Hans Halberstadt | |
---|---|
Born | Hans Milton Halberstadt February 29, 1944 Plainfield, New Jersey |
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Author, filmmaker, historian and photographer |
Known for | Authored and co-authored more than 60 non-fiction books |
Hans Milton Halberstadt (born February 29, 1944) is an American author, filmmaker, historian and photographer. He has authored and co-authored more than 60 non-fiction books, many of them documenting the American military.
His books have been translated into several languages, including German, French and Japanese. Halberstadt's books focus on portraits of military units, the mindset of modern warriors, equipment, tactics and missions.
His early career centered on creating short films for the educational market and for corporate clients. He belongs to a number of organizations, including E Clampus Vitus, the UDT/SEAL Association, Association of the US Army (Life), and Author's Guild.
Halberstadt was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, the oldest son of photographer Milton H. Halberstadt (Hal) and Olga Navratil Halberstadt. His family moved to California about 1945, where he was raised in Marin County and graduated from Tamalpais High School. [1] His early years were spent working in his father's photography studio in San Francisco where he was introduced to artists including Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham, Benny Bufano, Keith Munro and architects Lawrence Halprin and Doug Bayliss.
He joined the army in 1962 and went to Vietnam where he served as a helicopter door gunner throughout the Central Highlands.
After his years in service, Halberstadt returned to California and graduated from San Francisco State in 1968 with a degree in film and broadcasting.
Halberstadt worked for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill in Washington DC as a photographer. When this project ended, he moved back to California, and started his Company Very Moving Pictures. He produced television commercials, public relations films, corporate and educational films, videos and audio/visual presentations for clients including Exxon, Bank of America, Ketchum Communications and Discovery Toys. He made nearly 40 educational films for Arthur Barr Productions, Inc. Of Pasadena.
His first foray into publishing was providing the illustrations for a book on stained glass, Stained Glass, Music for the Eye in 1979. This book was favorably reviewed by Newsweek Magazine, which called Halberstadt's photographs "dazzling".[ citation needed ]
His first authored book was Coast Guard, Always Ready, about the United States Coast Guard. He has since written, co-written or illustrated more than 70 non-fiction books. Many of his books are about special operations units such as United States Navy Seals and Green Berets. [2] Other subjects include Railroad depots, seaplanes, Farming and locomotives. His publishers include Barnes & Noble, Motorbooks Publishing, Presidio Press, Trident Publishing.
The United States Army Special Forces (SF), colloquially known as the "Green Berets" due to their distinctive service headgear, is the special operations branch of the United States Army.
The 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment–Delta, referred to variously as Delta Force, Combat Applications Group (CAG), or within Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), Task Force Green, is a special operations force of the United States Army, under operational control of JSOC. The unit's missions primarily involve counterterrorism, hostage rescue, direct action, and special reconnaissance, often against high-value targets.
The green beret was the official headdress of the British Commandos, a special-forces unit active during World War II. It is still worn by members of the Royal Marines after passing the Commando Course, and personnel from other units of the Royal Navy, Army and RAF who serve within 3 Commando Brigade and who have passed the All Arms Commando Course.
Eric M. Hammel was a military historian, with a focus on the military campaigns of the United States Marine Corps in the Pacific War, and other military action in World War II as well as military conflicts including the Vietnam War and the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Hammel wrote a series of books about World War II Flying Aces but his most influential book was The Root : The Marines in Beirut, August 1982-February 1984 on the subject of the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings.
Robert Lowell Moore Jr. was an American writer who wrote The Green Berets, The French Connection: A True Account of Cops, Narcotics, and International Conspiracy, and with Xaviera Hollander and Yvonne Dunleavy, The Happy Hooker: My Own Story.
The black beret is a colour of beret, a type of headgear. It is commonly worn by paramilitaries and militaries around the world, particularly armored forces such as the British Army's Royal Tank Regiment (RTR), the Royal Canadian Armoured Corps (RCAC), and Royal Australian Armoured Corps (RAAC) and the Indian Army Armoured Corps and Indian Border Security Force. Notable non-armored military units to wear the black beret include the non-military police and non-special forces elements of the Irish Defence Forces, MOD Guard Service, Russian Naval Infantry and Russian OMON units, the United States Air Force (USAF) Tactical Air Control Party (TACP), Philippine National Police-Special Action Force (PNP-SAF) members, and the Royal Canadian Navy. It was also worn by the United Kingdom's Royal Observer Corps (ROC) with their Royal Air Force (RAF) uniform, Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA).
The Battle of Debecka Pass on 6–7 April 2003, sometimes known as the Battle of Debecka Ridge or Debecka Crossroads, or otherwise referred to as the Alamo of the Iraq War, was a successful operation launched by U.S. Special Forces to secure a major crossroads near the village of Debecka, between Mosul and Kirkuk in northern Iraq. It was notable for its use of the Raytheon/Lockheed-Martin Javelin anti-tank missile. The weapon demonstrated how lethal and crucial technology can be in determining the outcome of a battle. The light unarmored SOF and Peshmerga (KDP) force faced a mechanized force of Iraqi infantry and tanks. The US and KPD force was able to defeat the Iraqi mechanized infantry & tank force with combined air-to-ground strikes, superior maneuvering, and the use of the Javelin missiles.
