On ancient battlefields formerly dominated by heavily armed, well-protected hoplites, a once scorned class of fighting man changed the face of warfare. The prevailing image of ancient Greek warfare typically involves tight formations of helmeted hoplites clashing at close quarters in epic battles against opposing armies. But that image depicts just one variation on the …
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The Chevy Corvette sports car was named after this.
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Tonight We Die as Men: The Untold Story of the Third Battalion 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment from Toccoa to D-Day By Ian Gardner and Roger Day. 344 pp. Osprey, 2009 $27.95 What more could possibly be said about the 101st Airborne Division in Normandy? Band of Brothers, in book and miniseries form, sparked a prodigious …
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The first tank battle signaled the beginning of a new era of modern warfare centered on firepower, protection, and mobility. Dense fog shrouded the area around the French villages of Villers- Bretonneux and Cachy, made even thicker by dust, smoke, and mustard gas from a thunderous German artillery barrage. It was early in the morning …
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Parliament’s modern army faces off against the Royalists at Naseby in 1645. The English summer of 1645 had been unusually wet, but on June 14 the sky was clear and visibility excellent, making for a dramatic spectacle as two 17th-century armies faced off across a small green rectangle of the English Midlands just outside Naseby, …
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A timeless tale of William the Conqueror’s Norman invasion of England, in colored yarn. Associated with such bellicose figures as William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Heinrich Himmler, it is surprising that the delicate fabric of the Bayeux Tapestry, which depicts the story of William, Duke of Normandy, overcoming England’s king Harold Godwinson in the …
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Lost in the political scheming and gamesmanship that characterized the Union’s war in the West was the cold-blooded killing of one Union general by another in 1862. After Fort Sumter surrendered to Confederate batteries and the American Civil War became inevitable, many Northerners, including President Abraham Lincoln, realized that the fate of the nation depended …
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A Prussian captain’s discipline and vast military experience have had a lasting influence on the army of the United States. On February 24, 1778, Capt. Gen. George Washington, commander in chief of the Continental Army, rode out from the fortified camp at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to greet the latest in a long line of foreign …
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While Hitler concluded that the airborne invasion of Crete was far too costly, it spurred the U.S. Army to create an entire American parachute corps. Corporal Hans Kreindler knew something was wrong. His transport had approached the island low and slow, slicing through a beautiful Mediterranean morning toward the drop zone 450 yards west of …
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Using a brilliant artillery tactic, Zachary Taylor drove the Mexicans into the Rio Grande in the opening battles of the Mexican-American War. On the northern edge of modern Brownsville, Texas, lie the battlefields of Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. It was here, on succeeding excessively hot days in 1846, that two still young …
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A British military historian views the epic battle through the prisms of time and nationality. It seems appropriate that the standard British image of Waterloo is of fortitude, the fortitude of soldiers in line and square resisting French attacks, the fortitude commemorated on canvas. Thus Dighton, who was appointed military draftsman to the prince The …
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A former Russian cavalry officer helped Finland win independence, then saved it from Stalin and Hitler. On a pedestal across from the Central Post Office in Helsinki stands an imposing equestrian statue of Marshal Carl Gustav Emil Mannerheim, one of Finland’s greatest heroes. Statues are usually raised to victors, however, and in that regard Mannerheim …
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France very nearly failed to repulse Germany’s mammoth initial invasion. But it did, leading to a slaughterous long-term war of attrition. The Battle of the Marne was a close-run thing. It confirmed the elder Helmuth von Moltke’s famous counsel that no plan of operations “survives with certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s major …
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Conceived as a peacemaker, the inventor’s weapon ushered in an era of mechanized killing. Rumors raged. In ex- cited whispers, in idle conversations that filled the nervous hours be- tween battles, soldiers on both sides of the American Civil War gossiped about the sketchy reports of a fantastic new weapon. Unlike such familiar firearms as …
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In The Death of General Wolfe, Benjamin West combined elements of national pride, historical accuracy, and Christian iconography to create a new image of the heroic. On September 13, 1759, British Maj. Gen. James Wolfe and his men drifted down the St. Lawrence River on flatboats in the early morning darkness, heading toward a landing …
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Whether heroes or opportunists, the O’Brien family of privateers helped America launch its battle for independence. It was an unlikely setting for one of the American Revolution’s most celebrated naval engagements: a hamlet in a remote stretch of the Maine coast with soils and weather so inhospitable that even today it is lightly settled. What …
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Inspired by Alexander the Great, the Roman emperor set out to conquer Persia with a massive army, a bold plan, and a thirst for glory. One day in early April, stood on an earthen mound and looked out upon a magnificent array of military might. Assembled before him were the legions of the Roman eastern …
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A marine recalls the first major battle on Guadalcanal. On August 7, 1942, Pfc. Robert “Lucky” Leckie and the 1st Marine Division stormed ashore at Guadalcanal only to find that the Japanese had abandoned the beaches and holed up inland. But their relief was to be short-lived. Within days, Leckie—a machine gunner and later an …
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After a Spanish town was bombed in 1937, overheated—and inaccurate—accounts of civilian deaths shook the world. On April 26, 1937, in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, German war – planes bombed Guernica, the ancient Basque capital and the center of Basque culture, in perhaps the most famous conventional bombing raid of all time. …
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In the century before guns, the longbow brought a lethal efficiency to medieval warfare and gave England an early advantage in the Hundred Years’ War. In July 1333, Edward III stood at Halidon Hill, on the English border of Scotland, hoping to taste battlefield victory for the first time in his short, troubled reign over …
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Civil Rights Movement Should Never Be Called Insurgency Professor Mark Grimsley’s article “Why the Civil Rights Movement Was an Insurgency” (Spring 2010) introduces many readers to facts about the civil rights movement that lie outside popular conceptions, and in doing so he provides a useful service as a historian. But he also pushes the definitions …
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She was the first women in US history to enter the album chart at Number One.
