Welcome to Dispatch: U.S. Military History Magazine. This is “This Week in U.S. Military History,” where we walk through key moments that share this week on the calendar. Today we’re exploring events from December ninth, two thousand twenty five through December fifteenth, two thousand twenty five.
From December ninth, two thousand twenty five through December fifteenth, two thousand twenty five, the calendar lines up with a striking set of moments in United States military history. During these same days across more than two centuries, American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and people on the home front have faced muddy earthworks in Virginia, amphibious beachheads in the Pacific, icy evacuations in Korea, and the complex endings of modern wars in Iraq. Some of these dates echo with the roar of battle, while others capture quieter but decisive acts in law, diplomacy, and ceremony that shaped how the nation raises, governs, and remembers its armed forces. This Week in U.S. Military History is part of Dispatch: U.S. Military History Magazine, developed by Trackpads dot com, and it follows those threads from the Revolution to the present. Together, these stories show a military that has had to fight, adapt, withdraw, and return home while the country argues over the balance between liberty and security, and they remind us that those choices still echo in the uniforms and units that carry the flag today.
We begin on December ninth, seventeen seventy five, at a narrow causeway south of Norfolk, where Virginia militiamen faced British regulars and Loyalist auxiliaries in one of the Revolution’s earliest clashes in the South. Royal governor Lord Dunmore hoped to break the Patriot camps that blocked his access inland, trusting his professional troops to push aside what looked like a small rebel force. The Americans, however, fortified the far end of Great Bridge with earthworks and artillery, so any attack would have to cross a tight causeway under close, concentrated fire. When the redcoats advanced in column, they marched straight into a killing zone and were cut down, and the assault collapsed in confusion and retreat. That defeat shattered British confidence in holding southeastern Virginia and helped drive royal authority out of Norfolk in the months that followed. For Patriot leaders, Great Bridge proved that local volunteers, properly positioned and motivated, could bloody the king’s troops and defend their own ground.
On December fifteenth, seventeen ninety one, the states ratified the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the collection now known as the Bill of Rights. They were not fighting a field battle that day, but they were fixing the rules under which future soldiers would serve. Provisions against quartering troops in private homes, protections for speech and assembly, and recognition of militias all reflected fresh memories of imperial garrisons and standing armies used to enforce unpopular policies. The new amendments tried to balance the need for defense with fears that a permanent army might threaten liberty at home. Over time, that compromise helped shape the citizen soldier tradition, the National Guard, and the expectation that military power remains firmly under civilian control. The Bill of Rights became part of the invisible framework surrounding every later mobilization, deployment, and demobilization of American forces.
In the closing months of the War of eighteen twelve, British forces prepared to strike at New Orleans, and the struggle reached the shallow waters of Lake Borgne. A small flotilla of United States gunboats and cutters moved out to contest their advance along the Louisiana coast, knowing they were badly outnumbered. On December fourteenth, eighteen fourteen, British longboats swarmed the American vessels at Lake Borgne, rowing under fire to board and overwhelm them in brutal, close quarters fighting. The United States sailors and Marines were outnumbered and eventually captured, and the British secured control of the waters leading toward their intended landing sites. Yet that stand slowed the enemy enough to give General Andrew Jackson precious time to strengthen his defenses around New Orleans. That delay helped set the stage for the later American victory at the Battle of New Orleans, showing how even a doomed rearguard can alter the tempo of a campaign.
Fast forward to the Civil War and December thirteenth, eighteen sixty two, when Union forces under Major General Ambrose Burnside launched repeated assaults against Confederate positions outside Fredericksburg, Virginia. The Confederate line held strong ground behind stone walls and on the slopes of Marye’s Heights, overlooking open fields that attackers had to cross under concentrated artillery and rifle fire. Union brigades advanced again and again across that ground, only to be shattered and forced back, leaving the fields littered with casualties as the winter light faded. The defeat crushed morale in the Army of the Potomac and raised new doubts about Union leadership and tactics at the highest levels. Fredericksburg became a grim symbol of the dangers of frontal attacks in an age of rifled muskets and entrenched positions. It foreshadowed the horrific attrition that would appear again at Cold Harbor and, decades later, in the trenches of Europe.
Two years after Fredericksburg, another December battle unfolded with a very different outcome for Union arms. On December fifteenth, eighteen sixty four, Union forces under Major General George Thomas attacked Confederate General John Bell Hood’s Army of Tennessee outside Nashville. Using strong defensive works, sweeping cavalry maneuvers, and coordinated infantry assaults, Thomas methodically rolled up the Confederate flanks instead of hurling men straight into fortified centers. Over two days of hard fighting, Union troops broke the Southern line, captured guns and prisoners, and sent Hood’s army reeling south in disarray. The Battle of Nashville effectively destroyed the Army of Tennessee as a major field force, removing one of the last Confederate threats in the Western theater. It demonstrated how improved planning, combined arms, and patience could reduce casualties while still delivering a decisive blow.
On December fifteenth, eighteen ninety, a very different kind of violence marked the frontier. Lakota leader Sitting Bull was killed during an arrest attempt at his home near the Standing Rock Reservation, in what is now North Dakota. Indian police acting under orders supported by the United States Army moved to detain him amid fears that his influence might swell the Ghost Dance movement, which many officials saw as a challenge to reservation control. A confrontation outside his cabin escalated into a chaotic exchange of gunfire that left Sitting Bull and several others dead. His killing deepened fear and anger among Lakota people and contributed to families leaving the agency in search of safety. Within weeks, that atmosphere of mistrust and tension helped lead to the tragic events at Wounded Knee, where a disarmed Lakota band was massacred by United States troops, and the death of Sitting Bull became a painful marker in the long, violent struggle over the West.
