Free Republic

(Odds are, a little elbow grease and some lube will get those STENs up and running again.) A couple remodeling an old home in north-central France found a cache of ammo, grenades and submachine guns hidden under a granite floor, The Lyonne Republicaine reported. The find was made in July by the couple in the Quarré-les-Tombes area, about 150 miles away from Paris. Cached under the floor were three STEN guns, over a dozen Britsh Mills bomb type fragmentation grenades, three handguns, more than 1,000 rounds of ammo, and several Bren light machine gun magazines. Two of the sub...

Covert intelligence operations, propaganda, fake news stories, dirty tricks—all were used in a foreign government’s audacious attempt to influence U.S. elections. It wasn’t 2016; it was 1940, and the operations were employed not by a hostile adversary, but by America’s closest ally, the United Kingdom. Though technology has advanced, and the two nations’ motives could not have been more different, critical aspects of Russia’s alleged covert efforts to bolster the campaign of Donald Trump echo the tactics that Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service pioneered seven decades ago. In 1940, as war raged in Europe, British intel officers in New York and...

Heaven has received another soul from the ranks of America's greatest generation. Master Sergeant William H. Holt of Inman, South Carolina passed on October 24th. He served with the US Army Air Corp as a crew member on A-20 attack bombers based in New Guinea. He was the grandfather of my son in law. Please keep his family in prayer and do not fail to give respect and thanks to his surviving comrades before it is too late.

On the morning of December 8, 1941, tens of thousands of American and British civilians living in China woke up to learn that the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor had been bombed by Japanese forces. Their nations were suddenly at war with Imperial Japan. The Japanese had invaded China years earlier, and the troops stationed there wasted no time turning these Westerners—who were now part of the enemy—into prisoners of war. “They appeared the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked,” Mary Previte told the Trumpet. “We were now the prisoners of the great emperor of Japan, they said.”...

Israel's vaunted Mossad missed at least two chances to capture Nazi fugitive Dr Josef Mengele, who sent hundreds of thousands of Jews to their death at Auschwitz, a former agent said Tuesday. Rafi Eitan, who commanded the audacious capture in 1960 of top Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina, said that during the hunt he and his team discovered Mengele's hideout. "At the same time as we caught Eichmann, Mengele was living in Buenos Aires. We found his apartment and kept it under observation," he told Israeli public radio as the spy agency declassified its file on operations against the man...

"No Trump! No wall! No U.S.A. at all." This was the chant of the violent, black-masked thugs who descended on an otherwise peaceful protest in Berkeley over the weekend. And it gives you a window into the tactics of the violent fringes of the Left. They attempt to lure in normal, reasonable people -- which they most certainly are not -- by showcasing a common enemy, such as racism or fascism. But that's just a sweetener for their real agenda item. Lots of normal, reasonable people oppose Donald Trump. Many of them oppose the border wall, too. But the third...

Dunkirk, the movie, is a big box office hit even with its somewhat inaccurate historical perspective. It only partially tells of the real heroes of this incident and never explains the impact it had on World War II or the British population. On May 10th 1940, Germany invaded France and the Low Countries, pushing the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), along with French and Belgian troops, back to the French port of Dunkirk. A huge rescue, Operation 'Dynamo', was organized by the Royal Navy to get the troops off the beaches and back to Britain. The fierce Nazi bombing demolished the...

"We've located the wreckage of the USS Indianapolis in Philippine Sea at 5500m below the sea." That tweet from entrepreneur and billionaire Paul Allen around 12:20 p.m. Saturday confirmed what many have been searching for since the ship was sunk on July 30, 1945. Allen, who is leading a 13-person team on his 250-foot research ship, the R/V Petrel, said the wreckage was found at a depth of more than 18,000 feet.

On numerous housing estates throughout London, the rows of black steel and mesh railings guarding red brick mansion blocks appear, at first glance, little more than a quirk of post-war architectural design. However, unbeknown to thousands of passersby each day, those sometimes rusting or buckled fences were in fact the emergency stretchers that helped to save the lives of those injured during the Blitz. Now, a campaign has been launched to protect and restore these metal fences, mainly found on estates in South London, that had served so well as stretchers during World War II. Rosie Shaw, founder of the...

Incredibly, it wasn’t until I was 19 that I learned that there had been a Holocaust. My hyper-assimilated, New England Jewish family and friends looked only to the present and future. We focused on the polio vaccine that promised to banish the iron lungs that had been our childhood terror. We trusted in the United Nations, whose gleaming buildings my father took me to see when they were brand-new, and from which I came away with hopeful admiration—mixed, however, with a vague sense, which I couldn’t have put into words then, that perhaps an enterprise housed in architecture so grandiosely...

