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It was the first week of April 1941, and Lt. Gen. Richard O’Connor could scarcely believe what was happening as his driver suddenly cocked the wheel and swerved hard left, flooring the gas pedal in a futile attempt to outrun the multiple bursts of machine-gun fire erupting all around them, lighting up the Saharan night as bullets chased after his wheels. Read more
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Jugurtha, king of the desert nation of Numidia, was a long-time antagonist of Republican Rome. Over more than a decade of war, he was a bold and cunning battlefield commander who used swiftness and determination to make fools of Roman consuls, even as the Romans were systematically conquering his country. Read more
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For the hard-pressed German Empire, New Year’s Day 1918 brought a compendium of evils. The Allied naval blockade, increasingly effective, depressed industrial production and stoked a war weariness made manifest in strikes and bread riots. Read more
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The 809th Tank Destroyer Battalion was an independently attached unit of the U.S. Army. The battalion was activated on March 18, 1942, at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, and remained in the United States through most of the war. Read more
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On March 1, 1461, English Chancellor George Neville faced a large crowd of Londoners in St. John’s Field outside the city. Read more
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Amid the fog of powder smoke in the north-Georgia forest, the frayed remnants of the Union’s Army of the Cumberland faced determined Confederate troops who sensed an impending victory. Read more
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At 4 am on October 14, 1806, 37-year-old Jean Lannes, Marshal of France in Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armee and commander of that host’s V Corps, received his final instructions verbally from the emperor. Read more
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Despite more than a decade of triumphs in Asia and the Pacific, by the spring of 1942 the Japanese military establishment was in a somber mood. Read more
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Whether fighting in the mountains of the Italian peninsula, assaulting Nazi defensive positions along the vast Russo-German Eastern Front, or clashing with German Army opponents from Normandy to the Elbe River, from 1942 to 1945, Allied soldiers in World War II faced a determined enemy armed with the most effective machine gun produced during that struggle: the Maschinengewehr 42, or the MG 42 for short. Read more
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Nineteen-year-old U.S. Army Specialist E5 James Griffith wasn’t particularly nervous when he boarded Seaboard World Airlines Flight 253 at McChord Air Base in Tacoma, Washington, on June 30, 1968. Read more
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Dawn broke clear and hot over Constantinople on July 17, 1203.
All manner of war machines were clustered around the Latin crusaders’ fortified camp on a hill where the Monastery of Saints Cosmas and Damian was located. Read more
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Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt of the Royal Navy was in a grave predicament on August 28, 1914. His force was near the German base at Heligoland Bight. Read more
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In the early 13th century the legendary Mongol Genghis Khan laid the foundations for the greatest land empire in history. Read more
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On November 17, 1915, Major Smedley Butler and a small force of U.S. Marines approached the old French bastion of Fort Riviere in Haiti. Read more
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The iconic image of a woman in overalls, her hair tied up in a bandana, and flexing her bicep below the headline, “We Can Do It,” is one of the most recognizable images from World War II. Read more
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An unrelenting rain soaked the gray-clad troops of Maj. Gen. George Pickett’s reinforced division of Confederate soldiers on the morning of March 30, 1865. Read more
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The South Vietnamese rangers huddled in their trenches and bunkers at landing zone Ranger North throughout the day of February 19, 1971, as mortar shells crashed inside the perimeter. Read more
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Under sunny skies, favorable winds pushed Captain Mark Robinson and the 74-gun ship of the line Shrewsbury on September 5, 1781, toward a stormy encounter with an old enemy. Read more
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Seventeen months after the juggernaut of Japanese conquest in the Pacific had come to an abrupt end with the Battle of Midway, American strategists were ready to launch their long-awaited offensive in the Central Pacific. Read more
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The night of April 14, 1865, was one of celebration in Washington, D.C. Just a few days earlier, on April 9, Confederate General Robert E. Read more
