When the Japanese attacked the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941, Baker 3rd Class Dale Augerson had just put a batch of apple pies in the oven aboard the battleship USS West Virginia. The battleship was moored at “Battleship Row,” together with most of the fleet’s other capital ships.
Just like Mr. Roberts, who served aboard the USS Reluctant, Seaman 1st Class Ed Blissick of Gardens of Gulf Cove near Port Charlotte, Fla. served on a similar attack transport, the USS Montague, AKA-98, during the final months of World War II.
Like a lot of other young men his age, Ed Lukach wanted to be a pilot when he signed up at 19 for the Army’s Aviation Cadet Program in 1942 near the start of World War II.
This interview first appeared in the Charlotte Sun newspaper, Port Charlotte, Fla. on Sunday, March 5, 2006 and is republished with permission. Learning to fly a Stearman PT-17 “Kaydet” fabric-covered, two-seat biplane at Carlstrom Field in Arcadia, Fla. in 1943 was a far cry from piloting a B-26 “Marauder” twin-engine attack bomber against a heavily…
Don Fowler was born in Arcadia, Florida in 1925. “I was going to graduate from DeSoto County High School in 1943, but I joined the Navy to see the world that March,” Fowler, who lives in Rotonda, Fla. said more than six decades later.
It wasn’t the bombing of the carrier USS Franklin off the coast of Japan on March 19, 1945, or the attack by 31 Kamikazes on the four destroyers leading the Franklin’s task force off Okinawa on April 14, 1945, that John Wisse of Rotonda, Fla. considers his worst day in World War II.
Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe in World War II, knew a couple of weeks ahead of time the Germans were planning the huge offensive that became known as the “Battle of the Bulge,” according to Raymond Walker of Punta Gorda, Fla.
Jefferson Askew joined the Navy at age 23 in 1940, almost a year before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. By war’s end, he had made 38 trips across the Atlantic in a minuscule destroyer escort, the USS Amick, helping to protect 150-ship convoys making the hazardous voyage to Europe during World War II.
Ted Weatherhead was a 21-year-old green 2nd lieutenant and co-pilot of a C-47, twin-engine, transport plane — a member of the 316th Troop Carrier Group, 44th Troop Carrier Wing, 9th Air Force — that dropped 19 fully-equipped 101st Airborne paratroopers behind enemy lines on D-Day hours before the June 6, 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy…
More than 60 years ago, former Sgt. Robert Martin of Englewood, Fla. was a back seat gunner in a Douglas Dauntless SBD single-engine dive bomber flying against Japanese fortifications on Bougainville in the New Georgia Islands in the Pacific during World War II. He was a member of Marine Dive Bomber Squadron 234.
Francis Currie of Port Charlotte, Fla.was 15 years old when he joined “The Ladies From Hell,” the Canadian Blackwatch Regiment, in 1938 a year before England declared war on Germany beginning World War II.
At 90 Don Lumsden of Boca Royale subdivision in Englewood, Fla. has the distinction of being the oldest living “Frogman” in the United States of America. He learned about this honor a few days ago from Mike Howard, Director of the Seal Museum in Fort Pierce, Fla.
“Billy’s Filly” is what he called her. She was the sleekest, most beautiful, best fighter plane there was in World War II, according to Col. William Fowkes of Punta Gorda, Fla., U.S. Air Force retired.
A gorgeous but lethal P-51 Mustang fighter plane knifing its way through puffy white clouds seemed to fly off the wall at De Carter Brown’s Port Charlotte, Fla. studio.
The Tachibana Maru was the only Japanese ship captured under sail by the U.S. Navy during World War II.
Five days after Carl Cooley of Grove City, Fla. graduated from Fremont High School in Fremont, Ohio, on June 2, 1943, he took his physical and officially became a private in the United States Army.
1st Lt. Bob Wachter of Port Charlotte, Fla. was the navigator on a B-29 bomber called “Old Upper Cut” that flew on the last “Super Fortress” mission of World War II. When his squadron left Guam on Aug. 14, 1945, he didn’t know they would fly not only the last, but the longest bomber raid…
Former 2nd Lt. J.J. Jones of Punta Gorda Isles, Fla. was an Army nurse who served in the Philippines during World War II.
Chief Julius Gervan of Burnt Store Isles subdivision south of Punta Gorda, Fla. was in charge of the forward engine-room aboard the destroyer USS Thatcher II (DD-514) when a kamikaze pilot crashed his plane into the the ship’s super structure and burst into flames killing 14 sailors and wounding 56 more during the Battle for…
Dick Henry of Foxwood subdivision in Englewood piloted a “Higgins Boat,” a plywood landing craft, in six major invasions during World War II. However, the closest he came to being killed during the war was in a typhoon one night off Okinawa.
Fred Winterbottom has been a soldier for most of his 92 years. Winterbottom, who lives at the Village on the Isles retirement complex in Venice, Fla. with his wife, Gwen, saw service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of two parts. World War II was over, but not for Sgt. John Meloney. He was on his way from Oslo, Norway to London where he held a quick meeting with his O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services) handlers and off he flew to Salzburg, Austria.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two parts. John Meloney was smart and had an ability with foreign languages, that’s why the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.), the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, selected him to be a World War II spy.
