Veterans Breakfast Club

The Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943 helped trigger the collapse of Benito Mussolini’s government and, within weeks, Italy’s surrender to the Allies. But the surrender of Italy did not mean the end of the war there. German forces quickly moved to occupy key areas of the country and began a determined defense that would turn the Italian Campaign into one of the longest and hardest-fought campaigns in Western Europe.

Military historian Colin Heaton joins Veterans Breakfast Club to examine German military strategy in Sicily and Italy in 1943–1944. What did German leaders hope to accomplish as the Allies pushed onto the Italian mainland? How did their strategy change after Italy left the Axis? And how did disagreements among senior German commanders shape the defense of the peninsula?

We’ll look at the men who developed and carried out that strategy—from senior commanders such as Albert Kesselring to the army, corps, and division commanders fighting on the ground—and explore how German tactical decisions affected major battles including Salerno, Monte Cassino, and Anzio.

We’ll also ask why German forces, despite repeatedly slowing and frustrating the Allied advance, ultimately could not hold Italy.

Join us for a close look at command, strategy, and battlefield decision-making in the German defense of Italy during World War II.

General Mark Clark remains one of the more debated American commanders of World War II. As commander of the U.S. Fifth Army during the Italian Campaign, he led Allied forces through some of the hardest fighting in Europe, from the landings at Salerno through the long advance toward Rome.

Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a conversation with military historian Roger Cirillo, who will look at Clark’s leadership during the campaign and the difficult circumstances in which he operated. Clark was ambitious, highly aware of the press, and often controversial, but he was also commanding in a theater defined by rough terrain, heavy casualties, an inexperienced American army, and broader Allied strategy that was frequently flawed or overly ambitious.

Cirillo will discuss the Salerno landings, the challenges of the Italian Campaign, the failures and frustrations surrounding Anzio, and the larger strategic questions that shaped Fifth Army operations from 1943 into 1944. Rather than treating Clark simply as either a great commander or a poor one, the program will place his decisions in the context of the campaign as a whole and the limitations facing Allied forces in Italy.

Roger Cirillo is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel and military historian who has written and lectured extensively on war and military history. He has taught military history to junior officers and served as the research author for American Armies and Battlefields in Europe: World War II.

We hope you’ll join us for a closer look at General Mark Clark, the Fifth Army, and the difficult road from Salerno to Rome.

Millions of viewers know NCIS as one of television’s most successful dramas. But what is the real Naval Criminal Investigative Service—and how closely does the show reflect it?

Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for a fascinating conversation with Leon Carroll Jr., Marine veteran, retired NCIS Special Agent, bestselling author, and the longtime technical advisor to the hit CBS series NCIS.

After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, Carroll spent more than twenty years investigating crimes involving the Navy and Marine Corps before helping bring the world of military criminal investigations to television audiences around the globe.

Leon will share stories from his career, explain what NCIS agents actually do, and pull back the curtain on more than two decades behind the scenes of one of America’s most enduring TV shows. How much of NCIS is real? Which details matter most? What does Hollywood get right—and what can never quite capture the reality of military investigations?

We’ll also discuss Carroll’s work as co-author, with actor Mark Harmon, of the bestselling books Ghosts of Honolulu and Ghosts of Sicily, which uncover remarkable true stories of Naval Intelligence, espionage, and World War II.

Whether you’re a veteran, an NCIS fan, a military history enthusiast, or simply curious about the intersection of military service, criminal investigation, and popular culture, this promises to be an engaging evening of stories and conversation.

Bring your questions—and join us live.

We’re grateful to our sponsor, Claim Raven (https://claimraven.com), and encourage anyone building a VA Claim to check them out!

Every family has its own connection to World War II, whether through a parent, grandparent, spouse, sibling, or another loved one whose experiences became part of the family story.  Many World War II veterans did not speak of the war or their experience in it until many years later, some never did.

Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for an open conversation about the World War II experiences passed down through families. We’ll hear from Chris Pirollo and others who will share stories of loved ones who served during the war, and then open the conversation to everyone. Participants are encouraged to bring their own family stories, photographs, letters, keepsakes, or memories to share. This program is about preserving the personal side of World War II history—the stories passed down around the dinner table, tucked away in old boxes, or discovered years later.

