WWII

Vietnam war veteran Harvey Charter didn’t have to be an expert in World War II relics to know that the old American flag hanging in the Fort Myers American Legion Post was special. As a Jewish-American, he recognized the symbolism the flag's creators intended in replacing the banner's traditional stars with a field full of the Star of David.Now known as the Nordhausen flag, it is on permanent loan at the Holocaust Museum & Cohen Education Center in Naples. It’s on display full time thru about January. It will then go on rotation with another treasure there, a quilt created by the survivors of Auschwitz who presented the gift to Soviet troops who liberated them.

OMAHA BEACH, France — Under their feet, the sands of Omaha Beach, and in their rheumy eyes, tears that inevitably flowed from being on the revered shoreline in Normandy, France, where so many American young men were cut down 80 years ago on D-Day.Veterans of World War II, many of them centenarians and likely returning to France for one last time, pilgrimaged Tuesday to what was the bloodiest of five Allied landing beaches on June 6, 1944. They remembered fallen friends. They relived horrors they experienced in combat. They blessed their good fortune for surviving. And they mourned those who paid the ultimate price.They also bore a message for generations behind them, who owe them so much: Don’t forget what we did.

Flying in a three-man formation as the “Veterans Airlift Command Tribute Wing” and led by Walt Fricke, former Army combat helicopter pilot and Vietnam Veteran, AirBoss and Founder of the Veterans Airlift Command non-profit, with fellow pilots Mike Grossmann and Dan Blackwell, the trio helped re-dedicate newly-opened Runway 4-22 at Punta Gorda Airport.

An encore broadcast of our 2014 conversation about the unique contributions to defeating German forces in WWII by members of the Ghost Army. On Feb. 1, President Joe Biden signed into law the “Ghost Army Congressional Gold Medal Act,” to honor and recognize their contributions.

We listen back to our conversation from earlier this year about an exhibition at Florida Gulf Coast University’s Wilson G. Bradshaw Library documenting…