Roger D. McGrath

Latest by Roger D. McGrath in Chronicles

• Columns

  October 2012

  Ace of Aces: Richard Bong

  He was an all-American boy who became an American hero in World War II.

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• Columns

  August 2012

  The Battle off Samar

  One would think that a battle called the most gallant in the history of the U.S. Navy would be prominently featured in our textbooks. Not only does the Battle off Samar in the Philippine Sea on October 25, 1944, go unmentioned in schoolbooks, but it’s rare for anyone under 60 even to have heard of the fight.

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• View

  July 2012

  Stand Your Ground

  Bodie, July 1881—The early morning hours found deputy constables Richard O’Malley and James Monahan patrolling the streets of the mining town of more than 5,000 residents in mountains immediately east of the Sierra.

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• Columns

  June 2012

  The Shot Heard Round the World

  While nearly all my college students had heard of Lexington and Concord and the first battle of our Revolutionary War, only rarely did any of them know why the British were marching on the small Massachusetts towns.

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• Cultural Revolutions

  June 2012

  Man of Honor

  Ralph Walker Willis was a fireman, the author of five books, including My Life as a Jarhead (1999), and a contributor to Chronicles, but most of all he was a Marine.

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• View

  May 2012

  Same Border, Different America

  For the last several years Texas farmers and ranchers whose lands butt up against the Rio Grande have complained about cross-border raids by thugs of Mexican drug cartels. “It’s a war. Make no mistake about it,” said Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples. “And it’s happening on American soil.”

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• Columns

  April 2012

  The Tuskegee Airmen

  If you think political correctness is a recent phenomenon in America, then the longtime promulgation and perpetuation of distortions and falsehoods concerning the Tuskegee Airmen should disabuse you of such a notion.

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• Columns

  February 2012

  Divine Wind

  Suicidal ground attacks had been a common Japanese tactic since Guadalcanal, but the first such aerial attacks were not employed until the Battle for Leyte Gulf in October 1944. By March 1945 kamikaze attacks had become a basic component of Japanese strategy.

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• Columns

  December 2011

  Bombing the West Coast

  The Battle of Los Angeles was preceded by ten Japanese submarine attacks on American ships off the California coast and one attack on an oil field. The attacks left the coastal population apprehensive, if not unnerved.

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• Columns

  October 2011

  The Betsy Ross of California

  Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed legislation requiring public schools to teach students about the contributions of “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans.”

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• Columns

  August 2011

  James Arness

  Early in June, James Arness died. Everyone thinks of him as Matt Dillon, the brave and incorruptible town marshal of Dodge City in the television series Gunsmoke. I think of him as the father of one of my childhood friends and as one of the last actors in Hollywood to have fought in World War II.

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• Reviews

  July 2011

  New Tricks

  Steve Farron has written not only a comprehensive and exhaustive study of the subject but a brilliantly insightful critique of the whole ugly and unconstitutional process of discriminating against whites.

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• Columns

  June 2011

  Chuck Older

  Recently, a younger acquaintance of mine, an actor on stage and screen, mentioned with disgust the circus-like atmosphere that pervaded the trial of O.J. Simpson for the murder of his ex-wife.

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• View

  May 2011

  Suicide by (Legal) Immigration

  I was fortunate to grow up before the Immigration Act of 1965 began an incremental and insidious change in the ethnic composition of America. I had friends whose parents were immigrants.

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• Columns

  March 2011

  Jumpin' Jim Gavin

  Like most kids I loved reading about Americans who rose from nothing to greatness. When I got to college and encountered my first left-wing history professor, I learned that Horatio Alger characters were pure myth—except I had already read and heard about dozens of them.

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• Columns

  January 2011

  The Fighting Marine: Gene Tunney

  Though he beat Jack Demp­sey decisively the two times they met in the ring, was undefeated as a heavyweight, and retired as heavyweight champion, Gene Tunney is often forgotten when today’s era of fight fans or others discuss the greatest heavyweights.

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• View

  November 2010

  Celebrity Politicians, Savvy Sergeants

  “We need another Reagan.” I’ve heard that too many times to count. Don’t get me wrong: I think another Reagan would be a good start—but only a start.

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• Columns

  November 2010

  Dan Daly

  A friend recently sent me an e-mail with a link to YouTube. A click took me to a tribute to Col. Bob Howard, broadcast by NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams upon Howard’s death just before Christmas 2009.

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• Columns

  September 2010

  The Man Who Won the Revolution

  Every history textbook has a paragraph or more devoted to Crispus Attucks, who, besides being half black and half Indian and one of those killed in the Boston Massacre, was of little historical significance. Nearly everything else said about him is a matter of speculation.

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• Columns

  July 2010

  Red Cloud's War

  The Oglala Sioux chief Red Cloud is generally portrayed as someone who chewed up the U.S. Army in battle after battle. He was, in the words of one author, “the first and only Indian leader in the West to win a war with the United States.”

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