Invasion Diary

Invasion Diary PDF

Author: Richard Tregaskis

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2016-11-15

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 1504040015

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A dramatic and richly detailed chronicle of the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy from one of America’s greatest war correspondents. Following the defeat of Axis forces in North Africa, Allied military strategists turned their attention to southern Italy. Winston Churchill famously described the region as the “soft underbelly of Europe,” and claimed that an invasion would pull German troops from the Eastern Front and help bring a swift end to the war. On July 10, 1943, American and British forces invaded Sicily. Operation Husky brought the island under Allied control and hastened the downfall of Benito Mussolini, but more than one hundred thousand German and Italian troops managed to escape across the Strait of Medina. The “soft underbelly” of mainland Italy became, in the words of US Fifth Army commander Lt. Gen. Mark Clark, “a tough old gut.” Less than a year after landing with the US Marines on Guadalcanal Island, journalist Richard Tregaskis joined the Allied forces in Sicily and Italy. Invasion Diary documents some of the fiercest fighting of World War II, from bombing runs over Rome to the defense of the Salerno beachhead against heavy artillery fire to the fall of Naples. In compelling and evocative prose, Tregaskis depicts the terror and excitement of life on the front lines and recounts his own harrowing brush with death when a chunk of German shrapnel pierced his helmet and shattered his skull. An invaluable eyewitness account of two of the most crucial campaigns of the Second World War and a stirring tribute to the soldiers, pilots, surgeons, nurses, and ambulance drivers whose skill and courage carried the Allies to victory, Invasion Diary is a classic of war reportage and “required reading for all who want to know how armies fight” (Library Journal). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Richard Tregaskis including rare images from the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming.

Richard Tregaskis

Richard Tregaskis PDF

Author: Ray E. Boomhower

Publisher: University of New Mexico Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0826362885

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In the late summer of 1942, more than ten thousand members of the First Marine Division held a tenuous toehold on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal. As American marines battled Japanese forces for control of the island, they were joined by war correspondent Richard Tregaskis. Tregaskis was one of only two civilian reporters to land and stay with the marines, and in his notebook he captured the daily and nightly terrors faced by American forces in one of World War II's most legendary battles--and it served as the premise for his bestselling book, Guadalcanal Diary. One of the most distinguished combat reporters to cover World War II, Tregaskis later reported on Cold War conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. In 1964 the Overseas Press Club recognized his first-person reporting under hazardous circumstances by awarding him its George Polk Award for his book Vietnam Diary. Boomhower's riveting book is the first to tell Tregaskis's gripping life story, concentrating on his intrepid reporting experiences during World War II and his fascination with war and its effect on the men who fought it.

Alone on Guadalcanal

Alone on Guadalcanal PDF

Author: Alexandra C. Clemens

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2013-01-15

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 1612512038

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This remarkable memoir tells the compelling story of the near-mythic British district officer who helped shape the first great Allied counteroffensive. Scottish-born and Cambridge-educated, Martin Clemens managed to survive months behind Japanese lines in one of the most unfriendly climates and terrains in the world. After countless partisan and spy missions, in 1942 he emerged from the jungle and integrated his Melanesian commando force into the heart of the 1st Marine Division's operations, earning the unfettered admiration of such legendary Marine officers as Vandegrift, Thomas, Twining, Edson, and Pate. This book is based on a journal Clemens kept during the war and might well be the last critical source of analysis of the Solomon's campaign. His eyewitness accounts of harrowing long-distance patrols and life on the run from shadowy Japanese intelligence operatives and treacherous islanders are unmatched in the literature of the Pacific war. First published in 1998, the story, with an introduction by Allan R. Millett, is essential and enjoyable reading.

Guadalcanal Diary

Guadalcanal Diary PDF

Author: Richard Tregaskis

Publisher: Open Road Media

Published: 2016-11-15

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1504040007

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#1 New York Times Bestseller: A “superb” eyewitness account of one of the bloodiest and most pivotal battles of World War II (Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down). On August 7, 1942, eleven thousand US Marines landed on Tulagi and Guadalcanal Islands in the South Pacific. It was the first major Allied offensive against Japanese forces; the first time in history that a combined air, land, and sea assault had ever been attempted; and, after six months of vicious fighting, a crushing defeat for the Empire of Japan and a major turning point in the Pacific War. Volunteer combat correspondent Richard Tregaskis was one of only two journalists on hand to witness the invasion of Guadalcanal. He risked life and limb to give American readers a soldier’s experience of the war in the Pacific, from the suffocating heat and humidity to the unique terror of fighting in tall, razor-sharp grass and in crocodile-infested jungle streams against a concealed enemy. In understated yet graceful prose, Tregaskis details the first two months of the campaign and describes the courage and camaraderie of young marines who prepared for battle knowing that one in four of them wouldn’t make it home. An instant bestseller when it was first published in 1943 and the basis for a popular film of the same name, Guadalcanal Diary set the standard for World War II reportage. Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the literary events of its time,” it is a masterpiece of war journalism whose influence can be found in classic works such as John Hersey’s Hiroshima, Michael Herr’s Dispatches, and Dexter Filkins’s The Forever War. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Richard Tregaskis including rare images from the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming.

