Gregory A. Freeman

The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All For the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II

The Forgotten 500

The astonishing, never before told story of the greatest rescue mission of World War II—when the OSS set out to recover more than 500 airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia... During a bombing campaign over Romanian oil fields, hundreds of American airmen were shot down in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. Local Serbian farmers and peasants risked their own lives to give refuge to the soldiers while they waited for rescue, and in 1944, Operation Halyard was born. The risks were incredible. The starving Americans in Yugoslavia had to construct a landing strip large enough for C-47 cargo planes—without tools, without alerting the Germans, and without endangering the villagers. And the cargo planes had to make it through enemy airspace and back—without getting shot down themselves. Classified for over half a century for political reasons, the full account of this unforgettable story of loyalty, self-sacrifice, and bravery is now being told for the first time ever. The Forgotten 500 is the gripping, behind-the-scenes look at the greatest escape of World War II. “Amazing [and] riveting.”—James Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers

The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II

Draws on recently declassified documents and exclusive interviews to recount the dramatic story of a World War II rescue mission in 1944 during which the OSS embarked on a daring scheme to recover more than five hundred airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia. 40,000 first printing.

The Untold Story of the Men who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II

The 1921 Murders of Eleven Plantation Slaves

Lay This Body Down

The John S. Williams plantation in Georgia was operated largely with the labor of slaves—and this was in 1921, 56 years after the Civil War. Williams was not alone in using "peons," but his reaction to a federal investigation was almost unbelievable: he decided to destroy the evidence. Enlisting the aid of his trusted black farm boss, Clyde Manning, he began methodically killing his slaves. As this true story unfolds, each detail seems more shocking, and surprises continue in the aftermath, with a sensational trial galvanizing the nation and marking a turning point in the treatment of black Americans.

In the vein of Crimson Tide, with action pulled straight from a high seas thriller, this is the exciting story of a mutiny that the U.S. Navy denies to this day. In 1972, the U.S.S. Kitty Hawk was headed to her station in the Gulf of Tonkin when many of the five thousand men cooped up for the longest at-sea tour of the unpopular war rioted -- or, as Freeman claims, mutinied. Most disturbingly, the lines were drawn racially, black against white. By the time order was restored, careers were forever ruined, but the incident became a turning point for race relations in the Navy. Through careful and unprecedented examination of the official record and eyewitness accounts, Freeman refutes the official story of the incident, and makes a convincing case for the first mutiny in U.S. Navy history.

Race, Mutiny, and Bravery on the USS Kitty Hawk

Troubled Water

The aircraft carrier USS Forrestal was preparing to launch attacks into North Vietnam when one of its jets accidentally fired a rocket into an aircraft occupied by pilot John McCain. A huge fire ensued, and McCain barely escaped before a 1,000-pound bomb on his plane exploded, causing a chain reaction with other bombs on surrounding planes. The crew struggled for days to extinguish the fires, but, in the end, the tragedy took the lives of 134 men. For thirty-five years, the terrible loss of life has been blamed on the sailors themselves, but this meticulously documented history shows that they were truly the victims and heroes.

Gregory A. Freeman

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