Military History 2015-09

Mongol Massacre Paris in Flames Gallipoli’s Missing U.S. Military Honor Bloody Fredericksburg The War of 1898 HistoryNet.com

The savage street fight for Madrid, 1936–39

SEPTEMBER 2015

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SEPTEMBER 2015 Letters 6 News 8 HistoryNet Reader 16

Features

36 Mongols at the Gate Baghdad’s caliph sniffed at Mongol threats, but in 1258 Hülegü Khan came calling By Frank McLynn

26 They Shall Not Pass During the Spanish Civil War Republicans in Madrid held out more than two years—but how? By Anthony Brandt

Departments

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Interview Lambis Englezos

Valor Alone on a Hill

On the cover: At the 1938 disbandment of the International Brigades a volunteer with Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War renders a last raised-fist salute. (David Seymour/Magnum Photos)

Reviews 72 War Games 79 Captured! 80

44 While Paris Burned In 1871 a revolt born of outrage and frustration turned the City of Light into a bloodbath By Ron Soodalter

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Soldier of Misfortune

War of 1898 A castoff book published within weeks of the conflict brings the Spanish-American War to life By David Lauterborn

Gustave Cluseret had a knack for combat—but a habit of choosing the losing side By John Koster

66 Honor and the American Warrior The concept of honor is elusive and fragile, residing in the mind, heart and soul of the individual By Joseph F. Callo

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What We Learned... From Fredericksburg, 1862

Hardware Messerschmitt Bf 109D-1

Hallowed Ground Anzac Cove, Gallipoli, Turkey

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: DAVID SEYMOUR/MAGNUM PHOTOS; THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM; BRADY-HANDY PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; AKG-IMAGES/DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY; W. NEPHEW KING. THE STORY OF THE WAR OF 1898. NEW YORK: P.F. COLLIER, 1898; FELIX O. C. DARLEY/MABEL BRADY GARVAN COLLECTION/YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY; KURZ & ALLISON/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; BRETT AFFRUNTI

In a different 1990...

Join the discussion at militaryhistory.com

‘Great War’ Films # In West Germany, NATO will win the greatest tank battle in history # In London, Prime Minister Thatcher will urge the continuation of the war

In the aftermath of World War I and in decades since filmmakers have sought to capture the horror, heroism and even dark humor of that first truly global conflict. Read our list of classic films and share your favorites online By Richard Farmer

# In Alaska, Americans will defend their homes against Soviet invaders # In the North Sea, the United States and Royal Navies will begin the campaign to liberate Norway # Its World War Three: Operation Arctic Storm

Interview

Marine Corps General James Mattis insists that good training and a study of history are critical to a warrior’s education

Tools

The Japanese Type 95 Ha-Go light tank held its own against Allied armor early in World War II but was ultimately outclassed

Reviews

Pierre Briant, renowned scholar of ancient Persia, interpolates existing Greco-Roman sources to profile Persian King Darius III

Sound Off

Join an online debate or send an email to militaryhistory@ historynet.com about what you’ve read in the magazine

What If Franco’s Spain Had Entered the War?

Wo ld Wa 1990

Mark Grimsley speculates on the consequences for Spain and the world had Francisco Franco sent his armed forces into World War II

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Too Low Caliber?

SEPTEMBER 2015

If the photo on P. 80 [“April in Paris?” Captured] of your July 2015 issue is actually of the 210mm (8.3-inch) barrel of the Paris Gun, then that’s the world’s smallest soldier, smoking the world’s smallest cigarette. More likely it’s the 380mm (15-inch) barrel of an SK L/45 “Long Max” siege gun. If so, that German soldier would have flown only 29 miles not 80. Paul J. Madden SEATAC, WASH.

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Editor responds: Good eye! But you must have missed David T. Zabecki’s article “Paris Under the Gun,” in the May issue. In it he explains, “Krupp assembled the barrel of each Paris Gun by inserting a 210mm liner tube into a bored-out 56-foot 380mm SK L/45 ‘Long Max’ naval gun

MILITARY HISTORY

barrel.” The photo shows a young man perched in the barrel of the “Long Max” prior to insertion of the Paris Gun liner tube. Either way, in his position we’re not sure we’d have lit up! Re. your photograph of a member of the imperial German military: You are incorrect in identifying the individual as a “soldier.” The military personnel who manned those highcaliber guns were Imperial German Navy sailors, who were more familiar with the operations of such guns, which required a considerable amount of expertise. Michael Hitchens SANTA ANA, CALIF. Editor responds: You may have us there—”sailor” he likely is.

Great War Films [Re. “Great War Films,” by Richard Farmer, July:] Farmer has presented a fine survey of World War I films, though I would make mention of three notable omissions. Regeneration/Behind the Lines (1997) is the film version of Pat Barker’s literary trilogy, which tells the story of British officers being treated for “war neurosis” at Scotland’s Craiglockhart hospital in 1917. It stars Jonathan Pryce as Dr. William Rivers, the pioneering British psychiatrist who developed “gentle” treatments for the men whose scars were internal but no less crippling. Although not a “battlefield” movie per se, it is notable for some of the gruesome PTSD-inducing

experiences and symptoms of Rivers’ patients and the brutal treatments practiced by Rivers’ contemporaries, which involved, among other things, electrifying a patient’s vocal cords to cure his mutism. Another excellent British contribution, The Wipers Times (2013), tells the story of the first true soldiers’ paper (1916–18) by the same name. After discovering a printing press in a ruined village in Flanders, a unit of British sappers begins publication of an underground newspaper loved by the men and hated by the brass for mocking the decisions of the general staff and the general absurdity of the war. Finally, Bertrand Tavernier’s Capitaine Conan (1996) covers the Salonika Front from the perspective of a unit of French Chasseurs Alpins who conduct raids behind Bulgarian lines and “forget” to take prisoners. An incredibly gritty film, its spot-on depiction of what happens in the vacuum created by the end of hostilities and in the absence of orders is unsettling, as is the hard-hitting reality of what happens to a professional warrior when there is no more war to fight and his service and sense of usefulness ends. To my mind, though, no single film has yet captured the full breadth and scope of the Hell-on-Earth so unique to that conflict. Michael J. Wright PORTAGE, MICH. One could take from your selection of Great War films

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS, Q 87407

Letters

that the United Kingdom played only a minor part in the war. British participation on the Western Front (at the end of the war the largest army, air force and navy) is virtually ignored. Consider Regeneration (1997), one of the best films ever about the effects of war; The Trench (1999), a modern classic; Oh! What a Lovely War (1969), a film with whose conclusions I largely disagree, but recognized as a landmark in film production; Aces High (1976), perhaps the best film about the war in the air; and who can ignore War Horse (2011)? It doesn’t end there, but I have to men-

the Tommies’ crucial role in the conflict. I enjoyed Richard Farmer’s article on World War I films. The only one that stands out for me as missing is The Lost Battalion (2001), starring Rick Schroder as Major Charles Whittlesey, a Medal of Honor recipient for action in the Argonne Forest in October 1918. His unit, the 308th Infantry Regiment of the 77th Division, held off the Germans single-handedly for six days. This A&E movie is well made and well acted. It is also one of my modern favorite depictions of World War I, along with Flyboys (2006). Mark DuBail DERBY, CONN.

Civil War Matters

MARY EVANS/BBC/ETC/RONALD GRANT/EVERETT

tion the BBC production The Great War (1964), widely recognized as the best documentary series on the war. David Betts BILSTON, ENGLAND Editor responds: Thank you for drawing our attention to these classic British films about the Great War. They were missing from the recent article only due to space limitations and not an overt decision on our part to redact

[Re. Interview, May:] In answering the question, Was the Civil War a “total war”? historian James McPherson said, “Because Civil War armies did not deliberately target civilian lives, as did both Axis and Allied armies and air forces in World War II, the Civil War could not be called a total war.” In the March 2008 issue of North & South historian Michael R. Bradley wrote of Southern civilians targeted by the U.S. Army. The Civil War bred a hatred so great, shared by both sides, that Union soldiers committed acts of vengeance against Southern civilians. Bradley wrote, “The sources for the historians researching the findings of these unlawful

killings are the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion and the Provost Marshal Records of the United States Army.” In that respect I would say the Civil War was indeed a total war. Claude Ingrassia ROCKFORD, ILL.

Necessary Wars I notice in recent articles from Military History you have quietly begun to include editorial comment that damns war, even as a last resort instrument of policy —or as Carl von Clausewitz put it, “the continuation of politics by other means.” That was certainly the case in the Falklands War piece “Crags of Tumbledown” [by Ron Soodalter, May] and the Russian intervention article “First Shots of the Cold War” [by Anthony Brandt, May]. In the first case, what was Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to do? Force British subjects to leave their ancestral farms and homes or, alternatively, allow British subjects to fall under the rule of what all concede to have been one of the most tyrannical and brutal fascist regimes that has ever stained the Western Hemisphere? Surely Soodalter wasn’t swayed by the mutterings of a young wounded British soldier who joined up to look spiffy on parade in front of the queen’s residence but suddenly found himself at war, the real purpose and mission of the army and regiment in which he volunteered?

As for Western opposition to the Bolsheviks: Had the failure of those military expeditions been reversed, might not Russia and the world been spared the rule of Joseph Stalin, a dictator whose mass murders make Adolf Hitler’s crimes look like child’s play? Was that not worth a try? As soldiers know better than anyone, war is a hateful and awful thing, brutal and pitiless. It must not be undertaken by democracies unless their security is threatened and no other viable options exist. And then it must be prosecuted in such a way as to come to a successful conclusion as quickly as possible, ending the misery. But, given national or international security and the nature of man, it unfortunately becomes necessary and unavoidable at times. Your role should be to portray military history as it actually happened so that more can be learned from that unpleasantness. If you see your mission as one aimed at damning war as an instrument of policy, then maybe you should alter the name of your magazine. Colonel Wayne E. Long U.S. Army (Ret.) CHESTER, MD.

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News

By Brendan Manley

V-E Day Anniversary Prompts Celebrations, Political Posturing

DISPATCHES WWII Museum to Refloat PT Boat

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Several nations staged events this spring to mark the 70th anniversary of V-E Day, the end of World War II in Europe on May 7–8, 1945. But the lead-up to this year’s commemorations played out as classic political theater. Britain held three days of events, including street parties evoking the original celebrations. On May 8 at 3 p.m. Britons observed two minutes of silence to mark the moment Prime Minister Winston Churchill broadcast a speech announcing war’s end, and that evening hilltops from Newcastle to Cornwall lit up with beacons in remembrance of the war dead. On May 9 at 11 a.m. cathedrals across Britain sounded their bells, as they had on V-E Day. The weekend culminated in a May 10 thanksgiving service at Westminster Abbey, led by Queen Elizabeth II. On May 9 Russia staged its annual Victory Day celebration, centered on a parade of military hardware through Moscow’s Red Square. In protest of Russia’s recent military actions

V-E Day brought Londoners to cheers and tears, but the 2015 events turned political.

in Crimea and Ukraine, however, a number of nations—including the United Kingdom, United States, Japan, Germany, Poland, the Baltic States, Georgia, Slovakia, Finland and Norway—boycotted the event. Cold War allegiances emerged, with officials from China, North Korea, Cuba, the Czech Republic, Vietnam and Serbia, among other nations, accepting Russia’s invitation. Reportedly in response to the snub, Russia’s Federal Security Service canceled a World War II exhibition slated for the Metenkov House Museum in Yekaterinburg, where British Consul General Jon Sharp was to have delivered the opening address. “Triumph and Tragedy: The Allies During the Second World War,” featured artifacts and photos of U.S. and British troops on loan from London’s Imperial War Museum [iwm.org.uk].

