Military History 2010-01

Leners Not-So-lndomitable Afghanistan? In his article "Indomitable Afghanistan" [Aug/Sept 20091, Stephen Tanner states the Soviet Union "ultimately lost" the war in Afghanistan. I do not understand what this is based on. After all, the Soviet Union finally did manage to install Mohammad Najibuliah, who, with a lot of aid, managed to keep the country under control and the Taliban at bay. The Najibuliah regime outlasted the Soviet Union. Not until the fall of the latter, which deprived its former satrap of his source of aid, did his regime give way to the Taliban. George Nielsen T H E HAGUE, NETHERLANDS

In the article "Indomitable Afghanistan," the author states, "... failed would-be conquerors have included Alexander the Great." My understanding is that Alexander the Great did, in fact, conquer Afghanistan. Although it took him three years to do it and required a considerable portion of his small army to garrison it, he left a stable province, through which he received reinforcements and communications while in India. Almost alone among his conquered provinces, Afghanistan never rose in revolt while he was alive. John Harrison POTOMAC, MD.

Daring Raids Being a former airborne Ranger, 1 could not let it go that the raid on St. Francis, Canada, by Rogers' Rangers during the French and Indian War was not included [in "The Seven Most Daring Raids Ever," by Stephan Wilkinson, Oct/Nov]. It may have been the greatest raid by a ranging force as far as distances cov-

MILITARY HISTORY

ered, cost in casualties and difficulties encountered, while ha\ing a dramatic and probably decisive effect on the outcome of the war. Brian Giíberí VERDALE, WASH.

wife and 1 recently visited the invasion beaches of Normandy. Not all the traces of war are gone, however, as you can see from this 2008 photo (below). The remains of the Mulberry harbor nicknamed "Port Winston" even provided

A raid of scope and daring from World War II would be the fabulous rescue of more than 2,000 civilian internees I from Los Baños, the Philippines on Feb. 23, 1945], a perfect example of trusting Philippine intelligence and guerrilla groups to provide aid. Lt. Gen. E.M. Flanagan Jr. produced a wonderful book entitled The Los Baños Raid. Don Fangboner LAKE GEORGE, N.Y.

Battlescapes Alfred Bueilesbachs photos from Marcus Cowpers Battlescapes in your Aug/Sept issue would be beautiful enough without the added interest of helping us to imagine what it was like as armies struggled years before. The idylhc Utah Beach photo especially caught my eye, as my

a backdrop for a young boy playing army on the same beach where 64 years earlier soldiers fought for real. Walter E. Switzer MESA, ARIZ.

Mad Anthony [Re. "Fallen Timbers, Broken Alliance," Aug/Sep:] Hooray for Thomas Fleming! 1 am neither a military scholar nor a social studies expert, but

at last 1 have seen in print what has seemed abysmally obvious to me since I was a kid. Yes, our forefather's dealings with American Indians were not particularly enlightened by today's standards, but Fleming captured it correctly when he referred to the vast movement of fjeople, the clash of totally different ways of life and the pointlessness of hand-wringing. The westward movement followed patterns well established in human history, and I submit it would likely happen again if we had it all to do over in a modem setting. David Teasdale SACHSE, TEXAS

Thomas Fleming's article on the St. Clair-Wayne campaigns in the Northwest Territory, 1791-94, has one serious omission and one misrepresentation that influence understanding of the St. Clair defeat and the Wayne victory. The omission is to ignore the role of William Wells, a young Kentuckian kidnapped and raised as a Miami warrior. At St. Clair's defeat, he led the joint Miami-Shawnee attack group that identified and overran St. Clair's artillery positions after scouting the U.S. Army march order and nightly deployments. Changing sides because he believed the Miamis had been misled by the Shawnees

and the British, Wells became chief of scouts for Wayne and conducted many invaluable services as de facto force intelligence officer and translator, persuading Wayne to postpone his attack at the Fallen Timbers until fasting, exhaustion and impatience weakened the American Indian force. The misrepresentation involves the status of the non-regular Army forces under Wayne's command. The Kentucky force was composed of civilian volunteers who joined for the campaign under

state sponsorship, commanded by Maj. Gen. Charles Scott (Kentucky state forces), an experienced frontier campaigner Scott and his officers resisted complete subordination to Wayne for good reasons. The Kentuckians had little confidence in Wayne, who had no frontier experience. The Kentuckians had distrusted Wayne's devious deput>Oames Wilkinson, and his two ambitious young aides, William Henry Harrison and William Clark, who later used the 1794 campaign to start careers that took one to the presidency, one to iconic status as an explorer and both to territorial gover-

norships. To call the Kentucky mounted rifles "militia" conjures up images of ill-armed, undisciplined farmers, which they most certainly were not. Harrison did not make the same mistake in undervaluing the Kentuckians when he commanded them in the campaign that crushed the Shawnee-Lakes tribes confederation at the Battle of the Thames in October 1813. Allan R. MiUett Ambrose Piojessor of History Director Eisenhower Center Jor American Studies University ojNew Orleans N E W ORLEANS, LA.

Correction In "The Seven Most Daring Raids," by Stephan Wilkinson, Oct/Nov, we incorrectly state that Allied soldiers from Correidor were among the prisoners on the Botaan death march; Conegidor Jell weeks after the death march. Send letters to Editor, Military History Weider History Group 19300 Promenade Dr. Leesburg. VA 20176 or via e-mail to miljtaryhjstory@ weiderhistorygroup.com. Please include name, address and telephone number.

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News

By Brendan Manley

Team Recovers Remains of Missing Navy Pilot 18 Years After Shoot-down

DISPATCHES Cards Honor D-Day, Band of Brothers lCardz has released a 192card collectors set entitled America at War (www.lest weforgetcardsus.coml that honors the people, places, events and equipment of D-

Bedouins who first discovered the wreck and the pilot's body. Speicher's fate remained uncertain after an Iraqi fighter downed his F/A-18 Hornet in combat on Jan. 17,1991. The Pentagon initially declared the pilot killed in action, but the Navy was unable to confirm his death and in 2001 changed Speicher's status to missing in action. A year later the Navy switched bis status to missing/captured, fueling speculation the pilot may have survived his shoot-down. Flying was in Speicher's blood—his father, Wallace, was a Navy pilot during World War II. Before his Gulf War deployment aboard USS Saratoga, Speicher was stationed at the nowdecommissioned Naval Air Station Cecil Field in Jacksonville, Fla., home base of his squadron, tbe VF-81 "Sunliners." Jacksonville honored its adoptive son with a motorcade and memorial service, capped off by a 21gun salute. During a private ceremony at Jacksonville Memory Gardens, Navy jets flew This summer U.S. Marines sifted the sands for evidence at the site of by in the missing-man Navy Captain Michaei Spetcher s 1991 crash in Al Anbar Province, Iraq. formation.

Day and highlights the U.S. 101st Airborne Division's celebrated "Band oí Brothers." Each set contains a card autographed by a veteran of the 506tJi Parachute Infantry Regiment's Easy Company, while randomly inserted cards offer chances to win World War 11 memorabilia and limited-edition prints.

'Glory lights the soldier's tomb, and heauty weeps the brave' —Joseph Drake

Actor Gary Sinise narrates the series. The film blends high-definition footage of key wartime locations with restored archival film clips.

The search has ended for the only U.S. serviceman listed as missing in action during the Gulf War—33-year-old Navy pilot Captain Michael Scott Speicher, who was shot down over west-central Iraq in the opening hours of Operation Desert Storm. This summer a Marine Corps search team in Al Anbar Province recovered Speichert remains from a desert grave less than two miles from the crash site, some 60 miles wesi of Ramadi. The Marines were acting on intelligence from Iraqi civilians, including a man who witnessed Speicher's burial by

World War II in HD This fall History [www .historj-com] is premiering its 10-part drama/documentary series WWfi in HD. which relates the epic clash through the stories of a dozen Americans who contributed to the war effort.

News Germany'Baus Out' its Historic Casties Germany^ numerous castles and historic sites are the latest beneficiaries of controversia! stimulus money in the growing world economic downturn. The government has earmarked $452 milhon through three separate programs for restoration efforts

at dozens of historic properties, including Sanssouci, above—Frederick the Greatîs summer palace in Potsdam —and 32 other UNESCO World Heritage sites |u IR .uncsco.orgl. The funds, intended both to preserve these sites and boost the country's ailing construction segment, come at a time of increased tourism in Germany.

Brest Evacuates to Clear WWIi Ordnance Brest, France, recently evacuated 16,000 ofits residents to allow ordnance-clearing teams to sweep neighborhoods for unexploded World War ll-era munitions. In August and September 1944, Allied forces dropped some 30,000 tons of bombs on and around a key German naval base in the city. An estimated 10 percent of those explosives failed to detonate and remain hazardous. During this latest sweep, munitions experts identified 83 shells and 15 other potentially dangerous items for removal.

MILITARY HISTORY

A Hard Knight's Day Forensic analysis of a skeleton unearthed at Scotland's Stirling Castle has revealed fascinating details about the life of the exhumed, believed to be an English knight named Robert Morley, who was killed in a tournament at the castle in 1388. Standing 5-foot-7, the man had a stout upper body and strong right arm from years of wielding hefty swords. Repetitive damage to his ankles illustrates the strain of riding, while the remains also evince

muscle injuries consistent with heavy hfting. The knight bore a large arrowhead in his chest and also had survived an ax blow hard enough to dent his skull. Researchers havefixedthe knight's death somewhere between the ages of 18 and 26, when an opposing swordsman sliced through his nose and jaw. Based on forensic reconstruction, the fatal wound came while the knight lay| on the ground—a less-than-1 chivalrous end, to be sure, g

'He iooks grim, and he'ii fight iilte hate; He has an axe of 20 pound in weight'

—Geoffrey

Chaucer, The Knight's Tale

Historians Pledge to Save Patriot Cemetery Historians in New York are seeking protection for a 12-acre parcel near a shopping mall in Fislikill that was a graveyard during the American Revolution. The Fishkill Encampment and Supply Depot was active from 1776 until 1783, helping to feed, clothe and arm Patriot defenders of the Hudson Highlands (see related story, E 36). Archaeological teams equipped with ground-penetrating radar have pinpointed several hundred graves on the site. Although an important link in Washingtons supply line, the encampment never saw a British attack, thus historians believe those buried at the site died of disease or wounds suffered elsewhere. Local historians have pushed to set aside Fishkill as the country's first national Revolutionary War cemetery.

WAR RECORD The first winter snows can signal the end of hostilities or the arrival of death itself. Others steel their resolve for the renewed offensive sure to accompany the spring thaw. • Dec. 15, 1944: A plane carrying famed bandleader Glenn Miller, then a major in charge of the U.S. Army Air Forces Band, disappears over the English Channel. In 1992 Arlington National Cemetery (see E 44) erected a headstone to Miller, who remains missing in action. • Dec. 18. 1916: The Battle of Verdun draws to a close, as French forces, bolstered by the recent recapture of Forts Vaux and Douaumont (see P 56), seize 115 heavy guns and round up 11,000plus German prisoners. • Jan. 15, 1777: Fort Edward, N.Y., tavem owner Henry Francisco (see P 64) enlists in the Continental Army at age 91, becoming America's oldest known recruit. Francisco went on to fight through the Saratoga campaign before his discharge for medical reasons on April 20, 1778. • Jan. 16. 1944: Dwigbt Eisenhower takes command of Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), in London. Lessons learned from the disastrous August 1942 Dieppe Raid (see P 17) would help shape his Operation Overlord strategy.

Spanish Newspaper Challenges Authenticity of Iconic Capa Photo The Spanish newspaper El Periódico claims thai Robert Capa's signature '"falling soldier" photo—a defining image of the Spanish Civil War and a vviitershcd moment

Capa's photo, which reportedly depicts a soldier falling to his death on a grassy hillside after being shot, has had its fair share of skeptics since first appearing in print

show Republican militiamen in action against Franco's Nationalist troops—present a continuous mountainscape that closely mirrors the new Espejo images.

WalMart Headed for the Wilderness officials in central Virginia have approved construction of a WalMart Supercenter near the Civil War-era Wilderness Battlefield [www .rip-..i;o\ 'ti-r-pl despite fierce opposition from hundreds

of protestors, including actor Robert Duvall and filmmaker Ken Bums. Although the store won't be visible from the Wilderness' 2,700 protected acres, historians point out that only about one-fourth of the battlefield falls within park boundaries.

WWII Museuni Opens New Wing The National WWII Museum in New Orleans Iwww . national w\v2museum.orgl has unveiled its new $60 million, 70,000-square-foot Victory Theater complex,

for modem photojournalism —was actually staged. After a detailed study of the landscape in Capas image, the Barcelona-based paper concludes the picture was taken not at Cerro Muriano in Andalusia, as Capa claimed, but near the town of Espejo, roughly 30 miles to the southwest—far from the front lines and on a day devoid of military action.

in September 1936. The latest challenge is based on a set of modern-day photographs of a hillside near Espejo, framed by a skyline that closely matches the one in Capa's image. Two other photos from Capa's series appear in an exhibit entitled 'This Is War" at the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya ¡www.mnac caí] in Barcelona. Those images—which Capa claimed

If Capa was, in fact, in Espejo, experts say it is unlikely he would have encountered any combat. Franco's troops were at least 15 miles distant at the lime—in Montilla, near Cordoba—and the hillside in question faced areas under solid Republican control. The only known fighting in the region was on Sept. 22 and 25.1936, after the image had already been published.

Mf your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough" —Robert Capa

MILITARY HISTORY

part of a $300 million multiphase expansion scheduled for completion in 2015. The new building centers on the 250-seat Victory Theater, which will present the 40-minute film Beyond All Boundaries, billed as a "4-D experience," as well as the themed Stage Door Canteen and the American Sector, a new restaurant by celebrated local chef John Besh.

¡News Homecoming for Last Aussie MIAs Australia has repatriated ihe last of its Vietnam War MIAs. Last spring a search team found the remains of Flying Officer Michael Herbert and Pilot Officer Robert Carver deep within the jungle near the Laos border, where their

Canberra bomber crashed during a raid over central Vietnam in November 1970. This summer the remains were flown to Sydney and buried with full military honors in the airmen's hometowns.

NORAD: Keeping Tabs on Santa Claus It is a longstanding Christmas tradition at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, to track the whereabouts of Santa Ciaus. In recent years the initiative has gone high-

tech vid ,\OR-.\Ds Santa tracking center i www.norad sanla-orgl, which is viewable in seven languages and receives millions of hits per year. Recent intel upgrades include the ability to follow Santa's progress with twodimensional Google maps or in 3-D using Google Earth.

MILITARY HISTORY

Oniy Three Worid War I Veterans Survive With the recent passing of Brits Henry Allingham and Harry Patch and Australian Jack Ross, just three World War I veterans stirvive worldwide: Canadian soldier Jack Babcock, Royal Navy seaman Claude Choules and American doughboy Frank Buckles. Babcock, 109. enlisted in 1916 but never made it to tbe front; wben the Armistice was signed, he remained shy of bis 19tb birthday, the minimum age to serve in combat. Choules, 108, is the last living veteran of

both world wars. He enlisted in the Royal Navy at age 14 and patrolled tbe North Sea aboard the battlesbip HMS Revenge. During World War II, Choules was the Royal Australian Navy's chief demolition officer in Western Australia. Buckles, 108, served in Britain and France as an ambulance driver and messenger. At war's end, be repatriated German prisoners of war. Buckles was himself a civilian POWoftheJapa- ^ nese in the Phil- | ippines for the | duration of World Î War II. I

'it is fooiish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we shouid thank God that such men iived'

—George 5. Patton Jr.

Korean War Archive Fixes Longtime Flubs Since founding the Korean War Project ¡ \\%\'w .knrranwjr-orgi in the early 1990s, brothers Hal and Ted Barker have worked tirelessly to honor servicemen who gave their lives during that conflict. In tnany cases, it simply comes down to fixing a typo. Nearly 37,000 U.S. soldiers were killed between June 1950

and July 1953, tbeir names and hometowns recorded by the Army and shared with the National Archives [ .archives.gov I and the American Battle Monuments Commission (www.abmc.gov]. But the process was far from | foolproof, and the Barkers have | since corrected countless mis-1 spellings and other errors. §

WAR ETERNAL Some soldiers are fortunate enough to live a long life after their last battle; others had already lived a lifetime before heeding their country's call. • William Marshal: Bom in 1146, the 1st Earl of Pembroke was history's greatest knight. His jousting prowess was legendary having ransomed some 500 opponents without a loss. He died in 1219 at age 72, investing in the Knights Templar on his deathbed. • Curtis King: In 1863, 80-year-old King joined the Union's 37th Iowa Volunteer Regiment, dubbed tbe "Gray Beards,' as the unit comprised men over age 35. King served several months until ill health prompted his discharge. He was the oldest enlistee from either side in the Civil War. • Charles Surrugue: A veteran of the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War and former mayor of Auxerre, France, Surrugue joined up in 1914 at age 76, serving as a sapper. He was discharged as a lieutenant in 1919. • Kenna Clyde Taylor: Taylor served the Navy for 22 years, rising to the rank of Storekeeper First Class (SKI), At age 62, the Shadyside, Ohio, native had the unfortunate distinction of being the oldest casualty of tbe Vietnam War, when he died from a heari attack on Sept. 21,1970.

interview Rick Atkinson: From Reporter to Historian ournalist and historian Riefe Atkinson knows the face of batik jar better ihan most who write about wars and those who fight them. The son of a career Army officer, Atkinson grew up on posts in Europe and the United States, in Ï982 his articles for The Kansas City Times on West Point's Class of 1966 won the Pulitzer Prize for nfltiontii reporting, and in 1983 he joined The Washington Post. As the paper's Berlin bureau chief he covered the confíicts in Somalia and Bosnia and was the Post^ lead Gulf War reporter Atkinson took a leave of absence from the newspaper in Î999 to begin work on the three-volume World War II history hwwn as tlif Liberation Trilogy; the first volume won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2003. He briefly returned to the Post that year and again in 2007 to cover combal operations in Jraq. Atkinson is working on the trilogy's final volume.

J

Why the focus on Europe rather than the Pacific? You might say I've had a Europe orientation literally since birth. And 1 think the war in Europe just grabs my imagination in a different way. The European Theater works for me in terms of finding the narrative and the lyricism that comes from exploring a topic that really works on your imagination on a variety of levels.

al realized the story of World War II is bottomless, and weMI never run out of things to write aboutf

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What was the genesis of the Liberation Trilogy? World War II didn't stan on Otnaha Beach, and I recognized at some point there was a triptych to American involvement in the liberation of Europe. The first panel was North Africa, the second was Sicily and Italy, and the third and final panel was the decisive campaign in Central Europe. I realized the story of World War II is bottomless, and we'll never run out of things to write about.

