Ravens Flight To Freedom Odyssey From Wartime Lithuania To Lands End America A Story Of Survival Dedicated To Those Who Retained Their Humani

This is the story of my survival, adventures, experiences, and insights about geopolitics and changing worldviews from before World War II Lithuania to Soviet occupation and my escape and evasion through wartime Germany till the end of WWII. It also talks about my life as a refugee in displaced-persons camp for four years and my immigration to the United States of America in 1949. Five years later, having graduated from the Citadel Military College, I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the US Air Force and participated in the Cold War as a combat crew member of Strategic Air Commands Bombers B-52 and B-58. Then I had a stint with research and development of F-111 weapons systems at Wright Air Development Center and about a year in Southeast Asian war (Vietnam) with an F-111 fighter-bomber detachment. Then I went back to Europe on an US AF project. Finally, after twenty-two years, I retired from the Air Force to Southern California and worked in the aerospace industry and had new experiences and insights about mens venture into the cosmos. However, after the dissolution of Soviet Union, the old country of Lithuania became free, and I went there to help rebuild the country and pay my debt to it by consulting the general staff and teaching at the military academy there. There are more insights and adventures. Finally, I retire to cool my heels in the warm waters of the Pacific Rim in Southern Californias Rancho Palos Verdes as a freelance writer.

This is the story of my survival, adventures, experiences, and insights about geopolitics and changing worldviews from before World War II Lithuania to Soviet occupation and my escape and evasion through wartime Germany till the end of WWII. It also talks about my life as a refugee in displaced-persons camp for four years and my immigration to the United States of America in 1949. Five years later, having graduated from the Citadel Military College, I was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the US Air Force and participated in the Cold War as a combat crew member of Strategic Air Command's Bombers B-52 and B-58. Then I had a stint with research and development of F-111 weapons systems at Wright Air Development Center and about a year in Southeast Asian war (Vietnam) with an F-111 fighter-bomber detachment. Then I went back to Europe on an US AF project. Finally, after twenty-two years, I retired from the Air Force to Southern California and worked in the aerospace industry and had new experiences and insights about men's venture into the cosmos. However, after the dissolution of Soviet Union, the old country of Lithuania became free, and I went there to help rebuild the country and pay my debt to it by consulting the general staff and teaching at the military academy there. There are more insights and adventures. Finally, I retire to cool my heels in the warm waters of the Pacific Rim in Southern California's Rancho Palos Verdes as a freelance writer.

In 1941 Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and the Soviets retreated. Life was tough but better than before. Then the Soviets were pushing the Germans back, and our family like millions of others decided to move into Germany toward Western Europe as refugees to avoid life under Stalin's Soviet Russia. The Germans were ready for the influx of refugees because they needed their labor. We entered Germany on July 20, 1944 the day of the assassination attempt on Hitler's life. Those were tense times. We ended up in a labor camp in Oels, near Breslau, (now Wroclaw). Since my father was an MD, he was assigned to a hospital in Breslau and we moved there with him. Then, through the efforts of my mother, my sister and I were evacuated to St. Florian Stift in Neuzelle, a convent of Catholic Nuns, further west, near the Oder River, to avoid the frequent bombings and approach of Russians from the East. This was an experience full of fright and terror, but sometimes full of insights and poignant awareness of spirit that people go through in times of war. When the Soviet Army began to advance into Germany, our parents joined us in St. Florian Stift and we moved again further West via bombed-out ruins of Berlin to the city of Kempten in Southern Germany. That trip was full of interaction with the German people, other refugees and even Nazis of the collapsing Third Reich. We ended up in a village called Wildpoldsried outside the city of Kempten where we awaited the end of the war. This village was within the proximity of Alpine mountain views and grazing cows. We watched thousands of American bombers flying overhead toward German cities, more distant from us. On May 8,1945 the war ended in Germany. Under the auspices of the United Nations, we spent four more years in a Displaced Persons Camp in Kempten as refugees. We did not have a place to return, did not have a country, nor did we want to go back because our country was now under communist rule. My manuscript contains descriptions of life in such camps; places full of desperate people whose lives were disrupted and their futures completely uncertain. It also covers the better parts: people managed to get organized, schools were established, artists, musicians, poets, and writers began to express their talents and former academics began to give lectures. Life was bearable but somehow insufficient because it was obvious that such a existence could not to continue much longer. Finally, the UN found us new homes in the free countries of the world: Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Brasil, Argentina, etc. This was a relief. We had to go through a screening procedure (vetting) in order to weed out undesirables such as criminals, communists, nazis, and potential subversives. Our family was fortunate to get sponsors in the United States of America and we reached New York in 1949. Then came another stroke of good luck. Some kind people helped me get into The Military College of South Carolina, The Citadel, in the historic city of Charleston. It was a tough school for future defenders of America. For the Corps of Cadets it was a source of inspiration, discipline, and education. In my memoir I described life and lore of this magnificent old military school of the South, which I'll never forget. Someone expressed it to me, "The Citadel is not just a school or fraternity, it's a sacred order". I believe him even today.

