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I read a book about Spetsnaz a few months back: Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces

I recall this segment:

>''I have been asked how long a very strong person can hold out against questioning by spetsnaz, without replying to questions. The answer is: one second. If you don't believe this, just try the following experiment. Get one of your friends who considers himself a strong character to write on a piece of paper a number known only to himself and seal the paper in an envelope. Then tie your friend to a post or a tree and ask him what number he wrote on the paper. If he refuses to answer, file his teeth down with a big file and count the time. Having received the answer, open the envelope and check that he has given you the number written on the paper. I guarantee the answer will be correct. If you perform such an experiment, you will have an idea of one of spetsnaz's milder ways of questioning people.''

The book was pretty clear of how ruthless these guys are. These guys are nothing like western SF units. They have vast internal power struggles to gain the upper hand in their respective units. They're more like wolves than humans.

Well I'm horribly biased, but Symphony of War by me is not a bad read, I hear, if one likes ground pounders. Jay Allen is a pretty good new writer with an impressive backlist if you like more space stuff.

As I've written elsewhere I kind of don't like spruiking my writing on unrelated subs haha, but since you asked, that's what I got.

Thanks man. I appreciate that and love not being dead as well. At the time, I was sure I was gonna be a grease spot on that dusty, narrow road in eastern Afghanistan.

https://www.amazon.com/Blindsided-Taliban-Journalists-Story-Trauma/dp/1510729682

Take care,

Carmen

One major point that people should know about Pakistan is that they are culturally, religiously, historically and linguistically tied to India and to an extent, Bangladesh and Afghanistan (the latter tie being stronger than the former).

India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh were once a single entity under the British Raj. Most Indian nationalists at that time, and some (though a smaller component) of Greater India nationalists see these three countries as one entity.

There are many reasons as to why India and Pakistan split, some of them are very legitimate concerns, whereas there are some issues that were very clearly motivated by personal interests of several leaders.

There is more to the split between India and Pakistan aside from the Republican split from the British Raj, there are other factors playing into the division of India into India and Pakistan, such as those that pertain to the treatment of the many Princely States.

Here are some solid recommendations as far as reading is concerned on this particular part of the world:

Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah and the Battle for Pakistan by Qutubuddin Aziz & Katherine Wang

Makers of Modern India by Ramachandra Guha

A Concise History of Modern India
by Barbara D. Metcalf & Thomas R. Metcalf

The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan
by Yasmin Khan

Shooting for a Century: The India-Pakistan Conundrum by Stephen Cohen

Roll Me Over by Raymond Gantter.

The Short Timers by Gustav Hasford.

These are lesser known but honestly my two favorite books about war. Gantter was a civilian soldier who got a battlefield commission during WW2. He survived multiple engagements all across Europe.

Short Timers is the real basis for the movie Full Metal Jacket. If you've seen the movie you'll recognize much of the dialogue immediately. Gustav Hasford was a pretty unusual person. He was responsible for one of the largest library thefts in history. I checked out a copy of this book once from a library I had access to. It was a first edition hardback signed by the author. I tried to justify stealing it saying Hasford would have approved. In the end I returned it and implored them to keep such a valuable book in the stacks.

In my opinion the best book about the conflict is this one: https://www.amazon.com/South-Africas-Border-War-1966-89/dp/1909982016/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1500700478&sr=8-10&keywords=south+african+border+war

The documentary is great and there is an English version. I haven't been able to find it. If anyone can find it, please post it here. I would greatly appreciate it!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rage Company by Thomas Daly. It's the best book written about the Iraq war, and, in the humble opinion of this connoisseur of military history, one of the best books ever written in the field.

Why? Most military history falls into one of two traps - 1) it's either an ant's-eye view of the day to day grind of an individual in combat, with no reflection of the larger scheme of things, or 2) it's written by someone in the higher command, giving a good overview of the strategies involved, but with no feel of the struggles and hardships of the individual soldiers involved.

