Drusus the Elder: Hero of Rome
By P. Lindsay PowellOn a sultry summer night in 9 BC, 29-year-old commander of Augustus Caesar ’s army in Germania bolted upright in his cot, dripping with sweat. Read more
Bloody Aachen
By Richard RuleBy the time of the waning of the summer of 1944 in western Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s victorious Allied armies had forged a battle line from the Dutch province of Maastricht in the north to Belfort near the Swiss border in the south. Read more
The Battle of Kernstown: Stonewall’s Victorious Defeat
By Lawrence WeberSunday morning, March 23, 1862, was sunny and warm in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Confederate general Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, a devout Christian, did not like to fight on the Lord’s Day. Read more
The Battle of Sobraon: Indian Waterloo
By Mike PhiferMaharaja Ranjit Singh, ruler of the Sikh empire in northern India, was dead. Under his intrepid leadership, starting in 1799, Afghan control over Punjab, or Five Rivers Land, was thrown off and the Sikh empire flourished over the next 40 years. Read more
Healers or Horrors: Civil War Medicine
By Richard A. GabrielSafe behind its ocean barriers, the United States paid scant attention to the wars that raged abroad during the early 19th century, taking little notice of the lessons that might have been learned from the European experience with mass killing. Read more
Lt. Col. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck
By Don HollowayJust a few days after Britain and Germany declared war in August 1914, their territories in East Africa declared peace. Read more
The Famed Jug
By Michael D. HullLosses were high and morale low when the U.S. Eighth Air Force intensified its heavy bomber missions over Nazi-occupied Europe in late 1942. Read more
The Battle-Ax
By William McPeakThe shafted ax has been around since 6000 bc, in both peaceful and warlike uses. The so-called battle-ax cultures (3200 to 1800 bc) extended over much of northern Europe from the late Stone Age through the early Bronze Age. Read more
Glory Enough for One Day: Phil Sheridan’s Victory at Cedar Creek
By Roy Morris Jr.Phil Sheridan had a bad feeling. The bantam-sized Union general always trusted his instincts, and now, in mid-October 1864, those instincts were telling him that trouble was brewing back at the front, where his Army of the Shenandoah was encamped near Cedar Creek, Virginia, resting and relaxing after a busy few weeks burning civilian farms and slaughtering thousands of head of livestock from Staunton north to Woodstock. Read more
Incredible Wartime Odyssey
By Kelly BellBy the spring of 1943 the situation for Nazi Germany was becoming grave as military reverses in Russia and Africa sent the formerly unstoppable Wehrmacht reeling. Read more
Hussite Jan Zizka
By John E. SpindlerJan 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
Heroic Sacrifice Over Sicily
By Patrick J. ChaissonA thousand questions flashed through Lieutenant Cy Lewis’s mind as he spotted the pair of German Messerschmitt Me-109 fighters banking in to attack him. Read more
Harry S. Truman’s Battery D, 129th Field Artillery, 35th Division
By Robert F. DorrIn the darkness and driving rain on August 29, 1918, German artillery shells smashed down on American artillerymen fighting on a fir-clad slope in the Vosges Mountains in Alsace. Read more
The Big Red One in World War II
By Steven WeingartnerThe outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, found the United States in an isolationist mood that precluded, for the time being, any direct involvement in the conflict. Read more
The Knoxville Campaign: Battle of Fort Sanders
By Arnold BlumbergAfter the crushing Union defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln relieved Maj. Read more
The Return of Hadley’s Harem
By Duane SchultzFirst Lieutenant Gilbert B. Hadley—he liked to be called “Gib”—was buried back home in Kansas in 1997, some 54 years after he was killed in action on August 1, 1943. Read more
Triumph At Plassey
By Louis CiotolaFor nearly 200 years, India was the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. Untold wealth flowed from such cities as Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta, supplying Great Britain with much of what made it possible to construct its world empire. Read more
Carnage at Bussaco
By Simon ReesTired, battered, and bruised, the Spaniards had put up a brave fight, but the enemy had proven too powerful. Read more
King Turned Pawn
By Eric NiderostIt was around noon, June 19, 1940, when a small caravan of cars set out from Antibes in southern France en route to the Spanish border. Read more
The Death of General Robert McCook
By Stuart W. SandersWhen the Civil War erupted, so many of Lisbon, Ohio-born Robert McCook’s large extended family joined the Union Army that the clan became known as the “Fighting McCooks.” Read more
