In WWII, an Australian soldier removed his own appendix in the middle of a Philippine jungle in 1944, without any anaesthetic and with only the use of a mirror and an ordinary knife. The operation took 4 and a half hours and he stitched himself up with jungle fibre. Following the end of the war, […]
Throughout South London, there are…
Throughout South London, there are large sections of fence made out of WWII stretchers. These stretchers were used by civil authorities to transport the injured during the Blitz. They are what remain of the 600,000 built for the city during the war.
Carl Jung was an undercover operative…
Carl Jung was an undercover operative (“Agent 488”) for the allies during World War 2. His commanding officer Allen W. Dulles said that “Nobody will probably ever know how much Prof Jung contributed to the allied cause during the war.” Dulles later became the first director of the CIA.
America’s Oldest World War II Veteran Has Celebrated His 110th Birthday
The men who served in World War II are a dying breed – in fact, most of them have already passed on from this plane of existence to the next (where hopefully they will not be asked to save the world by enacting great mental and physical trauma on themselves).
They’re not all gone, though. One of those great, brave men just celebrated his 110th birthday.
Lawrence Brooks of New Orleans, Louisiana was born on September 12th, 1909, and had his most recent birthday celebration at the National World War II Museum in his hometown.
During the war, Brooks served in a primarily African-American unit in the army, the 91st Engineer Battalion, with which he was stationed in New Guinea before heading to the Philippines. He was active between 1940 and 1945, exiting duty as a Private 1st Class.
. . . . 
: Chris Granger Photography #LawrenceBrooks #110Years #110thBirthday #WWIIVet #WWIIVeteran #VictoryBelles #WWIIMuseum #WWII #Kisses #LipstickVictims #Smooch #Lipstick #RedLips #Birthday #HappyBirthday #NewOrleans #Louisiana #NationalWWIIMuseum #WorldWar2 #WorldWarII #Army #ArmyVet #VintageLadies #1940s #1940sHair #1940sMakeUp #1940sLookThe National World War II Museum in New Orleans has hosted Brooks’ last five parties, loves doing it, and hopes to be asked to help celebrate for a few years yet to come.
“We absolutely love Mr. Brooks,” said a spokesperson for the museum. “We’ve told him, ‘As long as you keep having birthdays, we are going to keep having birthday parties for you here.’ We consider him ‘our’ veteran.”
Though Brooks is definitely getting long in the tooth – he has poor vision and low blood pressure and requires a walker to get around – he’s thankful to have good hearing and to never have been faced with any serious diagnoses in his long life.
#moorinfo“I’ve started to think about not having many birthdays left. But I’m not worried about it, because God has let me live this long already. I think it’s because I’ve always liked people so much. Oh, yes, I do.”
It’s safe to say that plenty of people like him right back – including me, now that I’ve leaned a bit most about him.
Brooks takes over the title of oldest living WWII veteran from Mr. Richard Overton, who passed away in 2018 at the age of 112.
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Hitler privately expressed great…
Hitler privately expressed great admiration for Mussolini; however, Mussolini had little regard for Hitler. Mussolini said that the Germans were the descendants of those who were illiterate when Rome had Caesar, Virgil, and Augustus.
A Town in Austria Is so Sick of Nazis Visiting Hitler’s Birthplace That They’re Turning It into a Police Station
In a small town in Austria on the border of Germany sits a structure with a notorious past. It was here, in a nondescript building downtown called the Braunau am Inn, that Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889.
The building has been used as a school and a library over the years, but it has also been a magnet for neo-Nazis who view it as a shrine to Hitler. People have been coming since all the way back in the 1940s just after World War II ended, when Austrian and German veterans would flock to the house on Hitler’s birthday.
In 1972, the interior ministry of Austria took over the main lease from the family that owned the building so that the government could eventually have the final say about what the building would be used for. In 1984, the Austrian government tried to acquire the building outright from Gerlinde Pommer, who had sole possession of the building, but she refused to sell. Pommer also refused to renovate the structure so the government could not find a good tenant for the property.
Finally, in 2017, the Austrian government seized the building from Pommer and the dispute ended. Authorities have decided to turn Hitler’s birthplace into a police station to hopefully deter neo-Nazis from visiting the site.
In 1989, a stone was put in place in front of the building that reads, “For peace, freedom and democracy. Never again fascism. Millions dead are a warning.”
There will be an international architectural competition to redesign the building for its future police tenants.
Wolfgang Peschorn, the interior minister of Austria, said, “The future use of the house by the police should send an unmistakable signal that the role of this building as a memorial to the Nazis been permanently revoked.”
And it’s about time.
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Aleksey Maresyev, a pilot who was…
Aleksey Maresyev, a pilot who was shot down in Nazi territory, lost the use of his legs, crawled for eighteen days before returning to Soviet territory. His legs were then amputated. Nevertheless, within a year he was flying again on prosthetic legs.
This Tiny Yorkie Dog Was a Hero Who Saved Soldiers During WWII
The dog’s name was Smoky, and she was a wee little Yorkshire terrier who, after her heroic performance in WWII, became the world’s first therapy dog.
Photo Credit: Flickr
Found in an empty jungle foxhole in New Guinea, she was first thought to be the pet of one of the Japanese soldiers. The soldiers took her to a nearby POW camp and discovered she couldn’t understand either English or Japanese. So, her origins remained a mystery.
Still, she ended up in the American soldiers’ camp, where Corporal William (Bill) A. Wynne of Cleveland, Ohio, bought her off of another soldier, distracted by his poker game, for about $7.
That lucky seven bucks ended up saving Corporal Wynne’s life.
Wynne credited Smoky with leading him through heavy shelling coming from a transport ship. She warned him of the attack, and while eight other men around them were hit, Wynne made it to safety.
For the next two years, Smoky never left Wynne’s side, sleeping with him in his tent in the harsh conditions of the jungle and eating from his rations. Since she was there in an unofficial capacity, she didn’t get her own special food like the other war dogs received. Eventually, the 5th Air Force made her a member, and she saw 12 combat missions and was even awarded eight battle stars for bravery.
Photo Credit: Aphillcsa
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Her most notable mission was crawling through narrow pipes filled with soil to run telegraph wire for an airbase crewman were building. She saved the soldiers from a three-day, danger-filled task of digging up a heavily used runway, as she took only minutes to squeeze through pipes with the wire, wiggling through a space of about 4 inches in some places.
She also loved to entertain soldiers recovering from their wounds in hospitals with her tricks. She would go on rounds with the nurses, visiting the wounded and lifting their spirits, and she actually continued to do this well after WWII ended (therapy dog!).
After the war, Smoky appeared on TV where she performed tricks like riding a scooter. She was a natural entertainer who delighted audiences with her intelligence and is credited for making the then obscure Yorkshire terrier one of the most popular and adored breeds today.
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Lydia Litvyak was the Jewish…
Lydia Litvyak was the Jewish Soviet fighter ace. During WWII she claimed 14 kills, trained 45 pilots, and shot down an ace who wouldn’t believe a woman beat him until she described the fight. She went missing on a flight Just before she was to receive the award “Hero of the Soviet Union”.
Fuzzy dice hanging on a rear…
Fuzzy dice hanging on a rear view mirror is a good luck charm with the origins based on WWII pilots keeping gambling trinkets in their air planes. A lot of car and sub culture trends is spawned from this, including hot rod flames, shark mouths, pin up girls, etc.