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Glenn Edward McDuffie, the young sailor from Houston who can be seen in one of the most iconic photos from the end of World War II, has died, according to family members. The Navy veteran was 86. McDuffie was 18 when he said he was captured in the famous kiss photo with nurse Edith Shain. “I heard someone running and stopping right in front of us. I raised my head up, and it was a photographer,” McDuffie told the Houston Chronicle in 2007. “I tried to get my hand out of the way so I wouldn’t block her face, and...

Ehlers was awarded the Medal of Honor ‘for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty’ on June 9 and 10, 1944, according to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society. He ‘repeatedly led his men against heavily defended enemy strong points exposing himself to deadly hostile fire whenever the situation required heroic and courageous leadership.’ Ehlers heroically defended his unit from ‘withering machine gun fire’ and mortars, personally killing at least seven Nazi soldiers, taking out multiple enemy positions

Yesterday “TheBlaze” published an interview with Romanian Lt. Gen Ion Pacepa, a discussion which arose around the publishing of his work, “Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion, and Promoting Terrorism.” Pacepa is a defector to the United States, but not just any run-of-the-mill defector. He is the highest-ranking Soviet intelligence officer to ever defect. He crossed over back in 1978 and was given political asylum by then President Jimmy Carter. He has made a practice since that time to write in defense of freedom while living his life under threat of assassination, hiding out...

Captain Robert Posey and Pfc. Lincoln Kirstein were the first through the small gap in the rubble blocking the ancient salt mine at Altausee, high in the Austrian Alps in 1945 as World War II drew to a close in May 1945. They walked past one sidechamber in the cool damp air and entered a second one, the flames of their lamps guiding the way. There, resting on empty cardboard boxes a foot off the ground, were eight panels of The Adoration of the Lamb by Jan van Eyck, considered one of the masterpieces of 15th-century European art. In one...

SEOUL, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- Organizers say a newly dedicated statue in Seoul honoring Korean women forced into sexual slavery during World War II is "an alarm bell" for future generations. "The Girl Statue for Peace" is outside the Geoje Arts Center, Yonhap news agency reported Friday. The statue in the coastal city 300 miles south of Seoul shows a young woman standing next to an empty chair.

A Japanese soldier who hid in the Philippine jungle for three decades, refusing to believe World War II was over until his former commander returned and ordered him to surrender, has died in Tokyo aged 91. Hiroo Onoda waged a guerilla campaign in Lubang Island near Luzon until he was finally persuaded in 1974 that peace had broken out, ignoring leaflet drops and successive attempts to convince him the Imperial Army had been defeated. (AFP)

The daughter of a Jewish classmate of Anne Frank rescued from the horrors of Bergen Belsen concentration camp has met the British officer who saved her mother's life. Grateful Elizabeth Kahn, 59, flew to Israel to meet Major Leonard Berney, 93, from Plymouth, Devon, and present him with a special silver platter paid for by the family in recognition of his heroics. Jewish Leonard, of the British 11th Armoured division, was one of the first army officers through the gates of Belsen when the camp was liberated on April 15, 1945. It is estimated that 50,000 inmates died in the...

PQ 17 was the code name for an Allied World War II convoy in the Arctic Ocean. In July 1942, the Arctic convoys suffered a significant defeat when Convoy PQ 17 lost 24 of its 35 merchant ships during a series of heavy enemy daylight attacks which lasted a week.

Roanoke lost one of its most decorated World War II veterans last weekend. Former fighter pilot William Overstreet Jr., famous for flying beneath the arches of the Eiffel Tower while chasing a German aircraft during the war, died Sunday afternoon. He was 92. Overstreet was awarded hundreds of medals for his service in the 357th squadron of the U.S. Army Air Forces, according to his obituary for Oakey’s Funeral Home. One of his greatest honors was receiving France’s Legion of Honor by the French ambassador to the U.S. in 2009 at the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford. At the ceremony,...

A World War II fighter pilot who gained fame for dramatically flying beneath the Eiffel Tower's arches to take down a German aircraft has died aged 92. William Overstreet Jr. died on Sunday at a hospital in Roanoke, Virginia, according to his obituary, but there was no indication of the cause of his death. Overstreet's famously flew his P-51C 'Berlin Express' beneath the Eiffel Tower in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1944, which has been credited with lifting the spirits of French Resistance troops on the ground. For his valiant service, the French ambassador to the United States presented Overstreet with France's...

