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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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Turning Point In The Pacific

By Michael E. Haskew

Despite more than a decade of triumphs in Asia and the Pacific, by the spring of 1942 the Japanese military establishment was in a somber mood. Read more

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The MG-42 Light Machine Gun

By Arnold Blumberg

Whether fighting in the mountains of the Italian peninsula, assaulting Nazi defensive positions along the vast Russo-German Eastern Front, or clashing with German Army opponents from Normandy to the Elbe River, from 1942 to 1945, Allied soldiers in World War II faced a determined enemy armed with the most effective machine gun produced during that struggle: the Maschinengewehr 42, or the MG 42 for short. Read more

Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca enters an Italian village following a victory over the Romans in a contemporary painting by Peter Connolly. Hannibal invaded the Italian peninsula in 218 bc to keep the war away from Carthage and put the burden of sustaining the fight on his enemy’s lands.

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Hannibal’s Cunning Ambush

By Chuck Lyons

When 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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Prisons of the Civil War: An Enduring Controversy

By Michael E. Haskew

The June 19, 1861, editorial in the Charleston Mercury newspaper warned: “War is bloody reality, not butterfly sporting. Read more

Lt. Col. John Eager Howard’s Continental infantry breaks up a British charge with a strong volley as Washington’s dragoons prepare to strike the British right flank.

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Frontiersman Daniel Morgan

By Simon Rees

The lieutenant had reached the end of his tether. It was time to cut this impudent American wagoner down to size with the flat of his sword. Read more

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World Airlines Flight 253: Hostage of the Soviet Union

By Adam Griffith

Nineteen-year-old U.S. Army Specialist E5 James Griffith wasn’t particularly nervous when he boarded Seaboard World Airlines Flight 253 at McChord Air Base in Tacoma, Washington, on June 30, 1968. Read more

Sailors and marines of the powerful Venetian Navy assault the seaward wall along the Golden Horn for a second time in April 1204. The Venetians suspended gangplanks from the masts and yard-arms of their galleys that served as flying bridges for marines to use in assaulting the tops of the city's walls.

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Sack of Constantinople

By William E. Welsh

Dawn broke clear and hot over Constantinople on July 17, 1203.

All manner of war machines were clustered around the Latin crusaders’ fortified camp on a hill where the Monastery of Saints Cosmas and Damian was located. Read more

Timothy O’Sullivan photographed the massive Union pontoon bridge over the James River at Weyanoke Point. Anchoring schooners can be seen in the background.

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Union Army Engineers

By Gustav Person

The Union Army’s ambitious Overland Campaign began on May 4, 1864. It was the fourth year of the Civil War, and Lt. Read more

The German flagship SMS Cöln takes fire from Commodore William Goodenough’s cruisers. Having suffered severe damage, her crew decided to scuttle her in the hope that they would be picked up by ships in close proximity. Sadly, all but one man perished at sea.

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Race to Victory

By John Protasio

Commodore Reginald Tyrwhitt of the Royal Navy was in a grave predicament on August 28, 1914. His force was near the German base at Heligoland Bight. Read more