Joe Ronnie Hooper had his share non-judicial punishments (authorized by Article 15 of UCMJ), racked up 115 confirmed kills and was awarded the Medal of Honor. He was also one of the most decorated soldiers in American international combat.
Born in the summer of 1938 in South Carolina, Joe Ronnie Hooper was relocated as a child to Moses Lake, Washington where he attended Moses Lake High School.
Originally a Navy man, Hooper first enlisted in December of 1956. After graduation from boot camp at San Diego, California he served as an Airman aboard USS Wasp (CV-18) and USS Hancock (CV-19). He was honorably discharged in July 1959, shortly after being advanced to Petty Officer Third Class.
The next year, Hooper enlisted in the US Army as a Private First Class. After graduating Basic Training, he volunteered for Airborne School. From there he did tours of duty in Fort Bragg, Korea, and Fort Hood, eventually making his way to Fort Campbell's 101st Airborne Division.
Now a Staff Sergeant, Hooper requested a tour in Vietnam but was sent to Panama instead as a Platoon Sergeant. Unable to stay out of trouble while he was there, he was the subject of several Article 15 hearings and was eventually demoted to Corporal. However, he eventually got his Sergeant stripes back and deployed with the 101st to Vietnam in December of 1967, taking on the role of a Squad Leader. During his tour of duty with Delta Company (Delta Raiders), 2nd Battalion (Airborne), 501st Airborne Infantry, 101st Airborne Division, he was recommended for the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions on February 21, 1968, outside of the city of Hue.
On February 21st, 1968, Hooper and his company were beginning an assault on an enemy position when they came under fire by everything from machine guns to rockets.
According to his Medal of Honor citation, Hooper's unit "was assaulting a heavily defended enemy position along a river bank when it encountered a withering hail of fire from rockets, machine guns, and automatic weapons. Staff Sergeant Hooper rallied several men and stormed across the river, overrunning several bunkers on the opposite shore.
Thus inspired, the rest of the company moved to the attack. With utter disregard for his own safety, he moved out under the intense fire again and pulled back the wounded, moving them to safety. During this act, Hooper was seriously wounded, but he refused medical aid and returned to his men. With the relentless enemy fire disrupting the attack, he single-handedly stormed 3 enemy bunkers, destroying them with a hand grenade and rifle fire, and shot 2 enemy soldiers who had attacked and wounded the Chaplain.
Leading his men forward in a sweep of the area, Hooper destroyed three buildings housing enemy riflemen. At this point, he was attacked by a North Vietnamese officer whom he fatally wounded with his bayonet. Finding his men under heavy fire from a house to the front, he proceeded alone to the building, killing its occupants with rifle fire and grenades. By now, his initial body wound had been compounded by grenade fragments, yet despite the multiple wounds and loss of blood, he continued to lead his men against the intense enemy fire.
As his squad reached the final line of enemy resistance, it received devastating fire from four bunkers in line on its left flank. Hooper gathered several hand grenades and raced down a small trench which ran the length of the bunker line, tossing grenades into each bunker as he passed by, killing all but two of the occupants.
With these positions destroyed, he concentrated on the last bunkers facing his men, destroying the first with an incendiary grenade and neutralizing two more by rifle fire. He then raced across an open field, still under enemy fire, to rescue a wounded man who was trapped in a trench. Upon reaching the man, he was faced by an armed enemy soldier whom he killed with a pistol. Moving his comrade to safety and returning to his men, he neutralized the final pocket of enemy resistance by fatally wounding three North Vietnamese officers with rifle fire. Hooper then established a final line and reorganized his men, not accepting (medical) treatment until this was accomplished and not consenting to evacuation until the following morning."
While he was discharged from the Infantry upon his return from Vietnam in 1968, he managed to re-enlist and serve as a Public Affairs specialist until President Richard Nixon awarded him the Medal of Honor in 1969.
Hooper eventually managed to finagle his way back into the Infantry, serving a second tour in Vietnam as a pathfinder with the 101st Airborne. By 1970, he had been commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant, though he was discharged from an active commission shortly after due to inadequate educational requirements.
