Some of the 'Services' and 'Programs we have available
The last Active Duty, enlisted draftee retires!!!!
You have to hear his story.
Academy Award winning actor Lee Marvin (The Dirty Dozen) (The Delta Force) speaks about combat in this USMC training film on combat leadership. Marvin is a combat veteran of WWII and a recipient of the Purple Heart. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Sgt. Henry W. Tisdale enlisted in Company I, Thirty-Fifth Regiment,Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry on July 10, 1862 at the age of 25. Sgt. Tisdale kept a very detailed diary of his service from 1662 t0 1865. His son and his sons wife typed and bound the diary in 1926. Please click on the picture and you will see the diary.
Pvt. L. Leon of the Charlotte Grays, Company C, First North Carolina Regiment, recounted his service in the Confederacy from 1861, and titled it "Diary of a Tar Heel Confederate Soldier. Put. Leon copyright and published the diary in 1913. Please click on the picture and you can read his story.
Pvt. George Edgar Cripps of the 34th Michigan Volunteer Infantry left Michigan in June of 1898 bound for Cuba.This diary is re-typed from the handwritten diary he left. You will greatly enjoy his account of time spent from Michigan to Cuba and back. Please click on the picture to read his diary.
Charles Normington was in Paris France and recounted in a letter to his mother the jubilation of the war being declared ended. Just click on the above picture and under "First-Hand Accounts" click on the letter from Paris 11 Nov 1918, to view his letter.
Induction Center in Baltimore, Maryland 1942. And actually all inductees were told especially 'what not to do', because "loose lips could sink ships'. So click on the picture and choose 'World War II' at top of site and choose the heading "loose lips sink ships', and get the whole story of induction education.
Just 'thanking and recognizing' the service our men and women gave this country is Powerful Medicine! Please thank our Veterans when you see them.
April 2023 by Drew F. Lawrence
Military.com
To say William "Billy" Waugh was a legend in the Special Forces community is more than an understatement. He was very nearly mythological.
The unparalleled godfather of the Green Berets, and CIA septuagenarian at the spearhead of early operations in Afghanistan, passed away Tuesday. He was 93.
Waugh was on any short list of famed operators who deployed to the Korean, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars, serving in dozens of countries in his more than 50-year career with Special Forces and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Read Next: Air Force Budgets Less for Bonus Pay for its Toughest Jobs in 2024
In Vietnam, he was almost fatally wounded, later receiving a Silver Star. Despite the wounds, he returned to the war after recovering at Walter Reed. In the '70s, he was the first soldier to conduct a high-altitude, low-opening jump -- known as a HALO jump, now a staple in the special operations repertoire.
When he finished his military career at the rank of sergeant major, Waugh had earned the Silver Star, four Bronze Stars, eight Purple Hearts, more than a dozen Army Air Medals, and a bevy of other awards, according to 1st Special Forces Command, which announced his passing this week.
"From Korea to Afghanistan and every conflict in between, I have fought whomever my country ordered me to fight," Waugh wrote in his autobiography, "Hunting the Jackal." "For 50 years in 64 countries, I have sought and destroyed my country's enemies -- whether they be called communists or terrorists -- wherever they hide."
While Waugh is known for his daring feats and fabled accolades, he was also a lifelong supporter of the military communities that formed him. In turn, he formed them under the shadow of his likeness, never losing his Texas heart, keen wit and indomitable spirit.
Getting a Taste of Combat
Nary a soul has been stationed at a military base or made it through four years of college without stumbling one drunk Saturday night into the 24-hour greasy spoon chain known lovingly as “Waffle House.”
With more than 2,000 locations across 25 states, it’s safe to say that the humble breakfast haunt is really more of an empire than a mom-and-pop shop. But it wasn’t always that way. The first Waffle House was actually opened by two veteran neighbors in the small town of Avondale Estates, Two World War II veterans opened the first Waffle House in 1955. (Sarah Sicard/Waffle House via Canva)
Georgia, in 1955. “Tom Forkner joined the military and served in military intelligence and security based out of Oak Ridge, TN,” according to Njeri Boss, Waffle House’s vice president of public relations.
Drafted into the Army in 1941, he covertly worked to transport valuable products from a “Tennessee facility to Los Alamos,” according to the Atomic Heritage Foundation. He eventually was sent to work on the infamous Manhattan Project, where he served until heading home and taking his place with his family’s real estate business.
