Free Republic

My wife and I went to a Republican fund-raiser this weekend - a wine-tasting party. At our table an eldery couple sat down - both in their late 80's. The man was a WW II vet. Joked that he joined the army in 1940 only for one year and ended up getting out in 1946. Was in the Normandy invasion all the way to Germany. Was part of the group that liberated Dachau. Swore up and down that Patton was the greatest general ever. Had some good conversation with both he and his wife.

Eisenhower said the simple Higgins boat was the key to victoryBEAUFORT - For days now, the men, all in their 80s, have trickled in as if visiting a friend in the hospital. They stand on the observation balcony inside the N.C. Maritime Museum's barnlike waterfront boat shed, mixed among the tourists and squinting at the rust-streaked, rectangular hulk on the shop floor. Eventually they have to speak. "Is that the LCVP?" they ask one of workers down on the floor, though they know the answer better than anyone. Then the stories start, stories about how this strange boat carried the...

RUSSIANS REPORT ROUTING JAPANESE IN BORDER BATTLE Defeat of Invading Division in Changkufeng Zone Claimed – Its Losses Put at 400 NEW PROTEST IS ORDERED Tokyo Tells of Shooting Down 5 Soviet Bombers in Korea – High Command Confers By WALTER DURANTY Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES. MOSCOW, Aug. 1.-Soviet forces hurled back a Japanese division in the disputed Changkufeng zone on the Siberian-Manchukuoan border after a two-day battle in which artillery, tanks and planes were used, it was declared in a government communiqué issued here tonight. The communiqué said the Japanese casualties totaled 400 dead and wounded....

There is another reason, however, that Chinese people almost seem to automatically express their hate for the Japanese when the subject is broached. State controlled television in China has for many years now been showing programs that constantly remind the Chinese of the horrors perpetrated upon them by the Japanese. According to some of my Chinese friends, the television channels in China are full of programs and movies that allow the Chinese to at least partly relive the Japanese incursion into China. I have had a chance to watch a few of these programs, and I am always shocked by...

BARLETTA, Italy -- Collecting music written in internment camps before and during World War II may n ot occur to everyone but that has been Francesco Lotoro's quest since 1991. "To allow the musicians to continue to work was also a way to control them better," said the 44-year-old Italian Jew. "At Auschwitz, there were seven orchestras." Lotoro has amassed some 4,000 pieces, all composed between March 1933, when the Nazis' Dachau death camp was opened soon after Hitler won absolute power, and the end of World War II in 1945. But while much is from Nazi camps, Lotoro's collection...

Police evacuated a San Rafael neighborhood Tuesday afternoon when live World War II ordnance was discovered in a garage. The resident said he found two hand grenades and a mortar that had been brought back from the war as souvenirs by his wife's late husband and had been stored in the garage for more than 50 years, police spokeswoman Margo Rohrbacher said. Police found a live 37mm anti-tank projectile, a live hand grenade and an inert mortar. The Napa County Sheriff's Department bomb squad and the San Rafael Fire Department evacuated residents on Wolfe and Antonette avenues after the discovery...

AUSTRALIA may soon issue medals and provide financial support to the "fuzzy wuzzy angels" of Papua New Guinea. The Koiari people along the Kokoda Track earned the nickname during the 1942 battles against invading Japanese forces, when they carried Australian supplies and equipment and helped evacuate wounded soldiers. "The fuzzy wuzzy angels saved the lives of many Australian troops during the Kokoda campaign," Liberal Senator Guy Barnett said today. "They carried stretchers, stores and sometimes wounded diggers directly on their shoulders over some of the toughest terrain in the world. "It has been over 65 years since the Kokoda battles...

HIGHLY decorated war veteran and former head of the defence force General Sir Francis Hassett has died. The Defence Department said last night General Hassett died on Wednesday at the age of 90. "He was a fine man, warrior chief and remarkable servant of the nation," the department said in a statement. The soldier served in three wars and towards the end of a 42-year military career became head of the army and then chief of defence force staff in the 1970s. General Hassett fought in World War II and in Malaya, and is best known for his role in...

