Sudanese warriors charge a British relief contingent formed into an infantry square in this painting of the Battle of Abu Klea by William Barnes-Wollen.

Peter Hart’s ‘Chain of Fire’

By Kevin Seabrooke

Hart, the oral historian for the Imperial War Museum in London, constructs a highly engaging narrative of the British Egyptian and Sudanese campaigns (Egypt in 1882, Sudan in 1883-85 and 1896-98) by alternating his own prose with first-hand accounts from soldiers and journalists who were there in the desert. Read more

Hell Let Loose: Vietnam

By Joseph Luster

The world of first-person shooter Hell Let Loose, which originally debuted as a World War II game in 2021, is getting ready to expand into new territory. Read more

Caribbean Gibraltar

By Mark Carlson

For more than a year and a half, 120 British sailors and Marines led a successful blockade of the French “Sugar Island” of Martinique, birthplace of Gen. Read more

The white-bearded Archimedes (bottom, right), Greek mathematician, physicist, engineer, astronomer, and inventor, directs the defense of his home city of Syracuse against the Roman attack.

The Siege of Syracuse

By John E. Spindler

From the deck of a quinquereme, one of 60 in his invasion fleet, Roman Consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus surveyed Syracuse’s Little Harbor on the coast of Sicily. Read more

China Strikes Back

By Joshua Shepherd

For the men of the U.S. 9th Infantry Regiment, the evening of November 25, 1950, began routinely enough. Read more

At left, the Imperial German Navy’s sailing commerce raider SMS Seeadler (Sea Eagle) moves to capture the French bark Cambronne off the coast of Brazil on March 20, 1917.

The SMS Sea Eagle

By Mark Carlson

For more than three centuries, from 1520 in the reign of King Henry the Eighth up until the advent of steam-powered ironclads in the American Civil War, ships under sail ruled the world’s oceans. Read more

Private George B. Turner

By Edward F. Murphy

The terse announcement stunned the tightly packed group of young Marines aboard a troop ship in New York Harbor, November 12, 1918. Read more

Members of Ninth Carrier Command unload a Jeep from a C-47 on one of the emergency landing strips in France. Without the Troop Carrier Commands, the American war effort in the European Theater would have ground to a halt.

The Flying Pipeline

By Patricia Overman

“Flying supply missions with the 435th Troop Carrier Group, or any tactical group of IX Troop Carrier Command, is a combination of taking a physical beating and sweating out land and aerial war hazards”

—Michael Seaman, Warweek Staff Writer, Stars and Stripes, April 29, 1945

By April 1945 the Allied Armies were racing east as German resistance crumbled. Read more

French troops in the foreground counterattack Prussian infantry in a vain effort to stabilize their right flank at the elevated village of Saint-Privat seen in the background. Infantry of both sides fought valiantly throughout the day, but both the French and Prussian high commands performed poorly.

Victory At A Dreadful Cost

By William E. Welsh

King William I of Prussia stood resplendent in the uniform of a Prussian Guard officer on a hill in eastern France on a sunny day in late summer 1870. Read more

Citizen Spies: Simon and Marie Koedel

By Michael W. Williams

Buried in the October 24, 1944, edition of the New York times was the headline: “German Ex-Officer Held as Nazi Spy: Captain in Kaiser’s Army, 62 and Foster Daughter Accused of Sending Ship Data Before U.S. Read more

A tongue-in-cheek British cartoon from 1819 lampoons the idea of adapting the newly invented bicycle for military use.

Military Bicycles

By Peter Suciu

Anyone who has ever visited Europe—particularly France, Italy, and the Netherlands—knows that the people in those countries love their bicycles. Read more

Hard-fighting veterans of Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s II Corps rush through the thick forest west of the Chancellorsville crossroads in the late afternoon of May 2, 1863, to fall on Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard’s unsuspecting XI Corps in Don Troiani’s painting.

“Like A Picture Of Hell”

By Chuck Lyons

The two Union generals faced each other on the afternoon of May 1, 1863, at the large house by the Orange Turnpike that had been chosen as the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac. Read more

Death Penalty for Desertion

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

British Army privates Thomas Highgate, Ernest Jackson, and Louis Harris shared a distinction in World War I that they undoubtedly would rather not have had. Read more

Hussite Jan Zizka

By John E. Spindler

Jan Zizka belongs to the elite group of leaders who never lost a battle. He was born on or around 1360 in the village of Trocnov in the Kingdom of Bohemia. Read more