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The Vatican sought on Tuesday to clarify the pope’s position on Ukraine, after the pontiff’s comment on the death of a Russian ultranationalist’s daughter ruffled feathers in Kyiv.

“The Holy Father’s words on this dramatic issue are to be read as a voice raised in defense of human life and the values associated with it, and not as political positions,” the Vatican said in a statement.

It stressed that the war in Ukraine had been “initiated by the Russian Federation” and that Pope Francis had been “clear and unequivocal in condemning it as morally unjust, unacceptable, barbaric, senseless, repugnant and sacrilegious.”

Speaking on Ukraine’s Independence Day on August 24, the pope had said of the conflict: “So many innocents… are paying for madness.”

He cited as one example Daria Dugina — the daughter of a Russian ultranationalist ally of President Vladimir Putin’s — who was killed when a bomb exploded under her car.

Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, Andriy Yurash, responded that the pope should not have put “aggressor and victim” in the same category and the Vatican’s envoy to Kyiv was summoned to the foreign ministry to explain.

Pope Francis, who has repeatedly condemned the conflict, has, on several occasions, been criticized in some quarters for not painting the war in black and white terms, and for leaving the door open to discussions with Moscow.

“Someone may say to me at this point: but you are pro Putin! No, I am not,” the pope stressed in an interview published in June by Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica.

“I am simply against reducing complexity to… good guys and bad guys, without reasoning about roots and interests, which are very complex.”

In July, the head of the Roman Catholic Church repeated his wish to visit Ukraine.

The 85-year-old pontiff is due to attend a congress of religious leaders in Kazakhstan in mid-September.

Patriarch Kirill, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church and a fervent supporter of both Putin and his war in Ukraine, had been due to attend the congress but has now said he will not be going.
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Ukraine’s presidential office reported heavy fighting Tuesday in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, an area occupied by Russian forces where Ukraine says it has launched a counteroffensive to try to retake territory.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy vowed in his nightly address Monday that Ukrainian forces would take back their territory. He said Ukraine would chase Russia’s forces “to the border.”

“If they want to survive — it’s time for the Russian military to run away. Go home,” he said.

Britain’s defense ministry said Tuesday that as of early Monday, “several brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces increased the weight of artillery fires in front line sectors across southern Ukraine.”

It added that since the start of August, Russia has worked to reinforce its presence on the western bank of the Dnipro River in the Kherson area.

“Most of the units around Kherson are likely undermanned and are reliant upon fragile supply lines by ferry and pontoon bridges across the Dnipro,” the British defense ministry said.

Russia’s defense ministry said Monday that Russian forces had stopped Ukrainian attacks in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions and inflicted “heavy losses” on Ukrainian forces.

A senior U.S. defense official told reporters Monday that the United States would know more about Ukraine’s offensive near Kherson “in the next 24-36 hours.” The official said Ukrainian force numbers are gaining parity with Russian forces in the south.

“Are they on the offensive? I think they are,” the official said.

Russia failed to capture the capital, Kyiv, in northern Ukraine in its initial attack that began in late February, but later took control of wide swathes of land in the south along the Black Sea coast.

Fighting for months has centered on eastern Ukraine in the Donbas region, where Russia-supported separatists and Kyiv’s forces have fought since 2014, the same year Moscow seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in a move not recognized by the international community.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine has been at somewhat of a standstill for weeks, with Russia and Ukraine gaining or losing territory incrementally.

But Western allies, led by the United States, have continued to ship armaments to the Kyiv government, possibly giving Ukraine new confidence to attack farther in the southern reaches of the country.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. VOA’s Carla Babb contributed to this report.
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Russian prosecutors at the trial of a former journalist asked the court Tuesday to hand him a 24-year prison sentence on treason charges.

Ivan Safronov who worked as a journalist for a decade before becoming an adviser to the head of the Russian space corporation Roscosmos, has been in custody since his July 2020 arrest in Moscow. He has rejected the charges of passing military secrets to Czech intelligence and insisted on his innocence. 

