Military History

Take this quiz to test your knowledge of the biggest events of 1968, from the Vietnam War to the civil rights movement.

In chronicling CIA operative Edward Lansdale's adventurous life and approach to counterinsurgency, The Road Not Taken definitively reframes our understanding of the Vietnam War.

The United States Army celebrates its 243nd birthday today. If you see an active duty, former, or retired member of the United States Army today, wish their service Happy Birthday. The Army website provides a short but thorough overview of its history. Here are five things worth knowing: The Army is the oldest of the four services. It was created on June 14, 1775, so it’s four months older than the United States Navy, five months older than the United States Marine Corps, and 172 years older than the United States Air Force, which began as part of the Army.   Eleven Army generals went on to become president of the United States: George Washington (General), Andrew Jackson (Major General), William Henry Harrison (Major General), Zachary Taylor (Major General), Franklin Pierce (Brigadier General), Andrew Johnson (Brigadier General), Ulysses S. Grant (General), Rutherford B. Hayes (Major General, Brevet), James A. Garfield (Major General, Volunteers), Benjamin Harrison (Major General, Brevet), and Dwight D. Eisenhower (General). No Navy Admiral, Marine Corps General, or Air Force General has ever been elected president. (Chester A. Arthur was Quartermaster General of the New York State Militia at the start of the Civil War, but I don’t believe he was mustered into federal service.)   The highest rank in the Army is General of the Armies of the United States. Only two men have held it: George Washington and John Pershing. Efforts to give General Douglas MacArthur the title failed. Washington got his title posthumously on July 4, 1976. During his lifetime, the highest rank he achieved was Lieutenant General. President Ford issued the executive order elevating Washington to six-star status because given the military’s strict hierarchy he was technically outranked by the four- and five-star generals who came after him. President Ford’s executive order directs that Washington shall always be considered the most senior U.S. military officer.   The Medal of Honor has been awarded to a member of the Army 2,451 times. Put differently, 70 percent of all 3,518 Medals of Honor awarded have gone to soldiers.   There are about 468,000 active duty Army personnel.     I asked Colonel Daniel S. Morgan, an active duty U.S. Army officer spending the year as a military fellow at CFR, what to read to learn more about the Army’s history. Below is what he recommended, organized into three categories: political science, history, and leadership. He picked three for leadership because “it is that important.” (I will add a fourth, Colonel Morgan’s own book, Chasing the White Rabbit: A Discovery of Leadership in the 21st Century, which he co-authored with his brother.) Political Science: Peter Zeihan, The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Order (2014).   John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (2001).   History: Rick Atkinson, The Liberation Trilogy, which includes An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943 (2002), The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 (2007), and The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945 (2013).     T. R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War: A Study of Unpreparedness (1963).   Leadership: Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (2015).   Elbert Hubbard, A Message to Garcia: And Other Essential Writings on Success (2009).   Simon Sinek, Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t (2014).   Colonel Morgan also recommended five films to watch: Darkest Hour (2017). It’s “a good look at the political decisions that lead to war.”   12 Strong (2018). It “discusses what it is to have the patriotism to deploy.”   Thank You for Your Service (2018). It “shows many of the struggles veterans endure returning home.”    Dunkirk (2017). It accurately “portrays sacrifice and war.”   Last Flag Flying (2017). It “explores nuanced reactions to the loss of a family member and soldier.”   Corey Cooper assisted in the preparation of this post. ​ ​ ​​ ​​

