Military History 2005-07

E D I T O R I A L

OnlineCxtras July 2005 You'll find much more about military history on the Web's leading history resource:

www, TheHistoryNet.com Discussion: How much of a threat did Persia represent to the course of Western civilization— and how much of a debt does Europe owe Themistocles for stemming the Persian tide? Goto

www. TheHistoryNetcotnJmhJ for these great exclusives: Haughty Host Humbled—The mere mention of the Persian empires might was enough to make Greece tremble...or was it? Go Tell the Spartans—M Thermopylae a king and 300 of his men set the standard for battle to the death against overwhelming odds. Two Views of Civil War in the Balkans—In a pair of interviews, two former Yugoslav nationals share their views on the bloodiest partisan conflict of World War TI. William Howard Russell— During the Crimean War, London Times correspondent William Howard Russell's no-holds-baiTed candor bi ought down generals and a government.

6 MILITARY HISTORV JULY 2005

The search for petroleum has created new contested ground in old places. doesn't all just seize up and break down. The Western world's giowing need for oil and gas has led to dramatic changes in the Middle East, where "black gold" turned Arabian sheiks fiom quaint nomadic anachronisms to wealthy power brokers on the world stage. Oil helped make Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein rich and powerful, but his attempt to grab more oil-rich territorv by invading neighboring Kuwait on August 2. 1990, laid the groundwork for his eventual downfall. Even in regard to oil, however, there is nothing new under the desert sun. This issue of Military History includes a look at another region where the discover^' of fossil fuel has resulted in conflict. Erom the time Russia built itsfirstoil rigs in the late 19th century, the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea regions have attracted spies Location has condemned numerous from every Western power. Amid the places around the world to ongoing con- chaos ofthe Russian Revolution, Britain tention. Viewed on a globe, Israel occupies launched a remarkable expedition to take an absurdly insignificant sliver of land, contix)l of the far-flung Caspian port—and but it is arable land, with a long stretch of oil center—of Baku, only to iun afoul of coastline and a city that is held sacred by a Turkish army with the same ambition. three religions divided by a common her- Thc result was one of the World War I's itage. In consequence, it has been [ought strangest and I east-remembered battles, over for thousands of years—and still is, between strangers in a strange land to the extent of disproportionately affect- (story, R 54). ing foreign policies and events throughThe Turks won the battle, but in the end out the world. The same may be said for they had to relinquish Baku because they Mesopotamia (now Iraq), as Mllilary His- lost the war. That was hardly the end of tory readers were reminded in the June the story, however. In the summer of 1942, issues feature on Roman Emperor Julian's Adolf Hitler, w ho had originally gambled campaign of AD 363. The Netherlands on overcoming the Soviet Union with a and Belgium, the Dardanelles (stoiy, P. 22), swift campaign, conceded the possibility the Balkans (storv', P. 30), Manchuria, of a long war by diverting his forces south Afghanistan and India's Northwest Fron- toward the Caucasus oil fields, as well as tier among many others claim longtime east toward the symbolically fx)tent Volga status as prizes to be repeatedly coveted, River city of Stalingrad, only lo suffer either for their resources or simply for bitter failure—both at Stalingrad and in passage to another prize. thc Caucasus Mountains. In the 19th century, a new factor arose The foiTner Soviet republics that now to add new territories to history's bones occupy the Caucasus and Caspian remain of contention: the search for petroleum, potential "movers and shakers" in world to heat steam engines, run internal com- events. We can only hope war no longer bustion and jet engines, generate power figures in the moving and shaking, but for factories, sustain modem technolog- that depends, as always, on what lessons ical civilization and lubricate all of it so it were learned from history. J.G. AN OFT-REPEATED MAXIM holds that

the thi'ee essential words in the real estate business are "location, location, location." That may not always be the case in military matters, but location usually comes into play one way or another. At the most fundamental level, a military handbook such as Sun Tzu's The Art of War would askfirstand foremost whether it is worth resorting to aimed force to take possession of a given location. Are its resources or advantages worth peoples lives? If the answer is yes, then the resulting struggle brings more locations into play—based on the nature of the teirain as a vantage point, a staging area, a junction for lines of supply and communication, a battlefield that will permit best use of one's assets, or as a good place to make a fighting stand.

LETTERS IN ON THE GREAT ESCAPE

After reading "Surviving the Great Escape" in the May 2005 issue, I must say there is a lot of history to Stalag Luft m . But from that one place of hell came some heroes, and what Roger Bushell did was quite heroic, as he gathered 600 men to make their escape. It gave me shivers to think that 50 of the escapees were murdered. The interview with George McKiel was quite enlightening—a way for me to see it all through his eyes. Sharon Diane Roberts Port Orange, Fla. BEHIND THE SCENES AT SEKIGAHARA

The Battle of Sekigahara, as recounted by John F. Murphy Jr., in the May 2005 issue, was the end product of nearly six months of political warfare, in which all the plays were settled by deals and betrayal. On the whole, it was a stalemate until the betrayals kicked in—then it was a foregone conclusion. During this period, the family of the late Toyotomi Hideyoshi still controlled most of Japan. Even Tokugawa declared himself prior to the battle to be a faithful retainer to the Toyotomi clan, as did its bugyo (commissioner for the regency), Ishida Mitsunad. The Toyotomis decided that this was a civil war between two retainers and did not interfere—in retrospect, a rather shortsighted view. Both Ishida and Tokugawa declared that they werefightingto erase corruption and traitors from the Toyotomi government. Only one was telling the truth, though. The overall commander of the Western Army was originally to have been Mori Terumoto, powerful warlord of the Mori clan. However, he was given a secondary role to his social inferior, Ishida, which insulted him and discouraged members of his family. Both Kikkawa Hiroie and Kobayakawa Hideaki represented branch families of the Mori clan and both betrayed Ishida at Sekigahara, an arrangement made before the battle. If Mod Terumoto had been at Sekigahara, Kikkawa or Kobayakawa could not have betrayed the head of their core family, no matter how much they detested Ishida. The wdter also failed to point out that Mori Hidemoto, also a family member, commanded 8 MILITARY HISTOKV JULY 2005

15,000 men in addition to the 3,000 that Kikkawa commanded, cJl of whom failed to support Ishida at all. Tokugawa Hidetada was berated by his father because Hidetada commanded the core army of the Tokugawa family— 30,000 men—and Hidetada allowed himself to be sidetracked by the Saneda family when he should have been marching straight toward Sekigahara to join his father Because of that, Ieyasu had to depend on Toyotomi retainers who hated Ishida to fight his battle; of the 30,000 Tokugawa troops Ieyasu brought with him, only half were considered to be firstline troops. Sekigahara was not really between Ishida and Tokugawa, but the start of a power struggle between the Toyotomi and Tokugawa families, although only Tokugawa Ieyasu fully understood that as he spent the next 14 years betraying the Toyotomi clan and wiping it out during the famous Osaka Castle sieges in 1615. One of the most readable and accurate recent books on the subject is Sekigahara 1600, by Anthony Bryant, in Osprey s Campaigns series. Gerald Tamnra Anchorage, Alaska

Artillery model is 7.5 inches, not 8. Third, the caliber of the Artillery model Luger is 9mm Parabellum (also known as 9mm Luger or 9mmxl9), not 9mm magnum. The type of projectile was changed in 1918 from a conical to a round-nose bullet to solve a jamming problem in the "snail drum" magazine. Finally, it is very unlikely that a presentation pistol would be an Artillery model, that it would be blued or that it would be carried in the field. Most presentation-grade firearms are engraved, with nickel, silver or gold plating, and are rarely carded as weapons by the recipients. Robert M. WUshire Deland, Fla. MORE PRECISE AIM

In his May 2005 "Weaponry" article on the AIM-9 Sidewinder, Justin Ruhge states that the first one was launched fi-om a Douglas F5D Tiger in 1953. What in the world is an F5D Tiger? The U.S. Navy had the Grumman FllF Hger in the late 1950s and there was a 1960s proposal from Douglas for an F5D Skylancer, but that latter was never produced. It would be interesting to know from which aircraft the Sidewinder was first fired. Allan Ames John F. Murphy Jr. responds: Of course Hawley, Pa. Sekigahara was the end product of nearly six months of political warfare! In 1600, Justin Ruhge fires back: The statement that the house of Toyotomi was represented by the test aircraft was a "Douglas F5D Tiger the 7-year-old Hideyori—the five regents came from the China Lake Naval Weapons held the real political power. However, MoriCenter, in an article published in 1981. Terumoto had little enthusiasm for the Navy personnel at the Missile Museum in entire struggle against the Easterners. China Lake are at a loss as to where the Osaka Castle was only a footnote—most of designation came from. The first missile its garrison with Hideyori were ronin, was actually fired on September 11, 1953, whose daimyo masters had perished at from a Douglas F3D Skyknight two-seat Sekigahara 15 years earlier. all-weather jet fighter piloted by Lieutenant Walter Schirra, destroying the target, a UNIQUE LUGER? Grumman F6F drone. The person in the I thank you for an outstanding magazine. photograph in the Military History article "A Luger's Story" in the May 2005 issue was probably Glen Tiemey of the GMU-61 was very entertaining. However, I would test squadron, at China Lake in 1956. like to point out four points in reference to the description of the Artillery model Send letters to Military History Editor, PriLuger in the article. media History Group, 741 Miller Drive, First, the barrel in a Luger is screwed Suite D-2, Leesburg, VA 20175, or e-mail to into the frame of the pistol and cannot be [email protected]. Please easily removed (a job best done by a gun- include your name, address and daytime smith). Second, the barrel length on the telephone number. Letters may be edited.

I N T R I G U E In a desperate time, Nathan Hale took on a dirty job-and ennobled himself despite his tragic end, By Becky Akers

A REBEL ARMY OF AMATEUR soldiers,

defeated in hattle by one of the most professional armies in the world, lay trapped on an island, wilh the enemy's navy prowling the waters around it. The rebel commander pleaded for a volunteer to carry out a risky mission, a task he described as so dishonorable that there would be no glory in its success, and so shameful that the person who carried it out would likely be shunned by friends and family—if he came back alive. General George Washington's Continental Army was in desperate straits following the Battle of Long Island on August 27,1776. His troops were beaten, sick, exhausted and, worst of all, disillusioned. Up until then, their rebellion against the British Crown had gone well. After the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, they

had driven the British from Boston the following March. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress had formally declared independence. But then the British, under Maj. Gen. Sir William Howe, landed on Long Island and squared off against Washington's force in Brooklyn. Finding an undefended pass on the Continentals' left, the British inflicted some 2,000 casualties and drove the survivors to their fortifications on Brooklyn Heights. Rain fell during thc next three days, giving Washington time to execute one of the most daring withdrawals ever. At nightfall on August 29, he ferried his army across the East River to Manhattan Island, right under the noses of the British. Still, defeat loomed. Sooner or later the British would cross the river, and their powerful fleet surrounded Manhattan.

"His nature was too frank and open for deceit and disguise," said Captain William Hull of Nathan Hale-but it is uncertain whether tfiat character trait led to his capture and hanging. 10 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2005

Washington's army had shrunk from 30,000 to 10,000, and it had to guard 18 miles of accessible coastline against Howe's 35,000 Redcoats and German mercenaries. But if Washington could learn the time and place of the British landing, he could mass his troops and possibly manage to hold New York. What he needed was a spy. Contrary to the popular image conjured up by later novels and films, there was nothing glamorous about espionage in the 18th century. One Continental officer called it "moral degradation" and added; "Who respects the character of a spy, assuming the garb of friendship but to betray?... .Let us.. .not stain our honor by the sacrifice of integrity." Years later, when President Washington wished to honor some of the Revolution's surviving secret agents with a dinner party, they declined to attend, unwilling to admit their shady activities to family and friends. Washington turned to Colonel Thomas Knowlton of Connecticut for help. With the need for intelligence so forcibly demonstrated in the Long Island debacle, Knowlton had taken about 100 of the army's creme de la creme and formed a corps of Rangers under four captains. Washington may have talked to the Rangers himself, or he may have asked Knowlton to handle it. Either way, finding someone willing to leave the ranks to furtively gather intelligence behind British lines would be difficult. One officer did volunteer, however—Captain Nathan Hale of the 19th Connecticut Regiment. Hales friends tried to dissuade him. "I [told him] that it was an action...[whose] propriety...was doubtful...the employment was not in keeping with his character," wrote Captain William Hull. "His nature was too frank and open for deceit and disguise." Bom on June 6, 1755, in Coventry, Conn., Hale indeed lacked a

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spy's talent for keeping a low profile. "Everybody loved him," said Hannah Pierson, an acquaintance from his prewar days as a schoolteacher "He was so sprightly, intelligent, and kind...so handsome!" He was also a world-class athlete in an age that revered strength. "I have seen him follow a football & kick it over the tops of the trees {an exercise he was fond of)," reported Lieutenant Elisha Bostwick. Colonel Samuel Green remembered that Hale was "extremely active—would jump from the bottom of one hogshead up and down into a second and from the second one up and down into a third like a cat—used to perform this feat often....Everybody that knew Hale was attached to him."

his uniform for a plain suit of citizens brown clothes...[afterwards] we parted for the last time in life." That was the last recorded reference to Hale until British logs noted his capture. His mission— where he went and what he learned—remains a mystery. Hempstead stated that Hale's original intent was to uncover plans for the British beachhead. However, the British landed in Manhattan on September 15, a few days after Hale penetrated their lines, and easily took New York City from the shattered rebels. At that point, the captain's quest was moot, and he could have returned to his own camp. Instead, he stayed with the British for another week. Why? What had he found? There are no eyewitness accounts of A YALE GRADUATE, Hale was better edu- how Hale was captured, though his cated than many of his superior when he father wrote: "...betra'd he doubtless joined the Continental Aimy, and more wass by somebody. [He] was executed sophisticated than most combatants on about the 22nd of September Last by the either side. He soon proved both his Aconts we have had. A Child 1 sot much mettle and his devotion to the cause of in- by but he is gone...." Some thought dependence. When the army threatened Nathans cousin Samuel, a Loyalist from to dissolve in December 1775, with virtu- New Hampshire who was serving as Genally all enlistments expiring on the same eral Howe's deputy commissan' of prisday. Captain Hale paid his company out oners, had recognized and betrayed him. of his own pocket to keep the troops on Other stories had him losing his nerve duty until new recruits were trained. Six and giving himself away. His brother months later, he led a detachment that Enoch's journal noted, "Being suspected captured a British supply sloop from by his movement [that] he wanted to get under the 64 guns of a man-of-war, pro- out of N York [he] was taken up & examviding much-needed aims and provisions ined by the Genl & some minutes being for the beleaguered Continentals. Such found with him orders were immediately was the honorable record he had built given that he should be hanged." before he volunteered for a mission that Howe's summai-y treatment of Hale is would earn him dishonor if he succeeded, somewhat curious. The general was a death if he failed. well-known Whig who, like most mem"After the retreat of our army fiom Long Island," Sergeant Stephen Hempstead wrote, "[Captain Hale] infonned me, he was sent for the Head Quarters, and was solicited to go over to Long Island to discover the disposition of the enemy's camps, &.C., expecting them to attack New York, but that he was too unwell to go, not ha\ang recovered from a recent illness; that upon a second application, he had consented to go." Asher Wright, a boyhood friend and the captain's waiter, thought it folly; "He was too good-looking to go so. He could not deceive, Some scrubby fellows ought to have gone. He had marks on his forehead so that anybody would know him who had ever seen him—having had powder flashed in his face." Sergeant Hempstead wrote that he accompanied Hale as he "left our Camp on Hai lem Heights.. .Capt Hale had changed

bers of that political party, sympathized with the American colonists' grievances and had even campaigned for reelection to Parliament by promising to refuse a command in America if it was offered him. Although he broke that vow, Howe prosecuted the war at such a leisurely pace that London wits suggested he join the peerage with the title of Lord Delayware, and he spent the rest of his military career defending himself from charges of incompetence and cowardice. Howe's decision to sentence Hale to death without even a court-martial has often been explained by the fact that his anest coincided w ith a fire ihat broke out in New York on the morning of September 21. The conflagration, which destroyed a quarter of the city, so tarnished Howe's victory that most New Yorkers assumed that the rebels had set it, and the Continued on page 18

E A P 0 N R Y Lieutenant Alfrecj Tirpitz (dreamed of the Prussian navy's emergence from the shacjow of the army. By Brian Turner

During one ot the tew naval actions of the Franco-Prussian War, tlie Prussian gunboat Me(eor engages the French Sowef off Havana on November 9,1870, in an illustration by Christopher Rave.

ON JUNE 16, 1871. when 42,000 battlehardened veterans of the German army marched through Berlin's Brandenbui^ Gate, the naval contingent in their wake was so small as to be barely noticeable. The army had won the Franeo-Prussian War in six months, enduring the hardfought battles of Worth, Gravelotte-St. Phvat, Rezonville-Mars-la-Tourand Sedan at a cost of 28,268 soldiers killed, 88,488 wounded and 12,854 missing. The navy, in contrast, had nothing to show for its participation but a few skirmishes—all of them bloodless save for a fight between the gunboats Meteor and Bouvet off Havana on November 9, 1870, in which two Prussian crewmen were killed and one man wounded before the French Bouvet fled into neutral Cuban waters and Spanish authorities ordered the fighting to cease. Admittedly, the navy was in its infancy—it dated only from 1848—while France's fleet was the world's strongest U MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2005

after Britain's Royal Navy. Consequently, German ships had often been bottled up in harbors, acting as a "fleet in being" to deter French invasion plans from the North Sea or Baltic coasts. Even then, two of its three ironclads—wooden frigates plated in iron—had engine trouble and could not have sallied forth from the Jade Estuary anyway. Small wonder, then, that Germany's navy was refused the right to wear the medal granted to the army. No wonder, either, that some naval officei~s blushed with shame, including young Lieutenant Alfred Tirpitz. Serving on a corvette in the North Sea in 1871, Tirpitz was shocked to find that the German fishermen his ship was supposed to protect flew the Dutch flag—they said that if they showed the German colors, British and Dutch fishermen would simply sail through them, cutting their nets and driving them away. Nothing in the navy's lackluster performance during the Franeo-Prussian

War would have suggested that within four decades the German Hochseeflotte (High Seas Fleet) would challenge Britain's supremacy and come close to beating the Royai Nav>' at Jutland on May 31, 1916. For the time being, Tirpitz could only resolve to devote his life to turning Germany into a sea power that could really protect its seafai'ers. Prussia's first timid attempts to form a navy actually dated back to the 17th century, when Eriedrich Wilhelm, the "Great Elector" of Brandenburg, chartered some Dutch ships to oppose the Swedes and captured a Swedish galleon to add to his squadron. His flotilla later sailed to the African Gold Coast (now Ghana) flying Brandenburg's red eagle on a white flag, to establish a short-lived trading post, Grossfriedrichsburg. After Brandenburg became Prussia, King Eriedrich Wilhelm II—Erederick the Great—mobilized a force of gunboats to protect his Baltic ports from the Swedes and Russians, who promptly destroyed it. In 1816 Pmssia acquired from Sweden a stretch of Baltic coastline including the port of Stralsund, where it built a 250-ton armed schooner of that name, supplemented by some former Swedish armed gunboats. All were soon sold off as virtually useless. There was no nation called Germany then, only a motley collection of kingdoms, grand duchies, duchies, principalities and free-state ports, such as Bremen and Hamburg. Although some Teutonic economists and patriots had dreams of sea power, there was neither enough money nor collective incentive to form an all-Gemian fleet—at least not until 1848. In that "Year of Revolutions," a democratic wave swept through Germany. A pan-GeiTnan parliament was formed at Paulskirche in Erankfort-am-Main—a hallowed monument to democracy where, not coincidentally, American Continued on page 20

Only after death was it revealed that the British army's distinguished medical officer was a woman. By Thomas Hanlon

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE HATED her

boss almost as much as he detested her. James M. Barry, principal medical officer for the British army on the isle of Corfu, would not tolerate her meddling with his field hospitals, and very publicly kicked her and "her passel of sluts" off the island, much to the amusement of the watching Scottish regiment. "The Lady of the Lamp" immediately instigated a hate mail campaign, petitioning her influential friends in England for the dismissal of "the unciiilized biTite, Barr>." Little did Nightingale know—any more than anyone else in the Ciimea— that Inspector Deputy General of Hospitals James Miranda Bairy was actually a woman.

