◊   Medal of Honor recipient David C. Dolby dies at 64; had troubled post-military career, by T. Rees Shapiro
◊   Vernon J. Baker, African American Medal of Honor recipient, dies at 90, by T. Rees Shapiro
◊   A Hero and a National Disgrace, by Christian Davenport
◊   James McLaurin, member of famed Tuskegee Airmen; at 87, by J.M. Lawrence
◊   Korean War documentary, 'Uncommon Courage: Breakout at Chosin,' debuts, By Neely Tucker
◊   Oldest Medal of Honor recipient from WWII dies, by Julie Watson
◊   A Memorial Day Tribute
◊   Edward Uhl, 92; helped invent bazooka, headed Fairchild Industries, by T. Rees Shapiro
◊   Dorothy "Dottie" Kamenshek dead; women's professional baseball player, by Matt Schudel
◊   Walker M. "Bud" Mahurin, a top flying ace, dies at 91, by T. Rees Shapiro
◊   Robert Grimes dies at 87; WWII pilot evaded Nazi capture, by Peter Eisner
◊   Jaime Escalante dies, inspired 1988 film 'Stand and Deliver', By Jay Mathews
◊   Heinz Stahlschmidt dies; demolitions expert thwarted razing of Bordeaux, By by T. Rees Shapiro
◊   Officers Who Shot Pentagon Gunman Recall Moments Of Mayhem, By Christian Davenport
◊   WW2 Renegades Saved Lives, By T. Rees Shapiro
◊   2 Teens Injured In Colorado Middle School Shooting, By Samantha Abernethy
◊   Soldier stormed Japanese machine gun bunker, by T. Rees Shapiro
◊   Freya von Moltke dies; Led Nazi Resistance Kreisau Circle, by Emily Langer
◊   Medal of Honor recipient Col. Robert L. Howard dies at 70, by T. Rees Shapiro
◊   Miep Gies was the last link to Anne Frank, by Monica Hesse
◊   Jasper Schuringa subdued alleged terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Northwest Airlines 253, by Soraya Roberts
◊   Passengers subdued man with satchels on Dulles-Vegas flight, by Avis Thomas-Lester and Martin Weil








Medal of Honor recipient David C. Dolby dies at 64; had troubled post-military career
T. Rees Shapiro
The Washington Post


[Beisho editor's note: This obituary is a good reminder that, with thousands of our service men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffering from traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other non-visible wounds of war, we owe it to those who have served to be sure they get the help they need in recognition of their service, whether they received the Medal of Honor or not.]

Friday, August 13, 2010; B07

David C. Dolby, 64, who received the Medal of Honor for saving his Army platoon in Vietnam but had a troubled post-military career that included a conviction for cashing fraudulent checks, died Aug. 6 in Spirit Lake, Idaho. He lived in Royersford, Pa.

His brother, Daniel Dolby, said Mr. Dolby had been visiting fellow Vietnam veterans in Idaho, but he did not know the cause of death.

Mr. Dolby -- "Mad Dog," as he was known to his Army comrades -- was a solid 6-footer who wrestled and played football in high school. He enlisted in the Army at 18 and became an Army Ranger and a member of the Green Berets. He was known to scout the jungle ahead of the other men, toting his heavy M60 machine gun like a rifle.

On May 21, 1966, then-Spec. 4th Class Dolby was in the middle of his first tour in Vietnam. He was part of a 1st Cavalry Division platoon on a mission near An Khe when the men walked into an ambush.

Six soldiers were immediately killed by machine-gun fire.

Several others were wounded, including the platoon's officer, 2nd Lt. Robert H. Crum Jr. Within an hour of the ambush's first shots, the lieutenant, drenched in blood from bullet wounds, sat against a tree and relinquished command of his men to Spec. Dolby.

In Brig. Gen. S.L.A. Marshall's 1967 book about Vietnam, "Battles in the Monsoon," an entire chapter is dedicated to Spec. Dolby's rescue efforts. Marshall said Spec. Dolby was "one of the rarest of warriors -- a man with keen imagination who at the same time, when under fire, seems to be wholly without fear."

While fully exposed to enemy fire, Spec. Dolby launched his own assault on the enemy machine gun bunkers until he'd expended all of his ammunition.

"I prayed in the beginning and then I didn't have time to pray," Spec. Dolby later said of the action on the ridge that day, noting that "bullets were going by -- under my arms, between my legs, past my head."

After reloading, he single-handedly killed three enemy machine gunners, according to his Medal of Honor citation. Spotting a wounded comrade, Spec. Dolby picked the man up and carried him over his shoulder to safety for medical treatment. He then crawled through gunfire to within 50 meters of the enemy positions, which were concealed within the ridge by camouflage mats covered with jungle fronds. He lobbed several smoke grenades at the face of the bunkers to mark them for air strikes.

After a four-hour battle, Spec. Dolby organized the withdrawal of his troops while artillery fire and air strikes obliterated the Vietcong redoubt. The platoon lost eight men, and 14 were wounded, including Sgt. Alonzo Peoples.

"The bravest man I ever knew, maybe the bravest that ever lived," Peoples later called Spec. Dolby. "He saved all of us."

An Army report counted 55 dead enemies on the ridge and estimated that 100 others were killed or wounded. On Sept. 28, 1967, Mr. Dolby -- who had been promoted to sergeant -- received the Medal of Honor from President Lyndon B. Johnson in a White House ceremony.

In a highly unusual turn of events, Mr. Dolby served four more tours in Vietnam after receiving the country's highest award for valor. He said of his continuous service, "If I'm going to be in the Army, I'd rather be in Vietnam where the actions is. I feel I can be of more help to my fellow men there."

His other military decorations included the Silver Star, three awards of the Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart.

Mr. Dolby's life after receiving the Medal of Honor was marked by controversy. In 1969, he was arrested for possession of marijuana and for participating in a brawl in Vietnam. He was fined $342 and reduced a grade in rank. He left the Army in 1971 as a staff sergeant. He later worked in a tire factory and a steel mill and was a painting contractor with his brother.

In 1974, Mr. Dolby was arrested by FBI agents for cashing at least 58 fraudulent checks under assumed names and worth between $8 and $500 during a trip to Hawaii. He pleaded guilty to cashing $1,200 in bad checks and was placed on three years' probation.

Upon receiving his sentence, Mr. Dolby told the court: "I'm sorry to say I made such a poor and incredible decision at the time."

David Charles Dolby was born May 14, 1946, in Norristown, Pa. His father was a personnel manager at a BFGoodrich tire plant and had been a prisoner of war during World War II.

His wife, Xuan Dolby, whom he met in Vietnam, died in 1987. Besides his brother of Coventryville, Pa., he is survived by his mother, Mary Dolby of Laureldale, Pa.

"Look, we're all equal," Mr. Dolby once said of Medal of Honor recipients. "We all did things that, if we had chosen not to do, nobody would have said we should have done. We all had that one moment in our lives. Other than that, we're just normal people."






Vernon J. Baker, African American Medal of Honor recipient, dies at 90
T. Rees Shapiro
The Washington Post


Thursday, July 15, 2010; B05

First Lt. Vernon J. Baker, 90, an Army infantryman who, more than 50 years after the end of World War II, became the only surviving African American to receive the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions during the war, died July 13 at his home near St. Maries, Idaho. He had brain cancer.

In 1993, the Army commissioned a study led by researchers from Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., to determine whether there had been a racial disparity in how the Medal of Honor was awarded during World War II.

Of the more than 400 Medals of Honor awarded, not one of the 1.2 million African Americans who served in the war was a recipient.

After researchers found the discrepancy, the Army recommended seven African American soldiers for the country's most prestigious military honor, including Lt. Baker.

On Jan. 13, 1997, after Congress voided a statutory limit for awarding the medal, President Bill Clinton presented the families of six men with the Medal of Honor; four had died in combat, and two others had died since the end of the war. Lt. Baker, then 77, was the only living recipient.

In April 1945, then-2nd Lt. Baker was one of the few black officers serving in the segregated 92nd Infantry Division near the northern Italian village of Viareggio.

He and his 25 men were ordered to lead an assault on Castle Aghinolfi, a heavily guarded mountain fortress on the western end of the Gothic Line, a series of fortified bunkers considered to be the one of the last lines of German defense toward the end of the war.

Two hours after starting their mission on April 5, Lt. Baker and his men came within 300 yards of the castle. While attempting to find a suitable place for a machine gun, Lt. Baker observed two rifle barrels hanging out of a concealed slit in some rocky earth.

After stealthily crawling to the opening, he popped up and emptied the clip of his M-1 rifle into the observation post, killing two sentries.

While searching for more camouflaged emplacements, Lt. Baker spotted a machine-gun nest occupied by two soldiers distracted by their breakfast. He shot and killed them both.

A German soldier then hurled a grenade that landed at Lt. Baker's feet. Undeterred, he fired two fatal rounds at the fleeing German, while the grenade by Lt. Baker's boots failed to explode.

He found the door to another bunker and blasted it open with a grenade. A wounded German soldier stumbled out in confusion, and Lt. Baker shot him. After tossing in a second grenade, he raided the bunker with a submachine gun blazing, killing two more Germans.

On the way back to his men, Lt. Baker saw that his platoon's position had come under heavy machine gun and mortar fire. He watched in despair as 19 of his men were cut down by bullets or wounded by shrapnel.

Even though he'd been shot in the hand, Lt. Baker led the evacuation of his remaining men, helping to eliminate two machine-gun nests and four more German troops.

In the midst of the retreat, Lt. Baker's platoon came across German soldiers wearing helmets painted with red crosses carrying litters covered with blankets.

His shellshocked men urged him to let them fire, but Lt. Baker refused. When the platoon came within 50 yards of the supposed medics, the Germans dropped their stretchers and picked up machine guns.

"Hit the bastards!" Lt. Baker instructed his men, according to his 1997 memoir "Lasting Valor." "Our riflemen cut loose with a vengeance. . . . The enemy platoon dissolved."

On July 4, 1945, Lt. Baker received the Distinguished Service Cross, the military's second highest decoration for his actions in Italy. Upon receiving the Medal of Honor 52 years later, he burst into tears.

"I'm not a hero," Lt. Baker later said. "I'm just a soldier that did a good job. I think the real heroes are the men I left behind on that hill that day."

Vernon Joseph Baker was born Dec. 17, 1919, in Cheyenne, Wyo., where he was raised by his grandparents. He learned to hunt at a young age and became an expert marksman.

He shined shoes, swept out a barbershop and worked as a railroad porter before graduating from high school. When he attempted to enlist in the Army, he was told by a recruiter that there was no place for "you people." He tried again and was accepted into the infantry in June 1941.

He stayed in the Army until 1968, retiring as a first lieutenant. His other decorations included the Bronze Star Medal and Purple Heart. After his Army career, Lt. Baker worked in Vietnam with the Red Cross and counseled military families.

His marriage to Leola Baker ended in divorce. His second wife, Fern Brown, died in 1986. Survivors include his third wife, Heidy Pawlik Baker; and two children.

He spent much of his later life hunting big game in Idaho. During one expedition, he discovered a mountain lion lurking behind him. After receiving his Medal of Honor, Lt. Baker was asked by Clinton what happened to the cougar.

"Why, it's in my freezer," Lt. Baker said. "I'm going to eat him."




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A Hero and a National Disgrace
[Editor's note: The following story relates the story of a hero who answered his nation's call not once, not twice, but three times. It also illustrates the on-going scandal at Arlington National Cemetery, arguably America's most hallowed ground. The mismanagement and negligence of those in charge of the cemetery is a national disgrace that breaks the heart of every veteran and their family members. As July 4, our national Independence Day, approaches, I urge each of us to take a few minutes to remember those who have served their country and to insist that their service be honored properly, befitting the dignity, honor, and efficiency with which they served their country.]




Photo of veteran's tombstone in Arlington Cemetery creek startles son
Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, June 18, 2010; B01

It was around lunchtime Thursday when Mike McLaughlin settled into a chair in his family room and opened the newspaper. There, on the front page, was a photograph of a burial marker lying in a stream at Arlington National Cemetery and an article that led to a sudden realization.

"This is my father's tombstone," he called out to his wife.

Then he became, as he said, "unglued." How could his father -- who dropped out of college to serve in World War I, rejoined the Navy the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor at the age of 44 and then served again during the Korean War -- be so dishonored?

Upset, he called the cemetery, which had been trying to figure out whom the headstone belonged to after The Washington Post alerted officials there Wednesday morning that several mud-caked markers were lining a stream at one of the country's most venerated burial grounds.

A few hours later, a top Arlington official called McLaughlin back to apologize for his father's tombstone being discarded in such a way and assure him that it will be disposed of properly.

