Military History 2005-11

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Onlineextras Famous last military words: 'It November 2005 You'll find much more about military history on the Web's leading history resource:

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Goto tinwv. JheHistoryNetcomlmhJ for these great exclusives: British Prisoner's Death Camp Odyssey—Newly commissioned in the Royal Army Medical Corps, Lieutenant J. Frank Pantridge served in Singapore and subsequently stmggled for his and his comrades' survival as a Japanese prisoner in Thailand. Red Lion Rampant—At Bannockbum in June 1314, Robert the Bruce's Scottish army faced 3-to-l odds in open battle, something with which he had little experience. His preparations, however, showed him to be an ingenious learner. Aleksandr SMVorov—Aleksandr V. Suvorov wrote and practiced a military doctrine that made him the most brilliant general in Russian history The closest he came to defeat ended in the crowning achievement of his career. Sherman's Other Marcfe—Ordered to assist Maj. Gen. Ambrose Btimside's besieged troops at Knoxville, Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman demonstrated his ability to move an army to a given objective on short notice.

6 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

seemed like a good idea at the time.' AT THE TIME OF THIS WRITING, the

United States remains bogged down in Iraq, still losing military personnel to car bombs while it awaits the event that can make or break its entire purpose for being there: the ratification of a viable constitution. Frustrating but true, all the United States' military might cannot effect the result—only the Iraqis can. Meanwhile, as patience for the protracted occupation of Iraq erodes at home—even among Republican conservatives—^President George W. Bush is modifying his original prerequisites for withdrawal. Such is the consequence of wishful or assumptive thinking. But one thing you leam from history is that it's happened before—and what you thought would surely turn out differently this time didn't turn out quite so differently after all. Long before Sun Tzu, grand strategists have known that the first thing one should do before embarking on a military operation in a faraway place is to leam what you're up against—know your enemy, the people, the terrain, the environment— and use that intelligence to prepare. Assuming and wishing won't make it so. Even General Douglas MacArthur's risky landing at Inchon (whose 55th anniversary was noted in the September 2005 issue) was a calculated risk. So was Sir Robert Napier's well-prepared 1868 expedition into Abyssinia and Assyrian King Sargon II's Urartu campaign 2,500 years earlier, both recounted in the same issue. On the other side of the coin, there was Lt. Gen. John Burgoyne's campaign to split the rebellious colonies in 1777, using a split force of his own—brilliant on paper, perhaps, but in practice a colossal accident waiting to happen. Among military history's many tragic examples of wishful thinking is Edward Bruce's Irish campaign. Following the encouraging victory at Bannockbum, it must have seemed like a good idea at the time—Scots coming to liberate their Irish cousins and forming a Celtic coalition of the willing against the threatening

Norman English. For King Robert the Bruce, it would also provide a fresh outlet for the ambitions of his brave but headstrong brother Edward, who in lieu of waiting for a chance to inherit the Scottish throne could seize another one for himself, if he could just convince the Irish that he was fit to be their high king. Alas, Edward's invasion in 1315 was based more on wishful thinking than on hard analysis, and he soon discovered that things were not quite as hoped. The Bruces, themselves descendants of Normans who had settled in Scodand, should have realized that many of the Norman lords in Ireland had similarly "gone native" and were not necessarily seen as any more foreign by the Celtic Irish than they would regard the Scottish invaders. Instead of being hailed as a liberator, then Edward faced a perpetual stmggle until his death at Faughart Hill and, in an even sadder aftermath, his recession into the pages of history, eclipsed in Scotland by his more famous brother Robert, and remembered in Ireland (if at all) only as a bringer of famine, death and misfortune (story, P. 38). Edward Bruce's is a universal cautionary tale, played out repeatedly by such acts as the United States' involvement in Vietnam, the Soviet Union's involvement in Afghanistan, Austria-Hungary's 1914 invasion of Serbia and practically everybody's invasion of Russia. AU might have profited from a bit less assumption and a bit more forethought. All, like Edward Bruce's frustrating time in Ireland, might bear the same universal epitaph: It seemed like a good idea at the time. J.G.

IN MEMORIUM Benjcunin H. Watson 1981-2005 Military History photo editor Ben Watson passed away suddenly on August 5. He will be sorely missed by all of his coworkers at Primedia History Group. Our deepest condolences to his family and iiiends.

LETTERS

FORT WILLIAM HENRY MASSACRE

I'd like to thank you for George Yagi Jr.'s article on Fort William Hemp's siege and the ensuing massacre (July 2005). 1 find the French and Indian War (or Seven Years' War, in North America) to be one of Americas most interesting conflicts. It wasrefreshingtoo that the author ignored the cun ent bias toward minimizing, justifying or completely ignoring atrocities committed hy Native Ameiicans. One small point of contention, however, is the authors reference to the Battle of the Monongahela as an ambush. It's my understanding that it was more of a pure "encounter" battle, with both sides mutually surprised. It was the subsequent enveloping movements of the French and iheir Indian allies that proved Maj. Gen. Edward Braddocks undoing. Aside from that minor detail, Yagis article was a highly readable account of a tragic event. Barry Dennis Peltier Apple Valley, Minn. While "Siege and Massacre at Fort William Heni'y" was basically coirect, it contained some items that need to be addressed. To begin with, aftei' Maj. Gen. Edward Braddocks defeat in July 1755, the French captured his war chest, with the British plans for military activity in North America. What followed were their steps to counter those plans. The French attacked Fort Bull on March 27, 1756, and blew it up when a fire in its warehouse touched off 30,000 pounds ol black powder, lt wasrebuilt,only to be destro\'ed again in August, the same month that Oswego, an impediment to the French fur trade with the western Indian tribes, fell. By 1757, the Iroquois were deserting their British allies of 146 years, sensing they were losing the initiative to the French. The Brttish considered John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudon, one of their better generals, with a quick mind that could readily adjust to a given situation. Major General Daniel Webb was judged an e.\cellent administrator and a capable but indecisive field officer. In the long run he made the right decision in not relieving Fort William Henn. Had he sent the small numbei-s he had available, they too would have been destroved. 8 MILITARl'HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

On July 24, 1757, Colonel John Parker and 350 New Jersey militiamen departed to scout Lake George, but Ottawa Indians fi"om Wisconsin had observed them fi'om the moment they left Fort William Henry. Acknowledged as some of the finest canoe men on the Great Lakes, they destroyed 24 boats and killed 131 men, with 150 taken prtsoner. Only Parker and a Ranger captain got back to the fort. Fort William Henrv was not fireproof, but its cradle construction was extremely stout. In fact, it was never breached by cannon or moilarfire.Lieutenant Colonel George Munro was commander by virtue of being the senior i^anking regular army officer present, but he was a surgeon. In a memo he wi'ote in late August 1757, Munro stated he had 2,140 fighting men and more than 100 women and children in the fort. The casualty count given on August 25 had 701 survivors accounted for, 406 dead, 923 prisonei's and 264 missing. Except for one woman and her baby rescued by Father Roubaud, all the women and children wei e killed. The French did not keep their promise to protect the British. Even their senior officei^s could not stop the .slaughter Expeiience had taught them not to get between an Indian and his \ictim if one did not want to become the next victim. On August 11, 1757, a relief column led by Major Israel Putnam of the Rangers arrived at what was left of Fort William Henrv. Three of my ancestors were with that column. The carnage they found was the woi-st they had ever seen. A board of inquiiy held in Albany, N. Y., in November 1757 found no wrongdoing on either Webb's or Munro's parts. Muni'o died of a heart attack that same month and was posthumously promoted to colonel. Edward J. Dodge Springfield, 111.

ol Robert Fulton). These had first proved effective duiing the American Civil War, which drew considerable attention in Europe. Piussian e.xpatriate Victor von Scheliha served as the Confederates' senior engineer in the defense of Mobile Bay. After he returned to Europe, he published A Treatise on Coast-Defense Based on the Experience Gained by Officers of the Cofps of Engineers of the Anny of the Confederate State.-^. in 1868. During the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War, the Prussians announced that they were defending their ports from the vastly larger French fleet by placing minefields at the entrances to the Jade, Elbe and Weser rivers. For example, the Southern Historical Papers noted in 1894: "Napoleon's great fleet attempted to enter one of the German Baltic ports during the Franco-Prussian war. Colonel Von Scheliha, the engineer who had so well guarded Mobile with toipedoes, was charged by [Helmuth] von Moltke with the torpedo defense of the German ports. In entering one of them, the leading French ship was struck by a torpedo, whereupon the whole of that great fleet returned to Cherboui'g, where it has been lusting and rotting ever since." Indeed, it continued, "the Pixissians advertised defensive mining of all their harboi"s to keep the French at bay, using dummy mines when real ones could not be procured fast enough."

At this time, the Prussian Army Pioneers (corps of engineei^s) had responsibility for the employment of torpedoes, adding "torpedo detachments" to their 12 pioneer battalions. One such detachment consisting of two officers and 55 pioneers reinforced an existing barrier of sunken ships and command-detonated (by means of a galvanic batteiy) toipedoes emplaced by the 1st Field Pioneer Company with a line of 19 (of 50 in stock) water toipedoes in the Seine River near Rouen by FebruaiT 1871. After the French signed the PRUSSIAN TORPEDOES The interesting "Weaponn" department aiTnistice, these were removed between piece in the July 2005 Mililaiy Hi.stoiy February 5 and 7. staled that "Prussia's small fleet was saved William Schneck from embarrassment or worse by France's Lake Ridge, Va. failure to use its navy to land forces on the German coast." A key reason for that fail- BATTLING FOR BRUSILOV ure was the Pnjssian use of "toipedoes" The August 2005 featui^ on Aleksei Brusi(as naval mines were called since the time Contmued on pa^e 19

P E R S O N A L I T Y Marcus Furius Camillus-the Roman Republic's greatest champion, or merely a literary legend? By Drew J. Kendall

A Roman alabaster and bronze statue of Marcus Furius Camillus, the soldier-statesman who did great things in his lifetime... if indeed he did them all.

MARCUS FURIUS CAMILLUS, recent

dictator and three-time military tribune of Rome, fresh from the most complete victory in the history of the young republic, was departing the city alone and in disgrace. Once hailed as a conquering hero, he was now a criminal of the state, facing a potential prison sentence. So he said Farewell to his wife and son (knowing that his powerful friends would watch after them) and went into voluntary exile. As he passed the city gate he turned around to gaze back upon the city and fervently prayed to the gods that if his exile was unwarranted the Roman people might someday be forced to call upon him again. Little could he have known 12 MILrTAIO-HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

how prophetic a prayer it was. At that very moment a population shift was forcing hordes of foreign invaders across the Alps and into northern Italy. The Gauls were coining. At least that is the story as related by the renowned biographer Plutarch. But the prayer of an exiled Roman dictator just before the Gallic onslaught seems just a bit too well timed to be believable. In fact, it may have been a literary device fabricated by an ancient author to tie together actual events. Plutarch was relying on the equally eminent historian Livy when he penned this tale, and Livy was quite possibly one of the most melodramatic of all Roman authors. Writing some 360 yeare after the event, Livy himself had no hard facts on which to rely, for nobody in Rome's nebulous early days had recorded anything in writing—or, if they had, their manuscripts had since been lost. Certainly Livy was a historian first, and most of his stories are indeed fact-based, but he was also a storyteller who tended to minimize Rome's gloomy moments by introducing heroic characters who show up in \irtually every situation requiring a city savior. For better or for worse, historians must turn to Livy as well as Plutai ch before deciding whether

Camillus was a bona fide hero or a figure of myth. Aside from his being bom in 447 BC to a patrician family of no particular distinction, little is known of Marcus Furius Camillus until he shows up fighting Rome's oft-initating neighbors, the Aequians and Volscians. Rome at that time was a small, developing city-state whose larger neighbors were all jealous of its Tiber River settlement and consequently raided its territoiy at will, burning farms and stealing cattle. During one such encounter Camillus rode out alone and put the enemy to flight, suffering a spear wound to his thigh in the process. Such bravery did not go unnoticed in Rome's martial society, and he was awarded the office of censor. To achieve such a distinction was a great honor for a man of Camillus' youth, for that office was usually bestowed on older, more seasoned veterans. From that point on, his name was no longer shrouded in obscurity. Although none of his biographies suggest that Camillus was anything more than an adequate politician, he must have held a singular power over the plebeians, because just Iwo years after he was appointed censor he was elected military tribune—putting him on equal footing with the top political position of the state, the consul. Camillus would serve as military tribune an unprecedented six times (and dictator five times), yet not once did he hold the consulship. Plutarch attributed that to "the state and temper of the commonwealth at that time" rather than to any character flaw of Camillus'. Great internal strife between patricians and plebeians would run its course throughout Camillus' life. The struggle was based on the plebeians' antipathy to the ubiquitous power the patricians wielded, and they fought for equal rights with a ferocity matched only on the battlefield. By the time of Camillus' tenure.

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the plebeians had obtained voting rights. They exercised that privilege by electing military tribunes who, Plutarch said, wielded "full consular power, but were thought to exercise a less obnoxious amount of authority...." Plutarch says Camillus served the office with "moderation of command" and "great judgment and wisdom." In spite of his apparent plebeian popularity and sympathies, however, he supported patrician dogma up to his last days. WHILE CAMILLUS the politician was a complex character, his alter ego, the soldier, was lauded by the ancient scribes as innovative, charismatic and resolute. Some yeare after the fight against the Aequians and Volscians, the Roman ai"my was in need of experienced generals because its most ambitious venture to date, the siege of Veii, was not going well. A longtime enemy of Rome, Veii was a part of the EtiTJScan confederacy that had repeatedly tried to overthrow Rome's growing power in the city's eariy years. Gradually the confederacy had weakened until the Romans could finally consider themselves at least on equal footing with that rival cit>'. Veii, however, was perched on a high promontory', and its powerful army had withdrawn behind its fortified wails to wait things out. Aftei" seven yeai^ of siege warfare, Roman citizens started to become distressed at a conflict that seemed to have no end. When Veii's neighboring peoples, the Faliscans and Capenates, saw Rome tied up in the siege, they took advantage of the situation and began plundering Roman territory. Camillus, in his second tenure as military tribune, assumed command of a small force that drove off the raiders. When the Alhan Lake near Veii flooded and washed away some of the Roman army's meticulously constructed defenses, however, Rome's nervous populace was at wits' end. Not knowing where else to turn, the Senate appointed Camillus as dictator. Livy says that through this appointment "courage and hope were renewed, [and] the fortune of the City seemed to take on a new lease of life." Camillus immediately put the army to work on two major engineering projects: draining the Alhan Lake, which would deprive Veii of its water supply, and digging a tunnel under the city's wall. When the Roman Senate surveyed his pnigi^ess, it anticipated success and issued an edict to the weaiy populace that whoever wished to travel to Veii could take part in

plundering the great city when it fell. Camillus wisely chose to steer cleai' of the debate over that decision but made a promise to his god that would later come back to haunt him: "Pythian Apollo," he prayed (according to Livy), "I vow to you a tenth pari of the spoils." Camillus' two projects worked to perfection. The Alban Lake was emptied to the point where it no longer presented a threat lo the Romans and no longer supplied water to Veii, and the tunnel was successfully excavated under the walls and into the city. After nine years of siege, Veii'sfinalcollapse in 396 was amazingly anticlimatic in its swiftness. As was the custom in that day, the slaughter of the population ensued; those who were taken prisoner were sold into slavery. Legend has it that when Camillus saw the immensity of the spoils, he raised his hands and prayed that if any god or man thought his luck and the luck of Rome to be excessive, the dictator might be allowed to appease the en\y it ai^oused with the least possible inconvenience to himself or hurt to the general welfare of Rome. After he finished his prayer, he turned and stumbled. Li\'y wTote that all who witnessed this accepted it "as an omen of his subsequent condemnation and of the capture of Rome...." In the triumph that followed Veii's fall, Plutarch recorded that Camillus rode up the Aventine Hill of Rome in a chariot drawn by four white horses "in pride and haughtiness." This was only the first of several major mistakes that alienated a once-adoring populace. His personality and agenda seemed to change. Before the siege his emphasis seemed to center on military matters, while after the victory he seemed to regard himself as a demigod, desiring to place his own personal stamp of approval on all matters, both military and domestic. He opposed a popular measure by the tribunes to colonize Veii (which at that time was more glamorous than Rome) and then tried to coax his promised tithe to Apollo from the spoils the Roman citizens had just collected. Just when the citizens seemed to have had enough of his conniving, war broke out with the Faliscans again and Camillus was again elected military tribune. He dutifully responded by laying siege to the Faliscans' chief city of Falerii but alienated his soldiers when he negotiated a peaceful settlement, thereby denying them the right to plunder the city. Jealous tribunes in Rome picked up Continued on page 18

PERSPECTIVES The astonished Iroquois never knew what hit them French explorer Samuel de Champlain. By Stuart A. Hessney

Samuel de Champlain and some armored French soldiers aid Montagnais and Huron Indians in an attack on an Iroquois camp on July 29,1609. The victory would have far-reaching consequences for all parties concerned.

THREE MOHAWK WAR captains suddenly fell, two of them instantly killed and the third mortally wounded. They never knew what hit them. A few steps away Samuel de Champlain reloaded his harquebus for a second shot. Looking to his adversaries like a one-man army equipped with seemingly supernatural weaponry, the French adventurer was on his way to winning the first battle in history to pit Europeans against the Iroquois. Historians debate the actual year, but it is generally believed that Champlain was bom about 1567 in the Breton sea16 MILITAKi-HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

port of Brouage. The son of a navy captain, he grew up during the Huguenot wars and became a militaiy man, fighting for his king to drive Spanish invaders out of France. Not quite 20 when peace left him unemployed, the adventurous young man sailed for Spain with his uncle, a French privateer. From there, Champlain made his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere in 1599. He spent two years in Peru and Mexico, where he was appalled by the injustice suffered by the indigenous peoples and by their exploitation at

the hands of their Spanish overlords. An imperialist but no conquistador by nature, he envisioned a French colonial empire in North America built on trust, not terror, working with the Indians on an "equal footing for a common end," according to Champlain biographer Moms Bishop. "His character belonged partly to the past, partly to the present," historian Francis Parkman wrote. "Thepreux chevalier, the crusader, the romance-loving explorer, the curious knowledge-seeking Continued on page 20

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population from their burned-out city to the stiil-splendorous Veii, Camillus adaContinued from page 14 mantly refused, saying, "Why did we save Rome from the hands of our enemies, if we are to desert her now?" He launched on the popular resentment, going so far a massive rebuilding program and, by as to accuse him of using the wealth ac- way of impassioned speeches and reliquired from Veii to equip his home with gious observances, brought Rome back bronze doors. These scheming bureau- to its former self-respect, although its crats finally got their way when Camillus original splendor would take centuries to secluded himself in his home to mourn reestablish. Plutarch went so far as to call over his dying, disease-stricken son. Ac- him "the second founder of Rome." cusing him of intentionally avoiding Twenty-three years after tbe sack of them and refusing to answer their accu- Rome another Gallic army drove south, sations, they charged him with expropri- and for the fifth time Camillus was apation of plunder and levied a heavy fee. pointed dictator and protector of Rome. The citizens joined the tribunes in calling This time Rome's well-trained and wellfor Camillus' ouster At that point the con- led army managed to turn back the barqueror of Veii sneaked off to the city of barians at the Anio River. Now a living Ai'dea. legend and free to institute wholesale His self-imposed exile would be short- changes, Camillus reformed the old lived. Gallic tribes swept down the Italian wealth-based hierarchy into a more pracpeninsula from the north, devouring tical system that recognized age and exarmed resistance and cities in their path. perience. He is generally accepted as the Rome only aggravated them when one of founder and organizer of the long-lived, its envoys killed a Gallic chief, precipitat- long-feared Roman miiitar>' machine ing an invasion by 40,000 enraged war- based on the legionary formation. riors. Realizing the danger they were in, Despite Camillus' military successes, the Romans raised a comparatively tiny Rome remained in a state of social uparmy of 13,000 men that met the Gauls heaval, and in his later years he worked just outside the city on the Alha River, tirelessly to bring order to the volatile only to be overwhelmed. The sui"vivors situation. One of his last acts was to pass either fell back lo Veii or the Capitoline Licinian-Sextian laws in 367 that manHill Citadel, leaving the fortifications sur- dated that one of the two consuls must rounding Rome unmanned. The victori- always be a plebeian. The measure was a ous Gauls simply walked through the significant step in reducing the class struggates and sacked the city. "For the gle, and in Camillus' waning days he apRomans beleaguered in the Citadel," parently believed the strife had come to wrote Livy, "the full horror was almost an end, for he commissioned tbe building too great to realize." of a new temple to celebrate the reconciliation. Before the temple was comMEANWHILE CAMILLUS, grieved by the pleted, he died of the plague in 365, mislortunes of his country," came out of "more lamented," wrote Plutarch, "than exile and rounded up what scattered units all the rest put together that then died of he could, including those in Veii. A brave that distemper" messenger slipped through the Gallic Marcus Furius Camillus' place in anlines to the Citadel and announced Camil- cient Roman history is still debated more ius' intention to raise the siege. The Senate than 2,300 yeai^s after his death. Was he itnmediately appointed him dictator for the militaiy innovator who conquered the second time, but it was too late for Veii and drove baek the Gauls, or merely such measures. Starving and exhausted, a tool of the ancient authors? Certainly the city agreed to pay the Gallic chieftain his augur at the gate of Rome, the alleged Brennus 1,000 pounds of gold to with- defeat of Brennus' army and various di'aw his army, Brennus, who was prob- other accounts appear contrived. But the ably as tired of the siege as the Romans, victory over Veii, the restoration of the accepted the terms. Rome's worst night- city of Rome, the repulse of the second mare was over, but Livy's claim that Gallic incursion and the reorganiz-ation Camillus attacked the Gallic army and of the Roman military were actual events, reacquired the gold is pure fabrication. attributed to Camillus by many ancient Perhaps Camillus' finest hour came fol- authors. Perhaps nobody will ever really lowing Rome's sack. With the citizens and know his full contribution to history, but tribunes again clamoring to transfer the his legacy cannot be ignored. MH

LETTERS Continued from page 8

More Damning than Slaughter Desertion in the Confederate Army BYMARKA.WErrZ $49.95 Cloth

lov's offensive was a great pleasure for me lo read beeause my father fought in il. He graduated from the Infantry Academy in 1912 and was aceepted as ajtmker (second lieutenant) of the Imperial Guards 4th Regiment of the Rifle Brigade. Each of the four regiments had honoran' commanders from the imperial family. The 4th had the tsar himself, and he knew all of its officere. The Imperial Guard was a separate organization, with membei^ from all serviees. Its commander, General Vladimir Mikhailovich Bezobrazov, wrote a diaiy that helped a lot in reconstructing my father's service. (My dad wrote his own memoir, but like many men subjected to c<3mbat, he almost never discussed it. We know that he was wounded three times and was awaj^led two major eombat decorations, but we don't know how.) The Imperial Guard fought its first major battle against the attacking Austrians in the village of Opatov, 100 miles south-southeast of Warsaw and 20 miles west of the Vistula River. The "Rifles" fought throughout the war, dispei^sed with other forces but regrouped in the "Special Arniy" on August 28, 1916, and removed from Bezobrazov's command. It was then assigned to the Special AiTny Reserve. Brusilov placed the Guard between the Third and Eighth aimies per the article's map. In his diaiT Bezobrazov deseribed a meeting in July 1916 with Brusilov, who showed him where his Guards were to stand. It was swampy ground on the Stochod River, but Bezobrazov was told it was passable. My fathers memoir described that fight as the worst battle of his life. The 4th Rifles was ordered to capture a well-defended German battery. Their losses were tremendous. My fathers company of 250 men had only 32 left after their victory. He and the next company's commander were the only officers left. Father's memoir did not name il, but Bezobrazov's diary called it Tristen, which I can't find in my atlas. George Toumanoff Peterborough, N.H.

