The Battle of Hamel: Australian Soldiers Taught American Doughboys to Fight Germans in WWI
At 3:10 a.m. on July 4, 1918, American soldiers climbed out of their trenches in northern France. Most had never seen combat before. They had arrived in Europe weeks earlier. Now they were attacking German positions alongside battle-hardened Australian troops and were under the command of an Australian general. For the first time in American […]
Operation Cowboy: When U.S. Cavalry and Germans Fought Together in WWII to Save 1,200 Horses from the Soviets
American soldiers and German troops fought Waffen-SS units together in Czechoslovakia on April 28, 1945. The mission was to rescue some of Europe’s rarest horses before the Soviet Red Army arrived. Operation Cowboy stands as one of only two documented occasions during World War II when U.S. and Wehrmacht forces fought alongside each other against […]
Dieppe: The Army Rangers’ First Fight Against the Germans in WWII
The U.S. Army Rangers of World War II were brand new in the summer of 1942. Though the “Ranger” name had roots in America’s colonial wars, the modern battalions were created in Britain at the urging of Gen. George Marshall and Maj. Gen. Lucian Truscott, who saw how Britain’s Commandos had tackled Axis positions with […]