This Date in Military History:

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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

BOX, THOMAS J.
Rank and organization: Captain, Company D, 27th Indiana Infantry. Place and date: At Resaca, Ga., 14 May 1864. Entered service at: Bedford, Ind. Birth:——. Date of issue: 7 April 1865. Citation: Capture of flag of the 38th Alabama Infantry (C.S.A.).

NEWMAN, MARCELLUS J.
Rank and organization: Private, Company B, 111th Illinois Infantry. Place and date: At Resaca, Ga., 14 May 1864. Entered service at: Richview, Washington County, Ill. Birth: Richview, Washington County, Ill. Date of issue: 13 May 1899. Citation: Voluntarily returned, in the face of a severe fire from the enemy, and rescued a wounded comrade who had been left behind as the regiment fell back.

RANNEY, GEORGE E.
Rank and organization: Assistant Surgeon, 2d Michigan Cavalry. Place and date: At Resaca, Ga., 14 May 1864. Entered service at: Detroit, Mich. Born: 13 June 1839, Batavia, N.Y. Date of issue: 24 April 1901. Citation: At great personal risk, went to the aid of a wounded soldier, Pvt. Charles W. Baker, lying under heavy fire between the lines, and with the aid of an orderly carried him to a place of safety.

SLADEN, JOSEPH A.
Rank and organization: Private, Company A, 33d Massachusetts Infantry. Place and date: At Resaca, Ga., 14 May 1864. Entered service at: Lowell, Mass. Birth: England. Date of issue: 19 July 1895. Citation: While detailed as clerk at headquarters, voluntarily engaged in action at a critical moment and personal example inspired the troops to repel the enemy.

TYRRELL, GEORGE WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company H, 5th Ohio Infantry. Place and date: At Resaca, Ga., 14 May 1864. Entered service at: Hamilton County, Ohio. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 7 April 1865. Citation: Capture of flag.

JORDAN, GEORGE
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company K, 9th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Fort Tularosa, N. Mex., 14 May 1880; at Carrizo Canyon, N. Mex., 12 August 1881. Entered service at: Nashville, Tenn. Birth: Williamson County, Tenn. Date of issue: 7 May 1890. Citation: While commanding a detachment of 25 men at Fort Tularosa, N. Mex., repulsed a force of more than 100 Indians. At Carrizo Canyon, N . Mex., while commanding the right of a detachment of 19 men, on 12 August 1881, he stubbornly held his ground in an extremely exposed position and gallantly forced back a much superior number of the enemy, preventing them from surrounding the command.

*DIAMOND, JAMES H.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company D, 21st Infantry, 24th Infantry Division. Place and date: Mintal, Mindanao, Philippine Islands, 8-14 May 1945. Entered service at: Gulfport, Miss. Birth: New Orleans, La. G.O. No.: 23, 6 March 1946. Citation: As a member of the machinegun section, he displayed extreme gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty . When a Japanese sniper rose from his foxhole to throw a grenade into their midst, this valiant soldier charged and killed the enemy with a burst from his submachine gun; then, by delivering sustained fire from his personal arm and simultaneously directing the fire of 105mm. and .50 caliber weapons upon the enemy pillboxes immobilizing this and another machinegun section, he enabled them to put their guns into action.

When 2 infantry companies established a bridgehead, he voluntarily assisted in evacuating the wounded under heavy fire; and then, securing an abandoned vehicle, transported casualties to the rear through mortar and artillery fire so intense as to render the vehicle inoperative and despite the fact he was suffering from a painful wound. The following day he again volunteered, this time for the hazardous job of repairing a bridge under heavy enemy fire.

On 14 May 1945, when leading a patrol to evacuate casualties from his battalion, which was cut off, he ran through a virtual hail of Japanese fire to secure an abandoned machine gun. Though mortally wounded as he reached the gun, he succeeded in drawing sufficient fire upon himself so that the remaining members of the patrol could reach safety. Pfc. Diamond’s indomitable spirit, constant disregard of danger, and eagerness to assist his comrades, will ever remain a symbol of selflessness and heroic sacrifice to those for whom he gave his life.

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*HAUGE, LOUIS JAMES, JR.
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Born: 12 December 1924, Ada, Minn. Accredited to: Minnesota. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as leader of a machinegun squad serving with Company C, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines, 1st Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Okinawa Shima in the Ryukyu Chain on 14 May 1945. Alert and aggressive during a determined assault against a strongly fortified Japanese hill position, Cpl. Hauge boldly took the initiative when his company’s left flank was pinned down under a heavy machinegun and mortar barrage with resultant severe casualties and, quickly locating the 2 machineguns which were delivering the uninterrupted stream of enfilade fire, ordered his squad to maintain a covering barrage as he rushed across an exposed area toward the furiously blazing enemy weapons.

Although painfully wounded as he charged the first machinegun, he launched a vigorous single-handed grenade attack, destroyed the entire hostile gun position and moved relentlessly forward toward the other emplacement despite his wounds and the increasingly heavy Japanese fire. Undaunted by the savage opposition, he again hurled his deadly grenades with unerring aim and succeeded in demolishing the second enemy gun before he fell under the slashing fury of Japanese sniper fire. By his ready grasp of the critical situation and his heroic 1-man assault tactics, Cpl. Hauge had eliminated 2 strategically placed enemy weapons, thereby releasing the besieged troops from an overwhelming volume of hostile fire and enabling his company to advance. His indomitable fighting spirit and decisive valor in the face of almost certain death reflect the highest credit upon Cpl. Hauge and the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life in the service of his country.

*WAUGH, ROBERT T.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, U.S. Army, 339th Infantry, 85th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Tremensucli, Italy, 11-14 May 1944. Entered service at: Augusta, Maine. Birth: Ashton, R.I. G.O. No.: 79, 4 October 1944. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy. In the course of an attack upon an enemy-held hill on 11 May, 1st Lt. Waugh personally reconnoitered a heavily mined area before entering it with his platoon. Directing his men to deliver fire on 6 bunkers guarding this hill, 1st Lt. Waugh advanced alone against them, reached the first bunker, threw phosphorus grenades into it and as the defenders emerged, killed them with a burst from his tommygun. He repeated this process on the 5 remaining bunkers, killing or capturing the occupants. On the morning of 14 May, 1st Lt. Waugh ordered his platoon to lay a base of fire on 2 enemy pillboxes located on a knoll which commanded the only trail up the hill. He then ran to the first pillbox, threw several grenades into it, drove the defenders into the open, and killed them. The second pillbox was next taken by this intrepid officer by similar methods. The fearless actions of 1st Lt. Waugh broke the Gustav Line at that point, neutralizing 6 bunkers and 2 pillboxes and he was personally responsible for the death of 30 of the enemy and the capture of 25 others. He was later killed in action in Itri, Italy, while leading his platoon in an attack.

*FOUS, JAMES W.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Company E, 4th Battalion, 47th Infantry, 9th Infantry Division. Place and date: Kien Hoa Province, Republic of Vietnam, 14 May 1968. Entered service at: Omaha, Nebr. Born: 14 October 1946, Omaha, Nebr. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Pfc. Fous distinguished himself at the risk of his life while serving as a rifleman with Company E. Pfc. Fous was participating in a reconnaissance-in-force mission when his unit formed its perimeter defense for the night. Pfc. Fous, together with 3 other American soldiers, occupied a position in a thickly vegetated area facing a woodline. Pfc. Fous detected 3 Viet Cong maneuvering toward his position and, after alerting the other men, directed accurate fire upon the enemy soldiers, silencing 2 of them. The third Viet Cong soldier managed to escape in the thick vegetation after throwing a hand grenade into Pfc. Fous’ position. Without hesitation, Pfc. Fous shouted a warning to his comrades and leaped upon the lethal explosive, absorbing the blast with his body to save the lives of the 3 men in the area at the sacrifice of his life. Pfc. Fous’ extraordinary heroism at the cost of his life were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army

McCLEERY, FINNIS D.
Rank and organization: platoon Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company A, 1st Battalion, 6th U.S. Infantry. place and date: Quang Tin province, Republic of Vietnam, 14 May 1968. Entered service at: San Angelo, Tex. Born: 25 December 1927, Stephenville, Tex. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. P/Sgt. McCleery, U.S. Army, distinguished himself while serving as platoon leader of the 1st platoon of Company A. A combined force was assigned the mission of assaulting a reinforced company of North Vietnamese Army regulars, well entrenched on Hill 352, 17 miles west of Tam Ky. As P/Sgt. McCleery led his men up the hill and across an open area to close with the enemy, his platoon and other friendly elements were pinned down by tremendously heavy fire coming from the fortified enemy positions. Realizing the severe damage that the enemy could inflict on the combined force in the event that their attack was completely halted, P/Sgt. McCleery rose from his sheltered position and began a 1-man assault on the bunker complex. With extraordinary courage, he moved across 60 meters of open ground as bullets struck all around him and rockets and grenades literally exploded at his feet. As he came within 30 meters of the key enemy bunker, P/Sgt. McCleery began firing furiously from the hip and throwing hand grenades.

At this point in his assault, he was painfully wounded by shrapnel, but, with complete disregard for his wound, he continued his advance on the key bunker and killed all of its occupants. Having successfully and single-handedly breached the enemy perimeter, he climbed to the top of the bunker he had just captured and, in full view of the enemy, shouted encouragement to his men to follow his assault. As the friendly forces moved forward, P/Sgt. McCleery began a lateral assault on the enemy bunker line. He continued to expose himself to the intense enemy fire as he moved from bunker to bunker, destroying each in turn. He was wounded a second time by shrapnel as he destroyed and routed the enemy from the hill. P/Sgt. McCleery is personally credited with eliminating several key enemy positions and inspiring the assault that resulted in gaining control of Hill 352. His extraordinary heroism at the risk of his life, above and beyond the call of duty, was in keeping with the highest standards of the military service, and reflects great credit on him, the Americal Division, and the U.S. Army.

*SHEA, DANIEL JOHN
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Army, Headquarters Company, 3d Battalion, 21st Infantry, 196th Infantry Brigade, Americal Division. Place and date: Quang Tri Province, Republic of Vietnam, 14 May 1969. Entered service at: New Haven, Conn. Born: 29 January 1947, Norwalk, Conn. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Pfc. Shea, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 3d Battalion, distinguished himself while serving as a medical aid man with Company C, 3d Battalion, during a combat patrol mission. As the lead platoon of the company was crossing a rice paddy, a large enemy force in ambush positions opened fire with mortars, grenades and automatic weapons. Under heavy crossfire from 3 sides, the platoon withdrew to a small island in the paddy to establish a defensive perimeter. Pfc. Shea, seeing that a number of his comrades had fallen in the initial hail of fire, dashed from the defensive position to assist the wounded.

With complete disregard for his safety and braving the intense hostile fire sweeping the open rice paddy, Pfc. Shea made 4 trips to tend wounded soldiers and to carry them to the safety of the platoon position. Seeing a fifth wounded comrade directly in front of one of the enemy strong points, Pfc. Shea ran to his assistance. As he reached the wounded man, Pfc. Shea was grievously wounded. Disregarding his welfare, Pfc. Shea tended his wounded comrade and began to move him back to the safety of the defensive perimeter. As he neared the platoon position, Pfc. Shea was mortally wounded by a burst of enemy fire. By his heroic actions Pfc. Shea saved the lives of several of his fellow soldiers. Pfc. Shea’s gallantry in action at the cost of his life were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

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15 May

Murcuralia; the Festival of Mercury, Patron of the Signal Corps:

Mercury, was a Roman messenger god whose attributes were mainly borrowed from the Greek god Hermes although there are myths regarding Mercury that are distinctly Roman. He was also a god of trade, thieves, and travel. The name is closely related to merx, mercari, and merces which respectively mean merchandise, to trade, and wages. For good luck, on the Ides of May (May 15th) which was considered his birthday, the merchants of Rome would use laurel boughs to sprinkle their merchandise, their ships, and their heads with water from a fountain at Porta Capena known as aqua Mercurii. They also offered prayers to Mercury for forgiveness of past and future perjuries, for profit, and the continued ability to cheat customers!

1602 – Bartholomew Gosnold, an English lawyer, explorer, and privateer who was instrumental in founding the Virginia Company of London, and Jamestown in colonial America led the first recorded European expedition to Cape Cod. He is considered by Preservation Virginia (formerly known as the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities) to be the “prime mover of the colonization of Virginia”.

1701 – The War of the Spanish Succession, known in North America as Queen Anne’s War, begins. the second in a series of French and Indian Wars fought between France and England, later Great Britain, in North America for control of the continent. In addition to the two main combatants, the war also involved numerous Native American tribes allied with each nation, and Spain, which was allied with France. It was also known as the Third Indian War or in French as the Second Intercontinental War. The war was fought on three fronts: Spanish Florida and the English Province of Carolina were each subjected to attacks from the other, and the English engaged the French based at Mobile in what was essentially a proxy war involving primarily allied Indians on both sides. The southern war, although it did not result in significant territorial changes, had the effect of nearly wiping out the Indian population of Spanish Florida, including parts of present-day southern Georgia, and destroying Spain’s network of missions in the area; The English colonies of New England fought with French and Indian forces based in Acadia and Canada. Quebec City was repeatedly targeted (but never successfully reached) by British expeditions, and the Acadian capital Port Royal was taken in 1710.

The French and Wabanaki Confederacy sought to thwart New England expansion into Acadia, whose border New France defined as the Kennebec River in southern Maine. Toward this end, they executed raids against targets in Massachusetts (including present-day Maine), most famously raiding Deerfield in 1704; On Newfoundland, English colonists based at St. John’s disputed control of the island with the French based at Plaisance. Most of the conflict consisted of economically destructive raids against the other side’s settlements. The French successfully captured St. John’s in 1709, but the British quickly reoccupied it after the French abandoned it. Following a preliminary peace in 1712, the Treaty of Utrecht ended the war in 1713. It resulted in the French cession of claims to the territories of Hudson Bay, Acadia, and Newfoundland to Britain, while retaining Cape Breton and other islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Some of its terms were ambiguous, and concerns of various Indian tribes were not included in the treaty, setting the stage for future conflicts.

1755 – Laredo, Texas is established by the Spaniards.

1756 – The Seven Years War, a global conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, officially begins when England declares war on France. However, fighting and skirmishes between England and France had been going on in North America for years. In the early 1750s, French expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought France into armed conflict with the British colonies. In 1756–the first official year of fighting in the Seven Years War–the British suffered a series of defeats against the French and their broad network of Native American alliances. However, in 1757, British Prime Minister William Pitt (the older) recognized the potential of imperial expansion that would come out of victory against the French and borrowed heavily to fund an expanded war effort. Pitt financed Prussia’s struggle against France and her allies in Europe and reimbursed the colonies for the raising of armies in North America.

By 1760, the French had been expelled from Canada, and by 1763 all of France’s allies in Europe had either made a separate peace with Prussia or had been defeated. In addition, Spanish attempts to aid France in the Americas had failed, and France also suffered defeats against British forces in India. The Seven Years War ended with the signing of the treaties of Hubertusburg and Paris in February 1763. In the Treaty of Paris, France lost all claims to Canada and gave Louisiana to Spain, while Britain received Spanish Florida, Upper Canada, and various French holdings overseas. The treaty ensured the colonial and maritime supremacy of Britain and strengthened the 13 American colonies by removing their European rivals to the north and the south. Fifteen years later, French bitterness over the loss of most of their colonial empire contributed to their intervention in the American Revolution on the side of the Patriots.

1776 – The Virginia Convention instructs its Continental Congress delegation to propose a resolution of independence from Great Britain, paving the way for the United States Declaration of Independence.

1800 – CAPT Preble in Essex arrives in Batavia, Java, to escort U.S. merchant ships.

1802 – Isaac Ridgeway Trimble, Major General (Confederate Army), was born.

1819 – Thomas Leonidas Crittenden, Major General (Union volunteers), was born.

1820 – The US Congress designated the slave trade as a form of piracy.

1850 – The Bloody Island Massacre takes place in Lake County, California, in which a large number of Pomo Indians in Lake County are slaughtered by a regiment of the United States Cavalry, led by Nathaniel Lyon.

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1862 – General Benjamin F. (“Beast”) Butler decreed his “Woman Order,” that all captured women in New Orleans were to be his whores.

1862 – The Union ironclad Monitor, Revenue Cutter Naugatuck, and the gunboat Galena fired on Confederate troops at the Battle of Drewry’s Bluff, Virginia.

1862 – The Confederate cruiser Alabama ran aground near London.

1862 – Corporal John Mackie became the first Marine awarded the Medal of Honor.

1864 – Students from the Virginia Military Institute ( VMI ) take part in the Battle of New Market, part of the multipronged Union offensive in the spring of 1864 designed to take Virginia out of the war. Central to this campaign was Ulysses S. Grant’s epic struggle with Robert E. Lee around Richmond. Union General Franz Sigel had been sent to apply pressure on a key agricultural region, the Shenandoah Valley. He marched south out of Winchester in early May to neutralize the valley, which was always a threat to the North. The Shenandoah was not only a breadbasket that supplied Southern armies, it also led to the Potomac north of Washington. The Confederates had used the valley very effectively in 1862, when Stonewall Jackson kept three Federal armies occupied while keeping pressure off of Richmond. But the Confederates were hard pressed to offer any opposition to Sigel’s 6,500 troops.

Lee was struggling against Grant and was badly outnumbered. He instructed John Breckinridge to drive Sigel from the valley but could offer him little in the way of troops to do the job. Breckinridge mustered a force of regular troops and militia units and pulled together 5,300 men. They included 247 cadets from the nearby Virginia Military Institute, some of the boys just 15 years old. On May 15, Breckinridge attacked Sigel’s troops at New Market. Sigel fell back a half mile, reformed his lines, and began to shell the Confederate center. It was at this juncture that Breckinridge reluctantly sent the VMI cadets into battle. The young students were part of an attack that captured two Yankee guns. Ten of the cadets were killed and 48 were wounded, but Sigel suffered a humiliating defeat and began to withdraw from the valley. The courage of the VMI cadets at the Battle of New Market became legendary, and the pressure was temporarily off of the Rebels in the Shenandoah Valley. Breckinridge was able to send part of his force east to reinforce Lee.

