Military History 2007-11

Letters Custer Wasn't Entirely to Blame [Re. "Worst Battlefield Blunders," by Stephan Wilkinson, September:] Your description ofthe debacle at the Little Bighorn in 1876 omits an itnportant item: General Guster certainly v^dll never be mistaken for Generals Roben E. Lee, George Patton or any other outstanding military leader, but let's be fair—Guster just didn't have proper equipment. The trapdoor Springfield v^^as obviously not properly field-tested, was an economic compromise (using as much of an outdated muzzleloading rifle as possible) and failed in Custer's time of need. Specifically, the soft pure copper cartridges would not extract properly as the rifle heated up from repeated firing; consequently the rifles became inoperable. A quick and simple fix was to use stronger brass cartridges, an approach still in use today But this change was too late for Custer.

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Would properly operating rifles have saved Custer? Probably not, but the battle would have been more favorable to him. Alden L Head WHITE STONE, VA.

Korea, leaving only about 500 military assistance personnel behind. From these facts I conclude that the United Stales invited the invasion of South Korea. Our foreign policy was quite clear that we would not defend South Korea. Either Truman suddenly changed

War Declared!

|Re. "War Declared!" by Jonathan Turley,July/AugU5t:l The article was nol at all what 1 expecied. For starters, Harry Truman appears on the cover. Il could be argued that President Truman did start the Korean War In 1948, Dean Acheson, Ilaterj TruWAR DECLARED! man's secretary of stale, drew a line around the world, defining America's area ol security inlerest so thai there would he no doubt about what ihe U.S. would fight for and what it his mind or knew all along would noi fighi for. Two allies that when South Korea was were on the oLher side of the invaded, he would order a line: Souih Korea and Formosa U.S. inter\'ention. (now called Taiwan). At the Cosmo Bavone same time, all U.S. combat U.S. Army (Ret.) troops were withdrawn from

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1 have a great deai of respect for Jonathan Turley and was delighted to see his article in one of my favorite magazines. Like many of your readers, I am a little surprised by the increased commentar)' on current military issues. On reileclion, it seems quite appropriate and useful, especially if the commentatots are of the quality of Tui'ley Timothy Wachter KEITH viLLE, LA.

Foolish Things |Rc. "These Foolish Things," News, July/Augusl:) Even if I Bryan Ferry] made statements [complimenting Nazi aesthetics], so what? I'm a Jew, an Israeli and ihe child of a Holocaust escapee, my father having goilen out of Germany at age 13 in 1939. I am no fan of the Nazis, but you've got to give credit where credit is due: They did have a flair for pageantry

and lavish parades. Sounds pretty innocuous to me. And if I spent time in a windowless recording studio, busy planning out my next career moves, I too mighl Just call it Jo^lly my Fuhrerbunker. Steven A. Marcus VENTURA, CALIF.

POW Treatment I take great exception to Simon Rees' article "German POWs and the Art of Survival" [May] and your magazine for priming such biased material. The main body of the article is fine, although it contrasts only the English and Russian treatment of German POWs. It makes no mention of how America treated German POWs, both in the European Theater of Operations and in the U.S. But then Rees lakes a shot directly at the U.S. and our armed forces in "Geneva QinventioiTS 101," on P 52. The last paragraph is an "everyone else good, U.S. bad" insinuation. He doesn't mention that some of those involved in Abu Ghraib were courtmartialed. The U.S. cleans house as best it can— unlike many others. Also, if the Geneva Conventions are consiilied, none of those fighting us are legal combatants and are, therefore, nol POWs. Rees knows this and shows il with his term enemy captives rather than POWs. The U.S. and iis armed services set the standard

for ihe world in enacting and enforcing the Geneva Conventions, and we are not treated in a reciprocal fashion. Think of Blackhawk Dt'wn, Danie] Pear] or how the Japanese ireated American POWs in WWII, Andre R. PerrauU HOUSTON, TEXAS

USAF-Style SOS "Beyond Hardtack," by Agostino von Hasse]l et a]. iMarchl did not mention our great Air Force chow. In the '60s my branch had a detachment at Da Nang, Vietnam. If we did not mess at the main compound, we usually had a

case of steaks al our site—acquired through trading. We could gril] in the rec area. We had a good recipe for SOS that 1 have used since the eady '70s: 1 tbs butter, 2 tbs flour, 1 cup milk, sa]t and pepper to taste (basic white sauce) and, most importani, 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce (or more to taste), then add the beef. Flying out of Langley AFB, Va,, in the mid 70s, we had inflight stewards and a galley where fresh meals could be prepared. One had a complete Tappan range. You have not lived until you have had a turkey dinner with all the trimmings prepared fresh

aboard the aircraft during an eight- to 12-hour mission. The aroma was unbelievable. We also had flight line snack bars, where you could get a fresh hamburger. It was great to sit down with your crew for a Tew minutes and go over the mission. One of the most notable snack bars was at Tinker AFB, Okla., where the specialty was freshly baked pumpkin bread. /. Ernee Edwards GREENWOOD VILUGE, COLO.

Kingdom for a Map? [Re. "Big Win at Saratoga," by Geoffrey Norman, October:] 1 suspect many others have written lo you about the staie-

ment on P 31 that General Burgoyne "set out from St. John's, Newfoundland, wilh an 8,200-strong force," That would lnean Burgoyne's men walked on water to march across the Gulf of St. LawTence. A good trick, thai. KR, Woodhead U.S. Navy (Rcl) SEATTLE, WASH.

Editor responds: Good catch, that. Burgoyne had a high opinion of his abilities, bul not even he believed he could walk on water. He and his force set out from the British base at St. Johns (no apostrophe), Quebec, near Montreal, not from the major port ojNewfoundland.

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lews Forensic Artist Identifies Saiior in Times Square V-J Day Smooch a clear look at the sailor. He just kissed her and melted into the crowd. A dozen men have since stepped forward, claiming to be the one. Now a police forensic artist has identified Shain's man. Glenn McDuffie was 18 years old that happy day in August 1945. He and his friends were on a subway headed to Brooklyn when they decided to hop off at Times Square. Making his way through the throng, McDuffie spotted a nurse with open arms. As they kissed, he noticed Eisenstaedt and cocked his wrist so Shain's face would be visible,

Glenn McDuffie was in Times Square on August 14,1945, when he paused to kiss a nurse—a moment captured in Life magazine.

Ii was a kiss of epic proportions. The dale ts August 14, 1945, V-J Day. Newspaper headlines irumpel JAPAN SUR-

Thousands of servicemen and civilians pour into New York's Times Square to celebrate. Among them is a 27-year-old nurse named Edith Shain, who'd headed downtown RENDERS...WAR OVER!

with a friend. As they emerge from the subway station, a smiling young sailor grabs the nurse, dips her and plants a long kiss. Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt is on hand to capture the moment, and his joyful image is soon circulating worldwide, Shain closed her eyes during the kiss and never got

"I didn't think that sucker would ever quit taking pictures.'" the North Carolina native said in a recent NPR lntemew. "It was a good kiss," Houston Police Department forensic artist Lois Gibson had McDuffie recreate the famous pose, substituting a pillow for the nurse. She then took measurements of his ears, facial bones, hairline, wrist, knuckles and hand and compared them digitally to those of the sailor. They were a perfect match. "I'm as positive as you can be," Gibson told the Associated Press.

'If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace' —Thomas Paine

DISPATCHES British Museum to Buy Viking Plunder A father and son hit pay din on a North Yorkshire (arm early this year when their metal detectors signaled on an 8th cemur)' gilt and silver cup containing Viking plunder. The BriUsh Museum [www,[hebriushniuseum,ac.

ukl has since exhibited the Harrogaie hoard and plans to purchase it for up to Cl million. The find includes 617 silver coins, jewelry and ingots. It was likely buried for safekeeping in 927 when Anglo-Saxons drove the Vikings out of Northumbria. The pair will split ihe proceeds with ihe landowner.

F-14S Hit Shredder In ils latest bid lo keep F-14 Tomcat pans from Iran—the only countr)' actively flying the Coid War fighter—the

U.S. government is paying a contractor to rend the jets i n | an industrial shredder, The^ Pentagon retired the F-Hg last fall and has since s u s - | pended sales of all surplus! parts for the aircraft, S

lews Sinai Dig Turns Up Pharaonic Fort An archaeological team digging near the Suez Canal has unearthed Fort Tjaru, the largest known Pharaonic-era fonrcss. which dates trom the New Kingdom (1570-1070 Bt). Ringed by a deep moat, ilu" massi\'c mud-brick edifice

Is ^50 yartis k'ng hy 11'^ yaab wide. Iwo do2en watchtowers once capped its 43-foot-thick walls. Tlic Ton lies along the iloais Road, an ancient military route thai ono.' skirted the northern Sinai coast from the Suez to Palesiitic (see P 21),

WWII Mine Recalls Black Sea Incident A World War tl-era German naval tiimi- recenity turned up in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, Hoatingjust 500 yards from a visiting U.S. missile destroyer. A demolition leam towed the 1,100piiund mine out to sea and (.iriiMKiu-tl II T h e L I O S C c a l l

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hrought to mind an earlier incident. On October 29, 1953, a larger mine struck the batiie.ship Nnvorossiysfe, flagship of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, as it sat at anchor ofT Sevastopol- The rt'sulting c.\plt>.sion capsizet! ihe ship, killitigf>08oiTicersand men.

Purple Heart Turns 225 w h e n George Washington fashioned the Puq^le Heart back in 1782, il wasn't lo honor the wounded hut to forestall a mutiny by battle-weary troops. Known as the Badge of Militarv' Merit, the heart-shaped paieh was awarded in lieu of discontinued battlefield eommissions. Martha Washington herself may have crafted the first out of a purple silk remnant. Todays Purple Heart was resiir- ^ rected in 1932 by none oth. than General Douglas MacAnh11 \ who with typical hubtis prompt I. accepted the first medal. Since then, more than 1.5 million serviee men and women wounded or kil!t\l in action have received Purple Hearts. To mark the 75th anniversary of the modem award, the Nmional Puqjle Heart Hall of Honor 1 www.thepurpleheart.coml in New Windsor, NY., has unveiled a monument to Purple Heart recipients from World War 1 through present day. The Military Order of the F*urple Heart lwww.purplehean.org] donated the granite marker.

'In war, there are no unwounded soldiers' —jose Narosky

GPR Pinpoints Aztec Emperor's Lost Tomb Archaeologists using ground-penetrating radar have detected subterranean chambere that likely hold the ashes of Ahuitzotl, who ruled the Azlecs when Golumbus discovered the New World, He was the last emperor to complete his rule before the conquest. The site lies off Mexico Gity's central plaza, the Zocalo. Alter conquistadors seized the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan in 1521, they built atop the ruins of its temple complex. Their historic structures have since thwarted excavation plans. One such builditig Wiis razed follov^ang a 1985 earthquake, opening the door to archaeologists. This summer they found the flooded tomb entrance. Gipping the stntcture is a depiction of Ttaltecuhtli, Aztec god of the earth. Her clawed foot holds a rabbit marked with 10 dots, indicating the year 10 Rabbit, or 1502, the year of Ahuiuotls death. Inside researchers hope to find rare artifacts related to royal burial. Dudng his reign, Ahuitzotl doubled the extent of lands under Aztec dominion, extending his reach as far south as Guatemala. His tomb represents the empire at its height oi power.

WAR RECORD Wb)-ld War 1 ended on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the l U h month in 1918. Other notable November events include: • Nov. 1, 1911: Italian planes conduct history's first aerial combat bombing, on Libya's Tanguira oasis, during the Italo-Turkish War. • Nov. 5, 1757: Frederick the Great defeats the armies of France and the Holy Roman Empire at the Battle of Rossbach. • Nov. 8.1950: U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Russell J. Brown shoots down two North Koa\in MiG-15s in history's first jet aircraft dogftght. • Nov. 10, 1775: The Continental Gongress autfiorizes the creation of two battalions oi" Marines (the future U.S. Marine Gorps) to serve as landing tRX)ps for the newly created Navy. • Nov. 11, 1940: The British Royal Navy launches history's first aircraft carrier strike, on the Italian fleei at Taranto. • Nov. 14-18, 1965: The Battle of the la Drang marks the first major engagement between regular American and North Vietnamese forces. • Nov. 15, 1864: LInion General Williatn Tecumsch Sherman begins his infamous March to the Sea. • Nov. 16, 1532: Francisco Pizarro and his men capture Inca Emperor Atahualpa.

News Korean War Vet Sees Purple After Navy Suggests He Purchase Medal Korean War veteran Nyles Reed, 75. finally won approval for a Purple Heart this summer—more than a half century after being injured—only to be told the

buy his own Purple Heart. So he did just that, purchastng one from a military surplus store for $42. On June 22. 1952, the 20-year-old Marine sergeant

It took 55 years, but Korean War vet Nyles Reed, right, finally got his Purple Heart, thanks in part to Sen. John Cornyn, left.

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medal was "out of stock." The form letter from the Navy Personnel Gommand told Reed he eould reapply in 90 days or go out and

was serving as a forward observer near Panmunjom when a 76mm artillery round flipped his Jeep, tossing him through the windshield.

Reed ran to a nearby aid station, where a Navy corpsman stitched him up, then asked the sergeant, "Do you want a Purple Heart?" "I ain't got time!" barked Reed as he ran out the door lo rejoin his unit. Three years ago, the Pearland, Texas, native had a change of heart, deciding it would be nice to pass on the medal to his family, which includes three children, eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He dutifully gathered the required service records and eyewitness accounts, only to receive the Navy's "heartless" response. Hearing of the snafu, U.S. Sen. John Gomyn, a member of the Senate Armed SerNaces Gommittee, approached the Navy Department, which finally issued Reed his official Purple Heart. On August 20, Gornyn formally presented the medal to Reed at a Lions Glub luncheon in his hometown. "Today, that 50-year-old offer was accepted," Gornyn said, "and a brave Texan received the recognition he had long been due." Reed has yet to decide what he'll do with his own "surplus medal."

The whole art of war consists of guessing at what is on the other side of the hill' —Arthur Wellesley, Duke oJ Wellington

ILITARY HISTORY

Death Mask Depicts Napoleon's Butler? A deaih mask on display ai the Paris military museum long supposed to be that al Napoleon Bonaparte may in fact be that of his builer, Cipriani Franceschi. Frencii historian Bruno Rey-Henry points to discrepancies in the mask's jawiinc and a missing scar depicted in period portraits of the emperor. He insists the original mask, or "parent mold," which once resided in a London museum, was sold at auction in 2004,

No Day at the Beach Beachcombers m Surf City, NJ., have been turning up a cache of unwelcome shells— namely, thousands of unexploded World War 1 munitions. The Army Corps of Engineers unwittingly deposited the ordnance last

spring during a $71 million beach replenishment project, using sand from a longforgotien offshore military dumping site. Adding insult to incendiary, the corps has asked the town to help foot the cleanup bill. The mayors response; Go pound sand— figuratively speaking, that is.

News Lessons from Forrestai 40 Years After Fire On July 29. 1967, the supercarrier USS Forrestai was operating off North Vietnam. Deck crews were fueling and

bomb cooked off and exploded, destroying his plane and killing most of the specialized firefighters. Subsequent explosions tore holes in the deck, allowing flaming jet fuel to drain belowdecks. The resulting inferno killed 134crews men and wounded more I than 60. i In July, the USS For5 restal Association |www .Iancfhatfield,com/cv59 arming planes for a bombing ,htm I held a memorial service at run when an electrical mal- Norfolk Naval Stations Farrier function on an F'4 Phantom Fire Fighting Facility, named for fired a rocket into the wing- the [light deck chief who died in mounted fuel tank of a fully the initial explosion. The acciloaded A-4 Skyhawk, wreath- dent is the subject of a safety ing that plane in a plume of fire. training video, Trial by Fire, Senator John McGain, then a shown to all new Navy recruits, lieutenant commander, was the Forreatal itself was decommispilot in the Skyhawk. He had sioned in 1993 and is slated barely gotten clear when a to be sunk as an artificial reef.

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The Goast Guard [www.uscg mil] marked its 217th birthday this year with an even more impressive milestone— more than 1 million lives saved. Among its mercy missions:

• Great Mississippi Flood (1927): 674 guardsmen on 128 Goast Gtiard vessels rescue 43,853 people and 11,313 head of livestock—a relief effort that eclipsed even Katrina.

Eco-Battle at Manassas Natural resource managers at Manassas National Battlefield Park iwwvvnps.gov/manal in Northern Virginia are cutting around 140 acres of timber in the west end of the park to approximate its appearance during the August 1862 Battle of Second Manassas. Proponents claim the restoration project will lend the battlefield a sense of authenticity, enhancing \nsitors' experience. But environmentalists bemoan the loss of old-growth hickory-oak forest. National Park Service officials insist they will follow best forest management practices, maintaining adec[uate buffers along streams and roads and planting deep-rooted native grasses to anchor the soil. They've also reached compromises over the extent of the cuts.

• Overland Rescue (1897): Late in the year, eight whaling ships got stuck in the Arctic ice near Point Barrow, Alaska, putting 265 crewmen at dire risk of starvation. A relief team aboard the cutter Bear steamed north from Port Townsend, Wash., put ashore at the ice pack and drove 382 reindeer several hundred miles north to the stranded sailors.

