The Rifle Line

The American ground war, told from the line.

The Rifle Line covers US Army and Marine Corps ground combat in the Second World War — the rifle companies, tank crews, tank destroyer battalions, airborne sticks and combat engineers who actually held the ground. One unit, one action, one episode.

We build every episode from the record: after-action reports, unit journals, General Orders, the Army's own Green Books, and the Signal Corps film and photographs held at the National Archives. Where the record is thin or contradicts the popular story, we say so on screen rather than filling the gap.