His eventual partner, Joe Rogers Sr., enlisted with the Army Air Corps at age 16...
March 2023 - U.S.Veterans Magazine
I've always known that I wanted to be a reporter. I started watching the news around 10th grade, and I was a big fan of WNBC. I learned that you could make so much of an impact on people’s lives as a reporter, and that really motivated me.
So, as soon as I got to college, I declared my major as broadcast journalism. While I was still in undergrad, 9/11 happened. As a native New Yorker, I wanted to do something for my country; I wanted to be a part of something bigger, and I was drawn to the military.
I initially planned to join the Marines, but I ran into an Army recruiter before my decision was final, and they were able to offer me a schedule that worked better for pursuing my education and military service at the same time. I started as an enlisted soldier; then, after completing basic training and receiving my master’s degree in mass communication and media studies, I was commissioned and became a public affairs officer. I started out as a private; now, I’m a major in the Army Reserve.
I moved my way up the ranks while moving around the country: in South Carolina, I worked as an assignment editor for WIS-TV; in Kansas, as a television news reporter for WIBW-TV; in Missouri, as an anchor for KMBC; in Washington, D.C., as a multi-platform reporter for ABC.
During that time, I remained in the Reserve, reporting to units that corresponded with each new location, participating in training exercises and taking military courses. In 2008, while I was in Kansas, I deployed to Baghdad for the first time for a year, serving as a historical ambassador at Camp Slayer in Victory Base Complex...
August 2023 by Blake Stilwell, Military.com
It all started with a World War II veteran's hamburger stand.
Glen Bell didn't invent the taco. He didn't even invent the hard-shell taco. What Bell did was recreate a taco recipe from a competing food stand and brought it to the rest of the United States. From that first taco recipe in 1951, Glen Bell started what would become Taco Bell in 1962.
When it first started, Taco Bell offered tacos, burritos, tostadas, refried beans and chili burgers. Today, Taco Bell pulls in nearly $9.2 billion in revenues annually, selling everything from Mexican pizzas to Cheetos burritos. Though the chili burger might be gone, you can still get the original hard-shell taco.
A child of the Great Depression, Bell picked up some culinary skills in a short business venture with his aunt while selling pies and other comfort foods to make extra cash. He joined the Marine Corps in 1943 and spent much of World War II cooking for high-ranking Army and Navy officers in the Solomon Islands. After the war, he went home to San Bernardino, California.
There, he saw two brothers named McDonald working a new kind of burger stand, one where customers came and went (and came back) all day. With years of food service under his belt, he figured he could do something similar. He bought a grill and opened Bell's Burgers in 1948.
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I fought in Vietnam for 13 months at the age of 18. After my tour in Vietnam, I returned home a changed man. And while there was nothing extraordinary about my experience compared with others who had fought, I remain changed by my experiences there.
It’s estimated that around 30 percent of Vietnam Veterans have experienced PTSD in their lifetime. The disorder, however, doesn’t have to be as a result of war; it can be caused by any traumatic experience. For veterans who have fought in wars, PTSD can be lurking just under the surface and ready to take the place of rational thought. It pushes you into an uncontrollable urge to win the perceived battle. My urges are deep-seated and come from just over a year of constant combat.
I Had to Get My Story Out
When I came home, I knew I had an amazing story to tell. It took me nearly 50 years, but last year, I published my memoir, On Full Automatic: Surviving 13 Months in Vietnam. I always knew getting my story down on paper would be a great way to explain to those who have never fought in a war, what it’s like to actually be there. What I didn’t expect was that the whole process would be so cathartic.
Here’s How Writing My Book Has Been Healing:
I've Found a Way to Honor the Heroes I Knew in Vietnam
I’m not the hero in my book. People have said to me, “Thank you for your service. You are a hero in my eyes.” But I’m thinking, “I’m not the hero. The guys in my book that I wrote about are the heroes. Especially those that gave their all, they are the real heroes.” I was just a scared kid and in a lot of ways it was pure luck that brought me home at the end of my tour. Many guys weren’t as lucky.
In writing my book, I’ve been able to tell the story of all the men I knew. Many of them lost their lives but writing about them is a way of honoring them. They are back with us forever. My story is their story, and it’s finally being told.
