A memoir of one woman's struggle to adapt to the different military lifestyle of loneliness, patriotism, and being a "married-single parent." It's an account of how love, honor, loyalty, courage, commitment, and resilience helped keep her family together through tough times and marriage to life in Naval Special Warfare.

He was only fifteen when he enlisted in the navy without his father's permission. He was only sixteen when he died at Grimsby General Hospital with splinters of steel in his chest. The Battle of Jutland was the biggest sea battle since the Armada. Jack Cornwell was awarded a posthumous Victorian Cross for staying, seriously wounded, at his post on the HMS Chester. This is the tragic true story of one of the youngest heroes of World War I.

"Sir, when the regulations of my country clash with the laws of my God, I must obey my God," Ivan declared. The general studied Ivan's face seriously. "Does that include the regulations of your army?" Religion was suppressed. Christians were forced to practice their faith secretly. Yet one teenage boy found the courage to stand up and speak boldly about his God. Not just to his friends or in a private church meetingbut on a military base. In front of nearly 3,000 enlisted men . . . and one colonel. Foolish? Maybe. Risky? Definitely. But Ivan Gumenyuk had determined to follow God's calling, and right then God was calling him to be a missionary in the Soviet army. Like Daniel of old, Ivan faced trials that tested his faith to the limits. And, like Daniel, Ivan accomplished incredible things for God.

In the courage and unselfish love this book describes there is an inspiration for the world today. It is the story of Ned Langford, an ordinary young mid-western American who learned that something had happened to him, so terrible that it sent him into lifelong exile on a distant tropical island. The thing began, probably, in the years when young Ned served as a soldier in the Philippines, but he did not find out what had happened until years later. By that time he was launched in a happy, successful life—engaged to be married, and with a real standing in his community. How he found out the meaning of the places on his arm where there was no feeling, how he destroyed his own identity and went to the leper colony of Culion, how he came to terms with himself and built a new life, makes tremendous, dramatic reading which is doubly effective because Mr. Burgess has let Ned tell it in his own words. Ned Langford’s story is as triumphant as it is memorable and dramatic. Here is the story of a man who faced one of the ultimate of human disasters, and yet managed to wring from it a rich, useful, undaunted life. At the time of its first publication in 1940, Perry Burgess had been a national director of the Leonard Wood Memorial (American Leprosy Foundation) for fifteen years, and the president and executive officer of that foundation for the last decade. His work has taken him to leprosaria all over the world. He presents the factual background of the disease in an authoritative appendix to this volume, a supplement that removes the misconceptions about leprosy which exist in the minds of many people. Richly illustrated throughout with photographs drawn from the files of the Memorial. “Told with amazing sincerity and restraint. It is a true story of gallantry, suffering, triumph, victory of the spirit. It is inspiring....”—Robert M. Green in the Boston Evening Transcript. “A gentle and profoundly affecting story.”—The New Yorker.

The New York Times bestselling true account of John Chapman, Medal of Honor recipient and Special Ops Combat Controller, and his heroic one-man stand during the Afghan War, as he sacrificed his life to save the lives of twenty-three comrades-in-arms. In the predawn hours of March 4, 2002, just below the 10,469-foot peak of a mountain in eastern Afghanistan, a fierce battle raged. Outnumbered by Al Qaeda fighters, Air Force Combat Controller John Chapman and a handful of Navy SEALs struggled to take the summit in a desperate bid to find a lost teammate. Chapman, leading the charge, was gravely wounded in the initial assault. Believing he was dead, his SEAL leader ordered a retreat. Chapman regained consciousness alone, with the enemy closing in on three sides. John Chapman's subsequent display of incredible valor -- first saving the lives of his SEAL teammates and then, knowing he was mortally wounded, single-handedly engaging two dozen hardened fighters to save the lives of an incoming rescue squad -- posthumously earned him the Medal of Honor. Chapman is the first airman in nearly fifty years to be given the distinction reserved for America's greatest heroes. Alone at Dawn is also a behind-the-scenes look at the Air Force Combat Controllers: the world's deadliest and most versatile special operations force, whose members must not only exceed the qualifications of Navy SEAL and Army Delta Force teams but also act with sharp decisiveness and deft precision -- even in the face of life-threatening danger. Drawing from firsthand accounts, classified documents, dramatic video footage, and extensive interviews with leaders and survivors of the operation, Alone at Dawn is the story of an extraordinary man's brave last stand and the brotherhood that forged him.

The Lonely Soldier--the inspiration for the documentary The Invisible War--vividly tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006--and of the challenges they faced while fighting a war painfully alone. More American women have fought and died in Iraq than in any war since World War Two, yet as soldiers they are still painfully alone. In Iraq, only one in ten troops is a woman, and she often serves in a unit with few other women or none at all. This isolation, along with the military's deep-seated hostility toward women, causes problems that many female soldiers find as hard to cope with as war itself: degradation, sexual persecution by their comrades, and loneliness, instead of the camaraderie that every soldier depends on for comfort and survival. As one female soldier said, "I ended up waging my own war against an enemy dressed in the same uniform as mine." In The Lonely Soldier, Benedict tells the stories of five women who fought in Iraq between 2003 and 2006. She follows them from their childhoods to their enlistments, then takes them through their training, to war and home again, all the while setting the war's events in context. We meet Jen, white and from a working-class town in the heartland, who still shakes from her wartime traumas; Abbie, who rebelled against a household of liberal Democrats by enlisting in the National Guard; Mickiela, a Mexican American who grew up with a family entangled in L.A. gangs; Terris, an African American mother from D.C. whose childhood was torn by violence; and Eli PaintedCrow, who joined the military to follow Native American tradition and to escape a life of Faulknerian hardship. Between these stories, Benedict weaves those of the forty other Iraq War veterans she interviewed, illuminating the complex issues of war and misogyny, class, race, homophobia, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Each of these stories is unique, yet collectively they add up to a heartbreaking picture of the sacrifices women soldiers are making for this country. Benedict ends by showing how these women came to face the truth of war and by offering suggestions for how the military can improve conditions for female soldiers-including distributing women more evenly throughout units and rejecting male recruits with records of violence against women. Humanizing, urgent, and powerful, The Lonely Soldier is a clarion call for change.

The first book in the Private Palmer trilogy is based on the late Gary Reilly's experiences in Vietnam. Private Palmer is stationed at San Francisco's army base at The Presidio, awaiting orders. He's trying to find his place in the ranks. And trying to avoid work.