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On June 24 1924, American Marines left this country.
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On Hitler’s 50th, adoring Germans hailed their leader for making their country a great power again—and for stopping short of the all-out war they so feared. Adolf Hitler rose unusually early on the morning of Thursday, April 20, 1939, his 50th birthday. A public holiday had been decreed, and a series of events, parades, and …
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Time and again, America marches into battle confident of easy victory— only to find that war really is hell. At a dinner party not too long ago, I met a prominent newsman who, during a conversation about America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, condemned President George W. Bush. He ridiculed Bush’s fanciful belief that the war …
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Led by a Nobel laureate, British gunners in World War I mastered the science of pinpointing— and knocking out—enemy artillery. By all accounts, the British artillery bombardment that pounded German positions prior to the 1916 Battle of the Somme was apocalyptic. For five days an unprecedented aggregation of guns fired without pause; it was said …
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Twisting Words on Torture I would not expect Stephen Budiansky to agree with much of anything in my book The Father of Us All, but I would hope him to be intellectually honest in his critique. That was not the case with his review Summer 2010. I did not, as Budiansky states, minimize “American casualties …
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The Tragedy of the Vietnam War: A South Vietnamese Officer’s Analysis by Van Nguyen Duong, McFarland & Co., 2009 Of the tens of thousands of books written about the Vietnam War, less than half of one percent are personal narratives by Vietnamese. Although The Tragedy of the Vietnam War is promoted as a memoir, it …
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Wandering Souls: Journey with the Dead and Living in Viet Nam by Wayne Karlin, Nation Books, 2009 Vietnam veteran and author Wayne Karlin has crafted a dramatic account of the combat experience of platoon leader 1st Lt. Homer Steedly and how it shaped a young man’s life for decades. Centered around Steedly’s first kill during …
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Flying from the Black Hole: The B-52 Navigator-Bombardiers of Vietnam by Robert O. Harder, Naval Institute Press, 2009 The Vietnam War held two special forms of terror. For an American, it was not knowing who among the population was truly friendly and who was a Viet Cong out to kill him. For the Viet Cong, …
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Rock ’n’ Roll Soldier, A Memoir by Dean Ellis Kohler with Susan VanHecke, HarperCollins, 2009 In a famous Bill Mauldin cartoon from World War II, a U.S. Army infantryman says to an engineer laboring to lay a useable road in the mud: “Yer lucky. Yer learnin’ a trade.” A lucky few soldiers actually did find …
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Virtual JFK: Vietnam If Kennedy Had Lived The film: produced and directed by Koji Masutani, Docudrama Films, 2009, available on DVD, www.virtualjfk.com The book: by James G. Blight, janet M. Lang, David A. Welch, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2009 In November of 1963, the United States had 16,000 military advisers in South Vietnam. Five years …
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The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers A Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith film, in cooperation with Independent Television Service, now in theatrical release, http://ift.tt/2CR9jLn The truly dramatic, epic story of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers is no secret. For nearly 30 years, it has been well chronicled in …
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In the wake of the Tet Offensive, a cobbled together platoon of Marines thrown into the fray had an incredible—but inevitably finite—streak of good luck. Around mid-April 1968, our 12-man team set up an ambush in the early morning darkness at our patrol’s second checkpoint, where we hoped to surprise some unwary Viet Cong that …
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How an insane—and unsuccessful—Viet Cong assault on the U.S. Embassy blew a hole in America’s will. As midnight drew near on January 30, 1968, the Marine Security Guard at the United States Embassy in Saigon began its routine shift change. Marine Corporal Tom DeWitt and I had just posted Sergeant Ron Harper and Corporal George …
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Hope, and joy, for the holidays Peace and goodwill toward men. The traditional holiday sentiments seem incongruent with war, but since time immemorial soldiers have paused from their violent work to mark their most sacred and meaningful holidays. Today American soldiers who are serving and fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are just the latest to …
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U.S. ARMY CAPTAIN, JAN. 1968–APRIL 1968; APRIL 1969–MAY 1970 On my first tour, we deployed all the way from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on almost no notice. We were a brigade of the 82nd Airborne that was called into action as a result of a request by General William Westmoreland for additional troops during Tet. …
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The Soviet-built Strela-2 Man Portable Air Defense (MANPAD) system was developed in the late 1950s, based heavily on intelligence gleaned by the KGB about the American FIM-43 Redeye surface-to-air missile (SAM). It had an impact on the battlefield far beyond its technical capabilities in virtually all the world’s late 20th-century conflicts. The Strela (“Arrow”), code-named …
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Battle Heroes, Lost in Shuffle, Found At an October rose garden ceremony, President Barack Obama awarded the Presidential Unit Citation—the highest honor a U.S. military unit can receive—on an army squadron whose medals for valor were overlooked for nearly 40 years. On March 26, 1970, in what came to be called “The Anonymous Battle,” Troop …
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John Ripley’s All-American Tenacity I had the good fortune to engage in a brief exchange of correspondence with the late Colonel John Ripley featured in your October issue (“Ripley’s Believe It or Not!”) and found him to be a gentleman. I first read of Ripley’s exploits in John Miller’s excellent book The Bridge at Dong …
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USN F-4 Phantom II Vs VPAF MiG-17/19, Vietnam 1965-73 by Peter Davies, Osprey Publishing, 2009 Having already pitted the McDonnell F-4 Phantom IIs of the U.S. Air Force against Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21s of the Vietnamese People’s Air Force for Osprey Publishing’s “Duel” series, British jet warplane expert Peter Davies follows up with a less likely match …
