When we think of the German Army we think of the Blitzkrieg years, 1939–41, during which Panzers pushed deep into enemy territory and forced huge encirclement battles that annihilated the enemy’s strength in Poland, France, the Balkans and the Soviet Union. With their Auftragstaktik and cutting-edge weaponry, they epitomised incisive modern war.However, there was an elephant in the room, and in spite of their superb battlefield leadership, their brilliant victories, their technical prowess, their mighty Tigers and Panthers, they lost because of it. It wasn’t, as the German generals argued postwar, the Soviet hordes that swamped them. It wasn’t the industrial capabilities of the United States. It wasn’t the control exerted by a dictator increasingly removed from the real world. It wasn’t the amount of effort spent transporting millions of people to their deaths in the camps, or the amount of concrete poured into the Atlantic Wall from the Arctic to the Mediterranean.All these points helped swing the war in the Allies’ favour but they weren’t the main reason why the German Wehrmacht lost. The elephant in the room was logistics.It’s easy to point out how well the Germans achieved their Blitzkrieg successes, but the war didn’t end in 1941. It’s easy to talk about the positives of German logistics—the fact that they could advance so far into the Soviet Union over such difficult terrain until the weather and poor roads conspired against them; the way that German industry kept going in spite of Allied strategic bombing; the resilience and resourcefulness of the way they kept the railways running, allowing huge numbers of men and armoured vehicles to shuttle from east to west as they were needed.In the end, at the critical moments in the war, their logistics failed them

Joshua Shores was just nineteen years old when he deployed to Iraq in 2005. A Midwestern kid raised in a closeknit, supportive family, he had developed a strong sense of duty and honor. Both sides of his family had proudly served their country, fostering a legacy of service that would guide his own path. Serving in Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, Shores was a teenager among battlehardened peers, far removed from the naive assumptions of war he had once held.Based on meticulous notes taken throughout his deployment, this vivid account follows his experiences as he navigated the brutal realities of war. Shores’ grueling sevenmonth deployment was marked by daytoday struggles and nightmarish events. Driven by a desire to redeem himself and reconcile the harrowing experiences of his first deployment, Shores chose to return to combat a second time, this time to Afghanistan with the firstever Marine Special Operations Company Bravo. But upon returning home, he faced new and equally daunting battles—struggling with survivor’s guilt and a profound sense of being misunderstood by those who had once known him.Illuminating both the triumphs and failures he encountered on the front lines, his memoir offers a deeply personal perspective on the true cost of combat, providing a modernday perspective on the psychological and emotional impacts of battle. This is the harrowing story of a teenager’s descent into the darkest parts of the soul and his arduous quest for redemption and selfdiscovery, capturing the relentless emotional toll of war even after the physical battles end. Counting on Death serves as both a guide for new warfighters and a candid exploration of a veteran’s battle to find peace after service.

“In 2016, I was responsible for the deaths of over 600 people. But they deserved to die. All of them. History will not grant the Islamic State a redemption arc. They were the bad guys, the evil of our time. I don’t lose sleep over what we did. However, I still struggle with how easy it was. I still relive the darkest moments of that year. Technology turned warfare into a game, and we treated it as such.”Brennan Deveraux deployed to Iraq from January 2016 to August 2016, serving in the Strike Cell as the theater-level rocket artillery liaison for Operation Inherent Resolve, firing over 500 rockets and killing over 600 enemy fighters. His account relates a personal journey, addressing how US soldiers dealt with slaughtering a technologically inferior foe. This includes detailed and honest accounts of numerous artillery missions. He is open about having had a desire to rack up statistics and is candid about some choices he is not proud of. He shares the dark humor of war that he and his fellow soldiers sought refuge in when dealing with death, helping them escape their actions. Even so, at times they realized that they had lost their humanity, and the reality of warfare once again set in. When Brennan returned home, he was forced to face what he had done overseas in a life-changing moment with his family, experiencing an anxiety attack he could not explain.Brennan’s story is important because it paints a very different picture of what it means to be a soldier in a 21st-century military, exposing the impact of “remote” warfare on service members. It is a reflection on war and a soldier’s role in it, emphasizing the importance of empathy—even for the bad guys—and an appreciation for the families impacted by the inherent violence.

Sons of the Arghandab tells the story of the 1-320th Field Artillery "Top Guns" Battalion, 101st Airborne, in the Arghandab Valley, 2010-2011.The Arghandab River Valley is known for its lush vegetation from its grape furrows and its pomegranate orchards. It’s also known as the birthplace of several Taliban leaders such as Mullah Omar and Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, and was a major crossing route for weapons coming from Pakistan into Kandahar. This hostile environment had already claimed the lives of many seasoned Infantrymen. But the Top Guns weren't infantrymen, they were artillerymen, deployed without their usual weapons and with minimal last-minute training, redesignated as "provisional infantrymen." Painstakingly researched by one of the Top Guns and told through the perspectives of the men who survived that terrible year, this is the harrowing story of Alpha, HHB, and Bravo Batteries as they undertook the challenges of an Artillery unit charged with an Infantry mission in the most hostile killing fields in Afghanistan.