In an interview from his home in the Shenandoah Valley, McLaughlin, a 74-year-old Arlington County native, said he was "appalled."

"You can't harm Dad, and you can't harm Mom," he said, his voice cracking. "But the way this was handled is going to affect service personnel who are dying right now and in years to come. They deserve some honor and respect."

"We thought it was a sacrosanct place," said his wife, Judé McLaughlin. "I can't believe they'd be so cavalier with such an important thing."

Cemetery officials said they will take corrective action immediately and are to meet with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Friday to figure out how the headstones can best be removed without harming the stream or surrounding environment. They confirmed that one of them belonged to J. Warren McLaughlin, a retired Navy captain who died in 1971.

After his wife, Elizabeth, died four years later, the cemetery ordered a new headstone and engraved both names on it, said Kaitlin Horst, a cemetery spokeswoman. That headstone is still there today, in Section 47. The old headstone was discarded and somehow ended up in the stream, along with many others. It was still unclear Thursday how they ended up there or why.

But who was J. Warren McLaughlin?

A patriot, his son said. And a hero. A dedicated father and husband, whose military career spanned five decades and inspired his son to join the Navy.

He was born in Burr Oak, Kan., in 1896, the son of a railroad man, the oldest boy among nine children. He went to college and made good grades but dropped out over the objections of his father, who wanted him to be the first member of the family to receive a college degree.

It was 1917. World War I was raging, and the young J. Warren McLaughlin wanted to serve. After the war, he left the Navy, moved to Arlington and worked as an engineer for the Department of the Interior.

Mike McLaughlin remembers sitting on his father's lap as a young boy in 1941 when the news of Pearl Harbor broke on the radio. His father leapt up at the news. "I was dumped on my butt on the wood floor," Mike McLaughlin recalled. "I joke that I was the first Washington area casualty of the Second World War."

The next day, he said his father went to rejoin the Navy and was soon deployed to the Pacific. There, while helping unload a ship, U.S. forces came under attack. An artillery shell landed close to the ship, causing him to fall from one of the decks.

Mike McLaughlin said the Navy wanted to award his father the Purple Heart, but he refused, saying that "his injury was caused by his stupidity, not enemy action," because he was leaning too far over the rail when the shell hit.

After World War II, the elder McLaughlin served at the Pentagon in the Naval Reserves until the late 1950s. Mike McLaughlin followed in his father's footsteps and became a Naval Reserve officer after college, retiring as a commander.

Arlington has long been an important place for him. It's not only where his parents are buried but his daughter as well. She died when she was 4 days old.

And it's where he used to ride his bicycle as a kid with friends from the neighborhood.

"We'd ride through Fort Myer into the back of the cemetery and have one whale of a downhill ride and out the main gate," he said.

So he was especially dismayed when the scandal at Arlington Cemetery broke last week. The Army's inspector general found that more than 200 grave sites were unmarked or misidentified and that at least four burial urns were unearthed and dumped in an area where excess dirt is kept.

As a result, the Army has reprimanded Superintendent John C. Metzler Jr., who is retiring July 2, and his deputy, Thurman Higginbotham, who was placed on administrative leave pending a disciplinary review.

Mike McLaughlin had been following the news closely. Then on Thursday, after he settled into his favorite chair with the paper, the story was no longer just about the cemetery. It was about his father's memory.

Staff researcher Julie Tate, staff writer Rick Rojas and editorial aide Brian Kuhta contributed to this report.



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James McLaurin, member of famed Tuskegee Airmen; at 87
J.M. Lawrence
Globe Correspondent

May 28, 2010

When World War II hit, 21-year-old Roxbury machinist James Wardell McLaurin joined the Tuskegee Airmen and became one of 994 black aviators for the Army Air Corps who endured discrimination in America even though they fought the Nazis.

Mr. McLaurin of Weymouth, a retired lieutenant colonel and former assistant regional director of the Small Business Administration, died May 18 at Massachusetts General Hospital of cancer. He was 87.

"We didn't know we were making history in those days,'' said his fellow Tuskegee Airman Dr. Harold May on Tuesday outside Trinity Church in Boston, where five Tuskegee Airman attended Mr. McLaurin's funeral.

All in their 80s now, the airmen slowly rose from a pew at Trinity and gave a final salute to their comrade.

Fewer than 75 Tuskegee pilots are living today.

The Tuskegee Airmen escorted bomber planes on missions and their military achievements are often cited as a factor behind President Truman's decision to end racial segregation in the military in 1948.

In 2007, Mr. McLaurin and other surviving Tuskegee Airmen received the Congressional Gold Medal.

He rarely spoke about his World War II experiences, his family said.

Born in Newport News, Va., Mr. McLaurin moved to Boston as a boy. He loved airplanes as a youth and started flying as a teenager, his family said.

After World War II, he was discharged in 1946 and spent 10 years in the reserves assigned to Otis Air Force Base. He worked in the Boston Navy Yard as a ship mechanic and later an administrator before going to work for the Small Business Administration.

"Jim McLaurin is the type of person who did more things for other people by accident than most people do in their lifetime on purpose,'' said his childhood friend Jay Arrow of Carver, who said Mr. McLaurin helped him earn promotions in the Navy Yard.

"There weren't a lot of opportunities for people like me in those days,'' said Arrow, a Native American.

"Doors were closing in my face all the time. He gave me my big break.''

Mr. McLaurin was remembered for his infectious smile as well as his love of jazz clubs and Cape Verdean cooking.

He quietly carried his experiences of racial discrimination without bitterness, friends and family said.

"He wasn't a prejudiced guy. He always reached out and he never let his experience change the way he dealt with people. His friends were black and white and whatever,'' said his grandson Mark Bailey of Quincy.

"My father was murdered when I was young,'' Bailey said, "so to have a guy like him around to talk to you about being a man was great. I carry a lot of things he told me about being a father, being smart enough to always complete what you start, and to never give up even when you make mistakes.''

Mr. McLaurin married Helen Willis in the 1940s. They raised their two daughters in Rockland and divorced after 30 years of marriage.

His family said Mr. McLaurin brought the Harlem Globetrotters to the South Shore to foster better race relations and founded a program with attorney F. Lee Bailey to teach piloting skills and aircraft appreciation to urban and suburban youths.

"He was funny. He was very easygoing. He was sweet. He was extremely generous to others,'' said his daughter Karen McLaurin-Chesson of Providence.

Mr. McLaurin loved Martha's Vineyard and was a regular presence in Oak Bluffs for many decades. He served on the board of the town's Elderly Affairs Council.

During one summer four years ago in Oak Bluffs, he met then-Senator Barack Obama, who asked him about his Tuskegee experiences. Obama made good on his promise to bring Mr. McLaurin to the White House if elected president. Mr. McLaurin attended Obama's inauguration "with bells on,'' his grandson said. "He was cold, but he was out there.''

Mr. McLaurin helped many local minority businesses through his work at the SBA. "It's no joke he made millionaires,'' his daughter Karen said.

After he retired from the SBA, Mr. McLaurin opened his own small business, East Bay Marine, which ferried supplies to crews working on the Big Dig tunnel projects.

In 1989, the Massachusetts Port Authority declared that the East Boston Pier he rented was unsafe and ordered him to leave. Mr. McLaurin's supporters blamed union politics for forcing him out.

He eventually gave up his business and spent his later years assisting neighbors at the Weymouthport condo complex where he lived.

During services at Trinity Church, where he was a member for two decades, Mr. McLaurin was remembered as an American hero who was more than happy to fix leaky faucets, shave down sticky doors for his neighbors, and drive people to doctor's appointments.

"Jim knew how to help people in all kinds of ways,'' the Rev. David Dill said.

In addition to his daughter and grandson, Mr. McLaurin leaves another daughter, Sheila Jane Bailey of Hyde Park; another grandson; and several nieces and nephews. Burial was in Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain.



© Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company



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Korean War documentary, 'Uncommon Courage: Breakout at Chosin,' debuts
Neely Tucker
Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, May 30, 2010; E01

The old Marine is sitting in the lobby of his elegant apartment building in Northwest Washington. Dark pinstriped suit. Checked shirt. Red-and-blue striped tie held in place with a gold pin. Chest full of medals. Black shoes shined to merciless perfection.

He is 84 years old. He is trying to hold his composure.

"I get sentimental thinking about this," Maj. Kurt Chew-Een Lee says in his gravelly voice, his brown eyes dropping. "Just thinking and talking about it."

Lee is the subject of "Uncommon Courage: Breakout at Chosin," an hour-long documentary making a Memorial Day debut on the Smithsonian Channel. It's about one of the Marine Corps' greatest moments, when a few thousand Marines, surrounded and greatly outnumbered by Chinese and North Korean forces, led United Nations troops in bursting out of their death trap near the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War, making their way to the coast and safety.

A short and skinny young lieutenant, Lee made a one-man raid on a Chinese gun position during that battle in the winter of 1950. He then led 500 men on a five-mile nighttime hike across mountainous terrain through a blizzard, in 30 degrees below 0, to re-enforce and rescue another position, all with a broken arm. Then he was shot and had to be evacuated. The fighting was so intense that roughly 90 percent of his rifle company was killed or wounded. He was awarded the Navy Cross.

"He was ferocious," says Lt. Joseph R. Owen, another survivor of that campaign, who served alongside Lee.

The documentary focuses on Lee's role as the first U.S. Marine-commissioned officer of Chinese descent during a time of great prejudice toward Asian Americans. His contemporaries recall hearing racial slights and insults during the era, but Lee politely dismisses the issue as "overplayed and a little ridiculous."

("They better not have had any biases like that," he says now. "They'd have gotten their [rear ends] kicked.")

It also details a battle, and a war, that are often an afterthought in U.S. history discussions.

"It was the Afghan war of its time, and in that way it resonates even today," says David Royle, executive vice president of the Smithsonian Channel. "When you hear the details, it's not that much different from young soldiers today fighting in the hills in the Hindu-Kush."

Lee -- about 5 feet 7 inches tall and maybe 130 pounds -- speaks about the war in crisp, economical terms, if not harsh ones. Much of the military's planning for the conflict was "horrible." The night of his heroic, near-impossible march, he was given "asinine directions" by superiors that he proceeded to ignore.

"Certainly, I was never afraid," he says. "Perhaps the Chinese are all fatalists. I never expected to survive the war. So I was adamant that my death be honorable, be spectacular."

But the documentary and his famed exploits are not what he wants to talk about on this rainy Washington afternoon, in the city where he eventually settled after being detailed to Quantico.

What he wants to talk about as the afternoon gloom settles in the corners of the building's huge lobby, as the cleaning people come and go and vacuums turn on and off, is an afternoon more than 65 years ago, long before he ever set sail for the Korean Peninsula.

It is the day he told his mother that he had enlisted in the Marines. Rather coldly, he sees now, he waited to tell her until the day before he left.

"She did not say anything when I told her. Not a single word. But I could tell by her face she was totally crushed."

The family was Chinese, but he, like his father, had been born in Hawaii. They were living in Sacramento by the time he was a teenager and World War II was raging. His father, an intensely patriotic and proud man (of both China and the United States), sold produce to local markets. His mother raised the children and was "the prettiest woman in the community."

Lee "totally identified" with the Marines' reputation for being the first into combat. He enlisted to counter the stereotype of the "meek, obsequious, bland Asian."

The day after he told his mother, she made him a "banquet-type meal" of his favorite foods. When the family ate, she sat, wordless. She finally went to her room and sat on the edge of the bed. He followed her and stood beside her.

"I thanked her for the meal. I said I had to leave. And then she threw her arms around my waist. She was sobbing. She just cried. She never said anything."

There was so much ahead of him on that afternoon. The brutalities of the war, a successful military career, two marriages. After leaving the Marines, he worked for New York Life for seven years as a trainee supervisor, then nearly two decades for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association as a coordinator of regulatory compliance. He had no children but has a stepdaughter who is now "the closest person to me."

And yet, what haunts him still is his behavior that day, of failing to take into account his mother's feelings.

"I was, more or less, a young punk," he says. Later, he adds: "I'm glad I got another 20 years or so to try to make it up to her. She was a great lady."

Uncommon Courage: Breakout at Chosin, premieres on the Smithsonian Channel at 8 p.m. Monday.





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Oldest Medal of Honor recipient from WWII dies
Julie Watson
The Associated Press

Thursday, May 27, 2010; 8:05 PM

SAN DIEGO -- Retired Navy Lt. John Finn - the first American to receive the nation's highest military award for defending sailors under a torrent of gunfire during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor - died Thursday. He was 100.

Finn was the oldest of 97 Medal of Honor recipients from World War II still living. He died at a nursing home for veterans in Chula Vista, outside San Diego, according to a Navy statement.

