When North Korea invaded South Korea behind a barrage of artillery fire on June 25, 1950, they came in a swell of 200,000 troops, overwhelming the Republic of Korea's Army and moving to conquer the entire country.
The closest American ground force to the Korean Peninsula at the time was the U.S. Army's 24th Infantry Division, under the command of Maj. Gen. William F. Dean. With little more than 15,000 troops, Dean was asked to do the seemingly impossible by Gen. Douglas MacArthur: push back the communist invasion or hold them off long enough for reinforcements to arrive.
Dean and the 24th Infantry Division not only went head-on against the entire North Korean Army, they were determined to win or die trying.
William F. Dean was an accomplished military officer and combat veteran by the time the Korean War began. He led troops fighting Nazi Germany in Europe during World War II and had returned to the U.S. to prepare for the invasion of Japan before the war ended. He and the 24th were on the Japanese island of Kyushu on July 25, 1950.
After the fall of South Korea's capital, Seoul, Dean began his response by airlifting the 1st Battalion of the 21st Infantry Regiment into Korea on July 1, under the command of Lt. Col. Charles B. Smith.
Smith, a veteran of Guadalcanal, had combat experience, and his battalion was the most well-prepared. Called Task Force Smith, the 540-man unit was ordered to halt the North Korean advance at Osan, just south of Seoul. Task Force Smith had to hold the communists off until the 24th Division could reach Korea by sea.
The Americans fought the communists for hours, but their weapons were ineffective against Soviet-built T-34 tanks and were forced to withdraw. By then, Dean and his Division had landed and met the advancing North Koreans at Pyeongtaek, Chochiwon, and Taejon.
Peacetime cutbacks took their toll on his forces, and his largely inexperienced troops were overwhelmed at every turn. At Taejon, however, the Americans' mission finally bore fruit. The U.S. Army was able to hamper the North Koreans for a week, as the invasion turned to intense urban combat in the city.
North Korea's invasion force might have been overwhelming to the green soldiers of the U.S. Army, but the Americans put up enough of a fight in a tactical loss at Taejon that the United Nations was able to turn it into a strategic victory. As the Americans held off the North Koreans, UN forces began to set up a defensive perimeter around the southern port city of Pusan.
Dean and his forces crossed the Kum River near Taejon on July 12, 1950, to meet the North Koreans. Meanwhile, elements of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division and 25th Infantry Division began to finish the establishment of what would become known as "The Pusan Perimeter."
Inside Taejon, Dean and his soldiers found themselves quickly cut off from the outside world and with each other. As the North Koreans jammed their radios and overwhelmed their positions, even Maj. Gen. Dean was forced to join the street fighting, destroying tanks with grenades and the new M20 Super Bazooka.
On July 20, the perimeter was supposed to be established, so Dean ordered the Army to leave Taejon, but it was too late by then. The North Koreans had surrounded the city and captured the American defenders. They tried to fight or sneak their way out, but many - including Dean - were captured.
Dean, like many Americans held by North Korea, would remain in captivity for the duration of the war. For his defense of Taejon, he was "posthumously" awarded the Medal of Honor, but only because no one knew he was alive. It wasn't until he was repatriated after the war that the Army discovered he'd survived the invasion.
Without William F. Dean's leadership, determination, and sheer force of will to hold off the communist advance, the Korean War might have ended in a communist victory just weeks after it began.
By June of 1862, the Civil War was not going well for the Union cause. A string of Union defeats in 1861 dampened the enthusiasm for the Union cause, but a victory at the Battle of Shiloh and the Federal capture of New Orleans was enough to restore hope for the preservation of the Union.
On June 6, 1862, the Union and Confederate Navies would fight a pitched battle on the Mississippi River that would have a resounding significance, not just for the war, but for the future of the U.S. Navy itself. The First Battle of Memphis, also known as "The Battle of the Rams," would mark the end of privateering in the United States and lead to a purely professional U.S. Navy.
The Mississippi River was a key component of the Union's plan to cripple the Confederacy and end the rebellion. Called the "Anaconda Plan," the Union strategy required a blockade of the southern coast and control of the Mississippi River to strangle the South's ability to wage war effectively.
President Abraham Lincoln declared the southern blockade in 1861, and by 1862, it was fully in place. Although Rear Adm. David Farragut had control of New Orleans, the Union was far from in control of the Mississippi. It would need to capture the Confederate stronghold at Vicksburg first, and to get to Vicksburg, the Union Navy had to go take Memphis.