MILITARY HISTORY

Stasi Told Guards, 'Shoot to Kill' Archivists have discovered Cold War orders urging East German border guards to shoot anyone trying to escape to West Germany, Commu-

• Hurricane Katrina (August 2005): More than 5,000 guardsmen operating 76 aircraft, 42 cutters and 131 small boats save 33,545 people along the Gulf Goast during the costliest hurricane in U.S. history.

• Priscilia Rescue (August 18, 1899): Patrolling on horseback, Rasmus S. Midgett from the Gull Shoal, N.C., lifesaving station came across the foundering sailing ship Pmcilla. Midgett instructed seven sailors to jump into the water, then pulled them to safety on the beach. The three remaining crewTiien were too weak to jump, so Midgett waded out to the ship and carried them to ihe beach.

1f it were not for the war, this war would suit me down to the ground' —Dorothy L Sayers

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nist leaders from the period have repeatedly denied the existence of such orders. "Do not hesitate to use your firearm," the Stasi documeni urges, "not even when the border is breached in the company of women and children." More ihan 100 people were shot trying to cross the Berlin Wall.

Fed Court Upholds Ban on Rebel Duds In the Civil War border stale of Missouri, a federal court recently dismissed a lawsuit filed by three teens suspended from school for wearing Confederate sym-

bols. The court ruled th;U Farmington High School officiab were justified in sending the students home for flaunting, among other items, a hat, belt buckle and T-shirts bearing the Confederate battle flag- In its ruling, the court pointed lo several racially motivated incidents at the school in the past year.

Interview Stephen Potter: Ground Truth on the Battlefield

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S a trained historian and archaeologist, Stephen Potter has long evinced an innovator's curiosity in jindingjresh ways to undersland the past and to communicate his findings to an audience. Whether the subject is native American culture or the shock of combat at Antietam, Potter—who is regional archaeolo^t of the National Capital Region of the National Park Service—employs a scientist's rigor in

unearthing evidence oj human activity and a historian's skills in interpreting patterns oj behavior Recently, he has used archaeological tools to refine conventional historical understanding oj Civil War battles.

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preserved layer of the American Civil War We found WM buttons—Vermont Volunteer Militia—from the very first column after President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers. They were encamped along Rock Creek in a quasi-industrial area. We have a full foot of Civil Warperiod soldiers' deposits. Was that a big surprise? Yes, but we also found a preserved layer dating back to about AD 11001200—a prehistoric American Indian village site—totally intact, directly beneath the intact Civil War encampment layer.

*We can learn about the trauma the person suffered. And we find objects that were thrown in the grave'

When archaeologists investigate a battlefield, what do they look for? We're interested in discovering what human activities have taken place on that piece of real estate, and how we can understand activities that left tangible expressions in the archaeological record. And we're trying to jind those tangible expressions.

What did you discover on that site? Broken glassware and that kind of thing. We also found melted lead from bullets. Soldiers get bored. Sometimes they're just fooling around, trying to make things out of the molten lead. Smashing bullets to make chips for poker games was quite common. Or they'd carve bullets into chess pieces.

In the Washington, D.C, area, where you do much of your exploration, is it rare lo find an undisturbed site? There are little pockets—we call them "refugia"—that have escaped disruption by human beings.

What can found bullets tell you? Where particular units were located, for one thing. In the American Civil War, supplying the soldiers was a logistical nightmare, because one unit might not carry the same t^'pe of shoulder arm as the next unit, even though they were in the same brigade. So if you know what a particular regiment is carrying, you can identify them on the battlefield.

You've found some in Washington? Oh yes. One is near the Watergate Hotel. Thirteen feet below grade we found a

MILITARY HISTORY

Do they tell you anything else? We can see exactly where units were active, awaiting movement onto the battlefield, or on a skirmish line, or retreating. What can you tell from the condition of the found bullets? "Dropped" and "iired" are terms that mean a great deal to archaeologists. Dropped bullets would mark the location of a unit that was firing? Yes. At Antietam, with a pattern of dropped bullets, we found a firing line ol ihe lQth Indiana. They were standing on the highest pan of a hill and were not taking advantage of a slight dip lower on the hill to protect themselves. Most accounts of that action, some written by very well-known Civil War historians, stated that the 19th Indiana was farther dov*n the hill. The historians were looking at it from the standpoint of logic: If you're under fire, this is logically where you'd be standing. The dropped bullets showed otherwise? Yes. Whoever said logic had anything to do vAih maneuvers on a battlefield? How do you find bullets and the like? The tools of the historical archaeologist are not unlike the array of tools that a forensic scientist is going to use when investigating a crime scene. So in addition to metal detectors, we have a newer, better device: surface-penetrating radar, or SPR. The kind of metal detectors people use to search for coins at the beach? Yes, they've been in use since World War II, but are now incredibly sophisticated. You can discriminate: If you are searching just for ferrous material you can focus on that and eliminate everything else. Let's say you want to focus only on lead because you're trying to trace tactical tnovements across the landscape. You can do things with this generation of

metal detectors that people in the TOs and early '80s never thought possible. How do they work? A nieial cleLtLior sends energy into the earth in a small number of frequencies— up Lo 17. When the transmitter passes over a metallic object, that object becomes energized, and in tum it emits a signal of its own. The metal detector receives the 5ignai and translates it into a recognizahic

show disturbances in real time, in X-Y coordinates on-screen, with high resolution down to 6 feet and useful resolution down to about 16 feet.

you're looking at a battlefield burial? Burials usually have specific dimensions. So when the SPR shows you a disturbance that's roughly 2 and a half feet wide and 6 feet long, you think. Oh (his doesn't

Who developed SPR? The Brits, as a result of the Falklands War. They spent over £500 million sterling developing it because their enemies were using nonmetallic landmines. Thai was the genesis of the technology.

look natural.

How is SPR utilized in battlefield archaeology? When a person digs a hole in the ground, even if it's been backfilled, it's still been disturbed. If you know how to read the soil, you can say, "Yeah, this areas been disturbed." And you can see the way it was disturbed. With something that's uniform like a shovel blade—as opposed to a tree being uprooted—with something that a human has done, that's going to have a uniformity to il. Does that mean you could identify a foxhole that was dug 150 years ago? Oh, absolutely Or fortifications or shell pits or rifle pits—features no longer visible on the surface, as leaf mold, humus and detritus have filled them in. Dr. Stephen Potter, left, and a volunteer examine a round ball found in the North Woods at Antietam.

tone in your headset, giving you some sense of the size and depth of the object, down to about 10 Inches. How does SPR work? Surtace-peiTctrating radar sends microbursts of thousands of frequencies into the ground, which allows it to detect a wide variety of materials, whether they are conductive or not—whether metallic or not. The advantages are that it can

So it tells you where to dig? Yes.

And SPR alsofindsobjects like bullets? Yes, but ihal would be overkill. It's most useful for battlefields, for hastily excavated entrenchments or burials or places where there might have been encampments. So privy pits, trash pits, mass burials are probably the besl applications. With SPR, how would you know

If you found a mass grave, would anything be left of the bodies? Oh yes. But soil conditions and geology are going to determine everything. Is it a highly acidic soil? In which case, your bone preservation isn't going to be good. Have you found hitherto undiscovered burials? We have uncovered batUelield burials at Antietam, and because soil conditions vary over die battlefield, Ixine preservation is not the best. But we still get enough data lo ID it as a body and get an idea of age at death. In some cases we can leam about the trauma the person suffered. And we find objects that were thrown in the grave or were on the bodies at the time. What objects? Anything that has copper in it as an alloy, like brass—brass buttons, the brass waist belt, cartridge box plates. And if you've got really thick leather, you can still get footwear. Union Army soldiers referred to their poorly made shoes as "mud scows." We found a mud scow in one battlefield burial. You mentioned privy pits. Why would you want to investigate latrines? Civil War soldiers referred to them as "sinks." It's an open trash receptacle, so there are lots of things other than human waste that are going into a sink. Soldiers throw stuff in that they're not supposed to be caught with, like booze. In Civil War camps, soldiers were ditching flasks and things like that. You find all kind of things. Privies are great treasure troves if you're looking at the social history ofthe soldiers, 1^

Voice Flight of the Porky 6eag/e Stcphan Wilkinson

t may be hard to imagine now, but there was a time when warplanes were sport planes-—^racers, recordsetters, stunters, PR concoctions, coloriui dazzlers competing for space in the record books. Dogfighting or toting bombs were the last things on pilots' minds: They had the Navy, or Roscoe Turner, or the French or Italians, or even tbe setting sun to beat. The Navy's Curtiss NC flying boat (aka "Nancy boat") was among the first military planes in the record books. Conceived as a World War 1 antisubmarine weapon in response to U-boat hysteria, tbe NC wasn't finished until after the war, but in May 1919 crews on three NCs set out to prove the plane could have crossed the ocean under its own steam. Only one, NC--^, made it, and it took 19 days with multiple stops, but it was the first aerial crossing of the Atlantic. Two weeks later, Britain's Royal Flying Corps picked up the gauntlet and made a irue Atlantic crossing, nonstop from Newfoundland to Ireland in a Vickers Vimy bomber that resembled a large section of industrial scaffolding. Well sir, if the Navy was going to start setting records, the Army Air Service would show it a tbing or two. It would go around the world, not just across the pond. In April 1924, pilots set off westbound from Seattle in four enormous Liberty-engined, open-cockpit Douglas World Cruisers, using no nav

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gear other than whiskey compasses. No beacons, no radios, no aii'ways, no Jepp charts, no help nohow. Two of the planes, Chicago and New Orleans, com-

pleted the circumnavigation. It was racing, however—pure speed— tbat really got military pilots going. The Pulitzer Trophy Race, established in 1920 and held through 1925, was a closed-course race limited to American airplanes and pilots, since tbe foUow-ons of tbe airplanes the French bad developed for World War I were pretty much unbeatable. Most Pulitzer racers were officers in Army or Navy biplanes, and in six years they succeeded in raising their top straight-line speeds from 156 to 248 mph. Best-known of the military meets was the annual Schneider Trophy seaplane race. The U.S, Navy had some early successes, but tbat simply pushed tbe RAF and the Italian air force to design some of the most insanely powerful airplanes to fly until late in World War II, The 3,000-hp, 24-cylmder Macchi M.C. 72 with coupled Fiat V12s could have been a contender, if only the engine didn't blow apart its entire induction system, and much of tbe airplane, every time it backfired. Even though it never won a race, tbe M.C, 72 did in 1934 set a world absolute speed record (440.681 mph), which remains the fastest speed ever attained by a pistonengined seaplane.

* I somehow ended up taking part in the last major air race to be contested by operational military aircraft*

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After World War U, the military was back at it. For a while tbe quest was distance records, and the U,S, Army Air Forces dispatched a B'29 to nail down that mark. But in an unexpected riposte, the Navy sent up Turtle (often referred to as tbe "Truculent Turtle"), a twinengine Lockheed P2V Neptune that in 1947 spent two and a half days trudging the 11,235 miles from Perth, Australia, to Columbus, Ohio, beating tbe B-29's mark by 4,000 miles and setting an unrefueled record thai would stand uniil Voyager flew around the world in 1986. Soon we'd have routine aerial refueling, and long-distance flights became more a matter of a crew's endurance than of aeronautical achievement. But speed remained a lure. Between 1945 and 1976 the U.S., Great Britain and the Soviet Union traded tbe absolute record 10 times, witb 22 different records, from the Brits' opening bid of 606,38 mph, the world's first jet record, to the current Lockheed SR-71 mark of 2,193,16 mph. Gloster Meteors, a Hawker and a Eairey, North American F-86s and F-lOOs, MiGs. various Lockheeds and other military planes have all held the title. Tbe U,S. military last competed in closed-course air racing in 1946 and 1948, wben first the Army Air Forces and then tbe Navy entered Lockheed P-80s and North American FJ-1 Furys, respectively, in a special jet class at the Thompson trophy races in Cleveland. These were really just six-lap demo dasbes for PR, but can you imagine the military participating at today's Reno Air Races? The transcontinental dasb also became a boly grail for former aces and future astronauts. In 1946, Robin Olds, a World War II double ace who would achieve triple-ace status in Vietnam, left California at sunrise in a P-80, circled Washington, D,C., and returned before sunset. In 1957, John Glenn crossed tbe country eastbound in an

Vimy, the London Daily Mail hosted ihe Great Atlantic Air Race. The Daily Mail had put up a £.10,000 prize in 1913 lo encourage the nonstop transatlantic attempt. For the rerun, the prize money amounted to $144,000. At ihe time. 1 was an editor at Flying, which decided il would be fun to enter me in the race, co-flying a Beagle 206, a ladpole-shaped British light twin. The porky Beagle needed to come across the pond anyway, as the Brits had deluded ihemscK'Cs into thinking that 206s, designed as RAF liaison transports, could compete for U.S. sales with Piper and Cessna iwins. Thus, my air race was also a deliver)' ilighi.

110 NP OH WINS '

YEWS 19(4.19

The Daily Mail stipulated thai the race was to hegin (or end—your choice) on the lop floor ot the Posl Office Tower, London's tallest building, or Manhattan's Empire Slate Building. My job was 10 snatch my airplane's time card ai the PO Tower, dash down lo the street, jump on the back of a terdfyingly fast Triumph motorcyele and be driven to Heathrow, where my partner had the Beagle warmed up and ready to go. THE

JACQUES SCHNEIDER MARITIME TROPHY Presented Ui 1912 to tkc

NO OF WINS • 5

- 1920.1921.1926.

AERO CLUB DE FRANCE Schneider for an f

Cbmj?etitiotv U S. A. NO OF WINS-. 2

YEARS: t925. 1925

approved by tKo f'en A t I l t l

The program for the 1929 Schneider Trophy seaplane race centers on the cup itself, which the British team won outright two years later with its third straight win. F8U Cmsadcr, the first-ever such flight at an average speed that was supersonic. And in 1962, in the last Bendix Trophy Race, a three-man crew in a Convair B-58A Hustler obliterated the competi[\on by flying from LA. to New York in two hours.

civilian pilot, 1 somehow ended up taking part in the last major air race to be contested by operational military aircraft. In May 1969, to mark the 50th anniversary of Captain John Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Browns Atlantic crossing in their RFC

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We landed at LaGuardia some 20 hours later, after refueling m Iceland and Labrador, and 1 did another motorq^cle "dash"—my driver got lost in Queens— to New York City and the top of its tallest skyseraper. And while we didn't finish first, we did win the light aircraft class, beating 16 other private planes. Tiie RAF had entered one of its brandnew Harrier jump jets, enabling its pilot to take ofi in a cloud oi coal dust trom an empty lot near the Post Office Tower and land on a Manhattan pier a short cab ride irom the Empire Stale. The Royal Navy countered with three F-4 Phantoms, whieh required conventional runways but were far fasier over the Atlantic than the Harrier. The F-4s beat the Harriers soundly— but frankly, nobody mueh noticed. The era of military record-setters was pretty much over. And nobody noticed me ;u all. 0

Power Tool

By Jon Guttman • Illustration hy Ted Williams

Spencer Carbine A repeater that rode into battle with the cavalry

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n March 6, 1860, Christopher M, Spencer obtained a patent for a breech-loading rifle that could fire more than 20 rounds a minule. Inserted inio the stock, a tubular metal magazine held seven ,'52-caliber bullets in copper rJmfire cartridges. Each spring-loaded magazine fed a round into the breecbblock whenever the trigger guard lever was lowered—an action thai also ejected the previous rounds empty cartridge. With the breakout of the American Civil War in April 1861, the U.S. Navy tested Spencer's rifle, and the Army ordered 95,196 to he delivered tbe day after Christmas, only to cancel ihe order wben

the weapons suffered from extractor problems. Spencer remedied the prohlem within the year, and indi\'idua!ly purchased Spencers were reportedly used at Antietam on Sept, 17, 1862, Brig. Gen. George A, Custers brigade also used Spencer rifles at the Battle of Hanover on June 30, 1863, On AtigList 18, Pi-esident Abraham Lincoln himselt test-fired Spencers shorter cavalr)carbine on the grounds of the Washington Monument, hitting a bulls-eye on his second shot. Given the presidential nod, the Spencer carbine officially entered serN-ice in October and by 1864 was the standard-issue long ami for the Union cavalry.

