Sgt. 'Stubby' was a highly decorated soldier of the American 102nd Infantry Division who fought during World War I. As part of the 26th Division, his unit was one of the first committed to the front, fighting in over a dozen battles with distinction, and wounded twice, once from shrapnel, and once from a gas attack. During his time in the trenches, he became known for his superhuman senses, allowing him to warn the other soldiers of incoming gas attacks and artillery barrages. His brave forays into No Man's Land resulted in the locating and rescue of numerous injured soldiers, and on one notable occasion, the capture of a German observer attempting to map out the American trench line, which resulted in his promotion to Sergeant.

With the end of the war, he returned to the US a hero, enjoying a meeting with President Wilson himself, and was personally presented with an award for his heroics by Gen. Pershing. Upon his retirement from the army, he attend Georgetown University, becoming an integral, and still fondly remembered, member of the football team.

Tragically, he died quite young in 1926.

Source

Soldiers putting a village on fire. Women and children crying as they are dragged out of their homes and executed for supporting the local insurgents. Insurgents slipping through to fight another day but suffering difficult losses.

No, we're not revisiting a popular perception of the war in Vietnam. This is not South Vietnam in 1969. The soldiers aren't Americans.

They're German. We're in France in 1944.

The young Maquisards in the French Alps had seen their current positions as a sort of natural fortress. When you overlook the areas they fought, lived and died in, you can understand why. Large mountains towered over the idyllic landscape which in pre-war France had been a tourist destination. The Alps themselves were of strategic importance to both the French and the Germans. A large amount of Maquis behind enemy lines could serve as a large threat to German supply lines and they could also take control of the mountain passes which linked France with Italy. With a very present chance of France being invaded alongside the constant expansion of the Maquis in the French Alps, the decision was taken in February 1944 to eliminate all Maquisard strongholds.

Starting with Operation Korporal through Hoch - Savoyen, Fruhling, Bauges, Treffenfeld and Bettina, German reserve units alongside Ostbataillones, fallschirmjagers and regular troops fought a vicious and unforgiving battle against the different French Resistance groups in the French Alps and the Jura. In some cases, such as in Bettina, the Maquisards tried to fight a conventional battle in static positions and ended up with heavy losses because of it. There were little to no heavy weapons available for the Maquisards and air support from the allies were not forthcoming. While plenty slipped out of the grasp of the German encirclement which was so typical of German counterinsurgency operations, there were very few Maquisards that survived German capture. Many preferred fighting to the death.

After set backs in Operation Hochsommer I and II, the FFI in the French Alps found themselves pushed back into a corner, the Beufortain. It was here which the FFI tried to get back on its feet and they were just about to get a helpful boost in the form of the largest aidrop ever carried out in occupied France: Operation Buick on August 1st, 1944. Weapons were dropped from the sky, everything from rifles to submachine guns to explosives. Alongside the weapons, an Inter-allied Mission was dropped, codenamed Union II.

Imagine that you're a young French Maquisard, excited not only by the prospect of receiving arms, but by getting help in your fight against the Germans by Allied soldiers dropped behind enemy lines. Out of the sky drops a man dressed in complete American dress uniform. He's tan, has a smile like a movie star and would probably have been a very desirable man for the state side women. To top that off, he rocks sunglasses like few men can.

The man? USMC Major Peter J. Ortiz. Ortiz was a man with an adventurous past. He knew seven languages, amongst them French and had served in Africa in the French Foreign Legion during the 1930's, receiving plenty of awards for his service. He went on to serve once more in the FFL when France entered WWII, serving between October 1939 and June 1940 when he was captured by German forces after being injured. He spent the next 15 months as a POW before escaping to the United States through Portugal. In 1942, he enlisted in the USMC and would later on join the OSS due to the large amount of languages he spoke.

While his record between 1943 and August 1944, which included fighting alongside Tunisian tribesmen, stealing Gestapo vehicles and training French Maquisards, was one that could fill plenty of adventure books, it would all come to an end in August 1944.

