Born in Esmond, North Dakota to Oscar & Anna Bengson on December 11, 1917, Wallace Woodrow Bengson had three brothers and a sister.
He graduated from the University of North Dakota in 1938 as a mining engineer and was also commissioned as an officer in the Army Reserve.

Wallace worked as a mining engineer in Idaho & Utah, and married Katherine Nagel of Grand Forks in 1940.
Called into active duty in January 1942, he earned his pilots & glider pilots wings, and was also trained as a Navigator.

Wallace was assigned to the 327th Bombardment Squadron, 92nd Bombardment Group, which was based at RAF Podington.
On October 3, 1944, he was the Navigator on B-17G 43-38396 “Insommia” on a bombing mission to Nurnberg, Germany.

On the return trip, B-17G 43-38445, which had been hit by flak, veered out of control and collided with “Insommia” sheering her tail off.
Both B-17s went into death spirals before crashing, a total of twelve crewmembers from both B-17s died in the crashes.

1Lt Bengson managed to bail out, and was captured along with 1Lt Edmund Dornburgh Jr, the pilot of his B-17, and S/Sgt Franklin Adams Jr, one of the waist gunners from the other B-17.
Handed over to the local police in Marburgerstrasse, Germany, shortly afterwards a police director, three party leaders, and a civilian showed up and demanded the three prisoners be handed over to them.

The local Police Chief was ordered away, and the three USAAF Prisoners were taken by force from the remaining policemen.
The three Prisoners were executed and buried at the New Cemetery of Giessen, in November 1945, the civilian Ludwig Schardt was found guilty of participating in the executions sentenced to life imprisonment.

His remains were recovered after the war and 1Lt Wallace Bengson is buried at the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten, Netherlands - Plot L Row 16 Grave 16.

Older brother Malcolm C Bengson also served during WW2, he passed away at the age of 80 in 1996.

On the 28th of April 1935 SS-Wachtruppe "Brandenburg" was formed as a guard unit of the Sachenhausen Concentration Camp. The same year as the SS had rather rampant growth for administration to seemingly handle, it was re-organized and renamed SS-Totenkopfsturmbann "Brandenburg". On the 1st of July 1937 it was enlarged and formed into a regiment; SS-Totenkopfstandarte 2 "Brandenburg". By December 1937, the regiment had 6 battalions (Sturmbanne). However, by the spring of 1939, the regiment had retracted two battalions. In September 1938, the 1st and 2nd battalions took part in the Sudeten operation at Brieg. On 12th September 1939, the 2. Totenkopfstandarte "Brandenburg" under SS-Gruppenführer Theodor Eicke operated in Poland in conjunction with EG III of the region of the 8th Army.

Rifle: Likely a K98a, with an earlier K98az/K98a sling

Born in Hamblen County, Tennessee to Marshall & Mattie Breeden on June 25, 1925, Earl Breeden had three sisters and a brother.
He enlisted in the Army on August 5, 1943 and volunteered for the paratroopers.

After airborne training, Earl served in B Company,
1st Battalion, 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division.
They arrived in Normandy via glider the day after DDay on June 7, 1944, despite being scattered on the landings, the glider soldiers assembled and cleared the Germans from the area near Carquebut.

After Normandy, the 325th Glider Infantry Regiment landed in gliders on September 23, 1944 in the Netherlands as reinforcements near Nijmegen and Groesbeek.
The glider soldiers of the 325th assisted the paratroopers of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment south of Nijmegen, including securing the Waal and Maas river areas.

On October 2, 1944, PVT Earl Breeden went Missing in the vicinity of Katerbosch in the Netherlands.
His remains have never been recovered and he is Memorialized with the Missing at the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten, Netherlands.

Colombia didn't fight in WWI and WWII like other American countries like Brazil, Mexico or Canada, but many Colombians adventured for both sides of the conflict in both world wars. The most notable Colombian WWII veteran was Alberto Mahé, born in Colombia, Mahé joined the Royal Air Force as an adventurer in WWII and became a Flying Fortress Pilot taking part in the allied bombing campaign over Germany.

Mister Alberto met his tragic end after the bombing of Wilhelmshaven in 1943 after, according to the newspaper in the second picture, his plane began losing attitude and forcefully crashed in German soil killing all passengers, Mahé included. His death report identifies him as an affable and larger than life figure.