A candid and multifaceted look at life as a security contractor in Iraq in the early years after the American invasion. It’s not just a story of surviving IEDs and firefights while protecting American contractors—though those moments are vividly recounted—it’s also an exploration of the broader, often unexpected, experiences that defined the author’s two and a half years in Iraq.Structured as a series of concise, self-contained chapters, the book captures a wide range of events and encounters: high-speed crashes, tense standoffs with Iraqi security forces, the ever-present uncertainty of knowing who to trust, and the toll of living in a warzone—but outside the protection of the military—on contractors, clients, and locals alike. The focus isn’t just on action but also on the everyday challenges and the strategies necessary to stay safe in such a dangerous and unpredictable environment.The book introduces the diverse people the author met through his work, from former Green Berets, British Royal Marines and South African commandos, through to Gurkhas, a former member of the French Foreign Legion, and even a Buddhist monk. There are stories of heroic, larger-than-life figures and of outlaws who came to Iraq because they didn’t fit in anywhere else and ended up not fitting in there either. It also delves into the lives of Iraqi civilians, who offered glimpses of kindness and humanity amid the chaos. These stories provide readers with a nuanced and personal perspective on a challenging and complex chapter of modern conflict.

In 2006, the shock and awe campaign of securing the major cities had ended, and the Iraq War had moved into an alien phase for the operators of Black Flag One. With their motto “swift, silent, deadly,” the Marine operators of 2nd Reconnaissance Battalion were trained for unconventional warfare but they were tasked with holding and securing swathes of the country, facing Insurgents who were adapting their tactics to kill as many Coalition soldiers as possible using IEDs. It was a terrifying new phase of the war where every disturbed patch of dirt, every piece of rubbish, every civilian acting oddly could mean instant death. Into this cauldron of hate came a young Marine recon sniper. Brennan Morton had been fascinated by war and the military as long as he could remember, and had signed up for the Marines as an enlisted after 9/11. Developed from writing undertaken at the suggestion of his VA therapist, his immersive memoir takes the reader through selection and training and the first patrol sweeping for caches, to endless night watches, and deadly IED attacks.

“The Devil’s Playground” was anything south of the second canal to the men of Charlie Company’s 2nd Platoon—Two Charlie—during their 2009–2010 deployment to the Arghandab River Valley in Afghanistan. The valley had been a notorious hot spot throughout history, with the Russians unable to maintain a foothold in the 80s and Coalition forces now facing the same problem during Operation Enduring Freedom.The Two Charlie paratroopers deployed as part of the 2-508th PIR, Two Fury, of the 82nd Airborne Division, but always seemed to be on their own. They started their deployment attached to Canadian forces in Panjwai but were shortly moved into the Arghandab with one of the battalion’s biggest Areas of Operation. They inherited a bare bones outpost that they worked hard to turn into the defendable position known as COP Tynes, while patrolling the grape fields and orchards of the valley. Little did they know that when the leaves returned to the valley in the spring, so too would the fighting.As the fighting picked up in the valley, the men of Two Charlie continued to sustain casualties as they fought day in and day out. There was never a dull moment in the Arghandab, and the fact that Two Charlie had to patrol, act as a quick reaction force, and secure their outpost on their own ensured that they never stopped. The men were constantly brought to their breaking point as their numbers dwindled and the fighting intensified. The men all started to believe that they weren’t going to make it out of the valley alive. The one rule of the valley would be proved time and time again: in the end, the valley always wins.This book shares the story of the men of Two Charlie and their fight for survival in the Arghandab River Valley, the Devil’s Playground.

The decision to not deploy reoriented, trained Iraqi divisions and other allied forces in numbers significant enough to adequately stabilize the situation in Iraq in 2003–04 resulted in significant shortages of manpower and equipment that eventually led to a less-than-satisfactory ending to the campaign, and significantly challenged the entire Coalition effort in the first year of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The roles and missions assumed by allies were vitally important in the under-resourced effort to bring order to the chaos of Iraq but would remain relatively unheralded throughout most of the campaign.Colonel Tiso’s account of this time offers unique insights into the challenges of planning the Iraqi campaign and the intricacies and challenges of multinational service through the lens of his assignments as a war planner at U. S. Central Command, Senior Military Adviser of the Arab Peninsula Shield Force and the Polish-led Multinational Division (Central-South), and Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations (C-3) of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team tasked to develop the New Iraqi Army. His observations cast significant light on the missions these units undertook and the challenges they confronted.His firsthand account of operational planning for war in Iraq captures the concerns of the military planners and senior commanders to liberate and stabilize the country, enabling the reader to better understand the challenges of operational war planning, coalition warfare, the difficulty of stabilizing Iraq after the fall of Baghdad, the development of the New Iraqi Army, and ultimately a deeper understanding of America’s “long war” in Iraq.