Discharged and a little sour about it, Hooper managed to retain his commission in the Army Reserve's 12th Special Forces Group before being transferred to a training unit. Though he was eventually promoted to Captain, he was discharged a final time in 1978 after a spotty drill record.
Much like the war he fought in, Hooper is not as well-known as other Medal of Honor recipients of his stature. According to accounts, he was a likable guy who partied hard, drank a lot and related to veterans. However, he was allegedly rather troubled by America's treatment of soldiers and attitudes towards the war in general.
He is credited with 115 enemy killed in ground combat, 22 of which occurred on February 21, 1968. He became one of the most decorated soldiers in the Vietnam War and was one of three soldiers who were wounded in action eight times in the war.
In addition to the Medal of Honor, Hooper was also awarded two Silver Stars, 6 Bronze Stars with "V" Devices, an Air Medal, the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Palm and 8 Purple Hearts.
He was found dead in a hotel room in Louisville, Kentucky on May 5, 1979, having suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in his sleep at the age of 40.
He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Arlington County, Virginia.
A book written by Peter Maslowsk is available on Amazon.com. It is titled "Looking for a Hero: Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam War" paperback.
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I recently reviewed a biographical history of the men who flew on the famous Doolittle Raid of 1942 where I professed strong approval of that kind of book.
We now must jump back further to the year 1879 for a similar and equally effective work by the respected Zulu War historian James W Bancroft.
This book, "Rorke's Drift: The Zulu War, 1879", is the sum of decades of work, provides biographies of the men awarded the Victoria Cross for their actions during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, a conflict marked by the shocking defeat of the British at Isandlwana followed by the heroics of Rorke's Drift over the period of 22nd to 24th January.
But there was much more to the conflict than those iconic events. Britain's war with the Zulus tends to be defined in the broadest modern perception by the film "Zulu", a 1960s classic, which tells a story of the defense of Rorke's Drift, rather than the story.
I love the movie and it does, without a doubt, inspire pride in the British defenders and encourage interest in the conflict itself. I heard Tom Hanks discussing it on the radio a few weeks ago where he professed a love for the movie and he did a Michael Caine impression as a bonus of sorts to go with it.
This illustrates how a movie can create its own history placed on top of the real events. Is it a bad thing? No, but we need to keep tabs on the reality and Mr. Bancroft's book helps the cause.
The conflict grew out of a mixture of the bellicose ambitions of the Zulu king Cetswayo butting up against the determination of British colonial figures to bolster their position at a time when Britain's imperial interests in southern Africa faced a degree of uncertainty as Dutch Boer settlers continued to oppose the expansion of colonial administration.
Meanwhile, the British had fought a succession of wars against tribes reluctant to accept the new reality but there were never enough imperial troops to do all the work and the available forces would find themselves hard-pressed in 1879.
Cetswayo's impressive army had made mincemeat of indigenous opposition but there were only relatively few occasions when Zulus faced up to European settlers and the king's determination to push out on the borders of his kingdom was bound to flutter European hearts as fears of a Zulu invasion spread.
Colonial leaders saw an opportunity to force the Zulus into a conflict that would remove them from future concerns. Although military men were minded to see such a conflict as far more of a challenge they had little option but to take on the Zulus and with this in mind Cetswayo was presented with an ultimatum designed to be unacceptable to him precipitating a British invasion. This was all very well, but the Zulu reaction would be ferocious.
Britain's war with the Zulus commenced in a dangerous mixture of overconfidence and incompetence that led to the disaster at Isandlwana. But there were heroics, nonetheless, that would eventually see the award of three VCs for the battle, although two of them were made in 1902 after the terms of the medal were changed to allow posthumous recipients.
The award to Private Samuel Wassall gathered no controversy, but the later posthumous awards to two officers who attempted to save the Queen's Color of their battalion were not so well received. Lieutenants Coghill and Melville died in their attempt but were suspected by a number of senior soldiers of using the fate of the Color as a pretext for saving themselves while their comrades were literally being cut to pieces.
