BattleFire!: Combat Stories from World War II - Softcover

An excellent book. - Military Review ""I salute all of these Kentucky heroes, as well as Kelly, who reminds us of what these old soldiers cannot forget."" - Bob Edwards ""A fascinating collection, all the more because it's a book about people you may have known or certainly knew whence they came. It could have been the boy next door or a small town neighbor, and it could have been any war at any time."" - Louisville Courier-Journal ""They were there, all right - and you're right there with them!"" - C. Brian Kelly, World War II Magazine ""Possesses important lessons in combat and leadership."" - Leatherneck

" Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941: High on the bridge of the USS West Virginia Sfc. Lee Ebner was looking forward to the end of his watch and a relaxed Sunday morning breakfast. But the two low-flying planes painted with rising sun insignia and bearing down on the ship had other plans for him and his fellow seamen. Ten hours later, at Clark Field in the Philippines, Pfc. Jack Reed felt the brunt of another Japanese air attack and within weeks found himself a part of the gruesome Bataan Death March that was to claim the lives of hundred of his comrades. On another continent, four years into the war, Capt. Benjamin Butler led his exhausted company up a steep, fog-shrouded Italian mountain toward a well entrenched German defensive position. The odds against their survival were appalling, though worse was to come in the months ahead. Such were the experiences of many young men-plucked from their local communities all across America, trained for war, and hurled into the strange reality of combat thousands of miles form home. In this stunning collection of World War II oral histories, Arthur Kelly recreates the experiences of twelve young men from Kentucky who survived the seemingly unsurvivable, whether in combat or as prisoners of war.