Captain Bill Cooper was an American World War II fighter. He flew 70 missions, including during D-Day, Battle of the Bulge and the invasion of Holland. One of his planes was the P-47 Thunderbolt, of which he said, “It took a lot of punishment.” Shot down three times, he always managed to get back to […]
In October 1944, General Douglas Macarthur stepped onto the Philippine island of Leyte, and made his radio announcement to let the Japanese and the world know: “People of the Philippines, I have returned!” It was December 1944. PFC Dirk Vlug and his regiment were was on Leyte Island to chase retreating Japanese across the jungle. […]
On Easter Sunday morning 1972, Marine Corps Captain John Ripley was in a South Vietnamese village. He was there to help train 600 South Vietnamese Marines. But no one was thinking about that now. An enemy armored division had appeared on the other side of the river. Two hundred tanks and 20,000 men were assembling […]
Men need cool and aggressive leadership when under fire. Captain Roger Donlon displayed just that on July 5, 1964. At 2:26 AM a barrage of mortar shells rained on his Special Forces Detachment camp. He had just written to his wife, “All hell is going to break loose here before the night is over.” He […]
Korean War POW to be buried in Robert E Lee’s Arlington Cemetery First Lt. Herman Falk, a 1950 graduate of The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina, went missing with 156 other soldiers from Company B, 38th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division, on Feb. 12, 1951, during operations against the Chinese People’s Volunteer Forces near Changboing-ni, […]
Tony saw plenty of combat in the Pacific. But he is most famed for his actions at the Battle of Iwo Jima. A son of immigrants, Tony Stein enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1942, becoming a Paramarine. Paramarines were an experiment to test the idea of dropping Marines into battle. His regiment saw plenty […]
Retired Army Colonel Van T. Barfoot loved his country and had served it bravely in three wars, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. So, he proudly flew his American flag on a 21 foot pole in the front yard of his Virginia home. But in December 2009, his local homeowners’ association told the veteran, now 90 years […]
How tough do you have to be to survive a Nazi concentration camp, defend a hilltop against wave after wave of enemy troops – twice – then spend 2 ½ years in another hellish prison camp, and still live through it? Hard as nails tough, Corporal Rubin tough. That’s him in the photo. Hungarian-born Tibor […]
In Vietnam, he was part of an operation to battle and stop the Viet Cong’s resupply line along the coast. Within a year the enemy had to go inland to move supplies, using the tortuous Ho Chi Minh Trail as it wound through Laos and Cambodia. Chief Warrant Officer Bernard Webber added that victory to […]
Before the Battle of the Bulge of WWII, American forces fought the Battle of Hurtgen Forest – the longest single battle in the history of the US Army. When the Germans were defeated in France in August 1944, GIs began to believe the war would be over by Christmas, but when the Americans reached German […]
This is the second story about “The Filthy 13.” If you missed the first one, you can read it here. Known for their disregard of military discipline, they didn’t take a lot of baths, didn’t keep their barracks clean. Too busy going AWOL. They were members of the 101st Airborne, as you can see from […]
Have you ever seen the movie, The Dirty Dozen? The real life soldiers it was based on were known as “The Filthy 13.” And a crew of troublemakers they were! Jack Agnew recalled it like this: “We weren’t murderers or nothing. We just did a lot more than they asked us to do, and we […]
