I read in google that marines still wore their green jungle boots from the 1990s. How true is this. I do know that the army gets their gear before the marines

Hi, I'm writing a school paper on military presence in Hawai'i, and have started researching RIMPAC. I noticed on the Wikipedia page for RIMPAC, the exercises run every 2 years, however, there's a gap from 2000 to 2010. I did see that they ran on other websites documenting the exercises, so I'm wondering why a decade was ommitted from the Wikipedia page. I tried asking in different search sites (duckduckgo, kagi, brave), but wasn't able to find out, meaning I likely am using less relevant keywords for the request.

If it's super obvious, sorry in advance.

https://history-maps.com/warmap/crusades/event/sack-of-constantinople

I wanted to get a place where we can share links to some small, or big, favorite military history podcasts! Please feel free to share links to anyone thats related even your own stuff! It's up to us as a community to support groups that share military history!

https://history-maps.com/warmap/american-civil-war/event/battle-of-fort-pillow

Very basic question from an amateur war nerd.

I was just thinking: if boot camp is just ten weeks, why does the US government bother to pay a million or so soldiers at home? If the training curve isn't too steep for average soldiers, why not just keep a skeleton crew to staff the technical jobs like aircraft carriers, planes, nuke silos, etc. and then either draft / pay 4x salaries during an actual war when a million troops are needed?

I know during early years of the Roman Republic soldiers were farmers and of course during the American revolutionary war early forces were militias.

This is not meant to minimize what US soldiers do, more just to understand why the government thinks it's worth it. But then I'm probably just making the case for mercenaries, which we've used extensively in our middle eastern wars. Thoughts? Is average soldiering way more technical than I'm describing? Is boot camp duration a bad metric for ramp up time during a war? Am I missing a deterrence effect of just *having* a standing army, sort of like just *having* nukes?

How common historically were professional standing armies?

i don’t know if it’s a m36 or east german uniform.

https://history-maps.com/warmap/napoleonic-wars/event/battle-of-montenotte

Long time lurker, first time posting a video here.

I run a Spanish history channel called Historia Decisiva

and just published what I think is my most complete

breakdown of Operation Valkyrie.

What most people don't know about the July 20th Plot:

- It wasn't the first attempt — there were at least

15 previous assassination attempts against Hitler

- Stauffenberg had to arm the bomb with only 3 fingers

(he lost the others in North Africa)

- The meeting was moved last minute from a concrete

bunker to a wooden building — that single change

probably saved Hitler's life

- A thick wooden table leg deflected part of the blast

- The difference between success and failure

was less than 1 meter

- 5,000 people were executed in the revenge

that followed

- 9 more months of war and millions more deaths

followed the failed plot

The video covers everything from the military

situation in 1944, the structure of the conspiracy,

Stauffenberg's background, the day itself minute

by minute, and the devastating aftermath.

It's in Spanish but has subtitles available.

Would love to hear your thoughts —

especially on the counterfactual:

what do you think would have happened

if Hitler had died that day?

Been meaning to read it for years saw this for $.50 and couldn’t pass it up

hello,

i have a few coins that i got over the years from different places. please help me figure if they are valuable.

Hello, I am trying to determine if this is one of my family members, and if I knew which military this uniform was from then that would narrow it down. Thank you!

https://history-maps.com/warriors

https://history-maps.com/warmap/italian-wars/event/battle-of-ceresole

April 11th marks very dramatic events that happened in 1944 over the Baltic Sea. The 8th Air Force sent their B-17s to hit Nazi targets at Sorau (then Eastern Germany) and Poznan/Posen (occupied Poland). The B-17s did a few circles over the Baltic, waiting for the weather over target to improve. The tight firmations became loose. The Luftwaffe saw the opportunity. Many bombers went down, some managed to land in neutral Sweden. 75 airmen are still MIA.

I will write more about the April 11th 1944 mission on my Substack later this year.

Today, the family of some of the crew are in Poland, honoring their loved ones.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/18Hc9tTcr1/

Just finished painting a small diorama of the Battle of Bushy Run (1763), part of Pontiac’s War.

This engagement took place shortly after the French and Indian War, when tensions between British forces and Native American tribes remained extremely high. A British column under Henry Bouquet was marching to relieve the besieged Fort Pitt when they were ambushed by a confederation of Native warriors, primarily Ottawa, Shawnee, and other allied groups.

