Launching of SS Arisan Maru (Wikimedia Commons) by Rona Simmons In 1943, the Japanese began emptying their Philippine prison camps and shipping able-bodied POWs to the home islands or other Japanese-controlled territories. The country’s shipyards, wharves, coal, copper, and nickel mines, steelworks, and road building, and wood cutting operations were suffering a
by Rona Simmons October 24, 1944 was the deadliest day for American service members in World War II. The day’s grim record tally—2,600 KIA—didn’t make headlines. It wasn’t Pearl Harbor, or D-Day, or the Bulge. It was just an otherwise average day of a gargantuan global war. A war that, in the end, had
Armor Battalion soldiers engaged in firefight (LTC McBrearty) Retired Army LTC John J. McBrearty deployed to Iraq in 2004 with the California National Guard as part of the 185th Armor Battalion. Serving as Deputy Base Commander of Combat Support Center Scania, a major stop-over point for convoys traveling from Kuwait to the
Kate during her Iraq deployment, 2003-4 by COL Kate Guttormsen (USA, ret.) Retired Army Colonel Kate Guttormsen joined the Veterans Breakfast Club last year to share her story as the CO of the original Team Lioness, the female soldiers who fought alongside the Marines in the 2004 Ramadi uprising. A graduate of
by Daria Sommers Army veteran Nancy Stroer served from 1986 to 1992 as a maintenance officer, spending time in what she calls “the beer-soaked trenches of post-Cold War Germany.” After leaving active duty, she worked in military communities in Germany, Turkey, Japan and the United Kingdom. During that time she found her calling as
A Marine’s Letter Home Paul Keaveney, of Smyrna Beach, Florida, served in Vietnam as a Lance Corporal with the 3rd Force Recon Company, First Marine Division. In February of 1970, during a patrol in the A Shau Valley, he and his fellow Marines ended up in a firefight with NVA. For his actions that