This program is about preserving the personal side of World War II history—the stories remembered around the dinner table, discovered in old boxes of photographs and letters, or learned only years later. Whether your family member served overseas, on the home front, or somewhere in between, we’d love to hear their story.

As a young teenager, Adais A. “Tony” Garcia, Jr., was running with gangs and headed down a dangerous road. After becoming involved in a crime, Tony found himself in court facing a grim and possible short future. Instead, a deal was worked out with a judge: when Tony was old enough, he would join the United States Army. And that deal put Adais on a whole different path.

Adais went on to serve an extraordinary 37 years in the Army, much of it in the Military Police, rising through the enlisted ranks to become a Sergeant Major. His long career included service connected to Operation Garden Plot during the Los Angeles riots, Operation Noble Eagle, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Jump Start, and Operation New Dawn. In Iraq, he served at the Multi-National Corps-Iraq level overseeing and tracking military police operations throughout the theater and later as NCOIC of a Personal Security Detachment conducting convoy and security missions. His decorations include the Bronze Star, two Army Commendation Medals, and the Combat Action Badge.

Tony also carries an unusual American family history. He traces his ancestry to Nathaniel Jackson, a Cherokee settler who brought his family from Alabama to the Rio Grande Valley in 1857, along with eleven formerly enslaved people whom Jackson had freed and who chose to remain with the family. Jackson established a ranch near the Rio Grande, became fiercely loyal to the Union, and, according to local histories, helped enslaved people escape to freedom and served as an intelligence agent for Union forces during the Civil War.

Join us on VBC LIVE for a remarkable conversation about crime and second chances, war and military service, plus the inspiration he finds in his family history. Most of all, we want to understand how a wayward teenager headed full-blast down a dead-end road become a career soldier entrusted with leading other in war.

Read about Adais in Iraq in 2010: https://www.dvidshub.net/news/52963/sustainment-brigades-personal-security-detachment-conducts-first-mission

The Guadalcanal campaign was America’s first major ground offensive of World War II in the Pacific, but some of its most important fighting took place along a relatively small stretch of ground west of Henderson Field: the Matanikau River.

Author and Guadalcanal battlefield expert Dave Holland joins Veterans Breakfast Club to explore the repeated battles fought along the Matanikau front. Over several months, American and Japanese forces struggled for control of the river, surrounding ridges, and approaches to Henderson Field in a series of hard-fought engagements that helped shape the outcome of the campaign.

Drawing on years spent walking and researching the battlefields, Holland will take us onto the ground where Marines and Japanese troops fought and explain why the Matanikau became one of the most important—and often overlooked—fronts of the Guadalcanal campaign.

Lt. Col. Frederick C. Brems carried a camera throughout his World War II service with the 2nd Armored Division, preserving an extraordinary visual record of the war as he experienced it.

Brems enlisted before the attack on Pearl Harbor and eventually served in Europe with the famed “Hell on Wheels” division. From the fall of 1944 through the end of the war, he photographed the soldiers, vehicles, towns, battlefields, and everyday moments around him. His journey included the Battle of the Bulge, Operation Grenade, the advance across Germany, the occupation of Berlin, and the long road home.

Join us for a conversation with his son, retired Lt. Col. Frederick “Fred” Brems, about Knights of Freedom: With the Hell on Wheels Armored Division in World War II, A Story in Photos. The book brings together more than 500 photographs taken by his father, along with wartime letters and the stories he shared with his family over the years. Together, they offer a deeply personal account of one soldier’s service and a vivid look at life inside an American armored division during the final campaigns of the war in Europe.

We’ll talk about the photographs, the stories behind them, and the process of turning a family archive into a detailed history. Brems will also discuss his father’s experiences with the 2nd Armored Division, including combat during the Battle of the Bulge, the Allied drive into Germany, and the occupation that followed. The book contains nearly 600 photographs, dozens of maps, and hundreds of additional illustrations documenting that journey.

Fred Brems is an educator, researcher, writer, and photographer who spent years studying his father’s wartime service and preserving the collection he left behind. He has also worked in U.S. embassies and schools in the United States and overseas.

We hope you’ll join us for this remarkable story of war, memory, family history, and the photographs that brought one veteran’s experience back to life.

TO PURCHASE THE BOOK, GO TO http://www.GlobePequot.com OR WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD

Join the Veterans Breakfast Club for an open conversation with veterans of the Army Security Agency (ASA), the once-secretive U.S. Army intelligence organization whose soldiers served around the world during the Cold War.

