South Africa
South Africa in the spring of 1978 was a country besieged. The apartheid state was increasingly unpopular with its neighbors and unable to control its own restive black population. Read more
South Africa
The century of conflict that would introduce the concept of total war to the world had its bloody roots on an obscure hilltop in the remote South African veldt. Read more
South Africa
At the start of the Second Boer War in 1899, Winston Churchill sailed to Cape Town, South Africa, where he served as a journalist for the Morning Post. Read more
South Africa
Boarding a train at the famous station built by the French as a terminus on the line from Djibouti, the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, Ras Tafari, Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia left his capital Addis Ababa on May 2, 1936. Read more
South Africa
The contribution of the Union of South Africa’s armed forces to the winning of World War II is little known outside South Africa itself. Read more
South Africa
The desert sky lit up like a summer lightning storm on the night of December 31, 1941. The distant thunder of hundreds of guns rolled across the sandy, stony ground. Read more
South Africa
On the morning of December 15, 1899, the serene, windswept wilderness of northern Natal was punctuated by the sound of 18,000 British soldiers trudging north to relieve the besieged town of Ladysmith. Read more
South Africa
It is not always the actions of the brave and mighty that determine a battle’s outcome—victory or defeat can hinge on the most mundane of events. Read more
South Africa
From atop the bluff overlooking a ford on the Buffalo River, Captain Alan Gardner, a staff officer in the British Army’s 24th Regiment of Foot, looked down at the chaos and carnage being played out below him. Read more
South Africa
(Scott McGaugh, Da Capo Press, Boston, 2016, 257 pp., Read more
South Africa
It was a letter in the London Times that caught the attention of British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Read more
South Africa
The reason for it was unthinkable. The Gothic Line, the last line of defense in Italy, was necessary, but senior German commanders had not been concerned that it would ever be contested by Allied forces. Read more
South Africa
In early 1942 things could have hardly looked bleaker for the Allies. In Europe, Hitler’s war machine had steamrolled across the entire continent and was now battling before the gates of Moscow. Read more
South Africa
In September 1942, two patrols of armed jeeps and trucks of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) raided the German airfield at Barce. Read more
