19 FEBRUARY 1945 THE FIGHTING FIELD MUSICIAN Darrell Samuel Cole could see the war clouds on the horizon in the Fall of 1941. Wanting to be ready to fight himself, on 25 August 1941 he enlisted in the United States Marine Read More
5-7 FEBRUARY 1832 THE FIRST BATTLE OF QUALLAH BATTOO His trading mission scrubbed, Captain Charles Endicott refitted Friendship for sea and departed 4 March 1831 for Salem. His landfall on 16 July was preceded several days by the arrival of another Read More
EARLY FEBRUARY 1831 FRIENDSHIP AND THE SUMATRAN PIRATES Salem, Massachusetts, was one of our busiest seaports in the early days of our young nation. In fact, it was the major port through which the American spice trade was conducted. About the Read More
30-31 JANUARY 1863 BULLS ISLAND INCIDENT (cont.) The morning of 31 January roused CAPT Charles T. Haskell’s Confederates from their rest at the Gibbes house and greeted the arrival of 50 Confederate reinforcements from Fort Moultrie. Suspecting FLAMBEAU would send a Read More
30-31 JANUARY 1863 BULLS ISLAND INCIDENT Bull Island is a low coastal island 10 miles north of Charleston Harbor separated from the mainland by the Intercoastal Waterway. Today a national wildlife refuge, in antebellum times it was owned by a family Read More
9-11 JANUARY 1863 REDUCTION OF ARKANSAS POST Arkansas sided with the South in the Civil War, and after the firing on Ft. Sumter, Arkansans prepared for an expected Union invasion. Their capital, Little Rock, and the Fort Smith arsenal lay on Read More
27-28 OCTOBER 1855 USS DECATUR vs. The Indians The Oregon Treaty with England in 1846 deeded that portion of British Columbia south of the 49th parallel to the United States–the area that would become our States of Washington and Oregon. Settlers Read More
2-4 OCTOBER 1912 THE CHARGE UP COYOTEPE The US Marines had been in Nicaragua off and on since December 1909, each time to quell civil unrest and prop-up conservative pro-American governments. In this latest foray, the administration of Adolfo Díaz had Read More
30 AUGUST-20 SEPTEMBER 1995 OPERATION “DELIBERATE FORCE” The Balkan cease fire brokered by former President Jimmy Carter in 1994 had failed. United Nations’ efforts at peacekeeping in the war-torn former Yugoslavian republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina had given way to NATO and its Read More
17-18 AUGUST 1942 MAKIN RAID As a diversion to the 10-day-old invasion of Guadalcanal, 222 men of the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion embarked on two submarines, USS NAUTILUS (SS-168) and USS ARGONAUT (SM-1), for a raid behind enemy lines. Commanding the Read More