Bom around 1795 in London, Barry is believed to have been the illegitimate child of society portrait painter James BaiTy, whose circle of sitters included South American revolutionary Francisco de Miranda, then living in Fitzroy Square. Miranda raised Barry's red-haired daughter in his own home. He also hired tutors and allowed her access to his ow n library, which included a collection of medical texts that Cttught the girl's eye. Recognizing her talent and apparently keen to flaunt society's conventions, Bany and Miranda dressed their 11-year-old protege as a boy and sent her to take the entrance examinations to Edinburgh University. She attained high marks and was accepted in the fall of 1809. "James" Barry, as the new literal^ and medical student called herself, studied hard and passed "his" medical degree with a prize-winning dissertation on herniorrhaphy (the surgical coirection of a hernia), written in Latin, then enrolled in London's St. Bartholemew's Hospital Medical School. There, she became the star pupil of Astley Cooper, then England's most renowned surgeon. They were diinking partners and grave robbers, purloining cadavers for the dissection (ables. BaiT\' continued to excel, writing specialist research papers on obstetrics and gynecology before graduating at the top of her class.

A caricature of James M. Barry in an army surgeon's uniform around 1850, shortly before the Crimean War. 16 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2005

At that point, Barry had few options—i^emain at St. Bartholemew's as a teacher, find a sympathetic husband with whom to

practice her chosen profession, or reveal her true identity and give up her career entirely. She opted instead to take the AiTny Medical Board examination in June 1813, and on July 5 she was commissioned a hospital assistant in the British aiTny as Lieutenant James Stuart Miranda Barry. Initially posted to Plymouth, in August 1816 Ban-y was shipped to South Africa. There she was attached to the household of Cape Colony's governor. Lord Charles Somerset, as well as serving in the Vaccine Institute, the Leprosy Institute and the lunatic asylum. Barry quickly reformed the leper colony by establishing a fidl-time nursing staff, diagnosing and isolating different forms of the disease and creating treatment schedules that would minimize the effects of reinfection, dramatically reducing the death rate. At the asylum, Baiyy replaced ciuel and incompetent warders with medically qualified assistants, paid fi'om the governor's budget. She also set her hospital orderlies to scrubbing wards and burning stinking straw beds—long before anyone knew about infection and sterilization. When the exiled former French emperor Napoleon needed a doctor in January 1817, Barry was dispatched in a fast frigate to the island of St. Helena. While there, she also cared for the ailing son of another French exile, Emmanuel, comte de las Cases, who wrote of their meeting on January 20: "The grave Doctor, who was presented lo me as a boy of 18, with the form, manner and the voice of a woman. But Mr. Barry (such was his name) was described to be an absolute phenomenon. I was infoTined that he had obtained his diploma at the age of 13, after the most rigid examination, and that he had performed extraordinaw cures on the Cape." Sympathetic as she was with patients. Continued on page 70

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blaze was probably still raging when Hale was captured later that day. In Kpite of theories that Hale was condemned for arson rather than espionage, contemporarv British and American sources make it clear that he was executed solely for spying. What Hale might have uncovered to warrant such swift punishment can only be speculated upon. In any case, after the spy was personally interrogated by Howe, British Lieutenant Frederick Mackenzie noted, "A person named Nathaniel Hales...this day made a full and free confession to the Commander in Chief of his being employed by Mr. Washington...." Howe probably offered him his life lo change sides, but despite the doubtful prospects of success the rebellion now faced. Hale remained true to his cause. HOWEVER ESPIONAGE WAS regarded in 1776, Hales conduct on the gallows impressed all witnesses as anything but dishonorable. Mackenzie reported that "he behaved with great composure and resolution." On September 22, William Hull recorded, British Captain John Montresor "came to our camp, under a flag of truce and informed [us]...that Captain Hale had been...executed that morning....[Montresor] was present...and seemed touched by ihe circumstances. .. .[Hale] was calm, and bore himself with gentle dignity, in the consciousness and rectitude of high intentions....He said, 'I only regret that 1 have bul one life to lose for my country.' " Measured by his success in carrving out his intelligence-gathering mission, Nathan Hale's performance as a spy ranks among history's great failures. But if he foiled British plans simply by discovering them, as his extra week behind enemy lines and Howe's draconian punishment seem to imply, then he may indeed have helped save thc Continental Army and its cause. Certainly his courage on the gallows inspired the Patriots despite their defeats in October and November 1776, as Howe chased them off Manhattan into Westchester and New Jersey. Hale's death probably achieved more than his success would have. "So why is it," Sergeant Hempstead asked soon after his death, "that the delicious Capt Hale should be...forgotten?" MH

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20 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2005

WEAPONRY

The nav\''s new fiag consisted of a black eagle on a white field, with an iron cross Continued from page U in the comer. During the next war over SchlesvvigHolstein in 1864, Prussia's ally Austria put President John F. Kennedy would make forth the main naval effort. On March 17, a speech in 1963. The Gernian confeder- Commodore Eduard von Jachmann held ation, or Bund, was then in dispute with off a superior Danish force at Jasmund, Denmark over Schleswig-Hoistein. inde- near the mouth of the Oder River. Off Hependent duchies whose populations were ligoland Bight on May 9, Austrian frigates predominantly German, but over which Furst Felix Schwartzenberg and Graf Denniai'k, profiting from the revolution- Radetzky, with a modest backup from arv' chaos, tried to take control. Prussian gunboats Preussischer Adler, The people of Schieswig appealed to Basilisk and Blitz, fought the Danish wartheir fellow Germans for help, and the ships Niels Juel, Hejmdal and Jyiland to a Bimd ordered Prussia and the duchy of standoff. Alarmed by the Danes' possesNassau to send troops. They could make sion ofan ironclad monitor. Rolf Krake, no headway against Denmark's nav\', how- the Prussian admiralty ordered one of its ever, so the Frankfort national assembly own fiom London, but the 1,650-ton decided to build afleet.As the city had no Arminius, with two pairs of 8.2-inch guns naval shipyards or trained officers, it had in revolving turrets, was not delivered to get what it needed from abroad. Karl- until the war was over. It was followed by Rudolf Brommy, a Leipzig-bom officer the 1,440-ton Prinz Adalbert, which had trained in the U.S. merchant marine who begun life as Cheops, originally laid dov^Ti had sened in the Greek navy against the in the Armand Freres shipyard in BorTurks, took command of the hastily as- deaux, puiportedly for Egypt but actually sembled force. Heflewhisflagaboard the for the Confederate Navy. 1,312-ton Barbarossa, the former Cunard transatlantic paddle steamer Britannia, UNABLE TO BUILD ITS OWN SHIPS, Prusarmed with nine 68-pounder guns. Also sia ordered three ironclad frigates from joining the fleet was the 1.650-ton paddle abroad—Konig Wilhelm and Kronprinz steamer United States, formerly of New from England and Friedrich Carl from York's Black Ball Line, recycled as the France. By the time they arrived, the frigate Hansa with two 84-pounder and PiTissian nav>' had become the Nordeight 68-pounder cannons. deutsche Bundesflotte—the fleet of the In its base at Bremerhaven, the new North German Confederation, formed navy hoisted a new ensign, comprising after Prussia's \ictory over Austria in the black, gold and red horizontal stripes (if Seven Weeks' War of 1866. German ships one removed the double-headed eagle it henceforth flew a national flag combinhad on one comer, it would have been ing horizontal stripes of Prussian blackidentical with the current flag of the and-white with the red of the Hanseatic German Federal Republic). The ships ports. The naval ensign, white ban ed by saw little action apart from a skirmish a black cross with the German imperial with Danish frigates off Heligoland eagle in the middle, and the national flag before a truce was declared, leaving with an iron cross in the comer would fly Schieswig independent. Meanwhile, the from German warships until 1921. democratic tide in Germany ebbed, and Prussia adopted a 10-year plan for 16 the Deutsche Reichsflotte (Imperial Fleet) annored ships, 20 corvettes and 22 gunwas ignominiously sold at auction. Prus- boats in 1867, but that program was still sia acquired the best ships, notably the in its early stages when war broke out 1,390-ton, 48-gun Gefion. a Danish frigate with France in 1870. The Prussians did captured in Eckenforde in 1849. have two major a.ssets, however. First, Having leamed of the importance of they possessed two fine naval bases, one sea power the hard way, in 1854 Prussian at Wilhelmshaven, which gave Prussia its King Friedrich Wilhelm IV put his first "window" on the North Sea. and the cousin. Prince Adalbert, in charge of other at Kiel on the Baltic, acquired with planning a navy with the title of "admiral the annexation of Schleswig-Hoistein in of the Prussian coasts," refusing him the 1866. Their second advantage was the rank of admiral of the fleet, "as we have Krupp rifled cannon, which made even no fleet." The farsighted prince recom- their little gunboats a force to be reckmended steam power for the "flying oned with. squadron" of six frigates he demanded. Prussia's small fleet was saved from

embart"assment or woree by Frances failure to use its nax^ to land forces on the GeiTnan coast, and the later withdrawal of French ironclads fix>m blockading duty to use their cannons in defense of Paris. That allowed the 12-gun corvette Amazone to slip out of Danzig to do some commerce raiding in the mouth of the Gironde River in western France in Januar\' 1871, capturing two French cargo boats and sinking a supply ship. That was a piuance, however, compared with the 75 German merchant ships the French had seized. With the proclamation of the German empire in Versailles on Januarv 18, 1871. the fleet became the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy), answerable only to the kaiser—unlike army units, which reported to their respective states. Its early commanders, however, were generals. The (iret, General of Infantry Albrecht von Stosch. in charge from 1872 to 1883. wanted armored ships for coastal defense and corvettes to protect German commerce. The 7.250-ton annored frigates Kaiser and Deutschland, launched in London in 1872. were the last such vessels Germany would order from abroad. By the mid-1870s. German yards were ready to start building warships, though their first product, the armored frigate Hansa, took 10 years to complete. Next came three Preussen-c\ass 6,800-ton turret ships, aiTned with four 10.2-inch guns and protected by 9.2-inch armored belts. The Preussens were also among the last warships to retain a full sailing-ship rig. THIS WAS A TIME OF CHANGE and ex-

perimentation, reflected in the variety of ships entering German service. There were shallow di-aught monitors, seagoing turret ships; "broadside ii^onclads," with rows of guns along the sides, such as the 9,750-ton Konig Wilhelm (in its day, the worlds biggest warship); central battery ships, with an armored box amidships and guns at the overhanging corners able to give fore and aft fire; and barbette armored ships, with guns firing over steel breastworks. The latter included a curious hybrid, the four-ship Sach.sen class of 7,400-ton Ausfallkor^'etten ("sortie coi'vettes"), with four gunnels an anged in a square and six 10-inch guns, intended to attack enemies approaching the coast. When General Leo Graf von Caprivi took over in 1883. he decided to stop building lone samples and produce more ships in series. The result was the Siegfried class of eight 3,500-ton coastal defense battleships, with three 8.2-inch

guns in separate turrets—two foru'ard on each side and one aft. Those miniature battleships were far from a high-seas fleet, but Caprivi continued building ciTiisers that, in their shining white liveries, showed the Gennan flag ovei^seas and paved the way for the acquisition of German colonies from 1884 onward. Caprivi was not a big-ship man, believing more in the virtues of the newl\ developed automobile torpedo. He felt that a fleet of small toipedo boats would soon rout the big ships and level up the disadvantages suffered by smaller fleets. He found an able collaborator in Tirpitz, who developed the "T-boats" and tactics for their use in combat. One redundant feature that warships had retained since its occasional successful use in the American Civil War and at the 1866 Battle of Lissa was the ram. In the last decades of the 19th century, however, these underwater projections from ships' bows generally did more damage to their own ships than to enemy vessels. Off Folkestone in the English Channel on May 31, 1878, for example, when Konig Wilhelm turned to avoid sailing ships in its path and rammed Grosser Kurfiirst, the latter—on its maiden voyage—sank along with 269 of its crew. In a similar catastrophe off Beirut in June 1893, the British warship HMS Camperdown rammed and sank HMS Victoria, resulting in 358 lives lost. Germany was flexing its political, economic and industrial muscle when Kaiser Wilhelm II ascended the throne in 1888. He was a naval enthusiast who had a love-hate relationship with Britain (his mother was Queen Victoria's daughter) and who both admired and envied the Royal Navy. One of his first actions was to dismiss General Caprivi and to at last appoint an admiral to head the admii^ty. Vice Admiral Alexander Graf von Monts designed Gennany's first four high-seas battleships, the 10.000-ton Brandenburg class with six II-inch guns. Soon, however, the kaiser found the man he needed to transform Germany into a first-class naval power—Tirpitz, who was appointed state secretary for the Imperial Navy in 1897. ennobled as Alfred von Tirpitz in 1900 and made grand admiral in 1911. Under Tirpitz's direction. Germany would plunge headlong into building a huge battle fleet without sufficient consideration for its purpose. The ensuing naval race would set Germany on a collision course with Britain—and help bring on World War I, MH

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JULYZ005 MILITARY HISTORY 21

XERXES' E ek

In 480 BC, Xerxes, great king of Persia, set out to swiftly yet systematically finish what his father had begun 10 years before: the conquest of Greece. BY BARRY PORTER 22 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2005

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N SEPTEMBER 20, 480 BC, Xerxes, king of Persia, mounted his golden throne, placed by his order on a high point overlooking the Channel of Salamis, and surveyed the place he had chosen for battle. This would be where he would finally conquer the Greeks, nearly four months after crossing the Hellespont and one month after overwhelming the 300 Spartans and 700 Thespians who had audaciously sought to bar his progress at Thermopylae. This is where he would become the absolute ruler of not only Persia but the entire Greek maitiland, on his way to conquering all of Europe.

I ^ I g I I l l 3 u 5 On May 10, 480 BC, the Persian king of kings sends the first elements of a multinational army numbering between 300,000 and 500,000 soldiers into Europe, in Xerxes at the Hellespont by Jean Adrien GuigneL

The war had gone well for him so far. Ten years before, his father, King Darius, had tried to invade European Greece, and despite initial success (due to little or no resistance) his army had been pushed back at Marathon by a united Greek front. Darius had retreated to Pei^sia, where he had to deal with problems closer to home. He became sick in November 486 BC and died before he could bring an Egyptian rebellion under control. Darius' 32-year-old son Xerxes took control immediately and swiftly crushed the Egyptian rebellion. Grain flowed once more, and now the great king could considerfinishinghis father's work ot uniting Persia and European Greece under one absolute niler—himself. Once Xerxes made his decision, elaborate planning of every detail began in earnest. His generals readied their armies and made the colossal logistic preparations necessary for their survival in a foreign land; his diplomats prepared the way with the cities and peoples they hoped to embrace as allies along the way; and every shipyard in ihc empire began building hundreds of warehips and transports. By the .spring of 480 BC, Xerxes' invasion force was ready. Though reports of its actual size varied, the anriy was estimated at between 300,000 and 500,000 strong when he led it out of the capital of Susa, along with 1,300 fighting ships. The aiTny drew its men from several nations, but the Pei'sian nucleus was the most magnificent contingent. Dressed in coats of mail, they were outfitted wilh a multitude of weapons—including shields, short spears, bows and arrows and daggers—and supplied with special food kept separate from the rest of the army. As for the Persian fleet, it was hardly Persian at all. The kingdom had very little maritime experience, so the naval expedition included Phoenicians, Egyptians and even some Greeks from satrapies in Asia Minor. Together, fleet and army traveled north. Their first obstacle came from nature rather than man, in the fonn of the Hellespont (now the Dardanelles), a strait about 40 miles long and one to four miles wide that connects the Aegean Sea with the Propontis (now the Sea of Marmara). According to Herodotus, two bridges had been built from Abydos: one by Phoenicians usingflaxcable and the other by Egyptians from papyrus cables. Both were subsequently destroyed by storms. Xerxes had the engineers beheaded and ordered that the waters of the strait be lashed 300 times and branded by hot irons (whether this was JULY 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 23

fl om Susa. At dawn on May 10, the king poui'ed wine into the watei^ from a golden chalice and prayed to the gods that chance would not prevent him from conquering Europe. He ended his prayer by throwing the golden chalice, a golden bowl and a Persian short sword into the sea. Then, with incense buming on the bridges and myrtle boughs strewn along the way, the great Persian army began its invasion. Thefirstacross were Xerxes' 10,000 Immortals, his ehte force, all wearing wreaths on their heads. They were followed over the next six days by the soldiers of countless nations. In keeping with the strict class system in Persia, the king and his soldiers all passed over the bridge closest to the Black Sea; only the pack animals and other underlings crossed over the bridge nearer the Aegean.

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HILE XERXES AND HIS MEN safely crossed the strait, his advance force had already passed thi'ough Thrace, reporting no opposition. City after city fell to the Persian forces with barely a whimper. Volunteers continued to swell their ranks—some enthusiastic, some merely afraid of the massive army. Xerxes must have felt confident of victory, but he had only been in Europe for a short while. He did not know ofthe rapid and effective planning that was going on in southern Greece, especially between the two most powerful city-states: Sparta and Athens. The two rivals did not start off in a cooperative mood. When word of Xerxes' invasion finally reached Greece, Sparta and Athens were at odds as to how to deal with it. In April the congress of the Hellenic League assembled at Corinth, a city at the neck of Attica and the Peloponnese. There, General Themistocles of Athens hoped to persuade the League to favor his plan to defend Greece. He had been pushing all winter to get Athens' new trireme Greek galleys engage the Persian navy-many of v^^hose best warships and ileet built so it could evacuate Attica and meet the sailors were also Greek-in the confined entrance to the Bay of Eleusis off Persians on the sea, where Themistocles felt the Salamis Island on September 20, A80 BC. enemy was weakest. However, he had yet to comince even his own Athenian contingent of his plan. The merely symbolic or the great king actually believed he was pun- expert soldiering of the Spartans, already demonstrated at ishing the strait is unknown). He then put a Macedonian named Marathon, was too obvious to be ignored by Athenian leaders Harpalus in charge of building two new bridges, one nearly a hoping to save Athenian lives. Eurthermore. due to the hopedmile in length, the other two miles. Haipalus did so by lashing for addition of naval squadrons from Crete and Syracuse falling together galleys and triremes (360 ships for the bridge nearest through, the League could argue that the Greek navy faced overthe Black Sea and 314 for the one leading to Maidos). These ves- whelming numbers at sea. sels were mooT ed with their bows facing the current and heavy Themistocles, ever the cagey politician, set aside his losing anchors laid out both upstream and downstream to take the proposal in favor of an idea that he thought had a chance of strain of shifting currents and wind. Both bridges had two flax winning support: place the Greek defenses in northern Greece cables and four papyrus ones laid across these ships from shor e rather than on the isthmus, as the Spartans wanted. In this way to shore and pulled taut by winches on land. Planks were then both Athens and the isthmus would be protected. But Sparta cut to match the floats. (Three gaps were left in the length of argued, quite reasonably, that there was no support for a Greek each bridge to allow boats to pass through to the Black Sea.) defense in northern Greece; cities there were falling to Persia This wooden surface was then covered with a layer of brush- without any opposition. How could one put up an effective dewood and hard-packed earth. Finally, a paling was built along fense where even the locals couldn't be trusted to support the both sides so as to help keep the animals crossing the bridge cause? from panicking. Themistocles understood this concern. He managed to get an Once those bridges were complete, Xerxes led his forces north advance force sent north to investigate further defensive plans, 24 MILITARV HISTORV JULY 2005

but it huiTied back to report how little support it encountered. At that point, Themistocles again pushed to evacuate Athens and fight Xei'xes on the sea. Still, as an Athenian, he did not have the absolute authority that a Spartan king enjoyed; he held a position on the Board of Generals only because he had been elected to the post. And now he had to trv to con\ince the elected Assembly ot Athens that its people should leave their homes and their holy shrines undefended so that they could fight the Persians elsewhere. It was not an easy sell, to say the least, but Themistocles was as good a politician as he was a military tactician. Speaking to the Assembly, Themistocles threw in every argument he could make. He cautioned that Athens had to look out for itself. Thessaly, in the north, had recently defected to the Persians; so might Corinth or even Sparta. As the historian Plutarch reported, Themistocles told the Assembly that Athens' army was no match for even neighboring Boeotia, let alone a mighty empire like Persia—but its navy was unmatched, capable even of dominating all of Greece once the war was over. And on top of those rational ai^imenls he included a bit of religious motivation: a prophecy he had received from the oracle at Delphi, whose ambiguity he shaped to his advantage.

