Native Americans demostrated extraordinary service, honor, and heroism during World War I. Anglo officers revered them for their abilities, but no one early on thought their language would help confound the Germans.

United States Marine Corps

Choctaw Code Talkers in World War I

By Richard L. Hayes

The affection that Europeans have for the Great American West is well known, so it shouldn’t be surprising that several traveling Wild West Shows happened to be in enemy territory when World War I broke out. Read more

U.S. Marines put up a tenacious defense against a large Japanese force invading Wake Island in December 1941.

United States Marine Corps

WWII’s Battle of Wake Island: An Unsteady Victory

by John Wukovits

In mid-December 1941, during the thick of the Battle of Wake Island, the 400 U.S. Marines who called the island outpost home stood a lonely sentinel in the watery Central Pacific wilderness, like a cavalry fort in an oceanic version of the Western frontier. Read more

Orlando Norie captured a grisly moment following the Indian rebellion of 1857-1858. Some mutineers were executed by being tied to cannon and then blown in half.

United States Marine Corps

POW: Art and the Image of The Prisoner

By Peter Harrington

War produces casualties … and captives. Much “war art” concerns itself with the heroics and clash of battle, the sway of forces, and the turns of history. Read more

A contingent of U.S. Marine Corps intelligence personnel and native scouts shove their canoes off from the coast watchers’ station at Segi, New Guinea, on a routine patrol.

United States Marine Corps

Coast Watchers in the Solomons

by John Brown

Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, coast watcher Cornelius Page, a plantation manager on Tabar Island 20 miles north of New Ireland in the South Pacific, reported by teleradio that Japanese planes were making reconnaissance flights over New Ireland and New Britain. Read more

United States Marine Corps

V-E Day: Victory at Last for World War II’s Allies

By Flint Whitlock

Within his reinforced concrete bunker, 50 feet below the garden of the New Reichs Chancellery on Berlin’s Wilhelmstrasse, German dictator Adolf Hitler, his soon-to-be bride Eva Braun, and several hundred friends, SS guards, and staff members could feel the concussion and hear the unending drumroll of thousands of Soviet artillery shells reducing the already-battered capital city of the Third Reich to unrecognizable rubble. Read more

United States Marine Corps

The Marines and North Vietnamese at Khe Sanh

By John Walker

In early 1967, the thinly populated, rugged, and mountainous Khe Sanh plateau lay in the northwest corner of South Vietnam, bordered by Laos to the west and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and North Vietnam to the north. Read more

U.S. Marines make their way across a low stone wall as they seek out hidden Japanese positions on bloody Okinawa.

United States Marine Corps

Sugar Loaf Hill Survival: U.S. Marines in the Okinawa Campaign

By John Wukovits

The grimy, weary Marines heard with little emotion the instructions shouted by their officer. He wanted them to mount yet another charge to the top of the nondescript hill blocking their way, another collection of rock housing an enemy that tried to halt their advance. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Famous Marines: Smedley Butler

By Edward L. Bimberg

The annals of the United States Marine Corps are filled with the names of mavericks known not only for their fighting skills, but for their offbeat personalities as well. Read more

Marines of Company D, 3rd Platoon, rush to take defensive positions around Con Thien as they encounter heavy North Vietnamese gunfire.

United States Marine Corps

Con Thien: Hell on the Hill of Angels

By Al Hemingway

Lieutenant General Lewis Walt was not a happy man. The burly III Marine Amphibious Force commander had just been ordered by Commanding General William C. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Still a Splendid Sight: Merrill’s Mauraders

By Al Hemingway

Private First Class Frank Rinaldi cautiously made his way through the dense foliage. He and other soldiers were on patrol when they heard the unmistakable sound of Japanese voices, and they inched their way forward to investigate. Read more

With their Ka-Bar fighting knives at their sides, U.S. Marines sit atop a pile of spent shells and provide cover for comrades moving inland on Iwo Jima.

United States Marine Corps

The Marine Corps’ Ka-Bar Fighting Knife

By Mike Haskew

When Private Clarence Garrett of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, United States Marine Corps, clung to the loose black volcanic sand on the sloping beach of Iwo Jima on Feburary 19, 1945, he probably had no idea that his photograph was being taken. Read more

United States Marine Corps

Saipan: A Crucial Foothold in the Marianas

By John Wukovits

On June 10, 1944, as his troop transport churned through the Pacific toward the Japanese-held island of Saipan, Pharmacist’s Mate First Class Stan Bowen wrote a letter to his sweetheart, Marge McCann. Read more

From Around the Network

  • The 9th-century Oseberg ship in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo was excavated in the early 20th century from a burial mound in southern Norway. The karve-style, clinker-built ship with its broad hull is made almost entirely from oak.

    Military History

    The Viking Longship
    Read More

  • Military Games

    Vietnam is the setting for two action games.
    Read More
  • A twin-boomed P-38 Lightning flies over snow-capped mountain peaks. With its tremendous range and firepower, the P-38 saw service in every major theater of World War II.

    WWII

    What Made the Lockheed P-38 Lightning So Special?
    Read More

  • Civil War

    West Virginia: Seceding from the Confederacy
    Read More