FEATURES
"Brethren of the Coast" — One government's privateer was another's pirate.Whatever you called them, they were the inevitable product of two centuries on constant war between Spain and her European enemies. A surprise: The Spanish did not always come off that badly.
"The Spanish Main and the Silver Screen" — sidebar
"Hawk in the Fowlyard" — "As resistless as a hawk in a fowlyard" was how one Union supporter described Robert E. Lee's favorite, Jeb Stuart. He may not have been an innovator, but no other cavalryman could wreck more havoc deep behind enemy lines.
"Brandy Station: The War's Greatest Cavalry Battle" — sidebar
"Eternal Argument" — The basic quarrel may be centuries old, but the first outbreak of the present trouble in Northern Ireland seems a bit ludicrous now. British troops arrived to impose calm exactly twenty-five years ago; they haven't left yet.
"Two Centuries of the IRA" — sidebar
"The Deceivers" — As the Allies prepared to carry the war to Berlin and Tokyo, a colorful assortment of intellectuals concocted phantom D-Days. Many details of their strategic hoaxes are only now coming to light.
"We Will Fight You Forever!" — In the 1860s, the sophisticated defensive works of New Zealand's Maori warriors almost made up for what the natives lacked in numbers. But the defenses did not fortify them against Te Riri Pakeha—the white man's anger.
"The Maori Way of War" — sidebar
"Decima Mas" — Italy's 10th Light Flotilla was a unit that specialized in naval sabotage. Its exploits disrupted the British Mediterranean Fleet from Alexandria to Gibraltar, and it had even targeted New York Harbor.
"The Birth of Blitzkrieg" — The Germans largely eschewed mechanized warfare in World War I. But the restrictive provisions of the Treaty of Versailles caused their tiny army to reinvent it, with a vengeance.
"Hans von Seeckt: The Political Heritage of an "Unpolitical" Soldier" — sidebar
"Rome's British Mistake" — The occupation of the distant island may have been popular at home, but the cost, military and economic, was a drain the empire could ill afford.
"Arthur, Artorius" — Who was King Arthur? Shreds of evidence seem to indicate that he was a military leader who, in the anarchy of the fifth century, waged a briefly successful struggle to save much of Roman Britain from barbarian invaders.
DEPARTMENTS
"Fighting Words: Terms from Military History" — Our historical lexicographer examines words and phrases that have come down to use from the Middle Ages.
"Arms and Men: "These Hideous Weapons"" — Little talked about, the flamethrower was one of the nastiest, but most effective, weapons of the Great War.
"Experience of War: The Day the Hornet Sank" — The author, then a nineteen-year-old ordnanceman on the doomed aircraft carrier, remembers its last, fire-ravaged moments at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, and his own narrow escape.