pagesofhistory Marking Victory

Americans celebrated the end of World War II in Europe May 8, 1945. Seventy years later, vintage warplanes and speeches commemorated the momentous anniversary.

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undreds of people, including scores of veterans, gathered May 8 at the National World War II Me-

morial in Washington, D.C., to mark the 70th anniversary of V-E Day, which signaled the end of fighting in the European theater. Among the highlights was a flyover by dozens of war-era fighter planes and bomb- ers, which turned at the Lincoln Memorial and flew down the Mall over the World War II Memorial. The Federal Aviation Administration, the Secret Service, and the Transportation Security Administration granted special permission for the planes to fly in normally restricted airspace near the White House and Capitol. The event also included a wreath-

laying ceremony at the World War II Memorial in honor of those who made the ultimate sacrifice. “The story of your gen- eration will never be forgotten,” National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice told the crowd. “We will continue to tell it to chil- dren blessedly untouched by war, so that they understand, as this memorial reminds us, the price of freedom.” President Barack Obama commended

the veterans in a statement from the White House: “Today, we salute the more than 16 million Americans who left everything they knew ... to serve in World War II, and then came home to build the America we know today. ... We rededicate ourselves — on this day and every day — to the freedoms for which they fought and to the American dream for which they died. ... And we honor

PHOTO: MARVIN LYNCHARD/DOD

our brave men and women in uniform and their families who continue to defend the freedom that was won 70 years ago today.”

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Bloggers Recount the Civil War as It Unfolded very day for four years,

volunteers at the University of North Carolina brought the Civil War to life by posting a docu- ment that was 150 years old that day. Items included hand-written letters, diary entries, news- paper clippings, photographs, sheet music, pamphlets, broadsides, and telegrams. A total of 1,450 posts were made over the course of the Civil War Day by Day project (http://blogs.lib.unc.edu/civilwar), which concluded April 26 with a lithograph Conference Between General Sherman and General Johnston. The illustration com- memorated the surrender of Confederate troops in Durham, N.C. The blog drew from the Wilson Special Collections Library, which contains many Civil War primary-source documents.

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— Don Vaughan, a North Carolina-based free- lance writer, authors this monthly column.

SEPTEMBER 2015 MILITARY OFFICER 1 03

History Lesson On Sept. 5, 1961, Presi- dent John F. Kennedy signed into law a bill making air- plane hijacking a crime pun- ishable by death. The first aerial hijacking in the U.S. occurred in May 1961.

World War II fighter aircraft fly the missing man forma- tion over the National Mall in Washington, D.C., May 8.