The long-lost Medal of Honor belonging to the "Lion of Little Round Top" has been found.
The Medal awarded to then-Colonel (and later Maj. Gen.) Joshua L. Chamberlain, for his "distinguished gallantry" in leading the 20th Maine volunteers on the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg, came by mail to the Pejepscot Historical Society in Maine in July from a donor who wished to remain anonymous.
Historians from the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, and the U.S. Army have since verified the authenticity of the Medal.
"Though it seems almost too good to be true, we are confident that we are now in possession of Joshua Chamberlain's original Medal of Honor," said Pejepscot Historical Society Director Jennifer Blanchard.
"All of the experts we've consulted believe it to be authentic, and we are tremendously honored to return the medal to Chamberlain's home" in Brunswick, Maine, which is now a museum open to the public, Blanchard said in a statement.
After Chamberlain's death in 1914, the Medal came into the possession of his last living descendant, granddaughter Rosamond Allen, the Times Record of Maine reported.
When she died in 2000, the contents of her estate were donated to the First Parish Church of Duxbury, Mass., and the anonymous donor found the Medal in the back pages of a book he had purchased from the church, the newspaper said. The donor said the Medal was given to the historical society "to honor all veterans."
Chamberlain, who served four terms as Maine governor after the war and was president of Bowdoin College, was called "one of the knightliest generals in the Federal Army" by an adversary -- Confederate Gen. John B. Gordon.
The "Fighting Professor" who taught languages and rhetoric had several horses shot out from under him through 24 battles, in which he was wounded six times, from Antietam to Appomattox.
It was on July 2, 1863, that he passed into legend on the second day at Gettysburg in command of the 20th Maine, which held the far left flank of the Union Army on Little Round Top.
Confederate Gen. James Longstreet sent wave after wave of infantry against Chamberlain's position. The Maine volunteers held, but barely.
Longstreet sent his Alabamians up the hill in one last push. Chamberlain later wrote that his troops were nearly out of ammunition. "At the crisis, I ordered the bayonet," he wrote.
In the desperate melee, a rebel officer aimed his handgun at Chamberlain at point-blank range and fired.
"In the excitement, his aim was poor and, strange to say, I was not hit," Chamberlain wrote. "I struck the weapon from his hand with my saber."
The stunned Alabamians fell back or surrendered under the weight of the charge by the 20th Maine. The flank had not been turned; the line had held. The next day, the charge by massed Confederate troops under Maj. Gen. George Pic
kett would be thrown back by the federals, and the Union would be saved.
Chamberlain's feats at Gettysburg were dramatized in the best-selling novel "The Killer Angels," by Michael Shaara, and the Chamberlain character was played by actor Jeff Daniels in the movie "Gettysburg."
"It's a tremendous privilege to join with the Pejepscot Historical Society, and indeed, the people of Maine, in welcoming home General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain's Medal of Honor," said Sen. Angus King, I-Maine., in a statement.
"This special moment undoubtedly captures the hearts and minds of all Mainers, as we continue to proudly recognize the legacy of General Chamberlain's leadership and heroism," King said.
Chamberlain continued to serve his state and nation long after the war. At age 70, he volunteered to fight in the Spanish-American War and later wrote that he was "greatly distressed" at being turned down.
The Battle of Iwo Jima was an epic military campaign between U.S. Marines and the Imperial Army of Japan in early 1945. Located 750 miles off the coast of Japan, the island of Iwo Jima had three airfields that could serve as a staging facility for a potential invasion of mainland Japan. American forces invaded the island on February 19, 1945, and the ensuing Battle of Iwo Jima lasted for five weeks.
In some of the bloodiest fighting of World War II, it's believed that all but 200 or so of the 21,000 Japanese forces on the island were killed, as were almost 7,000 Marines. But once the fighting was over, the strategic value of Iwo Jima was called into question.
According to postwar analyses, the Imperial Japanese Navy had been so crippled by earlier World War II clashes in the Pacific that it was already unable to defend the empire's island holdings, including the Marshall archipelago.
