Always Remember - World War II Through Veterans’ Eyes

Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution” was carried out in 42,400 concentration camps, ghettos, and forced labor camps spread out throughout Europe.  An estimated 15 to 20 million people were murdered in these camps including six million Jews. For the young American GIs who liberated them, the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps far outweighed anything they had experienced in war.  Tasked with the welfare, James S. Moncrief was one of...

The Siegfried Line which spread from the Netherlands to Switzerland was Nazi Germany’s 400 mile westernwall, a heavily fortified defensive line that took the Allies six months to pierce.  David Saltman remembered the Siegfried Line as a formidable opponent in itself.  Robert Maxwell  regained consciousness after throwing himself on a grenade to save his buddies only to find himself alone in an abandoned house.  Maxwell found a lieu...

The final battle before the anticipated invasion of mainland Japan, Okinawa became the deadliest battle for US forces in the Pacific with savage fighting on land, air, and especially sea.  Nicknamed the Typhoon of Steel because of its intense artillery fire and bombardments on land, air and sea, the battle for Okinawa cost 49,000 US casualties including more than 12,000 deaths.  For the Japanese soldiers, the battle for Okinawa was...

Millions of Allied and Axis soldiers became POWs in WW II.  His weight down to 90 pounds, sick with malaria, Edgar Kuhlow overheard two German guards talking about his condition – “He is going to stay laying here in Germany.”  Forced to work in railyards 2 – 3 times a week in Munich, William Ledeker knew he was better off than the concentration camp prisoners he would occasionally see from nearby Dachau.  Recovering from being shot...

With the Germans seemingly on the run everywhere in Europe, the Allies had hoped WW 2 would be done by year’s end 1944.  Those hopes were shattered when the Germans launched their largest counter offensive on the western front, the Battle of the Bulge.  A frustrated Tom Carr, who served as a scout, had warned his officers for weeks that the ermans appeared to be preparing a sneak attack, only to be ignored.  The Germans weren’t the...

As the Allies embarked on their island hopping campaign growing ever closer to the Japanese mainland, they soon discovered that their enemy in the Pacific was adept at presenting new challenges on every island.  Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, Peleliu, Leyte would all forever be ingrained in WW 2 veterans memories - and in their nightmares.  Richard V. Morgan remembers Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman,, who stood atop a heavily garrisoned Jap...

The African Americans who served on the USS Mason destroyer had already endured 90 mph winds and 60 foot waves that split the Mason's deck as they shepherded convoys to safety in the Atlantic when their beloved Captain Blackford was replaced with a racist captain who claimed the African Americans sailors he led smelled, couldn’t swim, and were hard to educate .  1st Lieutenant Vernon Baker, also an African American, destroyed six m...

Bloody Omaha Beach bore the brunt of D-Day’s savage fighting with more casualties than all of the other D-Day beaches combined.  Aware that the men he led in one of the first waves to land on Bloody Omaha Beach had no prior combat experience, Staff Sergeant Walter Ehlers single handedly took out several German machine gun nests even while he was in their crossfire.  Ehlers was at first elated when he was told he would be receiving ...

From landing on Utah beach amidst floating bodies in life preservers to a combat glider landing aboard one of the "flying coffins" at Operation Market Garden. Robert Bowen saw a lot of action in World War II before he was badly injured and taken prisoner of war at the Battle of the Bulge.  As a POW a badly injured Bowen was nearly strangled by an enraged German doctor as Bowen lay on his operating table.  Back home, Bowen's young w...

While Winston Churchill believed an Allied invasion of Italy would find it the soft underbelly of the Axis, most GIs agreed with General Mark Clark's description of it as "One Tough Gut" as they faced ferocious fighting at Salerno and along the Gustav Line at Mt. Sammucro, Monte Cassino and Anzio.  Episode 6 begins with Helen Callentine, a US Army Nurse whose hospital ship was bombed before she ever made it to Salerno; Russell Dark...

Arnold "Dutch" Nagel volunteered to be a paratrooper in WW 2 because of the extra $50 per month jump pay paratroopers received and the distinctive uniforms they wore.  By war's end, he had participated in 4 combat jumps - Sicily, Maiori, Italy, Operation Market Garden in Holland, and on D-Day at Sainte Mere Eglise, France - and had fought in the invasion of Sicily, the liberation of Naples, Italy, D-Day, and the Battle of the Bulge...

In August 1942 the US launched its first major amphibious landing of WW 2 in the Solomon Islands.  The battle became a bitter war of attrition as both sides fought feverishly for months on land, sea and air for the strategically important islands.  Jefferson DeBlanc became a fighter ace in just one day as he shot down six Japanese fighters before DeBlanc himself was shot down.  With his back, arms, and legs wounded from shrapnel, D...

In the aftermath of the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, and the declaration of war against Germany and Japan, millions of Americans didn't wait till their draft numbers were called upon.  They immediately enlisted, including nearly 200,000 underage Americans.  In the rigorous basic training that followed, young Americans learned that war was for keeps as they learned the fighting skills that would keep them alive in comba...

As he looked into the USS California's CL compartment located on the ship's lower level, John McGoran "...saw pure horror, my first realization that the game was now for keeps.  I saw bodies, many bodies, some of which I knew, just by their eyes, were lifeless."  Like the rest of the US Pacific fleet battleships moored at Ford Island's "Battleship Row", the USS California had been hit by torpedoes in the massive surprise attack aga...