In 1503, near the northern Italian town of Cerignola, the famous Spanish commander Gonsalvo de Cordova, Viceroy of Naples (to be known to military history as “The Great Captain”), resolved to turn and stand before the pursuing French army. Read more
On April 26, 1607, three small English ships arrived at the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay after a grueling and contentious four-month voyage. Read more
It was 11:45 am, on December 9, 1945, and former U.S. Third Army Commanding General George Smith Patton, Jr., Read more
In warfare, desperate times call for desperate measures, and in the fall of 1944 the empire of Japan found itself in precisely that predicament. Read more
In the autumn of 1495, three years after the Christian reconquest of Islamic Spain, Queen Isabella I of Castile and her husband, King Ferdinand II of Aragon, sent a letter to their master architect. Read more
When Louis XIV assumed the throne of France in 1661, Europe was at peace. He acknowledged as much in his memoirs: “Everything was quiet everywhere. Read more
During the 1920s, roughly two decades before the B-25 Mitchell bomber came into service, U.S. Army Air Service commander Brig. Read more
Wednesday, December 27, 1944, found the military situation in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium stalemated. After 12 days of unrelenting struggle, the American and German forces on this part of the Western Front found themselves locked in brutal combat, unable to drive each other back. Read more
The field telephone rang on the bridge of the trapped German cruiser SMS Konigsberg. On the other end of the line, the coast watcher spoke the words that had been dreaded for almost eight months—the British were coming. Read more
It was early spring, ad 235, on the Rhine frontier. In the imperial tent of a Roman encampment, 26-year-old Emperor Severus Alexander wept at his mother’s side. Read more
On the morning of Monday, December 18, 1944, a mixed group of white MPs and black American service troops stood guard on the little bridge at Aywaille in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium. Read more
It was early in the year 1917, and a member of the Luftstreiknafte (German Army Air Service), Freiherr (Baron) Manfred von Richthofen, was feeling a trifle disgruntled. Read more
Steaming through the summer Mediterranean night, the world having gone sour in two awful months, British Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville read the message just sent to him from London: “You are charged with one of the most disagreeable and difficult tasks that a British Admiral has ever been faced with, but we have complete confidence in you and rely on you to carry it out relentlessly.” Read more
By the time the British Pacific Fleet began staging air strikes against the Japanese in the spring of 1945, its aircraft carrier commander had already seen plenty of naval action since the beginning of World War II. Read more
On May 10, 1940, a daring group of German parachutists descended on the mighty Belgian fortress of Eben Emael, compelled its surrender, and opened the way for the German Army’s drive into Belgium. Read more
In the lengthening shadows of a late October afternoon, a column of tired marchers attired in dusty, fringed hunting dress emerged from the trees along the north bank of the Kanawha River, raising an exhilarating shout upon sighting its confluence with the Ohio. Read more
During the Civil War western Virginia was crucial to the Union. The region that lay west of the Shenandoah Valley and north of the Kanawha River held nearly a quarter of Virginia’s nonslave population when the war began in 1861. Read more
When German panzer and infantry columns rumbled across the frontier into Russia on June 22, 1941, the Soviet Air Force was woefully unready for war. Read more
In an article in the Pittsburgh Courier on April 15, 1944, correspondent Billy Rowe, who was covering the activities of the 93d U.S. Read more
Anna Comnena, daughter of the Byzantium Emperor Alexius Comnenus, writing at about the time of the First Crusade (1096-1099), said of the medieval crossbow, a military tool new to her part of the world, “The crossbow is a weapon of the barbarians [western Europeans], absolutely unknown to the Greeks [Byzantines].” Read more