I

N THE END THEMISTOCLES' DECREE passed the Assembly in June, in July Athenians evacuated their homes and moved south, either to Troezen or Salamis. Meanwhile Themistocles, now with the fiill backing of his Athenian delegation, traveled to Corinth to meet with the League. There, he persuaded the other Greek states to send an advance guard of land forces to a pass in northeiTi Boeotia called Thermopylae, while their fleet waited for the Persians at nearby Artemisium. The Greek defense was now united. That unity might be questioned, of course, considering what happened at Thermopylae. There, on a narrow beach between sea and mountains. King Leonidas of Spaita anived in late July with an advance guard of no more than 4,000 men. When Xerxes' vast host arrived there in August, all but the 300 Spartans and some 700 Thespians retreated. Leonidas, to his credit, vowed that he and his elite Spartan warriors would stand their ground to the bitter end. Inevitably they were overwhelmed— as were the Thespians—but they inflicted heavy casualties, delayed the Persian advance for four days, and by their bravery became a rallying point for the rest of Greece. The first encounters at sea were more encouraging, though hardly decisive. At Artemisium 271 Greek galleys, mostly Athenian, fought more than 650 Peraian vessels. For a while it seemed the Greeks might be gaining the upper hand, until news of the disaster at Thermopylae reached them. When the call to retreat came from Themistocles, the fleet withdrew to Salamis. As his enemies retreated, Xerxes concentrated on advancing into central Greece, toward Attica and Athens. His land forces led the way, securing ports for the supporting fleet. He met little resistance. Most of Athens had been evacuated back in June. In Corinth, the League voted against committing a large Greek army in Attica, resorting instead to the plan favored by Sparta: They put up a great wall along the isthmus and made their stand there. As a result, Attica now lay open to the Persian onslaught. Most of Athens' remaining populace hastily hiked into the Attican hills to hide, leaving in the city only the old and infirm whom they considered expendable. By the time Xerxes entered Attica in late August, the land seemed deserted. That did not

Go tell the Spartans: Part of the monument marking the site where Leonidas and his 300 warriors made their final stand at the pass of Themiopylae in August 480 BC.

stop Xerxes from burning its temples, farms and crops. Entering Athens, the Persians found a nearly empty city. The Athenian treasurer and some supporters were entrenched behind wooden barricades in the Acropolis so as to protect their holiest of temples. The Persians demanded that the Athenians inside the Acropolis surrender; they refused. The Persians ignited the wooden barricade with flaming arrows; still the Athenians didn't budge, and pushed back any Persian attempt to the Acropolis' defenses with well-aimed boulders rolled down the slope. Then in early September, some Persian soldiers scaled the cliff behind the Acropolis. When they appeared above the defenders, the Athenians either committed suicide or died fighting. The invaders then plundered the temple and set the citadel afiame. Meanwhile, the Greeks worked feverishly to finish their own barricade across a narrow part of the isthmus wail. The League then sent orders to the Greek fleet to mass farther south, at Troezen, to further protect the isthmus. Themistocles had other ideas—from the first he had felt the final battle against the PerJULY2005 MILITARY HISTOKV 25

sians should be ioughl in Eleusis Bay, the Persian land forces were moving near Salamis^but he was not in charge. closer to the isthmus. Themistocles must Fortunately for him, Eurvbiades, the have been equally alarmed to see his commander in chief, asked his senior plans in jeopardy. He had to keep the staff, including Themistocles, for its colGreek navies together off Salamis—and lective opinion as to the best place to he had to find some way to trick Xerxes engage the Pereians. The meeting split up into sending his ileet into the bay after into two camps. Athens, Aegina and them. Megara wanted tofightoff Salamis, while As a master politician, Themistocles the Peloponnesians preferred Troezen, was not above a little underhanded nudgfearing that a defeat at Salamis would preing. During the Greek strategic confervent their escaping to fight another day. ence at dawn on September 19, he slipped out and sent one of his slaves, Sicinnus, The issue was decided by the sight of away in a small boat toward the Persian the horrible red glow of Athens and its fleet. Sicinnus delivered a message to a Acropolis burning to the north. Many Persian officer and hastened back to sailors hurried to their boats to set sail fbr Salamis. the isthmus, but Themistocles asked Eurybiades to call another meeting. He did, The message puiportedly said that and Themistocles used all his skills of orThemistocles and his Athenian brethren atory to influence the sailors to make had switched sides and that the Greek their stand at Salamis. Three points he forces were now split between anti- and raised proved especially convincing: They Though arrogant and corrupt Themistopro-Persian parties. Those who were antihad lo do something now, for lhe fu'es of des displayed genius at diplomacy, states- Persian were going lo ti-y to slip away that Athens demonstrated just how close the manship and strategy atthe right time. night to join their land forces at the isthenemy was; Troezen was too wide open mus. If they succeeded, Xerxes would and would prove more advantageous to probably be in for a long campaign. If Persia's larger fleet than the confining coastline around Salamis; Xerxes struck now, however, infighting among the divided facand, most important, the Athenians and their allies—compris- tions within Greek fleet would assure him an easy victory. ing three-quarters of the fleet—were going to fight at Salamis The Persian admirals believed the message was genuine and no matter what Eurybiades decided. passed it on to Xerxes, who took the bait and ordered Ms fleet Despite the sti'ategic logic of Themistocles' speech, it took that to enter Eleusis Bay. Themistocles' strategy' had worked, playlast childish threat to convince Eurybiades that they should ing upon what he knew the Great King wanted to believe. make their stand at Salamis. When the meeting ended on SepWhile the Persian fleet moved in silence, so as to surprise the tember 6, an earthquake shattered the still of the dawn. The Greeks, Xerxes ordered an Egyptian squadron to make its way Greeks, always looking for a sign from the gods, could have around Cape Petritis and block the Megara Channel. Two more taken it as a good or bad omen. They settled on the foiTner squadrons were sent to either side of the island of Psyttaleia to block the mouth of the Salamis Channel. He also landed a Per^EORTUNATELY EOR XERXES, all the omens looked sian infantry force on the island, since once the battle began bad. In just four months, he had advanced from the wi-ecked ships and helpless sailore would probably wash ashore Hellespont into Attica, winning victory after victory there. By midnight, Xeiices had the entire Greek fleet bottled up along the way. But by late September the stonn season was in Eleusis Bay—and the Greeks still didn't know it. brewing, threatening his supply ships. His rash decision to bum The Greeks received word the next mot ning that they were the crops of Attica had left no food for his men. He had to defeat surrounded, later confirmed by a defecting Persian ship. Dethese Greeks quickly, or risk a starving army. Thanks to his spite the dire threat now hanging over his head, Themistocles many spies, he knew of the Greek wall and solid mass of sol- must have been secretly pleased as he rallied the Greek comdiers at the isthmus, so he made his choice: better to send his mandere, who chose him to speak to their fighting men at dawn navy against the Greeks than have his hungry men trek over the on September 20. Themistocles did so, motivating them to fight mountains to the isthmus. He sent advance naval squadrons for their lives and the future of their free homelands. When he from Phalerum, just south of Athens, to a location nearer was done, the Greeks hurried to their ships and set out into the Salamis, where the Greeks could see them. That, Xerxes channel. thought, would either force the Greeks to engage his ships in By that time, Xerxes sat on his throne on the lower slopes of the open Saronic Gulf, where the greater Persian numbers Mount Aegaleus, overlooking all of Salamis. What he must have would be an advantage, or it could scare the Peloponnesian seen at dawn that morning was the Greek ileet moving northships into scattering for home, which would allow the Persian ward, away from the open mouth of the channel and into Eleufleet to pick them off one by one. sis Bay. The logical conclusion Xerxes must have drawn was The plan almost worked. When word reached the Greeks on that the Greeks, unaware of his force blockading the Megara September 17 that Xerxes' fleet lay in the Saronic Gulf waiting Channel, were trying to escape. Therefore, he ordered his fleet for them, they were alarmed—especially the Peloponnesians, farther into the channel in pursuit. The Persians drew into a who felt their lands were now open to attack while they were standard battle foi"mation—a mile wide with about 90 ships in bottled up in Salamis. Their panic grew when news came that the front line, with at least 30 to 40 marine infantrv and archers

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26 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2005

per ship. What might not have seemed immediately obvious to Xeiices, however, was that the ships were tightly packed into the channel, and as the front line rounded Peramis, the ships in the Ionian left wing fell foul of one another, slowing them, while the Phoenician right wing advanced much faster. The line began to break up. Even worse, as the Persians entered the channel a trumpet sounded and the Greek ileet, seemingly disorganized, suddenly turned and gathered into foiTnation to face them. The Greek galleys held fewer men but were sleeker, faster and easier to maneuver than the Persian ships. The Athenian contingent, 180 triremes strong with about 18 men per ship, faced the Persian right wing and immediately backed water, drawing the Phoenicians forward into narrower waters.

T

Writing off Athens as indefensible, Themistocles staked Greece's future on one throw of the dice off Salamis-aided by leaked disinformation that convinced Xerxes of what he wanted to believe.

HE BAITING TACTIC worked. The whole Greek fleet lay in a crescent formation, four rows deep with 75 ships to a row. The Athenian left wing had plenty of room to maneuver, while the crowded Phoenician ships continued to foul each other in the nan'ow waters between the mainland and the island of Psyttaleia. The moment to strike had come, yet Themistocles, who knew the channel better than the Persians, still hesitated. A light south breeze had been blowing across the channel during the early part of the day, but now, as the sun began to warm the channel, a heavy swell traveled north out ofthe sea. This posed little threat to the small Greek ships, but Themistocles bargained that such choppy waters would throw the large, topheavy Persian ships into further disan'ay. He proved to be right. Many of the Phoenician ships, bouncing in the sudden waves, now had their sides turned helplessly to the Greek prows. Herodotus wTote that it was Ameinias of Pallene, captain of an Athenian ship, who was first to ram a Persian vessel. The historian Plutaixh tells us it was Ameinias of Decelea who first rammed the Persian flagship commanded by Xerxes' brother, Ariamenes, whose men responded with a volley of arrows and javelins from their greater height, "as if from the wall of a fortress." The two ships' bronze bows, shaped like beaks, slammed into each other and held both together. As Ariamenes tried to board the Athenian trireme, he was run through with speai^s and thrown into the water. With their rigging fouled, the men of both ships were locked in mortal combat, as the rest of the Greek fleet hunied to Ameinias' aid. The two lleets were now fully engaged and somewhat evenly matched in numbei"s, since the Persians could only bring a

small portion of their vessels forward to fight at one time. Besides their disadvantage in maneuvering, the Persians suffered from the death of Ariamenes, their chief admiral. Perhaps due to overconfidence, they had selected no immediate second-incommand to whom the fleet could look for orders. As a result, the Persian lines fell into utter confiasion, some retreating, some pressing on, while more Persian vessels still poured in from the open sea. What may have finally sealed the Persian fate was their right wing, the Phoenicians. Those expert sailors suddenly panicked under the Athenian onslaught and turned in flight—only to collide and run afoul of the oncoming Pereian ships. Those nearest to the mainland ran aground, and their crews struggled to what they thought was safety. The captains were hauled before Xeiiies, who demanded explanation for their failure. The Phoenicians blamed the lonians on the opposite wing. Herodotus wrote that Xerxes looked out on Salamis, saw how bravely the lonians fought and immediately had the Phoenicians before him beheaded for cowardice. They may have been the lucky ones. Most of the Persians could not swim, so when their ships were rammed and sunk, the majority of the crews drowned. The Greeks, on the other hand, were excellent swimmers and usually made their way to safety if their vessels went down. They were aided by the Athenian Aristides, who took a number of Athenian hoplites gathered along the coast of Salamis to Psyttaleia, killed every Persian on the island and thus made it safe for the Greeks who might find need of it. Meanwhile, with the Phoenician right wing out of the way, the Athenians swung their ships around to battle the JULY 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 27

In addition to canceling out the Persian navy's numerical superiority, the Greeks' success in stopping the first Persian formation in the narrows off Salamis caused the galleys that followed to run afoul of the vanguard, resulting in utter chaos in their formations.

Persian center and left wing. The Cilician squadron, part ofthe Persian center, had fought on until its officers saw the Phoenicians break away; then they also retreated. That left the Pei^ian left wing and part of the center exposed, which the Athenians exploited to the utmost. They broke off their pursuit of the scattered Phoenicians and Cilicians and attacked the lonians and Persian center from their flank and rear. The lonians in particular fought on with great skill and bravery. One of their ships rammed an Athenian vessel, only to be rammed by another trireme. The lonians did not panic, but quickly boarded and took over the Greek vessel. Still, despite such daring acts, the lonians could not stand up to the Athenian assault on their right and the Aeginetans on their left. They held their own for as long as they could, then turned under a westerly wind and raced back to the open sea. Much of the rest of the Persian fleet followed them.

T

HE GREEKS WERE VICTORIOUS, but they were not out of danger. Despite their losses, the Persians still outnumbered the Greek fleet, which had lost nearly 40 ships in this engagement. Oi"dinarily, they would have tried to capture some of the damaged enemy ships, but the westerly wind that had taken the lonians and the other Persian ships out of the channel had also blown the abandoned Persian vessels out of the Greeks' reach. So they did what they could, regrouped 28 MILrrARY HISTORY JULY2005

and repaired what ships they had left, and prepared for another Persian onslaught. It never came. Xerxes, no doubt with a broad view of the Salamis Channel filled with his dead sailors and about 200 wrecked ships, ordered a general retreat back to Phalerum and then, two days later, back to the Hellespont. His confidence had been shattered as effectively as his fleet, and now he was terrified that the Greeks would set sail across the Aegean Sea in order to destroy his Hellespont bridges, thus cutting him off from much-needed supplies and reinforcements. Xerxes also feared for his land forces still camped out in Attica. The Greeks, now in control ofthe Aegean, could sail to the eastern frontiers of the Persian empire, populated mostly by Greeks, and foment rebellion. Xerxes could hurry back to preempt such a revolt, but he still had his reputation to contend with: How could he order a complete retreat and abandon everything north of Attica after conquering most of Greece? In the end, Xerxes decided on a halfway measure, leaving a land force at Thessaly under the command of his cousin Mardonius—one not big enough to make logistics a problem, but so small that the Persian army would now be on the defensive. With this plan in place, Xeraes and the rest of his amiy mai'ched back to the Hellespont in 45 days. That swift retirement took its toll, as plague, dysentery, famine and cold weather descended on Continued on page 72

I N T E R V I E W

Chetnik Mountain

GUERRILLA Fighting for Draza Mihailovic in the Royal Yugoslav Liberation Army, Milorad Krstovic battled Germans and Josip Broz Titos Communist partisans during World War II. BY COLIN D.HEATON

30 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2005

F

ollowing Nazi Germany's invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Chetnik nationalist partisans, under the command of General Dragoljub "Dra/a" Mihailovic, fought a relentless war against both the foreign invadere and Yugoslav Communist guerrillas led by Josip Broz, also known as Marshal Tito. In essence, the nationalists who supported the return of the monarchy were fighting a two-front war: against Adolf Hitlers professional and well-armed forces, and against Tito's Communists, who wished to overthrow the existing royalist govemment-in-exile. ln spite of their formal military training, Milorad "Mike" K]-stovic and his brothers served Mihailovic as irregulars— and the Krstovic family paid a high price for its convictions. Mike Krstovic, now retired, has lived in Greenville, S.C., since 1959. In a January 2002 interview with Colin D. Heaton, Ki'stovic provided insights into the wai" against the Axis—and also described the way the Yugoslav nation was torn apait by the infighting between the nationalists and Communists. Military History: When and _^ j where were you bom? Kretovic: I was bom on August 15, 1919, in Uzica, Yugoslavia, which is today independent Serbia. I had three brothers. Rade was killed after the war. The other two—Drgica, who is still alive, and Mida, who died SL\ yeare ago—both came here and worked for me. My father was murdered during the war, and the family was almost destroyed. MH: How did your life change when the Gennans invaded Yugoslavia? Krstovic: I was in the military, at the national academy at Sabac, near the Drina River. The Germans came in and said, "We will make peace," and so on, so I ran away with two other guys, as we did not want to become prisoners. It took me a month to get back to my home, since it was about 20 miles away. That was when I joined the forces of Mihailovic at Ravna Gora. This unit never suirendered, you know. When I joined in May 1941, there was a full Communist unit as well as the Royal Yugoslav Army, all together, and we Chetniks. It was kind of strange, I know. MH: How did that work out, joining the Chetniks? Krstovic: We never called ourselves Chetniks, but the Royal Yugoslav Liberation Army. Well, the Communists did not want to go along with our plans, and they went their separate ways. The Yugoslav army stayed with us, and we served together for a time. 1 knew the minister of Serbia—who was killed, by the way, by Tito, who had his car sabotaged, and he hit a tree. He had been a student in 1941 and knew my family, as we were neighboiii, and he knew my father, who had lun away when the Germans came. Royalists and Communists killed each other off all the time. After this split, I went to Bosnia to fight. This

minister friend of my family came to me and said that I must join Tito's group, since I was a military man. I said no, I could not do that, since he was a Communist. 1 told him that I had taken an oath to serve the royal army. He tried to persuade me, offering a large command if I did. This was the guy Tito killed, one of his own. I still can't understand that madness. That was when Mihailovic made me a company commander under his command, with the rank of captain. MH: Were the Communists a major factor in Yugoslavia? Krstovic: Yes and no. They had a lot of political interest among the people, but not much real support from the government. Before the war, they had held demonstrations and such, and we all got along OK for a while. The Germans did not stay long in my town; they left after a short time, and the Communists moved in. That was when we joined forces against the Germans for a short time. MH: Did you ever have contact with the Tomobranzen ("Volunteers," Croatian military forces allied to Germany)? Opposite: Milorad Krstovic and his brother Rade of the Royal Yugoslav Liberation Army-more commonly known as Chetniks-after a battle with their Communist partisan rivals in 1943. Left: Krstovic Oeft] as a captain of police in Germany, while attached to the British Military Occupation Command in 1947 (Photos: Courtesy of Milorad Krstovic).

Krstovic: Yes, I fought them many times, along with the Communists and the Germans. Forty miles from my hometown were the Croatian and Bosnian borders, and that was where I fought the Tomobranten and Ustase [Croatian Fascist paramilitary forces allied to Germany]. MH: What was your first combat like? Krstovic: T was walking up a hill one day, and down below there was flat ground. I was with my men when we came across some camouflaged Ustase with their machine guns pointed at us, very close. I threw myself down on the giound and told my men to do the same. They opened up on us with everything, and my men ran away for cover. I passed one of my sergeants; his head had been opened up, and his brains were falling out. He was not dead yet, but I had to finish him off—we could not leave our badly wounded. I had to withdraw also, so 1 climbed a tree and spent the night hoping not to be found. From my tree I could see the Ustase withdraw and cross the border into Serbia from where we were, which was actually in Croatia. The following morning, I went back over the same path through the woods and regrouped. My men thought JULY 2005 MILITARY HISTOKY 31

The Germans were killing 100 people fi

Tito did not give a damn^ no mat that I had been killed. In fact, my mother was informed that I had been killed. MH: What did you do about the men running away? Krstovic: Well, I cussed them out for running away and leaving us exposed. They should have sought cover and regrouped. They never did that again. This was in 1941. MH: Did you also fight any of the German units? Krstovic: Oh yes, many times. In one battle we destroyed six or eight tanks, I don't remember exactly how many. They were supported by Serbian Nazis, and this was only 30 miles from my home. The commander was a Slovenian Nazi, in fact, and many of the soldiers were nonGerman. This was in August 1943. We had been supplied Borka and Kosta Krstovic with their four sons (from left], Rade, Miodrag C'Mida"), Dragomir C'Drgica") and Milorad (Courtesy of Milorad Krstovic].

with large British PIAT [projector infantry antitank] weapons, and that was how we were able to attack the tanks. Once you fired one of those things, your shoulder was dead—it really gave you a kick from the recoil. We used lo put a pillow against our shoulders to absorb the impact; it hurt that much. But it felt good when you killed or disabled a tank. I would say I fought large German units at least 10 to 15 times during the war. MH: How many casualties did your unit take during the war overall? Kjrstovic: Oh, I could not even tell you, but hundreds to be sure. MH: Did you know Mihailovic personally? Krstovic: Oh yes, he personally screened all of his people. MH: How did you get chosen to be a company commander so young? Krstovic: Because 1 was an officer cadet in the academy and had formal military training. I was not a Communist, and my father was also well known. 1 was a professional soldier. He [Mihailovic] knew who I was, as he was also a 32 MILITARY HISTORY JULYZ005

professional soldier and former academy man. MH: What did you think of Mihailovic as a leader? Krstovic: Oh. he was a smart man and had attended the higher academies offered by the British before the war. He had been a soldier all of his life. He never asked anyone to do something that he would not do, and this was important for good leadership. He was bom 20 miles from my hometown, near Ravna Gora. That was the site of the American mission [Office of Strategic Services, or OSS], and we all worked together many times. Later on, what happened was that the Gennans were killing 100 people for every German soldier that was killed. We were trying to avoid those things, and Mihailovic tried to organize his resistance to where such things would not happen. But Tito did not give a damn, no matter how many [of his own] people were killed. Tito wanted bodies for his propaganda. MH: You also met Tito, did you not? Krstovic: Oh yes, I did. MH: What did you think of him? Krstovic: Tito was not a true Yugoslav; he was educated by the Russians and adopted their way of thinking. He did not give a damn about Serbia. What happened later on was that the Serbs simply bowed down to whoever was in charge, despite the fact that the Serbian people are probably the most hospitable people and would feed you if you were a stranger; they would drink with you and trust you until you did something to make them change their ideas about you. Serbs were always people who would be slaves to other people. They were willing to live by other peoples' rules as long as they were left in peace. They were veiy easily affected by propaganda also. MH: Did your men wear uniforms at this time? Krstovic: No, we did not have any. MH: Were you ever concerned about the Geneva Convention in case you were captured, given the requirement of wearing uniforms to qualify as POWs? Krstovic: No. not really, and neither Tito nor the Germans and their allies would have cared even if we had uniforms. That was just the way it was. MH: When was the first time you fought against Tito's partisans? Krstovic: Well, we fought them off and on, but in late 1944 the Gennans were leaving... .They knew that they had lost the war. We were sent to Italy, in the north, and then returned. What that idiot Tito did was go to Belgrade and

