How the Vietnam War’s ‘Unknown Soldier’ was identified and reinterred
It should not have been a case of mistaken identity. When Michael Blassie’s remains were first found by South Vietnamese soldiers, they found his ID card, wallet, dogs tags and…
Here’s what a Navy corpsman does when a Marine is hit
Marines rushing into combat count on the corpsman to come to their aid if they’re hit. Here’s what the sailors do after the call of, “Corpsman up!”
1. Rush to the casualty
The surprising reason most troops who die in the military don’t die in combat
There are things that can annoy you during your time in uniform, like PowerPoint presentations, waiting to be released for the weekend, and that private who clearly needed a waiver to get in. Wait, that’s not a private, that’s a lieutenant!
Why handling battlefield casualties was so gruesome during the Civil War
The Civil War produced casualties and war dead on a level previously unencountered by Americans and it was all happening in their farms, fields and in some cases, literally their…
The first casualty of the Civil War happened entirely by accident
On Dec. 20, 1860, the state of South Carolina seceded from the Union, leaving military personnel stationed there in a state of confusion. What belonged to the United States, what belonged to South Carolina, and who was going to be loyal to which sid…
How Americans are saving the Syrian War’s severely burned children
On an especially cold winter afternoon in 2016, in the dark depths of the Syrian war, Yazen was quietly playing in Al-Bab, Syria, when a bomb ripped through his family…