Category: Military History

In the predawn hours of May 1, thieves towed away a World War I-era cannon from outside the Veterans Memorial Hall in Richmond, Calif. — where the artillery piece had stood for 70 years — and later sold it to an unsuspecting buyer. It was an audacious caper, but not an uncommon one. American war […]

“The allied army, more specifically, the American Army, they came to liberate, not to conquer,” van den Brink said. “That’s what it says in the Coleville cemetery, where 10,000 Americans are resting forever.

They hunt for jewels and gold, the long-hidden plunder of Nazi lore. Now hobby historians in Germany believe they have an urgent case of potentially catastrophic proportions — secret nuclear bombs. Deep inside the Thuringian Forest, 70-year-old Peter Lohr and two friends have been scanning the surface with “earth radar” and “geomagnetic” technology after one […]

Thirty-five years after Operation Opera – the Israeli air attack that destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, retired IAF officers and Mossad agents revealed hitherto unknown details of the operation on Friday. In an expose aired on Channel 10, Col. (Ret.) Ze’ev Raz, who led the June 7, 1981 raid, said that Air Force […]

Black-and-white photos of endless Allied mechanized columns advancing into Germany hint at the unbelievable numbers of military vehicles built to turn WWII’s tide. That flood of jeeps, tanks, deuce-and-a-half trucks and other motorized vehicles illustrated America’s prodigious industrial might at its apex. It’s a scene that probably inspired more than a few people to get […]

Proximity to Samuel Booth Foster was key where survivability was concerned. He was the one you wanted nearby in the fight.

The U.S. Marine Corps landed in China exactly 116 years ago today. On May 31, 1900, an expeditionary force of 56 Marines and sailors arrived in Beijing to protect the U.S. diplomatic mission in the face of mounting militia attacks in what would be known as the Boxer Rebellion. Over a brutal 55-day siege, the […]

The most extraordinary things about Stephen Harding’s The Last Battle, a truly incredible tale of World War II, are that it hasn’t been told before in English, and that it hasn’t already been made into a blockbuster Hollywood movie. Here are the basic facts: on 5 May 1945—five days after Hitler’s suicide—three Sherman tanks from the […]

As for the name “Taps,” the most likely explanation is that it comes from the fact that prior to Butterfield’s bugle call, the lights-out call was followed by three drum beats, dubbed the “Drum-Taps,” as well as “The Taps” and then simply “Taps.”

Ramon “Tony” Nadal can forget a lot of things in his life, but even the passage of half a century has not dulled the memory of three scorching days in the jungles of Southeast Asia during one of the most significant battles of the Vietnam War. A mission to hunt down North Vietnamese troops who […]

As a Navy SEAL sniper, Chris Kyle served his country with distinction in some of the worst places and situations imaginable. Most Americans will never know what it’s like to leave the comforts of home for the hot streets of Iraq where everyone is trying to kill you and your friends, and life or death […]

It is July 1965, and President Lyndon B. Johnson has made the decision to send troops into Vietnam. U.S. strategy in Vietnam demands a necessary escalation of force. American policy, stemming from Cold War doctrine, and events in Vietnam since at least 1954 have gone unchecked for too long. Yet, U.S. policy is destined to […]