Today we pick up where we left off last week.I recently returned from touring World War II battlefields in Europe, which I visited in preparation for writing a book titled "In the Footsteps of the Band of Brothers." The book will be a memoir/travelogue, which is why I to......

I just returned from two weeks overseas, and the one question people keep asking me is, "How did you find Europe?"Actually, I let the airplane pilot find Europe (I suspect he took off from Philadelphia International Airport and turned left).The purpose of my trip was ......

Banks and most government offices are closed today and the mail won't be delivered as the country pauses to honor former members of the military. This year, Veterans Day comes as the United States has soldiers deployed in active conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also marks the 90th anni......

It's been 90 years since the armistice of World War I. The cease fire between the Allies and Germany occurred at the 11th hour of the 11th day in the 11th month and culminated with the Treaty of Versailles. This day, now known as Veterans Day, began as a time to honor those who fought in T......

Paraguayan Mennonite businessman Ernst Bergen had every reason to refuse when his country's newly elected president, Nicanor Duarte, asked him to join the cabinet in August 2003.Dictator Alfredo Stroessner had ruled the country from 1954 to 1989. His successors in the ruling Colorado P......

When you've lived a long, interesting life and watch the news avidly, you notice that though the world has changed, people have stayed the same.Just ask 89-year-old Quarryville resident the Rev. C. Russell Doherty.He said he's been enjoying recent news reports about American......

At 19, Leonhard Keck grew up fast in the closing days of World War II in Europe. It was April 1945. Germany's Third Reich was on the verge of collapse. But that didn't mean young American soldiers like Keck, who today at age 84 lives in a quiet Lancaster neighborhood, were going to have......

One end of the Elizabethtown fairgrounds will turn into a giant parking lot this Saturday for the Elizabethtown Lions Club seventh annual "Car Cruise" auto show.The other end of the grounds will be a time-warp to the 1940s and the American home front during World War II.&q......

Some people will go to the Elizabethtown Lions Club's 7th annual Car Cruise/Show this weekend because they're car junkies, plain and simple. The smell of exhaust, the roar of a healthy V-8, the gleam of just-cleaned chrome are the stuff of life to them. But let's face it, fo......

Wilbur "Bing" Miller gingerly climbed into the Liberator. It had been 65 years since he last negotiated the tiny crawl spaces of a Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber. And now, at age 85, it wasn't any easier for him. "I wanted to sit in this seat one more time," Miller said Friday from the......

This month, Pennsylvania College of Art & Design will feature an exhibit of World War II posters that reveal how artists were enlisted to keep morale high and production steady on the home front."I think this show will appeal to the students as well as the people in the community ......

A local company is making a big bang thanks to a new contract with the U.S. Army.L-3 BT Fuze Products, 101 N. Queen St., has landed a $13.4 million contract from the U.S. Army Sustainment Command at the Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois to manufacture M67 fragmentation hand grenades. Combine......

Some World War II veterans got a free ride recently, and they deserved it. About 45 veterans and 20 other guests left Solanco High School at 7:30 a.m. Tuesday on two tour buses headed to the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. The memorial honors the 16 million men and women......

Raymond C. Wallace Jr. jumped out of a plane Saturday and this time around, the skies weren't cracking with enemy fire, and the plane from which he jumped was not aflame. Wallace was a paratrooper in the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division, and was among those who parachuted into Normand......

The following is a message for filmmaker Spike Lee:Hey, Spike, lighten up, will ya?Spike recently berated fellow director Clint Eastwood, saying Eastwood's films, "Letters from Iwo Jima" and "Flags of Our Fathers," fail to depict the contributions of black so......

Those who served were themselves served Friday during a special dinner honoring the men and women who wore the uniform of America's armed forces.The Cocalico Senior Association, which performs outreach programs for seniors in northern Lancaster County, hosted about 230 people, includin......

It was spring 1942, and the world was at war.In May of that year, Japanese submarines were mounting an attack on Sydney harbor in Australia, and Mexico had just joined the war effort against the Nazis.Meanwhile, in Paradise Township, 18-year-old Lee Huff had just graduated from what......

The familiar tune of "Taps" echoed throughout Churchtown Monday evening as band members, veterans and children holding flowers joined in the town's 142-year-old Memorial Day ceremony.When it comes to tradition, Churchtown's Memorial Day celebration can't be rivaled. T......

On Nov. 8, 1862, young Ebenezer S. Killian was drafted into the military, donning the blue kersey uniform of a Union soldier to take up arms in a struggle to preserve freedom and end slavery.The Lancaster County man was made a member of a local militia organization, the 178th Pennsylvania ......

