Remembering a WWII Veteran
Donald Lewis stood crammed among a group of friends and fellow soldiers trying not to lose his balance. The landing craft they were on was pushing toward its destination on Omaha Beach at Normandy, France. A strong current threatened to pull them away from their destination. Lewis was a long way from his hometown of Thurmont, but he along with millions of other young men had been drafted to serve in the armed forces during World War II. Though he had entered the army as a private, he had risen to the rank of staff sergeant. Lewis stood at the front of the landing craft hanging onto the edge of the wall. Around him, he could hear the explosion of artillery and see the explosions on the water or beach. Things seemed a mass of confusion, but it was all Read more…
Rejected four times, Menchey becomes a decorated veteran
Before Francis J. Menchey could fight for his country amid the islands of the Pacific Ocean during World War II, he first had the win the battles against the draft boards at home that didn’t want him to fight. When Menchey graduated from Gettysburg High School in 1943, the U.S. had been at war with the Axis Powers for about 18 months. Like many Americans, the young man wanted to do his part to help his country. Shortly before his graduation, he traveled to Baltimore to try and enlist in the U.S. Navy. The U.S. Navy rejected him because the physician at the enlistment center said Menchey had a hernia. That was news to Menchey who felt perfectly fine and had never had any indication that he had a hernia. “Returning to Gettysburg, Menchey consulted his family physician who declared Read more…
The Return of a Ritchie Boy
Cascade may be a small community nestled in the mountains, but what happened there 75 years ago helped changed the world. Guy Stern fled Nazi Germany in 1937 as a young man of 15. He left behind his parents and two siblings. “I made efforts to get the papers for my family to emigrate and I almost succeeded, but in the end it did not work,” said Stern in an interview with the Waynesboro Record Herald. Stern’s family eventually perished in the Holocaust. Meanwhile, Stern attended St. Louis University and was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942. Only a few months after his basic training in Texas, he received secret orders to transfer to Camp Ritchie in 1943. Because of his German heritage, he had been selected as part of a military intelligence training program. Using the knowledge of Read more…
The "Last to Fall" is now available for pre-order
It can be said that the last deaths at the Battle of Gettysburg were two marines who fell from the sky in an airplane in 1922. Confused? Are you starting to type a comment to tell me that the Battle of Gettysburg was fought in 1863 and there weren’t any marines there? You would be right on both counts. However, during the first week of July 1922, nearly a quarter of the U.S. Marine Corps re-enacted Pickett’s Charge in a historical way and also using modern equipment, such as tanks and airplanes. Think about that for a second. There’s a whole sub-genre of science fiction based on alternative history. One of the standards of the genre is Harry Turtledove’s “Guns of the South.” In it, time travelers give the Confederacy Uzis to use in their Civil War battles. That is Read more…
Secret message found on pigeon skeleton
Imagine getting a coded message from World War II delivered around 70 years too late. More than 250,000 pigeons were used during the war to deliver messages. The pigeons even had their own arm of the military called the National Pigeon Service. David Martin of England found what is probably the last carrier pigeon message from the war. It was attached to the skeleton of the pigeon that Martin found in a chimney that he was renovating. “Theories suggest the bird was making its way from behind enemy lines, perhaps from Nazi occupied France during the D Day invasions heading toward Bletchley Park which was Britain’s main decryption establishment during World War II,” according to the ABC News report. “Others say the bird likely got lost, disorientated in bad weather or was simply exhausted after its trip across the English Read more…
The Sands of Time Reveal Plane After 70 Years
I wrote about a lost plane that had been found in Alaska after 60 years last month. Now I’ve come across another story of a lost plane. In the 1960’s movie Flight of the Phoenix, James Stewart plays a pilot whose plane crashes in the Sahara in a storm. He then must find a way to get his passengers to safety before they die of thirst or from desert bandits. He eventually does get them to safety. Though the pilot of an American-made Curtiss Kittyhawk P-40 that crashed in desert 70 years ago apparently survived his crash, he may not have been as lucky as Stewart. A Polish oil company worker, Jakub Perka, recently found the nearly intact plane while exploring a remote area of the Western Desert in Egypt about 200 miles from the nearest town. “Perhaps low on Read more…
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