This column is the second of three D-Day columns written by war correspondent Ernie Pyle describing the Allied invasion of Normandy. 

The British landing area lay between Port-en-Bessin and Ouistreham where they would link up with 6th British Airborne Division along the Orne River, after their landing to protect the eastern flank of the Allied lodgment.  

If the US and its western Allies wanted to win this war as rapidly as possible, they couldn’t sit around and wait: not for a naval blockade, or for strategic bombing to work, or for the Soviets.

Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight D. Eisenhower knew that success on the beaches would require support beyond the beaches to prevent the arrival of German reinforcements.

It’s no secret that many WWII veterans returned home reticent to discuss their wartime experiences, but for members of the Ghost Army, silence was not a choice—it was a mandate. 

The Holocaust was Nazi Germany’s deliberate, organized, state-sponsored persecution and genocide of European Jews. During the war, the Nazi regime and their collaborators systematically murdered over six million Jewish people.

One of America’s only female war correspondents reported on the aftermath of D-Day, the Battle of Saint-Malo, and the liberation of Paris.

In this column, journalist Ernie Pyle describes the bombing of London in late December 1940 as “the most hateful, most beautiful single scene” he had ever witnessed as the city was “stabbed with fire” by the German Luftwaffe.

Spoilers ahead for Episode 3 of Masters of the Air. 

Created by a Belgian politician and broadcaster fleeing Nazi persecution, the V for Victory symbol became one of the most enduring signs of the war. 

The Eighth Air Force’s hard luck unit was filled with colorful personalities who made the unit one of the most storied of World War II.

Authorized during the one of most difficult periods during the air war, the Air Medal was an effort to rally the US Army Air Forces crews.