Safronov’s case reflects the challenges faced by Russian journalists, which have grown even tougher amid Moscow’s military action in Ukraine.

Safronov, who covered military and security issues for the leading Russian business daily Kommersant before joining Roscosmos, stated that he had collected all the information from open sources in the course of his work and did nothing illegal. He has argued that the investigators have failed to spell out the treason charges and explain what secrets he had allegedly revealed.

Many Russian journalists and human rights activists have pushed for Safronov’s release, and some have alleged that the authorities may have wanted to take revenge for his reporting that exposed Russian military incidents and shady arms deals.

Roscosmos has said that Safronov didn’t have access to state secrets, and claimed that the charges didn’t relate to Safronov’s work for the corporation, which he joined in May 2020.

Rights activists, journalists, scientists and corporate officials who have faced treason accusations in Russia in recent years have found it difficult to defend themselves because of secrecy surrounding their cases and a lack of public access to information.

Safronov’s father also worked for Kommersant covering military issues after retiring from the armed forces. In 2007, he died after falling from a window of his apartment building in Moscow.

Investigators concluded that he killed himself, but some Russian media outlets questioned the official version, pointing to his intent to publish a sensitive report about secret arms deliveries to Iran and Syria. 
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An Istanbul court has released Turkish pop star Gulsen from pretrial detention but put her under house arrest with judicial control on Monday over a remark she made about religious schools in Turkey.

The 46-year-old singer-songwriter, whose full name is Gulsen Colakoglu, was taken into custody for questioning on charges of “inciting hatred and enmity among the public” and put in pretrial detention last Thursday.

The charges were based on a joke she made onstage about Turkey’s religious Imam Hatip schools in April.

“He studied at an Imam Hatip [school] previously. That’s where his perversion comes from,” Gulsen says in a video of the incident, referring to a musician in her band.

The video was circulated by pro-government daily Sabah a day before her detention and widely shared on social media by pro-government accounts.

Several ministers condemned her words on Twitter, including Turkish Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag.

“Inciting one part of society towards another using begrudging, hateful and discriminating language under the guise of being an artist is the biggest disrespect to art,” Bozdag tweeted.

Imam Hatips are state-run middle and high schools providing religious education for boys and girls ages 10 to 18 in Turkey. There are several graduates of Imam Hatip schools in the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Cabinet, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Bozdag.

The AKP government is a staunch supporter of Imam Hatip schools, as Erdogan has said in the past that he aims to raise a “pious generation” in Turkey.

In a statement on her social media accounts, Gulsen apologized for her remark, adding that what she said was used by some people who want to polarize society. She also denied the accusations in her testimony at the police station.

Her lawyer Emek Emre appealed the pretrial detention decision last Friday and said he will appeal the house arrest decision Monday.

Reactions

Her arrest has sparked controversy about Turkey’s freedom of expression and judicial independence.

Yigit Acar, a lawyer who specializes in freedom of expression and human rights violations, calls the court decision to keep her under house arrest “a disgrace.”

“This decision meets the wishes of a group of conservative people who are uncomfortable with her and are not a large group. Look at the court decision where the lynching campaign against Gulsen was used as a reason for the arrest,” Acar told VOA.

Acar believes that putting the singer under house arrest is intended to be a deterrent.

“The purpose has already been accomplished. The purpose was to keep Gulsen away from the stage and to make her modern, secular view invisible,” Acar said, adding that the government is sending a message to millions of people by putting the singer under house arrest.

The singer has long been a target of conservative circles in Turkey because of her revealing stage outfits and support for the LGBTQ community.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), called for her release, saying that her arrest was aimed at polarizing society to keep Erdogan’s government in power. The next parliamentary and presidential elections are scheduled for June 2023, but the opposition parties are calling for snap elections, which Erdogan has repeatedly rejected.

Responding to an inquiry from VOA on the pop star’s arrest, a U.S. State Department spokesperson said, “The right to exercise freedom of expression, even when it involves speech which some find controversial or uncomfortable, strengthens democracy and must be protected.”