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Vietnam’s Second Front: Domestic Politics, The Republican Party, and The War by Andrew L. Johns, University Press of Kentucky, 2010 War, Von Clausewitz famously wrote, “is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of same policy by other means.” He went on to …
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War Without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam by Bernd Greiner, translated from the German by Anne Wyburd with Victoria Fern, Yale University Press, 2009 For some four decades now, the “aberration versus business-as-usual” My Lai argument has raged. On the one hand, there are those—generally of the hawkish persuasion—who say that the March 16, 1968, …
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War Stories: False Atrocity Tales, Swift Boaters, and Winter Soldiers—What Really Happened in Vietnam by Gary Kulik, Potomac Books, 2009 Although he was a conscientious objector, Gary Kulik came from a military family and “loved being a medic in a war zone.” After serving in Vietnam, Kulik earned a Ph.D. in history. His book had …
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The perfect storm brewing over Camp Bunard was about to change Robert Pryor’s life forever. Gazing out the open cargo doors of the Huey flying over Phouc Long Province, boyish-looking Specialist 4 Robert Pryor took in an endless landscape of mountains, meandering rivers and rolling hills covered with dense evergreen vegetation, bamboo thickets and triple …
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The Vietnam War was photographed like no war before it or since, and its uncensored reality had profound consequences. Just outside Saigon in June 1967, the sky above Bien Hoa air base is a swarm of helicopters rising, landing and darting off in different directions. Landing pads are awash in blinding dust and deafening noise …
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Looking at war; seeing people “You can’t photograph bullets flying through the air. So it must be the wounded, or people running loaded with ammunition, and the expressions on their faces.” That was the way com bat photographer Larry Burrows described how he did his job, covering the war in Vietnam, attempting to convey through …
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U.S. Army Nurse, 1st Lieutenant December 1966–August 1967 In Vietnam, all wounds were considered dirty. The wounds had shrapnel, lead, dirt and anything else in them. Everything was filthy. The wounded were taken from the helicopter and triaged and then on to the surgical ward. When they arrived at Post-Op II, the ward I worked …
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A 1947 Naval Academy graduate, Jeremiah Denton was piloting an A6 Intruder over North Vietnam on July 18, 1965, when he was shot down and taken prisoner. Denton was held for nearly eight years, during which time he was tortured repeatedly and thrown in solitary confinement for long periods. In 1966, while appearing in a …
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North Vietnam’s air defenses were among the most advanced of their day, rivaling those deployed around Moscow. The diversity of radars and integrated weapons coverage made defense suppression support essential to any tactical strike mission. The EA-6B Prowler marked the U.S. Navy’s recognition that modern air defense systems could not be defeated by evasive approach …
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Women Vietnam Vets Target of VA Study Nearly 40 years after the war, the women who served in Vietnam, Southeast Asia and in the United States during the conflict will be the subject of a Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) study designed to explore the effects their military service had on their mental and physical …
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Hear the One About Hope in Vietnam? The article on Bob Hope (February) reminded me of my 1964-65 Vietnam tour. I was an infantry major at the time and had just been reassigned to MACV. On Christmas Eve 1964, I saw the Hope show at Bien Hoa Air Base. Later, as I was traveling back …
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No Truer Friend or Tougher Foe. Ted Sampley, a founder of Rolling Thunder, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and former Green Beret who was best known as an unyielding activist for American prisoners of war and missing servicemen, died in May 2009 of complications from heart surgery just weeks before Rolling Thunder XXII. Ted was …
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At 11:55 a.m. on Sunday, May 24, 2009, a shadow loomed out of the east-southeast. The altitude was 1,000 feet and it was big—very, very, very BIG! Her air brakes were on, she seemed to float across the sky, and she was ominously silent. Normally, the heated pavement of the North and South Pentagon parking …
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As we near our 23rd year of Rolling Thunder, all is not well. Our country is at war and the POW/MIA issue is still very much “front and center.” While our economy is on its butt and millions of Americans are out of work, hundreds of thousands of good patriotic Americans will still make the …
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Education Center to usher in new era of understanding. The names. The roll of names, each etched a half-inch tall into polished black Bangalore granite, stretches 493 feet, 6 inches. The names begin with Dale R. Buis and end with Richard Vandegeer. Between the two are 58,259 others who lost their lives in the Vietnam …
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A soldier’s gift to his high school still inspires. Amelia High School Athletic Director Tom Jones read the letter from 1966 graduate Brad Braughton. He was surprised—stunned actually—by the letter’s content. By the time he had finished reading it, he was crying his eyes out. Jones immediately took the letter to Principal Vince Gilley. Both …
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Introduced into Soviet Service in 1962 and provided to North Vietnam starting in 1966, the RPG-7 was carried by every infantry squad in the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN). Although it saw its initial combat in the 1967Arab-Israeli War, the RPG-7 gained its vaunted international reputation in Vietnam. The rocket first came to the American …
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Saigon Airlift Refugees on USS Midway Again The aircraft carrier Midway, whose decks were full of helicopters and refugees during the evacuation of Saigon 35 years ago, will once again be the scene of American sailors and pilots and Vietnamese pilots and citizens joining together on the flight deck on April 30. This time, however, …
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On this day in history, two national parks were established in the United States10 years apart–the Grand Canyon in 1919 and the Grand Tetons in 1929.
