title: The Heart of a Soldier: A True Love Story of Love, War, and Sacrifice
author:  Kate Blaise 
description: Blaise, a support operations transportation officer for the 101st Airborne Division, and her husband, Mike, a helicopter pilot, were both sent to the front lines of Iraq in March 2003. Blaise tells the poignant tale of the young Missouri couple whose dual army career ended shatteringly in January 2004, when Mike's plane crashed in a windstorm and he died. She retraces her and Mike's early romance as high school sweethearts and her ROTC training, while Mike endured Ranger School, then flight school; they were first stationed in Korea, though separately. Alternating with professional accomplishments are personal tragedies, such as the car accident that left Blaise's mother brain damaged, and the discovery that Blaise is afflicted with premature ovarian failure, effectively prohibiting her from having children. The couple's seven-year marriage was continually strained by their long absences from each other, though they managed to share quarters erratically at Q-West in Iraq as the Americans moved aggressively to take Saddam Hussein and his minions. Blaise offers elucidating close-up details of army life, especially for the rare woman officer (she was promoted to captain but has since left the military); despite her own professionalism, she acknowledges that "men saw me as a woman first, and nothing could change that." <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  To Save a Love
  
  Soldiers & Soulmates  
  Book 4
  
  Alexa Aston
  
  ![](images/00006.jpg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  © Copyright 2020 by Alexa Aston
  
  Text by Alexa Aston
  
  Cover by Wicked Smart Designs
  
  Dragonblade Publishing, Inc. is an imprint of Kathryn Le Veque Novels, Inc.
  
  P.O. Box 7968
  
  La Verne CA 91750
  
  [ceo@dragonbladepublishing.com](mailto:ceo@dragonbladepublishing.com)
  
  Produced in the United States of America
  
  First Edition May 2020
  
  Kindle Edition
  
  Reproduction of any kind except where it pertains to short quotes in relation
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  All Rights Reserved.
  
  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any
  similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not
  intended by the author.
  
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