Military History 2015-07

Tonkin Gulf Ghosts World War I in Film Charles I at Edgehill Texian Massacre Death of a Journalist Educating Warriors HistoryNet.com

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World War I, 1914-1918 The 17 cm mittlerer Minenwerfer (17 cm mMW) was developed by Rheinmetall and entered German service in 1913. It was a muzzle-loading, rifled mortar weighing 1,065 lbs. (483 kg) that had a standard hydro-spring recoil system designed for destroying bunkers and field fortifications otherwise immune to normal artillery. It fired 110 lb (50 kg) HE shells, which contained far more explosive filler than ordinary artillery shells of the same caliber. The low muzzle velocity allowed for thinner shell walls, hence more space for filler. Furthermore, the low velocity allowed for the use of explosives like Ammonium Nitrate-Carbon that were less shock-resistant than TNT, which was in short supply. This caused a large number of premature detonations that made crewing the minenwerfer riskier than normal artillery pieces.

In action, the 17cm mittlerer Minenwerfer was placed in a pit, after its wheels were removed, not less than 1.5 meters deep to protect it and its crew. Despite its extremely short effective range of 300 m (325 yards), this mortar proved to be very effective at destroying enemy bunkers and other strong points. With the nature of static warfare on the western front, the number of mortars grew from 116 in service when the war broke out in 1914 to some 2,361 by the end of the war in 1918. Our new German Minenwerfer is a meticulously hand painted and assembled metal and resin model in 1/30 scale and includes three crewman and accessories. To see our complete range, please visit one of the fine retailers listed or visit: www.wbritain.com

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COVER STORY

26 Japan’s Last Fight Though Hirohito surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, soldiers on islands to the north and in Manchuria kept fighting to the death against Soviet invaders By Sir Max Hastings

FEATURES

36 Casting the Die at Edgehill The seesaw clash that commenced the English Civil War By Christopher G. Marquis

44 ‘Biggest Story of My Life’ Behind enemy lines reporter Joe Morton found death—his own By Norman Goldstein

52 Bloody Goliad: Birth of a Republic After the Alamo came a far worse—yet often overlooked—massacre By Ron Soodalter

60 War Ends! World War II ended in a flurry of headline-grabbing events and memorable images

66 Great War Films Movies that capture the horror and dark humor of World War I By Richard Farmer

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22 HARDWARE Type 95 Ha-Go Light Tank 73 REVIEWS Not Just Another ‘Great’ Opponent

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80 CAPTURED! War’s Unexpected Images

On the cover: In the closing days of World War II, and for some days afterward, Japan and the Soviet Union kept fighting in Manchuria and on a contested island group. (National Archives; Flag Image: Enjoyz/Istockphoto) MilitaryHistory.com

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Disabled Japanese warplanes and castoff propellers litter Atsugi airfield, south of Tokyo, in the days after Japan’s August 1945 surrender.

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First Shots of the Cold War In 1918 Woodrow Wilson committed to an Allied intervention in a reeling Russia—but instead of repelling the Germans, U.S. troops clashed with communists on their home turf. By Anthony Brandt

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Letters Anthony Brandt, in his article on the Allied intervention in Russia [“First Shots of the Cold War,” May], seems to have ignored a few salient figures—namely, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and those that followed them. These people may well have killed more Russians than Adolf Hitler. They were not a bunch of liberal idealists. Nothing we could have done would have made these guys into anything other than enemies. So, Western intervention

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didn’t change a damn thing. It was a failure—but it was a failure to nip communism in the bud. Had the Western powers intervened wholeheartedly, they could have helped the Whites defeat the Reds, and that would have changed history. Of course, a more liberal peace treaty with the Germans might have prevented Hitler from rising to power, too. There are a lot of “might have beens,” but us having a nicer relationship with the communists wasn’t something that was going to happen. We were the people the communists wanted to destroy. What part of that do Brandt and those who would have us sit back on our hands and do nothing not get? Bob Frazier SAN DIEGO, CALIF.

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In his article on the Allied intervention in Russia at the end of World War I, Anthony Brandt writes that this “misstep” by President Woodrow Wilson would initiate the Cold War and ruin whatever chances there were for any sort of relationship between the communists and America. Brandt mentions the late dip-

MILITARY HISTORY

lomat and historian George Kennan, who, in Brandt’s words, claimed that this “intervention killed whatever germ of hope existed for a better relationship between the two countries.” Poppycock! How can anyone be so naive as to believe that if the United States and its allies had not intervened in the Russian Civil War there would have been a chance for a better relationship between the communists and America? Communism and democracy are worlds apart. Lenin and later Stalin would have nothing to do with America. When the Bolsheviks rose up in 1917, they not only wanted Russia but also wanted their rebellion to spread throughout the world. Tom R. Kovach NEVIS, MINN. Anthony Brandt responds: Both correspondents seem to assume it would have been easy to “nip communism in the bud” had the Allies only applied themselves instead of going into Russia halfheartedly. They seem to have forgotten that at the time the Allies were fully engaged on the Western Front,

and British and French troops were exhausted; that the American troops there had only recently been well-enough trained to go into battle; that because of the Russian collapse in 1917 the Germans had been able to throw some 40 or so additional divisions at the Allies; and that the whole purpose of the Allied intervention was to reopen the Eastern Front and take pressure off the Western at a moment when the outcome of the war remained in doubt. Winston Churchill was the only Allied leader who really had much interest in “nipping communism in the bud,” but those who thought it might be easy to invade Russia in force were soon enough disabused. George Kennan wrote a twovolume account of the intervention, and his conclusions seem wise to me. He admitted the slim chance of cooperation between the United States and Russia had there been no intervention, but he thought there was a chance. Oppose that to the “might have beens” these correspondents suggest, and imagine the consequences among the American public if, right after the war was over, the U.S. had sent

Falklands War [Re. “Crags of Tumbledown,” by Ron Soodalter, May:] There are 1,513 good reasons for the Brits to punch the Argentines in the nose over the Falklands —namely, the British residents who want no part of a corrupt and incompetent Argentine government. More important, the residents know their motherland will be ready to fight for them no matter how many miles away. Anyone who questions this fine example of loyalty should visit the Falklands. Enter any of the shops where you see a Union Jack flying and ask an islander what he thinks about the Argentine bullies. Take a bus tour to see the battle memorials—and where the Argentines abandoned their own dead for the Brits to bury. The message is simple: “Don’t tread on me!” The Falklands are British. The islanders are British and very proud and thankful for it. And that is the way it will remain. Robert F. Reynolds GEORGETOWN, TEXAS

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Failed Intervention in Russia

major forces—whole armies— into Russia. Does anyone think that would have been easy? That the American public would have accepted it? Ask Napoléon Bonaparte if Russia was easy.

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By Brendan Manley

U.S. Naval Reserve Celebrates a Centennial of Global Service

DISPATCHES Team to Excavate Waterloo Farm This spring an international team of battlefield experts [www.waterloouncovered. com] led by Tony Pollard of Glasgow University will begin the most comprehensive excavation to date of Hougoumont farm, south

J U LY 2 0 1 5

The U.S. Navy Reserve, which contributed the bulk of American naval manpower during both world wars, marks its centennial this year with a series of events at installations nationwide. The celebration kicked off in early March with a Pentagon ceremony, the opening of a related exhibit at the U.S. Navy Memorial [www.navymemorial.org] in Washington, D.C., and ceremonies at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum [www.intrepidmuseum. org] in New York, the USS Ward Gun Memorial in Minneapolis and the USS Iowa Museum [www.pacificbattleship.com] in Los Angeles. Created by an act of Congress on March 3, 1915, the Navy Reserve [www.navyreserve. navy.mil] has long been an integral component of U.S. sea power. It entered World War I in April 1917 with some 8,000 sailors and by war’s end numbered more than 250,000 reservists (including 12,000 women) —more than half of the wartime Navy. The

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reserve played an even greater role in World War II, contributing 84 percent of U.S. naval manpower. Manned by reservists, the destroyer Ward’s deck gun fired the first American shot of the war, sinking a Japanese midget sub off Pearl Harbor on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941. Among the reservists who served during the war were future Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, as well as 15 Medal of Honor recipients. Some 21,000 reservists served during the 1990–91 Gulf War, while more than 70,000 reserve sailors have mobilized since Sept. 11, 2001. The Navy Memorial exhibit continues through April 2016. Other centennial events include organized runs, honorary banquets, family appreciation nights, parades and related happenings during annual Navy Weeks. For more info visit the Navy Reserve Centennial website [navyreservecentennial.com].

‘Ready Now, Anytime, Anywhere’ —U.S. Navy Reserve motto

MILITARY HISTORY

HMS Victory Restoration Begins Britain’s National Museum of the Royal Navy [www. royalnavalmuseum.org] has begun its restoration of HMS Victory, the 104-gun flagship of Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson at the decisive Oct. 21, 1805, naval

Battle of Trafalgar. In dry dock at Portsmouth, Victory [www.hms-victory.com] is the world’s oldest commissioned warship. Initial efforts will focus on waterproofing and construction of a new dry dock cradle.

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By World War II reservists comprised 84 percent of U.S. naval manpower.

of Brussels, Belgium, where Anglo-allied troops led by the Duke of Wellington repelled French troops under Napoléon Bonaparte during the June 18, 1815, Battle of Waterloo. The team will include wounded veterans from recent campaigns as part of the Operation Nightingale initiative of the Defence Archaeology Group [www.dmasuk.org].

Museum to Display Coat From Monitor

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After a decade of painstaking restoration the Mariners’ Museum [www. marinersmuseum.org] in Newport News, Va., will soon display a Union sailor’s woolen coat retrieved from the wreck of the Civil

War ironclad USS Monitor. On Dec. 31, 1862, the 179foot coastal steamer sank off Cape Hatteras, N.C., during a violent storm. In 2002 Navy divers raised its distinctive revolving gun turret, which contained the skeletal remains of two crewmen and numerous artifacts, including the coat.

Richard Hottelet, 97, Last ‘Murrow Boy’ Richard Hottelet, 97— the last of the “Murrow Boys,” a cadre of World War II–era CBS radio reporters who worked under famed broadcaster Edward R. Murrow—died in December. In 1941 the

German Gestapo held Hottelet in Berlin for four months on suspicion of espionage. In wartime he was the first CBS correspondent to broadcast an eyewitness report of the June 6, 1944, invasion of Normandy and later covered such major events as the Battle of the Bulge.

Paul Allen Pinpoints Battleship Musashi

After an eight-year search Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen announced in March that a remotely operated submersible launched from his expedition yacht Octopus had located the wreck of the World War II Japanese battleship Musashi, 3,300 feet deep in the Sibuyan Sea off the Philippines. Footage posted on Allen’s website [www.paulallen.com] shows unmistakable details from the battleship’s hull and superstructure, including a space on the prow that once held a teak chrysanthemum, the seal of imperial Japan. Musashi and sister ship Yamato were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever built, each displacing some 73,000 tons and carrying nine 18.1-inch naval guns. On Oct. 24, 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, dozens of carrier-based U.S. warplanes attacked and sank Musashi, claiming nearly half of its 2,399-man crew.

‘Would it not be a shame to have the fleet remain intact while our nation perishes?’ —Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita

Replica Prewar Bugatti May Take to the...Sky? This fall a team of aviation enthusiasts hopes to fly a replica of the Bugatti Model 100P [bugatti100p.com], a revolutionary air racer built in 1939 by Italian-born French auto designer Ettore Bugatti and Belgian engineer Louis de Monge. Fitted with twin Type 50 480hp engines driving forward-mounted contra-rotating propellers, it was reportedly capable of speeds up to 474 mph. But the original, owned by the EAA AirVenture Museum [www.eaa.org] in Oshkosh, Wis., never flew. Bugatti put the plane in storage for the duration of the war to keep its technology out of German hands.

WAR RECORD June 14, 1930: Universal Pictures premieres All Quiet on the Western Front (see P. 66) in London after British censors trim 2 minutes from the epic war film. Based on the novel by German World War I veteran Erich Maria Remarque, the movie sees general release stateside that summer. July 1839: Retired Texas army Colonel William Parsons Miller is elected probate judge in Victoria County. Miller and the men of his Nashville Battalion were fortunate survivors of the March 27, 1836, Goliad Massacre (see P. 52) during the Texas Revolution.

July 9, 1945: An Associated Press investigation concludes that German guards executed its correspondent Joe Morton (see P. 44) on January 24 at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria. Morton was the only Allied reporter executed in World War II.

July 12, 1642: The British Parliament votes to raise an army to oppose King Charles I and appoints Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, as its commander. The earl’s troops see their first major fight on October 23 at the Battle of Edgehill (see P. 36). July 24, 1945: Its neutrality pact with Japan expired and tensions rising, the Soviet Union recalls all embassy staff from that nation. On August 8 the Soviets declare war and invade Japanese-held Manchuria (see P. 26).

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News Battle of Britain Chapel Kept Open London Biggin Hill Airport, on the site of the wartime RAF Biggin Hill Aerodrome in Kent, has pledged to foot the £50,000 annual operating cost of St. George’s Chapel of Remembrance [www.rafchapelbigginhill. com], dedicated to the 454

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local RAF members who died during the 1940 Battle of Britain. The Ministry of Defence, citing spending cuts, had threatened its closure. Built in 1951, St. George’s features a floor hewn from wooden propellers, while wartime Spitfire and Hurricane fighters flank its gate.

Researchers: PTSD As Old as Warfare British researchers poring over ancient texts have identified likely instances of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) dating far earlier than previously recorded —roughly 3,000 years back during the Assyrian dynasty in ancient Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). Excerpts from their paper, titled “Nothing New Under the Sun,” describe how the king of Elam’s “mind changed” after battle, while soldiers attributed their anxiety to ghosts of their fallen foes.

Britons Remember Churchill on 50th Anniversary of His Death Wartime PM Winston Churchill ranks among the most influential leaders of the World War II era.

Britain is holding a series of events this year to commemorate the 50th anniversary of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s death. On Saturday, Jan. 30, 1965, six days after Churchill’s passing at age 90, officials held a state funeral service for him at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. Attended by throngs of Britons and representatives from 112 nations, with a worldwide television viewing audience of some 350 million, it marked history’s largest state funeral to date. Fifty years later Britons marked the date with a service and wreath-laying at the Houses of Parliament, a memorial service at Westminster Abbey and the rebroadcast by BBC Parliament [www.bbc.co.uk] of the original live funerary coverage. A ceremonial flotilla down the Thames centered on Havengore, the very launch that bore Churchill’s coffin. This time Havengore took Churchill family members from the Tower of London to a point on the river opposite Parliament,

where they cast the wreath into the water. The ship bears a commemorative plaque, presented by the International Churchill Society [churchillsociety.org], inscribed with broadcaster Richard Dimbleby’s words: AND SO HAVENGORE SAILS INTO HISTORY ... NOT EVEN THE GOLDEN HIND HAD BORNE SO GREAT A MAN. The National Railway Museum [www.nrm. org.uk] in York is displaying the restored locomotive (renamed Winston Churchill) and Pullman carriage that carried Churchill’s family from Waterloo Station in London to Oxfordshire. Churchill is buried in the family plot at St. Martin’s Church, Bladon, near his birthplace at Blenheim Palace. More information and a full list of events are available at the Churchill Central website [www.churchillcentral.com]. Meanwhile, the Royal Mint [www.royalmint.com] has issued a series of silver and gold commemorative coins, including one patterned after a 1965 design by Churchill sculptor Oscar Nemon.

‘I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter’ —Sir Winston Churchill

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News Congress Honors ‘Devil’s Brigade’

LEFT: TOP: CALEB SMITH/U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES; BOTTOM: U.S. ARMY/NATIONAL ARCHIVES; RIGHT: TOP: VIS PIERRE-ETIENNE COURTEJOIE/U.S. ARMY; BOTTOM: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

The U.S. Congress has awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the American-Canadian 1st Special Service Force (aka “Devil’s Brigade”), an elite commando unit that served during World War II. Activated in 1942, the brigade saw heavy

action in 1944, from the Allied amphibious landing at Anzio, Italy, through the siege of Monte Cassino and capture of Rome to the invasion of southern France. During the war the 1,800-man force tallied some 12,000 German casualties and 7,000 prisoners. Seventy-five brigade members survive.

Belgium May Close Bastogne Barracks Faced with spending cuts, the Belgian army may shutter the Bastogne Barracks Museum, wartime head-

quarters of the 101st Airborne Division during the December 1944 siege and the place from which U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Anthony McAuliffe issued the famous one-word reply “NUTS!” to a German demand for surrender. Museum supporters have circulated a change.org petition to Belgian Defence Minister Steven Vandeput to keep the barracks open.

Re-enactors Mark 70th Anniversary of ‘Bulge’ American and Belgian re-enactors gathered in December in the Ardennes region of Belgium to portray the winter 1944–45 Battle of the Bulge, the costliest clash for U.S. forces in World War II. In similarly frigid, snowy conditions uniformed participants conducted mock maneuvers with such military vehicles as a U.S. M36 Jackson tank destroyer and a German Jagdpanther tank destroyer. The commemorations extended to Bastogne, where Belgium’s royal family laid wreaths at Place Général McAuliffe, a memorial dedicated to the wartime commander of the 101st Airborne Division. Fought from Dec. 16, 1944, to Jan. 25, 1945, along a 70-mile front, the Bulge pitted more than 82,000 dug-in Allied troops against a 200,000-man German offensive targeting Antwerp. By the time German troops withdrew, the battle had claimed some 76,000 Allied and 84,000 German casualties.

