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Capture-to-repatriation memoir of an U.S. Air Force combat pilot who spent six years as a prisoner of war in the infamous Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War.
For middle-grade readers, the true story of a pilot in the U.S. Air Force who received the Medal of Honor for his great acts of aerial valor. Lieutenant Colonel Leo K. Thorsness was a Wild Weasel pilot in the Vietnam War, targeting enemy missile sites. On a 1967 mission, when his wingmen ejected from their burning aircraft, Thorsness initiated attacks on enemy planes and other daring maneuvers in order to protect them. Two weeks later, he was shot down and would become a P. O. W. for the next six years. This is the third nonfiction middle-grade book in the Medal of Honor series, which profiles the courage and accomplishments of recipients of the Medal of Honor, the highest and most prestigious personal military decoration, awarded to recognize U.S. military service members who have distinguished themselves through extraordinary acts of valor.
On April 19, 1967, Air Force Colonel Leo Thorsness was on a mission over North Vietnam when his wingman was shot down by an enemy MiG, which then lined up for a gunnery pass on the two American pilots who had bailed out. Although his F 105 was not designed for aerial combat, Thorsness engaged the MiG and destroyed it. Spotting four more MiGs, he fought his way through a barrage of North Vietnamese SAMs to engage them too, shooting down one and driving off the others. For this action, Thorsness was awarded the Medal of Honor. But he didn’t learn about it until years later—by a “tap code” coming through prison walls—because on April 30, Thorsness was shot down, captured, and transported to the Hanoi Hilton. Surviving Hell recounts a six-year captivity marked by hours of brutal torture and days of agonizing boredom. With a novelist’s eye for character and detail, Thorsness describes how he and other American POWs strove to keep their humanity. Thrown into solitary confinement for refusing to bow down to his captors, for instance, he disciplined his mind by memorizing long passages of poetry that other prisoners sent him by tap code. Filled with hope and humor, Surviving Hell is an eloquent story of resistance and survival. No other book about American POWs has described so well the strategies these remarkable men used in their daily effort to maintain their dignity. With resilience and resourcefulness, they waged war by other means in the darkest days of a long captivity.
This is the story of a special breed of warrior, the fighter-bomber pilot; the story of valiant men who flew the F-105 Thunderchief 'Thud' Fighter-Bomber over the hostile skies of North Vietnam. From the briefing rooms to the bombing runs, Vice-Wing Commander Colonel Jack Broughton, recounts the tragedy and heartache, the high drama and flaming terror, the exhilaration and thrill of life on the edge. He relives the incredible feeling of high-speed, low-level sorties where SAM missiles, flak and MiGs were all in a day's work. The bravery of the pilots and their commitment to each other in times of extreme fear, crisis and catastrophe are highlighted by vivid, fast moving flying sequences. Thud Ridgeis a fascinating and graphic memorial to the courage of the men, the power of their machines and their dedication to their mission.
Staff Sergeant Ryan M. Pitts enlisted in the Army when he was seventeen, and was just twenty-two years old when he fought at the Battle of Wanat in Afghanistan, where his heroic actions earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor. On July 13, 2008, Staff Sergeant Pitts was trapped and badly wounded at an elevated outpost, but helped turn back a brutal attack by 200 insurgents and save many of his company in one of the bloodiest battles of the war with Afghanistan. The Medal of Honor series profiles recipients of the highest and most prestigious personal military decoration, awarded to recognize U.S. military service members who have distinguished themselves through extraordinary acts of valor.
"From the earliest records of human civilization until the dawn of the twentieth century, and in widely separated cultures throughout the world, the story of honor was inseparable from the story of mankind. Today, an acquaintance with the concept of honor is indispensable to understanding the culture of the Islamic world and its sense of grievance against the West, where honor has been disregarded or actively despised for three-quarters of a century." "James Bowman draws from an wealth of sources across many centuries to illuminate honor's curious history in our own culture, and he discovers that Western honor was always different from that found elsewhere. Its idiosyncratic qualities derived partly from the classical tradition but mainly from the Judeo-Christian heritage, whose emphases on individual morality and, more recently, on sincerity and authenticity in private and personal life have acted as continual challenges to the traditional notion of honor as it is still maintained in other parts of the world. These challenges to honor and the accommodations with it that they ultimately produced are a fundamental theme in our own culture's distinctive history; and the eventual collapse of the honor culture in the West is the background against which the War on Terror and the Clash of Civilizations ought to be seen."--Jacket.
A fresh look at the how US troops played a part in the resistance of US troops to the American war in Vietnam Even if you don't know much about the war in Vietnam, you've probably heard of "The Hanoi Hilton," or Hoa Lo Prison, where captured U.S. soldiers were held. What they did there and whether they were treated well or badly by the Vietnamese became lasting controversies. As military personnel returned from captivity in 1973, Americans became riveted by POW coming-home stories. What had gone on behind these prison walls? Along with legends of lionized heroes who endured torture rather than reveal sensitive military information, there were news leaks suggesting that others had denounced the war in return for favorable treatment. What wasn't acknowledged, however, is that U.S. troop opposition to the war was vast and reached well into Hoa Loa Prison. Half a century after the fact, Dissenting POWs emerges to recover this history, and to discover what drove the factionalism in Hoa Lo. Looking into the underlying factional divide between pro-war “hardliners” and anti-war “dissidents” among the POWs, authors Wilber and Lembcke delve into the postwar American culture that created the myths of the Hero-POW and the dissidents blamed for the loss of the war. What they found was surprising: It wasn’t simply that some POWs were for the war and others against it, nor was it an officers-versus-enlisted-men standoff. Rather, it was the class backgrounds of the captives and their pre-captive experience that drew the lines. After the war, the hardcore hero-holdouts—like John McCain—moved on to careers in politics and business, while the dissidents faded from view as the antiwar movement, that might otherwise have championed them, disbanded. Today, Dissenting POWs is a necessary myth-buster, disabusing us of the revisionism that has replaced actual GI resistance with images of suffering POWs—ennobled victims that serve to suppress the fundamental questions of America’s drift to endless war.
A comprehensive history of America's highest award for military valor. The Medal of Honor chronicles the creation, evolution, and awarding of the Medal, from the battlefields of the Civil War to the jungles of Vietnam, through a wealth of illustrations and hundreds of authoritative, action-filled accounts of heroism in America's conflicts. This wonderfully detailed and beautifully designed history book puts the Medal and its recipients into the context of their times, with brief and accessible introductions explaining each war and conflict for which the Medal was awarded. It also includes photo essays, intriguing stories of the Medal's sometimes quirky personalities, effects on surviving recipients, and the Medal's preeminent place in the American story. Whether you're an avid reader on the history of the Medal of Honor or simply intrigued by its place in our history, you're certain to want to flip through the pages of The Medal of Honor again and again.
Jack C. Montgomery was a Cherokee from Oklahoma, and a first lieutenant with the 45th Infantry Division Thunderbirds. On February 22, 1944, near Padiglione, Italy, Montgomery's rifle platoon was under fire by three echelons of enemy forces when he single-handedly attacked all three positions, neutralizing the German machine-gunners and taking numerous prisoners in the process. Montgomery's actions demoralized the enemy and saved the lives of many American soldiers. The Medal of Honor series profiles the courage and accomplishments of recipients of the highest and most prestigious personal military decoration, awarded to recognize U.S. military service members who have distinguished themselves through extraordinary acts of valor.