Bill’s blog archive: Daily Posts

Cornelia Clark Fort and fellow female pilots
Cornelia Clark Fort and fellow female pilots
Cornelia Clark Fort and fellow female pilots
Cornelia Clark Fort and fellow female pilots
Cornelia Clark Fort and fellow female pilots

Women in WWII: Cornelia Clark Fort

In the course of researching the World War 2 military casualties buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery in Fort Worth, TX, I came across the name of Cornelia Clark Fort, who is buried in a cemetery by the same name in Nashville, TN. Cornelia’s headstone reads, “Killed in service to her country.” It’s an interesting and meaningful inscription, since women were not allowed to enlist as flyers in the military. And although women were extremely influential in the war effort, and some even died...
PFC Frank P. Witek
PFC Frank P. Witek
PFC Frank P. Witek
PFC Frank P. Witek

From “Satisfactory” to Medal of Honor

August 3, 2015 marks the 71st anniversary of the death of Frank Witek, by all accounts, a polite, but fairly ordinary kid from Chicago by way of Connecticut. Enlisting in the Marines after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Frank continued building his “good guy" résumé – competent, but not exemplary. But Fate has a way of sorting out the truly heroic ones, by putting them in situations where they can’t be anything else. Frank Witek distinguished himself in the most extraordinary way, when...