* ever/ German SDldier that was killed... sr how many people were killed. collect all of the students and had them fire upon the Germans. Even Mihailovic said that this was stupid, because they were leaving. Let them gol They had lost the war. But no, the Communists continued to aggravate the situation, and that forced the Germans to do two things: stop their retreat and bring more SS units into the country. That was when the really bad times started. The Germans stopped, regrouped and waited until their strength was solid, then they launched their last great attacks. Thousands were killed because of this, and it was all Titos fault. He sacrificed the lives of innocent Serbs to further his own power and prestige. MH: Do you think that Tito wanted the Germans to take care of his internal problems for him by killing off the "undesirables"? Krstovic: Sure, why not? This was during the time we were sent to Italy to meet with the United States representatives and the OSS main commanders. We worked mostly with the United States, and Tito was supported by the British after 1943. MH: When was your first encounter with Americans? Krstovic: Oh, you will like this, it is a great stoiy There was a flight of American bombers, B-24s I think, coming back from Romania in October 1944. Some guys parachuted, others crashlanded. We got to them, and they were hurt, but all were damn near frozen to death. We gave them blankets and warm clothes, and we fed them. We learned that they were flying from Italy and had been shot down. We had a ball with them, dancing, food, drinks—we had a great time, and they were nice men. They gave us these bracelets that they wore, and my son, who lives in Atlanta, has mine now. MH: What did you do with them afterward? Krstovic: We passed them on to higher command, where they were handed over to the OSS mission. We had to take them over the mountains and avoid the enemy; they were too important to risk, but we did get into some trouble. We were with them for about a week and got to know them well. MH: What kind of trouble did you get into? Krstovic: Well, these guys had taken the .50-caliber machine guns off their aircraft, and we had two of them, with the ammunition. The local blacksmith took two bicycle wheels and made gun caniages for us. We found some Germans living in an old hospital, a three-floor building. We attacked and fired on them, and you could see those

Germans coming out in pajamas and even without clothes. We killed over a dozen Germans that night. It did not last long, since we did not have much ammunition. We also used grenades and bombs. MH: How did your soldiers survive during the famine of 1943-44, given the difficulty of getting supplies? Krstovic: Well, the fanners helped us with what little they had; everyone tried to help us. MH: What was your policy on stealing? In Tito's forces that was punishable by death. Krstovic: Yes, for us also—^you were shot for that. You did not steal from the people, because you needed the people to survive. And we fought for the people, to make them Far left: Chetnik commander Dragoljub "Draza" Mihailovic addresses villagers in western Bosnia. Left: Mifiailovic's co-belligerent and enemy, partisan leader Josip Broz, a k a Marshal Tito (Far left: United Press International; Left: National Archives].

free. Many crimes were punishable by death, especially rape. MH: Where did you get your weapons? Krstovic: Many times we stole them from the Germans, and sometimes we were supplied by the Allies. It just depended. After 1943 we had nothing but what we stole from the Germans; we did not get hardly anything. MH: Did you ever have any German soldiers defect and come over to your side? Krstovic: No, not to us. MH: How did you handle German prisoners? Krstovic: Well, I have to tell you about that. We treated them well and handed them over to higher headquarters. The Germans killed our men; 1 saw some hangings in the market of my hometown. At this time the Bulgarians were with the Germans. Turks too. Here is a good story. My brother Rade had two guys with him who were afraid of nothing. They were called "The Black Trio." and what happened was that a German transport was going off to Russia with many Romanian soldiers. In this country place, they stopped all the railroad cars. These were full of weapons, ammunition, cannons, you name it. My brother knew they were coming from our network of JULY 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 33

The Germans were caught hy surprise.,

and his men killed a few Gei people, the communication service. We also had spies working in the railroad, telling us schedules and what was coming. On this one train there were about 20 Germans who were just hanging around waiting for about five or six hours. There were 18 cars in this train. Rade came to this wooded area nearby, just the three of them, each man about 50 feet away from each other on each side. Rade yelled, "Left battalion round it up, right battalion." and so on. His voice echoed through the woods, and the Germans were caught by surprise; they had their shoes off and were not expecting anything, and they were in a panic. Rade opened up with a machine gun; he and his men killed a few Germans and captured the train. Rade had a

was what wounded me—they threw hand grenades, and that was how I was wounded in August 1943. My leather coat was full of holes from the grenade fragments and bullets that went through it. I also remember the "Ptinz Eugen" Division [at that time commanded by SS General Artur Phleps]; they were terrible, absolutely ruthless. They were mostly Germans with some Yugoslavians. There are a couple [of] those SS guys living here, and they have a German restaurant. Strange world. There is another guy li\ing here who was a Hungarian Nazi, and he spent some time in South America, then came here, and as a mechanical engineer wanted me to give him a job. That was 1963-64. He had a lot of money; where it came from I have

Belgrade's German occupiers make an example of one of many university pupils by hanging him from a lamppost. Politically inspired terror and reprisal were equally common among the Yugoslav resistance groups-against the Germans and against each other CCorbis).

farmer bring wagons with oxen, and they loaded up the weapons and everything. Then they blew up whatever they could not take. My brother was something else, I tell you. He always wore his shirt open. But he was the kind of man that if he only had a piece of bread, he would give it to you. He was two years younger and was in the air force academy. He would have finished since he only had a year to go, but the war started. His nickname was "Red Hair" MH: How would you rate the Germans you fought? KrstovJc: They were good soldiers, very tough, especially the SS guys. They were no joke, you know? We fought some of the best counterinsur^ency units Adolf Hitler had, including the 6th, 7th, 8th and 13th SS, the "Handschar" unit, comprised of Muslim recixiits. Fighting these guys 34 MILnARY HISTORY JULY 2005

no idea. MH: Did you ever fight the Italians? Krstovic: Oh yes! Let me tell you, Italians are just musicians, not ver\' good soldiers. The guys who fought them before I became involved told great stories about them running 40 miles back into Italy. They were not fightei"s. Not like the Germans. As long as they have their music and their vino they were harmless, for the most part. They did not have the heart for it. Just look how easily they changed governments. I was there and saw Benito Mussolini hanging upside down with his girlfriend when I was sent to Ttaly later in the war. They went Communist overnight, and they still have problems trying to figure out who they are, I think.

lade opened up with a machine gun; he nans and captured the train. MH: Did you ever meet British Brig. Gen. Fitzroy Maclean, the man Churchill sent to report on the situation in Yugoslavia? Krstovic: No, but he was at higher headquarters, and then he worked with Tito later. MH: Did you ever meet Milovan Djilas, the Montenegiin writer and political adviser who Tito dismissed in 1954 because he was becoming too critical of him? Krstovic: I never met him. MH: 1 met him, and he felt that Tito had betrayed not only Yugoslavia but also his own cause, although Djilas still respected him. Krstovic: It was hard in that war, not knowing who you could trust, and people becoming traitors left and light, killing and destroying. I can't understand that. I also can't understand that American Taliban fellow [John Walker Lindh], who would work against his country, the greatest country in the world. I know this to be tiTje, and I was not even born here, so maybe that is why I have such a perspective. 1 have seen perhaps some of the worst in the world, and this countiy is the greatest. People should be proud and protect it, not work with murdering bastards like these idiots in Afghanistan. That is treason no mattei how you look at it, in my opinion. Then you had thai FBI agent. Robert Hanssen, who was selling secrets, and the CIA guy some time ago, Aldrich Ames, doing the same thing. I don't know how these people could do this. What is wrong in their mind? No country' is perfect, but this is the best one, where even an immigrant like me can have a new life, and a good one, to be free and live in peace. It is No. 1. Even when 1 was young and in the academy back home, everyone knew America was the best place to be. MH: What was your opinion of the British Special Operations Executive and American OSS people working in Yugoslavia? Krstovic: They were fine, no great problems, but when Winston Churchill changed his mind and decided to support Tito, well, that was the end for us. Who in the world gave Franklin D. Roosevelt and Churchill the right to give my country to the Communists? And not just Yugoslavia, but all the others, like Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, Hungan, Bulgaria, you know? This created suffering for decades among those people. They should have never trusted the Communists. They should have listened to General George S. Patton, who wanted to go in and kick them the hell out of Europe. He would have had so much support from the European anti-Communists, but politics made this impossible. The Germans had beaten the hell out [of] them numerically, and there were many Germans who would have fought with their former enemies to fight the Communists. The Allies should have reequipped the

Germans and others and let them go back east with American support, and things would have been different. Russia had nothing at that time and was poor—American supplies saved them. MH: How did the war end for you? Krstovic: Well, when the British came into the country, as well as the Russians, I was sent to Italy and then to Germany. That was when I was appointed to the British Militan' Occupation Command. MH: What were your duties during this time? Krstovic: I was still a captain of the Royal Yugoslav Army, following my dutv with the Chetniks. At that time, in 1945, I had about 80 people under me, basically to work as a Krstovic with his wife, Elfriede, and sons Alex and Peter after coming to Alabama. Eldest son Peter was born in Germany while Krstovic was awaiting passage from Bremerhaven to New York in 1945 (Courtesy of Milorad Krstovic).

military police unit, keeping the peace and establishing safety perimeters and appointing guards to their posts. Also we had a lot of Serbian refugees in the countrv, many coming out of the camps, and they needed translator, that kind of thing. I did this until 1949. MH: You could not go back home? Krstovic: No. Tito had taken over the country. He had Mihailovic executed in 1946, and my brother Rade was captured in Bosnia, tortured and beheaded. They also killed my father and were looking for the rest of us, so there was no way we could ever go back. We would have been dead. So much for the great brotherhood of communism—and Tito even pleaded for exiled Yugoslavs to come back. They had confiscated our land, and we had a lot of land. Mv JULY 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 35

Rade was forced into hiding in the mountains^ and he lasted a month until they caught him. Retired engineer Mike Kretovic at his current home in Greenville, S.C, in January 2002 (Courtesy of Milorad

father had beautiful horses and stables, four homes, people working our land. He was like an aristocrat, We lived very well, and all of us who were in that position were being hunted down and killed, our property confiscated by either Germans or Communists afterward. We also worked the land, and I think that life made me strong and able to survive what I went through. It also made me appreciate what I have now. The Allies offered many of us free transportation to either Austi'alia or the United States, so I came here with my v.iie and children on a U.S. Navy ship from Bremerhaven, Germany. It took us 15 days to get to New York. I was sick like a dog, you know. My little boy almost died on that trip. MH: How was Rade captured? Krstovic: He was trying to meet up with us and join the British and Americans. All of us were to meet in northern Italy, but the Russians with Tito's forces were right behind them, and they were cut off eventually at Tuzla. Rade was forced into hiding in the mountains, and he lasted a month until they caught him. They put him in jail in Ustice. and I have the Serbian-language newspaper article that tells about this. That was also w hen my father was murdered. They were all killed and buried in a mass grave. When Rade was caught, he was weak and hungry, and had no chance to fight back. We know that they tortured him for information, and at 9 in the morning on October 15, 1945, they cut his throat and butchered him with knives, and then they cut his head off. They would have done the same thing to me if I had been caught. This was the great ally Tito, who was supported by the British! MH: Where did you go from there? 36 MILrfARY HISTORY JULY 2005

Krstovic: I went to Alabama and attended Taliadega College. Since I worked as a maintenance engineer, I decided to get a degree. Back in those days we traveled around, and I had a big station wagon, a real American family car. MH: Your father-in-law was an interesting person. Tell us about him. Krstovic: His name was Wilhelm Mittelbach, a German. I met my wife while in Germany with the British. He was more Communist inclined and anti-Nazi. He hid a typewriter in the attic during the war when he was home, and he was part of the German army, working in the kitchen peeling potatoes. He never saw any combat. MH: So you assimilated easily into American life? Krstovic: Sure. Here, look what I have—a concealed weapons permit. What a great country! MH: Why do you think so many people in the world hate the United States so much today? Krstovic: Well, you even have people here who hate America, so why do they stay? They hate it because of jealousy, and also think about this: Imperfect humans cannot always rule over other humans; there will always be mistakes. Different political systems, thoughts, ways of life. Look at the last [2000] election, the differences between people in their views on George W. Bush and Al Gore. At least here you can have a difference in political opinions without going to jail or being killed. But this is still the best country in the world, right here. Just look at my son, Pete, with his business in Atlanta, with 48 people working for him. Only here, not in Germany or Yugosla\ia, could he have achieved such success, although he is a mechanical engineer by profession. Now he is a millionaire. And look what I have managed to do. Only here! My second son, Alex, was born in Alabama and has his business in Greenville. MH: What are the names of all of your children? Krstovic: Alex, Peter, Michael and my daughter Miriam. Mike is the youngest. MH: Do you still have family living in the former Yugosla\'ia? Krstovic: Yes, cousins, but we did not stay in contact. We were never close. My family is all here, including my other two brothers. MH: What would you say to the young people of this country given the circumstances of today? Krstovic: Love your country and protect your country, and don't let anyone, no matter who they are, do or say anything against it. America is the best country in the world, and 1 think that young men should be willing to join the military and defend it. MH For further reading, history professor Colin D. Healon rec-

ommends his book German Anti-Partisan Warfare in Europe, 1939-1945.

Far from matching posterity's clumsy image, the plate armor of the late medieval European knights provided flexibility as well as protection. BY JOHN CLEMENTS

T

HE CONCEPTION OF the medieval armored knight as a lumbering, overburdened figure aimed with a ciimbei^ome sword is the stuff of modem myth. Despite the importance of the armored warrior during the Middle Ages, that clumsy image was a leitmotif of much that was authored on fencing and combat by 19th- and 20th-century writers. The reality was quite different and, as the evidence will reveal, has been fiequently misinterpreted. The myth of the ungainly armored knight has its origins in flawed readings of several historical sources. In his 13th-century book Expugnatio hibernica, Gerald of Wales commented on the vulnerability of unarmored Irish warriors, declaring that "against men lacking protection, for whom the victory is won or lost at the first encounter or nearly always so, less cumbrous weapons fully suffice...." He added that "with a complicated armour [it was] difficult to get around on foot when necessary"—a comment on the mobility of aimored fighters canying shields, which actually refeired to battle with earlier forms of reinforced maile bymies (chain mail coats) rather than later, much more sophisticated styles of full plate harness, which were carefully designed with foot combat in mind. In the 1302 Battle of Courtrai in Belgium, where a far larger army of more lightly armed Flemish foot soldiers and peasants slaughtered more than 300 mounted French knights, the French attacked unsupported by their own archers and footmen, and were caught in the mud, where they could not maneuver or charge. On that occasion, it was not the weight of their armor that made the knights vulnerable on foot in the mud, but the long, deadly pole arms employed by the more numerous Flemish, to kill horses or pull their riders off them. Jean Froissari's Chronicles described the English footmen at the Battle of Crecy in 1346 as moving among the fallen crowd of French knights and kiUing them with shori weap
38 MILITARV HISTORY JULY 2005

J

ated"

The armor in Friedrich Hottenroth's survey of leth-century German soldiery ranges from partial to compiete. Aithough the Landsknecht's harquebus at ieft presages warfare's future, body armor and cold steel were far from obsolete at that time (Private Collection/Bridgeman Art Library).

L ARMOR

Perfection JULY 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 39

horses—would obviously be vulnerable to men on foot rushing them from close range. This would be true regardless of the type or the weight of armor worn by either side. Indeed, had the knights at Crecy (or any other battle of that era) been unarmored, they would likely have survived an even shorter time against swaiTns of arrows, crashing horses and charging foot soldiers. An unarmored man can be more readily hacked, clubbed or stabbed to death, and—unlike a wanior in plate armor—he can't slam a steel-encased fist back at his attacker, grab his assailant's blade in a mailed palm, or use his armored extremities to shield himself. At the 1356 Battle of Poitiers the slaughter of armored knigbts was due mainly to arrow fire at sbort range. Again, dismounted and pinned-down knights were unable to move swiftly not because of their armor's weight, but because it had not specifically been designed for foot combat. Poitiers is not an instance in which unarmored foot soldiers witb daggers simply engaged and defeated armored knights in single combat. Mass battle such as this was not merely a matter of the sum total of separate individual combats, but more of dynamic encounters among small groups. Medieval daggers such as the rondel were special weapons quite capable of killing an armored man, especially one who bad fallen from or was pinned under a slain borse. More than one master of defense Two French knights try to settle a personal dispute, In a painting by Eugene Delacroix. Though most effective as mounted shock cavalry, armored knights could be just as fonTiidable on foot G-Ouvre, Pahs, Giraudon/ Bridgeman Art Library).

40 MILITARY HISTORV JULY 2005

from the era wrote that the dagger was a formidable weapon whether one was armored or not. Wben a knigbt was riding against a bedgebog of tightly wielded pole arms and his horse was shot out h-om under him, he might well end up lying on the ground stunned while bordes of enemies rushed to jab shaip metal spikes into bis eyes.

B

FTU'EEN 1459 AMD 1464, Benedetto Accolti of Arezzo wrote critically of Italian condottieri (mercenaries), saying, among other things, that their cavalrymen were so burdened with heavy armor that tbey could not figbt for an hour without collapsing under its weight, and tbal if they dismounted they lost their mobility and were easily captured, so that in a major conflict scarcely 10 perished by the sword. Even there, however, we must consider several factors in Accolti's observations. Was the condoltieri's armor of particularly good quality—that is, light and well-fitting? Well-tempered aimor intended forfigbtingon eitber foot or horseback in tbat period could be lighter as well as stronger, while specialized aiTnor designed exclusively for mounted fighting or tilting was much heavier and less maneuverable. Another consideration would be the physical condition of these soldiers compared to that of other knights and men-at-arms, and they might also be more motivated to fight tban condoltieri, who were merely fighting for pay. Considering the proclivity among

the Italian condottieri for weighing the risk against the reward in every battle they fought, with an emphasis on self-preservation, we might surmise that they employed extra-thick armor—safe, but impractical for close combat. Dismounted knights or men-at-anns in plate armor were far fi^om helpless or ineffectual, depending on the tactical situation. Plate armor was of course somewhat constricting and stifling, and the addition of an enclosed helm also restricted a warrior's vision and hearing. Armor of the late 1200s and early 1300s tended to be much bulkier and heavier in construction than the leaner, more tailored and sophisticated designs of post-1400. In all cases, however, a harness was designed to evenly distribute the armors weight on the wearer. Moreover, plate aimor was not made of uniform pieces of equally thick metal. Those sections not commonly exposed to direct attack were made thinner than those that were. The shape of each piece was intended to allow the armor to deflect rather than directly absorb blows from edged weapons and missiles. In terms of fatigue, the armor's weight was less a factor than poor ventilation, which restricted air circulation and the release of pent-up body heat. Consequently, endmxince was more important than physical strength for aiTnored waniors. Because medieval chroniclers did not go out of their way to state the self-evident—that armored wairiors were highly effective—later historians have often latched on to the rare instances where they were defeated as arguments for their inherent vulnerability For instance, at the 1266 Battle of Benevento in southern Italy, French men-at-arms and knights won because they noted and exploited a weakness in the armor of the German knights. The attacking Germans had initially been successful thanks to their heavy armor and massive swords. But then the French noticed that whenever the Germans raised their weapons to strike, they exposed an unprotected area underneath their arms. French forces subsequently targeted the Germans' armpits. German armorers corrected that problem soon after the battle.

