Herb Heilbrun and John Leahr were twenty-one when the United States entered WWII. Herb became an Army Air Forces B-17 bomber pilot. John flew P-51 fighters. Both were thrown into the brutal high-altitude bomber war against Nazi Germany. However, they never met because the Army was rigidly segregated - only in the air were black and white American fliers allowed to mix.
Both came safely home, but it took a chance meeting 20 years ago when the two retired salesmen met at a reunion of the Tuskegee Airmen in Cincinnati. That meeting led them to review their parallel lives and discover their shared history.
It began in 1995 when Herb read in the newspaper that the city was honoring the local chapter of the Tuskegee Airmen, the all-black 332nd Fighter Group. They flew "Red-Tail" P-51s on missions escorting bomber squadrons from Italy into Germany and German-held territories. Herb could still remember hearing, amid the radio chatter over the target, the distinctive voices of the Tuskegee Airmen. He felt that his thanks were overdue.
So Herb went down to the hotel where they were having a reception and told somebody he flew B-17s in Europe during WW II and that the Tuskegee Airmen escorted him.
He then asked if there was a fighter pilot around that was over there and that he'd like to give him a hug for saving his behind. One guy pointed, telling him a fellow was standing across the room that he thinks flew fighters.
The man was John Leahr. When the two were introduced, Herb hugged John and said, "I've been waiting 50 years to meet one of you guys. You saved my tail on many a day." John, who felt for many years that the nation he had served had paid him back with prejudice and discrimination, had been waiting just as long for one of those white bomber pilots to come along and say thanks. That was all he ever wanted.
It did not take long for the black ex-fighter pilot and the white ex-bomber pilot to become friends. They went out for lunch. They visited each other's homes for dinner. Both men had their old mission logs, and Herb also kept a diary. They began matching up dates and other details of combat missions they'd flown. It turns out John had flown cover on at least two of Herb's 35 missions: once on Dec. 16, 1944, on a bombing raid on an oil refinery on Brux Czechoslovakia and the next day a strike on an oil refinery in Blechemmer Germany. Flying through a wall of flak in Brux on Christmas Day 1944, Herb's fuel tanks were hit, his high-altitude oxygen system was smashed, and his armor gunner ended up getting wounded in the foot. Herb left John sitting and returned moments later with one of the 89 chunks of shrapnel that ventilated his bomber on that mission.
As the two got to know each other even better, they discovered other things in common. The men had been born within a mile of each other, and only seven months apart. Both had come up through Cincinnati public schools, and both had managed to scrape together two years of college during the Depression. Both had enlisted in the Air Corps within weeks of Pearl Harbor. Both had to wait months to be called for flying school, so both took 
jobs at the same airplane engine factory: Wright Aeronautical in Lockland, Ohio. Herb tested engines, firing up Cyclone Engines on test stands. John worked in the plant foundry. The work was filthy, hot, and done exclusively by blacks.
Following flight training, Herb got assigned to Italy as part of the 32nd Squadron of the 301st Bomb Group. He arrived well-schooled in the elaborate squadron takeoff ritual that quickly launched and stacked dozens of bombers into box formations. Rising from the field all around Foggia, Italy, the bomber echelons assembled themselves until hundreds of aircraft were swarming up the Adriatic.
Like Herb, John, too, had always wanted to fly and volunteered for flight school, ending up at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama for primary pilot training. Traveling to the deep-south in that era scared him to death. There were so many stories. At that time, there was no federal anti-lynch law, and black people were beaten up and killed, and nothing was being done about it.
John earned his wings in February 1944 and was assigned to the all-Black 332nd "Red Tail" Squadron located at Ramiltelli Airfield on the Adriatic Coast in Italy. The black airmen completely segregated from the white Air Corps. The pilots also flew hand-me-down aircraft. When John's squadron first went into combat with the 12th Tactical Air Force, they were the only Americans in Europe flying the cranky and obsolete P-39 Airacobra. That July, the squadron was given weary P-51Bs, and Cs Mustang fighter planes left them by white squadrons trading up to the more advanced P-51Ds.
