In the early 1940s, when John Estep was a teenager, teachers and other mentors of that generation spoke of religious principles, of love for God and country, of men being willing to die to uphold t...
Harold Delotell Drove WWII Landing Craft There’s a job for every individual in the military, and all those different jobs meshed together during World War II to form one very effective force — a force that defeated two powerful foes on b...
Curt Diles, B-24
Nose-gunner, Bailed Out Behind Enemy Lines Curtis “Bud” Diles would have graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1944, but he dropped out to go to work. He was working as an automotive machinist when, two months after his 18th birthday, w...
Infantryman Arthur Sullivan Won Bronze Star On Okinawa Arthur Sullivan sits in his double-wide home off Ohio 335 just north of Sciotoville and his mind wanders back 65 years to his fighting days as a U.S. Army infantryman in World War II. On one wall ...
Richard Allen,
Tank Driver, Mechanic Richard Carl Allen will turn 91 on May 15. He’s still sharp physically and mentally. He keeps busy with one little project after another around the mobile home of Beatrice Shields, his niece whom...
Ken Rapp, Combat Medic Kenneth Rapp, 85, of Portsmouth, graduated from Washington Local High School on the West Side one day and was in the Army the next. “The Army promised that no 18-year-olds would be sent overseas i...
John McCleese, Rifleman:
‘Show The Enemy No Mercy’ John McCleese is in Heartland of Portsmouth. He is in the nursing home undergoing a couple of weeks rehabilitation for gout and various other ailments before returning to his home at Park Apartme...
The USS Johnston DD 557 is listed in the annals of World War II as one of the bravest ships to do battle in the Pacific, and this was all because of its skipper, Commander Ernest E. Evans, a full-b...
Art “Bub” Lewis recalls his first night on French soil as the loneliest and most uncertain time of his life. He was just past his 20th birthday and 4,000 miles from his Ohio home in South Webster....
WHEELERSBURG — James Howard had no problem deciding what he wanted to do upon finishing high school. He graduated from Wheelersburg on May 25, 2002, and four days later left for duty with the U.S. ...
WHEELERSBURG — You’d never know it to hear him tell it — he never talks to family members much about it, not in much detail — but few American fighting men saw more combat action in the Pacific isl...
It was a round-about route that led Richard “Dick” Jenkins from Portsmouth to the controls of a C-47 “Skytrain,” which evolved from the DC-3 airliner. The C-47 was the standard transport used by t...
The early part of Paul R. Morton’s World War II experience reads like something out of a Milton Caniff comic strip adventure featuring ace pilot Flip Corkin — or the more modern-day Hal Jordan. Th...