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A year later to the day, July 1st, 1863, the opening clash at Gettysburg began almost by chance as Confederate troops moving into Pennsylvania met Union cavalry west of town. Brigadier General John Buford’s troopers used dismounted tactics and carbines to delay the advance, buying time for Union infantry of the First Corps to arrive. As more Confederate divisions came onto the field from the north and west, fighting
Four days after Fort Stedman, the initiative swung decisively to the Union side. On March 29th, 1865, General Ulysses S. Grant launched a wide-ranging offensive west of Petersburg, sending Union corps toward key roads and crossroads along the Confederate right flank. Battles at places like Lewis’s Farm, White Oak Road, and Dinwiddie Court House unfolded over the next days as Union troops pressed around the end of Lee
Two years later, another turning point arrived when Ulysses S. Grant began work in his new role as general-in-chief of all Union armies. Having made his reputation at places like Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga, Grant now carried the rank of lieutenant general, a grade not held since George Washington. From this position he could coordinate the Army of the Potomac in Virginia with campaigns in the West, aim
A Medal of Honor story of selfless sacrifice and battlefield leadership in World War II.
The fuel gauges in Harold Bauer’s Wildcat fighter were already edging toward empty when the coastline of Guadalcanal slid beneath his wings. He had just finished leading a long, tense, overwater flight of Marine fighters up from Espiritu Santo, six hundred miles of nothing but ocean and cloud. Henderson Field, the hard-bitten airstrip the Marines called home, lay ahead as a thin strip of coral and mud, promising rest
An Ohio engineer officer who turned a rear-area camp into a last-ditch defensive line
How a Marine Corps fighter pilot sank a destroyer, then picked up a rifle to defend a tiny atoll at the dawn of World War II.
A Medal of Honor story of relentless courage under fire in the Pacific War of World War II.
The black volcanic sand of Iwo Jima offered no cover, only shallow shell holes and the hulks of stalled tanks. Late on February 23, 1945, Marines of the 21st Regiment lay pinned down, staring across a short stretch of open ground that felt a mile wide. Ahead of them, a maze of reinforced concrete pillboxes spat machine-gun fire in crossing patterns, every burst chewing fresh craters into the sand.
Early in the Second World War’s Pacific campaign, United States and Filipino forces on Bataan and Corregidor fought a desperate defense against Japanese invasion. With the situation deteriorating and Washington determined to preserve a senior commander for future operations, General Douglas MacArthur received orders to leave the Philippines and take up a new post in Australia.
As war raged across Europe and Asia, the United States still officially stood neutral in January 1941, but the lines were beginning to blur. On January 10th, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt’s administration saw the Lend-Lease bill introduced in Congress, proposing that the United States could lend or lease war material to nations whose defense was deemed vital to American security.
In the wake of the September 11th attacks and years of tense inspections and sanctions, the United States and a coalition of partners confronted Iraq over weapons of mass destruction and compliance with international demands. After issuing a final ultimatum to Saddam Hussein’s regime, American forces launched the opening strikes of what would become known as the Iraq War on March 19th, 2003.
A Jewish paratrooper from Berlin who met the Battle of the Bulge head-on to save his men
On February 19th, 1945, the beaches of Iwo Jima filled with landing craft as Marines of the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions came ashore under fire. The island was small but strategically important, lying between the Marianas and the Japanese home islands and hosting airfields that could threaten American bombers.
A Medal of Honor story of relentless courage under fire in the Italian campaign of World War II.
The draw is narrow and steep, its sides scoured by months of shellfire and rain. At the bottom, the earth is churned to powder. Above it, hidden in the scrub and broken stone near Cisterna di Littoria, German machine guns wait for anything that moves. Private James Henry Mills can hear them before he sees them—the clatter of automatic fire, the sharper crack of rifles, the dull thump of grenades exploding somewhere a
A Medal of Honor story of stubborn courage and small-unit leadership in the Pacific war’s last great battle.
The ground in front of Sugar Loaf Hill is already chewed into mud and craters when Corporal James Lewis Day crawls forward to look for cover. It is May 1945 on Okinawa, and the Marines trying to cross this open killing ground are being shredded by Japanese mortar and artillery fire. The air is thick with pulverized coral dust. Fragments of shattered ammunition boxes and discarded packs lie where men dropped them runn