Posted on 05/25/2012 5:12:30 AM PDT by pietraynor
George Voinovich died the other day. He was 96 years old. I did not know him, but I felt as though I did.
That's because I spent a lot of time with men like him, men who served in the now-honored OSS (Office of Strategic Services) during World War II, when I interviewed them during the four years I spent researching and writing my book The OSS in World War II Albania. The OSS was the wartime forerunner of the CIA.
The historic action I wrote about took place behind the enemy lines in the rugged mountains of Albania when the OSS helped the partisan guerrillas fight the Nazis. It was a very small war fought inside a much bigger war.
The action Voinovich was involved in was in next-door Serbia, and it was a much larger and more daring military adventure than anything that took place in Albania or anywhere else in the Balkans.
Read more: http://www.lowellsun.com/columnists/ci_20709095/heroes-ww-ii-are-tough-forget#ixzz1vsndAaA1
(Excerpt) Read more at lowellsun.com ...
Yes and I’d like to call attention to one I met two weeks ago in New Orleans. Clifford Alton Frost of Wortham Texas. He was a USMC fighter pilot with 95 combat missions starting at Guadalcanal.
Yes, if we took the time to spend some time with these guys, 30 years my senior, we would find out what many of them did for this country not even considering the number who have passed on already. Sadly there are few surviving now and within a decade those left will be close to 100yo.
I don’t mean to diminish from those serving today, especially the ones who are on their third or more tours in the Mid East. To many, these guys are like in the foreign legion, out of sight, out of mind. I truly bothers me that the press spends so much time following some tramp in Hollywood and little time extolling the resolve of these guys.
Many years ago I took my son to see a B-24 Liberator on display at a local airport. While there I ran into an older gentleman I knew from church. The gentleman said seeing the plane brought back lots of memories and he proceeded to tell how he was a 19 year old gunner on a B-24 that was shot down after a raid on Vienna. That he had parachuted from the crippled plane into Nazi held Yugoslavia and was hidden by Yugoslav partisans for some 6 weeks before being smuggled back to allied lines. I’m sure few outside of his family knew of this story of his heroism.
Not the same George Voinovich who was Cleveland mayor and Ohio governor and senator.
I read everything I can find about Operation Halyard. As a native of western PA and descendent of eastern european immigrants, I have a personal interest in the fact that the OSS recruited heavily in immigrant communities of the area for Slavic language skills. One of the key operatives, Captain George Musulin, played football for the University of Pittsburgh and then went pro for a year or two prior to the year. At 240 lbs., his parachute jump into the Balkans made him the heaviest person (documented) to do a combat jump in WWII.
Dad was radio guy on a B-24 only flew 2 missions before the war ended.
Never told us until a month ago he saw the atomic bomb loaded.
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