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Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900
I looked around and people's faces were distorted...lights were
flashing everywhere...the screen at the end of the room had three
or four different films on it at once, and the strobe light was
flashing faster than it had been...the band was playing but I
couldn't hear the music...people were dancing...someone came up to
me and I shut my eyes and with a machine he projected images on the
back of my eye-lids...I sought out a person I trusted and he
laughed and told me that the Kool-Aid had been spiked and that I
was beginning my first LSD experience...
In a gripping, moment-by-moment narrative based on a wealth of
recently declassified documents and in-depth interviews, Bob Drury
and Tom Clavin tell the remarkable drama that unfolded over the
final, heroic hours of the Vietnam War. This closing chapter of the
war would become the largest-scale evacuation ever carried out, as
improvised by a small unit of Marines, a vast fleet of helicopter
pilots flying nonstop missions beyond regulation, and a Marine
general who vowed to arrest any officer who ordered his choppers
grounded while his men were still on the ground.
Drury and Clavin focus on the story of the eleven young Marines who
were the last men to leave, rescued from the U.S. Embassy roof just
moments before capture, having voted to make an Alamo-like last
stand. As politicians in Washington struggled to put the best face
on disaster and the American ambassador refused to acknowledge that
the end had come, these courageous men held their ground and helped
save thousands of lives. Drury and Clavin deliver a taut and
stirring account of a turning point in American history that
unfolds with the heartstopping urgency of the best thrillers--a
riveting true story finally told, in full, by those who lived it.
"An author's quest to discover what really happened to his uncle
in World War II"
To all appearances, Anthony "Tony" Korkuc was just another
casualty of World War II. A gunner on a B-17 Flying Fortress,
Korkuc was lost on a bombing mission over Germany, and his family
believed that his body had never been recovered. But when they
learned in 1995 that Tony was actually buried at Arlington National
Cemetery, his nephew Bob Korkuc set out on a seven-year quest to
learn the true fate of an uncle he never knew.
"Finding a Fallen Hero" is a compelling story that blends a
wartime drama with a primer on specialized research. Author Bob
Korkuc initially set out to learn how his Uncle Tony came to rest
at Arlington. In the process, he also unraveled the mystery of what
occurred over the skies of Germany half a century ago.
Korkuc dug up military documents and private letters and
interviewed people in both the United States and Germany. He
tracked down surviving crewmembers and even found the brother of
the Luftwaffe pilot who downed the B-17. Dozens of photographs help
readers envision both Tony Korkuc's fateful flight and his nephew's
dogged search for the truth.
A gripping chronicle of exhaustive research, "Finding a Fallen
Hero" will strike a chord with any reader who has lost a family
member to war. And it will inspire others to satisfy their own
unanswered questions.
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