“Colonel, there’s about 3,000 Japs between you and me.” Sergeant Ralph Briggs telephoned the command post of the 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment at about 9:30 on the night of October 24, 1942, to report what he had just seen. Read more
As the Allied armies advanced across Western Europe in the summer of 1944, the First Canadian Army undertook the task of clearing the coastal areas and opening the Channel ports. Read more
British Army officer John Graves Simcoe wanted to command a corps of irregular troops. He believed that there were opportunities in “the service of a partisan” that taught a man habits of self-dependence and prompt decision making rarely found in the duties of a subordinate officer. Read more
Lieutenant John P. Lucas of the 13th U.S. Cavalry was sound asleep in a small adobe shack in Columbus, New Mexico, on the night of March 9, 1916, when he was abruptly awakened by the unmistakable sounds of men and horses passing outside his window. Read more
When news began to circulate through the city of Bordeaux, France, in August 1914 that war had broken out with Germany, 21-year-old Englishman Wilfred Owen was as surprised as most. Read more
For the cold and hungry GIs of Company B, 1/401st Glider Infantry Regiment, holding the western approach to Bastogne would push the men to the limits of their endurance. Read more
British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery has gone down in history as the victor of El Alamein and the relentless nemesis of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, Nazi Germany’s famed “Desert Fox.” Read more
On the snowy field of Mollwitz, Poland, on April 10, 1741, newly installed King Frederick II of Prussia faced a formidable army of Austria. Read more
For William Henry Harrison, the letter he received on October 12, 1811, constituted not only official orders, but something of a personal vindication as well. Read more
Months after the Red Army stormed across the Polish frontier from the east and occupied approximately half of Poland in the autumn of 1939, the Soviet secret police (NKVD) rounded up thousands of Polish Army officers and summarily executed them at various locations around the war-torn country. Read more
When the Arado Ar-234 Blitz jet bomber first appeared in the skies of Europe, most Allied airmen did not know what it was. Read more
At 1:30 am on August 21, 1968, Czech authorities at Ruzyne Airport in the capital city of Prague waited to greet a special flight that was flying in directly from Moscow. Read more
On the evening of September 13, 1759, Major Robert Rogers and 220 hand-picked rangers climbed into 17 whaleboats and rowed across the placid waters of Lake Champlain. Read more
General Joseph W. “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell and his Sino-American Myitkyina Task Force (MTF), in a coup de main attack, seized the vital Japanese-controlled airfield just west of the town of Myitkyina on the great Irrawaddy River in northern Burma on May 17, 1944. Read more
The developers at Firaxis are currently hard at work on the next entry in the Civilization series, which should be nearing its worldwide October 21 launch date by the time this is in the hands of readers. Read more
The cold and ruthless silence of sniping mixes even further with high-tech solutions and ghost-like infiltration in Sniper: Ghost Warrior 3, which is coming to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on January 27, 2017. Read more
The late morning sky above the besieged Irish town of Kinsale was full of storm and rage on December 24, 1601. Read more
The Germans had flooded the plain surrounding the key crossroads of Carentan before the Americans came ashore at Omaha and Utah Beaches on June 6, 1944. Read more
“Peiper must be stopped!”
Lieutenant General Courtney M. Hodges, commanding the U.S. First Army, looked up from his maps and saw chaos everywhere. Read more
President Franklin D. Roosevelt was disturbed in the autumn of 1938 by the Munich agreement, at which the rights of Czechoslovakia were signed away, and by reports of mounting air strength in Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Read more
