personal narratives, american

"A Navy SEAL's highly-charged account of his combat missions in Iraq and his miraculous recovery from wounds that might have killed him--if it were not for his grit and the devotion of his wife and family"--.

"Webb offers eight profiles of uncommon courage--who these men were, what they stood for, and how they came to make the ultimate sacrifice"--OCLC.

Ten stories of American heroes who risked their lives for their country while fighting in the Afghan War.

In October 1969, William Albracht, the youngest Green Beret captain in Vietnam, took command of a remote hilltop outpost called Fire Base Kate, held by only 27 American soldiers and 150 Montagnard militiamen. He found their defenses woefully unprepared. At dawn the next morning, three North Vietnamese Army regiments--some 6,000 men--crossed the Cambodian border and attacked. Outnumbered three dozen to one, Albracht's men held off repeated ground assaults by communist forces with fierce hand-to-hand fighting, air support and a dangerously close B-52 strike. For days, the NVA blanketed Kate in a rain of rockets, mortars, artillery, machine guns, and small arms, blocking efforts to resupply, reinforce, or evacuate the outpost. Albracht continually exposed himself to enemy fire to direct air strikes, to guide re-supply helicopters, to distribute ammunition and water to his men, to retrieve the dead and to rescue the wounded, often shielding men with his own body. Wounded by rocket shrapnel, he refused medical attention or evacuation. Exhausted from days without sleep, he continued to rally his men to beat off each new enemy attack. After five days, Kate's defenders were out of ammo and water. Aerial resupply was suicidal, and reinforcements were denied by military commanders who had written off Kate. Albracht refused to surrender or die in place and he led his troops, including many wounded, off the hill and on a daring night march through enemy lines. An astonishing memoir of leadership, sacrifice. Today Albracht, a highly decorated Vietnam veteran, is a retired Secret Service agent. He has managed executive security operations at the Ford Motor Company in retirement and has opened a security consulting business in his hometown.

In the chaotic final days of the Vietnam War in April 1975, as Americans fled and their Vietnamese allies and employees prepared for the worst, John Riordan, the assistant manager of Citibank's Saigon branch, succeeded in rescuing one hundred and five Vietnamese. They were his thirty-three Vietnamese staff members and their families. Unable to secure exit papers for the employees, Citibank ordered Riordan to leave the country alone. Safe in Hong Kong, Riordan could not imagine leaving behind his employees and defied instructions from his superiors not to return to Saigon. But once he did make it back on the last commercial flight, his actions were daring and ingenious. Decades later, Riordan has located the Vietnamese and reconnected with them, sharing accounts of those frantic days and the derring-do it took to get them out to safety.

Draws on in-depth interviews with American soldiers to trace the history of the Iraq war from initial invasion to the present.

A decorated Navy SEAL offers stories from his years of combat experience in Afghanistan, discussing his theory of a man's Inner Dialogue. Offers advice for harnessing and controlling one's inner dialogue to keep one's cool on the battlefield, literally or metaphorically in life.

A memoir of a U.S. soldier who survived a bloody battle in Afghanistan and went on to fulfill a promise to his best friend to play college football after he returned home.

A first-person account of the top-secret mission inside Afghanistan that took place in the days following the September 11 terrorist attack and set the stage for the defeat of the Taliban and the war on terror.