‘It is the victory of the cause of freedom in every land’ —Prime Minister Winston Churchill

MILITARY HISTORY

participated in the invasion of southern France. Built in 1943 by New Orleans– based Higgins Industries, the vessel was sold in 1948 for use as an oyster boat. The restored craft will take a shakedown cruise on Lake Pontchartrain before becoming a permanent exhibit at the museum.

Archaeologists ID Waterloo Skeleton Researchers have identified a skeleton found at the Waterloo battlefield [waterloo 1815.be] near Brussels, Belgium, as that of Friedrich Brandt, 23, a Hanoverian private in King George III’s German Legion. Brandt was killed by a musket ball,

found between his ribs in 2012 after a construction crew unearthed the bones near the Lion’s Mound memorial. Beside the remains was a box lid bearing Brandt’s initials. His was the first intact Waterloo skeleton found in 200 years.

LEFT: MILITARY IMAGES/ALAMY; RIGHT: TOP: COURTESY THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM; BOTTOM: FRANCOIS LENOIR/REUTERS/CORBIS

SEPTEMBER 2015

The National WWII Museum [nationalww2 museum.org] in New Orleans has nearly completed its multiyear restoration of PT-305, a 78-foot woodhulled patrol torpedo boat that saw action in the Mediterranean in 1944–45 and

Museum Explores Reach of WWI

LEFT: TOP: COURTESY NATIONAL WORLD WAR I MUSEUM AND MEMORIAL; BOTTOM: AKG-IMAGES/DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY; RIGHT: TOP: DENNIS COX/ALAMY; BOTTOM: XINHUA/ALAMY

The National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial [theworldwar.org] in Kansas City, Mo., looks at the global impact of the war in its new exhibit Sand to Snow: Global War 1915, which runs through April 10, 2016. The exhibit

showcases artifacts from more than 20 nations, including an ANZAC cribbage board from the Gallipoli Campaign, an Indian lancer’s Kurta and relics from the British liner RMS Lusitania, whose 1915 sinking by a German U-boat inflamed war passions worldwide.

Researchers Find I-400 Sub Hangar Researchers from the University of Hawaii [hawaii. edu] and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [noaa.gov]

have found the hangar deck and conning tower of the World War II Japanese submarine I-400, scuttled off Oahu in 1946 by the U.S. Navy to thwart inspections by the Soviet Union. The find follows discovery of the I-400 hull in 2013. The 400-foot vessel and its sister ships I-401 and I-402 were the largest subs built prior to the nuclear era. Their hangars were designed to hold up to three folding-wing Aichi M6A1 Seiran floatplanes.

Armenians Mourn as Turks Deny Genocide On April 24 demonstrators worldwide marked the centennial of the start of the Armenian genocide, the mass extermination of up to 1.5 million men, women and children of the largely Christian ethnic group by Muslim Ottoman Turks during and after World War I. Turkey still refuses to use the term “genocide” regarding the killings. Many nations marked the event with religious and secular ceremonies, rallies and parades, while a Twitter campaign [#ErmenilerdenÖzürDiliyorum] seeks official Turkish recognition of, and apology for, the genocide. Meanwhile, Turkey intentionally bumped up its Gallipoli centennial commemorations one day to overlap the Armenian protests.

‘Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’ — Adolf Hitler

Japan Unveils Largest Warship Since WWII Japan’s Maritime SelfDefense Force recently commissioned the 814-foot helicopter carrier Izumo, the nation’s largest naval vessel since World War II. Rollout of the ship—equipped with Phalanx and SeaRAM anti-missile systems and a flight deck large enough to accommodate up to 28 aircraft—comes amid ongoing territorial disputes with China, Russia and South Korea. Under Article 9 of Japan’s postwar Constitution, “Land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained,” although the 1954 creation of the Japan SelfDefense Forces gave the nation leeway for homeland security. Japanese officials duly maintain Izumo is only for coastal defense, peacekeeping and humanitarian purposes, pointing to its lack of a catapult or hangar space for fixed-wing aircraft.

WAR RECORD Aug. 13, 1898: U.S. forces under Rear Adm. George Dewey and Maj. Gen. Wesley Merritt wrest control of the Philippine capital of Manila from Spain, unaware a cease fire had been declared the day before, officially ending the Spanish-American War (see P. 60). Aug. 15, 1942: A select group of Army and Navy personnel gather at the Naval Amphibious Base in Virginia Beach, Va., for joint training as Amphibious Scouts and Raiders. The new unit is a precursor to the present-day Navy SEALs (see P. 66). Aug. 22, 1900: French soldier of fortune Gustave Paul Cluseret (see P. 54) dies in bed of pneumonia at age 77. He’d fought for several nations, including the Union during the American Civil War, and survived losing stints in both the Fenian Revolt and Paris Commune uprising. Sept. 3, 1936: General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces seize Talavera de la Reina, the last key town separating his advancing army from the Republican-held Spanish capital of Madrid (see P. 26). The city ultimately falls to Franco after a 29-month siege. Sept. 19, 1870: With the German army surrounding Paris, French National Guard units march to the city center to demand a new Commune government (see P. 44). In March 1871 they take matters into their own hands and seize control of the city.

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News

SEPTEMBER 2015

A display of knitted poppies graced Federation Square in Melbourne, Australia.

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Officials from Great Britain, Australia and Turkey gathered on the Gallipoli Peninsula in April to mark the centennial of the 1915– 16 campaign, which claimed nearly a halfmillion Allied and Turkish casualties over eight months of fighting. The World War I clash—part of a failed Allied invasion of the strategic Dardanelles strait—helped shape the national identities of those involved. It marked the first time Australia and New Zealand fought together as independent nations under the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), and Ottoman army Colonel Mustafa Kemal, a participant in the battle, later founded the Republic of Turkey, assuming the surname Atatürk (“Father of the Turks”). Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan presided over the centennial events. At Anzac Cove, just north of where troops landed on April 25, 1915, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and Britain’s Prince

Charles (accompanied by Prince Harry) laid memorial wreaths. Irish President Michael Higgins joined dignitaries at Cape Helles to commemorate the Irish, French and British Commonwealth troops who fought in the campaign. Turkish memorial participants, meanwhile, marched the route of the Ottoman 57th Regiment, the first to see action. In London, Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip and Prince William attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the Cenotaph war memorial in Whitehall, preceded by the annual Anzac Day dawn service at the Australian and New Zealand war memorials at Hyde Park Corner. Australia and New Zealand held a wideranging event called Camp Gallipoli [camp gallipoli.com.au], which brought together families, schools and community groups at historic locations across both nations for a night of remembrance, entertainment and camping out in traditional military swags (tents).

‘Men, I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die’ —Colonel Mustafa Kemal

MILITARY HISTORY

Last Gallipoli Ship Opens to Public The National Museum of the Royal Navy [royal navalmuseum.org] in Portsmouth, England, is completing its restoration of the monitor HMS M33 —the only surviving British vessel from the 1915– 16 Gallipoli Campaign

—and will open it this summer as a museum ship. The 164-foot flat-bottomed vessel was designed to sail inshore waters and target troops and coastal defenses with its two 6-inch Mk XII naval guns, QF 6-pounder Hotchkiss gun and two .303-caliber Maxim machine guns.

Salvor, U.K. Share WWII Silver Hoard Maritime salvage firm Deep Ocean Search [deep oceansearch.com] has announced its retrieval of tons of silver coins from the wreck of the British steamer City of Cairo,

sunk off Brazil by the German sub U-68 on Nov. 6, 1942. Requisitioned by the British government, the ship was carrying a valuable cargo, including £34 million in silver. Though the salvor recovered the coins in 2013, it only recently fulfilled its contract with the U.K. government, with whom it has split the proceeds.

LEFT: XINHUA/ALAMY; RIGHT: TOP: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE ROYAL NAVY; BOTTOM: U.S. NAVY

Turkey, Britain, Australia and New Zealand Mark Gallipoli Centennial

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News The Department of Defense will disinter the remains of nearly 400 sailors and Marines killed aboard the battleship USS Oklahoma [ussoklahoma.com] during the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, aiming

to ID the men and return the remains to their families. Only 35 of the 429 Oklahoma crewmen killed that day have been identified; the rest were ultimately buried in communal caskets at Honolulu’s National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

SEPTEMBER 2015

NOAA Finds WWII Atomic Test Carrier

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Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Navy and Boeing recently surveyed the wreck of the World War II–era carrier USS Independence (CVL-22), scuttled off San Francisco in 1951 after use in the postwar Bikini Atoll atomic tests. The ship, resting upright in 2,600 feet of water in the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary [farallones.noaa.gov], remains “amazingly intact.” Independence operated in the Pacific from 1943 to 1945 and supported the occupation of Japan.

MILITARY HISTORY

Magna Carta Turns 800 The British Library is marking the octocentennial of the Magna Carta [www.bl.uk/magna-carta], the document that challenged the rule of monarchs and laid the foundation for Britain’s parliamentary democracy. In a concession to rebellious barons, King John affixed his seal to the original charter on June 15, 1215. His refusal to abide by its terms sparked the First Barons’ War. After John’s death in 1216, William Marshal sought accord with the barons and diplomatically reissued the Magna Carta. The library’s exhibit “Magna Carta: Law, Liberty, Legacy,” features two original copies of the Magna Carta, plus more than 200 artifacts, including King John’s teeth and thumb bone. Also on display are early copies of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, both of which were inspired by the Magna Carta.

‘All these things for God, for the better ordering of our kingdom’ — Magna Carta

Doolittle Raiders Lose A Man, Donate Medal The Doolittle Raiders— 80 daring crewmen of 16 U.S. Army Air Forces B-25B Mitchell bombers that on April 18, 1942, staged the first World War II air raid on Japan—have lost another member. Former Lt. Col. Robert Hite, 95, died on March 29. One of eight Raiders captured by Japanese occupation forces in China, Hite (circled above) was imprisoned until freed by U.S. troops in 1945. Just two Raiders survive: retired Lt. Col. Richard Cole and former Staff Sgt. David Thatcher. In April, Cole and Thatcher received the Congressional Gold Medal on behalf of the Raiders, which they presented to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force [national museum.af.mil] in Dayton, Ohio.

NAZIS SELL Nazi German relics, despite their ties to the Third Reich’s dark legacy, are perpetual must-haves for many World War II collectors. Recent items to resurface include:

Aces High: British auction house Dominic Winter [dominicwinter.co.uk] recently listed the port tail fin, above, and a propeller blade from a Messerschmitt Bf 110G-4 flown by Luftwaffe pilot Heinz-Wolfgang Schnaufer, history’s highestscoring night fighter ace. Göring Garb: Parade Antiques [paradeantiques.co. uk] of Plymouth, England, lists a blue service uniform worn by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, Gestapo founder and Luftwaffe chief. The outfit includes his pants, suspenders and heavily sweat-stained tunic. Asking price: £85,000. Unbanned Book: Germany recently approved the reissue of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi manifesto Mein Kampf for the first time there in 70 years. The new edition, scheduled for release in January 2016, will be heavily annotated with critical commentary.

