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Conflict · 1939–1945 · 83 files

Second World War

From 1939 to 1945 the Second World War was fought across Europe, Africa, Asia and every ocean. Our files cover the soldiers, medics, pilots, sailors, resistance agents and rescuers, many of them overlooked, whose courage helped decide it.

Western Front 24 Eastern Front 5 Resistance networks 9 North Africa & Mediterranean 11 Pacific 31 Search and filter these files →
Written stories

Case files from the Second World War

Painting of Coast Guard landing craft evacuating Marines under fire near Point Cruz, Guadalcanal File 042Article Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands · 1939–1942 “Did They Get Off?” Douglas Munro joined the Coast Guard because its job was saving lives. On Guadalcanal in September 1942 he steered his landing craft between hundreds of trapped Marines and the Japanese guns so the others could load. Shot as the last boats pulled away, he asked one question before he died. He is the only Coast Guardsman ever awarded the Medal of Honor. Finnish officers including Lauri Törni conferring before a counter-attack, 27 July 1944 File 041Article Karelia; later Vietnam · 1939–1965 The Soldier of Three Flags Lauri Törni fought the Soviet Union for Finland in two wars and won the Mannerheim Cross, then trained with the Waffen-SS and was jailed at home for treason. He escaped to America, joined the Army as Larry Thorne, and became a legend in the Green Berets. He vanished in a helicopter over Vietnam in 1965. His remains came home thirty-four years later. Spitfires of No. 249 Squadron RAF at readiness at Ta Kali, Malta, 1942 File 040Article Malta · 1942 Screwball: The Falcon of Malta Rejected by the Royal Canadian Air Force for lack of schooling, George “Buzz” Beurling crossed the Atlantic on a convoy to join the RAF. Over besieged Malta in the summer of 1942 he became the deadliest Allied fighter pilot of the campaign. He could not fit into the war’s end, or the peace. Private First Class Jacklyn H. Lucas, U.S. Marine Corps, Medal of Honor recipient File 039Article Iwo Jima · 1942–1945 Two Grenades in a Trench Jack Lucas lied his way into the Marine Corps at fourteen, stowed away on a troopship to reach the fighting, and turned seventeen at sea on the way to Iwo Jima. On his second day ashore he threw himself on two Japanese grenades to save his friends. He became the youngest Marine ever awarded the Medal of Honor. Eleanor Butler Roosevelt receives the Medal of Honor awarded posthumously to her husband, 1944 File 038Article Utah Beach, Normandy · 1917–1944 “We’ll Start the War from Right Here” At fifty-six, with a bad heart and arthritis that made him walk with a cane, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., the eldest son of a president, talked his way into the first wave at Utah Beach. When the landing craft came in a mile off course, he made the decision that saved the day. Five weeks later he was dead. Judy, a pointer, sits on the deck of HMS Grasshopper listening to a sailor File 037Article Yangtze River; Sumatra · 1936–1946 Prisoner 81A: The Dog Called Judy Judy, a Royal Navy ship’s dog on the Yangtze, survived two sinkings, a crocodile, a jungle trek across Sumatra and three years in Japanese prison camps. A starving airman shared his rice with her and talked a drunken camp commandant into registering her as a prisoner of war: the only dog ever to be one. German prisoner-of-war identification card of Joseph R. Beyrle, Stalag XII-A, July 1944 File 036Article Normandy; Germany; the Oder front · 1944–1945 The Paratrooper Who Joined the Red Army Joe Beyrle jumped into Normandy on D-Day with the 101st Airborne, was captured, escaped from a German prison camp and walked east until he met a Soviet tank battalion. He fought with them towards Berlin. At home he had already been declared dead, and his funeral had been held. Two Grumman F4F-3 Wildcats of Fighting Squadron 3 in flight off Oahu, 10 April 1942 File 035Article Off Bougainville; the Gilbert Islands · 1942–1943 Four Minutes over the Lexington On 20 February 1942 Lieutenant Butch O’Hare flew alone into a formation of nine Japanese bombers heading for his carrier, USS Lexington, and broke up the attack. He became the Navy’s first Medal of Honor aviator of the war. His father had been murdered for helping to convict Al Capone. Chicago’s airport bears his name. An inflatable dummy Sherman tank of the kind used in the D-Day deception