Category: Historical

Someone sent us this link from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel last night on Facebook about the female photojournalist Dickey Chapelle. I’d never heard of her before now, but I guess she was kind of a big deal through the war years from World War II until she died in Vietnam, when she was on patrol with Marines and the fellow in front of her triggered a mine.

In anticipation of the 50th anniversary next year of Chapelle’s death, the Milwaukee Press Club is inducting her into its hall of fame on Oct. 24. A book of her photos will be published next spring by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. A playwright in California is writing a play about her. The Milwaukee Press Club is working with University of Wisconsin graduate students on a project to track down military members and journalists who interacted with Chapelle.

Chapelle put herself into harm’s way over and over, covering the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa during World War II, and traveling to Algeria, Panama, Lebanon, Hungary, Cuba and Vietnam on assignment for National Geographic, Cosmopolitan, National Observer and other publications. She was captured by Russians while covering the uprising in Hungary in 1956 and held for 52 days, writing an article for Reader’s Digest about spending Christmas in a Hungarian prison.

Born in Milwaukee, Georgette Meyer began calling herself Dickey because she admired polar explorer Admiral Richard Byrd, whose nickname was Dickey.

I’m kind of embarrassed that I’d never heard of her, but I am glad I read about her in this article. I recognize some of the photos at the link, though.

Meet Major John Joseph Duffy, who on April 14th, 1972, was serving with the US Advisory Team 162 assigned to the 11th Airborne Battalion of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam when they were attacked at Fire Support Base Charlie, Kontum Province, Republic of Vietnam. The North Vietnamese had been attacking the Firebase in human waves for two continuous weeks, but on the 14th they used T-34 tanks and PT-76 armored personnel carriers to break through the beleaguered battalion’s defenses. From Major Duffy’s Distinguished Service Cross citation;

Beginning with the morning of the 14th and continuing for a period of approximately twenty-four hours, Major Duffy repeatedly made heroic contributions to the defense of the fire base. When attempts at resupplying the base were still being considered, Major Duffy exposed himself to the effects of the continuous bombardment the base experienced as he targeted anti-aircraft weapons and adjusted airstrikes on them. When the resupply attempts were abandoned Major Duffy moved about the base, continuing to expose himself to the enemy fire, treating and finding shelter for wounded Vietnamese defenders. During the early evening initial ground assault, Major Duffy ignored the massive small arms fire as he adjusted gunships and artillery on the advancing enemy formations. When the enemy finally gained control of a portion of the base and advanced to within ten meters of his position, Major Duffy had the supporting gunships make a run directly on him. Eventually the fire base had to be abandoned. Major Duffy was the last man off the base, remaining behind to adjust the covering gunships until the last possible moment. After the Battalion Commander was wounded, Major Duffy assumed command and lead (sic) the formation through the night. Finally, when the battalion was ambushed and the unwounded soldiers abandoned their wounded comrades, Major Duffy remained with the wounded and eventually was able to arrange for their extraction.

On top of the DSC, Major Duffy was awarded the Soldiers medal while in Vietnam for an action that I can’t find. But that means his heroics extended past the battlefield. Doug Sterner tells me that Major Duffy also earned eight Purple Hearts (the only American living today who can make that claim) and 4 Bronze Star Medals all for Valor and eight Air Medals for Valor.

You can read more about the battle at Armchair General.

A guest post from Martinjmpr;

The “big” wars get all the press. Books, movies, television programs and other elements of pop culture devote their attention to the major military operations of the day. The mundane, minor, brush-fire conflicts are barely mentioned at the time and quickly forgotten afterwards.

It was 20 years ago today that the US intervention in Haiti officially began. The mission was to restore the democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, to the seat of power he’d been kicked out of a couple of years before in a military coup (a secondary justification was to stem the flow of refugees fleeing from Haiti to American shores.)

The original plan was a Panama/Grenada-style air-and sea-borne military invasion, with paratroopers from the 82nd descending on the capital city of Port-au-Prince to seize the airfield, heliborne SOF units to capture key facilities deep inside the country, and a follow-on force of Marines to arrive by sea at the country’s two main ports, Port-au-Prince in the West and Cap Haitien in the North. It would have been swift, brutal and decisive.

But that’s not the way it went down. Just a day before the operation was set to begin, a team of three high ranking US representatives – former President Jimmy Carter, former senator Sam Nunn, and retired General Colin Powell, flew to Haiti to urge the dictator, General Cedras, to step down and go into exile. The carrier battle group was anchored in the Carribbean off the Haitian coast, and the paratroopers were literally in the air on their way to the drop zone, when the word came that an agreement had been reached, and the “forced entry” operation turned into a “soft invasion.”

US forces occupied most of the country, with the bulk of US forces in the areas of the two biggest cities, Port au Prince and Cap Haitien. The remainder of the country was “occupied” by SOF units, primarily the 3rd Special Forces Group (ABN) out of Fort Bragg, under the command of Col. Boyatt.

There was one US KIA, SFC Greg Cardott, A/3/3rd SFG who was shot and killed in Gonaives on 12 JAN 1995 by a disgruntled former member of the Haitian Armed Forces (FAD’H) The shooter was immediately shot and killed by Cardott’s partner.

OUD “Officially” ended in mid-1995 when the UN took over as UNMIH. UNMIH stayed there until 1996.

On a purely personal note, OUD will always loom large in my conscience because it was my first “real” operation (that is, the first time I was given ammunition without having to sign for it!) I was assigned to Military Intelligence Detachment of the 3rd battalion, 3rd SFG, and detached to the the CJSOTF(Combined/Joint Special Operations Task Force) at Guantanamo Bay. I remember vividly, sitting at a picnic table overlooking the runway on the Leeward side of Gitmo, loading ammo into my magazines as the C-130s containing the Rangers landed one by one, and then just sat on the runway with their engines running, just waiting for the orders to take off. I deployed to Port au Prince on about the 25th or 26th of September, and a few weeks later when the 3rd Battalion was “stood up” in Haiti, I spent the rest of my time at FOB 33 (3/3 SFG) in Gonaives. I was there until February of 1995.

DoD never considered Haiti to be a “war.” Except for those of us who were there, Haiti has been largely forgotten by most Americans, and probably by most Haitians as well. Sadly, Haiti remains the same corrupt, broken country as it was when we got there, and OUD is just a minor footnote in American military history, a messy little operation in a hopeless little country.