World War II

The message that members of the 2nd Ranger Battalion of today carried forth to the few…and dwindling survivors of the original assault on Pointe du Hoc from 75 years ago was respect. They re-enacted the climb up the cliffs made by their forebearers on that fateful day in 1944 and it wasn’t an easy slog […]

The preparation for D-Day on the Allied side took a couple of years of meticulous planning, training, the massing of troops and then intense coordination with air, sea and land forces as well as coordinating the French resistance. The British Special Operations Executive (SOE) was the driving force behind infiltrating agents into occupied France, setting […]

Memorial Day preparations and programs are all going non-stop this weekend. In our small bucolic town in Central Massachusetts, our schools have all put together very nice programs to honor those members of our country who have paid the ultimate sacrifice. Our high school put together a nice program where the students researched town members […]

Seventy-five years ago, thousands of American and British paratroops were waiting on the go-ahead to begin the airborne assault on Normandy during World War II. The airborne assault on Hitler’s Fortress Europe was expected to be a very bloody affair for the airborne troops which were expected to suffer grievous casualties in the opening days […]

George Clooney takes on Joseph Heller’s dark, satirical novel that he penned in 1961, starring in it, directing two of the series six episodes and producing it as well. Trying to reproduce Catch-22 is no easy feat although the insanity of war and the weird characters that war produces lend itself well to the insanity […]

One of the more bizarre and successful military deception operations took place on April 30, 1943, during World War II by the British. Operation Mincemeat took place off the Spanish coast and convinced the Germans that the upcoming Allied invasion of Sicily was headed instead for Greece and Sardinia. This caused the Germans to funnel […]

One of the biggest blockbuster war films is being re-released for the 75th anniversary of the D-Day Normandy invasion of France. Steven Spielberg’s classic “Saving Private Ryan” is being brought back in 600 theaters nationwide for just two days, June 2 and June 5 at 3 and 7 p.m. on those days to commemorate the […]

The very last of the original “frogmen”, the forerunners of the Navy SEAL teams was honored on the date of his 94th birthday amid his family, friends, and family members. Bill Dawson, who grew up in Washington D.C. was working at the D.C. Shipyard in 1943 and enlisted in the U.S. Navy when he was […]

In the annals of Naval Aviation for the U.S. Navy, one of the pioneers for combat tactics was John “Jimmy” Thach who, during World War II not only came up with one successful tactic but two. He was credited with the “Thatch Weave” where U.S. fighters could successfully counter the better maneuverability and climbing ability […]

Masaharu Homma was a Lieutenant General of the Imperial Japanese Army and during in the early days of World War II, his command, the 14th Army was tasked with routing the American and Filipino forces from Bataan. And after the surrender of 76,000 American and Filipino troops there, Japanese troops under Homma’s command forced them […]

In the early, dark days of World War II, the United States military in the Pacific theater was reeling. After the disastrous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, the Japanese forces began a series of invasions across the Pacific and extended their empire nearly to the edges of Hawaii. American and Filipino […]

Moe Berg was one of the more fascinating characters in the world of both professional baseball and the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. After playing professional baseball for 15 years and coaching for two more, he joined the OSS and was an operative in Europe during the war. But prior to […]