We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved and the world prayed for its rescue. Here, in Normandy, the rescue began. Here, the Allies stood and fought against tyranny, in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history. We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty...

Southeast Texas seniors describe storming beach at Normandy as young men By: ROSE YBARRA, The Enterprise 06/06/2008 Updated 06/06/2008 09:57:18 AM CDT Arlie Horn stands by a display of medals he received while serving in the U.S. Army. On the evening of June 5, 1944, Arlie Ray Horn and his fellow soldiers from the 175th Infantry Regiment, 29th Division were fired up. Their adrenaline was pumping as they prepared mentally and physically to invade Omaha Beach - the code name for a spot on the shores of Normandy on the French coast. The troops were ready for immediate battle against...

THE Australian Army's worst training accident, in which 26 men died, should be commemorated each year to acknowledge their forgotten sacrifice, a memorial service heard yesterday. The special service in a field outside the Kapooka army base near Wagga Wagga in central NSW was held to mark the 63rd anniversary of a blast that killed 26 trainee sappers when an explosives lesson in an underground bunker went wrong on May 21, 1945. The army decided to hold the service after an article in The Australian last month highlighted how the tragedy had been airbrushed from official histories of World War...

ADDRESS BY HIS EXCELLENCY MAJOR GENERAL MICHAEL JEFFERY AC CVO MC GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA ON THE OCCASION OF SERVICE OF COMMEMORATION OF THE BATTLE OF THE CORAL SEA AUSTRALIAN-AMERICAN MEMORIAL, FIELD MARSHAL SIR THOMAS BLAMEY SQUARE, CANBERRA The recent discovery of HMAS SYDNEY after more than 66 years - with so many lives lost, so many grieving families - has been a poignant reminder, if one were needed, of the significance of Australian and United States naval operations in the Second World War. You will recall that in 1941, Australian divisions, fighter squadrons and naval units were...

The last surviving veterans of the Second World War Dambusters raid will meet for what is expected to be the last time on Saturday night to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the mission. Engineers, ground staff and the last surviving pilot to fly one of the 19 modified Lancaster bombers of 617 Squadron will be amongst those at the gathering. The veterans are now all in their late 80s and many have said they plan to make these anniversary celebrations their last. Their mission, on May 16, 1943, to destroy German dams with Barnes Wallis’s bouncing bombs, has become part...

The Robert L. Capp collection at the Hoover Institution Archives contains ten never-before-published photographs illustrating the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing. These photographs, taken by an unknown Japanese photographer, were found in 1945 among rolls of undeveloped film in a cave outside Hiroshima by U.S. serviceman Robert L. Capp, who was attached to the occupation forces. Unlike most photos of the Hiroshima bombing, these dramatically convey the human as well as material destruction unleashed by the atomic bomb. Mr. Capp donated them to the Hoover Archives in 1998 with the provision that they not be reproduced until 2008. Three...

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Budapest, November 1944: Another German train has loaded its cargo of Jews bound for Auschwitz. A young Swedish diplomat pushes past the SS guard and scrambles onto the roof of the cattle car. Ignoring shots fired over his head, he reaches through the open door to outstretched hands, passing out dozens of bogus "passports" that extended Sweden's protection to the bearers. He orders everyone with a document off the train and into his caravan of vehicles. The guards look on dumfounded. Raoul Wallenberg was a minor official of a neutral country, with an unimposing appearance and a...

SIXTY-SIX years ago, a month after HMAS Sydney disappeared off the coast of Western Australia, it was standing room only at St Andrew's Cathedral in the city that shares its name. Widows stood in the aisles, praying for lost loved ones, amid hopes the war would end some day soon. Yesterday, at that same cathedral, families of the 645 crew who died when the Sydney was sunk by the German raider Kormoran spilled out on to the street as hundreds of mourners gathered to pay their respects. "I don't mind being outside," said Brian Doyle, whose 19-year-old uncle Thomas Glackin...

