A Medic's Memory Of D-Day: Unimaginable Carnage

Edward Colimore offers a piece in the Philaelphia Inquirer on a WWII medic who served with the allied invasion forces on D-Day.

A few blocks from his Margate, N.J., home, the beach is busy with vacationers baking in the sun, playing in the waves. But when Bernard Friedenberg closes his eyes at night, he sees another sandy shore - a nightmarish place 3,000 miles away that won't let him go, not even after 72 years.

A few blocks from his Margate, N.J., home, the beach is busy with vacationers baking in the sun, playing in the waves. But when Bernard Friedenberg closes his eyes at night, he sees another sandy shore - a nightmarish place 3,000 miles away that won't let him go, not even after 72 years.

Friedenberg tosses and turns in his sleep, he repeats military jargon, and tries to jump from his bed, as if again exiting the landing craft that brought him to Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

The Army medic's lifesaving "work began" the moment he crawled out of the surf - and onto the killing ground that was Normandy, France.

"Everywhere I looked I saw dead and wounded," said Friedenberg, who was a staff sergeant. "I could hear men hollering 'Medic' from every direction."

Amid exploding shells, machine-gun fire and unimaginable carnage, he "moved on to the next casualty and then the next and the next and the next," he said. "There was no end to them."

Friedenberg, 94, a South Philadelphia native, is one of the ever-shrinking number of World War II veterans who witnessed the tragic losses and heroic self-sacrifice of D-Day - the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler's Third Reich.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/new_jersey/20160606_A_medic_s_memory_of_D-Day__Unimaginable_carnage.html 

American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth Honed His Acting While At Philadelphia's Arch Street Theatre

Edward Colimore at the Philadelphia Inquirer reports on Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth's time in Philadelphia.

At Philadelphia's old Arch Street Theatre, he was a "great hit," the newspaper said.

His energetic performances in plays such as Richard III and The Marble Heart drew large crowds. And his dashing good looks - some called him "the handsomest man in America" - made him an instant heartthrob, the matinee idol of his day.

"The audience was very enthusiastic, the ladies joining in the applause," The Inquirer wrote of one appearance.

Before John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln, he was a well-known stage star warmly embraced by a city where he had strong ties to his famous thespian family.

With so much attention focused on the 16th president through Civil War sesquicentennial events, new books, the Steven Spielberg movie Lincoln, and record viewership for the National Geographic Channel's Killing Lincoln, Booth is again drawing an audience, historians say.

From March 2 to 14, 150 years ago, he appeared in several plays at the Arch, including The Merchant of Venice and The Apostate. It was the last time Booth performed in Philadelphia.

You can read the rest of the story via the below link:

http://articles.philly.com/2013-03-03/news/37412862_1_terry-alford-junius-brutus-booth-assassin