Articles Archive

Major General Walton Walker, left, commander of U.S. XX Corps, greets Maj. Gen. Philippe Leclerc, commander of the 2nd French Armored Division, after the division landed at Utah Beach, Normandy, on August 1, 1944. The French division was then attached to Maj. Gen. Wade M. Haislip’s XV Corps, a part of George Patton’s Third U.S. Army. From Normandy, Leclerc would lead his men triumphantly to the liberation of Paris by the end of month. The 2nd French Armored Division notably took part in the Battle of the Falaise Pocket, the Battle of Dompaire, the Colmer Pocket and the push into Bavaria in May 1945.

Leclerc: Free France’s Greatest General

By William G. Dennis

Géneral d’ Armée Jacques-Philippe Leclerc’s service to France during World War II made him one of the few heroes to be admired by the whole country. Read more

Wracked by wintry weather, demoralized British soldiers trudge the snow in artist Richard Bevis’s painting, Retreat to Corunna.

Dismal British Retreat to Corunna

By Eric Niderost

It was December 1808, and the French Army was struggling though the 4,500-foot Sierra de Guadarrama Mountains in central Spain. Read more

Five 82nd Airborne troopers, plus a pilot and co-pilot, are photographed with a 1,439-lb. 75mm pack howitzer inside a CG-4A “Waco” glider during training in Morocco prior to the June 1943 invasion of Sicily. The glider forces sustained heavy losses during Operation Husky.

Glider Pilots: No Engines, No Parachutes, No Second Chances

By Scott McGaugh

During the decade of the U.S. Army’s experiment with gliders in war, nearly as many glider pilots died in training as they did in combat. Read more

Artillerists load a 4.5-inch howitzer in Richard Jack’s painting, The Battle of Vimy Ridge. Ranging innovations improved their aim.

Locating Enemies on the Western Front

By John E. Goodwin

All wars give rise to change and innovation. In the early years of the 20th century, a short but nasty territorial war erupted between Russia and Japan. Read more

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (right) inspects members of an assault gun battalion standing in front of their guns—10.5cm leFH 18 (Sf.) auf Geschützwagen 39H(f)—a self-propelled howitzer designed by Alfred Becker—in Normandy, France, a month before the Allied invasion. Only 48 were produced during the war.

Oberstleutnant Alfred Becker

By Craig Van Vooren

Students of World War II know the name Percy Hobart—a British general who raised and trained several armored divisions and who invented all sorts of unique and unusual weapons of war—swimming tanks, flail tanks (for exploding landmines), a flame-throwing tank, a tank that laid down its own roadway, and many other odd-but-useful devices. Read more

Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar

By William Stroock

Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a Castilian mercenary who served Christian kings and Muslim emirs alike in late 11th-century Spain, was born in 1043 in the village of Vivar, about six miles north of the city of Burgos. Read more

In Richard Taylor’s striking new painting, the Tuskegee “Red Tail” pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group are shown escorting a damaged B-17 Flying Fortress of the 483rd Bomb Group to its home base in Italy, summer 1944. Skin color made no difference to the bomber pilots when their “little friends” came up to escort them on their bombing missions.

African-American Airmen Blasted Barriers

By Dante Brizill

The African American Tuskegee Airmen took the fight to a well-trained and deadly enemy with a ferocity and tenacity that World War II aerial combat required. Read more

An American M-26 Pershing tank of the 89th Medium Tank Battalion passes a Russian-made North Korean tank destroyed by Fox Company of the U.S. Army’s 27th Infantry Division during the retreat of North Korean forces in August 1950.

Armored Clash on the Road to the Yalu

By Christopher Miskimon

The chase was on in early autumn 1950. The North Korean People’s Army, after its invasion of South Korea, fell back north with United Nations’ forces in close pursuit following the Battle of Inchon the previous month. Read more

A tragic loss of life, a tragic loss of history

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for prop-driven airplanes, especially World War II warbirds. I guess it began when my parents took me to an airshow back in the early 1950s. Read more

The First Edged Weapon: The Knife

By William McPeak

While the sword usually comes to mind first when one thinks of edged weapons, it was not actually the first such weapon—the knife was. Read more

Marines watch as a flame-throwing amphibious tractor fires at caves in the mountainous areas used by the Japanese during the fight for the Pacific island of Peleliu. The lowlands and the airport were quickly captured, but the Umurbrogol massif—a series of limestone and choral ridges rising as high as 300 feet took much longer. A moonscape of sinkholes, canyons and cliffs further fortified by Japanese engineers, the “Umurbrogal Pocket,” and the island, was finally declared secure 73 days after the Marines had landed.

Savage Struggle for Peleliu

By Joshua Shepherd

Amphibious landing craft carrying U.S. Marines plunged through heavy surf toward the beaches of Peleliu Island, a formerly inconspicuous tropical paradise in the Palau Islands. Read more

This painting by Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse (1859-1938) depicts a party of Huns ransacking a Roman villa in Gaul. Raids and tributes from the Roman Empire were the largest source of income for the Hunnic confederation under Attila.

For Nearly a Century the Nomadic Huns Dominated Much of Europe

By Ludwig H. Dyck

“A hitherto unknown race of men had appeared from some remote corner of the earth, uprooting and destroying everything in its path like a whirlwind descending from high mountains” wrote Ammianus Marcellinus, a 4th century AD Roman officer and historian. Read more

Australia’s Heroic Son

By Christopher Miskimon

John Hurst Edmondson, known to his friends as Jack, died April 14, 1941, lying on the concrete floor of a sand-swept fighting outpost in the perimeter around Tobruk, Libya. Read more

Jedediah Hotchkiss’ Map

After his exploratory expedition to the Shenandoah Valley in 1716, Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood encouraged Germans and Dutch farmers residing in eastern Pennsylvania to settle the region when he found Virginians in the Tidewater and Piedmont regions of his state initially reluctant to settle beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains. Read more