Fencing manuals of the 14th and 15th centuries reveal that armored knights were as much specialists in hand-to-hand fighting on foot as they were experts at mounted combat. A repeated theme of such works is the necessity for mobility, whether fighting armored or unarmored. For example, as with many similar sources from the period, the images in books by the Swabian knight Hans Talhoffer, dealing with combat in the 1440s to 1460s, depict fighters wearing full armor in agile, dynamic and aggressive stances. As described in 15th- and 16th-century fencing manuals, single combat in plate armor consisted not of cutting or slicing attacks, but of thrusting, grappling and trapping, with special emphasis on halfThe gold-plated armor of Jean Jacques de Verdelin, grand master of the Knights of Malta, on display in the Grand Masters' Palace La Vallette. A man of Verdelin's standing could afford customfitted armor [Art Archive/Grand Masters' Palace La Vallette/Dagli Orti].

T

HE MANY DIFFERENT T\TES of plated armor worn from the 1300s to 1600s varied so extensively in their shape, thickness, weight and area of coverage that it would be folly to generalize armor-wearers as being slow, heavy or cumbersome. The whole impetus for wearing defensive garments in the fii-st place was because of the deadliness of weaponry. Arrows and crossbow bolts, for example, surely killed unaimored men more easily than they did aiTnored ones. Thus lighting men wore armor for a purely pragmatic reason: It worked. Armor wasn't completely impregnable, but an unaimored man had to strike more precisely and specifically (and perhaps repeatedly) to defeat his armored advei"sai"Y before he himself was stiTJck down. JULY 2005 MILrrARY HISTORY 41

thmsting. he recognized thai "striking, thrusting or cutting, with stepping out or in, passing around or leaping" were necessar-y to extend the sword's point forward. You must "step backwards or forwards, as it occurs, firmly and skilfully, rapidly and quickly." Liechtenauer's instructions on the use of the long sword, which formed the basis of fighting in armor, advised specifically that one should not remain too long in fighting stances, because he "who is still is dead, he who moves still lives." He added that one should "move to fight instead of waiting in the guard and waste the chance [to attack]." Decades later his follower, Sigmund Ringeck, in his own fighting treatise, urged combatants to "Jump and thrust well." Similai ly, iVIartin Siber in his circa-1491 treatise Fechtlehre advised, "in all your fighting you are nimble," and urged combatants to "In all work tread roundabout."

A duel on foot in Jheuerdank. an

epic tale by Emperor Maximilian I 0459-1519X illustrates one of the few ways to overcome armorthrough the joints or, in this case, the eye slil in the helmet

swording, wrestling and the use of daggers. Based on our undei"standing of those manuals, it is now clear that many 19th- and 20th-century historians, fencing writers and stunt performers have misunderstood how European anns and armor were actually used in battle. This is especially so in regard to energetic fighting in full-harness plate, employing close-in gi'appling and the techniques of half-swording (mezza spada or halb schwert), in which the sword is gripped hy the blade itself and used with both hands like a short staff or poleax. in 1389 fencing master Johannes Liechtenauer wrote of the need to keep up aggressive motion during a fight. Liechtenauer said, "If someone fights...he should he in the movement, and not in the rest." He stressed the necessity of "being steadily moving" and declared that "constant movement comprises the beginning, the middle and the end of all swordsmanship." He added, "Movement, this beautiful word, is the heart of swordsmanship and the crown of the whole matter of swordsmanship." Liechtenauer's instructions are filled with admonitions on dexterity and good steps, always on the offensive. He urged combatants to deliver "one attack after the other, always in the movement, no matter whether you hit or miss." Whenever cutting or

1*2 MILITARY HISTORV JULY 2005

The anonymously authored 14th-century chivalric novel Amadis of Gaul also emphasized agile movements in armored combat. The knight Gandalin, fighting armored on foot, is described as "moving very nimbly and with great courage." Later on, when he isfightingagainst King Abies and they knock each other off their horses, the novel says that Gandalin and his opponent "both were ver\ agile" and "quickly got up." Elsewhere Gandalin is described as a moving "nimbly and aggressively...in delivering veiy severe blows." The knight Galaor is also characterized as "very nimble...and agile" in combat, and after being knocked off his horse the aimored knight Dardan quickly remounts it, "for he was very agile." Like modem-day soldiers preparing for war and familiarizing themselves with their weapons, knights prepared at length for the rigore of fighting in armor. An example of the training a young esquire seeking knighthood would undergo in the late 1300s comes from Jean Le Meingre (Boucicaut): Now cased in armour, he would practice leaping on to the back of a horse; anon, to accustom himself to become long-winded and endming, he would walk and run long distances on foot, or he would practice striking numerous and forcible blows with a battle-axe or mallet. In order to accustom himsetl lo the weight of his amioiir, he would tuiTi somei^aults whilst clad in a complete suit of mail, with the exception of his helmet, or would dance vigorously in a shirt of steel; he would place one hand on the saddle-bow of a tall charger, and ihe other on his neck, and vault over him...,He would climb up between two perpendicular walls that stood four or five feet asunder by the mere pressure of his

actns and legs, and would thus reach the top, even if it were as high as a tower, without resting either in the ascent or descent.

More than a century later in the Regimento, a 1434 work on fencing by Dom Duarte, king of Portugal, warriors in training were advised to keep a wooden horse to practice jumping on and off the saddle as well as becoming accustomed to sitting mounted in aiTnor. Keith Ducklin, a professional fight interpreter at tlic Royal Aimouries in Leeds, England, who has personally examined dozens of authentic samples of European armor from several centuries, offered the lollowing commentar\' on fighting in full amior on foot: Surely the notion that fully armoured men-at-arms and knights were slow moving and clumsy must finally be laid to rest? European armour was developed and worn over hundreds of years precisely because it gave the wairior maximum protection and mobility. In the 21 st century, historical specialists all over lhe world are donning well made, properly designed and accurately \veighled Medieval harnesses to demonstrate that they can run, jump, climb, ride and fight vi/ith great agility. Yes, the general weight range for a battle harness was, and is, between 60 and 80 lbs, therefore it takes time and practise for the average modem historical enthusiast to become comfortable. However, the manner in which lhe amiour is fitted means that in a relatively short period of time the wearer develops the necessary poise and musculature to sastain the effort. It is true that different armours can restrict the wearer in different ways, but these are minor problems and quickly overeome. t've spent ten yeai-s 'in harness' at the Royal Armouries, regularly giving arming and fighting demonstrations, while many of my colleagues t^egularly motinl their horses to practice armotired skill-at-arms and jousting. Our visitors constantly assure us that we are all fast moving and dextrous!

AiTTior changes things in personal combat. Medieval European annor was designed and shaped to deflect strikes and absorb blunt blows from lances and swoixls. Armor varied from simple bymies of fine riveted maile (chain mail) that could absorb slices and prevent cuts, to well-padded soft jackets, and metal coats-of-plates that were designed to protect equally against concussion weapons and penetrating thrusts. A complete suit of fully articulated rigid plate armor, which has been described as unequaled in its ingenuity and strength, could only be defeated using specialized weapons. It was invulnerable to sword cuts. In the prologue to one edition of his martial ari treatise from 1410, Flos Duellatomm. Eiore dei Liberi wrote how he instructed his students who trained to light armored in closed judicial contests "that fighting in the baniers is much and much less dangerous thanfightingwith sharp and pointed [cut-

ting and thrusting] swords in zuparello darmare [with only a padded arming jacket] and leather gloves because to the one who plays with sharp swords, failing just one cover gives him death. While the one who fights in the barriers and is well armoured, can be given a lot of hits, but still he can win the battle. Also there is another fact: that rarely someone dies because he gets hit. Thus I can say that I would rather fight three times in the barriers than jtist once with sharp swords."

A

As exemplified by Albrecht Durer's sketch of a knight. plate armor varied in thickness, shape and amount of coverage, depending on the owner's idea of what needed to be protected-and how S DESCRIBED IN' FROISSART'S Chronicles. much he wanted to a large percentage of the wounds incitrred by spend for it

knightly combatants in armor were caused by sword or spear thrusts to the face and other armor openings. A window into the types of injuries caused by shori thrusting swords against 15th-century Italian wamors in plate armor comes from rare first-person accounts of combat in the period, such as that by Venetian physician Alessandro Benedetti in his Diario de Bello Carolino (a diary of Ft^nch King Charles VIlI's campaign for Naples in 1494-1496), who wrote: "All lay prone, just as they had fought, body to body, and most of the wounds were in their throats, since they had contended more eagerly than carefully in the enemy's midst.... Almost all ofthese JULY 2005 MILITAKY HISTORY

Having killed each other's horses, two knights continue their fight to the finish on foot.

had a piercing wound in the throat or on the face." This description is entirely consistent with fencing texts of the period, which emphasized strong thrusting techniques to the opponent's face and the importance of keeping the sword point directed at the enemy. Early 16th-century conquistadors under Hernando Cortez and other Castilian military leaders employed their plate armor to fearsome effect against the lightly armored, and in some cases nearly naked, warriors of the Ameticas, where their armor proved neai'ly invulnerable to the weapons employed by their more mobile opponents. Nowhere in the conquistadores' chronicles are complaints raised about their lack of maneuverability in armor. The only grievances have to do with the stifling effects of wearing metal armor in the tropical heat. As a result, they eventually discarded the metal armor in favor of coats with thick cotton padding. Afighterin full plate armor was effectively immune to sharp blows of wide-bladed cutting swords, but the joints of his armor were still vulnerable to thrusting with tapered swords and also to a range of specialized fighting techniques such as half-swording. Those moves led not only to more grappling and wrestling actions, but also to more complicated stabbing attacks, not harder chopping blows. Like any other fallen combatant, if he was caught on the ground the knight could be killed, except in his case it would require piercing him in a vulnerable spot, such as a dagger thiiist into his helmet openings. In the chaos and uproar of the medieval battlefield, losing one's situational awareness could prove fatal. Lightly equipped and armored fighters—especially if they were more numerous—could be very effective in defeating armored knights if they closed on them quickly and unexpectedly. But those lightly

44 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2005

armed troops were vulnerable to much smaller wounds and blows, hazards of the battlefield that an armored man could viitually ignore.

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\T\iE L'iTH CENTURY plate armor designed for foot combat was well-balanced, maneuverable and sometimes even made of tempered steel. Medieval warriors were no fools. They were shrewd, detennined, courageous and accomplished fighters. The choices they made regarding the types of aiTns, the amount of armor coverage and the material from which it was made reflected considerable experience and wisdom. Full harnesses of plate armor survived until the development of effective firearms made them obsolete. Even then, portions of it were still used by soldiers into the I9th century. Did medieval plate armor inhibit a fighter's movement and speed compared to fighting unarmored? Yes. Was wearing plate armor on foot more exhausting than fighting unaiTnored? Yes. Did plate armor make a warrior in general harder to injure or kill than if he were unarmored? Without question, the answer there, too, is yes. Did it require greater physical endurance and more extensive training than unarmored combat? The answer is certainly yes. Was a fighting man in plate armor clumsy, slow and less able to defend himself than an unarmored fighter? The evidence provides afiiTnresponse: no. MH John Clements is an authority on medieval and Renaissance fighting skills and the direclor of the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts (www.thearma. org). He is the author of Renaissance Swordsmanship and Medieval Swordsmanship, both from Paladin Press. His forthcoming titles are Historical Fencing \300'l650 and Swords of the Renaissance.

SIEGE AND MASSACRE AT

FORT WILLIAM HENRY )C

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d<; MonU;;iliii-Gfj/on, confers wilh ttuliiiiis on the shoffj nl Lake Cluirnpl.-iin. m Couf)cil Wilh Ihv. Allies, by Roljert '••-• Griffififj (Paramount Press, Irir;.)

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TheJail of Fort William Henry reflected well on the marquis de Montcalm's siege skills^ but poorly on his ability to control his Indian allies. BY GEORGE YAGI JR.

DURINGTHE FIRST HALF of the French and Indian War, and the concurrent Seven Years' War in Europe, British arms suffered a series of humiliating defeats at the hands of the forces of King Louis XV. In 1755 Major General Edward Braddock suffered a catastrophic defeat in Pennsylvania in a battle with the French and their Indian allies at the Monongahela River near Foil Duquesne. By the time the smoke had cleared from the ambush site, 977 of the 1,499 men Braddock commanded were dead or wounded—including the dying Braddock himself. The failure of the Fort Duquesne expedition was only the first in a string of disasters that would befall the British around Ihe w
A cannon faces Lake George from the restored ramparts of Fort William Henry.

sion. Webb, upon hearing iTimors of a French force marching toward the Mohawk River, panicked and ordered the immediate destruction of Fort Bull, near present-day Rome, N.Y., which lay directly in the alleged invasion's path, without dispatching a single scout to verify whether or not the rumor was indeed true. As an additional precaution, Webb ordered his a.x men to tell trees to divert nearby Wood Creek and slow the French advance. With the fort in ruins and the creek out of its natural course, Webb and Fort Bull's ganison fled back to German Flats. Believing that the next French attack would fall on Fori; William Henry, the key fortress located on the southern end of Lake George, guarding tbe main approach lo the upper Hudson River valley, Webb postponed offensive plans for the capture of Crown Point on Lake Champlain and instead strengthened William Henry's defenses. THE FRENCH HAD indeed been making plans to capture Fort William Henry, and when the campaigning season of 1757 began, they were ready to put their plan into action. In fact, the crafty royal governor-general of Canada, Pien'e de Rigaud, marquis de Vaudreuil, had been planning an expedition against Foil William Heruy for months. The governor chose his younger brother, Francois-Pierre, to lead a 1,500-man force against the foit. In the middle of March 1757, the force, after marching through snow and ice, arrived before the fori, and Rigaud demanded its sun^ender. Although outnumbered, the commander and designer of the fori, Major William Eyre, refused. For lour days the French tried to take the fori; they did little damage, however, as their musket balls simply embedded themselves in the wooden ramparis. Armed with only scaling ladders, Rigaud's men had no chance of taking the fori itself, so he satisfied himself by destroying the outer buildings as well as nearly all of its boats. Only one gunboat escaped the raid undamaged. The French may have failed to take Fori William Henry, but they succeeded in destroying the ability of the British to control the waters of Lake George, leaving the path open to a later invasion force. When news of the French \ictories at the Monongahela and Oswego spread among the native tribes of the Great Lakes region and beyond, Indians from as far away as Iowa began flocking to the French at Crown Point and Fori Carillon, between Lakes The remains of a pistol and a coin bearing the portrait of Britain's King George II, found and now on display at Fort William Henry [Courtesy of Fort William Henry).

48 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2005

Champlain and George, hoping to share in the spoils. By the spring of 1757, as many as 33 different tribes had joined the French to fight against the British. As Montcalm received reinforcements from his new Indian allies, word had arrived fi-om Versailles that the British were planning to attack the foriress of Louisboui^, the capital of Cape Breton Island, but that the French garrison was well prepared to defend itself. Britisb prisoner brougbt in by tbe Indians arriving at Montreal also confinned the dispatches from Versailles, claiming that the best British soldiers guarding the New York frontier had been removed by Loudoun and shipped to Halifax for the assault on Louisbourg. That news, combined with the arrival of so many Indian waniors from the west, convinced Montcalm that the time was right to move on Fori William Henry. To prepare for his campaign, Montcalm first sent agents to procure a month's supply of provisions from among the populace. Once the supplies were in order, Montcalm's forces began moving down Lake Champlain toward their rendezvous point, Fort Carillon. By the end of July, he commanded a force of 8,000 men comprising 3,000 French regulars, a mixed force of 3,000 troupes de la marine and Canadian militia and 2,000 Indians. Montcalm was the last to leave Fori Carillon, his expedition setting out toward Fori William Heni^ on August 1. In the meantime, William Henry's new commandant, Lt. Col. George Munro, was well aware of French intentions. Toward the end of June, several English prisoners had escaped from Fori Carillon, caiTying with them the news of Montcalm's attack plans. Munro, in response to the newly arrived intelligence, dispatched several patrols to investigate

the buildup of French troops at Fort Carillon, but they failed to gather further information. On July 23, Munro dispatched a party of 300 Colonials in two bay boats under .sail and 20 whaleboats, under the command of Colonel John Parker, to conduct a raid against the French sawmills on Lake GeoT-ge. As the ileet traveled northward, Montcalm's scouts spotted it and prepared an ambush. The next morning a force of 500 Indians and Canadians awaited the arrival of Parker's vessels. Around daybreak, the first of the boats appeared on the river. Parker had divided his smallflotilla,resulting in three boats being the first to encounter the French. Taken completely by surprise, the boat crews sun endered without offering any resistance. Behind them came another three boats, and their crews also suirendered immediately. In both cases, not a single shol was fired. As the remaining 16 of Parker's boats proceeded down the river, the forest around them suddenly etTipted in a hail of French and Canadian musket fire. Some of the British Colonials panicked and plunged into theriver,where Indians in their canoes speared the helpless svvimmei"s to death. The rest, terrified by the shooting and the war cries ofthe Indians, simply surrendered while there was still a chance of falling into the hands ofthe French instead. Four boats escaped the ambush and returned to Fort William Henr>;

command of the entrenched camp and, contrar\' to Webb's orders, left a force of 50 regulars and 385 Colonials to garrison the fort. On August 2, 1,000 more troops arrived as promised by Webb, bringing the number of defenders up to 2,372. Even as those reinforcements entered Fort William Henry, the first contingents of French soldiei-s had already arrived. From a distance, British sentries posted on duty at the fort on the night of August 2 noticed three large bonfires burning brightly seven miles west of the lake. Colonel Munro immediately dispatched two boats to investigate, but they never returned. By morning, British officers peering through their telescopes in the first light of day saw Montcalm's fleet moving toward the shore and also spotted a large number of cannons being moved down the lake. Upon learning of that, Munro sent an urgent dispatch to Webb begging the general for more reinforcements. He and the rest of his officers knew that the presence of cannons could only mean one thing—this would not be a raid by irreg-

Made commander in chief of British forces in North America in July 1756, John Campbell, fourth Earl of Loudoun. was pathetically indecisive—as were his second and third in command.

AS THE FIRST SURVIVIORS began to arrive. General Webb was visiting the fort for ihe veryfii-sltime. Upon hearing of the fate of Parker's men and of the invasion force on its way, Webb immediately ordered Munro to construct an entrenched camp atop Titcomb's Mount to accommodate the ganison's Colonial troops, and ordered the fort itself to be garrisoned by regulars. After issuing those orders, Webb huiried back to Fort Edward, 17 miles away, promising to send Munro additional reinforcements. In the meantime, Munro's men prepared to meet Montcalm. Fort William Henrv' was in a reasonable state to withstand the French onslaught, at least for a while. Its walls fomied an iiregular square, with four bastions built of timber framing, filled with earth and gravel and faced with logs. Able to absorb musket fire, the foTl was also fireproof and almost immune to cannon fire, thanks to Major Evre's engineering. Mounted along the fort's walls were 18 heavy cannons, 13 light swivels, two mortal's and a howitzer. The entrenched camp 750 yards away was protected by log and stone brea.stworks, and defended by six brass fieldpieces and four swivel guns. Colonel Munro took personal JULY 2005 MILITARY HISTORY

An 18th-century map depicts Fort William Henry and the positions of its French besiegers in August 1757. Using standard European methods, Montcalm's sappers and artillerymen wore down British resistance in five days.

Camps %iRet7rnchmentr (amps\ja ^ andAttactthere upon i* 'fc

vThi ular forces, as Rigaud's had been in March, but a European-style siege. That morning, Montcalm s forces proceeded to besiege the foit. Brigadier General Francois Gaston, chevalier de Levis, had airived one day ahead of Montcalm, and it was his force's bonfires that were visible from the fort the night before. Montcalm ordered Levis to block the road connecting Fort William Henry with the next British post, Fort Edward. Levis dispatched a group of Indians and Canadians under the command of Saint-Luc de La Come, a Canadian officer referred to as "general of the Indians," to seize control of the road. As they did so, La Come's men encountered a small group of Colonials, which they quickly drove back to the entrenched camp. After that, the Indians began to snipe at the gairison from the foit's garden. About 3 p.m. Montcalm arrived and in the traditional European style dispatched a messenger under 50 MILHARY HISTORY JULY 2005

a flag of truce with a threatening order: "I owe it to humanity to summon you to surrender. At present 1 can restrain the savages, and make them observe the terms of a capi tulation, as I might noi have power to do under other circumstances; and an obstinate defense on your part couid only retard the capture of the place a few days, and endanger an unfortunate garrison which cannot be relieved, in consequence of the dispositions I have made. I demand a decisive answer within an hour." Munro replied that he would fight to "the last extremity," and as the courtesies of war were exchanged, Montcalm's Indian allies swarmed around the fort making menacing gestures and shouting threats toward the garrison. Upon hearing that Munro refused to sun"ender, one Abenaki warrior yelled toward the fort in bad French, "Take care of yourself, for if I capture you, you will get no quarter." Munro's cannons fired his defiant response.

