Military Heritage

Winter 2025

Volume 26, No. 4

Cover: A G.I. uses his walkie-talkie to “get the message through” near the Siegfried Line. See story page 54. Photo: National Archives.

“Shenandoah Valley, September 1864,” first-hand drawing by Alfred R. Waud, a war correspondent for Harper's Weekly. On September 19, 1864, Union General Phillip Sheridan’s Army of the Shenandoah defeated General Jubal Early at the Third Battle of Winchester.

Winter 2025

Military Heritage

Crook’s Devils

By Kevin O’Beirne

In the fourth summer of the Civil War, things were not going well for the Union. After more than three years of bloody conflict the Confederacy, although on the defensive and having lost significant territory, was still defiant and dangerous, while the war-weary North wondered if victory was truly attainable. Read more

Winter 2025

Military Heritage

To the Mons

By Eric Niderost

Southwestern Belgium echoed with the ceaseless tramp of heavy boots on cobbled roads as long brown lines of khaki-clad men marched into Mons and its suburbs. Read more

After Operation Market-Garden failed make it into Germany in September 1944, U.S. Lt. General “Lightning” Joe Collins suggested the Hürtgen Forest might offer a safer route into the Reich through the German Siegfried Line.

Winter 2025

Military Heritage

Into the Hürtgenwald

By Robert A. Lynn

The 1944 invasion of France, the breakout from the beaches, the surprise German counterattack in the Ardennes, and the final reckoning with the Third Reich have all been exhaustively chronicled. Read more

Winter 2025

Military Heritage

The Berezina Bridges

By Jonathan North

The shattered remains of Napoleon’s once brilliant Grande Armée entered Smolensk on November 9, 1812. Taking stock of the situation, the emperor realized that he and his army couldn’t possibly winter in the charred remains of the city. Read more

In an ambush led by Arminius (later known as Hermann), three Roman legions were destroyed in Germania in 9 CE. The event, one of Rome’s worst defeats, was seized upon by nationalists in the 19th-century, and later by the Nazi Third Reich, as the mythological origin of the German state. Paintings such as “The battle of Hermann in the Teutoburg Forest,” (1840) by Wilhelm Lindenschmit the Elder, helped popularize Hermann as the father of the German nation.

Winter 2025

Military Heritage

Havoc in the Teutoburger Forest

By Michael D. Greaney

One of the most devastating events to shake the early Roman Empire was the defeat of Legate Publius Quinctilius Varus and his army at the hands of Arminius in the Battle of Teutoburgerwald in 9 ad. Read more

Winter 2025

Military Heritage, Soldiers

Samuel Pepys

By Kelly Bell

The wind was from the southwest early on the morning of June 13, 1665, as the Dutch and British fleets deployed just off southeastern coast of England, 40 miles east of the town of Lowestoft in Suffolk. Read more

Members of the Military Telegraph Construction Corps, including two balancing atop freshly cut tree trunks, hanging telegraph wire near Brandy Station, Virginia.

Winter 2025

Military Heritage, Weapons

The Telegraph

By Jim Haviland

Early in the American Civil War, during the first months of 1862, Union General Henry Halleck, commanding from his headquarters in St. Read more

Winter 2025

Military Heritage, Valor

Andrews Raiders

By Kevin Seabrooke

A little more than 162 years after they were executed as spies in Georgia, privates Philip G. Shadrach and George D, Wilson of the 2nd Ohio Infantry were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor by President Biden in a ceremony at the White House on July 4, 2024. Read more

Winter 2025

Military Heritage, Games

Aero Fighters

By Joseph Luster

Known in Japan as Sonic Wings, the Aero Fighters series first kicked off way back in 1992. The original entry started out as an arcade game before making its way to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and now SUCCESS Corporation has its eyes set on a revival. Read more

Winter 2025

Military Heritage, Games

Under Defeat

By Joseph Luster

Arcade shoot ‘em ups were a dime a dozen back in the day, but developer G.rev did things a little differently. Read more