Special Forces History

"I never thought it would be a foregone conclusion that I would be seeing a fight when I entered the Teams. I thought that perhaps I would get the chance to answer that call, but I never knew for sure until today. I hope that I never get in a rough situation, but if I do, I hope I will have the courage to see it through." Less than four years later, on June 28, 2005, Matthew Gene Axelson answered his own question.

God & Spies is a firsthand account of America's greatest intelligence coup. Operation Ivy Bells was not a onetime intercept of foreign intelligence but an ongoing operation of multiple Soviet military channels! "How did I end up as a navy diver, 400 feet down in a frigid Russian sea? After making my dad totally disgusted with me, I set out to make him happy. 'Honor thy father' - I struggled with a decision to serve God. 'Lord, I will give my life to you and serve you if you let me make this dive.'"

Soon after the declaration of war on Japan, a secret military reconnaissance unit was established, based on the British Special Operations Executive (known as SOE) and called the Inter-allied Services Department. The unit was tasked with the role to "obtain and report information of the enemy...weaken the enemy by sabotage and destruction of morale and to lend aid and assistance to local efforts to the same end in enemy occupied territories."

The operation known as "Market Garden" - made famous in the book and film A Bridge Too Far - was the largest airborne assault in history up to that time. A high-risk Allied invasion of enemy territory that has become a legend of World War II, it still invites criticism from historians. Now a thrilling and revelatory new book re-creates the operation as never before, revealing for the first time the full adventures of the bold "Jedburgh" paratroopers whose exploits were almost unimaginably risky and heroic.

Is learning a lesson worth losing your life? Bringing back a traitor to face trial seems an easy job for young Roma Novan officer Carina Mitela – until she is catapulted into confrontation with the powerful head of the Praetorian Guard. Will she collapse in face of corruption at high level or risk disgrace and destruction in standing up for her principles? On her first overseas mission, Carina and her comrade-in-arms Flavius’s sole task is to recover a traitor hiding in the Republic of Quebec. Under no circumstances must she enter the Eastern United States where she is still wanted ...

Ill Met by Moonlight is the true story of one of the most hazardous missions of the Second World War. W. Stanley Moss is a young British officer who, along with Major Patrick Leigh Fermor, sets out in Nazi-occupied Crete to kidnap General Kreipe, Commander of the Sevastopool Division, and, narrowly escaping the German manhunt, bring him off the island - a vital prisoner for British intelligence.

A look at two of the United States military's most elite and successful snipers of all time: Chuck Mawhinney and Adelbert Waldron. In 1991, Chuck Mawhinney was reluctantly dragged out of anonymity when it was revealed that he held the record among United States Marine Corps snipers with over 103 confirmed kills. Before there was "American sniper" Chris Kyle, there was Adelbert "Bert" Waldron. Waldron had over 109 confirmed kills in the Vietnam War.

"Unser Geschäft ist der Tod – und das Geschäft läuft gut." PMC (Private Military Company) WAGNER ist ein privates russisches Sicherheits- und Militärunternehmen, dessen Einheiten verdeckt operieren und als besonders brutal gelten. WAGNER war während der russischen Machtübernahme auf der Krim sowie in Syrien, im Sudan, in Mali aktiv und ist es aktuell auch in der Ukraine.

1943. Major-General Orde Wingate startles the military world by commanding a daring raid in the heart of Japanese-occupied Burma. But this was just the beginning. In the following year, Wingate spearheaded an even more ambitious operation, flying 10,000 men and 1,000 animals behind Japanese lines to disrupt communications and harass the Japanese forces. With close tactical support from Colonel Philip Cochran, Chindit was the name given to these operations and the men who made them happen. This is their story, told by one man who was at the heart of it all.

"Eloquent… An uplifting, heart-rending, and terrifyingly real account of frontline air combat. A first-rate military memoir." – David Eastman, US Army retired and author. In this true story, Robert Stanek delivers a raw and unforgettable narrative, revealing what it’s like to be in war waged from the skies above. Day by day, step by step, he brings readers into the secretive world of combat fliers, and tells the story of the men and women who flew dangerous combat missions during the largest air war of the 20th century. Experience the extraordinary events through the author’s ...

