[PDF] Yank eBook

Author : John Crawley
Publisher : Melville House
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 11,79 MB
Release : 2022-09-06
Category : History
ISBN : 1612199852

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1975: A young Irish-American man joins an elite US Marine unit to get the most intensive military training possible — then joins the Irish Republican Army, during the days of some of the bloodiest fighting ever in the Irish-British conflict . . . The Irish "Troubles" were at a murderous fever pitch when John Crawley volunteered for the IRA. Bloody Friday, Bloody Sunday, the bombing of the British Houses of Parliament, and other deadly incidents had recently unfolded or were about to ... Civilian casualties were common as British soldiers, Republican militants (who wanted the UK out of Northern Ireland) and Unionist police and militants (who wanted to remain in the UK), engaged in gun battles and car bombing throughout Northern Ireland. The death toll numbered over 1,000. The IRA split over how to react between the old-line IRA, and the new Provisional IRA — the Provos, mostly impassioned young men who were not hesitant to resort to violence. In a powerful, brutally honest, no-holds-barred recounting of his experience, John Crawley details, first, the grueling challenges of his Marine Corps training, then how he put his hard-earned munitions and demolitions skills to use back in Ireland in service of the Provos. It is a story that will see him running guns with notorious American mobster — and secret IRA fundraiser — Whitey Bulger; running, under cover of night, from safe house to safe house in the Irish countryside, one step ahead of British troops; being captured, imprisoned, and being part of a mass escape attempt; fending off a recruitment offer from the CIA; and being one of the masterminds behind a campaign to take out London's electrical system. Along the way, Crawley is blisteringly candid about the memorable people he worked with, including behind-the-scenes portrayals of revered IRA leader Martin McGuinness, and of the psychopathic Whitey Bulger, as well as others in the Boston IRA support network. There are vivid portraits of colleagues and enemies, and Crawley is unflinching in his commentary on IRA leadership and their tactics, both military and political. Through it all comes the steadfast voice of a man on a mission, providing an evocative, detailed, and passionate recounting of where that mission led him and why — as well as why, to this day, he remains ready to serve.

Author : 'Yank' Levy
Publisher : Penguin UK
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 39,48 MB
Release : 2008-11-06
Category : History
ISBN : 0141903449

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1941. Britain is under some of the heaviest air raids of the Second World War. Concerns about Nazi paratroopers landing in Britain and invading take hold in the hearts of the British citizenry. The Home Guard has been mobilised to defend against airborne assault – and it needs training. ‘Yank’ Levy is brought in to Osterley Park to teach guerrilla warfare, from practical experience in the Spanish Civil War. ‘Yank’ trains soldiers of the Home Guard how to use surveillance, defend against tanks and armoured vehicles, how to fight in towns and across country and against a well-supplied, highly-trained and mobile occupying force. His book, Guerrilla Warfare offers such sound advice as: ‘Whether you go to a tea-party or to work on your allotment...take your rifle with you. Don’t leave it downstairs for a German to grab if he enters the house’ and 'Your motto should always be: ‘Finish them! Then a quick get-away, and another ambush some place else’’

Author : John Eisenhower
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 369 pages
File Size : 46,58 MB
Release : 2001-09-14
Category : History
ISBN : 0743216377

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Fought far from home, World War I was nonetheless a stirring American adventure. The achievements of the United States during that war, often underrated by military historians, were in fact remarkable, and they turned the tide of the conflict. So says John S. D. Eisenhower, one of today's most acclaimed military historians, in his sweeping history of the Great War and the men who won it: the Yanks of the American Expeditionary Force. Their men dying in droves on the stalemated Western Front, British and French generals complained that America was giving too little, too late. John Eisenhower shows why they were wrong. The European Allies wished to plug the much-needed U.S. troops into their armies in order to fill the gaps in the line. But General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing, the indomitable commander of the AEF, determined that its troops would fight together, as a whole, in a truly American army. Only this force, he argued -- not bolstered French or British units -- could convince Germany that it was hopeless to fight on. Pershing's often-criticized decision led to the beginning of the end of World War I -- and the beginning of the U.S. Army as it is known today. The United States started the war with 200,000 troops, including the National Guard as well as regulars. They were men principally trained to fight Indians and Mexicans. Just nineteen months later the Army had mobilized, trained, and equipped four million men and shipped two million of them to France. It was the greatest mobilization of military forces the New World had yet seen. For the men it was a baptism of fire. Throughout Yanks Eisenhower focuses on the small but expert cadre of officers who directed our effort: not only Pershing, but also the men who would win their lasting fame in a later war -- MacArthur, Patton, and Marshall. But the author has mined diaries, memoirs, and after-action reports to resurrect as well the doughboys in the trenches, the unknown soldiers who made every advance possible and suffered most for every defeat. He brings vividly to life those men who achieved prominence as the AEF and its allies drove the Germans back into their homeland -- the irreverent diarist Maury Maverick, Charles W. Whittlesey and his famous "lost battalion," the colorful Colonel Ulysses Grant McAlexander, and Sergeant Alvin C. York, who became an instant celebrity by singlehandedly taking 132 Germans as prisoners. From outposts in dusty, inglorious American backwaters to the final bloody drive across Europe, Yanks illuminates America's Great War as though for the first time. In the AEF, General John J. Pershing created the Army that would make ours the American age; in Yanks that Army has at last found a storyteller worthy of its deeds.