Ten years after the end of the American involvement in the Vietnam War, a career Foreign Service officer, Thomas J. Corcoran, set down in writing his thoughts on the history of U.S. State Department policy during America's involvement with South Vietnam. Like many Americans of his generation, he was perplexed by the failure of America to achieve its goals in South Vietnam. As an ambassador and with over 30 years of diplomatic experience – beginning in 1948 when he was assigned to Hanoi and involving other postings in Southeast Asia – he brought to his analysis a long and rich personal experience with events in Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The result is a thoughtful, objective and well-researched study that chronicles the key policy decisions made by the US State Department throughout the entire period from 1945 to 1975; decisions that ultimately led to the first war lost by the United States. In his extensive study, Corcoran does an excellent job of exposing many of the myths and falsehoods found in orthodox histories of U.

The nature of war is constant change. We live in an era of exponential technological acceleration which is transforming how wars are waged. Today, the battlespace is transparent; multi-domain sensors can see anything, and long-range precision fire can target everything that is observed. Autonomous weapons can be unleashed into the battlespace and attack any target from above, hitting the weakest point of tanks and armoured vehicles. War now develops at hyper-speed, risking operational, informational, and organisational paralysis induced by the rapid convergence of key disrupters in the battlespace. Hit with too many attacks in multiple domains, all occurring simultaneously, the force is paralysed.Imagine a peer fight against Communist China, a new war in Europe against a resurgent Russia, or a conflict against Iran in the Middle East. How can our forces survive an enemy-first strike in these circumstances? Can we adapt to the ever-accelerating tempo of war? Will our forces be able to mask from enemy sensors? How will leaders execute command and control in a degraded communications environment? Will our command posts survive, and will our commanders see and understand what is happening in order to plan, decide, and act in real time? Written by military strategy and leadership expert, John Antal, this book addresses these tough questions and more.

In the past decade, heroes and villains spawned from the pages of comic books have upended popular culture and revolutionised the entertainment industry. The narratives weave together a multitude of complementary and sometimes competing storylines, spun across decades, generations, and mediums, forming a complex tapestry that simultaneously captures the imagination and captivates the mind. These stories reveal our own vulnerabilities while casting an ideal to which we aspire. They pull at our deepest emotions and push us to the cusp of reality, and bring us back to Earth with a renewed hope of a better tomorrow. They are an endless source of powerful metaphors to help us learn and develop, then be the best versions of ourselves possible. Through the lens of the superhero genre, each chapter explores contemporary challenges in leadership, team building, and conflict, while emphasising the role of humanity and human nature in our own world. Contributors: Ian Boley; Jo Brick; Mitch Brian; Max Brooks; Mike Burke; Kelsey Cipolla; Amelia Cohen-Levy; Mick Cook; Jeff Drake; Clara Engle; Candice Frost; Ronald Granieri, PhD; Heather S. Gregg, PhD; James Groves; Geoff Harkness, PhD; Theresa Hitchens; Kayla Hodges; Cory Hollon, PhD; Joshua Huminski; Erica Iverson; Alyssa Jones; Mathew Klickstein; Jonathan Klug; Matt Lancaster; Steve Leonard; Karolyn McEwen; Eric Muirhead; Jon Niccum; Kera Rolsen; Mick Ryan; Julie Still; Patrick Sullivan; Aaron Rahsaan Thomas; Dan Ward; and Janeen Webb, PhD.

The most eye-opening, and terrifying, story in Chip Reid's career as a journalist was the six weeks he spent with 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, as a correspondent for NBC News. Traveling shoulder-to-shoulder with the young Marines, he had unparalleled access, witnessing them in combat, and interviewing as many as he could persuade his bosses to put on air, allowing them to tell their war stories in their own words. It took only 22 days for the Marines of 3/5 to fight their way to Baghdad, but the effects on those who fought have lasted a lifetime. They lost a number of their own in battle, and others suffered life-threatening injuries. Of those who returned - even if they avoided physical scars - many have had to find their own way through survivor's guilt and the nightmare of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, with all its attendant miseries. Twenty years on, Chip sat down with the Marines of 3/5 once more. They told Chip inspiring stories of heroism in battle, of camaraderie and comrades lost, of patriotism and belief in mission, of recovery and success in both military and civilian life, and of the new appreciation for life that results from Post-Traumatic Growth. Visceral and searingly honest, this book is a tribute to the Marines for their service, and for the many sacrifices they made then, and that many still make today.