CLOCKWISE FROM BOTTOM LEFT: U.S. NAVY/NATIONAL ARCHIVES (2); NATIONAL ARCHIVES; COURTESY DOMINIC WINTER; U.S. AIR FORCE

DoD to Disinter Oklahoma Dead

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he old saying “looks can be deceiving” is more than just an idle phrase, it actually led to a truly amazing discovery that can put the glory and intrigue of the Roman Empire into the palm of your hand! During a hike in northern Turkey, a curious tourist, who had stepped outside his group, uncovered a weather-beaten goat bag. About to cast the filthy thing aside as nothing more than trash from a nearby excavation project, he pulled on the strap. The pure heft of its contents made him wonder if something were inside. To his surprise, a pile of coins spilled out. His discovery is now your opportunity because these weren’t just any coins—they were scarce historic coins from the Constantine Dynasty—buried over 1,600 years ago!

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Interview Lambis Englezos A Quest for Australia’s Missing

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Lambis Englezos is a man on a sacred mission. The Greek-born 62-year-old retiree from Melbourne, Australia, has spent more than a decade in search of the burial sites of Australian troops listed as “missing” from that nation’s wars. His research and persistence led to the discovery of an unrecorded World War I mass grave in Fromelles, France, containing the remains of 250 “Diggers,” as Australian and New Zealand troops are known. The remains were exhumed in 2008, then reinterred once identified. For the past four years Englezos has been advocating a similar recovery effort for the remains of 250 Australians killed in the March 1916 Second Battle of Krithia—an ultimately futile Allied assault against Ottoman Turkish positions on the Gallipoli Peninsula.

MILITARY HISTORY

What led you to search for the missing at Fromelles? There were more than 5,500 Australian casualties and some 1,335 missing from the July 19, 1916, Battle of Fromelles. I visited the battlefield in 2002, and when I returned to Australia, I was determined to help locate those whose bodies had not been recovered. I researched the Red Cross’ “Wounded and Missing” files [awm.gov.au/people/ roll-search/wounded_and_missing] and cross-checked the names with a “roll of honor” that historian Robin Corfield included in his 2000 book Don’t Forget Me, Cobber. A soldier profiled in the book pointed to a place called Pheasant Wood as a possible burial spot, and by looking closely at some archival aerial photos of that area, I found what I believed to be

anomalies. I and other members of the World War I commemorative group Friends of the 15th Brigade presented our evidence to the Australian government in 2005, and in May 2008 the information led to the discovery of 250 sets of remains. So far 144 have been identified, and the bodies have been reburied in a special cemetery on donated land. Why search for the remains of Australia’s missing soldiers? First, our nation sent them to war, and I believe our nation, therefore, has a moral obligation to find and recover the bodies of those who died. We cannot allow our war dead to be seen as a financial or logistical inconvenience. Second, if a nation just leaves its war dead on the battlefield in anonymous

JOHN STILLWELL/PA PHOTOS/LANDOV

SEPTEMBER 2015

Englezos’ mission is to locate, identify and reinter the remains of Australia’s missing war dead, as was done in Fromelles, France, in 2008.

dirt, it sends a very strong message to people currently serving in the military that their nation doesn’t care what happens to them. That’s very bad for morale. Third, commemoration and remembrance isn’t just about the dead, it’s also about the families that might never know what became of their loved one. My son served in Afghanistan, and I certainly wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering what happened to him had he been listed as missing. Many have sneered at the term “closure,” saying it should be sufficient to have the missing person’s name carved into a stone monument or painted onto a church honor roll. I would suggest that whenever we can, we should acknowledge the person’s service and sacrifice by doing everything possible to locate and recover their remains. Can’t the Commonwealth War Graves Commission do it? It does a fine job of maintaining our cemeteries, but its role is reactive. If a body is discovered during construction work, it is recovered and reburied in a Commonwealth Cemetery. Our work and advocacy is research-based and active—we go looking for the missing.

BRETT AFFRUNTI

What is your opinion of the Gallipoli Campaign? It was a disaster. Poor leadership and poorer planning and execution on Britain’s part— combined with a huge underestimation of the Turkish defenders—guaranteed failure. More than 8,000 Australians died in combat or of wounds or disease in nine months. Didn’t it instill in Australia a national consciousness? When war broke out in 1914 men enlisted for a variety of reasons, among them the desire to defend and serve the mother country and the empire. Their wartime contribution and warranted fighting reputation—endorsed by the

Americans who fought alongside them at Hamel on July 4, 1918—certainly helped mold Australia’s national consciousness, but at a staggering cost. How did you learn about the Second Battle of Krithia? I read the two volumes of Charles Bean’s Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 that cover Gallipoli, as well as other books on the campaign. It occurred to me that—as was the case at Fromelles—there were likely unrecorded burial sites that would contain the remains of missing Australians. Which units were involved? The 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th battalions of the 2nd Infantry Brigade, Victoria. They were brought down from Anzac Cove to Cape Helles on the southern tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula to act as part of the reserve along with the New Zealand Infantry Brigade [see Hallowed Ground, P. 76]. The Australians entered the reserve line and began to settle in, but then a general advance was ordered, and they were given just 30 minutes’ notice to attack. The incompetent British commander, Major General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston, even asked if the Diggers had brought a band to lead the attack! The Australians advanced across 600 yards of open ground toward defenses they couldn’t see while being subjected to frontal and enfilade machine gun and artillery fire. The line withered, and the attack failed. The Australians suffered casualties of 50 percent. After the battle, under cover of darkness, the dead were recovered and buried by our troops in hastily dug mass graves whose positions went unrecorded. What made you believe there are forgotten mass graves? Four years ago I suggested to a TurkishAustralian friend—author, guide and historian John Basarin, who volunteers

at Melbourne’s World War I memorial, the Shrine of Remembrance [shrine. org.au]—that there could be a burial site behind our lines. We spent years researching official documents, diaries and memoirs of participants. Several of the documents spoke of hurriedly dug graves, one containing 57 bodies and the other 86, for a total of 143. We determined the likely position of the mass grave—or graves—was in or near a dip in the ground that would have provided cover for the burial parties. John visited the area and found that dip in the ground. Are you certain you found the right spot? It matches the documentation—the eyewitness accounts are confirmed by the geography. However, the only way to positively confirm it is to conduct an officially sanctioned investigation using modern technology. Did you give the Australian government your data? We did. Three years ago we forwarded our information but didn’t get a reply or an evaluation. Then in December 2014 the government finally responded, saying they would only investigate the site if they were certain to find remains. But how can we be certain if we don’t investigate? What is your ultimate goal for this search? Burial in place? Repatriation? Australia does not repatriate recovered World War I remains. We would like to see them reinterred in place with the respect and honor they deserve. What do you personally get out of this effort? Any work that I have done in the field of commemoration and remembrance I dedicate to the memory of the World War I veterans I have met over the course of my life. They were wonderful gentlemen who carried their physical and emotional scars with quiet dignity. I consider myself very fortunate to have shared their company and their companionship. MH

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HistoryNet Reader

SEPTEMBER 2015

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

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CIVIL WAR TIMES

MHQ

WORLD WAR II

Brash Lieutenant Cushing

Clash in the Carolinas

The Worst Was Yet to Come

Young Navy Lieutenant William Cushing’s daring raids on Confederate ships along North Carolina’s hazardous Cape Fear River bedeviled Rebels. Jamie Malanowski recalls the many successes from Cushing’s military career in “Brash, Dashing…and Effective,” from the June 2015 issue of Civil War Times.

Among the string of American loses in the South during the American Revolution was the 1781 Battle of Guilford Courthouse, a tactical defeat on its face but a strategic victory in the long run. Noah Andre Trudeau considers the tactics of both Nathanael Greene and Charles Cornwallis in “Steeplechase in the Carolina, 1781,” from the summer issue of MHQ.

A massive buildup of American and British warships off the coast of Japan’s Ryukyu Islands set the scene for the closing act of the Pacific War. Read more in “Into the Inferno,” by Sharon Tosi Lacey, in the July/August issue of World War II.

Lieutenant William Barker Cushing of the U.S. Navy pulled off one of the most daring and implausible feats of the Civil War on Oct. 28, 1864, when he sank the notorious Confederate ironclad ram Albemarle with a torpedo launched from a small open boat. But the Albemarle triumph was presaged by a number of other successes for the audacious and quick-thinking Cushing. Two of those escapades occurred within four months of each other early in 1864. In February 1864, Cushing—then 21, and the youngest lieutenant in the history of the Navy—was assigned to the North Atlantic Blockading Squadron, based at the mouth of the Cape Fear River, and given command of USS Monticello. By that point North Carolina, with its many twisty rivers and hidden inlets, was one of the few places where Rebel blockade runners still enjoyed success. Their preferred port was Wilmington, 28 miles inland from the mouth of the Cape Fear, a river well protected by not only forts and batteries but also shifting currents, changing depths, unmarked shoals and marshes, and other navigation hazards that could ensnare even experienced pilots familiar with the area.

MILITARY HISTORY

On June 2, 1791, an impressive American arrived in Martinsville, North Carolina, site of one of the Revolutionary War’s most important battles. President George Washington was nearing the end of a three-month Southern states tour, during which he met veterans and visited sites where British and Americans had clashed. Slightly more than a decade earlier there had been a small administrative settlement in the area that gave this battle its name—Guilford Courthouse. Here, British troops had fought Americans led by Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene. For three months in early 1781 a high-stakes military campaign played out in the Carolinas. Nathanael Greene’s Department of the South army and a British one under Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis engaged in a series of marches and maneuvers with Georgia and the Carolinas as prize. Cornwallis needed a decisive victory that would sweep the Americans from the field and animate Loyalist elements to flock to his standard. Greene had to maintain a firm American military presence to suppress royalist sentiment and encourage the Patriots. Above all he had been charged by Washington to preserve his core professional army, something his two predecessors had failed to do.

Before assaulting Japan proper, the Allies faced a formidable stepping-stone. Okinawa, the largest of the Ryukyu Islands, lies less than 400 miles south of the Japanese Home Island of Kyushu. The defenders had transformed mountains into fortresses and planned air attacks and suicide sorties. Offshore the imperial navy had tucked more than 350 18-foot boats meant for one-way runs against American transports and landing craft. Kamikaze planes and warships would attack as well. But reality intruded. On April 1, 1945, the only planes overhead were American; at sea more than 1,500 American and British vessels bobbed. From an observation post a Japanese soldier reported that the ocean appeared to be 30 percent water and 70 percent ships. “My god,” an officer murmured. “What kind of enemy do we face?” Savvier Japanese saw no chance of victory. At best they might make the Americans reconsider invading the Home Islands. Thus the 32nd Army’s mantra: “One plane for one battleship; one boat for one ship; one man for one tank or 10 enemy dead.”