Rage Company bridges these two perspectives very nicely. Lt Daly was an FO assigned to a detached Marine company operating with the Army in Ramadi. Since artillery wasn't really being used in counterinsurgency operations in the city, he sort of fell into the ad-hoc role of company intel officer. As such, he was involved with both the day-to-day operations and the planning of such operations at the battalion and regimental level. He does really just an excellent job giving you the nitty gritty details of daily patrol and clearing operations, and, more importantly, placing those operations in the operational scheme of maneuver.

The Anbar Awakening happens during his tour. The first Ex-Iraqi army folks show up and start to work with the Marines. There's mistrust and miscommunication. And results. Spectacular results.

The last 20 pages or so are AQI's retaliation. There's a car chase, surveillance by drone and Apache, and a surprise twist that beats anything I've ever read in a Tom Clancy novel. It had me up reading until 4:00 AM.

I really enjoyed my reading of "A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918" https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553382403/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Eh21AbS0PCY5A
Covers all aspects and "fronts" in a very interesting way. I highly recommend it. I was in the same place you were now and this was my first book in my journey (I've since read about a dozen books on the war, and I keep wanting more!) Hope you find your book of choice and enjoy the topic as much as I have!

I'll always recommend Liaison 1914. Hands down one of the best books I've ever read, period. I'm an amazing read to get a handle on what was going on with the French 5th Army and the BEF at the outbreak out WW1. It's also super insightful to see how everything breaks down under the pressure of retreat and chaos.

A great book about this armored charge is "Thunder Run". The book describes in grisly details the battle that took place, and the reasons for sending in an armored convoy to the heart of Baghdad. These brave tankers saved a TON of American lives by piercing through the concentric defenses of Baghdad and destroying them from the inside out.

Book: http://www.amazon.com/Thunder-Run-Armored-Capture-Baghdad/dp/080214179X

This book https://www.amazon.com/Ready-Not-Into-Wild-Blue/dp/0970417519 is an autobiography of a B17 Pilot, in it describes his plane blowing up over Germany he's knocked unconscious briefly, when he wakes up he's falling out of the sky from 20,000 feet and can see the parts of his plane falling around him with perfect clarity, the engines, wings, bombs still in the bomb rack, he can see some of his crews parachutes.. what got me reading it was the detailed description of everything he saw and his distance to them and thoughts as he was plummeting from the sky, at some point he remembered he needed to pull his chute, he was only a short distance from the ground by then and got pretty fucked up but survived.

Frankly you're going to have to read.

But I would recommend https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Turkey-Twenty-First-Centurys-Muslim/dp/1612346502 to start.


Caspian report tends to be one of the best channels I've seen when it comes to geopolitical summaries. They had two recent videos on the Turkish invasion of Syria and their geopolitical goals in the region.

Other books in a similar vein I recommend are

• If You Survive: From Normandy to the Battle of the Bulge
  
  
• Band of Brothers: 101st Airborne from Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest
  
  
• Citizen Soldiers: The U. S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany
  
  all real nice short reads, band of brothers is as good a book as the TV series
  
  

check the reviews on amazon :)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sniper-One-Blistering-British-Battle/dp/0141029013

I have read this a few times. Really enjoyed it, Sniper One by Dan Mills http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sniper-One-Blistering-British-Battle/dp/0141029013

I see, thanks for the input.


Say, there’s this guy who’s a journalist on reddit that reminded me of you. I saw he was shilling his book, you might want to check it out!

It’s called “Blindsided by the Taliban”:

https://www.amazon.com/Blindsided-Taliban-Journalists-Story-Trauma/dp/1510729682

I think it was a type of earplug. Looks like a square of cotton he twisted up and stuck in his ears.

Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Macks-Shooters-Earplugs-Wallet-Roll-ups/dp/B0067PG5QA

> Road to Huertgen: Forest in Hell

I enjoyed “a dark and bloody ground for a great study of the campaign itself, but you should also pick up if you survive as the author was a young infantry officer who fought through Normandy and straight into the hell that was Huertgen. This is one of the best American memoirs to come out of ww2, a sort of “with the old breed” except taking place in Europe. Can’t recommend it enough

For those who would like to learn more about this, there's a great book called Thunder Run:The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad.

Including the name.