Unwavering: The Wives Who Fought to Ensure No Man is Left Behind

by Taylor Kiland

Moving from the sidelines to the frontlines of activism, a small group of military wives defies government rules to leave wartime diplomacy to the professionals. Speaking up about the plight of their missing and captive husbands, they successfully make the fate of their men a national priority in the 1960s. It was a time when without the signature of a spouse or father, a woman could rarely obtain a credit card, get a mortgage, or purchase a car.

Meticulously researched, Unwavering is a spellbinding page-turner. Thrusting the reader into an unfolding drama, it captures the women's tentative beginnings and the obstacles they endured during the tumult of a war unfolding on television, in nationwide antiwar protests, the Watergate scandal, and the seismic cultural upheavals taking place in America. As they take matters into their own hands, they succeed in persuading a U.S. president, Congress, the State Department, and the Pentagon to follow their lead. Simultaneously, they galvanize public support for their cause, creating a national obsession with our missing men. In doing so, they established an enduring tenet of American policy to Leave No Man Behind. Theirs is not simply a wives' tale. This is the quintessentially American story of how a group of women, once silenced and sidelined, persevered against all odds to change how America fights its wars.

Email: taylor.kiland@gmail.com
Publisher: Knox Press, 2023

Ordering Info: Amazon

Known But to God: America's Twentieth Century Wars and the Search for the Missing

by CDR Kenneth Breaux, USN (Ret.)

There are many books written about epic battles, heroic soldiers and the remarkable events that occur during a war. This book contains little of that history. This book is about the more than 70,000 men who remain missing after America's wars. Their names appear in our cemeteries, on gravestones marked "unknown," on commemorative walls listing the missing or simply in after-action reports inadequate to the task of declaring a life at an end. Americans are sensitive to the injustice and incompleteness of such records. So, the United States is the only country publicly committed to searching for missing warriors' remains and to identifying and finally honoring them. This commitment has been inconsistently fulfilled, however, and results have been mixed. This book shows how modern warfare loses its dead in ways that make them harder than ever to find after battle. It tells the story of families who never give up hope and of the volunteers and officials who try to help them. But it's also the story of how our government too often has failed to make finding the missing possible -- and what we can do about it. These are the ultimate cold cases.

Email: kenneth.breaux@sbcglobal.net
Published: 2022

Ordering Info: Amazon. See other works by this NOUS companion here.