Category: Military History

Captured by the IRA or a blown cover. These were the ultimate sins. In case an operator was compromised, it was either a different Detachment and location or the conventional army. So, the three-week Induction Phase, when fresh operators were paired with seasoned ones, was crucial.  The veterans drove their new colleagues through their AO, […]

Camp Two was a different pudding. Not to say that the physical or mental pressure eased.  But now it was selection by training as opposed to Camp One’s selection by torture. Nestled in rural Wales, Camp Two resembled an operational Detachment base.  There was a bar, a TV room, lecture rooms, ranges, etc. Women and […]

When most people think of special operations units, they tend to think of Navy SEALs, Delta Force, or Green Berets.  In the minds of many, particularly our nation’s enemies, America’s Special Operations forces have earned a reputation as the most capable war fighters on the planet, able to train friendly foreign nations, take on missions […]

The United States boasts not only the largest and most powerful air force in the world, it actually boasts three of them.  If you were to divide the airborne assets employed by the Air Force, Navy, and Army into service for separate nations, each branch would earn a spot on the military power podium; that’s […]

There have been countless books written about the war in Vietnam as the United States was involved in a very costly war in terms of human loss and what the conflict did to tear apart our country as a whole. But could the war in Vietnam have been avoided in the first place? In the […]

Charles Robert Jenkins deserted the U.S. Army on a freezing night in January 1965. He pounded 10 beers to quiet his nerves, and abandoned his patrol unit along the border dividing South and North Korea — a 160-mile-long, 2.5-mile-wide strip of mine-ridden no man’s land. He unloaded his M-16 rifle to show the enemy he […]

Note: This is part four of a series. You can read part one, part two, and part three here. Like Executive Outcomes in the 1990s, STTEP faces an uphill battle against a media narrative that has accused the South African contractors of being white, racist mercenaries who helped prop up apartheid. STTEP’s chairman, Eeben Barlow, scoffs at such a notion. “Some in the […]

Three Britons were jailed on Friday for running a huge cannabis farm inside a former Cold War nuclear bunker in an isolated area of southwest England. The gang used the bunker, built in the 1980s to house local government officials in the event of a nuclear attack, to cultivate more than 4,000 cannabis plants capable […]

Processing the aftermath of war on a person’s psyche and soul is a complicated subject. Probably one of the biggest societal shifts the Global War on Terror has brought is our understanding and recognition of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and other combat-related conditions. Everyone can recall those old veterans, be they from WWII, Korea, and increasingly […]

He walked across the bleak expanse of what was once the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, toward the gas chamber that had been stocked with liquid Zyklon B, and posed the question that still strains the conscience of modern German society. “How was it possible?” Osman Jamo asked. Yet he also wondered why the site, where barbed […]

Read Part I here. “From time to time, there is a requirement for men and women to volunteer to undertake special duties of a hazardous nature in Northern Ireland. Selection and training for the special duties is both rigorous and arduous. For further details, see defense council instructions…” Divine words for anyone stranded in a […]

Buzz Aldrin, an accomplished pilot and academic best known as the second human being ever to set foot on another celestial body, is popular in a number of circles.  His participation in the history making Apollo 11 mission earned him a place in America’s heart, and his appearances in movies like “Transformers” and on TV […]