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Valor Alone on a Hill

Corporal Hiroshi Miyamura U.S. Army Medal of Honor Korea April 24 and 25, 1951

SEPTEMBER 2015

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n April 24, 1951, 10 months after the start of the Korean War, as hordes of Chinese soldiers approached, U.N. forces withdrew behind the Imjin River just north of Seoul. Assigned to a hilltop rearguard position, U.S. Army Corporal Hiroshi Miyamura and his squad of two machine guns and fewer than a dozen men braced for action as enemy soldiers, bugles sounding and whistles screeching, poured across the river on pontoon bridges. That night, though the Chinese sent wave after wave against his position, Miyamura held his ground, his machine gunners delivering a withering fire on the enemy. During one assault he personally leapt from cover with his M1 rifle to bayonet attackers and

MILITARY HISTORY

prisoners north. The distance, meager then returned to his men, adminisrations, illness and medical neglect tering what first aid he could to the —as well as the increasing cold the farwounded. When one of his gunners ther north they went—claimed many bolted in the face of an overwhelming POWs’ lives. attack, Miyamura opened up with the “I was exhausted and so hungry,” machine gun and ordered the rest of Miyamura admitted, “I almost gave up.” his men to retreat. He did survive the march, how“While they were leaving, I just ever, and spent the next 28 months in fired and threw all the grenades that captivity, fighting off dysentery and I could,” he recalled. “After they left, starvation and holding fast to his will our own mortars started dropping to live. What he didn’t know—though phosphorous bombs on our position. neither did his family, friends or even That woke me up to the thought, I’ve his fellow soldiers—is that the Army got to get out of here.” had awarded him the Medal of Honor. Alone in the midst of thousands of The award had not been publicized. communist troops, he disabled the “If the Reds knew what he had done machine gun with a grenade and then to a good number of their soldiers just worked his way downhill through a before he was taken prisoner,” 3rd Infantrench to link up with his company. try Division Brig. Gen. Ralph Osborne En route he came face to face with a later explained, “he might not have Chinese soldier and bayoneted him, not come back.” seeing a grenade fall from the man’s In July 1953 the warring nations hand. As Miyamura pulled out the bayosigned the armistice to end net and fell backward, the grehostilities, and Miyamura was nade went off, wounding him released near Panmunjom in in the calf. He kept moving. August. By then the already At the base of the hill he slight corporal weighed less ran straight into his own comthan 100 pounds. pany’s barbed-wire perimeter. “I can remember seeing “I didn’t know it was set up a big U.S. flag flying in the down there,” Miyamura exbreeze, and I just concentrated plained, “and I was concenon that flag,” he said about his trating on one of our [tankbridge crossing to freedom. ers]…so I could get his atAfter being deloused and tention and get out of there.” given a medical checkup, MiThe tanker didn’t spot him. yamura showered and dressed Miyamura crawled beneath the wire and made it another The Army awarded in pajamas and a robe. A ser30 feet before passing out. Corporal Miyamura geant then led him to a room Rousing to the sound of tramp- the Medal of Honor where Osborne stood waiting. ing feet all around him, he while he remained The corporal thought he was a POW in Korea. in trouble for having abanlay still, unsure whether they doned his position. were friends or enemies. Then Instead, the general informed him a Chinese officer ordered him to his he’d received his country’s highest feet and took him captive. His ordeal award for valor in combat. had only begun. Miyamura recalled his response: “All For more than a month the ChiI could say is, ‘What?…What for?’” MH nese marched Miyamura and other

COURTESY OF THE CONGRESSIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR SOCIETY (2)

By Chuck Lyons

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What We Learned... From Fredericksburg, 1862 By Sarah R. Cokeley

Union troops come under fire from Confederate snipers as they span the Rappahannock with pontoons.

the Confederates, who cut down Union soldiers by the thousands. The outcome of the battle was soon clear. Though Federal forces had managed to secure the town and harass Lee’s flanks, Burnside was forced to withdraw across the Rappahannock on the 15th, ending the campaign. Poor planning had cost him more than 12,600 dead, wounded and missing compared to Lee’s 5,400 or so casualties.

Lessons: Be sure your commander is fit for the job. Burnside lacked confidence,

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MILITARY HISTORY

Meanwhile, Lee had caught wind of Burnside’s plan and ordered more than 72,000 Confederate troops to Fredericksburg. Positioning their artillery on Marye’s Heights, the high ground overlooking town and the river crossing, the Rebels were ready well before the first Yankee pontoon hit the water. The battle opened on December 11 when concealed Confederate sharpshooters fired on Union engineers as they struggled to construct six pontoon bridges. Though Burnside’s attack was clearly no longer a surprise, he opened up a bombardment of the city and sent troops to secure it. By nightfall on the 12th Union soldiers had cleared, occupied and widely looted Fredericksburg. On the 13th Burnside launched an assault to roll back Lee’s right flank, held by Lt. Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s corps, and ordered the troops in town to seize Marye’s Heights. At the latter Lee had deployed 3,000 infantrymen behind crude breastworks and a 4-foot-high stone wall, backed by artillery on the heights. Though the defensive line was virtually impregnable, Burnside sent regiment after regiment to assault

A surprise only works if it is a surprise. The delayed arrival of

the Union pontoon bridges left Lee plenty of time to call in reinforcements from the Shenandoah Valley. To cross or not to cross? Many critics thought Burnside, instead of waiting two weeks for the pontoon bridges, should have crossed the Rappahannock earlier to establish superior position at Fredericksburg. Loot after victory. Burnside’s men ransacked Fredericksburg before the main battle. Their unchecked mischief distracted them from the fight that lay ahead and boosted their enemy’s resolve. Communicate clearly. Burnside issued confusing orders and failed to give his senior commanders specifics on the conduct and timing of the attack. Maneuver can prevent massacre.

Union troops suffered more than twice as many causalities as the Confederates because Burnside launched repeated assaults against impenetrable Marye’s Heights. He should have found a way around or called it quits sooner. MH

KURZ & ALLISON/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

SEPTEMBER 2015

I

n the fall of 1862 President Abraham Lincoln, frustrated by Maj. Gen. George McClellan’s ineffectual pursuit of Confederates from Antietam, Md., tapped Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside to replace McClellan as commander of the Army of the Potomac. Though Burnside felt unequal to the command, he accepted. His first course of action was to scrap McClellan’s master plan and devise a strategy to capture the Rebel capital at Richmond, Va. Burnside planned to cross the Rappahannock River at Fredericksburg and secure that railroad town, then continue to Richmond. On paper the strategy made sense, with a high chance of success if Burnside attacked Fredericksburg before General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia could form a defense. In mid-November, Burnside sent troops to occupy the north bank of the Rappahannock at Falmouth and ordered up critically needed pontoon bridges. While Burnside’s army of nearly 114,000 men arrived quickly, the pontoons— held up in Washington by a shortage of transport horses—did not. For two weeks the Union troops sat and waited.

and it showed in his first major battle, sealing his fate. Lincoln relieved him of command only a month after the Fredericksburg debacle.

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Hardware Messerschmitt Bf 109D-1 By Jon Guttman / Illustration by Adam Tooby

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1. Staggered pair of 7.92mm MG 17 machine guns (fired through propeller) 2. Cockpit canopy, hinged to open to starboard 3. 8mm cockpit armor

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Radio mast All-metal monocoque fuselage All-metal strut-braced tail Split flaps Wing structure: all metal, single main spar, stressed skin covering

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12. Engine mounting frame 13. Exhaust 14. Junkers Jumo 210D engine 15. Two-blade metal Hamilton variable-pitch propeller

erman fighter pilots of the Condor Legion, flying Heinkel He 51s in support of Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War, were initially shocked to encounter Soviet pilots on the Republican side flying two superior Soviet designs—the Polikarpov I-15 biplane and the I-16, the world’s first lowwing monoplane fighter with retractable landing gear. Help soon arrived, however, in the form of the Messerschmitt Bf 109B. In September 1935 Wilhelm Emil “Willy” Messerschmitt, chief designer and co-director of Bayerische Flugzeugwerke (BFW), rolled out the prototype of a monoplane fighter with a narrow monocoque fuselage, hydraulically retractable undercarriage, enclosed cockpit, leading-edge slats and trailing-edge slotted flaps in the wings. Despite its high wing loading— which handicapped maneuverability at low speeds—the Bf 109V1’s outstanding performance earned it a production contract, an urgent decision prompted by the concurrent appearance of Britain’s Hawker Hurricane and Supermarine Spitfire and the July 1936 outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. In March 1937 the first production Bf 109Bs entered service in Spain, and on April 6 1st Lt. Günther Lützow shot down an I-15, scoring the 109’s first victory. The Bf 109Bs became a Condor Legion mainstay, their pilots developing tactics that would become standard during World War II. The aircraft also saw continual improvement with rollout of the Bf 109C and Bf 109D. By 1939 Messerschmitt had acquired a controlling share of BFW, and he replaced the Bf 109D’s Junkers Jumo 210D engine with the fuel-injected Daimler-Benz DB 601A to produce the Me 109E—a change of power plant that turned a good fighter into a truly great one. MH

Length: 28 feet 6.5 inches Wingspan: 32 feet 4.5 inches Height: 11 feet 2 inches Empty weight: 3,872 pounds Loaded weight: 5,340 pounds Power plant: Junkers Jumo 210D (640 hp) Max speed: 360 mph Service ceiling: 32,800 feet Armament: Four 7.92mm MG 17 machine guns

IMAGE FROM AIR VANGUARD NO. 18 MESSERSCHMITT BF 109 A-D SERIES, BY ROBERT JACKSON, © OSPREY PUBLISHING, LTD

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AS RECENT EVENTS IN THE MIDDLE EAST HAVE REMINDED US,

war is most definitely the realm of uncertainty. No matter how meticulously planned an attack or a defense might be, or how invincible a particular military force or bastion may appear, when battle is joined, the outcome often rests on factors that have little to do with either side’s martial capabilities. Among these factors are such natural ones as weather, terrain and even time of day. History is populated with great commanders who, in their haste to close with the enemy, ignored falling temperatures or rising winds, only to see their presumed victories evaporate and their once-grand armies transformed into ragged lines of hollow-eyed men bent on retreat. Likewise are leaders whose inattention to the subtleties of the ground over which their forces moved led to their domination by opponents better attuned to the geography of the battlefield. And countless fights have hinged on how closely each side paid attention to the angle of the sun, or on how well versed combatants were in the art of night fighting. But human factors also influence a battle’s conduct and outcome. Take, for example, a well-equipped and highly motivated army that rebels against its ill-prepared government. The rebel commanders, having enjoyed early and relatively easy victories, assume they will take their nation’s capital with little effort and yet are held at bay for years by the city’s poorly armed and fractious defenders. Or what of the arrogant ruler of an ancient and cosmopolitan city who, when faced with the imminent arrival of a ravening horde, disdains to negotiate and thus ensures the ruthless destruction of himself, his people and the treasures of their culture? And, sadly, incompetent and foolish generals eager for martial glory have squandered far too many lives by sending their armies against better-armed, better-led and better-sited opponents. In the end the line between victory and defeat is both thin and inconstant, and it is always written in blood. MH

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THEY SHAL

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L NOT PASS During the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War hard-pressed Republican forces in the capital of Madrid held off a determined Nationalist siege for more than two years—but how? By Anthony Brandt As Nationalist forces approached Madrid, Republican officials finally recognized the gravity of the situation and called on loyal army officers and ragtag militias— composed of both men and women—to defend the city.

