by Wayne Wade Richard “Dick” Cavazos commanded the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment—the “Dogface Battalion”—in Vietnam before becoming the Army’s first Hispanic four-star general. Wayne Wade served in Cavazos’s battalion and, in his new memoir, Legacy: A Pathway in the Darkness, draws on his own experience, research, and interviews to tell its story. This
By Bob Von Bargen Few veterans today remember the phrase "purple suit." I was reminded of that recently after giving a presentation on the origins of Armed Forces Day. At the end, I asked the audience whether anyone remembered the expression. No one did. That surprised me because, for many of us, "putting on
By Bill Mayhue, LTC (Ret.) Military humor is unique, and few things inspire more jokes that the huge compendia of jargon that the branches of services accumulate and dispense every year. For retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Bill Mayhue, that language shaped the way he viewed one of life's most memorable missions: getting his wife
By Todd DePastino This account is drawn largely from the memories and research of Norman Silverman, a veteran of the Army Security Agency who served in West Berlin during the height of the Cold War. Norman later helped create the remarkable West Berlin Archive, an extensive online collection of photographs, documents, recollections, and historical
By Todd DePastino As a historian drawn to veterans’ stories, I sometimes indulge a private daydream. One morning at a Veterans Breakfast Club gathering, just as the coffee is being poured and the conversations begin, the door opens and in walks a small, weathered old man in a dusty colonial militia uniform. He’s bent
A Black Soldier in the Continental Army Boyrereau Brinch, later known as Jeffrey Brace, was born in West Africa around 1742, kidnapped as a teenager, and carried into Atlantic slavery before being sold repeatedly in the Caribbean and New England. In Connecticut, he eventually came into the household of Mary Stiles, a widow in