Its swift rate of fire had a demoralizing effect on Confederate troops, and a captured Spencer was ol little use, as the South didn't produce compatible ammunition. However, as they used black powder, Spencers fired in rapid volleys would ohscure tbe field in smoke, and ammunition requirements taxed Union supply lines. In postwar years the Army reverted to single-shot breechloading carbines to discourage such rapid expenditure of ammo. Surplus Spencers remained popular with frontier wagon masters, as one could carry ample magazines, and tbe weapon^ quick-fire capabilities came in handy wben encircled by hostile Indians, iSSi

THE COLDEST WINTER By David Halherstam

"THE MOST BITTER KIND OE WAR'' is how David Halberstam described the subject of The Coldest Winter, his final book. Completed days before his tragic accidental death in early 2007, this is, he believed, his best book. A magisterial work of history, it rescues America's forgotten war from oblivion with masterful analyses of the mendacity at the top and the courage on the ground. Halberstam's account of the 1951 battle of Twin Tunnels, excerpted here, is a classic combat narrative: a single U.S. Army patrol, cut off in the harsh winter hills, battling 40-to-l odds. January 1951. In a way, there were two battles of Chipyongni. First came the battle of Twin Tunnels, between the two gathering armies, in which the Chinese nearly overwhelmed the UN forces. That, in tum, triggered the battle of Chipyongni, All of this was part of a larger contest for control of the transportation arteries leading south through the central corridor, Chipyongni itself was about. 50 miles east of Seoul, about 40 south of the 38th parallel and about 15 miles northwest of Wonju, The Twin Tunnels were Corporal Leonard "about 3 miles southeast of Chipyongni," in the words of Hayworth provided historian Ken Hamburger, who wrote with exceptional Duncan with his clarity of both battles. There, he noted, the railroad best-known series of "abruptly turns south to east and tunnels images from Korea. under tworidgelinesbefore tuming again to 1 9 5 0 ^^ Opposite, in September the south and east. The terrain in the tunnels 1950 Hayworth weeps area consists of the two ridgelines generally running north on learning his nnit is to south and rising to about 100 meters above the valley out of ammunition and floor The ridgelines curve toward one another in the reinforcements, with north, where they close into a horseshoe with a single no word from the rear. constricted road leading to Chipyongni. As this road leads Left, weeks later he out of the valley, it crosses the east-west railroad between proudly reviews his the two tunnels that give ihe area its name," The valley photo in Life. Hayworth floor, Hamburger noted, ran about 500 meters from east is killed the next dayto west, and 1,000 meters from north to south. Several shot between the eyes. high hills of about 500 meters each surrounded it.

1953

Photographs by David Douglas Duncan

CHINA

The American command was beginning to look at nearby Chipyongni as critical, because it would help them control access to W'onju, the larger communications center, where the Americans, like IChinese Cenerali PengDehuai, now believed one of the fateful battles of the central corridor would be fought. In late Januarv; as Ridgways forces over on the west began their first major operation, the 2nd Division found itself ORlered to proted its flank on the east and at the same time to move into the Chipyongni area and try to locate the Chinese 42nd Army Ridgv^^ay's intelligence people believed it was hiding out somewhere in the central corridor but had not yet revealed itself. For it was one of those great contrasts ot the first year of

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the war, the stark difference

between the two armies and the way they maneuvered: on the eve of battle, even facing a force that had nine divisions in it, the Americans did not yet know where the Chinese were; by contrast, hiding an American division on Korean soil would have been comparable to hiding a hippopotamus in a pet store.

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here were three stages to the Twin Tunnels battle: a recon and then two battles, each of escalating violence. The 8th Army's Operation Thunderbolt, Ridgways main drive and his attempt to reclaim the initiative m the war, kicked oft on Januar\' 26, and the first recon into the Twin Tunnels area, led by Lieutenant Maurice Fenderson. took place the next day Fenderson was new to the 23rd, having arrived right after the Kunuri fighting, for which he remained eternally grateful. He was assigned to Captain Sherman Pratt's Baker Company, given its first platoon and, as an added welcome, assigned to take his men and recon an area to the east where there were some railroads and, he was told, two tunnels. There were scattered reports of some Chinese troops operating in the area. All he had to do was go over there and check it

MILITARY HISTORY

out—nothing much months. Many of them were just otit ol to it, he was told. the repot-dcpot, where replacement troops arrived, and lew were trained It was an eerie combat infantrymen. The two units assignment. Even the were to join up at the village of Iho-ri spot his motorized and then head for Twin Tunnels, sonic patrol staned out from 15 miles away was already deep in enemy territory, lar It was a relatively small combincti , north ol the American force—four officers and 56 enlisted ) lines. At ever)' moment men. The weaponr\- was quite heav>' for I he feared a possible so small a unit: eight BARs, two heav^ 3 ambush. As a kid of machine guns and four light ones, a 17, straight out of high rocket launcher, a 60mm mortar, and school, Fenderson had served in World both a 57 and a 75 recoilless rifle. In a W'ar II, as part of the 70th Division, fight, nearly half the unit would v-ither mostly trying to keep up with Ceorge be firing a hea\y weapon or assistiiii; on Patton as his tanks raced across France, one. They also had two three-quancr-U'ii That race, its sheer musculanty, stot^d in trucks and nine jeeps, A liaison plane stark contrast to the patrol he was now flew overhead, a spotter in caso Chinese leading. This was about being apart units, unseen from the ground, were from other American units and, more moving in on them. The plane enjoyed than anything else, about the loneliness better communications with their base of war. It bad things happened, you were than did the men on the ground, and out there by yourself. the planes link to the His patrol proceeded to men on the ground was the assigned location, weak. Captain Mel Stai, perhaps a mile south of the assistant battalion opthe tunnels, ver)' cauerations officer, had also tiously. There, they joined the unit. He was spotted soldiers, almost supposed to return to surely Chinese, and a battalion headquarters brief firefight ensued, when the patrol left Iho-H, Fenderson was then orbut he decided on his dered to return to base, Brig. Gen. Edward M. Almond own to stay with them to which he did. feeling points out the action to General Twin Ttmnds, In his ]ccp he had done his job Douglas MacArthur, commander was the onl)' radio capable and been lucky as well. in chief of U.N. forces, during the of contacting the spotter The next day, on September 1950 shelling of Inchon. plane. It was slow going |8th Army commander all day—there was a lot Lt- Gen, Edward] Almonds orders. Freeof snow on the icy road and also heavy man sent out a larger force to recon the fog. all too typical of the Korean winter area, setting in motion the next stage of The spotter plane was of little value lor the Twin Tunnels struggle. The men in much of the morning. this task force were to patrol the area, They reached the Twin Tunnels area but if at all possible not engage any around noon, well behind schedule, larger enemy force. Elements of two Mitchell waited at the south end of the companies were sent in, the reconstivalley that led to the tunnels, until tuted Charley Company of the 23rd Mueller caught up with him. So far Regiment, commanded by Lieutenant everything had gone reasonably well, James Mitchell, and a company from the Mitchell had kept his jeeps about 50 21st Regiment of the neighboring 24th yards apart in the convoy and the trucks Division, commanded by Lieutenant with the heavy weapons (arther back, so Harold Mueller, Aboui lialf the men if the jeeps were hit, ihey could quickly from Charley Compan)- were brandcome to ihcir aid, lt was at this point, new, hardly surprising given all the hits as Ken Hamburger later wrote, that a the compan)- had taken in the last tew kind of Murphy's Law took over—and

everything that could when the lead jeep was go wrong began to go hit. The driver, Fockler •ATong. They liad stopfied remembered, panicked just where the main road and stalled it out, blockled north to the tunnels, ing the rest of the but a side road shot off convoy. Then a Chinese east to the nearby village machine gun began of Sinchon, Because the General Matthew Ridgway, right, hammering away at patrol was late. Captain operational comtnander in Korea, them, the taltoo of an Stai volunteered as a confers with battlefield officers. automatic weapon on a courtesy lo go into Sin- Ridgway's aggressive strategy melal target, followed chon by himself and look gave U.N. forces the upper hand. by the worst noise imagit over, allowing the main inable, FockltT believed, body to continue without interruption. a kind of lerminal sound, that of coolant He drove partway to the village, left his draining from a radiator. When the Chivehicle at the side of the road and walked nese began to fire, there apparently was m, taking with him, of course, the only a brief disagreement between Mitchell radio compatible with the one in the and Mueller. In Muellers view their only spotter plane. That was a critical mistake. chance to avoid total annihilation was to His jeep was soon destroyed, his driver head for the high ground—a hill just off killed, and Stai was never seen again. to the east—and dig in. For a brief moment, Mitchell still hoped they might Effective communication between be able to fight their way out by road. the force on the ground and its eyes and Then Mueller yelled to Mitchell: "WeVe ears in the sky was now gone. Up in the going to have to get to the top of that spotter aircraft. Major Millard Engen, the hill. The Chinese are coming up from battalion executive officer, had spotted the other side. This is our only chance!" a sizeable force of enemy soldiers moving The Chinese understood that as well, so rapidly toward the Americans from the both sides started racing for the hill and slope of Hill 453, which dominated the the high ground. But if they were in a southern approach to the Twin Tunnels race for the hill, and if time was sudarea. He immediately tried lo radio denly the critical factor, then the AmerLieutenant Mitchell to get out of the icans were going to have valley as quickly as possible, but of to travel light, leaving course, he could not get through. Soon most of their heavy there was no need to wam them that the weapons behind. In the Chinese might attack—they were already end, they took only a being hil hard. The spotter plane then rockel launcher, a Hght turned back to refuel, but not before machine gun, and some Engen radioed regimental headquarters of the BARs. that the patrol was in danger of being wiped out. In fact, even as they entered the open valley, they had been trapped by a considerably larger Chinese force. Private Richard Fockler, who was caught along with the other men in the patrol when the Chinese struck, later remembered that they were just about to have lunch when the first mortar round landed near ihem. Almost immediately other weapons joined in. The drivers were ordered to turn their vehicles around immediately. But the road was so narrow that it was hard for the jeeps, let alone the trucks, to maneuver. They had just gotten most of ihe vehicles facing the right way

assurances, going on a mission always had an element of uncertainty and danger, and he was going to be doing it without knowing anyone else in the unit. While ihe men who had been separated were being torn aparl. the rest of tbe task force was scrambling up the hill under constant machine gim fire from ;m adjoining hill where the Communists had already set up positions. Wilson was tinng quickly as he climbed, needing to rest more frecjuenlly—and the enemy fire was getting heavier. About twothirds of the way up, he stopped, sure tbat be was incapable of taking even one more step. That was when Lieutenant iWilliam] Penrod came down for him, telling him he had to make it, and they had lo gel to the high ground. Not knowing wbere the energy was coming irom, but knowing that if his mind gave in to bis body, he was surely dead, he pressed on. When Wilson reached the makeshift perimeter, he was exhausted, his clolhes soaked with sweat in that freezing cold, and he was certain of one thing—if the Chinese didn't get him, the sheer cold would, that he was probably going to freeze to death on that hill. But he had made it, a triumph of adrenalinedriven fear over normal physical limitations. Better yet, he had managed to bring the ammo with him, even though at certain moments as he had climbed, he wanted more ihan an)'thing else lo leave it behind. Later he was glad he had brought it up, because that night they ran Coionel Paul Freeman, right, perilously short early head of the 23rd infantry, confers on, and if not for those with Maj. Gen. Clark Ruffner over two extra cans he had plans for the February 1951 battle carried, they all would of Twin Tunnels, a Chinese rout. have been dead.

, he day the patrol was hit happened to be the 21st birthday of a young man named Laron Wilson, a driver for Headquarters Company of ihe 3rd Battalion of the 23rd Infantry Regiment, who had been loaned to Charley Company The patrol was going to be an easy one. he had been assured, because the rccon the previous day had made only the most minimal contact with tbe enemy. Wilson was just a little uneasy: For all of the

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About 40 of them had made it up the hill, along with one light machine gun, eight BARs and a bazooka. The semiautomatic, crew-ser\'ed BAR was one of an infantrymans best friends, much prized by the men who fought in Korea, because it couid be used single-shot or as an automatic weapon. Two men handled it, one

The faces of Korea Soldiers overlook Seoul in September 1950 as American planes bomb Communist positions, eventually driving North Korean troops from the city. Seoul would change hands four times over the course of the war, leaving it largely destroyed. Its prewar population of 1.5 million dropped to around 200,000, and food was scarce.

"Outside the aid station, a tiny group of Marines always stood," wrote Duncan in This Is War! "They were men who had almost nothing to say. They were waiting. When their time was up, and they had to go back up on the hill, other men just like them came down. They, too, were waiting to learn whether their buddies were still alive."

Marines retreat to Hungnam from the initial Chinese push in December 1950, filing past the bodies of tbose killed in a prior ambush. Trucks and trailers at the end of the column paused to pick up the dead. In tbe ensuing evacuation, more than 200,000 soldiers and civilians, 17,500 vehicles and tons of supplies were shipped to Pusan. Rear-guard troops largely demolished the city, thus denying the Communists shelter.

MILITARY HISTORY

Of the bitter Korean winter of 1950-51, Duncan wrote: "The wind that blew from the north-from Manchuria and the Siberian steppes beyond, down over

the yalu and the mountains, down along the ice-capped road-was like nothing ever known by the trapped Marines, yet they had to march through it."

f-' '••

Above, a column of Marines takes sbelter along a roadbed during the breakout in September 1950. Landing well bebind enemy lines at Inchon, MacArthur met ligbt resistance. X Corps quickly captured Seoul, relieving pressure along tbe Perimeter and trapping tens of tbousands of Nortb Korean troops. They pressed on to the Yalu.

Left, breaking out of the Pusan Perimeter in September 1950, a squad of Marines makes its way across one of a thousand anonymous ridges. Duncan watched as each Marine pulled the pin on bis grenade, quickly stood to hurl it at the enemy position and tben dropped back down in the tall grass, belly to the ground. Within weeks troops reached tbe Yalu River.

Less tban a tbird of tbe North Korean invading force made it back nortb following tbe Americanled breakout from Pusan and concurrent landing at Inchon. Tbis wounded POW was among those trapped in tbe middle. "Tbe prisoner sat unmoving," Duncan wrote of the man, "even as a long'^reamed-of and now forgotten cigarette burned bis fingers."

Left, soldiers tend to a fallen buddy in the first year of U.N. combat operations. By war's end, more than 36,000 American troops and nearly 60,000 South Korean soldiers lay dead. North Korea lost more than 200,000 men, while estimates of Chinese war dead range to upwards of half a million. Millions of Korean civilians lost their lives and homes.

Of this image taken in Seoul in September 1950, Ouncan wrote: "The messenger who stopped beside the fence, behind which lay the body of a rubberbooted North Korean lieutenant, saw the body of a dead man as just another statement of fact...another incident of another day [in the war in Korea]. Then he continued up the hill to deliver his dispatches."

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MILITARY HISTORY

Opposite, a low-flying F-86 Sabre thunders past South Korean farmers in July 1950, just five days after North Korean troops attacked Seoul, touching off the war. Soviet-supplied MiG-15s dominated the airspace in the early part of the war, until the newer Sabres, which fired armorpiercing incendiary rounds, were deployed.

1950

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firing, the other feeding it a clip of marked some of the Chinese 20 rounds; Wilson became a feeder. positions for American jets The BAR man that Wilson worked that raked the area with rockets, with was from another unit, and later napalm and machine gun fire. he could not rememher his name Then the little plane returned (it was Private William Stratton). and dropped some ammo and Wilson wondered, years later, if he medical supplies. Most of it had ever known it during those long missed the perimeter, but one hours when their lives were so closely case of ammo got through. bound together. Could they really The pilot made pass after pass have fought there, literally body to trying to drop ammo off, body, without exchanging names? coming in so low they could Had Wilson ever mentioned that see his face, Wilson added this day possibly the last in his life, him to his pantheon of heroes, was his birthday? The only thing he someone who risked his life knew about the BAR man, other again and again on behalf of than that he had a coveted white men he had never met, pushed parka, which meant he was from by an exceptional internal the 21st Regiment, was that he had code of honor. been a hell of a soldier. The ChiFinally the pilot came in nese launched assault after assault, low and dropped a yellow their heads popping up as they streamer that read. FRIENDLY tried to break into the perimeter, COLUMN APPROACHING FROM and Stratton just sat there, and THE SOUTH. WILL BE WITH YOU waited and waited, and then fired, S H O R T L Y . But how shorily was almost, it seemed, at the last millishortly? If it was a long shortly, second. They had eight clips to they would not live to see it. spend, just 160 rounds of ammo Duncan encountered this Marine in December 1950: "When asked The men knew that when darkto last what might well be their lifeness fell, the Chinese would be what he would have wanted if he could have any wish, he continued time, and he had wasted nothing. coming again, and then maybe to stand motionless, with empty eyes. Then his lips began to open... Bless him for that, Wilson thought. The Chinese kept pouring fire in his eyes went up to the graying sky, and he said, 'Give me tomorrow.'" again, and that there were always too many of them. That their direction and finally hit the BAR evening, as predicted, they did. with nese assaulted their position, he stood man's right hand with a round, knocking machine guns, grenades and burp guns. and emptied the BAR at them and was off a couple of his fingers. But even that Mitchell eventually moved his men back hit a second time—in the chest. Another did not stop him. Wilson helped him from the edge of the knob, in pan because soidier crawled out and pulled him back bandage the hand, and he kept on firing. they had so little ammo that he did not to the center ol the perimeter. Then a In all the wildness and the desperation want any wasted on mere sounds—they Chinese grenade landed between his of that Tight, the gunner still managed to were only to fire when they actually saw legs. He screamed in pain. boast, in the age-old sardonic language a Chinese head. of soldiers, that he now had his million"For Gods sake shut up!" Lieutenant dollar wound, his war was Mitchell said. Back at headquarters for the 23rd, ^ 1 9 5 3 t^^'er, and he wanted the "My legs have just been shot off," the when Colonel Freeman heard that the names and phone numbers BAR man yelled. patrol had been hit by a major Chinese ol everyone else so that he could call "I know it, but shut up anyway," force, he immediately ordered up an air their loved ones when he got back to the Mitchell replied- A liitle while later Stratstrike. He was told by the spotter plane StaLes. Especially their girlfriends. Later, ton was hit for the fouri,h time and died. that at least two battalions of Chinese, when the Chinese firing got even worse, perhaps even a regiment, had struck this Almost everyone up on their tiny he kept going around to the others, a small patrol. That made it a fight of quite perimeter was hit that night. Penrod and number of them wounded by then, possibly 2,000 to 3,000 against 60. Mueller had gone around telling the telling them that they were going to Freeman immediately ordered Lt. Col. men not to cry out when they were make it out, that they had to keep the Jim Edwards, commander of the 2nd wounded and not to moan from their faith and not give in mentally Battalion, positioned about 10 miles wounds, because they did not want to nearer Twin Tunnels than the rest of the give away the vulnerability of their regiment, to put together a relief force. position and encourage the Chinese. At Nothing stopped Stratton. When he Edwards chose Captain Stanley Tyrrell, dusk the men on the hill had gotten a could no longer use his right hand, he commander of Fox Company, one of his boost when an Army spotter plane switched to his left. When more Chi-

