Axis
On a cold March evening in the Goldenrod Café in West Point, Nebraska, Mary Timmermann, a waitress there, picked up the telephone receiver when her boss told her it was Omaha calling long distance for her. Read more
Axis
“She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her body was perfect in every line, her face clear and angelic, and her blue eyes the gayest, the most innocent eyes one can imagine. Read more
Axis
The first days of January 1943 found American forces winning the prolonged struggle for control of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific. Read more
Axis
The Nazi regime in Germany has become synonymous with inhuman cruelty. Hitler incarcerated millions in his concentration camps and inflicted on his victims the harshest forms of torture and deprivation imaginable. Read more
Axis
“The lieutenant said for everyone to lay your arms down,” a fellow paratrooper told Pfc. Bob Nobles, who had been fighting for six grueling days in the hedgerows following his unit’s jump into Normandy. Read more
Axis
Major General John K. Singlaub was a young airborne lieutenant when he took up an offer from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to become engaged in “hazardous duty behind enemy lines.” Read more
Axis
The name Leonard Jay Thom may not mean anything to a great many people today, and that is unfortunate. Read more
Axis
Bradley could have been referring to German General Erwin Rommel. While Rommel was winning the war of desert armor tactics during 1941-1942 in the North African Campaign, he was losing the war of logistics. Read more
Axis
It was, as the phrase goes, another perfect day in paradise. As the sun rose above the Pacific in the clear, cloudless sky east of the Hawaiian Islands, on December 7, 1941, the giant U.S. Read more
Axis
In the fall of 1941, the Polish writer Aleksander Wat, recently released from confinement in a Soviet prison, made his way east across the vast expanses of the Soviet Union. Read more
Axis
It was a letter in the London Times that caught the attention of British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Read more
Axis
BACKSTORY: The Reverend E. Gage Hotaling, the son of a Baptist minister, was born in Wellsville, New York, on January 21, 1916. Read more
Axis
Lieutenant William A. “Bill” Klenk, piloting a Curtiss SB2C-3 Helldiver, bristled at the “clawing, miserable weather,” with inverted pyramids of cloud hanging from a low ceiling and gray murk everywhere. Read more
Axis
Shortly after 8 am on June 6, 1944, a German officer overlooking the Vierville-sur-Mer Draw on Omaha Beach reported that the soldiers defending the beach were repelling the Americans: “The enemy is in search of cover behind the coastal zone obstacles. Read more
Axis
Explosions send fire through the air, aircraft drone overhead, tanks rumble across the cratered ground, and machine guns chatter in murderous conversation on a chaotic battlefield. Read more
Axis
It was a routine carrier takeoff, but nothing in warfare is ever routine. Lieutenant B. Sevilla launched his TBF Avenger torpedo bomber from the USS Anzio but within seconds he lost control and spun into the water. Read more
Axis
April 18, 1942, will forever live in American military glory as the date of the Jimmy Doolittle Raid on Tokyo––a gutsy, never-before-attempted combat mission to fly North American B-25 Mitchell bombers off the deck of an aircraft carrier and attack an enemy capital. Read more
Axis
When the four members of the Japanese surrender delegation climbed aboard the deck of PT-375 on September 8, 1945, the boat’s skipper, Lieutenant Henry “Hank” Blake, directed the men to an open area on the forward deck where the Japanese could be closely watched for any signs of treachery. Read more
Axis
When I was a young boy in Seattle, my father told me about a fake town that had been built on top of Boeing’s Plant 2 during the war. Read more
Axis
By mid-January 1945, the famous Battle of the Bulge, a massive and fatal failure for the Third Reich, was virtually over. Read more