The United States has fought twelve major wars and a countless number of smaller skirmishes in its history. Memorial Day is how we honor the soldiers, sailors, airmen, airwomen, and marines who did not return home. The holiday dates back to the months immediately following the Civil War when a few towns and cities began honoring their dead. In 1868, General John A. Logan designated May 30 as “Decoration Day,” the purpose of which would be “strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” The holiday was renamed Memorial Day after World War I, and its purpose became to honor the more than 600,000 Americans who have died fighting for their country. Here are the stories of five who were awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for bravery, for making the ultimate sacrifice: Corporal John Henry Pruitt was born on October 4, 1896 in Fayettesville, Arkansas, and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. In May 1917, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and went to Parris Island, South Carolina for basic training. During the summer of 1918 he fought in some of the biggest American battles of World War I—Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood. He was exposed to gas when his mask came off during hand-to-hand combat with a German soldier. He recovered and returned to the front. On October 3, 1918, at Blanc Mont, Corporal Pruitt single-handedly took out two enemy machineguns, killed their operators, and captured forty prisoners hiding nearby. Later that day, while on sniper detail, he was hit by intense enemy shell fire. He died the next day. It was his twenty-second birthday. Pruitt was initially awarded an Army Medal of Honor for his sacrifice, followed by a Navy Medal of Honor (the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard share a medal). The practice of awarding two medals for the same act ended after World War I. A Navy destroyer—the USS Pruitt was named after Corporal Pruitt. Lieutenant John Robert Fox was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on May 18, 1915. He studied biology at Wilberforce University and enrolled in the Army Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC). He graduated in 1940 with the rank of second lieutenant. During World War II, he went to Europe with the 366th Infantry Regiment, 92nd Infantry Division—the African-American division known as the “Buffalo Soldiers.” On December 26, 1944, German troops tried retake the town of Sommocolonia, Italy, which the Buffalo Soldiers were defending. Lieutenant Fox was an artillery spotter, radioing artillery units situated outside of the town with the coordinates of enemy positions. When American troops retreated under heavy fire from the Germans, he stayed behind to direct artillery fire that would provide defensive cover. At one point, he radioed to “Bring it in 60 yards.” The artillery officer warned Fox that firing on that location would kill him. Fox replied, “Fire it.” The action that cost Lieutenant Fox his life killed roughly one hundred German soldiers. President Bill Clinton posthumously awarded Lieutenant Fox the Medal of Honor on January 13, 1997. His widow, Arlene, received the medal. Captain John Springer Walmsley Jr., was born on January 7, 1920 in Baltimore, Maryland. He enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1944 and acted as a flight instructor during World War II. He later served in occupied Japan as a pilot flying B-26 Marauders before returning stateside to attend the Air Tactical School at Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida. In June 1951, Captain Walmsley went to Korea as an all-weather fighter pilot with the 3rd Bomb Group’s 8th Bomb Squadron, flying B-26 Night Intruders. On September 14, 1951, he was flying his twenty-sixth mission, near Yangdok, when he spotted an enemy supply train. He attacked the train, but ran out of ammunition. He then used the searchlight mounted on his plane to guide another B-26 to the target. In doing so he exposed himself to enemy fire. The train was destroyed, but Captain Walmsley’s plane was hit and crashed into the nearby mountains. He was killed, along with the plane’s navigator and the photographer. The plane’s gunner, however, survived. Captain Walmsley was one of four airmen, and the only bomber pilot, awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously from the U.S. Air Force for service during the Korean War. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Construction Mechanic Third Class Marvin Glenn Shields was born on December 30, 1939, in Port Townsend, Washington and grew up in nearby Discovery Bay. After graduating from high school, he moved to Alaska to work on a gold mining project for the Alaska Mineral Basin Mining Company. He returned home to Washington in 1962 and joined the U.S. Navy as a Seebee. In February 1965, he was deployed to South Vietnam and attached to Seabee Team 1104 of the Mobile Construction Battalion 1. Its job was to construct a camp at Dong Xoai in the Phuoc Long Province, South Vietnam—strategically located on a Viet Cong supply route from Cambodia. On June 9, 1965, Viet Cong forces attacked the camp. For three hours, Construction Mechanic Shields carried ammunition to GIs defending the camp.  He was wounded twice, but still rescued an injured comrade. When the camp’s commanding officer asked for help to take out an enemy machine gun, Construction Mechanic Shields immediately volunteered. The two men destroyed the machine gun, but Shields was killed while returning to American lines. He is the only Seabee to receive the Medal of Honor. He was also the first sailor to be awarded the Medal of Honor for service in Vietnam. He left behind his wife, Joan, and daughter, Barbara Diane. Sergeant First Class Randall David Shughart was born August 13, 1958 in Lincoln, Nebraska, into a U.S. Air Force family. The Schugharts later moved to Newville, Pennsylvania, where they owned and operated a dairy farm. Sergeant First Class Shughart joined the U.S. Army when he was a senior in high school and went to basic training after graduation. In 1980, he joined to the reserves, but returned to active duty in 1983. After Special Forces training, he joined “Delta Force” and was stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He deployed to Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993. On October 3, Sergeant First Class Shughart was a sniper onboard a Black Hawk helicopter during Operation Gothic Serpent—a mission to capture lieutenants of Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed. But the mission went awry. Two Black Hawks were shot down. Sergeant First Class Shughart and his team leader, Master Sergeant Gary Gordon, volunteered to go to one of the crash sites to aid four critically wounded crew members. Sergeant First Class Shughart and Master Sergeant Gordon made their way to the crash site under intense enemy fire. Once they reached the site, Sergeant First Class Shughart pulled the crew from the downed helicopter. He used his long range rifle and side arm to fend off attackers and protect the crew until he ran out of ammunition. Both he and Master Sergeant Gordon were fatally wounded, but their sacrifice saved the pilot’s life. This act of heroism is retold in Mark Bowden’s Black Hawk Down. You can read about other Americans who were awarded the Medal of Honor for their bravery and supreme sacrifice here, here, here, here, and here.   Corey Cooper co-wrote this post.

