Showing results by author "Larry Alexander" in All Categories

Set on retaking the Philippines ever since his ignominious flight from the islands in 1942, General Douglas MacArthur needed a first-rate intelligence-gathering unit. Out of thousands, only 138 men were chosen: the best, toughest, and most fit men the army had to offer. Their task: silently slip onto Japanese-held islands, stalk through the thick jungles, and assess enemy locations, conditions, morale, and troop strength, all while remaining undetected.

For Sergeant Pete “Hardball” Talbot, recently returned from being wounded on Tarawa seven months earlier, Saipan is just another battle as the United States leaps island to island toward an invasion of the Japanese homeland. But the Japanese have learned, all too well, how to defend their islands, with carefully constructed and concealed bunkers and machine gun nests. Talbot and the dozen men of Second Squad have no idea they are running headlong into thirty-five thousand Japanese soldiers who have sworn to fight to the last man.

On the eve of the 65th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe, Larry Alexander returns to the very battlefields that made Easy Company a legend. Accompanied by Easy veteran Sgt. Forrest Guth on his final tour, Alexander crosses an ocean and a continent to follow the path to victory taken by the famed Band of Brothers, exploring the living history of the places where they went into action and revealing what makes their story so meaningful for us to this day.

Four days before Christmas 1943, a badly damaged American bomber struggled to fly over wartime Germany. At its controls was a 21-year-old pilot. Suddenly, a German Messerschmitt fighter pulled up on his tail. Worse, the German pilot was an ace, a man able to destroy the American bomber in the squeeze of a trigger. What happened next would later be called 'the most incredible encounter between enemies in World War II.'

How much control do we have over love? Much less than we like to think. All that mystery, all that poetry, all those complex behaviors surrounding human bonding leading to the most life-changing decisions we’ll ever make, are unconsciously driven by a few molecules in our brains.

On the killing ground that was the island of Guadalcanal, a 2,000-yard-long ridge rose from the jungle canopy. Behind it lay the all-important air base of Henderson Field. And if Henderson Field fell, it would mean the almost certain death or capture of all 12,500 marines on the island. But the marines positioned on the ridge were no normal fighters - they were the hard-fighting men of Edson's Raiders, an elite fighting unit within an already elite Marine Corps.

They were Easy Company, 101st Army Airborne - the World War II fighting unit legendary for their bravery against nearly insurmountable odds and their loyalty to one another in the face of death. Every soldier in this band of brothers looked to one man for leadership, devotion to duty, and the embodiment of courage: Major Dick Winters. This is the riveting story of an ordinary man who became an extraordinary hero.

The island of Tarawa, a tiny spit of sand out in the middle of the Pacific, teemed with five hundred pillboxes filled with artillery pieces and highly motivated Japanese soldiers. Their commanding officer encouraged his troops, saying, “It would take one million men one hundred years” to conquer Tarawa. They were convinced that the Americans would be slaughtered before they ever got ashore.