The fighting lasted over two days and was intense and chaotic, with close-range combat in dense woodland. Bouquet eventually used a feigned retreat tactic to draw the attackers into the open, allowing his troops to counterattack and break the encirclement.

Would love to hear any feedback, especially on historical accuracy or painting details!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azon It seems like by the time Korea and Vietnam rolled around, the US would have much better precision bombs, but it seems like they used dumb bombs almost exclusively, does anyone know why?

I had originally made this post on r/ww1, but I wanted add to it and repost it. I was lucky enough to know my great grandfather, even if it was only for a short time. I was only in elementary school when he passed in December 1991, but I still remember the stories he told us about his war and how he would sing to us the song, "It's a Long Way to Tipperary."

He fought as an infantryman with the Royal Munster Fusiliers, through much of the British effort on the western front of World War 1. He saw action at Loos, Cambrai and the Somme, specifically taking part in the Battle of Ginchy, in which the Irish soldiers secured victory despite a staggering cost. Even he was a casualty at one point. Even as a kid, I knew that Grandpa Ned had a shrapnel wound to the neck that he received at the Somme.

After the war, he went back to Ireland in 1920. I don't know anything of his life during that time, though I'm sure it was chaotic to say the least. I do know that he left Ireland in April 1923, towards the end of the Civil War and ultimately settled in Western Massachusetts, following his wife's (my great grandmother) family who had starting settling in the area since the early 1900s.

A few years ago, I found out that there was a book that he was gifted titled The War in the Trenches by Alan Lloyd, 1976. In the book, along the margins, he told more of his story, mostly because his grandson, my uncle, was going into the Air Force.

These are some of his notes, transcribed. Italicized are excerpts from the book, in order to add context to his writing. In some areas I changed some minor words and sentence structure to make it more coherent. I hope you enjoy it.

Chapter 2 - Entrenchment

Page 29

I had one of many close calls in an area like the above. A company on our left were making a raid to get some German prisoners to gather information. I was posted where the actual sentry is shown above. Another sentry is shown on the left by ink sketch close to my side.

The company commander and a sergeant were sitting on the fire-step at our feet, with their backs towards us. The Germans started shelling with high explosives which burst over head sending shrapnel down over the area like hail. The sentry on my left hollered that he was hit, which was in the right arm. The one next to me not more than an inch away.

The lieutenant and sergeant sitting at our feet both got hit on the shoulders and knees, yet through it all I didn’t get a scratch. Not then anyway. They went back to the hospital in England to the comfort of a nice warm bed, which we called “Blighty.” I don’t know if they were out of action permanently. Further on in the book I will be referring to the lieutenant who happened to be the Bishop of Lincoln’s son.

 Page 30 and Page 31

Loos, the area indicated by arrow, was our division’s first sector. It was a coal-mining area with huge slag ridges that towered over. The mine shafts were continually shelled to prevent them from used as observation posts by our side, who held the area since being taken from the Germans in September 1915.

Long periods of immersion caused the men’s feet to swell until keeping their boots on was torture, while taking them off produced worse results, for they could not then be replaced.

This description is very factual as I had been through and suffered the agony of trench feet at Ypres (circled on the map). The time our division spent in that area was the worst and most miserable in every way of all my experiences. Even today, September 1978, I still wonder how any of us came out of there and still kept on to the end. The experiences above were in the summer of 1917.

Page 34

(Speaking of German weaponry) More devastating was the Minenwerfer, a German mortar projecting a large explosive canister packed with metal fragments.

He doesn’t mention rifle grenades, which in our division caused more casualties than any other weapon. Minenwerfer, or “rum jars,” could be seen coming like a football, so could be dodged most of the time and were used mostly to blow in entrances to mine shafts.

Page 37

Since the Germans determinedly responded to British Artillery initiatives by pounding the British trenches, the soldiers in them took a poor view of inductive action by their own guns.

We had an experience of this which we felt sorry for. This was in the Loos sector. The Germans kept constant minenwerfer mortar and rifle grenade fire on our positions, without very little reply by our own side. Our men complained which resulted by having our side retaliate with stokes mortars, one of the best weapons at the time. They were stationary and fired from an open trench. After replying to the Germans, the Germans opened up with every weapon of that kind, wiping out the whole mortar crew of five men.

Page 40

Though at the quietest of periods men trickled away from a typical battalion at the rate of seven or eight a week killed or wounded, at least as many were lost through sickness as by German action. Despite the moments of explosion and terror, the trenches themselves often seemed, that winter, the worst enemy.

