Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: fbWldcat on June 06, 2010, 11:30:41 AM
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Read E.B. Sledge's "With the Old Breed" His account of Peleliu and Okinawa?
or Lecky's book "Helmet For My Pillow?"
If you have, great :aok :salute
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Let me know how u like it sir,
I just got done reading (over the last couple of months ) Flyboys ( the story of 8 downed pilots over ChiChi Jima ( Bradley ) The Few ( Alex Kershaw) The Battle of Leyte Gulf (Thomas Cutler) and Clash of the Carriers The True Story of the Marianas Turkey Shoot (Barrett Tillman )
All extremely factual and well written books.Picked them up and could not put them down. Now im looking for another good one to read, any suggestions would be appreciated, I mostly enjoy WWII aviation oriented books and Id like to find a real good WWII Naval aviation book, but am open to anything WWII related.
<S>
Mbailey
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Yes. I've been saying for some time to the folks who were "disappointed" in The Pacific HBO miniseries that the books would shine a whole new light on what was impossible to cover in only 10 episodes.
John Basilone's biography is good reading as well.
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Just started "With The Old Breed" and it is already one helluva book, first 15 pages :aok
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It's great. I bought my first copy in 1982, wore that one out and bought another copy a few years ago. The Forgotten Soldier is another great one about the fighting in Russia.
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Half way through Boy Soldiers, about WWI infantry. Not really the right topic but just thought I'd mention it. Quite amazing the kind of lives people were living not even 100 years ago.
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Let me know how u like it sir,
I just got done reading (over the last couple of months ) Flyboys ( the story of 8 downed pilots over ChiChi Jima ( Bradley ) The Few ( Alex Kershaw) The Battle of Leyte Gulf (Thomas Cutler) and Clash of the Carriers The True Story of the Marianas Turkey Shoot (Barrett Tillman )
All extremely factual and well written books.Picked them up and could not put them down. Now im looking for another good one to read, any suggestions would be appreciated, I mostly enjoy WWII aviation oriented books and Id like to find a real good WWII Naval aviation book, but am open to anything WWII related.
<S>
Mbailey
Flyboys was really good. If you need suggestions, look for Armageddon and Retribution by Max hastings. I'm halfway through Armageddon and I can't put it down. Both are about the last two years of WWII in Germany and Japan respectively covering both the Eastern and Western fronts in great detail. As for books related to aviation, the only ones I've read are Flyboys, Half a Wing, Three Engines, and a Prayer, which is about B-17s over Germany and The Wild Blue, which is about B-24s.
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Let me know how u like it sir,
I just got done reading (over the last couple of months ) Flyboys ( the story of 8 downed pilots over ChiChi Jima ( Bradley ) The Few ( Alex Kershaw) The Battle of Leyte Gulf (Thomas Cutler) and Clash of the Carriers The True Story of the Marianas Turkey Shoot (Barrett Tillman )
All extremely factual and well written books.Picked them up and could not put them down. Now im looking for another good one to read, any suggestions would be appreciated, I mostly enjoy WWII aviation oriented books and Id like to find a real good WWII Naval aviation book, but am open to anything WWII related.
<S>
Mbailey
Flyboys is a great read IMHO. Started on With The Old Breed, and a lot of it is just like the series.
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The Forgotten 500 is good.
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Flyboys was really good. If you need suggestions, look for Armageddon and Retribution by Max hastings. I'm halfway through Armageddon and I can't put it down. Both are about the last two years of WWII in Germany and Japan respectively covering both the Eastern and Western fronts in great detail. As for books related to aviation, the only ones I've read are Flyboys, Half a Wing, Three Engines, and a Prayer, which is about B-17s over Germany and The Wild Blue, which is about B-24s.
I just ordered both the Max Hastings books, should be here in a week or so. Thanks for the suggestions, The forgotton 500 and The Old Breed are next. Thanks guys.
If you get a chance, read the ones that i listed, all were great. Flyboys broke my heart,and made me angry all at one time. The others ( Expecially The Few ) were awesome
Edit: I didnt mean to hijack your thread FbWldcat, I just figured if i could get or throw out some suggestions it couldnt hurt :salute
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"With The Old Breed" is a really good read :aok
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Does anyone know of a book (could be already listed, I'm not sure) that is an account of Guadalcanal?
Some great replies, I'll have to make a book spree at my library soon :aok
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Helmet for my Pillow and I'm Staying With My Boys.
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Fire in the Sky is another good read.
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A friend lent me his copy of "With the Old Breed", been reading it this month actually (already 2/3 done).
Past couple months I read the revised and updated "A Dawn Like Thunder" about Torpedo Squadron 8 in a pacific campaign (great book, I really enjoyed it) and the revised and updated "Flying Tigers" by Daniel Ford (a good read, I liked it, I would ding the athor for going on at length though at various points like it were a direct online forum responce to his past critics).
I read "Clash of the Carriers" this past winter, I also would recomend it for a good read.
I need some new books, I think I'll pick up Flyboys and The Forgotten 500, maybe either I'm Staying with My Boys or Helmet for My Pillow to read and share with my friend who lent me WtOB.
