Military Heritage

February 2011

Volume 12, No. 5

COVER: A German anti-tank crew prepares to fire during street fighting in Stalingrad in 1942. Photo: ullstein bild/ The Granger Collection, NY

February 2011

Military Heritage

Capturing the Rock: Gibraltar 1704

By Arnold Blumberg

As Spanish king Charles II lay dying in Madrid in the autumn of 1700, worried diplomats in other European capitals brooded day and night over who would succeed the childless monarch. Read more

Soviet soldiers storm the ruins of School # 6 in a photpgraph by Russian newspaper photographer Georgy Zelma.

February 2011

Military Heritage

Stalingrad: Apocalypse on the Volga

By John Walker

After Adolf Hitler’s audacious invasion of Russia finally ground to a halt in December 1941 on the forested outskirts of Moscow, the exhausted German Army stabilized its winter front in a line running roughly from Leningrad in the north to Rostov in the south. Read more

February 2011

Military Heritage

Surprise Attack at Tippecanoe

By Joshua Shepherd

For William Henry Harrison, the letter he received on October 12, 1811, constituted not only official orders, but something of a personal vindication as well. Read more

February 2011

Military Heritage

The Guns of Formigny

By Eric Niderost

In the fall of 1447, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, was not a happy man. He was lieutenant general of France and Guyenne, a kind of viceroy who oversaw English possessions in France, and he was also a powerful and rapacious feudal magnate in his own right. Read more

February 2011

Military Heritage, Editorial

The Sand Creek Massacre of 1864.

Major John M. Chivington, Colorado’s “fighting parson,” played a large role in the Union victory at Glorieta Pass, New Mexico, in 1862. Read more

February 2011

Military Heritage, Soldiers

Drusus the Elder: Hero of Rome

By P. Lindsay Powell

On a sultry summer night in 9 BC, 29-year-old commander of Augustus Caesar ’s army in Germania bolted upright in his cot, dripping with sweat. Read more

A Polish Vistula lancer wearing the familiar four-sided lancer cap, or shako, crosses blades with an Austrian cuirassier during the Napoleonic Wars.

February 2011

Military Heritage, Militaria

The Four-Sided Peak Lancer Cap

By Peter Suciu

While lightly armed cavalry already seemed anachronistic by the time of the Napoleonic Wars, the success of the Polish lancers in that conflict convinced many nations to adopt a similar fighting force. Read more

February 2011

Military Heritage, Intelligence

John Graves Simcoe: a Queen’s Ranger in the American Revolution

By Mike Phifer

British Army officer John Graves Simcoe wanted to command a corps of irregular troops. He believed that there were opportunities in “the service of a partisan” that taught a man habits of self-dependence and prompt decision making rarely found in the duties of a subordinate officer. Read more

February 2011

Military Heritage, Books

Revisiting the Tet Offensive

By Al Hemingway

Many who remember the 1968 Tet Offensive in South Vietnam still believe that the U.S. military suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the North Vietnamese Army. Read more

February 2011

Military Heritage, Games

Medal of Honor vs. Call of Duty

By Joseph Luster

Is it really any surprise at this point that the latest Call of Duty title completely obliterated sales records upon its release? Read more