D-Day Airborne Stand at La Fière

Unlike many of the paratroopers in the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, 1st Lieutenant John J. Dolan knew exactly where he was when he landed on June 6, 1944. Read more

Blood on the Lake

As the first streaks of dawn painted the horizon, all was quiet in the American squadron anchored at Put-in-Bay. Read more

Civil War Stories: Libby Prison’s ‘Lottery of Death’

One of the primary reasons given for the Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run was the lack of adequate cavalry. Read more

The First Victory

Both sides needed reinforcements.For the Japanese and the Americans in October 1942, the battle for Guadalcanal was turning into a bottomless pit, demanding more and more scarce resources—in the air and at sea  and, most importantly, on the ground. Read more

Battle of Omdurman: The Last British Cavalry Charge

It was the morning of September 1, 1898, the day before the Battle of Omdurman. Lieutenant Winston Churchill of the Queen’s 4th Hussars rode out with four squadrons of the 21st Lancers to scout the approaches to Omdurman, a Sudanese village on the west bank of the Nile opposite Khartoum, epicenter of a revolt that had rocked the very foundations of the British Empire. Read more

9 World War II Book Reviews for Winter 2026

Fighting Fifteen: The Navy’s Top Ace and the Deadliest Hellcat Squadron of the Pacific War (Stephen L. Moore, Dutton Caliber (PenguinRandomHouse), New York, NY, 432 pp., Read more

Stephen L. Moore’s ‘Fighting Fifteen’

Many of the men in the new VF-15 Fighter Squadron had three things in common: a love of flying and the desperate desire to fly fighters in combat. Read more

Flint Whitlock’s ‘Patton and the Battle for Sicily’

Launched on the night of July 9-10, 1943, the amphibious assault of Operation Husky was the largest the world had ever seen—more than 3,200 vessels and half a million Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen attacked the island of Sicily, Adolf Hitler’s “Fortress Europe.” Read more

David Lyle Williams ‘The Road to Cisterna’

By Kevin Seabrooke

The Battle of Anzio (January 22-May 25, 1944) was aimed at bypassing the German’s daunting Gustav Line in an effort to capture Rome. Read more

Raquel Ramsey’s ‘Reflections’

During the Japanese invasion of the islands in December 1941, 2nd Lt. Edwin Ramsey commanded the U.S. Army’s 26th Cavalry Regiment (Philippine Scouts) in rearguard action that allowed Allied forces to fall back to the Bataan Peninsula. Read more

Mark Stille’s ‘Pearl Harbor: Japan’s Greatest Disaster’

By Kevin Seabrooke

Author Mark Stille bemoans the “continuing flood of Pearl Harbor books [that] focus on the failure to avoid conflict in the months before the attack or on the deeply flawed concept that ‘Washington’ conspired to let the Japanese take the first shots of the war while not informing the commanders at Pearl Harbor what was coming.” Read more

Christine Kuehn’s ‘Family of Spies’

A screenwriter’s letter asking what her father, 70-year-old Eberhard Kuehn, remembered about his own father’s life as a spy in WWII turned journalist Christine Kuehn’s world upside down. Read more

Donald Nijboer’s ‘World War II Aerial Combat 1937-1945’

Beginning with the Battle of Britain and going forward, it was clear that military aviation would become a critical component of modern warfare. Read more

Elizabeth R. Hyman’s ‘The Girl Bandits of the Warsaw Ghetto’

Led by the Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ŻOB) (Jewish Combat Organization), the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of April/May 1943 against the German SS remains one of the most famous struggles in the annals of the Holocaust. Read more

Bruce Henderson’s ‘Midnight Flyboys’

Flying classified missions under the cover of darkness to support underground resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Europe is not the kind of volunteer work that garners much contemporary press. Read more

The Stuka

During World War II the exploits of certain aircraft saw them indelibly associated with the battles in which they fought. Read more

Fighting 80th Division at Bastogne

In a letter to his fiancée, Betty Craig, on December 16, 1944, from Helleringen, France, newly promoted Staff Sergeant Frank Lembo of Company B, 305th Engineer Combat Battalion, 80th Division, wrote of a battalion show the night before, complete with Red Cross girls serving donuts and the division band; an upcoming dance; doing laundry; and other pastimes of a soldier experiencing a period of reserve status. Read more

How Did Stonewall Jackson Actually Die?

Following his greatest victory, at the Battle of Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863, Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas J. Read more

Roger Sauvage & Normandie Niemen

Roger Sauvage was born in Paris in 1917 to a white Parisian woman and a black soldier from Martinique. Read more

Maryland’s Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Towson

Few in the unincorporated community in Baltimore County that bears his name know of the deeds of the eminent American brevet Maj. Read more