Last month marked the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Tet Offensive. Yesterday I had the good fortune to discuss the lessons of Tet with three experts on the Vietnam War, Frances FitzGerald, Fredrik Logevall, and Lien-Hang Nguyen. You can watch our discussion below. Note: If the video is not displaying in your browser, please click here. Tet is often described as the pivotal moment in the Vietnam War. It certainly was a game changer for President Lyndon Johnson and Democratic Party politics. Tet convinced LBJ not to run for re-election as challengers like Robert F. Kennedy came out against the war. Tet also persuaded LBJ to veto a request to send 206,000 more combat troops. In retrospect, 1968 marks the high water point in the U.S. troop commitment in South Vietnam. But Tet’s impact on the war is easily overstated. Consider the following three facts: U.S. troops fought in Vietnam for another five years before the Paris Peace Accords were signed. Two-thirds of the American troops who died in Vietnam were killed after the Tet Offensive began. Public opinion shifted only slightly in the immediate aftermath of Tet. In December 1967, 46 percent of American said “no” when asked if they thought the war had been a mistake. In April 1968, 40 percent said “no.” Even by late 1968 less than 20 percent of Americans favored a withdrawal from Vietnam. Two additional points are often lost in discussions of Tet. The first is that the public had begun to sour on the war months earlier. That’s why LBJ called General William Westmoreland home in November 1967. He wanted the commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam to make the case that the United States was winning. Westmoreland did his duty and famously declared that “We have reached an important point where the end begins to come into view.” So rather than creating public doubts about the war and the administration’s managing of it, Tet confirmed what many Americans already suspected. The second is that public opinion seldom compels presidents to act in foreign affairs. LBJ could have responded to Tet by deepening America’s involvement in Vietnam. Many Americans would have approved. That he rejected those calls reflected his recognition of what he had feared from the start and what his advisers had increasingly been telling him: the war could not be won at an acceptable cost. But that recognition did not bring the war to a quick end. If you want to learn more about the Vietnam War, check out these other TWE posts: Remembering Ho Chi Minh’s 1945 Declaration of Vietnam’s Independence TWE Remembers: Thich Quang Duc’s Self-Immolation Remembering the Vietnam "Coup Cable" TWE Remembers: The First U.S. Combat Troops Arrive in Vietnam TWE Remembers: The Gulf of Tonkin Incident TWE Remembers: Congress Passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution TWE Remembers: General Westmoreland Says the “End Begins to Come Into View” in Vietnam Lessons Learned: LBJ Announces He Will Not Seek Reelection TWE Remembers: The Fall of Saigon The Vietnam War in Forty Quotes Ten Vietnam War Novels to Read The Best Histories of the Vietnam War The Ten Best Memoirs of the Vietnam War Iconic Images of the Vietnam War The Twenty Best Vietnam Protest Songs Eleven More Classic Vietnam War Protest Songs Top Ten Vietnam War Movies Ten More Vietnam War Movies Corey Cooper assisted in the preparation of this post.

How the regulation of early balloon warfare can inform current debates about regulating cyber conflict.

As 2017 comes to a close, here are ten notable historical anniversaries to mark in 2018.