SEPTEMBER 2015

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adrid in November 1936 was a city under siege by its own countrymen. Four months earlier disaffected generals within Spain’s armed forces had launched a coup against the leftist coalition government of President Manuel Azaña Díaz. After the uprising failed to secure any major cities other than Seville, the rebels had brought in the professional Army of Africa—seasoned Moroccan troops under Spanish army officers—from the Spanish protectorate of Morocco. In this budding proxy war that saw international participation on either side, the Moroccan troops arrived in German-supplied Junkers Ju-52 transport planes and merchant ships screened by Italian bombers. The insurgents, calling themselves Nationalists, had quickly taken Seville, then driven methodically north toward Toledo and Madrid, seizing provinces and cities in between. Spain’s military and police forces disintegrated as their members chose sides, and the militias that sprang up to defend the government were poorly armed and largely untrained. The Nationalists controlled most of the machine guns and artillery, and they maintained air superiority with a mix of German and Italian warplanes and pilots against Soviet planes and pilots attached to the fractured command

MILITARY HISTORY

structure of the Republican Air Force. The militias themselves had little in the way of artillery, few machine guns and rifles in a mix of calibers. Some units required as many as 16 types of ammunition to keep their guns firing. What remained of Spain’s contentious, divided Republican government was weak and indecisive. It behaved as if the capital were invulnerable and had failed to make plans for its defense. By late October the rebel forces had reached and taken Toledo and were fighting their way toward Madrid. The Nationalists were telling foreign correspondents they would march into the city in November, virtually unopposed. Various press outlets pre-composed the story of the city’s occupation. A few governments sent congratulatory telegrams to General Francisco Franco, timed to arrive when he had boasted he would reach Madrid. It looked to be a short war indeed. When it finally dawned on Prime Minister and Minister of War Francisco Largo Caballero how immediate the danger was, he placed Republican General José Miaja in charge of the city’s forces and on November 6 secretly slipped out of the city with the rest of the Republican politicians. Miaja was an old man, and the government had left him few instructions. He didn’t know how many troops he had, where they were deployed or the location of his ammunition dumps. He called a conference of his remaining loyal officers in the

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: AFP/GETTY IMAGES; PICTURES FROM HISTORY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; ALBUM/SFGP/NEWSCOM

Republican fighters, above, brandish a motley array of weapons. General José Miaja, left, took command of Republican forces in Madrid, knowing little about the extent of those forces. Right, a propaganda poster commemorates the date the Republicans met the Nationalist advance on the city.

Nationalist soldiers, here using dead horses for cover, expected a quick victory but faced guerrilla tactics and intense urban combat.

headquarters of the vanished government. They were all lieutenant colonels or colonels, and none knew the government had absconded. They had no information regarding the rebels’ strength or location. Here is what Miaja told them:

BETTMANN/CORBIS

The Government has gone. Madrid is at the mercy of the enemy. The moment has come in which you must act as men! Do you understand me? As men! Machos! I want those who stay with me to know how to die!… If there is anyone here who is not capable of this, of dying, he had better say so now. No one spoke. Miaja sent them to the general staff for their orders. Then he called in the representatives of Spain’s major trade unions, ordering them to distribute any weapons they had and demanding they mobilize 50,000 men for the coming battle. A communist firebrand named Dolores Ibárruri, known by her nickname La Pasionaria (“The Passionflower”), coined the defenders’ rallying cry: “¡No pasarán!”— “They shall not pass!” The Nationalist army under Franco launched its assault on Madrid on November 8 and expected a quick victory. But in one of the more remarkable events in the history of warfare, the ragtag group of improvised defenders holding

Spain’s capital ensured the besieging army did not pass. For more than two years.

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n retrospect civil war in Spain seemed inevitable. The country was deeply divided into right and left, and right and left were themselves split into separate factions. Further complicating the situation were regional conflicts between those who wanted a strong central government and others, including the Catalans and the Basques, for whom a central government was anathema. To this day the Basques insist on self-rule, having engaged in occasional acts of terrorism to that end. The Catalans are nonviolent, but their school systems do require instruction in their language, which is closer to medieval Occitan than to Spanish. Spain never has been quite one nation. Ideological differences cut just as deep as the regional differences. From 1479 to 1931 Spain was ruled by a monarchy. The 1931 elections, won by a coalition of leftist parties, led King Alfonso XIII to abdicate, and the Second Spanish Republic—the first in 1873 lasted less than two years— came to power. Almost at once the Carlists, a monarchist and ultra-conservative Catholic party, began to plot an overthrow. Such plots were not uncommon in Spain. For decades its citizens had grown increasingly politically polarized, and

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Spanish Civil War, 1936–39

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t was Spain’s bitter national divorce, spawned by warring ideologies that would soon air their differences on a global scale. On the one side were the Republicans, who in the wake of elections they had won had imposed leftist policies on a country long dominated by conservative, monarchist governments. On the other side were the Nationalists, led by insurgent Spanish army officers opposed to the anti-Catholic, socialist political shift.

Behind them both were greater political forces that used Spain as a testing ground for the coming fight. The Nationalists sealed a devil’s pact with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany for the use of aircraft, pilots and other support, while the Republicans let the communist Soviet Union test its pilots, planes and tactics in this proxy war. The conflict drew international interest and involvement before Nationalist forces wrested control of Spain and then sat on the sidelines of World War II.

Bombing of Guernica April 26, 1937

GUERNICA October 1937

F RA NC E

June 1937

Basque Country

PAMPLONA

Nationalist control September 1936

March 1938

Catalonia January 1939

March 1937

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BARCELONA Battle for Madrid November 1936

October 1936

MADRID

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S P A I N Republican control 1936–39

miles km

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100 100

October 1936

SEVILLE September 1936

August 1937

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By early November, less than four months from the start of the coup, Nationalist forces were at the gates of Madrid. On November 7 Republicans laid hands on Nationalist plans for the following day’s attack, and General José Miaja was able to shift his forces to meet it. What General Francisco Franco had predicted would be a cakewalk instead bogged down into urban combat and a two-and-a-half-year siege.

1936 Battle for Madrid ARAVACA

University City November 23

POZUELO

Casa de Campo

MADR I D

November 13

November 6

CUATRO VIENTOS

CARABANCHEL

BOTTOM LEFT TO RIGHT: KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES; LEN PUTNAM/ASSOCIATED PRESS

November 4

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Casa de Campo

University City

Franco faced the initial difficulty of crossing the Manzanares River and then the unwelcome prospect of house-tohouse fighting through the suburbs to reach central Madrid. He’d hoped to skirt that clash by striking through the parkland of the Casa de Campo. The Republicans were waiting for him.

Nationalists managed to secure a toehold in the quarter that held the University of Madrid, but Republican defenders made them pay for every building, engaging Franco’s forces in bitter guerrilla combat. Here the battle stalled into a siege, as the Nationalists slowly tightened the noose. Madrid finally fell on March 28, 1939.

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Even the trade unions did not trust each other. Trust was in as short supply on the left as ammunition. All these disparate divisions, moreover, were present throughout Spain, not isolated from each other. Madrid itself had plenty of homegrown Carlists and Falangists. Indeed, on that November day when the city’s Republican militias streamed through the streets toward the front lines, Falangist and Carlist snipers fired on them from apartments above. Militiamen searched out and killed such holdouts by the scores each day. In one infamous purge Republican forces escorted more than a thousand Nationalists from prison in Madrid and summarily executed them. It was among the Spanish Civil War’s steady stream of atrocities, known for mass executions and killings of civilians on either side of the ideological divide.

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violent labor uprisings had rocked the country in 1934. The constitution drafted by the Republican-led parliament after King Alfonso’s abdication was militantly leftist, allowing for nationalization of utilities, land, banks, railways and other private entities and mandating obligatory secular education, among other measures. It was also anti-Catholic in a conservative country dominated for centuries by the church. It dissolved the Jesuit order, nationalized church property and prohibited Catholic involvement in education. Some historians date the beginning of the civil war to passage of this constitution and the wave of anticlerical violence it spawned. Emerging about the same time as the Carlists was a party of Spanish fascists calling itself the Falange. Initially it was not strong in numbers, but Franco, whose own political views were not especially vehement, borrowed from its ideology to develop his governing philosophy when he became de facto head of the right in 1937. Behind these political divisions lay the Catholic Church—traditional, rigid, authoritarian—which embraced the political right. And behind the church stood the wealthy landowners, who had traditionally dominated Spanish politics and worked to sustain what remained, in many respects, a feudal society. The divisions and dissensions were even more pronounced on the left, which was composed largely of landless, illiterate peasants, a working class centered in Spain’s industrial cities and the leftist intellectuals competing to speak for them. That in turn created still more divisions, including assorted liberal republicans, a small but well organized Communist Party and two large trade unions—one socialist and one anarchist. All through the previous five years of the Second Republic’s existence these groups had been at odds with one another, schemed against each other, vied for power. It was an open question whether they could band together to wage war.

MILITARY HISTORY

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ROBERT CAPA/INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY/MAGNUM PHOTOS

SEPTEMBER 2015

Author Ernest Hemingway chats with Republican fighters. Both sides of the conflict drew international volunteers, materiel and coverage.

o go to war, Miaja had told his officers, you have to be willing to die. The dying began in earnest on November 8. On November 7 a Republican militia unit had blown up the lead tank of a Nationalist column and found on the body of its commander the plans for the next day’s attack by the entire rebel army. Miaja had just time enough to shift his forces away from the areas he had thought the attack would target to areas noted on the map. Meanwhile, the defenders were gaining strength. Even women were joining up to fight. A group of 300 marched down Madrid’s Gran Vía carrying signs with such militant slogans as IT IS BETTER TO DIE ON YOUR FEET THAN LIVE ON YOUR KNEES ! E VERYONE TO ARMS ! and T HE F ASCISTS SHALL NOT PASS ! Volunteers went to the movies that night and then took the subway to the front lines. The trade unions were coming through with men, although it took a lot of persuading before the CNT (Confederatión Nacional del Trabajo) would join the fight. They were anarchists, opposed in general to the state, any state, and had themselves been rebelling against the Republic for years. Militarily, for Republican forces, it helped that Madrid for the most part lay east of the Manzanares River and the bulk of the rebel forces were deployed west of it. The Nationalists had planned a feint from the south to draw the Republicans away from the fight. The main attack would target the Casa de Campo parkland on the city’s immediate west, thus avoiding costly house-to-house street fighting through the suburbs. The attacking forces never foresaw the determined resistance that awaited them. By this time the defenders had swelled to some 40,000 armed soldiers, including reserves. Combathardened Soviet officers had arrived on scene in support of the Republicans, as had the first Soviet fighter planes. The Army of Africa did not reach the river for the first day of fighting, taking some steam out of the Nationalist offensive. The outbreak of the civil war had drawn the world’s attention, and volunteers had poured into Spain to fight on either side. Nazi Germany and Italy had sent equipment—planes, weapons, ammunition—as well as pilots to fly the planes and

TOP: PICTURES FROM HISTORY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; BOTTOM: ROBERT CAPA/INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY/MAGNUM PHOTOS

Italy and Nazi Germany backed the Nationalists, supplying General Francisco Franco with artillery, equipment and aircraft like this Italian SavoiaMarchetti SM.81 bomber and its escort of Fiat CR.32 biplane fighters, hitting Madrid in November 1936. Below, Spanish civilians gaze skyward during a raid.