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PERSPECTIVES Continued from page 16

traveler, the practical navigator, all claimed their share in him. His views, though far beyond those of the mean spirits around him, belonged to his age and his creed."

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20 M a n A R Y HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

CHAMPLAIN MADE his first trip to Canada in 1603. Subsequent visits lo North America polished his proficiency as a keen observer who could write detailed accounts of his travels, create illustrations and make maps. In 1608 Champlain founded a trading post at the spot that would become Quebec City. The ensuing winter killed 20 of the 28 Frenchmen in his party. Champlain himself got scurvy, but he sumved to pui"sue his iwin goals; to discover the Northwest Passage to Asia and to enhance the extremely lucrative fur trade. In order to obtain geographic information and pelts, he needed to establish friendly relations with the Indians li\ing along the St. Lawrence River. Consequently, the Algonquin, Huron and Monlagnais tribes asked Champlain to assist them against their mortal enemies, the Five Nations ofthe Iroquois Confederacy, during the summer of 1609. In exchange lor military assistance, the Indians promised to guide Champlain down the river of the Iroquois (the Richelieu) to a great lake (Champlain) separated by waterfalls (Ticonderoga) from another large lake (Lake George), from which it was only a short canoe portage to a mighty river (the Hudson) that empties into the sea (the Atlantic Ocean), Champlain, accompanied by just two companions. Joined 60 native wanioi"s as they paddled south in 24 canoes that July. The trio of Frenchmen became the first Europeans to set foot in present-day New York state. Upon reacliing the giant lake the Indians had iold him of, the expedition's leader named it after himself. Incidentally, Champlain also gave us the first written account of a possible sighting of Champ, the lake's elusive legendary monster. From the description, it may have been a very' large gaipikc. Anticipating an encounter with the Iroquois, the Canadian Indians paddled their canoes at night to avoid detection. Nevertheless, at 10 p.m. on July 29, they bumped into a canoe-borne band oi about 200 Iroquois enemies from the

fearsome Mohawk tribe. Both sides began yelling at each other. The Canadian Indians clumped their canoes together offshore for the night, while the Mohawks withdrew to a camp ashore and began felling trees to erect a rough stockade. Champlain's allies sent out emissaries to inquire whether the Iroquois cared to do battle. The Mohawks indicated that they did, persuading the Canadians to wait until morning, since daylight would make it easier to tell friend fi^om foe. The Algonquin, Huron and Montagnai wamoi-s accompanying the Frenchmen stayed in their canoes, singing insulting songs about their foes. The Mohawks danced the night away. They were like two athletic teams getting psyched up for a big game. For the Indians, battle was "half war, half sport," Bishop wi"ote. "It was a noble dance of death, a bloody ballet performed according to accepted rules." Come the morning, however, the harquebus-toting Frenchmen, who were kept hidden fiom the Mohawks, would shatter those woodland warrior luies of etiquette forever. Historians disagree about where exactly this baptismal battle between Europeans and the Iroquois took place. Some think the site might have been Crown Point on Lake Champlain. However, archaeological evidence—and some understandable sentiment—favors the belief that theii' inaugural brush with destiny took place on the very same lake peninsula that would give rise to the Fort Ticonderoga of future ware. "Some spots on this earth seem destined to be battlefields," Bishop reasoned. "They smell of blood." The next morning, July 30, Champlain prepared to do battle by loading a charge with four balls into his harquebus, a heavy but portable matchlock musket. His attire included a thick leather buff coat, a burgonet-style helmet, an iron breastplate and a backplate. Amiored and ready, he went ashore with his allies. Their landing was not opposed by the Mohawks—that wouldn't have been sporting. Keeping the three Frenchmen and their harquebuses out of sight, the Canadian Indians an ayed themselves in battle formation. They were outnumbered more than 3-to-l by the Mohawks, who filed out of their stockade like solemn Spartans at the appointed time. The Indians' weapons included bows and an ows, clubs and shields made of cotton

ihj'ead woven together with wood. Champlain later recalled that the dignified Iroquois were led by three "chiefs," actually war captains, who were distingiaishable by the large feathered plumes on their heads. Champlain remained with the main force while the other two Frenchmen hid in some flanking woods with a few of their allies. The rest of the warriors started to call loudly for Champlain. Their lines parted ranks to make way, and out stepped the Frenchman—a strange armored apparition to the eyes of the astonished Mohawks. From the Iroquois perspective, it was as if Captain James T. Kirk had suddenly beamed down from the starship Enterprise for a first contact with the startled people of a Stone Age planet. Alone, the Frenchman marched forward until he was within 30 yards of the Mohawks. For a moment, Champlain just looked them over while they stared at him, trying to figure out what he was. •'When I saw them make a move to draw their bows upon us," Champlain wrote, "I took aim with my harquebus and shot straight at one of the three cliiefs, and with this one shot two fell to the: ground, and one of their companions who was wounded died thereof a little laler." The air began to fill with shouts and with arrows shot by both sides. The Mohawks, whose cotton shields were proof against arrows, could not understand how the stranger could kill their leaders so easily. Champlain was still reloading when one of his French companions hidden in the woods fired a second blast. That did it. With their leaders dead and strange waniors booming thunder at them from an unknown weapon, the Mohawks lost heart and took flight. Some 15 to 16 of the Canadian Indians were struck by Mohawk arrows, but their minor wounds would heal swiftly. There would be neither pursuit of the defeated foe nor exploration farther south for Champlain. His allies had proved their \ alor and captured a dozen or so prisoners to torture for their amusement. They were satisfied and ready to go home. Within three houi^ the Canadian Indians had gathered up com and shields abandoned by their enemies and headed north. Traveling with a Montagnais band, Champlain was back in Quebec in just a few days. Neutrality in the Indian wars would have been ideal, but it was never a viable option for Champlain. The battle, how-

ever, precluded his venturing farther south. It is not hard to imagine the twist in history if the French flag had been flying over Manhattan Island just two months later, when Henry Hudson's Half Moon sailed into New York coastal waters. Instead, he sailed right up the river that bears his name to a point just north of what is now Albany. For the next several generations, that river would be the most hotly contested w^aterway in North America. THE MOHAWKS and their Iroquois brethren never forgot those fateful events of July 30, 1609. They embarked on a never-ending quest to avenge the trio of slain war captains and their honor Ditching their obsolete shields, the forest warriors developed new tactics based on surprise and raiding. There would be no more courtly battles between groups of massed warriors in close-order ranks. An arms race erupted, with every Indian hoping to gain possession of a "thunder tube" like Champlain's weapon. In addition to earning the undying enmity of the Iroquois, Champlain had the bad luck to cast his lot with the losing side. The Iroquois were superior warriors and better oi^anized than their Canadian counterparts. Mostly siding with the Dutch and later the British, the Iroquois were destined to nearly exterminate the Hurons and relentlessly harry the Algonquins and the French. Champlain fought the Five Nations at least twice more, continued to search for the Northwest Passage and made the perilous Atlantic crossing a total of 22 times. He worked tirelessly to promote the colonization of New France, but in 1629 a flotilla of English privateers led by the Kirke brothers and carrying hundreds of men attacked Quebec. In all of New France—Canada and Acadia combined— there were only 107 settlers to oppose them. Outgunned and outnumbered, Champlain had no choice but to capitulate and was held prisoner in England until 1632. New France was finally returned to France by treaty, and he was able to return to Canada in 1633. Champlain was governor of the colony when he died at Quebec on Christmas Day 1635. Champlain had successfully created and maintained a North American base for a French empire. However, his actions also helped set in motion tides of history that would spell its doom in 1763, when it was annexed by the British at the end of the French and Indian Wai: MH

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NO\/EMBER2G05 MILITARY HISTOKY 2)

Heroic Last Stand for

POLISH INDEPENDENCE

Having helped the United States achieve independence, in 1794 Tadeusz Kosciuszko turned his martial talents to defending his native Poland against three powerful, threatening European neighbors. BY MAHHEW R. LAMOTHE

22 MILITARY HISTORV NOVEMBER 2005

The Vows of Tadeusz Kosciuszko In the Main Market Square in

Krakow, as depicted by Micha! Stachowicz, made official Poland's war against the three powers that were partitioning it.

I

N 1794 POLISH PATRIOTS led by a hero ol the American Revolution, Tadeus/ Kosciuszko, rose up and fought the ihrec most pt^werful kingdoms in Central Europe. At stake was Poland's existence as a nation. At the beginning of the 18th century, Poland was one of the largest nations in Europe. Yet its political system left it vulnerable to foreign interference. In the second half of the century, Poland began a rapid decline. In 1772 rival powers Austria, Prussia and Russia agreed lo partition some of Poland's terri-

tory between them. Poland's reigning—but barely ruling—King Stanislaw II Augustus Poniatowski (1732-98) was helpless to slop them. In 1793, responding to fears about Polish resurgence, the three powers partitioned the hapless country again. The winter of 1793-94 brought miserv' to what was left of Poland. The people were angry and looking for ways to deal with their imminent assimilation within their three larger neighbors. Wealthy Poles emigrated to Austria, France and Saxony. The cities were getting hungry. Poland was forced to support 40,000 foreign soldiers on occupation duty within her borders. Six banks in Warsaw, the Polish capital, collapsed. Poles who had sided with Russia formed the Confederation of Targowice, which benefited from the favor of Tsarina Catherine Ii the Great (1729-96). Suffering Poles developed an intense hatred toward members of the confederation. Patriotic Poles began to plan an uprising against King Stanislaw and the confederation, largely inspired by the French Revolution. As they saw it, France was also bordered by monarchies, yet its citizen soldiers had managed to fend off their invading armies. If the French Republic could survive, why not a Polish one? The main leader of the conspirators was Lt. Gen. Tadeusz Kosciuszko (1746-1817), whose dedication to Polish liberty had largely been inspired by the American Revolution. Although he had received military' training in Poland and France, Kosciuszko could not afford to buy a commission in Poland's army, so he had joined a contingent of French volunteers who fought for American independence. In 1777 Colonel Kosciuszko sei-ved as chief engineer for Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates at the Battle of Saratoga. He also directed the fortification of West Point, later to become the U.S. Military Academy. After the war, he returned to Poland and took up farming. Following the Second Partition, Kosciuszko went into exile in Saxony, where he joined Polish emigres planning for a national rising against the powei^ oppressing their homeland. Initially, he planned for uprisings to begin in Poland's outer provinces to distract the Russian army. While the Russians tried to put those down, Kosciuszko would assemble and concentrate his forces for a general rising. Tsarina Catherine smelled revolution brewing, however, and acted quickly to stop it. She ordered all those under suspicion arrested. In February 1794, she ordered her ambassador to Poland, General Osip, Baron Igelstrom, to reduce the size of the standing Polish army. In March Igelstrom ordered the Polish army reduced to 15,000 men. That action only fueled the revolutionary undercuo'ent, however, as masses of unemployed soldiers wandered around Poland looking for something to do. Most of these new civilians drifted into Warsaw; turning the city into a tinderbox. Igelstrom responded with more arrests. NOVEMBER 2005 ManAR\" HISTORY 23

Left: Ineffectual ruler King Stanislaw II Augustus Poniatowski did nothing to stop the partition of Poland. Right: Kosciuszko orders his peasant soldiers forward at Raclawice, in a detail from a painting by Wojciech Kossak and Jan Styka.

The Polish emigres, meanwhile, got wind of Russian plans. Kosciuszko knew he had to take control of the Polish army before it was rendered completely useless, but events overtook him. When General Igelstrom ordered Brig. Gen. Antoni Madalinski to demobihze his brigade on March 12, Madalinski refused. King Stanislaw intervened, pleading with Madalinski to avoid bloodshed. Disregai'ding the king as well, Madalinski took his brigade to Krakow and secured that city. Volunteers started running to Krakow to join this resistance to Russian domination. Stanislaw tried to convince Catherine that this act of disobedience was unimportant, at the same time begging citizens of Warsaw not to join Madalinski's rebellion.

K

OSCIUSZKO REALIZED that the revolution had begun. The emigres began to infiltrate back into Poland. On March 23, Kosciuszko entered Krakow to take charge of the situation and appointed Maj. Gen. Stanislaw Fiszer, an officer who enjoyed good relations with the enHsted men, as his aide-de-camp. On March 24, 1794, Kosciuszko began the day with a moming Mass, and a piiest blessed his sword. He then went to the market square and read a statement to the populace called the "Act of Insuirection of the Citizens and Inhabitants of Krakow." Dressed in national costume with a feather in his cap, he took the following oath: "I, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, swear before God and to the whole Polish Nation, that I shall employ the authority vested in me for the integrity of the frontiers, for gaining 24 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

national self-rule and for foundation of general liberty, and not for private benefit. So help me God." Patriotic fervor swept through Ki-akow. Following Kosciuszko's example, the people swore to "free the country from sliameful oppression and the foreign yoke, or to perish and be buried in the ruins." Kosciuszko was now the dictator of Poland. He gave the rebellion the slogan "Liberty; Integrity, and Independence" and called on ever\ citizen ofthe old commonwealth to rise up for the cause of Poland's freedom. Despite the tide of patriotism in Krakow; this would not be an easy task. France's government had been able to call upon its citizens to defend the new republic. In Poland the citizens saw Kosciuszko's uprising as an insurrection led by the elite. The educated upper class' promises of freedom to the common man were met with suspicion. Kosciuszko would have to earn the tmst of the people he sought to liberate. The Polish army also posed a problem for Kosciuszko. The 27,000 men listed on its rolls were spread out at various posts. An area of the Ukraine where 14,000 Polish soldiers were stationed had been taken by Russia during the Second Partition. Some of those troops managed to get out to join Kosciuszko, but many were caught by Russian authorities and killed. As the 13 colonies had done before and during the American Revolution, Kosciuszko tried to form militias to support the regular army. He called peasants to arms in defense of the nation under the slogan "They feed and defend." He planned to use them in massed attacks, aJTned with scythes, or kosa in

Polish. The scythe was modified for combat by heating the blade, which was then bent upward to form a pike, and peasants, ov kosinierszy. became very adept at using this weapon. The army would cover their attacks with rifle and artillery fii'e. Kosciuszko called on all males between the ages of 18 and 40 to drill with pikes and scythes weekly. To show he was one of them, Kosciuszko himself donned a typical peasants coat as his unifonn. When the insurrection broke out, Catherine already had 29,000 soldiers inside Poland and an additional 30,000 deployed near the border. King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Piussia had 8,000 regulai^s deployed inside his Polish tenitories and sent 14.500 more soldiei's in as reinforcements. With these foi"ces. General Igelstrom tried to keep the insuirection localized. He filled Warsaw with Russian troops and ordered mass arrests. Meanwhile, Kosuiuszko had assembled a force of 4,000 arm\ regulai-s and 2,000 peasants, which he now led toward Wai*saw. On April 4, his path was blocked near the village of Raclawice by a Russian aiTny under Maj. Gen. Aleksandr P. Tormasov. Striking first, Tonnasov sent his troops at both Polish flanks, but the Poles managed to defend themselves against both onslaughts. Tomiasov sent another column around the Poles to encircle them. At that point Kosciuszko, wearing his peasant's coat, led 320 peasants aimed with scythes fonvard in a counterattack, covered by gunfire from the 6th Infantry Regiment. Biinging his American experience into play, he successfully hid his naiTow column o{ kosiuierszy in a gully as they made their way unnoticed toward the Russian artilleiy By the time the peasants buret out of the gully and lushed the remaining 200 to 300 yards to the Russian artillei^y emplacements, it was too late for the astonished Russians to respond effectively. In the violent melee that ensued. pea.sant soldier Wojciech Barios from the village of Rzedowice stopped one cannon fiom firing by placing his cap on the gun's fuse. Kosciuszko later ennobled Bartos on the field of battle for his braverv.

With his gunners cut dovm and his center broken, Tormasov tied the battlefield, leaving 11 cannons and a Cossack banner in Polish hands. News of Kosciuszko's remarkable first victory spread throughout Poland, providing the spark needed to get the insurrection going. On April 17, Warsaw rose up against its occupiers. A bloody fight ensued for 24 hours between the Polish citizens and the Russian ganison. General Igelstrom fled, leaving behind 4.000 Russian casualties and King Stanislaw unprotected. Without Russians tofight,the citizens of Wai^aw turned their attention to known and suspected membei's of the Confederation of Tai^owice. whom they regarded as traitors and sellouts. The crowd began rounding up people for exectition. An angry mob gathered at the Royal Palace and demanded that the king hand over any Targowicans under his protection. Those already in the mob's clutches were hanged. While Warsaw fell into anarchy, the rebellion spread. In the Lithuanian capital of Wilno. Colonel Jakub Jasinski led the citizens against the Russian gairison. which pn^mpdy evacuated the city. Inspired by the French Jacobins. Jasinski favored the overthrow of King Stanislaw as well as the dissolution of the Confederation of Tai^owice. He read an "Act of lnsutrection of the Lithuanian Nation" to the inhabitants and then, as in Wai^saw. he began rounding up and executing those he regarded as traitore to the Polish nation. On May 7, Kosciuszko, fresh from his victory at Raclawice, published the Manifesto ofPoloniec, which gave the peasants personal freedom and reduced their labor dues. By such measures, he hoped to promote equality among his countiTmen— and give the common man a reason to enlist and fight alongside him. Although it soon attracted Disuniates, Greek Orthodox Christians. Jews. Cossacks and Lithuanians to Kosciuszko's standard, the Manifesto ofPoloniec alienated some others. The landed gentry and the Catholic Church saw the manifesto as a threat to their wealth and gave it limited support at best. About

The Polish commander reviews his army of 4,000 soldiers and 2.000 peasant militiamen, in Kosciuszko at Raclawice, by Jan Matejko. Using the terrain to cover his men's advance, Kosciuszko won a stunning victory on April 4.1794. NOVEMBER 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 25

150.000 people heeded Kosciuszko's patriotic call, but all he could offer those new recruits was more scythes. Tsarina Catherine's reaction to the manifesto was to declare the insurrection to be Jacobin—the equivalent of a French Revolution on her doorstep. On May 24, Kosciuszko entered Warsaw and restored order. The insurrection's leaders formed a Supreme Counsel, which restored some fonn of government to Poland. Kosciuszko guaranteed Stanislaw's safety and agreed to inform the king of the coitnsel's decisions, but granted him no political influence. Next he moved to stop the public executions incited by the Jacobins. He ordered Jasinski to cease his activities in Wilno, but when Jasinski replied that he would rather "hang a hundred people, and save 6 million," Kosciuszko immediately sacked him. He did not want to be branded a Jacobin, but on the other hand he did not want to look as if he supported the king. He needed to be his own man. While all this political maneuvering was occurring, the rebellion spread to Volhynia. Lublin and Gdansk. Realizing a Russian backlash was coming, the new government took over the armaments industry. Aitillei-y production was increased, but the Poles' most critical shortage was in small arms. Tactics were based on the use of cavaliy, artillery strikes and human wave attacks by the kosinierszy. The four-cornered

cap was adopted as the headgear of the National Cavalry, thus giving it a link with the masses. All men between the ages of 18 and 28 were conscripted, nobles and commoners alike. Warsaw's Jewish population formed a brigade to defend the capital. Commanded by Colonel Berek Joselowicz. it was the fiist all-Jewish military unit formed since biblical times.

