World War II

JESSICA WAMBACH BROWN (“Fire on the Mountain”) writes about history and the outdoors from Kalispell, Montana. While drafting a story about the first climber to ascend Mount Rainier, she learned of the 10th Mountain Division’s brief training stint the

This last issue was a winner for our family, with Johnny Carson (“Familiar Face,” April 2019) being on the USS Pennsylvania at the same time as my darling husband, Jack, when the ship was torpedoed and all those dear men were killed. Of course, Carso

CONSTRUCTION WORKERS CLEARING GROUND in February for a luxury apartment building in Brest, Belarus, uncovered a mass grave in what was once a Jewish ghetto. Buried in a 130-foot-long pit were the remains of 1,214 men, women, and children. Bones were

A DIARY WRITTEN by one of the British prisoners who plotted the real-life “Great Escape” sold at auction for nearly $18,000 on March 22, three days before the audacious getaway’s 75th anniversary. Royal Air Force flight lieutenant Vivian Phillips kep

WHEN MEMBERS of Germany’s second-richest family learned what their ancestors had done during World War II, they turned “white as a wall” and decided to donate more than $11 million to charity as penance. According to Peter Harf, one of two managing d

THE RIFLE CREDITED with helping win World War II is still lending a hand to Uncle Sam: by bringing in big bucks to a federally chartered program established to teach gun safety. A February report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) fou

Q: Regarding your answer in June 2019’s “Ask WWII” that the “D” in “D-Day” stands for “day”: I believe it actually stands for “disembarkation,” or the day troops arrive and leave the ship or landing craft (and that “embarkation day” is the day troops

ROBERT VENDITTI, 45, is the bestselling author of popular comics series including The Surrogates, Hawkman, Freedom Fighters, and many others. He ventures into a fact-based tale with his latest work, Six Days: The Incredible True Story of D-Day’s Lost

These are my ration books from 1943, when I was four years old. I would like to know what we were able to buy with these coupons; I don’t remember my mother telling me. Where did people go to pick up rations? Did children have to go with parents? Was

LIKE MANY MILITARY HISTORY BUFFS, I am an aficionado of maneuver. I love to see one side in battle surprise the other, showing up unexpectedly on a flank, or both flanks, or even bursting into the rear areas, overrunning headquarters and supply dumps

IN THE EARLY EVENING SHADOWS of Colorado’s Sawatch Range, I pull off the stretch of U.S. Route 24 known as the 10th Mountain Division Memorial Highway and step out to survey a mountain valley a half-mile wide by five miles long. Flat and seemingly em

Perhaps the most peculiar craft ever to ease its way into the Port of Los Angeles was “Gimik.” The 19-foot-long, 3,650-pound vessel looked like a design failure—something that had started as a closed lifeboat before the designer lost his mind. Gimik

The shadows were lengthening at England’s North Witham airfield on June 5, 1944, when an officer stepped down from a C-47 transport plane, a small case attached to his right wrist. Armed guards, who usually patrolled the airfield that lay 100 miles n

When General Raymond E. Lee, the former U.S. military attaché in wartime London, died in 1958 at age 72, his obituary in the New York Times pointed out that no one “was ever more popular in that post both with the American residents in the British ca

AS JAPAN’S FORTUNES IN THE PACIFIC ARENA went from bad to worse, and with an American invasion of the home islands on the horizon, Japanese High Command began considering drastic defensive strategies. By 1944, they approved a program of suicide warfa

The most devastating war ever to afflict the world isn’t often associated with humor, but judging from the postcard collection reader James Woodall—a retired U.S. Army colonel from Texas—shared with us, perhaps it should be. Today found at flea marke

On the morning of March 24, 1945, an Allied armada of more than 1,500 powered aircraft and 1,300 gliders converged over the central Belgian town of Wavre. The aircraft had departed from 23 airfields in England and France; for their pilots, Wavre serv

CATCH-22 Directed by George Clooney, Grant Heslov, and Ellen Kuras. Six episodes; 45 minutes each. Hulu, premiering Friday, May 17, 2019. JOSEPH HELLER’S Catch-22 is bizarre, polarizing, surreal—and undoubtedly one of the greatest war novels of the 2

MADAME FOURCADE’S SECRET WAR The Daring Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network Against Hitler By Lynne Olson. 464 pp. Random House, 2019. $30. IN JULY 1944, the Gestapo pushed in Marie-Madeleine Fourcade’s door while hunting for French Resi

DESERT FOX The Storied Military Career of Erwin Rommel By Samuel W. Mitcham Jr. 436 pp. Regnery History, 2019. $29.99. BIOGRAPHIES OF ERWIN ROMMEL abound, and any new addition to the tribe must begin with a justification for its own existence. This m

POST SCRIPTUM Periscope Games, $30. WORLD WAR II RATING Post Scriptum is an ambitious and detailed first-person shooter computer game. It emphasizes accurate depictions of infantry and armored combat, complete with real-life limitations and difficult

MIDWAY THROUGH Platoon (1986), Oliver Stone’s classic film about the Vietnam War, a brash private reassures a squad mate assigned to share his foxhole, “Don’t you worry, Junior. You’re hanging with Audie Murphy here, my man!” He doesn’t have to expla