For two American aviators assigned to the Aerial Rocket Artillery in Vietnam, the odds for survival, the margin between life and death, is often as thin or mysterious as the dismal, gray mist that routinely lingers over the jungle treetops surrounding their makeshift airbases. During the early hours of February 4, 1968, as the Tet Offensive thunders around him, Russell Warriner, a lanky 20-year-old Huey crew chief from the foothills of the Berkshires watches as the men he routinely flies with leave in an effort to help a group of young Army Rangers. With his aircraft in pieces and his buddies in the air, the mission horns on the base blare overhead as Warriner learns that his friends and their Huey are missing. After flying search missions for nearly 36 hours, his unit locates the battered and burnedfuselage. There are three American bodies near the wreckage, but Bobby Connelly, the co-pilot, is not among the dead. For these two men, a single mission, a routine call for help, will forever link their spirits. For one, the mysterious strength of that spirit, an almost transcendent will to survive, goes back generations to a time before technology and industry. This inner strength will help one of the soldiers live to see another day. But will it be enough to bring them both home?

For two American aviators assigned to the Aerial Rocket Artillery in Vietnam, the odds for survival, the margin between life and death, is often as thin or mysterious as the dismal, gray mist that routinely lingers over the jungle treetops surrounding their makeshift airbases. During the early hours of February 4, 1968, as the Tet Offensive thunders around him, Russell Warriner, a lanky 20-year-old Huey crew chief from the foothills of the Berkshires watches as the men he routinely flies with leave in an effort to help a group of young Army Rangers. With his aircraft in pieces and his buddies in the air, the mission horns on the base blare overhead as Warriner learns that his friends and their Huey are missing. After flying search missions for nearly 36 hours, his unit locates the battered and burned fuselage. There are three American bodies near the wreckage, but Bobby Connelly, the co-pilot, is not among the dead. For these two men, a single mission, a routine call for help, will forever link their spirits. For one, the mysterious strength of that spirit, an almost transcendent will to survive, goes back generations to a time before technology and industry. This inner strength will help one of the soldiers live to see another day. But will it be enough to bring them both home?

Brooke King has been asked over and over what it’s like to be a woman in combat, but she knows her answer is not what the public wants to hear. The answers people seek lie in the graphic details of war—the sex, death, violence, and reality of it all as she experienced it. In her riveting memoir War Flower, King breaks her silence and reveals the truth about her experience as a soldier in Iraq. Find out what happens when the sex turns into secret affairs, the violence is turned up to eleven, and how King’s feelings for a country she knew nothing about as a nineteen-year-old become more disturbing to her as a thirty-year-old mother writing it all down before her memories fade into oblivion. The story of a girl who went to war and returned home a woman, War Flower gathers the enduring remembrances of a soldier coming to grips with post-traumatic stress disorder. As King recalls her time in Iraq, she reflects on what violence does to a woman and how the psychic wounds of combat are unwittingly passed down from mother to children. War Flower is ultimately a profound meditation on what it means to have been a woman in a war zone and an unsettling exposé on war and its lingering aftershocks. For veterans such as King, the toughest lesson of service is that in the mind, some wars never end—even after you come home.

The New York Times bestselling author of Fly Girls shares the riveting story of an unsung World War II hero who saved countless American lives in the Philippines. When Florence Finch died at the age of 101, few of her Ithaca, NY neighbors knew that this unassuming Filipina native was a Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, whose courage and sacrifice were unsurpassed in the Pacific War against Japan. Long accustomed to keeping her secrets close in service of the Allies, she waited fifty years to reveal the story of those dramatic and harrowing days to her own children. Florence was an unlikely warrior. She relied on her own intelligence and fortitude to survive on her own from the age of seven, facing bigotry as a mixed-race mestiza with the dual heritage of her American serviceman father and Filipina mother. As the war drew ever closer to the Philippines, Florence fell in love with a dashing American naval intelligence agent, Charles "Bing" Smith. In the wake of Bing's sudden death in battle, Florence transformed from a mild-mannered young wife into a fervent resistance fighter. She conceived a bold plan to divert tons of precious fuel from the Japanese army, which was then sold on the black market to provide desperately needed medicine and food for hundreds of American POWs. In constant peril of arrest and execution, Florence fought to save others, even as the Japanese police closed in. With a wealth of original sources including taped interviews, personal journals, and unpublished memoirs, The Indomitable Florence Finch unfolds against the Bataan Death March, the fall of Corregidor, and the daily struggle to survive a brutal occupying force. Award-winning military historian and former Congressman Robert J. Mrazek brings to light this long-hidden American patriot. The Indomitable Florence Finch is the story of the transcendent bravery of a woman who belongs in America's pantheon of war heroes.

Includes a foreword by Major General David A. Rubenstein. From the editor: "71F, or "71 Foxtrot," is the AOC (area of concentration) code assigned by the U.S. Army to the specialty of Research Psychology. Qualifying as an Army research psychologist requires, first of all, a Ph.D. from a research (not clinical) intensive graduate psychology program. Due to their advanced education, research psychologists receive a direct commission as Army officers in the Medical Service Corps at the rank of captain. In terms of numbers, the 71F AOC is a small one, with only 25 to 30 officers serving in any given year. However, the 71F impact is much bigger than this small cadre suggests. Army research psychologists apply their extensive training and expertise in the science of psychology and social behavior toward understanding, preserving, and enhancing the health, well being, morale, and performance of Soldiers and military families. As is clear throughout the pages of this book, they do this in many ways and in many areas, but always with a scientific approach. This is the 71F advantage: applying the science of psychology to understand the human dimension, and developing programs, policies, and products to benefit the person in military operations. This book grew out of the April 2008 biennial conference of U.S. Army Research Psychologists, held in Bethesda, Maryland. This meeting was to be my last as Consultant to the Surgeon General for Research Psychology, and I thought it would be a good idea to publish proceedings, which had not been done before. As Consultant, I'd often wished for such a document to help explain to people what it is that Army Research Psychologists "do for a living." In addition to our core group of 71Fs, at the Bethesda 2008 meeting we had several brand-new members, and a number of distinguished retirees, the "grey-beards" of the 71F clan. Together with longtime 71F colleagues Ross Pastel and Mark Vaitkus, I also saw an unusual opportunity to capture some of the history of the Army Research Psychology specialty while providing a representative sample of current 71F research and activities. It seemed to us especially important to do this at a time when the operational demands on the Army and the total force were reaching unprecedented levels, with no sign of easing, and with the Army in turn relying more heavily on research psychology to inform its programs for protecting the health, well being, and performance of Soldiers and their families."

This work is a collection of observations, insights, and advice from over 50 serving and retired Senior Non-Commissioned Officers. These experienced Army leaders have provided for the reader, outstanding mentorship on leadership skills, tasks, and responsibilities relevant to our Army today. There is much wisdom and advice "from one leader to another" in the following pages.