J

UNE SAW the Polish National Army trading blows with the invaders. On June 5, Kosciuszko led 14,000 Poles and 24 guns against General Vasily Denisov's outnumbered Russian force at Szczekociny, but his untrained peasants took too long foiming up for battle, wasting valuable time. The next day, Prussian forces under Friedrich Wilhelm 11 arrived and turned the tide, The Poles now faced 27,000 men and 124 guns. The outnumbered Polish artillery was silenced. Kosciuszko was slightly wounded, but managed to disengage and retreat to Warsaw, saving his armyfi-omcertain destruction. The Battle of Szczekociny was swiftly followed by further proof that elan w ithout training would not be enough to prevail against regular professional armies. On June 8, the Jacobinleaning Lt. Gen. Jozef Zajaczck and his chief of staff. Colonel Karol Kniaziewicz, led 10,000 men armed with scythes against Russian Lt. Gen. Otto W.K. Derfelden at Chelm and was defeated. On June 15. Krakow, the cradle of the insiurection, fell to the Pmssians. On June 20. however. Michal Wielhorski, leader of Polish forces in Lithuania, managed to defeat Russian Maj. Gen. Bogdan F. Knoiring. The Pmssian capture of Krakow alarmed Kaiser Francis of Austria, who felt that King Friedrich Wilhelm was getting too powerful in Poland. The Austrians had also just lost teniton' in the Netherlands, and Francis decided it was ^ time to exert Austrian influence in Poland. Catherine, also concerned about growing Prussian power, encouraged Francis to intervene. Francis sent his aimies into Poland and occupied Lublin and Sandomierz. The Poles fell back on Warsaw as they suffered more and more defeats. On July 22. a 40.000-man Russo-Pi"ussian army armed with 235 cannons encircled the Poles, led by General Zajaczek, within their capital. As fortune turned against them, the citizens of Warsaw began hanging suspected traitors again. Kosciuszko arrested the lingleaders and had them hanged in turn. He knew he could not effectively defend the capital with a lynch mob roaming among his men. As he had done at Saratoga and West Point, Kosciuszko expertly fortified the city for the siege. Its gaixison consisted of 26,000 poorly armed men with 230 cannons, but Kosciuszko's engineering expertise made up for being outnumbered. On August 2, the Prussian king called on Warsaw to sun ender. Kosciuszko's answer was to

Newly promoted Russian Field Marshal Aleksandr V. Suvorov enters Warsaw on November 8. 1794. Organized resistance ceased on the 16th. 26 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

thousand Poles tried to bar Suvorov from Warsaw at Krupczyce on September 17 and at Terespol on the 19th, but in both battles he simply baished them aside. More bad news for the Poles followed. Generals Derfelden and Knorring had taken Wilno on August 12. Lithuania was back under Russian control. Realizing the insurrection was in danger, Kosciuszko immediately recalled Dabrowski to Warsaw. Once their two forces were combined, he planned to sally out from the capital and rout the retiring Russian army before Suvorov arrived to reinforce it. As soon as Kosciuszko departed Warsaw, however, the Jacobins took control once more, and hangings resumed in the streets. Kosciuszko was in command of 7,000 ill-tmined men. Changing horses repeatedly, he personally covered 120 kilometers in 11 hours. Once he reached Maciejowice, where the Russians were trying to cross the Vistula Rivei, he developed his plan. As his forces came up for battle. Kosciuszko sent a messenger to Maj. Gen. Adam Poninski, whose division was four miles away, with orders to join him. The Russians captured the messenger, N THE SURFACE, things looked better for the Poles. and Kosciuszko, realizing his message had not reached PoninIn reality, Catherine^^verjoyed that her rival, Fried- ski, dispatched another rider This one made it, but six precious rich Wilhelm, was having so many problems—took ad- hours had been lost and Poninski never did join him. vantage of the Prussian setback to strengthen her own position. On October 10, General Ferzen realized that Kosciuszko had She planned to take Warsaw by herself. caught up with him before he could link up with Suvorov as Her first move was to secure a neutrality treaty from the Otto- planned. Kosciuszko held the high ground, thinking his rear man Empire, with which Russia had been in constant conflict. would be protected by marshy teii'ain on his right flank. Ferzen, Once the southern borders were thus secured, the tsarina or- however, had numerical superiority and decided to attack the dered her most brilliant and experienced commander, General Poles. The ensuing battle lasted eight bloody hoitrs. Ferzen sufAleksandr V. Suvorov, to disengage from the Turkish front and fered horrific losses, but knowing that a battle of attrition famarch on Poland. Moving with characteristic speed, he arrived vored him, he just refilled his ranks with his reserves. Ferzen's at Brzescon the Bug River on September 15, with 8,000 veteran troops also managed to cross the swampy terrain that Kosciuszko had hoped protected his rear and crushed the Polish Russian soldiers. The Poles reacted as fast as they could to this new threat. Ten right wing. Kosciuszko's Poles fought valiantly, their com. __ mander himself having three horses killed under him. When therightflank was turned, however, part of Kosciuszko's cavalry retreated. He rode up, trying to rally them, but a Cossack patrol attacked the Poles as they tried to regroup. Kosciuszko suffered a saber stroke to the head during the skirmish and was unhorsed. With their commander down, the Poles fled. The Russians took the unconscious Kosciuszko prisoner. When he regained consciousness, he said, "Jam Kosciuszko wody." He was asking for water. The Russians later said that Kosciuszko yelled "Finis Polonia." Kosciuszko denied ever saying such a thing, but those two words aptly described the insurrection's future. Kosciuszko's aide-de-camp, Fiszer,

order a number of sorties against the Prussians and Russians. The siege continued. Unfortunately for Friedrich Wilhelm, on August 20, residents of Wielkopolska. lying between his army and Prussia, revolted. Cut off fi om his capital at Berlin, the king abandoned the siege on September 6 to put down the rebellion in Wielkopolska. Ever daring, Kosciuszko sent General Jan Henryk Dabrowski in pursuit of Friediich Wilhelm s army, to give the Prussians further grief. After meeting and defeating the Prussians at Wilkowiszki on September 23 and then forcing the sun'ender of the fortress at Bydgoszcz on October 2, Dabrowski had the guts to continue into Pixissian-held Pomerania itself. For the next six weeks, he led a larger but less-mobile Prussian army of 30,000 on a wild goose chase. With the Prussians diverted from the siege of Warsaw; the Russian corps, under Lt. Gen. Ivan E. Ferzen, also abandoned it and withdrew. Kosciuszko had won a remarkable victory.

O

& •

f^

Overwhelmed by Lt Gen. Ivan E Ferzen's army at fVlaoiejowice on October 10, Kosciuszko had three horses shot from under him before being wounded by a Cossack's saber. NOVEMBER 2005 MILITAHV HISTORY 27

The wounded Kosciuszko refuses Tsarina Catherine ll's offer to return his sword. By the time he was freed by Tsar Paul 1. Poland had vanished from the map of Europe.

I ler reply was equally brief and to the point: "Huirah... f^ield Marshal...Catherine." On November 8, Warsaw. the center of resistance, fell to the newly promoted Field Maishal Suvorov. and the Russians paraded through the streets to the ciies of "Long live Catherine!" The citizens feared another massacre. The ganison commander, Maj. Gen. Ludwik Kaminiencki, evacu•& ated his men. Rumors im1 mediately arose that he had Z indulged in secret negotiaI tions with the Russians. But " Wawrzecki had ordered the military evacuation because he wanted to spare Warsaw more horrors. had also been wounded, and he—along with the commander ofthe left wing, Maj. Gen. Kniaziewicz—followed his leader into On November 16, Wawrzecki was surrounded and gave up captivity. Two thousand surviving Poles retreated to Warsaw. A thefight.The next day Dabrowski and Kosciuszko signed an act Russian officer bnjught the news of the defeat to King Stanislaw. of suirendcr to Suvorov. King Stanislaw was alone in his capicarrying a pass signed by Kosciuszko to prove that the leader of tal. On Catherine's orders, he was sent to Grodno, where he abthe insuirection was indeed a prisoner. General Feizen informed dicated his throne. The remaining areas of his kingdom were Stanislaw that he was the only legitimate leader in Poland, then divided up between Austria, Prussia and Russia. demanded the release of all Russian prisoners of war. Instead of obeying, the king suggested an exchange of prisoners. WO YEARS after the disappearance of Poland, Catherine The Poles in Warsaw still refused to recognize the king's the Great died. Her son and successor. Tsar Paul I, freed authority. The Supreme Counsel elected Tomasz Wawr/ecki as Kosciuszko and all the other Polish prisoner—under the their new leader Even as the Poles squabbled. Suvorov was ap- condition that they never return to Russian-occupied (enitoproaching Warsaw. Rather than seek winter" quarters and pi o- ries. After revisiting the United States in 1797 and living for 16 long the war. he decided to storm the capital without delay. years in France, Kosciuszko died in Switzerland in 1817. Poland Stanislaw, unwilling to be accused by his people of defeatism, would not reemerge as a nation until after the end of World encouraged them to defend their capital. The gairison had for- War I. tified the suburb of Praga. but it was separated from Warsaw Kosciuszko had been unable to unite Poland. The Jacobins by the Vistula River. Suvorov therefore made that area the focal and the gentiy had undermined his efforts. After its resurt^ecpoint of his attack. tion in 1918, however, the nation as a whole recognized his effort At dawn on November 4, Russian Cossacks struck and rolled toward that belatedly realized goal, and he has since become right over the Poles. Praga fell, and 20,000 men were lost in the one of Poland's greatest heroes. Today when \isitoi"s enter helter-skelter retreat to Warsaw. Many of them drowned in the Wawei Castle in Ki'akow. the burial place of Polish royalty, they Vistula, and 10.000 went into captivity. Jasinski. the Jacobin are greeted by a statue of Kosciuszko, waving his cap and ralfrom Wilno. was killed in the assault, and the ganison com- lying his troops while mounted on a Yiorse. Inside the castle they mander. General Zajaczek, fell wounded. At a cost of relatively can see Kosciuszko's casket, with reliefs of peasant scythes minor losses, Suvorov had secured a foothold in the city while carved into its base. It seems only fitting that Poland's greatest wiping out more of the Polish leadership. patriot is buried alongside Polish royalty MH The Russian troops were interested only in revenge for the massacre the Poles had indicted on them in Warsaw back in A member of the U.S. Army since 1989, Matthew R. Lamothe April. Praga's streets ran red with the blood of women, children. ser\'ed in Operation Joint Endeavor in Bosnia and Herzegovina priests and nuns. Appalled by the atrocities. Suvorov tried to in 1996. For further reading, he recommends: The Last King of regain control of his men late that day. He also sent a message Poland, by Adam Zamoyski; and Thaddeus Kosciuszko: The is progress to the tsarina: "Hun^ah.. .Pj-aga.. .Suvorov:" Purest Son of Liberty, bv James Pida.

T

28 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

Medic! From the Argonne to Saigon, battlefield medics were a wounded soldier's lifeline. By Christine M. Kreiser

said the officer, and even as we were doing so something jabbed my hand. It dropped down and blood spurted out. The others had gone. 1 was alone....From the pillbox, hidden somewhere about.. .a couple of bits of lead whistled. I crawled into an enormous shell hole and began to sink into mud. With the slime clinging to me 1 got away, through the bottom of a hedge which, by the grace of God, had remained there. No one to be seen now and my head facing 1 knew not where....Not far away a tank, half embedded, was getting it full tilt. The sweat stood on my dirty face. And then in ihat great expanse of mud and wire I spotted a little red cross on a little flag, sticking eighteen inches out of the ground. I felt safe again." Private Alfred Willcox, Royal Sussex Regiment, was just one of the 310,000 casualties sustained by the British Expeditionar\' Force (BEF) during ihe Third Battle of Ypres. a controversial campaign that dragged on from July 1917 until Passchendaele fell to the Allies in November. For Willcox and millions like him, the "little red cross on a little flag" meant the difference between life and death. It was the emblem of the medical corps—the stretcher-bearers, orderlies, doctors, nurses and many others who often risked their own lives to care for the wounded. Medical treatment for battle injuries is as old as warfare itself. It is discussed in ancient Egyptian surgical texts from 3000 BC. Greek physician Hippocrates {ca. 460-377 BC), for whom the doctor's Hippocratic Oath is named, advised his disciples, "He who would become a surgeon, let him join an arniy and follow it." Humanitarian considerations aside, the need to conserve trained fighting men by caring for their wounds has made sense for millennia, but treating those casualties on the front lines is a relatively recent de-

IVlembers of the Royal Army Medical Corps attend to wounded men in a British trench during World War I. Amid all its miseries-and largely because of them-the war saw major advances in field medicine. NOVEMBER 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 31

velopment. In the West, Queen Isabella is usually credited with the creation of field hospitals; during the reconquest of Spain from Muslim rule in the 1480s she provided medical tents for her wounded soldiers. (Given that Islamic medicine at the time was greatl> advanced compared to that of Europe, some have suggested that Isabella got the idea from the Moors.) The use of military hospitals and even mobile field hospitals caught on slowly. The English, for example, did not establish field hospitals until King William Ill's bloody trek through Ireland in 1690. Modem military medical practice owes much to Napoleon Bonaparte's chief surgeon, Dominique Jean Larrey. Larrey's greatest contribution was the flying ambulance—a horsendrawn wagon that evacuated wounded from the battlefield, so that they could be tended to farther behind the lines. His use of triage— treating the wounded according to the severity of their injuries instead of by rank—was considered quite radical at the time; today it is standard operating procedure. Lairey was also a proponent of immediately amputating a damaged limb rather than

waiting until it became gangrenous, at which point it was usually far too late to save the limb or the life. Military medical care followed the same pattern for more than a century. Stretcher-bearers wotild remove the wounded from the field and take them to a dressing station located just out of range of enemy small-aiTns fire and equipped with the barest essentials. In the American Civil War, for example, that included bandages, chloroform (ii it was available), moiphine, opium and whiskey. The surgeon's task was to stop the bleeding and prevent shock until the wounded troops could be moved farther behind the lines for treatment in a field hospital Over time, this basic method of evacuating the wounded and providing care developed into a remarkably efficient system. In the early 1900s, the Medical Department of the U.S. Army and the British army's RoyEil Army Medical Corps (RAMC) were probably the best-prepared military medical outfits in the world. Both armies had learned harsh lessons about the importance of quality medical care during the Spanish-American and Anglo-Boer wars, in which the Americans and the British respectively lost more soldiers to typhoid than to combat. They entered the 20th century determined to attract quality medical professionals to military service and to enforce basic hygiene and other preventive measures among the troops. Nothing, however, could prepare them for the catastrophe that awaited as the world rushed headlong toward 1914. World War I produced horrors the likes of which had never been seen. Some 65 million troops were mobilized by the Allies and Central Powers; more than 37 million—approximately 57 percent—were coimted among

Left: Staff members lay out their equipment at a Union surgeon's tent at Gettysburg in July 1863. Below: The horse-drawn ambulance of the American Civil War had its origins in the Napoleonic wars.

32 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

A U.;> .::.: • . , ,,iii iJiuvides wntci fui u vvoundci:! Marine on Guam in July 1944. Due to the faster pace of operations during World War II, medical personnel became an integral component of all combat units.

the dead, wounded or missing at war's end. Treating tbose casualties was a gargantuan task, and the work of the RAMC serves as a good example of life on the Western Front. The RAMC established three working zones: the collecting zone (that closest to the battleBeld where the wounded were taken first); the evacuating zone (located along lines of communication with vehicles to transport the wounded to the rear); and the distributing zone (the location of more permanent structures such as base hospitals). The regimental medical officer (MO) was thefii"stCRicial link in this chain. His aid post was situated witbin yards of tbe main fighting trench, but if thefighting—orwound—was such that a soldier could not be moved, the MO attended casualties in the trench itself. Fighting trenches measured approximately 2 feet wide at tbe bottom, 4 feet wide at the top and 6 feet deep. Firesteps were dug into trench walls about a foot off the ground where slretchere could be placet! out of tbe way of fighting men. In waterlogged trenches, v\ bich were common, thefire-stepalso

kept the wounded dry. The cmmped qtiarters made maneuvering stretchers difficult, to say tbe least; sometimes tbey had to be carried over open ground. Generally tbese removals took place under cover of darkne.ss unless tbe nature of tbe wound was so critical that tbe soldier had to be moved under fire at whatever cost to the stretcher-bearers and tbe soldier bimself. (Stretcher-bearers suffered e.xtremely high casualty rates, and the RAMC is tbe only component in tbe British army lo have had two members awarded double Victoria Crosses.) At tbe regimental aid post, tbe first priority was to keep a wounded soldier wann and to prevent shock. His wounds were cleaned and bandages applied. Broken limbs were splinted. The patient might also be given a tetanus shot, as tbere was always the risk of infection. Dead tissue was cut away when the wound was cleaned, and the MO had to be extremely careful to remove any bits of clothing or other foreign matter that could turn a wound septic. Tben the soldier would be made as comfortable NOVEMBER 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 33

A Marine wounded on Namur in the Marshall Islands in January 1944 receives blood plasma. Plasma gave medics a valuable option when whole blood was unavailable.

as possible until a field ambulance could transfer him to a dressing station. Private Willcox was one ofthe walking wounded, a soldier who could get to the dressing station under his own steam. He might as well have found himself in a different univei"se: "f n the eaiiy hours of the morning I tumbled into an electrically lighted dug-out dressing station two miles from the fi'ont line where there were clean bandages and steaming tea. I fell at full length, motionless. Someone pressed drink to my lips." Triage was earned out at the dressing station, and the wounded were separated into three categories: those with less serious wounds that could be dressed and then sent on to the field hospital for further treatment; those requiring immediate emei^ency treatment; and the "hopeless cases" who were given palliative care, often in the form of morphine or chloroform. The field hospitals—or casualty clearing stations in the RAMC—were, in the words of a 1917 British Medical Association manual, "real hospitals, despite the fact that some are only about six miles from the fighting line.. ..The patients are nursed by trained women nurses; ordinary hospital beds are provided for the most severe cases; the operating theatres have usually four operating tables.. .electric light.. .and some have X-ray annexes of their own... .[CJlinical laboratory work is done for them by the mobile laboratories...." Casualty clearing stations (CCS) had the amenities of civilian hospitals, but the comparison ended there. Dr. John Hayward had 20 years' experience as a general practitioner and served a brief stint at a Red Cross hospital in England when he volunteered to go to France in 1918. Assigned as a surgeon to the CCS at Amiens, he was overwhelmed at first by the volume and the difficulty of the work: They come in such numbers that the tent is soonfilled.Many are white and cold, and lie still and make no respon.se, and those 34 MILITARY HISTORV NOVEMBER 2005

who do are laconic..,.! have had no instructions how to dispose of such numbers, or the method of procedure, but realize that they must be examined briefly and sorted, and sent to one or other of our hospital tents.... It was 7 a.m. before 1 had cleared the tent...but at 10 a.m. 1 should have to begin to operate for another twelve hours and on cases like these! It was extraordinary that in this chame! tent of pain and misen' there was silence, and no outward expression of moans or groans or complaints. The badly shocked had passed beyond it; others appeared numbed, or too tired to complain, or so exhausted that they slept as they stood.... 'Rcsuss' [resuscitation tent] was a dreadful place. Here were sent the shocked and collapsed and dying cases, not able to stand as yet an operation, but which might be possible after the warming-up under cradles in heated beds or transfiision of blood. The effect of transfusion was in some cases miraculous. I have seen men ali-eady like corpses, blanched and collapsed, pulseless and with just perceptible breathing, within two hours of transfusion sitting up in bed smoking, and exchanging jokes before they went to the operating table.... That dreadful day of my first experience of a C.C.S. msh ended.. .after thiity-six hours of continuous work, and somehow I had got through. 1 was completely exhausted with anxiety and fatigue, and fell I could never go on with it, and was not up to the task: but to give in was even more terrible. The ambulance drivers who transported the wounded in a steady flow from the aid post to the dressing station to the field hospital had their share of hairowing experiences. Speed was essential, but so was remembering that severely wounded men could not stand to be bounced around over roads pitted by countless bombardments. There were other hazards, too, as Leslie Buswell, an Ameiican volunteer, recalled in American Ambulance Field Service in France: About ten o'clock I had a call to go to Auberge St. Pierre for two seriously wounded, and when I arrived there, the medecin chef told me that if I got them to the hospital quickly, they would have a chance of living. So "No. 10" tooted off down the hill—at what the plain wanior would tenn—"a hell of a pace...." [0]n turning to go lo Dieulouard where we take the wounded 1 saw a huge shell explode two hundred metres down the road

I was to drive along. Had the ambulance been empty, or with only slightly wounded, I should have waited, of course, but under the circumstances my duty was to go on as fast as I could. I noticed ahead of me three large motor-trucks and the thought struck me: "What if those ai'e hit and contain ammunition." 1 was ten yards away when—bang!—1 was half blown out of my seat—a shell had landed on the motor-truck. Hardly believing I was not hit, I increased my pace and emerged from the smoke and blackness, going at a good clip, safe and sound, but shaken....[W]hen I arrived at Dieulouard, I noticed that everybody was pointing at my car. I suppo.sed it was because we looked so smoke-grimed....! then got down to discover what was troubling them. One of the poor fellows had thrown himself off the stretcher and all of his bandages had slipped and a trail of red was flowing from the car and leaving a pool on the ground.