“The United States remains concerned by widespread use of censorship, criminal insult suits, and other forms of judicial harassment to restrict freedom of expression in Turkey. We urge Turkey to respect and ensure freedom of expression,” the spokesperson said, adding that the U.S. “opposes discrimination against LGBTQI+ persons and those who support LGBTQI+ rights.”

The Turkish government has argued that the judiciary is free from political interference.

Cultural hegemony

Yuksel Taskin, deputy leader of the CHP and a former professor of political science at Istanbul’s Marmara University, argues that the singer’s arrest was part of the government’s efforts to establish cultural hegemony among the Turkish public through its ideological lens.

Taskin recalls Turkish presidential communications director Fahrettin Altun’s tweet from 2018: “Your political hegemony is over. Your cultural hegemony will also end,” referring to Turkey’s Kemalist elites before the AKP came into power. Kemalism, as an ideology, is based on the principles of modern Turkey founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, which include secularism.

“A cultural hegemony based on intimidation and oppression has no chance to survive,” Taskin told VOA.

Ezel Sahinkaya contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press and Reuters.

This story originated in VOA’s Turkish Service.
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In the Russian government’s latest move to reduce its reliance on a global financial system dominated by the United States and its allies, Kremlin authorities Monday began a policy of barring the use of U.S. dollars as collateral for transactions on the Moscow Exchange, Russia’s largest financial services marketplace.

According to experts, the change was more symbolic than practical, because a broad slate of sanctions imposed on Russia over its expanded invasion of Ukraine have made it almost impossible for Russian businesses to make dollar-based transactions. The change comes just a few weeks after the Moscow Exchange reduced the acceptable percentage of U.S. dollars in collateral from 50% of total value to 25%.

Still, the change underlines Moscow’s efforts to chart a path through the maze of economic barriers constructed by the U.S. and its allies over the more than six months since the invasion began. Kremlin officials have called on Russian businesses and individuals to divest themselves of “toxic” currencies issued by governments that have acted to thwart President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to expand Russian territory by force.

“The blocking of Russian assets by unfriendly countries, as well as operational restrictions on settlements in the world’s major reserve currencies, create risks for citizens and businesses when using the U.S. dollar and the euro,” the Russian central bank said in a statement issued last month.

Heavy sanctions

In the days after Russian troops crossed into Ukraine in February, the U.S. and its allies, including most of the European Union, Canada, Japan, Australia and almost all other major Western economies began applying unprecedented economic pressure in an effort to get Putin to reverse course.

A large portion of the assets of the Russian central bank held overseas were frozen, as were the assets of many wealthy Russian businesspeople. U.S. banks were effectively barred from doing business with Russian businesses, with some exceptions for energy payments, which had the result of cutting Russian firms off from the dollar-based transactions that represent a large share of global commerce.

Russian banks were eventually barred from SWIFT, the global messaging network that international banks use to settle cross-border transactions, and export controls have made it difficult for Russia to purchase high-end electronic components and other goods essential to operating a modern economy in the 21st century.

Faulty assumptions

The Kremlin may have been surprised by the unity with which the U.S. and its allies acted. Experts said that Russian leaders likely assumed that it would be cut off from the dollar after invading Ukraine — indeed, Russian has, for years, been taking steps to insulate itself from the dollar.

However, the Kremlin did so on the assumption that other global currencies, primarily the euro, but also the Japanese yen and the British pound, would remain available to it.

“What’s so important to understand about this is that Putin and Elvira Nabiullina, the central bank governor, truly believed that it was OK to be less reliant on the dollar, because they could diversify into euros and other currencies,” Josh Lipsky, the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, told VOA.

But the world’s seven leading industrialized democracies, the G-7, remain firm on sanctions, and have pledged solidarity with Ukraine.

“What surprised them was the unity amongst the G-7 — that the dollar and the euro and the yen and the pound were acting in tandem,” Lipsky said. “And that gave them no other outlets.”