In addition, Japan's air force had lost many of its warplanes, and those it had were unable to protect an inner line of defenses set up by the empire's military leaders. This line of defenses included islands like Iwo Jima.
Given this information, American military leaders planned an attack on the island that they believed would last no more than a few days. However, the Japanese had secretly embarked on a new defensive tactic, taking advantage of Iwo Jima's mountainous landscape and jungles to set up camouflaged artillery positions.
Although Allied forces, led by the Americans, bombarded Iwo Jima with bombs dropped from the sky and heavy gunfire from ships positioned off the coast of the island. The strategy developed by Japanese General Tadamichi Kuribayashi meant that the forces controlling it suffered little damage and were thus ready to repel the initial attack by the U.S. Marines, under the command of Holland M. "Howlin' Mad" Smith.
On February 19, 1945, U.S. Marines made an amphibious landing on Iwo Jima and were met immediately with unforeseen challenges. First and foremost, the beaches of the island were made up of steep dunes of soft, gray volcanic ash, which made getting sturdy footing and passage for vehicles difficult.
As the Marines struggled forward, the Japanese lied in wait. The Americans assumed the pre-attack bombardment had been effective and had crippled the enemy's defenses on the island.
However, the lack of immediate response was simply part of Kuribayashi's plan.
With the Americans struggling to get a foothold on the beaches of Iwo Jima - literally and figuratively - Kuribayashi's artillery positions in the mountains above opened fire, stalling the advancing Marines and inflicting significant casualties.
Despite a banzai charge by dozens of Japanese soldiers as dusk fell, however, the Marines were eventually able to move in past the beach and seize part of one Iwo Jima's airfields - the stated mission of the invasion.
Within days, some 70,000 U.S. Marines landed on Iwo Jima. Although they significantly outnumbered their Japanese enemies on the island (by a more than three-to-one margin), many Americans were wounded or killed over the five weeks of fighting, with some estimates suggesting more than 25,000 casualties, including nearly 7,000 deaths.
The Japanese, meanwhile, were also suffering major losses and were running low on supplies - namely, weapons and food. Under Kuribayashi's leadership, they mounted most of their defenses via attacks under the cover of darkness.
While effective, the success of the Japanese forces seemed to forestall the inevitable merely.
Just four days into the fighting, U.S. Marines captured Mount Suribachi, on Iwo Jima's south side, famously raising an American flag at the summit. That image was captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the iconic photograph.
More recently, actor/director Clint Eastwood in 2006 made two movies about the events on Iwo Jima called, respectively, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima. The first depicts the battle from the American perspective, while the latter shows it from the Japanese perspective.
Rosalind P. (Palmer) Walter passed away at the age of 95. She is known to millions as the original inspiration for the "Rosie the Riveter" character.
She is appreciated by many for her years of service and support for public broadcasting.
Walter grew up in a wealthy family in Long Island. Her father was Carleton Palmer, who was president and chairman of E.R. Squibb and Sons (which is now part of Bristol Myers Squibb). Squibb and sons sold penicillin, which was in high demand due to the war.
Walter's mother was W. Bushnell, who taught literature at Long Island University. When the US entered World War II, Walter did not go off to college as she could have but rather supported the war effort by working in an airplane factory.
With most of the country's men off serving in the military, women rose up to take the jobs those men vacated. Walter worked the night shift attaching rivets to Corsair fighter planes in a plant in Connecticut.
Syndicated columnist Igot Cassini published an article about her in his "Cholly Knickerbocker" column. Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb wrote a song in 1942, which was based on that article. The Four Vagabonds recorded "Rosie the Riveter" in 1943, and it became a popular song, charting as high as #20.
It is possible that Norman Rockwell heard this song before painting his famous picture of "Rosie the Riveter." His painting was used to encourage women to step up and perform the jobs left behind by the men.
J. Howard Miller also painted a famous picture of "Rosie the Riveter," which was used by the Westinghouse Company's War Production Coordinating Committee to motivate employees to continue working hard for the war effort.