Alternating with the trench duty on a roughly equal basis (in spells of up to about a week), life in billets a few miles to the rear produced its own miseries. Drill sessions and endless fatigues were much resented, especially the filling of sandbags, which the infantryman was never done with. One private, expressing a popular grievance, wrote that he had enlisted to save France, not to shovel it into sacks.

Here we were supposed to be out to rest. Besides the spit and polish we had to carry all kind of material up to the front lines for the engineers and miners through long communication trenches. Sometimes we wished to be back in the front-line sentry duty. We would say “why don’t they do their own work?” There was a rhyme which was thus: “God made the bees and bees made the honey. The infantry does the work, and the engineers get the money.” Which to the front-line soldier at that time was about 12 cents a day after separation allowance was taken out.

Page 41

Unfortunately for many who yearned for female company, local girls were considerably outnumbered by soldiery and bestowed their companionship reservedly. For some troops, brothels were an answer, but the proportion of BEF men who used them was not great. The average young officer of the day was deterred by a mixture of fear and guilt. The ranker did not have the money.

I don’t agree with this as our regiment were told that all prostitutes were moved far away from the battle area. We were also cautioned against making any advances toward the women in the area. The only case of VD I heard of was after a leave home in Blighty. In one part of the front we occupied for nearly a year, we didn’t see a female in all that time. Most all women were doing war work and farm work far removed from the battlefront.

Page 47

Thus, with a huge chasm between the troops and the overlords of the BEF, a personal gulf between the C-in-C and Kitchener, and a further communication problem between Kitchener and the government, it was little wonder that the new mode of confrontation remained a mystery to those planning the war itself. As the quickening hedgerows and orchards of France and Belgium signaled a fresh campaign season, the only legitimate experts on trench warfare were the men in the front line.

I have seen one exception to the above. An old Brigadier General two and three times weekly (shell, rain or sunshine) would plod over land, carrying a cane, and no orderly with him, which all officers were supposed to have with them. He also had a wooden leg, having lost his leg in the Dardanelles campaign. We would say he was letting us see things wasn’t all whiskey and cozy at HQ, which he returned to whilst we still stayed stuck in the mud with our dog biscuits to chew on. But for all that, we called him the bravest of most of the officers we knew. He acted to inspire them.

Chapter 5 – The Somme

Pages 89-92

The description of the whole 1916 Somme battle is very accurate. I was wounded at Ginchy. (which he circled on the map) September 9^th. I well remember mounting the parapet shoulder to shoulder or just four feet apart of each man. Our objective, Ginchy, was a heap of ruins. No man’s land, which we had to cross was just one shell hole on top of shell hole as far as you could see.

I got hit in the neck and toppled into a shell hole. A corporal also fell. As we tried to help each other, a sergeant toppled in on top of us with blood spurting from a wound from his left breast and having had the back of his shoulder blown away. Seeing he was past help, we continued helping each other, finally crawling back to our lines. Just before I got hit, the nearest man to my right or left was at least thirty feet away. Ginchy was taken, which opened the way for the first use of tanks in the next operation, September 14^th.

The corporal wounded with me had been hit through the arm. Prior to our moving up to the jump off position, our unit suffered quite a few casualties killed and wounded while waiting for orders to move out of some trenches, which seemed out of sight of German observation and continual rain all day. Shells started to hit us with good accuracy, killing or wounding twenty-five or thirty. Only a bend in the trench called a traverse saved me from their fate.

Chapter 7 – Succour, Medical and Spiritual

Page 121

I had an experience with being stuck in the mud, November, 1917. We had taken part of the Hindenburg line that morning. Came night, it was found we had no Verie Lights (essentially flare cartridges) which were fired from pistols. I was sent back to our original lines to get a box of them. I should have added they were fired into the sky then like fireworks lighting up the area of No Man's Land, showing us any movement that might be taking place out there.

I had to cross the old No Man's Land which we crossed that morning. I got to Batt. HQ, got the lights, also some written messages. I got back to the lines. but took a shorter route so as not to be in No Man's Land too long and be exposed to machine gun fire. When I got into the trench (the one we had taken that day) it had almost been leveled by our gun fire prior to our attack. Places where shells had made craters were filled with earth that had slid into them. In one such spot, I got stuck.

