When all hell has broken loose and a rapid response is required, a familiar cry has echoed down through the millennia, “Send in the cavalry!” Mounted fighting forces sprang into being almost from the moment man learned to harness the power of the hor

When Military History sought an interview with Buzz Aldrin, he initially demurred. The second human being ever to walk on the surface of the Moon—on July 21, 1969, as a crew member of Apollo 11—he finds that journalists seldom want to discuss anythin

Though popular culture tends to depict the space race as a cooperative effort among nations with a shared interest in science, it started as a competition between Cold War rivals the United States and the Soviet Union, and there remains an undeniable

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Poland stepped forward as one of its eastern neighbor’s staunchest supporters. But the ongoing eruption involving Russia, Ukraine and Poland is just the latest tragic chapter in a three-way strategic powe

The 66–74 Great Jewish Revolt against Rome has taken its place in legend for the Jewish ambush at Beth Horon in 66—which cost Legio XII Fulminata nearly 6,000 soldiers and an aquila (imperial eagle standard)—the Roman siege and destruction of Jerusal

British naval historian and geostrategist Sir Julian Corbett (1854–1922) was a contemporary of renowned American naval strategist Rear Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840–1914). Unlike Mahan, Corbett had no personal military or naval experience, which pro

Just after dawn on July 14, 1918—Bastille Day in France—four American fliers of the 95th Aero Squadron, piloting French-built Nieuport 28 biplane fighters, set out on patrol looking for German observation aircraft. Shortly after crossing no-man’s-lan

Major General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, was killed by a drone strike in the early morning of Jan. 3, 2020. The CIA, working with Joint Special Operations Command, had been gathering int

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UNION SOLDIER JOHN J. WILLIAMS IS KILLED ON THE BANKS OF THE RIO GRANDE DURING THE BATTLE OF PALMITO RANCH. RECOGNIZED AS THE LAST MAN TO DIE IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR, HE WAS ONE OF AN ESTIMATED700,000MEN—ROUGHLY 2% OF THE U.S. POPULATION AT THE TIM

Match each famed commander below to the place where his son, nephew or grandson gained martial notoriety: 1. George Smith Patton 2. Genghis Khan 3. Hamilcar Barca 4. Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia 5. Helmuth von Moltke the Elder 6. Henry IV of Englan

Regarding the use of gun-powder, infantry and cav-alry as described in “The Day Combined Arms Prevailed,” by David T. Zabecki [Spring 2023]: It wasn’t Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden [at the Battle of Breitenfeld in 1631] but Spain in the 1482–92 last

In mid-May 1264 Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, gambled. As English King Henry III pushed north from Hastings toward London, Montfort broke off his siege of the castle at Rochester and moved south to Fletching. After praying there in the ch

Gallop Toward the Sun: Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison’s Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation, by Peter Stark, Random House, New York, 2023, $28.99 When one broaches the subject of westward expansion, many picture Conestoga wagons creaking down t

In the 16th century, at the heart of what today is Ukraine, lived an Eastern Slavic Orthodox Christian people known as the Cossacks. Granted a measure of autonomy under the nominal suzerainty of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Cossacks even s

He had bitterly opposed the British decision to retreat up the Thames River into Canada. Now, on this crisp October morning in 1813, Shawnee Chief Tecumseh watched in horror as a mounted force of Americans armed with tomahawks, knives and long rifles

In the darkness, despite having lost the fingers of his right hand and suffered severe shrapnel wounds, Gurkha Rifleman Lachhiman Gurung kept working his bolt-action rifle with his left hand as Japanese repeatedly attacked his position. When morning

On Oct. 23, 1983, amid the Lebanese Civil War, two Islamic suicide bombers in separate trucks loaded with high explosives detonated their payloads outside buildings in Beirut housing U.S. and French service members of the Multinational Force in Leban

The origin of that phrase lies in the function of flintlocks like the musket in the hands of this Battle of Waterloo re-enactor in Belgium. As the flint in the jaws of the cock (hammer) strikes the upright frizzen, sparks drop into the flashpan. That

Can you match each of the following Great War field commanders to his outstanding battle or campaign? 1. Armando Diaz (Italy) 2. Radomir Putnik (Serbia) 3. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck (Germany) 4. John Monash (Australia) 5. Hunter Liggett (United States)

The Asiatic-Pacific Theater in World War II culminated with a grueling, bloody amphibious campaign to capture one Japanese-held seabound stronghold after another. To deliver soldiers to the various beachheads along the sea route to Japan, the U.S. Na

No general, the old saying goes, ever wakes up in the morning and decides he is going to lose a battle. Yet for every general who loses a battle, there is an opposite number who wins the fight. This has been a constant of warfare for as long as man h

On the night of June 18, 1968, then 1st Lt. Larry L. Taylor, a helicopter pilot with Troop D, 1st Squadron, 4th U.S. Cavalry, led a two-gunship mission in support of a four-man long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) surrounded and under attack in th

For the sick, half-starved inhabitants of Tenochtitlán, island capital of the beleaguered Aztec empire, the new year of 1521 offered only severe hardship and continued bloodshed. Over the past eight months the city’s quarter million residents had suf

Edward C. Byers U.S. Navy Medal of Honor Afghanistan Dec. 8–9, 2012 In December 2012, in the Laghman Province of eastern Afghanistan, Senior Chief Special Warfare Operator Edward Byers of the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team 6 burst into a one-room building occ