Category: Military
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3704 – Australia’s Irish rebellion
‘On 5 March, 1804, a group of 233 convict rebels revolted against their incarceration in the British colony of New South Wales (corresponding to modern Sydney, Australia). They were met by the local garrison, consisting of only 28-30 regulars and a few loyalist militia, at a place some 40km north-west of Sydney soon dubbed Vinegar…
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3703 – The battle of Abritus, AD 251 (part 2)
It is the dream of every ancient historian that some new discovery will solve a mystery of the past – some newly discovered fragment of a lost historian which will make everything clear. Such circumstances are very rare, but the Gothic War of Decius is one recent occasion where exactly the new discovery historians dream…
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3702 – The battle of Abritus, AD 251 (part 1)
“The battle of Abritus saw the death of two emperors in battle against a foreign enemy – Gaius Messius Quintus Trajanus Decius, usually known as Trajan Decius (r. 249-251) and his son and co-emperor Quintus Herennius Etruscus Messius Decius, known as Herennius Etruscus (r. 251). They lost their lives intercepting an invasion of Goths led…
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3701 – Heroism in Borneo
“At the conclusion of the Malayan Emergency in July 1960, plans were put into place to incorporate British North Borneo and Singapore into Greater Malaysia. This idea was met with fierce opposition from President Sukarno of Indonesia and in 1962 Indonesia began supporting revolutionary factions on the large, dense jungle island of Borneo. The Confrontation…
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3610 – The Battle of Chaeronea
‘The battle of Chaeronea was fought in early August, 338 BC, between the forces of Macedon commanded by king Philip II and his eighteen-year-old son Alexander (not yet ‘the Great’) against an unlikely alliance of the forces of Athens and Thebes and other allies. It was, without doubt, one of the most decisive battles ever…
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3609 – Australian Bravery in the Vietnam War – Part 2
‘Australia’s involvement and commitment to the Vietnam War continued until 1973 when the last remaining platoon who were acting as guards for the Australian Embassy in Saigon, were withdrawn in June 1973. As with American involvement, Australia’s contribution also escalated over time. Following the arrival of the AATTV in 1962, in August 1964 the Royal…
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3608 – Australian Bravery in the Vietnam War – Part 1
‘Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War began in 1962. In July that year, the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam (AATTV) (or “the Team”) first arrived, consisting of thirty military advisers. These special teams were designed to train and advise local troops – ARVN units, Montagnards, territorial forces, and Mobile Strike (Mike) Forces. Although they were…
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3607 – Martin Leake VC
“Arthur Martin-Leake, serving as a lieutenant in the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1914 was the first man to be awarded a Bar to the Victoria Cross he received during the Second Boer War in 1902. In both circumstances Martin-Leake’s conduct was to put the lives of his injured comrades first despite being exposed to…
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3606 – The 54th Massachusetts Infantry at Fort Wagner
“On September 22nd, 1862, already almost two years into the US Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation stating that, as of January 1st, 1863, all slaves within any State would be ‘thenceforward, and forever free.’ This proclamation freed 3.5 million men and women of African-American descent and, included in the proclamation, was…
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3605 – The Battle of the Granicus
“In the Spring of 334 BC, the 22-year-old Macedonian king, Alexander III (r. 336–323 BC – not yet ‘the Great’), invaded the vast Achaemenid Persian Empire with an elite but small army of some 30-40,000 veteran infantry and only 5,000 cavalry. This invasion was the culmination of almost a century of pressure for some Greek…