Union II consisted of men from three different nations. It task was to liaison between the French Resistance and the government in London and Algiers alongside training them, advise them and fight alongside them. What made this mission so different out of an American perspective was the fact that all seven Americans involved were all from the USMC. Ortiz was the overall commander of the mission. With weapons in Maquisard hands and with advise from Union II, the FFI went forward in their fight against German occupation. Soon enough, the Tarentaise Valley was liberated on August 8th. The Germans didn't waste much time in striking back to this critical development.

A ferocious fight broke out between the FFI and German forces as the FFI tried everything to stem the tide of German forces but cooperation and coordination between different groups were disastrous and led to the final breakdown of the defences. While this was happening, Union II found itself at the village of Montgirod together with Compagnie du Lac, a Gaullist FFI detachment who was led by former French Army officers. The German forces soon found out about their whereabouts and attacked the village. The commander of Compagnie du Lac, Jean Bulle and Peter Ortiz observed from the Montgirod bell tower how the battle was unfolding and how outnumbered they were. They had to make a choice. Either fight their way out of the encirclement or withdraw to the mountains. Bulle took the latter option, but Ortiz had another idea. Ordering Union II to fight their way out of the encirclement, the idea was to reorganize the FFI to fight another day. As both Compagnie du Lac and Union II escaped from Montgirod, the village was left to the mercy of its German occupiers. It was burned to the ground as a reprisal for its support to the FFI.

Union II were once more found by German forces in the town of Centron where they accidentally stumbled onto elements of the 157th Alpine Reserve Division. A fight broke out between the two forces and Ortiz found himself pinned down once more. After what had happened at Montgirod, Ortiz knew that escaping would only mean more suffering for the local French civilians who begged for them to give themselves up. Seeing no way out of it, Ortiz agreed and surrendered to the German forces. The official policy of the Wehrmacht in these cases was to execute any and all insurgents, commandos and SOE/OSS agents. Ortiz knew this. His Marines knew this. They were walking into a certain death by surrendering, yet they did this to protect the civilians of Centron.

The popualtion of Centron was spared from reprisals and instead of being shot as terrorists, Ortiz and his Mariens were taken to see the commander of the German Forces in the Tarentaise, Major Johann Kolb. Ortiz was received with great admiration by Major Kolb and he and his men were treated with the utmost respect by all enemy soldiers present. Ortiz was sent to STALAG Marlag und Milag Nord in Westertimke where he would remain until the liberation of the camp on April 29th, 1945.

Ortiz retired with the rank of a Colonel from the USMC in 1955 and would later on die of cancer in 1988. While his rank might have been modest, he retired as the most decorated member of the OSS in its short history.

I present two Chinese generals: Zhang Zizhong and Sun Liren. The two remain well-known in China and Taiwan, but neither have received much attention in English-language accounts of the Second World War.

The warlord-turned-general Zhang Zizhong abandoned Beijing to the Japanese army in the early months of the Second Sino-Japanese War (having allegedly "lost his nerve and fled the city in disguise to avoid detection"), drawing accusations of treachery from his countrymen. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who often exacted harsh punishment on his defeated generals (e.g., executing Han Fuju a few months later for leaving his army at Shandong), nevertheless reappointed Zhang to command, and the following year he restored his reputation by taking part in the Battle of Taierzhuang, where Japan suffered its first major military defeat in modern history. However, Zhang did not become a national hero until he fell in battle on May 16, 1940 on a mountain in Northern Hubei. As historian Arthur Waldron tells it ("China's New Remembering of World War II: The Case of Zhang Zizhong," Modern Asian Studies 30.4 [1996], 945):

Surrounded by the Japanese, his forces had refused either to retreat or to surrender. In the ensuing hand-to-hand combat, General Zhang had been wounded seven times in all, by grenade, bullet, and finally by bayonet. The victorious Japanese realized Zhang's identity only when a major discovered, in the left breast pocket of his blood-soaked yellow uniform, a fine gold pen engraved with his name. The major quickly summoned senior officers; they ordered a stretcher brought and the body was carried away from the battlefield. (This was observed, through half-opened eyes, by Zhang's long-time associate, the Chinese major Ma Xiaotang, who lay nearby, bleeding from a bayonet wound, and who later gasped out the story to Chinese as he died).

