By December 24, 1944, the commander of the Sixth Panzer Army’s strongest battlegroup, SS Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Jochen Peiper, was facing the ultimate military nightmare. Read more
Winter was the calmest period for Civil War soldiers. Knowing that there was no combat immediately looming on the horizon allowed the soldiers to relax and recuperate in ways they had not been able to enjoy beafore. Read more
The 18-year-old seamen bobbed in the oily waters off the Philippine coast with other survivors of the October 25, 1944, battle. Read more
In the fall of 1447, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, was not a happy man. He was lieutenant general of France and Guyenne, a kind of viceroy who oversaw English possessions in France, and he was also a powerful and rapacious feudal magnate in his own right. Read more
September 1943 was an extraordinary month for the Royal Italian Army. On the 8th, General Dwight Eisenhower and Marshal Pietro Badoglio announced Italy’s surrender to the Allies. Read more
Nothing in Ambrose Burnside’s pre-Civil War career indicated that he would be anything but a successful and energetic general. Read more
Recently detached from the Army of Tennessee, the Arkansas troops of Brig. Gen. Thomas J. Churchill’s division had not yet met their new commander when the division came under fire at Richmond, Kentucky, on August 30, 1862. Read more
On the evening of June 21, 1941, foreboding hung like a heavy blanket over the Soviet Union’s western border as indicators of the imminent German invasion increased every day. Read more
Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr was in a tight spot, and he knew it. It was the morning of August 26, 1813, and Saint-Cyr and his French XIV Corps were defending Dresden, the capital of Saxony, from a large and menacing Allied army that outnumbered his own by at least four to one. Read more
It was a battle fought without armies. No rifles, no tanks, no barbed wire. In the summer of 1940, the skies above Britain served as the battlefield for the British Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe. Read more
The year 2007 marked the 30th anniversary of the E-3 Sentry’s Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) service to the United States Air Force. Read more
Freighter Ehrenfels’ siren shrieked through the muggy night across the harbor. As the captain pulled down hard on the alarm cord, the alarm howled out over the steaming darkness, screaming that British raiders were in the harbor, alerting Ehrenfels’ crew and calling for help from ashore. Read more
When a friend from Wolsey, South Dakota, asked Alven Baker why he was joining the army in 1941 and not another branch of the service, he replied, “To capture Adolf Hitler.” Read more
Despite costing the Union Army 55,000 men in five weeks of hard marching and grueling combat, Lt. Gen. Read more
Suppose you found a magic door that opened onto some of the most crucial battles fought in the Pacific during World War II? Read more
On the chilly night of February 8, 1904, the Imperial Russian Navy’s Pacific Squadron lay peacefully at anchor just outside Port Arthur’s main harbor. Read more
Activity at Japanese air bases in the northern Solomon Islands reached a fever pitch as the South Pacific sun rose on the morning of April 7, 1943. Read more
The continued presence of a handpicked French puppet emperor in Mexico, which had so worried the Lincoln administration during the Civil War, remained a sore point with American political and military leaders after the Union victory in 1865. Read more
Just boys facing danger, please God make them men; If they live through the danger, make them boys once again. —Sergeant Ginger Woodcock, June 5, 1944
On the morning of June 6, 1944, the greatest amphibious fleet in history bore in toward the coast of Normandy. Read more
On September 27, 1944, a C-47 Skytrain named “Mary,” tail number 43-48395, prepared to depart Royal Air Force Base Wharton in Lancashire, England, filled with assorted medical supplies destined for a U.S. Read more
