Military History 2010-11

Letters Lessons from Mayaguez Incident 1 read with great interest "What We Learned [from the Mayaguez Incident," by William H. McMichael], in the September 2010 issue, especially the lesson learned about the delayed warning to other merchant ships in the area. I was in one of those ships. I was master of SS Pioneer Moon, a United States Lines merchant ship under time charter to Military Sealift Command (MSC). During April and early May 1975, we were delivering ammunition to Sasebo, Japan; Okinawa; and then Subie Bay, Philippines, as the final days of the war in Vietnam took place. Upon discharge of cargo in Subie Bay, we were scheduled

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for a final port of discharge at Port Vayama, Thailand. Most of the ammunition cargo for Vayama was for ultimate transshipment to Phnom Penh, Camhodia, and marked as such. With the fall of Vietnam and the Khmer Rouge victory in Cambodia, it was decided, by MSC, that we would proceed to Vayama anyway, not to discharge, but to load similar ammunition stockpiled there for return to the United States. I had misgivings about sailing up the west coast of Vietnam and Cambodia en route to Thailand under such uncertain conditions but was assured by MSC that all was under control. Upon sailing from Subie on May 13,1 learned, by means of a commercial news broadcast, that Mayaguez had been taken by Cambodian naval forces. I communicated by radio to MSC and was ordered to follow my saihng orders to Vayama and to report any unusual incidents to them. I maintained full speed up the Gulf of Siam, keeping well off the coast and well clear of

MILITARY HISTORY

any other vessels or small craft. On the morning of May 14, our ship was overtaken by USS Harold E. Holt, which passed

by at full speed without communicating with us. Although we arrived safely in Vayama and completed our voyage back to the United States without further incident, 1 have often wondered what the political repercussions would have been had we been the ship seized and our most sensitive cargo fallen into Cambodian hands. Captain David H. Cory UNITED STATES LINES (RET.) SAG HARBOR, N.Y.

Malaya Emergency Mark Moyar's fine September 2010 article "Right Man, Right Time" seized upon the notion that the military could "solve" Malaya. To quote the popular maxim: "The military makes a great hammer, but not every problem is a nail." No one understands better than a career soldier the limits of what armed force can achieve. It's one of the fundamental axioms of guerrilla

warfare: An insurgency can be contained by military means, but it can be "defeated" only by political means. Evan Dale Santos ADELANTO, CA.

U-Boats I much enjoyed Stephan Wilkinson's article ["Killer U-Boats"] in the September 2010 issue of Miliiary History, but I do want to point out an error regarding U-53. While U-53 sank five ships after leaving Newport, R.I., they were not all Allied, as stated. Norway and the Netherlands were neutral nations in World War I, even though their ships were considered fair game by the German navy after Germany's adoption of unrestricted submarine warfare. The three British vessels sunk by U-53 were those of a belligerent enemy power and, hence, fair game. Robert W.Arnold III ALBANY, N.Y.

Whose History? I read with great interest your interview with Evan Thomas

[September] regarding the lead-up to Atnerica's war with Spain. While Thomas' grasp of the situation in the United States is quite solid, 1 must disagree with his view of Spain's armed forces. Their situation was, without doubt, unenviable. But Spanish troops in the Caribbean and the Philippines had far more at their disposal than just pride. They possessed both a rifle and a uniform superior to those of American troops. And they knew the terrain. Thomas' portrayal of Spanish naval actions as suicidal is also incorrect. Even though it was outnumbered, outgunned and outclassed, Spain's Caribbean squadron was not on a suicide mission. The Spanish commander. Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete, was well aware of his ships' limitations and worked to make the best use of the force he had at his disposal. Thomas' assertion that the officers and crews of the Spanish squadron "wanted to die" is simply not true. "When they sailed out for their last naval battle," the only ship Cervera planned to sacrifice was his flagship. His hope was this sacrifice would give his remaining three cruisers and two destroyers a chance to escape. His only alternatives were to be sunk at anchor inside Santiago harbor or

to surrender. The Spanish squadron's emergence from Santiago harbor was not a "parade of death," as Thomas states. It was, rather, a calculated risk. Andrew M. Cooperman WATERLOO, 111.

Suez Smashup Your article "Suez Smashup" Iby David T. Zabecki, July] begins with the phrase "U.S. ally Israel." A [State Department] spokesman actually said in 1967 that America was officially "neutral in thought, word and deed." No treaty of alliance has

ever existed between the two nations, though the United States signed dozens of such treaties during the Cold War. In the 1956 and 1967 wars, Israel used mostly French weapons. In 1948 Israel had World War Il-era German weapons, sold by Czechoslovakia. The United States did begin selling Israel Phantoms and Skyhawks while Lyndon Johnson was still in office. The first free aid given Israel came from Richard Nixon (God bless him) and quite literally saved Israel in October 1973. Michael Carson IONE, CALIF.

Boer Lessons Excellent article on the Boer War ("Farmers at Arms," by Martin Dugard, May 2010). The war is near and dear to me, as my mother's father, Dan Kennedy, along with about 50 other Irish immigrants from Holyoke, Mass., and Chicago took up arms in the Boer cause. Along with the books Dugard recommends should be added A West Pointer With ihe Boers, by Colonel John Y. Filmore Blake, recently re-released by Kessinger Publishing. Blake was commander of the "Irish Brigade," an exaggeration to

be sure. However, 1 wouldn't recommend Kitchener's strategy to the U.S. command, as many of the Brits and all of the Irish disdained the lord's perfecting of the concentration camp as a weapon of war. Patiickj. Sullivan COLONEL, U.S. ARMY RESERVE MARSHFIELD, Wise. Send letters to Editor, Military History Weider History Group 19300 Promenade Dr. Leesburg, VA 20176 or via e-mail to militaryhjstofy^ weidei1iistorygroup.coin. Please include name, address and telephone number.

News

By Brendan Man ley

DISPATCHES BP Spill Threatens Gulf Shipwrecks Maritime researchers fear that sinking oil from the recent massive BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico may containinati- •^ulimerged re-

USS Olympia, above left, leads the U.S. Asiatic Squadron to victory at Manila Bay on May 1,1898.

Dewey's 119-Year-Old Flagship Olympia at Risk of Being Scuttied

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USS Olympia, the flagship from which Commodore George Dewey led the famed 1898 attack on Manila Bay, the Philippines, during the Spanish-American War, is at risk of being scuttled. For the past 50 years the 5,870-ton protected cruiser has been a central tourism feature of the Philadelphia waterfront. But a $20 million shortfall in preservation funds has officials at Independence Seaport Museum |v\'w-w.phillyseaport org] mulling whether to sink Olympia—the world's oldest floating steel warship—as an artificial reef. Olympia was laid down in 1891 and commissioned in 1895. On May 1,1898, with

Dewey aboard and Captain Charles Gridley at the helm, it led five other warships into Manila Bay. When Olympia had closed to within 5,000 yards of the Spanish fleet, Dewey issued his oft-quoted order, "You may fire when you are ready, Gridley." The U.S. fleet sank eight Spanish warships during the battle, inflicting nearly 400 casualties while losing just one American sailor—to heatstroke. During World War I, Olympia patrolled the Atlantic, making histor)' again in 1921 by repatriating from France the remains of that conflict's "unknown soldier." Decommissioned in 1922, the ship remained docked at

the Philadelphia Navy Yard until 1959. It has since served as a museum. In 1964 Olympia was designated a National Historic Landmark. The nonprofit Friends of the Cruiser Olympia |www cruiserohTTipia.orgl is seeking the necessary funds to save the ship, which suffers a leaky deck and corrosion to its hull at the waterline. Meanwhile, the mtiseum is consulting with the Navy on plans to scuttle the ship off Cape May, N.J. "I think what's happening is a total disgrace," FOTCO President Harry Burkhardt

MILITARY HISTORY

Atkinson Nabs Pritzker Award The nonprofit Tawani Foundation has selected Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian Rick Atkinson (see January 2010 Interview) to receive this year's Pritzker Military Library |www .pritzkermilitarylibraryorgl Literature Award for Lifetime Achievement in Military Wrilinj;. I In- .iwiinl c e r e m o Li"

told The Philadelphia Enquirer

last spring. "The Liberty Bell has a crack in it, but we don't melt it down."

'Where lies the land to which yon ship must go?' —William Wordsworth

sources, notably the many historical shipwrecks. Several significant wrecks lie in the path of the spill, including the scuttled aircraft carrier USS Oriskany, the depthcharged German (7-166 and multiple vessels sunk by other German U-boats during World War II.

ny will be i i i l d O t t o i j e r 2 2

at Chicagos Palmer House. Atkinson's books span military history from World War II to the present and include An A>my at Dawn (re-

lating the North African Campaign) and Crusade (a narrative of the Gulf War).

Ships Revisit Dunkirk

Last WWII Lakota Code Talker Dies Clarence Wolf Guts, 86, the la.st surviving World War II Oglala Lakota code talker, died June 16 at the South Dakota Stale Veterans Home

in Hot Springs. Wolf Guts and three other Sioux code iali
. I Churchill's Cigar Missing in Action officials at the Winston Churchill's Britain at War Experience Iwww.hritain atwar.co.ukl in London are

at a k)ss lo explain a missing cigar mysteriously airbrushed from an iconic image of the wartime prime mitiister displayed above the tnuseum entrance. Mum's the word about who altered the 1948 photo, in which Churchill renders a victory salute with his fingers while clenching a signature stogie (or not) between his teeth.

This spring more than 60 ships crossed the English Channel from Ramsgate in Kent, England, to Dunkirk, France, marking the 70th anniversary of Operation Dynamo, the mass evacuation of Allied troops from besieged Erench beacbes to Britain between May 26 and June 4,1940. Among the participating vessels were survivors of the 700strong civilian fleet of "Little Ships" that aided the withdrawal, later dubbed by Winston Churchill as a "miracle of deliverance." Several dozen Dunkirk veterans also attended the weeklong commemoration. During Dynamo, nearly 900 naval and civilian craft evacuated some 338,000 British, French, Polish and Belgian soldiers. The Allies lost more than 200 ships to German aircraft, submarines and torpedo boats, including nine destroyers. But the "Dunkirk spirit" demonstrated that day became a wartime rallying cry.

'There was a victory inside this deliverance' —Winston Churchill

Falklands Vet Returns Confiscated Trumpet In Buenos Aires, Argentina, last June, a Scottish veteran of the 1982 Falklands War returned a confiscated trumpet to its owner, a former Argentine army musician. During that conflict, 20-year-old paratrooper Tony Banks was ordered to strip weapons from Argentine prisoners, including Omar Tabarez, 19, who had manned an artillery post in Port Stanley Banks seized

WAR RECORD In the temperate zones, the latter months of the year augur an inevitable slowdown in hostilities. Seeking the upper hand before taking winter quarters, the world's annies have historically taken decisive action. As for winter in the tropics—things are often Just heating up. • Oct. 7.1780: At the Battle of Kings Mountain in the Carolinas, Patriot forces take British Major Patrick Ferguson's superior Loyalist force by surprise (see P 34), deflating Lord Cornwallis' Southern Campaign. • Oct. 12.1945: A U.S. military commission in Rome wraps up war crimes proceedings against German General Anton Dostler (see P 56), convicted of unlawfully executing 15 American POWs. Dostler himself meets a firing squad on December 1.

• Nov. 4,1914: German Fast African guerrillas under Lt. Col. Paul Emil von LettowVorbeck (see P 40) rout a Taharez's only "anns"—a case British invasion force in the holding his trumpet and Battle of Tanga, despite being music books. Banks kept tbe outnumbered 8-to-l, handing instrument as a spoil the etnpire one of its most of war. This spring, after | stunning military defeats. three decades of guilt i and a yearlong search, 8 • Nov. 20,1962: Cold War Banks found Tabarez, J tensions recede as the Cuban flew to Argentina and | Missile Crisis (see P 26) forreturned the trum- § mally concludes, witb the pet. Tabarez praised | lifting of the quarantine on Banks as a "tnan of ' incoming offensive weaponry to the island, previously deep honor," while the Arenforced by a U.S.-led multigentine army honored Banks national naval blockade. for his "good attitude."

News Bletchley Park to Post Secret Docs Preservationists are working 10 digitize and po.st online untold millions ol World War ll-cra decoded Gemían messages and other intelligence documents stored in Britain's once-covert Bleichley Park code-breaking facil- s ity lwww.hleichleypark.org I

.IlkI. During the war, some 10,000 analysts worked at the Buckinghamshire estate. Hewlett-Packard has donated scanners and technical support to the current project, which will make available wartime transcripts, memoranda, communiques, maps, photos and other materials.

CW Trust Donates Perryville Land The Civil War Preservation Trust Iwww.civilwarorRl has donated 54 acres to Kentucky's Perryville Battlefield State Historic Site I www parks, ky.gov 1, scene of an Oct. 8, 1862, dash that was the peak ol Confederate General Braxton Bragg's Heartland Offensive. Purchased

by liii- n ust in 2006 for $157,000, the parcel on the southeast side of the battlefield marks where Confederate inlantr\' under Maj. Gen. William Hardee launched an assault on the Union center.

Union General Edwin V. Sumner and staff, including Alonzo Cushing (second from right) in 1862.

Gettysburg Artilleryman to Receive Posthumous Medal of Honor The U.S. Army has approved a Medal of Honor Iwww.cmohs.orgl for lsl Lt. Alonzo Cushing, a Union artilleryman killed on July 3, 1863, during the pivotal Battle of Gettysburg, Pa. The award comes after more than 20 years of campaigning by relatives and supporters and 147 years after Cushing's combat death. At Gettysburg the 22-year-old Wisconsin native and West Point graduate led Battery A of the 4th U.S. Artillery, commanding some 110 men and six field pieces. On the final day of battle, Cushing and his men defended Cemetery Ridge against Pickett's Charge, standing firm in the face of a brutal two-hour bombardment and subsequent assault by more than 12,000 Confederate infantrymen. Despite sustaining grievous shrapnel

wounds to his shoulder and abdomen, Cushing refused to fall back, instead turning his two remaining guns on the onrushing enemy infantry. Minutes later a Confederate bullet struck Cushing in the head, killing him before he could witness the Union victory he had helped secure. Civil War soldiers account for more than 1,500 of the 3,446 Medal of Honor recipients to date; the last honorée from the conflict was Corporal Andrew Jackson Smith of Clinton, 111., who received the MoH in 2001. A monument to Cushing and two of his brothers—Navy Commander William B. Cushing and Army 1st Lt. Howard Cushing—stands at Cushing Memorial Park in Delafield, Wis., the artilleryman's hometown.

'Who kept the faith and fought the fight; the glory theirs, the duty ours' —Wallace Bruce

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News Guide Finds l o s t ' Kokoda Trail Site This spring villagers in Papua New Guinea took Brian l-rccman, an Australian hiking guide and former army captain, to the site of a pitched battle along the Kokoda Trail, object of a

four-Mionlli srcsaw campaign between the Japanese and Australians in 1942. The site near Eora Creek in the Owen Stanley Range includes human remains, war materiel and evidence of a Ja|5anesc field liospilal. Freeman has notiiicd the respective govcriuncnts and initiated preservation efforts.

V-J Day Times Square 'Kissing Nurse' Dies Edith Shain, the woman believed to be the nurse in Alfred Eisenstaedt's iconic V-J day photo of a kissitig couple in New York's Times Square, died June 20 at age 91. On Aug. 14,1945, Shain, a part-time nurse, was tnarking the Japanese surrender with other revelers when a passing sailor grabbed and dipped her for a celebratory smooch. Eisenstaedt captured the motnent, and his photograph ran in Life the following week. Years later Shain wrote the photographer, identifying herself as the nurse in the image. Several tnen have claimed to be tbe amorous sailor, most convincingly 83-yearold Houstonian Glenn McDuffie, who has passed multiple polygraph tests and matched forensic renderings of the photo.

'Together we shall achieve victory' —Dwight David Eisenhower

Boer War Killers Eigiuy-six British soldiers serving in the 1899-1902 Second Boer War in South Africa were struck down not during combat or by disease but by lightning, according

Arlington Blunders Prompt Overhaul The U.S. Anny has dismissed two top officials and overhauled operations at Arlington National Cemetery I \\ >

by tlic British section ol the genealogy Web site Ancestry .com |\\\\\\ ,uucstry.c'o.ukl. While those deaths account lor an admittedly small percentage of the estimated 45,000 British casualties, one soldier holds the unfortunate distinction of suffering the most unusual demise —eaten by a crocodile in Swaziland's Usutu River.

.arlingtoncemetery.org[ following a seven-motith investigation by Inspector General Lt. Gen. R. Steven Wbitcomb that cited long-term misman-

agement and recordkeeping inconsistencies, including at least 211 unmarked or mismarked graves. Army Secretary John M. McHugh reprimanded Arlington superintendent John C. Metzler Jr. and deputy superintendent Thurman Higginbotham and relieved the men of their duties. McHugh has also created a new director post to oversee all 131 national cemeteries [www.cem .va.gov[, as well as a new Army National Cemeteries Advisory Commission to review cemetery procedures.

