by jack | Feb 12, 2023 | Espionage, WWII
September 7, 1941. SOE agent Michael Trotobas and 5 other agents parachuted into central France. Trotobas was a perfect candidate for the SOE. He was an excellent athlete, a small arms instructor, had led a platoon at Dunkirk, and he spoke French. For the next 6 weeks...
by jack | Jan 30, 2023 | Espionage, WWII
The nazis considered him their most valuable spy in England, and awarded him the Iron Cross in 1944; the British awarded him the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire later that same year. How did an ex-chicken farmer and part-time hotel manager living in Madrid...
by jack | Jan 23, 2023 | USMC, WWII
One of the six Marines shown in the famous photo of raising the flag on Mount Suribachi at Iwo Jima was PFC Ira Hayes. 19 years old at the time, Hayes, a member of the Gila River Indian community, enlisted in the Marines 8 months after Pearl Harbor and volunteered...
by jack | Dec 30, 2022 | WWII
When his father, a World War I flying ace, took him for a flight in an Avro 504 biplane, young Peter Vaughn-Fowler was hooked on flying. Years later he would become the youngest pilot to fly secret missions for the RAF. At age 19, Vaughn-Fowler was assigned to the...
by jack | Nov 29, 2022 | Citizen Heroes, Espionage, WWII
2 A.M. September 22, 1943 Under a pale crescent moon a British Halifax bomber drops through clouds over the countryside in occupied France. At 900 feet, an exit panel opens and a lone parachutist prepares to jump. She smells the damp farmland below and watches faint...
by jack | Nov 22, 2022 | Citizen Heroes, WWII
A mother of two, living in Ithaca, New York, Florence Finch was raising two children while working as a secretary at Cornell University. When in 1995 the Coast Guard commemorated the 50th anniversary of the end of WWII by naming an administrative building in Hawaii in...