‘We should thank God that such men lived’ —General George S. Patton

Germans to Revive Iconic Nazi Sites Nuremberg officials are pushing to renovate that city’s decaying Nazi party rally grounds [www.museums. nuremberg.de]. Proponents tout the historical significance of the site, which includes 6 square miles of structures and roadways, a ghost railway station and secret rooms for the Nazi elite. Detractors cite the proposed $90 million cost and concern the restored site would become a pilgrimage site for neo-Nazis. Meanwhile, this summer the Top Secret Spy Museum [www.topsecret-oberhausen.de] in Oberhausen plans to open five rooms modeled after Adolph Hitler’s Berlin Führerbunker, where the Nazi leader made his last stand.

LOST AND FOUND While the 863-foot Japanese battleship Musashi (see P. 9) is undoubtedly the largest military relic in the news, there’s no shortage of smaller finds. Other discoveries include:

Norse Trader: Norwegian archaeologists examining a Viking-era grave near Trondheim recovered a leather purse containing Islamic coins. The purse was concealed in a shield boss that dates to the year 950. As the Vikings traded as far south as Constantinople, researchers surmise the coins may have been payment for such items as ivory or furs. Windbreakers: During restoration work to a hut at Bletchley Park, Britain’s World War II code-breaking center, workers found stuffed within its walls papers tied to efforts to crack the German Enigma code. Cryptanalysts apparently used them to block drafts. Aerial Assassin: Owners of a wartime resistance safe house in Czechoslovakia found the radio antennae agent Jiri Potucek used to coordinate the June 1942 assassination of Nazi chief Reinhard Heydrich. Spee Spat: Salvors are pushing the Uruguayan government to auction a 6-foot bronze eagle they recovered in 2006 from the prow of the scuttled World War II German heavy cruiser Admiral Graf Spee. The eagle, legally seized by the government, could fetch $15 million, half of which would go to the finders.

13

Interview General James Mattis On Educating Warriors

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In 2013 General James N. Mattis retired after a 41-year Marine Corps career that included field commands in the Persian Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan. In the theater of combat the hard-charging general was known by the call sign “Chaos.” But it was his respect for history and studious commitment to training in strategy and tactics that earned him the moniker “Warrior Monk.” As head of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, Mattis furthered the efforts of MCCDC’s Center for Lessons Learned and helped compile the U.S. Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. He rose through the ranks to head up U.S. Joint Forces Command in 2007 and to replace General David Petraeus at the helm of U.S. Central Command in 2010,

MILITARY HISTORY

with responsibility for ongoing U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since retiring, Mattis, 64, has been a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and taught courses on various subjects at other colleges nationwide. He also plans to write a book about leadership. Mattis paused long enough to speak with Military History about the importance of educating warriors for the challenges of modern-day warfare. You often quote Ecclesiastes 1:9: “There is nothing new under the sun.” What does it mean to you? Read about history, and you become aware that nothing starts with us. It started long ago. If you read enough biography and history, you learn how

people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself. Further, you recognize there is nothing so unique that you’ve got to go to extraordinary lengths to deal with it. How did the Marine Corps prepare you for warfare? The Corps made very clear that I was responsible for my own learning, and that it would guide me with a required reading list. We learned the Corps was as serious about that as it was about 3-mile runs and pull-ups. It set an institutional expectation with a moral tone to it: War is bloody enough with-

LAURA RAUCH/ASSOCIATED PRESS

J U LY 2 0 1 5

Mattis insists that a study of history and shared knowledge from combat are essential elements of training.

out having to have amateurs send young men into a fight. Don’t superior firepower and combat training alone adequately prepare a warrior? We deal with a fundamentally unpredictable phenomenon called war, and the idea you’re going to solve this with just technology or training alone does not hold up in a study of history. Yes, the training is critical, that you have ingrained the muscle memory, so when you employ this force in close contact with the enemy, you have a vicious level of harmony built on brilliance in the basics. But you educate them for what we don’t know will happen. They’re like two rails of a railroad track. If you want to run your locomotive down a track, you need both rails.

BRETT AFFRUNTI

How did such training inform your decisions? It meant I was never really bewildered for very long by anything an adversary did. I remember in 2001 when the fleet commander [Vice Adm. Charles W. Moore Jr.] asked if I could get the Marines from the Mediterranean and the Pacific together and move against Kandahar, Afghanistan. I did my reconnaissance in a Navy antisubmarine plane with beautiful telescopes on board. I could see the fighting up north, a little bit going on further east. Out west there wasn’t much. And then down south at Kandahar, this big dark area— no one down there, not scouts, not even patrols. And I knew right away.…I didn’t care how brave their boys were. I didn’t care how many guns they had. I knew I was going to stick a knife in their back. Based on all that reading the Marine Corps had required at each rank, I could see exactly how to take this enemy down. What are the origins of the Center for Lessons Learned? It goes back to the interwar period,

when the Marines were doing experiments with amphibious warfare and encapsulating lessons from fighting in their Small Wars Manual. Another key development came in World War II, in the midst of the Guadalcanal campaign, when Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift realized his men were not fully prepared for jungle warfare and created schools to take lessons learned and teach the Marines. When I got to Quantico [Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia], the formal organization was already in place.

early years in the Marine Corps. Then, under the guidance of various senior officers who coached us juniors, I turned to reading deeply about a few battles or a few campaigns, and that really helped. I studied the Geronimo campaign in detail, the Great Sioux War, went deeply into Waterloo and Gettysburg. Henry Kissinger once said that as you fill a kettle full of water, you fill your mind with knowledge, and then, when you’re on those high-tempo jobs, you pour it out. Then you get out of those jobs and refill it.

What changes did you implement? We simply prioritized the center’s mission, incorporating lessons learned. We had to have product, to put out things that changed pre-deployment training, so we put out the Small Unit Leaders’ Guide to Counterinsurgency and the Counterinsurgency (or COIN) Field Manual, written by both the Army and the Marines. It changed the way we trained and codified what we were already doing in some cases.

And then pour out that knowledge to the next vessel in line? Well, yeah. We have an obligation to pass on the lessons we learned oftentimes at great, great cost. I would liken it to running the elevator down, opening the doors, bringing on board young guys, and carrying them up a couple of levels, sharing what we learned so they can go make their own mistakes, not the same ones we made.

Who tops your reading list? Colin Gray from the University of Reading is the most near-faultless strategist alive. Then there’s Sir Hew Strachan from Oxford, and Williamson Murray, the American. Those three are probably the leading present-day military theorists. You’ve got to know Sun-tzu and Carl von Clausewitz, of course. The Army was always big on Clausewitz, the Prussian; the Navy on Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American; and the Air Force on Giulio Douhet, the Italian. But the Marine Corps has always been more Eastern-oriented. I am much more comfortable with Sun-tzu and his approach to warfare. How do you structure your personal reading? I tried to read very broadly during my

What lessons would you like to impart to warriors in training? That small groups of committed people can change things. That ethical, competent and admired leadership is badly needed nowadays. For young officers, certainly to gain trust and respect from their subordinates. But they also have to be able to gain the affection of their troops. Not popularity—affection. By doing that they’ll find people who have coequal commitment across all ranks. That’s what you see in forces that have shown spirit even when a lot of things went wrong. How would you answer critics who accuse you of espousing “old school” values? It takes a military with what could be considered old-fashioned values or quaint values to protect the country. There’s always going to be a bit of a tension, a dynamic that has to be understood by those responsible for leading a progressive America that does not want to be militarized yet needs certain military attributes for protection. MH

15

HistoryNet Reader A sampling of remarkable adventures, decisive moments and great ideas from our sister publications, selected by the editors of Military History

AMERICAN HISTORY

WORLD WAR II

MHQ

Southern Revolution

Industrial-Grade Attack

Modern Artillery Expert

In the late 1770s the red-hot action in New England often overshadowed fighting in the South. In the June 2015 issue of American History Edward G. Lengel spotlights the intense struggle between Patriots and Loyalists in the Carolinas and Georgia in his article “Southern Showdown,” excerpted here:

With Adolf Hitler’s death and an imminent unconditional surrender, it’s no wonder the Battle of the Ruhr Pocket is overlooked. Robert Citino recounts the Americans’ latewar victory that crushed any hope of a German rebound in “Death in the West,” in the May/June 2015 issue of World War II.

Brig. Gen. Thomas Jackson Rodman developed an alternate process for casting smoothbore gun tubes, reducing the possibility of potential explosions during use—and it wasn’t even his most important invention. David T. Zabecki profiles Rodman and his inventions in “The Man Behind the Rodman Gun,” in the Spring 2015 issue of MHQ.

The Army hit the Ruhr hard and well. When American armies were encircling and crushing the last Wehrmacht force in the west, Germany was weeks from unconditional surrender. Amid the war’s final tumult, it’s easy to overlook the Battle of the Ruhr Pocket. By 1945 German losses were soaring, replacements were not keeping up, and much of the Reich’s army consisted of old men and boys, sketchily trained and equipped. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, German supreme commander in the west, once complained that leading German armies in those days was like “playing a Beethoven sonata on an old, rickety, out of tune piano.” But the U.S. Army was mobile and lethal. The intensity of American artillery never ceased to shock the Germans, who had to obliterate more selectively. And overhead, American airpower nearly paralyzed German forces by day. In 1945 these advantages coalesced. In the Ruhr Pocket the U.S. Army lived and fought the dream: establishing dominance to achieve, at minimal cost, the greatest American victory of the European war.

The Rodman gun, developed in the mid-19th century, was the technological apex of smoothbore, muzzleloading artillery. Cannons using chemical explosives to propel a projectile had made their first appearance on the battlefield in the 14th century, and for the next 500 years the technology changed very little. Almost all artillery pieces, cast of either iron or bronze, were smoothbore, muzzle-loaded and used propellant charges based on black powder. Then, near the end of the 19th century, artillery technology made a radical leap forward with the introduction of rifled steel barrels, breechloading systems, recoil mechanisms and improvements in propellants. During the 40 years between 1830 and 1870 the older types of artillery also underwent drastic scientific improvements, culminating in the Rodman gun. Although in the long run the gun was a technological dead end, the advances introduced by its designer, Rodman, revolutionized gun-barrel production and propellant design.

In 1778 it was clear to the British that three years of fighting in New England and the Mid-Atlantic had settled nothing. Loyalist uprisings expected in New York and Pennsylvania had not materialized. As the British probed for American weaknesses elsewhere, they thought they discovered the soft underbelly in the South, where Loyalist sentiments were strong and Patriot military forces were weak and scattered. In December a British expedition captured Savannah, Ga. It was to be the first step in a campaign to conquer the entire region. Instead, it touched off America’s first civil war, as Patriot and Loyalist militias squared off. Militiamen rarely wore uniforms, and their rationales for fighting could be obscure. True, many fought because they disagreed over whether to form a new nation independent from Great Britain. But some fought because they had personal, social or economic grievances or because they had private scores to settle. Others sought to protect their families and homes. More than a few probably just aimed for plunder. Whatever the motivation, the results were tragic. British Redcoats weren’t the worst perpetrators of violence in the Southern war. Most atrocities there were committed by Americans against Americans.

To subscribe to any World History magazine, call 1 (800) 435-0715 or visit us online at HistoryNet.com.

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Valor England’s Best Knight By David T. Zabecki

William Marshal Knights Templar Order of the Temple 1219

TOP: CLASSIC IMAGE/ALAMY; BOTTOM: ANDREY KUZMIN/SHUTTERSTOCK

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illiam Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke and lord marshal and regent of England, was considered the greatest fighting man of his day. Reportedly defeated only once in personal combat, he was perhaps the only man to unhorse Richard I “the Lionheart” and live to tell about it Marshal, the younger son of an impoverished Wiltshire baron, was born circa 1146. As a child he was sent to his father’s cousin, William de Tancarville, chamberlain of Normandy, to train for the knighthood. At 6 feet Marshal was tall for his era, and he displayed an instinctive skill for weaponry that made him a formidable warrior. Still, when knighted in 1167 he had to borrow a horse to enter his first tournament. Tournaments in those days were no mere sporting events; they were deadly affairs fought on a winner-take-all basis. Marshal claimed to have defeated some 500 knights without a loss during his long career on the tournament circuit in England and France. In 1168 Marshal was helping escort Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of King

Henry II, when her convoy was attacked Marshal transferred his loyalty to King John, serving him in the continuing near Poitiers, France. Eleanor reached conflict with France and during the the safety of her castle while William delayed the attackers. The enemy evenFirst Barons’ War in England. In 1215 tually overwhelmed and captured him, Marshal was a signatory of the Magna Carta, a document intended to limit marking his only recorded defeat in royal powers and thus resolve the discombat. Eleanor personally arranged for pute between John and his barons. his ransom, and in gratitude King Henry selected Marshal to train his eldest living When John died the following year, his son Henry was only 9 years old. son, Henry, for the knighthood. When With internal tensions smoldering in son Henry—who reigned alongside his England, and France’s Prince Louis father as “the Young King”—died in installed in London by the barons as 1183, he made a deathbed request of pretender to the throne, the marshal Marshal to carry his Crusader’s cloak remained the only universally trusted to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in man in the kingdom. Marshal knighted Jerusalem. After making the pilgrimage, the boy and oversaw his coronation as Marshal remained in Syria several years Henry III. He was also appointed Henry fighting alongside the Knights Templar. III’s protector and given the title Rector On his return to England in 1187 Regis et Regni, making him England’s Marshal joined the royal household de facto military and political leader. and the following year accompanied Marshal’s first act was to confirm and Henry II on campaign against Philip II reissue the Magna Carta. Despite that of France. Prince Richard had allied overture, conflict with the barons soon with Philip in an ongoing dispute over resumed. Although in his 70s, Marshal territory and alliance through marcommanded the Royalist forces in the riage. In the spring of 1189 Richard led field for two years. In 1217 Marshal led a pursuit of his ailing father’s convoy his forces to victory against the in the Loire Valley. As Richard French and rebel barons at the galloped after Henry’s train, Marshal drove a lance into Battle of Lincoln. As the battle was ending, French commander Richard’s horse, killing it and Thomas, comte du Perche, who leaving the Lionheart sitting was young enough to be Marin the dust. Within days Henry shal’s grandson, challenged the died, and Richard rose to the English commander to single throne, yet one of his first acts combat. It was a fatal mistake. was to pardon William’s acMarshal died on May 14, tions in defense of Henry and Marshal’s remains, reconfirm his position in the in robes bearing 1219, having secured the Enthe order’s symbol, glish throne for Henry III and royal court. lie in London’s the Magna Carta for humanity. Marshal served Richard loyally for a decade, thwarting Temple Church. Just before death he assumed the habit of a Knight Templar. Prince John’s power grab while He was entombed in London’s Temple Richard was off at the Third Crusade Church, where his recumbent effigy and later serving the Lionheart during remains. Presiding at Marshal’s funeral, his many small wars in France. On the Archbishop of Canterbury Stephen death of his older brother in 1194 WilLangton said, “Here lies all that remains liam served the king as sole marshal of of the best knight of all the world.” MH England. When Richard died in 1199,

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What We Learned... From the Tonkin Gulf By Stephan Wilkinson

led to the deaths of more than 58,000 Americans and countless Vietnamese.

Lessons: Good gunnery takes practice. In the

August 2 incident Maddox expended 283 3- and 5-inch rounds yet inflicted significant damage on only one of the three attacking PT boats. A dozen of the rounds were illuminating star shells, useless in daytime combat. Micromanagement is never a good tactic. The commanders of Maddox

Senior Pentagon officers sought to grasp a confused situation unfolding half a world away.

ALBERT MOLDVAY/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

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hat happened on the night of Aug. 4, 1964, in the Gulf of Tonkin—a large body of water pinched between North Vietnam and China—changed the course of military history. The murky events involved the U.S. Navy destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy and constituted the second of two closely linked Tonkin Gulf incidents. The first had occurred two days earlier, on the afternoon of August 2. The United States was not yet at war in Vietnam, but the presence of Maddox within a dozen miles of North Vietnam’s offshore islands (inside that government’s claimed territorial limits) certainly offered provocation. This was no mere “show the flag” cruise, either. Maddox was there to gather electronic intelligence from North Vietnam’s radar installations, communications facilities and coastal defenses. So it’s not surprising the tiny North Vietnamese navy sent three fast torpedo boats to intercept Maddox. In the attack the U.S. destroyer evaded several torpedoes, neatly outmaneuvered the PT boats and dam-

aged at least one with gunfire. Pursuing jet fighters from the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga damaged all three North Vietnamese boats, leaving one dead and burning in the water. Damage to Maddox comprised a single hole from a 14.5mm machine-gun bullet. Little more than 48 hours later Maddox, joined by Turner Joy, fought another three-hour running battle far out in the Tonkin Gulf with…well, ghosts, phantoms on a stormy, lightning-laced night. Maddox and Turner Joy fired more than 300 3- and 5-inch shells and several depth charges at false radar and sonar targets, perhaps reflected from the wave tops and the ships’ own rudders. At one point radar operators on Maddox even identified Turner Joy as a possible target. The destroyers reported having evaded at least 26 torpedoes, and to this day former crewmen of the ships insist the attacks were real. Three days later President Lyndon Johnson used the “battle” as a means to push through Congress the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave him the war-making power that ultimately

and Turner Joy were bombarded by scores of distracting radio queries from officials in Washington, D.C. If you are nearly 9,000 miles from a battle, hold that thought until it’s over. Say again? Lacking a dedicated communications ship, the destroyers’ radios were so swamped by their own traffic that legitimate traffic from Pacific Fleet commanders didn’t reach the ships until after the action. Radar and sonar can lie. Though experienced operators knew better, novice techs were fooled by sonar returns off their own ships’ rudders and by “Tonkin spooks”—radar returns generated by atmospheric and maritime phenomena. The fog of war is thick. Maddox and Turner Joy had the entire Pacific Fleet wound tight with requests for help. Ticonderoga launched numerous aircraft, none of which saw a single target. Once the camel gets its nose under the tent, the hump is sure to follow.

