The Real English Patient Behind the Ralph Fiennes Film
By Ron GilliamOn the morning of May 15, 1942, a strange motorcade rolled out of Campo Four, located 170 hot, dusty miles south of the Italian base at Jalo oasis in northeast Libya. Read more
Game Review: Immortal Conquest: Europe
By Joseph LusterImmortal Conquest: Europe is one of many territory-claiming iOS/Android strategy games with a vicious hook. While it’s set in a fantasy world that mixes in elements of mythology and a slight dash of historic heroics, the end result is mostly in line with what we’ve seen in previous mobile outings within the genre. Read more
Game Preview: Holdfast: Nations at War
By Joseph LusterAnd now, for something completely different, Anvil Game Studios is preparing to drop us smack-dab in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars. Read more
Robert S. Garnett: First General to Die in the Civil War
By William E. WelshRather than embrace his appointment to command the confederate forces in northwestern Virginia with enthusiasm, Brig. Gen. Read more
Book Reviews: Heroism of the Nisei Soldiers
By Christopher Miskimon Honor Before Glory: The Epic World War II Story of the Japanese American GIs Who Rescued the Lost Battalion(Scott McGaugh, Da Capo Press, Boston, 2016, 257 pp., Read more
On a Wing and Several Prayers: The Story of a B-17 Tailgunner
By Glenn BarnettOn August 25, 1944, Larry Stevens and the rest of his Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber crew completed their 35th mission over Nazi-occupied Europe. Read more
Fiery Fight for a Frozen Hell: Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg
By James G. Bilder
Described in one U.S. Army report as “the quiet paradise for weary troops,” the tiny nation of Luxembourg was viewed by American commanders in late 1944 much like Belgium—liberated, safe, and an ideal location for combat-worn troops to rest and for untested replacements to get exposed to outdoor living and military routine before being exposed to combat. Read more
La Gleize Battle of the Bulge Museum
By Michel De TrezThere is no shortage of museums in the Belgian Ardennes to record the region’s dark winter of World War II. Read more
Remembering a Day of Remembrance
By Flint WhitlockThis year, as I have done almost every year for the past 30 years, I took part in the Memorial Day ceremony at the 10th Mountain Division War Memorial near the division’s former training area high up in the Colorado Rockies. Read more
75th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway
By Michael E. HaskewSeventy-five years ago this month, the pivotal battle of World War II in the Pacific occurred in the waters surrounding an otherwise obscure atoll, Midway, roughly 1,300 miles from Pearl Harbor, where American involvement in the conflict had begun so suddenly just six months earlier. Read more
Weighing the Odds of Crusader Success
The christian crusaders that marched south into Ottoman Rumelia in 1444 bet heavily that the combined power of Poland, Hungary, and Wallachia would prove sufficient to break the iron grip the Ottoman Porte had on the southern Balkans. Read more
The Lions of Carentan Part III: Operation Cobra
By Volker GriesserBackground: In this, the third and final installment of a three-part series excerpted from The Lions of Carentan, the 2011 book by a respected German military historian, Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6 (FJR 6) has been pushed out of Ste.-Mère-église, Read more
The Lions of Carentan Part II: Defending Carentan
By Volker GriesserBackground: Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6, under the command of Major Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte, had the fortune (or misfortune) to be stationed in Normandy at the time of the Allied invasion of France on June 6, 1944. Read more
The Lions of Carentan Part I: Paratrooper vs Paratrooper on D-Day
By Volker GriesserBackground: Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6 was organized in February 1943, under the command of Major Egon Liebach. It was part of the 2nd Fallschirmjäger Division and was stationed in France, where it trained in parachute and glider operations. Read more
Michael Wittmann: How the Legendary Panzer Ace Died in World War II
By Christopher MiskimonDuring the late morning of August 8, 1944, the day famed tank commander Michael Wittmann would meet his end in combat, German SS-Oberführer (Colonel) Kurt “Panzer” Meyer sat in his staff car as his driver made his way toward the town of Cintheaux, France, near the front lines. Read more
Book Review: Thunder at the Gates: The Black Civil War Regiments That Redeemed America
By Christopher MiskimonThe men of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment began a hard march at 8:30 am on February 20, 1864. Read more
Book Reviews: Nine Literary Picks For May 2017
By Christopher Miskimon Pax Romana: War, Peace and Conquest in the Roman World(Adrian Goldsworthy, Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2016, 513 pp., Read more
“Put the Boys In”: Confederate Cadets at the Battle of New Market
By Pedro GarciaAs the Civil War continued in the spring of 1864, a Shenandoah Valley resident lamented, “Our prospects look gloomy, very gloomy.” Read more
The Men Against the Bomb
By Andrew J. RotterThe men and women who imagined and then built the atomic bomb thought they were doing something different from what makers of “conventional” weapons did. Read more
LIFE Photographer Ralph Morse’s War
By Susan ZimmermanIn an age before television and instant communications, Americans wanted to see what was going on in the world’s “deadliest conflict in human history,” and LIFE magazine was making a name for itself as THE war magazine during World War II. Read more