But being the inspiration for countless women during and after the war was just the beginning for Walter, nicknamed "Roz" by her friends.
Walter was one of the principal benefactors for PBS. She was the largest individual supporter of WNET in New York. With her support, the station financed 67 shows or series beginning in 1978.
Walter had an affinity for public television because she had turned down the opportunity to go to college during the war. She found that the programming on public television helped to fill in the education she had missed out on.
According to Allison Fox, who is WNET's senior director for major gifts, Walter felt that public media was the best way to keep the public informed – a cause that Walter was passionate about.
Walter was married twice. Her second husband was Henry Walter, Jr., president and chairman of International Flavors and Fragrances, which provides scents and flavorings for 38,000 products. It was once the largest company in its field.
The Walters were generous supporters of the American Museum of Natural History, Long Island University, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the college scholarship program of the U.S. Tennia Association, and the North Shore Wildlife Sanctuary.
To fully understand just how remarkable the achievement of D-Day and the Normandy campaign that followed was, it is worth casting the net back four years to that darkest hour, June 1940.
Britain and France had declared war against Germany, confident that they had the resources, wealth, and global reach to stop Hitler and the tide of Nazism.
For all Germany's grandstanding and military drum beating, Hitler's Reich lay at the heart of Europe, with little access to the world's oceans, with neither a decent navy nor merchant navy and therefore lacked the resources needed to conduct a modern war.
Britain's Royal Navy immediately imposed an economic blockade while France mobilized its vast army of millions. Britain and France, admittedly apprehensive, nonetheless expected to prevail.
By June 1940, such hopes had been shattered. German shock and awe had delivered its Blitzkrieg, mighty France had crumbled, and the forces of totalitarianism and nationalism were sweeping across Europe and threatening to spread their tentacles even further. With it came oppression, a press that was no longer free, racism, secret police, and, as the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill warned, a "descent into a new dark age made more sinister by the perversions of modern science."
The Nazi swastika fluttered over much of Europe, while the flags of Fascism spread even further. From the Arctic to the west coast of Africa, democracy was dead. For many millions of people, this cancer would bring untold misery, shattered lives, repression, appalling violence, and death.
Britain had evacuated its, admittedly very small, army from across the Channel but had left much of its equipment behind and now faced the prospect of a possible invasion.
Across the Atlantic, Franklin D Roosevelt elected back in 1932 on an isolationist ticket, was President of a united America. Emerging as the most modern and progressive country in the world but with armed forces that were woefully underdeveloped.
With a tiny air corps of a few hundred aircraft and an army that had almost no modern equipment at all, it languished as the nineteenth largest in the world, sandwiched between Portugal and Uruguay.
For both Roosevelt and Churchill, June 1940 represented ground zero. Britain still had much in its favor, and it is entirely wrong, as many have suggested since, that Little Britain stood alone, David against Goliath.
Rather, Britain ruled some 400 million people worldwide, had the world's largest navy, largest merchant navy, access to around 85 percent of the world's merchant shipping, the world's largest empire, vast extra-imperial assets, and a burgeoning Air Force.
The total shock of such a rapid and dramatic defeat on the continent, however, should not be underestimated. Furthermore, with the British Army so small, it had also depended on its ally, France, for land forces. Now that ally and the enormous military strength it possessed, had gone.
The challenge for Britain was to harness its global reach swiftly in a battle against time. Build a new, much larger, and mechanized army for which it had made no plans; Germany's military USP was rapid, overwhelming lightning strikes of force, in which its enemies were swiftly defeated. In June 1940, Britain needed to quickly recover from the shock and ensure Germany was consigned to a long, attritional war for which it was not equipped.
In America, meanwhile, Roosevelt understood that the U.S. needed to equally and urgently rearm on a massive scale too; as he was aware, in this modern age, the Atlantic was not necessarily the barrier it once had been. The isolationist lobby was still powerful, however, and to rearm on the scale he intended required a dramatic political volte-face with a presidential election just months away - an election he intended to fight for a historic third term.
