[22-rimfire]

I'm pretty fond of the S.M. Stirling novel series which started with Dies the Fire. The latest in this series was just released , The Sword of the Lady. Just bought it, but I'm reading some other stuff at the moment. It will take a place in line. Picked up One Second After as well, which I am looking forward to reading.

[srt 10 jimbo]

The Stand.

[sunwheel29]

I am pretty fond of Lucifer's Hammer and Last of the Breed.


They both have the right mix of adventure and entertainment along with common sense.

David Morrell's novel "First Blood" is pretty good too. Once again a mixture of suspense and entertainment.

The fictional version of John Rambo accepts what comes his way and makes the best of it. For example, when the deputy falls and gets killed, Rambo gets his .357 python and is happy thinking, "Hey, I can down a deer with this."

The Road is a good read, but very grim....
David Gemmell had a post apocalyptic series out about a traveling gunfighting preacher that was entertaining too.

[Dragunov]

Swans Song.

[Bookman]

+1 to Lucifer's Hammer and the novels by Steve Stirling.

[Maudite]

Quote:      

The fictional version of John Rambo

As opposed to...

[Capt'n Mil Coll]

Quote:       Originally Posted by SightNSqueeze

The true survival epic of "They Fought Alone" by James Taylor. The true story about Colonel Wendell Fertig and his guerilla force of American and Filipino soldiers and civilians who refused to surrender and who took to the hills and hidden plantations in the vast interior of Mindanao during the brutal Japanese occupation of the Philippines. The true epic is filled with descriptions of '03 Springfields, Model of 1917 US Enfields, Type 99 Arisakas, BARs, Thompsons, 1911s, etc. There are chilling encounters with Japanese patrols, and battles using homemade ammunition made out of brass curtain rods, lead weights, and homemade primers and powder. I heard they are making a movie about it. Fertig was a strong proponent of the armed citizen. Let’s hope leftist Hollywood doesn’t liberalize it too bad.

That book does sound good.
Here is what they say about making a movie of it.

They Fought Alone: According to Empire Online, David Fincher and Bratt Pitt are reteaming, their first project since Fight Club, to create a film called They Fought Alone.

They Fought Alone tells the story of one Wendell Fertig, an American soldier who fought in the Philippines during World War II. After American soldiers are ordered to surrender, Fertig and his men team up with Filipino resistance fighters to prevent the Japanese from taking full control of the region. When Fertig gets a message out about his guerilla actions, the American army is divided between wanting to get behind the rogue team and disowning Fertig for having ignored military orders.

Thanks to DH.


Here are two good survival books I have read and recommend.

FM 21-76 US Army SUrvival Manual.
The Dirty Dozen 12 Nasty Fighting Techniques for any Self-Defense Situations -- Larry Jordan.

[Huey Rider]

+ 1 on Alas, Babylon,The Last Breed,and Lucifers Hammer.
For used and hard to find books try;

www.betterworld.com

[redhed]

I try to re-read Alas Babylon and the Stand at least once a year just to keep things fresh in my head. 'Babylon', while definitely dated now is just thought provoking as to
'hmmm, what could I hunt and eat around here if I had to survive?'

I just downloaded 'LightsOut' and plan to tear into it.

Personally, I've always had a weak spot for this subject.

[cjleete]

Quote:       Originally Posted by sea_chicken1

I just finished patriots a couple weeks ago and it was pretty good in terms of realisim and how to. Another good book series is dies the fire by S.M. Stirling. It is a little scifi in terms of a giant emp storm wiping everything out and heat based engines wont ever work again. It knocks everyone back to the mid evil era of survival and is pretty entertaining.

I am caught up all the way in that series, the religious aspect is a bit flaky, but the characters are great and the storyline rocks.

[G. Green]

Fertig was the real deal. Classic case of the right man, right place, at the right time. Gave himself the title of General because he understood that the Phillipinos needed to hear the word General.

[Blackrock]

Quote:       Originally Posted by thrillbilly

"Last of the Breed" by Louis L'Amour

+10 on this book

[SightNSqueeze]

Quote:       Originally Posted by G. Green

Fertig was the real deal. Classic case of the right man, right place, at the right time. Gave himself the title of General because he understood that the Phillipinos needed to hear the word General.

