War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's

founding right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased

its size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. your host, James Early. Greetings, everyone.

This is James, as always.

I have an exciting announcement for you.

As I say in the outro of every episode, I am part of a podcast network called Parthenon

that includes Scott Rank,

who hosts History Unplugged, Steve Guerra, who does Beyond the Big Screen and History of the

papacy, and Richard Lem, who does This American President. I am pleased to announce that another

show is joining our ranks. It's called Eyewitness History, and it's hosted by Josh Cohen.

The show collects stories of people who encountered history's most important events firsthand.

Sometimes Josh features long-form interviews with people like Holocaust survivors,

or those who witnessed 9-11 or the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Other times he will feature recorded oral history testimonial, kind of like StoryCorps.

You're going to hear a preview of the show here. It's snippets from two episodes. The first one is an interview with Bill Taylor. Bill fought with the Marines in the Vietnam War, and he was attached

to a new unit designed to surprise the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong and to destroy them. Bill's battalion fought 27 different operations over the

course of his 13-month tour of duty. The second snippet is from an interview with Hope Harrison,

a professor of history who was on a flight to Berlin when she got word that the wall fell,

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