War Heroes #11

In 1944 France, Baker Company faces an impossible order from their increasingly unstable Captain Diskin: assault the heavily fortified Mont Rouge despite devastating Nazi artillery and machine gun fire that's already decimated their ranks. When the captain's behavior becomes erratic and dangerous after a near-miss from German shells, soldiers Raines and Corporal Clark find themselves forced to make a harrowing choice between following orders and survival on a blood-soaked hillside. This is a raw portrait of men caught between duty, fear, and the question of whether true cowardice lies in disobeying a madman or in the impossible act of facing him down.

When a small unidentified object is spotted near Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941, an alert American captain commands his World War I destroyer crew into action, ordering them to open fire. The old ship's guns roar to life in what becomes the first shots fired against Japan—a moment of preparedness and courage that unfolds in the tense minutes before history's most infamous attack.

PFC. Don Harkness has a reputation as a troublemaker who'd rather buck the system than follow orders—but when his rifle company hits combat in September 1944 France, he discovers that staying out of the fight isn't always an option. As his brothers serve with honor in other theaters, Harkness finds himself caught between his contempt for military authority and the reality of soldiers depending on him in the field. When a moment of reckoning arrives, the army's black sheep finally gets a chance to prove what he's made of.

When Captain Roger Leeds takes shrapnel during a mortar barrage, his men in Baker Company watch without rushing to help—the harsh discipline he'd imposed as commanding officer has earned him nothing but resentment. But when a more easygoing replacement captain arrives to lead the company back into combat, the soldiers discover that Leeds' demanding ways had made them soldiers, and his absence leaves them dangerously unprepared for the fight ahead. As Baker Company faces a Chinese counteroffensive and mounting casualties, the men realize they may have misjudged the C.O. they all disliked.