Montcalm employed standard 18th-century European siegecraft against the fort. On August 4, his engineers began constructing the first line of entrenchments. In spite of constant cannon fire from the fort, French sappers working in shifts completed the first entrenchments in two days. A French battery was then emplaced and began returning fire. Soon William Henry's wooden ramparts began to disintegrate in a mass of splinters and dust under the French cannon fire. While Montcalm and Munro exchanged salvos, Webb, back at Fort Edward, was well aware of Fort William Henry's predicament. Day after day the general could hear the relentless cannonade from the besieged fort. Webb, however, was hesitant to march the rest of his ganison to assist Munro for fear of e.xposing all of New York to a possible French invasion should he and his men be I 'f defeated. In supporting the attack on Louisbourg, Loudoun had stripped the New York frontier of its defenses, I leaving only two regiments of I regulars and 5,500 Colonial I troops to guard the frontier. S Webb, panic-stricken, issued I an emergency call for the mili.i tia to come to his aid at once. The militia responded, but Webb apparently feared that they would not airive in time for him to relieve Fort William Heniy. On August 4, Webb sent a message to Munro, explaining that he was unable to send any further reinloixements and that if the defense of the fort seemed hopeless, he should seek sun'ender terms. Montcalm saw Webbs message before Munro. One of La Come's Indians killed the messenger carrying it and discovered the letter in his coat. Several days later. Colonel Louis Antoine de Bougaimille delivered the message to Munro under a flag of truce. In spite of Webb's recommendation, Munro still refused to suirender By August 8, however, the garlison's morale had begun to plummet, since the French bombardment continued unabated. By then, Montcalm had mounted 18-pound guns only 300 yards away from the fort. The next day, judging that continued resistance was hopeless. Colonel Munro summoned a council of war On the fort's ramparts

the British raised a white flag, a drummer boy beat a call for parley, and an officer rode out of the fort to meet Montcalm. At 1 p.m. on August 9, negotiations were concluded, the articles of capitulation were signed and the fort officially surrendered. For their gallantry in battle, the garrison members were accorded the fiall honors of war In return for a promise to remain out of the conflict for 18 months, Montcalm gave Munro and his ganison their freedom and promised safe passage under a French guard to Fort Edward. In addition, the defenders were allowed to keep their personal effects, unit colors, a symbolic brass fieldpiece and small arms—but no ammunition—in honor of their heroic defense. The fort, its cannons and stores of supplies became the property of the French crown. ALL THE EUROPEANS, both \-ictors and vanquished, were satisfied with the siege's outcome, but Montcalm's 2,000 Indians were most assuredly not. After traveling great distances in search of plunder, scalps and prisoners, the Indians were profoundly disappointed by the terms and utterly unwilling to honor them. As soon as the British garrison marched out of the fort, a group of Indians immediately entered it. While searching for plunder, they came upon a group of 70 soldiers who had been left in the care of the French because they were too sick or wounded to join the evacuation, and instantly fell on them. Upon hearing the commotion from the infirmary, nearby French soldiers and missionaries raced to the scene. Their intervention came just in time to save some of the prisoners, but many had already been killed. One of tbe missionaries, Pere Pierre Joseph Antoine Roubaud, saw an Indian emerge from one of the casemates with a human head in his hand, from which the blood ran in streams, and which he paraded as if he had taken the finest prize in the world. Once the fort had been looted of whatever it had to offer, the Indians and the Canadians began to look toward the main British camp for more plunder Throughout the night there was increased tension between the British soldiers and the Indians and Canadians. French soldiers had to clear the camp of all Indians around 9 p.m. because they continually harassed and tried to rob the British troops. When they were forced out of the camp, they loitered around it, causing the Britons even more uneasiness. Colonel Joseph Frye of Massachusetts remarked that the Indians had "more than usual malice in their looks which made us to suspect they intended us mischief." Frye's suspicions would prove to be justified as dawn approached. Still eager for plunder to prove they had participated in a great victory, the Indians turned their attention toward the entrenched camp, where the entire garrison was preparing to depart for Fort JULY20Q5 MILITARY HISTORY 51

The terms of Lt Col. George Munro's surrender were acceptable to victors and vanquished alikeexcept for Montcalm's 2.000 Indians, who later fell upon the British Colonials as they tried to make their way to Fort Edward.

Edward. Some of the Indians had entered the camp and began to carry off personal property, black servants and soldiers, Indians who had fought alongside the Biitish, and the women and children or camp followers who had accompanied the garrison. At about 5 a.m., 400 French regulars arrived to escort the garrison to Fort Edward, and took up positions to march at the head of the column alongside the British. With so few escorts, the troops at the end of the column, who were mainly Colonials, were virtually defenseless. AS SOON AS THE COLUMN moved out of the entrenched camp, the Indians moved in. At first they only demanded plunder, and the French suggested that it would be in the column's best interests to comply with their demands. Colonel Munro protested at fii'st that it was a violation of the temis of capitulation, but his protest fell upon deaf ears, as French officers continued to advise that his men give the Indians whatever they wanted. The baggage was turned over to the Indians, and the garrison continued to march into the forest. Along the way the Indians continued to steal from the column, taking hats, coats, weapons and even women and children. Those who resisted were instantly kflled. The British had scant means of defending themselves. By the teiTns of the capitulation, the only effective weapons the British had were their bayonets, and only the regulars at the head of the column had those. The column was suddenly attacked outright. One Abenaki warrior gave out a fearsome war whoop, and soon hundreds more Indians came dashing from the forest upon the rear of the column. With52 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2005

out bayonets or gunpowder, the Colonials were defenseless. With their muskets, tomahawks and scalping knives, the Indians completely overwhelmed the Colonials, capturing many and killing those who resisted. Colonel Fiye's regiment dissolved within minutes. His troops, screaming and running as fast as their feet could carry them, fled toward the woods, back to the fort or into the French camp. Among the camp followers, daughters were dragged away from their fathers, children were snatched from their mothere oi" simply murdered. Some of the victims were left half dressed or completely naked. While the carnage went on, a group of Canadian officers. La Come among them, simply stood by and watched. Since prisoners were worth more than scalps, most of the soldiers and camp followers the Indians took prisoner were kept alive, at least for the moment. Hearing the commotion, Montcalm, Levis and other senior officers galloped into the fray, hoping to stop the Indians, but the massacre only escalated. As he made his way through the chaos, Montcalm spotted a young British officer and tried to free him from his captor. Upon seeing this, Indians nearby began to tomahawk and scalp their prisoners rather than be deprived of the booty. Montcalm and his senior officers spread out among the disorderly mob, but by the time order was restored the slaughter had reached horrifying proportions. Of the 2,456 people who had left the fort, including camp followers, 185 were dead and up to 500 had been canned off. An additional 300 to 500 sumvors found protection with the French, and those unable to do so simply fled into the woods. Five Continued on page 72

Battle for Baku On the plains of Central Asia, the men of 'Dunsterforce' fought Germans, Turks, Bolsheviks and Persian warlords with equal verve. BY PIERRE COMTOIS

_ niidmorning on August 26, 1918, a small con,1^^ , f^-' tingent of British soldiers from D Company of the ^ *\ / ' North Staffordshire Regiment lay dug in along a de'•-:'_ fensive line at the crest of a dubious geological foima•y tion known locally as the Mud Volcano. It was the ke\ *£ in a defense plan protecting the vital oil town of Baku ^ on the Caspian Sea—and the target of Ottoman forces seeking to take advantage of the internal chaos created by Russia's ongoing revolution.

Below; /\;i Armenian su.^iii^, ^i id a British officer man a picket post outside Baku in August 1918. Above: Troops of D Company, North Staffordshire Regiment, at the Mud Volcano CAII photos courtesy of Imperial War Museum except where noted).

All had been quiet until about 10:30 a.m., when the Brilish defenders spotted a long line of about 1,000 Turkish infantry and cavalrv marching slowly at firsl, then more quickly toward their positions. Suddenly the enemy struck the line with light and heavy artillery. Then all along the ridge British machine guns began sputtering in response. Five times the Turks lunged at the defenders, taking heavy casualties. At last, outflanked on the north side of the volcano and coming under machine gun fire fi'om the reverse slope, the "Staffords" were forced to retreat to a secondary' position among the oil derricks northeast of Baku. The final battle for the city had begun—or so it seemed. In the confused seesaw situation in Transcaucasia following the collapse of tsarist Russia, nothing could be taken as final. Although World War l's principal area of conflict was in Europe, the aiTnies of Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Turkey and Japan also fought in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Among the least known of those scattered battlegrounds was what at that time was called Transcaucasia and Transcaspia, an area occupied by the newly independent nations of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. There, secret agents from half a dozen powers

prowled the streets of such legendary cities as Samarkand, Kabul and Bukhara, seeking allies and stirring up the native populations. The Allies had suffered a major disaster when revolution overtook Russia's creaking empire. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne on March 15, 1917. At first the new government was determined to continue the war against Germany, but then, almost in a flash, it was replaced by the more radical Bolshevik faction, With the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk by the Bolsheviks in March 1918, the Allies'worst nightmare came tiiie. Freed ft om the Russian threat in the east, Germany was able to transfer the bulk of its divisions to the WesteiTi Front. Even worse, with the situation in revolutionary Russia still unsettled, anarchy reigned throughout much of the country. In the Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia, the Germans held sway, draining those lands of their natural resources for shipment west. Soon they were eyeing the oil fields around the city of Baku on the Caspian Sea. Shortly before World War I broke out, London had ordered India to station troops in the Persian Gulf to protect its oil fields and the refinery at Abadan at the head of the gulf, in what is now Iran. When hostilities began, the troops went ashore. After a long and arduous campaign, the British finally occupied Baghdad on March 11, 1917. All their gains were placed in jeopardy when the Bolsheviks took Russia out of the conflict, rendering the vast landmass that stretched from the Black Sea to the Indian frontier vulnerable. Biitish spies throughout Central Asia began sending back disturbing signals. German agents were at work in Afghanistan and Turkestan. Turkey was seeking to take advantage of the civil chaos in the Turkic-speaking lands bordering their empire to invade Transcaspia. Furthermore, London was under the false impression that the GeiTnans were on good teiTns with the new regime in St. Petersburg, making Bolshevik agitation in Central Asia and the German presence in Georgia and Armenia appear ominously coordinated. Then in the spring of 1918 Enver Pasha, war minister, commander in chief—and de facto ruler—of Turkey, began planning an offensive to seize Baku and unite the Turkic-speaking peoples of Central Asia under Ottoman rule. Enver Pasha had cannily bided his time after the revolution until the demoralized Russian army stationed in northeastern Turkey simply melted away, leaving the way to Baku invitingly open. Enver's scheme did not sit well with his German allies, however. When he ignored their request that he cancel the invasion, the Germans turned to the Russians and offered to stop the Turks in return for guaranteed unlimited access to Baku's oil. Some months before the Turkish invasion, the British, fearing a Russian withdrawal from Bolstered by 10,000 Armenians, Russians, Cossacks and Tartars of wildly inconsisTranscaucasia, decided to send a mission to the tent reliability, the British at Baku found themselves defending a shrinking perimeGeorgian city of Tiflis, to help stiffen local reter against Nuri Pasha's larger expeditionary force.

Battle

56 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2005

sistance to the Gennans. By the time that expeditionary' force, called "Dunsterforce" after its commander, Maj. Gen. Lionel C. Dunsteiville, reached the area, Tiflis and most of Transcaucasia was in German hands. The mission's parameters were changed to fit the new scenario: Now Dunsterforce would seek an accommodation with local revolutionary elements at Baku in an effort to deny it to the Turks, and do what it could to aid a second mission operating farther west in Transcaspia.

Dunstcrville, a boyhood friend of Rudyard Kipling and the inspiration for the character Stalky in Stalky and Co., Kipling's novel about their schooldays together, was fluent in Russian and had commanded the 1st Infantry Brigade on India's Northwest Frontier until he received secret orders to report lo Delhi. There, he learned the details of his new assignment. Together with a handful of 200 officers and NCOs and a small train of armored vehicle.^ with supplies, he was to proceed north from Baghdad to the Caspian Sea. From there, his force would go to Tiflis and form the nucleus ofa reorganized Russian force meant to restore the Allied line facing the Turks.

Above: tnvu P.ibiij ^awthe Russian Revolution as his opportunity to overnjn Central Asia. Right: Major General Lionel C. Dunsterville [right) with Commodore David Norris on the Caspian Sea.

Dunsterville arrived in Baghdad on Januai>' 6, 1918, to find orders, maps and intelligence reports awaiting him—but no army. Three weeks later only 12 officers, a number of Ford vans and a single armored ear had joined him, but Dunsterville decided to can-y out the first part of his orders and clear the road to Enzeli, on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, hoping the rest of his modest force would follow him in good time. Although Dunsterville's orders seemed clear-cut, no one knew much about the military situation in the Transcaucasus. In fact, a Turkish military mission, headed hy Enver Pasha's brother, Nuri Pasha, had arrived al Tabriz, in what is now northern Iran, in May 1917 and was organizing a Caucasus-Islam aimy, sometimesrefeiTedto by Enver as his "Army of Islam," to bring Azerbaijan under Ottoman rule. Soon afterward, an advance column of 12,000 men, commanded by Mursal Pasha, was making its ponderous way toward Baku. Germans and Turks controlled

most of the local railways, and Persian revolutionaries called Jangalis, led by warlord Mirza Kuchik Khan, teirorized the En/eli road. Meanwhile, in Baku, therevolutionai-ycentral committee had reached an impasse, split between factions loyal to the Russian government at Petrograd, those eager to join w ith the Turks, and Armenians svmpathetic to the British. Not all the news was bad for Dunsterville, however. When the Russian army was ordered back north, Colonel Lazar Bicherakov decided to remain behind with several hundred of his Cossacks. They eventually attached themselves to Dunsterforce, which had spent the three weeks since its departure fi'om Baghdad crossing the jungles of Gilan province and plowing it.s way through mountain passes filled with 12-foot snowdrifts and stray Jangalis. At last the force arrived in Enzeii, where the local Soviets insisted that Russia was out of the war and did not want anything to do with the British, including helping them to reach Baku. That initially cool reception soon turned dangerous for Dunsterville. The local Persian population suirounded and threatened to massacre his small force. With only a single armored car to impress 2,000 Bolshevik soldiers and 5,000 rowdy Persians, Dunsterforce slipped away one night and made its way back south to the town of Hamadan, about halfway from Enzeli to Baghdad. At Hamadan the British established temporan/ headquarters and a defensive line that consisted mostly of bluff until it was joined by Bicherakov's Cossacks, who were disappointed to discover just how weak Dunsterforce really was. As winter gave way to spring and summer, however, the rest of Dunsterville's men began to arrive, including two Martinsyde G.I00 Elephant bombers of No. 72 Squadron, flown by Lieutenants M.C. McKay and R.P. Pope, which went a long way to improve morale and impress Dunsterforces local allies. At last, with the force's assigned complement of officei"s and the addition of a mobile force of 1,000 rifles of the 1/4 Hampshire Regiment and the 1/2 Gurkhas with two mountain guns, Dunstewille felt strong enough to move forward to clear the Enzeli road once and for all of Kuchik Khan's guerrillas, who had seized the Menjil Bridge, a vital position on the way north. Bicherakov had been agitating to attack the Ttirkish sympathizers for weeks, but Dunsterville had hesitated, feaiing Kuchik Khan might be too much for the intemperate Cossacks. Finally he could put off the impatient Bicherakov no longer, and after talks with Kuchik Khan failed, plans were made to attack his positions at Menjil. On June 11, Bicherakov left Dunsterville's forward position at Qazvin, Iran, at the head of his Cossacks and elements of the 14th Hussars. At first light on June 12, the Cossacks started for the bndge expecting a hard fight, but as the Martinsydes flew over the enemy positions, their pilots discovered that the Jangalis had failed to occupy a key ridge commanding their lines. Bicherakov quickly took the ridge and sited his artillery. A German adviser with Kuchik Khan, realizing the importance of that move, called a truce and tned to bluff a victory from certain defeat, but Bicherakov refused his advances and pressed the attack. Almost immediately the Jangalis broke and ran, leavJULY2005 MtLITARY HISTORY 57

ing scores of dead and wounded behind. Wilh the bridge secured, Bicherakov, supported by mobile units from Dunsterforce, continued northward to the provincial capital at Resht, just south of Enzeli, where on July 20 he routed the remnants of Kuchik Khan's Jangalis in a final battle. Meanwhile, Dunsterville had established his headquarters at Qazvin, about midway between Enzeli and Hamadan. More reinforcements reached Qazvin in July, including a group from the Royal Navy under Royal Naw Commodore David Norris, who brought with him several 4-inch guns. That happy event was dulled, however, by news of Bicherakov's defeat east of Baku by the Turks, who had run off the newly formed Red Army and captured an armored car and its British crew, which had been on loan from Dunsterforce. By the end of the month. Mureal Pasha's force was outside Baku. Then the Turks suddenly departed. The reason was never made clear, but the alerted Gemian occupation forces may have posed a threat to their flanks—though that threat proved to be nothing more than a rumor. At almost the same time, the Baku Soviet was deposed and the new regime decided to make contact at Qazvin with the British, who in the meantime had received permission from London to occupy Baku. After stressing to Baku's new rulers, who somewhat grandiosely called themselves the Central-Caspian Dictatorship, that the British could only provide help on a small scale, Dun-

Britain's main interest in the Baku region was the oil fields, such as this complex at Binagadi.

Troops of the 7th North Staffordshire march from Baladjari to reinforce Binagadi Hill on August 31.

sterville sent Colonel C.B. Stokes to Baku with 44 men of the 4th Hampshires. They arrived just in time to help repel a desultory attack by elements of the Turkish army that had been left behind. Two days later, Colonel R. Keyworth arrived with the 7th North Staffordshires to organize the city's defense. He found only a few defenses there, all sited improperly. Nobody knew what supplies were available or where they were located. There was little food, fodder or oil. Worst of all, the local soldiei^ was little better than a disorganized mob. Receiving this disheartening news back at Enzeli, Dunsterville was moved to commandeer three local ships, President Kriiger, Abo and Kursk, and arm them with heavy gims, thus providing the means to evacuate his men from Baku if the need arose. Dunsterville himself landed on August 16, along with a battalion each of the understi'ength 9th Warwickshire and 9th Worcestershire regiments, which were immediately sent into

the thin defensive line around the city. Dunstendlle then met with the town's new rulers to impress upon them the fact that although every effort would be made to prepare their men for battle, they could not depend solely on Dunsterforces 1,000 or so men to defend Baku. Ten days later, Nuri Pasha, learning that the Germans had no men to spare in tiying to stop him—even if they contemplated so extreme a move against their ally—once again ordered advance elements of his 60,000-man army to move on Baku. The British had used every day following their arrival to assemble the city's stocks of weapons and ammunition and oi^anize an army of 10,000 men. With all they had accomplished in the short time at their disposal, however, the British knew that Baku could not w ithstand a determined attack. Their 7,000 Armenian conscripts were unreliable, the 3,000 Russian troops would break and run at a moments notice and the Tartar population only waited for a Turkish victory to rise up and slaughter the defenders.

positions at Diga and reinforce the Armenians on Binagadi Hill. When they reached the crest, however, the British found it deserted, with 250 Turks coming up the opposite side. The company lost 10 men killed and wounded before it threw back the attack with a hail of lead from its Lewis machine guns and rifles at point-blank range. A second assault was also repelled, and the men breathed easier when they saw the Turks retire toward Novkhany. Dunstemlle found his fallback position was a crooked, unsatisfactory line, inferior to the first. In addition, the Turks now commanded the heights atop the volcano and were bombarding the city with artiller\' fire. Also disturbing was the news that conscripts had abandoned the Armenian hilltop. It seemed to