As the War Memorial Clocks in Salunga marked the beginning of the annual Memorial Day ceremony, applause erupted from the audience."It's the first time in several years that our town clocks reflect the correct time for our memorial day service," master of ceremonies Burnell H......

Hundreds of small-plane and car enthusiasts flocked to Lancaster Airport on Sunday for the annual Memorial Weekend fly-in and accompanying cruise-in.The family-friendly event featured more than 60 small aircraft on display, 350 specialty cars and motorcycles, a pancake breakfast and plane ......

If past years are any indication, Sunday promises to be an exciting, fun-filled day for local plane and car enthusiasts.That's when the county's annual breakfast fly-in and cruise-in will take place at Lancaster Airport.It's organized by the Lancaster chapter of the Expe......

Army Command Sgt. Maj. Jeffrey Vance gripped a baseball in his right hand as he stepped to the mound at Clipper Magazine Stadium Friday evening.Vance, a 21-year Army veteran, threw out the ceremonial first pitch to mark the beginning of the Barnstormers' Salute to Veterans, an event co......

During World War II, women's roles in the country changed dramatically, from Rosie the Riveter to the Donut Dollies. You've probably heard of Rosie, who represented the women who worked in factories, helping American industry gear up for the war that would consume the country for fou......

Thanks to an anonymous donor, there will be music and marching in the streets of Lancaster next month after all.Organizers of the American Spirit Parade say they now have enough money to hold the event as planned April 26.Earlier this year, the volunteer group that organizes the par......

Removal of radioactive World War II dials in eight acres of storage warehouses in Columbia, Marietta, Maytown and Mount Joy could cost nearly $2 million, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA has ordered an "emergency removal response" at eight old warehouses owned by Strub......

On June 12, 1942, Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank received a small book for her 13th birthday. Anne had spotted the book, bound with red-and-white plaid cloth, with a small lock on the front, in a shop window a few days earlier and pointed it out to her father, Otto.Although it was a......

Strasburg Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 8710 will likely disband due to a disappearing membership. Mount Joy VFW Post 5752 is flourishing with 709 members — 183 percent more than three years ago. Their difference lies in recruitment of new members to replace dying World War II and......

Frank Denlinger is 100 years old today. While most everyone else is surprised and impressed that he has made it to the century mark in life, Denlinger is not. "I always knew I would live to be 100," says Denlinger, who resides at Audubon Villa in Lititz. Unlike some other 10......

The feds are stepping in to take over removal of radioactive instrument dials from seven Strube Inc. sites in western Lancaster County.The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officially took on the job at the request of the state Department of Environmental Protection after Strube Inc. of......

What's the secret to living to 100 while looking 30 years younger? Miriam Rutt Terry, who was born Dec. 23, 1907, in East Earl Township, says the answer is simply having a good attitude. "Treat other people as you would like to be treated. That's the way I always did and I get......

The number 171952 will remain in Severin Fayerman's mind and imprinted on his left forearm forever. "I felt it was a badge of honor," he said. The number was tattooed onto him by the Nazis in 1943 when he entered the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. "Once you......

I heard he was quite a classroom showman.His field of expertise: American intellectual history. He was passionate about making it come to life for his students, whether teaching an introductory class or an advanced round table.Comfortable in at least four languages — more than......

He's one of the dozen remaining veterans of the original "Band of Brothers." Forrest Guth was a corporal in Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, the unit made famous in Stephen E. Ambrose's book, "Band of Brothers." The Allen......

After six months of renovations, two historic town clocks are back and looking better than ever.The clocks, one in Landisville and the other at Hempfield Fire Department Community Park in Salunga, were re-erected in their original locations last week.Installed in 1946, the clocks ar......

The American Music Theatre has done it again — produced a holiday show that will knock the Christmas socks right off your feet.The "2007 Christmas Show" may not be an imaginative title, but it's the only part of this holiday extravaganza that's unexciting.The......

States Reps. Bryan Cutler and Scott Boyd wanted to find a special way to honor veterans living in their House districts.Their response was to spend $700 of their own money to buy bronze medals with the inscription "Your service will never be forgotten" and give them to veterans o......

The history of warfare is linked indelibly to transportation.From aircraft and naval vessels to jeeps and motorbikes, the military always has had to find better ways to get where it needs to go. That's where the histories of trains and troops overlap."Railroads really were ......

The question "What time is it?" has been harder than usual to answer this week.When the clock in Lancaster's Penn Square read "11 a.m.," the one at Clock Towers, a short distance away, read "10 a.m."While patients visiting the Surgery Center of Lanc......