The outbreak of the civil war had drawn the world’s attention, and volunteers had poured into Spain to fight on either side

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officers to train and lead Nationalist forces. The Nationalists had also drawn thousands of volunteer ground troops, not only Germans and Italians but also Romanians, Portuguese, even Irishmen. Attracting the most press attention, however, were the International Brigades, which the Republicans had formed from the volunteers entering Spain through France. These men had come from all over Europe and included sympathetic contingents from China and the United States. Two battalions of them had arrived in Madrid before the Nationalist attack. Though relatively few in number, the brigadiers were well disciplined and taught the militias how to fight. With the foreign aid came writers and journalists: Ernest Hemingway, who famously presented a Republican perspective on the war in his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls; novelist André Malraux; photographer Robert Capa; Herbert Matthews from The New York Times, who would later cover the Cuban Revolution; Arthur Forbes of London’s Daily Express; and George Orwell, who fought, survived and then wrote Homage to Catalonia. The war had become a global cause célèbre for both left and right—the left couching it as an opportunity to stop the spread of fascism, the right as essential to the suppression of communism. Some Western nations, more fearful of communism than fascism, did everything possible to prevent volunteers from reaching Spain; on the other side France made a show of closing its Spanish border while surreptitiously funneling aircraft, pilots and engineers to the Republicans.

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n November 8 a force of brigadiers held the Republican line at Casa de Campo, though they lost half their men doing it. A day later the XI International Brigade went into action under Soviet intelligence officer Manfred Stern, aka General Kléber. Attacking Casa de Campo, his men suffered severe losses but were able to regain ground. Meanwhile, to the southwest, in the working-class suburb of Carabanchel, the colonial Moroccan troops launched their assault only to bog down in house-to-house fighting and suffer massive losses to militia fighters defending their home turf. Only to the north, in the quarter known as University City, did the Nationalists make any progress. There careless Republican troops left a gap in the defenses, allowing the rebels to drive a wedge into the area. The fighting was intense—building to building and hand to hand. The Hall of Philosophy became a war zone, as did the Hall of Letters and the Schools of Architecture and Medicine. Miners employed their skills to tunnel beneath buildings held by the Nationalists and blow them up, while other Republican fighters placed grenades in elevators, pulled the pins and sent the cars to floors occupied by the rebels. To deal with machine gun emplacements in windows, defenders attached grenades to strings, pulled the pins and swung them down from higher floors or the roof. Though the Nationalists managed to occupy three-quarters of the complex, they could advance no farther.

MILITARY HISTORY

Above, after his victory in the 1936–39 civil war, Franco ruled Spain until his death in 1975. Below, Nationalists march to victory in Madrid.

The Nationalists continued to advance, isolating the Republicans in Madrid and gradually pulling the noose tighter around Spain’s capital By December the fighting stabilized, the front line running through the heart of the city. Franco’s army had lost many of its best men, as had the International Brigades, but the Republicans had held. The Nationalists made subsequent attempts to choke off the city, but all failed, and the battle devolved into a siege that lasted till war’s end. With the Germans and Italians on one side and the Soviets on the other, the opponents continued to test both weapons and men in this theater, rehearsing for the much larger war looming on the horizon. As the siege dragged on, the celebrities started to drift away. Malraux toured the United States to raise money for the Republican cause and published his war memoir Man’s Hope in 1937. Orwell, wounded in the throat during the fighting, fled Spain in 1937 and published Homage to Catalonia the following year. Hemingway left in 1938, For Whom the Bell Tolls appearing two years later.

TOP: HANNS HUBMANN/BILDARCHIV PREUSSISCHER KULTURBESITZ/ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK; BOTTOM: AKG-IMAGES/ULLSTEIN BILD

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n a recent book that touched on the international fighters in Spain, American author Amanda Vaill writes that when foreigners and foreign aid came into the conflict, it changed the fighting landscape from being a civil war to “an experimental exercise.” But there was nothing experimental about the battle for Madrid. It was up close and personal, fiercely fought on both sides. It was all-out, brutal combat, and tens of thousands died. Massacres were common. Spanish pride in dying bravely marked the fight. The propaganda war was just as intense. On the Republican side the factional clashes among communists, anarchists and socialists continued unabated. Even as they fought their common enemy, they never quite stopped fighting each other. When the fight for Madrid became a stalemate, the Nationalists turned their attention to the Basque enclave in the far north. On April 26, 1937, the Germans fighting for the Nationalists bombed defenseless Guernica into oblivion. For the attackers it was an experiment intended to discern the strategic value of terror bombing; to the rest of the world it was an atrocity. Republican forces overran the city within days, and the last of the Basque towns surrendered in October. The Nationalists continued to advance throughout 1937 and into 1938, isolating the Republicans in Madrid from the Catalans in Barcelona and gradually pulling the noose tighter and tighter around Spain’s capital. A naval blockade cut off the flow of Soviet supplies, and after the Basque defeat the Nationalists closed the border with France. The Republicans did pull off a few victories but lacked the arms and equipment to hold what they won. In Madrid food was

in such short supply that its half-million citizens were each reduced to a daily ration of 2 ounces of bread and a handful of lentils, beans or rice. Defeat was inevitable, and on March 28, 1939, the Spanish capital fell to the Nationalists.

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he end of the Spanish Civil War left Francisco Franco as the nation’s iron-fisted dictator, and he used his victory to crucify those who had defied him. Tens of thousands of former Republicans— soldiers and civilians alike—were summarily executed, and thousands more would languish in concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands fled abroad, mostly to France. Though it sat out World War II as a non-belligerent nation, Spain did provide material support to the Axis Powers, including an entire division of “volunteer” troops that fought on the Eastern Front. In the postwar period many Western nations withdrew their ambassadors from Francoist Spain, and not until 1955 was the state admitted to the United Nations. Until Franco’s death in 1975 the Spanish people continued to live under fascist rule, which was strong enough to ensure relative peace and even prosperity—perhaps a consequence of the dictator’s lukewarm ideology. On Nov. 22, 1975, two days after Franco’s passing, Juan Carlos I, his handpicked choice to restore the Spanish monarchy, became king of Spain. Six years later, on Feb. 23, 1981, Spaniards were watching a government debate on television when, to their shock, more than 200 armed members of the quasi-military Civil Guard stormed into parliament. Led by Lt. Col. Antonio Tejero, the troops fired bursts at the ceiling, shot out TV cameras and held legislators captive as part of an illconceived coup intended to restore fascism in Spain. The uprising failed through lack of preparation and the ringleaders’ failure to gain the king’s support. But it was clear from the attempt that the Spanish Civil War is not really over. The divisions remain, and they are deep. It must be no easy thing to be Spanish. MH A frequent contributor to Military History, Anthony Brandt is the author of The Man Who Ate His Boots: The Tragic History of the Search for the Northwest Passage. For further reading he recommends Antony Beevor’s The Spanish Civil War, and The Struggle for Madrid, by Robert G. Colodny. To share your views with other readers about this contentious modern-era conflict, visit our Spanish Civil War forum thread [historynet.com/scw_discussion].

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MONGOLS AT THE GATE The caliph of cosmopolitan Baghdad had sniffed at Mongol threats—but in 1258 Hülegü Khan came calling and demanded to see the caliph’s face By Frank McLynn Trained to shoot from horseback, the Mongol archer, portrayed in this 13th century illustration, was an essential part of the intimidating army led by Hülegü.

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PICTURES FROM HISTORY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

In this 13th century miniature, Islamic philosophers gather at Baghdad’s House of Wisdom, a research institute that held the world’s largest library.

aghdad in 1257 was still regarded as one of the great centers of Islam. The seat of the ‘Abb a¯ sid caliphate, it was to an extent living on past glories, for its halcyon days were in the late eighth and early ninth centuries. Al-Mansur, ¯ the second caliph (r. 754–775) and true founder of the ‘Abb¯a sid dynasty, had laid the groundwork, but the real wonders came under H¯ar un ¯ alRash¯id (r. 786–809), the fifth caliph. He made Baghdad a showpiece of the world, with mosques, palaces, hospitals and irrigation works that astonished visitors and won him eternal fame. Perhaps the most famous building of all was the House of Wisdom, the world’s largest library—also a research institute and translation center. The House of Wisdom contained volumes and professors specializing in the sciences: astronomy, mathematics, medicine, alchemy, chemistry, zoology, geography and cartography. But this was no mere Los Alamos or MIT of its day; the rigor and erudition of the institute was counterpointed by the colorful city of bazaars and markets outside, where snake charmers, fortune-tellers and hucksters of all kinds thrived. H a¯ run ¯ al-Rash¯id’s Baghdad, in short, was the one so unforgettably portrayed in 1,001 Nights. Under H¯ar u¯ n and his immediate successors Baghdad overtook Cordoba as the largest city in the world, but by the 13th century it had long since ceded the palm in the population stakes to Merv and the other great cities of Khor¯as¯an. Even though Baghdad had declined since the glory days and had been on the wane since the late 10th century, an Islamic traveler around the time of the Norman Conquest could still marvel at it:

ROLAND AND SABRINA MICHAUD/AKG-IMAGES

There is no city in the world equal to Baghdad in the abundance of its riches, the importance of its business, the number of its scholars and important people, the extent of its districts, the width of its boundaries, the great number of its palaces, inhabitants, streets, avenues, alleys, mosques, baths, docks and caravanserais. Even those with jaundiced feelings about the ‘Abb¯a sid capital could not deny the grandeur that remained in the eastern bank city, as Ibn Jubayr, an Arab traveler from Moorish Spain reported in 1184: [It] has magnificent markets, is arranged on the grand scale and enfolds a population that none could count save God. It has three congregational mosques.…The full number of congregational mosques in Baghdad, where Friday prayers are said, is 11.…The baths in the city cannot be counted.

City workshops produced superb silk and brocaded material, and in Italy there was a special cloth brocaded with gold named for Baghdad, and the cloth of silk and cotton called ‘attabi, after one of the city’s quarters, was known throughout Europe. Baghdad essentially exported luxury goods: cloth, silk, crystal, glass, ointments and potions; the city might have declined, but its prosperity was the envy of most.