Author : Bell Irvin Wiley
Publisher : LSU Press
Page : 492 pages
File Size : 24,37 MB
Release : 2008-09-01
Category : History
ISBN : 9780807133750

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In this companion to The Life of Johnny Reb, Bell Irvin Wiley explores the daily lives of the men in blue who fought to save the Union. With the help of many soldiers' letters and diaries, Wiley explains who these men were and why they fought, how they reacted to combat and the strain of prolonged conflict, and what they thought about the land and the people of Dixie. This fascinating social history reveals that while the Yanks and the Rebs fought for very different causes, the men on both sides were very much the same. "This wonderfully interesting book is the finest memorial the Union soldier is ever likely to have.... [Wiley] has written about the Northern troops with an admirable objectivity, with sympathy and understanding and profound respect for their fighting abilities. He has also written about them with fabulous learning and considerable pace and humor.

Author : Taylor M. Chamberlin
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 50,7 MB
Release : 2011-09-29
Category : History
ISBN : 0786489340

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The northern part of Loudoun County was a Unionist enclave in Confederate Virginia that remained a contested battleground for armies and factions of all stripes throughout the Civil War. Lying between the Blue Ridge Mountains, Harpers Ferry, and Washington, D.C., the Loudoun Valley provided a natural corridor for commanders on both sides, while its mountainous fringes were home to partisans, guerillas, deserters and smugglers. This detailed history examines the conflicting loyalties in the farming communities, the peaceful Quakers caught in the middle, and the political underpinnings of Unionist Virginia.

Author : Michael J. McAfee
Publisher : Frontline Books
Page : 81 pages
File Size : 34,59 MB
Release : 2006-02-19
Category : History
ISBN : 1853672386

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A history of the United States Army during the time it served as the vanguard of western expansion and a description of its uniforms and equipment in the late nineteenth century. Each volume in this ongoing series combines detailed and informative captions with over 100 rare and unusual images. These books are a must for anyone interested in American military uniforms.

Author : Ted Ellsworth
Publisher : Hachette UK
Page : 384 pages
File Size : 41,85 MB
Release : 2009-04-30
Category : History
ISBN : 0786736402

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Ted Ellsworth was a young Dartmouth grad in 1941. In the years before the U.S. joined the Second World War effort, American men who wished to fight against Hitler were granted permission from President Roosevelt and the U.S. Congress to join the British army. In normal circumstance, fighting for another nation's army would be an automatic forfeiture of U.S. citizenship (as noted on U.S. passports). Yank begins with goodbyes to Ellworth's young wife and family. It covers his crossing to Britain, initial stay in London, assignment to a North African tank regiment and the campaign there, participation in the invasion of Italy and the second wave of D-Day, accounts of fierce battles, being taken prisoner by the Germans and shipped to a POW camp, the camp deprivations, liberation by the Russians, and finally, the year Ellsworth spent wandering eastern Europe with no dog-tags, after the war had ended, trying to reach a city from which he could ship back home. Ellsworth had been officially MIA for over two years, and everyone assumed he was dead. The final pages detail Ellsworth's homecoming when his wife hand-delivers the beautiful and intimate note that she'd written him when he was first reported missing.

Author :
Publisher : Potomac Books
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 42,61 MB
Release : 1991
Category : History
ISBN :

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Yank was the US Army's weekly magazine, written by the troops themselves during World War II. A 23-page facsimile of the magazine is included in this book, which chronicles the uncensored story of what 14 million Americans did to achieve victory - in the words of those involved. Here, in the language and artwork of contributors who include Joe McCarthy, Merle Miller, George Baker, Irwin Shaw, Ed Cunningham, Andy Rooney, William Saroyan and Richard Armour, is the GIs' account of how they fought, thought, felt, lived and talked between 1941 and 1945.