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The Ship That Disguised Itself as an Island and Other Lesser-Known WWII Facts

Khalid Elhassan July 6, 2020 35 min

Guadalcanal - Guadalcanal campaign — Marines arriving in Guadalcanal. Encyclopedia Britannica

20. The Serbo-American

Mihajlo Pejic, who would later anglicize his name to Mitchell Paige, was born in Pennsylvania in 1918, to Serb immigrant parents who hailed from what had been the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As Paige would later recount, his mother had raised him and his brother as proud Americans, while keeping them aware of and in touch with their Serb ethnic roots.

From early childhood, as he recalled, he grew up with stories of Serbian feats of heroism and resistance, dating from as far back as the 1389 Battle of Kosovo. Consuming such martial lore as steady fare at home, it was no surprise that Paige grew up with a desire to join the military. As a young boy, he watched a parade that featured proudly marching US Marines. Then and there, he made up his mind to join the Corps as soon as he was old enough.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.