Free Republic

Of all the memorable dates of World War II, this one somehow got lost in the jungle. Remember Aug. 7, 1942? Quiz your friends. Note the silence. To veterans who landed 60 years ago today on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal, it is a silence almost as eerie and inexplicable as the quiet of the early hours of their raid -- the first U.S. offensive of the war. "So many people today don't even know what Guadalcanal is," said Rudy Bock, 82, of Overland Park, who stormed in with fellow Marines and caught the Japanese with their guns down. "You...

Memories of fallen consecrate name of Solomons' airportBy Tom HennessyStaff columnistHenderson Field is one of those place names that still resonates with most Americans who lived through World War II. And even with some of their descendants. U.S. Marines seized the airfield Aug. 7, 1942, when they invaded Guadalcanal in our first offensive of the Pacific War. They finished the construction the Japanese had started and named the airfield for Lofton Henderson, a Medal of Honor aviator killed in June at the battle of Midway. It was one of the war's most significant airfields. Whoever held Henderson pretty much...

It's hard to envision -- or, for the dwindling few, to remember -- what the world looked like on Oct. 26, 1942, when a few thousand U.S. Marines stood essentially stranded on the God-forsaken jungle island of Guadalcanal, placed like a speed bump at the end of the long blue-water slot between New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago, the most likely route for the Japanese Navy to take if they hoped to reach Australia. On Guadalcanal, the Marines struggled to complete an airfield. Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto knew what that meant. No effort would be spared to dislodge these upstart...

What if the Allied war effort of World War II was directed by the current Republican leadership? Listen to the strumming harp music as we take an imaginary journey into the past... 24 November 1944 -- Emerging from a joint strategy meeting, Generals Eisenhower and Zhukov addressed a press meeting and outlined their plans for bringing about a peaceful resolution to what had snowballed into a massive world war. “My Russian counterpart and I realize the meaning of our spectacular victories at Stalingrad and Normandy," said Eisenhower. "It is that the message of the Allies must be one of willingness...

The remains of a World War II airman from San Francisco, who was missing for seven decades after his plane was shot down over New Guinea, will be returned to the United States and buried with full honors, the Department of Defense said Monday.

On freerepublic, people were discussing the recent legal victory, where a federal judge ruled that people who already had guns had no reason to wait through a 10 day California waiting period.  The law was first passed in 1923.  He ruled that the law infringed on second amendment rights.  The KG9 Kid wrote, from freerepublic.com: I'm sorry, but I read of these little 'victories' by the CalGuns Foundation in their thoroughly anti-gun state and cannot help but compare them to some WWII Japanese radio broadcast that exclaims that the Imperial Japanese Navy now has now deployed the first rocket-powered...

Can it be true that Vladimir Lenin, the alleged “leader of the world Proletariat,” whose monuments adorned central squares in every Soviet town and who inspired generations of Soviet citizens, had been a mere agent provocateur working for the German government? In The World Crisis, Volume 5, Winston Churchill writes this about war-time Germany in 1917: “They turned upon Russia the most grisly of all weapons. They transported Lenin in a sealed truck like a plague bacillus from Switzerland into Russia.” The rest is history: Lenin staged a coup and withdrew Russia from World War One, conceding large swaths of...

Molly Guptill Manning, with her collection of Armed Services Edition books, discovered that soldiers liked nostalgic books and those with sex scenes. Armed Services Editions created a new audience of readers back home. A decade after the Nazis’ 1933 book burnings, the U.S. War Department and the publishing industry did the opposite, printing 120 million miniature, lightweight paperbacks for U.S. troops to carry in their pockets across Europe, North Africa and the Pacific. The books were Armed Services Editions, printed by a coalition of publishers with funding from the government and shipped by the Army and Navy. The largest of...

Unfortunately I'll have to skip tomorrow's London Forum meeting. But I wish to write about the topic of one of the announced speeches, by Richard Edmonds: "Bad Nenndorf – a Nuremberg Trial for Allied War Criminals". The subject is described as "the tragedy of Bad Nenndorf where in the aftermath of WWII British torturers, many of them later emigrating to Israel, killed dozens of National Socialist sympathisers including girls belonging to the BDSM." Richard Edmonds is a British nationalist who is capable of criticising his country when necessary, who rightly doesn't believe that patriotism means defending the indefensible. I'd never...

