The Great Papago Park Escape
On December 23, 1944, twenty-five German POWs tunneled out of Camp Papago Park near Phoenix, Arizona, in the largest Axis prisoner escape on U.S. soil during World War II.
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World War 2 Stories
Bill Mauldin: The Soldier Who Drew the War
A Pencil and a Rifle He wasn’t a general or a war correspondent with press credentials. Bill Mauldin was a rifleman — one of millions of dogfaces who trudged through Europe’s mud, slept in foxholes, and learned to laugh at misery because the only other option was to cry. Born William Henry Mauldin in Mountain
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Desmond Doss, the Pacifist Who Went to War
The real life Desmond Doss. Desmond Thomas Doss was born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1919. During the Great Depression, he stopped attending school after the ninth grade to help out his family, working in a shipyard when WWII broke out. He could have gotten a deferment due to his employment, but he wanted to serve
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The U.S. Army Parachute Test Platoon
The U.S. Army Parachute Test Platoon: Quiet Heroes of a Military Revolution In the grand narrative of American military history, few units have left such a powerful legacy with so little public recognition as the US Army Parachute Test Platoon. Born in 1940 amidst rising global tensions, this elite 50-man unit ignited the spark that would
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The Battle of La Fière Bridge
Jumping on the night of D-Day, the 82nd Airborne had to capture the town of Sainte-Mère-Église. Holding the town, however, would have meant little without also holding the roads to and from it. One such route had a bottleneck: the La Fière Bridge a small stone bridge at La Fière manor, 700 yards to the west
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Dead Man’s Corner: The 101st Airborne and the Battle for Carentan
Dead Man’s Corner: The 101st Airborne and the Battle for Carentan After D-Day After the Allied landings on D-Day, the mission wasn’t over once the beaches were secured. The hard-fought push inland through the Normandy countryside began immediately. Troops had to capture key crossroads and towns to link up the separate beachheads and expand the
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Brécourt Manor and the Easy Company Assault: A Textbook Tactical Victory on D-Day
On the morning of June 6, 1944, as the Allied invasion of Normandy unfolded across beaches and fields, a small unit from the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Easy Company, executed one of the most tactically significant assaults of D-Day—the Brécourt Manor assault. This engagement, though often overshadowed by the larger-scale beach landings, became a textbook
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WWII Points – Adjusted Service Rating Score (ASRS)
World War 2 “Points” the Adjusted Service Rating Score or ASRS, the system for calculating the eligibility of when a U.S. Soldier was allowed to In early as mid-1943, as troops were being shipped all over the world, it was becoming obvious that bringing all the Soldiers, Sailors and Marins back home after the war
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Other D-Days in WW2
Where does the name “D-Day” come from, and how D-Days were there?. What is the actual meaning of the D in D-Day?. A popular view in France is that it stands for disembarkation or debarkation, referring to the invading Allied troops disembarking from their landing craft. Another, more romantic, explanation is decision, deliverance or doom.
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General James Gavin: the Jumping General
James Gavin (1907-1990) was raised adopted from an orphanage in Brooklyn by a struggling coal miner. Inspired by his school readings on the American Civil War, Gavin decided to seek a better future by joining the army. He was 17 when he enlisted as a private, lying about his age as he knew his adoptive
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