The final battle before the anticipated invasion of mainland Japan, Okinawa became the deadliest battle for US forces in the Pacific with savage fighting on land, air, and especially sea. Nicknamed the Typhoon of Steel because of its intense artillery fire and bombardments on land, air and sea, the battle for Okinawa cost 49,000 US casualties including more than 12,000 deaths. For the Japanese soldiers, the battle for Okinawa was far worse with 90,000 deaths. As always, civilians suffered the most with an estimated 150,000 dead. William Agen recalled the terror of kamikaze attacks that occurred three or four times during the day and even more often at night. Raymond Goron and Phil Klenman both lost their best friends in kamikaze attacks. 23 servicemen received the Medal of Honor for their heroism at Okinawa. This podcast features the stories of six Medal of Honor recipients. Kamikazes set the LCS that Richard M. McCool commanded ablaze and resulted in 50% casualties amongst his crew, yet McCool still managed to rescue some 98 men from a sinking destroyer. Richard E. Bush threw himself on a grenade to save the wounded men in his squad. Elsewhere, a wounded Robert E. Bush gave his lieutenant a life saving transfusion of plasma with his one hand, while he used his other to fire his pistol at the advancing Japanese who were less than 30 feet away. Angry that the Japanese had his riflemen pinned down for too long on Hen Hill, Clarence Craft led a heroic attack against the Japanese defensive line killing an estimated 25 Japanese soldiers. Atop the 400 foot Maeda Escarpment, conscientious objector Desmond T. Doss rescued an estimated 75 soldiers lowering them 35 feet below the escarpment in a rope supported litter tied to a tree stump, all the while under enemy fire as he did so. While the bloody battle for Okinawa raged on, Staff Sergeant Henry E. "Red" Erwin was flying bombing runs over the Japanese mainland. On a mission to bomb a chemical plant near Koriyama, Japan, the phosphoresce smoke bomb Erwin was supposed to drop to signal to B-29s that they had reached their target exploded prematurely in the launching chute, shooting its 1300 degree Fahrenheit flames into the aircraft and, more precisely, into Erwin's face blinding him and destroying his nose. "Open the window! Open the window!," Erwin yelled as he attempted to throw the burning bomb out the window to save his aircraft. Those stories and more in this 13th episode of Always Remember - World War II Through Veterans' Eyes.

William Agen

Raymond Goron

Richard M. McCool

Richard E. Bush

Robert E. Bush

Clarence Craft

Desmond Doss

Henry "Red" Erwin

Henry "Red" Erwin receiving the Medal of Honor

Millions of Allied and Axis soldiers became POWs in WW II. His weight down to 90 pounds, sick with malaria, Edgar Kuhlow overheard two German guards talking about his condition – “He is going to stay laying here in Germany.” Forced to work in railyards 2 – 3 times a week in Munich, William Ledeker knew he was better off than the concentration camp prisoners he would occasionally see from nearby Dachau. Recovering from being shot in the back and the shoulder, Jim Lingg was still loaded onto boxcars along with other POWs by the SS. While trying to liberate the Belgium town of Viller-La-Bonne-Eau, Michael Cannella and six others were separated from their company. Badly outnumbered with an intense fire fight taking place outside, Cannella’s makeshift squad took refuge in a cellar. Unbeknownst to them, it was already occupied by nearly a dozen German soldiers. Together they all made a pact, they would lay down their guns and surrender to whoever took over the town. When the Russian forces liberated his camp, Paul MacElwee found he went from being imprisoned by the Germans to now being imprisoned by the Russians. Seldom reported in the official records of the war, opposing forces in WW 2 sometimes did not abide by the Geneva Accords and took no prisoners. American GIs like James Spaulding couldn’t forget the senseless killing of soldiers who should have been taken prisoners of war.

