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Vets in Action

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olivas

One hundred-year-old former Green Beret Polito “Paul” Olivas jumps tandem with skydiving instructor Richard Doppelmayer 29 August 2018 over Oahu’s North Shore. Olivas, a thirty-year Army veteran who served during World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam War, jumped into Normandy, France, during the Allies’ 1944 D-Day invasion. (Photo courtesy of Skydive Hawaii via Stars and Stripes)


In commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the beginning of Operation Overlord (commonly known as D-Day), the Allied invasion of Normandy, Military Review highlights two veterans of World War II. Our World War II veterans are rapidly disappearing; the youngest of remaining men and women who fought are now in their late 80s. But take, for example, 101-year-old Ben Skardon and 100-year-old Polito “Paul” Olivas who are two of the many that help remind us why these men and women are often referred to as “the greatest generation.”



Skardon

Col. Ben Skardon, a 1938 graduate of Clemson University, World War II prisoner of war, and recipient of two Silver Stars, poses 17 March 2019 at the mile-8 marker of the Bataan Memorial Death March at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. Skardon is 101 years old and the only survivor of the actual death march to walk in the memorial march and now for the twelfth time. (Photo by Ken Scar, U.S. Army)

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July-August 2019