Williams Ford Texas A And M University Military History

The American military establishment is intimately tied to its technology, although the nature of those ties has varied enormously from service to service. The air force evokes images of pilots operating hightech weapons systems, striking precisely from out of the blue to lay waste to enemy installations. The fundamental icon for the Marine Corps is a wave of riflemen hitting the beaches from rugged landing craft and slogging their way ashore under enemy fire. How did these very different relationships with technology develop? During the interwar years, from 1920 to 1940, leaders from the Army Air Corps and the Marine Corps recreated their agencies based on visions of new military technologies. In War Machines, Timothy Moy examines these recreations and explores how factors such as bureaucratic pressure, institutional culture, and America's technological enthusiasm shaped these leaders' choices. The very existence of the Army Air Corps was based on a new technology, the airplane. As the Air Corps was forced to compete for money and other resources during the years after World War I, Air Corps leaders carved out a military niche based on hightech precision bombing. The Marine Corps focused on amphibious, firstwave assault using sturdy, graceless, and easytoproduce landing craft. Moy's astute analysis makes it clear that studying the processes that shaped the Army Air Corps and Marine Corps is fundamental to our understanding of technology and the military at the beginning of the twentyfirst century.

Presents a comprehensive biography of Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson and traces his life and military career from his childhood and entrance into West Point, years of teaching at the Virginia Military Institute, Civil War campaigns, and death after the Battle of Chancellorsville in May of 1963.

Historian McRandle contends that war is a deep-rooted human institution, like marriage and food sharing, that depends on ritual and myth. He began his inquiry after being struck by the similarity of letters from common soldiers as long as 2,000 years ago, and has mustered evidence from psychological concepts, literature, and studies of animal behavior. He suggests that soldiers raping conquered women, rather than an atrocious side effect of war, may be its fundamental purpose. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Every Medal of Honor represents a story of gallantry, courage, and sacrifice. Conceived in the early 1860s, the Medal of Honor, awarded "in the name of the Congress of the United States," has been presented to more than 3,000 members of the United States armed forces. Seven of the 464 Medals of Honor awarded during World War II went to Texas Aggies. Author James R. Woodall, a 1950 graduate of Texas A&M University and a decorated veteran of the Vietnam War, carried out a dedicated search of archives, family collections, and scores of other resources to gather, for the first time, the complete stories of these seven courageous men. Texas Aggie Medals of Honor will undoubtedly be of great interest to former students of Texas A&M University, members of the Corps of Cadets, and others associated with the university and its distinguished tradition of military training and service. But the book will also hold great appeal, in the words of one advance reader, "to those interested in the nation's highest award for valor and the individual stories of ordinary men who did extraordinary things when confronted by life-threatening situations in combat." " . . . a fast moving narrative of short, thoughtful portraits of the lives of seven World War II Texas Aggie Medal of Honor recipients. . . has meaning for readers both inside and outside the Texas Aggie Nation, and they will certainly grasp Woodall's admiration for these seven men and appreciate his tenacious research into their histories."--Southwestern Historical Quarterly

Hundreds of novels have been written about young men coming of age in war. And millions of young men have, in fact, come of age in combat. This is the story of one of them, as told by his daughter, based on the daily letters he wrote to his family in 1944 and 1945. After ten months of stateside training, nineteen-year-old Joe Ted (Bud) Miller shipped out from New York harbor in November 1944 and served with the 63rd Infantry in France and Germany. Although he fought with his unit at the Colmar Pocket and earned a Bronze Star for his role in pushing through the Siegfried Line, his letters focus less on the details of battle than on the many aspects of his life in the military: food, PX, movies, biographies of friends and platoon-mates, training activities, travelogues, and the behavior (good and bad) of officers. Bud’s journalistic skills show in his letters and fill his reports with a wealth of objective detail, as well as articulate reflections on his feelings about his experiences. Katherine I. Miller, a communication scholar, brings to her father’s letters—which form the centerpiece of the book—her scholarly training in analyzing issues such as the development of masculinity in historical context, the formation of adult identity, and the psychological effects of war. Further insights gained from additional personal and family archives, interviews with surviving family members, official paperwork, the unit history of the 63rd Infantry Division (254th Regiment), unit newspapers, pictorial histories, maps, and accounts by other unit members aided her in crafting this “interpretive biography.” The book also serves as a window onto more general questions of how individuals navigate complicated turning points thrown at them by external events and internal struggles as they move from youth to adulthood.

"Aggies of all ages will find it a wonderful read and so will people who are interested in military history, national security or sacrificial service. It is a wonderful book! Don't miss it."--Thomas G. Darling' 54, Major General, USAF (Ret.), Commandant Emeritus

"One of the few people alive today to have seen Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, and other leaders of Third Reich, Obermayer wrote compellingly about the Nazis on trial at Nuremberg, describing Goering's leadership qualities when stripped of the symbols of rank. A Jew himself, Obermayer explained his reactions at the trials when he witnessed the first documentary confirmation that six million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust. He knew and wrote about the official U.S. Army hangman at Nuremberg."--Jacket

During World War II, the army established 107 evacuation hospitals to care for the wounded and sick in theaters around the world. An evacuation hospital was a forward hospital accepting patients from the battlefield. It was where the wounded first received definitive care. Formed at Camp Breckenridge, the 95th Evac arrived in Casablanca in April 1943, with seven thousand troops, thirty doctors, and forty nurses. First pitching their tents at Oujda, they moved eastward toward Algeria before making a D-day landing on the beaches of Salerno, Italy, on September 9, 1939. Shortly thereafter, they entered Naples, then set up shop at Anzio before moving on to become the first American hospital to penetrate Nazi-occupied Europe. After the guns were silent, records show that these doctors and nurses had treated over 42,000 Americans in almost all the critical battles of the European theater: Salerno, Monetcassino, Anzio, southern France, the Battle of the Bulge, the Rhineland, and finally, the invasion into Germany. Hospital at War is the story of the 95th Evac Hospital as told by Zachary Friedenberg, a young surgeon at the time, fresh out of his internship. He tells the story of how the men and women of the 95th survived the war. He describes how they solved problems and learned to treat the war-wounded in the extreme heat of North Africa and during the frigid winters of the Rhineland. He tells how they endured shelling and a bombing of the hospital and how they adjusted to the people and the countries in which they worked. By the end of their two-year tour of duty, the men and women of the 95th Evac were superbly efficient. A casualty who made it to their facilities had a 99 percent chance of surviving. For anyone who wants to know how so many of our boys made it home despite horrific injuries, this book provides part of the answer.