VOICES OF WAR Even the hardiest soldiers inevitably face the march into eternity. In recent months, several notable warriors have died, while one long dead has only recently found rest: • Amedeo Guillet: Guillet, an Italian commander under Benito Mussolini, led the last cavalry charge British regulars ever faced —a January 1941 ambush of armored forces at Keru, Italian East Africa (presentday Eritrea). Guillet, 101, died June 16. • Edward Uhl: Army Ordnance Corps Lieutenant Uhl was the brain behind the tank-killing bazooka— among the most pivotal weapons of World War II. Uhl, 92, died May 9. • Jack Harrison: British Royal Air Force pilot Harrison was the last known survivor of the March 1944 mass escape frotn the Gertnan POW camp Stalag Luft 111, subject of The Great Escape (1963).

He failed to break out; tbe Gestapo later executed 50 of the captured escapees. Harrison, 97, died June 4. •

Charles Dickinson:

Dickinson, 26, a Tennessee attorney and an expert shot, challenged future general and U.S. president Andrew Jackson to a duel in May 1806. He lost. A Nashville couple recently found Dickinson's lost grave. He has since been reburied.

I ntervjew Sebastian Junger: On Combat New and Old

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o cover the 15-month deployment of the U.S. Army's 2nd Platoon, Company B, 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment, author Sebastian Junger shared forward positions the soldiers occupied in the Korengal Valley in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan in 2007-08. What he saw and felt there, as reported in his new book, War, were the eternal verities of close quarters and close combat: FEAR, KILLING, LOVE (as he titled

the three sections of his booh), plus sudden violence, selfless courage, boredom, deprivation, humor, relentless danger and the focused actions of trained professionals who are very good at whai they do.

Were they aware of Afghanistan's reputation as a "graveyard of empires"? Not really And the United States was not really seen as an invader by the Afghans. I was in Kabul when the Taliban fell, and the Afghans were overjoyed. They definitely saw the AmeriA One of the cans as heroes—at least for a while. most difficult

things about combat is... having to give up the very secure and close bond created in a small unitV

This is a story that is at once new and old. But few correspondents have reflected as wisely on men's actions and reactions in combat, and fewer still have recorded the sights and sounds, the voices and character of the men in such taut, pared-down prose.

Do you feel that war is essentially unchanging? The tools change, but psychologically it is all the same. An aerial bombardment is not the same as a sword fight, obviously. But if you are talking about smallarmsfire,it is pretty much all the same. We hear Afghanistan is a "different" kind of war. Did the soldiers you were with think so? It's the only war they know. They've seen movies, so they understood it was dif-

MILITARY HISTORY

ferent from World War II and Vietnam. But the main distinction they made was between this war and Iraq—and there was way more combat in Afghanistan.

Who did the soldiers think they were facing on the battlefield? They understood they were fighting a conglomeration: local boys with AKs, timber mafia mobs, foreign fighters, Pakistanis who came across the border. And Cbechens, who were as well trained as the Americans. But essentially they were just fighting the people who were shooting at them.

Which other historical campaigns resemble Afghanistan? There was a bit of Vietnam—in the sense of a small outpost in a wild place —and of the American frontier. The Indian wars were essentially a counterinsurgency: There were small groups of white guys, who were pretty well armed, in very hostile territory, fighting an enemy they rarely saw... and it drove them crazy. And the same thing drove the American soldiers crazy in the Korengal.

Explain what you have termed the "choreography" of close combat. Some people lay down suppressive fire while others maneuver to gain a tactical advantage to kill the people shooting at you. It's taught in training, it is intricate, and it's honed through experience. One of the big things is restraining your fire. As soon as you shoot, the enemy can see where you are. You shoot in bursts, so the guns talk. It's called "talking the guns." What are the consequences of not restraining one's fire? Inexperienced troops take casualties because they are not restrained, they wreck their guns, they give away their positions, and they get killed. One of the marks of experienced fighters is that they are very judicious in their use of firepower. Does the enemy do the same thing? The Chechens do. 1 don't think the local boys knew much. They were just getting paid to crawl up behind a rock and empty a magazine into the outpost and run. Do you perceive combat as a test of character? Yes, definitely. Character is: Are you willing to make yourself do things you don't want to do, to put the interests of the group above your own interests? That's, essentially, being an adult. It's an extreme version of being a responsible and selfless adult. Is there anything "noble" or "glorious" about combat, or has it become just industrialized killing? Industrialized killing really was a hallmark of World War 1 and, to an extent. World War II, and 1 think it would be hard to find nobility in that. But nobility is an individual act, and in the kind of war 1 saw, the individual is extremely important. One individual

could make all the difference in a battle. In Afghanistan they were fighting in very small units; it really was on the scale of warfare that probably existed in tbe Stone Age. I

What motivated the soldiers in the Korengal Valley? They enlisted for a variety of reasons— 9/11, family tradition, and some were just looking for some excitement and a test. But in combat, tbey were really figbting to survive and for their friends to survive. ;

ated in a small unit in a situation like that. Not wanting to give up combat? Is that a surprise? People see combat through a paradigm of trauma. But there are also psychologically positive things that happen within a small group that cannot be duphcated back home. That's another way of looking at PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder]. And it's serious. I think it's as serious as the trauma component.

things that otherwise would have left me unmoved, before. Tbat bappened to everyone in tbe platoon. How were they changed? The guys were almost alarmed by it. Tbey'd ask, "Why do we keep crying about stuff that's not sad?" Life things happen and trigger emotional responses, and they were not used to that. The same thing bappened to me, and I tbink it was tbe aftereffect of this very close bond. There's

You quoted military theorist Carl von Clausewitz: "Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult." How does that apply to what you saw in Afghanistan? Very small things could create very large effects: You go to carry ammo to the top of the hill, and suddenly you need a whole squad to do it, and you come under fire, and you have to call in the Apaches. In any other context, it would just be a miserable balf-bour walk with a beavy load on your back. Suddenly, because it's war, it all just goes screwy. Do you think that combat has always been a life-altering event? Anything where you confront your owTi mortality is life-altering, whether it's disease, a car accident or combat. Have we as a society gotten better at helping soldiers return from war? There are some things you just can't return from. Most of those guys saw someone they really loved die in front of thetn. It's not a realistic expectation that you can reset that clock to zero. 1 think the government is getting better at dealing with the effects of combat. My opinion is that one of the tnost difficult things about combat is having to give it up, having to give up the very secure and close bond cre-

Reporting from Afghanistan, Sebastian Junger, above, and photojournalist Tim Hetherington shared hardships and hazards with U.S. soldiers-the subjects of Junger's new book, War, and their feature-length documentary Restrepo. How do the soldiers handle that? That's why they all wanted to go back. They didn't want to go back because it was traumatic, but because it was a place where they understood what they were supposed to do. They understood who they were. They had a sense of purpose. They were necessary. All the things that young people strive for are answered in combat. And it's going to take tbem years to answer tbose tbings in a satisfactory way in the civilian world. Did this 15-month frontline experience change you? 1 think so. I just get emotional about

post-traumatic stress disorder, but tbere is also the positive side that's known as "traumatic growth," the positive changes that come with a traumatic experience. Is that what you saw happening with these soldiers? The experience really ojjened them up; it opened me up. I find myself getting choked up about tbings tbat don't have an obvious emotional cbarge. A lot of guys in tbe platoon commented on the same tbing. Some even complained about it, asking, literally, "Wby are we turning into girls"? (^

What We Learned... from the Siege of Vicksburg By Wcuk G. Dudley

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n early 1862, General Ulysses S. Grant, with help from the Western Gunboat Flotilla (see P 23), captured Forts Henry and Donelson in Tennessee and then won a victory at Shiloh, allowing a Union siege of the Confederate bastion at Vicksburg, Miss. Meanwhile, Flag Officer David Farragut took New Orleans, threatening all of Louisiana and positioning the converging Union forces to split the Confederacy. Wetlands and the Mississippi itself impeded advances on Vickshurg. Unahle to protect his supply line. Grant halted a march through central Mississippi, ordering General William T. Sherman to boat his 31,000 men downriver. In the last week of 1862, Sherman sent his men against bluffs nortb of tbe city Repulsed, his cotps held iLs ground through v^inter, fixing significant Confederate forces in the defense of Vicksburg. Grant then crossed to the west bank of the Mississippi and cleared eastern Arkansas while seeking to move his gtinboats atid transports downriver past

the city. Vicksburg's batteries, set on a bluff above the river's east bank, could pierce the decks of Union gunboats. Grant ordered canals built to bypass the bluff, but those attempts failed. Witb most of his army waiting on the west bank of the river south of the city. Grant challenged Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter to run the Vicksburg batteries. Porter's first 10 sbips did so in the dark on April 16,1863, losingjust one vessel. By early May, Grant had some 40,000 men on the east bank south of the city. Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton had 33,000 defenders in and around Vicksburg, wbile another Confederate force held Jackson—until driven out by Grant on May 14. He then punished Pemberton at Cbampion Hill and tbe Big Black River Bridge, forcing him to flee to entrenchments along the eastern approaches to Vicksburg. Grant assaulted the works, but tbe Confederates bad spent months fortifying the ridges around the city. The assaults failed, so Grant—reinforced to

some 77,000 men—pressed the siege with trenches and hombardments. Union miners dug beneath Rebel positions and packed the tunnels with explosives, destro)'ing one fort on July 1. Inside Vicksburg, citizens dug into tbe bills to escape sbellfire, while troops faced reduced rations. The comtnissariat had stockpiled little food, atid Pemberton had ordered most horses and mules driven outside the city due to lack of fodder. Along with corn and peas, rats and cats virtually disappeared by the end of June. Thirsty soldiers drank directly from the river, with dire results. By July 1, Confederate commanders reported fewer than 200 able-bodied met! per regiment. Two days later, Petnberton opened negotlatiotis with Grant, who requested unconditional surrender but accepted the parole of all Confederate troops instead. On the Fourth of July, Union troops occupied Vicksburg. Grant took some 10,000 casualties after crossing the Mississippi, while inflicting an equal number of enemy casualties. He paroled nearly 30,000 Rebels, most of wbom fought again. Five days after Vicksburg's fall. Port Hudson, last bastion on tbe Mississippi, also surrendered, and Union eyes turned eastward.

Lessons:

Grant's triumph at Vicksburg ultimately enabled the Union to split the Confederacy.

• Divide and conquer. • A mobile force sbould never surrender its mobility (the tenn "sitting ducks" comes to mind). • A fortress is defensible only as long as its food holds out. • When defending a city, evacuate civilians; they have to be fed. Do not evacuate animals; they are emergency rations. • Accurate threat assesstnent beats shoveling canals in a swamp while the enemy itni^roves his defenses. Damn the batteries, full speed ahead! • Never parole enemy troops; they are veterans. You will see them again (maybe from the wrong side of a POW cage). • Finally, boil the danged river water! (^

i

/alor The Gentleman Marine By Stephen Harding

Private Henry L. Hulbert U.S. Marine Corps Medal of Honor , Samoa, 1899

the sister of a senior British colonial official. Hulbert seemed destined for a tneteoric rise in his chosen profession. That ascent ended, however, when in 1897 Hulbert was caught having an affair with his wife's sister. Distnissed from the colonial service, he lost everything in the ensuing divorce and was ordered to leave Malaya. Hulbert hopped the first boat out and within months wound up in Canada's Yukon Territory goldfields. Having no luck there, he worked his way to San Francisco where, in March 1898, the 31-year-old English gentleman joined the Marines. After boot camp, the newly minted Leatherneck was assigned to USS Philadelphia, flagship of the Nav)'s Pacific Station.

Leading the Americans were Navy Lieutenant FV. Lansdale, assisted by Ensign John Monaghan and Marine 1st Lt. Constantine Perkins. The column swept through the village of Fagali'i, burning the huts of presumed insurgents. Once clear of the village, the force— with Hulbert and fellow Marines as the rear guard—started toward Apia. After fording a river, the column was atnbushed by heavily armed Samoans, and what had been a routine operation degenerated into a brutal, close-range brawl. The column began withdrawing toward the nearest beach, and Perkiiis ordered Hulbert and Sergeants Michael McNally and Bruno Forsterer to defend an opening in a fence through which the main body of the column had to pass. Last to the fence were Lansdale and Monaghan, who were cut down within yards of Hulbert. He moved toward them, shooting and bayoneting warriors in his way. Seeing tbat the officers were

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y the time he died in a hail of German machine-gun fire on France's Blanc Mont Ridge on Oct. 4, 1918, 1st Lt. Henry L Hulbert was already a Marine Corps legend. And though his courage and leadership on the meat-grinder battlefields of World War 1 had further burnished his martial reputation—and earned him the Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross and France's Croix de guerre—it was during a savage fight in a forgotten conflict on a faraway Pacific island that this most atypical of Marines first distinguished himself. Hulbert was born into wealth and privilege in 1867 in Kingston-uponHull. Yorkshire. Groomed to be a proper English gentletnan, he received a classical education and at 18 joined Britain's colonial service in Malaya. His drive, cotnpetence and charm won him quick protnotion and marriage at age 21 to

The Marines on Samoa had heavy guns, bul nuiüei i-nliu ncm un lu bcmui cmisied ranks and

was ultimately commissioned-earned the Medal of Honor in a small-arms fight at close range. The cruiser sailed for Samoa, which the 1899 Berlin Treaty had made a joint American-German protectorate. The August 1898 death of Samoa's king and Germany's effort to put a successor of its choice on the throne fanned a simmering civil war into open hostilities. Philadelphia was sent to protect Americans and, in cooperation with several British warships, to counter German influence and quell the civil strife ashore. On April 1,1899, Private Hulbert was one of 20 Marines and 36 sailors sent ashore as part of an American-British operation to confront Samoan iiisurgents.

dead, and wounded himself, Hulbert fought his way back to the fence and covered McNally and Forsterer as they crossed. Out of amtnunition, he used his rifle as a club. Finally, seeing his chance, he rushed to rejoin the column. For his actions he received the Medal ol Honor. Hulbert stayed in the Corps, volunteering for World War 1 cotnbat at 50. His time in France brought additional decorations and promotion to officer rank, and he led from the front until his death. Henry L. Hulbert, the gentleman Marine, was ultiinately interred in Virginia's Arlington National Cemetery (^

Hand Tool

By Jon Guttman • Illustration by Gregory Proch

I

Gladius and Scutum Combined arms that carved out an empire The double-edged gladius was more often employed as a stabbing weapon

As men at the head of a formation tired, they rotated to the rear, to be replaced by the next soldiers in line.

When used in combination, scuta provided excellent overhead cover, enabling units to storm fortifications.

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Enemy fighters often exhausted themselves hacking futilely at the sturdy scutum.

