Battlefield

The fighting that killed or wounded 21,000 Americans in the rolling hills of western Maryland was over in about 12 grisly hours. But a century and a half after the bloodiest day in American military history, the struggle to preserve the ground where Union and Confederate soldiers fought the Battle of Antietam only now appears close to a declaration of victory. As Americans gather to honor the sacrifice of those who fell Sept. 17, 1862 - as they are doing this weekend and Monday on the 150th anniversary - they will do so at one of the nation's best-preserved Civil War sites.

TEL AVIV - Israel's highest-ranking female soldier says efforts to draft male ultra-Orthodox students into the Israel Defense Forces should not come at the expense of women's advancement in the army. Last year, the nation's Supreme Court determined that a legal exemption for the ultra-Orthodox from mandatory military service was unfair, and the issue is a top legislative priority of the newly formed Israeli government. Orna Barbivai, 50, Israel's first female major general and commander of the army's personnel department, says the nation has come a long way in integrating women into meaningful military professions, including allowing them to serve as pilots and in a special combat battalion with 60% female members.

The proud lieutenant commander of the Smithfield Light Infantry of the Sons of Confederate Veterans is John M. Booker, a burly retired veterinarian with a trove of Civil War books and an abiding fascination with all things Confederate. Since 2006, Booker has devoted himself to erecting a statue of Joseph E. Johnston, the last Confederate general to mount an effective fight against Union forces. Johnston ultimately surrendered to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman after the pivotal Battle of Bentonville, fought in March 1865 on a site a few miles from Booker's white-columned Greek Revival home.

British soldiers on the front lines in Afghanistan have been armed with pocket-sized spy drones that can give operators bird's-eye views of the battlefield below. The little flying machine, dubbed Black Hornet Nano, is just 4 inches long and weighs about a half-ounce. It flies like a helicopter, allowing it to hover and dart back and forth. “We used it to look for insurgent firing points and check out exposed areas of the ground before crossing, which is a real asset,” Sgt. Christopher Petherbridge with Britain's Brigade Reconnaissance Force told the Associated Press . The drone, which resembles a child's toy, is made by the Norwegian company Prox Dynamics AS. According to the company's website, the Hornet can fly indoors or outdoors.

British soldiers on the front lines in Afghanistan have been armed with pocket-sized spy drones that can give operators bird's-eye views of the battlefield below. The little flying machine, dubbed Black Hornet Nano, is just 4 inches long and weighs about a half-ounce. It flies like a helicopter, allowing it to hover and dart back and forth. “We used it to look for insurgent firing points and check out exposed areas of the ground before crossing, which is a real asset,” Sgt. Christopher Petherbridge with Britain's Brigade Reconnaissance Force told the Associated Press . The drone, which resembles a child's toy, is made by the Norwegian company Prox Dynamics AS. According to the company's website, the Hornet can fly indoors or outdoors.

The DNA of a battle that helped turn the tide of a war going horribly wrong for America lay buried just 6 inches below a Maryland cornfield. For nearly two centuries, musket balls, canister shot and other artifacts from intense fighting at Caulk's Field waited to tell the story of a sweltering August night in 1814, when militiamen sprang a trap on a British raiding party bent on destruction. How did the citizen-soldiers best their battle-tested foes? State archaeologist Julie Schablitsky hopes to figure that out. With the help of cadaver-sniffing dogs and history buffs armed with metal detectors, she is retracing the footsteps of Sir Peter Parker, a British marine captain who led 170 troops, and a like number of militiamen commanded by Col. Philip Reed.

With a light breeze rustling a Confederate flag, the remains of a soldier known only as "Rebel Butler" were buried Saturday, 132 years after he died in one of the Civil War's fiercest battles. Men in gray wool uniforms and women in black veils dropped clods of red clay onto a tiny coffin containing a skull that was found on the battlefield at Spotsylvania Courthouse and carried home as a memento by a Union soldier.

The most famous painting of the 20th century, Picasso's "Guernica," commemorates the 1937 bombing of this small Spanish town by the German air force, in support of Gen. Francisco Franco's fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Hard to believe, but this was history's first extensive bombing of a civilian population. In his book "Postwar," historian Tony Judt pointed out that more civilians died in World War II, of various causes, than did soldiers. That was not true of World War I or of most earlier conflicts.

It is war unlike any other that has been fought. True, combatants meet on a "battlefield" where, for all appearances, they blast away at one another from tanks, airplanes and helicopters. But fighting alongside the troops are robots. Invisible, ghostly observers can move back and forth in time, soar over the battlefield in "flying carpets" and infiltrate tanks, unnoticed by the vehicles' occupants. No one dies or even gets hurt. Welcome to the virtual war, now being fought in high-tech simulators in the United States and Germany.

Last month, when University of Southern California wide receiver Garrett Green bobbled the football on a key play against Washington State, red flags went up among the Trojans' athletic trainers on the sidelines. Only minutes before, Green had tackled an opponent -- hard -- on a kickoff return. His sudden lack of coordination struck team trainer Russ Romano as a pretty likely sign of concussion. Romano called Green to the sidelines, asked him a few quick questions and got back answers confused enough to take the senior from Chatsworth out of the game.

