By Richard Morain, Volunteer at the Maryland Museum of Military History As work continues at the Maryland Museum of Military History, the staff has made an exciting discovery. They have found more than 280 photographs from World War I in a cardboard box that once contained perfume bottles. What makes this collection particularly noteworthy is its principal photographer  – a Baltimore resident, Private Daniel Gaines, an African-American soldier of the 301st Stevedore Regiment. Although overlooked in many histories, the stevedores were integral to the Allied victory in World War I. PV ..read more

A Soldier’s Poem from the Maryland National Guard and Naval Militia Newsletter No. 21 April, 1940 As a result of thirty years exposure to the writings of soldiers and their drawings and cartoons, I must say that four themes are the most recurring. 1. Their food 2. The opposite sex 3. Field conditions, mud being the #1 complaint there and 4. Officers. And, I’d say in that order. I have enjoyed these themes my whole career, which is why this poem endeared itself to me instantly. I hope everyone else enjoys it as much as I did. Barbara Taylor, Curator, Maryland Museum of Military History Attentio ..read more

The D-Day Airborne Mission By Joseph Balkoski Nothing like it had ever been attempted. Nevertheless, in Operation Overlord the Allies intended to try a multifaceted airborne mission on such a colossal scale that would, they hoped, negate the oppressive disadvantages faced by seaborne troops forced to execute a frontal assault against a heavily defended coastline. The U.S. Army’s leading soldier, General George Marshall, had clamored for operations of that kind—he called them “vertical envelopment”—to take advantage of the impressive surge in size and skill of Allied airborne forces since their ..read more

Operation Fortitude Fools the Germans by Joseph Balkoski By the third day of the Tehran summit, code-named “Eureka,” that trinity of statesmen known in the western press as “The Big Three”—Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin—finally began to relax. Just a few years in the past, one could hardly have envisioned FDR, a Hyde Park aristocrat, or Churchill, an old-school imperialist, bantering with Stalin, whom George Marshall described as “a rough son-of-a-bitch who made his way by murder and everything else.” But at 4 PM on November 30, 1943, near the close of their third plenary meeting, Churchill ..read more

Montgomery Tackles Overlord by Joseph Balkoski On New Year’s Day, 1944, the two most famous Englishmen of their day drove north toward the Atlas Mountains from Marrakesh, Morocco, for a picnic. Winston Churchill considered Marrakesh “the most lovely in the world” and wanted to share with Gen. Bernard Montgomery, late of the legendary Eighth Army, the breathtaking vistas of snowcapped mountains, azure skies, and bloated clouds that Churchill himself had often tried to capture on canvas. It was, Churchill wrote, “an oasis in the vast desert of human conflict,” and after lunch near a “dazzling st ..read more

Exercise Tiger by Joseph Balkoski In The Guns at Last Light, page 191, Rick Atkinson depicted the August 5, 1944, death of Rear Admiral Don Pardee Moon aboard his flagship Bayfield in Naples harbor. A steward “found the admiral, dressed in shorts and undershirt, sitting on the sofa with a .45 in his right hand, his eyes open, and a red worm of blood trickling from his ear. The spent bullet was found in the shower.” Moon’s suicide note pleaded, “The mind is gone… I am sick, so sick.” Just two months before, Moon had held command of “Force U,” designated in Overlord plans to convey the U.S. Arm ..read more

In the closing days of June 1776, British troops under General William Howe, having evacuated Boston, sailed into New York harbor. In substantial strength they embarked on Staten Island where they were soon reinforced by the additional fleets under Admiral Lord Howe and Sir Peter Parker. By August 12, the British army stood at 27,000 men, most of whom were disciplined veterans, while the Americans numbered approximately 17,000, practically all of whom were ill-equipped and inexperienced. It became clear to General Washington that within a short time a decisive engagement must be fought with th ..read more

On September 17, 1862, the bloodiest day of any American war occurred on the soil of the state of Maryland near the village of Sharpsburg and the meandering Antietam Creek not far from the border with present-day West Virginia. It was a day of total violence lasting from 6:00 AM in the morning when Hookers Corps attacked out of the North Woods and ended around 6:00 PM when Burnside’s final attack was stopped by A. P. Hills troops arriving from Harper’s Ferry to stave off a disastrous Confederate defeat. The 12-hour slugfest left 11,500 Confederate casualties and 12,900 Union casualties for a t ..read more

Overlord Security Measures by Joseph Balkoski In April 1944 the restaurant in Claridge’s, the renowned Mayfair hotel just blocks away from Ike’s London headquarters at 20 Grosvenor Square, was not a good spot for an American general to gossip about D-Day. At an April 18 party thrown for Red Cross nurses by the U.S. Army’s chief intelligence officer in Britain, Brigadier General Edwin Sibert, a Time reporter noted: “Cocktails were sipped”—perhaps in sufficient quantities to loosen the tongue of Major General Henry Miller, the head of Ninth Air Force’s Service Command. The 53-year-old Miller, n ..read more

By Joshua Gamma, Museum Curator, Maryland Museum of Military History If you are a Marylander of a certain age, you probably listened to Baltimore radio station WFBR at some point growing up, but you may not know that citizen soldiers in the Maryland National Guard (and one famous Coast Guardsmen) facilitated the early breakthroughs that gave WFBR the reputation as “Maryland’s Pioneer Broadcast Station.” This summer marks the 100th anniversary of the first radio broadcast of a public address by a U.S. president. From the unveiling of a Francis Scott Key monument at Fort McHenry on 14 June 1922 ..read more