Medical personnel also had to contend with more efficient—and therefore more deadly—weapons. Flamethrowers were introduced by the Germans and quickly adopted by the Allied forces. One automatic machine gun was reckoned to have the same firepower as 80 rifles. But perhaps nothing was as devastating as chemical warfare. The French first used tear gas in battle in 1914, but the Germans were the first to use a lethal agent when they launched an attack with chlorine gas in April 1915, at the Second Battle of Ypres. Harder to detect and potentially more dangerous than chlorine was mustard gas. Practically odorless, it had no immediate effects, but within hours of exposure, the gas caused severe intetTial and external blisters. It also contaminated the soil for weeks after its release. Steps were quickly taken to protect soldiers from gas attacks, and by the war's end, both sides employed highly effective respirators

were improvements in blood transfusions and the diagnostic use of X-rays. For the first time, the military addressed the psychological effects of war, as "sbell shock" accounted for a considerable number of casualties. The widespread use of reeonstiiictive surgery, orthopedic surgery and physical rehabilitation marked a turning point in preparing the veteran for postwar life. By the end of tbe war, it was well understood tbat tbe sooner a wounded soldier received treatment, tbe better his chances of survival. Aid posts in the trenches and motorized ambulances were a boon, but as the pace of life in general accelerated in the run-up to World War II, so did the means by whicb the military dealt with its wounded. Combat medics were incorporated into fighting units and went into battle to administer immediate care in the field under fire. Like the stretcher-bearers in

The 8225th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital displays its Ijfesaving equipment-jnciudmg a Bell H-13 Sioux helicopter, a type that evacuated 18,000 United Nations casualties during the Korean War.

with charcoal filters—a definite step fonvard from holding cotton pads dipped in a solution of bicarbonate of soda or urinesoaked cloths over the face. It was just another chapter in constantly evolving warfare.

World War I, combat medics suffered high casualty rates. World War II also usbei^ed in tbe era of sulfa drugs and penicillin to treat infections. Tbe synthetic antimalarial drug Atabrine was used extensively in the Pacific after the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies effectively cut off the quiThe battlefields ef World War I laid the foundations for tbe nine supply. A method to separate plasma from whole blood medical advances that were to follow in World War II, Korea was perfected in tbe 1930s, giving field medics a viable option and Vietnam. War has always served as a proving gtound for for stabilizing the wounded wben whole blood was unavailable. medical techniques that were later adapted to future military Moiphine, which had been used in field hospitals for decades, was now available in individual doses tbat could be injected imand civilian use. Among the most important developments during World War 1 mediately, bringing a measure of comfort until the wounded NOVEMBER 2005 MILnAKY HISTORY 35

It was April 14, 1968—Castleberry's 21st birthday—and a rocket-propelled grenade had just severed his right arm below the elbow and his left leg above the knee. Castleberry was doubting that he'd ever make 22 when he saw a "big green angel," a Bell UH-1 "Huey" helicopter bearing a red cross—the officially recognized symbol of ihe medical corps since the i 864 Geneva Convention— coming for him: For the rest of my life, I will never forget the whopping sound of the Huey's blades and the sight of the spotlight clearing the tree line. As the Paramedics load casualties suffered by the 101st Airborne Division on Hamburger Mm duuaiLl a Bell Huey got closer, I could see UH-lH "Huey" in May 1969. The medevac helicopter proved indispensable during the Vietnam War. sparks flying everywhere, as countless small-aiTns rounds hit the helicopter....! honestly could be evacuated from the field. Thanks to this progress, in thought the helicopter would be shot down, and we would World War II only 4.4 percent of those wounded died, compared all die. to 8.1 percent in World War I. But somehow, through all of the gunfire, they got in. I reMobility was the watchword of the post-World War II era. member seeing these beautiful angels pick me up and take me The U.S. Army experimented with various mobile medical faaboard. I remember the pinging of the bullets ripping through cilities before adopting the mobile army surgical hospital the skin of the Huey and bearing the crew excitedly, yet calmly, (MASH) lale in 1945. Used extensively for thefii-sttime in Korea, talking to one another Then I saw this face above me saying, MASH units were designed to move in response to the fight"Buddy, stay with me. Hey, Buddy, you are going to be all light." ing. The first thi'ee MASH units—8055lh, 8063rd and 8076th— Over and over again I would drift in and out of consciousness, moved 50 times between July and December 1950; the 8076th and all I can recall is this bloody face telling me I was going to alone admitted more than 5,000 patients as the battle for the make it.

Pusan perimeter raged fi om July to September. What made this all possible was aeromedical evacuation, perhaps ihe most significant technological development in 20thcentur> military medicine. World War I saw the limited use of airplanes to move the wounded, but thefieldprogressed rapidly. In World War II, the U.S. AiTny Air Forces modified a Douglas C-47 to carry 18 patients on stretchers in addition to medical technicians and nurses. Ar^ably the most revolutionary development was the medical evacuation, or medevac, helicopter, which became symbolic of the Korean and Vietnam wars. In terrain that was often inaccessible to ground transport, the medevac could carry surgeons into the field if necessary, as well as caiTy wounded out. By 1951, 60 to 80 percent of battle casualties were taken to field hospitals or other treatment facilities the same day they were wounded. In Vietnam it was possible for a wounded soldier to reach a hospital within two hours. It was a far cryftximWorld War I, the first industrialized war, when the journey from the trenches to the field hospital could take between 12 and 48 hours.

Mora than 50 years after Private Willcox stumbled into a dressing station in Ypres, Sergeant Fred Castleberry lay on a battlefield halfway around the world neai' Trang Bang, Vietnam. 36 MILITAKV HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

When I came to, this nurse asked me if I would like company.. ..Tbe entire dustoff crew was in the hospital with me. The guys that saved my life, the young boys that rescued me themselves bad been woimded. The blood on tbe air medic's face was not mine; il was bis. A bullet bad gone through his cbeek, and ratber tban tend to his own wounds, be kept me alive. CastlebeiTy testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Vet-

s' Affairs in July 2003 during a hearing to determine whether the criteria for awarding a Combat Medical Badge should be changed. Established in 1945, before the age of helicopters, the CMB has been given to ground personnel who provided medical aid in combat. A bill to create a Combat Medevac Badge to recognize helicopter pilots and crews passed the U.S. House of Representatives in May 2005. As of June 6, it had been refened to the Senate Armed Services Committee. MH For fiwlher reading, Military History senior editor Christine M. Kreiser recommends: Medics at War, hyJohn T. Greenwood and F. Clifton Bern' Jr.; Doc: Heroic Stories of Medics, Corpsmen, and Surgeons in Combat, by Mark R. Littleion and Charles "Chuck" Wright; Testament of Youth, by Vera Brittain; and Goodbve to All That, bv Robert Graves.

CAMPAIGN OF

'FALSEHOOD AND FAMINE

IN 13L9 SCOTLAND OPENED A NEW FRONT AGAINST ENGLAND WHEN ROBERT THE BRUCE'S BROTHER EDWARD INVADED IRELAND. By Gavin Hughes

38 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

n 1314 an unknown Irish annalist wrote of a momentous battle at a place called Srub Liath ("The Gray Point"), almost a world away in Scotland: "The flower of the English fell at the hands of Rc^bert Bmce in doing battle for the possession of Scotland, where many earls and knights and numberless other men were slain...." Srub Liath was, in fact, what is now called Stirling, and the battle had been fought on June 24 at nearby Bannockbum, where the Scots king, Robert I, or Robert the Bruce, won a decisive victory against the English king, Edward II. In the wake of that Scottish success, the Scots laid siege to Berwick and Carlisle.

AND HOMICIDE'

in February 1315, however, England's so-called Border Wars to dominate Scotland took an unforeseen turn. A Scottish exile and renegade, John of Argyll, had captured the Scots garrison on the Isle of Man and claimed it for Edward. Ai"gyll, a cousin of John Comyn the Red, whon"! Robert had killed in 1306, was a sworn enemy of the Bruces and had been present with Edward II at the siege of Benvick. Given the strategic importance of the Isle of Man, it soon became clear to King Robert that the English castles to the west, notably Carrickfergus in northern Ireland, were just as important as those in Berwick or Carlisle. Thus, he reasoned, invading Ireland would be a logical extension of (he Border Wars, because it posed equally as

English forces-including Sir Richard de Burgh, 2nd Earl of Ulster—meet disaster against King Robert the Bmce's Scots, in Battle ofBannockbum, by Mark Churms.

great a threat to Anglo-Norman rule as any war in northern England. It would strengthen the Scots' western flank and damage Edward ll's income, as he drew great levies from Ireland to pay for his Irish Sea fleets, defenses at home and wars abroad. By early 1315, Robert was in secret parley with chieftains and clans in Ulster and elsewhere in Ireland. Some chieftains— O'Neill, O'Connor, O'Brien and Sorley McDonnell of Antrim— NOVEMBER 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 39

immediately agreed to give their support to a Scottish army in Ireland, but it was clear that the impetus would come from Roberts highly trained veteran troops. These were to be commanded by Robert's only surviving brother, Edward, Lord of Galloway and Earl of Carrick. In past battles, Edward had developed a sterling reputation, and he was described by at least one contemporary as "braver than a leopard." Robert also thought him ambitious beyond his capabilities, which often led to tension between the two brothers. Archdeacon John Barbour, in his epic biography The Bruce, described Edward as "a mettlesome man, and would not dwell together with his brother in peace unless he had half the kingdom for himself." By appointing Edward lord-lieutenant, Robert provided his hotheaded brother an opportunity to carve a separate Scottish kingdom of his own, Afier securing Ulster, he would stiike swiftly into the southern counties held by AngloNorman lords, harass their armies, disrupt English control of the Irish Sea, tie up troops that would otherwise be used in Scotland to avenge Bannockbum, and ultimately force Edward II into signing a peace treaty. One of the most powerful Anglo-Norman lords with whom Edward would have to contend in Ireland was the 2nd Earl of Ulster, Richard de Bui^h, who held the mighty fortresses of Carrickfergus and Greencastle. Known as the Red Earl because of

KING ROBERT THOUGHT HIS BRAVE BUT HOTHEADED BROTHER AMBITIOUS BEYOND HIS CAPABILITIES. his ruddy face, de Bui^h was a staunch ally of King Edward, although his links with Scotland were also close. In 1304 Robert Bruce had mairied de Burghs daughter, Elizabeth, and those who envied the earl's power would constantly accuse him thereafter of having Scottish sympathies. All sides knew, however, that a Scottish conquest of Ireland would not succeed unless de Bui^h was ousted from Ulster. The importance that Robert placed on the venture was reflected in the distinguished list of knights and nobles accompanying Edward s army to Ireland, including Sir Philip Mowbray, Sir John Stewart and Fergus of Ardrossan. Perhaps the most militarily gifted among them was Sir Thomas Randolph. Earl of Moray, who was not only Robert and Edwards nephew but also a close adviser and confidant of the Scottish king. To assist in the passage of these knights and their men-atarms from Galloway to Antrim, certain Scottish pirates and ad-

Dispatched by his elder brother Robert to Ireland to establish a new Celtic kingdom of his own in 1315, Edward Bruce comes under attack by native Irish (upper right) and Norman-Irish warriors at Moyry Pass, in an illustration by Angus McBride, 40 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

The Battle of Connor left the Red Earl's besieged garrisons at CaiTickfergus and Greencastle completely isolated, with the only hope of relief coming from a regr"ouped attack by the Anglo-Norman military. Edward decided to take the campaign south by advancing into Leinster and defeating a combined Anglo-Norman anny under Roger de Mortimer at Kells on December 6, In less than eight months since its landing, the Scotn St. Augustine's Day, May 26, 1315, Edward BRice tish army had fractured the Anglo-Nonnan pro\inces, defeated sailed with 300 ships h'om A\T, in Galloway, landing their most prominent commander's and reached within miles 6,000 men at Lame on the Antrim coast. Just weeks of Dublin Castle. The year closed with Edward setting up his alter the landing, Edward had already seized all of Antrim and forward position at Ballvmore Loughsewdy in Leitrim, where Down, and as The Annals of Connacht recorded, "his warlike he celebrated Christmas, Meanwhile, his Norman enemies reslaughtering army caused the whole of Ireland to tremble.,,." treated to their strongholds and prepared for the next year's Resistance initially came fiom the minor Norman genti>, but campaigning season. this disintegrated once de Burghs garrison troops had withThe first campaign of the Irish Wars had been a definite Scotdrawn to their castles. Inevitably the Scots surrounded Car- tish \ictor\'—but the warfare had been unforgiving. Between rickfergus, the treasury of de Burgh's earldom and the center of the opposing armies, they had, noted The Annals, "spared not Norman authority in Ulster, and its caretaker. Sir Henry de saint nor shrine, however sacred, nor churchman, nor layman, Thrapston, After stationing a besieging force outside the town nor sanctuary...." The Annals concluded that 1315 in Ireland walls of Canickfergus, Edward continued southward, sacking had been noteworthy primarily for "very many deaths, famine the ganison town of Dundalk and razing Ai"dee to the ground. and many str^ange diseases, murders and intolerable storms as Within a matter of months, The Annals of Connacht con- well." The campaigns to follow would bring more of the same. tinued, Edward had effectively gained "lordship of the whole Suiprisingly, the next campaign season began only a few province without opposition, and the Ulstennen consented to months later, and some scholars suggest that this was an ophis being proclaimed King of Ireland, and all the Gaels of Ire- portunistic response to Thomas Dun's raid on Holyhead, North land agreed to grant him lordship and they called him King of Wales, in September 1315. The campaign may even have been Ireland." His position was secured once the Gael kings of Meath, part of a speculative attempt to forge a Celtic alliance between Leinster, Munster, Thomond, Desmond, Uriel, Connaught and Scotland and Wales, of the sort Robert and Edwar d had invited the powerful Donal O'Neill of Tyrone acknowledged Edward of the Irish that year. Wales would certainly have been a valuBruce as ardiigh (high king of Ireland). able campaign front, as the Norman castles in Gwynedd relied Soon Scottish forces were dominating as far south as Meath and Kildare, with Ormond Butler and de Burgh floundering Eoiward Bruce badly in an attempt to organize their annics and lead them in Ireland northwai'd. Yet Edward felt that his lines of supply were overextended, and on Donal O'Neill's advice, he withdrew to his power base in Ulster. Richard de Burgh, declining Butler's offers of assistance, pushed northward with his own army. The Red Earl pursued Edward as fai' north as Coleraine, There, each arm\ stood on opposite sides of the Bann River, but they were unable to join battle because Edward had previously destroyed the bridge outside Coleraine to hinder de Burgh's progress. In spite of that, states The Amials, the Red Earl kept himself "opposite Edward and the Ulstennen...and between them they left neither wood nor lea, nor com nor crop, nor stead nor bam nor church, but fired and burnt them all." Eventually, on September 10, 1315, Edward Bruce defeated dc Burgh's forces at Connor, ousting the earl of Ulster from his own territory and forcing him to ixtreat to Drogheda. The Scottish victory at Connor also began to crack the support de Burgh had been receiving from his Irish allies—all of whom were now exiled or defeated lords or clan kings of one shade or another. It is reported that McDermot, king of Roscommon, was "ashamed" upon aniving at the ear! of Ulster's quarters at Dr'ogheda and finding none there but dishonor'ed and deposed kings. According to The Annals, he was so disgusted that he vowed that he would never again be seen with any of them— and that he would "go by his own action into his own teriitoiy, Between 1315 and 1318, Edward Bruce ventured south to as fortune might grant him." This he did, eventually making consolidate his power in Ireland, but thrice had to retire north to peace with Edward's allies there. seek security during the winter months. venturers were employed. The most noted of these were Thomas Dun (possibly an UlsteiTnan called Thomas of Down) and Angus Og MacDonald. MacDonald was the most powerful noble in the Western Isles, and his fleet was known in Ulster by the ominous name of the "Black Galleys," They completely dominated the northern channel of the Irish Sea.

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An engraving by William Henry Bartlett of Carrickfergus Castle, treasury and linchpin of Richard de Burgh's power in Ulster until Edward Bruce finally took it in September 1316.

upon the Isle of Man for security, and the isle depended upon the castle ports of northern Ireland. The Welsh aspect aside, Edward Bruce, as a cavalryman. would certainly have known the disadvantages of a midwinter campaign for the Anglo-Norman armies, whose mounted knights could not be used to their full capabilities if the terrain was wet or sodden underfoot. With depleted resoiu ces, Edward seems to have favored a strategy of targeting and destroying specific Anglo-Norman armies. Instead of attacking Dublin directly, he circumvented the capital and di'ew one of the largest Anglo-Noiman forces, under the royal governor, into following him south. On January 26, Bruce caught Edmund Butler completely off guard at Athy (Ardscull). where Butler's massed armored cavahy chai-ge floundered in the wet winter weather and was demolished by the Scottish pikemen. MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

With Butlei's aiTny routed and scattered, Edward wished to lay siege to Dublin, but once again lack of supplies compelled him lo move back to Ulster. This could also have been the indirect result of the failed Welsh rebellion of Llywelyn Bren in Glamorgan that February, for if Edward was moving south for the launch of a possible invasion of Wales, a preestablished bridgehead there would have been useful.

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ince the winter of 1315 a famine had gripped Ireland, as it had swept continental Eiiiope the year before, forcing both sides to depend on areas where food had been stored. As a consequence, Edward, knowing that the aimies south of him were in no state to attack, decided to consolidate his gains in Ulster. Keeping Canickfergus under siege, Bmce attacked, breached and captured the fortress at Greencastle, slaughtering the English troops within. He then installed his own garrison there under the command of an Ulster-Scots noble, Robert of Coiei-aine, to guard and keep the sea ixjutc open for Dun and MacDonald. By Easter, Canickfergus' defenders were in desperate straits.

