Showing results by author "W. E. B. Griffin" in All Categories

From Shanghai to Wake Island, the Corps was America’s first line of defense as the winds of war exploded into the devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. This is the story of the men of the Marine Corps, their loves and loyalties, an elite fraternity united by courage and honor, as they steel themselves for battle, prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice....

The story of one of the bloodiest conflicts of the Pacific, the epic struggle for Guadalcanal. Daredevil pilot Charles Galloway learns the hard way to command a fighter squadron. Lieutenant Joe Howard teams up with the Coastwatchers. Jack 'No Middle Initial' Stecker leads his infantry battalion into the thickest of the fighting, at a terrible price. And Navy Captain Pickering grabs a helmet and a rifle to join the ranks at Guadalcanal....

They were the young ones, the bright ones, the ones with the dreams. From the Nazi-prowled wastes of North Africa to the bloody corridors of Europe, they honorably answered the call. War - it was their duty, their job, their life. They marched off as boys and they came back - those who made it - as soldiers and professionals forged in the heat of battle....

October 1945: The Germans and Japanese have surrendered. For Cletus Frade and his colleagues in the OSS, it should be time to pack up - but they have far more important things to do. Chief among them is the protection of their assets, especially the human ones. In the closing months of the war, the United States made a secret deal with the head of German intelligence’s Soviet section. In exchange for a treasure trove of intelligence - in particular the identity of the Soviet spies in the U.S. atomic bomb program - his people would be spirited to safety in Argentina.

Korea, June 1, 1950. Captain Ken McCoy's report on probable North Korean hostilities meets with so much bureaucratic displeasure that not only is it promptly suppressed, but McCoy himself is kicked out of the Corps. At least two outfits, however, are not impressed by such infighting: the fledgling CIA, which promptly hires McCoy; and the North Koreans, who on June 25th invade across the 38th parallel.

It was more than an incident: It was a deadly assault across the 38th parallel. It was the Korean War. In the fear and the frenzy of battle, those who had served with heroism before were called again by America to man the trenches and sandbag bunkers. From Pusan to the Yalu, they drove forward with commands too new and tanks too old, brothers in war, bonded together in battle as they had never been in peace....

In November 1964, Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara went to the Congo with two hundred men, intent on making it his first step in taking over Africa and South America. He failed, thanks in large part to the efforts of an intrepid band of Green Berets. Licking his wounds, he retreated to Cuba to recruit more men and try the same thing in Bolivia. He failed there, too. In fact, he died there, and thus, despite his incompetence, became a glorious martyr to the cause. But who was trying to kill him, really - and who was trying to keep him alive?

The attack on Pearl Harbor swept America into the raging heart of the war. The stormy South Pacific presented a daring new challenge, and the men of the Corps were ready to fight. An elite fraternity united by a glorious tradition of courage and honor, the Marine Raiders were bound to a triumphant destiny.

It is the fall of 1950. The Marines have made a pivotal breakthrough at Inchon, but a roller coaster awaits them. The bit in his teeth, Douglas MacArthur is intent on surging across the 38th parallel toward the Yalu River, where he is certain no Chinese are waiting for him, while Major Ken McCoy, operating undercover, hears a different story entirely, and is just as intent on nailing down the truth before it is too late.

Wars come to an end. But then new ones begin. Just weeks after Hitler's suicide, Cletus Frade and his colleagues in the OSS find themselves up to their necks in battles every bit as fierce as the ones just ended. The first is political-the very survival of the OSS, with every department from Treasury to War to the FBI grabbing for its covert agents and assets. The second is on a much grander scale-the possible next world war, against Joe Stalin and his voracious ambitions.

As Japanese forces close in for an all-out effort to recapture Guadalcanal from the American forces occupying the island, many fates converge and intertwine. First Lieutenant William Dunn, 21 years old but already one of the only two pilots remaining from his fighter squadron’s original 16, must learn what it is like to lead men - and to lose them. Hot-tempered Sergeant Thomas McCoy finds he has a hero’s welcome waiting stateside - if he can avoid a court-martial first. On a bloody island, Major Jake Dillon discovers just how much combat is involved in a combat correspondent’s life.

"From the devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor to America’s first bold counterstrike against the Japanese on the beaches of Guadalcanal, this compelling story takes you to the front lines of victory and defeat - and into the very heart of courage, loyalty, and valor. It is a heroic story of pride and passion you will never forget.... Griffin’s books are distinguished by their high action and suspense, his dashing irreverence toward high command, and his clear picture of war and its wartime leaders.” (The Florida Times-Union)

They were the professionals, the men who had been toughened by combat in the mine-laden fields of Europe, in Korea, in Greece, in Indochina. Now, in the twilight of a dying decade, they must return to the United States to forge a new type of American soldier - one to be tested on the beaches of Cuba and in a new war yet to come....

January 1946: Two WACs leave an officers' club in Munich, and four Soviet NKGB agents kidnap them at knifepoint in the parking lot and shove them in the back of an ambulance. That is the agents' first mistake, and their last. One of the WACs, a blond woman improbably named Claudette Colbert, works for the new Directorate of Central Intelligence, and three of the men end up dead and the fourth wounded.

Desperate to find someone to unite the battling interests of General Douglas MacArthur, Admiral Chester Nimitz, and OSS Chief "Wild Bill" Donovan, President Franklin D. Roosevelt puts Fleming Pickering in charge of the OSS’s Pacific operations. Immediately, two urgent missions fall into his lap: to contact and rescue a band of former American servicemen and their dependents on the run from the Japanese in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia; and at the same time, to set up a weather station in the Gobi to help direct planned aerial attacks against Japan.

World War II. On the island of Mindanao, the Philippines, a man calling himself "General" Fertig has set himself up as a guerrilla leader to harass the Japanese. Army records show that the only officer named Fertig in the Philippines is a reserve lieutenant colonel of the Corps of Engineers, reported MIA on Luzon.

Assigned to the Nuremberg war trials, special agent James Cronley, Jr., finds himself fighting several wars at once, in the dramatic new Clandestine Operations novel about the birth of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Cold War.

In the first weeks after World War II, a squeaky-clean new second lieutenant named James D. Cronley Jr. is spotted and recruited for a new enterprise that will eventually be transformed into something called the CIA. One war may have ended, but another one has already begun, against an enemy that is bigger, smarter, and more vicious: The Soviet Union. The Soviets have hit the ground running, and Cronley's job is to help frustrate them, harass them, and spy on them any way he can.

They were the chosen ones - and the ones who chose to be the best. Never before had the United States given so select a group of fighting men such punishing preparation. Now they were heading for their ultimate test of skill and nerve and sacrifice, in a war unlike any they or their country had ever fought before, in a land that most of America still knew nothing about - Vietnam...

Dien Bien Phu. Saigon. Hanoi. In 1954, they were only exotic names from a French campaign halfway around the world. But now American fighting men - proven on the bloody beaches of Normandy and in the minefields of Korea - are summoned to help beat back the guerilla forces of Ho Chi Minh. To some, the “secret” war in Indochina was the depth of folly. To others, like the majors, it pointed to the heights of glory.