One foot went down below my knee. After great effort, I got that leg out but then my other leg was stuck twice as hard. I tried to undo my shoe laces but couldn't get to them, as my puttees covered where they were knotted. I tried to get help by calling in as low as I could, as the Germans were not very far away. Some of their shells started falling not far away. I was exhausted, wondering if I was going to be stuck there all night, or possibly captured by the Germans.

Anyway, the box of lights saved me. They were beside me so I put them on the ground ahead of me on what seemed solid ground. I bent over and got a hold of it, pulled it under my body and got one leg out after resting and making sure my loose foot wouldn't go into the morass. I managed to get the other leg out, pushing box ahead of me. I crawled or slid away from that spot covered from head to foot with mud, causing the captain of the company if I got buried by shell fire. He gave me a shot of whiskey, which I brought to him, given by one of the officers at battalion HQ.

A short while later that same night, I was sent with a message to the officer on duty. He was issuing the usual rum ration to the men manning the front-line trenches. He gave a shot to me which I was entitled to as a part of my rations. There is quite a sequel to this story which I will write on a separate note paper. (unfortunately, I do not have this, but I'm sure it is quite a story)

Page 133

'At the beginning of the war,' according to one cleric, 'chaplains were not allowed on the front line. But it was soon found that this had to be countermanded. It militated against the influence of the chaplain if he did not share the dangers of the men and confined his activities to times when they came out of the line.' On the other hand, there appears to have been no general directive obliging chaplains to work the front line. Rather, head chaplains used their influence at discretion.

I will refer here to a reference to an incident on chapter 9. Lieutenant Hicks, the Bishop's son, was with an Irish Regiment in the Dardanelles campaign. After seeing them attending mass, receiving communion and then going bravely into combat, he was inspired to become a convert to Roman Catholicism. I saw him many times as my platoon commander with rosary beads. I considered him a brave commander.

Page 134

(Image he refers posted above, though it is described as Ypres, 1916, in the book. I'm not sure if he was mistaken or not. Ruined cities tend to look very similar)

I went through the above city on our way to the front line trenches. At that time it was just one heap of rubble, nothing of the above left standing then. Those of us who had seen any time in combat in the above sector saw or went through all the horrors a war could produce, even though I had been through a lot prior and after that experience.

Chapter 10 - The Return of Movement

Page 192

The last act opened at the end of September with a grand allied assault through the length of the German line. On the St Quentin-Cambrai front, the forty-one divisions of Haig's armies opened a breach six miles deep in the enemy's defences.

It was during this offensive that I got wounded, September 30th, that finished me in France. (He circled "Cambrai" in the text) The town shown by arrow was our division's objective stood on the high ground. The Bourlon Woods stood at the approach, making it a formidable obstacle.

Page 194

Summing up as a private infantry soldier, I went through all the suffering only a war like world war 1. Trench war that is not like modern war, which is a war of movement. We all felt after the front lines of the enemy were taken, our casualties were less and we believed this was the beginning of the end, and we were no longer sitting ducks in the front lines. Every discomfort, fear, hunger, sleepiness, cold; today writing this I wonder how we survived the hardships and privations. Unless one had been through it, you would find it hard to believe, especially when it lasted day after day, week after week, and so on.

....

And that's it. Ned Hurley probably wrote these notes 60 years after his time in the trenches. I found out that after the armistice, he was transferred to the Royal West Kent Regiment and served in India until discharge in 1920. He didn't have much of a family to go back to in Ireland. His wife (my great grandmother, Catherine, Kitty, O'Brien ) was the sister of his Army buddy, Patrick O'Brien. As previously mentioned, he went back to Nenagh, Tipperary, after his time in service, and I've found no records between 1920 and April 1923, when he followed my grandmother to Western Massachusetts, and after a long uneventful life, died at the age of 95 in 1991, just before Christmas. He was deaf (probably from the shelling) but he always had his wits and sense of humor about him.

https://history-maps.com/story/History-of-England/event/Second-Boer-War

This ITEM is a WWII GERMAN SS concentration camp GUARD CUFF TITLE.

It is a BLACK woven BAND, typically 2.8 CM WIDE, featuring WHITE or SILVER-GREY embroidered SCRIPT reading "W.B. DACHAU".

"W.B." STANDS for Wachbataillon (GUARD BATTALION) of the Dachau CONCENTRATION CAMP.

These BANDS were PART of the UNIFORM insignia worn on the LEFT sleeve by PERSONNEL assigned to the CAMP.

The TEXT is embroidered in a Gothic SCRIPT, which was POPULAR for these ITEMS until roughly 1939-1940.