Doug Gilchrist holds a dress dagger he was given by a World War II Kamikaze pilot as a token of the Japanese's pilot's admiration for the U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel's understanding of his former foe's feelings. Sun photo by Don Moore
U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Doug Gilchrist was waiting at the airport terminal in Tokyo in 1967 for a flight that would take him to the war in Vietnam when a chance encounter with a Japanese couple changed his life.
This was Pvt. John Thomas of Port Charlotte, Fla. shortly after he got out of Marine boot camp at 22. He was sent to Pearl Harbor where he spent most of WW II. Photo provided.
John Henry Thomas was a Marine who served in the Pacific during World War II, but never fired a shot in battle. He was a carpenter before the war who worked in the woodworking shop at the Marine Corps barracks in Pearl Harbor almost a year after the Japanese bombed the Pacific Fleet at Pearl dragging the United States into war. Read the rest of this entry »
Gunners Mate Mike Stata of Venice Isles mobile home park in Venice, Fla. is pictured when he graduated from boot camp at 19 in 1943. Photo provided
Mike Stata was a “hot shell man” on a 5-inch gun aboard the destroyer USS Harding 1500 yards off Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944 during the Normandy Invasion. He also served aboard the Harding off Okinawa on April 16, 1945 when his ship was hit by a kamikaze and 22 sailors aboard the destroyer were killed.
President Harry Truman is all smiles as he presents Sgt. William Harrell U.S. Marine Corps with the Medal of Honor shortly after World War II. Photo provided
To everyone else, Sgt. William Harrell was a war hero. He was the recipient of the Medal of Honor, “…for conspicuous gallantry at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty” at Iwo Jima during World War II. To Gary Harrell he was just dad. Read the rest of this entry »
Being recognized—Gen. Courtney Hodges, commanding general of 1st Army, presents Hank Abajian, a civilian, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom for perfecting and installing radar on 90 millimeter anti-aircraft guns on the front line in World War II. Sun photo by Don Moore.
Besides the 16 million service men and women who took part in World War II, there were also thousands of civilians on the front lines involved in fighting against the Germans and the Japanese, too. Read the rest of this entry »
Memories: Ruth Arnold of Heritage Oak Park in Port Charlotte looks at a drawing of her first husband, 2nd Lt. Frank Burrows, drawn by a German prisoner after the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. Sun photo by Don Moore
A penciled drawing of a young man in Army garb is the most tangible remembrance she has of her first husband, 2nd Lt. Frank Burrows. Ruth Arnold of Heritage Oak Park in Port Charlotte had the drawing matted and framed to preserve it.
This was 2nd Lt. Leonard Pogue when he was in his early 20s flying as a bombardier in the 8th Air Force in Europe during World War II.
Second Lt. Leonard Pogue knew he and the other eight members of his B-17 bomber crew were in for a bad day when they were informed of their target.
For the second day in a row, the crew of “Straighten Up and Fly Right” was ordered, along with the rest of the 493rd Bomb Group, 863rd Bomb Squadron, 8th Air Force, to bomb the ball-bearing plants and synthetic oil refineries around Merseburg, Germany. It was a harrowing assignment even though the 8th Air Force put 1,200 heavy bombers, escorted to the target by 650 fighter planes, in the air that day during World War II. Read the rest of this entry »
The propeller on the inboard engine of their plane spun off while on a bombing run over Japan. It hit the outboard engine and knocked it out, too. The Superfortress had to fly the 700 miles back to Iwo Jima on two engines.
It was March 9, 1945. Sgt. Bob Wallace was a radioman aboard “Pride of the Yankees,” a B-29 Superfortress flying lead bomber on the first firebomb raid over Tokyo during World War II. Read the rest of this entry »
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, talks to 101st Airborne Division paratroopers in England shortly before they jumped on D-Day during World War II. Pfc. Robert Granche of Port Charlotte, Fla. was one of the “Screaming Eagles” who was there that historic day. Photo provided
Pfc. Robert Granche was a “Screaming Eagle” He served in the 101st Airborne Division that parachuted behind enemy lines in the dark on D-Day morning, June 6, 1944.
Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets waves to the ground crew on August 6, 1945 as he pilots the B-29 bomber “Enola Gay” on its last bomb run. He flew from Tinian Island in the Pacific to drop the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan that help end World War II a few days later.
Before he dropped the world’s first Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima in a B-29 Super Fortress named for his mother, “Enola Gay,” Lt. Col. Paul Tibbets flew a B-17 Flying Fortress over Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich.
Bert Earnest is pictured as a naval aviation cadet in 1941. He received two Distinguished Flying Crosses for one mission in his TBF-1 Avenger torpedo bomber during the attack on the Japanese fleet at Midway as a member of Torpedo Bomber Squadron #8.
The god of war smiled on United States forces at Midway.
“In 30 hours, at the Battle of Midway, the fate of World War II was changed in the Pacific,” according to commentary from newsreel footage taken at the time.
Hal Ross holds a World War II souvenir he will never forget. A Japanese 7.7 millimeter Army rifle. Sun photo by Jonathan Fredin.
Hal Ross of Port Charlotte, Fla. was trained as a member of the 10th Mountain Division in World War II, but ended up fighting the Japanese in the jungle islands of the South Pacific.
‘The 19-year-old son of a New York State Baptist minister knew he was a long way from home when he became part of the Americal Division, the 182nd Infantry Division on Guadalcanal. His unit arrived at the ‘canal late. They were used as mop-up troops. The Marines, who were there first, stopped the Japanese’s westward offensive for the first time during the war at Guadalcanal.
After three months of clean-up duty the 182nd was shipped to Bougainville in the Solomon Islands 500 miles away.
“We took the landing at Bougainville pretty easily,” he recalled. “It wasn’t long before we owned half the island and the Japanese held the other half.”
His unit was ordered on a mission to capture Japanese prisoners.
“The lieutenant in charge of this patrol pointed to me and said, ‘tomorrow morning you’re gonna be first scout.’
“That put him out front at the head of a patrol. It was not a good place to be. Read the rest of this entry »
From the smile on his face, it would appear that Woody Lindskog may have just returned to base in his Hellcat fighter. Photo provided
It was Ensign Woody Lindskog’s lucky day.
The Navy pilot was plucked from Wasile Bay off Halmahera Island in the South Pacific by an Army Air Corps Catalina flying boat, right under the nose of a Japanese gun emplacement and thousands of enemy troops after his Hellcat fighter was hit by an antiaircraft flak and crashed.
Sgt. John Beck at 24 when he served as the commander of a tank destroyer in the 3rd Army during World War II.
It was the day after Christmas 1944 when the 704th Tank Battalion, 4th Armored Division of Gen. George S. Patton’s 3rd Army broke through the German lines at Bastogne to rescue the 101st Airborne Division, dug in and holding back the enemy onslaught at the Battle of the Bulge.
Former Sgt. John Beck Jr. of Punta Gorda Isles, Fla. and the other four soldiers in his tank destroyer were in the thick of it. Read the rest of this entry »
Pvt. Mike Clemente is pictured at the time he got out of boot camp in 1944. He was 19
The red, white and black Nazi flag was in as good condition, swastika and all, as the day Mike Clemente pulled it off a flag pole that stood in a tiny public square in Remagen, Germany almost 60 years ago.
Sgt. Mike Sovan was the commander of a Sherman tank. He served with the 15th Tank Battalion, 6th Armored Division in Patton’s 3rd Army during World War II. He lost four tanks to German 88s, received three Purple Hearts, two Silver Stars, and a Bronze Star with a “V” for Valor among his many commendations.
Sgt. Mike Sovan, a Sherman tank commander, and his men had just crossed the Nied River in France during World War II as part of Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army when their third tank was shot out from under them.
Hundreds of bodies clad in gray and white striped prison uniforms are laid out in rows at Dachau concentration camp in Germany. This is what Sgt. Irving Ross’ unit found after they took control of the camp. For a week after his outfit captured the camp it had the problem of disposing of the hundreds of bodies so it continued the practice of their predecessors to reduce the possibility of an epidemic. Photo provided
Irving Ross saw the “Gates of Hell.” He was among the first American soldiers to help liberate Dachau concentration camp in Germany at the end of World War II.