The Old Breed of Marine

The Old Breed of Marine PDF

Author: Abraham Felber

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2015-09-11

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0786480556

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On Friday, August 7, 1942, at 1300, after a furious cannonading by the Navy fighting vessels slamming salvo after salvo into the shores, 36-year-old Marine Sergeant Abraham Felber jumped from a Higgins boat onto Beach Red in the first-wave assault on the deadly jungle island of Guadalcanal. Felber was responsible for writing the Record of Events for his unit, and recorded in meticulous detail the fighting that wrested Guadalcanal from the enemy in the skies, off the shores, and in the muddy jungles. This work is part of the diary that Abraham Felber kept during his service in World War II. It begins with January 7, 1941, and ends with December 31, 1945. As the 1st Sergeant of Headquarters Battery, 11th Marines, Felber dealt with both officers and enlisted men, which exposed him to the perspectives and insights of both. Felber was also granted the unusual privilege of taking photographs during the Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester campaigns, some of which are published here for the first time. Felber's accounts of his unit's role in the combat at Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester; his time at Guantanamo Bay, Parris Island and Camp Lejune; daily life, and other experiences are presented here as he recorded them.

Vietnam Diary

Vietnam Diary PDF

Author: Richard Tregaskis

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 419

ISBN-13: 1786251698

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“The first definitive eyewitness account of the combat in Vietnam, this unforgettable, vividly illustrated report records the story of the 14,000 Americans fighting in a new kind of war. Written by one of the most knowledgeable and experienced of America’s war correspondents, Vietnam Diary shows how we developed new techniques for resisting wily guerrilla forces. Roaming the whole of war-torn Vietnam, Tregaskis takes his readers on the tense U.S. missions—with the Marine helicopters and the Army HU1B’s (Hueys); with the ground pounders on the embattled Delta area, the fiercest battlefield of Vietnam; then to the Special Forces, men chosen for the job of training Montagnard troops to resist Communists in the high jungles. Mr. Tregaskis tells the stirring human story of American fighting men deeply committed to their jobs—the Captain who says: “You have to feel that it’s a personal problem—that if they go under, we go under;” the wounded American advisor who deserted the hospital to rejoin his unit; the father of five killed on his first mission the day before Christmas; the advisor who wouldn’t take leave because he loved his wife and feared he would go astray in Saigon. And the dramatic battle reports cover the massive efforts of the Vietnamese troops to whom the Americans are leaders and advisors. An authority on the wars against communism is Asia, Tregaskis has reported extensively on the Chinese Civil War, Korea, the Guerrilla wars in Indochina, Malaya, and Indonesia. He was the winner of the George Polk Award in 1964 for reporting under hazardous conditions.-Print ed.

South Pacific Diary, 1942-1943

South Pacific Diary, 1942-1943 PDF

Author: Mack Morriss

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2021-12-14

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 0813189543

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A unique chronicle of the war from the perspective of a sensitive twenty-four-year-old sergeant who wrote for the Army's in-house paper, Yank, the Army Weekly and a tale of the South Pacific that will not soon be forgotten. Correspondent Mack Morriss reluctantly left his diary in the Honolulu Yank office in July 1943. "Here is contained an account of the past eight and one-half months," he wrote in his last entry, "a period which I shall never forget." The next morning he was on a plane headed back to the South Pacific and the New Georgia battleground. Morriss was working out of the press camp at Spa, Belgium, in January 1945, when he learned that the diary he had kept in the South Pacific had arrived in a plain brown wrapper at the New York office. He was so happy "to know that this impossible thing had happened," he wrote to his wife, that he helped two friends "murder a quart of scotch." What was preserved and appears in print here for the first time is a unique chronicle of the war in the South Pacific from the perspective of a sensitive twenty-four-year-old sergeant. This is an intensely personal account, reporting the war from the ridge known as the Sea Horse on Guadalcanal, from the bars and dance halls of Auckland to a B-17 flying through the moonlit night to bomb Japanese installations on Bougainville. Morriss thought deeply and wrote movingly about everything connected with the war: the sordiness and heroism, the competence and ineptitude of leaders, the strange mixture of constant complaint and steady courage of ordinary GIs, friendships formed under combat stress, and, above all, what he perceived to be his own indecisiveness and weaknesses. Ronnie Day introduces Morriss's diary and illuminates the work with extensive notes based on private papers, government documents, travel in the Solomon Islands, and the recollections of men mentioned in the diary.