BRUCE Buckham is the kind of war hero that kids used to love reading about in comics. As an Australian pilot at the controls of Lancaster bombers, he flew 76 bombing missions over Germany and the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. Mr Buckham, 89, who lives in quiet retirement in the leafy Brisbane suburb of Indooroopilly, sank the German floating fortress the Tirpitz, wiped out a top secret factory he believes the Nazis were using to develop their own version of the atomic bomb and set a record by flying more than 15 hours non-stop. While flying...

Wing Commander Paddy Barthropp, who died on April 16 aged 87, was one of the RAF’s most ebullient and colourful characters; he fought in the Battle of Britain, escaped twice from prisoner-of-war camps and later became a test pilot and a winning jockey in Hong Kong.Aged 19 Barthropp joined No 602 Squadron to fly Spitfires from an airfield on the south coast. His first day of action was September 15 1940, the climax of the Battle, when he was airborne four times. In his excitement he managed to fire off all his ammunition during each engagement and readily acknowledged that...

For only the second time in 85 years, Time magazine abandoned the traditional red border it uses on its cover. The occasion – to push more global warming alarmism. The cover of the April 21 issue of Time took the famous Iwo Jima photograph by Joe Rosenthal of the Marines raising the American flag and replaced the flag with a tree. The cover story by Bryan Walsh calls green “the new red, white and blue.” Donald Mates, an Iwo Jima veteran, told the Business & Media Institute April 17 that using that photograph for that cause was a “disgrace.” “It’s...

GRIPPING, crystal-clear new pictures of HMAS Sydney reveal the devastating bombardment by the Germans - but are also testament to the heroics of Aussie gunners who never gave up. Shipwreck investigator David Mearns said the images were remarkable for their clarity and their documentation of the punishment suffered by Sydney and its crew. "I have studied many historical accounts of the battle between Sydney and Kormoran, but none of these could fully prepare me for the enormous damage withstood by Sydney,'' he said. One of the new photos shows a cluster of four large-calibre shell hits on Sydney's starboard side....

IT has all the makings of a Boy's Own blockbuster: a mass breakout by German POWs from a rural Victorian internment camp; a mysterious dictionary revealing dotted codes of vital military importance; and a body washed up on a remote Indian Ocean island. These events - three of many surrounding the evolving, extraordinary story of HMAS Sydney - continue to fascinate historians, who are now tantalisingly close to solving a military riddle that has haunted the nation for more than 66 years. In the next few days, shipwreck hunter David Mearns and his crew aboard the SV Geosounder will sink...

HITLER ASSUMES CONTROL OF ARMY; RETIRES 15 GENERALS AND SHIFTS 25; RIBBENTROP MADE FOREIGN MINISTER AIDE TO RULE ARMY Blomberg, Fritch Are Retired – Goering Is Made Marshal PAPEN, OTHERS RECALLED Neurath Heads Secret Foreign Affairs Board – Reichstag Summoned for Feb. 20 By OTTO D. TOLISCHUSWireless to THE NEW YORK TIMES BERLIN, Feb 4.-The National Socialist Cabinet crisis that has been smoldering for a week behind walls of silence came to an end tonight when with a Napoleonic gesture Chancellor Adolf Hitler assumed personal charge both of the armed forces and the Third Reich’s foreign policy. He reorganized both...

My father passed away this month. Among his effects is a book published by the officers of the 329th Infrantry in July, 1945, from Germany.

Introduction World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in the history of mankind. However, the half century that now separates us from that conflict has exacted its toll on our collective knowledge. While World War II continues to absorb the interest of military scholars and historians, as well as its veterans, a generation of Americans has grown to maturity largely unaware of the political, social, and military implications of a war that, more than any other, united us as a people with a common purpose. Highly relevant today, World War II has much to teach...