Other markets

While Russia has found itself largely blocked from doing business with much of the world, a set of exceptions has been put in place that allow the Kremlin to continue selling energy products, primarily oil and gas. Those sales, boosted by months of abnormally high energy prices, have helped Russia avoid the worst potential consequences of its economic isolation.

At the same time, Russia has been working to develop alternatives to its traditional trade and financial flows. Turkey, whose leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has positioned himself as an intermediary between Putin and Western leaders, agreed earlier this month to pay for some Russian natural gas in rubles.

China and India, both major consumers of Russian energy, have both increased their purchases in the months since the invasion, settling transactions in their national currencies rather than in dollars, as is common on global markets.

However, even Russian officials have conceded that creating a system completely independent of the dollar is not feasible.

Commenting on his country’s growing relationship with China in June, Russian Ambassador to China Andrei Denisov said, “Full de-dollarization is impossible in principle, and no one is setting this goal, considering that the dollar is actually a tool, an accounting currency, means for international settlements and international payments.”

Bad options

Jeffrey Mankoff, a distinguished research fellow at the National Defense University and a non-resident senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA that while Russia may be able to make some transactions in non-dollar currencies, the practice is “suboptimal” at best, and the future looks bleak for the Russian economy.

“The problem is, there’s not really a good alternative to the dollar at this point,” Mankoff said. “There’s no other currency that is convertible to the extent the dollar is and has a deep liquid securities market behind it so that you’re not taking on big exchange rate risks by doing business in it.”

While the use of non-dollar currencies for settlement keeps cash flowing into Russian coffers, he said, “The problem is the money can’t really flow out. Or, it can’t flow out to buy the things that Russia needs, which are restricted because of sanctions.”

Russia cannot import many of the consumer goods that its citizens had been used to purchasing, which has eroded living standards. Additionally, Russia cannot import semiconductors and other high-tech components needed for domestic manufacturing operations.

In the end, Mankoff said, Russia’s options are starkly limited if it remains cut off from most global markets, and economic conditions are likely to get worse.

“Manufacturing, anything kind of high-tech related, and that includes military goods, is going to get harder and harder,” Mankoff said. “If this war is still going on six months or 12 months or longer from now, I think you’re going to see the impact of these restrictions increasing over time.”
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Germany has secured a power link to a planned offshore wind hub in the Danish part of the Baltic Sea that will help reduce energy dependence on Russia, Denmark’s energy ministry said on Monday.

The planned energy hub on the island of Bornholm will by 2030 link several offshore wind parks in the Baltic Sea with a total generating capacity of at least 3 gigawatts, enough to power 4.5 million German households, the ministry said in a statement.

The hub will be connected to Germany via a 470 kilometer power cable.

Investment and future profit will be shared equally between Germany and Denmark, the statement said without giving financial details.

“The Danish-German cooperation is a flagship project,” Germany’s Minister of Economy and Climate, Robert Habeck, said in the statement.

“The green electricity from Bornholm Energy Island will supplement the national electricity production and reduce our dependence on importing fossil energy,” he said.

Last year, the two countries began operating a smaller cross-border cable that also connects several wind farms in the Baltic Sea.

Bornholm Energy Island is part of Denmark’s broader plan to increase domestic offshore wind power production five-fold by 2030.

Early plans by Northern European countries to create a common power grid under the North Sea to connect future offshore wind farms have faced financing and regulatory challenges.

Denmark will host an energy summit on the Baltic Sea island on Tuesday.
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Norwegian carbon dioxide (CO2) storage company Northern Lights and its owners have agreed to store emissions captured at fertilizer maker Yara’s Dutch operation from 2025 in what they say is a commercial breakthrough for the business. 

The joint venture founded by oil companies Equinor, TotalEnergies and Shell plans to inject CO2 from industrial plants into rock formations beneath the North Sea ocean floor. 

