Captured German prisoners from the raids on Norway and France spoke freely about Rommel’s plans in North Africa and fears of an Allied Second Front. Via bugged conversations by the British, what they revealed about life inside Germany was shocking: (🧵)

U.S. Army Sergeant Phillip Henry Kilver was killed in Vehicle Accident October 25, 1970 in Darlac Province, South Vietnam. Phillip was 21 years old from Bluffs, Illinois. HHC, 19th Engineer Battalion. Remember Phillip today. Bronze Star #American Hero🎖️🇺🇸

Captain Kermit Evans, 31, was killed Dec. 2 when the Marine CH-46 helicopter he was traveling in was forced to make an emergency water landing near the shore of Lake Qadisiyah in western Iraq. We are so thankful for your service, words can not express our gratitude.

Chief Special Warfare Operator William Chad “Bill” Mulder, a highly decorated US Navy SEAL, died on June 9, 2017, in Boerne, Texas, 127 days after retiring from the Navy in January 2017. He was a combat veteran of multiple overseas deployments and received numerous awards, including three Bronze Stars with Valor, a Joint Service Commendation Medal with Valor, and others. According to accounts from his widow Sydney and the SEAL community, Mulder struggled with the cumulative effects of combat, including PTSD, traumatic brain injury, insomnia, anxiety, and related issues. On the day of his death, he was on a FaceTime call with his family when he showed a firearm and ended 🕊️ his life; police later found him in his vehicle in a parking lot. The Navy SEAL Foundation and other sources have publicly described his death as resulting from service-connected wounds. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. His story prompted congressional action, including the Navy SEAL Chief Petty Officer William “Bill” Mulder (Ret.) Transition Improvement Act, aimed at improving support for veterans during the transition out of the military. #PTSDAwarness #PTSDVeterans #NAVYSEAL #USNAVY #RIP

For fourteen years, everyone thought U.S. Air Force Technical Sergeant John Chapman died in the first two minutes on top of a freezing 10,000-foot mountain in Afghanistan. Then modern image technology unlocked the thermal camera footage recorded by a Predator drone circling high in the clouds on March 4, 2002. When Pentagon investigators watched the enhanced screen, hardened combat generals broke down in tears. Because the video proved that after everyone else had left the mountain peak, John Chapman woke up alone in the snow and fought an entire army by himself. That night on the peak of Takur Ghar, thirty-six-year-old Chapman, a father of two little girls from Connecticut, had charged uphill through thigh-deep snow alone to silence an enemy bunker and save his pinned-down team. Hit from a second bunker, he fell motionless. Believing he was dead, the surviving team was forced to retreat down the ridge. Chapman was not dead. The drone footage showed him regaining consciousness in the pitch-black snow, surrounded on three sides by enemy fighters, with nine separate wounds in his body. In total darkness, with no comrade beside him and nobody on earth watching except a silent camera in the sky, he refused to surrender. For more than an hour, he fought from inside the bunker, killing an enemy fighter in bare-handed close combat when they tried to rush him. Then, at dawn, Chapman heard the heavy thump of rotor blades in the mist. An American Chinook helicopter carrying twenty-three U.S. Army Rangers was flying straight toward the peak to rescue him, right into the sights of an enemy rocket launcher. Chapman knew that if he stayed safe inside the rock bunker, those twenty-three young Americans in the helicopter would be blown out of the sky. So on the thermal video, investigators watched John Chapman deliberately climb out of the bunker, stand up tall in the open snow, and fire into the enemy positions to draw every machine gun on the mountain onto his own chest. He died in the snow as the sun rose, shielding the incoming helicopter with his life. True bushido is what a warrior does when he thinks nobody will ever know his story. The sky was watching, John. And America will remember your name forever.

🇺🇸 News from the US — AFTER 83 YEARS, AN AMERICAN AIRMAN IS FINALLY COMING HOME. Six siblings served. Five came home. For Charles Ray Smith, the journey home would take 83 years. He was a kid from Henderson County, North Carolina, who enlisted in 1942. A year later, he was serving his country as a tail gunner aboard a B-24 Liberator, thousands of miles from home. On August 16, 1943, Staff Sgt. Smith took off from Libya with the 67th Bombardment Squadron, 44th Bombardment Group. Their targets were enemy airfields at Foggia, Italy. Twenty-six bombers went out. Seven never returned. His was one of them. Back in North Carolina, a family that had sent six of its children into military service would welcome only five home. Charles remained missing. In 1945, American personnel recovered unidentified airmen’s remains from a cemetery in Lacedonia, Italy. Unable to establish their identities, they buried them as unknowns in an American military cemetery in Naples. Among those remains were Charles’s. Decades passed. His relatives provided DNA samples, hoping that one day there would be an answer. In June 2022, the unidentified remains were exhumed for examination. On May 29, 2026, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency finally identified him. His return to North Carolina was scheduled for this weekend, with burial announced for Sunday, October 25, at Shepard Memorial Park in Hendersonville, with full military honors. Eighty-three years after his final mission, another generation of his family would finally have the chance to bring him home. There is something deeply moving about a country still searching for its fallen long after the guns have fallen silent. About investigators, historians, scientists, veterans, and families working to recover a man whose war ended before many of them were born. Because he was never just a name on a list. He was someone’s son. Someone’s brother. An American airman who served his country and never got to grow old. Eighty-three years cannot give him back the life he lost. But they have not erased his name. Welcome home, Staff Sgt. Charles Ray Smith. 🇺🇸 Follow @Vanguard_WW2 to help keep their names and their stories alive.

Pvt. Harry Hudec stood 6'4" tall & was the regimental boxing champion of the 82nd Airborne Division’s 508th PIR, but his greatest fight came during the battle for Normandy. 🥊 On D-Day, Hudec made his first combat jump into Normandy, dropping at 1:30 AM with Headquarters Company. He fought fiercely at Hill 30 between Chef-du-Pont and Picauville. 🪂 On June 15, German hand grenade fragments tore into his leg, severely wounding him.🏥 Crawling to a nearby French farmhouse, Hudec was hidden in the stable by a brave farming family who tended his wounds for four days. When Germans approached, the farmer warned Hudec who hobbled down the road until American forces rescued him. 🇺🇸 After recovering, he jumped again during Operation Market Garden in Holland. 🪂 Later, he endured the brutal winter fighting of the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes. 🪖 During his service, the boxing paratrooper tough earned the Purple Heart, the Combat Infantryman Badge, the Parachutist Badge with two combat stars, & the Presidential Unit Citation awarded to the 508th PIR for their heroism in Normandy. 🎖️ After the war, Hudec returned home to Cleveland, Ohio, married his sweetheart, Dorothy, raised three children, & enjoyed a 43-year career with the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company. 🔋⚡️ In 2004, for the 60th anniversary of D-Day, Hudec returned to Normandy to personally thank the French family that had saved his life decades earlier. 🇫🇷 Harry Hudec passed away at the age of 85 on March 29, 2007. He is buried at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Sedalia, Pettis County, Missouri. 🪦