Bøger i North Texas Military Biography serien

"My Darling Boys is the story of a New Mexico farm family whose three sons were sent to fight in World War II. All flew combat aircraft in the Army Air Forces. In 1973 one of the boys, Oscar Allison, a B-24 top turret gunner and flight engineer, wrote a memoir of his World War II experiences. On a mission to Regensburg, Germany, his bomber, ravaged by German fighters, was shot down. He was captured and spent fifteen months in German stalag prisons. His memoir, the core of this unique book, details his training, combat, and prisoner-of-war experience in a truthful, introspective, and compelling manner. Fred H. Allison, the author and Oscar's nephew, gained access to family letters that supplement Oscar's story and bring to light the experiences of Oscar's brothers. Harold Allison, the author's father, was sidelined from combat as a bomber copilot due to a health condition. The letters also tell of the brother who did not come home, Wiley Grizzle Jr., a P-51 fighter pilot. Wiley's last mission brought his squadron of Mustangs into a pitched battle with German fighters bound for the front to attack American troops. The letters also introduce the boys' family, who fought the battle of the home front on their farm in New Mexico. Allison reveals the burden home folks bore for their boys in combat and then the emotional trauma from the dreaded War Department letters announcing "missing in action" or "killed in action." Allison conducted extensive research in the official records and in secondary sources to give context to the memoir and letters. My Darling Boys brings a new and important aspect to personal accounts of World War II combat, giving the reader a unique blend of first-person military action tied to the home front family"--

"Joe Olexa enlisted in the US Army in December 1940, figuring that if he was going to be in a war, he might as well start training. Assigned to the 1st Infantry Division, nicknamed "The Big Red One," he served in Company L of its 26th Infantry Regiment for the next four years. Along the way he trained with the division in maneuvers in the United States; shipped to England in 1942; landed at Oran, Algeria, in the Operation Torch landings of November 1942; and fought in Tunisia, Sicily, Normandy, Belgium, and Germany. Olexa was one of the first group of enlistees that brought the division up to full strength in the buildup prior to Pearl Harbor, and was a sergeant by the time he went overseas. He served as a squad leader, platoon sergeant, and acting platoon leader, outlasting nearly all the men in his company. His memoir features accounts of unusual adventures in Tunisia when his battalion was detached from the rest of the division, and presents a detailed and intense account of his platoon's experiences at El Guettar. Later, Olexa became a "Sea Scout," going ashore on Sicily the night before the invasion to provide signals to guide landing craft onto the beach at Gela. After landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day, Olexa was selected by his battalion commander to hunt snipers and lead patrols in addition to his usual duties, and he fought in Normandy until wounded in late June. He rejoined his company in mid-September 1944 and was heavily involved in the capture of Aachen in October. His memoir, originally composed in the late 1970s and expertly edited and annotated by James Smither, offers remarkable insights into the experiences of an ordinary soldier who found himself in truly extraordinary situations"--

"Despite all that has been written about Vietnam, the story of the 1-A-O conscientious objector, who agreed to put on a uniform and serve in the field without weapons rather than accept alternative service outside the military, has received scarce attention. This joint memoir by two 1-A-O combat medics, James C. Kearney and William H. Clamurro, represents a unique approach to the subject. It is a blend of their personal narratives-with select Vietnam poems by Clamurro-to illustrate noncombatant objection as a unique and relatively unknown form of Vietnam War protest. Both men initially met during training and then served as frontline medics in separate units "outside the wire" in Vietnam. Clamurro was assigned to a tank company in Tay Ninh province next to the Cambodian border, before reassignment to an aid station with the 1st Air Cavalry. Kearney served first as a medic with an artillery battery in the 1st Infantry Division, then as a convoy medic during the Cambodian invasion with the 25th Infantry Division, and finally as a Medevac medic with the 1st Air Cavalry. In this capacity Kearney was seriously wounded during a "hot hoist" in February 1971 and ended up being treated by his friend Clamurro back at base. Because of their status as "a new breed of conscientious objector"-i.e., more political than religious in their convictions-the authors' experience of the Vietnam War differed fundamentally from that of their fellow draftees and contrasted even with the great majority of their fellow 1-A-O medics, whose conscientious objector status was largely or entirely faith-based"--