Odin & Aesop Bill Redman & Tony Faust

Company E, 506th Regiment was part of the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division.  It was formed in 1942 and comprised of young volunteers that were generally new to the army.  Company E received its baptism by fire in June 1944 when it jumped into NAZI occupied France.  It went on to jump into Holland as part of Operation Market-Garden; helped blunt the German advance by holding the town of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge; and then drove across Germany to secure Hitler’s final defeat.  During its advance across Europe, Company E sustained 150% casualties.  Stephen Ambrose tells Easy Company’s story through the words of the men who served in it. 

Sierra Leone’s civil war lasted from 1991 until 2002.  It was marked by exceptional levels of cruelty and suffering.  During this civil war the United Nations, neighboring West African states, and the United Kingdom launched military interventions into Sierra Leone.  The United Kingdom’s intervention was called Operation Palliser.  In September 2000 eleven British soldiers participating in Operation Palliser were captured by a militia gang known as the West Side Boys.  When it became clear negotiating with the West Side Boys was proving futile, the British decided to take military action to free their soldiers.  William Fowler’s “Operation Barras” tells the story of what happened.

On November 20th, 1953 thousands of French paratroopers dropped into a place called Dien Bien Phu.  Dien Bien Phu is a small valley in the northern part of Vietnam close to Laos.  The French plan was to establish a base at Dien Bien Phu, keep it resupplied by air, and then use it as a place to launch operations against the Viet Minh.  The French underestimated the scale of the force the Viet Minh would concentrate around Dien Bien Phu.  Before long, the French were besieged and doomed to defeat.  This battle ended French rule in Indochina.  Bernard Fall explains what happened at Dien Bien Phu and why in “Hell in a Very Small Place”.  

The First Allied Airborne Army launched an attack into the German occupied Netherlands on September 17, 1944.  Eventually over the 41,000 troops went in by parachute and glider.  The idea was for this huge airborne force to seize nine bridges stretched across 64 miles of the Netherlands.  Seizing these bridges would allow the British Army’s XXX Corps to advance rapidly across the rivers and into Germany.  It was a bold plan that ultimately failed.  Cornelius Ryan explains why in “A Bridge Too Far”.  

On June 1942, Germany’s Army Group South started an offensive called Case Blue or Plan Blue.  The idea was to sprint out off eastern Ukraine, across the Russian steppe, and into the Caucasus to capture the oil fields there.  As part of this big effort, the German Sixth Army attempted to capture the city of Stalingrad on the Volga River.  The Sixth Army reached Stalingrad in August.  The fighting was ferocious.  In November the Soviets launched offensives of their own north and south of Stalingrad.  Those two pincers linked up and trapped the Germans in a cauldron.  Fighting continued in Stalingrad but now winter was closing in.  Starvation and the cold exacted a toll as harsh as the Soviets.  Despite Hitler’s attempts to resupply the Sixth Army by air and his exhortations to fight to the last, what was left of the German Sixth Army surrendered in late January 1943.  There was no way for Hitler and his propagandists to spin this crushing defeat.  Antony Beevor tells the story of history’s largest land battle and arguably the turning point of World War Two in “Stalingrad.”

On June 27, 1976, an Air France flight from Tel Aviv to Paris was hijacked by a group of Arab and German terrorists.  They demanded the release of 53 terrorists and diverted the plane to Entebbe, Uganda.  On July 4th, Israeli commandos disguised as Ugandan soldiers flew over 2,000 miles, assaulted the airport, killed the terrorists, and rescued all but three of the hostages within an hour. The Israeli assault force suffered one fatality: its commander, Yoni Netanyahu (brother of Israel's current Prime Minister).  Saul David’s “Operation Thunderbolt” is a definitive account of what happened.