Frank Carlson Library

Examines the role of African-Americans in the military through the history of the Triple Nickles, America's first black paratroopers, who fought against attacks perpetrated on the American West by the Japanese during World War II.

"The national bestselling author of The First Wave tells the untold story of four of the most decorated soldiers of World War II-all Medal of Honor recipients-from the beaches of French Morocco to Hitler's own mountaintop fortress As the Allies raced to defeat Hitler, four men, all in the same unit, earned medal after medal for battlefield heroism. Maurice "Footsie" Britt, a former professional football player, became the very first American to receive...

Presents a history of the role of the Marines in the World War II Pacific campaign against Japan, narrating events from the perpectives of the men fighting the battles as well as their commanding officers.

They were the men of the now-legendary Easy Company. After almost two years of hard training, they parachuted into Normandy on D-Day and, later, Operation Market Garden. They fought their way through Belgium, France, and Germany, survived overwhelming odds, liberated concentration camps, and drank a victory toast in April 1945 at Hitler's hideout in the Alps. Here, revealed for the first time, are stories of war, sacrifice, and courage as experienced...

National Book Award Winner Paul Fussell tells the breathtaking story of WWII from the young soldiers' points of view. WWII was not the glorified picture it is often depicted to be. For the American soldier it was a tiring, emotional, and gruesome experience. Fussell's extensive details and insight help to make this story come alive.

The Bedford Boys is the astonishing true story of twenty-one young men who were killed during the first horrifying minutes of D-Day and the friends and families they left behind in the small town of Bedford. Twenty-one sons killed-no other town in America suffered a greater loss in one day. It is an unforgettable story of triumph, courage, and tragedy based on extensive interviews with survivors and relatives as well as diaries and letters. Alex Kershaw's...

December 1944: Deep in the Ardennes forest, a platoon of eighteen men under the command of twenty year old lieutenant Lyle Bouck huddle in their foxholes. Under attack and vastly outnumbered, they repulse three German assaults in a fierce day long battle, killing over five hundred Germans. Only when Bouck's men run out of ammunition do they surrender. As POWs, Bouck's platoon experience an ordeal far worse than combat: trigger-happy German guards,...

The injustices of 1940s Jim Crow America are brought to life in this extraordinary blend of military and social history--a story that pays tribute to the valor of an all-black battalion whose crucial contributions at D-Day have gone unrecognized to this day. In the early hours of June 6, 1944, the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, a unit of African-American soldiers, landed on the beaches of France. Their orders were to man a curtain of armed balloons...

The story of Easy Company of the US Army Airbourne Paratrooper division and their mission in WWII France during Operation Overlord.

Drawing on years of research and firsthand interviews with both American and Japanese survivors, Maxwell Taylor Kennedy draws a gripping portrait of men bravely serving their countries in war and the advent of a terrifying new weapon, suicide bombing, that nearly halted the most powerful nation in the world. In the closing months of World War II, Americans found themselves facing a new weapon: kamikazes--the first men to use airplanes as suicide weapons....