Read more
Zusatztext “McCain and Slater tell the historical story of the ordinary Americans that went to war! told in a way that may help the average reader understand the sacrifice! the lost blood and treasure of sending our sons and daughters to war.” Informationen zum Autor Senator John McCain (1936—2018) entered the Naval Academy in June of 1954. He served in the United States Navy until 1981. He was elected to the US House of Representatives from Arizona in 1982 and to the Senate in 1986. He was the Republican Party’s nominee for president in the 2008 election. He is the author of Faith of My Fathers , Worth Fighting For , Why Courage Matters , Character Is Destiny , Thirteen Soldiers , and The Restless Wave. Mark Salter has collaborated with John McCain on all seven of their books, including The Restless Wave , Faith of My Fathers , Worth the Fighting For , Why Courage Matters , Character Is Destiny , Hard Call , and Thirteen Soldiers. He served on Senator McCain’s staff for eighteen years. Klappentext A personal history of war from bestselling authors John McCain and Mark Salter, told through the stories of thirteen remarkable American soldiers who fought in the nation’s major military conflicts, from the Revolution of 1776 through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.As a veteran himself, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and a long-time student of history, John McCain brings a distinctive perspective to the experience of war. With Mark Salter, Thirteen Soldiers tells the stories of real soldiers who personify valor, obedience, enterprise, and love. You’ll meet Joseph Plumb Martin, who at the tender age of fifteen fought in the Revolutionary War; Charles Black, a freeborn African American sailor in the War of 1812; and Sam Chamberlain, of the Mexican American War, whose life inspired novelist Cormac McCarthy. Then there’s Oliver Wendell Holmes, an aristocratic idealist disillusioned by the Civil War, and Littleton “Tony” Waller, court-martialed for refusing to massacre Filipino civilians. Each story illustrates a particular aspect of war, such as Mary Rhoads, an Army reservist forever changed by an Iraqi scud missile attack during the Persian Gulf War; Monica Lin Brown, a frontline medic in rural Afghanistan who saved several lives in a convoy ambush; and Michael Monsoor, a Navy SEAL, who smothered a grenade before it could detonate on his men in Iraq. From their acts of self-sacrifice to their astonishing valor in the face of unimaginable danger, these “inspirational accounts of thirteen Americans who fought in various wars…aptly reveal humanizing moments in such theaters of cruelty” ( Publishers Weekly ).Thirteen Soldiers CHAPTER ONE Soldier of the Revolution Joseph Plumb Martin joined the Revolutionary War at fifteen and fought from Long Island to Yorktown. TWO DAYS AFTER JOHN HANCOCK affixed his extravagant signature to the Declaration of Independence, an intelligent, spirited boy of fifteen pretended to write his name on an order for a six-month enlistment in the Connecticut militia: “I took up the pen, loaded it with the fatal charge, made several mimic imitations of writing my name but took especial care not to touch the paper.” Someone standing behind him, probably a recruiting officer, reached over his shoulder and forced his hand. The pen scratched the paper. The helpful agent declared, “The boy has made his mark.” “Well, thought I, I may as well go through with the business now as not. So I wrote my name fairly upon the indentures. And now I was a soldier, in name at least, if not in practice.” Joseph Plumb Martin would remain a soldier for the duration of the revolution. He first saw action as part of Washington’s outnu...
