“I am up at the front and entering Belleau Wood with the U.S. Marines.” And with that final dispatch, war correspondent Floyd Gibbons — armed with nothing but his pen and paper — strolled into a melee of artillery and machine gun fire. This dispatch would later help to shape the ethos of the United States Marine Corps and more than a century on, define the public’s view of the “Devil Dogs.” A seasoned reporter for the Chicago Tribune, the charismatic Gibbons had reported on the Pancho Villa expedition in 1916 and the sinking of the RMS Laconia in 1917 before accepting his latest assignment as ..read more

MINNEAPOLIS — A Korean War veteran from Minnesota who still carries shrapnel in his leg from when he was wounded in combat will finally get his Purple Heart medal, 73 years late. The U.S. Army notified Earl Meyer, 96, of St. Peter, on Monday that it has reversed itself and granted him a Purple Heart, which honors service members wounded or killed in combat. The decision came after a campaign by his daughters and attorney. U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota championed his cause. The Army’s top noncommissioned officer — the sergeant major of the army — took an interest in the case after it had ..read more

Bulletin writer Annmarie Timmins will be reporting from Eagle Pass, Texas, this week, in collaboration with New Hampshire Public Radio, while shadowing the 15 National Guard soldiers sent by New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu to assist with border patrol. You can find her reporting at New Hampshire Bulletin and NHPR, both on air and online. Two weeks into their mission in Eagle Pass, Texas, New Hampshire National Guard soldiers said they are seeing more attempts to cross the border illegally than expected. That’s true even for those who’ve been deployed to the border before. “This mission differs ..read more

DETROIT — Military scientists have identified the remains of an Army Air Forces pilot from Michigan eight decades after he died during a World War II bombing mission in Southeast Asia. The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency said Monday the remains of 2nd Lt. John E. McLauchlen Jr. of Detroit were identified in January and will be buried this summer at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. McLauchlen, 25, was the pilot of a B-24J Liberator bomber during a Dec. 1, 1943, bombing mission from India targeting a railroad yard in Myanmar, then known as Burma. After reaching the target, McLauchlen’s pl ..read more

Federal authorities have extradited the second of three men charged with drugging, kidnapping and robbing two U.S. Army soldiers in Colombia in 2020. Pedro Jose Silva Ochoa, also known as “Tata,” made his initial appearance in federal court in Miami on April 18. He faces charges of conspiracy, kidnapping and assault of an internationally protected person, according to court documents. Authorities extradited Silva Ochoa, of Bogota, Colombia, from Chile to the United States last week, according to a justice department release. Two soldiers, identified in court documents only by the initials L.G ..read more

FORT NOVOSEL, Ala. — In the first half of fiscal 2023, more than a dozen U.S. Army aviators died in helicopter crashes, a startling number that prompted an aviation-wide standdown in April 2023. The Army, after a thorough review, eventually lifted the standdown. But five months later, an MH-60 Black Hawk stealth helicopter belonging to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment crashed into the Mediterranean Sea during a training mission, killing five on board. The accidents kept coming. Another two AH-64E Apache crew died during a training flight in Mississippi, while three crew members d ..read more

NASCAR fans watching Sunday’s Würth 400 NASCAR Cup Series race at Dover International Speedway are going to see a special paint design on Bubba Wallace’s No. 23 car honoring the World War II Flying Tigers and Vietnam War veterans. Wallace told Military Times the paint scheme, which will be unveiled at the April 28 race, is a call back to a 2019 design that honored the A-10 Thunderbolt. Four Vietnam War veterans will also have their names on the hood of the car — and attend the race. “There’s a lot of race fans, a lot of crew members, part of the race teams that have a military background,” Wal ..read more

MANILA, Philippines — American and Filipino forces launched their largest combat exercises in years Monday in a show of allied firepower near the disputed South China Sea that has alarmed Beijing. The annual exercises by the longtime treaty allies will run until May 10 and involve more than 16,000 of their military personnel, along with more than 250 French and Australian forces. While the Philippine military maintains that the Balikatan — Tagalog for “shoulder-to-shoulder” — trainings are not directed at a particular country, some of their main conflict scenarios are set in or near the disput ..read more

A U.S. defense official said that a failed rocket strike was launched at a base housing U.S.-led coalition forces at Rumalyn, Syria, marking the first time since Feb. 4 that Iranian-backed militias have attacked a U.S. facility in Iraq or Syria. No personnel were injured in the attack. Iraqi authorities said early Monday that they were searching for “outlaw elements” who launched an estimated five missiles across the border from Iraq into Syria late Sunday night targeting the base. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Also on Monday, a U.S. official said American forces had shot ..read more

A federal judge recently sentenced a former Army specialist to 40 months in prison on money laundering charges in a series of romance scams that bilked victims of more than $350,000. Former Spc. Sanda Frimpong, 33, pleaded guilty to three counts of money laundering in September. He was sentenced on April 11 in federal court in Raleigh, North Carolina, and must also serve three years of supervised release and pay restitution to victims, according to court documents. From December 2019 to February 2022, while stationed at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, Frimpong and three other individuals, identi ..read more