[quote=frankj1]Not Louie, TW's dog?[/quote]

Louis Zamperini Olympian, WWII Vet and POW

[quote]Louis Silvie Zamperini (January 26, 1917 – July 2, 2014) was an American World War II veteran, a Christian evangelist and an Olympic distance runner. He took up running in high school and qualified for the US in the 5,000 m race for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In 1941, he was commissioned into the United States Army Air Forces as a lieutenant. He served as a bombardier in B-24 Liberators in the Pacific. On a search and rescue mission, mechanical difficulties forced Zamperini's plane to crash in the ocean. After drifting at sea for 47 days, he landed on the Japanese occupied Marshall Islands and was captured. He was taken to a prison camp in Japan where he was tortured. Following the war he initially struggled to overcome his ordeal.[/quote]

Celtic’s mind.

Whew!!! Not good...

[quote=Gene363]Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

By Laura Hillenbrand

"Louie’s life, with its athletic feats, air combat, plane crash, shark attack, strafing, years as a POW, and slavery, is truly singular. But as unique and dramatic as it is, his story offers lessons that can guide those of us who lead much more ordinary lives. It stands as a testament to the breadth of the realm of possibility, demonstrating that with perseverance, courage, and resourcefulness we can prevail over hardships we imagined were insurmountable. And it demonstrates both the corrosive, life-consuming nature of bitterness and the transcendent liberation and peace that are the gifts of forgiveness. An odyssey of exceptional hardship, pain, trial, and triumph, Louie’s life is like no other, yet it carries lessons that speak to all of us. He is truly an inspiration.”

This is a quote from the author that says it all.[/quote]

Great book! =d>

[quote=Palama]Great book! =d> [/quote]

Nothing like redemption.

The Coastwatchers: Operation Ferdinand and the Fight for the South Pacific

By: Eric A. Feldt

[quote]The Coastwatchers is the story of the unsung heroic civilian spotters of World War 2 who roamed the coastlines of their home islands and reported back enemy sightings to Allied Intelligence. Author Eric Feldt led Operation Ferdinand, part of the build-up to the Normandy landings, in which the Coastwatchers, by this time on the US Navy's payroll, played a critical role. His intimate knowledge of Ferdinand, and his familiarity with the Coastwatchers of the Pacific islands, provides a unique perspective on this little known but important chapter of military history.[/quote]

Devotion: An Epic Story of Heroism, Friendship, and Sacrifice

By: Adam Makos

A sad, but interesting story that takes place before and during the Korean War.

[quote]Devotion tells the inspirational story of the U.S. Navy’s most famous aviator duo, Lieutenant Tom Hudner and Ensign Jesse Brown, and the Marines they fought to defend. A white New Englander from the country-club scene, Tom passed up Harvard to fly fighters for his country. An African American sharecropper’s son from Mississippi, Jesse became the navy’s first black carrier pilot, defending a nation that wouldn’t even serve him in a bar.[/quote]

Before They are Hanged - Joe Abercrombie

Just started Death By China a global call to action by Peter Navarro & Greg Autry

Seems appropriate reading about now.

Just finished

Spearhead by Adam Makos

An autobiographical account of an American tank gunner, his enemy, and a collision of lives in WWII

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

A third book on the 1996 Everest expedition in which 17 climbers lost their lives.

Currently reading

A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman

A fictional story about Indian pot hunters (not MJ)

[quote=izonfire]Celtic’s mind.

Whew!!! Not good...[/quote]

You wish! If you read my mind you'd be drooling right now like you took the biggest dose of LSD ever taken by one man.

You'd understand time, space, light, matter, energy, sex, drugs and rock 'n roll like never before.... You can't handle the truth!

You can barely handle goats! 😳

:-"

Book of Poetry tonight. This has always been one of those I could never forget. Always makes me think of my Dad. Every day getting up and breaking his back. Not for fame or glory but just for us. Nothing to the rest of the world but, a hero to me.

The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz - he dead. ----- A reference to Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad.

A penny for the Old Guy ------ A reference to Guy Fawkes

I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other kingdom

Remember us - if at all - not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death's dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind's singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer

In death's dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer -

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man's hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

In death's other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of this tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death's twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but with a whimper.

[quote=opelmanta1900]I'm still reading a Connecticut Yankee in king Arthur's court... Been picking it up when I hit the river and soak bait.... One of my favorites of all time... [/quote]

This book and the movie The Time Machine have had a thought churning in my head for over 35 years. If you could go back in time to the Dark Ages or even further back what 3 books would you take with you. You only get 3 and have to live out the rest of your life there. What would you take? I still don't have a definitive answer.