With its metal boss and reinforced edges, the scutum could be wielded offensively if necessary.

t the height of Rome's conquests, the Roman foot soldier dotninated the battlefield with disciplined coordination of the weapotis in his arsenal—first by hurling his thin, iron-tipped pilum (javelin) at the enemy and then deciditig the issue at close quarters using gladius (sword) and scutum (shield). The gladius was a cut-and-lhrust weapon, with a double-edged, pointed steel blade about 2 feet long. Tbe scutum, originally elliptical, bad assumed a rectangular shape by the early days of the empire. An imperial scutum comprised strips of bentwood, steamed over a form

into a convex curve to deflect blows and missiles. The face was covered in hide, its edges bound in rawhide or iron, with a round central boss of bronze, brass or iron. A surviving example fourid in Syria was 43 incbes bigh and 34 inches wide with a 26-inch gap behind its face. ln close combat, the Roman legionary used his scutum to batter an enemy or deflect blows while seeking an opening to stab his opponent in the torso with gladius or pugio (dagger). Confident in their combined arms, legionaries scoffed at enetny swordsmen who tried to hack their way through a

Roman square, waiting until exhaustion rendered their foes ripe for a killing blow. However, scuia offered limited protection from powerful composite bows, sucb as those used by the Parthians and Huns. By the early 3rd century, the Rotnans had replaced the gladius with the 3foot-long spatha, a design evolution that would lead to the medieval broadsword. And by the late 3rd century, the scutum had reverted to elliptical or circular form. By that time the empire was in decline, and a new era ol warfare was in the offing. (^

I

t was one minute before high noon on Oct. 27,1962, the day that later became known as "Black Saturday" More than 100,000 American troops were preparing to invade Cuba to topple Fidel Castro's communist regime and destroy dozens of Soviet intermediate- and medium-range ballistic missiles thought to be aimed at targets in the United States. American reconnai.ssance aircraft were drawing enemy fire. The U.S. Strategic Air Command's missiles and manned bombers bad been ordered to DEECON-2, one step short of nuclear war. In the Caribbean, U.S. Navy destroyers were playing a cat-and-mouse game with Russian submarines armed with nuclear-tipped torpedoes. And then, at 11:59 a.m., a U-2 spy plane piloted by Captain Charles W. Maultsby unwittingly penetrated Soviet airspace in a desolate region of the Chukot Peninsula opposite Alaska. Flying at an altitude of 70,000 feet, the 11-year Air Force veteran was oblivious to the drama below. He bad been on a routine mission to the North Pole, gathering radioactive air samples from a Soviet nuclear test. Dazzled by tbe aurora boreahs, he'd wandered off course, ending up over the Soviet Union on the most perilous day of the Cold War.

air-defense tracking network. But there was little they could do with this information: The ability to "read the mail" of Russian air defenses was a closely guarded Cold War secret. Pentagon records show that Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was not informed about tbe missing U-2 until 1:41 p.m., 101 minutes after Maultsby first penetrated Soviet airspace. He briefed President Jobn E Kennedy by phone four minutes later. "There's always some sonofabitch who doesn't get the word," was Kennedy's frustrated response. At 2:03 p.m. came news that another U-2, piloted by Major Rudolf Anderson Jr., was missing while on an intelligencegathering mission over eastern Cuba. Evidence soon emerged it had been shot down by a Russian surface-to-air missile near the town of Banes. Anderson was presumed dead. Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called the Cuban Missile Crisis "the most dangerous moment in human history." Scholars and politicians agree that for several days the world was the closest it has ever come to nuclear Armageddon. But the nature of the risks confronting Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev have been widely mis-

THE END WAS NEAR NEW INFORMATION ABOUT THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS SHOWS JUST HOW CLOSE WE CAME TO NUCLEAR ARMAGEDDON BY MICHAEL DOBBS He was completely unaware the Soviets had scrambled MiG figbters to intercept him, and not until he heard balalaika music over bis radio did he finally figure out where he was. A former member of tbe Air Force's Tbunderbirds fligbtdemonstration team, Maultsby bad enough fuel in his tank for nine hours and 40 minutes of flight. That was sufficient for a 4,000-mile round trip between Fairbanks' Eielson Air Force Base and tbe Nortb Pole, but not enough for a 1,000-mile detour over Siberia. At 1:28 p.m. Washington time, Maultsby shut down his single Pratt & Whitney J57 engine and entrusted his fate to his U-2's extraordinary gliding capabilities. The Air Force's Alaskan Air Command sent up two F-102 figbters to guide bim back across tbe Bering Strait and prevent any penetration of American airspace by the Russian MiGs. Because of the heightened alert, the F-102s were armed with nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles, sufficient firepower to destroy an entire fleet of incoming Soviet bombers. On the ground, SAC commanders were frantically trying to retrieve their wayward reconnaissance plane. They knew Maultsby's location, as they had tapped into the Soviet

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MILITARY HISTORY

understood. Eor decades, the incident was taught in war colleges and graduate schools as a case study in the art of "crisis management." A young American president went "eyeball to eyeball" with a Russian chairman and forced him to back down through a skillful blend of diplomacy and force. Accorditig to Scblesinger, Kennedy "dazzled the world" through "a combination of toughness and restraint, of will, nerve and wisdom, so brilliantly controlled, so matchlessly calibrated." Tbanks to newly opened archives and interviews with key participants in the United States, Russia and Cuha, it is now possible to separate the mytb from the reality. The real risks of war in October 1962 arose not from the "eyeball-toeyeball" confrontation between Kennedy and Khrushchev, but from "sonofabitcb" moments exemphfied by Maultsby and his wandering U-2. The pampered son of the Boston millionaire and the scion of Russian peasants had more in cominon than they imagined. Having experienced World War II, both were horrified hy the prospect of a nuclear apocalypse. But neither leader was fully in command of his own mihtary machine. As the crisis lurched to a climax on Black Saturday, events

Photographed from a low-flying U.S. Navy patrol aircraft in November 1962, the Soviet freighter Anosov carries tarpaulin-shrouded ballistic missiles on her fore and aft decks.

threatened to spin out of control. Unable to effectively communicate with each other, the two leaders struggled to rein in the chaotic forces of history they themselves had unleashed.

T

he countdown to Armageddon began on October 16, when Kennedy learned that Khrushchev had broken his promise not to deploy "offensive weapons" in Cuba—a U-2, piloted by Major Richard Heyser, had flown over the island two days earlier and taken photographs of intermediate-range Soviet missiles near the town of San Cristóbal. Kennedy branded the mercurial Russian leader "an immoral gangster," but the Americati presi-

Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and American President John F. Kennedy share a light moment after a meeting at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, Austria, in June 1961. Just over a year later, the men, both veterans of World War II, would bring the world to the brink of all-out nuclear war.

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dent bore some responsibility for bringing about the crisis. His bellicose, but ultimately ineffective, attempts to get rid of Castro had provoked Khrushchev into taking drastic action to "save socialism" in Cuba. Kennedy imposed a military quarantine on the island and demanded the Soviets withdraw their missiles. By October 27—tbe 12th day of the crisis—the two superpowers were on the brink of war. The CIA reported that morning that five of the six Soviet R-12 missile sites were "fully operational." All that remained was for the warheads to be mated to the missiles. Time was obviously running out. The U.S.Joint Chiefs of Staff presented the president with a formal recommendation to bomb tbe Soviet missile sites.

MLITA»V HISTORY

A full-scale invasion of the island would follow within seven days. Marine units and the Army's 1st Annored Division would hit the beaches east and west of Havana, along a 40-mile front, in an operation modeled after the ]uno 1Q44 D-Day landings in France. It is impossible to tell what would have happened had Kennedy accepted the advice of Air Force General Curtis LeMay and the other joint chiefs. But several things are certain. The risks of a nuclear conflagration were extraordinarily high. And the full scope of the danger was not understood in Washington, Moscow or Havana. None of the main protagonists—Kennedy, Khrushchev or Castro— had tnore than a very limited knowledge of events unfolding on a global battlefield that stretched from the Florida Straits to the Bering Sea. In sotne ways. World War III had already begun—aircraft were taking fire, missiles were being readied for launch and warships were forcing potentially hostile subtnarines to surface. As Black Sattirday dawned, Castro wrote Moscow of his conviction that an American attack on the island was "almost inevitable" and would take place in the next 24 to 72 hours. Unbeknownst to Kennedy, the Cuban leader had visited the Soviet embassy in Havana at 3 a.m. and petined an anguished telegram to Kbrushchev. If the "itnperialists" invaded Cuba, Castro declared, the Soviet Union should undertake a pre-emptive nuclear strike on the United States. In the meantime, he ordered his anti-aircraft defenses to begin firing on low-flying American reconnaissance planes. Castro declared that he and his comrades were "ready to die in the defense of our country" rather than submit to a Yanqui occupation. The Soviet cotnmander in Cuba, General Issa Pliyev, was also preparing for war. On his orders, a convoy of trucks carrying nuclear warheads moved out of the central storage depot at Bejucal, south of Havana, around midnight. By early afternoon, the convoy had reached the Sagua la Grande missile site in central Cuba, tnaking it possible for the Soviets to lob eight 1-megaton missiles at the United States. Pliyev also ordered the arming of shorter-range tactical nuclear missiles to counter a U.S. invasion of Cuba. By àawn a battery of cruise missiles tipped witb 14-kiloton warheads had targeted the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay from an advance position just 15 miles away. Kennedy was blissfully unaware of the nature of the threat facing U.S. forces poised to invade Cuba. Oti October 23, the CIA estimated that the Soviets had between 8,000 and 10,000 military "advisers" in Cuba, up from an earlier estimate of 4,000 to 5,000. We now know that the actual Soviet troop strength on Black Saturday was 42,822, a figure that included heavily armed combat units. Furthermore, these troops were equipped with tactical nuclear weapons intended to hurl an invading force back into the sea. McNamara was stunned to learn, three decades later, that the Soviets had 98 tactical nukes in Cuba that Atnerican intelligence knew nothing about.

U.S. reconnaissance aircraft, flying at high speed and often at low altitude, took thousands of images over Cuba, including, left, missile equipment at the port of Mariel; right, Soviet 11-28 jet bombers at San Julian Airfield; and, below, a medium-range ballistic missile base.

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BLACK SATURDAY. HOUR BY HOUR SATURDAY OCT. 271962 • 12:38 a.m. Soviet SAM missile sites on Cuba activated, according to transmissions intercepted by USS Oxford. • 3 a.m. Fidel Castro visits Soviet embassy in Havana, wires Moscow urging Khrushchev to use nuclear missiles against U.S. if Cuba is invaded. • 4 a.m. U-2 piloted by Captain Charles W. Maultsby takes off from Eielson AFB en route to North Pole to monitor Soviet nuclear tests. • 5 a.m. Soviet nuclear cruise missiles arrive at launch position. 15 miles from Guantanamo naval base. • 6:45 a.m. U.S. Navy tracks Soviet freighter Grozny en route to Cuba. • 9:09 a.m. U-2 piloted by Major Rudolf Anderson takes off for mission over eastern Cuba. • 10:12 a.m. Anderson enters Cuban air space. • 10:18 a.m. Radio Moscow announces Khrushchev offer to withdraw missiles from Cuba in return for withdrawal of U.S. missiles in Turkey.

• 12:44 p.m. Soviet MiG fighters attempt to intercept Maultsby. • 1:28 p.m. Maultsby runs out of fuel. • 1:41 p.m. SAC informs Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that U-2 is missing off Alaska. • 1:45 p.m. McNamara informs Kennedy of missing U-2. • 2:03 p.m. McNamara informed that U-2 is missing over Cuba. • 2:25 p.m. Maultsby lands at Kotzebue. Alaska. • 3:02 p.m. Cuban radio announces that U.S. aircraft overflying Cuba will be fired upon. • 4:28 p.m. Cuban antiaircraft guns fire on Navy reconnaissance planes near San Cristobal. • 5:59 p.m. Navy drops practice depth charges on nuclear-armed Soviet submarine B-59. • 8:05 p.m. Robert Kennedy meets with Soviet ambassador Dobrynin. offers to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey "within four to five months" of Soviet puliout from Cuba.

• 11:19 a.m. Anderson is shot down, shortly after overflying Soviet missile positions near Guantanamo.

• 9:52 p.m. ß-59 surfaces without a fight.

• 11:30 a.m. Nuclear warheads arrive at Soviet missile base at Sagua la Grande in central Cuba after overnight journey from Bejucal.

• 2 a.m. Khrushchev meets with Communist Party presidium; decides to withdraw Soviet missiles from Cuba.

• U:59 a.m. Maultsby's Ü-2 enters Soviet air space as a result of navigational error.

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SUNDAY OCTOBER 28

• 9 a.m. Radio Moscow announces withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba. (All times Eastern;

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Based on reconnaissance photographs, communications intercepts and other sources, U.S. intelligence analysts produced the above map of Soviet installations in Cuba, including the contested missile sites.

MILrTARY HISTORY

No one can know for sure whether the Soviets would have actually used these weapons in the event of an American invasion of Cuha. In a cahle to Pliyev, Khrushchev had asserted his sole decision-making authority over the firing of nuclear weapons, both strategic and tactical. But communications between Moscow and Havana were sporadic at best, and the missiles lacked electronic locks or codes to prevent their unauthorized use. The weapons were typically under the control of a captain or a major. It is quite conceivable that a mid-level Soviet officer might have fired a nuclear weapon in self-defense had tlic Americans landed. "You have to understand the psychology of the military person," said Colonel-General Viktor Yesin, a former chief of staff of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces, when confronted with precisely this scenario. "If you are being attacked, why shouldn't you reciprocate?" As a young lieutenant in October 1962, Yesin was responsible for preparing the missiles at Sagua la Grande for the final countdown. There is at least one documented case of a Soviet officer contemplating the unauthorized use of tactical nuclear weapons on Black Saturday Valentin Savitsky, captain of the Soviet submarine B-59, considered firing his 10-kiloton nuclear torpedo at the destroyer USS Beale as the latter attempted to force B-59 to the surface by dropping practice depth charges. Savitsky could not communicate with Moscow and had no idea if war had broken out while he was submerged. "We're going to blast them now!" he yelled. "We will die, but we will sink them all!" Fortunately for posterity, his fellow officers calmed him down. The humiliated Savitsky surfaced his vessel at 9:52 p.m.

T

he unauthorized firing of nuclear weapons was only one ol several dangers the world faced at the peak of the Guban Missile Crisis. The very act of ordering armies, missiles and nuclear-armed bombers to hair-trigger states of readiness created its own risks, which increased exponentially as the crisis progressed. Mishaps, accidents and near misses occurred on all sides. A U.S. F-106 carrying a nuclear warhead crash-landed in Terre Haute, Ind. A guard at an Air Force base in Duluili, Minn., mistook a fence-climbing bear for a Soviet saboteur, triggering an alarm to scramble an interceptor squadron in Wisconsin. A truck in the Soviet cruise missile convoy moving toward Guantanamo fell into a ravine in the middle of the night, convincing others in the convoy they were under attack. American air-defense radars picked up evidence of a missile launch in the Gulf of Mexico that was later traced to a computer glitch. Mistakes and miscalculations go hand in hand with war. Some have far-reaching consequences, leading to the pointless squandering of blood and treasure, but they are unlikely to cause the end of civilization. Kennedy understood that a nuclear war is different from a conventional war. There is no room for error. A "limited nuclear war" is a contradiction in terms.

As the missile crisis deepened, U.S. forces at Guantanamo Bay on Cuba's southeast coast went on high alert.

As Maultsby glided across the skies of eastern Russia, a debate raged in the White House over how to respond to a new message from Khrushchev, delivered over Radio Moscow. The Soviet leader had offered Kennedy a deal: The Soviet Union would withdraw its nuclear missiles from Cuba if the United States agreed to remove its analogous missiles from Turkey Advisers urged the president to reject Khrushchev's offer, arguing that acceptance would destroy NATO, compromise the American negotiating position and confuse public opinion. Kennedy remained open to the proffered deal. "How else are we gonna get those missiles out of there?" he asked.

K

ennedy's decisions on Black Saturday were shaped by a lifetime of political and military experience, beginning with his service as a World War 11 U.S. Navy torpedo boat commander in the Pacific. One lesson he learned from World War II was that "the military always screws up." Another was that "the people deciding the whys and wherefores" had better be able to explain why they were sending young men into battle in clear and simple terms. Otherwise, Kennedy noted in a private letter, "the whole thing will turn to ashes, and we will face great trouble in the years to come." He was also influenced by historian Barbara Tuchman's 1962 book The Guns of August, which described how the great powers had blundered into World War I without understanding why. Kennedy did not want the survivors of a nuclear war to ask each other, "How did it all happen?"

MILITARY HISTORY

Bypassing his executive committee, or FxComm, the president sent his brother. Attorney General Robert F Kennedy, to meet Soviet Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Dobrynin at 8:05 p.m. on Black Saturday. "There's very little time left," the younger Kentiedy warned Dobt"ynin. "Events are moving too quickly." If the Soviet government dismantled its missile bases in Cuba, the United States would end the Cuba quarantine and promise not to invade the island. "What about Turkey?" Dobrynin asked. Tbe attorney general told the ambassador that the president was willing to withdraw the Ainerican Jupiter missiles from Turkey "within four to five tnonths" but added that the U.S. government would not make any public commitment to do so—that part of the deal would have to remain secret. Although Bobby Kennedy did not set a deadline for a response from Khntshchev, he warned that "we're going to have to make certain decisions within the next 12, or possibly 24, hours.... If the Cubans shoot at our planes, we're goitig to shoot back." Like John Kennedy, Khrushchev had come to understand the liinits of crisis management. At 9 a.m. on October 28— the 13th day of the crisis—the Soviet premier broadcast another message over Radio Moscow, announcing the dismantling of the Cuban missile sites. He also expressed his concern about the overflight of the Chukot Peninsula by Maultsby's U-2. "What is this—a provocation?" he asked Kennedy. "One of your planes violates our frontier during this anxious time we are both experiencing, when everything has been put into combat readiness. Is it not a fact that an intruding American plane could be easily taken for a nuclear bomber, which might push us to a fateful step?"

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iting national-security considerations, the U.S. Air Force has yet to release a single document on Maultsby's adventures. In the book One Minute to Midnight, this author was able to piece together his story from a family memoir, interviews with his fellow U-2 pilots and scraps of information discovered in other government archives. After switching off his engine, Maultsby glided for 45 minutes across the Bering Sea and was eventually picked up by the American F-102s. Maultsby performed a dead-stick landing on an ice airstrip near Kotzebue, on the westernmost tip of Alaska. Numbed from his 10 hour 25 minute ordeal, he had to be lifted out of

Khrushchev's concession triggered the removal of most Soviet military hardware from Cuba. Top, Kasimov'is outbound with il-28 bomber fuselages. Above, USS Vesole escorts the missile-bearing Polzunov. the cockpit like "a rag doll." (Charles Maultsby died of cancer in 1998.) The "sonofabitch wbo never got the word" was fortunate to survive that day the White House called Black Saturday. So was the rest of humanity. (^ Eor further reading, Michael Dobbs recommends his own One Minute to Midnight (Knopf 2008).

