Days of Steel Rain

Days of Steel Rain PDF Author: Brent E. Jones
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0316451096
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This intimate true account of Americans at war follows theepic drama of an unlikely group of men forced to work together in the face of an increasingly desperate enemy during the final year of World War II. Sprawling across the Pacific, this untold story follows the crew of the newly-built "vengeance ship" USS Astoria, named for her sunken predecessor lost earlier in the war. At its center lies U.S. Navy Captain George Dyer, who vowed to return to action after suffering a horrific wound. He accepted the ship's command in 1944, knowing it would be his last chance to avenge his injuries and salvage his career. Yet with the nation's resources and personnel stretched thin by the war, he found that just getting the ship into action would prove to be a battle. Tensions among the crew flared from the start. Astoria's sailors and Marines were a collection of replacements, retreads, and older men. Some were broken by previous traumatic combat, most had no desire to be in the war, yet all found themselves fighting an enemy more afraid of surrender than death. The reluctant ship was called to respond to challenges that its men never could have anticipated. From a typhoon where the ocean was enemy to daring rescue missions, a gallant turn at Iwo Jima, and the ultimate crucible against the Kamikaze at Okinawa, they endured the worst of the final year of the war at sea. Days of Steel Rain brings to life more than a decade of research and firsthand interviews, depicting with unprecedented insight the singular drama of a captain grappling with an untested crew and men who had endured enough amidst some of the most brutal fighting of World War II. Throughout, Brent Jones fills the narrative with secret diaries, memoirs, letters, interpersonal conflicts, and the innermost thoughts of the Astoria men—and more than 80 photographs that have never before been published. Days of Steel Rain weaves an intimate, unforgettable portrait of leadership, heroism, endurance, and redemption.

Days of Steel Rain

Days of Steel Rain PDF Author: Brent E. Jones
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0316451096
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

Book Description
This intimate true account of Americans at war follows theepic drama of an unlikely group of men forced to work together in the face of an increasingly desperate enemy during the final year of World War II. Sprawling across the Pacific, this untold story follows the crew of the newly-built "vengeance ship" USS Astoria, named for her sunken predecessor lost earlier in the war. At its center lies U.S. Navy Captain George Dyer, who vowed to return to action after suffering a horrific wound. He accepted the ship's command in 1944, knowing it would be his last chance to avenge his injuries and salvage his career. Yet with the nation's resources and personnel stretched thin by the war, he found that just getting the ship into action would prove to be a battle. Tensions among the crew flared from the start. Astoria's sailors and Marines were a collection of replacements, retreads, and older men. Some were broken by previous traumatic combat, most had no desire to be in the war, yet all found themselves fighting an enemy more afraid of surrender than death. The reluctant ship was called to respond to challenges that its men never could have anticipated. From a typhoon where the ocean was enemy to daring rescue missions, a gallant turn at Iwo Jima, and the ultimate crucible against the Kamikaze at Okinawa, they endured the worst of the final year of the war at sea. Days of Steel Rain brings to life more than a decade of research and firsthand interviews, depicting with unprecedented insight the singular drama of a captain grappling with an untested crew and men who had endured enough amidst some of the most brutal fighting of World War II. Throughout, Brent Jones fills the narrative with secret diaries, memoirs, letters, interpersonal conflicts, and the innermost thoughts of the Astoria men—and more than 80 photographs that have never before been published. Days of Steel Rain weaves an intimate, unforgettable portrait of leadership, heroism, endurance, and redemption.

Disaster in the Pacific

Disaster in the Pacific PDF Author: Denis Warner
Publisher: US Naval Institute Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Exhaustively researched account. Stalking the facts relentlessly in the official records of the United States and Australia, in unofficial reports and interviews, and in Japanese documents with the help of Commander Sadao Seno, the Warners have written what will remain for the foreseeable future the definitive history of the Battle of Savo Island.

Unsinkable

Unsinkable PDF Author: James Sullivan
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1982147849
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
Documents the true story of a U.S. Navy destroyer that inspired the writings of John Ford and Herman Wouk, drawing on the journals and other writings of five shipmates who witnessed the Anzio attacks and D-Day invasion.

