Archivist of the United States Dr. Colleen Shogan announced in June that the National Archives will place the Emancipation Proclamation on permanent display in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. 

The intent is for the Emancipation Proclamation to be permanently displayed in the Rotunda along with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights. 

“When President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, he wrote that ‘all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free,’’’ Shogan quoted. “Although the full privileges of freedom were not immediately bestowed upon all Americans with Lincoln’s order, I am proud that the National Archives will enshrine this seminal document for public display adjacent to our nation’s founding documents. Together, they tell a more comprehensive story of the history of all Americans and document progress in our nation’s continuous growth toward a more perfect Union,” she said.

The National Archives will commence an assessment to determine the best display environment considering the condition and importance of the original document. The current plan for display calls for showing one side of the Emancipation Proclamation, a double-sided five-page document, alongside facsimiles of the reverse pages. The original pages on display will be rotated on a regular basis to limit light exposure.

The Texas Civil War Museum in Fort Worth, one of the country’s largest such facilities, will close its doors on December 30. After 16 years of operation, Texas oilman Ray Richey and his wife, Judy, have decided to retire. “It was a hobby that got out of hand,” Richey professed in 2006 when he opened the 15,000-square-foot facility to house his extensive personal artifact collection.

Touted as the largest Civil War Museum west of the Mississippi River, the building has more than 5,000 artifacts on display, valued at $15 million–$20 million. Included are Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s presentation sword, Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart’s saber and personal battle flag, Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler’s dress uniform, and Maj. Gen. Phil Sheridan’s saber and saddle blanket. The country’s second largest Civil War gun collection is also on display.

The north wall of the exhibit hall features Union artifacts, the south wall Confederate. In addition to the Civil War artifacts, Victorian-era dresses are featured, including one worn by Lady Randolph Spencer Churchill, Winston Churchill’s mother.

The Richey collection will be auctioned off by The Horse Soldier Auctions in Gettysburg, Pa. The Civil War artifacts of the Texas United Daughters of the Confederacy—also displayed at the museum—will be stored at another location, with portions to be occasionally loaned to other museums.

“What a great gift Ray and Judy provided,” says Texas historian Don Frazier. “Ray had an eye for antiques. There’s not another collection like it. It’s the end of an era.” 

This article first appeared in America’s Civil War magazine

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The wreckage site of a World War II U.S. Navy escort carrier was identified Monday by the Naval History and Heritage Command’s Underwater Archaeology branch, bringing a semblance of closure to the crew of a ship that dipped beneath the waves 78 years ago.

The USS Ommaney Bay (CVE 79) was transiting the Sulu Sea near the Philippines on the evening of Jan. 4, 1945, when it came under attack by a twin-engine aircraft flown by a Japanese kamikaze pilot.

The ship’s skipper, Capt. Howard L. Young, had just opted to install extra guards on deck as an extra precautionary measure against such attacks — but the effort proved futile.

The incoming aircraft, which no sailors spotted until it was too late, slammed into the Casablanca-class escort carrier’s starboard side, erupting its two attached bombs and igniting a conflagration on the ship’s flight deck, where a slew of aircraft that had not yet been degassed were assembled.

“The second bomb exploded close to the starboard side after rupturing the fire main on the second deck and passing through the hanger deck,” the NHHC release stated.

Other ships rushed to pull alongside the “Big O” and assist with the fires but were quickly beaten back by the searing heat. As the gasoline- and bomb-fueled inferno spread, an even more dire issue arose — the ship’s torpedo warheads could explode.

At 5:45 p.m., 45 minutes after the plane tore into the carrier, the abandon ship order was issued by Adm. Jesse B. Oldendorft, the top officer aboard the adjacent Fletcher-class destroyer USS Burns.

Joe Cooper, a sailor aboard the Ommaney Bay, recalled desperately awaiting rescue in the water after abandoning ship.

“There was sharks. Looked like men were climbing on each other’s shoulders to get out of the water,” Cooper told the Veterans History Museum of the Carolinas. “I remembered from Guadalcanal, we saw a submarine’s periscope. We fired a torpedo. I run back there and saw oil slicks. It was a cargo ship and sunk it. It was our first submarine. I’d seen men get pulled under by sharks and ate up at Guadalcanal. After Guadalcanal, they told us, ‘If you ever hit the water, don’t kick or nothing, because the sharks will come after you.’

“In the water, I stayed still and a few sharks just went by me. No ships came to support us because the light carrier Princeton had been damaged when it went alongside the Birmingham when it was bombed, so they stayed away from us. So they let us burn.”

Around 8 p.m. the USS Burns fired a single torpedo at the unsalvageable escort carrier, sending the hulking, broiling ship below the surface for good. Of her 800-strong crew, 95 were lost.

A crew working alongside NHHC personnel located the ship Monday using “a combination of survey information provided by the Sea Scan Survey team and video footage provided by the DPT Scuba dive team,” according to the release. “This information was correlated with location data for the wreck site” gathered in 2019.

“Ommaney Bay is the final resting place of American Sailors who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of their country,” retired admiral and NHHC Director Samuel J. Cox said in a release announcing the location of the wreckage. “This discovery allows the families of those lost some amount of closure and gives us all another chance to remember and honor their service to our nation.”

While Rome wasn’t built in a day, the Colosseum was completed in 80 B.C. and has remained an iconic structure in both Italy and around the world for more than 2,000 years.

But according to Ivan Dimitrov — the tourist who was filmed carving “Ivan+Hayley 23” into the centuries-old structure with his keys — he had no idea about the “antiquity of the monument.”

According to NPR, Dimitrov was filmed in the act by an American tourist, Ryan Lutz, who posted the video on social media after he said Colosseum guards failed to show interest in his footage.

The video was swiftly met with outrage across social media, with the Rome prosecutor’s office beginning their investigation into Dimitrov shortly after.

This is the fourth time this year that such graffiti was reported at the Colosseum, writes NPR. The act of damaging cultural property carries fines of up to 15,000 euros and five years in prison.

“I admit with the deepest embarrassment that only after what regrettably happened, I learned of the antiquity of the monument,” Dimitrov wrote in his letter to the prosecutor, his lawyer, Alexandro Maria Tirelli, told CNN.

In a report published on July 25, 2022, by the U.K.-based financial consultant group Deloitte, the company estimated that the iconic Colosseum in Rome is worth 77 billion euros, or $79 billion, in cold, hard cash.

The study also found that the Colosseum contributes 1.4 billion euros per year to the Italian economy as a cultural attraction. 

Dimitrov’s actions have “offended everyone across the globe who appreciate the value of archaeology, of monuments and of history,” Culture Minister Gennaro Sangiuliano tweeted last week. He added that the police had “identified the person presumed to be responsible for the uncivilized and absurd act committed at the Colosseum.”

Tirelli and Dimitrov are seeking a plea bargain in the case.

Daniel Ellsberg, whose leaked “Pentagon Papers” revealed to the world in 1971 the U.S. government’s closely guarded overview of the Vietnam War, died of pancreatic cancer on June 16 at his home in Kensington, Calif., at age 92.