“With the first commercial agreement for transportation and storage of CO2, we open a value chain that is critical for the world to reach net zero by 2050,” Equinor Chief Executive Anders Opedal said in a statement. 

Under the deal with Yara, 800,000 tons of CO2 per year will be transported on ships from the Netherlands from early 2025. 

Northern Lights also has preliminary deals to store CO2 from a cement plant and a waste plant that, if confirmed, will fill the project’s phase 1 capacity of 1.5 million tons per year. 

Following the Yara deal, the partnership will now work on expansion of its storage capacity to between 5 million and 6 million tons of CO2 per year, Equinor said. 

The International Energy Agency says carbon capture and storage (CCS) is vital to reducing global CO2 emissions, including from hard-to-abate sectors such as cement production, to curb global warming. 

However, there are few commercial projects in existence. 

Norway tried a decade ago to create a carbon capture project at a gas power plant in a plan once touted as the oil-producing country’s “moon landing,” but it failed because of cost issues. 

In addition, some environmentalists say that CCS merely serves to prolong the age of burning carbon for energy and that the world needs a more decisive shift to renewables. 

Yara, one of the world’s largest fertilizer manufacturers, uses natural gas in its production processes and has long sought solutions to cutting the resulting emissions. 

France’s TotalEnergies said the deal to transport CO2 to Norway and store it 2,600 meters (8,500 feet) under the seabed was a breakthrough for commercial CCS operations. 

“TotalEnergies aims to develop CO2 storage capacity of more than 10 million tons per year by 2030, both for its own facilities and for its customers,” Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanne said in a separate statement. 
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French-Israeli diamond magnate Beny Steinmetz will be back in court in Switzerland on Monday to appeal against a corruption verdict linked to mining rights in Guinea. 

The 66-year-old businessman was convicted in January 2021 of setting up a complex financial web to pay bribes to ensure his company could obtain permits in an area estimated to contain the world’s biggest untapped deposits of iron ore. 

He was sentenced by a Geneva court to five years in prison and also ordered to pay 50 million Swiss francs ($52 million) in compensation.   

Steinmetz, who maintained his innocence throughout that trial, has changed his legal team for the appeal.   

“We expect that the tribunal recognises that Beny Steinmetz did not bribe anyone,” his new lawyer Daniel Kinzer told AFP in an email.  

“I am confident the appeals court can be convinced,” he said, adding a deeper look at the case revealed “a totally different picture than the one painted by the first verdict”. 

Far from being corrupt, Beny Steinmetz Group Resources (BSGR) had legitimately obtained the mining rights in question and had striven in difficult and complex circumstances to set up an operation that would have benefited Guinea’s national interests, his team said.

‘Pact of corruption’   

Swiss prosecutors, however, accuse Steinmetz and two partners of bribing a wife of the then Guinean president Lansana Conte and others in order to win mining rights in the southeastern Simandou region.   

The prosecutors said Steinmetz obtained the rights shortly before Conte died in 2008 after about $10 million was paid in bribes over a number of years.   

Conte’s military dictatorship ordered global mining giant Rio Tinto to relinquish two concessions to BSGR for around $170 million in 2008. 

Just 18 months later, BSGR sold 51 percent of its stake in the concession to Brazilian mining giant Vale for $2.5 billion. 

But in 2013, Guinea’s first democratically elected president Alpha Conde launched a review of permits allotted under Conte and later stripped the VBG consortium formed by BSGR and Vale of its permit.   

To secure the initial deal, prosecutors claimed Steinmetz and representatives in Guinea entered a “pact of corruption” with Conte and his fourth wife Mamadie Toure. 

Toure, who has admitted to having received payments, has protected status in the United States as a state witness.  

‘No crystal ball’  

She and several other key witnesses in the case failed to appear in the first trial, and Kinzer said he had “no crystal ball as to what they will do for the appeals trial”. 

Steinmetz, who lived in Geneva during the years when the bribes were allegedly paid, continues to insist the bribery allegations are “totally false,” according to a document released by his team. 

