George Ferkes could not pass up the opportunity to fly in the U.S. Air Force. After finishing flight school in 1970, he soon found himself in the skies over Vietnam. Ferkes flew in support of Operation Lam Son 719/Dewey Canyon II and the Siege of Fire Support Base Fuller. Less than a decade later, Ferkes was co-piloting an MC-130 gunship as part of Operation Eagle Claw in the mission designed to rescue hostages in Iran. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Ferkes takes us inside the intensi...
May 10, 2023•52 min
In February 1945, Willie Clemons, Jr. joined the U.S. Navy while still 17 years old. Within just a couple of months, he was off to the Pacific Theater. Within a few more months, the Japanese surrendered and the war was over. After leaving the military, Clemons returned to the Navy in 1953 and served in the Korean theater. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Clemons discusses why he joined the Navy at a young age and what it was like to serve while the military was segregated. He tells us a...
May 03, 2023•39 min
Vern Staley wanted to join the military at age 17 following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. His father refused to sign off, telling him to finish high school and accurately predicting "there'll be plenty of war left as soon as you get out of school." After graduating, Staley was drafted into the U.S. Army and assigned to the 70th Infantry Division. He went through basic training and was then sent to Colorado to be trained as a combat medic. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Staley d...
Apr 26, 2023•49 min
Ken Guyer joined the U.S. Navy when he was 17 years old. It was 1967, and he was eager to join the fight in Vietnam. Once he turned 18, he was on his way there and was soon serving as a gunner on a five-man crew aboard a Navy picket boat patrolling Da Nang Harbor and the Da Nang River. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Guyer explains why he loved serving on the picket boats so much, interdicting Vietnamese vessels to see if they were transporting contraband, and engaging enemy forces alo...
Apr 19, 2023•28 min
Dewayne Rudd joined the U.S. Air Force with a dream of one day becoming an astronaut and flying to space. Instead he became a versatile pilot the military and NASA would turn to on some of their most important projects, including a U-2 reconnaissance pilot, a test pilot during the development of the B-2 Stealth Bomber, and the chief test pilot for the space shuttle crew escape system following the Challenger disaster. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Major Rudd walks us through his days...
Apr 12, 2023•50 min
Lockered "Bud" Gahs was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II. In late 1944, he deployed to France with the 42nd Infantry Division, which was dubbed "The Rainbow." Over the next several months, Gahs experienced intense combat all the way to Munich and the end of the war. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Gahs gives us great detail on one of his early combat experiences...as roughly 200 German troops surrounded about 20 soldiers in a French farm house. While one soldier was kille...
Apr 05, 2023•29 min
Henry Greenbaum was born in Poland in 1928. He was one of nine children. Even before the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, Greenbaum's family sensed that trouble was coming. One of his sisters had married and moved to the U.S. two years earlier. In addition to the invasion, Henry's father died and the family scrambled to make ends meet. But before long, some members of his family were dead. Others had fled, and Henry and others were eventually headed for for the Nazi labor and death camps. In thi...
Mar 29, 2023•1 hr 15 min
Matt Cable joined the Montana National Guard shortly after graduating from high school because he just wanted to move on with his life. Little did he know at the time that saving his own life would be by far the biggest challenge he would face in the years to come. But he did live. In fact, Cable is thriving. And in 2022, he won two gold medals, a silver, and four bronze in the Invictus Games. In this edition of :Veterans Chronicles," Sgt. Cable takes us into his battles with acute myeloid leuke...
Mar 22, 2023•32 min
Richard Hamilton was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1942. He was trained as a radio man on a B-17 bomber crew. After arriving in England, he took part in eight successful bombing missions, but often dealt with the harrowing anti-aircraft fore coming from the Germans. The ninth mission turned out much differently. The bomber was severely damaged and Hamilton and several other crew members were forced to parachute out of the plane over enemy territory. He was captured and spent more than ...
Mar 15, 2023•55 min
When John Cahill graduated from high school, college was not an option for him. He knew that meant he would soon be drafted. So he decided to enlist, and his U.S. Army veteran father convinced him to join the Navy. Cahill was soon disappointed that all of his preferred assignments were rejected. He would be working as a bolilerman aboard the destroyer USS Buck. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Cahill offers an unvarnished and entertaining look at his time aboard the Buck, from the painf...
