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Soldiers: General Peter Bagration
By Victor KamenirRussian General Peter Ivanovich Bagration was one of those rare commanders who received near-universal praise from his contemporaries outside of Russia. Read more
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The Wayward Helmet Liner
By Berry CraigFirst Lieutenant William Parks of the 101st Airborne Division left a snow-camouflaged helmet liner behind when the storied Screaming Eagles moved out following the American victory in the Battle of the Bulge in January 1945. Read more
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Siegfried Line: Breaking the Dragon’s Teeth
By Allyn VannoyAs the battalion officers surveyed the terrain before them, they must have been worried about the men who would have to cross it—the 300 yards of open ground to the banks of the Saar River lined with barbed-wire, concrete pillboxes, anti-vehicle “dragon’s teeth,” and reinforced with minefields in depth known as the Westwall or, more commonly, the “Siegfried Line.” Read more
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Bloody Assault on Knoxville
By Mike PhiferAt midnight on November 13, 1863, two companies of the Palmetto (South Carolina) Sharpshooters Regiment led by Captain Alfred Foster slipped down to the south bank of the Tennessee River at Huff’s Ferry. Read more
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The Shinano Carrier: How Allied Forces Sunk Such a Secret
By Kelly BellThe first torpedo struck the Shinano carrier farthest aft. Over the next 30 seconds three more warheads detonated against the massive aircraft carrier’s hull, working their way forward. Read more
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Jefferson Davis in Mexico
By Chuck LyonsOn September 20, 1846, Colonel Jefferson Davis and a regiment of untested Mississippi volunteers stood before the fortress of La Teneria at Monterrey in northern Mexico. Read more
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Japan’s Hellish Unit 731
By David D. BarrettThe final months of World War II saw the liberation of hundreds of ghastly concentration camps and the awful reality of Nazi racism. Read more
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Military Postcards
By Peter SuciuMany famous photos of military uniforms and personalities are actually taken from vintage postcards. And while today many vintage baseball or football cards can fetch thousands of dollars, military postcards essentially have been forgotten. Read more
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Patton’s Dual Drives
By Kevin M. HymelThis article is excerpted from Kevin Hymel’s latest book, Patton’s War: An American General’s Combat Leadership, Volume 2: August—December 1944, published by University of Missouri Press. Read more
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Long Shadows at Ball’s Bluff
By Cowan BrewFor all his great political skills, Abraham Lincoln was a man who made few close personal friends. He was both too private and too ambitious to court a large number of intimate acquaintances. Read more
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Flight Out of Hell: The Harrowing Bombing Mission to Kavieng
By Steven D. SmithIn the predawn darkness of Dobodura, New Guinea, 2nd Lt. William J. Smith of the U.S. Army Air Corps was roughly awakened by a noncom announcing that it was time to get dressed and get to the mess tent for breakfast. Read more
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Duel in the Backwoods
By James K. SwisherRichard Hovenden of His Majesty’s British Legion Dragoons cautiously urged his tired horse through a parklike expanse of tall trees that marked the entrance to a South Carolina country crossroads junction called locally “Hannah’s Cowpens.” Read more
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The Vermehren Betrayal
By Tim MillerAfter the long journey from Germany to Istanbul, their escape to North Africa and finally to England, the two defectors ended up in an apartment in South Kensington, one of the more wealthy neighborhoods of London. Read more
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The Four-Sided Peak Lancer Cap
By Peter SuciuWhile lightly armed cavalry already seemed anachronistic by the time of the Napoleonic Wars, the success of the Polish lancers in that conflict convinced many nations to adopt a similar fighting force. Read more
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The Crater: Explosion of Death
By John WalkerIt was just after 3 am on Saturday, July 30, 1864. A month of relative quiet along a two-mile stretch of Union and Confederate trench lines immediately east of Petersburg, Virginia, was about to come to an explosive end. Read more
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The Japanese Blitz on Bataan
By Donald YoungFollowing their impressive string of victories in Malaya, Hong Kong, Burma, the Dutch East Indies, and the Philippines, it appeared that the Japanese were invincible in the early days of World War II. Read more
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Hannibal’s Cunning Ambush
By Chuck LyonsWhen still a young boy, Hannibal once came upon his father, the Carthaginian general Hamilcar Barca, who at the time was preparing to go to Iberia where Carthage was campaigning to expand its power. Read more
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Disaster In A Bright Blue Sky
By Allyn VannoyLieutenant Robert Sabel struggled to get his Fortress, the Rusty Lode, home. Eight B-17s of his bomb group, the 390th, had already been shot from the sky. Read more
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The Secret World of Richard Nixon
By Blaine TaylorIn the spring of 1974—at the height of the political Watergate crisis in Washington, D.C.—Joseph Laitin, a spokesman at the Office of Management and Budget whose office was in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, was on his way over to the west wing of the White House to meet with Treasury Secretary George Schultz. Read more
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Detention In Wartime
By Gene Eric SaleckerAfter the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, many Americans in authority began to fear the large number of people of Japanese ancestry living along the West Coast of the United States, thinking that some of them might have sympathies for Japan and might assist in a possible invasion or sabotage American efforts to resist such an invasion. Read more