MILITARY HISTORY

What struck you about North Africa and Italy? The events that unfolded beginning with Operation Torch in North Africa in 1942 and Operation Husky in Sicily in 1943 inform what happened in Normandy and beyond. North Africa, Sicily and Italy were absolutely essential to the Army's development as an institution and to the development of the individuals I write about. Eor example, Eisenhower wouldn't have been Eisenhower had he not gone through North Africa, Sicily and Italy. How important was a commander^ ego to his performance in Europe? Ego is inseparable from any human enterprise, and war probably more so than most. When you talk about coalition warfare on a global scale, you find that most of the successful practitioners tend to be able to check their egos at the door. That doesn't mean a general can't be both flamboyant and successful—look at George

Patton. Its the clashing of egos, the insecurities, the effort to get diverse personalities to mesh and the capacity for growth, or lack thereof, that really intrigue me. Who was the best combal leader in North Africa? In Italy? The two in North Africa that I admire are Terry Allen, commander of the 1st Infantr)' Division, and Charles "Doc" Ryder, commander of the 34th Division. Both were very competent. They were both professional officers who were excellent practitioners of the combat arts. In Sicily and Italy, I'm a big fan of Lucian Truscott, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division and then VI Corps, who was a truly superb combat leader. But the best tactician in Italy wasn't American, he was General Alphonse Juin, who commanded the Erench Expeditionary Corps attached to the U.S. Fifth Army. He stands out as extraordinarily gifted. I'd go so far as to say Juin was better than any of the British or Atnerican commanders. Who was the most overrated combat leader in each theater? In North Africa. I'd have to say Patton. He was only in command of II Corps for about six weeks, and though legend has it that he revived II Corps' fortunes and turned it into a highly competent, war-winning unit, it's just not true. He was quite frustrated, he made mistakes, and he left after his six weeks feeling a mixture of satisfaction and disgruntlement. He hadn't performed as well as he thought be should have. And as much as I admire him for what be later did as supreme Allied commander, I'd have to say Eisenhower was the most overrated in Italy. He was only there as theater com-

mander through December 1943, when he left for England to prepare for

Operation Overlord, but he was not a particularly good field marshal. When we invaded Sicily in July 1943, there wasn't really a good plan for what would happen 20 miles heyond the beaches, because Eisenhower hadn t been attentive to the notion of severing the Messina Straits that separate Sicily from mainland Italy. As a result, four very fine German divisions got away almost intact because, frankly, Eisenhower and his immediate suhor-

In llaly, the same holds true: The landings in Sicily had to be successful for anything else to work. And the subsequent landings on the Italian mainland were also important. Salerno was a very near-run thing; General Mark Glark ver>' nearly got his 5th Army thrown back into the sea. Had that happened, it would have been a monumental setback, so the success in those landings was absülutelv vital.

Taking a break from writing his World War II trilogy. Rick Atkinson returned to The Washington Post in 2003 and 2007 to report on U.S. military operations in Iraq. dinates—particularly General Sir Harold Alexander—simply hadn t been paying sufficient attention. Which was the most important battle in North Africa? In Italy? In both cases, the first battles were the most important. In North Africa, the landings in Morocco and Algiers were critical. If they hadn't succeeded, nothing else could have happened. The landings were a novel enterprise, one of the boldest operations of the war.

Is there really more to say about the Normandy invasion? First. I think it's important to assert that the siory is bottomless, in that there will always be more to write about Normandy. The U.S. Army's records pertaining to World War II —just the Army's—weigh 17,000 tons. So, if you're an "archive rai," as I am, you'll always be able to find new and interesting aspects to even as oft-told a tale as Normandy. And I also believe I'm writing one book

that just happens to come in three parts, and il begins in November 1942, and Normandy is an iteration. Yes, people think they know the story, but I ihink those who are picking up the story from the beginning and understand how it fits in to the earlier campaigns will find that there are still revelations. How difficult is it to research these long-ago events? I find that while trying to reconstruct something that happened 60-plus years ago is sometimes incredibly frustrating, it's often not as difficult as we might think, given that the Second World War has to be lhe most recorded and scrutinized real-time event in our national history. And while secondary sources such as lhe official histories are very important, there needs to be a thrust toward originality in voice and in material. Frankly, at least half the fun of this process is rooting around in the archival sources. Having now been doing this for more than a decade, I have a pretty good feeling for archives large and small, both in this country and around the world. There is a staggering amount of material, so you don't need latter-day oral histories, because the contemporaneous record is extraordinarily rich. Where do you go from here, as both journalist and historian? In the past 10 years I've been back to The Wirí.sJinigíun Post twice—once to go to Iraq for the invasion and again in 2007 for six months. But I think I've made the transilion lo historian. I'm not sure what I'll do when the trilogy is done in 2012 or 2013, but I'm sure I'll find something to keep myself out of trouble. ^ tor Lhcjull inlayiew with Rick Atkinson, visit Military History online (www .historynet.com/miUtaryhistory}.

/aior Honored by One's Enemy By Chuck Lyons

Lt. Cmdr. Gerard Roope British Royal Navy Victoria Cross Norwegian Sea April 8,1940

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ne of World War Us most unusual—and gallant—stories unfolded early in the war off the Norway coast. That the action prompted the award of the first of the conflict's 182 Victoria Crosses (Britain's highest decoration for valor in ihc face of the enemy) makes it important. But that this VC was awarded on the recommendation of an enemy commander makes it historic.

The story, which Winston Churchill called one "to be remembered," began in early April 1940 when 35-year-old Royal Navy Lt. Cmdr. Gerard Broadmead Roope took his 1.350-ton G-class destroyer HMS Glowworm into the Norwegian Sea. The vessel, anned with four 4.7-inch guns and 10 torpedo tubes, was part of the battlecruiser HMS Renown's escort for mine-laying operations off Norway. During the

Pounded by the heavy cruiser's secondary' batteries. Glowworm rammed Hipper's bow, tore away 130 feet of Us armor belt and ripped a major gash in the hull, leaving it listing with tons of night of April 7, however, Glowwonn seawater pouring in. Glowwonn kept up lost a man overboard in rough seas and a steady fire as it pulled away from the dropped back to search for him. collision, but with its forecastle sheared The following morning, Roope abanback to the bridge and fires raging on all doned the search to rejoin Renown. decks, the end came quickly Glowworm At about 8:30 a.m., Gíowwoim endrifted briefly alongside Hipper before countered the German destroyers Bernd capsizing and sinking. "'[Its] light," von Arnim and Hans Lüdemann. The Churchill later wrote, "was quenched." vessels were escorting the 14,000-ton One hundred eleven members of heav)' cruiser Admiral Hipper, en route Glowworm's company perished, into land troops at Trondheim as part cluding Roope. German crewmen tried of the German invasion of Norway. hauling him up Hipper's side with a Commanded by Kapitän Zur See Hellrope, but Roope let go—apparently muth Heye, Hipper mounted eight from exhaustion—and disappeared. 8-inch guns, 12 4.1-inch guns, 12 His body was never recovered. 1.5-inch guns, eight .8-incb guns and Demonstrating a gallantry that was 12 torpedo lubes. to vanish as the war dragged on, Heye Glowworm and the German destroystayed on scene for an hour, picking ers exchanged fire, the up British survivBritish warship scoring ors and congratuat least one hit before 1 lating the men he the destroyers fled. Giv^ saved for putting up ing chase, Roope closed ; a good fight. within range of Hipper, I "[He] told us that which the British comI otir captain had been mander knew could a very brave man," make short work of his much Roope and Glowworm, said Bert Harris, a Glowworm smaller vessel. Realizing thai above, boldly took on stoker who was among the 31 rough seas and Hipper's speed a much larger German men rescued, and long-range guns would heavy cruiser in 1940. Heye then sent an award make escape difficult if not imrecommendation lo the British possible, Roope instead chose to attack. War Office through the International Glowwonn headed straight for Hipper Red Cross. For the Victoria Cross lo be while launching ils torpedoes, all of awarded, the citation must be issued hy which missed. The heavy cruiser then a regimental-level officer and supported fired at Glowworni, scoring several by three witnesses. Since no British offimajor hits, knocking out one of the cer of rank had survived the fight, the British destroyers guns and setting the War Office agreed to accept Heyes testiship on fire. Roope, knowing it was mony. It is one of few instances in British only a matter of time before Hipper histor)' the medal was awarded on the sank his ship, ordered a smoke screen, recommendation of an enemy. giving the impression he was going to Though Hipper completed its mission steam away from the German warship. to Trondheim, it was compelled to Instead, he turned Glowwonn hard to return lo port for repairs that kept it out starboard and, with all remaining guns of action for a month after the encounter firing, headed straight for Hipper. with Roope and Glowworm. ( 0

nand Tool

By Jon Guttman* Illustration by Gregory Proch

Ancient Sling The weapon that turned rock throwing into an art form

The sllnger slips the looped end over a finger on his throwing hand and pinches the loose end.

Slipping a stone into the rounded pouch, he rapidly swings the projectile, takes aim.

...and releases tn the direction of his foe. A skillful sitnger could hit a target 200 yards away.

T

he sling, mans first ballistic weapon, was a staple in tbe arsenak of armies worldwide for at least six millennia. The weapon comprises two lengths of leather, sinew or braided fabric extending from a rounded pouch. A sUnger slips the looped end of one cord over a finger on bis throwing hand and pinches tbe knotted end of tbe other cord between thumb and forefinger, swinging and then releasing bis projectile toward tbe target.

The principal is simple, but mastering the technique takes practice. Still, the Old Testament account of David and Goliath demonstrates its deadly potential, and Roman army trainers expected a proficient slinger to strike targets at up to 200 yards, about tbe same standard as that of archers. Although a slinger could use any

i

reasonably smooth stone in a pinch, armies boosted tbeir range by introducing such standardized ammunition as terracotta balls or molded lead pellets. A truly proficient slinger might target specific enemy combatants, but more often armies used slingers en masse to defend a strongbold or barass enemy columns in advance of an infantry attack. Later slingers incorporated a notcbed staff to increase tbeir leverage and burl a beavier missile, a development that inspired tbe siege catapult, i ^

H'ower 1001

By Jon Guttman'lîlustration by Gregoty Proch

The original Montigny mitraiHeuse, left, fired 37 rounds at once at the turn of its crank.

Reffye Mitrailleuse That's rapid-fire French for 'machine gun'

The mitrailleuse's removable held 25 centerf ire cartridges.

The gun encased rows of five barréis and weighed 750 pounds, minus its carriage An pivoted for limited lateral movement.

By rotating the firing , a gunner could fire 100 to 125 rounds per minute.

centerf ire roun

I

n 1851—a decade before Richard J. Gatling fired his eponjonous automatic weapon—Belgian army Captain Toussaint-Henr>'-Joseph Fafchamps designed the worlds first machine gun. The 50-barrel carabine multiple, or mitrailleuse

( grapeshot shooter"), used a cranked, alternating needle-fire mechanism to discharge preloaded cartridges from a steel breechblock. Fafchamps worked with gunsmith Joseph Montigny to develop a more practical weapon and. in 1863. introduced the BT-barrel centerfire Mon-

The sheer weight of tts carriage limited the weapon's recoil, thus improving its accuracy. Overall length: 5 feet 9 inches Total weigh: 1,880 pounds Muzzle velocity: 1.560 feet per second Maximum ran; 2,500 yards

ligny iniíííii//fust'. In 1853 Fafchamps pitched his weapon to Napoleon III, but on the ad\ice of Marshal Edmond Leboeuf. Napoléon instead ordered the Frt-nch-madc canon à balles from Lt. Col. Jean-Baptiste Verchère de Reffye. Adopted by the French army in 1865. the 25-barrel RefTye mitrailleuse fired 13mm centerfire cartridges at the rate of 100 rounds per minute. The weapon debuted under a veil of secrecy. Indeed, by the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, in July 1870, thougb the French army boasted nearly 200 oper-

ational mitrailleuses, few officers knew of their existence. Placed in six-gun batteries with artillery units rather than as infantry support, the mitrailleuses were largely ineffectual, and the Germans prevailed despite the dreaded HöUejmwschinai {'"hell machines"). The gun did prove useful for executing Commuiiiirds after the 1871 fall of the Paris Commune. Although both the Gatling and Maxim guns rendered Reffyes weapon obsolete, milvaillcuse remains the French term for automatic weapon. <^

Letter rrorn Military nisiory How to Win Atkinson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist turned historian, who is currently writing the third volume of his Liberation Trilogy on World War 11 in Europe, makes a convincing case that his subject is inexhaustible (see Interview, P 18). Atkinson cites the 17,000 tons of World War 11 records held by the U.S. Army alone and pronounces that war's military histor)' "bottomless" in the depth of available material. Such tonnage of source material is crucially important to historical accuracy, to establishing the facts and answering big-picture questions. But meaningful history is also a summary of individual experiences, the type of first-person stories that characterized the innovative 1958-63 television drama series Naked City and led to its legendary tagline: "There are 8 million stories in the Naked Gity" So in that sense, the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, surely offer a potential minimum of 250,000 stories, reflecting the number of attackers and defenders on the ground that day. The importance of such individual soldiers' stories is spotlighted in this issue in the paired tales of two forts at Verdun, France, in 1916. The big-picture view of the Battle of Verdun is difficult to comprehend: It lasted about 10 months and cost each side more than 300,000 casualties. But in the fights for Fort Douaumont and Fort Vaux, a handful of soldiers on both the German and French sides determined—through their decisions and exemplary leadership— who won and who lost that phase of the Verdun campaign. At Douaumont, regarded by many as the strongest fortification in the world, a pioneer squad led by Feldwebel Felix Kunze boldly snuck in and confronted the surprised French defenders, who chose to surrender rather than fight. Later, at Vaux, the French defenders, led by a thrice-wounded, crippled 49-year-old commander, Sylvain-Eugene Raynal, chose to fight rather than surrender and refused to yield to vastly superior German forces. Ra)Tiars men fought nonstop for five days in conditions beyond imagining, costing the German attackers almost 3,000 casualties. Part of the inexhaustible appeal of military history is that while the issue of how to win a war often involves high-level strategic decisions about which nations to invade or defend, and when and how to attack with whole armies, winning or losing also depends on individual soldiers' behaviors, which are as decisive as they are unpredictable. 0

.eutoníc military history of the 20th century | was marked by tactical brilliance but undone by strategic incompetence By Williamson Murray

28

MILITARY HISTORY

T

he 20th century opened with an unprecedented flurry of technological and scientific advances. Among the nations at the forefront of those advances was Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's creation, the German Empire. The leaders ofthat state were confident Germany would advance from its position as the dominant European power to hecome the dominant world power.

rman soldiers advance under withering French shellfire during the 1916 Battle of Verdun. In both world wars, the tactical competence of German units could not overcome the strategic failures of senior military and political leaders. SÜDDEUTSCH^ ZEITUNG

^

They were wrong; it did not. Instead, two great world wars, both instigated and pursued hy the Germans, destroyed Bismarck's creation and left Germany just another European state. Tbis tum of events, which played out over the first half of the 20th centur>; is directly tied to the effectiveness— and failures—of Germanys military institutions. It is clear the Germans produced extraordinär) military institutions. Indeed, on the tactical level, those institutions essentially invented modern ground warfare. But at tbe same time, Germanys military leaders repeatedly proved incapable of thinking through the operational consequences of their tactical successes, much less the strategic and political implications of the conflicLs on which they so readily embarked.

VISiONARIES, FOOLS AND BLUNDERI

Ouo von Bismarck The defeat of France in ihe Franco-Prussian War helped Bismarck bring about his dream L>f German unilication, and he was a key piayer in the early developmeni of a professional and united German army. Paul von Hindehurg A national hero following his 1914 defeat of ihe Russians at the Bailie of Tannenhcrg, Hindenhurg as chief of the General Staff ultimately sought an armistice with the Allies and pushed Kaiser Wilhelm to abdicate.

In short, the picture of modem German military effectiveness is one of battlefield brilliance mixed wilb myopic vision at the strategic level. That combination ensured that German defeat would do maximum damage not only to the Reich's neighbors, but also to the German people themselves. At the Battle oftbe Marne in September 1914 and again at tbe Battle of Moscow in December 1941—early in each of the world wars—Germany had already reached tbe point where defeat was inevitable. Yet, tragically, the tactical competence of German military forces ensured each conflict would last another four years at terrible cost lo all involved.

liriih Ludcndorff After becoming eo-leader of the German army wilh tHindenhurg, LudendorfF strongly advocated the unrestricted submarine warfare that ultimately brought the I niied Stales into the war on the Allied side. Hans von Seecki Von Seeekt based his reorganization of the German army on an honest assessment of its World War t Tailings. The resulting doctrine served as ibe roadniap to Germanys initial World War II victories.

T

he toxic combination of tactical brilliance and strategic incompetence is readily apparent In the Gennan armys developing perfonnance in the two world wars. The armies that embarked on war in August 1914 were in most respects, except the technological, closer to the armies that fought at Waterloo than to those that fought in the climactic battles of 1918. in 1914 French armies had marched into machine-gun and artillery fire during the opening battles, leaving nearly 300,000 of their soldiers dead hy the end of ibe Battle of tbe Mame. The Gemians displayed little more initial tactical proficiency than the

HISTORY

Wilhelm Keitcl The OKWchier helped plan must major Wchmacbl campaigns and had the good sense to ad\isc Hiller against invading France and Russia, hut be backed down quickly whenever faced with the/úíircrs displeasure.

•V

.^dolf Hiller While he had learned valuable tactical lessons in bis years of World War I combat. Hitler ignored the larger irutbs of that conHict, such as heitig prepared logLstically and never lighting a two-front war in Furope.

