Support Our (USA) Troops Podcast service for USA Military Service Personnel to send messages home

PodStar Network launched "Support Our Troops Podcast" especially for the American Military Personnel who are on active duty in other countries, and on ships at sea abroad, so they can send podcast messages home to their family and friends in the USA.

If you are serving in the United States of America military, or you know someone who is, please contact us for more information on how to send / hear podcast messages, or use the link below.

Hitler decided to await the end in Berlin, where he could still manipulate what was left of the command apparatus. Most of his political and military associates chose to leave the capital for places in north and south Germany likely to be out of the Soviet reach. On the afternoon of April 30 Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. As his last significant official act, he named Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz to succeed him as chief of state.

Doenitz, who had been loyal to Hitler, had no course open to him other than surrender. His representative, General Alfred Jodl, signed an unconditional surrender of all German armed forces at Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims early on May 7. By then the German forces in Italy had already surrendered (on May 2), as had those in Holland, north Germany, and Denmark (May 4). The U.S. and British governments declared May 8 V-E (Victory in Europe) Day. The full unconditional surrender took effect at one minute past midnight after a second signing in Berlin with Soviet participation.

Memorial Day is a legal holiday observed annually on the last Monday in May in the United States, in honor of the nation's armed services personnel killed in wartime. The holiday was originally called Decoration Day because it is a time for decorating graves with flowers and flags. Over time, the designation Memorial Day became far more common.

In the United States, local observances to honor the war dead became widespread following the American Civil War (1861-1865), which had taken more than 600,000 lives. These local observances inspired General John Alexander Logan, the leader of a Union veterans' group called the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR), to issue a general's order in 1868 designating May 30 as a day for "strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land." (By "the late rebellion," Logan meant the Civil War, also known as the War of Rebellion.) Accordingly, on May 30, 1868, several thousand people gathered to observe Decoration Day at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The memorial ceremonies were presided over by Washington officials such as General Ulysses Grant and included a tribute by General James A. Garfield. Following the speeches, thousands of war veterans, orphans, and other participants helped decorate the more than 20,000 graves of Civil War dead in the cemetery.

In 1873 New York became the first state to declare a holiday on May 30. By the end of the 1800s, states throughout the nation had declared Memorial Day a holiday.

After World War I (1914-1918), Memorial Day observances were changed to honor the dead in all American wars, starting with the American Revolution. The U.S. Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday in 1971, and changed the date of observance from May 30 to the last Monday in May to give workers a three-day weekend.

Photo taken by me (Anthony (Tony) H. Massey) on May 28, 2006

D-Day Invasion or Invasion of Normandy, the 1944 Allied assault on Nazi-occupied northern Europe that assembled the largest force in the history of amphibious warfare and represented a major turning point in World War II (1939-1945). The Allied forces consisted of 20 U.S. divisions, 14 British divisions, 3 Canadian divisions, a French division, and a Polish division. On the first day of the invasion, June 6, about 120,000 Allied troops landed at five beach locations along the coast of the French province of Normandy after crossing the English Channel from bases in southern England. The Allies faced a force of about 50,000 Germans and suffered nearly 5,000 casualties on the first day alone but succeeded in securing the beaches from which they launched their offensive. Many historians consider the D-Day invasion the greatest military achievement of the 20th century.

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In the United States, Flag Day is celebrated on June 14. It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States, which happened that day by resolution of the Second Continental Congress in 1777.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation that officially established June 14 as Flag Day; in August 1949, National Flag Day was established by an Act of Congress.

Flag Day is not an official federal holiday, though on June 14, 1937, Pennsylvania became the first (and only) U.S. state to celebrate Flag Day as a state holiday.

src http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_Day_in_the_United_States

V-J Day is the celebration of the Surrender of Japan.

At noon Japan standard time on August 13, 1945, Emperor Hirohito's announcement of Japan's acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration was broadcast to the Japanese people over the radio. Earlier the same day, the Japanese government broadcast an announcement over Radio Tokyo that "acceptance of the Potsdam Proclamation [would be] coming soon," then advised the Allies of the surrender by sending a cable to U.S. President Harry S. Truman via the Swiss diplomatic mission in Washington, D.C.

Since Japan was the last Axis Power to surrender and V-J Day followed V-E Day by three months, V-J Day marked the end of World War II.

Veterans Day, holiday observed annually in the United States in honor of all those, living and dead, who served with the U.S. armed forces. Unlike Memorial Day, which honors those who have died in wartime, Veterans Day honors all those who have served, in times of peace as well as in war.

Veterans Day is observed on November 11. The holiday was originally called Armistice Day, and it commemorated the end of World War I on November 11, 1918. Fighting stopped at 11 am, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

In 1919, on the first anniversary of the World War I armistice (truce), President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation expressing pride in the heroism of those who had died during the war. Business stopped for two minutes starting at 11 am, and it later became customary to observe two minutes of silence from 11 am. Many states made Armistice Day a state holiday in the 1920s and 1930s, and in 1938 the Congress of the United States declared it a federal holiday.

In 1954 the name of the holiday was changed from Armistice Day to Veterans Day to honor those who had served in World War II (1939-1945) and the Korean War (1950-1953). Today, the holiday honors all veterans. In 1968 Congress changed the date of the holiday to the fourth Monday in October to give Americans a three-day weekend. But because of the significance of November 11 to many people, the traditional date was restored by law in 1978.

Veterans Day is marked by parades and speeches and by formal ceremonies at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia. Congress voted to establish the tomb in 1921, and since that time unknown soldiers from several wars in which the United States has taken part have been buried in it. On Veterans Day, the president of the United States or a representative of the president traditionally places a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknowns.

