Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor exposed American's ill-preparedness for war, and the scenario grew even darker as the talons of the Japanese war-machine grasped toward another plumb target - the Philippines. One day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese bombed Clark Field and Manilla. Two days later, on Dec.10, 1941, Japanese troops landed on the beaches of Luzon.
These small-scale landings were followed by the main assault on December 22, 1941, at Lingayen Gulf in Pangasinan and Lamon Bay, Tayabas, by the 14th Japanese Imperial Army, led by Lt. General Masaharu Homma. American's makeshift defenses rapidly crumbled.
The new Filipino recruits of Maj. Gen. Jonathan M. Wainwright's North Luzon Force was no match for their experienced enemy. They could neither repel the landings nor pin the enemy on the beaches. By nightfall, December 23, the Japanese had moved ten miles (16 km) into the interior.
It was apparent that Gen. Douglas MacArthur's combined American-Filipino defense forces were in no condition for the imminent onslaught of an enemy hardened in the mountains of Manchuria and the jungles of Southeast Asia.
In stark contrast to Japanese Gen. Homma's veteran forces, MacArthur's divisions lacked training, equipment, and manpower, but one unit was fully prepared for combat. The 26th Cavalry was one of the best-drilled regiments in the entire U.S. Army. Composed of Filipino enlisted men and American officers, the crack regiment was commanded by a born to lead "thundering columns of horse cavalry into battle." With his dapper mustache, rugged features and bulldog physique, Col. Clinton A. Pierce was his generation's embodiment of such legendary Cavalrymen as Phil Sheridan, JEB Stuart, and George Custer.
To stem the enemy tide, Wainwright threw his friend's Cavalrymen directly into the path of the Japanese juggernaut and remarked to an aide, "The 26th is the only hope to stop them before being in Manila in a few hours."
Hurling themselves and their mounts against machine guns and tanks, supported only by personnel carriers with thin armor and light machineguns, Pierce's men slowed Homma's onrushing divisions. Mounted on horses or riding in personnel carriers, the Scouts continually and aggressively counter-attacked the Japanese tanks and sacrificed their lives to protect the Filipino and Americans as they fell back.
After falling back to regroup, the Japanese unleashed a murderous trio of tanks, aircraft and naval bombardment upon the outmanned and outgunned 26th. The shredded columns of horsemen refused to yield. The charged the clanking tanks and picked of Japanese infantrymen who dared lift their heads. 
Developing tactic on the gallop, bands of horsemen used the jungle terrain to separate Japanese tanks from each other and attack single tanks from three directions at once. The rider's unleashed small arms fire to force the tank crews to button up their turrets and then closed in to destroy them with grenades and by tossing gasoline-filled soda bottles.
Knowing he could not fight off the powerful Japanese with his understrength and badly bruised force, MacArthur ordered a tactical retreat up the Bataan peninsula. Homma's threatening to cut off the strategic retreat of MacArthur's American and Philippine troops to the Bataan peninsula. To prevent a disastrous possibility that Homma would cut off the strategic retreat, the elite Philippine Scouts were given the dangerous task of fighting a delaying action.
Twenty-four-year-old Lt. Edwin Price Ramsey was one of the American officers attached to the Philippine Scouts, serving as the commanding officer of a platoon in the 26th Cavalry Regiment (Philippine Scouts). Born in Carlyle, Illinois in 1917, but moved to Eldorado, Kansas when he was two and 10 years later to Wichita, Kansas, with his older sister Nadine - who flew US fighters and bombers during the war - and his mother, who ran a dermatology clinic, after his father died. While at school, he worked in a soda fountain and a waiter in The Palms nightclub in Wichita to help feed his family.
As part of his high school education, he went to the Oklahoma Military Academy in Claremore, outside Tulsa, largely because they had a "horse artillery unit" and a serious polo team. As the war in Europe loomed he applied for active duty in the Philippines, where the U.S. had major military bases although they were not yet involved in the conflict.
On Jan. 15, 1942, Ramsey and his troops were looking forward to some rest and relaxation following a demanding reconnaissance mission. But a counterattack was being planned, and because he was intimately familiar with the region, he volunteered to assist in the assault.
Wainwright wanted to make the Japanese-held village of Morong, strategically located on the west coast of the Bataan Peninsula, the anchor for a defensive line stretching inland to the rugged Mount Natib. On the morning of January 16, Wainwright ordered Ramsey to take an advance guard into Morong. Ramsey assembled a 27-man force composed of mounted platoons from the 26th Cavalry and headed north along the main road leading to Morong.
Upon reaching the Batalan River that formed part of Morong's eastern border, Ramsey's unit swung west and cautiously approached the seemingly deserted village, composed of grass huts suspended on stilts, with livestock living beneath the structures. The only stone building was the towering Catholic Church, located in Morong's central plaza. Ramsey halted his column short of the village and pulled out a pair of binoculars. Three trails branched from the road. The middle one led directly into the village, a jumble of nipa grass huts atop bamboo stilts rigged to pen livestock.
Ramsey raised his left arm and gestured toward the middle trail. He divided his platoon into a column of three squads. On his signal, every man reached for his hip holster and withdrew his Colt .45 pistol. Ramsey ordered the point riders to advance into Morong. As this vanguard, pistols aloft, trotted into the outskirts, the rest of the men steadied their mounts and listened for opposing gunfire.
None came. Ramsey nudged Bryn Awryn forward, his platoon following. Even though Morong seemed deserted Ramsey halted short of the square.
Beyond the town lay dense coconut groves inclining through a swamp stretching the sea. To their right coursed the narrow Batalan River, spanned by a crude wooden bridge. Ramsey's vanguard had turned into the square and out of sight. His three squads followed cautiously, pistols at the ready and eyes on the huts.
Suddenly explosions erupted. Birds screeched and soared away in a flutter of brilliant plumage. Horses reared or bucked. As riders swiveled their heads and struggled to rein in their mounts, rifle and machine-gun fire chattered from the north. Ramsey could see scores of Japanese infantrymen who, he said later, "turned out to be the advance guard of the Japanese who had been landed from Subic, north of Morong." Following behind these skirmishers came rank upon rank of what appeared to be hundreds more enemy soldiers, some wading the chest-deep river, others crowding the ramshackle bridge.
