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Marine Cpl. George Briede had his face blown off while fighting on Mt....
George Briede, a scout-sniper attached to Company A, 1st Battalion, 9th Regiment, 4th Marine Division, was fighting his way up Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific in World War...
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Bill Hahn of PGI in charge of building ‘Doomsday Presidential Helicopter’ for...
Bill Hahn of Punta Gorda Isles flew a P-2 “Neptune,” twin-engine Navy patrol plane for three years during the“Cold War” in the 1950s searching for Soviet submarines and communication ships off the...
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Jim Walker was flight engineer on P-3 spy plane during ‘Cold War’
Jim Walker of Englewood, Fla. spent most of his 22 years of service in the U.S. Navy as a flight engineer on a P-3 four-engine reconnaissance plane searching for Soviet submarines or monitoring...
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Coast Guardsman LeRoy Zeedyk at ‘West Lock Disaster’ also Saipan, Guadalcanal...
Even before Watertender 1/C LeRoy Zeedyk of Venice sailed into the Southwest Pacific during World War II aboard amphibious landing ship, LST-169, as a member of Gen. Douglas Mac Arthur’s Allied task...
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Pfc. Tom Moore of Port Charlotte, Fla. took part in Battle of Metz, France...
The 3rd Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron, the outfit Pfc. Tom Moore of Port Charlotte, Fla. served with during World War II, was called “Patton’s Ghost Troops.” They were the flamboyant 3rd Army tank...
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Wayne King’s Marine Corps company was surrounded by enemy troops and about to...
Marine Corps Pfc. Wayne King of Rotunda West was a “short-timer” in 1968 when he survived the worst of his nine-months tour during the Vietnam War. His company was sent into the jungle to protect an...
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Sgt. Bernie Shenal of Port Charlotte soldiered with Elvis Presley at Fort...
Former Sgt. Bernie Shenal of Port Charlotte spent the last month of his three-year tour in the U.S. Army with Elvis Presley at Fort Hood, Texas in 1958. Shenal was in the 2nd Armored Division and...
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CW-4 Rod Williams flew a ‘Cobra’ chopper during multiple tours in Vietnam
Rod Williams of Royale Palm Retirement Center in Port Charlotte, Fla. spent almost 30 years in the Marine Corps. He started out as a ground pounder carrying a rifle, most of the rest of his career was...
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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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Michael Kelley served as baker aboard USS Nueces in Vietnam in 1968
Michael Kelley sailed for South Vietnam aboard the self-propelled barracks ship USS Nueces (APB-40) in 1968. He was the night baker aboard the strange craft that anchored at Vung Tau, near the Mekong...
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Former Cpl. Leo Scaruffi was member of U. S. Constabulary Force in Germany at...
Leo Scaruffi, who lives in South Port Square Senior Living in Port Charlotte, was a member of the U.S. Constabulary forces in Bavaria after World War II ended. Their job was to help the German...
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Seaman 1st/C Sylvia Scaruffi typed her way through Korean War on IBM...
Sylvia Scaruffi of Port Charlotte, Fla. joined the Navy shortly before her 21st birthday near the start of the Korean War in 1951. She was following in the footsteps of her older brothers shortly...
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George Bagley served 22 years in Army during WW II, Korean War and start of...
George Bagley of Rotunda was in the U.S. Army for 22 years— from 1942, during the middle of World War II, through the Korean War and on until 1964 near the beginning of the Vietnam War.He first saw...
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Pfc. Joe Steimel of Holiday Park North Port received 2 Purple Hearts fighting...
Pfc. Joe Steimel of Holiday Park in North Port was a twice-wounded mortar-man who served in the 29th Infantry Division that fought its way through France and Germany during the last year of the war in...
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Duane Holmbeck was barber aboard anti-sub destroyer USS Perry shortly before...
Duane Holmbeck of Englewood served aboard the USS Perry (DD-844), a Gearing class destroyer, shortly before the “Cuban Missile Crisis” of 1962. He was the ship’s barber. Holmbeck joined the Naval...
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Seaman Charles Dietterich served aboard the cruiser St. Paul in the South...
Charles Dietterich of Deep Creek sailed out of San Francisco Bay, under the Golden Gate aboard the heavy cruiser USS St. Paul (CA-73) in June 1945 and headed for the war in the South Pacific. He...
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Bill Akins was a forward artillery observer with 1st Cavalry in Vietnam
Bill Akins of Port Charlotte quit high school at 17 in 1966 and joined the Army with his father’s permission. After basic at Fort Bliss, Texas. he was sent to Germany with a self-propelled unit of 175...
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Petty Officer John Denike of Venice helped keep Navy flying during WW II
Because John Denike worked as an aviation repair sheet metal worker for Schweitzer Aviation in the Elmira, Ny. area building glider planes before World II, he joined the Navy in 1941 and was...
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Pfc. Dave Rydberg served at Guantanamo Cuba during the revolution in ’58
Former Pfc. Dave Rydberg of Venice was a 19-year-old Marine recruit who wound up at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo, Cuba in 1958 during the Cuban Revolution. “I spent two years on base. I really...
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Stuart Wagner of Port Charlotte became radio operator in Merchant Marines in...
When Stuart Wagner of Port Charlotte sailed out of New York Harbor in a convoy headed for parts unknown during World War II all he knew was he was a member of the Merchant Marine serving as one of...
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