The way Fertig explained it was that every American and Filipino guerrilla leader from corporal to major had already promoted himself to the rank of "colonel." Colonel Fertig was actually advised to promote himself to “general” by the leaders of one of the more unsavory guerrilla bands that wanted to join up with him. That was the only way to get all resistance groups under one command and not end up fighting each other. Fertig went to a Moro silver smith and had a set of oversized general’s stars made up for him. Interestingly, when some American POWs managed to escape from the POW camps or Japanese work details, Fertig would size them up before promoting them to junior officers and putting them to work for him, or sending them to Australia on the next relief submarine making a supply run. When the Philippines were liberated years later, those junior officer commissions were retained on Fertig’s insistence, but MacArthur demoted Fertig back to colonel.

[sunwheel29]

Quote:       Originally Posted by Maudite

As opposed to...

As opposed to the cinematic version.
You must be a victim of the public school system.
To make this simple for you, First Blood was a novel, written in the 1970s about a disturbed Vietnam Veteran named John Rambo and his war with Sheriff Wilfred Teasle in a rural Kentucky town in the early 1970s. At the end of the novel, Col.Trautman sneaks up behind Rambo and decapitates him with a shotgun.
Rambo is technically closer to the villian in this novel and Teasle is technically the hero, albeit both men are basically mirror images of each other.
Even though the plot and characters are similar the 1980s film version of First Blood is VERY different.
For one thing, the filmakers changed the setting from Kentucky to the pacific northwest. For the other, they tried to justify everything Rambo does and made Teasle into a bully.
Also, they gave Rambo special weapons such as a custom knife and a belt fed machine gun.
In the book Rambo has no special knife, and he gets a lever action rifle from a moonshiner. Later he gets a .357 Colt revolver from a deputy.
In the book, Rambo doesn't even know Trautman personally, Trautman was just the base commander when he was in the Army.

[bigb831]

its hard to find, but the turner diaries is a good book.

[Dragunov]

"With the Old Breed" by E.G. Sledge. One of the best reads of all time. Not a survival novel per se, but Sgt Sledges personal account of the campaignes of Pelelu, Tarawa and Okinawa. You CANNOT put this book down. Very graphic, very candid and very well written. I wish I had my copy out here. This is a MUST read for WWII enthusiasts, historians and those who like anything military.

[Deep13]

Not a novel, but a first-hand account: Annapurna, Maurice Herzog, the first man to climb and 8000 meter mountain.

[ke4sky]

Onoda, Hiroo. No Surrender: My Thirty-Year War.
Translated by Charles S. Terry

Hiroo Onoda - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This tells the ture story of an Imperial Japanese Army Intelligence officer survived and evaded capture for over 30 years. Onoda was trained as an intelligence officer by the Nakano School, and on 26 December 1944 was sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines. He was ordered to do all that he could to hamper enemy attacks on the island, including destroying the airstrip and the pier at the harbor, his orders also stating that under no circumstances was he to surrender or take his own life.

When Onoda landed on the island, he linked up with a group of Japanese soldiers who had been sent there previously. The officers in the group outranked Onoda and prevented him from carrying out his assignment, which made it easier for US and Philippine forces to take the island when they landed on 28 February 1945. Within a short time of the landing, all but Onoda and three other soldiers had either died or surrendered and Onoda, who had been promoted to Lieutenant, ordered the men to take to the hills.

Onoda continued his campaign, initially living in the mountains with three fellow soldiers (Yuichi Akatsu, Corporal Siochi Shimada and Kinshichi Kozuka). The first time they saw a leaflet which claimed that the war was over was in October 1945; another cell had killed a cow and found a leaflet left behind by islanders which read: "The war ended on August 15. Come down from the mountains!"[1] However, they mistrusted the leaflet, since another cell had been fired upon a few days previously. They concluded that the leaflet was Allied propaganda, and also believed that they would not have been fired on if the war was indeed over.

Towards the end of 1945 leaflets were dropped by air with a surrender order printed on them from General Tomoyuki Yamashita of the Fourteenth Area Army. They were in hiding over a year at this point, and this leaflet was the only evidence they had the war was over. Onoda's group looked very closely at the leaflet to determine whether it was genuine or not, and decided it was a hoax.

One of the four, Yuichi Akatsu, walked away from the others in September 1949 and surrendered to Filipino forces in 1950 after six months on his own. This seemed like a security problem to the others and they became even more careful.