Charles Patrick Pfarrer III is an American writer, film producer, and former Navy SEAL. As an author, he has penned published screenplays, novels, comic books, and non-fiction works. His works deal with themes pertaining to the military. Pfarrer has worked on films including Navy SEALs, Darkman, and Hard Target.
Franklin Douglas "Doug" Miller was an American and United States Army Special Forces staff sergeant during the Vietnam War who was awarded the United States military's highest decoration—the Medal of Honor—for his actions above and beyond the call of duty on January 5, 1970. He was also awarded a Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and six Purple Hearts during his six years service in Southeast Asia.
Kevin Dockery is an American fiction and nonfiction author and military historian. He is best known for his work detailing the history and weapons of the Navy SEALs. He served in the US Army on the President's Guard, and as an armorer. Since retiring from the Army, he has worked as a curator for the SEAL Museum in Fort Pierce, Florida, a historian, a game designer and as a lecturer. He has written 37 books, appeared in a number of television documentaries and served as technical advisor for several motion pictures.
Leo J. Meyer was a soldier in the United States Army, one of only three hundred and twenty-four men who have been awarded three Combat Infantryman Badges out of more than the twenty-three million men who served in the US Army between December 1941 and December 2007. Colonel Meyer was inducted into the U.S. Army Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame in 2009.
Project GAMMA was the name given in 1968 to Detachment B-57, Company E, 5th Special Forces Group (Airborne) in Vietnam from 1967 to 1970. It was responsible for covert intelligence collection operations in Cambodia. The teams were highly effective at locating Viet Cong operations in Cambodia, leading to their destruction. When assets began to disappear, they identified a South Vietnamese officer as the mole. On the advice of the CIA, they took extrajudicial steps and murdered him. Seven officers and one non-commissioned officer were arrested and tried. When the CIA refused to answer summons for witnesses for national security reasons, the charges were dropped.
Donald Mitchell Brown, Jr. is an American author, attorney, and former United States Navy JAG Officer. He has published fifteen books on the United States military, including eleven military-genre novels, the best known of which is Treason (2005) in which radical Islamic clerics infiltrate the United States Navy Chaplain Corps. He has published four works of military nonfiction, including his national bestseller, The Last Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Final Combat Mission of World War II (2017). Brown may be best known for his work as legal counsel to Army Lieutenant Clint Lorance, who had been convicted of murder by a military court-martial at Fort Bragg when his platoon became involved in a firefight in Afghanistan in 2011, and his authorship of the 2019 book Travesty of Justice: The Shocking Prosecution of Lt. Clint Lorance. On November 15, 2019, President Donald Trump pardoned Lorance, and the book is considered to be a factor in leading to that pardon. Between the release of Travesty of Justice on March 31, 2019, and Lorance's pardon on November 15, 2019, Brown made numerous national television appearances and penned a number of national Op-eds urging President Trump to free and exonerate Lieutenant Lorance. On the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, November 27, 2019, Brown and Lorance appeared on Hannity, the nightly national broadcast on the Fox News Channel to discuss the presidential pardon and release.
The Special Forces Brigades of the Republic of Korea (ROK) are six special forces brigades and one oversea deployment group under the command and control of the Republic of Korea Army Special Warfare Command (ROK-SWC; Korean: 대한민국 육군 특수전사령부, 특전사; Hanja: 大韓民國陸軍 特殊戰司令部). These units were modelled after United States Army Special Forces (Green Berets).
The M9 half-track was a half-track produced by International Harvester in the United States during World War II for lend-lease supply to the Allies. It was designed to provide a similar vehicle to the M2 half-track car. It had the same body and chassis as the M5 half-track but had the same stowage and radio fit as the M2 half-track.
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Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War is a non-fiction book edited by Ron Carver, David Cortright, and Barbara Doherty. It was published in September 2019 by New Village Press and is distributed by New York University Press. In March 2023 a Vietnamese language edition of the book was launched at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
The court-martial of Howard Levy occurred in 1967. Howard Levy was a United States Army doctor who became an early resister to the Vietnam War. In 1967, he was court-martialed at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for refusing an order to train Green Beret medics on their way to Vietnam. He said it "became clear to me that the Army [was using medics] to 'win hearts and minds' in Vietnamese villages - while still burning them to the ground in search-and-destroy missions." He considered the Special Forces "killers of peasants and murderers of women and children".
A Matter of Conscience: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War is an artist book published in 1992 at the time of the Addison Gallery of American Art exhibition, “A Matter of Conscience” and “Vietnam Revisited.” It contains oral histories of Vietnam era GIs, gathered and edited by Willa Seidenberg and William Short, and 58 photographs by William Short. Each oral history is complemented by a portrait in which the Vietnam veteran holds an object of some significance such as a newspaper clipping, a legal document, a book, or photograph. The large black and white photographs allow readers to see the veteran while reading the brief but moving oral histories to learn why they turned against the Vietnam War. The veterans' stories and portraits were collected over a five-year period and have been exhibited throughout the United States, Vietnam, Japan and Australia. A number of them were also included in the book Waging Peace in Vietnam: U.S. Soldiers and Veterans Who Opposed the War edited by Ron Carver, David Cortright, and Barbara Doherty. It was published in September 2019 by New Village Press.
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