French: At ihe Battle of Langemark in Flanders in late fall 1914, the Germans sent battalion-sized columns of illtrained university students directly into the deadly fire of professional British infantry. In what they later termed tbe "Battle oftbe Innocents," tbe Gcnnans lost 30,000 soldiers out of 37,000 by tbe battle's end—Adolf Hitler being one of the few sur\'ivors. The invention of modem war at the tactical level began toward the end of the 1916 Battle of the Somme, a struggle renowned in the British mythology of tbe war for tbe disastrous loss of 57,000 soldiers on the first day. On tbat day the Germans suffered minimal casualties, but over tbe remainder of tbe 142-day catnpaign, under a rain of British and French shellfire, the Germans suffered losses they could ill afford. The "battle of materiel," as they termed it, represented a serious drain on the German army from which it never fully recovered. At ihis point in the war, the kaiser appointed tbe two generals who had commanded German armies on tbe Eastem Frotit—Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and his chief of staff. General Erich Ludendorff—to command the overall German war effort. Ludendorff itnmediately traveled to the Western Front to see what was actually happening. His trip involved visiting not only senior generals, but also the field commanders and troop leaders who actually understood the problems at the front. And as noted in his memoirs, he demanded those witb wbom be met speiik their minds and not pass along something made to order." What emerged from Ludendorff s discussions was the realization that German commanders on the Sotnme were demanding that defending troops hold every square yard of trench. The result was that infantry found itself packed into frontline tretiches, where British and French artillery sitnply butchered it. In reaction, Ludendorff s general staff officers quickly developed the doctrinal concept of defense in depth. The Germatis thereby invented modern defensive warfare, in which a thin skin of macbine gunners held the

front lines and increasingly strong defensive positions ensnared any enemy offensive. Moreover, since the bulk of ihe infantry remained deep behind the front lines, il was no longer within range of enemy artillery and could launch quick, decisive counterattacks. At tbe same time, German artillery could also withdraw and diminish the effectiveness of Allied counter-batter)' fire. The newdefensive doctrine also emphasized decentralized, aggressive leadership by frontline officers and NCOs, who now could make decisions on the spot without waiting for orders. What was particularly impressive about Germanys tactical performance over the winter of 1916-17 was that it not only developed an entirely new approach to defensive warfare, but also managed to retrain its entire army in the new tactics by spring 1917—while

German troops, above, rush past a destroyed French position during an assault in 1916. The strategic halance that existed between Germany and France was forever altered when Germany adopted its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, putting American vessels at risk, left, and ultimately prompting the United States to join the Allied war effort.

under fire. Its defensive stance on the Champagne front ultimately ihwarted a major French offensive in turn based on tactics that had worked well during the last stages of the November 1916 Verdun campaign, but were now fundamentally flawed in the face of the new German defensive system. Based on that system of decentralized aggressive counterattacks, the Germans then developed modern offensive combined-arms tactics, which involved not only decentralized leadership at the from, but combined-arms

exploitation of weaknesses in the enemys frontline defenses. By spring 1918, such tactics allowed the Germans to bring movement back to the battlefield in their great offensives and win a series of victories that were astonishing in comparison to the pre\ious ibree years of static combat on the Western Front. And yet, those tactical successes failed to bring the Germans victory in the war. Why? The failure to understand the political and strategic realities ofthe war in 1916 simply rendered German tactical effectiveness irrelevant: At tbe same time he set in motion the tactical revolution in 1916, Ludendorff was lobbying hard in support of the Imperial German Nav)'S efforts to resume unrestricted submarine war-

General Hans von Seeckt, at left, above, laid the foundations for Germany's initial World War II victories by reorganizing tbe army during the Weimar period. However, the competing demands of Germany's services after 1933 meant that when war erupted in 1939, some 80 percent of the army still used borses, rigbt, for logistical transport.

fare, a move practically everyone but Ludendorff understood would bring ihe United Slates into the war. With Ludendorffs and Hindenburgs support, Germany—which would help pioneer the development of the submarine despite starting World War I with barely 20 operational boats— resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917, and, sure enough, the United States entered the war in April. Barely a year later, American troops were arriving in France at the rate of approximately 250,000 a month, and those fresh American divisions would play a major role in cracking the German army Ludendorff had hased his opinion on the belief that "mihtary necessity" should trump all other concems, including strategic and political matters.

MILITARY HISTORY

And there lay the great weakness of the 'German way of war." The emphasis on military necessity had led the Germans to use their Schlieflcn Plan to invade Belgium, a move that ensured Britain would immediately enter the war. When they did, the British arrived on the Rank of French armies in August 1914, preventing General Alexander von Kluck's First Army from outflanking the French. They played a major role in the Battle of the Mame by entering the gap between the German First and Second armies and then defeated the German attacks in the Battle of Langemark, thus preventing the Ger-

mans from capturing the channel ports. But the most important contribution tlic British made was to secure Allied control of the oceans, the global economy and America's benevolent neutrality— major strategic concerns overlooked by the Germans. By 1916 the British army had grown to a force of more than 50 divisions, which, despite ham-handed leadership, hamtnered the Germans from 1916 on and eventually proved to be the crucial instrument in the Allied \ictories that shattered the Gennan army. German devotion to "militar)' necessity" had contributed to a number of other crucial political and strategic mistakes early in the war. Fearful the French and Belgians might resort to guerrilla war, tbe Germans shot 6,000 Belgian and French civilians in response to incidents that in almost every case represented either legitimate resistance or cases of friendly fire. The German atrocities of August and Sep-

lember 1914 went a long way toward persuading the neutral Americans that Germany was beyond the pale. The introduction of chemical warfare the following April intensified American outrage. There were ironies in Germanys introduction of gas. For one, prevailing winds carried the gas back over German trenches. Also, gas masks were primarily composed of rubber, a raw material readily available lo the Allies, but not the Germans, through war's end. The sinking of the passenger liner Lusilaniti in April 1915, which augured the first phase of unrestricted suhmarine warfare, brought America to the brink of war; only Woodrow Wilson's hedging delayed that strategic disaster for Germany Regardless, the German navy harbored its own strategic stupidity—it coniinued to wage a political campaign for the resumption oi unrestricted submarine warfare. Putting forth bogus figures of what its U-boats could achieve while ignoring the tonnage of neutral shipping available to the Allies, the Gennan admirals carried their argument to the anny and to Ludendoriï— never one lo deny the overwhelming importance of "militar)' necessity." Confronted with the reality that Americans wouid begin to arrive in substantial numbers in 1918, Ludendorff rebuffed all suggestions of a peaceful compromise in which the Reich might abandon its conquests in the west to keep its eastern gains. Instead, he launched a scries of tactical offensives, none of which had any clear operational goals. The result was exhaustion of his army and losses on a scale Germany could not sustain, but the Allies could. Nothing could make clearer the lack of strategic vision and understanding in the "German way of war"

H

istorians have often argued that military institutions study the last war, and that is why ibey perform badly in the next. Few myths perpetrated by historians could be more misleading. In fact, those military institutions that honestly examine history can learn crucial lessons; those that refuse to heed the past pay a terri-

ble price in the lives of their soldiers and, in some cases, their national existence. Here Germany's case is particularly instructive, for while it did study those areas in which the armed forces had performed well, it largely ignored its greatest failings. In 1920 General Hans von Seeckt, the sharpest officer on tbe general staff of lhe Weimar Republic's Reichswehr, assumed lhe position of commander in chief. In the face of Allied demands thai Germany drastically reduce the size of iLs arm)', von Seeckt placed ihe gen-

á What t army—or navy, for that matter—failed to examine were the strategic and politi lessons of conflict f eral staff in control of the officer corps. He also launched a massive lessonsleamed initiative in which 57 comtnittees collaborated on an honest and thorough study of the tactical lessons of World War 1. Thus postwar Gennan doctrine incorporated the lessons of decentralized, combined-arms exploitation, and in 1933 the general staff produced the doctrinal manual TruppenJührung, which formed the basis for the great victories of 1940 and 1941. But what the army—or lhe navy, for that matter—failed to examine were lhe strategic and political lessons of the conflict. Germany had lost World War I because it had consistently ignored the larger consequences of its military actions and consequently had ended up fighting all the other major world powers wilh only the ramshackle Ottoman and Hapsburg empires and Bulgaria as allies.

The overall cause of Germany's defeat should have been obvious. Yet, lo have admitted that Germany's defeat had arisen from strategic myopia would have been to admit military culpability Instead, the military—and indeed most Germans—still entranced by the victories of spring 1918, fastened on the myths that the army had stood unbroken and undefeated in the field, and that Jews and Communists bad slabbed it in the back. The military also blamed the defeat and collapse on politicians, whom it had denied all responsibility for the conduct of the war until October 1918. Most of the generals believed Germany simply needed a leader, zführer, who could unite the population behind a future war while letting the military fight a conflict of "pure military necessity"—thus laying the groundwork for the same blunders that doomed Germany in the earlier war. On Jan. 30, 1933, Adolf Hiller took power as the Reich's chancellor That was precisely what the Gertnan Wehrmacht—now comprising the army (Heer), navy (Kreigsmarine) and air force (Lujtwajje)—had wanted. Thus, the political naivete of the generals played a crucial role in first bringing Hitler to power and then supporting his massive military buildup, which could have no purpose other than to fight another great world war. In fact, within the first week of his coming to power. Hitler made clear to his leading generals that hLs purpose in rebuilding the Reichs military was not simply to revise the Treaty of Versailles, but to overthrow the existing world order. Only in 1938 wouid there be a serious disagreement between Hitler and a handful of the annys generals. At that point, having annexed Austria into the Third Reich, Hitler was about to launch the Wehrmacht against Czechoslovakia. The chief of the general staff. General Ludwig Beck, tried to rally leading generals against Hitler's desire for militar)' confrontation with the Czechs, as in his analysis the strategic situation was entirely weighted against the Reich. The great majority of the generals obdurately refused. Frich von Manstein, a future field marshal, urged Beck to support

Hitler, as "so far he has always been correct over political matters." The infamous denouement of the crisis was that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain ceded Czech Sudetenland to the Nazis, Beck resigned as chief of staff, and Hitler achieved a great political victory over his extemal and internal opponents.

O

n Sept. 1,1939, Hitler unleashed the Wehrmachl on Poland and set off World War 11. His generals offered not the slightest peep of opposition; indeed, ihose of Prussian ancestry were delighted at the opportunity to destroy ihe Polish state. Germanys strategy was now entirely Hitler's province, with the generals simply his technicians of violence. The nine months that followed the conquest of Poland witnessed a string of astonishing Gennan victories that evinced extraordinär)' skill at the tactical and operational levels, if not the logistical— at the outbreak of war only about 20 percent of the Gennan army was fully motorized, with the majority ol units still relying on horse-drawn transport. Poland. Denmark, Norway Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium and France fell like dominos. But then came the Battle of Britain, which suggested some glaring weaknesses in the German approach to strategy and operations. Put simply, none of the three German services displayed the slightest understanding of joint operations or the difficulties conquering tlie British Isles might entail. Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, chief operations officer of the Armed Forces High Command (the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, or OKW), suggested in ajune 30,1940, memo that crossing the channel should prove no more difficult than a river crossing. The LitjtwaJJes intelligence assessment of Britain's air-defense system managed to get every major fact wrong except for the number of aircraft the Royal Air Force Fighter Command possessed. Not surprisingly, the Battle of Britain was a dismal failure not just for the Luftwaffe, hut also for German strategy: The German response to the difficulties Britain posed was not to reexamine fundamental assumptions, but

MILITARY HISTORY

instead to deny there was a problem. Given his ideological attitudes, Hitlers focus almost itnmediately after the defeat of France had turned to the Soviet Union. But the army's leadership had moved in that direction even faster than ihcjührer. In early July 1940, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitseh, the army's commander in chief, and General Franz Haider, the chief of staff, had begun planning Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Given the LuJtwaJJe's focus on continental war, it is not surprising that its chief of

áPut simply, none of the three German services displayed the slightest understanding of joint operations'

only served to destroy all possibility of politically undermining the Soviet Union's rulers, as had occurred in World War 1. Stalin's regime, though hardly popular at home, was thus able to rally the Soviet people against an even more heinous enemy and fight a war of popular liberation. If the strategic and political assumptions of Operation Barbarossa weren't had enough, tbe operational planning and execution were equally faulty. Operational excellence is not just a matter of battlefield execution, but also a matter of intelligence regarding the nature of one's enemy and logistics. In the case of the former, Germany failed to grasp hoth the numbers and tenacity of its So\iet opponent. As Haider noted in his journal in early August 1941: The whole situation shows tnore and more clearly that we have underestimated the colossus oJ Russia. ...We have already identified 360 ¡Soviet divisions]. The divisions are admittedly not aimed and equipped in our sense, and tactically they are badly led. But there they are, and when we destroy a dozen, the Russians simply establish another dozen.

Underlining the extent of Germany's folly is the fact that logisticians had warned that the advance into the Soviet staff. General Hans Jeschonnek, would comment upon the invasion of the Union would outrun its supply lines Soviet Union, 'At last, a proper war!" by the time it reached two-thirds of Underlying the Barbarossa plan was the distance to Leningrad in the north, Hitlers ideological crusade to conquer to Smolensk in the center and midway the 'Jewish-Btilshevist state" and impledown the Don in the south. Haiders ment the racial "cleansing" of Furope. warning went unheeded, while planFrom the opening days of the invasion, ners simply assumed their forces would regular army troops actively and enthudestroy tbe Red Army in tbe border siastically cooperated in the massacre areas and then advance unhindered of Jews and other 'undesirables" along into the heart of Russia. In October with Russia's entire educated elite. Hit1941 the logisticians again warned that lers political aim was to create a poputhe army faced two crucial choices: lation of slaves to do their German coneither bring up heavy clothing and querors' bidding. 4-\s an order of the day. winter-weight fuels and prepare supply Panzer Group 4 commanding General dumps appropriate to winter weather, Frich Hoeppner stated: "The objective or bring up ammunition and fuel of this battle must be the demolition to support the advance on Moscow. of present-day Russia and must thereIt's not difficult to guess the choice fore be conducted with unprecedaited German commanders made, nor the severity In particular, no adherents oj results: soldiers shivered in gabardine the contemporary Russia» Bolshevik sys- uniforms, while their vehicles' geartem are to be spared." But that approach boxes froze sohd.

But the defeat in front of Moscow only exposed the operational and strategic failures of the campaign against the Soviet Union, Otber strategic blunders soon followed. In the midst of the growing disaster on the Eastern Front, tbe Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and four days later. Hitler declared war on the United States before an enthusiastic Reichstag. While Hitler seemingly ne\er bothered to consult his senior military leaders—many of whom he was firing for the troubles

Germans were surprisingly ignorant of tbeir enemies. The Soviets were able lo disguise virtually every one of their major offensives from 1942 to tbe end of the war through the skillful use of deception operatiorts; a key factor in their success was continued German contempt for those subbumans" on the opposing side of tbe Eastem Front. Matters were no better on the Western Front, where tbe Allies executed a series of elaborate deception operations to convince the Germans the great French

people, fought on to the bitter end. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, whom many German generals accused postwar of not understanding strategy, bad astutely prepared for the Allied assault on the basis that if the Wehrmacht failed to stop the landing itself, the war was irrevocably lost. He was right; in fact Rommel had a far better grasp of strateg)' than did his critics. World War II historian Gerhard Weinberg bas best encapsulated tbe strategic comprehetision of most Ger-

in the east-—^there is little evidence they would have advised an alternative course. Tbe navy leadership, for one, had been urging Hitler to declare war on the United States since midsummer. When Hitler inquired of his military staff in East Prussia whether anyone knew where Pearl Harbor was, not a sitigle officer could locate the base on tbe globe—astonishing strategic and geograpbic ignorance for people planning to conquer the world.

When Field Marshal Erwin Rommel {third from left, above) toured German defenses along the French coast, he found them inadequate and believed that their concentration in the Pas de Calais was a mistake. His conviction the Allies would land in Normandy-an idea Hitler ridiculed-would prove all too accurate.

man military leaders. He notes that their memoirs consistently followed the line, "If \hefuhrer had only listened to me..., " but that they failed to grasp what serious study of the wars historyand strategy' surely suggested: "The war would have lasted another six months, and the Americans would have dropped the atomic bomb on Germany." (^

I

ntelligence failures were another major contributor to Germany's ultimate defeat. For example, as the Allies successively broke Gennanys most important codes, its militar)' hierarchy remained oblivious. In fact, the

amphibious invasion would come at Pas de Calais. Even after tbe Allies fought their way ashore in Normandy, deception operations continued to persuade the OKW the main landing was yel to occur at Pas de Galais. Well before the events of 1944, it should have been clear to Germany tbe war was lost. But the militar)- leadership, its back covered by a regime that ensured the absolute obedience of its

Forjurther reading, V/illiamson Munay recommends his own A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War, with coauthor Atlan R. MiUett, as well as A World at Arms, A Global History of World War II, by Gerhard L Weinbeig, and Tbe First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungar>', 1914- 1918, by Holger H. Herwig.

MILITARY HISTORY

I After British troops captured the river fortress at Stony Point in 1779, George Washington was determined to drive them out with f o r c ^ and fixed bayonets . ^ .^^

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By Edward G. Lengel

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O man dared speak as the American soldiers crept grimly toward the enemy-held promontory^ silhoue^pdjgainst the midnight sky. Their orders stated that any ni . fired his musket or took one step backward would be executed on the spot. Officers brandishing ugly iron-tipped pikes advanced quietly alongside their men, ready to impale the first who disobeyed. It was July 15, 1779, just before midnight. Twenty soldiers, led by a fresh-faced 21-year-old lieutenant from Pennsylvania named George Knox, headed the American colunm| Collectively and aptly named the "Forlorn Hope" in testament lo their dim chances of survival, the men had volunteered for the honor of leading the assault on British fortifications at Stony Point, N.Y. Knox's volunteers carried heavy axes with which to dismantle the abatis—thick rows of outward-facing sharpened logs the British

had built into the double line of earthworks protecting their inner redoubt. The Americans would have to work quickly to enable the infantry marching behind them to slorm through the breaches. Success depended on surprise. Tbe only possible approach to Stony Point

Knox's men had been told lo expect no more than two feet of water in the marsh. Instead, with their first steps, they plunged into chest-deep poois of muck. Splashes resounded through the night air as they waded forward, mud slowing their pace to a nightmarish crawl. More troops toppled in behind

through weeds, water, uniforms and flesh. A bloody night lay ahead. yih paints George Washington as a Fabian warrior, careful!)' husbanding his resources and avoiding risky battles on the assumption the United States could outlast Great Britain in a protracted war In fact, he was an aggressive commander always on lhe lookout tor the final, set-piece battle that would shatter Britain's army and ensure American victory. In pari, this was a matter of personality—Washington was a gambler by instinct. In addition, however, Washington seriously doubted whether the fledgling United States possessed the economic wherewithal to endure a protracted conflict. "1 have seen without despondency (even for a moment) the hours which America have stiled Isic| her gloomy ones," Washington wrote to his friend George Mason in the spring of 1779. "But I have beheld no day since tbe commencement of hostilities that 1 have thought her liberties in such eminent danger as at present." Political corruption and economic weakness had spurred a wildfire of inílatíon tbat threatened to bring the country to its knees. Lacking the power to enact legislation, Washington could not help thinking in terms of some military action that could restore the country's focus and sense of purpose. Unfortunately, British-occupied New York City looked next to impregnable, and enemy forces in Georgia and South Carolina operated well out of his reach. Opportunities to bloody the enemy seemed few and far between.

WItite tlie American assault on the fortifications at Stony Point was 18th century warfare at its most brutal-cold steel and small arms at extremely close range-casualties were relatively modest given the numbers of troops engaged, totaling some 35 dead and about 150 wounded. lay across a boggy marsh and up a grassy slope devoid of shelter and covered in enfilade by well-trained British infantry Redoubts mounting cannon stocked with grapeshot also covered the approach. The slightest noise—a splash, a cough, a clank of equipment—might aleri the enemy and precipitate disaster.

