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As the excited passions of hostile people are of themselves a powerful enemy, both the general and his government should use their best efforts to allay them.

-- Lieutenant General Antoine

Welcome to the Patriot Files


The Patriot Files is a Library of Congress Veterans History Project Founding Partner web site comprised of first hand accounts of military life and combat, primary source material, as well as image, video, and audio resources.

The Patriot Files also supports the largest military usenet archive, military memorial, military website archive, and military news archive online.


World War I Front, Aug. 9, 1918
Dear Uncle Clem:
I know you must be waiting anxiously for a letter from me and wondering why I have not written before. Ever since July 15, the day of Clem's death, and the opening of the German offensive which we turned into defeat, we have been on the go night and day, and a good share of the time have been used as infantry.
Note: W.A. Thompson, Jr served with the Rainbow Division of Engineers in France.  3435 Reads  Printer-friendly page



Vietnam I was a 1stLt. copilot in HMH463, and had only been in-country for a month at the time. I was assigned to the flight schedule for the nape drop, and was very excited to be going on one. I had heard about them, but this was going to be the biggest. Charlie Ridge was our target. The NVA there were in tight, and didn't want to move. Attempts to clear the area with fixed wing bombs had failed. Marines were taking heavy casualties.
Note: by Skip Burns  3916 Reads  Printer-friendly page



Civil War Headquarters, 1st Brig., 3d Div. 6th Ar.
Near Gaines Mills
June 4, 1864
Dear Ha: I have just received a letter from you and as a mail will leave in an hour or two, I hasten to answer. We are behind entrenchments, holding a position which we have just taken from the enemy. Bullets, as I write, are flying in all directions, and wounded and dead men pass me continually.
Note: Letter from Chas. Leonard to his father in the trenches, Virginia countryside near Richmond, Va.  4475 Reads  Printer-friendly page



Airforce After a year in Peru in 1946 teaching Peruvian pilots to fly P-47’s, I returned to the U.S. in 1947, was assigned to the 161st Tac Recon Squadron at Langley Field, Virginia, which operated new RF-80’s. I was delighted, but when Lt. Col. Jim Rose the Squadron C.O. had to offer someone for a base headquarters assignment, he picked me — I was out.
Note: by Colonel Jean K. Woodyard, USAF Retired
Squadron Commander, 8th TRS.
  7398 Reads  Printer-friendly page



World War II A week or so before the December 31, 1943, mission, my crew, the Mendelsohn crew, was breaking apart. Our navigator, Bill Borellis, was promoted to the exalted position of 91st Bomb Group navigator; our bombardier, Harold Fox, (later to be killed in action over Hamburg) had applied for special training as a navigator and was leaving the crew, and the pilot, Stuart Mendelsohn, had been designated, but not yet officially installed, as the new operations officer of the 324th squadron. And I had just been checked out as first pilot and was about to take over what remained of our original crew.
Note: by Verne Woods, 91st BG  10893 Reads  Printer-friendly page



World War I Entry One For most of 1917 I was at Lehr, North Dakota working as a rural mail carrier. In September, when the first draft was called, I was at the depot to see the boys off. Mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers of the boys were there also. There was crying, praying, yelling and the band was playing. It was an awful sight.
  3530 Reads  Printer-friendly page



Civil War Near Sharpsburg, MD, September 29, 1862 I have the honor to report the following as some of the results of the battles of South Mountain and Antietam: At South Mountain our loss was 443 killed, 1,806 wounded, and 76 missing; total, 2,325. At Antietam our loss was 2,010 killed, 9,416 wounded, and 1,043 missing total, 12,469. Total loss in the two battles, 14,794.
Note: by Major General George McClellan  5047 Reads  Printer-friendly page



Vietnam Once upon a time there was a war, and I was in it. It seems about as far away now as the Civil War, but there it was--The 1960’s--and among things like topless bathing suits, integration and space programs there was an increasingly gnawing ache in the side of the American People called Vietnam.
Note: from EVERYMAN STROLLS THROUGH HELL by James Worth.  5194 Reads  Printer-friendly page



