Lehigh Valley Veteran History Project Roundtable
Lehigh Valley Veteran History Project RoundtableLehigh Valley Veteran History Project RoundtableLehigh Valley Veteran History Project Roundtable

Attention WAR TIME Veterans!

What happens to history when those who lived it can no longer tell their stories?

Of the 16,112,566 Americans who served in World War II, fewer than 2.5 million remain alive today. Statistically, we are losing 852 of these brave and honorable men and women every day. As we move toward the day when not a single WWII participant remains alive to tell his or her story, we will lose a large part of our culture and the first hand experiences of what has been deemed the Greatest Generation. Who can doubt that this loss will be extremely profound. As the generation passes on, so does the living memory of a world calamity that claimed 60 million lives.

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Thursday, April 26, 2012, beginning at 7:00 PM

Col. Ward B. Nickisch, U.S. Army (Retired)
Former Director of Casualty and Memorial Affairs for the U.S. Army

Col. Nickisch will discuss the current search and recovery process of POW/MIA’s from prior U.S. wars. His presentation (video and slide show) features an actual recovery mission using the scientific process to identify the body remains of our MIA’s from WWII and Korea. Col. Nickisch has a 30 year Army career including a tour of duty in Vietnam in 1970 and 1971. He later commanded two companies in Germany and a battalion in the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, NC. His last command was as Director of Casulty and Memorial Affairs, which had responsibility for the body ID laboratory in Hawaii. Col. Nickisch participated in recovery missions in Vietnam and served as a senior member of the US Delegation to the first bilateral talks with North Korea. These historically significant talks resulted in an agreement for the first joint recovery operation into North Korea. He was honored to be directly involved in the relating disinterment and identification of the remains of the Vietnam Unknown from Arlington National Cemetery in May 1998.

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Thursday, March 29, 2012, beginning at 7:00 PM

TechSgt. William J. Fili
Flight Engineer, 15th US Army Air Force, 450th Bomber Group, WWII, Africa, Italy and European Threatre

A veteran of 34 combat missions in a B-24, Liberator Bomber, in World War II before he was blown out of the skies over Europe, four miles above the Earth. He subsequently found himself in a POW camp in Bucharest, Romania. A veteran of the Ploesti oil field raids, TechSgt. Fili will talk about the profound heroism, and the awesome sacrifices made by individuals who voluntarily gave their lives to save their fellow combatants, so that they might survive the shambles of war. A successful author and lecturer, Mr. Fili has written four books detailing his wartime experiences. Startling first person accounts of what it feels like to drop bombs on other human beings, then to experience what it feels like to be on the receiving end of the falling bombs. Moreover, he describes what the bomber crews had to endure just to stay alive.

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War Stories: In Their Own Words

Pennsylvania Veterans Tell of Sacrifice and Courage
By David Venditta

An original 176-page collection of stories as told by Pennsylvanians who served in the armed forces during the major U.S. wars of the 20th century.

War Stories: In Their Own Words is a collection of stories as told by Pennsylvanians who served in the armed forces during the major U.S. wars of the 20th century – World Wars I and II, the Cold War, and the Korean and Vietnam wars. Published in The Morning Call over the last 12 years, these are vivid, personal accounts of men and women from the Lehigh Valley and beyond who had a role on the world stage at critical times. They are stories of heartbreak and suffering, humanity and courage that take us from the earliest days of the 1900s, when the cavalry was chasing Pancho Villa into the Mexican desert, to the early 1970s, when GIs slogged through the rice paddies of Vietnam.

For more than a decade, author David Venditta has documented the personal stories of America’s wars by letting the veterans speak for themselves. His in-depth interviews of men and women who served in combat zones are a remarkable record of courage and survival. This volume for the first time brings together a wide-ranging selection of the stories, presented with photos, maps and notes on the veterans’ post-war years. David is an editor at The Morning Call in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

Click here to order your copy today or call 610-508-1517.

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