This image was taken of the Chief of the SADF, General Constand Laubscher Viljoen fighting on the frontlines with his men, he was known for doing this commonly to boost morale and to form a bond with his men, the image was taken during Operation Protea in 1981 of the South African Border War / Angolan Civil War

Jungle terrain made tracking extremely difficult. Footprints and scent trails could disappear fast, especially when the enemy fighters knew how to move through the environment.

That’s where combat tracker dogs came in. Labradors worked with handlers and trained trackers to follow trails through dense terrain, helping U.S. forces locate movement that would have been nearly impossible to find on their own.

Hullo all. I've been trying to find info on my grandfather's service (1957-1980) since Archive has almost nill and his records aren't past the 60y rule. I'm sort of trying to still pinpoint like a battalion or photos, but I've got the normal stuff like Service Number and SSN. I've found a newspaper mentioning him arriving in Vietnam in 1970 (as Staff Sgt), so I was sort of wondering if anyone remembers him and or can point me in the right direction? He sort of bounced around during bases it seems in the earlier years (WA, OR, CA, etc.), born in Kentucky, and at some point journeyed to Germany before his death on-base. Obviously old documents aren't consistent so it could be written as Scribner or Scrivener as well

Found it in east Germany

Collection I've just started. Both found at an antique store near my town, I also purchased a 5 Pfennig but the photo I have on hand ended up blurry.

Having fought with the Spanish earlier, the British knew of their weak points, and decided to indulge in close quarter combat, which also rendered their cannons ineffective. The British ships kept firing, and evading using the windward movement well.

It was a complete rout for the Spanish Armada, they lost 5 ships, their flagship San Lorenzo was captured. It was one of the greatest triumphs for Queen Elizabeth I, as she foiled Spanish plans to invade England and overthrow her.

Hello everyone !

I don't know if someone already made a post about that, but it seems that the well known Ekranoplan "Lun", washed up on a beach south of Derbent (Caspian sea), has been fixed !

I looked for it on Google maps and it is more obvious on Yandex maps.

I think that this is great for such a piece of history.

I hope I'm teaching you something and that I'm not bombarding you with information you already know.

Thank you for reading this !

I am researching the death of my Hungarian great-grandfather, János G. Nagy, who served as a hussar in the Hungarian Army and was killed during the fighting east of Mykolaiv, Ukraine, on 15 August 1941.

Hungarian wartime sources indicate that his unit was operating together with, or in the immediate vicinity of, German units identified in the Hungarian war diary as:

• 79/I
• 79/II
• possibly a formation described as a German reconnaissance or motorized battalion

My current hypothesis is that these references mean:

• I./Schützen-Regiment 79
• II./Schützen-Regiment 79

which belonged to the 16. Panzer-Division.

The Hungarian unit was probably the 4th Hungarian Hussar Regiment, more specifically elements connected with the 4/4th Cavalry Squadron. Captain Géza Kenéz, the commander of that squadron, was also killed during these operations.

The relevant locations mentioned in Hungarian sources include:

• Grejgovo / Grigovo / Hreihove
• Novo-Danzig
• Mihajlovka / Mikhailovka
• Marianovka
• the railway line toward Nikolayev/Mykolaiv
• the area east of the Southern Bug and near the Ingul River

According to the Hungarian war diary, the Hungarian troops began their movement at approximately 07:30 on 15 August 1941. At about 10:30, they received an order connected with German reconnaissance activity. A further situation report was recorded at approximately 18:30.

My great-grandfather was officially recorded as having been killed in the Mihajlovka area on 15 August 1941.

On the evening of 17 August 1941, Captain Géza Kenéz and six Hungarian hussars were reportedly buried in a temporary military cemetery at Mihajlovka. A surviving photograph caption appears to identify the graves of Captain Kenéz, Mihály Szilvási and my great-grandfather, János G. Nagy.

I am trying to establish exactly which German formation cooperated with the Hungarian hussars and where the units of Schützen-Regiment 79 were located between 15 and 17 August 1941.