It stresses that Rio Tinto had lost the rights to half of its concessions in Simandou for failing to develop them, and BSGR later legitimately bid for and obtained exploration rights. 

“The mining rights were withdrawn from a competitor because it was hoarding them and then awarded to BSGR on the basis of a solid and convincing business case with no need to bribe a public official,” Kinzer said. 

Steinmetz, who was granted a legal free-passage guarantee in order to participate in the first trial, left Switzerland without serving his sentence. 

He is back in Geneva to argue his case after receiving another free-passage. 

The appeal hearings are due to last through September 7. The verdict will come at a later date. 
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Fears of radiation leaks remain at Zaporizhzhia, but International Atomic Energy Agency says Ukraine reports the facility remains operational

The head of the U.N.’s atomic energy agency said it has a team on the way to visit Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, situated near the front line of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi tweeted that he is leading the team that will be at the power plant “later this week.”

“We must protect the safety and security of #Ukraine’s and Europe’s biggest nuclear facility,” Grossi said.

The IAEA said the mission will focus on assessing physical damage at the plant, determining the functionality of safety and security systems, evaluating staff conditions and performing “urgent safeguards activities.”

Russia has controlled the plant site since early in its six-month invasion, but the plant is being operated by Ukrainian engineers.

Despite numerous attacks in the area that Russia and Ukraine have blamed on each other, Grossi said Ukraine has told the agency that “all safety systems remained operational and there had been no increase in radiation levels.”

Russia launched new rocket and artillery attacks near the facility early Sunday, with Ukrainian officials reporting significant damage.

Ukraine’s Valentyn Reznichenko, governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, said that heavy firing during the night left parts of Nikopol, about 10 kilometers from the nuclear site, without electricity. Rocket strikes damaged about a dozen homes in another nearby city, Marhanets.

The city of Zaporizhzhia, about 40 kilometers upriver from the nuclear facility, was also attacked, with city council member Anatoliy Kurtev saying two people were injured.

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov claimed Sunday that shells fired by Ukrainian forces fell near buildings storing reactor fuel and radioactive waste.

The U.S. State Department accused Russia of blocking a consensus document on a nuclear non-proliferation treaty because the agreement noted the risk posed by fighting near the Zaporizhzhia plant.

“For the Russian Federation to not accept such language in the face of overwhelming international consensus underscores the need for the United States and others to continue urging Russia to end its military activity near ZNPP and return control of the plant to Ukraine,” the statement said. 

Moscow said it supports the work of the IAEA but has refused to withdraw its soldiers from the complex to create a demilitarized zone.

An engineer working under Russian occupation since March 4 at the Zaporizhzhia power plant has told VOA that Russian forces have placed artillery and missile installations within and around the property.

The engineer, whose identity is being withheld for fear of retaliation by the occupying authorities, supports Ukrainian government claims that Russia itself is responsible for the explosions.

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Ernest Marvel has a case full of medals in his Frankford home.

He was awarded his most recent addition, the French Legion of Honor, in July — almost 80 years after he helped liberate the country from the Germans in World War II.

Marvel, now 98, has rarely left the Bethany Beach area, save for the war.

“I’m a home boy,” he said.

He speaks fondly of his family. His garden is his pride and joy. He likes to dance and sing karaoke on the weekends at the local VFW and Eagles Club.

But Marvel also holds dark memories of a different time, when heroes had to fight through Europe to free thousands held in concentration camps under Adolf Hitler’s control.

He was one of those heroes.

In 1945, Marvel made his way through French and German villages, across the Rhine River and to the gates of Dachau.

Marvel’s war story

Pfc. Marvel entered the war late, just after the Battle of the Bulge, according to historian Eric Montgomery. A member of U.S. Army Company B, 179th Infantry Regiment, 1st Battalion, 45th Infantry Division, the 20-year-old made his way to Europe aboard the Queen Elizabeth troopship.

One of Marvel’s first missions, according to Montgomery, was to crawl “across an enemy-held field (strewn) with mines and booby traps.”

