Dr. Corydon Wassell’s selfless effort to aid wounded sailors on Java earned him undying gratitude and a Navy Cross.   More »

General Alexander Vandegrift, a career Marine was commissioned in the Marine Corps as early as 1909.   More »

By Jon Diamond
Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto was not the only gambler in Imperial Japan’s military hierarchy. Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, appointed commander of the Imperial Japanese Army’s (IJA) 25th Army on November 2, 1941, to lead the invasion of Malaya and Singapore, also took risks to capture the prized British territory   More »

As a member of the 24th Infantry Division, Sergeant ‘Red’ Mantini battled the Japanese on five jungle islands.   More »

By Kevin M. Hymel
“Bombs away!”called out the bombardier of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber Great Speckled Bird, signaling the release of a full bombload over an enemy target. He was wrong. Two stubborn bombs refused to fall, remaining in their bomb bay racks.
The bomber’s radioman, Technical Sergeant Thomas Fitzpatrick,   More »

By John J. Domagalski
General Alexander Patch had been thinking about moving some troops to the southwestern part of Guadalcanal since taking command of all American ground forces on the embattled island on December 9, 1942. Little more than a month later his soldiers were cautiously pushing the remaining Japanese troops   More »

By John Osborne. Jr.
One of World War II’s longest, least known guerrilla resistance campaigns was fought in the depths of the jungle covering 80 percent of Malaya’s 50,850 square miles; in it the most unlikely of friendships would develop, leading to a remarkable meeting, then parting, a decade later.
In 1941,   More »

By Jon Diamond
The British Army has had its share of religious zealots Serving in theupper echelons of command. These typically independent-minded soldiers, motivated largely by their spiritual belief, were in sharp contrast to those, as characterized by J.F.C. Fuller, who comprised a “strictly hierarchical army headed by largely unimaginative leaders   More »

By Nathan N. Prefer
He organized, trained, and commanded the 4th Marine Division in the Marshall Islands and Saipan campaigns before taking command of the Fifth Amphibious Corps and leading it against Tinian and Iwo Jima. He was on the short list for commandant of the Marine Corps after World War   More »

By David H. Lippman
In the darkness, the two American submarines moved toward the hostile beach, inching carefully through badly marked waters. They surfaced well before dawn, and the Marine Raiders and submarine crews began bringing up rubber boats from below, inflating them on deck, installing outboard motors, and filling them   More »