Never overpromise and under deliver. General William Westmoreland should have followed that advice when he addressed the National Press Club fifty years ago today. Instead, the commanding general of U.S. military forces in Vietnam gave his audience an upbeat assessment of the war in South Vietnam, going so far as to say it had reached the point “where the end begins to come into view.” He was tragically wrong. Westmoreland took charge of the U.S. military effort in Vietnam in March 1964. A highly decorated veteran of World War II and the Korean War, he looked like a general straight out of central casting. Time magazine was so taken with him that it named him its Man of the Year for 1965. When Westmoreland first took command in Saigon, the United States had fewer than 17,000 military “advisors” on the ground in South Vietnam. Their job was to train and advise the South Vietnamese military in the fight against the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong. Westmoreland continually pressed Washington to send combat troops. He got his wish in March 1965 when the first Marines hit the shores of Da Nang. The American phase of the Vietnam War had begun. But as President John F. Kennedy had predicted just a few years earlier, the result had been like taking a drink—the fix quickly wore off and more troops were needed. By late summer 1967, the United States had 450,000 troops in Vietnam. The Americanization of the war deepened the U.S. role in Vietnam. It didn’t, however, bring South Vietnam closer to victory. South Vietnamese governments came and went as a series of generals battled for control. Meanwhile, the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese held their own even though the U.S. military owned the skies and enjoyed a lopsided firepower advantage on the ground. The lack of progress on the battlefield eroded public support for the war. In October 1967, Gallup found for the first time ever that more Americans (46 percent) thought that it had been a mistake to send U.S. troops to fight in Vietnam than thought it hadn’t (44 percent). Perhaps even more significant for a president just a year away from running for re-election, the percentage of Americans doubting the wisdom of the war had doubled from just two years earlier. The trend was not LBJ’s friend. Discussions inside the administration gave LBJ no reason to believe that he would soon have good news for the American public. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, one of the architects of the Americanization of the war, had concluded by the spring of 1967 that the war couldn’t be won and pressed Johnson to scale back the U.S. effort. Meanwhile, Westmoreland, with the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, argued that the war could be won, but only if he sent 200,000 more troops and widened the aerial campaign. Unable to accept McNamara’s conclusion and reluctant to embrace the military’s push for a wider war, LBJ turned his attention to shoring up public support. He ordered U.S. officials in Saigon to highlight evidence showing that the United States was winning the war. The White House created a group to share favorable information with opinion leaders and news outlets. And at the recommendation of the so-called Wise Men, a group of former senior foreign policy officials convened to advise LBJ, Westmoreland was ordered home to reassure the American public that the war was going well. Westmoreland willingly took up the task. He had already returned to Washington seven months before at Johnson’s request to give an upbeat speech on the state of the war to a joint session of Congress. That had been the first time in U.S. history that a president had asked a wartime commander to return from the field to speak to Congress.  In his November 21, 1967 address to the National Press Club, Westmoreland was even more upbeat than he had been on Capitol Hill back in April. He assured his audience that “We have reached an important point where the end begins to come into view.” He cited a list of problems plaguing the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, including an inability to recruit. And lest his fundamental optimism be missed, he ended his speech by invoking his goal to reach Phase IV of the war, when the communists would be on the run: I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing. We are making progress. We know you want an honorable and early transition to the fourth and last phase. So do your sons and so do I. It lies within our grasp--the enemy’s hopes are bankrupt. Westmoreland knew that he had put the best face on the war. He later wrote, “I permitted myself the most optimistic appraisal of the way the war was going that I had yet made.” Some of his fellow generals worried he had been too optimistic—and too willing to serve LBJ’s political objectives. As Army Chief of Staff General Harold K. Johnson put it, “Westys trip has gone extremely well, and I only hope that he has not dug a hole for himself with regard to his prognostications. The platform of false prophets is crowded.” General Johnson turned out to be prescient. Just ten weeks after Westmoreland’s National Press Club speech, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong launched the Tet Offensive. What Americans saw on television and read in the newspapers looked nothing like the rosy picture Westmoreland had painted. While U.S. and South Vietnamese forces ultimately turned the tide and inflicted punishing losses on the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, in political terms everything had changed. The end was not in sight, and no one knew when it would be. On March 22, 1968, Johnson announced that Westmoreland would be leaving Vietnam to take up the post of Army Chief of Staff. Nine days later, LBJ surprised by the nation by saying he would not seek re-election. U.S. troops would fight in Vietnam for another five years.

The United States Air Force marks seventy years of service.

