infidel English colonizers of the Sudan and their Egyptian allies from the land, to scourge the land by fire, blood and steel until not a single interloper was left among the living. At the head of his minions, called Ansari or believers by the Mahdi but Dervishes and "Turks" -- a name for all outsiders -- by the British, the Mahdi rode, wielding his trademark, a jewel-encrusted sword whose origins lay in the time of the Crusades. At first, the Mahdi was dismissed as a mere madman. But as the Bedouin tribesmen of sub-Saharan Africa rallied to his standard, taking up the sword against the hated Infidel in a Holy War of Madiyyah, the Mahdi's forces swept across North Africa in a blood-tide of death and destruction that left nothing but ashes and rubble strewn in its wake. The British and the Egyptians (the latter who, to this day, maintain interests in the Sudan) built and then manned forts such as mighty Omdurman against the incursion of the Mahdi, but were unable to turn the tide on their own. As the situation worsened, and before the crisis had passed the point of no return, a military expedition comprised of British regular forces was launched against the warrior chieftain's band in a desperate bid to defeat him. But it too failed to succeed. All but a few of the soldiers were exterminated in the desert wastes of Kordofan, and in its aftermath the Mahdi grew even stronger and far bolder than he had ever been before. The Sudan's defenders realized that unless drastic measures were taken, and the Mahdi stopped, before long the war would be certainly lost and the entire region of sub-Saharan Africa plunged into an era of barbarism and bloodshed the likes of which had never before been seen. While the last outposts of once great colonial power manned their forts along the Nile and in the desert vastness further inland, counting the days and weeks until they too would be destroyed by the Mahdi's ferocious hordes of nomadic warriors, foreign mercenaries were sought out in a last-ditch effort to turn the tide of battle in the war against the Mahdi. The center of mercenary activity was Zanzibar, a small island republic that lay off the East African coast, ruled by its Sultan who was the Mahdi's sworn enemy -- for the Sultan himself held an ancestral claim on the lands of the Sudan. In the days during which this story occurred, Zanzibar was a place where anything went and any pleasure or vice could be bought by whomever carried enough gold in his purse with which to meet the seller’s price. From its slave markets to its hashish dens, Zanzibar had long since earned a reputation for being a hotbed of every form of corruption, vice and sinful pursuit known to man. At the same time it was also a place to which an adventurer might come in order to make both his fortune and write his name forever on the bloodstained pages of history. At the height of the Mahdi's reign of terror, the desert warlord overstepped himself by kidnapping one of the most beautiful denizens of the Sultan’s royal seraglio, an Englishwoman who was the descendant of titled nobility. The Sultan could not permit such a brazen act of aggression to go unavenged. The Mahdi had taken his favorite wife of all his many other wives and concubines, and he knew that he had to get her back or forfeit his right to rule. But how? From the renowned military leader, bold adventurer and former Governor of the Sudan, "Chinese Charlie" Gordon, and his colleagues in Whitehall, London, came the solution. It would be based upon the same principles by which Gordon had established the band of cut-throat mercenaries some years before that had come to be called Baker's Forty Thieves by friend and foe alike. Only now they would solicit the aid of one of the most notorious pirates of the day, the American privateer known as Snakeskin Blake. History states that the Mahdi was never defeated on the battlefield, but instead vanished from the Sudan one day, years later, almost as mysteriously as he had originally first appeared. This is because history has never recorded the true reason for the Mahdi's sudden demise. As the story chronicled in the pages of this book will reveal, the Mahdi’s defeat was brought about by the secret war waged against him by Snakeskin Blake and his band of mercenary heroes whose exploits made them known throughout the windswept desert reaches of North Africa as the Brothers of the Gun.

This carefully crafted ebook collection is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents: Treasure Island (R. L. Stevenson) Blackbeard: Buccaneer (R. D. Paine) Pieces of Eight (Le Gallienne) Gold-Bug (Edgar A. Poe) The Dark Frigate (C. B. Hawes) Hearts of Three (Jack London) Captain Singleton (Defoe) Swords of Red Brotherhood (Howard) Queen of Black Coast (Howard) Afloat and Ashore (James F. Cooper) Pirate Gow (Defoe) The King of Pirates (Defoe) Barbarossa—King of the Corsairs (E. H. Currey) Homeward Bound (James F. Cooper) Red Rover (Cooper) The Pirate (Walter Scott) Book of Pirates (Howard Pyle) Under the Waves (R. M. Ballantyne) Rose of Paradise (Howard Pyle) Tales of the Fish Patrol (Jack London) Peter Pan and Wendy (J. M. Barrie) Captain Sharkey (Arthur Conan Doyle) The Pirate (Frederick Marryat) Three Cutters (Marryat) Madman and the Pirate (R. M. Ballantyne) Coral Island (Ballantyne) Pirate City (Ballantyne) Gascoyne (Ballantyne) Facing the Flag (Jules Verne) Captain Boldheart (Dickens) Mysterious Island (Jules Verne) Master Key (L. Frank Baum) A Man to His Mate (J. Allan Dunn) Isle of Pirate's Doom (Robert E. Howard) Black Vulmea (Howard) Robinson Crusoe (Defoe) Count of Monte Cristo (A. Dumas) Ghost Pirates (W. H. Hodgson) Offshore Pirate (F. Scott Fitzgerald) The Piccaroon (Michael Scott) The Capture of Panama, 1671 (John Esquemeling) The Malay Proas (James Fenimore Cooper) The Wonderful Fight of the Exchange of Bristol With the Pirates of Algiers (Samuel Purchas) The Daughter of the Great Mogul (Defoe) Morgan at Puerto Bello Among Malay Pirates: A Tale of Adventure and Peril The Ways of the Buccaneers A True Account of Three Notorious Pirates Narrative of the Capture of the Ship Derby, 1735 (Captain Anselm) Francis Lolonois The Fight Between the Dorrill and the Moca Jaddi the Malay Pirate The Terrible Ladrones The Female Captive The Passing of Mogul Mackenzie The Last of the Sea-Rovers Pagan Madonna ...

A Medal of Honor recipient looks back at his own service in the Vietnam War—and ahead to America’s future. Jack Jacobs was acting as an advisor to the South Vietnamese when he and his men came under devastating attack. Wounded, 1st Lt. Jacobs took command and withdrew the unit, returning again and again, saving fourteen lives—for which he received the Medal of Honor. Here, Col. Jacobs tells his stirring story of heroism, honor, and the personal code by which he has lived his life, and expounds with blunt honesty and insight his views on our contemporary world, and the nature and necessity of sacrifice. If Not Now, When? is a compelling account of a unique life at both war and peace, and the all-too-often unexamined role of the citizenry in the service and defense of the Republic.