Ramsey's point men galloped back. One, Private First Class Pedro Euperio, had been shot several times in his left arm and shoulder. Remarkably, Euperio "held his pistol with his right hand while the rein of his mount still remained hanging in his left elbow." Ramsey ordered the wounded trooper to the rear for medical treatment.
It was now fight, or flee. With the Japanese attackers advancing on the church, Ramsey drew on ingrained training. "I formed a line," he said later. Then, pistol aloft, he shouted, "Charge!"
The command was as old as mounted cavalry - and as stirring to Ramsey's "Yellowlegs" as it had been to generations before. Instinctively, men crouched low in their saddles, hugging their horses' necks. Outnumbered and outgunned, the scouts galloped forward and slammed into the Japanese, trampling some and felling others with point-blank pistol shots. When Dan Figuracion and other troopers found themselves blocked by bamboo fences, they dismounted, holstered their 45s, unsheathed their M1s, and continued afoot.
Panicked enemy soldiers vaulted into huts. Others bounded for the river. "They say Japanese don't run but they did that day," Figuracion said. "We caught them by surprise."
One kill rankled Figuracion long after. "I shot him in the back, still bothers me," the cavalryman said. "But he was the enemy."
Knowing he had to hold Morong long enough for John Wheeler to arrive and reinforce him, Ramsey halted the charge. While a handful of troopers grabbed reins and led horses to shelter, one squad established a perimeter, hoping to pin down the main Japanese column.
With his second squad, Ramsey galloped into Morong, intent on clearing its huts. Mounted and afoot, the men systematically fired into windows, doors, and grass walls. The men inside returned fire and crossfire erupted from Japanese advancing on the eastern flank and enemy light mortar crews whose 50mm projectiles set huts ablaze and terrified horses. The hooves of riderless mounts thumped and skidded along Morong's paths. One horse, standing calmly near the church as its rider fired into a hut, took the brunt of a mortar blast. The doomed animal reared, screamed, and "crumbled onto its haunches," as the trooper, wounded and enraged, regained his feet and resumed shooting.
Amid the explosions, small fire, shouts, and horses' shrieks, the troopers barely heard approaching hoofbeats: John Wheeler's reinforcements had arrived. In a letter to his father, Wheeler had written, "I have found myself entirely equal to everything we've been up against, steady and unafraid, as for my men, they have proved themselves splendid fighters." Now, steady and unafraid, Wheeler waved one platoon of his splendid fighters to reinforce Ramsey's riverbank line while he and his other platoon joined the door-to-door melee. Several of Wheeler's horsemen chased fleeing Japanese, leaving enemy bodies in their wake all the way to Morong's outskirts and pressing the chase to the banks of the Batalan.
In Morong, Wheeler's reinforcements joined Ramsey's scouts in securing the town center. For hours, as enemy mortar rounds landed and riverbank sharpshooting held off the Japanese main column, the Cavalrymen secured Morong. 
At midafternoon, Fidel Segundo's infantry regiment, accompanied by Wainwright, poured into town and chased the Japanese into the jungles beyond Morong.
Enemy casualties littered the area. One horse soldier lay dead; at least six had serious wounds, including Pedro Euperio, who had not gone for care. "Here he is standing, waving a pistol in his hand," Ramsey said. "He was so brave. I thought he was dead."
Neither Wheeler nor Ramsey escaped being wounded: Wheeler had been shot in the calf and shrapnel had caught Ramsey's knee.
Shortly before the capitulation of U.S forces in the Philippines, the troopers of the 26th endured the ultimate nightmare of a Cavalryman, for, with provisions virtually non-existent, the 26th's beloved mounts were slaughtered to feed Wainwright's doomed Army. Surviving troopers who stoically recall the deaths of comrades in arms have a hard time holding back tears in describing how they had to shoot the horses. "They shared all our dangers, loving and trusting us as we did with them. There's a special bond, and we were the last to share it," reflected a rider of the 26th.
All but a handful of the Cavalrymen who were forced to surrender with the rest of MacArthur's encircled Army would share the horrors of the Bataan Death March and Japanese prisoner-of-war camps.
When Bataan fell on April 9, 1942, Wainwright and Wheeler were among those captured; Wheeler died in the subsequent ordeal. Others, including Figuracion and Ramsey, avoided capture. Ramsey originally thought "to get out of Bataan, down and across into the Sierra Madre, south to where he could get a boat and work our way to Australia. It was very ambitious, probably stupid."
Escaping capture during the Japanese advance, Ramsey retreated to the jungle and mountains, building a guerrilla force of Filipinos, eventually totaling 40,000 men. They harassed the enemy for the next three years while most American soldiers and their allies had retreated or been captured, many forced into the infamous Bataan Death March. The Japanese offered a reward of $200,000 for his capture (the equivalent of millions now) and capture meant certain execution.
For three years Ramsey's family assumed he was dead - as did Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who had been forced to retreat from the Philippines - until Ramsey started getting messages to him from the Central Luzon jungle, via guerrillas, sympathizers, and American warships. Ramsey recalled how he smuggled messages through enemy lines: "You take lemon juice and write with it and you don't see it until you put heat under it. Unless you put a match under it, you couldn't see it."
On retreating from the Philippines MacArthur had said: "I shall return." He did, famously wading ashore in October 1944, and after the Japanese surrender the following year he insisted on personally pinning the Distinguished Service Cross, the Silver Star, and the Purple Heart on Ramsey for harassing the enemy for those three years, a major factor in securing an eventual allied victory in the Pacific.
MacArthur later estimated that Ramsey's guerrilla activity, and the intelligence he gathered, had saved tens of thousands of American and Filipino lives. His operations became a blueprint for modern-day U.S. Special Forces and to this day, to Filipinos of a certain age, the name Ramsey is second only to MacArthur as their most-loved American.
