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. Stephen Ambrose tells Easy Company’s story through the words of the men who served in it.
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 take military action to free their soldiers. William Fowler’s “Operation Barras” tells the story of what happened.
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 what happened at Dien Bien Phu and why in “Hell in a Very Small Place”.
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”.
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. Fighting continued in Stalingrad but now winter was closing in. Starvation and the cold exacted a toll as harsh as the Soviets. Despite Hitler’s attempts to resupply the Sixth Army by air and his exhortations to fight to the last, what was left of the German Sixth Army surrendered in late January 1943. There was no way for Hitler and his propagandists to spin this crushing defeat. Antony Beevor tells the story of history’s largest land battle and arguably the turning point of World War Two in “Stalingrad.”
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 what happened.
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 troops and their ships could force through the strait, they could threaten the Turkish capital. So that’s what they tried to do. The Australian author Les Carlyon tells the story of what happened in “Gallipoli”.
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.”
Adolf Hitler ruled Germany from 1933 until he committed suicide in 1945. Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. Between 1933 and 1945 these two brutal dictators oversaw the killing of 14 million noncombatants in the region comprised of the Baltic states, Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine. Timothy Snyder explains how and why the NAZI and Soviet regimes inflected such suffering in Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.
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.
Argentina seized the Falkland Islands on April 2nd, 1982. The British government deployed a naval task force on April 5th to take them back. As the force steadily converged from 8,000 miles away, the rest of the world wondered if the two countries would really fight over the remote and sparsely populated islands. They did. By the time it was over in June, 3,336 people had been killed or wounded; sixteen ships sunk; and 134 aircraft were lost. The Falklands campaign is considered by many as the first technologically modern war. In some ways it is a microcosm of what major fleet actions could look like. Martin Middlebrook’s “Operation Corporate” gives us the details of what happened.
The Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, was created between North Vietnam and SouthVietnam in 1954. The DMZ was supposed to be a temporary buffer zone thatwould keep previously hostile forces away from each other. When the plannedunification of North Vietnam and South Vietnam stalled out, the DMZ stayed onwith an air of permanence. It was four to six miles wide and ran about 47 milesfrom the coast to the border with Laos. Don’t believe the label though. The DMZwas anything but demilitarized. It’s here in the DMZ that 3rd Battalion, 26thMarines got into the fight for its life in September 1967. In four days 3/26 lost 56killed and 290 wounded.
Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck commanded Imperial German military forces throughout the East Africa campaign during World War One. His mostly African army of about 14,000 attacked, checked, and evaded much larger Allied forces for over four years. When the war ended, Lettow-Vorbeck surrendered and returned undefeated to a hero’s welcome in Germany. This book is how he remembers the experience.
By the middle of 1942 the United States had recovered from the shock of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and the early defeats of Japan expanding into the Pacific. Now it started parallel offensives north and south of the equator. By the middle of 1944 the United States had retaken the Marianas Islands and was flowing over Japan’s empire like “a conquering tide.”
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 patrol leader and tells the story of what happened.
In November 1965, roughly 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry flew by helicopter into Vietnam’s Ia Drang Valley. They were attacked by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers almost immediately. Three days later, one of their sister battalions was unexpectedly attacked a short distance away. The U.S. lost 237 killed. These two fights at landing zones X-Ray and Albany came on the front end of America’s build up in Vietnam and were a portent of things to come. The two authors of this book were there. One, Hal Moore, commanded the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry and the other, Joe Galloway, was a war correspondent.
Ernst Junger was an infantry officer in the German army throughout World War One. He served in the trenches for close to four years, was wounded fourteen times, and was the youngest recipient of Germany’s highest award, Pour le Mérite. Somehow, he lived. Storm of Steel is his memoir. It was first published in 1920.
After the United States invaded Iraq and removed Saddam Hussein from power in spring 2003, the city of Fallujah became a hotbed of unrest. In March 2004, four American contractors were brutally murdered and mutilated there. President Bush ordered an attack to subdue the city. This attack was called off early after it sparked a media and political firestorm. With U.S. forces out of it, Fallujah became the red-hot epicenter of Iraq’s Sunni insurgency and the U.S. recommitted to taking it through large-scale offensive action. This operation, known as Phantom Fury, lasted from through November and December 2004. It was America’s bloodiest battle of the Iraq war. Bing West tells the story in “No True Glory.” We are joined in this episode by Mr. Pat Carroll who spent close to four years in Iraq working in or dealing with Fallujah
The German navy refitted the merchant ship Atlantis with weapons hidden in phony deckhouses and side structures. Using its disguise as a freighter, the Atlantis stalked the ocean for over 600 days in 1940 and 1941. She captured or sank 22 ships until cornered and sunk by the British. Bernhard Rogge was the captain of the Atlantis throughout its service. This is the story of what he and his crew did.
John Paul Vann was a career Army officer. He served in combat during the Korean War and was an advisor to the South Vietnamese Army’s IV Corps fighting the Viet Cong for a year from 1962 to 1963. Vann retired from the Army a few months after completed that assignment. He returned to Vietnam in 1965. First he worked as an official for the Agency for International Development. Vann was then made the Deputy for Civil Operations and Rural Development Support for the Third Corps Tactical Zone in the twelve provinces north and west of Saigon. In 1968 he was assigned to the same position for the Fourth Corps Tactical Zone in the provinces south of Saigon. Vann died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam on June 16, 1972. During his years in Vietnam, he developed some strong views about what the United States was doing versus what he thought it should be doing.