Beyond the Call: Technician Fifth Grade Eric Gunnar Gibson at Isola Bella, 1944
A Medal of Honor story of courage under fire in the Italian campaign of World War II.
Search & discovery
ONE SEARCH. A WIDER HISTORY.
Find a person, battle, citation, tank profile, article, book or episode. Start with a name or identifier, then explore the connections.
167 results for “ARL 44”
Showing 55–72
M18 Hellcat Tank Destroyer in the Ardennes, 1944–45
A story of speed, improvisation, and thin armor told through the crews and battles that defined it.
33rd Infantry Division in World War II
The Illinois division’s wartime service led through Hawaii, New Guinea and Morotai to northern Luzon, where difficult terrain, combined operations and widely separated small-unit actions defined its contribution.
Albert Ernest Schwab
The valley offered almost no cover. Shallow folds of earth and shattered shrubs were all that shielded the Marines of 1st Battalion, 5th Marines as they tried to push forward on Okinawa Shima on May 7, 1945. Ahead of them, on a high ridge at the valley’s mouth, a Japanese machine gun hammered the slopes, stitching bullets across every patch of ground where a helmet or sleeve dared to move. The air vibrated with the c
Battle of Iwo Jima
A story of a volcanic ridge, two flags in the wind, and a fight that reshaped the Pacific war’s final months.
Battle of Peleliu
The September 1944 landing on Peleliu secured an airfield but opened a much longer struggle against a deeply fortified island. Marine and Army operations continued into November, making the battle more than the familiar story of its first beaches.
Battle of Saipan
The June–July 1944 battle for Saipan joined Marine and Army divisions in a sustained advance across a populated island. Its outcome transformed American air operations while leaving a devastating military and civilian legacy.
Battle of the Bulge
A story of a winter surprise offensive and exhausted American units holding the line under crushing odds.
Battle of the Philippine Sea
An air-sea clash where radar, training, and discipline turned a desperate carrier defense into a one-sided hammer blow that reshaped the Pacific war.
Beauford T. Anderson
In the dark, humid hours before dawn on Okinawa, the American line around Kakazu Ridge was little more than a jagged string of foxholes and shattered stone. Technical Sergeant Beauford “Andy” Anderson and the men of his weapons platoon had spent the night listening to the island—distant artillery rumbled, mortars coughed, and now and then a Japanese flare turned the terraced fields silver for a heartbeat before dropp
Capture of the Ludendorff Bridge
A story of a shattered defensive line, a race against explosives, and the one intact bridge that cracked open the last barrier into Germany.
Dale Merlin Hansen
The ridge ahead looked less like a battlefield and more like a shattered hillside of rock, clay, and smoke. It was early May 1945 on Okinawa, and the Marines of Company E had stalled below Hill 60. Japanese machine guns chattered from hidden bunkers. Mortar rounds crashed into the slope, showering the men with dirt and splinters of coral. Every attempt to move up the ridge drew a fresh burst of fire that pinned them
Dirk John Cornelius Vlug
The jungle pressed in on both sides of the Ormoc Road, a narrow ribbon of mud and broken pavement cutting through the hills near Limon on the island of Leyte. December rain had turned the ditches into brown pools. American infantrymen crouched behind a hasty roadblock of felled trees, sandbags, and wrecked vehicles, listening to the grinding approach of steel.
Eric Gunnar Gibson
The winter sky over the Anzio beachhead was a low, gray lid, pressing the sound of guns back down onto the men below. Along a shallow drainage ditch called the Fossa Femminamorta, muddy water slid past tufts of grass and shattered reeds. Somewhere ahead, beyond the next bend, German machine guns covered the open fields that stretched away from the ditch, anchoring a strongpoint that threatened the entire attack.
Francis B. Wai
The ramps drop into waist-deep surf and chaos. It is the morning of October 20, 1944, on a stretch of shoreline the maps call Red Beach. Ahead lies a narrow band of sand, beyond it a low palm grove and flooded rice paddies. Somewhere in that green fringe, Japanese guns have the approaches bracketed. As the first waves of soldiers tried to cross, the beach turned into a killing ground.
Frederick Walker Castle
High over Europe on Christmas Eve 1944, the sky is crowded with contrails. Hundreds upon hundreds of heavy bombers push east toward German airfields, the engines’ steady thunder mixing with clipped radio calls. At their head is a single Flying Fortress, the air commander’s ship, where Brigadier General Frederick Walker Castle studies the instruments and the grey cloud deck below.
George Benjamin Jr.
The rain-soaked hills of Leyte were already torn open by days of fighting when Company A of the 306th Infantry pushed forward against a Japanese strongpoint that refused to break. Machine guns were dug into the slopes, firing down narrow approaches that funneled every American movement into sheets of bullets. A light tank inched ahead, meant to crack the defenses, but the infantry platoon walking behind it stalled un
George John Hall
The fields near Anzio were bare and unforgiving—flat, freshly plowed earth broken only by shallow furrows and a few low dikes. On a May morning in 1944, Staff Sergeant George John Hall lay pressed into that thin cover with the rest of his company, the dirt shaking under the hammering of German machine guns. Every time a man tried to crawl forward, grazing fire stitched the ground in front of him. Sniper rounds cracke