Created and led by historian Yannis Kadari (Cadet CEO), Vanguard is an international group of historians and authors who are passionate about WWII history.
2 subscribers
PFC Ira Hamilton Hayes was born in 1923 into the Akimel O'odham (Pima) Native American people in Arizona. He enlisted into the USMC Reserve in August 1942 and went on to see combat on the Solomon Island of Bougainville before taking part in the bloody landings on Iwo Jima on 19 February 1945. 2/10
Lucie was born into a working class family in Paris in June 1912. Her father, Louis Bernard, saw action in the Great War and was badly wounded in 1915. Her parents supported Lucie and her sister in the pursuit of their studies and after studying at the Sorbonne, whilst at the same time working as a dishwasher in a restaurant, she passed the tough competitive examination for the recruitment of associate professors and found work at the University of Strasbourg. 2/8
Victor Gregg would be haunted for the rest of his life by what he saw. He was in a prison in the city after having been sentenced to death for an act of sabotage at a soap factory he was forced to work in. A high esplosive bomb damaged the wall and he was able to escape and in the chaos of the raids, he was seen as just another POW and put to work clearing bodies during the attacks and after. 2/4
The two friends had taken flying lessons at the nearby aerodrome of Cormelles-le-Royal before the war and knew the area well. Both immediately joined the French air force on the outbreak of war and began their military pilot training. With the fall of France, they were sent to Oran in Algeria and began to think of ways of continuing the fight. 2/7
Led by Pierre Lavoix, the group of friends began making their plans in May. The Lavoix brothers already had a canoe, but another was needed for the other three. Renelde managed to buy one for only 300 francs, but there was a reason for its cheap price - it had a huge hole in it, but got a Kriegsmarine motorboat crew based at Berck to help repair it! 2/6
S/Sgt Turner was a typical US citizen soldier. Born in Berwick, Pennsylvania in 1921, he was drafted into the US Army in September 1943 after his twenty-second birthday. His unit left New York on 1 July 1944 and had its first taste of action in the latter phase of the Battle of Normandy and the subsequent push across France. 
Lilian Rolfe was born in Paris in 1914 to a British father and Russian mother. When war broke out, she was working at the British Embassy in Rio de Janeiro. She made her way to Britain in early 43 and joined the WAAF in May. She came to the attention of the SOE and was recruited in November, training as a wireless operator. During the early hours of 5 April 1944, she was on board one of two Lysanders (one was carrying Violette Szabo) that landed near Tours in occupied France. Working with local Resistance groups, she sent over sixty messages back to London, organizing arms drops and sending back intelligence. Her luck ran out on 31 July when she was arrested in Nangis, south-west of Paris. By the time of her execution, she could barely work, ill and worn out by the forced labour in various sub camps. She was thirty years old. 2/4
Born into a patriotic family, she could not accept the surrender of 28 May 1940 and entered into resistance working as a messenger for her father Jean-Luc who was involved in the Luc-Marc network. 2/7 
The drop is not without incident, there is thick fog and Eugène Déchelette (photo) breaks his ankle when he hits the ground and Marguerite gets tangled up in a tree. Yvon Morandat and Sabotage expert René Obadia are fine. 2/7 
Gustave Mesny, who had seen action during the Great War, commanded the 5th North African Infantry Division in the Battle of France and they fought like lions in defending the Lille Pocket, thus giving British units more time to evacuate from Dunkirk. Such was the defence of the six French divisions at Lille, German General Waeger allowed them to parade when they lay down their arms and saluted them. 2/6
The 333rd Field Artillery Battalion was a racially segregated unit composed of African-American troops. A day into the German offensive in the Ardennes, the unit fought back at Schoenberg near St. Vith and remained at the guns even when the Germans broke into their lines. 2/4 
The men were taken to a field by a crossroads and gunned down, but there were survivors. Peiper survived the war and was put on trial at Dachau with the main accusation concerning the Malmedy Massacre. 2/8 
Miller voluntarily enlisted in the fall of 1942 and was commissioned as a captain in the Army Specialist Corps before being transferred to the AAF Technical Training Command (TTC) where he formed a band. In May 44, Eisenhower requested the transfer of Miller's AAF band to Great Britain and was introduced to another star in London, the actor Lt. Col. David Niven who was deputy director of SHAEF Broadcasting. (Niven is seen here in the 1942 film 'First of the Few' with Leslie Howard who would die on 1 June 1943 when the plane he was flying in was shot down over the Bay of Biscay). 2/6
Bloch was born in Lyon on 6 July 1886 into a Jewish-Alsatian family and was working as a high school teacher in Amiens when the Great War broke out. Having already done his two years obligatory military service, he was mobilised as a sergeant into the 272nd Infantry Regiment and saw action during the bloody Battle of the Frontier and on the Marne, then later the Somme and other battles right up to the end of the war. 2/6
Edelweißpiraten were counter-culture groups of youths who were against the forced indoctrination of the Nazi party and its youth organisations (BDM and HJ) for whom they bore a particular hatred, occasionally ambushing groups of the latter and handing out a beating. 2/6 
The American paratroopers were from the 82nd Airborne who had been misdropped and they landed in the flooded marshlands around Graignes. Many would lose their lives drowning in the marshes before they had a chance to fight. The first paratrooper she saw was one who knocked on the farmhouse door. The family let him in and helped him dry off in front of the fire. 2/5
With the Allies only six miles away, local maquis groups harassed retreating German units. On the morning of the 27th, a Wehrmacht unit enters the village and the mayor, Charles Nardin, was ordered to gather all the menfolk under the pretext that they were to dig anti-tank ditches. 2/4
Audrey Kathleen Ruston was born in Brussels in 1929 to Baroness Ellea van Heemstra and British father Joseph Ruston (he later added Hepburn to his name as he wrongly thought he was a descendent of James Hepburn, 3rd husband of Mary Queen of Scots. 2/12 
After the fall of France, the border area became filled with refugees from as far away as Holland, trying to escape into neutral Spain. One Dutch family, unsuccessful in making the crossing, was that of Fernand De Greef, his wife Elvire and their two children Frederick and Janine, who settled in the Pyreneen town of Anglet, near the border. 2/5
Born in 1895 in the village Auffargis in the Chevreuse valley south west of Paris, his father was a gamekeeper for the Rothschild family who owned the nearby Vaux-de-Cernay Abbey. When war came in 1914, he was serving in the 131st infantry regiment based in Orléans, but he soon transferred to the nascent air arm and qualified as a pilot in 1915. 2/9
Elisabeth was born on 5 February 1915 in Bordes in the Loiret department and was one of five siblings (she is seen here on the right). She studied in Orléans and when war came in 1939 was in St. Omer in northern France where she worked as a school teacher. 2/7 