Relics of bygone days, hopelessly overmatched against mechanized forces, the dauntless riders of the 26th Cavalry nevertheless wrote a stirring conclusion to the glorious chronicles of the mounted warriors who had charged with resolute courage onto the battlefields of the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, and the Indian Wars.
Gen. Wainwright's official report of the Philippines Campaign provided the ultimate epitaph for the gallant men of the 26th when he wrote: "The savage clash between Ramsey's riders and the Imperial Japanese Army marked the end of an institution whose roots stretched back to the Revolutionary War. The "hell-bent-for-leather" strike of Ramsey's troopers, however, was hardly the first mounted action unleashed by the 26th during General Douglas MacArthur's ill-fated defense of the Philippines. From the first few hours after the Japanese troops had poured from their landing craft onto the shores of Luzon Island to the final months on "The Rock," the Corregidor fortress, the Scouts had bought time for MacArthur's Army to fight back. The Cavalrymen fought the last "horseback campaign" in America's annals, paying a terrible toll but exacting an even higher one upon the Japanese troops."
After the war, Ramsey became an attorney and worked as an executive with Hughes Aircraft Corporation. He returned to the Philippines as a private businessman before retiring to California. In 1948, in Manila, he married Madeleine Willoquet, daughter of the French Ambassador there and they went on to have four children. He remained active in U.S. Veterans' affairs for the rest of his life and recorded his wartime exploits in the 1991 book "Lieutenant Ramsey's War."
Edwin Price Ramsey died in 2013 in Los Angeles, California.
Please view a short video featuring Edwin Ramsey at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNk2fZAmkFs
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Wojtek grew to become a very strong bear and was happy bathing and wrestling with his comrades. Only a few soldiers dared to take him on in a wrestling match as sometimes the men would get roughed up a bit by getting scratched or have their uniforms torn. The rest of the men were happy to watch. In Palestine, Wojtek became a hero one night by capturing a thief who had broken into an ammunition compound where the bear was sleeping. The Arab was shocked to find himself confronted by the animal and the commotion that ensued resulted in his arrest. Wojtek was quite satisfied with the reward of a bottle of beer.
Archibald Brown was a British official whose everyday duties was checking crew manifests and speaking with freshly arrived soldiers. But this would be no typical day.
moving towards the cannons. The sounds of gunfire did not concern him and he displayed courage in his willingness to participate in the action. After the battle, the official badge of the 22nd Transport Company became a likeness of Wojtek holding a shell. This symbol appeared on vehicles, pennants and on the uniforms of the Soldiers. 
That's where the story gets personal for Andre Orr. Her grandfather was a Scottish Soldier who helped train the Poles from the Siberian gulag when they were in Baghdad, and she ended up marrying the man who ran the camp where they had stayed. She currently lives on that very farm, which apparently still has the bear's claw marks etched into the trees in her garden.
In November 2011, a parade of veterans and bagpipe players made its way through Edinburgh as part of a celebration that included a eulogy - delivered in Polish - to the Bear-Soldier. There are already a number of commemorative plaques and statues in various museums, and the Wojtek Memorial Trust is lobbying to get a large bronze statue of Wojtek erected in the heart of Edinburgh.
The American Ace of Aces, Eddie Rickenbacker, was a successful race car driver, fighter pilot, an airline executive, wartime advisor, and elder statesman. Few aces achieved so much in so many different lifetime roles.
His twenty-six aerial victories came after only two months of combat flying, a spectacular achievement.
His family name was originally spelled "Reichenbacher," anglicized to its more familiar form when the U.S. entered World War One. His father died when Eddie was twelve, and the youngster quit school to help support his mother. He found a job with the Frayer Miller Air-cooled Car Company, one of the thousands of automobile companies that emerged in the early 1900's.
From his job road-testing cars for Frayer-Miller, he made his way into automobile racing, racing for Fred Duesenberg, among others. He raced three times in the Indianapolis 500 and set a speed record of 134 MPH in a Blitzen Benz.
He became one of the most successful race car drivers of the era, earning $40,000 per year (a great sum at that time).
When the United States entered the war, Rickenbacker proposed a flying squadron staffed by race car drivers. The Army didn't accept his suggestion, but did accept his personal services; he became a driver for the Army General Staff (but not chauffeur to General John "Black Jack" Pershing as frequently claimed). Once in France, he hoped to transfer into aviation.
Rickenbacker got a break one day when he had a chance to fix a motorcar carrying Colonel Billy Mitchell, then chief of the Army's Air Service. 
He made his interests known to Mitchell, and Rickenbacker, then at the advanced age of twenty-seven, entered pilot training. Because of his mechanical skills, he was first made engineering officer at the Issoudun aerodrome, but he flew whenever he could.
In March 1918, he was assigned to the newly formed 94th Pursuit Squadron, which included: James Norman Hall (of the Lafayette Escadrille), Hamilton Coolidge, James Meissner, Reed Chambers, and Harvey Cook. But no airplanes! Once they secured some cast-off Nieuports, they moved up to the front.
Before April 3, 1918, only the 94th, commanded by Major John Huffer, (one of the old Lafayette flyers), and Captain James Miller's squadron, the 95th, were at the front. Both squadrons had been at Villeneuve and together had moved to Epiez. None of the pilots of either squadron had been able to do any fighting, owing to the lack of airplane guns. In fact, the pilots of Squadron 95 had not yet been instructed in the use of airplane guns. The 94 Squadron pilots, however, had been diverted to the Aerial Gunnery School at Cazeau for a month early in the year and were ready to try their luck in actual combat fighting over the lines. But they had no guns on their machines before April 3. Then suddenly guns arrived! All sorts of wonderful new equipment began pouring in. Instruments for the airplanes, suits of warm clothing for the pilots, extra spares for the machines. Shortly, they moved up to an aerodrome at Toul. Here, they unpacked, organized the squadron, and selected the famous "Hat-in-the-Ring" insignia.
On the 6th, Maj. Raoul Lufbery selected "Rick" and Douglas Campbell for the squadron's first flight over German lines. As he eyed the trenches and desolation of war from 15,000 feet up, suddenly "Archy," German anti-aircraft fire opened up. Carefully shepherded by Lufbery, it was an uneventful flight, but back on the ground, the experienced Lufbery chided the two novices for failing to notice other planes that he had seen. And for a good measure, he casually poked his fingers into several shrapnel holes in Rickenbacker's Nieuport.