1864 – As ships of Rear Admiral Porter’s gunboat fleet neared the mouth of the Red River, they met continued resistance from Confederate shore batteries and riflemen. U.S.S. St. Clair, a 200-ton stern-wheeler under Acting Lieutenant Thomas B. Gregory, engaged a battery near Eunice’s Bluff, Louisiana. Gregory exchanged fire with the artillerists until the transports he was con-voying were out of danger, then continued downriver.

1864 – Battle of Resaca, Georgia ends. The battle was waged in both Gordon and Whitfield counties, Georgia, May 13–15, 1864. It ended inconclusively with the Confederate Army retreating. The engagement was fought between the Military Division of the Mississippi (led by Major General William T. Sherman) on the side of the Union and the Army of Tennessee (General Joseph E. Johnston) for the Confederates.

1905 – Las Vegas, in the state of Nevada is founded when 110 acres (0.45 km2), in what later would become downtown, are auctioned off.

1916 – U.S. Marines landed in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.

1918 – The U.S. Post Office and the U.S. Army began regularly scheduled airmail service between Washington and New York through Philadelphia. Lieutenant George L. Boyle, an inexperienced young army pilot, was chosen to make the first flight from Washington. Even with a route map stitched to his breeches, Boyle lost his way and flew south rather than north. The second leg of the Washington–Philadelphia–New York flight, however, took off and arrived in New York on schedule–without the Washington mail. The distance of the route was 218 miles, and one round trip per day was made six days a week. Army Air Service pilots flew the route until August 10, 1918, when the Post Office Department took over the entire operation with its own planes and pilots.

1918 – Pfc. Henry Johnson and Pfc. Needham Roberts received the Croix de Guerre for their services in World War I. They were the first Americans to win France’s highest military medal.

1940 – USS Sailfish is re-commissioned. It was originally the USS Squalus. USS Sailfish (SS-192), a Sargo-class submarine, was originally named Squalus. Her keel was laid on 18 October 1937 by the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, as Squalus, the only ship of the United States Navy named for the squalus.

( Squalus: a genus (the type of the family Squalidae) of sharks originally comprising all the known sharks but now restricted to various typical dogfishes. )

She was launched on 14 September 1938 sponsored by Mrs. Thomas C. Hart (wife of the Admiral), and commissioned on 1 March 1939, with Lieutenant Oliver F. Naquin in command. Due to mechanical failure, the Squalus sank during a test dive on 23 May 1939. She was raised, renamed, and re-commissioned as Sailfish.

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1942 – Gasoline rationing went into effect in 17 states, limiting sales to 3 gallons a week for nonessential vehicles.

1942 – First Naval Air Transport Service flight across Pacific.

1942 – A bill establishing a women’s corps in the U.S. Army becomes law, creating the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAACs) and granting women official military status. In May 1941, Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, the first congresswoman ever from New England, introduced legislation that would enable women to serve in the Army in noncombat positions. Rogers was well suited for such a task; during her husband John J. Rogers’ term as congressman, Rogers was active as a volunteer for the Red Cross, the Women’s Overseas League, and military hospitals. Because of her work inspecting field and base hospitals, President Warren G. Harding, in 1922, appointed her as his personal representative for inspections and visits to veterans’ hospitals throughout the country. She was eventually appointed to the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, as chairwoman in the 80th and 83rd Congresses.

The bill to create a Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps would not be passed into law for a year after it was introduced (the bombing of Pearl Harbor was a great incentive). But finally, the WAACs gained official status and salary-but still not all the benefits accorded to men. Thousands of women enlisted in light of this new legislation, and in July 1942, the “auxiliary” was dropped from the name, and the Women’s Army Corps, or WACs, received full Army benefits in keeping with their male counterparts. The WACs performed a wide variety of jobs, “releasing a man for combat,” as the Army, sensitive to public misgivings about women in the military, touted. But those jobs ranged from clerk to radio operator, electrician to air-traffic controller. Women served in virtually every theater of engagement, from North Africa to Asia. It would take until 1978 before the Army would become sexually integrated, and women participating as merely an “auxiliary arm” in the military would be history. And it would not be until 1980 that 16,000 women who had joined the earlier WAACs would receive veterans’ benefits.



The women in this photo, dated January 29, 1943, were bound for North Africa with the first WAAC detachment to be sent abroad.

1943 – On Attu, fighting continues in the Clevesy Pass. Japanese forces hold the high ground and offer determined resistance to the American attacks. Forces of the US 5th Army assault the German-held Senger Line. The French Expeditionary Corps attacks Pico; the Canadian 1st Corps attacks Pontecorvo; and the Polish 2nd Corps attacks Piedimonte San Germano.

1944 – American forces have eliminated the Japanese garrison on Wadke, New Guinea. On the mainland, nearby, Japanese forces conduct weak attacks near Arare.

1944 – American aircraft the carriers of Task Group 58.2 (Admiral Montgomery) conduct a raid.

1945 – On 12 May the Coast Guard-manned frigate USS Forsyth (PF-102) was called off her weather station to search through haze and fog for a German submarine that was attempting to surrender. Three days later Forsyth joined Sutton (DE-771) in accepting the surrender of U-234 at 46º 39′ N. x 45º 39′ W. This submarine was carrying a German technical mission and supplies, including a cargo of uranium, to Tokyo. Earlier, two Japanese passengers on board had committed suicide rather than surrender.

1945 – On Okinawa, American troops secure Chocolate Drop Hill after fighting in the interconnecting tunnels. Elements of the 1st Marine Division, part of US 3rd Amphibious Corps, capture Wana Ridge. Elements of the US 6th Marine Division, part of the same corps, begin mopping up operations in the Japanese held caves of the Horseshoe and Half Moon positions. They use flame-throwers and hollow-charge weapons and seal off some Japanese troops. Japanese forces counterattack on the Horseshoe position suffering an estimated 200 killed. To the east, the US 7th and 96th Divisions, of US 24th Corps, continue to be engaged in the capture of Yonabaru.

1945 – On Mindanao, the US 31st Division, part of US 10th Corps, advances northward and occupies positions near the town of Malaybalay and encounter Japanese artillery fire. Other units advance north of Davao and resist nighttime counterattacks.

1951 – After the quick rout of two South Korean divisions by an attack of some 120,000 Communist Chinese troops, the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, supported by intense and accurate 105mm howitzer fire from Wyoming’s 300th Armored Field Artillery Battalion stemmed the enemy assault long enough for American positions to stabilize. For its determined resistance in the Battle of Soyang the 300th was awarded a Distinguished (now known as a Presidential) Unit Citation.

1952 – Air Force First Lieutenant James H. Kasler, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the war’s 15th ace after downing two MiGs for a total of five kills.

1960 – Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser (a ruby laser), at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.

1962 – US Marines “arrived” in Laos.

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1963 – Gordon Cooper is launched into space aboard Faith 7 on the longest American space mission to that date. Faith 7 was the capstone of Project Mercury, the NASA program that put the first American into space in 1961 and the first astronaut into orbit in 1962. Cooper completed 22 orbits of the earth and spent 34 hours in space. He was the first American astronaut to spend more than a day in space. On the afternoon of May 16, Faith 7 landed safely in the Pacific Ocean, four miles from the recovery ship Kearsarge. Cooper was honored by parades in Hawaii and Washington, D.C., where he addressed a joint session of Congress, and in New York City, where he was greeted by a massive ticker-tape crowd. Later Shawnee, Oklahoma–Cooper’s hometown–celebrated the return of the sixth Mercury astronaut from space.

1967 – The Defense Department announces that a US F-105 Thunderchief may have crashed in Communist China after being hit during a raid on the Kep area in North Vietnam.

1967 – U.S. forces just south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) come under heavy fire as Marine positions between Dong Ha and Con Thien are pounded by North Vietnamese artillery. At the same time, more than 100 Americans were killed or wounded during heavy fighting along the DMZ. On May 17 and 18, the Con Thien base was shelled heavily. Dong Ha, Gio Linh, Cam Lo, and Camp Carroll were also bombarded. On May 18, a force of 5,500 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops invaded the southeastern section of the DMZ to smash a communist build up in the area and to deny the use of the zone as an infiltration route into South Vietnam. On May 19, the U.S. State Department said the offensive in the DMZ was “purely a defensive measure” against a “considerable buildup of North Vietnam troops.” The North Vietnamese government on May 21 called the invasion of the zone “a brazen provocation” that “abolished the buffer character of the DMZ as provided by the Geneva agreements.”

1968 – U.S. Marines relieved army troops in Nhi Ha, South Vietnam after a fourteen-day battle.

1968 – To break an impasse at the Paris talks, the US asks that the meeting be moved into secret session.

1969 – At approximately 8:30 P.M. (Pacific Daylight Time), the nuclear powered attack submarine Guitarro (SSN-665) sank while tied up to the dock at the Mare Island site of the San Francisco Bay Naval Shipyard. The ship had been under construction since August 1965, and was due to be commissioned in January 1970. Sinking was caused by uncontrolled flooding within the forward part of the ship. It was refloated at 11:18 A.M. (PDT), Sunday, May 18, and after inspection damages were estimated at between $15.2 million and $21.85 million. As a result of an investigation a Congressional Subcommittee concluded that, although the sinking of the USS Guitarro was accidental, the immediate cause of the sinking was the culpable negligence of certain shipyard employees.

1970 – President Richard Nixon appoints Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington the first female United States Army Generals.

1972 – Led by a platoon of 30 Soldiers flown in by helicopter, South Vietnamese troops retake Fire Base Bastogne, a matter of strategic importance, as the recapture should prevent the Communists from moving their heavy artillery to within shelling distance of Hue.

1972 – The US announces the movement of a seventh aircraft carrier, the USS Ticonderoga and six other destroyer type warships to Vietnam.

1975 – Merchant ship U.S. Mayaguez was recaptured from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. Some 200 Marines stormed the island of Koh Tang to rescue the crew of the Mayaguez, but the crew had been moved. The Marines fought all day against the Khmer Rouge and escaped by helicopter in the evening. Three comrades were left behind and later died under the Khmer Rouge. The crew was freed about the same time that the Marine assault began.

1988 – More than eight years after they intervened in Afghanistan to support the procommunist government, Soviet troops begin their withdrawal. The event marked the beginning of the end to a long, bloody, and fruitless Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In December 1979, Soviet troops first entered Afghanistan in an attempt to bolster the communist, pro-Soviet government threatened by internal rebellion. In a short period of time, thousands of Russian troops and support materials poured into Afghanistan. Thus began a frustrating military conflict with Afghan Muslim rebels, who despised their own nation’s communist government and the Soviet troops supporting it. During the next eight years, the two sides battled for control in Afghanistan, with neither the Soviets nor the rebels ever able to gain a decisive victory.

For the Soviet Union, the intervention proved extraordinarily costly in a number of ways. While the Soviets never released official casualty figures for the war in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence sources estimated that as many as 15,000 Russian troops died in Afghanistan, and the economic cost to the already struggling Soviet economy ran into billions of dollars. The intervention also strained relations between the Soviet Union and the United States nearly to the breaking point. President Jimmy Carter harshly criticized the Russian action, stalled talks on arms limitations, issued economic sanctions, and even ordered a boycott of the 1980 Olympics held in Moscow.

By 1988, the Soviets decided to extricate itself from the situation. Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev saw the Afghan intervention as an increasing drain on the Soviet economy, and the Russian people were tired of a war that many Westerners referred to as “Russia’s Vietnam.” For Afghanistan, the Soviet withdrawal did not mean an end to the fighting, however. The Muslim rebels eventually succeeded in establishing control over Afghanistan in 1992.

1996 – US Navy Admiral Jeremy Boorda committed suicide shortly before answering questions from Newsweek Magazine about his right to wear certain combat pins. Admiral Jeremy “Mike” Boorda, the nation’s top Navy officer, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after some of his military awards were called into question.

1996 – The Coast Guard formally closed Governors Island. The Army left the base in the early 1960s and the Coast Guard took it over on 3 June 1966 as a way to consolidate its operations in the New York Area. At the height of Coast Guard involvement on the island over 4,600 people lived and worked there.

1997 – Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a mission to deliver urgently needed repair equipment and a fresh American astronaut to Russia’s orbiting Mir station.

1997 – The United States government acknowledges the existence of the “Secret War” in Laos and dedicates the Laos Memorial in honor of Hmong and other “Secret War” veterans.

1999 – US warplanes attacked Iraqi air defense sites after being targeted by radar.

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2002 – The White House acknowledged that in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush was told by U.S. intelligence that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network might hijack American airplanes, but that officials did not know that suicide hijackers were plotting to use planes as missiles.

2003 – The Development Fund for Iraq was established to fund reconstruction projects with Iraqi oil revenue.

2003 – US Army forces stormed into a village near the northern city of Tikrit before dawn, seizing more than 260 prisoners, including one man on the most-wanted list of former Iraqi officials.

2004 – U.S. forces fought militiamen loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Karbala, while insurgents in the northern city of Mosul attacked an Iraqi army recruiting center, killing four people and wounding 19.

2007 – Space Shuttle Atlantis rolls out to launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in preparation for the STS-117 mission to the International Space Station. The rollout is the second for the mission, as Atlantis’s External Tank was damaged during a hailstorm on February 26, leading to the shuttle being rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building for repairs.

2007 – Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute has been chosen to be President Bush’s “war czar,” overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2014 – Shinseki testifies before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. “Any allegation, any adverse incident like this makes me mad as hell,” he says. At the same hearing, acting Inspector General Richard Griffin tells lawmakers that federal prosecutors are working with his office looking into allegations veterans died while waiting for appointments.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citation for Actions Taken This Day

BURNS, JAMES M.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company B, 1st West Virginia Infantry. Place and date: At New Market, Va., 15 May 1864. Entered service at: Jefferson County, Ohio. Birth: Jefferson County, Ohio. Date of issue: 20 November 1896. Citation: Under a heavy fire of musketry, rallied a few men to the support of the colors, in danger of capture and bore them to a place of safety. One of his comrades having been severely wounded in the effort, Sgt. Burns went back a hundred yards in the face of the enemy’s fire and carried the wounded man from the field.

COLLINS, THOMAS D.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company H, 143d New York Infantry. Place and date: At Resaca, Ga., 15 May 1864. Entered service at: Liberty, Sullivan County, N.Y. Born: 14 August 1847, Neversink, N.Y. Date of issue: 14 August 1896. Citation: Captured a regimental flag of the enemy.

COSGROVE, THOMAS
Rank and organization: Private, Company F, 40th Massachusetts Infantry. Place and date: At Drurys Bluff, Va., 15 May 1864. Entered service at: East Stoughton, Mass. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 7 November 1896. Citation: Individually demanded and received the surrender of 7 armed Confederates concealed in a cellar, disarming and marching them in as prisoners of war.

KENYON, CHARLES
Rank and organization: Fireman, U.S. Navy. Born: 1840, New York. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 11, 3 April 1863. Citation: On board the U.S.S. Calena in the attack upon Drewry’s Bluff, 15 May 1862. Severely burned while extricating a priming wire which had become bent and fixed in the bow gun while his ship underwent terrific shelling from the enemy, Kenyon hastily dressed his hands with cotton waste and oil and courageously returned to his gun while enemy sharpshooters in rifle pits along the banks continued to direct their fire at the men at the guns.

KENYON, JOHN S.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company D, 3d New York Cavalry. Place and date: At Trenton, N.C., 15 May 1862. Entered service at: Schenevus, N.Y. Born: 5 May 1843, Grosvenors, Schoharie County, N.Y. Date of issue: 28 September 1897. Citation: Voluntarily left a retiring column, returned in face of the enemy’s fire, helped a wounded man upon a horse, and so enable him to escape capture or death.

MACKIE, JOHN F.
Rank and organization: Corporal, U.S. Marine Corps. Born: 1836, New York, N.Y. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 17, 10 July 1863. Citation: On board the U.S.S. Calena in the attack on Fort Darling at Drewry’s Bluff, James River, on 15 May 1862. As enemy shellfire raked the deck of his ship, Corporal Mackie fearlessly maintained his musket fire against the rifle pits along the shore and, when ordered to fill vacancies at guns caused by men wounded and killed in action, manned the weapon with skill and courage.

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OLIVER, PAUL A.
Rank and organization: Captain, Company D. 12th New York Infantry. Place and date: At Resaca, Ga. 15 May 1864 Entered service at: New York, N.Y. Born: 18 July 1831, at sea in the English Channel aboard American flagship. Date of issue. 12 October 1892. Citation: While acting as aide assisted in preventing a disaster caused by Union troops firing into each other.

POND, GEORGE F.
Rank and organization: Private, Company C, 3d Wisconsin Cavalry. Place and date: At Drywood, Kans., 15 May 1864. Entered service at. Fairwater, Fond du Lac County, Wis. Birth: Lake County, Ill. Date of Issue: 16 May 1899. Citation: With 2 companions, attacked a greatly superior force of guerrillas, routed them, and rescued several prisoners.

REGAN, JEREMIAH
Rank and organization: Quartermaster, U.S. Navy. Born: 1832 Boston, Mass. Accredited to: Massachusetts. G.O. No.: 11, 3 April 1863. Citation: As captain of No. 2 gun on board the U.S.S. Galena in the attack upon Drewy’s Bluff, 15 May 1862. With his ship severely damaged by the enemy’s shellfire and several men killed and wounded Regan, continued to man his gun throughout the engagement despite the concentration of fire directed against men at their guns by enemy sharpshooters in rifle pits along the banks.

SWEATT, JOSEPH S. G.
Rank and organization: Private, Company C, 6th Massachusetts Infantry. Place and date: At Carrsville, Va., 15 May 1863. Entered service at: Lowell, Mass. Born: 23 October 1843, Boscawen, N.H. Date of issue: 22 March 1892. Citation: When ordered to retreat this soldier turned and rushed back to the front, in the face of heavy fire of the enemy, in an endeavor to rescue his wounded comrades, remaining by them until overpowered and taken prisoner.

TREMAIN, HENRY E.
Rank and organization: Major and Aide_de_Camp, U.S. Volunteers. Place and date: At Resaca, Ga., 15 May 1864. Entered service at: New York, N.Y. Birth: New York, N.Y. Date of issue: 30 June 1892. Citation: Voluntarily rode between the lines while 2 brigades of Union troops were firing into each other and stopped the firing.