The senior British soldier Garnet Wolseley was an uncompromising figure who did not favor the award of gallantry medals. His reservations about Coghill and Melville also applied to the award of eleven Victoria Crosses for the defense of Rorke's Drift where a reinforced company of the 24th Foot held off around four thousand Zulu warriors in a terrifying ordeal where the British fired upwards on twenty thousand rounds with their Martini-Henry rifles.
Wolseley was critical of the award of the VC to two British officers at Rorke's Drift because he did not admire them as soldiers at all. The company commander Gonville Bromhead and sapper officer John Chard faced considerable jealousy from other officers for their achievement, but they gained the admiration of Queen Victoria, a factor that helped them in later life.
Nine other medals went to men of the 24th and other branches of the British military and no other battle has seen so many awarded for one occasion.
The horrors continued at the Tombi River and Hlobane Mountain, where more British soldiers met grisly ends at the hands of uncompromising Zulus. Reading of these encounters invites strong comparison with the travails endured by settlers and soldiers clashing with Native Americans as they pushed west.
There is no question that a mix of fear and admiration built up around the Zulus whose complex society and martial traditions were a match for any foe they could get within stabbing range of.
The lone VC at Tombi was Color Sergeant Anthony Clarke Booth who saw his officer ride off to "get help," abandoning a bewildered and outnumbered wagon train caught at night in a terrifying ordeal that saw many helpless men butchered in their tents.
Clarke Booth's actions were heroic, to say the least, and having shepherded the survivors he was prepared to go out again but was prevented from doing so. Four VCs were awarded for actions at Hlobane Mountain included the award to Redvers Buller, one of the greatest soldiers of the age.
The war continued with the British needing reinforcements before they could square up to Cetswayo at his capital, Ulundi.
Lessons had been learned by this time and the Zulus would face a large force using artillery and Gatling guns but this material advantage was not decisive and a series of sharp fights were necessarily leading to the award of several more VCs.
Victory did not save the reputation of the commanding general of the British campaign, Lord Chelmsford. His overconfidence and poor strategy from the very start had cost the British Army dearly and it would not be forgotten.
This is an excellent book. Each action is reported in meticulous detail before biographies of the medal recipients add further information of their deeds and a great deal about the men themselves.
That they were heroes is beyond doubt but despite modern day aversion to events recalled in lurid accounts such as "Deeds That Thrilled the Empire" a century ago, it is only right to say that the gallantry and ferocity of the Zulus was openly admired and treated with much respect from the outset by the soldiers who faced them. They were great warriors and in defeating them many of the recipients of the VC and other significant gallantry medals gained a kudos that lasts to this day.
The plan was audacious, requiring a midnight parachute jump onto a snow-covered mountain plateau, cross-country skiing in subzero temperatures and an assault on an isolated, heavily guarded power plant in southern Norway.
And the stakes, though no one in the five-man commando team knew it at the time, were spectacular: Destroy the Nazis' sole source of heavy water, a recently discovered substance that Hitler's scientists were using to try to develop an atomic bomb or risk the creation of a superweapon that could secure a German victory in World War II.
"We didn't think about whether it was dangerous or not," Joachim Ronneberg, the 23-year-old Norwegian resistance fighter charged with leading the mission, later told Britain's Telegraph newspaper. "We didn't think about our retreat. The most important decision you made during the whole war was the day you decided to leave Norway to report for duty. You concentrated on the job and not on the risks."
Ronneberg went on to land a crippling blow against Nazi Germany's atomic ambitions, blowing up much of the plant and destroying its heavy-water stockpile without firing a shot or losing a man. He was 99, and the last of Norway's celebrated heavy-water saboteurs, when he died Sunday, according to the state-owned broadcaster NRK, which confirmed the death but did not provide additional details.
"Ronneberg is one of the great heroes of Norwegian war history," Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg told the media company. In 2015, British military historian M.R.D. Foot told the New York Times that Ronneberg's mission "changed the course of the war" and deserved the "gratitude of humanity."