Located in northwestern Arizona, the Grand Canyon is the product of millions of years of excavation by the mighty Colorado River. The chasm is exceptionally deep, dropping more than a mile into the earth, and is 15 miles across at its widest point.The canyon is hometo more than 1,500 plant species and over 500 animal species, many of them endangered or unique to the area,and it’s steep, multi-colored walls tell the story of 2 billion years of Earth’s history.
In 1540, members of an expedition sent by the Spanish explorer Coronado became the first Europeans to discover the canyon, though because of its remoteness the area was not further explored until 300 years later. American geologist John Wesley Powell, who popularized the term “Grand Canyon” in the 1870s, became the first person to journey the entire length of the gorge in 1869. The harrowing voyage was made in four rowboats.
In January 1908, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt designated more than 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon a national monument; it was designated a national park under President Woodrow Wilson on February 26, 1919.
Ten years later to the day, President Calvin Coolidge signed into law a bill passed by both houses of the U.S. Congress establishing the Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming.
Home to some of the most stunning alpine scenery in the United States, the territory in and around Grand Teton National Park also has a colorful human history. The first Anglo-American to see the saw-edged Teton peaks is believed to be John Colter. After traveling with Lewis and Clark to the Pacific, Colter left the expedition during its return trip down the Missouri in 1807 to join two fur trappers headed back into the wilderness. He spent the next three years wandering through the northern Rocky Mountains, eventually finding his way into the valley at the base of the Tetons, which would later be called Jackson Hole.
Other adventurers followed in Colter’s footsteps, including the French-Canadian trappers who gave the mountain range the bawdy name of “Grand Tetons,” meaning “big breasts” in French. For decades trappers, outlaws, traders and Indians passed through Jackson Hole, but it was not until 1887 that settlers established the first permanent habitation. The high northern valley with its short growing season was ill suited to farming, but the early settlers found it ideal for grazing cattle.
Tourists started coming to Jackson Hole not long after the first cattle ranches. Some of the ranchers supplemented their income by catering to “dudes,” eastern tenderfoots yearning to experience a little slice of the Old West in the shadow of the stunning Tetons. The tourists began to raise the first concerns about preserving the natural beauty of the region.
In 1916, Horace M. Albright, the director of the National Park Service, was the first to seriously suggest that the region be incorporated into Yellowstone National Park. The ranchers and businesses catering to tourists, however, strongly resisted the suggestion that they be pushed off their lands to make a “museum” of the Old West for eastern tourists.
Finally, after more than a decade of political maneuvering, Grand Teton National Park was created on February 26, 1929. As a concession to the ranchers and tourist operators, the park only encompassed the mountains and a narrow strip at their base. Jackson Hole itself was excluded from the park and designated merely as a scenic preserve. Albright, though, had persuaded the wealthy John D. Rockefeller to begin buying up land in the Jackson Hole area for possible future incorporation into the park. In 1949, Rockefeller donated his land holdings in Jackson Hole to the federal government that then incorporated them into the national park. Today, Grand Teton National Park encompasses 309,993 acres. Working ranches still exist in Jackson Hole, but the local economy is increasingly dependent on services provided to tourists and the wealthy owners of vacation homes.
This was the first Universal Product Code (UPC) marked item ever scanned at a retail check out.
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On February 25, 1964, 22-year-old Cassius Clay shocks the odds-makers by dethroning world heavyweight boxing champ Sonny Liston in a seventh-round technical knockout. The dreaded Liston, who had twice demolished former champ Floyd Patterson in one round, was an 8-to-1 favorite. However, Clay predicted victory, boasting that he would “float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” and knock out Liston in the eighth round. The fleet-footed and loquacious youngster needed less time to make good on his claim–Liston, complaining of an injured shoulder, failed to answer the seventh-round bell. A few moments later, a new heavyweight champion was proclaimed.
Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1942. He started boxing when he was 12 and by age 18 had amassed a record of over 100 wins in amateur competition. In 1959, he won the International Golden Gloves heavyweight title and in 1960 a gold medal in the light heavyweight category at the Summer Olympic Games in Rome. Clay turned professional after the Olympics and went undefeated in his first 19 bouts, earning him the right to challenge Sonny Liston, who had defeated Floyd Patterson in 1962 to win the heavyweight title.
On February 25, 1964, a crowd of 8,300 spectators gathered at the Convention Hall arena in Miami Beach to see if Cassius Clay, who was nicknamed the “Louisville Lip,” could put his money where his mouth was. The underdog proved no bragging fraud, and he danced and backpedaled away from Liston’s powerful swings while delivering quick and punishing jabs to Liston’s head. Liston hurt his shoulder in the first round, injuring some muscles as he swung for and missed his elusive target. By the time he decided to discontinue the bout between the sixth and seventh rounds, he and Clay were about equal in points. A few conjectured that Liston faked the injury and threw the fight, but there was no real evidence, such as a significant change in bidding odds just before the bout, to support this claim.
