Posts Tagged ‘USMC’
We Would Have Followed Him Anywhere
“Of all the Marine Corps officers I remember, Lt. Carl Lindquist inspired me the most. I will remember him the rest of my life.” – Joe “Doc” Candilora, US Navy Corpsman, Korea, 1953. On the night of July 24, 1953, just three days before the Korean War armistice was signed, 2nd Lieutenant Carl E. Lindquist,…
Read MoreFollowing in His Father’s Footsteps
Fighting In Korea On the night of November 27, 1950, PFC Joe Dunford, a Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR) gunner, sat shivering in his foxhole at Yudam-ni, a village deep in the mountains of North Korea. It was his 20th birthday. Having already fought at the Pusan Perimeter, Inchon, and Seoul, Dunford, like all the Marines…
Read MoreA Marine for All Time
John Stevens, the steely-eyed, tireless Marine who fought in World War II and Korea and played a major role in establishing the Korean War Memorial Foundation’s memorial to Korean War veterans at the Presidio, passed away on May 25, 2021, just four weeks after celebrating his 100th birthday. During his 23 years as a Marine,…
Read MoreThe Only Woman at Red Beach
As Marines climbed aboard their landing craft at Inchon, one woman, a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, went with them. She was the only female to land at Red Beach on September 15, 1950. She covered the invasion with up-close, graphic, and oftentimes tragic stories of courage and self-sacrifice. From Inchon to Seoul…
Read MoreYou Ain’t Going To Be No Officer
On November 10, 1945, the 170th anniversary of the founding of the United States Marine Corps, a small ceremony took place at Montford Point, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. In what would later be deemed an historic day for the Marine Corps and the United States, Frederick C. Branch, a twenty-three-year-old World War II veteran with…
Read MoreFrom Bougainville to Hungnam: A Marine’s Life of Service
He’s one of the main reasons I’m in Korea. But after spending more than three years researching the Marine colonel who dedicated his life to country and Corps, I’m still no closer to knowing what made him click. I’ve pieced together some of the “who, what, where, and when” of his life, but it’s the…
Read MoreTwo Medal Of Honor Recipients, One Small Town
With just a few elementary schools, a middle and high school, two hospitals, a community center, a “busy” main street, and 13,000 residents, South Charleston, West Virginia, is an all-American community like thousands of others across the country. But there’s something special about the small town that sets it apart from the rest. South Charleston…
Read MoreBrothers in Arms: A Story of Sacrifice and Survival
For 19-year-old Pat Finn, a Minnesota Marine with Item Co, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, the night seemed colder and darker than any of the others he’d experienced since landing in Korea. His battalion had just arrived at a desolate, frozen lake he would remember for the rest of his life: the Chosin Reservoir. Home by…
Read MoreThere Was an Angel on Her Back
On March 26, 1953, nearly four months to the day that the Korean War armistice was signed, one of the bloodiest battles in Marine Corps history began: The Battle for Outpost Vegas. Located in the strategically important “Iron Triangle,” a bitterly contested area along the DMZ, or MLR, Main Line of Resistance, Outpost Vegas was…
Read MoreOn a Hill Far Away
We’ll never know the terror 18-year-old Marine PFC Edward “Eddie” Thorn experienced in the final minutes of his life, but we do know that what he and hundreds of other Marines went through at the Chosin, or “Changjin,” Reservoir was unimaginable. Shivering on a wind-swept, snow-covered hill on the night of November 28, 1950, PFC Thorn…
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