Free Republic

Above: National Park Service workers setting up new barricades this morning, around the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.- Yesterday, the Obama Administration got real petty over the partial government shutdown, sending employees to barricade memorial sites around Washington that are normally open 24/7. Thankfully, one group of WWII vets wasn't having ANY of it - removing barricades, with the help of fantastic GOP Reps. like Steve King (R-IA) and others - and refusing to be denied access to THEIR World War II Memorial. Well today, another group of WWII vets plan to do the same thing at the Lincoln Memorial,...

Update 1:45 p.m. ET: House GOP leadership sources tell CNN they plan to vote on a series of bills to fund the government, beginning Tuesday with three measures–spending for veterans, the District of Columbia and the Park Service. Washington (CNN) – Busloads of World War II veterans, many in wheelchairs, broke past a barricade Tuesday morning to cross into the World War II Memorial, as onlookers applauded and a man playing the bagpipes led the way. Moments earlier, a few Republican members of Congress had removed a section of the black gates that surrounded the site, allowing a line of...

A man who police say assaulted and carjacked an 86-year-old World War II veteran is behind bars Friday morning. Detroit Police say the 21-year-old suspect was arrested around 1 a.m. Friday. Aaron Brantley was on his way home from Bible study when he was assaulted in broad daylight and his car was stolen from a BP gas station on McNichols near Fairfield Street last week. Brantley told The Associated Press said several people passed by him as he crawled, unable to walk because his leg was broken in the attack. He eventually tried to pay a stranger to drive him...

Washington — When Carl Oehlke woke up early Sunday, he carefully attached to his blue polo shirt his Purple Heart, the same medal President Franklin Roosevelt pinned on the 89-year-old New Berlin man at a naval hospital at Pearl Harbor more than six decades ago. He also was careful to pack a couple of handkerchiefs. Oehlke knew he would cry. Oehlke and 299 other World War II veterans from Wisconsin spent the day in the nation's capital visiting monuments and memorials. The highlight for Oehlke, and what started tears flowing in his eyes, was the World War II Memorial. "This...

NEW YORK - The famed Navajo Code Talkers, the elite Marine unit whose unbreakable code stymied the Japanese in World War II, fear their legacy will die with them. Only about 50 of the 400 Code Talkers are believed to be still alive, most living in the Navajo Nation reservation that spans Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Many are frail or ill, with little time left to tell the world about their wartime contribution. But on Wednesday, 13 of the Code Talkers are coming to New York City to participate for the first time in the nation's largest Veterans Day...

Veterans for Peace, the banners proclaimed as a minister said on a TV newscast, “After two years in Iraq, what have we gained … only the deaths of US soldiers and Iraqi civilians.” Most of us who are WWII veterans are all for peace. We don’t know anyone who prefers war over peace; however, we do know that it takes a war to obtain peace rather than to allow slavery or attacks by terrorists. We want a continued peace, not a temporary peace that will be regarded as a cowardly surrender by our terrorist enemies, thus causing more attacks on...

Won't Be Long And They Will Be Gone From a Military Doctor: I am a doctor specializing in the Emergency Departments of the only two military Level One-trauma centers, both in San Antonio, TX and they care for civilian Emergencies as well as military personnel. San Antonio has the largest military retiree population in the world living here As a military doctor, I work long hours and the pay is less than glamorous. One tends to become jaded by the long hours, lack of sleep, food, family contact and the endless parade of human suffering passing before you. The arrival...

Monument Honoring WWII Japanese-American Soldiers Defaced Police Not Sure If Vandalism Is Hate Crime POSTED: 2:27 pm PST March 23, 2004 UPDATED: 7:43 pm PST March 23, 2004 LOS ANGELES -- Police are trying to find those responsible for defacing a monument to Japanese-Americans who fought during World War II even as their loved ones were held in internment camps at home. About 20 star-like symbols, each surrounded by a circle, were carved into the Little Tokyo monument at Temple and Alameda streets, said Diane Tanaka of the Go For Broke Educational Foundation. The vandalism, discovered last Friday, occurred some...

LOTTERY WIN FOR WAR VETS Second World War veterans are to receive Lottery funding to pay for visits to the foreign battlegrounds where they fought. The Heroes Return Programme is being given £10m from the Lottery's New Opportunities Fund. The cash is to pay for trips to countries, battlefields and cemeteries where the veterans fought and lost comrades. Sergeant John Jones, 81, from Blaenau Ffestiniog, north Wales, was 18 when he enlisted in the Parachute Regiment in October 1942. "I'm lucky. I worked all my life. I can go to Arnhem (Netherlands) every year but a lot of old soldiers...

Online Registry for World War II Veterans Goes Live on National WWII Memorial Web Site 7/3/03 1:00:00 PM To: National Desk Contact: Mike Conley of the American Battle Monuments Commission, 703-696-6778; 571-216-6115 (cell); (additional contacts listed below) web: http://www.WWIImemorial.com WASHINGTON, July 3 /U.S. Newswire/ -- At a time when fewer than one in ten adults recognize that 16 million Americans served in uniform during the Second World War, the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) today introduced a World War II Registry online to document the names of those who participated in history's largest and most devastating war. The Registry...