Military History

Luis Botha was born near Greytown in Natal and, the son of a farming family, was given very little formal education. He was, however, intensely interested in politics and took part in creating the New Republic around Vryheid in 1884. He settled in that region, becoming field cornet (military leader) of Vryheid in 1894 and gaining election to the...

Claude Auchinleck was the son of an army officer and, destined for a military career, was educated at Wellington and Sandhurst. He became an officer in the Indian army and saw service during World War I against Turkish forces in the Middle East. During the Great War, he rocketed through the ranks, becoming a lieutenant colonel by 1917.

A native of Gladwyne, Pennsylvania, Henry Harley Arnold attended West Point, from which he graduated in 1907, and was commissioned an officer in the infantry. His first service was in the Philippines during 1907-1909, but he became passionately interested in flying and was a pioneer in military aviation.

Edmund Allenby was born in Nottinghamshire and joined the Inniskilling Dragoons in 1882. With this unit, he served in the Bechuanaland (Botswana) expedition of 1884-85. At the turn of the century, during 1900-1902 he saw service in the Second Anglo-Boer War on the staff of Lord Kitchener and in the field. In 1902, he returned to England to comma...

Alan Brooke was born in 1883 at Bagnères-de-Bigorre, Hautes-Pyrénées (France), to a prominent Anglo-Irish family from West Ulster with a long military tradition and was educated on the continent. After returning to England, he joined the army as a junior artillery officer (1902) and saw service on the Western Front during World War I, where he w...

Avraham Adan was a controversial Israeli military leader who advocated and helped create the "Bar Lev Line" of fortified observation posts along the troubled Suez In 1969. A native-born Israeli, Avraham Man enlisted in 1943, at age seventeen, in the Palmach.

Hiroaki Abe was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. Abe graduated from the Japanese Naval Academy (1911) and Naval Staff College (1925). He rose through the ranks as a torpedo officer and during 1922-23 commanded a destroyer.

Creighton Abrams was a native of Springfield, Massachusetts, and received an appointment to West Point, where he was a superb student, graduating in 1936, eighteenth in a class of 276. Commissioned a second lieutenant of cavalry, he was promoted to captain in 1940 and transferred to armor. In Europe, during World War II, he brilliantly commanded...