The Japanese provided him a quick but dignified burial; when the Chinese retook the ground two days later, they recovered Zhang's coffin and prepared his body for a more fitting funeral. At the time of his death, Zhang held the rank of general second-class (equivalent to an American lieutenant general), but Chiang Kai-shek posthumously promoted him to a full general, thus making Zhang the highest ranking Allied officer to be killed in action during World War II.

General Sun Liren is somewhat better known. During the otherwise disastrous First Burma Campaign, Sun's New 38th Division rescued the British First Burma Division trapped at Yenangyaung in April 1943, after which he conducted an orderly withdrawal to India (where the First Burma Division was then disbanded). In the meantime, his American commander Joseph Stilwell had abandoned the "Chinese horde" (his own words) in order to make his way on foot to India--though he had not bothered to inform the Chinese. (Claire Chennault, who despised Stilwell and whose Flying Tiger had performed admirably during the campaign, commented that "if Stilwell had been a Chinese general there seems little doubt that his performance would have ended with the firing squad.") The British commander William Slim, however, gave high praise for the Chinese forces: "I had expected the Chinese soldier to be tough and brave, but I was, I confess, surprised at how he responded to the stimulus of proper tank and artillery support, and the aggressive spirit he had shown. I had never expected, either, to get a Chinese general of the calibre of Sun."

Later, during the Civil War, a rumor emerged that the United States intended to topple Chiang Kai-shek and replace him with Sun, who at point was the commander-in-chief of the Nationalist army. Chiang then "promoted" him to his personal chief of staff, but the government subsequently (allegedly) found a communist spy ring operating among Sun's subordinates. Sun resigned in August 1955 "as an admission of negligence," but Chiang then placed his best general under house arrest. He was released in 1988 after the death Chiang's son Jiang Jingguo and passed away two years later. The government exonerated him in 2011, concluding that the evidence against him had been forged. It seems Chiang wanted to remove a potential political rival.

Some other trivia about General Sun: he studied at VMI, earned the nicknames "ever-victorious general" and "Rommel of the East," was made a Commander of the British Empire, and met General Patton (another fascinating figure). And an elephant he captured in Burma, Lin Wang, lived at the Taipei Zoo until early 2003.

Capt. Hubert Dilger, known as "Leatherbreeches" by his men due to the deerskin pants he wore, commanded Battery I, 1st Ohio Light Artillery during the American Civil War. Prussian born, and trained to the impeccably standards of his native military, he went on leave from the army in 1861 to visit America and volunteer his services. He fought in the East originally, with the Army of the Potomac, earning (although only years later) the Medal of Honor for the rear guard action his battery fought against Stonewall Jackson during Chancellorsville. But it would be in the west with the Army of the Cumberland that he truly made his mark.

Brave to the point of foolhardiness, he enjoyed placing his guns at the closest position to the enemy, a freedom that his superiors granted him as he was nearly unanimously proclaimed the best artilleryman in the army. Speaking with a thick German accent, his crews were trained to act according to his hand signals, which made them all the more effective in the roar of battle. It was on June 14th, with his guns set up on Pine Mountain, Georgia as Sherman pushed to Atlanta, that three apparently high ranking officers were spotted inspecting the Confederate defenses, causing Sherman, doing his own inspection of the Union forces, to comment that they were "saucy" and requesting that they be encouraged to fall back. The order was passed on, but Dilger, just as attentive as his commander, had already seen them and prepared his guns before he had heard word of the order.

