Quantcast
Channel: War Tales
Viewing all 558 articles
Browse latest View live
↧

Lt. Earl Swillum served aboard LST-121 at Saipan, Peleliu, Iwo Jima & Okinawa

April 16, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
The hand-written note on the back of the framed 8 X 10-inch black and white photo on the wall of Earl Swillum’s Port Charlotte home reads: “Iwo Jima, Day 3.” On the flip side it shows LST-121 on the beach with its bow in the island’s black volcanic sand two days before the Marines put [...]
↧
Search

U.S. 8th Air Force saved Britain from Hitler during WW II old airman says

April 18, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
The American 8th Air Force saved the English from being invaded and defeated by Germany during World War II, according to Wes Belleson, who served as a tail gunner in a B-24 “Liberator” flying from a field near Norwich, England during the Second World War. “It’s my idea we saved England. The Germans were bombing [...]
↧
↧

With 3 engines out and carrying a load of A-bombs Maj. Nick Firda had a Cold War dilemma

April 21, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
It was the height of the Cold War in the 1960s. Maj. Nick Firda was flying a secret Strategic Air Command mission in a B-52 bomber loaded with atomic bombs across the Atlantic Ocean to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina when an oil pressure problem caused him to shut his first engine [...]
↧

Quartermaster Harold Tyson took part in 7 major battles aboard USS Sheridan during WW II

April 23, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
Harold Tyson was a teenage quartermaster 2nd class at the helm of the USS Sheridan (APA-51), an attack transport, in seven major Pacific battles during World War II. He and his ship took part in the Invasion of Tarawa, Kwajalein, Saipan, Guam, Leyte, Philippines and Okinawa, the largest island engagement during the Second World War. [...]
↧

Marvin Aronow was wounded serving as a mortar-man during Korean War

April 25, 2013, 11:58 pm
$
0
0
The day after Thanksgiving, Nov. 26, 1951, Marvin Aronow from Bronx, N.Y. was drafted. He wound up in Korea as a member of I-Company, 31st Regiment, 7th Infantry Division. “It wasn’t my idea to get drafted. When I got put in the Army I told them, ‘My teeth were bad.’ They said, ‘Here’s a rifle. [...]
↧
↧

Soldier led 10th Armored Division tanks into Nazi Germany

April 28, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
George Sutherland of Port Charlotte, Fla. was in the vanguard of Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army atop his light tank fighting his way into Germany during the closing months of World War II. A staff sergeant in command of a reconnaissance platoon of five tanks, he spearheaded the 10th Armored Division’s lightening advance into the [...]
↧

Robert Robb battled for the ‘Punchbowl’ during Korean War

April 30, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
Cpl. Robert Robb was a sniper attached to Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment, 1st Marine Division in Korea during the war. His unit took Hill 749, a volcanic mound known as the ‘Punchbowl,’ away from a regiment of North Koreans holding the high ground in mid-September 1951. Lt. Barney Adams, Robb’s platoon leader, wrote [...]
↧

Young Dutchman puts flowers on American soldier’s grave for almost a decade

May 2, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
Since he was 13, almost a decade ago, Robin Gulikers of the Netherlands has placed flowers on the grave of Pfc. Robert Ramsdell buried in the American Military Cemetery at Maastricht, Netherlands. It’s become a monthly ritual for the teenager, part of the Dutch “Fallen Not Forgotten” program honoring American servicemen killed in action whiled [...]
↧
Search

Port Charlotte, Fla. man flew in three wars

May 5, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
As a kid Hal Johnson wanted to be a fighter pilot. When he joined the Army Air Corps in 1943 they made him a B-24 “Liberator” bomber pilot. “By the time I graduated from B-24 training and was ready to go overseas, I was told they needed pilots to fly B-29 ‘Superfortresses.’ So I went [...]
↧
↧

Lt. Bruno Virgili and Lulubelle Gaehner got ‘hitched’ before he flew off to WW II

May 8, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
Before flying off to war in North African in the spring of 1942 during World War II, Bruno Virgili married Lulubelle Gaehner. It wasn’t easy. He was a lieutenant in the Army Air Corps stationed in Long Beach, Calif. She was working in a munitions plant in Connecticut. “My wife-to-be took a DC-3 (airliner) out […]
↧

Alex Haak served in US Army while an illegal alien

May 13, 2013, 4:58 am
$
0
0
Alex Haak was 8-years-old when the German Army defeated the much smaller Dutch Army in May 1940 and marched into Amsterdam, Netherlands his home town and occupied the country for five years. As World War II progressed conditions for him and his family and friends grew worse and worse. “I remember the German airplanes flying […]
↧

Cornel Dolana survived WW II Plosti raid and many more calamities on way to U.S.

