Free Republic

7 April 1944 Good Friday; at least I suppose it must be somewhere. I remember the 'Karfreitag' I spent in Heidelberg seven years ago. A party of us had an early supper and then went into Mannheim to the opera house to hear 'Parsifal,' which on this day would be playing in every opera house in Germany. I remember returning to Heidelberg, tired and slightly stunned by 5 hours of concentrated Wagner, the first time I had ever heard of 'Parsifal' in its entirety. The next time I heard it was about a year later at the Colon Opera House...

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A doctor once told Albert Brown he shouldn't expect to make it to 50, given the toll taken by his years in a Japanese labor camp during World War II and the infamous, often-deadly march that got him there. But the former dentist made it to 105, embodying the power of a positive spirit in the face of inordinate odds. "Doc" Brown was nearly 40 in 1942 when he endured the Bataan Death March, a harrowing 65-mile trek in which 78,000 prisoners of war were forced to walk from Bataan province near Manila to a Japanese...

His name was Gregory Boyington. Some called him "Pappy." He served as a combat pilot in World War II with the 1st Squadron, American Volunteer Group. This squadron was known as the Flying Tigers of China. Boyington later served as a combat pilot for the U.S. Marine Corps. He commanded Marine Fighting Squadron 214. Perhaps you've heard of this squadron. It was called the Black Sheep Squadron and was later featured in a TV series called "Baa Baa, Black Sheep." Boyington shot down 26 Japanese aircraft while serving in the Pacific. He was later shot down and spent 20 months...