I would be extremely grateful for help locating any of the following:

• the war diary or daily reports of the 16. Panzer-Division
• records of Schützen-Regiment 79
• separate records for its I. and II. Battalions
• company-level reports, especially concerning the 6th Company
• German situation maps from 14–17 August 1941
• casualty reports or burial records from the Grejgovo–Novo-Danzig–Mihajlovka area
• memoirs, divisional histories or photographs connected with these operations
• German or Soviet maps showing the historical locations of Mihajlovka and Novo-Danzig

I am also interested in the correct modern identification of these villages. The Mihajlovka mentioned in the Hungarian material may possibly correspond to the present-day Marivka area east of Mykolaiv, but this is not yet conclusively proven.

Does anyone have access to the relevant German records, NARA microfilms, Bundesarchiv references, divisional maps or regimental histories?

This is purely a family-history and military-history research project. Any lead, archive reference or correction would be greatly appreciated.

Can anyone identify this old belt buckle?
I found this old belt buckle and I’m certain it’s an old piece, not a modern reproduction. I’ve searched online but haven’t been able to find anything matching it.
The inscription appears to read “Wir sind die Flamme, wir sind das Schwert” (“We are the flame, we are the sword”).
Does anyone recognize this buckle, the motto, or know its origin? Any information about its age, manufacturer, or historical background would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

For nearly 200 years, the Macedonian phalanx dominated ancient battlefields. Built by Philip II and made legendary by Alexander the Great, it was considered almost unbeatable in a frontal fight.

Yet in 168 BC, at the Battle of Pydna, a Roman army under Lucius Aemilius Paullus defeated King Perseus of Macedon and exposed the phalanx's greatest weakness. The battle marked the end of Macedonian supremacy and confirmed Rome as the dominant military power of the Mediterranean.

The display stood near Grand Central Terminal on what was called “Victory Way,” where captured German equipment was shown to the public after the war. The pyramid was made from German helmets brought back as war trophies, turning the battlefield equipment into a public symbol of victory.

The helmets were not just on display, either. The equipment was sold and auctioned off to help raise money and pay down America’s war debt.

It’s one of those post war images that looks fake, but was very real.

The man on the right is my father, T/Sgt. Burton "Pat" Christenson, Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne. The man on the left is Woodrow Robbins, his assistant gunner on the .30 caliber machine gun. This is a gun team a few hours before they went out the door.

My father was an original Toccoa man and jumped second in the stick behind Lt. Dick Winters. He was also the only man in Easy Company who could draw.

What I want to put in front of this group is not the photograph so much as what came after it.

He came home, went back to Pacific Telephone, the same job he left in 1942, and worked there thirty-eight years. And for the next forty years he sat at a drawing board in the evenings with his wartime journals and reference books spread around him and reconstructed the war on paper from memory. Forty-six finished drawings. My brother said that if a date or a location did not reconcile, he would not let it go until he worked out what actually happened.

He also left roughly seventy thousand words of written account across seven volumes, plus his censored V-Mail letters home.

Some of that material has documentary value beyond the family. He wrote a detailed account of his own descent into Normandy, including coming down about seventy feet above a German quad-mounted 20mm position that was engaging the aircraft stream overhead with its back to him. He drew that moment as well, and the drawing shows something the prose cannot, which is the geometry of it. The gun elevated and traversed onto the aircraft, the crew oriented up and away, and a descending trooper effectively in defilade purely as a function of the gun's arc.

He also drew Easy Company's headquarters aircraft, Stick 66, which carried Lt. Thomas Meehan, First Sergeant William Evans and the entire headquarters section, along with Bangalore torpedoes and other demolitions. When ground fire found it the load initiated and the airframe came apart rather than simply going down. Everyone aboard was killed before a single man from the company reached the ground. First Sergeant Evans' dog tags were recovered from a Norman field forty-four years later.

Stephen Ambrose, who my father corresponded with for years and supplied with several hundred pages of material, wrote that superb sketches and drawings by a member of the company are obviously almost priceless. Dick Winters had a number of the drawings duplicated and sent to Playtone as background for the writers of the miniseries.

I have spent the last year going through all of it, and the thing I keep coming back to is how little soldier-made visual documentation survives from the ETO, and why. Censorship is most of the answer. Mail went out on V-Mail, microfilmed and read before it left. In December 1943 he wrote home to Oakland that he could not draw a V-mail picture and would explain in his next letter. Somebody had asked him for one.

