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Military Myths and Legends

The Passing Of “Rosie The Riveter”

The Passing Of “Rosie The Riveter”

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Rosalind P. (Palmer) Walter passed away at the age of 95. She is known to millions as the original inspiration for the "Rosie the Riveter" character. She is appreciated by many for her years of service and support for public broadcasting. Rosalind P. Walter's Early Life Walter grew up in a wealthy family in Long Island. Her father was Carleton Palmer, who was president and chairman of E.R. Squibb and Sons (which is now part of Bristol Myers Squibb). Squibb and sons sold penicillin, which was in high demand due to the war. Walter's mother was W. Bushnell, who taught literature at Long Island University. When the US entered World War II, Walter did not go off to college as she could have but rather supported the war effort by working in an airplane factory. "Rosie The Riveter" Is An Allegorical Cultural Icon In the United States With most of the country's men off serving in the military, women rose up to take the jobs those men vacated. Walter worked the night shift attaching rivets to...

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Eugene Bullard: World’s First Black Fighter Pilot

Eugene Bullard: World’s First Black Fighter Pilot

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A largely unsung and non-known hero of the World War One was the fascinating Eugene James "Jacques" Bullard of the Lafayette Flying Corps. Biography Eugene Jacques Bullard Bullard was born in a three-room house in Columbus, Georgia, the seventh of ten children born to William (Octave) Bullard, a black man who was from Martinique, and Josephine ("Yokalee") Thomas, a Creek Indian. His father's ancestors had been slaves in Haiti to French refugees who fled during the Haitian Revolution. They reached the United States and took refuge with the Creek Indians. An adventurer by nature, he left the small town of Columbus and moved to Atlanta by himself while still in his teenage years. He had been told that the way to escape racial prejudice was to head to Europe, particularly France (he once said he witnessed a near lynching of his dad). A long time back his father had pointed out to him that Bullard was a French name and that at least one ancestor had hailed from there. Stirred by all the...

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The USS Recruit in Union Square

The USS Recruit in Union Square

In 1917 the U.S. Navy built a full-size battleship in New York City's Union Square Park near the entrance to the subway and faced south. It would stay there for the next three years. The ship - USS Recruit - was commissioned as a normal seagoing ship, under the command of Acting Captain C. F. Pierce and with a complement of thirty-nine bluejackets from the Newport Training Station. It functioned as a recruiting office and training center with sailors training on the ship to demonstrate a small part of navy life to potential civilian recruits. The Navy also offered public access and tours of the ship, allowing civilians to familiarize themselves with how a Navy warship was operated. The accommodations aboard USS Recruit included fore and aft full officer's quarters, a wireless station, doctor's quarters and examination rooms to assess the health of potential candidates, a heating and ventilation system that was capable of changing the temperature of the air inside the ship ten times...

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Did a Scottish Soldier Really Play Bagpipes at Normandy?

Did a Scottish Soldier Really Play Bagpipes at Normandy?

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On June 6, 1944, the Allied forces launched Operation Overlord, the largest and most complex amphibious landing in history until that point. Invading Hitler's Fortress Europe was no small matter, even with all the preparations and forethought Allied planners made in advance of the landings. In the years and decades that followed, D-Day became one of the most thoroughly studied and documented events of World War II. Still, it seems like more and more personal stories, fascinating accounts, and even urban legends from the invasion emerge every day.  Only those who were there can really know what it was like to hit the beach that day. But given recollections from veterans, photos and film reel taken that day, and Steven Spielberg's realistic depiction of the event in the 1998 film "Saving Private Ryan," we have a pretty good idea of what it looked like. Legend of the Scottish Soldier So it's all the more shocking to hear the legend of the Scottish soldier who walked up and down...

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Lost Battalion

Lost Battalion

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Immediately after Japan's December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and other American bases in the Pacific, the United States declared war on Japan. Several days later Nazi German and Italy declared war on the U.S., embroiling the world into World War II. The war heightened American prejudice against German Americans and Italian Americans but the racism directed against Japanese Americans was particularly vicious. The calculated response culminated in the forced removal and unconstitutional incarceration of 120,000 residents of Japanese ancestry, including the complete elimination of communities and individuals from the entire West Coast of the United States. This racism was precipitated by the attack on Pearl Harbor but it had deep antecedents in the near half-century of legal, social, and economic policies directed against Asians in general within the United States. As the war progressed, however, more American units were needed to successfully fight the Axis powers. One such unit...

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A Leadership Lesson From a Janitor

A Leadership Lesson From a Janitor

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William "Bill" Crawford was an unimpressive figure, one you could easily overlook during a hectic day at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Mr. Crawford, as most of us referred to him back in the late 1970s, was our Squadron janitor. While we Cadets busied ourselves preparing for academic exams, athletic events, Saturday morning parades, and room inspection, or never-ending leadership classes-Bill quietly moved about the squadron mopping and buffing floors, emptying trash cans, cleaning toilets, or just tidying up the mess 100 college-age kids can leave in a dormitory. Sadly, and for many years, few of us gave him much notice, rendering little more than a passing nod or throwing a curt, "G' morning!" in his direction as we hurried off to our daily duties. Why? Perhaps it was because of the way he did his job - he always kept the squadron area spotlessly clean, even the toilets and showers gleamed. Frankly, he did his job so well; none of us had to notice or get involved. After all, cleaning...

