Callsign Hades

Callsign Hades PDF Author: Patrick Bury
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1847378617
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
In summer 2006 Helmand Province erupted into violence as NATO forces struggled to crush Taliban strongholds. For six weeks the Royal Irish Regiment and the Paras defended Sangin in the face of ever-mounting attacks. At this point young officer Patrick Bury was learning the trade of the infantry in the Brecon Beacons. Paddy had always wanted to be a soldier - a desire fraught with the contradictions of a complex history overridden by a 'warrior calling'. When he arrived in Afghanistan with 1stRoyal Irish, he was surrounded by men oozing bloody combat experience. This was not Sandhurst. It was extreme violence and killing. Hades Four One was his callsign and the infantry mantra rang in his ears: 'To close and kill the enemy, in all weather conditions, in all terrain, by day or night.' Over six months, Paddy and his company dealt with over a hundred IEDs, of which 60 exploded on them, killing his comrades in the most vicious of ways and fuelling a sense of ever-growing dissatisfaction in the young captain. This powerful and thoughful first-hand account about the 'eternal truths of military life' places the reader in Paddy's boots, sharing every thought, ache, smell and taste of life on the frontline in Afghanistan. He describes modern warfare in a way that creates an understanding of the myriad complexities soldiers are faced with, the conditions in which they operate and the moral and emotional challenges they endure.

Callsign Hades

Callsign Hades PDF Author: Patrick Bury
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1847378617
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book

Book Description
In summer 2006 Helmand Province erupted into violence as NATO forces struggled to crush Taliban strongholds. For six weeks the Royal Irish Regiment and the Paras defended Sangin in the face of ever-mounting attacks. At this point young officer Patrick Bury was learning the trade of the infantry in the Brecon Beacons. Paddy had always wanted to be a soldier - a desire fraught with the contradictions of a complex history overridden by a 'warrior calling'. When he arrived in Afghanistan with 1stRoyal Irish, he was surrounded by men oozing bloody combat experience. This was not Sandhurst. It was extreme violence and killing. Hades Four One was his callsign and the infantry mantra rang in his ears: 'To close and kill the enemy, in all weather conditions, in all terrain, by day or night.' Over six months, Paddy and his company dealt with over a hundred IEDs, of which 60 exploded on them, killing his comrades in the most vicious of ways and fuelling a sense of ever-growing dissatisfaction in the young captain. This powerful and thoughful first-hand account about the 'eternal truths of military life' places the reader in Paddy's boots, sharing every thought, ache, smell and taste of life on the frontline in Afghanistan. He describes modern warfare in a way that creates an understanding of the myriad complexities soldiers are faced with, the conditions in which they operate and the moral and emotional challenges they endure.

Second Platoon: Call Sign Hades

Second Platoon: Call Sign Hades PDF Author: First Lieutenant Mark A. Bodrog
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1491711418
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Book Description
The war in Afghanistan is considered by most to be America's longest and least talked about war to date. After terrorists attacked the United States on 9/11, less than one percent of America's population answered our nation's call to serve in the Armed Forces. Even fewer Americans made the life choice to become United States Marines. During this war, two Marine Corps platoon's were selected by their Battalion to fully integrate with two platoons of Afghanistan National Army Soldier's in order to create a Combined Action Company (CAC) capable of conducting sustained Counterinsurgency (COIN) operations throughout their Area of Operation's (AO) and adjacent battlespaces. Inside of this book, you will learn about one of those platoons and how they fought the Taliban during their deployment to the Helmand Province, Afghanistan. In this memoir, Bodrog recalls how his platoon of Marines, Sailors and Afghan Soldiers lived, operated and fought in the Helmand Province, Afghanistan as part of the Combined Action Company. In doing so and translucently through the men under his command, the author attempts to immortalize every Marine, servicemen and civilian who sacrificed everything they had to ensure the survival of our great nation, while asking for nothing in return. The missions and stories mentioned in this memoir must never be forgotten or become a lost chapter in our nation's history. Discover what it's like to be one of the bold few who still fight for freedom and gain a deeper appreciation of the Marines and Sailors who served this great nation with Second Platoon: Call Sign Hades.

War Stories

War Stories PDF Author: Philip Dwyer
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785333089
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Although war memoirs constitute a rich, varied literary form, they are often dismissed by historians as unreliable. This collection of essays is one of the first to explore the modern war memoir, revealing the genre’s surprising capacity for breadth and sophistication while remaining sensitive to the challenges it poses for scholars. Covering conflicts from the Napoleonic era to today, the studies gathered here consider how memoirs have been used to transmit particular views of war even as they have emerged within specific social and political contexts.

In Defence of War

In Defence of War PDF Author: Nigel Biggar
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019967261X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
Against the domination of moral deliberation by rights-talk In Defence of War asserts that belligerency can be morally justified, even while it is tragic and morally flawed. Recovering the early Christian tradition of just war thinking, Nigel Biggar argues in favour of aggressive war in punishment of grave injustice.