On Veterans Day, Justus Belfield donned his Army uniform one more time, even though he was too weak to leave his bed at an upstate New York nursing home. The 98-year-old World War II veteran died the next day. The Daily Gazette of Schenectady reports that Belfield had worn his uniform every Veterans Day since he and his wife moved into Baptist Health Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Glenville, outside Albany, several years ago. On Tuesday, the former master sergeant wasn't able to get out of bed to participate in the facility's Veterans Day festivities, so he had the staff...

Rare Bugs Bunny Featuring Hitler.

The Army deployed 65 infantry divisions for the Second World War. Each was a small town with its own equivalents for community services plus eight categories of combat arms. Units such as artillery, engineering, and heavy weapons engaged the enemy directly. Yet of all categories, the foot soldier faced the greatest hazard with the least chance of reward. Except for the Purple Heart and the coveted Combat Infantryman’s Badge, recognition often eluded them because so few came through to testify to the valor of the many. The infantryman confronted the most dismal fate of all whose duty was uninterrupted by...

The last Navajo Code Talker, Chester Nez, USMC died on 10 November 2014, the 239th birthday of the Corps. They played a vital role during WWII.From Source Marine veteran Michael Smith wept Wednesday when he heard about the death of Chester Nez, the last of the original Navajo Code Talkers.Smith, from Window Rock, who had met Nez several times, described him as a “quiet, humble” Navajo Marine.Smith said that the passing of Nez — the last of the first 29 Navajo men who created a code from their language that stumped the Japanese in World War II — marked the...

The Army deployed 65 infantry divisions for the Second World War. Each was a small town with its own equivalents for community services plus eight categories of combat arms. Units such as artillery, engineering, and heavy weapons engaged the enemy directly. Yet of all categories, the foot soldier faced the greatest hazard with the least chance of reward. Except for the Purple Heart and the coveted Combat Infantryman’s Badge, recognition often eluded them because so few came through to testify to the valor of the many. The infantryman confronted the most dismal fate of all whose duty was uninterrupted by...

The Army deployed 65 infantry divisions for the Second World War. Each was a small town with its own equivalents for community services plus eight categories of combat arms. Units such as artillery, engineering, and heavy weapons engaged the enemy directly. Yet of all categories, the foot soldier faced the greatest hazard with the least chance of reward. Except for the Purple Heart and the coveted Combat Infantryman’s Badge, recognition often eluded them because so few came through to testify to the valor of the many. The infantryman confronted the most dismal fate of all whose duty was uninterrupted by...

The Army deployed 65 infantry divisions for the Second World War. Each was a small town with its own equivalents for community services plus eight categories of combat arms. Units such as artillery, engineering, and heavy weapons engaged the enemy directly. Yet of all categories, the foot soldier faced the greatest hazard with the least chance of reward. Except for the Purple Heart and the coveted Combat Infantryman’s Badge, recognition often eluded them because so few came through to testify to the valor of the many. The infantryman confronted the most dismal fate of all whose duty was uninterrupted by...

Hitler's GI Death Camp I came across this video on NetFlix a few weeks back. Shortly after, I then found someone had uploaded it to You Tube. I watched it for a third time last night with my mom on my little phone. I think it's well done and very emotional. Amazing what these men went through and survived. I have so much respect for these men. On the You Tube thread, one of the posters said that her father, Norman Fellman, who was one of the GI's featured in the documentary, passed away just this past August. God bless...

SGT. MIKE MCKOOL, rescued American WWII Halyard Mission Airman, testifies before Commission of Inquiry regarding "Fair Trial for General Mihailovich" May 1946 New YorkAleksandra's Note: On May 13, 1946, the Committee for a Fair Trial for General Mihailovich announced that a "Commission of Inquiry" had been established in New York for the purpose of taking the testimonies of American officers and airmen whose request to be heard as witnesses at the trial of General Draza Mihailovich in Belgrade, Yugoslavia had been refused by the Tito government. The following is the testimony of Sergeant Mike McKool from Dallas, Texas, one of...

Fury: The Mother of all Tank Movies starring Brad Pitt, no I'm not a fan of his, but did enjoyed the movie. The authenticity of the tanks was the real thing, Sherman's and the German Tiger I. Pitt's character is a bit reminiscent of the role he played as a soldier in Inglorious Basterds, which also took place during WWII. He takes his five-man crew behind enemy lines, where they are outnumbered and outgunned. FURY is the first war film to feature a real life German Tiger I tank which actually came out of a museum collection. Tigers were the...