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The draw is narrow and steep, its sides scoured by months of shellfire and rain. At the bottom, the earth is churned to powder. Above it, hidden in the scrub and broken stone near Cisterna di Littoria, German machine guns wait for anything that moves. Private James Henry Mills can hear them before he sees them—the clatter of automatic fire, the sharper crack of rifles, the dull thump of grenades exploding somewhere a
The ground in front of Sugar Loaf Hill is already chewed into mud and craters when Corporal James Lewis Day crawls forward to look for cover. It is May 1945 on Okinawa, and the Marines trying to cross this open killing ground are being shredded by Japanese mortar and artillery fire. The air is thick with pulverized coral dust. Fragments of shattered ammunition boxes and discarded packs lie where men dropped them runn
The ridge near San Jose Hacienda rose steep and stubborn out of the jungle, a wall of earth and rock that dominated the valley floor. Somewhere up there, hidden in spider holes—small, camouflaged fighting pits—and pillboxes, Japanese soldiers waited behind interlocking bands of machine-gun fire. To reach the crest, Company I of the 160th Infantry Regiment had only one narrow approach, a trail that funneled men into a
The black volcanic sand of Iwo Jima offered no cover, only shallow shell holes and jagged rock. On the morning of March 9, 1945, Platoon Sergeant Joseph R. Julian lay there with the rest of his company, pressed into the ash while enemy fire tore long furrows across the slope. Ahead of them, a line of Japanese trenches and pillboxes guarded a critical rise. Machine guns hammered from narrow firing slits.
Night still clung to the sea when the submarine slid in among the enemy ships. On the open bridge, spray cold against his face, Commander Lawson “Red” Ramage watched the black shapes of freighters and tankers loom out of the darkness. Their wakes glowed faintly, white scars across a heaving Pacific, while bursts of star shell and tracer fire clawed at the sky. Somewhere off Taiwan, a Japanese convoy was trying to sli
Medal of Honor, U.S. Army, World War II
The return to Luzon combined amphibious landings, the destruction and liberation of Manila, the recovery of the bay approaches and months of fighting in mountain defenses. Capturing the capital did not end the island campaign.
Snow hangs heavy in the Ardennes forest, muting sound until a rifle cracks and splinters bark from a nearby tree. Private First Class Melvin Earl Biddle lies pressed into the freezing ground, the lead scout for an American parachute infantry company feeling every heartbeat echo in the stock of his rifle. Somewhere ahead, beyond the dark trunks and tangled undergrowth, German snipers have halted his company’s advance
A story of a nearly lost beach, scattered initiative, and how small groups clawed back the chance to win a war.
Before dawn on Leyte, the world was reduced to shadows, muzzle flashes, and the flat crack of Japanese rifles. Company A of the 382nd Infantry had clawed its way to the edge of the enemy‑held Buri airstrip, then stalled. Out in front, less than a hundred yards away, Japanese soldiers were dug into bomb craters and a drainage ditch, their machine guns perfectly sighted on every patch of open ground. Anyone who tried t
By February 1945, much of Pearl Harbor had returned to the business of war. Battleships and carriers came and went; convoys formed up and headed west toward Iwo Jima and Okinawa. But in a side channel called West Loch, the harbor still hid a graveyard. Months earlier, a chain of explosions had torn through a cluster of tank landing ships loading ammunition for the Pacific campaign.
A story of block-by-block urban fighting and the hard decision to take back a city at any cost.
The hill had a simple name on the map—Zebra Hill—but nothing about it was simple up close. Ahead of the assault troops the ground rose in a broken, rocky slope, pocked with shell holes and scraps of shattered brush. Hidden in that terrain were Japanese pillboxes and trenches positioned to command every approach. As the American infantrymen pushed forward, the hillside erupted with machine-gun bursts and grenades, tur
A story of nuclear propulsion, undersea endurance, and how one boat reshaped the Cold War at sea.
The B-17 was almost home when the choice arrived over the radio: bail out, or try to land a dying airplane. The long mission over Leipzig was behind them, but the bomber itself was torn open—control cables shot away, engines coughing, the fuselage peppered with holes where German fighters had raked the formation. In the cockpit, the copilot lay dead. The pilot, badly wounded, had been dragged from his seat and now dr
The morning sky over northern Luzon is deceptively calm. From the cockpit of his sleek reconnaissance Mustang, Major William Arthur Shomo scans the broken clouds, hunting for airfields and antiaircraft positions that his ground commanders need to see. His mission is straightforward on paper: an armed photographic and strafing sweep over the Aparri and Laoag airdromes, far ahead of friendly lines.
Albert Ernest Schwab — Private First Class U.S. Marine Corps Reserve World War II Okinawa Shima, Ryukyu Islands
Albert Joseph Smith — Private U.S. Marine Corps Interim 1920 - 1940 Marine Barracks, Naval Air Station, Pensacola, Florida, USA