Despite head wounds and other injuries, Finn, the chief of ordnance for an air squadron, continuously fired a .50-caliber machine gun from an exposed position as bullets and bombs pounded the Naval Air Station at Kaneohe Bay in Oahu. He then supervised the rearming of returning American planes.

"Here they're paying you for doing your duty, and that's what I did," Finn told The Associated Press before his 100th birthday. "I never intended to be a hero. But on Dec. 7, by God, we're in a war."

President Barack Obama said "his modesty does not diminish his extraordinary conduct or the incredible example he has set for our men and women in uniform and for all Americans."

"I had the privilege of meeting Lt. Finn last year, and I was struck by his warmth and humility," Obama said in a statement from the White House. "As we mark Memorial Day, and pay tribute all who have fallen in defense of this nation, the passing of Lt. Finn is a reminder of the sacrifices that generations have made to preserve the freedoms we hold dear."

Finn, who enlisted in the Navy just before his 17th birthday, received the Medal of Honor on Sept. 15, 1942.

He later served as a limited duty officer specializing in anti-aircraft guns in San Diego, Hawaii, Washington, Panama and aboard aircraft carriers, the Navy said.

Finn retired in 1956 after three decades of service, but he continued to help young sailors and stayed active in Navy organizations, Lt. Aaron Kakiel said.

"He's been a real inspiration to a number of our aviation ordnance men and an example for the entire Navy," he said.

Born July 23, 1909, in Los Angeles, Finn lived for 50 years on his ranch near Live Oak Springs, outside San Diego.

Finn died at the Veterans Home of California in Chula Vista, the Navy said. Officials initially said he had died at his ranch.

He will be buried with full military honors. Kakiel said the Navy was still working with his family members on the details.



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A Memorial Day Tribute
Christopher M. Clarke
I just finished researching, compiling, and self-publishing a book about what I could discover concerning my father's experiences during World War II. I made only four copies-one for each of his descendants. It was a real labor of love, for him and for my sister, my late brother, and my son, daughter, and granddaughter. But the more I researched and the more I worked on it, the more I realized it was really a tribute to the tens of thousands of GIs my Dad interacted with, many of whom never came back to marry, raise a family, embark on a career, and enjoy a well-deserved retirement. I'd like to share with you just a few thoughts from my research and the book.

My father's experience was unique-as was everyone's, I suppose. He was born in a small town in Ohio in 1908 and remembered as a small boy watching General John "Black Jack" Pershing stopping at the local railroad siding to wave to folks as he returned from World War I. From 1923-1932, Dad served on both active and inactive duty in the Ohio National Guard as a member of what later became the 107th Armored Cavalry. During his service, it was the real cavalry, and one of the few memories my father shared was the thrill of riding a horse at full gallop shooting a .45 pistol in target practice.

Dad had been involved in radio as an announcer and entertainer virtually since the beginning of the medium, as early as the mid-1920s. By the mid-1930s, he was the promotion and publicity director of WNJO in West Palm Beach, Florida and later of WRBL in Columbus, Georgia. The beginning of the war found him in Columbus, GA just outside Fort Benning, a major training facility for infantry, airborne, and other combat troops. From about March 1941 until May 1942, Dad was a member of the Columbus, Georgia Defense Service Council and Camp Services Committee at Fort Benning as civilian coordinator of entertainment for troops. From May 1942-March 1943, he worked fulltime as WRBL's Director, Soldier and Civilian Morale Department, producing, directing, announcing and sometimes acting in theatrical performances and coordinating other entertainment for the troops.

In 1942, Dad pulled every string he could find to get a commission to join the Army so he could continue to contribute to the War effort as a member of the uniformed services. Failing that, he enlisted in March 1943. While continuing his grueling schedule of coordinating and conducting evening morale programs, he spent his days going through regular boot camp with the other recruits. He was promoted to the rank of Technical Sergeant (T/4), but his enlistment lasted only a few months. The rigors of working day and night led to a total physical collapse, and Dad was hospitalized for months, eventually dropping to around 90 pounds. He was discharged in August 1943, but as soon as he recovered his energy, he resumed his duties as civilian coordinator of morale programs at Fort Benning and continued those duties until the end of the War.

Dad never spoke much about his experiences. I remember as a very young boy-perhaps five or six years old-Dad teaching me how to stand at attention; turn right, left, and "about face"; and how to salute. But it wasn't until he died in 1981 that I found among his possessions a small box of strange little pins of all sorts. They sat in my drawer for more than 20 years before I finally got around to investigating what they were and what they signified.



Framed Collection of John H. Clarke's pins from Fort Benning and Fort Blanding during World War II.

It turns out that most of the pins were "Distinctive Unit Insignia" from various military units (see photo attached) that he had entertained. After an entertainment program, a member of the unit would present him with a pin that had great significance to the members of the units. Some units had long and distinguished histories, going back to the War of 1812 or the Civil War. (See examples below.) Many are still in service, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. All took part in World War II in the European Theater of Operations. Some were at Fort Benning unknowingly training for involvement in the D-Day landings, including the unit in which my father had taken basic training. Thousands of the men from these units never returned home-and likely some of the individuals who presented him with their unit pins died on some European battlefield.

Putting together the history of these units, and of my father's brief encounter with each of them, became a moving experience for me, reminding me of the sacrifice so many of our men and women made to assure freedom in Europe and Asia. It made me appreciate all the more the long, thin line of men and women who have been willing to man the walls of civilization from Bunker Hill to Kandahar, those who have answered our country's call In time of need. So, as Memorial Day comes this year, it will not be just another "day off," another opportunity for a barbeque, or a time for family and friends. For me, it will be a day of reflections on the blessings of liberty, the responsibility that goes along with that blessing, and the sacrifices of those who have stood forth to protect it when called upon to do so.





14th Field Artillery Regiment

Distinctive Unit Insignia. Description: A silver color metal and enamel device consisting of a red disc charged with a white Maltese cross within a ring of fourteen gouttes d'eau (silver) reversed; attached above is a wreath of the colors, silver and red, on which is a red and white American Indian war bonnet surmounting a silver arrow. Attached below, a silver triparted scroll inscribed "EX HOC SIGNO VICTORIA" in black letters. The overall dimension is 1 1/8 inches (2.86 cm) in height.

Symbolism: Scarlet (red) is a color traditionally associated with Artillery units. The cross, a heraldic device, and utilized by the Indians in Oklahoma, is symbolic of the morning star and is representative of the dawn of the 14th Field Artillery. The fourteen drops of water correspond to the numerical designation of the regiment. The irregular placement of the drops is to represent a dried peyote, a species of small cactus, one of the sacred emblems of the Comanche and Kiowa Indians. The war bonnet pierced by the arrow of Satanta, a noted Kiowa chief of the mid-19th century, is really a spear with a feathered end and leather grip. Satanta was well known among all the Indians of the Fort Sill region.

Background: The distinctive unit insignia was originally approved for the 14th Field Artillery Regiment on 20 October 1923. It was redesignated for the 14th Field Artillery (Armored) Regiment on 25 October 1940. The insignia was redesignated for the 14th Armored Field Artillery Battalion on 30 March 1942. It was redesignated for the 14th Artillery Regiment on 21 November 1958. Effective 1 September 1971, it was redesignated for the 14th Field Artillery Regiment. The insignia was amended to correct the description and revise the symbolism on 7 November 1991.



Coat of Arms

Blazon:

Shield: Gules a broad armed Maltese cross with slightly reentrant ends Argent within fourteen gouttes d'eau reversed arranged in the outline of peyote (one of the cactus family, in outline approximating a circle).

Crest: On a wreath of the colors, Argent and Gules, an American Indian war bonnet Gules and Argent over Satanta's arrow of the last.



Motto: EX HOC SIGNO VICTORIA

Shield: Scarlet (red) is a color traditionally associated with Artillery units. The cross, a heraldic device, and utilized by the Indians in Oklahoma, is symbolic of the morning star and is representative of the dawn of the 14th Field Artillery. The fourteen drops of water correspond to the numerical designation of the regiment. The irregular placement of the drops is to represent a dried peyote, a species of small cactus, one of the sacred emblems of the Comanche and Kiowa Indians.

Crest: The war bonnet pierced by the arrow of Satanta, a noted Kiowa chief of the mid-19th century, is really a spear with a feathered end and leather grip. Satanta was well known among all the Indians of the Fort Sill region.

Background: The coat of arms was originally approved for the 14th Field Artillery Regiment on 24 February 1921. It was amended to correct the blazon of the shield on 28 April 1923. It was redesignated for the 14th Field Artillery (Armored) Regiment on 25 October 1940. The insignia was redesignated for the 14th Armored Field Artillery Battalion on 30 March 1942. It was redesignated for the 14th Artillery Regiment on 21 November 1958. Effective 1 September 1971, it was redesignated for the 14th Field Artillery Regiment. The insignia was amended to correct the blazon of the shield and revise the symbolism on 7 November 1991.





8th Infantry Regiment

Distinctive Unit Insignia. Description: Argent on a bend Azure, between in sinister chief a tomahawk Gules halved Sable and an arrow of the last barbed of the third in saltire and in dexter base an eagle's claw erased Proper, three roses of the field seeded of the third, surmounted by a mural crown, the shield and crown mounted on a heavy Roman Gold boss figure in high relief. The overall height of the insignia is 1 5/32 inches (2.94 cm).

Symbolism: The shield is silver (white) with a blue bend, the Infantry colors. The three heraldic flowers on the bend are symbolic of: first, the rose, the flower of the state of New York, where the regimental headquarters was first organized; second, the hispida, the flower of the Philippines, where the regiment saw service during the Insurrection; and third, the temple flower, which is the flower of Cuba, where the 8th served during the War with Spain. The arrow and tomahawk represent the Indian campaigns in which the regiment has participated. The claw representing the maimed strength of the Prussian eagle alludes to the regiment's part in the Occupation of Germany after World War I.

Background: The distinctive unit insignia was approved on 5 November 1923. It was amended to correct the description on 28 April 1925.



Coat of Arms.

Blazon:

Shield: Argent on a bend Azure, between in sinister chief a tomahawk Gules halved Sable and an arrow of the last barbed of the third in saltire and in dexter base an eagle's claw erased Proper, three roses of the field seeded of the third.

Crest: On a wreath of the colors Argent and Azure out of a mural coronet a dexter arm in armor embowed the hand grasping a flagstaff with tassel all Proper.



Motto: PATRIAE FIDELITAS (Loyalty to Country).



Shield: The shield is white with a blue bend, the Infantry colors. The three heraldic flowers on the bend are symbolic of: first, the rose, the flower of the state of New York, where the regimental headquarters was first organized; second, the hispida, the flower of the Philippines, where the regiment saw service during the Insurrection; and third, the temple flower, which is the flower of Cuba, where the 8th served during the War with Spain. The arrow and tomahawk represent the Indian campaigns in which the regiment has participated. The claw representing the maimed strength of the Prussian eagle alludes to the regiment's part in the Occupation of Germany after World War I.

Crest: The crest symbolizes service in the Mexican War; the Eighth was the first United States Regiment to plant its colors on the fort at Churubusco.

Background: The coat of arms was approved on 6 July 1923. It was amended to correct the spelling of the motto on 1 October 1963.

The regiment was constituted 5 July 1838 in the Regular Army as the 8th Infantry,organized in July 1838 in New York, Vermont, and Michigan. It was consolidated in May 1869 with the 33d Infantry, and the consolidated unit was designated as the 8th Infantry. It was assigned 17 December 1917 to the 8th Division, relieved 24 March 1923 from assignment to the 8th Division and assigned to the 4th Division (later redesignated as the 4th Infantry Division). It was inactivated 25 February 1946 at Camp Butner, North Carolina, but reactivated 15 July 1947 at Fort Ord, California.

The unit was relieved 1 April 1957 from assignment to the 4th Infantry Division and reorganized as a parent regiment under the Combat Arms Regimental System. It was withdrawn 1 August 1984 from the Combat Arms Regimental System and reorganized under the United States Army Regimental System. Among the famous former members of the 8th Infantry Regiment were Confederate generals James Longstreet and George Pickett.

1st Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment

The 1st Battalion (Mechanized), 8th Infantry Regiment was originally organized on 1 July 1838 as a detachment of recruits at Detroit, Michigan. It was designated on 5 July 1838 as Company A, 8th Infantry, and concurrently constituted in the regular Army. It was consolidated in May 1869 with Company A, 33rd Infantry, with the consolidated unit being designated as Company A, 8th Infantry.

The 8th Infantry was assigned on 17 December 1917 to the 8th Division and relieved on 2 March 1923 from its assignment to the 8th division before being reassigned to the 4th Division (later redesignated as the 4th Infantry Division). It inactivated on 25 February 1946 at Camp Butner, North Carolina.