Within hours of the phantom battle Johnson ordered retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnamese torpedo boat bases, while the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave him the authority to further escalate the conflict without a formal declaration of war from Congress— and the rest, as they say, is history. MH

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Hardware Type 95 Ha-Go Light Tank 7

By Jon Guttman / Illustration by Peter Bull

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n July 1933 Japan’s infantry and cavalry schools—responding to complaints that the Type 89 medium tank was too slow and the Type 92 cavalry tank too lightly armed (machine guns only)— collaborated on the design of a tank that would combine greater speed with better armament. The result was a 7.7-ton light tank (half the weight of the Type 89B, but using the same diesel engine) armed with a 37mm cannon. Mitsubishi had a prototype ready for trials by June 1934. After further modifications, including the addition of a rearfacing machine gun in the one-man turret, the machine went into production in 1936 as the Type 95 Ha-Go (“third issue”) light tank. The Ha-Go entered service in Manchuria, and at the outset of World War II it supported the invasions of Malaya, Singapore and the Philippines, where it held its own against the Allies’ M3 Stuart light tanks. Although its quarters were cramped and its armor scarcely able to withstand a heavy machine-gun round, attempts to produce an improved design— including an amphibious variant—amounted to little. Mitsubishi and the Hino Motor Co. built 2,300 Ha-Gos, which Japan deployed everywhere from western Burma to Kiska in the Aleutian Islands. But as the Allies forced Japan onto the defensive, the Ha-Go succumbed to more advanced opposition, such as the M4 Sherman medium tank. When Soviet forces stormed Manchuria in August 1945 (see related story, P. 26), the Ha-Go and its medium-weight stablemates found themselves outnumbered and hopelessly outclassed by the armored columns that had just prevailed over Nazi Germany’s best. MH 1. Main gun trunnion 2. Type 94 37mm gun 3. Right side ammunition storage for 37mm gun 4. Turret 37mm ammunition ready rack 5. Engine bulkhead 6. Rear turret Type 97 7.7mm machine gun 7. Engine muffler 8. Air intake for engine 9. Mitsubishi A6120VD diesel engine 10. Oil filler cap 11. Tank repair jack 12. Tank tools 13. Idler wheel 14. Power train to transmission (cover omitted for clarity)

Crew: Three Combat weight: 8.1 tons Armor: 12mm hull and turret, front, rear and sides; 9mm top and bottom Power-to-weight ratio: 16.2 hp/ton Overall length: 14 feet 4 inches Width: 6 feet 9 inches Height: 7 feet Engine: Mitsubishi A6120VD 120 hp six-cylinder diesel engine with a five-speed transmission Fuel capacity: 27 gallons (main tank), seven gallons (reserve) Max. speed: 28 mph (road), 18 mph (cross-country) Max. range: 130 miles Fuel consumption: 5.4 mpg Ground clearance: 15 inches Armament: Type 94 or Type 98 37mm tank gun; two Type 97 7.7mm machine guns Ammunition: 130 rounds 37mm; 3,300 rounds 7.7mm Muzzle velocity: 2,300 fps Max. effective range: 1.8 miles

15. Helical compression springs under armored cover for suspension 16. Return roller 17. Front Type 97 7.7mm machine gun 18. Road wheel in twin bogie mount 19. Drive sprocket 20. Steel tracks 21. Transmission 22. Brake pads for vehicle steering 23. Tank headlight 24. Driver’s forward visor 25. Driver’s instruments (electrical switches) 26. Driver’s seat

IMAGE FROM NEW VANGUARD NO. 137 JAPANESE TANKS 1939–1945, BY STEVEN J. ZALOGA, © OSPREY PUBLISHING, LTD.

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WARS BEGIN FOR A VARIETY OF REASONS—

to spread or combat an ideology, to gain or defend territory, to punish a nation for some real or perceived wrong, prompted by some minor dynastic struggle or even resulting from a calculated misrepresentation of actual events. Once begun, military conflicts—whether between nations, members of different ethnic groups or adherents of differing faiths—all tend to include the same ingredients. There is, of course, actual combat, the struggle of armed forces over well-defined battlefields or, increasingly, across far-flung cityscapes whose residents are suddenly thrown into the midst of combat. There is also the accompanying war of words, ideas and beliefs, in which each side attempts to justify itself to its own people and to the larger world, while at the same time working to vilify the enemy and undercut support for him both at home and abroad. And, of course, there are the concurrent diplomatic and financial battles, as the war’s participants seek to achieve through other means what they might not be able to accomplish with weapons. Yet those who fight wars, either as aggressor or victim, all have the same ultimate goal: to conclude the conflict as quickly and successfully as possible, hopefully at the lowest cost in blood and treasure. Whether the war lasts six days or 30 years, the purpose is to defeat the enemy and prevent the destruction of one’s own homeland, culture or political system. Nations that revel in the conduct of war for its own sake, without regard for its costs or consequences, seldom survive. When wars finally do end, the victors seek to ritually demonstrate the superiority of their cause and the extent of their martial prowess. The demonstrations have historically involved the execution of a defeated monarch, a parade of captives, the destruction of an enemy capital or, in more recent times, solemn surrender ceremonies aboard mighty warships. However conducted, the event has conveyed one clear message: We won, you lost, and the war is definitively over. Until, of course, the next time. MH

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JAPAN’S LAST FIGHT On Aug. 15, 1945, Emperor Hirohito broadcast Japan’s surrender to his people— but on islands to the north and in Manchuria many Japanese kept fighting to the death against Soviet invaders

CORBIS

By Sir Max Hastings

In August 1945 Joseph Stalin committed Soviet troops to helping the Allies defeat Japan. But the forces the Soviets met weren’t about to give in.

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For all the Red Army’s experience of continental warfare, it knew pitifully little about opposed landings from the sea

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ven as Soviet armies completed the occupation of Manchuria, amphibious units were assaulting the Pacific islands promised to Joseph Stalin at Yalta. Eight thousand men were dispatched across 500 miles of sea to the Kurils, a chain of some 50 islands situated northeast of Japan. The northern Kurils were defended by 25,000 imperial troops, of which 8,480 were deployed on the northernmost, Shumshu, 18 miles in length by 6 wide. Their morale was not high. This was, by common consent, one of the most godforsaken postings in the Japanese empire.

On the night of August 14 Shumshu’s senior officer, Maj. Gen. Fusaka Tsutsumi, was alerted by Fifth Area Army to listen with his most senior staff to Emperor Hirohito’s broadcast next day. Having done so, Tsutsumi awaited the arrival of an American occupation force, whom he had no intention of fighting. Instead, however, at 4:22 a.m. on August 18, without warning or parley, a Russian division assaulted Shumshu—and met resistance. For all the Red Army’s experience of continental warfare, it knew pitifully little about the difficulties of opposed landings from the sea. From the outset the Shumshu operation was a shambles, perfunctorily planned and chaotically executed. The landing force was drawn from garrison troops without combat experience. At 5:30 a.m. Japanese shore batteries began to hit Soviet ships as they approached. Some assault craft were sunk, others set on fire. Those who abandoned foundering boats found themselves swept away by the currents. The invaders’ communications collapsed as radios were lost or immersed when their operators struggled ashore. Sailors labored under Japanese fire to improvise rafts to land guns and tanks—the Russians possessed none of the Western Allies’ inventory of specialized amphibious equipment. A counterattack by 20 Japanese tanks gained some ground. What was almost certainly the last kamikaze air attack of the war hit a destroyer escort. Early on the morning of the 19th the Soviet commander on Shumshu received orders to hasten the island’s capture. Soon afterward a Japanese delegation arrived at Russian headquarters to arrange a surrender. Yet next morning some coastal batteries still fired on Soviet ships in the Second Kuril Strait and were heavily bombed for their pains. Tsutsumi’s men finally quit on the night of August 21, having lost 614 dead.

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Marines of the Soviet Pacific Fleet sail to Port Arthur (in Japaneseoccupied China) aboard a U.S.-provided landing ship in 1945. Moscow sought access to the port as a precondition for joining the Pacific War.

MILITARY HISTORY

akhalin Island represented a less serious challenge, for its nearest point lay only 6 miles off the Asian coast, and its northern part was Soviet territory. But the island was vastly bigger—560 miles long and between 19 and 62 miles wide. Japan had held the southern half since 1905, a source of bitter Russian resentment now to be assuaged. Sakhalin’s terrain was inhospitable— swamp-ridden, mountainous, densely forested.

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he Soviet Union joined the Allied war against Japan on Aug. 9, 1945, just weeks before Tokyo’s formal surrender. The opening of hostilities was in keeping with Moscow’s commitment at the November 1943 Tehran Conference to enter the war in the Pacific once Nazi Germany had been defeated, and with its further pledge at the February 1945 Yalta Conference to join the campaign against Japan within three months of Berlin’s surrender. The Soviets first invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria and then conducted amphibious landings in Korea and on Sakhalin Island and the Kuril Islands, with the ultimate goal of both gaining control of the territories and winning a role in the occupation of Japan.

Soviet forces began combat operations on August 9, three months to the day after the German surrender. They initially invaded Japanese-occupied Manchuria, then moved against Korea, Sakhalin and the Kurils.

For reasons of prestige, the Japanese had lavished precious resources on fortifying the island. The consequence was that when Soviet troops began an assault on August 11, their advance made little headway. Only after bitter fighting did they capture the key Honda strongpoint, whose defenders fought to the last man. The weather was poor for air support, and many tanks became bogged. Russian infantrymen were obliged to struggle through on foot to outflank Japanese positions. Early on August 16, however, after the imperial broadcast, the Japanese obligingly launched “human wave” counterattacks, which enabled the Russians to inflict much slaughter. Next day, yard by yard, Soviet troops forced passages through the forests, battering the defenders with air attacks and artillery barrages. On the evening of August 17 the local Japanese commander in the frontier defensive zone surrendered. Elsewhere on Sakhalin, however, garrisons continued to resist. When the Soviets’ Northern Pacific Flotilla landed a storming force at the port of Maoka (present-day Kholmsk) on August 20, the invaders mowed down civilians at the shore-

side. Japanese troops opened fire. Thick fog hampered gunfire observation. Defenders had to be painstakingly cleared from the quays and then the city center. “Japanese propaganda had successfully imbued the city’s inhabitants with fears of ‘Russian brutality,’” declared a Soviet account disingenuously. “The result was that much of the population fled into the forests, and some people were evacuated to Hokkaido. Women were especially influenced by propaganda, which convinced them that the arriving Russian troops would shoot them and strangle their children.” The Soviets claimed to have killed 300 Japanese in Maoka and taken a further 600 prisoners. The rest of the garrison fled inland. Sakhalin was finally secured on August 26, four days behind the Soviet schedule. From the book Retribution, by Sir Max Hastings, copyright © 2008 by Max Hastings, published by arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Originally published in Great Britain in 2007 as Nemesis, by Harper Press, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, London.

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U.S.S.R. vs. Japan

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he Soviet Union declared war on Japan on Aug. 8, 1945, three months to the day after the German surrender, in compliance with agreements signed at the Yalta Conference that February. Among other preconditions, the Soviets demanded postwar access to Port Arthur on mainland China, a share in the operation of the Manchurian railways and possession of southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands. Soviet forces launched a three-pronged invasion of Manchuria on August 9. Though Emperor Hirohito broadcast his nation’s decision to surrender on the 15th, pockets of Japanese troops in Manchuria continued to fight the Soviet invaders, and the Soviets went ahead with amphibious landings on Sakhalin and the Kurils.

Hutou Fortified Region Fighting persisted the longest at Hutou, a reinforced concrete fortress complex centered on five hilltop artillery positions overlooking key roads and rivers. For more than two weeks Hutou’s 1,500 defenders held out with their families from deep within the subterranean stronghold. When combat ceased on August 26, only 46 Japanese remained alive.

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Invasion of South Shakhalin Japan had held the southern half of 560-mile-long Sakhalin Island since the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, a sore point the Soviets sought to remedy. Invading the island on August 11, they faced unexpectedly stubborn Japanese resistance, even after Hirohito’s broadcast. With superior artillery and air support, the Soviets finally secured the island by the 26th.

Invasion of the Kuril Islands On August 18, three days after Japan’s surrender announcement, Soviet forces invaded the Kurils from Kamchatka, striking first at Shumshu. The operation exposed the Soviets’ inexperience with amphibious landings, costing them 1,567 casualties to just over 1,000 for the Japanese. Japan and Russia continue to contest the sovereignty of the islands.

Battle of Shumshu The Soviets faced a tough fight from the 8,480-man Japanese force on Shumshu. In the wake of Japan’s surrender, Shumshu’s garrison commander had expected a U.S. occupation force and not a Soviet amphibious invasion on August 18. But his artillery and tanks inflicted a steep toll on the Soviets before the last Japanese holdouts surrendered on the 23rd.

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talin harbored more far-reaching designs on Japanese territory. Before the Manchurian assault was launched, Soviet troops were earmarked to land on the Japanese home island of Hokkaido and to occupy its northern half as soon as north Korea was secure. On the evening of August 18 Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, commander of Soviet forces in the Far East, signaled Moscow, asking permission to proceed with a Hokkaido attack scheduled to last from August 19 to September 1. For 48 hours Moscow was silent, brooding. On August 20 Vasilevsky signaled again, asking for orders. Continue preparations, said Stalin: The assault force should be ready to attack by midnight on August 23. Meanwhile, the Americans also dallied with possible landings in the Kurils and at the mainland port of Dalian, China, to secure bases—in breach of the Yalta agreement— before the Soviets could reach them. Both sides, however, finally backed off. Washington recognized that any attempt to preempt the Soviets from occupying their agreed territories would precipitate a crisis. Likewise, President Harry S. Truman cabled Moscow, summarily rejecting Stalin’s proposal that the Russians should receive the surrender of Japanese forces on north Hokkaido. At midday on the 22nd Moscow dispatched new orders to Far East Command, cancelling the Hokkaido landings. The Americans confined themselves to hastening Marines to key points on and near the coast of mainland China, to hold these until Chiang Kai-shek’s forces could assume control. A huge American commitment of men and transport aircraft alone enabled the Nationalists to re-establish themselves in the east during the autumn of 1945.

Chinese assert that the 30,000 slave laborers who built the fortress were killed when their work was complete, and indeed many bodies were exhumed after 1945. To the Japanese, Hutou was an unpopular posting, remote he last battle of World War II was fought at a place few Westerners have ever heard of. Hutou means “tiger’s from any pleasures or amenities. For those who occupied head” in Chinese. In 1945 there were still some tigers its echoing caverns, it was also chronically unhealthy—moisture dripped off the concrete walls, rusted in the Wanda Mountains, where the weapons, spoiled food. In winter the buntown stands beside the great Ussuri River, eastern frontier of Manchuria. On the Ruskers were icy cold; in summer stiflingly sian shore forests stretch for miles across hot. Through the years of war, veteran 1,577,725 troops* flat country. On the Manchurian side, units had been removed from the fortress garrison and replaced by less impressive however, steep bluffs rise from the swamps 27,086 artillery pieces human material. Despite evidence of Soviet and railway yard at the waterside. There, 3,721 aircraft beginning in 1933, the Japanese Kwantung patrolling and the discovery of pontoons Army created the most elaborate defensive drifting on the Ussuri River, Hutou’s com3,705 tanks system in Asia: Its commanders were rash mander was absent at a briefing on the 1,852 self-propelled guns night of the initial attack and was never enough to call it their “Maginot Line.” Hutou was centered on five forts built able to return to his post. The defense was on neighboring hills that rise up to 400 therefore directed by the local artillery TRANS-BAIKAL FRONT: 654,040; 2ND FAR EASTERN * FRONT: 337,096; 1ST FAR EASTERN FRONT: 586,589 feet above the riverbank. The concrete commander, Captain Masao Oki. roofs and walls were 9 feet thick, with generators, storeThe initial Soviet barrage cut road links and spread terror rooms and living quarters sunk deep underground, linked among the few hundred hapless civilians living behind the forby tunnels. The whole system was almost 5 miles wide and tress. On August 9 the Chinese inhabitants of Hutou township, 4 deep, supported by some of the heaviest artillery in Asia, a wattle-and-wooden settlement, were awakened in the early including 240mm Krupp guns and a 410mm howitzer. The morning darkness by the roar of aircraft overhead, the whistle

MILITARY HISTORY

Soviet Forces

ALEXANDER IVANOVICH LAKTIONOV/FINE ART IMAGES/HERITAGE/THE IMAGE WORKS

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Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky commanded Soviet units in the Far East, preparing his forces far in advance of the scheduled August 9 invasion.

