WWII
Tuesday reunion, Friday suggestion
Eighty-three years ago, April 13 August 27, 1942, a Marine automatic rifleman named Robert Joseph Budd was killed on Guadalcanal, along with his best friend Thomas Phillips, and both were buried there. The next morning, the friends were buried side by side in a coconut grove. A burial party noted a broken-down fence as a […]
Jessie Mahaffey, USS Oklahoma survivor, passes
Not sure how we may have missed this at the time, but Jessie A. Mahaffey, a seaman on the USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor, passed May 1 at the age of 102. Mahaffey joined the Navy in the summer of 1941 after graduating high school in Louisiana. After attending boot camp in San Diego, […]
WWII nurse, age 106, donates bullet from husband’s heart to Pearl Harbor museum
A widow of a Pearl Harbor survivor has donated the bullet they removed from his heart after the attack to a museum. He successfully used the war wound to get the young Navy nurse to agree to a date with him (should he survive the surgery), and parlayed that into nearly 50 years of marriage […]
Last? Tuskegee Airman dies
George Hardy, one of the last World War II ‘Tuskegee Airman’ pilots has died at the age of 100, it was announced Friday. Mr. Hardy was the youngest of the 932 pilots commissioned. Hardy was 19 when he flew his first combat sortie over Europe, the office said. He was the youngest Red Tail fighter […]
Valor Friday
The earthly remains of US Army Captain Willibald Bianchi have been identified more than 80 years after he died. Bianchi is notable for having received the Medal of Honor for his actions during the Battle of Bataan in 1942. Bianchi died three years later, after surviving unimaginable horrors before he was able to receive the […]
Valor Friday
The above is an artist’s rendering of what a lone survivor looks like. The plane is “Squawkin’ Chicken”, a Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress, and on one April day in 1944 it was the only plane from its squadron to return. They set out on a mission with hundreds of other bombers. The mission was especially […]
Last original member of the “Bloody Hundredth” dies
John Luckadoo, the last surviving member of the 100th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force in WWII died September 1 at the age of 103. Luckadoo (inevitably nicknamed ‘Lucky’) lived up to his moniker – he survived 25 missions and was returned to the States. The man eventually known as “Lucky” was born March 16, […]
Valor Friday
I talked a while back about one of Norway’s greatest heroes, Captain Gunnar Sønsteby. During World War II, as a member of the Norwegian Resistance, he thrice earned that nation’s highest honor of the War Cross with Swords, among many other awards. The War Cross with Swords is analogous to an American Medal of Honor […]
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