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As a last hope. Sir Thomas de Mandeville fit of pique, he sacked both the monastery and the walled catheled a relief force that he gathered from dral town before progressing thi"ough the mountains of Mourne Drogheda and sailed into Belfast Lough. and eventually halting in Dundalk. The famine exacerbated the On Easter Mandeville attacked the be- harsh conditions throughout the campaign, and the Land sieging Scottish force within the town Annals record, perhaps allegorically, the effects of the scarcity and by St. Nicholas's Church, but in so of food upon the Scots: "[They were ] so destroyed with hunger^ doing created a serious breach in the that they raised the bodies of the dead from the cemeteries...." town wall. The Battle of Carrickfergus The impending arrival of another Scottish army threw Dirblin ended disastrously for the Anglo-Norman into panic, and such was the suspicion and fear in the capital garrison—Sir Thomas was killed, and the that Richard de Burgh, who had been wintering there, was arScottish army secured the town and rested on the grounds of possible sympathy with the Scottish tightened its stranglehold on the castle. cause. As the Bruces neared Dublin, the citizens retreated within The zeal that had spurred Bruce its walls and burned down their own suburbs in an attempt to onward to Meath and Kildare in 1315 was deny the Scots food or shelter. Although spring was approachdissipating into a concern to ensure his ing fast, the Scots still did not have the logistical support to susposition as undisputed high king of Ire- tain a siege. In early May, primarily in response to the famine, land by the following year. The Scots had the BiTJces turned back toward Ulster. It was the last time that been inadvertently dravm into the O'Con- a Scottish army would be so close to Dublin. chobhair civil wars in the west, and deWhile Edward Bmce still claimed to be high king of Ireland, spite the support of their Irish allies, they it was now a hollow title. The support from his Irish kings and seriously doubted the integrity of their hit nobles had dwindled as the famine had raged, and left him virand mn tactics. As Barbour commented, tually alone, save for his original ally, O'Neill. The consolidation the Irish practice in battle was to "follow and defense of Ulster was the only realistic alternative while and ficht, and ficht fleand/And nocht till Dublin remained under Edwar'd II's control; consequently. King stand in plane melle/Quhill the ta part Robert returned to the Border Wars proper on May 22. discumfit be," Yet when reports of In the same month, Roger de Mortimer returned from a war massed Irish support reached the garricouncil in England with a large army and orders to release son of Canickfergus, Henry de Thrapston Richard de Burgh from imprisonment in Dublin Castle. From agreed on June 26 to have a parley with there, a reorganization of the Norman forces began, but by now the earl of Moray, who was now conducting the castle's siege. A group of 30 Scots agreed to enter Carrickfergus to THE FAMINE/THE LAUD ANNALS secui'e teiTns of a sun'ender, only to be seized, held for ransom and eventually CLAIMED/ LEFT THE SCOTS 'SO killed. There were even wild rumors that DESTROYED WITH HUNGER THAT seven of the Scots had been eaten by the starving English garrison. Whether that THEY RAISED THE BODIES OF THE was true or not, negotiations were now DEAD FROM THE CEMETERIES.' out of the question, and Moray further

tightened his grip. In September the remnants of the EngUsh forces in Carrickfergus, hemmed in and with promised food supplies from Drogheda never materializing, capitulated. King Robert arrived in Ulster to receive the castle in person, and despite the murder of his ambassadors honored the terms of the new surrender agi'eement, allowing the garrison to leave without hindrance. Canickfei^s' fall left the Scots undisputed masters in the notth and turned de Burghs strongest symbol of Norman power into the new capital of Edward Biuce's Scottish Ireland. Scottish Ireland, however, extended no farther than Edwards most southerly outpost—and that was now Downpatrick. During Christmas 1316, King Robert stayed at Carrtckfergus and billeted nearly 7,000 reinforcements for the wars with the Norman abbot of White Abbey. Throughout Januar>' 1317, there wer-e rumors of de Bur'gh s army massing near Drogheda for another assault on Ulster; and in Eebtiiaiy, amid a very harsh winter, the Scottish army again ventured south. Edward, commanding the advance cavalry, was furious to find that the monks at Downpattick (Inch Abbey) had become disillusioned with his rule and had switched their allegiance back to de Bui^h. In a

the famine was at its height, and any campaign beyond sustainable supply bases would have been ill-advised. As a result, neither army engaged in any battles for the rest of the year Edward remained at Carrickfer'gus, bestowing meaningless Irish titles upon his ablest Scottish knights while his southern Gaelic allies melted away. By 1318, any hope of complete \ictoiy was beginning to fade, in no small part because the Scottish army, though militarily undefeated, had been reduced to fewer than 3,000 men by the years of war. famine and plague. The atmosphere of the time was grimly captured in the writings of The Aimals of Commchl: "For in this Baice's time, for three years and a half, falseh(XKi and famine and homicide filled the country and men undoubtedly ate each other...."

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he Scottish forces were becoming increasingly dependent upon supplies from home, and the Anglo-Normans exploited that weakness for all it was worth, just as Moray had done with Thrapston. In June 1318, John of Athy, the newly appointed high admiral of Ireland, captured Thomas Dun, who was conveying supplies from Ayrshire to CanickferNOVEMBER2005 MILnARY HISTORY 43

gus. At that juncture, however, Ireland was graced with its fiist good hancst in three yeai"s, and Edward, sensing the risk to his supply route, decided to take the war south once again. In early September 1318, Edward took his aimy through Moyr\' Pass, in the foothills of Moume, for the last time. On this occasion the Scottish route of maixh was very deliberate, perhaps due to a lack of supplies or the desertion of Edward's Gaelic allies. By October the Scots had only reached as far as County Louth, giving the Anglo-Normans enough time to raise a new amiy and march it to Dundalk. On October 14, Edward Bruce was cornered at Faughart, near Dundalk, by a larger Noiman force led hy John de Berming-

troops began to dislodge those pikemen, and the Scottish knights who had sumved the cavalrv' battle pulled the whole line back for a last stand on the slopes of Faughart Hill. Although details of the battle are unreliable, the remnants of Edward's knights apparently dismounted and fought on foot u'hen thefinalAnglo-Norman advance came. Barbour suggests that none of the Scottish knights survived, prefening to die alongside their commander rather than surrender under Edward Us terms of ransom. With the death of Sir Edward Bruce and the destruction of his army, so too died the prospect of a Scottish kingdom in Ireland. The army that had toppled one of the most prestigious ., Norman castles in Ireland and defeated some of the most able lords at Edward ll's disposal had at last been laid to rest. Despite the victory at Faughart, however, Edward U's fracturing reign was to spiral into civil war in England and was never as strong in Ireland as it had been before the Bmce wars. Richard de Burgh, the Red Ear! of Ulster, found himself reduced in lands, tide and power Canickfergus Castle was not restored to his care and instead given to John de Athy, King Edward U's high admiral, in December 1318. On July 26, 1326, de Burgh—"the best of all the Galls in Ireland"—died at Athassel Monastery near Cashel, County Tipperary, with accusations of complicity with the Scots still clouding his reputation. A year later, the weak King Edward II was deposed, imprisoned and supposedly murdered at Berkeley Castle. Edward U's most able advei-saiy, Robert the Bruce, outlived them all, finally sucEnd of the dream: The grave of Edward Bruce near Faughait Hdl, where he fought cumbing to a lingering illness—generally his last battle on October 14,1318. thought to have heen lepiTJsy—at his house at Cardross in June 1329. According to his last wishes, Robert's heart was removed ham. The Scottish army found itself between de Bermingham's and placed in a silver casket, to be taken on cixisade by his most equal force of horse and loot, now blocking the northern road, faithful companion, "Good Sir James the Black Douglas." In and Sir John Maupas' lai^er cavalry squadrons and spearmen contrast, the ultimate fate of his brother Edward's remains was from Dundalk. According to Barbour, Sir John Stewart pleaded typical for those who dared defy Nonnan sovereignty or authorwith Edward not to engage the enemy, but to wait for fresh re- ity. According to The Chronicles of Landercost: "Edward...was inforcements from Scotland. Edward supposedly rejected this, beheaded after death; his body being divided into four quarters, believing that he could once again take on the might of a which were sent lo the four chief quarters of Ireland." NoiTnan army and prove victorious. In the subsequent clash beContemporary chroniclers regarded Edward Bruce's legacy tween Maupas' and Edward's mounted knights, a personal as nothing more than famine, opportunism and widespread decombat ensued between the two commandei's. In a scene iron- stRiction. Bui his invasion was also an incisive attempt to open ically mirroring his brothers victorious combal with Sir Henr> up a Scottish second front during the Border Wars, and for three de Bohun before the Battle of Bannockbum, it was Edward yeai-s it achieved its goals. The victoiies at Connor, Kells or Athy Bnice who was unseated and killed by a blow to ihe head. As may not have been as stunning as Bannockbum, but they were the annalist of Connacht wrote: "Edward Bixice. he who was highly significant in their message. It is perhaps fitting then that the common ruin of the Galls and Gaels of Ireland, was by the after 679 years Sir Edward Bmce's standard is fl>ang fi^om the Galls of li'cland killed at Dundalk by dint of fierce fighting.. .and gatehouse of Canickfergus Castle once more. MH never was there a better deed done lor the Irish than this...." The furious impact of the Scottish cavaliy was checked by a Firsl-lhne contributor Gavin Hughes writes from Banbridge, flanking charge from de Bermingham's line, but in the im- County Down, Northern Ireland. For further reading, he recommediate onslaught that followed, the Scottish pikemen con- mends: The Wars of the Bruces, by C. McNamee; and Edward tinued to stand their ground. Eventually dc Bermingham's : A Medieval Tragedy, by Roger Chatterton-Newmaii. 44 MILnARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

storming Fort Sanders

MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

On November 29, 1863, the forces of Maj. Gen. Ambrose Bumside and Lt. Gen. James Longstreet clashed in East Tennessee—with results that reflected more on the senior commands than on the valor of their men. BY DUANEE SHAFFER n camp near Knoxville, Tennessee, Private J. Lewis Chase of Company A, 11th New Hampshire Volunteer Infantr\, wrote to his parents on November 1, 1863: "Daybeforeyesterdayl went to the city and who should I see but Gen. Bumside and his whole staff came in on the cars.... I do not think Bumside was obliged lo fall back. 1 think he is tn'ing to get a bettei" hold of them and 1 think he is going to use a little strategy....! hope Bumside will get them where he wants them soon it is evident that there will be come hard fighting down here." Chase, whose regiment was an element of Union Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Bumside's IX Corps, was correct in his assessment. Coming his way were about 15,000 Confederate soldiers under the corps commander who General Robert E. Lee called his "Old Warhorse," Lt. Gen. James Longstreet. The "hard fighting" that ensued wt)uld be marked by deeds of individual heroism on both sides. Its outcome was determined by command-level errors, rather than any lack of bravery on the soldiers' part. Union or Confederate. The two antagonists had met in battle before in Virginia and Maryland. In September 1863, Longstreet's First Corps had been detached from Lee's Army of Noiihem Vii^ginia and shipped by railroad to bolster General Braxton Bragg's Amiy of Tennessee at the Battle of Chickamauga, then helped drive Maj. Gen. William S. Rosecrans' Army of the Cumberland back to Chattanooga. While Longstreet had performed steadily in service of the Confederate cause, Bumside had proved himself a competent brigade commander at New Bern, N.C., a mediocre coips commander at Antietam, and a disastrous army commander at FredencksbuT-g, Va., and during his subsequent "Mud March." Relieved of command of the AiTny of the Potomac in January 1863, Bumside had heen sent west to direct operations in the Department of the Ohio. From Kentucky, he had marched with elements of his DC Corps over tough mountain roads into East Tennessee and captured Knoxville with little opposition. The Confederates were not about to give up East Tennessee without afight.Early in November, Bragg sent Longstreet from Chattanooga to operate against Bumside. Because of the antagonistic relationship between the two Rebel generals, however, Bragg released an insufficient number of soldiers—about 15,000. Bumside had about 30,000 troops in East

Confederate soldiers of Lt. Gen. James Longstreet's First Corps, detached from the Army of Northem Virginia, assault Fort Sanders outside Knoxville, Tenn., in a Kurz & Allison illustration (Kur7 & Allison].

NOVEMBER 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 47

Right: Sent by General Braxton Bragg to drive Union forces out of East Tennessee, Longstreet had only 15,000 troops with which to do the job. Below right: Major General Ambrose Bumside had about 30,000 troops in East Tennessee, but only 12,000 at Knoxville.

generals in command...to retreat and a stampede was the result. The trains, artillery and infantry started for Knowille a distance of twent>-five miles." Brigadier General William R Sanders, a promising young officer, temporarily held up the Rebel advance, but he was killed in an engagement with Longstreet's cavalry on November 18. Meanwhile, the soldiers and pro-Union citizens of Knoxville labored day and night on earthworks that had been designed by Bumside's chief engineer, Captain Orlando Metcalfe Poe. One of the earthworks, named Fort Sandei-s in honor of the slain general, was apparently also the most vulnerable point in the Federal line. The approaches to it were not as exposed to defensive fire as those in other parts of the field.

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Tennessee, but they were so scattered that when Longstreet reached Knoxville, there were only 12,000 effectives on hand to defend the town. Longstreet's force crossed the Tennessee River at Huffs Ferry, near Loudon, on November 14, then marched toward Knoxville. The Federals contested their advance yard by yard, retiring to their defensive lines in front of the town on the 17th. "The fighting and retreat commenced Saturday the I4th of November." wrote Sergeant Charles C. Paige ofthe 11th New Hampshire in his journal. "It seems that part of the enemy's forces had crossed the river by daylight and an order had been given by our 48 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

ongstreet's original plan was simply to invest Knoxville, which was not prepared for a protracted siege and had limited food stocks. "We got half rations it is a ver>' long and hard road to draw suplyes o\'er and they can not get them along," Coiporal Plummer Small of the 11th New Hampshire explained to friends at home, "but as soon as they get the railroad open through to Chattanooga they can get plenty there. The rebels hold the railroad between us and there." Thanks to the loyal populace of East Tennessee, Knoxville was never completely cut off from the outside world. A small band of men was operating along the French Broad River, which flows into the Holston, on the north bank of which is Knoxville. On foggy nights they would load provisions on rafts and float them down to Knoxville. A pontoon bridge that crossed the river at the town checked the further progress of the crude supply boats. Still, the supply pinch was felt almost immediately. Once per week the soldiers of Bumside's corps received a small amount of com meal, a tiny chunk of pork, a bit of sugar and a small ration of coffee. Tobacco, if available at all, was a much sought-after commodity. The Federals never lost control of the high ground on the south bank of the Holston River opposite Knoxville, and that gave them good interior lines. Longstreet's force was not large enough to completely encircle the town. Rain on the afternoon and evening of November 20 turned all but the pa\ed roads around Knoxville to mud. The people who were caught in the crossfire between the two armies desperately tried to save all they could. Private Willard Templeton of the llth New Hampshire pitied the civilians. "The citizens are engage[d] during the night in moving off their goods," he wrote, "the rifle balls whizzing over their heads and shells dropping about...added to the excitement of teamsters, citizens and mules. It seems too bad for such splendid dwellings to be destroyed, dwellings as richly furnished as the finest dwelling houses in N.E. [New England]." Templeton also expressed his disapproval of the lawless behavior of his comrades. "The citizens are

not able to get much of their property into the city and the contents of parlors, chambers, closets, cupboards and cellars are pillaged by our soldiers," he wrote. "It seems too bad to see the most elegant furniture, the choicest libraries and the nicest wearing apparent all left to be destroyed by the flames." Finding that his original plans to starve out the Yankees was not working and urged by messages from Bragg to can^t' the town l)y storm and hasten back to Chattanooga before the Federals there could go over to the offensive, Longstreet ordered an attack on Knox\'ille's defensive works. Fort Sanders was selected for the assault, which was to be made at daylight on the morning of November 28. That day dawned extremely foggy, however, and the attack was postponed until the next day.

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ort Sanders, commanded by Lieutenant Samuel N. Benjamin ofthe 2nd U.S. Artillen', mounted 10 guns: four 20-pounder Pairott lifles, tour light 12-pounders and two 3-inch guns of Captain Jacob Roemer's 34th Batteiy 2nd U.S. Aitillen', and Captain William W. Buckley's Battery D, Ist Rhode Island Light Aitillery. The fort's main ganison comprised about 150 troops ol the 79th New York "Highlandei's," with four companies

of the 17th Michigan stationed nearby. Taking position to storm the fort were Brig. Gen. Benjamin G. Humphrey's Brigade, consisting of the 13th, 17th, 18thand21st Mississippi regiments; Brig. Gen. William T Woffords Brigade of the 16th, 18th and 24th Geoi^ia regiments; Brig. Gen. Thomas R.R. Cobb's and Colonel William Phillips' legions and the 3rd Battalion of Sharpshooters, also from Georgia; and Colonel Goode Bryan's Brigade of the 10th, 50th, 51 st and 53rd Georgia regiments. Brigadier General Joseph B. Kershaws Brigade was to remain in resei"ve. Brigadier General Geoi"ge T. "Tlge" Anderson's Brigade of Brig. Gen. Micah Jenkins' Division was to deliver a simultaneous attack on the earthworks north of Fort Sanders and if possible force its way to the rear of the fort. Anderson's Brigade consisted of the 7th, 8th, 9th, 11th and 59th Georgia regiments. Other troops were held in readiness to follow up the expected success of the assaulting columns. Shortly after 10 p.m. on the chilly night of November 28, four regiments of the attacking column moved rapidly toward Fort Sanders, capturing or driving in the Federal pickets and establishing themselves within 100 yards of the fort. They also dug rifle pits on the crest of a ridge. After 6 a.m. on the 29th, the Confederate artillery

As Longstreet's troops moved on Fort Sanders from all sides, its earthen walls were the least of their problems. An abatis, telegraph wire strung between tree stumps and a ditch 10 feet deep also stood between them and their objective.

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•George Barnard of the chief engineer's office. Military Division of the Mississippi, photographed Knoxville from south of the Tennessee River, with East Tennessee University in the middle distance.

Opened fire on Foit Sanders. Ii did little damage. wounding only one man. Lieutenant Benjamin hurried from point to point in the fort to see that his men were ready. Ammunition was distributed, and the cannons were triple .shotted with canister As the cannonading subsided, the solid columns of Confederates came over the rise and dashed across 50 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

the open ground, yelling and screaming but not filing their rifles, since Longstreel had ordered a hayonet chaise. The Federal guns swept the ground with a shower of shells, but the Rebel advance was so rapid that only one i ound could be fired before they came too close for the guns to be brought to bear. A series of abatis checked the Confederate charge, but only

momentarily. Bursting through that obstruction, the Rebels next ran up against telegraph wire that had been stiTjng between tree stumps. Confederate commands became separated, and ranks were shattered. The two main attacking columns, unable to see one another because of a slight fog. came up nearly at the same point in front of the fort. Their ranks bi^came intemiinglcd, but the men soon bi^oke through the wire, and dashed on toward the earthen walls. "The rebs made a desperate attempt to take one of our forts but were repulsed in the attempt with great slaughter," wrote Private Chase on December 6. "They made the charge before light...on the strongest part of our lines and were nearly cut to pieces....Around the fort where they charged was a ditch dug aboutfivefeet deep. Before they got to the ditch our folks had a lot of telegraph wire all wound around amongst the st;umps when they got to that tbey fell against it in a heap."

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Union troops guard the bridge at Strawberry Plain, 20 miles northeast of Knoxville. A tripod with one of Barnard's cameras can be seen at right

hen the Confederates reached the foot of the parapet, they il found a ditch running across its fiont. They had known of its existence, but now they discovered it was more substantial than the earlier observers' reports had indicated— 12 feet wide and 10 feet deep, with nearly vertical sides. Even so, the Rebels hesitated only an instant before the pressure of those behind them and the delenders' heavy fire compelled them to take immediate action. Jumping into the trench, they clambered up the sides. "Our force...was at work...throwing grape and canister," Chase continued, "the ditch was piled full of their dead and wounded the most of them shot through the head. The rebs planted three stand of colors on the fort but they could not stand." All was confusion among the Confederates. Here and there battle fiags were carried forward with a cheer and rushed through the stiuggling mass of men, onto the parapet and into embrasures. Groups of Confederates forced their way up the steep walls of tbe fort, slippery in the morning frost, only to be shot down or thrown back into the trench below: Union cannons, loaded to the muzzles with canister, raked the ditch and parapet with a destructive crossfire. The defenders were ordered tofireonly on anyone who gained the walls and to waste neither time, energy nor ammunition on those in the rear. In spite of all that was arrayed against them, some of the Confederates made it over the parapet. "They would actually take hold of the muzzles of the guns

to pull themselves up into the fort," wrote Private Willard Templeton of the llth New Hampshire. "A Lieu. Climbed up in this way and cried out, 'I am the man to whom this fort is to suirender.'The h—1 you ai^e.' answered the gunner as he touched off his piece blowing the lieutenant into a thousand pieces." Captain James Lile Lemon managed to lead Company A of the 18th Georgia through the obstacle course of abatis and wire, only to founder in the ditch. Realizing they would all be doomed if something wasn't done. Lemon dug steps into the frozen clay with his .sword and then, despite being exposed to constant fire, helped some of his surviving troops up to the parapet before clambering up himself. "We were then just below the parapet & at once moved quickly over the top of the works &i were face to face with them in an instant." Lemon later wrote. "The yanks met us with a withering volley which I think killed & wounded many of us. I had left my sword in the mud & bad drawn my pistol & moved up firing as fast as 1 could when 1 suddenly felt a tremendous blow to my head & lost consciousness." Wben Lemon revived, he found himself severely wounded and a prisoner of war. He also lecimed that his regimental commander, Lt. Col. Solon Z. Ruff, who was also sei^ng as acting commander of Wofford's Brigade, had been killed in the assault. Muskets, clubs, bayonets, swords and even axes were used in the bloody band-to-hand combat. NOVEMBER 2005 MILITARY HISTOKV 51

Another photograph by Barnard ofthe military bridge at Strawberry Plain, seen from the north bank ofthe Holston River, with a fort in the distance. Longstreet withdrew through this area after abandoning the siege of Knoxville on December 4.

As the fighting on the walls of Fort Sanders subsided 20 minutes after it began, one company of the 29th Massachusetts and one from the 2nd Michigan were ordered to counterattack. Launching a simultaneous assault on the attacking force and mshing along the ditch, they ix)unded up about 200 prisoners.