Although historians have argued over how close the Nazis came to be developing an atomic bomb, and over what prevented them from succeeding, German officials at the time seemed to agree that Ronneberg's actions were pivotal. After visiting the damaged heavy-water plant, Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, the Nazi general overseeing occupied Norway, was said to have declared, "This is the most splendid coup I have seen in this war."
Yet even Ronneberg's exploits were chronicled in books, television series and movies such as "The Heroes of Telemark," a popular 1965 film starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris, Ronneberg resisted being glorified as a war hero.
"There were so many things that were just luck and chance," he told the New York Times. "There was no plan. We were just hoping for the best."
Raised by a prominent Norwegian family in the port town of Alesund, he was born Joachim Holmboe Ronneberg on Aug. 30, 1919, and was working for a fish export company when Germany invaded in April 1940. With a few friends, he fled to Britain aboard a fishing boat and linked up with the Special Operation Executive, a wartime espionage unit that Winston Churchill dubbed his "Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare."
Ronneberg studied the dark arts of sabotage - including how to lay a bomb, fire a weapon and kill someone with his bare hands - before serving as an instructor for recruits in Norwegian Independent Company 1, a unit sometimes known as Kompani Linge.
His rise through the organization occurred as Allied forces received reports that the Nazis were increasing cold-water production at Vemork, an industrial facility, and hydroelectric power plant - once the world's largest - built by Norsk Hydro in the Telemark region of southern Norway.
The plant was already the world's leading commercial supplier of heavy water, a moderator that German scientists were using to try to produce weapons-grade plutonium for an atomic bomb. It proved less effective than graphite, which their American rivals working on the Manhattan Project used to create the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
By the time Ronneberg was enlisted to lead Operation Gunnerside, the mission to destroy the plant, 41 men had died in a November 1942 raid dubbed Operation Freshman, in which a pair of gliders crashed in bad weather in Norway. The survivors were executed by the Nazis.
Rather than risk another glider mishap, Ronneberg and the four commandos he selected for the mission parachuted into Norway in February 1943. They landed in the wrong location but waited out a snowstorm inside a cabin and met up with four local fighters in Hardangervidda, a desolate plateau northwest of the plant.
The group reached Vemork on the night of Feb. 27, after scrambling down a steep gorge, crossing a frozen river and climbing up the far side to avoid a bridge guarded by the Nazis. Timing his infiltration of the plant to match a changing of the guard, Ronneberg said he was able to gain entry undetected, quickly and quietly breaking through a chain on the gate with help from a pair of heavy-duty metal cutters. He had purchased them in Britain "entirely by chance," he said, after walking by a hardware store during a trip to the movies.
Drawing on intelligence from a Norwegian escapee who had worked at the plant, Ronneberg crawled through a ventilation duct and found his target - a row of pipes - without understanding its significance as a source for a mysterious new weapon in Germany.
The charges, he later said, "fitted like a hand in a glove," and in a last-minute change he trimmed the fuse, causing the explosion to go off in about 30 seconds, rather than 2 minutes, so that he and his team could ensure it went off - and, he hoped, escape the facility without being caught in the explosion.
"It was a mackerel sky. It was a marvelous sunrise," Ronneberg told the Telegraph, recalling the moment hours later when he and his team had returned to the mountains, safely out of reach of Nazi guards. "We sat there very tired, very happy. Nobody said anything. That was a very special moment."
Ronneberg and his fellow commandos skied 200 miles across southern Norway, escaping into neutral Sweden before returning to Britain.
He went on to lead Operation Fieldfare, an effort to break German supply lines in Norway by damaging bridges and railroads, and Allied forces continued to monitor Vemork. The plant was repaired after several months, leading U.S. planes to bomb the heavy-water factory later in 1943.
When the Nazis decided to move their supply of heavy water to Germany in 1944, one of Ronneberg's fellow commandos, Knut Haukelid, led a successful operation to sink the carrying the substance, while it was traveling across Lake Tinn.
