Zutphen is a town in the province of Gelderland in the Netherlands. It lies some 30 km north-east of Arnhem, on the Eastern bank of the river IJssel at the point where it is joined by the Berkel    On the 14th of October 1944, Zutphen was bombed by the allies At 4 PM three allied bombers… Read more »

Flight Sergeant Nicholas Stephen Alkemade, born 10-12-1922 in Loughborough, Leicestershire, England, was a rear gunner in Royal Air Force AVRO Lancaster      heavy bombers during World War II, who survived—without a parachute —a fall of 18,000 feet (5,500 m) when abandoning his out-of-control, burning aircraft over Germany. On the night of 24 March 1944, 21-year-old Alkemade was one of… Read more »

Operation Husky was the code name given to the Allied invasion of the island of Sicily in World War II, which took place in the summer of 1943. The campaign ran from early July to the middle of August, and consisted of airborne and amphibious operations at first. These were then followed up with land… Read more »

The Ludendorff Bridge (sometimes referred to as the Bridge at Remagen) was in early March 1945 one of two remaining bridges across the River Rhine in Germany when it was captured during the Battle of Remagen by United States Army forces during the closing weeks of World War II. Built in World War I to help deliver reinforcements… Read more »

The Wound Badge was a military decoration first promulgated by Wilhelm II, German emperor  on 3 March 1918, which was awarded to wounded or frostbitten soldiers of the Imperial German Army during World War I. Between the world wars, it was awarded to members of the German armed forces who fought on the Nationalist side of the… Read more »

On Memorial Day and Veterans Day, we remember and celebrate all Americans who served in the military. March 13, 1942 was the birthday of the U.S. K9 Corps, and here are five dogs who also bravely served their country. Their acts of heroism should not be forgotten. Chips Chips was a Collie-German Shepherd-Siberian Husky mix who was… Read more »

During the war, the treatment of prisoners of war was supposedly governed by the Geneva Convention, a document formulated in 1929 in Switzerland and signed by the major western powers including Britain, Italy, the US and Germany. The armies of the Western Allies were under strict orders to treat Axis prisoners in line with the… Read more »

The Siege of Malta was a military campaign in the Mediteranean Theatre of the World War II. From 1940–42, the fight for the control of the strategically important island of Malta pitted the air forces and navies of Italy and Germany against the Royal Air Force  and the Royal Navy. The opening of a new front in North Africa in mid-1940… Read more »

The German-Soviet Pact, also known as the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact after the two foreign ministers who negotiated the agreement, had two parts. An economic agreement, signed on August 19, 1939, provided that Germany would exchange manufactured goods for Soviet raw materials. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union also signed a ten-year nonaggression pact on August 23,… Read more »

The surrender of Japan was announced by Imperial Japan on August 15 and formally signed on September 2, 1945, bringing the hostilities of World War II to a close. By the end of July 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy  was incapable of conducting major operations and an Allied invasion of Japan was imminent. Together with the United Kingdom and China, the United… Read more »