Ellsberg, a Harvard-educated former Marine, was an analyst for the RAND Corporation before becoming an adviser to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1964. He spent two years in Vietnam for the DoD assessing the war and spent significant time accompany counterinsurgency sorties in the field.

It was there that his formerly pro-war stance began to change, as the brutality and likely futility of the fighting slowly turned him against American policy. In 1967, he joined three dozen others in compiling what would later be called the Pentagon Papers—a 7,000-page study commissioned by McNamara—detailing the history of the conflict in Southeast Asia and revealing that four successive presidents from Eisenhower to Johnson had expanded the war illegally, misleading Congress and the American public while doing so.

Ellsberg’s work on the document led him to believe the war was unwinnable. In 1971, he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, and later the Washington Post, who published them wholesale after court battles debating the limits of the First Amendment.

Ironically, it became the next president in the series, Richard M. Nixon, to take the fall. Nixon ordered a series of aggressive countermoves, including illegal wiretaps and a break-in of Ellsberg’s former psychiatrist’s office to dig up dirt, that ultimately led to the Watergate scandal and the subsequent resignation of the president.

Ellsberg was charged with espionage, conspiracy, and other crimes that could have seen him spend decades in prison, but his case was thrown out in 1974 when the level of the government’s misconduct came to light. Nixon’s domestic affairs adviser, John Ehrlichman, even offered the trial judge the directorship of the F.B.I. as the court case was proceeding. Ehrlichman later went to prison.

Ellsberg continued his antiwar activism and in later years became a vocal advocate for nuclear disarmament. In 2018 he was awarded Sweden’s Olof Palme Prize, which noted how his “moral courage” to leak the report led to an “untold number of saved lives.” He is survived by his second wife, children, and extended family.

An estimated 20,000 men perished on June 18, 1815, on the plains of Waterloo, Belgium, the site of Napoleon Bonaparte’s downfall and a dramatic coda to the decades-long Napoleonic Wars.

On that day, Napoleon sought to capture Brussels and separate and divide the armies of the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. Despite defeating the Prussians on June 16 at the Battle of Ligny, Napoleon was unable to force them to retreat entirely, meaning they were still free to support Wellington’s force. Needing a decisive victory to prevent an invasion of France, Napoleon decided to attack, according to Antara Bate of HistoryHit.

The climatic one-day battle ranks as the third bloodiest of Napoleon’s campaigns and signaled the beginning of a nearly 50-year peace in Europe.

Today, the hallowed grounds draw over a quarter-million visitors, a number boosted by the area’s panoramic views and serene surroundings.

At least, that was until this month.

Beginning June 1 and running until the end of the month, a “unique dining experience” has popped-up over the battle’s landscape. Advertised as “Dinner in the sky,” the restaurant boasts that adventurous foodies can eat 164 feet above where Wellington defeated Bonaparte once and for all.

According to The Brussel Times, “a total of 3,000 guests will be hosted at a table perched 50 metres above the Lion’s Mound, highlighting the history of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington.”

“Aside from a four-course menu (two starters, a main course, and a dessert),” The Times continued, “diners will be served entertainment by soldiers in full regalia, campfires, cannon, drums and a video mapping animation on the facade of the panorama.”

Tourists making the trek for the 208th anniversary of the battle and perhaps seeking a more somber experience, however, “Couldn’t escape [the pop-up] if [they] wanted to.”

Hoisted by a large crane near the famed Lion’s Mound, the attention-grabbing restaurant went even further on June 18 by treating diners and tourists alike to the dulcet tones of ABBA blasting across the hallowed grounds.

One visitor took to Twitter to describe the tourism-gone-rogue experience, as he was subjected to the famed Swedish quartet’s hit, “Waterloo” as he surveyed the battlefield.

The original Twitter post lamented that “Belgian commercial interests turn[ed] the #Waterloo battlefield into Disneyland.”

The experience ranges from €150 (roughly $164) for cocktails to well over €300 ($328) for an evening dinner.

It remains unclear, however, if Beef Wellington is on the menu.

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The Army redesignated Fort Polk, Louisiana, as Fort Johnson on June 13, concluding a move made in accordance with a 2021 Naming Commission policy requiring the removal of any names adorning Defense Department property that commemorated the Confederacy.

Fort Johnson, one of nine Army installations to receive a new moniker under the policy, was selected to honor New York National Guard Sgt. William Henry Johnson, a Black World War I soldier whose frontline heroism in France would etch his name into the history books as a lionheart of the famed Harlem Hellfighters.

Johnson was in his mid−20s when he left his job as a railway porter in Albany, New York, and enlisted in the Army. It was June 1917. America declared war against Germany two months prior and Johnson was eager to join the fight.

Standing at only 5-foot−4 and 130 pounds, Johnson enlisted in Brooklyn and was subsequently assigned to C Company of the 15th New York Infantry Regiment, an all-Black National Guard outfit that would later become the 369th Infantry Regiment — also known as the Harlem Hellfighters.

The 369th became the first Black combat regiment to serve with American Expeditionary Forces. Prior to the unit’s formation, Black soldiers who wanted to serve in combat worked around U.S. military policies by enlisting in the French or Canadian armies instead.

Racism encountered by Black soldiers at the time was severe. U.S. Gen. John G. Pershing even went as far as writing a pamphlet, titled “Secret Information Concerning Black American Troops,” advising French authorities against relying on Black American soldiers. In the correspondence, Pershing wrote that the men of the 369th were “inferior” to white soldiers, were a “constant menace to the American” and didn’t possess a “civic and professional conscience.”

Burdened by a misguided reputation, Johnson’s unit was initially relegated to labor-intensive duties. That was until they were ordered into battle in 1918 and assigned to the French Army, who seemed to care far less about race than their American allies.

Alongside French forces near the Argonne Forest, Johnson and 17-year-old Needham Roberts were standing watch during the early morning hours of May 15, 1918.

At about 1 a.m., the two men began taking fire from a German sniper. Johnson opened a box of 30 grenades and lined them up for quick use. Moments later, in the terrifying dark of the Western Front, Johnson heard the “snippin’ and clippin’” cutting sounds of at least 12 Germans making their way through the wire encircling the post.

Johnson tossed a grenade in the direction of the commotion and all hell broke loose. The German invaders unleashed gunfire and grenades toward the two watchmen, injuring Roberts immediately.

Unable to walk, Roberts sat upright in the trench and continued to feed Johnson grenades — but the Germans kept coming.

Johnson quickly exhausted his supply of grenades and subsequently suffered a rifle jam with the enemy soldiers close enough to touch.

Multiple German soldiers attempted to grab Roberts from the trench and take him prisoner, so Johnson went to work.

Climbing out of the cover of the trench he charged at the enemy, swinging his rifle, his fists and a bolo knife in a furious melee of clubbing, punching and slashing in every direction.

“Each slash meant something, believe me,” Johnson recalled.

Johnson stabbed one German in the stomach then killed a lieutenant before being shot in the arm. He was then attacked from behind by another, who he discarded by driving his knife into the German’s ribs.