MILITARY HISTORY

them, slipping, stumbling and puUing each other inlo the morass. As they struggled forward, a shout, then several, echoed from behind the enemy abatis. Powder Hashes lit the night as musketry rattled tentatively along the British lines. Then the cannon spoke, and pellets of grapeshot ripped

On May 30 and 31, some 4,500 British, Loyalist and German mercenary troops under Maj. Gen. Sir Henry Chnton sailed up the Hudson River from New York City and occupied King's Ferry. Protecting this important supply conduit to and from New England were small forts at Stony Point on the west bank and Verplanck Point on the east bank, which Clinton immediately rebuilt and reinforced. From King's Ferry the British also menaced West Point, just 12 miles upriver.

Fager for action though he was, Washington sensed a trap. If he moved to retake King's Ferry, he risked being caught between the river and the craggy Hudson Highlands on ground of Clinton's choosing. Instead of attacking, he shifted his troops to New Windsor, N.Y., from where he could protect West Point without exposing his army. Washington sent cavalry to probe for weak points in the enemy positions hut found none. "An attempt to dislodge them.. .would require a greater force & apparatus than we are masters of," he wrote a confidant. Unwilling to give up hope, he sent spies—including a mysterious group of "half-Tory women"— to infiltrate British lines. The spies returned detailed reports on the enemy positions but also could not uncover any weaknesses. Clinton had dug in well and seemed intent on staying put. Becoming daily more frustrated with his inability to get at the enemy, Washington dispatched yet more spies, including Captain Allan McLane of Delaware, who entered Stony Point under a flag of truce. Confident in their security—or just plain arrogant—the British let him view their fortifications with impunity. Stony Point stood on a promontory about 150 feet above the Hudson, which flowed around it to the north, east and south. To the west, the promontory sloped gradually downward to a broad marsh that lay entirely underwater, except at low tide. Fast of the marsh, a short distance upslope, a line of abatis bisected the promontory from north to south. Three redoubts mounting brass 12-pounder cannon protected the fortifications, which were marmed hy British infantry and grenadiers. The ground grew rougher as it sloped sharply upward to the main redoubt, which was protected by a second line of abatis defended by British infantry, Loyahsts and several more well-stocked artillery pieces. Supporting commander Lt. Col. Henry Johnsons troops were two British gunboats, which squatted menacingly in the Hudson on either side of the promontory. McLane, an experienced officer with a good eye for terrain, noticed one

potential weak point, though it wasn't much: The British had not completed the abatis around a large rock on the inner line. More important, he discovered that Clinton had departed King's Ferry with most of his infantry, leaving behind a garrison of about 600 men at Stony Point and an equivalent force across the river at Verplanck Point. Maj. Gen. Anthony Wayne, Washington's chosen on-scene commander, remained wary of attacking. "Upon the whole, I do not think a Storm practicable," he wrote Washington after viewing the works at Stony Point on July 3. Washington joined him three days later and snuck as close as he could to the British defenses before likewise concluding they were impregnable. He left, "mortified" that circumstances forced him to resort to "a mere defensive plan." Shortly after Washington departed Stony Point, a British fleet anchored off New Haven, Conn., and landed the troops Clinton had withdrawn from King's Ferry. The Redcoats raided up and down the coast, burning farms and terrorizing civilians. Washington's hlood boiled. Scruples or no, he decided, the time had come to act. "The Reputation of the Army and the good ofthe Service," he wrote Wayne, demanded an attack on Stony Point.

A

nthony Wayne was the closest thing George Washington had to George S. Patton. Thirty-four years old, bold-featured, hard-drinking and temperamental, he radiated energy and a hunger for glory that readily transferred to his men. He loved spit and polish and trusted in the bayonet. Wayne was also fanatically brave and often charged into battle as if he expected to die but didn t give a hoot, so long as he gave a good account of himself. Later in the war his men dubbed him "Mad Anthony," but affectionately— they would follow him anywhere. Wayne's command, the Corps of Light Infantry, was bred ior the attack. Formed in the spring of 1779, it had drilled under Continental Army Inspector General Maj. Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, who emphasized discipline and skill with the bayonet. This

George Wa^ihinglon An aggressive commander who sought to push British forces into a set-piece battle they could not win, he saw ihe aciion at Stony Point as an ideal opportunity to trounce King George's troops once and for all. Mad Anthony" Wayne Emotionally mercurial but tactically brilliant, Wayne employed a style of warfare that blended surprise, speed and skillful use of the bayonet to demoralize, overwhelm and ultimately defeat one's enemy. Sir Henry Clinton As commander of British forces in North America, Clinton often found himself defending small !nit important outposts against American attacks that usually came at the time and place of his encmys choosing. Henry fohnson The young offîcer'5 garrison of British regulars and American Loyalists held a commanding position ringed in abatis and backed by cannon, and his baitlc-liardened men were no strangers to hand-to-hand combat. Allan Milane Young and well-Io-do, he didn't l(H)k like a spy, which is exactly why Washington sent him into Stony Point under a flag of truce. McLane's eye for detail enabled him to discern a key weakness in the British defenses. George Knox As leaders of the Forlorn Hope detachments, Knox and James Gibbons were to do whatever was necessary to breach British defenses, even if doing so meant the death of every man under their command.

ATTLE OF STONY POINT, JULY 1779 «-aj. Cji-n. Sir Henry Clintons occupation of Kings Ferry, Stony Point L / l '^"^ Verplant k Point gave ihe British absolute control of the Hudson T M. River from New York City to wilhin a day's easy march of the American positions at West Point. Clinton hoped thai ihis movement, which interdicted one of the tnost important supply routes to New England, would goad General George Washington into lighting a set-piece battle on the narrow strip of land between the river and the high ground along its banks. If Washington took the bail, he would face almost inevitable defeat. Clinton also rebuilt and reinforced the defensive fortifications originally constructed hy American forces across the ncek of the small peninsula at Stony Point and brought in cannon to dotninate the approaches to it. Unfortunately for the British, Clinton and bis planners didn't take into account either the Americans' ingenuity or the taetical advantages that time, tide and cold steei gave tlurm.

HUDSON RIVER About three^uarters of a mile wide and subject to swift currents, the river seemed a significant obstacle to any American assault on the British positions. However, the Patriots exploited the Hudson's tidal flow to flank their opponents* outermost defenses.

King's / / Ferry/ /

í \ DIVERSIONARY ATTACK As Butler's contingent, led by a 20-man "Forlorn Hope" under Lieutenant James A Gibbons, advanced on the * extreme north end of the British earthworks, Murfree's men—the only American ^' troops permitted to carry . loaded muskets—launched a noisy assault against ; ' g the British center to draw * the enemy's attention

•••".jjii

'•'^

HINGTON'S STRATEGY

Verplanck Point

Some 12 mites south of the American, positions at West Point and about 30 miies north of New York City, -^ Stony Point dominates a strategic --• bend in the Hudson River. British forces holding both sides of the river were abie to close off the waterway as an American supply route, and Gênerai George Washington initially beiieved the British-heid positions to be impregnable. Spies discovered weaknesses in the defenses, however, and after determining to avenge British depredations against the civilian popuiation of Connecticut, Washington ordered Anthony Wayne's weil-trained and combat-seasoned Corps of Light Infantry to march south from its positions near West Point and undertake the nighttime assauit.

Bntish Gunboat

• West Point (Fort Clinton)

Bear Mountajn

New York

. , ^-î-'

• Verplanck Point Point

Fortification

Stony Point

Hudson River

edoubt

Redoubts

STONY POINT

Defense

Protected on three sides by the Hudson, the British positions stood atop a steep promontory. Artiliery and infantry posts covered any assault from the west, white two British gunboats stood ready to thwart any attempted amphibious assault.

Haverstraw Bay

ANTHONY WAYNE

OISTAN Bridge .Smi/ Skm Maps by Steve

With a 20-man "Foriorn Hope led by Lieutenant George Knox in the van, the main attack force waded through unexpectediy deep water to the edge of the steep escarpment commanded by the British fortifications. "^ With the British distracted by • Murfree's and Butler's assaults. Knox's men breached the abatis and cleared the way for the ^ main force under Wayi "

British Gunboat

gave a keen edge lo men already hardened to the core. All were seasoned veterans, handpicked for the unit. To lead them, Washington chose the boldest attack-tninded officers at bis disposal, making the light infantry an armored gauntlet perfectly shaped to bis fist. Wayne roused his men early on July 15 and ordered them to shave and powder themselves. They displayed the same kaleidoscopic variety of homespun as did the rest of tbe Army, but at least they were clean. Next came orders to sharpen tbeir bayonets and don battle gear. Though naturally curious, the men betrayed no nervousness as their officers set them marching early that afternoon.

a deserter bad told Washington could be bypassed at low tide along the edge of the beacb. Wayne would command this column personally. On the left. Colonel Richard Butler's light infantry regiment, along with a detachment of North Carolina troops under Major Hardy Murfree, would follow an old farm lane and cross the tnarsh over the remains of a bridge directly in front of enemy entrencb-

Several hours passed under the broiling midsummer sun as the soldiers marched single file in column along 14 miles of winding, narrow mountain trails. By late afternoon, the mornings powder had washed away in streaks of sweat. Near dusk the troops reached tbeir stagitig area in the fields around a farm. Assembling their men, the officers announced thai just before midnigbt tbe light infantry would storm the British fortifications at Stony Point. The enemy had built strong defenses and stood ready and detennined. The attack would be difficult, and many would die. The first five Americans to enter the enemy's inner redoubt, however, would receive from $500 to $100 dollars, in order of their entry, along with their fair share of Lhe loot. Tbe officers laid out the plan of attack devised by Washington and Wayne. The light infantry, some 1,150 men strong, would divide into two columns. The right column, comprising 700 men in two regiments under Colonel Christian Febiger and Lt. Col. Return Jonathan Meigs and a detachment of Massachusetts troops, would cross the marsh and advance on the south edge of the enemy abatis, which

MILITARY HISTORY

patch enemy sentries, dismantle the abatis and lead the assault, followed by tbe remainder of their respective columns. Each man would have to trust entirely to bis bayonet to see bim through the night alive. The officers nodded in satisfaction as dozens of volunteers stepped forward for the honor of joining each Torlorn Hope." Many were turned down. Lieutenant Knox, of the 9th Pennsylvania Regiment, was chosen to lead tbe detail on the right, and lieutenant James Gibbons, of the 6th Pennsylvania, to lead the one on the left. Commanding the advance guards on the right and left, respectively, were French Lt. Col, François de Fleury and Major John Stewart. Their dispositions determined, tlie troops settled down [o wait, whispering to each other and swatting mosquitoes as the night deepened. As they rested, Wayne dispatcbed squads of soldiers to detain any nosy civilians and i bayonet any dogs whose bark3 ing might betray the attack. G He then sat down to write a I letter to bis brotber-in-law, I commending his wife and I children to bis care. An inner I voice told Wayne he would ~ not survive the tiight.

"Mad Anthony" Wayne's victorious troops carry their wounded commander, at center with bandaged head, toward the redouht at Stony Point. British Lt. Col. Henry Johnson surrendered his sword and the garrison. ments, Butler would then tum to attack the extreme north end of the British earthworks, while Murfree—whose troops were the only ones permitted loaded muskets—feigned a noisy attack against the enemy's center. The officers were to synchronize their watches and launch the attacks simultaneously Twenty-man "Forlom Hopes" bearing heavy axes would head each column, followed by advance guards of 150 men each. The latter would dis-

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t 11:30, half an hour before the scheduled attack, the Americans stuck scraps of paper in their caps to distinguish friend from foe during tbe coming attack. After a final admonisbment not to make noise or shirk—on pain of instant death— the officers assembled their men and marched them off. The depth of water in tbe marsh took WajTie and his troops completely by surprise. Fortunately, Butler's approach to the marsh on the left was fairl>' short, and he had his troops across the water and in position before the British detected Knox's approach on the right. Thus, even as Knox and his men came under fire, Murfree's North Caro-

linians made their feint against the enemy center, and Gibbons' Forlorn Hope" began hacking away at the north edge of the enemy abatis. Musket and cannon fire erupted almost simultaneously along the outer line, hampering British officers' ability to pinpoint the source of the American assault. They instinctively responded to the most immediate apparent tbreais: to the north, where Gibbons' men worked to breach the abatis, and in the center, where Murfree's troops shouted and fired wildly into the night. All but three of Gibbons' men fell dead or wounded as tbe British concentrated musket and artiller)' fire against them and Murfree's stalwart North Carolinians. Fortunately for ihe Americans, most of the British artillery shells and shot passed over their heads. Garrison commander Johnson, meanwhile, rushed all his reserves from the main redoubt to this section of his onter line. Johnson's preoccupation with his right and center gave Knox's 'Forlorn Hope" critical time to crawl out ofthe swamp and assault the south edge of the outer abatis. Sensing they would have no time to wreck it entirely, Knoxs men chopped and yanked out just a few logs before tossing aside their axes and rushing up tbe rocky slope. Bayonets at the ready, the remainder of the column followed close behind, many ol them slipping and slashing open their legs on the sharpened logs. Rocks and the steep riverbank partially sheltered Waynes men from enemy fire as they surged uphill. And though some of the British artillery crews detected the threat to their flank, the tight embrasures prevented them from bringing their guns to bear. British soldiers shouted insults, but the Americans let their bayonets do the talking, thrusting and lunging according to Steuben's instructions. Wayne made more noise than any of them, for as he stood up to observe the advance, a musket ball grazed his skull and sent him toppling to the ground. Raising himself to one knee, dazed and with blood pouring down his face, Wayne bellowed loudly enough to drown out tbe sounds of

fighting across the entire promontory: "Forward, my brave fellows, forward!" With a groan, he collapsed again and begged his aides to carry him into the fort so he might die amid scenes of victory. For victory it was. Within minutes of breaching the outer abatis, Knox and Fleury reached the British second line at the inner redoubt, only to find it practically deserted. Breaking through the sally port and hurling themselves over the parapet, the Americans quickly

his men had dutifully carried into the inner redoubt, became so agitated by the whooping that he forgot about dying and joined inf seized the British cannon and entire slock of supplies. Fleury barely spoke English but knew a prize when he saw it and quickly snatched the British flag. Jumping np on the parapet, he waved tbe flag about, threw back his head and lustfully hollered the watchword appointed for the moment of victory: 'The fort's our own!" Fleury's heavy accent didn't hinder anyone's comprehension. The remnants of Butlers column to the north, which had taken heayy casualties but managed to penetrate the outer and inner abatis, soon joined Wayne's column in the inner redoubt. Johnson, still awaiting Murfree's attack, had no clue he had been surrounded until he heard the Americans shouting victory and his own men begging for mercy. Wayne, whom his men had dutifull)' carried into the inner redoubt, became so agitated by the whooping around him

that he forgot about dying and joined in the celebrations. Johnson handed over his sword in token of surrender, and his men received full quarter from the Americans, who were in too good a mood to kick around their prisoners. A few hours later, as dawn broke, the Americans turned the forts cannon on the British gunboats, which hastily moved downstream. As his troops took potshots at Verplanck Point, Wayne sent a dispatch to Washington, announcing the victory: "The fort and garrison with Colo. Johnson are ours," he wrote. "Our officers and men behaved like men who are determined to be free."

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hough dramatic, the American assault on Stony Point counted for little relative to major battles already fought and those yet to come. Wayne lost 15 men killed and 84 wounded, while the British lost 20 killed, 74 wounded and 472 captured. Fleury, Knox and three wounded sergeants claimed their reward for being the first five men into the British redoubt and shared in a $200,000 government payout for tbe stores tbey had captured. Congress awarded Wayne a gold medal and Stewart and Fleury silver medals. Gibbons and Knox each won promotion to captain. Ironically, tbe greatest prize—the fort itself—could not be held without risking a potentially costly, large-scale engagement. Wayne, therefore, evacuated Stony Point onjuly 19. Washington had not achieved a decisive military victory; tbat would elude him until the Battle of Yorktown, more than two years later. Nor could the action at Stony Point, by itself, restore a sense of unity to the country. Wayne's victor}' nevertheless gave Americans a needed boost, proving what audacity could achieve in concert with singleness of purpose. It was a paving stone in the road to ultimate victory, l ^

For/uriJier redding, Edward G. Lengel recommends The Revolution's Boldest Venture: The Story of General "Mad Anthony" Wayne's Assault on Stony Point, by l.W. Sklarsky, and The Enterprise in Contemplation: The Midnight Assault of Stony Point, by Don Loprieno.

THELASTUNKNOWN In 1984 the nation officially laid to rest the remains of an unknown serviceman from the Vietnam War. By 1998 he was unknown no more. By Roben M. Poole

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fter more than a decade of uncertainty, the nation was finally honoring the Unknown of the Vietnam War —the long conflict thai continued to stir argument i for years after tlie last U.S. troops had withdrawn I from Southeast Asia. On May 28, 1984, some ^ 3,000 guests took their seats in the amphitheater at Arlington National Cemetery, where President Ronald Reagan strode to the podium and launched into a longoverdue trihute to the Vietnam Unknown and those who had served with him,

Medal on a velvet stand at tbe foot oí the Unknowns hier. Then the nameless hero of Vietnam was borne away by eight comrades wbo slow-marched him from the amphitheater out onto the terrace overlooking Washington, where Reagan joined mourners for final honors. The Army Band rolled the drums and sent "America, the Beautiful" sailing out over tbe cemetery. Pallbearers lifted the flag from tbe casket, folded it into a taut triangle and passed it down the line to Reagan, who accepted it as the Unknowns next of kin. Reagan nodded bis thanks, entrusted theflagto Arlington's superintendent and turned for home, having put in a performance considered one of his most affecting.

