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Photo of defused UXO outside a house in Xieng Khouang. Over 30% of the bombs dropped on Laos by the US failed to explode - leaving literally millions of items of ordinance (many of them tiny mine bomblets from cluster bombs) sitting in villages, buried in rice padddies, and scattered over the hillsides. Casualties from UXO are estimated at 12,000 since 1973. A substantial industry in scrap metal has arisen from the abundance of recoverable (but still fused) bombs, both due to its relative lucrativeness (compared with growning rice), and also out of desperation, as thousands of hectares of land has been rendered unfarmable until cleared of UXO. Once defused, much of this war scrap is also put to practical use; cluster bomb casings are used as planters and house stilts, bomb cases for fencing and jettisoned fuel tanks converted into fishing boats.

A Look at the Damage from the ‘Secret’ War in Laos

by Zita Ballinger Fletcher3/2/20236/28/2023

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Umbrella Guns and Fake Poop? Cold War Spies Thought of Everything.

by Zita Ballinger Fletcher1/19/20231/19/2023

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This Holocaust Survivor Told the Horrors of War With Fabric and Thread

by World War II Magazine12/29/202212/29/2022

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A Look At The Legends Behind British Cap Badge Symbols

by Zita Ballinger Fletcher12/19/202212/19/2022

Photo of Soldiers of the National Liberation Front , the Viet Cong, in the early 1960s display weapons from a variety of sources, from left, a captured American M79 grenade launcher; an American M1 carbine, captured from the French or South Vietnamese or supplied by the Chinese; and a K-50M submachine gun supplied by North Vietnam.

Here Are the Weapons of the NVA — Backed by Russia and China

by Jon Guttman12/19/202212/19/2022

Abandoned Libyan tank

Are Tanks Obsolete?

by Jon Guttman12/9/202211/7/2022

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Eugene Sledge’s WWII Relics from ‘With the Old Breed’

by Karen Jensen11/30/202211/30/2022

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How Patton Saw the War—In His Own Photographs

by Jerry D. Morelock11/11/20223/31/2024

Winchester’s Burying Grounds: Where North Meets South

by Melissa A. Winn10/10/202210/18/2022

Armored Personnel Carriers with troops of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment aboard grind their way through underbrush in Tay Ninh Province, about a mile and a half away from the Cambodian border on March 18, 1970, as they proceed towards an enemy base camp. The troops were checking the area to determine effectiveness of a recent B-52 bomber strike on the base camp. (AP Photo/Charles Ryan)

Vietnam War Armored Cavalry in Photos

by Jon Guttman and David T. Zabecki10/4/202210/4/2022