In their engagements with Japanese forces Soviet units usually wielded far greater firepower, from PPSh-41 submachine guns like those above to rocket launchers, artillery and columns of tanks.

of falling bombs and the thud of shells. Some fell on the Japa- Oki was preoccupied with directing the infantry defense. nese defenses, others among the houses, killing five Chinese. All that day and the next Soviet troops continued to shuttle After two hours the shelling stopped, and hundreds of across the river. The local Japanese army commander, Lt. villagers ran out into the street. They saw the horizon rip- Gen. Noritsune Shimuzu, telephoned Hutou on the evening pling with gun flashes from the Russian shore of the Ussuri of the 9th to deliver a wordy injunction to Oki to hold fast: and at once understood that the Soviets were coming. Japa- “In view of the current war situation and the circumstances of the garrison, you are all requested to nese soldiers ran into the town. Though fight to the last breath and meet your fate, some buildings were already blazing after being hit by bombs and shells, they merely when it comes, as courageously as flowclaimed that an air-raid practice was taking ers, so that you may become pillars of our place. All civilians must move immedination.” After this heady torrent of mixed * 1,217,000 troops metaphors all contact was lost between ately into the nearby woods. There was 6,700 artillery pieces the defenders and the outside world. no time to gather food or possessions. The defenders exploited a lull in Russian By nightfall on August 10 the surround1,800 aircraft artillery fire to move all the garrison’s family ing area was securely in the hands of the 1,215 tanks members and nearby immigrant Japanese invaders. When darkness came the Soviets began attacks on the bunker system. All farmers into the tunnel system. As well as failed. It became plain that against such 600 regular troops, there were then shelter* KWANTUNG ARMY: 713,000; KOREA, SAKHALIN, ing underground 1,000 civilians, some with strong defenses subtler tactics would be KURIL ISLANDS: 280,000; MANHUKUOAN ARMY: 170,000; INNER MONGOLIAN FORCES: 44,000 militia training and weapons. An hour later necessary. Through the days that followed, shelling resumed, and at 8 a.m. Soviet infantry started crossing artillery was used to keep Japanese heads down, while inthe Ussuri. The Japanese responded with mortar fire. This fantry and engineer groups inched forward among the inflicted some casualties, but within three hours the attackers trenches. Soon they had isolated the individual forts and had secured a bridgehead. Amazingly, Hutou’s biggest artillery destroyed Japanese artillery observation posts. The condipieces did not fire. They were short of gunners, and Captain tion of the defenders became grim.

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Japanese Forces

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“After the first [Soviet] salvo we knew the battle could have only one outcome,” wrote one of the few Japanese survivors, gunner Gamii Zhefu. “In the tunnels beneath the fort it was incredibly hot. We were desperate for water. The women were terrified. Then one soldier produced a canteen and gave everyone a sip, which did wonders for our morale. We were also very hungry, however, and started looking for food. We found some cans, ate—and started feeling thirsty again. Soon, for all of us, water became an obsession. It overcame even our fears about the battle and the threat of death. We were reduced to animal needs and desires.” On August 13, adopting a technique familiar in the Pacific island battles, the Russians poured gasoline down the fortress’ ventilation inlets and ignited it. Hundreds of defenders and their families perished in the conflagrations that followed. Yet the Japanese continued to surprise Russian troops with sallies, sometimes dislodging the attackers from newly occupied positions. One Japanese rush was led by a 22-year-old probationary officer brandishing a sword, who fell to a Russian grenade. Hutou’s gunners, unable to use their huge weapons, destroyed them with demolition charges and formed suicide squads. A Japanese artillery piece was destroyed by a round from its neighbor, firing at point-blank range. The central heights of the fortress changed hands nine times.

MILITARY HISTORY

The wretched defenders of Hutou knew nothing of the emperor’s broadcast on August 15, nor of their country’s surrender. They rejected all Russian calls to lay down their arms. On the 17th a five-man party of local Chinese and captured Japanese carrying a white flag was dispatched from the Soviet lines to tell the garrison that the war was over. The officer who received them dismissed such a notion with contempt. He drew his sword and beheaded the elderly Chinese bearing the Soviet proposals. “We have nothing to say to the Red Army,” he declared, before retiring into his bunker. The Soviet barrage resumed. Conditions underground became unendurable. Many of those in the tunnels and casemates suffered carbon monoxide poisoning. “There were plenty of bodies down there,” wrote Zhefu. “I heard a wounded man crying repeatedly, ‘Water, water,’ but no one took any notice of him. I was momentarily excited by seeing a trickle of fluid running across the floor, until I realized that it was leaking from a corpse. I drank it. Another man said, ‘That stuff will kill you.’ I didn’t care. I was dying of thirst anyway.” For hundreds of peasants sheltering in the woods in the first days there was nothing to eat save a few berries and wild plants. They drank water from the river and listened to the appalling cacophony of battle on the Hutou hills. A few Japanese immigrants huddled among them, but most had sought

AKG-IMAGES/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/SOVFOTO

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In Harbin, Manchuria, on Aug. 20, 1945, a Red Army officer takes inventory as Japanese troops file past to surrender their small arms.

Today, a huge Soviet war memorial on the site declares Hutou to be the scene of the final battle of World War II

the shelter of the fortress. On the fourth day, while fighting still raged, Red soldiers appeared and herded the civilians down to the riverbank, which was now secure. The Russians smashed open a big Japanese food store and invited the Chinese to help themselves. They were able to make rice soup to sustain them through another 10 days of uncertainty and gunfire on the hills above. On August 19 a large party of Japanese from the fortress attempted a break for freedom. They were cut down by Russian machine guns. By the 22nd almost all the underground bunkers had become untenable. Soviet troops probing cautiously down the steps met a ghastly stench of humanity, cordite and death. In one bunker the bodies of men, women and 80 children aged between 1 and 12 were heaped together. In a cavern beneath Strongpoint “Sharp” lay another pile of women’s corpses. There was also the detritus of the dead—cooking pots, wire-rimmed spectacles, gramophones, a few bicycles, pinup pictures of surprisingly smartly dressed “comfort women.” The Soviets declared the Hutou Fortified Region secure. Yet for four days more one isolated Japanese company continued its resistance. Only on August 26 was this remnant snuffed out. Thus, today, a huge Soviet war memorial on the site declares Hutou to be the scene of the final battle of World War II. Almost 2,000 Japanese men, women and children perished in and around the fortress, days after the rest of the world celebrated peace.

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ussians told the Chinese fugitives in the woods behind Hutou that it was now safe to come out. In a curious introduction to their new lives these bewildered peasants were shown a propaganda film about the Russian Revolution. A commissar addressed them through an interpreter: “Red soldiers have made great sacrifices in this battle to bring you liberty, and now it is yours.” The Japanese were all dead, he said. The villagers could go home. Home? They drifted uneasily back to their huts to find only ruins and blackened earth. In the ashes of Jiang Fushun’s family home lay the body of his father, a bullet through his head, the price of his rashness in staying behind. Every Chinese who ventured into the village during the battle had met the same fate. Those who had relatives elsewhere began long treks in search of sanctuary, but Jiang’s family had no one to go to. They lingered among the ruins, scrabbling to build themselves a shelter, scavenging for food. The task was made no easier by the fact that Russian soldiers began to remove everything

edible or of value. The Chinese were appalled to see the liberators drive off the horses on which their tiny farms depended. Women were raped in the usual fashion. Soviet soldiers warned peasants not to approach the forts, which were still littered with mines and munitions. After a few days, however, Jiang and a few others wandered up to the blackened casemates, gazing in revulsion at the unburied corpses of Japanese soldiers and their women. When the Russians finally departed, taking with them even the tracks of the local railway, the 1,000 or so desolate people left in Hutou found themselves existing in a limbo. The village headman was dead. For more than two years thereafter no one attempted to exercise authority over them, nor to provide aid of any kind. When the communists eventually assumed control of their lives, “things became a little better.” Only 46 Japanese are known to have escaped from the fortress with their lives. “The defense was extraordinarily brave,” says Chinese historian Wang Hongbin, “which usually demands respect. But it was also completely futile. It is hard to admire blind loyalty to the emperor at that stage. They all died for nothing.” MH Sir Max Hastings is the author of 20 books. He has served as a foreign correspondent and as the editor of Britain’s Evening Standard and The Daily Telegraph and has received numerous British Press Awards, including Journalist of the Year in 1982 and Editor of the Year in 1988. He resides outside London.

In the wake of the Japanese defeat cheering civilians in Dalian, China, greet Red Army tank crews. Though liberated, many Chinese returned to their villages only to find burned-out ruins and blackened earth.

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AN INCONCLUSIVE RESULT TO THE FIRST PITCHED BATTLE OF THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR AUGURED A DECADE OF BLOODY, SEESAW CONFLICT BETWEEN THE ROYALISTS AND PARLIAMENTARIANS BY CHRISTOPHER G. MARQUIS

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SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK/HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF NORFOLK, ARUNDEL CASTLE/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

CASTING T H E D IE AT EDGE HILL

King Charles I, clad in armor in this period painting by Sir Anthony van Dyck, took on the Parliamentarians in 1642 at the Battle of Edgehill, the opening clash of the English Civil War.

England’s King Charles I was an exile in his own kingdom. In early January he had marched on the House of Commons to arrest five of his harshest critics—leaders of a movement intended to curb the monarch’s royal prerogative and nullify his insistence on the divine right of kings to rule solely as they saw fit. When Charles’ infringement of parliamentary privilege had failed, sparking an outcry in the Commons and on the streets of London, the royal family had fled the capital city. In the intervening months, as Charles and his supporters prepared for war against the Parliamentarians, the king had learned who his friends were. For example, when he sought to enter the town of Hull and seize munitions stored there, its governor, Sir John Hotham, refused him—twice—and Charles lacked sufficient numbers to force the issue. By August the king could only count on horse troops of about 700 or 800 men and no more than a few hundred foot soldiers. When Charles later arrived at Coventry to head off an approach by the Parliamentary army, he found its gates shut to him as well. The raising of the royal standard at Nottingham on Aug. 22, 1642, made for a pathetic scene, according to Royalist statesman and historian Edward Hyde, later the Earl of Clarendon:

By the summer of 1642

Melancholic men observed many ill presages about that time. There was not one regiment of foot yet levied and brought thither; so that the train-bands, which the sheriff had drawn thither, was all the strength the king had for his person and the guard of the standard. There appeared no conflux of men in obedience to the proclamation; the arms and ammunition were not yet come from York, and a general sadness covered the whole town, and the king himself appeared more melancholic than he used to be. That night, a strong wind arose and knocked down the standard.

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Though this engraving depicts a crowd cheering in support of King Charles, eyewitnesses present at the raising of the royal standard at Nottingham described a pitifully somber scene.

MILITARY HISTORY

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arliament had been quite active during the king’s absence from London. On March 5, 1642, the Commons had passed the Militia Ordinance, enabling Parliament to act independently of the king to raise militias in defense of the realm. On May 26 Parliament had issued a remonstrance stating that evil counselors had seduced the king, and that anyone who assisted him was a traitor. In June it voted to raise a 10,000man Parliamentary army—the majority of soldiers recruited from London and the eastern and central counties—and appointed Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex, its captaingeneral and chief commander. Born in 1591, Essex had gained experience as colonel of a foot regiment serving with the Dutch. Though brave and dedicated to the Parliamentary cause, he lacked initiative and was a poor tactician. “As a strategist he must be considered distinctly suspect,” British historian Peter Young wrote of Essex. “What other general fought three of his major battles with the enemy between his army and his base?” Essex, seemingly aware of his own limitations, often employed simple tactics even green recruits could understand. In September 1642 when Essex coalesced his army in Northampton, he had some 15,000 men at his command, including 20 regiments of foot and 77 troops of horse. His instructions from Parliament were to rescue the king from the clutches of his evil counselors and disband the Royalist army.

CHARLES LANDSEER/WALKER ART GALLERY, NATIONAL MUSEUMS LIVERPOOL/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

On the eve of the Battle of Edgehill the Royalist war council—including Prince Rupert (seated) and the Earl of Lindsey (in red sash)—advises Charles (in blue sash) on the disposition of his troops.

At the time there was little to disband. Charles’ fortunes were only slightly better than they had been when he first raised the standard at Nottingham, his supporters remaining widely scattered. Gradually, however, men of integrity and military experience—mostly from the north and west, including Wales—rallied to his cause, and with each passing day his army grew stronger. The king had at his command several talented officers. Charles had appointed Robert Bertie, 1st Earl of Lindsey, commander of the Royalist army. Born in 1582, he had fought in Spain and the Low Countries and took part in the 1627 La Rochelle expedition. Lindsey and son Montagu, the self-styled Lord Willoughby d’Eresby, were among the first to come to the king’s aid. Commanding the royal cavalry was Charles’ nephew Rupert, Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria and a wholly different personality. Although only 22, Rupert was already a seasoned veteran of the Thirty Years’ War. He could fight with sword or pistol, was an expert rider and had introduced to England such military innovations as horse artillery and mining in siege warfare. But for all his tactical prowess, he lacked tact in his personal interactions. Other members of the king’s war council regarded him as haughty. “The uneasiness of the prince’s nature, and the little education he had in courts,” Hyde recalled, “made him unapt to make acquaintance with any of the lords, who were likewise thereby discouraged

from applying themselves to him.” The clashing personalities of Lindsey and Rupert complicated matters for the king, in spite of their other admirable qualities. In October, Charles’ war council debated whether to attack Essex’s army at Worcester or march on London and capture the capital. The latter argument carried the day, and the Royalists set out from Shrewsbury. Once Essex realized the king’s intentions, he led his Parliamentarian army from Worcester on a course to intercept Charles. On the night of October 22 it arrived at Kineton, a market town midway between Stratford-upon-Avon and the Parliamentary garrison at Banbury. A few miles to the southeast sat the long, steep ridge known as Edgehill.

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oving at a swifter pace than its opponent, the Royalist army had deployed in and around Edgecote, several miles east of the Parliamentary army. Charles planned a morning assault on Banbury, as Rupert sent out parties of quartermasters to secure billets. On the outskirts of Wormleighton one of those parties ran into a patrol of Parliamentarians. Rupert informed Charles, who ordered the army to muster atop Edgehill the next morning. Early on October 23, as the forces prepared for battle, another debate erupted in the Royalist camp, this time regarding formation of the brigades—called “tertias” by

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Robert Devereux, 3rd Earl of Essex

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the Royalists. Rupert favored the Swedish formation, each tertia comprising four mixed regiments of pikemen and musketeers. These regiments were arranged in a checkerboard formation, the musketeers on the outside. At close range the musketeers would rush to the inside, screened by the pikemen. It was an effective tactic but perhaps too complicated for a newly formed army with many raw recruits. Lindsey favored the Dutch formation, comprising simple phalanxes eight ranks deep. This, it turns out, was the formation Essex had chosen. Predictably, Charles sided with Rupert and informed Lindsey that Patrick Ruthven, 1st Earl of Forth, would oversee the placement of soldiers. Offended by the king’s lack of trust, Lindsey left the council and placed himself at the head of a regiment of foot.

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MILITARY HISTORY

Robert Bertie, 1st Earl of Lindsey

Around midday Royalist forces descended the hill and took up positions, right to left. Estimates vary on the relative sizes of the armies. James— the king’s 9-year-old son, who was at the battle with older brother Charles, Prince of Wales—later estimated about 8,000 foot and 2,500 horse on the Royalist side, while Parliamentary records place the king’s overall force at between 14,000 and 18,000 men. Similarly, numbers for Parliamentary forces vary from 10,000 to 13,000 foot and horse. The Royalists likely held a slight edge in overall numbers, with an advantage in horse. Parliament was more concentrated in its foot regiments and had three times as many artillery pieces as the Royalists. One problem Essex faced was that his Parliamentarians remained strung out along the route of march between Worcester and Kineton, with two full regiments of foot still half a day’s march away. Several troops of horse—including those belonging to Captains Oliver Cromwell, John Fiennes and Edward Kightley—were quartered several miles from Kineton and also not present when the army took up position around 2 p.m. Parliamentarians fired the first shot. Artillery on both sides then opened a duel. The barrage lasted no more than an hour and was largely ineffective. Meanwhile, at Rupert’s direction, the Royalist horse spurred into action. Thundering down on musketeers crouched behind hedges on the extreme left of the Parliamentary line, the dragoons beat them back with little resistance. Rupert then led the entire right wing of Royalist horse against a wavering Parliamentarian regiment of horse under Sir James Ramsay. At their approach the astoundingly misnamed Sir Faithful Fortescue and his troop of horse promptly defected to the Royalists, turning on their heretofore comrades in arms. This sudden switch of allegiances had a crippling effect on the morale of the remaining troops in Ramsay’s wing. Consequently,

TOP: LEFT TO RIGHT: SIR ANTHONY VAN DYCK/HIS GRACE THE DUKE OF NORFOLK, ARUNDEL CASTLE/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; PRIVATE COLLECTION/KEN WELSH/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; GEORGIOS KOLLIDAS/123RF; BOTTOM; PRIVATE COLLECTION/THE STAPLETON COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

King Charles I

Prince Rupert of the Rhine

Sir Edmund Verney

LEFT TO RIGHT: GEORGIOS KOLLIDAS/THINKSTOCK; 123RF; CHRONICLE/ALAMY

Lord Basil Feilding

the defenders panicked, fired their weapons early and wildly, and broke at first contact. Ramsay, facing a courtmartial after the battle, claimed to have been swept away by the tide of horses and men. He was absolved of blame. The right wing of the Parliamentary line also came under attack. Sir Arthur Aston, a veteran of Russian and Polish service and the lone overtly Catholic officer on the field, first led his dragoons to clear the Parliamentarian musketeers from the field. Then Lord Henry Wilmot led his Royalist horse against the outnumbered horse of Lord Basil Feilding. As with Ramsay’s wing, Feilding’s troops broke and fled, along with a regiment of foot under Sir William Fairfax. Having broken both wings of the Parliamentary army, Wilmot and Rupert’s horse—instead of launching immediate flanking attacks against Essex’s center—wildly pursued the fleeing troops to Kineton and commenced plundering the baggage train. Rupert and Sir Charles Lucas sought to rally the pursuers for a flanking assault, but only a fraction of the Royalist horse responded. The consensus among those present—and historians ever since—was that this was the great missed opportunity of the battle and perhaps the war. For the moment it seemed fortune had smiled on the Royalists. The foot now advanced to finish off the Parliamentarian rebels and bring Essex and his cohorts to the mercy of the king. On contact the opposing foot soldiers engaged in a “push of pike,” with pikemen in the vanguard of each side locking their weapons together in an epic trial of strength and endurance. The Royalists found the remnants of the enemy force more formidable than expected. Even so, the Royalists continued to tilt the scales in their favor. A Parliamentarian brigade under Colonel Charles Essex (not to be confused with the Earl of Essex) was the next to break and run. The official Parliamentary account records that the colonel, “being forsaken by his whole bri-

gade, went himself into the van, where both by direction and his own execution he did most gallant service, till he received a shot in the thigh, of which he is since dead.” With Parliamentary fortunes at their nadir, the reserve horse pulled off a daring assault on the Royalist center. First, Sir Philip Stapleton’s regiment charged Sir Nicholas Byron’s infantry tertia. Though beaten back, Stapleton’s men withdrew intact and provided relief to the hard-pressed pikemen on their front lines. Next, Sir William Balfour, lieutenant-general of the Parliamentarian horse, led his regiment against the Royalist tertia under Colonel Richard Feilding (no relation to Parliamentarian Lord Basil Feilding), breaking the king’s men and capturing Feilding. Balfour drove his men forward all the way to the Royalist artillery. According to the Parliamentary account (to which Balfour was a contributor), he “laid his hand upon the cannon and called for nails to nail them up…but finding none, he cut the ropes belonging to them, and his troopers killed the cannoneers.” Unlike Rupert and Wilmot’s unruly horse, Balfour’s men were mindful of the ongoing battle to their rear. After spiking the Royalist guns, they wheeled about and returned to the fight. The reserve horse of the Parliamentarians had turned the tide of the battle.