"The Unknown soldier who has ' returned to us today...is symholic of all our missing sons," said Reagan. "Today we pause to embrace hitn anil all who served us so well in a war Later that evening, cemetery workers whose end offered no parades, no lowered the Unknown into the ground, nags and so little thanks." where he would rest beside his comrades from World War I, World War 11 As Reagan spoke, a sultry hreeze and Korea. Just hefore midnight, a stirred American flags behind him; marble slab was hoisted into place over before him sat reminders of the war's cost tbe new crypt and sealed flusb witb the —a man with a black eyepatch, a squadron plaza; its simple inscription, "1958of young veterans in wheelchairs, a scattering oi 1975," was a reminder that tbe unothers sitting with crutches or canes at the ready. declared conflict in Vietnam bad been tbe Several hundred others in the audience had never longest war in American historv: ser\'ed in Vietnam but nonetheless carried deep wounds from the conflict; their loved ones were among the 2,500 men still missing in action, nine years after Among the few artifacts eagan's appearance at the cemetery was Americans ended tbeir involvement in the war. recovered from the site designed to smooth over raw memories To reassure this last group, Reagan promised of the crash that killed of Vietnam and reinforce the pride of the government would continue searching for Air Force 1st U.Michael tbose wbo bad served there. Since the time of his their lost brothers, fathers and husbands, no J.BIassie were, above, election in 1980, he had worked toward this matter how long it took. "An end to Americas remnants of his flight suit, symbolic moment at Arlington, which would not involvement in Vietnam cannot come before we his pistol holster and an only bury an individual combatant, but also, have achieved the fullest possible accounting of ammunition pouch. The wath luck, tbe war's di\asive legacy. tbose missing in action," he said. finds would prove crucial By tbis time tbe number of unidentified Coming full circle, Reagan turned back to the to identifying his remains. war dead wbo might qualify for burial had been man of tbe bour, wbose Qag-covered casket occuwhittled down to just four candidates out of pied center stage. "Thank you, dear son,"' said Reagan, his more than 47,000 killed in combat. Some specialists beld voice cracking, "and may God cradle you in His lo\'ing arms.' out hope tbat eacb of tbose remaining four could have their The president crossed tbe stage and draped the Congressional names restored hy further investigation. Though few candi-

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THESTORy OFARUNGTONNATIONAL CEMETERY. BY ROBERT M. POOLE. WALKER &C0.. NEW VDHK. ?009, S2a COPYRIGHT © 2009 8V ROBERT M. POOLE

MIL!

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dates were available for Unknown honors by the 1980s, Vietnam veterans continued to press for a new tomb at ArUngton, in part to justify their sacrifice, in part to ease the pains of the inhospitable homecoming so many had endured. Reagan sought to rectify those insults, which set him on the path to that unforgettable Memorial Day of 1984. The journey might have ended there, with the Unknown resting forever in marble splendor. But just as the lighting for Vietnam was seldom predictable, so with the war's aftermath. Fourteen years after Reagan's appearance at Arlington, the unthinkable happened: The Tomb of the Vietnam Unknown was broken open, not to the rousing cail of Gabriel's trumpet, but to the prosaic shriek of a diamondtipped saw biting through granite. Near midnight on May 13,1998, workers made their way into the tomb, lifting the

was coming to bear on me," said Webb. He described the tug-of-war over Michael Blassie as the most trying period of his long mihtary career.

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he chain of events that brought Blassie to Arlington was set in motion by the bleating of a Klaxon at Bien Hoa Air Base at dawn on May 11, 1972. Blassie rushed to bis A-37 Dragonfly attack jet, strapped in and zoomed northwest toward An Loc in formation wiih Major Jim Connally. the flight commander, who piloted an identical Dragonfly. Each plane was equipped with two 500-pound napalm bombs; the napalm was meant for enemy antiaircraft emplacements near An Loc, a strategically situated city of 30,000 near the Cambodian border. Under siege by North Vietnamese troops. An Loc held off its attackers, in part with air heav)' marble marker, prizing the lid from support from pilots like Blassie, the Unknown's vault and bringing his steel ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ a decorated veteran of 132 such casket up into the night. When the foggy combat missions. Connally led the morning of May 14 arrived, so did a military A Blassie put his attack on May 11, whizzing in low band, which struck up "Amazing Grace " to over enemy guns, releasing one jet into a dive but announce the next, wholly unexpected leg bomb and pulling up to tjpen the of the Unknown's journey. Covered in a new ^ was hit by way for Blassie. Blassie put his flag and bundled into jet into a dive but was hit by antiantiaircraft a hearse, he was driven aircraft fire. His jet rolled over and to Walter Reed Army fire. His jet slammed into the earth with a Medical Center in Washtremendous explosion. Connally rolled over ington, where his meager circled but saw no sign of a pararetnains were prepared for and slammed chute, no sign ol life on the ground DNA testing. The analysis below. He summoned Cobra heliinto the provided a name for the copters for search-and-rescue operaUnknown: He was 1st Lt. earth with tions—to no avail. "The team pulled Michael J. Blassie, a 24-year out after determining that Mike a tremendous old Air Force pilot shot down indeed had gone in with the airover An Eoc, Soutb Vietnam, in 1972. explosion' craft," Connally reported to Blassie's The final chapter of Blassie's story—from family shortly after the crash. The the Air Force Academy to a jungle war zone, helicopters, caught in a murderous hail of fire, pulled back. to years of limbo in mortuaries and labs, to the ceremoConnally continued circling "until the last hope faded and nial heights of Arlington and finally home to his native all other aircraft departed the scene." St. Louis—is a narrative spanning more than a quarter century, with enough twists and tums to make his experiFierce fighting around An Loc marooned Blassie's wreckage ence seem like a work of barely plausible fiction. It is a for more than five months while his parents and four sibstory confused by the fog of war, the loss of crucial evidence, lings in St. Louis grieved over his disappearance and hoped the misreading of forensic data and the well-meaning but for some word regarding his fate. None was forthcoming. poorly considered ministrations of a Reagan White House "We didn't hear a whole lot for a period of time," said Patricia keen to enshrine an Unknovm for political purposes, despite S. Blassie, age 14 when her brother vanished. "They told us the sketchiness of the evidence, the objections of service they couldn't recover him, but tbey knew he was kilted." families and the warning of a key Army officer who worried Unable to reach An Loc by chopper, Blassie's comrades that the Unknown was being rushed to the grave. finally dispatched allies from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) to comb through the area. An ARVN patrol That officer, johnie E. Webb Jr., was a Vietnam veteran made its way to the coordinates of Blassie's crash and found and a major commanding the Army's Central identification an A-37 wreck on Oct. 11, 1972. With it they discovered Laborator)' in the early 1980s when his Pentagon superiors what remained of Blassie—four ribs, one bumerus and part began squeezing him to find an Unknown. There was a lot of a pelvis. From the same site the ARVN team recovered of pressure to get a Vietnam Unknown," recalled Webb, who physical evidence—Blassie's military identification card, still serves as a civilian in the Pentagon's Joint POW/MIA remnants of his flight suit, an ammunition pouch, a paraAccounting Command, which oversees operations of the chute fragment, a holster for a signal marker, a piece of laboratory at Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii. "All the pressure

MILITARY HISTORY

his pistol holster, a life raft, a wallet and a small amount of local currency. Packing away the remains and evidence, the patrol trekked through the jungle to a rendezvous point, where Artny Lieutenant Chris Calhoun and other American advisors were waiting. Calhoun, taking charge of the airman's remains and other evidence, called for a chopper, which came in over the trees and dropped into a makeshift landing zone. Two bags, containing Blassie's remains and the physical evidence, were tossed aboard. Army Captain Richard S. Hess, another advisor on the scene that day, witnessed their transfer to the Tan Son Nhut Air Base in Saigon. In a later statement, Hess recalled details frotn Blassies ID card; "Name; Blaisse (sic), Michael Joseph, lLT, 6 foot 200 lbs picture showed with mustache, dark hair." Hesss recollection would later prove to be a critical clue. The reason? During Blassies joumey from An Loc to Saigon, his wallet, identification card and money disappeared. Thus began the Si. Louis airman's long descent into limbo. There was enough evidence to form a reasonable hypothesis that the bones and other material from the crash probably belonged to Blassie, but not enough \o support a positive identification. Reliable DNA testing, still decades in the future, was unavailable when Blassie's remains arrived at the Ton San Nhut mortuary in November 1972. Because mortuar)' specialists had insufFicienl proof for certain identification. the)' kept Blassies family in the dark. His parents, George and Jean Blassie, were not informed that remains and related evidence had been recovered from their sons crash. George Blassie, a meat cutler in a suburb of St. Louis, kept his sons memory alive by furnishing a basement room with photographs and other memorabilia from Michael's career. And each morning George Blassie raised the Stars and Stripes in his front yard, dutifully reversing the ritual every evening.

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ith the Vietnam conflict's end in sight, the military stepped up withdrawal of its remaining forces, along with the hundreds of unidentified combatants stored in wartime mortuaries. Blassies remains, evidence and related paperwork were shifted to Camp Samae San, Thailand, in 1973. They were moved again in 1976, a year after Saigon fell to Communist forces; this transfer took Blassie to the Army's new forensic laboratory near Honolulu, where investigators methodically worked to provide names for unidentified servicemen—by poring over after-action reports, interviewing witnesses, scrutinizing debris from crashes and analyzing bone fragments. Like others caught between combal and final honors, Blassie awaited the one scrap of evidence that would end his war. Instead of resoKing the airman's identity though, investigators from the Hawaii lab sent his case deeper into ihe shadows as 1978 drew to a close. That is when Blassie's box was taken from the shelf and his bones were spread oui on a stainless steel lable for inspection. Tadao Furue, a physical anthropologist with more than 20 years of forensic experience and a reputation for making osseous material

give up its secrets, supervised ihe examination. Using timehonored anthropological identificalion melhods, he measured the airman's hones for comparison to averages derived from thousands of others to determine the likely age, height and sex of the person on his table. Based on his analysis, Furue concluded that the bones labeled TSN 063-72 BTB Blassie did not match Michael Biassie's physical profile. Instead, Furue suggested, the remains belonged to a man who was between 30 and 40 years of age. Blassie was 24. Furue guessed the height of his patient to be between 5-foot-6 and 5-foot-11—a possible match, since Blassie stood between 5-foot-ll and 6 feet, but at the outer limit of the average. Finally, Furue discovered a small, light brown body hair on a fragment of the flight suit recovered with Blassie; this miniscule clue yielded another piece of evidence, fixing the dead man's blood as type O. Blassie's was type A. Based on these three findings. Fume recommended, in a memorandum dated Dec. 4,1978, that the remains prexiously associated with Blassie be reclassified as unidentified and that the airman's name be stripped from the accompanying case file. A militar}' review board declared Blassie's remains as unidentified and rescinded his Believed To Be" status on May 7, 1980. His bones were assigned a new file number, TSN 0673-72 X-26. The X-designation, which took the place of Blassie's name, pushed him one step closer to the Tomb of the Unknowns. While Blassie remained on the shelf in Hawaii, political pressure increased in Washington, where a tomb had been prepared for the Vietnam Unknown at Arlington but remained empty.

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y the early 1980s, key officials of the Reagan administration evinced little patience for more investigation, having satisfied themselves that suitahle remains were available if only the Central Identification Laboratory could be prodded to produce them. "President Reagan.. wanted to go forward with it, as a way to honor those who served and as a way to reach closure on the Vietnam era," recalled John O. Marsh Jr., who as secretary of the Army became Reagan's point man for the Vietnam initiative. "The process was held up because some of the people in the forensic area began lo have second thoughts about it," said Marsh. The former congressman from Virginia had no such qualms. "It's what the American Legion, the VFW, the Congress and President Reagan wanted to do....My role was to jump-start the process." Having borne more delay ihat he thought reasonable. Marsh made his move on June 16. 1982, declaring the time had cotne to bur)' the symbolic warrior from Vietnam. We have remains which meet the legal requirements for the Unknown," Marsh told Caspar Weinberger, secretary of defense, that day. "After careful consideration, I have concluded that the interests of the nation are served best by proceeding with the anonymous selection and subsequent interment of a Vietnam Unknown from these candidates. This coming Veterans' Day, Nov. 11, 1982, would he an appropriate date, since the World War 1 Unknown was also interred on Armistice Day."

Marsh's proposal ignited howls of protest from the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, which helieved the action was premature. 'We are opposed to the interment of any remains now held," Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director the National League, wrote Weinberger in July. She presciently warned against "interring an individual who may be identified at some point in the future. " Her note set off alarms in the Reagan White House, where Richard T. Childress, a Vietnam veteran and influential member of the National Security Council staff, sided with Griffiths. Pointing out thai the Unknown contenders might be identified in the future, he cautioned against rushing the process, which could be perceived as nakedly political. 'We simply can't have the public believe we created an unknown for interment," Childress told William P Clark, Reagan's national security chief. Faced with these objections, Weinberger delayed the selection so the forensics laboratory in Hawaii could narrow its list of Unknown candidates.

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hat list had been reduced to four contenders by June 1984. One by one, ibese prospects came off the list: Two servicemen were identified and sent home to their families; a third was disqualified because the circumstances of bis death could not be verified, as required by the legislation that made provision for a Vietnam Unknovm. That reduced the roster of candidates to just one—the man tagged as TSN 0673-72 (X-26). With no choices remaining, Weinberger itiformed Reagan on March 16, 1984, that the Pentagon was ready to bury X-26 as the Vietnam Unknown on Memorial Day "In 1982 we began an intensive effort to determine whether any of the remains in our possession are qualified for the Vietnam Unknown," Weinberger reported. •'We concluded that we have one set of remains which cannot be identified and which, although not as complete as we would like, meets the legal requirements for the Vietnam Unknown. • Weinberger did not mention the doubts about X-26 or Blassie's associations wilh the remains and crash site. "Reagan wanted his Unknown," said a historian at Arlington. "Nobody was going to stop it." In Hawaii, however, Webb made one last try. "These remains should be disqualified for selection as the Unknown because of past and present name associations," he wrote to Washington about the time of Weinberger's announcement. Webb sketched out the tangled story of X-26. Without naming Biassie, Webb reminded his superiors the X-26 case had been linked to a particular pilot who had been formerly assigned BTB ( "Believed To Be") status. He listed the evidence found with Biassie, including the one-man-raft, the flight suit, the parachute and the vanished identification card. For good measure, Webb also mentioned another unnamed casualty associated with the X-26 remains; he was referring to Capt. Rodney Strobridge, a missing helicopter pilot who matched the anthropological profile from Blassie's crash but not other evidence from the site. Webb's note, sent to an assistant secretary of the Army, was supposed to be forwarded up the chain to John O. Marsh Jr. Marsh says he never saw

MILITARY HISTORY

the document. 'If Johnie Webb had second thoughts, I never heard about it." Marsh said recently "He shouldVe said something." For his part, Webb avows that he did say something—and that Washington ignored his warning. Within five days of Weinberger's letter to Reagan, Webb received orders to certify that X-26 couid never be identified, an action that would clear the way for Biassie's entombment. Against his betier judgment, Webb produced the required document on March 21, 1984, ceriifying that the remains of TSN 0673-72 (X-26) "failed to support a positive identification viith any known casualty of Southeast Asia." He swallowed hard, signed the statement and prepared Biassie for Arlington. In keeping with the tradition of the Unknowns, the Pentagon ordered Webb to surrender all original files relating to Biassie and to destroy all copies to guarantee the anonymity of the tomb. Webb obeyed tbe first part of this directive bul not lhe second: He kept copies of the Biassie dossier in the belief they would be needed if the case was reopened. He also retained the life raft and other physical evidence hnking Biassie to the crash—which meant that man and artifacts would be buried together at Arlington. "These remains came in together wilh tbe material e\'idence," Webb recalled. 'I wanted lo make sure everything stayed together. If the remains were going into the tomb, the artifacts needed to go to the tomb, so that at some point there was the historical perspective on what came in with these remains." Webb watcbed as Blassie's bones were folded into an army blanket with the life raft, the parachute fragments, and other physical evidence. Webb saw the blanket fastened sbut all around with safety pins to form a woolen envelope. He watched as it was eased into a pohshed steel casket. He saw the lid shut and heard the lock click in place. Biassie was ready for the next stage of his journey, which commenced on May 17, 1984.

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or all the indignities Biassie had suffered, his passage from Hawaii to Washington constituted a sort of restitution. At Pearl Harbor he was presented with flowers by a Medal of Honor winner and given a place of pride aboard USS Brewton, the frigate that conveyed him past all the ships in Pearl Harbor while all rendered passing honors. On May 24, he sailed past the hills of San Francisco and into moorings at Alameda Naval Air Station, where further honors awaited: a 21 gun salute, a flyover of fighter jets and more eulogies. These preliminaries were but a warm up for the state honors in Washington, where Biassie lay in state in the Capitol Rotunda, thousands turned out to pay their respects and Reagan delivered his famous Memorial Day speech—all for the forgotten war that had finally earned its place at Arhngton. This, at least, was the plan, and to a large degree it succeeded. While Biassie slept in anonymity- on the grand plaza of the amphitheater, dead comrades were found and restored to their families; old enemies shook hands and made peace at home and abroad; new wars boiled up; Reagan departed for California and the shadowy world of Alzheimer's. George Biassie died in St. Louis, never knowing his son had come

sacred site at Arlington. "It's not sacred if we know the name of tbe person you have there," Pat Biassie retorted. "That's not what the tomb was meant for... .Either put his name on the tomb or disinter him for DNA testing." William Cohen, secretar)' of defense under President Bill Clinton, moved quickly to quell the controversy He ordered a bigb-level task force lo examine tbe case, naming Rudy deLeon, respected undersccretar)' of defense for personnel and readiness, to bead up tbe study group. "Tbe last tbing we expected was tbat we were going to exhume the remains from Arlington," deLeon said recently. 'That was the last resort." Instead, deLeon mounted a fact-finding mission with three goals; to establisb that the casualty known as X-26 ^^^^^^^^^^^^ was indeed entombed al Arlington; ^^^^^^^^^^^^ to find a paper irail and evidence ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ hnking him to the 1972 crash in ^^^^^^ Vietnam; and lo determine if new DNA testing could provide a foolproof identity. DeLeon met pri1998, DNA tests vately witb Jobnie Webb, who confirmed a helped fill gaps in the record witb match. Michael tbe purloined papers he had copied in 1984. Webb also dropped tbe Blassie was hombsbell tbat be bad placed relevant physical evidence in Blassie's casket. Erom John Marsh, deLeon Louis for a learned of the political pressures that mounted within the Reagan funeral with administration as Unknown candifull honors at dates fell by the wayside, leaving six tiny hone fragments to sland for all Jefferson Barracks who fought and died in Vietnam. National Cemetery f "I felt that, indeed, all of the data we had on X-26 told us those were

bome. Jean Blassie carried on. Pat Blassie took ber brother's place in the Air Force and worked her way up the ranks, earning ber captain's bars by 1994. Then, all of a sudden, tbe old ghosls of Vietnam came rumbling back. Tbat year, for the first time since Michael Blassie's death in 1972, bis family learned tbat the airman's remains bad been found and. furtber, tbat be was most likely in tbe Tomb of tbe Unknowns at Arlington. This revelation came from an unlikely source, a Vietnam veteran named Ted Sampley, the scrappy publisher of the U.S. Veteran Dispatch in Kinston. North Carolina. Rooting through his extensive POW/MIA files and poring over Pentagon documents, Sampley independently pieced together his own version of Michael Blassie's chronicle, publishing his ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ findings on July 14, 1994. ^^^^^^ Under tbe beadline "Tbe Vietnam Unknown Soldier Can Be Identified," Sampley described tbe recovery of Blassie's remains and identit)' card and the suggestive evidence linking Blassie with the Tomb of tbe Unknowns. "Many facts pertaining to 1st Lt. Michael J. Blassie's shootdown closely match those of tbe Unknown Soldier," Sampley reported. Noting recent advances in forensic technology, Sampley urged authorities to open the tomb and establish the airmans identity through DNA testing. His revelation stirred up old feelings for tbe Blassie family, wbo relived the anguish of Michael's death. "It was shock and disbelief," Pat Blassie recalled. "1 still marvel at it after all these years. Tbey knew it w ^ Micbael. Tbey didn t tell us because of the political expediency. Tbey took bis name away. We felt betrayed." Discouraged and numbed, tbe family let the matter drop for two years. Then Vince Gonzales, a producer from CBS News, read the Veteran Dispatch report, collected Sampley's extensive files and called the Blassie family. Tbe Blassies gathered in St. Louis. They talked for hours until Jean Blassie signaled sbe had made a decision. '1 want to bring my son home," she said. Tbe family rallied around. She granted CBS access to her sons files. Pat Blassie agreed lo speak on camera. Gonzales wrapped up a seven-month investigation, and CBS Evening News broadcast tbe results on Jan. 19, 1998. Blassie was 'almost certainly" buried in the Tomb of tbe Unknowns, the report said. His identity had been known for decades, and tbe government had deliberately hidden this information from his family and the public, CBS reported. The report, which suggested the Tomb of the Unknowns be opened to establish its occupant's identity, sparked outrage from tbe VFW and the American Legion—tbe same groups thai bad lobbied for selection of a Vietnam Unknown, now complaining tbat tbe Blassies threatened to violate the most

ihc remains at Arlington," deLeon said. "Then the next question was whether tbe DNA testing could be conclusive. We were satisfied it could be. ' So on April 23, 1998, deLeon recommended the tomb be opened. "By taking action to resolve this controversy,' he WTOtc, 'we can preser\'e the integrity of the Tomb and fulfill our responsibility to the families."

