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So I went to see Devotion…
I weighed in last week on the behind-the-scenes attention to detail of the new J. D. Dillard/Erik Messerschmidt Sony Pictures war biopic Devotion, focusing on the too-short life of Ens. Jesse Leroy...
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First Antarctic Pistol Tournament
The Coast Guard’s only heavy icebreaker, USCGC Polar Star (WAGB 10), earlier this month departed to support the annual joint military service mission called Operation Deep Freeze (OpDFrz or ODF), a...
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And Pass the Ammunition
Original caption: “Seaman Barrett C. Benson who was a Methodist minister with two churches at Dalton and LaFayette, Georgia, saw the men of his churches going off to war…Deciding to follow them, he...
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Red Arrow at War
80 Years Ago: Papua, New Guinea, December 1942: “Red Arrow at War by Michael Gnatek” via the U.S. Army National Guard Heritage Painting Program. The 32nd Infantry Division, known as the “Red Arrow”...
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Toughest thing I had to write
This cartoon hit me in the feels this year. That’s because it is the first in my life without my grandfather. A career NCO (Signal Corps), he joined the Guard as a teenager during the war in Korea and...
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Christmas in Rayon City
Starting 30 November and running through the first week of December 1944, the “Angels” from the 11th Airborne Division made their first combat jump– Operation King II, better known later as “Operation...
View ArticleThat kick, tho
I love both war movies and sports movies so it should come as no surprise that 1981’s “Victory,” directed by the great John Huston (shortly after he did one of my favorite films of all time, the...
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The Flight to Freedom’s final chapter
We pause to remember a North Korean fighter pilot today, No Kum-sok. Born in 1932 as Okamura Kyoshi in the Japanese-occupied Hermit Kingdom, he was the son of a baseball player. The teen considered...
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May we all grow up to be Buzz Aldrin
Downing a pair of NorK MiG-15s while flying an F-86 Sabre as part of the famed 51st Fighter Wing over Korea would be the highlight of a career for most, but was just the opening act for Buzz… Col....
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A Smoke and a Read
105 years ago. February 1918. Offical caption: A Canadian soldier enjoys a few minutes with the Canadian Daily Record (Un soldat canadien prenant une pause, s’apprêtant à feuilleter le Canadian Daily...
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Light a candle for the Dorchester Chaplains today
USAT Dorchester during 1942. Note her 4-inch deck gun forward. NHHC Catalog #: SC-290583 Some 80 years ago today, 3 February 1943, the 5,200-ton Gulf & West Indies Steamship Lines passenger...
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Discovering the Seventh Continent, to the call of the Shantyman
Raising the foreyards aboard the 1,500-ton barque-rigged RRS Discovery, base ship for the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition under Australian geologist, Antarctic...
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Just 95 Pfennigs per Week– and all the Bombs you can Catch!
This great image shows a Kratzchen-wearing German Lanser in a set of exceptionally well-prepared trenches during the Great War, triumphantly holding some sort of unexploded ordnance as the rest of his...
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Vale, Ricou Browning, Daddy Frogman
One of Florida’s greats, and the last of the classic 1950s Universal horror film actors, Ricou Browning, has passed this last week, aged 93, at his home in Southwest Ranches, Florida. Raised on Jensen...
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Of Pistachios and the Emperor Ming
As a child of the early 1980s, the first Bond movie I saw in the theatre was Sir Roger Moore’s For Your Eyes Only, and today I will fight for that film’s reputation. I just thought it was great and it...
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80 Years Ago: Calvertville Mosquito Station
The U.S. Navy PT Boat Base at Tulagi (Tulaghi) in the British Florida (Solomon) Islands came about after the island was liberated by Allied forces– primarily the 1st Marine Raiders– in August 1942...
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Cactus Crew Chief
80 Years Ago Today: “March 22, 1943: Technical Sgt. R.W. Greenwood, a Marine, sits in the cockpit of a Grumman Wildcat fighter plane, based at Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, that is credited with...
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Edelweiss Raid 23
More than just a folk song, the Austrian Army (Österreichs Bundesheer) Gebirgsjäger-Wettkampfes is a grueling Alpine mountaineer competition that is sort of the Olympics for mountain warfare folks....
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Maple Leafs over Tunisia
80 Years Ago this month, a brilliant original Kodachrome: A pilot of No. 417 “City of Windsor” Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force climbing into the cockpit of his Supermarine Spitfire fighter at...
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Simon Lake’s Defender found?
Simon Lake, the famed mechanical engineer and naval architect, who held hundreds of patents relating to submarine vessels, engines, and other concepts, built his first operational submersible in 1894...
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