I’ve Helped Other Survivors Process Their Own Experiences
So many veterans come home from war and can’t talk about it. They keep their experiences bottled up inside, where they can do real harm. But people respond to shared experiences. When I’ve talked to other vets who have been through war, our stories just come out automatically. It completes, verifies and justifies something inside us. I’ve had a lot of feedback from other vets who have read my book and feel that by telling my story, they have found healing too. In a way it’s their story, the one they weren’t able to tell themselves or to their families.
1. One-third of the soldiers who fought for the Union Army were immigrants, and nearly one in 10 was African American.
The Union Army was a multicultural force—even a multinational one. We often hear about Irish soldiers (7.5 percent of the army), but the Union’s ranks included even more Germans (10 percent), who marched off in regiments such as the Steuben Volunteers. Other immigrant soldiers were French, Italian, Polish, English and Scottish. In fact, one in four regiments contained a majority of foreigners. Blacks were permitted to join the Union Army in 1863, and some scholars believe this infusion of soldiers may have turned the tide of the war.
We remember the Maine, but we don’t understand it.
In January 1898, as tensions flared between Cuban revolutionaries and Spanish troops, the battleship USS Maine was sent to Havana to protect American interests and civilians there. On February 15 a massive explosion sank the vessel, killing 266 sailors. Sensationalist newspaper articles and advocates of war accused the Spanish of destroying the ship, and a naval inquiry soon concluded that a mine had caused the disaster. With the rallying cry “Remember the Maine!” galvanizing Americans, President William McKinley reluctantly signed a resolution supporting Cuban independence and threatening Spain with military action. Today, however, experts generally doubt the Spanish had a hand in Maine’s demise. Though we may never know for sure what unleashed the tragedy that helped spark a war, recent investigations have implicated the ship’s design, ammunition storage and coal bunker.
In 1943, British intelligence was asked to help conceal Allied intentions of invading Sicily that summer. Germany and the Allies were involved in a high stakes deception/ guessing game to determine just exactly where the first European attack would occur. British intelligence officers came up with the idea of Operation Mincemeat, a plan to disseminate false information by allowing the Germans to "accidentally" discover faked top secret documents.
To carry out Operation Mincemeat, the British acquired the cadaver of homeless man Glyndwr Michael, transforming him into "Major William Martin." By the time a submarine crew pushed Michael/Martin's body gently into the water off the coast of Spain, he was handcuffed to a briefcase stuffed with falsified military documents and mundane items.
If the Germans had finished building it, the 1,000-ton Ratte would have been the largest conventional tank ever built. The Nazis envisioned the Ratte as a kind of battleship for land, literally. Its massive 283 mm cannon was to be taken directly off the deck of a Scharnhorst-class battleship, and would have been capable of hammering hard targets up to 17 miles away.
With armor 14.2 inches thick in some places, the Ratte would have been almost invulnerable to all but the biggest bombs in the Allied arsenal.
Over six decades later, we are no closer to a peaceful ending of the conflict.
A month after the Korean War broke out, Major General William F. Dean, commander of 24th Infantry Division, was separated from his forces in Taejon while trying to help wounded soldiers. While out seeking water for a particularly injured G.I., he fell down a cliff and was knocked unconscious. He would be isolated in the mountains for the next 36 days, losing 80 pounds in addition to the broken shoulder and head wound he had sustained. When two South Koreans found him, they pretended to lead him to safety, but in fact brought him to a North Korean ambush site. Though Dean tried to fight his captors, he was down to 130 pounds and too weak to resist for long. He was taken prisoner on August 25, 1950, and remained prisoner until the end of the war.
Many people mistakenly believe — much like the comical ‘coalition of the willing’ in Iraq in 2003 — that the Americans acted unilaterally in Vietnam. In fact, New Zealand, Australia, Cambodia, Laos and South Korea all contributed significant numbers of troops to the war.
Everyone knows about the defoliant, Agent Orange, because of the horrible birth defects it caused, but not many people know people sniffers — known as Operation Snoopy. Northern troops on the Ho Chi Minh Trail were notoriously difficult to find, so the Americans used sensors to detect effluents of human sweat and urine. While they frequently turned up false results, leading to attacks on civilians and cattle, they did prove to be somewhat effective. Though, the North Vietnamese Army eventually learned to hang buckets of mud mixed with urine from trees to throw off the sensors.
