Here is the wartime diary of Wayne Nelson, an OSS officer who served in North Africa and Europe during World War II. A prewar colleague of Allen Dulles, Nelson joined an infant OSS after failing to join the Navy because of a vision disability, and he went on to serve in North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia, Italy, Corsica, and mainland France. Erudite and a skilled writer, Nelson captured intriguing observations about some of the most important spy operations of the war, and his diary entries offer a thrilling, readable and informative glimpse into the life of a spy during World War II.
Fahey was a 24-year-old garbage-truck driver when he enlisted in the Navy on Oct. 3, 1942, and became a seaman first class on the USS Montpelier. During almost three years of battle in the Pacific Ocean, he defied Navy rules against keeping a diary by writing copious notes on loose sheets of paper that appeared to anyone watching to be ordinary let
Thirteen-year-old Madeline's diaries for 1941 and 1942 reveal her experiences living on Long Island during World War II while her father is away in the Navy.
Follow the men who fought America's first battle in World War II--their will, their resolve, the odds against them, their surrender, the Death March, their imprisonment, and the few who escaped to continue the fight.After the destruction of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the U.S. Army on Bataan was forced to surrender to the Japanese and70,000 American and Filipino soldiers became Prisoners of War. Over the next three years, almost two-thirds of them would die in Japanese custody. However, a few hundred Americans refused to surrender, evaded the Japanese Army, and slipped into the jungle to hide and await the return of General MacArthur. Some joined Filipino guerrilla bands hoping to help the war effort during the months they would wait. But months turned into years, and there was no sign of General MacArthur or his army. At home in the United States their families waited for them, not knowing if their men were dead or alive. Bataan Diary is the remarkable true chronicle of the American prisoners, evaders and guerrillas, trapped in the Philippines during the Japanese occupation.
“I am home, safe and sound, and reviewing all these memories as if in a dream. All of this pleases me. I have been faithful to my duty.” Thus José de la Luz Sáenz ends his account of his military service in France and Germany in 1918. Published in Spanish in 1933, his annotated book of diary entries and letters recounts not only his own war experiences but also those of his fellow Mexican Americans. A skilled and dedicated teacher in South Texas before and after the war, Sáenz’s patriotism, his keen observation of the discrimination he and his friends faced both at home and in the field, and his unwavering dedication to the cause of equality have for years made this book a valuable resource for scholars, though only ten copies are known to exist and it has never before been available in English. Equally clear in these pages are the astute reflections and fierce pride that spurred Sáenz and others to pursue the postwar organization of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). This English edition of one of only two known war diaries of a Mexican American in the Great War is translated with an introduction and annotation by noted Mexican American historian Emilio Zamora.
This account by a woman who fought the Nazis alongside her husband is “an indelible portrait of extraordinary strength of character” (The New Yorker). Virginia Roush fell in love with Philippe d’Albert-Lake during a visit to France in 1936; they married soon after. In 1943, they both joined the Resistance, where Virginia put her life in jeopardy as she sheltered downed airmen and later survived a Nazi prison camp. After the war, she stayed in France with Philippe, and was awarded the Légion d’Honneur and the Medal of Honor. This book includes two rare documents—Virginia’s diary of wartime France until her capture in 1944, and her prison memoir written immediately after the war. Together they offer “an invaluable record of the workings of the French Resistance by one of the very few American women who participated in it” (Providence Journal). “A sharply etched and moving story of love, companionship, commitment, and sacrifice . . . This beautifully edited diary and memoir throw an original light on the French Resistance.” —Robert Gildea, author of Marianne in Chains: In Search of the German Occupation, 1940–1945 “At once a stunning self-portrait and dramatic narrative of a valorous young American woman . . . an exciting and gripping story.” —Walter Cronkite
