Volume 85, Number 3 · July 2021

This article provides a brief military background of the origins of the Fifth Crusade, but highlights the events and immediate aftermath of a battle fought 29 August 1219 between the crusaders and Egyptian sultan al-Kamil’s army near modern-day Fariskur, Egypt. Beyond mentioning that a battle took place, historians since the nineteenth century have failed to consider the reasons and implications of why the crusaders sought battle when they did. The battle resulted in a severe tactical defeat for the crusaders, and affected the rest of the crusade.

Unlike the British metropolitan military, Britain’s new West African colonial army of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ignored sexually transmitted diseases, more concerned with tropical disease and establishing medical infrastructure. This changed after the First World War when British officers in West Africa launched aggressive interventions against venereal disease in the ranks, including genital inspections, punishments, and emergency disinfection, none of which had any impact. After the Second World War, with more effective treatments, British officers stopped obsessing over sexually transmitted disease among West African soldiers. Colonial stereotypes around race and gender informed these military health policies.

The legend of the military homing pigeon Cher Ami has captured the public’s imagination; but the story of this pigeon helping save the lives of the Lost Battalion is rife with inconsistencies and falsehoods. This article delves into archival records to retrace Cher Ami’s life and deconstruct the myth about the bird. There is nothing conclusive linking the pigeon to the actions of the Lost Battalion. Cher Ami did survive severe wounds transporting a message, but exactly where and when are uncertain. The U.S. Army chose to link Cher Ami with the Lost Battalion’s story to promote the contributions of the Signal Corps’ Pigeon Service. The Smithsonian Institution preserved and displayed Cher Ami with benign indifference. The public treated the pigeon as a memorial, a place of remembrance and reflection on the heroism of the Lost Battalion and of the war’s combatants.

Update since publication: The DNA results for Cher Ami have been released by the Smithsonian at https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/cher-ami.

During the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–52) one of the most vexing issues facing Occupation authorities was prostitution, which had historically enjoyed widespread acceptance. Many Allied personnel patronized prostitutes. Venereal disease was common among prostitutes and increasingly among GIs. The Occupation outlawed the old imperial system of licensed prostitution because of its reliance on human trafficking but never outlawed prostitution outright. This apparent contradiction led many writers to condemn the Occupation as hypocritical. Nevertheless, the Occupation’s decisions were consistent with its commitment to individual autonomy and its understanding of the situation in Japan, an understanding which was essentially accurate.

This article reveals how Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo intervened in Costa Rica’s military conflicts in 1948. Previous works have centered upon Central American actors like Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza and Guatemalan president Juan José Arévalo who sought to influence the direction of Costa Rica’s Civil War or the end-of-year invasion into the country. This work applies an international perspective that recognizes the activities of actors throughout the Caribbean Basin. Recently declassified Cuban, Dominican, and Guatemalan sources demonstrate that Somoza and prominent Costa Rican figures, including ex-president Rafael Ángel Calderón Guardia, lobbied Trujillo to support their efforts against an alleged network of communist enemies throughout the region, and expose Somoza’s role as a middleman for armaments and funds for the end-of-year invasion.

The early military history of the Second Indochina War—the fighting before the end of 1963—has been somewhat neglected by Western historians. This article examines it with reference to the thesis put forward by Mark Moyar that, by mid-1962, the South Vietnamese government was implementing a successful counterinsurgency program and that, until President Ngo Dinh Diem’s overthrow and assassination at the beginning of November 1963, was winning its war with the Communists. It is here argued that, for several carefully considered reasons, the fortunes of war had turned sharply in the Communists’ favor months before Diem’s demise.