Category: Military
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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until 1973 when the last remaining platoon who were acting as guards for the Australian Embassy in Saigon, were withdrawn in June 1973.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…
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3604 – The Siege of Belgrade 1456
‘Twelve years have passed since the disastrous Crusader Battle of Varna and three years since the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. Europe is reeling under the relentless pressure of Ottoman advances: Serbia fell in 1455, and Sultan Mehmed II had now amassed his forces for an invasion of the Kingdom of…
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3603 – Italian Invasion of British Somaliland
“The Italian invasion of British Somaliland is an often-overlooked action of the Second World War. Although small and a backwater of the British empire, the region would see several significant firsts of the Second World War. The loss of the colony in mid-1940 was the first significant loss of British colonial territory during the war.…
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3602 – Heroics of the Second Anglo-Afghan War
‘Among the many brave acts of the Second Anglo-Afghan War (November 1878-September 1880), sixteen were awarded the Victoria Cross. Among this relatively small collection of awards, however, are several remarkable circumstances. The war saw the last Victoria Cross awarded to a civilian and the same award was the first to a clergyman (Reverend James Adams).…
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3601 – The Italo-Turkish War
‘At the turn of the nineteenth century, Italy, a newly unified upstart Great Power, was looking to expand its political and economic influence into neighbouring North Africa. Just a few years earlier, France had taken effective control of the North African coast from Tunisia to Morocco, while Egypt was a British protectorate. Just two areas…
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3510 – The New Zealand Division and the capture of La Basseville, July 1917
‘The Battle of Passchendaele, or the Third Battle of Ypres, in Flanders, raged from July to November 1917 and was fought for control of the commanding, 80-metre high, ridges which ran south and east from the Belgian city of Ypres. These ridges bulged into the Germans lines creating a salient and capturing them would prove…