Initially, they were little used and looked down on by the military establishment. Still, eventually they were given brand-new P-51Ds and, at the insistence of their commander Col. Benjamin O. Davis (retired as a Brigadier General), given the mission of dive-bombing and strafing missions. They were so successful that they were assigned to one of the most important tasks in the Army Air Force: escorting bombers deep into Europe on strategic bombing missions.
On missions, the bombers would be about two hours out when the fighter escorts caught up with them. The escorts were supposed to handle enemy interceptors, but nothing seemed to lessen the flak. The Germans moved mobile flak units around to surprise the Allies while they were crossing the Po Valley or near the mountain passes that they followed into Austria and Germany. And once the bombers reached their target, all the anti-aircraft guns on earth seemed to be waiting for them, altitude fuses set.
John recalled seeing those poor bomber boys line up and go straight into that flak. "Those bombers would fly right through it," he said. "We watched those guys go through hell. We're sitting out on the side waiting for them to come out, and we could see them getting hit. If they got hit in the bomb bay, the plane just exploded into a great big ball of fire. The whole plane blew up, and then it was nothing." None of the B-17s that survived the missions were lost with the Tuskegee squadron escorting them home.
Once he was out of the military, John discovered that he was a pretty good salesman. He sold securities and managed a brokerage office before retiring as an office administrator from
Cincinnati Gas & Electric. Herb became a salesman too, selling radio ads and then commercial real estate. Today, John is a widower with children and grandchildren. Herb is remarried and busy with his own children and grandchildren, as well as his step-children and step-grandchildren, plus the kids who attend his wife 
Carol's in-home daycare center. When their paths crossed at the Tuskegee Airmen's reception, the men were living 10 minutes apart.
One night, Herb was having dinner when John said he had grown up in Avondale. Herb said he also had. John reminded Herb there were only five black families in Avondale and that he went to a school on Clinton Springs
Avenue, which had at one time been an old mansion. Surprised, Herb reported he too had gone to that school.
Both claimed they did not remember the other, but that wasn't surprising. When it came to racial matters, Cincinnati had Southern ways. During World War II, Cincinnati's railroad station had the distinction of being the southbound point where passenger segregation began. Most of Cincinnati's hotels, restaurants, and even hamburger stands were for whites only.
After Herb learned that he and John had gone to the same school, he wondered if they had ever crossed paths. When he got home, he went through his photo album looking for his second-grade picture taken more than 75 years ago in front of North Avondale School. After a short search, he found the 1928 photograph.
In it are 40 kids; 38 are white, and two - a boy and a girl - are black. Herb sent the photograph to John with a note that read, 'John, this thing is getting crazier and crazier by the minute. If that little black guy in this picture is you, well, that kid behind him who is almost touching him is me.'
The two men now in their early 90s have been speaking publicly for years, telling their stories in words and pictures, putting on record not just their valor at war but the ugliness they confronted at home. An underlying theme is about the segregation that kept them apart.
John begins by showing a video - a segment from a TV documentary on the Tuskegee's. He talks about his training, about shipping out, and about getting jumped over Linz, Austria, by 40 German Bf 109s. 
Two of his wing mates were shot down at once; his flight leader was driven off, and, surrounded by enemy aircraft, he discovered that his machine guns had frozen at the high altitude and were unable to fire. He tells the audience that he owed his escape to a mixture of aerial acrobatics and applied religion. He then introduced Herb, gives him a hug to the wide applause from the audience.
When it's Herb's turn, he tells the audience about the bomber war. He tells them about the wooden boards in the briefing room where each crew member's last name was posted on a metal strip; one morning, Herb watched the operations officer take down a stack of strips and toss them in the trash. They were shot down, the officer explained. They're not coming back. Herb reaches into his pocket and, with a grin, hold up a battered metal strip with "Heilbrun" written in white. The audience claps.
He talks about his homecoming in 1945, about meeting John all those years later, and about piecing together their past.
Herb hits the button of the projector, and up comes the black and white photo of the second-grade kids standing in front of North Avondale School. When he points out the two 8-year-old boys squeezed together shoulder-to-shoulder, the audience cheers wildly.
