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DINOSAURS AND BARBARIANS
Articles and Artwork on Science and History
Hello, blog viewers! Did you notice a mistake on the website? Do you want to ask for more information? Got questions? Please contact me at jrabdale@msn.com.
DINOSAURS AND BARBARIANS 
Dear friend Abdale,
My name is Aid Kurtovic.
I would like to buy your book “The Great Illyrian Revolt” but I don’t now how.
I am quite old and not familiar with online shopping. I have my own PayPal account, but I only use it when I buy stuff on eBay (I’ve never used it for anything else). I live in Melbourne, Australia (but I’m originally from Bosnia, a refugee since 1995.) Can you help me order your book? My e-mail address is aidkurtovic@yahoo.com.
Thank You.
Thank you for your interest in my book.
Since you said that you purchase things on Ebay, I noticed that copies of my book The Great Illyrian Revolt are available to buy on Ebay. https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=Jason+R.+Abdale+The+Great+Illyrian+Revolt&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313.
You could order the book directly from my publisher, Pen & Sword Books, which is a publishing company in England. Here is the website: https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/The-Great-Illyrian-Revolt-Hardback/p/16015. However, since the book would have to be sent from England to Australia, the cost of shipping might be very high.
I hope that this information helps. I offer my best wishes to you.
Hello friend
I ordered on ebay
Thank You
(it’s not expensive for that book. As an Illyrian it means a lot to me)
Jason,
I hope that you’ll enjoy my posts. Thank your for subscribing and I’ll be looking forward to any comments that you, a fellow historian, might have.
My specialization is military history. I obtained my degree from the University of Nebraska (Omaha) campus. I’ve been an avid military history student for many years. I tend to specialize in US Civil War history and I’ve authored a number of books and papers on the subject. I am currently reediting two books that are unpublished on Wisconsin cavalry regiments that fought along the Mississippi River during the Civil War. I hope to get them published on Amazon sometime in the future. They are very detailed but by nature very esoteric in scope – definitely not BEST SELLERS!
Having spent 43 years in uniform (US Army Retired) I enjoyed your musings on BOOTS. One story that you might enjoy
As a young officer in Vietnam there was always the military tradition that the officer was the first person to get off of the helicopter to lead an operation and the last person to get on when the operation was finished. I worked primarily in the Mekong delta of Vietnam in the swamps and rice paddies.
My “Boot” story involved one of those missions. Our pick up point after the completion of our mission was in an area that was covered with rice paddies. This was during the monsoons; it was quite wet. When the helicopter came in to pick us up he could not land because we were standing in water and he had no idea how deep it really was. So he hovered a few feet over the rice paddy and I began pushing my Vietnamese troops up into the craft. What I didn’t realize was that every time that I pushed one of them up I was pushing myself deeper into the mud and mock.
I finally got everyone on board, and now it was my turn. I grabbed hold of the skid and tried to pull myself up and I was stuck. The pilot realized my situation and gestured to me to hold on to the skid and he would slowly pull me up and out of the muck.
By this time I was deep enough to where the suction of the mud was quite intense. He slowly lifted the bird up and as I came out of the mud my combat boots came off. I flew back to our compound barefoot.
I’ve always thought that in 1000 years some archaeologist is going to be doing research in that part of the Mekong delta and they are going to find a pair of combat boots 3 or 4 feet into the mud and question how they got there. It would be interesting 1000 years from now to hear their comments about their questions and conjecture regarding how a pair of boots could get that far in the mud and there weren’t any feet in them.
I’m enjoying your blogs.
Pete “Hardcharger”
I’m glad that you enjoyed my article about boots in the Vietnam War. Please check out my other history-related posts by clicking on the “History” tab. I’ve also written a couple of articles about the Civil War, and I’ve got a couple more in the works. The Vietnam War is one of the major historical topics that I am absolutely passionate about, right up there with ancient Rome, medieval times, and the French and Indian War. I have greatly enjoyed reading your articles, and I look forward to any others that you will be posting.