“We had to climb from foxhole to foxhole to get to our headquarters to let them know where we were,” Marvel said. “Each foxhole had two Germans in it, but they were kids. They were maybe 15 or 16 years old, and they were scared to death.”

His division crossed the Rhine River in storm boats as the Germans fired mortars at them.

“About three boats down from me there was a mortar shell landing, and it blew it apart,” Marvel said. “We were about halfway across. It could’ve been us.”

From there, the soldiers moved into Germany, taking village after village, often house by house.

“I was a bazooka man for a good while, and I would knock out the wheels of a tank so they couldn’t move. I’d shoot a phosphorus grenade into the turret, and it’d get so hot, they’d have to come out. Some would come out fighting, some with their hands up,” Marvel said.

He bombed German soldiers shooting from perches in church steeples, as well.

“I could hear ‘em for ages, screaming as it blew ’em out,” Marvel said.

He became reflective as he spoke.

“It’s not a good feeling,” he said. “I’m doing better.”

Marvel said he has post-traumatic stress disorder. After the war, he’d wake his wife up in the night as he experienced flashbacks. Ultimately, he got help from a psychiatrist.

“He said my trouble was it was all bottled up in me; I wouldn’t let it out. He said, ‘You start letting it out and you’ll feel better.’ And I did. I started telling different people about different things and it started coming around, but it’s still never left my mind,” he said.

Liberating Dachau concentration camp

Part of the trauma he experienced was during the liberation of Dachau concentration camp. Marvel’s memories are vivid of the horrific place where thousands of people were killed.

“There was about a half a mile of concrete road, and they had a big German barrack made out of brick on each side of the road. In between was a white-bark tree,” he said.

Marvel and his fellow soldiers moved through the buildings and killed or took prisoner the German soldiers inside.

Elsewhere on the grounds, he opened up a boxcar, only to find it and several others like it full of bodies.

“The smell was terrible. They had … big incinerators that they were burning them with and they couldn’t burn them as fast as they were dying,” he said.

That day, U.S. soldiers found more than 30 railroad cars filled with bodies brought to Dachau, all in an advanced state of decomposition, according to the U.S. National Holocaust Memorial Museum.

He was shocked by the condition of the prisoners still alive inside the camp, who were starving and wracked with diseases.

“You’ve seen ‘The Walking Dead’?” Marvel asked of the zombie apocalypse TV series. “They looked worse than that. They were dying of malnutrition. They were nothing but skin and bones, and their eyes sunk right into their heads.”

Soldiers “tossed candy bars and cigarettes over the barbed wire to the starving prisoners until ordered to stop,” according to the July 2022 National WWII Museum article, “The Last Days of the Dachau Concentration Camp,” but most of them stayed out of the main compound for “fear of disease.”

“Medical staff came, regulated the supply of food and water to those beset with malnutrition and created a typhus ward to respond to the epidemic of that dreaded disease in the camp,” the article states.

U.S. forces liberated 32,000 prisoners at Dachau, according to the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

A connection to the present

The only injury Marvel said he suffered during the war was from being hit by shrapnel on his arm. He still has a scar.

“Our general … he wanted us to take this village. He said they had been flying over and reconnaissance planes saw no activity,” he said. “We got out halfway into the field. It was breaking day, and they started shooting at us. … And the shrapnel was flying everywhere.”

Marvel was one of eight of 28 men to survive the attack, he said.

One of the soldiers who did not survive was Orla Moninger, a man Marvel had become close friends with since arriving in Europe, he said. When they returned to retrieve the bodies the next day, Moninger’s hand was over his heart, holding photos of his family, Marvel said.

Marvel’s grandson, Donnie Carey, knew of Moninger from stories shared by his grandfather. He began wondering if the fallen soldier had any family still alive. The historian he’d been working with, Montgomery, found Moninger did indeed have a living son, and Carey gave him a call.

