Stories tagged with: world war ii

• Baptist workers join those remembering the Holocaust

  by Kelvin Joseph, posted Monday, January 27, 2020 (3 years ago)

  

  Photo by Kelvin Joseph

  KRAKÓW, Poland (BP) -- The twisting of my gut was expected, but it was much deeper than I had imagined. Standing in the place where Nazi Germans murdered more than a million Jews and thousands of other people deemed undesirable, I could not escape the feeling. This wave of emotion flooded over me as I walked through the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, near Kraków, Poland, the city my wife and I have moved to in order to serve with the IMB.

  January 27, 2020, marks the 75th anniversary celebration of the day when the Soviet army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in January 1945. Read More

• Longtime missionary to Japan Ralph Calcote, 95, dies

  by Mary Jane Welch, posted Thursday, June 20, 2019 (3 years ago)

  

  WESSON, Miss. (BP) -- Every week a small group of World War II and Korea veterans meet in Wesson, Miss., to drink coffee, maybe eat lunch, swap stories and remember comrades who died. But Ralph Calcote no longer joins the Greatest Generation Coffee Club, having died at age 95 on May 9.

  Calcote's story, encompassing 35 years as a missionary to Japan, wasn't quite like the other veterans in the group. Read More

• MEMORIAL DAY: Remembering Sgt. James Fred Johnston

  by Steve Playl, posted Friday, May 24, 2019 (4 years ago)

  

  At a revival tent near Fort Bragg, N.C., James Fred Johnston became prepared for the bitterly cold day in North Korea when he joined the ranks of those who have given their lives for their country. Read More

• Twin brothers, WWII veterans, joined for eternity

  by Mike Schueler, posted Friday, November 10, 2017 (5 years ago)

  

  Photo courtesy of Hannah Hanzel/Baptist Messenger

  MCALESTER, Okla. (BP) -- Claude Stokes guessed he had about 15 seconds to decide how he was going to die.

  It was 1944, and the 20-year-old tank commander was lying face-down in a ditch in the middle of a firefight in central Italy when he heard something sizzling. Claude looked up to see a German artillery shell sticking out of the mud about six inches from his head. Since the shell didn't explode on impact, he had a choice: stay put to hope for a dud or run for it through a cloud of German machine gun and mortar fire. Read More

• WWII ship's discovery prompts survivor to 'praise the Lord'

  by David Roach, posted Thursday, August 24, 2017 (5 years ago)

  

  CBSNews.com screen capture

  CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. (BP) -- When Edgar Harrell learned about the recovery of the U.S. Navy cruiser whose sinking he survived 72 years ago, his first reaction was "praise the Lord!"

  "I'm so excited," Harrell, 92, told Baptist Press. "It kind of brings closure."

  The U.S.S. Indianapolis' discovery was announced Aug. 19 by Paul Allen, an entrepreneur whose research ship located the wreckage 3.5 miles below the surface of the Philippines Sea. The Indianapolis was sunk by Japanese torpedoes July 30 ... Read More

• Frank Gillespie remembered by Clemson's Dabo Swinney

  by Gerald Harris, posted Wednesday, March 22, 2017 (6 years ago)

  

  Photos courtesy of ClemsonTigers.com

  VILLA RICA, Ga. (BP) -- Frank Irvin Gillespie's last year playing football at Clemson was 1949 -- 20 years before Dabo Swinney, coach of the university's national championship football team, was born.

  However, Coach Swinney called Gillespie's son Frank the day after his dad died to offer his condolences -- a call evidencing that Frank Irvin Gillespie's influence at Clemson is legendary and still being felt nearly 70 years after his last football game. Read More

• Pearl Harbor attack cited as evangelism catalyst

  by David Roach, posted Wednesday, December 07, 2016 (6 years ago)

  

  Photo from Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

  HONOLULU (BP) -- As Americans commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, some Christians also are remembering a series of evangelistic harvests that emerged from the death and destruction.

  Among those to find a saving relationship with Jesus in the aftermath of Dec. 7, 1941, were the commander of the Japanese air fleet that carried out the attack, Japanese Buddhists in Hawaii and other Hawaii residents who heard the preaching of missionaries recalled from East Asia. Read More

• Southern Baptists honor Pearl Harbor survivor

  by Todd Deaton, posted Thursday, June 16, 2016 (6 years ago)

  

  ST. LOUIS (BP) -- World War II veteran Bill McAnany, one of 2,000 living survivors of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was introduced to the Southern Baptist Convention as messengers honored America and recognized military veterans June 14 at the SBC's annual meeting in St. Louis.

  Calling it an "awesome privilege," SBC President Ronnie Floyd observed that a memory of WWII disappears from American culture every three minutes as those who fought in the global conflict pass into eternity. Read More

• MEMORIAL DAY: Jimmy Connelly's greatest honor

  by Jim Burton, posted Friday, May 27, 2016 (7 years ago)

  

  Submitted photo

  ST. GEORGE, S.C. (BP) -- An estimated 3.6 million Americans fought in the Pacific Theatre in World War II, overcoming brutal encounters on island after island against Japanese soldiers burrowed into the hillsides.

  The late Jimmy Connelly was one of those Americans.

  The Navy made Connelly chief of a troop-landing Higgins Craft during the massive amphibious assaults at the outset of the Allies' first major Pacific offensive against the Japanese -- Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

  Each craft could ferry up to 36 Marines, and when they stormed the beaches, Connelly operated a 7.62mm belt-fed machine gun to provide cover. On his 10th trip to transport troops into the Solomon Islands battle zone, he also was carrying several hundred five-gallon cans of gasoline. When a mortar round struck their craft, shrapnel pierced his neck and arm, and his pants were set afire, propelling him into the ocean. Read More

• VETERANS DAY: Iwo Jima: young Marine's faith endured

  by Neisha Roberts/The Alabama Baptist, posted Wednesday, November 11, 2015 (7 years ago)

  

  Photo by Neisha Roberts

  BLOUNT SPRINGS, Ala. (BP) -- Horace Lee was 12 when he "gave my heart to the Lord" at a Baptist church in Alabama; 17 when he entered the Marine Corps in 1940; and 21 when he was wounded in Iwo Jima as the U.S. wrested the strategic island from the Japanese.

  "God taught me a great deal" in the military, Lee, now 91, said. "The Marine Corps complemented God's work by their fellowship … because it's teamwork and fellowship, and if you don't have that then you cannot depend on that fellow behind you.... Read More