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s he watched events transpire, Charles quickly realized that not only had a swift victory slipped his grasp, but also his army was in peril. He couldn’t even rely on protection from his personal guard, as they had taken leave to participate in Rupert’s charge. Whatever shortcomings he may have had as a king, Charles exhibited courage and levelheadedness at this critical juncture, remaining in the fight to rally his remaining tertias. Unwilling to risk his sons, however, he had a trusted officer escort young Charles and James to the rear.

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Meanwhile, pressing his advantage, Essex ordered two fresh regiments of foot from Sir John Meldrum’s brigade to concentrate on Byron’s tertia. Byron, having repelled the charge from Stapleton’s horse, found himself hard-pressed by this new assault. His men soon came under a renewed charge from Stapleton’s horse and were encircled when Balfour’s regiment fell on them from the rear. At that moment a regiment from Sir Thomas Ballard’s brigade attacked, finally breaking Byron’s tertia. Its collapse was particularly damaging to the Royalists. When a mortally wounded Lindsey fell into enemy hands, his son, Lord Willoughby, came to his father’s aid at great peril. “[Willoughby] was left ingaged in the midst of the

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Realizing victory would be hard won, the king had an officer escort his young sons—Charles, Prince of Wales, and James, Duke of York —to safety in the rear, from where they watched the battle unfold.

MILITARY HISTORY

enemies,” James later recalled, “chusing rather to be taken with his father, that so he might be in a condition of rendering him what service was in his power.” If the loss of their field commander wasn’t startling enough, the Royalists also watched in horror as the Parliamentarians captured the royal standard, in the process killing standard-bearer Sir Edmund Verney. To the rear of the Parliamentary right, Lucas finally managed to organize a Royalist charge against Essex’s vulnerable center with the small group of horse he’d been able to rally. But his potentially devastating blow fell apart, ironically, at the approach of a gaggle of fleeing Parliamentarians. Lucas could only watch in frustration as several of his men broke off to pursue the routed enemies rather than attack those still fighting. The effort was not completely squandered, however, as Captain John Smith managed to retake the royal standard, apparently by masquerading as a Parliamentarian officer and offering to relieve Essex’s own secretary of the banner. Continuing the string of unforeseen consequences, the arrival of Parliamentary reinforcements may actually have saved the day for the Royalists. Colonel John Hampden’s regiment of foot had finally reached Kineton, halting the Royalist assault on the baggage train and forcing Rupert’s cavalry into retreat. As it happens, the Royalists were in dire need of cavalry to support their tenuous position, their lines having been reduced by half since the start of the fighting. Rupert’s arriving dragoons managed to fire a volley or two into the oncoming Parliamentary lines, stopping them in their tracks. By this time twilight had settled over the field, and neither side was willing to press on for a better outcome. The following morning, when the reinforced Parliamentary lines formed for battle, Charles boldly dispatched herald Sir William le Neve with a proclamation of pardon to all who would lay down their arms. Essex forbade le Neve to read it, insisting Charles was not even in the field. Still, having sized up his own forces and those arrayed against him, Essex decided he had had enough and retired with his army to Warwick Castle to recover from this first conflict. By disengaging to the north, however, he left Charles an open road south to London. Initial reports of the battle at Edgehill—carried by Parliamentarians who had fled the battle—threw the capital into a panic. The sudden appearance of the king at the head of a battle-tested army could have led to an unconditional

W.F. YEAMES/WELLCOME LIBRARY, LONDON

The Parliamentarians had taken up arms and waged battle against their own king, and they would have to do so again

HENRY A. PAYNE/PRIVATE COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Charles’ nephew Prince Rupert—a veteran of the Thirty Years’ War—commanded the royal cavalry and led a charge that stopped the Parliamentarian reinforcements cold.

surrender. But the lethargic pace of the Royalist advance allowed the people time to find their courage. And while Charles’ army marched south by southeast before turning due east at Reading, Essex’s army took a more direct southeasterly route from Warwick and reached London by November 8. By the time the Royalists advanced on the capital, 24,000 Parliamentarians were arrayed against them. Charles again yielded the capital to his foes and withdrew to Oxford, his wartime capital. The Battle of Edgehill was a significant but inconclusive start to a long, bloody campaign. The Royalists initially displayed superior tactics and discipline but allowed early

successes to distract them from finishing off their foes. The event was even more profound for the Parliamentarians. They had taken up arms and waged battle against their own king, and they would have to do so again. The die had been cast. MH Christopher G. Marquis, an officer in the U.S. Air Force, has also written for American History. For further reading he recommends Edward Hyde’s The History of the Rebellion, Edwin Walford’s Edgehill From the Keyhole and Winston Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Volume 2: The New World.

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‘BIGGEST STORY OF MY LIFE’ ASSOCIATED PRESS

Shadowing the war wherever it led, World War II Associated Press correspondent Joseph Morton ventured behind enemy lines to report the full story—and to face his own tragic end By Norman Goldstein

Joe Morton jumped at his first opportunity to cover World War II as a foreign correspondent, traveling to West Africa in May 1942. First landing in Liberia, where he sat for this official portrait, he went on to report stories throughout Europe.

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uring World War II the U.S. War Department accredited some 500 correspondents to cover American military forces in the field. Among the reporters were such names as Scripps-Howard’s Ernie Pyle; UPI’s Walter Cronkite; Hal Boyle, Larry Allen and Lynn Heinzerling of the Associated Press; the New York Herald Tribune’s Marguerite Higgins; and Time magazine’s John Hersey. Sadly, 54 correspondents—including Pyle—were killed in action, falling to enemy fire on land and sea and in the air. Each of these deaths was tragic, but one stands out for its unique circumstances: Joe Morton of the Associated Press holds the dubious double distinction of being the first American war correspondent executed by a foreign enemy in wartime and the only Allied correspondent executed by the Axis during World War II.

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oseph Morton Jr. was born in St. Joseph, Mo., in 1911. The son of an attorney, Morton attended the University of Nebraska and the University of Iowa, where his skill as a wordsmith eventually led to a career in journalism. He wrote for the St. Joseph News-Press and the Gazette, The Des Moines Register and The Omaha Bee-News. Two years after marrying Letty Miller in 1935, Morton joined the Associated Press in Lincoln, Neb.

Morton earned quick promotion from Lincoln to AP’s bureau in Omaha and later Cleveland. In 1940 he moved up to the agency’s New York office, working as an editor. He had long wanted to be a foreign correspondent, however, and in May 1942 he jumped at the chance to go abroad. His initial wartime assignment did not go as well as he had hoped. Boarding a troopship bound for Liberia, Morton was to cover the embarked task force of black U.S. soldiers whose secret mission was to build an Allied military base in the heart of West Africa. But due to the classified nature of the mission the War Department embargoed Morton’s stories for months. Not until early December, when the department officially disclosed the presence of Allied forces in Liberia, was he permitted to file. Meanwhile, after German forces capitulated in French West Africa and American troops headed for Dakar, Morton traveled overland and reached the French colonial capital 20 days before any other correspondent. He contracted dysentery but was released from the hospital in time to talk his way aboard the formerly Vichy French battleship Richelieu, which left Dakar for refitting in New York in late January 1943. He was the only reporter aboard. On July 19, 1943, Morton became one of the first Allied correspondents to see Rome since the start of the war. He achieved that feat aboard a Martin B-26 Marauder bomber participating in the first American air raid on the Italian capital and reported in vivid firsthand detail the aerial assault on the city’s rail yards. Later that summer, during the invasion of Sicily, Morton talked the U.S. Army Air Forces into flying his jeep to the island, enabling him to run circles around his fellow journalists.

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Members of a black Army engineer task force pose in their ship bunks while en route to Liberia in 1942 to build an Allied military base. The War Department, citing security, embargoed Morton’s reports for months.

MILITARY HISTORY

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oon after returning stateside in September 1943 for treatment of his persistent dysentery, Morton learned he was to become a father. Family members and friends quietly hoped impending parenthood on the home front would give him pause about taking risks on the war front, but apparently that was not in his professional nature. Morton returned to Europe, and after the June 1944 fall of Rome he expanded his coverage into the Balkans. In August he accompanied Major Walter Ross, chief of operations for the Office of Strategic Services, to Romania, where Morton became the first American correspondent to report on the entry of Soviet troops into Bucharest. He returned to the Romanian capital in early September to cover Operation Reunion, the evacuation of newly liberated American airmen, held as POWs since being shot down in August 1943 while

HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS

The July 19, 1943, air raid on Rome targeted its rail yards. Morton, who observed from a B-26 Marauder, was among the first Allied correspondents to see Rome since the start of the war.

raiding the Ploie¸sti oil fields. The wily Morton had flown there aboard a Fifteenth Air Force bomber and was again the only Allied reporter present. As soon as he landed in Bucharest, Morton raced off to the royal palace to get the scoop on how Romania’s 22-yearold monarch, King Michael I, had recently summoned the fascist Prime Minister Ion Antonescu to the royal palace, had him seized by guards and then proclaimed Romania’s allegiance to the Allies. In the late afternoon Morton met the young king, Queen Mother Helen and various aides and advisers. Throughout that evening and the next day the American correspondent and the Romanian royals swapped stories about politics, the war, rationing, sports and Hollywood. They played table tennis and toured the estate by car. Morton left the following day, wrapping all the details of his visit into a widely published story, the first to explain events leading to the ouster of Antonescu.

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xpressing a particular interest in clandestine operations, Morton was allowed to cover missions undertaken by the OSS and the Fifteenth Air Force in the Balkans to rescue downed American airmen and support anti-Nazi partisans. The OSS, established by President Franklin Roosevelt’s military order in 1942, had teamed up with the British Special Operations Executive to send agents in support of the Slovak National Uprising, a resistance movement launched against the Nazis in August 1944. The Fifteenth Air Force, based at Bari Airfield, Italy, transported the agents into Slovakia. On Sept. 17, 1944, a sixmember team departed Bari in two B-17G Flying Fortresses, landing the huge bombers behind enemy lines for the first time. In the successful mission they rescued 14 American and two Australian airmen. At the OSS base in Bari, Morton learned of a similar but far more dramatic mission to Slovakia in the works. It was

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to be led by Navy Lieutenant James Holt Green and would include intelligence officers, weapons and demolition experts, translators and a radio operator. Six B-17s—escorted by 32 P-51 Mustang fighters—would transport the OSS and SOE agents and their equipment, as well as a cache of arms and ammunition for the partisans. Meanwhile, an additional 20,000 German soldiers had entered Slovakia in an effort to quell the uprising, and by September it was clear the Slovak fighters were losing ground, the revolt nearing collapse. Green, stationed in the rebel capital of Banská Bystrica, reported to OSS headquarters that the German offensive was closing in and “would probably be successful. Situation here is considered hope-

MILITARY HISTORY

less.” He advised against sending in more agents. However, despite Green’s warnings, his superiors in Bari decided to proceed with the larger second mission. During the last week of September, Morton phoned the AP bureau in Rome seeking authorization to shadow a mission he said would require two to three weeks. Morton shared no specifics of the operation, but the bureau editor surmised it would be similar to earlier trips the reporter had covered— flying supplies, weapons and ammo to Slovak partisans and returning with rescued Allied flyers. Morton got his approval, provided he would return on the next available flight. Before leaving Bari with portable typewriter in hand, Morton sent a dispatch to the AP bureau in Rome announcing

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Eager to cover clandestine operations, Morton began reporting on OSS and Fifteenth Air Force missions from Bari, Italy, writing about rescue missions and the tense situation in Romania.

Morton, a man who knew a scoop when he saw one, decided to remain with the OSS/SOE team to cover the Slovak uprising his departure. He provided no further details on the assignment but said, “I’m off on the biggest story of my life.” The planes took off from Bari on the morning of October 7 and flew over the Allied air base at Foggia on the Adriatic coast. To avoid suspicion the aircraft continued north, joining a scheduled bombing mission. As the formation crossed the Alps and entered Austrian airspace, the B-17s carrying Morton and the OSS/SOE team dropped out and headed northeast toward Slovakia. Hundreds of cheering Slovak partisans were on hand when the bombers landed at Tri Duby airfield. The B-17s remained on the ground about 30 minutes, the fighters circling protectively overhead while 28 Allied airmen boarded for the return flight to Italy. Major Ross, the OSS operations chief, was walking to one of the waiting planes when he spied Morton pecking away on his typewriter, set atop a box beneath a wing of one of the huge bombers. “Aren’t you coming with us?” he asked the journalist. Morton, the only Western journalist in the region and a man who knew a scoop when he saw one, said he had decided to remain in Banská Bystrica with the OSS/SOE team to cover the Slovak uprising. He asked Ross to carry his hastily written story on the latest rescue of downed airmen back to Bari. Ross did so, but military censors deemed the piece too revealing and never passed it on to the AP bureau in Rome. No one would hear directly from Morton again.

TOP: AKG-IMAGES; BOTTOM: ASSOCIATED PRESS

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orton only spent a brief time in Banská Bystrica, but he made every minute count. Seeking a balanced understanding of the Slovak uprising, he interviewed its communist supporters as well as the nationalists. Cecilia Wojewoda, a Polish journalist who had fled Hungary with her husband and was working for a Slovak news service in support of the uprising, described Morton as having “a sort of recklessness” about him, “a carelessness of a fine sort” that “made only his work important for him.” The German encirclement of Banská Bystrica tightened following the departure of the U.S. aircraft. OSS headquarters in Bari put together a rescue mission, but bad weather grounded all aircraft. On October 25, as organized resistance by the Slovak forces collapsed, most of the Americans—comprising the OSS team and remaining airmen— traveled by bus to Donovaly, about 16 miles north. However, Morton and Navy Lieutenant James Gaul, an OSS team member, remained in the threatened city a further two days. With only hours to spare, they left with translator Josef Piontek and joined the column of soldiers, partisans and

The Red Army occupied Bucharest, top, after Romanian King Michael I switched his nation’s allegiance to the Allies in August 1944. Morton, in the company of OSS agents, was the first American to report on the Soviets’ entry. Bottom, Romanian Prime Minister Ion Antonescu (seated on left) and family meet Queen Mother Helen and King Michael (far right) in a more cordial meeting months before the royal coup.

civilians fleeing into the mountains. En route the refugees took fire from German aircraft and artillery and faced relentless pursuit by enemy ground units. All was chaos. Morton, Gaul and Piontek eventually linked up with the Americans from Donovaly. Among the latter was 23-year-old Maria Gulovich, a multilingual Slovakian schoolteacher recruited by the OSS as a guide and translator. The consolidated group decided to withdraw farther into the Tatra Mountains and make for the Soviet lines, thought to be about a week’s march away. For six weeks Morton, members of the OSS team, partisans and others evaded their German pursuers in the thick forests, seeking to reach the front lines of the advancing Red Army. The

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weather was a constant threat. Howling winds, a blizzard, crippling icy streams that froze boot leather to skin—all took their toll. Some desperate souls slaughtered packhorses for food. Scores froze to death. Others suffered frostbite and pneumonia. Morton had tucked packets of antimicrobial sulfa powder in the hatband of his uniform cap and shared them with Gulovich and Nelson Paris, a U.S. Navy photographer. “Many times others could walk much better than we did,” Gulovich later recalled, “so we kind of stayed together. That powder helped.… Our wounds started healing after application.” All three were soon on the mend, but others were not so lucky—one group of 83 partisans who chose to sit out the storm all froze to death. In late November, after escaping another German attack, the group headed for the central Slovakian village of Polomka, reaching it on December 14 after several close calls with German patrols. As a blizzard closed in, Morton and companions, joined by a few SOE agents, made a six-hour uphill slog to a remote mountainside retreat. On Christmas Eve the OSS/SOE team members held a party in the hut, which they had decorated with drawings of American and British flags and a small tree adorned with stars cut from red and blue paper. On Christmas Day the group celebrated with a holiday feast—black bread and thin soup. It was at that point Gulovich, two Americans and two Brits left for another partisan hideout some two hours away. Gulovich said Morton “walked with us half an hour or longer, and then he said, ‘Well, I have to go back,’ and we hugged.” Years later she recalled their parting. “Joe wore a hat, a green knitted cap. I turned back after he left me. I can see it even now. He was walking alone with that green hat on top of his head.” After two more weeks of hiking in bitter temps, Gulovich and team did finally reach Soviet lines, only to face arrest and interrogation by secret police who suspected them of being spies. Taken to Bucharest, they soon secured release through diplomatic channels.

