German parachute troops found the resistance from Commonwealth soldiers particularly brutal, but prevailed at terrible cost in the fight for Crete. In May 1941, General Kurt Student’s elite paratrooper forces descended like an anvil on the British garrison defending Crete. Instead of winning a quick and decisive victory, the airborne troops found themselves locked…
Tag: Military History
Know Your Real WW2 History: Hunting Yamamoto, The Story of Operation Vengeance
On Palm Sunday morning April 18 1943, 18 American P-38 Lightning fighters took off from Guadalcanal at dawn. 16 of them would continue on a 1,000 mile round trip mission across open ocean. Their target was a single Mitsubishi G4M Betty bomber. Inside that bomber was the Japanese admiral who had planned the attack on…
On This Day in History: May 7th, 1915
The sinking of RMS Lusitania during WWI RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-boat on 7 May 1915. The luxury passenger liner was crossing the Atlantic from New York to Liverpool when the German submarine U-20 fired without warning. After a second explosion – the cause of which is still debated – the ship quickly sank. It…
The Story of ANZAC Day: History and Legacy
The Story of ANZAC Day: History and Legacy ANZAC Day history began in the darkness before dawn, as Australian and New Zealand soldiers rowed towards Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. The landing at Gallipoli was anticipated to be a quick action that would remove Turkey from World War I (WWI). Instead, it escalated into…
War’s of Distraction
Napoleon Bonaparte took part in seven major coalition conflicts during the era known as the Napoleonic Wars, which lasted from 1803 to 1815. These wars pitted France against shifting alliances of European powers determined to curb his influence. When counting individual engagements instead of entire wars, historians generally estimate that Napoleon personally commanded around sixty…
Booby Traps from the Vietnam War
Assessing “Cognitive Warfare”
Despite its introduction over a decade ago by the People’s Liberation Army, there is no common understanding of Cognitive Warfare. Nor is there an agreement on the existence of a human or cognitive domain. These concepts compete in a crowded and confusing field centered around information technology and the related information dimension of statecraft….
The Burning of Alexandria
The Burning of Alexandria The Yankees occupied New Orleans and its surrounding environs from April, 1862 until the end of the Civil War. In 1863, Gen. Nathaniel Banks left New Orleans to start an advance toward Shreveport. He hoped to seize the busy river port. He followed the Red River upstream. Banks joined with forces…
In Memoriam: John C. Cole, USMC, Last of the Old Breed
John C. Cole, a United States Marine Corps veteran, was born on May 23, 1927, in Moran, Texas, and passed away peacefully on March 9, 2025, in Roy, Utah, at the age of 97. He enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1944, following in the footsteps of his brother and uncle, and served as…