Rain of Steel

Rain of Steel PDF Author: Stephen Moore
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 168247531X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 471

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Book Description
The last Pacific campaign of World War II was the most violent on record. Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher’s Task Force 58 carriers had conducted air strikes on mainland Japan and supported the Iwo Jima landings, but his aviators were sorely tested once the Okinawa campaign commenced on 1 April 1945. Rain of Steel follows Navy and Marine carrier aviators in the desperate air battles to control the kamikazes directed by Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki. The latter would unleash ten different Kikusui aerial suicide operations, one including a naval force built around the world’s most powerful battleship, the 71,000-ton Yamato. These battles are related largely through the words and experiences of some of the last living U.S. fighter aces of World War II. More than 1,900 kamikaze sorties—and thousands more traditional attack aircraft—would be launched against the U.S. Navy’s warships, radar picket ships, and amphibious vessels during the Okinawa campaign. In this time, Navy, Marine, and Army Air Force pilots would claim some 2,326 aerial victories. The most successful four-man fighter division in U.S. Navy history would be crowned during the fight against Ugaki’s kamikazes. The Japanese named the campaign tetsu no ame (“rain of steel”), often referred to in English as “typhoon of steel.”

Cold Steel Rain

Cold Steel Rain PDF Author: Kenneth Abel
Publisher: Speaking Volumes
ISBN: 1628158158
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
Nothing stays dead in New Orleans. Not for long, anyway… No one knows this better than ex-district attorney Danny Chaisson—the dead show up in his bathroom mirror every morning, staring right back at him with hollow eyes. Chaisson is the legman for Jimmy Boudrieux, speaker of the Louisiana House of Representatives, for whom dirty dealing is more than just a way of life. So when Danny makes his regular pick-up of a briefcase full of handguns at a downtown Vietnamese restaurant, leaves the room for a moment, and returns to find a bloodbath, he knows the next bullet has his name on it. And nobody—least of all Boudrieux or the crooked cops who control the NOPD—is going to lift a finger to help him. From the bestselling author of Bait: “A scorcher . . . clever, tough and terrific enough to make you comb publishers’ lists for his next.”—Time Out

Steel Rain, the Tet Offensive 1968

Steel Rain, the Tet Offensive 1968 PDF Author: john harrison
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781977045447
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
This book is about the bloodiest year of the Vietnam War, 1968, including the Tet Offensive. Like the original Band of Brothers, we were formed in the States as the 3rd Battalion (Airborne), 506th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. As the story shows we specifically formed the make the second large unit combat parachute jump in the Vietnam War. The first had been made by a battalion of the 173rd Airborne Brigade (Separate). Our original commanding officer was Lt. Col. John P. Geraci. Geraci had started his military career in the Marines during World War II. He continued it as an Army platoon leader in the Korean War and then went on to serve two tours in Vietnam with the Green Berets prior to heading up our battalion. He was good enough and famous enough to inducted into the Ranger Hall of Fame at Fort Benning. While we never made that jump, we were ready.The book starts with me attending Airborne School and ends with a case I had as a lawyer long after the Vietnam War was over defending a former 173rd Airborne trooper from criminal charges related to his use of marijuana while undergoing cancer treatment at Walter Reed Army Hospital. I tell our story episodically with each chapter capable of being read alone. Many of the stories have already appeared in my blog. Among the readers were many of the men that served with me and that literally brought me home. Some of their comments appear at the beginning of each story.It is a story of men at war doing the best they could in a war they did not choose, in a place we never really did understand. We managed to be there on the bloodiest day, the bloodiest week, the bloodiest month and the bloodiest year of a long bloody war. The 1968 Tet Offensive is a big part of what we saw and what we did in our year in country. War never really leaves you, it brings out the best and the worst in men and because of those two facts normally the story of a war is well told. However, the Vietnam War was different. Never have there been more myths reported as facts. Never has the actual story of the war been more ignored. If you read almost any history of the Vietnam War at some point it will say something like: "The enemy attacks during the Tet Offensive were quickly beaten back except in Khe Sanh, Saigon, Hue and Phan Thiet." Then the history will go on to describe the fighting in Khe Sanh, Saigon and Hue, but Phan Thiet will never be mentioned again. This is our story. We fought and won in Phan Thiet.

