News & Updates

Military History

On 6 Feb 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant provided the first major Union victory of the war when he captured Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. Ten days later, he captured Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River, which gave the Yankees control of northern Tennessee and paved the way for the occupation of Nashville.

On 8 Feb 1918, our Army resumed publication of the military newsletter Stars and Stripes.

Begun as a newsletter for Union soldiers during the American Civil War, Stars and Stripes was published weekly during WWI from 8 Feb 1918, until 13 June 1919. The newspaper was distributed to American soldiers dispersed across the Western Front to keep them unified and informed about the overall war effort and America’s part in it, as well as supply them with news from the home front.

The front page of the newspaper’s first WWI issue featured A Message from Our Chief, a short valedictory from General John Pershing, commander in chief of the American Expeditionary Force: The paper, written by the men in the service, should speak the thoughts of the new American army and the American people from whom the army has been drawn. It is your paper. Good luck to it.

The WWI-era Stars and Stripes was largely the creation of Second Lieutenant Guy Viskniskki, an AEF press officer and former censor at the American Field Test Headquarters in France. Featuring news articles, sports news, poetry, letters to the editor and cartoons, among other content, the eight-page weekly publication was printed on presses that had been borrowed from Paris newspapers. Viskniskki’s staff was made up mostly of enlisted men and featured prominent journalists like Alexander Woollcott, a former drama critic for The New York Times, and Grantland Rice, who went onto become known as the dean of American sports writers. At its peak during the war, Stars and Stripes reached a circulation of 526,000.

Stars and Stripes resumed publication during WWII, during which circulation reached 1,000,000. Serving as a daily hometown newspaper for service members, government civilians and their families stationed around the world, it has been in continuous publication in Europe since 1942 and in the Pacific since 1945. In these two regions, Stars and Stripes reaches 80,000 and 60,000 readers respectively. It also publishes a Mideast edition as well as an electronic edition on the Internet.

On 8 Feb 1862, Union General Ambrose Burnside scored a major victory when he captured Roanoke Island in North Carolina. The victory was one of the first major Union victories of the war and it gave the Yankees control of the mouth of Albemarle Sound, a key Confederate bay that allowed the Union to threaten the Rebel capital of Richmond from the south.

The Yankees suffered 37 men killed and 214 wounded, while the Confederates lost 23 men killed and 62 wounded before the surrender. The Union now controlled a vital section of the coast. The victory came two days after Union General Ulysses Grant captured Fort Henry in northern Tennessee, and, for the first time in the war, the North had reason for optimism.

On 15 Feb 1898, a massive explosion of unknown origin sank the battleship USS Maine in Cuba’s Havana harbor, killing 260 of the fewer than 400 American crew members aboard.

One of the first American battleships, the Maine weighed over 6,000 tons and was built at a cost of over $2 million. Ostensibly on a friendly visit, the Maine had been sent to Cuba to protect the interests of Americans there after a rebellion against Spanish rule broke out in Havana in January.

An official Naval Court of Inquiry ruled in March that the ship was blown up by a mine, without directly placing the blame on Spain. Much of Congress and a majority of the American public expressed little doubt that Spain was responsible and called for a declaration of war.

Subsequent diplomatic failures to resolve the matter; this coupled with our indignation over Spain’s brutal suppression of the Cuban rebellion and continued losses to American investment, led to the outbreak of the Spanish-American War in April 1898.

Within three months, we had decisively defeated Spanish forces on land and sea, and in August an armistice halted the fighting. On December 12, 1898, the Treaty of Paris was signed between the US and Spain, officially ending the Spanish-American War and granting the US its first overseas empire with the ceding of such former Spanish possessions as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

In 1976, a team of American naval investigators concluded that the Maine explosion was likely caused by a fire that ignited its ammunition stocks, not by a Spanish mine or act of sabotage.

COMING UP ON FRONTLINES OF FREEDOM

On the weekend of Feb 8-9: Congressman and retired Marine General Jack Bergman will discuss our nation’s key issues. The AF vet Dr. Ryan Freeland will discuss his service. George Wrightson will discuss his children’s books on the climate, and Gill and Skip will discuss the Border and a Book.

And on the weekend of Feb 15-16: China expert Gordon Chang will discuss Greenland and the Panama Canal. Mike Glover will then address the need for situational awareness. And Gen Chris Petty will present the Battle of the Month.

The Frontlines of Freedom Newsletter is published twice monthly;
the dates of publication each month depend on the events and history of that month.

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