ATTHE 1780 BATTLE OF KINGS MOUNTAIN, \ FORCE OF BACKWOODS • HUNTERS KNOWN AS THE OVERMOUNTAIN MEN THRASHED THE LOYALISTS, / ALTERING THE DESTINY gFTHE SOUTHERN STATES íñTTHOMAS B.ALLEN

MILITARY HISTCMIY

Struck by a Rehel rifle volley, British Major Patrick Ferguson falls from his mount during the battle. A talented infantry leader who recruited and trained Southern Tory militias, he considered the Rebels "mongrels" and "barbarians."

T

o those living beyond the Appalachian Mountains, the American Revolution was a faraway war that had hegun in the villages of New England and concerned places like New York and Philadelphia. Most of the "overmountain people," as they were called, descended from immigrants who had come not from England but from a vast Irish territory known as the Ulster Plantation. These ScotchIrish had defied King George Ill's 1763 proclamation that prohibited private settlements west of the mountains. They claimed the forbidden wilderness for their own, felling trees to clear the land for small farms, building dirt-floor log cabins, growing what they needed and living as they pleased—a people apart.

Their "low, lazy, sluttish, heathenish, hellish life" shocked and opportunities and expected them to make the most of one Anglican missionary sent over the mountains in 1766 those endowments." to convert them. He had particular difficulty averting his By the spring of 1780, the Revolution was no longer eyes from the "young women," who had "a most uncommon remote. The British army had invaded the South in a campractice, which I cannot break tbem of. They draw their shift paign aimed at splitting the colonies and forcing an end as tight as possible to tbe body and pin it close to shew [sic] to the war. The Southern strategy was based on the asthe roundness of their breasts and slender waists (for they are sumption that local Tories—or Loyalists, as they called generally finely shaped) and draw their petticoat close to themselves—^would fight alongside British troops and help their hips to shew the fineness of their limbs." restore royal rule. The ogling missionary was witnessing a new American Never in the history of British North America had so breed: People who had not migrated from England, people much blood been shed as was spilled in the civil war that to whom Scotland was a folk memory, a place few of them raged within the Revolution. Continental Army Maj. Gen. had even seen. And, as Presbyterians, they had eschewed Nathanael Greene, commander of Rebel forces in tbe South, the hierarchal structure of the Anglican Church in favor of wrote a fellow officer that "the Whigs and Tories pursue each the democracy of the meetinghouse. As a other with the most relent [less] fury, killNorth Carolina minister—and Patriot— Near the border between North and ing and destroying each other wherever explained Presbyterian beliefs: "Tbe Cre- South Carolina, Kings Mountain is they meet.. .plundering one another" and ator bad long ago implanted into man's a rocky ridge rising 150 feet above cotnmitting "private murders." nature a capacity for civic responsibility. dense woodland. Attacking Rebel Charleston and large areas of the CarohGod had taught men to consider them- forces first surrounded Ferguson's nas fell to the king's troops. A British officer selves His stewards, had given them talents position, then ultimately overran it. boasted of his desire, soon fulfilled, to "rent

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MILITARY HISTORY

The Rebel force that captured Kings Mountain and decimated Ferguson's Tory militia included fighters from North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and what is now Tennessee. Armed with long-barreled rifles, they kept up a withering and highly accurate fire as Éarmed up the steep slopes.

[sic] a stripe and star from the rebel flag" when Georgia again became a royal colony. By September 1780, the Continental Army helded no large concentration of troops anywhere in the South. The king's forces and their Tory friends were snug in the region, their flanks covered by the sea to the east and the mountain barrier to the west. Timid Rebels suggested the time had come to simply let all three of those states revert to colony stattas under their occupiers. In late September, Lt. Gen. Lord Charles Cornwallis decided to expand Britain's control of the South by leading his army through North Carolina and into Virginia. He ordered Major Patrick Ferguson and the American

to bring down above five of his majesties enemys [sic] in that time.") Bom in Scotland in 1744, Ferguson had served as a soldier since age 17. At the September 11, 1777, Battle of Brandywine, he led a rifle company whose men used the weapon he invented. A Patriot musket ball shattered Ferguson's right elbow that day, and he was never again able to bend that arm. He returned to duty in May 1778 and taught himself to shoot, fence and wield a saber with his left arm.

F

ollowing Cornwallis' practice, Ferguson had been pressuring Carolina Rebels to sign loyalty oaths and receive pardons, as about

Ferguson Rifle

Major Patrick Ferguson had developed and patented an innovative breechloading rifle-seen here with the trigger guard rotated forward to open the breech-but his Tory militiamen at Kings Mountain were equipped with far iess accurate muskets.

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Volunteers, a Tory militia, to protect the British western flank. Cornwallis had great confidence in Ferguson, who was in charge of recruiting and training the thousands of Southern Tories signing up to fight for the king. A hard-driving infantry tactician, Ferguson was, in the words of one Tory subordinate, "well informed in the art of war." He produced well-trained militiamen, teaching recruits to follow signals from his silver whistle, so they could understand his orders even when terrain or the "fog of war" obscured him from view. The British officer was the inventor of the Ferguson breechloading rifle, which could fire some five shots a minute. (While demonstrating his rifle before King George, Ferguson joked that while he could fire seven random shots a minute, "1 could not undertake

1 MILITARY HISTORY

1,400 men had done in Augusta, Ga. But so many overmountain men had refused to sign the oaths that an angry Ferguson sent a paroled Whig prisoner into the mountains carrying a warning: If the Rebels "did not desist from their opposition to the British arms," he would "march his army over the mountains, hang their leaders and lay their country waste with fire and sword." The prisoner brought the warning to a Rebel militia colonel in a part of North Carolina that is now Tennessee. Enraged by the threat, the officer immediately met with a neighboring Rebel leader. They agreed there was only one way to respond to the British threat: muster as many men as possible and strike first at Ferguson. A third militia leader from the Virginia backwoods soon appeared, bringing his men.

On September 25, the militia leaders—includitig colonels Isaac Shelby, Samuel Phillips, John Sevier, William Campbell, Arthur Campbell, Charles McDowell and Andrew Hampton— assembled their troops on the Watauga River at an outpost called Sycamore Shoals (near present-day Elizabethton, Tenn.). Presbyterian minister Samuel Doak addressed the rifle-toting irregulars frotn Virginia, Georgia and the Carolinas. "The enetny is tnarching hither to destroy your homes....Go forth, then, in the strength of your manhood to the aid of your brethren, the defense of your liberty and the protection of your homes." As the makeshift army left Sycamore Shoals, more men joined it. The force had no supply train, no authorization from the Continental Artny and no military structure, aside from the militia colonels and a handful of officers chosen en route. The tnen, most of them mounted, carried what they needed and prodded cattle along the trail for food on the hoof. More hunters than soldiers, most did not carry muskets, preferring the more accurate long-barreled, stnall-caliber American rifles. Setting off not to fight for a nation but to defend their cabins and patches of cottoti and corn, the irregulars headed south in search of Ferguson and his Tory troops. The militiamen rode or hiked a wilderness road that led across tnountains —one more than a mile high—to the eastern slopes of the Blue Ridge in North Carohna. At one point on the 330-mile journey, the army spht into two groups, again joining forces near the North Carolina-South Carolina border. Volunteers kept coming. As tbe army closed to witbin a few days of its prey, the men numbered more than 1,000. Ferguson, heading tiorth to cover Cornwallis' western flank, expected to forage on Loyalist plantations. He often found Rebels instead. At one settlement, for example, a surprised a Tory officer found "the tnost violent Rebels I ever saw, particularly the young ladies." Ferguson, aware that a ragtag army was pursuing him, played

on the fears of local Tories by issuing a proclamation warning of the imminent arrival of "the backwater men," a disparaging British term for colonists who lived beyond officially sanctioned territory. "I say," Ferguson wrote, "if you wish to be pinioned, robbed and murdered and see your wives and daughters, in four days, abused by the dregs of mankind; in short, if you wish or deserve to live and bear the name of men, grasp your arms in a moment and run to camp....If you chuse [sic] to be degraded forever and ever by a set of mongrels, say so at once and let your women tum their backs upon you and look out for real men to protect them." On October 1, Ferguson, informed by spies his pursuers were on his trail, sent a courier to Cornwallis with an urgent request for reinforcements: "I am on my march towards you by a road leading from Cherokee Ford, north of Kings Mountain. Three or four hundred good soldiers, part dragoons, would finish this business. Something must be done soon." Near the border of the Carolinas, Ferguson encamped with his 1,100 men along a rocky ridge called Kings Mountain, which rose 150 feet above its surroundings. Local bunters had cleared the ridge of trees in order to attract deer, which preferred a forest edge. (The hunters could drop a deer at 200 yards.) After settling in atop the mountain, Ferguson wrote a letter to a Tory officer and friend who had been a schoolteacher in New Jersey: "Between you and 1, there has been an inundation of barbarians, rather larger than expected." If Ferguson was worried, he did not show it. He had two women with him. One left before the shooting began.

O

n October 7, a fast-riding detachment of about 900 overmountain men, joined by other Rebels east of the mountains, located Ferguson's mountaintop encampment. They dismounted, silently surrounded the ridge and started climbing. A recent rainfall had soaked the leaf-carpeted forest floor, muffling

the militiamen's tread and keeping down any telltale dust. Knowing that, like them, the Tory troops would not be wearing uniforms, the Rebel soldiers put bits of white paper in their hats to distinguish friend from foe —Ferguson's men used pine sprigs. Charging with a yell, the Rebels formed a circle of fire as tbey climbed, pumping accurate rifle fire into the Tories, falling back briefly before the enemy's desperate bayonet cbarges, tben

'Catching sight of Ferguson silhouetted against the sky, the Rebels let loose a rifle barrage, hitting the major with at least seven bullets' ascending again as Ferguson's men retreated upslope. During the hour-long battle, Ferguson chirped on his silver whistle and rallied his men, riding his white horse from one strongpoint to another. He wore a red-checkered hunting shirt over his unifonn, making him a conspicuous target. Catching sight of him silhouetted against the sky, some Rebels let loose a rifle barrage, hitting Ferguson with at least seven bullets. Captain Abraham DePeyster, a New York Tory, took command and quickly raised a white üag. But the vengeful Rebels keptfiring,until one of their officers shouted, "Don't kill any more! It's murder!" Finally, the firing died out, and Rebel officers advanced to accept the soundly defeated Loyalists' surrender. I

The next day, local Tories came to seek their loved ones. "Their husbands, fathers, and brothers lay dead in heaps, wbile others lay wounded or dying," one Rebel wrote. More tban 200 Tories bad died outright, and no one knows how many of the 160 wounded survived. A work detail hastily buried Ferguson, reputedly wrapped in a cowhide, in a shallow grave. The Rebels, who lost 29 men, led off nearly 700 prisoners. At drumhead courts-martial, they condemned 36 of those hapless Tories lo death. They hanged nine by torchlight, three at a time, from the limb of a great oak. As tbree more awaited the noose. Rebel officers managed to stop the bloodshed. The Rebels later executed another prisoner for trying to escape. An unknown number, according to one survivor, "worn out with fatigue and not being able to keep up, were cui down and trodden to death in the mire."

K

ing's Mountain was a requiem for Tories throughout America. For the reality of the Revolution played out on that Carolina ridge: The only British national in the battle was Ferguson. Everyone else was an American, and tbose who chose to fight for King George III had chosen the losing side. General Sir Henry Clinton, commander in chief of British forces in North America, later referred to the Battle of Kings Mountain as "the first link of a chain of evils" that ended in "the total loss of America." After Ferguson's defeat, Cornwallis retreated into South Carolina. The Continental Congress called forth Nathanael Greene to lead the new Southern army, which ultimately badgered Cornwallis out of the Carolinas and into Virginia, where, at Yorktown, George Washington forged the last link. (Jl For further reading, Thomas Allen rec-

ommends: The Road to Guilford Courthouse: The American Revolution in the Carolinas, by John Buchanan, and The Southern Strategy: Britain's Conquest of South Carolina and Georgia, 1775-1780, by David K. Wilson.

The Unexpected Lv IN WORLD WAR I AFRICA, AN OBSCURE GERMAN OFFICER BECAME ONE OF THE WORLD'S BEST UNCONVENTIONAL WARRIORS BY NIGEL JONES

tartingjrom the Engare-Naiwhi, small detachments of eight to 10 men, Europeans and Askari, rode round the rear of the enemy's camps, which had been pushed up as far as the Longido, and attacked their communications. They made use of telephones we had captured at Tanga, tapping in on the English telephone lines; then they waited for large or small hostile detachments or columns of ox wagons to pass. Erom their ambush, they opened fire on the enemy at 30 yards' range, captured prisoners and booty and then disappeared again in the boundless desert. Thus, at that time, we captured rifles, ammunition

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QC LLJ

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and war materiel of all kinds.

- M y Reminiscences of East Africa, by Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck

When we think of great guerrilla leaders, the image that comes to mind is of unshaven types with burning eyes, dressed in scruffy fatigues, brandishing rifles for the news cameras. Pancho Villa, say, or even Che Guevara. The career soldier who was arguably the greatest guerrilla leader of World War II— Britain's General Orde Wingate of Burma Chindits fame—fits this irregular image. What we don't expect to see is a starchy, one-eyed, glaring German general with bristling moustache and trim uniform— a product of the hard school of Prussian

military tradition, with its emphasis on rigid discipline and conventional hierarchy. Successful guerrilla warfare, one tnight assume, demands just the opposite—flexibility, irnprovisation, individualism, low cunnitig and whatever-it-takes pragmatism. But appearances and an orthodox curriculum vita can deceive: This German general—Paul Etnil von Lettow-Vorbeck— In appearance the epitome brought all the right of a rigid, unimaginitive q u a l i t i e s t o h i s success- Prussian military officer, r

1r

'11

ful four-year guerrtlla campaign i n German

Paul von tettow-Vorbeck was

^^tually an innovative and capable guerrilla fighter.

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•

East Africa. Historian John Keegan wrote of him, "With Lawrence of Arabia, [he was] one of the few truly individualist leaders of the First World War; in duration and scale, his operations in East Africa far exceeded those of Lawrence in the desert." At the outbreak of war in August 1914 Lettow-Vorbeck, then a colonel, was already a seasoned professional soldier with two major colonial campaigns behind him. Born in 1870 in Saarlouis, Prussia, he came from a family of minor aristocrats with a strong soldiering tradition. Lettow-Vorbeck was educated at the Prussian military academies of Potsdam and Lichterfelde, outside Berlin, and commissioned a lieutenant in 1890. In 1900 Lettow-Vorbeck participated in the international military effort to relieve the American and European legations in Beijing besieged by Chinese nationalist rebels during the Boxer Rebellion. Four years later, he was among the German commanders who put down a rebellion by Herero and Namaqua tribesmen in Germanruled South-West Africa (present-day

Namibia). It was a genocidal war of gun vs. spear, and it cost Lettow-Vorbeck his left eye. In April 1914, following a spell at home commanding a marine battalion in the port of Wilhelmshaven, LettowVorbeck was appointed military commander of the Schutztruppe, the force garrisoning his nation's largest African colony, German Fast Africa (centered on present-day mainland Tanzania). Officially, Lettow-Vorbeck was subordinate to the colony's civil governor, Heinrich Schnee. Acutely conscious that his territory was surrounded by hostile Allied colonies—British East Africa, the Belgian Congo, Southern Rhodesia and Portuguese East Africa—when the war broke out, Schnee favored a lowprofile policy of non-provocation in order to preserve the colonial status quo and infrastructure. In stark contrast, Lettow-Vorbeck decided to annoy and distract the Allies as much as possible. Cut off from his embattled fatherland, he had both the will and the military muscle to ignore Schnee and make his own policy. Lettow-Vorbeck's mission, as he saw it.

was to divert Allied resources and troops from the Westem Front and tie them down in the distant backwater of Africa. • We now had two mounted companies, composed o/Askari and Europeans mixed, an organization which proved successful. They provided us with the means of sweeping the extensive desert north ofKilima Njaro with strong patrols who went out for several days at a time; they penetrated even as far as the Uganda and Magad Railways, destroyed bndges, surprised guards posted on the railways, mined ihe permanent way and carried out raids of all kinds on the land communications between the »ciilwfiy.s and the e n e m y ' s c a m p s . -My Reminiscences of East Africa

In implementing his strategy, LettowVorbeck paid scant respect to Schnee's precious infrastructure: The coloneltumed-guerrilla and his troops torched villages, demolished bridges, tore up railway tracks and chopped down telegraph poles to cut the wires—all to deny resources to the numerically superior enemy. All were classic guerrilla tactics, not, perhaps, to be expected

At the outbreak of war in 1914 Lettow-Vorbeck's force included some 2,500 Askari, most drawn from the Wahehe and Angoni tribal groups.