This annotated edition of General Hodges’s WWII diary offers a unique firsthand account of the First US Army from D-Day to V-E Day: “a fascinating book” (Bowling Green Daily News). During World War II, General Courtney Hicks Hodges commanded the First US Army, taking part in the Allied invasion of France, the liberation of Paris, and the ultimate Allied victory in 1945. Maintained by two of Hodges's aides, Major William C. Sylvan and Captain Francis G. Smith Jr., this military journal offers a unique firsthand account of the actions, decisions, and daily activities of General Hodges and the First Army throughout the war. The diary opens on June 2, 1944, as Hodges and the First Army prepare for the Allied invasion of France. In the weeks and months that follow, the diary highlights the crucial role that Hodges's command played in the Allied operations in northwest Europe. The diary recounts the First Army's involvement in the fight for France, the Siegfried Line campaign, the Battle of the Bulge, the drive to the Roer River, and the crossing of the Rhine, following Hodges and his men through savage European combat until the German surrender in May 1945. This historically significant text has previously been available only to military historians and researchers. Retired US Army historian John T. Greenwood has now edited the text in its entirety and added a biography of General Hodges as well as extensive contextual notes. A Choice Outstanding Academic Title Winner of the 2009 Distinguished Writing Award from the Army Historical Foundation
Includes the Aerial Warfare In Europe During World War II illustrations pack with over 180 maps, plans, and photos. Gen Henry H. “Hap.” Arnold, US Army Air Forces (AAF) Chief of Staff during World War II, maintained diaries for his several journeys to various meetings and conferences throughout the conflict. Volume 1 introduces Hap Arnold, the setting for five of his journeys, the diaries he kept, and evaluations of those journeys and their consequences. General Arnold’s travels brought him into strategy meetings and personal conversations with virtually all leaders of Allied forces as well as many AAF troops around the world. He recorded his impressions, feelings, and expectations in his diaries. Maj Gen John W. Huston, USAF, retired, has captured the essence of Henry H. Hap Arnold—the man, the officer, the AAF chief, and his mission. Volume 2 encompasses General Arnold’s final seven journeys and the diaries he kept therein.
The historian Carol Harris has collected together a remarkable series of accounts from the war's darkest days, with heart-warming stories of survival, perseverance, solidarity and bravery, the preservation of which becomes increasingly important as the Blitz fades from living memory. War with Germany seemed increasingly likely throughout the 1930s. The British Government and the general population believed that bombs and poison gas would be dropped on civilians in major towns and cities with the aim of terrifying them into surrendering. Today the Blitz, far from breaking civilian morale, is seen as achieving the opposite; it helped galvanise public opinion to carry on fighting the war. But in 1937, preparations to protect the population were hopelessly inadequate, and the British government was far from confident that people would respond in this way.
How do you convince men to charge across heavily mined beaches into deadly machine-gun fire? Do you appeal to their bonds with their fellow soldiers, their patriotism, their desire to end tyranny and mass murder? Certainly—but if you’re the US Army in 1944, you also try another tack: you dangle the lure of beautiful French women, waiting just on the other side of the wire, ready to reward their liberators in oh so many ways. That’s not the picture of the Greatest Generation that we’ve been given, but it’s the one Mary Louise Roberts paints to devastating effect in What Soldiers Do. Drawing on an incredible range of sources, including news reports, propaganda and training materials, official planning documents, wartime diaries, and memoirs, Roberts tells the fascinating and troubling story of how the US military command systematically spread—and then exploited—the myth of French women as sexually experienced and available. The resulting chaos—ranging from flagrant public sex with prostitutes to outright rape and rampant venereal disease—horrified the war-weary and demoralized French population. The sexual predation, and the blithe response of the American military leadership, also caused serious friction between the two nations just as they were attempting to settle questions of long-term control over the liberated territories and the restoration of French sovereignty. While never denying the achievement of D-Day, or the bravery of the soldiers who took part, What Soldiers Do reminds us that history is always more useful—and more interesting—when it is most honest, and when it goes beyond the burnished beauty of nostalgia to grapple with the real lives and real mistakes of the people who lived it.