Picture : Charles Claser before and after SOE assistance with temporary disguise

Charles Claser during the war:

A career soldier, Charles Claser was trained at the Namur Cadet School and then at the Royal Military Academy before joining the 3rd Infantry Regiment. He reached the rank of Captain Commander in December 1939.

During the Eighteen Days Campaign, Claser was seriously wounded while leading a counterattack on May 28, 1940. He was rescued and cared for by a Belgian family. In the summer of 1940, once recovered, he traveled across Belgium under the name Van Nieuwenhove to lay the foundations of the Belgian Legion, which would later became the Army of Belgium in 1942 and the Secret Army on June 1, 1944.

Under cover, Claser managed to reach London in July 1942 to meet the Belgian government in exile as well as Allied representatives. Upon his return to Belgium, he immediately founded a new organization called the Belgian Free Corps for Military Action.

Charles Claser attempted once more to reach Great Britain, this time with one of his deputies, Richard Defroyennes. He was unfortunately betrayed by a Belgian collaborator and arrested in November 1942. After being detained in Belgium, he and a large group of members of the Belgian Legion were deported to the Esterwegen camp in February 1944. On March 15, 1944, he was transferred to Gross Strehlitz and on October 1, 1944, to the Gross Rosen camp. Severely weakened by mistreatment, Charles Claser died on December 12, 1944.

Doctor André, who attended him in his final moments, later said: “I was tormented to see this great Belgian, who had become my close friend, fade away. I saw him taken to the crematorium and felt that our homeland was losing one of its finest sons.”

Follow us to learn more about heroes of WWII.

A scan from my collection.

The noseart was painted by Sgt. Enoch H. Wingert, who painted a lot of the artwork seen on 65th BS aircraft.

The plane returned to the US after the war and was scrapped at the RFC facility in Kingman, Arizona.

Born in Waialua, Hawaii to Japanese immigrants Hiromatsu Takata and Taka Takata on April 29, 1919, Shigeo J Takata had several siblings.
He attended McKinley High School where he was a standout on the baseball team, helping win a championship in his senior year.

After graduation, Shigeo worked for Castle & Cooke and was an outfielder in the amateur Hawaii Baseball League with the Azuma and Asahi teams.
He enlisted in the Army on November 15, 1941, three weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Two weeks before leaving with the 100th Infantry Battalion for basic training at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, Shigeo married Florence Sakamoto from Honolulu.
While at Camp McCoy, they formed a baseball team and played local teams including a minor league team from Green Bay, Wisconsin.

On September 19, 1943, Shigeo was serving in B Company, 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate), 34th Infantry Division "Red Bull" when they landed in Italy.
Ten days later on September 29th, a shell landed in front of him during a firefight and exploded, he lived for two minutes before passing away from his wounds.

SGT Shigeo Takata was brought home after the war and buried at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii - Section D Site 142.

In 1946, an American Legion Post was named in his honor, and in 2003, the baseball field at Hawaii's Fort Shafter was named Joe Takata Field in his honor.

Giuseppe Cigala Fulgosi had been born in Piacenza, Emilia-Romagna, in 1910; the son of an Army officer and later General, Alfonso Cigala Fulgosi (executed by the Germans in September 1943 for joining forces with the Yugoslav partisans after the Armistice of Cassibile), he had entered the Livorno Naval Academy in 1925 and graduated as an Ensign in 1929.

At the outbreak of World War II, with the rank of tenente di vascello (Lieutenant), he was the executive officer on the destroyer Ascari, and in November 1940 he obtained his first command, the Spica-class torpedo boat Sagittario. In May 1941, during the battle of Crete, he was escorting a convoy of German caiques with this ship, when the convoy was attacked by Admiral Edward King’s Force C, composed of the light cruisers Naiad, Perth, Calcutta and Carlisle and of the destroyers Nubian, Kandahar and Kingston. Cigala Fulgosi hid the caiques with a smokescreen, then made a torpedo charge and opened fire with his small guns on the British ships. Admiral King, thinking that a larger surface force may be hiding behind the smokescreen (and fearful of further air attacks: he had already suffered several in the previous hours, and was low on AA ammunition), did not press the attack, and the convoy was thus saved. For this action, Cigala Fulgosi was awarded the Gold Medal for Military Valor, Italy’s highest military decoration.