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Chase wrote of how "The captain of a battei> burned himself by lighting the fuses of his shells and holding them in his hands until they were about to explode then he would toss them down amongst the cusses and slayed them with great st>le." A fresh attack on another part of the fort announced the arrival of Andei-son's Brigade. According to plan, Tige Anderson should have directed his assault against the works north of the fort, but in the confusion his men had diverted to the south. They stmck Fort Sanders at the point that Wofford's Brigade should have attacked. Wlien \\\Q companies of the 29th Massachusetts and two companies of the 20th Michigan were sent to reinforce the hardpressed defendei's, the Confederates were Hung back with heavy losses. Sergeant Frank Judge of Company D, 79th New York, dashed out through an embrasure and, gi^appling with the color-bearer of the 51st Georgia, dragged him and his Hag inside the fort. Sergeant Jeremiah Maloney of the 29th Massachusetts managed to secure the colors of the 17th Mississippi. Judge and Maloney were both subsequently awarded the Medal of Honor, as was Private Joseph S. Manning, also of the 29th Massachusetts, for similarly capturing a Confederate battle Hag. 52 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

ongstreet, learning of tbe lailure of his attack, ordered his men to fall back to shelter. The agonized cries of Confederate wounded and dying left in front of the fort tore at the hearts of the Federals within. Bumside proposed a tiuce so thai Longstreet could recover his dead and wounded. Longstreet accepted his offer, and in a few hours the casualties had been removed. "You ought to have seen the ditch after they got the dead and wounded out," wrote Chase. "The ground was covered with blood. We captui'ed six or seven hundred stand of arms...the pile of guns and cartridge boxes covered the ground well enough." A more emotional Private Templeton wi-ote, "It was a sad sight to see so many brave men cut down, the flower of the Southern army, the hei oes of probably a dozen battles." The 813 Confederate casualties comprised 129 killed. 458 wounded and 226 captured or missing. Among the dead were Lt. Col. Ruff, 18th Geoi-gia, commanding Wofford's Brigade; Colonel H.P. Thomas. 16th Georgia; and Colonel Kennon McElroy. 13th Mississippi. Fort Sanders' Union defenders lost 20 soldiers, and 80 were wounded. When Longstreet was handed a telegram announcing the defeat of Bragg's forces at Chattanooga, it was clear to him that he could stay no longer On December 4, he lifted the siege of Knoxville and withdrew his battered, bleeding corps. Bumside received the thanks of Congress for saving Knoxville. and the city remained under Union control for the rest ofthe war. MH A historian and library director from New Durham, N.H., Diiane E. Shaffer is working on a lx)ok tentatively titled Men of Granite: New Hampshire's Role in the American Civil War. For further reading, he recommends: From Manassas to Appomatto.x, by General James Longstreet; and Bumside, by William Man'el.

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Fieldon the Medic Italian Front Technician 5th Class Jerome McMenamy dealt with casualties almost daily during his World War II career, but he preferred combat to the pettiness he encountered behind the lines. BY FRANK A. REYNOLDS

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ike many of his generation, for a long time Jerome Barry McMenamy did not care to talk about what he had seen and done during World War II. A draftee in 1943. he had enrolled in the Arm\ Specialized Training Program, or ASTP, onl\ to see the program canceled. He went on to serve as a field medic with an artillery company of the 91st Infantrv' Division, witnessing tbe Fifth Army's giaieling, hill-hyhill, town-hy-town advance up the Italian boot from early 1944 to the end of the war in Europe. "I'd say only in the last maybe five years I could talk about it," he told inter\iewer Frank A. RevTiolds, "but I can talk about it freely now." Military History: Where were you bom and raised? McMenamy: I was bom January 27, 1923, and I grew up in St. Louis, Mo.—bom and raised Catholic. I had the nuns in grade school and Jesuits in high school. MH: How did you enter wartime sei"vice? McMenamy: I was drafted in Januaw 1943.1 was 20 years old, and I was put in the 44th Infantrv' Division's 114th Regiment as a medic, out in North Fort Lewis, Wash., for a four-month training program. I didn't apply for medic and only found out about it when they caUed my name on the train. Five doctors drilled about 20 of us in medicine while the rest ofthe men were being trained on rifies and guns...but we were all out in the field digging foxholes and making those marches, crawling under live fire and all the rest. It was on one of those marches that they ran us down a creek bed. My ankle snapped over a i ock and got badly sprained. Tbey put me on kitchen police, and the ankle wasn't getting any better, but I got through the four months of 54 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

basic training. They just taped it up, and I was marching with a sprained ankle. So along •k came this ASTP. / MH: How did you get into that? / McMenamy: If you had enough of an intelli1 gence quotient and you were the right age and had a high school education, tbey would send you off to college. So I went to Stanford University for six months. They were trying to give us a four-year college education in 18 months, and they would put us in a classroom all day long with only 2'A hours a night for studying. Well, it didn't work out. But it got my ankle better, because ever>' day I had to go over to the aid station, and they shot Novocain into my ankle to relax it. It did get better after six months, and then the program [ASTP] seemed to kind of fold up, and I was sent to the 91 st Infantiy Division in Corvallis, Ore. We were there only a short time when the di\dsion was sent all the way across to Newport News. Va. We were transferred from one coast to the other. MH: Where did you go from there? McMenamy: We all got on a ship there, at Camp Patrick Henry, and we were shipped to Oran, North Africa, in a 100-ship convoy. We trained there for about three months, then they shipped us over to Italy. We landed in Naples, because Rome was declared an open city. There was a lot of bombing going on at a railroad station, but not the rest of Rome. They didn't want to destroy all the history and all the antiquities. MH: Where did your unit enter combat? McMenamy: We went into combat against the Germans just north of Rome, heading up toward the Apennine Mountains of northern Italy, in the beginning of 1944, if I recall. We were in /

Above: Medical corpsmen of the U.S. Fifth Army evacuate Pnvate James Brandt, v^/ounded by a German sniper, from the newly taken town of San Vittore, Italy, on January 13, 1944. OpposKe: Technician 5th Class Jerome McMenamy served as a medic in the 91st Infantry Division in Italy from early 1944 to the end of World War II in Europe,

combat until the war ended in the spring of 1945—probably 14 or 15 months. MH: What did the 91st Division do? McMenamy: We spearheaded. We had the 92nd, an AfricanAmerican division, on our left flank. 1 hate to say it, but tbeir officei"s couldn't keep them in line. They kept running back at night, and the Germans would move in. So they put the Japanese-American 442nd Infantry Regiment in its place, lt was the most highly decorated regiment of the war, as I understand, but there just weren't enough of them—a 3,000-man regiment to hold the whole division down, Finally, General Mark Clark pulled the 92nd Division troops out of the line and used them as quartermasters, delivering supplies. In the meantime, we would get to a point where sometimes we were getting shot from the fi'ont and both sides. MH: Did you shoot back? McMenamy: Being a medic, I was not allowed to use a gun, but the GeiTTians were shooting down medics. So our division stopped taking prisoners—they just killed eveiything in sight for two weeks. G2 [division intelligence] called down and said. "Take some prisoners—we have to interrogate somebody!" Axis Sally came on Gennan radio. "You boys in the 91st, don't bring your mess gear." she said. "When you're captured you won't need it." In other words, they were gonna kill us like we were killing them. We thought maybe it was accidental that the Ger-

mans were shooting these medics, I was told about them sending a guy with a big flag on a pole with a red cross on it. The Germans shot him dead. Finally we stopped, and the Gennans stopped killing medics. MH: Did that understanding between the two sides save your life? McMenamy: Yes, like when another medic and I got word from our headquarters that this command car carrying the first sergeant and three other men was hit carrying rations up to the front lino, It tumed out they had gone right down a ridge between German and American tanks firing at each other, and they were sitting ducks. One shell hit the front and knocked the vehicle off the road, and the second one hit the rear, and that's the one that got them all. It went right through the truck and killed Paul Clark UL The first sergeant was not wounded, but another guy had got hit in the middle of his back and was supposed to have been paralyzed, but crawled away from it all on his hands. We couldn't find him. And the other one ran back to report. The dead one behind the wheel, Clark, had a jagged hole in the back of his head about 2'A inches long, and about half an inch wide. His brains were all down his back, and I dragged him out of that truck. But my sergeant had to get Clark's feet out— they were tangled in the geai-s. Then I got him in a litter and hauled him away. But the interesting part was both sides stopped firing when we were in there right between them in a NOVErviBER 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 55

truck with red crosses painted A 10- or 11 -year-old girl came 1t was all COUNTERBATTERY on the side. And once we got running down the road, saying, out of there, they started blast"La guerra fini, la guerra fini. FIRE, Germans and Amencans ing away at each other, which the war is over!" And I said: was very suiprising. Never "What? The war is over?" And blasting away at each other thought I'd see that in a war she said, "I heard it on the MH: What progress did the radio!" We ail spoke a little 91st Division make bx>m there? Italian by then. In fact, I took in those [nountains.' McMenamy: We went straight care of some Gennans now up the line. We captured Floand then. They didn't know rence. We captured Pisa. The English, and I didn't know Germans were using the Tower of Pisa as an obsen'ation post. German, but we could communicate in Italian. And they always Then again, since it was one of the wonders of the world, they said, "We'll fight alongside of you against the Russians somewouldn't let us shoot it down. We had to take it by hand. 1 have day." They were wounded and hurting, and they wanted to be pictures taken from the top of that tower We got up into the kind of buddy-buddy. northern Apennines there, and we were frozen in those moun- MH: What was your impression of the Germans once you got tains for the rest of the winter. It was aU counterbattery fire, Ger- to meet them under those circumstances? mans and Americans blasting away at each other in those McMenamy: The regular German soldier almost looked like mountains. an American soldier The Wehnnacht troops were just kids they MH: When did the stalemate end? pulled off the faim and out of their jobs and whatnot. It was the McMenamy: When spring came in 1945. wecame out of those SS that were mean, cold, blue-eyed big guys. When we captured mountains. In late March I was behind the Gennan hont line. them they were verv difficult to handle at all. Thev were so su-

A French female ambulance driver attached to the Fifth Army converses with wounded Gennan prisoners on January 27 1944. McMenamy thought the H/e/^rmac/yf troops "were kind of like us." SS men were harder to handle, but "a Gl with a rifle would get their attention." 56 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

perior acting, they didn't want to take ordere from anybody. But pass, I was just leaving a museum, and I still had my overseas a GI with a rifle would get their attention. The Wehnuachl guys, cap under my belt and was standing in the doorway. Along came they were kind of like us. They weren't getting the right amount a jeepk)ad of military police who promptly took my pass away of f(K)d, and when they complained about the food they were because 1 hadn't put my cap on yet. The report went all the way getting to their general, Albert Kesselring, he told the com- through Fifth Army headquarters, down to my commander. He mander to feed them bullets. From then on he had the nick- apologized to me, but said: "I have to report to Fifth Army headquarters what disciplinary action I took against you. You are rename "Feed 'em Bullets" Kesselring. stricted to the area for one week." MH: Did you have any contact with the Italian civilians? McMenamy: We treated an awfiil lot of kids for diarrhea. Sani- MH: Were things less petty during the Italian campaign? tation was veiT bad. A doctor and I delivered a baby one day. McMenamy: During the war, when \hree of us got a five-day pass The Germans took all the food with them when they retreated, to Rome, we came back a day late. Nobody said anything. In so we gave out a lot of food. The kids were always going through combat you are not allowed to salute an officer. It might get him our garbage. killed. The officers were hiding their insignias with MH: Weren't they often mud. Nobody knew who caught between you and was gonna pick who up off the Gemians? the ground, wounded or McMenamy: When the whatever. So in combat Germans and Americans there is more camaraderie. got through blasting away Eveiybody is looking out at each other, fi-equently for everybody else. Rank there was not much left of seems to kind of fade away the village. The Italians in combat. would iim around when the shells were coming in. MH: Did you operate They didn't know enough under a different set of to lie down, and many rules as a medic? were killed or wounded. McMenamy: I had a jeep Kids would pull the pins with litters on it. A friend out of hand grenades left worked on the jeep and put behind by the Germans I wo littere up f7x>nt and two and kill themselves, not i n the back, going sideways knowing any better. across the vehicle. One day MH: How did the GerI was following a group of mans treat civilians in their Medical corpsmen load containers of blood plasma on a mule tor tiTicks, to go pick up two tenitoiT? wounded men. when I transport to troops in the mountains of Italy on February 10,194A. McMenamy: When we glanced over my shoulder went into one village, all and there was this German the women were walking around dressed in black, crying their plane coming over, firing machine gun bullets right at me. Since eyes out, Apparently a partisan had popped a shot off at one of every fourth bullet was a tracer, T could see them hitting the the Gernian soldiers when they were there, and the Germans T oad, so I just shot off of the road into a held to get away from killed evei^ male in the village. They even dragged a male baby that airplane. out of a mother's amis on the third floor of a building and threw MH: With what aircraft were the Gemians strafing you? it out the window. So they were pretty ruthless. Another differ- McMenamy: They were little monoplanes, and they came ence between us was that the Germans needed a leader, and every evening at twihght. Americans had air superiority and whatever they were told to do, they did. Americans were mtjie radar, but those German planes had veiT little metal and would resourceful. They didn't have to be ordered or commanded^ fly in low and drop their 500-pound bombs, shfmt their machine they just did their job, and they were just pretty good at taking guns and get out at dusk. As I looked at the plane it went right care ol themselves. down the line. I cotild see the bullets go right through the tiiaeks, MH: Yet both you and the Germans complained about your bouncing up off the road and up in the air again. Now, I was not allowed to stop and get involved with those knocked-out higher-ups. McMenamy: Rank doesn't mean an awful lot in combat. The tiTicks. That was not part of my mission. I pulled back out on main thing that gripes me about noncombat duty before or after the road after the plane went by, thinking it would keep going. a war is the pettiness that goes on. As an e.xamplc, when I was But that thing turned around and came straight at me again, so in Oran, Noith Ahica, another soldier and I were on a one-day I shot back in the field, It was almost dark by then. We found pass. We were looking in a storefront window when a young those two guys we were looking for. 1 grabbed one by the legs, second lieutenant walked up to us, demanded our pas.ses and and the other medic grabbed him under the armpits, and his tore them up. He claimed we failed to salute him. We explained leg came right off in my hands. Shrapnel had cut it and it slid thai we hadn't seen him because we were looking in the win- right out of the pant leg. But he was dead. The other had shrapdows. It didn't make any difference to him. He still sent us back nel in his body, and we got them back to the collecting station. to camp. Another time, after the wai- was over, I had a one-day MH: What did you use to alleviate your patients' pain? NOVEMBER 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 57

McMenamy: One of the things killed, 6,795 wounded, 1,016 'OUR DIVISION had 14,000 or for a medic in combat is mormissing. When we were in the phine in little tubes. You had mountains, there was not 15,000 men...we had 9,027 a quarter-grain of morphine in much face-to-face combat; there, and you just jabbed it battery fire was what it was all into a guy's arm and squeezed casualties...l,216 killed, 6,795 about. I was very fortunate that tube dry. In a few minutes that one of those shells didn't he was feeling better. It would knock me off. wounded, 1,016 missing.' last at least until we could get MH: Looking back at all those to the collecting station, where naiTow escapes, how do you they'd collect the wounded—a think you avoided being hit? couple of hours, but if it didn't I'd shoot him again. McMenamy: 1 think my mother and father and the religious MH: What other drugs were available to you? representatives of the family were praying their heads off that McMenamy: Another big thing that came out of the war was I would survive. 1 really think prayer saved my life. I had too the antibiotic penicillin. Before that, everything was sulfa [sul- many close calls. fanilamide]. But right in the middle of the war, it seemed like MH: What were some of the close calls? they came through with penicillin. It really was a godsend. McMenamy: Once I was standing outside a building, and a MH: How did you administer it? branch right over my head just fell behind me. I didn't hear the McMenamy: We gave them shots or tablets. The doctors sniper's shot until it hit the branch and the wall. 1 didn't wait for weren't around in the field. We had to do it. We had moiphine a second shot, Another time, we were in a town or village, and and penicillin in our medical kits. We were loaded up with tubes some guys had set up a still on the third floor of a building, right of it. at the top of the stairs. They were distilling wine down into MH: How important were those dnigs? strong, 80- to 90-proof stuff we called grappa. 1 went up those McMenamy: These guys were going into shock; they were in staii-s when it was just getting dark. I hit that still, kicked it, and terrible pain. You shot that morphine in them, and it would everything went crashing in a million directions. And these two relax them. Then, of course, you would have to get transfusions guys that made the still were ready to kill me. But just at that going if they needed them. It was plasma—we didn't have any time, a Gemian plane flew right outside of the window-—I could blood. see the pilot as plain as day. He was dropping 500-pound bombs MH: What other incidents in your field medic activities stand and shooting his machine gun. Fortunately, he didn't drop it on our building, but down the line, before and after us, he knocked out in your memory? McMenamy: I saw one guy who had a mu/zle bui"st on his out some buildings with soldiers in them. So those guysflewout 105mm artillery piece. It blew the shrapnel back and cut this of that building and forgot about me, and of course I took off. guy's right arm off at the shoulder, and we had to pack it. Now MH: How did the 91st Division's artiller>' unit operate during here's the coolest guy 1 ever saw in the wai; I just packed every- the advance? thing and wrapped it all around him. He was sitting there, and he said, "Gimme a cigarette, I have to get used to using my left hand." I couldn't believe it. But this is the attitude you have to have if you want to stay sane. You have to be fatalistic about it: "If it gets you, it gets you. If it doesn't, it doesn't, and you go about your business." I have seen men who were loud talkers Stateside go to pieces when the shells started coming in. clawing the ground witl bleeding fingers or just shak ing in fear. A few of the quiet ones would crack up, too. MH: How many people do you estimate you took care of? McMenamy: Our division had 14,000 or 15,000 men. Our regiment had about 100 medics. We had 9,027 casualItalian partisans force a suspected Fascist to crawl out from behind a steel gate on June 17,1944. ties in our division—1,216 after the Allied occupation of Rome. In one village, McMenamy saw his host shot as a Fascist spy.

58 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

McMenamy: When the Germans retreated, we would drive through the infantry and set up our positions ahead of them. And then the infantry- would walk through us. Tanks would also go roaring through there, but they usually had the infantry hanging on and tagging along with them. Sometimes we were the first ones in town. Once we were the first ones in this town and we saw this nice-looking house. We slept there and used it as a dispensary. We had medical chests that we'd open on one end, then set up and stick a litter between to use as an operating table. This civilian guy, his wife and daughter were there. I remember sitting up and talking with them late that night when we got there. The guy seemed pretty nice, and he spoke good English. I remember lying down on a litter around 9 or 10 that night, and around 6 in the moming, I heard crashing through the door and yelling and screaming. The Italian villagers had broken in and took that guy out in a field and shot him. Killed him dead, because he was the guy reporting to the Germans and spying on all the other neighbors. And they ran the mother and daughter out of town. MH: Was he trying to play the same game with the Americans that he had with the Germans? McMenamy: That's right. He was buttering us up. Maybe he thought we'd protect him. But the villagers came right in, took over and dragged him out. MH: How often were you treating casualties? McMenamy: Usually there was somebody daily, but sometimes we didn't have much because everyone was in his foxhole or lying down in some kind of basement. We were never supposed to go into the buildings, because that's what the Germans would be shooting at. But it was so cold and snowy and icy up there in the northem Apennines that if American soldiere could get into a house, they got into it, especially Fifth Army troops occupy a ruined building, in a photograph taken by the lower part of it. I remember sleeping in a bam on Margaret Bourke-White on January 1,1945. The Germans' dogged fighting Christmas Day 1944.1 was underneath the building, retreat left ruin in its wake all the way up the Italian Peninsula. and 1 wrapped a blanket around my face after rats had run across me. That night was very cold. They had been playing "I'll Be Home for Christmas." That's when I Regular artillery you could hear coming in, but not the 88. They was really homesick. Another time we were on the third floor of could use it as an anti-aircraft gun or they could lob It in like a a building. The doctor and I left the following moming to go for- regular artillery shell. And you could not hear it coming, it'd just ward. The Germans dropped a 500-pound bomb through it that arrive and—bam! They'd put il on their Tiger tanks. We evenevening and killed everybody in it—I would say 25 to 30 guys. tually put 90mm guns on our tanks. Originally we had 75mms, Another time, I was in a one-story building, more like a glori- but they wei e no match foi" those Tiger tanks. fied shed, with thick walls. They'd pile all the mortar, bricks and MH: What was your daily r'outine like? rocks and stone in there, so some walls were three feet thick. McMenamy: Well, you didn't get up and put on your clothes, Well, the medical major and I were in there, and the Gemians because you were already wearing them—24 hours a day and were shelling the area that day. A shell hit outside and blew the seven days a week. The helmet was your washbasin, if you door open. The major said, "Close the door!" So I went over and wanted to wash up a bit or change your underwear, which you slammed the door Another shell hit, blew it open again. He said, didn't do very often. Then you'd dump that out and put the liner "Close the door!" So I went over and just as I closed it, shi"ap- back in your helmet and put that back on your head. Every two nel came flying through that door and blew it out of my hand. weeks they'd pull us out of the line, mn us thiough a portable So I said to the major, "The hell with it, let it stay open!" State- shower unit, take our clothes and give us all rewashed clothes. side I probably would have been court-martialed, but he didn't MH: Did you suffer from lice? say anything. The door stayed open. McMenamy: They were very careful about giving us plenty of MH: What sort of guns were shelling you? McMenamy: The Gennan 88mm cannon was a great gun. DDT powder to douse ourselves. They wanted us to use it to keep away any kind of bugs, because there was a virus or someNOVEMBER 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 59

Private First Class Paul Oglesby of the 30th Infantry Regiment pauses before the altar of a partially demolished Catholic church in Acemo on September 23,1944.

thing involved with those lice. MH: What do you i^ecall of the 91st Division's linal advance? McMenamy: Starting on April 14, 1945, we crossed the Po Valley and came out of those mountains. One day in April I was out in the fields by myself, just lying there to gel away from eveiybody, I guess. 1 woke up at just the crack of dawn. All I had was this AiTny blanket over me. I stood up and saw all these Germans walking toward me. 1 didn't see any guns on them. They had German uniforms...but turns out they weren't Germans. They were big Mongolian slave lahorere. They had yellow skin and slant eyes. They walked right past me like a bunch of zombies and came in to suirender They were eventually sent back to Russia and Mongolia. MH: What were the German prisoners like at that point? McMenamy: Some of the Gernian soldiers were 15-vear-olds and looked like they weren't even old enough to shave yet. And 60 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 20Q5

1 saw them standing up there in line and all their guns and ammunition piled out in front of them. There was a whole company of them, and they looked a liille bit frightened and bewildered. MH: What was your impression of the Fifth Army commander, General Mark Clark? McMenamy: He was a very good genei"al. Bui I remember the time a chaplain came from one of their meetings, when our Maj. Gen. William G. Livesay was in that meeting, and the ehaplain was mad as a hatter because Livesay had said to evei^body: "We aren't making enough progress, because we don't have enough casualties. We should have more casualties by this lime." And here we were, 9,000 casualties before the war ended, dead and wounded, out of 14,000 men. MH: What did you do after Germany suirendered on May 8, 1945? McMenamy: For four or hve months, they sent us to a castle called Castello de Spevza near Trieste, on ihe border of Italy and Yugoslavia. Yugoslavs were trying to take some of the Italian tenitorv' because the Italians had lost the war, so we were sent there, in the middle, to keep the Yugoslavs out. When we were pulled out t)f there they sent us home instead of to the Pacific, because the war had ended there, too. MH: Did you have a chance to take in the culture while you were in Italy? McMenamy: Florence is considered a real city of culture. The museums are famous. That's where Michelangelo's David is. Evei'ybody's an artist of some kind over there, and I had a painting done of me by a street guy. It looks good, with my uniform and all.