Reactivation - The unit reactivated on 15 July 1947 at Fort Ord, California. It was reorganized and redesignated on 1 October 1963 as the 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry. It inactivated on 10 April 1970 at Fort Lewis, Washington. 2nd Reactivation - It reactivated again on 13 September 1972 at Fort Carson, Colorado.

Honors

The regiment has earned a total 48 Campaign Streamers. Decorations of the "Fighting Eagles" Battalion include three presidential unit citations (four citations for A Co. and C Co.). The first citation was awarded to the regiment during World War II on June 6, 1944, for action on the beaches of Normandy. Two other presidential unit citations were awarded to the battalion for actions in Pleiku Province and Dak To district in the Republic of Vietnam. A co and C co were awarded another presidential unit citation for Kontum Province in the Republic of Vietnam.

In World War II, the Eighth Infantry Regiment was cited twice in the order of the day by the Belgian Army - the first for action in the Belgian Campaign, and later for action in the Ardennes. The Belgian Government subsequently awarded the regiment the Belgian Fourragere.

The First Battalion Eighth Infantry won nine campaign streamers, and one in May and 2nd with it being an Oak leaf cluster in October-November 1967 Presidential Unit Citation (United States) with one Oak leaf cluster, and supporting units, for action in Vietnam from 1966 to 1970, participating in operations Sam Houston, Francis Marion, Don Quin, and Paul Revere III, and IV. The Vietnamese Government awarded the battalion the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palm and the Civil Action Medal First Class. Alpha and Charlie Companies were awarded an Oakleaf Cluster to their Presidential Unit Citation for extraordinary heroism in the Republic of Vietnam. Companies A and C sought out, engaged and decisively defeated an overwhelmingly larger force by deploying small, isolated patrols and conducting company and platoon-size reconnaissance-in-force operations. A-1-4 engineers took much of the brunt blast of automatics and mortar fire from human waves charging and retreating many time they received. Personal awards are highlighted by the regiment's seven Medal of Honor winners.

A few of the famous past commanders include former General of the Army George C. Marshall, and General James Van Fleet, who led the regiment ashore on D-Day.

2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment

The 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, was originally constituted on July 5, 1838 in the Regular Army as Company B, 8th Infantry, and organized at Detroit, Michigan. It consolidated in May 1869 with Company B, 33d Infantry, with the consolidated unit being designated as Company B, 8th Infantry.

World War I

The 8th Infantry was assigned on 17 December 1917 to the 8th Division and relieved on 24 March 1923 from this assignment to the 8th Division and reassigned to the 4th Division later re-designated as the 4th Infantry Division. Company B inactivated 25 February 1946 at Camp Butner, North Carolina.

Reactivation

It reactivated on 15 July 1947 at Fort Ord, California, and inactivated on 1 April 1957 at Fort Lewis, Washington, and relieved from assignment to the 4th Infantry Division. Re-designated on 1 August 1957 as Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2d Battle Group, 8th Infantry, it was assigned to the 8th Infantry Division, and activated in Germany (with its organic elements concurrently constituted and activated). It was relieved on 1 January 1959 from assignment to the 8th Infantry Division and reassigned to the U.S. 1st Infantry Division. Reorganized and re-designated on 1 October 1963 as the 2d Battalion, 8th Infantry, it was concurrently relieved from assignment to the 1st Infantry Division and assigned to the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. It inactivated on 13 September 1972 at Fort Carson, Colorado. The unit activated on 1 August 1984 at Fort Carson, Colorado. It inactivated there on 15 December 1989 was relieved from assignment to the 4th Infantry Division. Reassigned on 16 December 1995 to the 2d Armored Division and activated at Fort Hood, Texas, it was relieved on 16 January 1996 from assignment to the 2d Armored Division and reassigned to the 4th Infantry Division.

Operation Iraqi Freedom

OIF I (OIF 05-07)

Under the command of LTC James Howard, 2-8 IN deployed in support of OIF 05-07 in November 2005. The battalion spent approximately three weeks at Camp Buehring, Kuwait conducting Reception, Staging, Integration, and Onward Movement (RSOI). In mid-December 2005 the battalion began its move north into Iraq via semi-tactical ground movement. The battalion moved north through southern Iraq, making stops along the way at NAVISTAR on the Kuwait/Iraq border, CSC CEDAR II, and CSC SCANIA before reaching FOB KALSU in northern Babil Province.

2-8 IN, in conjunction with 2nd Special Troops Battalion, and 2nd Brigade Headquarters conducted Relief in Place/Transfer of Authority with 155th AR BDE, Mississippi National Guard and 2nd Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in December 2006. 2-8 IN's area of operations included Babil Province north the Yusifiyah, south to Tounis, west to Mussayib, and east to the Ubaid. Within AO NORMANDY the major population centers controlled by 2-8 IN included Iskandariyah, Haswah, Eskan, the Hateen Apartments, Muelha, and an area known as Chaka 4 (or the Kilometers). In addition, 2-8 IN controlled a large portion of MSR TAMPA, from Checkpoint 15 all the way north to Checkpoint 22. The TALONS spent OIF 05-07 balancing kinetic operations with security and support operations, as well as keeping vital supply routes open through AO NORMANDY. Kinetic operations netted several high value targets, while security and support operations allowed the local populace to be co-opted into participating securing their villages and towns.

Through twelve months of combat operations, 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry lost six members of the battalion:

PVT Joshua M. Morberg (HHC/2-8 IN); SPC Lance S. Sage (HHC/2-8 IN); SGT Jason J. Buzzard (E/2-8 IN) CPL Cesar A. Granados (E/2-8 IN); SPC Jeremiah S. Santos (B/2-8 IN); SGT Michael T. Seeley (B/2-8 IN)

In November 2006 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment redeployed to Fort Hood, TX. Shortly after redeployment LTC James Howard relinquished command and 2-8 IN began to relocate from Fort Hood, TX to Fort Carson, CO. 2-8 IN finalized the move in the Spring of 2007. LTC Doug Cardinale and Command Sergeant Major Richard Joyce assumed command of the battalion prior to it relocating to Fort Carson, CO. Upon arrival at Fort Carson, 2-8 IN began training up for yet another OIF deployment. In April 2008 the battalion conducted a month-long rotation at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, CA in preparation for OIF 08-09.





14th Infantry Regiment

Distinctive Unit Insignia. Description: A gold color metal and enamel device 1 1/8 inches (2.86cm) in height overall consisting of a gold imperial Chinese dragon placed against a red conventionalized Spanish castle with the motto "THE RIGHT OF THE LINE" in gold letters on a blue ribbon scroll.

Symbolism: The dragon is the crest of the regiment and the castle is one of the charges on the regimental shield. The motto is the motto of the regiment.

Background: The distinctive unit insignia was originally approved on 6 Nov 1924. It was amended on 11 Jun 1925 to correct the color of the motto letters.



Coat of Arms

Blazon:

Shield: Per fess Azure and Argent, two arrows chevronwise point to point counterchanged between in chief a cross patée of the last and in base a spreading palm Vert debruised by a castle Or.

Crest: On a wreath of the colors an imperial Chinese dragon affronté Or scaled and finned Azure incensed and armed Gules.



Motto: THE RIGHT OF THE LINE



Symbolism:

Shield: The regiment was organized in 1861 and played a notable part in all the Virginia Campaigns from the Siege of Yorktown in 1862 to October 1864. It was in Sykes' regular division of the 5th Corps of the Army of the Potomac whose badge was a white cross patée. At Gaines Hill and Malvern Hill the division commander praised the regiment and the brigade commended it at Second Manassas. It performed a most difficult service at Antietam, was in the repulse of the crucial attack of the enemy at Gettysburg and made a most gallant charge at the Wilderness. In later years the regiment took part in two Indian Campaigns indicated by the two arrows and detachments were in two others but not in sufficient strength to entitle the regiment as a whole to participation. It was at the capture of Manila in the Spanish War indicated by the castle, and in the fighting around the same city in 1899 indicated by the palm, and in the China Relief Expedition as shown by the dragon.

Motto: The motto is the much prized remark made by General Meade directing the station of the regiment in the Review just after the Civil War.

Background: The coat of arms was approved on 10 Dec 1921.

At the end of the Civil War when asked where the 14th U.S. Infantry Regiment should be placed in the Grand Review in Richmond, Virginia celebrating the Union victory, General George Meade, Commander of the Army of the Potomac said, "To the right of the line. The 14th has always been to the front in battle and deserves the place of honor."

Since its constitution in 1861, the 14th Infantry Regiment has compiled a distinguished record of service with the United States Army. The Golden Dragons have been "to the front in battle" in the Civil War, the Indian Wars, the War with Spain, the China Relief Expedition, the Philippine Insurrection, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and currently in the War on Terrorism.



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Edward Uhl, 92; helped invent bazooka, headed Fairchild Industries
T. Rees Shapiro
The Washington Post
Sunday, May 23, 2010; C06

In early 1942, then-Lt. Edward Uhl was a young engineer just out of college when he was recruited to the Army's ordnance corps for a special mission.

The United States had only recently entered World War II, and the Army was scrambling to create a functional antitank weapon capable of penetrating German armor.

Within months, Mr. Uhl and a senior colleague created just such a device -- a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher that became known as the "bazooka" and is still used in various forms today. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower called the bazooka one of the crucial "tools of victory" for the Allies in World War II, along with the C-47 transport plane, the Jeep and the atomic bomb.

Decades after the war, Mr. Uhl became president, chief executive and chairman of the defense contractor Fairchild Industries, where he was responsible for overseeing the production of the A-10 Thunderbolt II, an aircraft that ravaged Iraqi tanks during the Persian Gulf War.

Mr. Uhl, 92, died May 9 at an assisted living facility in Easton, Md., of complications from a stroke.

He joined the Army in 1941 shortly after graduating with honors from Lehigh University, where he majored in engineering physics. He was assigned to the ordnance corps and began serving in a special weapons unit with Leslie Skinner, who would retire from the Army as a colonel.

In 1942, the pair received orders to design an antitank weapon that could penetrate four-inch steel plating used on German tanks. At a small shop in Indian Head, Md., they went to work on developing the bazooka, officially known as the M1 rocket launcher.

Physicist Robert Goddard is often credited with designing the prototype for the tube rocket launcher, but his innovation was poorly timed. He presented his device to military officials in Washington in November 1918, the month World War I ended.

Inspired by Goddard's earlier work, Skinner and Mr. Uhl planned to design an inexpensive and mobile launching system. They created projectiles by attaching grenades to miniature rockets that flew at 300 feet per second.

But when it came to a viable launching method, they were stumped.

The weapon needed to be lightweight, accurate and, above all, safe. Mr. Uhl and Skinner were struggling to find a way for a soldier to fire the launcher without being burned by the thrust of hot gas created when the rocket's propellant was ignited.

One day, Mr. Uhl was stumbling through an old junkyard when he saw a metal tube about five feet long and had a brainstorm.

In an interview with Maryland Cracker Barrel magazine in 2007, Mr. Uhl remembered saying: "That's the answer! Put the tube on a soldier's shoulder with the rocket inside and away it goes."

He and Skinner added a shoulder stock and a hand grip. Mr. Uhl tested the weapon first by firing a round into the Potomac River while wearing a welder's helmet and mitts.

An Army official requested a live demonstration at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, where Mr. Uhl and Skinner would fire at a tank 125 yards away, moving at 20 mph.

After six other antitank systems had a try -- all missing the tank or failing to fire -- it was Mr. Uhl's turn. It was a perfect shot.

"I hit the damned tank dead center," Mr. Uhl said.

The Army called for the weapon to be mass-produced and deployed quickly. The new launcher was cheap to make, and the Army reportedly distributed more than 450,000 during World War II.

Soldiers who used the American rocket launcher gave it a number of monikers, including "the stovepipe" (because of its appearance) and "the Buck Rogers gun" (because of its advanced technology).

The officer who oversaw the Aberdeen demonstration in 1942 was credited with bestowing on the launcher its enduring nickname. He remarked at the time that Mr. Uhl's launcher resembled comedian Bob Burns's tubular musical instrument, called the "Bazooka."

Edward George Uhl, whose father was a mechanic and milkman, was born March 24, 1918, in Elizabeth, N.J.

He left the Army in 1947 at the rank of lieutenant colonel and began his ascent in the defense industry. After he worked in guided missiles with the Glenn L. Martin Co. in Middle River, Md., he joined Fairchild in 1961.

At Fairchild, Mr. Uhl expanded the company's offerings to include missiles, satellites and aircraft, including the A-10 Thunderbolt II, also known as the Warthog. He retired as the company's chairman in 1985.

