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A Bloody Sport Indeed

By Carole Butcher

One of the most enduring images of the Middle Ages is the tournament, with its knights in shining armor, heraldic devices on shields, fair damsels watching from the stands, and brightly colored banners flying in the breeze. Read more

The sky lit with explosions, the 3rd Australian Division moves out of the trenches at Messines. During the attack, Captain Jacka’s company captured three machine gun nests and an artillery position.

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Australia’s Venerable Albert Jacka

By Thomas G. Bradbeer

He had the distinction of being the first Commonwealth soldier to receive the Victoria Cross for valor in World War I, and many observers felt that Australian-born Albert Jacka should have earned at least three of Great Britain’s highest award. Read more

Japanese troops advance through the rubble of a destroyed building in Shanghai on October 29, 1937. Young Marine Captain Evans Carlson witnessed the onslaught.

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Creating the OSS: FDR’s Network of Personal Spies

By Peter Kross

One of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s longtime interests was the hidden world of espionage. In the months before the United States entered World War II, the commander-in-chief was dabbling in the covert world of intelligence-gathering, using a number of trusted personal friends as his own private eyes and ears around the globe. Read more

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Battle of the Philippine Sea & The ‘Great Marianas Turkey Shoot’

By John Wukovits

Lieutenant Tom Bronn glanced anxiously at the fuel gauge on his Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber. He had been aloft for almost four hours, engaged in a hectic combination of trying to locate Japanese ships he knew to be in the Philippine Sea, diving down to unleash his four bombs at a carrier as dusk enveloped his aircraft, and then embarking on a desperate search for his own carrier, the USS Lexington, in the darkness. Read more

The Duke of Villeroi committed the bulk of his cavalry in a fearsome counterattack on the open plain south of Ramillies late in the battle in a quest to shatter the Allied center.

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Grand Alliance Triumph At Ramillies

By Joshua Shepherd

Late in the day on May 23, 1706, the troops of the Colonel William Borthwick’s regiment of Argyll’s Scots Brigade formed up for an unenviable assignment. Read more

Early in the war, German troops advance in the company of a Czech-made tank and under cover of a smoke bomb they have ignited. The German occupation of Czechoslovakia provided the Wehrmacht with a windfall of military hardware.

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WWII Vehicles: The Czech Panzer 38(t)

by Arnold Blumberg

Poland, the Netherlands, France, the Balkans, and Russia were subjected to Germany’s blitzkrieg between 1939 and 1941. At the forefront of those assaults were tanks of Czechoslovakian design. Read more

Union soldiers of Colonel John Wilder’s Mounted Infantry Brigade armed with Spencer repeating rifles delay Confederate attempts to cross at Alexander’s Bridge over Chickamauga Creek at midday on September 18, 1863. The rebels suffered heavy casualties but eventually overpowered the defenders by sheer force of numbers.

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“A Terrible Cyclone”

By Lawrence Weber

On Saturday, September 26, 1863, six days after the Battle of Chickamauga, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet wrote Confederate Secretary of War James A. Read more

A German soldier surveys an antiaircraft defense gun on the bank of the Rhine near the Ludendorff Bridge, January 1945.

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A “Bright Opportunity” At Remagen

By Flint Whitlock

It was March 7, 1945––a gray, overcast day with a nasty chill in the air, the kind of day in which a soldier at the front wished he could relax in front of a toasty fire with a canteen cup full of hot coffee and think about home. Read more

Union intelligence chief Colonel George Henry Sharpe is pictured with his staff at Brandy Station in June 1863. Left to right are Sharpe, John C. Babcock, an unidentified man, and John McEntee.

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Civil War Intelligence

By Arnold Blumberg

The Union officer saw it quite clearly across the Rappahannock River: a hand-painted sign held up by a Rebel soldier that read, “Burnside and his pontoons stuck in the mud. Read more

A 17th-century cavalry- man charging into battle atop a white charger opens fire with his wheel lock pistol in this painting by Dutch artist Pieter Meulener.

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The Wheel Lock: Birth of the Combat Pistol

By William J. McPeak

By the late 15th Century, early firearm designers were already looking at ideas for semi-automatic weapons. The matchlock had been the first mechanism to make a shoulder-aimed firearm, the arquebus, possible. Read more

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    Latest Posts

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