November 2021
By Flip Cuddy and Christine Cuddy
She was the first Asian American woman in the Navy and the first woman gunnery officer teaching air combat tactics. During World War II, Lieutenant Cuddy trained Navy pilots in dogfighting maneuvers and firing .50-caliber machine guns.
But her children, Flip and Christine Cuddy, didn’t know about her accomplishments until later in life. In 2018, they came to StoryCorps to remember her.
To read more about this story watch the video ... https://storycorps.org/stories/a-brother-and-sister-remember-their-trailblazing-mother-lieutenant-susan-ahn-cuddy/
July 2021, by Blake Stilwell, Military.com
For decades, Air Force military training instructors have been using the example of an "Airman Snuffy" in preparing new trainees for the active Air Force. He (or she) is your average, everyday airman, working in the Air Force.
"Airman Snuffy is working the CQ desk one night when an MTI shows up without his CAC [ID card]," the Air Force training instructor would say. "What should Airman Snuffy do when the MTI demands to be let in?"
These are the questions that make trainee airmen sweat in their sleep.
Airman Snuffy is at times an instructional figure, showing young recruits how to do things. At other times, he's a cautionary tale, illustrating the potential dangers of making poor decisions while wearing the uniform.
The real Airman Snuffy, Maynard Smith, was both of those things and more; when Smith was notified that he was awarded the Medal of Honor, he was on KP duty as a punishment. Nothing could be more illustrative of his military career.
To read the full article click on the 'red-bar', find out more' on the right....
In 1942, he enlisted and volunteered to be an aerial gunner, because aerial gunners got an automatic promotion to a non-commissioned officer's rank and the pay that comes with it. Nobody wanted to fly with Smith, not because it was one of the most dangerous jobs of World War II, but because Smith was not a great airman -- yet.
He hated taking orders. He displayed a total disrespect for younger men of any rank. He was just as spoiled in the Army Air Forces as he ever was as a civilian. Now he was just getting paid for it. He was stubborn and belligerent. So it took a full six weeks before he ever flew a combat mission over occupied France.
Editor’s note: This book excerpt was first published in The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. It was republished with permission. Subscribe to their newsletter.
Author David Chrisinger spent the past four years walking in war journalist Ernie Pyle’s footsteps for his new book. This excerpt first appeared in “The Soldier’s Truth: Ernie Pyle and the Story of World War II,” from Penguin Publishing Group.
Yomna Mansouri cinched the belt on her coat as a rundown pickup loaded down with sheep blew past us. A blazing sun high in the clear December sky warmed my face and the top of my head. Once she was ready, we darted across the two-lane highway, hopped a concrete water pipe that ran the highway’s length, and landed in a ditch. The ground beneath our feet was spongy and uneven where the earth had healed over discarded plastic shopping bags, crinkled water bottles, and paper espresso cups. A stiff wind kicked up sand from the west, stirring the smells of modern life in rural Tunisia into an odd bouquet of damp earth, truck exhaust, and the sweet smell of barbequed camel.
“We will not be eating that,” Yomna told me when I asked about the food served up by the roadside eatery we passed a few hundred yards down the highway from where we parked.
On the other side of the ditch, a small field with neatly cultivated rows sprawled out before us. In the far corner of that field, two farmers Yomna had spotted, a man and a woman, picked onions with their two mangy dogs.
We were there to climb Djebel Hamra, the Red Mountain—a jagged, steep-sloped escarpment that juts out of the desert valley a short distance from the farmers’ field. On Feb. 15, 1942, Ernie Pyle scaled Djebel Hamra after he and several other correspondents were assured its summit would provide an unobstructed view of the Americans’ planned counterattack on the ancient camel-trading city of Sidi Bou Zid, which had fallen easily to the two German Panzer tank divisions the day before.
Despite the devastating losses sustained at Sidi Bou Zid, an impenetrable sense of denial blanketed the Allied high command over the border in Algeria. Rather than withdraw and regroup, they issued an order to counterattack more than 200 German tanks, half-tracks, and big guns with what little was left of the American force: a tank battalion, a tank destroyer company, an infantry battalion, and some artillery pieces.
“We are going to kick the hell out of them today,” an army officer told Ernie, “and we’ve got the stuff to do it with.”