MILITARY HISTORY

Lettow-Vorbeck's/1s/rar/, widely regarded as the best native troops in Africa, were welt trained, disciplined, highly motivated and well paid. from a by-the-book product of a Prussian military academy. In his swift adoption of this scorched-earth policy and his defiance of Schnee, LettowVorbeck gave early notice of the qualities that would make him an effective guerrilla leader. Lettow-Vorbeck's own military resources were meager. At the outbreak of war, he had at his disposal just 260 Gertnan officers, NCOs and local volunteers and about 2,500 Germantrained African auxiliary troops known as Askari (Arabic for "soldier"). Recruited from the loeal Wahehe and Angoni tribes and paid 10 times as tnuch as native troops in British East Africa, the German Askari proved more resilient against the rigors of the climate and the ravages of disease than Eurogeans and were enduringly lpyial. Organized into 14 compatiies and traitied under harsh German discipline, Lettow-Vorbeck's Askari were widely regarded as the best native troops in Africa. They detnonstrated their abilities at the Battle of Tanga, their first major

military test. On November 2, the British cruiser HMS Eox led more than a dozen troop transports into the port city's harbor, and by the next evening some 8,000 troops of the BritishIndian Expeditionary Force B had landed unopposed at the harbor and south of the city. Lettow-Vorbeck rushed reinforcements by rail to boost the single company of Askari defending Tanga, and although outnumbered 8-to-l, they beat back the attack—aided by swarms of angry bees, which joined in the pursuit—forcing the British to withdraw to their ships. Lettow-Vorbeck lost 16 Gesrmans and 55 Askari to the invaders' 360 dead and nearly 500 wounded; Tanga remained in German hands for 20 more months. The retreating Bjitish ab^nëo^ed their equipment, handing Lettow-Vorbeck a rieb haul of much-needed military booty, including bundreds of modern rifles, 16 machine guns and 600,000 rounds of atnmunition. After beating another Anglo-Indian force at Jassin on the British East Africa

border in January 1915, Lettow-Vorbeck realized tbat, witb one-third of his officers dead or seriously wounded, he could not afford to lose any more staff. He decided to avoid further setpiece actions and switch entirely to guerrilla warfare. When he put the idea to his ofhcers, they were enthusiastically supportive. Lettow-Vorbeek evidently had the personal magnetism and charistna of the classic guerrilla leader. A fluent Swahili speaker who a4,dressed his Askari in their own tongue, he won the respect and loyalty of Germans and Africans alike. Lettow-Vorbeek next staged a series of destructive raids on British East Africa's Uganda Railway, melting away into the bush before the British could muster sufficient forces to bear against ^him. In July 1915, the guerrilla leader carried out one of his most imaginative moves when he cannibalized the 4.1inch guns of the German light cruiser SMS Königsberg. After a brief career as a commerce raider in the Indian Ocean, the warship had run out of coal and hidden in the Rufiji River Delta.

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BUKOBA

GUNS OF SMS KÖNIGSBERG

Lettow-Vorbeck turned bad luck to his military advantage in 1915, after the Royal Navy bottled up the cruiser Königsberg in the Rufiji Delta. The guerrilla leader salvaged its 4.1-inch guns and mounted them on wheels, using them to effect in key battles.

Three of SMS Königsberg's guns, sent to'protect Lake Tanganyika. One was put aboard the lake steamer Graf von Götzen.

THE ASKARI ADVANTAGE

The East African colonial powers all used native troops to supplement their forces, but only the Germanled Askari carved out a deserved reputation in combat. Why? They were disciplined, well trained and, perhaps most important, well paid.

Lettow-Vorbeek söhender^t O ABERCORN Abercorn. Nov. 23, 1918. Nov. 12.1918 Escape after firefight with King's African Rifles.

Nov. 13, 1918 Arrives at deserted town of Kasama.

FIFEO

, ^

,

November 1918 ' "^;Lettow-Vorbeck's last' ' assault takes place at' Fife. KOBA

Nov. 14,1918 LettowVorbeck informed of Armistice signing in France three days earlier.

EAST AFRICAN CAMPAIGN, 1914-18 orld War I canic to Africa's shores in summer sand reinforcements, Lettow-Vorbeck set out on a guerrilla 1914, as British warships bombarded the port campaign that would last four years and lead superior of Dar es Salaam, capital of German East Africa. Allied forces on a maddening chase across a stretch of Colonial Governor Hçiiuich Schnee had advocated neu- East Africa bigger than Texas. To pursue tljeic elusiQ^ foe, trality, but his military commander, Lt. Col. Paul Emil the British in 1916 enlisted the help of Soitfh African Jan von Lettow-Vorbeck, was determined to give the Allies Christiaan Smuts, the famed Boer gtfe/rilla,coiî)mandi-r a fight, hoping to sap their resources on the Western Front. and former enemy of the crovyn. But the Smaltçr, nioic Mustering his Schutztruppe of barely 2,700 German sol- mobile Schutztrwppi' defied all efforts to capture or condiers and native Askari troops, Leltpw-VorbfccU struck first tain it. Smuts' countryman Jacph van Deventer tpok^ip at critical railways in Iheighboring British Bast A^ica. The the chase in early 1917, tighlçning the cordon around the British tried lo flank the guerrillas in November 1914 with, '^^'guerrillas, who slipped first into Portuguese Ea8t,AlVir-a an amphibious assault-on the German'port of Tanga, byt and then into Northern Rhodesia iti search of supplies. the guerrillas and hives of angry beies'd^oveoff the l^ndíiíg The Nov. 11, 1918, Armistice beat the Allies to the punch, party, which left behind huist of its weapons, ammu/iition, atid an undefeated Lettow-Vorbeck laid down his arms clothing and supplies. With this windfall and several lliou- two weeks later, ¡(Mm ninp; to a herns welcome in Gcrnianv

W

MILITA

In March 1916 Lettow-Vorbeck uses Königsberg gun to defend Kahe.

Lettow-Vorbeck conducts a senes ',,, of raids on Taveta and the \ Uganda Railway in 1914-15. OTAVETÄ"/'""" ' " " " " " • ' - " O MOMBASA

H,,.^_^, J^.n.

KONDOA IRANGI

Battle of Kondoa Irangi (in Burungi Heights) May 7-10,1916.

Bnttle ofJassin Jan. 18-19, 1915. OTANGA ^ Battle of Tmga ("Battle of the Bees") Nov. Sh5. 1914.

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„iii.i.u.M.o DAR ES SALAAM Captured by Allies September 1916.

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KIBATA

Dec. 5-21,1916

, SMS Königsberg, iding in the Rufiji Delta, scuttled after attacks from the British Royal Navy. The ship's ten I I inch guns are salvaged ¡ot use on land.

LI WALE O NYANGAO

Battle of Mahiwa Germans defeat MAHIWA British troops Oct. 15-18, 1917. NGOMANO

Germans engag Allied troops Nyangâi.O'bOt withdraw wa to prepare for a counterattack the following day.

Battle ofjiigefnano ans defeat Portuguese tfoops • Nov. 25,1917.

O NAMIRRUE

NUMARROEO

• DISTANCES:

Dar es.Salaam to KIgoma: 677 mlles/1.089km Dar es Salaam to Quelimane: 781 miles/1.2S7l
. In July 1918 Lette Vorbeck captures an ammunition dump at Namacurra and a fort at Quelimane, obtaining quinine and ammunition.

22,1918

ONAMACURRAÍ OQUELIMANE

The Royal Navy ships HMS Severn and HMS Mersey trapped and shelled the German light cruiser SMS Königsberg, above, in the shallow Rufiji River Delta.

There the shallow-draft Royal Navy monitors HMS Severn and HMS Mersey trapped, blockaded and ultimately bombarded Königsberg. Before scuttling his ship on July 11, Kônigsberg's captain. Max Looff, in an astonishing feat of engineering, ingenuity and sheer grit, transferred his ship's big guns to land and transported tbem to Lettow-Vorbeck. Directing tbe operation was Franz Kohl, in peacetime a landlubbing Bavarian gunner With the salvaged cannon mounted on wheels, Lettow-Vorbeck fielded the heaviest artillery in Africa. Determined to put his newly acquired heavy weapons to use, LettowVorbeck deployed two of the makeshift field pieces to protect Lukuga, the main port city on Lake Tanganyika. Germany still controlled most of the vast lake, which was also bordered by Britisb East Africa. Lettow-Vorbeck put a tbird gun aboard the lake steamer Graf von Götzen and sent others to

MILITARY HISTORY

defend Dar es Salaam, where they fell into Allied hands after the capture of the colony's seaside capital in September 1916. Lettow-Vorbeck used yet another gun when attacked at Kahe in March 1916. After a fiveday hattle, in his usual "tip and run" fashion (which won him the nickname "Lettow-Fallback" among his grudgingly impressed Allied opponents) the German commander withdrew in good order, leaving behind the disabled gun. Tbe Germans sometimes used the salvaged naval cannon offensively— to bombard South African lines from commanding positions in the Burungi Heights in May 1916, for example. Lettow-Vorbeck took the guns with him when he invaded Portuguese East Africa in fall 1917, so terrifying defenders of the town of Nangade with the bombardment that they turned tail and fled. LettowVorbeck was compelled to abandon

his last two guns that Noveinber at Chiwata when threatened with encirclement. He again managed to elude his pursuers. • Owing to the numerical superiority of the enemy in the actions which now took place. Otto's detachment frequently found itself exposed to an attack on ils front while being enveloped on both ßanks. The enemy did not always succeed in timing these movements correctly. At Mpapua the frontal attack got too close to our line and suffered severely; and the flank attack, even when directed on (he rear of our positions, produced no ciccisivc effect. The short range of visibility always enabled its either to avoid the danger or, if the opportunity was favorable, to attack the troops outflanking us in detail. In any event, these outflanking tactics of the enemy, when followed, as in this case, in extraordinarily thick bush and among numerous rocks, demanded great exertions and used up his strength.

-My Réminiscences of East Africa

Artillery was not all Königsberg provided. The scuttled vessel yielded hundreds of sorely needed rifles, and Looff and his 180 surviving crewmen made a useful European addition to LettowVorbeck's depleted army, which was then in the process of recruiting and training some 14,000 newAsfeari. Ihe additional troops would prove vital, for the British—stung as much by Lettow-Vorbecks bold attacks as by the bees at Tanga—were determined to bring the German-led guerrilla army to heel. Their solution to the intrepid German commander's humiliation of the British Empire was to use a guerrilla to catch a guerrilla. Jan Christiaan Smuts—a daring Afrikaner commando leader who had plagued the British in the 1899-1902 Boer War and then turned Loyalist—was given the task of hunting down his German guerrilla counterpart. Smut.s' strategy was to use his 45,000-man force of British, Indian and African troops in a convergent attack from several directions at once— British East Africa, Nyasaland (presentday Malawi), the Belgian Congo and Portuguese East Africa—to surround

Lettow-Vorbeck in the interior and force his surrender. But the dense bush, lakes and muggy marshes of East Africa presented challenges far different from those Smuts' Boer horsemen had encountered on the wide-open South African veldt. Keeping his diverse army intact and supplied from his distant headquarters at Mombasa posed huge logistical problems for Smuts, and the campaign came to resemble a struggle between an elephant and a gadfly, with a cautious Smuts continually trying to outflank and trap Lettow-Vorbeck. Operating on familiar ground and living off the land, the more maneuverable Germans kept skipping maddeningly out of reach. After one brief visit to the forward theater, a dispirited Smuts remarked "What a dismal prospect there is in front of me." Real flies—of the Tsetse variety— proved an even deadlier foe for the British than the Germans, and Smuts lost to the disease-bearing insect thousands of the horses he had unwisely imported from South Africa. Thousands of his men also succumbed, not to combat

wounds but to malaria, dysentery and other tropical ailments that flared when heavy seasonal rains turned much of the region into swamps. After a year's inconclusive campaigning, LettowVorbeck remained at large, and Smuts left for London to join the Imperial War Cabinet. The German commander had proved especially skilled at turning his enemy's strengths into weaknesses. Like a lever shifting a heavy weight when applied at the right point, he had refused to hold to fixed positions or untenable territory, thus converting Smuts' superiority in numbers into a cumbersome disadvantage that slowed Allied progress. Lettow-Vorbeck's exploits had made him a hero in Germany, and he was promoted to general after his victory over a largely Nigerian force at Mahiwa in October 1917. The fight cost him more than 500 men, but he inflicted 2,700 casualties on the enemy. For reasons of pride and propaganda, if nothing else, the Allies were determined to crush the German commander and inexorably increased

Königsbergs captain transferred his blockaded ship's guns to Lettow-Vorbeck, granting the guerrilla leader the heaviest artillery in Africa.

Despite continual hardships and increasing Allied pressure, Lettow-Vorbeck's mobile and elusive guerrilla force remained unbeaten at war's end. the pressure on the beleaguered gtaerrilla army. In November 1917, in a desperate bid to escape the Allied columns inexorably closing in from all sides, Lettow-Vorbeck led his men across the Ruvuma River from German East Africa into Portuguese East Africa. The Germans—including Schnee— had now abandoned all pretence of being an intact colonial administration and had become akin to a tribe of nomads, a wandering caravan living off the land and constantly on the move. Portugal had only recently entered the war on the Allied side, and in invading these virgin lands, LettowVorbeck knew exactly what he was doing. He pillaged towns and villages, helping himself to whatever he found —including a shipload of antimalarial quinine and more weapons and ammunition than his men could carry— and was able to sustain his forces for almost a year. By September 1918, however, the jaws of the Allied trap were again closing, so once more Lettow-Vorbeck eluded his pursuers by striking out in a new and unexpected direction. Recrossing tbe Ru-

MILITARY HISTORY

vuma, he drove west into Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia), a British colony previously uninvolved in the war. On November 1, an optimistic Lettow-Vorbeck launched what proved to be his final assault, on the settlement at Fife. By now his artillery was down to an old captured Portuguese gun and a decrepit trench mortar that blew apart when fired. He met unexpectedly strong resistance from a North Rhodesian police battalion and broke off combat after a few hours. On November 12, Lettow-Vorbeck's adjutant. Captain Walter Spangenburg, leading bis advance column, seized a bridge over tbe Chambezi River and prepared to attack a rubber factory defended only by a few invalids and some convicts released from a nearby jail. Lettow-Vorbeck hitnself, pursued by the British 1/4 King's African Rifles, had vanished into the bush after a hot, four-hour firefight. On November 13, the German guerrilla commander took the town of Kasama, which the British had evacuated. The following day, a message from Lettow-Vorbeck's British opposite number, Soutb African Lt. Gen. Jacob

van Deventer, informed the German commander the Armistice had been signed in France three days earlier. The war was over. Unbeaten, LettowVorbeck proudly marcbed his men into captivity. His surviving command consisted of 30 German officers, 125 NCOs and other ranks, 1,100 Askari and some 3,500 porters, messengers and assorted camp followers. By war's end, the Allies had deployed a staggering 350,000 troops to pursue the elusive general and his tiny band. Lettow-Vorbeck had brilliantly fulfilled his goal of tying up Allied forces and resources. • Our feelings were very mixed. Personally, as I had no knowledge of the real state of affairs in Germany, I fell convinced that the conclusion of hostilities must iiave been favorable, or at least not unjavorable, to Germany....All our troops, native as well as Europeans, had always held the conviction that Germany could not be beaten in this war, and were resolved to fight on to the last....The men were well aimed, equipped and feel, and the strategic situation at the mommt Wiis more favorable than it had been for a long time.

-My Reminiscences of East Africa

In March 1919, Paul Emil von LettowVorbeck returned to a hero's welcome in a defeated and demoralized Germany He, Schnee and Looff led their surviving SchulzU'uppe in a triumphant parade through Berlin's Brandenburg Gate. Set against the grim industrialized slaughter on the Western Front, the East African campaign took on the clean lines of an old-fashioned, chivalrous sort of warfare, with LettowVorbeck achieving the distinction of being the only German general to have fought throughout the war and ended it undefeated. The reality, of course, was grimmer, for Lettow-Vorbeck possessed that other quality necessary in a successful guerrilla chief—utter, single-minded ruthlcssness. His scorched-earth methods had left German East Africa devastated and starving, leading directly and indirectly to the deaths of perhaps 1 million Africans. Even the relatively privileged porters employed to carry Lettow-Vorbeck's supplies existed on fewer tban 1,000 calories

a day and had a death rate of 20 percent. Dr. Ludwig Deppe, a physician who had campaigned with LettowVorbeck, compared the guerrilla army's progress to that of locusts: "Behind us we leave destroyed fields, ransacked magazines and, for the immediate future, starvation. We are no longer the agents of culture; our track is marked by death, plundering and evacuated villages, just like...in the Thirty Years' War." A year after his Berlin homecoming, Lettow-Vorbeck—having used his own Freikorps militia to put down a communist rising in Hamburg—took a leading role in the Kapp Putsch, an unsuccessful mifitary coup aimed at returning Germany to an authoritarian, nationalist path. He was compelled to leave the army and took to right-wing politics, later becoming a Reichstag deputy, while scornfully steering clear of the rising Nazis and rebuffing Adolf Hitler's offer to make him ambassador to Britain. LettowVorbeck lost bis two sons in World

War II, and by 1945 he had been reduced to destitution and near starvation. He was saved by none other than his admiring former foe Jan Smuts, then South Africa's prime minister, who sent the old warrior lifesaving food parcels and arranged a pension that sustained him to the end of his long life. In 1953 Lettow-Vorbeck made a sentimental journey back to the East Africa where he had won military immortality. Honored by the British who had taken over his old colony in 1918, he was able to meet the surviving Asfcari. Lettow-Vorbeck died on March 9, 1964, at the age of 93. Two Askari were among the pallbearers at his funeral, a ceremony in which Germans paid homage to that 20th century rarity in their country—a military hero they could honor with pride. (Jt For further reading, Nigel Jones recommends: My Reminiscences of East Africa, by Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck, and Tip and Run, hv Edward Paice.

