Audie Murphy honors and awards

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the military and civilian honors of Audie Murphy. For details on his life and military career, see Audie Murphy.

Audie Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971) was one of the most decorated United States Army combat soldiers of World War II, serving from 1942 to 1945. He received every American combat award for valor available at the time of his service, including the Medal of Honor. He also received recognitions from France …
See more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Murphy_honors_and_awards


Murphy wearing the U.S. Army khaki "Class A" (tropical service) uniform with full-size medals, 1948
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Almost 80 Years Later, Audie Murphy's Medal of Honor Action Is Still Like Something Out of a Movie

Military.com | By Blake Stilwell
Published January 19, 2024

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Moviegoers have seen it all by now. We've seen tornadoes full of sharks, trucks fighting jets and Nic Cage swap faces with John Travolta after landing a helicopter on an airplane. Such outlandish mayhem gets a little ridiculous after a while, but the real world is full of its own unbelievable stories.

Audie Murphy's one-man fight against the Nazis in Europe might seem like something straight out of a modern action movie, but his movie was actually made a decade after the battle ended -- and it still stands up today.

In January 1945, Allied victory in Europe was anything but assured. The German military launched a major offensive in December 1944 that had pushed Allied lines back into Belgium and France, but the resulting Battle of the Bulge forced the Nazis into a retreat. They were far from finished, however: on New Year's Eve, Nazi Germany launched what would be its last major offensive on the Western Front. Operation Northwind was an attempt to bolster its forces in the Bulge and destroy two Allied armies.

American and French forces would fight for more than a month to not only prevent a German advance, but to push the Nazi Wehrmacht back into Germany. Though they finally succeeded, a powerful force of some 30,000 or more Germans were centered around the city of Colmar, forming a pocket of resistance in Eastern France that American troops would have to retake. Not only was it the last major Nazi foothold on French soil, but control of Colmar also allowed freedom of movement into Germany itself.


An American map showing the reduction of the Colmar Pocket in 1945.

One day late that January, near the village of Holtzwihr, northeast of Colmar, German forces struck out at advancing American infantry. This is where Lt. Murphy would single-handedly hold the strategically important forest outside the town, despite being outmanned and outgunned by a veteran German Army.

It's safe to say Murphy knew his way around a battlefield and had a pretty reliable intuition when it came to taking risks. By the time the U.S. Army advanced on the Colmar Pocket, Audie Leon Murphy had already received the Distinguished Service Cross, two Silver Stars and two Bronze Stars.
He had enlisted at the tender age of 16, joining the Army in 1942 because it was the only branch that would accept his underweight frame. He was first sent to North Africa, then landed at Sicily, mainland Italy and eventually southern France. He then fought his way across Europe, earning a battlefield commission in October 1944.

To hell and back
https://youtu.be/Z-7m6ejqfm8

The danger the Colmar Pocket posed to the Allied advance into Germany was real. If the Nazis broke out, they could have routed the overstretched Seventh Army and then hit the advancing Third Army in the rear, potentially destroying it, too. From there, the Wehrmacht could have retaken the port of Antwerp and pushed the Allies back into the English Channel. That was the reason the Allies couldn't just hole up such a powerful pocket of enemy troops and armor. Something had to be done.

On Jan. 23, 1945, the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division's 30th Infantry Regiment advanced through the Bois de Riedwihr, a forest near Holtzwihr, when it was suddenly attacked by a large force of enemy tanks, tank destroyers and infantry. The 30th was caught in an open ground and was unable to dig into the frozen earth, ending up mangled by the attacking Germans and ordered to withdraw. To fill the gap, the Americans ordered the 15th Infantry to take its place.

The very next day, on the southern edge of the woods, German tanks and infantry hit the regiment's Company B hard, wounding 102 of its 120 enlisted men and killing all of its officers except one: Lt. Audie Murphy.

That same day, Murphy led what was left of his company into the woods, where they, too, were unable to dig any kind of foxhole. They worked through the night but couldn't make any progress in the snow and cold. The next morning, Murphy was reinforced with two tank destroyers from the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion and used them, along with five armored vehicles, to form a defensive position. It was better but it was still weak, and they could see the heavily defended village of Holtzwihr from this spot.

It was now Jan. 26, 1945. Murphy had made the most of what was available, but was informed that his reinforcements had not yet arrived -- and they wouldn't make it that day. At 2 p.m. that day, six tanks and 250 elite German mountain troops moved out of the village toward their position. Murphy only had time to get to a phone and call for artillery before the shooting started. It turns out the road to a German victory in the Colmar Pocket ran right through the road his company was holding.

The American tank destroyers opened up on the oncoming German tanks immediately, but their fire was ineffective. They were taken out almost, either by enemy tank rounds or poor maneuvering, which scattered surviving anti-tank troops into the forest. The only silver lining was the M10 tank destroyers' mounted guns, which tore into the German infantry, but even that didn't last long. Company B's machine gun crew was hit next. Murphy knew his unit couldn't hold this vital stretch and ordered his men to fall back into the forest. He would cover their retreat while directing artillery fire.

With the Germans advancing and his carbine out of ammunition, Murphy spied a burning tank destroyer and its remaining .50-caliber gun. Instead of going back into the forest, he climbed aboard the turret and began pouring fire into the oncoming enemy advance. He believed the tanks could not advance without infantry, so he began mowing them down. Murphy was right; as he cut down enemy troops, the German tanks were forced to fall back to their own treeline. He fought on as enemy tank shells and artillery exploded around him.


Murphy killed an estimate 50 German troops from atop the tank destroyer on Jan. 26, 1945. (Universal Pictures)

For an hour, Murphy was obscured by smoke and firing the machine gun, stopping only to reload, call in artillery fire or recover from the exploding 88-millimeter shells. After what must have seemed like days, the clouds parted and he was able to get close-air support from Allied air power. In the face of all that firepower, the Germans finally began a retreat toward the village. It was great timing for Murphy, because his phone to Allied artillery suddenly went dead. He left the tank destroyer and rejoined his men in the relative safety of the forest. After he reached the treeline, the turret on which he stood for that entire hour blew up, tossing it sky high.

Refusing to be evacuated or deterred, Murphy then began to plan a counterattack, retaking their original position from the remaining Germans. Company B held its ground throughout that night and the reinforced 30th Infantry Regiment captured the village the next day. Had Murphy not made his stand atop the burning armored vehicle, it's likely the entire company, undermanned and demoralized, would have been annihilated.

Murphy was promoted to first lieutenant and received the Legion of Merit for his leadership during the Colmar Pocket operation. On June 2, 1945, Lt. Gen. Alexander Patch, commander of the Seventh Army, presented the 19-year-old Murphy with the Medal of Honor for his actions outside of Holtzwihr.
By the war's end, he would famously receive every medal for valor the United States offered, along with three Purple Hearts for his trouble.


Lt. Gen. Alexander Patch awards the Legion of Merit and Medal of Honor to Lt. Audie Murphy. (Audie Murphy Research Foundation)

After the war, Murphy went off to Hollywood, where he began a slow but lucrative film career, landing his first leading role in 1949's "Bad Boy." That film led to a contract with Universal Pictures, where he was particularly known for his war movies (whether they were his story or not) and for his westerns. He later parlayed his success in western film into making country music and western television series.

As the most decorated soldier of World War II, he not only wrote his popular autobiography "To Hell and Back," but also played himself in the 1955 movie of the same name, along with some 40 other films, including "The Unforgiven," "The Quiet American" and "A Time for Dying." His performance in "To Hell and Back" was so solid that the movie made him a massive star, one of Universal's "Big Four" leading men alongside Tony Curtis, Rock Hudson and Jeff Chandler.

Murphy would go on to join the Texas National Guard and Army Reserve while being an outspoken advocate of post-traumatic stress disorder research and treatment, from which he personally suffered for the rest of his life.
He died at age 45 in 1971, a passenger on a private plane that crashed into a mountain near Roanoke, Virginia, and was interred at Arlington National Cemetery.

https://www.military.com/history/almost-80-years-later-audie-murphys-medal-of-honor-action-still-something-out-of-movie.html?ESRC=mr_240122.nl&utm_medium=email&utm_source=mr&utm_campaign=20240122

Normandy American Cemetery

Overview

For questions regarding the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, June 6, 2024, please contact us at dday80@abmc.gov.

The Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in France is located in Colleville-sur-Mer, on the site of the temporary American St. Laurent Cemetery, established by the U.S. First Army on June 8, 1944 as the first American cemetery on European soil in World War II.
The cemetery site, at the north end of its half mile access road, covers 172.5 acres and contains the graves of 9,387 of our military dead, most of whom lost their lives in the D-Day landings and ensuing operations. On the Walls of the Missing, in a semicircular garden on the east side of the memorial, are inscribed 1,557 names. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered and identified.

The memorial consists of a semicircular colonnade with a loggia at each end containing large maps and narratives of the military operations; at the center is the bronze statue, “Spirit of American Youth Rising from the Waves.” An orientation table overlooking the beach depicts the landings in Normandy. Facing west at the memorial, one sees in the foreground the reflecting pool; beyond is the burial area with a circular chapel and, at the far end, granite statues representing the United States and France.

In 2007, the Normandy Visitor Center opened. The $30 million visitor center was dedicated by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) on June 6, 2007 during the commemoration of the 63rd Anniversary of D-Day. The center is sited in a wooded area of the cemetery approximately 100 meters east of the Garden of the Missing.

Learn more about the architecture, exhibits, inscriptions, and the project team.

Normandy is ABMC's most visited cemetery, receiving more than one million visitors each year.
To plan a site visit, a visit to a relative's grave, request a group visit, special tour, or wreath laying ceremony, please contact NormandyVisits@abmc.gov.

Due to security concerns, the pathway from Normandy American Cemetery to the beach was closed to the public in 2016. However, public beach access is available nearby.

The flag lowering ceremony is held one hour before the cemetery closes to the public.

For questions, please contact us at NormandyVisits@abmc.gov.

British D-Day veteran celebrates turning 100

By Danica Kirka, The Associated Press


D-Day veteran Bill Gladden speaking at his home in Haverhill, England, Friday, Jan. 12, 2024. (Alastair Grant/AP)

LONDON — British D-Day veteran Bill Gladden turned 100 on Saturday, a day after his niece threw a surprise birthday party for him. It was a big fuss he didn’t really expect, though the old soldier had tears in his eyes long before he caught sight of a cake decorated with a replica of his uniform and the medals he earned.

But Gladden isn’t focused on his birthday this year, big as it is. He’s looking six months down the road.

That’s because the event he really wants to attend is the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings on June 6.
It may be the last of the big events marking the beginning of the end of World War II in Europe because so few of the 850,000 troops who took part remain. Gladden wants to be there to honor those who are gone — to remind people that victory did not come cheap.

“If I could do that this year, I should be happy,’’ he told The Associated Press from his home in Haverhill, eastern England, where he still lives on his own. “Well, I am happy now, but I should be more happy.”


D-Day veteran Bill Gladden show off a painting, of they type of glider he was in when he landed in Normandy and a snap of parachute which he later embroidered, at his home in Haverhill, England, Friday, Jan. 12, 2024. (Alastair Grant/AP)

A dispatch rider with the 6th Airborne Reconnaissance Regiment, Gladden landed behind the front lines on D-Day, June 6, 1944, in a wooden glider loaded with six motorcycles and a 17,000-pound (7,700-kilogram) tank. The unit was part of an operation charged with securing bridges over the River Orne and Caen Canal so they could be used by Allied forces moving inland from the Normandy beaches.

Based in an orchard outside the village of Ranville, Gladden spent 12 days making forays into the surrounding countryside to check out reports of enemy activity.

On June 16, he carried two injured soldiers into a barn that was being used as a makeshift field hospital. Two days later, he found himself at the same barn, his right ankle shattered by machine gun fire.

Lying on the grass outside the hospital, he read the treatment label pinned to his tunic:

“Amputation considered. Large deep wound in right ankle. Compound fracture of both tibia and fibula. All extension tendons destroyed. Evacuate.”

Gladden didn’t lose his leg, but he spent the next three years in the hospital as doctors performed a series of surgeries, including tendon transplants, skin and bone grafts.

After the war, Gladden married Marie Warne, an army driver he met in 1943, and spent 40 years working for Siemens and Pearl Insurance. They had a daughter.

These days he’s more likely to talk about how proud he is of his family than he is to reminisce about D-Day. But his wartime story is preserved in a scrapbook that includes a newspaper clipping about “the tanks that were built to fly,” his drawings and other memorabilia.

There’s also a scrap of parachute left behind by one of the paratroopers who landed in the orchard at Ranville. As he lay in the hospital recovering from his wounds, Gladden painstakingly stitched his unit’s shoulder insignia into the fabric.

The edges are frayed and discolored after eight decades, but “Royal Armoured Corps” still stands out in an arc of red lettering on a yellow background. Underneath is a silhouette of Pegasus, the flying horse, over the word “Airborne.”

“These are the flashes we wore on our battledress blouses,” says the caption in neat block letters.

Nothing has faded from memory though. At his party, people celebrated his service and offered a booming happy birthday chorus.

“I just think he’s a legend, what he’s been through, what he’s seen, what he’s done,’’ said his niece, Kaye Thorpe. “He’s just amazing, and he’s still bright as a button on top.’


A birthday cake specially designed and made for D-Day veteran Bill Gladden surprises birthday party in Haverhill, England, Friday, Jan. 12, 2024. (Alastair Grant/AP)

For men like Bill Gladden, though, there was no I in D-Day. Even as he celebrated his 100th birthday, somehow it wasn’t just about him. Instead, he echoed the words of many who survived the invasion.

“When you think of all those young lives that lay in those cemeteries abroad, the Allies and us won the war but (victory) was a very expensive one, life-wise,’’ he said. “Because so many youngsters died.’’

Associated Press writers Mayuko Ono and Alastair Grant contributed

https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2024/01/14/british-d-day-veteran-celebrates-turning-100/

https://apnews.com/article/dday-veteran-birthday-100-28523e59141702a391d990aadb0f71da

Military News -- Dozens of Troops Suspected of Advocating Overthrow of US Government, New Pentagon Extremism Report Says


Carrying shields, covering their faces, and holding upside down U.S. flags, marchers with the Alt-Right Neo-Nazi group "Reclaim America," chant the phrase "reclaim America," while marching near the Capitol, Saturday, May 13, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Military.com | By Konstantin Toropin
Published December 01, 2023 at 5:16pm ET

An annual Pentagon report on extremism within the ranks reveals that 78 service members were suspected of advocating for the overthrow of the U.S. government and another 44 were suspected of engaging or supporting terrorism.

The report released Thursday ... https://media.defense.gov/2023/Nov/30/2003349553/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2024-034_SECURED.PDF .. by the Defense Department inspector general revealed that in fiscal 2023 there were 183 allegations of extremism across all the branches of military, broken down not only into efforts to overthrow the government and terrorism but also advocating for widespread discrimination or violence to achieve political goals.

The statistics indicate the military continues to grapple with extremism following its public denunciations and a stand-down across the services ordered by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in 2021. .. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/11/01/what-pentagon-has-hasnt-and-could-do-stop-veterans-and-troops-joining-extremist-groups.html .. Furthermore, the numbers do not make it clear whether the military's approach is working.
In 2021, the year the data was first released to Congress, there were 270 allegations of extremist activities. .. https://media.defense.gov/2021/Dec/02/2002902153/-1/-1/1/DODIG-2022-042.PDF In 2022, that figure dropped to 146 before rebounding over the past year.

Read Next: Airman's Remains Recovered from Osprey Crash off Coast of Japan, 7 Others Listed as 'Whereabouts Unknown'

The Army had the most allegations in fiscal 2023 with 130 soldiers suspected of participation in extremist activity.
The Air Force suspected 29 airmen; the Navy and Marine Corps reported 10 service members each. For the first time, the inspector general also reported numbers for the Space Force as a separate entity from the other services -- it suspected four Guardians of extremism.

Remaining links...
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The IG report also included instances of alleged criminal gang activity: There were 58 allegations of gang activity across the military.

However, the report did note that, out of all the suspected extremism and criminal gang activity, 68 of the total cases were investigated and cleared or deemed unsubstantiated.

In the U.S., extremist activity, including neo-Nazi, white supremacist and anti-government movements, has been growing, and numerous violent plots by veterans and even active-duty troops have been thwarted in recent years. Experts on extremist movements have warned about the growing potential of more violence and future attacks, similar to the Oklahoma City federal building bombing in 1995 that killed 168 and was carried out by an Army veteran.

In February, a former National Guardsman, Brandon Russell, who founded the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi hate group, was charged with plotting to blow up Baltimore's electrical grid and cause as much suffering as possible. Russell, who allegedly kept a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, was sentenced to five years in prison in 2018 after an arrest in Florida for possessing explosives.

In the wake of the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol building, the Pentagon tried to make a show of dealing with the problem of extremism among troops after it became clear that veterans as well as some active-duty troops were among the mob that stormed the halls of Congress in an effort to halt the certification of the 2020 election.

Military.com has reported that many of those efforts -- including the military-wide extremism training stand-down ordered by Austin -- were largely symbolic and were widely considered as just another box for commanders to check.

One active-duty noncommissioned officer said that, aside from the fact that no one was paying attention at the stand-down briefing he attended, the commander giving the lecture was "talking about what he thought were radical groups like Black Lives Matter."

The idea that far-left groups are just as problematic as far-right ones is a popular talking point among conservatives and Republican lawmakers. However, law enforcement officials and experts who study the topic have consistently noted that far-right groups espousing anti-government and white supremacist views are the biggest threat to the U.S. today.

The report also revealed that other efforts such as screening prospective recruits before enlistment are not working as well as intended.

Some recruiters did not complete all of the screening steps and "as a result, military service recruiters may not have identified all applications with extremist or criminal gang associations," according to the inspector general report.

"Further, the audit found that one military service entered data indicating applicants disclosed extremist or gang associations even though the applicants had not made such disclosures," the IG said, but it did not reveal which of the services falsely accused some of its recruits of having extremist ties.

What the report does make clear, however, is that when allegations are made, they are being referred for investigation, and when allegations are substantiated, some action is taken.

Of all the extremist and gang activity allegations, 135 were reported to military or civilian law enforcement, and 109 of the allegations were reported to another DoD organization or official.