On the 14th, a patrol of Rickenbacker, Capt. Peterson and Lieutenant Reed Chambers was ordered to fly from Pont-a-Mousson to St. Mihiel at 16,000 feet. Lieutenants Douglas Campbell and Alan Winslow were directed to stand by on the alert at the hangar from six o'clock until ten the same morning. Rickenbacker's patrol got separated in fog and didn't accomplish too much, but as they returned, the "alert" pilots, Campbell and Winslow, intercepted two Boche airplanes and sent them both down. The newspapers made a huge fuss over the first "American" victories of the war.
For ten weeks Rickenbacker flew strafing missions and fruitless sorties before shooting down his first enemy plane. One day he encountered a Spad with French markings that almost shot him down, a lesson well-learned. He made several mistakes in this early period: getting lost, mistaking friends for foes, falling into German aerial ambushes, etc. He later reflected that these early disappointments and lessons gave him enormous benefits in his subsequent flying.
April 29th was a wet day; he and Capt. James Norman Hall had the afternoon alert. At five o'clock Capt. Hall received a telephone call from the French headquarters at Beaumont stating that an enemy two-seater machine had just crossed the lines, flying south.
Hall and Rickenbacker had been on the field with their flying clothes on and their machines ready. They jumped into their seats and the mechanics twirled the propellers. Just then the telephone sergeant told Capt. Hall to wait for the Major, who would be on the field in two minutes. "Rick" scanned the northern heavens and spotted a tiny speck against the clouds above the Forêt de la Reine; it was the enemy plane. The Major was not yet in sight. Their motors were smoothly turning over and everything was ready.
Deciding not to wait for the Major, Capt. Hall ordered the blocks pulled away from the wheels. His motor roared as he opened up his throttle and in a twinkling, both machines ran rapidly over the field. Side by side they arose and climbing swiftly soared after the distant Boche. In five minutes they were above the observation balloon line which stretched along two miles behind the front. Rickenbacker could still distinguish their unsuspecting quarry off toward Pont-a-Mousson. He briefly left Hall to pursue a French three-seater, but recognized the ally before firing, and rejoined Capt. Hall.
Hall led them up the sun, gaining an advantageous position over the new Pfalz fighter that he had spotted. Coordinating skillfully, Rickenbacker cut off the German's retreat while Hall dived at him, from out of the sun. As the German tried to escape eastward, Rickenbacker opened his throttle and was on him. At 150 yards he pressed the triggers. The tracer bullets cut a streak of living fire into the Pfalz's tail. Raising the nose of his airplane slightly the fiery streak gradually settled into the pilot's seat. The Pfalz swerved, out of control. At 2000 feet, Rickenbacker pulled up and watched the enemy machine continuing on its course. Curving slightly to the left the Pfalz circled and crashed at the edge of the woods a mile inside the German lines.
Lt. Eddie Rickenbacker had brought down his first enemy airplane without taking a single shot! He and Hall did aerobatics all the way back to their field, where they received the hearty congratulations of their mates, on the squadron's third victory.
While April's rainy weather inhibited flying, the 94th saw more action in May 1918. On the 2nd, James Meissner outmaneuvered an Albatross, sent it into a spin, and dived after it. Firing until the German plane spouted flames, 
Meissner didn't immediately notice the fabric peeling off his left upper wing. With careful flying, he made it back the 94th, with the squadron's fourth victory confirmed by a French observation post. That same day, the 94th suffered its first casualty when Charley Chapman's Nieuport was flamed by a two-seater. On the 7th, while dogfighting four Germans with Rickenbacker and Green, the wing of Hall's Nieuport stripped; he crash-landed and was captured. Rickenbacker replaced Hall as commander of the squadron's Number 1 Flight.
Rickenbacker scored his second victory while flying with Reed Chambers. On the morning of the 17th, he and Chambers took off before dawn in an effort to catch some German planes unawares. After fruitless circling at 18,000 feet, Rickenbacker headed for the German stronghold of Metz, losing Chambers in the process. Finding no Hun air activity over Metz, he then flew over an airdrome at Thiaucourt, where he noticed three Albatrosses taking off. He eased down lower, unnoticed by the enemy airplanes until "Archy" gave him away. Diving at 200 MPH, he fired a long ten-second burst, until, at 50 yards, the Albatros pilot was hit. When Rickenbacker pulled out of his dive, the Nieuport cracked and the upper wing covering came off. He spun down, apparently a certain casualty, but managed to re-start his engine and pull out at about 2,000 feet. He landed safely and even had his victory confirmed. On May 30, 1918, 
Rickenbacker claimed two German airplanes, to become an ace. Once again, Jimmy Meissner lost the upper wing of his Nieuport. By then, the American pilots were anxious to discard the Nieuports, for the heavier, stronger Spads, as the French had already done.
Rickenbacker continued to prowl the skies, looking for victories and learning more. On the 4th of June, he cornered a Rumpler, two-seater observation plane with the number '16' painted on its fuselage. His gun promptly jammed, and number '16' escaped. The next day, flying Lt. Smyth's plane while the guns in his plane were being repaired, he chanced upon Rumpler number '16' again! This time the Rumpler pilot evaded by zooming upward and giving Rickenbacker a taste of its floor-mounted machine gun. Its skillful pilot kept him at bay for over half an hour, working his way back over German lines. "Rick" regretfully turned home, and his engine froze up; he had exhausted its oil supply in his two-and-a-half hours of combat flying. Once again, he squeaked through to a safe landing. For the next two days, he stalked the predictable number '16' which easily evaded him by seeking higher altitudes, even when he used the Nieuport in the squadron reputed to have the highest ceiling. Some wags suggested that he could gain some extra altitude by leaving his guns behind, or perhaps even more by omitting that heavy fuel!
