By: Helen Mooradkanian – February, 2014 They called it “the Valley of Death”—the dreaded Hiep Duc Valley in Vietnam. The enemy’s stronghold. A major battleground. One where American units were nearly annihilated. Sergeant Dudley H. Farquhar, A Troop, 1/1st Cav, Americal Division (23d Infantry), as a member of Americal’s Reactionary Forces was sent in with […]
VALLEY PATRIOT OF THE MONTH By: Helen Mooradkanian – January, 2014 NORTHANDOVER – “We were the second largest convoy to leave for Europe—5,000 of us aboard the U.S. Army troopship George Washington—when we left New York in early 1944, bound for Liverpool, England. By the time we arrived in England in April, two months before […]
By: Helen Mooradkanian – December, 2013 In the early dawn hours of March 25, 1969, in the rice paddies of South Vietnam, near Bong Son, in the province of Binh Dinh, 22-year old Sergeant Thomas F. Siopes, Company A, 2nd Battalion, 503d Infantry, 173d Airborne Brigade (separate), was leading a patrol on a “search and […]
VALLEY PATRIOT OF THE MONTH By Helen Mooradkanian – November, 2013 At 6:54 a.m. Sunday, December 7, 1941, the quiet midnight watch was about to end for 20-year old Gerald L. Halterman, U.S. Navy, Yeoman 3rd Class. An urgent message came in on the teletype in the communications office at Pearl Harbor, 14th Naval District, […]
By: Helen Mooradkanian – October, 2013 TEWKSBURY – Nineteen-year old George A. Flibotte, U.S. Army Air Corps, now of Tewksbury, was with the Ninth Air Force stationed across the English Channel from Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944. As part of the 1925th Ordnance Ammunition Company, he was loading bombs onto convoys of trucks […]
By: Helen Mooradkanian – August, 2013 Nineteen-year old Corporal William T. Poulios, of Chelmsford, 87th Infantry Division, 347th Regiment, swept across France, Belgium, Luxembourg, central Germany, to Czechoslovakia—in 154 days of combat! From December 6, 1944, to May 8, 1945 (when Germany unconditionally surrendered), the 87th drove relentlessly from Metz, France, to Plauen on the […]
By: Helen Mooradkanian – July 2013 On D-Day, June 6, 1944, Walter Hedlund, then a sergeant, U.S. Army, 29th Infantry Division, 3rd Battalion, 115th Regiment, Company I, stormed Omaha Beach in Normandy—part of the second assault wave. “The first assault wave, our own 116th Regiment, was slaughtered by the Germans. They never got beyond the […]
VALLEY PATRIOT OF THE MONTH By: Helen Mooradkanian – June, 2013 In that assault landing on Morotai, 45 LSTs (landing ship, tank) lined the shore. Offshore coral reefs and boulders caught landing craft. Troops, vehicles, and supplies were unloaded onto the beach—with no opposition from the 500 or more Japanese caught there by surprise. But […]
By: Helen Mooradkanian – May 2013 In this Memorial Day issue, we honor a local WWII veteran who survived the brutality of the Japanese POW camps and the “Hell Ships.” Although he passed away February 3, 2013, shortly before his 93rd birthday, his story of courage and endurance lives on. *** Sergeant Victor Cote, […]
By: Helen Morradkanian – February 2013 TEWKSBURY – When 6,000 Marines were trapped at their base during the 77-day siege of Khe Sanh—a surprise attack by 40,000 heavily armored North Vietnamese and Viet Cong during the infamous 1968 Tet Offensive —it was “the longest and deadliest battle” of the Vietnam War. West Point graduate Lieutenant […]
By: Helen Mooradkanian – January 2013 LAWRENCE – It was early 1961 during the Cold War. The United States had just closed its embassy in Havana, Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis would not come to a head until one year later, in October 1962—the closest the U.S. and the Soviet Union ever came to […]
Helen Mooradkanian – March, 2012 Colonel Kris Mineau, USAF (Ret.), of North Reading, flew 100 combat missions into North Vietnam in 1966 as fighter pilot in the supersonic F-4C Phantom II. Capable of speed Mach 2.23, more than twice the speed of sound, the Phantom was key to downing the Soviet MiG-21s used by the […]