Ronneberg received Norway's highest military honor, the War Cross With Sword, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in Britain. He returned to his hometown of Alesund after the war and worked as an editor at NRK before retiring in 1987, according to the broadcasting company.
He married Liv Foldal, a crafts teacher, in 1949, and had three children: Jostein, Asa, and Birte.
Ronneberg began speaking about his experiences as a resistance fighter only in recent years. His story, he told the Telegraph, had lessons for politicians and ordinary civilians even today.
"A few years ago," he said, "I realized that I am part of history. Having been silent for years, now I realize it is important and quite natural for people to ask about the past, so they can plan. People must realize that peace and freedom have to be fought for every day."
Joachim Ronneberg died Oct 22, 2018, at the age of 99.
Just a few miles to the northeast of Limoges, France, is one of the most poignant and tragically beautiful of all war memorials.
Today, the town of Oradour-sur-Glane has a population of just over two thousand. It is a thriving little city with amenities including a sports complex and a seafood market. The town of Oradour doesn't have much to recommend it to tourists, except for one thing: the town is not the real Oradour. Any tourists who visit come to see what used to be, not what is.
The "real" Oradour lies about two hundred meters to the southwest of the modern town. The original Oradour is a town frozen in time. If anyone lives there, it is the ghosts of those who died there on June 10th, 1944.
Four days after the invasion in Normandy, elements of the 2nd Waffen-SS Division "Das Reich" were in the area, heading slowly towards the Allied landings in the north. It would take Das Reich two weeks in total to get to Normandy, a trip which should have taken just a couple of days.
Impeding its way north was the overwhelming Allied air power which attacked virtually anything that moved during the day. The division also had to contend with the lack of functional railroads, which had been damaged by both the Allied Air Forces and the Resistance, not to mention the occasional crude roadblocks and snipers' bullets from the Resistance.
Also, in the area were the Milice (militia), the collaborationist fascist police. Many Frenchmen hated them more than they hated the Nazis. Exceedingly anti-Semitic and strongly pro-Vichy, the Milice were known throughout France as torturers and thugs. Much of the war in France during the Occupation took place between the Milice and the Resistance, with the Germans watching the two tear themselves apart.
On the morning of June 10th, the 4th Grenadier Regiment of Das Reich, designated "The Fuhrer," arrived near the town. Milice Officers approached and told the SS that the Resistance was holding a Waffen-SS Officer hostage in the nearby town of Oradour-sur-Vayres (which lies to the south of Oradour-sur-Glane).
Mistaking the two towns, the regiment marched into Oradour-sur-Glane and prepared to order the mayor to provide hostages against the Waffen-SS Officer's life. Hostage-taking was an unfortunate and brutal by-product of the Nazi occupation in the West, especially in France, where thousands were killed in reprisal for Resistance action. But somewhere along the line, the men of Das Reich changed their minds.
When the residents of the town assembled in the square, the men were separated from the women. The men were then marched off to barns on the edge of town where machine guns and SS troops were awaiting them. The SS troops opened fire, aiming for the legs of their victims. As the villagers lay on the ground, many still alive, they were doused in fuel before being set alight. 190 men died in agony while the SS watched. Six men managed to escape in the chaos – one was later shot and recaptured as he fled down a road.
The women and children, who had been locked in the town church, listened to the sounds of their men being shot. Then the SS placed an incendiary device next to the church. When it exploded, many of those inside, burned to death. The rest rushed outside to where the SS were waiting with machine guns. 247 women and 205 children were casually cut down as they fled. Only one middle-aged woman escaped.
Some of the villagers had run for the woods as soon as the Waffen-SS appeared. Along with the five male survivors and the woman from the church, they made a group of about thirty. The next day, when the SS had left, those survivors returned to bury their dead.
Before he died in combat, SS Officer Adolf Diekmann, who had been present, declared that the killings were done in revenge for the actions of a nearby Resistance cell and the capture and killing of an SS Officer. Many in the SS thought the Officer had been burned to death. Diekmann was subject of a military inquiry initiated by Rommel, but after his death in combat, the inquiry was ended.