CANFIELD, HETH
Rank and organization: Private, Company C, 2d U.S. Cavalry. Place and date. At Little Blue, Nebr. 15 May 1870. Entered service at. ——. Birth: New Meddford, Conn. Place of issue. 22 June 1870. Citation. Gallantry in action.

CRAIG, SAMUEL H.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company D, 4th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Santa Cruz Mountains, Mex., 15 May 1886. Entered service at: ——. Birth: New Market, N.H. Date of issue: 27 April 1887. Citation: Conspicuous gallantry during an attack on a hostile Apache Indian Camp; seriously wounded.

HIMMELSBACK, MICHAEL
Rank and organization: Private, Company C, 2d U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Little Blue, Nebr., 15 May 1870. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Allegheny County, Pa. Date of issue: 22 June 1870. Citation: Gallantry in action.

HUBBARD, THOMAS
Rank and organization: Private, Company C, 2d U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Little Blue, Nebr., 15 May 1870. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Philadelphia, Pa. Date of issue: 22 June 1870. Citation: Gallantry in action.

LEONARD, PATRICK
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company C, 2d U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Little Blue, Nebr., 15 May 1870. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Ireland. Date of issue: 22 June 1870. Second award. Citation: Gallantry in action.

THOMPSON, GEORGE W.
Rank and organization: Private, Company C, 2d U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Little Blue, Nebr., 15 May 1870. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Victory, N.Y. Date of issue: 22 June 1870. Citation: Gallantry in action.

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JOHNSON, HENRY AKA WILLIAM HENRY JOHNSON
Rank and Organization: Private, U.S. Army, Company: Company C, 369th Infantry Regiment Division: 93d Division, American Expeditionary Forces, Born: 1897, Alexandria, Virginia, Departed: Yes (07/05/1929), Entered Service At: Albany, New York, G.O. Number: , Date of Issue: 06/02/2015, Accredited To: ,Place and Date: Northwest of Saint Menehoul, France, 15 May 1918. Citation: Private Henry Johnson distinguished himself by extraordinary acts of heroism at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a member of Company C, 369th Infantry Regiment, 93d Infantry Division, American Expeditionary Forces on May 15, 1918, during combat operations against the enemy on the front lines of the Western Front in France. In the early morning hours, Private Johnson and another soldier were on sentry duty at a forward outpost when they received a surprise attack from a German raiding party consisting of at least 12 soldiers. While under intense enemy fire and despite receiving significant wounds, Private Johnson mounted a brave retaliation, resulting in several enemy casualties.

When his fellow soldier was badly wounded and being carried away by the enemy, Private Johnson exposed himself to grave danger by advancing from his position to engage the two enemy captors in hand-to-hand combat. Wielding only a knife and gravely wounded himself, Private Johnson continued fighting, defeating the two captors and rescuing the wounded soldier. Displaying great courage, he continued to hold back the larger enemy force until the defeated enemy retreated leaving behind a large cache of weapons and equipment and providing valuable intelligence. Without Private Johnson’s quick actions and continued fighting, even in the face of almost certain death, the enemy might have succeeded in capturing prisoners and the outpost, without abandoning valuable intelligence. Private Johnson’s extraordinary heroism and selflessness above and beyond the call of duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, Company C, 369th Infantry Regiment, 93d Infantry Division and the United States Army.

*COURTNEY, HENRY ALEXIUS, JR.
Rank and organization: Major, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve. Born: 6 January 1916, Duluth, Minn. Appointed from: Minnesota. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as Executive Officer of the 2d Battalion, 22d Marines, 6th Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Okinawa Shima in the Ryukyu Islands, 14 and 15 May 1945. Ordered to hold for the night in static defense behind Sugar Loaf Hill after leading the forward elements of his command in a prolonged fire fight, Maj. Courtney weighed the effect of a hostile night counterattack against the tactical value of an immediate marine assault, resolved to initiate the assault, and promptly obtained permission to advance and seize the forward slope of the hill. Quickly explaining the situation to his small remaining force, he declared his personal intention of moving forward and then proceeded on his way, boldly blasting nearby cave positions and neutralizing enemy guns as he went. Inspired by his courage, every man followed without hesitation, and together the intrepid marines braved a terrific concentration of Japanese gunfire to skirt the hill on the right and reach the reverse slope.

Temporarily halting, Maj. Courtney sent guides to the rear for more ammunition and possible replacements. Subsequently reinforced by 26 men and an LVT load of grenades, he determined to storm the crest of the hill and crush any planned counterattack before it could gain sufficient momentum to effect a breakthrough. Leading his men by example rather than by command, he pushed ahead with unrelenting aggressiveness, hurling grenades into cave openings on the slope with devastating effect. Upon reaching the crest and observing large numbers of Japanese forming for action less than 100 yards away, he instantly attacked, waged a furious battle and succeeded in killing many of the enemy and in forcing the remainder to take cover in the caves. Determined to hold, he ordered his men to dig in and, coolly disregarding the continuous hail of flying enemy shrapnel to rally his weary troops, tirelessly aided casualties and assigned his men to more advantageous positions. Although instantly killed by a hostile mortar burst while moving among his men, Maj. Courtney, by his astute military acumen, indomitable leadership and decisive action in the face of overwhelming odds, had contributed essentially to the success of the Okinawa campaign. His great personal valor throughout sustained and enhanced the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

KETTLES, CHARLES S.
Rank: Major, Organization: U.S. Army, Company: 176th Assault Helicopter Company, Division: 14th Combat Aviation Battalion, Task Force Oregon, Born: January 9, 1930, Ypsitanti, Michigan, Departed: No, Entered Service At: , G.O. Number: , Date of Issue: 07/18/2016, Accredited To: , Place and Date: Near Duc Pho, Republic of Vietnam, May 15, 1967. Citation: On 15 May 1967, Major Kettles, upon learning that an airborne infantry unit had suffered casualties during an intense firefight with the enemy, immediately volunteered to lead a flight of six UH-1D helicopters to carry reinforcements to the embattled force and to evacuate wounded personnel. Enemy small arms, automatic weapons, and mortar fire raked the landing zone, inflicting heavy damage to the helicopters; however, Major Kettles refused to depart until all helicopters were loaded to capacity. He then returned to the battlefield, with full knowledge of the intense enemy fire awaiting his arrival, to bring more reinforcements, landing in the midst of enemy mortar and automatic weapons fire that seriously wounded his gunner and severely damaged his aircraft. Upon departing, Major Kettles was advised by another helicopter crew that he had fuel streaming out of his aircraft. Despite the risk posed by the leaking fuel, he nursed the damaged aircraft back to base.

Later that day, the Infantry Battalion Commander requested immediate, emergency extraction of the remaining 40 troops, including four members of Major Kettles’ unit who were stranded when their helicopter was destroyed by enemy fire. With only one flyable UH-1 helicopter remaining, Major Kettles volunteered to return to the deadly landing zone for a third time, leading a flight of six evacuation helicopters, five of which were from the 161st Aviation Company. During the extraction, Major Kettles was informed by the last helicopter that all personnel were onboard, and departed the landing zone accordingly. Army gunships supporting the evacuation also departed the area. Once airborne, Major Kettles was advised that eight troops had been unable to reach the evacuation helicopters due to the intense enemy fire. With complete disregard for his own safety, Major Kettles passed the lead to another helicopter and returned to the landing zone to rescue the remaining troops. Without gunship, artillery, or tactical aircraft support, the enemy concentrated all firepower on his lone aircraft, which was immediately damaged by a mortar round that shattered both front windshields and the chin bubble and was further raked by small arms and machine gun fire.

Despite the intense enemy fire, Major Kettles maintained control of the aircraft and situation, allowing time for the remaining eight soldiers to board the aircraft. In spite of the severe damage to his helicopter, Major Kettles once more skillfully guided his heavily damaged aircraft to safety. Without his courageous actions and superior flying skills, the last group of soldiers and his crew would never have made it off the battlefield. Major Kettles’ selfless acts of repeated valor and determination are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Army.

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May 16

1691 – Jacob Leisler, American colonist, was hanged for treason. He was a soldier, born in Frankfort on the Main, Germany. He came to this country in 1660 as a soldier in the service of the Dutch West India company. Leaving the army soon after his arrival, he engaged in the Indian trade, and became a comparatively wealthy man. While on a voyage to Europe in 1678 he was captured by Moorish pirates, and was compelled to pay a ransom of 2,050 pieces of eight to obtain his freedom. Previous to this voyage he was a resident of Albany, where he was a magistrate, and had incurred the displeasure of Sir Edmund Andros, the governor, by the arbitrary and high-handed measures that he and his associates had adopted to prevent the spread of popery, the political bugbear of the day. Leisler had also endeared himself to the common people by befriending a family of French Huguenots that had been landed on Manhattan island so destitute that a public tribunal had decided they should be sold into slavery in order to pay their ship-charges. Leisler prevented the sale by purchasing the freedom of the widowed mother and son before it could be held. Under Dongan’s administration in 1683 he was appointed one of the judges, or “commissioners,” of the court of admiralty in New York. In 1688 Governor Dongan was succeeded by Lieutenant-Governor Francis Nicholson.

In 1689 the military force of the city of New York consisted of a regiment of five companies, of one of which Leisler was captain. He was popular with the men, and probably the only wealthy resident in the province that sympathized with the Dutch lower classes. At that time much excitement prevailed among the latter, owing to the attempts of the Jacobite office holders to retain power in spite of the revolution in England and the accession of William and Mary to the throne. On a report that the adherents of King James were about to seize the fort and massacre their Dutch fellow citizens, an armed mob gathered on the evening of 2 June, 1689, to overthrow the existing government. The cry of “Leisler” was raised, and the crowd rushed to his house. At first he refused to lead the movement, but when the demand was reiterated by the men of his regiment he acceded, and within an hour received the keys of the fort, which had meanwhile been seized. Fortunately for the revolutionists, the fort contained all the public funds, whose return the lieutenant-governor in vain demanded. Four hundred of the new party signed an agreement to hold the fort ” for the present Protestant power that reigns in England,” while a committee of safety of ten of the city freeholders assumed the powers of a provisional government, of which they declared Jacob Leisler to be the head and commissioned him as “captain of the fort.”

In this capacity he at once began to repair that work, and strengthened it with a “battery” of six guns beyond its walls, which was the origin of the public park that is still known as the Battery. Nicholson and the council of the province, with the authorities of the city, headed by Stephanus van Cortlandt, the mayor, attempted by pacific means to prevent the uprising, but without effect. Finally, becoming alarmed for their own safety, the lieutenant-governor sailed for England, and the mayor, with the other officials, retired to Albany. To the latter city, where the Jacobite office holders still held control, Leisler sent his son-in-law, Milbourne, in November, with an armed force to assist in its defence against the Indians, but he was directed to withhold it unless Leisler’s authority was recognized. This was refused, and Milbourne returned unsuccessful. In December a despatch arrived from William and Mary directed “to Francis Nicholson, Esq., or in his absence to such as for the time being takes care for preserving the peace and administering the laws in his majesty’s province of New York.” This Leisler construed as an appointment of himself as the king’s lieutenant-governor. He therefore dissolved the committee of safety, swore in a council, and assumed the style of a royal lieutenant-governor and commander-in-chief.

In the spring of 1690, Albany, terrified by an Indian invasion, and rent by domestic factions, yielded to Milbourne. Amid distress and confusion a house of representatives was convened, and the government was constituted by the popular act. After the massacre at Schenectady in February, 1690, Leisler engaged with great vigor in the expeditions against the French, and equipped and despatched against Quebec the first fleet of men-of-war that had been sent from the port of New York. In January, 1691, Major Ingoldesby arrived with the news of Henry Sloughter’s appointment as governor, and demanded possession of the fort, which Leisler refused. On Sloughter’s own demand immediately upon his arrival in the following March, he likewise refused to surrender it until he was convinced of Sloughter’s identity and the latter had sworn in his council. As soon as the latter event occurred, he wrote the governor a letter resigning his command. Sloughter replied by arresting him and nine of his friends. The latter were subsequently released after trial, but Leisler was imprisoned, charged with treason and murder, and shortly afterward tried and condemned to death.

1745 – A force numbering about 4,200 men, all of them drawn from New England militia regiments, under the command of General William Pepperrell of Maine, opens a brisk artillery bombardment against the French fortress of Louisbourg. In a siege operation that would last 47 days before the garrison surrenders, the colonial soldiers maintain a disciplined investment of the walled city and harbor. Built in the 1720s by the French to protect the entrance to the St. Lawrence River and French Canada it was the largest fort anywhere in North America. England and France had gone to war in 1741 and French privateers used Louisbourg’s protected harbor as a base from which to prey on British and colonial fishing and merchant fleets.

When colonial authorities asked England for Royal Navy assistance to stop the attacks no help was forthcoming. So the colonial governments decided to launch their own expedition to take Louisbourg and stop the raids. Militiamen from Massachusetts (which also included the present day state of Maine), Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire were gathered for the campaign. They were transported on 19 colonial ships, protected by 13 armed merchant ships. After the capitulation the militia garrisoned the fort until war’s end. Rightfully proud of their achievement the colonies were dismayed to learn that the fortress was returned to France in the peace treaty ending the war. In the next war (the French and Indian War, 1755-1763) it had to be recaptured, this time by regular British troops and ships.

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1771 – The Battle of Alamance, a pre-American Revolutionary War battle between local militia and a group of rebels called The “Regulators”, occurs in present-day Alamance County, North Carolina. The Battle of Alamance was the final battle of the War of the Regulation, a rebellion in colonial North Carolina over issues of taxation and local control. In the past, historians considered the battle to be the opening salvo of the American Revolution and locals agreed with this assessment. However, modern historians reject this, since there does not seem to have been any intent to rebel against the king or crown, merely to protest taxation and corrupt local government. Named for nearby Great Alamance Creek, the battle took place in what was then Orange County and has since become Alamance County in the central Piedmont about six miles south of present-day Burlington, North Carolina.

1820 – USS Congress becomes first U.S. warship to visit China.

1824 – Edmund Kirby-Smith, educator and soldier, was born. He was a Confederate general in the western theater.

1843 – The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri.

1846 – Eleven cutters were assigned to cooperate with Army and Navy in the Mexican War. USRCs McLane, Legare, Woodbury, Ewing, Forward, and Van Buren were assigned to the Army. USRCs Wolcott, Bibb, Morris, and Polk were assigned to the Navy.

1861 – The Confederate government offered war volunteers a $10 premium.

1861 – Commander John Rodgers ordered to report to the War Department to establish naval forces on the western rivers under the command of General John C. Fremont. The importance of controlling the Mississippi and its tributaries which pierced the interior in every direction was recognized immediately by the U.S. Government. This control was not only militarily strategic but was a vital factor in keeping the northwestern states in the Union. Under Rodgers, three river steamers were purchased at Cincinnati. Rodgers, overcoming no little difficulty in obtaining and training crews, getting guns and other equipment, converted the steamers to gunboats Tyler, Lexington, and Conestoga. These three gunboats, as stated by Alfred Thayer Mahan, were of inestimable service in keeping alive the attachment to the Union where it existed.”

1861 – Kentucky proclaimed its neutrality.

1861 – Tennessee officially admitted to the Confederacy.

1863 – The Union army seals the fate of Vicksburg by defeating the Confederates at the Battle of Champion’s Hill. General Ulysses S. Grant had successfully run the Confederate gauntlet at Vicksburg and placed the Army of the Tennessee south of the stronghold, the Rebels’ last significant holding on the Mississippi River. But he did not move directly on Vicksburg because he knew Joseph Johnston was assembling a Confederate force in Jackson, 40 miles east of Vicksburg. Instead, Grant advanced toward Jackson and prevented Johnston from uniting with the Vicksburg garrison, headed by John C. Pemberton. After boldly attacking and defeating the Confederates at Jackson, Grant left William T. Sherman’s corps to hold Johnston at bay. The Confederates were divided not only by Grant’s army, but also by conflicting strategy. Johnston wanted Pemberton to head into northern Mississippi to join forces with his own army. But Pemberton insisted on sticking close to Vicksburg and defending the city.

Grant sent his other two corps, commanded by James McPherson and John McClernand, to take on Pemberton. They found the Confederates on Champion’s Hill, about halfway between Jackson and Vicksburg. There, some 30,000 Union troops attacked 20,000 Confederates. The battle swayed back and forth, but the Federals eventually gained the upper hand. Pemberton’s men were forced to retreat, and one division was completely cut off from the rest of the army. Although McClernand’s timidity kept the rout from being complete, the engagement was still the decisive action of the Vicksburg campaign. Pemberton fell back into Vicksburg, where Grant followed and soon bottled the Confederates. A six-week siege ensued, and Vicksburg fell on July 4th.

1864 – In the Atlanta Campaign, the battle of Resaca, begun May 13th, ended.

1864 – Having crossed the rapids of the Red River at Alexandria, Rear Admiral Porter next had to traverse the many bars in the River near its mouth. The Admiral found that the water was higher there than had been anticipated and reported to Secretary Welles: “Providentially we had a rise from the backwater of the Mississippi, that river being very high at that time, the back-water extending to Alexandria, 150 miles distant, enabling us to pass all the bars and obstruc-tions with safety.” After battling low water, rapids, and the harassing forces of General Taylor for two months along the Red River, Porter and his gunboats again entered the Mississippi.

1868 – The U.S. Senate failed by one vote, cast by Edmund G. Ross, to convict President Andrew Johnson as it took its first ballot on one of 11 articles of impeachment against him. Johnson, who came to office on Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, was an honest but tactless man who made many enemies in the Radical Republican Congress. In response to Johnson’s recurrent interference with Radical Reconstruction, the U.S. House of Representatives drew up 11 articles of impeachment against the chief executive in March 1868. Although the charges against him were weak, Johnson was tried by the Senate as the Constitution provides.

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1899 – One month after the Spanish-American War began in April 1898, an expeditionary force sailed from San Francisco to capture the Spanish colonial capital of Manila, on Luzon Island, Philippines. Because most of the Regular Army was fighting in Cuba and Puerto Rico, three-quarters of this force was composed of state volunteer units, mostly from mid-western and western states. The Spanish surrendered by August and an uneasy peace settled in. The Filipinos wanted independence and when the American government announced it was annexing the islands as a colony, the local people rose up in revolt in February 1899.