“Unfortunately,” Ernie would report, “we didn’t kick hell out of them. In fact, the boot was on the other foot.”
September 2021 by Todd South, Observation Post
Arkansas native Bob Burns enlisted in the Marine Corps during World War I and sailed to France in 1918 as part of the 11th Regiment.
The artillery detachment converted quickly to infantry for trench fighting but saw little action, allowing time for Sgt. Burns, the lead in the Marine Corps’ jazz band, to fashion a homemade instrument that would become a part of combat lore for decades to come.
Back in the States the following year, a newspaper article noted that Burns’ deft jazz playing was drawing in young men to a Marine Corps recruiting office in New York City, according to Sept 1919 edition of the New York Evening Telegram.
“We play everything from Berlin (Irving) to Mr. Beethoven and will tackle anything except a funeral march,” said Robbie (Bob) Burns. “The outfit consists of two violins, a banjo, piano, drum, and the bazooka.”
Bazooka. The word traces its origins back to “bazoo,” a slang term for mouth that, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, may have come from the Dutch term for trumpet, “bazuin.”
“According to tales told by the Marines, the Melody Six are the snappiest, zippiest, jazziest aggregation of tune artists in any branch of Uncle Sam’s service,” the newspaper article noted in a section adjacent to Burns’ own instructions to building that very item: “Two pieces of gas pipe, one tin funnel, a little axle grease and a lot of perseverance.”..
August 2021, by J.D. Simkins, Observarion Post
The seventh installment in an illustrated series dedicated to soldiers whose actions earned them the nation’s highest award for military valor is now available online.
The newest issue of “Medal of Honor,” a graphic series produced by the Association of the U.S. Army, spotlights the Civil War heroics of Mary Walker, the first woman in the U.S. to earn a medical degree and the only woman to ever receive the Medal of Honor.
Born in Oswego, New York, to abolitionist parents, Walker attended Syracuse Medical College prior to the outbreak of the Civil War, when she saw an opportunity to serve as a surgeon in the U.S. Army.
But the arrangement wasn’t a seamless one. In 1861, Walker attempted to join the ranks of U.S. Army surgeons but was denied for being a woman. Like many obstacles she encountered prior to 1861, Walker refused to allow the hiccup to derail her.
Years as an unpaid surgeon’s assistant finally paid off when, at the height of the war, Walker was issued a contract as a credentialed War Department surgeon at the recommendation of Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman and Maj. Gen. George H. Thomas.
WASHINGTON — Members of the 720th Military Police Battalion’s B Company had been sent to Vietnam to provide security for fighting troops.
But for three years, they joined soldiers on the front lines, conducting patrols and ambushes, participating in search-and-destroy missions and defending local villages.
Their unique service from 1967 to 1970 marked the first time a U.S. military police battalion took part in infantry duties, according to unit accounts. Officially, however, it went unacknowledged by the Army.
That changed Monday in a long-awaited ceremony in the U.S. Capitol, where 35 former “Bushwhackers,” as the military police members called themselves, were awarded Bronze Stars for their service. The medals also honored the scout dog handlers of the 212th Military Police Company.
“Today marks a milestone when our history at last meets official recognition of who we were and what we did, to officially set the record straight for our posterity and how we should be remembered,” said Steven Aurilio, a former specialist in B Company. “This will help bring our members and families a sense of identity and closure and out of the shadows of obscurity.”
The 55-year oversight ended due to a mailing blitz several years ago by a group of former military policemen from the unit, who sent out 55 letters to congressional representatives in 25 states asking for assistance in obtaining recognition. Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, answered the call.
In 2021, he contacted the Defense Department and the Army, which began extensive searches at multiple personnel records facilities to find documentation of the military police's infantry actions. The former Bushwhackers wanted to receive the Army’s Combat Action Badge or Combat Infantry Badge but both requests were denied.
Unit members instead were offered Bronze Stars, a decoration for meritorious service in a combat zone that Aurilio said the military police “never considered or thought we earned.”
NEED HELP!!!! PLEASE!!! The Covid-19 pandemic has left many local Veterans and their families in need. If you are fortunate to not need your stimulus money or part of it, please think about donating it to Veteran Advocates of Ore-Ida. As a non-profit your donation would be tax deductible. Please call me, Thank You.....
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