We didn't do too much tearing up of Florence, either. It didn't get shelled or bombed or anything. We also captured this Franciscan monastei"y without a shot—it was full of Germans who just left when (hey saw us. It had a room set aside for Bonaventure. This cell had to be over a thousand yeai^ old. And they had these giant keys; you had to use two hands to unlock the dooi^s. They had priest quarters up there. No civilians were allowed in this sancluaiy Our doctor wanted to open up a little practice in there. I got mad and talked him out of it. Here 1 was, just a little old Tech 5 enlisted man, and he's the captain. And he didn't do it—he didn't break the tradition of the monastery. I'm a third order of Franciscans today. They have three orders—friars, sisters and lay people. MH: Speaking of rank, what was yours at the end of the war? McMenamy: A Tech 5, like a coiporal, but I was recommended Conliimed on page 68

REVIEWS The War of 1812 established many American military traditions, but accomplished little else, By Mike Oppenheim

AMONG THE UNrTED STATES' less glori-

ous conflicts, the War of 1812 ranks with the Mexican, Spanish-American and perhaps a few recent affaii^. Walter R. Bomemans recent book 1812: The War Thai Forged a Nation (Harpei-CoUins, New York, 2004, $25.95) may be the best modem single-volume histoiT on the subject. No revisionist, Bomeman provides an entertaining account with a large cast of inept generals and wrong-headed politicians and a sprinkling of heroes who made no difference to the outcome, Tbe War of 1812 was the most justified of the United Slates' minor wars. Embroiled in a life-and-deatb struggle with France for 15 years, Britain bad been seizing American ships, impressing their sailors into its navy, and infuriating settlers by refusing to evacuate forts on tbe U,S, side of the Canadian border, thus provoking Indian attacks—at least according to the settlers, who rarely assumed that tbe attacks had anything to do with tbeir having settled on land tbe Indians claimed. Elected president in 1800 on a platform tbat could be called Reaganomic, Tbomas Jefferson abolisbed all internal taxes, ensuring tbat the United States' armed forces, tiny wben he assumed office, would be even tinier wben be left. Under increasing pressure to protect U.S. sbips, be adopted tbe traditional tactic of a weak nation: an embai^o. Britain paid no attention, but it devastated tbe U,S, economy. Tbe election of 1810 brougbt Henrv Clay to Congress, accompanied by a number of like-minded freshmen known To see these reviews and hundreds more by leading authorities, go to our new book review section at

www.thehistorynet.coin/reviews The[-|istoryNet.com

62 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

sucb as Constitution, but strategically they were insignificant. In 1813, with Napoleon Bonaparte on tbe ropes, Britain sent additional warsbips and troops, blockading American ports and raiding at will. Incompetence, bowever, seemed to prevail as much on the British as on tbe American side. An overwbelming British force marched south from Canada in 1814, then marched back witbout firing a shot after Tbomas Macdonough's naval victory on Lake Champlain. Another force cbarged Andrew Jackson's fortified lines outside New Orleans in January 1815—and was slaughtered. By that time, after months of haggling, the Treaty of Ghent had ended tbe war. Nothing was resolved. In his obligatory summing-up, Bomeman's irony deserts bim, as he states that the war convinced Americans tbey were a nation. In trutb, as tbe Civil War later proved, the states still weren't veiT united. After its generally dismal performance, tbe U.S. Army look its professional officer corps more seriously. Paradoxically, the Nav\''s more impressive perioTinance went unrewarded—not until the 1880s would the country begin building a substantial ocean-going navy. Tbe War of 1812 was not terribly significant, but featured more military ineptitude than the avei^ge conflict, wbicb can make for amusing reading. In 1812, readers are in the bands of a skilled historian wbo does not take it too seriously.

as "Young Warhawks" wbo eventually pushed Jeffei^on's successor, James Madison, into submitting a lugubrious war message on June I, 1812. Whipped on by Clay, the House of Representatives quickly approved 79-49. After two weeks of debate—witb several senators switching sides to avoid looking unpatriotic—tbe Senate finally voted 19-13 to declare war. American forces immediately set out to achieve their main objective, conquering Canada, by launching a tbree-pronged invasion—and even' prong failed. Two efforts in early 1813 also failed. In spite of Oliver Hazard Perry's dazzling victory on Ace Eagle Hasse Wind: The Finnish Lake Erie in September 1813, later cam- Air Force at War, 1939-1944, by Seppo paigns brougbt only more frustration, Porvaii, Apali Oy, Tampere, Finland, and American troops burned several 2004, $44.95. towns, acts tbat would be remembered in Curiously, Ace Eagle Hasse Wind: The Canadian history' the way Americans re- Finnish Air Force at War, 1939-1944, does member Pearl Harbor In 1814 the British not entirely live up to its title. More of a burned Wasbington in retaliation. "life in wartime" account tban an actual American schoolchildren study tbe in- biograpby, it is nevertheless a gotjd, comContinued on page 69 dividual victories of U.S. Naw frigates

I N T R I G U E A pagan uprising in Hungary ended up putting a Christian king on the throne. By Margaret Donsbach

BY THE YEAR 10A6, Hungary had been officially Chiistian for nearly half a century, yet its official status masked seething discontent. Three royal brothers, exiled while still in their teens, became the focus of a rebellion so savage it left only three bishops alive in the entire kingdom. In the end, however, a Christian regained the throne: King Endre (Andrew) I. Endre's youth was shaped by religious change and political violence. His father,

Vazul, was a direct descendant of Arpad, the pagan chieftain who had led the nomadic Magyars from central Asia into the Carpathian Basin in 895. Vazul's first cousin, Istvan (Stephen), had been crowned the first officially recognized monarch of what Rome acknowledged as the Apostolic Kingdom of Hungary in the year 1000. Istvan proclaimed Western Christianity the official religion of the land and urged his subjects, from the

nobles to the humblest villagers, to adopt the new religion. Many did. Vazul did not. In pagan times, when a chieftain died, the eldest able-bodied male descendant of the Arpad line was chosen to succeed him. Vazul would have been Istvan's heir under that tradition. In accordance with European Christian practice, however, Istvan had become king upon his fathers death, and he intended his only son, Imre Continued on page 70

At Varkony castle, an ailing King Endre I offers his brother Bela the choice ofthe Hungarian crown or a sword representing a duchy Bela made his decision realizing his head was on the line. 64 MILITARY HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

W E A P O N R Y Artillery played a varied but vital role in Texas' War for Independence. Brown

FOR A STATE THAT BRAGS ABOITT its size, Texas' revolution is an anomaly. Texas came into existence in 1836, when a relatively few Anglo settles and adventurers wrested a very large section of land away from Mexico and, in the process, created larger-than-life legends such as William Barret Travis, James Bowie, David Crockett, Samuel Houston and Stephen F. Austin. The conilict itself, however, lasted only seven months and consisted of eight battles. The siege of the Alamo lasted just 13 days, and once the Mexicans stoimed it on March 6, 1836, it fell in one hour The decisive Battle of San Jacinto that secured Texas' independence was even briefer—about 18 minutes. The rebellious Texans had problems throughout the conflict in securing provisions, including ordnance, and the few established roads in the territory were not conducive to rapid movement of artiUerv'. Yet cannons played a cmcial role throughout the short war. Artillery's role in the revolt was established right at its start, at the small, rural township of Gonzales, 70 miles from Bexarand modem-day San Antonio. The townships Anglo-American settlers had been loaned a small cannon, barely 24 inches in length and probably originally a swivel gun, for defense against Indian raids. Now, with rebellion ilaring up, Mexican Genei'al Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna ordered Colonel Domingo Ugartechea to retrieve it. The settlers' response was to mount the cannon on the axle of a cotton wagon and fashion a lar^e white flag from a wedding dress, displaying a black star, a cannon and the challenge to "Come and take it." As both forces faced off on September 20, 1835, the cannon fired a chai'ge improvised from pieces of chain. It caused neither damage nor casualties, but Ugartechea retreated lo San Antonio. The Texas Revolution had begun. After the settlers left Gonzales for 66 MILITARV HISTORY NOVEMBER 2005

Bexar on October 12, the makeshift gun carriage's ungreased wheels began to grind and smoke, in spite of the application of water and tallow. Ultimately, they buried their immobilized cannon near Sandies Creek, where it remained for 101 years. Its brief role in the firet confi'ontation assured the gun an honored place in Texas history, but its failure to traverse the rough Texas terrain would svmbolize a disadvantage that would plague the Texans throughout the conflict. ThefirstTexans airiving south of Bexar di.scovered that the Mexican troops had hastily retreated into the city, leaving

behind eight 4-pounder as well as larger cannons and ammunition. The Texans continued to advance on San Antonio, besieging the Mexican army under General Martin Perfecto de Cos. One of the participants in that siege, which lasted from December 5 lo 11, was Hermann Ehrenberg, a newly arrived German immigrant serving with a unit called the New Orleans Greys, who left behind an account that provides insights into the role played by the artillery. "On the second day of the siege the attention of the Texans was centered on a long 12pounder, of a larger caliber than any other gun in San Antonio," he wrote. "This cannon had been hauled to our walls during the preceding night, and our first occupation upon its anival had been to cut a k)ophole for it in the masonrv and set it up at an angle from which we could conveniently shell the enemy's position."

Located at Presidio La Bahia near Goliad, this cannon is believed to have been buried by Colonel James Walker Fannin inside the fort prior to his disastrous retreat in March 1836.

On the third day, Khrenberg wrote, the 12-pounder destroyed a key Mexican position, allowing the soldiers to push the defendei"s back li'om the central plaza. While the 12-pounder was effective, Ehrenbei^g noted that ammunition I or the 6-pounders gave nut. In an account that seems almost humorous, he reported how "each time the enemy's missiles hit the quartet's ()f the Greys, the men immediately sprang over the walls, picked up the Continued on page 72

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for a field commission as a medical administration officer by a general, a major and a captain. It was passed by the 91st Division headquarters, but the Fifth Army knocked it down. They said they didn't need a medical administration officer at that time, and they said 1 hadn't served enough time in an administrative office. MH: Could you explain the significance of your AGC test results? McMenamy: That's my Army General Classification test, with a score of 122— that was pretty good. It also says: "Applicant has held positions of medical technician of this organization from February 3, 1944 to August 19, 1945, and dental technician also from the 7th of August." Yes, I had worked with a dentist along with my regular duties. I wanted to get more in the medical field, so I did that. I was honorably discharged on November 11, 1945.1 was amazed I survived all this without heing hit. Now I have a wife, eight children and 30 grandchildren. MH: Looking back on what happened to you during WWII, what final words of wisdom would you like to leave for your grandchildren from your wartime experience? McMenamy: If you have to go into the military because of wars, then go in. But other than that, stay out of the military. You're giving up yourfi"eedom.You're not in a democracy anymore. You don't use the bathroom without permission. You get up when you're told, you go to bed when you're told. Stay out of the military unless it's something necessar\', like a war. Live for today, because too many things can happen to you. And you never know what's going to happen from day to day After WWII ended, Jerome McMenamy worked for 25 years in the Environmental Protection Agency and in the space program at Cape Canaveral, Fla., before retiring in 1983. A member of the Sons of the American Revoution, he has also held prominent positions in the Roman Catholic Church, including six years as president of the Order of Franciscans. MH First-lime conlributor Frank A. Reynolds writes from Onnond Beach, Fla. For further reading, try The 91 st Infantr> Division in World War II, b\ Robert A. Robbins.

REVIEWS Continued from page 62

pi'ehensive, lavishly illustrated primer for anyone unfamiliar with the astounding achievements of Finland's air arm during wbat Finns refer to as the Continuation Wai" against the Soviet Union, from June 25, 1941, tbrough September 4, 1944. Altbough be was only Finland's secondranking ace, Hans "Hasse" Wind claims his share of tame for shooting down 75 Soviet aircraft, including 30 in 12 days in June 1944, and twice receiving tbe Mannerheim Cross, his counti-y's highest award for valor, Americans might be most astonished at what be accomplisbed wbile flying the Brewster 239, an export version of ihe much-maligned F2A-1 Buffalo. Flown by British, Austialian, Dutch and U.S. Marine pilots in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, tbe Buffalo suffered a mauling at Japanese bands. In ihe well-trained, tactically proficient and highly motivated bands of ibe Finns, however, tbe lightened export Brewster claimed a kill-toloss ratio of 34-lo-1 againsl its Soviet opposition, and Wind scored 39 victories in it—just one short of what American ace of aces Richard L Bong accomplished Hying Lockheed P-38 Lightnings. Ace Eagle Hasse Wind spends as much time on the overall operations of the Finnish air force as it does on Wind, altbough the two are admittedly hard to separate fi'om one another. Wind himself contributed to Finnish air tactical doctrine, and the book's appendix includes his comments on tbe subject, Seppo Forvaii's narrative displays more frequent bursts t)f national pride than most previous English language Liccounts by Finnisb aviation autbors. More curious, however, is the author's concluding witb Wind's maniage to Hilkka Saari on August 26, 1944, and tbe conditional armistice with the Soviets that assured Finnisb independence. It makes for a bappy ending, but one would think tbat what puiports lo be a biography would make at least a summary mention of Wind's postwar success as a businessman, his five children and bis death in Tampere—the cily in wbicb Pon-ali's hook was publisbed—on July 24, 1995. In tbat I'espect, Ace Eagle Hasse Wind: The Fhuii.sh Air Force at War, 1939-1944 lives up lo tbe second part oi its title better tban it does to tbe first.

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Call: 1-800-358-6327 Online: vvw'w.thehision'neLshop.com ijtiiled Stales Postal Service STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, AUNAGEMENT. and CmCUUlKM fle[juir«i!tiy39USC36eS 1. PubiicafenTtle MilTARVHISTORY 2 PyUaranNumoer OiES-;3263.Filiii5Dile iQ'Q1/fl5 4. Issue ol Ffemienc; Montniy excepi ta Jaoiiart'and March S.NumteotlaiiesPuBliMieflAmiially )0 8. Annual S u t o p u m P r a . S27.96 7. Complete Wailing Wdress Dt M m Office of PiiMicalKm (Hot Pnnter) Primedia CHMG, 7^1 Miller Dr., S E, Suite D-2, Leesburg. VA 20175 8, Complete Mailing JUdress ol Headquarieis w GEnerai Business D t e of PuWiste (Wot Pnnter) Pnmedia ZWj. 260 Madisonflvsnue.New Vorti NY 10016 9. fiiii iJames and Compete Mailing Addresses of Publislier, Editor and Marking Editor - PuDlislier' Jcsepfi Pecki, 741 M t o Dr, S £, Suile D-2, Leesburg VA 2(]175. Edto JonGu!tiiBii.7JtMiile(Dr,S.E..Sui!eD-2,LBesbirrg.Vfl30l75;Managir9Editor Carl i/on WtxftW, 741 Miller Dr., S.E. Suile D-?, LcKtwig, VA 20176 tO, Owier • Full name. Pnmedu inc, 716 Fiftli Ai«nue. Hew Yort, NY fO151 USA. 11. Known flondtioMers, Mongagees, and Ottier Security HoWsrs Oviiimg or HokJing i Penxnt or Mote ol Total Amount of Bcmds. Mottpages or Ottier SecjinMs' None 12. Tai Slaius Has not clianjed dunng preffiding 11 monttis U, Publication Title' MILITARY HISTDRV tfl. issue Dale far Ctrcuiahw Data Below October2()0615.EitenUndNatureofCiFCulation a.TotaiNumbEroiCopies(fWpress run) TtiejvsrasenumtiHCOpieseacftissjedunngpfffifidingiJmonttBtvas 130.596 Ttrenumbei copies single issue |:iibi>st)ed newest to tiiuig date was 119,675 Ii, Paid and/or Reguesled :iituiai«n (1| Paid'Ttequested Outside-Coumy Maii Subscriplions SBied or Fonii 3 H I ilnciude advertiser s pro:! and eiclangt o»ies). Ttie avsrjge numbec copies esc^ ssue dunng preceding 12 monttis *as 55 D7a T?ie number copes single ssue published nearest lo fiiinfl date MS50,709 (!)Paidin-CountySiibscnptionsStatedonForm3Ml(incii)desa(tffirtiser'sproof and eiD-hange co[nes) Tie Mrage numtjcr copies eacn issue dunng prBMlinc \Z monttis w> 0 itie number copies s ngie issue piaiistseJ neaiesi lo liling date was 0 (3) Saies Ttirougti DeaJers and Carrters, Street Vendors, Counter Sales, and Otlier Non-USPS Paid dstnbution The awfage number cofiies each issue flunng precaJing 12 montfisras21,951 Tbe number copies single issue publisfied np,arES! to fii^ng dateras21.2B5 (fl| Other Classes Maiied Ttirougti tlie JSPS. Ttie awrage number copies eacii issue dunng preradinj 1 ! monttis w s 0 The number copies singie issue pubished nearest to filing date ^ 0 c. Total Paid and/o' Ftepuested Circulation [Sum of 151) 1.2,3 8 4j The average number copies each issue durrng preceding 1 ! monBis MS 77,029 Ttre number copies srngie issue pubiisnett nearesi lo fiimg U i m 71,994. i. Free Dtstnbution tiy Maii (Samples. Compiimenlarv and olhet Iree) (1)ftjEideCounty as Staled or Fom 3641 Ttie average number copies eacti issue dunng prece(!ing 12 monitis was 63 ni( number copies single issue publisfied nearest to fiiing date W3s 59 (!] In-Counly as Staled on form 3641 The anerage numter copies eacH issue dunng preceding 12 monltis was 0. Tte number copies s^ngle ssue putiisbefl nearest lo liiing M e was 0 |3| Other Classes U a M Ttirougti ttie ISPS Tts average numtier copies eacti issue dunng preceding M monihs was 0. Ttie fiumtiet copies single issue puDlistied nearestto liling date was 0. i . Free Distnbulion DuSide tbe Vaii iCanets ol otber meansi Tlie ararage nunte copies eacb issue during prece^og 12 mortis was 7?3. The number copies single issue published nearest to fiimg date M S 750. t.TotalFrteDistntiijbon(Sumot15dand16e| Ttieaveragendmtocopieseacbissueduiing preceding 12 montft was 791. The number copes single ssue puKistted nearest lo liling date was 808. j . Total [istnbution(Sunio!16candl6ll Ttie average number copes each issue during preceding 11 monttis was 77 S30 Ttw number copies singie issue pubislied neaiesi lo Sing date WK 72.B02 li. Copies not Distnbuted. Ttie aiwage number copies each issue dunny preceding 12 mcmt^s *as 62,776 The number copies single issue publisbed nearest to filing dale was 4S.873 I. Totil (Sum of 15g aid 15h} The average number copies eacti issue during precsding 12 monltis MS 130,596 The number copies single issue publistiBd nearest to filing dateMs 118,675 j . Perrent Paid and'or Renuesled Cin;ulation The average itumtier copies each issue dunng preceding 12 monttis was 99.0'ii Tbe number copies single issue puhiisbed nearest to fiiing dale M S 9B.9';i. 16. Publication of SBtment ol iWiersbip • Wll be pnnted m ttie November 2005 Gsue ot ttiis putiiication 17. i certityttiatail iniormation lumeliKJ on (his [orm is true and caniiiete Signature and title ol Etltor, Pudishet Business Manager, or Dwner - Kevin Neary, Senior Vra Presidenl. CfO, 1M1/05

