Articles Archive

Major Charity Adams and Captain Abbie Campbell inspect the ranks of the 6888th Central Postal Battalion in England. The WACs of the battalion were proud of their service record in Europe.

The Six Triple Eight Big Screen Debut

After years in obscurity, the story of the 6888th Postal Directory Battalion is coming to selected theaters and to Netflix in December with the release of the feature film, The Six Triple Eight. Read more

Following an extensive modernization, the battleship HMS Warspite sails past the battlecruiser HMS Hood at Grand Harbor, Valletta, Malta, in 1938. The tiny Mediterranean island became a bastion of British resistance to the Nazis during World War II as aircraft and submarines attacked German supply convoys bound for North Africa. However, the Maltese endured heavy bombing and reached the brink of starvation in the process.

Malta: Bastion in the Mediterranean

By Martin J. Dougherty

More or less in the center of the Mediterranean Sea, Malta became one of the most strategic locations in all of World War II. Read more

Stonewall Jackson’s Hard Defeat At The Second Battle of Manassas

By Todd S. Berkoff

As the bright red sun was slowly setting over their shoulders on the balmy evening of August 28, 1862, Union troops marching east along the Warrenton Turnpike knew nothing of what awaited them. Read more

6th South African Armoured Division M4 Shermans firing at Monte Sole during the breakthrough to Bologna, April 1945. After early victories in North Africa, the South African contingent was kept in reserve until after the fall of Rome, June 4, 1944. The men then really proved their mettle.

Fighting from Tobruk to Milan

By Brig. Gen. (Ret.) Raymond E. Bell

The contribution of the Union of South Africa’s armed forces to the winning of World War II is little known outside South Africa itself. Read more

Maltese civilians inspect the ruins of the opera house in Valletta after heavy Axis aerial blitz, April 7, 1942. The British called Malta “the most-bombed island in the world.”

Linchpin of the Mediterranean

By Mark Simmons

It was the humid season on Malta that September of 1943. The hot Sirocco winds from North Africa blow from August to October across the cool sea, raising humidity. Read more

Sennacherib: The Assyrian King’s Failed Second Siege of Jerusalem

By Eric Niderost

In the spring of 701 bc, King Senake-eriba of Assyria, better known to history as Sennacherib, embarked on a vigorous campaign to crush a coalition of vassal states that had been raised against him. Read more

An artist of a much later age attempted to depict classical artillery in the painting below. Greeks devised weaponry that launched bolts and stones, often with great accuracy.

Types of Weapons Used by Ancient Greece

By Mike Markowitz

When we think “catapult,” we imagine the types of weapons used for hurling rocks, dead plague victims, or unlucky cows against a castle. Read more

Members of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division march ashore at Gela, Sicily, while an LST burns off shore on the first day of Operation Husky in this 1943 painting by Navy war artist Mitchell Jamieson. Soldiers injured during the fighting can be seen being evacuated to hospital ships. Sicily became the stepping stone for the invasion of the Italian mainland.

Sicilian Slugfest

By Flint Whitlock

The island of Sicily, lying in the Mediterranean Sea between Tunisia and the toe of the Italian peninsula, is no stranger to war and conquest. Read more

Evans Carlson & America’s First Special Operations Team

By Duane Schultz

Major Evans Carlson stood on a rickety platform built from wooden crates, the kind their rations came in. Read more

Osprey Publishing/Campaign 328: Imjin River 1951/Steve Noon

‘Glorious Glosters’ at the Imjin River

By Michael E. Haskew

On the barren, windswept and war-torn Korean peninsula, the autumn of 1950 brought United Nations forces to the brink of total victory—and complete disaster. Read more

The U.S. Air Force B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is the most advanced flying wing ever built. A combination of classified technology that reduces infrared, acoustic, electromagnetic, visual and radar signatures of the aircraft makes it difficult for enemy defense systems to detect, track and engage it.

The Northrop B-2 Spirit

By Kelly Bell

The old axiom that “forewarned is forearmed” is as true nowadays as it was millenia ago. Since 1989 America’s B-2 Spirit flying wing has been assailing the Free World’s foes, and consistently taking them unawares. Read more

Using black ink and crayon, Eigener drew German tanks advancing across a stark landscape during a Wehrmacht advance. He titled this sketch “Panzer Angriff,” or “Tank Attack.”

German Soldier’s Sketchbook

By Flint Whitlock

It’s called Mein Skizzenbuch (My Sketchbook)—a 72-page booklet of pencil drawings and watercolors by noted German war artist Ernst Eigener, a soldier with Propaganda Co. Read more

World War 2 Casualties & Caring for the Wounded

By Jon Diamond

The U.S. military employed an organized system for the treatment of soldiers severely wounded while fighting in the Pacific, including their evacuation stateside if needed. Read more

Artist Edgar Samuel Paxson spent years researching and interviewing participants from both sides of the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn before completing “Custer’s Last Stand” in 1899. Lt. Col. George A. Custer’s widow, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, broke into tears upon viewing the six-by-nine foot painting.

American Tragedy on the Greasy Grass River

By John E. Spindler

A few miles southeast of the Little Bighorn River, known as the “Greasy Grass” to the various Lakota nations camped along its west bank, a number of women dug wild turnips. Read more

The Red Baron

By Kelly Bell

Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen was born May 2, 1892, as the second of four children to Baron Albrecht and Kunigunde von Richthofen. Read more

Forest of Death

By Nathan N. Prefer

“Passchendaele with tree bursts” was how war correspondent Ernest Hemingway described it. The three-month slugfest that became known as the Battle the Hürtgen Forest was that and much more. Read more

Wehrmacht Pioneer Mathias Hansen Laid to Rest 70 Years After Operation Barbarossa

By Wilhelm R. Gehlen & Don A. Gregory

Letters home provide us with a glimpse into the daily lives of soldiers during the best and worst times. Read more

With some sleeping soldiers and a Union officer listlessly watching the fire, Winslow Homer’s painting, “In Front of Yorktown,” seems to capture the atmosphere of inaction surrounding Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign. Homer covered the war as an artist for Harper’s Weekly magazine.

Army of the Potomac Flounders in Drive for Richmond

By David A. Norris

On April 5, 1862, the Fourth Corps under Brig. Gen. Erasmus Keyes pushed forward along the road by the James River. Read more

Captain Lewis L. Millett and the ferocious ‘Battle of Bayonet Hill’ in South Korea.

By Kevin Seabrooke

In the dead of winter at the base of a hill just 20 kilometers south of Seoul, Korea, Easy Company’s 1st platoon found themselves pinned down by a continuous stream of small arms, automatic, and antitank fire coming from above. Read more

A group of American tankers of the 193rd Tank Battalion take a break on and around their M4 Shermans before returning to combat on Okinawa, April 1945. Note that the white stars on the sides of the tanks have been painted out to reduce their visibility to the enemy. Nevertheless, exceptionally strong Japanese resistance took a heavy toll on American tanks and tankers.

Death Ride of the Shermans

By Nathan N. Prefer

They weren’t originally supposed to be there. In the early planning for the invasion of the island of Okinawa, the 27th Infantry Division was to be held in reserve as the eventual garrison force after the defeat of the Japanese 32nd Army. Read more

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