True war stories Books

Generation Kill is about the young men sent to fight their nation's first open-ended war since Vietnam. Despite the flurry of media images to come of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, you have never really met any of these people, who serve as front-line troops. For whatever reason, the media...

"An amazing tale of perilous adventure...Vibrant with life and fear and the sense of momentous events in the making."—Chicago Tribune In 1943, a group of brave Danish and Norwegian hunters carried out one of the most dramatic operations of World War II. Using dogsleds to patrol a st...

In the shadow of Auschwitz, a flamboyant German industrialist grew into a living legend to the Jews of Cracow. He was a womaniser, a heavy drinker and a bon viveur, but to them he became a saviour. This is the extraordinary story of Oskar Schindler, who risked his life to protect Jews in Nazi-occupi...

The first-person account of a 26-year-old who fought in the war in Sierra Leone as a 12-year-old boy. 'My new friends have begun to suspect that I haven't told them the full story of my life. "Why did you leave Sierra Leone?" "Because there is a war." "You mean, you saw people running around with g...

From the author of The Perfect Storm, a gripping book about Sebastian Junger's almost-fatal year with the 2nd battalion of the American Army. They were known as "The Rock." For one year, in 2007-2008, Sebastian Junger accompanied a single platoon of thirty men from the storied 2nd bat...

He has played an East End hardman, an SAS soldier and investigated vicious world gangs. Now Ross Kemp is taking on perhaps his hardest assignment of all - the Taliban. In order to prepare for this life-threatening ordeal, Ross Kemp trains with the First Battalion Royal Anglians in England's subzero ...

Late in the afternoon of Sunday, 3 October 1993, 140 elite US soldiers abseiled from helicopters into a teeming market neighbourhood in the heart of the city of Mogadishu, Somalia. Their mission was to abduct two top lieutenants of a Somali warlord and return to base. It was supposed to take them ab...

In June 2005 four US Navy SEALs left their base in Afghanistan for the Pakistani border. Their mission was to capture or kill a notorious al Qaeda leader known to be ensconced in a Taliban stronghold surrounded by a small but heavily armed force. Less than twenty-four hours later, only one of those ...

A stunning book about the right stuff in the wrong war. As a child, Robert Mason dreamed of levitating. As a young man, he dreamed of flying helicopters - and the U.S. Army gave him his chance. They sent him to Vietnam where, between August 1965 and July 1966, he flew more than 1,000 assault missio...

The new book from the author of the bestselling and much-loved Seabiscuit. On a May afternoon in 1943, a bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young ...

THE MAN WHO BROKE INTO AUSCHWITZ is the extraordinary true story of a British soldier who marched willingly into the notorious concentration camp. In the summer of 1944, Denis Avey was being held in a British POW labour camp, E715, near the site of Auschwitz III. He had heard of the brutality meted ...

'Good luck to all the lads'. Brian Cox wrote those words in his diary on 26 August 1940, just before he and his mates from 9 Platoon of 27 (Machine Gun) Battalion experience enemy action for the first time in the Western Desert. Good Luck To All The Lads is the story of Brian Cox and his schoolmates...

Heart-pounding real-life tales from the military's most experienced snipers From the peaks of Afghanistan's Hindu Kush to the subtropical marshes of south central Iraq, American snipers have braved heart-pounding situations to hit their human targets dead-on. Few military feats stir the imaginati...

'The cloak and dagger, secretive, mercurial, exceedingly hazardous life behind enemy lines . . . ' (Allan Yeoman) Between 1941 and 1945 a fair number of young Kiwi combatants found themselves loose behind enemy lines in occupied southern Europe - mostly Greece, Yugoslavia and Italy. Most were esc...

For half a century, the case of Isaiah Oggins, a 1920s New York intellectual brutally murdered in 1947 on Stalin's orders, remained hidden in the secret files of the KGB and the FBI - a footnote buried in the rubble of the Cold War. Then, in 1992, it surfaced briefly, when Boris Yeltsin handed over ...

In 2006 Doug Beattie of 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment was awarded the Military Cross for his part in recapturing the town of Garmsir from the Taliban. He was due to retire from the Army in 2007, but that was before his CO made a desperate plea: stay and do just one more tour. He couldn't turn h...

The Vietnamese hill tribes made him a demi-god. The CIA wanted to kill him. This is the remarkable true story of Australian war hero Barry Petersen. In 1963, the 28-year-old Barry was sent to Vietnam as part of the 30-man Australian Training Team, two years before the first official Australian troop...

This book tells the stories of forty heroes, all awarded bravery medals for their conduct during Special Forces missions over the last 150 years. Often covert hit-and-run operations involving very small numbers of highly skilled men, those who partake in these missions know that their goals involve ...

On 11th September 2006 - exactly five years after the attacks on the Twin Towers - a modern day Rorke's Drift was played out in the town of Garmsir, known as the Taliban gateway to Helmand Province. 40-year-old Capt. Doug Beattie of the 1st Battalion Royal Irish Regiment was charged with the mission...

