Fortification
The World beyond Rome II
Fort at Vindolanda, AD 105. The fort housed the First Tungrian cohort and a Batavian cohort. The effects of imperial neglect can be seen on the British frontier. The archaeological evidence from Scotland shows a lively cross-frontier exchange in the first and early second centuries. Roman goods found their way into native hands, from fine enameled brooches and sets of…
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The War of the Engineers II
Fort Douaumont (Illustration from Neil Demarco’s The Great War) THE RIPOSTE On the other hand, now that the engineers knew what the new shells could do, coming up with a way to counter them was not all that difficult, at least in theory. Basically, the material that formed the carapace…
The War of the Engineers III
THE INTERNAL DEBATE In order to understand how that came to happen, and why it continued for the first part of the war, it is unfortunately necessary to peer into the labyrinth of the Third Republic, where basically, the army was run by a committee called the Conseil SupĂ©rieure de…
Japan at Bay
No one—and especially not the members of Japanese Imperial General Headquarters or the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff—expected Okinawa to be the last battle of World War II. Why the surprise? The Joint Chiefs, having woefully underestimated enemy striking power at the beginning of the Pacific War, had just…
The Final Siege: Antwerp 1914 Part I
42 cm M-Gerät On Saturday, 10 October 1914 Admiral von Schroeder, Antwerp’s new military governor, and General von Beseler, commander of the siege troops that had captured the fortress, watched as the siege corps marched in review, celebrating the capture of the Belgian National Redoubt. The most noteworthy thing about that…
The Final Siege: Antwerp 1914 Part II
The bombardment of the Belgian army headquarters at Mechelen had started on 18 October, as a result of which King Albert moved the headquarters to Antwerp. Once Mechelen was taken, the Germans moved their heavy guns forwards and began shelling the forts. The first German attack was directed against Sector…
TRENCH WARFARE, 1915–1917
Aerial view of opposing trench lines between Loos and Hulluch, July 1917. German trenches at the right and bottom, British at the top-left. The trench systems of 1915, 1916 and early 1917 became increasingly sophisticated as time, the lack of any significant advances or withdrawals and lengthy periods of inactivity…