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Rating: 
Summary: Lady Be Very Good....
Review: Bluejacket Press' "Lady's Men" by Mario Martinez is an excellent read. The most moving part of the book are the "Day X" chapters based on the crew's diary entries. The photocopied diary entries document the tradgedy, courage, and waning hope of the crew in a very personal, moving, and insightful way.The book also explores the mystery of why the Lady Be Good ended up hundreds of miles inland in Libya, well-past their destination airport. Navigator equipment still unopened in boxes, working compasses and direction finding equipment, and 1st hand air-traffic accounts are all well-researched and well-presented clues to understanding the mystery. And most of all is the tradgedy. They probably passed nearly right over their airport. If they had landed with the plane instead of bailing out (with life preservers on!) they would have had the resources of food, radios, and shade. It is just so sad...an inexperienced crew and some rotten luck. A suprise for me was in the next to last chapter was some 1st hand accounts from a pilot's diary of the infamous Ploesti raids taken by Lady's squadron. While somewhat of a non-sequitor, it is great content and am very glad it was included. This is my 2nd book by Bluejacket Press -- the other was The Sand Pebbles. I am coming to expect very good quality from them. This book does not disappoint, and tells the compelling story of the Lady Be Good in a very interesting, well-researched, and well-documented manner. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Lady Be Very Good....
Review: Bluejacket Press' "Lady's Men" by Mario Martinez is an excellent read. The most moving part of the book are the "Day X" chapters based on the crew's diary entries. The photocopied diary entries document the tradgedy, courage, and waning hope of the crew in a very personal, moving, and insightful way. The book also explores the mystery of why the Lady Be Good ended up hundreds of miles inland in Libya, well-past their destination airport. Navigator equipment still unopened in boxes, working compasses and direction finding equipment, and 1st hand air-traffic accounts are all well-researched and well-presented clues to understanding the mystery. And most of all is the tradgedy. They probably passed nearly right over their airport. If they had landed with the plane instead of bailing out (with life preservers on!) they would have had the resources of food, radios, and shade. It is just so sad...an inexperienced crew and some rotten luck. A suprise for me was in the next to last chapter was some 1st hand accounts from a pilot's diary of the infamous Ploesti raids taken by Lady's squadron. While somewhat of a non-sequitor, it is great content and am very glad it was included. This is my 2nd book by Bluejacket Press -- the other was The Sand Pebbles. I am coming to expect very good quality from them. This book does not disappoint, and tells the compelling story of the Lady Be Good in a very interesting, well-researched, and well-documented manner. Recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Haunting and tragic, this is a timeless tale of courage.
Review: Since military history is only a passing interest of mine, I will not pretend to be the best-qualified reviewer to read this fine book. However, as a work of nonfiction about humans placed in a hopeless situation, and how they respond to it, "Lady's Men" tells a great story that is as inspirational as it is eternal and poignant. Although author Mario Martinez obviously takes a few literary liberties with the artistic license of creating imaginary dialogue between the principal characters, he has just as clearly done his homework on this case, and his intimate account of the doomed airmen is both compelling and plausible. Martinez does a particularly good job of placing the disappearance and rediscovery of the ill-fated B-24 and her crew into an historical context. He also captures what must have surely been a growing sense of despair and determination among the men who struggled so hard to survive even as they gradually realized the futility of their predicament. It remains an amazing tribute to the endurance of the young men who flew into oblivion on one April night in 1943 that most of them walked 78 miles across the open desert over a period of several days, and one of them (Staff Sgt. Guy E Shelley, Jr.) trekked as far as 115.5 miles from the bail-out point, on nothing more than five or six canteen capfuls of water and almost no food. Well-illustrated and skillfully told with diary excerpts from the plane's copilot and flight engineer, "Lady's Men" gets off to a slow start, but gives the reader a vivid picture of what happened on this mysterious and sad mission. Amid the background of World War II and all of its carnage, this small tale of ordinary men doing extraordinary things stands out as lesson in the importance of each individual life, and the dignity that can be found even in one's dying breath. If "Lady's Men" has a fault, it is in the writer's approach to using some of the archival information as the raw material for a movie screenplay. No doubt, the heroic saga of the Lady Be Good and those who served aboard her would make an excellent movie, but no cinematic embellishment was needed to maintain this reader's interest in the subject. Also, it would have been nice if "Lady's Men" had included more of the news coverage which accompanied the initial location of the lost aircraft, and of the investigation to learn what became of her crew. These minor complaints aside, "Lady's Men" is still a very meaningful and worthwhile addition to anyone's reading list. This is one of those rare books that will give you a renewed perspective on your own problems and the relativity of pain.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, if you discount the speculative narrative
Review: This book appears well-researched but didn't come across as particularly authoritative. I appreciate that there must be some speculation about the events that occurred, but the author turned to fantasy when he speculated about the thoughts of the crew on their trek, trying to expand on cryptic diary entries. Such an approach significantly devalued later statements by the author about the condition of artifacts. All in all, the book was a little unsatisfying.
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