In reply to CanyonAg77

CanyonAg77 said:

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https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-500-Untold-Greatest-Mission/dp/0451224957

The amazing story of over 500 American and other Allied airmen who were protected by the Chetniks in German occupied Yugoslavia, and rescued in the biggest mission you never heard about. Picked up in C-47s, 12 at a time.

Most were shot down in raids on the oil facilities at Ploetsi.

The rescue is inspiring, the betrayal of the Chetniks and their leader by the US State Department disgusting.

Never trust a communist.

I'm considering a thread on this book and WWII in Yugoslvia.

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The astonishing, never before told story of the greatest rescue mission of World War IIwhen the OSS set out to recover more than 500 airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia...

During a bombing campaign over Romanian oil fields, hundreds of American airmen were shot down in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. Local Serbian farmers and peasants risked their own lives to give refuge to the soldiers while they waited for rescue, and in 1944, Operation Halyard was born. The risks were incredible. The starving Americans in Yugoslavia had to construct a landing strip large enough for C-47 cargo planeswithout tools, without alerting the Germans, and without endangering the villagers. And the cargo planes had to make it through enemy airspace and backwithout getting shot down themselves.

Classified for over half a century for political reasons, the full account of this unforgettable story of loyalty, self-sacrifice, and bravery is now being told for the first time ever. The Forgotten 500 is the gripping, behind-the-scenes look at the greatest escape of World War II.

Friend's brother was one of those pilots! Made it back safely.

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Any book recs on the OSS and founding of the CIA?

El Narco by Ioan Grillo. Shocking book on Mexican cartels. More recent history than many of the books on here. It is better than any show or documentary I have seen. Truly horrifying

I just started Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage and it's fantastic so far

In reply to Ag_07

Ag_07 said:

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I just started Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage and it's fantastic so far

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About 1/3 of the book is dedicated to the submarine Parche. My brother-in-law was an officer on it during that time. He still refuses to discuss anything at all and will neither confirm nor deny anything in the book.

However, I found out about the book from a guy who was an officer in the Naval Reserve serving in Navy Intelligence. At the time of my b-in-law's service, he was the Intelligence Officer assigned to coordinate with the Parche. He told me to go out and buy two copies of the book, one for myself and one for my b-in-law. He said he would not confirm or deny anything in the book, but I just needed to buy two copies.

My dad had previously figured out that the Parche was in the intelligence business based on publicly available info, such as:

• It was the only sub that had a full doctor on its crew, rather than a medic
• It had 4 full-time deep-sea divers on its crew
• It was the only Naval vessel home ported in the San Francisco area (Mare Island) (I think that this is correct)
• No one could talk about its missions at all, even in the most general sense. (i.e., it was not being used as an attack sub (its design classification) nor obviously as a missile/boomer.)
• Its relatively short cruises that were of random duration.
• All of the secrecy around it.

I picked back up and finished The Big Bend: A History of the Last Texas Frontier after a long pause....good history of the Big Bend region of the state.

I think I'm going to read Masters of the Air next so I can then watch the mini-series when it comes out.

Finished The Pirates Laffite by Davis. Very detailed and informative. I knew the names and the connection of Jean to Texas and the Battle of New Orleans but my very limited impression of him was very different than what this books shows. Also goes into detail as well about his older brother Pierre. Didn't know about their work for the Spanish as well. For a much rumors of lost treasure exist, they basically didn't handle finances well at all and were constantly in need of another score.

Reading about Jean Laffite and Wyatt Earp has really opened up my eyes to the value of good post death PR. Both were sensationalized in various media forms to a greater deal than their actual contributions and character.

In reply to Aggie1205

Aggie1205 said:

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Finished The Pirates Laffite by Brown. Very detailed and informative. I knew the names and the connection of Jean to Texas and the Battle of New Orleans but my very limited impression of him was very different than what this books shows. Also goes into detail as well about his older brother Pierre. Didn't know about their work for the Spanish as well. For a much rumors of lost treasure exist, they basically didn't handle finances well at all and were constantly in need of another score.

Reading about Jean Laffite and Wyatt Earp has really opened up my eyes to the value of good post death PR. Both were sensationalized in various media forms to a greater deal than their actual contributions and character.

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By William C. Davis, right?

Yes, not sure how I botched the name. Fixed.

Lincoln's Spies-Douglas Waller

This is an interesting book on the development of an early intelligence service and the struggles they faced. Lots of colorful characters in this book.


The Forgotten 500 was strong as well. Thanks for the recommendation on that one.

Recently read Operation Swallow by Mark Felton. Interesting story of US POWs from the Battle of the Bulge that I hadn't heard of before.

Also read Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. He writes about Fundamentalist Mormoms using a murder case from the early 80s.

