Axis
In June 1943, with the war on the island of New Guinea in its last stages, a proposal was under discussion in Washington that the huge Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain be bypassed and “left to wither on the vine.” Read more
Axis
On March 23, 1991, at a reunion of the postwar Nuremberg International Military Tribunal staffers in Washington, I had occasion to meet the former American prosecutor, Brigadier General Telford Taylor. Read more
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Not all World War II heroes were men or women. Some were four-legged, hoofed, or winged. They included horses and mules, elephants, and dogs as well as more exotic animals such as bats, camels, reindeer, and pigeons. Read more
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Among the thousands of American soldiers slogging through the miserable winter of 1944 in southern Italy after the Allied landing at Anzio were two GIs who existed only on paper, but who became as real to their readers as the mud-covered, K-ration-eating guys sitting next to them in their foxholes. Read more
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After the German Army’s invasion of Russia in June 1941 and the capture of the historic Lithuanian city of Vilnius late that month, Abba Kovner and a group of friends took refuge in a Dominican convent on the city’s outskirts. Read more
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In the words of a veteran of the China-Burma-India Theater, retired Technical Sergeant Edward Rock Jr., [they] “served without a word of complaint or lack of courage. Read more
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It was Colonel Hiromishi Yahara who designed and implemented the jiykusen, or the yard-by-yard battle of attrition that cost the American forces so many casualties in the three-month battle, and he was the highest ranking officer to survive the battle and make it back to Tokyo. Read more
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Normally, the end of combat brings satisfaction and a sense of relief, but the Army infantrymen and Marines who slugged it out with the Japanese at Saipan experienced little of either. Read more
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When the Tokyo War Crimes Trials opened in the former hilltop headquarters of the Japanese military at Ichigaya on May 3, 1946, American-born chief prosecutor Joseph Keenan faced a difficult task. Read more
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Born in 1887 in Virginia, Alexander Archer Vandegrift was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps in 1909. Read more
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In early September 1940, the world was in turmoil. The battle of Britain was nearing its climax, and elsewhere global tensions ran high. Read more
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Slender, five feet, seven inches tall, and with a warm smile that belied toughness and leadership ability, Virginia “Dindy” Hall of Baltimore had a wooden leg and a price on her head. Read more