By spring the American Army, still composed mostly of state units, was on the offensive cleaning out insurgent strongholds north of Manila. During this period a long-time American resident named Henry Young offered his services as a guide to the Army. He organized 25 men into a highly-mobile reconnaissance force called “Young’s Scouts” to patrol ahead of the advance. Most of the men in this unit were volunteers from the 1st North Dakota and 2nd Oregon Volunteer infantry regiments. On May 13th, a patrol of 11 Scouts plus Young charged and routed about 300 insurgents. Young was killed in this attack. Three days later (this date) 22 Scouts rushed across a bridge being set ablaze by enemy soldiers. The Guardsmen, while under a heavy fire from about 600 Filipinos across the river, succeeded in routing the insurgents and saving the bridge from burning. They continued to hold off several assaults to recapture the bridge until relieved by the 2nd Oregon. A total of 15 Medals of Honor were awarded to Guardsmen during the Philippine Insurrection. For their heroic actions in these two events ten Guardsmen of “Young’s Scouts” received the Medal, seven from North Dakota and three from Oregon.

1918 – The Sedition Act of 1918 is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government during wartime an imprisonable offense. It will be repealed less than two years later.

1919 – A naval Curtiss aircraft NC-4 commanded by Albert Cushing Read leaves Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight.

1927 – Marines participated in the Battle of La Paz Centro in Nicaragua.

1940 – Roosevelt asks Congress to authorize the production of 50,000 military planes per year and for a $900,000,000 extraordinary credit to finance this massive operation.

1943 – On Attu, the Japanese are forced to pull back as the Americans continue their attacks near Holtz Bay.

1944 – Most Allied forces of the US 5th Army meet reduced resistance to their ongoing offensive. Only the Polish 2nd Corps, at Cassino, continues to have difficulty. The British 13th Corps and the Canadian 1st Corps, in the Liri Valley, are advancing toward Pontecorvo and Piumarola. The US 2nd Corps advances along the western coast. The French Expeditionary Corps capture Monte Petrella and advance toward Monte Revole.

1944 – American forces move from Hollandia toward Wadke Island.

1945 – The Nazi submarine U-234 surrendered to US forces at Portsmouth, NH. It had been bound for Tokyo with 10 containers of uranium oxide. The atomic material ended up in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

1945 – On Okinawa, the US 6th Marine Division (part of US 3rd Amphibious Corps) reports heavy casualties in continuing attacks on Sugar Loaf Hill. Japanese antitank guns knock out a number of American tanks supporting an advance, by US 1st Marine Division, along the valley of the Wana River. Attacks by the US 77th Division to the north of Shuri continue to be unsuccessful. The US 96th Division reaches the edge of the village of Yonabaru. Love Hill, to the west of Conical Hill, continues to be held by Japanese forces.

1945 – On Luzon, the US 152nd Division, part of US 11th Corps, attacks Woodpecker Ridge with heavy artillery support and entrenches on the summit. The capture of the Bicol peninsula by forces of the US 14th Corps is declared to be completed. On Mindanao, Japanese forces hold the American advance along the Talomo River.

1951 – Chinese Communist Forces launched a second step, fifth-phase offensive [in Korea] and gained up to 20 miles of territory.

1953 – American journalist William N. Oatis is released after serving 22 months of a ten-year prison sentence for espionage in Czechoslovakia.

1955 – The US signs an agreement with Cambodia to supply direct military aid.

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1960 – In the wake of the Soviet downing of an American U-2 spy plane on May 1, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev lashes out at the United States and President Dwight D. Eisenhower at a Paris summit meeting between the two heads of state. Khrushchev’s outburst angered Eisenhower and doomed any chances for successful talks or negotiations at the summit. On May 1, 1960, the Soviets shot down a CIA spy plane and captured the pilot, Gary Francis Powers. The United States issued public denials that the aircraft was being used for espionage, claiming instead that it was merely a weather plane that had veered off course. The Soviets thereupon triumphantly produced Powers, large pieces of wreckage from the plane, and Powers’ admission that he was working for the CIA. The incident was a public relations fiasco for Eisenhower, who was forced to admit that the plane had indeed been spying on Russia.

Tensions from the incident were still high when Eisenhower and Khrushchev arrived in Paris to begin a summit meeting on May 16th. Khrushchev wasted no time in tearing into the United States, declaring that Eisenhower would not be welcome in Russia during his scheduled visit to the Soviet Union in June. He condemned the “inadmissible, provocative actions” of the United States in sending the spy plane over the Soviet Union, and demanded that Eisenhower ban future flights and punish those responsible for this “deliberate violation of the Soviet Union.” When Eisenhower agreed only to a “suspension” of the spy plane flights, Khrushchev left the meeting in a huff. According to U.S. officials, the president was “furious” at Khrushchev for his public dressing-down of the United States. The summit meeting officially adjourned the next day with no further meetings between Khrushchev and Eisenhower. Eisenhower’s planned trip to Moscow in June was scrapped.

The collapse of the May 1960 summit meeting was a crushing blow to those in the Soviet Union and the United States who believed that a period of “peaceful coexistence” between the two superpowers was on the horizon. During the previous few years, both Eisenhower and Khrushchev had publicly indicated their desire for an easing of Cold War tensions, but the spy plane incident put an end to such talk, at least for the time being.

1963 – After 22 Earth orbits Gordon Cooper returned to Earth in Friendship Seven, ending Project Mercury.

1964 – Governor Nelson Rockefeller accepts President Johnson’s offer to brief all Republican candidates for the presidency; afterwards, he agrees with a questioner that Americans are not getting the full story of the situation. Senator Barry Goldwater openly charges that US pilots have died because of obsolescent planes.

1965 – First US Naval gunfire support in Vietnam by USS Tucker.

1965 – What is described by the United States government as “an accidental explosion of a bomb on one aircraft which spread to others” at the Bien Hoa air base leaves 27 U.S. servicemen and 4 South Vietnamese dead and some 95 Americans injured. More than 40 U.S. and South Vietnamese planes, including 10 B-57s, were destroyed.

1969 – 23rd Infantry and 101st Airborne Divisions conduct Operation Lamar Plain southwest of Tamky in Quangtin Province through 13 August.

1972 – A series of air strikes over five days destroys all of North Vietnam’s pumping stations in the southern panhandle, thereby cutting North Vietnam’s main fuel line to South Vietnam. These strikes were part of Operation Linebacker, an air offensive against North Vietnam that had been ordered by President Richard Nixon in early April in response to a massive communist offensive launched on March 30th.

1975 – Congress appropriates $05 million to fund a refugee aid program and authorizes resettlement of South Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees in the US. Over 140,000 refugees are flown to the United States under the program in the next few months.

1991 – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom addresses a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.

1992 – The space shuttle Endeavour completed its maiden voyage with a safe landing in the California desert.

1996 – US Navy Admiral Jeremy “Mike” Boorda (57), the nation’s top Navy officer, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after some of his military awards were called into question.

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1996 – UN and Iraqi officials reached a tentative agreement to resume oil sales of $4 billion a year to buy food and medicine. The oil for food program mandated that 13% of the UN resources go to northern Kurdish areas. In 2004 it was reported that illicit trade agreements with neighbors netted Iraq nearly $11 billion between 1990 and 2003. In 2004 the estimate for illicit trade was raised to $21.3 billion.

1997 – The space shuttle Atlantis docked with Russia’s Mir station.

1999 – NATO admitted to some 100 casualties from its air strikes but cited executions by Serb forces of at least 4,600 ethnic Albanians.

2001 – Former FBI agent Robert Hanssen was indicted on charges of spying for Moscow. Hanssen later pleaded guilty to 15 counts of espionage and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

2003 – US Special Envoy to Iraq and head of the Coalition Provisional Authority orders De-Baathification, banning ranking members of Hussein’s Baath Party from public service.

2006 – The United States releases a list of 759 former and current inmates of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in Cuba after a Freedom of Information Act action was filed by the Associated Press.

2007 – A flare dropped from a New Jersey National Guard F-16 Fighting Falcon is believed to be the cause of a wildfire that has burned 20 square miles (52 km2) at the edge of Pinelands National Reserve, New Jersey, burning three homes and causing the evacuation of 2,500 other homes.

2011 – STS-134 (ISS assembly flight ULF6), launched from the Kennedy Space Center on the 25th and final flight for Space Shuttle Endeavour.

2011 – Due to massive flooding along the river, the United States Coast Guard closes 15 miles of the Mississippi River near Natchez, Mississippi.

2011 – The USS Stephen W. Groves exchanged fire with Jih Chun Tsai 68, a known pirate mothership. When a boarding team arrived, they found 3 pirates dead and captured 2 pirates.

2012 – The trial of former Bosnian Serb Army Colonel General Ratko Mladić starts in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken this Day

GRAY, ROBERT A.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company C, 21st Connecticut Infantry. Place and date: At Drurys Bluff, Va., 16 May 1864. Entered service at: Groton, Conn. Birth: Philadelphia, Pa. Date of issue: 13 July 1897. Citation: While retreating with his regiment, which had been repulsed, he voluntarily returned, in face of the enemy’s fire, to a former position and rescued a wounded officer of his company who was unable to walk.

HILL, JAMES
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, Company I, 21st lowa Infantry. Place and date: At Champion Hill, Miss., 16 May 1863. Entered service at: Cascade, lowa. Birth: England. Date of issue: 15 March 1893. Citation: By skillful and brave management captured 3 of the enemy’s pickets.

LORD, WILLIAM
Rank and organization: Musician, Company C, 40th Massachusetts Infantry. Place and date: At Drurys Bluff, Va., 16 May 1864. Entered service at. Lawrence, Mass. Birth: England. Date •r issue. 4 April 1898. Citation: Went to the assistance of a wounded officer Iying helpless between the lines, and under fire from both sides removed him to a place of safety.

WILHELM, GEORGE
Rank and organization: Captain, Company F, 56th Ohio Infantry. Place and date: At Champion Hill, or Bakers Creek, Miss., 16 May 1863. Entered service at: Lancaster, Ohio. Born: 2 April 1830, Scioto County, Ohio. Date of issue: 17 November 1887. Citation: Having been badly wounded in the breast and captured, he made a prisoner of his captor and brought him into camp.

BABCOCK, JOHN B.
Rank and organization: First Lieutenant, 5th U.S. Cavalry. Place and date: At Spring Creek, Nebr., 16 May 1869. Entered service at: Stonington, Conn. Birth: New Orleans, La. Date of issue: 18 September 1897. Citation: While serving with a scouting column, this officer’s troop was attacked by a vastly superior force of Indians. Advancing to high ground, he dismounted his men, remaining mounted himself to encourage them, and there fought the Indians until relieved, his horse being wounded.

BOEHLER, OTTO
Rank and organization: Private, Company I, 1st North Dakota Volunteer Infantry. Place and date: Near San Isidro, Philippine Islands, 16 May 1899. Entered service at: Wahpeton, N. Dak. Birth: Germany. Date of issue: 17 May 1906. Citation: With 21 other scouts charged across a burning bridge, under heavy fire, and completely routed 600 of the enemy who were entrenched in a strongly fortified position.

DAVIS, CHARLES P.
Rank and organization: Private, Company G, 1st North Dakota Volunteer Infantry. Place and date: Near San Isidro, Philippine Islands, 16 May 1899. Entered service at: Valley City, N. Dak. Birth: Long Prairie, Minn. Date of issue: 28 April 1906. Citation: With 21 other scouts charged across a burning bridge, under heavy fire, and completely routed 600 of the enemy who were entrenched in a strongly fortified position.

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HIGH, FRANK C.
Rank and organization: Private, U.S. Army, Company G, 2d Oregon Volunteer Infantry. Place and date: Near San Isidro, Philippine Islands, 16 May 1899. Entered service at: Picard, Calif. Birth: Yolo County, Calif. Date of issue: Unknown. Citation: With 21 other scouts charged across a burning bridge, under heavy fire, and completely routed 600 of the enemy who were entrenched in a strongly fortified position.

KINNE, JOHN B.
Rank and organization: Private, Company B, 1st North Dakota Infantry. Place and date: Near San Isidro, Philippine Islands, 16 May 1889. Entered service at: Fargo, N. Dak. Birth: Beloit, Wis. Date of issue: 17 May 1906. Citation. With 21 other scouts charged across a burning bridge, under heavy fire, and completely routed 600 of the enemy who were entrenched in a strongly fortified position.

LONGFELLOW, RICHARD M.
Rank and organization: Private, Company A, 1st North Dakota Volunteer Infantry. Place and date: Near San Isidro Philippine Islands, 16 May 1899. Entered service at: Mandan, N. Dak. Birth: Logan County, Ill, Date of issue: Unknown. Citation: With 21 other scouts charged across a burning bridge, under heavy fire, and completely routed 600 of the enemy who were entrenched in a strongly fortified position.

ROBERTSON, MARCUS W.
Rank and organization: Private, Company B, 2d Oregon Volunteer Infantry. Place and date: Near San Isidro, Philippine Islands, 16 May 1899. Entered service at: Hood River, Oreg. Birth: Flintville, Wis. Date of issue: 28 April 1906. Citation: With 21 other scouts charged across a burning bridge, under heavy fire, and completely routed 600 of the enemy who were entrenched in a strongly fortified position.

ROSS, FRANK F.
Rank and organization: Private, Company H, 1st North Dakota Volunteer Infantry. Place and date: Near San Isidro, Philippine Islands 16 May 1899. Entered service at: Langdon, N. Dak. Birth: Avon, Ill. Date of issue: 6 June 1906. Citation: With 21 other scouts charged across a burning bridge, under heavy fire, and completely routed 600 of the enemy who were entrenched in a strongly fortified position.

*MULLER, JOSEPH E.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company B, 305th Infantry, 77th Infantry Division. Place and date: Near Ishimmi, Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands, 15-16 May 1945. Entered service at: New York, N.Y. Birth: Holyoke, Mass. G.O. No.: 71, 17 July 1946. Citation: He displayed conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty. When his platoon was stopped by deadly fire from a strongly defended ridge, he directed men to points where they could cover his attack. Then through the vicious machinegun and automatic fire, crawling forward alone, he suddenly jumped up, hurled his grenades, charged the enemy, and drove them into the open where his squad shot them down. Seeing enemy survivors about to man a machinegun, He fired his rifle at point-blank range, hurled himself upon them, and killed the remaining 4. Before dawn the next day, the enemy counterattacked fiercely to retake the position. Sgt. Muller crawled forward through the flying bullets and explosives, then leaping to his feet, hurling grenades and firing his rifle, he charged the Japs and routed them. As he moved into his foxhole shared with 2 other men, a lone enemy, who had been feigning death, threw a grenade. Quickly seeing the danger to his companions, Sgt. Muller threw himself over it and smothered the blast with his body. Heroically sacrificing his life to save his comrades, he upheld the highest traditions of the military service.

BALLARD, DONALD E.
Rank and organization: Hospital Corpsman Second Class, U.S. Navy, Company M, 3d Battalion, 4th Marines, 3d Marine Division. Place and date: Quang Tri Province, Republic of Vietnam, 16 May 1968. Entered service at: Kansas City, Mo. Born: 5 December 1945, Kansas City, Mo. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life and beyond the call of duty while serving as a HC2c. with Company M, in connection with operations against enemy aggressor forces. During the afternoon hours, Company M was moving to join the remainder of the 3d Battalion in Quang Tri Province. After treating and evacuating 2 heat casualties, HC2c. Ballard was returning to his platoon from the evacuation landing zone when the company was ambushed by a North Vietnamese Army unit employing automatic weapons and mortars, and sustained numerous casualties. Observing a wounded marine, HC2c. Ballard unhesitatingly moved across the fire swept terrain to the injured man and swiftly rendered medical assistance to his comrade. HC2c. Ballard then directed 4 marines to carry the casualty to a position of relative safety.

As the 4 men prepared to move the wounded marine, an enemy soldier suddenly left his concealed position and, after hurling a hand grenade which landed near the casualty, commenced firing upon the small group of men. Instantly shouting a warning to the marines, HC2c. Ballard fearlessly threw himself upon the lethal explosive device to protect his comrades from the deadly blast. When the grenade failed to detonate, he calmly arose from his dangerous position and resolutely continued his determined efforts in treating other marine casualties. HC2c. Ballard’s heroic actions and selfless concern for the welfare of his companions served to inspire all who observed him and prevented possible injury or death to his fellow marines. His courage, daring initiative, and unwavering devotion to duty in the face of extreme personal danger, sustain and enhance the finest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

*ROARK, ANUND C.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company C, 1st Battalion, 12th Infantry, 4th Infantry Division. Place and date: Kontum Province, Republic of Vietnam, 16 May 1968. Entered service at: Los Angeles, Calif. Born: 17 February 1948, Vallejo, Calif. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Sgt. Roark distinguished himself by extraordinary gallantry while serving with Company C. Sgt. Roark was the point squad leader of a small force which had the mission of rescuing 11 men in a hilltop observation post under heavy attack by a company-size force, approximately 1,000 meters from the battalion perimeter. As lead elements of the relief force reached the besieged observation post, intense automatic weapons fire from enemy occupied bunkers halted their movement.

Without hesitation, Sgt. Roark maneuvered his squad, repeatedly exposing himself to withering enemy fire to hurl grenades and direct the fire of his squad to gain fire superiority and cover the withdrawal of the outpost and evacuation of its casualties. Frustrated in their effort to overrun the position, the enemy swept the hilltop with small arms and volleys of grenades. Seeing a grenade land in the midst of his men, Sgt. Roark, with complete disregard for his safety, hurled himself upon the grenade, absorbing its blast with his body. Sgt. Roark’s magnificent leadership and dauntless courage saved the lives of many of his comrades and were the inspiration for the successful relief of the outpost. His actions which culminated in the supreme sacrifice of his life were in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service, and reflect great credit on himself and the U.S. Army.

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17 May

1673 – Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette began exploring the Mississippi.

1733 – England passed the Molasses Act, putting high tariffs on rum and molasses imported to the colonies from a country other than British possessions.

1775 – The Continental Congress bans trade with Quebec.

1792 – The early 1790s were not a good time for New York’s burgeoning class of speculative traders. Their collective reputation had been badly tarnished by the fall of William Duer, a powerful speculator who illegally parlayed privileged information into successful speculative trades. Along with an extended jail term, the maneuver left Duer broke, which all but destroyed the tradersý nascent market. However, rather than give up on speculative trading, the dealers and auctioneers decided to clean up their operations. On this day in 1792, a group of twenty-four traders gathered under a buttonwood tree at 68 Wall Street in lower Manhattan to mete out the conditions and regulations of the speculative market.