In reply to Aggie1205

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Also read Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. He writes about Fundamentalist Mormoms using a murder case from the early 80s.

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Back in the early 80s, I was practicing law in a smallish community out west. My firm assigned me to assist some local doctors who needed legal help in protecting real estate investments that they had made with a promoter out of Salt Lake City. The promoter had sold such investments for tax deduction purposes to doctors nationwide. He controlled a real estate empire valued in the multiple billions. The reason my clients needed protection is that the promoter had died, throwing his empire into chaos.

My clients were not the only ones affected so a number of lawsuits had been consolidated into a giant proceeding in Salt Lake. I hired a local firm to represent my clients' interests in Salt Lake. My conversations with those Salt Lake lawyers were interesting.

They told me that the promoter had been a devout Mormon and had assembled a very large collection of Mormon historical documents. Many of those documents contradicted official Mormon history. The Mormon Church asked the promoter to donate his collection to the Church, but he declined, perhaps because many such documents and artifacts that contradicted the official histories simply disappeared when acquired by the Church.

A few months after the promoter declined to donate his collection, a bomb went off in his mailbox when he was getting his mail, killing him. By the time the dust settled and an investigation was made, his collection had disappeared.

In reply to Aggie1205

Aggie1205 said:

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Recently read Operation Swallow by Mark Felton. Interesting story of US POWs from the Battle of the Bulge that I hadn't heard of before.

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If you found that interesting check out Escape From Davao by John Lukacs. It's a great read

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On April 4, 1943, ten American prisoners of war and two Filipino convictsnicknamed the "Davao Dozen"executed a daring escape from one of Japan's most notorious prison camps. Called the "greatest story of the war in the Pacific" by the War Department in 1944, the full account has never been tolduntil now. A product of years of in-depth research, John D. Lukacs's gripping description of the escape brings this remarkable tale to life. In this remarkable contribution to the realm of WWII POW narrative, Lukacs describes the dramatic escape for a new generation to admire the resourcefulness and patriotism of the men who fought in the Pacific.

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In reply to Jabin Your story has at least some interesting connections to the book. One of the murderers was cellmates with Mark Hofmann who was the forger turned bomber. He forged what he claimed were early Mormon documents that he then sold to the church to keep some of them from being publicized.

I read Sole Survivor by George Gay. He recounts much of his life but most is focused on the WW2 years. Of course he attended A&M but didn't graduate. Overall an interesting read, lots of info on just daily life both on ship and when he was based at Henderson on Guadalcanal. He seems to have been quite a ladies man as well. He definitely crossed paths with a larger number of major names in the military, entertainment industry, and in aviation. One thing that stands out is the print on the spine is flipped.

Almost finished with this. Pretty interesting perspective of the ETO.

more interesting to me because I bought it at the Arlington Cemetery gift shop before going to see his grave

Endeavor - Peter Moore. About Captain Cook's adventures into the south Pacific and Australia. Also catalogues the ship's use in the American Revolution. Not my favorite book but learned a good bit about sailing in that time period. I would give it a 6/10.

Currently reading Narco Land by Anabel Hernandez cue to my recent interest in MX/Cartels. Good so far.

In reply to Ag_07

Ag_07 said:

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I just started Blind Man's Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage and it's fantastic so far

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I'm spending a good chunk of time on the Cold War this year. Started with The Cold War A New History by John Lewis Gaddis. It was a solid overview at a high level for someone who was not alive during that era.

Just picked up this one as it sounds interesting, thanks for the recommendation.

Just finished another history book for the Army War College's Commandant's Reading Program. This one is titled Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad by Matthew Delmont. Like I mentioned in my post about The British Are Coming, we read the book on our own and get to spend an evening with the author. The prose and narrative were written with the intent to be accessible to a mass audience, though the research is as thorough as you might expect for academic history. I consider it a pretty quick 307 pages.

The subtitle captures the essence of the book well. This is a history of World War II focused on the experience of the black community, both in uniform and out of uniform. Delmont incudes as much content related to the civil rights issues facing black troops and defense industrial workers before, during, and shortly after the war as there is of combat. If you have a decent comprehension of WWII history, I'd say Half American does a fine job shedding light on an aspect of American WWII history that does not get much coverage. I found the black press' strong motivation to combat fascism, starting during the Spanish Civil War, to be fascinating, as they saw analogy between Nazi ideology and Jim Crow. Their coverage was a factor in many black enlistments. There are also some politically intriguing interactions between black civil rights leaders and Roosevelt & Truman that I had not seen elsewhere. A reader will get plenty of exposure to the formation and combat of more well-known black units like the Tuskegee Airmen, 92nd Infantry Division, and the 761st Tank Battalion. The broader look at the black-only engineer units, air corps ground support, nurse corps, and supply functions was particularly interesting and newer to me.