David McKalip flew 30 combat missions as a radio operator on a B-24 “Liberator” bomber during World War II. The mission that made the biggest impression on him 65 years later was the flight that leveled Dresden, Germany.
Harry Weis of Punta Gorda, Fla. served aboard the escort carrier USS Santee. He took part in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval engagement in World War II. It was the first time the Japanese Imperial Navy used kamikaze airplanes to attack the Allied fleet.
Bill Stevens of Deep Creek near Port Charlotte, Fla. was a member of a four-man Coast Guard crew on a plywood “Higgins Boat” that transported Marines and soldiers to South Pacific beaches during five major invasions in World War II.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Second of a two-part story. When the Korean War broke out in June 1950 George Hardy’s World War II service was long behind him. He flew a P-51 “Mustang” in the 99th Fighter Squadron as a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black fighter group, during the Second World War.
EDITOR’S NOTE: First of a two-part story. George Hardy of Sarasota, Fla. was a Tuskegee Airman. The retired lieutenant colonel began his military career as a member of the all-black 99th Fighter Squadron, flying 21 combat missions over Germany during the final two months before V-E Day in World War II in a P-51 “Mustang” fighter plane.
U.S. Marine Pfc. Bob Crossley of Venice, Fla. hit the beach on Iwo Jima in a Higgins boat in the third wave on Feb. 19, 1945. He was a member of the 5th Marine Division, 26th Regiment, 2nd Battalion D-Company.
George Lentz of Rotonda, Fla. was a staff sergeant in the 385th Bomb Group, 549th Bomb Squadron, 92nd Wing of the 8th Air Force in World War II. He flew 29 combat missions as an engineer and top turret gunner in a B-17 “Flying Fortress” at the end of the war from a base near…
John Callahan , of Punta Gorda Isles, Fla., was the coxswain of a Higgins Boat, a plywood and steel landing craft built in the New Orleans area. He and his wooden boat played a part in the Battle of Okinawa, the biggest battle in the Pacific during the Second World War.
Larry Izzo of the Oak Forest subdivision in Englewood, Fla. was a 21-year-old corporal attached to the G-Company, 2nd Battalion, 9th Regiment, 2nd Infantry Division in Korea. He was a BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle) man.
George Gallagher of Englewood, Fla. was serving aboard the USS Trutta, a Tench-Class submarine, as a motor machinist-mate 2nd/class when they picked up a downed P-51 Mustang fighter pilot who was shot down and adrift almost a week in a yellow life raft in the East China Sea.
John Andresen of Punta Gorda, Fla. served in the U.S. Merchant Marines during World War II. He is proud of his service to his country.
Lawrence Houle joined the Marine Corps in 1943 after graduating from high school in Grosvenordale, Conn. He first served with the 4th Marine Division during the invasion of the Marshal Islands.
Despite the German U-boat packs prowling the Atlantic, Seaman 1/C Bob Frazier survived 10 round-trips in the USS Susan B. Anthony, an attack transport, without a scratch taking troops to Europe in World War II.
Navy Corpsman Bill Remley of Royal Palm Retirement Home in Port Charlotte, Fla. was aboard the heavy cruiser USS Vincennes watching the “Doolittle Raiders” fly their B-25, twin-engine bombers off the deck of the carrier USS Hornet on their way to bomb Japan four months after devastating the American fleet at Pearl Harbor on Dec.…
A cadre of brilliant young scientists and an army of “hick girls” from the Oak Ridge, Tenn. area secretly processed uranium-235 used in the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at the close of World War II. Scores of FBI undercover agents watched almost every moved made by 100,000 atomic energy workers who reported to their jobs in a community that over night grew out of two farms, but wasn’t shown on any map during the Second World War.
1st Lt. Ken Stetson, was at the controls of a B-29 “Superfortress” the crew named “Tanaka Termite” when it was attacked by Japanese fighter planes while flying in formation over Mount Fuji on their first of 30 combat missions to Japan.
Pfc. Vito Mancine of Port Charlotte, Fla. was a 21-year-old Browning Automatic Rifleman when he landed in Normandy, France, about a month after D-Day, June 6, 1944. He was a member of the 5th Division in Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army.
At 90 years old, Bob Boliere of Stillwater Villas in Englewood, Fla. may be the last of the U.S. Army’s horse cavalry.
Ninety-one-year-old former Sgt. Roy Kroesen of Rotonda commanded “The Priest,” a 105 mm, M-7 self-propelled Howitzer in World War II that looked a lot like a tank. He served with the 696th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, which came ashore at Pont-Scorff, France, on Aug. 7, 1944, and fought through France, Belgium and Germany, eventually meeting the Russian Army at the Elbe River near Berlin.
The barrel of Cpl. Sam Burns’ .50 caliber machine-gun glowed red from the heat of 1,000 bullets. He was firing at the twin-engine German JU-88 “Junkers” bombers strafing their artillery outfit in the Tunisian desert of North African in December 1942.