At the end of their presentation, John wraps his arm around Herb and says the two have one request: "Don't forget us," he says.
In 2003, the men were honored guests of The Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations for their mission of telling young people why race once made all the difference and why it shouldn't anymore.
In January 2012, they were both honored in a private screening ceremony in Cincinnati for the George Lucas film "Red Tails." The movie tells the story of a fictional squadron of the 
332nd Fighter Group who fought discrimination and prejudice to become one of the most decorated fighting units of World War II earning 1,000 awards and decorations, and the respect of the white bombers pilots whose tails they protected on thousands of mission.
As the movie ended, John and Herb, trim and erect and dressed in his Army Air Force uniform, slowly made their way up the stairs out of the theater, surrounded by fellow movie-goers who wanted to shake their hands and thank them for their service.
"It was real," John said, leaning on his cane at the top of the steps. "That was pretty much the way it was."
John and Herb were featured on NBC and The History Channel. Please go to the URLs below and check it out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agwnwqCdwl8
http://www.yourepeat.com/watch/?v=yfYG4PIjIEs
During the long war in Iraq and Afghanistan, coalition forces relied on thousands of military working dogs to help keep them safe by detecting explosives, finding illegal drugs, searching for missing comrades, or targeting enemy combatants. Dozen died in the line of duty. Others struggle with wounds and post-traumatic stress. Many have earned recognition for heroism. Among the heroes is Lucca, a highly skilled German Shepherd/Belgian Malinois mix trained to sniff out explosives and protect the combat Marines and Special Forces she served. 
According to the Military Working Dog Team Support Association, Inc. website (
She has also found Dsh-Ks, which are vehicle mounted .50 caliber Soviet guns. These were hidden along the Tigris River. She also found deadly Dsh-K rounds buried in a cemetery tomb. Her finds led to the arrest of numerous insurgents.
On missions where Lucca sniffed out explosives, she worked off-leash at long distances from Willingham. Her job was to alert on the explosives beforehand and have them rendered harmless so the troops could move on. 
Once she finds the smell she is looking for she will lie down, stare at the scent and communicate the find to Willingham. This action was repeated dozens of time and saved the lives of service members and civilians. As Willingham put it, "Your lives are literally in each other's hands."
They were about four hours into the patrol when Lucca located an IED, her second of the day. When she moved closer to the secondary device it exploded. Rodriguez, hearing Lucca squealing and screaming in pain, 
ran forward to give her first aid and a tourniquet, which saved her life. He then called in a Medevac and continually petted and spoke quietly and reassuringly in an attempt to keep her calm. 
she was running around on her three legs just as she had done when she had all four legs. It was obvious she had the same spirit, same personality as before the injury.
Her flight was paid by the carrier, American Airlines, which also bumped her up to business class. When asked by a reporter at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, Rodriguez - ever the Marine - did not elaborate on what saying goodbye will be like. "It will be hard," he acknowledged. "But seeing Lucca bounce off to a safe home will ease the farewell."
Nonplused by all the strangers petting her at O'Hare's Terminal 3, Lucca worked away at a treat inside the treasured red toy she carried and kept close to her trainer. Rodriguez looked at his partner with love.
"We've got a lot of loyalty between us. We've been together for two deployments now and she saved my life a couple of times, so I've definitely got a tight bond with this dog," he said while affectionately, scratching and petting Lucca who was enjoying every second of the loving attention. She also enjoys the occasional visits by Juan Rodriguez. 
And she even has her own Facebook page. 
The guerrilla war was not going well for the Viet Cong in the late fifties. Badly needed supplies moving down jungle trails from North Vietnam were constantly being spotted by South Vietnamese warplanes and often destroyed. To give themselves a fighting chance, existing tribal trails through Laos and Cambodia were opened up in 1959. The North Vietnamese went to great lengths to keep this new set of interconnecting trails secret. 
By late, 1964 South Vietnamese recon units were inserted into Laos in 'Operation Leaping Lena.' After a number of disastrous missions, it was determined U.S. troops were necessary, and Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) was given the green light to take over the operation.