The result was the Buttonwood Agreement, a modest, two-sentence contract that gave birth to the New York Stock Exchange, which would become the worldýs largest forum for trading stocks and securities. Where speculators had previously conducted their auctions twice a day in various locations, including street corners and coffeehouses, the Buttonwood Agreement established stricter rules and parameters to more effectively govern trading.

1862 – Joint expedition including U.S.S. Sebago, Lieutenant Murray, and U.S.S. Currituck, Acting Master Shankland, with troops embarked on transport Seth Low, at the request of General McClellan ascended the Pamunkey River to twenty-five miles above White House. Confederates burned seventeen vessels, some loaded with coal and commissary stores. The river was so narrow at this point that the Union gunboats were compelled to return stern foremost for several miles. General McClellan reported that the ”expedition was admirably managed, and all concerned deserve great credit.”

1863 – The Union army defeats the Confederates on the Big Black River and drives them into Vicksburg in part of a brilliant campaign by General Ulysses S. Grant. Grant had swung his army down the Mississippi River past the strong riverfront defenses, and landed in Mississippi south of Vicksburg. He then moved northeast toward Jackson and split his force to defeat Joseph Johnston’s troops in Jackson and John C. Pemberton’s at Champion’s Hill. During the engagement at Champion’s Hill, a Confederate division under William Loring split from Pemberton’s main force and drifted south of the battlefield. Pemberton was forced to retreat to the Big Black River where he waited for Loring’s troops.

Loring, however, was heading east to join Johnston’s army because he believed he could not reach Pemberton. While Pemberton waited for Loring on a bridge over the Big Black River, Grant attacked. Pemberton suffered his second defeat in two days at the Big Black River. The battle began at dawn, and by 10 a.m. the Confederate position appeared hopeless. Confederate casualties numbered 1,752 killed, wounded, and captured, to the Yankees’ 279. Pemberton withdrew across the bridge and then burned it down. With the bridge out, Grant could no longer advance. But he now had Pemberton backed up into Vicksburg. He soon closed the ring and laid siege to the town, which surrendered on July 4th.

1864 – The Battle of Adairsville, Georgia, resulted in a Confederate retreat.

1871 – Gen. Sherman, Indian fighter, escaped in ambulance from the Comanches.

1876 – The 7th US Cavalry under Custer left Fort Lincoln.

1884 – Alaska became a US territory.

1885 – For the second time in two years, the Apache chief Geronimo breaks out of an Arizona reservation, sparking panic among Arizona settlers. A famous medicine man and the leader of the Chiricahua Apache, Geronimo achieved national fame by being the last American Indian to surrender formally to the United States. For nearly 30 years, Geronimo and his followers resisted the attempts of Americans to take away their southwestern homeland and confine them to a reservation. He was a fearless warrior and a master of desert survival. The best officers of the U.S. Army found it nearly impossible to find Geronimo, much less decisively defeat him. In 1877, Geronimo was forced to move to the San Carlos, Arizona, reservation for the first time, but he was scarcely beaten. Instead, Geronimo treated the reservation as just one small part of the vast territory he still considered to belong to the Apache. Fed up with the strictures and corruption of the reservation, he and many other Apache broke out for the first time in 1881. For nearly two years, the Apache band raided the southwestern countryside despite the best efforts of the army to stop them. Finally, Geronimo wearied of the continual harassment of the U.S. Army and agreed to return to the reservation in 1884, much on his own terms. He did not stay long.

Among the many rules imposed upon the Apache on the reservation was the prohibition of any liquor, including a weak beer they had traditionally brewed from corn. In early May 1885, Geronimo and a dozen other leaders deliberately staged a corn beer festival. Reasoning that the authorities would be unlikely to try to punish such a large group, they openly admitted the deed, expecting that it would lead to negotiations. Because of a communication mix-up, however, the army failed to respond. Geronimo and the others assumed the delay indicated the army was preparing some drastic punishment for their crime. Rather than remain exposed and vulnerable on the reservation, Geronimo fled with 42 men and 92 women and children. Quickly moving south, Geronimo raided settlements along the way for supplies.

In one instance, he attacked a ranch owned by a man named Phillips, killing him, his wife, and his two children. Frightened settlers demanded swift military action, and General George Crook coordinated a combined Mexican and American manhunt for the Apache. Thousands of soldiers tracked the fugitives but Geronimo and his band split into small groups and remained elusive. Crook’s failure to apprehend the Indians led to his eventual resignation. General Nelson Miles replaced him. Miles committed 5,000 troops to the campaign and even established 30 heliograph stations to improve communications. Still, Miles was also unable to find the elusive warrior.

Informed that many of the reservation Apache, including his own family, had been taken to Florida, Geronimo apparently lost the will to fight. After a year and a half of running, Geronimo and his 38 remaining followers surrendered unconditionally to Miles on September 3, 1886. Relocated to Florida, Geronimo was imprisoned and kept from his family for two years. Finally, he was freed and moved with this family to Indian Territory in Oklahoma. He died of pneumonia at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1909.

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1916 – President Woodrow Wilson announces that the US may have to intervene in the war in Europe and should certainly have a role in any peace-making process.

1938 – Congress passed the Vinson Naval Act, providing for a two-ocean navy.

1940 – FDR announces plans to re-commission 35 more destroyers.

1942 – USS Tautog (SS-199) sinks Japanese sub, I-28; while USS Triton (SS-201) sinks I-164.

1943 – The Memphis Belle, one of a group of American bombers based in Britain, becomes the first B-17 to complete 25 missions over Europe. The Memphis Belle performed its 25th and last mission, in a bombing raid against Lorient, a German submarine base. But before returning back home to the United States, film footage was shot of Belle’s crew receiving combat medals. This was but one part of a longer documentary on a day in the life of an American bomber, which included dramatic footage of a bomber being shot out of the sky, with most of its crew parachuting out, one by one.

Another film sequence showed a bomber returning to base with its tail fin missing. What looked like damage inflicted by the enemy was, in fact, the result of a collision with another American bomber. The Memphis Belle documentary would not be released for another 11 months, as more footage was compiled to demonstrate the risks these pilots ran as they bombed “the enemy again and again and again-until he has had enough.” The film’s producer, Lieutenant Colonel William Wyler, was known for such non-military fare as The Letter, Wuthering Heights, and Jezebel.

1944 – Allied forces of the US 5th Army continue to advance in the Liri Valley. Piumarolo, Monte Faggeta, Esperia and Formia are all captured. The Polish 2nd Corps captures Sant’Angelo. The French Expeditionary Corps is held beyond Esperia, near Monte d’Ore. The German 10th Army (Vietinghoff) has been reinforced by 3 division from Army Group C (Kesselring) reserves but it is unable to halt the Allies. The German command decides withdraw to a new line of defense.

1944 – US forces land on Insumarai Island and at Arare on the mainland nearby. Admiral Crutchley and Admiral Berkey command cruisers and destroyers covering the landings.

1944 – Allied aircraft carriers HMS Illustrious and USS Saratoga raid oil installations at Surabaya, on Java. Battleships of the British Eastern Fleet (Admiral Sommerville) provide escort. The Japanese lose 1 freighter and 12 aircraft on the ground. Only 1 Allied plane is lost. During the night, land-based Liberator bombers raid the installations again.

1945 – On Luzon, the US 152nd Division, part of US 11th Corps, entrenches in favorable positions on Woodpecker Ridge as the Japanese retire. The US 43rd Division captures the Ipoh dam, the main source of water for Manila, intact after an intensive bombing and artillery preparation.

1945 – On Okinawa, the US 6th Marine Division, part of US 3rd Amphibious Corps, continues assaulting Sugar Loaf hill have Japanese positions are heavily bombarded by aircraft, artillery and ships. Elements of US 1st Marine Division capture the western part of the Wana valley but fail to take the ridge. Units of the US 77th Division, part of US 24th Corps, make a surprise attack on Ishimmi Ridge, west of the village, and end up in positions exposed to Japanese fire.

1945 – Aircraft from the USS Ticonderoga attack targets on the Japanese held island of Taroa and the Maleolap atoll, encountering limited resistance.

1951 – Aircraft from carriers attack bridges between Wonsan and Hamhung, Korea.

1961 – Cuban leader Fidel Castro offered to exchange prisoners captured in the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion for 500 bulldozers.

1962 – Three thousand US Marines begin landing at Bangkok, Thailand, in response to troop movements near the Thai border by the Soviet-supported Laotian Pathet Lao army. The Marines are flown 350 miles north to Udorn, which is 35 miles form the Laotian capital of Vientiane. This US show of force, ordered by President Kennedy at the request of the Thai government, is out of Thailand by the beginning of August.

1964 – On the 16th, the Communist Pathet Lao succeeded in driving the neutralist forces lead by Kong-Le from the Plain of Jars, marking the end of any efforts at a coalition government and leaving Souvanna Phouma and his followers in control. When word of this reaches Washington, President Johnson orders the Seventh Fleet in the South China Sea to prepare for a possible military action. Officials begin drawing up a resolution that Johnson might present to Congress to get it to declare that the independence and integrity of Laos are vital to US interests.

1966 – Naval Support Activity Saigon established.

1967 – US Marines at Dongha, Giolinh, Camlo, and Camp Carroll are bombarded.

1968 – 1st Air Cavalry’s Operation Jeb Stuart III begins along the border of Quang Tri and Thua Thien provinces. The operation will continue to the first week of November.

1968 – 101st Airborne Division’s Operation Nevada Eagle begins in =central Thua Thien Province. This operation will conclude at the end of February 1969.

1968 – The second Air Guard unit to arrive in Vietnam is Iowa’s 174th Tactical Fighter Squadron. When not engaged in combat operations many of the men volunteered their time to work with abandoned children in nearby orphanages. The medical personnel treated Vietnamese civilians for a variety of diseases and injuries under the MEDCAP (Medical Civic Action Program) project. Some Guardsmen wrote home about the bad conditions at the orphanage and had their families, with the help of local churches and businesses, gather donated clothes, toys, books, and school supplies to help these children.

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1970 – A force of 10,000 South Vietnamese troops, supported by 200 U.S. advisers, aircraft and logistical elements, attack into what was known as the “Parrot’s Beak,” the area of Cambodia that projects into South Vietnam above the Mekong Delta. The South Vietnamese reached the town of Takeo in a 20-mile thrust. This action was part of the ongoing operation ordered by President Richard Nixon in April. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces launched a limited “incursion” into Cambodia that included 13 major ground operations to clear North Vietnamese sanctuaries 20 miles inside the Cambodian border in both the “Parrot’s Beak” and the densely vegetated “Fishhook” area (across the border from South Vietnam, 70 miles from Saigon).

Some 50,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and 30,000 U.S. troops were involved, making it the largest operation of the war since Operation Junction City in 1967. In the United States, news of the incursion set off a wave of antiwar demonstrations, including one at Kent State University that resulted in the killing of four students by Army National Guard troops. Another protest at Jackson State in Mississippi resulted in the shooting of two students when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory. The incursion also angered many in Congress who felt that Nixon was illegally widening the scope of the war; this resulted in a series of congressional resolutions and legislative initiatives that would severely limit the executive power of the president.

1972 – All colleges and universities in South Vietnam are closed to allow for the conscription of students.

1972 – Preceded by five B-52 strikes, which reportedly killed 300 North Vietnamese to the south, South Vietnamese forces arrive by helicopter to within two miles of An Loc in continuing efforts to relieve this besieged city. It had been surrounded by three North Vietnamese divisions since early April. The North Vietnamese had been holding An Loc under siege for almost three months while they made repeated attempts to take the city. The defenders suffered heavy casualties, including 2,300 dead or missing, but with the aid of U.S. advisors and American airpower, they managed to hold An Loc against vastly superior odds until the siege was finally lifted on June 18th.

1973 – In Washington, D.C., the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, headed by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, begins televised hearings on the escalating Watergate affair. One week later, Harvard law professor Archibald Cox was sworn in as special Watergate prosecutor. On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into and illegally wiretapping the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. One of the suspects, James W. McCord Jr., was revealed to be the salaried security coordinator for President Richard Nixon’s reelection committee. Two other men with White House ties were later implicated in the break-in: E. Howard Hunt, Jr., a former White House aide, and G. Gordon Liddy, finance counsel for the Committee for the Re-election of the President. Journalists and the Select Committee discovered a higher-echelon conspiracy surrounding the incident, and a political scandal of unprecedented magnitude erupted.

In May 1973, the special Senate committee began televised proceedings on the Watergate affair. During the Senate hearings, former White House legal counsel John Dean testified that the Watergate break-in had been approved by former Attorney General John Mitchell with the knowledge of chief White House advisers John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman, and that President Nixon had been aware of the cover-up. Meanwhile, Watergate prosecutor Cox and his staff began to uncover widespread evidence of political espionage by the Nixon reelection committee, illegal wiretapping of thousands of citizens by the administration, and contributions to the Republican Party in return for political favors. In July, the existence of what were to be called the Watergate tapes–official recordings of White House conversations between Nixon and his staff–was revealed during the Senate hearings. Cox subpoenaed these tapes, and after three months of delay President Nixon agreed to send summaries of the recordings. Cox rejected the summaries, and Nixon fired him. His successor as special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, leveled indictments against several high-ranking administration officials, including Mitchell and Dean, who were duly convicted.

Public confidence in the president rapidly waned, and by the end of July 1974 the House Judiciary Committee had adopted three articles of impeachment against President Nixon: obstruction of justice, abuse of presidential powers, and hindrance of the impeachment process. On July 30th, under coercion from the Supreme Court, Nixon finally released the Watergate tapes. On August 5th, transcripts of the recordings were released, including a segment in which the president was heard instructing Haldeman to order the FBI to halt the Watergate investigation. Four days later, Nixon became the first president in U.S. history to resign. On September 8, his successor, President Gerald Ford, pardoned him from any criminal charges.

1973 – First woman to hold a major Navy command, Captain Robin Lindsay Quigley assumes command of Navy Service School, San Diego, CA.

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1987 – At 8:00pm local time, a Mirage F-1 fighter jet took off from Iraq’s Shaibah military airport and headed south into the Persian Gulf, flying along the Saudi Arabian coast. An Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) plane, in the air over Saudi Arabia and manned by a joint American-Saudi crew, detected the aircraft. Aboard the USS Stark, a Perry-class frigate on duty in the gulf,… radar operators picked up the Mirage when it was some 200 miles away; it was flying at 5,000 feet and traveling at 550 mph. Captain Glenn Brindel, 43, commander of the Stark, was not particularly alarmed. He knew it was fairly common for Iraqi and Iranian warplanes to fly over the gulf. Earlier in the day, Iraqi jets had fired missiles into a Cypriot tanker, disabling the vessel. But no American vessel had been attacked. In keeping with standard procedure, Captain Brindel ordered a radio message flashed at 10:09 PM: “Unknown aircraft, this is U.S. Navy warship on your 078 for twelve miles. Request you identify yourself.” There was no reply. A second request was sent. Still no answer.

Brindel noted that the aircraft’s pilot had not locked his targeting radar on the Stark, so he expected it to veer away. At 10:10 PM, the AWACS crew noticed that the Mirage had banked suddenly and then turned northward, as though heading for home. What they failed to detect was the launching by the Iraqi pilot of two Exocet AM39 air-to-surface missiles. The Exocets had a range of 40 miles and each carried a 352 lb. warhead. For some reason, the sea-skimming missiles were not detected by the Stark’s sophisticated monitoring equipment. A lookout spotted the first Exocet just seconds before the missile struck, tearing a ten-by-fifteen-foot hole in the warship’s steel hull on the port side before ripping through the crew’s quarters. The resulting fire rushed upward into the vessel’s combat information center, disabling the electrical systems. The second missile plowed into the frigate’s superstructure. A crewman sent a distress signal with a handheld radio that was picked up by the USS Waddell, a destroyer on patrol nearby.

Meanwhile, the AWACS crew requested that two airborne Saudi F-15s pursue the Iraqi Mirage. But ground controllers at Dhahran airbase said they lacked the authority to embark on such a mission, and the Mirage was safely back in Iraqi airspace before approval could be obtained. As fires raged aboard the Stark, Brindel ordered the starboard side blooded to keep the gaping hole on the port side above the waterline. All through the night the fate of the stricken frigate was in doubt. Once the inferno was finally under control, the Stark limped back to port. The Navy immediately launched an investigation into an incident that had cost 37 American seamen their lives. The Stark was endowed with an impressive array of defenses — an MK92 fire control system that could intercept incoming aircraft at a range of 90 miles; an OTO gun that could fire three-inch anti-aircraft shells at a rate of 90 per minute; electronic defenses that could produce bogus radar images to deceive attackers; and the Phalanx, a six-barreled gun that could fire 3,000 uranium rounds a minute at incoming missiles. Brindel insisted that his ship’s combat system was fully operational, but Navy technicians in Bahrain said the Stark’s Phalanx system had not been working properly when the frigate put out to sea. (Brindel was relieved of duty and later forced to retire.)

A C141B Starlifter carried 35 flag-draped caskets to the Stark’s home base at Mayport, Florida. (Two of the crewmen were lost at sea during the attack.) President Reagan and the First Lady were on hand to extend condolences to grieving families. Reagan was under fire from Congress and the press for putting American servicemen in harm’s way on a vaguely defined mission. “We need to rethink exactly what we are doing in the Persian Gulf,” said Republican Senator Robert Dole. The Senate overwhelmingly passed a resolution, sponsored by Dole and Democratic Senator Robert Byrd, that demanded the president explain to Congress the strategy and goals of the Persian Gulf mission — and the risks involved. Congress was also unhappy with Saudi Arabia for what it viewed as a lackadaisical response to the request to pursue the Iraqi Mirage — so unhappy, in fact, that the administration thought it wise to delay submission of a proposal to sell new F-15 fighter jets to the Saudis.