Today I had the good luck to talk with three distinguished historians, John Milton Cooper, Jennifer Keene, and Jay Winik about the U.S. decision to enter World War I. All three shared sharp insights into the consequences and lessons of America’s participation in “the Great War.” You can watch the video of our discussion below. I hope you enjoy it. Note: If the video does not display in your browser, please click here. If you are interested in learning more about World War I, check out these posts:  TWE Remembers: World War I on the World Wide Web TWE Remembers: World War I Histories TWE Remembers: Top Ten World War I Films TWE Remembers: World War I Poetry TWE Remembers: World War I Novels TWE Remembers: The Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand TWE Remembers: Austria-Hungary Issues an Ultimatum to Serbia TWE Remembers: Serbia Responds to Austria’s Ultimatum TWE Remembers: The Assassination of Jean Jaurès TWE Remembers: Britain Declares War, the United States Declares Neutrality TWE Remembers: The Sinking of the Lusitania TWE Remembers: The Black Tom Explosion TWE Remembers: The Zimmermann Telegram TWE Remembers: Woodrow Wilson Asks Congress to Declare War on Germany Remembering America’s Entry into the Great War I also highly recommend PBS’s recent three-part series, The Great War. It is documentary film-making at its best. Corey Cooper assisted in the preparation of this post.

Today marks the one hundredth anniversary of Congress declaring war on Germany, thereby thrusting the United States into the Great War, or what we know today as World War I. The vote was a major turning point in U.S. history. For more than a century, Americans had steered clear of Europe’s political affairs. They had been good students of George Washington, who said “It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world,” and of Thomas Jefferson, who recommended "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations-entangling alliances with none." Suddenly, however, American boys were headed “over there.” It took a lot to persuade Americans that the Great War was their war to fight. President Woodrow Wilson had declared the United States neutral when the fighting began in Europe in August 1914. The rape of Belgium didn’t prompt Americans to the change their minds. Neither did the sinking of the Lusitania. Or the Ancona. Or the Sussex. Or the Black Tom explosion. Public sentiment only shifted decisively in early 1917 after Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and then news broke of Berlin’s effort to entice Mexico into attacking the United States. Even after entering the war, Americans found it hard to give up old habits; the United States insisted it was fighting alongside Britain and France as an “associated power” and not an allied one. As important as World War I is in U.S. history, most Americans today know far less about it than about the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War II, or Vietnam. A century ago William Jennings Bryan, Robert Lansing, and General John “Black Jack” Pershing were household names. They are seldom mentioned today. Fortunately, if you want to learn more about World War I and how it shaped America, PBS has a show for you: “The Great War.” It’s a six hour, three-night special that will air from April 10-12. (Check your local listings for when it will air on your area.) Here’s the trailer:   “The Great War” is terrific film-making. It explores not just the hows and whys of America’s entry into the Great War, but also its consequences. It’s a story of paradoxes. Americans entered the war reluctantly but embraced it with patriotic fervor. Wilson campaigned on a pledge to keep America out of war but five months after winning reelection asked Congress to wage one. He justified the war on the grounds that “the world must be made safe for democracy,” but then helped lead a massive curtailment of civil liberties. “The Great War” introduces all the leading political figures of the day while at the same time highlighting the experiences of ordinary Americans both on the front lines and at home. And it tells the war’s story against the backdrop of the other major issues of the day: rising immigration, the suffragette movement, and growing racial animosity. In all, it’s must see TV. PBS is not the only place you can learn about World War I. Many museums are commemorating the centennial with special exhibits. If you are visiting Washington, DC, check out the Library of Congress. It’s showing “Echoes of the Great War: American Experiences of World War I." The exhibit, which runs through January 2019, examines how Americans, both at home and on the front, dealt with the war. While you are in DC, you should also check out the National Archives. For the next month it is displaying the joint resolution that formally declared war on Germany.   Joint Resolution declaring war on Germany (Source: The National Archives)   You’re also in luck if you’re in the City of Brotherly Love. The National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia is hosting “1917: How One Year Changed the World” until July. (If you go today, admission is free.) The exhibit looks at three critical events in 1917: America’s entry into World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Balfour Declaration. Among other artifacts, you can see a decoded copy of the Zimmermann Telegram and two original drafts of the Balfour Declaration. The National Museum of American Jewish History offers an added bonus: it is located across the street from Independence Mall. So if you take a few more steps you can visit Independence Hall and see the Liberty Bell. Just a mile away, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts is hosting its own World War I exhibit, “World War I and American Art.” PAFA bills the show as “the first major exhibition devoted to exploring the ways in which American artists reacted to the First World War.” John Singer Sargent’s masterpiece Gassed, which shows British soldiers blinded by mustard gas being led to a medical station, is the exhibit’s centerpiece. Just as interesting, at least to me, are the many propaganda and recruiting posters. They offer competing visions of the war’s ultimate meaning: preserving liberty or delivering death and destruction. But if you want to see the exhibit, you have to act fast. It closes this Sunday, April 9. One museum I haven’t visited is the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Missouri. It’s closed today for a commemoration ceremony entitled “In Sacrifice for Liberty and Peace." But when it reopens tomorrow you can check out its four special exhibits: “Fields of Battle, Lands of Peace: The Doughboys 1917-1918,”“Posters as Munitions, 1917,” “Vive l’Amérique: French Children Welcome Their American Ally,” and “Revolutions! 1917.” If you know of any other exhibits or documentaries on World War I and its consequences, please list them in the comments section below. Corey Cooper assisted in the preparation of this post.