That he was able to begin rearmament on such a big scale and win the November 1940 election was achieved in no small part by telling the American people he was doing so on behalf of Britain and the forces of freedom. That, in turn, required British cash - billions of it - and the start of an increasingly productive relationship between the two nations, whose leadership recognized that cooperation, compromise, and coordination were to be the watchwords if Nazism and Fascism were to be crushed.
And while it was 
true that the U.S. did not formally enter the war until December 1941, America's involvement had begun a lot earlier-with the acceptance of massive arms orders. Lend-lease, signed in March 1941, with the involvement of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet in escorting merchant ships from August 1941 onwards, and in the sharing of intelligence, science, and technology.
On June 6, 1944, a mere four years after the nadir of 1940, Britain and the United States together launched Operation OVERLORD, the D-Day landings that began the liberation of France.
The military growth from both nations and the totality of their respective war efforts had been exponential and quite astonishingly rapid. Much focus has been made ever since on the actual fighting - the tactical level and the coalface of war.
Big-hearted Bon Jovi frontman Jon Bon Jovi has put his heart on his sleeve and his hand in his pocket to help homeless Washington war veterans rebuild their lives.
His Soul Foundation charitable project partnered with non-profit Help USA to provide a seventy-seven-home facility in the city.
The Walter Reed facility has been ten years in the making from concept to opening. It boasts a courtyard, gymnasium, lounge and computer room and can house up to three-hundred veterans.
Time spent on the streets can be lonely and isolating, so the facility encourages residents to socialize and come together for regular events and meetings.
There are a number of programs run by Help USA at Walter Reed designed to help veterans back on their feet.
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development claims up to half the number of veterans found to be homeless in 2010 has now been housed.
However, the problem continues to grow as ex-military men and women return from service suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental health issues.
Jon Bon Jovi has sympathy for these former soldiers, 'Oftentimes, they're left to deal with PTSD and the issue of coming back to the workplace after leaving the battlefield.
Life as you knew it is going to be different, and sometimes, people need that extra help.'
But this isn't the first non-profit homes-for-vets project for the rock star.
Way back in 1989, the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation started Soul Homes, which also provided support for teenagers making the transition from foster care to life in the adult world and people in the community on low incomes.
The Walter Reed facility is set up for low-income individuals who earn half the average wage or less and will be expected to be able to budget a third of their income for rent.
Many vets do work in part-time roles, and some have pensions or are entitled to social security. Sometimes all they really need is a safe space to sleep and the dignity of a little privacy.
Help USA recognizes this as one of the most effective ways of keeping people off the streets. In a statement, the non-profit said, 'Over time, JBJ Soul Homes will give hundreds of people a permanent home with supportive services that will allow them to flourish.'
The opening of the new housing facility comes just as a new documentary 'To Be of Service' is released, which follows ex-servicemen and explores how their service dogs have helped in combating the effects of PTSD.
It shows how this simple bond has transformed the lives of sufferers.
Jon Bon Jovi took up a challenge to write a new track to go with the film and has released 'Unbroken' as a single, although he has been careful to point out that he had not served in the military. '
You have to be honest so that men and women who did serve will feel pride when they hear this song.'
All profits from the release of the single are to be donated to the Patriotic Service Dog Foundation, which endeavors to match vets and first responders with service dogs.
The Soul Foundation has supported more than six-hundred affordable units and supported living facilities across ten US states, which has provided aid for thousands of vulnerable young people as well as military veterans.
The site in Washington will eventually provide 2,100 residential units, of which 432 will be classed as 'affordable,' retail, office, medical and arts and entertainment spaces alongside a hotel and a charter school.
Among the twenty acres of parkland, the Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre will continue to operate as a hospital.
Bon Jovi had two number one hit singles in 1986 from their multi-million selling third album 'Slippery When Wet.'
The singles were 'You Give Love a Bad Name' and the iconic rock chorus 'Living' on a Prayer.' The band has played 2,700 rock concerts in more than fifty countries in front of an estimated thirty-five million fans.