Baku sat on the southern shore ofa naiTow .spit of land that stuck out into the western side of the Caspian Sea. A series of cliffs to the east of the city were dominated by the railroad that crept from the west to sei"vice the oil fields to the northwest of the town and then circled east- One of the two Martinsyde G.100 Elephants ui [\iu. li bguadron, Roydi MM ward to Baku's seaport. Beyond the cliffs, attached to "Dunsterforce" stands by for its next mission. a succession of ridges formed the high ground of the tiny peninsula, among which gathered a number of salt lakes and marshes. It was on be the same everywhere—while his men fought off the Turks, that high ground, from which they could study the enemy's the local militia loitered in town and Russian soldiers attended movements, that Stokes and the other British officers decided political meetings. Dunsterville faced a difficult dilemma—if his they could best defend the city. Thus the Turkish charge that men were all that stood between the Turks and Baku, they were stmck the North Staffordshires atop the Mud Volcano on the surely doomed to failure, but if he decided to abandon the city, morning of August 26 was expected. he would be leaving the valuable oil fields in enemy hands. The Turks attacked with more than 1,000 men, supported by Talks with the Baku government yielded glib promises from cavalrv' and artillery. Four times the Staflbrds thiew them back, the local commander, a General Dukuchayev, that his forces but with no sign of their expected Armenian reinforcements would fight to the death. The central committee adamantly rethey were eventually forced to abandon tbeir position atop the sisted Dunsterville's more realistic suggestion—that they prevolcano after losing all of their officers and 80 men. pare to destroy the oil fields—sinee its members considered Dunsterville rushed reinforcements from Baku aboard a cara- them the city's only claim to importance. van of careening trucks. Sixty Staffords and 70 Warwicks arMeanwhile, the Turkish shelling increased. The Hotel d'Eurived on the scene too late to help and were forced to join the rope, Dunsterville's headquarters, was reduced to rubble, forcdozen or so survivors as they retreated to new positions among ing him to relocate to another hotel. That building too came the oil derricks east of the volcano. A company of the 9th under accurate fire, and the British began to suspect that there Worcesters joined them there in midaftemoon. was a spy in their midst. After the war, they learned that a TurkThe position atop the volcano had been the key to Dunster- ish colonel, disguised as a Tartar fodder merchant, had been ville's entire line, and when its defenders were forced to retreat, spotting for the enemy artillery all along. the whole 19-mile front was obliged to fall back to an inner line On August 31, Mursal Pasha struck again at Binagadi Hill. of prepared positions. By early afternoon, the volcano was in Early that morning, the 7th North Staffords under the comTurkish hands. mand of Lieutenant R.C. Petty brushed off a strong enemy At the same time as they attacked the volcano, the Turks patrol, then reported that at least 500 Turks were forming up to moved out from the village of Novkhany on the north side of attack. The British quickly shifted a company of Warwicks to the peninsula, where a sunken road allowed them to approach the center of the oil derricks near Binagadi Hill to be held in close to the British lines while under cover. They charged a hill reserve, and sent an armored train filled with Russians to Baleast of the village of Binagadi, held by a battalion of Aimenian adjari village to pin down the enemy at the Mud Volcano. conscripts. When word reached them of the attack on the volAt 6 a.m. Turkish machine guns and artillery opened an encano, a company of North Staffords was told to abandon their fUading fire on the men on Binagadi Hill, inflicting heavy casuJULY2005 MILITARV HISTORY 59

A 6-inch artillery piece manned by Armenian and British gunners engages the Turks as the struggle for Baku reaches its climax. The Turks ultimately won out, though they would not hold their prize for long.

alties. With Lieutenant Petty dead, the British survivors retreated to a fallback position called Warwick Castle. A nearby Armenian unit took too long to react, arriving long after the hill had been abandoned. The Armenian reinforcements failed to hold their new position on the right, however, and the retreat of another battalion on the left made Warwick Castle indefensible. The remainder of the Warwicks then made a fighting retreat through a forest of oil derricks to the northeast. A second company of Warwicks, ordered to plug the gap in the new line, found the position amid the derricks too weak. After nightfall, everyone was pulled farther back to Baladjari. Angt>' at the sight of hundi^eds of demoralized Russian troops streaming through the streets of Baku even as his own men were dying in their defense, Dunsterville fired off none-toopolite letters to General Dukuchayev, who tried to soothe the British officer by inviting him to attend a council of war. That meeting devolved into a series of long-winded speeches suggesting unlikely plans for the city's defense. "Stalky" expressed his disgust with his allies by walking out of the meeting. All this time Dunsterville had kept his nav>', now grown to four ships, close at hand in Baku's port. On September 1, he notified the central committee that there was nothing more his men could do for the city so long as its local defenders refused to join the British at the front. Over the next few days, a fiurr>' of correspondence produced a provisional promise from Dunsterville to remain in Baku if the Russians showed n:iore spirit. A few days later, a deserter who identified himself as being from the Turkish lOth Division informed the defenders that the Turks planned a major attack on the 14th. In the meantime, 500 men and 10 machine guns from Bicherakov's force had arrived and immediately found a place in the city's new line of defense. Because their informer was unable to tell them just where the Turkish attack would come, the defenders were forced to draw their perimeter tight around Baku, in some places leaving little room for maneuver or retreat. The heights to the immediate south of the city near the Bibi Eibal oil fields were held by 60 men of A Company, North Staffords, while 100 Armenians were held in reseive. Just to the north and hugging light to Baku itself was Wolfs Gap, a narrow space between hills cixicial to the cit\'s defense, manned by Russians with two machine guns, two howitzers and a battery of field guns. B Company of the North Staffords held the thin line fi'om Wolfs Gap to the village of Khoja Hasan, northwest of Baku, which was held by more Ar60 MILITARY HISTORV JULY 2005

menians and a batter\- of howitzers. Bicherakov's Cossacks watched the line from Khoja Hasan to Baladjari, At Baladjari two companies of the 9th Worcesters were settled in the village even as the 9th Royal Warwicks watched the line out to the Damabul Salt Lake and four machine guns and an armored car machine gun squadron guarded its eastetn shore. Bad weather had grounded Dunster\ ille's liny air force, leaving him guessing as to just where Nuri Pasha intended to strike next along his 14-mile-long front. Then, before dawn on September 14, a Turkish artillerv' barrage strtick everywhere along the line. Eight to 10 battalions of Turkish infantiA' swarmed across

the railroad tracks south of Khoja Hasan, rolled over Bicherakov's stunned Russians, breached Wolfs Gap and gained the cliffs overlooking Baku. The 39th Brigade mshed to stem the tide but lacked ihe strength to throw the Turks from the heights. Lieutenants McKay and Pope, finding their Martinsydes unserviceable, burned them and joined the British infantry. Dukuchayev ordered counterattacks, but due to poor leadership his men accomplished little. The Turks poured in reinforcements and consolidated their hold along the cliffs. There, the action halted, but the Turks awaited only the arrival of artillery on the heights before swooping down into the city. With scattered artillery fire pounding Baku and his last line of defense breached, Dunsterville decided that further resistance was futile. Accordingly, he ordered the Royal Navy to have its ships ready to evacuate Dunsterforce.

Al 8 p.m., with their positions around the city deteriorating fast in the face of renewed Turkish attacks, the Wanvicks and Worcesters. screened on the left flank by the North Staffords, began abandoning their places in the line and streamed toward the docks. The evacuation was complicated by the knowledge that if Baku's populace learned they were leaving, they would become hostile and an angry central committee might turn the guns of its own ships in the harbor on the British vessels. The sick and wounded were evacuated first aboard the improvised hospital ships Kursk and Abo, which then managed to slip away from the city unnoticed. Next, Dunsterforce loaded its equipment and ammunition on the 200-ton Armenian. During a propitious lull in the fighting, the last elements of Dunsterforce found their places aboard President Kjiiger at 10 p.m. Just before the ci^ew cast off, a Russian soldier noticed the activity around the British vessel, and minutes later Dunsterville was confronted by two members of the central committee. They warned him that if he was leaving, they would act to stop him. Dunstei"ville l'eminded them of his warning that if greater efforts were not forthcoming from their own men, he would have no choice but to abandon the city. He then ordered the ship to cast off. With Baku lit by flames and its streets beginning to ring with the din of combat, Kriiger began heading out lo sea. Its leavetaking was not without a moment of tension, when all its lights Continued on page 72

REVIEWS

Rome's Legio XIV rose from disgrace under Julius Caesar to elite status under Emperor Nero. By Peter B. Gemma

shame to seize everlasting fame." Nero's Killing Machine is a fitting chronicle of what the author calls "the men that made Rome great."

THE ANCIENT HISTORIAN Flavius Jose-

phus wrote admiringly of the Roman legionaries' lighting excellence: "Their perfect discipline welds the whole into a single bfxly; so compact are their ranks, so alert their movements in wheeling, so quick their eare for orders, their eyes for signals, their hands for tasks." His observations were more than academic^as a sun'iving leader of Zealol rebels during the Jewish war of AD 66-73, he had experienced their efficiency first-hand. In Nero's Killing Machine; The True Story oj Rome's Remarkable Foiirleenth Legion {John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken, N.J., 2005, $24.95, $35.99 Canadian), Stephen Dando-Coliins tracks the histoi> ofone ofthe most famous such units, the 14th Legion—Legio XIV in Roman parlance—which suffered disgrace in its early years under Gaius Julius Caesar, but went on to be regar ded by EmperoT" Nero as the best such unit he had. Drawing on 30 years of research for the second of his definitive histories of ancient Roman armies, Dando-Collins reveals new information about Roman military strategies and explains fascinating details of the often brutal but honorcentered daily life among legionaries. Within that context, he starts tracing Legio XIV's fortunes from its foiTnation under Julius Caesar in 58 BC to disaster in Germany six years later In 53-52 BC, the legion was attacked in its winter quaiters by marauding German cavalry and was severely mauled. Caesar himself arrived in time to compel the GeiTnans to withdraw, but the survivors of Legio XIV were said to have committed suicide. The author writes, "For more than a century its legionaries bore the shame of [this] tenible baptism of fire...." He then tells the e.\citing stor>' of Legio XIV's exploits during its second lease on life. In its reconstituted foim, the 14th was called Gemina, meaning "twin," which identi62 MILITARV HISTORY JULY 2005

Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revoltition, 1910-

fied it as an amalgamation of existing formations. Elements ofthe legion fought in Africa, Spain, Gaul and Greece. The legion also took part in the AD 43 invasion of Britannia, and for more than a decade its troops were based in Wales on the Severn River. Legio XIV established its distinguished war-making reputation once and for all in AD 60, during the Iceni rebellion under Queen Boudicca. Numbering less than 10,000 men. but ready to go dowTi fighting lor the honor of Rome, Legio XIV defeated 230,000 Iceni, inflicting some 80,000 casualties while suffering only 400 losses. That victory inspired Emperor Nero to honor the legion with the title Martia Victrix ("victorious, blessed by Mars"), as well •dsDomitoresBritannonmi, or "Tamers of Britain." As DandO'Collins observes, "The 14th Legion sened Rome for upward of five centuries....Romans would always remember it as the legion that overcame its

1920, by Gerald Home, NYU Press, New York, 2005, $20. Despite the title. Black and Brown: African Americans and ihe Mexican Rei'ohilion, 1910-1920 is, by its author's admission, "primarily and overwhelmingly about African Americans...." It also ranges much farther afield geogi'aphically and chronologically than the border region between the United States and Mexico and the decade of the Mexican Revolution, respectively. Horne, a professor of Afi'ican and Afiican-American Studies at the University of Houston and the author of several monographs in those fields, sets out to illuminate a subject that historians have largely overlooked: the role of African Americans along the 2,000-mile border with Mexico. He focuses on the period of the Mexican Revolution because of the attntction its ideology of equality held for African Americans. The author is clearly conflicted about the black soldiei^' role. At best they were foils of the white establishment. Horne also wrestles with the issues of a more fluid social environment for African Americans along the border and the security problem relating to the U.S. Anny's heavy dependence on black troops. Black and Brown benefits from the author's extensive research on both sides of the border, and it succeeds in shedding light on a forgotten comer of American history. Academic libraries and individuals interested in African-American history, the Mexican Revolution and the histoiy of the American Southwest will want to consider this volume. It is not

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While many popular books have been published on the Mongols and Genghis Khan, few have discussed their way of war in more than general terms. The recent publication of Jack Weatherfords Genghis Kliau and the Makhtg of the Modem World, however, goes a long way toward illuminating the basis of the Mongols' military might. The main thrust of Weatherfords book concems how the Mongols set the stage for the modem world, directly and indirectly usheiing in Europe's rise as a dominant power Those interested in military histoiy however, will benefit from sections of the book concerning the Mongol war machine, for they go far beyond its strategy and tactics. One of the keys to the Mongols' success lay in their outlook on war, which embodied honor not in terms of personal valor, but primarily in winning the battle by whatever means possible. The other key was a readiness to learn h'om their mistakes. After a defeat, the Mongols rouiinely determined what went wrong and sought to correct it. Weatherford's description of the Mongol military examines their training, basic day-to-day operations and logistics as well as combat. He even explains such details as the importance of their protein-based diet as a factor in Mongol success against the Jin soldiers of northern China, with their carbohydrate diet of noodles. The author occasionally overstates his claims, as he does in regard to the Mongols' use of gunpowder. There are also minor historical etTors, such as his reference to Timur-iLenk's defeating the "Seljuk" (actually Ottoman) sultan to conquer Anatoha. Nonetheless, military history enthusiasts will find Genghis fOian and the Making

ofthe Modem World to be very useful. In addition to providing information that is generally overlooked in previous works on the Mongols, Weatherford's book is well written and will engage readers with even the most casual interest in history's greatest conqueror Timothy May For additional reviews, go to www. historybookworld.com.

PERSPECTIVES Gaius Julius Caesar took advantage of his German enemies' ferocity by enlisting them in his cavalry. By Ludwig H. Dyck

The Roman cavalrymen shown at left in Lionel Royer's painting Vercingetorix Throws His Arms at the Feet of Caesar were probably Germanic tribesmen in Gaius Julius Caesar's service-the elite of his auxiliary horse.

BY THE TURN OF THE FIRST century BC,

the cavalry of the Roman Republic was typically made up entirely of auxiliaries. In his Gallic campaigns, Gaius Julius Caesar relied heavily on several thousand horsemen levied from allied Gallic tribes and smaller numbers of Iberians. After he beat back German tribal intrusions into Gaul in 58 and 55 BC, Caesar further boosted his cavalry by enlisting 400 German mencenaiies and former hostages. They bailed out his Gallic cavalry in 52 BC, when the latter ran into trouble against rebellious Gauls at the Battle of 66 MILITARV HISTORY JUtY2005

Noviodunum. Later that year, more Germans swelled his cavalry and light infantry ranks to about 1,000. The fact that Caesars former German foes were willing to fight for him is not too surprising. The retainers, or comitatus, of a German chief were drawn not Just from his own tribe but also from warriors who wandered the land in search of martial glory and plunder. To such men it did not matter if they served a German chief of a different tribe, a Gallic lord or even a Roman consul Germans even served as bodyguards for Cleopatra VII of

Egypt and Herod the Great in Judaea. Caesars Gemians included the feared Suebi, the Usipetes and the Tenctheri. They were the tribes that Caesar had fought, but one might also see a Harii, who blackened his shield, dyed his body and preferred to fight in the dead of night, or an Aestii, who wore a protective emblem of the wild boar, symbol of the mother of the gods. Caesar learned to respect the Teutonic warriors. When he fought them in 58, mere rumors spread by the Gauls of the valor, strength and martial skill of the

Suebi sent even battle-hardened legionaries into a panic. "All over the camp men were signing and sealing their wills," lamented Caesai: After all, half a century earlier the Gennanic Cirabri and Teutones had crushed four Roman armies before finally being defeated. During the 55 BC campaign against the Usipetes and Tenctheri, Caesars 5,000 Gallic cavalrymen were scattered by 800 GeiTnans. Caesar wrote that "as warriors they are superior to the Gauls...they [the Gauls] do not even compare themselves in point of valor with the Germans," adding that even the "fierce glance of their eyes was more than they could endure." Caesar valued his German recruits so highly that he replaced their ponylike horses with the lai^er steeds of his bodyguard, Iribunes and knights. When fighting for Caesar, the Gennans likely retained most of their native offensive tactic, a columnar or "boar's head" charge. Ostensibly carried out by a mass of enraged berserkers, such an attack was calculated to break the enemy by its sheer ferocity, and was dubbed Furore Teulonictis by the Romans. Like hounds of war, fleet infantrymen ran alongside the cavalrymen protecting theridei"s'flanks,coming to their rescue if they were dismounted or wounded. In a lengthy advance or retreat, they would hang onto ihe horse's mane to keep pace. The Germans' tough little steeds were well trained. At times the rider leapt off his mount to fight on foot, and in the chaos of battle, his horse would remain on the spot. How the Gennans fared with Caesar's larger, faster steeds is unclear Possibly they continued to use their ponies in most battles unless speed was important. Even in Roman service, a German infantryman had little more than a wattle shield and an ash-wood spear with a point of bone or iron with which to pix)tect himself. Horses were usually reserved for warriors of high merit. The hostages who joined Caesar in 55 BC were mostly chiefs and their attendants. Among such men, mail hauberks, helmets and swords were much more common, and others surely acquired such arms from war booty. INITIAL DISUNITY BETWEEN the Gallic

tribes allowed Caesar to defeat them piecemeal, but in 52 BC, the victory of the rebellious chief Vercingetorix at Gergovia enflamed a pan-Gallic uprising against the Roman overlords. Caesars legions 68 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2005

could still hold their own against the Gallic infantry, but with few of the Gallic tribes remaining loyal to him his deficiency in cavalry became critical, compelling him to hire additional Germans. Forced onto the defensive, Caesar moved toward the threatened Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis. In early September, Vercingelorix sent his cavalry against the Roman column near what is now Dijon. The three-pronged attacks on their vanguard and flanks took the marching Romans by surprise, but Caesar's cavalrv managed to keep the Gallic horseftom ovenianning their baggage train, while his legionaries formed a defensive square. The Gennans, meanwhile, gained the summit of a nearby hill and then charged, driving a body of the attacking Gauls back upon Vercingetorix's nearby infantry. Alanned at the rout of their comrades, the entire Gallic cavalry force took flight. Vercingetorix ordered a retreat toward the fortified stronghold of Alesia. Caesar immediately led his legions in pursuit, engaged the Gallic rear guard and inflicted up to 3,000 casualties. The battle completely reversed the course of the war. With the defeat of their cavalry arm, Gallic spirits sank, while Caesar regained the initiative. Still, perched on a plateau and surrounded by hills and streams, Alesia seemed impervious to assault. Caesar decided to surround the city with two concentric 14-mile-long rings of earthworks, ditches, ramparts, spikes, stakes, covered pits, forts and camps. The inner ring, the line of contravallation, faced Alesia's defenders, while the outer, the line of circumvallation, protected the Romans from anticipated relief forces. Barely had the siege begun in late September when Vercingetorix's cavalry assailed Caesar's horsemen, presumably to reduce the Romans' foraging capability. Perceiving that his auxiliary Gallic and Spanish cavalry were taking the worst of it, Caesar unleashed his Germans and drew up his legions for support, stopping the Gallic assault cold. The Gennans then hanied the Gauls back against their outer wall and ti ench, slaughtering those who could not scramble through. Changing to a defensive strategy, Vercingetorix sent his cavalry abroad among the rebellious tribes. A Gallic relief army led by Commius anived around noon on September 30. Commius sent his cavalry, archers and light troops to assault the line of circumvallalion, and Vercingetorix's infantry stormed the line

of contravallation. While his legionaries held Vercingetorix's men at bay, Caesar sent his cavalry to engage Commius' troops. As the sun dipped neai' the horizon, the Germans massed all their squadrons for a charge that sent Commius' cavalry reeling. That exposed the Gallic archers, who were surrounded and annihilated by the Geiman cavaliy Seeing Commius' force routed, Vercingetorix retreated back into Alesia. The Gauls rallied to launch a second assault on the night of October 1, but that attacked died in the fire of Roman siege engines. A third attack on October 2 saw Caesar's cavalry strike at Commius' infantiy from the rear, utterly beating them. Demoi'alized, Vercingetorix surrendered to Caesar, bringing to an end the siege of Atesia and with it, apart fi'om minor engagements, the end of the Gallic revolt. THREE YEARS LATER, IN 49 BC, Caesar

plunged the Roman Republic into civil war when he marched his legions across the Rubicon River into Italy. For the next four years his Gallic and German cavalry accompanied his legions against Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great). After performing admirably in the Iberian Ilerda campaign of 49 BC, Caesar's auxiliary cavalry crossed the Adriatic Sea to Greece in 48 BC. There, Caesar moved to block Pompey from reaching his base at Dyrrachium, but in turn found his own supply route to Italy severed by Pompey's naval dominance of the Adriatic. Pompey eventually forced Caesar to withdraw into Thessaly, where Caesar stoiTned the defiant town of Gomphi and gave it over to be ransacked by his halfstarved soldiers. The whole army, especially the Germans, embarked on an orgy of gluttony and drinking. Pompey finally caught up with Caesar at Pharsalus, only to go down in defeat. Pompeyfledto Egypt, where Pothinus, chief adviser to Ptolemy XIU, had him murdered. Arriving in pursuit of Pompey, Caesar became involved with Cleopatra VII and her dynastic struggles with her brother and co-regent Ptolemy XIII. With the aid of Mithridates of Per^amum, on Januaiy 13, 47 BC Caesar cornered Ptolemy near the Nile, where his army sought protection on a hill flanked by a canal. German cavalrymen were the first to swim the canal and struck the Egyptians in the flank, allowing the Romans to cross on hastily constructed bridges. In the ensuing battle the Romans annihilated the Egyptians, with Ptolemy drowning in the Nile.

