Band of Brothers leader diesLast Updated: Monday, January 10, 2011 | 12:51 PM ETCBC News A December 1945 photo shows Maj. Richard Winters, whose quiet leadership was chronicled in the book and television miniseries Band of Brothers. Winters died Jan. 2. (Courtesy of Sgt. Maj. Herman W. Clemens/Associated Press) Richard "Dick" Winters, a U.S. soldier and Second World War commander whose story was told in Band of Brothers, has died. He was 92. Winters died Jan. 2 in central Pennsylvania a...
I just read that they defused a 1000 pound aircraft bomb in Freiburg (where I live) on the 2nd of July, last week. A digger operator on a construction site next to the university hospital complex discovered it suddenly in his bucket. There are special police EOD units for unexploded american and british demolition and fire bombs in Germany and nothing happened, but that is no guarantee. Most duds are discovered by perusing allied aerial pictures from WW2, and by accident on construction sites. S...
John Demjanjuk has been declared fit to stand trial in Germany, probably one of the last huge trials of an alleged Nazi warcrime perpetrator.
She took down a cookie jar and poured from the bag a myriad of hard candies into the jar, and took it into the living room to set it down next to the wooden bowl. Starting back for the kitchen, she paused, turned to the mantelpiece and stared at the yellow paper. Taking the wargram and holding it at arms length, she glanced at it, then slowly walked to the armchair and sat on its edge. She read it again and again—always it read the same way. Finally she rubbed her eyes and ...
Sally was at the threshold of womanhood and she knew it from the hours spent before the mirror admiring God’s miraculous evolution from a boring, simplistic state of angles and straight lines to the complex math of subtle curves. Pam, on the other hand, though perhaps as blossoming—conceivably more so—was unaware of it, or did not dwell on it. There lay the difference—that which is market-able, though resistant, perhaps indifferent to fashionable demand and supply owing t...
Before the push toward the ominous Mt. Yaetake on the China Sea peninsula, the squad’s regiment was camped outside a small village by the end of the second week. The troops rose before the crack of dawn to line up before the regimental cooks who had prepared hospital rations—a cuisine approach to dehydrated foods with a smattering of fresh meat and vegetables whenever logistically feasible. Infantry men burn up heaps of energy and calories and it is preferable that th...
Excerpt from my novel 12: Sunday BulletinJohnny—most of the old timers being drafted—was caddying on the bright, sunny day of infamy. Ricocheting round the course was news of the bombing. Johnny had never heard of Pearl Harbor nor did the other caddies in the foursome. His golfer explained what and where it was. Johnny thought of the strange places depicted in war cards that had no true sense of place, no meaning just as the early years of the war in Europe had no meaning un...
BougainvilleThe United States did once again turn its attention to the Pacific Theatre. Johnny had thought that he would never encounter another jungle as inhospi-table as Guadalcanal until he landed on Bougainville. When his battalion hit the beach there, it was so narrow that tangled growth hung over the lapping shores. There was consolation in that they had immediate cover and advanced into the jungle against scattered sniper fire which was as blind as its source was invisible...
I came across this true story recently. I've never heard of Irene Sendler before but admire her courage and dedication to her fellowman. Lula especially would like this story because Irene was a Catholic Social Worker. Anyhow, this is a very condensed story about her. More can be found by googling her name. Pretty gutsy woman! The end is like a kick in the face....but doesn't matter. God will reward this woman and the riches of this ...
Cactoblasta said: "Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms thathuman beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning andshape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humanesociety through an ethic based on human and other natural values in thespirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is nottheistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality." This is the statement of the International Humanist and Ethical Unio...
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I do not subscribe to the Church of Secular Humanism (just take the tax exemption, already), so this work is not technically "heretical", and it is filled with my bias, but you can try to prove me wrong. Introduction: Hitler subscribed to the teachings of Darwin in making his racist, hate-filled Third Reich which, at one point, threatened to take over the world and create a eugenics-fed super-planet. This man was, undoubtedly...
There are darn few of them left, WWII veterans are leaving us at the rate of about a thousand a day. How many Normandy survivors are still around? Can't say, but for those who were there and are still here...my deepest, sincerest, heartfelt thanks for what you did. There is no way to calculate the debt this country owes you, but I, for one, will always remember and be grateful.
Today is the 65th anniversary of the attack on pearl harbor. And as the first-hand survivorsfade away, it becomes incumbent on the inheritors to keep them alive in our hearts and memories.
A Small Boy's Wartime memories I will be relating this tale as if I were talking to you over a beer in a pub. I was born in 1936 so that when the war started I was three and a half years old(half's matter when you are very young). I can't remember much about that time but, about two years later in 1941 when there was the “Battle of Britain”, That's when I really started remembering. It was fireworks every night. (In fact after the war on the first fire works night I was quite disappoi...
Sixty years ago, the International Military Tribunal held what has come to be known as the Nuremberg Trials, which endeavored to judge all the people who had been complicit in the Nazi Party and Germany's instigation of war. The point was to ferret out and prosecute all those who inflicted Nazi rule on an unsuspecting Europe. I quote from Wikipedia, which is much more concise than the official sites: The Nuremberg Trials is the general name for two sets of trials of Nazis involved in Wo...