Napoleon promoted General Jozef Poniatowski to marshal during the battle, but a badly wounded Poniatowski drowned on October 19 in the White Elster River.

Spring 2023

Volume 25, No. 1

Marines watch as a flame-throwing amphibious tractor fires at caves in the mountainous areas used by the Japanese during the fight for the Pacific island of Peleliu. The lowlands and the airport were quickly captured, but the Umurbrogol massif—a series of limestone and choral ridges rising as high as 300 feet took much longer. A moonscape of sinkholes, canyons and cliffs further fortified by Japanese engineers, the “Umurbrogal Pocket,” and the island, was finally declared secure 73 days after the Marines had landed.

Military Heritage

Savage Struggle for Peleliu

By Joshua Shepherd

Amphibious landing craft carrying U.S. Marines plunged through heavy surf toward the beaches of Peleliu Island, a formerly inconspicuous tropical paradise in the Palau Islands. Read more

Militiamen from the Carolina Colonies, most armed with rifles, fire on Loyalist American troops under the command of British Major Patrick Ferguson at the top of Kings Mountain, South Carolina. The hour-long battle on Oct. 7, 1780, was a victory for the Patriots and a turning point in the Revolutionary War. This painting by Don Troiami depicts the moment Major Ferguson, center left, was shot from his horse as he charged. Hit multiple times, Ferguson fell from his mount and was dragged by a foot caught in the stirrup. The Loyalists surrendered shortly after his death.

Military Heritage

Pivotal Victory at Kings Mountain

By Mike Phifer

Kings Mountain was a battle of militia–American Patriots against American Loyalists. Short and intense, it was the last desperate stand of British Major Patrick Ferguson and a turning point in the American Revolution. Read more

Although Napoleon took up a strong position at Leipzig, he found his Grande Armée greatly outnumbered. The titanic clash involved upwards of 500,000 combatants.

Military Heritage

Death Knell for Napoleon’s Empire

By Victor Kamenir

French Marshal Michel Ney found himself outmatched in a clash of arms with a Swedish-Prussian army at Dennewitz 40 miles southwest of Berlin on September 6, 1813. Read more

Confederate General Richard Taylor’s Louisiana “Tiger” Brigade attacks the guns of of Battery E, 4th U.S. Artillery in the Coaling during the Battle of Port Republic in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley on June 9, 1862.

Military Heritage

Rebel Fury at Port Republic

By Robert L. Durham

Confederate infantry on the northeastern outskirts of Port Republic in the Shenandoah Valley charged up the slopes of a ravine on June 9, 1862, against Union artillery that had been ravaging their ranks all morning. Read more

An American M-26 Pershing tank of the 89th Medium Tank Battalion passes a Russian-made North Korean tank destroyed by Fox Company of the U.S. Army’s 27th Infantry Division during the retreat of North Korean forces in August 1950.

Military Heritage

Armored Clash on the Road to the Yalu

By Christopher Miskimon

The chase was on in early autumn 1950. The North Korean People’s Army, after its invasion of South Korea, fell back north with United Nations’ forces in close pursuit following the Battle of Inchon the previous month. Read more

This painting by Georges-Antoine Rochegrosse (1859-1938) depicts a party of Huns ransacking a Roman villa in Gaul. Raids and tributes from the Roman Empire were the largest source of income for the Hunnic confederation under Attila.

Military Heritage

For Nearly a Century the Nomadic Huns Dominated Much of Europe

By Ludwig H. Dyck

“A hitherto unknown race of men had appeared from some remote corner of the earth, uprooting and destroying everything in its path like a whirlwind descending from high mountains” wrote Ammianus Marcellinus, a 4th century AD Roman officer and historian. Read more

Military Heritage, Editorial

Jedediah Hotchkiss’ Map

After his exploratory expedition to the Shenandoah Valley in 1716, Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood encouraged Germans and Dutch farmers residing in eastern Pennsylvania to settle the region when he found Virginians in the Tidewater and Piedmont regions of his state initially reluctant to settle beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains. Read more

For what the U.S. Army called a “magnificent display of courage” while killing a dozen Vietnamese soldiers during a January, 1968, ambush in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, Johnson was recommended for, and received, the Congressional Medal of Honor the same year. He was the City of Detroit's only Vietnam War Medal of Honor winner and the first African American soldier from Michigan to recieve the nation's highest military honor.

Military Heritage, Valor

Tank driver Dwight Johnson in Vietnam

By William E. Welsh

The U.S. military had 409,000 soldiers and Marines in South Vietnam organized into approximately 100 infantry and mechanized battalions at the start of 1968. Read more

Military Heritage, Uniform

Soldier in the French Royal Regiment

By William E. Welsh

French King Louis XIV first standardized uniforms in 1657 when the king gave the companies of Masion du Roy blue uniforms. Read more

This painting by Graham Turner depicts Sir John Hawkwood pulling the Veronese standard bearer Francesco Visconti from his saddle during the 1387 Battle of Castagnaro. Following closely are Hawkwood’s own standard bearer and one of his captains, John Coe.

Military Heritage, Soldiers

English Mercenary Captain John Hawkwood

By William E. Welsh

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

A Jagdpanzer 38(t) tank destroyer in Hungary, circa 1944. Nicknamed “Hetzer,” baiter or agitator, this compact , powerful weapon was Hitler’s response to British and Russian tanks that were too heavily armored for towed German anti-tank guns.

Military Heritage, Ordnance

The Jagdpanzer 38

By William E. Welsh

It became glaringly apparent to the German Wehrmacht in 1943 that it needed a solution to the threat of heavily armored British and Russian tanks whose armor proved too thick for German towed anti-tank guns. Read more

Military Heritage

Military History Book Reviews for Spring 2023

By Christopher Miskimon Full Reviews

Putin’s Wars: From Chechnya to Ukraine (Mark Galeotti, Osprey Publishing, Oxford UK, 2022, 384 pp., maps, photographs, bibliography, index, $35, hardcover)

The Abyss: Nuclear Crisis Cuba 1962 (Max Hastings, Harper Collins Publishing, New York NY, 2022, 544 pp., Read more

Military Heritage, Games

The Great War: Western Front

By Joseph Luster

It’s time to travel back to the era of World War I once again in The Great War: Western Front, which puts you in control of the battlefield in a unique dual role system. Read more

Military Heritage, Games

Knights of Honor II: Sovereign

By Joseph Luster

If your particular flavor of strategy falls on the grand side of the spectrum, you might want to dive into the recently-released Knights of Honor II: Sovereign, which arrives courtesy of developer Black Sea Games and publisher THQ Nordic. Read more

Spring 2023

From Around the Network

Blood in the Snow

Game Changer: The B29

Cold War Spies: General Reinhard Gehlen

LIFE Photographer Ralph Morse’s War