WAC Corporal Lena Derriecott and the 6888th Central Postal Battalion

The German V-1 flying rocket, packed with 1,870 pounds of explosives, buzzed over Birmingham, England, until its pulsing engine cut out. Read more

Judas Maccabeus, Hammer of the Jews

By 167 bc, when a full-scale revolt erupted in Judea, it had been more than 400 years since an organized Jewish army had taken up arms against an enemy. Read more

The Battle of the Wabash: Slaughter in the Snow

The warriors of the Western Confederacy crept silently along the snow-covered ground towards the U.S. Army camp on the banks of the upper Wabash River just before dawn on November 4, 1791. Read more

First Sergeant John L. Canley’s Marines at Hue

The crackle of small-arms fire on the night of January 30-31, 1968, alerted the South Vietnamese troops at an outpost three miles south of Hue City that the enemy was nearby. Read more

Fighting for Water

Staff Sergeant Chester B. Opdyke, Jr., crouched down at the tree line. He could see his objective, a crossroads village named Barrigada, shimmering in the hot August sun across a large open field just 300 yards away. Read more

Wekusta: Weathermen of the Wehrmacht

The fundamental pillars of war—strategy and tactics— inevitably depend on an imponderable and uncontrollable factor: the weather. With the increasing sophistication of weather data gathering, analysis, and forecasting in the early 20th century, predicting the weather became an integral part of World War II. Read more

“A Very Murdering Battle”

By Eric Niderost

Peter Drake was a cavalryman, but at the moment he was standing near his horse’s head, holding his mount’s bridle and calming the beast when the animal grew restless after a night of inactivity. Read more

Lennart Torstensson’s Winning Artillery Tactics in the 30 Years War

Thousands of Protestant Swedish and German soldiers struggled up the rain-slickened slopes of a high ridge in southern Germany on September 3, 1632. Read more

Hold at All Costs

After D-Day, the Allied armies slowly advanced across Europe and pushed the German army back. Paris was liberated on August 25, 1944, the Belgian capital of Brussels fell on September 3, and the important port of Antwerp was taken two days later. Read more

Senseless Slaughter at Gallipoli

The crash of the heavy guns from a dozen British and French capital ships, one of which was the super-dreadnought the HMS Queen Elizabeth, reverberated against the shoreline of the Dardanelles on February 19, 1915. Read more

Athens In Agony

“No other two races have left such a mark on the world” as the Jews and the Greeks, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill once wrote. Read more

The Girandoni Air Rifle: The Lewis and Clark Expedition’s Secret Weapon

When one thinks of the guns that won the West, one naturally envisions such familiar weapons as the Winchester, Henry, and Spencer repeating rifles, the trapdoor Springfield, the Smith & Wesson revolver, and the Colt Peacemaker. Read more

Bloody D-Day Clash for Carentan

On Tuesday, June 6, 1944, at nearly three in the morning, Chicago-native Lieutenant John E. Peters safely landed Snooty, his Douglas C-47 Skytrain, on the massive 5,800-foot runway at Greenham Common airfield in southern England. Read more

Morgan’s Northern Strike

Stepping off of two captured river steamboats, the 2nd Kentucky Cavalry and the 9th Tennessee Cavalry set foot in Indiana on July 8, 1863. Read more

John Glubb: The Other Lawrence of Arabia

With his short, dumpy appearance and high-pitched voice, John Glubb seemed more like a real-life Colonel Blimp than another Lawrence of Arabia. Read more

Across the Wide River

Major Julian A. Cook stood on the ninth floor of a power plant west of the Dutch city of Nijmegen and stared north across the 400 yards of the fast-moving Waal River at German defensive positions on the other side—the square turn-of-the-century Dutch Fort Hof van Holland, its machine-gun emplacements, 20mm guns, and dug-in troopers of the 10th SS Panzer Division. Read more

Disaster in the Wilderness

Captain Daniel Lienard de Beaujeu rushed to save the remote French outpost of Fort Duquesne in early July 1755. Read more

“Manila’s Mata Hari”

It is a usual evening at Club Tsubaki, wartime Manila’s most exclusive nightspot. On stage, a statuesque brunette in a clinging white dress, olive skin, and raven hair illuminated by a spotlight, is singing a “torch” song in a low, seductive voice, dark eyes flashing. Read more

Uniform: Private in the 4th New York Regiment

Headgear: Since leather caps were unavailable, the regiment was outfitted with felt hats trimmed with hair crests. Read more

Still Fighting After Dunkirk

By Alan Davidge

Background: When the German army burst through Belgium’s Ardennes Forest in May 1940, it cut the Allies’ front line in half, then turned northwards through France towards the Channel coast. Read more