Volume 87, Number 2 · April 2023

In the armies of the late Middle Ages, engineering forces fell into a gray area between combatant and noncombatant. They might fight if necessary, but that was not their primary role, suggesting that late medieval military engineers might best be defined as combat support personnel. A study of contemporary sources supports the argument that engineers in King Edward III of England’s expeditionary armies, although proportionately few in comparison to his fighting forces, were key to his strategic successes and that they occupy a pivotal spot in the history of military engineering.

The British Army during Victoria’s reign has been portrayed as an institution standing awkwardly next to British society. Legal authorities and academics have used military law as an example, noting the military’s “capricious” legal processes in contrast to the predictable civilian experience. Rather than understanding military legal processes though, academics tend to focus on discipline or penalties foreign to today’s mind. This article draws evidence from centuries of legal development and late-nineteenth-century sources to demonstrate a far greater commonality between civilian and military legal experiences. The military’s legal tradition describes, in part, the military’s position as a rare example of a truly “British” institution.

The staff officers of the 1st Australian Division often are lauded as “invaluable” and commended for having fought “half the battle” during the First World War yet they have received only passing mention in military histories. This article builds on Dale Blair’s analysis of officer demographics to highlight the prevalence of British and Indian Army officers holding key staff positions, thus dispelling the popular perception of an “all-Australian” force. The “first Australian staff” was fundamentally British in its personnel, concept, and organization. Yet the appointment of staff officers remained a matter of individual ability rather than a political agenda, and British regular officers made up for the shortfall in qualified Australian officers throughout the war.

According to the U.S. Army’s official history, joint army-navy logistics reached a high point during World War II in the Central Pacific. That required the creative integration of army and navy methods. Although the pre-war U.S. Navy emphasized the importance of mobility, its logistical methods were inadequate to meet the challenges of war in the Pacific. Collaboration with the army led to improvements that sustained a rapid tempo of offensive operations and enabled numerous victories. By 1945, a new paradigm emerged, allowing the navy’s striking forces to maintain a forward presence for months in the face of increasing Japanese resistance.

In spring and early summer 1945, U.S. forces in Germany were responsible for a wave of violent rapes of local women and girls. Investigating and prosecuting these crimes proved a major challenge for the U.S. Army’s military justice system. This article examines ninety-five documented cases of rape and sexual assault from the period, involving more than two hundred uniformed culprits. Within the constraints imposed by wartime, investigators and members of courts-martial brought a surprising degree of professionalism to bear upon their task. Their efforts were, however, often frustrated by the army’s system of post-trial review which, in response to public pressure, displayed a marked preferential option for perpetrators. The record thus indicates that in contrast to a pervasive “rape culture” at all levels of command, the failure to deliver justice to victims is attributable in these cases to more specific and identifiable causes.

On 29 October 1956, the first day of the Suez War, detachments of the Israeli Border Police massacred forty-seven Arab men, women, and children in the village of Kafr Qasim. Although the government and army denounced the atrocity, some historians have since argued that the massacre was planned by high-level military and government circles. The government’s goal, according to this view, was to drive the Arab villagers across the border in line with a contingency plan known as Operation Mole. We present an alternative view based on new documents: rather than being either part of a preconceived plan of expulsion or an aberrant individual crime, the massacre was in fact a result of an Israeli deception plan that got out of hand.