The Road

The Road PDF Author: Cormac McCarthy
Publisher: Vintage Books
ISBN: 0307386457
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
In a novel set in an indefinite, futuristic, post-apocalyptic world, a father and his young son make their way through the ruins of a devastated American landscape, struggling to survive and preserve the last remnants of their own humanity

Send Down the Rain

Send Down the Rain PDF Author: Charles Martin
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
ISBN: 0718084764
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
Can two people brought together by desperate circumstances help one another heal, and maybe even begin a new life? New York Times bestselling author Charles Martin’s Send Down the Rain answers the questions of what it means—and what level of sacrifice it takes—to truly love someone. Allie is still recovering from the loss of her family’s beloved waterfront restaurant on Florida’s Gulf Coast when she loses her second husband to a terrifying highway accident. Devastated and losing hope, she shudders to contemplate the future—until a cherished person from her past returns. Joseph has been adrift for many years, wounded in both body and spirit and unable to come to terms with the trauma of his Vietnam War experiences. Just as he resolves to abandon his search for peace and live alone in a remote cabin in the Carolina mountains, he discovers a mother and her two small children lost in the forest. A man of character and strength, he instinctively steps in to help them get back to their home in Florida. There he will return to his own hometown—and witness the accident that launches a bittersweet reunion with his childhood sweetheart, Allie. When Joseph offers to help Allie rebuild her restaurant, it seems the flame may reignite—until a forty-five-year-old secret begins to emerge, threatening to destroy all hope for their second chance at love. Send Down the Rain will take you on a journey that spans the sweltering migrant worker routes of south Florida, muddy battlefields of Vietnam, thickets of northwest North Carolina, and the idyllic shores of America’s most beautiful beach (Cape San Blas). At the story’s center lies the question: What does it mean—and what level of sacrifice does it take—to truly love someone? Praise for Send Down the Rain: “Charles Martin understands the power of story and he uses it to alter the souls and lives of both his characters and his readers.”—Patti Callahan Henry, New York Times bestselling author Full-length, stand-alone novel Includes discussion questions for book clubs Also by bestselling author Charles Martin: The Mountain Between Us, Chasing Fireflies, When Crickets Cry, and The Letter Keeper

The Iron Sea

The Iron Sea PDF Author: Simon Read
Publisher: Hachette Books
ISBN: 0306921707
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
From the acclaimed military history author, this action-packed World War II history describes the Allies' brutal naval engagements and daring harbor raids to destroy the backbone of Hitler's surface fleet. The sea had become a mass grave by 1941 as Hitler's four capital warships -- Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Tirpitz, and Bismarck, the largest warship on the ocean -- roamed the wind-swept waves, threatening the Allied war effort and sending thousands of men to the icy depths of the North Atlantic. Bristling with guns and steeled in heavy armor, these reapers of the sea could outrun and outgun any battleship in the Allied arsenal. The deadly menace kept Winston Churchill awake at night; he deemed them "targets of supreme consequence." The campaign against Hitler's surface fleet would continue into the dying days of World War II and involve everything from massive warships engaged in bloody, fire-drenched battle to daring commando raids in German occupied harbors. This is the fast-paced story of the Allied bomber crews, brave sailors, and bold commandoes who "sunk the Bismarck" and won a hard-fought victory over Hitler's iron sea. Using official war diaries, combat reports, eyewitness accounts and personal letters, Simon Read brings the action and adventure to vivid life. The result is an enthralling and gripping story of the Allied heroes who fought on a watery battlefield.

Bangkok Wakes to Rain

Bangkok Wakes to Rain PDF Author: Pitchaya Sudbanthad
Publisher:
ISBN: 0525534768
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
"A house in the center of Bangkok becomes the point of confluence where lives are shaped by upheaval, memory, and the lure of home. Witness to two centuries' flux in one of the world's most restless cities, a house plays host to longings and losses past, present, and future. A nineteenth-century missionary doctor pines for the comforts of New England even as he finds the vibrant foreign chaos of Siam increasingly difficult to resist. A post-war society woman marries, mothers, and holds court, little suspecting the course of her future. A jazz pianist is summoned in the 1970s to conjure music that will pacify resident spirits, even as he's haunted by ghosts of his former life. Not long after, a young woman gives swimming lessons in the luxury condos that have eclipsed the old house, trying to outpace the long shadow of her political past. And in the post-submergence Bangkok of the future, a band of savvy teenagers guides tourists and former residents past waterlogged, ruined landmarks, selling them tissues to wipe their tears for places they themselves do not remember. Time collapses as these stories collide and converge, linked by blood, memory, yearning, chance, and the forces voraciously making and remaking the amphibian, ever-morphing city itself"--Provided by publisher.