May 15, 2013, 5:38 am
$
0
0
Cornel Dolana is a survivor. As a child he survived the German occupation of his country on his parents’ family farm outside Plosti, Romania during World War II. He survived the Communist takeover of his country as a teenager. He escaped Communism and fled to Yugoslavia, Italy, France and finally, in the early 1960s, the […]
↧

Sgt. Ron York served with the 34th Combat Engineers in Vietnam in ’69-’70

May 16, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
Halfway through his senior year in high school Ron York, who grew up in Griffith, Ind., decided he had had enough education and joined the Army. In June 1969 he arrived in Vietnam a member of the 34th Combat Engineers. “My engineering outfit was based in Puloy, about 65 miles outside of Saigon,” the 63 […]
↧
↧

His grandfather shook Lincoln’s hand – Pvt. Franz Baumann, one of first 75,000 Union volunteers

May 19, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
Frank Hochstetter’s grandfather shook Abraham Lincoln ‘s hand after the 1863 draft riots in New York City. The wispy 93-year-old Pennsylvania snowbird, who winters in Englewood, is fond of telling people who shake his hand, “Now you’ve shook the hand that shook the hand of Abraham Lincoln.” Pvt. Franz Baumann, his grandfather, was a member […]
↧

World War II was almost over when Philip Merrill got aboard the USS Hornet

May 21, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
Philip Merrill almost missed World World II. Two weeks before graduating from high school at 17 he was sworn into the Navy on May 17, 1943. “I joined the V-12 Program. I was sent to Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J.,” the 87-year-old Punta Gorda, Fla. resident recalled. “This was a two year training […]
↧
Search

Eddie Hrycaj served as Army corpsman on Guadalcanal during WW II

May 23, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
About the time Corpsman Eddie Hrycaj landed on Guadalcanal in 1943 with the 101st Medical Regiment that took charge of the 52nd Field Hospital attached to the Army’s Americal Division the tide of war was starting to turn against the emperor’s troops. The Battle of Midway had come and gone and with it four of […]
↧

Joan Jacobson recalls husband’s Medal of Honor exploits

May 26, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
For 38 years Joan Jacobson was the wife and then the widow of Medal of Honor recipient Maj. Douglas T. Jacobson USMC. It was a big responsibility. When she married her Marine officer husband she knew nothing about the Medal of Honor or what it represented. “I had no idea what the Medal of Honor […]
↧
↧

Bud Lounsbury had the cushiest job in the Navy during Korean War

May 28, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
Bud Lounsbury of North Port, Fla. may have had the cushiest job in he Navy! He served as a seaman aboard the fleet admiral’s barge in the Mediterranean during the Korean War. “I made two cruises with Adm. Richard Moorehouse, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet in ’53 and ’54. It was great duty,” the 79-year-old […]
↧

Roy Johnson served aboard the destroyer USS-Wiltsie during Korean War

May 30, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
When Roy Johnson of Port Charlotte went aboard the destroyer USS Wiltsie (DD-716) in December 1952, just before a shakedown crew, he was an 18-year-old apprentice fireman. Since the ship ran on steam turbine power Johnson was made a messenger aboard the Wiltsie. “It was in the shipyard in Long Beach, Calif. for a complete […]
↧

Arcadia flying-bomb basis for WW II German ‘Buzz Bomb’

June 2, 2013, 11:38 pm
$
0
0
The devastating German V-1 rockets that rained terror and death, during the ‘Blitz,’ down on the inhabitants of London in World War II had their birth in Arcadia, Fla. An old black and white picture showing a motor-driven flying bomb sitting on a four-wheeled carriage on a narrow-gauge railroad track 85 years ago was where […]
↧
Viewing all 558 articles
Browse latest View live
Search