Interviews
Rear Adm. Charles Grojean: Submariner Who Headed the Nimitz Foundation
Robert Woodard -0
One of the U.S. Navy’s submarine leaders has been the driving force behind the Nimitz Foundation and National Museum of the Pacific War, retired Rear Adm. Charles Grojean, served as executive director of the Nimitz Foundation. The Foundation provides private financial support to expand and enhance the collections, exhibits, and programs of the National Museum of the Pacific War...
This interview was originally published in Recon Magazine in 2005.
As president of the Women’s Memorial Foundation board of directors, retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Wilma Vaught led the campaign that raised $22 million for the Woman’s Memorial, the nation’s first major tribute to women veterans. The memorial, located at the gates of Arlington National Cemetery, also holds the Faces...
The Stonewall Brigade Museum has received the donation of a large pen and ink drawing depicting the Vierville Chateau that played a prominent part in the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944 as a tribute to 115th and 116th Infantry Regiment soldiers who died during the war.
The painting, by French artist Martine Pageot, was gifted to the Verona, Va.-based...
The United States Navy Memorial will postpone the official ceremony of the Normandy Lone Sailor statue dedication due to the ongoing pandemic. The Dedication Ceremony will now be conducted in conjunction with the 78th anniversary of the invasion of Normandy, June 6, 2022.
“It is prudent to make this decision today so that the many people who have been involved...
Don Whipple grew up on a farm in western Kansas, never realizing he would play a role in one of the most famous battles in United States history.
Whipple, now 95 and living in the Denver area, grew up during the Depression as a member of a large family. He attended a one-room school house.
He persuaded his parents to sign...
Additional Airborne Sites West of the Merderet River
In addition to the Merderet River crossing sites we list in the “D-Day Visitor’s Handbook,” there are a number of other memorials scattered a short drive east of the La Fiére crossing that commemorate the desperate fighting by airborne troopers on D-Day and its immediate aftermath.
To reach them, leave St-Mère-Église on D15...
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Operation Neptune laid out a carefully organized assault on the beaches. The landing diagram for the 116th Regimental Landing Team (RLT) is found in “Omaha Beachhead” (Washington, D.C.: U.S. War Department, 1945), p. 31) and reproduced in Stephen E. Ambrose, “D-Day” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), pp. 122-23). It illustrates the timing and composition of...
In 1993 Congress authorized a review of the military records of African-Americans to determine if any racially biased decisions had been made in the decisions to award the Congressional Medal of Honor (CMH), the nation’s highest honor for combat bravery. That review resulted in the awarding of seven CMHs to deserving black servicemen who had earlier been awarded Distinguished...
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia)
Sometime in 1943 the German occupying force in Normandy began construction of a coastal gun battery near the inland village of Maisy about 7 km west of the now better known battery located on the Pointe du Hoc. The Maisy Battery was apparently not fully operable by June 6, 1944. It was bombed by the RAF...
VOUILLY, France—Some of the biggest names in journalism camped out in tents in front of a medieval chateau while covering the epic battles of the 1944 Normandy campaign.
In the weeks following the D-Day invasion, a chateau in Vouilly was the scene of the First Army’s U.S. press camp. Famous names lived in tents in front of the chateau while...