The increasingly wounded and exhausted Johnson eventually managed to drag Roberts back to safety just as reinforcements arrived.

The diminutive-yet-Herculean soldier then fainted, fatigued from the hour-long fight and 21 wounds to his arm, feet, face and back — the majority of which were from knives and bayonets. Johnson’s left foot had also been shattered, and he would later have to have a steel plate inserted at a French hospital.

When dawn broke, the Americans found four dead Germans and evidence of at least 10 to 20 more having participated in the attack.

Johnson’s ferocity earned him the nickname “Black Death.” In recognition of his actions, France awarded him with the Croix de Guerre with a Gold Palm for extraordinary valor, making Johnson the first American to receive France’s highest award for bravery. Roberts also received the Croix de Guerre.

The Harlem Hellfighters would go on to spend 191 days fighting in frontline trenches and would sustain 1,500 casualties by war’s end, the most of any single American unit during World War I in either category.

When Johnson returned home to New York, the severity of his injuries prevented him from resuming his pre-war job at Albany’s Union Station. Sadly, Johnson turned to the bottle, became estranged from his family and faded from the memory of those who once celebrated his heroism.

Johnson contracted tuberculosis and later died, destitute, in July 1929 of myocarditis at the age of 36. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

In 2015, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Johnson the Medal of Honor. Johnson also was awarded the Purple Heart and the Distinguished Service Cross in 1996 and 2002, respectively.

Originally published by Military Times, our sister publication.

The Army officially redesignated the installation previously known as Fort Polk, Louisiana, on June 13 to Fort Johnson.

The fort, which is home to the Joint Readiness Training Center and the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, derives its new name from New York National Guard Sgt. William Henry Johnson, a Black World War I soldier who bravely fought off German forces as a member of the famed Harlem Hellfighters.

“Sgt. Henry Johnson embodied the warrior spirit, and we are deeply honored to bear his name at the Home of Heroes,” Brig. Gen. David Gardner, the commanding general of the base, said in a statement.

Johnson enlisted in 1917 with the 15th New York Infantry Regiment — a National Guard unit of Black Americans later designated as the 369th Infantry Regiment — about two months after the United States entered WWI, according to the statement.

The Harlem Hellfighter single-handedly repelled a German raiding party in May 1918 with his rifle butt, grenades, his fists and a knife, saving his fellow soldier Needham Roberts from capture in the process.

“Each slash meant something, believe me,” Johnson once said. “There wasn’t anything so fine about it … just fought for my life. A rabbit would have done that.”

Suffering 21 wounds, Johnson was unable to resume his job as a luggage handler after the war.

He received the French Croix de Guerre military decoration for his actions, one of the first Americans to receive the honor, the Army statement noted.

The courageous soldier died in 1929 and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart, Distinguished Service Cross and Medal of Honor for his actions.

“It is a distinct pleasure and honor to represent the New York National Guard in the rededication ceremony of Fort Polk to Fort Henry Johnson,” Brig. Gen. Isabel Rivera Smith, the New York National Guard’s director of joint staff, said in the release. “As a Black American whose bravery wasn’t acknowledged at the time, Sgt. Johnson personified the Army values and was the epitome of strength. As a former member of the 369th Harlem Hellfighters myself, I could not be prouder to be part of this ceremony.”

The renaming move adheres to legislation requiring the removal or modification of Department of Defense assets that commemorate the Confederate States of America or those who voluntarily served under the Confederacy. The Louisiana post is one of nine Army installations being redesignated.

The Army installation was previously named for Confederate Gen. Leonidas Polk, a resident of New Orleans who was killed in combat in 1864.

Originally published by Military Times, our sister publication.

After 105 years, the remains of an American doughboy were finally given a proper burial.

Today, the American Battle Monuments Commission, alongside French and U.S. officials, interred its first Great War unknown since 1988 — the first burial at Oise-Aisne American Cemetery in France since 1932.

The ceremony itself, however, was over a year in the making.

On February 8, 2022, local undertaker Jean-Paul Feval was digging a fresh gravesite in the cemetery at Villers-Sur-Fère, in northeastern France, when he stumbled upon “human bones, along with artifacts that would later include pieces of a helmet, a stretcher, a trench knife and a corroded, unreadable dog tag,” according to a Washington Post report.

The stretcher was a particularly unique find.

“During the fighting they tried to get rid of the bodies as soon as they could,” Bert Caloud, the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery’s superintendent, told The Post. “They would roll them up in ponchos. They’d roll them up in blankets. They could carry them on stretchers.

“My guess is he was dead, and what was left of him was put on a stretcher,” he continued.

For the past year French and American officials have worked in tandem to verify beyond a reasonable doubt that the remains found were, in fact, American.

While the identity of the American soldier remains unknown, it was determined that he was killed in July 1918 around the fight for Villers-Sur-Fère.

According to Mike Knapp, the commission’s director of historical services, the “archeological artifacts gave a good indication” that this was the gravesite of an American soldier. However, Graves Registration Service maps created in 1919-20, now housed at the National Archives, helped to verify the location of the American gravesites from the Great War.

“He’s been by himself for over 100 years, and finally we can give him the dignified and honored burial that he rates,” Caloud told the Post.

Buried with a Purple Heart and given full military honors, the unknown soldier joins 6,012 of his comrades — 597 unknowns — where they already rest.

His gravesite reads, “Here Rests In Honored Glory An American Soldier Known But to God.”

The ABMC, which was started in 1923 by President Warren Harding to honor U.S. World War I dead overseas, “operates 26 cemeteries on foreign soil where 123,000 service members from World Wars I and II are buried, and thousands of others are memorialized,” according to The Post.

The soldier’s discovery “is an extraordinarily big deal,” said Knapp.

“Here we are … 105 years after this guy died and … he’s getting a full honors, military funeral just like some veteran would get today at Arlington” cemetery, Knapp continued “I think that says a great deal.”

The Battle

While the First World War would end in just under five months after the unknown soldier’s death, the fight remained bitter to the last.

In late July 1918, the U.S. Army’s 42nd Infantry Division — called the Rainbow Division because it contained outfits from across the country — went on its first offensive, pushing back German forces around the Ourcq River, less than a mile north of Villers-sur-Fère.

The men of that division saw intense action around the village, with Francis Duffy, the division chaplain, writing in his postwar memoir, “Father Duffy’s Story,” that “Nearly one-third of those who lost their lives in this action received their death wounds from shell fire in and around Villers-sur-Fère.”

While it is believed that the unknown soldier was from the Rainbow Division, he could well have been a part of the the 165th Infantry Regiment, which also saw intense action around the French village of Villers-sur-Fère. More than 30 Americans from that regiment were hastily buried by a stone wall near the village cemetery.

However, regardless of the fact that “We do not know his name, his age, or his background,” Gen. James C. McConville, chief of staff of the Army, told the crowd gathered at Oise-Aisne this morning that “we do know one thing for certain … this soldier was a hero.”

Watch the full ceremony here.

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An illegal Chinese salvage operation seized by Malaysian authorities Sunday is suspected to have looted two iconic World War II shipwrecks, USNI first reported.

