I've always suspected that the prison guards desperately didn't want to be captured by the Soviet Army, and if they had abandoned the POWs they...
Nolan Ruiz was five bomber missions from going home. Instead, he spent the end of the war as a POW, then on a weeks-long forced march. Not a...
Fearing the POWs at Cabanatuan would be executed, the Army Rangers executed a daring rescue....
Conrad Meijer was a civilian Dutch teenager, but that didn't keep him from ending up in a Japanese POW camp....
Middleton's decision to defend Bastogne defined the Battle of the Bulge....
Janice Hobson Monro remembers the song playing on the radio that fateful Sunday morning in Hawaii. It was the Ink Spots' "I Don't Want to Set the...
It might have better been named Operation SNAFU. But it seemed like a good idea at the time. https://ww2thebigone.com/2016/11/30/stuck-in-the-ussr/
Hundreds of Americans went down with the HMT Rohna, but it was kept secret from their countrymen....
The last great battle of battleships saw the U.S. Navy get even for Pearl Harbor....
Before he became famous as a college football coach, Paul Dietzel flew B-29s against Japan....
Edward Loustalot holds a melancholy place in World War II history, but his friends remembered him for his life, not his death....
To Joe and Ben Gracy, Paul Tibbets was just another pilot, and the Enola Gay was just another B-29 they serviced. That changed on Aug. 6, 1945....
Dale Carver returned from World War II with memories that haunted him. He turned them into poetry....
Shot down in occupied France the day after D-Day, P-51 pilot Osce Jones set about trying to avoid capture....
By surviving 35 bombing missions in a B-17, Rex Shearer and crew joined an exclusive club. http://ww2thebigone.com/2016/07/11/a-lucky-bastard
Joining the German military in 1943 led Joachim Hoehne to the cutting edge of the future of aviation....
When Bob Talley's ship was sunk by a U-boat in 1942, those in his lifeboats weathered storm, sharks and stress before they were rescued....
Monroe Combs had his ticket home. Instead of the easy route, he took the Easy Company route....
When people think of World War II, the famous flag-raising at Iwo Jima is one of the most memorable images. But there is another flag from that...
Whether by parachute or glider, the first allied soldiers to reach land didn't have an easy arrival....