After this useless exercise, he took a leave in Paris. He didn't fly much in June, due to a persistent ear infection. But late in the month, he did participate in an early American effort to emulate the largely organized formations of fighters that the Germans used so effectively. The three U.S. squadrons got hopelessly mixed up. Early one morning he, Reed Chambers, Jimmy Meissner, Thorn Taylor, and Lt. Loomis organized an early morning attack on 
German observation balloons, Drachen, which was depressingly unsuccessful. On June 27, all four of the U.S. Pursuit Squadrons in France (the 94th, 95th, 27th, and 147th) moved from the Toul to Chateau-Thierry sector, to "an old French aerodrome at Touquin, a small and miserable village some twenty-five miles south of Château-Thierry and the Marne River."
July was not much better; little flying a no victories. He was briefly hospitalized with pneumonia and then visited Paris on the 4th of July. He dropped in at the U.S. supply depot at Orly, found some new Spads there, and flew a "borrowed" one back to the 94th.
By August 8, the 94th received newer, faster Spads to replace their Nieuports, promising even greater results. But Rickenbacker's ear infection grounded him for much of August, as well.
On that day, He went up with 11 Spads of the 94th, escorting a pair of French two-seater photo planes over Vailly. When two small groups of Fokkers attacked, the 94th pilots successfully protected the photo planes. Rickenbacker and Chambers both believed they had downed Fokker, but their claims were unconfirmed, as the combat took place well over German lines. On a similar mission on the 10th, when escorting some Salmson photo machines over the Vesle and Aisne rivers, they met some Fokker D.VII's, but all Rickenbacker got was three bullet holes in the fuselage of his Spad. He spent late August in the hospital, returning on Sept. 3rd, when the 94th Squadron moved back to the Verdun sector, to a little town named Erize-la-Petite.
During the month of September, he scored four more victories and rose to command the 94th Squadron.
He assumed command on Sept 24; the first thing he did was check the operations records and he found that the 27th Squadron was leading the 94th in victories, largely due to Frank Luke's balloon-busting spree. By the end of the month, the 94th had recaptured the lead.
While flying over Etain on the 25th, Rickenbacker picked up a pair of L.V.G. two-seater machines, escorted by four Fokkers. He climbed into the sun unnoticed, got well in their rear, and made a beeline for the nearest Fokker. With one long burst, he sent it down. The other Fokkers scattered, and he took the opportunity to make a pass at the LVG's. After several maneuvers, he flamed one of those, too.
Sept. 26, 1918, was a big day. Forty thousand American doughboys were going over the top, in an offensive from the Meuse River to the Argonne forest. In support of this, the 94th Pursuit Squadron was charged with destroying German observation balloons. He and five of the 94th's best pilots, Lieutenants Cook, Chambers, Taylor, Coolidge, and Palmer; gathered for an early breakfast, and went over their plans. Two balloons assigned to the 94th, and three pilots were delegated to each balloon. Both lay along the Meuse between Brabant and Dun. They eluded the Archy fire to bring down both balloons, and "Rick" downed a Fokker
As commander of the 94th, nicknamed the "Hat in the Ring" Squadron, he displayed the managerial skills that served him so well in later endeavors. He drove his men hard and demanded results. They rose early for calisthenics; inspections were frequent and detailed; waste was not permitted. Rickenbacker insisted:
"Every plane must be ready to take-off any moment, day or night, guns loaded, gassed, engine tuned. If all was not correct, the war could be lost".
He also spent as much time as possible leading patrols in the air, delegating operational issues to different officers. Billy Mitchell was delighted at his protege's success. His reports glowed with both Rickenbacker's aerial and organizational successes.
He and Reed Chambers shared a victory over a Hanover recon plane on October 2nd, this on a day when they were flying low-level ground-support patrols. Within a few minutes of this action, a flight of Fokkers appeared, chasing Rickenbacker down toward the ground. Reed Chambers and other Spads arrived in the nick of time, and the whole circus was soon climbing to gain the shelter of some low-hanging clouds. Recovering from his dive, Rickenbacker and Chambers sought a place between the Fokkers and their lines where they might be expected to issue out and make for home. They caught them and promptly sent two of them crashing inside the American lines. All three of their victories were promptly confirmed.
Twelve years after the war ended, he was belatedly awarded the Medal of Honor for his accomplishments.
In the early 1920's, he secured backing for a new automobile company under his name. It was a well-designed, even advanced, car featuring four wheel brakes, but offered at the wrong time. Soon, his new company was bankrupt.
Starting in the early 1930's, he owned or managed various commercial airlines, notably Eastern Airlines, which had its roots as a division of General Motors. He became General Manager of Eastern in 1933, and in 1938, with a group of investors, he bought it and became its President. Starting with an aggressively low bid ($0!) for a government airmail contract, he managed the company profitably for twenty years.
During WWII, he carried out special assignments for Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War. In October 1942, flying in a B-17 over the Pacific, on such a mission for Douglas MacArthur, the plane went down in the Pacific. In a horrifying ordeal, Rickenbacker and seven other men, rode a raft for twenty-two days before they were rescued. One man died; Rickenbacker, the oldest man in the raft, lost 54 pounds.
He became a spokesman and advocate for conservative causes, convinced that government "socialist" programs were ruining the country. He died on July 23, 1973 (aged 82) in Zurich, Switzerland.
Together We Served is pleased to feature one of our Association Partners, the Korean War and Korean Service Veterans Association.
On June 25, 1985, Sgt William T. Norris , a member of F Company, 27th Infantry Regiment (Wolfhounds), 25th Infantry Division founded The Korean War Veterans Association (KWVA), in NY.
The Mission Statement reads:
DEFEND our Nation
CARE for our Veterans
PERPETUATE our Legacy
REMEMBER our Missing and Fallen
MAINTAIN our Memorial
SUPPORT a free Korea
Membership is open to any service member who served in the Korean War or who has earned the Korean Service medal during any era.
KWVA encourages the younger generation to join in the mission to Perpetuate the Legacy of our aging Korean War veterans and help them tell their story.
