Pvt. Alex Haak is shown in the foreground painting murals for the 43rd Infantry Division’s mess hall in Germany in 1953 when he served in headquarter’s company. Photo provided
Alex Haak was 8-years-old when the German Army defeated the much smaller Dutch Army in May 1940 and marched into Amsterdam, Netherlands his home town and occupied the country for five years. As World War II progressed conditions for him and his family and friends grew worse and worse.
John Brophy of Heron Creek subdivision, North Port, Fla. was 21 when this picture was taken shortly after he graduated from boot camp at Fort Dix, N.J. in 1951. Photo provided
John Brophy of Heron Creek subdivision in North Port at 21 was 6-feet 3-inches tall and 120 pounds when drafted in 1951 during the Korean War. He was too skinny to fight. Read the rest of this entry »
This was Lowell McCarty's boot camp company at Camp Croft, S.C. where he trained to be a soldier before being shipped to Italy shortly after the end of World War II, Photo provided
Lowell McCarty want to be a fly boy.
“I tried to enlist in the Air Corps when I was 17. I passed the written exam with no problems, but when I took the physical exam they found out I was color blind and they told me, ‘We don’t want you!’” the 84-year-old Port Charlotte man said more than six decades later. Read the rest of this entry »
This is Warrant Officer II Charles Myers of Port Charlotte, Fla. when he became an officer in the U.S. Army in 1978. Photo provided
Charles Myers was born and grew up in the Panama Canal Zone in Central America in 1933. At 21 he enlisted in the U.S. Army on May 17, 1954 under agreement between the U.S. and Panama. Read the rest of this entry »
Pfc. James Johnson was a member of the U.S. Army Honor Guard shown marching through the front gate at the Fontainebleau, Napoleon's summer chateau, for a ceremony of some kind. Photo provided
When James Johnson joined the 82nd Airborne Division, an elite fighting force, in the fall of 1955 as a 20-year-old soldier he took part in one of the largest ground maneuvers the Army ever staged in the United States.
A bugler from the 102nd Infantry Division plays taps as a rifle squadron fires a volley to commemorate 1,016 concentration camp prisoners murdered by German SS Troops at Gardelegen, Germany. Photo provided
Fred Strass was a rifleman in an infantry company that fought in Europe during World War II. He served as a sergeant in K-Company, 406th Regiment of the 102nd Infantry Division. Read the rest of this entry »
Members of the 82nd Airborne fill the sky over Fort Bragg, N.C., headquarters for the elite Army outfit, when 2nd Lt. Randy White of Port Charlotte, Fla. served with the 325th Regiment. Photo provided
When Randy White went into the Army and eventually joined the 325th Paratroop Regiment in 1955 his unit was a far cry from the one that flew into Normandy, France in gliders on D-Day to fight the Germans.
Julius Hirsch returned from fighting the Japanese in the Aleutian Islands on a 30-day leave before shipping out to fight on Okinawa, and married Anna. This picture was taken in 1944. Photo provided.
Julius Hirsch grew up in the Bronx and went to war almost a year before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He was a member of the 862nd Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion sent to the Aleutians when the Japanese invaded the barren islands off the Alaskan coast in 1942.
