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Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a Castilian mercenary who served Christian kings and Muslim emirs alike in late 11th-century Spain, was born in 1043 in the village of Vivar, about six miles north of the city of Burgos. Read more
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Despite being caught up in the tide of isolationism prevalent duringthe interval between the world wars, the United States Army was lucky enough to have Congressional funding for the further development and expansion of its fledgling air arm, known initially in 1926 as the Army Air Corps and in 1941 renamed the Army Air Forces. Read more
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“Every war will astonish you,” American general Dwight D. Eisenhower said after World War II. As the leader of the Allied forces that successfully landed on D-Day and marched into Berlin 11 months later, Eisenhower obviously knew what he was talking about. Read more
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Late on the night of June 5, 1944, while American paratroopers were on their way to drop behind Utah Beach, another, smaller air armada carrying 170 British airborne troops was also dashing headlong into battle like an aerial cavalry charge towards the far eastern flank of the Normandy invasion site. Read more
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For the citizens of western Missouri, the Civil War effectively began with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. Read more
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Second Lieutenant John Bosko was flying his seventh mission on August 24, 1944. He was reasonably seasoned as far as bomber commanders went but was unaware of his target’s macabre reputation. Read more
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The French Revolution of 1789, which began as a peaceful process of social and financial reform, rapidly descended into internal strife and violence. Read more
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World War II saw great advancements in firearms technology. Many nations that entered the conflict with bolt-action rifles ended the war with a variety of complex submachine guns and assault rifles. Read more
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The Hussites, all but forgotten today, were a 15th-century sect of religious reformers, forerunners of the Protestant Reformation that was to come a century later. Read more
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Arguably the most celebrated campaign feat of arms of the American Civil War is that of Stonewall Jackson in the Shenandoah Valley in May and early June 1862. Read more
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The summer of 1942 had brought uplifting news for the United States in the Pacific Theater. After a numbing series of setbacks, including the December 1941 surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent fall of Guam and the Philippines, the nation’s Navy had husbanded its depleted forces and, with the crucial aid of naval intelligence, halted the Japanese in the May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea and the June Battle of Midway. Read more
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When Lt. Col. Lord George Paget rose early in the morning of October 25, 1854, he had no inkling of, as he later put it, “the day’s work in store for us.” Read more
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Captain Odd Isaachsen Willoch knew what had to be done. The 55-year-old career Norwegian officer, commander of an aging coastal defense ship, was looking down the five-inch gun barrels and 21-inch torpedo tubes of the Wilhelm Heidkamp, a state-of-the-art German destroyer. Read more
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Coming upon the enemy’s rear guard outside the western Kentucky village of Sacramento, four days after Christmas 1861, Confederate Colonel Nathan Bedford Forrest ordered his cavalry to advance. Read more
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Among the thousands of American soldiers slogging through the miserable winter of 1944 in southern Italy after the Allied landing at Anzio were two GIs who existed only on paper, but who became as real to their readers as the mud-covered, K-ration-eating guys sitting next to them in their foxholes. Read more
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The U.S. 3rd Infantry Division has one of the longest legacies in the United States Army. Originally formed in November 1917 at Camp Greene, North Carolina, it gained a reputation for toughness. Read more
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Following the spectacular success of the Allied air campaign against Iraq during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and against the Serb forces in Kosovo in 1999, the value and efficiency of utilizing air power to shape or forgo the need for a ground battle has been taken for granted by military planners. Read more
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Long columns of heavily armed soldiers streamed southeast along the left bank of the Adige River in the Veneto region of northern Italy on March 11, 1387. Read more
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By 1939 the German Reich possessed 3,800,000 horses while 885,000 were initially called to the Wehrmacht as saddle, draft, and pack animals. Read more
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In the days following the outbreak of war, Northern states scrambled to assemble small militia groups into regiment-size units, recruit additional volunteers and uniform them all in a cohesive manner. Read more