“He said he heard (his father) was getting off a train in Germany and was shot,” Carey said, recalling the conversation with Moninger’s son. “The hair just stood up on my arm because I knew I had some information he had never heard. … It was right before holidays and he was like, ‘I have a story I can tell now.’ It was a great moment.”

A grandson, a country music singer and the Legion of Honor

Carey said he became interested in learning more about his grandfather’s time in the war about six years ago. That was when his wife read “The Diary of Anne Frank,” the well-known writings of a young Jewish girl who spent two years hiding from Nazis with her family and ultimately died in a concentration camp.

“She said, ‘You know, your grandfather experienced a lot of this stuff at Dachau,’ and I just realized how honored I was to still have the opportunity to help him and learn from him,” Carey said. “He’s my hero.”

Carey and the rest of Marvel’s extended family surprised him last summer when they took him to see country music singer Jamey Johnson at the Freeman Arts Pavilion in Selbyville. Johnson gave Marvel a shoutout before singing “In Color,” a song about a veteran.

The family made their way to the front of the stage and Johnson said, “Thank you for your sacrifice, sir.” He then came down and gave Marvel a handshake, a hug and some guitar pics.

Video of the moment was posted online, and one of those who viewed it reached out to let Carey know Marvel qualified for the Legion of Honor, France’s highest decoration.

“I’m just trying to do everything I can to help him be recognized while he’s still here,” Carey said.

Marvel turned 98 in May.

This summer, he contracted pneumonia on top of COVID-19, but recovered in time for the Legion of Honor ceremony in Washington, D.C. It was held the day before Bastille Day, (July 14) France’s most notable patriotic holiday. Marvel and two other American World War II vets were presented the award by French Ambassador Phillipe Etienne.

The award was created in 1802 “to recognize outstanding services rendered to France by military and civilian personnel,” Etienne said.

An average of 2,200 French citizens and 300 foreigners are decorated each year, according to the Legion of Honor website.
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 Greek surface-to-air missiles locked on to Turkish F-16 fighter jets carrying out a reconnaissance mission in international airspace, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said Sunday.

The allegation is the latest claim from Turkey that its neighbor and fellow NATO member Greece has been targeting its aircraft above the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean Seas.

The radar of a Greek S-300 missile system based on the island of Crete locked on to the Turkish jets on Aug. 23, Anadolu reported, citing Defense Ministry sources.

The F-16s were at an altitude of 10,000 feet to the west of Greece’s Rhodes island when the Russian-made S-300’s target tracking radar locked on, the report added. The Turkish planes completed their mission and returned to their bases “despite the hostile environment.”

It added that radar lock-ons are considered an act of hostility under NATO rules of engagement.

Calls to the Greek Embassy in Ankara went unanswered Sunday.

Last week, Turkey summoned the Greek military attaché and filed a complaint with NATO after Greek F-16s allegedly harassed Turkish F-16s that were conducting a mission for the alliance.

Anadolu said the Greek pilots put Turkey’s aircraft under a radar lock over the eastern Mediterranean. Turkey “gave the necessary response” and forced the planes to leave the area, Anadolu said, without elaborating.

Greece rejected the Turkish version of events. The Defense Ministry said five Turkish jets appeared without prior notification to accompany a flight of U.S. B-52 bombers — which hadn’t been due to have a fighter escort — through an area subject to Greek flight control.

It said four Greek fighters were scrambled and chased off the Turkish planes, adding that Athens informed NATO and U.S. authorities of the incident.

Although both NATO members, Turkey and Greece have decades-old disputes over an array of issues, including territorial claims in the Aegean Sea and disputes over the airspace there. The disputes have brought them to the brink of war three times in the past half-century.

Tensions flared in 2020 over exploratory drilling rights in areas of the Mediterranean Sea where Greece and Cyprus claim exclusive economic zones, leading to a naval standoff.

Turkey has accused Greece of violating international agreements by militarizing islands in the Aegean Sea. Athens says it needs to defend the islands — many of which lie close to Turkey’s coast — against a potential attack from Turkey’s large fleet of military landing craft.
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