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Byline: ALLAN MALLINSON Sergeant Alexander Blackman, 'Marine A', 6ft 3in tall and ramrod straight, after being sentenced to life imprisonment, reduction to the ranks and dismissal with disgrace from Her [...]

Byline: ALLAN MALLINSON Although the Western Front would eventually be seen as the only one on which the German army could be decisively beaten, there would be costly fighting elsewhere [...]

Byline: COMMENT ALLAN MALLINSON THERE IS an episode of The West Wing in which the Speaker of the House of Representatives recounts the course of the July crisis of 1914: [...]

Byline: writes Allan Mallinson In the long history of Army reform, two names stand head and shoulders above the rest: Edward Cardwell and Richard (Lord) Haldane. Both were secretaries of [...]

Byline: Allan Mallinson The scene is Blackheath, south-east London, May 29 1660, the King's 30th birthday. Charles Stuart, as he was still officially known, had stepped on to English soil [...]

Labour prime ministers are not always wrong about military matters, nor Chiefs of the General Staff always right. In 1948, Clement Attlee rejected Field Marshal Montgomery's nomination of General Sir [...]

'The fog of war'', like so many militarisms, goes back to Clausewitz. Reflecting on 20 years' fighting in Napoleonic Europe - from the great campaigns and field battles to the [...]

THE PROBLEM the Russians face in South Ossetia is that their peacekeepers have had to make the transition overnight to what is, in effect, a war-fighting force. While they are [...]

When the Duke of Wellington died, in 1852, his reputation in the Army was tarnished. As commander-in-chief, he had done next to nothing to prepare for modern war, or to [...]

The news that General Petraeus is to be commander-in-chief of the United States Central Command is confirmation that, in military terms at least, the Iraq troop surge is working. Such [...]

That magnificent, if edgy, service, the Royal Air Force, is 90 today. The marriage of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service towards the end of the [...]

It is an old joke, vintage late-Victorian Punch magazine, the time of the second Afghan War, but still one that brings an affectionate smile at the thought of infantry-cavalry rivalry: [...]

The poppy wreaths at the Cenotaph have been gathered in, the Downing Street Christmas tree brightens Whitehall instead, and on British Forces Radio the Prime Minister tells the troops: 'I [...]

Band of Brigands: The First Men in Tanks BY CHRISTY CAMPBELL HARPERPRESS, pounds 20, 479 pp T pounds ( pounds 1.25 p&p) 0870 428 4115 Tank Tracks Steam-powered vehicles with [...]

General Sir Richard Dannatt must seem an increasingly turbulent priest. Warning of a growing gulf between the nation and its Army, and calling for an outward and visible sign of [...]

General Petraeus wants more time. Unlike Napoleon, who told his generals to ask of him anything but time, President Bush is prepared to give it him. No one who has [...]

As the RAF stared defeat in the face during the Battle of Britain, arguments raged how best to beat the Luftwaffe. The head of Fighter Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir [...]

We shall be in Afghanistan for as long as we were in Northern Ireland, said Brigadier John Lorimer, the Army commander in Helmand province, last week. He meant that, given [...]

'It is with artillery that war is made,'' said Napoleon. But it is with the improvised explosive device that insurgents make war. Fenian bombs shook London in the 19th century, [...]

WAR, wrote the German military strategist Clausewitz, is the continuation of politics by other means. A century earlier, the British general Wolfe, the hero of Quebec, put it more pertinently: [...]