History of War

At around 8.45am, heavily laden Royal Marines of 41 Commando arrive on Sword beach, the eastern-most of the Allied landing zones on D-Day. The British at Sword beach were joined by 176 Free French commandos led by Philippe Kieffer. They were the only

“Mush” is an enormous British airborne training exercise, which is spread over three days across Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. The vast majority of the paratroopers are unaware that this is the preparation for Operation Overlord. “Tong

The British 6th Airborne Division had the job of securing and holding the British left flank. To accomplish this, they were to be dropped by parachute and glider to the northeast of Caen. Their target was the wooded ridge in the Bois de Bavent area,

Gale joined the British Army at the outbreak of WWI and was commissioned as an officer in 1915. He saw heavy action the Western Front in machine gun companies during the battles of the Somme and Passchendaele and was awarded the Military Cross in ear

D-Day was the culmination of years of planning and the Allied aim was nothing less than the liberation of occupied France, the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of the Second World War. Of the 13 participating Allied nations, the landings were led b

Gold was the central-most Allied beach. After the beachhead was secured, the British aim was to link up with the Americans at Omaha and Canadians at Juno while also capturing Bayeux. Soldiers began landing at 7.25am but high winds made disembarkation

For the 75th anniversary of the D-Day landings, the Royal British Legion and Normandy Memorial Trust are ensuring that the veterans and fallen of the Normandy Campaign are suitably honoured. As Britain’s leading armed forces charity, the British Legi

Sword was the easternmost beach on D-Day and stretched from Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer to Ouistreham. It was also the nearest beach to Caen and the responsibility for storming the sands fell to the British 3rd Infantry Division. The invading forces landed a

On Monday, 22 May 1944, 16 P-47 Thunderbolt fighter planes of the 61st Fighter Squadron were speeding towards the north German city of Bremen led by Lieutenant-Colonel Francis “Gaby” Gabreski, one of the originals of Colonel Hub Zemke’s 56th Fighter

With the cannonade in full voice, those aboard the invasion fleet lined the gunwales to watch an enemy shore be pummelled by a cascade of shells, bombs, and rockets. It seemed impossible anyone could survive. From their perch aboard heavy cruiser Tus

At 10.49pm on 5 June, 1944, seven RAF Douglas C-47 Dakotas took off from RAF Down Ampney. These were the first of 1,067 Dakota or Skytrain (USAAF C-47s) sorties over the following “day of days” – the tip of the spear for the Allied liberation of Occu

At the end of May 1944, the headquarters of the Luftwaffe’s signals intelligence regiment at Asnières, outside Paris, issued a direct invasion warning, “All preparations by the British and American air forces are complete. Two British and two America

He was 56 years old and kept knowledge of a heart condition to himself. He walked with a cane due to an old wound suffered during World War I and was recovering from a bout with pneumonia. But Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., son of the fam

As the first rays of dawn appeared over the Vorskla Valley in the Cossack Hetmanate at 4.00am on 27 June 1709, Russian cannoneers in a south-facing redoubt fired their gun into a blurry mass of Swedish infantry advancing towards them. The shots carri

A battalion of Russian fusiliers of the Belgorodsky Regiment put up a heroic defence of the triangular-shaped third redoubt astride the main road leading north from Poltava. One thousand Russian musketeers in the third redoubt stalled the attack of t

The camera sweeps across the chaos of battle. Volleys of arrows are unloosed. Horses roll on the ground in agony. Newsreel type headings flash across the screen. This is “the war of the century”, and “God is on our side”. We are transported back to 1

The Highlanders’ Museum is displaying 16 original Victoria Crosses from its huge collections for the first timeThe Highlanders’ Museum near Inverness is the largest regimental museum in the Highlands and the second largest in Scotland. It is located

Director: Trevor Nunn UK Cinematic release: Out Now The naivety of youth has a price – as Hitler’s private secretary Traudl Junge came to face in the documentary Blind Spot. As it turns out, youthful ignorance, especially in times of war, is not an e

Author: Sonia Purnell Publisher: Virago, 2019 Price: £20.00 The title of this book belies the very real importance of its remarkable protagonist, the wartime secret agent Virginia Hall. Though the claim that Hall was the Second World War’s “most dan

Author James Holland Publisher Corgi Books, 2019 Price £9.99 During the third week of February 1944, the combined Allied air forces launched their first-ever round-the-clock bomber offensive against Germany. Code-named Operation Argument, this monum

Although he was, and remains, a deeply controversial figure, Oliver Cromwell was indisputably one of England’s greatest generals. As the most influential commander of the New Model Army, Cromwell was instrumental in Parliament’s victory over Charles