} MILITARY HISTORY

best young officers. It took about two hours to mobilize the men and the requisite gear, especially the heavy weapons—a section of 81mm mortars and a section of heavy machine guns. Edwards ordered Tyrrell to play it tough but smart, to tr>' and rescue them that night, but to make sure his own troops were in a solid defensive position first. If need be, he was to button up for ihe nighi and attack in the morning. Tyrrell took off with a total of 167 officers and men, Tyrrell's assault was almost letter perfect—in the words of Paul Freeman, "one of the most brilliant small-unit actions in the Korean campaign." His column arrived in the area about 5:30 p.m. As soon as the men reached the area, the Chinese opened up with two machine guns from Hill 453 across ihe valley, Tyrrell's driver dove into a ditch, "You'd better get in the diich, Captain. The Chinks will get you," the driver exclaimed. ^To hell with the Chinks," TyTrell replied, Tyrrell decided he had to take Hill 453, the tallest in the valley, before he did anythirig else. Otherwise his men would be cut down. He prepared two platoons to attack the hill from separate ilanks and used his third platoon to lay down a withering mortar barrage and hea\7 machine gun fire just ahead of the attacking troops—so that a wave of death preceded them up the hill. The intensity of it, unusually deadly fire for so small a force, was too much for the Chinese, who abandoned the hill. There were many moments duting the Korean War when the Chinese fought to the last man, but not that day, not on Hill 453, The two flanks of Tyrrell's relief force came together about 10:30 p.m. Tyrrell immediately set up a strong defensive perimeter on the hill, which would give him good covering fire when he went to relieve the survivors on a nearby hill, Tyrrell originally intended lo hold through the night on top of Hill 453 and attack in the morning, but a medic who had been with the holdouts slipped through the Chinese lines and found his way to Tyrrell's position. The besieged men, he said, were in desperate condition, almost out of ammo, three-quarters

of them already dead or seriously wounded. With that, Tyrrell decided to continue the attack right through the night. "T" ^ " p on the knob of the hill, I during the late afterI noon, some of the men I had noticed dust being ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ kicked up by what were probably the jeeps and trucks of an American column. But Wilson doubted they would get through in time. The Chinese seemed so close—sometimes only 30 or 40 feet away, and there were so many of them and so few Americans that every assault made ihe defense that much weaker. More rnen were incapacitated or dying all the time. Some men who had been wounded were now dead, and some who had been ablebodied were wounded and unable to fire back. The living were busy scrounging bullets from the bodies of the dead, Wilson decided that his birthday was a disaster. How could you reach the moment when you were finall}' a grown-up, and could buy a drink in any state in the Union, and that was the end of it? What bothered Wilson most was that he was never going to see his daughter.

memory the Chinese had reached the top, and Lieutenant Penrod had told his men to pretend to be dead, and in time the Chinese had left. But he was unsure how much of what he remembered had any truth—although in the following days his side gave him a tot of pain, as if someone had in fact kicked him there. He remembered the sound of hea\y fighting when the troops from Tyrrell's company first started coming up the hill, and then a silence, such a deathly silence that he feared the relief column had been wiped out. Then around 11 that night, voices speaking English—as yet unseen—were yelling not to fire, because they were Gls, Someone on the knob yelled, "Who won the Rose Bowl game?"—^but they were in Korea, so who the hell knew the teams in the Rose Bowl, let alone the winner?

h took almost four hours to get all the men—alive, wounded and dead— off that hill, with Wilson still carrying his live grenade. At one point he slipped and fell, and the grenade got away from him, but he quickly grabbed It, threw it as far as he could, and no one was hurt. Of the 60 men who had started out on the patrol, 13 were dead, five were missing (and presumed dead) and 30 were wounded, many quite seriously Once, when the Only 12 came out unChinese were making scathed, one of them a rush to the top, being Laron Wilson, Wilson pulled the pin who lived well beyond on his last grenade, A company of Marines in 1950. his 21st birthday From but then when the Chi- Led by veterans of World War It, the then on, whenever he nese broke off, ammo young troops who shipped off to had troops in his jeep, being so valuable, he Korea fought the first conflict of he tried to make sure lay down on it to keep the Cold War to a stalemate. that at least one of them it suppressed. Afterhad a BAR. The survivors, grateful ward he thought he might even have for their rescue, later had a banner fallen asleep momentarily in that posimade up that read. WHEN IN PERIL, SEND tion. He remembered, in a dreamlike way, the last part of that night before T>TTe]ls men arrived, part of it ob^-iously real and part of it veiy fuzzy He believed a few Chinese had actually penetrated the perimeter, and that one of them had kicked him hard in the ribs. In his

FOR TYRRELL, (flh

Ail text excerptedjrom The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, by David Halherslam, Hyperion, New York, 2007, $35; ©2007 The Amateurs Ltd.

The celebrated conqueror of Dacia caps his reign with campaign victories in distant Mesopotamia to secure the Roman Empire's eastern frontier •

By Richard Tada

^ hen the Emperor Trajan stood on the shores of the Persian Gulf and watched a ship sail off to India in the summer of 116, the Roman Empire had reached its "^ zenith. No Roman emperor before Trajan had ever come so far east, and none of his successors would do so again. Trajan, seeing the ship, recalled that r' Alexander the Great had gone all the way to India more than 400 years earlier. He yearned to follow the Macedonian king's example. But Trajan's advanced age—^he was then in his early 60s—made such an ambitious undertaking unlikely Trajan reached that Persian shore during his 114-117 I campaign against the Parthian empire, Rome's great eastern ' rival The Parthians, originally Iranian steppe nomads, had carved out a vast state encompassing present-day Iraq and .M MILITARY HISTORY

Iran, as well as parts of Af^Tanistan and former Soviet Cential Asia. Rome's border with Parihia had long Iain along the Euphrates River, btu Trajan was determined to extend Roman control east to Armenia and ancient Mesopotamia—better known today as Iraq.

T

rajan, who became emperor in 98, already had one major conquest to his credit. In 106 he had completed the armexation of Dacia, which lay north of the Danube River in present-day Romania. (The senate commemorated that feat by raising the famous Column of Trajan in Rome, which bears bas-relief carvings of scenes from the campaign.) In the autumn of 113, he left Rome and headed east to confront the Parthians on the issue of Armenia: That country, though heavily inlluenced by Parthian culture, was supposed to be a neutral zone between Rome and Parthia, The two powers had agreed that the Armenian king was to be

In 114 Trajan pushed east into Armenia, which encompassed much of present-day eastern Turkey. He quickly annexed this territory and deposed the Armenian king, who was subsequently killed by Roman soldiers, most likely v^dth their emperor's approval. The next year—115—Trajan turned south, marching with his army inio northern Mesopotamia. This was nominally Parthian territoiy, though a closer look reveals a more complex picture. The area contained several small states, clients of Parthia, but semiautonomous and tending toward greater autonomy at times when the central Parthian authority was weak. Thus the Romansfirstencountered armed resistance not from the main Parthian army, bul from a secondstring team—the local forces of the kingdom of Adiabene. Ambrose Bierce once famously remarked that war was Gods way of teaching Americans geography In ihis instance, many of the places the Romans ventured supenmpose neally over locations that have become all too familiar during the current Iraq War. The core territory of Adiabene lay in what is now northern Iraq, between Mosul and Kirkuk, though in 115 the kingdom extended farther west and included the city of Nisibis, on the current Turkish-Syrian border. As might be expected, the Romans made short work of the Adiabenians, seizing Nisibis and points nearby Dio records thai a Roman centurion named Sentius was sent as an ambassador to Meharsapes, the Adiabenian ruler. Meharsapes imprisoned Sentius within a fortress called Adenystrae. (Its location remains unconfirmed.) When Trajans forces reached Adenyslrae, Sentius led his fellow prisoners in a rebellion, killing the Adiabenian commander and opening the gates to the Romans,

The campaign against Adiabene culminated in a Roman crossing of the Trajan and his army stride forth in bas-relief from a plaque in Ephesus, Turkey, Tigris. (This episode is difficult to date, the capital of preconsular Asia and a primary trading center of the Roman Empire. though the most recent examination of the evidence places it in 115.) The Romans felled timber from the forests around Nisibis to conappointed by Parthia, subject to Roman approval. But Panhian struct boats using an early form of modular engineering; Dio King Osroes 1 had violated the agreement by deposing the stated the boats were "buik in such a way that they could be previous Armenian king and unilaterally placing his own taken apart and put together again." Workers loaded the nominee on the throne. boat segments onto wagons and transported them to the Trajan's invasion was a massive undertaking. Modern estiTigris, where Trajan forced a crossing. Roman engineers, promates of the "paper strength" of a Roman legion range from tected by archers in neighboring craft, lashed some boats to4,800 to 6,000 men, and 11 legions took part in the Parthian gether to form a pontoon bridge. Still other boats, said Dio, war (it is uncertain if all of them were committed at the outset). "kept making dashes this way and that." feinting as though Seven of these legions redeployed from the Roman east, another they were about to cross to the opposite bank. These actions came in from Egypt, and three others marcbed down from the caused the "barbarians" (Dios term) on the opposite bank to Danube frontier. Rome also committed an unknovm number pull back in dismay as the Romans crossed over into Adiaof auxiliary forces. Trajan enjoyed an excellent rapport viath bene proper. How long the Romans remained there is unthe troops: According to 3rd century historian Cassius Die, known, but it was enough to drive Adiabene out of the war. "He always marched on foot with the rank and file of his army, The main Parthian army did not engage the Romans at all and he attended to the ordering and disposition of the troops in 115—no doubt to the intense resentment of the beleaguered throughout the entire campaign."

uiSTORY

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I Roman Empire c. 117

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AD 106 Trajan annexes ' , Dacia, a feat commemoratecf ^ on Trajan's Column in Ronw ADU4 Trajan confronts v., " ( i the Parthians and deposes the Armenian king.

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Adiabenians, It is difficult to comprehend their actions, as sur•vi\'ing Parthian histoncal sources are exceedingly rare. Panhian coins are the only consistent source of evidence, though in this instance, they may be sufficient: They show that Parthian king Osroes I had a competitor for the throne, Vologases III, who was issuing coins of his own. Osroes' coins disappear after 129, when he apparently either died or was overthrown. Thus Parthia was a house divided against itself, which mighL explain Osroes' initial lack of response to Trajan's invasion. Trajan spent the winter of 115-116 in Antioch (now Antakya in Turkey), narrowly escaping death in an eanhquake ihai devastated the city Undaunted by this close call, he took the field again in the spring of 116, this time guiding a fleet down the Euphrates while Roman units marched along the bank. The fleet stopped in middle Mesopotamia, where the Euphrates and Tigris converge. To ihe easi was Trajans objective: the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon. It lay on the east bank of the Tigris, across from the mostly Greek city of Seleucia, founded centuries before by one of Alexander the Great's successors, Baghdad did not yet exist; it would be founded over 600 years later, roughly 30 miles to the north of Ctesiphon and Seleucia. Trajan considered digging a canal between ihe two rivers to convey his fleet from the Euphrates to the Tigris; when this proved impractical, he managed to have the boats transported overland instead. With ihe Roman fleel on the Tigris, Ctesiphon tell without resistance. Osroes fled from the city.

leaving his daughter and his golden throne to fall into Roman hands. It was a notable achievement—the first time the Parthian capital had fallen to a Roman army—but Trajan did not stop there. He sailed south on ihe Tigris, dnven by a desire to reach ihe Persian Gulf. Al length, the Roman fleet reached the remote kingdom of Characene, on the alluvia! plain where the waters of the Tigris and Euphrates flow into the Persian Gulf. Characene was a major trading center: Ships from the Gulf region and India arrived wilh goods that were then transported north through Mesopotamia, mostly headed for Roman markets. Unlike Adiabene, Characene was frequently at loggerheads with Parthia and hence extended a warm greeting lo Trajan. Characenian King Attambelos Vll even agreed to pay tribute

*Had he simply thrown caution to the wind or succumbed to a latent desire to extend his conquests?' ---^

to Rome. So it was among congenial company that Trajan reached the Persian Gulf and watched that ship sailing away in the distance.

W

hy did Trajan go to war? Dio gives a straightforward answer: glory (doxa in Greek). Modern historians, assuming there must be more to it than that, have suggested other motives. Perhaps Trajan was influenced by economics—specifically, a desire to control Indian trade routes. Another theory has Trajan driven by strategic factors: He saw that the Roman Empire needed greater strategic depth between the Mediterranean and its eastern frontier and ihus moved into Armenia. The security of that new province in turn required that Rome maintain a frontier in northern Mesopotamia. However, this latter theory fails to explain Trajan's further push south to the Persian Gulf. Had he

* Foreigners would be so overawed by Roman power that they would never dare to stir up trouble' simply thrown caution to the v>and or succumbed to a laient desire to extend his conquests as far as possible? These theories are intriguing, but they lack support in the ancient sources. What those sources do indicate is that the empire's foreign and military policies were driven by certain cultural values. Above all, Romans were dead serious about upholding the glory and honor of Rome. Us standing (as well as its security) required that foreigners be so overawed by Roman power that they would never dare to stir up trouble. Any challenges—such as when the Parthians placed their own candidate on the Armenian throne—called for a ruthless response, lest Rome's authority be compromised. Seen in this lighl, Trajan might actually have been motivated by glory, but chiefly glory for the empire—though he likely wouldn't have minded had some of that glory rubbed off on himself.