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llied investigators and the OSS received the first definitive information about Joe Morton’s fate in April 1945 after Allied troops captured Werner Müller, who had served as translator during the interrogations of the OSS agents at Mauthausen. He accurately recalled the names of the OSS agents and specifically mentioned “AP reporter Morton.” OSS investigators sat on the information until further proof surfaced. The details of Morton’s fate remained a secret until war’s end, when fellow AP correspondent Lynn Heinzerling was assigned to investigate the disappearance. He and a member of the Allied War Crimes Commission visited Mauthausen, where they were provided with details from Müller’s testi-

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U.S. Navy Lieutenant James Gaul remained with Morton in Banská Bystrica for two tense days after other OSS members had fled the encircled city.

s difficult as conditions were for Morton and the others who remained in the hut, things soon got considerably worse. On the day after Christmas some 300 troops of a German anti-partisan unit, operating on a tip from a local Nazi sympathizer, stormed the cabin, captured its occupants and then burned the structure to the ground. Their captors first took Morton and the others to Bratislava for initial questioning, after which they were transported by truck to the Mauthausen concentration camp, east of Linz, Austria. There the OSS agents faced further interrogation and torture under the direction of Gestapo officers. Postwar testimony described how interrogators placed Holt Green in a crouch, his hands tied behind his knees, then severely whipped him across the face and buttocks till his blood ran freely. They bound another agent’s hands behind his back before suspending him from the ceiling by a chain wrapped around his wrists. A uniformed Morton, protesting that he was not a soldier but an Associated Press reporter, pointed to his war correspondent’s insignia and even produced his ID card. But while he was not harmed during the interrogations, his status was ultimately of no help. On Jan. 24, 1945, a telegram from SS headquarters in Berlin ordered the Mauthausen commander to execute all members of the Slovak mission. The death warrant was based on Adolf Hitler’s Oct. 18, 1942, order to ignore the Geneva Convention on the treatment of POWs and execute any Allied commandos captured behind German lines. The order, of which only 12 copies were distributed, declared, in part, “From now on all enemies on so-called commando missions in Europe or Africa challenged by German troops, even if they are to all appearances soldiers in uniform or demolition troops, whether armed or unarmed, in battle or in flight, are to be slaughtered to the last man.” SS guards set up a camera in Mauthausen’s execution room. The prisoners, lined up in the courtyard outside, were individually escorted into the room and told they were to be photographed. As each man turned to face the camera, a guard with a pistol stepped in and shot him in the nape of the neck. Their bodies were cremated.

IAM/AKG-IMAGES

German guards interrogated and killed Morton and the captured OSS agents scant weeks before the liberation of Mauthausen concentration camp by the U.S. 11th Armored Division in May 1945.

mony and interviewed a prisoner who removed the bodies after the executions. They also met with Wilhelm Ornstein, a Polish Jew and former prisoner, who shared the details of Morton’s and the others’ final moments. Heinzerling was stunned. “This was my first visit to a concentration camp and gave me my first inkling of the scope of Hitler’s madness and crimes,” Heinzerling later wrote to his wife. “I had of course heard about the camps in the early days in Berlin [where he was based from 1938 to 1941], and I knew that Frenchmen were being shipped away to them during the German occupation of Paris in 1940, but I had no conception of the systematic killing in progress.”

Having established the facts surrounding Morton’s death, Heinzerling returned to Rome to write the first complete report on the murder of his friend and fellow war correspondent. MH For further reading Norman Goldstein recommends Inappropriate Conduct, by Don North; World War II: OSS Tragedy in Slovakia, by Jim Downs; and Sisterhood of Spies: The Women of the OSS, by Elizabeth P. McIntosh. The author is grateful to Larry Heinzerling for providing access to his unpublished account “The Execution of Joe Morton” and for sharing information from the files of his father, Lynn Heinzerling.

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The ruthless Mexican General Santa Anna ordered the mass execution of captured Texian rebels at Goliad, but their deaths only further fanned the flames of the Texas Revolution By Ron Soodalter

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PAUL L’OUVRIER/COLLECTION OF THE NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

BIRTH OF A REPUBLIC

Mexican army commander General Antonio López de Santa Anna, pictured here in an 1858 official portrait, enforced a merciless death sentence on some 400 Texian prisoners at Goliad in March 1836.

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y New World standards Goliad was a venerable settlement, built by and for early Spanish explorers and colonists. It had its origins in a mission and fort sited in the early 1720s on a Gulf Coast bay, or bahía. Given impossibly long names, the structures were known simply as Mission la Bahía and Presidio la Bahía. The missionaries were to bring Christianity to the natives, while the presidio garrison served as a deterrent to French, English and, later, American interlopers and as a bastion against marauding tribes of Lipan Apaches and Karankawas. In time a community grew up around the presidio, and residents applied the name La Bahía to the entire district, just as the presidio of San Antonio de Béxar came to be known simply as Béxar. Spanish officials moved La Bahía progressively further inland, ultimately to the bluff on the San Antonio River, at the crossroads of various military and trade routes. In 1829 its Mexican overseers renamed the settlement Goliad, in honor of a martyred rebel priest. On Oct. 10, 1835, after a brief clash at the outset of the Texas Revolution, the strategic presidio fell into the hands of the Texians, as early white Texans were known.

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mericans had had their sights set on Texas since the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Freebooters—adventurers who invaded foreign territories with conquest and treasure in mind—made subsequent forays into Spanish Texas, all without success. Beginning in 1821 Spanish authorities, and soon Texas’ new Mexican rulers, cautiously welcomed Americans as colonists, under certain restrictions. Some of the provisos—such as a restriction on the number of slaves—particularly galled Southern-born Texians, who often circumvented or ignored the law. In 1830 Mexican President Anastasio Bustamente cracked down, outlawing further American immigration to Texas. By 1832 President Andrew Jackson and his loyal acolyte Sam Houston were on the stump, pushing for the annexation of Texas into the Union. Friction steadily increased between the Texian colonists and the Mexican government. When Santa Anna installed himself as dictator in 1834 and tried to rein in the largely independent Mexican state, Tejanos—residents of Mexican origin—joined the Texian opposition. Seeking a return to the old federalist system, they made uneasy and sometimes fatal alliances with the Texians against a common enemy. By the fall of 1835, after several earlier clashes with Mexican forces, the revolution began in earnest.

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arly on the morning of March 27, 1836— Palm Sunday, exactly three weeks after the fall of the Alamo—Mexican soldiers under General José de Urrea formed more than 300 Texian prisoners into three columns in the courtyard of the presidio in Goliad, a settlement on a bluff overlooking the San Antonio River. At the command of Lt. Col. José Nicolás de la Portilla the soldiers marched the prisoners from the fort on three separate roads—east toward Victoria, south toward San Patricio and northwest toward Béxar (present-day San Antonio). A rumor circulated they were being escorted to the coast, where they would be paroled to board ships for New Orleans and freedom. Before they had proceeded a mile along their separate routes, however, the military escorts abruptly halted each column and lined up the prisoners. The soldiers then cocked and aimed their weapons. Several of the Texians, staring suddenly down the muzzles of Mexican muskets, wept and begged for their lives. Others stoically accepted what was about to befall them. One of their number, 19-year-old North Carolina native Robert Fenner, exhorted his comrades to accept their fate with courage: “Don’t take on so, boys! If we have to die, let’s die like brave men!” At their officers’ command the soldiers fired into their prisoners at point-blank range, killing most of them instantly. Others ran, only to be chased down by mounted lancers and slashed or skewered. Miraculously, 28 managed to escape. The officers then marched their troops back to Goliad, where they fell upon several dozen wounded Texian prisoners, who had listened helplessly to the musket fire and cries of their dying comrades. The soldiers killed them to a man. The morning’s mass execution was the single bloodiest massacre of the Texas Revolution. Mexican soldiers had slaughtered some 400 men at Goliad on the order of their commanding general, Antonio López de Santa Anna. Yet for the past 179 years the battle and subsequent massacre have taken a back seat to what one chronicler refers to as the “inseparable alpha and omega of the Texas creation myth”—the fall of the Alamo and the vindicating triumph at San Jacinto. And when historians do speak or write about Goliad, it often comes across as a best-forgotten subtext to the real tragedy that ended the lives of the Texas trinity— William Travis, James Bowie and David Crockett.

On March 6, 1836, the Alamo, held by some 200 Texians, fell to Mexican forces after a 13-day siege. Its defenders were massacred to a man. Goliad commander Colonel James Fannin had vowed to reinforce the Alamo, but his expedition fizzled.

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The Texas Revolution has often been painted as a grassroots juggernaut, peopled by men of singular purpose and a clear objective. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the outset the Texian chain of command was badly fractured and often crippled by jealousy and resentment, with the result that, despite early victories, several subsequent campaigns were ill-conceived, poorly planned and ended in disaster. For many participants the actual objective of the revolution was unclear: an independent republic, annexation into the United States, a return to the original federalist constitution of 1824, or perhaps the overthrow of the selfappointed dictator, Santa Anna. Many volunteers had taken up arms solely in the interest of self-enrichment, conducting themselves more as freebooters than soldiers, and in turn alienating both Tejano and Texian settlers. Texian Philip Dimmitt, commanding Goliad during the fall and early winter of 1835, took it upon himself to father the Goliad Declaration of Independence, declaring Texas “a free, sovereign and independent state.” For emphasis, he created what was ostensibly the first Texas free-state flag: a bloody arm, holding a bloody, dripping sword against a white field (see opposite page). However, the provisional General Council rejected the declaration as ill-advised and likely to alienate their Tejano allies, prompting Dimmit to resign his post. Not until delegates to the Convention of 1836 formally declared an independent Texas Republic on March 2 did the various factions begin to coalesce. Still, dissension prevailed among a number of commanders. Among them was Colonel James Walker Fannin Jr., the

MILITARY HISTORY

man who replaced Dimmitt at Goliad. A 32-year-old Georgiaborn plantation owner, slave trader and opportunist, Fannin proved himself a lethal liability as a leader of men. He had dropped out of West Point after two years, having absorbed few if any of the skills required of a good officer. Tragically, his flaws would soon become all too apparent. Fannin joined the ranks of the revolution as an agitator as early as August 1835. By January 1836 he had been commissioned a colonel in the Texian army and assigned as a governmental agent to raise troops and supplies. He had initially showed promise as a soldier, fighting at the opening Battle of Gonzales in early October and, alongside Jim Bowie, leading Texian troops at Concepción later that month. The fact he had some military training had made him an attractive choice for command. He arrived at Goliad in early February 1836, and his garrison soon swelled to an often-fractious force of more than 400 regulars and volunteers. However, as some of his men noted in letters home, Fannin proved a less than ideal commander. “Colonel Fannin,” wrote Captain Burr Duval to his father, “is unpopular—and nothing but the certainty of hard fighting, and that shortly, could have kept us together so long.” Joseph Ferguson, of the Alabama Red Rovers volunteer company, wrote his brother, “Our commander is Colonel Fannin, and I am sorry to say the majority of the soldiers don’t like him, for what cause I don’t know, whether it is because they think he has not the interest of the country at heart, or that he wishes to become great without taking the proper steps to attain greatness.” One historian labeled Fannin the “most reluctant soldier in all of Texas.”

JAMES ERWIN BOREN/HERITAGE AUCTION GALLERIES, DALLAS JAMES ERWIN BOREN/HERITAGE AUCTION GALLERIES, DALLAS

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Within days of the Alamo’s fall Texian army commander Sam Houston ordered Fannin to abandon the Goliad garrison, Presidio la Bahía, and retreat toward Victoria. But Fannin dallied another full week, exposing his poorly supplied troops to surrounding Mexican forces.

Personality aside, Fannin was indecisive, made poor tactical decisions and habitually defied authority, sometimes by simply ignoring orders. When Santa Anna invested the Alamo on February 23, Travis beseeched Fannin to march to his aid. Two days later Fannin set out from Fort Defiance—as he had renamed Presidio la Bahía—at the head of some 300 men and four cannon. They didn’t get far, as a wagon broke down, and Fannin had failed to procure sufficient provisions for the 90-mile trek. The following morning he tucked tail and turned back to the post. Once again Fannin had failed to act decisively. He would do so again, with tragic results. Desperate for reinforcements, Travis had dispatched multiple couriers, receiving in response only 32 volunteers from Gonzalez. On March 3 he sent an angry missive to the president of the convention, bitterly indicting Fannin:

TOP: LEFT: SAMUEL F. B. MORSE/DALLAS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, TEXAS/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; RIGHT: MATHEW BRADY/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; FLAG: 123RF

Colonel Fannin is said to be on the march to this place with reinforcements, but I fear it is not true, for I have repeatedly sent to him for aid without receiving any. Colonel Bonham, my special messenger, arrived at La Bahía 14 days ago, and on the arrival of the enemy in Béxar, 10 days ago, I sent an express to Colonel F., which arrived at Goliad on the next day, urging him to send us reinforcements; none have yet arrived. A week after the fall of the Alamo, then General Houston —commander of the Texian army and a man never above covering his own flank—wrote to a friend of his irritation: “Colonel Fannin should have relieved our brave men in the Alamo. He had 430 men with artillery at his command and had taken up the line of march with a full knowledge of the situation of those in the Alamo, and owing to the breaking down of a wagon abandoned the march, returned to Goliad and left our Spartans to their fate!” Of course, had Fannin succeeded in reaching the Alamo —by no means a certainty, given the presence of the Mexican army between Goliad and Béxar—it can be argued his men would merely have added to the number of Texian dead. Instead, he elected to hold his ground and fortify Goliad in preparation for an imminent Mexican attack. Indeed, Fannin’s aide-de-camp, John Sowers Brooks, predicted in a March 9 letter to a friend, “As soon as Béxar falls, we will be surrounded by 6,000 infernal Mexicans.” However defensible Fannin might have found his actions, in the eyes of most Texians his failure to rush to the aid of the Alamo branded him indecisive at best, a coward at worst.

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n returning to Fort Defiance, Fannin foolishly split his forces, sending 150 of his men in two separate parties to relieve the Texians at Refugio. Mexican forces under Urrea swiftly engaged, defeated and captured both relief expeditions. On March 11 Houston ordered Fannin to immediately abandon Goliad and retreat to Victoria before Urrea’s advancing army cut him off. By then Fannin was aware of not only the fall of the Alamo, but also

James Fannin

Sam Houston Inexperience and indecisiveness were Fannin’s gravest faults, and both Houston and William Travis openly criticized his lack of judgment. Left, Philip Dimmitt’s Goliad flag struck a grimly defiant tone.

the defeat of Texian forces at San Patricio and Agua Dulce. Texians had also abandoned the seaport of Copano—a vital link to Goliad. Thus Fannin’s requests for more men, weapons and supplies were met with the same silence as Travis’ letters. Urrea was on his way with an overwhelming force. There was no strategic reason to stay. Yet Fannin continued to fortify Goliad, biding his time once again—until time ran out. When Fannin finally marched his men from the fort on March 19, they were hauling nine cannon and some 500 spare muskets—but insufficient food and water. Lumbering along at the pace of his slowest oxen, which Fannin had neglected to feed, he ordered a stop for lunch after traveling only a few hours. When Urrea’s men—most of whom had participated in the Alamo fight—rode into view, instead of hurrying his column to the relative protection of tree-lined Coleto Creek, Fannin formed a defensive square on a low open plain, exposing his entire command to enemy fire. The next morning Urrea’s artillery arrived, rendering a Texian defeat inevitable. Fannin surrendered his men in hopes of securing favorable terms, and Urrea’s soldiers promptly escorted the Texians back to Goliad. Two days later 80 Texians who had eluded Urrea at Refugio also surrendered. Retaining nearly 30 of them at Victoria as laborers, Urrea ordered the rest of the men marched to Goliad.

