Free Republic

WASHINGTON — At 22, 2nd Lt. John Pedevillano was the youngest bombardier in the U.S. Army Air Corps' 306th Bomb Group when he was shot down by Nazi fighter pilots in Germany in 1944. Pedevillano and his crew were missing for a month before being taken as prisoners of war. The men were liberated by U.S. Army forces under Gen. George S. Patton in 1945. More than 70 years later, Pedevillano has received the Presidential Unit Citation, with one oak leaf cluster, for extraordinary heroism in combat. Pedevillano, a B-17 bombardier, flew six combat missions before being shot down over...

MOSCOW — TWO years ago today, three journalists and I worked nervously in a Hong Kong hotel room, waiting to see how the world would react to the revelation that the National Security Agency had been making records of nearly every phone call in the United States. In the days that followed, those journalists and others published documents revealing that democratic governments had been monitoring the private activities of ordinary citizens who had done nothing wrong. Within days, the United States government responded by bringing charges against me under World War I-era espionage laws. The journalists were advised by lawyers...

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Wearing a brown plaid coat worn by John Wayne in 1945’s “Flame of Barbary Coast,” Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has declared a day in honor of the quintessential screen cowboy. An avid collector of movie memorabilia, Patrick wore the coat as he presided over the Senate Tuesday. He declared it John Wayne Day in Texas to mark the Hollywood legend’s 108th birthday and named the actor an honorary Texan.

CENTER CITY (WPVI) -- Action News has obtained video of the moment a SEPTA commuter stumbled onto the subway tracks after getting too close to the edge Wednesday night. Seconds later a Good Samaritan springs into action, risking his own life to save a stranger. It happened around 6:30 p.m. Wednesday on the westbound Market-Frankford El tracks at 15th Street Station. 28-year-old Charles Collins of South Philadelphia can be seen in the video wearing an Eagles jacket, walking away from the camera. Moments later an older man, identified as Alfred McNamee, is seen walking near the SEPTA platform's yellow line....

The City of Hoquiam last night voted against committee recommendation and renamed a portion of Queets Avenue to McQuade in honor of a fallen Vietnam veteran who’s chopper was shot down while searching for missing soldiers under fire. “On June 11th, 1972 the 23 year old pilot from Hoquiam Washington, [his gunner] and the copter was right above their leader’s chopper when it was shot down itself.” Dan Discher grew up on Queets Avenue with James McQuade, he told the council last night that McQuade left the Harbor to become a 1st Lieutenant in the Army, and flew for the...

A heroic act of a D.C. man may have helped save a woman who was being raped.  The man picked up a stick and a brick and repeatedly hit the suspect, who was later caught by police.  This all unfolded early Tuesday on 16th Street, Northwest.  Ketrell Ferguson says he doesn't want to be called a hero, but by any measure of the word that's exactly what he is to a woman who was being sexually assaulted.  “I just cracked him as hard as I could, and when I cracked him he got off here and he started running,” said...

Like most Louisiana boys, 16-year-old Leyton Page of Bogalusa loves the outdoors. Unlike most anyone, Page is a genuine hero. Page lived with his father until two weeks ago when the Pine High School student came home to find his father dead of natural causes. His grandfather also died in February, and Page was understandably blue after losing what another relative called "the two most important men in his life." Following their deaths, the grieving sportsman bought a 12-gauge shotgun for hunting. Around 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Page took his boat out on to the usually placid, dark water of the...

In WWI Alvin York almost single handedly captured 132 German soldiers using nothing but a rifle and a pistol, while the German soldiers having among them 32 machine guns along with rifles and pistols and the advantage of being above him in the biggest of the forays.  And did I mention York was out in the open during the largest gun fight?  Ya, when the Germans attacked they pretty much mowed down almost the entire unit that York was with, including York’s commanding officer, which put him in charge.  The other soldiers left from the original group of 17, were...

Such is the quality of American military leadership that generals and political appointees like McHugh will send courageous soldiers like Golsteyn into incredibly difficult (some would suggest impossible) circumstances, then invest years in second-guessing their actions after the fact—and then, finding no evidence of wrongdoing, still publicly dishonor the man without giving him a chance to defend himself.

Even as “American Sniper” breaks January box-office records and revels in six Oscar nominations, criticism over the subject of the film, sharpshooter Chris Kyle, is rising and reaching into the Academy of Motion Picture of Arts and Sciences, which votes on the Academy Awards. Over the weekend, multiple Academy members told TheWrap that they had been passing around a recent article by Dennis Jett in The New Republic that attacks the film for making a hero out of Kyle, who said: “The enemy are savages and despicably evil,” and his “only regret is that I didn’t kill more.” Kyle made...