Though a staunch opponent of the rising Nazi power structure, Lettow-Vorbeck often visited Wehrmacht unils in the lead-up to World War II.

i

REPORTER JOHN RICH'S NEWLY REDISCOVERED COLOR IMAGES OFFER A RARE AND FASCINATING GLIMPSE AT AN OFTEN OVERLOOKED CONFLICT

hen American print journalist John Rich set off i to cover the Korean War in 1950, he carried his * personal Nikon camera and rolls of Kodachrome film. Given that most news photographers of the period were still shooting hlack-and-white images, Richs photos provide an unusually vibrant record of the conflict from its opening days to the 1953 armistice. After the war. Rich worked in Europe and Asia for NBC, and spent 10 years covering the Vietnam War. He retired to a seaside cottage in Maine, where he still lives, and his Korea photos—long packed away—were finally published earlier this year in his book „.^^ ^^^^ ^^„^ ^^^^^^ ^, Korean War in Color: A Correspondent's Korean civilians. Here, a boy Retrospective on a Eorgotten War, dis- ^^""^^ '*°P *'*' bumed-out tribu ted by Seoul Selection. ®

remains of a Russian-built North Korean Yak-9 fighter.

Young Marines newly arrived in South Korea take a break while loading their vehicles outside Pusan in July 1950. Of the approximately 1.7 million American military personnel who served in the Korean theater, 33,739 were killed in combat and 2,835 died from other causes.

South Korean troops initially lacked the weaponry and know-how to repel North Korea's invasion. But time and combat experienceas well as massive amounts of materiel provided by the United States-ultimately enabled them to become the backbone of the UN effort.

Men of Britain's Royal Tank Regiment pose for Rich's camera in January 1951. Some 17 nations ultimately deployed combat forces or noncombatant medical personnel to Korea to aid in the UN-led war effort.

Rich's press credentials gave him unparaiieied access to senior political and military leaders. Posing above, left to right, are U.S. generáis Matthew Ridgway, Van Fleet and Marit Clark.

Whiie North Korea's Soviet-built T-34 tanks initially dominated the battlefield, UN forces soon fielded such state-of-the-art armored vehicles as the British Centurion and U.S. M46 Patton. Rich spotted this M46, beiow, of the 64th Heavy Tank Battalion in late 1950.

. / * ^

A young South Korean soldier, above, heralds the arrival of spring by adorning his helmet with flowers.

American film actress and singer Betty Hutton belts out a tune for GIs during a 1952 USO show.

MILITARY HISTQRY

Based in Tokyo before the Korean War, Rich often photographed General Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of the Allied forces in Japan. Above, MacArthur escorts Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and General Omar Bradley during a ceremony in Tokyo days before the outbreak of war in 1950.

North Korean officers, below left, arrive for the start of peace talks at Kaesong in July 1951. The war continued until July 27,1953, when the signing of armistice documents, below, by the United States, North Korea and China halted the fighting.

TRIED FOR ORDERING THE EXECUTION OF AMERICAN PRISONERS OF WAR, A GERMAN GENERAL ULTIMATELY I FACED HIS OWN JUDGMENT DAY BY FRED L BORCH c t

"Ready. A i m . F I R E ! " At that last command, a dozen American soldiers fired their rifles at a German Wehnnacht officer tied to a wooden post. On Dec. 1, 1945, General Anton Dostler, his head shrouded in a black hood as required by military regulations, died instantly His execution by firing squad in Italy was the final page in the story of a horrific war crime ordered by Dostler some 21 months earlier—the murder of 15 American soldiers who had been captured behind enemy lines. The case of United States v. Anton Dostler is unique. It is the only instance in history in which a German general officer was tried and executed for war crimes on the sole authority of the United States. It also is an illuminating example of the U.S. Army's use of a lnilitar)^ commission to prosecute war crimes in the aftermath of World War II. On the night of March 22, 1944, 15 American soldiers—two officers and 13 enlisted men—climbed into rubber dinghies from U.S. Navy PT boats that had brought them from Gorsica, paddled to the beach and waded ashore on the Italian mainland some 60 miles north of La Spezia and about 250 miles behind German lines. The men were members of Gompany D, 2677th Special Reconnaissance Battalion, a covert operations group of the Office of Strategic Services. Their mission, code-named Operation Ginny, was to destroy a tunnel on the vital rail line between La Spezia and Genoa, a line the Germans were using to supply forces fighting on the Gassino and Anzio beachhead fronts. Allied bombers had tried—but failed—to destroy the rail line. Now the plan was to have the 15 saboteurs cut the line by blowing one of its tunnels. But while stealth

MILITARY HISTORY

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was essential to mission success, and the Americans were all of Italian ancestry and had been chosen because most spoke Italian, they did not attetnpt to disguise their identities; all wore regulation Army field uniforms (including insignia), and none carried civilian clothes. On the morning of March 24 a patrol of Italian Fascist militiamen and German soldiers surprised the outnumbered Americans, who surren-

ligence) station in La Spezia, and his assistant, Oberleutant zur See Georg Sessler. The Germans tricked Ginny commander 1st Lt. Vincent Russo itito revealing the details of the American operation by telling him his fellow officer had already revealed all. In fact, no one on ihe teatn had talked. Russo realized too late he had been duped. In the meantime. Aimers had reported the Americans' capture to higher

March 26. Officers of the 135th Fortress Brigade tried twice more to reach Dostler by telephone and plead with him to rescind his execution order. They were unsuccessful. The next morning, less than 48 hours after the capture, a Wehrmacht firing squad shot the Atnericans. The Germans dumped the bodies in an unrnarked mass grave. The execution could not have been more summary: Tbe U.S. soldiers had neither been tried nor even given a hearing. Unlike the 15 Ginny team members, Dostler survived the war. Born in 1891, the professional soldier had spent most of his life in uniform. By October 1945 he was in Rome, a POW in American custody. He faced a possible deatb sentence at a military commission appointed by General Joseph T. McNarney the Army's commanding general in the Mediterranean Theater.

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An Army medical officer pins a regulation 4-inch white target to Dostier's tunic, directly over the condemned man's heart. The target and the black hood shrouding the German officer's head were both required under War Department regulations governing execution by firing squad.

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dered after a brief firefight. They were taken to La Spezia and confined near the headquarters of the Wehrmacht's 135th Fortress Brigade. The unit, commanded by Colonel Kurt Aimers, was subordinate to General Anton Dostier's 75th Army Corps. Soon after arriving in La Spezia, the captured Americans were interrogated in Fnglish by Korvettenkapitän Friedrich Klaps, commander of the small Abwehr (German military intel-

MILITARY HISTORY

headquarters. The next day, March 25, the brigade received a telegram stating. THE CAPTURED AMERtCANS WILL BE SHOT IMMEDIATELY. Dostler had signed the order. Aimers, Klaps and Sessler were shocked by the order to kill POWs. They asked Dostler to reconsider his order or at least stay the execution. The 75th Army Corps commander replied later that day: The Americans were to be shot before 7 the next morning.

he two U.S. Army prosecutors. Major EW. Roche and 1st Lt. W.T. Andress, saw the case against Dostler as simple and clear-cut: The dead Americans had been soldiers, were properly dressed as such and were on a legitimate military operation when captured. They were therefore entitled to be treated as prisoners of war, and their execution without trial violated a rule of international law at least 500 years old. The prosecutors called several witnesses, including an OSS captain who explained the nature of the Ginny team's sabotage mission. Klaps and Sessler, the two Abwehr officers who had interrogated the Americans, also took the witness stand. They confirmed the 15 men had been dressed in U.S. Army uniforms and carried military equipment. Three German soldiers also testified about attempts made by Aimers and others at the 135th Fortress Brigade to have Dostler rescind his execution order and about the execution itself. Finally, the prosecution submitted two written statements made by Dostler and the notes of an interview with him. The defense countered by saying the stealthy nature of the sabotage mis-

sion meant the OSS members were really spies rather than legitimate combatants. They added that the Ginny saboteurs were not wearing distinctive military insignia recognizable at a distance and were, therefore, improperly uniformed and thus not entitled to POW status. But the earlier testimony of the Abwehr officers directly contradicted this position. And, as the prosecution quickly pointed out, since the law of war required that even spies be given a lawful trial prior to execution, this line of defense was of little value to Dostler. As the essential facts of the case —Dostler had ordered the executions, and the Americans were dead—were not in dispute, the accused's lawyers resorted to the "defense of superior orders." They claimed that Dostler's oath of obedience to Adolf Hitler required him to obey the October 1942 Führerbefehl ("Leader Order"), which proclaimed Allied commando units to be in violation of the Geneva Convention and ordered German units encountering such groups to "exterminate them without mercy wherever they find them." Hitler's order insisted that even if commandos "appear to be soldiers in uniform," they must be killed and not be allowed to surrender. Finally, the order stated that if Allied commandos fell into German military hands "through different channels (for example, through the police in occupied territories)," they could not be kept, even temporarily. Instead, military personnel were to immediately deliver the commandos to the Sicherheitsdienst, the "security service" of the SS. Under oath, Dostler testified he had no choice but to order the execution of the members of the Ginny mission: They had been caught while carrying out a commando raid, and Dostler's oath to Hitler required hiin to obey the Führerbefehl, even if that order violated international law. The defense of superior orders was not without merit. The 1940 version of the U.S. Army field manual governing the rules of land warfare stated that an individual would not be punisbed for a war crime if that crime was

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committed under the orders of his government or higher commander. The Army had amended the manual in 1944, and at the time of Dostler's trial it stated that an individual who violated "the accepted laws and customs of war may be punished." However, it continued, "The fact that the acts complained of were done pursuant to order of a superior or government sanction may be taken into consideration in determining culpability, either by way of defense or in mitigation of punishment." The prosecution countered that the execution of POWs without trial was an egregious violation of the law of war, inexcusable by the "defense of superior orders." Roche and Andress added that Dostler's reliance on the Euhrerbefehl as a defense was misplaced: Since the Germans had not killed the Ginny saboteurs or immediately turned them over to the Sicherheitsdienst at the time of their capture, Dostler was, in fact, disobeying Hitler's order. Whether the general and his defense counsel were correctly interpreting the law was irrelevant. On Oct. 12, 1945, after a four-day trial, the military commission found Anton Dostler guilty. His sentence, in the archaic terminology of Army courts-martial, was "to be shot to death by musketry"

F

ifty days later, the Army carried out Anton Dostler's execution at a prisoner stockade in the town of Aversa, Italy. McNarney had approved the commission's sentence and denied requests from Dostler's lavk^ers that their client's life be spared. The execution closely adhered to War Department regulations, which provided clear and detailed instructions for carrying out the sentence. Those participating in the execution appreciated its historic significance; Army Signal Corps photographers and a film crew arrived to record it. The officer in charge and the 12 marksmen who had volunteered to serve on the firing squad followed a specific procedure. As required, the officer watched the firing party load

MILITARY HISTORY

Killed instantly by the firing squad's volley, Dostlera rosary still clutched in his hands-slumps against the restraining ropes. Following the medical officer's confirmation of death, a detail transported the body to the German war cemetery at Pomezia, near Rome.

its rifles, several of which received blank ammunition. Others then placed the rifles at random in a holding rack, from which each member of the detail chose a weapon. These steps ensured the riflemen would never be certain who had actually fired the fatal bullets (although an experienced shooter might know whether he had fired a blank round). Shortly after sunrise, the prisoner guard delivered Dostler to the execution party. The officer in charge then read aloud the charge, the finding and the sentence and granted the condemned a brief moment with a Roman Catholic chaplain. Things moved quickly after that: Three soldiers tied Dostler to a post with his arms behind his back, one slipped a black hood over his head and a medical officer attached a 4-inch white target over Dostler's heart. Then, with the firing party lined up some 50 feet from the post to which Dostler was secured, the officer in charge gave the command to fire. The shots rang out in unison, and Dostler slumped forward. The riflemen, still following regulation, immediately turned their backs on the German general as the medical officer went forward and officially pronounced Dostler dead.

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nton Dostler's case remains unique in history. His fate alarmed German Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, Dostler's superior commander, who almost certainly knew of the decision to execute the American prisoners and likely approved the killings. Kesselring lied about his involvement in the affair at his own trial in Venice in 1947. But his perjury underscored the deterrent effect of the Dostler military commission, as it was now clear that the execution of prisoners of war would not be tolerated, regardless of circumstances. (^ Eorfurther reading, Ered L Borch recom-

mends: Anatomy of Perjury, by Richard Raibcr, and the United Nations War Crimes Commission's Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals.

A GRAND LONG-TERM STRATEGY ALLOWED ROMAN RULERS-BOTH GOOD AND BAD-TO SHAPE THE EMPIRE'S DESTINY BY WILLIAMSON MURRAY

Why did the Western Roman Empire collapse? The question has consumed historians, clergy and philosophers since its fall in the 5th century Today, the generally accepted answer is that the empire's demise (the Eastern Roman or Byzantine—Empire lingered until 1453) s t e m m e d from multiple causes that, in combination, pushed the empire created by Augustus into irrevocable decline. But m o r e meaningful questions concern Rome's prior longevity a n d dominance. What strategic and military factors fostered the ^^^^,^^^^^^^^„i^ empire's success for more than two centuries? And what ^^H';;:^:^^^^^^^^ strategic and military changes prefaced its downfall? ^

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centuries and factored m su considerations as a standing

a great crisis broke on the Romans—one that lasted nearly

MILITARY HISTORY

army and defensible borders

While stands the Cohseum, Rome shall stand; When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls the W o r l d ' -Lord Bywn

50 years, with the empire besieged from abroad and embroiled in a series of civil wars. When historical sources reemerge at the end of that century, they suggest a radically different military, political and cultural epoch. Even extant 1st and 2nd century sources present difficulties, offering little more than an outline of overall military and strategic policies. And the authors on whom

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we must rely (e.g., Suetonius or Tacitus) were not interested in the questions that engage military historians today. Finally, the vocabulary used by ancient historians is not congruent with that used by 21st century strategic analysts. One result is a misreading of the past by those modern-day historians who argue the Romans had no concept of grand strategy. But the continuities of the period between Augustus' creation of the principate in 27 BC and the onset of the troubles in AD 235 do clearly suggest the existence of a coherent grand strategy over some 250 years. That strategy carefully measured means and ends, balanced diplomacy and military force and determined what was—and was not—feasible and defensible when adding territory to the empire. Any coherent grand strategy demands the setting of clear and attainable goals based on an accurate estimate of the means a state possesses and can mobilize. When Augustus (then known as Octavian) became sole ruler of the Roman world in 31 BC, tbe borders of Roman rule claimed little geographic coherence. In the West, the Rhine frontier provided considerable protection, but tribal societies held much of western Spain and most lands south of the Danube. The empire's

MILITARY HISTORY

frontiers extended over great distances, and in almost every quadrant Rome confronted many serious threats from external enemies. Simply put, the new political entity Augustus was creating made great political and economic sense but little military and strategic sense. Moreover, his empire was based on a subsistence economy that produced relatively small

'Aïiy co/iereni giflnd strategy deinanífs í/tc setting of clear and aílíníiflb/e ^jofl/s biisct/ on an estimate oj the means a state possesses and can mobilize' surpluses to support the civilization for which it is justly famous and the military on which its peaceful existence depended. Among the many political difficulties Augustus faced after defeating his rival Mark Antony at the 31 BC Battle of Actium was how to establisb a government in Rome tbat possessed sufficient legitimacy to prevent the rise of generals and politicians who might attempt to seize power, a threat that had marked the Republic's catastrophic course over its final half centur)'. Augustus' answer was to create a sort of disguised monarchy, the principate, which kept the form of the republic but placed extraordinary powers and control of Rome's army in the hands of one man. Augustus faced two other major challenges: The first was to downsize the massive military forces he and Antony had inherited from the civil wars and used in their fight for control of the empire. The second concerned the establisbment of defensible frontiers for the Roman world. The problems were interrelated, as the army would need sufficient strength to keep the barbarians out of the Mediterranean and would need to mount that defense without breaking the empire economically How Augustus met those two challenges suggests a great deal about his

grand strategy. On the military side, he reduced the amiy to an all-professional force of 28 legions that came under his direct control through officers he appointed. In addition, the Romans established a number of auxiliary formations, which comprised about the same number of soldiers. Altogether, Augustus could field approximately 300,000 soldiers to defend the entire Mediterranean region—an astonishingly small number considering the territories and enemies involved.

