“War is hell,” said William Tecumseh Sherman. But it has also spawned some mind-bending true stories.
Consider: a topless dancer saved the Roman Empire, and Daniel Boone was once tried for treason. One conflict broke out because of a soccer game while another was halted so a soccer game could be played. An African-American unit managed to serve on both sides during the Civil War. And Santa Anna, the general who massacred the defenders of the Alamo, was instrumental in the invention of modern chewing gum.
I am a lifelong history enthusiast lucky enough to be earning a living doing what I love: making history documentaries. A few years ago I got the chance to produce a series of history minutes for THE HISTORY CHANNEL.® The Timelab 2000® series, hosted by Sam Waterston, was so well received that it led to my first book, The Greatest Stories Never Told. I filled that book with the kind of history I love—stories that turn your expectations upside down and leave you shaking your head in wonderment. Happily, readers and critics enjoyed the stories as much as I did.
Now I have turned my attention to the subject of war and warriors, human experience at its most concentrated and extreme. For better or worse, war has been a fundamental part of history, touching every generation and reaching into every corner of the globe. “War means fighting,” said Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, “and fighting means killing.” Hard words, and true. But there is more to war than death and destruction. War can be a catalyst for change, an engine for innovation, and an arena for valor, deceit, intrigue, ambition, audacity, folly, and, yes, humor. That’s what makes military history so compelling.
Beyond the big-name battles and celebrated soldiers lies a wealth of amazing characters and unbelievable happenings. As I did for my first book, I set out on a quest for the unusual, the surprising, and the ironic—stories that cry out to be told. Here they are in your hand, gathered from more than two thousand years of history. The very first one is about an elite military unit composed entirely of gay soldiers, and the last is about Pentagon pizza deliveries predicting the start of the first Gulf War. In between you can find out why George Washington’s house was named after the inventor of grog, what the Mafia did to help win World War II, and how a Civil War general who didn’t know a note of music still managed to write a song that everybody knows.
Though I have read a fair bit of history, I was quite amazed by some of the stories I came across. Each of them has been painstakingly researched and carefully fact-checked. Many a fascinating tale has failed to make the cut because it didn’t hold up under scrutiny. The ones that made it in, bizarre as they might seem, are as true as I know how to make them.
“It is well that war is so terrible,” blurted out Robert E. Lee in the midst of a battle, “or we should grow to love it.” Human beings have been fascinated by war since the dawn of history. What could be more dramatic, after all, than high-stakes, life-and-death conflict on a grand scale? For all of war’s horrors, its pull remains strong. I hope that the stories that follow truly do “astonish, bewilder, and stupefy.” I also hope they will prompt readers to ponder the ultimate folly of war, and why it is that we never quite manage to make it a thing of the past.