His battery was armed with 3-in Parrot guns, an accurate, rifled artillery piece, and they made their shots count. The first two missed their mark, but only barely, sending the officers for cover. The third, however, ripped through one of them, passing straight through the body to explode behind him. Despite the shells bursting around them, the remaining two officers ran to assist their fallen comrade, but nothing could be done for him, killed almost instantly. Hours later, through the decoding of Confederate signals, Sherman was pleased to learn that Dilger's 'sniping' had taken out no less than the second-in-command of the opposing force, Gen. Leonidas 'Bishop' Pope, and narrowly missed taking out the commander, Joe Johnston, as well!

Dilger would retire in America, eventually being awarded the Medal of Honor for his rear guard action somewhat belatedly, in 1893. Despite his role however, interestingly his son Anton would eventually flee to Mexico, and then Spain (where he died of the Spanish Flu in 1918), as he was under suspicion of being part of a German spy ring attempting to sabotage American military and agricultural interests during the point of American neutrality, in an effort to keep them from being sent to the UK.

Most of Dilger's story is adopted from Shelby Foote's Civil War: A Narrative, where he credits Dilger with the killing shot. Some sources credit Capt. Peter Simonson however, and from what I could find digging around, there is no clear cut consensus, at least in my own books.

Soo I'm going to stretch the definition of "nobodies" a little. This guy is fairly well-known in Israel and was awarded the Medal of Valor. But he's an individual soldier who affected the course of the war. And unfortunately he has a wikipedia pages. And he's even referenced in the wiki about the Yom Kippur War.

Anyway, the context--on Yom Kippur 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel rather suddenly, after years of low-level conflict following the Six-Day War. Because of Israeli command missteps, hubris, and fear of activating reserves for a false-alarm, things didn't start well for Israel. In the south, Egypt breached the Bar-Lev line with relative ease using overwhelming firepower and the clever strategy of using giant water cannons to destroy the Israeli sand and dirt wall. In the North, Syria advanced into the Golan Heights (captured by Israel in '67) relatively easily. Disorganized, Israeli forces struggled to stop the Syrian advance. There was serious risk of Syria capturing the heights, which would've given them the high ground to risk sweeping across the Galilee. Israeli tanks were seriously outnumbers, especially at first before reinforcements arrived.

Enter Tzvika Greengold, a young Lieutenant home on leave before a commander's course he was going to take began. I can't find reference to what he'd done in the army previously. He may've had combat experience, but I can't find in what context. If so, it would've been in the War of Attrition, which was essentially a long series of artillery barrages and aerial battles. If he was in tanks he wouldn't've seen much action.

Anyway, when war broke out he didn't have a unit to go to yet. So he hitchhiked to the northern front. He then managed to snag a tank being repaired and headed for the battle, not quite telling command who he was--over the radio he called himself "tzvika force". During the battle he essentially roamed around attacking Syrian armor, sometimes with other tanks who'd been separated from their units. He switched vehicles several times, and fought sometimes single-handed. The narrative is kind of confusing, honestly, because exactly who was doing what is unclear. But a guy pretty much went beserk on the Syrian army. After being reinforced, he got out of his tank and collapsed from exhaustion, having fought continuously for 30 hours. Exactly how many tanks he's credited as destroying is unclear--wikipedia seems to think he himself claims 20, but I've found (uncited) references to as many as 60.

Another related guy is Avigdor Kahalani, who held off a Syrian advance with his battalion of 20 tanks. He was an actually deployed officer, though, so less ridiculous.

For reference, the Yom Kippur War's northern front was the greatest tank battle by tank concentration. For reference, the Battle of Kursk in WW2 involved 8,000 tanks along a 1,200-mile-long front. The northern front had over 1,000 tanks during the first phase of the battle (before major Israeli reinforcement) over a front about 25 miles long.

I gave Dieppe a quick search in the search bar and saw that nobody has mentioned these two men when discussing Dieppe. Lieutenant-Colonel Cecil Merritt and Honorary Captain John Foote. I've been wanting to get my hands on Mark Zuehlkes book on Dieppe, as I am sure that he goes into further detail about these two actions, but I haven't gotten around to purchasing it.