Sgt. Charles McLaughlin of North Port, Fla. is all smiles when this picture was taken a lifetime ago during World War II.
They were supposed to fly their final bombing mission, their 35th, over Cologne, Germany on Friday 13th, 1944. They didn’t do it. That was a big mistake. Read the rest of this entry »
Pvt. Harry Glixon carries a German Luger pistol in his shoulder holster. He planned to sell the pistol to a buddy. Photo provided.
Harry Glixon couldn’t believe his ears when he answered the phone at his Sarasota, Fla. home one day in June 2001.
He wasn’t expecting to become a war hero after 57 years. The old soldier had been a member of a 55-man combat patrol from the 94th Infantry Division captured by the Germans near Lorient, France in the fall of 1944. He and his prisoner of war buddies were eventually part of the only POW exchange involving healthy prisoners made in the European Theater during World War II.
Glixon was about to play a role as one of a dozen veterans to participate in a tribute to A. Gerow Hodges, the young International Red Cross worker who conducted the exchange almost six decades ago. Read the rest of this entry »
These are the officers of the 703rd Squadron. Jimmy Stewart is fourth from the left in the back row. Jim Myers of Englewood, Fla., is second from the right in the front row. They are standing in front of a B-24 Liberator.
“Jimmy Stewart was just one of the guys after we got to know him,” Jim Myers said. The Englewood, Fla. aviator flew with the movie star in a B-24 Liberator bomber during World War II. Read the rest of this entry »
The first flag goes up on Iwo. This flag-raising most people don’t know anything about. The famous picture of the 2nd flag-raising captured by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal that made the front page of hundreds of newspapers in the US amounted to nothing, according to the men who put it up. Photo by Sgt. Lou Lowery/Leatherneck Magazine
The light cruiser Vicksburg laid a half-mile off the beach at Iwo Jima. Her 5-inch and 8-inch guns had pounded Mount Suribachi and the surround shoreline for days. Read the rest of this entry »
Pieter Kohnstam is pictured with his mother and grandmother before the Nazis forced the family to flee Amsterdam, Netherlands. The Kohnstams made a perilous nine-month journey on foot to Spain and then to Argentina to escape the Third Reich. Photo provided by Pieter Kohnstam
As a child Pieter Kohnstam of Venice, Fla. grew up in Amsterdam, Netherlands during the late 1930s and early ‘40s. His family lived in an apartment house at 17 Merweideplein St. in a lovely section of the city’s south side. Read the rest of this entry »
This was Moore at the time he graduated from boot camp at Newport, R.I. in 1940. Photo provided
Thomas Moore was an 18-year-old street-smart kid who grew up on his own in Monticello, N.Y. He joined the Navy on Sept. 10, 1940.
Then 19-year-old Harold Tayler, far left kneeling in the front row, is pictured on Guadalcanal with a bunch of his buddies in Company C, 1st Battalion, 29th Marine Regiment, 6th Marine Division.
Okinawa was the end of the line in the Pacific for the Japanese Imperial Army.
The island invasion included 548,000 Allied forces and 1,200 ships. The initial assault force totaled 182,000 men – 75,000 more than landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day, a year earlier. They were facing 100,000 entrenched Japanese. Read the rest of this entry »
This was George Stanton when he was a member of the 309th Polish Fighter Squadron in England during World War II.
Before Flying Officer George Stanton joined the 309th Polish Fighter Squadron in England during World War II, he spent 18 months in a Russian slave labor camp in Siberia chopping down trees.
1st Lt. Marcella Zaborac of Englewood, Fla. is pictured as an Army nurse in her mid 20s during World War II. She served with the 110 Evacuation Hospital in Europe.
1st Lt. Marcella Zaborac of Englewood, Fla. came ashore on Normandy beach in August 1944 with Gen. George Patton. She served as a nurse with the 110th Evacuation Hospital in “Ol’ Blood-N-Guts” 3rd Army that fought its way across France and into Germany during World War II.