Mr. Uhl's first wife, Maurine Keleher, died in 1966. Their daughter, Carol Uhl Nordlinger, died in 2008.

Survivors include his second wife, Mary Stuart Brugh Uhl of Oxford, Md.; three children from his first marriage, Kim Uhl of Washington, Scott Uhl of Woodbine, Md., and Cynthia Uhl of Williamsburg; two stepsons, George Hatcher of Easton and William Hatcher of Hagerstown, Md.; a sister; and nine grandchildren.

In retirement, Mr. Uhl and rocket scientist Wernher von Braun went on big-game hunting trips to Africa. On his deathbed, von Braun gave his prized elephant gun to Mr. Uhl.



Photo of Uhl: Associated Press

Photo of Soldier: Us military file photo



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Dorothy "Dottie" Kamenshek dead; women's professional baseball player
Matt Schudel
The Washington Post
Saturday, May 22, 2010; B04

Dorothy "Dottie" Kamenshek, 84, often considered the finest female baseball player ever and whose exploits with the Rockford Peaches in the 1940s helped inspire the movie "A League of Their Own," died May 17 at her home in Palm Desert, Calif. A family friend said she had lingering complications from a stroke suffered nine years ago.

Ms. Kamenshek was only 17 when she joined the Rockford, Ill., team in 1943, the first year of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. Chicago Cubs owner and chewing gum magnate Philip K. Wrigley established the league to keep baseball before the public eye when male ballplayers were drafted into the military during World War II.

The women's league became a popular attraction in the 1940s and early '50s, and Ms. Kamenshek was acknowledged as its greatest all-around player. She twice won the league's batting title, was named to seven all-star teams and was once recruited to play for a men's professional team.

In 1999, Sports Illustrated named her one of the 100 greatest female athletes of all time.

Wally Pipp, a onetime New York Yankee who lost his job at first base to Hall of Famer Lou Gehrig, called Ms. Kamenshek "the fanciest fielding first baseman I've ever seen, man or woman."

In the 1992 film "A League of Their Own," Geena Davis played a character named Dottie Hinson that was said to be based on Ms. Kamenshek and another star player, Pepper Paire Davis. Ms. Kamenshek, who was often known as "Kammie" during her playing days, was a consultant for the movie and spent two days teaching the actresses how to turn a double play.

"Our skills were as good as the men's," she told baseball historian John B. Holway for an article in Baseball Research Journal. "We just weren't strong enough to compete with them."

Ms. Kamenshek, who was 5-feet-6 and 135 pounds, was playing for a softball team near Cincinnati when she tried out for the fledgling women's baseball league. She was signed as an outfielder before making the transition to first base.

The Rockford Peaches were one of the four original teams of the All-American League, as it became known, along with teams in South Bend, Ind., Racine, Wis., and Kenosha, Wis.. By 1948, the league had expanded to 10 teams across the Midwest and drew almost 1 million fans to its games.

The women's rules evolved from a modified form of softball to an almost exact duplicate of men's baseball -- except that its players wore above-the-knee skirts. The women played up to 120 games in a four-month season. Each team had only 15 players, which meant that they often played with serious injuries as well as constant abrasions, or "strawberries," from sliding into bases on their bare legs.

The players were expected to follow one simple rule: "Look like women. Play like men."

They had to keep their hair at shoulder length and wear makeup even while playing and were required to attend a charm school run by cosmetics doyenne Helena Rubenstein. Chaperones traveled with the teams, and drinking, smoking and unauthorized dating were forbidden. Still, some of the ladies of the diamond managed to have colorful escapades, as recounted in "A League of Their Own."

They even had male groupies, whom they called "Clubhouse Clydes" or "Locker Room Leonards."

Ms. Kamenshek seldom got into trouble off the field because, by all accounts, she was fanatical about practicing. She batted and threw left-handed and spent hours in front of hotel-room mirrors working on her fielding and batting swing.

In 1946 and 1947, she led the league in hitting with averages of .316 and .306. Her lifetime batting average of .292 was the highest ever in the women's league. She stole 657 bases during her 10-year career, including 109 in 1946. In 3,736 career at-bats, she struck out only 81 times.

When a men's team in Florida offered her a contract in 1947, she turned it down because she thought it would turn into a publicity stunt.

Ms. Kamenshek led her Rockford team -- which she called "the New York Yankees of the All-American League" -- to four league titles. In the final game of the 1950 championship series, she drove in five runs to propel the Peaches to victory.

In 1951, she hit .345 and stole 63 bases, and after sitting out the 1952 season, she returned for a final year in 1953. With dwindling attendance and competition from television, the All-American League disbanded in 1954.

"All the girls were there because they loved playing," she recalled of her career, "but we were also here to keep baseball going during the war."

Dorothy Mary Kamenshek was born Dec. 21, 1925, in Norwood, Ohio. She was an only child and grew up playing sports on sandlots.

After retiring from baseball, she received a bachelor's degree in physical therapy from Marquette University in Milwaukee in 1958. She worked as a physical therapist in Ohio before moving to Los Angeles, where she became chief of therapy services of a Los Angeles County children's services agency. She retired in 1980 and had no survivors.

Ms. Kamenshek and the All-American League were all but forgotten until a 1988 exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. Years later, people who saw her play still marveled at her ability.

"Kammie had no weakness," Pepper Davis once said. "She hit left-handed line drives and was a complete ballplayer, the Pete Rose of our league."



Photo Credit: National Baseball Hall Of Fame Library Photo



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Walker M. "Bud" Mahurin, a top flying ace, dies at 91
T. Rees Shapiro
The Washington Post
Friday, May 14, 2010; B05

Retired Air Force Col. Walker M. "Bud" Mahurin, 91, who as a fighter pilot in World War II and the Korean War was credited with downing 24 enemy planes, making him one of the leading American aces of his generation, died May 11 at his home in Newport Beach, Calif. He had complications from a stroke.

A spokesman for the American Fighter Aces Association said Col. Mahurin shot down 24.25 planes over the course of his career (pilots are awarded a fraction of a kill if multiple fighters engaged the enemy). He downed 20.75 in World War II and 3.5 in Korea before he was captured by the enemy and endured 16 months as a prisoner of war.

To qualify as an ace, a pilot must have five or more documented enemy kills. The top U.S. ace of World War II, Richard Bong, gunned down 40 Japanese planes.

While serving in the Army Air Forces during World War II, Col. Mahurin flew the P-47 Thunderbolt, a propeller-driven plane equipped with eight 50-caliber machine guns. He used them to devastating effect against the German Luftwaffe.

In November 1943, Col. Mahurin was the first American pilot to become a "double ace," having destroyed 10 enemy planes, in the European theater.

In late March 1944, he was flying on an escort mission over France when he encountered German fighter planes. He dove toward the ground in pursuit of an enemy plane, and his P-47 was shot up in the altercation. He parachuted out.

"The next thing I know, I'm in the French countryside at high noon with 35 of my fellow fighter pilots circling around me like a beehive," Col. Mahurin told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 1986. "I ran like hell."

He hid in a tall haystack and eventually made contact with a group of French Resistance fighters, who spirited him out of the country to England five weeks later.

He finished the war flying P-50 Mustangs in the Pacific. His last confirmed kill of the war came against a Japanese plane in January 1945 on a mission over the Philippines.

In 1951, Col. Mahurin was sent to Korea to fly the F-86 Sabre jet, which he described as "a Cadillac" in the sky, complete with an air-conditioned cockpit.

Unlike during his bomber escort days in Europe, Col. Mahurin's objective in Korea was to lure enemy MiG-15 planes into the sky over the Korean peninsula for one-on-one dogfights.

"That was the most fun I ever had," Col. Mahurin said in a 2006 interview. "You seldom think of aerial combat -- getting shot at -- as fun, but it's a lot of fun if you're doing the shooting."

In a May 1952 bombing raid on a communist railroad depot, Col. Mahurin got cocky, and it cost him.

"I figured they couldn't touch me," he told an interviewer in 1997. "I was on the side of God. I felt that we were doing the right thing for humanity. I saw a truck coming into the target area. I thought to drop my bomb, and then go down to strafe that truck. Back at the Officer's club bar, I would have a great story to tell."

His plane was shot by anti-aircraft fire, and he crash-landed in a rice paddy. As a prisoner of war in North Korea, he was subjected to psychological torture. He was interrogated for hours on end and was forced to stand at attention in subfreezing temperatures until collapsing from exhaustion. He reportedly attempted suicide because of the harsh treatment.

Col. Mahurin, along with many others, signed a false confession that the United States was partaking in a germ warfare campaign against North Korea and China.

"I lived in solitary confinement, with no one to talk to except the interrogators," he said in 1997. "The POWs had a hard time, but they were together. Being isolated in your own mind, in your own facility without any extraneous information, except what they wanted you to hear, was a different circumstance."

Walker Melville Mahurin was born in Fort Wayne, Ind., on Dec. 5, 1918. He was a 1949 astronautics and aeronautics graduate of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind.

His first marriage, to Patricia Sweet, ended in divorce. In 1970, he married Joan Gill. Besides his wife, of Newport Beach, survivors include three children from his first marriage, Lynn Vaughan of San Juan Capistrano, Calif., George Mahurin of Brea, Calif., and Michael Mahurin of Florida; a stepdaughter, Valerie Miller of Newport Beach; seven grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.

After retiring from the Air Force Reserve in 1956, Col. Mahurin became an official for North American Aviation and other aerospace companies. He spent several years with the National Security Industrial Association, an organization for defense contractors.

He wrote a memoir about his time as a prisoner, "Honest John" (1962), which had been his call sign in Korea, and a book about the German air force during the Third Reich, "Hitler's Fall Guys: An Examination of the Luftwaffe by one of America's Most Famous Aces" (1999).

Despite his prowess, the first plane Col. Mahurin downed during World War II was his own.

His main task with the 56th Fighter Group was to escort large bomber planes on missions from England to Germany. One day, Col. Mahurin was hot-dogging next to a B-24, a hulking bomber with long wings and four jumbo-size propellers.

Col. Mahurin maneuvered his smaller P-47 closer and closer, until he was flying just feet from the B-24.

While pulling away, the tail of Col. Mahurin's plane was shredded by the bomber's propeller. He ejected and landed next to the burning carcass of his plane. When he returned to the base, he received a tongue lashing and a $100 fine, but he was allowed to keep flying.





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[Editor's note: The U.S. and British air forces flying missions over Germany in World War II lost more men in action per capita than the Japanese kamikaze corps. Those who flew these dangerous missions deserve our highest respect and admiration. The "Black Thursday" raid was one of the worst encounters of the air war. "After rebuilding its strength, the 8th Air Force again attacked Schweinfurt on 14 October 1943, a day that would go down in history as "Black Thursday." 291 B-17s left England, 229 bombed the target, and 60 bombers were lost. Crew casualties amounted to 639 men ... a loss the 8th Air Force could not afford, and which put a halt, for the time being, to unescorted deep strikes." (Geoff Walden, Third Reich in Ruins, http://www.thirdreichruins.com/schweinfurt.htm.)


Robert Grimes dies at 87; WWII pilot evaded Nazi capture
Peter Eisner


Friday, April 23, 2010; B05

Col. Robert Grimes, 87, an Army Air Forces pilot who evaded capture in World War II when his B-17 bomber was shot down over Nazi territory, and who later was a Prince William County schools administrator, died April 21 at his home at Fort Belvoir. He had complications from prostate cancer.

Only in recent years did Col. Grimes speak extensively of his wartime experiences, in part, he said, because the military had ordered airmen to treat their experiences as secret.

When he sat down for extensive interviews about the war in 2002, he said he felt relief about being able to share his memories. After that, he met with Air Force jet pilots at a base in Colorado, in which he described flying night training missions in the dark, without radar and under radio silence. He knew other planes were nearby but used instinct and occasional flares to avoid collisions. The top-gun pilots were shocked and rendered speechless.

In 1943, then-Lt. Grimes and a nine-man crew flew bombing runs over Nazi Europe from an English air base, north of London. He was 20, unknown to the others, and was the youngest of the crew. It was the height of the U.S. Army Eighth Air Force daylight bombings of strategic targets over Nazi territory. On a mission near Gdansk, Poland, on Oct. 9, they faced intense ground fire and flak.

After dropping his bombs, he was able to return to his base at Snetterton Heath, but the B-17 was riddled with holes and taken out of service. Lt. Grimes and crew set off with a different plane on the morning of Oct. 20, six days after what became known as "Black Thursday" -- an attack on a Schweinfurt, Germany, ball-bearing plant in which 60 B-17s and 600 men were lost.

