Sherman Tank
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
Sherman Tank
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
Sherman Tank
The Normandy landings, the fighting at St. Lô and Caen, Operations Goodwood and Cobra, and the subsequent Argentan-Falaise Pocket have always drawn major attention from historians, with respect to the early struggle for supremacy in France. Read more
Sherman Tank
On the chilly afternoon of Tuesday, December 26, 1944, a column of mud-caked Sherman tanks, halftracks, scout cars, and tank destroyers of the U.S. Read more
Sherman Tank
An old cliché admonishes, “Bad things always come in threes.” Whether it was thought of as a law of nature or merely coincidence, a rapid succession of events in North Africa during the summer of 1942 seemed to confirm this widely held notion among the officers and men of the British Eighth Army. Read more
Sherman Tank
The captured German pilot was cocky and boastful. He had just parachuted into the American airfield, now lit up by the fires of burning Republic P-47 Thunderbolts, a sprinkling of bright torches amid the gray January gloom and the dirty white snow. Read more
Sherman Tank
In the wan North African light on February 14, 1943, Lt. Col. John Waters watched columns of dust rise from the east. Read more
Sherman Tank
By the autumn of 1943, the Allied armies fighting in Italy had discovered that Winston Churchill’s description of Italy as the “soft underbelly of Europe” had been a falsehood of monumental proportions. Read more
Sherman Tank
In an August 14, 1944, General Bernard L. Montgomery was facing a manpower crisis, unable to drive the Germans out of Caen. Read more
Sherman Tank
The U.S. 29th Infantry Division was formed in July 1917, three months after America entered World War I. Read more
Sherman Tank
German defenders hunkered in their concrete and steel bunkers along the Normandy coast were in for two major shocks on Tuesday, June 6, 1944. Read more
Sherman Tank
The darkness held a terror of its own—any false movement or unwarranted sound could easily betray the presence of the 16-man patrol that crept ever closer to the enemy lines. Read more
Sherman Tank
Four Medals of Honor were awarded for acts of conspicuous gallantry during the invasion of Tarawa atoll in the Pacific during World War II. Read more
Sherman Tank
For the Allied tankers and infantrymen of the American, British, Canadian, and Free French armies battling German Panther and Tiger tanks in Normandy in the summer of 1944, the Sherman tank’s failures were glaringly evident as their own shells bounced off the hulls of the Nazi armor and they were themselves destroyed at a far greater range by the powerful German tanks. Read more
Sherman Tank
When twin brothers Roy and Ray Stevens of Bedford, Virginia, joined Company A, First Battalion, 116th Infantry of the 29th Infantry Division in 1938, they could not know that their decision would completely destroy their dream of one day owning a farm together. Read more
Sherman Tank
By the late summer of 1944, the Third Reich was almost surrounded. Two years earlier Adolf Hitler had ground 10 European countries under his heel along with vast expanses of North Africa and Soviet Russia. Read more
Sherman Tank
After four months and a 600-mile advance from the beaches of Normandy into Brittany and then through eastern France, the spearhead of Lt. Read more
Sherman Tank
Lieutenant General Omar Bradley had reason to be pleased by the last week of July 1944. His First Army had scratched out a substantial foothold on the Normandy coast, capturing three times more French territory than his British allies. Read more
Sherman Tank
During the Battle of the Bulge, Adolf Hitler launched his last great counteroffensive along the Western Front. From full armored divisions running on gasoline fumes to “American schools” teaching spies how to pose as Allied soldiers, Hitler used everything in his arsenal to try to turn the tide of the war. Read more
Sherman Tank
With a quarter of a million German troops pouring through the Ardennes Forest, three Americans fleeing in a jeep should have raised no alarm. Read more