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uch has been made of Santa Anna’s practice of refusing quarter to rebels. In fact, the infamous slaughter of the Alamo defenders was not unprecedented. Santa Anna had established the practice of executing prisoners at the outset of the insurrection. In December 1835, following the execution of 28 Mexican rebels captured after an abortive attempt to seize Tampico, Santa Anna pushed a law through Congress mandating the execution of any captured armed rebels as “pirates.” He

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believed such a policy would act as a deterrent and put a fast end to the insurrection. It proved his greatest miscalculation. There is reason to believe many more Texians would have faced execution during the war but for the merciful leanings of Urrea. As one Texian contemporary described him, “Urrea, though a man of not much capacity or principle, was not bloodthirsty and when not overruled by orders of a superior, or stirred by irritation, was disposed to treat prisoners with lenity.” When Fannin surrendered at Coleto, he requested terms that specified treatment as prisoners of war, medical attention for the wounded and parole back to the United States. Urrea, painfully aware of Santa Anna’s execution order, told Fannin he could accept only unconditional surrender “at the discretion of the Supreme Government of Mexico.” He assured Fannin he would attempt to intercede on behalf of the Texians and would treat them well until such time as the government determined their fate. “In spite of my great desire of offering them guarantees

MILITARY HISTORY

as humanity dictated,” Urrea wrote in his campaign journal, “this was beyond my authority. Had I been in a position to do so, I would have at least guaranteed them their life.” According to survivor accounts, Fannin apparently could not bring himself to share these terms with his men, and, consequently, they surrendered their arms on the assumption of fair and honorable terms. True to his word, Urrea wrote to Santa Anna, recalling in his journal, “I wished to elude these orders as far as possible without compromising my personal responsibility.” Before resuming his campaign, he sought yet another means of shielding the prisoners from execution—sheer numbers. “I issued several orders to Lt. Col. Portilla, instructing him to use the prisoners for the rebuilding of Goliad. From that time on I decided to increase the number of the prisoners there in the hope that their very number would save them, for I never thought that the horrible spectacle of that massacre could take place in cold blood… a deed proscribed by the laws of war and condemned by the civilization of our country.” Throughout their weeklong imprisonment, the captives honored their promise not to

ALFRED R. WAUD/PRIVATE COLLECTION/THE STAPLETON COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

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When he surrendered to General José de Urrea at Coleto Creek, Fannin had hoped for lenient terms, but he and his men instead faced execution.

Ron Soodalter is a regular contributor to Military History. For further reading he recommends Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State, by Randolph B. Campbell, and Sleuthing the Alamo: Davy Crockett’s Last Stand and Other Mysteries of the Texas Revolution, by James E. Crisp. Also browse the Handbook of Texas Online [www.tshaonline.org/handbook]. U N I T E D S TAT E S

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TOP: MARTIN WALZ/PEGMOTIONS GROUP; BOTTOM: WITOLD SKRYPCZAK/ALAMY

to a new low; and American men, and American money, for the Texan venture would have been scarce indeed.” Instead, Santa Anna—through callous and shortsighted adherence to his own bloody edict—created enough martyrs at Béxar and Goliad to impel Sam Houston’s furious rebels, Texian and Tejano alike, to a stunning, improbable final victory at San Jacinto that April, driven home to the echoes of their twin battle cries, “Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!” MH

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attempt escape, although many might well have saved their own lives through flight. In his reply to Urrea on March 26 a furious Santa Anna rebuked the general, demanding the immediate execution of the “perfidious foreigners.” To ensure his order would be carried out, Santa Anna sent a copy to presidio commander Portilla and dispatched an officer to witness the executions and make a report. Within an hour of receiving the execution order, Portilla was handed a dispatch from Urrea, instructing him to “treat the prisoners with consideration, and particularly their leader, Fannin.” Portilla’s journal records that he spent a troubled night but rose the next morning resolved to obey Santa Anna’s superior orders. In the end he spared what men he could— blacksmiths, wheelwrights, interpreters—about 20 skilled workers who could serve the Mexican army. He also culled out the two surgeons in the command, one of whom would lose a son and two nephews to the massacre. And, finally, he reprieved William Miller’s entire Nashville Battalion of 75 volunteers, who had sailed from New Orleans to Copano but were seized by Urrea’s men as they landed on March 20. Portilla spared them because they had surrendered without resistance. All the others perished. Fannin was the last to die. He had been quartered with the wounded at Fort Defiance, having been shot in the thigh at Coleto Creek. When informed of his fate, he walked resolutely to the courtyard, leaning for support on the shoulder of Joseph Spohn, one of the Texians spared for his language skills. With Spohn translating, the captain in charge of the firing squad read the execution order: “For having come with an armed band to commit depredations and revolutionize Texas, the Mexican government is about to chastise you.” According to Spohn, Fannin maintained his composure throughout. Handing the captain his gold watch, a purseful of doubloons and a wad of dollars, Fannin secured the man’s promise to shoot him in the chest (not the head), to avoid scorching his face by firing too closely and to have his body properly buried. The captain so promised. He then sat Fannin in a chair, blindfolded him, stepped back and gave the order to fire. The muzzles of the soldiers’ muskets were less than a yard from Fannin when they shot him in the head. They rolled his body into a ditch. The soldiers then threw the Texians’ bloodied corpses into carts, hauled them from the fort, piled them up with loose brush and burned them. Only partially cremated, their grisly remains were left exposed to the weather and scavengers for two months till fellow Texians buried them with military honors in an unmarked common grave. Some of the survivors attended the ceremony. As Texas historian Harbert Davenport observed more than a century later, had Santa Anna merely “seized the opportunity of Fannin’s surrender to dump his men with Miller’s on the wharves of New Orleans, humiliated, starving, halfnaked, penniless, homesick and forlorn, and each with his painful story of Texan mismanagement and Texan neglect, Texas’ standing with the American people would have fallen

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Mission la Bahía, which briefly held the wounded Texians captured at Coleto, is part of present-day Goliad State Park and Historic Site. On its grounds stands a memorial to Fannin and his slaughtered men.

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For three months the world held its breath before a weapon of ‘prompt and utter destruction’ brought Japan to its knees

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WAR ENDS!

The unconditional surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945, sparked wild celebrations throughout the Allied nations, with millions of people taking to the streets in joyous observance of victory in Europe—V-E Day. The defeat of Nazism and all it stood for had long been the prime objective of the grand and often-fractious coalition that included the United States, the British Commonwealth and the Soviet Union. Berlin’s capitulation was a clear sign the most destructive war in human history was nearing its end. However, Japan, the sole remaining Axis power, seemed more than willing to continue the fight. By May 1945 Japan had lost most of the territory it had conquered in the Central and South Pacific, had seen its once-proud navy reduced to little more than a coastal-defense force and could not prevent armadas of Allied bombers and carrier-based strike aircraft from systematically reducing its major cities and industrial centers to smoking rubble. It nonetheless remained a formidable foe, with more than 1 million troops under arms on the Home Islands, in occupied China and Manchuria, and in Southeast Asia. Pentagon analysts estimated that the combined military and civilian resistance to Operation Downfall—the planned two-part invasion of Japan in late 1945 and early 1946—could result in more than 700,000 Allied dead and wounded. Japanese casualties were expected to be much higher. Yet by late summer 1945 the entire situation had changed. Following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki three days later, the Japanese government on August 15 announced its acceptance of Allied demands for unconditional surrender. Despite an attempted coup in Tokyo by diehard members of the armed forces, as well as several violations of the mutually agreed-upon cease-fire, Allied occupation units began landing in Japan on August 28. Representatives of the participant nations signed the instrument of surrender aboard the battleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, officially ending World War II. After nearly four years of war V-J Day had finally arrived. MH

Colonel Paul Tibbets waves from the cockpit of his B-29 Superfortress before takeoff on the flight that would change history—the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic

A mushroom cloud towers over Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945. Less than a week later the Japanese government accepted the Allied demand for unconditional surrender.

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LEFT: U.S. AIR FORCE/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; RIGHT TOP: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; BOTTOM: U.S. AIR FORCE/NATIONAL ARCHIVES

The atomic bombs inflicted catastrophic destruction and loss of life on Hiroshima, above, and Nagasaki. The attacks helped convince Emperor Hirohito that continuation of the war was futile, a belief he communicated to Japan’s senior political and military leaders. Aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy, left—disabled by the removal of their propellers or fuel tanks, in keeping with Allied instructions— litter Atsugi airfield, just south of Tokyo. Atsugi’s pilots were among the last of Japan’s airmen to cease hostilities following the surrender.

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Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz signs the instrument of surrender as the United States’ representative, right. Standing behind him are, from left, General of the Army (and Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) Douglas MacArthur, Admiral William Halsey and Nimitz’ deputy Rear Admiral Forrest Sherman.

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U.S. ARMY/NATIONAL ARCHIVES; BOTTOM: U.S. NAVY/NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Crew members, journalists and other onlookers crowd the decks of USS Missouri, above, as the Sept. 2, 1945, surrender ceremony gets under way.

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Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and Chief of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff General Yoshijiro Umezu lead the Japanese delegation.

Representatives signed the instrument of surrender aboard Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, officially ending World War II. After nearly four years of war V-J Day had finally arrived Shigemitsu signs the surrender document on behalf of Hirohito and the Japanese government.

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GREAT WAR Films

WARNER BROS/THE KOBAL COLLECTION AT ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK

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Like many of the standout World War I films, The Fighting 69th is based on actual events. James Cagney stars as the fictitious Private Jerry Plunkett, a black sheep in the regiment who earns redemption through self-sacrifice.

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uly 2014 marked the centennial of the outbreak of World War I, and museums, archives and governments worldwide will continue commemorations through November 2018. While exhibits of uniforms, weapons, vehicles and other artifacts will certainly help illuminate the causes, conduct and consequences of the war, those seeking a more personal and visceral perspective can turn to a host of feature and documentary films that detail virtually every aspect of that first truly global conflict.

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mong the first motion pictures to depict World War I’s grim realities was All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), and it remains one of the best. Based on the eponymous novel by wartime German army veteran Erich Maria Remarque, the film follows a group of German friends as they transition from students to soldiers and experience the insanity and horrors of war firsthand. All Quiet depicts life and death in the trenches with unflinching realism that shocked audiences of the time. It also captures the alienation soldiers often feel while home on leave that makes them long to return to the front. Released by Universal Pictures when the war remained fresh in people’s minds, the film may have led star Lew Ayres to declare himself a conscientious objector early in World War II, though he served in the Pacific as a medic. A television version, airing in 1979, features sturdy performances by Richard Thomas (John-Boy of The Waltons fame), Ernest Borgnine and Donald Pleasence. The Fighting 69th (1940) is based on the exploits of the New York Army National Guard’s 69th Infantry Regiment, which at the outset of the war was folded into the 42nd “Rainbow” Infantry Division. While the central character, Jerry Plunkett (James Cagney), is fictional, other characters are based on actual members of the 69th, including Medal of Honor recipient Major William “Wild Bill” Donovan, poet

MILITARY HISTORY

Sergeant Joyce Kilmer and military chaplain Father Francis Duffy. Structured around actual events, the story line relates the transformation of young tough Plunkett into a solid, selfsacrificing soldier. Along the way the movie introduces viewers to the difficulties America faced in raising an army capable of participating in the largest war the world had yet seen. Moving from the city to the country, Sergeant York (1941) profiles real-life doughboy Alvin York, a pacifist from rural Tennessee whose change of heart regarding combat led to action that earned him the Medal of Honor. Starring Gary Cooper, with perennial co-star Walter Brennan as his hometown pastor, the film addresses York’s attempt to claim conscientious objector status on religious grounds and the negative view many Americans then held of anyone taking such a moral stand. The action that brought him fame is only a small part of a movie focused more on personal character. While York’s marksmanship stood out, he was otherwise typical of millions of men from rural America who, despite their limited understanding of the war and its causes, left home to do their duty as they saw it. After repeated refusals, York finally agreed to authorize the movie in order to finance construction of a Bible school. Paths of Glory (1957), director Stanley Kubrick’s first significant box office success, is loosely based on mutinies in the French army in the spring and early summer of 1917. In order to quell dissent among frontline units, France’s military and political leaders ordered mass trials of the mutineers, more than 40 of whom faced execution. Paths of Glory depicts one such trial. It is an intense film, and Kirk Douglas is riveting as Colonel Dax, an officer assigned to defend three of his soldiers arbitrarily charged with cowardice. An ironic footnote is an appearance by actor Wayne Morris, a decorated seven-victory U.S. Navy fighter ace during World War II, in the role of a cowardly lieutenant. A classic film that encompasses not only the war but also the social upheaval it wrought is Jean Renoir’s La Grande

LEFT: HERITAGE AUCTION GALLERIES, DALLAS; RIGHT: UNIVERSAL PICTURES/PHOTOFEST

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

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Illusion (1937). Captured by the Germans, two French aviators, aristocratic Captain de Boeldieu (Pierre Fresnay) and working-class Lieutenant Maréchal (Jean Gabin), are transferred from several POW camps after failed escape attempts. Arriving at a fortressed mountain prison, de Boeldieu enjoys a more comfortable relationship with camp commandant Rittmeister von Rauffenstein (Erich von Stroheim) than with fellow Frenchmen of lesser pedigree (the noblemen often converse in English so French and German subordinates won’t understand them). Still, de Boeldieu agrees to provide a distraction for an ultimately successful escape by Maréchal and nouveau riche French Jew Lieutenant Rosenthal (Marcel Dalio). Shot by a reluctant von Rauffenstein, de Boeldieu dies pitying his German counterpart, who must adjust to the upended postwar world they both foresee. Among the many surrealist looks at the war, one of the most entertaining is director Philippe de Broca’s King of Hearts (1966), a comedy-drama that takes a literal view of the conflict’s insanity. Sent to a French town to disarm a bomb planted by the retreating Germans, a kilt-wearing Scottish soldier (Alan Bates) finds it populated by escapees from the local insane asylum, whom he mistakes for the townspeople, who have fled. While trying to find the bomb, the young soldier tries to make sense of the residents’ antics, leading to a surprising but fitting ending.

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ooking beyond the war of attrition on the Western Front, some movies remind viewers it was a global conflict. In 1932, for example, two films depicted the Italian front. The Doomed Battalion, co-directed by Cyril Gardner and war veteran and champion skier Luis Trenker (who wrote and stars in the film), deals with a unit of Austrian mountain troops holding a position 12,000 feet in the Tyrolean Alps against an Italian force that occupies the town in the valley below where most of the

Austrians’ families reside. That year also saw the release of Frank Borzage’s A Farewell to Arms, based on the semiautobiographical novel by Ernest Hemingway. Although less notable for the horrors of war in Italy than for the romance between the American medical volunteers played by Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes, the film won two Academy Awards. Moving to the Middle East, Gallipoli (1981) relates the futility of the failed 1915–16 Allied campaign in the Dardanelles against the German-allied Ottoman empire through the eyes of two Australian friends, portrayed by actors Mark Lee and a pre–Mad Max Mel Gibson. Like many, if not most, of their contemporaries, these young men start out as idealists in search of adventure, only to be confronted by the war’s brutal realities. Peter Weir directed this critically acclaimed Australian film. While Gallipoli bogs down in bloody stalemate, the sweeping desert epic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) centers on the bold exploits of legendary British officer T.E. Lawrence, who convinced the disparate tribes of the Arabian Peninsula to revolt against their Ottoman overlords. Although based on historical characters and events, the film takes literary license in many areas and generally advances the legend more than the real man—who, for one thing, was much shorter than starring actor Peter O’Toole. Directing the film was David Lean, who also related Russia’s World War I experience of revolution, civil war and communist domination in his monumental and hugely entertaining 1965 film Doctor Zhivago. For a unique take on the war in a forgotten corner of the world, there is no better film than The African Queen (1951). Directed by John Huston and set in German East Africa, it spins the tale of a grizzled, hard-drinking Canadian riverboat captain (Humphrey Bogart), a British missionary (Katherine Hepburn) and the rundown eponymous vessel they plan to take downriver to Lake Tanganyika and there transform it into a makeshift torpedo in order to sink

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hile many films thrilled audiences with tales of dashing, scarf-wearing World War I aviators, most of the films made in the 1920s and ’30s are more memorable for their aerial stunt work than their often-hokey screenplays. Among the best of the genre is the silent film Wings (1927), directed by former Lafayette Flying Corps fighter pilot William Wellman and starring Buddy Rogers, Richard Arlen, Clara Bow and Gary Cooper (in a brief appearance that helped launch his career). The film was also the first to receive the Academy Award for best picture. Howard Hughes’ 1930 action film Hell’s Angels is better remembered for its spectacular dogfight sequence—arguably the last of its kind—and for Jean Harlow than for its story. The same might be said for its contemporary, director Howard Hawks’ The Dawn Patrol, with Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., a film whose flying sequences were reused in a far more dashing 1938 Edmund Goulding remake starring Errol Flynn, Basil Rathbone and David Niven. Perhaps the best combination of an engrossing story mated to convincing air action is John Guillermin’s The Blue Max (1966). The film follows German Army Air Service Lieutenant Bruno Stachel (George Peppard), a cynical field-commissioned officer of low birth who seeks to rise through the ranks by achieving acedom and attaining the Pour le Mérite—the fabled Blue Max award for extraordinary valor. The movie’s array of aircraft (most modified from

MILITARY HISTORY

1930s de Havilland Tiger Moths and Stampe SV.4 biplane trainers) saw much use in later and lesser films, but The Blue Max, co-starring James Mason, Jeremy Kemp and Ursula Andress, still holds up admirably. More dubious is the mixture of replica and computergenerated aircraft that inhabit Flyboys (2006), a movie based on French fighter squadron N.124, better known as the Lafayette Escadrille, whose pilots were largely American volunteers. The film characters are loosely based on real members of either the escadrille or the Lafayette Flying Corps, which channeled excess volunteers to other units. An example of the latter is “Skinner,” a black member of N.124 based on Eugene Bullard, a bone fide lightweight boxing champion who served in the Foreign Legion before qualifying as a pilot and flying with escadrilles N.93 and SPA 85. Sorry to say, most of the actual flyboys serving in N.124 were vastly more interesting than anyone in this cast, and the film’s dogfights generally pit Nieuport 17s against Fokker Dr.I triplanes— German fighters nobody in the Lafayette Escadrille ever encountered during its time at the front.

