The Battle of Carrizal: America's Worst Defeat in the Hunt for Pancho Villa
Captain Charles T. Boyd led his mounted troopers across the Mexican desert. He had been ordered to avoid a fight. But on June 21, 1916, outside Carrizal, Mexico, Boyd faced 400 Mexican federal troops blocking his path. Their commander, General Félix Uresti Gómez, warned him to turn back. Three months earlier, Pancho Villa had raided […]
The Battle of Kasserine Pass: The Humiliating WWII Defeat That Transformed the US Army
American soldiers dug foxholes into the ridgeline at Djebel Chambi. They had only arrived in North Africa a few weeks ago and faced light resistance from Vichy French troops. The infamous Afrika Korps under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had just launched a massive offensive the day prior. The Americans knew what was coming. They were […]
‘A Profound Debacle’: 5 Decades After US Defeat in Vietnam, Divisions Opened by War Are, if Anything, Even Wider
It’s been a half-century since the United States of America, until then undefeated in modern warfare, took its first “L.” The signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973 allowed then-President Richard Nixon to complete the drawdown of U.S. troops from Vietnam, ending the so-called “police action” that transmogrified into a quagmire that cost 58,220 […]