Furthermore, 69 of all the allegations were substantiated at the time the report was written and the vast majority of those -- 50 -- were handled through administrative actions. That included involuntary discharge for 19 and counseling in three instances, while 17 more were handled by nonjudicial punishment and two went to court-martial.

There were no substantiated cases of extremism or gang activity where no action was taken.

While these figures, compared with the overall size of the services, are small, research and experts say that military service members and veterans pose an outsized danger to communities when they go down the path of extremism, given their increased familiarity with firearms and ability to organize and plan effectively.

In 2020, an Air Force sergeant at Travis Air Force Base in California pulled up to a federal courthouse in Oakland, California, in a white van and opened fire on security guards, killing one before going on the run and murdering a county sheriff's deputy a week later as part of a larger plan to incite a civil war.

Also in 2020, members of a group that included two Marines and styled itself as a "modern day SS" were arrested on allegations that they were plotting to destroy the power grid in the northwest. U.S. court records in that case say members discussed recruiting other veterans, stole military equipment, asked others to buy explosives, and discussed plans to manufacture firearms.

-- Konstantin Toropin can be reached at konstantin.toropin@military.com. Follow him on X at @ktoropin.

Related: What the Pentagon Has, Hasn't and Could Do to Stop Veterans and Troops from Joining Extremist Groups
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/11/01/what-pentagon-has-hasnt-and-could-do-stop-veterans-and-troops-joining-extremist-groups.html

Sixty years ago yesterday the United States came to a halt and sixty years later everyone knows where they were that day.

He died too soon and may he rest in peace and may we never forget.

Somber Bugles and Bells Mark Armistice Day Around the Globe as Wars Drown Out Peace Messages


French President Emmanuel Macron adjusts the flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier during a ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe,
as part of the commemorations marking the105th anniversary of the Nov. 11, 1918 Armistice, ending World War I,
Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023 in Paris. (Ludovic Marin/Pool via AP)

11 Nov 2023
Associated Press | By RAF CASERT and MARTA FIORIN

YPRES, Belgium (AP) — With somber bugles and bells from Australia to western Europe's battlefields of World War I , .. https://apnews.com/hub/world-war-i .. people around the globe on Saturday remembered the slaughter and losses just over a century ago that was supposed to be “the war to end all wars.”

Yet the rumble of tanks and the screeching of incoming fire from Ukraine to Gaza pierced the solemnity of the occasion and the notion that humankind could somehow circumvent violence to settle its worst differences.

“This time last year, our thoughts were focused on Ukraine. Today, our minds are full with the terrible images emerging from Israel and Gaza. These are just two of the more than 100 armed conflicts in the world today,” said Benoit Mottrie, the head of the Last Post Association in western Belgium's Ypres, where some of the fiercest and deadliest World War I battles were fought.

During a ceremony with Prime Minister Alexander De Croo and dozens of dignitaries, Mottrie expressed the sense of powerlessness that so many feel that the lessons of the past cannot automatically be translated into peace today.

“It would be naive to think that our presence here in Ypres will have any direct impact on any of the 100 conflicts. The emotions of those involved are too raw for us to understand, and for them to see the light of what we regard as reason,” Mottrie said.

At the same time as French President Emmanuel Macron was saluting French troops in Paris and honoring the eternal flame to commemorate those who died unidentified, war and destruction was raging Gaza. In Ukraine, troops have been fighting Russian invaders along a front line that has barely moved over the past months, much like in Western Europe during most of World War I.

Still Armistice Day largely stuck to the primary purpose of the occasion — to remember and pay respect to those who died for their country.

“'Lest we forget,' — It should not be forgotten," said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, reflecting on the carnage of the 1914-1918 war that killed almost 10 million soldiers, sometimes tens of thousands on a single day in a war that pitted the armies of France, the British empire, Russia and the U.S. against a German-led coalition that included the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires.

Generally the most peaceful of occasions, the ceremony in London was held under strict police and security surveillance for fears that a massive pro-Palestinian protest could run out of hand and clash with the remembrance ceremonies.

“Remembrance weekend is sacred for us all and should be a moment of unity, of our shared British values and of solemn reflection,” said British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Related Topics: Military Headlines Veterans Day Topics World War I

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/11/11/somber-bugles-and-bells-mark-armistice-day-around-globe-wars-drown-out-peace-messages.html

On Veterans Day, Biden commemorates the sacrifice made by soldiers and their families

November 11, 20231:45 PM ET
Juliana Kim


President Biden speaks at the Memorial Amphitheater in Arlington National Cemetery during celebrations for Veterans Day on Saturday in Arlington, Virginia.
Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

President Biden paid his respects to those who served the country and their families on Saturday — vowing to provide them with the care they need and deserve during his Veterans Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery.

"We owe them. We owe you," Biden said Saturday afternoon. "Not just for keeping the flame of freedom burning during the darkest of moments. For preserving our communities even after they hang up their uniforms, for inspiring the next generation to serve."

The president's remarks came on the 105th anniversary of the end of World War I but his message was largely focused on today's veterans, who he described as the "steel spine" of the nation.

During his remarks, Biden acknowledged the sacrifice that soldiers and their families often make in order to serve the country, like the holidays spent apart, the move from one duty station to another and the sleepless nights waiting to hear back from a loved one deployed oversees.

"Too often their sacrifices go without thanks or without acknowledgment," Biden said.

He added that it was the country's "sacred obligation" to recognize such sacrifices and provide them with adequate support and care.

"It's not an obligation based on party or politics, but on a promise that unites us all together," he said.

The president's speech on care comes a day after the White House announced new efforts to expand healthcare access for veterans. Beginning this month, the Department of Veteran Affairs will offer its no-cost healthcare to veterans who live in nursing homes and all those who served in World War II. The department will also cover costs associated with Parkinson's disease.

On Saturday, Biden also announced that veterans who were exposed to toxins will be able to enroll in the department's no-cost healthcare starting March 2024. The effort to provide toxin-exposed veterans health services has been hailed as the largest expansion of care in VA history.

Before his remarks, Biden placed a floral wreath at the tomb, solemnly looked at it and gestured the sign of the cross before the military band's trumpeter played taps.

The president was joined by first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Harris, and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff, as well as some members of the president's cabinet.

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/11/1212487962/on-veterans-day-biden-commemorates-the-sacrifice-made-by-soldiers-and-their-fami

The oldest continuing celebration of Veterans Day is in Warsaw, NC. There is a rest area on the way to the beach that celebrates our Veterans.

The Only Navy Warship Authorized to Fly a Pirate Flag at Sea


Although there are dozens of active Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers in the U.S. Navy's fleet, there's something special about the USS Kidd. It doesn't have any secret technology or weapons (that we know of), and its capabilities are the same as any other of its class. The standout feature that tends to capture the attention of even the most landlubberly civilian is the massive Jolly Roger that the Kidd is often seen flying from its mast.

The USS Kidd's pirate flag, the infamous skull and crossbones that hearkens back to the Golden Age of Piracy that spanned the 17th and 18th centuries, is the only one the U.S. Navy has ever allowed to fly on one of its ships. And like most bizarre things that happen inside the Navy, it starts with an honored tradition, one dating back to World War II.

Pirates these days don't really think about hoisting a Jolly Roger to announce their intentions. They usually just go in for the killing and stealing. So if a U.S. Navy vessel flies the old pirate flag when returning to port (and some do), it's all in good fun. No one thinks the submarine USS Jimmy Carter, which was spotted flying the pirate banner back in 2017, is actually out there terrorizing sea lanes and stealing doubloons.

Read: Why Some Submarines Return to Port Flying Pirate Flags

But in the Navy, old habits die real hard. There's no better example than the fact that U.S. sailors wore bell-bottom trousers until the 21st century. So even though most of its ships are more likely to kill pirates than join them, the Navy brass still frowns on making light of lawlessness at sea by raising the Jolly Roger.

Yet, not so much with the USS Kidd. The Kidd gets a pass because of tradition, the most powerful force in the Navy. Tradition is what keeps Navy coffee mugs unwashed and sailors eating cherries out of belly buttons (you're gonna have to ask a "shellback" about that one; don't Google it at work).


(U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kaylianna Genier)
The USS Kidd is named for Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, who was killed aboard the battleship USS Arizona during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the first American flag officer to die in World War II. As he was the commander of Battleship Division One, he ran to the bridge of Arizona, his flagship, to take command during the outset of the surprise attack. He died aboard the ship with 1,175 of his sailors and Marines, and was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

Rear Adm. Kidd picked up the nickname "Cap" while attending the U.S. Naval Academy, a reference to the infamous privateer-turned-pirate Capt. William Kidd, who was executed for the crime in 1701. When a Fletcher-class destroyer was named for Rear Adm. Kidd in 1943, its crew immediately adopted the pirate theme, with the blessing of Isaac Kidd's widow, Inez. Inez Kidd even convinced the Navy to formally give the USS Kidd express permission to fly the pirate flag.


The Fletcher-class USS Kidd during World War II. (U.S. Navy)
That first crew of the Kidd began calling themselves "the Pirates of the Pacific," picking up downed naval aviators and returning them to their carriers in exchange for a "ransom" of ice cream. That initial USS Kidd, which served the U.S. Navy off and on until 1964, is now a museum ship. In 1981, a new USS Kidd, the first of its eponymous class of warships, entered service and inherited the tradition (and permission) to hoist the Jolly Roger until it was given to Taiwan in 1998.

And so it was for the latest USS Kidd when it was commissioned in 2007. It not only flies the pirate flag when entering and leaving port, but when the vessel makes its way between the U.S. coasts and during multinational exercises, as well. The skull and crossbones can also be seen on the rear of the Kidd's five-inch guns, on its internal doors and probably tattooed on a fair number of its sailors.

A lot of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers are out there, named for a great number of the Navy's leaders and heroes. The USS Kidd (and the Kidds that come after it) will always be the only ship flying the Jolly Roger as part of its own unique piece of history.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Facebook, X or on LinkedIn.
https://www.military.com/history/only-navy-warship-authorized-fly-pirate-flag-sea.html

How Armistice Day Became Veterans Day in the United States
The holiday, which originally marked the end of World War I, was broadened in the 1950s to honor all veterans.


People celebrate Armistice Day in New York City on Nov. 11, 1918.Credit...Associated Press

By Karen Zraick
Published Nov. 10, 2019
Updated Nov. 8, 2023
On Nov. 11, 1918, the Allied nations and Germany signed an armistice ending the fighting in the Great War, which had killed more than 15 million people. A year later, King George V of England proclaimed that date Armistice Day, to be marked with two minutes of silence at 11 a.m., the hour the agreement had gone into effect.

“King Asks British to Pause Two Minutes on Armistice Day,” The New York Times wrote in a front-page headline on Nov. 7, 1919. Days later, the paper reported that Americans would be observing the day, too, with ceremonies around the country.

In a special message to the nation in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson noted the monumental changes that the fierce and bloody war had provoked. The European Allies fought for more than four years, and the Americans for more than a year and a half. None would ever be the same. The fighting had destroyed empires, transformed Europe’s borders, spurred advances in weaponry and manufacturing, and brought millions of women into the work force.

Wilson’s statement said:

With splendid forgetfulness of mere personal concerns we remodeled our industries, concentrated our financial resources, increased our agricultural output, and assembled a great army, so that at the last our power was a decisive factor in the victory. … Out of this victory there arose new possibilities of political freedom and economic concert. The war showed us the strength of great nations acting together for high purposes.

The Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended the war, had been signed earlier that year, on June 28, 1919.

In 1953, Alvin J. King of Emporia, Kan., proposed changing the name of the holiday to Veterans Day, to recognize veterans from all wars and conflicts. According to a 2003 congressional resolution recognizing his efforts, the holiday was first celebrated in that small city, about 60 miles southwest of Topeka, the same year.
The resolution noted that while Mr. King was not a veteran himself, his stepson John Cooper, whom he had raised, was killed in combat during World War II.

The community raised money to send Mr. King and his wife, Gertrude, to Washington to meet with officials and push them to change the name of the federal holiday. They received crucial support from Representative Edward H. Rees, also of Emporia.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower made the change the following year. A 1968 law moved the observance of the holiday to the fourth Monday in October, but that was unpopular, and in 1975, President Gerald Ford signed a law moving it back to Nov. 11. The law took effect in 1978.

Memorial Day, on the other hand, is observed on the last Monday in May. Whereas Veterans Day honors all veterans, Memorial Day specifically honors those who gave their lives for the United States.

British Commonwealth nations and some other European countries also mark the anniversary of the armistice with ceremonies on or around Remembrance Sunday. In London, a National Service of Remembrance is held each year at the Cenotaph, a war memorial, and bright red paper poppies are worn as a symbol of support for the armed forces.

In the bombed-out countryside of Western Europe after World War I, Flanders poppies, which were resilient enough to grow amid the destruction, became potent symbols. A Canadian doctor, Lt. Col. John McCrae, described them in the poem “In Flanders Fields.”


Harold E. Talbott, secretary of the Air Force, laying President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery on Nov. 11, 1954.Credit...Associated Press

The Royal British Legion, a charity founded in 1921 that supports the armed forces, adopted the poppy as its emblem and set up a warehouse to employ disabled ex-servicemen to produce poppies. The tradition has endured, and public figures who have declined to wear the poppy have faced criticism. (There are also white poppies for pacifists, purple ones for animal lovers and, this year, apparently false reports of rainbow ones for supporters of L.G.B.T. rights.)

The organization’s American corollary, the American Legion, also uses the red poppy as its official flower, and has promoted the Friday before Memorial Day as National Poppy Day.

Thanks. I was working that day and the people I worked with came rushing into my office since they knew I grew up in NYC.

I saw those buildings go up when I went to school at NYU. I ate dinner at the Windows on the World once and lost 4 friends that day.

I remember how quiet it was afterwards with no planes flying and played a lot of golf just to get away from the news.

Bells toll as the US marks 22 years since 9/11

By Jennifer Peltz and Karen Matthews, The Associated Press
Sep 11, 10:50 AM


Sam Pulia places flags before the commemoration ceremony of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Monday, Sept. 11, 2023, in New York. (Yuki Iwamura/AP)

Editor’s note: This story was updated at 6:00 p.m. EST with additional information.

NEW YORK — Americans looked back Monday on 9/11 with moments of silence, tearful words and appeals to teach younger generations about the terror attacks 22 years ago.

“For those of us who lost people on that day, that day is still happening. Everybody else moves on. And you find a way to go forward, but that day is always happening for you,” Edward Edelman said as he arrived at New York’s World Trade Center to honor his slain brother-in-law, Daniel McGinley.

President Joe Biden, speaking at a military base in Anchorage, Alaska, urged Americans to rally around protecting democracy. His visit, en route to Washington from a trip to India and Vietnam, is a reminder that the impact of 9/11 was felt in every corner of the nation, however remote.

“We know that on this day, every American’s heart was wounded,” Biden said. “Yet every big city, small town, suburb, rural town, tribal community — American hands went up, ready to help where they could.”

Nearly 3,000 people were killed when hijacked planes crashed into the trade center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field, in an attack that reshaped American foreign policy and domestic fears.

On that day, “we were one country, one nation, one people, just like it should be,” Eddie Ferguson, the fire-rescue chief in Virginia’s Goochland County, said by phone before the anniversary.

The predominantly rural county of 25,000 people has a Sept. 11 memorial and holds two anniversary commemorations, one focused on first responders and another honoring all the victims.

At ground zero, Vice President Kamala Harris joined other dignitaries at the ceremony on the National Sept. 11 Memorial plaza. Instead of remarks from political figures, the event features victims reading the names of the dead and delivering brief personal messages.

Some included patriotic declarations about American values and thanked first responders and the military. One lauded the Navy SEALs who killed al-Qaida leader and 9/11 plotter Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in 2011. Another appealed for peace and justice. One acknowledged the many lives lost in the post-9/11 “War on Terror.” And many shared reflections on missing loved ones.

“Though we never met, I am honored to carry your name and legacy with me,” said Manuel João DaMota Jr., who was born after his father and namesake died.

To Gabrielle Gabrielli, reading names “is the biggest honor of my life.” She lost her uncle and godfather, Richard Gabrielle.

“We have to keep the memory of everybody who died alive. This is their legacy,” Gabrielli said, heading into the ceremony.

Biden, a Democrat, became the first president to commemorate Sept. 11 in the western U.S. He and his predecessors have gone to one or another of the attack sites in most years, though Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Barack Obama each marked the anniversary on the White House lawn at times, and Obama also visited Fort Meade in Maryland.

Warning of a rise in extremism and political violence, Biden told service members and their families that that “every generation has to fight” to preserve U.S. democracy.

“That’s why the terrorists targeted us in the first place – our freedom, our openness, our institutions. They failed. But we must remain vigilant,” he said.

First lady Jill Biden laid a wreath at the 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon, where a giant American flag hung over the side of the building. Earlier, bells tolled, and musicians played taps at 9:37 a.m., the time when one of the hijacked jets hit the military headquarters.

“As the years go by, it may feel that the world is moving on or even forgetting what happened here on Sept. 11, 2001,” but the Defense Department will always remember, Secretary Lloyd Austin said. He deployed to Iraq in the war that followed the attack.

Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, laid a wreath at the Flight 93 National Memorial near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where another plane crashed after passengers tried to storm the cockpit. Earlier Monday at the memorial, a rabbi from Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, where a gunman killed 11 worshippers in 2018, called for ensuring that younger people know about 9/11.

“With memory comes responsibility, the determination to share our stories with this next generation, so that through them, our loved ones continue to live,” Rabbi Jeffrey Myers said. The memorial is offering a new educational video, virtual tour and other materials for classroom use.

Many Americans did volunteer work on what Congress has designated both Patriot Day and a National Day of Service and Remembrance. Others gathered for anniversary events at memorials, firehouses, city halls, campuses and elsewhere.

In Iowa, a march set off at 9:11 a.m. Monday from suburban Waukee to the state Capitol in Des Moines. In Columbus, Indiana, observances include a remembrance message sent to police, fire and EMS radios. New Jersey’s Monmouth County, which was home to some 9/11 victims, this year made Sept. 11 a holiday for county employees so they could attend commemorations.

Pepperdine University’s campus in Malibu, California, displayed one American flag for each victim, plus the flags of every other country that lost a citizen on 9/11. Reflecting the tragedy’s scope, U.N. General Assembly President Dennis Francis exhorted world nations Monday to counter extremism, build tolerance, “join hands and say never again.”

