History

Title: South of Heaven: My Year in Afghanistan
Author: Daniel Flores
Genre: Military Army
Reviewer: Terry Shoptaugh

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1462024386

A memoir of an Army Apache helicopter pilots tour of duty in the Afghanistan war. The book follows the author's life from enlisting in the Army as an infantry soldier. Then continues as the author goes through flight school then incredibly survives a devastating crash only months after getting married. The author then continues his training until he is activated for the Afghanistan campaign, in the Global War on Terror. Believing that the only fighting is in Iraq he is then suprised and challenged at the resurgence of the Taliban and the escalating battles throughout the year, 2006. This memoir is a gripping insight to the incredible helicopter war going on in the rugged yet beautiful Hindu Kush mountains. The reader will finish this memoir with a first hand account of flying and fighting the Apache helicopter and the patriotic heroic decisions and challenges facing a husband, father and God fearing Christian in the war in Afghanistan.

Title: Dog Tags: The History, Personal Stories, Cultural Impact, and Future of Military Identification
Author: Ginger Cuculo
Genre: Non-Fiction & Fiction
Reviewer: Joyce Faulkner

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0983305706

The 100 year anniversary of the official use of American personal identity tags, affectionately known as Dog Tags, recently passed without fanfare. We are currently in a war where the Dog Tag is once again a highly personal item to warriors of every service and to their families as well. Every Dog Tag carries its own human interest story. Receiving it, hanging it around the neck, and feeling it is a silent statement of commitment. The tag itself individualizes the human being who wears it within a huge and faceless organization. While the armed forces demand obedience and duty to a higher cause, the Dog Tag, hanging under each service member's shirt and close to their chest, becomes a part of them. It brings comfort to that fear of every soldier facing death: I do not want to be forgotten; I will not become an "unknown."

Understanding and sharing the history of Dog Tags and their deeply personal meaning in today's world is at the core of this book.

Title: Kontum: The Battle to Save South Vietnam
Author: Thomas P. McKenna
Genre: Non-Fiction History
Reviewer: Bob Doerr

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 081313398X

In the spring of 1972, North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam in what became known as the Easter Offensive. There were American advisors with the South Vietnamese armed forces but almost all other American forces had already withdrawn from Vietnam. When the invasion started, powerful U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy forces returned to Southeast Asia. South Vietnam's 23rd Infantry Division and its American advisers were sent to defend the provincial capital of Kontum in the Central Highlands. They were surrounded and attacked by three enemy divisions with heavy artillery and tanks but, with the help of air power, managed to successfully defend Kontum and prevent South Vietnam from being cut in half and defeated in 1972. Kontum: The Battle to Save South Vietnam is the first in-depth account of this violent engagement. It describes the events leading up to the invasion and then the battle in Kontum.

Title: Revenge of the Pearl Harbor Survivors
Author: John Nevola
Genre: Non-Fiction, History
Reviewer: Joyce Faulkner

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): B005EDAROM

This year we commemorate the 70th Anniversary of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. All of the U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers survived that assault. The central theme of this article describes the pivotal role played by those surviving American aircraft carriers in the first year of the war.

The article also briefly describes all of the Japanese and American aircraft carriers in service at the time and their relative strengths and weaknesses. It reveals the location of all the American carriers at the precise moment of the Pearl Harbor attack and describes their deployment and operations in the year immediately after the raid.

Thanks to the survival and clever deployment of the carriers in 1942, the United States Navy was able to effectively thwart and delay Japan's military aggression throughout the Pacific despite the tragic loss of many battleships and over 2,400 military personnel on December 7.

This is also a story of valor and sacrifice as only two of these ships survived that first year. By bravely and stubbornly blunting Japanese thrusts until newly built reinforcements could arrive, the surviving aircraft carriers and their courageous sailors and airmen exacted a true measure of revenge for Pearl Harbor.