The Union sent a flotilla of five gunboats under Flag Officer Charles H. Davis, along with four unarmed rams from the U.S. Ram Fleet toward Memphis in June 1862. The command structure of this flotilla was varied at best and, at worst, downright dangerous. The gunboats were staffed by Union naval officers but nominally under the command of the Army. The rams were civilian boats that reported directly to Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.
As any experienced military officer will tell you, the lack of a unified command can mean a potential disaster for any fighting force. Luckily for this ragtag riverine fleet, the Confederates were even worse off. Consisting of just eight rams, they were sent north to avoid capture at New Orleans and to stave off Federal attempts to control the river.
The rebel fleet was under the command of civilian riverboat captain James Montgomery, who had no military experience and relinquished a unified command entirely before the battle. This granted each ram the ability to operate independently, an act that experienced military officers protested, to no avail.
To make matters worse for the Confederates, the civilian captains used Confederate Army gun crews and made no attempts to establish command of the crews or even learn about artillery. The battle became an ugly slugfest when the two fleets met on the river on June 6. Neither side coordinated their movements after the Union flagship Queen of the West rammed the CSS Colonel Lovell.
After hours of fighting, as citizens of Memphis watched, all but one Confederate ram were captured or sunk, with the CSS General Earl Van Dorn fleeing toward Vicksburg. 100 Confederates were killed, and another 150 were captured. Memphis was completely cut off from the rest of the South by land or sea. It would surrender at noon that same day.
On the Union side, The Queen of the West was disabled in the middle of the river, and the Union Navy had only one wounded officer. It was a lopsided victory that ended Confederate challenges to the Union Navy on the Mississippi and opened the way to the Siege of Vicksburg.
Most importantly, the Navy (on either side) would never again allow civilians to command ships in combat and would demand that only trained naval officers, under a unified command, lead sailors into combat.
This is a great program. It's laid out nicely. I'm so happy with it. It's so easy to add information. Things are better than the ones I have used before. TWS has more detail to it, and I am able to look up old Navy buddies. I want to thank the IT person for the best program I have ever seen. It's just an all-around great program.
SK1 Robert Smith US Navy Reserves (Ret)
Served 1969-2003
At the 1918 Battle of the Somme, a British cavalry officer orders a search party to follow a dozen German troops into No Man's Land, swearing he saw them go underground. He was advised against it as the sun was setting – soon, the legend says, wild, ghoul-like men will feast on the Germans and kill anyone who gets in the way.
Of all the military myths and legends that sprung from World War I, there is possibly no greater mystery – and nothing closer to the men in the trenches – than the Wild Deserters of No Man's Land.
Most military myths are passed down from generation to generation, usually from a friend who "knows a guy who was there." You've probably heard about the infamous "ether bunny," the Bigfoot of the Vietnam War, or even a ghost story or two (especially if you were stationed on Okinawa). The Wild Deserters are a legend shared on both sides of the war by thousands of men across almost all armies.
Except, notably, the United States.
Everyone knows that No Man's Land is the area on the front lines between two opposing armies. It's remembered as a harsh, muddy, unforgiving place, shell-pocked, cratered by unexploded ordnance, and littered with the dead and dying. But that didn't stop the persistent rumors that men lived out there as the war raged around them.
Poet Wilfred Owe once described it as "like the face of the moon, chaotic, crater-ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness." Screams and moans of dying men, forever lost, echoed across the open ground. Anyone who dared to try and rescue them might never hear the shot that ended their lives too.
Yet, troops in all the trenches, be they Australian, Austrian, British, Canadian, French, German, or Italian, swore that a cadre of deserters who would no longer fight the war braved life in No Man's Land. Legend has it they lived off the leavings of the dead, picking away at them for food, water, weapons, and clothing.
Like something from Night of the Living Dead, they came out at night to fill the bellies with the flesh of the newest dead men and would even fight each other for the freshest morsels. Over time, these deserters slowly devolved from men to feral zombies as they feasted on their fellow soldiers.
While most of the men who fought World War I knew the tales of the Wild Deserters, it wasn't until 1920 that the legend appeared in print for the world to know. It was the aforementioned British cavalryman, Lt. Col. Ardern Arthur Hulme Beaman, who first wrote about them in his wartime memoir, "The Squadroon."