To celebrate winning the world heavyweight title, Clay went to a private party at a Miami hotel that was attended by his friend Malcolm X, an outspoken leader of the African American Muslim group known as the Nation of Islam. Two days later, a markedly more restrained Clay announced he was joining the Nation of Islam and defended the organization’s concept of racial segregation while speaking of the importance of the Muslim religion in his life. Later that year, Clay, who was the descendant of a runaway Kentucky slave, rejected the name originally given to his family by a slave owner and took the Muslim name of Muhammad Ali.
Muhammad Ali would go on to become one of the 20th century’s greatest sporting figures, as much for his social and political influence as his prowess in his chosen sport. After successfully defending his title nine times, it was stripped from him in 1967 after he refused induction into the U.S. Army on the grounds that he was a Muslim minister and therefore a conscientious objector. That year, he was sentenced to five years in prison for violating the Selective Service Act but was allowed to remain free as he appealed the decision. His popularity plummeted, but many across the world applauded his bold stand against the Vietnam War.
In 1970, he was allowed to return to the boxing ring, and the next year the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Ali’s draft evasion conviction. In 1974, he regained the heavyweight title in a match against George Foreman in Zaire and successfully defended it in a brutal 15-round contest against Joe Frazier in the Philippines in the following year. In 1978, he lost the title to Leon Spinks but later that year defeated Spinks in a rematch, making him the first boxer to win the heavyweight title three times. He retired in 1979 but returned to the ring twice in the early 1980s. In 1984, Ali was diagnosed with pugilistic Parkinson’s syndrome and has suffered a slow decline of his motor functions ever since. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1990. In 1996, he lit the Olympic flame at the opening ceremonies of the Summer Games in Atlanta, Georgia. Ali’s daughter, Laila, made her boxing debut in 1999.
At a White House ceremony in November 2005, Ali was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Christmas was made a national holiday in this year.
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This was the last American Space Shuttle to fly in space.
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During the bloody Battle for Iwo Jima, U.S. Marines from the 3rd Platoon, E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment of the 5th Division take the crest of Mount Suribachi, the island’s highest peak and most strategic position, and raise the U.S. flag. Marine photographer Louis Lowery was with them and recorded the event. American soldiers fighting for control of Suribachi’s slopes cheered the raising of the flag, and several hours later more Marines headed up to the crest with a larger flag. Joe Rosenthal, a photographer with the Associated Press, met them along the way and recorded the raising of the second flag along with a Marine still photographer and a motion-picture cameraman.
Rosenthal took three photographs atop Suribachi. The first, which showed five Marines and one Navy corpsman struggling to hoist the heavy flag pole, became the most reproduced photograph in history and won him a Pulitzer Prize. The accompanying motion-picture footage attests to the fact that the picture was not posed. Of the other two photos, the second was similar to the first but less affecting, and the third was a group picture of 18 soldiers smiling and waving for the camera. Many of these men, including three of the six soldiers seen raising the flag in the famous Rosenthal photo, were killed before the conclusion of the Battle for Iwo Jima in late March.
In early 1945, U.S. military command sought to gain control of the island of Iwo Jima in advance of the projected aerial campaign against the Japanese home islands. Iwo Jima, a tiny volcanic island located in the Pacific about 700 miles southeast of Japan, was to be a base for fighter aircraft and an emergency-landing site for bombers. On February 19, 1945, after three days of heavy naval and aerial bombardment, the first wave of U.S. Marines stormed onto Iwo Jima’s inhospitable shores.
The Japanese garrison on the island numbered 22,000 heavily entrenched men. Their commander, General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, had been expecting an Allied invasion for months and used the time wisely to construct an intricate and deadly system of underground tunnels, fortifications, and artillery that withstood the initial Allied bombardment. By the evening of the first day, despite incessant mortar fire, 30,000 U.S. Marines commanded by General Holland Smith managed to establish a solid beachhead.
During the next few days, the Marines advanced inch by inch under heavy fire from Japanese artillery and suffered suicidal charges from the Japanese infantry. Many of the Japanese defenders were never seen and remained underground manning artillery until they were blown apart by a grenade or rocket, or incinerated by a flame thrower.
While Japanese kamikaze flyers slammed into the Allied naval fleet around Iwo Jima, the Marines on the island continued their bloody advance across the island, responding to Kuribayashi’s lethal defenses with remarkable endurance. On February 23, the crest of 550-foot Mount Suribachi was taken, and the next day the slopes of the extinct volcano were secured.
By March 3, U.S. forces controlled all three airfields on the island, and on March 26 the last Japanese defenders on Iwo Jima were wiped out. Only 200 of the original 22,000 Japanese defenders were captured alive. More than 6,000 Americans died taking Iwo Jima, and some 17,000 were wounded.
After purchasing his freedom, former slave Samuel Green was imprisoned in Maryland from 1857-1862 for this offense.
