Odin & Aesop

The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979.  It was supposed to be a swift operation to install a loyal communist government.  The Soviets were initially successful in gaining control of the cities and major infrastructure but became bogged down and flummoxed fighting against mujahideen guerillas in Afghanistan’s rugged mountains.  The Soviet – Afghan War went on for ten years and cost...

Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nassar announced Egypt was taking control of the British and French owned Suez Canal Company in July 1956.  He took this action to fund the Aswan Dam he wanted built.  In response to Nassar seizing the canal, Britain, France, and Israel secretly planned a joint invasion.  Israel would advance towards the canal through the Sinai Peninsula while Britain and France woul...

Bill Richardson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and enlisted in the Army in 1945.  He deployed to Korea when war broke out in 1950 and fought northward up the length of the Korean peninsula as part of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division.  On November 5th, 1950, Richardson was captured by the Chinese during the Battle of Unsan.  He spent roughly the next three years enduring brutal captivity.  S...

Among other things, Thomas Edward Lawrence was an author, archeologist, and British Army officer.  During the First World War, he served as a liaison between the British and the Arab tribes fighting Ottoman rule in the western Arabian desert.  Lawrence spent approximately two years and covered hundreds of miles by camel in this role.  His campaign was successful in toppling Ottoman rule yet failed...

Within a few short years, drones went from being a niche capability reserved for technically advanced militaries to something ubiquitous on the modern battlefield.  According to the Atlantic Council, Ukraine was producing 200,000 first person view drones per month by early 2025.  The Ukrainians used those drones to inflict up to 80% of Russian battlefield casualties.  That conflict continues and s...

Tameichi Hara descended from Japan’s samurai class.  He graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1921 and began a career at sea.  When war started with the United States in 1941, Hara was serving as the captain of the destroyer Amatsukaze.  He went on to command a destroyer division and participated in major engagements throughout the war.  His last assignment at sea was captain of th...

On 30 April 1980 six Iranian Arabs seized the Iranian Embassy in the center of London and took 26 people hostage.  They demanded the release of prisoners in Iran and safe passage out of the United Kingdom.  British authorities managed to get five hostages released in return for minor concessions, but time passed, and tensions rose.  On the sixth day, the hostage takers killed one of their captives...

The A Shau Valley is in the mountainous northwest corner of what used to be South Vietnam.  It is right across the border from Laos.  Because of its location, the A Shau formed a natural hub for the North Vietnamese Army to move their units and supplies into South Vietnam and threaten the more heavily populated coastal plains.  The United States tried multiple times and multiple ways to disrupt wh...

The island of Crete sits in the Eastern Mediterranean.  In 1941 the Germans decided to seize Crete, “As a base for air warfare against Great Britain in the Eastern Mediterranean”.  The elite paratroopers of Germany’s 7th Air Division were assigned to lead the attack.  They would be reinforced by more troops arriving by sea and air.  It was Germany’s biggest airborne operation of the war by far.  T...

The 24th Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) landed in Beirut Lebanon on May 29th, 1983, as part of a peacekeeping force during Lebanon’s Civil War.  Once ashore, the MAU’s battalion landing team, BLT 1/8, took up positions around Beirut International Airport.  Things escalated and the Marines began regularly taking fire.  They suffered their first deaths on August 29th when Staff Sergeant Alexander Orte...

Japan devastated the United States’ fleet with a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7th, 1941.  The Japanese followed up on their Pearl Harbor attack by seizing Guam, Wake Island, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines.  The Japanese seemed almost unstoppable while the United States asked itself, “What are we going to do, or what can we do, now?”  With direction from President...

Rhodesia, now called the Republic of Zimbabwe, used to be a self-governing British colony.   In November 1965, the Cabinet of Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence from Britain in an effort to preserve white minority rule.   The Rhodesian Bush War, also known as the Rhodesian Civil War, followed.  It lasted until December 1979.  This protracted guerilla war pitted Rhodesia’s globally isolate...

South Vietnam has a long coastline and lots of waterways, particularly in the Mekong River Delta at the southern tip of the country.  In 1968 U.S. Naval Forces Vietnam had roughly 38,000 sailors serving in country.  Their main tasks were to prevent supplies from reaching the Viet Cong, stopping Viet Cong movements, helping move U.S. Army units along the water, and guarding ports and harbors.  It w...

