Memoir

Title: Letters to Louise
Author: Russell J. Jewett
Genre: Non-Fiction Memoir
Reviewer: Steve Phillips

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1453513019

An autobiography about a naive young man coming from a very stable and protected environment and went into the navy. As a Navy hospital corpsman, he became a combat corpsman with the US Marines. This story includes memories of events and the actual text of letters written over a period of four years to his girlfriend who was still in high school while he was in the States, Japan, and Vietnam.

Title: CALLSIGN: SPECTRE
Author: Jeff Noecker
Genre: Military Air Force
Reviewer: Buddy Cox

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1462004822

This is the story of a young man from Pennsylvania who enlists in the U.S. Air Force at age 19. After three years of essential but otherwise boring duty, he is accepted into the AC-130 gunship pprogram and is assigned to a special operations unit in Southeast Asia. This book is written in a memoir format and details the duties and missions of this young man and his contemporaries as they attack supply convoys while flying at low altitude along the notorious Ho Chi Minh Trail. The story relates the good with the bad and has a special section dedicated to the "urban legends" of the time.

Title: Why Didn't You Get Me Out?: A POW's Nightmare in Vietnam
Author: Frank Anton with Tommy Denton
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir
Reviewer: Bill McDonald

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0312974884

Frank anton went to Vietnam in 1967 to serve the country he loved. Now, more than thirty years later, he tells the story of how his own government failed him...

For give hellish years, American soldier Frank Anton was held as a POW in Vietnam. Subject to disease, starvation, and physical and psychological torture, Anton and his fellow prisoners held out hope that the U.S. government would find and rescue them.

When he was finally freed in 1973, Anton returned to the United States bruised and battered. And the most devastating blow of all had yet to even be struck. Upon his release, Anton and debriefed by the government and saw both aerial photographs of the prison camps where he was held and a close-us picture of himself walking the grueling Ho Chi Minh Trail. The government had known all along where and when Anton and his fellow soldiers were being held--and made no attempt to rescue them.

Now, in this harrowing first-person account and shocking expose, Frank Anton recounts his years as a POW and the aftermath--devoting his life to understanding why and how his own government left him and others to suffer and possibly die in the Vietnamese prison camps. And the answers he's uncovered will forever astound and disturb you.

Title: Z Square 7, A B-29 True Story
Author: Frank L. Grube
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir
Reviewer: Bill McDonald

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1930847947

They flew from Saipan, Tinian and Guam to Kobe, Nagoya and Tokyo! They flew to Osaka, Yokohama and Tachikawa! The B-29s reaped destruction and devastation on the entire country of Japan during World War 2. The destruction was so thorough throughout the country that the Japanese were asked to surrender months before the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Major General Curtis E. LeMay, Commander of the B-29 bombers, wrote in a commendation to his crews , "Men of your courage, resourcefulness, and determination enabled the B-29s to lay waste to the heart of the Japanese mainland and thus hasten the close of World War 2."

Title: The Young Draftee
Author: Monte Howell
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir
Reviewer: Bill McDonald

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 0595226140

Of all of the stories to come out about World War II few are written about the young 18 year old inexperienced soldiers who were thrust into a brutal part of the war. None were professional soldiers, most were draftees or civilians who were allowed to play soldier for the duration of the war. This true story identifies those everyday occurrences which a "young soldier" experiences as he goes through Army basic training, being sent overseas to an infantry replacement depot in New Guinea, never quite knowing where he was or where he was going. Finally experiencing the horrors of combat in Leyte and Luzon, Philippines and wondering if his luck was going to see him through these ordeals. The war in the South Pacific was beyond being called a brutal, savage war or some other words, which can explain what these men went through. The terrain, climate and disease those men had to fight besides the enemy was unbearable. The war in the South Pacific was a war without mercy. This is a descriptive march through history.