Free Republic

A military ceremony has been held in honour of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is due to step down next week after 16 years in office...

SNIP Grable’s daughter Victoria Colucci recently opened up to Closer Weekly about her late mother and why the actress felt honored to be loved by the troops. “She would just say that she was a dancer who could act,” Colucci said. “But she felt that one of her greatest accomplishments in life was bringing a little happiness to our soldiers.” “She would get letters from soldiers and she’d reply,” she continued. “She was proud to help light up the world when it was so dark.”

Wednesday is the United States Marine Corps’ birthday. The Marines were formed 246 years ago in a bar in Philadelphia. Marines old and young across the U.S. are celebrating their special day, including a 103-year-old Marine from Greensburg. KDKA’s resident Marine Ross Guidotti spent some time with Madeline Buchek, whose service in World War II helped pave the way for future female Marines. Although it’s been 78 years, Buchek says her memories of her time as a Marine are as vivid as ever.

Veteran’s Day is here and descendants of World War II Rangers are working to have a Congressional Gold Medal awarded to them. Of 16 million American military in World War II, just 7,000 were Rangers who spearheaded multiple invasions from Africa to D-Day Normandy. Today, only 19 of those Rangers are living. The U.S. Senate has already passed bipartisan legislation that will award the medal. HR3577 will do the same in the House if it gains sufficient co-sponsors. Sen. Jerry Moran was a co-sponsor on the Senate bill, but as of yet, only Congressman Tracey Mann — one of four...

SAN DIEGO — Dave Severance, a retired U.S. Marine colonel whose troops were the first to plant an American flag over the Japanese island of Iwo Jima during World War II, has died. He was 102. Severance died Monday at his home in the San Diego suburb of La Jolla, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. On Feb. 23, 1945 about 40 members of Severance’s company were sent up Mount Suribachi with orders to plant the flag. A short time later, another group was sent up with a second flag to replace the first. That iconic image was captured by...

Writing and reading history is one of the greatest joys of life. Writing about Ronald Reagan and WWII has been singularly pleasurable for me. What was it the philosopher Erasmus said, “When I have a little money, I buy food and clothes. But anything I have left over, I buy books.” Now, we study history for many reasons: for the sheer joy of reading; of knowing more than the next guy, or as the noted teacher George Santayana said, just to learn about not repeating failures - “Those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.” Teddy Roosevelt...

Ver-sur-Mer (France) (AFP) - A memorial to almost 22,500 servicemen and women under British command killed during D-Day and subsequent battles is to be unveiled on Sunday in northern France, a tribute seen as a long overdue commemoration of their sacrifice. The British Normandy Memorial, inscribed with the names of 22,442 men and women who lost their lives during the invasion of Nazi-occupied France in the summer of 1944, will open on a hillside in the Normandy village of Ver-sur-Mer on the 77th anniversary of the landings. It overlooks Gold Beach, one of three beaches where British forces landed on...

It is an uphill battle to track down the culprits, the programme Undercover Asia finds out. Meanwhile, experts urge greater protection of underwater cultural heritage. Deep-sea diver Dave Yiu has done countless dives to Asia’s World War Two shipwrecks over the past 20 years. He imagines what life was like aboard the ships, and is awed by their historical value and the surrounding marine life. In recent years, however, he has also witnessed their destruction first-hand. Two wrecks that he has often visited are the British Royal Navy battlecruiser HMS (Her Majesty’s Ship) Repulse and battleship HMS Prince of Wales....

An Illinois man who left college to serve in World War II returned to finish his education nearly 80 years later. Bill Gossett, 97, attended Lincoln College for a short time before transferring to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, but he ended up joining the U.S. Army Air Corps before finishing a degree. Gossett returned from the war and took over the family business, Gossett's Cleaners, instead of returning to school. "There was always a void there but I was busy learning to run a business. Time went by and I finally decided to finish my degree. It was a...

Fifteen heirs to a German collecting couple are seeking to restitute a Camille Pissarro painting. The heirs brought the lawsuit in the Federal District Court in Atlanta, claiming that a family in the Georgia city owns the work. The new was first reported by the New York Times. The work in question is Pissarro’s 1903 harbor scene painting The Anse des Pilotes, Le Havre, painted in the final year of the artist’s life. According to the suit, the work was purchased by German collector Ludwig Kainer in 1904 from the artist’s son. It was most recently displayed at the High...

