From May 19th, 2026 through May 25th, 2026, the calendar brings us back to a set of days crowded with hard decisions, desperate assaults, and quiet acts of courage across United States military history. In these same dates we find young volunteers marching off to the Civil War, submariners trapped on the cold Atlantic seabed, and airborne infantry clawing their way up a jungle-covered ridge in Vietnam. Some of these moments unfold at the sharp edge of battle, where regiments collide in narrow streets or on steep slopes. Others play out in rescue chambers and operations tents, where new technology and new doctrine are tested under pressure. Together they show how quickly local actions can ripple into national strategy and public debate. This week’s selection traces a line from the war-torn towns of Virginia, through the siege lines outside Vicksburg, to the deep waters off New England and the steep heights of “Hamburger Hill.”
Death of Colonel Elmer Ellsworth in Alexandria
Early in the Civil War, Colonel Elmer Ellsworth led the 11th New York “Fire Zouaves,” a regiment drawn from New York City firefighters, across the Potomac River to occupy Alexandria, Virginia. On May 24th, 1861, Ellsworth personally took down a large Confederate flag flying above the Marshall House inn, a banner that could be seen from the White House and that deeply angered President Lincoln. As Ellsworth descended the stairs with the captured flag, the inn’s proprietor shot him at close range, killing him instantly. A sergeant in the regiment immediately killed the proprietor, but Ellsworth’s death became the first widely mourned Union officer casualty of the war. His body lay in state in the White House, and newspapers carried emotional accounts of his friendship with Lincoln and his idealism. The incident reminded Americans on both sides that this would not be a brief, bloodless contest of abstractions but a conflict that reached into personal relationships and family circles.
Open the Wiki entryAction at Front Royal, Virginia
One year later, the Shenandoah Valley became the stage for a fast-moving campaign that kept Union leaders off balance. On May 23rd, 1862, Confederate forces under Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson struck the small Union garrison at Front Royal, a town guarding key road and rail links in the lower Valley. The defenders, including a Union Maryland regiment, were surprised by the sudden appearance of their Confederate counterparts and pressured from multiple directions. Outnumbered and outflanked, the Union troops fell back in disorder, abandoning supplies and opening the way toward the main Union force at Strasburg. News of the setback raced to Washington, where leaders worried that Jackson might use the Valley roads to threaten the capital itself. The sharp blow at Front Royal showed how speed, local knowledge, and aggressive maneuver could let a smaller Confederate army unsettle national strategy, tying down Union troops that might otherwise have reinforced offensives elsewhere.
Open the Wiki entryFirst Battle of Winchester
The shock delivered at Front Royal set the stage for a larger clash two days later. On May 25th, 1862, Union General Nathaniel Banks tried to hold the town of Winchester against Jackson’s advancing Confederates, whose columns converged on the Valley Pike from multiple directions. Through the morning, Union infantry and artillery contested ridges south of the town, but Confederate attacks pressed steadily against their flanks. As positions crumbled, Banks’s men were forced into a fighting retreat through Winchester’s streets, with civilians watching from doorways and windows as blue-coated soldiers streamed north. The retreat turned into a long, exhausting withdrawal toward the Potomac River, and the scale of the setback deeply alarmed Washington. To guard the capital, President Lincoln held back significant forces that might otherwise have supported Union campaigns near Richmond. The First Battle of Winchester thus showed how a hard-driven regional offensive could pull at the cords of national decision-making and change the balance around the main theaters of war.
Open the Wiki entryFirst assault on Vicksburg
Farther west, control of the Mississippi River became a central Union objective. After a bold overland campaign that saw victories at Port Gibson, Raymond, Jackson, Champion Hill, and the Big Black River, General Ulysses S. Grant brought his army up to the defenses of Vicksburg, Mississippi. On May 19th, 1863, he ordered an immediate assault, hoping to capitalize on Confederate disarray and seize the fortress city by storm. Union troops pushed forward against strongpoints such as the Stockade Redan, climbing ravines and tangled slopes under rifle, artillery, and canister fire. In many places, attackers were pinned down short of the Confederate works, and efforts to bridge ditches or place scaling ladders broke apart. By day’s end, casualty lists showed that the city would not fall easily. The failed assault revealed how formidable Vicksburg’s earthworks and terrain really were and foreshadowed the difficulties of taking a well-prepared position overlooking a major river.