TO EVERY BRITON In 1896 I addressed an appeal to every Briton in South Africa on behalf of my countrymen who had gone there as labourers or traders and their assistants. It had its effect. However important it was from my viewpoint, the cause which I pleaded then was insignificant compared with the cause which prompts this appeal. I appeal to every Briton, wherever he may be now, to accept the method of non-violence instead of that of war for the adjustment of relations between nations and other matters. Your statesmen have declared that this a war on behalf of...

Jefferson J. DeBlanc, a World War II fighter pilot who was awarded the Medal of Honor for shooting down five Japanese planes on a single day while running out of fuel, died Nov. 22 in Lafayette, La. He was 86 and lived St. Martinville, La.. The cause was complications of pneumonia, said his daughter, Barbara DeBlanc Romero. On Jan. 31, 1943, Mr. DeBlanc, then a lieutenant in the Marines, took off from Guadalcanal in his Wildcat fighter, leading a six-plane section of Marine Fighting Squadron 112. They were assigned to protect dive bombers and torpedo planes attacking Japanese ships off...

Jefferson J. DeBlanc, seated in the cockpit of a F4F Wildcat fighter plane, found ways to beat death for three years. But on Thanksgiving Day, DeBlanc, a Marine pilot in World War II's Pacific Theater, passed away from complications related to pneumonia. He was 86. So many World War II veterans have died recently that we don't often pause to pay them the honor they're due. DeBlanc may provide a chance to make up for it. DeBlanc wore the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military honor. DeBlanc, born in Lockport, enlisted in the Marines five months before Pearl Harbor....

Elizabeth Nel, who has died aged 90, was the last surviving personal secretary to have worked for Winston Churchill during the Second World War.At 10.30 one evening in late May 1941 Elizabeth Layton, as she then was, first encountered the prime minister in 10 Downing Street as he paced up and down in his siren suit.There was no greeting; he disliked new faces. The new shorthand-typist sat down at the specially adapted silent typewriter, and immediately made a mistake when he started to dictate.Churchill liked his minutes typed in double-spaced lines, but she used single spacing. He exploded. With the...

A Hero Among US by: James F. Davis, November 09, 2007 The first Medal of Honor since 9/11 was recently awarded posthumously by the President to Michael Murphy. It saddens me that, of the major media, only one, Fox News, carried the ceremony live. This is the highest award for bravery in defending our country. Our people, especially our youth, need to know about the kind of person who risked his life so that the rest of us could live free. I discovered I had one such hero in my own family. After taking my uncle, Gerald F. Davis, to...

Countess Andrée de Jongh, who has died in Brussels aged 90, founded and organised the Comet Escape Line, the route from Belgium through France to Spain used by hundreds of Allied airmen to escape from Nazi-occupied Europe.Known to all simply as “Dédée”, Andrée de Jongh began her resistance work as soon as the Germans advanced into Belgium in May 1940. At the time she was a 24-year-old commercial artist and Belgian Red Cross volunteer, but she gave up her work in order to nurse wounded soldiers; once they were able to walk, she found them safe houses and recruited her...

By Germany's wealthy and reclusive Quandt family, a major BMW shareholder, has gone on the defensive. For decades the family repressed its Nazi past, but a new documentary film provides new photos of old revelations that have prompted the Quandts to confront their own history of using slave laborers in factories during World War II.It is difficult to ignore the stories of former forced laborers during the Nazi era. Their memories are painful to listen to, even when they are presented calmly and without any finger-pointing. One former forced laborer telling his story today is Carl-Adolf Soerensen, a former Danish...

Our WWII Veterans are dropping like flies. I lost my Dad in February. I thought I would pass on some of the information that I found when I inherited a photo album of his experiences. He was stationed on Guam in 1944 and 1945. He arrived on the day the Staff declared the island won, when there were still 5000 hostile Japanese on the Island. This album is amazing--it shows an accurate picture of that conflict (about 300 photos.) He was a SeaBee and apparently spent most of his time at Agana. There was a poem that he posted at...

