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Lest We Forget - Corregidor Surrenders May 6, 1942

Russia honours veteran with medal, vodka By Jonathan Sher, The London Free Press Monday, April 25, 2016 10:05:18 EDT PM When your life is the world of ­diplomacy and your boss is Vladimir Putin, you’re not easily surprised. But the head of the Russian delegation in Toronto was taken aback this month when a 95-year-old Londoner, to be honoured for heroism during the Second World War, not only walked himself into the reception area, but passed up coffee and tea for a vodka. “He was quite surprised I walked in instead of being carried,” Londoner Bob Kennedy said. Kennedy was...

You might think 97-year-old Ralph Kimball of Murray, Utah, would be more careful with his hair. Instead, this World War II veteran and two-time Purple Heart recipient says with a sly chuckle, “I trust it to a kid.” That “kid″ is 91-year-old Wayne Chidester of Springville, Utah. Chidester is also a World War II veteran, and in the age of social media and digital relationships, their lengthy, loyal friendship is refreshing. Approximately once a month for more than 30 years, Kimball has visited Chidester’s barber’s chair for what he calls “the perfect haircut″ and a reminder of what matters most...

One week after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt began pressing the U.S. military to immediately strike the Japanese homeland. The desire to bolster moral became more urgent in light of rapid Japanese advances. These included victories in Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, Wake Island, Guam, and the Dutch East Indies, as well as sinking the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse. Only improbable, audacious ideas warranted consideration, because submarines confirmed Japan placed picket boats at extreme carrier aircraft range. One idea even involved launching four engine heavy bombers from China or Outer Mongolia to strike Japan and fly on to Alaska....

Seventy-two years after eight airmen in the B-24 Liberator Hot as Hell crashed in violent weather over India during World War II, part of the crew began their final journey home after a full-honors ceremony Wednesday, April 13, 2016, at Air Force Station Palam in New Delhi, India. TARA COPP/STARS AND STRIPES AIR FORCE STATION PALAM, NEW DELHI, India — Seventy-two years after eight airmen in the B-24 Liberator Hot as Hell crashed in violent weather over India, part of the crew has begun the final journey home. In a full-honors ceremony Wednesday at New Delhi’s airport, Secretary of Defense...

A former Auschwitz guard has died days before his trial in Germany -- dashing the hopes of survivors who wanted to see justice for their dead parents. Ernst Tremmel, who was 93, was a guard at the notorious Nazi concentration camp during the Second World War. He was accused of 1,075 counts of accessory to murder, covering the time he worked at the camp from November 1942 to June 1943.

In 1942, Seaman Calvin Graham was decorated for valor in battle. Then his mother learned where he'd been and revealed his secret to the Navy. With powerful engines, extensive firepower and heavy armor, the newly christened battleship USS South Dakota steamed out of Philadelphia in August of 1942 spoiling for a fight. The crew was made up of “green boys”—new recruits who enlisted after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor—who had no qualms about either their destination or the action they were likely to see. Brash and confident, the crew couldn’t get through the Panama Canal fast enough, and their...

It’s hard to believe the resolve the United States once showed in defeating enemies. One wonders if in a 24/7 news cycle of “living room wars” whether this nation could have ever mounted the sustained effort it took to join the Allies in stopping Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Americans today would find such will to win at any cost difficult to comprehend. Perhaps with Easter just passed, it is fitting to remember Easter of 1945 when the invasion of Okinawa, the last battle of World War II and the largest sea-air-land operation in history, began. It would also be...

The Associated Press news agency cooperated with the Nazi regime during the 1930s, a German historian has exposed. In an article for the Studies in Contemporary History journal, historian Harriet Scharnberg revealed archival material which detailed how AP struck a deal with Adolf Hitler’s regime for access inside Nazi-ruled Germany. In return for that exclusive access — by 1935 all other international news agencies had been forced to leave Germany — AP signed up to what was known as the Schriftleitergesetz, or editor’s law, which meant the New York-based agency pledged to toe the Nazi party line and not publish...

When the US/UK special relationship really WAS special: New £3million war museum opens telling how Britain and the U.S. worked together during the darkest days of the 20th Century American Air Museum based at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford, Cambridgeshire, looks at role of US air power It has 18 aircraft on display, including B-17 bomber used in WWII and supersonic SR-71 Blackbird spy plane The museum looks at conflicts in chronological order, beginning at 1918 and continuing on to the present day Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3495651/When-special-relationship-really-special-New-3million-war-museum-opens-telling-Britain-U-S-worked-darkest-days-20th-Century.html#ixzz437ANIZjh Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

Thinkstock Eighty years ago the first Spitfire prototype flew from Eastleigh aerodrome in Hampshire. One man reveals the impact piloting this aircraft had on his life. It was always an exclusive club, and now there are only a handful of people left who can claim membership. To fly a Spitfire, especially in combat, is as close to holding a place in mythology as modern times allow. But Sqn Ldr Geoffrey Wellum DFC, still passionate and engaging at 94, cautions against hyperbole. "I didn't think of myself as glamorous but certainly I was aware it was a privilege," he says. "Everybody...