Scrap steel, aluminum, brass fittings and ammunition believed to have belonged to the British ships HMS Prince of Wales and the HMS Repulse — both designated war graves — were discovered by Malaysian authorities aboard the Chinese cargo ship Chuan Hong 68, according to the BBC.

The ship was boarded and searched after authorities found the vessel was not authorized to anchor in the waters under Malaysian jurisdiction.

“We are distressed and concerned at the apparent vandalism for personal profit of HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse,” Dominic Tweddle, the director general of The National Museum of the Royal Navy, wrote in a statement. “We are upset at the loss of naval heritage and the impact this has on the understanding of our Royal Navy history.”

On Dec. 10, 1941, just three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Royal Navy ships were attacked and, having no aerial defense, quickly sunk by Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft. The strike killed some 842 sailors and is considered one of the worst disasters in British naval history.

The shocking loss forced the navy to reevaluate how it had fought for centuries — pivoting away from the Mahanian notion that “Big ships with big guns, concentrated into a single, undivided battle fleet, and infused with an overriding purpose to wipe the enemy off the face of the sea” was the way to rule the waves, according to historian Ian Toll.

Carrier strike groups were in. Antiquated battleship tactics were out.

Of the loss, Prime Minister Winston Churchill recalled in his postwar memoirs: “In all the war, I never received a more direct shock. … As I turned over and twisted in bed the full horror of the news sank in upon me. There were no British or American ships in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific except the American survivors of Pearl Harbour, who were hastening back to California. Across this vast expanse of waters, Japan was supreme, and we everywhere were weak and naked.”

Today, the battleship HMS Prince of Wales rests upside down 223 feet beneath the waves near Kuantan in the South China Sea. The battlecruiser HMS Repulse lies several miles away from its sister ship.

The alleged Chinese looting, which has reportedly become common over the past several years, sparked outrage and concern from both the British and their allies. In 2017, The Guardian reported more than 40 Australian, Dutch and Japanese warships had been destroyed by looting operations in the same waters off Indonesia and Singapore.

Old shipwrecks are increasingly targeted by scavengers “for their rare low-background steel, also known as ‘pre-war steel’. The low radiation in the steel makes it a rare and valuable resource for use in medical and scientific equipment,” according to the BBC.

The U.S. Navy has expressed concern over the safety of the cruiser USS Houston, which sank just south of the same area during the Battle of Sunda Strait on March 1, 1942. More than 650 U.S. sailors and Marines died when the Houston sank.

While the wrecks remain a key part of World War II history, they are most importantly the gravesites for sailors and Marines entombed within.

“A strategy is vital to determine how to assess and manage these wrecks in the most efficient and effective manner,” Tweddle stated. “Above all, we must remember the crews who served on these lost ships and all too often gave their lives in the service of their country.”

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The U.S. Navy has identified a sunken ship off the coast of Okinawa, Japan, as the Sumner-class destroyer Mannert L. Abele, the first U.S. warship to sink on April 12, 1945, after it was hit with a Japanese suicide rocket bomb, according to the Naval History and Heritage Command.

“Mannert L. Abele is the final resting place for 84 American sailors who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of their country,” NHHC Director Samuel Cox said in a statement. “Its discovery allows some closure to the families of those lost, and provides us all another opportunity to remember and honor them.”

The day of its sinking, the destroyer came in contact with Japanese aircraft about 75 miles off the coast of Okinawa. Although the warship damaged multiple enemy planes, one Japanese kamikaze pilot managed to cut through the anti-aircraft fire and crashed into the starboard side of the ship, according to the release.

The ship was then hit at the water line by a rocket-powered human-guided kamikaze bomb — a Yokosuka MXY-7 Ohka, also called the Cherry Blossom — that caused the bow and stern of the ship to buckle, dooming the vessel.

The wreck of Mannert L. Abele is protected and falls under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Navy, the statement noted.

“The wreck represents the final resting place of sailors that gave their life in defense of the nation and should be respected by all parties as a war grave,” the NHHC release states.

Naval History and Heritage Command traces its history back to 1794, according to the command’s website. The Navy Department Library was established under the Naval Bureau within the War Department. In 1800, President John Adams asked the first secretary of the Navy to prepare a list of books suited for a Navy library.

The command now includes 10 museums across the country and a detachment that contributes to the upkeep of the service’s oldest ship, the USS Constitution.

Originally published by Military Times, our sister publication.

The Biden administration remains in a tense standoff with congressional Republicans over the national debt ceiling. On June 1, the U.S. will default on its obligations for the first time in history if the two parties are unable to come to an agreement on lifting the debt ceiling.

Indeed, there are perilous repercussions if the Treasury Department cannot avert an unprecedented U.S. default.

If the specific deadline, known as “X-date,” is missed, the “cascading impacts of default would probably compound — a pause in federal payments would hurt the economy, which would hurt the stock market, which would in turn hurt the economy even more, and so on. The interactions between collapsing home values, rising interest rates and a destabilized global financial system are hard to calculate. Some estimates suggest that more than 8 million jobs could be wiped out. Mortgage rates might soar by more than 20 percent, according to some projections, and the economy would contract by as much as it did during the 2008 Great Recession,” according to the Washington Post.

Such consequences are terrifyingly grim, yet this is not the first, nor — unfortunately — most likely the last time in U.S. history that the nation has come dangerously close to not raising the debt ceiling.

Since 1917, when lawmakers instituted the first debt ceiling, Congress has since raised that number 78 times — 49 times under Republican presidents, and 29 times under Democratic administrations, according to NPR.

Except for the year 1835, when President Andrew Jackson became the first and last president to pay off the entirety of the national debt, the U.S. Treasury has never experienced zero debt, with the need to accrue more debt beginning in earnest at the start of the U.S. entry into World War I.

As of today, the debt currently stands at $31.4 trillion.

Below is a brief history of the debt ceiling to provide some context to the current political battle waging in the capital city.

The Good News First: Has the U.S. ever defaulted before?

No, the U.S. has never defaulted on its debt over failure to raise the debt ceiling. Congress missed payments, but they were unrelated to the debt ceiling.

Why Was the Debt Ceiling Created?

According to Kathleen Day, aJohns Hopkins University financial history professor, the national debt ceiling was created in the 20th century due to the first World War. “Congress needs to approve every time the government had to borrow money,” Day told NPR. “But then with World War I, they had to do it so often, they just said, enough of this. Let’s just give you the authority to do — to borrow money up to a certain limit. And so ever after, we’ve had these debt limits. So Treasury can borrow up to a certain amount. And then when it hits that amount, it has to go back to Congress and get authorization.”

Since entering World War II, the U.S. has raised the debt limit every year, and, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center, “By the end of the war, in June 1946, the debt limit [wa]s lowered to $275 billion as war costs dissipate[d] and the federal government beg[an] to run three years of surpluses. The federal debt limit remain[ed] unchanged at this level for eight consecutive years – the longest such period since its inception.”

With the decades-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, tax cuts, emergency responses such as Katrina and expanded federal spending, the U.S. has added $25 trillion in debt, writes TIME.

How Did the Founding Fathers View Debt?