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The Ghost of Kyiv

The Ghost of Kyiv

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, they came with an estimated 190,000 troops across Ukraine's border with Russia. Minutes after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the Russian invasion, Russian aircraft from Belarus struck the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv. The Russians had launched a northern front across the border with Belarus. The target of the north front was Kyiv, and Russian forces were trying to break the will of Ukraine's people and its armed forces. But stories began to spread about a mystery jet fighter that had fought seemingly for days in skies above Kyiv, downing at least six Russian fighters, maybe more. The mystery pilot became known as "The Ghost of Kyiv," Though it was later found to be nothing more than a story, it inspired the Ukrainians to fight off the attack on their capital and defeat the Russian offensive. Russia's northern push from Belarus was an estimated 30,000 strong, with hundreds of attack helicopters, ground vehicles, airborne assault...

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The Bigfoot of the Vietnam War

The Bigfoot of the Vietnam War

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Paratrooper Gary Linderer deployed to Vietnam with the 101st Airborne and often went out into the jungle with a six-man Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol. During one patrol, he claimed to have encountered a creature with "deep set eyes on a prominent brow… five feet tall, with long muscular arms, walking upright with broad shoulders and a heavy torso." Linderer had no idea what he saw, but he wasn't the first American to report seeing an ape-like creature while out on patrol, and he definitely wasn't the last. Some Army platoons reported coming under attack from the apes and even fighting them in hand-to-hand combat. There are no known species of apes native to Vietnam, but that didn't stop reports of large, ape-like creatures dwelling in the country's jungles during the entire Vietnam War.  US Troops Thought that They Saw Bigfoot in Vietnam Bigfoot didn't get drafted or come over to Vietnam as a figure of the American imagination, either. The Vietnamese, Cambodians and even Laos had...

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Mary Bowser: the Civil War’s Most Productive Spy

Mary Bowser: the Civil War’s Most Productive Spy

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Espionage was big business during the American Civil War. Both sides had thousands of spies including hundreds of women. Many of the spy rings were located in each of the capital cities, Washington D. C. and Richmond, sending valuable information back to their respective governments, and each side had a number of independent spies working for them. Some of these independent spies were under contract, but others did their dangerous work out of love for their country. To be sure, it was a very dangerous business and inevitable, some were caught and often the penalty was hanging. Others were placed in prison or released. Of all these thousands of spies, there was one who many Civil War historians considered the most productive espionage agents of the entire war. Her name was Mary Bowser, a freed black slave working in the home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Mary Bowser Was a Free Woman Mary Elizabeth Bowser was born in Richmond, Virginia, as a slave to John Van Lew, a wealthy...

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American Nurses in WWI

American Nurses in WWI

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As a German plane buzzed overhead, nurse Helen Dore Boylston dropped face down in the mud. Boylston, an American nurse, serving at a British Army base hospital near the Western Front in 1918, had been running between wards of wounded patients that night, trying to calm their nerves during the air raid. Now, all she could do was brace herself for the hissing bomb that hurtled toward her. She covered her eyes and ears against the deafening roar and "blood-red flare." About a half-hour later, finally realizing she had not been hurt, Boylston stopped shaking. The Account of World War I Experience as a Nurse Boylston's vivid account of her World War I experience as a nurse, published in 1927, depicts her work with the first Harvard Unit, a U.S. medical team that treated more casualties than any other American doctors group and nurses during the conflict. In May 1917, U.S. medical teams became the first American troops to arrive in the war zone, and many remained through mid-1919. Over...

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The Death of the Red Baron

The Death of the Red Baron

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In 1915, von Richthofen transferred to the Imperial German Army Air Service (Luftstreitkrafte). He studied aerial tactics under the master German strategist, Hauptman Oswald Boelcke, flying his first combat mission after less than thirty hours of flight instruction. Despite an indifferent start as a fighter pilot, he nonetheless was invited to join Boelcke's Jagdstaffel 2 squadron and soon excelled in combat following the Boelcke Dicta, which included approaching his enemy from above with the sun behind him, firing only at close range, always keeping his eyes on his target, and attacking in a group of four to six planes. The History of The Red Baron At the beginning of 1917, he had 16 confirmed kills, had been awarded Germany's highest military decoration, Pour le Merite, and was commander of a squadron, Jasta 11, of elite fighter pilots.  In April 1917 alone, he downed 22 British planes. Flying a series of Albatros aircraft, his vanity led him to have each painted red. As the...

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Escape from Libby Prison: The Largest Successful Prison Break of the Civil War

Escape from Libby Prison: The Largest Successful Prison Break of the Civil War

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On February 9, 1864, more than 100 Union prisoners tunneled their way to freedom in an audacious escape from Libby Prison in the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. More than half of the prisoners made their way to Union lines while others were recaptured and returned to the confines of Libby. Libby Prison started as an old food warehouse on Tobacco Row along the James River. Captain Luther Libby, along with his son George W. Libby, leased the three-story brick building where they operated a ship chandlery and grocery business. In 1862, the Confederacy took over the building and turned it into a prison for Union officers. Colonel Thomas E. Rose, a Union officer from the 77th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, was captured during the Battle of Chickamauga and taken to Libby Prison. He found conditions appalling and immediately started plotting his escape. He devised an ambitious plan to dig a tunnel from the cellar of the prison to a tobacco shed that stood just outside the...

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