Newsletter & Updates

Military History

On 16 June 1961, following a meeting between President John Kennedy and South Vietnam envoy Nguyen Dinh Thuan, an agreement was reached for direct training and combat supervision of Vietnamese troops by US instructors. South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem had earlier asked Kennedy to send additional US troops to train the South Vietnamese Army. US advisers had been serving in Vietnam since 1955 as part of the US Military Assistance Advisory Group. There would be only 900 US military personnel in South Vietnam at the end of 1961, but the number would climb until it reached 16,000 by the time of President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963.

On 17 June 1775, British General William Howe landed his troops on the Charlestown Peninsula overlooking Boston, Massachusetts, and led them against Breed’s Hill, a fortified American position just below Bunker Hill.

As the British advanced in columns, American General William Prescott reportedly told his men, “Don’t one of you fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” When the Redcoats were within 40 yards, the Americans let loose with a lethal barrage of musket fire, throwing the British into retreat. After reforming his lines, Howe attacked again, with much the same result. Prescott’s men were now low on ammunition, though, and when Howe led his men up the hill for a third

time, they reached the redoubts and engaged the Americans in hand-to-hand combat. The outnumbered Americans were forced to retreat. However, by the end of the engagement, the Patriots’ gunfire had cut down nearly 1,000 enemy troops, including 92 officers. Of the 370 Patriots who fell, most were struck while in retreat.

The British had won the so-called Battle of Bunker Hill, and Breed’s Hill and the Charlestown Peninsula fell firmly under British control. Despite losing their strategic positions, the battle was a morale-builder for the Americans, convincing them that patriotic dedication could overcome superior British military might.

The British entered the battle overconfident. Had they merely guarded Charlestown Neck, they could have isolated the Patriots with little loss of life. Instead, Howe had chosen to try to wipe out the Yankees by marching 2,400 men into a frontal assault on the Patriots’ well-defended position on top of the hill. The British would never make the same mistake again.

On 19 June 1885, the Statue of Liberty arrived in New York Harbor as a symbol of Franco-American friendship. Nine years late, the 300-foot statue was a gift from the people of France, who had been the Patriots’ primary foreign ally in our War for Independence, to those of the US as a celebration of the Declaration of Independence’s centenary in 1876. Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue, originally titled “Liberty Enlightening the World” from copper sheets upon a steel frame. After completion, the statue was disassembled into 350 sections and shipped in 214 crates to New York Harbor. Over a year later, on October 28, 1886, the statue was reconstructed and dedicated in a large public ceremony by President Grover Cleveland.

The statue’s pedestal bears the words of poet Emma Lazarus, written in 1883:

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

These words echoed those of the radical Patriot pamphleteer, Thomas Paine, written in his 1776 call to arms, Common Sense:

On 19 June 1944, during WWII, in what would become known as the “Marianas Turkey Shoot,” US carrier-based fighters decimated the Japanese Fleet with only a minimum of losses in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

The security of the Marianas Islands, in the western Pacific, were vital to Japan, which had air bases on Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. US troops were already battling the Japanese on Saipan. Any further intrusion would leave the Philippine Islands, and Japan itself, vulnerable to US attack. Our Fifth Fleet, commanded by Admiral Raymond Spruance, was on its way west from the Marshall Islands as backup for the invasion of Saipan and the rest of the Marianas. But Japanese Admiral Jisaburo decided to challenge our fleet, ordering 430 of his planes, launched from aircraft carriers, to attack. In what became the greatest carrier battle of the war, our navy, having already picked up the Japanese craft on radar, proceeded to shoot down over 300 aircraft and sink two Japanese aircraft carriers, losing only 29 of their own planes. It was described in the aftermath as a “turkey shoot.”

Admiral Ozawa, believing his missing planes had landed at their Guam air base, maintained his position in the Philippine Sea, allowing for a second attack of our carrier-based fighters to shoot down 65 more Japanese planes and sink another carrier. In total, the Japanese lost 480 aircraft, three-quarters of its total, not to mention most of its crews. American domination of the Marianas was now a foregone conclusion.

On 20 June 1898, during the Spanish-American War, on the way to the Philippines to fight the Spanish, the US Navy cruiser Charleston seized the island of Guam.

On 22 June 1807, British officers of the HMS Leopard boarded the USS Chesapeake after she had set sail for the Mediterranean and demanded the right to search the ship for deserters. Commodore James Barron refused and the British opened fire with broadsides on the unprepared Chesapeake and forced her to surrender. This British provocation led to the War of 1812.

