This month’s issue of CityView honors the military in our community. Fayetteville has a long history with its military connection to Fort Bragg, and I imagine most people who live here have some connection in the past or currently with our military friends and families.
Numerous books have been written as a testament to military men and women and their experiences. Many have been written by these men and women themselves.
Marine General James “Mad Dog” Mattis encouraged his soldiers to read. They would often say they were too busy to read, and Gen. Mattis replied in an email to his troops on Nov. 20, 2003: “… The problem with being too busy to read is that you learn by experience (or by your men’s experience), i.e., the hard way. By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.”
To help us understand what they have gone through in defending our country and our ideals, here are some books to help us know these heroes a bit better.
1. Where the Birds Never Sing: The True Story of the 92nd Signal Battalion and the Liberation of Dachau by Jack Sacco
Author Jack Sacco pays tribute to his father, Joe Sacco, an American soldier in World War II. In 1943, on his farm in Alabama, Joe receives his draft notice. After his training, he is shipped to England. Later he lands on Omaha Beach in Normandy and then survives the Battle of the Bulge. After fighting his way across Nazi Germany, he witnesses the cruel reality of the concentration camps. As he and his fellow soldiers are leaving Dachau, Joe Sacco writes, “Now, after a year of combat, each of us finally and forever understood why destiny had called us to travel so far away from the land of our birth and fight for people we did not know. And so it was here, in this place abandoned by God and accursed by men, that we came to discover the meaning of our mission.”
2. You Are Worth It: Building a Life Worth Fighting For by Kyle Carpenter and
Don Yaeger
U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Kyle Carpenter stepped in harm’s way to save a fellow Marine while in Afghanistan in 2010. Surviving but mortally wounded, he now shares this manual for living. Guided by the lessons he learned growing up as well as his training in the Marines, Carpenter shares his story to help readers become the best they can be throughout their lives. “A true leader is not someone who keeps themselves separate from the people they lead; he or she is right in the middle of what the team is going through, experiencing the lows as well as the highs with everyone else.”
3. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Considered a classic since it was first published in 1990, The Things They Carried is a collection of interrelated short stories based on O’Brien’s experiences during the Vietnam War. Prompted to write this book when he returned home from Vietnam, O’Brien was astounded that people in his hometown had so little understanding of the war. Avoiding the political debate about the war itself, he uses storytelling to relate the experiences of his fellow soldiers during the war. Although he wrote this as historical fiction, he says that the details of the story don’t matter as much as what the story is trying to teach us.
4. Shoot Like a Girl: One Woman’s Dramatic Fight in Afghanistan and on the Home Front by Mary Jennings Hegar
This book is for women and men in both the military and civilian life. A U.S. Air Force pilot in the Air National Guard, having finished at the top of her class during training, author Hegar served three tours in Afghanistan. But her story is about more than just her time in battle. She shares the battles she faced on American soil, facing harassment and disrespect from fellow soldiers. However, there were also those who advocated for her with respect and admiration. With this support, she took on an even greater challenge — to eliminate the military’s Ground Combat Exclusion policy, which kept women service members from officially serving in combat. At times funny and thrilling, this true story of a brave woman who sacrificed everything for her country proves her devotion to fellow women and men in uniform and her sense of justice.
5. Jet Girl: My Life in War, Peace, and the Cockpit of the Navy’s Most Lethal Aircraft, the F/A-18 Super Hornet by Caroline Johnson and Hof Williams
What is a tall, blonde debutante from Colorado doing in the cockpit of a fighter jet? This remarkable story tells us how Caroline Johnson became one of the first women to fly a combat mission over Iraq since 2011 and the journey that got her there to drop bombs on ISIS. Johnson shares her story to help attract and inspire the next generation of women and men to want to serve their country as well as seek a life of adventure.
In this coming-of-age story, we learn how Johnson gains strength from her group of friends, the Jet Girls. It details her struggles with all the ordinary problems of life while at the same time being put in harm’s way on a daily basis from terrorist groups such as ISIS and world powers like Russia and Iran.
6. Lafayette: Lessons in Leadership from the Idealist General by Marc Leepson
Lafayette was a French nobleman who came to our country in 1777 at age 19 to fight for our freedom as a Major General. He led American troops into battle and became one of George Washington’s most trusted generals. In his recently re-published book on Lafayette, author Leepson presents a concise and readable biography of our city’s namesake. He illuminates the core values Lafayette demonstrated throughout his lifetime — especially leadership — that are still relevant today.
A copy of this book is given to the top graduate and Médaille Lafayette Award recipient in each Master Leader Course at Fort Bragg for the Special Operations Forces. It has also been given to each graduate of the Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Fayetteville course for the past 10 years.
Read CityView Magazine’s “The Military Issue” July 2025 e-edition here.