The strife in the gulf had started in 1984 when Iran and Iraq, at war since 1980, began attacking each other’s ships. Inevitably, the vessels of third countries became targets. Over 200 ships had been attacked in the past three years. The Iranians were particularly keen to target the ships of Iraq’s ally, Kuwait. Even though only 7% of American oil supplies came from the region, the Reagan administration insisted that U.S. strategic interests required a naval presence in the gulf. Critics complained that Western Europe and Japan, which acquired 25% and 60% of their respective oil needs from the gulf, weren’t doing their part in keeping the sea lanes open.

In fact, certain Western European nations had become major suppliers of military hardware to both Iran and Iraq. Damage done to the Stark had been caused by French-built missiles fired from a French-built aircraft. The administration argued that to withdraw from the gulf would be to surrender America’s role as leader of the free world, and that if oil shipments were disrupted, prices would soar, adversely affecting the U.S. economy. As one Western diplomat put it, if the U.S. backed out, it wouldn’t “have enough credibility to float a teacup.” Furthermore, the Soviet Union had increased its naval presence in the gulf, and the fear was that if the U.S. faltered, the Soviets would gain the upper hand in the region — and growing Soviet influence in the region would pose a long-term threat to the West’s oil supplies.

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{ 1987 continued... }

“We will not be intimidated,” said Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. “We will not be driven from the gulf.” He described the attack on the Stark as a “horrible error,” and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was quick to apologize for the “unintentional incident.” Evidently, the Mirage pilot had mistaken the Stark for an Iranian tanker. Iraq promised to pay compensation to the families of the 37 slain seamen, and reparations for damages to the frigate. Officially the United States was neutral in the Iran-Iraq conflict, but the administration had decided that geopolitic considerations required that Iraq not lose the war. In the aftermath of the Stark incident, the rhetoric coming out of Washington was of a forgiving nature where Iraq was concerned, while growing increasingly hostile in reference to Iran. The White House was resolute. “The use of the vital sea lanes of the Persian Gulf will not be dictated by the Iranians,” said President Reagan during a press conference. “Those lanes will not be allowed to come under the control of the Soviet Union. The Persian Gulf will remain open to navigation by the nations of the world.” The U.S. naval presence was increased from six to nine ships. Air cover would be provided by a carrier stationed outside the gulf. The American warships would escort convoys of Kuwaiti tankers every ten days or so. Iran vowed to continue attacking Kuwaiti tankers regardless of whether they flew the Stars and Stripes. Congress objected to the open-ended nature of this commitment.

Memories of Vietnam — and of the Lebanon peacekeeping debacle in the early 1980s, during which 241 Marines were killed in their barracks by a suicide bomber — prompted many solons to insist on knowing what rules of engagement the U.S. Navy would be operating under while escorting oil tankers in the gulf. The answer: A U.S. warship could fire on any aircraft that came within 20 miles of it, on the authority of the captain. Unfortunately, the U.S. was so concerned about Iranian Sidewinder missiles being placed so as to control the Strait of Hormuz that it neglected to sweep the approaches for mines, one of which damaged an escorted tanker in July. The incident was egg on the face of the Navy, accused of sloppy mission preparation, and embarrassed the administration, which, while presiding over an unprecedented peacetime military buildup, had only three operational ocean-going minesweepers in service.

But on 21 September 1987, the military redeemed itself by conducting a successful raid involving U.S. Navy SEALS on an Iranian vessel caught laying mines. Five Iranian seamen were killed. That same week, Iran attacked a British-flagged tanker; Britain responded by shutting down Iran’s London-based arms procurement office. (By this time, British, French, Belgian, Dutch and Italian warships had joined the Americans and Soviets in patrolling the gulf.) The American raid gave some senators an excuse to push for invocation of the War Powers Act; they claimed the U.S. was clearly engaged in hostilities. The law required that the president obtain congressional approval of military action extending beyond a period of 60 days. But the Senate voted 51-40 not to invoke the law. Following the September 21 raid, Iran amassed 60 gunboats and directed the flotilla toward Khafji, a Saudi-Kuwaiti oil facility. The USS La Salle, flagship of Rear Admiral Harold Bernsen, commander of the U.S. Navy Middle East Force, moved to intercept the gunboats, which turned back after being buzzed by Saudi warplanes. Another encounter involved an Iranian warship that locked fire control radar on a USN destroyer, the Kidd; warned off by the Kidd’s skipper, the Iranian ship sailed away.

Then, on October 8, Iranian gunboats fired at a U.S. Army helicopter, missing the target but attracting the attention of two U.S. AH-6 gunship choppers, which sank one of the gunboats and damaged two others. Iran responded by firing Silkworm missiles at the U.S.-owned Liberian supertanker Sungari and the reflagged Kuwaiti tanker Sea Isle City, damaging both vessels. There were no fatalities, though the American skipper of the Sea Isle City, Captain John Hunt, was blinded. Few doubted the U.S. would retaliate. Two weeks later, four U.S. destroyers fired over one thousand rounds of 5-in. shells into Iran’s Rashadat oil-loading platforms in the Persian Gulf — after giving the platform crews twenty minutes to evacuate. Ninety minutes of continuous shelling left the platforms smoldering ruins; SEAL commando teams exploded the pilings and sent the rubble plunging into the sea. The Iranians answered by firing another Silkworm at Sea Island, Kuwait’s deep-water oil-loading facility, destroying the loading dock.

“We’re not going to have a war with Iran,” said President Reagan. “They’re not that stupid.” But it certainly seemed as though an undeclared war was already underway. A public opinion poll revealed that while 68% of Americans expected a “military exchange” between the U.S. and Iran, 60% were in favor of stronger retaliatory action against the Iranians.

The situation remained tense throughout the winter, but not until April 1988 did violence erupt once again in the Persian Gulf. Ten seamen were injured when the USN frigate Samuel B. Roberts struck an Iranian mine on April 14. Being careful to consult with Congress this time, President Reagan ordered a retaliatory strike against two Iranian oil platforms in the southern gulf — platforms that served as bases for Iran’s intelligence service. While one platform was shelled by the frigates Simpson and Bagley, Marines helicoptered to the second, seized it, planted explosive charges, and destroyed it. A few minutes later, the Simpson sank an Iranian patrol boat that had fired a missile at the USN guided-missile cruiser Wainwright. (The Wainwright defended itself by dispensing aluminum chaff in the air, which deflected the missile.)

Meanwhile, near the Strait of Hormuz, two Iranian frigates and several gunboats were sunk by American warships and an F-14 Tomcat from the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise. During the day-long battle, a Cobra helicopter carrying two American crewmen was shot down by the Iranians. This defeat at sea, coupled with grave setbacks in the land war with Iraq, persuaded Iranian leaders to seek improved relations with the West. The Ayatollah Khomeini agreed with Hashemi Rafsanjani, Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, on the need to pursue a new foreign policy that would defuse tensions in the Persian Gulf. As for the United States, its resolve in the gulf in 1987-88 improved its standing with allies, not only in the Middle East but also around the world.

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[SHOOTER13]

1990 – USS Roark rescues 42 refugees from unseaworthy craft in South China Sea.

1993 – Intel Corp. introduced the Pentium microprocessor. It had 3.1 million transistors.

1993 – Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal is approved for Somalia veterans by the Joints Chief of Staff.

1995 – Shawn Nelson steals a tank from a military installation and goes on a rampage in San Diego resulting in a 25 minute police chase. Nelson is killed by an officer after the tank got stuck on a concrete barrier and tried to break free.

1997 – Russia’s Mir space station received a new oxygen generator and a fresh American astronaut, courtesy of space shuttle Atlantis.

1999 – The US announced a 400,000 ton food aid donation to North Korea, as inspectors flew in to check on nuclear weapons development.

1999 – US authorities charged Jean-Philippe Wispelaere of Australia for trying to sell classified American defense documents. Wispelaere had worked in Canberra for the Australian Defense Intelligence Organization.

1999 – The Coast Guard “kept the peace” when the Makah Indian tribe hunted and killed a gray whale in Neah Bay, Washington. The Makah were guaranteed the right to hunt whales in their 1855 treaty with the U.S.

2002 – Coalition forces battled enemy forces in Operation Condor in the Khost region. A pan-Arab newspaper quoted Mullah Mohammed Omar as saying Osama bin Laden is alive and that the future of the US in Afghanistan is “fire, hell and total defeat.”

2003 – In Iraq US forces arrested Kamal Mustafa Abdallah Sultan al-Tikriti, former secretary of the Republican Guard (listed as No. 10 and the queen of clubs). Univ. students and teachers returned to their campuses.

2004 – The US military in Iraq reported that a roadside bomb containing deadly sarin nerve agent had exploded a few days earlier near a U.S. military convoy.

2005 – U.S. authorities detain Luis Posada Carriles, a CIA-linked anti-Castro militant, considered a terrorist by Cuba.

2006 – Operation Mountain Thrust was launched. There was heavy fighting during June and July 2006, with Afghanistan seeing the bloodiest period since the fall of the Taliban regime. The Taliban showed great coordination in their attacks, even capturing two districts of Helmand province at the end of July, which were retaken a few days later. The Taliban suffered during the fighting more than 1,100 killed and close to 400 captured. Heavy aerial bombing was the main factor. But even so the coalition forces had close to 150 soldiers killed and 40 Afghan policemen captured by the Taliban.

2006 – The aircraft carrier USS Oriskany is sunk in the Gulf of Mexico as an artificial reef. USS Oriskany (CV/CVA-34) – nicknamed Mighty O, and occasionally referred to as the O-boat – was one of the few Essex-class aircraft carriers completed only after World War II for the United States Navy. The ship was named for the Revolutionary War Battle of Oriskany. The history of Oriskany differs considerably from that of her sister ships. Originally designed as a “long-hulled” Essex-class ship (considered by some authorities to be a separate class, the Ticonderoga class) her construction was suspended in 1947. She eventually was commissioned in 1950 after conversion to an updated design called SCB-27 (“27-Charlie”), which became the template for modernization of 14 other Essex-class ships.

Oriskany was the final Essex-class ship completed. She operated primarily in the Pacific into the 1970s, earning two battle stars for service in the Korean War, and five for service in the Vietnam War. In 1966 one of the worst shipboard fires since World War II broke out on Oriskany when a magnesium flare was accidentally ignited; forty-four men died in the fire. Oriskany‍’s post-service history also differs considerably from that of her sister ships. Decommissioned in 1976, she was sold for scrap in 1995, but was repossessed in 1997 because nothing was being done (lack of progress).

In 2004 it was decided to sink her as an artificial reef off the coast of Florida in the Gulf of Mexico. After much environmental review and remediation to remove toxic substances, she was carefully sunk, settling in an upright position at a depth accessible to recreational divers. As of 2008, Oriskany is “the largest vessel ever sunk to make a reef”. Oriskany is mentioned in the 1986 film Top Gun as the ship from which the main character’s father had flown during the Vietnam War. She has been featured in films such as Men of the Fighting Lady and The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954) and What Dreams May Come (1998).


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

KENDALL, WILLIAM W.
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company A, 49th Indiana Infantry. Place and date: At Black River Bridge, Miss., 17 May 1863. Entered service at: Dubois County, Ind. Birth: Dubois County, Ind. Date of issue: 12 February 1894. Citation: Voluntarily led the company in a charge and was the first to enter the enemy’s works, taking a number of prisoners.

DAY, JAMES
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty as a squad leader serving with the Second Battalion, Twenty-Second Marines, Sixth Marine Division, in sustained combat operations against Japanese forces on Okinawa, Ryukya Islands from 14 to 17 May 1945. On the first day, Corporal Day rallied his squad and the remnants of another unit and led them to a critical position forward of the front lines of Sugar Loaf Hill. Soon thereafter, they came under an intense mortar and artillery barrage that was quickly followed by a ferocious ground attack by some forty Japanese soldiers.

Despite the loss of one-half of his men, Corporal Day remained at the forefront, shouting encouragement, hurling hand grenades, and directing deadly fire, thereby repelling the determined enemy. Reinforced by six men, he led his squad in repelling three fierce night attacks but suffered five additional Marines killed and one wounded, whom he assisted to safety. Upon hearing nearby calls for corpsman assistance, Corporal Day braved heavy enemy fire to escort four seriously wounded Marines, one at a time, to safety. Corporal Day then manned a light machine gun, assisted by a wounded Marine, and halted another night attack. In the ferocious action, his machine gun was destroyed, and he suffered multiple white phosphorous and fragmentation wounds. He reorganized his defensive position in time to halt a fifth enemy attack with devastating small arms fire.

On three separated occasions, Japanese soldiers closed to within a few feet of his foxhole, but were killed by Corporal Day. During the second day, the enemy conducted numerous unsuccessful swarming attacks against his exposed position. When the attacks momentarily subsided, over 70 enemy dead were counted around his position. On the third day, a wounded and exhausted Corporal Day repulsed the enemy’s final attack, killing a dozen enemy soldiers at close range. Having yielded no ground and with more than 100 enemy dead around his position, Corporal Day preserved the lives of his fellow Marines and made a significant contribution to the success of the Okinawa campaign.

By his extraordinary heroism, repeated acts of valor, and quintessential battlefield leadership, Corporal Day inspired the efforts of his outnumbered Marines to defeat a much larger enemy force, reflecting great credit upon himself and upholding the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service.

*BURKE, ROBERT C.
Rank and organization: Private First Class, U.S. Marine Corps, Company 1, 3d Battalion, 27th Marines, 1st Marine Division (Rein), FMF. Place and date: Southern Quang Nam Province Republic of Vietnam, 17 May 1968. Entered service at: Chicago, Ill. Born: 7 November 1949, Monticello, Ill. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty for service as a machine gunner with Company 1. While on Operation ALLEN BROOK, Company 1 was approaching a dry river bed with a heavily wooded treeline that borders the hamlet of Le Nam (1), when they suddenly came under intense mortar, rocket propelled grenades, automatic weapons and small-arms fire from a large, well concealed enemy force which halted the company’s advance and wounded several marines. Realizing that key points of resistance had to be eliminated to allow the units to advance and casualties to be evacuated, Pfc. Burke, without hesitation, seized his machine gun and launched a series of 1-man assaults against the fortified emplacements.

As he aggressively maneuvered to the edge of the steep river bank, he delivered accurate suppressive fire upon several enemy bunkers, which enabled his comrades to advance and move the wounded marines to positions of relative safety. As he continued his combative actions, he located an opposing automatic weapons emplacement and poured intense fire into the position, killing 3 North Vietnamese soldiers as they attempted to flee. Pfc. Burke then fearlessly moved from one position to another, quelling the hostile fire until his weapon malfunctioned. Obtaining a casualty’s rifle and hand grenades, he advanced further into the midst of the enemy fire in an assault against another pocket of resistance, killing 2 more of the enemy.

Observing that a fellow marine had cleared his malfunctioning machine gun he grasped his weapon and moved into a dangerously exposed area and saturated the hostile tree line until he fell mortally wounded. Pfc. Burke’s gallant actions upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the U.S. Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

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[SHOOTER13]

18 May

1631 – English colony of Massachusetts Bay granted Puritans voting rights and John Winthrop was elected 1st governor of Massachusetts.

1652 – Rhode Island passes the first law in English-speaking North America making slavery illegal.

1775 – Benedict Arnold captures British sloop and renames her Enterprise, first of many famous ships with that name.

1846 – US troops attacked at the Rio Grande and occupied Matamoros.

1861 – Battle of Sewell’s Point VA was the 1st Federal offense against South.

1861 – Arkansas admitted to the Confederate States of America

1862 – William High Keim (b.1813), US Union Brigadier-General, died in camp of fever in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

1863 – Union General Ulysses S. Grant surrounds Vicksburg, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, in one of the most brilliant campaigns of the war. Beginning in the winter of 1862-63, Grant made several attempts to capture Vicksburg. In March, he marched his army down the west bank of the Mississippi, while union Admiral David Porter’s flotilla ran past the substantial batteries that protected the city. They met south of the city, and Grant crossed the river and entered Mississippi. He then moved north to approach Vicksburg from its more lightly defended eastern side. In May, he had to split his army to deal with a threat from Joseph Johnston’s Rebels in Jackson, the state capital that lay 40 miles east of Vicksburg. After defeating Johnston’s forces, Grant moved toward Vicksburg.

On May 16th, Grant fought the Confederates under John C. Pemberton at Champion’s Hill and defeated them decisively. He then attacked again at the Big Black River the next day, and Pemberton fled into Vicksburg with Grant following close behind. The trap was now complete and Pemberton was stuck in Vicksburg, although his forces would hold out until July 4. In the three weeks since Grant crossed the Mississippi in the campaign to capture Vicksburg, Grant’s men marched 180 miles and won five battles. They took nearly 100 Confederate artillery pieces and nearly 6,000 prisoners, all with relatively light losses.

1864 – The fighting at Spotsylvania in Virginia, reached its peak at the Bloody Angle.

1864 – Battle of Yellow Bayou, LA (Bayou de Glaize, Old Oaks).

1864 – James Byron Gordon (41) Confederate Brigadier-General, died.

1871 – The Kiowa Chief Satanta joins with other Indians to massacre a wagon train near the Red River in northeastern Texas. One of the leading chiefs of the Kiowa in the 1860s and 1870s, Satanta was a fearsome warrior but also a skilled orator and diplomat. He helped negotiate and signed treaties with the U.S. establishing a Kiowa reservation in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), but Satanta remained resistant to government efforts to force the Kiowa to abandon their nomadic ways. The 1867 treaty allowed the Kiowa periodically to leave the reservation to hunt buffalo, but for more than a year, Satanta and other Kiowa continued to hunt and never even set foot on reservation lands. Fearing the Kiowa hunters would never come to the reservation, in late 1868 General Philip Sheridan had them arrested and brought in by force.

From the start, Satanta detested reservation life. He did not intend to become a farmer, a chore he considered to be women’s work. The beef provided by the Indian agents was stringy and vastly inferior to fresh buffalo, and he hated the tasteless corn they received. In 1870, when the Indian agent finally agreed that they could leave on another of the hunts provided for by the treaty, Satanta and several Kiowa happily rode off to Texas in search of buffalo. Along the way, they raided several white settlers, but the Kiowa were not identified and later returned to the reservation. The following spring, Satanta grew more aggressive. He joined a large party of other Kiowa and Commanche who bridled under the restrictions of the reservation and determined to leave. Heading south to Texas, the Indians eluded army patrols along the Red River and crossed into Texas.

