May is Military Appreciation Month!

The six branches of the armed forces include the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and Space Force. Most people know someone who has served or is serving in one of the branches of the military. 

Be sure to say thank you to any service members and veterans you know the next time you see them. If you can’t thank a service member in person, you can send a personal letter through A Million Thanks, an organization that collects and distributes letters of thanks and support directly to military members.

Are you a dog lover? When military members deploy, they often need someone to care for their pets. Dogs on Deployment is a non-profit organization that accepts volunteers who are willing to board service members’ pets during their owner’s service commitments. 

If you are willing to share your heart and your home with a service member’s pet, register here. 

For military spouses, there are daily tasks and moments that become lonely when a spouse is deployed. Friends can make an effort to fill those voids by sharing a meal, mowing the lawn, offering to babysit or pick up the kids, or including military families in holiday celebrations. This is especially appreciated since military families often reside so far away from their extended families. 

The USO (United Services Organization) has a mission to support and lift the morale of our military. The USO accepts donations of volunteer time and dollars to accomplish its mission. For more information, see Volunteer · United Service Organizations for a location in your area.

CCPL’s collection features many nonfiction books where you can read about the experiences of military members and their families. To learn about their lives and the sacrifices they make, stop by the library and check out some of these titles:

Dinner With the Smileys: One Military Family, One Year of Heroes, and Lessons for a Lifetime by Sarah Smiley

Documents Sarah Smiley’s efforts to fill her husband’s place at the dinner table with interesting people who could be role models for their three sons while their father, pilot Dustin Smiley, was on a yearlong deployment with the Navy.

The League of Wives by Heath Hardage Lee

“The true story of the fierce band of women who battled Washington–and Hanoi–to bring their husbands home from the jungles of Vietnam. On February 12, 1973, one hundred and fifteen men who, just six years earlier, had been high flying Navy and Air Force pilots, shuffled, limped, or were carried off a huge military transport plane at Clark Air Base in the Philippines. These American servicemen had endured years of brutal torture, kept shackled and starving in solitary confinement, in rat-infested, mosquito-laden prisons, the worst of which was The Hanoi Hilton. Months later, the first Vietnam POWs to return home would learn that their rescuers were their wives, a group of women that included Jane Denton, Sybil Stockdale, Louise Mulligan, Andrea Rander, Phyllis Galanti, and Helene Knapp. These women, who formed The National League of Families, would never have called themselves “feminists,” but they had become the POW and MIAs most fervent advocates, going to extraordinary lengths to facilitate their husbands’ freedom–and to account for missing military men–by relentlessly lobbying government leaders, conducting a savvy media campaign, conducting covert meetings with antiwar activists, most astonishingly, helping to code secret letters to their imprisoned husbands. In a page-turning work of narrative non-fiction, Heath Hardage Lee tells the story of these remarkable women for the first time in The League of Wives.”

–Biography

Be Safe, Love Mom by Elaine Lowry Brye

“Brye is a mom to four military officers, and for more than a decade she’s endured countless teary goodbyes, sparse communication from boot camps and training summers, deployments, emotional airport reunions, empty chairs at Thanksgiving dinners, and sleepless hours waiting for phone calls in the night. She’s navigated the complicated tangle of emotions–pride, worry, fear, hope, and deep, enduring love–that accompanies life as a military mom. In [her book], Brye reflects on her family’s military service and offers a lifetime’s worth of insight, comfort, wisdom, and a bit of humor to fellow military moms who are navigating the unpredictable life that accompanies having a child–or children–in uniform.”

— Provided by publisher

Far Side of the Moon by Liisa Jorgensen

The Howe Dynasty by Julie Flavell

“Finally revealing the family’s indefatigable women among its legendary military figures, The Howe Dynasty recasts the British side of the American Revolution. In December 1774, Benjamin Franklin met Caroline Howe, the sister of British Admiral Richard and General William Howe, in a London drawing room for “half a dozen Games of Chess.” As Julie Flavell reveals, the games concealed a matter of the utmost diplomatic urgency, a last-ditch attempt to forestall the outbreak of war. Aware that the Howes, both the men and the women, have seemed impenetrable to historians, Flavell investigated the letters of Caroline Howe, which have been overlooked for centuries. Using these revelatory documents, Flavell provides a compelling reinterpretation of England’s famous family across four wars, centering on their enigmatic roles in the American Revolution. The Howe Dynasty interweaves action-packed stories of North American military campaigns-including the Battles of Bunker Hill and Long Island-with parlor-room intrigues back in England, creating a riveting narrative that brings alive the influence of these extraordinary women in both peacetime and war.”

