Major Robert B. Yates arrived at the 1111th Engineers’ headquarters in Trois-Ponts, Belgium, around 13:30 on Monday, December 18, 1944, expecting to sit in on an ordinary staff meeting. Read more
On October 15, 1942, a total of 22 men, all British subjects and all prisoners of war captured by Japanese military forces in the Gilbert Islands in the Central Pacific, were executed on Betio islet at Tarawa Atoll.. Read more
For nearly two long months, from July 14 to early September 1683, Vienna endured the siege from the Ottoman Empire. Read more
Patton’s Prayer: A True Story of Courage, Faith and Victory in World War II (Alex Kershaw, Dutton Press, New York NY, 2024, 348 pp., Read more
It was the custom for King Alfred of Wessex to celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas at his royal palace at Dorchester, in the county of Dorset. Read more
Movies and novels about spies and espionage usually portray brave and sexy secret agents going deep behind enemy lines to grab some invaluable and potentially destabilizing piece of information. Read more
On September 3, 1939, when Great Britain and France declared war on Germany, the Kriegsmarine only had 46 operational U-boats, the majority of which were used for training. Read more
From games exiting Early Access to games entering Microsoft’s Game Pass subscription service, we now come to another look at Hell Let Loose. Read more
Publisher 2tainment and the indie game devs at Linked Dimensions launched their turn-based tactical war game Tank Operations: European Campaign in Steam Early Access back in August 2019, but the time has finally come to unleash the full game. Read more
Vice-Admiral Sir John Pennington’s jolly-boat nudged against the accommodation ladder that had been rigged aboard the Santiago, flagship of Admiral Don Rafael d’Oquendo’s Spanish fleet. Read more
“It is with artillery that one makes war.” So declared Napoleon Bonaparte, one of the Great Captains of military history and a born gunner himself. Read more
Belgian Fort Eben Emael was as close to impregnable as modern defense works could be—or so it seemed. Read more
On May 26, 1940, as the armies of Nazi Germany roared across prostrate France and the British Expeditionary Force was in the midst of its evacuation by sea from the European continent, Italian Army Marshal Pietro Badoglio, 69, was in the waiting room of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome. Read more
By the end of the second day visibility was reduced to almost zero. Burning hulks of everything from ME-109s to M3 “Honey” tanks, Panzer IIIHs, and trucks of all descriptions littered the battleground that was once an airfield. Read more
On the night of August 4, 1864, in the cabin of his flagship the USS Hartford, Admiral Farragut read his Bible, arriving at ultimate assurance that God was on his side. Read more
The city-states of ancient Greece were rich in culture and history. But following the Peloponnesian War, which lasted 27 years, they were exhausted, their best young men dead, Attica’s farms ruined. Read more
Richard Hovenden of His Majesty’s British Legion Dragoons cautiously urged his tired horse through a parklike expanse of tall trees that marked the entrance to a South Carolina country crossroads junction called locally “Hannah’s Cowpens.” Read more
A thin shaft of moonlight played over the broad, deserted boulevard leading to the suburban Athens home of Greek Prime Minister John Metaxas on the night of October 28, 1940. Read more
Morris “Moe” Berg was a man of many talents: linguist, lawyer, baseball player, spy. Although this Renaissance man gained a modicum of celebrity on the baseball diamond, Berg is best remembered as an operative for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), a World War II forerunner of the U.S. Read more
In 1490 Japan entered a crucial period of its history known as the sengoku-jidai, or the “Age of the Country at War.” Read more
