Articles Archive

A modern illustration shows Roman legionnaires on the march. The front ranks typically charged into battle, stopping to hurl their pilum before closing with the enemy using their gladius. In the melee, they used their scutum to knock their opponents off balance.

Roman Armageddon at Pharsalus

By William E. Welsh

The snow-capped peaks of the Ceraunian Mountains stared down on the sturdy barks hunting for a suitable place to land on the coast of Epirus on January 5, 48 bc. Read more

American Airborne In Operation Torch

By Michael E. Haskew

Only two years after the U.S. Army officially sanctioned the formation of an airborne arm, American paratroopers were committed to a vast offensive against Axis forces on the coast of French North Africa. Read more

RCAF Pilot Bill Ash, The Cooler King

By James Reynolds

For Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen interned in enemy prison camps during World War II, escaping was regarded as their unwritten duty. Read more

Yorkist English King Edward IV rides into London on April 11, 1471, at the head of a powerful army to reclaim his throne. Edward had sought refuge in Flanders the previous fall when his former mentor and chief ally, the Earl of Warwick, raised a large rebel army to lead against him and restored Lancastrian King Henry VI to the throne.

Battle of Barnet: Death of a Kingmaker

By William E. Welsh

Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, was troubled by reports he was receiving in March 1471 that an invasion by King Edward IV was imminent. Read more

World War II Snipers: The Men, Their Guns, Their Stories

By Christopher Miskimon

Private Harlan J. Hinkle enlisted in the United States Marine Corps the day after the Pearl Harbor attack. Read more

Z Special Unit: The Elite Allied World War II Guerrilla Force

By Christopher Miskimon

Z Special Unit: The Elite Allied World War II Guerrilla Force (Gavin Mortimer, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, UK, 2022, 240 pp., Read more

Marching From Defeat: Surviving the Collapse of the German Army in the Soviet Union 1944

By Christopher Miskimon

Claus Neuber served as an artillery officer in the German Army on the Eastern Front. In June 1944, the Soviets launched Operation Bagration, a massive offensive which crushed German Army Group Center. Read more

Alexander the Great’s soldiers are shown attacking Tyre in a modern illustration. Simultaneous attacks by Alexander’s fleet on both of the city’s harbors after six months of fighting put an impossible strain on the Tyrians’ resources.

The Fall of Tyre

By Alexander Zakrzewski

As Alexander the Great marched his army south along the Levantine coast in January 332 bc, he must have felt as if the fates were unquestionably on his side. Read more

B-25 Mitchell medium bombers fly over islands covered in snow and shrouded in fog to strike at Japanese forces.

Showdown In The Aleutians

By Phil Zimmer

With a sharp clatter of machine guns, the Japanese marines announced their presence by spraying bullets into the isolated U.S. Read more

A Flash of Sabers

By Alexander Zakrzewski

On the foggy morning of November 30, 1808, Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, watched impatiently as his Grande Armée lumbered up the rocky slopes of the Sierra de Guadarrama Mountains of central Spain. Read more

A 19th-century print offers a fanciful depiction of the desperate fighting along the Orange Plank on the second day of the Battle of the Wilderness. Although the battle ended in a draw with both sides suffering heavy casualties, the Army of the Potomac under the watchful eye of Commander-in-Chief Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant chose not to retreat, but continue south.

James Longstreet’s Daring Advance

By Arnold Blumberg

The column of Confederates marched east as quietly as possible along the bed of an unfinished railroad that knifed through the Wilderness south of the Rapidan River shortly before midday on May 6, 1864. Read more

Soldiers with the pro-Western Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) on patrol during the Bush War. A communist push into southeastern Angola in 1897 triggered a major ground response from South Africa.

Bloody Clash On The Lomba

By William Stroock

With its pro-Western ally in southern Angola facing destruction by an all-out communist offensive in 1987, Apartheid South African President P.W. Read more

Americans troops enter Messina on August 17, 1943. Despite Adolf Hitler’s orders to fight to the last man, Kesselring skillfully employed hundreds of antiaircraft guns to cover the withdrawal of 40,000 Germans to the mainland.

Drive to Messina

By Phil Zimmer

Sergeant Alfred Johnson peered from behind a boulder on a rock-strewn hillside at Piano Lupo about six miles inland from the southern coast of Sicily. Read more

Russia’s Four Immortal Generals

By Victor Kamenir

In 1242, Russian Prince Alexander Nevsky faced the armored might of the Teutonic knights. Generals Alexander Suvorov and Peter Kotlyarevski were Napoleon’s contemporaries, while General Mikhail Skobelev exemplified the panache of the Victorian Era. Read more

From urban combat to fighting in flat, open fields, from tank-vs.-tank duels, to aerial bombardments to ceaseless artillery barrages, the action at Anzio took on every dimension. Here an American GI uses his carbine to keep German forces at bay during the battle for Anzio that lasted from January to May 1944.

The 45th Infantry Division’s Desperate Defense at Anzio

By Christopher Miskimon

The sunrise on February 16, 1944, dawned foggy over the Via Anziate—the only highway between Anzio and Rome. Read more

Battle of Kadesh: Clash of the Chariot Armies

By Erich B. Anderson

In the cold, early morning of a day in late May 1274 bc, the Egyptian troops of the Re corps were abruptly awoken with shouts, kicks, or nudges. Read more

Death of Himmler’s Henchman

By Richard Rule

In a desperate bid to avoid another war in Europe, both Britain and France signed the notorious Munich Agreement in 1938, which annexed the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia to the Nazis. Read more

Life and Death on the Eastern Front: Rare Colour Photographs from the Second World War

By Christopher Miskimon

A trio of Soviet T-26 light tanks sit isolated in a field, green grass reaching the tops of their tracks. Read more

The 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion: Fighting on Both Fronts

By Christopher Miskimon

The men of the 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion fought two opponents during World War II. From the moment they began their training in 1942, the African American soldiers assigned to the unit faced the prejudice endemic in American society of the time, and by extension the United States Army. Read more

British infantry forms a square against French cavalry at the Battle of Quatre Bras in this painting by Lady Butler. Napoleon hoped when he crossed into the Netherlands to separate the British from the Prussians and defeat each separately, but neither he nor his subordinates rose to the occasion.

Terrible Slaughter at Waterloo

By David A. Norris

With two hours of daylight left, French Emperor Napoleon I saw his chance to make the Battle of Waterloo his greatest victory. Read more

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