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Battlefield Chronicles

Civil War – The Overland Campaign

Civil War – The Overland Campaign

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The first few years of the Civil War did not go well for the Union. At best, the war until 1863 performance could be considered a stalemate. At worst, the Confederates were establishing themselves as a force to be reckoned with. President Abraham Lincoln was looking down the barrel at a re-election campaign he never thought he would win and a country that might permanently be split in two. Lincoln had chosen a number of generals to command the Union Army, but none of them could make any headway against the rebellion. Gen. George McClellan was an organized leader but overly cautious and allowed the Confederates to escape destruction on a few occasions. He was replaced by Gen. Henry Halleck, who was even more ineffective.  Ulysses S. Grant's Overland Campaign One of the few bright spots was a commander in the West, a general who had defeated the Confederates at Shiloh, Chattanooga, and gave the Union control of the Mississippi River when he captured Vicksburg, Mississippi....

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Civil War – Battle of Chickamauga (1863)

Civil War – Battle of Chickamauga (1863)

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Chickamauga, a bloody Civil War battle, fought near the Chickamauga Creek in Georgia. The Battle of Chickamauga ended in a victory for Confederate forces and resulted in 34,000 casualties. It marked the end of a Union offensive in southeastern Tennessee and northwestern Georgia, known as the Chickamauga Campaign. It is widely considered to be the second deadliest battle of the Civil War, following the Battle of Gettysburg.  In the summer of 1863, Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans led his Union Army of the Cumberland from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, towards Chattanooga, 140 miles to the south. Chattanooga was an important rail junction for the South. The goal was to use the Federal army of about 60,000 to surround the city and cut off escape for Gen. Braxton Bragg and his Army of the Tennessee numbering about 40,000. As the Union Army approached Chattanooga in early September, Bragg and his army abandoned the city and retreated to Chickamauga Creek, just 12 miles away. There they awaited...

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United States Expedition to Korea (1871)

United States Expedition to Korea (1871)

Sometimes good relationships get off to a bad start. The United States and South Korea are a case in point. Today, Seoul is a valued American ally. But U.S.-Korean relations started with conflict rather than cooperation when on June 10, 1871, the U.S. Navy Expedition to Korea sent to open relations with Korea instead waged the Battle of Ganghwa. The Main Purpose of Expedition to Korea The backdrop for the hostilities was the American desire to establish trade relations with Korea. Like its neighbor Japan, Korea in the mid-nineteenth century was hostile to foreign influences, so much so that it earned the nickname of "the Hermit Kingdom." Japan agreed to sign a commercial treaty with the United States only at the point of a gun after a fleet headed by Commodore Matthew Perry appeared in Tokyo Bay in 1854.  American merchants hoped that a similar treaty could be struck with Korea. But the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 ended U.S. interest in Asia for a time. After Gen. Robert Lee's...

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Civil War – The Battle of Glendale: The Day the South Nearly Won (1862)

Civil War – The Battle of Glendale: The Day the South Nearly Won (1862)

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It has become an accepted historical fact that the South could not have won the American Civil War. The North's advantages in finance, population, railroads, manufacturing, technology, and naval assets, among others, are often cited as prohibitively decisive. Yes, the South had the advantage of fighting on the defensive, this with interior lines, but those two meager pluses appear dwarfed by the North's overwhelming strategic advantages, hence defeat virtually a foregone conclusion. But if strategic advantage alone was always decisive in warfare, then names like Marathon, Cowpens, Rorke's Drift, and Cannae would today be meaningless, and they are not. The Battle of Glendale is One of Seven Days Battles of Civil War Indeed, there are times when the decided underdog wins in war, and there was one day in 1862 when the stars aligned, so to speak, to offer the South a victory of such magnitude that the Civil War might have ended in its favor. It was June 30, 1862, and for days the Federal...

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Iraq War – The Second Battle of Fallujah

Iraq War – The Second Battle of Fallujah

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On March 31, 2004, a private contractor's convoy was traveling through Fallujah when it was ambushed by heavily armed insurgents. Safeguarding the convoy were four Blackwater USA employees - Scott Helvenston, Jerry Zovko, Wesley Batalona, and Michael Teague. The four were killed by machine gunfire and a grenade thrown through a window of their SUVs. Their charred bodies were dragged from the burning wreckage of their vehicles by a mob, mutilated, dragged through the streets, and two were hung on display from a bridge over the Euphrates river as the crowd celebrated below.  U.S.- Led Operation to Retake Fallujah Begin The public display of the beaten and burned bodies of the four security contractors triggered worldwide outrage. In response to the gruesome slaughter of the private security guards, a U.S.-led operation to retake Fallujah began on April 4, 2004 - only four days after the macabre incident. Within a week, a third of the city had been retaken, but due to the considerable...