The DNA of a battle that helped turn the tide of a war going horribly wrong for America lay buried just 6 inches below a Maryland cornfield. For nearly two centuries, musket balls, canister shot and other artifacts from intense fighting at Caulk's Field waited to tell the story of a sweltering August night in 1814, when militiamen sprang a trap on a British raiding party bent on destruction. How did the citizen-soldiers best their battle-tested foes? State archaeologist Julie Schablitsky hopes to figure that out. With the help of cadaver-sniffing dogs and history buffs armed with metal detectors, she is retracing the footsteps of Sir Peter Parker, a British marine captain who led 170 troops, and a like number of militiamen commanded by Col. Philip Reed.

The most famous painting of the 20th century, Picasso's "Guernica," commemorates the 1937 bombing of this small Spanish town by the German air force, in support of Gen. Francisco Franco's fascists in the Spanish Civil War. Hard to believe, but this was history's first extensive bombing of a civilian population. In his book "Postwar," historian Tony Judt pointed out that more civilians died in World War II, of various causes, than did soldiers. That was not true of World War I or of most earlier conflicts.

SAN FRANCISCO - Capt. Zoe Bedell graduated at the top of her Marine Corps officer candidates class. In deployments to Afghanistan, she oversaw "female engagement teams" that accompanied male infantry units into the field - living and working in identical conditions. Yet since 1994, the Defense Department has formally excluded women from most direct ground combat positions, creating a growing disconnect with the realities of warfare. Bedell said she left active duty last year because the policy limited her potential for promotion by failing to officially recognize her combat leadership experience.

The Yellow Birds A Novel Kevin Powers Little Brown: 230 pp., $24.99 Pvt. John Bartle, the narrator of Kevin Powers' sorrowful war novel "The Yellow Birds," is a man of reason caught between the uncontrolled emotions of two men. The first is his sergeant, a severe gunslinger and molder of warriors named Sterling. Sgt. Sterling's discipline and his rage against the enemy are keeping his squad of men alive as they patrol an eerie, death-filled Iraqi landscape. Pvt. Bartle loves and hates him for this.

WASHINGTON -- A New York grave site, a Kansas battlefield, the Ohio home of an Alcoholics Anonymous founder and Los Angeles' downtown federal courthouse are among the newest national historic landmarks. In all, 26 sites received the largely honorary designation this week from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The designation of the courthouse comes as Congress debates the future of the Depression-era Spring Street building because of plans for a new courthouse in downtown Los Angeles.

TRUJILLO, Colombia - The 11,000 coffee bushes clinging to the steep slopes of his 10-acre farm represent nothing less than a miracle to former rebel Jose Manuel Ospina, and a sign of the stiff challenges facing Colombia's new effort to end half a century of civil war. Ospina and his son were members of the 21st Front of the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which has been at war with the government for 48 years. The two laid down their arms in 2005 and enrolled in a program to bring them back into the mainstream of society.

TEL AVIV - Israel's highest-ranking female soldier says efforts to draft male ultra-Orthodox students into the Israel Defense Forces should not come at the expense of women's advancement in the army. Last year, the nation's Supreme Court determined that a legal exemption for the ultra-Orthodox from mandatory military service was unfair, and the issue is a top legislative priority of the newly formed Israeli government. Orna Barbivai, 50, Israel's first female major general and commander of the army's personnel department, says the nation has come a long way in integrating women into meaningful military professions, including allowing them to serve as pilots and in a special combat battalion with 60% female members.

Who is the little girl in the above photo, found on a Civil War battlefield? And how was she linked (if at all) to the fallen soldiers found nearby -- one Union, one Confederate -- 150 years ago? The Museum of the Confederacy located in Richmond, Va., is asking for the public's help in identifying this and a number of other Civil War-era photos in order to return them to their rightful family owners. And the public is leaping to assist. On Monday, an Associated Press story on the effort to identify the subject  in this and other photos was passed along repeatedly in social media circles throughout the day via Tweets, Facebook "likes," blog postings, news reports and more.

BEIRUT - The rebel Free Syrian Army said Saturday that it was shifting its command headquarters from Turkey to Syria, a move meant to bolster its standing among fighters in the country and supporters abroad. In a video statement, the group's leader, Col. Riad Assad, said the command structure had moved to "liberated areas" in Syria. Although the shift has obvious symbolic importance, it was unclear how much significance it would have on the battlefield in Syria, where the rebellion aimed at ousting the government of President Bashar Assad is in its 19th month.

The fighting that killed or wounded 21,000 Americans in the rolling hills of western Maryland was over in about 12 grisly hours. But a century and a half after the bloodiest day in American military history, the struggle to preserve the ground where Union and Confederate soldiers fought the Battle of Antietam only now appears close to a declaration of victory. As Americans gather to honor the sacrifice of those who fell Sept. 17, 1862 - as they are doing this weekend and Monday on the 150th anniversary - they will do so at one of the nation's best-preserved Civil War sites.