The Forgotten Front Military history archive
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Joseph Medicine Crow with President Obama after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 12 August 2009 File 031Article Germany · 1943–1946 The Last War Chief of the Crow Joseph Medicine Crow went to war in 1944 with red paint on his arms under his uniform and an eagle feather in his helmet. In Germany he completed the four deeds a Crow warrior needed to become a war chief, ending with fifty horses taken from the SS. He lived to be 102, the tribe’s historian and its last war chief. Castle Itter on its hill in the Tyrol, Austria File 030Article Itter, Tyrol, Austria · 4–5 May 1945 The Battle for Castle Itter Five days after Hitler’s death, in a castle in the Austrian Alps, American tank crews, German Army soldiers, a converted SS officer and a group of famous French prisoners, including two former prime ministers and a tennis champion, fought side by side against the Waffen-SS. Soldiers of the Polish 22nd Company watch a comrade wrestle with Wojtek the bear in the Middle East File 029Article Persia, Italy and Scotland · 1942–1947 Corporal Wojtek of the 22nd Company Polish soldiers freed from Soviet camps bought an orphaned bear cub on a road in Persia in 1942. He grew up drinking beer and wrestling with the men, was enlisted as a private so he could sail to Italy, and, his company said, carried shells at Monte Cassino. He ended his days in Edinburgh Zoo, listening for Polish voices. General John J. Pershing presents a medal to Stubby, with Robert Conroy behind them, 1921 File 028Article Western Front, France · 1917–1919 The Stray from the Yale Bowl A brindle stray wandered into an Army training camp in Connecticut in 1917, was smuggled to France, and spent eighteen months in the trenches with the 102nd Infantry. He was gassed and wounded, and came home a celebrity. General Pershing pinned a medal on him. His rank of sergeant was never official, but nobody in the regiment argued. A heavily armed SAS jeep patrol in the North African desert, January 1943 File 027Article Libya and Egypt; later Sicily, France and Germany · 1941–1945 The Lion of the Desert Raids An Irish rugby international and Lions forward, Blair “Paddy” Mayne helped found the SAS and led its raids on German airfields in the desert. He finished the war with four Distinguished Service Orders. The Victoria Cross he was recommended for in 1945 was never given, and people are still arguing about why. Charles Upham in battledress after the campaigns in Greece and Crete File 026Article Crete and the Western Desert · 1941–1942 Twice the Victoria Cross A shy New Zealand sheep farmer who did not want a medal won the Victoria Cross twice: on Crete in 1941 and on Ruweisat Ridge in 1942. No other fighting soldier has done it. Then he spent three years trying to escape from German prison camps. Official portrait of Lieutenant Colonel Gregory “Pappy” Boyington File 025Article Solomon Islands and Rabaul · 1941–1945 The Black Sheep Who Came Back Gregory “Pappy” Boyington brawled, drank and argued his way through the peacetime Marine Corps and the Flying Tigers. In the Solomons he led a squadron of misfits to fame, equalled the American record, and vanished over Rabaul. He was given the Medal of Honor as a dead man. Twenty months later he walked out of a Japanese prison camp. Private First Class Ira Hayes, aged 19, in parachute gear at the Marine Corps paratroop school, 1943 File 024Article Iwo Jima · 1942–1945 The Pima Marine on Suribachi Ira Hayes, a quiet Pima from the Gila River reservation, helped raise the flag in the most famous photograph of the war. Then his country turned him into a symbol he never wanted to be. He hitchhiked 1,300 miles to tell one grieving mother the truth. Jimmy Doolittle’s B-25 bomber takes off from the deck of USS Hornet, 18 April 1942 File 023Article Tokyo and the East China Sea · 1942 Sixteen Bombers, One Way Four months after Pearl Harbor, Jimmy Doolittle led sixteen Army bombers off the deck of a Navy carrier to strike Japan, knowing they could not come back. He crash-landed in a Chinese rice paddy convinced he would be court-martialled. Instead he was given the Medal of Honor. Hill 55, the Marine firebase south-west of Da Nang, August 1969 File 022Article Near Da Nang, South Vietnam · 1966–1969 The White Feather of Hill 55 Carlos Hathcock wore a white feather in his hat so the enemy would know who he was. North Vietnam put a bounty on him. The most famous Marine sniper of the Vietnam