Today the news is full of reports about things like “bomb cyclones” and “atmospheric rivers,” but as terrifying as these meteorological mouthfuls are, they hardly represent the terror of the 1362 Grote Mandrenke, literally, “the Great Drowning of men."
In August of 1918, as the armies of Europe neared exhaustion, American troops of the 28th “Keystone” division were thrown into a nearly forgotten battle that fully represented the horrors of the War to End All Wars.
Of the vaunted ironclad warships of the US Civil War perhaps the mightiest and most terrifying was the confederate ram Tennessee. On August 5, 1864, she would be put to the test in the largest naval engagement of the war, an engagement that defined the divided loyalties of the War of the Rebellion.