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Apr 26, 2021

Faced with a choice of joining the Army, the Marines or the Navy, Angelo Crapanzano asked his father, who served aboard a submarine tender in World War I, for advice. Join the Navy, his dad said. You'll eat well, and have a place to sleep. So Angelo joined the Navy and became a motor machinist's mate first class aboard...


Apr 17, 2021

In 1994 I read "The Forgotten Dead," by Ken Small, about Exercise Tiger, the ill-fated practice landing for D-Day sometimes known as Slapton Sands, a stretch of beach on the English coast that resembled Utah Beach. In the middle of the night German e-boats, torpedo carrying surface boats. infiltrated the convoy and sank...


Apr 8, 2021

   Occasionally when doing an interview, I'm treated to a bit of ancillary history. Once, when I was listening to the tape of an interview with a D-Day, I was annoyed by a radio playing in an adjacent room. Then I realized the veteran's wife was listening to a basketball game, and that it was a Knicks playoff game. That...


Apr 4, 2021

A wrecked house, Heimboldshausen, Germany, April 3, 1945

April 3, 1945 was a tragic day in the history of the 712th Tank Battalion. A Company had just occupied the village of Heimboldshausen, Germany, and established its command post in the basement of a house facing a small railroad siding. Several rail cars were parked at the siding, on the other side of which was a wide...