Anyways, these two are both Victoria Cross recipients and their citations from the Government of Canada website are listed below.

Cecil Merritt “For matchless gallantry and inspiring leadership whilst commanding his battalion during the Dieppe raid on the 19th August, 1942.

From the point of landing, his unit’s advance had to be made across a bridge in Pourville which was swept by very heavy machine-gun, mortar and artillery fire: the first parties were mostly destroyed and the bridge thickly covered by their bodies. A daring lead was required; waving his helmet, Lieutenant-Colonel Merritt rushed forward shouting ‘Come on over! There’s nothing to worry about here.’

He thus personally led the survivors of at least four parties in turn across the bridge. Quickly organising these, he led them forward and when held by enemy pill-boxes he again headed rushes which succeeded in clearing them. In one case he himself destroyed the occupants of the post by throwing grenades into it. After several of his runners became casualties, he himself kept contact with his different positions.

Although twice wounded Lieutenant-Colonel Merritt continued to direct the unit’s operations with great vigour and determination and while organising the withdrawal he stalked a sniper with a Bren gun and silenced him. He then coolly gave orders for the departure and announced his intention to hold off and ‘get even with’ the enemy. When last seen he was collecting Bren and Tommy guns and preparing a defensive position which successfully covered the withdrawal from the beach.

Lieutenant-Colonel Merritt is now reported to be a Prisoner of War.

To this Commanding Officer’s personal daring, the success of his unit’s operations and the safe re-embarkation of a large portion of it were chiefly due."

http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/gal/vcg-gcv/bio/merritt-cci-eng.asp

John Foote

“At Dieppe, on 19th August, 1942, Honorary Captain Foot, Canadian Chaplain Services, was Regimental Chaplain with the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry.

Upon landing on the beach under heavy fire he attached himself to the Regimental Aid Post which had been set up in a slight depression on the beach, but which was only sufficient to give cover to me lying down. During the subsequent period of approximately eight hours, while the action continued, this officer not only assisted the Regimental Medical Officer in ministering to the wounded in the Regimental Aid Post, but time and again left this shelter to inject morphine, give first-aid and carry wounded personnel from the open beach to the Regimental Aid Post. On these occasions, with utter disregard for his personal safety, Honorary Captain Foote exposed himself to an inferno of fire and saved many lives by his gallant efforts. During the action, as the tide went out, the Regimental Aid Post was moved to the shelter of a stranded landing craft. Honorary Captain Foote continued tirelessly and courageously to carry wounded men from the exposed beach to the cover of the landing craft. He also removed wounded from inside the landing craft when ammunition had been set on fire by enemy shells. When landing craft appeared he carried wounded from the Regimental Aid Post to the landing craft through very heavy fire.

On several occasions this officer had the opportunity to embark but returned to the beach as his chief concern was the care and evacuation of the wounded. He refused a final opportunity to leave the shore, choosing to suffer the fate of the men he had ministered to for over three years.

Honorary Captain Foote personally saved many lives by his efforts and his example inspired all around him. Those who observed him state that the calmness of this heroic officer as he walked about, collecting the wounded on the fire-swept beach will never be forgotten."

http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/gal/vcg-gcv/bio/foote-jw-eng.asp

I visited the beaches at Dieppe and specifically the bridge that Merritt was present at. It is wide open, with little cover, surrounding by either high ground of tall buildings. The fact that the guy wasn't shot is a miracle, but he then went on destroyed several pillboxes is ridiculous in my mind. I'm not a historian or an awesome writer like Zhukov, but seeing the bridge and reading his citation was interesting to see.

I would of also liked to do sometime on a Canadian platoon that turned a mansion into a fortified positition after they were essentially surrounded during the Italian campaign, but I don't have my book with me right now ans the details are fuzzy.

Hopefully this qualifies as "obscure" military figures in history.

