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On February 23rd, 1945, a patrol from the 28th Marine Regiment climbed Mount Suribachi, the volcanic peak dominating the southern end of Iwo Jima, and raised an American flag. A larger flag soon replaced the first, and an Associated Press photographer captured the moment that would become one of the most reproduced images in military history.
More than half a century later, another presidency faced the task of closing a different conflict. On August 20th, 1866, President Andrew Johnson issued a formal proclamation declaring that the insurrection in the former Confederate states was at an end, effectively marking the official conclusion of the Civil War. The great campaigns and bloody battles were already over, but this act drew a legal line under four yea
As the world edged closer to global conflict, American leaders recognized that citizen-soldiers and long-service professionals alike would need support far beyond rifles and rations. On February 4th, 1941, several existing civilian welfare organizations joined together under a new umbrella: the United Service Organizations, or USO.
The ramps drop into waist-deep surf and chaos. It is the morning of October 20, 1944, on a stretch of shoreline the maps call Red Beach. Ahead lies a narrow band of sand, beyond it a low palm grove and flooded rice paddies. Somewhere in that green fringe, Japanese guns have the approaches bracketed. As the first waves of soldiers tried to cross, the beach turned into a killing ground.
High over Europe on Christmas Eve 1944, the sky is crowded with contrails. Hundreds upon hundreds of heavy bombers push east toward German airfields, the engines’ steady thunder mixing with clipped radio calls. At their head is a single Flying Fortress, the air commander’s ship, where Brigadier General Frederick Walker Castle studies the instruments and the grey cloud deck below.
The rain-soaked hills of Leyte were already torn open by days of fighting when Company A of the 306th Infantry pushed forward against a Japanese strongpoint that refused to break. Machine guns were dug into the slopes, firing down narrow approaches that funneled every American movement into sheets of bullets. A light tank inched ahead, meant to crack the defenses, but the infantry platoon walking behind it stalled un
The fields near Anzio were bare and unforgiving—flat, freshly plowed earth broken only by shallow furrows and a few low dikes. On a May morning in 1944, Staff Sergeant George John Hall lay pressed into that thin cover with the rest of his company, the dirt shaking under the hammering of German machine guns. Every time a man tried to crawl forward, grazing fire stitched the ground in front of him. Sniper rounds cracke
Night on Iwo Jima never really felt dark. The sky glowed faintly from flares and burning wreckage, and the volcanic ash underfoot seemed to swallow every step. In a shallow foxhole—a rough, shoulder-deep fighting position scraped into that ash—Private George Phillips stood watch while the rest of his squad finally slept. They had spent the night trading grenades and rifle fire with Japanese troops slipping through th
Just one day after creating a Continental Army, Congress turned to the problem of who should lead it and selected George Washington of Virginia as commander in chief. Washington had experience from the French and Indian War, a reputation for personal courage, and the political advantage of coming from a southern colony at a moment when most fighting was in New England. His appointment helped weld together regional in
After nearly two years of brutal fighting up the Italian peninsula, German Army Group C formally laid down its arms to the Allied command on May 2nd, 1945. United States Fifth Army and its partners had slogged through mountains, rivers, and heavily fortified defensive lines, from Salerno and Anzio to the Gothic Line in the north.
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
The climactic third day, July 3rd, 1863, is best remembered for the Confederate infantry assault later called Pickett’s Charge. After an intense artillery bombardment meant to weaken Union positions on Cemetery Ridge, several Confederate divisions stepped off from the tree line on Seminary Ridge and marched across open fields under heavy fire. Union cannon and rifles tore into their ranks, yet the attackers closed to
In the early years of the Cold War’s nuclear standoff, Strategic Air Command kept bombers airborne or on quick alert around the clock. On January 24th, 1961, a B-52 carrying two powerful thermonuclear bombs broke apart in the skies near Goldsboro, North Carolina, after suffering structural failure. The weapons fell to earth, and one descended with its parachute deploying, while the other plunged into soft ground.
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
On May 10th, 1969, paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division began a series of assaults against a steep, jungle-covered height in the A Shau Valley that would become known as Hamburger Hill. The Vietnamese Army defenders were dug into bunkers and trenches woven into the slopes, forcing American units to climb under fire again and again through mud, foliage, and concealed obstacles.
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
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.