In this ground-breaking book, Niall Downey – a cardio-thoracic surgeon who retrained to become a commercial airline pilot – uses his expertise in medicine and aviation to explore the critical issue of managing human error. With further examples from business, politics, sport, technology, the civil service and other fields, Downey makes a powerful case that by following some clear guidelines any organisation can greatly reduce the incidence and impact of human error. While acknowledging that in our fast-paced world getting things wrong is impossible to avoid completely, Downey offers a strategy based on current best practice that can make a massive difference. He concludes with an easy to use, aviation-style Safety Management System that can be hugely helpful in avoiding preventable catastrophes in organizations of all kinds. An acknowledged expert in error management, Niall Downey advises governments, major corporations and the health industry on how to develop a systemic approach to controlling for human imperfection. Arguing that prevention is far preferable to denying responsibility after the fact, he gave an influential TEDx talk outlining how healthcare could use aviation's experience to reduce tragic outcomes and improve patient safety. Oops! Why Things Go Wrong seeks to understand and navigate error. It shows how we have become particularly vulnerable to blunders due to new technologies and today’s pressurised work environments. But it also shows how we can fight back against our own inherent fallibility to live in a safer and less error-strewn world.

In March 2004, the unprovoked ambush, killing and desecration of the bodies of American civilian security contractors in Fallujah, Iraq, caused the National Command Authorities in Washington, DC. to demand that the newly arrived Marine Expeditionary Force there take action against the perpetrators and other insurgent forces. Planned Stability and Support Operations were cast aside as insurgent fighters dared the Marines to enter Fallujah. Marine infantrymen, tankers, helicopter crews, and amphibious vehicle drivers all pitched into high-intensity battles and firefights during the first fights of Fallujah in April 2004. Across the board cooperation and innovation marked these fighting Marines in combined arms fights that no one expected. Marines fought in the streets, conducted house-to-house searches, cleared buildings of enemy, and used tank main guns in direct support of urban environment operations. Helicopter crews supported operations on the ground with rockets and machine-gun fire, and Amtrac Marines transported forces to face enemy RPG and machine-gun fire. Marines from infantry squad members to a battalion commander were interviewed by Marine Corps field historians within days or weeks of the events at nearby combat outposts and camps.This book combines these interview notes and the words of the men themselves to create a unique narrative of Marines in this combat.

The High Ground draws on the author’s personal experiences as a combat leader to illustrate examples of successful and inspiring leadership in military organisations at all levels. Many of the essays contained in this volume focus on specific military personalities that portray effective leader behaviours in both peacetime and combat settings from the tactical to the strategic. Others describe key leadership characteristics and attributes of successful leaders, from small-unit level to the Pentagon. Throughout the author provides specific and compelling leadership advice and suggestions to new soldiers, new lieutenants, staff officers and commanders. The author served over thirty years in the post-Vietnam Army, rising from private to colonel and serving in the invasion of Grenada and in Somalia, the US response to the Rwandan genocide, in Bosnia and Kosovo, in peace-keeping operations in the Sinai, and in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. He commanded a paratrooper company, battalion and brigade and served in the continental US, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Southwest Asia. The High Ground describes his observations and interactions with military leaders at all levels, in battle and in garrison, to describe and portray military leader development and leader excellence in all its many and varied dimensions. Gripping and fast-paced, these leadership vignettes will carry the reader from peacetime into battle with an American Soldier.

Codenamed Operation Telic, the British component of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the largest gathering of British troops since the Second World War. Whilst the British public prepared for the worst as its soldiers were facing weapons of mass destruction, most servicemen and women were under no illusion that they were invading Iraq to rid the people of Saddam Hussein.While much has been said about WMD and Tony Blair’s government, not nearly enough has been heard from those men and women that took part in Operation Telic. Based upon dozens of veteran interviews, personal diaries and archival material, this book tells their stories, in their own words.From controlling the vast Allied Air Forces at 34,000 feet in an AWACS plane down to submariners beneath the warm waves of the Persian Gulf firing Tomahawk Cruise missiles, from the steaming hot turret of a Challenger Tank as it is peppered with RPGs, to being on your belly in a sandstorm disarming unexploded bombs – these veteran accounts cover the whole spectrum of experiences.Polarised public opinion and the post-war media portrayal of the war has detracted from what was achieved by these forces, when tasked to do so, often with insufficient or inadequate resources. These are their stories of courage, fortitude, pride, and brotherhood amidst the harsh realities of modern asymmetric warfare.