On a cold March evening in the Goldenrod Café in West Point, Nebraska, Mary Timmermann, a waitress there, picked up the telephone receiver when her boss told her it was Omaha calling long distance for her. Read more
“She was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. Her body was perfect in every line, her face clear and angelic, and her blue eyes the gayest, the most innocent eyes one can imagine. Read more
Following the spectacular success of the Allied air campaign against Iraq during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and against the Serb forces in Kosovo in 1999, the value and efficiency of utilizing air power to shape or forgo the need for a ground battle has been taken for granted by military planners. Read more
The first days of January 1943 found American forces winning the prolonged struggle for control of Guadalcanal in the South Pacific. Read more
The Nazi regime in Germany has become synonymous with inhuman cruelty. Hitler incarcerated millions in his concentration camps and inflicted on his victims the harshest forms of torture and deprivation imaginable. Read more
During Germany’s early string of victories between 1939 and 1941, Hitler informed the members of the nation’s aerospace industry that he had decided to impose new restrictions on aircraft research and development. Read more
On the morning of November 30, 1864, Fountain Branch Carter, a 67-year-old farmer, planter, and Confederate sympathizer, watched as his front yard in Franklin, Tennessee, filled up with Union soldiers pitching tents and starting campfires. Read more
On November 28, 1947, a converted North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber crashed in the Algerian desert, killing all aboard. Read more
“The lieutenant said for everyone to lay your arms down,” a fellow paratrooper told Pfc. Bob Nobles, who had been fighting for six grueling days in the hedgerows following his unit’s jump into Normandy. Read more
While many in the English-speaking world have heard of Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian, few today know the name of Otto von Knobelsdorff, a German panzer general who commanded troops in battles every bit as pivotal as his contemporaries did, in quantity and quality, and who also fought against General George S. Read more
The name Leonard Jay Thom may not mean anything to a great many people today, and that is unfortunate. Read more
Bradley could have been referring to German General Erwin Rommel. While Rommel was winning the war of desert armor tactics during 1941-1942 in the North African Campaign, he was losing the war of logistics. Read more
It was, as the phrase goes, another perfect day in paradise. As the sun rose above the Pacific in the clear, cloudless sky east of the Hawaiian Islands, on December 7, 1941, the giant U.S. Read more
While the surprise Japanese attacks against U.S. military bases in the Hawaiian Islands on December 7, 1941, are certainly the best-known aspect of the opening of hostilities between the two aLess well known today were the Japanese attacks on Clark Field and Iba Field on the opening day of hostilities in the Philippines. Read more
When we remember the 13,000 paratroopers and glider infantrymen who contributed so significantly to the hard-won success of June 6, 1944, we tend to remember the stories that leave us with something to admire. Read more
In the fall of 1941, the Polish writer Aleksander Wat, recently released from confinement in a Soviet prison, made his way east across the vast expanses of the Soviet Union. Read more
It was a letter in the London Times that caught the attention of British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Read more
BACKSTORY: The Reverend E. Gage Hotaling, the son of a Baptist minister, was born in Wellsville, New York, on January 21, 1916. Read more
Lieutenant William A. “Bill” Klenk, piloting a Curtiss SB2C-3 Helldiver, bristled at the “clawing, miserable weather,” with inverted pyramids of cloud hanging from a low ceiling and gray murk everywhere. Read more
Shortly after 8 am on June 6, 1944, a German officer overlooking the Vierville-sur-Mer Draw on Omaha Beach reported that the soldiers defending the beach were repelling the Americans: “The enemy is in search of cover behind the coastal zone obstacles. Read more