The topic of debt became a classic debate that contributed to the split between Jeffersonian and Hamilton followers. Jefferson understood the utility of debt but believed there were more downside to it. Hamilton recognized such downfalls but regarded debt as necessary to grow industry, and, in turn, the economy.

“There’s good debt and bad debt,” said Day. “Debt is just debt. It’s the people that either use it wisely or don’t.”

Andrew Jackson famously became the only U.S. president to get rid of the national debt, however,his actions, “zeroing out of the US debt contributed to the Panic of 1837, one of the worst recessions in American history,” writes NPR.

How Do Elections Play Into the Debt Crisis?

Oftentimes, debt-limit crises loom when an election produces a shift in who controls Congress. The debt ceiling crises of 1995 and 2011 are no exception.

During President Bill Clinton’s first midterms in 1994, the Republicans flipped both the Senate and House Chambers.

“GOP lawmakers pledged to pass a balanced budget as part of what they named their “Contract with America,” according to U.S. News and World Report. “House Republicans sent Clinton a budget that cut spending on domestic programs, which he vetoed. This in turn led to a five-day shutdown of the federal government.”

In response, House Speaker Newt Gingrich threatened to not increase the debt limit.

After a second Clinton veto of the GOP’s budget offer and a 21-day standoff, the Republicans passed a budget offered by Clinton and also lifted the debt ceiling.

Under President Barack Obama, the 2010 midterm elections saw Republicans gain seven Senate seats — although not a majority — and win a GOP majority in the House.

Following the election, the House refused to raise the debt limit without cuts to federal spending.

An 11th-hour agreement came on July 31, 2011, only two days before the U.S. government ran out of money. But creditors were spooked, with “the credit markets downgrad[ing] the nation’s credit ranking for the first time, upping the costs of future borrowing,” per the Associated Press.

What is the role of the 14th Amendment?         

The 14th Amendment states that “the validity of the public debt, authorized by law…shall not be questioned.”

According to TIME, “the controversial legal theory, which previous administrations had ruled out, builds on Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to argue that it would be unconstitutional for the U.S. to fail to make payments even if the debt limit isn’t raised, effectively challenging the debt limit on legal grounds.”

As talks between Democrats and Republicans stall, Biden stated that he was “considering” invoking the 14th Amendment on his own without an act of Congress but went on to say that he recognized the potential pitfalls in doing so. “The problem is it would have to be litigated, and without an extension it would end up in the same place.”

What Does This Mean Going Forward?

While invoking the 14th Amendment may be a constitutionally tenable option as the June 1st date looms, let’s hope for history’s sake — and the economy’s — that a deal is brokered long before that pinch point.

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After taking possession of 117 acres at Buffington Island, site of the largest Civil War battle in Ohio, the American Battlefield Trust has now protected hallowed ground at half the states in the Union. Founded in 1987 in Virginia, the Trust has saved a total of 56,000 acres across 155 sites in 25 states. Geographically, the organization’s footprint stretches from upstate New York westward to New Mexico, and chronologically from the “shot heard ’round the world” at Lexington and Concord that began the Revolutionary War to the stillness at Appomattox as the Civil War drew to a close.

The Trust first announced its intention to secure the Ohio site, adjacent to the existing Buffington Island Battlefield Memorial Park, in the spring of 2022 with assistance from the Buffington Island Battlefield Preservation Foundation.

In March, the Trust also announced the protection of 47 acres across the Cedar Creek Battlefield in the Shenandoah Valley and Cedar Mountain Battlefield in the Virginia Piedmont. The land was saved with the assistance of the National Park Service, American Battlefield Protection Program, Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, Virginia Land Conservation Fund, and Trust donors.

The newly saved and transferred property at Cedar Creek is adjacent to park headquarters and on a central part of the battlefield, once touched by the determined actions of Union and Confederate troops on October 19, 1864, during the boldly executed Battle of Cedar Creek.

this article first appeared in civil war times magazine

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Listen close, fellas. If you want to woo your significant other, know that limos and boutonnieres are out — tanks are in.

Sherman Bynum, a junior at Washington State’s Camas High School and long-time tank enthusiast, hatched up a plan with his friend Sam Tetro to go big for their upcoming prom night at the Portland Art Museum.  

“I have had the goal to ride a tank for years now, and with the opportunity of prom around the corner, it is only natural that the two mix,” Bynum wrote on his GoFundMe page.

While Bynum missed the opportunity to make the ultimate pun of Sherman riding a Sherman, the teen did manage to rent a M3A1 Stuart tank from a private collector.

According to KOIN 6 News, Bynum had originally called a group in Minnesota in February that rents out battle tanks for films, but that came with a Hollywood price tag of $20,000.

But Bynum was persistent. After reaching out to a museum in Oregon, the teen found his solution.

While the museum didn’t have what Bynum wanted, a curator knew someone who did.

For $1,000 — the cost for shipping and the night’s rental — Steven Greenburg, a private collector of military gear and accoutrements — agreed to loan the teen his tank.

“[I called] the guy and within about 15 minutes we had a deal worked out,” Bynum told KOIN.

Taking to TikTok to advertise their GoFundMe page, the friends managed to raise the funds in just three days.

Although a self-described “thrill-seeking, adventurous person,” Bynum still followed protocol, receiving permission from school administrators and local authorities to drive the tank to prom.

Another hurdle to overcome? Bynum didn’t initially have a date to the dance.

The teen soon improvised, adapted and overcame when he invited fellow Camas student, Mycah Chala, with a sign that read: “I’d be tank-full if you went to prom with me!”

After doing two laps around the art museum with “local Portland celebrity known as Unipiper who wore a Darth Vader mask as he rode his unicycle while playing flaming bagpipes,” writes Insider, it was time to dance.

But the stunt was much more than fulfilling a lark and gaining a date to prom.

According to Insider, Bynum’s father, a “history buff who loved tanks,” suffered from Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia.

When Bynum told his father in February about his idea, “He just thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard,” Bynum told the outlet.

His father passed away only a few days later.

“I knew that if I did this, whether he was right there in front of me or holding my hand from somewhere else, I knew that I would be honoring that spirit of adventure and doing good things,” Bynum added.

Pulitzer-prize winning World War II novel “All the Light We Cannot See” is getting the silver screen treatment. And as beautiful a story as it is on paper, the trailer seems poised to be just as luminous.

Anthony Doerr’s historical novel centers on the closing days of World War II in a small coastal town in France.

The trailer for the four-episode miniseries by Steven Knight and Shawn Levy brilliantly contrasts the idyllic locale with the destruction and chaos of war, without any of the characters uttering a single word. The decision to exclude any dialog in favor of simple piano music is clearly designed to leave audiences speechless.

In the book, chapters alternate between the perspective of the Marie-Laure LeBlanc, played at different ages by Aria Mia Loberti and Nell Sutton, and Werner Pfennig (Louis Hofmann) in what makes for an unorthodox love story that unfolds between two unlikely characters brought together while apart.