After that, the legend had been written about dozens of times, even among the Americans, who allegedly had no deserters turn into wild men. It was said that random shots fired in the dead of night were the wild men, who were either fighting over a fresh corpse or creating one from a dying soldier.
So what happened to these wild men when the war ended and No Man's Land disappeared? Army Captain Sir Osbert Sitwell wrote that the feral troops were all captured and rounded up, then gassed to death so they couldn't continue ravaging the French countryside after all the troops departed.
Constituted from the 18th AAF Base Unit, the designated 1st Motion Picture Unit was an independent Army Air Force film production outfit, creating between three and four hundred films in three years. They were assigned to produce propaganda, instructional, animation, historical, combat, and morale-boosting materials for military and civilian consumption in support of the WWII effort:
"… in December 1941, the Air Corps was a part of the Army, and motion picture production was the responsibility of the Army Signal Corps. USAAF Commanding General "Hap" Arnold believed that forming an independent film entity would help the Air Service gain its independence. At a meeting in March 1942, General Arnold commissioned Warner Bros. head Jack L. Warner, producer Hal Wallis and scriptwriter Owen Crump to create the unit. Warner was made Lieutenant Colonel and Crump a Captain, but Wallis, who was then in production with Casablanca, did not accept the offer. Of immediate concern was a critical shortage of pilots and recruits. Arnold told Warner he needed 100,000 pilots and contracted with Warner Bros. to produce and release a recruitment film, which would come to be known as "Winning Your Wings. "
Made up entirely of film industry professionals, it was activated in July 1942 at Fort Roach (Hal Roach Studios) in Culver City, CA. "…The studio had everything the motion picture unit needed: six warehouse-size sound stages, prop rooms, editing bays, costume and makeup departments, and even an outdoor set that looked like a city street ... The lot comprised 14 acres and dozens of buildings..."
The 1st MPU's initial product, "Live and Learn," came out in March 1943. They also oversaw the training of combat camera units domestically and in the ETO and PTO and eventually produced highly detailed tactical battle training preparations too. Titles of its better-known films, some of which were shown in public theaters, include:
1942
"Winning Your Wings"
"Men of the Sky"
1943
"Recognition of the Japanese Zero Fighter"
"Photographic Intelligence for Bombardment Aviation"
"Reconnaissance Pilot"
"Position Firing"
"The Rear Gunner"
"Aircraft Wood Repair"
"Ditching: Before and After"
1944
"Land and Live in the Jungle"
"Land and Live in the Ocean"
"Target for Today"
"Resisting Enemy Interrogation"
"Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress"
"Flak"
"Target Tokyo"
1945
"Wings for this Man"
"The Last Bomb"
"Both 16 and 35-millimeter units were used. Sixteen-millimeter Auricon and Filmo cameras were frequently used, but 35 mm was the standard. Mitchell studio cameras were used for sound movies, but the most ubiquitous machine was the 35 mm Eyemo. This was a handheld unit that filmed most of the war documentaries.
Since those pioneering days, anyone who has gone through basic military training with any branch has seen films such as those, and today even in virtual reality or podcasts, on every topic imaginable that is very familiar to veterans. The roster of notable celebrities, stars, technicians, and artists who were assigned (several of whom have posthumous TWS Remembrance profiles) included Ronald Reagan, Brenda Marshall, Robert Preston, Jack Warner, Betty White, George Reeves, Arthur Kennedy, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Paul Mantz, Lee. J. Cobb, Joseph Cotton, Howard Landres, Eugene Marks, Arthur Gardner, Clark Gable, William Holden, DeForest Kelley, John Huston, James Stewart, Wayne Thiebaud, Oren Haglund, Mel Blanc, John Sturges, Jack Warner, Van Heflin, Burgess Meredith, Clayton Moore, Owen Crump, Knox Manning, Mel Torme, George Montgomery, Alan Ladd, Guy Kibbe, Rudolph Ising, Frank Thomas, Bill Scott, and many others; in total about 1,100 individuals were members of the unit. They were called the "Celluloid [or Hollywood] Commandos" and used the motto "We Kill 'Em With Fil'm." In addition to numerous documentaries released over time, at least two dozen scholarly and historical books have been written since 2002, recognizing their achievements and exploits.
In his memoirs, German Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel wrote of the American military, "Our major miscalculation was in underestimating their quick and complete mastery of film education."