It was a voice from the past typed in blue on the sheet of yellowing copy paper that dropped from the little book about the 2nd Armored Division’s exploits in Europe during World War II.
Ed Kantz of Punta Gorda, Fla. served in the 15th Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division of Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army during World War II. He also soldiered through Italy, France and Germany with Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in World War II.
Frank Bloom joined the Marine Corps Aviation Cadet Program while still in high school and learned to fly F4U Corsair fighters during World War II. He was called back during the Korean War.
Harold Kloth of Lexington Manor in Port Charlotte, Fla. flew 30 combat missions as the pilot of a B-17 bomber nicknamed “Royal Flush” as part of the 8th Air Force in Europe during World War II.
The exploding Japanese torpedo sheared off 15 feet of the destroyer USS Benham’s bow during a night engagement off Guadalcanal on Nov. 14, 1942. Machinest-mate 3rd Class Henry Horst was two decks down in the magazine of the ship’s number one, five-inch main gun when disaster struck.
Nick Melone of Port Charlotte, Fla. sat in a big gray cushy chair, a tether running from his nose to a nearby oxygen bottle. He reached for a folded flag stuffed in the top of a blue plastic storage tub of World War II memorabilia. The 89-year-old Marine sergeant shook the folds out of the…
Otto Glass was the first young man in his hometown of St. Mary’s, Ohio drafted in World War II. He went in the Army Air Force almost a year before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
John Vicalvi’s discharge notes he received two Bronze Service Arrowheads and two Bronze Battle Stars on his Asiatic-Pacific Theater Campaign Ribbon for two landings and two major battles: Bougainville and the Philippines.
Staff Sgt. Raymond Hook , radio operator on a B-24 Liberator called the “Hubba-Hubba,” and the other eight members of his crew were shot down on their sixth combat mission to destroy a German oil refinery during the final months of World War II.
At 17, shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Dick Holmes of North Port, Fla. tired to enlist, but his mom wouldn’t sign him into the military. The following year he was drafted and ended up joining the paratroopers.
Four days after delivering the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan to Tinian Island in the Pacific during the final days of World War II, the USS Indianapolis was hit by two torpedoes from a Japanese sub. She sunk in 12 minutes and her demise resulted in the biggest loss of life in the U.S.…
Eugene Pentiuk joined the Michigan National Guard in 1939 on a dare from a buddy. They signed up shortly after graduating from high school in Pontiac, Mich. He and his friend trained for a year in the Louisiana wilds as members of the 32nd Infantry Division.
Roland Petit of La Casa mobile home park in North Port, Fla. served aboard an LST (Landing Ship Tank) and ashore as an interpreter in World War II. It wasn’t easy. He had to fight his way into the Navy.
Drennon Judy was a quartermaster who served aboard the Battleship USS Pennsylvania. He saw action during many of the major battles in the Pacific during World War II.
What Albert Reale of Port Charlotte, Fla. remembers most about World War II are not the battles, but the typhoon that ravaged Okinawa during the final weeks of the war.
John Ross, who until relatively recently lived in North Port, Fla. for 33 years, was the pilot of a B-17 Bomber during World War II. He and his bomber crew were members of the 388th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force flying out of a field near Cambridge, England.
Ralph Weir graduated from Kings Point, the Merchant Marine Academy, on Long Island, N.Y., during the middle of World War II. He went to sea as a cadet-midshipman aboard a liberty ship full of war supplies, the John Carroll, sailing out of San Francisco, Calif., for Australia on June 3, 1943.
Bob Arnold became a Navy man just like his dad. His father served aboard the USS Langley, American’s first aircraft carrier, before World War II.
1st Lt. Richard Burns almost “bought the farm” on his 95th combat mission over North Korea in his F-84 “Thunderjet.” His squadron’s objective: knock out an enemy bridge.
Warner Heinrich of Port Charlotte, Fla. was a Browning Auitomatic Rifleman who served in the 43rd Infantry Division in the Pacific during World War II. He saw action at Guadalcanal and Leyte in the Philippines.
For the past year, in addition to writing war stories about local veterans, I’ve provided DVD interviews of these same veterans to the Library of Congress’ “Veterans History Project.” This week I reached a milestone in these interviews. A couple of days ago I sent 25 DVDs and supporting material on each disk to the…
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.
Lt. Col. Bill Brown was flying a “Red Anchor” mission off the Russian Coast out of Thule, Greenland in his KC-135 refueling tanker when he got an emergency call on his radar scope.
Earl Swillum went aboard an LST as a “90-Day Wonder” third officer and sailed into the war zone at the Battle for Saipan. Before the fighting in the Pacific was over he and the LSTH-121, which also served as a hospital ship, took part in three other major battles during World War II.
Cpl. Willard Irwin was a member of the 64th Fighter Squadron, 57th Fighter Group that provided tactical air support for British Gen. Bernard Montgomery’s 8th Army during the North African Campaign in World War II. They were known as “The Desert Air Force.”