Stephanie Rader, a spy for the U.S. during World War II, died at 100 in January. But thanks to a spat between two Republican senators, her life was one month too short to see her service honored by Congress. Arizona Sen. John McCain temporarily blocked a bill commemorating veterans of the Office of Strategic Services with a gold medal as he feuded with Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, who leads the committee in charge of the measure. The bill finally passed this week after McCain relented, but not before Rader had passed away... McCain at first denied knowing anything about...

JERUSALEM -- Samuel Willenberg, the last survivor of Treblinka, the Nazi death camp where 875,000 people were systematically murdered, has died in Israel at the age of 93. Only 67 people are known to have survived the camp, fleeing in a revolt shortly before it was destroyed. Treblinka holds a notorious place in history as perhaps the most vivid example of the "Final Solution," the Nazi plan to exterminate Europe's Jews. Unlike at other camps, where some Jews were assigned to forced labour before being killed, nearly all Jews brought to Treblinka were immediately gassed to death. Only a select...

DENVER - America has lost a hero of Iwo Jima. First Lieutenant John Keith Wells, USMC, 94, of Wheat Ridge, died Thursday at the Arvada Care and Rehabilitation Center. Wells, who received the Navy Cross, Bronze Star and Purple Heart, commanded the 3rd Platoon, Easy Co., 28th Marine Regiment, during the Battle of Iwo Jima. The 3rd Platoon was part of the invasion force, landing on February 19, 1945. It was a key unit in the frontal assault on Mt. Suribachi. Wells, thinking the frontal assault order from higher up was pure suicide, refused to give his marines the order...

In August 1944, Gen. Charles de Gaulle thrilled a Parisian crowd by declaring, "Paris liberated! Liberated by its own efforts, liberated by its people with the help of the armies of France, with the help of all France, that is France in combat. The one France, the true France, eternal France!" As historian Robert Gildea scathingly documents, seldom has so much nonsense and misinformation been crammed into one oration. But de Gaulle piled lie atop lie with a reason. He laid the foundation for a myth that permeates France to this day: that the country freed itself of German occupation...

Video at link. Little David was the nickname of an American 36-inch (910 mm) caliber mortar used for test firing aerial bombs during World War II, that is one of the largest calibre guns ever built, having a larger calibre than both of Germany's Dora and Gustav which were 31.5-inch (800 mm) railway guns. By 1944, it was expected that American forces would encounter extremely strong fortifications during the expected invasion of Japan. Studies began on using Little David as a siege mortar. The mortar was converted into a two piece mobile unit, consisting of the 80,000-pound (36,000 kg) barrel...

Capt. Jerry Yellin, from Fairfield, Iowa, flew the final combat mission in World War II. World War II veterans visit Iwo Jima for the 70th anniversary Mar. 21 in commemoration of the end of World War II.

By Peter Roper The Pueblo Chieftain Published: January 28, 2016; Last modified: January 28, 2016 11:01PM Elmer Melchi survived parachuting into Normandy on D-Day and he survived jumping into Holland in Operation Market Garden -- although a German soldier shot him when the young 82nd Airborne paratrooper tried to escape from a POW camp. But death finally caught up with the tough 92-year-old veteran Thursday afternoon, taking him in his sleep at the Sangre de Cristo Hospice here. It was expected. Melchi had cancer and knew he was dying. "My dad went for his last jump," said a tearful...

Disaster struck when a machine gun went off without warning, hitting two crew members and shooting off the plane's right stabilizer. In a jaw-dropping display of valour and skill, Capt Rogers and Lt Gorse managed to control the stricken aircraft for two hours. They jettisoned their bombs in The Wash, off the UK's east coast, and allowed their seven crewmates to bail out safely. Once the last two had jumped through the bomb bay near King's Lynn, Rogers and Gorse continued to the North Sea. THE LIFE OF NORVILLE GORSE Born in 1924, he was the son of a Chicago...

This will make your blood boil. Federal employees with the Park Service brag about how they swindled two World War II veterans off the land for pennies on the dollar. Federal employees revel in the fact that they swindle land from private property owners at pennies on the dollar, in astonishing admissions captured in a recently released video. “We went out to the mine and the owners were two little guys that had been in the Second World War,” a California park service employee recalls at a retirement celebration for Mojave National Preserve Superintendent Mary Martin in 2005. The employee...