70 MILITARY HISTORY" NOVEMBER 2005

elder brother, Levente, stayed in Kiev with Endre and held to his pagan beliefs. Continued from page 64 Back in Hungary, King Istvan had named Peter Orseolo. the son of his sister and the doge of Venice, as his beir. When (Emeric), lo become king after him. Ist\'an died in the summer of 1038, Peter During a hunting party in 1031, however, became king and brought his foreign enImre was gored to death by a wild boar. tourage to court with him. In the HunThe shadow ol uncertainty that then garian Illuminated Chronicle, written fell acToss Hungan's future altered the some 300 years later, the outrage of the rest of Endre's life. His father vvas ac- Hungarian nobility is still palpable: "After cused of trying to assassinate Istvan^ Peter had been made king, be cast aside which he might have contemplated, seek- all royal goodness and serenity and raged ing to return Hungary to its old pagan with Teutonic fun; treating with conway oi life. Guilty or not. Vazul was tempt the nobles of Hungary and with inseized by a group of Christian knights satiable heart casting his proud eyes upon who put out his eyes and poured boiling their rich lands. Together with the Teulead into his eai^s. He lived, but as a blind tons, who roared like wild beasts, and the Latins, who chattered and twittered like and deaf invalid no longer able to rule. swallows, he devoured their wealth." Endre was probably in his mid-teens when his father was maimed. At King Peter reigned three years before the Istvan's urging, he and his brothets, Lev- nobles rebelled and replaced him with ente and Bela, fled to Poland and were the husband of one of Istvan's other sistaken in by King Mieszko II. Istvan and ters, a man named Aba. But the nobles Mieszko had been allies since Mieszko's turned against Aba as swiftly as they had father had died, leaving him the sole niler against Peter. According to the Chronicle, of Poland. Both nations were newly Aba offended the nobles by favoring Christian, and both kings had a common lesser folk. He "held that all things should enemy in German Emperor Conrad II, be in common between lords and serwho had tenitorial ambitions. vants," the Chronicle said, and "consorted Endre and his brothers cannot have with peasants and commoners." In 1044 been in Poland very long when Mieszko some nobles urged Peter to return. With was attacked by both the Rus of Kiev and military- assistance from Henry III. the the German empire. Mieszko's two half- new German emperor, he defeated Aba in brothers took advantage of the war to a battle so bloody that, according to the seize the kingdom, claiming the right to Chronicle, "For two months nobody could mle utider the old Polish tradition. Miesz- well pass over this field because of the ko appealed to the powerful Coni'ad, who stench of the dead men. who had been restored his rule but forced him to give killed by the archers." up his title of king and recognize Conrad Peter was no better liked during his as his overlord. The next year, 1034, a second reign than he had been during his pagan rebellion broke out. and Mieszko first. He infuriated the nobles when be was killed. His family took shelter with swore allegiance to Henr> III, ceremoniPrince Yaroslav of Kiev. ously handing him a golden lance, the symbol of the kingdom of Hungary. So in IT IS NOT CLEAR where Endre and his 1046 the nobles sent for Endre and Levbrothel's were throughout those vears of ente in Kiev, asking them to return and strife, but they too ended up at Yaroslav's rid them of their foreign king. The brothcourt. It was probably there that Miesz- ers left for Hungaiy, bringing some of ko's son Kasimierz and Endre's younger Yaroslav's troops with them. brother, Bela, forged the hiendship that The few remaining pagans among the would last the rest of their lives—and nobility and the more numerous pagans result in Endre's death. among the common folk had been quietly Yaroslav was an Eastern Orthodox seething for many years, angered by the Christian wbo ruled over a newly Chi'is- suppression of tbeir religion and timetianized principality. Endre accepted bap- honored customs. The "abominations" tism and maiTied Yaroslav's daughter, that the Chronicle attributed to them, Anastasia. Bela was also baptized and such as eating horse meat and wearing mairied Kasimier/'s sister. Richeza. In their hair shaved at the top of the head about 1040, Bela returned to Poland with with tbe rest braided into three plaits, Kasimierz, who regained the crown with would be considered cultural mther than the help of the German emperor. Endre's religious differences today. When they

learned that a pagan son of Vazul was on his way back to Hungary, they seized the opportunity for a full-scale rebellion, hoping not only to overthrow Peter but also to end half a centui"y of Christian rule. On their way to meet Vazul's sons, the pagans killed all the prominent Christians they could find. They seized Hungary's most eminent bishop, Gerard, thrust him into a call, and rolled it down a steep, rocky crag overlooking the Danube. Then, for good measure, they speared him through the breast and bashed out his brains (the martyred bishop was later canonized as Saint Gerard (or Gellert in Hungarian), and the hill in Budapest now bears his name). Endre, himself now a Cliristian, could not approve of the rebels' behavior, but he and Levente absorbed the pagans into their army and used them to help defeat Peter. As Peterfledtoward the Austrian border, he was taken captive, blinded and castrated. A few days later, he died. Endre's brother Levente was now the eldest able-bodied male descendant of Arpad. The pagans wanted him for their next king, but the Christians who dominated the nobility chose Endre. The pagans, sated by their killing spree and the death of the haled Peter, acquiesced. When Endre was crowned king in 1046, only three bishops were present; all the others had been slain in the rebellion. Levente died soon after the coronation, putting an end to any remaining pagan hopes thai he might yet become king.

balancing act succeeded in satisfying both parties, because there was no further pagan rebellion during his reign. In 1053 Endre's wife of some 10 yeai's, Anastasia, finally bore a son, Szalamon. Blessed though the event might have been, it cast a new shadow over Hungary's future. Would Bela continue to be Endre's heir now that he had a son? One clear advantage of the old system of succession was that only an experienced adult could rule. Bela already had almost kingly powers and had repeatedly proven himself as a militaiy commander, but Endre was determined to have his son succeed him. In 1057, when Szalamon was only 4 years old, Endre had him officially consecrated and crowned as king. Then, after his nemesis Henry III died, Endre negotiated Szalamon's betrothal to the late emperor's daughter A ceremony in 1058 formally bound the two children, now 5 and 11, in matrimony. While emphasizing Szalamon's official role as king, the mairiage also sealed Hungary's status as an independent nation and established a formal peace vvith the German empire.

Around that time, Endre suffered a stroke. In his sickbed, he must have begun to brood over his weakness and the fact that he had rewarded his brother Bela for defeating Henry III by breaking the promise to make him king. According to the Chronicle. Endre in•vited Bela to his castle at Varkony, on the border of Bela's ducal temtories. Endre, HENRY III WAS NOT pleased by the ouster it stated, "caused the crown to be laid on of his vassal. Endre, who intended to rule red samite before him and beside it a Hungary as an independent nation, knew sword, which is the symbol of a dukehe needed a skilled military commander dom." When Bela arrived, Endre asked to defend his kingdom against Henrys him to choose which of the two he wrath. He called Bela back from Poland wanted. Nearby stood some nobles with and named him commander of his army instructions to behead Bela if he chose and duke over a third of his kingdom, the crown. But the guard at the palace lands settled by the Kabars, who formed gate had warned Bela, if he valued his life, the core of the Hungarian army. As duke, to choose the sword. And so he did. Bela was entitled to such privileges as Bela left for Poland after this incident, minting his own coinage. His office, but in 1060 he returned at the head of a which Imre had held in King Istvan's day, Polish army. Endre, weakened fi'om his seems to have been linked to the throne, stroke and never the soldier his brother and Endre, who had no son yet, named was, was in a poor position to fight back. Bela his heir. Bela gave valuable service Bela's forces were victorious. Endre sufin return, for when Henry III attacked fered a fatal accident while fleeing his Hungary in 1051 and again in 1052, Bela brother's army. Bela honored him with a defeated him both times. royal burial in a tomb of red marble in With Bela guarding his borders, Bndre the Benedictine abbey at Tihany. The consolidated Hungary's status as a Chris- abbey is long gone, but Endre's tomb can tian nation. He passed laws requiring still be seen in the crypt under the church Christian religious practices but did not built over the abbey mins. It is the earlirigorously enforce them, to avoid anger- est tomb still in existence of any Hungaring the pagans. It seems Endre's religious ian king. MH

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MILITARY H I S T O R Y

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water to swab them down, the overheated, fouled cannons lost much of their Continued from page 66 effectiveness. After their surrender, Fannin, Ehrenberg and the rest of the Texans were cannonballs, and loaded our cannon...." marched back to Presidio La Bahia. One After five days of hand-to-hand and week later, on Palm Sunday, March 27, house-to-house combat, the Mexicans the Mexicans, on Santa Anna's order, exwere driven out of San Antonio, lea\ing ecuted 342 of them. Today, at Fannin behind the Alamo and its stores of am- Plaza Park, located in the town of Goliad, munilion, many cannons, gunpowder two cannons are on display. The larger and 4,000 muskets. Meanwhile, to the bears the inscription: "Used by Col. south, Texans had attacked and occupied Fannin and his men on Fannins battlethe old Spanish Presidio La Bahia at field in Goliad Count\ in 1836." A smaller Goliad. That prize gave the Texans access cannon is marked simply: "Found on the to even more Mexican ordnance and Streets of Goliad After the Battle of 1836." Inside the reconstructed Presidio La supplies. Bahia itself, near the historic Our Lady of EARLY IN 1836, Sanla Anna returned to Loreto chapel, is positioned another Bexar, and now Travis and the Texans cannon inscribed: "This cannon, believed came under siege in the Alamo com- to have been used by Col. James Walker pound. Meanwhile, at the Presidio La Fannin and his men during the Texas Bahia, Colonel James Walker Fannin ig- Revolution of 1835-6, was excavated from nored Sam Houston'sfii^stcall to retreat inside the presidio walls in 1936 by to Bexar and reinforce the Alamo de- Andrew Vivian Shaw and Santiago Carfenders. Only as his own position deterio- bajal." rated did Fannin finally acknowledge Houston's second call to blow up the fort, THREE WEEKS PRIOR to the Goliad mastake any ariilleiy thai could be cairied, sacre, the Texans' defense of the Alamo sink the rest in the river and retreat to was aided by the significant inventory of Victoria. ordnance they had seized after the Battle Fannin set out in mid-March 1836, but of Bexar, as well as the artillery previously immediately had wagon problems due to transported to Bexar from Velasco by the overloading, and one of his howitzers New Orleans Greys. Several of the debogged down at the river. He also mis- fendeni. notably Almeron Dickinson and judged the nearness of the Mexican J.C. Neill of "come and take it" experience tixwps, and three miles from Coleto Creek and compound chief engineer Green Jameson, were skillful ariillei'y tacticians he was suirounded. Fannin had nine cannons, and as he who positioned the guns at stations formed his wagons and equipment into a around the mission that maximized their square defensive position, he located his effectiveness. The New Orleans Greys, artillery at the comers. German volunteer whose ranks included several artillery vetEhrenberg was present, and his diary erans of European armies, also pnndded recorded that with the fii^t Mexican cav- e.xperi firing and maintenance skills once ali7 charge on March 19, seven of the the siege and fighting staried. Texan cannons opened iire "with immediEstimates vaiT as to the number of canate and honibie effect." Mext the Mexican nons the detendei"s maintained inside the infantry charged, and the Texan cannons Alamo, but several Mexican reports indiwere wheeled about to spread grapeshot cated about 20 pieces. The highly effective and canister through their ranks. Three 18-pounder was directed at Bexar from Mexican attacks were repulsed with the southwest comer. Inside the roofless heavy casualties during thatfii"stday, but chapel, Dickinson had built a diit ramp as darkness set in they spent the night against the rear wall and mounted thi-ee sniping at the Texans while Mexican re- 12-pounders facing east. On the weak inforcements, including cannons, were south wall, guarded by David Crockett brought up. and the Tennessee Volunteers, were posiOn the second day, hunger, thirst and tioned four 4-pounders, while Travis tactical errors forced Fannin to sun ender. commanded a battei^ of 9-pounders on Reporis indicate that many of the Texan the north palisade. At least two cannons cannoneei^ were killed or wounded, and were positioned in the courtyard, and a the bores of their guns became clogged swivel gim was located atop the hospital. with powder I'esidue. Without access to One of the cannons on the west wall was

a short-range naval weapon called a gunade. The artillerv' engagement began when Santa Anna flew a blood-red banner from tbe towers of San Fernando Churcb in Bexar to warn the Alamo's recalcitrant garrison to expect no quarter. Travis answered witb a round from tbe 18pounder Thirteen days later, when the Mexicans launched tbeir final assault early In the moiTiing of March 6, Travis was killed instantly while comnrianding his cannon on the north wall. Inside tbe chapel, Jim Bonham directed fire from tbe three I2-pounders, constantly moving their positions so tbat they could fire in tbree directions across the roofless walls. One glaring weakness in tbe positioning of the cannons was that those three pieces were almost the only ones capable of pivoting. Also, the Alamo defenders had positioned all pieces above the walls instead of tbrougb portboles, rendering them nearly useless once tbe Mexican soldiers bad reached the bases of the walls. As the Mexicans stormed into the compound, some of the cannoneers, swung tbeir pieces around and began firing into the courtyard. Wben the cannoneei-s were killed or retreated, tbe Mexicans turned

the abandoned cannons—including tbe powerful 18-pounder—on tbe Texan barracks. After the doors were blown apart, the Mexicans used the 8-pounders to spray grape and canister at the defenders inside. To tbe south, Crockett's men and tbeir four 4-pounders were overwhelmed, and tbe remaining defenders began retreating into tbe chapel, where Jameson, Bonham and Dickinson continued to fire tbeir three 12-poundei"s with deadly accuracy. Once tbey bad exbausted tbeir supply of cannonballs, tbey loaded tbe guns with rocks, nails, chain, metal hinges and any lethal object tbey could find. Wben the chapel was oveirun and tbose three cannons were silenced, tbe Battle of the Alamo was over. TODAY SEVERAL SPANISH and Englisb

cannons of the period are positioned for display in the cavalry courtyard, but only one, a carronade, is listed as a veteran of the actual battle. Its inscription reads: "This cannon was used in tbe Battle oi the Alamo, probably on tbe west wall. It was made inoperable by General Santa Anna before he left for San Jacinto. This type of cannon was made in Carron,

Scotland in the 1790s." As costly as tbe Alamo defeat was for the separatists. General Sam Houston was to exact revenge seven weeks later at San Jacinto. There, Houston overwhelmed and soundly defeated a numerically superior Mexican force under Santa Anna in only 18 minutes and did so using only two cannons—the fabled "Twin Sisters." Tbose cannons were a gift to tbe rebelling Texans from the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, manufactured by the foimdry of Messrs. Greenwood and Webb in 1836. Because the United States was officially neutral during the war, they were labeled as "hollow ware" and sent to Texas by ship. They were reportedly named tbe Twin Sisters in honor of the twin daughters of a prominent pbysician on board. Tbe 6-pounders, about 5 feet 5 inches long and weighing about 800 pounds, proved deadly accurate during the battle on April 21. Afte!"ward, they were used to guard Mexican prisoners and in 1840 were moved to Austin, tbe new capital of the Republic of Texas, to guard against Indian attacks. Sometime since then, however, both historic guns have disappeared. MH

AMERICAN H I STORY

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NOVEMBER 2005 MILITARY HISTORY 73

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H.R.D. Maclver: Forty years a vagabond soldier to kings and fools. By C. Brian Kelly

BORN OF A VIRGINIA MOTHER who

was aboard a ship and then spending his first 10 years in Virginia, Henry Ronald Douglas Maclver did later fight for the Confederacy.. .but not until after defending British rule in India against the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 and then, on a contrary tack, fighting in Italy with Giuseppe Garibcddis rebel redshirts. Later to become a naturalized citizen, even a U.S. consul as part of a checkered career, the one-time Confederate major would serve under 18 different flags as probably the epitome of the 19th-century soldier of fortune. Only 16 at the time of the Great Indian Mutiny and an ensign with the East India Company, he was lucky to survive that first taste of warfare. "He was wounded in the arm, and, with a sword cut over the head," wrote the famous American correspondent Richard Harding Davis in his book Real Soldiers of Fortune. The result was a head scar visible for hfe. From India for the young man, it was but a hop, skip and a jump to Italy, where he "was a volunteer and wore the red shirt of GaribcJdi." Still ahead would be military service or campaigns in Egypt, Cuba, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Crete, Serbia and his onetime home base, Virginia. Serving the Confederacy under Generals Jeb Stuart, Stonewall Jackson and Edmund Kirby Smith, he emerged from the Civil War four times wounded and officially described as "an officer of great gallantry." In addition to his 18 stints at soldiering by age 60, said Davis in his book, Maclver survived capture by hostile Indians in the American Southwest, spent days adrift at sea off Cuba, foiled "several attempts to assassinate him," and "fought several duels, in two of which he killed his adversary." From among those duels, however, comes a Civil War tale with an ugly and 74 MILITARY HISTOKY NOVEMBER 2005

totally unnecessary outcome. "At the close of the war duels between officers of the two armies were not infrequent," Davis asserted in his book. Then citing cin account sent to an unnamed Northem newspaper by a correspondent in Vicksburg—"who was an eye-witness to the event"—Davis explained that Maclver, for reasons not given, engaged in a duel by swords with a Union artillery officer from Vermont. According to the newspaper cited by Davis, Maclver impaled his opponent, then "wiped his sword on his handkerchief as his opponent breathed his last. Before mounting his horse and riding off, Maclver told the dead officers seconds: "My friends are in haste for me to go. Is there anything I can do? I hope you consider this matter settled honorably." Receiving no reply, the Confederates rode away.

adventures to help insurgents on the island of Crete in a revolt against their Turkish rulers. Then came fresh services with an abortive rebellion against the Spanish in Cuba. He was next recruited by a former Union officer for the Egyptian ruler Khedive Ismail as part of a contingent of former Union and Confederate soldiers rounded up to help him run his army. But the climate in Cairo "did not agree with Maclver," and after six months as inspector general of the cavalry, he moved on... this time to Europe's Franco-Prussian War. After being wounded at Orleans, recovering and seeing the French lose their war, he followed his usual pattern and moved on. Never fond of the Turks anyway, he found common cause with the Montenegrins and Serbians fighting against them in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He now organized and commanded his own cavahy AFTER HIS FATAL duel with the Vermont brigade, the "ICnights of the Red Cross." officer, Maclver tried to leave the former "The pay was good,fightingplentiful, and Confederacy for Mexico, where he Belgrade gay and amusing," wrote Davis. planned to join Emperor Maximillian's "Indeed, of all the places he has visited Royalist army. On his way across Texas and the countries he has served, it is of from Galveston to El Paso, however, he this Balkan kingdom the general seems was captured by Indians. "He was not ill- to speak most fondly and with the greattreated. . .but for three months was a pris- est feeling. oner, until one night, the Indians having He still would reorganize yet more forcamped near the Rio Grande, he escaped eign legions—"small armies" in Central into Mexico." America—become a naturalized U.S. Maclver fled by boat to Rio de Janeiro. citizen and even offer tofightin the Spein"Two months later he was wearing the ish American War of the late 1890s. But uniform of another emperor, Dom Pedro, at age 60 in 1901, after serving so many and with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, countries, Henry Ronald Douglas was in command of the Foreign Legion Maclver was a "rolling stone" without a of the armies of Brazil and Argentina, pension or real home to call his own. which at that time as allies were fighting After 40 years of "selling his sword and risking his life for presidents, pretenders, against Paraguay." But now an outbreak of cholera in charlatans and emporers," noted correBuenos Aires killed thousands, including spondent Richard Harding Davis, Genabout half of Maciver's 700-man legion. eral Maclver truly and only was, as the Returning to his father's homeland of king of England once fondly said, "the Scotland, Maclver was soon off to new vagabond soldier." MH