Fenton, Missouri, is more than 650 miles (1,050 kilometers) from the attack sites. But the St. Louis suburb, population 4,000, holds an anniversary ceremony at a memorial that includes steel from the World Trade Center’s fallen twin towers and a plaque honoring Jessica Leigh Sachs, a 9/11 victim with relatives in town.

“We’re just a little bitty community,” Mayor Joe Maurath said ahead of the anniversary, but “it’s important for us to continue to remember these events. Not just 9/11, but all of the events that make us free.”

Associated Press journalists Julie Walker and Deepti Hajela in New York; Seung Min Kim in Anchorage, Alaska; Tara Copp in Washington and Michael Rubinkam in northeastern Pennsylvania contributed to this report.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2023/09/11/bells-toll-as-the-us-marks-22-years-since-911/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=army-dnr

Biden awards Army pilot Medal of Honor for Vietnam War rescue

By Darlene Superville, The Associated Press
Sep 5, 04:01 PM


President Joe Biden awards the Medal of Honor to Capt. Larry Taylor, an Army pilot from the Vietnam War who risked his life to rescue a reconnaissance team that was about to be overrun by the enemy, during a ceremony Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2023, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)

President Joe Biden awarded the Medal of Honor to Capt. Larry Taylor on Tuesday, honoring the Army pilot who risked his life during the Vietnam War by flying into heavy enemy fire to save four members of a reconnaissance team from almost certain death as they were about to be overrun.

On the night of June 18, 1968, then-1st Lt. Taylor flew his Cobra attack helicopter to rescue the men after they had become surrounded by the enemy.

“It was pitch black. No moon. No stars. No light beyond the glow of Lieutenant Taylor’s cockpit control, when he heard a whisper coming through his radio, ‘We’re surrounded,’” Biden said, adding, “Lieutenant Taylor knew the risks, but he was ready.”

Taylor, a Tennessean who is now 81, recalled in an interview last week that he had to figure out how to get the men out, otherwise “they wouldn’t make it.”

David Hill, one of the four Taylor saved that night, said his actions were what “we now call thinking outside the box.”

Hill and the others were on a night mission to track the movement of enemy troops in a village near the Saigon River when they were discovered by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops. An intense firefight ensued and soon they were running out of ammunition. They radioed for help.

Taylor arrived in minutes at the site northeast of what is now Ho Chi Minh City. He asked the team to send up flares to mark their location in the dark. Taylor and a pilot in an accompanying helicopter started firing their ships’ Miniguns and rockets at the enemy, making low-level attack runs and braving intense ground fire for about a half-hour.

But with both helicopters nearly out of ammunition and the enemy continuing to advance, Taylor surveyed the team’s intended escape route to a point near the river and concluded that the men would never make it.

He had to think of something else.

Now running low on fuel and almost out of ammunition himself, Taylor directed his wingman to fire the rounds left in his Minigun along the team’s eastern flank and return to base camp, while Taylor fired his remaining rounds on the western flank. He used the landing lights to distract the enemy, buying time for the patrol team to head south and east toward a new extraction point he had identified.

After they arrived, Taylor landed under heavy enemy fire and at great personal risk. The four team members rushed toward the helicopter and clung to the exterior — it only had two seats — and Taylor whisked them away to safety. He was on the ground for about 10 seconds.

“I finally just flew up behind them and sat down on the ground,” Taylor said by telephone. “They turned around and jumped on the aircraft. A couple were sitting on the skids. One was sitting on the rocket pods, and I don’t know where the other one was, but they beat on the side of the ship twice, which meant haul a--. And we did!”

During the medal ceremony, Biden said that Taylor’s aircraft was “hit multiple times” and that, according to “Army standards, he could have left the fight.” At one point, the president said, Taylor was directed to withdraw but “he refused to put his own life above the lives of those in need.”

“That’s valor,” Biden said. “That’s our nation at its very best.”

The army says that what Taylor did that night had never been attempted.

The president, whose wife, first lady Jill Biden, tested positive on Monday for COVID, and Taylor wore facemasks to start the ceremony. But both later removed them and later stood together maskless as Biden placed the medal on Taylor, shook his hand and saluted him.

In the interview before the ceremony, Taylor said he flew hundreds of combat missions in UH-1 and Cobra helicopters during a year’s deployment in Vietnam and, “We never lost a man.”

“You just do whatever is expedient and do whatever to save the lives of the people you’re trying to rescue,” he said.

Taylor left Vietnam in August 1968. He was released from Army active duty in August 1970, having attained the rank of captain, and was discharged from the Army Reserve in October 1973.

He later ran a roofing and sheet metal company in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He and his wife, Toni, live in Signal Mountain, Tennessee.

Taylor received scores of combat decorations, including the Silver Star, a Bronze Star and two Distinguished Flying Crosses.
The president noted that, all told, Taylor flew more than 2,000 combat missions — earning 43 air medals.

“Thank God he’s not wearing all of them on his chest. He’d have trouble standing,” Biden joked.

Still, Hill said in an interview that he and Taylor’s other supporters were shocked to learn over the years that Taylor had not been awarded a Medal of Honor.

Hill said they believed Taylor deserved the medal, the military’s highest decoration for service members who go above and beyond the call of duty, often risking their lives through selfless acts of valor.

Their campaign lasted more than six years. Biden called Taylor in July with the news.

Biden said Tuesday that Taylor didn’t see some of the men he rescued that night in 1968 until decades later, at Army reunions.

“But the greatest honor of all, the family showed up at these reunions too,” Biden said.
“They’d look for Larry. They’d hug him. They’d say ‘You don’t know me, but you saved my Daddy’s life.’”

----------------------
RELATED
This daring Vietnam rescue finally results in Medal of Honor award
https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2023/09/01/this-daring-vietnam-rescue-finally-results-in-medal-of-honor-award/

https://www.armytimes.com/veterans/2023/09/05/biden-awards-army-pilot-medal-of-honor-for-vietnam-war-rescue/

A World War II warship will dock in three US cities and you can explore it. Here's how and where
Keith Uhlig
Green Bay Press-Gazette

A one-of-a-kind World War II-era ship that helped turn the tide for the Allies will be moored and open for tours in three U.S. cities starting at the end of August.

The chance to board the USS LST 325, the last fully functional Landing Ship Tank remaining in the country, will appeal to history junkies and maritime buffs everywhere.

The ship is docked and open for tours in Evansville, Indiana eleven months out of the year, but will take its annual voyage to three port cities.

This year, the USS LST 325 will visit La Crosse, Wisconsin; Dubuque, Iowa; and Hannibal, Missouri over the course of a month.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/08/03/world-war-ii-warship-visits-wisconsin-iowa-missouri-tour-tickets-schedule/70524710007/

This Independence Day Let's COMMIT to Saving Democracy

Tuesday, July 04, 2023 at 6:52:38a CDT


We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident

Today, we in America rightfully celebrate the birth of our country, a Democracy founded upon the precepts of equality and Divinely bestowed "inalienable" rights such as the pursuit of "life, liberty and happiness."

But as we celebrate the joy of being Americans, let us also recognize the fragility of said democracy, and renew our commitment to the PRESERVATION of it, in full recognition of the equally "self-evident" truth that our Democracy is now being threatened, undermined, and imperiled like never before, by authoritarian elements of fascism and supremacist ideology, promoted by wealthy power brokers and oligarchs (domestic and abroad), whose sole purpose is to further empower themselves via hate based rancor, divisive rhetoric, and the systemic demonization of some perceived "other." Just as they ALWAYS HAVE.

And imo, few narratives have captured and quite succinctly summarized how this has played out time and time again, from early in our nation's history, as did Thomhartmann's rather excellent piece,
"Why are We Letting Red State "Welfare Oligarchs" Mooch Off Blue States?" .. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/27/2177933/-Why-are-We-Letting-Red-State-Welfare-Oligarchs-Mooch-Off-Blue-States

In it, he wrote:

Yankees celebrate all-time great on Yogi Berra Day
Event coincides with 79th anniversary of D-Day, 25th anniversary of namesake museum
June 6th, 2023
Bill Ladson

https://www.mlb.com/news/yankees-celebrate-yogi-berra-day-on-79th-anniversary-of-d-day

Amazing when you think about his service on D-Day.

World War II veterans return to Utah Beach to mark D-Day anniversary

By Sylvie Corbet and Jeffrey Schaeffer, The Associated Press
Jun 5, 03:13 PM

https://www.militarytimes.com/resizer/O8_aLxjznnffep7s1GY_14CgwE4=/1024x0/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/archetype/ECCDFJWMO5E3RPQ76JENHMXZCM.jpg
U.S war veterans salute during a ceremony outside the Pegasus Bridge memorial in Benouville, Normandy, Monday, June 5, 2023. (Thomas Padilla/AP)

ON UTAH BEACH, France — World War II veterans shared vivid memories of D-Day and the fighting as dozens returned to Normandy beaches and key battle sites to mark the 79th anniversary of the decisive assault that led to the liberation of France and Western Europe from Nazi control.

https://www.militarytimes.com/resizer/DhnU09eQUPX2_J87Zxp-jVrfR2s=/600x0/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/archetype/EGMJFUM55JHQ3MXH5IBSTSEW6M.jpg
Children greet war veterans arriving for ceremony at the Pegasus Bridge memorial in Benouville, Normandy, Monday June 5, 2023. (Thomas Padilla/AP)

He said there were “lots of casualties. We had almost run over bodies to get in the beach. Never forget we were only 18, 19 years old. ... I’m glad I made it.”

The first job of his battalion, he said, was “to guard an ammunition dump and the first night it got struck. You didn’t know where you were to go. Bullets were going all over the place. But we ducked it.”

On Monday, veterans have been greeted to the sound of bagpipes at the Pegasus Memorial, where they attended a ceremony commemorating a key operation in the first minutes of the D-Day operations, when troops had to take control of a strategic bridge.

World War II veterans Jake Larson, a 100-year-old American, and Bill Gladden, a 99-year-old British national, met at the memorial where they had a close discussion.

“I want to give you a hug, thank you. I got tears in my eyes. We were meant to meet,” Larson told Gladden, their hands clasped.

Larson, who has more than 600,000 followers on TikTok, explained with enthusiasm: “I’m just a country boy. Now I’m a star on TikTok. You can see me all over: ‘Papa Jake.’ I’m a legend! I didn’t plan this, it came about.”

Larson landed on Omaha Beach, where he ran under machine-gun fire and made it to the cliffs without being wounded.

“I’m 100 without an ache or a pain. You can’t fake that,” he said.

U.S. veteran Andrew Negra returned for the first time to Utah Beach this year. The last time he stood there was when he landed on July 18, 1944.

He was “amazed” by the warm welcome from local French people: “Every place we went, people are cheering, clapping, and they’ve been doing this for I don’t know how many years.”

At age 99, Negra is the only member of his battalion who is still alive. Braving the wind to walk on the beach for a few minutes, he said, “So many we lost. And here I am.”

Negra participated in combat operations until his division reached eastern Germany in April 1945.

On Sunday, more than 40 American veterans of World War II formed a parade, using wheelchairs, along the streets of the small town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, where thousands of paratroopers jumped not long after midnight on June 6, 1944.

https://www.militarytimes.com/resizer/y_xnRWsfIzcngzUnrmvHhXYOMTw=/1024x0/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/archetype/PKEP5PWL7RF2DLQY2NYNR7FSN4.jpg
Cheerful crowds applauded, calling out “Merci” and “Thank you.” Children waved, and many families asked for a photo with the men.

Donnie Edwards, president of the Best Defense Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps World War II veterans visit former battlefields, said, “For us, every year is a big one.”

Given the ages of the soldiers who fought nearly eight decades ago, Edwards observed, “Nothing is guaranteed. So we want to make sure that we do everything we can to get them an incredible and enjoyable experience.”

The veterans then headed to Sainte-Marie-du-Mont for a brief ceremony at a monument honoring the U.S. Navy that overlooks Utah Beach.

“The fallen will never be forgotten. The veteran will ever be honored,” an inscription in the stone reads.

Some of the almost-centenarians asked volunteers to accompany them on the wide stretch of sand.

Matthew Yacovino, 98, became emotional as he remembered what happened there to his older brother, who almost died after his jeep blew up during the landings.

“The driver got killed and my brother fell on the beach unconscious,” Yacovino said with tears in the eyes.

His brother eventually recovered. Yacovino himself served as a U.S. combat air crewman during the war.

Like others who come to Normandy for historical reenactments of what transpired there, Valérie and Lionel Draucourt, visitors from the Paris region, dressed in khaki uniforms. They wanted to pay their respects to the veterans.

“Frankly, I don’t think we can quite fathom what they lived through. We can’t understand it, it’s so big, it’s crazy,” Lionel Draucourt said.

Veterans were due to take part in official ceremonies of the 79th anniversary on Tuesday, including at the Normandy American Cemetery.

On D-Day, Allied troops landed on the beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold, carried by 7,000 boats. On that single day, 4,414 Allied soldiers lost their lives, 2,501 of them Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded.

On the German side, several thousand were killed or wounded.

U.S. Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Mark Milley, stressed that the significance of the commemorations “for memorializing the efforts that they did and what they did.”
https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2023/06/05/world-war-ii-veterans-return-to-utah-beach-to-mark-d-day-anniversary/

U.S. veterans arrive for the commemoration organized by the Best Defense Foundation at Utah Beach near Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, Normandy, France, Sunday, June 4, 2023, ahead of the D-Day Anniversary. (Thomas Padilla/AP)

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France's last surviving D-Day commando joins beach landing anniversary

Reuters
June 6, 20236:19 AM CDT Updated 6 hours ago

[1/5] French WWII veteran Leon Gautier poses for a photo on the day of a ceremony in tribute to the 177 French members of the Commando Kieffer Fusiliers Marins commando unit, who took part in the Normandy landings, in Colleville-Montgomery, France, June 6, 2023. Ludovic Marin/Pool via REUTERS

COLLEVILLE-MONTGOMERY, France, June 6 (Reuters) - Leon Gautier, the last surviving member of the French commandos who stormed the Normandy beaches defended by Hitler's troops in 1944, on Tuesday joined President Emmanuel Macron at a seafront ceremony marking the 79th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

Gautier, 100, presented a student marine commando with his green beret at a passing out parade at Colleville-Montgomery, near where a 17-year-old Gautier had landed on Sword Beach in a hail of enemy fire.
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Gautier was one of 177 French green berets under the command of Captain Philippe Kieffer who took part in the Normandy landings. More than 150,000 allied troops invaded France to drive out Nazi Germany forces.

At Tuesday's ceremony, the young marine knelt down on one knee to allow Gautier, sat in a wheelchair to Macron's side, to straighten his beret.

In 2019, Gautier recounted on the occasion of the 75th D-Day anniversary how French troops had been the first to wade chest-deep onto Sword Beach.

"Your honour," Gautier recalled British Colonel Robert Dawson telling the French green berets. "We went in only a few seconds ahead. It was a symbolic gesture."

"By the end of the day I didn’t have many bullets left."
Reporting by Noemie Olive; Writing by Richard Lough, editing by Ed Osmond

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/frances-last-surviving-d-day-commando-joins-beach-landing-anniversary-2023-06-06/

Photos Show Memorial Day Tributes at Arlington National Cemetery

BY KAITLIN LEWIS ON 5/29/23 AT 5:51 PM EDT

02:58
Watch: President Biden Lays Wreath At Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier
https://www.newsweek.com/photos-show-memorial-day-tributes-arlington-national-cemetery-1803208

President Joe Biden advised thousands of visitors at Arlington National Cemetery (ANC) to "never forget" the price that democracy costs while delivering his Memorial Day remarks.

Monday's federal holiday marked Biden's third Memorial Day since taking office and began with a traditional wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Solider.
The president was joined by first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff for the observance proceedings.

"Every year, as a nation, we undertake this rite of remembrance, for we must never forget the price that was paid to protect our democracy," Biden said while delivering remarks at the Memorial Amphitheater following the wreath-laying ceremony. "We must never forget the lives these flags, flowers and marble markers represent: a mother, a father, a son, a daughter, a sister, a spouse, a friend. An American."


President Joe Biden participates in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, on May 29 in observance of Memorial Day.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP VIA GETTY

According to ANC, nearly 5,000 visitors dawn on the national gravesite every year for Memorial Day. CNN reported that around 3,000 people were in attendance this year during Biden's speech, citing the White House.

Visitors also flocked to the national cemetery Monday to pay their own respects to the over 400,000 veterans and their eligible dependents who are buried in Arlington. Service members from every one of the United States' major wars are entombed within the 639 acres, ANC states, dating back to the Revolutionary War.


Brad Fromm talks to his son, Tyler, at the final resting place of a fallen loved one in Arlington National Cemetery on Memorial Day, May 29, in Arlington, Virginia.
SAMUEL CORUM/GETTY IMAGES

Like in past years, the president spent time during his speech to reflect on his late son, Beau, who served with honors in Iraq and died in 2015 of brain cancer. Tuesday will mark the eighth anniversary of Beau's death, and Biden spoke about the pride he felt for his son's time in the armed forces.

Biden also acknowledged that his loss was "not the same" as those who have lost loved ones on the battlefield, but he added, "as it is for so many of you, the pain of his loss is with us every day, but particularly sharp on Memorial Day."

"But so is the pride Jill and I feel in his service, as if I can still hear him saying, 'Dad—it's my duty, Dad,'" Biden continued. "That was the code my son lived by and all those you lost lived by. It's the creed that millions of service members have followed....Throughout history, these women and men laid down their lives, not for a place or a person or a president, but for an idea unlike any other idea in all of human history. The idea, the idea of the United States of America."


From left to right, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrive to participate in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, on May 29.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP VIA GETTY

Biden also used his speech to highlight ways his administration has increased support for veterans and their families, including signing the PACT Act into law in 2022 that expands federal health care services for veterans who were exposed to burn pits during their service.

"As a nation, and people have all heard me say this for a long time, as a nation, we have many obligations, but I believe with every fiber of my being we have only one truly sacred obligation: to prepare those we send into harm's way and care for them and their families when they come home, and when they don't," the president said. "It's a sacred obligation, not based on party or politics, but on a promise, a promise to unite all of us. There is nothing more important, nothing more sacred, nothing more American."