LeBlanc, who went blind at age six, lives with her father Daniel (Mark Ruffalo). They are being hunted by the Nazis because he has been assigned by the Natural History museum to protect a rare diamond from falling into German hands. As such, they flee to the seaside town of Saint-Malo to live with a reclusive uncle who broadcasts Resistance radio transmissions.

Pfennig, a genius German orphan, built his own radio to listen to a French professor talk about science when he was young. He is drafted into the Army underage for his brilliance and is tasked with tracking illegal broadcasts for the Nazis in the same small town.

Their paths eventually collide in the most unlikely of ways and show that, despite the most tragic of circumstances, there is always a light to be found in the dark.

“All the Light We Cannot See” is set to air on Netflix Nov. 2, 2023.

Originally published by Military Times, our sister publication.

The rediscovered remains of American Revolutionary War soldiers who died in South Carolina more than 240 years ago are set to be reinterred this weekend in a ceremony to honor their sacrifice to a budding nation.

Archeologists excavated the skeletal remains of 14 individuals in fall 2022 at the Camden Battlefield, the site of a 1780 British victory during America’s fight for independence.

“Honoring these heroes in a respectful manner and ensuring the permanent protection of their remains continues to be the mission of this effort,” Doug Bostick, CEO of the South Carolina Battleground Preservation Trust, said in a release.

The reburial of the unknown soldiers will honor some of America’s earliest fallen and advance current understanding of how the important battle unfolded.

Recovering remains of history

Some of the soldiers’ remains were first discovered during the past few years by looters searching for artifacts, Bostick said in an interview with Military Times.

A team of archeologists and anthropologists launched an ensuing excavation in September 2022 and uncovered even more remains. Some remains discovered during the eight-week search were found in shallow graves less than six inches below ground.

An initial examination of the soldiers concluded 12 of the bodies are likely Patriot Continental soldiers from either Maryland or Delaware, one is likely a North Carolina loyalist and another served with the British 71st Regiment of Foot, Fraser’s Highlanders, the nonprofit said in a release.

Forensic anthropologists are continuing to craft biological profiles for each of the troops.

At least five of the Continentals were determined to have been teenagers, while the oldest soldier is estimated to have died when he was between 40 and 50 years old. Some possess clear evidence of battle injuries from musket balls and buck shot.

The Scottish Highlander is the only soldier who appears to have been carefully laid to rest, face up with his arms crossed. Others were found face down or overlaying each other. Based on the historical record, the Highlander’s identity has already been narrowed to three potential candidates, Bostick said, but it will only be confirmed when a DNA analysis is complete.

Researchers are collecting DNA so that individuals with a suspected connection to the soldiers can provide a sample to help the identification process, though that undertaking can take some time, Bostick said.

The loyalist militiaman is thought to have Native American ancestry and is not a part of this weekend’s events. Instead, he is scheduled to be honored in a private ceremony with local tribes.

The August 16, 1780, Battle of Camden was a devastating defeat for the Americans in the early stages of the British military offensive in the south. It did, however, usher in changes in the rebellious colonists’ military leadership that eventually altered the war’s course.

The recent recovery of remains in South Carolina comes on the heels of a similar discovery during summer 2022, when scientists uncovered a mass grave in New Jersey with as many as a dozen German soldiers, called Hessians, who fought alongside the British.

Honoring early heroes

The full slate of weekend festivities — a funeral procession at Fort Jackson, historic reenactments, a military flyover and more — is expected to draw lawmakers, foreign troops and public spectators.

Historians are looking to keep the burial as authentic to the time period as possible. The soldiers’ coffins are handcrafted in an 18th-century design using hand-forged nails and wood from longleaf pine trees thought to have grown not far from where the historic battle took place.

At the conclusion of the funeral service and military honors, the soldiers will be reinterred in the seven locations where they were found on the battlefield.

“The work we are doing honors their sacrifice by shedding light on details that are not yet documented in the historical record,” archeologist James Legg said in the release. Legg added that the marked graves will now allow “for the contemplation of battlefield visitors.”

Originally published on Military Times, our sister publication.

A Virginia man recently confessed to bringing a pipe bomb to a Civil War reenactment, creating a less-than-historic retelling of how an important battle unfolded.

Gerald Leonard Drake, 63, a former Civil War reenactor, was federally charged for mailing threatening letters and planting an explosive device at the Cedar Creek Battlefield in Middletown, Virginia, during a 2017 reenactment event.

He pleaded guilty April 17 for possession of the unregistered explosive device and for stalking, according to a release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Virginia.

“This defendant sought to intimidate and harm innocent people, and further, he tried to sow discontent by falsely claiming that the attempted bombing was politically motivated,” U.S. Attorney Christopher R. Kavanaugh said in the release.

The 1864 Battle of Cedar Creek, a Union victory, ended Confederate resistance in the Shenandoah Valley and helped propel President Abraham Lincoln to reelection, according to the National Park Service.

Court documents show Drake belonged to a group that participated in a yearly reenactment of the battle until he was removed from the cosplaying unit in 2014. It remains unclear whether his acting chops or his propensity for dangerous explosives led to his exit from the cohort.

Drake later volunteered with the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation, which hosts the event. Between September 2017 and December 2018, he sent the nonprofit and various newspapers disturbing mail while pretending to be a member of the left-leaning anti-fascist group antifa.

The ousted actor threatened violence if the event was not canceled.

“Several hundred of our supporters will attend and slash tires, block traffic, harass [p]atrons and [reenactors],” he said in one letter.

On October 14, 2017, as the annual reenactment came to an end, a pipe bomb was discovered at the battlefield. The explosive contained metal nuts, a mercury switch, a battery, ball bearings, black and red wires and powder, among other items. The very real device did not detonate but forced the conclusion of the very pretend activities.

Authorities responded to the scene to investigate and seize the explosive device, which was later rendered safe by Virginia State Police.

Court documents show Drake’s aggressive letter writing campaign continued after the incident, forcing the 2018 observance of the event to be canceled.

At sentencing, Drake faces a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

The next anniversary reenactment of the battle is scheduled for October 21 and 22, according to the nonprofit’s website.

Originally published by Military Times, our sister publication.

Benjamin Ferencz, the last living prosecutor from the Nuremberg trials, died Friday, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington confirmed. He was 103.

“Today the world lost a leader in the quest for justice for victims of genocide and related crimes,” the museum tweeted on April 7.

Born in 1920 into a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, Ferencz emigrated with his family to the U.S. just 10 months later to escape rampant anti-Semitism. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1943, Ferencz enlisted in the U.S. Army and was given the job of anti-aircraft artillery gunner.

Ferencz reminisced about the Army’s odd job placement in a 2016 interview with the Washington Post, noting, “In their typical [Army] brilliance, being a Harvard Law School graduate and an expert on war crimes, they assigned me to clean the latrines in the artillery and do every other filthy thing they could give me.”

“It took a while before it began to dawn upon them that perhaps I might be useful for something else,” he continued.

The diminutive-yet-outspoken Ferencz — who barely registered over 5 feet tall — eventually rose to the rank of sergeant as a member of Gen. George Patton’s Third Army. Action during the Normandy invasion followed — disembarking his landing craft at Omaha Beach, Ferencz found himself slugging through waist-deep water that came up to the knees of those around him — as did breaking through the Maginot and Siegfried lines, crossing the Rhine and bitter fighting in the Battle of the Bulge.