Although he served as a private in a medical unit in Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army, took part in the “Battle of the Bulge” and the Hurtgen Forest Campaign, two of the worst battles on the Western Front, what Andrew Napolitano of Venice, Fla. remembers most about World War II is a small bell he…
Before she signed up for the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps in World War II, Marjorie Morris , who lives North Port, Fla.’s Jockey Club, said she led a rather cloistered life.
Vernon Olsen, 91 — who survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor aboard the battleship USS Arizona, swam away from the carrier USS Lexington as it was sinking during the Battle of the Coral Sea months later, and took part in the Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests after the war — died Friday, April 22,…
Combat Medic Sgt. Larry Earle was freezing his backside off in December 59 years ago.
Right out of high school Clyde Leininger, who lives in Alligator Mobile Home Park south of Punta Gorda, Fla. joined the Naval Aviation Cadet Program to become a pilot. Before he got his wings the program was canceled in October 1944 because the Navy had too many pilots.
Mark Vanderveer only fought in one major battle during World War II, but it was a doosie. He served as a PFC in E-Company, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Division of the 1st Army during the Battle of the Hürtgen Forest fought along the Belgium-German border.
Col. James Oliver Stephenson of Venice, at 93, may be the oldest West Point graduate in southwest Florida.
When Eugene “Fuzzy” Fazekas of Spanish Lakes mobile home park in Nokomis, Fla. sailed to war as a corpsman with Naval Advance Group 56 in 1944 he hadn’t been given any medical training.
Millie Edsall was a registered nurse working in a doctor’s office in Joliet, Ill. when the Second World War erupted. At 20, in 1938, she graduated from St. Joseph’s School of Nursing in Joliet.
Martin Warnke of Port Charlotte, Fla. was a spotter on a 20 millimeter anti-aircraft gun aboard landing craft (LST-66) that brought troops ashore at 15 major invasion beaches in the Pacific during World War II.
Angelo Marinelli is the swabbie in the center. He and his buddies had just dropped FDR off at Malta and were touring the island on a sunny Sunday. President Roosevelt met with Egyptian King Farouk aboard the USS Quincy in July 1944. Photo provided Boatswain’s mate Angelo Marinelli knew something big was up when a bathtub was brought aboard his ship, the heavy cruiser USS Quincy, in December 1944 while it was moored at the Boston Navy Yard.
Getting it right: This little book was given to all American GIs who set foot on English soil during the Second World War. Its purpose: To teach them British customs in a hurry.
His dark blue ball cap with the orange patch and gold lettering read: “SCOUTS AND RAIDERS, 1942-1945, U.S. NAVY WW II, WE LEAD THE WAY.” It was what Art Nicholas of Englewood, Fla. wore when he, his wife and two grown daughters visited all five beaches in Normandy, France on the 65th Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion during the summer of 2009.
A VFW chaplain said a few words, two soldiers in dress uniforms folded an American flag into a precise triangle and handed it gently to the widow, a rifle squad fired three volleys and Taps was played as 50 mourners bowed their heads.
His story could have been a page out of “South Pacific,” Rodgers and Hammerstein’s hit musical set in the Solomon Islands during World War II.
Bob Bolling missed World War II altogether. He signed up for the navy in 1946 right out of high school. After boot camp in Bainbridge, Md. he went aboard the escort carrier USS Salerno Bay, CVE-110, in Norfolk, Va.
Pete Self of Englewood was a rifleman in H-Company, 143rd Regiment of the 36 Infantry Division when he first came ashore at Naples, Italy on Sept. 9, 1943 during World War II.
Kil Kilcauley of North Port has seen a lot of life in his 97 years of living. He’s fought in three of this country’s wars–World War II, Korea and Vietnam–and lived to tell about it.
Richard Smith of Port Charlotte, Fla. served in the 500th Port Battalion, an all black unit in World War II, that kept front line troops supplied with ammunition and equipment.
Harold Glover of La Casa mobile home park in North Port, Fla. was a sergeant in the “Fighting 36th Infantry Division” that first saw battle in North Africa in World War II, went on to Italy and before the war was over made the invasion of Southern France and marched into Germany. He received three Purple Hearts while fighting at Salerno, Anzio, Monte Casino and finally crossed the Rhine River into Germany at war’s end.
Jean Cole was an 11-year-old Scottish school girl when the Germans marched into Poland in September 1939 starting World War II. She lived in a Glasgow tenement with her parents, twin sister and little brother.
Floyd Cole piloted a B-17 bomber on 30 combat missions over Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. He was a member of the 452nd Bomb Group, 8th Air Force that flew from a field near Norwich, England.
Robert Stilson of Alameda Isles Mobile Home Park in Englewood, Fla. was a 19-year-old Marine Corps corporal who charged ashore from a Higgins Boat onto the black sandy beach at Iwo Jima on the first first day in the second wave –Feb. 19, 1945– to play his part in one of the major battles in the Pacific during the closing months of World War II.