Joseph Kerr - Alias of the D.C. Comics' Joker, but in fact quite a riveting person. He was a man of not much information (No Wikipedia page!), but a man who held quite a weight in the Southern states during the latter part of the American Revolution, because Kerr had one ace up his sleeve that nobody ever thought to suspect.

He was born on the 3rd of November, 1760, as a cripple.

At the urging of family and friends, he had gone to see General McDowell personally in 1779 and offered his services as a spy. McDowell had then sent him to General Patrick Ferguson's camp to spy on their troop formation and size (This would later become Battle of Blackstock's Farm). Kerr had posed as a beggar, his favorite disguise, in order to blend in and spend some time with the loyalists, and nobody thought nothing of it! It was a genius disguise. Not only was he playing the part of a beggar, but he was a cripple as well - It was completely inconspicuous! Nobody saw through it, and several times throughout the campaigns of the British in the backcountry of South Carolina, this man would play a major part in helping to ambush the British and was a very successful spy, despite being completely unfit for normal military duty.

At the age of 72 on September 4th 1832 he filed for pension. At this point he was living in White County, Tennessee - His duty during the war, and the things he had done for his country were still quite fresh in his mind, and he was awarded an annual pension of $80 (an inflation calculator puts this at around 50,000 dollars, which seems a tad high, but I don't know if he got extra for being part of the shaping of the country itself!).

The British military's Special Boat Service is something of an obscure unit in itself. It's never quite attained the level of mythology in the popular imagination that its larger counterpart, the Special Air Service, has. With that in mind, it's understandable that very few people have heard of the story of its founding and its founder, one Roger Courtney.

Courtney was formerly a guide for big game hunters in British colonies Africa. He would take clients out on the waterfront in kayaks in order to sneak up on the animals. When WWII broke out, he immediately went back to England to join the army. As a recruit for the Army Commandos, he proposed that a unit be trained in the use of small boats for infiltration missions on docks and contested shores. At first, his superior officers didn't see any real value in what he had to say. So Courtney set out to prove that his skills were useful in a very direct manner: he crept aboard the HMS Glengyle at night, pinned a note with his initials to the captain's door, and stole the cover of one of the deck guns. Fortunately for Courtney, the officers who had previously rejected his offers were impressed enough to give him a command rather than a court martial.

Courtney and his no. 1 Special Boat Squadron served for the rest of WWII. Courtney died in 1947, at the rank of Major and after receiving a Military Cross, but his unit was reassigned to the command of the Royal Navy after the war's end. In 1949, the SBS was folded into the Royal Marines Commandos. Roger Courtney's unit survives into the present day, although it is now called the Special Boat Service (rather than Squadron or Section, as it was known at various points before).

For further reading on Courtney and the SBS:

1. Shortt, James G., and Angus McBride. The Special Air Service: And Royal Marines Special Boat Squadron. London: Osprey Pub., 1981. Print.

2)Thompson, Julian. The Royal Marines: From Sea Soldiers to a Special Force. London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 2000. Print.

Glyndwr Michael was the very definition of a nobody. A man of unstable temperament, often prone to bouts of serious depression, his life was an unending trial of setbacks and sadness.

His childhood was an unhappy one and after his parents died he quickly lost contact with his remaining siblings. Desperate to better himself he moved to wartime London but sadly his lot was to die friendless and alone in an abandoned warehouse he'd broken into for shelter. He had ingested lethal quantities of hydrochloric acid after eating bread crusts smeared with the substance, laid down by the owner as rat poison.

And yet Glyndwr is a hero. A man who in death is credited with saving many thousands of Allied soldiers. For Glyndwr is possibly better known as Major William Martin, the man whose corpse helped liberate the Mediterranean.

His body, dressed in uniform and chained to a briefcase detailing false plans for an apparent invasion of Greece and Sardinia was left to be found washed up on a beach in Spain. The authorities there, believing they'd discovered the Allied intentions were quick to contact their Fascist brethren. As a result, forces based in Sicily were relocated to face the nonexistent threat in the Peloponnese. Thus the landings at Salerno were made easier.

