Free Republic

Col. Van T. Barfoot, a local Medal of Honor recipient, is under the gun from his Henrico County community's homeowner association. In a five-paragraph letter to Barfoot that he received yesterday, Barfoot is being ordered to remove a flagpole from his yard. The decorated veteran of three wars, now 90 years old, raises the American flag every morning on the pole, then lowers and folds the flag at dusk each day in a three-corner military fashion. ... There is no provision in the community's rules expressly forbidding flagpoles, Barfoot's daughter said. But she said the board ruled against her father's...

For the better part of 60 years, two old Army pilots who loved each other argued over many a meal and drink as to which of them was the second best pilot in the world. The two shared the cockpits of old Beaver prop planes and Huey helicopters; they shared rooms in military hooches all over the world; they shared a love of practical and impractical jokes and they shared an undying love of flying and soldiers and the Army. They also shared membership in a very small and revered fraternity of fewer than 105 men who are entitled to...

McGinnis was no stranger to combat. The Middle East edition of Stars and Stripes for Nov. 30, 2006, has a picture of McGinnis on its cover. His unit had been involved in a fierce firefight on Nov. 5 and had killed 38 attackers. His superiors were quick to recognize the special nature of McGinnis’ actions. He was awarded a posthumous Silver Star, America’s third-highest award for valor in combat, and nominated for the Medal of Honor. Eighteen months later, McGinnis will receive his medal. Speaking anonymously, sources at the Department of Defense have confirmed this with reporters from the Army...

Summary of Action Petty Officer Second Class (SEAL) Michael A. Monsoor For actions on Sept. 29, 2006 Petty Officer Michael A. Monsoor, United States Navy, distinguished himself through conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a Combat Advisor and Automatic Weapons Gunner for Naval Special Warfare Task Group Arabian Peninsula in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom on 29 September 2006. He displayed great personal courage and exceptional bravery while conducting operations in enemy held territory at Ar Ramadi Iraq. During Operation Kentucky Jumper, a combined Coalition battalion clearance and...

*SINGLETON, WALTER K. Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps, Company A, 1st Battalion, 9th Marines, 3d Marine Division. Place and date: Gio Linh District, Quang Tri Province, Republic of Vietnam, 24 March 1967. Entered service at: Memphis, Tenn. Born: 7 December 1944, Memphis, Tenn. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Sgt. Singleton's company was conducting combat operations when the lead platoon received intense small arms, automatic weapons, rocket, and mortar fire from a well entrenched enemy force. As the company fought its way forward, the extremely...

A strange occurrence took place recently deep in the Argonne forest of France. Two Midstate university scholars, Michael Birdwell and Tom Nolan, whooped and hollered like Predators fans reacting to a score. "We were screaming and shouting," Birdwell said. In fact, they had "scored." Combining their expertise — Birdwell in history and Nolan in high-tech mapmaking — the pair pinpointed with satellite accuracy the site where Sgt. Alvin C. York silenced a nest of German machine gunners and captured 132 prisoners during World War I. For his heroics in October 1918, the man from Pall Mall, Tenn., was awarded the...

LOS ANGELES - Tibor Rubin kept his promise to join the U.S. Army after American troops freed him from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria during World War II. A Hungarian Jew, Rubin immigrated to New York after the war, joined the Army and fought as an infantryman in the Korean War. In 1951, Chinese troops captured Cpl. Rubin and other U.S. soldiers and he became a prisoner of war for 2 1/2 years. More than five decades later, after a relentless campaign by grateful comrades and Jewish war veterans, President Bush on Sept. 23 will give Rubin the Medal...

    For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.     Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!       ~ Medal Of Honor ~             The President, in the name of Congress, has awarded more than 3,400 Medals of Honor to our nation's bravest Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen since the decoration's creation in 1861. For years, the citations highlighting these acts of bravery and heroism resided in dusty archives and only sporadically were printed. In 1973,...

AL QA'IM, Iraq -- Early this spring, Cpl. Jason Dunham and two other Marines sat in an outpost in Iraq and traded theories on surviving a hand-grenade attack. Second Lt. Brian "Bull" Robinson suggested that if a Marine lay face down on the grenade and held it between his forearms, the ceramic bulletproof plate in his flak vest might be strong enough to protect his vital organs. His arms would shatter, but he might live. Cpl. Dunham had another idea: A Marine's Kevlar helmet held over the grenade might contain the blast. "I'll bet a Kevlar would stop it," he...

Comedienne-turned-peace activist Janeane Garofalo offered a stunning admission on Sunday, explaining that she and her fellow anti-war protesters didn't stage huge demonstrations when President Clinton launched attacks on Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan and the Sudan because "it wasn't very hip" to protest the former president. Asked by "Fox News Sunday's" Tony Snow why peace protesters like herself didn't object to Clinton's wars, Garofalo explained: "I absolutely did. I did not support Operation Desert Fox. It's just that you didn't know me very well back then. Nobody really was interested in listening to me back then." Then she added, by way of...