A newly formed reconnaissance team selected for the initial mission was Recon Team (RT) Iowa. 
The team leader was Master Sergeant Charles Petry along with Sergeant First Class Willie Card, a South Vietnamese Army Lieutenant and five Nungs (fierce fighters of Chinese decent used extensively and paid by U.S. Special Forces). They were the first U.S.-led cross-border secret operation into Laos, code-named 'Shining Brass,' to reconnoiter and interdict infiltration along Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Tension during the idle days ran high, for their highly classified mission could open a new phase of the war. Finally, the rain stopped, but visibility was still poor on the Laotian border to the 
West, where mountain peaks poked above the clouds. It was finally agreed, however, to try and infiltration despite the unfavorable flying conditions. 
Recon Team Iowa members set on the floor of the lead chopper. Dressed in camouflage fatigues and soft bush hats or rags tied around their heads, they carried no identification, and all their gear and weapons were 'sterilized' - non-U.S. government issue. This was a highly secret mission the United States did not want to be traced back to the American forces. 
Thorne was the only American passenger aboard the South Vietnam Air Force flown command and control aircraft. U.S. Army Huey gunships launched at the same time to provide air cover should it be needed at any time during the mission.
The flight arrived over the target area just before sundown. All aircraft circled the area looking for a way to get down to the clearing through the thick angry clouds that blanketed the area. A decent seemed hopeless, and darkness was closing in. Minutes before Thorne intended to cancel the mission and return to Kham Duc; the clouds opened up slightly, allowing the CH-34 carrying RT Iowa to spiral into the slash-and-burn clearing, rapidly discharge its passengers and immediately climb for altitude. As Thorne's helicopter attempted to descend, the clouds again closed up. Thorne ordered the now empty CH-34 to return to Kham Duc. 
As the weather worsened, Thorne continued to orbit near the landing zone in case RT Iowa ran into trouble. After received a message from the team that their insertion was successful, he transmitted that his aircraft was also on its way back. 
Approximately 5 minutes after receiving the patrol's report, the other aircrews heard a constant keying of a radio for roughly 30 seconds. After that, only silence was heard in response to repeated attempts to raise anyone aboard Thorne's helicopter.
The team was extracted without further incident.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail was no longer a mystery, and ultimately became a killing ground for many of the North Vietnamese who worked there, or were just passing through.
In 1999, Thorne's remains were found by a Finnish and Joint Task Force-Full Accounting team that was excavating a helicopter crash site near Thorne's last suspected location. DNA on remains found at the site were those of Thorne and the South Vietnamese airmen. He was buried on June 26, 2003, at Arlington National Cemetery, section 60, tombstone 8136, along with the Vietnam casualties of the mission recovered at the crash site.
Prior to D-Day, the Allies conducted a large-scale deception campaign designed to mislead the German High Command as to the location of the imminent invasion of Europe. The purpose was to make the Germans believe the invasion would occur at Pas-de-Calais rather than at Normandy. The plan worked perfectly. A large number of German divisions were moved to the port of Pas-de-Calais, including units from the Normandy region.
Slow to react, it took a few days before the German High Command realized they had been deceived and ordered divisions to Normandy in an effort to stop the Allies from advancing. One division was the 2nd SS Panzer Division (Das Reich). 
Nearly 440 miles southeast near the French town of Valence the division moved north to Normandy. With French rail network nearly destroyed by strategic Allied bombing, the division was forced to move by road. Along its rush north, it came under constant harassing attacks by the French resistance (Maquis) which over several days managed to kill or wound some 40 German troops near the village of Tulle. 
In retribution for each German casualty, Das Reich soldiers hanged three male citizens of Tulle - 120 men in all. 
Later that day SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Adolf Diekmann, commander of 1st Battalion, 4th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment, moved into Oradour-sur-Glane, possibly mistaken it for nearby Oradour-sur-Vayres. 
His aim was exacting revenge and teaching the French a lesson for supporting the French Resistance movement. They assembled all of the townspeople in the central square under the guise of having their identity papers checked. In addition to all of the local residents who were present on that day, the SS also ensnared six young people who did not live there but had the great misfortune of just having ridden through town on a bicycle trip when the Germans arrived. 