If you would like more information on the KWVA and how to join, contact AFTWS Member Thomas Stevens at stevenst@swbell.net or visit their website at http://www.kwva.org
The Aleutian Islands are known for their rugged, treeless tundra and almost perpetually foul weather, but during the early days of World War II, they were considered a valuable piece of real estate. Fresh off their success at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese were looking to consolidate their gains in the Pacific while also stymying any potential U.S. attacks against their home islands. The Aleutians - situated at the center of the shortest route between the United States and Japan - were viewed as a key part of their defensive shield. The Japanese high command scheduled an advance on the islands for June 1942. While the bulk of their navy looked to demolish the American Pacific fleet at the Battle of Midway, a smaller force consisting of two aircraft carriers and a handful of destroyers, 
cruisers and submarines sailed for the frozen north.
The island of Unalaska, in the heart of the Aleutian Chain, is approximately 80 square miles in size with an elevation as high as 6,680 feet at the top of Makushin Volcano. The Port of Dutch Harbor, which is part of the City of Unalaska, is located on Amaknak Island and is connected to Unalaska by bridge. The current day population of the City of Unalaska is about 4,300. The population triples between August and May due to the arrival of commercial fisherman. Unalaska is approximately 792 miles by air south and west of Anchorage.
December 7th, 1941 was proclaimed to be a day that would live in infamy by then President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, as a result of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Hawaii, of course, isn't connected to nor is it physically part of the contiguous 48 States. The attack on Pearl Harbor thus presented itself to Americans living on the "mainland" as an event that took place in a somewhat detached and remote location, given that Hawaii is located some 2,400 miles to the west of San Francisco by air.
On the 3rd and 4th of June, 1942, six months after the attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, they attacked and bombed the port of Dutch Harbor. Now, Dutch Harbor, being around 792 miles from Anchorage, is a little closer to home. One would think that the mainland Americans would be outraged, concerned to the maximum extent, 
but given that American soil was attacked directly by the Japanese, and that this was seen as a demoralizing factor, the military clamped down on any news reporting of this event. Little was known at the time in the lower 48 about this attack on Dutch Harbor.
U.S. forces at Fort Mears met the first attack on June 3rd, with anti-aircraft and small arms fire, but on June 4, the Aleutian Tigers (eight P-40s), engaged the Japanese planes in aerial dogfights. The U.S. planes were launched from Cape Field at Fort Glenn, a secret airbase on neighboring Umnak Island. The Japanese had thought the nearest airfield was on Kodiak, and Cape Field, disguised as a cannery complex, had remained undetected. The surprise aerial counter-attack destroyed four Val dive bombers and one Zero.
In the following days, U.S. amphibious and bomber aircraft searched the Pacific Ocean for the Japanese carriers and their escort ships. Low visibility weather exacted a heavy toll on the search planes. Of six Catalinas that came within sight of the Japanese fleet, four were downed by Japanese fighters, another was lost in the fog.
Notwithstanding the tragic loss of American lives, the first forty-eight hours of the Aleutian Campaign exacted little substantive damage on U.S. or Japanese forces. No Japanese vessels were damaged and Fort Schwatka at Dutch Harbor was quickly repaired. What had quickly become apparent to both sides, however, was the role the capricious Aleutian weather would play in the campaign; at times an unpredictable ally, at times an uncertain foe. Weather claimed more than its share of lives. Soldiers shot their own in the fog; unable to penetrate fog and clouds, ships were thrown against rocks and sunk in heavy seas; pilots met the sides of mountains in low overcast skies or flew off course never to be seen again.
The casualties and damage on a remote Aleutian islet amounted to little more than a blip in the cataclysm of World War II. To this day, educated Americans are unaware that it happened at all.
But the battle permanently changed Alaska in ways that few at the time realized.
In an essay in the collection "Alaska at War," historian Stephen Haycox describes Anchorage in 1940 as "a sleepy little village" with a population of about 3,500.
The summer of 1940 saw the beginning of construction of a military base on what had hitherto been hay fields and birch forests north of Government Hill.
Uncle Sam had been content to leave Alaska as an undefended frontier. A military buildup was reluctantly initiated only when the global war began to seem inevitable. Progress was slow and patchy. But after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, officials aware of the territory's vulnerability flew into high gear.
Haycox says the next seven months were "characterized by a great deal of panic. There was not enough of anything, and there was a sense that everything had to be done at once."
Construction of a naval base on Amaknak Island, across the channel from Unalaska, had started in September 1940. Dutch Harbor had an excellent port, but no place for a runway. That would be on Umnak Island, 70 miles away.
News from the Atlantic was grim; 231 ships had been sunk close to U.S. shores by German U-boats in the month of May alone. The Pacific Front was even worse. The Japanese added victory to victory with ease, wiping out a combined Allied fleet in the Battle of the Java Sea, taking Singapore from the British in a single maneuver and forcing the surrender of American and Filipino soldiers in the grueling siege of Corregidor.
One bright spot was the bombing raid on Japan led by Jimmy Doolittle on April 18, 1942, a special source of pride for Alaskans since Doolittle had grown up in Nome.
And yet there was an odd sense of normalcy in Anchorage that spring. Temperatures were warm; people flocked to Spenard Lake - the "Waikiki of Anchorage" - in mid-May. Rationing had not hit a population that was largely self-sufficient in terms of food. Cesar Romero starred in "Dance Hall" playing at a local theater. Celebrity news included child star Shirley Temple's first on-screen kiss and photos of the New Orleans Jax Brewers women's professional softball team. Crooner Al Jolson was due to make an appearance for the troops and the civilians were welcome to attend. A house rented for $15 a month. William Hesse, the Territorial Highway Engineer, publicly derided the idea of a highway to the Lower 48, calling it a "rat hole" with "no necessity, military or otherwise."
The first nighttime blackout wasn't ordered until June 2nd, and there's some evidence that few people took it seriously.
They might have felt differently had they known that Japan's 2nd Carrier Division was steaming through the fog toward the Alaska Peninsula.
Starting at 3:25 a.m. on June 3, warplanes took off from the carriers Ryujo and Junyo; Val dive bombers, Kate torpedo bombers, Zero fighters. The weather turned many back, but those that continued found clear skies between them and the 6,282 Soldiers below.