Theatre goers watching the premiere of “Dunkirk” at Calgary’s Westhills Cinemas on Friday night got a surprise encounter with a 97-year -old man who was at the battle in 1940. The Battle of Dunkirk took place during the Second World War between the Allies and Nazi Germany in Dunkirk, France. Calgarian Ken Sturdy, dressed in a jacket adorned with medals, viewed the movie and was impressed by what he saw...

A German Second World War pilot has made his maiden voyage in a Spitfire seven decades after he flew for the Luftwaffe. Hugo Broch, 95, who last flew in 1960, took to the skies above Kent on Tuesday as a passenger in a British TR9 MJ627 Spitfire. Born on January 6 1922, Broch is a former Messerschmitt 109 fighter pilot and Luftwaffe ace. During his career, Broch flew 324 combat missions and shot down 81 enemy aircraft on the Eastern Front, including 18 Soviet Sturmoviks. His score included twelve double victories and three triple victories.

The St. Louis Cardinals and Fox Sports Midwest have made it a yearly tradition to honor veterans with Military Appreciation Night at Busch Stadium and their This One’s For You telecast. This year was no different, and it provided several memorable moments for veterans who served and their families. Among those moments was a ceremonial first pitch that’s impossible not to get emotional watching. Clarence Adelhardt, a 99-year-old veteran of World War II and longtime Cardinals fans, was called upon to deliver the pitch, and did so with incredible spirit as the crowd showered him with their appreciation.

As part of a weapons amnesty in Denmark, police recovered a vintage stockpile of munitions including submachine guns and grenades. The South Jutland Police posted images to social media last week of some 25 weapons and 100 grenades turned in as part of a reprieve for those with illegal or unregistered arms, many of which may have a connection to Danish history. Occupied by Germany during World War II, Denmark was home to a well-organized network of underground resistance units, often equipped by the Allies through the OSS and SOE. Among the weapons brought down from attics and up from...

An iconic Second World War fighter aircraft which crash landed as it tried to rescue Allied troops has taken to the skies for the first time in nearly 80 years. The Mk 1 Hawker Hurricane thundered through the skies after taking off at Elmsett in Suffolk following a £2 million restoration project and some 25,000 hours of highly-skilled labour. In May 1940, the Hurricane of 245 Squadron took off from Kent with Pilot Officer Kenneth McGlashan at the controls, before being shot down on a Dunkirk beach. But now the distinctive sound of the P2902 with its Merlin engine is...

We are losing World War II veterans at an alarming rate. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, an average of more than 370 World War II veterans die every day. But, 17-year-old Andy Fancher is dedicated to keeping their legacy alive and he's racing against life's clock to tell their stories. "I would see this man just sitting in his wheelchair with no one to talk to," Fancher recalled. He was only 12-years-old when he met that gentleman, and it was then that he realized someone had to record the story of those veterans. He decided to use his...

The architect of the Second World War prison break immortalised by The Great Escape is to be honoured with a plaque on the spot where Gestapo officers murdered him in 1944. Daredevil skiier, ladies' man and multilingual Cambridge-educated barrister Roger Bushell helped 76 prisoners of war escape from Stalag Luft III, a Nazi camp in occupied Poland. Just 33 at the time of his death, Squadron Leader Bushell - played by Richard Attenborough in the classic 1963 film - had been in enemy hands since his first day of combat, when he was shot down in a Spitfire during the...

Art Jackson, who singlehandedly destroyed a dozen enemy pillboxes and killed 50 Japanese soldiers during a fierce battle on the Pacific island of Peleliu, died Wednesday at the Boise VA Medical Center. Nine Marines, including Jackson, were presented the Medal of Honor for their roles in the battle. Fighting for control of the island lasted for two months, beginning in September 1944. The Japanese, entrenched in caves, killed 1,800 American soldiers and injured 8,000 more.

When 1st Lt. Robert Eugene Oxford’s flight went down in 1944, he was carrying supplies from China over the Himalayas. On Sunday, hundreds of Chinese-Americans poured into his tiny hometown of Concord, about 50 miles south of Atlanta, to honor him. His remains returned to Georgia last week 73 years after the mysterious plane crash in a remote ravine. “These mourners went to honor a man who had sacrificed everything to defend a country to which he did not belong, a people that he did not know,” read a story in the Atlanta Chinese Life publication. “The 308th Bombardment Group...

SIERRA VISTA — Whether they had met him once or had known him for several years, the words “kind,” “sweet,” and “caring,” were repeated by many guests describing 97-year-old Sierra Vista resident Frederick “Fred” Tilton Moore Drew at his memorial service on Monday. Drew, who died in February, received a formal farewell complete with military honors at the chapel of the Southern Arizona Veterans Memorial Cemetery. The Patrol Guard Riders provided an escort through the cemetery to the chapel. Though there was a crowd of 47 people in attendance, not a single one was a blood relative. “Fred didn’t have...