Once the passengers ahead of me finished fumbling with stowing their carry-on luggage in the overhead bins and sitting down, I, at last, reached my aisle seat near the center of the plane. I sat down, bucked in, and said "hello" to the young man sitting in the seat next to me. He said hello back. I then closed my eyes in preparation for my normal routine of falling asleep even before the plane leaves the ground. Today was different, however. I was too excited to sleep.
Fifty years ago, I met some exceptional young men. We were all part of a rifle company humping the jungles of Vietnam. In a matter of hours, I would be seeing 18 of them at a reunion in Myrtle Beach. I know they would have aged, but in my mind's eye, they are still the brave young warriors who did their duty in a nasty war they didn't totally understand. And through it all, bonded together as brothers, placing their lives in each other's hands. I was proud to be one of them.
When the plane reached cruising altitude, and the pilot finished welcoming us aboard, I began a conversation with the young man. His name was Jason, an engineer from Atlanta, who was heading home following a business trip to Los Angeles. When he asked me where I was going, I told him about meeting up with some men I served with in Vietnam. "We read about Vietnam in high school," he said, "but I didn't learn much. There were only four paragraphs about it in our history book." I was amazed. How could a 10-year war that changed the United States in so many ways rate only four paragraphs? I decided to tell Jason as much about the how and whys of the war as best I understood them and what I observed from my ringside seat.
When I finished, Jason wanted to know how the men felt about the war? "They didn't want to be there. They were a long way from home in a hot, dangerous place full of bad smells, bugs, and snakes. Every step they took, they didn't know if it would be their last, "I answered. "Yet in spite of all the uncertainly, the camaraderie we built among each other is what kept most of us going. We had each other's back."
A flight attendant is asking us what we'd like to drink interrupted our conversation. I got some water and Jason got a coke. Sipping our drinks, we both fell into silence. Soon Jason closed his eye, perhaps contemplating what he had just learned about the Vietnam War from an eyewitness. Me I stared in the nothingness, lost in thought about the reunion, and how it would not have happened without a website exclusively for veterans.
The site, TogetherWeServed.com, is a private website where former, retired and active duty men and women reconnect and bond. It's also a place where I met some great people.
The first time I signed on, I was surprised how easy it was to navigate, and within a couple of hours, I found six old army buddies. When someone becomes a member, there are encouraged to fill out their profile page with as much personal information about their military and personal history. There are places for unit assignments, awards, schools attended, and military and personal photos.
To capitalize on this powerful search capacity, I filled out my profile as completely as possible, and as time passed, a whole lot of old army friends contacted me, with the greatest number being those I served with in Vietnam.
After months of exchanging emails and messages over the TWS message center with my Vietnam comrades, the idea of holding a reunion began to take shape. There was a lot of enthusiasm and the beginning of some planning. The final shove, however, came from somewhere else.
One day, I got a TWS message from an unknown veteran. He wrote he had been a member of our company when it arrived in Vietnam in 1965, and for the past eight years, the original members had been meeting for reunions every two years. He wanted to open the next reunion to be held in Myrtle Beach to all veterans from all years who served in the company. I wrote back we would be there and got busy getting the word out.
Reflecting on how it all came about, I was struck by the versatility of TWS. It not only brings together long-lost friends, but it's also a national archive where millions of stories and photos are posted, and with each, a lasting legacy of America's military heritage.
Whenever I get the chance, I like to search for photos and stories posted by vets who served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. It never fails to amaze me the detail some of the veterans have posted. It is better than a history book because it's personal, and because these living, breathing "scrapbooks" come straight from the gut and the heart. The postings by friends and relatives honoring the men and women who paid the supreme sacrifice are the ones that get me the most.
Inspired by the firsthand accounts of historical wars and battles by others, I began making a detailed history of Vietnam. So far, I've posted over 200 photos and detailed stories, beginning with the French occupation. It's still a work in progress, but eventually, it will have all major battles and end with a modern Vietnam, one of our trading partners. What Vietnam veteran would have ever dreamed of the happening?
