Soldiers
More than 16 million Americans served in the U.S. military during World War II, but as fluid as the situation was in the Pacific, and considering the priority given to the European Theater, it is difficult to obtain an accurate count of how many served in the Pacific at any one time during World War II. Read more
Soldiers
The commander of the U.S. Third Army, General George Patton, Jr., took no great pleasure in the end of the war in Europe; he already knew that despite his lobbying of many influential figures in Washington, D.C., Read more
Soldiers
Russian General Peter Ivanovich Bagration was one of those rare commanders who received near-universal praise from his contemporaries outside of Russia. Read more
Soldiers
It is said that hard times create strong men. The first and second centuries bc were certainly a hard time for the diverse peoples of the ancient Near East. Read more
Soldiers
At dawn on August 21, 1863, 450 Confederate Irregulars under William C. Quantrill descended on the town of Lawrence, Kansas. Read more
Soldiers
One month after the disastrous French defeat at Poitiers in September 1356, a large English army besieged Rennes in eastern Brittany. Read more
Soldiers
On January 18, ad 532, a 54-year-old eunuch by the name of Narses, described by Agathias, a contemporary chronicler, as “small in stature and of abnormal thinness,” entered alone into the Hippodrome of Constantinople carrying a bag of gold. Read more
Soldiers
An event of great significance in early medieval Europe occurred in 753, when newly ensconced Pope Stephen II decided to journey north to Metz to confer with Frankish King Pepin III (known as “The Short”). Read more
Soldiers
“A soldier in every phrase of the term, able and skillful, on many a bloody field he demonstrated his ability and courage,” Brig. Read more
Soldiers
In the early weeks of the Second Boer War, General Jacobus Hercules De La Rey suggested a way to overhaul the tactics of his fellow Boers in a way that would prove devastating to his British opponents. Read more
Soldiers
A column of American M-4 Sherman medium tanks moved through Dison, Belgium, in late summer 1944, near the city of Liege. Read more
Soldiers
On the evening of October 13, 1939, sailors aboard the British battleship HMS Royal Oak had no reason to believe they were in danger of anything other than cold and boredom. Read more
Soldiers
Special Forces Team A-726 had been out on patrol far from the unit’s camp at Nam Dong on the night of Friday, July 3, 1964, when radiomen back at the A team camp received an ominous warning from the field. Read more
Soldiers
On the morning of Friday, February 18, 1944, fresh groups of German panzergrenadiers backed by tanks swept south from their defensive positions at Anzio and overran American forward positions at Aprilia, eight miles north of the landing beaches. Read more
Soldiers
As the 33 men of his machine-gun platoon set up their four s along the ridge facing south toward a jungle-shrouded ravine on Guadalcanal where the Japanese were massing for an attack on the evening of October 25, 1942, Marine Sergeant Mitchell Paige crawled in front of their position and rigged a makeshift trip wire designed to alert his troops should Japanese forces approach their line. Read more
Soldiers
Shortly after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt remarked that he would like to bomb the enemy homeland in revenge as soon as possible. Read more
Soldiers
In his Maxims of War, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote, “It is exceptional and difficult to find in one man all the qualities necessary for a great general. Read more
Soldiers
Astounding news swept through Greece in the summer of 371 bc. In Boeotia, a crossroads for armies that was usually littered with the dead of its own citizens, the invading Spartans had been beaten, and one of their two kings had been slain in battle. Read more
Soldiers
The four Curtiss P-40 Warhawks plummeted 10,000 feet over NewGuinea’s coastline to ambush their quarry. Flight leader 1st Lt. Read more
Soldiers
Encased in mail and armor, the soldiers of the Kingdom of Hungary’s Black Army stood rigidly at attention on a warm summer day in late August 1487 at Wiener Neustadt in Lower Austria. Read more