On the ground, sirens screamed. Men raced to anti-aircraft guns. Ships rushed to clear out of the harbor.
Army Fort Mears, with neat rows of closely-packed wooden barracks, presented a choice target. The bomber aimed for it and the communications facility on what became known as Suicide Hill. Zeros strafed the defenders in the trenches, then zipped back to their carriers.
"By 7:45 a.m. all the pilots and their crews had arrived safely home," wrote historian John Cloe in his book "The Aleutian Warriors."
Numbers reported by Cloe indicate more than 40 American dead at the end of the first day of the battle.
Dutch Harbor's defenders were handicapped by radio and radar problems. The closest air support, on Umnak Island, remained unaware of the attack until it was over. Planes based at Cold Bay heard the news but were too far away to get there on time.
Nine newly arrived destroyers sat anchored in Makushin Bay, awaiting orders. But Rear Adm. Robert Theobald, in charge of Alaska Navy operations, was in the Gulf of Alaska with his flagship and observing radio silence. Six 'vintage' submarines patrolled the North Pacific without encountering the invasion fleet.
The Navy force left to defend the Aleutians consisted of the gunship USS Charleston, five Coast Guard cutters and what Cloe calls "a motley collection" of patrol boats and requisitioned fishing craft. Only the Charleston had sonar or large guns. 
There were no guarantees that any of the weapons would work. Gov. Ernest Gruening heard from one officer that his ship had plenty of anti-aircraft ammunition but no anti-aircraft guns, and lots of depth charges but no way to safely deploy them.
Air power was similarly iffy. Planes deemed obsolete elsewhere were sent north, including B-18s, essentially a DC-3 prototype fitted to drop bombs. Cloe notes the military didn't want the clunkers but Congress bought them anyway. There were a number of seaplanes, good for scouting oceans but flying coffins in combat. The famed PBYs could carry bombs and guns, but with a cruising speed of 125 miles an hour, they seemed to be sitting still when challenged by a Zero coming in at 300 miles an hour. Three PBYs were shot down on the first day and another destroyed as it tried to take off.
But it could have been much worse.
The Japanese thought they would catch the Dutch Harbor defenders by surprise. In fact, the Americans were on high alert. Their anti-aircraft fire surprised the attackers. Most of the PBYs had been dispersed to scattered bays and coves as a precaution. It was no accident that authorities ordered Anchorage's first blackout the night before.
America had broken the enemy's code. Top commanders knew the Dutch Harbor attack was coming. They also knew that the main Japanese force would not target Alaska, but west of Hawaii.
On the same day the Ryujo's bombers hit Dutch Harbor, B-17s made the first contact with the Japanese fleet approaching Midway Atoll. There, over the next four days, a monumental battle took place that has gone down as the most important naval engagement since Trafalgar - maybe ever. By June 7th, America had won a decisive victory and Japan's slow, hard-fought retreat had begun.
All of that lay in the uncertain future as the Aleutian defenders braced themselves for the next attack. It came on the afternoon of June 4th and began with Americans getting their first kill.
The Americans were better prepared on this second day of fighting and, with photographs taken during the first raid, so were the Japanese. They knocked out a tank farm, set ablaze the Northwestern, a former passenger ship pressed into service as barracks, a vacant Bureau of Indian Affairs hospital, warehouse and hangar facilities.
The Raiders regrouped at a predetermined point off Umnak Island where they were confronted by Col. John Chennault's P-40s. The Japanese had not known that an American field was in the area. The Americans, still struggling with spotty radio connections, had no news from Dutch Harbor; they had taken to the air as a precaution since the island had no ground defenses.
The ensuing dogfight took a toll on both sides. But the bulk of the Japanese force made it back to the carriers. The planes were stowed below and the fleet steered back into the fog.
They left behind one important trophy. A disabled Zero crashed on Akutan Island, killing the pilot but leaving the plane mostly intact. Americans retrieved and rebuilt the machine, testing it against their best fighters and discovering the feared warplane's 
Achilles' heel - its formidable speed was the result of minimum armor.
People in Anchorage had bare-bones information. The Anchorage Times ran a hastily prepared extra edition with the giant-print headline, "Raid Dutch Harbor!" But the accompanying 'story' was merely a press brief.
Gruening issued a short message, "To the people of Alaska: The anticipated air raid on Alaska began this morning with an air attack by Jap planes on Dutch Harbor." No other details were added.
Information about the fighting was frustratingly scattershot. Reports came in that Japanese ships had been sunk, that air raids on Anchorage loomed, that enemy soldiers had invaded Attu and been fought off by the brave villagers.
None of this was true, but it satisfied the curious more than the official declaration on June 8 that, due to bad weather the situation is still obscure. Adm. Ernest King, Fleet Commander, went on the record saying, "We have none too clear a picture of what is going on (in the Aleutians), but it is going on."
Meanwhile, residents were told that the blackout would be strictly enforced.
It would be days or weeks before the scope of the incursion was reported, including the sobering information that Japanese troops had indeed landed on two Alaska islands, capturing the weather crew on Kiska and sending the Attu villagers to internment camps in Japan.
For the next 18 months, the recapture of the Alaska islands was a primary focus for the military. Tens of thousands of troops, up-to-date warships, and state-of-the-art planes poured into the territory. Radios and radar worked. 
A road from the states was pushed through in record time.
This second phase ended with a U.S. Navy victory in the Battle of the Komandorski Islands, the bloody Battle of Attu and a remarkable bloodless evacuation of the occupation force from Kiska. By the end of the war, American bombers were striking Japan from the air base on Shemya Island. The overland route sending American planes to the Soviet Union via Fairbanks and Nome is credited with turning the tide on the Russian Front.
Despite that, Alaska's role in World War II is largely unrecognized. The proposition that the government covered up Alaska battles to protect civilian morale is a myth, said Cloe.
"There was a lot of coverage at the time," he said. "There were big spreads on the Aleutians and Dutch Harbor in Life magazine. There was no cover-up."
