Duty, Honor, Victory: America's Athletes in World War II

"It's hard to imagine Derek Jeter or Tiger Woods heading to Iraq to join the U.S. Armed Forces. But in World War II no American man between the ages of 20 and 45 was too big to serve-except for the basketball players who exceeded the Army's 6'6" limits for recruits, a situation illustrated in this excellent book. Part log, part pictorial, and total history lesson, this book could be sent to school with your kids and used for social studies class. Riveting and moving." -Sports Illustrated

Painstakingly researched and profusely illustrated, DUTY, HONOR, VICTORY tells the stories of the well-known athletes whose onfield exploits brought another type of fame, but whose battlefield duty has long been overlooked. Here is football's Chuck Bednarik flying bombing missions over Germany, baseball's Bob Feller commanding an anti-aircraft gun crew aboard the USS Alabama; Warren Spahn wounded and nearly killed when the bridge at Remagen collapses, or Yogi Berra on a rocket boat in Normandy. Here are boxer Gene Tunney, ballplayer Bert Shepard. Winter Olympic athletes in the famed Tenth Mountain Division, black athletes in the Tuskegee Airmen.

DUTY, HONOR, VICTORY covers all sports, from tennis, golf, and baseball to football, and basketball. The well-known professionals, the lesser-known college athletes, and those who toiled in obscurity-they all performed their duty extraordinarily.

DUTY, HONOR, VICTORY covers World War II from the origins of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the 1930s through their defeats in 1945-and extends into 1946 and the integration of major league baseball. DUTY, HONOR, VICTORY covers a wide range of athletes, whose love of competition served them well in battle: Dizzy Dean, Larry Doby, Enos Slaughter, Monte Irvin, Pee Wee Reese, Art Donovan, Pete Gray, Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, Hoyt Wilhelm, Emlen Tunnell, and scores of others.