Military History

My father was Royal Air Force Corporal Leonard John Henry Westbrook, and he was part of the No. 107 Maintenance Unit, stationed at RAF Kasfa-reet in Egypt. That air base was formed in late 1940 and originally called Geneifa. My father was stationed there, I believe, from 1941 to ’43, and he was a crane driver specializing in recovery and rescue of vehicles as well as planes. He drove most vehicles, from cranes to Queen Mary trailers, and his hunting grounds, so to speak, were Cairo, Sweetwater Canal, Alexandria, Port Taw-fiq, Ismailia, Port Said, Suez and probably other places along the northern shores of Egypt and inland. He took pictures of recovery operations of vehicles and planes, of general life in Egypt as well as of the air base, buildings…

On June 18, 1965, in the wake of a successful raid on a Viet Cong command post, U.S. Army Captain Paris Davis’ assault force of three fellow Green Berets and a company of South Vietnamese troops were counterattacked by enemy forces. At one point, with men wounded and dying all around him, the 5th Special Forces Group team commander was ordered to evacuate the battlefield. “Sir, I’m just not going to leave,” Davis told his superior officer. “I still have an American out there.” Throughout the 19-hour battle Davis kept in the fight. Under intense enemy fire and shrugging off his own wounds, he organized the defense of his position, dragged fellow Green Berets to safety and refused to leave until all friendly forces had been recovered or evacuated. Among…

In 1923 the U.S. Army Air Service at McCook Field in Dayton, Ohio, put a few biplane engines and other machinery on public display. That modest effort launched the genesis of the present-day National Museum of the United States Air Force, whose exhibit space at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base spans more than 1.1 million square feet and features some 350 vehicles and missiles and thousands of artifacts. The world’s oldest and largest military aviation museum is marking its centennial with a series of exhibits, including ones honoring its history, enlisted personnel and search-and-rescue operations.…

“In war anything is better than indecision,” Ulysses S. Grant once told an aide. “We must decide. If I am wrong, we shall soon find it out and can do the other thing. But not to decide wastes both time and money and may ruin everything.” As commanding general of the Union Army during the Civil War, Grant made key decisions that brought the North victory at a precarious time in the nation’s history. As part of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress has recognized the decisive commander and 18th U.S. president with a posthumous promotion to General of the Armies, an honor conferred only three times. Grant shares the Army’s highest rank with George Washington and John J. Pershing.…

June 1, 1776 Patrick “Bulldog” Ferguson (P. 64), a Scottish officer in the British army, demonstrates his breech-loading namesake rifle. He earns his “dogged” nickname for his reckless courage and determination during the American Revolutionary War. June 19, 1948 Officials in Soviet-occupied Germany initiate a systematic blockade of all roads, rivers and rail routes to isolated West Berlin, presaging the start of the Berlin Airlift (P. 24). June 30, 1722 Jean-Baptiste Hertel de Rouville dies on Île-Royale, New France (present-day Cape Breton Island, Canada). In 1704 Hertel led French and Indian troops 300 miles on the bloody Deerfield Raid (P. 48) in the English Province of Massachusetts Bay. July 18, 1868 German-American painter Emanuel Leutze—famed for his moving, albeit inaccurate, Washington Crossing the Delaware—dies in Washington, D.C. His and other…

Much like contemporary soldiers, Romans didn’t enlist to line their pockets. Proof comes in the form of a legionary’s papyrus paycheck dating back nearly 2,000 years. Israeli archaeologists recently turned up the relic at the ruins of Masada (above), site of the infamous ad 72–73 siege against Jewish rebels that ended with the latter’s mass suicide. According to the pay stub—one of only three known to survive from the ancient world—the legionary earned next to nothing after deductions for a tunic, footwear and fodder for his horse. The find lends new credence to verses from the 1917 World War I ditty: “You’ll never get rich by digging a ditch / You’re in the Army now.”…