But that was not Glyndwr's only contribution and indeed credit should be given to the many other schemes to plant false information that took place as well. However two other incidents are solely to his credit.

Soon after D Day, a landing craft carrying detailed plans for the Allied breakout from the beaches and future operations in the area was found washed up on a French beach. The Germans ignored it believing it to be the same trick.

During Operation Market Garden German forces deployed contrary to the full and intricate plan of the ongoing airborne operations they found forgotten in a glider. They were simply determined not to fall for the same trick twice.

I understand that Glyndwr's role in his subterfuge was involuntary and perhaps it's a stretch to consider him a hero for it. However I believe it was Nathan Hale who lamented he had only one life to offer for his country. Glyndwr was lucky enough to have two.

Source: Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory by Ben Macentyre

I hope this is interesting/ satisfactory to the mods and subscribers here. I'd like to talk about Nestor Makhno, who is certainly a controversial figure.

I'll quote a few passages regarding Makhno, sorry if they seem disjointed.

"As an anarchist, he believed that no man had the right to command another. The story of Makhno’s struggle during the Civil War against a succession of predatory and ruthless enemies, is the story of the abandonment of the latter principle in favour of the conventional tactics of a war of movement, mingled with guerrilla trickery.” (Colin Darch, The Makhnovshchina, 1917-1921 p. 230)

I think this is a very superficial understanding of anarchist philosophy, nevertheless- Darch wrote quite an interesting thesis on Makhno.

During the civil war Makhno entered into multiple alliances with the Bolsheviks in order to procure arms and supplies to fight the Whites, Petlyurist, and Austro-German forces operating/occupying the Ukraine. He was able to establish a nominally autonomous area called the Free Territory, or Makhnovia to some. One issue with the story of Makhno is that historical accounts are difficult to 'filter' because the major works are either Soviet propaganda or Anarchists memoirs loyal to Makhno. I think Makhno was a very interesting character in history. He attempted to foment social revolution from the ground up, but was ultimately squashed by the Bolsheviks because he refused to accept bureaucratic state-socialism, opting instead for peasant and worker councils to 'govern' daily life in the areas which his army operated.

Here is an interesting excerpt from Darch's work regarding the Makhnovist after a request for military alliance with the Bolsheviks was denied in early December 1918. On the way to Ekaterinoslav

he encountered the comparatively wall-armed forces of the Directory. To the Petliurists the Makhnovites were just another peasant gang, albeit an influential one, which might be absorbed into their movement. They were ignorant of Makhno’s political views, and asked him a series of questions – what did he think of the Directory? What was his idea of Ukraine’s political future? Would an alliance not be in the interests of both groups in the common struggle for an independent Ukraine? Makhno’s answers, as always were uncompromising. Despite the refusal of local Bolsheviks to ally themselves with him, he accepted the decision of the earlier meeting and refused to have anything to do with the Directory. The Petliura’s movement, he declared, was bourgeois and nationalist, and Ukraine could only be free if the peasants and workers were free. Only armed struggle was possible between the Makhnovites, the workers’ movement, and the Petliurists, the movement of the bourgeoisie. Immediately after negotiations had broken down, the Makhnovites moved onto the offensive against the Petliurists in Ekaterinoslav. The town had fallen to Ukrainian hands in early December, and by the 22nd the nationalists felt sufficiently secure to move against the local soviet and disperse it. They arrested two Left SRs , who they shot, and six communists.…..Makhno’s reputation as a revolutionary fighter was formidable. The Nizhnedneprovsk committee offered him, with the approval of the Central Committee of the KP(b)U, the command of their workers’ detachment for the attack on the city. The combined forces totaled about 15,000 men.” P 234-235

This is really a small piece of history regarding Makhno, but depending on the literature you read he was either 1)tyrannical 2)drunkard 3) anti-semit OR 1)brilliant military commander 2) genuine social revolutionary 3) anarchists poster-boy.