R

ome possessed history's first true professional army, a tactically proficient force that sustained its excellence through a severe regimen of training and discipline that remained in place into the 3rd century. The Roman army was also proficient at building road networks that buttressed frontier defenses and the empire's grand strategy by allowing the rapid transfer of units from one distant region to another. The roads also enabled the resupply of the legions and auxiliary cohorts spread across the frontier's widely separated fortresses and guard posts. Similarly, the legions constructed great defensive lines— such as Hadrian's Wall in northern Britain—as bases from which they could strike at enemies beyond the Roman equivalent of the Irish "pale." The engineering sophistication of both roads and fortifications underscore the deep appreciation Roman strategists had for maximizing both the offensive and defensive potential of their military instrument. Rome's military superiority over its neighbors lasted well over two centuries. The Romans bested their enemies in battle after battle, thanks to their systematic, coherent approach to training and tactical doctrine. They won because their troops were a disciplined army rather than an armed mob, and when the legions and auxiliaries fought together, the whole was truly greater than the sum of its parts. With his 28 legions, Augustus waged a series of wars to achieve defensible frontiers. Those wars brougbt tbe tribes of northwestern Spain, Switzerland

and the Balkans under Roman control. The latter success, though, led to a massive revolt of the Danubian tribes in AD 6, which forced Augustus to engage 10 legions under his stepson Tiberius (who would eventually succeed him as emperor). The strain of the Balkan wars on the empire's manpower and economic resources was such that Augustus had to draft slaves to keep Tiberius' legions up to combat strength. In AD 9 disaster struck in the new province of Germania, when rebels led by Arminius ambushed the Roman governor, Publius Quinctilius Varus, and his three legions in the Teutoburg Forest and slaughtered them almost to the last man. While historians have argued that Varus' defeat pushed the Roman frontier from the Elbe River back to the Rhine, the Romans had other reasons for pulling back to the Rhine. Given the subsistence nature of their economy and the difficulties involved in transporting the grain and other supplies on which frontier legions depended, it made greater logistic sense to maintain bases along the Rhine, closer to the food-producing regions of Gaul. Moreover, the Germany of AD 9 was simply incapable of providing the foodstuffs a Roman army deployed along the Elbe would have required. Over the next 250 years the Romans managed their northern frontiers with a combination of diplomacy, manipulation and punishing military force when necessary. Rome's approach to its frontier troubles is vividly illustrated by the case of Dacia. During the reign of Domitian (81-96), the Dacian leader Decebalus united the tribes in what today is Transylvania. The Romans saw him as a serious threat to their provinces south of the Danube, and ihe Dacian king proved ihem correct by invading Moesia and causing considerable damage. The Romans soon drove the Dacians from the south bank of the Danube and by late 88 had defeated Decebalus. The legions were on the brink of besieging his capital when troubles on the Rhine frontier compelled Domitian to make peace and present the Dacians a sizeable subsidy.

Trajan's (r. 98-117) accession as emperor two years after Domitian's assassination in 96 quickly led to a reconsideration of Roman policy toward Decebalus. The soldier-emperor brought together forces from throughout the empire and in 101 led four legions across the Danube. The Dacian Wars proved successful but expensive. By the second war, Trajan had concentrated parts or all of nine legions to break the power of the Dacians and create a new province across the Danube. In this case, the annexation made economic sense, as gold and silver mines in Dacia more than paid for the expenses of defending the province. The Romans also sent a clear political message to their opponents on the frontiers: "Annoy us enough and we will come and entirely destroy you and your homes." (Six decades and three emperors later, Marcus Aurelius (r. 161-180) similarly waged systematic campaigns against the Marcomanni and Quadi in central Germany after those tribes had broken into the empire and reached northern Italy.) Following his victories over the Dacians, Trajan waged a great campaign against the Parthians in the east and turned the Mesopotamian river valley into a province. That efîort made little

I

n addition to engaging foreign enemies, the Roman army served another major strategic purpose —maintaining the empire's internal stability. While most legions were stationed on the frontiers, some were kept close to major strategic points within the empire. Legionaries guarded Egypt, for instance, as it was a crucial source of Rome's food supply Other legions in Syria not only watched the borderlands between the Roman and Parthian Empires, they were ideally placed to intervene in Judea, should that province's restless population rebel. Rebellions did flare up throughout the first two centuries of the empire's existence, but usually only in areas that had recently been added and were least assimilated to Greco-Roman civilization. The most dangerous rebellions arose in Judea. The first, in 66-70, prompted a campaign to re-establish Roman authority province-^y}de and led to the eventual destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by Vespasian (r. 69-79) and Titus (r. 79-81). The second rebellion, of BarKokhba in 132-136, occasioned an even harsher Roman response— a contributing factor in the great Jewish diaspora that continued through the 20th century. The commander of the legions and auxiliaries that destroyed the Jewish

'Over the next 250 years the Romans managed their northern frontiers with a combination of diplomacy, manipulation nd punishing militaiy )rce when necessary'

t strategic sense, however, as the distances were simply too great. Trajan's successor, Hadrian (r. 117-138), pulled back to the traditional border between Rome and Parthia along the eastern borders of modern-day Syria and Turkey. Again, a strategic decision rested on what made logistic and political sense.

rebels. General Sextus Julius Severus, was recalled from Britain to take military command in Judea (soon to be renamed "Palestine" by Hadrian). Significantly, Hadrian had had no qualms about appointing the highly competent Severus to command Roman forces in Britain at one end of the empire and then transferring him

Whil|discipline, training and profœslonalism had long enabled file legions to crush Rome's enemies -such as the barbarian falling to a legionary in this marble relief/ economic and political changes ./ in the first half of the 3rd century degraded the civil-military relations that had stabilized the empire..

across the breadth of the empire to confront the crisis in Judea—an indication that at least during this period, the emperors could depend on their generals' fidelity Augustan calculations of the force structure required for the empire's defense remained accurate largely because the size of the Roman army remained stable for two centuries. By the reign of Claudius (r. 41-54), the army was back to a force of 28 legions, the same number Augustus had established, with three of the legions guarding the new province of Britannia, which Claudius had conquered. By the end of the reign of Septimius Severus in the early 3rd century, the army had stabilized at 33 legions. That force stability, despite a number of major wars of conquest, suggests Rome's rulers had carefully calculated the economic burden the empire could bear in supporting its defense establishment. That affirms a grand strategy that had carefully weighed the connection between ends (the protection of the frontiers) and means (the available resources to support the army). While the Roman world was not a pleasant place for the great majority of its people—life, in the words of the 17th century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, was "brutal, nasty and short"—the Mediterranean enjoyed two centuries of peace absent the murderous ravages that have marked human polity through the ages and which, in fact, rippled across that same world through the 20th century.

U

nfortunately for the Romans and their strategic wisdom, the world is always in flux. In the iirst half of the 3rd century, the external environment experienced major changes, while the empire iLself underwent equally significant economic and political changes. During that time, Rome's civil-military relations, which had remained stable for most of the previous 250 years, collapsed. Historians have accurately called this period the "crisis of the 3rd century." Nearly all the major developments that fed the crisis—military, civilian

and economic—remain obscured by the dearth of historical sources. Yet, historians can pinpoint some specifics through the mists of the past. During the 2nd century reign of Marcus Aurelius, soldiers returning from a campaign in the east against the Parthians apparently brought back some sort of plague. In evaluating the impact of such a development, it is important to remember how finely balanced was the empire's economy, producing only a slight food surplus. Any significant disease-driven decline in population would translate into a smaller food surplus, in turn hindering the empire's ability to meet its commitments. Its forces spread thinly

had handled the Dacians and Parthians in two impressive wars, and Marcus Aurelius had repelled the Germanic tribes that had reached into northern Italy. Similarly, in the late 2nd century BC, Gaius Marius and Lucius Cornelius Sulla had crushed the invasion of the Teutons and the Cimbri, who had just destroyed two great consular armies. The Romans had faced and handled many such invasions in the past and, as Marcus Aurelius proved, the superiority of their military system even allowed them to absorb significant military defeats. Changes on the domestic front, however, shifted the balance. The strains of supporting the military establishment

force slruciiire required for the empire's defense remained aeeurate largely because ihe size of the army remained stable for two centuries' along vast frontiers, Rome could not afford to cut military expenditures to keep the aggressive barbarians at bay. Those frontiers grew more threatening in the 3rd century. The Parthians, rarely successful against the legions, yielded during the period to the Sassanid Empire, a far more resilient and effective military state. Consequently, Rome could expect no more easy victories in the east, but rather the constant threat of invasion into the empire's richest provinces. In the west, by the beginning of the 3rd century, tribes beyond the frontier were fielding increasingly sophisticated bands of armed men. The barbarian tribes east of the Rhine and north of the Danube coalesced into larger and more aggressive groupings—perhaps emboldened by the internal troubles they perceived within the empire. Still, massed barbarians should not by themselves have represented a serious threat to Rome. After all, Trajan

from a shrinking economic base were clearly beginning to show, while the civil-military fabric at the highest levels of the empire unraveled in the early 3rd century. Generals and common soldiers alike began to question the emperor's legitimacy In short, the provincial armies, as well as the praetorians, came to feel it was their right to determine who would rule the empire. Between Augustus' assumption of dominion in 31 BC and the reign of Septimius Severus (AD 193-211), and excluding those emperors caught up and killed in the two civil wars, 10 rulers died of natural causes, one (Claudius) was possibly murdered by his wife, one (Nero) committed suicide and at least three others were assassinated by soldiers or officers of the praetorian guard or members of their entourages. Admittedly, there was no simple, constitutional tradition whereby a dying emperor could transfer power to his successor. But the

Augustan principate had worked relatively well, sparking just two major contested wars of succession over three centuries.

I

n his history of the first great civil war that brought Vespasian to power in AD 70, Tacitus commented that the legions had "discovered the secret of the empire"—namely that they, and they alone, were the arbiters of who would rule in Rome. Given the history of the next 150 years, Tacitus was certainly wrong at the time, but he was right in terms of what was to happen in the 3rd century: Troubles were brewing under the reign of Caracalla, the son of Septimius Severus, who had followed his father's advice to

of punish the tribesmen. The legions mutinied, murdering the emperor. His successor. Maximinus Thrax (r. 235-238), a man of great size and strength, had risen from the ranks of the army Unlike the emperors of the first two centuries—who had come almost entirely from the senatorial class, with ample knowledge and understanding of the broader interests of the empire— Maximinus had no connection to the upper classes, nor did the legitimacy of his rule rest on any other basis than the sharpness of his soldiers' swords. In the 1st and 2nd centuries, senators had spent the bulk of their careers in handson civil positions, actually running the government. But in the 3rd century, the path to the top hinged on one's military |

'The revolts and assassinations of the 3rd century, unlike the civil wars of the late republic, were a byproduct of collapsing military discipline' ^

CM

favor the soldiers and forget the rest. But Caracalla was a monster whom even the soldiers came to distrust. In 217, at the instigation of a praetorian prefect, an officer of the emperor's bodyguard assassinated Caracalla just six years into his reign, setting a precedent for successions to follow. All of Septimius Severus' successors were assassinated by their officers or courtiers, clearly signifying a breakdown in the loyalty of senior officers. Thus, despite the decline in overall military effectiveness, militarization of the empire had accelerated; the legions were focused on promoting their own candidates to the purple rather than on defending the empire from its external enemies. In 235 the Danubian and Rhine legions, concentrated in Gaul for a campaign against German invaders, took issue when Emperor Alexander Severus (r. 222-235) sought to placate instead

MILITARY HISTORY

service—social class, education and jx)litical experience played little or no role. The turbulent careers of Alexander Severus' successors speak volumes about the collajjse of civil discipline within the army and particularly among its senior officers. A seemingly unending series of civil wars and revolts buffeted the armies from one end of the empire to the other—confiicts that undermined the economy and civil structure. In a period of just 40 years, only one emperor died of natural causes (plague)— hardly an indication of political stability or strategic wisdom. The strife of those years had catastrophic results. Most obvious was that the barbarians—increasingly emboldened by tbe scenes of Romans fighting Romans in successive civil wars and revolts—devastated substantial portions of the empire. At first, localized raids ravaged the border provinces. But barbarian thrusts grew increasingly

ambitious, even reaching into Italy, which explains the city walls Emperor Aurelian (r. 270-275) hastily constructed around Rome. Raids by the Goths and the Heruli in the 250s and 260s devastated the province of Dacia and reached into the Balkans and through the Dardanelles to wreck much of Greece and western Asia Minor. At the same time, the Sassanids under King Shapur overran the border kingdoms between Persian and Roman territory and reached into Syria to capture Antioch, one of the empire's greatest cities—along the way they destroyed a Roman army and captured Emperor Valerian (r. 253-260). The economic toll these raids and other upheavals exacted on the empire cannot be exaggerated. The disasters touched off an economic death spiral— as the external threaLs demanded greater military expenditures, the invasions inflicted enormous damage on the empire's subsistence economy. But there was another significant problem: Tbe Roman army of the empire's first two centuries had depended on the extraordinary discipline and training of its legions to overcome the numerical superiority and ferocity of its enemies. Romans of that period won battles and wars because tbey were pitting disciphned, highly trained professionals against the equivalent of armed mobs. But tbe revolts and assassinations of the 3rd century, unlike the civil wars of the late republic, were a byproduct of collapsing military discipline among officers and soldiers. Absent such discipline and training, military professionalism fell by the wayside. This wasn't a sudden event. As the declining economy led to the gradual constriction of the army, the disintegration of discipline led to an army that increasingly resembled the anned mobs of its opponents. The Western Rotnan Empire had reached a tipping point. Us collapse was now inevitable. ( ^ For further reading, Williamson Murray recommends: The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, by Edward Luttwak, and The Cambridge Ancient History, Vols. 9 and 10.

RECOMMENDED

The Tale of the 'Man Who Never Was' Operation Mincemeat, by Ben Macintyre, Harmony Books, New York, 2010, $25.99

Forget the Battle of Britain, forget Enigma and El Alamein. Read this fascinating book and you'll prohably agree that even if the Germans had stormed the beaches of Kent, there is no way they would ever have beaten the Brits. The Huns simply didn't have the sense of humor, the imagination, the delight in mind games or the fascination with pure intellect rather than Panzers. The Brits would have laughed them back into the sea, playing practical jokes all the while. Operation Mincemeat was the biggest and most successful hoax perpetrated until Bernie Madoff came along, and it was put together by a bunch of academics, esthetes and novelists (Ian Fleming among them) in the employ of British intelligence. The mission was to convince the Germans that the Allies' big 1943 jump from North Africa onto the soft underbelly of Europe would take place not at Sicily—the invasion site obvious to even a sixtb-grader with an atlas—but simultaneously at Greece and Sardinia. Tbe Brits successfully did this by chaining a briefcase witb documents to that effect to a corpse dressed as a Royal Marine officer and letting the body wash ashore on the southern coast of Spain, a country filled with German agents and spies. Fortunately, the key German agents were incompe-

MILITARY HISTORY

tents, poseurs, yes-men and, in one high-ranking case, a committed anti-Nazi activist who hated Adolf Hitler. And best of all from the British viewpoint, they were German. Case in point: One of the characters involved in Mincemeat was a member of tbe British Q-Branch, suppliers of spy tools to the Secret Service. (Ian Fleming used this man, Charles FraserSmith, as the model for Q, James Bond's Aston Martinbuilding gadgeteer.) One of the devices Fraser-Smith designed was a tiny compass for behind-the-lines infiltrators that was hidden inside

a coat button and revealed by unscrewing the button's brass cover. But tbe cover was reverse-threaded, so it needed to be unscrewed clockwise. Fraser-Smith reasoned that an unremittingly logical German would never consider such a possibility. Much of what took place during Operation Mincemeat falls under the heading "You can't make this stuff up." One of the Mincemeat operatives was a coroner named Bentley Purchase. Another was the founder of the World Table Tennis Association, who spent weeks bounce-testing pingpong balls and was actually a Soviet spy. Yet another was a pro racecar driver so embarrassed by tbe fact he was myopic that he refused to wear glasses. While speeding the fast-rotting Mincemeat corpse to the submarine that would carry it to Spanish waters, he at one point drove straight across a traffic circle he never saw. The Mincemeat story has been told before, most notably in the 1953 nonfiction classic The Man Who Never Was, by Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu, one of the lead planners of the caper. (The 1956 film adaptation, starring Clifton Webb as Montagu, was true to the basic facts, albeit witb some dramatic license.) But no one has ever told the tale as accurately and wittily as British spystory specialist Ben Macintyre. —Stephan Wilkinson

The Wars of the Roses, by Michael Hicks

In this t'omiirt'iicnsivc yet readable history of the 1455-85 confiicts between medieval England's Houses of York and Lancaster, the author—head of the University of Winchesters department of history— sheds new hght oti the causes, conduct and key personaliiies involved in the successive upheavals that ultimately led to a Tudor triumph.

ATLANTIC AND ITS

VIIES

The Atlantic and Its Enemies, by Norman Stone

British historian Stones sprawling history of relations between the Wesi and the Soviet Union between 1943 and the early 1990s examines the period's vast political, social, economic and military transformations in rich detail and ably captures both the atmosphere of the time and the personalities of key world leaders.