Electrician’s Mate 1st Class Thomas McLean’s war in the Pacific lasted a little over three months. He sailed aboard the USS Tollberg, APD-103, for Pearl Harbor arriving April 22, 1945.
Jerry Hemphill served aboard the USS Missouri as a Japanese intercept operator. He was the first American to intercept the official code from Tokyo that the emperor was calling it quits. World War II was almost over.
Billie Hopkins, who winters at Little Charlie Creek mobile home park in Wauchula, was only 5-feet, 3-inches tall and weighed 112 pounds. His size made him a perfect candidate to be a ball turret gunner on a B-17 or B-24 bomber in World War II. But the Air Corps didn’t want him because he was…
Jim McKinney is a Navy man. So was his father and so is his son. Jim was a career naval officer who served during the Cold War as a commodore of a squadron of hydrofoil boats in Key West equipped with Harpoon, ship-to-ship guided missiles. His father, Adm. Eugene McKinney, was skipper of two World War II submarines: the USS Salmon and the USS Skate. He received three Navy Crosses and a Silver Star for Valor for the combat missions he made. Brad, Jim’s oldest son, is the commander of the Explosive Ordinance Department at the Navy’s facility at Panama Beach.
Bernie Harris of Loveland Courtyard condominium in Port Charlotte, Fla. made 40 trips across the Atlantic and Pacific during World War II sailing in Esso tankers bringing aviation gasoline and fuel oil to the troops. After the war he joined the Navy and served four years as a submariner aboard the USS Trout—SS-566.
It was June 20, 1944 and 1st Lt. Leslie Nielsen was on his 28th combat mission over Nazi occupied Europe during World War II with only two more missions to fly. Their target: an oil refinery in Hamburg, Germany.
1st Sgt. Jim Tankersley, who lives in Brookside Bluff Condominium Park north of Arcadia, Fla. was in charge of ground communications for the 95th Infantry Division’s artillery battalion. He and a squad of 25 soldiers laid and maintained the phone cables connecting division headquarters with front line troops during some of the major battles in Europe in World War II.
By the time Radioman 2nd/Class Vern Nelson came aboard PT-108 in the South Pacific in 1944 the torpedo boat had seen lots of action against the Japanese in World War II. As part of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron FIVE the 80-foot plywood craft first operated out of the Panama Canal Zone starting in July starting in 1942.
Although Russell Clark was a strapping 6-foot, 2 ½-inches tall, 210 pounds and physically fit, the Marines wouldn’t have him; neither would the Navy or the Coast Guard. The reason: the 21-year-old was married with a child on the way.
Electronics Technician 2nd Class Richard Berry of Venice served aboard the USS Hudson (DD-470), on picket duty off Iwo Jima and Okinawa during the closing months of World War II.
Joe Pendrak spent his time flying a twin-engine Martin Mariner PBM Seaplane on submarine patrols and convoy duty in the Atlantic and Caribbean during World War II. His squadron, V P-215, was assigned to Bermuda part of the time.
Don Lichty of Lemon Bay Isles mobile home park in Englewood was a torpedoman aboard the USS Torsk in World War II. Her claim to fame was she was the only submarine in the U.S. Navy to sink a train. She also sent the last two Japanese ships to bottom hours before the end of the Second World War.
It was supposed to be a “milk run.” The crew of “Angel in Di-Skies,” a B-17 flying as part of the 8th Air Force from a base in Framlington, England, during World War II, was sent on a low-level mission to knock out a railroad bridge near Jussy, France.
2nd Lt. Carl Citron hadn’t been in England but a few weeks when his unit, the 466th Bomb Group, 786 Squadron, of the 8th Air Force, was assigned to a low-level bombing mission in their B-24 Liberators against the German submarine pens at Brest along the coast of Nazi-occupied France.
The citation accompanying his Bronze Star Medal reads: “LAWRENCE G. SCHAEFERLE, CAPTAIN, Medical Detachment, 32nd Field Artillery Battalion. For heroic achievement in connection with military operations against the enemy in the vicinity of St. Laurent-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, 6 June, 1944. Although subjected to heavy enemy fire, Capt. Schaeferle remained on exposed beach, administering first aid and assisting in evacuation of the seriously wounded. His heroic devotion to duty saved many lives. Entitled to wear six bronze battle participation stars on European Theatre Ribbon for campaigns in Sicily, Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Ardennes, and Central Europe. Awarded the Bronze Star Medal…
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor shortly before 8 a.m., Dec. 7, 1941 George Hire was a Marine recovering from coral poisoning at the Naval Hospital. He was looking out the window while washing dishes and saw the first bomb hit the dry dock 100 yards from where he was standing.
The British tried it, the Canadians tried it and elements of the 5th U.S. Army gave it a shot to no avail. Now it was the American 10th Mountain Division’s turn to take on German Gen. Fridolin von Senger’s entrenched troops in the Apennines Mountains of Italy during the winter of 1944.
