Defeat is a possibility in almost any undertaking. Understanding how to turn failures into lessons learned is a key contributing skill to bringing about future success. In two of his recent books, Dr. David L. Preston, the General Mark W. Clark Distinguished Professor of History at The Citadel, provides a framework of how to draw constructive criticism out of defeat. Both “Braddock’s Defeat: The Battle of the Monongahela and the Road to Revolution” and “The Other Face of Battle: America’s Forgotten Wars and the Experience of Combat” analyze key takeaways hidden behind the immediate sting ..read more

This lecture was recorded at the open house for the USAHEC's newest exhibit, “Ka-Pow Boom! Understanding the Soldier Experience through Comic and Illustrative Art.” Writer, former military strategist, and U.S. Army veteran Steve Leonard delivered a presentation on his comic series “The Further Adventures of Doctrine Man” In his presentation discussed the origins and inspiration for the iconic comic strip, and the impact it’s had on the U.S. Army ..read more

In her award-winning novel “I Will Die In A Foreign Land”, author Kalani Pickhart offers an opportunity to connect with the human aspect of the conflict. The novel, winner of the 2022 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, lets readers experience the complex, and often intensely personal, circumstances leading up to the conflict through the stories of its main characters ..read more

October 16, 2019 - Superintendent Brandon Bies, Manassas National Battlefield Park Amid the stink of blood, the moans of wounded, and the detritus of battle, a Civil War battlefield surgeon sawed through the shattered remnant of a Soldier’s leg.  As he tossed the removed appendage into the nearby pit of other discarded limbs, another victim of the Battle of Second Manassas was placed on his grizzly operating table.  On Wednesday, October 16, 2019, at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, hosted Superintendent Brandon Bies of the Manassas Nati ..read more

September 18, 2019 - Mr. Rick Atkinson In mid-January 1777, Lord Cornwallis of the invincible British Army retreated from the New Jersey countryside after two years of epic struggle against up-start American rebels. From the bloodshed on Lexington Common to the defeats at Trenton and Princeton, the American Revolution raged throughout the new United States. On Wednesday, September 18, 2019 at 7:15PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center welcomed Historian and Pulitzer Prize Winner Mr. Rick Atkinson to present the General of the Army Omar Nelson Bradley Memorial Lecture. He discussed the ..read more

August 21, 2019 - Dr. Edwin E. Moïse On the night of August 4, 1964, two American warships clashed with torpedo boats in the dark waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. The “attack” rapidly pushed President Lyndon Johnson to escalate the tensions between the United States and the communist government of North Vietnam. On Wednesday, August 21, 2019, at 7:15 PM, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, hosted Dr. Edwin Moïse of Clemson University to present a talk based on the new edition of his book, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War. Looking at the most cur ..read more

July 17, 2019 - Mr. Jared Frederick Along the steep cliffs and thick, mazelike hedgerows of Normandy, American Soldiers broke Hitler’s “Fortress Europe” and flooded France with a new sense of freedom. The American public was glued to their newspapers and radios, awaiting updates from intrepid war correspondents covering the invasion from the front lines. In this lecture, the U.S. Army Heritage and Education Center welcomes acclaimed local historian and Penn State Altoona Professor Jared Frederick, author of Dispatches of D-Day: A People’s History of the Normandy Invasion to discuss, in vivid d ..read more

May 15, 2019 - Dr. Robert F. Jefferson, Jr. From the blood soaked earth of the American Civil War to the booby-trapped jungle pathways of Vietnam and beyond, 89 African American Soldiers have earned the highest military accolade in the land – the Congressional Medal of Honor. In the sweltering jungles of Vietnam, 18-year-old Private Milton Olive III of the 503rd Infantry Regiment selflessly threw his body over a grenade tossed into the middle of his platoon. His actions earned him a posthumous Medal of Honor and echo the heroism of the first African American recipient almost 100 years earlier ..read more