War Stories
A Date That Will Live In Infamy….
At 07;55 Hawaii time on 7 December 1941, the Japanese sent aircraft to bomb the ships in harbor at Pearl Harbor and destroy the base itself. They also sent a few minisubs to assist in the destruction. The attack lasted 1 hour and 15 minutes. Japan’s plan, if the USA had not declared war, was […]
Valor Friday
I’m going to do something a little different. Military folks, particularly in wartime, become a superstitious lot. There are lucky trinkets individuals will carry and there are certainly vehicles seen as cursed or blessed. I’d like to explore some of the latter. The B-26 Marauder, made by the Martin Aircraft Corporation, first flew in November […]
World War II Was Everywhere
… and so was the US Army. Part of this film was shot in Italy’s Volturno River area, showing us how difficult it was for the Army to build, under lousy weather conditions, a pontoon bridge that would hold up a tank and still stand up to the currents of the Volturno River in winter, […]
Merrill’s Marauders: We Few, We Happy Few
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/mco/W5RIOPUOT5E4LNSBNNCAUDDD3U.jpg "Merrill’s Marauders: We Few, We Happy Few")
US Army photo Eight surviving members of Merrill’s Marauders will get a Congressional Gold Medal. It took some work and time, and it has paid off. The photo is from one of those jungle treks. Note the soldier on the bamboo bridge, leading the horse: the man is so skinny that you wonder how short […]
WWI British Tank Recovered
You may recall that World War I came to as the result of actions by a Serbian malcontent named Gavril Princip, when he shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary in 1914. You may recall that, at the time, the Austro-Hungarian empire was quite large. However, it did not include Serbia. With the assassination of the […]
Valor Friday
Leo Rosskamm was a farmhand in Holsensolm, Germany, where he was born and raised, before World War II. In 1938, when he was about 18 years old, Herschel Grynszpan assassinated German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris. Grynszpan, a 17 year old Polish Jew born in Germany, provided a perfect opportunity for the Nazis to […]
Valor Friday
Today’s article I’m calling “Heroism in Conscience.” Conscientious objectors (COs) are those who find it morally reprehensible and against their conscience (usually for religious reasons) to take up arms against their fellow man. The Civil War was the first time conscription occurred in America, and those drafted claiming CO status paid a $300 fine to […]
Cleaning up after WWII
I recently stumbled upon an article that explores the massive undertaking of cleaning up after the world’s largest war and thought you’d all be interested. Head’s up, it’s a long read, but I found it fascinating. The scale of the war is hard to fathom. Tens of millions of men and women were pressed into […]
Recent Comments