Soldiers Of Folly

The Border Campaign was an ambitious plan to use the tactics of Flying Columns in the Irish War of Independence. This account of the campaign, immortalized in Dominic Behan's ballad The Patriot Game, outlines the origins, planning, and phases of the conflict, and how it was wrapped in outdated notions of republican romanticism. The campaign was to wage a guerrilla war, make Northern Ireland ungovernable and force a British withdrawal. It was an abject failure. The IRA received little support from Northern nationalists, while governments north and south introduced internment.

Stalin's cunning and ruthlessness brought him to supreme power in the Soviet Union. Yet in the summer of 1941 he appeared to lose his touch. With unparalleled access to the Soviet archives, this text reveals why the dictator behaved as he did.

Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Barbara W. Tuchman, author of the World War I masterpiece The Guns of August, grapples with her boldest subject: the pervasive presence, through the ages, of failure, mismanagement, and delusion in government. Drawing on a comprehensive array of examples, from Montezuma’s senseless surrender of his empire in 1520 to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Barbara W. Tuchman defines folly as the pursuit by government of policies contrary to their own interests, despite the availability of feasible alternatives. In brilliant detail, Tuchman illuminates four decisive turning points in history that illustrate the very heights of folly: the Trojan War, the breakup of the Holy See provoked by the Renaissance popes, the loss of the American colonies by Britain’s George III, and the United States’ own persistent mistakes in Vietnam. Throughout The March of Folly, Tuchman’s incomparable talent for animating the people, places, and events of history is on spectacular display. Praise for The March of Folly “A glittering narrative . . . a moral [book] on the crimes and follies of governments and the misfortunes the governed suffer in consequence.”—The New York Times Book Review “An admirable survey . . . I haven’t read a more relevant book in years.”—John Kenneth Galbraith, The Boston Sunday Globe “A superb chronicle . . . a masterly examination.”—Chicago Sun-Times

Polk's Folly is William Polk's captivating investigation of his impressive family tree and of the broader American tale it narrates. Growing up in Texas in the late 1930s, listening to his grandmother's memories of her childhood amidst the Civil War, Polk became fascinated by tales of his family's engagement in monumental moments of our nation's history. Beginning when Robert Pollok fled Ireland in the 1680s, Polk's saga includes an Indian trader, an early drafter of the Declaration of Independence, one of our greatest presidents, heroes and rascals on both sides of the Civil War, Indian fighters, a World War I diplomat, and Polk's own brother, a journalist who reported on the Nuremberg Trials. Full of stunning detail and based on primary historical documents, Polk's Folly is a grand American chronicle that allows history to include the lives that made it happen.

When the U.S. Army drafted Elvis Presley in 1958, it quickly set about transforming the King of Rock and Roll from a rebellious teen idol into a clean-cut GI. Trading in his gold-trimmed jacket for standard-issue fatigues, Elvis became a model soldier in an army facing the unprecedented challenge of building a fighting force for the Atomic Age. In an era that threatened Soviet-American thermonuclear annihilation, the army declared it could limit atomic warfare to the battlefield. It not only adopted a radically new way of fighting but also revamped its equipment, organization, concepts, and training practices. From massive garrisons in Germany and Korea to nuclear tests to portable atomic weapons, the army reinvented itself. Its revolution in warfare required an equal revolution in personnel: the new army needed young officers and soldiers who were highly motivated, well trained, and technologically adept. Drafting Elvis demonstrated that even this icon of youth culture was not too cool to wear the army’s uniform. The army of the 1950s was America’s most racially and economically egalitarian institution, providing millions with education, technical skills, athletics, and other opportunities. With the cooperation of both the army and the media, military service became a common theme in television, music, and movies, and part of this generation’s identity. Brian Linn traces the origins, evolution, and ultimate failure of the army’s attempt to transform itself for atomic warfare, revealing not only the army’s vital role in creating Cold War America but also the experiences of its forgotten soldiers.