An air pocket saved her. The bodies piled in the gas chamber included her entire family, but 16-year-old Lena, pushed into a corner of the wall, somehow survived. Will that miracle lead to her survival and to hope, or will she be thrown back into the gas chamber and the job of the Nazis......

If Amtrak had a suggestion box, I'd recommend that the company seriously consider equipping its passenger cars with ejector seats.This would enable riders to give the heave-ho to irritating people they are forced to sit beside.I certainly would have used it on my recent trip out wes......

Most of you don't know this, but I am writing a new book.Like "Biggest Brother," my biography of Maj. Richard Winters of "Band Of Brothers" fame, this is set in World War II. It's about a group of soldiers called the 6th U.S. Army Special Reconnaissance Unit, or the Alamo Scouts, an elite ......

On Feb. 23, 1945, as five U.S. Marines and a Navy corpsman raised a flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, another heroic American action was taking place hundreds of miles away in the Philippine Islands.A battalion of paratroopers from the U.S. 11th Airborne Division, a contingent of Fili......

Jim Way is hearing the comments all the time these days when he goes into his nearby Turkey Hill or is otherwise out and about in the Landisville/Salunga area. The work to restore a pair of World War II clocks in his area is now in the home stretch, and "it seems like people are always tel......

One hundred, sixty-five days do not use up much of a typical life. Not much, that is, until you stand a good chance of dying every minute. Robert Stryker and Cleon Alexander took that chance in the 1940s fighting in the Philippines and survived. Now, the men have beat the odds again b......

As World War II whirred around him, Army infantryman Clayton Musser manned a machine gun atop a guard tower in a North African prison camp. When Musser's eight-hour shift ended, boredom quickly set in. So he picked up his pocketknife and part of a wooden crate and started carving. Carv......

When the soldiers of the 314th Infantry Regiment built their officers' club in 1917, they never imagined that it would be a mobile home. Now, the Descendants and Friends of the 314th Infantry Regiment are hoping to move the cabin from its current site in the midst of Valley Forge to Carl......

Richard Larry Weaver still carries the physical and emotional scars from June 8, 1967.It was 40 years ago today that the Willow Street native and McCaskey High School graduate was stationed aboard the USS Liberty, a Naval reconnaissance ship, in international waters off the coast of Egypt.......

Howard Peterman's hobby is a historian's dream.Peterman — who is celebrating his 100th birthday today in Elizabethtown, where he lives — has written columns for several small-town, northcentral Pennsylvania newspapers throughout his life.As late as age 95, Peterm......

To many, the term "fighting Amishman" is an oxymoron similar to jumbo shrimp or pretty ugly.Fighting Amishman, however, aptly describes Andrew K. Stoltzfus, who grew up in an Amish family, enlisted in the U.S. Army when he was 19 and was killed in action in Germany one year later......

Choking back tears as he addressed a full pavilion, author Andrew Farmer introduced his family and his book, "Finding the Way."Farmer said focus of the book is former Landisville resident John Long. Long was Farmer's mother's first husband. Farmer spoke at Sunday's Me......

When he saw Richard C. Meck Sr. clad in his black World War II cap, the young police officer from Bayeux, France, got tears in his eyes. "I saw your hat and just wanted to thank you for what you did," the officer said. What Dick Meck did was land on Omaha Beach the day after D-Da......

U.S. Rep. Joe Pitts today awarded service medals to seven World War II veterans in a ceremony in their honor at the Masonic Village in Elizabethtown. Six of the veterans are residents of the retirement community. One received awards posthumously. Robert E. Balser, for his service in the U.......

Peter Matthews has served as a U.S. Army basic private and demolitions specialist in the darkest days of World War II. But here's the catch: He's just 19 years old.No, he's not a time traveler — just one of more than 70 re-enactors who volunteer at the Lancaster County Hi......

They're not the Greatest Generation, but they are an incredible simulation.The Lancaster County Historical Society will host its annual World War II encampment this weekend.More than 75 re-enactors representing both Allied and Axis soldiers and civilians will set up canvas tents and......

Workers dismantled the town clock in Landisville Tuesday so it can be restored. The clock is expected to be down for about six months.Global Time Wizard in Columbia is handling the work. The firm also is slated to fix the clock at Hempfield Fire Department Community Park in Salunga.......

A small bronze plaque being erected in France to commemorate an American airman who died six decades ago tugs at the heartstrings of a Lancaster County woman.

In 1945, Mildred Steed was just 26 years old and the mother of a 7-month-old infant when a plane piloted by her 25-year-old husban...