The target this time was a bomb manufacturing plant near Aachen, Germany. Nazi fighter planes zoomed in when Lt. Grimes experienced engine trouble over central Belgium. He was forced to linger beneath the clouds and separated from the rest of his squadron.

Within minutes, cannon fire destroyed the plane's tail, and Lt. Grimes struggled for control. As he sounded the alarm, not realizing he had been wounded in the leg by machine-gun fire, the pilot held a slow circle and fought for crucial seconds so the crew could jump free of the stricken plane. He was the last to bail out before the B-17 crashed into a field close to a Luftwaffe base, 35 miles southwest of Brussels.

Col. Grimes later learned that four of his crewmen were killed in action, but five had survived the crash. "You never stop thinking about it," he said in a 2004 interview. "In my mind, I'm back in the cockpit, left seat, looking at the controls, and I'm dodging and diving around the Nazi fighters, trying to make it to a cloud bank. And I look for every option, but I never come up with anything to save us."

On the ground in Belgium, he heard Nazi patrols and barking dogs but was able to hide in the brush until dark, when farmers saved him, knowing the penalty for harboring airmen was execution. He was handed over to members of the Comet Line, a civilian escape organization that saved an estimated 700 airmen during the war. A young member of the organization, Micheline Dumont, arranged for a doctor to remove a bullet from Lt. Grimes's leg and nursed him back to health.

He recalled celebrating his 21st birthday in Brussels on Thanksgiving Day, hidden by Micheline and her friends.

In mid-December, Comet operatives provided forged Belgian and French identity papers and led him on foot, by bicycle and train to a village near the French-Spanish border. Basque guides took Lt. Grimes and several other airmen on an overnight hike in the freezing rain through the Pyrenees. He and his companions waded to safety across the Bidassoa River into Spain before dawn Dec. 23, pursued by Nazi patrols and facing fire from border guards.

Lt. Grimes returned to the United States, trained other bomber pilots in 1944 and was preparing for an impending invasion of Japan when the war ended in 1945. As part of the new Air Force, he went back to Europe for the Berlin Airlift that brought supplies to Berliners during a communist blockade of that city.

He finished his military career as chief of the logistics operations division with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After military retirement in 1972, at the rank of colonel, he spent 10 years as an associate superintendent of schools in Prince William County.

Robert Zeno Grimes was born in Portsmouth, Va., on Nov. 24, 1922. He was one of seven children born to a master carpenter at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.

In 1945, he married Mary Helen Moore. Besides his wife, of Fort Belvoir, survivors include three daughters, Susan Grimes of Washington, Jennifer Grimes of Falls Church and Dale Soper of Woodbine, Md.; two brothers; two sisters; two grandsons; and three great-grandchildren.

After the war, Col. Grimes received a bachelor's degree in military science from the University of Maryland and a master's degree in business administration from George Washington University. His military decorations included the Legion of Merit, the Air Medal and the Purple Heart.

One of Col. Grimes's riveting memories was having been on a Brussels street car the night of his birthday celebration, which was halted by Nazi guards. "I gave the first guard my Belgian ID card and got through it. Then the second guard came and asked me in French if I'd already shown my identification. I somehow saved myself with my high school French. And this was what I said, 'Oui, oui.' Those words saved my life."

Peter Eisner, a former Washington Post editor, is author of "The Freedom Line" (William Morrow, 2004), the story of Robert Grimes and the Comet Line.



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Jaime Escalante dies, inspired 1988 film 'Stand and Deliver'
Jay Mathews


Wednesday, March 31, 2010; B05

Jaime A. Escalante, the most famous and influential American public-school teacher of his generation, died March 30 of cancer at his son's home near Sacramento. He was 79.

A lively, wisecracking Bolivian who did not begin teaching in the United States until he was 44, Mr. Escalante transformed one of the lowest-performing high schools in the country into a model for raising the achievement of disadvantaged children. A 1988 film about his success, "Stand and Deliver," with Edward James Olmos playing the East Los Angeles math teacher, spread his story around the world and inspired teachers in hundreds of inner-city schools to copy his methods.

Mr. Escalante pioneered the use of Advanced Placement, a program of college-level courses and tests designed for high-achieving private schools, to raise standards in average and below-average public schools. His success at Garfield High School, where 85 percent of the students were low-income and few parents had more than a sixth-grade education, suggested that more time and encouragement for learning could trump educational disadvantages.

Calculus was one of the most difficult of the AP subjects. The three-hour final exam, written and scored by outside experts, was considered an impossible goal by many Garfield teachers, familiar with the academic weaknesses of their mostly Hispanic students. Mr. Escalante's first calculus class in 1978 did poorly. Five of the original 14 students lasted the entire course. Only two passed the exam.

But each year's calculus class did better than the previous one. When in 1982 all 18 students passed the exam, Mr. Escalante hoped he had a thriving program that would only get bigger.

Then the Educational Testing Service, which administered AP exams for the College Board, accused 14 of the students of cheating on the exam. Outraged Hispanic community leaders suspected ethnic bias and called for protests. But Mr. Escalante urged his students to retake the exam, an option allowed under AP rules.

Twelve accepted his advice. The exam this time was heavily proctored. The results gave the film its dramatic high point and guaranteed Mr. Escalante's celebrity: All 12 passed the exam, including five who earned top scores.

A Washington Post investigation of the cheating charges unearthed copies of the original exams of 10 students, and they showed that nine of them had been involved in copying one another's work on one free-response question during the first exam. Mr. Escalante never accepted that account and noted that the second exam results were clearly valid.

The Garfield AP program continued to grow, with courses in history, government and biology, and spectacular results in calculus.

In 1987, Garfield students took 129 AP calculus exams, more than all but four high schools, public or private, in the country. That year more than a quarter of all Mexican American students in the United States who passed the Calculus AB exam attended Garfield.

Jaime Alfonso Escalante Gutierrez was born Dec. 31, 1930, in La Paz, Bolivia. He was a fun-loving, athletic teenager who developed into a natural teacher.

His first job was teaching physics, without a textbook, to a class at the American Institute, a school established by Methodist missionaries, when he was 21. He became a popular science teacher in La Paz, often working at one school in the morning, another in the afternoon and tutoring at night.

His wife, Fabiola, arranged for the family to move to California, to which two of her brothers had already immigrated. Mr. Escalante went along with his wife's plan, but he was frustrated to discover upon arriving that his Bolivian credentials would not get him a job in any U.S. school.

He spent 10 years learning English and repeating his undergraduate education and teacher training, mostly at night and during the summers, before he was accepted as a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Shortly after Mr. Escalante arrived at Garfield in 1974, its administrators were fired because the chaotic campus -- riven by gang disputes -- was on the verge of losing its accreditation. Few people noticed the balding teacher with the thick accent teaching basic math to the school's lowest-achieving students. But the new principal saw how well-decorated his classroom was, with sports posters and motivating slogans. Mr. Escalante was given more challenging classes, leading to his experiment in AP Calculus for barrio children.

Once Mr. Escalante became a national celebrity, rubbing shoulders with Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron on his own PBS series on careers for students who applied themselves in school, he faced resentment from other Garfield teachers. He was quick to tell Principal Henry Gradillas about colleagues selling real estate in the teachers lounge or calling in sick to get a head start on their weekend. He was painfully blunt about the flaws in the teaching methods of other teachers in the math department, which he chaired.

Much of Mr. Escalante's success with students stemmed from his ability to persuade them to work on lessons in his classroom after school each day, and to attend Saturday and summer classes to prepare for calculus. He rejected the usual markers of academic excellence and insisted that regardless of a student's GPA, he would let her take the AP course if she promised to work hard.

On one occasion, a student he did not know wandered into his after-school classroom, crowded with people doing their homework. She said she was in the gifted class and needed help with a problem. His voice full of delight, Mr. Escalante motioned to a boy in the room and said, "Let me have a student who is not gifted show you how to do that."

Lured to a Sacramento school by an ambitious superintendent in 1991, Mr. Escalante ended his career quietly, making sure that his students passed the AP test without trying to revolutionize the school. In retirement, he divided his time between California and Bolivia, where he complained that several schools were named after him but had given him no money for the rights.

He is survived by his wife, two sons and six grandchildren.




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Heinz Stahlschmidt dies; demolitions expert thwarted razing of Bordeaux
T. Rees Shapiro
The Washington Post


Friday, March 12, 2010; B08

Heinz Stahlschmidt, a World War II demolitions expert in the German navy who disobeyed orders to raze the crucial French port of Bordeaux and instead set off a controlled explosion that was credited with saving the city, died Feb. 23.

He was 90 or 91, depending on news accounts, and had been living in Bordeaux since 1947, when he became a naturalized French citizen and was known as Henri Salmide.

Mr. Stahlschmidt, a native of Dortmund in northeast Germany, joined the navy in 1939 and was trained to defuse British sea mines. He survived the sinking of three warships and in 1941 was assigned to shore duty in Bordeaux in southwest France.

In late August 1944, with Allied forces closing in, he was ordered by his superiors to rig Bordeaux's docks to blow. It was the country's most extensive port, stretching about seven miles.

Mr. Stahlschmidt said he could not bring himself to perform the job. "My family were Huguenots, and I acted according to my Christian conscience," he told Reuters in 1997. "I could not accept that the port be wantonly destroyed when the war was clearly lost."

After making contact with French Resistance fighters, Mr. Stahlschmidt came up with a plan to thwart the destruction.

The German orders called for the city to be blown up on Aug. 26, but Mr. Stahlschmidt struck Aug. 22 at 8:15 p.m. He laid strips of dynamite inside the supply bunker filled with demolition hardware and thousands of pounds of ordnance and watched as the city shook from the huge explosion.

He killed dozens of Germans in the process but spared nearly 3,500 civilian lives -- the number the Germans expected to die in the port blast. By saving Bordeaux -- home to the country's most vital harbor and nucleus of the famed wine region -- he also helped assure France had a stable platform for postwar economic recovery.

In 2000, France made him a Knight of the Légion d'Honneur, one the country's most prestigious decorations.

After the demolition, Mr. Stahlschmidt hid from Gestapo in Bordeaux, became a member of the port's fire brigade and later married a French woman, Henriette Buisson, according to the New York Times. She is his only immediate survivor, the Times reported.

Mr. Stahlschmidt was seen as a traitor by many Germans, and his name was struck from official German naval records. Likewise, Mr. Stahlschmidt said French officials nearly shot him after the war because of his German military service. For many years, the French Resistance tried to take credit for Mr. Stahlschmidt's exploits in Bordeaux.

"Despite it all, in the same circumstances I'd do it all over again," Mr. Stahlschmidt told Reuters. "But to some people, I'm still just a 'boche' [a derogatory term in French for Germans]."

By adopting a French name, he made his allegiances clear. He returned to Germany only once, in 2001, and proudly wore the Legion d'Honneur insignia on his lapel during a visit to Dortmund.

Bordeaux city government officials said Mr. Stahlschmidt will be buried in French soil.

Washington Post, March 12, 2010




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Officers Who Shot Pentagon Gunman Recall Moments Of Mayhem
Christian Davenport
The Washington Post

Tuesday, March 9, 2010; B02

There was something about the man in the blazer that wasn't quite right -- an intensity, a nervousness -- that told Officer Marvin Carraway that "something was about to happen."

A former Marine who served in the Persian Gulf War, Carraway could sense it, he said. So he stood up to greet the man at the entrance to the Pentagon last Thursday evening, and that's when John Patrick Bedell pulled out a gun and started firing.

Within moments, the gunman suffered a fatal gunshot wound. In interviews Monday, the three members of the Pentagon Force Protection Team involved in the shooting outside the Pentagon said Bedell, a 36-year-old Californian whose family said he had descended into paranoia, appeared from out of nowhere and started firing wildly.

Even though Bedell was standing just five feet away, he only managed to hit Carraway in the thigh. Carraway, 44, said he retreated behind a bulletproof barrier while Bedell kept firing. Police said the shooter was carrying two 9mm semiautomatic handguns. Nearby, Officer Colin Richards also ducked behind a barrier, and, as Bedell ran past them, the two officers returned fire.

"There was no time to think," Carraway said, "it happened so fast."

Moments before, Officer Jeffrey Amos, 46, who was on patrol near the Metro station entrance, had decided to stretch his legs when he heard "a loud popping sound" and thought, "That's gunfire." He started running toward the sound and suddenly saw Bedell, holding a gun, running toward him.

Amos raised his UMP 40 submachine gun and fired, and Bedell came crashing down, knocking over a metal railing. He was pronounced dead later that evening. Authorities said he had been shot in the head.

On Monday, all three officers said they were thankful no one else was hurt. "It could have been much worse," Carraway said.

