Mar 24 1918 – WW1: German forces cross the Somme River, achieving their first goal of the major spring offensive begun three days earlier on the Western Front.
Mar 24 1944 – WW2: In an event later dramatized in the movie The Great Escape, 76 prisoners begin breaking out of Stalag Luft III.
Mar 24 1944 – WW2: German occupation troops killed 335 people in Rome as a reprisal for a partisan attack conducted on the previous day against the SS Police Regiment Bozen.
Mar 24 1975 – Vietnam: Despite the 1973 Paris Peace Accords cease fire, the fighting continued between South Vietnamese forces and the North Vietnamese troops in South Vietnam. The launch of the Ho Chi Minh Campaign was the final assault on Saigon. By April 30, the North Vietnamese tanks broke through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon and the Vietnam War came to an end.
