Non-combatants Books
Casemate Publishers Clearing the Way: U.S. Army Engineers in World
Book SynopsisQuite simply, without engineers the U.S. Army would have been unable to fight World War II. The men of the Corps of Engineers, with the strength of more than 700 battalions mobilised during World War II, were tasked with every imaginable engineering challenge. In rear areas and back in the United States they built the facilities essential for everyday military life: showers, toilets, barrack blocks, military hospitals, training camps, storage depots, and much more. To keep logistics flowing to the front, they constructed or repaired thousands of miles of roads and bridges, plus built airfields to support Allied strategic and tactical air operations. Engineers also created endless chains of defensive positions, from simple trench systems to complex bunker networks, as well as retrieving damaged vehicles and equipment from still-contested battlefields. Combat engineers, meanwhile, occupied some of the most dangerous frontline roles in the American armed forces. Heavily armed with demolitions and weapons, plus weighed down by engineering tools and even driving armoured bulldozers, they were tasked with destroying enemy strongpoints, bridges, equipment, vehicles and many other obstacles to the advance, in both overland and amphibious operations.Building the Battlefield: Tactics and Techniques of U.S. Army Engineers in World War II brings together an exceptional collection of primary sources from engineering field manuals, technical manuals, and other official publications. They provide a detailed insight into the work and skills of the U.S. Army engineers, including building a field fortification, laying and defusing mines, making a contested river crossing, or camouflaging a defensive position properly. Through these texts, we gain practical insight into the exceptional individuals who often combined first-rate infantry fighting skills with engineering skill and problem-solving ingenuity.
£21.25
University of North Texas Press,U.S. Duty to Serve, Duty to Conscience: The Story of
Book SynopsisDespite all that has been written about Vietnam, the story of the 1-A-O conscientious objector, who agreed to put on a uni-form and serve in the field without weapons rather than accept alternative service outside the military, has received scarce atten-tion. 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.
£27.96
The University of Alabama Press Pulpits of the Lost Cause
Book SynopsisCompares the faith and politics of former Confederate chaplains during the Reconstruction period, and argues for some counterintuitive understandings of their beliefs and practices in the post-war period.
£44.60