E ac CO

ven as Trajan stood on the shore, perhaps dwelling on India and his lost youth, his grand scheme of eastern conquest was starting to unravel. The cities of Mesopotamia began rising up in rel^elHon and expelling or killing iheir Roman garrisons. Economics was likely a factor: Many of these cities acted as middlemen for the lucrative Indian trade, a status they stood to lose il Roman occupation were to become permanent. Mesopotamia also contained a large Jewish population with its own reasons to hate Romans. As recently as 70, Rome had crushed a major rebellion in Judaea,

MILITARY HISTORY

in the process demolishing Jerusalem's Second Temple. Thus Mesopotamian Jews enthusiaslically joined the current revolt. Trajan remained ignomnt of these troubles during the first leg of his return from the Persian Gulf. He stopped off at Babylon, south of present-day Baghdad, apparently still in the grip of his Alexander obsession. The Roman emperor had just offered a sacrifice in the room where the Macedonian king was said to have died, in 324 BC, when he learned about the rebellions in Mesopotamia. The news threw the Roman military machine into reverse. Trajan sent several forces back north to stamp out the revolt. His most competent subordinate, Lucius Quietus, a North African Moor, was given a force of at least two legions. With these troops. Quietus retook and sacked Nisibis in northern Mesopotamia, then did the same to Edessa farther west. Two other Roman commanders, Erucius Clarus and Julius Alexander, captured and burned Seleucia on the Tigris. But then a long-delayed blow landed, as regular Parthian torces descended Irom the Iranian plateau to strike at the Romans in Mesopotamia. The fall of Ctesiphon had apparently bolstered their resolve, Panhian armies comprised two complementaiy forces: mounted archers and heavy amiored cavalry armed with long lances. They had defeated the Romans before, most spectacularly in 53 Bt: at the Battle of Carrhae, where a Roman anny was pinioned by the annored Parthian cavalrymen, subjected to a merciless hail of arrows and virtually annihilated, Parthian soldiers and Mesopotamian rebels reportedly defeated one Roman contingent under a certain Maximus, only to be defeated in turn by a force led by either Quietus or Trajan himself, (Tactical details of the Roman-Parthian clashes in Mesopotamia in 116 are sketchy and depend largely on information from the less-than-reliable 6th century Byzantine chronicler John Malalas.) Trajan sought to exploit the internal fractiousness of the Parthian leadership and was somehow able to drive a wedge between the two Parthian commanders, Parthamaspales and Sanatruces (the son and nephew, respectively, of King Osroes). According to Malalas, Trajan held a secret nighttime meeting to win over Parthamaspates, who then helped the Romans defeat and kill his cousin Sanatruces. Though it sounds improbable, this account receives partial confirmation from Dio, who wrote that Trajan subsequently returned to Ctesiphon and installed Parthamaspates as king of Parthia. By then the worst of the fighting had subsided, and Trajan had time to make a grandiose speech to a crowd of assembled Romans and Parthians; only then did he place ihe royal diadem on Parthamaspates' head. Even then, however, Trajan could not remain in Mesopotamia: News had reached him of a vast Jewish rebellion within the Roman Empire itself that had actually broken out the year belore, in 115. The revolt was confined to the eastern Jewish diaspora; Judaea itself remained quiet, its inhabitants perhaps still cowed by the mauling they had received back in 70. It began among the Jews living in Cyrenaica (in present-day Libya) and later spread to Egypt and Cyprus. Later Roman historians regarded this revolt as unusually cruel and

destructive, even by the brutal standards of the ancient world, and it look more than two years for Roman forces to put ii down. Jewish sources are scarce, thus the origins of the revolt are hazy. By early 117, the Romans were northbound, on their way out of Mesopotamia. They paused along the way to do some looting, as recorded in a written Greek inscription discovered at the site of Dura-Europos on the Euphrates: A certain "Alexander, the son of Epinicus" states the Romans had literally ripped off and carted away the doors of a local temple; Alexander wished it to be remembered that he had furnished new doors for the temple "at my own expense." Trajan moved north along the Tigris and halted to mount a siege of the walled city of Hatra (in present-day northwest Iraq), a stronghold of the anti-Roman forces. Here occurred the crowning fiasco of a campaign that was unraveling: The legions were able to breach the city walls but could not further exploit the opening. Trajan himself narrowly escaped death when the Hatrenes, seeing a gray-haired man ride by, correctly surmised this must be the emperor and sent a stream of arrows his way They missed Trajan, but killed a cavalryman in his escort. Meanwhile, the weather turned ominous, with frequent thunder and lightning that Dio ascribes to the intervention of the sun god worshipped in Hatra. The Romans were also tormented by swarms of flies that settled on the soldiers' food and drink during mealtimes. Adding injury to insult, Trajan's health was starting to fail. He lifted the siege of Hatra and resumed his withdrawal to the north.

ut the story of Trajan's last, fruitless adventure has one final twist. It arises from a new piece of evidence—a particularly fascinating one, as it represents one of the few extant sources from the Parthian side. In 1984 archaeologists discovered a bronze statue of Herakles (Hercules to the Romans) at the site of Seleucia on the Tigris, A bilingual inscription appears on both thighs of the statue: Greek on the Hght, Aramaic on the left. The inscription dates from 151—34 years after Trajans vvithdrawal Irom Mesopotamia, It was written at ihe bchcsi ofPanhian King Vologases IV (r. 148-191) and involves Characene, the petty-state on the Persian Gulf that willingly submitted to Trajan. In the inscription, Vologases slates he had invaded and conquered Characene and expelled its king. The statue was a trophy of war from that conflict and was later inscribed to mark the occasion. The inscription raises intriguing questions. Did Characene fall back under Parthian conirol after Trajan's withdrawal? If so, then Vologases' invasion simply represents an internal Parthian dispute—a Parthian king cracking down on an unruly sub-king. But is il possible, as one scholar has suggested, that Characene remained separate from Parthia after Trajan's withdrawal, serving as a Ronian client slate laim 117 lo 151? If so, Rome was able to salvage something from the ruins of Trajan's campaign. The empire would have retained a tenuous presence in the Persian Gulf, though it is unclear how useful this would have lx-en to Rome, with the rest of Mesopotamia back under Panhian control. A more definitive answer will have to wait until archaeological research can resume in Iraq.

As for the statue itself: In 1984, Trajan intended to recuperate in after some restoration work, it was Rome and then return east for anplaced on display in the Iraq other attempt at conquering MesoMuseum in Baghdad. In April 2003, potamia. Bui he never made it home. Trajan, atop podium, appoints Parthamaspates during the chaos in Baghdad when The emperor died in August 117 at a as king of Parthia—a move to secure Roman place called Selinus in Cilicia (now control of ancient Mesopotamia. It wouldn t last. U.S. forces toppled the regmie ol' Saddam Hussein, looters hit the in southern Turkey). In the wake of museum, making off with many important objects. But the his death, the last strands of his Eastem scheme came unravHerakles statue seems to have dodged a bullet—literally and eled. Back at Ctesiphon, the local ctLizenry rejected Parthamasfiguratively—as it does not appear on published lists of looted pates, whom Trajan had installed on the Parthian throne; he items. And while the lists incomplete, it seems unlikely that fled to Roman territory, apparently having accomplished little such an important artifact would have gone unnoticed had it aside from minting a few coins for future archaeologists to disbeen stolen. Herakies, witness to an ancient conflict, appears cover. Emperor Hadrian, Trajan's successor, concluded that to bave survived the latest in an ever-lengthening list of wars Rome's conquests in Armenia and Mesopotamia were untenfought in Mesopotamia. 10 able and pulled back to the old Euphrates frontier. "Thus it came about that the Romans in conquering ArmeFor further reading, Richard Tada recommends.' Rome and the nia, most of Mesopotamia and the Parthians," declared Dio, "had undergone their hardships and dangers all for nothing." Enemy, by Susan Mattern, and the Web site Iwww.parthia.comj.

50» MILITARY HISTORY

i '^'^"^aston

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Castro's forces round up members of the exile 2506 Assault Brigade following their failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs. Most were later ransomed in exchange for food and medicine. 1

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Count Helmuth von Mo appears the stern Pruss , commander in a late 19tli century chromograph. His resolve led to ultimate victory over French forces at Gravelotte/Saint-PrivaJ but at a terrible cost. •

On the morning of August 18, 1870, Helmuth von Mokke—best known to history as a consummate staff officer rather than a battle captain—committed the Prussian army to a maneuver so daring it might well have daunted Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville. Moltke, as Prussian chief of staff, launched fewer than 200,000 men against a French army of 110,000 that occupied some ofthe best defensive positions in eastern France: the high ground west of the fortress of Metz, between the villages of Gravelotte and Saint-Privat. His force fell far short of the numerical superiority considered sufficient for attacking field defenses. As if the odds were not risky enough, Moltke also reached this first major battlefield of the weeks-old Franco-Prussian War by marching his entire army across the rear of the French. Had the similar Lee-Jackson flank march gone amiss, the Confederates had the option of falling back to Richmond. But the Prussians in France were attacking toward Germany—if they lost the battle they would be trapped. Even a local defeat would

THE DAYOF I

0 •

have cut their supply lines, likely triggering a catastrophe. The Battle of Gravelotte/Saint-Privat was not a Prussian "crowning mercy," as Oliver Cromwell described one of his battles. By day's end, the French had inflicted more than 20,000 casualties on their attackers, eviscerating some of the best regiments in the Prussian army. They took some 13,000 casualties on their side, then abandoned the field and fell back to Metz, one of Europe's strongest fortresses. The Prussians, counting their losses and re-forming their ranks, might well have quoted Shakespeare's Henry V at Agincourt, "1 know not if the day be ours or no." But in a single day ol lighting, France's main army, \^^ including most of its besl troops, had been cut off ^ from its country After August 18, France <>S^ ^ was constrained to fight on Moltke's ^yS^^ C^ terms m an improvised war vfti9:-Ae^^e''^e against a master o '^^\x^^^^^^^

vA V

^^' ^h^^^' ^^^^^dy ^^ght at

Gravelotte/Saint-Privat was the O* first battle of the first modern European war, fought as it was with advanced weapons and obsolete tactics. It was no more than half a victory for Prussia, but it was the event on which a whole war tumed, a soldiers' battle that opened the way to the downfall of an empire and the reconfiguration ofa continent. The Eranco-Prussian War was a come-as-you-are collision, a war that had been expected by neither army when hostilities opened on July 19. Moltke saw the war's true objective not as French territory but the French army. Decisively defeating it was the best way to convince other powers, Austria in particular, to let half-drawn swords return to the scabbards. And the surest way to engage the French army was to advance on Paris. The city—the very heart of France and of the Second Empire—could not be sacrificed without a fight to the finish. So Moltke resolved to attack as soon as possible.

f

In a scene typical of Gravetotte/Saint-Privat, Prussian dragoons overrun Frencb positions, as depicted in a May 1894 print from Le Petit Journal. Momentum sbifted repeatedly over the course of the fighting, leaving behind unspeakable carnage. Once war had been declared, Moltke used the German railway network to conceniraie his main force in ihe RhinelandPalaiinate, swing south of the French fortress complex al Metz, then advance northwest toward the Moselle River lo force a major battle with the French army Although what Carl von Clausewitz calls "fog" and "friction" hindered the Prussians at ever)' tum, they were aided by France's own highly disorganized mobilization, and with their south German allies from Baden, Wiirttemberg and Bavaria, they were able to win a series of victories on the frontier and to push steadily into France. On August 16,1870, the Prussian 1st and 2nd Armies swTing around the left Rank ofthe French army ofthe Rliine. The French Army had been making its way past Metz and through Verdun toward Paris when two Prussian corps got ahead of the French and cut the Metz-Verdun road, at the cost of some 16,000 casualties in what became known as the Battle of Vionv1lle-Mars. Prussian anillery, with cast-steel long-range rifled cannons deployed en masse, silenced the French guns and accounted for many of the 15,000 French casualties. But the superior French rifles, the breech-loading chassepots with better accuracy and longer range than the older Prussian needle guns, time and again halted the Prussian infantry. At day's end in most sectors, the French were holding their ground in front of fieids carpeted with Prussian bodies. There seemed to be no reason why the French army should not on the next day move to vanquish the Prussians. French commander Marshal Francois Achille Bazaine, however, took a less sanguine view of the day's outcome. Around 10 that nighi, he told his staff he intended to retire the next morning

MILITARY HISTORY

eastward to Metz—a decision tliat seemed so illogical, contemporaries ascribed it to treason. It may be that Bazaine was simply unwilling to risk an attack. Defense seemed a safer option. For his pan, Moltke intended either to force the French to fight or drive them into Laxembourg, internment and disgrace. His orders for August 17 had Prince Frederick Charles mo\ing the five corps of his 2nd Army northeast on a sweeping flank march, pivoting on General Karl von Steinmetz's 1st Army. Today's armchair strategist, following the moves of both armies, may be pardoned for seeing one side offer a catastrophe in slow motion while the other side refuses the gambit. Marching some 200,000 tTien across Bazaine's front was akin to stretching out one's throat for the knife, a prospect even the most lethargic foe might find difficult to ignore: the French might be t^treating, but their columns could readily be tumed around to attack. But they did not. It is a measure of the confidence the Pmssian army had in its chief of staff that no one suggested if Moltkes latest moves reflected genius, then what was the definition of incompetence?

M

oltke's outward confidence never wavered throughout the follovving day, although his may have been ihe valor oHgnorance: He had no real intelligence on where the French were or where they were going and was forced to rely on xisible dust clouds rather than cavalry scout reports; his cavalry spent most of that day recovering from its prior exenions on tbe battlefleld. And the French cavalry was no more eiTective: Had Bazaine's troopers reponed the Prussian 2nd Army's high-risk movement across his rear, the mar-

shal might have been tempted to try a lightning slash across the Prussian jugular Instead, Bazaine spent the day deplo)ing in the strongest tactical position of the campaign. It ran along a stretch of high ground about a mile outside Metz, from the village of Saint-Privat in the north through Amanvillers and Gravelotte in the center, then down to the wooded terrain covering the Mance Ravine, which bent the left into a fishhook. Most of the ground on the right and center was bare and gently sloped, offering perfect fields of fire for the chassepoL while the steep ravine was all but impassable in the face of opposition. Bazaines 2nd Corps held the Mance sector. The 3rd and 4th Corps deployed along the ridge in the center, establishing ranges and fields of fire. The right of the French line fell to the 6th Corps. Bazaine had proposed to guard against envelopment by having that corps deploy in echelon to the northeast, and corps commander Marshal Frangois Certain Canroben established his main position southwest of Saint-Privat. Bazaine anticipated that the main Prussian effort would come against his left and center, so he deployed his pnncipal reserve, the Imperial Guard, to suppon tliat sector. If things went as Bazaine expected, Moltkes corps would advance into a killing ground almost ideal for French weapons and tactics. His orders, though, did not include plans for a general counterattack should the Prussians be defeated. Should the day go a^inst him, Bazaine couid fall back into the fortress at Metz and wait for the emperor to bring the strength of France to his relief

smaller armies and smaller battlefields. Frederick Charles then received a reality check from cavalry pata-^Ls reporting Saint-Privat as heaviiy fortified and swaiTning with Frenchmen, He promptly ordered the IX Corps to halt in place as the pivot for the guard and the Saxons as they advanced. But IX Corps commander Albrecht von Manstein bad the bit in his teeth and instead sent nine batteries forward to establish a gun line and "shoot in" his riflemen before the French could know what hii them.

Around noon the Prussian guns opened, and the French 3rd Corps boiled out of its tent lines to give the Prussians a lesson in combined-arms tactics: Manstein's artillery officers had made the mistake of deplo)'ing within chassepot range, and their crews suflered hea\'y losses. When the Pmssian infantr>' went forward over billiard-table ground, the French Reff)'e mitraiWcuae came into its own. Mounted on a wheeled gun carriage, the miliaillcusc looked like a cannon and functioned bke a machine gun, Prince Frederick w1ih 25 rifle batrels built into a cylinder and fired in seCharie5 hastily quence b)' tuming a crank—no mean force-multipliei" foi' swung the 2nd an infantry' armed with single-shot weapons. Its range was Army eastward, no greater than that ofa rifle, but French gunners undera maneuver that put the Prussians stood that mi(mi[(ftiiL'.s were best used forward v^ath the directly under infantry. Pmssian officers had vaguely heard of a French French guns. superweapon, but discounted the siories as minor. Now dug-in mitrtii!lt'a.st'i rapidly convinced Manstein's infantr)of the wisdom of keeping their heads down.

he commanding general of the Prussian 1st Army, Karl von Steinmetz, was a veteran of tbe Napoleonic Wars, a hero of the war of 1866 Marshal against Austria and in 1870—with his imFrangois Achille petuosity and obtuseness—a thorn in Moltke's side, Bazaine failed to Moltke intended to use the 1st Amiy only in support of pounce on the overextended Frederick Charles, and when Manstein's guns opened, Prussian lines the chief of staff sent Steinmetz a direct order to engage and was blamed only his artilier>^ and nothing else until further notice. for the ultimate French defeat. Believing Sieinmetz salely neutralized, Moltke moved forward to the village of Rezonvifle to see what was happening But the event5 of August 18 did not go according to plan. to his 2nd Anny He did not advance alone. Wilh the outbreak Virtually e\-er\- standard account of this battle la>'S the blame lor of war. King William took the field in person vtath a large headwhat happened on Moltkes subordinates. When the 2nd Army quarters contingent, including many civilian oERcials. In contrast encountered the French positions on the Amanvillers ridge at to most of his royal counterparts and all of their successors, around ] 0 a.m., Frederick Charles, archetype of a "good ordiWilliam was no amateur of war: He had won his spurs as a nar)' general," evidently mistook diem for the llank of an amiy in junior officer against Napoleon, and before ascending to the retreat and responded by swinging his anTiy eastward instead of throne he had established a peacetime reputation as a solid continuing north as ordered by Moltke. That decision seemed senior commander. A legitimate soldicr-king, he usuafly forbore validated, however, when Moltke confirmed Frederick Charles' to interfere directly with his chief oi staff Moltke ne\'ertheless move and ordered the Saxons and the guard to ad\'ance directly saw himself as the king's man, and one reason for bis reluctance east against the presumed exposed French flank at Amamillers. to exercise direct control ofthe amiies committed to battle was The chief of statT, in olher words, agreed the French were massed his unwillingness even to seem to challenge the king's authority. farther south than he had originally believed and that the posiMost of the time the system worked. tion observed by Frederick Charles was their actual right flank. The Prussians began August 18 by assuming the role of "obliging enemy" Moltke initially planned to launch his 2nd Artny in a five-corps "sickle cut" against the French right. Its pivot would be die IX Corps, then the guard, with the Saxons ofthe XII Cor]is on the far left, and with the 111 iuid X Corps following m support. The 1st Army's VII and VIII Corps would advance on the Mance Ravine. Moltke meant to deliver a hammer blow that would reduce Bazaine's army to fragments.