The Germans launched “Operation Citadel” on July 5th, 1943.  They wanted to encircle and destroy Soviet forces in a salient centered on the city of Kursk.  The Soviets knew they were coming and had spent months preparing.  What followed was the greatest land battle in history.  About two million men with 6,000 tanks, 35,000 guns, and 5,000 aircraft fought into late August.  Despite horrific losses...

John G. Bourke won the Medal of Honor during the American Civil War.  He stayed in the army and graduated from West Point in 1869.  Between 1869 and 1883, Bourke served on the frontier with much of that time spent as an aide to General George Crook.  Bourke saw action in the Apache Wars and Great Sioux War.  He clashed with Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Geronimo.  Bourke was a keen observer and c...

The Korean peninsula was split into two countries after the Second World War.  The Soviet backed North and the U.S. backed South.  North Korea tried to unify the two by invading South Korea in June 1950.  Initially North Korea had great success.  It pushed South Korea's small military aside and rushed down the peninsula while the United States tried to get forces onto the peninsula.  The Nort...

Japan captured and occupied China’s sea ports at the onset of World War Two.  That lead to hundreds of thousands of Chinese laborers building a road through Burma to get supplies to China.  That road got blocked when Burma fell to the Japanese.  Next, American engineers began building another road through hundreds of miles of steep jungle while pilots flew supplies into China over the Himalayas. ...

In 1899, the British went to war with the Boer Republics.  This was when the British Empire was close to its blazing zenith and unquestionably the ranking world power.  Any war against the somewhat backward Boers on a remote border of the empire in southern Africa would surely be quick and decisive.  It did not turn out that way.  As Rudyard Kipling put it, the Boers gave the British “no end of a...

The United States and Soviet Union stood on opposite sides of the Cold War.  Both tried to project strength and both possessed immense arsenals of nuclear weapons.  A fundamental problem for both superpowers was figuring out what the other side was doing.  What were they capable of?  What were they thinking?   The United States relied on its submarines to help answers those questions throughout th...

The Japanese attacked the Philippines almost simultaneous with their December 7th, 1941 attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor.  Following Japanese air attacks, the Japanese 14th Army landed in the Philippines on December 8th.  By January 1942, the Japanese had U.S. and Filipino forces bottled up on the Bataan Peninsula.  Those U.S. and Filipino forces surrendered on May 8th.  It is arguably Ame...

NAZI scientists relied on heavy water to produce the right uranium isotope for an atomic weapon.  They produced most of their heavy water at a hydroelectric in occupied Norway called Vemork.  In February 1943, a small group of Norwegian commandos slipped into Vemork, blew it up, and made their escape.  This is after months of reconnaissance and preparation in the frozen wilderness.  Neal Bascomb t...

In October 2001, the United States began aerial bombing of Afghanistan in response to the terrorist group Al Queda’s attacks of September 11th.  Special Forces followed up by teaming with the Taliban’s opponents – the Northern Alliance – and by late November / early December 2001 the Taliban had been driven from power.  That didn’t mean the Taliban and Al Queda had gone away or given up.  They had...

William Manchester served in the Marine Corps during the Second World War.  He was wounded during the Battle of Okinawa.  After the war, Manchester established himself as a journalist in Baltimore, an adjunct professor at Wesleyan University, and an author.  In 1978, he returned to the Pacific and visited various places connected either with his service or the Pacific campaign.  That trip forms th...

Bill Peters was commissioned in the Marine Corps via Officer Candidate School.  After completing the Basic School at Quantico, Virginia, he was assigned to Vietnam as a platoon commander in First Force Reconnaissance Company in 1969.  Peters conducted twenty-three long-range patrols in enemy-controlled territory, was wounded, and decorated for bravery. He tells the story in “First Force Recon Comp...

The Algerian War of Independence lasted from 1954 to 1962.  It carried heavy costs for both sides.  Estimates vary but upwards of a million Muslim Algerians died; roughly a million Pied Noir (settlers of European descent) were driven into exile; and France was driven to the brink of civil war.  Alistair Horne tells the story in “A Savage War of Peace.”