UNITS & FORMATIONS

Three weeks after seizing Saipan, American forces returned to Guam, reclaiming a prewar United States possession that had been lost in the dark days of 1941. Marines and soldiers from the Third Marine Division, the First Provisional Marine Brigade, and the Seventy-Seventh Infantry Division went ashore under heavy fire, forced to slog through surf, coral, and fortified jungle slopes.

On January 31st, 1944, United States forces stormed ashore on the islands of Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands during Operation Flintlock. Amphibious training in earlier campaigns had taught hard lessons, and planners now applied them against one of Japan’s most important central Pacific strongholds.

As World War II in the Pacific neared its climax, United States forces launched the amphibious assault on Okinawa, a large island only a few hundred miles from the Japanese home islands. The Tenth Army, composed of United States Army and Marine Corps units, went ashore on beaches that were eerily lightly defended, a stark contrast to the bloody assaults at places like Tarawa and Iwo Jima.

Two months after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, a long chapter of American warfare drew to a close. On March 29th, 1973, the last United States Army combat units departed South Vietnam, leaving behind a small presence associated with the embassy and defense attaché functions. Many American prisoners of war had already been released and flown home in the preceding weeks, their arrivals watched closely by families and a war-weary public.

At the shipyards in Groton, Connecticut, the United States Navy launched a vessel that would fundamentally change undersea warfare. On January 21st, 1954, USS Nautilus slid into the water as the world’s first operational nuclear-powered submarine. Unlike conventionally powered boats that had to surface or snorkel regularly for air and fuel, Nautilus could remain submerged for long periods, travel at higher sustained speeds, and operate far from bases.

Night still clung to the sea when the submarine slid in among the enemy ships. On the open bridge, spray cold against his face, Commander Lawson “Red” Ramage watched the black shapes of freighters and tankers loom out of the darkness. Their wakes glowed faintly, white scars across a heaving Pacific, while bursts of star shell and tracer fire clawed at the sky. Somewhere off Taiwan, a Japanese convoy was trying to slip through before dawn. Ramage intended to stop it.

In the summer of 1776, the Continental Army was already fighting the British Empire around Boston, New York, and in scattered frontier campaigns. On June 7th, 1776, Virginia delegate Richard Henry Lee put into words what that fighting increasingly implied, offering a resolution that the united colonies “are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.” Debate over his proposal forced Congress to confront the true scale of the conflict and led to the appointment of a committee tasked…

Medal of Honor, U.S. Army, World War II

On May 14th, 1804, a small flotilla of boats pulls away from Camp Dubois, near Saint Louis, and starts upriver into largely unmapped country. The party, known as the Corps of Discovery, is built around soldiers and noncommissioned officers of the United States Army under Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lieutenant William Clark. Their mission is to explore the recent Louisiana Purchase, seek a practical route toward the Pacific, and make contact with Native nations along the way.

On this date, elements of the United States Seventh Army reached the gates of Dachau, one of Nazi Germany’s earliest and most notorious concentration camps. Soldiers from the 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions walked into scenes of devastation and horror: emaciated prisoners, mass graves, and railcars filled with bodies from death marches.

On January 9th, 1945, American forces surged ashore along the beaches of Lingayen Gulf on the island of Luzon in the Philippines. Supported by a powerful naval and air armada, soldiers of the United States Sixth Army waded through surf under the threat of mines, artillery, and kamikaze attacks that had already cost the fleet dearly during the approach.

Off the New England coast, the nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher was conducting deep-diving tests when something went catastrophically wrong. Communications suggested trouble with systems and attempts to surface as the boat descended beyond its safe limits. Moments later, contact was lost, and later analysis pointed to flooding and a reactor shutdown that left the submarine unable to recover.

On this date American negotiators in Paris agreed to purchase the vast Louisiana territory from France, a deal that nearly doubled the size of the young republic. For the United States Army, the treaty opened an enormous new frontier to explore, survey, and secure, from the Mississippi River out toward the Rocky Mountains. Army officers and enlisted soldiers would lead reconnaissance missions, escort surveyors, and eventually garrison remote posts that anchored American claims on the plains.

Less than three weeks after North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel, President Harry Truman moved to unify the international response under a single commander. On July 8th, 1950, General Douglas MacArthur, already commanding United States forces in the Far East, was designated to lead United Nations military operations in Korea.

As ground combat raged on Okinawa, the United States fleet offshore faced a new and deadly form of air attack in unprecedented numbers. Japanese forces launched a series of large-scale suicide air raids, known as kamikaze attacks, aimed at crippling the invasion armada by sacrificing pilots and aircraft directly against ships. On April 6th, waves of kamikaze aircraft struck radar picket destroyers, carriers, and other vessels, sinking some ships and damaging many more.

Snow hangs heavy in the Ardennes forest, muting sound until a rifle cracks and splinters bark from a nearby tree. Private First Class Melvin Earl Biddle lies pressed into the freezing ground, the lead scout for an American parachute infantry company feeling every heartbeat echo in the stock of his rifle. Somewhere ahead, beyond the dark trunks and tangled undergrowth, German snipers have halted his company’s advance on the road between the villages of Soy and Hotton.

Less than two decades later, the young republic took a step toward professionalizing its forces when the president signed legislation establishing the United States Military Academy at West Point. The new school, placed atop a strategic bend in the Hudson River, initially focused on engineering and artillery, recognizing that future wars would demand officers who could build forts, maintain weapons, and manage complex campaigns.

In the bitter winter of the Revolutionary War, soldiers of the New Jersey Line encamped near Pompton reached the breaking point over unpaid wages, expiring enlistments, and miserable living conditions. Inspired in part by the recent and much larger mutiny in the Pennsylvania Line, the New Jersey troops turned on their officers and marched to demand redress.

Two years later to the day, President Harry S. Truman signed legislation that fundamentally reshaped how the United States organizes for war and peace. The National Security Act merged the Department of War and Department of the Navy into a unified National Military Establishment under a Secretary of Defense, later renamed the Department of Defense.

Less than a decade after independence, the United States found itself without a real blue-water navy, even as its merchant ships ventured across dangerous seas. Attacks by Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean and harassment from European powers made clear that paper protests were not enough to protect American commerce.

A story of scattered night jumps, improvised small-unit fights, and how chaos still helped open the door into Fortress Europe.

In the early years of the Cold War, representatives of the United States and eleven other nations gathered in Washington, D.C., to sign the North Atlantic Treaty, creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The treaty committed its members to mutual defense, stating that an attack on one would be considered an attack on all, and it provided a formal framework for coordinating military planning and deterrence against potential aggression.

Early on June 25th, 1950, North Korean forces crossed the thirty-eighth parallel in strength, spearheaded by tanks and infantry that quickly shattered many South Korean positions. For American commanders, the attack transformed Korea from a peripheral concern into the central crisis of the moment, testing the policy of containing communist expansion that had taken shape in the early Cold War.

After nearly three brutal months of fighting, American commanders declared the island of Okinawa secure on June 22nd, 1945. The campaign had begun with amphibious landings in April, followed by a grinding advance against deeply dug-in Japanese defenses that relied on cave systems, reverse-slope positions, and determined infantry counterattacks.