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An American soldier of the 31st Infantry Division carries an M3 submachine gun, known as the Grease Gun, during landings on the island of Morotai in the Pacific in September 1944.

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The Controversial M3 Grease Gun

By Patrick J. Chaisson

No one ever used the words “graceful” or “elegant” to describe the M3 submachine gun. Instead, those soldiers, sailors and Marines who carried it called the M3 a “plumber’s nightmare” or “the cake decorator.” Read more

Marines manning a fighting top on the USS Bonhomme Richard fire on British seamen while another prepares to hurl a grenade at the Serapis.

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Triumph Off Flamborough Head

By Eric Niderost

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

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Slogging into the Reichswald

By David H. Lippman

Just after midnight on February 9, 1945, across the diamond-shaped mass of forest, hills, and flooded terrain that defined the Reichswald, rain fell in a steady downpour upon a battlefield that had already seen some of the most ferocious fighting of World War II in Western Europe. Read more

Smoke billows from bomb strikes against the submarine pens at St. Nazaire. This photo was taken from a U.S. bomber that participated in a costly raid against the heavily defended pens on the French coast.

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Lessons at St. Nazaire

By Robert F. Dorr

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

A Marine shares his water with a badly wounded fellow Marine during the fight for Peleliu. Although less well known than Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa, the battle was no less brutal.

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Perilous Fight For Peleliu

By Christopher Miskimon

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

German infantrymen follow their armored vehicles on the advance into Stalingrad. Few if any of the Nazi soldiers would survive the meat-grinder battle.

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Prit Buttar’s ‘Meat Grinder’

By Christopher Miskimon

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

Thick black smoke seen in the distance beyond a burned-out Iraqi tank streams skyward after Iraqi forces withdrawing from Kuwait set fire to the Arab emirate’s oil fields.

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Lightning Victory In The Persian Gulf

By Victor Kamenir

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

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