It was Ferencz’s last Army assignment, however, that would forever alter the trajectory of his life.

After an honorable discharge in 1945, Gen. Telford Taylor, then the chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials, recruited Ferencz to return to Germany and work with a team of investigators tasked with uncovering the horrors of the Nazi regime.

Ferencz encountered the depths of human depravity while entrusted with gathering credible evidence of Nazi war crimes for the Army’s War Crimes Branch — the Germans maintained meticulous death registries at numerous camps.

“Camps like Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Dachau are vividly imprinted in my mind’s eye,” Ferencz said in an interview with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Even today, when I close my eyes, I witness a deadly vision I can never forget.”

One of his investigators had discovered a trove of secret reports while rummaging through an annex of the German Foreign Ministry near Tempelhof Airport. The typed pages, bound in loose-leaf folders, had been sent daily by the Gestapo to top Nazi officials.

They provided full details of mass shootings of Jews, Gypsies, and other civilian “enemies” on the Eastern Front by Einsatzgruppen — SS extermination squads that followed the German army into the Soviet Union.

As Ferencz tallied up the numbers of victims listed in the reports, he was stunned.

“When I passed the figure of one million, I stopped adding,” he recalled. “That was quite enough for me.”

In the subsequent trial, the International Military Tribunal determined that nearly two million Jews were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen. But with the highest Nazi officials, including Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess, already prosecuted, Britain, France and the Soviet Union moved on to other postwar concerns, according to the Washington Post. That left the U.S. to oversee any further prosecutions in Nuremberg.

Gen. Taylor, meanwhile, faced extreme pressure to wrap up tribunal proceedings, which included the prosecution of Nazi doctors who had conducted medical experiments on prisoners as well as the trove of evidence against the roving killers comprising the Einsatzgruppen.

At the time, Taylor’s staff was overextended and underequipped to take on another case.

“I start screaming,” Ferencz told 60 Minutes in 2017. “I said, ‘Look, I’ve got here mass murder, mass murder on an unparalleled scale.’ And [Taylor] said, ‘Can you do this in addition to your other work?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ He said, ‘Okay.’ So, you do it.”

Ferencz, then just a 27-year-old without previous trial experience, became chief prosecutor in what is considered to be one of the most significant murder trials in history.

In theory, the young lawyer could have charged thousands with crimes. In reality, he was limited to the number of seats in the courtroom — 24.

Ferencz chose defendants based on rank and education. Of the original 24 selected for prosecution, one committed suicide before the trial and another died shortly after due to poor health, leaving Ferencz to prosecute 22 men for crimes against humanity.

During the trial, Ferencz became the first to use the word “genocide” — a term coined by Polish-Jewish refugee lawyer, Raphael Lemkin — in a court of law.

In his opening statement of United States of America v. Otto Ohlendorf et. al, Ferencz told the judge, “The killing of defenseless civilians during a war may be a war crime, but the same killings are part of another crime, a graver one, if you will, genocide, or a crime against humanity. This is the distinction we make in our pleading. It is real and most significant.”

“Death was their tool and life their toy,” he continued. “If these men be immune, then law has lost its meaning, and man must live in fear.”

All 22 men prosecuted by Ferencz were convicted. Most were sentenced to death. Defendant Emil Haussmann died prior to the trial.

In a discussion with historian Andrew Nagorski, Ferencz recalled, “I had 3,000 Einsatzgruppen members who every day went out and shot as many Jews as they could and Gypsies as well. I tried 22, I convicted 22, 14 were sentenced to death, four of them were actually executed, the rest of them got out after a few years.”

By 1958, the last of the surviving defendants were free men.

“The other 3,000 — nothing ever happened to them,” Ferencz added somberly. “Every day they had committed mass murder.”

After Nuremberg, Ferencz returned to New York with his wife, Gertrude, and spent several years tracking down and recovering the unclaimed heirlooms of Europe’s murdered Jews.

Motivated by what he saw during the Vietnam War, Ferencz quit his private practice and worked to establish an International Criminal Court with the power to investigate and charge individuals and nations of genocidal acts and war crimes.

The ICC was finally established in July 2002. Notably, the U.S. signed the treaty, but it was not ratified by Congress.

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It has been over 108 years since Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship “Endurance” became trapped in pack ice while enroute from South Georgia to Antarctica, and just over a year since the discovery of the iconic ship.

Now, Deadline reports, “Oscar winners Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin and BAFTA-nominated director Natalie Hewit are boarding the National Geographic documentary ‘Endurance’” to tell the epic 2022 tale of the search and discovery of the doomed ship.

Production of the documentary is now underway, with Carolyn Bernstein, executive vice president of Documentary Films at National Geographic, saying in a press release that “We are delighted to share this inspiring story of exploration, grit and perseverance with the world. Chai and Jimmy are bold, ambitious and nuanced storytellers, perfectly cast to bring this gripping story to life, along with their exceptionally talented co-director Nat Hewit, who has a unique first-hand perspective as part of the Endurance22 expedition. We feel privileged to share this astounding discovery with audiences around the world and to dramatize the extraordinary tale of survival that started it all.”

The 2022 exploration was first organized by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, with the expedition led by polar geographer Dr. John Shears and marine archaeologist Mensun Bound as director of exploration.

In addition to Shears and Bound, a crew of scientists, archaeologists and a team of highly experienced extreme environment filmmakers, led by Dan Snow for his channel History Hit, was onboard the South African icebreaker Agulhas II. Leaving Cape Town on Feb. 5, 2022, the team set off on an expedition to the Weddell Sea off the coast of Antarctica where the Endurance sank, according to Variety.

Exactly one month later, the recovery team announced that it had “reached its goal,” according to Shears.

The wreck was eventually located by the team at a depth of 9,843 feet and approximately four miles south of the position originally recorded by Endurance’s captain, Frank Worsley, when it sank.

“We have made polar history with the discovery of Endurance, and successfully completed the world’s most challenging shipwreck search,” Shears said.

The Endurance remains largely preserved due to the frigid waters of the Weddell Sea — described by Shackleton as the “the worst portion of the worst sea in the world” — and the absence of wood-eating organisms.

Shackleton and his Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition had aimed to be the first to cross the Antarctic continent by foot. But just two days after setting sail from South Georgia in December 1914, the Endurance became surrounded and caught in a polar pack of ice.

By early January, the ship was permanently stuck, with its passengers and crew storing up on provisions and three open lifeboats for the better part of 1915.

As the months went by, Endurance slowly submerged, and by November, it finally slipped below the sea.

“She went down bow first, her stern raised in the air. She then gave one quick dive and the ice closed over her forever,” one crewman later wrote.

Snow documented the 2022 expedition and its discovery in real-time for his History Hit viewers, telling Variety, “This has been the most exciting and challenging experience of my career so far.”

Adding, “People thought the story of ‘Endurance’ was over when it sank in November 1915, but it wasn’t. This is the start of a new chapter.”

