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Varangian leader Rurik and his sons arrive in the trading post of Staraya Ladoga in 862. About that same time Varangians began serving with forces protecting the frontiers of the Byzantine Empire.

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The Byzantine Army’s Varangian Guard

By Erich B. Anderson

Byzantine Emperor Basil II suffered a massive defeat against the Bulgarians on August 17, 986, at a strategic mountain pass known as Trajan’s Gate in Bulgaria. Read more

The Battle of Narva was a resounding victory for Swedish King Charles XII over his Russian foe. The young monarch is shown at lower right in Alexander von Kotzebue’s romantic painting.

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Swedish Gamble at the Battle of Narva

By Eric Niderost

Just after dawn on the morning of November 20, 1700, two figures stood atop Hermansburg, a small rise that overlooked the fortress town of Narva in the Baltic province of Estonia. Read more

Members of Ninth Carrier Command unload a Jeep from a C-47 on one of the emergency landing strips in France. Without the Troop Carrier Commands, the American war effort in the European Theater would have ground to a halt.

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The Flying Pipeline

By Patricia Overman

“Flying supply missions with the 435th Troop Carrier Group, or any tactical group of IX Troop Carrier Command, is a combination of taking a physical beating and sweating out land and aerial war hazards”

—Michael Seaman, Warweek Staff Writer, Stars and Stripes, April 29, 1945

By April 1945 the Allied Armies were racing east as German resistance crumbled. Read more

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Masterstroke at Friedland

By Coley Cowan

Friedland was burning. The darkening sky of late afternoon on June 14, 1807, was deepened further by the ashes swirling in the narrow streets. Read more

Disabled automobiles lie abandoned in the street of a French village south of the major port city of Cherbourg. In this image soldiers of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division move cautiously through the area.

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Cherbourg’s Bloody Toll

By Pat McTaggart

It was June 1944. Two generals, one American and one German, faced each other with diametrically opposed missions. Read more

In her battle armor, Joan of Arc leads a rapturous army of French followers who believe her to be divinely inspired.

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Joan of Arc’s Loire Campaign: The English Tide Recedes

By William Welsh

None of those present at the war council held on July 18, 1429, at Beaugency in central France seemed to object to the peculiar sight of an armor-clad young woman advising some of the greatest military captains of the age on how to proceed with the campaign to crown the Dauphin Charles king of France. Read more

Georgians of Lawton's Brigade drive off the Pennsylvania Reserves during the Union assault on the Confederate right wing.

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Rebel Blunder at Fredericksburg

By David A. Norris

Brig. Gen. George Gordon Meade’s division spent three hours bombarded by Confederate guns on December 13, 1862. Read more

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Victoria Cross Recipient Private Henry Tandey

By Robert Barr Smith

Private Henry Tandey had a clear shot at the German soldier. He was so close that he could look his enemy in the eyes. Read more

New England militiamen disembark from British ships and row to shore at the beginning of the siege of Louisbourg in May 1745. The Americans were eager to capture the French fortress because it gave safe haven to privateers and French naval vessels that preyed on colonial maritime trade.

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Cannonballs, Grapeshot, and Profanity

By David A. Norris

For nearly a month, 4,000 New England militia aided by the Royal Navy had surrounded the great fortress of Louisbourg, the key to French Canada. Read more

American soldiers splash ashore at Anzio, Italy, during an end run expected to compromise the German defenses of the Gustav Line. The landings failed to achieve the desired results and remain controversial to this day.

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Prudence or Paralysis?

By Steve Ossad

Hitler called it an “abscess.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the chief sponsor and loudest cheerleader for the endeavor, grudgingly proclaimed it “a disaster.” Read more

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Turco-Mongol Emir Timur: Scourge of the East

By Victor Kamenir

Egyptian medieval chronicler Ibn Taghribirdi relates an incident that occurred following Turco-Mongol Emir Timur’s conquest of Aleppo in 1400. Read more

South Vietnamese troops advance through waist-high grass toward North Vietnamese invaders in May 1972 following the NVA’s all-out Easter offensive of 1972.

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The Easter Offensive of 1972

By John Walker

At noon on Good Friday, March 30, 1972, more than 25,000 North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers, backed by state-of-the-art Soviet tanks, artillery, and mobile antiaircraft missile platforms, poured across the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Vietnams. Read more

Australians expand and improve the Italian defenses at Tobruk in February 1941 in anticipation of an attack by Axis forces in a painting by Australian war artist Ivor Hele. Two months later, Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps began probing the Allied defenses at the key Libyan port.

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Rommel Repulsed

By Robert Heege

It was the first week of April 1941, and Lt. Gen. Richard O’Connor could scarcely believe what was happening as his driver suddenly cocked the wheel and swerved hard left, flooring the gas pedal in a futile attempt to outrun the multiple bursts of machine-gun fire erupting all around them, lighting up the Saharan night as bullets chased after his wheels. Read more

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Jugurtha: Numidian King, Roman Enemy

By William Stroock

Jugurtha, king of the desert nation of Numidia, was a long-time antagonist of Republican Rome. Over more than a decade of war, he was a bold and cunning battlefield commander who used swiftness and determination to make fools of Roman consuls, even as the Romans were systematically conquering his country. Read more

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Alfred Duffie: A ‘Napoleon’ in the Civil War

By Arnold Blumberg

Napoleon Alexandre Duffie was born on May 1, 1833, in Paris, France. His father, Jean August Duffie, was a prosperous sugar refiner and mayor of the village of La Ferte-sous-Jouarre. Read more

A seemingly endless procession of trucks brings American soldiers and supplies to the front at Chateau-Thierry in May 1918. Painting by William James Aylward.

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American Stand At Chateau-Thierry

By George T. Raach

For the hard-pressed German Empire, New Year’s Day 1918 brought a compendium of evils. The Allied naval blockade, increasingly effective, depressed industrial production and stoked a war weariness made manifest in strikes and bread riots. Read more

The 809th Tank Destroyer Battalion prepares to move out from the French port of Le Havre on January 22, 1945. The equipment consists of M20 command and reconnaissance cars belonging to the 809th’s A Company. The M20 was a variant of the M8 Greyhound, with the turret and 37mm cannon removed.

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Tank Destroyers in Action! Photos of the 809th on the Front

By Neal Fausset

The 809th Tank Destroyer Battalion was an independently attached unit of the U.S. Army. The battalion was activated on March 18, 1942, at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, and remained in the United States through most of the war. Read more

Yorkist troops led by the Earl of Warwick and the Duke of York storm through the streets of St. Albans on May 22, 1455. The rebels captured King Henry VI, killed the Duke of Somerset, and ignited the 30-year-long War of the Roses. Painting by Graham Turner.

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Roses In The Snow

By Mike Phifer

On March 1, 1461, English Chancellor George Neville faced a large crowd of Londoners in St. John’s Field outside the city. Read more

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We Will Hold It or die Here!

By David A. Norris

Amid the fog of powder smoke in the north-Georgia forest, the frayed remnants of the Union’s Army of the Cumberland faced determined Confederate troops who sensed an impending victory. Read more

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Napoleon’s Triumph over Prussia

By Arnold Blumberg

At 4 am on October 14, 1806, 37-year-old Jean Lannes, Marshal of France in Napoleon Bonaparte’s Grande Armee and commander of that host’s V Corps, received his final instructions verbally from the emperor. Read more

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From Around the Network

The RAF’s Dambusting Lancaster Bomber

Last Act in the Dutch East Indies

Grant’s Army of the Tennesee overcame adversity on the roundabout road to Vicksburg.

The Soviets carried the heavy end of the stick