On 1 August 1990, British Airways Flight 149 departed from Heathrow airport, destined for Kuala Lumpur. It never made it there, and neither did its nearly 400 passengers. Instead, Flight 149 stopped to refuel in Kuwait, as Iraqi troops amassed on the border—delivering the passengers and crew into the hands of Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi army, to be used as 'human shields' during their invasion. Why did BA flight 149 proceed with plans to refuel in Kuwait City, even as all other flights were rerouted?

Jasper Maskelyne was a world famous magician and illusionist in the 1930s. When war broke out, he volunteered his services to the British Army and was sent to Egypt when the desert war began. Here, he used his unique skills to save the vital port of Alexandria from German bombers and to 'hide' the Suez Canal from them. He invented all sorts of camouflage methods to make trucks look like tanks and vice versa. On Malta he developed 'the world's first portable holes': fake bomb craters used to fool the Germans into thinking they had hit their targets.

The General’s dysfunctional home life drove him to apply to the Air Force Academy almost 40 years ago, where he was provided with a new family and sense of worth he had never gotten from his own father. This purpose has driven the General throughout his remarkable career, taking him to Alaska, the Pentagon, and Germany; to Florida during Hurricane Opal, and has also allowed him to work alongside Presidents Bush and Obama and Secretaries of Defense Leon Panetta and Ashton Carter. Journey is a book about leadership. It is packed with the General’s lessons from life in the military.

Seven Troop is Andy McNab's account of the time he served in the company of a remarkable group of men - from the day, freshly badged, he joined them in the Malayan jungle, to the day, 10 years later, that he handed in his sand-coloured beret and started a new life.

Code Name Green 41 deals with the interdicting of drug smuggling routes by using Special Forces and secret agents only. No police, no costly public trials, no arrests, just summary justice as it should be. Things that go “boom” at night and no one knows why, except those that are smirking in delight, shaking hands on a job well done. The question I wanted to answer is, can hard drugs be used as a weapon of war? If you somehow could flood an enemy army with drugs as was done apparently in Vietnam to the American Army, will you win the war? In more recent times we look at Afghanistan and ...

June 1942. The Third Reich is victorious everywhere. In desperation, Winston Churchill and his chief of staff form an unusual plan: a new commando unit made up of Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria who escaped to Britain just before the War. Many have lost their families, their homes - their whole worlds. And now, in the crucial final battles against the Nazis, they will stop at nothing to defeat them. Trained in counterintelligence and advanced combat, this top secret unit becomes known as X Troop.

"Eloquent… An uplifting, heart-rending, and terrifyingly real account of frontline air combat. A first-rate military memoir." – David Eastman, US Army retired and author. In this true story, Robert Stanek delivers a raw and unforgettable narrative, revealing what it’s like to be in war waged from the skies above. Day by day, step by step, he brings readers into the secretive world of combat fliers, and tells the story of the men and women who flew dangerous combat missions during the largest air war of the 20th century. Experience the extraordinary events through the author’s ...

Feel helpless watching acts of terror on the television? History of Terrorism: From Holy Wars to Conspiracies, False Flags, and Cyber Warfare will unlock a new understanding of why terrorism exists and how we can stop it from happening in the future. Our news feed is bombarded with news about terrorists, though we rarely stop long enough to understand what creates a terrorist and what terrorism’s true purpose is. Go behind the headlines and take an intimate and personal look at the events, people and mindsets that have created today’s modern terrorism landscape.

Code Name Sanford - I often warn in GMJ books about the threat and menace of penetration agents (radicals) inside Western Intelligence Agencies. This is something that will bite the West in the years to come and is being suppressed for political reasons. In the previous book, Code Name Odette, GMJ 8, we took a hard look at cyphers and codes, explaining to you the difference between the two as well as the history of cyphers. More importantly, we warned that according to the Al-Qaeda Manual, found on the laptops of the London Tube bombers (the 2005 attack), that hostile penetration is taking ...

The famous 'Surrender' in Bavaria of the Nazi/NASA scientists, was staged, it has been cited as fact in all literature and film since the war, 76 years! But they just happened to 'surrender' to a translator accompanied by a film crew? This is the real story....