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Carl Letterie of Venice graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West...
Carl Letterie was a 1965 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. After graduation his first assignment as a young second lieutenant was Fort Bliss, Texas to attend the Air Defense...
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Sea duty for Arnold LeMoine aboard carrier USS Cape Esperance was dull &...
During the Korea War era—from 1951 to 1955—Arnold LeMoine of Deep Creek subdivision near Punta Gorda served as a machinist-mate 3rd Class aboard the escort aircraft carrier USS Cape Esperance (CVE-88)....
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Katherine Riposta tells husband, Frank’s, Korean War story: He shot at enemy...
Pfc. Frank Riposta of Deep Creek, a Punta Gorda, Fla. subdivision, was a loader in a 105mm Howitzer artillery unit during the Korean War in ’52 and ’53. When he wasn’t firing his 105 at advancing North...
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Richard Mikutis spent a year with 800th MP Battalion in Japan after war
Richard Mikutis of Port Charlotte was a teenaged military policeman who served with the U.S. 800th MP Battalion in Kyoto, Japan as part of our occupation troops immediately after the Second World War....
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Treasured Zippo found
Two months ago, Ray Lynch lost his Zippo lighter in an Englewood Circle K. It meant a lot to him. A dead war buddy gave him the silver lighter 34 years ago when they both served as members of a U.S....
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Sailor helped with top secret codes
Because he could type Ken Lubold of Englewood got a job shortly after the end of World War II transcribing Morris Code for the U.S. Navy and working the Navy’s top secret code machine while serving in...
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Joe Cigich was shot at only once during WWII
Only once during the whole time Joe Cigich fought his way through Europe with Gen. Omar Bradley’s 9th Army during World War II was he shot at by the enemy. “I was up on a pole stringing phone cable...
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Jacob Walker of Punta Gorda drove a Sherman tank during World War II
Jacob Walker of Punta Gorda remembers, like it was yesterday, how he joined the service before the Second World War more than 75 years ago. “Seven of us boys were sitting along a creek in the Tennessee...
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Duane Waterman of Punta Gorda was on minesweeper in Pacific Theatre during...
Duane Waterman, who lives south of Punta Gorda, served aboard a minesweeper, USS YMS-200, at the end of World War II. He was a seaman 1st class and she was a wooden boat about 20 feet wide and 100-feet...
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Carter Archambeault of Port Charlotte served aboard USS Hissem during ‘Cuban...
Carter Archambeault of Port Charlotte joined the Navy just in time for the Cuban Missile Crisis that mesmerized the world for two weeks during October 1962. It was a period in world events where the...
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Lt. Col. Ian Milne of Burnt Store Isles flew F-4 ‘Phantom’ jet with nuclear...
For two decades, from 1973 to 1993, Lt. Col. Ian Milne of Burnt Store Isles south of Punta Gorda, Fla. flew some of the U.S. Air Force’s most lethal fighter planes in this nation’s arsenal from air...
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Lt. Col. Ian Milne had more combat time flying ‘Predator Drone’ than 20 years...
In 2010, 17 years after Lt. Col. Ian Milne of Burnt Store Isles near Punta Gorda, Fla. retired from two decades of flying the hottest fighter-bombers in the U.S. Air Force’s arsenal, he was recruited...
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Punta Gorda man was in Patton’s famed unit
Former Sgt. Ed Strnad pulled a massive 8-inch artillery piece behind a modified Sherman tank through Europe during World War II as part of Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army. The gun was the kind and size...
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Al Tracy was U.S. Army spy operating behind ‘Iron Curtain’ in East Germany...
Al Tracy of Nokomis was a spy working in East Germany in the ‘60s. He was a member of the U.S. Military Liaison Mission operating out of spy headquarters in 1966 located in a big house in Potsdam....
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Pfc. Joe Lukasek was cannoneer with 124th Anti-Aircraft Battalion that fought...
Joe Lukasek of Port Charlotte, Fla. was a cannoneer in A-Company, 124th Anti-Aircraft Battalion attached to Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army in Europe during World War II. His anti-aircraft unit shot down...
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Bob Schaeffer of Maple Leaf Estates served as medic in Korea with 1st Marine...
Bob Schaeffer of Maple Leaf Estates Golf & Country Club in Port Charlotte, Fla. was a Navy medic attached to the 1st Marine Division during the Korean War. Most of his overseas service was in a...
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John Kohout of Port Charlotte, Fla. joined 11th Airborne and went to Pacific...
By the time John Kohout of Port Charlotte, Fla. graduated from jump school at Fort Benning, Ga. V-E Day had come and gone. Since the Germans had already surrendered he became a replacement soldier in...
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Radioman Sandy Dunn served aboard USS Achilles in the S.W. Pacific at close...
A couple of days before Radioman 1/C Sandy Dunn of Chestnut Creek Subdivision in Venice, Fla. joined the crew of the USS Achilles (ARL-41 repair ship) during the Philippine Invasion on Nov. 12, 1944...
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Former Sgt. Jim Franklin of Port Charlotte fought in 5 major campaigns during...
Jim Franklin of Port Charlotte fought in five major battles as a member of the 82nd Automatic Weapons Battalion attached to the 2nd Infantry Division during the 11 months and 19 days he served at the...
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Joe Parry served aboard the USS Wrangell at Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Leyte in WW II
Joe Parry of Port Charlotte, Fla. was a radioman aboard an ammunition ship involved in three of the primary battles in the Pacific Theatre of Operation during World War II—Iwo Jima, Okinawa and the...
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