In 1952 letters and family pictures were dropped from aircraft urging them to surrender, but the three soldiers concluded that this was a hoax. Shimada was shot in the leg during a shoot-out with local fishermen in June 1953, following which Onoda nursed him back to health, On 7 May 1954, Shimada was killed by a shot fired by a search party looking for the men.

Kozuka was killed by two shots fired by local police on 19 October 1972, when he and Onoda burned rice that had been collected by farmers, as part of their guerilla activities, leaving Onoda alone. Though Onoda had been officially declared dead in December 1959, this event suggested that it was likely he was still alive and search parties were sent out, though none was successful.

On 20 February 1974, Onoda met a Japanese college dropout, Norio Suzuki, who was traveling the world and was looking for "Lieutenant Onoda, a panda, and the Abominable Snowman, in that order". Onoda and Suzuki became friends, but Onoda still refused to surrender, saying that he was waiting for orders from a superior officer.

Suzuki returned to Japan with photographs of himself and Onoda as proof of their encounter, and the Japanese government located Onoda's commanding officer, Major Taniguchi, who had since become a bookseller. He flew to Lubang and on 9 March 1974 informed Onoda of the defeat of Japan in WWII and ordered him to lay down his arms.

Lieutenant Onoda emerged from the jungle 29 years after the end of World War II, and accepted the commanding officer's order of surrender in his uniform and sword, with his Arisaka Type 99 rifle still in operating condition, 500 rounds of ammunition and several hand grenades. This makes him the second-to-last fighting Japanese soldier of World War II, before Teruo Nakamura.

Though he had killed some thirty Philippine inhabitants of the island and engaged in several shootouts with the police, the circumstances of these events were taken into consideration, and Onoda received a pardon from President Ferdinand Marcos.


No Surrender is an incredibly interesting read. It was required reading for my class when we went to jungle survival and SERE school. Even if you're not interested in history/World War II. The story is very captivating, and Onoda's will to survive is amazing. Only when his orders were specifically rescinded, did he emerge. Over the years his skills in evading and surviving were honed to a edge.

[Cyrano]

Quote:       Originally Posted by SightNSqueeze

The true survival epic of "They Fought Alone" by James Taylor. The true story about Colonel Wendell Fertig and his guerilla force of American and Filipino soldiers and civilians who refused to surrender and who took to the hills and hidden plantations in the vast interior of Mindanao during the brutal Japanese occupation of the Philippines. The true epic is filled with descriptions of '03 Springfields, Model of 1917 US Enfields, Type 99 Arisakas, BARs, Thompsons, 1911s, etc. There are chilling encounters with Japanese patrols, and battles using homemade ammunition made out of brass curtain rods, lead weights, and homemade primers and powder. I heard they are making a movie about it. Fertig was a strong proponent of the armed citizen. Let’s hope leftist Hollywood doesn’t liberalize it too bad.

A very good book. Check out American Guerrilla and Ghost Soldiers, too. I believe that W.E.B. Griffin drew on it, as well as the personal reminiscences of Colonel Fertig, when he wrote one of the novels in his series The Corps that was set in the Phillipines in 1942 and 1943. Griffin knew him well and certainly seemed to have 'caught' him in his novel.

At the height of the campaign against the Japanese, Fertig had 30,000-plus combat soldiers under his command. That's as many grunts as a World War II corps commander had in the three divisions of his army corps. Griffin suggests that the reason Fertig was never given the Lieutenant General's rank his performance had earned him was that MacArthur had problems with being told - or worse, proven - to be wrong; a view I share based my reading about MacArthur's life and career. God-Emperor MacArthur had decreed that guerrilla operations and a Resistance movement in the Phillipines were impossible after he was ordered out by Roosevelt. Yet there 'General' Wendell Fertig was, with a corps'-worth of combat soldiers. The God-Emperor hated being proved wrong. I believe he punished Fertig for his success by refusing to promote him.

[R5CYA]

how about
Hell On Ice The Saga Of The Jeannette?
it's about a noth pole expedition that never made it. got stuck in the ice and it all got worse from there. good read! i read it about 30 years or so ago and again a little more recently.
you can check it for free here.
Internet Archive: Free Download: Hell On Ice The Saga Of The Jeannette