Allies
Normandy’s Little Victims
By Kevin HymelWar spared no one. As modern armies clashed in France’s Normandy countryside, French civilians found themselves in the crossfire or on the receiving end of bombs and heavy weapons. Read more
Allies
War spared no one. As modern armies clashed in France’s Normandy countryside, French civilians found themselves in the crossfire or on the receiving end of bombs and heavy weapons. Read more
Allies
The Germans were gone. After more than four years of occupation, the soldiers of the Wehrmacht had been evicted from France’s Normandy region by the American and British armies. Read more
Allies
An eternal grayness created a sense of constant gloom. The short, wintry days ended quickly, giving way to endless hours of dark, monotonous cold, and ever-present clouds of ghostlike fog crept slowly over the landscape, blocking all sight. Read more
Allies
The image of the Scottish piper standing erect under fire was commemorated in the film The Longest Day nearly two decades after the D-Day landings of June 6, 1944. Read more
Allies
No Allied amphibious invasion in World War II left such a bitter legacy as Operation Jubilee, the ill-fated British-Canadian raid on the northern French port of Dieppe on Wednesday, August 19, 1942. Read more
Allies
Many people who never knew John Hanlon personally may remember him as that paratrooper who took the sheets back to Bastogne. Read more
Allies
On March 23, 1919, but four months after the armistice that ended the Great War—100 young toughs, ex-Italian Army war veterans, former socialist politicians, and newspapermen met in Milan’s Piazza San Sepolchro in industrial northern Italy to form a new political party. Read more
Allies
The year 1944 dawned with America already at war for over two years. In an event not marked by history books, the 96th Navy Construction Battalion, Seabees, crossed the Atlantic from Davisville, Rhode Island, on the Abraham Lincoln, a converted banana boat escorted by two destroyers, the USS Ellis and USS Biddle. Read more
Allies
By 1901, the Small Arms Committee—the body within the War Office tasked with arming the British Army with weapons—sought to replace their then-standard issue rifle: the Magazine Lee-Metford Rifle Mark II. Read more
Allies
From an altitude of 30,000 feet, the swift Japanese reconnaissance aircraft flew high over Saipan and Tinian, photographing the brisk and extensive engineering effort under way on the American airfields far below. Read more
Allies
Watching his forces prepare to attack the Union Army at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson commented to an aide, “The Institute will be heard from today.” Read more
Allies
When American soldiers landed in France in June 1944 as part of the great Allied crusade to liberate Europe, they were well trained, fully equipped, and brimming with confidence. Read more
Allies
Following the 76th anniversary of the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from the beaches and harbor of Dunkirk, one is amazed at the number of articles and volumes written about the subject. Read more
Allies
On March 5, 1936, the new Supermarine Type 300 took off from Southampton, England. The plane would soon be called the Spitfire, and along with the Hawker Hurricane it would become Great Britain’s first line of defense. Read more
Allies
In the 1940s, war disrupted the lives of millions of people around the globe: fuel rationing, food rationing, shortages of all kinds, and, of course, the death and destruction that was visited on cities, nations, and whole populations. Read more
Allies
Lieutenant Colonel William Edwin Dyess, a U.S. Army Air Corps pilot and squadron commander, was considered a hero by men who served under him in the Philippines and who felt they owed their own lives to Ed’s sacrifice. Read more
Allies
The road to Fort Driant began for the United States Third Army when it landed on Utah Beach at 3 pm on August 5, 1944. Read more
Allies
The origins of the Universal Bren Gun Carrier can be traced to the Ford T-powered Carden-Loyd machines developed in Great Britain in the mid-1920s, specifically the Mark VI model of 1927. Read more
Allies
A fuming John Steinbeck vented his frustration over World War II to a friend on March 15, 1943. Read more
Allies
U.S. involvement in WWII grew to be about 16,000,000 military personnel by the war’s end: approximately 11,200,000 in the Army, 4,200,000 in the Navy, and 660,000 in the Marine Corps. Read more