In 1953, a variety of SS men were put on trial in France. Some of these men were Alsatians, from the region on the Franco-German border that had passed back and forth between Germany and France since 1871. They were found guilty, but with Alsace being a French province again, they were released on a technicality after an uproar in Alsace itself.
A small number of Germans, who had been deported from Western Germany, were found guilty, but with the caveat that they were "just following orders." They were released from jail within five years. The Officers in charge were either dead or could not be deported for international political reasons. One SS man was put on trial in 1983 and served fourteen years before being released.
Charles De Gaulle, the post-war leader of France, ordered that Oradour should never be rebuilt. Though a town of the same name exists, the old town is a memorial, left exactly as it was in June 1944. A large memorial lies to the north of the old town itself, commemorating not only the dead of Oradour but all the innocents that died during the war.
The Battle of Stalingrad was not only one of the largest battles of the Second World War, but it was also one of the biggest and bloodiest battles in human history.
German forces attacked the city of Stalingrad (now called Volgograd, located in southern Russia) on August 23, 1942. The battle lasted until the 2nd of February 1943, when Soviet forces retook what was left of the city.
During that time, 2.2 million people participated in the battle, around 700,000 of whom did not make it out of Stalingrad alive.
Adding those who were wounded or taken prisoner to that number brings the casualty total closer to two million, and it is estimated that the average life expectancy of a Soviet soldier at the height of the battle was a mere twenty-four hours.
The battle for control of the city of Stalingrad was part of Hitler's 1942 Summer Offensive against the Soviet Union, the aim of which was to capture the Caucasus oilfields and destroy what was left of the Soviet Army. The city of Stalingrad was strategically important in terms of the Germans' aims since it is on the Volga River, which was a key supply route for the Soviet interior.
It was also important in terms of morale and propaganda, both to the Germans and the Soviets. As the city bore Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's name, taking control of it would provide a massive morale boost for the German troops while simultaneously crushing the spirit of the Soviets.
To this end, German General Friedrich von Paulus, leading the Sixth Army and elements of the Fourth Panzer Army, was ordered to take the city.
He started his assault on the city on August 23, 1942. Hitler had ordered that when the city was taken, all male Soviet citizens were to be executed, while all the Soviet women and children were to be deported. Stalin, meanwhile, ordered that the city be defended at all costs, and he was prepared to sacrifice as many troops as it took to hold the city. The stage was thus set for a gargantuan battle.
In the weeks leading up to the assault on the city, four relatively ragtag Soviet armies engaged in a series of running battles against the German Sixth Army to try to at least slow the German advance. In terms of this goal, the Soviets were at least partially successful.
They managed to put enough of a dent in the Germans' momentum to ship cattle, railway cars, and grain out of Stalingrad and across the Volga River. Most of the city's citizens, however, were not evacuated in time. Thus, when the Sixth Army appeared on the horizon, and the Luftwaffe planes began their bombing campaign, many civilians were still in the city–around 400,000, according to historical estimates.
Luftflotte 4, one of the largest divisions of Germany's Luftwaffe, was the division tasked with bombing Stalingrad. At the time this division launched its offensive, it was the most powerful single air formation on earth. One thousand tons of bombs were dropped on the city in 48 hours, some of which caused a massive firestorm. By the time Luftlofte 4 completed its bombing mission, most of the city had been reduced to rubble.
Despite this, those factories that had not been destroyed continued to produce tanks and weapons, and civilians were put to work repairing infrastructure and manning defenses.
Much of the city's defense up to this point was conducted by the 1077th Anti-Aircraft Regiment. A volunteer force composed mainly of young women, they took on the advancing German tanks of the 16th Panzer Division with their anti-aircraft guns.
Despite being poorly trained, they fought fiercely, and it was only when most of their posts were overrun that the surprised Germans discovered that they had been fighting women.
Other aspects of the city's defense involved untrained civilians pressed into hastily-formed militias. They did what they could against the Germans but were not particularly effective. Some of them were sent into battle without rifles, which made them little more than cannon fodder.