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[SHOOTER13]

{ 1871 continued... }

On this day in 1871, they spotted a wagon train traveling along the Butterfield Trail. Hoping to steal guns and ammunition, the warriors attacked the 10 freight trains, killing seven teamsters. They let the remaining drivers escape while they looted the wagons. Again, Satanta and the other warriors returned to the reservation. Informed of the Texas raid, the Indian agent asked if any of his charges had participated. Amazingly, Satanta announced that he had led the raid, and that their poor treatment on the reservation justified it. “I have repeatedly asked for arms and ammunition,” he explained, “which you have not furnished, and made many other requests, which have not been granted.” Taken to Texas for trial, Satanta was sentenced to hang, but the penalty was later commuted to life in prison. Besieged with humanitarian requests, the Texas governor paroled Satanta back to the reservation in 1873.

The following summer, Satanta again led war parties off the reservations, this time to participate in the Red River War from 1874 to 1875. By October 1875, Satanta and his allies were again forced to surrender. Despite his vocal protests that he preferred execution to imprisonment, Satanta was returned to the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. He fell into a deep depression, refused to eat, and slowly began to starve to death. Transferred to the prison hospital in 1878, he committed suicide by leaping headfirst from a second-story window.

1899 – The First Hague Peace Conference opened in the Netherlands as 26 nations met on World Goodwill Day. The destruction or seizure of enemy property with no military value was banned at the convention.

1902 – Marines from the USS Ranger landed in Panama City to protect Americans.

1904 – Brigand Raizuli kidnapped American Ion H. Perdicaris in Morocco.

1916 – US pilot Kiffin Rockwell shot down German aircraft.

1917 – The U.S. Congress passed the Selective Service act, which allows for the registration and selective draft of men aged between 21 and 30, calling up soldiers to fight World War I.

1933 – The Tennessee Valley Authority Act was signed by President Roosevelt. The TVA proceeded to build dams in the Tennessee Valley, directly competing with private industry.

1940 – Tyler Kent, a clerk at the US Embassy in London, and Anna Wolkoff, a Russian emigree, are arrested on spying charges. Kent has had access to the correspondence between Churchill and Roosevelt, and Wolkoff has helped pass it to Germany via Italian diplomats. Kent’s diplomatic immunity is waived by the United States ambassador. Wolkoff has had connections with a pro-Fascist organization, the Right Club.

1942 – New York ended night baseball games for the rest of World War II.

1943 – On Attu, American forces advancing from the north and south link up. They reorganize for the drive on what is believe to be the final Japanese positions on the approach to Chicago Harbor.

1943 – Adolf Hitler launches Operation Alaric, the German occupation of Italy in the event its Axis partner either surrendered or switched its allegiance. This operation was considered so top secret that Hitler refused to issue a written order. Instead, he communicated verbally his desire that Field Marshal Erwin Rommel should assemble and ultimately command 11 divisions for the occupation of Italy to prevent an Allied foothold in the peninsula.

1944 – The Polish Corps, part of a multinational Allied Eighth Army offensive in southern Italy, finally pushes into Monte Cassino as the battle to break German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring’s defensive Gustav Line nears its end. The Allied push northward to Rome began in January with the landing of 50,000 seaborne troops at Anzio, 33 miles south of the Italian capital. Despite having met very little resistance, the Allies chose to consolidate their position rather than immediately battle north to Rome. Consequently, German forces under the command of Field Marshal Kesselring were able to create a defensive line that cut across the center of the peninsula. General Wladyslaw Anders, leader of the Polish troops who would raise their flag over the ruins of the famous Benedictine monastery at Monte Cassino, commenting on the cost of the battle, said, “Corpses of German and Polish soldiers, sometimes entangled in a deathly embrace, lay everywhere, and the air was full of the stench of rotting bodies.”

1944 – The US 163rd Infantry Regiment (General Doe) lands on Insoemar Island and advance to capture Wadke airfield.

1944 – The US 6th Army announces that the campaign in the Admiralty Islands has been completed. The Americans have suffered 1400 dead and wounded; the Japanese have suffered 3820 dead and 75 prisoners.

1945 – On Okinawa, the US 6th Marine Division, part of US 3rd Amphibious Corps, captures most of the Sugar Loaf Hill, as well as parts of the Half Moon and the Horseshoe positions that overlook it, after several days of bitter fighting. The US 1st Marine Division continues to battle for the Wana river valley and Wana Ridge but fails to eliminate Japanese resistance, even with flame-throwers and tanks in support. Meanwhile, the US 77th and 96th Divisions, parts of US 24th Corps, attack Japanese positions on Flat Peak without success.

1945 – On Luzon, American units make some progress toward Woodpecker Ridge.

1951 – The United Nations moved out of its temporary headquarters in Lake Success, N.Y., for its permanent home in Manhattan.

1951 – The U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for an embargo on the provision of strategic goods to China and North Korea by a vote of 47-0 with eight abstentions.

1951 – Naval Task Force 77 suffered its worst single day of the war when six planes failed to return to their carriers.

1953 – Air Force Captain Joseph C. McConnell, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, qualified as the top ace of the war and the first of only two triple jet aces (15 kills) after shooting down another three MiGs. Captain McConnell completed his combat tour on 19 May with a total of 106 missions and 16 MiG kills.

1953 – Air Force Lieutenant Colonel George I. Ruddell, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the 31st ace of the war after making his fifth MiG kill in an F-86 Sabre called “MiG Mad Mavis.”

1953 – USAF Reserve Lt Col Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier.

1958 – An F-104 Starfighter sets a world speed record of 1,404.19 mph (2,259.82 km/h).

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[SHOOTER13]

1964 – President Johnson, in a special message to Congress, asks for $125,000,000 more for economic and military aid to Vietnam.

1965 – Following a 5 day suspension of aerial bombing by the US, North Vietnam charges that the halt was only ‘an effort to camouflage American intensification of the war and deceive world opinion.’

1965 – President Johnson releases a memo from Secretary of Defense McNamara showing how the recently appropriated $700 million will be spent on the military. he promises US servicemen a ‘blank check’ for their needs.

1966 – U.S. Representative Melvin Laird (R-Wisconsin) states that because the Johnson administration is not providing the American public with precise information on planned troop deployments to Vietnam, a “credibility gap” is developing. Informed sources reported that 254,000 U.S. troops were serving in Vietnam, and that another 90,000 were performing tasks directly concerned with the war. These numbers were higher than those provided by the government. This was emblematic of the gap between what the administration said and what it did, leading to a growing distrust of the government among a large part of American society. This mistrust also plagued Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon, who made Laird his secretary of defense. Like the Johnson administration, Nixon’s administration was marked by attempts to manage the information released about the war. Under Nixon, this included the secret bombing campaign of Cambodia, which was kept from the American public until it was exposed by William Beecher, a military correspondent for the New York Times, in May 1969.

1967 – Following three days of bombardment form the North, a force of 5,500 US and South Vietnamese troops invade the southeastern section of the DMZ to smash a Communist buildup in the area and to prevent infiltration into South Vietnam. This operation will continue for the next 4 days.

1967 – The 26th marines begin Operation Prairie IV east of Khesanh to clear the DMZ south of the Ben Hai River. This will last to the end of May.

1968 – 1st Marine Division begins Operation Mameluke Thrust in central Quang Nam province. Operations will continue until late October.

1969 – More than 1,500 communist troops attack U.S. and South Vietnamese camps near Xuan Loc, located 38 miles east of Saigon. After five hours of intense fighting, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces were driven off. At the U.S. camp, 14 Americans were killed and 39 wounded; 24 enemy soldiers were killed in the action. At the South Vietnamese camp, 4 South Vietnamese were killed and 14 wounded, with 54 communist soldiers reported killed and 9 captured.

1969 – Launch of Apollo 10, dress rehearsal for first lunar landing mission. CDR John W. Young, USN, was the Command Module Pilot and CDR Eugene A. Cernan, USN, was the Lunar Module Pilot. During the 8 Day mission, the craft made 31 lunar orbits in 61.6 hours. Recovery was by HS-4 helicopters from USS Princeton (LPH-5).

1974 – In the Rajasthan Desert in the state of Pokhran, India successfully detonates its first nuclear weapon, a fission bomb similar in explosive power to the U.S. atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan. The test fell on the traditional anniversary of the Buddha’s enlightenment, and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi received the message “Buddha has smiled” from the exuberant test-site scientists after the detonation. The test, which made India the world’s sixth nuclear power, broke the nuclear monopoly of the five members of the U.N. Security Council–the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, China, and France. India, which suffered continuing border disputes with China, refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968. Fearing a second war with China and a fourth war with Pakistan, India actively sought the development of a nuclear deterrent in the early 1970s. The successful detonation of its first bomb on May 18, 1974, set off an expanded arms race with Pakistan that saw no further nuclear tests but the development of lethal intermediate and long-range ballistic missiles by both countries. On May 11, 1998, India resumed nuclear testing, leading to international outrage and Pakistan’s detonation of its first nuclear bomb later in the month.

1989 – A crowd of protesters, estimated to number more than one million, marches through the streets of Beijing calling for a more democratic political system. Just a few weeks later, the Chinese government moved to crush the protests. Protests in China had been brewing since the mid-1980s when the communist government announced that it was loosening some of the restrictions on the economy, allowing for a freer market to develop. Encouraged by this action, a number of Chinese (particularly students) began to call for similar action on the political front. By early 1989, peaceful protests began to take place in some of China’s largest urban areas. The largest of these protests took place around Tiananmen Square in the center of Beijing.

By the middle of May 1989, enormous crowds took to the streets with songs, slogans, and banners calling for greater democracy and the ouster of some hard-line Chinese officials. The Chinese government responded with increasingly harsh measures, including arrests and beatings of some protesters. On June 3, 1989, Chinese armed forces stormed into Tiananmen Square and swept the protesters away. Thousands were killed and over 10,000 were arrested in what came to be known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

The protests attracted worldwide attention. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev applauded the protesters and publicly declared that reform was necessary in communist China. In the United States, the Chinese students were treated like heroes by the American press. Following the Tiananmen Square Massacre, a shocked U.S. government suspended arms sales to China and imposed economic sanctions. The Chinese government, however, refused to bend, referring to the protesters as “lawless elements” of Chinese society.

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1999 – Pres. Clinton declared for the first time that he would consider ground troops in Kosovo if he becomes convinced that the NATO bombing strategy would not bring victory.

1999 – Two Serb soldiers held as prisoners of war by the U.S. military in Germany were turned over to Yugoslav authorities.

1999 – NATO missiles hit at least 4 cities in Yugoslavia and one woman was reported killed and 12 injured. Some 1000 ethnic Albanians crossed into Macedonia.

2002 – The pan-Arab newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat quoted Abdel Azeem al-Muhajir, a senior al Qaeda leader, that a strike against the US was imminent and that the recent attack in Tunisia was its work.

2004 – In Afghanistan U.S. forces killed 3 Taliban commanders and arrested five more members of the hardline militia.

2004 – Before dawn U.S. troops killed nine fighters loyal to al-Sadr in Karbala. Ten Iraqi fighters were wounded in the clashes near the city’s Imam Hussein and Imam Abbas shrines. At least five Iraqi insurgents were killed during clashes in Karbala later in the day.

2011 – The United States Coast Guard reopens a section of the Mississippi River to shipping that was closed on on the 17th as a result of the 2011 Mississippi River floods.

2011 – The Space Shuttle Endeavour docks at the International Space Station for the final time.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

BEDDOWS, RICHARD
Rank and organization: Private, 34th New York Battery. Place and date: At Spotsylvania, Va., 18 May 1864. Entered service at: ——. Birth: England. Date of issue: 10 July 1896. Citation: Brought his guidon off in safety under a heavy fire of musketry after he had lost it by his horse becoming furious from the bursting of a shell.

ENGLE, JAMES E.
Rank and organization: Sergeant, Company I, 97th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Bermuda Hundred, Va., 18 May 1864. Entered service at: Chester, Pa. Birth: Chester, Pa. Date of issue: 17 December 1896. Citation: Responded to a call for volunteers to carry ammunition to the regiment on the picket line and under a heavy fire from the enemy assisted in carrying a box of ammunition to the front and remained to distribute the same.

KINSEY, JOHN
Rank and organization: Corporal, Company B, 45th Pennsylvania Infantry. Place and date: At Spotsylvania, Va., 18 May 1864. Entered service at: —–. Birth: Lancaster County, Pa. Date of issue: 2 March 1897. Citation: Seized the colors, the color bearer having been shot, and with great gallantry succeeded in saving them from capture.

WHITMAN, FRANK M.
Rank and organization: Private, Company G, 35th Massachusetts Infantry. Place and date: At Antietam, Md., 17 September 1862. At Spotsylvania, Va., 18 May 1864. Entered service at: Ayersville, Mass. Birth: Woodstock, Maine. Date of issue: 21 February 1874. Citation: Was among the last to leave the field at Antietam and was instrumental in saving the lives of several of his comrades at the imminent risk of his own. At Spotsylvania was foremost in line in the assault, where he lost a leg.

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*GRANDSTAFF, BRUCE ALAN
Rank and organization: Platoon Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company B, 1st Battalion, 8th Infantry. Place and date: Pleiku Province, Republic of Vietnam, 18 May 1967. Entered service at: Spokane, Wash. Born: 2 June 1934, Spokane, Wash. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. P/Sgt. Grandstaff distinguished himself while leading the Weapons Platoon, Company B, on a reconnaissance mission near the Cambodian border. His platoon was advancing through intermittent enemy contact when it was struck by heavy small arms and automatic weapons fire from 3 sides. As he established a defensive perimeter, P/Sgt. Grandstaff noted that several of his men had been struck down. He raced 30 meters through the intense fire to aid them but could only save 1. Denied freedom to maneuver his unit by the intensity of the enemy onslaught, he adjusted artillery to within 45 meters of his position. When helicopter gunships arrived, he crawled outside the defensive position to mark the location with smoke grenades. Realizing his first marker was probably ineffective, he crawled to another location and threw his last smoke grenade but the smoke did not penetrate the jungle foliage. Seriously wounded in the leg during this effort he returned to his radio and, refusing medical aid, adjusted the artillery even closer as the enemy advanced on his position.

Recognizing the need for additional firepower, he again braved the enemy fusillade, crawled to the edge of his position and fired several magazines of tracer ammunition through the jungle canopy. He succeeded in designating the location to the gunships but this action again drew the enemy fire and he was wounded in the other leg. Now enduring intense pain and bleeding profusely, he crawled to within 10 meters of an enemy machine gun which had caused many casualties among his men. He destroyed the position with hand grenades but received additional wounds. Rallying his remaining men to withstand the enemy assaults, he realized his position was being overrun and asked for artillery directly on his location. He fought until mortally wounded by an enemy rocket. Although every man in the platoon was a casualty, survivors attest to the indomitable spirit and exceptional courage of this outstanding combat leader who inspired his men to fight courageously against overwhelming odds and cost the enemy heavy casualties. P/Sgt. Grandstaff’s selfless gallantry, above and beyond the call of duty, are in the highest traditions of the U.S. Army and reflect great credit upon himself and the Armed Forces of his country.

*GUENETTE, PETER M.
Rank and organization: Specialist Fourth Class, U.S. Army, Company D, 2d Battalion (Airborne), 506th Infantry, 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile). Place and date: Quan Tan Uyen Province, Republic of Vietnam, 18 May 1968. Entered service at: Albany, N.Y. Born: 4 January 1948, Troy, N.Y. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Sp4c. Guenette distinguished himself while serving as a machine gunner with Company D, during combat operations. While Sp4c. Guenette’s platoon was sweeping a suspected enemy base camp, it came under light harassing fire from a well equipped and firmly entrenched squad of North Vietnamese Army regulars which was serving as a delaying force at the entrance to their base camp. As the platoon moved within 10 meters of the fortified positions, the enemy fire became intense. Sp4c. Guenette and his assistant gunner immediately began to provide a base of suppressive fire, ceasing momentarily to allow the assistant gunner time to throw a grenade into a bunker. Seconds later, an enemy grenade was thrown to Sp4c. Guenette’s right flank. Realizing that the grenade would kill or wound at least 4 men and destroy the machine gun, he shouted a warning and smothered the grenade with his body, absorbing its blast. Through his actions, he prevented loss of life or injury to at least 3 men and enabled his comrades to maintain their fire superiority. By his gallantry at the cost of his life in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service, Sp4c. Guenette has reflected great credit on himself, his unit, and the U.S. Army.

*STEWART, JIMMY G.
Rank and organization: Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company B, 2d Battalion, 12th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile). Place and date: Republic of Vietnam, 18 May 1966. Entered service at: Ashland, Ky. Born: 25 December 1942, West Columbia, W. Va. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Early in the morning a reinforced North Vietnamese company attacked Company B, which was manning a defensive perimeter in Vietnam. The surprise onslaught wounded 5 members of a 6-man squad caught in the direct path of the enemy’s thrust. S/Sgt. Stewart became a lone defender of vital terrain–virtually 1 man against a hostile platoon. Refusing to take advantage of a lull in the firing which would have permitted him to withdraw, S/Sgt. Stewart elected to hold his ground to protect his fallen comrades and prevent an enemy penetration of the company perimeter. As the full force of the platoon-sized man attack struck his lone position, he fought like a man possessed; emptying magazine after magazine at the determined, on-charging enemy. The enemy drove almost to his position and hurled grenades, but S/Sgt. Stewart decimated them by retrieving and throwing the grenades back.

Exhausting his ammunition, he crawled under intense fire to his wounded team members and collected ammunition that they were unable to use. Far past the normal point of exhaustion, he held his position for 4 harrowing hours and through 3 assaults, annihilating the enemy as they approached and before they could get a foothold. As a result of his defense, the company position held until the arrival of a reinforcing platoon which counterattacked the enemy, now occupying foxholes to the left of S/Sgt. Stewart’s position. After the counterattack, his body was found in a shallow enemy hole where he had advanced in order to add his fire to that of the counterattacking platoon. Eight enemy dead were found around his immediate position, with evidence that 15 others had been dragged away. The wounded whom he gave his life to protect, were recovered and evacuated. S/Sgt. Stewart’s indomitable courage, in the face of overwhelming odds, stands as a tribute to himself and an inspiration to all men of his unit. His actions were in the highest traditions of the U.S. Army and the Armed Forces of his country.

