Finished a very interesting book today.

The book is Where Men Win Glory by Jon Krakauer. What the title doesn’t tell you is that this is a book on the Pat Tillman story. Who is Pat Tillman, well here’s the brief run down.

Pat Tillman was an NFL player for the Arizona Cardinals. Just after the September 11 attacks in New York he gave up a very lucrative deal to instead enlist in the US Army as a Ranger and was deployed to Iraq & Afghanistan. Here’s the kicker. He was killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire.

The book follows his life but also how Afghanistan’s tumultuous history saw the beginning of the taliban and other tribal factions. So not only do you grt Pat Tillman ‘s history but also why he was there.

Then once you get to the day it happened the events are given a good amount of detail so you can understand what happened. The aftermath and cover up is also covered which may have been a bit one sided but it does pose a good amount of questions. The whole premise of the possibility of many more unreported friendly fire incidents.

The events never really made newa media in Australia and the book was recommended by a friend. Well worth the read and makes you think about the real merits of selflessness and sacrifice. Worth the read!

I wasn’t going to write up a book review on this one but by the time i finished it i just bad to.

The book is Without Hesitation by General (Ret) Hugh Shelton. Your probably thinking right now “another boring military biography” and that is kind of what I thought originally. This book was a gift from my parents so I never chose it, but I am glad they did.

Although probably not written in a fashion I like (where it jumps around a bit) it was a fascinating and inspirational read nonetheless. Probably need to give you some background first though. General Shelton was in the US Army leading Infantry, paratroopers & special forces as fsr back as Vietnam. When he left the service in 2001 (just after September 11) he finished up his time as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). What is the “Joint Cheifs of Staff?” Well they are the leaders and top advisors for each of the US Military Services. You have the Cheif of Staff for the Air Force, Cheif of Staff for the Army, Marine Corp Commandant and the Chief of Naval Operations. Along with other staff members and the Chairman and his Vice, these Generals and Admirals become the sounding board for the US President on military matters. Though the Chairman doesn’t necissarily run the day to day operations of the Military forces he is like the President’s right hand man.

I hadn’t really read anything on the JCS so this portion of the book was great, but the biggest thing I got from the book was the part I didn’t really like the most. Like I mentioned before the book jumped around a lot. At the end of each chapter it flashes back to the “present” so you may have been reading a chapter about Vietnam then the last few pages of the chapter your reading about the present. But that is the part that really suckered me in. These “Flash Forwards” are about how the General had fallen off a tree and suffered a spinal injury, an injury that he was told he would never recover from. Well that’s where the inspiration comes in. He DID recover and in fact is still alive today and walking (though from what I read he didn’t get full 100% mobility back, but he may have by now). Reading about his recovery, his determination to prove that point that no matter what you set your mind to, it can be done.

It set me back to the way that I had been with my weight loss. Reading about his recovery, his determination to just prove them wrong to do it for no one but himself, that hit home. I highly recommend this book to anyone, not only for the military and leadership side of things, but for that read to get inspired to do the things that you don’t think you can, that others tell you that you can’t. To defy what others will think.

You know the drill:

This weeks book (yeah its barely been a week) is “The Joker” by Pete Scholey. A look at life in the SAS for over 20 years. This is the real SAS he is referring to. The British one. From the time of the campaigns in Borneo, all the way through to the Falklands. What was the reincarnation of the SAS after World War 2. To give you a bit of a background the SAS during World War 2 was a revolution and one of the first real Special Forces in the world. They started up operating in Africa, penetrating far behind enemy lines in the deserts attacking the Nazi airfields and other targets in small groups. Fast forward to after the war and a reformed SAS was used in the Malayan Campaign in the jungles of Malaysia.

