Pfc. Merritt Dayton of Venice was one of the lucky ones who escaped the SS Leopoldville disaster off the coast of France on Christmas Eve 1944. The Leopoldville was a Belgium troop transport crammed full of 2,223 soldiers from the U.S. 66th Infantry Division sailing from England to France to take part in the “Battle…
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2nd Lt. Stephen Leopold was Vietnam MIA for almost 5 years before his release
- Bronze Star / Purple Heart / Silver Star / U. S. Army / Vietnam War / Ben Het / Camp 101 / Green Beret / Hanoi Hilton / MIA/POW / Montagnards / POW Camp 101 / Radio Hanoi / US Army Special ForcesPOW Camp 101 is what it was called. The camp was a hell hole located 20 miles outside Hanoi, North Vietnam. It’s where 100 American MIAs languished during the Vietnam War and nobody in the United States knew they were there.
2nd Lt. Stephen Leopold was Vietnam MIA for almost 5 years before his release
- Bronze Star / Purple Heart / Silver Star / U.S. Air Force / Vietnam War / Ben Het / Camp 101 / Green Beret / Hanoi Hilton / MIA/POW / Montagnards / Radio Hanoi / US Army Special ForcesIt made no difference that 23-year-old 2nd Lt. Stephen Leopold was a Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford University who served as a member of the U.S. Army’s elite Special Forces in Vietnam. Three weeks after arriving in country he was captured by the North Vietnam Army near Ben Het, in the jungles of Two Corps,…
Sgt. Norman Page was a C-130 ‘Cold War’ mechanic and flight engineer
- Cold War / U.S. Air Force / Belgium Congo / C-130 Hercules / Cuban Missile Crisis / Incirlik Air Force Base / Loring Air Force Base / McDill Air Force BaseFor most of his 24 years of service in the Air Force Sgt. Norman Page kept C-130 “Hercules,’ four-engine transport planes flying as a senior aviation mechanic and flight engineer or crew chief. After graduating from aviation mechanics training his first assignment, a Strategic Air Command mechanic at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa in the…
Coin flip saved Val Peterson from watery death in Second World War
- World War II / 66th "Black Panther Division" / English Channel / HMS Brilliant / S.S. Cheshire / S.S. LeopoldvilleIt was Christmas Eve 1944 when Staff Sgt. Val Peterson and the 66th “Black Panther Division” got their marching orders. “We had been stationed in Dorchester, England, since mid-October when orders swept the camp to be ready to get out in two hours. We were taken to Southampton by truck,” the 84-year-old Port Charlotte, Fla.…
William Schick survived Auschwitz
- World War II / 'Angel of Death' / 'Righteous Gentile' / Auschwitz / Camp B2B / Holocaust Memorial Museum / Josef Mengele / Schwartz Heiden / Terezin CzechoslovakiaThe faded, blue tattooed numbers on the old man’s left forearm bear witness to the hell on earth he endured as a young man during World War II.
He flew The Hump 160 times – ‘I flew into the middle of a squadron of Japanese Zeros ‘ – Col. Baxendale
- Distinguished Flying Cross / Korean War / U.S. Air Force / World War II / 'Lady Be Good' / 376th Bomb Group / CBI Theater / Leopoldville / Libya / Sahara Desert / Soluch / U.S. Air Transport Command / Wheelus Air Force BaseOn one of the 160 missions he flew over “The Hump,” Lt. Col. Tom Baxendale ran head-on into a flight of Japanese Zero fighters. He was piloting an unarmed C-46 twin-engine transport loaded with 55-gallon drums of gas.
Vietnam POW presents prison garb to Military Museum
- U. S. Army / Vietnam War / 5th Special Forces / 82nd Airborne / Airborne Ranger / Cambodia / Cobra / Cuban Missle Crisis / Fort Bragg / Hanoi Hilton / Ho Chi Minh Trail / Master Parachutist / Viet CongCharlotte Sun (Port Charlotte, FL) – Sunday, April 15, 2007 Capt. Luis Chirichigno was piloting an Army Cobra attack helicopter high above a couple of low-flying observation copters eight miles south of Duc Lap, South Vietnam, on Nov. 2, 1969. What happened next would make this Peruvian-born American chopper pilot a POW for the next…
War Tales 