Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free is a rare gift detailing the experience of Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson, who was one of 32 Tuskegee Airmen from the 332nd Fighter Group to be shot down defending a country that considered them to be second-class citizens. In this vividly detailed, deeply personal story, Jefferson writes as a genuine American hero about what it meant to be an African American pilot in enemy hands, fighting to protect the promise of freedom. The book features the sketches, drawings, and other illustrations Jefferson created during his nine months as a POW, and Lewis Carlson's authoritative background to the man, his unit, and the fight Alexander Jefferson fought so well. This revised edition covers the story of Jefferson's continuing outreach and education work, as he brings the story of the Tuskegee Airmen to communities and schools across the country, and the presentation of the Congressional Gold Medal to the Airmen in 2007. Red Tail Captured, Red Tail Free is perhaps the only account of the African American experience in a German prison camp.

Lewis H. Carlson was born and raised in Muskegon, Michigan, the only child of a Jewish father and a Scandinavian mother. It was the depth of the Great Depression, there was no work, and so-called "mixed" marriages meant additional pressures on a young couple unable to survive the hard times.

After the marriage ended in divorce, the young boy lived with his grandparents while his mother returned to college to get her teaching degree. Following an insecure childhood, he became an indifferent student, a frustrated pursuer of the fairer sex, and a military misfit before eventually achieving reasonable competence as a fly-fisherman, a lover of animals, and a gently radical professor of history. He also found a lovely Swedish girl to be his lifetime companion.

He offers this sage advice in the introduction to his memoir: "Listen to your inner voices, which are very different than what passes for truth in our mass-mediated, myth-laden, materialistic society. Be nostalgic about the future because it belongs to you, and not to those who demand that you live in a mythical past they themselves created."

This is his story, told with the humor he employs to stumble across the hurdles of life.

Lewis H. Carlson was born and raised in Muskegon, Michigan, the only child of a Jewish father and a Scandinavian mother. It was the depth of the Great Depression, there was no work, and so-called "mixed" marriages meant additional pressures on a young couple unable to survive the hard times.

After the marriage ended in divorce, the young boy lived with his grandparents while his mother returned to college to get her teaching degree. Following an insecure childhood, he became an indifferent student, a frustrated pursuer of the fairer sex, and a military misfit before eventually achieving reasonable competence as a fly-fisherman, a lover of animals, and a gently radical professor of history. He also found a lovely Swedish girl to be his lifetime companion.

He offers this sage advice in the introduction to his memoir: "Listen to your inner voices, which are very different than what passes for truth in our mass-mediated, myth-laden, materialistic society. Be nostalgic about the future because it belongs to you, and not to those who demand that you live in a mythical past they themselves created."

This is his story, told with the humor he employs to stumble across the hurdles of life.

The story of D.C. Caughran Jr., Mrs. Cordie's son, could be that of almost any soldier in World War II. He left the comfort of home and family to become part of one of the defining conflicts of modern times. The letters he wrote home tell his story from the day he received his draft notice in the summer of 1942 through battle, capture, wounding, imprisonment, and his eventual return home for recuperation and discharge.Author Rocky R. Miracle, the son-in-law of D.C. Caughran, tells not only Caughran's story, but at the same time the story of ""the home folks"" who anxiously watched for letters from their ""soldier boy"" and wrote faithfully of their love and prayers for his safety. This home-front narrative also stands as an important and deeply personal record of life in wartime.Taken prisoner during the German breakout of December 1944 that led to the Battle of the Bulge, D.C. was force-marched past corpses lining the road into Germany, loaded with other American prisoners into boxcars, and held in a prison camp during the coldest European winter of the century. He suffered starvation rations and hepatitis and was hospitalized after his liberation, though doctors were doubtful that he would recover. However, with time and care, he returned to health, was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army, and lived a long, productive life.This intimate portrait of an American family - at home and at war - during a time of world upheaval is at once heartwarming, sobering, and entertaining. ""Mrs. Cordie's Soldier Son"" is highly recommended for readers interested in World War II, the POW experience, and home-front literature.

This book discusses about inside the infamous Stalag 17. On a cold December day in 1943, Claudio 'Steve' Carano's B-17 bomber was shot down over the Dutch coast on the return flight to England. Thus marked the beginning of his eighteen-month incarceration in Stalag 17 b, the camp made famous in the Billy Wilder film and in the televison show Hogan's Heroes. During his confinement, Carano secretly kept a journal in his Red Cross blank book, filling it with meticulously penned entries and illustrations. It takes the reader deep behind the notorious wire fence surrounding the prison and into the world where men clung to their humanity through humor, faith, camaraderie, daily rituals, and even art. Not Without Honor threads together the stories of three American POWs - Carano; his buddy Bill Blackmon, who was also at Stalag 17 b; and John C. Bitzer, who survived the brutal 'Death March' from northern Germany to liberation in April 1945. At times, the journal reads like a thriller as he records air battles and escape attempts. Yet in their most gripping accounts, these POWs ruminate on psychological survival. The sense of community they formed was instrumental to their endurance. This compelling book allows the reader to journey with these young men as they bore firsthand witness to the best and worst of human nature.

Based on a series of one hundred pen and ink drawings by Captain Benjamin Comeau, a POW at Camp #1 in Korea from 1950-53, Honey Bucket Charlie contains letters Comeau wrote during his time in the prison camp, as well as photographs and interviews with his son, brother, and grandson. From Central Texas, Comeau enlisted in the Marine Corps during World War II, was wounded at Iwo Jima, left the Marine Corps and then joined the army in time for service as an infantryman in the Korean War. He was taken as a POW by the Chinese in November of 1951 and remained a prisoner until June of 1953. Comeau remained in the army and later served a year in Vietnam. He was an extraordinary man who has left us an equally extraordinary group of drawings describing his time as a POW. Honey Bucket Charlie has an introductory chapter by author and scholar Lewis Carlson.