A Texas judge has rejected the city of Houston’s demand to deny a jury trial to pastors fighting a controversial transgender ordinance. The ruling, released late Tuesday by Judge Robert Schaffer in the Harris County District Court in Houston, came in a case in which the city created a firestorm of controversy by issuing subpoenas for copies of pastors’ sermons. In its latest motion, the city claimed the pastors have no right to a jury trial, contending the decision should be made by a hand-picked “special master.” The pastors are opposing an ordinance adopted by lesbian Mayor Annise Parker and...

Chris Kyle was Derek's teammate through 10 years of training and battle. They both suffer/suffered from PTSD to some extent and took great care of each other because of it. 2006 in Ramadi was horrible for young men that never had any more aggressive physical contact with another human than on a Texas football field. They lost many friends. Chris became the armed services number #1 sniper of all time. Not something he was happy about, other than the fact that in so doing, he saved a lot of American lives. Three years ago, his wife Taya asked him to...

Navy veteran, 100, cheered for standing up to protesters at medal ceremony Published January 05, 2015 FoxNews.com A 100-year-old U.S. Navy veteran drew cheers from a crowd in Oregon Saturday after telling protesters shouting "hands-up, don't shoot!" to stop interrupting his medal ceremony and to “show a little respect.” Dario Raschio was at Portland Community College's Southeast Campus to be honored by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, at a public town hall meeting. But shortly after Wyden began speaking, more than 100 demonstrators in the back of the room started shouting, The Oregonian reports. After 15 minutes of chanting against the...

Do the right thing. Help others. Can heroism be as simple as that? Leo Thorsness swore an oath when he became a Boy Scout in Walnut Grove, Minn., eventually becoming an Eagle Scout. He took another oath when he joined the Air Force, eventually becoming a fighter pilot in Vietnam. He received the Medal of Honor for a mission in which he risked himself to help downed crewmen from another aircraft. But the only living Medal of Honor recipient from Minnesota said he later came to realize he could boil down those service oaths to a simple code: Do the...

American Sniper- The MovieI've read the book and passed it on to others

THE manager of the Lindt cafe who was fatally shot in the Martin Place siege is being praised as a hero, responsible for allowing others trapped in the cafe to escape. Tori Johnson, 34, was wrestling a gun from gunman Man Haron Monis when he was killed. It is understood the cafe manager decided to take action when the hostage-taker begun to doze off after the siege had been ongoing for 17 hours. He lunged at the gunman’s weapon, enabling others to flee.

When Capt. Derek Herrera was called to stand in the place of honor Friday at his retirement ceremony, he pressed buttons on what appeared to be a wristwatch as a fellow Marine came to his aid. After another push of a button and three short beeps, Herrera rose, legs shaking, and walked deliberately toward his commander. With each step, the exoskeleton he wore emitted a robotic whirring noise, as though it were Iron Man striding through the cordoned off parking lot in digital camouflage. Herrera was paralyzed from the chest down in June 2012, when he was shot in...

The Two Deaths of Crazy Fakhir Former Iraqi commander cleared booby-traps—until it finally killed him Many Kurdish Peshmerga fighters have died fighting Islamic State militants this year. But the news of Col. Fakhir Barwary’s death on Nov. 11 held special significance.That’s because Barwary’s death has been reported on two separate occasions. The media wrongly declared him dead in 2008 following a bomb blast outside Mosul.In fact, he’d only lost a leg—and even that didn’t end his soldiering days. After the fall of Ba’athist regime in 2003, many Peshmerga joined the Iraqi army in order to help protect civilians. Fakhir...

Millions of YouTube viewers have been captivated by the 'Syrian hero boy' who manages to rescue a little girl while under gunfire. Now a group of Norwegian filmmakers have told BBC Trending they are behind it. They say it was filmed on location in Malta this summer with the intention of being presented as real. Lars Klevberg, a 34-year-old film director based in Oslo, wrote a script after watching news coverage of the conflict in Syria. He says he deliberately presented the film as reality in order to generate a discussion about children in conflict zones.

f you really care for our fallen heroes, then do something to thank them: love your country, put up a fight for our veterans and protect the gift of freedom. Never give up He was an unknown soldier. A warrior, who sacrificed his life for our freedom. As rightly said by General MacArthur:” However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind”. There were tears and hope and years of waiting, because he wasn’t “known but to God”.