The legacy of that 1st Motion Picture Unit lives on in every branch and numerous units of today's armed forces, in many instances being recognized for exceptional unit service and individual valor through war and peace. Intelligence and training media that once required cumbersome delicate machinery can now be accomplished from thousands of feet altitude at hundreds of miles, remotely, and transmitted almost instantly to an infinite cadre of frontline and planning personnel.
"When the Germans surrendered in May 1945, General Arnold gave [Owen] Crump one last task: to travel throughout Europe shooting color film of the impact Arnold's Air Force had had. Crump and his crew traveled from city to city, including Berlin, filming the damage done by years of bombing. They recorded the interrogations of top Nazi officials captured after V-E Day. They shot footage of the Nazi concentration camps Ohrdruf and Buchenwald as Allied forces liberated the camps.
Back in California, Ronald Reagan and Technical Sergeant Malvin Wald, a scriptwriter, were among the few people to see the developed film of the camps. 'Even though it was a summer day, Reagan came out shivering - we all did,' Wald recalled in a 2002 interview. 'We'd never seen anything like that.' Arnold was ultimately unable to procure enough funding from Congress to create a documentary using Crump's footage, and the unused raw film was interred in archives."
"Photography" means to draw with light. Military photographic (invented circa 1840-50 France) pictures had their American, beginning with Mathew Brady, Timothy O'Sullivan, and a handful of others making still images during the Civil War. In WWI, fliers of the US Army Air Service reportedly flew 35,000 hours, making 18,000 images of enemy positions, from which 585,000 are said to have been printed. By then, the earliest cinematic cameras were also already in use. The famous Edward J. Steichen (Cmdr.) was exposing combat films aboard US Navy carriers in WWII. Even so, the photographic section of the AAF Signal Corps made up only three percent of it. On August 22, 2014, a Combat Camera Memorial Bench was dedicated at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
The 1st MPU was disbanded when WWII wound down in 1945-46. Fort Roach reverted to continued use in civilian commercial and other film production following millions of dollars in AAF improvements of the facility. It was demolished after 1963. But, more than twenty modern production studios, including SONY, Amazon, TriStar, and Lorimar, and the television homes of "Jeopardy" and "Wheel of Fortune," still occupy that original district of Culver City.
I have a file and photos in my home office. I expect family members will find on my passing and not understand the background of them. TWS has a great format for preserving my military history and my memories of the events that are contained in those files and photos.
Lt Col Edward Pagliassotti US Air Force (Ret)
Served 1964-1987
House lawmakers this week finalized plans to guarantee a cost-of-living boost in veterans benefits next year, sending legislation to the White House to be signed into law in coming days.
The move guarantees that veterans' support payments will keep pace with increases in Social Security checks and other federal stipends. It's a non-controversial annual procedure for Congress, but one that needs to be finished before the end of the year to ensure that veterans benefits keep pace with inflation costs.
Despite ongoing partisan fights on Capitol Hill over federal spending, the Veterans' Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act was adopted by both chambers without any opposition.
The legislation promises that VA benefits - including disability compensation, clothing allowances, and survivors' support - will see a cost-of-living hike in 2024 equal to that of Social Security payouts. The Social Security hikes are automatic each year, set under federal law. But Congress must re-approve the veterans hikes each year.
In January, the Social Security cost-of-living increase (and the veterans benefits hike) was 8.7%, the highest in 40 years. That reflected higher than expected costs for things like housing costs, groceries and fuel purchases over the last year.
The Senior Citizens League, a nonpartisan advocacy group focused on the rights of older Americans, has predicted the 2024 hike will be around 3.1%.
Lawmakers said they worked to finish the veterans cost-of-living guarantee earlier than usual this year to signal financial stability for veterans.
"Our veterans put their lives on the line to defend our freedoms, and they deserve certainty when it comes to providing for their families," said Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who chairs the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee and sponsored the Senate version of the legislation.
Similarly, the chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee - Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill. - said before the House vote on Monday that "veterans should not have to worry whether their earned benefits can cover their basic needs. They should not have to choose between gas to get to work or groceries for their family."
The White House has not expressed any concerns about this year's version of the legislation and has supported the move annually. Officials did not say when the measure may be signed into law.
Until May 9, 2023, the U.S. Army Fort located halfway between Killeen and Waco, Texas, was named for Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood. First founded during World War II to test and train tank destroyers, the installation is now home and headquarters to several major U.S. Army combat units.
