Articles Archive

Ernie Pyle: Fated at Ie Shima

By Roy Morris Jr.

Ernie Pyle did not want to go to Okinawa. He was too old, too tired, and—some said—too jaded for yet another American invasion of ferocious enemy territory. Read more

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel & The Battle of Kasserine Pass

By Eric Niderost

In the winter of 1942-1943, the Allies had every reason to believe that they were on the verge of total victory in North Africa. Read more

Controversial Civil War Commanders: Gideon Pillow

By Roy Morris Jr.

Few Mexican War generals fought more battles than Tennessee-born Gideon Pillow—the problem was that many of those battles were with his own superiors. Read more

Belleau Wood: Shrine of Great Deeds

By Al Hemingway

In the early morning hours of May 27, 1918, the earth trembled and the air was filled with a deafening roar as 4,000 German artillery pieces let loose a tremendous barrage on Allied lines. Read more

The Unfortunate End to Ranald Mackenzie’s Career

By Roy Morris Jr.

The young captain of engineers who discovered the dangerous bulge in the “Mule Shoe” salient at Spotsylvania, Ranald Slidell Mackenzie, would go on to make a name for himself during the Civil War and the subsequent Indian campaigns out West. Read more

The Tokyo War Crimes Trials

By Roy Morris Jr.

When the Tokyo War Crimes Trials opened in the former hilltop headquarters of the Japanese military at Ichigaya on May 3, 1946, American-born chief prosecutor Joseph Keenan faced a difficult task. Read more

The Conscription Act and Abraham Lincoln’s Civil War Substitute

By Roy Morris Jr.

When Abraham Lincoln signed into law the first conscription act in American history in March 1863, one of the most unpopular parts of the widely unpopular act was the provision allowing draft-eligible males to hire substitutes to take their place in the army. Read more

A company of exhausted and wounded members of the English Coldstream Guards and 20th East Devonshire Regiment stagger down from the heights of Inkerman in this 1877 painting, The Return From Inkerman, by Lady Elizabeth Thompson Butler.

Inkerman: The Soldiers’ Battle

By Victor Kamenir

When armed hostilities flared up between the Russian and Ottoman Empires in 1853 over control of holy places in Turkish-ruled Jerusalem, Great Britain was quick to throw its weight behind the Ottomans. Read more

Leo Tolstoy & The Siege of Sevastopol

by Roy Morris Jr.

Of the thousands of Russian soldiers and civilians pinned down by Allied forces during the 11-month-long siege of Sevastopol, one in particular chafed at the monotonous, mind-numbing routine. Read more

Resplendent atop a white war horse, William III leads his expeditionary force against his deposed uncle, King James II, at the Battle of the Boyne in this 18th-century painting by Benjamin West.

King Billy at the Boyne River

By Eric Niderost

On March 12, 1689, James II, recently deposed king of England, landed in Ireland in a last-ditch attempt to regain his throne. Read more

World of Tanks on PS4

By Joseph Luster

Every time a new version of World of Tanks is released I get the opportunity to remind myself that I’m really bad at World of Tanks. Read more

William T. Sherman: A Hard Lesson in War

By Arnold Blumberg

With the fall of Vicksburg in the first week of July 1863, the strongest remaining Confederate presence in Mississippi was a recently thrown together force of 26,000 soldiers under General Joseph E. Read more

Theodore Roosevelt, the Monroe Doctrine & the U.S. Navy

By. Roy Morris, Jr.

Never was Theodore Roosevelt’s famous dictum, “Speak softly and carry a big stick,” used to greater effect than in the high-stakes standoff between the American president and prickly, pugnacious Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany over the debt crisis in Venezuela in December 1902. Read more