Edgar Kuhlow and John Ulferts

William Ledeker

James Lingg (standing far right)

Michael Cannella

Paul MacElwee

Murray Shapiro

Robert Erhardt

James and Eva Mae Spaulding

With the Germans seemingly on the run everywhere in Europe, the Allies had hoped WW 2 would be done by year’s end 1944. Those hopes were shattered when the Germans launched their largest counter offensive on the western front, the Battle of the Bulge. A frustrated Tom Carr, who served as a scout, had warned his officers for weeks that the ermans appeared to be preparing a sneak attack, only to be ignored. The Germans weren’t the only enemy American GIs faced. Samuel Erlick recalled it was all he could do just to stay warm and avoid frozen feet. Still, David Kitchen was grateful for the bitter cold that kept the war dead that littered the Ardennes Forest refrigerated avoiding the stink and maggots that would have been present otherwise. German soldiers dressed as American GIs tricked David Kitchen’s squad into giving them their rifles. Frank Caruk recalled that when German soldiers dressed as American GIs were caught they were summarily executed. Mevlin Biddle took out three German snipers and three machine gun nests single handedly his actions earned him a Medal of Honor, though Biddle did not want to celebrate the killing he had done. The Bulge desensitized a young Ross Rasmussen who afterwards was ashamed of his callousness recalling eating his lunch on the frozen corpse of a German soldier. Separated from his unit, Murray Shapiro escaped German capture thanks to an old German woman. Stan Davis spent 30 nights in his tank protecting Bastogne. Their stories in more in this 11th podcast of Always Remember – World War II Through Veterans Eyes.

Tom Carr

Samuel Erlick

Frank Caruk

Melvin Biddle

Murray Shapiro

Stan Davis

As the Allies embarked on their island hopping campaign growing ever closer to the Japanese mainland, they soon discovered that their enemy in the Pacific was adept at presenting new challenges on every island. Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, Peleliu, Leyte would all forever be ingrained in WW 2 veterans memories - and in their nightmares. Richard V. Morgan remembers Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman,, who stood atop a heavily garrisoned Japanese bunker directing demolition charges despite his being mortally wounded. Bonnyman would receive the Medal of Honor posthumously. For Dennis Olson, his poems helped him cope with the horrible losses he endured at Tarawa. Later, at Peleliu, 19 year old Arthur Jackson volunteered to secure a position in the shallow enemy trench system wiping out 12 pillboxes and killing 50 Japanese soldiers. He would receive the Medal of Honor for his actions from President Truman himself one year later. In the Philippines, a young L.W. Clark and his buddies lose their appetite as 100 Filipino villagers stumble across the rice fields towards their dispensary seeking medical help after having been bombed by the 11th Airborne, who believed Japanese soldiers were still hiding in the village. Amongst them, a soldier carried a still baby whose guts were hanging over the side of his body, his stomach ripped open by a mortar shell. James Spaulding recalled Manilla was torn to pieces when they finally liberated it. Leo "Red" Gavitt was instructed to pick up "Just the live ones boys" as he helped pluck 150 American sailors from the sea after the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Roy Parks returned from the Pacific with a souvenir he never asked for - jungle rot - which left blisters all over his hands, and made his finger nails and toe nails fall off.

Richard V. Morgan

Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman, Jr.

Dennis H. Olson

Arthur J. Jackson

L.W. Clark and his wife Ella

James Spaulding and his wife Eva Mae

Roy and Penny Parks

The African Americans who served on the USS Mason destroyer had already endured 90 mph winds and 60 foot waves that split the Mason's deck as they shepherded convoys to safety in the Atlantic when their beloved Captain Blackford was replaced with a racist captain who claimed the African Americans sailors he led smelled, couldn’t swim, and were hard to educate . 1st Lieutenant Vernon Baker, also an African American, destroyed six machine gun nests, two observer posts and four dugouts at Castle Aghinolfi in Italy only to see Captain Runyon, his white commanding officer who abandoned the firefight, receive the Silver Star. An illegal immigrant to the US, Jose Lopez, a Mexican American, saved his company at the Battle of the Bulge by single handedly taking out over 100 German soldiers with his machine gun fire. Iva Ikuko Toguri, a Japanese-American who had the misfortunate of being in Japan when the war broke out, found herself nicknamed Tokyo Rose and accused of being a traitor even as she tried her best to help the American POWs and fighting force anyway she could behind enemy lines. Ira Hayes, a Native American, raised the American flag at Iwo Jima, but afterwards could not dispel the terrible combat memories that haunted him when he got home. Hattie Brantley joined the Army Nurse Corps to see the world, but was instead imprisoned under the harshest conditions in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines for almost the duration of the war. Their stories and more in this 10th podcast of Always Remember – WW 2 Through Veterans Eyes.