In May 2022, a special commission for renaming Defense Department assets named for the Confederates recommended renaming Fort Hood. No matter how you feel about the commission or its mission, John Bell Hood wasn't a great person to name an Army base after. He was best known for losing men, battles, and his own limbs.
The base will be rechristened Fort Cavazos for U.S. Army Gen. Richard Cavazos, the Army's first Hispanic four-star General, Commanding General of the Army's Forces Command, a Korean War veteran, and recipient of two Distinguished Service Crosses.
General Richard Cavazos died in 2017 from complications due to Alzheimer's Disease and was buried with full military honors at Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in Texas. Before his death, he led one of the Army's most storied careers.
A Texas native, Cavazos might have been one of the most Texan Texans who ever lived. He grew up playing football and attended what would become Texas Tech, where he continued his football career and became a distinguished graduate of the school's ROTC program. An injury might have ended his football career in college, but it didn't finish his Army career.
Lt. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger, a contemporary of Cavazos, would later say that Cavazos' Army career was the epitome of "Army done right."
Cavazos graduated in 1951 and went directly to basic officer training at Fort Benning, Georgia. From there, he was immediately sent to lead soldiers in the ongoing Korean War. By the time the men of E Company, 2nd Battalion, 65th Infantry Regiment met Cavazos, the 65th Infantry had been in Korea since the start of the war and was composed of soldiers from Puerto Rico.
He immediately won the hearts and minds of his men for his ability to speak Spanish, their native language, which improved their battlefield effectiveness. In February 1953, E company found itself under attack and outnumbered, but his leadership not only won the day for his unit, Cavazos advanced under heavy enemy fire to capture an enemy soldier, earning him a Silver Star.
A few months later, Cavazos led the company on an assault on Hill 142. During the battle, they were forced to defend Outpost Harry, an important defensive position. They were again outnumbered and came under heavy artillery fire, but they managed to hold the outpost for three hours. When they were forced to go back to friendly lines, Cavazos led them in an orderly retreat and, though wounded, repeatedly went back to retrieve wounded and missing soldiers under fire. For these actions, he received the Distinguished Service Cross.
After Korea, he stayed in the Army and found himself in the Vietnam War. By 1967, he was a lieutenant colonel, leading the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment. At Loc Ninh, near the Cambodian border, his Battalion came under a forceful Viet Cong attack.
The Viet Cong were entrenched on a hill and began assaulting a company of his men. Rather than stay on defense, Cavazos led his troops in an attack on the Viet Cong, forcing them into their fortifications. He cut off their retreat, pounded them with air strikes and artillery, and then led his men into close-quarters combat. They overran the VC unit and assaulted the hilltop. As the insurgents broke and ran, Cavazos and his men destroyed them. His leadership earned him a second Distinguished Service Cross.
By 1976, he was the first "Hispanic officer to be promoted to a General's rank, and six years later became the first to be promoted to four-star General. He retired in 1984.
Reprinted with permission from We Are The Mighty
When aspiring operators are being screened for selection into Delta Force, a collection of the most elite soldiers in the Army, they have to pass a series of rigorous and challenging tests, including a ruck march that they begin with no announced distance, no announced end time, and no encouragement. If they can complete this grueling ruck march, they will face a selection board and possibly join "The Unit."
If they fall short, they go home.
Delta Force was pitched and built to be an American version of Britain's Special Air Service by men like Col. Charles A. Beckwith, a Special Forces leader who had previously served as an exchange officer to the 22 SAS. Originally stood up in 1977, Delta was always focused on counter-terrorism.
Unsurprisingly, Beckwith got the nod to lead the unit he had helped pitch. He looked to the SAS itself for methods to winnow out those who might not be resolute at a key moment in battle and embraced their stress event: a superhuman ruck march.
It wasn't an insane distance, just 74 kilometers - or 40 miles. That's certainly further than most soldiers will ever carry a ruck, but not an eye-watering number.
But SAS candidates conducted this training at the end of what were already-grueling weeks of training. And on the day of the final march, they were woken up early to start it.
But the real mind game was not telling the candidates how far they had to go or how far they had already gone. They were just told to ruck march to a set point that could be miles distant. Then, a cadre member at that point would give them a new point, and this would continue until the candidate had marched the full distance.
Beckwith told his superiors that he needed two years to stand up Delta Force, partially because he felt it was necessary to incorporate this and other elements of SAS selection and training into the pipeline, meaning that he would need to recruit hundreds of candidates to get just a few dozen final operators. President Jimmy Carter wanted a new anti-terrorism unit, and senior Army brass were initially loathe to wait two years to give it to him.