Amos's shoulder was grazed by the gunfire. Carraway said a bullet just broke the skin of his thigh.

"He's Superman," said Richards, 29. "Man of steel."

"He's a former Marine," Amos added.

The incident was, the officers said, the sort of harrowing, random attack they try to stay alert for -- even at the end of a shift on what had been a normal Thursday of checking identifications at the Pentagon entrance.

All three officers are on routine administrative leave while investigators look into the shooting, but they should be back at work within a week, said Terry Sutherland, a police spokesman. In the meantime, they're spending time with their families.

Amos, who has three children, said his youngest, a 5-year-old, keeps asking: "Daddy, why are they calling you a hero?"





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WW2 Renegades Saved Lives
T. Rees Shapiro
The Washington Post


One was codenamed Agent Rose, the other was dubbed Bordeaux's Choltitz.

Andree Peel was a member of the French Resistance movement. She got her codename for being a saving grace to more than 100 British and American pilots shot down over France whom she helped flee the German occupied country.

In 1944, Heinz Stahlschmidt was a German Navy ordnance expert who was ordered to blow up the docks of Bordeaux, the country's most vital harbor. But Mr. Stahlschmidt wouldn't do it.

He disobeyed the orders and instead blew up his own explosives cache and went into hiding. (Much like Dietrich von Choltitz, the German general who refused Hitler's orders to burn Paris.)

Mr. Stahlschmidt later said the weight of the more than 3,500 civilians who would have been killed by his blasts seemed like too much of a cost when "the war was clearly lost

During her efforts, Mrs. Peel was captured by Nazi foot soldiers who tortured and interrogated her for her role in helping the Allies. Just as her captors were lining her up to be executed, U.S. troops arrived and liberated the prison.



"I was born with courage."Agent Rose later said of her exploits. "I saved 102 pilots before being arrested."

Her work did not go unnoticed. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was honored to shake her hand.

Mr. Stahlschmidt was not as lucky. After blowing up the explosives cache, he was hunted by Gestapo and French officials later tried to have him shot for his participation in the German military.

Nonetheless, Stahlschmidt was proud of his efforts, and eventually so was France. They granted him naturalized citizenship and a new name: Henri Salmide. In 2001, France awarded him with a prestigious honor.

He later said he had no regrets: "Despite it all, in the same circumstances I'd do it all again."

Mrs. Peel died March 5 at age 105. Mr. Stahlschmidt died Feb. 23 at 90 (or 91, there are conflicting reports).

It's pretty interesting to learn about how both of these people acted on their own instincts to preserve some humanity during a dark period in history.

After watching the Oscars last night, in which several war movies won awards, do either of these Renegades' life stories sound script worthy to you? Let us know below if you do.



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2 teens injured in Colorado middle school shooting
Samantha Abernethy
The Associated Press

Wednesday, February 24, 2010; 12:44 AM

LITTLETON, Colo. -- A teacher tackled a man armed with a high-powered rifle just after two teenage students were shot Tuesday at a suburban Denver middle school that's just miles from Columbine High School, the site of one of the nation's deadliest school shootings, authorities said.

One male and one female were shot at about 3:30 p.m. outside Deer Creek Middle School in Littleton, Jefferson County Sheriff's office spokeswoman Jacki Kelley said. Both students were taken to a nearby hospital and were expected to survive.

Student Steven Seagraves said he was about 10 feet away when an adult approached students and asked them: "Do you guys go to this school?"

When the students said they did, he shot them, Seagraves said.

Seventh-grade math teacher David Benke, a 6-foot-5 inch former college basketball player who oversees the school's track team, tackled the suspect as he was trying to reload his weapon.

"He was trying to rack another round. He couldn't get another round in before I got to him so I grabbed him," Benke said, recalling that he didn't have time to fear for his life.

Benke's wife said her husband called her after the shooting.

"He said there was a shooting and that he had to tackle the gunman," Sandra Benke said. She said her husband was upset that he couldn't reach the shooter before two rounds were fired. "He said, 'It was one of my students.'"

The sheriff's office identified the suspect as 32-year-old Bruco Strongeagle Eastwood, a man they say had visited the school before and was inside the building shortly before the shooting. Authorities have not said what his connection is to the school. He is expected to make his first court appearance Wednesday morning and may face at least two counts of attempted murder.

Eastwood has an arrest record in Colorado dating back to 1996 that includes menacing, assault, domestic violence and driving under the influence of alcohol, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

A man who answered the phone Tuesday night at a number listed for Eastwood identified himself only as "Mr. Eastwood" and said he was Bruco Eastwood's father. He was at a loss for words.

"There's nothing you can say about it. What can you say?" the man told The Associated Press. "Pretty dumb thing to do. I feel bad for the people involved." He wouldn't comment further.

The victims, Reagan Webber and Matt Thieu, were both treated at Littleton Adventist Hospital. Christine Alexander, a hospital spokeswoman, said Webber was treated and released to her home, and that Thieu was transferred to another hospital.

Authorities say both victims had surgery Tuesday evening.

Bus driver Steve Potter said he was about to pull away from the school with a full bus when he heard a loud bang that sounded like an M-80 firecracker. Students screamed when they spotted the man with a rifle, Potter told KMGH-TV.

"He looked like he was just kind of looking around for someone to shoot," he said.

Potter said he saw Benke grab the suspect so he and another man jumped on the gunman and helped hold him until police arrived.

"He's the real hero," Potter said of Benke. "All the credit goes to him."

Kevin Zwolinski, another student, said he had just boarded a school bus when he heard two shots and saw one of the victims fall to the ground.

"I thought it could have been like a tire might have been popped, but as soon as I turned around and saw everyone running I knew it was a gun," he said.

Zwolinski said everyone on the bus was told to lie silently on the floor until authorities arrived.

The school is about three miles southwest of Columbine High School, where two teens - Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris - killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 23 others before killing themselves in 1999.

The middle school was temporarily locked down with about 30 students in the building. They were eventually taken to a nearby elementary school, where they were to meet up with their parents.

Students' parents were alerted through text messages, phone calls and e-mails, Jefferson County Schools spokeswoman Melissa Reeves said.

Kelley said authorities don't yet have a motive for the shootings.

"Why this school, why this happened, why these students, we don't have any of those answers yet," she said.

Associated Press writers P. Solomon Banda in Littleton and Ivan Moreno and Thomas Peipert in Denver contributed to this story.




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Soldier Stormed Japanese Machine Gun Bunker
T. Rees Shapiro



Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Alejandro R. Ruiz Sr., 85, an Army infantryman in World War II who received the Medal of Honor for single-handedly storming a Japanese machine gun bunker -- twice -- during the Battle of Okinawa, died Nov. 23 at a hospital in Napa, Calif. He had congestive heart failure.

On April 28, 1945, in the last months of the war, Pfc. Ruiz deployed to Okinawa on a mission with his platoon, seeking remnants of a Japanese battalion hiding in fortified emplacements on steep ridges near the village of Gasukuma.

The soldiers were patrolling in a ravine when they were ambushed from a network of concealed pillboxes. Coming under heavy fire, every soldier except Pfc. Ruiz and his squad leader was dead or injured.

Realizing that his standard-issue M1 Garand -- with an eight round clip -- would be insufficient against the more powerful Japanese machine guns, Pfc. Ruiz picked up a Browning automatic rifle and began his solo assault. He calmly walked 35 yards to the bunker. He climbed on top and was prepared to fire into it, but a ruptured cartridge jammed the Browning, according to the Medal of Honor citation.

A Japanese soldier charged him, and Mr. Ruiz beat him down with the broken gun. Pfc. Ruiz tossed the rifle aside and ran back through the grenade explosions and gunfire to where his platoon was pinned down. He retrieved a second weapon, tested it and grabbed some extra cans of ammo before he dashed back.

All of the Japanese guns were now trained on Pfc. Ruiz as he raced back through a hail of gunfire. He was hit in the leg, but he managed to climb back on top of the pillboxes. He jumped from one bunker to the other, spraying bursts of gunfire into the apertures.

Pfc. Ruiz's Medal of Honor citation says that "in the face of overwhelming odds," he single-handedly killed 12 Japanese soldiers and silenced the machine gun nest, saving his fellow soldiers.

President Harry S. Truman gave him the Medal of Honor, the military's highest award for valor, during a ceremony at the White House in June 1946. He also received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

Alejandro Renteria Ruiz was born April 26, 1924, in Loving, N.M., to Mexican immigrants. He spent his career in the Army. He also served in the Korean War and retired as a master sergeant in the mid-1960s. He lived for many years in Visalia, Calif., which named a park in his honor. Most recently, he had been living at the Veterans Home in Yountville, Calif., near Napa.

His marriages to Eliza Martinez and Lilia Flores ended in divorce. Survivors include two children from his first marriage, Celia Ruiz and Alejandro Ruiz Jr., both of Berkeley, Calif.; a sister; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

Sgt. Ruiz often recounted the circumstances that led to his Army service. As a teenager working in odd jobs for a cattle farmer in Carlsbad, N.M., he had been tasked to drive a cow to another farm when he became distracted by thoughts of a girlfriend.

He drove, with the cow in tow, straight to Barstow, Tex., 122 miles away, to woo the young woman into marrying him. Sgt. Ruiz was detained, and a judge told him that he would either be sent to jail for kidnapping the cow, or he could enlist in the Army to stay out of trouble. He chose the Army.


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Freya von Moltke dies; led Nazi resistance Kreisau Circle
Emily Langer
Washington Post Staff Writer


Saturday, January 9, 2010; B04

Freya von Moltke, 98, who married into one of Germany's most prominent military families and preserved the memory of the Nazi resistance activities that led to her husband's execution, died of a viral infection Jan. 1 at her home in Norwich, Vt., where she had lived for the past 50 years.

Mrs. von Moltke outlived her husband, Count Helmuth James von Moltke, by almost 65 years. He was hanged in Berlin on Jan. 23, 1945. Together they ran the Kreisau Circle resistance group from their estate in rural Silesia, which was then German territory and is now part of Poland.

The full extent of the von Moltkes' activities did not emerge until decades later with the publication of two books: "Letters to Freya: 1939-1945," a collection of their correspondence published in 1990, and "Memories of Kreisau and the German Resistance," Mrs. von Moltke's memoirs published in English in 2003.

A group of several dozen German intellectuals, the Kreisau Circle participated in discussions of an attempt on Hitler's life. For moral and practical reasons, Helmuth von Moltke and other members disagreed with the assassination plan, at least initially. Other members supported and ultimately abetted the unsuccessful 1944 bomb plot.

Mostly, the Kreisau Circle used its several wartime summits at the von Moltkes' home to map out the democratic Germany they thought would follow the collapse of Nazism. Few in the group lived to see the end of the war, the others having been rounded up and killed.

"Our husbands died, but it was surely worth it," Mrs. von Moltke told the Daily Telegraph in 2004. "These men were acting on behalf of humanity."

Freya Deichmann was born March 11, 1911, to a prosperous banking family in Cologne. She was 18 when she met the man who would become her husband, a descendant of one of Bismarck's chief military strategists. They were married within a few years. Mrs. von Moltke received a doctorate in law from Humboldt University in Berlin but never practiced law, as the young couple soon moved to Silesia.

Her husband went alone back to Berlin, where he advocated in his capacity as an international lawyer for better treatment of prisoners taken by the German army. Before the war, he offered his expertise to Jewish families trying to use legal means to salvage what they could of belongings confiscated by the government and helped them leave the country.

All the while, Mrs. von Moltke was his loyal and savvy accomplice. She collected his letters, later published in a book, and hid them in the estate's beehives, which she said even S.S. officers would be afraid to search.

"The letters were dynamite," said her son, Helmuth Caspar von Moltke of Hanover, N.H. "They were very dangerous . . . for my parents, but also for any people named in them. . . . She decided that [the beehive] was the best place to keep them."

In 1989, the estate was the site of a Mass for the reconciliation of Germany and Poland, a cause Mrs. von Moltke enthusiastically supported. Today the property houses a foundation for European understanding.

After the war, the widowed Mrs. von Moltke went with her two sons to Switzerland and then to Cape Town, South Africa, where some of her husband's family had lived. There she was a social worker for the handicapped but left almost a decade later because of her anger at the racist policies of the apartheid government.

In 1960 Mrs. von Moltke moved to the United States to be closer to Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, a philosopher whom she had known in Germany and who had fled when the Nazis came to power. In the 1980s, she became a U.S. citizen.

In addition to her son, survivors include six grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. Another son, Konrad von Moltke, died in 2005.

In an interview for the 1993 book "Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich" by Alison Owings, Mrs. von Moltke spoke about her relationship with her husband.