Presenting a fascinating insider's view of U.S.A.F. special operations, this volume brings to life the critical contributions these forces have made to the exercise of air & space power. Focusing in particular on the period between the Korean War & the Indochina wars of 1950-1979, the accounts of numerous missions are profusely illustrated with photos & maps. Includes a discussion of AF operations in Europe during WWII, as well as profiles of Air Commandos who performed above & beyond the call of duty. Reflects on the need for financial & political support for restoration of the forces. Bibliography. Extensive photos & maps. Charts & tables.

Widely acknowledged as a contemporary classic that has introduced thousands of readers to American literature, From Puritanism to Postmodernism: A History of American Literature brilliantly charts the fascinating story of American literature from the Puritan legacy to the advent of postmodernism. From realism and romanticism to modernism and postmodernism it examines and reflects on the work of a rich panoply of writers, including Poe, Melville, Fitzgerald, Pound, Wallace Stevens, Gwendolyn Brooks and Thomas Pynchon. Characterised throughout by a vibrant and engaging style it is a superb introduction to American literature, placing it thoughtfully in its rich social, ideological and historical context. A tour de force of both literary and historical writing, this Routledge Classics edition includes a new preface by co-author Richard Ruland, a new foreword by Linda Wagner-Martin and a fascinating interview with Richard Ruland, in which he reflects on the nature of American fiction and his collaboration with Malclolm Bradbury. It is published here for the first time.

A landmark American drama that inspired a classic film and a Broadway revival—featuring an introduction by David Mamet A blistering character study and an examination of the American melting pot and the judicial system that keeps it in check, Twelve Angry Men holds at its core a deeply patriotic faith in the U.S. legal system. The play centers on Juror Eight, who is at first the sole holdout in an 11-1 guilty vote. Eight sets his sights not on proving the other jurors wrong but rather on getting them to look at the situation in a clear-eyed way not affected by their personal prejudices or biases. Reginald Rose deliberately and carefully peels away the layers of artifice from the men and allows a fuller picture to form of them—and of America, at its best and worst. After the critically acclaimed teleplay aired in 1954, this landmark American drama went on to become a cinematic masterpiece in 1957 starring Henry Fonda, for which Rose wrote the adaptation. More recently, Twelve Angry Men had a successful, and award-winning, run on Broadway. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Routledge Companion to Fascism and the Far Right is an engaging and accessible guide to the origins of fascism, the main facets of the ideology and the reality of fascist government around the world. In a clear and simple manner, this book illustrates the main features of the subject using chronologies, maps, glossaries and biographies of key individuals. As well as the key examples of Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy, this book also draws on extreme right-wing movements in Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Far East. In a series of original essays, the authors explain the complex topics including: the roots of fascism fascist ideology fascism in government and opposition nation and race in fascism fascism and society fascism and economics fascism and diplomacy.

Over the course of more than twenty-five years, Primo Levi gave more than two hundred newspaper, journal, radio and television interviews speaking with such varied authors as Philip Roth and Germaine Greer. Marco Belpoliti and Robert Gordon have selected and translated thirty-six of the most important of these interviews for The Voice of Memory.

An Epic Memoir of an Intrepid Solo Adventurer, a Woman Who Lived by the Philosophy "Go Simple, Go Solo, Go Now"

The author demonstrates, through the history of the Black Sea area and the disputed regions of Russia, Turkey, Romania, Greece, and Caucasus, that "the meanings of 'community, ' 'nationhood, ' and 'cultural independence' are both fierce and disturbingly uncertain."