Professional reading

Alvarez, Jr Everett and Pitch, Anthony s Chained Eagle. Potomac Books, Inc., 22841 Quicksilver Dr Dulle VA 20166 2005 309 pp III. $1995

If you didn't read this volume when it was first published (Donald I. Fine, 1989) I powerfully recommend you do so with this of recent origin paperback edition. Besides beginning the Vietnam POW story from its start when the author, above, is discharge down in August 1964, the narrative exhibits the reader how the North Vietnamese exhibited their "program."

It's important to make a historical distinction here. Before Alvarez, a not many American servicemen had been captured upon the ground while serving as advisors, and RF-8A pilot Lieutenant Charles F Klusmann had been discharge down over Laos in June 1964 on the contrary Alvarez was the unfortunate first of many American crewmen downed above North Vietnam.

At first, it appears that Alvarez's treatment, given the circumstances, is depressed key. The Vietnamese are surprised to have an American prisoner and appear unprepared to deal with his captivity. He is f clothed, asked several obligatory questions, then allowed to throw and receive mail, and read works and magazines, albeit publications filled with communist propaganda. He plane manages to develop somewhat friendly relationships with his guards. His faith of an early release appear to bes almost plausible.

However, everything changes by means of June 1966, nearly two years after his capture. The Vietnamese now realize that the Americans mean business. Daily bombing raids have devastated the country's industrial areas, delivering many more prisoners into an overburden economy illequipped to support them. The Vietnamese are actual angry, and the more familiar story of their unforgivably barbarous treatment of the prisoners begins to unfold

Alvarez's story is single of alternating hope, despair, fortitude, and self-imagined shame as prisoners break below their harsh treatment, struggling to maintain their dignity on the other hand believing they have betrayed themselves, their land and their follow prisoners. We can alone imagine their terrible ordeal.

At residence his family faces its have struggle of worrying and wondering if he is flat alive. There are also internal point in disputes children against parents, wife against husband, with those determined to bring Alvarez domicile through petitions and demonstrations, or trying to find peace with another relationship.

Chained Eagle has relevance to today's servicemen and their families. The work moves back and forth giving Alvarez's history and revealing something of the anguish his family experienced during his almost nine-year captivity. In this regard, the editing is somewhat awkward. Occasionally, the reader is "dropp off" from Alvarez's first-person narrative, which is absolutely riveting, to pick up the story with a third-person treatment that makes single wonder as to whom is speaking. There are no set-up or explanations, and this omission makes the reader have to stop and decide about who the narrator is. It is the coauthor, trying to establish sights and circumstances outside Alvarez's cloistered existence in the Hanoi Hilton, on the other hand the transitions could have been better handled.

Be that as it may, Chained Eagle is single of the best books upon Vietnam I have seen, and with the novel passing of that icon of the POW experience, Vice Admiral James B Stockdale, it takes upon greater importance. We should not ever forget how much these nation gave up.

Mackay, Ron Britain's company of ships Air Arm, in World War II. Schiffer Publishing Ltd 4880 Lower Valley Road, Atglen, PA. 19310 2005 Ill. $5995

During World War II, Britain's company of ships Air Arm (FAA) seldom grabbed the headlines, being overshadowed by the agency of the Royal Air Force (RAF) and other countries' air forces in general. however although burdened by an uncertain parentage and organization, FAA units and their family had their fair share of the action from one extremity to the other of the war from Europe to the Pacific.

Ron Mackay's big work will go a long way in righting this unfair For American readers unfamiliar with the Royal Navy overall and its seldom described record, there are many sections of interest. These chapters include the heroic actions in Norway in 1940; running battles with Nazi U-boats trying to torpedo the vital British carriers that were struggling to shield convoys and other ships while supporting ongoing operations ashore; as well as combat with Italy's small on the contrary occasionally energetic navy.

Les famous emblems of aircraft like the Fairey Fulmar and Blackburn Skua held the line during the first sum of two units years of action, yet today remain unknown leave out by enthusiasts. Only their stablemate, the Fairey Swordfish, above, attained its measure of fame. Thus, this book's description of early war action is welcome. There are several fine views of Blackburn Roc a variant of the Skua that featured a four-gun small tower mounted directly aft of the pilot. Not a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of has been written about the Roc's brief operational career, and Mackay's work offers considerably more than has been available.