A concern was that if a single turret were disabled, the ship would lose fifty percent of its overall firepower, but each turret was also divided in half by a bulkhead of 45mm. Each half thus contained two of the 15-inch guns, which were fed by their own respective magazine below decks. Therefore the only thing the two compartments actually shared was the barbette. Richelieu was also armed with three sets of triple 6-inch guns mounted aft of the superstructure in smaller traversable turrets. She was also equipped with an aircraft deck with an integrated hanger, which allowed the battleship...

HMS Hood took several direct hits – the first of which were from the Prinz Eugen and then additional hits from Bismarck – with some shells landing near her ammunition magazines, which quickly exploded. Despite the prestige, The Mighty Hood was soon lost. Of the crew of 1,415 sailors, only three survived. The loss of the Hood was taken hard by the Royal Navy, which began a pursuit of Bismarck. The German battleship had been damaged in the fight and tried to make for the coast of occupied France. Three days later, the pride of the German Kriegsmarine was hunted...

She was briefly decommissioned, and then reactivated for the Korean War, and provided naval gunfire support duties against enemy bunkers, command posts, and artillery positions. Wisconsin earned five battle stars for her World War II service, and one for the Korean War. When she joined the United States Navy reserve fleet – the “Mothball Fleet” – in 1958, it was the first time the United States Navy was without an active battleship since 1895. However, that wasn’t the end of the line for USS Wisconsin. President Ronald Reagan called for a 600-ship U.S. Navy in the 1980s, and as a...

The late royal consort, who died Friday at 99, came of a family of Greek aristocrats who led dramatic and colorful lives in the 20th century — including three sisters who were married to Nazis and a mom who was honored for saving Jews during the Holocaust. Philip was the fifth child and only son of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and his wife, Princess Alice of Battenberg. His older sisters were Princesses Margarita, Theodora, Cécilie and Sophie. The prince would stay close to his mom, who came to live at Buckingham Palace in her final years, while he...

Today, the massive USS Iowa (BB-61) calls the Port of Los Angeles home, where she is a museum ship and serves as a testament to the might of the United States Navy from World War II to the end of the Cold War. The largest and most powerful battleships built for the U.S. Navy, the Iowa-class were also the final battleships that entered service with the Navy. Unlike slower battleships of the era, this class was also designed to travel with a carrier force, and even be able to transit the Panama Canal, enabling the mighty warships to respond to...

Roma was the third Littorio-class battleship, and by all accounts, she was graceful in appearance – a testament to Italian designs – unlike the blocky designs of British or German battleships. She was well-armored, fast-moving, and quite capably armed. Built with a compartmented hull and an ingenious system of bulkheads and expansion cylinders the Roma was in theory as fortified as her namesake – where Rome’s mighty walls fended off attackers for centuries.

Bob Hope’s eldest child, Linda Hope — who worked with her father for many years — says her dad made it to the ripe old age of 100 because of sheer willpower. “He was determined to do that,” Linda told Page Six. “His grandfather lived to be just short of 100 so Dad’s goal was always to beat his grandpa. I think it kept him alive towards the end.” SNIP Linda, who produced the documentary “Bob Hope: The First 90 Years,” has now co-authored a book with Martha Bolton called “Dear Bob: Bob Hope’s Wartime Correspondence with the G.I.s of...

An Italian police officer beside Lot with His Two Daughters Serving Him Drinks by Nicolas Poussin. A painting by Nicolas Poussin, looted from its Jewish owners in France by the Nazis during occupation, has been discovered in Italy. The work, titled Lot with His Two Daughters Serving Him a Drink, has since been returned to its owners, according to the Carabinieri, Italy’s national police force. The search for the missing work began again last year, when the heirs, a 98-year-old Swiss woman and a 65-year-old American, began combing through a database of property looted in France throughout the second World...

He's been around long enough to serve in World War II and in Korea, and on Sunday this local Marine celebrated his 100th birthday. It was a surprise birthday celebration for U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Robert Boeddiker. He was joined by family and friends as well as the color guard from the Naval Postgraduate School and the Defensive Language Institute. "I'm feeling really good. Right now, I'm honored. I feel good," said Robert. Robert turned 100 years old on March 28, with a military record going back almost as far. He first joined the Marines when he was 20 years...

New standards proposed by the Minnesota Department of Education would banish lessons about World War I, World War II, the Holocaust, the Civil War, the American Revolution, communism, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Replacing those significant history topics will be "systemic racism," how democracy has "excluded certain groups," an "awareness" of "the LGBTQ+ community" and how the disenfranchisement of freed blacks during Reconstruction connects to "persistent discrimination and inequity" today.