According to his book Delta Force: a memoir by the founder of the military's most secretive special operations, Beckwith had to fight tooth and nail to get enough candidates and time for training, but he still refused to relax the standards. Beckwith successfully argued that, to make a unit as capable or better than the SAS, the Army would have to fill it with men as tough or better.
This couldn't just be men great at shooting or land navigation, or even ruck marching. It had to be those people who would keep pushing, even when it was clearly time to quit.
To make his argument, he p
ointed to cases where capable men had failed to take appropriate action because, as Beckwith saw it, their resolve had failed. He pointed to the 1972 Olympics in Munich, where great German marksmen failed to take out hostage takers early in the terror attack because they simply didn't pull the trigger.
Beckwith needed guys who could pull the trigger; he knew that the SAS process delivered that, and he didn't want to risk a change from the SAS mold that might leave Delta with people too reluctant to get the job done during a fight.
And so, the "Long Walk" was born into Army parlance. This is that final ruck march of selection. It's 40 miles long, it's conducted on the last day of training when candidates are already physically and mentally completely exhausted, and the rucksacks weigh 70 pounds.
Oh, and there is an unpublished time limit of 20 hours. And candidates can't march together; each gets their own points and has to walk them alone. And, like in the SAS version, they don't actually ever know the full course, only their next point.
Finally, while the first classes conducted the Long Walk at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, later iterations had to conduct the exercise in the mountains of West Virginia, adding to the pain and exhaustion.
Even men like future Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who came to the course after the existence and general distance of the Long Walk were known, talked about how mentally challenging the uncertainty would be. He lost 15 pounds in the tough training that led to the march, and then he struggled on the actual event.
In his book, Never Surrender A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom, Boykin says that he was exhausted by the 8-hour mark. Having started before dawn, he would still have to walk deep into the night with his heavy ruck to be successful, praying that every point was his last.
But the next point wasn't the last. Nor was the one after that or the one after that. The cadre assigning the points cannot cheerlead for the candidate, nor can they tell the candidate if they're doing well or if they're marching too fast. Either the candidate pushes themselves to extreme physical and mental limits and succeeds without help or encouragement, or they don't.
In Boykin's class of 109, only about 25 people even made it to the Long Walk, and plenty more washed out during that test. Freezing in the weather and exhausted from the weight, terrain, and distance, Boykin did make it to the end of the course. But, interestingly, even completing the prior training and the Long Walk does not guarantee a slot in Delta. Instead, soldiers still have to pass a selection board, so some people train for months or years, are marched to exhaustion every day for a month during training, have to complete the Long Walk, and then they get turned away by the board, are not admitted, and don't become capital "O" Operators.
Delta Force has undoubtedly made America more lethal and more flexible when it comes to missions, but there are strict standards that ensure that only the most fit soldiers can compete in this space. And the Long Walk forces everyone but the most tenacious out.
Reprinted with permission from We Are the Mighty.
TWS has helped me remember by giving me the tools to look up old shipmates and see how they turned out. Also, by answering these questions, many memories come flooding back. I have missed my time in the Navy, and TWS has helped me remember the good and the bad, though the good far outweighs the bad.
NCC Steven Fifield US Navy Veteran
Served 1965-2001
Two veterans are sharing a table at a Veteran's Day event. They are not friends. One hates the other; one's apologetic. One served duty in Vietnam in country, in the field.
The other served state-side, yet both shared time during the conflict. One will not embrace the other, shake his hand, or speak because he has no respect for his comrade.
In his eyes, he didn't survive battle, carry weapons, fight, or see death face to face. The other will not speak about his claim to have 'served' during the conflict.
One bears the scars of war – the sounds, the smoke, the shells, and screams of death – the blood of his companions dying.
And the other's memories are of California sunsets, beaches, swimming, laughing, and playing while his table-mate was in the battle.
They ignore each other and share the moment but don't speak. They cannot, will not, for the memories are too real for both.
The celebration ends, th
e men stand up to leave, and neither one looks back or speaks. The years they shared – the 60s and the 70s – are over, passed, but both men know them in different ways.
One knows the horror of Vietnam; the other only knows of California and good times. Neither can find a place in life for one another, and they'll only share the time – the years – but nothing else.
