Military History

In 1968, novelist David Morrell was a 25-year-old graduate student teaching American literature at Penn State when the first Vietnam vets started turning up in his classes.

Late in August 1780, an obscure officer in the Continental Army had his first brush with fame. Francis Marion and a raggedy gang of South Carolina militia surprised a detachment of British and loyalist soldiers who were hauling a string of Continental prisoners off to Charleston.

America’s seafaring history is as old and diverse as the nation itself. From the canoes paddled by native peoples to the submarines that harness nuclear energy, our maritime heritage has shaped the nation.

The cold cut through our World War II uniforms as we moved in convoy toward our objective. Though fog and drizzle hid the vehicles from sight, the sounds of an army on the move filled the air.

His prospects were bleak. Barring the arrival of substantial reinforcements, William Travis and the 150 or so rebels holed up with him in the Alamo would soon be history.

Great desert warriors through the course of history, from the biblical Joshua to Lawrence of Arabia to Rommel, confronted some of the same challenges faced by today’s U.S. troops in Iraq.

Just before dawn on the brisk morning of April 19, 1775, Jonas Parker stood with a loaded musket and watched as six companies of King George’s light infantry, the vanguard of an 800-man detachment of British regulars, marched toward the common of Lexington, Mass.

Everyone, including the general’s few defenders, agreed that the affair was a national disgrace. Former President Thomas Jefferson fumed about his “treason or cowardice, or both.”

Of all the early World War II developments worrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the destructive exploits of Nazi U-boats had to have been especially troubling.

In the early hours of June 6, 1944, German officers in Normandy began frantically phoning Adolf Hitler at the Berghof, the führer’s mountaintop home and headquarters in Bavaria.