American infantrymen from the 290th Regiment crouch in the snowy woods near Amonines, Belgium, January 1945.

June 19, 1944: Despite a malfunctioning engine, Navy Lt. Alexander Vraciu shot down six Japanese "Judy" bombers in eight minutes, while using only 360 rounds of ammunition. Vraciu would shoot down 19 enemy planes (plus 21 on the ground), becoming the Navy's fourth-leading ace of World War II.

OKINAWA, JAPAN - Jun 01, 1945: Dirt-smeared soldier Terry Moore stopping for a cigarette break during the fight for Okinawa. (Photo: Carl Mydans/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)

Terry Moore was the subject of Time magazine’s story, “24 Hours with Infantryman Terry Moore,” written by W. Eugne Smith. Moore was a Private First Class with Fox Company, 184th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division.

E14Y (Source: warbirdphotographs.com)

On the morning of Sept. 9, 1942, the Japanese submarine I-25 surfaces off the Oregon coast, launching an E14Y (Glen) floatplane. Chief Warrant Officer Nobuo Fujita and Petty Officer Shoji Okuda took off, loaded with two 160-pound incendiary bombs with the intent to cause a wildfire and spread panic.

Fujita’s bombs set two small fires on Mount Emily near Brookings, Oregon, but did little damage as rain had saturated the forest. Fujita would bomb Oregon a second time on Sept. 29, but no U.S. record exists of a second fire.

Fujita earned the distinction of being the only pilot to bomb the continental United States.

Eniwetok landing. US soldiers on the beach awaiting orders to attack (Source: National Park Service)

On Feb. 17, 1944, the naval and aerial bombardment of Eniwetok Atoll began. Intelligence suggested that enemy defenses would be light, so the Navy did not use as much ordinance as they had at previous operations. Therefore, when two regiments of U.S. soldiers and Marines landed on Feb. 18, it took them 4 days to secure Eniwetok Island rather than the 24 hours they had anticipated. Nearly all of the Japanese and Korean defenders were killed.

Check out the Center for American Military History’s article on the Battle of Eniwetok.

Marines on Roi-Namur. Source: Flickr

On January 31 and February1, 1944, Marines and soldiers stormed the Japanese-held beaches of Kwajelein and Roi-Namur in the Marshall Islands. In a few short days, the force would overwhelm the defenders and gain control of the Marshall Islands.

On Dec. 23, 1944, Private Melvin Biddle and his unit set out on a mission to rescue a stranded company in Belgium. Biddle was selected to lead the force when two scouts were injured by a land mine. He shot three German snipers, then killed eight more soldiers and destroyed three machine gun nests. The next day, Biddle came across 13 German soldiers and killed them all with his M-1 rifle. Amazingly, Biddle was not injured during his actions, but his uniform sleeves were riddled with bullet holes. Biddle passed away in his home almost two weeks ago. His citation can be read here.

On Dec. 25, 1944, near Chaumont, Belgium, Private Paul Wiedorfer and his unit were clearing an area of German snipers when two machine gun emplacements opened fire. Although the emplacements were dug-in and flanked by riflemen, Wiedorfer charged the positions. Miraculously, none of the enemy fire hit him, and he reached the first machine gun, destroying it with a grenade and killing the soldiers with his rifle. When he threw another grenade at the next position, the remaining Germans surrendered to him. As he recovered from a serious mortar blast at Walter Reed hospital in February, Wiedorfer learned that he was awarded the Medal of Honor from a sergeant in the hospital bed next to his who read the news in Stars and Stripes. His citation can be read here.

The elder Mullikin landed at Normandy, and fought his way across Europe as a member of a special reconnaissance unit of the 407th Infantry Regiment. His outfit was led by 1st Lt. Roy “Buck” Rogers, and the stellar unit would earn them the nickname “Rogers’ Raiders” (not to be confused with Rogers’ Rangers, the American unit that achieved fame during the French and Indian War).

Mullikin shares a story of his father’s unit from February 1945 :

At exactly 0300 Buck Roger’s Night Raiders of the 407th Infantry pushed out into darkness, out into the narrow torrential Roer (River). … A German machine gun opened up not 50 yards away … Two long minutes later … the boats hit the Roer’s east bank. …With clocklike precision dark figures fanned out around the ominous machine gun. …One man returned the fire. Another grasped his grenade. A good throw. A dull thud. A scream. Silence.

One group… swung toward the railroad bounded by a dense minefield … The rest of the patrol slugged south mopping up one nest after another. At H-hour—30 minutes later—the first assault wave of the 407th Infantry crossed without a hitch. Their bridgehead, the first across the Roer, was established.

When the 30 minutes of intense action had ended, the Raiders had destroyed five machine gun nests along with six other automatic weapon positions, killed 15 and captured eight of the enemy … all without losing a single American.

Walking the beaches – and SCUBA diving among the wrecks as Mullikin did – would be a wonderful experience, but I can imagine that splashing through the same surf your father did when landing at Normandy 66 years earlier would be absolutely incredible.

More information on the operation is available here.