Open the Wiki entrySecond assault on Vicksburg
Undeterred by the first setback, Grant prepared a larger, more coordinated assault for May 22nd, 1863. Union artillery pounded the Confederate lines through the morning, and attacking columns moved out with specially chosen volunteers—the so-called “forlorn hope”—carrying ladders and planks to cross obstacles. Across the front, Union regiments advanced against steep slopes, dense abatis, and well-sited rifle pits, enduring a storm of small-arms fire and exploding shells. Some parties reached the outer faces of the Confederate works and clung there through the day, unable to break through but unwilling to fall back under such heavy fire. By evening, it was clear that even this larger effort had failed to crack the defenses, at the cost of thousands of casualties. The repeated repulse convinced Grant that Vicksburg would have to be taken by siege, not by direct assault, and many of the volunteers who had gone forward earned decorations for their persistence in an almost impossible task.
Open the Wiki entryOpening of the Battle of North Anna
The following spring in Virginia, Grant and Robert E. Lee continued their brutal series of maneuvers and battles known as the Overland Campaign. After the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, Grant again tried to sidestep Lee’s army by pushing southeast toward the North Anna River and the rail lines that supplied Richmond. On May 23rd, 1864, Union forces moved to cross the river at several points, only to find Confederate troops dug in on commanding ground. Lee arranged his lines in a distinctive “inverted V” formation, aiming to split the advancing Union army and create a chance to strike a portion of it in detail. Skirmishes and attacks flared along the river crossings, and the intricate positions on both sides exposed units to difficult, often bloody engagements. Although neither army gained a decisive advantage there, the fighting at North Anna showed how quickly both sides adapted to continuous campaigning, entrenching rapidly and using rivers and ridges to offset numerical disadvantages. It also underscored the relentless human cost of a strategy that sought to grind down the opposing army rather than seek a single, sweeping victory.
Open the Wiki entrySinking of USS Squalus off New Hampshire
The technological face of United States naval power carried its own risks, even in peacetime. On May 23rd, 1939, the submarine USS Squalus submerged for a test dive off the New Hampshire coast and suffered a catastrophic failure in one of its main air and water systems. Seawater flooded aft compartments, sending the boat to the bottom in cold, dark water with part of the crew trapped inside. Above the surface, rescue and salvage teams mobilized quickly, using a newly developed diving bell that could be lowered to mate with the submarine’s escape hatch. Over a series of tense operations, divers and rescuers brought surviving sailors to safety while working in dangerous conditions themselves. Although not everyone on board lived, the Squalus rescue became a landmark in undersea survival and recovery. The lessons learned shaped procedures, equipment, and training that would later influence wartime submarine operations and offered proof that innovation in rescue technology could save lives as surely as new weapons could take them.
Open the Wiki entryCapture of “Hamburger Hill” in Vietnam
More than a century after the Civil War, United States troops were again fighting over steep slopes, this time in the A Shau Valley of Vietnam. From May 10th through May 20th, 1969, airborne infantry and supporting units battled to seize Hill 937, a thickly forested height that soldiers nicknamed “Hamburger Hill” because of the grinding nature of the combat. On May 20th, after repeated assaults in rain, mud, and tangled jungle, United States forces finally secured the crest, having faced determined opposition from North Vietnamese defenders who used bunkers, camouflage, and the terrain itself to blunt attacks. The operation involved intense use of artillery and air strikes, as well as close-quarters fighting that tested small-unit leadership and endurance. Militarily, the hill represented another effort to disrupt enemy units and deny them key ground. Politically and socially, the high casualties for terrain that was not permanently held fueled criticism of an attrition-based strategy and raised difficult questions about how success in Vietnam was being defined. The battle’s legacy lies as much in those debates as in the tactical outcome on that remote ridge.
Open the Wiki entryAcross the Week
Across these days in May, the stories range from the narrow stairway of a Virginia inn to the broad waters of the Mississippi, from a submerged hull off New England to a sodden mountain in Southeast Asia. Each episode turns on human choices under pressure—officers deciding whether to storm fortified lines again, sailors trusting new rescue gear, infantry leaders guiding exhausted platoons up yet another slope. The Civil War battles remind us how individual towns and valleys could shape national strategy, while later events show how technology and public opinion become as much a part of warfare as rifles and artillery. For readers of Dispatch: U.S. Military History Magazine, these anniversaries offer a chance to trace enduring themes of initiative, adaptation, and sacrifice across very different eras. They also invite reflection on the service members who stand in similar uncertainty today, carrying forward traditions shaped on hillsides, river bluffs, and coastlines that once shared this same week on the calendar.