James Graham

Lorenzo Dufau (left) and James Graham (right)

Medal of Honor recipient Vernon Baker

Vernon Baker later years

Medal of Honor recipient Jose M. Lopez

Iva Ikuko Toguri

Ira Hayes

Hattie Brantley in the Philippines

Hattie Brantley's tombstone

Bloody Omaha Beach bore the brunt of D-Day’s savage fighting with more casualties than all of the other D-Day beaches combined. Aware that the men he led in one of the first waves to land on Bloody Omaha Beach had no prior combat experience, Staff Sergeant Walter Ehlers single handedly took out several German machine gun nests even while he was in their crossfire. Ehlers was at first elated when he was told he would be receiving the Medal of Honor for his actions, but he was soon brought to his knees upon learning the terrible loss he suffered on Omaha beach. Trying to sleep after having witnessed so much death and suffering on Omaha beach, Charles Toole’s buddy told him that 24 hours from now there’d be a lot more dead in their own company. Toole’s buddy’s words proved eerily prophetic. Thanks to two Texas Rangers, there were far less dead on Omaha beach than there would have been otherwise. Leonard Lomell and his buddy Jack Kuhn climbed the 100 foot cliffs of Pointe du Hoc even as Nazi soldiers fired down upon them, threw grenades, and cut their ropes. Lomell and Kuhn knew the lives of countless Americans depended on them finding the huge 155 mm coastal howitzers the Nazis had hidden above, capable of firing five miles or more out to sea, far enough to hit the troop ships landing for the invasion. Nothing in their 18 years of life could have prepared Frank Caruk and Mark Wilson for all the suffering they witnessed landing in the initial waves at Omaha beach.

Walter Ehlers

Walter and Roland Ehlers

Charles Toole and the podcast host John Ulferts

Frank Caruk and his wife Janet

Leonard Lomell

From landing on Utah beach amidst floating bodies in life preservers to a combat glider landing aboard one of the "flying coffins" at Operation Market Garden. Robert Bowen saw a lot of action in World War II before he was badly injured and taken prisoner of war at the Battle of the Bulge. As a POW a badly injured Bowen was nearly strangled by an enraged German doctor as Bowen lay on his operating table. Back home, Bowen's young wife Christine never gave up hope that her husband was still alive, despite being told that he had been killed in action.

Robert and Christine Bowen

Robert Bowen in WW 2

Robert Bowen's painting of a Great Blue Heron

Bowen's painting of Nags Head, North Carolina

While Winston Churchill believed an Allied invasion of Italy would find it the soft underbelly of the Axis, most GIs agreed with General Mark Clark's description of it as "One Tough Gut" as they faced ferocious fighting at Salerno and along the Gustav Line at Mt. Sammucro, Monte Cassino and Anzio. Episode 6 begins with Helen Callentine, a US Army Nurse whose hospital ship was bombed before she ever made it to Salerno; Russell Darkes who ordered his pinned down platoon at Mt. Sammucro to fix their bayonets before charging; Howard Fay who recalled the American dead that covered Monte Cassino's mountain slopes; Edgar Kuhlow and Leo Lawrence remembering the terror of Anzo Annie's 560 lb. shells that could fire for miles; Gunsmoke's James Arness, better known as Matt Dillon, who received a million dollar wound at Anzio days after the initial landing; B-25 pilot Jay DeBoer, show down over Italy, most of his crew executed by the SS, escaped capture by masquerading as an Italian soldier aboard a German troop train, and, finally, the liberation of Rome.

Helen Callentine

Russell Darkes

Howard K. Fay

Leo Lawrence

James Arness

Jay DeBoer