Krista Meinert sits with her late son, U.S. Marine Corps Lance Corporal Jacob Meinert, who was killed in Afghanistan, at Arlington National Cemetery on May 29 in Arlington, Virginia.
SAMUEL CORUM/GETTY IMAGES

According to the Associated Press, Biden hosted members of veterans organizations, military service and military family organizations, surviving families of fallen soldiers and other administration officials for a breakfast at the White House prior to Monday's observance proceedings.

Both the president and the first lady are scheduled to spend the remaining time of their holiday at their home near Wilmington, Delaware, the AP reported.

https://www.newsweek.com/photos-show-memorial-day-tributes-arlington-national-cemetery-1803208

We went to a Memorial Day ceremony here today.

They had a Fife and Drum group playing patriotic songs.


They also had a bagpiper who played Amazing Grace.


The rain held off and it was a nice ceremony.

The Most Decorated Female Soldier in the History of Modern Warfare


There are no National Defense Medals in World War I Serbia.
Military.com | By Blake Stilwell

LISTEN -- The Most Decorated Female Soldier in the History of Modern Warfare
https://www.military.com/history/most-decorated-female-soldier-history-of-modern-warfare.html?ESRC=mr_230306.nl

In 1912, the nations of the Balkans joined together to kick the Ottoman Empire out of Europe, end its influence in their countries and free the people living in those territories from Ottoman rule. Spoiler alert: They were wildly successful, but only after raising a combined army of more than 750,000 men. And at least one woman.

The Serbians had to call up 255,000 men, almost 9% of its total population at the time, so the army went far and wide to find conscripts. In the tiny village of Koprivnica, it called up Milunka Savic’s brother, who was suffering from tuberculosis

This region of Serbia just happened to be known as a hotbed of Serbian patriotism, so the Savic family wasn’t about to shirk its duty just because of a deadly lung infection. Milunka Savic cut her hair, donned a uniform and set out in her brother’s place as Milun Savic, which was a great ruse considering her village only had 20 people in it.


Pictured: Milun Savic, who is totally not Milunka Savic, no way.

Savic probably didn’t know she was about to set out on a seven-year rampage of destruction across two continents in three wars, but she was definitely willing to try.

The Serbians were divided into four groups, the bulk of which fought the Ottomans’ western army near Novi Pazar, right outside of Savic’s home village. At just 24 years old, she joined the Iron Regiment, which saw action almost immediately at the Battle of Kumanovo, the first major battle of the war, on Oct. 24, 1912.

When the Ottoman commander realized the Serbs weren’t ready at Kumanovo, he just attacked. Despite the surprise, the Serbs put such a beating on the Turks that the entire Ottoman offensive had to be scrapped, and they retreated from the area altogether.

The Serbians forced the Ottoman Army into a pocket from which it couldn’t escape, laid siege to Shkodër alongside their Montenegrin allies and occupied northern Albania until the war ended. After seven months, the Turks were essentially kicked out of Europe. Savic must have learned a lot from this first war, which was a good thing, because the next one came pretty quick.

Unhappy with how the spoils of war turned out for Bulgaria, that southeastern European country turned on the rest of its former allies. It was a bad call. Not only did Montenegro, Greece and Serbia have veteran armies by then, Romania and the Ottoman Empire wanted a piece of Bulgaria, too.

The Iron Regiment was sent to Bregalnica in July 1913. In what turned out to be the largest battle of the Second Balkan War, nearly hundreds of thousands of Serbians clashed with Bulgaria’s finest.

The Bulgarians’ plan was to surprise the Serbian Army, which, as we know, is a bad move. They tried to overpower the middle of the Serbian lines, which just happened to be Savic’s regiment. Savic’s superpower, it turns out, was lobbing grenades at enemy offensives, and she did it over and over at Bregalnica, running right into a charging army 10 times. For her trouble, she received her first medal for valor and a grenade to the chest.

Taken to the field hospital for shrapnel wounds, this is where Serbia’s army discovered her secret. But they didn’t give her a discharge; they gave her a promotion. This worked out for the Serbians, because they got the heroine they didn’t know they needed for the upcoming world war.

Riding high on back-to-back war victories, the Serbians were convinced that Bosnia and Herzegovina belonged to them, not the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which annexed it in 1908. Archduke Franz Ferdinand visited Sarajevo in 1914, where he became history’s most legendary gunshot victim, which led to World War I.

Austria marched a massive force right to Serbia, where the Serbians promptly handed them their fourth point of contact over and over. Savic fought at Cer, where the undersupplied and outnumbered Serbians gave the Allies their first victory over the Central Powers. Their next meeting came at the Kolubara River.

At Kolubara, Savic charged across No Man’s Land with two bandoliers of grenades and her standard-issue rifle. After single-handedly clearing an Austrian trench with those grenades, she ran to the next one, where 20 enemy soldiers surrendered. After sending the prisoners back, she assaulted another trench with grenades. She didn’t stop until shrapnel from an artillery shell hit her in the head.


When you can finally let your hair down and crush your country's enemies as the woman you are.

For her gallantry at Kolubara, she received the highest medal Serbia could bestow, the Karadjordje Star with Swords. Austria lost the battle and was forced to withdraw from Serbia, tail between its legs. Milunka Savic’s career wasn’t over. Serbia was surrounded by enemies Bulgaria, Austria, Germany and the Ottoman Empire, and Savic fought them all.

In 1916, she earned another Karadjordje Star with Swords for cleaning trenches full of Bulgarians by chucking grenades at them, even managing to capture 23 prisoners. The Serbians couldn’t hold out against all of its enemies and were forced to retreat across Albania. They were picked up by the French and Italians and joined the French Army of the Orient to continue the fight.

Savic was wounded a total of nine times over the course of her three wars. She was also awarded 12 medals, including two French Legions d'Honneur, Russia’s Cross of St. George, the British Medal of the Order of St. Michael, the Serbian Milos Obilic Medal, and she was the only woman in all of World War I to receive the French Croix de Guerre.


The monument to Milunka Savic in Jošanicka Banja.

As a recipient of the Legion d'Honneur, France offered to set her up in Paris with a home and a nice pension after the war, but she did not want to leave Serbia.
Instead, she became a factory worker, cook, nurse, janitor and, during World War II, ran a hospital for partisans.
She died in Belgrade in 1973, still the most decorated female combatant in history.

https://www.military.com/history/most-decorated-female-soldier-history-of-modern-warfare.html?ESRC=mr_230306.nl

"The United States should not have a domain awareness gap," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, D-N.J., told reporters, echoing the phrasing U.S. Northern Command commander Gen. Glen VanHerck used to explain why the military did not detect previous balloons in real time. "We have to be able to understand everything that may be coming toward our country, in every dimension -- space, continental parts of our country. And so that's something that I think we need to be working on."

Considering what we spend on defense every year we should have seen it coming.

DoD Struggles to Answer Questions on Chinese Balloon in Congressional Testimony


Lawmakers and intelligence advisers, including Gen. Glen VanHerck, left, commander of the United States Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, arrive for a briefing on the Chinese surveillance balloon that flew over the United States, at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 9, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

9 Feb 2023
Military.com | By Rebecca Kheel

Defense officials on Thursday defended their response to a suspected Chinese spy balloon that flew over the continental United States but struggled to satisfy furious senators at the first public hearing on the incident.

A key subcommittee held a hearing that was part of a balloon-centric day on Capitol Hill a week after the Pentagon first disclosed that the craft was traversing the U.S. heartland. The full Senate also received a classified briefing, as did the full House. And the House voted unanimously to condemn China for its "brazen violation of U.S. sovereignty."

The classified briefing appeared to quell some lawmakers' concerns. Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., the chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee, excoriated Pentagon officials at his panel's hearing, proclaiming that he didn't "want a damn balloon going over the United States when we could've taken it down over the Aleutian Islands," referencing the island chain in Alaska that sweeps across the Pacific Ocean. But after the classified briefing, Tester told reporters he was satisfied and that officials gave "more concrete answers."

Still, in public, officials struggled to explain why the balloon was not considered a threat as soon as it was discovered near Alaska, whether they know what China was spying on, and what actions they would take against any future balloons.

"I respect the need to keep some of this classified, but we all understand that some of the desire to keep things classified has to do with not wanting to disclose to the public things that might be inconvenient politically for the department," Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said at the public hearing.

The Chinese balloon, which the U.S. government alleges was conducting surveillance but which China maintains was a weather balloon, has been an object of public fascination since it was spotted in the sky over Montana last week. In Congress, it immediately sparked concern about what the incident means for the threat posed by China.

The balloon first came to the U.S. military's attention when it entered the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone on Jan. 28, according to the Pentagon. It then briefly flew over Alaska before moving over Canada. Then, on Jan. 31, it flew back into U.S. airspace and continued to fly east across the country until it was shot down Saturday by an F-22 Raptor while it was over the Atlantic Ocean off the South Carolina coast.

The Biden administration has said it did not shoot down the dirigible earlier because of the risk of debris injuring a bystander on the ground, because the balloon provided little added intelligence-gathering capabilities beyond China's spy satellites and because the U.S. itself could gather intelligence from watching the balloon's flight.

Pressed repeatedly at the hearing about why the balloon entering Alaskan airspace was not treated with the same urgency it was when the balloon entered the lower 48 and why it was not shot down when it was over the Bering Sea or remote areas of the state with little risk of collateral injuries, defense officials said the craft didn't display a hostile intent and that its path over the state did not take it to sensitive sites.

That explanation rankled senators, in particular Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska.

"I am so angry. I want to use other words, but I'm not going to," Murkowski said. "Seems to me the clear message to China is, 'We got free range in Alaska.'"

The classified briefing later did not assuage Murkowski, who told reporters afterward that she felt like her state "gets treated differently, and when it comes to national security, national defense, no state should feel like they are more vulnerable than the rest."

Toward the end of the public hearing after an hour of getting beaten up by senators, officials also argued that recovering the balloon debris would have been difficult in Alaska's harsh terrain and that shooting it down too early could have set a dangerous precedent.

"Once you take a shot, you can't get it back," Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims II, director for operations of the Joint Staff, told senators. "I think it's important for us to remember that if we establish that precedent, that we may meet the same precedent."

After several attempts by Tester to ask whether the United States knows what information China was trying to gather, Jedidiah Royal, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said only that "we have some very good guesses" but deferred a more specific answer to the classified briefing.

Questioned about how the military plans to deal with any future balloons, Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, said officials are still learning about the balloon's capabilities and what would be needed to counter them as debris is collected.

While the classified briefing allayed some concerns from the Biden administration's allies in Congress, they also said the United States needs to better prepare for future incidents.

"The United States should not have a domain awareness gap," Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez, D-N.J., told reporters, echoing the phrasing U.S. Northern Command commander Gen. Glen VanHerck used to explain why the military did not detect previous balloons in real time. "We have to be able to understand everything that may be coming toward our country, in every dimension -- space, continental parts of our country. And so that's something that I think we need to be working on."

Menendez also said the United States needs to craft a policy response to make Chinese President Xi Jinping "understand that there are consequences for this action."

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/02/09/dod-struggles-answer-questions-chinese-balloon-congressional-testimony.html?ESRC=eb_230210.nl

Black WWII soldiers asked a White woman for doughnuts. They were shot.
The case of Allen Leftridge shows how racism infected White American troops — and how its victims were denied benefits
Image without a caption
By Justin Wm. Moyer
Updated January 15, 2023 at 10:01 a.m. EST|Published January 15, 2023 at 7:00 a.m. EST

About two weeks after the end of World War II in Europe, French women were serving U.S. soldiers coffee and doughnuts in a Red Cross tent in France. Two Black soldiers went inside to get some.

This was a breach of norms: In a segregated army, many White American soldiers did not want Black men talking to French women.

The Black soldiers — Allen Leftridge and Frank Glenn — were challenged by a White sergeant, according to a witness. When a White armed guard arrived, he fatally shot the two men. A third soldier — a White man just released from a German prison camp who was not named in documents related to the incident — was caught in the crossfire and killed, a newspaper from the time reported.

These deaths, briefly touched upon in a 1984 oral history, were not widely chronicled at the time outside of Black publications. Documents in the Library of Congress archives — including pleas from civil rights advocates and responses from military officials — reveal details of the case and further evidence of how White U.S. soldiers fighting fascism abroad brought racism overseas. The consequences were fatal — and some victims of racial violence were robbed of compensation.

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Two White soldiers were acquitted in a court-martial over the deadly incident. Leftridge’s widow was denied military benefits because her husband’s death was ruled not in the line of duty “due to his own misconduct.”

“They weren’t breaking a law — unless there’s a law against being a Negro soldier,” a legal advocate for the slain Black soldiers wrote in 1946. “They were visiting a Red Cross tent — on the post on which they were stationed — and were shot down by trigger-happy guards who had prejudice[d] orders not to allow Negro soldiers to talk to French women.”

“That’s not how people think about World War II,” said Matthew F. Delmont, Dartmouth University history professor and the author of a book about African American troops in World War II. “Incidents like these between Black and White troops really spotlight that things were not unified in any real way.”

However, there may be a remedy. In another case from the same period, a Black soldier slain in a Jim Crow incident in Georgia was wrongly blamed for the circumstances that led to his death until his record was corrected last year. This didn’t just clear his name, but may also make it possible for his family to receive financial benefits.

More than 80 years after World War II, some racial injustices endured by Black servicemen are finally being addressed.

A long-forgotten case
Most of what is known about Leftridge and Glenn comes from the reporting of Alfred A. Duckett, a Black war correspondent who served in Leftridge’s regiment and later became a speechwriter for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

In an interview published in Studs Terkel’s oral history “The Good War,” Duckett, who died in 1984, said the regiment was stationed at Camp Lucky Strike in Saint-Valery-en-Caux, France, about 120 miles north of Paris.

These Black troops were charged with guarding German prisoners, Duckett told Terkel. But some White U.S. officials feared these Black men would engage in normal interactions with White Europeans.

“There was an almost psychotic terror on the part of white commanders that there would be a great deal of association with the white women,” Duckett said. One White Army chaplain, he added, warned Europeans that Black soldiers had tails.

Leftridge and Glenn went on their doughnut mission in this charged environment. As they were being served, Duckett said, military police showed up. There are varying accounts of what happened next.

“When a white MP ordered him not to stand there talking to this woman, Allen turned his back on him,” Duckett told Terkel. “He was shot in the back and killed.”

In an undated statement from the Library of Congress archives, a witness, Solomon Johnson, said Leftridge and a sergeant “got into a hot discussion and suddenly came to blows.” After the fight was broken up, Leftridge “took one step” toward a guard, who then fired on him, according to Johnson.

“He never gave the command ‘Halt’ or gave any warning,” Johnson said. The Washington Post could not locate or reach him for comment.

“When is all this going to stop?” the Pittsburgh Courier, once the nation’s most widely circulated Black newspaper, wrote a few months after the incident. “Now that prisoners have been liberated from Nazi tyranny in Germany, when will we be freed of it in our own lines?”


The Pittsburgh Courier, Nov. 3, 1945. (The Pittsburgh Courier/Archives)
Seeking justice for a war widow — and marrying her
After Leftridge’s death, the lives of those he left behind changed irrevocably.

In a 10-page letter written the day before he died — a copy of which was provided by his family to The Post — Leftridge mused that he might have to stay in France for only three more months and asked about his infant daughter: “What is baby doing now? Can she say any words yet?”

The shooting also transformed Duckett’s life — more so after a meeting with Leftridge’s widow, Sarah, and the couple’s daughter.

According to the account in Terkel’s book, Duckett had heard that Sarah wanted more information about her husband’s death, so he paid her a visit. He found her at home with a young girl — Leftridge’s daughter, whom he hadn’t lived to meet.

The war correspondent and war widow stayed up late talking. When “The Star-Spangled Banner” came on the radio at the programming day’s end, Duckett said, Sarah turned it off. She couldn’t bear to hear the national anthem.

“She was very bitter about what had been done to her husband, to herself, to her little girl,” Duckett told Terkel. As their relationship developed, Duckett ended up marrying Sarah, and her daughter became his.

The Post reached out to Leftridge’s family; Carolyn Holman, his daughter and Duckett’s stepdaughter, declined to comment.

Her son Will Holman — Leftridge’s grandson — told The Post that because of his grandfather’s death, his mother grew up without a “stable male figure” after Duckett and Leftridge divorced when she was 5.


Sarah Leftridge, with daughter Carolyn and second husband Alfred A. Duckett, who unsuccessfully fought to get her military benefits. (Courtesy of Will Holman)
For reasons that aren’t clear, Frank Glenn’s death was ruled in the line of duty, archived documents show, and his widow was awarded a “gratuity.”

But Sarah’s efforts to secure military benefits came to nothing. The documents, including her handwritten letters to what was then the Veterans Administration, show she was denied a widow’s pension and a $300 gratuity because the Army attributed her husband’s death “to his own misconduct.”

In 1947, the Army denied Sarah’s application to correct her late husband’s record.

“Private Leftridge was killed ... after he failed to heed the challenge of an armed guard,” an Army official wrote to the NAACP, which had taken up Leftridge’s cause.


A letter from Sarah Leftridge to an Army official. (National Archives)
A fight for fair compensation in a new century
In such incidents in which White soldiers killed Black colleagues, the battle to clear a victim’s name can stretch decades. In one 1941 case, a White military police officer shot a Black soldier after he talked loudly on a bus. The surviving family of that soldier — Albert King — succeeded in correcting the subsequent “not in the line of duty” designation only in November.

The U.S. military papered over the killing of a young Black soldier by a White officer. Can there be justice 80 years later?

“This finding reverses a decision that is as wrong today as it was 82 years ago,” Margaret Burnham, founder of Northeastern University Law School’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, which tracks such cases, wrote in an email. “It is never too late.”

Attorneys for King’s family — a trio of lawyers with military records from the firm Morgan Lewis — took the case pro bono to clear King’s name. Now that King’s record has been corrected, they’re trying to determine what financial benefits, if any, are available to the family.

The idea that the armed forces will pay compensation to a slain soldier’s family is “one of the fundamental transactions that occur when you join the military,” said Chris Melendez, one of the attorneys. “He should have been taken care of.”

It’s not clear how much Sarah Leftridge would have received had the Army reversed course — or how much her heirs could receive now. A $300 gratuity in 1945 is worth about $4,900 today. Widows’ pensions, meanwhile, may be worth thousands of dollars per year and continue until the widow’s death. His grandmother died in 2009, Will Holman said.

In a statement, spokeswoman Madison Bonzo said the Army “puts a high priority on honoring the legacy of all our Soldiers and their families, especially when there may be an error or injustice.”