Jason.
I did three combat tours in Vietnam I was there from the fall of 1969 through the fall of 1970 on my first tour. I served in the Mekong delta with the MACV advisory teams. I was the intelligence officer on the team as well as the deputy district senior advisor. That’s not saying much it was just a three man team myself a captain and a Sergeant. I was a second Lieutenant at that time. I wrote all about it in my novel “The Advisors”.
From the fall of 1970 through the spring of 1971 I completed a second tour in Vietnam this time I was at the provincial capital. I was the Province Senior Intelligence Advisor on that assignment and my second book, “The Province Senior Intelligence Advisor“ deals with that assignment.
I actually got thrown out of Vietnam in 1971 came home and ended up as a reserve advisor in Minneapolis MN. I was stationed at old Fort Snelling. I became the base historian by default, because I was working on a degree in history at that time.
Towards the end of the Easter Offensive in 1972 I got recalled back to Vietnam to serve with the 525th Military Intelligence Group over there. The third book deals with that assignment, the book is called “The Hardchargers”. Hardcharger was my team nickname on my first assignment in the Mekong delta, and the nickname kinda stuck.
I wrote one other book in that series called “The Tuscarora Trail”. There were a number of war stories that I couldn’t fit into the other three books for a number of different reasons. And So what I did is I used the trail journal that I kept while I was hiking the Tuscarora trail and wove those stories into the story about that hike. The two old Army veterans kept running into other veterans and young kids who wanted to know about their exploits in Vietnam and so they told the stories that way.
I did all four of my books as novels so as to not end up with a stolen valor issue. Some of the stories were ones I was actually involved with while others just happened while I was there and they were stories that needed to be told. So rather than worry about a stolen valor complaint I wrote them as novels and that way I could pretty much use literary license to change names and places and things like that. As I mentioned when I was at the United States Army War College I actually got to study as a military historian. When I left there I carried the specialty code of military historian. I had three various assignments as a military historian as an additional duty during my assignment over the 27 years of my service.
When I was at old Fort Snelling, Minnesota, I was a part of the restoration board for the Old Fort back in 1971 to 1972. I served as the army’s representative to their board.
When I graduated from College in Omaha, Nebraska I ended up at old Fort Omaha and by default became the base historian there since I just finished my degree in history.
When I was the Director of Operations at Fort McCoy, Wisconsin the history office fell under my department. It was later moved to another side of the Fort when one of the civilians up there objected to me being in charge of it. But I got a lot of new projects started up there at the base that have turned into some interesting historical operation since then.
My real love though is the civil war period I have written two books on the civil war. One is a history of Harrison County West Virginia. In 2020 I was at the US archives just before they close down for COVID. I came home to Clarksburg WV with over 2000 pages of photographs of documents covering the civil war period in Harrison County From the 1st of June 1861 all the way through September 1866. I wrote a very detailed history of our county as a result of that. Our little town was a logistical Center for the Union war effort at the beginning of the war all the way up through the Battle of Gettysburg. Because of the railroad that ran through town we supported all of the Union operations in 1861 through 1863 in Western Virginia all the way over to the Shenandoah Valley. That book generated another book called “The Most Hated Man in Clarksburg” which was a historical novel about the first quartermaster general here in town. It’s a good read I wrote it as historical fiction because I didn’t know exactly what was said and so a lot of that was written was fiction. But it was a fun one to write.
When I was stationed at Fort McCoy WI I wrote two regimental histories one dealing with the First Wisconsin cavalry, and the other one was the Second Wisconsin cavalry. My great-great grandfather served in the Second Wisconsin cavalry during the civil war. I’m in the process of rewriting them for publication at this point. They’re very esoteric and so I probably will have a few books published to put in libraries.
Glad you liked my story about the boots in Vietnam. Always thought that was an interesting little story. Well take care and I hope to hear from you soon.
Pete