Veterans Chronicles

Frank Wright joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1942, when he was just 16 years old. Before long, he became one of the famed Marine Raiders. After deploying first to Guadalcanal in th...

Clayton Hutmacher enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1978. Six years later he jumped at the chance to go to Army flight school and pursue a career in special operations. He would...

In the first half of our conversation with retired U.S. Navy Commander Porter Halyburton, we learned about the day he was shot down over North Vietnam, how he was captured and tort...

Porter Halyburton was born in Florida and grew up in North Carolina. After college, he got married and joined the U.S. Navy with a clear goal of becoming a naval aviator. He got hi...

Ron DiFrancesco moved to the New York City area in 2000 to take an investment job with a firm based in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. He was already at work on Septembe...

In 2022, we presented the oral history of U.S. Marine Corps veteran Rob Riggle, who later became famous as an actor and comedian. Riggle told us all about his service in Kosovo and...

David Rodriguez has a legacy of military service in his family, but his real motivation for joining the Army was to move on from working in the family business of farming. Soon he ...

Ernie Mogor wanted to join the U.S. Navy during World War II but he was rejected for being colorblind. He then chose the Army over the Marines and was soon off for "vigorous" infan...

John Dailey remembers the day he decided to become a U.S. Marine. He was a young boy at a U.S. bicentennial parade in 1976. When he saw the Marine in dress uniform, he was hooked. ...

In last week's edition of "Veterans Chronicles," U.S. Marine Corps veteran Darren Walton told us about his role on a seven-man reconnaissance team in Vietnam from 1969-1970. He exp...

Darren Walton grew up north of San Francisco and stood out as a distance runner in high school. When he found out he would soon be drafted into the U.S. Army, Walton joined the Mar...

Last week, we began sharing the story of Col. Frank Cohn, U.S. Army (Ret.). He told us about growing up in a Jewish family in Nazi Germany, how his family fled to the U.S. after Kr...