“The Army is standing by to assist the Leftridge family through the Army Board for Correction of Military Records at the Army Review Boards Agency, should they decide to submit a records correction request,” the statement said.

Holman said he’s looking into how to pursue the benefits that were denied to his grandmother, leaving her “destitute.”

Racism led to lower benefits for Black veterans, studies find

Charissa Threat, a history professor at Chapman University, said that paying benefits to Black men who died because of racism in military ranks must be part of the conversation about racial justice.

“This boils down to a question of reparations,” she said. “It’s reparations under a different name.”

Duckett died without clearing Allen Leftridge’s name and decades before talk of reparations revived. Even amid civil rights gains, he knew a storm was coming.

“We’ve come a long way,” Duckett said. “But racism is just as alive today, maybe even more virulent.”

Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/01/15/allen-leftridge-black-soldier-segregation/

Feds Try to Seize Money, Property from Church Accused of Multimillion-Dollar Scheme Targeting Vets


The altar of the main church for the House of Prayer in Hinesville, Georgia, features a large cross and a reference to a verse from the gospel of Matthew. (Military.com photo by Thomas Novelly)

12 Jan 2023
Military.com | By Steve Beynon

Listen to this article
05:32
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/01/12/feds-try-seize-money-property-church-accused-of-multimillion-dollar-scheme-targeting-vets.html?ESRC=eb_230113.nl

The Department of Justice is trying to seize money and property from a church group some former members describe as a cult that preyed on soldiers and veterans by bilking them out of millions of dollars of benefits.

Federal authorities are seeking some $150,000 spread across six bank accounts, a relatively small sum of money compared to what the House of Prayer ultimately earned though its bible school, which accepted millions in GI Bill funding for veterans. Authorities are also moving to seize the church's properties.

Five of House of Prayer's churches were raided by the FBI in June; all of the locations were near Army bases in Hinesville and Augusta, Georgia; Tacoma, Washington; Killeen, Texas; and Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Military.com was first to detail the complex alleged scheme that reportedly went on for nearly 20 years, pushing troops and veterans to relinquish their military paychecks and disability pay and use their Department of Veterans Affairs-backed home loans to drive revenue for the church. The church went as far as placing one of its own members into a job at the VA, allegedly to increase disability compensation for its members. Former members say that much of that cash ended up supporting a lavish lifestyle for the church's leader, Rony Denis.

Prosecutors allege the church moved money it earned through its operations across at least 80 bank accounts with at least 20 different banks to "conceal" where those funds originated, according to released court documents.\

Court Watch was first to report on the forfeiture motion, wherein federal authorities requested permission to reclaim the $150,000, according to court documents released Friday.

However, public-facing court databases do not show any charges filed against Denis or any other key church figures.

The bulk of the church's money was allegedly in accounts with Chase, SunTrust/Truist, Bank of America and Wells Fargo, accounts that held at least $5 million worth of VA payments, according to federal officials. It's unclear if that money is still there or whether authorities will try to seize those accounts too.

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did a spokesperson with the church respond to a request for comment ahead of publication of this story.

In many cases, members reportedly were pressured to live in barracks-style housing controlled by the church and perform hours of unpaid labor on the outskirts of major Army installations such as Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and Fort Stewart, Georgia. Women were often tasked with cooking and cleaning, while the men performed manual labor and maintenance, according to former members interviewed by Military.com.

But at the center of the church's access to federal funds was House of Prayer's bible school, which law enforcement representatives say didn't meet any of the requirements for a legitimate school that would be eligible for GI Bill use. Church officials allegedly made fraudulent claims to the VA that allowed the school to receive GI Bill funds since 2013, bringing in roughly $7 million from enrolling 304 students between January 2013 and February 2022.

An additional $8 million was paid out by the Department of Veterans Affairs directly to students for housing allowances and other stipends, money that former members told Military.com they were pressured to give to the church.

The investigation, led by the FBI in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs Inspector General, found that House of Prayer "made numerous false statements to the VA in order to establish [the church] as an educational institution recognized by the VA in order to secure regular payments from the VA under the Post-9/11 GI Bill program."

Prosecutors say the church's claims about the bible school included false statements about the qualifications of school instructors, the number of students enrolled, and the location of facilities, while also misrepresenting the hours faculty members worked, the type of courses taught to students, and the quality of its courses.

In an interview with Military.com, a church leader who led the Bible school said it amounted to little more than brief classes on the gospel, also alleging that the names of classes were changed so VA regulators would continue to pay for what looked like a broad curriculum. Church officials went as far as staging classrooms with desks and other furniture during inspections from regulators, the source claimed.

The bulk of those alleged misrepresentations were made in documentation that all schools must file with the VA in order to be eligible for GI Bill funds. That eligibility is determined by state-approving agencies, which often have broad flexibility over what schools students can choose while receiving military benefits.

The flexibility is designed around cutting red tape and putting up as few burdens as possible on how a veteran spends their benefits, though there is also a history of schools, especially for-profit colleges, manipulating the system.

Military.com was first to report in October that all of House of Prayer's branches lost their GI Bill eligibility, following the FBI raids and media attention.

The investigation was spurred in 2020 after Veterans Education Success, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group that lobbies on military education issues, raised concerns about the church to the VA and lawmakers.

"All veterans should feel proud of the student veterans who alerted us to the ways the House of Prayer was mistreating them and taking their VA benefits. By speaking out, these student veterans have helped reclaim stolen GI Bill funds," Carrie Wofford, president of Veterans Education Success, told Military.com. "We are glad DOJ is seizing these bank accounts and recouping some of the stolen $7 million in GI Bill funds and urge DOJ to also seize the larger bank accounts and take any other steps to reclaim the rest of the GI Bill funds."

-- Steve Beynon can be reached at Steve.Beynon@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevenBeynon.

Related: How a Church Allegedly Scammed Millions in VA Money from Vets
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/07/19/how-church-allegedly-scammed-millions-va-money-vets.html

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2023/01/12/feds-try-seize-money-property-church-accused-of-multimillion-dollar-scheme-targeting-vets.html?ESRC=eb_230113.nl

Tony Vaccaro, 100, Dies; Photographed War From a Soldier’s Perspective
After carrying a camera across battlefields, he became a magazine photographer known for his images of famous subjects like Georgia O’Keeffe and Greta Garbo.


Tony Vaccaro in 1945. Along with the M-1 rifle he carried in battle, he kept a small 35-millimeter Argus C3 camera that he had bought as a teenager.Credit...Tony Vaccaro Studio/Monroe Gallery of Photography, via Associated Press

By Richard Goldstein
Dec. 30, 2022
As a high school student in the New York City suburbs, Tony Vaccaro became intrigued by photography. Two months after graduation, when he was inducted into the Army during World War II, he showed a captain the photos he had taken for his yearbook and requested an assignment as a combat photographer with the Signal Corps.

“The pictures are great,” the officer told him. But since he had no experience in combat and was too young to be a seasoned photographer, he was rejected.

At 21, though, he was old enough to be an infantryman.

Private Vaccaro spent 272 days in combat with the 83rd Infantry Division, which fought its way from Normandy to Germany.

Along with the M-1 rifle he carried across Europe, he kept a small 35-millimeter Argus C3 camera that he had bought as a teenager. Army regulations prohibited soldiers from taking photos unless they were with the Signal Corps. But he managed to capture thousands of images of the war, taken close up. They conveyed an intimacy often denied to the photographers of the Signal Corps, whose mobility was limited by their much heavier cameras.

He later received approval to take photos openly, with the admonition that he was a rifleman first and a photographer second.

When Mr. Vaccaro died at 100 on Wednesday at his home in the Long Island City section of Queens, he was remembered for his searing photos — most of them unseen for decades after the war’s end — and for his work as a fashion, travel and celebrity photographer for America’s leading magazines.

His death was announced in a statement by the Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe, N.M., which is currently presenting “Tony Vaccaro: The Centennial Exhibit.”

While en route to Normandy 12 days after the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944, Private Vaccaro hid his camera beneath his raincoat, placed his lens behind a hole he had made in it, and photographed Allied boats in the English Channel.

Two of his best-known photos captured the deaths of two men from his unit, both on Jan. 11, 1945, near Ottré, Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge.

“The Last Step of Jack Rose” portrays a fellow soldier running with his rifle at the split second when shrapnel from a German shell exploded nearby and killed him, its smoke visible in the picture.

Mr. Vaccaro’s “White Death: Photo Requiem for a Dead Soldier, Private Henry I. Tannenbaum” shows the remains of a soldier whose body was partly covered by snowfall when Private Vaccaro came upon him the morning after he died.

“I wanted this photo to be that of an unknown soldier,” Mr. Vaccaro recalled in the Emmy-nominated HBO documentary “Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro.” And then, he said, “I saw who it was — my friend Henry Tannenbaum. We were both from New York. One day he showed me his family and his baby.”


Mr. Vaccaro’s 1945 photograph“White Death: Photo Requiem for a Dead Soldier, Private Henry I. Tannenbaum” shows the remains of a soldier whose body was partly covered by snowfall.Credit...Tony Vaccaro, via Monroe Gallery

Private Tannenbaum’s son, Samuel, who was 2 when his father died, learned of the photograph many years later and contacted Mr. Vaccaro, who gave him a signed print of the image and, in 2002, accompanied him to the site of his father’s death. They placed a wreath at a marker in the field, which was dedicated by the American World War II Orphans Network to Private Tannenbaum and other members of the 83rd Infantry Division.

“The bullet that killed my father also destroyed my mother’s mind and ended my childhood,” Mr. Tannenbaum said in a 2017 interview. He called his visit to Belgium with Mr. Vaccaro “a trip of a lifetime,” adding: “I may not have had the opportunity to tell my parents that I love them. Through telling their story, I believe I am honoring them.”

Mr. Vaccaro’s “Kiss of Liberation,” taken on Aug. 14, 1944, showed an American soldier, Sgt. Gene Costanzo, kneeling to kiss a little girl, as two smiling women dance a celebratory polka in the square of the newly liberated town of Saint-Briac-sur-Mer in Brittany.


A soldier in his uniform with his knees on the ground kisses a little girl on the cheek in a black-and-white photo. In the background there are two women wearing dresses while smiling and holding hands.
In “Kiss of Liberation,” Mr. Vaccaro captured Sgt. Gene Costanzo kneeling to kiss a little girl during a celebration in a newly liberated French town in 1944.Credit...Tony Vaccaro, via Monroe Gallery

Mr. Vaccaro was able to capture intimate war photos since, like his subjects, he was an infantryman, Anne Wilkes Tucker, a curator emeritus at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, said in “Underfire.”

“He was one of them, they trusted him,” she said. “Not only with the pictures that he took, but as the man on one side or another of them as the fighting broke out.”

Private Vaccaro improvised as he moved through Europe, finding his film and his processing chemicals among the ruins of camera shops in towns his unit passed through. He developed the film in Army helmets and hung the negatives on trees to dry when he wasn’t on night duty. He carried them in his backpack.

After the war, worn out emotionally, he stored his photos and vowed that he would never again bring a camera to a battle scene.

Instead, he became a photographer for magazines including Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, Harper’s Bazaar, Town & Country and Flair. His subjects included John F. Kennedy, the Eisenhower family, Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Frank Lloyd Wright, Sophia Loren, Greta Garbo, Maria Callas and Federico Fellini.

In 1960, he was assigned by Look to photograph O’Keeffe, the modernist artist, at her New Mexico home.

Expecting a more famous photographer to show up, she refused to pose for him at first. To win her over, Mr. Vaccaro cooked a meal and made a picnic lunch. When the weather turned too windy for the picnic, he gave her a plate of Swiss cheese as she sat in the back of his car. And when she playfully peered through a hole in a piece of the cheese, Mr. Vaccaro went into action.

“I wanted to reproduce emotions, feelings, so I sort of invented a way to take pictures so fast, never giving people a chance to make themselves more flattering,” he told The Santa Fe New Mexican in 2007, when his O’Keeffe photos were exhibited at her museum. “For one, she looked at me through a piece of cheese. That moment was not even a second, but I stopped it. She was amazed by it. She said, ‘I never saw anyone working like you.’”

Michelantonio Vaccaro was born on Dec. 20, 1922, in Greensburg, Pa., a son of Italian immigrants. When he was 3, he moved with his parents to Italy, but both his father and mother died, separately, a few years later. His sisters were taken to an Italian orphanage, and he lived with an uncle and aunt.

The children returned to America just before war broke out in Europe and lived together in New Rochelle, N.Y., in Westchester County, where he attended Isaac E. Young High School before going to war.

Mr. Vaccaro retired in the early 1980s. His photos have been exhibited at leading museums and at shows, and he sold some privately through the Tony Vaccaro Studio in Long Island City.

Mr. Vaccaro is survived by his sons Frank and David from his marriage to Anja Lehto, a Finnish fashion model he had photographed, and two grandsons. Mr. Vaccaro and Ms. Lehto separated in 1979; she died in 2013.

After the war, Mr. Vaccaro spent several years with Stars and Stripes, a publication for the American military community, touring Europe to document its recovery, before turning to commercial photography.

He never put the war behind him. He struggled with trauma from the killing he had taken part in and photographed, and he experienced nightmares.

But, as he said in the 2016 documentary about his nine months enmeshed in unrelenting violence: “It was necessary for me to be evil for 272 days. But not forever.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/30/arts/tony-vaccaro-dead.html

Join us on National Wreaths Across America Day
December 17, 2022
Each December on National Wreaths Across America Day, our mission to Remember, Honor and Teach is carried out by coordinating wreath-laying ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery, as well as at more than 3,400 additional locations in all 50 U.S. states, at sea and abroad.

Join us by sponsoring a veterans’ wreath at a cemetery near you, volunteering or donating to a local sponsorship group.
https://wreathsacrossamerica.org/?utm_source=gs&utm_medium=g.waa&utm_campaign=WAA_g.waa_gs&gclid=CjwKCAiAs8acBhA1EiwAgRFdw56Gg5OfifFnlkwJFZJ7_aTD7KXKO16l1255XQy46qtO8TiUXvdvqRoCMNAQAvD_BwE

Honor those killed at Pearl Harbor, USS Arizona survivor says

Military Times
By Audrey McAvoy, The Associated Press and Haven Daley
Dec 6, 01:45 PM


FILE - In this photo provided by the U.S. Navy, smoke rises from the battleship USS Arizona as it sinks during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Dec. 7, 1941. (AP Photo/File)

HONOLULU — USS Arizona sailor Lou Conter lived through the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor even though his battleship exploded and sank after being pierced by aerial bombs.

That makes the now 101-year-old somewhat of a celebrity, especially on the anniversary of the Dec. 7, 1941, assault. Many call him and others in the nation’s dwindling pool of Pearl Harbor survivors heroes.
https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2022/12/06/honor-those-killed-at-pearl-harbor-uss-arizona-survivor-says/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=army-dnr
https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2021/12/06/101-year-old-returns-to-pearl-harbor-to-remember-those-lost/

“The 2,403 men that died are the heroes. And we’ve got to honor them ahead of everybody else. And I’ve said that every time, and I think it should be stressed,” Conter said in a recent interview at his Grass Valley, California, home north of Sacramento.


Pearl Harbor survivor Lou Conter, 101, is seen at his home in Grass Valley, Calif., Friday, Nov. 18, 2022. Conter survived the devastating explosion that destroyed the battleship, USS Arizona during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)

On Wednesday, the U.S. Navy and the National Park Service will host a remembrance ceremony at Pearl Harbor in honor of those killed.

Last year about 30 survivors and some 100 other veterans of the war made the pilgrimage to the annual event. But the U.S. Navy and the National Park Service anticipate only one or two survivors will likely attend in person this year. Another 20 to 30 veterans of World War II are also expected to be there.

Conter won’t be among them. He attended for many years, most recently in 2019. But his doctor has told him the five-hour flight, plus hours of waiting at airports, is too strenuous for him now.

“I’m going on 102 now. It’s kind of hard to mess around,” Conter said.

Instead he plans to watch a video feed of this year’s 81st anniversary observance from home. He’s also recorded a message that will be played for those attending.

Conter’s autobiography “The Lou Conter Story” recounts how one of the Japanese bombs penetrated five steel decks on the Arizona and ignited over 1 million pounds of gunpowder and thousands of pounds of ammunition.

“The ship was consumed in a giant fireball that looked as if it engulfed everything from the mainmast forward,” he wrote.

He joined other survivors in tending to the injured, many of whom were blinded and badly burned. The sailors only abandoned ship when their senior surviving officer was sure they had rescued all those still alive.

The Arizona’s 1,177 dead account for nearly half the servicemen killed in the bombing. The battleship today sits where it sank 81 years ago, with more than 900 of its dead still entombed inside.

Conter wasn’t injured at Pearl Harbor, during World War II or the Korean War.

This year’s remembrance ceremony is the first to be open to the public since 2019. The pandemic forced the adoption of strict public health measures for the last two years.

David Kilton, the National Park Service’s chief of interpretation for Pearl Harbor, said he’s not sure how many people will attend but they’re anticipating between 2,000 to 3,000 people.

It will be held at the Pearl Harbor National Memorial visitors center which overlooks the water and the white structure built to honor those killed on the Arizona.

RELATED
Survivors gather to remember those lost at Pearl Harbor
The number of Pearl Harbor attack survivors gets smaller every year.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2021/12/07/survivors-gather-to-remember-those-lost-at-pearl-harbor/

Organizers have set a theme of “Everlasting Legacy” for this year’s ceremony, highlighting how fewer and fewer survivors remain.

“We honestly have to know and be prepared that eventually we won’t have the ability to connect with their stories and have them with us anymore,” Kilton said. “And it’s hard to to come to grips with that reality.”

Conter went to flight school after Pearl Harbor, earning his wings to fly PBY patrol bombers, which the Navy used to look for submarines and bomb enemy targets. He flew 200 combat missions in the Pacific with a “Black Cats” squadron, which conducted dive bombing at night in planes painted black.

One night in 1943 he and his crew had to avoid a dozen or so nearby sharks after they were shot down near New Guinea.

When one sailor expressed doubt they would survive, Conter responded “baloney.”

“Don’t ever panic in any situation. Survive is the first thing you tell them. Don’t panic or you’re dead,” he said. They were quiet and treaded water until another plane came and dropped them a lifeboat hours later.

