Reluctant Warriors

During the “Hundred Days” campaign of the First World War, over 30 percent of conscripts who served in the Canadian Corps became casualties. Yet, they were often considered slackers for not having volunteered. Reluctant Warriors is the first examination of the pivotal role played by Canadian conscripts in the final campaign of the Great War on the Western Front. Challenging long-standing myths, this Patrick Dennis examines whether conscripts made any significant difference to the success of the Canadian Corps in 1918. Reluctant Warriors provides fresh evidence that conscripts were good soldiers who made a crucial contribution to the war effort.

Can Germany and Japan do more militarily to uphold the international order? Since the end of World War II, Germany and Japan have been the most reluctant of all major U.S. allies to take on military responsibilities. Given their histories, this reluctance certainly is understandable. But because of their size and economic importance, Germany and Japan are the most important U.S. allies in Europe and in East Asia, respectively, and their long-term reluctance to share the defense burden has become a perennial source of frustration for Washington. The potential security roles of Germany and Japan are becoming increasingly important given the uncertainty, indeed volatility, of today’s international environment. Under President Trump, friction among allies over burden-sharing is more intense than ever before. Meanwhile, the security environments in Europe and Asia have deteriorated because of the resurgence of a belligerent Russia under Vladimir Putin, the steady rise of an increasingly assertive China, and North Korea’s worrisome acquisition of nuclear weapons. Partly in response to these developments, Germany and Japan in recent years have boosted their security efforts, mainly by increasing defense spending and taking on a somewhat broader range of military missions. Even so, because of their cultures of anti-militarism resistance remains strong in both countries to rebuilding the military and assuming more responsibility for sustaining regional or even global peace. In Reluctant Warriors, a team of noted international experts critically examines how and why Germany and Japan have modified their military postures since 1990 so far, and assesses how far the countries still have to go—and why. The contributors also highlight the risks the United States takes if it makes too simplistic a demand for the two countries to “do more.”

Reluctant Warriors challenges traditional political interpretations of the Spanish Civil War, and sets it in a new and immediately human light. It is a comparative study of Nationalist Army and Republican Popular Army conscripts, and analyses the conflict from the perspective of those who were involved against their will. While militants on both sides joined the conflict voluntarily, millions of Spanish men coped with the military uprising as an unwanted intrusion into their lives. James Matthews firstly examines the climate in which both sides implemented mass conscription within their zones. He analyses the process of conscription from call-up to placement in a unit, and looks at the methods employed to motivate and maintain the morale of drafted men, as well as the approaches to discipline in the two armies. Finally, he examines situations in which men avoided front line service. These accounted for constant manpower losses on both sides, and were particularly marked for the Republic. Reluctant Warriors reveals that the Nationalist Army managed its conscripted men better than the Republican Popular Army; a vital factor in determining the ultimate outcome of the war.

World War II, 1939-1945, was easily the most destructive war in history; claiming the lives of from fifty to sixty millions of people. This historical fiction takes us "behind the scenes" in the lives of everyday people who became reluctant warriors. Each of the men depicted in this book—Joseph “Chip” Wiley, Jimmy DeValery, Harry Conners, and Theodore Rodgers—were admirable people who gave everything they had and became Army scouts, men in aircraft like the B-25, B-17, P-38, P-47. They went from the guy next door to operating Navy PT boats, submarines, destroyers, and heavy cruisers. They did what America and the world needed them to do. These men, and the millions they represent, had lives, families, and careers they left behind. And they were not the only ones to report for duty: their families also had to fight daily battles through hardships, through defeats, through loss. Reluctant Warriors brings these stories home to our hearts and reingnites our gratitude for those who fight so we can live free.

Reluctant Warriors, 1941-1945, an autobiographical memoir set in New York, Texas, Tennessee, Florida, and the European Theater of Operations, describes the lives of young people caught up in World War II, daily life during those years, and the profound effect the war had on that life. Extensive illustrations include original photographs, official Army correspondence, wedding invoices and menus, telegrams, V-mail, and air combat descriptions over Europe. The uniqueness of the war years resonates deeply in the minds of those who endured them. Reluctant Warriors presents an honest, intimate, and poignant description of many peoples lives during those years.

Why did American leaders work hard to secure multilateral approval from the United Nations or NATO for military interventions in Haiti, the Balkans, and Libya, while making only limited efforts to gain such approval for the 2003 Iraq War? In Reassuring the Reluctant Warriors, Stefano Recchia addresses this important question by drawing on declassified documents and about one hundred interviews with civilian and military leaders.The most assertive, hawkish, and influential civilian leaders, he argues, tend to downplay the costs of intervention, and when confronted with hesitant international partners they often want to bypass multilateral bodies. America's top-level generals, by contrast, are usually "reluctant warriors" who worry that intervention will result in open-ended stabilization missions; consequently, the military craves international burden sharing and values the potential exit ramp for U.S. forces that a handoff to the UN or NATO can provide.Recchia demonstrates that when the military speaks up and clearly expresses its concerns, even strongly pro-intervention civilian leaders can be expected to work hard to secure UN or NATO approval—if only to reassure the military about the likelihood of sustained burden sharing. Conversely, when the military stays silent, as it did in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq War, bellicose civilian leaders are empowered; the United States is then more likely to bypass multilateral bodies, and it may end up carrying a heavy stabilization burden largely by itself. Recchia's argument that the military has the ability to contribute not only to a more prudent but also to a more multilateralist U.S. intervention policy may be counterintuitive, but the evidence is compelling.

"ONE OF THE BEST VIETNAM WAR STORIES I'VE EVER READ, one damn good, compelling read. It's almost something out of a Clancy novel, yet it's true. The best thing I can say about it is I didn't want it to end." --Col. David Hackworth, New York Times bestselling author of About Face By the spring of 1970, American troops were ordered to pull out of Vietnam. The Marines of 1st Reconnaissance Battalion, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel "Wild Bill" Drumright, were assigned to cover the withdrawal of 1st Marine Division. The Marines of 1st RECON Bn operated in teams of six or seven men. Heavily armed, the teams fought a multitude of bitter engagements with a numerically superior and increasingly aggressive enemy. Michael C. Hodgins served in Company C, 1st RECON Bn (Rein), as a platoon leader. In powerful, graphic prose, he chronicles his experience as a patrol leader in myriad combat situations--from hasty ambush to emergency extraction to prisoner snatch to combined-arms ambush. . . . "THIS MEMOIR IS GRIPPING." --American Way

TO CATCH A TRAITOR The Warriors have recovered from Zeb Carter's mission in the Congo. They now find themselves helping the FBI. USA's premier investigative agency has a mole in its ranks. The betrayer has access to highly classified intel and is a threat to national security. The Warriors respond by deploying their maverick intelligence analyst Broker. Who makes the shocking discovery that the traitor is not owned by a foreign government. The truth is worse. And the repercussions can trigger a devastation the kind of which the country hasn't seen before. Before long, the investigation leads to a showdown. The Warriors - all by themselves - on one side, the city's organized crime gangs on the other. Broker and his team can't afford to lose that battle, nor can they give up the investigation. The odds against them are overwhelming. The mafia gangs have come together in an unprecedented move. And the mole is helping the criminals. And what of the mysterious assassin tailing them? He might prove more lethal than the mole or the gangs. 'Non-stop action isn't a tired old cliche in this book's case. The Reluctant Warrior delivers NON-STOP ACTION!' 'Pedal-to-metal, needle-in-the-red thrills!' 'You won't like Zeb Carter and his Warriors. You'll LOVE them!'