Battlefield Action #44

For five weeks, a German 88mm gun has been picking off American supply trucks on a stretch of French road—and P.F.C. Tom Dixon's truck keeps drawing fire. When Dixon hatches a bold plan to take the fight to the enemy himself, he volunteers for a dangerous solo mission over the mountain to outflank the gun crew and put an end to their reign of terror. "The Clay Pigeon" delivers a sharp lesson in thinking tactically when you're the target.

When a young American woman gets trapped trying to escape East Berlin with her papers stolen, P.F.C. Hubert L. Kennard doesn't hesitate to help her cross to freedom—even if it means punching a Russian colonel and triggering an international incident. The situation spirals from embarrassing fame to something far darker when Kennard himself is captured by Communist forces bent on revenge, forcing his unit to mount a daring rescue across the Iron Curtain. This is a tense Cold War standoff where one soldier's conscience sets off a chain of escalating consequences that neither side can afford to back down from.

A platoon of futuristic soldiers equipped with jet jump belts and advanced weaponry blasts off across the polar regions to strike enemy power stations in this near-future war scenario. As the combat troops descend on enemy territory via parachute capsule, they discover that no matter how revolutionary the technology—rocket-powered tanks, new explosives, weightless transport—the gritty work of ground combat remains unchanged: an infantryman must occupy the battlefield, or there is no victory.

P.F.C. Bernie Reardon arrives in North Africa convinced that the Nazi war machine is unbeatable—until he discovers that respect for a skilled enemy doesn't mean he can't learn to outfight them. As he fights his way through the desert campaign and up through Italy, Reardon's reluctant admiration for German military prowess transforms into something far more valuable: the hard-won expertise of a soldier who understands his opponent. By the time he reaches the Italian Alps, his commanding officers recognize what his comrades learned long ago—that beneath the modest exterior of a half-trained G.I. lies one of the war's sharpest combat soldiers.