In the late 1950s, he was made the Navy’s first SERE officer — which is an acronym for survival, evasion, resistance and escape. He spent the next decade training Navy pilots and crew on how to survive if they’re shot down in the jungle and captured as a prisoner of war. Some of his pupils used his instruction to live through years as POWs in Vietnam.

These days, he spends his time going to his favorite breakfast spot twice a week and going out for Mexican food every Friday night. He enjoys visiting with friends and watching TV.

Conter hasn’t forgotten his shipmates. He said he’d like the military to try to identify 85 Arizona sailors who were buried as unknowns in a Honolulu cemetery after the war.

“They should never give up on that issue. If they’re ever identified, I’m sure their families would want to bury them at home or wherever, but they should never give up on trying to identify them,” he said.

https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2022/12/06/honor-those-killed-at-pearl-harbor-uss-arizona-survivor-says/

R.I.P. to you PegnVA

Remains of soldier who disappeared during Korean War identified

By Mark Pratt, The Associated Press
Sep 25, 11:39 AM


This undated photo provided by the U.S. Defense Department shows
Cpl. Joseph J. Puopolo. (U.S. Defense Department via AP)

BOSTON — A soldier from Massachusetts who went missing during the Korean War and was later reported to have died in a prisoner of war camp has been accounted for using modern scientific techniques, military officials said.

Army Cpl. Joseph J. Puopolo, 19, of East Boston, was accounted for in August, according to a statement Friday from the:
Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency.
"Progress on recovering missing troops, but still a daunting task ahead"
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/09/19/progress-on-recovering-missing-troops-but-still-a-daunting-task-ahead/

It was the news his family — including his now 99-year-old sister Elizabeth Fiorentini — has been awaiting for decades, Fiorentini’s grandson and Puopolo’s grandnephew, Richard Graham, said in a telephone interview Saturday.

“We have all heard about him, and we all knew of him, and we all knew he was a war hero. We always hoped we’d find him,” he said. “But I never thought my grandmother would be here for it.”

Fiorentini had not seen her brother since she was in her 20s, and had mixed reactions on hearing the news that his remains had been identified.

“In her mind it was like he died again,” Graham said.

Puopolo, an artilleryman with the 8th Army, was reported missing in action on Dec. 2, 1950, after his unit attempted to withdraw from Kunu-ri, North Korea, following the Battle of Ch’ongch’on, according to the military. Four former POWs reported in 1953 that Puopolo had died at a POW camp in February 1951.

After the war, the sides exchanged remains, but not all could be identified and those were buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, the agency said.

A set of previously unidentified remains were disinterred in December 2019, and identified as being those of Puopolo through dental and anthropological analysis, mitochondrial DNA analysis and circumstantial evidence, the agency said.

The family hopes to hold a burial service for Puopolo in another month or so either in a family plot in Malden or the veterans’ cemetery in Bourne, Graham said. Puopolo was one of six children, all of whom had large families of their own, and as many as 60 or 70 relatives might show.

“He has not been forgotten,” Graham said.

https://www.armytimes.com/veterans/2022/09/25/remains-of-soldier-who-disappeared-during-korean-war-identified/?utm_source=sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=army-dnr

Last World War II Medal of Honor recipient to lie in honor at US Capitol
By Sonnet Swire

Updated 9:57 PM ET, Sun July 3, 2022


People salute the casket of Hershel "Woody" Williams set up in the first floor rotunda of the West Virginia State Capitol in Charleston, West Virginia, for visitation on Saturday, July 2, 2022.

(CNN)Hershel W. "Woody" Williams, who was the last surviving Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, will lie in honor at the US Capitol, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Sunday.

The date and other details will be announced later, Pelosi and Schumer said in a joint statement.
"Woody Williams embodied the best of America: living a life of duty, honor and courage," said Pelosi, a California Democrat.
Schumer, a New York Democrat, called Williams "an American hero who embodied the best of our country and the greatest generation."
Williams, who died Wednesday at the age of 98, was awarded the Medal of Honor after serving in the Battle of Iwo Jima and displaying "valiant devotion to duty." President Harry Truman presented Williams with the honor in a ceremony at the White House on October 5, 1945.
The Medal of Honor is the United States' highest award for military valor.
At a Sunday memorial service in Williams' native West Virginia, Sen. Joe Manchin announced he received a call that morning informing him that Williams would be memorialized in the US Capitol Rotunda.
Manchin, a Democrat from the state, praised Williams as someone who "never quit giving back" by raising money for Gold Star Families with an annual motorcycle ride.
"It's raised hundreds of thousands of dollars," Manchin said Sunday, adding, "It's not going to be stopping, because Woody would come after me in a heartbeat."
Manchin said he will miss Williams' phone calls, joking how Williams would give him directions on how to do his job.
"I'll miss him telling me how I'm supposed to vote. And when I didn't, how I made a mistake," Manchin said.
CNN's Jake Tapper contributed to this report.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/03/politics/hershel-woody-williams-world-war-ii-veteran-lie-in-honor/index.html

Cabell County Courthouse employees pay their respects as law enforcement officers lead a procession for Hershel W. “Woody” Williams,
the last remaining Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, Wednesday, June 28, 2022, in Huntington, W.Va.

R.I.P.

Last remaining WWII Medal of Honor recipient dies at 98

By JOHN RABY an hour ago


1 of 8 -- FILE - Hershel "Woody" Williams, center, the sole surviving U.S. Marine to be awarded the Medal of Honor during World War II, poses with fellow Marines at the Charles E. Shelton Freedom Memorial at Smothers Park, Saturday, April 6, 2019, in Owensboro, Ky. Williams, the last remaining Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, died Wednesday, June 29, 2022 He was 98. Williams' foundation announced on Twitter and Facebook that he died at the Veterans Affairs medical center bearing his name in Huntington. (Greg Eans/The Messenger-Inquirer via AP, File )


Woody Williams, 94, the only living Marine Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, gets ready to assist with the coin toss, before the NFL Super Bowl 52 football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots, Sunday, Feb. 4, 2018, in Minneapolis. Williams, the last remaining Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, died Wednesday, June 29, 2022. He was 98.
Williams' foundation announced on Twitter and Facebook that he died at the Veterans Affairs medical center bearing his name in Huntington. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)


CORRECTS SPELLING OF FIRST NAME TO HERSHEL, NOT HERSCHEL
Law enforcement officers lead a procession for Hershel W. “Woody” Williams, the last remaining Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, Wednesday, June 28, 2022, in Huntington, W.Va. Williams, 98, died Wednesday at the Veterans Affairs medical center bearing his name in Huntington. As a young Marine corporal, Williams went ahead of his unit during the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific Ocean in February 1945 and eliminated a series of Japanese machine gun positions. (Sholten Singer/The Herald-Dispatch via AP)


Law enforcement officers lead a procession for Hershel W. “Woody” Williams, the last remaining Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, Wednesday, June 28, 2022, in Huntington, W.Va. Williams, 98, died Wednesday at the Veterans Affairs medical center bearing his name in Huntington. As a young Marine corporal, Williams went ahead of his unit during the Battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific Ocean in February 1945 and eliminated a series of Japanese machine gun positions. (Sholten Singer/The Herald-Dispatch via AP)

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Hershel W. “Woody” Williams, the last remaining Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, whose heroics under fire over several crucial hours at the Battle of Iwo Jima made him a legend in his native West Virginia, died Wednesday. He was 98.

Williams’ foundation announced on Twitter and Facebook that he died at the Veterans Affairs medical center bearing his name in Huntington.

“Today, America lost not just a valiant Marine and a Medal of Honor recipient, but an important link to our Nation’s fight against tyranny in the Second World War,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement. “I hope every American will pause to reflect on his service and that of an entire generation that sacrificed so much to defend the cause of freedom and democracy.”

As a young Marine corporal, Williams went ahead of his unit in February 1945 and eliminated a series of Japanese machine gun positions.

Later that year, at age 22, Williams received the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for military valor, from President Harry Truman at the White House.

“For me, receiving the Medal of Honor was actually the lifesaver because it forced me to talk about the experiences that I had, which was a therapy that I didn’t even know I was doing,” Williams said during a 2018 Boy Scouts recognition ceremony in Fairmont, according to the Times West Virginian.

Iwo Jima was where Marines planted the American flag on Mount Suribachi, a moment captured in one of the most iconic war photographs in history. Williams said he saw the flag from a distance after it went up as troops around him celebrated.

Williams’ actions in battle to clear the way for American tanks and infantry were detailed on the military’s Medal of Honor website: He was “quick to volunteer his services when our tanks were maneuvering vainly to open a lane for the infantry through the network of reinforced concrete pillboxes, buried mines, and black volcanic sands. Williams daringly went forward alone to attempt the reduction of devastating machinegun fire from the unyielding positions.”

Facing small-arms fire, Williams fought for four hours, repeatedly returning to prepare demolition charges and obtain flamethrowers.

“His unyielding determination and extraordinary heroism in the face of ruthless enemy resistance were directly instrumental in neutralizing one of the most fanatically defended Japanese strong points encountered by his regiment and aided vitally in enabling his company to reach its objective,” the website said.

Williams remained in the Marines after the war, serving a total of 20 years, before working for the Veterans Administration for 33 years as a veterans service representative.

In 2018, the Huntington VA medical center was renamed in his honor, and the Navy commissioned a mobile base sea vessel in his name in 2020. In February 2018, Williams was joined by 14 other recipients of the Medal of Honor to be honored by the NFL and the nation during the coin toss before the Super Bowl in Minneapolis.

Williams may not have gotten as much attention nationally as Air Force Brig. Gen. Chuck Yeager, the flamboyant World War II fighter pilot ace and West Virginia native who became the first person to fly faster than sound in 1947. Yeager died in December 2020. Yet in his home state, Williams was a household name.

“Woody Williams will go down in history as one of the greatest West Virginians who ever lived, and we salute him for everything he gave to our state and our nation,” Gov. Jim Justice said in a statement.

U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin said Williams “was the embodiment of a true American hero. Americans like Woody answered the call to serve our great nation and their sacrifices allow us to enjoy the freedoms we hold dear.”

Williams was born the youngest of a family of 11 on a dairy farm on Oct. 2, 1923, in the Harrison County community of Quiet Dell. Prior to joining the military, he served in the Civilian Conservation Corps and worked as a teenage taxi driver in Fairmont, sometimes delivering Western Union telegrams to the families of fallen soldiers.

It was that passion that later led Williams and his Louisville, Kentucky-based nonprofit foundation to raise money and establish more than 100 Gold Star Families Memorial Monuments in recognition of relatives of lost service members across the United States, according to his website.

Although his two older brothers were serving in the Army, Williams wanted to take a different path. He knew some Marines from his area and admired their blue uniforms whenever they returned home. But at 5-foot-6, Williams was rejected because of his height when he tried to join in 1942. A year later, the Marines allowed him in at age 19.

Williams relied on his fiancée, Ruby, to get him through the often anxious times during the war, saying he had to get back to the girl in Fairmont that he was going to marry.

Their marriage lasted 62 years. Ruby Williams died in 2007 at age 83. The couple had two daughters and five grandsons.

Services will be held at 4 p.m. Sunday at the state Culture Center in Charleston. Visitations will be conducted Saturday and before Sunday’s service in the nearby Capitol rotunda.

https://apnews.com/article/huntington-pacific-ocean-world-war-ii-obituaries-west-virginia-fffddf8fb9856a3a4e54bd5de875c290

Crowds honor WWII veterans at Normandy D-Day celebrations


World War II reenactors gather on Omaha Beach in Saint-aurent-sur-Mer, Normandy, France
Monday, June 6, 2022, the day of 78th anniversary of the assault that helped bring an end to World War II.
(AP Photo/Jeremias Gonzalez)

6 Jun 2022
Associated Press | By Sylvie Corbet and Jeff Schaeffer

COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, France — When D-Day veterans set foot on the Normandy beaches and other World War II sites, they express a mix of joy and sadness. Joy at seeing the gratitude and friendliness of the French toward those who landed on June 6, 1944. Sadness as they think of their fallen comrades and of another battle now being waged in Europe: the war in Ukraine.

As a bright sun was rising over the wide band of sand of Omaha Beach on Monday, 78 years on, U.S. D-Day veteran Charles Shay expressed thoughts for his comrades who fell that day. “I have never forgotten them and I know that their spirits are here,” he told The Associated Press.

02:59
The 98-year-old Penobscot Native American from Indian Island, Maine, took part in a sage-burning ceremony near the beach in Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer.

Shay, who now lives in Normandy, was a 19-year-old U.S. Army medic when he landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.

He said he was sad to see war in Europe once again, so many years later.

“Ukraine is a very sad situation. I feel sorry for the people there and I don’t know why this war had to come, but I think the human beings like to, I think they like to fight. I don’t know," he said.

"In 1944 I landed on these beaches and we thought we’d bring peace to the world. But it’s not possible.”

This year, Shay handed over the remembrance task to another Native American, from the Crow tribe, Julia Kelly, a Gulf War veteran, who performed the sage ritual. “Never forget, never forget,” she said. “In this time, in any time, war is not good.”

Shay's message to young generations would be “to be ever vigilant.”

“Of course I have to say that they should protect their freedom that they have now,” he said.

For the past two years, D-Day ceremonies were reduced to a minimum amid COVID-19 lockdown restrictions.

This year, crowds of French and international visitors — including veterans in their 90s — are back in Normandy to pay tribute to the nearly 160,000 troops from Britain, the U.S., Canada and elsewhere who landed there to bring freedom.

Several thousand people were expected Monday at a ceremony later at the American Cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach in the French town of Colleville-sur-Mer. Amid the dozens of U.S. veterans expected to attend was Ray Wallace, 97, a former paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division.

On D-Day, his plane was hit and caught fire, forcing him to jump earlier than expected. He landed 20 miles (32 kilometers) away from the town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise, the first French village to be liberated from Nazi occupation.

“We all got a little scared then. And then whenever the guy dropped us out, we were away from where the rest of the group was. That was scary," Wallace told The Associated Press.

Less than a month later, he was taken prisoner by the Germans. He was ultimately liberated after 10 months and returned to the U.S.

Still, Wallace thinks he was lucky.

“I remember the good friends that I lost there. So it’s a little emotional,” he said, with sadness in his voice. “I guess you can say I’m proud of what I did but I didn’t do that much."

He was asked about the secret to his longevity. “Calvados!” he joked, in reference to Normandy’s local alcohol.

On D-Day, Allied troops landed on the beaches code-named Omaha, Utah, Juno, Sword and Gold, carried by 7,000 boats. On that single day, 4,414 Allied soldiers lost their lives, 2,501 of them Americans. More than 5,000 were wounded.

On the German side, several thousand were killed or wounded.

Wallace, who is using a wheelchair, was among about 20 WWII veterans who opened Saturday's parade of military vehicles in Sainte-Mere-Eglise to great applause from thousands of people, in a joyful atmosphere. He did not hide his pleasure, happily waving to the crowd as parents explained the achievements of World War II heroes to their children.

Many history buffs, wearing military and civilian clothes from the period, also came to stage a reenactment of the events.

In Colleville-sur-Mer on Monday, U.S. Air Force aircraft are to fly over the American Cemetery during the commemoration ceremony, in the presence of Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The place is home to the gravesites of 9,386 people who died fighting on D-Day and in the operations that followed.

For 82-year-old Dale Thompson, visiting the site over the weekend was a first.

Thompson, who traveled from Florida with his wife, served in the 101st Airborne Division of the U.S. military in the early 1960s. He was stateside and saw no combat.

Walking amid the thousands of marble headstones, Thompson wondered how he would have reacted if he landed at D-Day.

“I try to put myself in their place,” he said. “Could I be as heroic as these people?”

____

AP Journalists Oleg Cetinic and Jeremias Gonzalez contributed to the story.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/06/06/crowds-honor-wwii-veterans-normandy-d-day-celebrations.html?ESRC=eb_220606.nl

===================================

Photos from D-Day give glimpse into historic World War II invasion 78 years ago

Wyatte Grantham-Philips USA TODAY
Updated 8:43 am ET June 6, 2022

Monday marks the 78th anniversary of the historic D-Day operation.

In the midst of World War II on June 6, 1944, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy in Nazi-occupied France. More than 156,000 troops, notably from the United States, Britain and Canada, confronted Nazi forces on D-Day forever reshaping the war, according to the Department of Defense.
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2022/06/06/d-day-photos-1944-normandy-invasion/7502281001/

A massive repatriation of World War II dead — and one body’s long journey
By Kim Clarke
May 30, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT

The U.S. Army transport ship Joseph V. Connolly moves into New York Harbor in 1947, bearing 6,200 World War II dead being returned from military cemeteries in Europe for reburial in the United States. (AP)

When the United States began bringing home its dead from World War II, the body of Army Staff Sgt. Themistocles Zombas was in the first shipment of flag-draped caskets from Europe’s battlefields.

But it would be among the last to reach its final place of rest.

Years would pass before Zombas was buried for the last time. As the country shipped home hundreds of thousands of war dead to be mourned and buried, Zombas was repeatedly interred and exhumed, first by the military and then by parents so paralyzed by grief they could not bear being apart from their only child.

As Americans observe Memorial Day, few are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the start of the return of the dead from World War II. But in the early postwar era, this massive act of repatriation — the largest in history — reunited hundreds of thousands of families torn apart by war and death and created its own series of wrenching dramas like the one that saw Zombas moved back-and-forth across the Atlantic Ocean.

While the war was underway, the U.S. military banned the return of any overseas war dead. Money was to go toward fighting rather than shipping bodies back home. Instead, soldiers buried their comrades in temporary military cemeteries throughout the European and Pacific theaters.

When the war ended, the military gave families a choice: leave their loved ones in their overseas graves or bring them home for reburial. The plan — approved and funded by Congress — split public opinion, as well as many families. Some argued it would be sacrilegious and disrespectful to move the dead. Others pleaded for the return of the bodies of fallen husbands, sons and brothers.

For Daniel and Giaseme Zombas, there was no debate. They wanted their son Themistocles brought home to Haverhill, Mass. It was where the couple had married after emigrating from Greece and where Themistocles grew up, played football in high school, and worked at the Kent Shoe factory before enlisting in 1942.

“He was the only thing they lived for,” said a high school classmate, Arthur Karambelas.

