A new prose collection by Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa

Contents: base defense in a possible war with Japan; an organization for base defense; organization & equipment for the defense battalion; the approach of war; the saga of Wake island; a defensive buildup; two African-American defense battalions; shoulder insignia; the South pacific; South Pacific tales; antiaircraft artillery; into the Central & Northern Solomons; antiaircraft machine guns; fighting boredom; the central Pacific drive; reorienting the defense battalion; coast & field artillery; fire control; armor & support; battalion summaries. Photos & maps.

July 9, 1947. Roswell, New Mexico. A young boy tags along with his father to the Roswell Army Air Field and witnesses something he was not to see or know about until fifty-three years later. August 5, 2000. Garden Plains, Kansas. A massive alien craft is spotted hovering by local citizens and darts off to the Northwest somewhere in Colorado, where it starts to tailgate commercial Flight 311 on its way to Oklahoma City. Three F-15 aircrafts are scrambling to intercept and investigate this unknown intruder. The alien craft darts off to the Southeast, and the three F-15s give pursuit of the unknown intruder. The alien craft is able to lose the F-15s in a thunderstorm near Roswell, and history repeats itself some fifty-three years later.

Includes the Second World War In The Pacific Illustration Pack – 152 maps, plans and photos. Commander Frederick Bell recounts his wartime experiences on the USS G (Grayson) during the Pacific War. “CONDITION RED” was an expression that we used to indicate the imminence of any type of engagement. Aboard the G it was a colloquialism that served to express the conviction that the next few hours or days or weeks were going to be packed with action. We first heard it soon after we arrived in the Solomons, where the term was used on Guadalcanal and Tulagi to indicate the approach of the enemy, and when our voice radio blared out the words we went to General Quarters and prepared to greet the Tokyo Express or the Zeros and Mitsubishis when they came within view. Little has been written of the part that our destroyers are playing in the Pacific War, where they are called upon to fulfil such a variety of missions that they have become multipurpose ships, engaging in any form of combat. Because we lacked suitable escort ships we used destroyers to protect convoys as well as to guard our combatant Task Forces. We used them to bombard enemy shore positions and to carry bombs and aviation gasoline and stores to Guadalcanal during the lean weeks early in our campaign in those far-distant seas. By nature as well as by name, the purpose of the destroyer is wholly offensive. Bantamweights in comparison with the great battlewagons, they pack a punch out of all proportion to their size. They are triple-threat weapons, built to strike at any enemy on or over or under the sea. In the words of Rear Admiral Tisdale, “They are the fightingest thing afloat.”