Somewhere in my mental praising of why I love Together We Served, I must have fallen asleep. The next thing I felt was the plane leveling off, and the pilot telling us we would be landing in 15 minutes. The head flight attendant got on the horn with some gate numbers for some connecting flights and thanked us for flying their airline.
The plane landed at the Atlanta and parked at a gate. Walking off the plane, I said goodbye to Jason and headed for the gate my flight for Myrtle Beach would leave. Two hours later the commuter plane landed. I called the hotel where I would be staying and where the reunion was being held. In a matter of minutes, a van picked me up.
The excitement and anticipation was growing inside as I realized that within minutes, I would be coming face-to-face with some of my combat buddies after more than four decades. They understood better than anyone else about what Vietnam meant because they were there, they shared in the experience too. No doubt Shakespeare had us in mind when he wrote in Henry V, "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."
At the age of twenty-four, Dang Thuy Tram volunteered to serve as a doctor in a National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) battlefield hospital in the Quang Ngai Province. Two years later, she was killed by American forces not far from where she worked. Written between 1968 and 1970, her diary speaks poignantly of her devotion to family and friends, the horrors of war, her yearning for her high school sweetheart, and her struggle to prove her loyalty to her country. At times raw, at times lyrical and youthfully sentimental, her voice transcends cultures to speak of her dignity and compassion and her challenges in the face of the war's ceaseless fury.
The American officer who discovered the diary soon after Dr. Tram's death was under standing orders to destroy all documents without military value. As he was about to toss it into the flames, his Vietnamese translator said to him, "Don't burn this one. It has fire in it already." Against regulations, the officer preserved the diary and kept it for thirty-five years.
In the spring of 2005, a copy made its way to Dr. Tram's elderly mother in Hanoi. The diary was soon published in Vietnam, causing a national sensation. Never before had there been such a vivid and personal account of the long ordeal that had consumed the nation's previous generations. Translated by Andrew X. Pham and with an introduction by Pulitzer Prize winner Frances FitzGerald, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is an extraordinary document that narrates one woman's personal and political struggles. Above all, it is a story of hope in the dire of circumstances - told from the perspective of our historic enemy but universal in its power to celebrate and mourn the fragility of human life.
Readers Reviews
Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is an extraordinarily moving diary of a young doctor from North Vietnam, Dang Thuy Tram, who volunteered to use her medical training at hidden locations in Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam to treat wounded North Vietnamese, National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) soldiers, and local villagers. In constant danger from American and South Vietnamese government forces and longing for her family, her mother's touch, and her boyfriend, from her point of view, she was helping in the effort to reunify Vietnam. Her surgical skills and treatments saved lives, and she provided comfort to those she could not save. The diary brings the reader intimate knowledge of Thuy's life, emotions, and experiences and the multiple horrors and tragedies of war. Her diary, not much bigger than a pack of cigarettes, was found after she was shot and killed by soldiers of the Americal Division close to her forest hospital on June 22, 1970. After a translator explained the contents of the little handwritten book, a U.S. soldier kept it for some 35 years and then sought out and returned it to Thuy's family in Vietnam.
~ Jim DeFronzo
This is an excellent insight into a young woman's perspective of life in her role as a comrade, friend, anti-American fighter, and emerging adult. She introduces the reader to the reality of war at the most basic level. She has integrated typical girlhood dreams with those of her country and shows us the strength of character that so many people fighting for their life and country must possess.
~Anne Wglin
I enjoyed this book, as it is written in diary form, which was it is very personal and emotional, she was a well-educated young doctor whose life was tragically ended far too young.
~Kindle Customer
About the Author
Last Night I Dreamed of Peace is the moving diary kept by a 27-year-old Vietnamese doctor who was killed by the Americans during the Vietnam War, while trying to defend her patients. Not only is it an important slice of history, from the opposite side of Dispatches and Apocalypse.
Now, but it shows the diarist Dang Thuy Tram as a brilliant human being, full of youthful idealism, a poetic longing for love, trying hard to be worthy of the Communist Party, and doing her best to look after her patients under appalling conditions.
She wrote straight from the heart, and, because of this, her diary has been a huge bestseller in Vietnam and continues to fascinate at a time of renewed interest in the Vietnam War.