"Some marriages are made in heaven," she said. "I certainly had such a marriage. . . . When one has such a wonderful thing, it doesn't last. It was a gigantic gift. Then there was nothing."

Mrs. von Moltke told Owings, who visited the elderly woman twice at her Vermont home, that every morning she ate a bowl of porridge and then sat in a straight-backed chair to think for an hour. She said that not a day passed when she didn't remember her late husband.


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Medal of Honor recipient Col. Robert L. Howard dies at 70
T. Rees Shapiro


Saturday, January 23, 2010; B04

Robert L. Howard, 70, one of the Vietnam War's most highly decorated servicemen who received the Medal of Honor for leading fellow soldiers out of an ambush and fending off more than 250 troops during a two-day siege deep in enemy territory, died Dec. 23 of pancreatic cancer at a hospice in Waco, Tex. He had been living in the San Antonio area since retiring from the Army in 1992 at the rank of colonel.

In addition to the Medal of Honor -- the military's highest award for valor -- Col. Howard received two awards of the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, the Defense Superior Service Medal, four awards of the Legion of Merit, four Bronze Star Medals and eight Purple Hearts.

Col. Howard, an Army Green Beret, served five tours in Vietnam. During one 13-month period, he was nominated for the Medal of Honor for three separate acts of heroism.

In December 1968, then-Sgt. 1st Class Howard was part of a platoon tasked with going into North Vietnam in search of a fellow Green Beret whose rescue beacon reported him missing in action. While leading the patrol, Sgt. Howard and his lieutenant were blown back by an anti-personnel mine that signaled a 250-man ambush on their platoon. The blast knocked Sgt. Howard unconscious, and the shrapnel wounded his hands and destroyed his rifle.

When he came to, Sgt. Howard smelled the stench of burning flesh as a North Vietnamese soldier was using a flamethrower to torch the bodies of the American and South Vietnamese casualties, as Peter Collier wrote in "Medal of Honor: Portraits of Valor Beyond the Call of Duty."

As Collier described it, Sgt. Howard lobbed a grenade in the direction of the North Vietnamese soldier and made his way toward his lieutenant, who had been badly injured in the melee.

While he was administering aid to the wounded officer, a bullet struck Sgt. Howard's ammunition pouch, detonating several magazines and knocking him back. After regaining his composure, the badly injured sergeant moved back to the lieutenant and began dragging him toward the remaining Special Forces soldiers, shooting several North Vietnamese troops along the way.

Sgt. Howard took charge of the battered platoon and helped organize the overpowered and outnumbered troops into defensive emplacements along a ravine. Sgt. Howard crawled from position to position, resupplying his men with ammunition and directing fire toward the encircling enemy while radioing in fire support from airborne gunships.

After two days of constant firefights with North Vietnamese troops, the stranded platoon was evacuated by U.S. helicopters. Ensuring that all of his men had made it on to the choppers, Sgt. Howard climbed aboard and was the last man to leave the battlefield, according to his Medal of Honor citation.

As a result of his actions, Sgt. Howard received a direct appointment to officer status as a first lieutenant. President Richard M. Nixon presented him with the Medal of Honor in 1971.

Robert Lewis Howard was born July 11, 1939, in Opelika, Ala. He enlisted in the Army in 1956 and joined the 101st Airborne Division.

In 1965, during his first tour of duty in Vietnam, he was wounded by a bullet that ricocheted and glanced his face. While recuperating in a hospital, he was recruited by a Special Forces soldier to join the Green Berets.

He received a bachelor's degree in police administration from Texas Christian University in 1973 and received two master's degrees from Central Michigan University, one in management in 1980 and the other in public administration in 1981.

After retiring from the military, he worked at the Department of Veterans Affairs as a liaison to other veterans. He frequently made trips around the country and abroad to battle zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan to speak with troops about his experiences. From 2007 to 2009, he was president of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

Col. Howard's marriages to Tina Dickinson and Rona Redfern ended in divorce.

Survivors include two daughters from his first marriage, Melissa Gentsch of Waco and Denicia Howard of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; two children from his second marriage, Army Sgt. Robert L. Howard Jr. of Fort Bragg, N.C., and Roslyn Howard of Hawaii; and four grandchildren.



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Miep Gies was the last link to Anne Frank, and her loss is tough for many women
Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer


Wednesday, January 13, 2010; C01

The girls who loved Anne Frank loved her in a deep and abiding way, in a way that bordered on obsession and felt both bleak and wise. She was their first introduction to the terribleness of the world, and the beauty, and to sad endings that are also hopeful and true.

Miep Gies died on Monday, and another chapter in Anne Frank's legacy has ended.

"I read ["The Diary of Anne Frank"] in fourth grade," remembers Krista Francis, a human resources director in Kensington. "It was the first grown-up book that I read," back in the 1970s. "She was feisty, and I was feisty, and she loved to write, and I loved to write." Thirty years later, Francis remembers the experience. Most of Anne's fans remember their first experience and the ways it changed them.

"It was my parents' book -- black, hardback, without a picture," remembers author Sandi Wisenberg, who first read the book in 1964 and whose deep fixation with Anne Frank would ultimately lead her to write her own memoir, called "Holocaust Girls." Prompted by Anne's hiding, "I had an escape bag -- a little plastic overnight bag -- and I kept it near my bed." One night the air conditioning went out in her family's Houston home, and she lay in her dark, hot bedroom, listening in terror to every noise that came through the open windows. "I thought," she says, "that it was the Nazis."

The girls who loved Anne Frank wanted to understand what she went through, in whatever small ways they could. They were prone to melancholy and morbidity; they couldn't believe the atrocities that had happened in their parents' or grandparents' lifetimes.

My own fixation came early and stayed late. In high school I begged my father to take me to Germany, to a conference he was attending where the keynote speaker was Gies, one of the women who protected the Frank family during their two years of hiding in the annex of an Amsterdam spice factory. I don't remember much of what she said. I just remember thinking that she knew Anne Frank, and that we were in the same room.

The Austrian-born Gies never became what you might consider a household name, but a historical footnote for what she did more than six decades ago -- bringing the eight residents of the annex supplies during their hiding, and rescuing Anne's diary when the Franks were discovered and sent to concentration camps in 1944. She was the last living protector; other annex helpers died long ago. Her passing represented the loss of the only connection that Anne had to the present world, and that her fans, in turn, had to her. As years passed, and the Holocaust became something that happened a generation ago, then two, then three, Gies alone was our tie.

"Anne Frank and Miep Gies have in them the entire range of human behavior," says Francine Prose, author of the recent "Anne Frank: the Book, the Life, the Afterlife." "You have the unbelievable evil that was going on just outside of the attic, and then you have Anne and Miep exemplifying the greatest decency and courage and humanity that could possibly exist."

In researching her book, Prose was repeatedly surprised by the depth of feeling that people felt for Anne, for how personal they viewed the relationship to be.

"I was in sixth grade, and my language arts teacher did a quarter-long project on the Holocaust," remembers Melanie Karlins, a 20-something who works for George Mason University. "I stole the book. I didn't give it back to the library. I read it over and over again, every six months, all the way through high school."

In the beginning she read it for the story of Anne, for her schoolgirl concerns about boys and parents and homework. As Karlins got older, she realized that she no longer identified with the Frank sisters, but with their protectors, who were confronted daily with choices of self-preservation vs. altruism and fear vs. bravery. Gies "was the last remaining person who was part of the story, and she was such a big part of the story," Karlins says.

"People who read the diary understand that she was an average, normal person with limited means," says Sara Bloomfeld, the director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. "And in an extraordinary moment she did what she felt was the right thing."

As the girls who loved Anne Frank grew up, they became women who loved Miep Gies, and who hoped that they would do what she did, if ever they were asked to.



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Jasper Schuringa subdued alleged terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on Northwest Airlines 253
Soraya Roberts
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Originally Published:Saturday, December 26th 2009, 9:21 AM
Updated: Saturday, December 26th 2009, 10:41 PM

The passenger who tackled a suspected terrorist on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 said Saturday that he's "happy" to be alive.

Jasper Schuringa, a video director and producer from Amsterdam, told CNN how he helped the cabin crew to subdue Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the 23-year-old who reportedly ignited a small explosive device on board the plane Friday as it prepared to land in Detroit.

Schuringa said he heard a sound that reminded him of a firecracker and someone yelling, "Fire! Fire!"

But he was only certain something was wrong when he saw smoke. He saw Abdulmutallab's pants open and he was holding a burning object between his legs.

"I pulled the object from him and tried to extinguish the fire with my hands and threw it away," Schuringa said.

He said he then screamed for water and pulled Abdulmutallab out of his seat and dragged him to the front of the plane.

Schuringa told CNN that Abdulmutallab seemed out of it and "was staring into nothing."

To ensure the suspect did not have other explosives on his body, Schuringa stripped off Abdulmutallab's clothes. He then handcuffed the alleged attacker with the help of a crew member.

Schuringa said the other passengers applauded as he returned to his seat and that he sustained minor injuries during the take down.

"My hands are pretty burned. I am fine," he said. "I am shaken up. I am happy to be here."

Federal law enforcement and airline security sources say Abdulmutallab was immediately taken into custody following the incident and treated for second- and third-degree burns on his thighs.

CNN reports that the Nigerian suspect, a student at University College London, is 'talking a lot' to the FBI.

The Transportation Security Administration said in a statement that the plane and its baggage were screened after the incident. Security sources told CNN that remains of the device were sent for analysis to an FBI explosives lab in Quantico, Virginia.

Law enforcement and airline security sources also told CNN that no other suspicious materials were found and that the suspect only had carry-on luggage.

Passengers on board the flight were interviewed by law enforcement before leaving the airport.

Abdulmutallab flew on a KLM flight from Lagos, Nigeria, to Amsterdam and is reportedly not on a "no fly" list, though he is on a U.S. database of people with suspected terrorist connections.

Although there is no evidence that he is a trained member of Al Qaeda, the Nigerian national reportedly claimed a link to extremists. A federal security document obtained by CNN further revealed that his explosive device "was acquired in Yemen along with instructions as to when it should be used."




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Passengers subdued man with satchels on Dulles-Vegas flight
Avis Thomas-Lester and Martin Weil
Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, January 25, 2010; B01

Earl W. Stafford said he had just awakened from a nap in first class of United Airlines Flight 223 Saturday night when a large man holding two satchels came down the aisle from the coach section.

First, the man tried to open the cockpit door, Stafford said. Then, Stafford said, he began to shake the handle of the airplane's front exit door.

Stafford jumped up from his aisle seat.

It was the key moment in the drama that unfolded with startling suddenness high in the sky as the jetliner, carrying 129 passengers and a crew of five, headed toward Las Vegas from Dulles International Airport.

"I grabbed him from behind and spun him around," said Stafford, 61, an entrepreneur who lives in Centreville.

"I yelled: 'I need help! Somebody get the bags!' My fear was that he was going to try to detonate an explosive."

Ultimately, the airplane interrupted its flight to land safely in Denver, where authorities took over. But it was the passengers who intervened to protect themselves and their fellows.

The response appeared to stem at least in part from heightened sensitivity to threats, such as that posed by the man who allegedly tried to detonate explosives aboard a Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas.

Four other passengers also gave accounts of the flurry of action in the cabin.

Art Thomm of Martinsburg, W.Va., said he had spotted the man earlier and said he had seemed to be staring into space. "He looked crazy," Thomm said.

When Thomm heard the commotion at the front of the plane, he ran up the aisle to help.

He said the man pushed back against Stafford and "threw [Stafford] off him."

As soon as he did, Thomm said, "I hit him and tackled" him.

"He was crazy," Thomm said. "He started asking me if I knew who I was messing with." But Thomm said he had the man around the neck and held on.

Passenger Barry Eynon of Coopersburg, Pa., was seated across the aisle from Stafford. When Stafford yelled for help, Eynon said, he pitched in, grabbing the man and helping to subdue him.

Stafford's seatmate, Washington lawyer Thomas A. Hart, headed to Las Vegas with him on business, also joined in, taking one of the man's bags and tossing it out of reach as others came to help.

Sergei Sandou, 41, of Las Vegas said he twisted the man's arms behind his back and held them there as other passengers strapped him into a seat with a seat belt.

FBI officials said Sunday that they had released the man, whom they did not identify, pending a psychiatric evaluation. Authorities said they do not think he is a terrorist.

A Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman said it is almost impossible to open the door while the cabin is pressurized.

Stafford, who organized the People's Inaugural celebration in Washington last year, was headed to a convention of television executives to promote a public-service announcement that his charitable foundation produced last week, encouraging voluntarism.

Stafford was "the man of the hour," Eynon said.

"I'm just thankful that everybody is okay," Stafford said.

Staff Writer Matt Zapotosky also contributed to this report.




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