An infantryman with the 310th Infantry Regiment, Zombas was killed by a shell fragment on March 18, 1945, after his company crossed the Rhine River into Germany. He was 21 years old. Soldiers from the American Graves Registration Service wrapped his body, still in its uniform, in a thin cotton mattress pad and buried him in a temporary military cemetery outside Henri-Chapelle, Belgium.

Henri-Chapelle grew to be the largest wartime cemetery in Europe. It was also the first to be emptied when the repatriation program began in 1947. Zombas’s remains were exhumed, placed in a casket and, with some 5,000 others from the cemetery, loaded onto the U.S. Army Transport Joseph V. Connolly at Antwerp, Belgium.

The Connolly arrived in New York harbor on Oct. 26, 1947, with the first of the war dead from Europe. The first bodies from the Pacific had arrived two weeks earlier when the Army transport Honda Knot sailed into Oakland, Calif., with 3,027 caskets in its hold.

The Connolly tied up at the Brooklyn Army Base, where soldiers moved its precious cargo into the base’s cavernous terminal, then onto mortuary trains that would fan out across the country. A military escort, Army Sgt. Johnnie K. Ward, accompanied the Zombas casket to Massachusetts.

There, for the second time, Themistocles Zombas was buried — this time in his hometown — in November 1947.

But his parents could not rest. Shattered and lost without their son, the couple wanted to return to their native Greece, but only with Themistocles. They asked if the military would assist in moving his remains, and the answer was swift: “Any action … with respect to the remains must be taken by the family on their own initiative and at their own expense.”

The Zombases went ahead with their plans. They had their son’s casket re-exhumed and set sail for Greece in June 1949. Their ship shared the ocean with the Army transport Carroll Victory, making its way westward with the latest shipment of war dead. By that summer, the repatriation program was well into its second year, with more than 150,000 sets of remains returned to families.

When Julia Child worked for a spy agency fighting sharks

Themistocles Zombas was buried in Greece while his parents struggled to rebuild their lives. Yet after all of eight months, Daniel and Giaseme Zombas decided to return to Haverhill, again with their son’s remains in tow — the third time the body had crossed the Atlantic.

When the Zombases docked in Hoboken, N.J., in March 1950, they were penniless. Daniel was disabled and had been unemployed for years. The couple had been living on their son’s life insurance policy and military death pension. They could not afford the $395 bill to transport the casket to Massachusetts. They left their son’s body in Hoboken and returned home, alone, to await a government check.

For 34 days, Themistocles Zombas’s remains were on sawhorses on a New Jersey pier, draped with the same U.S. flag that had covered the coffin for its initial return from Europe in 1947. Only after a New York newspaper reported the abandonment was Zombas rescued when Greek war veterans and family friends came forward to pay the transport fee. Soldiers with the Graves Registration Service, who continued to process war dead at the Brooklyn Army Base, retrieved the body. A mortician drove the casket to Massachusetts.

On April 17, 1950, in Haverhill’s Linwood Cemetery, Zombas was lowered into the ground for the fourth and final time.

Five years had passed since his death. His journey was an anomaly, but his parents’ grief was not. When the return program ended in 1951, more than 171,000 bodies — 60 percent of America’s World War II fallen — were reunited with waiting families. The remaining overseas dead were reinterred in new, permanent cemeteries, including Henri-Chapelle American Cemetery. The repatriation plan cost $163 million.

Today, an engraved granite marker issued by the government covers the grave of Themistocles Zombas. His parents, who died in 1953 and 1966, rest at his side.

Kim Clarke, a writer based in Michigan, is writing a book about the unacknowledged men and women who brought home the bodies of some 171,000 fallen Americans in the years after World War II. She is on Twitter @kd_clarke.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/05/30/repatriation-world-war-ii-zombas/

I doubt it. Any major change in the military is usually a slow process.
But hopefully the Navy is seriously addressing the issue(s).

Are there signs the Navy is getting a handle on this problem?

A surge in Navy deserters could be a sign of a bigger problem for the military

NPR
May 21, 20222, 2: 26 PM ET
Dustin Jones

In 2021, 157 sailors illegally fled the U.S. Navy, more than double the number who deserted in 2019. Although all but eight of them eventually returned to their units, a military legal expert says the dramatic increase in desertions may be a sign of a bigger issue.

The Navy has seen an increase in desertions over the previous three years. In 2019, 63 sailors fled from their duty stations, and another 98 did so in 2020, a Navy spokesperson, Lt. Cmdr. Devin Arneson, told NPR. The number of deserters still at large had been on the decline between 2017 and 2019.

But other branches of the military didn't see a similar increase in the past three years. Desertions in the Army dropped by 47%, from 328 in 2019 to 174 in 2021, and the Marine Corps reported 59 in 2019 and 31 in 2021. The Coast Guard said it didn't record a single deserter between 2019 and 2021.

The increase in Navy desertions was first reported by NBC News.
"Navy desertions have more than doubled amid suicide concerns, as sailors feel trapped by contracts"
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/navy-desertions-doubled-suicide-concerns-sailors-feel-trapped-contract-rcna28516

Arneson said she cannot speculate about the increase in Navy desertions or why a sailor would choose desertion — an unauthorized absence in which a military member has no intention of returning. It's a grave offense that can result in a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay, a loss of benefits and jail time.

Leaving the military early is almost impossible, a legal expert says

But one former JAG officer — with over 11 years of military justice experience — said the issue underscores a harsh reality for some service members who find themselves seemingly stuck in a line of work they dislike that's tied to a multiyear contract.

Stephanie Kral spent over seven years in the Air Force serving as a legal officer. She served as a senior trial council litigator and defense attorney before leaving the service to work as a civilian military defense lawyer. She said many of the service members who resort to desertion are junior enlisted members with limited options should their military experience unfold differently from what they had hoped.

"[For] somebody who just doesn't like the environment, it's almost impossible to leave," Kral told NPR.

And though there are ways out — such as a medical discharge for individuals with health conditions preventing them from fulfilling their duties — the waters surrounding mental health are a bit murkier.

"Somebody who's suffering with an acute mental health crisis ... should not ordinarily result in a mental health discharge," Kral said. "What should happen is that they receive the care and treatment that they need to be ready to rehab their mental health and then go back to being a member of the fleet. Unfortunately, that's not always what we see."

Arneson said in statement provided to NPR that the Navy recognizes that sailors are subjected to an array of stressful situations over the course of their service and that the mental health of every member is an important part to mission success.

But Kral said that sailors, Marines, soldiers and other members of the armed forces often don't have access to the help they need.

"Regardless of what upper-level leadership says about trying to erase the stigma of mental health in our services, that does not play out when you get to the boots on the ground or the deck-plate level of actual experiences of junior service members," Kral said.

Military members who feel trapped by their contracts find themselves in a precarious position. They can stay in a job they hate and wait for their contract to end; they can become a deserter — a fugitive on the run; or, in the most extreme circumstances, they can choose to take their own life, Kral said.

Kral said if desertion is becoming an issue, then perhaps the military should explore other options regarding how to handle individuals who want to leave the service.

"Right now, the ability to discharge or to end the contract early is essentially entirely in the hands of big Navy, big Air Force, big Army. They are the ones that get to decide," Kral said. "So it puts the military in a position of power to, frankly, just abuse their people [and] not provide them resources [and] put them in situations like on the [USS] George Washington."

Kral was referring to a string of suicides aboard the aircraft carrier that is undergoing extensive repairs in Virginia. Three sailors aboard USS George Washington died by suicide in one week in April, which has prompted an investigation set to be released next year, the U.S. Naval Institute News reported.

Leaders should consider moving away from insisting junior servicemembers pursue a long-term military career, Kral said, and instead provide a way out for those who no longer want to serve. She also acknowledges that the Defense Department has a job to do, and allowing service members leave when times get hard doesn't coincide with an effective military.

If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (en español: 1-888-628-9454; deaf and hard of hearing: 1-800-799-4889) or the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. Members of the military community can contact the Military Crisis Line.

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/21/1100512920/navy-deserters-more-than-doubled-indicator-of-bigger-problem

US Army 'Returns' Cake to Italian Woman for 90th Birthday


Soldiers from U.S. Army Garrison Italy return a birthday cake to Meri Mion, center,
in Vicenza, Italy, April 28, 2022, to replace the one U.S. soldiers ate as they entered
her hometown during one of the final battles of World War II. (Laura Krieder, U.S. Army via AP)

29 Apr 2022
Associated Press

ROME — With a round of “Happy Birthday” in Italian and English, the U.S. Army toasted an Italian woman with a birthday cake Thursday to replace the one that U.S. soldiers ate as they entered
her hometown during one of the final battles of World War II.

Meri Mion, who turns 90 on Friday, wiped away tears as she was presented with the cake during a ceremony in Vicenza, northwest of Venice. The event marked the anniversary of the day the 88th Infantry Division fought its way into the city on April 28, 1945.

According to the U.S. Army, Mion spent that night with her mother hiding in the attic of their farm in the nearby village of San Pietro in Gù. Retreating German soldiers had fired on the house, but when Mion awoke on the morning of her 13th birthday, American soldiers were nearby.

In a statement, the U.S. Army Garrison Italy said Mion’s mother baked her a birthday cake and left it on the windowsill to cool. But it disappeared — apparently nicked by hungry American soldiers who had already been feted by grateful Italians with wine and bread as they entered Vicenza along its main thoroughfare.

Mion seemed genuinely surprised that U.S. soldiers had returned the cake 77 years later. She marveled “Mama mia” and “Grazie” as a small crowd featuring U.S. commanders and Italian officials sang “Happy Birthday.”

“Tomorrow, we will eat that dessert, with all my family remembering this wonderful day that I will never forget,” Mion said, according to the U.S. Army.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/04/29/us-army-returns-cake-italian-woman-90th-birthday.html

Charles G. Boyd, Air Force general and former POW, dies at 83After his fighter plane was shot down in North Vietnam, he spent nearly seven years in captivity.

By Harrison Smith
March 24, 2022 at 11:12 a.m. EDT

Listen to article,, 7 min
https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/03/24/air-force-general-charles-boyd-dead/


Charles G. Boyd, a retired Air Force general and Vietnam POW, led the Washington-based group Business Executives for National Security. (Frank Johnston/The Washington Post)

Charles G. Boyd, a highly decorated Air Force general who was shot down as a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, endured nearly seven years of captivity and rose to become the only former POW from that conflict promoted to a four-star rank, died March 23 at a hospital in Haymarket, Va. He was 83.

The cause was complications from lung cancer, said his son, Dallas Boyd.

A 36-year veteran who held posts in Europe, Southeast Asia and the Pentagon, Gen. Boyd retired from the Air Force in 1995 after serving as deputy commander of the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, with an area of responsibility spanning 82 countries. He later served as executive director of the Hart-Rudman Commission, a congressionally chartered panel that reviewed the state of national security and — seven months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks — called for the creation of a new agency similar to what became the Department of Homeland Security.

Active in the realm of foreign affairs long after his retirement from the military, Gen. Boyd went on to warn against a unilateral U.S. invasion of Iraq, declaring that the “cakewalk” that some observers anticipated for American forces trying to replace Saddam Hussein would “never happen.” He was also a senior vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations, president and chief executive of Business Executives for National Security and chairman of the Center for the National Interest, a Washington think tank.

But as he saw it, “the defining experience” of his life was the 2,488 days he spent in confinement in North Vietnam, where he was tortured and beaten at prisons including Hoa Lo, a notorious detention center that American POWs nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton.
For about 18 months, he occupied a cell next to a young naval officer, John S. McCain, and got to know the future U.S. senator and Republican presidential candidate by communicating through a series of coded taps on the wall, which POWs used to share stories and information.

The prolonged malnutrition he suffered in captivity led to vision problems that ended his career as a military aviator. Long after he was released in 1973, he returned to Southeast Asia to retrace his wartime steps and found himself overwhelmed by memories. For years, he rarely spoke about his experience as a prisoner, saying he wanted to look forward, not back.

“I made a significant effort in my life, and I think fairly successfully, to put that all behind me,” he told Airman Magazine, an Air Force publication, in 2016. “I’d lost about a fifth of my life at that point,” he added, “and I didn’t want to waste any more feeling sorry for myself or fussing over what otherwise might have been.”

Charles Graham Boyd was born in Rockwell City, Iowa, on April 15, 1938, and grew up working on his family’s farm. At age 7, his father paid for him to take a 15-minute flight on a crop duster. It was his first plane ride, and transformed an interest into an obsession.

“For a preteen farm boy from Iowa in bib overalls, in a family of very modest means, that was a really big dream — rather like, say, going to the moon,” he recalled in a 2019 oral history interview with the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training.

Gen. Boyd studied for two years at Baylor University in Waco, Tex., before learning about the Air Force’s aviation cadet program, which offered him a chance to become an officer and a pilot without receiving a degree. He signed up in 1959 and was deployed in 1965 to Thailand, where he went on bombing missions to North Vietnam and Laos, flying a supersonic F-105 Thunderchief fighter-bomber.

On April 22, 1966, during his 88th mission over North Vietnam, he volunteered to participate in an operation to destroy surface-to-air missile sites on the outskirts of Hanoi. He evaded a pair of missiles and continued his attack before being hit by antiaircraft fire, according to his citation for the Air Force Cross, the service branch’s highest decoration after the Medal of Honor.

“The selfless act of making repeated attacks through intense ground fire after barely avoiding two missiles was far beyond the normal call of duty,” the citation said.

Gen. Boyd recalled that his plane was damaged so severely he was forced to bail out at a dangerously high speed; his helmet was ripped off his head as he exited the aircraft. Parachuting into a rice paddy, he landed with scraped cheeks but no broken bones and was immediately captured by North Vietnamese wielding AK-47s.

Much of his captivity was spent in isolation, either in solitary confinement or with a fellow POW or two in his cell, although a few months after his capture he and some 50 other prisoners were forced to participate in a propaganda demonstration known as the Hanoi March. Paraded through the North Vietnamese capital, they were beaten and attacked by civilians along the way.

Gen. Boyd was released in February 1973, days after the Paris Peace Accords ended U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. By then he had vowed to return home “a different and better man,” including a better husband. His marriage to Millicent Sample, a schoolteacher, had been strained, he said, but they renewed their vows at a hospital chapel shortly after he returned, and remained together until her death in 1994.

Readjusting to life outside of captivity, he enrolled at the University of Kansas to pursue Latin American studies, an interest he had developed while in Vietnam, where a fellow POW used the “tap code” to teach him basic Spanish. “The big calluses on my knuckles from tapping so much lasted close to 10 years after I came home,” he told a University of Kansas interviewer.

He received a bachelor’s degree in 1975 and a master’s in 1976, and continued his military education at the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.

Gen. Boyd later served as vice commander of Strategic Air Command’s 8th Air Force in Louisiana, director of plans at Air Force headquarters and commander of Air University in Alabama before being appointed to U.S. European Command in 1992. His military decorations included the Distinguished Service Medal, Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart.

In 2005, Gen. Boyd married Jessica Tuchman Mathews, a former member of The Washington Post editorial board and president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, retiring with her to a farm outside Marshall, Va. In addition to his wife and son, of Falls Church, Va., survivors include a daughter, Jessica of Corona, Calif.; a sister; and four grandchildren.

Although vision problems stymied his career as a fighter pilot, Gen. Boyd rode a BMW motorcycle into his late 70s and continued to fly until last fall, including on a T-34 Mentor, the same single-engine aircraft he had trained on. Some of his other habits started to change, however. He noted that he had been “a Republican, but quietly” since his return from Vietnam, and served as a military adviser to Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) in the 1990s. Yet he largely stayed out of national politics until 2020, when he joined nearly 500 former senior military and civilian leaders in signing an open letter in support of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign.

“I fervently believe that military officers should not get involved in presidential politics, even when retired,” he said in a video he recorded for the group’s Twitter account. “But this year is different. Donald Trump’s assault on the rule of law that makes a democracy possible has been so egregious I’ve decided to speak out.”

He was voting for Biden, he added, and hoped others would do the same.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/03/24/air-force-general-charles-boyd-dead/

The Top 10 Military.com News Stories of 2021

22 Dec 2021
Military.com | By Zachary Fryer-Biggs

Five days. That's how long the country had for a bit of peace and quiet to start 2021 before the events of Jan. 6 upended our democracy and kicked off a year that once again was shrouded in the continuing coronavirus pandemic.

The riot at the U.S. Capitol was just the warmup for a year that included the end to the 20-year war in Afghanistan, which had claimed the lives of 2,461 service members and marked a generation of troops.

With those events in mind, here's an unranked list of the Top 10 stories written by Military.com this year.


https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/12/22/top-10-militarycom-news-stories-of-2021.html?ESRC=eb_211224.nl

Join us on National Wreaths Across America Day
December 18, 2021
https://wreathsacrossamerica.org/

14 Rarely Seen Photos that Reveal the Horror of the Attack on Pearl Harbor


Scene on the southeastern part of Ford Island, looking northeasterly, with USS California (BB-44) in right center, listing to port after being hit by Japanese aerial torpedoes and bombs.
Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives. (National Archives)

7 Dec 2021
Military.com | By Amy Bushatz

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, they catapulted the United States into World War II in one swift stroke, removing from the international playing field the bulk of the American fleet, which had been strategically moved to Pearl Harbor only 18 months prior by President Franklin Roosevelt.

The damage to Pearl Harbor and the surrounding area was astounding. More than 2,400 Americans were killed in the attack. Nearly 20 American ships, including five of the eight battleships, and 300 aircraft were destroyed.

The Japanese hit Pearl Harbor, located on Oahu, Hawaii, just after 8 a.m. The entire attack lasted a mere 75 minutes.

Today, 80 years later, these rarely seen photos from the U.S. Navy and National Archives demonstrate the horror and damage of the attack.


View looking down Battleship Row from Ford Island Naval Air Station, shortly after the Japanese torpedo plane attack. USS California (BB-44) is at left, listing to port after receiving two torpedo hits. In the center are USS Maryland (BB-46) with the capsized USS Oklahoma (BB-37) alongside. USS Neosho (AO-23) is at right, backing clear of the area. Most smoke is from USS Arizona (BB-39).
(Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.)


Japanese model of Pearl Harbor, showing ships located as they were during the Dec. 7, 1941, attack. This model was constructed after the attack for use in making a motion picture. The original photograph was brought back to the U.S. from Japan at the end of World War II by Rear Admiral John Shafroth, USN. Collection of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. (U.S. Naval History and Heritage Command Photograph)

12 More Photos

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/12/07/14-rarely-seen-photos-reveal-horror-of-attack-pearl-harbor.html?ESRC=eb_211208.nl

Military Ends Pearl Harbor Project to Identify the Dead
The remains of 355 sailors and Marines from the U.S.S. Oklahoma were identified using DNA and dental records, but 33 crew members could not be.