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f documentaries are more to your liking, several provide excellent footage and commentary. Produced by CBS and narrated by actor Robert Ryan, the three-disc series The Complete Story: World War I (1963) features black-and-white historical film clips from the era. Generally viewing the war from a U.S. perspective, it relates the controversial sinking of the British liner RMS Lusitania and events on the home front, including opposition to the United States’ entry in the conflict. The series does venture beyond Western Europe, however, to explore the Allied intervention in Russia (see “First Shots of the Cold War,” by Anthony Brandt, May) in the wake of its 1917 revolution and to discuss how the war prompted the rise of communism and fascism in postwar Europe. Bonus episodes cover a range of headline prewar events,

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the enemy gunboat Queen Louisa. Very loosely based on events in the region, the film was shot in Africa—reportedly so Huston could go elephant hunting—and is a delightful change from most adventure films of the period, which were largely shot on Hollywood soundstages. The film gave Bogart his first real opportunity to play someone other than a smooth gangster, and the role won him the 1951 Academy Award for best leading actor.

MIDDLE: UNITED ARTISTS/PHOTOFEST; OTHERS: HERITAGE AUCTION GALLERIES, DALLAS (2)

The African Queen (1951)

including Robert Peary’s 1909 journey to the North Pole and the 1912 sinking of the British liner RMS Titanic, as well as such postwar events as Prohibition and women’s suffrage. The more recent five-disc Trenches: Battleground WWI (2006), an eight-episode series with three bonus episodes, combines frontline footage and photographs with no-nonsense narration some viewers might find dry. Actors liven up the script with period quotes from soldiers, leaders and civilians, and the producers include interviews with veterans of both the Allied and Central Powers forces. One annoying aspect for the purist, however, is that the producers have reused footage—sometimes in mirror image— to illustrate different battles. The First World War (2003) is a well-produced fourdisc, 10-episode series that combines period black-and-white footage with color segments from recent visits to key locations and incorporates clips from postwar movies to illustrate certain battles. The script features passages from the journals and letters of everyday soldiers and citizens, as well as quotes from political and military leaders. Voice actors provide much of the narration, though the producers use period recordings of wartime leaders whenever possible. The narrative style is more personal than that in Trenches and less dramatic than Robert Ryan’s delivery in The Complete Story. The series devotes several episodes to Africa, the Middle East and other overseas locales largely ignored in the other documentaries. If you want a break from the forced march of a documentary series, consider two outstanding recent single-episode documentaries, The Last Day of World War One (2008) and Paris 1919 (2009). The Last Day of World War One, an episode of the British television series Timewatch, is among the most captivating documentaries about the war, in which narrator Michael Palin recounts the events on Nov. 11, 1918, the day fighting ceased on the Western Front. It also features commentary by Joseph E. Persico, author of Eleventh Month, Eleventh

Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918. In one scene illustrative of the war’s lasting legacy, Palin examines a pile of relics, including unexploded ordnance, recently unearthed by a farmer. The program ends with the stories of the last men killed in action just before the armistice went into effect at 11 a.m., the unnecessary loss of life and the controversy that resulted. Paris 1919 is a unique docudrama based on the postwar framing of the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended hostilities between Germany and the Allies. It combines actor portrayals of the major participants with narrated period footage and photos of the Paris Peace Conference and its participants. The film focuses on the background and behind-the-scenes events of the conference, including how cartographers redrew the map of Europe and how economists and accountants sought to calculate the massive monetary damages inflicted by the Germans. It also recreates private discussions among the primary Allied leaders as they work out a strategy to punish Germany for the war and keep it from regaining its prewar strength. At times actors address the camera directly, bringing the audience into the moment. The production is entertaining enough to hold a casual viewer’s attention and informative enough for anyone interested in the history behind the war’s end. MH Richard Farmer retired as a master sergeant after a 34-year Army career, in which he served with the 101st Airborne Division, the 24th Infantry Division and various units of the Ohio Army National Guard. He deployed for Operation Enduring Freedom in 2004 and Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2008. For further reading Farmer recommends Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918, by Joseph E. Persico; All Quiet on the Western Front, by Erich Maria Remarque; and Father Duffy’s Story: A Tale of Humor and Heroism, of Life and Death With the Fighting Sixty-Ninth, by Francis P. Duffy.

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Reviews Not Just Another ‘Great’ Opponent Darius in the Shadow of Alexander, by Pierre Briant, translated by Jane Marie Todd, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2015, $39.95

Pierre Briant, professor of history and civilization of the Achaemenid world at the Collège de France in Paris, is a renowned expert on the history of ancient Persia from Cyrus the Great to its destruction by Alexander the Great during the reign of Darius III. The difficulty in understanding Persian history is that most of our knowledge derives from the works of Greco-Roman authors (Quintus Curtius Rufus, Arrian, Justin, Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch) writing about the exploits of Alexander, in which they portray Persia and its kings in a largely negative light. The scarcity of Persian sources makes obtaining an accurate historical record of Persia even more difficult. This is the first dedicated biography of Darius III. Parsing the portrayals of Darius in GrecoRoman sources, Briant reads between the lines to bring to light the “Achaemenid kernel embedded in a Greco-Roman interpretive shell.” Briant takes a strong analytical approach, analyzing the texts against his prodigious knowledge of the so-

ciopolitical/socioeconomic structure of the Persian empire and the Alexander narrative. Focusing on Darius III’s actions with regard to Alexander, Briant raises legitimate questions about key conclusions proffered in the Greco-Roman accounts and offers fresh historical interpretations about both Darius and Alexander. The book is a magnificent work of classical scholarship, and Briant rewards readers with insights the source authors either failed to see or deliberately omitted. He also gives Alexander biographers reason for pause, reiterating that the five sources on which Alex-

ander scholarship is based are simply not reliable. Darius in the Shadow of Alexander is an important book that makes a major contribution to our understanding of ancient Persia and the narrative of Alexander the Great, and we highly recommend it to students of the classics. — Richard A. Gabriel A Box of Sand: The Italo-Ottoman War, 1911– 1912, by Charles Stephenson, Tattered Flag, Ticehurst, England, 2014, $22.95 With the centennial of World War I upon us it is worthwhile to reflect on the events that brought about that monumental conflict. Among them is the 1911 war between Italy and the Ottoman empire. The conflict had far-reaching effects with present-day reverberations. From a military standpoint it is notable as the first war in which armored vehicles and airplanes played a role. On a political level it was equally important, as it precipitated the creation of the state that became modern-day Libya. A newcomer among the modern-day European great powers, Italy was eager to

jump on the imperial bandwagon and establish its own colonies in Africa. With that in mind, along with an awareness of the Ottoman empire’s weakness, Italy invaded Turkey’s North African territories of Cyrenaica and Tripoli. The ensuing conflict was the first to combine land, sea and air elements to achieve victory. While Italy swiftly deposed Turkey as ruler over the region, however, it had a far more difficult time imposing its rule over local inhabitants. The conflict degenerated into a guerrilla war for which the Italians were not prepared and which dragged on for decades. Hostilities ceased only when the Allies drove the Italians from the country during World War II. A Box of Sand is the first English-language study of a conflict that set the stage for World War I as well as much of the current political situation in Libya. It is a must for students of military history, particularly events in the present-day Middle East and North Africa. —Robert Guttman Marshal Joffre: The Triumphs, Failures and Controversies of France’s Commander in Chief in the Great War, by André Bourachot, translated by Andrew Uffindell, Pen and Sword, Barnsley, U.K., 2014, $39.95 On July 28, 1911, the Journal officiel de la Republique française published a decree

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Reviews appointing as chief of the French General Staff Joseph Joffre, 59. He immediately became commander in chief designate of the French armies as well, meaning he would command in the event of war. It was the first and last time an engineer officer held such a high position of responsibility. Bourachot, an expert on French army history and himself a former engineer in chief, examines the period from Joffre’s assumption of command until 1916, the year of his disgrace. In the war’s eventful first month Joffre was forced to deal with a lack of unity of command among the French army, Belgian army and British Expeditionary Force, as well as the complete absence of useful intelligence on the real intentions of the German army. Examining the subsequent dispute between Joffre and General Joseph Gallieni over who was the principal agent of victory in the First Battle of the Marne, the author concludes without question that it was Joffre. Bourachot defends Joffre against the accusation he left the Verdun sector unprepared, pointing out he had already reinforced Verdun with six divisions before the Germans launched their offensive. Marshal Joffre should provide scholars of World War I plenty of material over which to mull and debate, along with some satisfying answers. —Thomas Zacharis

Secret Warriors: The Spies, Scientists and Code Breakers of World War I, by Taylor Downing, Pegasus Books, New York, $28.95 British TV producer and writer Downing argues persuasively that almost every significant modernday military advance originated in 1914 and, less persuasively, largely in Britain. His book focuses on advances in code breaking, aviation, communication, medicine and weapons. Six hours after the declaration of World War I a British ship cut Germany’s undersea cables. That left radio as its only means of overseas communication, and the British could listen in. Those familiar with the World War II Bletchley Park geniuses may not realize Britain did even better in World War I, deciphering most German transmissions from the outset. Although dogfights dominated headlines, reconnaissance was the airplane’s leading wartime contribution. No reader will be surprised that early airmen recognized the import of strategic bombing. Had the war continued, Britain would have introduced a four-engine bomber, the Handley-Page V/1500, which could carry a heavier payload than a World War II B-17. Holding the traditional military view of journalists

as a nuisance, the British War Office banned reporters from the front. It was 1915 before five reporters and a few photographers got near the fighting. This included two cinematographers, whose 100-pound camera produced mostly bland scenes of soldiers marching and artillery firing. The familiar clips of troops going “over the top” were staged. World War I was the first recorded conflict in which more soldiers died from combat wounds than disease. Sanitation and antisepsis saved many lives, but Downing also addresses dazzling advances in surgery and the organization of an efficient military medical service. The high command at first tolerated a sympathetic treatment of “shell shock” (aka posttraumatic stress disorder), but disturbed at the loss of so many men, it ultimately cracked down. Oddly, the rate of recovery seemed little different. Discussing iconic weapons, Downing gives poison gas, artillery and the machine gun their due but points out that the hand grenade became essential in trench warfare, and that the tank was a game changer. Readers bored by the debate over which was the first modern war will enjoy this skillful history and likely agree that World War I deserves that distinction. —Mike Oppenheim

RECOMMENDED

The Handy Military History Answer Book, by Samuel Willard Crompton

Considering the course of military history, Crompton explores the pivotal conflicts and the strategies, politics and weaponry that determined their outcome. With more than 1,400 snapshots in a question-and-answer format, the book is an excellent reference, with short, digestible answers and surprising trivia for military historians of any level.

Men of War, by Alexander Rose

Seeking to answer one question, What is it like being in a battle? Rose studies Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Iwo Jima, drawing from firsthand accounts to relate American soldiers’ experience before, during and after war. Deviating from strategic analysis, he offers a rare peek into the mind of the common soldier.

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Hallowed Ground River Vale, New Jersey

I

t must have been terrifying. One moment the 3rd Continental Light Dragoons were resting peacefully in what they had assumed was friendly territory, and the next they awoke to plunging bayonets and screaming in the early morning hours of Sept. 27, 1778. The attack took place amid the houses and barns of the Blauvelt and Haring families in a northern New Jersey village then known as Overkill—the ominous-sounding name merely signifying a place with a bridge over de kille (Middle Dutch for “over the channel”). The village is known today as River Vale.

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British Maj. Gen. Charles “No Flint” Grey had his men remove the flints from their muskets to ensure surprise in the night attack on dragoons at River Vale.

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MILITARY HISTORY

The troops under attack that night, commanded by Colonel George Baylor, were from a somewhat elite Virginia regiment that had previously served as escort to Martha Washington. That September, however, the dragoons were some 260 miles from home, having been posted to duty in the Hudson Valley region. They must have considered the region somewhat foreign, as many of the residents still spoke Dutch. The early morning assault by the British was a sideshow, meant to divert attention from an attack elsewhere in New Jersey. Carrying out the raid were some 650 British infantrymen under Maj. Gen. Charles “No Flint” Grey, an officer experienced in night attacks. In fact, his peculiar nickname derived from his practice of having his men remove the flints from their muskets and use only bayonets during night raids, ensuring none of them could accidentally fire his weapon and give away the attack. Using this tactic a year earlier against 2,500 Continental troops under Brig. Gen. “Mad Anthony” Wayne, bedded down near Paoli Tavern (present-day Malvern, Pa.) on the evening of Sept. 20, 1777, Grey’s troops had killed 53 Patriots, wounded 113 and taken 71 prisoner at a cost of four British dead and seven wounded. Grey used the identical tactic against Baylor’s dragoons, and it proved just as effective. Heavily outnumbered and literally caught sleeping, Baylor’s dragoons succumbed quickly with little opportunity to offer resistance. Of the unit’s 116 members, 11 were killed outright, four were mortally wounded, and 54 were captured. Baylor himself took a bayonet through the lung and was captured, though later released. He returned to combat and ended the war as a brigadier general, but he never recovered from his wound and died in convalescence in 1784. While the engagement was a success for the British, it was a disastrous embarrassment for the Americans. As they had

LEFT: ANNE S.K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION, BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY; RIGHT: FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF THE BERGEN COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY

By Robert Guttman

after their defeat at Paoli, they labeled the Overkill raid a massacre. It is still referred to as the “Baylor Massacre” despite the relatively low death toll. Ironically, less than a year later, on July 16, 1779, Wayne—perhaps in payback for, or emulation of, Paoli—employed similar tactics in a successful night attack on the British fortified position at Stony Point, N.Y., just up the Hudson from Overkill. Tradition held that local militiamen had hastily buried some of Baylor’s dead on-site, prompting local historian Thomas Demarest to research the incident. In 1967 he persuaded the county to fund an archaeological dig at the former site of a tannery on the Blauvelt farm. There diggers unearthed the skeletal remains of six Continental dragoons in abandoned tanning vats capped by an old millstone. Metal buttons

In 1967 an archaeological team unearthed the skeletal remains of six of Colonel George Baylor’s dragoons from a makeshift grave near the massacre site on the Blauvelt farm.

and other artifacts found positively identified the dead as members of B Troop, 3rd Continental Light Dragoons. When development threatened the massacre site in 1972, the Bergen County Board of Chosen Freeholders bought the property and transformed it into a park. There, in a quiet, wooded glade beside the Hackensack River, the freeholders had the remains of the six Virginia soldiers reinterred. Alongside the grave stands the millstone that had capped their makeshift burial site. What had been their only marker for nearly two centuries now serves as a simple memorial. MH

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War Games Arab-Israeli Arms Modern-day Arabs and Israelis first clashed in 1948–49 with some of the following weapons. Recognize any? ____ A. Czech-made MG 34 (Israel) ____ B. Hotchkiss H39 (Israel) ____ C. Bren light machine gun (Arabs) ____ D. Avia S-199 (Israel)

Men of Noble Service

____ E. Renault FT-17 (Lebanon)

English knight William Marshal had martial colleagues of comparable valor and loyalty. Know ye these men?

____ F. M3A1 Scout Car (Israel) ____ G. M22 Locust (Egypt) ____ H. Marmon-Herrington Mk IVF

(Lebanon)

1 Match the wartime massacre (or so-called massacre) to the number of people who perished in it. 1. Béziers, 1209

A. Zaragoza

B. Leon

C. Aragon

D. Andalusia

2. Who was appointed guardian and protector of Scotland in 1297?

3

2

A. Andrew Moray B. William Wallace

2. Drogheda, 1649

C. Robert the Bruce

3. Boston, 1770

D. William Douglas

4. Paoli, 1777

4

5. Fort Pillow, 1864 6. Little Bighorn, 1876

3. Who attained martial renown for the defense of Hennebont in 1342? A. Jean I de Montfort

7. Khartoum, 1884

B. Charles de Blois

8. Frog Lake, 1885

C. Joanna of Flanders

9. Odessa, 1941

D. Bertrand du Guesclin

10. Srebrenica, 1995

5

____ A. 53 ____ B. 268

6

____ C. 11,000 ____ D. 3,552 ____ E. 25,000

A. 50

B. 100

C. 200

D. 500

5. After the 47 Ronin avenged their slain lord in 1703, what did they do?

____ F. 8,372 ____ G. 20,000

4. How many Spanish knights did Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, single-handedly defeat at Garigliano Bridge in 1503?

A. Laid Kira Yoshinaka’s head at

7

8

____ H. 9 ____ I. 277+ ____ J. 5

Asano Naganori’s grave B. Turned themselves in to the shogun C. All but one committed seppuku D. All of the above Answers: A, B, C, C, D

Answers: A2, B8, C4, D1, E5, F6, G7, H3

Answers: A4, B6, C7, D2, E9, F10, G1, H8, I5, J3

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To the Last Man

1. In the service of which Muslim kingdom did Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar earn the legendary moniker El Cid (“The Lord”)?

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Captured!

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MILITARY HISTORY