Roman Tritz’s memories of the past six decades are blurred by age and delusion. But one thing he remembers clearly is the fight he put up the day the orderlies came for him. “They got the notion they were going to come to give me a lobotomy,” says Mr. Tritz, a World War II bomber pilot. “To hell with them.” The orderlies at the veterans hospital pinned Mr. Tritz to the floor, he recalls. He fought so hard that eventually they gave up. But the orderlies came for him again on Wednesday, July 1, 1953, a few weeks before his...

THE GREATEST RAID OF ALL "What a story it is, straight out of a Commando comic book." the guardian Jeremy Clarkson tells the story of one of the most daring operations of World War II -- the Commando raid on the German occupied dry dock at St. Nazaire in France on 28th March 1942.

On Pearl Harbor Day, Campbell’s got in a lot of trouble when it tweeted out a picture of its SpaghettiOs mascot holding an American flag and asking people to "take a moment to remember #PearlHarbor with us." On NBC’s “New Year’s Eve with Carson Daly,” actress and comedienne Natasha Leggero disgustingly joked, “It sucks that the only survivors of Pearl Harbor are being mocked by the only food they can still chew” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Bearing gifts of extra rations, Coca Cola and nylon stockings it is no wonder that American GIs were popular house guests among British families during the Second World War. With British soldiers away in Europe, war-hit families were issued with an urgent plea to invite their US colleagues to share their Christmas celebrations. Faced with the prospect of their guests bringing extra food with them, families jumped at the chance to welcome the Americans into their homes, with some 50 invitations being offered for every GI, or Government Issue. For troops serving in a foreign land, far away from home,...

Americans see the 2010 Affordable Care Act as President Barack Obama's greatest achievement to date as well as his biggest failure, underscoring the controversial nature of the law that is likely to define his legacy. On balance, more Americans name the healthcare law as his biggest failure (36%) than as his greatest achievement (22%). History's verdict on Obama's presidency will not be rendered for years or decades, if even then, given the continuing revision of a president's legacy that inevitably takes place after his term ends. But after he has spent almost five years in office, Americans are certainly in...

On this day 71 years ago -- December 22, 1942 -- Congress got the United States out of what had turned into an unexpectedly embarrassing situation. It concerned the Pledge of Allegiance -- specifically, something called the Bellamy Salute. Most people today have likely never heard of it, but the Bellamy Salute was once a constant part of the country's life. Until 1892, there was no such thing as a Pledge of Allegiance. Daniel Sharp Ford, the owner of a magazine called Youth's Companion, was on a crusade to put American flags in every school in the country. He sensed...

MILWAUKEE -- Frank Kruck was 7 when he saw his mother crying and fingering her rosary beads as she listened to the terrible news on the radio. The announcement on a Sunday morning in December 72 years ago: Japanese planes had attacked Pearl Harbor, ships were burning, sailors and soldiers were wounded and dying. Frank's mother was praying for his brother Gene, a sailor aboard the minesweeper USS Widgeon. It would be more than a week before the Western Union telegram was delivered to the Kruck family home in Waukesha: Gene was OK.

During World War II, the Disney company joined in the Allied war effort by producing animated movie material at cost for the US government (they also created insignia mascots for hundreds of aircraft and warships by request). These films number well over one hundred - although most are only partially created by Disney - and cover topics from antenna tuning to Beechcraft airplane maintenance to anti-German and Japanese propaganda. However, one piece in particular is of interest to us here at Forgotten Weapons: Stop That Tank! Produced in 1942 for the Canadian military, it is a training film on the...

The old man sitting on his purple electric scooter in his son’s Port Charlotte, Fla. home was once a sniper in the 10th Armored “Tiger” Division when it landed in France shortly after D-Day during World War II. Staff Sgt. Steve Kruger arrived on the beach at Cherbourg on Sept. 13, 1944, and became part of Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army. He helped run the German forces back into Germany. By then Kruger had received a Purple Heart and a couple of Bronze Stars for valor.

Hundreds of people are expected to attend the funeral of a war veteran they never knew after he died with no close friends or relatives around him. Harold Jellicoe Percival helped with the famous Dambusters raids during the Second World War. Mr Percival, who served as ground crew with the RAF's Bomber Command, never married and had no children. The RAF Association has been involved in ensuring that his funeral in Lancashire on Monday is well attended. Mr Percival, who lived in Penge, south London before joining the RAF, died last month aged 99 at a nursing home in Lytham...