— Provided by publisher

9 Rules of Engagement by Harris Faulkner

Growing up in a military family, journalist and news anchor Harris Faulkner experienced firsthand how success in life is rooted in the knowledge, integrity, and duty that came from her military surroundings. She shares the formative lessons in leadership and work ethic she learned from a lifetime spent absorbing the military mindset, and offers recommendations for how all families can benefit from the guiding principles of military life.

The Things They Cannot Say by Kevin Sites

Award-winning journalist and author Kevin Sites compiles the accounts of soldiers, Marines, their families and friends, and also shares the unsettling narrative of his own failures during war (including complicity in a murder) and the redemptive powers of storytelling in arresting a spiraling path of self-destruction.

— Amazon.com

American Patriots by Gail Lumet Buckley

In an exploration of black American military heroes from Crispus Attucks to Colin Powell, Buckley presents a history of bravery, valor, patriotism, and extraordinary personal courage both on and off the battlefield. American Patriots is one of the great untold stories in American history. There have been books on individual black soldiers, but this is the first to tell the full story of the black American military experience, starting with the Revolution & culminating with Desert Storm. The best histories are about more than facts & events-they capture the spirit that drives men to better their lives & to demand of themselves the highest form of sacrifice. That spirit permeates Gail Buckley’s dramatic, deeply moving, & inspiring book. You’ll meet the men who fought in the decisive engagements of the Revolution, the legendary Buffalo Soldiers, & the heroic black regiments of the Civil War. You’ll meet some of America’s greatest patriots-men who fought in the First & Second World Wars when their country denied them access to equipment & training, segregated the ranks, & did all it could to keep them off the battlefield. You’ll meet the heroes of Korea, Vietnam, & Desert Storm. And you’ll meet two families, the Lews & the Pierces, who have served in every major American engagement since the Revolution. FDR used to say that Americanism was a matter of the mind & heart, not of race & ancestry. With photographs throughout & dozens of original interviews with veterans, American Patriots is a tribute to the black American men & women who fought & often gave their lives in the service of that ideal.

The Fifth Act by Elliot Ackerman

“A powerful and revelatory eyewitness account of the American collapse in Afghanistan, its desperate endgame, and the war’s echoing legacy Elliot Ackerman left the American military ten years ago, but his time in Afghanistan and Iraq with the Marines and, later, as a CIA paramilitary officer marked him indelibly. When the Taliban began to close in on Kabul in August of 2021 and the Afghan regime began its death spiral, he found himself pulled back into the conflict. Afghan nationals who had, for years, worked closely with the American military and intelligence communities now faced brutal reprisal and sought frantically to flee the country with their families. The official US government evacuation process was a bureaucratic failure that led to a humanitarian catastrophe. With his former colleagues, and friends, protecting the airport in Kabul, Ackerman was drawn into an impromptu effort alongside a group of journalists, and other veterans, to arrange flights and negotiate with both Taliban and American forces to secure the safe evacuation of hundreds. These were desperate measures taken during a desperate end to America’s longest war, but the success they achieved afforded a degree of redemption. And, for Ackerman, a chance to reconcile his past with his present. The Fifth Act is an astonishing human document that brings the weight of twenty years of war to bear on a single week at its bitter end. Using the dramatic rescue efforts in Kabul as his lattice, Ackerman weaves in a personal history of the war’s long progress, beginning with the initial invasion in the months after 9/11. It is a play in five acts, the fifth act being the story’s tragic denouement, a prelude to Afghanistan’s dark future. Any reader who wants to understand what went wrong with the war’s trajectory will find a trenchant accounting here. And yet The Fifth Act is not an exercise in finger-pointing: it brings readers into close contact with a remarkable group of characters, American and Afghan, who fought the war with courage and dedication, in good faith and at great personal cost. Understanding combatants’ experiences and sacrifices while reckoning with the complex bottom line of the post-9/11 wars is not an easy balance; it demands reservoirs of wisdom and the gifts of an extraordinary storyteller. It asks for an author willing to grapple with certain hard-earned truths. In Elliot Ackerman, this story has found that author. The Fifth Act is a first draft of history that feels like a timeless classic.”

— Provided by publisher

Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead by James Mattis

“Call Sign Chaos is a memoir of a life of warfighting and lifelong learning, following along as Mattis rises from Marine recruit to four-star general. It is a journey about learning to lead and a story about how he, through constant study and action, developed a unique leadership philosophy, one relevant to us all.”

–Dust jacket flap