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"World War, 1939-1945--Regimental histories--United States"
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Learning under fire
Thrown into the heart of war with little training--and even less that would apply to the battles in which they were engaged--the units of the 112th Cavalry Regiment faced not only the Japanese enemy, but a rugged environment for which they were ill-prepared. They also grappled with the continuing challenge of learning new military skills and tactics across ever-shifting battlefields.
eBook
Guard Wars
An inventive study of relations between the National Guard and the
Regular Army during World War II, Guard Wars follows the Pennsylvania National
Guard's 28th Infantry Division from its peacetime status through training and into
combat in Western Europe. The broader story, spanning the years 1939--1945, sheds
light on the National Guard, the U.S. Army, and American identities and priorities
during the war years. Michael E. Weaver carefully tracks the division's difficult
transformation into a combat-ready unit and highlights General Omar Bradley's
extraordinary capacity for leadership -- which turned the Pennsylvanians from the
least capable to one of the more capable units, a claim dearly tested in the Battle
of the Hürtgen Forest. This absorbing and informative analysis chronicles the
nation's response to the extreme demands of a world war, and the flexibility its
leaders and soldiers displayed in the chaos of combat.
eBook
A company of heroes : personal memories about the real band of brothers and the legacy they left us
Profiles the World War II veterans known as the \"Band of Brothers\" through notes, journals, letters, photographs, and the author's interviews with survivors.
BOOK
My Father's War
My Father’s War tells the compelling story of a
unit of Buffalo Soldiers and their white commander fighting on
the Italian front during World War II. The 92nd Division of the
Fifth Army was the only African American infantry division to see
combat in Europe during 1944 and 1945, suffering more than 3,200
casualties. Members of this unit, known as Buffalo Soldiers,
endured racial violence on the home front and experienced racism
abroad. Engaged in combat for nine months, they were under the
command of southern white infantry officers like their captain,
Eugene E. Johnston. Carolyn Ross Johnston draws on her
father’s account of the war and her extensive interviews
with other veterans of the 92nd Division to describe the
experiences of a naïve southern white officer and his
segregated unit on an intimate level. During the war, the
protocol that required the assignment of southern white officers
to command black units, both in Europe and in the Pacific
theater, was often problematic, but Johnston seemed more
successful than most, earning the trust and respect of his men at
the same time that he learned to trust and respect them. Gene
Johnston and the African American soldiers were transformed by
the war and upon their return helped transform the nation.
eBook
Every Day a Nightmare
In December 1941, the War Department sent two transports and a freighter carrying 103 P-40 fighters and their pilots to the Philipines to bolster Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s Far East Air Force. They were then diverted to Australia, with new orders to ferry the P-40s to the Philippines from Australia through the Dutch East Indies. But on the same day as the second transport reached its destination on January 12, 1942, the first of the key refueling stops in the East Indies fell to rapidly advancing Japanese forces, resulting in a break in their ferry route and another change in their orders.
This time the pilots would fly their aircraft to Java to participate in the desperate Allied defense of that ultimate Japanese objective. Except for the pilots from the Philippines, almost all of the other pilots eventually assigned to the five provisional pursuit squadrons ordered to Java were recent graduates of flying school with just a few hours on the P-40. Only forty-three of them made it to their assigned destination; the rest suffered accidents in Australia, were shot down over Bali and Darwin, or were lost in the sinking of the USS Langley as it carried thirty-two of them to Java. Even those who did reach the secret field on Java wondered if they had been sacrificed for no purpose. As the Japanese air assault intensified daily, the Allied defense collapsed. Only eleven Japanese aircraft fell to the P-40s.
Author William H. Bartsch has pored through personal diaries and memoirs of the participants, cross-checking these primary sources against Japanese aerial combat records of the period and supplementing them with official records and other American, Dutch, and Australian accounts. Bartsch’s thorough and meticulous research yields a narrative that situates the Java pursuit pilots’ experiences within the context of the overall strategic situation in the early days of the Pacific theater.
eBook
Shadows in the jungle : the Alamo Scouts behind Japanese lines in World War II
Drawing on personal interviews with and recollections by veterans, the author chronicles the exploits of the Alamo Scouts, members of an elite Army reconnaissance unit during World War II, a group that spent weeks behind enemy lines to gather much needed intelligence for Allied forces in the Pacific.
Book
Operation PLUM
They went in as confident young warriors. They came out as battle-scarred veterans, POW camp survivors . . . or worse.
The Army Air Corps’ 27th Bombardment Group arrived in the Philippines in November 1941 with 1,209 men; one year later, only twenty returned to the United States.
The Japanese attacked the Philippines on the same morning as Pearl Harbor and invaded soon after. Allied air routes back to the Philippines were soon cut, forcing pilots to fight their air war from bases in Java, Australia, and New Guinea. The men on Bataan were eventually taken prisoner and forced into the infamous Death March.
The 27th and other such units were pivotal in delaying the Japanese timetable for conquest. If not for these units, some have suggested, the Allied offensive in the Pacific might have started in Hawaii or even California instead of New Guinea and the surrounding islands.
Based largely on primary materials, including a fifty-nine-page report written by the surviving unit members in September 1942, Operation PLUM (from the code name for the U.S. Army in the Philippines) gives an account of the 27th Bombardment Group and, through it, the opening months of the Pacific theater.
Military historians and readers interested in World War II will appreciate the rich perspective presented in Operation PLUM.
eBook