Book Reviews

Title: D.E.R.O.S.
Author: John Rider
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Reviewer: Tony Lazzarini

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1601453205

The year is 1968. Wired in-series, trip-hammer shocks jolt the country...the capture of the USS Pueblo, Tet, LBJ declines to run, the murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy.

In Vietnam, a USAF pilot gets news that, to him, is every bit as jarring as those electrifying events: An airline wants to interview him for a cockpit job. In Dallas, three weeks from now. They have no idea he's in Vietnam. He still has fifty-six days and a wake-up before he can leave. Jack Boland is a Forward Air Controller pilot, part of a small USAF detachment stationed with a U.S. Army brigade, at a base camp in the jungle, seventy-five miles north of Saigon. Flying small, vulnerable spotter aircraft, the FACs fly over the jungle, looking for VC -- and when Brigade grunts get in trouble, bring in jet fighters to get Charlie off their backs.

The story is at times funny, as well as brutal, terrifying, idiotic, and in the end, tragic..Catch-22 in Vietnam.

Title: Crossing the Blue Code
Author: Miette Wells
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir
Reviewer: Joyce Faulkner

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 059546906X

Crossing the Blue Code is the powerful autobiography of Miette Walker, a young girl who joins the United States Air Force in pursuit of a promising career. He basic training at Lackland Air Force Base proves to be anything but basic as Walker soon finds out she has entered an alternately rigid and chaotic new world.

Crossing the Blue Code is the beginning story of Walker's difficult and sometimes horrifying experiences during her four years in the US Air Force. Harassed by her fellow recruits and discriminated against by her superiors, Walker is sometimes forced to suffer in silence for fear of the notorious "Blue Code" that keeps Security Police from breaking ranks and reporting even the most heinous crimes.

Title: Carry On Pvt Dahlgren
Author: Conrad Larson
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir
Reviewer: Lee Boyland

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1441579583

The hundredth anniversary of the First World War is nearing. With every turn of the year, the tales from this remarkable moment in history is also unfortunately fading. With the aim of preserving this noteworthy event, author Conrad Larson pays tribute to the veterans of the war with a gripping account of one man's war adventure, Carry On Private Dahlgren: World War I Runner.

The war that was supposed to stop all wars was cruel and brutal to all civilians and even soldiers.The sacrifices made by the men who stepped up to represent and protect their motherland should be remembered and be given the honor that they deserve. Reflecting the greatest on American character and courage, Carry On Private Dahlgren: World War I Runner presents the nostalgic, personal journals of Pvt. Oscar Dahlgren of World War I. The journals, as found by the author's family, were handwritten with notes written in margins at a later date by Dahlgren. It fascinatingly documents names of peers, superiors, dignitaries, and others. In detail, it chronicles Dahlgren's exploits during the upsetting era, including names of places, some which have different names today. It is an untainted piece of history for unless changes were made for clarity, the style of writing, spelling and grammar were left the way Pvt. Oscar Dahlgren wrote it.

Carry On Private Dahlgren: World War I Runner allows you to relive history and be awed by the fascinating account of one man's life filled courage, hope, brotherhood, and patriotism.

Title: Carolina Roots - From Whence I Came
Author: Thomas Shytle
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Inspirational
Reviewer: Lee Boyland

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1419695193

The author was a product of a hard hit area during the depression years. He was barely a year old and the great depression was at its peak when his family moved from the cotton mill village where he was born to relocate near Bryson City in the heart of the Western North Carolina mountains. The economy there was worse than it had been on the mill village; and after struggling to survive on a dollar a day his Father made working for FDR's Works Project Administration (WPA), his family held on for six years living in the most poverty stricken area of the country. He was seven when they moved back to the same cotton mill village and to much better conditions than when they left, thanks to the most part for Hitler's war that was raging in Europe. His story is about his experiences while growing up near Kings Mountain, NC followed by twenty-five years in the USAF. The years spent in the military are related in detail from the viewpoint of an Air Force non-com; from the Korean War to an assignment to a covert unit whose cold war mission was to "Develop an unconventional warfare capability that included inserting, supplying, and extracting indigenous partisans, to provide them with refitted small arms, and to design, produce, and airdrop psychological warfare materials into Eastern European countries, and to support U-2 over-flights of Eastern Europe and Russia." Throughout the book you will feel his reverence for his convictions, his devotion to family and an unquestionable commitment to duty, honor, and country.

Title: Within the Walls of Santo Tomas: A saga of captivity and survival in Manila during World War II
Author: Betty Bryon and Cassius Mullen
Genre: Fiction, Historical
Reviewer: Joyce Faulkner

ISBN (links go to the MWSA Amazon store): 1617773743

'Do you believe that what we do in life comes back to haunt us later?' 'You mean like fate comes along and throws you a curve ball when you least expect it?' 'Yes, exactly.' 'There are so many strange things that happen to people, nothing surprises me anymore.' 'I think life is a mirror. What you do reflects back at you.' Former army nurse Molly Martin has never forgotten her experience in the internment camp at Santo Tomas University during World War II. The horrors she witnessed in her younger days are burned in her brain, along with the memories of the people who walked with her through hell and the enemies who put them all through it. When she sees a picture in the paper of the doctor that committed some of the worst war crimes and got away, she knows it is time to tell her story. It is the last chance for justice. Travel back to 1942, when twenty-eight-year-old Molly Martin's life was changed forever. She and other army nurses and soldiers are taken from Corregidor to Manila, where they are imprisoned by the Japanese within the walls of Santo Tomas University with innocent US and Allied civilians. Molly leads the nurses in establishing a hospital in the former gymnasium, and they attempt to make the best of things. Soon Molly and her friend Clara befriend an ingenious teenage boy nicknamed Scrounger, who uses his skills to make life tolerable for the internees. Over a three-year period, Molly and the internees suffer greatly. Food and medicine are hard to come by, and the commandant becomes harsher. A sinister doctor carries out cruel experiments on selected internees, resulting in more death. Things become even more difficult as the American army draws nearer. But Molly is determined to make it out alive, to make the evil pay for their wrongdoings. Will Molly see justice before her days end? Go Within the Walls of Santo Tomas to find out.