They both are veterans of an era, of a war from separate vantage points. And neither does nor will find room or friendship for his comrade.
War's a personal thing that cannot and that will not be a shared memory. A veteran is a veteran to himself and no one else.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States seized the initiative in the Pacific by delivering a resounding defeat to the Japanese at the Battle of Midway. Following this turn of events, the U.S. decided to attack the Solomon Islands, especially Guadalcanal, to support further operations as they advanced toward the Japanese home islands.
Guadalcanal became a critical target for the Americans because of its position along Allied supply lines, its proximity to further Japanese bases, and because of an airfield the Japanese had constructed at Lunga Point. The U.S. sent more than 60,000 Marines to capture the island. Pfc. James J. Messina was one of those Marines.
Messina served his country as a Private First Class in the Marine Corps, joining well before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Pennsylvania native joined in September 1941 and served through the end of the Battle of Guadalcanal, where Messina and the 1st Marine Division defeated the Imperial Japanese Army over the course of six months.
Sadly, James Messina died in 2008, but luckily, he wrote and illustrated his personal history in World War II for his children before his passing. Over the course of eight years, he worked to finish his memoir, which was extraordinarily well-written and well-received, even by local journalists.
Messina declined to publish his memoir, saying it was a labor of love meant for his children to remember him. After his death, however, his son Charles decided his father's story wasn't just the tale of a hardworking man from Pennsylvania standing up to do his duty for God and Country. It was the story of many Americans from that era, many of which never got the chance to share their stories.
"Steel Soldier: Guadalcanal Odyssey" is the result of Charles Messina's labor of love in his father's memory. The younger Messina didn't just recreate his father's work, he painstakingly researched the details of the story and incorporated dates, facts, and statistics into his father's narrative.
"I made it my job to thoroughly research every detail of his story," Messina said in a statement to Together We Served. "The book is visually stimulating, entertaining, and educational at the same time. Readers will be moved by his story and gain a great deal of insight about one specific unit of the 1st Marine Division."
Messina's book follows his dad's Marine Corps journey from the recruiter's office through basic training, to combat training in New Zealand and then on to Guadalcanal, where Messina and his fellow Marines would be relieved by the Army in September 1942. It's an honest and deeply personal account of some of the most intense fighting of the Pacific War, from the point of view of an everyman from Pennsylvania.
War history buffs will love the Marine Corps action as the war unfolds in front of Messina. Nonfiction fans will love the real-life information interwoven throughout Messina's firsthand narrative. Everyone will love just how relatable this story of extraordinary feats by ordinary men can really be.
"Steel Soldier: Guadalcanal Odyssey" will be released on July 25, 2023, but is available for preorder now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Books-a-Million in hardcover and paperback, starting at $19.95.
The closest American ground force to the Korean Peninsula at the time was the U.S. Army's 24th Infantry Division, under the command of Maj. Gen. William F. Dean. With little more than 15,000 troops, Dean was asked to do the seemingly impossible by Gen. Douglas MacArthur: push back the communist invasion or hold them off long enough for reinforcements to arrive. 
The Americans fought the communists for hours, but their weapons were ineffective against Soviet-built T-34 tanks and were forced to withdraw. By then, Dean and his Division had landed and met the advancing North Koreans at Pyeongtaek, Chochiwon, and Taejon. 
Inside Taejon, Dean and his soldiers found themselves quickly cut off from the outside world and with each other. As the North Koreans jammed their radios and overwhelmed their positions, even Maj. Gen. Dean was forced to join the street fighting, destroying tanks with grenades and the new M20 Super Bazooka. 
On June 6, 1862, the Union and Confederate Navies would fight a pitched battle on the Mississippi River that would have a resounding significance, not just for the war, but for the future of the U.S. Navy itself. The First Battle of Memphis, also known as "The Battle of the Rams," would mark the end of privateering in the United States and lead to a purely professional U.S. Navy. 
The rebel fleet was under the command of civilian riverboat captain James Montgomery, who had no military experience and relinquished a unified command entirely before the battle. This granted each ram the ability to operate independently, an act that experienced military officers protested, to no avail. 
Of all the military myths and legends that sprung from World War I, there is possibly no greater mystery – and nothing closer to the men in the trenches – than the Wild Deserters of No Man's Land. 
Yet, troops in all the trenches, be they Australian, Austrian, British, Canadian, French, German, or Italian, swore that a cadre of deserters who would no longer fight the war braved life in No Man's Land. Legend has it they lived off the leavings of the dead, picking away at them for food, water, weapons, and clothing. 
