Overview

They arrived in Annapolis as teenagers the year Hitler re-occupied the Rhineland and graduated as young men the week the British Army evacuated Dunkirk. Annapolis Goes to War tells the story of their transformative years at the Naval Academy and the annealing years in the cauldron of war. More than a hundred of them were on duty in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Ten of them died that day--seven remain entombed in the USS Arizona still. Over the next four years, these former Midshipmen participated in virtually every significant engagement in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. They were at the front edge of the war in battleships, carriers, destroyers, submarines, and airplanes, and led Marine Corps units ashore. Some experienced the war as prisoners of the Japanese. Fifty-six of them died in the Second World War, the greatest wartime loss any service academy ever experienced. Taking listeners into and through the lives of these young men, Craig Symonds offers a poignant and powerful story of adjustment, growth, pain, loss, and eventually triumph. Using their diaries, memoirs, and letters, he evokes unforgettably their trials and bonds, their loss of innocence and their discovery of the meaning of sacrifice. Annapolis Goes to War is essential listening for anyone seeking to understand the experience of fighting the bloodiest war in human history.

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Craig L. Symonds is Professor Emeritus at the United States Naval Academy, where he taught naval history for thirty years. He also served as the Ernest J. King Distinguished Professor of Maritime History at the U.S. Naval War College. His books include Decision at Sea, Lincoln and his Admirals, The Battle of Midway, Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings, World War II at Sea, and, most recently, Nimitz at War. He has won the Lincoln Prize, the Roosevelt Prize, and the Dudley Knox Medal for Lifetime Achievement. In 2023 he was awarded the Pritzker Military Museum & Library Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Writing. Stephen R. Thorne is a professional actor and a member of the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island. He has played Hamlet, Henry V, and Tom Joad, among many other roles. Stephen has narrated over fifty audiobooks.

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