"From the moment I got to Auschwitz I was completely detached. I disconnected my heart and intellect in an act of self-defense, despair, and hopelessness." With these words Sara Nomberg-Przytyk begins this painful and compelling account of her experiences while imprisoned for two years in ...

In June 2005 four US Navy SEALs left their base in Afghanistan for the Pakistani border. Their mission was to capture or kill a notorious al Qaeda leader known to be ensconced in a Taliban stronghold surrounded by a small but heavily armed force. Less than twenty-four hours later, only one of thos...

In the early days of April 1941, the 14,000 Australian forces garrisoned in the Libyan town of Tobruk were told to expect reinforcement and supplies within eight weeks. eight months later, these heroic, gallant determined men were rescued by the British Navy having held the fort against the might of...

It was April 7th 2004: a year to the day since the city had fallen. Saddam had been deposed. The Marines and the Para's were long gone and Southern Iraq rarely made it into the news. When Sgt Dan Mills and the rest of the 1st Batallion, The Princess of Wales' Royal Regiment flew in, they were suppos...

This skillfully compiled anthology draws on the phenomenally successful "Forgotten Voices" series. "Lest We Forget" brings together first-hand recollections from the Great War to the Second World War, to vividly illustrate the impact of war. Told in the actual words of the men, women and children wh...

Following on from the great success of Escape: Kiwi POWs on the run in World War 2, this is another accessible and fascinating account of New Zealanders' extraordinary exploits during World War 2. Torpedo is an anthology of fascinating first-person stories about New Zealand's naval and convoy work i...

'Soldier Boy takes us into the world of Harry Gilbert, a slim, young (in fact under-age) New Zealand trooper who served in the 7th Canterbury Mounted Rifles during the latter stages of the Boer War in South Africa. Though more than a century has passed since that conflict, Harry's tour of duty is br...

In November 1965, 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lt.Col. Hal Moore, were dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by 2000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister...

This is McNab's account of the mission - a chronicle of courage, endurance and dark humour in the face of extreme cold, enemy attack, capture, and torture of a savagery and relentlessness for which not even their intensive SAS training had prepared them.

The battles on Gallipoli in 1915 were crucial in making New Zealand the nation it is today. The huge sacrifice of life has affected the country for generations. Now a new book will add significantly to our understanding of the events of 1915 on the Gallipoli penisula. Terry Kinloch tells the story w...

From the author of The Perfect Storm, a gripping book about Sebastian Junger's almost fatal year with the 2nd battalion of the American Army. For 15 months, Sebastian Junger accompanied a single platoon of thirty men from the celebrated 2nd battalion of the U.S. Army, as they fought their way throu...

Nestled by the riverside in the west-coast Japanese town of Naoetsu, camp 4-B was the prison for for some 30 Australian soldiers, collectively known as C Force. This is a gripping history of the men who spent WWII in the camp.

'Fly is an absorbing read thanks to the amazing and previously untold stories Veitch collected from aging pilots, navigators and gunners.' HERALD SUN All over the world during World War II, thousands of young men who had never so much as been near an aeroplane left offices, farms and classrooms t...

A collection of three exciting Second World War stories. Includes the stories of the Battle of Britain - when the RAF fought the Luftwaffe for control of the skies above the English Channel; the decisive battle at Alamein, where the British 'Eighth Army' destroyed the German forces in Egypt and the ...

The story of the unsung heroines who flew the newest, fastest, aeroplanes in World War II -- mostly in southern England where the RAF was desperately short of pilots. Why would the well-bred daughter of a New England factory-owner brave the U-boat blockades of the North Atlantic in the bitter winte...

In January 1991, eight members of the SAS regiment embarked upon a top secret mission that was to infiltrate them deep behind enemy lines. Under the command of Sergeant Andy McNab, they were to sever the underground communication link between Baghdad and north-west Iraq, and to seek and destroy mobi...

By 2000, civil war had been raging in the tiny diamond-rich country of Sierra Leone for ten years. The people there had endured unimaginable violence and were at the mercy of the uncontrollable rebel force, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). During this reign of terror, a splinter group calling t...

"Spoken from the Front" is the story of the Afghan Campaign, told for the first time in the words of the servicemen and women who have been fighting there. With unprecedented access to soldiers of all ranks, as well as pilots, reservists, engineers, medics, Royal Military police, mechanics...

The first heroes of the air. Rewriting the rules of military engagement and changing the course of modern history as a result, the pioneering airmen of the First World War took incredible risks to perform their vital contribution to the war effort. Fighter Heroes of WWI is a narrative history that ...

Using taped interviews from the Imperial War Museum's Sound Archive, Phil Robins has gathered together this compelling collection of first-hand accounts from people who grew up during the Second World War. As well as British children's stories of evacuation and the Blitz, this book also includes mem...

Monty Ingram's diary provides a remarkable insight into the mind of a front-line Digger during World War One, and particularly in the trenches at Passchendaele where, in four hours, New Zealand suffered more casualties than in the whole eight-month Gallipoli campaign, and the Allies lost 300,000 men...