Besides David Niven , what actor was a tough soldier in WWII? I choose actor Charles Durning.

He was drafted into the US Army in 1943 at age 19 and entered active duty in 1943. Durning was in the Big Red 1, 1st. Infantry Division, then later after recovering from wounds, was assigned to the 398th. Infantry Regiment of the 100th. Infantry Division.

Private Durning landed among the first waves on Omaha Beach on D Day. They landed on the eastern half, Fox Green and Easy Red. While advancing in France, he was the lone survivor of a machine gun ambush which decimated his unit.

In Belgium he was stabbed in hand to hand combat with a German soldier.

In his own words: “I was crossing a field somewhere in Belgium. A German soldier ran toward me carrying a bayonet. He couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15. I didn’t see a soldier. I saw a boy. Even though he was coming at me, I couldn’t shoot.”

Durning was stabbed seven or eight times, according to the Times obituary, “until finally he grasped a rock and made it a weapon. After killing the youth, he said, he held him in his arms and wept.”

During The Battle of the Bulge, Durning was one of a handful of men to escape what would be known as the Malmedy Massacre. He and the rest of his company were captured and forced to march through a pine forest at Malmedy, the scene of an infamous massacre in which the Germans opened fire on almost 90 prisoners. Mr. Durning was among the few to escape. He would suffer severe PTSD and survivor’s guilt which at times were apparent in his screen work.

Among his many medals earned are the Silver Star, Bronze Star, three Purple Hearts. He attained the rank of Private First Class.

He passed on Christmas Eve in 2012 at the age of 89 and is buried in Arlington Cemetery.

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The Last Judicial Hanging in The United States

Billy Bailey was born in 1946, the ninth of 23 children, in South Carolina, where they lived in poverty. When he grew up, he developed an alcohol addiction and had a filthy temper. Bailey also got in trouble with the law on numerous occasions, committing six felonies ranging from grand larceny to burglary. In 1979, in Delaware, after being placed in a work release facility, Billy Bailey learned he faced a potential 45-year sentence for his most recent string of crimes. After attempting to kill himself with a knife only to be stopped by his brother-in-law, Bailey asked him to stop at a liquor store. There, he robbed the clerk before knocking her down and attempting to shoot her, but thankfully, the gun jammed. He fled the scene, being dropped off by his brother-in-law at Lambertson’s Corner. There, Billy Bailey entered a farmhouse and stole a shotgun. The elderly couple inside where then slaughtered by Bailey, the man being shot twice in the chest and once in the head with the pist...

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Holocaust victim

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