Created on September 15, 1945, the ASA grew out of the Army’s wartime signals intelligence and communications security operations. Its mission included intercepting and analyzing foreign communications, codebreaking, direction finding, electronic intelligence, and protecting U.S. military communications. Its motto was fitting: Semper Vigiles—Vigilant Always.

ASA soldiers served in an extraordinary variety of places and assignments. They worked at large listening stations in Europe and Asia, at isolated field sites and hilltop positions, aboard aircraft and in mobile units, and alongside combat forces. They were linguists, radio operators, cryptographers, analysts, technicians, and direction-finding specialists. Much of their work was highly classified, and many veterans spent decades unable to talk openly about what they had done.

During the Vietnam War, ASA personnel operated under the cover designation “Radio Research.” They intercepted North Vietnamese and Viet Cong communications, located enemy transmitters, monitored communications networks, and provided intelligence and early warning to American and allied forces. Specialist 4 James T. Davis of the 3rd Radio Research Unit was killed during a direction-finding mission on December 22, 1961, and is remembered as the first American battlefield casualty of the Vietnam War recognized by the Department of Defense.

The ASA continued operating around the globe until 1977, when it was dissolved and its functions were incorporated into the newly created U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM). Its legacy continues in today’s Army signals intelligence, cybersecurity, and electronic warfare capabilities.

For this VBC program, we’re turning the conversation over to the people who actually served there. ASA veterans from different eras, specialties, and duty stations will share what they did—or what they can now tell us they did—along with stories of the strange places they worked, the equipment they used, the people they listened to, and the friendships they formed.

What was it like to spend your Army years listening to communications the other side didn’t know you could hear? What happened when an enemy radio network suddenly “went hot”? How much did ASA soldiers themselves understand about the larger intelligence picture? And what was it like to come home carrying stories you weren’t allowed to tell?

Whether you served in the ASA, knew someone who did, or have never heard of the agency before, join us for what promises to be a fascinating open conversation about one of the lesser-known corners of American military history.

ASA veterans are especially encouraged to join us, introduce themselves, and share their own stories.

Semper Vigiles—Vigilant Always.

In July 1943, General George S. Patton led the U.S. Seventh Army into Sicily in Operation Husky, the first major Allied assault on Axis-held Europe. What followed was a fast-moving campaign that showcased Patton’s aggressiveness, ambition, and battlefield leadership—and also revealed the controversies that would come to define his wartime reputation.

Historian and Patton expert Kevin Hymel, author of, Patton’s War: An American General’s Combat Leadership, joins Veterans Breakfast Club to examine Patton’s role in the Sicily campaign, from the fighting around Gela and the drive on Palermo to the race across the island toward Messina. We’ll look at Patton’s command decisions, his relationship with Allied leaders, the performance of the Seventh Army, and the incidents that nearly ended his career.

Join us for a closer look at one of World War II’s most famous—and most complicated—American commanders during a pivotal campaign in the Mediterranean.

Helicopters played an indispensable role in the Vietnam War, carrying troops and supplies, scouting enemy positions, providing fire support, evacuating the wounded, and giving commanders unprecedented mobility over some of the most difficult terrain in the world.

For Helicopter Pilots in Vietnam, Part II, we welcome back Gil Ferrey along with four more Army aviation veterans whose experiences span several aircraft, missions, and eras of the war.

Jim Stein flew the UH-1 Huey during his first tour in Vietnam and the OH-6 Cayuse “Loach” during his second. He was shot down ten times and lost a leg during his service.

Ed Strazzini, a retired lieutenant colonel, flew Huey gunships and troop-carrying “slicks,” as well as the CH-54 Tarhe heavy-lift helicopter during his second tour in Vietnam.

Bill Neuman flew Hueys in Vietnam and was wounded in action. He later continued his service with the California National Guard, flying both Hueys and CH-47 Chinooks.

Al Doucette served as a crew chief on the H-21 Shawnee in 1961 before returning to Vietnam as a Huey pilot with the 176th Assault Helicopter Company.

Gil Ferrey returns to share more about his service with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, the “Blackhorse,” including his experiences flying OH-23 helicopters on command-and-control missions in Vietnam.

If you flew helicopters in Vietnam, we especially invite you to join us, share your own experiences, and take part in the conversation.