Company E, 506th Regiment was part of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division.  It was formed in 1942 and comprised of young volunteers that were generally new to the army.  Company E received its baptism by fire in June 1944 when it jumped into NAZI occupied France.  It went on to jump into Holland as part of Operation Market-Garden; helped blunt the German advance by holding the town of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge; and then drove across Germany to secure Hitler’s final defeat.  During its advance across Europe, Company E sustained 150% casualties.  Stephe ..read more

Sierra Leone’s civil war lasted from 1991 until 2002.  It was marked by exceptional levels of cruelty and suffering.  During this civil war the United Nations, neighboring West African states, and the United Kingdom launched military interventions into Sierra Leone.  The United Kingdom’s intervention was called Operation Palliser.  In September 2000 eleven British soldiers participating in Operation Palliser were captured by a militia gang known as the West Side Boys.  When it became clear negotiating with the West Side Boys was proving futile, the British decided to t ..read more

On November 20th, 1953 thousands of French paratroopers dropped into a place called Dien Bien Phu.  Dien Bien Phu is a small valley in the northern part of Vietnam close to Laos.  The French plan was to establish a base at Dien Bien Phu, keep it resupplied by air, and then use it as a place to launch operations against the Viet Minh.  The French underestimated the scale of the force the Viet Minh would concentrate around Dien Bien Phu.  Before long, the French were besieged and doomed to defeat.  This battle ended French rule in Indochina.  Bernard Fall explains w ..read more

The First Allied Airborne Army launched an attack into the German occupied Netherlands on September 17, 1944.  Eventually over the 41,000 troops went in by parachute and glider.  The idea was for this huge airborne force to seize nine bridges stretched across 64 miles of the Netherlands.  Seizing these bridges would allow the British Army’s XXX Corps to advance rapidly across the rivers and into Germany.  It was a bold plan that ultimately failed.  Cornelius Ryan explains why in “A Bridge Too Far”.   ..read more

On June 1942, Germany’s Army Group South started an offensive called Case Blue or Plan Blue.  The idea was to sprint out off eastern Ukraine, across the Russian steppe, and into the Caucasus to capture the oil fields there.  As part of this big effort, the German Sixth Army attempted to capture the city of Stalingrad on the Volga River.  The Sixth Army reached Stalingrad in August.  The fighting was ferocious.  In November the Soviets launched offensives of their own north and south of Stalingrad.  Those two pincers linked up and trapped the Germans in a cauldron ..read more

On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by a group of Arab and German terrorists.  They demanded the release of 53 terrorists and diverted the plane to Entebbe, Uganda.  On July 4th, Israeli commandos disguised as Ugandan soldiers flew over 2,000 miles, assaulted the airport, killed the terrorists, and rescued all but three of the hostages within an hour. The Israeli assault force suffered one fatality: its commander, Yoni Netanyahu (brother of Israel's current Prime Minister).  Saul David’s “Operation Thunderbolt” is a definitive account of wh ..read more

By the end of 1914, World War One has stagnated into an industrial age nightmare.  The British and French sat opposite the Germans in trenches running through France from the coast to the Alps.  Things weren’t much different in the East where the early Russian advance had been defeated.  The British looked for options.  What could they do to alter the situation?  They looked at the Dardanelles Straits.  This narrow waterway connects the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea.  The Turks had mined the strait and fortified its coastline but if the British could land tro ..read more

Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) was established in January 1964 to conduct unconventional warfare operations.  These included reconnoitering and disrupting North Vietnamese activities in Laos and Cambodia.  Given the sensitive nature of MACV-SOG’s work, its missions were classified.  John Plaster served three years with MACV-SOG and tells the unit’s story in “SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam.”  ..read more

The Sherwood Rangers were a British tank regiment during the Second World War.  They served in North Africa where they fought in the battles of Alam El Hafa and Second El Alamein and helped drive Germany’s Afrika Corps out of Tunisia.  Next, the Sherwood Rangers landed in Normandy on D-Day.  They lead the drive out of France, across Belgium, and into Germany.  It was a hard slog, and they paid a price.  The Sherwood Rangers tank crews suffered 148% casualties just in the European campaign.  James Holland tells their story at a personal level in this book.  ..read more

Eight soldiers from the Britain’s Special Air Service flew deep into northwestern Iraq on the night of January 22nd, 1991.  Their callsign was Bravo Two Zero.  Their mission was to destroy the SCUD missiles Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was using against Israel.  A young goat herder stumbled across the patrol after it was on the ground for less than a day.  With their cover blown and no way to call for help, the eight solders attempted to fight their way more than 100 miles across the desert to Syria.  Only one made it.  This book was written by Bravo Two Zero’s ..read more