Archive for the ‘War & Peace’ Category

WWII ace Neville Duke, 85

Posted: Friday, April 13th, 2007 6:19 am

Aviation historians have paid tribute to one of Britain’s most decorated World War II fighter pilots who died shortly after his last flight. Sqn Ldr Neville Duke, 85, flew 485 sorties achieving 28 air combat victories, including seven aircraft shot down in seven days. … Read full obituary


“Great Escape” survivor Ian Tapson, 84

Posted: Thursday, April 5th, 2007 3:35 pm

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Ian Tapson, one of the last survivors of a team of World War II soldiers who planned and executed a breakout from a German POW camp later immortalized in the film “The Great Escape,” has died. He was 84. … Read full obituary


Lloyd Brown, 105, last known WWI Navy vet

Posted: Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 9:17 am

CHARLOTTE HALL, Md., April 2 — Lloyd Brown, the last known surviving World War I Navy veteran, died on Thursday in Charlotte Hall. He was 105. … Read full obituary


Charlotte Winters, last female U.S. WWI vet, 109

Posted: Wednesday, March 28th, 2007 9:46 pm

BOONSBORO, Md. (AP) — The last known surviving American female World War I veteran, a refined Civil War buff who met face-to-face with the Secretary of the Navy to fight for women in the military, has died. She was 109. … Read full obituary


Lucie Aubrac, French Resistance hero, 94

Posted: Thursday, March 15th, 2007 1:54 pm

Lucie Aubrac, a hero of the French Resistance whose dramatic life story became a hit film, has died. She was 94. … Read full obituary


Confirmed: Saddam Hussein executed

Posted: Friday, December 29th, 2006 7:21 pm

NBC News and news services
updated 7:05 p.m. PT, Sat., Dec. 30, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners before dawn Saturday. But as his final moments approached and masked executioners slipped a black cloth and noose around his neck, he grew calm. … Read full story


CNN reporting Saddam execution carried out…

Posted: Friday, December 29th, 2006 7:17 pm

…ten minutes ago (as of 7:07pm PST).

No confirmation, no details.


Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, 91

Posted: Monday, December 11th, 2006 1:54 pm

Augusto Pinochet, the former military dictator of Chile who was revered by supporters for leaving behind the most stable country in Latin America but reviled by critics who say he ruled with a complete disregard for human rights, died Sunday. He was 91. … Read full obituary


Tokyo Rose, 90

Posted: Wednesday, September 27th, 2006 6:17 pm

CHICAGO — Iva Toguri D’Aquino, who was convicted and later pardoned of being World War II propagandist “Tokyo Rose,” died Tuesday of natural causes, said her nephew, William Toguri. She was 90. … Read full obituary


Helene Adams, 85, French Resistance hero

Posted: Thursday, September 21st, 2006 7:04 am

Helene Deschamps Adams, a hero of the French Resistance who saved American fliers from capture and Jews from execution by the Nazis, and played a role in secret preparations for Allied invasions of France, died in Manhattan Saturday of heart failure. … Read full obituary


WWII hero Guy Gabaldon, “Pied Piper of Saipan”

Posted: Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 7:53 am

MIAMI — Guy Gabaldon, who as an 18-year-old Marine private single-handedly convinced more than 1,000 Japanese soldiers to surrender in the World War II battle for Saipan, died Thursday at his home in Old Town, Fla. He was 80. … Read full obituary


Hungarian poet Gyorgy Faludy, 95

Posted: Saturday, September 2nd, 2006 6:53 pm

Gyorgy Faludy, Hungarian poet and Nazi resistance fighter; in Budapest.


Joe Rosenthal, Iwo Jima flag photographer

Posted: Tuesday, August 22nd, 2006 7:32 am

Flag Raising on Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945Joe Rosenthal, Pulitzer prize-winning Associated Press photographer who shot the spontaneous (and ubiquitous) picture of World War II soldiers raising an American flag over Iwo Jima; Sunday, at age 94.


Maj. Gen. Kathryn George Frost, 57

Posted: Friday, August 18th, 2006 8:31 pm

Retired Major General Kathryn George Frost, highest-ranking woman in the U.S. Army upon her retirement in 2005; Friday, of breast cancer.


Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi reported dead

Posted: Thursday, June 8th, 2006 1:07 am

Could be another false alarm, folks, but it’s breaking all over the TV news, and just starting to hit the wires…

Iraqi PM: Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi Killed

00:48 PDT BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaida-linked militant who led a bloody campaign of suicide bombings, kidnappings and hostage beheadings in Iraq, has been killed in a U.S. air raid north of Baghdad, Iraq’s prime minister said Thursday. … Read full story


Slobodan Milosevic found dead in prison cell

Posted: Saturday, March 11th, 2006 1:57 pm

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has been found dead in the detention centre at The Hague tribunal. …

Mr Milosevic, 64, had been held at the UN war crimes tribunal for genocide and other war crimes since 2001. … Read full obituary


“Controversial” mountaineer Heinrich Harrer, 90something

Posted: Tuesday, January 10th, 2006 6:58 pm

The controversial mountaineering legend, Heinrich Harrer, died peacefully over the weekend; he was in his nineties. Harrer is likely most known by younger climbers through the film, Seven Years in Tibet, which was based on his life. … Read full obituary


My Lai Hero Hugh Thompson, Jr., 62

Posted: Friday, January 6th, 2006 6:57 pm

NEW ORLEANS — Hugh Thompson Jr., a former Army helicopter pilot honored for rescuing Vietnamese civilians from his fellow GIs during the My Lai massacre, died early Friday. He was 62. … Read full obituary


Man who captured Mussolini, Urbano Lazzaro, 81

Posted: Wednesday, January 4th, 2006 3:39 pm

Urbano Lazzaro, best known under his nom de guerre ‘Partisan Bill’, stormed into Italy’s history books on April 27, 1945, when he halted a Nazi truck in the village of Dongo and discovered Il Duce disguised as a Nazi soldier inside. … Read full obituary


Last “Christmas Truce” survivor Alfred Anderson, 109

Posted: Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005 6:48 am

The Christmas Day Truce of 1914, Published 1915
LONDON, Nov. 21 (AP) — Alfred Anderson, the last surviving soldier to have been present when the guns fell silent along the Western Front in the spontaneous “Christmas Truce” of World War I, died Monday in Newtyle, Scotland. He was 109. … Read full obituary


Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, 96

Posted: Tuesday, September 20th, 2005 2:03 am

LOS ANGELES — Simon Wiesenthal, the Holocaust survivor who helped track down numerous Nazi war criminals following World War II then spent the later decades of his life fighting anti-Semitism and prejudice against all people, died Tuesday. He was 96. … Read full obituary


General William Westmoreland, 91

Posted: Tuesday, July 19th, 2005 6:18 am

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Retired Gen. William Westmoreland, who commanded U.S. forces during the Vietnam War from 1964 to 1968 and advocated a strong military buildup at a time when American casualties were mounting, has died. … Read full obituary


John K. Vance, 89; uncovered LSD project at CIA

Posted: Saturday, June 18th, 2005 4:16 pm

John K. Vance, 89, a member of the Central Intelligence Agency inspector general’s staff in the early 1960s who discovered that the agency was running a research project that included administering LSD and other drugs to unwitting human subjects, died May 27 of respiratory arrest. … Read full obituary


Col. David H. Hackworth, 74

Posted: Friday, May 6th, 2005 2:40 pm

Washington, D.C., May 5, 2005 — Col. David H. Hackworth, the United States Army’s legendary, highly decorated guerrilla fighter and lifelong champion of the doughboy and dogface, ground-pounder and grunt, died Wednesday in Mexico. He was 74 years old. The cause of death was a form of cancer now appearing with increasing frequency among Vietnam veterans exposed to the defoliants called Agents Orange and Blue. … Read full obituary


Mossad operative Sylvia Raphael

Posted: Friday, February 18th, 2005 7:43 am

JERUSALEM — The Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, this week brought home to her final rest one of its legendary female operatives, Sylvia Raphael. …

Her story reads like . . . well, like a spy novel. … Read full obituary