HELL'S FOLLY, this is my story. There will be many "old soldiers" that will remember the incidents differently than I do. There will be many "Military Historians" that will disagree with me in accordance to OFFICIAL RECORDS (including the Government of the United States Archives). This is unfortunately what happens in any war. It is the "nature of the beast". PART ONE The story begins in Camp Howze outside of Gainesville, Texas circa July 1944. Private Moody had just been Court-Martialed for "Sleeping on Guard" in a Mustard Gas Training Area adjacent to Camp Howze. Because it was so late in the day when Private Moody was released to the Provost Marshal, he was allowed to sleep in the troop area for that one night so the proper paper work could be processed early the next morning. "Six months confinement at hard labor, forfeiture of 2/3rds of the soldier's monthly pay for six months and reduction to Private from Private First Class", were the exact words the President of the court droned. Little did I realize how much it would change my life and my outlook on life itself. In the Post Stockade, Moody schemed with his cellmate to escape to Canada but when the 103rd Infantry Division was alerted for the European Theatre, he was offered the option of freedom and combat or escape and being hunted for the rest of his life, he chose the former and was released the next day. Out of the Stockade, "it was pack this, pack that, "throw that away, you won't need it where we're going" by his platoon sergeant, Sergeant Denny. We were soon headed to New York on a train where Moody played poker for four straight days and nights and won nearly seven thousand dollars. He went from a poverty stricken prisoner to a rich, free soldier. In New York he began to make errors in judgment mostly caused by money, a need for sex before going to Europe and just plain youthful stupidity regarding Army regulations ...... Further in the book... Acting Corporal Hell had many feelings that he had never intimated in our days back in Camp Howze, Texas. We were good friends but we never discussed the fact that he was German or what that might mean to him, or to me for that matter. When we started south toward Austria I thought the trip would be a lark, some fun times, maybe a German girl or two? But there was something different in Clarence Hell's mind. Dachau! To me "Dachau" meant nothing at that time. It was just a German word that I didn't understand. But to millions of Europeans and German immigrants in the United States it was synonyms for "Death, Torture and Human Misery". The first night we tried to get an hour or two of sleep along side of the Autobahn hidden by some brush but it was miserable. The second day out we headed west. That, in itself meant nothing to me. It was the first day of May 1945, and Hell had directed the Jeep driver straight into Dachau, Germany. I was flabbergasted. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Hell had no authority to do this. He was in direct disobedience of orders. We rode around the compound for around 30 minutes finding nothing. No German Guards, no prisoners. It was as if the whole garrison had packed up and migrated somewhere? I was just breathing a sigh of relief when the Jeep driver Private Feinartz spotted prisoners in one of the outer compounds. Hell ordered Feinartz to stop. We dismounted the jeep and walked toward the gate. The situation was spooky and smelly. The inmates looked like Ghosts in striped pajamas. We were 50 feet away from them but they stunk to the high heavens and they started toward us. Unfortunately, Hell had already used his grease gun to shoot the chain off the wrought iron gate. We were about to be hugged and kissed by these, poor, pitiful, people... PART TWO Others have contributed to my story (Part II). Their words have been relate

An intimate look at war through the lives of soldiers and their families at Fort Hood Making War at Fort Hood offers an illuminating look at war through the daily lives of the people whose job it is to produce it. Kenneth MacLeish conducted a year of intensive fieldwork among soldiers and their families at and around the US Army's Fort Hood in central Texas. He shows how war's reach extends far beyond the battlefield into military communities where violence is as routine, boring, and normal as it is shocking and traumatic. Fort Hood is one of the largest military installations in the world, and many of the 55,000 personnel based there have served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. MacLeish provides intimate portraits of Fort Hood's soldiers and those closest to them, drawing on numerous in-depth interviews and diverse ethnographic material. He explores the exceptional position that soldiers occupy in relation to violence--not only trained to fight and kill, but placed deliberately in harm's way and offered up to die. The death and destruction of war happen to soldiers on purpose. MacLeish interweaves gripping narrative with critical theory and anthropological analysis to vividly describe this unique condition of vulnerability. Along the way, he sheds new light on the dynamics of military family life, stereotypes of veterans, what it means for civilians to say "thank you" to soldiers, and other questions about the sometimes ordinary, sometimes agonizing labor of making war. Making War at Fort Hood is the first ethnography to examine the everyday lives of the soldiers, families, and communities who personally bear the burden of America's most recent wars.

In a critical analysis of long-held views of the conduct of the War of American Independence, The Price of Folly argues that the conflict need never have been fought, and certainly not lost, by the British. Its outcome was due more to the many political and military errors made by British politicians and leading generals than to any grand strategy on the part of the American colonists. William Seymour, a direct descendent of British General John Burgoyne, who was defeated at the battle of Saratoga, marshals broad historical knowledge and trenchant insight to support his thesis. Whether describing the thinking of Whitehall policymakers or brilliantly chronicling all the major battles from Bunker Hill to Yorktown, he gives new life to the dramatic events that helped create the United States, the modern world's most powerful nation. Anyone with an interest in British or American history will be fascinated by this new perspective on the war and the men who played out its drama, ranging from George III, Lord North, and Cornwallis to George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. The Price of Folly will be hailed as a significant contribution to our understanding of an event that changed forever the course of human history.