Squadron Leader Terry O’Brien, who has died aged 91, was a brave and outspoken pilot who served with the Chindits and later flew many clandestine sorties in south-east Asia, experiences which he later recounted in a widely-acclaimed trilogy of memoirs.O’Brien had completed a tour of operations flying bombers in England and survived the Japanese advance on Singapore and Java when he volunteered to join the 4/9th Gurkha Rifles assigned to General Orde Wingate’s Long Range Penetration Group, better known as the Chindits.He was appointed the battalion’s air liaison officer and, after an arduous six-month training period, landed by glider with...

During World War II the Army Corps of Engineers needed to hide the Burbank Lockheed Aircraft Plant to protect it from Japanese air attack. They covered it with camouflage netting and trompe J'oeit to make it look like a rural subdivision from the air. (Pictures at web site)

Major Sir Hamish Forbes, 7th Bt, who has died aged 91, won an MC while serving with the Welsh Guards and was later appointed MBE (Military) in recognition of his numerous attempts to escape from a series of PoW camps. In May 1940 Forbes, then a lieutenant, was an intelligence officer serving with 1st Welsh Guards. In the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Force to Dunkirk, he was taking part in the defence of his battalion HQ when his party was overrun and he was taken prisoner. He was sent in a cattle truck to Aachen to be deloused, and...

Newly released photos of SS officers sitting in canvas chairs, participating in sing-alongs and enjoying their free time at a recreation home near Auschwitz have shocked many in Germany this week.

Group Captain Willie “Tirpitz” Tait, who died on Friday aged 90, had a brilliant wartime career as a bomber commander; he attacked some of the most demanding and difficult targets, the majority as the leader or master bomber, and will long be remembered for his three attacks against the German battleship Tirpitz.By the end of the war he had flown more than 100 operations, in respect of which he had been awarded, uniquely, four DSOs and two DFCs.The spectre of the Tirpitz emerging into the Atlantic to cause havoc amongst convoys carrying vital supplies and troops, particularly the crucial convoys...

There were fins all around, the killer sharks just circling, waiting, assessing their prey in their usual silent, sinister way. For the men strung out in the oil-streaked water, clinging to the sides of flimsy rafts or floating in sodden life-jackets, the sight was terrifying and the underwater brush of leathery skin against a submerged leg, or the nudge of a snout, was gut-wrenching. These men were already survivors, the remaining 900 sailors of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. Just three-quarters of the crew had managed to get off the heavy cruiser when she was blown apart by torpedoes from a Japanese...

THE 66-year search for the wreck of HMAS Sydney is believed to be over. The ship, in which 645 Australians died, is believed to have been found by a group of West Australians using a grappling hook and a camera last weekend. The Sydney sank after a battle with German raider, Kormoran, on November 19, 1941, Fairfax newspapers said. Video film of the find shows tangled wreckage over large, much longer than any other ship known to have sunk nearby.

INDIANAPOLIS — A Worthington man finally will be laid to rest Saturday in his home town after at least 65 years away. Fireman 3rd Class Alfred Eugene Livingston was aboard the USS Oklahoma when the ship was attacked and capsized in Pearl Harbor by a Japanese torpedo aircraft Dec. 7, 1941, according to a Navy Office of Community Outreach news release. His remains arrived Thursday in Indiana after spending more than 60 years buried in two different cemeteries in Hawaii as an unknown soldier, according to a Department of Defense memorandum. About 20 family members stood by somberly as a...

The Japanese government has resumed a search for the remains of World War II soldiers said to be buried in mass graves on the Aleutian island of Attu, U.S. officials said. More than 60 years after one of the deadliest battles of the war, the bodies of nearly 2,500 Japanese soldiers still lie beneath the bog of the tiny fog-draped island at the western tip of the chain, according to estimates by the Department of Defense. Last week, a group of Japanese and U.S. officials made a four-day trip to the island and used shovels and pickaxes to verify the...

Tulsa - Funeral services will be held this morning for Dr. Wilbert Wilson, the last of the Buffalo Soldiers, who passed away last week at age 86. Wilson's unit, the 10th Cavalry, served during World War II, guarding the California-Mexico border from attempts by the Japanese to invade the country. In recent years, Wilson spent his free time making appearances at area schools, educating children about the Buffalo Soldiers. The name Buffalo Soldiers was given to troops of the all-black 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments during the Indian wars of the late 1800s. Because of the successes of the all-black...