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‘Old hacks’ return to their Saigon haunts for a last hurrah 35 years after the fall. On April 29, 1975, the end of the Vietnam War was at hand. Helicopters were hitting pickup sites around Saigon in what became the largest helicopter evacuation in history. Dutch photographer Hugh Van Es, working for United Press International …
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An observation plane pilot’s chilling encounter epitomized the perils and uncertainties of warfare in Vietnam. “Damn generals,” I muttered to myself as I climbed into the cockpit of my Cessna O-1 Bird Dog at Nha Trang Air Base on a sunny morning in late May 1969. I had only been in Vietnam for a short …
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The desperate and confused battle triggered by the Mayaguez incident was a disturbing finale to America’s war in Southeast Asia. Could it get any worse? Two weeks earlier, April 29, 1975, Saigon had fallen to the North Vietnamese—just a couple of weeks after the Khmer Rouge took Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh. Flying F-4D Phantoms out …
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When Charlie Company crossed the border, its troops couldn’t imagine they would be the very last unit out—or the fate that awaited them. After three days beating the bush in Bu Dop and finding nothing but deserted jungle, I got a radio call on April 29, 1970, from battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Rick Ordway. He …
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Vietnam Vets First to Spot Times Square Car Bomb On May 1, two Times Square street vendors, Vietnam veterans Lance Orton and Duane Jackson, were hawking their T-shirts and handbags on a typical Saturday evening in New York’s busy theater district when they spotted smoke coming from an illegally parked vehicle at the corner of …
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In one of the most dramatic upsets in Olympic history, the underdog U.S. hockey team, made up of college players, defeats the four-time defending gold-medal winning Soviet team at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York. The Soviet squad, previously regarded as the finest in the world, fell to the youthful American team 4-3 before a frenzied crowd of 10,000 spectators. Two days later, the Americans defeated Finland 4-2 to clinch the hockey gold.
The Soviet team had captured the previous four Olympic hockey golds, going back to 1964, and had not lost an Olympic hockey game since 1968. Three days before the Lake Placid Games began, the Soviets routed the U.S. team 10-3 in an exhibition game at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The Americans looked scrappy, but few blamed them for it–their average age, after all, was only 22, and their team captain, Mike Eruzione, was recruited from the obscurity of the Toledo Blades of the International League.
Few had high hopes for the seventh-seeded U.S. team entering the Olympic tournament, but the team soon silenced its detractors, making it through the opening round of play undefeated, with four victories and one tie, thus advancing to the four-team medal round. The Soviets, however, were seeded No. 1 and as expected went undefeated, with five victories in the first round.
On Friday afternoon, February 22, the American amateurs and the Soviet dream team met before a sold-out crowd at Lake Placid. The Soviets broke through first, with their new young star, Valery Krotov, deflecting a slap shot beyond American goalie Jim Craig’s reach in the first period. Midway through the period, Buzz Schneider, the only American who had previously been an Olympian, answered the Soviet goal with a high shot over the shoulder of Vladislav Tretiak, the Soviet goalie.
The relentless Soviet attack continued as the period progressed, with Sergei Makarov giving his team a 2-1 lead. With just a few seconds left in the first period, American Ken Morrow shot the puck down the ice in desperation. Mark Johnson picked it up and sent it into the Soviet goal with one second remaining. After a brief Soviet protest, the goal was deemed good, and the game was tied.
In the second period, the irritated Soviets came out with a new goalie, Vladimir Myshkin, and turned up the attack. The Soviets dominated play in the second period, outshooting the United States 12-2, and taking a 3-2 lead with a goal by Alesandr Maltsev just over two minutes into the period. If not for several remarkable saves by Jim Craig, the Soviet lead would surely have been higher than 3-2 as the third and final 20-minute period began.
Nearly nine minutes into the period, Johnson took advantage of a Soviet penalty and knocked home a wild shot by David Silk to tie the contest again at 3-3. About a minute and a half later, Mike Eruzione, whose last name means “eruption” in Italian, picked up a loose puck in the Soviet zone and slammed it past Myshkin with a 25-foot wrist shot. For the first time in the game, the Americans had the lead, and the crowd erupted in celebration.
There were still 10 minutes of play to go, but the Americans held on, with Craig making a few more fabulous saves. With five seconds remaining, the Americans finally managed to get the puck out of their zone, and the crowd began counting down the final seconds. When the final horn sounded, the players, coaches, and team officials poured onto the ice in raucous celebration. The Soviet players, as awestruck as everyone else, waited patiently to shake their opponents’ hands.
The so-called Miracle on Ice was more than just an Olympic upset; to many Americans, it was an ideological victory in the Cold War as meaningful as the Berlin Airlift or the Apollo moon landing. The upset came at an auspicious time: President Jimmy Carter had just announced that the United States was going to boycott the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Americans, faced with a major recession and the Iran hostage crisis, were in dire need of something to celebrate. After the game, President Carter called the players to congratulate them, and millions of Americans spent that Friday night in revelry over the triumph of “our boys” over the Russian pros.
As the U.S. team demonstrated in their victory over Finland two days later, it was disparaging to call the U.S. team amateurs. Three-quarters of the squad were top college players who were on their way to the National Hockey League (NHL), and coach Herb Brooks had trained the team long and hard in a manner that would have made the most authoritative Soviet coach proud. The 1980 U.S. hockey team was probably the best-conditioned American Olympic hockey team of all time–the result of countless hours running skating exercises in preparation for Lake Placid. In their play, the U.S. players adopted passing techniques developed by the Soviets for the larger international hockey rinks, while preserving the rough checking style that was known to throw the Soviets off-guard. It was these factors, combined with an exceptional afternoon of play by Craig, Johnson, Eruzione, and others, that resulted in the miracle at Lake Placid.