Frederick Charles and Moltke. apparently as obsessed with Banks as iwo elderly rakes at the Folks Bcrgciv. were determined to seize what looked like an opportunity, despite the absence of direct evidence. Both were depending on a mixture of intuition and coup d'oeil thai probably had its roots in an earlier era of

That kind of sensiti\ity, however, was not Steinmelz's prol-ilem. Beginning around noon he concentrated some 150 guns around Gravelotte. The Prussian breech-loaders far outranged the French cast-iron muzzleloaders and bronze smoothbores converted to rifles, and they were far more accurate. Thus famis with names

BATTLE OF GRAVE LOTTE/SAINT-PRIVAT

The key battle of the war began just west of Metz on the morning of August 18. Prussian artillery opened up around noon, hoping to blast a path for a large-scale infantry assault. But the French had spent the night digging in. When the Prussian right poured into an anticipated breach near Gravelotte. it met withering fire from French guns. Farther north at Saint-Privat, the left flank met similar resistance. A French counterattack might have sealed the Prussians' fate, but it never came. Prussian artillery continued to take its toll, whiie the infantry stubbornly persisted By the next morning, Moltke held the f i e l d e the French were forced to withdraw toAdetz.

RONCOURT O ^AINT-MARIE-AUX-CHENES

CHAMPENOISO VERNEVILLEO

^0

OMOSCOU /

GRAVEJ.OTT

SAI NT-

MARS-UA-TOU Vetdun 25 miles (40.5 km)

PRUSSIAN ARMY Following up on the earlier French rout at Vionvilie-Mars, Moltke ordered the 190,000strong Prussian 1st and 2nd Armies to pursue retreating enemy forces. The Prussians barely held numerical superiority, faced dug-ln French positions and executed the assault with a risky flanking maneuver. As in earlier battles, however Prussian brass would trump French indecision.

MILITARY HISTORY

Disregarding Moltke s orders and believing the French were on the run, Prussian General Karl von SteJnmetz sent thousands of infantrymen and cavalrymen into the overgrown divide at Mance Ravine. The natural i
ENCH ARMY The French Army of the Rhine numbered just 110,000, but it held the high ground. Marshal Francois Achiile Bazaine also had the option of falling back to Metz. The entrenched French Infantry, armed with superior chassepot rifles and rapid-fire mitrailleuse guns, inflicted heavy early losses, but Bazaine failed to seize the initiative and counterattack.

METZ With the stronghold of Metz at his back, Bazaine may have indulged a false sense of security. It would prove his downfall at Gravelotte/Saint-Privat. Yet even Metz couldn't withstand the subsequent Prussian siege. Paris itself would fall within months.

French Imperial Guard positioned on bluffs behind 2nd Corps

FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR ensions between France and Prussia simmered through the latter half of the lQth century. France had lost much of its Napoleonic hister, while Prussia was eager to flex its bellieose hrawn. The flash point came in 1870 after Spain offered its vacated throne to a German prinee with royal ties. Napoleon HI, fearing further expansion of Prussian influence, pressed King William to yield all German claims to the vacancy. William refused, and France declared war on July 19, 1870. Prussia, backed by a eonfederation of German states, rapidly mobilized its army, forcing Napoleons hand into an early and ill-advised incursion into Germany Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Mohke eountered with a series of quick victories and was soon steamrolling west. Recognizing the French fortress at Metz as a linchpin on the road to Paris, Moltke ordered a daring sweep across the rear of the retreating French forces, hoping to eatch them in the open. The subsequent battle was the largest ofthe eonflict, involving more than a quarter-million men. Though the war lasted just 10 months, it would have far-reaching implications, unifying Germany under Prussian leadership, shifting the balance of power in Furope and foreshadowing World War I.

T

Distances: Gravelotte to Metz: 7 miles (11.25 km) Saint Privat to Metz: 7.5 miles (12 km) Gravelotte to Saint-Privat: 5 miles (8 km) Maps by Stevg Walkowlak

French Army Prussian Army PRUSSIA 1870-1871 In the mid-19th century, Germany was a conglomeration of independent kingdoms, principalities, duchies and cities. The largest of these states was Prussia, whose prime minister, Otto von Bismarck, had long sought German unification under Prussian control. Bismarck envisioned a nationaiistic Kleindeutschlatid (Small Germany) that fostered industriai efficiency, central legislation, social reform and cultural unity. The FrancoPrussian War was the catalyst that ultimately brought together the North German Confederation and aiiied southern states. On January 18,1871, while Prussian siege guns continued to pound Paris, Wiliiam was proclaimed German emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Bismarck was named chancellor. A careful diplomat, Bismarck would resign In 1890 amid increasing cries for rapid expansion and vigorous miiitarism. The die was cast for wars to come.

like Moscou and Saint-Hubert crumbled into blazing ruins as Pmssian batteries hammered French positions along the high ground on the far side of the ra\ine. But not all of the defenders were burned or buried alive; French infantr>' in camouflaged positions scattered the Pmssian skirmish lmes and pinned down Prussian infantry columns with heavy losses. Steinmetz ordered his guns to close the range by advancing to the side of the Mance Ravine that was in Pmssian hands. When that ground lumed out to be well vvithin chassepot range, he ordered the VIII Corps to cross tbe ravine and drive away the French riflemen. Three brigades advanced up the slope, only to stick fast in tangled woods and underbmsh and get scourged by French fire. The focal point of their attack was the farm of Saint-Hubert, a forward position blocking the only decent road across the ravine. A dozen companies from a halfdozen regiments managed to work close enough to msh SainiHuben around 3 in the afternoon, prevailing against a French garrison that went under in a no-quarter fight to the finish that left the x-ictors as exhausted as the few prisoners they took.

across ground where blood stood in pools and ran in streams and fragments of men made obscene noises. By early evening, moreover, the French faced other concerns: The Pmssian II Corps was among the second wave of fonnations transported to the theater of war. Since then, it had been marching hard to overtake the advance. Its men were tired, their canteens and stomachs empty, when they began reaching the field around 7 p.m. Steinmeu nevertheless asked not Moltke but King William for permission to use them in a last charge. William agreed, over Moltkes eloquent silence and pointed turning of his back on his monarch When the II Corps began its ad\'ance down the westem slope of the Mance ra\ine, it did so in columns. Its commander, like Steinmetz, believed the French could be finished off by one more blow, delivered by closed formations. Bui the French had reformed their lines. The muzzle flashes of hundreds of chasscpols reached for the Pmssian columns. The leadingfilesretumed fire— and shot into the backs of their comrades still holding out around Saint-Huben. Those sorely tried men about-faced and confronted what seemed a new enemy For perhaps 30 minutes the Pmssian forces tore each other to pieces. Around 8 p.m., enough proved enough. The men at Saint-Hubert broke, running through ranks that only then discovered the nature of their ostensible enemy

Communications vi^re a problem everyv^ere on the field of Gravelotte/Saint-Privat that day but nowhere more than around ihe Mance Ravine. Information that did get through was so out of date that commanders tended to disregard it m favor of their own observations or intuition. Steinmetz. convinced by mid-afternoon that he had the French on the run, ordered the VII Corps into the ravine on the Vin Corps' right. Prussian ..^ drums beat the cbai^e shonly before 4 p.m.—and within minutes their leading skirmish lines were fleeing before some of the heaviest French fire of the day They crashed into the rest of the corps, coming up in company columns The French army deployed Reffye that in tum melted away like sugar lumps mitraiUeuses with its frontline troops, in hot water. using the multi-barreled guns to

As the advance stalled and 1 i Corps" bugles sounded the ceasefire, the Mance Ravine burst iike a boil. Men. horses and wagons poured out of its western end, while officers sought vainly to stop the rout, beating panic-stricken soldiers with the flats of iheir swords. A by-now-exhausted WiUiam and his discomfited Chief of Staff Moltke had earlier exchanged harsh words on the behavior ol the soldiers in the ravine. Now they worked to convince each other to resume the attack the next day

As the afternoon wore on, the floor of repulse the initial Prussian assault. the Mance Ravine became a tangled mass of dead and wounded men and horses, destroyed wagons, disabled ater that night, news from the north, where Prince guns. An oblivious Steinmetz next sent a full division of cavalry Frederick Charles' 2nd Army faced the French right at down the western slope, with orders to pursue the French to Saint-Privat, brought a measure of reassurance: Shonly the gates of Metz. He aiso sent forward the VII Corps' artillery. after noon, Fredenck Charles and his staff had finally Only a single Pmssian cavalry regirnent and four batteries got agreed that Saint-Privat was the anchor of a French position that across the causeway at the bottom of tbe ravine. Everything extended well to the nonh of where he and Moltke had believed else bogged down in a gully that became a killing ground. il to be at 10:30 in the morning. Saint-Privat was also directly in the path of the guard's advance. A frontal attack uphill against a reinforced strong point was not pan of Frederick Charles' tactical ad the French mounted anything like a counterdoctrine. As the guard reached the lower slopes of Saini-Privat attack, the Gennan positions lay wide open to disasaround 2 p.m., it received new, blunt orders: wait for the Saxons ter. But Bazaine took no action. His extraordinary of the XII Corps to come up on the left. It took another hour for passivity attracted wide attention both during and the XII Corps to reach the lirsl defended obstacle in its path. after the battle and remains inexplicable today, except on the A dozen-battery gun fine blasted the village of Saint-Mariegrounds that awareness of his ovm incompetence drove him into aux-Chenes into rubble before Saxons and guardsmen a comfort zone of inertia. Generals kept to their headquaners. stormed and cleared it. In the process, the Germans took Exhausted regimental officers were unwilling to risk ad\'ancing

L

H

MILITARY HISTORY

heavy losses from a diehard French garrison ihat held its ground to the last at some 20-to-l odds, then fell back to the main position in a model holding action. Their fingere thus well burned, neither corps commander— the guards" Prince Augustus ol Wurtlembei^ or the Saxons' CI"O\MT Prince Alben—was eager to throw his men directly against SainiPrivat. Ir^stead the Sa.xon infantry pushed north and east, looking for a way around, and their corps artiller)' deployed on the left of the guiirds. For the next three hours, some 200 Gemian fieidpieces tore up the French position. Canrobert, commander of the 6th Corps, repeatedly called for support, but received only a few hundred rounds of artillery ammunition. At their combat range of 1,000 tneters, Prussian rifled cannons were most effective when kept under central control, deployed at the earliest possible moment in the largest possible numbers, and left in position to maximize their accuracy. Instead of the outdated practice of seeking first to silence enemy artillery, Prussian gunners concentrated on the infantry, softening it up for a decisive attack. On August 18, they inflicted almost three-fourths of the French casualties.

spare against a Saxon attack that around 7 p.m.firwllyhammered its way through the 6th Corps' flank position and took control of the road to Saint-Privat. As the Saxons enteR'd Saint-Pri\'at from the north around 7:30, the surviving guardsmen mounted a near-spontaneous rush against their French tonnentoi^. Batteries from both corps advanced to what seemed pocket-pistol ranges, aiming at Qashes as growing darkness made observation impossible. In an hour-long hand-to-hand brawl, the Gennans finally cleared Saint-Privat, Canroben retreated southeast witb what remained of his 6lh Corps. The rest of the French positions unwound from right to left. First the 4th Corps, then the 3rd, ihe 2nd and finally the Imperial Guard drew ofl in lum, none of them pursued by the

Prince Augustus decided in late afternoon to send the guards forward. The guns had done what they were going to do; at least the French artillery was silent. The Saxons seemed to be making no progress against the French flank, and the day was waning. Frederick Charles agreed with Augustus" Months after the Prussian victory at Gravelotte/Saint-Privat, Kaiser Wilhelm I, decision lo attack, and just before 5 p.m. Moltke and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, left to right, oversee the siege of Paris. one brigade mounted a diversionary attack to pin down the right division of the French 4ih Corps. Its Prussians, who were by now lacking the organization and the heads-down charge over open ground diverted the French for a energy to do more than thank God things had not gone worse. few minutes—at a cost of 2,500 casualties in three-quarters of an hour, including so many officers that one battalion was comoltke was quick to comprehend the results of manded by a cadet. Then at 5 p.m. Augustus sent in the corps' that dreadful day at Gravelotte/Saint-Privat: As three remaining brigades, one after another. the Prussians buried their dead and the French The Prussians attacked in columns of half-battalions. They were canning full packs and equipment, close to 100 pounds, and thus encumbered faced 3,000 yards of open slopes. The French infantr)' had to do no more than set their sights and open their canridge pouches. By 6:30, the Pmssian assault force of 18,000 had taken almost 8,000 casualties. Successi\-e attacl
M

.completed their withdrawal into Metz, he took the gtiard, the Saxons and another corps and, with royal headquarters in tow, set out to finish off the French troops still in the field. For his ill-considered actions, Steinmetz was sent into exile. Frederick Charles remained to besiege a French army so demoralized by its experience that it made no effort to escape, but instead surrendered on October 27. Ahead lay other great events: the Battle of Sedan and the capture of Napoleon III; the siege of Paris and an extended struggle with a French Third Republic emerging from a discredited empire's ruins; the proclamation of a new German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Bui old-timers from both sides would ever define the Franco-Prussian War by the monumenial clash at Gravelotte/Saint-Privat—a one-day precursor of the world war to come, iffil For further reading. Dennis Showalter rccommench: The FrancoPrussian War, by Geojjrey Wawro.

THE PHILIPPINE WAR In 1899, following its defeat of Spain, the United States fought against a guerrilla insurgency in the Philippines—a complex and still controversial conflict By Marc Leepson f the Korean War is Americas "Forgotten War," wedged as it was between World War II and the Vietnam War, where does that leave the 1899-1902 Philippine War? Few Americans today can recount the barest details of that controversial conflict, in which some 126,000 American soldiers fought and about 4,200 died during a guerrilla insurrection on the recently American-occupied islands ofthe Philippines. It's probably symbolic of the confusion and ambivalence over this conflict that historians cannot even agree on its name; The 39-month fight is known as the Philippine Insurrection, the Philippine-American War, the Filipino-American War, the Philippine War or the Philippine Revolution, among others. The war was controversial from its inception and remains so today Western historians agree it was a clear-cut American victory, but still disagree sharply on why and how the United States fought the war—and the lessons to be drawn from it: Was it little more than a naked grab of Philippine territory, fueled by racism and imperialism? Or was it a benevolent and successful exercise in nation-building? Here's what is indisputable: The fighting began on February 4, 1899, six months after the Spanish-American War had ended. During the peace conference that began in Pads in August 1898, the administration of President William McKinley had pushed

HISTORY

Right, soldiers of the U.S. 17th Infantry pack a troop train bound for the Philippine front. American occupation forces faced a largely unknown foe in an unfamiliar culture. Left, the ill-equipped insurgents were no match for well armed, well-trained U.S. troops, as evinced in this photo of Filipino casualties from the first day of war in February 1899.

Successful Counterinsurgency or a Grab for Territory?

for outright American annexation of the 116,000-square-mile Philippine archipelago, which had been a colony of Spain for more than three centuries. Spain signed the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898, ceding the PhiUppines to the United States for $20 million. That treaty also ended Spanish rule in Cuba and gave Puerto Rico and Guam (which U.S. troops had seized on June 21, 1898, on their way from San Francisco to the Philippines) to the United States. The bargaining over the fate of the Philippines all but ignored an independence movement that had begun in earnest there in the mid-1800s. In the last decade ofthe 19th century the Philippine independence movement was led by a group

put out the call in August 1896 for a nationviide uprising against the Spatiish colonial government. On August 26 the Katipunan launched attacks on Spanish military installations. When the Spanish convicted Rizal of sedition and executed him by firing squad in Manila on December 30, the revolution only intensified. In March 1897, 28-year-old Emilio Aguinaldo, bom into a middle-class family in Cavite Province on the Island of Luzon, assumed leadership of the rebellion. At about the same time. Governor William McKinley of Ohio, vi'ho had defeated William Jennings Bryan in the 1896 presidential election, took the oath of office in Washington as the 25th president of the United States.

10 Spanish ships. One American sailor was killed. "That American forces could win a great victory clear on the far side of the world rendered Dewey's victory in the Philippines more amazing and more noteworthy," historian H.W. Brands noted. "When the news got back to the U.S., Americans rejoiced as they hadn't since the Civil War." Seventeen days later McKinley ordered a military expedition under Maj. Gen. Wesley Merritt to complete the mission against Spain on the ground in ihe Philippines. Two days later, on May 19, Aguinaldo landed in Manila, at the invitation of the U.S. government, which hoped he would join the fight against the Spanish.

'Word went out: The Philippines would be annexed. Aguinaldo's revolutionary movement would now fight the Americans' of well-educated middle-class men, including Graciano Lopez Jaena, Marceiio H. del Pilar and Jose Rizal, known as ilustrados (the "enlightened ones"). When the Spanish arrested Rizal in July 1892, a group of revolutionaries led by nationalist Andres Bonifacio, a workingclass firebrand, created the Katipunan ("Society of the Sons of the People"), a secret brotherhood dedicated to separating the Philippines from its colonial master and uplifting the Filipino people. In addition to lighting Spanish colonial rule, the Katipunan had what noted Filipino historian Teodoro A. Agoncillo called "moral and civic" objectives. The moral objective "revolved around the teaching of good manners, hygiene, good morals and attacking obscurantism, religious fanaticism and weakness of character," Agoncillo wrote in his classic textbook, Histoty oJ the Filipino People. "The civic aim revolved around the principle of self-help and the defense of the poor and the oppressed."

o a-

The Katipunan revolutionaries, v/ith as many as 30,000 members mainly drawn from the working and middle classes.

