Drive to Messina

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

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

The 45th Infantry Division’s Desperate Defense at Anzio

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

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

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

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

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

Terrible Slaughter at Waterloo

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

Desperate Days On Hill 314

When the 230th Field Artillery Battalion was attached to the 30th Infantry (“Old Hickory”) Division in Mortain, France, on August 6, 1944, many of its men had already received their baptism of fire in Normandy. Read more

Letters From The Eastern Front

Backstory: My father, Karl Fuchs, was a German soldier in World War II who fought and died on the Eastern Front. Read more

On the trail of the Amber Room

Nearly 20 years ago, I met a fellow in Germany (we’ll call him “Hans”) who was on his life’s quest to find one of mankind’s greatest treasures and solve one of WWII’s greatest mysteries—the fabulous Amber Room. Read more

Soldiers of God

In November 1177, Saladin launched his first significant military campaign against a crusader state. With 26,000 men, siege engines, a huge baggage train, and his own personal force of elite Mamluk bodyguards, Saladin marched his Ayyubid army across the Sinai Desert from Egypt into southern Palestine. Read more

Incomparable Bravery

In the early evening of September 12, 1683, the citizens of Vienna watched from the ramparts of their beleaguered city as 3,500 winged horsemen poured down the slopes of the Kahlenberg Heights and into the heart of the besieging Turkish army. Read more

Liberating Paris

By Jean René Champion (with Marc and David Champion)

Jean René Champion (or René, as he preferred to be called) was born in 1921 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a commune on the west side of Paris. Read more

Guadalcanal: Ending with a Whimper

Admiral Ernest J. King wanted the battle for Guadalcanal to be over. There were additional objectives for the United States to pursue in the South Pacific and by the middle of January 1943 he was becoming impatient. Read more

Bloody Showdown at Stanley

A rocky, jumbled mass of boulders known as Mount Harriet just west of the city of Stanley in the Falkland Islands had no claim to fame before the night of June 11-12, 1982, but it achieved renown after a harrowing engagement that occurred between British and Argentine forces that night. Read more

Infantry’s Armored Fist

The 782nd Tank Battalion spent two years training stateside as part of the U.S. Read more

Spring 2014 Military Games

Things have been moving along nicely for Wargaming.net’s hugely successful massively-multiplayer online game World of Tanks. It was already doing plenty well on PC, but its recent arrival on Xbox 360 finally brought it to a hungry console audience. Read more

The Necessity of Drill

In normal times 18th-century Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a small farming community of about 800 souls clustered around a common. Read more

Captured in the Bulge

It took the HMS Queen Elizabeth, the world’s largest passenger liner, only five days to transport 15,000 men of the 106th Infantry Division from New Jersey to Glasgow, Scotland, making port on November 17, 1944. Read more