MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History

On October 7, 1777, during the second year of the Revolutionary War, Continental forces intercepted some 1,500 British troops led by Major General John Burgoyne as they advanced toward Saratoga, New York, in an attempt to reconnoiter the American lef

The Winter 2020 issue of MHQ contains an article written 90 years ago by James M. Cain that is of great interest to me and my family. My grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel George A. Wildrick, was the G-3 (Operations) officer for the 79th Division during

Eugene Bullard, the first African American fighter pilot, entered the French air service through the Lafayette Flying Corps in 1917. Was he the first black airman to shoot down an enemy plane? Paul Westerbrook Bloomington, Indiana Bullard, who was al

Neutrality in warfare has existed as a legal or social concept for centuries. It is a lofty ideal: that a nation can declare to the world that it wants no part in any quarrel beyond its borders, and then rely on the forbearance of warring neighbors t

Caffeine—a mild stimulant typically ingested in the form of coffee or tea but also consumed in caffeinated energy drinks and soft drinks such as Coca-Cola—is the world’s most popular mood-altering drug. Billions of people rely on it daily to boost en

During the American Civil War, Irish-born James R. O’Neill, who at one time or another made his living as an actor, comedian, or landscape artist, worked for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper as an artist-correspondent in the war’s Western theater

On June 9, 1917, nine weeks after the United States declared war on Germany, 20-year-old Everard J. Bullis—the only boy of five siblings in a middle-class family in St. Paul, Minnesota—enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, waiting until that evening to

The bomb’s irregular casing—about 3/8-inch thick—was made of iron or steel. Actual lumps of coal were used to create molds for casting the bombs. The explosive charge consisted of 3 to 4 ounces of gunpowder. The inside of each bomb was sanded smooth

Even well into his 80s, Felix de Weldon, the Austrian-born sculptor who created the Marine Corps War Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery, carried with him a copy of the speech he delivered when he became a U.S. citizen in 1943. “No other countr

On February 23, 1945, Felix de Weldon was at his desk at the Patuxent River naval air station near Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, working on an oil painting of the Battle of the Coral Sea, where, in May 1942, American aircraft carriers had stopped a plann

On March 27, 1777, King George III received Major General John Burgoyne at Saint James Palace, where, in a private audience, Burgoyne reviewed his audacious proposal to attack the rebellious American colonies “from the side of Canada.” If all went we

They fell from the skies like so many paper snowflakes in World War II: propaganda leaflets designed, in one way or another, to demonize and demoralize enemy soldiers and their compatriots—or, as an official directive of the Supreme Allied Command pu

In 1777, during the third year of the Revolutionary War, a group of American sailors alleged that Commodore Esek Hopkins, the commander in chief of the Continental Navy, the forerunner of the U.S. Navy, had tortured captured British sailors. In a pet

When Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in 1935 on what would have been his 94th birthday, he was one of the most famous men in the United States—certainly one of the most famous justices ever to sit on the U.S. Supre

George Steer was born in South Africa in 1909 and went on to study classics at Oxford, but he soon decided to follow in the footsteps of his father, a newspaper editor, and become a journalist. In 1935, after working in London as a reporter for the Y

A historian once described him as “a portly cavalryman with a painter’s eye for landscapes, a gourmet’s taste for wines, and a soldier’s eye for ground.” Joseph T. Dickman, a native of Dayton, Ohio, graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Po

Joe McCarthy didn’t have to go to war. His job as an elected circuit judge in Appleton, Wisconsin, was important enough to exempt him from military service. It would be nice to say that he volunteered for the best of reasons: a strong sense of duty,

Rod Serling was born in 1924 in Syracuse, New York, but he grew up in Binghamton, where his parents had moved when he was still an infant. From an early age he liked to perform for others and listen to science fiction, suspense, and horror shows on t

Dadaist artist George Grosz’s satirical sketches, paintings, and prints are iconic images of Weimar Germany, along with Bauhaus architecture, the horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, and, according to histo

By Thomas S. Helling. Westholme Publishing, 2019. $35. Reviewed by George A. Alexander In this book Thomas S. Helling, a surgeon at the University of Mississippi Medical Center and veteran of the Army Medical Corps, looks at the hell of war through a