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et there were always those, especially in an age of rampant superstition, who regarded Baghdad as an ill-starred city, beset by famine, fire and flood. There was famine in 1057, attempts at social revolution in 1077 and 1088, religious conflicts that led to violence and, most of all, the ravages of fire and water. Ten major fires were recorded between 1057 and 1154. There was an earthquake in 1117 and floods in 1106, 1174 and 1179. There were large-scale riots in 1100, 1104, 1110 and 1118, and in 1123 a confederation of Bedouin tribes came close to capturing the city, which was saved only with the help of reinforcements rushed in by the Seljuk Turks. Inevitably, prophets and soothsayers interpreted all these bad omens as the harbinger for an apocalyptic disaster that would finally destroy Baghdad. The decline in caliber of the caliphs also seemed to point in the same direction. Al-Musta‘sim, the caliph who had reigned since his accession in 1242 at the age of 31, was a man of poor judgment and little energy, a hedonist who spent his time in frivolous pursuits centered on women, music and the theater. Like many such people, he coupled these attributes with haughty arrogance, deeming himself (on no evidence) to be a superior ruler. His attitudes exasperated his courtiers, especially the chief vizier, and there was much muttering in the corridors of power by malcontents who wanted to depose him. A particular concern was that he seemed heedless and insouciant about the growing threat from the Mongols, a mysterious people from the east who on four occasions between 1236 and 1252 had made threatening forays in the direction of Baghdad only to veer off at the last moment when they spotted more promising prey. But now, in 1257, such threats could no longer be ignored, and the caliphate faced what in the 20th century would be called clear and present danger. The Mongols were coming, and this time it was no drill, no bluff. Genghis Khan’s grandson Hülegü—brother of the great khan Möngke, the future Chinese emperor Kublai and a fourth ambitious sibling Excerpted from Genghis Khan: His Conquests, His Empire, His Legacy, by Frank McLynn. Available from Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2015. Published in the United Kingdom by The Bodley Head with the title Genghis Khan: The Man Who Conquered the World.

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named Ariq Böke—was on the warpath. Möngke had ordered Hülegü to annex those parts of Muslim Asia still not under Mongol control and had decided on a sweep through the western Islamic world as far as Egypt. The largest Mongol force ever assembled was put under Hülegü’s command. Medieval sources speak of an army 150,000 strong, and by that point in Mongol history such a host was numerically feasible. Hülegü struck first at the Ismaili Assassins, the most dreaded opponents in the Islamic world. The political and military arm of the Nizari Ismailis, a breakaway Islamic sect, the Assassins established their “state” at the Rock of Alamut in northwest Persia. Under the grand master of the order, known as the “Old Man of the Mountain,” the Ismailis trained their adherents to become expert assassins, murderers of the great and powerful, whom they always dispatched in public places to intimidate everyone with the terror of their name. The great Saracen leader Saladin was afraid of them, and notable Crusaders had met their end from the Assassins’ knives. But in December 1256 they encountered a force even more terrible. Under Hülegü the Mongols attacked Alamut, destroyed the supposedly impregnable fortress and ended the menace of the Assassins forever. The motive was said to have been an incautious threat made by the master of the order to Hülegü.

MILITARY HISTORY

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lushed with this triumph over the Assassins, Hülegü sent a message to caliph al-Musta‘sim, requiring his surrender and personal obeisance and homage, the destruction of Baghdad’s fortifications and a huge sum in gold as tribute. The caliph treated this with the same lofty contempt the pope would have shown had he received a threat from one of the great temporal rulers of Europe. He told Hülegü’s envoys that he was the head of Islam and as such superior to any mere temporal ruler, and that he had millions of the faithful from China to Spain to back him. “Go home to Mongolia, young man,” was the gist of the patronizing message he apparently sent Hülegü, just seven years his junior. Behind the caliph’s back his grand vizier sent a secret message to Hülegü, encouraging him to attack and assuring him that he would experience a walkover, since Baghdad was honeycombed with conspirators and fifth columnists who wanted the caliph dead. Hülegü sent a final warning: “The moon shines only when the fiery disk of the sun is hidden,” meaning that the power al-Musta‘sim boasted of could be exercised only on Mongol sufferance. This time the caliph sealed his fate by executing the Mongol emissaries—possibly the greatest crime of all in Mongol culture. Only when he had made war inevitable did al-Musta‘sim take fright at the precipice on which he was

RASHID AL-DIN/PICTURES FROM HISTORY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

SEPTEMBER 2015

Hülegü—depicted in a 14th century text with Christian wife Doquz—targeted al-Musta‘sim’s Islamic territory in Baghdad.

TOP: JOHN RANKING. HISTORICAL RESEARCHES ON THE WARS AND SPORTS OF THE MONGOLS AND ROMANS. LONDON: LONGMANS, REES, ORME, BROWN, AND GREEN [ETC.], 1826; MIDDLE: RASHID AL-DIN/PICTURES FROM HISTORY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

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ülegü advanced from his base camp toward Baghdad in November 1257 with great confidence. His huge army BAGHDAD was supplemented by levies from conquered Armenians and Georgians, who had long since concluded that resistance to the Mongols was pointless, and, more surprising, by Christian troops from Antioch. He also had a corps of elite Chinese siege engineers and sappers commanded by Guo Kan, at 40 the same age as Hülegü and already renowned as an example of the way Mongols promoted on merit rather than birth. Hülegü reached the suburbs of Baghdad on Jan. 18, 1258, and began the encirclement of the city, probing its defenses. The original circular fortifications built by caliph Al-Mansur ¯ no longer existed, but there was a 10-mile semicircular kiln-burnt brick wall surrounding the inner city on the west bank of the Tigris, interspersed with powerful watchtowers; the defensive brick-lined ditch was no longer effective, as it had been ruined by regular flood damage. Additionally, al-Musta‘sim deployed his high-caliber Turkish troops in boats on the river, providing an extra layer of defense. Al-Musta‘sim’s chief astronomer (like those depicted in the circa 1305 Compendium The Mongols advanced down both banks of of Chronicles, above) predicted catastrophe for Hülegü if he dared attack Baghdad. the Tigris. On the west bank the caliph made the perched and summoned his council to ask if there was any mistake of sending out his 20,000-strong cavalry force to try way Baghdad could escape the Mongol whirlwind. to disperse the advancing marauders, but he did not reckon The universal opinion was to buy off Hülegü with so on the Mongols’ ingenuity. Their engineers broke the dikes much gold that he would have to agree to a peaceful solu- of the dams along the Tigris and flooded the ground behind tion. But instead al-Musta‘sim heeded his chief astrono- the cavalry, trapping them and then methodically destroymer, backed by a bevy of soothsayers, who claimed “it was ing them. The Turkish soldiers on the river in front of the written” that all who attacked the ‘Abb¯a sids were fated to metropolis bore themselves much better and performed well. perish miserably. The astronomer actually went into the Hülegü was patient and methodical. He had his mangonels details of the calamities that would attend Hülegü if he and catapults rain down missiles and naphtha—the ancient persisted in his sacrilegious folly: The sun would fail to equivalent of napalm—at selected towers, particularly targetrise, there would be no more rain, the soil would become ing the Persian Tower. Because the area around the Tigris and sterile, a great earthquake would swallow up the invader’s Euphrates rivers was barren of stones, the Mongols transarmy, and, finally, Hülegü himself would die within a year. ported them from the mountains and cut down palm trees, The astronomer made the fateful pledge that he was so which were then shaped into missiles. The Mongols dealt sure of what he was saying that he would stake his life with the challenge of the Turks by crossing the Tigris at sevon it. When the message was taken to Hülegü, his own astronomer confirmed the bad omens and said the caliph’s seers were speaking the truth. For this “treachery” Hülegü instantly executed him. When the caliph learned that Hülegü was unconcerned by the prophecies of doom awaiting him, once again he dithered and this time agreed to the massive tribute in gold demanded. Hülegü brusquely replied that the time for such negotiations was past; now he wanted to see the caliph’s face.

The universal opinion was to buy off Hülegü with so much gold that he would have to agree to a peaceful solution

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eral points simultaneously and selecting the weak points they had identified around the semicircular wall. The Georgians were particularly to the fore in relentless sapping operations. Nonstop bombardment continued from January 29 to February 10, when the Persian Tower collapsed, and a way into the city was clear. At this point a formal surrender was arranged, but Hülegü refused to give terms. He waited for three days before ordering the final assault, to rest his men and, doubtless, to inveigle the gullible city notables into revealing where their treasures lay hidden. He demanded the caliph’s astronomer be given up to him, taunted the man about the threatened disasters and reminded him he had sworn to the truth of the prophecy on his life. Then he had him executed. February 13 marked the beginning of a six-day sack of Baghdad. A Persian historian described the sequel with colorful poetic flourishes.

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In the morning, when the orange of the sun was placed at the rim of the dish of the horizon, and the light by sleight of hand had conjured away from the mercury blanket of the sky the imprint seals of the stars, Hülegü ordered the army to carry the torch of plunder and robbery into Baghdad.…First of all they razed to the ground the walls…and

MILITARY HISTORY

filled the moat which was as deep as the contemplation of rational men. Then they swept through the city like hungry falcons attacking sheep, with loose rein and shameless faces, murdering and spreading fear.…The massacre was so great that the blood of the slain flowed in a river like the Nile, red as the wood used in dyeing, and the verse of the Koran “Both seed and stem perished” was recited about the goods and riches of Baghdad. With the broom of looting, they swept out the treasures from the harems of Baghdad, and with the hammer of fury they threw down the battlements headfirst as if disgraced.…And a lament reached the ears…from roofs and gates.…Beds and cushions made of gold and encrusted with jewels were cut to pieces with knives and torn to shreds. Those hidden behind the veils of the great harem…were dragged like the hair of idols through the streets and alleys; each of them became a plaything in the hands of a Tatar monster. For six days and nights the pillaging went on. Mosques were gutted, great buildings pulled down, people slaughtered. A sober estimate of the fatalities in the siege and sack of Baghdad provides a tally of 90,000 dead. Seven hundred odalisques and 1,000 eunuchs were found in the caliph’s seraglio.

RASHID AL-DIN/PICTURES FROM HISTORY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

In 1258 Hülegü and his men probed Baghdad’s defenses before overrunning the city and destroying all they could.

TOP: THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM (3); BOTTOM: BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE/RMN-GRAND PALAIS/ART RESOURCE, NEW YORK

Hülegü starved the caliph. The famished man asked for food. Hülegü handed him a gold bar and said, “Eat that” The worst act of vandalism was the destruction of the House of Wisdom—a literary loss to rank alongside the destruction of the great library at Alexandria. It was said that so many books were thrown into the Tigris that the river, previously red with blood, now turned black with ink and remained that way for several days. There is a suspicion that Christians regarded the demise of the House of Wisdom as divine vengeance for the treatment allegedly meted out to the Alexandria library by Muhammad’s companion and successor caliph ‘Umar in 642 during the conquest of Egypt. According to Bar Hebraeus, the Syriac Orthodox divine who was a contemporary of the destruction of Baghdad, ‘Umar said of the Alexandria library, “If these books are in agreement with the Koran, we have no need of them; and if they are opposed to the Koran, destroy them.” The destruction of Islamic books in turn by the Mongols, who did not even have ‘Umar’s appreciation of the power of the written word, must have given smug satisfaction to anti-Islamic zealots in the West. While all this went on, Hülegü beheaded some 700 members of the elite and their families. Al-Musta‘sim himself he kept in an agony of suspense for a while. First he starved the caliph, then ordered him brought before him. The famished man asked for food. Hülegü handed him a gold bar and said, “Eat that.” “No man can eat gold,” replied the caliph in a plaintive echo of King Midas. “If you knew that,” said Hülegü, “why did you not send gold to me at the beginning? Had you done so, you would still be eating and drinking peacefully in your palace.” The caliph revealed the whereabouts of his public treasury, but Hülegü insisted that was not good enough: He also wanted to know where al-Musta‘sim kept his private hoard. The desperate caliph was forced to divulge the location of this also. Finally, Hülegü grew bored with toying with him and ordered his execution. On February 21 his personal servants were beheaded. The caliph and his son were put to death by a method the Mongols reserved for royal and princely personages; they were wrapped in rugs and then trampled to death by their own horses. After this Hülegü grew tired of killing, announced that the survivors were his subjects and needed his protection, and called a halt to the massacre. The destruction to Baghdad was devastating. The canals and dikes of the irrigation system had been totally destroyed, making agriculture and subsistence next to impossible. The city itself declined in all spheres: demographic, political, social, economic. A garrison of 3,000 was left behind. What remained of the city was reduced to a provincial capital, and Iraq thence-

Hülegü punished al-Musta‘sim by locking him in a tower, starving him and finally having him rolled in a rug and trampled to death by horses.

forth was ruled from Tabr¯iz. The survivors in Baghdad might well have wished they had perished in the holocaust, for the Ilkhanate—the government established by Hülegü—imposed crippling taxes on them at the very time their ability to pay had diminished to perhaps one-third of its level in 1257. By the end of the 13th century many of Baghdad’s suburbs were deserted, especially on the west bank. Its port Basra also went into decline, as the Mongols preferred to carry on trade with India from Hormuz. That was the end of the ‘Abb a¯ sid caliphate, and some historians say Islam itself never really recovered from the trauma.