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A young Paris Davis met a handful of soldiers while attending college in the deep South in the late 1950s.

Davis is Black, the soldiers were white.

Those soldiers had some words for him.

“A couple of NCOs thought I might be a fair soldier,” Davis told Army Times. “They said I ought to go into the military. The first thing they told me ‘do what the sergeants tell you, they’re not going to lead you wrong.’ And I did and they did and that’s why we’re in this room.”

Davis shared that memory as he spent the day being interviewed by multiple media outlets Thursday, a short time before he would stand in his old uniform, festooned with ribbons, badges and medals, but with space for one more – the Medal of Honor.

On Friday, President Joe Biden looked at retired Army Col. Paris Davis and then to the crowd and said that this day may be the “most consequential” of any day during his presidency.

“Paris, you are everything this medal means,” Biden said. “And you are everything our generation aspired to be and you’re everything our nation is at our best.”

The nation may have waited nearly six decades to right the wrong of not bestowing this medal on Davis, but the octogenarian released those prospects before weapons had cooled from the harrowing battle he’d survived.

Spc. Ronald Deis didn’t even know what Green Berets were in 1963 when he attended advanced infantry training while waiting on an officer candidate position. He joined the Army to fly helicopters.

But he and five other soldiers in the same status listened to a gruff first sergeant as he clicked through slides showing the work that the newly-formed Special Forces were doing.

“And when he showed a slide of a Green Beret in a jungle eating a snake I said, ‘sign me up,’” he said.

Deis didn’t look back, ripping through the training and landing in Okinawa, Japan for his first unit assignment.

The first sergeant told him and the other newbies they were forming a team that was headed to Vietnam.

“And naturally, I said yes,” Deis said.

That’s when he met Davis.

“I like to tell people that he did not lead as an authoritarian,” Deis said. “The men on the team I think respected him from the very start.”

On June 17, 1965, in the vicinity of Bong Son, Republic of Vietnam, Davis, three other Green Berets and an inexperienced company of the 883rd South Vietnamese Regional Force in an attack on an enemy base.

That night, Davis captured two enemy personnel himself and questioned them. He learned that a “vastly larger enemy force” patrolled the area. The captain put his men into position and commenced the attack.

Enemy fire wounded Davis on the initial attack, but he fought through, and killed several enemy soldiers in hand-to-hand combat, according to the award citation.

Despite a counterattack that separated Davis from his troops, he led the four soldiers he had with him as they braved intense fire, destroyed gun emplacements and captured more enemy soldiers.

Deis’ job during the mission required him to fly in a small spotter plane and monitor the unfolding operation and coordinate communications, fire and air support.

Within a half hour in the air, enemy fire shot down Deis’ plane. He made it to headquarters and started receiving wounded from the fight and hearing spurts of radio traffic on what his captain and teammates faced out there.

“I knew my teammates were all wounded and I knew that [Capt.] Davis was trying desperately to get his people back to an evacuation site where they could get them off the battlefield.”

After the chaos of battle separated Davis from his men, he regrouped his forces, broke contact with the enemy and called for air and artillery fire as the enemy again counterattacked. A close-range shot from another enemy soldier wounded Davis for the second time.

He tackled the man, defeating him in hand-to-hand combat before he saw two American soldiers wounded and pinned under ongoing small arms fire.

Asked, all these decades later, what stood out most from those two trying days, Davis shared with Army Times a snippet of those memories.

He crawled out 150 yards to one of his soldiers who’d been shot in the temple but still lived.

“Seeing him going in and out of reality, at one point he grabs my hand and says, ‘am I gonna die?’ and I say, holding his hand, ‘not before me,’” Davis said.

The captain timed moving the wounded off the battlefield with smoke, close air and artillery fire.

Not everyone made it. But Davis knew the bodies had to come home.

Without disclosing too many details, he said he had some “choice” words with an individual on one of the evacuation aircraft about leaving without the dead.

“I refused to leave and he thought I should,” Davis said. He thinks that had some initial impact on his Medal of Honor recommendation package being “lost” more than once. Others believe race was a factor, Davis served as a pioneering Black officer, the first to lead Special Forces troops in combat.

“At that time I thought something happened and I might not get the medal,” Davis said. “And I just completely forgot about it, I really did.”

Deis remembers a sergeant, a kind of mentor of his, arriving back at the headquarters, having spent the past two days in battle with Davis. This sergeant had seen much combat, more than any other in the group.

“I was helping get leeches off of his body from him lying in a rice paddy all day and he mentioned that he thought that Capt. Davis deserved the Medal of Honor for what he observed that day,” Deis said. “I never forgot that. That was pretty profound.”

After the Fight

Davis did later receive the Silver Star Medal. But as the decades dragged on, that didn’t sit right with Deis and others, who, starting in 2016 began a campaign of their own to have the medal recommendation reconsidered by the Army.

“It matters to me because I know what it takes to be nominated for the Medal of Honor,” Deis said. “To not have that recognized is an injustice.”

Maj. Gen. Patrick Roberson, deputy commander of U.S. Army Special Operations Command, knows a few things about valor after his own decades-long career in Special Forces.

Roberson told Army Times that the timeframe in which Davis and his team served as one of the golden ages of special operations as the newly formed Green Berets tested their mettle and fought in an entirely different kind of war than their predecessors.

Some of what was established by those Vietnam-era teams continued to be common practice a generation later in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Small teams working with indigenous forces in the midst of enemy territory can sound pretty familiar to a Green Beret of any age.

A number of the Vietnam War veterans in the special operations community come to speak at training events and lectures still, he said.

“When we look back on what they were doing, they did it masterfully,” he said.

Roberson said Davis’ actions and his career provide inspiration for him and the entire Army.

Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Weimer, the top enlisted individual for U.S. Special Operations Command and the incoming Sergeant Major of the Army, said that since childhood he has been a student of the Green Berets of Vietnam.

“I was not surprised,” Weimer said. “When the story came out I was not really surprised because of the amount of heroism that took place on a regular basis back then with little fanfare.”

The senior NCO said that Davis’ service in Vietnam and his career are living the motto of the Special Forces – “De Oppresso Liber” or “to free the oppressed.”

“I am a Green Beret today because of Green Berets like Col. Davis.”

Another life

Davis stayed in the Army after Vietnam, making colonel in 1981 and assuming command of the 10th Special Forces Group at Fort Devens, Massachusetts.

Which was his favorite command, he told Army Times.

“I was so happy,” he said. “It was like being in a place and loving every bit of it.”

Davis retired as a colonel in 1985. The proud father of three children published the Metro Herald newspaper for 30 years in Alexandria, Virginia following his Army career.

If his medal has a purpose, he said he hopes it serves to honor what all of the men of his team did during their time in Vietnam. Many, he said, didn’t receive the valor awards that they deserved.

Hero. Bravery. Courage. These are words that are hard to accept for anyone. Davis is no different.

“Was I scared?” Davis said. “Yeah.”

“Am I a real brave man?” he said. “No. Every person on that team could have been me.”

Originally published by Military Times, our sister publication.