•JARKETPLACE GAMES

Deadliest Warrior: The Game, by Spike Games, 2010, $10 download (Xbox 360, PlayStation 3)

Deadliest Warrior is a downloadable fighting game based on ibc popular Spike TV show of the same name. Each episode of the show pits two of history's archetypal warriors against each other in liypothetical combat. Who emerges victorious is based on honest historical analysis of each warrior's signature weapons and known fighting techniques. Unfortunately, the game discards any such analysis in favor of a "fair fight." As ridiculous as that sounds, the developers felt compelled to even the playing Reid to extend gameplay—for example, slowing down the deadlier Spartan to give the lightarmored Ninja a fighting chance. They excluded modem warriors altogether, presumably because automatic weapons are a no-no. Thus, the game is more fan service than an honest look at hypothetical historical combat. The gore factor is also high. If you're after a violent fighting game, this will fill the bill. But if history is your passion, the TV show beats the game every time. —Ryan Burke

The War for Korea, 1950-1951: They Came From the North, by Allan R. Millett, University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 2010, $45

leagues and friends, Millett laid out the Korean side of the war. Among other contributions, he underlines the heroism of South Korean soldiers, who—though poorly armed, ill-trained and often badly This is the second volume of led—enabled sufficient UN a trilogy on the origins and forces to reach the peninsula. Millett also employed his course of the Korean conflict. Millett, winner of the 2008 fortnidable research skills to Pritzker Military Library Liter- paint the larger canvas of this ature Award, has already es- ferocious conflict. A masterful tablished himself as the dean military historian, he provides the reader with a of living American THE W A R FOR clear account of the tnilitary historians. North Korean invaHis first volutne sion, the American covered the origins 195O-1951 response to hold of the conflict. This the peninsula, the volume recounts atnphibious landthe North's invaing at Inchon and sion of the South subsequent drive to and the American, the Yalu and, finalChinese and Soviet ly, the Chinese intervention, response to a conflict that could well have precipitated which ultimately led to the World War 111 but which cer- June 1951 stalemate. tainly played a crucial role Millett has written a stratein forming the American re- gic history of the war's first sponse to the Cold War. year, providing the reader And yet the Korean War vkith a clear picture of decision has almost disappeared from making in Washington, New America's consciousness. For York, London, Moscow and nearly 50 years, T.R. Fehren- Beijing. But it is his capacity to bach's This Kind of War (1963) relate the harsh reality of the has remained the foremost battlefield—from the bitter study of the Korean War. Mil- fights of the humid Korean lett's stellar work has now summer to the arctic cold of emerged as the other great battles along the Yalu—that work on the conflict. One makes this great history. reason is that Millett had —Williamson Murray access to original sources simply not available in the Hero Found: The Greatest early 1960s. POW Escape of the Vieinam Millett has been writing War, by Bruce Henderson, on this forgotten war since Harper, New York, $27.99 the early 1990s, when he took what was to hecome an an- Dieter Dengler was bom and nual summer trek from Ohio raised to be a prisoner of war. State to the Republic of Korea. That opinion isn't rooted There, with help from col- in a belief in fate but in the

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ILITARY HISTORY

resourcefulness, toughness and bent for leadership the German-born U.S. Navy flier developed as a young survivor of the destruction and poverty that engulfed the former Third Reich in the years immediately following the end of World War II. Those years of scrambling for sheep entrails that occupying Moroccan soldiers threw into the bushes to help feed his mother and brothers, and enduring the beatings of a cruel blacksmith who employed him, gave Dengler the wherewithal to survive the 1966 crash-landing of his A-1 Skyraider in the Laotian jungle, successfully escape a POW camp and find his way to freedom. Hero Eound is the riveting tale of this extraordinary escape and the full-tilt life that led up to it. Henderson's nicely paced narrative is laced with harrowing, humorous yet always illuminating anecdotes that paint a vivid picture of an outsize personality. Dengler was driven to fly early on, from the day the young boy was enraptured by a low-flying U.S. airplane and the pilot's white neck scarf flapping in the wind. He vowed to become an American pilot. He overcame language difficulties and a free-spirited mindset to achieve his goal, becoming a naval aviator Dengler was a naturally gifted flier but also tougb as nails. He escaped twice during a six-day survival and escape training course and actually gained weigbt by earning extra food or picking through garbage cans. Asked bow be'd done it, be credited the survival skills he'd learned as a boy. Tbose skills served Dengler well beginning on Feb. 1, 1966, wben his Skyraider's engine blew during a fouraircraft bombing raid on tbe Ho Chi Minh Trail supply route in Laos. Unable to bail out of the gyrating air-

craft, Dengler rode it down and crashlanded in a stump-fllled field. On his second day in the jungle, Dengler was captured by the Pathet Lao. It was the beginning of a five-month ordeal of privation and hardship. Within two weeks, he was deposited in a small Laotian POW camp with an assortment of other U.S., Thai and Chinese prisoners. Dengler emerged as a leader and nearly five months later organized a daring escape, burrowing under a fence while the guards ate dinner, grabbing rifles and killing or driving off the guards. The escapees split up, and Dengler paired up with 1st Lt. Duane Martin, an Air Force helii opter pilot. They fought through the jungle, dodging bamboo vipers and bears, killing lizards for food and surviving the bitter disappointment of mistakenly thinking they'd been spotted by rescuers. During a surprise encounter, a macbetewielding Laotian villager killed Martin, but Dengler escaped. Emotionally and physically spent, Dengler was at the end of his rope. But as he stood in a river clearing, the pilots of two passing Air Force Skyraiders spotted him, convincing an airborne command aircraft to order up a rescue helo. When lifted out of the jungle, Dengler weighed just 98 pounds and was suffering from malaria, intestinal worms, jaundice and hepatitis. The pace of this absorbing narrative does suffer in places from tbe irritating overuse of quotation marks. Henderson, or his editors, have chosen to place quote marks around every recollected fragment in the book, as in: "He said a 'long prayer,' then dropped off to sleep," or, "The heat and dehydration were already driving him 'nearly mad.'" Such material could easily have been parapbrased and stifl credited in the source notes. A revision in the second edition would correct that one flaw in this otherwise excellent book. —William H. McMichael

Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East, by David Stahel, Gambridge University Press, England, 2009,$99 For those interested in the history of the Eastern Front and particularly the opening moves of the German campaign in the east, Stahel has written a detailed account of Nazi operations through the fall 1941 decision to move against Leningrad and the Ukraine rather than Moscow. The academic and somewhat boastful introduction may discourage some readers, but this is a first-rate history. Stahel has thoroughly researched the planning stages, the preparation of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, the ideological underpinnings of the campaign and its pursuit by Army Group Center. At war's end, several German generals wrote detailed and thoroughly dishonest memoirs about why their nation had lost the war. Many of the field marshals and colonel generals responsible for operations in the east placed blame solidly on the man they had followed obediently to the bitter end in 1945. For them, Adolf Hitler's decision to turn the Second and Third Panzer groups to the south against the Ukraine and to the north against Leningrad, respectively, represented the turning point in the war. If only he had listened to their advice, the Wehrmacht would have driven on successfully to Moscow and ultimate victory. Regardless, as historian Gerhard Weinberg has repeatedly pointed out, the war would have lasted another six tnonths, and the United States would have dropped the atomic bomb on Germany rather than Japan. In fact, the Nazi defeat in Russia was largely the result of extraordinary hubris on the part of the German military. The planning for Operation Barbarossa rested on several flawed assumptions: that if the Germans could

destroy the Red Army in the border areas, there would be little resistance as their forces drove into the depths of the Soviet Union; that Soviet military equipment would prove inferior to that of the Wehrmacht, that the Soviets would not be able to reconstitute their armies after the first defeats; and that the whole campaign would be over by the fall. Stahel also addresses the abhorrent racial and ideological basis of the whole invasion— the extermination of the Jews in the east and the enslavement of other "subhuman" populations in the region, a conceit enthusiastically promulgated by the Wehrmacht and its leaders. Focusing on these assumptions and the conduct of operations over the first

nine weeks of Barbarossa, Stahel underlines the extent of German miscalculation in these early days, which all too many historians have described as dazzlingly victorious. That the Germans (barely) managed to reach the Smolensk/Dnieper line without suffering a major defeat was largely due to the extraordinary incompetence of Red Artny officers and their political masters in Moscow. Stahel succinctly sums up the deep troubles the Germans had run into by the end of August: Even in August 1941, when the supply system was greatly overextended, the army group's [Army Group Centerj offensive strength widely dispersed and the refitting process [of panzer divisions] incomplete, the generals argued jor an offensive toward

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throughout the US Moscow, which in practicable terms was impossible to realize. The fatal inability to recognize the limitations of the forces under their command was inherent to the campaign itself, but what is surprising is the slow learning curve among the generals at the front who were confronted with the day-to-day problems of the advance. —Williamson Murray The German 88: The Most Famous Gun of the Second World War, by Terry Gander, Pen and Sword Books, Barnsley, England, 2009, $39.99

Trial offer Three issues for the price of two € 1 4 . 8 5 * (incl.shipping) (Approximately US$19 - price depends on currency exchange)

PO Box 1574 6501 BN Nijmegen The Netherlands 1-740-994-0091 www.ancient-warfare.com MILITARY HISTORY

In 1916, as aviation began to play a significant role on the battlefield, the opposing armies in World War I sought a weapon to counter airplanes and observation balloons. The German army's selection of 88mm for a highvelocity anti-aircraft gun was based on a standard set by the navy, as the largest and heaviest fixed round a single loader could handle. The new Flugabwehrkanone, or anti-aircraft gun, remained under development when Germany surrendered in November 1918, but it would soon be revived. In The German 88, Gander, a leading artillery and armoredvehicle authority, follows the efforts of Rheinmetall and Krupp to develop links abroad in the interwar years, such as Krupp's collaboration with Bofors in 1921. The first result of that association was the 76.2mm Flak (an abbreviation of the weapon's designation) Model 1927. This failed to impress the German army, which regarded the 75mm as too light to be effective, while the 105mm was considered too bulky and heavy to be handled comfortably by an individual. The most convenient intermediate caliber was 88mm, and when Sweden passed an edict restricting ownership of Swedish firms

by overseas concerns, Krupp's team returned to Essen to continue development at home. The first examples of the 88mm gun —called the 8.8cm Elak 18 to mislead observers charged with enforcing the Versailles Treaty—were in the hands of Germany's resurgent Wehrmacht by the end of 1933. Because the gun had a conventional one-piece barrel, it became too worn for practical use after firing about 900 rounds. At that point, Rheinmetall at Düsseldorf took the lead with its 1936/37 model. It constructed the Rohr Aufbau 9 barrel, consisting of a jacket, a sleeve and an inner tube in three sections, the center section of which carried the forcing cone and the first part the rifling. Gander describes the multidimensional role this gun took on during the German crossing of the Meuse River, as a direct field gun against fortifications and British Matilda tanks in the Battle of Arras. The author gives special attention to the ammunition, as that, not the gun, is the key to the weapon. Gander devotes even more space to the development of the 8.8cm Flak 43, the deadliest antitank weapon of World War II. As an artillery piece, installed in a Ferdinand selfpropelled tank destroyer or in the turret of a Tiger II tank, the 88 was more than a match for any tank the Allies fielded, from the American M4 Sherman to the Soviet T-34/85. Although it fails to mention the little-known use of 8.8cm Flak 18s by the Greek army, which had 24 of them and used them with success against Axis air attacks on Albania, Piraeus and Thessaloniki using Britishsupplied 87mm shells, overall The German 88 is an invaluable, comprehensive overview of one of the war's most important weapons. —Thomas Zacharis

Hallowed Ground I

La Fière Causeway, Normandy By David T. Zabecki

T

he Merderet River, near the town of Sainte-MèreÉghse in Normandy, France, does not at first appear a significant obstacle on mihtary maps. The northto-south running stream is only yards wide and quite shallow. But a floodplain extends hundreds of yards from either hank, which can he turned into an impassahle marsh hy opening tidal floodgates from the Atlantic Ocean. As the Allied invasion of Furope loomed in May 1944, that's exactly what German defenders did.

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The U.S. VII Corps was to undertake two critical tasks after its June 6 landing on Utah Beach: The first was to move inland quickly, the second to prevent German reinforcements from cutting off the beacbhead. The key to accomplishing both tasks was to take and hold the only two Merderet bridges—at Chef-du-Pont, southwest of Sainte-Mère-Église, and La Fière, two miles west of town. The original stone bridge at La Fière lay close to the east bank of the river. From the bridge, an unpaved road ran along the top of a narrow elevated causeway, crossing some 500 yards of the Merderet floodplain to a small group of buildings on the west bank at Cauquigny. The 82nd Airborne Division was tasked with Mission Boston—the seizure of both spans and establishment of bridgeheads on the Merderet. The best way to capture a From La Fière Bridge, highlighted above, the bridge is to take both ends simul- causeway crosses the Merderet River and its taneously, so the plan called for the floodplain to the west bank at Cauquigny, top.

MILITARY HISTORY

507th and 508th Parachute Infantry Regiments (PlRs) to jump into drop zones (DZs) west of the Merderet, just outside the flooded area. The 505th PIR was to drop on the east bank, between the river and SainteMère-Église, capture the town, secure those bridgeheads and then link up with the 507th and 508th. But early on June 6, low cloud cover and heavy German anti-aircraft fire caused the C-47s carrying the 507th and 508th to veer off course, scattering the paratroopers across the French countryside, with many landing east of the river. Fortunately, the 505th made a fairly tight drop, with half the regiment landing within a mile of its DZ. The 3rd Battalion of the 505th (3/505th) secured Sainte-Mère-Église by 0430, while the l/505th moved to capture Manoir de La Fière, a group of stone farm buildings overlooking the bridge's east end. About the time the paratroopers secured

the Manoir, an element of the 507th occupied the buildings at Cauquigny. At that point, the 82nd held both ends of the causeway. The Gertnans reacted quickly. At 1730 on June 6, they attacked with a cotnpany from the 91st Air Landing Division's 1057th Grenadier Regiment, reinforced with tanks from the 100th Panzer Training and Replacement Battalion. The Germans pushed the small American force out of Cauquigny and then attacked across the causeway toward La Fière. In the fierce firefight that followed, the Americans stopped the advance and knocked out several of the Gennan tanks, but by midnight the Germans had secured the causeway's west end. The Germans attacked again on June 7, this time with artillery and tnortar support. The paratroopers at La Fière held on grimly all that day. Meanwhile, the 82nd's 325th Glider Infantry Regiment (GIR) landed early on the 7th, and later that day its 1st

The original stone span of La Fière Bridge today, looking due north across the partially inundated Merderet River floodplain. D-Day tour groups often stop at the span to discuss the June 1944 battle.

Battalion waded across the inundated floodplain north of La Fière and attetnpted to flank the Germans at Cauquigny. But a German counterattack pinned down the glidermen, and the defenders at Cauquigny held tight. When the l/325th GIR's attack failed, 82nd commander Maj. Gen. Matthew Ridgway ordered his assistant division commander. Brig. Gen. James Gavin, to launch a frontal assault straight down the causeway. Gavin designated the 3/325th GIR as the spearhead, with a makeshift company from the 507th PIR in reserve. The Americans attacked at 1030 on June 9, supported by the 155mtn howitzers of the 90th Infantry Division's 345th Field Artillery Battalion. The lead ele-

ments of the 3/325th made it across the causeway and reached Cauquigny, but the attack faltered as casualties mounted. Gavin committed the small reserve of 507th paratroopers, under Captain Robert Rae. That last desperate push tipped the balance, and by the end of the day, elements of the 90th were marching over the causeway into the Cotentin Peninsula. The battle for La Fière causeway— atrtong the fiercest small-unit actions of the Normandy Campaigti—cost the 82nd more than 500 casualties. But Mission Boston helped ensure the success of the VII Corps landings. Today, the buildings at Manoir de la Fière and Cauquigny remain much as they were iti 1944. The bridge and causeway are also much the same, except the road is now paved and the dense vegetation that lined both sides of the causeway in 1944 is gone. And the Merderet? lt still overruns its banks every spring, turtiing the floodplain into a huge, marshy lake. (©

Weapons we re glad they never built

f\PoLLO fELL OFF. ^ P OÜAS LOCKEO

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Weapons of the Gods: Part 1 ta O QC LU CQ

M

ars, God of War, irrepressible arms dealer to the other gods on Mount Olympus, was always trying to sell them new weapons systems they didn't know they needed. No matter how skeptical the gods were, they always came away from a meeting with Mars teetering under the weight and expense of some new piece of exotic weaponry.

MILITARY HISTORY

By Rick Meyerowitz

the purchase of which seemed like a good idea at the time. In practical terms, it rarely worked as advertised, if it ever worked at all. At times, the gods would refuse to pay, but Mars knew a group of gullible rubes when he saw them. He would plaster their names all over the new weapons, and they'd come back clamoring for more. (^