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On January 30th, 1968, during the lunar new year holiday known as Tet, communist forces launched coordinated attacks across South Vietnam. Viet Cong guerrillas and North Vietnamese Army units struck provincial capitals, district towns, and military bases, often achieving tactical surprise. In the days that followed, the world saw images of fighting near the United States Embassy in Saigon and fierce clashes around Kh
It is the early hours of 10 March 1945 on Luzon in the Philippine Islands. The jungle around the Villa Verde Trail is black and close, broken only by a thin ridge that juts out from a larger hill. On that ridge, just ahead of the main American perimeter, three foxholes scrape a shallow line in the earth. In one of them lies Private First Class Thomas Eugene “Gene” Atkins of Company A, 127th Infantry. His job is simpl
During the Vietnam War, American units operated in a confusing environment where enemy fighters, civilians, and local political forces often mingled in the same villages and rice fields. On March 16th, 1968, a United States Army company entered the My Lai area in South Vietnam expecting to find a strong enemy presence.
In the winter of the American Revolution, diplomats in Paris secured an agreement that transformed the struggle for independence. On February 6th, 1778, the United States and France signed a formal Treaty of Alliance and a companion treaty of commerce, bringing a major European naval and military power openly into the war against Britain.
After years of war and months of negotiation, delegates of the Confederation Congress gathered in Annapolis to ratify the peace treaty that had been signed in Paris the previous year. By approving the agreement on January 14th, 1784, the United States formally ended the Revolutionary War in the eyes of European powers and secured recognition of its independence and new borders.
In a remote stretch of New Mexico desert, the United States Army’s Manhattan Engineer District prepared to test a weapon unlike any used before. In the early hours of July 16th, 1945, scientists and soldiers watched as the “Gadget,” an experimental plutonium device, detonated atop a tower at the Trinity site. The explosion produced an intense flash, a rising fireball, and a towering mushroom cloud that confirmed the
On January 31st, 1950, President Harry Truman announced that the United States would move ahead with development of a thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb. The decision followed the Soviet Union’s first atomic test and intense debate among scientists, soldiers, and policymakers about the future of nuclear weapons. A hydrogen bomb promised yields far beyond earlier fission devices, raising questions about strategy, morality
Two days after the invasion began, President Harry Truman announced that he had ordered American air and naval forces to support South Korea and directed the Seventh Fleet to the waters near Taiwan. The decision, made without a formal congressional declaration of war, marked one of the earliest and most consequential uses of presidential authority to commit U.S. forces in the emerging Cold War.
Five days after North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea, President Harry Truman took a decisive step. On June 30th, 1950, he authorized the deployment of United States ground combat units to support South Korean forces already reeling under the assault. Air and naval power had been committed earlier, but this order meant American soldiers would again fight on the ground in Asia.
By the summer of the Second World War, Allied forces were fighting their way up the Italian boot while strategic air forces targeted the infrastructure that kept Axis armies supplied. On July 19th, 1943, hundreds of bombers from the United States Army Air Forces and the Royal Air Force attacked rail yards and communications nodes in and around Rome. The strikes aimed to disrupt German logistics and pressure Italy’s l
During the Second World War, Allied planners launched a raid on the German-held French port of Dieppe to test defenses and gather experience in amphibious operations. Among the mostly Canadian and British troops who went ashore that August morning were several dozen members of the newly formed United States Army Rangers, making their first combat appearance in Europe.
After months of siege warfare around Petersburg, Virginia, General Grant ordered a major assault on the overstretched Confederate lines protecting both Petersburg and the capital at Richmond. Union forces, including troops from several corps that had been steadily probing and extending the siege lines, attacked at multiple points along the defensive works. The Confederate positions, manned by weary soldiers of Genera
As global war raged and American involvement drew nearer, leaders in Washington recognized that the Army’s air component needed a more robust structure. On June 20th, 1941, the War Department reorganized the existing Army Air Corps into the United States Army Air Forces, giving it a more unified command structure and increased authority over training, doctrine, and operations.
On February 2nd, 1901, Congress created the United States Army Nurse Corps as a permanent part of the regular Army. The Spanish-American War and campaigns in the Philippines had highlighted how crucial trained nursing was to survival, not only in battle but also against disease. Before the Corps, the Army relied heavily on contract nurses and ad hoc arrangements that made it difficult to build experience and enforce
On this day the United States formally took over the stalled French canal project in Panama, turning a failing commercial venture into a strategic national priority. Army engineers and medical officers were at the heart of the effort, battling yellow fever and malaria while reshaping the isthmus with steam shovels, dynamite, and railroad lines.
On January 28th, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation merging the Revenue Cutter Service and the Life-Saving Service into a single organization: the United States Coast Guard. The revenue cutters had long chased smugglers, enforced customs laws, and supported naval operations, while life-saving crews manned small stations along dangerous coasts, ready to pull shipwrecked sailors from the surf.
Four days after Wilson’s address, Congress approved the declaration of war, formally bringing the United States into World War I on the side of the Allies. The decision triggered a sweeping mobilization effort at home, including the enactment of the Selective Service system to raise a large national army. The American Expeditionary Forces, under General John J.
Nearly four decades after independence, the United States again found itself in conflict with its old imperial rival. On June 18th, 1812, after months of debate over British interference with American trade, the impressment of American sailors into the Royal Navy, and tensions along the frontier, Congress passed and President James Madison signed a declaration of war.