RAF pilot Douglas Bader lost both of his legs in a 1931 aerobatic accident and was medically discharged. When WWII broke out, he fought to be reinstated — and was, against all odds, given command of a fighter squadron. With his artificial legs, he flew combat missions, shot down 22 enemy aircraft, a…
Wojtek the bear was adopted by the 22nd Polish Artillery in Iran. Enlisted as a Private with serial number and pay book, he carried 25-pound artillery ammo crates under fire at Monte Cassino. Became the official insignia. After the war lived at Edinburgh Zoo where Polish veterans visited with beer a…
Polish officer Witold Pilecki deliberately got himself captured in September 1940 to infiltrate Auschwitz. Inside he organized the ZOW resistance with hundreds of inmates. His three intelligence reports described gas chambers, crematoria, and extermination to Allies who ignored him as exaggerations.…
At Remagen, Germany, on March 7, 1945, the Ludendorff Bridge was the last intact bridge across the Rhine. German engineers rigged it with explosives to demolish it as American troops of the 9th Armored Division approached. But a combination of factors — damaged firing wires, weak explosives, and the…
In 1945, a 17-year-old Czech boy named Jiri Vavra watched as a damaged German Tiger II tank was abandoned on the outskirts of Prague during the uprising. With no experience driving a tank, he and several friends managed to start it and drove it through the streets, providing what firepower they had …