With fewer than 60 days to the Nov 3 election and early voting already started in North Carolina, the rivals for the White House lashed out at each other with a new ferocity ignited by allegations in an article that President Donald Trump was disrespectful about the sacrifices of American military personnel - and particularly those buried at the site of the 1918 Battle of Belleau Wood in France.

The article, published in the largely well-respected magazine The Atlantic, landed like a grenade in the middle of the tightening presidential race - and it probably will not be the last such missile in the weeks ahead.