I was lucky enough to speak with Rosa Brooks about her recent book, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales From the Pentagon. Rosa is law professor at Georgetown University, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and a fellow columnist for Foreign Policy. We talk about her unique and compelling experiences at the Pentagon, where she served as a counselor to the undersecretary of defense for policy. Rosa also shares her thoughts on the role of retired military officers in election politics, and the difficulties (or lack thereof) in addressing the most pressing challenges to U.S. national security policy and law. She also gives some important advice for young policy professionals starting their careers. Listen to my conversation with the brilliant and insightful Rosa Brooks, check out her new book (if you haven’t already) and follow Rosa on Twitter @brooks_rosa.  

Ask Americans to name World War II battles in the Pacific and you will likely to hear places such as Pearl Harbor, Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa. You aren’t likely to hear anyone mention Attu. But it was the only land battle fought on U.S. soil during World War II. And in proportional terms, it also was one of the bloodiest battles of the entire Pacific theater. You’ve never heard of Attu? It’s the westernmost island in the Aleutian Islands chain. It lies closer to Russia than to the U.S. mainland. It is 1,100 miles off the Alaskan coast and nearly 5,000 miles from Washington, DC. It’s about 20 miles by 35 miles in size, making it the twenty-third largest American island. Japanese troops captured Attu on June 7, 1942, exactly six months to the day after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. military wasn’t defending the island, so it was there for the taking. Japanese military leaders didn’t order the attack because of Attu’s strategic value. It didn’t have any. They instead hoped to entice the U.S. Navy into diverting its forces away from the southern Pacific to Alaska, thereby weakening the American ability to win the war in the South Pacific. Washington didn’t bite. Almost a year elapsed before it decided to retake Attu. On May 11, 1943, the first of 15,000 U.S. soldiers landed on the island. They squared off against roughly 2,500 Japanese. Although the Japanese were badly outnumbered, they fought tenaciously in grim, arctic weather conditions. The American troops slowly gained ground. On May 29, the Japanese commander recognized that the end was near. He ordered that all Japanese soldiers too wounded to continue fighting be killed. He then led a banzai charge, one of the largest of the entire war. Some 1,000 surviving Japanese troops attacked the surprised U.S. forces and nearly overran their positions. The headline that the Saturday Evening Post gave its story on the battle highlighted the viciousness of the fighting: “Mad-Dog Hunt on Attu.” Fewer than thirty Japanese soldiers survived the Battle of Attu. On the American side, 549 soldiers died, 1,148 were wounded, and more than 2,000 suffered exposure-related injuries. When the overall number of soldiers who fought in the battle is taken into account, only Iwo Jima surpasses Attu in terms of U.S. casualties. A soldier who fought at Attu summed up the experience of trying to retake 346 square miles of frozen terrain: It maybe wasn’t such a big battle as battles go nowadays, but, brother, everything about it was done in a big way, including the way them Japs knocked themselves off. Believe me, that was the biggest, awfulest damned mess I ever saw in my life, so help me. Today Attu is known as a birder’s paradise. If you ever visit Attu, and few people do, you might see a whiskered auklet, a red-legged Kittiwake, a solitary snipe, a red-flanked bluetail, or even a hawfinch. But if your eyes turn from the heavens to the earth, you’ll also see a collapsed church and few trees. They are pretty much all that remains of the presence of the Americans who fought on a distant island seven decades ago.