Mike Perry

Jake McNiece, considered the heart and soul of the rough and tough ‘Filthy Thirteen,’ passed away January 21, 2013. He was 93. The Filthy Thirteen were a Pathfinder unit of the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. McNiece and the group were the inspiration for the 1967 film ‘The Dirty Dozen,’ and famous for […]

The event that gave birth to the world’s deadliest sniper was a short but bloody conflict that Josef Stalin initiated on November 30, 1939, and concluded on March 13, 1940. Known as the Russo-Finnish War, or Winter War, the goal was to reclaim territory lost in the Russian civil war of 1917. Convinced the territory […]

The harshness that became the four battles of Cassino occurring in Italy from January through May 1944 represented the difficulty facing the Allies trying to take what had been described as the “soft underbelly of Europe.” They had witnessed the successes at the fall of the island of Sicily and Salerno beachhead on the mainland, […]

As much as the pain in his crippled body, the constant barrage of criticism at America’s involvement in Vietnam swelled the anger within his soul. On a daily basis he watched as the nightly news showed film of the American flag being burned, while he thought of those brave men he knew that were heading […]

Tall, with a refined face resembling a statesman, Phillipe Kieffer was 40 years old when he volunteered for active military service in French Navy after it declared war on Germany in September 1940. He served aboard a battleship, then at Northern Fleet headquarters, as he watched his beloved France crumbled under the heel of German […]

By May 9, 1940 German forces had shocked the world with the lightning successes it unleashed against Poland, Denmark, and Norway. During that time another war, the strange ‘Phony war’ or ‘Sitzkrieg,’ had played out along the French border with Germany. Here, hardly a shot had been fired, and neither side appeared willing to up […]

As you stand there looking at it, as I did in June 2010, it is difficult to grasp the fact that for a brief period in time, it was the most important man-made structure in the world. A tiny drawbridge that spanned a narrow body of water in France. One that was subject to a […]

Their jackboots planted easy on the soft carpet of grass as they stepped with the apprehension unknown into the wood line. Led by a Sergeant armed with a submachine gun, the group of 10 scanned every part of the still vegetation ahead for the slightest irregularity. The thought wasn’t lost on them. It was the […]

No one in Japan’s military was responsible for more devastation and humiliation to the United States in the opening months of the Pacific war than Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. His cunning and strategizing, beginning with the Pearl Harbor attack, permitted a sweep across the oceans to achieve a success unlike any the empire had ever known. […]

With their greatest ally, the darkness, stolen from them, the Japanese would watch in horror as a random ship, then another, exploded in a blinding mass of flame

Gray clouds rimmed with bright edges hung low over the horizon near the south Pacific island of Espiritu Santo. Winds teased the palm fronds in gentle sways as a deep rumbling, alien, but in the last months, familiar to this tranquil place, echoed through the jungle then back to its source: Twin engines of a […]

Modeled after British Brigadier General Orde Wingate’s Long Range Penetration Force, the ‘Chindits,’ volunteers of the U.S. 5307th Composite Unit arrived in Bombay, India on October 31st, 1943, to begin training alongside their counterpart. Appointed to command them was Brigadier General Frank Merrill, who once served as a military attaché’ to Burma, and answered directly […]