The Tomb of the Unknowns (also known as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) is guarded 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and in any weather by Tomb Guard sentinels. Sentinels, all volunteers, are considered to be the best of the elite 3rd U.S. Infantry (The Old Guard), headquartered at Fort Myer, Va.

Inscribed on the western panel of the Tomb are the words:

HERE RESTS IN
HONORED GLORY
AN AMERICAN
SOLDIER
KNOWN BUT TO GOD

Veterans Day," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2007
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2007 Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

The Korean War took place from June 25, 1950, to July 27, 1953. Korea had been divided after World War II, when Japanese control ended. The northern part was occupied by Soviet troops until 1948 and the southern part by Americans until 1949. Efforts to reunify Korea failed, and the divided regions became independent countries. The Korean War began when communist North Korea invaded South Korea in 1950 and captured the capital Seoul. The United Nations Security Council voted to aid South Korea, and the United States led the peacekeeping forces. China and USSR supported North Korea. Although 20 other nations eventually became involved in the war, the Koreans saw it primarily as a civil war between the north and south. The armistice line north of the 38th parallel along the battle line ended the fighting, but Korea has remained divided into North Korea and South Korea for decades since.

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba in the early 1960s during the Cold War. In Russia, it is termed the "Caribbean Crisis" while in Cuba it is called the "October Crisis". The crisis ranks with the Berlin Blockade as one of the major confrontations of the Cold War, and is generally regarded as the moment in which the Cold War came closest to a nuclear war.

The United States feared the Soviet expansion of communism or socialism, but for a Latin American country to ally openly with the USSR was regarded as unacceptable, given the Russo-American enmity since the end of the Second World War in 1945. Such an involvement would also directly defy the Monroe Doctrine which prevented European powers from getting involved in South American matters.

In late 1961, Kennedy engaged Operation Mongoose, a series of covert operations against Castro's government. They were unsuccessful. More overtly, in February 1962, the United States launched an economic embargo against Cuba.

The United States also considered covert action. Air Force General Curtis LeMay presented to Kennedy a pre-invasion bombing plan in September, while spy flights and minor military harassment from the United States Guantanamo Naval Base were the subject of continual Cuban diplomatic complaints to the U.S. government.

In September 1962, the Cuban government saw significant evidence that the U.S. would invade, including a joint U.S. Congressional resolution authorising the use of military force in Cuba if American interests were threatened, and the announcement of a U.S. military exercise in the Caribbean planned for the following month (Operation Ortsac).

As a consequence, Castro and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to secretly place strategic nuclear missiles in Cuba. Like Castro, Khrushchev felt that a U.S. invasion of Cuba was imminent, and that to lose Cuba would do great harm to his prestige worldwide, especially in Latin America. He said that he wanted to confront the Americans "with more than words...the logical answer was missiles."

The tensions were at their height from October 8, 1962. On October 14, United States reconnaissance saw the missile bases being built in Cuba. The crisis ended two weeks later on October 28, 1962, when the President of the United States John F. Kennedy and the United Nations Secretary-General U Thant reached an agreement with the Soviets to dismantle the missiles in Cuba in exchange for a no-invasion agreement. Khrushchev's request that the Jupiter and Thor missiles in Turkey be removed was ignored by the Kennedy administration and not pressed by the Soviet Union.

Kennedy gave a key warning in his first public speech on the crisis (October 22, 1962):

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.

This speech included another key policy:

To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation and port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.

Kennedy ordered intensified surveillance, and cited cooperation from the foreign ministers of the Organization of American States (OAS). Kennedy "directed the Armed Forces to prepare for any eventualities; and I trust that in the interest of both the Cuban people and the Soviet technicians at the sites, the hazards to all concerned of continuing the threat will be recognised." He called for emergency meetings of the OAS and United Nations Security Council to deal with the matter.

Source Wikipedia

Veterans of the Cold War include those who have served both in actual conflicts and on inactive confrontation lines since 1945. Thus Soviet servicemen who served in Afghanistan and Korea, British servicemen from a number of conflicts and in West Germany, Chinese personnel in Korea and Vietnam, French personnel from Algeria, Vietnam, Lebanon and elsewhere, and U.S. personnel in Vietnam, Korea, Germany and elsewhere, along with all the other servicemen and women who served from many other countries in those conflicts and along the confrontation lines in Germany and elsewhere can be considered Cold War veterans.

Only recently has there been the glimmer of recognition for those who served on active duty in the US military during the Cold War era (September 1945 to December 1991). Through the prompting of such individuals as Cold War scholar Frank Tims, Ph.D., have some veterans organizations begun to officially recognize Cold War veterans through official proclamations and published articles such as the one published in VFW Magazine." Coincidently, the editor of VFW Magazine is Richard Kolb ("Cobb"), author of Cold War Clashes: Confronting Communism, 1945-1991.

For at least a decade, a U.S. effort has been underway to pass legislation which would give official recognition to U.S. Cold War veterans beyond the ambiguous Certificate which was previously offered.

For more information visit the Cold War Veterans website.

"...this memorial is for those who have died, and for us to remember them." - Maya Ying Lin, designer, Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial recognizes and honors the men and women who served in one of America's most divisive wars. The memorial grew out of a need to heal the nation's wounds as America struggled to reconcile different moral and political points of view. In fact, the memorial was conceived and designed to make no political statement whatsoever about the war. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a place where everyone, regardless of opinion, can come together and remember and honor those who served. By doing so, the memorial has paved the way towards reconciliation and healing, a process that continues today. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial accomplishes these goals through the three components that comprise the memorial: the Wall of names, the Three Servicemen Statue and Flagpole, and the Vietnam Women's Memorial. We invite you to explore this web site so that you may understand the significance behind one of America's most important memorials.

For more information please visit NPS Gov - Vietnam Memorial

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Don't Let The Memory Of Them Drift Away