Free Republic

World War II veteran, 95-year-old Vincent Speranza, took his final jump. His first jump out of an airplane in over three decades. (Via U.S. Army Recruiting Twitter account). Even as the World War II Allies pushed the German Army back toward their homeland in 1944 and 1945, victory was never a sure thing. Nothing illustrated that fact more than Nazi Germany’s 1944 suprise counterattack through the Ardennes Forest. It threatened to cut the Allied army in two, cut them off from their supply center at the port of Antwerp and destroy four armies in the field. “The Battle of the...

During the intense fighting at Bastogne in 1944, Vincent Speranza went to visit a fellow 101st Airborne Division paratrooper in a makeshift hospital. Speranza asked the man what he could do to help, and the man asked for a drink. Speranza set out to find something for his friend and came across a bombed-out tavern that, improbably enough, still had a functioning beer tap. He filled up his helmet with some Belgian ale and returned to the field hospital. Not surprisingly, other wounded GIs asked Speranza to bring another round, and he continued tending bar for the wounded soldiers, running...