The Byzantine Army’s Varangian Guard

Byzantine Emperor Basil II suffered a massive defeat against the Bulgarians on August 17, 986, at a strategic mountain pass known as Trajan’s Gate in Bulgaria. Read more

Swedish Gamble at the Battle of Narva

Just after dawn on the morning of November 20, 1700, two figures stood atop Hermansburg, a small rise that overlooked the fortress town of Narva in the Baltic province of Estonia. Read more

Masterstroke at Friedland

Friedland was burning. The darkening sky of late afternoon on June 14, 1807, was deepened further by the ashes swirling in the narrow streets. Read more

Cherbourg’s Bloody Toll

It was June 1944. Two generals, one American and one German, faced each other with diametrically opposed missions. Read more

Joan of Arc’s Loire Campaign: The English Tide Recedes

None of those present at the war council held on July 18, 1429, at Beaugency in central France seemed to object to the peculiar sight of an armor-clad young woman advising some of the greatest military captains of the age on how to proceed with the campaign to crown the Dauphin Charles king of France. Read more

Prudence or Paralysis?

Hitler called it an “abscess.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the chief sponsor and loudest cheerleader for the endeavor, grudgingly proclaimed it “a disaster.” Read more

Turco-Mongol Emir Timur: Scourge of the East

Egyptian medieval chronicler Ibn Taghribirdi relates an incident that occurred following Turco-Mongol Emir Timur’s conquest of Aleppo in 1400. Read more

The Easter Offensive of 1972

At noon on Good Friday, March 30, 1972, more than 25,000 North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers, backed by state-of-the-art Soviet tanks, artillery, and mobile antiaircraft missile platforms, poured across the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Vietnams. Read more

Rommel Repulsed

It was the first week of April 1941, and Lt. Gen. Richard O’Connor could scarcely believe what was happening as his driver suddenly cocked the wheel and swerved hard left, flooring the gas pedal in a futile attempt to outrun the multiple bursts of machine-gun fire erupting all around them, lighting up the Saharan night as bullets chased after his wheels. Read more

Jugurtha: Numidian King, Roman Enemy

Jugurtha, king of the desert nation of Numidia, was a long-time antagonist of Republican Rome. Over more than a decade of war, he was a bold and cunning battlefield commander who used swiftness and determination to make fools of Roman consuls, even as the Romans were systematically conquering his country. Read more

American Stand At Chateau-Thierry

For the hard-pressed German Empire, New Year’s Day 1918 brought a compendium of evils. The Allied naval blockade, increasingly effective, depressed industrial production and stoked a war weariness made manifest in strikes and bread riots. Read more

Tank Destroyers in Action! Photos of the 809th on the Front

The 809th Tank Destroyer Battalion was an independently attached unit of the U.S. Army. The battalion was activated on March 18, 1942, at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, and remained in the United States through most of the war. Read more

Roses In The Snow

On March 1, 1461, English Chancellor George Neville faced a large crowd of Londoners in St. John’s Field outside the city. Read more

We Will Hold It or Die Here!

Amid the fog of powder smoke in the north-Georgia forest, the frayed remnants of the Union’s Army of the Cumberland faced determined Confederate troops who sensed an impending victory. Read more

Napoleon’s Triumph over Prussia

At 4 am on October 14, 1806, 37-year-old Jean Lannes, Marshal of France in Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armee and commander of that host’s V Corps, received his final instructions verbally from the emperor. Read more

Turning Point In The Pacific

Despite more than a decade of triumphs in Asia and the Pacific, by the spring of 1942 the Japanese military establishment was in a somber mood. Read more

The MG-42 Light Machine Gun

Whether fighting in the mountains of the Italian peninsula, assaulting Nazi defensive positions along the vast Russo-German Eastern Front, or clashing with German Army opponents from Normandy to the Elbe River, from 1942 to 1945, Allied soldiers in World War II faced a determined enemy armed with the most effective machine gun produced during that struggle: the Maschinengewehr 42, or the MG 42 for short. Read more

World Airlines Flight 253: Hostage of the Soviet Union

Nineteen-year-old U.S. Army Specialist E5 James Griffith wasn’t particularly nervous when he boarded Seaboard World Airlines Flight 253 at McChord Air Base in Tacoma, Washington, on June 30, 1968. Read more

Sack of Constantinople

Dawn broke clear and hot over Constantinople on July 17, 1203.

All manner of war machines were clustered around the Latin crusaders’ fortified camp on a hill where the Monastery of Saints Cosmas and Damian was located. Read more

Race to Victory

Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt of the Royal Navy was in a grave predicament on August 28, 1914. His force was near the German base at Heligoland Bight. Read more