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Started reading "D-day" by Stephen Ambrose, I am not sure how I will like it but should be interesting. Just finished "We Who Are Alive and Remain: Untold Stories of Easy Company" by Marcus Brotherton. I really enjoyed that one and especially how Herbert Sobel's family describes how they felt about how Ambrose(and the series) portrayed their father.
Contemplating reading "With Wings Like Eagles" by Michael Korda or "Clash of Eagles" by Martin W. Bowman. Anyone read either of them?
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Finished "Helmet For My Pillow" last month and really enjoyed it. I posted this excerpt in another thread but I thought Leckie really had a way with language.
This bit is taken from the assault on the airfield at Peleliu.
I got up and made for the airfield. About twenty yards away was a burning tank. Some of the enemy dead were inside. The snipers hung in their nests like dolls stuffed in a Christmas stocking. I turned to go, and as I did, nearly stepped on someone's hand. "Excuse me," I began to say, but then I saw that it was an unattached, hand, or rather a detached one. It there alone - open, palm upwards, clean, capable, solitary. I could not tear my eyes from it. The hand is the artisan of the soul. It is the second member of the human trinity of head and hand and heart. A man has no faculty more human than his hand, none more beautiful nor expressive nor productive. To see this hand lying alone, as though contemptuously cast aside, no longer a part of a man, no longer his help, to see war in all it's wantonness; it was to see the especially brutal savagery of our own technique of rending, and it was to see men at their eternal worst, turning upon one another, tearing on another, clawing at their own innards with the maniacal fury of the pride - possessed.
The hand saddened me and I offered it a respectful inclination of the head while recovering my balance and making a careful circle around it.
Here he witnessed a naval night engagement off the coast at Guadalcanal.
I think of Judgment Day. I think of Gotterdammerung; I think of the stars exploding, of the planets going off like fireworks; I think of a volcano; I think of a roaring and an energy unbelievable; I think , of holocaust; and again I think of a night reeling from a thousand scarlet slashes and I see the red eye of hell winking in her wounds -- I think of all these, and I cannot tell you what I have seen, the terrible spectacle I witnessed from that hillside.
The star shells rose, terrible and red. Giant tracers flashed across the night in orange arches. Sometimes we would duck, thinking they were coming at us, though they were miles away.
The sea seemed a sheet of polished obsidian on which the warships seemed to have been dropped and been immobilized, ventered amid concentric circles like shock waves that around a stone dropped in mud.
Our island trembled to the sound of their mighty voices. A pinpoint of light appears in the middle of the blackness; it grows and grows until it illuminates the entire world and we are bathed in pale and yellow light, and there comes a terrible, terrible rocking roar and there is a momentary clutching fear to feel Guadalcanal shift beneath us, to feel our Ridge quiver as though the great whale had been harpooned, as thou the iron had smacked into the wet flesh.
Some great ship had exploded.
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Started reading "D-day" by Stephen Ambrose, I am not sure how I will like it but should be interesting. Just finished "We Who Are Alive and Remain: Untold Stories of Easy Company" by Marcus Brotherton. I really enjoyed that one and especially how Herbert Sobel's family describes how they felt about how Ambrose(and the series) portrayed their father.
Contemplating reading "With Wings Like Eagles" by Michael Korda or "Clash of Eagles" by Martin W. Bowman. Anyone read either of them?
Kordas With Wings like Eagles was an awesome book!! It not only has alot of the actual fighting but a lot of backround on the "behind the scenes" logistics that came along with the BOB Definatly not a waste buying that book!!
Fud, Ill send u my copy if ya send it back, my son wants to read it also. It would prolly be less expensive than buying it. Let me know
Im about 265 pgs into Donald L Millers Masters of the Air...Americas bomber boys who fought the air war against Nazi Germany......good so far
<S>
Mbailey
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Kordas With Wings like Eagles was an awesome book!! It not only has alot of the actual fighting but a lot of backround on the "behind the scenes" logistics that came along with the BOB Definatly not a waste buying that book!!
Fud, Ill send u my copy if ya send it back, my son wants to read it also. It would prolly be less expensive than buying it. Let me know
Im about 265 pgs into Donald L Millers Masters of the Air...Americas bomber boys who fought the air war against Nazi Germany......good so far
<S>
Mbailey
Let your son read it bailey, I have no idea how long it may take me.
Sounds like the a good one to read.
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Started reading "D-day" by Stephen Ambrose, I am not sure how I will like it but should be interesting. Just finished "We Who Are Alive and Remain: Untold Stories of Easy Company" by Marcus Brotherton. I really enjoyed that one and especially how Herbert Sobel's family describes how they felt about how Ambrose(and the series) portrayed their father.
Contemplating reading "With Wings Like Eagles" by Michael Korda or "Clash of Eagles" by Martin W. Bowman. Anyone read either of them?
D-Day was a very good book. I enjoyed all of it. Ambrose goes into great detail all the aspect of the invasion, the Americans, British, and Canadians. He even talks extensively about the Navy and USAAF and their role in the invasion. I swear those destroyer captains were crazy to take their ships in that close. Another book about June 6, 1944 is Pegasus Bridge, also by Stephen Ambrose. This is the story of a group of British troops who captured Pegasus Bridge on D-Day, and in my opinion, one of the best accounts of small unit actions in all of WWII.