War was finally stopped not by a bullet but by a mine, and he won his Silver Star pulling men out of the fire. Virginia Hall receiving the Distinguished Service Cross from General William Donovan, 1945 File 021Article Occupied France · 1941–1944 The Limping Lady of Lyon Turned down by the State Department because she had lost a leg, Virginia Hall became one of the most effective Allied agents in occupied France. The Germans hunted “the limping lady” for years. They never caught her. Reckless carrying ammunition for the Marines, 1953 File 013Article Korea · 1952–1954 Fifty-One Trips Through the Fire Bought for $250 from a Korean stable boy, a small chestnut mare carried ammunition for a Marine recoilless-rifle platoon. In a single day at Outpost Vegas she made fifty-one trips to the guns, most of them alone. Audie Murphy in uniform File 010Article Holtzwihr, France · 1943–1945 The Burning Tank at Holtzwihr Audie Murphy was turned away by the Marines for being too small. On 26 January 1945, standing on a burning tank destroyer in eastern France, he held off a German attack for an hour. Doris Miller after receiving the Navy Cross, May 1942 File 020Article Pearl Harbor · 1941–1943 The Mess Attendant at Pearl Harbor The Navy of 1941 would only let Doris Miller cook, clean and wait tables. When Japanese aircraft struck Pearl Harbor, he carried his dying captain to cover and then fired an anti-aircraft gun he had never been trained to use. Corporal Hershel W. Williams File 019Article Iwo Jima · February 1945 Four Hours with a Flamethrower Turned away by the Marines for being too short, Woody Williams landed on Iwo Jima in February 1945 carrying a seventy-pound flamethrower. For four hours he went pillbox to pillbox while his covering riflemen fell. Simo Häyhä at Kollaa, 1940 File 018Article Kollaa, Karelia · Winter 1939–1940 A Hundred Days at Kollaa In the Winter War of 1939–40, a quiet Finnish farmer with an iron-sighted rifle held a stretch of front at Kollaa against the Red Army. How many men he killed is still argued over. He called his own tally his list of sins. Studio portrait of Nancy Wake, 1945 File 017Article Marseille · Auvergne · 1940–1944 The White Mouse A runaway from Sydney became a journalist in Paris, smuggled Allied airmen out of France, and parachuted back in 1944 to arm thousands of French resistance fighters. The Gestapo never caught her. Irena Sendler in 1942 File 016Article Warsaw · 1939–1945 The Names in the Jars A Warsaw social worker used a pass for typhus inspections to get into the ghetto, and led a network of women that smuggled Jewish children out. She wrote their real names on lists and buried them in jars. The One-Eyed Ghost of Zwolle File 015Article Netherlands · Korea · 1944–1951 The One-Eyed Ghost of Zwolle Léo Major lost an eye days after D-Day and refused to go home. In April 1945 he walked into the occupied Dutch city of Zwolle alone. By morning the Germans had gone. How much of that was his doing is still argued about. Colonel Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller in Korea, November 1950 File 014Article Haiti · Nicaragua · Pacific · Korea · 1918–1955 Five Navy Crosses Lewis “Chesty” Puller fought in the jungles of Haiti and Nicaragua, on Guadalcanal and Peleliu, and in the frozen hills of Korea. He is the most decorated Marine in American history. Sergeant Alvin C. York, 1919 File 011Article Argonne, France · 1918 Sergeant York’s Seventeen A Tennessee blacksmith’s son who had asked not to fight led the survivors of a seventeen-man patrol in the Argonne on 8 October 1918. By the end of the morning they had more than a hundred prisoners. Desmond T. Doss File 012Article Okinawa · 1944–1945 Lord, Help Me Get One More Desmond Doss refused to carry a rifle. On a cliff on Okinawa he lowered wounded men down a rope one at a time, and became the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor. First Lieutenant Sharon Ann Lane, U.S. Army Nurse Corps File 009Article Chu Lai, South Vietnam · 1969 Ward Four, Chu Lai First Lieutenant Sharon Lane cared for Vietnamese patients at an evacuation hospital. She was the only American servicewoman killed by enemy fire in the Vietnam War. An F4U-4 Corsair of Fighter Squadron 32 about to launch from USS Leyte, about 1950 File 008Article Chosin Reservoir, Korea · December 1950 Tell Daisy I Love Her Ensign Jesse Brown, the first African American to complete the Navy’s flight training, was shot down near the Chosin Reservoir in December 1950. His wingman crash-landed beside him on purpose.