Mar 08, 2023•21 min
Al Hansen joined the U.S. Navy when he was 16 years old, both to serve his country and to help his mother keep a roof over her head. Initially trained as a dive bomber, Hansen was later shifted to a B-24 crew, where he served as a waist gunner in the Pacific theater from 1944 through the end of World War II. It's an assignment change that Hansen firmly believes to be the reason he survived the war and has lived to be a great-great grandfather. In this edition of "Veterans Chonicles," Hansen desc...
Mar 01, 2023•31 min
Both of August O'Niell's parents served in the U.S. Air Force, and he followed suit thinking of a few years of service would pay for his college education. Instead, O'Niell overcame huge odds to become a member of a pararesue team, known as the PJ's. In Afghanistan, he and his team came under daily fire rescuing service members are others who were wounded or in precarious situations. However, that service also led to the greatest challenge of his life. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," O...
Feb 22, 2023•44 min
George Elliott joined the U.S. Army National Guard when he was just sixteen because he told recruiters he was seventeen. Before turning twenty, Elliott would be in Korea, serving as a driver for troops and supplies. His duties took him into the intense fighting near a critical airport, Heartbreak Ridge and other engagements. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Elliott shares what it was like being under fire while shuttling troops and equipment to the front lines and being near a strike on...
Feb 15, 2023•28 min
Ludwig Faistenhammer was born in Germany but his family moved to the U.S. before the Nazis rose to power. After the U.S. entered World War II, he joined the Army, never once deterred by having to fight the nation in which he was born. He would later be among the first in the Army to join Special Forces. He also served in Korea and Vietnam. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Faistenhammer takes us through his time as a tank commander at the Battle of the Bulge and Lyons. He also describes ...
Feb 08, 2023•36 min
Paul "Bud" Haedike was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1943. Before long he was assigned as a togglier bombardier on a B-17 bomber crew. From the final months of 1944 into 1945, Sgt. Haedike took part in 23 bombing missions over Europe, and none of those missions came with a guarantee he would return to base safely. In fact, Haedike remembers cooks at his base in England telling crews to eat up since it might be their final meal. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Sgt. Haedike rec...
Feb 01, 2023•45 min
Jim Leavelle had a front row seat to two of the most shocking moments of the 20th Century, serving in the U.S. Navy aboard the USS Whitney when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and serving as a homicide detective for the Dallas Police Department when President John F. Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963. Leavelle is most famous for being handcuffed to Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald when Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby two days after President Kennedy was murdered. In...
Jan 25, 2023•41 min
Jack Moran grew up in Wisconsin, joined the Army, and was deployed to France in the autumn of 1944. Over the next several months, Moran his his fellow soldiers in the 87th Infantry Division would see brutal combat throughout the Allied push into the heart of Germany. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Moran takes us back to the westrrn front in vivid detail. He begins with his shocking introduction to combat, the difficult fight for Hill 360 in France, racing to help out at the Battle of ...
Jan 18, 2023•52 min
Bob Edwards went through the Army ROTC program at Lafayette College and was commissioned as an officer in 1960. Soon, he was on his way to Germany at a very sensitive time in the Cold War as Berlin was divided in 1961 and became a focal point of the Cold War once again. Shortly after that deployment, Edwards was assigned to a new unit testing whether air assets could move troops and equipment as well or better than wheeled vehicles. He was also named company commander in what would become the 1s...
Jan 11, 2023•47 min
Retired U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Steve Ritchie excelled at every level in the Air Force, from the gridiron at the Air Force Academy to flight training to the skies over Vietnam. Fifty years after his second tour of duty in Vietnam, Gen. Ritchie remains the most recent ace among American fighter pilots. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Gen. Ritchie tells us why football taught him the most valuable lesson at the Air Force Academy and what propelled him to the very top of his clas...
Jan 04, 2023•31 min
From a young age, Mike Dowe knew that he wanted to attend the U.S. Military Academy and serve our nation in uniform. In 1950, he graduated from West Point and was immediately sent to Korea. After months of successfully pushing the North Koreans back to the north, American forces suddenly faced an endless surge of enemy Chinese soldiers pouring across the border. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Col. Dowe discusses his his time in combat, being taken prisoner, the horrific conditions in ...