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few weeks later, on May 14, 1998, tbe Unknown of the Vietnam War was exhumed. William Cohen presided at the Arlington ceremonies, saying tbe disinterment was undertaken "with profound reluctance" but for good cause, "if advances in technology can ease tbe lingering anguish of even one family, then our path is clear. We yield to the promise of science, with ibe bopc tbat tbe beaxy burden of doubt may be lifted from a family's heart." By tbis time, Pat Blassie bad no doubts. "1 knew it was Micbael before tbey opened the tomh. 1 knew the DNA would prove it. It was the only conclusion you could reach based on tbe eWdence." By June 28.1998, DNA tests confirmed a match. Michael Blassie was flown home to St. Louis for a militar)- burial with full honors at the Jefferson Barracks National Cemeter)'. Tbis time, his name was inscribed on bis tombstone. ( 0

SECRET WEAPON HIDDEN CITIES

GATFD COMMUNITY The Oak Ridge complex sprawled across three valleys and was sealed offJrom the outside world. Afmed guards manned Jortijied gatehouses, above, along the jew access roads.

MILITARY HISTORY

Seventy years ago Albert Einstein and MioW physicist Leo Szilard sat on the back porch of Einstein's Long Island home and wrote a letter to Eranklin Roosevelt, warning of Adolf Hitler's push to create the world's first ;at Nazi Germany to the punch. That letter spawned the Manhattan Project, one of history's biggest, costliest and most clandestine weapons programs, conceived at research laboratories nationwide and realized at the remote industrial complexes of Oak Ridge (Tenn.), Hanford (Wash.) and Los Alamos (N.M.). At the height of the war, these massive overnight cities housed tens I of thousands of workI ers. Oak Ridge alone i occupying a 17-mile I Stretch of the Tennessee — ~ ° Valley and consuming a sixth of the nation's total electrical output. Surrounded by miles of barbed wire—as much to keep people in as out—these selfsustaining communities boasted their own transportation and communications systems, banks, stores, schools, hospitals and theaters. Yet, remarkably, outside of the residents themselves and a handful of project insiders, the very existence of these cities remainec^ secret throughout the war. The workers, each assigned a specific task and forbidden to discuss the project, weren't even aware what they were creating.

at Oak Ridgé^bíM

tens of

thoitsands of prefctBncated houses and trailers. Residents made the best of their modest living quarters.

OFF TO SCHOOL '^'h Ridge boasted a wartime mlation approaching 70,000, Auding busloads of schoolchildren. Bf low, a safety patrolman monitors boarding ofthe Highland School bus.

READ ALL ABOUT n Above, Oah Ridge residents Ruth Hayes and George Flack peruse the reading material at Wayne Kinser's comic book stand. A spare nickel was a rarity in the wartime econoiny

BETWEEN SHIFTS ; A family spends its dowmtme dominoes and listening to the radio. Workers put in 10-hour shifts six days a week at Oak Ridge, with three shifts a day at the height of production.

BIKE TO WORK The gaseous diffusion building at K-25, one of four Oak Ridge facilities, stretched nearly a mile and employed 12,000 worhers. Many relied on bicycles to get around the complex.

SAUSBURY STEAK FOR 1,000? Mealtimes at the Hanford Site were an assembly line affair. Built atop hanen scrubland on the Columbia River, the complex housed 50,000 workers in 880 spartan hutments.

•i VIL CONNECT YOU NOW Telephone operators at Oak ^ prepare for a shift change. Al into or out of the facilities pc through this main switchboa operators dialed all outgoing calls.

MILITARY HISTORY

HEAVY METAL " nelejt, in 1942 worfei ect site in Chicago place the Jmal bhcks atop a 77l,000'pound stack of graphite—the world's Jirst nuclear reactor. Above, workers at Oak Ridge shove fresh uranium slugs,. into the face of the graphite reactor.!^ at the plutonium production plant.

JAST TRACK TO EISSION Consti-uction workers at Oak i lay the foundation oftheAl] Racetrack electromagnet, useató)' enrich some of the uranium used in Little Boy, the Hiroshima bomb.

BREAKING DC Women and men worked t ^, each other on the Manhattan Pr I»

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and eateiies were segregated by rg¿c. On the job, eveiyone drew toget

FISSION ACCOMPL/SHED in late 1942 physicist Enrieo Fermi, front row ¡eft, and fellow scientists achieved critical mass—histoiy's first nuclear chain reaction—in Fermi's reactor at the University of Chicago.

MIDDLE OF NOWHERE Míinfiaíííin Project scientific director J. Roben Oppenheimer spent some of his college years in New Mexico and chose remote Los Alamos as the site ofthe primary weapons laboratory.

THE GADGET The world's first nuclear weapon looked something like a space capsule wired inside out. ¡n mid-July 1945, scientists hoisted the device atop a WO-foot tower at the Wüte Sands Proving Ground.

MILITARY HISTORY

05:29:45 JULY] 6, 1945 The Gadget deionaies, releasingenergy _ equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT and sending a mushroom cloud 7.5 miles high. The shock wave is felt 100 miles away. Mankind enters the Atomic Age.

GROUND ZERO Within weeks of the test, and after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer (in tan hat) poses with project sciemists and militaiy officials at the base of the vaporized tower.

TALE OF TWO FORTS THE GERMAN TROOPS WHO SWARMED OVER TWO KEY FRENCH FORTRESSES PROTECTING VERDUN ANTICIPATED ATOUGH FIGHT. THEY WERE ONLY HALF RIGHT BY DAVID T. ZABECKI when the German army attacked Verdun, France, on Feh. 21,1916, it ran up against a ring of 18 large forts and 23 smaller strongpoints the French called ouvrages. During the 10-month campaign, two of the major forts—Douaumont and Vaux—fell, yet the hattles for each could not have been more different. Fort Douaumont, the largest and strongest fortification of the system, was taken without a shot heing fired, virtually single-handedly hy a German sergeant. Fort Vaux, the smallest of the Verdun forts, was commanded by a partially disahled officer who had refused medical retirement. But before Vaux fell, its commander and garrison put up a fight that cost the Germans almost 3,000 casualties in only seven days of fighting.

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Contcmporar)' miliian- experts considered massive Fort Douaumoni the worlds strongest fortification. Built in 1885, it was part of the Seré de Rivières system of border defenses France established following ils 1871 defeat in the FrancoPrussian War. Continually strengthened and modernized through 1913, Douaumont comprised an elongated pentagon more than 500 yards across at its widest point. Its outer defenses started with two concentric, 30-foot-deep belts of barbed wire. Backing the wire was a line of 8-foot sharpened stakes. A dr>' moat 24 feet deep and 35 feet wide surrounded the fort proper. Machine guns in inward-faeing counterscarp galleries on the moat's outer eorners covered every inch of the ditch with enfilading fire. The gun embrasures were 12 feet above the moat's floor, and the galleries were accessible only from inside the fort. Douaumont's two levels could aceommodate a garrison of nearly 1,000 troops within 8-foot-thiek walls of steelreinforced concrete. The root was 12 feet thick and covered with several additional feet of earth. Atop the fort were four

MILITARY HISTORY

hardened-steel observation turrets, tw^o machine-gun turrets, a turret with a pair of 75mm guns and a primary turret with a 155mm howitzer. Both rapid-fire artillery turrets were fully automated. Covering the left rear of the fort was a flanking battery mounting a 75mm field gun on a special fortress carriage. If that weren't enough, the batteries at Fort Vaux, two miles to the southeast, could cover the entire top of Fort Douaumont. Although Douaumont should have been impregnable, the French had severely weakened it well before the battle. In 1915 French commander in chief General Joseph Joffre February 1916: French troops had decided that field react to a near-miss from guns in the flanking bat- enemy artillery during a teries and most of the troops hasty counterattack against manning the Verdun forts were German forces seeking to needed elsewhere. By the time encircle Fort Douaumont. the Germans advanced on Fort Douaumont and Vaux were Douaumont on February 25, only woefully undermanned at the the two 75mm guns and single time of the German assault.

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A German machine-gun team posted above one of the observation tunnels leading into Fort Vaux keeps watch for counterattacking French patrols. 155mm remained. Although the Germans didn't know it, the garrison had been reduced to just 57 reserve artiller)'men, who kept up a half-hearted fire in the direction of the enemy lines as the Germans hammered the fort for several days with their 420mm Big Bertha" howitzers. The Gennan 12th Grenadier Regiment was to storm Douaumont, supported by the 24th Brandenburg Infantry Regiment. But during the approach march, the two units lost contact in a blinding snowstorm, and the 12th Grenadiers veered off course in the Chauffour Woods. At about 1630 hours, a 24th Brandenburg pioneer squad under Feldwebel Felix Kunze found itself jtist 50 yards from the apex of the fort. Kunzes orders had been to clear obstacles in front of the advancing infantry. Douaumont's retnaining guns were eerily silent as Kunze and his men crept around the outer edge of the moat, probing for a way in. As they neared one of the counterscarp gal-

MILITARY HISTORY

leries, a German artillery shell blew down pan of the wall, knocking Kunze into the moat. A shaken Kunze quickly recovered and ordered his reluctant squad to descend into the breach created by the blast. His men then formed a human pyramid against the counierscarp face, enabling Kunze and two others to scramble up into one of the gun embrasures 12 feet up the wall. The trio followed a tunnel to the center of the fort. Leaving his two men to secure whal seemed a key fork in the dimly lit passage, Kunze followed the sound of the 155mm gun, which had resumed firing. Taking the four surprised French artillerymen captive, Kunze then tried to work his way back to bis own men. He got lost in the labyrinth, however, and his captives bolted. As Kutize chased them through the dark, damp corridors, he happened upon a large room in which a French NCO was conducting a training class for about 20 troops. Kunze rushed in, pointing his rifle and yelling, ''Hände hoch!" ("Hands high!").

Just then a large shell hit the fort, knocking out the lights. Realizing the French would rush him in the dark, Kunze jumped from the room and bolted the doon When the lights came back on, he left the trapped Frenchmen and soon captured another one in the corridor. Kunze demanded to be taken to the fort's commander, not realizing that a sergeant major was the senior French soldier on band. As the German and his prisoner wandered the corridors, they passed a mess hall, its tables still laden with food. Famished because he had not eaten all day, Kunze, like any good soldier, took the opportunity to grab some chow. Meanwhile, a platoon of 24tb Brandenburgers under Lieutenant Eugen Radtke arrived at Douaumonl. Radtke and his 20 men entered the moat by tbe same route Kunze had taken, but then followed a path to the top of the main fort, which remained under German artillery fire. There, Radtke found an unguarded entrance that

Two French soldiers, or poilus ("hairy ones"), turn a captured German machine-gun against its former owners during the seesaw battle for Fort Vaux.

sheilfire had breached. Working their way through the corridors, Radtke and his squad linked up with Kunze, assumed overall command and rounded up the remaining Erencbmen. German ground troops had captured Douaumont without firing a shot. Shortly after Radtke secured the fort, his company commander, Captain Hans-Joachim Haupt, reached Douaumont with more troops and entered the same way. The Germans now had about 90 men inside the fort, and Haupt assumed command. At about 1730 still another detachment of 24th Brandenburgers under Lieutenant Cordt von Brandis entered tbe fort and belped repel a weak Erencb patrol tbat tried to retake Douaumont. An hour later, Haupt sent von Brandis back to Gennan lines witb orders to bring up tbe rest of tbe 2Mh Brandenburgers" 2nd Battalion. The battalion commander accurately reported Douaumonts capture up the chain of command, but by the time tbe trans-

mission reached Eiftb Anny headquarters under German Crown Prince Wilhelm, the garbled news was hailing latecomer von Brandis as the hero of Eort Douaumont. He was awarded the Pour le Mérite (the coveted "Blue Max"), as was Haupt several days later. The loss of Douaumont was a particular blow, as tbe fort dominated the high ground in tbat sector. Historians estimate the French took more than 100,000 casualties hefore finally recapturing it eight months later. Eor years Kunze and Radtke received no recognition for their roles in tbe capture. Von Brandis, on the otber hand, wrote a postwar memoir and made a career for himself as the 'Hero of Verdun," speaking lo schoolchildren and veterans' groups throughout Germany. It was only in the 1930s that historians at the Reichsarchiv finally unraveled and reported the true stor). The House of Hohenzollern had long since gone into exile, but Wilhelm did condescend to send Radtke a signed photo of himself. Kunze, by then a

rural policeman, was promoted. He had kept his silence all those years for fear of being disciplined for stopping to eat rather than continuing to round up Frenchmen.

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he Germans launched their initial attack at Verdun only on the right bank of the Meuse, a serious tactical error. Three days after capturing Douaumont, tbey extended the attack to the left bank, and the battle raged back and forth over the lollowing months. On May 8, an unattended cooking fire inside Douaumont set off a chain reaction tbal ignited stored ñametbrower fuel and, ultimately, a full magazine of 155mm ammunition. Tbe resulting blast killed some 650 troops, including the 12tb Grenadiers' entire regimental staff. Ironically, the Germans lost far more troops at Douaumont in tbat one accident tban tbey ever did to Erencb fire. In tbe aftermath. the Germans simply walled off the blast-damaged corn-

dor, turning it into a giant tomb. It remains today an official German military cemetery. On May 22. the French 129th Infantry Regiment tried to retake Douaumont. The poilus made it to the top of the fort, only to he swept away by German artillery fire. Nine days later, the Germans launched Operation May Cup, the strongest push so far on the right bank. By June 1, they had

worse. 600 French troops were jammed into living space designed for a garrison of 250. Unlike their counterparts at Douaumont, however, the troops inside Vaux had no shortage of tenacity and raw courage. The forts commander was Commandant (Major) SylvainEugene Raynal, an up-through-theranks officer who only days earlier had volunteered to command the fort.

fantry Regiment scrambled onto Vaux's roof. But French crossfire soon pinned tbem down. Rackow and his men hung on tenaciously for several hours, eventually finding a partially repaired hole in the forts roof. Working their way into the tunnel beneath, they captured Vaux's northwest counterscarp gallery from the rear. The French now had lost two of three outer strongpoints, and the

Smoke from incoming artillery rounds drifts over French positions near Fort Vaux before an assault by two battalions of the German 50th Division. taken all the outer defenses around Vaux and were hitting the small fort with between 1,500 and 2,000 artiller)' rounds per hour. Roughly square. Vaux was only one-quarter Douautnont's size. By the time the German 50th Division threw two battahons against Vaux in the early morning of June 2, artiller)- had already destroyed its single 75mm turret. Failing to leam the lessons of the Douaumont debacle, the French had not reinstalled the 75mm field guns in Vaux's two flanking batteries. The fort was thus armed with nothing heavier than machine guns. Its wire communications system had been knocked out, leaving the defenders oniy signal lamps and carrier pigeons. Even

Ra^mal was 49 years old and had already been wounded three times. He had no business being in combat, much less at the front, hobbling about on his cane. Yet, in days to come, he would give tbe Germans a far stiffer fight than they'd anticipated. At the outset of the battle, German combat engineers stormed into Vaux's defensive ditch under witbering fire from the counterscarp galleries. Tbe pioneers tried to knock out the galleries by suspending and then detonating clusters of hand grenades in front of the firing embrasures. At about 0300, the single French machine gun in the northeast galler}' froze up, enabling the Germans to cross the ditch. Led by Lieutenant Kurt Rackow, some 30 troops of the 138th Paderborn !n-

Germans had a solid foothold inside the fort. Ra^Tial's men threw up sandbag barriers in the tunnels to restrict the Germans' movement and establish firing positions. The fighting raged in the dark, wet corridors, with muzzle flashes and grenade bursts providing the only illumination. The fighting continued through June 3, witb Rackow directing the German assault force. Grenade explosions reverberated in the concrete-encased spaces. Machine-gun and small-arms fire ricocheted off the walls, the tumbling bullets causing horrific wounds when they hit flesh. Troops on either side found it almost impossible to breathe the air thick with cordite fumes and concrete dust. With no place to take the fallen, the stench of decaying

FORT DOUAUMONT Dating from 1885 and continuously upgraded through 1913, the roughly pentagonal fort measured approximately 1,500 feet at its widest point and enclosed a surface area of some 90,000 square feet. A steel-reinforced

concrete roof capped its two-level central complex, while counterscarp galleries and turrets housing guns of various calibers covered every possible avenue of approach. Despite the fort's stout defenses, German artillery bombardments largely obliterated Douaumont in early 1916 (see photo above).

Rue de Rampart Concrete shelter Observation lunet Gorge bunker with flanking galleries

Barbed wire fence Barbed Wire

Counterscarp Counterscarp gallery

This strongpoint lay northeast of Verdun, some two mites southeast of Douaumont. Roughly square. Vaux was just one-quarter Douaumont's size. In the days leading up to the final German assault, enemy artillery

I-, EnttancE tunnel

gallery

pounded the tiny fortress with between 1,500 and 2,000 artillery rounds per hour. Yet despite that rain of destruction, the Germans were able to overcome Vaux's defenders only after vicious hand-tohand fighting deep within the fortress.