The long-lost Medal of Honor belonging to the "Lion of Little Round Top" has been found.
It was on July 2, 1863, that he passed into legend on the second day at Gettysburg in command of the 20th Maine, which held the far left flank of the Union Army on Little Round Top.
kett would be thrown back by the federals, and the Union would be saved.
In some of the bloodiest fighting of World War II, it's believed that all but 200 or so of the 21,000 Japanese forces on the island were killed, as were almost 7,000 Marines. But once the fighting was over, the strategic value of Iwo Jima was called into question. 
However, the lack of immediate response was simply part of Kuribayashi's plan.
Just four days into the fighting, U.S. Marines captured Mount Suribachi, on Iwo Jima's south side, famously raising an American flag at the summit. That image was captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the iconic photograph.
Rosalind P. (Palmer) Walter passed away at the age of 95. She is known to millions as the original inspiration for the "Rosie the Riveter" character.
It is possible that Norman Rockwell heard this song before painting his famous picture of "Rosie the Riveter." His painting was used to encourage women to step up and perform the jobs left behind by the men.
Britain and France had declared war against Germany, confident that they had the resources, wealth, and global reach to stop Hitler and the tide of Nazism.
Across the Atlantic, Franklin D Roosevelt elected back in 1932 on an isolationist ticket, was President of a united America. Emerging as the most modern and progressive country in the world but with armed forces that were woefully underdeveloped.
The challenge for Britain was to harness its global reach swiftly in a battle against time. Build a new, much larger, and mechanized army for which it had made no plans; Germany's military USP was rapid, overwhelming lightning strikes of force, in which its enemies were swiftly defeated. In June 1940, Britain needed to quickly recover from the shock and ensure Germany was consigned to a long, attritional war for which it was not equipped.
true that the U.S. did not formally enter the war until December 1941, America's involvement had begun a lot earlier-with the acceptance of massive arms orders. Lend-lease, signed in March 1941, with the involvement of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet in escorting merchant ships from August 1941 onwards, and in the sharing of intelligence, science, and technology.
Big-hearted Bon Jovi frontman Jon Bon Jovi has put his heart on his sleeve and his hand in his pocket to help homeless Washington war veterans rebuild their lives.
However, the problem continues to grow as ex-military men and women return from service suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other mental health issues.
The opening of the new housing facility comes just as a new documentary 'To Be of Service' is released, which follows ex-servicemen and explores how their service dogs have helped in combating the effects of PTSD.
Fifty years ago, I met some exceptional young men. We were all part of a rifle company humping the jungles of Vietnam. In a matter of hours, I would be seeing 18 of them at a reunion in Myrtle Beach. I know they would have aged, but in my mind's eye, they are still the brave young warriors who did their duty in a nasty war they didn't totally understand. And through it all, bonded together as brothers, placing their lives in each other's hands. I was proud to be one of them.
The first time I signed on, I was surprised how easy it was to navigate, and within a couple of hours, I found six old army buddies. When someone becomes a member, there are encouraged to fill out their profile page with as much personal information about their military and personal history. There are places for unit assignments, awards, schools attended, and military and personal photos.
Somewhere in my mental praising of why I love Together We Served, I must have fallen asleep. The next thing I felt was the plane leveling off, and the pilot telling us we would be landing in 15 minutes. The head flight attendant got on the horn with some gate numbers for some connecting flights and thanked us for flying their airline.
At the age of twenty-four, Dang Thuy Tram volunteered to serve as a doctor in a National Liberation Front (Viet Cong) battlefield hospital in the Quang Ngai Province. Two years later, she was killed by American forces not far from where she worked. Written between 1968 and 1970, her diary speaks poignantly of her devotion to family and friends, the horrors of war, her yearning for her high school sweetheart, and her struggle to prove her loyalty to her country. At times raw, at times lyrical and youthfully sentimental, her voice transcends cultures to speak of her dignity and compassion and her challenges in the face of the war's ceaseless fury.
About the Author