On 22 June 1898, ADM Sampson began an amphibious landing near Santiago, Cuba. Lt. Col. Theodore Roosevelt and Col. Leonard Wood led the Rough Riders, a volunteer cavalry regiment, onto the beach at Daiquiri in the Spanish American War.

On 22 June 1936, Congress passed an act to define jurisdiction of our Coast Guard. In one of the most sweeping grants of police authority ever written into US law, Congress designated the Coast Guard as the federal agency for “enforcement of laws generally on the high seas and navigable waters of the United States.”

On 22 June 1942, during WWII, a Japanese submarine shelled Fort Stevens, Oregon, at the mouth of the Columbia River. No one was killed.

On 22 June 1943, during WWII, federal troops put down race-related rioting in Detroit that claimed over 30 lives.

On 22 June 1944, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the GI Bill, an unprecedented act of legislation designed to compensate returning members of the armed services–known as GIs–for their efforts in WWII. Roosevelt’s administration created the GI Bill–officially the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944–hoping to avoid a relapse into the Great Depression after the war ended. FDR particularly wanted to prevent a repeat of the Bonus March of 1932, when 20,000 unemployed veterans and their families flocked in protest to Washington. The American Legion successfully fought for many of the provisions included in the bill, which gave returning servicemen access to unemployment compensation, low-interest home and business loans, and–most importantly–funding for education.

By giving veterans money for tuition, living expenses, books, supplies and equipment, the G.I. Bill effectively transformed higher education in America. Before the war, college had been an option for only 10-15% of young Americans, and university campuses had become known as a haven for the most privileged classes. By 1947, in contrast, vets made up half of the nation’s college enrollment; three years later, nearly 500,000 Americans graduated from college, compared with 160,000 in 1939. The GI Bill became one of the major forces that drove an economic expansion in America that lasted 30 years after WWII. Only 20% of the money set aside for unemployment compensation under the bill was given out, as most veterans found jobs or pursued higher education. Low interest home loans enabled millions of American families to move out of urban centers and buy or build homes outside the city, changing the face of the suburbs. Over 50 years, the impact of

the GI Bill was enormous, with 20 million veterans and dependents using the education benefits and 14 million home loans guaranteed, for a total federal investment of $67 billion.

On 22 June 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower authorized the first use of the first official Marine Corps Seal.

On 23 June 1865, Confederate General Stand Watie, who was also a Cherokee chief, surrendered the last sizable Confederate army at Fort Towson, in the Oklahoma Territory.

On 24 June 1948, one of the most dramatic standoffs in the history of the Cold War began as the Soviet Union blocked all road and rail traffic to and from West Berlin. The blockade turned out to be a terrible diplomatic move by the Soviets, while the US emerged from the confrontation with renewed purpose and confidence.

American officials were furious, and some in the administration of President Truman argued that the time for diplomacy with the Soviets was over. For a few tense days, the world waited to see whether the US and Soviet Union would come to blows. In West Berlin, panic began to set in as its population worried about shortages of food, water, and medical aid. Our response came just two days after the Soviets began their blockade. A massive airlift of supplies into West Berlin was undertaken in what was to become one of the greatest logistical efforts in history. For the Soviets, the escapade quickly became a diplomatic embarrassment. Russia looked like an international bully that was trying to starve men, women, and children into submission. And our successful airlift served to accentuate our technological superiority over the Soviet Union. On May 12, 1949, the Soviets officially ended the blockade.

On 25 June 1876, Native American forces led by Chiefs Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull defeated the Army troops of Lieutenant Colonel George Custer in a bloody battle near southern Montana’s Little Bighorn River.

Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, leaders of the Sioux tribe on the Great Plains, strongly resisted the mid-19th-century efforts of the US government to confine their people to reservations. In 1875, after gold was discovered in South Dakota’s Black Hills, the US Army ignored previous treaty agreements and invaded the region. This betrayal led many Sioux and Cheyenne tribesmen to leave their reservations and join Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse in Montana. By the late spring of 1876, more than 10,000 Native Americans had gathered in a camp along the Little Bighorn River–which they called the Greasy Grass–in defiance of a US War Department order to return to their reservations or risk being attacked.

In mid-June, three columns of US soldiers lined up against the camp and prepared to march. A force of 1,200 Native Americans turned back the first column on June 17. Five days later, General Alfred Terry ordered Custer’s 7th Cavalry to scout ahead for enemy troops. On the morning of June 25, Custer drew near the camp and decided to press on ahead rather than wait for reinforcements.

