Showing results for "famous" in World War II

Here, in his own words, is the true story of America's wildest flying hero, of his extraordinary heroism, and of his greatest battle of all-the fight to survive. The World War II air war in the Pacific needed tough men like Colonel Pappy Boyington and his Black Sheep Squadron. The legendary Marine Corps officer and his bunch of misfits, outcasts, and daredevils gave a new definition to "hell-raising" - on the ground and in the skies.

Simo Häyhä was a man of action who spoke very little, but he was respected by his men and his superiors and given many difficult missions, including taking out specific targets. Able to move silently and swiftly through the landscape, melting into the snowbound surroundings in his white camouflage fatigues, his aim was deadly and his quarry rarely escaped. The Russians learned of his reputation as a marksman and tried several times to kill him by indirect fire. He was promoted from corporal to second lieutenant and he was awarded the Cross of Kollaa.

Heinz Wilhelm Guderian was one of the most respected commanders and theoreticians of World War II. An innovative tank commander, he was a pioneer of German Blitzkrieg tactics and therefore a hugely influential figure in the way the war was fought. Guderian's profile was not always what might have been expected for a man of his abilities and influence, due to the shape of his career.

Ernie Pyle's life is like a 1950s movie script. Born the beloved and only child of hardscrabble American farmers, he made good grades in school, graduated, and went off to college at "State", in his case the University of Indiana. Overcoming his shyness, he studied journalism and wrote stories for the school paper that earned him a position of esteem among his fellow students. He partied hard but kept his grades up, and then married a girl as high spirited as he was. Together, they left school early and made their way to the nation's capital, where the farm boy got a job with a big city paper. In the years that followed, they traveled the country, meeting the great and the simple alike, and writing stories that made them the envy of the common man.