Col. Carl Citron (Ret.) took a sentimental journey last Thursday morning at Venice , Fla. Municipal Airport on a B-24 “Liberator” bomber like the one he piloted a lifetime ago on 33 combat missions over Nazi occupied Europe in World War II. He was in ecstasy during the 30 minute flight down memory lane as the four-engine heavy bomber circled Venice a 1,000 feet below.
The headline on the story in the Sun read: ‘Jack Callahan served aboard USS St. Mary’s at Okinawa.’ Rudy Ricci of Windmill Village mobile home park in Punta Gorda, Fla. couldn’t believe his eyes.
World War II was over. The Japanese had signed the surrender aboard the Battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay a few weeks earlier when Shipfitter 2nd-Class Rudy Ricci of Windmill Village, Punta Gorda, Fla. stepped into the limelight. He served aboard the USS St. Mary’s off Okinawa Island during a typhoon in Buckner Bay that nearly…
When the Japanese surrendered abroad the Battleship Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945 America’s airborne military might was on display. An armada of U.S. fighters and bombers flew low and slow over the “Mighty Mo” to hammer home to the Japanese they had been vanquished.
Ed Bremen was a Marine sharpshooter in Company F, 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment, 4th Marine Division. He became a Browning Automatic Weapon man who saw action in the Pacific on Roi and Namur islands near Kwajalein Atoll in February 1944 and Saipan in the Mariana Island chain in June, 1944. He was wounded there and spent the next 16 months recuperating in a trio of hospitals throughout the country.
It was Jan. 22, 1945 and Americans forces were already making air strikes on Okinawa. The captain of the battleship USS South Dakota got word a carrier plane had crashed into the sea off the Pacific island.
For as long as Kathy Vanden Bosch of Port Charlotte can remember, the little teak wood box has been a prized possession. What made it really special is it sat on her father’s dresser until he died. She was told as a child, it was made from the deck of the battleship USS Arizona by her uncle when he was in the service at Pearl Harbor during World War II.
Disaster struck on Friday, October 13, 1944 for 2nd Lt. Victor Barber a 21-year-old bombardier aboard a B-24 “Liberator” four-engine bomber flying from a base in Foggia, Italy. He was a member of the 251st Bomb Group, 724th Squadron, 15th Air Force.
“We were anchored at Pearl about 1,000 feet from Battleship Row when the Japs attacked,” the 85-year-old former sailor recalled. “We got underway in 17 minutes, but our path to the open sea was blocked by the battleship West Virginia that had been torpedoed and run up on a shoal to keep from sinking.”
When the Germans marched into Poland in September 1939 starting World War II, Ted Bobbin of Punta Gorda Isles, Fla. was a 14-year-old English high school student. He wanted to do his part for the war effort so he joined the Royal Observer Corps.
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.
When Diane Oldmixon of Rolls Landing in Charlotte Harbor, Fla.was 12 she and her girlfriend helped the French Underground fight the Germans who invaded their country during World War II.
Ed Kent was the gunner on an M-7, self-propelled 105 millimeter Howitzer, who landed June 6, 1944 at Utah Beach on D-Day in Normandy, France during World War II. The 20-year-old corporal survived 15 days before being seriously injured by shrapnel from incoming enemy fire, was sent back to England and eventually the States to recuperate.
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.
Willard Chamberlin was a Marine mess sergeant and rifleman who saw action at Okinawa, the biggest battle in the Pacific during the closing days of World War II. He quit high school in 1943, when he was just 17-year-old, and joined the Marines with his parents’ permission. Before the war was over he had three brothers who also served in the Army, Navy and Air Corps.
Aviation Cadet Charles Grizzaffi wanted to fly a “Thunderbolt” fighter plane in World War II. He wanted to be a P-47 pilot, but the war was over before he got his wings.
The ancient hill town in central Sicily is topped by the ruins of King Robert II of Normandy’s 12th Century castle. It’s been a stronghold of armies and warlords since 1000 B.C. In July 1943 the village, the castle and the hill with its 1,100-foot cliff was held by the German’s elite Herman Goering Division during the Allied Sicilian Campaign in World War II.
Long before the Kamikaze attack during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, off Luzon in the Philippine Islands during World War II, the USS Claxton with George Bothum aboard saw considerable action in the Solomon Islands off Guadalcanal, Bougainville and Tillage earlier in the war.
There’s not much Nick Gassera remembers about serving as a seaman aboard the destroyer USS Collett, DD-730, during World War II. But three images still vividly stick out in his mind about World War II after more than six decades—Okinawa, the typhoon and being aboard the first American ship to sail into Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered.
Fred Butts, a Cape Cod industrialist who wintered in Boca Grande, Florida, was thought to be the first American soldier to loot Adolf Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest retreat high atop Kehlstein Mountain in the Bavarian Alps near Berchtesgaden at the close of World War II. Sixty years later, shortly before his death, he told his family…
Mark Futch knew all about the smashed pictured window in the living room of Hitler’s Berchtesgaden retreat in the Bavarian Alps mentioned in a recent war story that appeared in the Sun.