Vietnam This guy was ROTC and technically he was green to RVN but not green to combat. He had been in Israel working with the IDF when the June '67 war broke out.
Note: by Craig E. Thompson   3673 Reads  Printer-friendly page



Iraq I write this right now in my journal several hundred miles inside of Iraq. At the crack of dawn this morning we left Kuwait to enter Iraq, where we will be doing combat operations for the next calendar year. This will be my first and hopefully last combat deployment. Crossing the Kuwaiti/Iraqi border this morning was an experience; it was like crossing the DMZ or something.
Note: by Spc. Colby Buzzell, 11B, US Army  5914 Reads  Printer-friendly page



World War II July 18 (1944) Came in to Bostrem Bay early this morning. - I am now on another L.C.I. the 228, waiting to be stationed on L.C.I. 226 which is not in Bay yet. These are the older type L.C.I. They have all seen plenty of action. This is our home base all amphib called "Alixhaven" "Madang" the hardest fought Jap air field is only a few miles away.These bases were captured from Japs about four months ago.
Note: by Arden Lee Hunt, signalman, LCI 226  10063 Reads  Printer-friendly page



World War II The Naval Combat Demolition Units were charged with the responsibility of clearing sixteen 50 yard gaps on the beaches assigned to that force. They worked in conjunction with the Army engineers who were charged with the responsibility of clearing the shoreward obstacles.
Note: by Lieutenant Commander Joseph H. Gibbons, Commanding Officer of U.S. Navy Combat Demolitions Units in Force 'O'.  4767 Reads  Printer-friendly page



Navy Friday, 14 September 2001, turned out to be a tough day. We all got to NNMC early in the morning and boarded the buses for the 4-hour ride up to Earl, New Jersey. Eventually, we all got unloaded, checked aboard, got our rooms, unpacked our seabags, and checked into our workstations. Then, within an hour of arriving, there was an announcement that there had been a change in the mission. The hospital ship was going to be used to provide comfort, meaning living spaces, food spaces, and showers for the rescue workers. And except for a very core crew, everybody else was told to pack their seabags to go home.
Note: by Captain Ralph Bally, MCS, USN, USNS Comfort  10402 Reads  Printer-friendly page



World War II Berlin, or Big "B", as we called it, was a target that no one wanted to go to and a target that everyone wanted to go to. It seemed that everyone wanted to participate in a raid on Berlin because bombing big "B" was really striking at the heart of Nazi power and it was, in a way, retribution for the bombing of London, Rotterdam and other major cities.
Note: by A. Willard Reese, 1st Lt, 751st Sqdn, 457th Bmb Grp, 8th AF  4898 Reads  Printer-friendly page



War of 1812 Head Quarters 7h. M. District
Lines below New Orleans
8h Jany 1815. 3 Oclock
Sir,
I have recd. your dispatch of this date. The Army which I have the honor to command have used every exertion to afford relief to the wounded of your Army, even at the constant risque of their lives, your men, never intermitting their fire during such exertions.
Note: by Andrew Jackson, Major General, Commander Seventh Military District  7223 Reads  Printer-friendly page

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This Day in History
1863: Nathaniel Banks, commander of the Union Department of the Gulf, surrounds the Confederate stronghold at Port Hudson and attacks.

1940: British forces attack German General Rommels 7th Panzer Division at Arras, slowing his blitzkrieg of France.

1940: A Nazi "special unit" carries out its mission-and murders more than 1,500 mentally ill hospital patients in East Prussia over an 18-day period.

1941: The first U.S. ship, the S.S. Robin Moor, is sunk by a U-boat.

1942: 4,300 Jews are deported from the Polish town of Chelm to the Nazi extermination camp at Sobibor, where all are gassed to death. On the same day, the German firm IG Farben sets up a factory just outside Auschwitz, in order to take advantage of Jewish slave laborers from the Auschwitz concentration camps.

1951: The U.S. Eighth Army counterattacks to drive the Communist Chinese and North Koreans out of South Korea.

1969: A U.S. military command spokesman in Saigon defends the battle for Ap Bia Mountain as having been necessary to stop enemy infiltration and protect the city of Hue.