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75mm turret

75mm turrei

Observation turret

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Girard led a team armed with hand grenades up the tunnel alter them. By the time the fighting ended, Girard lay unconscious, overcome by the smoke and fumes, his face and hands covered wilh shrapnel wounds. Giraras men carried him back to the main gallery. But as soon as he regained consciousness, the lieutenant went right back to his position and reassumed command of his sector. The French had beaten back one more attack, but their position was deteriorating. Raynal set loose his last carrier pigeon, begging for reinforcements. Later that afternoon the French got more bad news, as one of Raynal's pioneer sergeants told him, ''Mon Commaj\dant, there is practically no water left in the cistern." Raynal assumed sabotage, but that was not the case. Workmen had incorrectly installed the cistern's depth gauge, thus the garrison had unknowingly been short of water from the start. Raynal ordered strict water rationing. By that point Rayna! also had more than 100 wounded soldiers on his hands. Given the lack of water, his own wounded were almost as serious a threat to his position as were the Germans. Raynal had to get them out if he could.

Intrepid Frencti soldiers take advantage of a brief lull between nearly ceaseless German artillery bombardments to inspect sbell damage to Fort Vaux's cotjnterscarp walls and forward ditches. bodies added to the misery as the bitter enemies slugged it out in the dark.

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n June 4, the French 124th Infantry Division launched six successive attack waves to relieve Fort Vaux. They almost reached the west side of the fort before German artillery fire and reinforcements beat them back. German pioneers, meanwhile, managed to hoist six flamethrowers inside the fort and began advancing down an

MILITARY HISTORY

access tunnel from a counterscarp galler\: Donning gas masks, the French slowly withdrew toward the forts central gallery A step ahead of the Germans, one of Raynals officers, a Lieutenant Girard, rushed back down a corridor to an abandoned machine-gun position. Once Girard had the gun operational, his men followed him back inio the 3-foot-wide access tunnel. After more than an hour of hard fighting, the Germans started to fall back, and

Farly on June 5, Raynal sent 19year-old Aspirant (officer candidate) Leon Buffet to find some route by which to evacuate the wounded. Although Vaux was completely surrounded. Buffet managed to smuggle out casualties a few at a time in stnall groups. Thotigh many were captured or killed, a fair nutnber got through. Treated like the hero he was when he reached French lines. Buffet received a good meal and a medal and then was ordered to sneak back in to Vaux to tell Raynal of a pending French counterattack. Raynal, meanwhile, was down to just eight officers—four wounded, one seriously, and another with a bad fever. The commander himself was suffering from malaria. The Germans inside the fort mounted another flamethrower attack, and once again Girard led a successful counterattack and was

wounded. The garrison marked a full 24 hours wiihout water and soon found it impossible to get salted pork rations down their parched throats. Ra)'nal finally dispetised the remaining water, which came to less than a pint per man. It was muddy and smelled of corpses, but the desperate defenders gulped il down. The French relief force attacked at 0300 on June 6 but was quickly

outside under a white flag wilh a message addressed To THE COMMANDE:R OF THE GERMAN FORCES ATTACKING FORT VAUX. When a German party entered the fort lo accept the surrender, it found the surviving members of the garrison in perfect formation, al rigid attention. In a ceremony steeped in the chivalry of a previous century', Raynal signed a document of surrender he had drawn up himself, then

firing millions of rounds of artillery and losing thousands of men. They finally recaptured Fort Douaumont on Oct. 24,1916, and reoccupied Vaux on November 2 in the wake of a German withdrawal along the line. Douaumont and Vaux would endure another war. In the internar years the French partially refurbished and garrisoned each fort and kept their gun turrets in working order. None-

French troops mass in a forward trench before one of the initial attempts to retake Fort Douaumont; recapturing it ultimately took eight months. crushed by the Germans; a handful of survivors from what had been an entire battalion limped back to French lines under the command of a sergeant. Ra>Tiars men were reduced to drinking their own urine and licking slime off the corridor walls for moisture. Germans inside the fort, sensing the end was near, eased the pressure and waited.

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nside Fort Vaux, the redoubtable Raynal was out of options. At 0330 on June 7, he sent his last signal message to Fort Souville, two miles to the southwest. Most of the message was garbled. The only fragment deciphered was "...nc quittez pas..." (...don't give up...). Shortly thereafter Raynal sent an ofTicer and two NCOs

turned over his sword and the key to the fort's main entrance. The Germans rushed Raynal to German Fifth Army headquarters, where he assumed he wouid face execution. Instead, the crown prince gave him a hero's welcome and returned the major's sword. Wilheltn informed RayTia! that according to an intercepted radio message, the French commander had earned the Legion d'homteur. This time, too, Germany managed to treat its own heroes of tbe Vaux fight better than it did its Douaumont heroes; Rackow was awarded the Pour le Méiite the day Vaux surrendered. Even after the fall of Vaux, the carnage of Verdun dragged on for six long months as the French repeatedly attempted to retake the two forts.

theless, the Germans captured both strongholds again on June 15, !940. This time neither fort fired a shot. The Wehrmacht battahon cotnmander who accepted Douaumont's surrender had served in the fort 24 years earlier as a young officer. World War II was very different from World War I, but an entire generation of French and German senior officers had learned the hard realities of their professions on the battlefields of Verdun in 1Q16. (SSi Eor additional reading. David T. Zabecki recommends The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916, by Alistair Home, and Verdun 1916: • Tbey Shall Not Pass," hy itiii

Druty and Howard Genard.

.v: /

THE IMPROBABLE LIFE AND TIMES OF HENRY FRANCISOO BY BRENDAN MANLEY Henry Francisco was no stranger to the battlefield when the American Revolution broke out virtually on his doorstep in the winter of 1776-77. Given an imminent British invasion of upper New York, the Continental Army intensified its recruiting efforts in the region during those frigid winter months, and Francisco, hke many of his neighbors, answered the call. But something about this old man set him apart from even his most seasoned compatriots: At the time of his enlistment, Francisco was 91 years old. Evidence suggests that Francisco, who ran a tavern in French clashes on the continent. Next, he settled in colonial Fort Fdward during the war, was not only the oldest person New York, where in middle age be took up arms again, this to enlist in the U.S. Army, but also one of history's oldest time for the French and Indian War, and was reportedly preshumans. Al the time of his deatb in 1820, he was said to be ent for Braddock's Defeat in 1755. Yet despite the heavy toll 134 years old and, perhaps even more incredible, a veteran all those years and battles bad taken, when duty called again of more than a century's worth of armed conñict. From his in 1776, military records confirm one of Francisco's most younger days as a drummer under the Duke of Marlhorough startling claims: After nearly a centur)- spent living and fightto his time in the French and Indian War, to bis later skir- ing on two continents, in 1777 Francisco took to the field as mishes at Saratoga, Francisco's astonishing life is interwoven he'd done so many times before. with the fabric of bistory—as botb witness and combatant. ne day in the autumn of 1819, Benjamin Silliman Francisco's lifetime travels read like a bistorical roadmap. had a few hours to kill as he waited for a steamboat The son of Huguenots, he was reportedly bom between May bound for St. Jobn's, Canada. Silliman, a Yale scholar 31 and June 11,1686, in a small French village, during a brief respite from the religious persecution directed by Louis XIV. and one of the most esteemed scientists of his day, was traveling through the northeast and planning to Farlier, Henry's father had fled to Holland, where he married a Dutch woman. The two Quite possibly the real-life publish his memoirs from the voyage. Along returned to France shortly before Henrys embodiment of the mythic the way, he learned of Francisco's uncanny claims and decided to make a side trip to visit birth, but within five years tbe family once "Eternal Soldier," Henry the man. According to Silliman, at the time again fled, ultimately emigrating to England- Francisco was reportedly Francisco was living two miles from Whitehall, It was tbere Henr)''s adventures would begin a veteran of nearly a NY. on tbe Salem Road to Albany —but it was far from wbere tbey would end. century of combat and Silliman's publisbed journal. Remarks Made According to Francisco's statements to died in 1820 at age 134. interviewers, made late in his life, he first An artist's rendition, right, on a Short Tour, Between Hartford and Quebec, in the Autumn of 1819, reads: "We rode out served as a drummer boy in Queen Anne's is based on contemporary to see (probably) the oldest man in America. army and witnessed many of tbe British- descriptions of Francisco.

O

ILITARY HISTORY

MAY/JUNE 1686 ^M Henry Francisco is bom in rural France, during the latter reign of King Louis XIV. Francisco's father is a persecuted French Huguenot, his mother a Dutch woman.

o •-< o ec

WINTER 1691 When Henry reaches age 5, persecution of the Huguenots resumes in France. The Francisco family f)ees first to Holland, then settles somewhere in England.

APRIL 23.1702 Sixteen-year-old u Francisco, serving I as a drummer boy in the English army, plays at the St. George's Day coronation of Queen Anne in London. j

He believes himself to be 134 years old, and the country around believe him to be of this great age. When we arrived at his residence (a plain farmer's house, not painted, rather out of repair and much open to ihe wind) he was upstairs, at his daily work of spoohng and winding yarn. This occupation is auxiliary lo thai of his wife, who is a weaver, and although more than 80 years old, she weaves 6 yards a day, and the old man can supply her with more yarn than she can weave." Silliman expected a man of Francisco's reputed age to be quite feeble, so he offered to climb the stairs to visit. Much to his surprise, Francisco instead soon began to descend the stairs all on his own, "walking somewhat stooping and supported by a staff, but with less apparent inconvenience ihan most persons exhibit at 85 or 90." He described Francisco as middle in stature and rather slender and delicate, yet "he stoops bul liltle, even when unsupported." Overall. Silliman was quite taken with die old man's appearance: iFrancisco's] complexion is very fair and delicate, and his expression hright, cheerful and inteUigent; his features are handsome, and considering that they have endured through one-third part of a second century, they are regular, comely and wonderfulh' undisfigured by the hand of time; his eyes are of a lively blue; his profile is Grecian and ver)' fine." The professor then noted what was perhaps Francisco's most distinguishing feature: "His head is completely covered with the most beautiful and delicate white locks imaginable; they are so long and abundant as to fall gracefully from the crown of his head, parting regularly from a central point and reaching dovm to his shoulders; his hair is perfectly snow white, except where it is thick in his neck; when parted there, it shews Isicl some few dark shades, the remnants ofa former centur)'." Silliman was impressed by the relatively youthful condition of his subject, who, much to his surprise, even retained his front upper teeth. "His voice is strong and sweet toned, although a little tremulous," he wrote, "his hearing very little impaired.... His eyesight is sufficient for his work, and he distinguishes large print, such as the title page of the Bible, without glasses; his health is good and has always been so, except that he has now a cough and expectoration."

MILITARY HISTORY

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AUG. 13,1704

MAY 23.1706

Francisco joins the ranks under John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, at the Battle of Blenheim, a key clash in the War of the Spanish Succession.

still with Marlborough, Francisco takes part in the decisive defeat of combined FrancoBavarian forces at the epic Battle of Ramillies. in present-day Belgium.

Francisco, who according to Silliman spoke "ver\' intelligible Fnglish.. .marked by French peculiarities," shared the amazing details of his life, starting with his family's exodus from France, which he remembered happening when he was five, in the latter reign of Louis XIV. Later, when the family settled in England, Francisco recalled being present at the coronation of Queen Anne, on St. George's Day, April 23, 1702, when he was still just 15. Based on these historical markers, Silliman deduced that Francisco was bom in 1686 and left France in 1691, and by the time Slllimans work was published, in 1820, Francisco would have been 134, just as he claimed.

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ccording to Francisco's account, the various wars of Queen Anne's reign granted him his first taste of combat. He claimed to have fought in all of the conflicts of that period, many battles under many commanders, but could only remember one of their names—^John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. Serving under Marlborough, Francisco claimed to have been present at the Battle of Blenheim in 1704 and at Ramillies in 1706, during the War ofthe Spanish Succession. To back his claims, Francisco showed Silliman his many scars, which pro\ided some detail where Franciscos memory could not. "He has been much cut up by wounds," Silliman wrote. At some point, most hkely in the early 1700s, Francisco and his father crossed the Atlantic to New York, his next theater of battle and home for the rest of his days. Seeking a more vivid account of Francisco's military ser\ice, Silliman pressed his line of questioning. "O, I was in all Queen Anne's wars," Francisco replied. "I fight in all sorts of wars, all my life; I see dreadful trouble." Silliman noted that when the American Revolution came up in conversation, Francisco "seemed much affected and almost too full for utterance." During the hostiliUes, Francisco explained, Tories burnt down his house and barn, which he "lamented in a ver)' animated manner." The region and colonies at large went into an uproar when Indian raiders, employed for the Saratoga campaign by British Maj. Gen. John Burgoyne, gave the Patriot cause one of its greatest martyrs. Miss Jane McCrea, by all accounts

Francisco emigrates to the New World with his father. After his father's death, Henry settles in the northern reaches of colonial New York.

Taking up arms again in the French and Indian War, 69-year-old Francisco is wounded during the disastrous campaign known as Braddock's Defeat.

Francisco, 91, enlists in the Continental Army. He is assigned to Captain Jeremiah Burrough's company, part of Colonel Seth Warner's vaunted I Green Mountain Boys.

a strikingly beautiful young woman wilh (laming red hair, was captured in the summer of 1777 near Fort Edward, where she had chosen to remain in order to wed her fiancée, Lieutenant David jones, a Loyalist fighting for the crown. Somewhere along her abduction roule, iwo of her captors got inLo an argument o\er whose prize McCrea was. In a rage, one of them tomahawked and scalped her, tore off her clothes, further mutilated her body, then rolled her corpse inlo a ditch and covered her with leaves. Later that night, as the warriors celebrated their raid back at Burgoynes camp at Fort Anne, Jones had the gruesome misfortune of recognizing his betrotbed's freshly hacked scalp, llianks to the unmistakable red locks that sprang from it. According lo both Francisco and his wife, Ruth Fuller, who also spoke witb Siliiman, McCrea was Franciscos neighbor. "They said that ihe lover, Mr. Jones, at first vowed vengeance against the Indians, but, on counting tbe cost, wisely gave it up," Silliman recounted.

B

y the time of McCreas death, Francisco had already spent roughly six months as a Continental soldier, having enlisted on Jan. 15, 1777—according to the

U.S. List of Pensioners Under the Act of 18¡8—as a private

in the New Hampshire line, in a company led by Captain Jeremiah Burroughs, wilhin Colonel Seth Warner's regiment, popularly known as the Green Mountain Boys. Many of Warner's troops ai the lime were raised at large, so Henry was not given a number, nor was be attached to a specific slate. At Saratoga, Warners regiment was in the thick of it. Based on his time of service and unit assignment, Francisco likely saw action ai the battles of Hubbardton, Benninglon, Freeman's Farm and, ultimately, Bemis Heigbts. One interesting notation in bis militar)' record is bis desertion"onjuly 7,1777. In that era, saying someone "deserted" could mean a number of things, not necessarily criminal, so ibe specifics of Francisco's wbereabouts from tbat point on are unknown until be reappears on ihe roll for Nov 10, 1777, to April 20, 1778, dated al Benninglon. He was discliarged on April 20, 1778, for medical reasons by a Dr. Washburn. What happened to Francisco during ibe gap monibs? Pending furtber evidence, one can only speculate, tbough ii

English and Hessian forces drive back Francisco's regiment in heavy fighting at the Battle of Hubbardton, part of the pivotal Saratoga campaign.

Francisco's regiment storms a key Loyalist redoubt at the Battle of Bennington. But Henry is missing from the regimental roll, his I whereabouts unknown.

seems more than coincidence that the day of Henry's "desertion"—July 7, 1777—is the same day his regiment saw heavy fire from both British and Hessian forces at the Batile of Hubbardton. wbich ended in a hasty Patriot retreat. As the day's fighting wound down and troops scrambled to safety through the dense surrounding forest, Francisco could easily have been separated from his company Tbere is also the possibility he was taken captive. In his interview wilh Silliman, Henry remarks that he was carried prisoner to Quebec," and Silliman deduces ihat Francisco is actually referring lo an episode during tbe Revolution. Some captives taken at Hubbardton were indeed imprisoned in Quebec, so tbe notion Henry was one of tbem isn't so far-felched. Silliman's assertion could also be wrong—Francisco could very well have heen imprisoned in one of tbe prior Frencb and Indian conflicts. If be wasn't captured at Hubbardton, he may have spent the duration of Saratoga in a different, ad hoc company of sorts, as Hubbardton bad left Warner's regiment in sbambles. Despite tbe dearth of correspondence tying Francisco to the conflict, one snippet referenced in Richard M. Ketchum's masterful work Saratoga: Turning Point of Amenca's Revolutionary War offers a tantalizing clue. At Bennington, a Captain Stafford, serving under Warner, was tasked with taking a key Loyalist redoubt and later spoke of a remarkable battlefield observation—one involving an old man of slender build. Recalling the battle in the Hall Park McCulIough papers, Stafford described tbe soldier as "stooping a little with advanced age and hard work, with a wrinkled face and well known as one of tbe oldest persons in our town.'' Stafford, fearing the forthcoming assault on tbe redoubt would prove deadly for a man of so many years, ordered tbe soldier lo guard the baggage. Tbe old man came forward and, witb a smile, removed bis bat. revealing "loose hair [that] shone as wbite as silver." He replied to the captain, "Not till I've hada shot at tbem first, captain, if you please," sparking a riotous cheer and sending tbe men, including our unnamed elderly warrior, niarcbing toward the redoubt. Could this be our man, thirsting for revenge on tbe Tories wbo put bis home to tbe torch?

.Up.

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DIED—At KviúílDrg, on To itj Die ï l i l Oct. MiUklir Mat ivi- one of llu elcdoNi uiididu in lhe l«t). y. I t of hii a^c. M«r VVhiwhiil, Ne» ïprii, Ihtf Slili D u . [fle lenenblc ilei Fr»Bci»«>, IB lhe m i l l i i i r o l i^i, af.^ir in illncH 0( *i (tif«, \ii on bj in Biuck uf iht fc

SEPT.-OCT. 1 7 7 7 ^ APRIL 20,1778 ^ The Saratoga campaign ends with the Battles of Freeman's Farm and Bemis Heights. Francisco's remarkable eight-decade military career nears its close.

Francisco is discharged on a Dr. Washburn's recommendation. His pension papers record that he was lame and unfit for duty. Henry retires to Whitehall. NY

APRIL 15.1818 The U.S. government grants Francisco a military pension for his Revolutionary War service, He lists his age on official paperwork as "upwards of 134.'