Among those to escape death in the burning barns was Robert Hebras. His mother Marie and two sisters, Georgette, 22, and nine-year-old Denise were not so fortunate. They were among those brutally murdered at the church.
Walking through the ruins, tears in his aged eyes, the 87-year-old remembers the warm, thriving little community that was his village...before the Nazis and their trucks came. 
One man tried to get away before they had gone, he was shot dead." 
During the night of the massacre, the village was looted and torched. 
Lammerding, was tried for the massacres at both Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane, convicted and sentenced to death in absentia but West Germany never extradited him. The court convicted 20 of the defendant and sentenced them to prison. French authorities soon granted the Alsatians amnesty and within five years the German defendants were also released. 
It is just 24 notes sounded on a bugle - and it lasts only 50 to 60 seconds. Yet no piece of music is more widely known in America than the strains of Taps or more apt to render emotion with a melody that is both eloquent and haunting. 
When the captain finally reached his own lines, he discovered in the dim light of a lantern it was actually a Confederate soldier who was already dead. Suddenly, he caught his breath and went numb with shock when he saw the face of the soldier; it was his own son. The boy had been studying 
music in the South when the war broke out. Without telling his father, he had enlisted in the Confederate Army. The following morning, heartbroken, the father asked permission of his superiors to give his son a full military burial despite his enemy status.
As romantic and gut-wrenching as this story is, it is not true; there was no dead son, Confederate or otherwise; no lone bugler sounding out the dead boy's last composition. More importantly, there is no record whatsoever of a Union Army captain by the name of Robert Ellicombe. When or where this fable began is uncertain, but it persisted for decades supported by many believers.
The revision that gave us present-day Taps was made during America's Civil War by Union Gen. Daniel Adams Butterfield, Commander of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Division, 5th Army Corps, Army of the Potomac camped at Harrison Landing, Va. Up to that time, the U.S. Army's infantry call to end the day was the French Final call, "L'Extinction des feux." Gen. Butterfield decided the "lights out" music was too formal to signal the day's end. One day in July 1862, he recalled the tattoo music and hummed a version of it to an aide, who wrote it down in music. 
Summoning his brigade's bugler, Private Oliver Willcox Norton, to his tent one evening, Butterfield showed him the notes written in pencil on the back of an envelope. Several times Norton would sound them on his bugle. Butterfield changed it somewhat, lengthening some notes and shortening others, but retaining the melody as he first gave it to Norton. After getting it to his satisfaction, he directed Norton to sound that call for 'Taps' thereafter in place of the regulation call. The music was beautiful on that still summer night and was heard far beyond the limits of the brigade. 
Although no general order was issued from army headquarters authorizing the substitution of this for the regulation call, each brigade commander exercised his own discretion in such minor matters. Before long, Taps was gradually taken up through the Army of the Potomac call for "light's out" signal. It quickly came into use by the Army of Confederate States of America as well. 
It was unsafe to fire the customary three volleys over the grave on account of the proximity of the enemy, and it occurred to Captain Tidball that the sounding of Taps would be used instead. Thus began the custom of playing Taps at a military funeral, although it did not become a standard component to U.S. 
military funerals until 1891. (Capt. Tidball is the second officer from the left in this photo.)
It was sounded an hour before the final bugle call to end the day by extinguishing fires and lights. The word 'tattoo' itself comes from the Dutch term 'taptoe,' meaning "close the (beer) taps (and send the troops back to camp)."
The site where Taps was born is also commemorated by a monument located on the grounds of Berkeley Plantation. This monument to Taps was erected by the Virginia American Legion and dedicated on July 4, 1969. 
Dennis Baker fictional novel takes the reader into a highly detailed, realistic setting that is invaded by something that breaks the rules of our real-world - five fallen warriors get a chance to return home as they search for closure to their unfinished lives. Using the names of real live heroes who once fought for our country beginning with WWI to the current day, Baker's story takes us to the depths of our emotion of sorrow for those who are gone and joy for the outcome of the choices in their journeys to their past lives.