Ola Lee Mize was born August 28, 1931, in Albertville, Alabama as the son of a sharecropper. He was forced to leave school after just the ninth grade to help his family put food on the table, as was very common throughout the United States in that era. Mize's Military Service Mize tried several times to enlist in the Army but was rejected for being too light at just 120 pounds. He finally got in when his mother signed an affidavit to affirm his age since a tornado had destroyed all his town's...
The Christy Collection
Military Stories and Articles
Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt, U.S. Navy (1994–Present)
As the USS Abraham Lincoln sailed into San Diego Thursday, Aug. 11, with two destroyers in tow and some 6,000 sailors and Marines aboard, it marked the completion of a U.S. military first: Navy Capt. Amy Bauernschmidt has now completed her first mission as the first woman to command a U.S. aircraft carrier. The nuclear-powered aircraft carrier left for a routine deployment to the Indo-Pacific region — generally ranging from the Philippines to the South China Sea — on Jan. 3. Over the next...
Lt. Col. James Rowe, U.S. Army (1958 – 1989)
Throughout the Vietnam War, the United States estimated that more than 2,500 American service members were taken prisoner or went missing during the Vietnam War. North Vietnam acknowledged only 687 of those unaccounted for. Most of them were returned during Operation Homecoming in 1973 after the Paris Peace Accords ended U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Of those 687, only 36 U.S. troops managed to escape their captors in North Vietnam and Laos. Of course, there were other attempts, but only those...