1410 The Battle of Mirbat
In the early morning of 18th July 1972 nine British SAS soldiers stationed at a fort outside the coastal town of Mirbat in Southern Oman saw approaching in the distance what they believed…
1409 British Commandos: Operation Biting 1942
“Commando operations in the sense of self-contained acts of war mounted by forces operating within enemy territory are as old as warfare itself. However, before the second world war, the types of missions…
1408 Harry Smith, 1st Baronet of Aliwal
By 1840 Harry Smith was a veteran soldier of the British Empire, he had joined the Army in 1805 and had seen active service in South America, the Peninsular Campaign where under the…
1407 Lend Lease
By mid 1940 of the European powers only Britain and her Empire stood alone against Germany, the situation looked dire. Though the miracle of Dunkirk had managed to save thousands of British troops…
1406 Khalkhin Gol
When Neville Chamberlain delivered his speech on September 3rd 1939 to declare that Britain was at War with Germany, western focus was fixed on that and the hearts and minds of Britain’s population…
1405 The Cannonade of Valmy
Of the Battle of Valmy, military historian J.F.C Fuller, wrote, “The Cannonade of Valmy was more than a military event; it drew a line between the form war had taken since 1648 and…
1404 Mata Hari
Mata Hari is one of the ‘best known’ spies of World War One. While she may not have been a ‘saint’ by any stretch of the imagination – it is said that she…
1403 Scorched Earth
The military performance of an army is not just dependant on numbers:- the men need to be fed, equipped, quartered, transported (the list goes on). If you can deprive your opponent of these…
1402 The Battle of Carrhae
In 53 B.C. a Roman army confronted a force one quarter its strength yet suffered Rome’s bloodiest defeat in more than a hundred years. The Battle of Carrhae pitted 40,000 Roman soldiers against…
1401 The Battle of Poltava
The origins of the Great Northern War can be traced back to the Swedish involvement in the Thirty Years War and later in the the First Northern War of 1655-60 between Sweden and…