Dec 28, 2022•35 min
James Livingston entered the ROTC program when he entered college. A decade later, he was in Vietnam as a company commander, leading his fellow Marines into battle against the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong. His actions in the vicious 1968 battle of Dai Do would result in the Medal of Honor. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Gen. Livingston takes us through the combat that day, in which his Marines were overwhelmingly outnumbered and were forced to fight hand-to-hand at times. L...
Dec 21, 2022•32 min
John Harris jumped at the chance to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corps in World War II as soon as the demand was lifted that required two years of college. Soon Harris was in Florida, proving himself in the P-51 and being just one of nine in his flight class who didn't wash out. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles, Capt. Harris takes us with him to the China-Burma-India theater. He describes the mission that devastated the Japanese air forces in the area, what it was like to see pilots next to...
Dec 14, 2022•28 min
Jim Downing joined the U.S. Navy in 1931 because the pay was very attractive at the depths of the Great Depression. After training he would be assigned to the brand new USS West Virginia, serving on 16-inch guns and as postmaster for the ship. Ten years later, on December 7, 1941, Downing was at a meeting on shore at Pearl Harbor when word came that the Pacific Fleet was under attack. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Downing explains how he raced back to his ship, helped protect it from...
Dec 07, 2022•36 min
Walter "Joe" Marm joined the Army to avoid being drafted. Before long he was assigned to a brand new division training for a new type of warfare. It was called the 1st Cavalry Air Mobile Division. And instead of moving by jeep or troop transport trucks, the men in this division would arrive by helicopter. Soon the new approach would be tested in Vietnam. In this edition, Col. Marm explains his role as a platoon commander in the division's fighting for Landing Zone X-Ray during the vicious battle...
Nov 30, 2022•41 min
You may know Rob Riggle best as a very successful actor and comedian, but he is also a 23-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps with three significant overseas deployments under his belt. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Riggle explains his unusual path of serving his nation while simultaneously pursuing a career in the arts and how his time in the Marine Corps turned out to be critical to realizing his dreams in the entertainment field. He also describes rescuing Americans and others d...
Nov 22, 2022•29 min
Frank Weisser entered the U.S. Naval Academy focused on becoming a Navy SEAL. But his superior officers informed hum he would be of greater value as an aviator. Working his way up to flying F/A 18 Hornets after flight school, Weisser would go on to serve in the Iraq and Afghanistan theaters before joining the elite Blue Angels and, more recently, serving as one of the pilots for "Top Gun: Maverick." In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Weisser (call sign "Walleye") shares his experience pro...
Nov 16, 2022•38 min
Richard Halferty was at college in Missouri when he learned that his brother had been killed while serving with the U.S. Army in Korea. As his parents' last surviving son, Halferty could be excused from military service but he refused to consider it. In this edition of Veterans Chronicles," Capt. Halferty discusses his service aboard the USS Yarnall, which pounded targets in Korea, his emotional return to Korea in 2010, and his tireless effort to bring Korean War vets the honor and recognition t...
Nov 08, 2022•34 min
Michael Peyton grew up in a family with a legacy of military service. As a young man he joined the Navy for one simple reason: he wanted to be a SEAL. In more than two decades that followed, Peyton and his fellow SEALs deployed four times to Afghanistan and twice to Iraq. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Peyton describes the very rigorous SEAL training process and how he passed BUD/s training while learning to swim at the same time. He also takes us into his first combat experience, exp...
Nov 02, 2022•47 min
Pete Cannon joined the U.S. Army shortly after graduating from high school in 1965. Soon he was training to fly a variety of helicopters and two years later he was flying missions in Vietnam. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Cannon explains why he was able to master flying helicopters when many fixed wing pilots struggled greatly. He also describes the many different assignments he flew in theater, including medical evacuations, resupplying missions, ferrying high-ranking officers, and ...
Oct 26, 2022•43 min
Both of Tom Harper's grandfathers served in the military and one of them later made a career out of repairing military helicopters in Florida. After seeing that world up close, Harper knew he wanted to join the military - although his future would be in ground forces. He finished basic training right before the 9/11 attacks and was ready and willing to be part of the fight that followed. In this edition of "Veterans Chronicles," Harper takes us inside his first moments of combat in Afghanistan a...
Oct 19, 2022•51 min