"… in December 1941, the Air Corps was a part of the Army, and motion picture production was the responsibility of the Army Signal Corps. USAAF Commanding General "Hap" Arnold believed that forming an independent film entity would help the Air Service gain its independence. At a meeting in March 1942, General Arnold commissioned Warner Bros. head Jack L. Warner, producer Hal Wallis and scriptwriter Owen Crump to create the unit. Warner was made Lieutenant Colonel and Crump a Captain, but Wallis, who was then in production with Casablanca, did not accept the offer. Of immediate concern was a critical shortage of pilots and recruits. Arnold told Warner he needed 100,000 pilots and contracted with Warner Bros. to produce and release a recruitment film, which would come to be known as "Winning Your Wings. "
"Both 16 and 35-millimeter units were used. Sixteen-millimeter Auricon and Filmo cameras were frequently used, but 35 mm was the standard. Mitchell studio cameras were used for sound movies, but the most ubiquitous machine was the 35 mm Eyemo. This was a handheld unit that filmed most of the war documentaries.
The legacy of that 1st Motion Picture Unit lives on in every branch and numerous units of today's armed forces, in many instances being recognized for exceptional unit service and individual valor through war and peace. Intelligence and training media that once required cumbersome delicate machinery can now be accomplished from thousands of feet altitude at hundreds of miles, remotely, and transmitted almost instantly to an infinite cadre of frontline and planning personnel.
"Photography" means to draw with light. Military photographic (invented circa 1840-50 France) pictures had their American, beginning with Mathew Brady, Timothy O'Sullivan, and a handful of others making still images during the Civil War. In WWI, fliers of the US Army Air Service reportedly flew 35,000 hours, making 18,000 images of enemy positions, from which 585,000 are said to have been printed. By then, the earliest cinematic cameras were also already in use. The famous Edward J. Steichen (Cmdr.) was exposing combat films aboard US Navy carriers in WWII. Even so, the photographic section of the AAF Signal Corps made up only three percent of it. On August 22, 2014, a Combat Camera Memorial Bench was dedicated at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. 
House lawmakers this week finalized plans to guarantee a cost-of-living boost in veterans benefits next year, sending legislation to the White House to be signed into law in coming days.
In May 2022, a special commission for renaming Defense Department assets named for the Confederates recommended renaming Fort Hood. No matter how you feel about the commission or its mission, John Bell Hood wasn't a great person to name an Army base after. He was best known for losing men, battles, and his own limbs.
Cavazos graduated in 1951 and went directly to basic officer training at Fort Benning, Georgia. From there, he was immediately sent to lead soldiers in the ongoing Korean War. By the time the men of E Company, 2nd Battalion, 65th Infantry Regiment met Cavazos, the 65th Infantry had been in Korea since the start of the war and was composed of soldiers from Puerto Rico. 
After Korea, he stayed in the Army and found himself in the Vietnam War. By 1967, he was a lieutenant colonel, leading the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment. At Loc Ninh, near the Cambodian border, his Battalion came under a forceful Viet Cong attack. 
If they fall short, they go home.
ointed to cases where capable men had failed to take appropriate action because, as Beckwith saw it, their resolve had failed. He pointed to the 1972 Olympics in Munich, where great German marksmen failed to take out hostage takers early in the terror attack because they simply didn't pull the trigger.
In his book, Never Surrender A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom, Boykin says that he was exhausted by the 8-hour mark. Having started before dawn, he would still have to walk deep into the night with his heavy ruck to be successful, praying that every point was his last.
The other served state-side, yet both shared time during the conflict. One will not embrace the other, shake his hand, or speak because he has no respect for his comrade.
e men stand up to leave, and neither one looks back or speaks. The years they shared – the 60s and the 70s – are over, passed, but both men know them in different ways.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States seized the initiative in the Pacific by delivering a resounding defeat to the Japanese at the Battle of Midway. Following this turn of events, the U.S. decided to attack the Solomon Islands, especially Guadalcanal, to support further operations as they advanced toward the Japanese home islands.
"I made it my job to thoroughly research every detail of his story," Messina said in a statement to Together We Served. "The book is visually stimulating, entertaining, and educational at the same time. Readers will be moved by his story and gain a great deal of insight about one specific unit of the 1st Marine Division."