Instead, Cloe suggests, the bombing was overshadowed by bigger events that followed it - D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Hiroshima. The Dutch Harbor casualty list of less than 100 American and Japanese dead pales next to the 3,300 or more who died in the simultaneous Battle of Midway.
The real legacy of the battle has less to do with war than with peace. When those bombs fell, 75 years ago, they brought not just destruction but the seeds of coming prosperity. The war in Alaska turned serious and the haphazard backwater afterthought, a dumping ground for old equipment and token commands, was suddenly transformed into a fortress and major depot as big and modern and efficient as military planners could make it. That status grew as the threat from Japan ended and the threat from the Soviet Union emerged.
Military spending replaced the gold, coal, and fur that had sustained Alaska before the war, ushering in two booming decades that would see the territory to statehood and keep it growing until oil became the state's major economic engine.
In the process, the sleepy village of Anchorage became a large, permanent city.
When Greg Cope White's best friend Dale tells him he's spending his summer in Marine Corps boot camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, all Greg hears is 'summer' and 'camp'. He's an eighteen, underweight Texan with zero self-confidence - and gay. Yet despite dire warnings from his friend, White vows to join him in recruit training.
Although Dale doubted the wisdom of White's questionable decision, he continued to show the remarkable degree of tolerance and acceptance that he exhibited from the beginning of their association as adolescents which proved to be a 
crucial benefit to both as they supported each other through boot camp.
It is their interpersonal relationship that is exceptional, and it is elements like this that make "The Pink Marine" such a worthwhile book, resulting in an insightful story of friendship, commitment, struggle and pride that is told with humor and respect for the military.
Those of us who experienced Marine Corps boot camp or who endured military boot camp in any service branch, will almost certainly shutter as they recall similar experiences that the author so vividly describes in his struggle to become a Marine, while at the same time, overcoming his fear of discovery as he carries the burden of being gay in "the few, the proud, the Marines."
He didn't know just how hard training would be. He didn't know that he'd rise to the challenge. He didn't know, or at least fully process, that "boot camp" had a whole lot less to do with tents and campfires than it had to do with endless drills.
White offers up a surprisingly balanced view here: he hates his trainers sometimes, and he hates the drills sometimes, and it takes a long time for him to see the point of things like having to make his bed perfectly - over and over and over again. He's constantly afraid of being outed. But he also develops, over the course of the boot camp that he describes here, a respect for what the Marines are teaching them. He also learns that he is, physically and emotionally, capable of far more than he'd expected.
The author's honesty, grit, and humor march the reader through the challenging mental, physical and emotional hurdles of a closeted, gay man at Marine boot camp at a time when homosexuals were banned from military duty. There'd be hell to pay if he were found out and, although the specter of that dogs him, we see this young recruit develop self-confidence, maturity and competence as both a Marine and as a man, thanks in part to the steadfast support of his dedicated and supportive friend, Dale.
Now more than ever, this story is incredibly important, powerfully refuting stereotypes and misinformation used to demean or exclude gay people from service. The parallels to other walks of life are clear. This is a highly entertaining and thought-provoking read.
I recommend it unreservedly.
Reader's Reviews
Marine Corps boot camp was the toughest thing I ever did. I had to cope with being skinny, weak, and timid in a place that demanded strength, confidence, and fearlessness. But I didn't have to cope with being gay or having to hide who I was. The Pink Marine is a wonderful book and I'm proud to be Greg Cope White's fellow jarhead.
~ Jim Beaver, Actor/U.S. Marine in Vietnam (Justified, Deadwood)
The only complaint about this book, it ended! Loved it from start to finish! My takeaway from this book is that it is a wonderful, sensitive, funny, story of a boy searching for his place in the world and his need to feel a sense of belonging. I laughed a lot - and cried a little. In just a few short months of boot camp, you see the author grow from a boy with no clear direction to a man who accepted the challenges of Marine Corps training and graduates boot camp with strength and confidence. Being gay in the military in the late 70s would have been dangerous but Cope tells his story with candor and not a bit of whining. I sure hope that he will share his life in the Corps after boot camp in a future book!
~J. Bigda
This book was such a delight to read. While the story itself is delivered with a self-deprecating humor, its message is a relevant one to anyone who has struggled to "fit". In a time in our history that being gay was not only frowned upon, it could actually get you jailed or worse, Greg pushed the boundaries of not only the military but of himself!
My favorite aspect of this book is the lifelong friendship with Dale. In my opinion, Dale is a model of good character. As a straight teenager, he had the confidence to not only accept Greg for who he was but he embraced him as his best friend. Then Greg trusted that friendship enough to enlist as a Marine! The courage that took for both of them is an inspiration. In 2015 it may not seem like such an amazing feat but in 1979 it was unheard of!
I would be one proud mom if my son turned out half as awesome as these men! My father was a Green Beret and I would put Greg and Dale in that category of Man!
I look forward to a follow-up book!
~S. Horner
For five years, on a television show called "Covert Affairs," I had the privilege of pretending to be a member of the U.S. military. For six years, in the United States Marines, my friend Greg pretended to be straight. He wins. The Pink Marine will inspire you, make you laugh, and remind you of what's important in this life.
~Christopher Gorham, Actor (Covert Affairs, Popular, Ugly Betty)
If you're searching for the next great memoir, it's arrived. Greg Cope White's The Pink Marine is both funny and relentlessly honest. If we have any reason to celebrate the imposed silence of President Clinton's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, The Pink Marine is it. If Greg had talked back then, we wouldn't have this book now. The Marines got a great soldier out of it. And we civilians got a great author.
~Peter MacNichol, Actor (Numb3rs, Ally McBeal)
About the Author
Author, television writer, blogger, world traveler, actor, and inveterate bon vivant Greg White is also a former Sergeant in the U.S. Marine Corps.
He's a bi-coastal, polo-playing, sixth-generation Texan with a voracious appetite for life. He contributes to The Huffington Post and The Good Men Project. He served six years in the Marines. He cooks on television, and you can watch him on Cooking Channel's food and travel show Unique Sweets.
His book, The Pink Marine, is optioned for television.
His credits: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0178547/