Damaged battleships after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.Credit...U.S. Navy, via Associated Press

By Neil Vigdor
Dec. 7, 2021, 5:40 a.m. ET
The hearse took six hours to complete the roughly 200-mile journey halfway across Nebraska this year, traveling down roads lined with fire trucks and people waving American flags for a homecoming that had been deferred for eight decades.

Inside were the remains of Louis Tushla, a fireman first class in the U.S. Navy who had been stationed in the main engine room of the U.S.S. Oklahoma when it sank during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Using DNA taken from a nephew, the Pentagon was finally able to identify the remains of the 25-year-old sailor in 2020. They were released in July from a Defense Department laboratory at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha and taken to Atkinson, in north central Nebraska, where Mr. Tushla was buried alongside his parents.

“It brings a sense of a realization of the great sacrifice that they made,” Msgr. James Gilg, 80, whose father was a first cousin of Mr. Tushla, said in an interview on Monday.

As the nation observes the 80th anniversary of the attack that drew the United States into World War II, the military said this week that a six-year project to identify those killed on the Oklahoma had matched human remains from the ship with the names of 355 sailors and Marines.

Thirty-three of the ship’s crew members could not be identified by comparing remains with DNA samples from relatives or dental records as part of the project, which began in 2015 and which officials said had ended.

According to the Pentagon, those remains will be reinterred on Tuesday at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii, a site nicknamed the Punchbowl. In total, 429 crew members from the Oklahoma died after several torpedoes struck the ship. Nearly three times as many service members died aboard the U.S.S. Arizona, which suffered the heaviest losses in the attack.




A grave marker for an unknown casualty from the U.S.S. Arizona at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.Credit...Caleb Jones/Associated Press


Civilian researchers and military commanders discussed the project’s findings during a news conference on Monday at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii. They said that 13,000 bones had been analyzed and inventoried after the military received approval to disinter them in 2015.

“It’s our responsibility as a nation to bring these sailors and Marines home to their families,” Capt. Robert McMahon, the head of the Navy’s casualty office, said during the conference. “We’ve sent them off to war.”

The unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor killed more than 2,400 Americans and struck a blow to the Navy’s Pacific fleet, which had been based at Pearl Harbor. It hastened the United States’ entry into World War II, with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt calling Dec. 7 a date that “will live in infamy.” The next day, Congress declared war against Japan.

For decades, efforts to identify the remains of sailors and Marines entombed in the sunken ships were hampered by lost records and the difficulty of accessing their watery graves, which some family members had said should not be disturbed.

But advances in genetic testing gave families and the military new optimism. In addition to the 355 sailors and Marines who were identified during the project, six names were matched from 2007 to 2010, researchers said.

“Three hundred and sixty-one families now have answers,” Kelly McKeague, the director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency for the Pentagon, said during the news conference.

Carrie LeGarde, the lead anthropologist for the project, said that some of the medical and dental records for the crew members were lost in the ship.

“For some of these service members, it can be difficult to find a living biological relative,” Ms. LeGarde said.


The remains of nearly 82,000 U.S. service members from several wars still have not been identified, the vast majority of whom are from World War II, according to the Pentagon. Separate efforts to identify crew members of the U.S.S. California and the U.S.S. West Virginia, which were also attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, are continuing, military officials said.

Even though several generations have passed since Pearl Harbor, Ms. LeGarde said, some of the Oklahoma’s crew members have living sisters, brothers, nieces and nephews who are often quick to share stories about their relatives.

“The work that we do is for them,” she said.

Timothy McMahon, the director of DNA Operations for the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System, said on Monday that those who worked on the project were each given a key chain with the photograph of a service member whose remains had not been identified.

About 100 of the Oklahoma’s crew members who were identified still have not been reinterred, according to the military, which attributed some of those delays to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Tushla’s family members received notification in 2020 that his remains had been identified. That came in time for them to plan a funeral in conjunction with an extended family reunion that was held this summer.

His relatives prepared an obituary, which said that he had worked on a farm before joining the Navy. Mr. Tushla’s first enlistment was rejected because a tonsil infection; he was finally accepted to the Navy after having a tonsillectomy.

In a letter to the Navy on Jan. 20, 1942, his parents pleaded for updates, one month after receiving a telegram that their son was missing in action.

“We are terribly worried and would appreciate it very much if you could aid us in anyway,” his parents wrote, according to the obituary. “Could you tell us if the ship Oklahoma has been raised as yet, as we thought all along that perhaps he went down with the ship.”

Monsignor Gilg, whose father was a first cousin of Mr. Tushla, said that he had often heard stories about his relative’s sacrifice while growing up.

“It gives you a connection to world history in a way that you never had before,” he said of the identification.

Jack Begg contributed research.


https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/07/us/pearl-harbor-attack-dna.html

101-Year-Old Returns to Pearl Harbor to Remember Those Lost


Pearl Harbor survivor and World War II Navy veteran David Russell, 101, reads a birthday card while talking about his time aboard the USS Oklahoma and his life after the war on Monday, Nov. 22, 2021, in Albany, Ore. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)

6 Dec 2021
Associated Press | By Audrey McAvoy and Gillian Flaccus

HONOLULU — When Japanese bombs began falling on Pearl Harbor, U.S. Navy Seaman 1st Class David Russell first sought refuge below deck on the USS Oklahoma.

But a split-second decision on that December morning 80 years ago changed his mind, and likely saved his life.

“They started closing that hatch. And I decided to get out of there,” Russell, now 101, said in a recent interview.

Within 12 minutes his battleship would capsize under a barrage of torpedoes. Altogether 429 sailors and Marines from the Oklahoma would perish — the greatest death toll from any ship that day other than the USS Arizona, which lost 1,177.

Russell plans to return to Pearl Harbor on Tuesday for a ceremony in remembrance of the more than 2,300 American troops killed in the Dec. 7, 1941, attack that launched the U.S. into World War II.

About 30 survivors and 100 other veterans from the war are expected to observe a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m., the minute the attack began.

Survivors, now in their late 90s or older, stayed home last year due to the coronavirus pandemic and watched a livestream of the event instead.

Russell is traveling to Hawaii with the Best Defense Foundation, a nonprofit founded by former NFL Linebacker Donnie Edwards that helps World War II veterans revisit their old battlefields.

He recalls heading topside when the attack started because he was trained to load anti-aircraft guns and figured he could help if any other loader got hurt.

But Japanese torpedo planes dropped a series of underwater missiles that pummeled the Oklahoma before he could get there. Within 12 minutes, the hulking battleship capsized.

“Those darn torpedoes, they just kept hitting us and kept hitting us. I thought they’d never stop,” Russell said. “That ship was dancing around.”

Russell clambered over and around toppled lockers while the battleship slowly rolled over.

“You had to walk sort of sideways,” he said.

Once he got to the main deck, he crawled over the ship's side and eyed the USS Maryland moored next door. He didn't want to swim because leaked oil was burning in the water below. Jumping, he caught a rope hanging from the Maryland and escaped to that battleship without injury.

He then helped pass ammunition to the Maryland’s anti-aircraft guns.

VIDDEO 3:31

After the battle, Russell and two others went to Ford Island, next to where the battleships were moored, in search of a bathroom. A dispensary and enlisted quarters there had turned into a triage center and place of refuge for hundreds of wounded, and they found horribly burned sailors lining the walls. Many would die in the hours and days ahead.

“Most of them wanted a cigarette, and I didn’t smoke at that time but I, uh, I got a pack of cigarettes and some matches, and I lit their cigarettes for them,” Russell said. “You feel for those guys, but I couldn’t do anything. Just light a cigarette for ’em and let ’em puff the cigarettes.”

Russell still thinks about how lucky he was. He ponders why he decided to go topside on the Oklahoma, knowing most of the men who stayed behind likely were unable to get out after the hatch closed.

In the first two days after the bombing, a civilian crew from the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard rescued 32 men trapped inside the Oklahoma by cutting holes in its hull. But many others perished. Most of those who died were buried in anonymous Honolulu graves marked as “unknowns” because their remains were too degraded to be identified by the time they were removed from the ship between 1942 and 1944.

In 2015, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency exhumed 388 sets of these remains in hopes of identifying them with the help of DNA technology and dental records. They succeeded with 361.

Russell's brother-in-law was among them. Fireman 1st Class Walter “Boone” Rogers was in the fireroom, which got hit by torpedoes, Russell said. The military identified his remains in 2017, and he's since been reburied at Arlington National Cemetery.

Russell remained in the Navy until retiring in 1960. He worked at Air Force bases for the next two decades and retired for good in 1980.

His wife, Violet, passed away 22 years ago, and he now lives alone in Albany, Oregon. He drives himself to the grocery store and the local American Legion post in a black Ford Explorer while listening to polka music at top volume. When he's not hanging out with other veterans at the legion, he reads military history and watches TV. He keeps a stack of 500-piece puzzles to keep his mind sharp.

For decades, Russell didn’t share much about his experiences in World War II because no one seemed to care. But the images from Pearl Harbor still haunt him, especially at night.

“When I was in the VA hospital there in San Francisco, they said, ‘We want you to talk about World War II.’ And I said, I told them, I said, ‘When we talk about it, people don’t believe us. They just walk away.’ So now people want to know more about it so we’re trying to talk about it. We’re trying to talk about it, and we’re just telling them what we saw,” he said. “You can’t forget it.”

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/12/06/101-year-old-returns-pearl-harbor-remember-those-lost.html

Survivors gather to remember those lost at Pearl Harbor

By AUDREY McAVOY
today


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Pearl Harbor survivor Herb Elfring speaks at a news conference in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on Sunday, Dec. 5, 2021. A few dozen survivors of Pearl Harbor are expected to gather Tuesday, Dec. 7 at the site of the Japanese bombing 80 years ago to remember those killed in the attack that launched the U.S. into World War II. (AP Photo/Audrey McAvoy)

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (AP) — A few dozen survivors of Pearl Harbor are expected to gather Tuesday at the site of the Japanese bombing 80 years ago to remember those killed in the attack that launched the U.S. into World War II.

Herb Elfring, 99, said he’s glad to return to Pearl Harbor considering he almost didn’t live through the aerial assault.

“It was just plain good to get back and be able to participate in the remembrance of the day,” Elfring told reporters over the weekend.

Elfring was in the Army, assigned to the 251st Coast Artillery, part of the California National Guard on Dec. 7, 1941..
'He recalled Japanese zero planes flying overhead and bullets strafing his Army base at Camp Malakole, a few miles down the coast from Pearl Harbor.

Elfring, who lives in Jackson, Michigan, said he has returned to Hawaii about 10 times to attend the annual memorial ceremony hosted by the Navy and the National Park Service.

About 30 survivors and about 100 other veterans of the war were expected to join him this year.

They will observe a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m., the same minute the attack began decades ago. Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro is expected to deliver the keynote speech.

The bombing killed more than 2,300 U.S. troops. Nearly half — or 1,177 — were Marines and sailors serving on the USS Arizona, a battleship moored in the harbor.

Several women who helped the war effort by working in factories have come to Hawaii to participate in the remembrance this year.

Mae Krier, who built B-17s and B-29s at a Boeing plant in Seattle, said it took the world a while to credit women for their work.

“And we fought together as far as I’m concerned. But it took so long to honor what us women did. And so of course, I’ve been fighting hard for that, to get our recognition,” said Krier, who is now 95. “But it was so nice they finally started to honor us.”

This year’s ceremony takes place as a strong storm packing high winds and extremely heavy rains hits Hawaii, flooding roads and downing power lines. Navy spokesperson Brenda Way told The Associated Press in an email Monday that she has heard of no discussion of canceling the event because of the storms.

https://apnews.com/article/hawaii-bombings-world-war-ii-cdb9ed8ee50b4de739f6d10b35234c3d

2021 Veterans Day Free Meals and Restaurant Deals and Discounts

Restaurants are saluting Veterans Day with free meals and discounts for veterans, service members and their families.

https://www.military.com/veterans-day/restaurants-veterans-day-military-discounts.html?ESRC=eb_211111.nl

Tomb of the Unknowns Welcomes the Public for First Time in 73 Years
Since 1948, guards have kept tourists and other visitors away from the memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. For two days this month, they will be allowed to get close and place flowers at the tomb.


Standing watch at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia in 2019. Since 1948, a 24-hour military guard has kept the public from the white marble sarcophagus.Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times
By Maria Cramer
Nov. 5, 2021

In 1921, a sergeant walked into a small, dark chapel in Châlons-sur-Marne in eastern France, not far from where French and English troops had pushed back against advancing Germans a few years before.

Clutching a bouquet of red and white roses, the sergeant, Edward F. Younger of Chicago, 23, circled four caskets that held the remains of American soldiers who died during World War I.

A colonel had ordered him to choose one coffin, which would be placed inside a marble tomb at Arlington National Cemetery and represent all the American soldiers killed during the war.

“I couldn’t bring myself to make a hasty choice,” he told The Decatur Daily in Alabama in 1935. Sergeant Younger stopped at the coffin third from his right, placed the bouquet on it, saluted and left the room.

“Something seemed to stop me each time I passed that third one’s coffin,” he said, describing the selection he made on Oct. 24, 1921. “Something seemed to say, ‘Pick this one.’”

A few weeks later, the remains were entombed overlooking Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, where today 4,723 unknown soldiers who died in battles dating to the Civil War are buried, along with more than 400,000 other war veterans.

Since 1948, a 24-hour military guard has kept the public from getting near the white marble sarcophagus. But on Tuesday and Wednesday, people will be able to walk close to the tomb again and place flowers to commemorate 100 years since its dedication.

Many are expected to visit the monument, which has become a sacred site for veterans, as well as visitors who watch the changing of the guard.

The tomb, however, was not always treated with such reverence.

From hallowed ground to picnic spot

On Nov. 11, 1921, thousands of people marched to Arlington National Cemetery to watch as the coffin Sergeant Younger had picked was lowered into a marble tomb. In a speech, President Warren G. Harding described how the soldier “might have come from any one of millions of American homes.”

“Hundreds of mothers are wondering today, finding a touch of solace in the possibility that the nation bows in grief over the body of one she bore to live and die, if need be, for the Republic,” he said.

Chief Plenty Coups, the leader of Crow Nation who was invited to attend the ceremony, laid a war bonnet and a rod known as a coup stick across the coffin.

At first, there were no restrictions on the public’s access to the tomb, which visitors could touch and kneel at, said Allison Finkelstein, senior historian at Arlington National Cemetery.

But as the years passed, the hallowed place became more of a public park.

People picnicked around the tomb and even used it as a table for their food. Photographers would linger, offering to shoot photos of visitors, who would sit on it and pose.

At night, couples were discovered “getting excessively romantic on top of the tomb,” said Beth Bailey, a professor of history at the University of Kansas.

Such behavior was not unusual at the time, she said.

“Remember that, during the Civil War, people went out on picnics to watch battles,” Professor Bailey said.

Guarding of the tomb as a sacred ritual

The decision to make one unknown soldier a symbol for those killed and lost in World War I was born in part out of a deep concern that American service members were being left in cemeteries overseas, said Micki McElya, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut and the author of “The Politics of Mourning: Death and Honor in Arlington National Cemetery.”

In 1918, Newton Baker, the secretary of war, promised that the dead would be returned home, but the logistics of bringing back thousands of bodies from Europe were overwhelming and threatened to disrupt relations with England and France, whose leaders did not want to shoulder the responsibility of transporting dead American soldiers, she said.

Some military leaders in the United States also felt that “soldiers should rest where they fell,” Professor McElya said.

Honoring one unknown soldier helped answer the question of what to do about the lost dead.

But as the tomb became more of a tourist destination and visitors grew unruly, veterans became incensed and demanded protections around it, Professor McElya said.

Initially, a picket fence was placed. Then, a chain-link fence.

It was not until 1948 that the Third U.S. Infantry Regiment, the Army’s oldest active-duty infantry unit, was assigned to guard the tomb at all hours and keep visitors away, except for official ceremonies.

The whole site around the tomb came to be “understood as a sacred place deserving of reverential treatment, not meant to be trod on by visitors,” Dr. Finkelstein said.

This became especially important in 1958, when crypts holding the remains of unknown World War II and Korean War soldiers were placed at the tomb, she said. The tomb also includes an empty crypt that once held the remains of an Air Force pilot who was killed in the Vietnam War but was identified in 1998 through DNA.

In recognition of that, the name Tomb of the Unknowns came into common public usage. But the cemetery still uses the original name, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. “The name has not changed,” said Tim Frank, a historian for the cemetery.

A somber ceremony beginning with Crow prayer

On Tuesday the first people to place flowers at the tomb will be the members of Crow Nation. Their leaders will also recite a prayer that some historical accounts say Chief Plenty Coups gave 100 years ago, according to a spokesman for Arlington National Cemetery.

When Chief Plenty Coups and other Native Americans were invited to attend the ceremony, it was meant to be an acknowledgment by the federal government of “the significant role of American Indians in the military during World War I, and the possibility that the Unknown Soldier could have been an American Indian,” Dr. Finkelstein said.

Between 8,000 and 15,000 Native Americans served in the war, she said.

The presence of Chief Plenty Coups was probably the first time that Native Americans were on a national political stage and broadcast to white Americans other than in Wild West shows, Aaron Brien, the tribal historic preservation officer for the Crow Tribe, said.

His presence also represented “this weird duality that we’re not being treated fairly at all at the time,” Mr. Brien said. “He’s showing the generosity and kindness of Native people, Native people who weren’t even citizens of the country and were living in a time of abject poverty.”

Professor McElya said that many Americans assumed the unknown soldier was a white, heterosexual male. But the mystery of his identity has turned the soldier into a potent political symbol. In 1980, for example, gay and lesbian veterans began laying a wreath at the tomb in a ceremony to honor service members who died in battle.

The tomb helped “Arlington become a site that every single American can claim a relationship to,” Professor McElya said. “The unknown is theirs.”

Johnny Diaz contributed reporting. Kirsten Noyes contributed research.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/us/tomb-of-the-unknown-soldier-100th-anniversary.html?searchResultPosition=1