Just got a couple of Lawrence Block books in the Scudder series I haven’t read yet.

Just finished, Harms Way

By James Bassett

[quote]Harm’s Way is a thrilling novel of naval fortitude and survival in the combat for the Pacific Ocean. It culminates in a brilliant sea battle off the coast of the strategic island of Levu-Vana where the fate of the Pacific conflict hangs in the balance.[/quote]

I don't read many novels, but this one wasn't too bad after reading nonfiction accounts of the Coast Watchers and the battle for Guadalcanal.

American Murder Houses

By: John Lehto

[quote]Writer Steve Lehto recounts the stories behind the houses where Lizzie Borden supposedly gave her stepmother “forty whacks,” where the real Amityville Horror was first unleashed by gunfire, and where the demented acts of the Manson Family horrified a nation—as well some lesser-known sites of murder that were no less ghastly.[/quote]

Finished ..... Being Mortal by Atul Gawande.

Three parts depressing, two parts enlightening. Not the best reading choice for just before bedtime during a pandemic.

In the end, it should help me navigate the final twists and turns of life.

[quote=cacman]Just finished

Spearhead by Adam Makos

An autobiographical account of an American tank gunner, his enemy, and a collision of lives in WWII

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

A third book on the 1996 Everest expedition in which 17 climbers lost their lives.

Currently reading

A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman

A fictional story about Indian pot hunters (not MJ)[/quote]

Spearhead was a good one, I bought a signed copy of the book for my veteran son at valorstudios.com

Just finished, The Soldier Who Came Back

By Steven Foster with help from Alan Clark

The story of a most audacious escape attempt by two British POWs in WWII.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/soldier-who-came-back-nazi-prison-camp.html 

[quote]A book based on Steve Foster’s painstaking research into his father’s life as a POW and his escape.

In Northern Poland in 1940, at the Nazi war camp Stalag XX-A, two men struck up an unlikely friendship that was to lead to one of the most brazen and remarkable wartime escape stories ever told.

Antony Coulthard (nicknamed ‘The Professor’) was the privately educated son of wealthy parents with a first-class honours degree in modern languages from Oxford. The other man, Fred Foster, was the son of a bricklayer from Nottinghamshire who had left school aged 14.

Held in captivity, this seemingly mismatched pair would bond together and hatch a risky plan: they would perfect their German, forge travel documents, disguise themselves as travelling salesmen – and simply walk out of the camp.

Their journey would take them into the very heart of the Third Reich, stopping en route to sightsee and drink at a notorious Nazi watering hole.

‘It was a clever strategy, but a high-risk one. Success or failure would depend entirely on one thing: their ability to pass themselves off as native German speakers. The weight of this rested largely on Antony, whose fluency would be their passport to freedom. The serious challenge was to get Fred’s skills up to a level where he could just about pass muster during the time required. It would be, as Fred put it, “one big bluff”.’

What happened next is both heart-stopping and tragic.[/quote]

Beyond Good and Evil

Friedrich Nietzsche

Finished this one in two days.

The Crash of Little Eva

By: Barry Ralph

An epic story of survival that includes a lookout the initial role of the US in Australia and the Pacific.

[quote]"Little Eva" was a USAAF Consolidated B-24 Liberator which, returning from a bombing mission, got lost and crashed having exhausted its fuel supply on 2 December 1942 north-west of Burketown, Queensland (near the Gulf of Carpentaria).

The crew had taken to their parachutes before the crash. The survivors, now in two groups, set out on foot. Two of the crew travelled east and came across people after twelve days. The other party travelled westerly, with the only surviving member being found some five months later.

The aircraft, part of the 321st Squadron, 90th Bombardment Group based at Iron Range was returning with four other B-24s from a bombing raid on a Japanese troop convoy about 80 km north of Buna, Papua New Guinea. "Little Eva" lost touch with the other aircraft and returned to the base on its own. A severe thunderstorm disabled the radio, causing the flight to lose its way and run out of fuel. Lieutenant Norman Crosson, the pilot, gave orders to bail out. Most of the crew members parachuted to safety, however one was killed when his parachute snagged on the aircraft and another who did not jump was killed when the plane crashed at about 2:45am near the Burriejella waterhole.[/quote]