The Luftwaffe's control of the skies proved to be a major boon for the Germans. Any attempts at counter-attacks by the Soviet armies on the ground were swiftly quashed by German airplanes. Fighting soon moved into the city itself, and this was where things became especially fierce and bloody.
Soviet commanders were under strict orders to execute any deserters and to die rather than retreat. If any Soviet commander gave an order to retreat, he knew he would face a fate worse than death if he survived. The Germans were under similar orders from Hitler, so they knew that they had to take the city at all costs.
By September 12th, after a few weeks of ferocious fighting, the Soviet 62nd Army in the city had been reduced to a mere 20,000 troops. However, in the fighting in the streets and among the ruined buildings, they had managed to exact a severe toll on the German invaders.
Soviet reinforcements arrived from across the Volga, but they could do little to stem the seemingly unstoppable tide of the German advance. The 13th Guards Rifle Division, for example, sent in to bolster Soviet defenses in mid-September, suffered a 30% casualty rate in their first 24 hours in the city. Not much longer after this, almost every one of the 10,000 members of the 13th was dead.
Despite many incidents like this, the Soviets refused to surrender, fighting hard to retake every building lost to the Germans, with some ruined buildings changing hands dozens of times over a 24-hour period. In the combat among the ruins, snipers played an important and deadly role for both sides, with snipers such as Vasily Zaytsev killing 225 German soldiers in the city.
By the end of October, the Germans controlled most of Stalingrad, and Soviet resistance was limited to a few small patches along the western bank of the Volga, as well as a particularly stubborn spot of Soviet resistance called Lyudnikov's Island. By the middle of November, German forces controlled over 90% of the city. If the Germans thought that the battle was won, however, they were in for a terrible surprise.
On November 19, 1942, the Soviets launched Operation Uranus, a massive counter-attack that aimed to retake Stalingrad. The Hungarian and Romanian Axis armies protecting the German flank were overrun by Soviet forces. Three Soviet armies encircled the city, trapping the German forces inside and cutting off their supplies.
In addition to impending starvation and the fact that ammunition was starting to run out, the Germans had another foe to contend with: the bitter winter, for which they were ill-prepared. Nonetheless, beleaguered as they were, many German troops within the city put up fierce resistance to the Soviet counter-attack, and it took the Soviets a further two months to recapture the city.
When the last remnants of the once-mighty German Sixth Army surrendered Stalingrad to the Soviets on February 2, 1943, the Germans had lost over 500,000 men. Including Soviet casualties and people taken prisoner, over 1.8 to 2 million lives were lost in the battle, making it one of the bloodiest in history.
It was to be a major turning point in the Second World War, with any Axis hopes of ultimate victory being effectively squashed after Stalingrad.
On June 23, 1943, three American soldiers had been drifting in the Pacific Ocean for twenty-seven days. The rafts were deteriorating, their bodies were covered in salt sores, and they didn't know it at the time, but there would be another twenty days of drifting ahead for them. Only two of the three would survive. One of them was former Olympic runner Louis Zamperini whose life would never be the same.
Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken is an amazing study in resilience, defiance, and strength that takes you on the journey of one man's lifetime. Zamperini was an incorrigible child, a natural runner, and a man who would not be broken. 
He survived unspeakable torture and deprivation at the hands of his Japanese captors only to find himself being tortured by his memories after returning home at the end of the war.
Being overtaken with the reoccurring tortures that resided in his mind, Zamperini turned to alcohol. He reclaimed his life after hearing an inspiring speaker in a tent on a street corner in Los Angeles. That speaker was Billy Graham. Graham taught him about total forgiveness. It was then and there that Louie was able to release the hatred and take hold of his own life and destiny.
Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Seabiscuit, brought the story of depression era wonder horse to us all. Now she brings us the story of Louis Zamperini, who as of this writing is ninety-three years old and residing in Los Angeles. Hillenbrand said that she came across an article about Louis Zamperini while doing research for Seabiscuit and set it aside. I'm glad she went back to Zamperini's story. In one of her countless interviews with Mr. Zamperini spanning seven years, he assured Hillenbrand that "I'll be an easier subject than Seabiscuit because I can talk." Although Unbroken is over 450 pages in length, but there's never a dull or lagging moment, just the opposite. The story flows quickly, and the suspense keeps you turning the pages.
Zamperini's struggle to reclaim his life is beautifully told by Hillenbrand. In Unbroken, Hillenbrand captures the spark of a man determined to survive what he had to and to come out the winner he'd always been.
Reader Reviews
I'm a voracious reader. Addicted to reading since I was a young child. I love and read a great deal of history. This book was hands down, one of the best written I've ever read on WWII. Laura Hillenbrand is now as beloved an author to me as Stephen Ambrose.
My grandfather spent years in Europe during WWII. My mother tells the story of meeting her father for the first time when he came home after the war. He left when she was a toddler and she had no memories of him before the war. Sadly, there was no information on PTSD in those years. He did his best, but the war broke him in profound ways that would chase all his children and grandchildren through the years.
This book has given me great sadness for what all the men suffered but has also healed a wound. Grandfather didn't hate us all, he was merely dealing with a burden he could never share. Great book. Very well written. I haven't stayed up all night reading in many years, but this book has me that rare pleasure of trading sleep for getting lost in a story.
~Amazon Customer
Laura Hillenbrand follows her spectacular biography of racehorse Seabiscuit with the gripping tale of Louis Zamperini's life and tribulations as a downed airman in WWII. "Unbroken" is written in Hillenbrand's inimitable style, blending global events with personal anecdotes from the lives of Lt. Zamperini and his family and fellow airmen.
Prior to the war, Zamperini had overcome serious obstacles to become one of the best milers in track and field history, competing in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin with Jesse Owens and other famous American Olympians. As America entered WWII he became a bombardier flying B-24s in the Pacific Theater. When his plane ditched in a remote part of the Pacific, Louie and two colleagues survived the crash and drifted thousands of miles for more than 47 days before being picked up by a Japanese ship. During those weeks they endured unthinkable hardships: one of their companions died aboard the life raft, they were repeatedly attacked by sharks, and strafed by Japanese planes.
After Louis and his pilot, Russell Allen Phillips were "rescued," an even more harrowing journey began, as both men were incarcerated in a series of brutal Japanese POW camps. The vivid descriptions of camp conditions and the inhuman brutality of many of the prison guards are gut-wrenching. The depth of depravity that Louie and his fellow prisoners had to endure is unimaginable, and the fact that he survived to live a productive life is a testament to his incredibly resilient and unbreakable will and spirit.
The author does not shrink from telling about Louie's post-war troubles with alcohol, rage, and PTSD. The account of Zamperini's reluctant encounter with evangelist Billy Graham, is touching and instructive, for it proved to be the event that allowed Louie to finally come to peace with his hatred of the worst of the Japanese guards, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, "The Bird," Louie was finally free of the haunting nightmares and his need to seek revenge.
As I was reading this book, one of my close friends saw the book in my hand and said: "This book changed my life!" The story of Louie Zamperini and his trials and tribulations is that inspiring.
~Alan L. Chase
About the Author
Laura Hillenbrand grew up in the northern suburbs of Washington, D.C., and began writing at an early age. While attending Kenyon College, her life would change when she suddenly fell ill with chronic fatigue syndrome, a debilitating condition with no cure. Confined to her home, Hillenbrand began writing in earnest, and her first book, 'Seabiscuit,' published in 2001, sold more 6 million copies in the United States alone and has been translated into 15 languages. It also spawned a hugely successful film that garnered seven Oscar nominations.
Adding to her massive bestseller, 'Seabiscuit,' was 'Unbroken,' the life story of Louis Zamperini, Olympic athlete, and war hero. Like her first book, 'Unbroken', was another major bestseller that inspired a 2014 film, directed by the actress Angelina Jolie.
Hillenbrand continues to write for publications like The New York Times and Vanity Fair, among others.