This improbable victory was later memorialized in a 2004 film, Miracle, starring Kurt Russell.
A second lieutenant assigned to lead the infamous platoon responsible for the My Lai massacre recalls the bitter reality behind Vietnam’s measurement of combat success. Fresh out of Officers Candidate School, 20-year-old Oklahoman Gary Bray arrived in Vietnam in late August 1969. The day after landing at Ton Son Nhut, the new second lieutenant was …
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Although Americans are a powerhouse in ladies and men’s figure skating and ice dancing, they have never won an Olympic gold medal in pairs. They have won three silver medals by two sister/brother teams, Kitty and Peter Carruthers in 1984 and Karol and Peter Kennedy in 1952 and by this non-related team in 1932.
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A brash tank commander for Patton in WWII who never let up in Vietnam. When Lieutenant General James F. Hollingsworth died at 91 on March 2, 2010, America lost a legendary figure of near epic proportions who left a lasting impression on all who ever encountered him. A warrior who served the nation for 36 …
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Marine Combined Action Platoons won hearts and minds—and some ferocious battles—deep inside enemy strongholds. With its “clear-hold-build” philosophy, the “Surge” initiated in 2007 by General David Petraeus proved to be dramatically effective in taming violence in Iraq. While touted by the United States Marine Corps as “a new counterinsurgency strategy,” the practice of using small …
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A young reporter on a 1967 medevac mission gone bad returns to face hard memories at Marble Mountain. When revisiting a significant experience in one’s life, it seems there always comes that moment when your heart begins beating faster and you feel your throat suddenly constrict with fear and anticipation about what you might find …
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Vietnam Vet Clapper Tapped to Be New Spy Chief Retired Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., a decorated Vietnam War veteran who flew nearly 75 combat support missions in Douglas EC-47s, was nominated in June by President Barack Obama to become his next intelligence chief, taking over from Dennis Blair, who stepped down in May. …
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Ridiculed after the 1963 Battle of Ap Bac as being too old, out of touch and mired in outdated military thinking, was General Paul Harkins actually the most accurate American prophet of the Vietnam War? As General Paul D. Harkins arrived at Tan Heip’s small airstrip on January 3, 1963, he knew it was bad. …
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Lost in a bloody fight during Tet 1968, a captured NVA fighter’s sketchbook chronicle finally finds it way back home. North Vietnamese Army Private Le Duc Tuan crouched in a hastily dug fighting position with two fellow squad members in the early hours of March 26, 1968. For the last eight days, his squad had …
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Less than a month after landing at Da Nang on July 7, 1965, with the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines, 1st Lieutenant Franklin Cox found himself on the outskirts of the Viet Cong–controlled complex of villages known as Cam Ne. What was about to unfold was just a foretaste of the frustrations and missteps that would …
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Despite popular perceptions, it was the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) that ultimately carried the day in Vietnam, and it did so via traditional combined arms operations with artillery playing a key role. The Marines at Khe Sanh and Army troops in the A Shau Valley can attest to the NVA’s effective employment of artillery, as …
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Secretary Clinton Presses Hanoi on Human Rights During Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent two-day visit to Hanoi, she met with Vietnam Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem to mark the 15th anniversary of the reestablishment of diplomatic relations, and urged Vietnam to ease its human rights restrictions, citing the recent arrests of religious freedom advocates …
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This British prime minister’s weak leadership during the American Revolutionary War helped the colonists win their freedom.
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Shenandoah (1965) Directed by Andrew V. McLaglen “These are my sons. They don’t belong to the state.” So says Jimmy Stewart’s Charlie Anderson to a Confederate recruiting officer in Shenandoah, a wholesome, family-values tale that does its best to drive a stake into the heart of Hollywood’s longtime fascination with Southern “Lost Cause” ideology. Stewart’s …
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Jayhawker: The Civil War Brigade of James Henry Lane by Bryce Benedict, University of Oklahoma Press, 2009,$32.95 The Civil War on the Kansas-Missouri border has received increased attention lately—due a great deal, no doubt, to the fact that the“unconventional” operations in that region remind us of modern warfare in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. In …
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The 25th North Carolina Troops in the Civil War: History and Roster of a Mountain-Bred Regiment by Carroll C.Jones, McFarland Publishers, 2009, $59.95 As is often the case with Civil War regimental histories, Carroll Jones was spurred to research and write a history of the 25th North Carolina Infantry because his great-great grandfather, William Harrison …
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In the Cause of Liberty: How the Civil War Redefined American Ideals edited by William J. Cooper Jr. and JohnM.McCardellJr.,LouisianaState University Press,2009,$27.95 Many of us sitting in the Virginia State Historical Society auditorium in March 2007 sensed that the papers being presented as part of “In the Cause of Liberty”—a symposium sponsored by the American …
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Even a lowly corporal can make a decision that has major consequences. Wars, campaigns and battles are all determined by decisions made under duress, and Confederate Lieutenant General Ambrose Powell Hill certainly made his share in the course of the American Civil War. The rapid march of his Light Division from Harpers Ferry to Antietam …
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Joe Johnston’s feud with Jeff Davis spelled disaster. Early in 1864, Federal troops spread along the Western theater prepared to merge into one huge fighting force designed to quash the rebellious South once and for all. But the Confederates had an audacious plan of their own to seize momentum and forestall the massive Northern campaign …