*WAYRYNEN, DALE EUGENE
Rank and organization: Specialist Fourth Class, U.S. Army, Company B, 2d Battalion, 502d Infantry, 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division. Place and date: Quang Ngai, Province, Republic of Vietnam, 18 May 1967. Entered service at: Minneapolis, Minn. Born: 18 January 1947, Moose Lake, Minn. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty. Sp4c. Wayrynen distinguished himself with Company B, during combat operations near Duc Pho. His platoon was assisting in the night evacuation of the wounded from an earlier enemy contact when the lead man of the unit met face to face with a Viet Cong soldier. The American’s shouted warning also alerted the enemy who immediately swept the area with automatic weapons fire from a strongly built bunker close to the trail and threw hand grenades from another nearby fortified position. Almost immediately, the lead man was wounded and knocked from his feet.

Sp4c. Wayrynen, the second man in the formation, leaped beyond his fallen comrade to kill another enemy soldier who appeared on the trail, and he dragged his injured companion back to where the point squad had taken cover. Suddenly, a live enemy grenade landed in the center of the tightly grouped men. Sp4c. Wayrynen, quickly assessing the danger to the entire squad as well as to his platoon leader who was nearby, shouted a warning, pushed one soldier out of the way, and threw himself on the grenade at the moment it exploded. He was mortally wounded. His deep and abiding concern for his fellow soldiers was significantly reflected in his supreme and courageous act that preserved the lives of his comrades. Sp4c. Wayrynen’s heroic actions are in keeping with the highest traditions of the service, and they reflect great credit upon himself and the U.S. Army.

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19 May

1643 – Delegates from four New England colonies, Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Harbor, met in Boston to form a confederation: the United Colonies of New England.

1749 – King George II of England grants the Ohio Company a charter of several hundred thousand acres of land around the forks of the Ohio River, thereby promoting westward settlement by American colonists from Virginia. France had claimed the entire Ohio River Valley in the previous century, but English fur traders and settlers contested these claims. The royal chartering of the Ohio Company, an organization founded primarily by Virginian planters in 1747, directly challenged the French claim to Ohio and was a direct cause of the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754.

With the defeat of the French in 1763, the Ohio River and the Great Lakes areas were placed within the boundaries of Canada, and the Ohio Company was merged with another land company to better exploit the region. Settlers in Ohio resented these acts and joined the patriots in their struggle against the British in the American Revolution. In 1783, Ohio was ceded to the United States with the signing of the Treaty of Paris. In 1788, Marietta became the first permanent American settlement in what was known as the Old Northwest. During the next decade, Native Americans were suppressed and British traders were pushed out, and in 1799 Ohio became a U.S. territory. In 1803, it entered the Union as the 17th state.

1774 – Ann Lee and eight Shakers sailed from Liverpool to New York. The religious group originated in Quakerism and fled England due to religious persecution. They become the first conscientious objectors on religious grounds and were jailed during the American Revolution in 1776. In 1998 Suzanne Skees published “god Among the Shakers.” The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing is the full, proper name for the 19th-century religious group better known as the Shakers. Although they were the largest and best-known communal society a century ago, the Shakers were rarely referred to by their proper name. Outsiders dubbed them “Shakers” for the movements in their ritualistic dance.

1776 – American Revolutionary War: A Continental Army garrison surrenders in the Battle of The Cedars. The Battle of The Cedars (French: Les Cèdres) was a series of military confrontations early in the American Revolutionary War during the Continental Army’s invasion of Quebec that had begun in September 1775. The skirmishes, which involved limited combat, occurred in May 1776 at and around The Cedars, 28 miles west of Montreal, Quebec. Continental Army units were opposed by a small number of British troops leading a larger force of Indians (primarily Iroquois), and militia. Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, commanding the American military garrison at Montreal, had placed a detachment of his troops at The Cedars in April 1776, after receiving rumors of British and Indian military preparations to the west of Montreal.

The garrison surrendered on May 19 after a confrontation with a combined force of British and Indian troops led by Captain George Forster. American reinforcements on their way to The Cedars were also captured after a brief skirmish on May 20. All of the captives were eventually released after negotiations between Forster and Arnold, who was bringing a sizable force into the area. The terms of the agreement required the Americans to release an equal number of British prisoners. However, the deal was repudiated by Congress, and no British prisoners were freed. Colonel Timothy Bedel and Lieutenant Isaac Butterfield, leaders of the American force at The Cedars, were court-martialed and cashiered from the Continental Army for their roles in the affair. After distinguishing himself as a volunteer, Bedel was given a new commission in 1777. News of the affair included greatly inflated reports of casualties, and often included graphic but false accounts of atrocities committed by the Iroquois that made up the majority of the British forces.

1796 – A game protection law was passed by Congress to restrict encroachment by whites on Indian hunting grounds.

1846 – Secretary of Treasury Walker assigned Revenue Captain John A. Webster, USRCS, to control movements of vessels assigned to Army and to cooperate with the Navy in the War with Mexico.

1848 – Mexico ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo thus ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States for $15 million.

1858 – A pro-slavery band led by Charles Hameton executed unarmed Free State men near Marais des Cygnes on the Kansas-Missouri border.

1862 – Homestead Act became law and provided cheap land for settlement of West.

1863 – Union commander Major General Ulysses S. Grant fails in his first attempt to take the strategic Confederate city of Vicksburg, which sits on a bluff overlooking (and thereby controlling boat traffic on) the Mississippi River. After substantial causalities, he calls off the attack. Instead he develops a plan to encircle and besiege the city. Grant was a West Point trained engineer who had served in the Mexican War (1846-1848) but resigned from the Army in the 1850s. When the Civil War started, he was appointed by the governor of Illinois as the colonel of the 21st Illinois Volunteer Infantry. He soon proved his value as a battlefield commander and by 1864 would be placed in command of all Union armies. In 1868 he was elected as the 18th President of the United States.

1864 – Battle of Port Walthall Junction, VA (Bermuda Hundred).

1864 – U.S.S. General Price, Acting Lieutenant Richardson, engaged a Confederate battery on the banks of the Mississippi River at Tunica Bend, Louisiana. The Southerners, who had been attempting to destroy transport steamer Superior, were forced to evacuate their river position. Richardson put ashore a landing party which burned a group of buildings used by the Confederates as a headquarters from which attacks against river shipping were launched.

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1864 – A dozen days of fighting around Spotsylvania ends with a Confederate attack against the Union forces. The epic campaign between the Army of the Potomac, under the effective direction of Ulysses S. Grant, and Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia began at the beginning of May when Union forces crossed the Rapidan River. After a bloody two-day battle in the Wilderness forest, Grant moved his army further south toward Spotsylvania Court House. This move was a departure from the tactics of the previous three years in the eastern theater of the Civil War. Since 1861, the Army of the Potomac had been coming down to Virginia under different commanders only to be defeated by the Army of Northern Virginia, usually under Lee’s direction, and had always returned northward.

But Grant was different than the other Union generals. He knew that by this time Lee could not sustain constant combat. The numerical superiority of the Yankees would eventually wear Lee down. When Grant ordered his troops to move south, a surge of enthusiasm swept the Union veterans; they knew that in Grant they had an aggressive leader who would not allow the Confederates time to breathe.

Nevertheless, the next stop proved to be more costly than the first. After the battle in the Wilderness, Grant and Lee waged a footrace for the strategic crossroads at Spotsylvania. Lee won the race, and his men dug in. On May 8th, Grant attacked Lee, initiating a battle that raged for 12 awful days. The climax came on May 12th, when the two armies struggled for nearly 20 hours over an area that became known as the Bloody Angle. The fighting continued sporadically for the next week as the Yankees tried to eject the Rebels from their breastworks.

Finally, when the Confederates attacked on May 19th, Grant prepared to pull out of Spotsylvania. Convinced he could never dislodge the Confederates from their positions, he elected to try to circumvent Lee’s army to the south. The Army of the Potomac moved, leaving behind 18,000 casualties at Spotsylvania to the Confederates’ 12,000. In less than three weeks Grant had lost 33,000 men, with some of the worst fighting yet to come.

1865 – President Jefferson Davis was captured by Union Cavalry in Georgia.

1882 – Commodore Shufeldt (USS Swatara) lands in Korea to negotiate first treaty between Korea and Western power.

1890 – Ho Chi Minh, revolutionist and leader of North Vietnam (1946-1969), was born. He fought the Japanese, French and United States to gain independence for his country.

1918 – Raoul Lufbery, one of the top-scoring US fighter pilots of the war with 17 victories, is killed during air combat. He had served with other American volunteers in the French Escadrille Lafayette (originally the Escadrille Americaine and credited with 38 air victories) before the United States’ entry into the war. Lufbery was the commander of the famed 94th “Hat in the Ring” Aero Squadron at the time of his death.

1921 – Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, which established national quotas for immigrants entering the United States.

1927 – The 11th Marine Regiment arrived at Esteli, Nicaragua, for garrison duty.

1941 – Viet Minh, a communist coalition, formed at Cao Bằng Province, Vietnam.

1942 – In the aftermath of the Battle of the Coral Sea, Task Force 16 heads to Pearl Harbor.

1943 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set Monday, May 1, 1944 as the date for the Normandy landings (“D-Day”). It would later be delayed over a month due to bad weather.

1943 – On Attu, American forces advance along Clevesy Pass toward Chicagof.

1944 – Allied forces of US 5th Army continue to make advances. The US 2nd Corps captures Gasta Itri and Monte Grande. The French Expeditionary Corps nearly reaches Pico and battle for Campodimele. Meanwhile, British armor and infantry overrun the Aquino airfield, in the Liri Valley but German antitank guns repulse an attempt to seize the town.

1944 – American aircraft the carriers of Task Group 58.2 (Admiral Montgomery) conduct a raid on Marcus Island.

1945 – On Luzon, in the Ipoh dam area north of Manila, where the US 43rd Division of US 11th Corps is operating, Japanese resistance ends. The US 152nd Division is holding its positions near Woodpecker Ridge. The US 25th Division, part of US 1st Corps, begins mopping up in the area north and west of Santa Fe.

1945 – On Okinawa, the US 77th Division suffers heavy casualties while fighting for the Ishimmi ridge and withdraws.

1945 – Some 272 American B-29 Superfortress bombers strike Hamamatsu, 120 miles (192 km) from Tokyo. Bombs are dropped through the clouds from medium altitude.

1945 – The UN Charter committee met in Muir Woods. The meeting was planned by Roosevelt on a suggestion by Secretary of the Interior Ickes: one of the sessions “might be held among the giant redwoods in Muir Woods. Not only would this focus attention upon the nation’s interest in preserving these mighty trees for posterity, but in such a “temple of peace” the delegates would gain a perspective and sense of time that could be obtained nowhere better than in such a forest.”

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1951 – The 2nd Infantry Division, with attached French and Dutch battalions, fought their way out of a Chinese trap in the mountains of central Korea, inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. The 38th Field Artillery Battalion fired 12,000 rounds in a 24-hour period in support of the division.

1958 – The United States and Canada formally established the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD).

1959 – The Peoples’ Army of Vietnam’s Military Transportation Group 559 formed on the 69th birthday of Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh. It ultimately resulted in the creation of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The trail was intended to facilitate the infiltrating of troops and transporting supplies from North Vietnam to support the revolution in South Vietnam.

1960 – USAF Maj. Robert M White took the X-15 to 33,222 miles.

1964 – The State Department announced the U.S. embassy in Moscow had been bugged. A network of more than 40 microphones embedded in the walls had been found.

1964 – The United States initiates low-altitude target reconnaissance flights over southern Laos by U.S. Navy and Air Force aircraft. Two days later, similar flights were commenced over northern Laos. These flights were code-named Yankee Team and were meant to assist the Royal Lao forces in their fight against the communist Pathet Lao and their North Vietnamese and Viet Cong allies.

1965 – 30th Naval Construction Regiment activated at Da Nang, Vietnam.

1967 – The first U.S. air strike on central Hanoi was launched.

1967 – One of the first major treaties designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons goes into effect as the Soviet Union ratifies an agreement banning nuclear weapons from outer space. The United States, Great Britain, and several dozen other nations had already signed and/or ratified the treaty. With the advent of the so-called “space race” between the United States and the Soviet Union, which had begun in 1957 when the Russians successfully launched the Sputnik satellite, some began to fear that outer space might be the next frontier for the expansion of nuclear weapons. To forestall that eventuality, an effort directed by the United Nations came to fruition in January 1967 when the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and dozens of other nations signed off on a treaty banning nuclear weapons from outer space.

The agreement also banned nations from using the moon, other planets, or any other “celestial bodies” as military outposts or bases. The agreement was yet another step toward limiting nuclear weapons. In 1959, dozens of nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, had agreed to ban nuclear weapons from Antarctica. In July 1963, the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed, banning open-air and underwater nuclear tests. With the action taken in May 1967, outer space was also officially declared off-limits for nuclear weapons.

1970 – To commemorate Ho Chi Minh’s 80th birthday, Communist forces shell more than 60 allied positions.

1971 – Hanoi initiates three days of heavy rocket and mortar attacks on US positions along the DMZ.

1972 – Units of South Vietnam’s 9th and 21st Divisions, along with several South Vietnamese airborne battalions, open new stretches of road south of An Loc and come within two miles of the besieged city. In the Central Highlands, North Vietnamese troops, preceded by heavy shelling, tried to break through the lines of South Vietnam’s 23rd Division defending Kontum, but the South Vietnamese troops held firm. These actions were part of the North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive (later called the “Easter Offensive”), a massive invasion by North Vietnamese forces on March 30 to strike the blow that would win them the war. The attacking force included 14 infantry divisions and 26 separate regiments, with more than 120,000 troops and approximately 1,200 tanks and other armored vehicles. The main North Vietnamese objectives, in addition to Quang Tri in the north and Kontum in the Central Highlands, included An Loc farther to the south.

Initially, the South Vietnamese defenders were almost overwhelmed, particularly in the northernmost provinces, where they abandoned their positions in Quang Tri and fled south in the face of the enemy onslaught. At Kontum and An Loc, the South Vietnamese were more successful in defending against the attacks, but only after weeks of bitter fighting. Although the defenders suffered heavy casualties, they managed to hold their own with the aid of U.S. advisors and American airpower. Fighting continued all over South Vietnam into the summer months, but eventually the South Vietnamese forces prevailed against the invaders and retook Quang Tri in September. With the communist invasion blunted, President Nixon declared that the South Vietnamese victory proved the viability of his Vietnamization program, which he had instituted in 1969 to increase the combat capability of the South Vietnamese armed forces.

1976 – The US Senate established congressional oversight over the CIA with the permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

1979 – R.C., “In The Navy” by Village People peaked at #3 on the pop singles chart.

1987 – President Reagan defended America’s presence in the Persian Gulf, two days after 37 American sailors were killed when an Iraqi warplane attacked the U.S. frigate Stark.

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1990 – Secretary of State James A. Baker III concluded an agreement with the Soviet Union to destroy chemical weapons and settle longstanding disputes over limits on nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

1995 – NASA’s administrator unveiled plans to slash thousands of aerospace jobs and to overhaul virtually every part of the agency.

1996 – The Endeavour Shuttle rocketed into orbit with six astronauts. One task was to deploy an experimental antennae that would inflate and swell to the size of a tennis court.

1999 – Ali A. Mohamed, a former US Army sergeant, was indicted for conspiring with Osama bin Laden to kill Americans abroad.

1999 – As NATO’s Operation Allied Force entered its ninth week, Russia’s special envoy to the Balkans called on both NATO and Yugoslavia to suspend hostilities.

2000 – The shuttle Atlantis lifted off with 7 astronauts on a mission to fix the International Space Station.

2000 – Nine countries banded together to petition entry into NATO in 2002. They included Albania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

2002 – In Afghanistan, Operation Mountain Lion began in an attempt to seal off the border.

2002 – A team of 50 US Green Berets landed in Tbilisi for a 2-year training program for Georgia’s army.

2003 – In central Iraq 4 US Marines on a resupply mission were killed when their Ch-46 Sea-Knight helicopter crashed into a canal and a fifth drowned trying to save them.

2004 – US Army Spc. Jeremy C. Sivits received the maximum penalty, one year in prison, reduction in rank and a bad conduct discharge, in the first court-martial stemming from mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison.

2006 – The case of Khaled el-Masri, who says he was abducted and tortured by the CIA because he was mistaken for another person, is dismissed by a district court in Alexandria, Virginia, as it would be a “grave risk” of damage to U.S. national security by exposing government secrets. The court rules that if the claims are true he “deserves a remedy” but this cannot be found in the court.

2006 – A riot takes place at the United States prison camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba after several inmates attempted suicide.

2013 – US Navy dolphins find a rare nineteenth-century torpedo off the coast of California.

2014 – The United States Department of Justice charges five Chinese military officers with hacking into private-sector American companies in a bid for competitive advantage.

2014 – Three supervisors at the Gainesville, Florida, VA hospital are placed on paid leave after investigators find a list of patients requiring follow-up care kept on paper, not in the VA’s computerized scheduling system.


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Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day

BROWN, JOHN H.
Rank and organization: First Sergeant, Company A, 47th Ohio Infantry. Place and date: At Vicksburg, Miss., 19 May 1863. Entered service at: Cincinnati, Ohio. Birth: Boston, Mass. Date of issue: 24 August 1896. Citation: Voluntarily carried a verbal message from Col. A. C. Parry to Gen. Hugh Ewing through a terrific fire and in plain view of the enemy.

HOWE, ORION P.
Rank and organization: Musician, Company C, 55th Illinois Infantry. Place and date: At Vicksburg, Miss., 19 May 1863. Entered service at: Woken, Ill. Birth: Portage County, Ohio. Date of issue: 2 3 April 1896. Citation: A drummer boy, 14 years of age, and severely wounded and exposed to a heavy fire from the enemy, he persistently remained upon the field of battle until he had reported to Gen. W. T. Sherman the necessity of supplying cartridges for the use of troops under command of Colonel Malmborg.

KEPHART, JAMES
Rank and organization: Private, Company C, 13th U.S. Infantry. Place and date: At Vicksburg, Miss., 19 May 1863. Entered service at: ——. Birth: Venango County, Pa. Date of issue: 13 May 1899. Citation: Voluntarily and at the risk of his life, under a severe fire of the enemy, aided and assisted to the rear an officer who had been severely wounded and left on the field.

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