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Great Military Stories

WW2 – Sugar Loaf Hill, Okinawa

WW2 – Sugar Loaf Hill, Okinawa

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After the Battle of Midway in the summer of 1942, the United States launched a counter-offensive strike known as "island-hopping," establishing a line of overlapping island bases. As each Japanese-held island fell, U.S. forces quickly constructed airfields and small bases, then moved on to surrounding islands, one after another, until Japan came within range of American bombers. The volcanic island of Iwo Jima was a crucial location for the island-hopping campaign to succeed. The island's proximity would make it possible for Marianas Island-based B-29 Superfortresses to refuel on their way to bomb Japanese targets and surrounding islands. It was also ideal for bombers damaged during the raids to find safety and medical attention on their way home from bombing Japan. Three airstrips, which the Japanese had been using for their suicidal Kamikaze attacks to destroy U.S. Navy warships, also made Iwo Jima a primary target. With the island captured, the Kamikazes would have to operate from...

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Indian Wars – The Nez Perce War

Indian Wars – The Nez Perce War

Shortly after purchasing the Louisiana territory from France in 1803, President Thomas Jefferson ordered an expedition to explore and map the newly acquired territory and establish an American presence before Britain and other European powers tried to claim it. The campaign's secondary objectives were scientific and economic: to study the area's plants, animal life, and geography, and establish trade with local Native American tribes. To lead the expedition of U.S. Army volunteers, Jefferson chose his personal secretary, Captain Meriwether Lewis, an intelligent and literate man who also possessed skills as a frontiersman. Lewis, in turn, solicited the help of Second Lieutenant William Clark, whose abilities as draftsman and frontiersman were even stronger. Lewis and Clark's expedition began on May 21, 1804, when they and 33 soldiers and others departed from their camp near St. Louis, Missouri. The first portion of the expedition followed the route of the Missouri River, during which...

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WW1 – Meuse-Argonne Offensive

WW1 – Meuse-Argonne Offensive

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World War I will be remembered as one of the bloodiest wars in human history. Millions of soldiers died on both sides, and whole generations of young men were wiped out. Armies were bogged down in impenetrable trenches, resulting in thousands dying in futile assaults against fortified enemies. The war also introduced new and terrible weapons, such as the machine gun, which made the war even more horrific and bloody. There were many terrible battles, but the worst one for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) was the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. On August 30, 1918, the supreme commander of Allied forces, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, arrived at the headquarters of General John J. Pershing's 1st US Army. Foch ordered Pershing to effectively shelve a planned offensive against the St. Mihiel salient as he wished to use the American troops piecemeal to support a British offensive to the north. Outraged, Pershing refused to let his command be broken apart and argued in favor of moving forward with...

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Landmines in Vietnam

Landmines in Vietnam

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Horrific stories and pictures from all around the world often show that large numbers of civilians are the main landmine casualties and continued to be so years after the warring factions have left the battlefield. Even today, with a multitude of mine-clearing methods and equipment, de-mining efforts remain challenging and risky. This is particularly true in cases where records were not kept on exact locations for any or all landmines. Because of Landmines, Have to Find Alternatives Ways of Life On land where minefields are known to exist, that land is unusable until the mines are cleared. This means that people who depend on the surrounding region for their livelihoods may have to find alternatives ways of life. Throughout the world, places that have been involved in a war and/or civil strife often have large minefields that still need clearing. In 2013, it was estimated that there was a global average of around nine mine-related deaths every day. The situation is especially dire in...

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Out of the Darkness : Navy Seals

Out of the Darkness : Navy Seals

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On June 6, 1943, the Naval Combat Demolition Unit (NCDU) training school was established at Ft. Pierce, Florida. Training candidates came from rugged, physically capable Marine Raider and Navy Scout and Construction Battalion volunteers with previous swimming experience. Demolition work was emphasized without restriction. Grueling nighttime training conducted in the snake- and alligator-infested swamps of Florida produced a specimen of a man who was at home with mud, noise, exhaustion, water, and hostile beings, human or otherwise. The trainees were divided into teams of six men - one officer and five enlisted - called Underwater Demolition Teams, or UDTs (later changed in the mid-1950s to Sea, Air, and Land, or SEALs), and were also known as Frogmen for their amphibious abilities and appearance. The UDTs conducted amphibious assaults on D-Day and on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific. Albert Machine Created a Museum Dedicated to Navy SEALs In the 1980s, a group of retired...

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The Fighting Arkansans

The Fighting Arkansans

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Lloyd L. "Scooter" Burke - the most highly decorated soldier in Arkansas' history - was born in Tichnor (Arkansas County) on September 29, 1924, one of five children of A. D. Burke, a foreman at a lumber mill in Clarendon (Monroe County) and his wife, Belly Burke. In 1942, Lloyd Burke graduated from Stuttgart High School and enrolled at Henderson State Teachers College, now Henderson State University. In 1943 when Burke was 18-years-old, he dropped out of Henderson State College and joined the United States Army. He served two years during World War II as a sergeant with combat engineers in Italy. After the war, he returned to school at Henderson, where he participated in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program, which is now named "Burke's Raiders" in his memory. He was also a member of the Phi Sigma Epsilon fraternity. In 1950, he graduated as a Distinguished Military Graduate. After graduation, Burke was commissioned a second lieutenant in June 1950. That same month, on...

