Will Dabbs

That SSG Alan Magee survived being thrown clear of his disabled B17 at more than 20,000 feet without a parachute was a legitimate miracle.

Operation Desert Shield ran from August 2, 1990, until January 17, 1991. This was the massive buildup of Allied forces in Saudi Arabia in response to Saddam Hussein’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq.

Ian Fleming conjured his fictional MI6 agent 007 based upon his personal experiences as a spy during WW2. The name James Bond was pirated from that of an obscure ornithologist of the day. Fleming wanted his secret agent to have a name that was both pedestrian and unremarkable.

Young ideologically naive men always make the best soldiers. WW2 stole life on an unprecedented scale. Major Gangl’s heroic sacrifice was swallowed up in the carnage.

Heinrich “Hein” Severloh should have been a farmer. Born on June 23, 1923, in the town of Metzingen in Northern Germany, Heinrich was a man of the earth. However, in the Summer of 1941 his country called. Conscripted into the Wehrmacht, Severloh was trained as a dispatch rider and assigned to the 3d Battery

Over the years Doohan played a wide range of roles on screens both large and small. However, the one part for which he is best remembered is that of Montgomery Scott, the chief engineer on Star Trek’s starship Enterprise.

Of the 83,115 British troops who landed as part of Operation Overlord only one man earned the Victoria Cross. Abbreviated VC, the Victoria Cross is England’s highest award for valor in the face of the enemy. It is the British equivalent of our own Medal of Honor, and it is not easily acquired.

Maurice Rose was born in 1899 in Middletown, Connecticut, the son of Samuel and Katherin Rose. The son and grandson of rabbis from Poland, MG Rose was ultimately the highest-ranking Jewish officer in the United States Army. From the very beginning, Maurice Rose was a warrior.

Though they have really changed very little over the past century, the ghillie suit remains an integral part of the modern sniper’s kit. Wherever men institutionally kill each other there will be precision marksmen decked out in fluffy earth tones creeping about in the brush visiting death upon their enemies. Born in South Africa in the late 19th century, the ghillie suit remains a timeless sniper tool even today.