Valor Tales

As this week commemorates the 80th anniversary of the German’s invasion of Poland, which started the Second World War, I think it’s fitting that we look at a Polish hero of the war. Nobody would ever want to be sent to a Nazi concentration camp, right? One man did. That’s not even the most incredible thing this man did. This is the story of Witold Pilecki of the Polish Army. Born into a Polish aristocratic family who had lost everything for supporting the January Uprising in 1863, he was born in the Russian Empire in 1901. His father was a forester for the Russian Civil Service, public service being a part of the family’s penance. At the outbreak of the World War, the young Pilecki’s family home was now in German occupied territory. They fled to Belarus. Here Pilecki would join the secret ZHP scouts (Polish equivalent of the Boy Scouts).  In 1918, having graduated secondary school, Pilecki returned to Wilno, Poland and joined the ZHP scouts section of the Lithuanian and...

The US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado can lay claim to having many heroes and notable men and women among their alumni. For example, the USAFA has commissioned 403 people who later became general officers, 36 graduates became prisoners of war who were later repatriated, 39 have become astronauts, and two became combat aces. However there has only been one USAFA graduate who has been awarded the nation’s highest honor, the Medal of Honor. His name is Captain Lance Sijan. The child of Serbs who had immigrated to the US after World War I and settled in Wisconsin, he attended the Naval Academy Preparatory Course right after high school. From there he was able to secure appointment to the US Air Force Academy (USAFA). At the USAFA he played football for three of his four years, graduating in 1965. Newly commissioned a second lieutenant, Sijan was sent to pilot training and by the summer of 1967 was flying in F-4 Phantoms over North Vietnam as a first lieutenant. ...