The British SAS have long been referred to by some as the very epitome of special forces (though I wont get into that fight) and there has been a number of books written about them (including Bravo Two Zero). But the thing I like about this book is the fact that it looks at the comedy of the events that can happen in amongst all the hardship, death & destruction. The author describes some good histroy of operations (obviously the ones he can talk about) but with each of these decriptions come the funnier more light hearted moments. This to me was fantastic! I do enjoy a good chuckle and there are plenty of laughs to be had. I was lol’ing on the bus a number of times at some of the book. Though most of the funny moments are as you would expect with a group of men, boyish, childish humor it is still good to read that they are just like everyone else, real people.

A good read!

Ahh Avgeek Book Review time… well.. Kinda..

This weeks book (it has been a week right?) is the History of the Glider Pilot Regiment by Claude Smith. Your probably thinking “the what regiment” and why the hell do I care. Well the British and the American’s in WW2 had been using Gliders to bring in parts of their Airborne forces, well before the invention of the helicopter insertions that are seen today. These gliders were towed into the air behind either a bomber like a Halifax or perhaps a Wellington or behind a C-47 Skytrain/Dakota (DC-3). Made of wood or fabric these flimsy aircraft were a 1 way ticket for the pilots and crew and they were used to ferry troops or vehicles into the war and essentially crash land them into a site and off they would go.

The biggest thing for this was the fact that the pilots of these gliders were pretty much stranded once they got there. During the build up and start of these forces the British went back and forth between the Army and the Royal Air Force to fight over who did what. Eventually it came down to the army to control the pilots and hence the Glider Pilot Regiment was formed. These pilots once they landed were dual role troops and once they were on the ground, they became soldiers, trained to not only lead men but fight and act like infantry till they could be exfiltrated back behind the lines to their home bases and restart the process.

This book is a pretty indepth look at all the different gliders and the regiments that pretty much existed for WW2 only and was gotten rid of once the war was over. As technology in aviation advanced they were no longer required as parachute technology expanded and the invention of helicopters came around, why would you need an aircraft that isn’t powered, is a one way ticket to possible death and destruction and really just an empty money hole? I guess they decided the same thing and it just slowly went away.

I have stood next to a Hamilcar glider in France and jesus they were big, its scary that they could carry a small light tank! It’s a good read, pretty interesting at least!

Good book that you get engrossed in means you finish it quickly (plus it is a small paperback):

The Book is “Combat Swimmer: Memoirs of a Navy Seal” by Captain Robert A Gormly. A Now retired US Navy Seal Captain Gormly was a seal from an era I had not read much about. I have always had a fascination about Navy Seals ever since I first saw the Navy Seals movie (from back in the 80s, not GI Jane). The one thing you mostly read about these days are modern day seals, what you hardly read about is the history of the seals and where they first got their real taste of action. Vietnam. This was close enough.

Gormly was a seal from the Vietnam era so it was great to read up on how things happened back then. I really need to read some more on this war as it is fascinating to me on so many levels. It saw leaps and bounds improvements in war fare but yet was so close to modern war fare in the fact that they in some cases were fighting a more guerilla style war (like today with the Taliban in Afghanistan). It looks at the basic rudimentary technology and weapons they used back then compared to now and it was great.

Definately a good read for someone who is into this sort of thing.

I was lucky enough to finish this book just before my trip to Dallas, so had a fresh book to start the trip

The book is “The Day the Devils Dropped In” by Neil Barber. This was a book recommended to me by our tour guide while in Normandy in 2011 (yes it has taken me this long to read it, judge me later). This follows the lead up to and the first few days (well 6 days) of the Normandy campaign for the 9th Parachute Battalion of the British Army.

On D-Day the biggest mission for the 9th Para was the attack on the Merville Battery and after visiting the site back in 2011, I really did want to read up a bit more on it as it was this crazy attempt at attacking a heavily fortified position, but that did not go according to plan at all, yet they still managed to pull it off.

It is a good book and interesting to read on Normandy airborne campaign from a Non US perspective (as the US did kind of dominate this campaign). What I learned from it though was how different the British armed forces are compared to the US Armed forces. With talks of “assistants” and “batman” etc it is very different to what you would expect to see, or even read about and compared to other countries.

A pretty good read, mind you it is not at all that long (190 pages) and I managed to finish it off in less than a week.