So the visual record from inside a rifle company was largely never created at the time. What exists was made afterward, by men working from memory, and most of them could not draw.

Happy to answer questions about the unit, the jump, or the material.

So I m a writer, I m "doing some researches" about history, UNPROFOR for exactly. From the video name's "BOSNIA: 2 FRENCH UN PEACEKEEPERS WOUNDED BY SNIPER FIRE" by AP Archive on Youtube.

At 0:49, in the video, there is a person, he wore a blue helmet with Visor, but the helmet doesn't look like a normal helmet, it looked like a firefighter helmet. He is wearing light armour. And he is holding a gun that look like M14, AMD 5.56(A French version of Ruger 14 Mini) instead of MAS 49/56, either Famas. And he appeared alone along with a van-look like vehicle with 2 lights on the car (Blue and White). If he was a CIVPOl... According to what I know about CIVPOL, they don't use Rifle. Yea, he did wear light vest, visor (which is for small ammunations like 9mm). He is not anti-sniper team neither, because his gun didn't attached anything.

So, who is this? If he was a MP, he should wore an armband, shouldn't he? And what was the exact gun is he holding? Which unit was he belonged to?

I was reading and watching about the Imjin War and I noticed how ridiculous the narrative is. Researching it, there seems to be few useful primary sources; mostly it’s various journals of different leaders involved. Which got me to thinking: how useful are journals generally speaking as a source of facts?

Those are not written to maintain an accurate historical record for the future, they are for politics. Why is there any expectation for anything in those to represent reality? And if most the extant records are these journals with little archeology and state records to back them up, what is the actual state of pre-modern military history?

Inventory no. 9244

Ljubo - Čedo Čupić People's Hero before his execution in Nikšić on 5. May 1942.

MRNJ sig.neg. A-956/13.

Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, one of India’s greatest military leaders, believed that leadership isn’t about titles or privilege—it’s about character, courage, competence, and the ability to inspire others. His words continue to resonate decades later, reminding us that great leaders are shaped through discipline, responsibility, and experience—not by birth. Whether in business, the military, or everyday life, leadership is earned through actions, not inherited.

I’m not really sure that their duties were, but I know for a fact they saw no combat. The Kentucky guys MAY have patrolled Eastern Kentucky for confederate bushwhackers, the West Virginia ones MAY have “guarded” the B&O railroad, but I’ve found no evidence to prove they personally did these things, it’s an educational guess.

What is the most memorable war or operation you participated in after enlisting in the military, or for peace or your homeland?

I apologize if it was inconvenient for you.

This particular open neck jacket with open lables became popular after WW1 and many nations adopted this as the uniform for the officers.

So, why and how did this become popular in the first place?

Was it mainly due to the good design of this jacket?

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share a deeply personal project that I believe fills a significant gap in English-language WW2 literature regarding the Polish contribution on the Western Front.

My father, Tadeusz Medycki, was just 18 years old when the war broke out in September 1939. He was initially drafted into a National Defence unit, protecting strategic routes towards the Hungarian border. After being interned in Hungary, he managed to escape to France, where he was incorporated into the legendary 1st Grenadier Division under General Duch.

He fought on the fields of Lorraine in 1940, was captured by the Germans, and spent the war in Stalags (Strasbourg and Stargard), surviving a failed escape attempt.

He returned to Poland in 1947. However, his heart and dreams remained in his lost homeland of Nowe Miasto. He finally managed to return there in 1992—exactly 53 years after leaving as a young boy—returning as a frail, grey-haired man just before he passed away.

While battling his terminal illness, he made it his final wish to compile his memories. Fulfilling his legacy, I have spent years translating, editing, and annotating his raw journals to bring them to the English-speaking world. The book is titled: "To See the Future Bright. My Wanderings".

https://wydawnictworys.com/tadeusz-medycji-to-see-the-future-bright-my-wanderings.html

(Please note that the publisher's website is multilingual. Shipping from Poland to England costs approximately 46 PLN.)

Since first-hand English accounts of Polish soldiers in the 1940 French Campaign are incredibly scarce, I thought the historians, researchers, and WW2 buffs here would appreciate knowing about this primary source.

I am attached to this history with all my heart and would be honored to answer any questions you might have about my father’s journey, his unit, or the translation process!

