Posts Tagged ‘US Army’
Two 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 MoreGreat Sacrifice Can Produce Great Results
This weekend as Americans enjoy cookouts, beach reading, shopping sprees, blockbuster movie openings, and good times with family and friends, many of us will also take time to remember America’s military men and women who died in defense of our freedom. It is, after all, Memorial Day Weekend. But there’s another group of Americans, far from home…
Read MoreThe Army’s Been Good to Me
In 1948, Travis Brann, an immature and disillusioned high school kid, dropped out of school. He wanted to make money, he told his parents, not sit in a classroom. A year later, tired of working part-time jobs and going nowhere, he decided to join the military. A month before his seventeenth birthday, Travis forged his…
Read MoreHe Had His Whole Life in Front of Him
Their stories are heartbreaking. For decades, thousands of families – over 7,800 from America and 100,000 from Korea – have wondered how and when their son, husband, brother, or uncle died during the Korean War. They’ve spent a lifetime hoping their loved one would return. But there has been only silence. No letters. No calls.…
Read MoreShe Eats, Sleeps, and Fights Like the Rest of Us
In a few weeks the 67th publication anniversary of a little-known Korean War book will quietly come and go. The non-fiction work won’t make headlines, and its author won’t be remembered in editorials or magazines. But things were different in 1951. The book, War in Korea, and its author, the award-winning Marguerite Higgins, were hugely…
Read MoreThe Forgotten Fighting Irish of the Korean War
I always look forward to St. Patrick’s Day. My maternal grandfather, Patrick J. Sullivan, did too. His father had come to America from County Kerry, Ireland, at the turn of the 20th century and had settled in Holyoke, Massachusetts, home at that time to one of the largest Irish-American communities outside of Boston. He worked…
Read MoreWorld War II and a Grand Matriarch
On December 7, 1941, Pauline Peyton Forney, like all Americans who heard the fateful news of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, knew everything was about to change. The United States was at war, and for her and millions of others, nothing would ever be the same. With over 2,300 American dead, more than a thousand…
Read MoreHappy Birthday to the Soldier Who Never Left
Stepping off the bus in January 1965, US Army Private First Class John Nowell, a 22-year-old California native who’d been drafted the year before, immediately knew Seoul wasn’t the place for him. The impoverished city of 3.2 million, with few cars, an abundance of ox-pulled carts, spicy food he didn’t like, and people he couldn’t…
Read MoreSmall Town, Big Heroes: South Charleston, West Virginia
I’ve never visited South Charleston, West Virginia, but after spending the past two days reading about the small city, located four miles west of the state capital and on the south bank (hence its name) of the Kanawha River, I feel like I’ve been there. I know it has six elementary schools and a middle and…
Read MorePhysically and Emotionally Frozen
Sixty-seven years ago, on November 27, 1950, one of the most monumental battles in US history began in the desolate, unforgiving mountains of North Korea. What occurred over the next two weeks was nothing short of a terrifying, grisly, and frozen nightmare. Chosin, as the savage fight between US and Chinese forces is now called,…
Read More