Battlefire!: Combat Stories from World War II Hardcover - 1997

From the publisher

Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. High on the bridge of the USS West Virginia Sfc. Lee Ebner was looking forward to the end of his watch and a relaxed Sunday morning breakfast. But the two low-flying planes painted with rising sun insignia and bearing down on the ship had other plans for him and for his fellow seamen.

Ten hours later, at Clark Field in the Philippines, Pfc. Jack Reed felt the brunt of another Japanese air attack and within weeks found himself a part of the gruesome Bataan Death March that was to claim the lives of hundreds of his comrades.

Such were the experiences of many young men plucked from their local communities all across America, trained for war, and hurled into the strange reality of combat thousands of miles from home. In this stunning collection of World War II oral histories, Arthur L. Kelly recreates the experiences of twelve young men from Kentucky who survived the seemingly unsurvivable, whether in combat or as prisoners of war. Their stories of endurance in the midst of chaos and violence tell of fear, rage, exhaustion, and despair, but also of courage, determination, and human kindness by those willing to risk their lives for others. These are the stories of men at their best in the worst of all possible times.