I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you about a local hero where I grew up.
Meet Lance Corporal Kenneth Scott Ferguson of the 18th Armoured Car Regiment (12th Manitoba Dragoons). Attached to II Canadian Corps, the regiment was in Europe from early July 1944 (LCpl Ferguson joining as replacement at the end of the month) and fought its way from Normandy to the Rhine.

After crossing the Rhine in operation Plunder, the Dragoons swung to the northwest to clear out the area north of the river and keep the Germans from blowing up the railway between Arnhem and the border (see map).

On 2nd April 1945, Ferguson's C Squadron was ordered from Elten to relieve the left flank squadron of the 7th Recce Reg. (17th Duke of York's Royal Canadian Hussars). The 7th told them that while they had cleared the Zevenaar/Didam area, they didn't actually know where exactly the left squadron's HQ was located. So Ferguson was sent to accompany Lieutenant Farr in a scout car to find the HQ.

Passing through the village of Babberich, Farr and Ferguson were approaching the town of Zevenaar when they found the railway crossing barriers closed. When Farr tried to turn the car around, a group of people in civilian clothing (presumed to be German soldiers in disguise) opened fire with small arms and a Panzerfaust. While the Lt tried to drive away, LCpl Ferguson returned fire with his Bren gun and the mounted .30 cal machine gun.
Though Lt Farr got away unharmed, assisted by a platoon of Highland Light Infantry, LCpl Ferguson was hit by a bullet in the head and died a short time later. Tragically, he'd had less than four weeks to go before returning to England and getting married.

With no further resistance, my hometown Zevenaar was fully liberated the next day. A month after that, all German forces in the Netherlands surrendered.
59 years later, a bridge had replaced that fateful railway crossing and on 2nd April 2004, it was named the Ferguson Bridge.

Source

I'm going to go on the Axis side for this one, because I've been tremendously impressed with this man ever since I learned about him. This is going to be supplemented by Wikipedia, of necessity, but my main source is Titans of the Seas: The Development and Operations of Japanese and American Carrier Task Forces in World War II, by James H. Belote and William M. Belote.

Saburo Sakai was one of Japan's greatest fighter aces. He came up through the Japanese air force's notoriously brutal prewar pilot training program, which employed physical abuse and difficult tasks that had little to do with flying an aircraft, such as hanging by one arm from a pole for ten minutes at a time. Despite this, and admittedly by Sakai's own testimony, he seems to have retained a sense of humor and humanity, choreographing an aerial performance of "Danse Macabre" above the Allies-held airfield of Port Moresby. He was also an immensely successful ace, albeit against technologically inferior Allied planes in the war's early stages, shooting down possibly as many as 64 aircraft.

During the aerial battle for Guadalcanal in August 1942, Sakai was engaged in a dogfight with several American planes. After shooting down two American airplanes, Sakai was hit by a burst of return fire from an American tail gunner, shattering his canopy and wounding him in the left arm and the skull. The bullet that hit his head blinded him in his right eye and paralyzed the left side of his body, temporarily rendering him unable to fly, and the plane went into a dive.

The cold air coming in through the open cockpit revived Sakai, and he eventually got the plane stabilized and set off on course for the Japanese base at Rabaul, which was around 640 miles away. He flew over six hundred miles in a busted Zero, cold air coming in, constantly on the verge of passing out. The Belotes record that Sakai repeatedly struck himself on his wounds, causing sharp bursts of intense pain in order to keep himself awake. He made it all the way back to Rabaul, landed safely, and according to Wikipedia, insisted on making his report to the squadron commander before collapsing. Not only did he survive his injuries, but he lived to be 84 years old. His obituary in the New York Times reported the following:

Mr. Sakai was dining with American military officers at the Atsugi Naval Air Station west of Tokyo and suffered a heart attack as he leaned across the table to shake hands with an American; he died later in a hospital. Mr. Sakai had visited the United States a dozen times, sometimes meeting convivially with American pilots he had confronted in dogfights.