MILITARY HISTORY

Bonifacio, meanwhile, challenged Aguinaldo for the leadership of the Katipunan. Aguinaido accused his working-class rival of treason and had him arrested and tried, then executed on May 10,1897. That same day Aguinaldo announced creation of the revolutionary Biak-na-Bato Republic, complete with a provisional constitution closely modeled on one drawn up in 1893 by antiSpanish revolutionaries in Cuba. The fighting against the Spanish— much of it hand-to-hand, with the rebels wielding machete-like bolo knives— continued throughout 1897, forcing Spain to negotiate. On December 15, the Spanish, already facing a costly war in Cuba, agreed to grant amnesty to the revolutionaries, pay them reparations and allow Aguinaldo and his top leaders to go into voluntary exile in Hong Kong. That's where Aguinaldo and company were when Commodore George Dewey and his U.S. Navy Asiatic Squadron steamed into Manila Bay on May 1, 1898, and annihilated the Spanish Ileet within six hours. Dewey destroyed

Aguinaldo immediately had an audience with Dewey, where, Aguinaldo said, he asked the American commodore if the United States would hold to a promise— reponedly made to Aguinaldo in Hong Kong by USS Petrel Commander Edward P Wood—that once the Spanish were defeated, the United States would not stand in the way of tbe Philippine independence movement. Aguinaldo later said that" Wood urged me to return to the Philippines to renew hostilities against the Spaniards with the object of gaining our independence, and he assured me of the assistance ofthe United States in the event ot war between the United States and Spain," When Aguinaldo asked Wood what the United States would concede to the Filipinos, Wood reportedly replied, "The United States is a great and rich nation and needs no colonies." In his 1899 treatise. True Version of the Philippine Revolution, Aguinaldo wrote that Dewey seconded Wood's promise, "adding that the United States had come to the Philippines to protect the natives and free them from the yoke ofSpain." According to Aguinaldo, Dewey

Above, American troops battled Spanish forces through 1898 for control of ttie Philippines, with support from Aguinaldo's men. But when McKinley proclaimed U.S. sovereignty over the country, our troops soon turned their guns against the rebels.

Further staled "that America is exceedingly well off as regards lerritory, revenue and resources and, therefore, needs no colonies, assuring me finally ihal there was no occasion for me to entertain any doubts whatever about the recognition of the independence of the Philippines by the United States." Dewey then reportedly asked whether Aguinaldo "could induce the people to rise against the Spaniards and make a short, sharp and decisive campaign of it." Aguinaldo's answer was a resounding yes. Those promises—which Dewey later loarfii]!)' denied having made—prampted Aguinaldo on June 12, 1898, to proclaim Philippine independence and the formation of a new revo!uLionar\- government that would lead the fight against

the Spanish, "Divine Providence," he said, "is about to place independence within our reach. The Americans have extended their protecting mantle to our beloved country, now that they have severed relations with Spain, owing to the tyranny that nation is exercising in Cuba. The American fleet will prevent any reinforcements coming from Spain. There, where you see the Americanflagflying,assemble in numbers; they are our redeemers." At that poinl il appeared the Americans would allow Filipinos some measure of self-rule. Although few Americans could find the Philippines on a map,

American annexation of the Philippines. "We have good money, we have ample revenues, we have unquestioned national credit, but we want new markets," he said in one typical speech, "and as trade follows the nag, it looks very much as if we are going lo have new markets." According to historian Walter LeFeber, McKiniey "made speeches in which he would pose the problem something like this: 'We have established American interests and the flag in the Philippines. Should we take the flag down?' And of course the audience would roar back, 'No!' 'Should we keep the Philippines as

A1900 Puck cartoon has antiexpansionists urging, "Here, take a dose of this anti-fat and get thin again." Uncle Sam replies, "No, Sonny! I never did take any of that stuff, and I'm too old to begin!" there was "a vague sympathy in support" of the anti-Spanish insurgency, according to Brands. "Americar\s have been at least rhetorically supportive of anticolonialist, anti-imperial movements from the time of the American Revolution," he said, "Compared to the insurgency in Cuba, which Americans knew all about, the Philippines were really a blank spot in the American public's perception."

A

merican sympathies toward Philippine independence did not last long. On the campaign trail for the fall congressional elections, and under pressure from American business, military and congressional leaders, McKinley began making wellreceived speeches advocating outright

MILITARY HISTORY

an overseas base?' And of course the audience would roar its approval, and McKinley would say, 'Well, I guess they want the Philippines,'" The first American troops departed San Francisco for the Philippines on May 25, 1898. They landed al Cavite on June 1. Two weeks later the McKinley administration made up ils mind: The United States, learing a chaotic civil war or the possibility that Japan or Germany would move in after American Forces left—and keeping in mind the potential economic windfall for American business and the geographic importance of the islands for geopolitical purposes— would annex the Philippines. As General Francis.V. Greene said in August of 1898, "If the United States evacuated

these islands, anarchy and civil war will immediately ensue and lead to foreign inter\'ention." That decision wasn't America's only such move in the Pacific at the time. On June 15, 1898, the day after McKinley announced the United States would take over the Philippine archipelago, the House of Representatives passed the Hawaii annexation resolution, which the Senate ratified on July 6 and McKinley signed the following day Soon thereafter, the American AntiImperialist League, whose members would include Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, William James and Samuel Gompers, formed to lobby against American annexation of the Philippines. "The Philippines," Carnegie predicted, "will be to the United States precisely what India is to England—a nation of incipient rebels." All that summer of 1898, despite McKinleyfeJune 15 annexation announcement, Aguinaldo's forces batlled it oul with Spaniards on the island of Luzon as tnore American troops landed, includmg ihe 8th Corps Expeditionary Force under Merntt. On August 13, the day after the Spanish officially agreed to bow out of the misbegoiten war against the United States, American troops took over Manila in a sham "batde" waged for ihe benefit of the natives and to keep Aguinaldo's men on the sidelines, Spain's Governor-General Fermin Jaudenes y Alvarez had met with Merritt and Dewey beforehand to devise a face-saving mock fight, which ended soon after it began with Spain flying the white flag of surrender. The following day, Merritt set up a U.S, military government in Manila, appointing himself military governor and General Arthur MacArthur {father of Douglas) military commandant. As Spanish-American peace negotiations dragged on that summer and fall, Aguinaldo lobbied the Americans in vain for a seat al the table. Word went out to the American peace delegation: The Philippines would be annexed. "This news," Aguinaldo said, "was received in the revolutionary camp like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky." On December 1, a fed up Aguinaldo

announced that his revolutionary movement would now fight the Americans for Philippine itidependence. McKinley responded on December 21 by issuing what was termed the •'Benevolent Assimilation Proclamation," In it, the president declared American sovereignty over the Philippines and promised benevolence to Filipinos who cooperated with their new overseers, •'We come not as invaders or conquerors, but as friends, to protect the natives in their homes, in their employment and in their personal and religious rights," McKinley said. "All persons who, either by active aid or by honest submission , cooperate wilh the government of the United States.. .will receive the reward of its suppon and protection, Al! others will l:Te brought wthin the lavi^l rule we have assumed, with firmness if need be, but without severity, so far as may be possible,"

Aguinaldo's men, and it appeared the rebellion would be short-lived. Secretary of War Elihu Root described the spark that set off the war in a speech in 1900: "On the fourth of Febmary," Root said, "an army of Tagalogs, a tribe inhabiting the central part of Luzon, under the leadership of Aguinaldo, a Chinese haifbreed, auacked, in vastly superior numbers, our little amiy in the possession of Manila, and after a desperate and bloody fight was repulsed in every direction,"

The American aim, McKinley said, was "to win the confidence, respect and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines" by offering a "full measure of indiWdual rights and liberties" and "by proving to them that the mission of the United Slates is one of benevolent assimilation." To do so, McKinley warned, "there must be sedulously maintained ihe strong arm of authority, to repress disturbance and to overcome afl obstacles to the bestowal of the blessings of good and stable government upon the people of the Philippine Islands under the flag of the United States."

"iThe Filipinos] are not capable of self government," Sen. Albert Beveridge of Indiana said in a strident Senate floor speech on January 9,1900, after having paid a visil to the islands. "They are, as a people, dufl and stupid," He continued, "The common people, in their stupidity are like their canbou bulls.... They are incurably indolent. They have no continuity or thoroughness of industry... They are like children playing at men's work." The New York Timt'.s, in a Februaiy 15, 1899, editorial, referred to the Filipino people as "babes in the jungle" and "a people who had Inot] passed the stage of guileless itifancy They sliow the weaknesses and the nces of the resourceless and unmoral human infant," The editorial called Aguinaldo "a vain popinjay, a wicked liar and a perfectly incapable leader," and characterized the anliimperialist arguments as "devoid of reason, of sense and of humanity."

The proclamation did not go over well with Aguinaldo and his followers. On January' 1,1899, Aguinaldo took an oath of office as the first president of a new Philippine Republic, which the United States refused lo recognize. Three days later, following publication of the McKinley proclamation in the Philippines. Aguinaldo issued his own proclamation, condemning McKinley's words as "violent and aggressive" and threatening to start a war against the Americans.

T

he Philippine War began February 4, 1899, when Aguinaldo's forces auacked Amencan troops in a suburb of Manila after an American patrol killed three Filipino soldiers. In the ensuing baitlc. the Americans routed

War proponents m the government and news media openly described the Philippine conflict in condescending, "white man^s burden" terms, taking thdr cue from the eponymous poem Rudyard Kipling wrote in 1899, In Tiv Volute Man'a Buidcn. Kipling urged the United States to uplift the Philippine people, whom he characterized as "your new-caught, sullen peoples/half-de\il and half-child."

At first, the war went well for the U.S. The poorly armed and poorly led revolutionary army was no match for the Americans under Maj, Gen. Elwcll S, Otis, who had succeeded Merritt as military governor of the Philippines on August 29, 1898. Otis had served as a colonel in the Army of the Potomac during the Civil War and fought in the Indian Wars of the 1870s. His men soon chased Aguinaldos army out of Manila

William McKinley Prcsidcni McKinley was an avowed Lxpaiisionisi. Ciliiig national security and ctonomif concerns, IK- pressed for control oftlic Philippines, Guam, I'uerlo Kiio and Cuba at ilic close oi the SpanishAineriiau War in 1898, George t)ewey Commodore Dewey stored a decisive victory in Manila Bay on May 1, 18*^8, defeaiinj; ihe entire Spanish Heel within six hours, tic then sought. and received, rebel support in tlie land war against the Spanish, lose Bizal Rizal was thf mosi prominent of ihe edueated ihisliados ( enlighlened ones^') advocating tor Pilipino independence. I ollowing an armed uprising, the Spanish arrested Rizal and executed him on December 30, I89fi. niilio .Agninaldo Vguinaldo picked up the lianner ol tin- Ktnlpuiian rehel movement. In 1897 he hrokered a cease-fire deal with the Spanish and went into exile. He rettirned within months lo fight first ihc Spanish and then the Americans. niwell Otis A veteran of the ,\tncrican Civil War and Indian Wars, Maj. Gen. Otis led the initial ground war against the I ilipino revolutionaries, ipiickly pushing them lUit of Manila and seizing their capital at Malolos in Central Luzon. \rlhur MaeArthiir ]r In 1900 General MacArlhur sLuieeded Otis as Army (mnniander and military j;o\ernor. The guerrilla war dragged on another two \ ears. His son, Douglas, wottld return lo liberate the islands from Japanese rulcin World Warn,

and in March captured the revolutionary capital of Malolos in Central Luzon, By October, Aguinaldo's men had fled into the mountains, and the conventional nature of the Philippine War ended. In its place, Aguinaldo waged a hitand-run guerrilla war, beginning in the spring of 1900. By that time. General MacArthur had succeeded Otis as Army commander and military governor. MacArthur, who had received the Medal of Honor for his courage under fire in the Civil War, had led the successful attack on Malolos. But the Americans were ill-equipped to fight the kind of irLeft, Miguel Malvar was the last of the Katipunan generals to surrender, on April 13, 1902, in his native Batangas. Despite the mutual savagery exhibited during the war, the Americans and Filipinos, below, waged an effective peace tbat benefited tbe country.

regular warfare they faced in the inhospitable Philippine jungles. "The Americans could not, at first, figure out what to do," noted historian David Silbey, author of A War oJ Frontier and Empire. "The enemy was hard to find, American units would be attacked, with a few wounded and killed, and their attackers, called insurrectos, would fade back into the jungle. The civilian population served as a ready camouflage,"

T

he Philippine War was a hotbutton issue in the 1900 presidential election, which the McKinleyRoosevelt ticket comfortably won, again defeating Bryan, McKinley hinted during the campaign that the war would soon end and that American troops would be withdrawn. MacArthur, though, had warned the administration that the conflict was far from over and predicted it would be a long and difficult proposition. He was correct. The war dragged on for two more years.

On March 23, 1901, three weeks after McKinley began his second term, the Americans scored a significant victory, capturing Aguinaldo at his remote jungle headquarters in northern Luzon in a daring raid led by Army General Frederick Funston. Aguinaldo subsequently signed an oath of allegiance Co the United States and called on the insurgents to lay dovm their arms. But the guerrilla war continued. The Americans, at the same time, did hold to McKinley's benevolent nationbuilding promises, setting up schools, hospitals and the beginnings of a selfgoverning structure. The work continued after McKinley's September 6, 1901, assassination and was a big factor in the insurgents' decision to give up the fight in April 1902, In the last six months of the war, allegations surfaced that American troops had taken part in what would today be described as atrocities, including killing unarmed civilians and forcing thousands of suspected insurgents and their supporters into concentration camps. There were reportedly atrocities on both sides. One horrific incident took place on the island of Samar in mid-September 1901. After 48 American troops were

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MILITARY HISTORY

killed and mutilated in an ambush. General Jacob Hurd Smith promised to tum the entire island into a "howling wilderness." ordering his troops to bum every village on the island and to kill every man, woman and child over 10 years old. The next year the U.S. Senate held the first official war crimes hearings in American history. The hearings, in which anti- and pro-imperialistic senators (including Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and Beveridge of Indiana) often engaged in shouting matches, "were inconclusive," David Sibley noted, "as were the couns-martial of a number of soldiers involved in Samar, including Jacob Hurd Smith," President Theodore Roosevelt officially declared the Philippine War over

Describing the conflict as "a long and bloody war with insurgent forces fighting for independence," Brinkley says that a "spirit of savagery grew among some American soldiers, who came to view the Filipinos as almost subhuman and at times to take pleasure in killing almost arbitrarily" He also points out that the Americans "built roads, schools, bridges and sewers; instituied major administrative and financial reforms; and established a public health system." A group of historians, including Johns Hopkins University history professor Paul A. Kramer and AfricanAmerican history specialist William Loren Katz downplay the nadon-building aspects ofthe war and argue instead that it was, at heart, an atrocity-filled, racist adventure in imperialism. The

marked by present-minded and politically correct judgments." Gates, in Tht' U.S. Army and Irregular Warfare, plays down reports of American atrocities. Considerable evidence. Gates contends, exists "to support the argument that atrocious acts of war, for all their widespread publicity, were neither the major nor the most important feature of the Army's approach to pacification." The pacification campaign, he says, "was not based upon a policy of terror or brutality; it was not 'genocidal.' Instead, it stands as an example of an approach to counterrevolutionary warfare that seemed to have been all but completely rejected less than a centur)' later." Whether or not ihe war was an imperialist, racist misadventure or a bencv-

spirit of savagery grew among some soidiers...[yet the Americans] buiit roads and instituted major reforms* on July 4, 1902. Just over 1,000 Americans had been killed in action; some 3,100 died from disease and other noncombat causes, and 2,900 were wounded. At least 20.000 Filipino troops had perished, as did hundreds oi thousands of civilians—precise figures have never been determined. Guerrilla lighting against U.S. forces continued until 1913.

W

hile it is often suggested that history v*all be the judge of how a war was fought, in the case of the Philippine War, the judgments are quite mixed: Almost all historians stress the negative aspects of America's first foray into imperialism and point out the brutal way the Americans waged war. The lesson of the American experience in the Philippines, Allen Brinkley of Columbia University vmtes in his popular U.S. history college text, American Hislory: A Sutyey, is that "subjecting another people required more than ideals; it also required strength and brutality"

Philippine War was "the nation's first overseas quagmire," Katz wrote recently, bearing "all the earmarks of a colonial project seasoned with racial warfare," The Philippine conflict, along with the Spanish-American War, "ushered the United States into the ranks of the world's colonial powers," Kramer said in his book The Blood of Government. "On the Filipino side, it had been a war for national liberation and a continuation of the anticolonial 1896-98 struggle against the Spanish empire." On the American side, he said, "it had become a race war." Other historians—such as Dan Crosswell of the National University of Singapore, John M. Gates ofthe Gollege of Wooster and Brian McAllister Linn of Texas A&M—accuse Kramer, Katz and others of promulgating revisionist history, colored by hindsight. The Philippine War "stands as the most successful counterinsurgency ever conducted by the United States," Crosswell says, despite "the last 30 years of revisionist and nationahst mythmaking

olent venture in nation building, the fact remains the United States held the Philippines securely until imperial Japan attacked the islands on December 8, 1941, a few hours after Pear! Harbor. After a series of brutal fights, Americans and Filipino forces, under the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, surrendered on the Bataan Peninsula in April 1942 and on Corregidor a month later. MacArthur lefi the Philippines on March 11, but fulfilled his dramatic vow to return on October 20, 1944, when he waded ashore on the island of Leyte. Months of fierce fighting ensued before the Japanese were pushed out of Manila on March 3, 1945, and officially surrendered the islands to the United States when the war ended in September. Less than a year later, on July 4, 1946, the United States granted independence to the Philippines. 1^ For (lather reading, Marc leepson recommcnj-s. The Philippine War. 1899-1902, hy Biian McAUistev Linn.

