The Battalion

With a centuries’ old warrior heritage, American Rangers endured the most difficult training that man could devise to overcome the most difficult challenges of the enemy and nature. For more than fourteen months, the volunteers that made up the 2nd Ranger Battalion had been finely honed for combat. Now, on June 6, 1944--D-Day--their battle would begin. The payoff was at hand. As the ramps of the landing craft went down, rockets on the sides of the ship fired ropes and grapnels skyward toward the cliff top. Some ropes fell short, men stepped into water that was over their heads and, loaded with equipment weighing over a hundred pounds, sank like stones. Sound and fury combined with fear and determination. Some men thought of the words they had heard each time they were tempted to complain: "You volunteered." Goes into exceptional detail on the D-Day assault of the gun positions at Pointe du Hoc, including how it almost ended in total failure. Unlike most books on the U.S. Army Rangers, this one also covers the many battles fought by the Rangers after D-Day and also lists the names of the Rangers who fought in the 2nd Battalion, including those who were casualties and those who were decorated for valor. Based on original documents and interviews with the surviving veterans by the author.

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A Ranger Born

Even as a boy growing up amid the green hills of rural Pennsylvania, Robert W. Black knew he was destined to become a Ranger. With their three-hundred-year history of peerless courage and independence of spirit, Rangers are a uniquely American brand of soldier, one foot in the military, one in the wilderness--and that is what fired Black's imagination. In this searing, inspiring memoir, Black recounts how he devoted himself, body and soul, to his proud service as an elite U. S. Army Ranger in Korea and Vietnam--and what those years have taught him about himself, his country, and our future.
Born at the start of the Great Depression, Black grew up on a farm at a time of great hardship but also tremendous national determination. He was a kid who toughened up fast, who learned the hard way to rely on his strength and his wits, who saw the country go to war with Germany and Japan and wept because he was too young to serve. As soon as the army would take him, Black enlisted. And as soon as he could muscle his way in, he became a Ranger.
As a private first class in the 82d Airborne Division headquarters, Black withstood the humiliations of enlisted service in the peacetime brown-shoe army. When the Korean War began, he volunteered and trained to be an Airborne Ranger. In Korea, this young warrior, his mind and body bursting with the lusts of adolescence, grew up fast, literally in the line of fire. In clean, vivid prose, Black describes the hell of giving his all for a country that lacked the political resolve to give its all to a war against the North Koreans and the Chinese.
If Korea was frustrating, Vietnam was maddening. The heart of this book is devoted to the years of actionthat Black saw in Long An Province starting in 1967. Black writes of the perplexity of collaborating with South Vietnamese officers whose culture and motives he never fully understood; he conjures up the sudden shock of the Tet Offensive and the daily horror of seeing fellow soldiers and innocent civilians slaughtered--sometimes by stray bullets, often by carelessness or treachery. Vietnam challenged everything Black had come to believe in and left him totally unprepared for the hostility he would face when he returned to a war-weary America.
Written with extraordinary candor and passion, "A Ranger Born is the memoir of a man who dedicated the best of his life to everything that is great and enduring about America. At once intimate in its revelations and universal in its themes, it is a book with profound relevance to our own troubled time in history.

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Cavalry Raids of the Civil War

In war, the raid is the epitome of daring. Usually outnumbered, raiders launch surprise attacks behind enemy lines, taking prisoners, destroying communications, and seizing supplies. In the Civil War, these men marauded on horseback, stunning opponents with their speed and mobility. This book covers the adventurous and often dangerous exploits of the Union and Confederate cavalry officers who had a flair for plunging into the enemy's lair. Covers raids from J. E. B. Stuart's 1862 ride around McClellan's army to James Wilson's crushing raids in Alabama and Georgia in 1865.

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Ghost, Thunderbolt and Wizard

Stories of adventure and danger behind enemy lines Describes the tactics pioneered by three masters of irregular warfare Noted Ranger historian Robert W. Black turns his attention to a trio of the Confederacy's--and America's--most infamous raiders and cavalrymen: John Singleton Mosby, John Hunt Morgan, and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Combining speed, mobility, and boldness, these three soldiers struck critical blows against the Union during the Civil War, including Morgan's notorious 1863 raid that penetrated farther north than any other uniformed Confederate force. While not overlooking their flaws. This is the first of two works on Ranger activities in the Civil War. Yank and Rebel Rangers is described in "Works in Progress."

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Rangers in World War II

From the deadly shores of North Africa to the invasion of Sicily to the fierce jungle hell of the Pacific, the contribution of the World War II Ranger Battalions far outweighed their numbers. They were ordinary men on an extraordinary mission, experiencing the full measure of the fear, exhaustion, and heroism of combat in nearly every major invasion of the war. Whether spearheading a landing force or scouting deep behind enemy lines, these highly motivated, highly trained volunteers led the way for other soldiers -- they were Rangers.

With first-person interviews, in-depth research, and a complete appendix naming every Ranger known to have served, author Robert Black, a Ranger himself, has made the battles of WWII come to life through the struggles of the men who fought to win the greatest war the world has ever seen.

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Rangers in Korea

In the Korean War, one group above all others distinguished itself, a small elite band who volunteered for action behind enemy lines. They were the men of the U. S. Army’s legendary Rangers. They succeeded in making the first combat jump in Ranger history, destroying enemy headquarters, and inflicting the first defeat on Communist Chinese forces while suffering a disproportionate number of casualties.

This is their story, told here for the first time—based on military records, interviews with survivors, and the author’s personal experiences as an American Ranger in the Korean War.

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