WWII
When Hollywood’s Tyler Perry heard a story about the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the U.S. Army’s only all-female, all-Black unit of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) to go overseas in World War II, he knew he had to make a movie about it. Read more
WWII
At around 9:30 p.m. on August 25, 1939, a German Opel staff car burst into the courtyard of the temporary headquarters of the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence) near the Slovakian and Polish border. Read more
WWII
Men of the Medical Detachment of the 2nd Battalion, 274th Infantry Regiment, 70th Infantry Division, arrived in France in December 1944, and within days found themselves in action in Alsace-Lorraine as the unit was sent to help blunt the German offensive—Operation Nordwind. Read more
WWII
Lieutenant Commander Draper Kauffman was crawling across a moonlit beach on enemy-held Tinian Island when he first noticed the sound of voices. Read more
WWII
After 36 days of ferocious combat, the island of Iwo Jima was declared “secure” by departing U.S. Marines on March 26, 1945. Read more
WWII
The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini and Hitler–How War Made Them and How They Made War (Phillips Payson O’Brien, Dutton Books, New York NY, 2024, 544 pp., Read more
WWII
Four miles above the snow-covered city of Steyr, Captain Jack Horner peered down through his Norden bombsight in a desperate attempt to identify the target. Read more
WWII
The afternoon of May 30, 1942, found Clyde Sarah waiting for his girlfriend Ida on Estudillo Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares in San Leandro, a small town just across the bay from San Francisco. Read more
WWII
In most people’s mind the Iron Cross is inescapably linked to the Third Reich. Indeed, Adolf Hitler was responsible for adding a “marching swastika” front and center, to the decoration’s black core in 1939. Read more
WWII
After years in obscurity, the story of the 6888th Postal Directory Battalion is coming to selected theaters and to Netflix in December with the release of the feature film, The Six Triple Eight. Read more
WWII
More or less in the center of the Mediterranean Sea, Malta became one of the most strategic locations in all of World War II. Read more
WWII
The contribution of the Union of South Africa’s armed forces to the winning of World War II is little known outside South Africa itself. Read more
WWII
It was the humid season on Malta that September of 1943. The hot Sirocco winds from North Africa blow from August to October across the cool sea, raising humidity. Read more
WWII
The island of Sicily, lying in the Mediterranean Sea between Tunisia and the toe of the Italian peninsula, is no stranger to war and conquest. Read more
WWII
Major Evans Carlson stood on a rickety platform built from wooden crates, the kind their rations came in. Read more
WWII
It’s called Mein Skizzenbuch (My Sketchbook)—a 72-page booklet of pencil drawings and watercolors by noted German war artist Ernst Eigener, a soldier with Propaganda Co. Read more
WWII
The U.S. military employed an organized system for the treatment of soldiers severely wounded while fighting in the Pacific, including their evacuation stateside if needed. Read more
WWII
“Passchendaele with tree bursts” was how war correspondent Ernest Hemingway described it. The three-month slugfest that became known as the Battle the Hürtgen Forest was that and much more. Read more
WWII
Letters home provide us with a glimpse into the daily lives of soldiers during the best and worst times. Read more
WWII
The heady days of summer—when Third Army made 600 miles in a week as the German troops fled for their lives—were a distant memory, a sort of story the veterans told the waves of replacements. Read more