File 034Article Lisbon and London · 1941–1945 Agent Garbo and the Army That Never Was Juan Pujol García, a Catalan poultry farmer, invented a network of twenty-seven spies in Britain who did not exist, and fed Hitler’s intelligence service a story so convincing that German divisions sat waiting at Calais for weeks after D-Day. Germany gave him the Iron Cross. Britain gave him the MBE. Major Richard I. “Dick” Bong, portrait File 033Article New Guinea and the Philippines · 1942–1945 America’s Ace of Aces A Wisconsin farm boy who once looped the Golden Gate Bridge became the highest-scoring American fighter pilot in history: forty Japanese aircraft, all in a P-38 Lightning. Sent home to safety, he died testing a jet fighter on 6 August 1945, the day the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima. The Neuf-Brisach area of Alsace after American artillery fire, 8 February 1945 File 032Article Houssen, Alsace, France · 1942–1945 “Blanket My Position” In a frozen ditch in Alsace in January 1945, Lieutenant Garlin Conner called American artillery down on his own position to stop six hundred Germans and six tanks. He went home to a Kentucky farm and never talked about it. It took his widow, a stranger and a twenty-two-year campaign to get him the Medal of Honor, seventy-three years later. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Portrait of Noor Inayat Khan in WAAF uniform File 005Article Occupied France · 1943–1944 Madeleine: The Last Radio in Paris A children’s author trained as a wireless operator, Noor Inayat Khan kept transmitting to London for more than three months after her network was destroyed around her. Airwomen of the 46th Guards Night Bomber Regiment in front of a Po-2 at Gelendzhik File 004Article Soviet Union · Poland · 1942–1945 Eighteen Sorties in One Night Nadezhda Popova flew 852 combat missions in a plywood-and-canvas biplane with no radio and no guns. The German soldiers below called her regiment the Night Witches. Andrée de Jongh after receiving the George Medal at Buckingham Palace File 003Article Belgium · France · Spain · 1941–1943 Dédée and the Line Through the Pyrenees At twenty-four, Andrée de Jongh walked a British soldier from Brussels to Spain and then talked the British into funding her. The Comet Line she built brought more than seven hundred Allied servicemen home. U.S. Marines land on Guadalcanal, 7 August 1942 File 002Article Guadalcanal · 1942 The Scout Who Would Not Talk Captured behind Japanese lines on Guadalcanal with a small American flag hidden in his clothing, Jacob Vouza was tied to a tree, bayoneted and left for dead. He chewed through the ropes. Troops of the 1st Infantry Division wade ashore at Omaha Beach, 6 June 1944 File 001Article Normandy · June 1944 The Medic of Omaha Beach Wounded before he reached the sand, Corporal Waverly Woodson Jr. treated more than two hundred men over thirty hours. The Medal of Honor recommended for him never came.
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Manuel Perez ▸ Film Pacific Manuel Perez One pillbox stopped his whole company — so he took it alone and killed 18 The Arizona Kid ▸ Film North Africa & Mediterranean The Arizona Kid Wounded and alone, he charged into 200 Germans with flamethrowers and broke them Garlin Conner ▸ Film Western Front Garlin Conner The second-most decorated U.S. soldier of WWII — and it took 73 years to honor him Rodger Young ▸ Film Pacific Rodger Young The nearly deaf soldier who demoted himself — then crawled alone into the guns Snuffy Smith ▸ Film Second World War Snuffy Smith They pinned the Medal of Honor on a man who'd been peeling potatoes on KP The Flying Undertaker ▸ Film Pacific The Flying Undertaker He took on 13 enemy planes with one wingman and shot down 7 Buzz Beurling ▸ Film North Africa & Mediterranean Buzz Beurling He shot down 27 planes in 14 days — then couldn't survive peace Llewellyn Chilson ▸ Film Western Front Llewellyn Chilson Truman gave him seven medals and said they should be a Medal of Honor Joe Beyrle ▸ Film Eastern Front Joe Beyrle The only man to fight for both America and the Soviet Union in WWII Paddy Mayne ▸ Film North Africa & Mediterranean Paddy Mayne He commanded the SAS and destroyed 100 planes. Still no VC Bill Crawford ▸ Film North Africa & Mediterranean Bill Crawford They gave his Medal of Honor to his father — they thought he was dead Vito Bertoldo ▸ Film Western Front Vito Bertoldo The half-blind cook who held off two panzer divisions alone