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John Baylor snatches New Mexico—and a Union officer’s career. Union Major Isaac Lynde was a worrier. From the moment he had been assigned command of the Southern Military District at Fort Fillmore, New Mexico Territory, he fretted that the fort was indefensible in the likely event of attack by Texas Rebels. The fort lay only …
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The Erie Canal was the ‘Big Ditch’ that gave the North the edge in the Civil War. Slavery, states’ rights, tariffs; all were obvious factors that distinguished the North from the South. But other issues—such as the search for a major East-West transportation corridor—played substantial but less evident roles in hastening sectional separation in the …
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Logan’s run I enjoy reading each issue of America’s Civil War. The September issue was most interesting but had one mistake. In the feature “Standing by Their Man” (pages 60-61) the picture of the railroad station was not the Logan House in Altoona, Pa., but the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad station in Cumberland, Md. The …
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The Red Badge of Courage (1951) Directed by John Huston In 1951, director John Huston was at the height of his cinematic powers, having already made such iconic feature films as The Maltese Falcon and Treasure of Sierra Madre as well as the brilliant World War II documentary The Battle of San Pietro. It is …
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Remembering Kentucky’s Confederates by Geoffrey R. Walden, Arcadia Publishing, 2009, $21.99 Geoffrey Walden’s new book Remembering Kentucky’s Confederates provides a rewarding look into the lives of the many Bluegrass Staters who served in the Confederate Army and the Kentucky legislature during the Civil War. Walden divides his book into five sections. After examining the assorted …
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Orlando M. Poe, Civil War General and Great Lakes Engineer by Paul Taylor, Kent State University Press, 2009, $65 When the U.S. Military Academy was established in West Point, N.Y., in 1802, early officials envisioned that its primary study focus would be artillery and engineering, but during the Civil War the academy’s best-known graduates were …
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South Carolina’s Military Organizations During the War Between the States (4 volumes) by Robert S. Seigler, The History Press, 2009, $139.96 Anyone examining Confederate military operations quickly stumbles upon some degree of uncertainty because of changes in the organizations that served as building blocks for larger units. Repeated adjustments in the legal basis for units …
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Wars Within a War: Controversy and Conflict Over the American Civil War edited by Joan Waugh and Gary W. Gallagher, University of North Carolina Press, 2009, $30 Anthologies prepared from conference papers often vary greatly in quality of content and competency of writing. Although the essays in Wars Within a War: Controversy and Conflict Over …
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Lincoln’s Political Generals by David Work, University of Illinois Press, 2009, $34.95 Abraham Lincoln made his share of mistakes as commander in chief during the Civil War, but did his politically motivated appointments of nonmilitary men as Union generals help or hinder the war effort? The battlefield failures of the likes of Nathaniel Banks, Benjamin …
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Atlas of the Civil War: A Comprehensive Guide to the Tactics and Terrain of Battle by Neil Hagan and Stephen Hyslop, National Geographic, 2009, $40 Recalling confederate military operations around Richmond during the Peninsula and Seven Days’ campaigns, Rebel General Richard Taylor lamented in his memoir how little he and other Southern leaders knew about …
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This first lady organized the first Washington D.C. Easter Egg Roll.
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To a Civil War soldier, a bulletproof vest could be a lifesaver—or just one more impediment. On the night of July 2, 1863, Captain Jesse H. Jones of Company I of the 60th New York surveyed the noise and flash of battle at Gettysburg from the crest of Culp’s Hill. As he directed the fire …
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Few expected him to run for president; even fewer expected he would win. The headlines seemed uncannily familiar: Inexperienced underdog from Illinois upsets more experienced New York senator to earn his party’s presidential nomination, wins fall election and appoints a “team of rivals” to his cabinet. He takes a triumphant train ride to Washington for …
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Divided loyalties within and armed mobs without plunge the United States Naval Academy into a sea of uncertainty. Two figures emerged onto the roof of the Executive Mansion, their silhouettes small against the cloudless immensity of blue spring sky as they surveyed the scene before them. This Sunday, April 21, 1861, dawned fine and fair …
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Stalking Yankee whalers was so much fun, the crew didn’t notice the war was over. The Scots build fine ships; they always have. And in the early 1860s, a number of their vessels found their way into the service of the Confederate Navy. Initially ordered by British government and businesses for commercial and military use, …
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On the home front I have been a loyal reader of America’s Civil War magazine for a dozen or more years, and in every issue, I find an article of special interest to me. The recent “Waterford News” feature (November 2009) was exceptionally excellent. Too often we forget life goes on even during war. Like …
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Tap Roots (1948) Directed by George Marshall After the Boffo box office success of Gone With the Wind, Hollywood tried to parlay the moonlight-and-magnolias myth of Southern life into megabuck sequels. Producer Walter Wanger contributed to the frenzy with Tap Roots, a bodice-ripping romance masquerading as Civil War cinema. The story is taken from James …
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Fields of Blood: The Prairie Grove Campaign, by William L. Shea, University of North Carolina Press, 2009, $35 December 1862 was a dark time for the Union war effort, as major battlefield setbacks delivered daunting blows to Northern hopes for victory in a war that had already lasted far longer than anticipated. Yet there was …
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