Five things you (probably) didn’t know about… the first world war

How the Red Army pushed back German forces and what they discovered in their wake as WWII turned

On a beautiful summer’s morning almost 110 years ago, men of the British Army stepped out into no-man’s land at 7.30am. It was 1 July 1916, and the start of what was then called ‘The Big Push’. With h

I n 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That, at least, is what the famous rhyme tells us. Memorising such dates is a common experience of being taught history – a cliché superbly lampooned by the w

Three months after German forces captured Fort Douaumont in February 1916 (see issue 1 of Iron Cross) a calamity befell the occupiers, predominantly comprising troops from the Prussian Brandenburg reg

We ended last month looking at the soldier’s pocket books of the 19th century. Sadly very few of these documents survive. They are NOT included in any Army papers that have been stored over the years.

On the night of 13 March 1944, the Greekregistered steamship SS Peleus was en route from Freetown to Buenos Aires when she was hit amidships by two torpedoes, launched by a German U-boat, U-852. The t