Snipers

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

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

When we think of the U-boat campaign during the Second World War, images often arise of silent predators gliding beneath the waves, steely and lethal, striking fear into Allied convoys. The myth of th

“HAUNTED BY THE SPECTRE OF THEIR OWN DESTRUCTION”

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