[John K]

The Liberator by Alex Kershaw

The riveting true story of the bloodiest and most dramatic march to victory of the Second World War, following the battlefield odyssey of a maverick U.S. Army officer and his infantry unit as they fought from the invasion of Italy to the liberation of Dachau at war's end.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...-the-liberator


The SBS in World War II: An Illustrated History by Gavin Mortimer

The Special Boat Squadron (SBS) was Britain's most exclusive Special Forces unit, similar to US Navy SEALS. Highly trained, highly secretive and utterly ruthless, the SBS was established as an entity in its own right in early 1943 having previously operated under the auspices of the SAS during the war in North Africa.

Though the movie Guns of Navarrone was inspired by SBS exploits, most people know little about them. Unlike its sister unit, which numbered more than 1,000, the SBS never comprised more than 100.
These men were mostly former commandos of guardsmen, cherry-picked by the unit's leader Lord George Jellicoe for their daring, initiative, and proficiency in killing Germans. The new unit was first committed to action on the islands of Crete and Sardinia, before spending much of the war fighting in the islands of the Aegean.
Led by men such as the famed Victoria Cross winner Anders Lassen, the SBS went from island to island, landing in the dead of night in small fishing boats and launching savage hit and run raids on the Germans. Sometimes they blew up a telegraph station, other times they cratered the airstrip, and more often than not they laid waste to a barrack room of sleeping soldiers. Like modern-day Vikings or pirates, they terrorised the German garrisons and were even described in the House of Commons as a band of "murderous, renegade cut-throats".
By the end of the war they had served in Italy, the Balkans, and mainland Greece, and following the cessation of hostilities their deeds were airbrushed out of history by an establishment that had never warmed to their piratical exploits. Gavin Mortimer, with his unrivalled access to the SBS and through interviews with the surviving members of the unit, has pieced together the dramatic exploits of this elite fighting force.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...n-world-war-ii


For a memoir, mystery writer Tony Hillerman's Seldom Disappointed: A Memoir. A large part of it concerns his war time service as a mortarman in the 103rd Infantry Division. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge and earned the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and a Purple Heart.

In this affectionate and unvarnished recollection of his past, Tony Hillerman looks at seventy-six years spent getting from hard-times farm boy to bestselling author. Using the gifts of a talented novelist and reporter, Hillerman draws brilliant portrait not just of his life, but of the world around him.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...m_Disappointed