For anyone that might immediately jump to a concern about a political or cultural agenda with the book, I'll admit the introduction and conclusion chapters have some moments of commentary that are certainly the author's analysis on how the history should be contextualized. However, I found the history throughout the rest of the book to be agenda-free. If a reader is especially sensitive to, or in denial about, the realities of how our country both legally and culturally treated the black community in that time, the book would be an uncomfortable read.

At our author session last week, Delmont mentioned a story of interviewing a black WWII vet who, in the years after the war (I believe he said it was in the 60s), was browsing pictorial histories of WWII (like the Time anthologies) and didn't see a single picture of a black servicemember in any of them. His thought at the time was that "we were being erased from the history of the war." Delmont's motivation was to tell the story of how those vets and the black community contributed to the war effort, even when they were fighting for civil rights at home. I think the book achieves that and honors their service, which is a great thing.

I will admit I probably would not have picked this up on my own but I'm glad the War College included it in our reading program lineup. WWII is one of my favorite historical subjects and I found Half American enhanced my understanding of the war and America during the war. It isn't the history of WWII but a history of WWII. A history worth learning about.

In reply to Noblemen06 Good review! Thanks.

Did it by any chance discuss the race riots in Beaumont during the war?

In reply to Jabin There's a chapter that specifically talks about race riots during the war. Beaumont, being one, along with Detroit, Harlem, Mobile, and some Army camps in the south. The riots are captured more in the context of how the War Department and local units' commands dealt with them, along with the President and NAACP. Delmont does a good job of not rehashing well-tread stories and giving new details. One aspect of the book that kept me engaged was how all these events during the war intersected with the politics, culture, and communities of the time.

Read The Foundations of Early Modern Europe, 1460-1559 by Eugene Rice Jr. Covers many of the key states during the Renaissance and the beginning of the reformation. Goes into key things like the printing press, changes in art, and education. Lots of religious discussion as well.

Part of a series called the Norton History of Modern Europe. I had read one of the other books previously.

The Spy and the Traitor-Ben Macintyre

This is the story of Oleg Gordievsky, who was one of the great assets for MI6. He would eventually be named residentura of the London KGB station, although he never served due to being under suspicion. There is a lot of talk of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames as well. It's entertaining.

In reply to Ghost of Andrew Eaton Macintyre writes the best spy books

Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, by Jon Meacham

I've read a biography on every President from Washington through Reagan and this is the most emotionally impactful of them all. The moments of Bush saying goodbye to his father as he heads off to war and later discovering his daughter will die of cancer are heart-wrenching. For a president who is outwardly so bland, there's a lot of emotional depth under those still waters.

"On Great Fields - The Life and Unlikely Heroism of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain" by Ronald White. This goes into a full biography not just his time in the Civil War. He was a fascinating man and a great American.

In reply to Jabin Interesting to hear and that lines up with everything in the book.

I just finished it up this week and again I highly recommend. Just fascinating subject matter and incredible stories.

Not to give away too much but things were so secretive that crew members did not know where they were going, how long they were gonna be gone, and what they were doing and on a couple of occasions crew members refused to go and were subsequently reassigned or discharged.

just finished this - was pretty good.



yes, I'm a bit of a Churchillian!

Read a short children's book written in 1934 called "Little Tony of Italy" by Madeline Brandeis. It appears she wrote a whole series of books that generally helped introduce kids to other countries and cultures. She took the photos in the book herself. What was interesting is the sections that touched on politics in Italy. Brandeis describes Mussolini as the "Great Chief of Italy" and discusses briefly that he founded Fascism in Italy. No idea what her politics were beyond this. She died in a car accident in 1937 so she never knew that shortly after the US would be at war with Italy.

"The Heart of Everything That Is". About the Sioux, Red Cloud and the US Army. Very good.

In reply to MAROON You might enjoy "No More Champagne " by David Lough. It is all about how WC managed, or better said, mismanaged his money. A notorious spendthrift, it forced him into writing book after book. It is great insight to his non political persona.

In reply to Aquin Thanks. I've probably read about 15-20 books on WC or written by WC. It's pretty obvious from even his own writing that he could not manage money and was a poor investor. He along with most everyone was wiped out by the market crash. Bernard Baruch covered some of his losses.

Churchill even as a young adult made most of his money as a writer. While he was born at Blenheim, his family was always in debt. His father was a terrible with money. He was quite prolific, and the London papers and publishers always were after him as a client.

In reply to MAROON It amazed me that several of his books were written just from his memory…no notes or research.

In reply to Aquin the one I'm reading right now - MY EARLY LIFE - is really good. His writing is great and he's very funny.