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Heroes of Hill 488

Heroes of Hill 488

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During the Vietnam War, one of the 1st Marine Division's primary area of operation was the southern two provinces of I Corps - Quang Tin and Quang Ngai, located in the southern portion of South Vietnam's I Corps Military Region. Astride the boundary between Quang Nam and Quang Tin provinces is the populous, rice-rich Que Son Valley, considered as strategically important in controlling South Vietnam's five northern provinces. For that reason, it was a principal focus for the Marines in I Corps.  In early June 1966, when intelligence reports indicated increased numbers of uniformed North Vietnamese Army (NVA) troops moving into the Que Son Valley, it became an even greater issue. To gain more immediate and timely eyes-on intelligence on the reported movements, seven recon teams from the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion were sent out to ring the large valley. If enemy's positions were located, the teams were to call in artillery and airstrikes against them. Among the seven teams was Team...

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Bayonet Charge

Bayonet Charge

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Following World War I, Americans reached the conclusion that our country's participation in that war had been a disastrous mistake, one which should never be repeated again. This resulted in a major segment of the population becoming "isolationist" hoping to avoid dragging the country into another disastrous foreign war. Lewis Lee Millett Enlisted Into the National Guard While Still in High School Even when Nazi German invaded Poland in 1939 and began conquering and controlling much of continental Europe, most Americans were adamant we stay out of the war - even though the war in Europe posed a serious challenge to the U.S. neutrality. Americans eager to help fight fascism and Hitler grew frustrated. A large number of these were young American males. Romanticized by the idea of fighting in battle and not wanting to wait until the United States decided to enter the war, many crossed the border into Canada. Among them was a South Dartmouth, MA. teenager by the name of Lewis Lee...

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Vietnam War – America’s Secret War

Vietnam War – America’s Secret War

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The guerrilla war was not going well for the Viet Cong in the late fifties. Badly needed supplies moving down jungle trails from North Vietnam were constantly being spotted by South Vietnamese warplanes and often destroyed. To give themselves a fighting chance, existing tribal trails through Laos and Cambodia were opened up in 1959. The North Vietnamese went to great lengths to keep this new set of interconnecting trails secret.  The first North Vietnamese sent down the existing tribal trails carried no identification and used captured French weapons. But the Communists could not keep their supply route secret for very long. Within months, CIA agents and their Laotian mercenaries were watching the movement from deep within the hidden jungle. But keeping an eye on what the North Vietnamese were doing in Laos was not enough for Washington. They wanted to put boots on the ground in a reconnaissance role to observe, first hand, the enemy logistical system known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail...

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Parallel Lives, Shared History

Parallel Lives, Shared History

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Herb Heilbrun and John Leahr were twenty-one when the United States entered WWII. Herb became an Army Air Forces B-17 bomber pilot. John flew P-51 fighters. Both were thrown into the brutal high-altitude bomber war against Nazi Germany. However, they never met because the Army was rigidly segregated - only in the air were black and white American fliers allowed to mix. Both came safely home, but it took a chance meeting 20 years ago when the two retired salesmen met at a reunion of the Tuskegee Airmen in Cincinnati. That meeting led them to review their parallel lives and discover their shared history. It began in 1995 when Herb read in the newspaper that the city was honoring the local chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black 332nd Fighter Group. They flew "Red-Tail" P-51s on missions escorting bomber squadrons from Italy into Germany and German-held territories. Herb could still remember hearing, amid the radio chatter over the target, the distinctive voices of the...

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Veteran of Three Wars Under Three Flags

Veteran of Three Wars Under Three Flags

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Lauri Allan Torni, later known as Larry Thorne, spent the majority of his life-fighting communists. First, the Soviets while in the service of Finland and Germany during World War II and then the Vietcong and North Vietnamese as a U.S. Army Special Forces officer during the Vietnam War. Biography Veteran of Three Wars Larry Thorne Lauri Torni was born in Finland, the son of a sea captain, in 1919. He enlisted in the Finnish Army at the age of 18 and was near the completion of his enlistment when the Soviet Union attacked Finland in late 1939. With his service suddenly extended as part of Finland's mass mobilization of troops, Torni was transferred to the front line, where he began a reputation as a determined fighter and strong leader. His heroism fighting the Red Army in what became known as the Winter War quickly caught the attention of his commanders resulting in commissioning as an officer. The Winter War ended with the Moscow Peace Treaty in March 1940. In 1941, when Hitler...

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Vietnam War – Battle of Camp Bunard (1969)

Vietnam War – Battle of Camp Bunard (1969)

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Gazing out the open cargo doors of the Huey flying over Phouc Long Province, boyish-looking Specialist 4 Robert Pryor took in an endless landscape of mountains, meandering rivers and rolling hills covered with dense evergreen vegetation, bamboo thickets, and triple canopy tropical broadleaf forests. The forbidding wilderness had an odd virginal beauty. It was also one of the most dangerous places in South Vietnam. This sparsely populated highland plateau, nestled along the Cambodian border some 65 miles northeast of Saigon, had long been a North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong stronghold. Its isolation offered them a safe hideaway where food and equipment could be replenished while units rested, trained, or prepared for future operations in the III Corps Tactical Zone. Fiercely contested by government and Communist forces, several deadly battles had been fought over the region. One bloody battle took place 24 kilometers from Pryor's destination, Camp Bunard, in June 1965, when the...

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