Trusted Writing on History, Travel, and American Culture Since 1949
U.S. Army
He didn’t want the job but felt he should do it. For the first time, the soldier who tracked down the My Lai story for the office of the inspector general in 1969 tells what it was like to do some of this era’s grimmest detective work.
In the early spring of 1969 I was an Army colonel recently assigned to the office of the inspector general in Washington, and I was not particularly happy about it; I have always disliked living in Washington, and I think that most infantry officers would rat
An American soldier would never forget encountering the German with an icy smile. He would later discover that the blood of innocent millions dripped from Eichman's manicured hands
It was the second of May, 1945, six days before the end of the war in Europe.
The old school is alive with the memory of men like Lee, Grant, Pershing, and Eisenhower
Each year most of West Point’s three million visitors enter the U.S. Military Academy through the Thayer Gate.
The United States had promised black soldiers that they would be paid as much as whites. Sergeant Walker believed that promise.
This is in honor of Sgt. William Walker, of the 3d South Carolina Infantry Regiment, a young black soldier who believed in the United States government’s promises of equal rights. This is in honor of Sgt. William Walker, who was brave enough to act on his belief in his rights.
On the eve of the Normandy invasion, a training mission in the English Channel came apart in fire and horror. For years, the grim story was suppressed.
Ralph Greene was in the lab of the 228th Station Hospital processing some routine tests when he got the order to report immediately to the hospital’s recreation room. It was early in the afternoon of April 28, 1944, and for Greene, a captain in the U.S.
The first major engagement of the U. S. Army in Vietnam was a decisive American victory. Perhaps it would have been better for all of us if it had been a defeat.
ALTHOUGH IT HAS been almost thirty years since the beginning of our military involvement in Vietnam and almost twenty years since American ground combat forces were committed to battle there, many still find the Vietnam War difficult to un
“I don’t want this thing often,” one soldier said of his .45 automatic pistol, “but when I do, I want it damned bad.”
IN COMMON with all good jungle fighters, the Moros liked to work close up.
A FEW YEARS AGO, writing in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, the distinguished historian Henry Steele Commager charged that while civil-military relations had been healthy during most of the nation’s history, the relationship had suddenly taken a turn for t
A British schoolboy sees the quiet English countryside come alive with excitement toward the end of 1943 when …
A soldier remembers the freezing, fearful retreat down the Korean Peninsula after the Chinese armies smashed across the border
THERE ARE places on this globe to which history can point and say of a people, a nation, or an empire: “This was their high-water mark.
A veteran news correspondent recalls his days as a spotter plane pilot
The idea is simple and sound and goes back at least to the American Civil War: to direct artillery fire intelligently, the higher you are above the target, the better. At ground level it’s difficult to tell just how far short or long your shells are falling.
An insider’s account of a startling— and still controversial—investigation of the Allied bombing of Germany
After a varied career as a soldier, statesman, diplomat, and presidential adviser, Taylor wants to known as someone who “always did his damndest.”
A trooper’s firsthand account of an adventure with the
Indian-fighting army in the American Southwest
In the early summer of 1872, Kiowa or Comanche Indians killed and scalped two white ranchers to steal their sixteen-shot Henry rifles.
On the morning of March 6,1836, a band of 187 Texas revolutionaries died at the hands of some three thousand Mexican troops within the crumbling pile of stones called the Alamo.
What’s Happened to the Long Gray Line
No monument or institution has more power to stir the patriotic emotions of Americans, or evokes more poignintly the martial virtues of self-sacrifice and discipline, than the United States Military Academy at West Point. In the view of General George S.
“For This Challenge, I Had Come Three Thousand Miles and Thirty-six Years of My Life”
The doughboys numbered only 550 men -- the remnants of four battalions -- and were surrounded by Germans. Then they were given the order to attack.
In the early fall of 1918 five hundred American infantrymen were cut off from their regiment and surrounded by Germans during five days of fighting in the Argonne Forest.
A decade ago a serious recognition of American Indian painters was rare indeed, for the simple reason that few art critics considered that there was anything about Indian painting worth knowing.
How the Generals Viewed the Indians
The white man’s peace at Appomattox in 1865 meant war for the Plains Indians.
Caught between two cultures, a young Sioux sought to make himself a hero—by killing an army officer
On January 8, 1891, newspapers throughout the United States headlined a tragic event in the Indian troubles rocking the Sioux reservations of South Dakota.
Army newspapers in World War I & II were unofficial, informal, and more than the top brass could handle
In the summer of the year 1944, in a time of world war that is already history to my children’s generation but remains vividly personal to mine as a moment of (in retrospect) astonishing simplicity and idealism, I found myself pointing a jeep in the direction
Eisenhower dreamed of serving under Patton, but history reversed their roles. Their stormy association dramatically shaped the Allied assault on the Third Reich
A Negro cavalry regiment was John J. Pershing’s “home” in the service. From it came his nickname, and he never lost his affection for—or failed to champion—the valorous colored troopers he led.
An eyewitness re-creates the wonderful, wacky day in August, 1944, when Hemingway, a handful of Americans, and a senorita named Elena helped rekindle the City of Light. Champagne ran in rivers, and the squeals inside the tanks were not from grit in the bogie wheels
Editor's Note: Gen. "SLAM" Marshall served in both world wars and was the Army’s chief historian in the European theater at the time of the events related here.
As the debate about rescuing them droned on and on, Lieutenant Greely’s men were dying one by one
Chief Washakie earned his battle scars in the service of the Great White Father, who—for once at least—kept faith with an Indian
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