History

Why do soldiers fight? The movies and government propagandists would have us believe it is for grand causes. Young folk go to war to free people from oppression or defend their homeland against soulless invaders. To a degree that is true. Soldiers may indeed go to war for such stuff as this. However, what keeps them in the suck is invariably their friends.

Depending upon what you read, Bowie was shot either two or three times and received between four and seven separate stab wounds. Colonel Crain, the man who shot him in the first place, helped the injured Bowie off of the field. Bowie supposedly said, “Colonel Crain, I do not think, under the circumstances, you ought to have shot me.” 

Oftentimes truth is more compelling than fiction. Such was the case of the real War Daddy, SSG Lafayette Pool.

In 1945 a one-eyed French Canadian named Leo Major did indeed snatch up a matching pair of Sten guns to shoot the holy heck out of a bunch of Waffen SS troopers defending the Dutch town of Zwolle. His story is one of almost insane bravery spanning two wars.

The classic WW2 action epic Fury was based upon the WW1 story of Fray Bentos and her crew.

On the very first day of American involvement in World War 2, a tragic little conflict played out on an otherwise peaceful remote island in Hawaii.

Doris “Dorie” Miller was supposed to have been a girl. Born October 12, 1919, to sharecroppers Connery and Henrietta Miller, he got the name Doris when the midwife assisting with his delivery became somehow convinced he would be female.

The son of a Czarist-era Imperial Russian cavalry officer, Mitch WerBell III suffered from a deplorable excess of personality. WerBell’s life reflected the synergistic combination of an audacious will, an insatiable thirst for chaos, a truly gifted mechanical insight, and some fortuitous timing. The cumulative result was adventure beyond the capacity of normal folk to comprehend.

The British Commandos helped lay the foundation for modern Special Operations.