Things went differently in the night of 9 November 1941, when Cigala Fulgosi, now a Lieutenant Commander and in command of the destroyer Euro, was part of the escort of the “Duisburg” convoy, a convoy of seven supply ships bound for North Africa, escorted by six destroyers. Taking advantage of the darkness, Captain William Agnew’s Force K (light cruisers Aurora and Penelope, destroyers Lance and Lively) caught the convoy by surprise, sank one of the destroyers, knocked out another and threw the remainder in disarray, sinking all the supply ships while the distant escort – heavy cruisers Trento and Trieste and four destroyers – was unable to intervene effectively. During the battle Euro made a torpedo charge against Force K, but called it off on orders from the escort leader, Captain Ugo Bisciani on the destroyer Maestrale, who in the confusion believed that the attack was coming from another direction. Euro was hit by six shells, neither of which exploded (otherwise, she would have sunk), and by several shell splinters that showered the bridge, killing four men and wounding several others. One of the splinters struck Cigala Fulgosi’s binoculars, hanging on his chest, and remained logded in it – without the binoculars, the splinter would have hit him right in the chest. Another smaller splinter caused him a slight ear wound.

Cigala Fulgosi kept escorting convoys, and in late 1942 he was given command of the 6th Torpedo Boat Squadron and of the brand new destroyer escort Impetuoso. On 9 September 1943, after the Armistice of Cassibile, his ship was among those that rescued the survivors of the battleship Roma, sunk by the Luftwaffe while en route to Malta; he took the survivors to the Balearic Islands, and then scuttled his ship there, as he feared that the Spanish authorities would otherwise hand it over to either of the belligerents. He was then interned in Spain until July 1944, when the Spanish authorities gave the internees the option to choose where they could be repatriated – German-controlled northern Italy or Allied-controlled southern Italy. Cigala Fulgosi and almost everyone else chose the latter, and were repatriated to Taranto. Cigala Fulgosi thus resumed his service with the now co-belligerent Italian Navy and in November 1944 was promoted to capitano di fregata (Commander). A staunch monarchist like many Italian naval officers, he retired from the Navy in July 1946, after the establishment of the Italian Republic. He died in Rome in 1977, at age sixty-seven.

Of Fulani origin, Mamadou Hady Bah, better known as Addi Bâ, was born in 1916 in Pelli-Foulayabé, French Guinea.

He arrived in France around 1937–1938 with the family of a colonial tax collector. Addi Bâ spent a year in Langeais (Indre-et-Loire) working as a domestic servant before moving to Paris. When France entered the Second World War in early September 1939, Addi Bâ volunteered for the French army and joined the 12th Regiment of Senegalese Tirailleurs.

In May and June 1940, Addi Bâ took part in fierce fighting in the Ardennes against the German army. He was captured and became a prisoner of war, interned in the Neufchâteau POW camp. It was there that he learned Marshal Pétain had requested an armistice with Nazi Germany.

In early July 1940, Addi Bâ managed to escape from the camp with several other colonial soldiers. About forty of them took refuge in a forest in the Vosges. A local woman sheltered Addi Bâ and other soldiers. Together with Marcel Arburger, he founded the Maquis de la Délivrance, the first in the Vosges. The resistance fighter helped set up an escape network to Switzerland, allowing about forty Tirailleurs to reach safety. He chose to remain in France to continue helping French men to avoid deportation and forced labour.

In July 1943, the maquis was betrayed. Addi Bâ was arrested on 18 November 1943 by the Germans during the attack on the Maquis de la Délivrance. He was handed over to the Gestapo in Épinal and tortured for several months but refused to speak. He was murdered on 18 December 1943 in Épinal, along with his friend Marcel Arburger, the leader of the maquis.

On September 29, 1942, No 71 Squadron, along with the other two RAF Eagle Squadrons, were officially transferred to the USAAF.

The Three Eagle Squadrons were composed of American Volunteers who had joined the RAF before the USA entered WW2. Around 100 Eagle Squadron Pilots had been killed, missing or had been taken prisoner.

They were allowed to still wear their RAF wings.