Reviews RECOMMENDED

Following the Nazi Money Trail The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, hy Adam Tooze, Allen Lane, New York., 2006, $60.18. Sixty years after Allied victory, major discovei'ies contintie LO fundamenially aller the histoiy of World War II. Sucb findings have included the circumsiances hehind Ultra, w hich drastically changed our understanding of the role of intelligence, and the nasty story of the Wchrmachts wholehearted cooperatioti with the Final Solution. Neveriheless, one area that has remained largely unmined has heen the economic tmderj^innings of the conflict. This brilliant study of the Nazi economy has now filled a significant gap in our knowledge. As Tooze shows, Nazi armament consistently lacked a strategic framework. Hitler gave the three services a blank check and thus ensured there would be no strategic policy except the most brazen opportunism and at times sheer unadulterated luck. As the regime set megalomaniacal goals for the military buildup, ihe Germans flirted with economic disaster brought on by shortages of raw materials, including coal. When war came in September 1939, Gemiany was virtually bankmpt. In retrospect the /Vnglo-Frcnch alliance pureued exactly the right strategy by aiming to complete this bankruptcy The one hole lay m the general inability of Allied leaders to undertake tough action and in the extraordi-

nary military incompetency of thc 1940 campaign. At best. Hitlers economic strategy represented a demand for more of everything. So once again the Germans proceeded [o fight the rest of the world on a very limited economic base. The three crucial elements in ihe equation were coal, steel and transportation. Nothing shows the disparity between Nazi goals and means ihan their supply of oil at the time, which was crucial for transportation. In addition to iheir produciion of synthelic oil, the Germans barely averaged 1,500,000 tons of oil imports from Romania between 1940 and 1943. In comparison, ihe British alone imported 10,200.000 tons of petroleum products in 1942. In economic terms, even the conquest of

much of Europe's economic infrastructure was simply nol going to make up ihe difference between what the Germans could produce and what the Allies could produce. Adding to the Gennan difficulties was the nature of the conHict on which they had embarked: not simply a war of outright conquest, but a racial, ideological war of extermination. We have known for a considerable period of lime the ideological nature of the war against the Soviet Union. What makes the Tooze book incisi\'c is his understanding of the connections between Nazi economic policy operational goals and ideolog)'. He describes the 1942 policies of Third Reich Minister of Food Herben Backe as "a return to the principles of the Hunger Plan Ithe aim to starve lo death millions of Soviet citizens to create an agricultural surplus]. Unlike in 1941, however, the Hunger Plan was now to be directly coupled lo the programme of racial genocide and above all to its centerpiece. the murder of the Jews in Poland." Thus, the Nazis decided to execute all Polish jews so ihat the Germans would have enough food. Tooze's insights were drawn from thorough research of all available economic documents. Not surprising is his conclusion thai the strategic bombing offensive had a signilicanl and growing impact on the German war economy from early 1943 on. But what is new here is his

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War Posters: Weapons of Mass Communication, by James Aulich

U'licilicr imploring poleniial recmils or demonizing the enemy, war posters demand alienlion. Aulichs book is a collection of prints from the U.S., Britain, Germany, France, Russia, Austna and other nations daling back to World War I, illustrating how pictvtres can become powerful tools of wnrtime propaganda.

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argument that had RAF Marshal Arthur Travers "Bomber" Harris persisted in his massive attacks on the Ruhr and not allowed his command to be diverted first to Hamburg and then to Berlin, the German war economy would have collapsed sooner than January 1945. Some parts of the book cover familiar ground, and there are some srrtall battlefield errors. Nonetheless Tooze's ability to synthesize military, economic and ideological histories into a clear, straightforward narrative makes this one of the most important works of the past two decades on the histor)' of World War II. —Williamson Murray Band of Sisters: American Women at War in Iraq, by Kirsten Holmstedt, Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, Pa., 2007, $27.95.

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Kirsten Holmstedt has pulled off two astonishing feats: Not only does she tell engaging stories of service in Iraq without any him of a political agenda, but she has chosen stories in which the heroes just happen to be women. As she relates the experiences of soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines and how they react in combat situations, the fact that they are women is largely forgotten. Books about women in combat generally come Vkith a clear bias, either pro or con, and focus on ex-

BANDofSISTERS l War in Ir.14

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rarely reflecting the actual experiences of servicewomen. Serving in combat zones alon^ide their male counterparts is simply what the women in this book do, and tnc)- sec nothing unusual or groundbreaking about it. You won't find tales of command malleasance and sexual harassment. Nor do the women downplay the difficulty of penetrating the inner circle and earning the trust and respect of their peers, leaders and subordinates; they just see it as some-

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Making History: The Calm and the Storm, by Strategy First, 2007, $29.99. Unlike iradiuonal empire-building simulation games, the World War 11era Making Hmory: The Culm and ihe Siorm enables the player to deploy political savvy and economics as weapons to achieve xictor)'. While military success is encouraged, "povi'er points" are also awarded for organizing your nations inrrastnjcture, developing new technologies, importing and exporting goods and forging political alliances. Players choose from five historic scenarios, each encompassing a certain time frame and heginning wilh a specific event, such as the attack on Pearl Harbor or the D-Day invasion of Nonnandy, You control one oi" seven nations, the starting conditions for each directly modeled after history. How you apply your country's capabilities and assets will determine how history will play out. You can u-in as an individual nation, as an alliance or as a particular ideological group. As its title suggests. Making Histoiy does allow for historical deviation. Yet it proWdes insight into the economic and political factors that influenced the course of world events. While most other WWII games deal with the struggles o[ individual stildieis on the battlefield. Making History provides a fresh gaming experience by highlighting the struggles that faced the politicians, military commanders, world leaders and other decision-makers of the time. —Ryan Burke

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thing every new unit member encounters. Except perhaps when trying to use the latrine in the field, these women do not expect special treatment. Tales range from a young corporal on patrol with Marine recon in Haditha to an Air Force squadron commander flying C-130s. Represented is a broad swath of American society, with diverse reasons for sending but a common devotion to comrades and country As one nurse sumtncd up: "Millions of Americans do the right thing. I'm just one person in that million." Sharing Americas freedom and opponunities meatis sharing therisksinvolved in defending them. The tnothers feel an extra burden of societal guilt, but none tried lo get out of their service. A sergeant with three young boys explaitied: "1 went because I had to. I was a soldier before I was a mom." Rather than presenting infallible paragons of virtue, the author faithfully records the women's frustrations, weaknesses and fears. One admits she was barely able to function as a commander on her first Mother's Day away from her children. Another comes to grips with having survived an IED attack, while her companion (another woman) was killed. A third is devastated when her toddler son doesn't recognize her when she returns home. These incidents are presented without Judgtiient or rancor and with the acknowledgment that fighting men throughout history have dealt with these same issues. A helicopter pilots reflectiotis on having been shot down will resonate with anyone who has served in cotnbat: "You always wonder whether you vviil be able to handle it if something bad happens. Well, I got a chance to find out. 1 feel very lucky to know that about myseUV Should women be allowed to serve in all combat units? This book does not ai'gue one way or another. These are simply good war stories that needed to be told. Our mediasaturated culture carelessly throws the word "hero" around while true bravery in our midst goes unnoticed. This book brings the spotlight back where it belongs. —Sharon Tosi Moore

Xenophon's Cyrus thf Great: The Arts of Leadership and War, edited by Larry Hedrick, Truman Talley Books, New York, 2006, $24.93. Xenophon's classic is only tenuously connected to the real historical figure of Cyrus the Great. Rather, he uses the vehicle of a biography of the Persian conqueror to expound his own vision of the arts of war and leadership. Thought to be written tn opposition to Plato's Republic, Xenophon's vifork is more an enlightened and practica! treatise on personal and organizational leadership. Hedrick has abridged and edited the work to steamline this practical aspect. He has put Cyms in the first person and emphasized specific examples to heighten the immediacy of the narrative. He has not neglected the moral XFNOPHON'S aspect of leadership and faithfully follows Xenophon's intent. In this we hear the echoes of Socrates' explorations of the THEAKTSOF nature of the good in the shady stoa of Athens. Xenophon's LARRY HEDRiCK approach is timeless, for leadership without the moral dimension of the appeal to the better angels of our nature is ultimately a hollow failure.

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Condottiere 1300-1500: Infamous Medieval Mercenaries, by David Murphy, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, UK, 2007, $17.95. Killing was a mercenary's business, and in 14th and 15th century Italy, busirtess was good. Heads of emerging city-states came to rely less on their own peasants and merchants and more on professionals for theit defense against violent rivals. Hired through complex contracts, or ai?u/n(ti, these mercenary companies domtnated warfare of the period. Many of their commanders rose in political power and prestige and, largely

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as a means of self-promotion, became patrons of the arts as avid and cultured as the princes they had served—godfathers and "wise guys" with a touch of class, Condottiere 1300-1500 is No. 115 in Osprey's Warrior series, but seldom have the warriors covered been so literally professional. Author David Murphy explores all aspects of condouiere life within the complicated, often contradictory and frequently treacherous social environment of Italy on the threshold of a renaissance in which they played a very active role. Graham Turner's illustrations are excellent, but the multitude of period artwork outshmes the text, making one wish that all the paintings could have been full color The ultimate honor of a condoUiere was to be immortalized by his artistic contemporaries, but a5 one may deduce from the book. Renaissance masters differed from their predecessors when it came to glorifying their subjects. Typical of many the face of Andrea del Verrocchlo's equestrian monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni captures not only his commanding presence but the ruthless savvy of a battle-scarred brute who earned his place in Venice's Campo SS Giovanni e Paolo the hard way —-Jon Guttman

EXHIBIT "The First Emperor: Ghina's Terracotta Army" September 13,2007-Apra 6,2008 British Museum, London As modern China emerges as a global power, an ambitious new exhibition at the British Museum offers insight into the extraordinary legacy of its first emperor. Few Westerners have heard of him, yet the empire he created in Ghina more than 2,000 years ago is as significant as that of ancient Greece or Rome.

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The star attractions of the exhibition are examples from the famous army ol terracotta warriors created for the emperor's mausoleum, to serve him in the afterlife. The army was discovered by chance in 1974 at Xi'an in central China. The site is still being excavated, and our understanding of the emperor and his rule is continually being revised as more discoveries are made. The first emperor was born in 259 BC as Ying Zheng and succeeded his father as king ofQin whenhcwas 13 years old. By 221 BC he had united the heart of what is now China and called himself Qin Shihuangdi (the first emperor of Qinl. He created a ceniralized bureaucracy and standardized the law, the script, currency, and weights and measures. But he was also a tyrant who reigned tbrougli terror and a system of informers.

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1-800-358-6327 www.HistoryNetShop.com Twent)' figures are on display at the British Museum—not just soldiers but civilian officials and court entertainers. Never before have so many of the figures been exhibited outside of China. They represent only a fraction of the 8,000 believed to have been buried at Xi'an. A funher 100 exhibits, including weapons and bronze birds, accompany the figures. For ticket prices and other information, visit the museum Web site [wwwthebritishinuseum.ac.uk/firstemperor]. —Andrew Uffindell

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nallowea Ground Thermopylae, Greece

By Gary L. Rashba

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n mid-September 480 BC, Spartan King Leonidas, supreme commander of Greek forces, stood defiantly at Thermopylae, preparing a heroic defense against a superior invading Persian army. An estimated half million men under King Xerxes the Great had spent four years preparing for war, and they eagerly funneled south to meet the Greeks. I Xerxes soon realized his men could not bring their force of arms to bear in the confined pass. Perhaps it dawned on him in that awful moment why the Greeks had chosen this choke point. Thermopylae (Greek for "hot gates," in reference to nearby springs) lies some 120 miles north of Athens on Greece's National Highway The road here hugs the coast, and steep mountain slopes constrict the route. Approaching the pass itself, the landscape widens, but back when the battle was fought, the coastline was much closer. Gazing in the direction where the Persian army deployed, one can imagine the fearsome sight of their sprawling encampment. The confederation of Greek troops numbered around 7,000 men under Spartan command. Xerxes must have expected this t^ U f t o c o w e r OetOre

Spartan King Leonidas and his Greek troops prepare for the Persian attack at Thermopylae in a rather romanticise French oil painting.

his massive army, bul the Greeks remained undeterred, even defiant. When the Persian king ordered them Lo surrender their arms, Leonidas is said to have replied, "Come take them!" After a four-day standofT, ihe Persian aitack finally came. The Greeks, deployed defensively and better equipped for closequarters fighting, slaughtered the invaders, cutting down ihe Persians crowding through the narrow pass. Xerxes ordered in his eliie troops, known as the Immortals, but they fared no better. The second day of battle brought more of the same.

call 10 surrender is prominently inscribed on the marble structure. A second monument commemorates the sacrifice made by the 700 Thespians. Greek flags, wreathes and flowers garland each memorial. Surrounded, their general dead and their numbers dwindling, the Greeks regrouped on Kolonos Hill. Reaching the hill from the monuments today requires a careful dash across the highway Frorn its summit, the Greeks watched the Immortals closing in on their flank and masses of Persian regulars flowing

A heroic bronze of Leonidas overlooks the pass at Thermopylae, anchoring a monument to the 300 Spartans who fell hy his side. As Persian casualties mounted, Xerxes grew increasingly enraged. The crack of Persian officers' whips must have echoed off these walls as they forced reluctant conscripts forward. Persian prospects improved considerably when a Greek traitor disclosed the existence of a high pass that would allow Xerxes 10 circle behind the Greeks. The king immediately sent his Immortals on a flanking maneuver through fhe mountains. Word soon reached the Greek camp. Though likely furious about this betrayal at the hands ofa countryman, Leonidas did not have the luxury of time for reflection. Realizing the Persians would soon encircle the Greeks, he ordered the withdrawal of most of his iroops. His handpicked Spartan force of 300 men and an oft-overlooked 700-strong Thespian contingent opted to stay put and fight. The Thebans, whose intentions Leonidas did not fully trust, were detained. On the third day of battle, the Greeks left their defensive positions to meet the Persians on open ground, as if inviting death. Leonidas was killed in the fray, and the Thebans soon deserted. The oracle at Delphi had foretold the death of a king that would spare Sparta from destruction, thus Leonidas ostensibly knew his fate going into battle. Xerxes had the Spartan commanders corpse decapitated—the body crucified and the head displayed on a pike. Today a bronze statue of the Spartan commander stands proudly at the pass, spear at ihe ready—the centerpiece of a monument to the 300 Spartans. His defiant response to Xerxes'

through Thermopylae pass. Spartan sense of duty would only allow a return home if \ictorious; retreat or surrender was unthinkable. The Thespians remained steadfastly by their side. The Greeks fought until their spears were broken, then resorted to using swords and finally their hands and teeth, defiant to the last man. A commemorative stone on the summit of Kolonos Hill marks the spot where they made their final stand. It bears an epitaph by 6th century BC Greek poet Simonides of Ceos: Go, TELL THE SPARTANS, THOU WHO PASSEST BY, TliAT HERE OBEDIENT TO THEIR LAWS, WE LIE. First century Greek philosopher Apollonius of Tyana poignantly referred to Kolonos as the world's highest mountain, "because on this mountain the law keeping and the noble self-sacrifice have put up a monumeni, which has its base on the earth and reaches the stars." Some 20,000 Persian corpses Uttered the pass and its approaches. Xerxes ordered the dead—Greek and Persian alike—^buried in place to conceal both his own casualties and the small number of defenders thai had inflicted such a blow. Greek resistance broken, the road south was open. The Persian army went on to sack Athens, but the battle at Thermopylae had hurt them. Nol only was the stance a blow to Persian morale, it bought the Greeks valuable lime for naval preparations; within weeks the Greek fleet would defeat the Persian navy at the Battle of Salamis. A year later the regrouped Greek army routed the Persians at the Battle of Plataea, ending the Greco-Persian War. ( ^

Weapons we're glad they never built Tut-Tut's Troop Transport By Bruce McCall

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rust Egyptian Pharaoh Tut-Tut, a lifelong military buff, to invent the first troop transport: a dutnmy pyramid fashioned from lightweight papyrus over a wood frame and powered by 100 foot soldiers concealed inside. The mobile monument vv-ould creep across the desert toward enemy lines in stopand-go increments so stealthy to be impercep-

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tible, until close enough for its occupants to doff their flimsy disguise and fall on their unwary foe. Alas, as Tut-Tut readied a flotilla of his peripatetic pyramids against an invading Carthaginian force near Aba Daba-Daba in 138 BC, the Carthaginians inched forward across the sands disguised as an oasis and struck their fatal hghtning blow, 0