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Tanker Turk and Hellcat Dan

On April 6, 1945, the author’s father, Robert “Turk” Lindsey, a tank commander with Patton’s 3rd Army, crossed the battle lines at Rinteln, Germany in an unarmed jeep and single-handedly convinced over two thousand Nazi’s to surrender without a single shot being fired. On that same day, during the most intense kamikaze attack of the war, the author’s father-in-law, Daniel Archibald Carmichael, while flying a Grumman Hellcat, shot down a Japanese Zero over Okinawa to become a World War II fighter pilot ace. Two fathers, two different war fronts on opposite sides of the world, “Tanker Turk and Hellcat Dan” chronicles the harrowing paths that brought these two heroes to that fateful day in April. Written like a novel, and revolving around the hopes, fears, and hardships involved in long separations from home, the story highlights the serendipitous twists of fate that often occur during a war.

One Rogue Raider

Death of the White Swan

In late June, 1914, two gunshots in Sarajevo have changed the course of history. Archduke Franz Ferdinand is dead and World War I begins. On the other side of the world the German dreadnought SMS EMDEN is sent from China to the Far East to disrupt Allied shipping. The EMDEN is outnumbered sixty to one but the men on board do their duty. What follows is a three-month-cat-and-mouse chase with the Royal Navy. Under the leadership of “gentleman pirate” Captain Karl Friedrich von Muller, the elusive “White Swan of the East” manages to sink sixteen Allied civilian vessels without a single loss of life on either side before meeting its fiery demise.

BONES

A Sister's Revenge

Hattie Sexton, at well over a hundred years old, is a mountain legend and mistress of the black arts. In her final days, she sends for reporter John March, intending to clear her conscience and tell her multifaceted story of growing up among the Melungeons of Appalachia—with a giant as a brother.

March finds himself mesmerized by a unique tale of retribution, replete with hill mannerisms and quirks and characters both fearsome and wonderful. In the end, Hattie Sexton turns out to be living (and dying) proof that “turnabout is fair play” and “revenge is best served cold.” In her case, stone-cold dead.

Long Slow Target

Long Slow Target chronicles the highs and lows of a former teacher making the transition from naïve civilian to the supply officer (“pork chop”) of an aged ship tasked with sailing up and down the rivers of Vietnam. The welcome-aboard speech the ship’s grizzled skipper gives to his shave-tail ensign says it all:

“We don’t do spit and polish well on the Fat Lady. We’re slow as molasses in January and easier to hit than the broadside of a barn-from the inside! Half of our equipment is down hard, and the other half has been patched up three times over. As far as money goes, we always suck hind teat. But without our dirty little ship, nothing would get done in this godforsaken country. In ‘Nam, nasty comes in all shapes and sizes, and I’m here to tell you that hauling our butts around the Delta, we’ve seen our fair share of nasty.”

STUMP!

This is the story of Lee “Stump” Kelley my good friend and neighbor. A truly amazing man, he died as he lived, fighting all the way. I was honored to care for him during his last few weeks, painful though they were. Although we were a generation apart, we were banded brothers of sorts. He, a frogman from World War II. Me, a river rat from Vietnam.

For ten years we went to dinner every Monday, and invariably our waitress would ask if we were father and son. Mainly because we both shaved our heads, sported moustaches, and had similar facial features. Lee would wink and say, “Nah, he’s just my little brother.” Even though he had some twenty plus years on me and I was a full head taller.