By Bob Von Bargen Few veterans today remember the phrase "purple suit." I was reminded of that recently after giving a presentation on the origins of Armed Forces Day. At the end, I asked the audience whether anyone remembered the expression. No one did. That surprised me because, for many of us, "putting on
By Jay Lacklen By 1976, Air Force pilot Jay Lacklen had spent years flying one of the largest and most demanding aircraft in the U.S. inventory, the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. In the excerpt below from his memoir Flying the Line: An Air Force Pilot's Journey, he recalls two flights that nearly ended in disaster.
The Berlin Airlift lasted only fifteen months, from June 1948 to September 1949, yet it changed the course of modern history. It demonstrated that the Western Allies could resist Soviet expansion without firing a shot, sustained more than two million West Berliners through one of the Cold War's first great crises, and laid the
By Ken Kaszak I recently took a private tour of the Korean Demilitarized Zone, the DMZ, one of the strangest places on earth. It's tourist destination, a wildlife refuge, a frozen-in-time relic of the Cold War, and, oh, yeah, the place where the next nuclear war could break out. My hotel was in Seoul’s
By Todd DePastino On May 20, 1950, Americans celebrated the first official Armed Forces Day with parades, air shows, and military base open houses. President Harry Truman wanted to give Americans an occasion to thank Service Members for their defense of the country. Administration officials emphasized unity, teamwork, and the permanent need for a
By Todd DePastino This account is drawn largely from the memories and research of Norman Silverman, a veteran of the Army Security Agency who served in West Berlin during the height of the Cold War. Norman later helped create the remarkable West Berlin Archive, an extensive online collection of photographs, documents, recollections, and historical