The week also carries us into the global crisis of the nineteen forties. Four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and one day after Japanese aircraft struck the Cavite Naval Yard in the Philippines, the war widened even further. On December eleventh, nineteen forty one, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, and American leaders responded with their own declarations, formally entering the European theater. What had begun as a Pacific catastrophe now fused with the long running struggle already raging across Europe, North Africa, and the Atlantic. That decision meant American soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines would soon be fighting on far flung fronts, from the deserts that sustained El Alamein’s supply lines to the icy North Atlantic shipping lanes. It also forced planners in Washington to balance resources between two massive wars, giving rise to a Germany first strategy and an unprecedented mobilization of industry and manpower.
On December fifteenth, nineteen forty four, attention in the Pacific fell on an island that does not always dominate the history books. While many accounts focus on the later assault on Luzon, the Mindoro landings that day were a vital step in retaking the Philippines. United States Army troops went ashore under the protection of United States Navy and Marine aviators, braving dangerous waters where Japanese aircraft, including kamikazes, hunted the invasion fleet. Once ashore, soldiers pushed inland to secure ground for new airfields that would bring land based fighters and bombers closer to Luzon and, eventually, Manila. The landings showed how American amphibious doctrine, refined in earlier Pacific campaigns, could support a broader island hopping advance instead of a single isolated assault. On that same day, far from the beaches, Major Glenn Miller of the Army Air Forces disappeared while flying to perform for troops in Europe, a reminder that morale and music were also woven into the fabric of wartime service and sacrifice.
In the bitter winter of nineteen fifty, United Nations forces in northeast Korea faced encirclement and crushing pressure from Chinese units that had entered the war in strength. Rather than accept annihilation, commanders organized a massive evacuation through the port of Hungnam, using United States and allied ships to move tens of thousands of troops and civilians to safety. Beginning on December fifteenth, nineteen fifty, warships, transports, and cargo vessels loaded units from the Tenth Corps along with Korean families fleeing the advancing front. The operation demanded tight coordination under the threat of artillery and air attack, turning the waterfront into a controlled chaos of embarkation points, perimeter defenses, and demolition teams. By the time the last ships pulled away, the evacuation had removed a huge force intact, allowing it to fight another day and sparing many civilians from falling under hostile control. Hungnam became a powerful example of how sea power can rescue, as well as deliver, armies.
On the night of December ninth, nineteen ninety two, United States Marines waded ashore near Mogadishu under television lights, as part of a multinational effort to relieve famine in Somalia. Years of civil war had shattered state institutions and left aid convoys vulnerable to armed factions, turning hunger itself into a weapon. American units secured ports, airfields, and key routes so that food and medicine could move inland with greater safety. Images of Marines advancing through surf alongside journalists showed how humanitarian aims and combat readiness can intersect in modern operations. Operation Restore Hope raised difficult questions about the limits of military power in fixing political collapse, questions that grew sharper as violence against peacekeeping forces increased in the years ahead. Even so, the landings showed that the United States military could be tasked not only with defeating enemy armies, but also with trying to create space for relief and recovery.
Nearly nine months after the fall of Baghdad in two thousand three, American soldiers and special operations forces closed in on one of the most wanted figures in the world. On December thirteenth, two thousand three, in a rural area near Tikrit, United States troops captured former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein during Operation Red Dawn. He was discovered hiding in a small underground shelter, unshaven and disoriented, a stark contrast to the defiant leader who had once dominated state propaganda. His capture removed a powerful symbol for loyalist resistance and offered some measure of closure to Iraqis who had suffered under his rule. Yet it did not end the insurgency, which drew on deeper political, sectarian, and economic grievances that could not be solved by one arrest. The operation highlighted both the reach of American forces and the hard reality that removing a regime is only the beginning of a long and complicated struggle.
Almost eight years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, American commanders gathered in Baghdad on December fifteenth, two thousand eleven to formally conclude their combat mission. In a ceremonial casing of the colors, the flag of United States Forces Iraq was furled and prepared for return home, while speakers recalled the sacrifices of service members and Iraqi partners. Outside the reviewing stand, convoys were already moving toward Kuwait, carrying the last combat units out of the country along familiar roads. The ceremony marked an official end to one phase of the war, even as Iraq’s future remained uncertain and many veterans carried the conflict’s weight back into civilian life. It tied the story of the two thousand three capture of Saddam Hussein to the later effort to hand security responsibilities to Iraqi forces, closing a chapter that had defined a generation of American military experience.
Across these seven days on the calendar, the stories range from muddy earthworks and stone walls in Virginia to stormy seas off Korea and dusty assembly areas in Iraq. Some entries mark moments of triumph, when careful planning and stubborn courage delivered decisive victories like the Battle of Nashville or the safe withdrawal from Hungnam. Others, such as the killing of Sitting Bull or the human costs of modern interventions, remind us that power can be misused or misunderstood, leaving deep scars that outlast any one campaign. Together, they trace the evolution of American arms from local militias to global coalitions and underscore the constant need for judgment, restraint, and accountability. As we look back from December ninth, two thousand twenty five through December fifteenth, two thousand twenty five, these episodes invite reflection on the burdens carried by those who serve and on the responsibilities held by the nation that sends them.