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A provost marshal’s office at Aquia Creek, Virginia, in February 1863 draws a desultory crowd. Some soldiers used provost duty to avoid combat.

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The Confederate Provost Guard

By Joan Wenner

With the bombardment of Fort Sumter in April 1861, the Civil War began in earnest. The first recruits, on both sides, were completely uninitiated in the ways of military life. Read more

LEFT: Field Marshal Erwin Rommel remains a controversial figure known both as a shrewd, chivalrous, military commander and as Nazi with a potential role in Germany’s atrocities of war. RIGHT: General Dwight D. Eisenhower poses in his eponymous “Eisenhower jacket” or “Ike jacket,”in 1943. The “Wool Field Jacket, M-1944,” as it was officially known, debuted in the European Theater of Operations in November 1944 and was issued to U.S. troops until 1956.

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Ike vs. the Desert Fox at Normandy

By Flint Whitlock

One of the supreme ironies of World War II was that the outcome of the Allied invasion of France, and ultimately the fate of the European Theater, would be decided by two men—one a highly decorated veteran, the other untested in combat—and it would be the latter that eventually triumphed. Read more

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The M-16’s Troubled Debut

By Mark Carlson

Marine Private Jim McGarrah arrived at Phu Bai in South Vietnam in late 1967 and was sent to what was euphemistically called “The Rockpile,” a firebase that overlooked the Demilitarized Zone between South and North Vietnam. Read more

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18th Georgia Infantry Regiment, 1862

Art by Keith Rocco

Cap: French chasseur-style gray kepi with blue band.

Coat: Military-style butternut colored greatcoat with brass buttons.

Backpack: Box hardpack knapsack, tarred canvas and leather with wood frame. Read more

In action on the banks of the Arno River on September 1, 1944, the crew of a 105mm howitzer of Battery B, 598th Field Artillery, services its weapon. The 598th was a component of the 92nd Infantry Division.

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Pauline Peretz’ ‘A Black Army’

By Kevin Seabrooke

Unlike other African-American military units such as the Tuske-gee Airmen, or even the 10th Cavalry Regiment “Buffalo Soldiers” who occupied Fort Huachuca before them, the 92nd and 93rd Infantry Divisions—the only two black units of divisional size in World War II—have received much less coverage in popular media over the past 80 years. Read more

After the German garrison on the island of Cezembre has surrendered, soldiers of the U.S. 83rd Infantry Division raise the American flag in triumph. The island is located near the French city of St. Malo, where troops of the 83rd Division were also engaged.

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David Nasaw’s ‘The Wounded Generation’

By Kevin Seabrooke

A two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, Nasaw takes an unvarnished look at the real America in the years after World War II—after the parades and celebrations—and how it affected those who fought and their families and how it changed our nation. Read more

War artist Gary Sheenhan captured the prisoners’ misery, fear, and deprivation at Buchenwald in 1945. The revolts in Sobibor and Treblinka were the last chance for the inmates to survive as the Nazis began to cover up their heinous deeds.

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Revolts in the Death Camps

By Jonathan F. Keiler

By the spring of 1943, the Nazi deaths camps in eastern Poland—Sobibor, Belzac, and Treblinka—were running out of victims. Read more

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Deborah Sampson: Continental Soldier

By Kelly Bell

Yearning for more out of life than a woman could hope for in her place and time, Deborah Sampson took the only opportunity she could see to fully realize her patriotic ambitions and wanderlust—she cut her waist-length blonde hair, put on men’s clothes and joined the Continental Army to fight for the embryonic country’s independence during the American Revolution. Read more

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  • A Supermarine Spitfire fighter of the British Royal Air Force chases a German Heinkel He-111 bomber during a swirl of aerial combat in the Battle of Britain. Canadian pilot Howard Peter “Cowboy” Blatchford served with the RAF during the crucial battle and was later killed in action.

    WWII

    Cowboy of the Royal Air Force
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