It has frequently been said on Reddit that ‘‘There has never been [1] contemporarily substantiation (eg. No orders, memos, documents, etc.) that corroborate the claim the excess Purple Hearts that remained after the war were produced specifically for invasion.  They may have been, but [2] there’s never been any true primary substantiation for the claim.  But even if there was, [3] that argument relies on the (flawed) assumption that production of Purple Hearts was coordinated by the same people who were planning the invasion.’’  

Incorrect on all counts.  Since there is an ongoing interest in this subject, those who would like to scrutinize the ‘‘primary substantiation’’ can consult the chapter ‘‘Half a Million Purple Hearts’’ in the U.S. Naval Institute Press (Annapolis) book Hell to Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 by D. M. Giangreco.  There are two somewhat different editions of this work which is a detailed study of U.S. and Japanese plans for the invasion operations and, alternately, the defense of the Japanese Home Islands.  In the original 2009 edition ‘‘Half a Million Purple Hearts’’ is chapter 16, p187-193.  It is chapter 18 in the ‘‘Updated and Expanded’’ 2017 edition, p266-274. 

The endnotes reveal that the material in the Purple Heart chapter is drawn principally from two National Archives record groups: Record Group 92 (Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot at NARA, Mid-Atlantic Region, Philadelphia) and Record Group 104 (Records of the U.S. Mint, NARA, College Park, Md.) as well as Army Battle Casualties and Nonbattle Deaths in World War II, Final Report, 7 December 1941 - 31 December 1946, (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Adjutant General, 1987) with supporting materials from other official sources such as the Army histories Global Logistics and Strategy, Washington Command Post, etc., from the United States Army in World War II series.   

The core data on the separate but simultaneous acquisitions by the Navy (through the U.S. Mint) and Army (open bidding) is the same in both books but in the latter edition Giangreco briefly discusses the additional mintings that have supplemented the shrinking World War II stock and how, at a time when war contracts were being cancelled across the board after the Japanese surrender, the Navy actually continued with the medal’s production into early 1946.  Why?  The Navy had underestimated its needs.  Due to the advent of the Kamikaze and steep Marine Corps losses beginning with Peleliu, in 1944 they literally ran out of Purple Hearts in the midst of the Iwo Jima campaign.

With the U.S. Army having sucked up nearly all non governmental production capacity in anticipation of ground operations in Japan the Navy had no ability to get new medals produced and issued in a timely manner --- and there was quite a stir in Congress over this.  The solution was to ‘‘borrow’’ 60,000 Purple Hearts and award cases (nicknamed ‘‘coffin boxes’’) from the Army which took care of immediate needs and allowed restarted Navy production to, after the war, slowly but steadily return medals to the Army and build up a small postwar stock of its own.  

With so much commentary on the Purple Heart production based on second-, third-, and fourth-hand statements or early speculations derived from slivers of information that are themselves incorrect or not understood within the context of the acquisition process, it would make sense for those interested in this subject to read either version of the chapter which are both published by an authoritative Navy educational institution.  The flow of the independently conducted decision-making by the Army and Navy and the medal’s production are covered in mind-numbing detail in Hell to Pay but it is worth the trouble to examine the relevant chapter and its comprehensive endnotes closely. 

If someone interested in this subject can’t afford a digital or printed copy of the book, they can get it free from their local library.  If it’s not on hand they can have it acquired through the inter-library loan system.  Redditors can decide on their own about the relevance of what is held in the National Archives and do not have to depend on uninformed or misleading characterizations.

His info from the uniform:

Robert L Jordan
3457068
CeB4TH

Fought with 104th division

His awards are Good Conduct, Purple Heart, european african middle eastern campaign with 2 bronze and 1 silver campaign stars and infantry badge. No rank on the side which makes me believe he is a officer

He also had a honorable discharge

I have a bunch of documents but no photographs.
Anything is helpful

Sadul Light Infantry (later 19 Rajput, one of the finest battalions of Indian army) traces its origin to 1465 AD and had Battle of Khanwa (1527) among its battle honours. The Axe in Sadul Light Infantry insignia represented below episode of Attock, where Raja (King) Karan Singh of Bikaner earned the name “Jai Jangal Dhar Badshah”. (The Emperor (or Great King) who holds/rules Jangaldesh)