MOSCOW. July 8 (Interfax) - The Federal Security Service has been assisting the United States in investigating crimes against humanity. "Since 1994, 60,000 pages of documents dealing with Nazi crimes during World War II, kept at the FSB's Central Archives, have been handed over to the United States," Vasily Khristoforov, the head of the FSB's Register and Archives Department, said in an interview with Interfax. Cooperation between American and Russian law enforcement and judiciary agencies led to a court ruling to deprive a Nazi accomplice in the extermination of the Warsaw Ghetto of American citizenship, he said. Copies of trophy...

A MONUMENT TO A GIANT FROM SERBIAN HISTORY Voyvoda Momchilo R. Djujich is immortalized on the grounds of St. Sava Monastery in Libertyville, Illinois Voyvoda Momchilo R. Djujich is now there permanently, beside his commander General Draza Mihailovich, along with Voyvoda Pavle Djurisic, all facing east toward the far away Serbian lands where their legacies were forged over 60 years ago in the battles that proved their measure as men. All three were leaders of a cause that remains alive in the hearts of those who came to pay tribute on May 20, 2007 at the St. Sava Monastery in...

In 1942, the Allied forces were losing a considerable amount of merchant shipping in the Atlantic Ocean, due to German submarine forces and the lack of adequate air cover in the mid-Atlantic. The range of operating aircraft was not sufficient to cover this area and aircraft carriers were in short supply to allow for shorter range flying. Plans for an Allied invasion of Europe were also underway and it was felt that large floating platforms were needed to assist the assault forces. The Second World War was also a time when many scientists were encouraged to develop weapon technology and...

TOKYO (AP) - A U.S. search team on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima is zeroing in on a cave where a Marine combat photographer who filmed the iconic flag-raising 62 years ago is believed to have been killed in battle nine days later, officials told The Associated Press Friday. The seven-member search team is looking for the remains of Sgt. William H. Genaust, who was killed in action after filming the flag-raising atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi. The team is also searching for other U.S. troops killed in the battle - one of the fiercest and most symbolic of...

We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here, in Normandy, the rescue began. Here, the Allies stood and fought against tyranny, in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history. We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty...

Bob Drury and Tom Clavin's "Halsey's Typhoon" is man-against-nature drama at its best. It's an inspiring and thrilling read. It is a true story of heroism and hardship at war. It's also an account of the occasional cowardice, incompetence and cock-ups that occur in every military conflict. It's a story worth knowing and well told, with the pace and riveting immediacy of a good novel. In December of 1944, while supporting Gen. Douglas MacArthur's "I will return" invasion of the Philippine Islands, Adm. William "Bull" Halsey's 170-ship armada suffered a sneak attack from Typhoon Cobra, an unexpected enemy that did...

A BRITISH maritime researcher claims to have solved one of Australia's greatest wartime mysteries by locating the wreck of HMAS Sydney. Timothy Akers also says he has discovered the whereabouts of the German raider Kormoran that sank the Sydney off the coast of Western Australia in November 1941, killing all 645 men on board. And the wrecks of a number of Japanese warships and submarines, also believed to have been involved in the battle, are lying on the ocean floor nearby, Mr Akers claims. However, Mr Akers' claims have been rejected by his former employer – now competitor – and...

As the Senate is mulling the details of a compromise immigration bill hammered together by the odd couple of Sens. Edward Kennedy and Jon Kyl, and as members of Congress hear from their constituents over the Memorial Day recess, it may be worthwhile to put the issue in historical context. For most of our history, the United States had no restrictions on immigration at all. I am told that my Canadian-born grandfather was a "nickel immigrant": He took the five-cent ferry from Windsor, Ontario, north to Detroit roundabout 1896. This situation resulted from America's strong demand for labor, coupled with...