At mid-day, Custer’s 600 men entered the Little Bighorn Valley. Among the Native Americans, word quickly spread of the impending attack. The older Sitting Bull rallied the warriors and saw to the safety of the women and children, while Crazy Horse set off with a large force to meet the attackers head on. Despite Custer’s desperate attempts to regroup his men, they were quickly overwhelmed. Custer and some 200 men in his battalion were attacked by as many as 3,000 Native Americans; within an hour, Custer and every last one of his soldier were dead.

The Battle of Little Bighorn–also called Custer’s Last Stand–marked the most decisive Native American victory and the worst US Army defeat in the long Plains Indian War.

On 25 June 1950, armed forces from communist North Korea smash into South Korea, setting off the Korean War. The US, acting under the auspices of the UN, sprang to the defense of South Korea. The forces of many nations fought a bloody and frustrating war for the next 3 years.

Korea, a former Japanese possession, had been divided into zones of occupation following WWII. US forces accepted the surrender of Japanese forces in southern Korea, while Soviet forces did the same in northern Korea. Like in Germany, however, the “temporary” division soon became permanent. The Soviets established a communist regime in North Korea, while the US became the main source of financial and military support for South Korea.

On June 25, 1950, North Korean forces surprised the South Korean army (& the small US force stationed in the country) and quickly headed toward the capital city of Seoul. We responded by pushing a resolution through the UN Security Council calling for military assistance to South Korea. Russia was not present to veto the action as it was boycotting the Security Council at the time—which is why the UN actually did something useful. Thus, President Harry Truman rapidly dispatched US land, air, & sea forces to Korea to engage in what he termed a “police action.” The American intervention turned the tide, and US and South Korean forces marched into North Korea. This action, however, prompted the massive intervention of communist Chinese forces in late 1950. The war in Korea subsequently bogged down into a bloody stalemate. In 1953, the US and North Korea signed a cease-fire that ended the conflict. The cease-fire agreement also resulted in the continued division of North and South Korea at just about the same geographical point as before the conflict. A “cease fire” doesn’t end a war, so the war technically continues. Then China became North Korea’s sponsor and now provides most of the resources that nation needs.

The Korean War was the first “hot” war of the Cold War. Over 55,000 US troops were killed. Korea was the first “limited war,” one in which our aim was not the complete and total defeat of the enemy, but rather the “limited” goal of protecting South Korea. For our government, such an approach seemed to be the only rational option in order to avoid a third world war and to keep from stretching finite American resources too thinly around the globe. It proved to be a frustrating experience for the American people, who were used to the kind of total victory that had been achieved in WWII. The public found the concept of limited war difficult to understand or support, and the Korean War never really gained popular support.

On 26 June 1917, during WWI, the first 14,000 US infantry troops landed in France at the port of Saint Nazaire. The landing site had been kept secret because of the menace of German submarines, but by the time the Americans had lined up to take their first salute on French soil, an enthusiastic crowd had gathered to welcome them. However, the “Doughboys,” as the British referred to the green American troops, were untrained, ill-equipped, and far from ready for the difficulties of fighting along the Western Front.

One of General John Pershing’s first duties as commander of the American Expeditionary Force was to set up training camps in France and establish communication and supply networks. Four months later, on October 21, the first Americans entered combat when units from the Army’s First Division were assigned to Allied trenches in the Luneville sector near Nancy, France. Each American unit was attached to a corresponding French unit.

After four years of bloody stalemate along the Western Front, the entrance of America’s well-supplied forces into the conflict was a major turning point in the war. When the war finally ended on November 11, 1918, over two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and over 50,000 had lost their lives.

On 27 June 1940, during WWII, the Germans set up two-way radio communication in their newly occupied French territory, employing their most sophisticated coding machine, Enigma, to transmit information.

The Germans set up radio stations in Brest and the port town of Cherbourg. Signals would be transmitted to German bombers so as to direct them to targets in Britain. The Enigma coding machine, invented in 1919 by Hugo Koch, a Dutchman was originally employed for business purposes. The German army adapted the machine for wartime use and considered its encoding system unbreakable. They were wrong. The Brits had broken the code as early as the German invasion of Poland and had intercepted virtually every message sent through the system. Britain nicknamed the intercepted messages Ultra.

On 28 June 1965, during the Vietnam War, in the first major offensive ordered for US forces, 3,000 troops of the 173rd Airborne Brigade–in conjunction with 800 Australian soldiers and a Vietnamese airborne unit–assault a jungle area known as Viet Cong Zone D, 20 miles northeast of Saigon. The operation was called off after three days when it failed to make any major contract with the enemy. One American was killed and nine Americans and four Australians were wounded. The State Department assured the American public that the operation was in accord with Johnson administration policy on the role of US troops.

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