Pollepel Island: Private Fortress on the Hudson

In central New York, 50 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River, is a small spit of land known as Bannerman Island. Read more

The U.S. Third Army and XIX TAC: Partners for Victory

In the summer of 1944, the Third United States Army under Lt. Gen. George S. Patton made a spectacular dash across France, a daring advance that ranks high on the list of great military endeavors. Read more

Chris Kyle’s Precision Rifles

From the sniper’s perch, the city of Fallujah, Iraq, on November 7, 2004, looked dusty and brown. Most of the buildings were squat, two-story affairs, with the occasional minaret or domed mosque sitting above them. Read more

The Strange Odyssey of USS Stewart

The Spanish-American War saw the development of the torpedo as we know it today. It was not the static mine of the Civil War but a propeller driven, waterborne explosive device. Read more

The Battle of Chalons: Attila’s Stinging Defeat

In AD 451, Attila the Hun, by then known to terrified Western Christians as the “scourge of God,” crossed the Rhine River in command of a multi-ethnic army. Read more

Bloody Stalemate at Borodino

By mid-afternoon on September 7, 1812, Russian troops had lost control of the earthworks on their left flank at Borodino. Read more

Triumph Off Flamborough Head

Standing on the quarterdeck of his flagship Bonhomme Richard, Commodore John Paul Jones took his telescope and trained it northwards, sweeping the instrument to the left and right to see what his lookouts were reporting at midafternoon on September 23, 1779. Read more

Lessons at St. Nazaire

Even today, they don’t like to talk about the St. Nazaire raid.

Compared to the thousand-plane raids that went deep into Germany later in World War II, the January 3, 1943, bomber mission from England to the coast of German-occupied France was small and spanned only a modest distance. Read more

Military History Book Reviews for Winter 2023

A Handful of Heroes: Rorke’s Drift Facts, Myths and Legends (Katie Stossel, Pen and Sword Books, South Yorkshire UK, 2022, 201 pp., Read more

Perilous Fight For Peleliu

The cacophony of naval gunfire proved so thunderous it left some marines in a stupor. Dark smoke roiled thousands of feet in the air from the bombardment of Peleliu, a small island in the Palau Islands. Read more

Steven E. Maffeo’s ‘Captain Chaos’

The Battle of Leyte Gulf was the largest naval battle of World War II, and by most measures the largest in history. Read more

The World War II Diary of Lieutenant General James. M. Gavin

James Gavin began his wartime service as the commander of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment during the Sicily operation, before assuming command of the entire 82nd Airborne Division for the remainder of the war. Read more

Prit Buttar’s ‘Meat Grinder’

Few in the West know about the Rzhev Salient. The fighting around Moscow and Stalingrad come quickly to mind, but this little-known salient near the town of Rzhev, roughly 100 miles west of Moscow, was so terrible it was nicknamed the “Meat Grinder.” Read more

Lt. Col. Wayne K. Blickenstaff’s ‘Ace in a Day’

Lieutenant Wayne Blickenstaff saw a group of German Messerschmitt Me-109 fighters disperse after making a run at some American bombers. Read more

Mark Stille’s ‘Leyte Gulf 1944 (2): Surigao Strait and Cape Engano’

The Battle of Leyte Gulf, while the largest naval battle in history, was composed of four major actions occurring over two days. Read more

Ian Baxter’s ‘The Soviet Baltic Offensive, 1944-45’

The overwhelming Soviet offensives in the summer of 1944 threw the German army back. Much of the German Army Group North drew back into the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Read more

Ian Buruma’s ‘The Collaborators’

Felix Kersten acted as Heinrich Himmler’s personal masseur and did the job so well Himmler nicknamed the outgoing, heavy set Kersten the “Magic Buddha.” Read more

Jonathan Trigg’s ‘D-Day Through German Eyes’

The German Army had extensive combat experience, some of the best weapons and equipment, and in June 1944 was holding its own in Italy and on the Eastern Front. Read more

Robert F. Ashby’s ‘D-Day, Arnhem and the Rhine’

Glider Pilots occupied a perilous position in British airborne divisions. It took skill and determination to pilot a glider. Read more

Lightning Victory In The Persian Gulf

IN November 1990 the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq if it failed to withdraw from Kuwait by January 15, 1991. Read more