A family tradition Bob Burling’s father, Samuel, served as a motorcycle dispatch driver on the front lines in Europe during World War I. Bob served two years, four months and 10 days as part of a B-17 bomber crew in World War II, and his son, Robert, served with the 1st Cavalry in Vietnam.
Ralph Coffin fought all across Europe during World War II with the 274th Armored Artillery Battalion, part of Gen. George S. Patton’s 3rd Army. He landed in Normandy on Aug. 19, 1944 at St. Mere L’Eglise and fought from there to Avaranches and on to the Muese River by Sept. 1 and then to the famed fort at Verdun held by the Germans.
World War II for Hank Chiminello only lasted four months. He ended up in Honolulu as a radioman aboard a troop transport ship in April 1945. “We were taking boys and supplies over to the islands on a 426-foot ship, the USS Medean (AKA-31),” the 88-year-old North Port resident explained. “We were sent to all the islands over there – the Philippines, Guam, Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.”
When Cpl. Kermitt Hampton’s landing craft hit the beach on New Britain Island in the South Pacific during World War II the Japanese knew they were coming and had a deadly trap waiting on the beach for the American forces.
Dave Schmidt joined the Navy at 15, before World War II. He was a big boy for his age – 5-ft., 6-inches tall and 215-pounds. “I was an out of control kid. My parents both worked and they decided the Navy was the best thing to straighten me out. They told the Navy recruiter my birth certificate was lost in a fire and I was 17-years-old,” the 86-year-old Port Charlotte man recalled almost seven decades later.
At 90 Al Gosselin of Big Tree mobile home park in Arcadia, Fla. no longer remembers all the details of the 10 trips he made across the Atlantic and Pacific as a radioman aboard six freighters and one landing craft he served on during World War II. But there are instances aboard ship he still recalls as clear as a bell.
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.
Herb Wild of Port Charlotte, Fla. joined the Navy in 1942 during World War II as an 18 –year-old electronics assistant’s mate. His job was to repair the newfangled electronic equipment on airplanes flown by Navy pilots in the Pacific Theatre of Operations.
When Boatswain’s Mate 2nd Class Diamond Trifilo went over the side of the USS Eversole, a destroyer escort, after she was struck by two Japanese torpedoes during the Battle of Leyte in World War II he was wearing nothing but his boatswain’s whistle on a chain around his neck.
John Arens served as a teenage Merchant Mariner in World War II, become an Airborne Ranger in the Korean War, graduated from diving school in the 1960s, spent 11 years as a Navy SCUBA diver in the Arctic before skippering a Navy spy ship during the Cold War and completed his 40-year military career as the captain of a fast transport ship during “Operation Desert Storm” in 1991.
He landed on Utah Beach on D-Day plus 6, took part in the breakout at St. Lo, the Battle of the Bulge, Hürtgen Forest, Remagen and stopped at the Elbe River near Berlin at war’s end. Edwin Erving of Port Charlotte, Fla. was trained as an ambulance driver and medic attached to the 5th Armored Division in World War II. He landed at Utah Beach in Normandy, France on D-Day plus 6 with the 5th Armored.
Bill Toledo, a Navajo Code Talker with the 3rd Marine Division in World War II, was in the area talking to several organizations and school groups, along with Frank Willetton, another Navajo who fought with the 2nd Marine Division at Okinawa. The Rotary Club of Englewood, Fla. brought them to town to speak at their 7 a.m. weekly meeting Thursday, March 25, 2010. While here they also talked to the general public at a two hour session held at Lemon Bay High School in Englewood on Thursday evening. A full house of 1st Marine Division Assn. member listened to the…
A spread of three “Long Lance” Japanese torpedoes struck the light cruiser USS Helena at 2 a.m., July 6, 1943 off Vella Lavella Island, part of the Solomon Island Chain in the South Pacific. Machinist Mate Ken Schank of Port Charlotte was at his battle station maintaining an electric generator controlling the cruiser’s main guns in the bowels of the ship deep below the surface when disaster struck.
Alex Brast of Blue Heron Pines mobile home park, south of Punta Gorda, flew a B-26, twin-engine bomber in North Africa, Sicily, Sardinia and Italy during World War II. These bombers were called “The Widowmaker.” Because the planes were hard to land, particularly with one engine out, a lot of airmen died when the hot…
Harold Clark served as a 3rd Mate in the Merchant Marines during World War II. He sailed the Atlantic and Pacific in slow-moving Liberty and Victory ships filled with life-saving cargo for the war front and the home front.
A small American flag hangs from the brick wall outside the front door of Buck Fields’ Port Charlotte home. It’s a manifestation of the former World War II infantryman’s love of the country he fought for so long ago. He hit the beach at Normandy on D-Day plus two, June 8, 1944, with Headquarters Company,…
After graduating in 1936 from Naval Aviation in Pensacola as an ensign, Capt. Al Boyd’s first assignment aboard the Battleship Tennessee was as a catapult pilot flying a pontoon spotter plane. Twenty –five years later, as a captain commanding a Navy base out west, he flew an F-4 “Phantom II” jet fighter-bomber faster than Mach-2…
Second Lt. Russell Ogan was returning from a fighter sweep over the Battle of the Bulge flying low and slow because of the weather, in “Gloria May,” his P-47 “Thunderbolt,” when his fighter took a direct hit from enemy ground fire.