After the Egyptian interlude, Caesar conducted a lightning campaign against Phamaces o( Pontus, who had occupied Aimenia and Cappadocia. Near Zela the legionaries defeated Phamaces in a defensive battle. With atfaii's in the Asian provinces settled, Caesar relumed to Italy. By 46 BC, Caesar was ready to continue the civil war against Pompey's followers in Noiih Africa but found himself vastly outnumbeted by the forces of Quintus Metellus Scipio and King Juba of Numidia. His predicament was exacerbated by his cava]r\ s failure to deal with the hitand-run tactics of the Numidian cavalrv and light troops. Caesar overcame those problems thtough extensive maneuvering, the iron discipline of his legions, ingenious use of entrenchment and by training some of his legionaries to act as light tr
ans and Scipio's legions collapsed like dominos, and Caesars soldiers butchered 10,000 Pompeians and Numidians. With Scipio's forces crushed in North Africa, the only Pompeians remaining were the younger Gnaeus Pompeiiis and his brother Sextus, who together with fugitives from Africa raised 13 legions in Iberia. In 45, Caesar faced Gnaeus at Munda. In addition to eight legions, Caesar possessed more than 8,000 cavalrv; including his veteran Gauls and Germans, and King Bogud of Mauretania, with his coips of Moorish horsemen. Caesar's Legio X caved in tbe Pompeian left flank while the cavalry, with Bogud in the lead, vanquished the Pompeian horse and fell upon their flank and rear. THE DEFEAT OF GNAEUS brought the

civil war to an end. Caesar returned to Rome and became dictator for life. After his triumphs, he awarded each of his veteran legionaries a war gratuity of 240 aureus, or gold coins, in addition to the 20 paid at the outbreak of the wars—together the equivalent of 27 years' pay. Caesar disbanded his Praetorian bodyguard and his Iberian cohorts. When they could, his Gallic cavalrv usually returned

to their tribes after each campaign, and his German cavaln' almost certainly was disbanded as well. It is reasonable to assume that Caesar rewarded his auxiliary cavalr\- handsomely. Perhaps a few were even granted Roman citizenship and settled down inside the bordet^s of the empire. Others may have wandered back to their tribal homelands across the Rhine, where their loot and experience increased their prestige. No doubt many stayed in some sort of Roman military senice. There was certainly no lack of opportunity for a skilled sword-for-hire when Caesars assassination in 44 BC brought on a new civil war. The career of Caesars German cavalry illustrates how a small but crack corps of soldiers can influence the course of combat. Their success was due to a combination of his skilled generalship and their own prowess. Though they were few in number, Caesar treated his German cavalry as an elite unit and often held them in reserve until the situation became desperate. In many ways, they were the prototype of the dual-purpose mounted troops, the Cohors Eqidtatae, that would one day replace the legions as the backbone of the Roman armv. MH

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PERSONALITY Continued from page 16

Barry was reputedly as cutting with her wil and cavalrv' sword as she was with a scalpel. In 1819 the governor's aide-decamp, Captain Josias Cloete, accused the gregarious Barry of getting too familiar with a lady friend of his, leading to a secret pistol duel at 10 paces. Barry was slightly wounded in the thigh, but was back at work, limping at her rounds, three days later. For violating the laws against dueling, Cloete was banished foi' some time to the island of Tristan da Cunha, but was so impressed with Band's pluck and sense of honor that he wi'ote a formal letter of apology and remained one of Bany's few lifelong friends. On July 25,1820, Cape Town merchant Thomas Munnik summoned Ban^ from a formal dinner to attend his wife, who was suffering from terrible labor pains. Bany quickly sized up the situation and performed a cesarean section in seven minutes, without even removing her fulldress unifonn. It was the first such operation to be performed in Africa in which both mother and child survived. The grateful Munniks named their son—^and vowed to have all the family's first-born males named—James Bany, a family tradition upheld to this day. On October 8, 1828, Bairy was posted to Mauritius as staff surgeon, followed on April 19, 1831, by a transfer to Jamaica. Her time there coincided with both a slave revolt and a cholera epidemic. Letting her profession deteiTnine her priorities, Baixy rode into the hills outside Kingston, where the slaves were cairying out a guenilia war against the authorities. There, the insurgents were amazed to see a British officer in ceremonial unifonn casually iide past their guards on a donkey and tip his hat with a friendly greeting of "Good morning to you, gentlemen." Barry explained that she had come to offer her services as a doctor, not to rebels, but to sick people. She spent the next four months organizing the rebel encampments into disease isolation centers and soon had the cholera under control. BaiTy then rode back into Kingston accompanied b\' a black manservant named John. For the rest of her life, John remained her companion, confidante and bodyguard, accompanying her on all her subsequent assignments.

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Sailing back to England on leave in 1835, Barr\' was made principal medical officer (PMO) at St. Helena a year later, but her involvement in civil and military' intrigues led to her arrest in March 1838, her demotion to staff surgeon and her posting to the West Indies in November. There, concentrating solely on medicine, Barpy' regained PMO status in four years. She almost died of yellow fever on Trinidad and set sail for England on October 14, 1845, for a year's convalescence. Posted to Malta as its PMO on November 2, 1846, Ban"\' altemated between that station and Corfu until June 23, 1857, a period in which she played a vital role in the Crimean War. Past experience in the colonies had already made Bairv aware that alcohol and venereal disease accounted for more casualties in the British army than combat, and she tackled the problem not as a moral issue but as a public health problem. She set up married quarters for soldiers, their wives and children. She treated syphilis epidemics as she would have typhus or cholera, by isolating the afflicted and containing the spread of the disease. In the Crimea, Barry inspected brothels and would advise soldiers on which "knocking shops" were the least dangerous. It is a measure of her success that the rate of venereal disease shi'ank to 7 percent wherever Barry was stationed, compared to 40 percent in England. In field hospitals, which soldiers regarded at that time as the next step to the grave, Barry insisted on disinfected quarters, clean mattresses, diets of nutrientrich local vegetables and isolation wards. Much of her freedom to innovate was made possible by her working relationship with the British commander in the Crimea, General FitzRoy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baion Raglan—Loixi Charles Somerset's brother. She devised her own forni of sterile field dressing to replace the rags stolen fi'om corpses that had been used—and reused—as bandages. Bany even asked the advice of Raglans chef for recipes that could nourish soldiers with stomach wounds. Of the 462 casualties BanT treated in her hospital on Corfu, only 17 died, a miraculous recovety rate amid a war in which the death rate under general medical care was 20 pei" day. Only one pei-son had reason to complain about Barry's conduct during the war—Florence Nightingale. In contrast to Barry's innovations. Nightingale spent moi^e time reading scripture and poetry to the wounded than wash-

CLASSIFIEDS

ing their wounds. The comfort that two of her nurees gave the troops was so unprofessional in nature that they had to be Books/Documents packed off to England when they became pregnant. Bany considered Nightingale RINGS OF SUPERSONIC STEEL: Air Dea meddling amateur who would upset her fenses of the U.S. Army 1950-1974, An Inmicarefully thought-out pixx:edures. Nightin- ductory Hisror>' and Site Guide, ISBN 0-615gale saw the surgeon-general as a thi eat 12012-1. 190 pa|;es, illustrated, $ 19.95 plus $4.00 shipping & handling horn Hole in the Head Press, to her recently acquired fame. While she pushed for a royal commis- P.O. Box 807, Bodega Bay, CA 94923-0807. Also availahle at www.holeintheheadpress.coni or sion on army health, Barry's image as an www.fetchbiiok.info eccentric man contributed to her being effectively sidelined for the more famous WWI novel follows "Lost Battalion" Doughboys Nightingale. Barn' claimed that "It is im- through hoot camp into the "pocket." A RED material who received the credit for the HORSE RODE OUT by J.C. Arlington. Availreforms that would have a lasting benefit able on-line, at bookstores, & jcarlington.com to the troops," but Nightingale's lobbying for Barry's dismissal only intensified after Collectibles the royal commission announced its conclusions and pressed for the reforms that MILITARY UNIT RINGS OR WATCHES Barry had initiated, which were finally www.aniericasmilitarvinall.com 1-888-^82-^54. put into general practice in 1867. REPLICA Weapons - Flintlocks to Automatics. In June 1857, with the Crimean War Great for Den or Office. Safe inexpensive disover and Nightingale relentlessly calling plays. Non-firing but very realistic. WWW. for the deputy surgeon-general's transfer AAROX.COM from Corfu, Barry was sent to Montreal, Miscellaneous Canada. There, on December 7,1858, she was promoted to the rank of inspector- FREE Catalog oi historical coins; Ancient general, a rank equivalent to an army Greek, Roman, Biblical, English, Modern major general's. Band's own health was German. M&R 11407 S. Harlem MHM, failing, however. After a severe bout of Worth, II 60482. 708-430-1445. pneumonia, she was pronounced unfit Special Events/Travel for service and sailed back to England. Barry died in London on July 26, 1865, TOUR GREAT BATTLEFIELDS A N D possibly of the typhus that she had fought HISTORIC SITES in Europe with experienced all her professional life. When the morti- guide. WWI, WWII and orhcr.s. Small Custom cian's assistant, Sophia Bishop, removed Touts. Clio Tours: 800-836-8768. Barry's clothing, she screamed, "The devil is a woman, and she's had a baby!" The morticians rushed in to confirm Bishop's suspicions and declared that the abdominal stretch marks she had seen were indeed pregnancy striations. Officers swiftly arrived to take control Rates per word of the body. They cleaned out Bany s residence of all papers and arranged for lx$3.48 3x $3.18 6x$2.82 John's one-way passage back to Jamaica. • 20-word minimum The obituaiy in the Manchester Guardian • New rates include website exposure was quietly forgotten, and so was Surgeon-General James M. Barry. When they first sent her to medical For information to place an ad, please call: school, Miranda Barry's guardians may Lauren Bamiak have intended it as the high-society joke of 1809. Instead, she turned the tables on Ph: 215-968-5020, ext. 132 them to live an extraordinaiy and highly accomplished life, delaying the punch Fax: 215-579-8041 line until her death. In that same year, Email: [email protected] Elizabeih Garrett passed the examination of the Society of Apothecaries to become Subscriptions: Britain's first recognized female doctor. That final irony might have given Barry l-800'829'3340 the last—and heartiest—laugh of all. MH

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XERXES

FORT HENRY

BAKU

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his men. Only a fraction of his army made it to the Hellespont, where they the bridges swept away—not by the Greeks, but again by a storm, a fittingly ironic bookend to Xerxes' tempestuous campaign. Once back at his provincial capital of Sardis, Xerxes might have felt safe at last, but not for long. Themistocles wanted to take the Greekfleetacross the Aegean and destroy the Hellespont bridges, but he was overruled—again—by Eurybiades, who still had Mardonius' land force to deal with. In September 479 BC, the Greeks met the smaller Persian army at Plataea and handily defeated it. In the same month, the Greek fleet, led byXanthippus, father of Pericles, defeated what was left of the Persian navy on Xerxes' own turf, just off the coast of Mycale in Asia Minor. Though Persia remained a threat for several more years, Xerxes never again tried to invade Europe. Greece was safe and set upon its own course, one that eventually turned the former allies against each other, in particular democratic Athens against absolutist Sparta. Ironically, Themistocles did not take part in the final two battles between Persia and Greece. Although he showed brilliant leadership, his severe character flaws—including arrogance and a penchant for coraiption—resulted in his being ostracized by Athens and later assuming an ignoble role as an aide to the son of his former enemy, Xerxes. He died while in Persia, in the end refusing to act against Athens despite compulsion from Persia's new king, Artaxerxes. It was a poor finish for the great statesman and strategist whose tactics at Salamis had forced a powerful and victorious king to crawl back home, tail between his legs. Though it was not thefinalbattle between Persia and Greece, the confidence engendered in that victor>' held the Greek allies together with more strength than any amount of fear could, and in the end left the Greek city-states free to determine their own fates in the harsh ancient world. MH

days after the massacre. Colonel Munro and 500 of his men arrived at Eort Edward to tell the tale. Ironically, after sumving the massacre, Munro died three months later of natural causes. The fall of Eort William Henn brought British fortunes on the fi'ontier to a nadir, but Montcalm did not follow up his successes. Webb had 1,400 troops under his immediate command at Eort Edward— soon to be joined by Munro and his survivors—and another 1,800 in nearby camps, in addition, some 7,000 Colonial militiamen responded to his call. Montcalm feared that more reinforcements would soon be on the way. Meanwhile, most of the Indians, sated with plunder and carnage, and nervous about the possibility of French retribution, had returned to their\illages. Given those factors, Montcalm decided to advance no farther, giving the British a respite in which to reappraise their strategy and replace their incompetent commanders with more capable men.

suddenly and inexplicably flashed on. Before they were once more extinguished, a Russian guard ship spotted them. The vessel ordered Kruger to halt, then opened lire. Luckily for the British, the .shots fell short, and the ship made good its escape. Armenian, however, still lay somewhere behind Kruger, surrounded by now-alerted Russians. Twelve houi's later, it entered Enzeli Harbor, having been struck six times by Turkish fire that miraculously had not touched off the ammunition on board. The mission to Baku had cost Dunsterforce 180 men dead, wounded and missing. Mursal Pasha later stated that the Turks had .suffered 2,000 casualties. The Turks' hard-won victory would prove less than satisfactory, however. With its armies in Palestine and Mesopotamia smashed, the Ottoman empire signed an armistice on October 30, 1918. On November 17, a British military mission returned to reoccupy Baku and supervise the removal of Nuri and Mursal Pasha's forces. In London, however, the failure of Dunsterforce to hold Baku was seen as an embarrassment, and Dunsterville became its scapegoat. With the war ended, British forces in Transcaucasia found their mission changing, as they became involved with the tangled politics of revolutionary Russia. As the Allied intervention in that countn' ran its course, limits were placed on British activities in Central Asia, followed by disengagement. By April 1919, it was all over. The British soldiers who had been cast into the farthest comers of the tsar's empire to keep it out of the hands of Germany and Turkey, then later the Bolsheviks, were rea.ssigned to their accustomed billets in India, the Middle East and England itself. The strange saga of Dunsterforce and its courageous stand receded from the consciousness of the West for the better part of 60 years, until the tumultuous events of the 1980s, 1990s and the early 21 st century once again placed Ti anscaspia at the center of world conflict. MH

Through a series of relentless efforts, Montcalm, his officers, missionary fathers and Governor Vaudreui! secured 200 additional captives fi'om the Indians. By the end of the war, only 200 prisoners had not been returned. Not all of the Indians involved in the slaughter of Eort William Henn's garrison escaped retribution. Some unwittingly brought punishment upon themselves. In their quest for plunder at the fort, a group of Indians from the western tribes discovered some fresh graves and proceeded to unearth the bodies and scalp them. What they did not know was that the graves contained the remains of .smallpox victims. That fall, the warriors carried the disease home to their tribes. Throughout the fall and winter, the disease rampaged among a people lacking any natural immunity, bringing death to almost all who contracted it. It was a silent revenge for the victims of the massacre of Eort William Henry. MH

For further reading on the French and For flinker reading, Califomia-hased con- Indian War, Stockton, Calif.-based writer tributor Barry Porter recommends: The George Yagi Jr. recommends: Crucible of Greco-Persian Wars, by Peter Green; The War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate Histories, by Herodotus; and "Life of of Empire in British North America, Themistocles" in The Rise and Eall of 1754-1766, by Fred Anderson; and Montcalm and Wolfe, by Francis Parkman. Athens: Nine Greek Lives, hy Plutarch. 72 MaiTARV HISTORY JULY 2005

For further reading, Lowell, Mass.-hased writer Pieire Comtois recommends: A Peace to End All Peace, by David Fronikin; Like Hidden Fire, by Peter Hopkirk; and The Baku Commune^ \9Y1-B\%, by Ronald G. Sunx.

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B E S T

L I T T L E

S T O R I E S

Prentiss Ingraham, the Confederacy's most prolific author, found a postwar audience for his hundreds of novels. By C. Brian Kelly

ONCE THE CIVIL WAR ENDED, some vet-

erans went back to farm, bank or store at home. Some became generals for the khedive of Egypt. One, Union Colonel Washington Roebling, built the Brooklyn Bridge; others, such as Union General GrenviDe Dodge, led in the construction of the transcontinental railroad. General Lew Wallace, in addition to governing New Mexico Territory, wrote his famous biblical epic, Ben Hur. Confederate veteran Prentiss Ingraham, on the other hand, found his niche and achieved literary fame as the author of hundreds—some estimate nearly a thousand!—of novels and novelettes. The undisputed king of the dime novels that were popular in the second half of the 19th century, Ingraham wrote more than 200 about William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody alone, a major chunk of the 400-odd novels and about 600 novelettes that made up the thousand. The mathematics of Ingrahams incredible 34-year writing career—not begun, mind you, until after the Civil War—has been parsed this way: He spun out the equivalent of 1,350,000 words per year, or 3,708 words a day, at an average 154 words an hour. Easily the most prolific author ever to emerge from his native Mississippi, Colonel Prentiss Ingraham wrote about adventurers of all kinds—cowboys, soldiers, pirates, Buffalo BiU, even the reallife "Texas Jack," a k a John Burwell Omohundro Jr., Virginia-bom frontier scout, actor and cowboy. Ingraham often wrote under various pen names, some of them a bit bizarre, such as "Dr. Noel Dunbar," "Midshipman Tom W. Hall" and "Dangerfield Burr." INGRAHAM HIMSELF WAS quite an ad-

venturer. He also was the son of another prolific writer, the Rev. Joseph Holt Ingraham, whose own adventure stories 74 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2005

sometimes became the barely disguised basis for many of his sons dime novels. The younger Ingraham, his father's only son, was bom in Natchez, Miss., in 1843. By pure chance he was a classmate of young John Wilkes Booth, Lincoln's future assassin, at St. Timothy's Military Academy School in Maryland, then attended Jefferson College in Mississippi and was taking classes at the Mobile (Alabama) Medical School when the Civil War broke out less than 20 years after his birth. Ingraham enlisted in the Confederate Army as a private in Colonel William Temple Withers' 1st Mississippi Light Artillery and attained the rank of ordnance sergeant before suffering a foot wound and being captured at Port Hudson, La., on July 8,1863. He and the rest ofthe enlisted men were subsequently paroled, but the injury to his foot would prove to be a problem for the rest of his life.

novels under titles such as Buffalo Bill's Slim Chance or Buffalo Bill's Fight for Right. "For a time," says an online summary of notes from an Ingraham exhibition at the University of Mississippi, "Ingraham worked as a press agent for Buffalo Bill's Wild West show." (Please see the Web page www.olemiss.edu/depts/general_library/ Bles/archives/exhibits/past/ingrahamex/ ingraham.html.) But first the superprolific author had begun writing his dime novels in the early 1870s for the New York publishers Beadle and Adams, often basing his stories, it seems, "on his own military experiences, as well as on themes devised by his father." In the latter category, the younger Ingraham "reworked a number of his father's sea stories into a pirate series, which was reprinted many times well into the twentieth century."

WHEN THE WAR ENDED in 1865, Ingra-

NATURALLY, THE BUSY author's enor-

ham joined those die-hard Confederates seeking sanctuary or further action in Mexico. There, he sided with the forces of Benito Juarez in ousting imported Emperor Maximillian of Austria, the puppet ruler installed by Napoleon III, but Ingraham's activities as a soldier of fortune did not end in Mexico. He soon was to be seen participating in the Battle of Sadowa, during the Austro-Prussian Seven Weeks' War of 1866; in Crete fighting on the side of the Greeks against the Turks; even in Cuba on the side of the rebels more than two decades before the Spanish-American War. Acquiring his title of colonel in Cuba, he was captured by the Spanish and condemned to death...but escaped. Not long after, he popped up in the American West, most notably, it might be said, at the side of Buffalo Bill, who soon would emerge as a favorite subject of Ingraham dime

mous literary output is easily dismissed today as "hackwork written quickly and produced cheaply," notes the same exhibition material...but perhaps too easily, since Ingraham did capture a "substantial popular audience," with the significant result that he "is credited with popularizing the cowboy hero and in shaping America's popular perception of the Westem frontier (as did Buffalo Bill's Wild West show)." A New York City resident for most of his adult life, ironically enough. Colonel Prentiss Ingraham lived to the age of 61 before checking into the Confederate Soldiers Home established at Beauvoir in Biloxi, Miss., the last home of Jefferson Davis, on August 12, 1904...and dying there just four days later of Bright's disease. The once-famous Civil War veteran is buried in Grave No. 62 in Beauvoir's Confederate Cemetery. MH