The Good Kill

The Good Kill PDF Author: Marc LiVecche
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197515827
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
War wounds the soul. It is not only the violence that warfighters suffer against them that harms, but also the violence that they do. These soul wounds have come to be known as moral injuries: psychic traumas that occur from having done or condoned that which goes against deeply held moral principles. It is not surprising that the committing of atrocities or the accidental killing of the innocent would hurt the soul of warfighters. The problem is that many warfighters at least tacitly follow the commonplace belief that killing another human being is always wrong--it's just that sometimes, as in war, it is necessary. This paradoxical commitment makes the very business of warfighting morally injurious. This problem is also a crisis. Clinical research among combat veterans has established a link between killing in combat and moral injury and between moral injury and suicide. Our warfighters, even those who have served honorably and with the right intentions, are dying by their own hands at devastating rates--casualties not of the physical threats of war, but of the moral ones. It does not have to be this way. The just war tradition, a moral framework for thinking about war that flows out of our Greco-Roman and Hebraic intellectual traditions, is grounded in the basic truth that killing comes in different kinds. While some kinds of killing, like murder, are always wrong, there are other kinds of killing that are morally neutral, such as unavoidable accidents, and still other kinds that are morally permitted--even, sometimes, obligatory. The Good Kill embraces this tradition to argue for the morality of killing in justified wars. Marc LiVecche does not deny the morally bruising realities of combat, but offers potential remedies to help our warfighters manage the bruising without becoming irreparably morally injured.

What's Wrong with Rights?

What's Wrong with Rights? PDF Author: Nigel Biggar
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198861974
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
What's Wrong with Rights? argues that contemporary rights-talk obscures the importance civic virtue, military effectiveness and the democratic law legitimacy. It draws upon legal and moral philosophy, moral theology, and court judgments. It spans discussions from medieval Christendom to contemporary debates about justified killing.

Bringing War to Book

Bringing War to Book PDF Author: Rachel Woodward
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137570105
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
This book explores how military memoirs come to be written and published. Looking at the journeys through which soldiers and other military personnel become writers, the authors draw on over 250 military memoirs published since 1980 about service with the British armed forces, and on interviews with published military memoirists who talk in detail about the writing and production of their books. A range of themes are explored including: the nature of the military memoir; motivations for writing; authors’ reflections on their readerships; inclusions and exclusions within the text; the memories and materials that authors draw on; the collaborations that make the production and publication of military memoirs possible; and the issues around the design of military memoirs' distinctive covers. Written by two leading commentators on the sociology of the military, Bringing War to Book offers a new and original argument about the representations of war and the military experience as a process of social production. The book will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including sociology, history, and cultural studies.

White Flag?

White Flag? PDF Author: Michael Ashcroft
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1785904191
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
FOREWORD BY GENERAL SIR MIKE JACKSON After the pain of Iraq and Afghanistan, it is hard to imagine the UK being drawn into another war. Defence chiefs warn that there is a real prospect of future conflict, but they have struggled to persuade most politicians to take them seriously. Our leaders have concluded there are no votes in defence, and have progressively run down the armed forces. Today, the army is at its smallest since the Napoleonic Wars; the RAF is less than half its size twenty five years ago, and the Royal Navy will struggle to muster the ships and weapons required to protect our new aircraft carriers. Is there really a risk of war? Is our military less capable and, if so, what could that mean for our future? White Flag? explains what has happened to our armed forces in recent years and asks whether their decline endangers our safety and prosperity.

Unwinnable

Unwinnable PDF Author: Theo Farrell
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1473522404
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 515

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Book Description
Afghanistan was an unwinnable war. As British and American troops withdraw, discover this definitive account that explains why. It could have been a very different story. British forces could have successfully withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2002, having done the job they set out to do: to defeat al-Qaeda. Instead, in the years that followed, Britain paid a devastating price for their presence in Helmand province. So why did Britain enter, and remain, in an ill-fated war? Why did it fail so dramatically, and was this expedition doomed from the beginning? Drawing on unprecedented access to military reports, government documents and senior individuals, Professor Theo Farrell provides an extraordinary work of scholarship. He explains the origins of the war, details the campaigns over the subsequent years, and examines the West's failure to understand the dynamics of local conflict and learn the lessons of history that ultimately led to devastating costs and repercussions still relevant today. 'The best book so far on Britain's...war in Afghanistan' International Affairs 'Masterful, irrefutable... Farrell records all these military encounters with the irresistible pace of a novelist' Sunday Times

The Routledge Companion to Military Research Methods

The Routledge Companion to Military Research Methods PDF Author: Alison J. Williams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317042573
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 556

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Book Description
This new handbook is about the practices of conducting research on military issues. As an edited collection, it brings together an extensive group of authors from a range of disciplinary perspectives whose chapters engage with the conceptual, practical and political questions raised when doing military research. The book considers a wide range of questions around research about, on and with military organisations, personnel and activities, from diverse starting-points across the social sciences, arts and humanities. Each chapter in this volume: Describes the nature of the military research topic under scrutiny and explains what research practices were undertaken and why. Discusses the author's research activities, addressing the nature of their engagement with their subjects and explaining how the method or approach under scrutiny was distinctive because of the military context or subject of the research. Reflects on the author’s research experiences, and the specific, often unique, negotiations with the politics and practices of military institutions and military personnel before, during and after their research fieldwork. The book provides a focussed overview of methodological approaches to critical studies of military personnel and institutions, and processes and practices of militarisation and militarism. In particular, it engages with the growth in qualitative approaches to military research, particularly research carried out on military topics outside military research institutions. The handbook provides the reader with a comprehensive guide to how critical military research is being undertaken by social scientists and humanities scholars today, and sets out suggestions for future approaches to military research. This book will be of much interest to students of military studies, war and conflict studies, and research methods in general.