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ccording to his militar)' pension application, executed on April 15, 1818 {which lists several variations on his name, including Henry Frances Siseo and Henry E Siseo), Francisco's astonishing career as a soldier finally ended on April 20,1778, on recommendation from the aforementioned Dr Washbum, who delennined Francisco was lame and unfit for duty 'Old Henry" was the oldest of three generations of Revolutionär)' soldiers (his son Solomon and grandson Cornelius Francisco also served). His service complete, Francisco retired to Whitehall, in Washington County, where Siiliman found him alive and well more than 40 years later.

Materials on file at tbe library in Whitehall state that Francisco ultimately moved to the Jackson Farm, "on the Granville Road," There he and bis wife remained, Ii\'ing wilh his daughter Ruth Willson and her husband, Robert. Aside from a brief listing in the 1790 U.S. Census, little other documentation of Francisco's time in Whitehall exists; in 1860 a fire claimed the clerk's office and the records it held. True to form, during those 40-plus years of "retirement," Francisco was far from dormant. Family legend purports he attended an agricultural fair at nearly 100 years old. At the time, he was said to still be standing incredibly straight and erect for his age and still possessed considerable strength. All this from a man said to have subsisted largely on tea, bread and butter, and baked apples. By tbe time Silliman's visit came to a close, the Yale scholar was convinced Francisco's claitn was genuine. Further, he wrote, elderly neighbors with whom he spoke all remembered "Old Henry" as ahvcivs being their senior, by many years, as far back as they could recall. "On the whole, although the evidence rests, in a degree, on his owTi credibility, still, as man)- things corroborate it, and as his character appears remarkably sincere, guileless and affectionate, 1 am inclined to believe that he is as old as be is stated to be," Siiliman concluded. Another, perhaps even more credible believer in Francisco's claim was the judge who presided over lhe old mans 1818 pension hearing, at which Francisco stated for the record, "I am, as 1 believe, upwards of 134 years old and absolutely unable to perform any labor but that 1 assist

MILITARY HISTORY

AUTUMN 1819 ^

L

Yale scholar Benjamin Sllliman interviews Francisco. Moved by the encounter. Siiliman devotes a chapter of his published travel Journal to their meeting.

OCTOBER 1820 Sometime mid-month, after a bout of what may have been malaria, Francisco dies at home at age 134. His grave in "Old Skene Cemetery" remains undiscovered.

my wife, who is a weaver." His entire estate, as listed in the records, consisted of one cow (worth $13) and one weaver's loom and apparatus ($5). He held no land of his own. Francisco's documented pension (Certificate No. 54 L3, issued January 1819) afforded him $8 per month, from "15 April, 1818, under the Act of 18 March, 1818." More important, for historical purposes, it confirms his status as a Revolutionär)' War veteran.

D

espite Franciscos impressive resilience, which prompted Sillitnan lo remark that, aside from a nagging cough, "nothing in Francisco's appearance [indicates] a speedy dissolution,"' as well as mental and ph>'sical faculties "to endure for years yet lo come," the old man's incredible life finally came to an end a year later, sometime between Oct. 10 and 25,1820, due to complications from what is believed to have been a bout of malaria. The location of Francisco's grave remains undiscovered. Prior works state he is buried in the 'Old Skene Cemetery," yet no exact locale is given. Of course, Francisco left a considerable familial legacy. He reportedly married twice and fathered 21 children, tbe youngest of which was bom when Henry was 82. Many of his offspring have since been inducted into the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, based on Francisco's service record. His genetic fingerprint is so far-reaching in America, "Old Henr)'" has become a popular discussion topic on related online genealogy message boards, many of the participants being remote descendents, scattered across the nation. Among those proud ancestors, there's little doubt as lo which of Francisco's traits they'd most like to inherit; indeed, to walk the Earth an)'where near as long "Old Henry" is a feat for any age, even without spending nearly a century on the front lines, as did Francisco. © For further reading, Brendan Manley recom mentís. Remarks Made on a Shori Tour, Between Hartford and Quebec, in the Autumn of 1819, by Benjamin Sillinum: Saratoga: Turning Point of America's Revolutionary War, by Richard M. Ketchum; and Saratoga: A Military History of the Decisive Campaign of the American Revolution, by John F. Luzader

.
For more than four centuries, the big gun reigned as the supreme arbiter of war at sea. Begitining in 1512, when Henr)- VIU commissioned the 1,500-ton warship Hemi Grace a Difitx —often referred to as 'Great Many"—the world's navies concentrated on building ever-larger warships armed with more and heaviercaliber guns, which they regarded as the true measure of any navy's power. All tbat came to an abrupt of Surigao Strait, was an end during World War U. epoch-marking event in miliCarrier-based aircraft dis- tary history by virtue of tbe abled tbe Italian and U.S. fact il was the last occasion battle fleets inside iheir bases wben gun-armed capital sbips at Taranto and Pearl Harbor. faced off against eacb other Land-based Japanese aircraft in battle. Since no na\7 mainsank the British capital sbips tains armored, gun-armed Repulse and Prince of Wales battlesbips anymore, it is safe on tbe high seas. Numer- to assume it will retain tbat ous major naval battles were historie distinction. fougbt in tbe Pacific solely Beyond tbat, however, Suby means of carrier-based rigao Strait remains a fasaircraft, witbout either fleet cinating event, shrouded in ever laying eyes on the other. ambiguity partly because It became manifestly elear it was fougbt at nigbt and tbat the aircraft carrier had because tbere were so few supplanted tbe dreadnought Japanese survivors left to as the new capital ship. Al- explain tbeir officers'actions. tbougb battlesbips continued The Japanese commander. to serve alongside tbe aircraft Vice Adm. Shoji Nishimura, carriers, they increasingly did led a fleet consisting of two so chiefly in supporting roles, old dreadnought battleships, such as shore bombardment one heavy cruiser and four and contributing to anti- destroyers in what in retroaircraft defense. spect seems a suicidal banzai cbarge through the narrow Tbe subject of Anthony Surigao Strait, belween the B. Tullv's new book. Battle

Philippine islands of Leyte and Dingat. straight into tbe guns of six battleships, eight cruisers, 28 destroyers and 39 PT boats. Five of tbose six U.S. Navy battleships were reconditioned survivors ofthe devastating attack on Pead Harbor three years before, finally getting a cbance to avenge tbemselves against the Japanese ñeet. Only one of tbe Japanese warsbips survived. A degree of mystery bas cloaked Nishimura's course of action that nighl, since he went down with his flagship, the battleship Yamashiro. Many otber Japanese sailors apparently survived the sinking of their ships only to perisb at sea after refusing to be rescued by U.S. warsbips. Equally perplexing were the actions of Vice Adm. Kiyobide Shima, whose fleet of three cruisers and seven destroyers was supposed to support Nishimura, but followed so far bebind it never bad the opportunity to do so. Tully bas provided fresh insight into tbe battle by researching records from U.S. NaNy and Imperial Japanese Naval headquarters, American and Japanese after-action reports, postwar U.S. intelligence debriefings of Japanese naval officers and rare interviews with some of the battle's very few Japanese survivors. Tbe result provides a new understanding of tbe Japanese navy s complex battle plan lo stop the

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PBS, 2009, 56 minutes. $24.99 Thi5 documentary pays iribule to America'íí 24 overseas militar)' cemeteries and the nearly 125,000 soldiers interred in ihem. The film opens with a sobering explanation of ihe burial grounds" origins: Before World War I, America bad repatriated the reETiains oí iLs soldiers killed in foreign wars. But in the bloody aftermatb of World War I, due lo the sheer number of casualties, the American Graves Registration Service gave next oí kin lhe option oí having iheir lost loved ones buried where they had fallen. in 1923 Congress created lhe American Baltic Monuments Commission I wviiw.abmc.gov 1 to establish and maintain permanent burial grounds on foreign soil. These "hallowed grounds" oí the films tille span eighi countries, irom the World War 1 iields oí Meusc-Argonne and the Somme to the World War i I hattle sites of Normandy. Sicily and the Philippines. Thefilmmakersrelaie siories of individual sacriiiee and exiol the eííoris oí the architects, landscapers and artisans who created these "powerful symbols oí America's commitment to peace around the world." —Editor

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Reviews MODERN WAR STUDIES Armageddon in Stalingrad September-November 1942 The Stalingrad Trilogy, Volume 2

EXHIBITION

David M. Glantz with Jonathan M. House

"Heroes: Mortals and Myths in Ancient Greece" Throughjan. 3, 2010 Wallers Art Museum 600 N.Charles St. Baltimore, Md. (410) 547-9000 www. thewalters.org

Glaiilz and House arc wriling the définitive history of the Stahngrad campaign. Their irilogy, backed hy meliculous scholarship and refreshingly fair minded, significantly alters long-accepted views of several important aspects of the campaign. . . . A monumental work that is unlikely lo be surpassed as an account oí the most important single campaign of the Second World War."—Evan Mawdsley, author of Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War. 1941-1945

Heroes—mortal and mythological— garnered godlike reverence in ancient Greece. The Greeks erected a shrine called a heroon to each idol, and a cult of worshippers offered whatever sacrifices they could spare. Greeks did not require perfection of their heroes; many

864 pages. 123 photographs, 49 tables, 97 inaps. Cloth $39.95

To the Gates of Stalingrad Soviet-German Combat Operations, April-August 1942 The Stalingrad Trilogy, Volume I David M. Giantz with Jonathan M. House 736 pages, 80 photographs. 87 maps, Cloth $39.95

Targeting the Third Reich Air Inteliigence and the Allied Bombing Campaigns Robert S. Ehlers Jr. "An important book that reveals much new information about how tbe Americans and British conducted a true combined air campaign against key Gennan target systems, and how thorough and painstaking intelligence analysis focused that effort."—Conrad Crane, author of Bombs, Cities, and Civilians." American Air Power Strategy in World War // 432 pages, 21 photographs. 7 maps. Cloth $39.95

"^^ Targeting the

Third Reich AIR INTElllGENCE

A circa 440 BO vase depicts Menalaus pursuing his wife, Helen, during the mythical Sack of Troy.

ind the klllEd Bomblng Ciirpalgns

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Punitive War Confederate Guerriiias and Union Reprisals Ciay Mountcastle 'Mountcastle demonstrates, with powerful insigbt, deep archival research, and crisp writing, the central role of guerrilla warfare during the Civil War. . . . This is a close-up view of the real Civil War, unrelentingly savage and utterly inhumane." —-Michael Fellman, author of In (be Name of God: Rctimsidehng Jentm%m in American Hisloty 212 pages, 20 photographs, 5 maps. Cloth $29.95

University Press of Kansas Phone 785-864-4155 • Fax 785-864-4586 • www.kansaspress.ku.edu

possessed tragic flaws. For example, Achilles was hrave in battle but flawed by an equally intense selfishness. "Heroes: Mortals and Myths" highlights the stories of several heroes and explains the Greeks" inherent cultural need for them. The exhihit showcases more than 100 pieces of artwork, including statues, reliefs, vases, hronzes and jewelry. Visitors can walk through a life-sized heroon, complete with such sample offerings as a Corinthian-style bronze helmet. Another interactive display prompts museumgoers to take a quiz to determine which hero (Achilles, Odysseus, Herakles or Helen) hest fits their personality. The Walters' permanent collection includes ancient ohjects from Greece, Rome, Egypt and Assyria. —Editor

naiiowea urouna Dien Bien Phu, French Indochina By Geoffrey Norman

B

y late 1953, the French army had lost the initiative in its fight to retain the nation's colony in Indochina. A Vietnamese insurgency controlled much of the countryside and was steadily increasing in strength. I In some seven years of fighting, the Viet Minh had f grown from a small, nimble guerrilla force into a disciplined army of a half-dozen divisions, supplied by the Chinese Communists, who had won their own war against Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces.

o o

The French were facing defeat in Indochina, a defeat that larly paratroopers and legionnaires. The government back would represent one more stain on the honor of an army in Paris was less sure. once the envy of all Furope. France had suffered hideous The army needed a hold plan. What General Henri Navarre, casualties in World War I, the resuit of a strategy so inepl commander of French forces in Indochina, conceived was and leadership so brutally insensitive that after one failed audacious: The French would build a fortified airhead in a campaign about half the valley near the Laotian army had mutinied. In the border, some 200 miles mythic battle of that war, from Hanoi. This advance Verdun (see P. 56), the base would lie within French had held on. But striking distance of three the repercussions of that tnain enemy supply routes battle, with its 400,000 and other targets. If the French casualties, mired enem\- should tr)' to elimthe nation and, indeed, inate the threat by a dithe army in a defensive rect attack, it would spark stance that bordered on the set-piece battle on defeatism and led to conopen terrain for which the struction of the static French command longed. Maginot Line; in 1940 They had the aircraft, and German armor had made given their superiority in short work of the French artillery; the battle would army that manned it. -r..;-. have to go their way. In November 1953, the Now, in Indochina, first French troops arrived by parathe French army was eager to re- Viet Minh troops follow a rolling barrage as chute and chased off Viet Minh units claim la gloire, and it believed it they advance on the strongpoint known to training in the area. The French imhad the necessary troops, particu- the French as Beatrice on March 13,1954.

ILITARY HISTORY

For two months, the Viet Minh dug proved ihe existing airstrip, then be- An American-ma de M-24 tank used by toward French lines under the cover of gan a buildup of troops and supplies, the French at Dien Bien Phu remains one artillery fire the French could noi supincluding a dozen tanks disassembled of the many battlefield artifacts at this for air transport and then reassembled increasingly popular tourist destination. press—not with counter-battery fire and not with airstrikes. This mode of back on the ground. Wiih a force of combat marked the furtliest thing from modern mobile warmore than 15,000 troops, they also established a chain of fare. It was Verdun all over again. And again the French solstrongpoints around the perimeter. It was rumored the French dier fought furiously and desperately—this time to defeat. named the strongpoints—Anne-Marie, Beatrice, Claudine, French losses at Dien Bien Phu totaled 2,293 killed, 5,195 et. al—after the commanding generals' mistresses. wounded and 10,998 captured. Viet Minh casualties exceeded The strongpoints anchored a perimeter of some 40 miles 23,000. With the battle lost in early May, the French govern—too much ground for just six battalions to hold. But the ment agreed, at Geneva, to a peace that led to creation ol an French were counting on superior firepower. Their artiller)independent Vietnam, partitioned into North and South. commander, Colonel Charles Piroth, who had lost an arm unification was forcibly accomplished 21 years later when in prior combat in Indochina, had assured both himself an anny commanded by Vo Nguyen Giap—the same general and his superiors that enemy artillerv' was no threat. French who led Viet Minh forces at Dien Bien Phu—rolled into Saigon. counter-battery fire would suppress any Viet Minh artiller)' Fifty-five years after the French defeat. Dien Bien Phu that made it through the jungle lo the battlefield. The airremains a popular destination for intemational visitors. Accesfield would remain open, enabling resupply by Americansible by weekly flights from Hanoi, it has grown into a modem made C-47 and C-119 transports. town with paved roads, a hotel and a small but impressive On March 13,1954—^almost four months after the first paramuseum displaying equipment, weapons and unifonns of lx)th troopers had jumped into Dien Bien Phu—Viet Minh artillery sides. While rice paddies have reclaimed the westemmost outopened fire on Beatrice. Until then, the campaign had composts, Françoise and Huguette, visitors may tour Dominique, prised inconclusive sorties that had cost the French more than Elaine, Isabelle, the former command bunker and the ceme1,000 casualties. But they retained control of the valley, and tery containing the French dead. All the main battle positions the airfield remained open. The attack on Beatrice marked a are maintained in their immediate post-battle condition. shift to a different kind of warfare—a siege. Piroth's guns were impotent against the Viet Minh artillery^ dug in on the heights. With its defeat at Dien Bien Phu, tJie French anny—the army On March 15, he committed suicide with a hand grenade. of Valmy, Austerlitz and, yes, Verdun—passed into history: (^

i/var uames Let's Do Launch Launchers give soldiers a clear edge over enemies who throw grenades the old-fashioned way ID the following:

Seeing the Light Lighl infantry evolved from harassers to highly Flexible fighting units. Match each light infantry below to its array; 1. Peltasts

2.

Never Say Die Henry Francisco was reportedly 91 when he enlisted in the Continental Army (see P 64). Other old soldiers include:

3.

1. Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz was how old when he embarked on the campaign that inspired Johann Baptist Strauss to compose a march in his honor? A. 74 B. 78 C. 82 D. 91

4.

2. Rogers' Rangers 3. Berdan's Sharpshooters 4.

5.

Bcrsaglieri

5. Velites

6.

2. Hessian Lt. Gen. Wilhelm von Knyphausen was 60 when he personally led his troops, musket and bayonet in band, to take wbicb objective in November 1776? A. Harlem Heights B. Fort Lee C. White Plains D. Fort Washington

6. 1st Rhode Island Regiment 7. 95th Rifles 8.

umCijo

9. Voltigeurs

8.

10. Jägers A. Continental Army, 1781 B. U.S. Army, 1863

9. 10.

C. French army, 1809 D. Zulu impi, 1879 E. British army, 1759 F. Piedmontese army, 1848 G. Hessian regiments, 1776 H. Athenian army, 480 BC I. Roman army, 100 BC J. British army, 1808

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A. South German wheellock grenade launcher, 1580 B. Lebel M1893 with VB grenade launcher, 1916 C. M79 grenade launcher, 1961 D. Type 89 grenade discharger, 1929 E. M203, 1969 E M7 grenade launcher, 1943 G. Panzerfaust, 1943 H. Schiessbecher, 1939 1. RPG-7, 1961 J. Mosin-NagantM1891/30 with launcher, 1930 9 T > 'f 6 '8 01 L 'Z Ê

3. William Marshall, 1st Earl o\ Pembroke, was bow old in May 1217., wben he personally led the relief of Lincoln Castle, in tbe process defeating a Frencb cbampion young enough to be bis grandson? A. 60 B. 70 C. 80 D. 90 4. After winning 70 battles and campaigns, Marsbal Aleksandr Suvorov was 69 in spring 1799, when be embarked on bis last campaign in wbat venue? A. Poland B. Italian Alps C. Persia D. Crimea

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Weapons we're giad they never Duilt

Les Boutonnières

I

n the winter of 1917, the British High Command, to hreak the stalemate on the hattlefield, began training a secret and elite squad of upper-class men in manners, the arts, language and dress. By summer 1918, they had become deadly bon vívanís. Les Boutonnières, as they were called, were ready for a field test. A battlefield set looking like the Somme was constructed at a studio near London, and German prisoners were brought in. Les Boutonnières—champagne flutes at

MILITARY HISTORY

By Rich Meyewwitz the ready liked fixed bayonets—froze the hapless krauts with withering glares, skewered them with rapier wit, detached them from their senses with devastating bon mots and laid them out like a string of sausages with a combination of scorching hauteur and mocking dismissal of the kaisers sex life. It wasn't clear how all this would translate to actual battlefield conditions, but lucky for the Germans, the war ended before they could find out. ©