She Went To War

Deep inside Iraqi territory, a U.S. Army helicopter on a medical rescue mission was shot down with eight Americans aboard. Five of them were killed instantly; the three survivors were captured by Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard. One of the survivors was Maj. Rhonda Cornum, whose diary of this experience forms the basis of this story. Photographs.

Deep inside Iraqi territory, a U.S. Army helicopter on a combat search-and-rescue mission was shot down with eight Americans aboard. Five of them were killed instantly; the three survivors were captured by Saddam Hussein's elite Republican Guard. One of the survivors was Maj. Rhonda Cornum - Army officer, helicopter pilot, physician, and mother of a 14-year-old girl. She Went to War is her story - a remarkable tale of courage, determination, and pride. This special commemorative edition, published for the 30th anniversary of the Gulf War and Operation Desert Storm, includes a new afterword by the author. When the call came in 1990 for the Persian Gulf, Rhonda Cornum eagerly traded her white physician's coat for a soldier's flak jacket and flew to the desert. There "Doc" Cornum was attached to the crack 101st Airborne Division. She was treated as an equal, participating fully in both training and combat operations. Major Cornum was requested for the combat search-and-rescue mission when an Air Force F-16 went down behind enemy lines. This was the mission when she was shot down and captured. Imprisoned in a cold, damp cell with two broken arms, a smashed knee, and a bullet wound, and at the mercy of the brutal Iraqi guards, Cornum tried to keep up her spirits. As the senior officer among the prisoners, she knew they had to depend on each other to stay alive and resist psychological pressure and threats of torture. As fast-paced and dramatic as a good adventure novel, She Went to War is an exciting war story. More than that, it is an inspirational personal story about one woman who became a hero in a world where women had previously never been allowed. Cornum's story is unique and eye-opening, challenging the myths about women in the military, and on the modern battlefield. Cornum's experience, and her testimony before Congress, helped encourage the military to ease restrictions on women in combat and opened the door to much wider participation and leadership roles for women. As one of the Army's top medical officers after the war, Cornum used her own experience to develop new ways to train soldiers for the emotional and psychological stresses of combat. Rhonda Cornum, one of a small number of women to be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, retired as a brigadier general and lives on a farm in Kentucky, with her husband, a retired Air Force officer. Co-author Peter Copeland is a journalist and the author of the award-winning memoir, Finding the News, from LSU Press.

Rhonda Cornum was a soldier, a surgeon, a helicopter pilot, a wife, a mother - and a prisoner of war during the Gulf War. Not only does this book explore Major Cornum's fears during her capture, but it gives us a unique insight into Middle Eastern culture. Major Cornum is a woman of immense courage, competence and conviction, and her performance helps convince us that women can, indeed, be warriors.

This New York Times bestselling account of books parachuted to soldiers during WWII is a “cultural history that does much to explain modern America” (USA Today). When America entered World War II in 1941, we faced an enemy that had banned and burned 100 million books. Outraged librarians launched a campaign to send free books to American troops, gathering 20 million hardcover donations. Two years later, the War Department and the publishing industry stepped in with an extraordinary program: 120 million specially printed paperbacks designed for troops to carry in their pockets and rucksacks in every theater of war. These small, lightweight Armed Services Editions were beloved by the troops and are still fondly remembered today. Soldiers read them while waiting to land at Normandy, in hellish trenches in the midst of battles in the Pacific, in field hospitals, and on long bombing flights. This pioneering project not only listed soldiers’ spirits, but also helped rescue The Great Gatsby from obscurity and made Betty Smith, author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, into a national icon. “A thoroughly engaging, enlightening, and often uplifting account . . . I was enthralled and moved.” — Tim O’Brien, author of The Things They Carried “Whether or not you’re a book lover, you’ll be moved.” — Entertainment Weekly

“A precisely crafted and bracingly honest” memoir of war and its aftershocks from the New York Times–bestselling author of Matterhorn (The Atlantic). In 1968, at the age of twenty-three, Karl Marlantes was dropped into the highland jungle of Vietnam, an inexperienced lieutenant in command of forty Marines who would live or die by his decisions. In his thirteen-month tour he saw intense combat, killing the enemy and watching friends die. Marlantes survived, but like many of his brothers in arms, he has spent the last forty years dealing with his experiences. In What It Is Like to Go to War, Marlantes takes a candid look at these experiences and critically examines how we might better prepare young soldiers for war. In the past, warriors were prepared for battle by ritual, religion, and literature—which also helped bring them home. While contemplating ancient works from Homer to the Mahabharata, Marlantes writes of the daily contradictions modern warriors are subject to, of being haunted by the face of a young North Vietnamese soldier he killed at close quarters, and of how he finally found a way to make peace with his past. Through it all, he demonstrates just how poorly prepared our nineteen-year-old warriors are for the psychological and spiritual aspects of the journey. In this memoir, the New York Times–bestselling author of Matterhorn offers “a well-crafted and forcefully argued work that contains fresh and important insights into what it’s like to be in a war and what it does to the human psyche” (The Washington Post).

This exciting new volume profiles several substantiated cases of female soldiers during the American Civil War, including Sarah Rosetta Wakeman (aka Private Lyons Wakeman, Union); Sarah Emma Edmonds (aka Private Frank Thompson, Union); Loreta Janeta Velazquez (aka Lieutenant Harry T. Buford, Confederate); and Jennie Hodgers (aka Private Albert D. J. Cashier, Union). Also featured are those women who may not have posed as male soldiers but who nonetheless pushed gender boundaries to act boldly in related military capacities, as spies, nurses, and vivandieres ("daughters of the regiment") who bore the flag in battle, rallied troops, and cared for the wounded. Examining the Civil War through the lens of these women soldiers who fought in the conflict offers valuable insight on existing historical work. This volume will acquaint readers with these women, offering in-depth biographies and behind-the-scenes information. While drawing from recent academic work, Women Soldiers of the Civl War is a lively text geared toward the general-audience reader.

A collection of “first-rate frontline journalism” from the Spanish Civil War to US actions in Central America “by a woman singularly unafraid of guns” (Vanity Fair). For nearly sixty years, Martha Gellhorn’s fearless war correspondence made her a leading journalistic voice of her generation. From the Spanish Civil War in 1937 through the Central American wars of the mid-eighties, Gellhorn’s candid reporting reflected her deep empathy for people regardless of their political ideology. Collecting the best of Gellhorn’s writing on foreign conflicts, and now with a new introduction by Lauren Elkin, The Face of War is a classic of frontline journalism by “the premier war correspondent of the twentieth century” (Ward Just, The New York Times Magazine). Whether in Java, Finland, the Middle East, or Vietnam, she used the same vigorous approach. “I wrote very fast, as I had to,” she says, “afraid that I would forget the exact sound, smell, words, gestures, which were special to this moment and this place.” As Merle Rubin noted in his review of this volume for The Christian ScienceMonitor, “Martha Gellhorn’s courageous, independent-minded reportage breaks through geopolitical abstractions and ideological propaganda to take the reader straight to the scene of the event.”