John Seelie of Englewood, Fla. was supposed to box the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941. He was a champion welterweight who just joined the 25th Infantry Division stationed at Schofield Barracks outside of Honolulu, Hawaii.
The Battleship USS Missouri, flagship of Fleet Adm. William F. “Bull” Halsey’s Task Force 58, steamed into Tokyo Bay 150 ships-strong on the morning of Aug. 29, 1945. Quartermaster 3rd Class Ed Kalanta of Port Charlotte, Fla., was at the wheel of the 45,000 ton leviathan.
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.
Lt. Col. John Dyer had no idea the planeload of .50-caliber machine-gun ammunition he flew to Tonsonnhute Airport in Saigon was part of a CIA plot to topple the Ngo Dinh Diem government in South Vietnam.
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.
Wallie Spatz captures incredibly delicate likenesses of people in intricate silhouette cutouts. She has made black and white paper silhouettes for more than 60 years of everyone from President Lyndon Johnson to thousands of servicemen during World War II.
Joe Quick is one of “The Chosin Few”. He’s one of the members of the 7th Regiment, 1st Marine Division that led the way up and back from the Chosin Reservoir during the early months of the Korean War. For nearly eight long weeks, Quick and 20,000 other U.S. Marines braved overwhelming enemy odds in…
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.
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,…
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.
Bill Roy was a 21-year-old photographer’s mate aboard the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown when she was sunk by an enemy submarine at the Battle of Midway June 7, 1942.Midway was the defining battle in the Pacific Theater during the first six months of World War II. The United States went to war after its Pacific…
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.
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.
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 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.
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…
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.
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, 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.
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.
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.
Father Bill Magill of Venice, Fla. was a “Devil Dog.” He flew a Corsair, F-4U fighter, in the Pacific during World War II before he began working for the Lord.
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,…
Despite what you may have read in history books or seen on the History Channel, the Japanese at the close of World War II surrendered first on Ie Shima Island before surrendering to Gen. Douglas MacArthur aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
“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.
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.
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.
Like a Biblical plague of locusts, the kamikazes swept across the Allied fleet in the Southwest Pacific during the closing months of World War II. The Japanese called them the “Divine Wind.” The sailors in Adm. “Bull” Halsey’s Task Force 38 called them “hell.”
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.
The Yamato was the largest battleship ever built. She had bigger guns and heavier armament than any ship afloat. Despite her size and fire power, the mightily leviathan’s hours were numbered as she and her small battle group steamed toward Okinawa on April 7, 1945.
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.
It was his baptism of fire. Ten days before, in early August 1944, 2nd Lt. Harry Long, a member of the Medical Administration Corps of the 318th Infantry Regiment, 80th Division landed on Utah Beach in Normandy, France as part of Gen. George S. Patton’s 3rd Army.
Charles Sass is a former platoon sergeant with the 511th Paratrooper Regiment. He made three combat jumps on Luzon Island in the Philippines 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. 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.
Their target was a railroad marshaling yard along the German-Belgium border. Second Lt. Robert Grace was making his initial pass over the target at Prum, Germany in a P-47 Thunderbolt fighter plane on May 29, 1944 when he was shot down.
Lt. Charles Bailey, Sr. was the last of the line. He was the last of Punta Gorda, Fla.’s “Fighting Bailey Brothers.” The last of a family of seven sons and two daughters who distinguished themselves in war and in life during World War II, Korea and much of the 20th Century.
Bob Liebold of Englewood Beach, Fla. wears a tan ball cap with a brown beak. On the front of his hit are two gold crossed cannons, a couple of campaign ribbons with three bronze stars and on the beak is a set of silver captain’s bars.
Von Spahr, an Englewood, Fla. retiree, was a 19-year-old armorer in 1943 attached to the 431st Fighter Squadron, 475th Fighter Group, 5th Air Corps based at Port Moresby, New Guinea during World War II. His company commander told him to take a Jeep and pick up a pilot flying into the local airstrip in a…
Andy Knef joined the Navy in 1942 at 17 with his parent’s permission. Trained as an aviation machinist mate, he spent most of his time as a tail-gunner on a Martin Mariner (PBM) twin-engine seaplane flying combat missions in the Atlantic and Pacific.
Bert Rockower was a corporal in the 9th Army that landed on Omaha Beach five months after D-Day during World War II. By then U.S. troops had advanced across France and liberated Paris. American forces were at the Siegfried Line, the massive concrete and steel fortification protecting Germany’s Western Front.
Harold Sandler didn’t start out to be a “Ninety-day Wonder” or a war hero, but that’s what he became by the time World War II was over.
The crippled German battleship Bismarck was just over the horizon, steaming erratically with two jammed rudders, the result of an earlier attack by ancient fabric-covered British torpedo bombers flying from the deck of the carrier HMS Ark Royal. The date was May 26, 1941.
War Tales 