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WW2 – Doolittle Raid and the Brutal Japanese Reprisals (1942)

WW2 – Doolittle Raid and the Brutal Japanese Reprisals (1942)

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Everyone knows about Pearl Harbor and Japan dragging the USA into World War II. Still, fewer are aware of the American Doolittle raid and the brutal Japanese reprisals to this daring counterpunch. Approximately five months after the Japanese attempt to cripple the American Pacific fleet, an unprecedented strike on the heart of the Japanese Empire was launched by the intrepid pilot Lt. Col. James Doolittle of the United States Army Air Force. While the United States boosted the American people's morale through the Doolittle raiders’ successful air raid on Japanese industrial strength, the Japanese army underwent a sickening rampage of reprisal in the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign that killed 250,000 Chinese civilians. Jimmy Doolittle and the Tokyo Raiders Strike Japan After the sneak attack on America’s main Pacific naval base, President Roosevelt pushed for a response that would underscore the Japanese people's danger of the situation that their leadership had put them in. While...

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The Battle of Hampton Roads

The Battle of Hampton Roads

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After the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina, the Union developed an overall strategy to defeat the Confederates. Later dubbed "the Anaconda Plan," it required the Union to capture control of the Mississippi River, effectively splitting the Confederacy in two while blockading Southern ports to cripple the South's economy and prevent it from acquiring supplies.  This plan was derided at first because the blockade wasn't considered aggressive enough by Union generals, but it turned out to be extremely effective. The rebels felt the Union blockade long before they felt the retribution of the Union Army – and almost immediately began finding ways to beat the blockade. On March 8, 1862, a new kind of ship would be put to the test for the first time, hoping to punch a hole in the Union Navy.  The Battle Was the First Engagement of Ironclad Warships One of the keys to Union seapower during the Civil War was the development of ironclad warships. The development of heavier naval guns and...

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Grant Delivers the First Major Union Victory

Grant Delivers the First Major Union Victory

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When the Civil War broke out in 1861, it started very poorly for the Union Army. Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor surrendered to the Confederates on April 13. Skirmishes and fights had broken out all over the country, but the major battles like those at Bull Run and Leesburg saw significant Union defeats.  The Confederate Invasion of Kentucky Throughout 1861, Virginia was pushing the Federal forces out, Missouri's pro-Confederate State Guard was on the warpath, and the Confederate invasion of Kentucky effectively ended the state's neutrality. In doing so, it provided the Union Army there, led by Brig. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had the opportunity to turn its fortune around. The Union cause needed a big win, and Grant delivered it at the February 1862 Battle of Fort Henry, Kentucky.  Grant Delivered Union Victory at the Battle of Fort Henry, Kentucky The Union's strategy for defeating the Confederate Army required it to gain control of the Mississippi River, splitting the Confederacy in...

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WW2 – The Great Raid On Cabanatuan

WW2 – The Great Raid On Cabanatuan

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Within weeks of Pearl Harbor, the Japanese Imperial Army pushed American and Filipino troops out of Manila. They were forced into the jungles of the Bataan Peninsula and the Island of Corregidor where they were cut off from supplies. Hungry and suffering from tropical disease, the troops were promised by the commanding Gen. Douglas MacArthur that "thousands of planes" with food, medicine, and reinforcements were on their way. But no help had arrived by March when MacArthur was ordered to leave and set up a command in Australia.  Over 25000 American Soldiers Surrendered Into Captivity During the Raid On Cabanatuan By April, Allied losses and the lack of supplies in Bataan were so bad that Maj. Gen. Edward King, the local commander, ordered the surrender of 70,000 troops (Filipinos and Americans); the largest American army in history to surrender. Having made plans to accept the surrender of about 25,000 soldiers, the Japanese were overwhelmed with POWs. Food, water, and...

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Iraq War – The Siege of Sadr City

Iraq War – The Siege of Sadr City

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On Mar. 28, 2004, Paul Bremer, administrator of the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq, ordered the closure of al-Hawza, an Arabic-language newspaper that was a sounding board for the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.  Bremer shut down the weekly paper because he believed it encouraged violence against U.S. troops in Iraq. It was only supposed to last 60 days, but the action would spark a series of events that led to a four-year siege and a series of battles between Coalition forces and al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. On April 3, 2004, Bremer ordered the arrest of Mustafa Yaqoubi, one of al-Sadr's senior advisors. An estimated 15,000 Iraqis took to the streets to demand his release. Demonstrators claimed that Spanish and El Salvadoran troops opened fire on them as they gathered, and the protest took a violent turn.  In response, al-Sadr ordered his Shia militia, the Mahdi Army, to take control of the Iraqi police stations in Najaf, Kufa, and Karbala but especially in...

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Facts on the Spanish-American War (1898)

Facts on the Spanish-American War (1898)

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On April 25, 1898, the United States declared war on Spain following the Battleship Maine's sinking in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898. As a result, Spain lost its control over the remains of its overseas empire - Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines Islands, Guam, and other islands. Background of the Spanish-American War Beginning in 1492, Spain was the first European nation to sail westward across the Atlantic Ocean, explore, and colonize the Amerindian nations of the Western Hemisphere. At its greatest extent, the empire that resulted from this exploration extended from Virginia on the eastern coast of the United States south to Tierra del Fuego at South America's tip, excluding Brazil and westward to California and Alaska. Across the Pacific, it included the Philippines and other island groups. By 1825 much of this empire had fallen into other hands. In that year, Spain acknowledged the independence...

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