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hroughout the Arab and Western worlds people were stunned by the destruction of one of Islam’s great centers. Baghdad joined the long roster of famous cities destroyed by the Mongols: Peking, Kaifeng, Samarqand, Bukhara, Kiev, Moscow, Kraków, Budapest. A new round of embassies and travelers set out from Europe to discover who exactly these ferocious people were. How could nomads from Mongolia have become the conquerors of most of the world? Who were Hülegü and his famous brothers? And who was their father, Tolui? Most of all they wondered about a man who had already passed into history and legend, the man Temüjin who had become Genghis Khan. MH

Frank McLynn is the author of many critically acclaimed biographies, including Marcus Aurelius: A Life and Richard & John: Kings at War. He has been a visiting professor at Strathclyde University and lives in England.

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While Paris Burned

CORBIS

In 1871 a revolt born of frustration and outrage seized control of the French capital, sparking war between armies of fellow countrymen By Ron Soodalter

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Napoléon III, whose liberal spending policies drove France into debt and led to widespread discontent, sought to distract his countrymen by leading them into war. It ended with his capture and selfexile and set France on a course to violent revolt.

Napoléon III’s French troops were ill-prepared compared to Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck’s welltrained army. Napoléon surrendered to Bismarck on Sept. 2, 1870, after a decisive French defeat at Sedan, as depicted in this 1912 illustration.

Saturday, May 27, 1871 Paris’ elegant Père-Lachaise Cemetery was designed as a place of rest and reflection for the living, where death was an accepted presence—but not like this. Some 200 members of the National Guard and their fellow Communards had held the cemetery—last remaining stronghold of the Paris Commune after a week of bloody fighting—against the troops and artillery of the French army, but by late afternoon cannon fire had demolished the gates, and hundreds of regular infantry poured in. With rifles and bayonets they engaged the defenders in desperate hand-to-hand combat among the shattered tombs and disturbed graves. By evening, surrounded and outnumbered, the remaining 147 guardsmen—many of them wounded— surrendered. They were marched to the cemetery wall and summarily shot, their bodies tossed or rolled into an open trench. The next day in parks and squares across the city the army rounded up and shot hundreds more—men and women, some of whom had taken no part in the weeklong fighting but had merely been caught up in the army’s sweep. Everyone involved—soldiers, guardsmen, Communards, simple citizens—shared a common heritage. They were all French.

IVY CLOSE IMAGES/ALAMY

If ever a ruler was said to have lacked the common touch, it was Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who ruled France as Napoléon III. In 1851, just three years after being elected president of the French Republic, he staged a coup d’état and established himself as emperor. Many people in rural France—conservative, staunchly Catholic—supported or accepted the newly declared Second Empire. But the working classes of Paris resented it. Over the next two decades Napoléon III did little to appease them. The class system was firmly entrenched throughout France but markedly so in its capital. Although Paris’ poor and working classes lived in the same city as its middle and upper classes, they were worlds apart in every other sense. Napoléon III, who enjoyed the support of the rich and the bourgeois business community, strove to make Paris a bastion of commercial security and a place of beauty and elegance in the eyes of the world. During his rule the western quarter of the ancient city thrived with wide boulevards, expensive stores, hotels, cafés and restaurants.

The Catholic Church, which maintained a strong presence in Paris, spent much of its time and energy on the more “respectable” conservative classes, generally leaving workingclass families to their own religious devices. The church’s message to the poor was, in the words of historian John Merriman, to “resign themselves to poverty in the valley of tears that is this world” and anticipate their reward in heaven. Not surprising, then, that the urban poor in Paris and other large cities such as Marseilles and Lyon, albeit stoked by anti-Catholic radicals, grew to harbor a sharp anticlerical resentment. Meanwhile, conditions in Paris’ working-class neighborhoods declined from bad to uninhabitable. Housing was squalid and becoming increasingly less available as more people moved into the city seeking work in the factories. The emperor’s costly urban renewal programs, while renovating sections of the city and annexing surrounding communes for new housing, destroyed an estimated 100,000 apartments in more than 20,000 buildings, forcing people to leave central Paris altogether or move to increasingly crowded neighborhoods in the eastern and northeastern sections. The luckless and indigent simply took to the streets, finding shelter where they could. Various historians have estimated the number of Parisians living in poverty by 1870 at nearly a half-million, or one-fourth of the population. One observer, staggered by the squalor, described central and eastern Paris as “a gothic city, black, gloomy, excrement- and fever-ridden, a place of darkness, disorder, violence, misery and blood.” Working-class, militant, socialist, communist and republican Parisians were not shy about expressing their dissatisfaction, and when faced with what they viewed as an unjustifiable situation, they displayed a propensity for going to the barricades. They had done so no fewer than eight times since 1828, most notably during the abortive uprisings of 1831 and 1848. In fact, critics suggest that one of Napoléon III’s underlying purposes in implementing the system of boulevards was to provide direct military access to the neighborhoods most inclined to rebel. Between 1868 and 1870 discontented Parisians held nearly 1,000 public meetings. Middle-class militants railed against the regime in coffeehouses and a rapidly increasing number of political clubs, making common cause with the

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poor and working class. Workers’ organizations—which, ironically, Napoléon III permitted, along with the right to strike—expanded their ranks. It would require very little to light the fuse that would end the Second Empire, and the emperor himself provided the match.

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Over the years Napoléon III’s liberal spending policies

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had resulted in an ever-increasing national debt, causing widespread unrest and a general lack of confidence. The emperor settled on a stratagem to unite the French people and perhaps add to France’s territorial holdings. It was a tactic employed by countless rulers throughout history who sought to distract their subjects from more pressing domestic issues. He led the country into war. On July 19, 1870, the French Empire declared war on an increasingly belligerent Prussia and its allied German states. Despite failing health, negligible military experience and the fact his ministers had no workable war plan in place, Napoléon III assumed field command of the French army. His officer corps was complacent, riven by class tension and unfamiliar with modern European warfare, while many of the soldiers

MILITARY HISTORY

were reluctant conscripts or untrained reservists. The forces of Prussia’s “Iron Chancellor,” Otto von Bismarck, on the other hand, were superbly structured, trained and experienced. France suffered defeat after humiliating defeat, and by August the Prussian army was marching on Paris. Throughout the nation there was a sense of outrage and betrayal, but especially in the capital. In mid-August a group of revolutionary socialists seized a fire station in an unsuccessful attempt to start an insurrection against the conservative imperial government. Meanwhile, Napoléon III, as concerned with quelling the brewing civil unrest within his capital as defending it against the advancing Prussians, appointed one of his generals, Louis-Jules Trochu, military governor of Paris. On September 1 the emperor suffered a resounding defeat near Sedan and the next day surrendered himself and 100,000 of his troops. When the news reached Paris, the Empress Eugenie and members of the upper and middle classes fled the city as furious demonstrators throughout Paris demanded an end to the empire and restoration of the republic. On September 4 the National Assembly announced formation of the Third Republic, structured under the newly created

AKG-IMAGES/MUSÉE CARNAVALET

Prussian forces laid siege to Paris two weeks after Napoléon III’s surrender at Sedan and began bombarding the city when Parisians, under the provisional Government of National Defense, resolved to repulse the invaders.

Government of National Defense. The name, however, was misleading, as the new government comprised almost entirely middle-class conservatives, with Trochu as president. The Second Empire was finished, but its replacement—while outwardly espousing republican values and committed to repulsing the Prussian invaders—excluded radical republicans and socialists from its ranks, soon proving as distrustful of the left-wing opposition as the monarchy. Two weeks later the Prussian army laid siege to Paris. Conditions within the city quickly deteriorated, exacerbated in late October by the surrender at Metz of another 140,000 French troops. Although no armistice had been declared, the war was all but over. Paris was on its own, isolated from the rest of France and growing increasingly desperate. Food supplies within the city first ran low and then ran out, reducing Parisians to eating cats, dogs, mice, rats and, ultimately, the exotic animals in the Jardin des Plantes zoo. In early January the Prussians, also eager to end the costly war, began an around-the-clock bombardment of Paris, lobbing hundreds of artillery shells into the city daily. Yet the frightened, freezing and starving Parisians stubbornly held out. When word leaked out the new government had entered negotiations with the enemy, cries of “Treason!” arose in various quarters. The republic put down another hastily formed insurrection, as the gap between radicals and conservatives widened. In late January upward of 100,000 French soldiers under Trochu tried to break the siege by engaging the Prussian line west of Paris. They were badly beaten, leaving more than 4,000 dead on the field. Disgusted with the army’s poor performance, an angry mob gathered outside government headquarters at the Hôtel de Ville, demanding the removal of Trochu and establishment of a socialist commune government. Defending the government in Paris were regular army troops and the Garde Mobile, comprising tens of thousands of conscripts, while opposing the administration was a loosely constructed militia force known as the National Guard, many of whose 200,000 or so members came from the city’s working-class neighborhoods. A number of guardsmen attended the protest at the Hôtel de Ville, and at one point gunfire erupted. When the protesters withdrew, five or six of their number lay dead in the street. First blood had been spilled.

Following the debacle with Prussia, the French elected Adolphe Thiers— no fan of the emperor or socialists—to head the French Third Republic. BELGIUM PRUSSIA

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On Jan. 28, 1871, the Government of National Defense signed a preliminary armistice with Prussia, agreeing to cede the disputed border regions of Alsace and northern Lorraine and pay an indemnity later set at a crippling 5 billion francs, payable to the Prussian army, which would remain in France

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TOP: AKG-IMAGES/IMAGNO; MAPS: MARTIN WALZ, PEGMOTIONS GROUP

The Prussians began an around-the-clock bombardment of the city. Yet the frightened, freezing and starving Parisians held out

F R A NC E

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until payment was complete. In exchange, Prussia would release the hundreds of thousands of captured French soldiers and spare Paris a lengthy occupation. After a brief victory parade, the Prussians withdrew east of the city. Predictably, most Parisians who remained in the city—those who had held out for four bitter months on the promise their government would see the war through to victory—felt betrayed. Soon after the war the Government of National Defense disbanded, and France held national elections. In February voters seated a largely reactionary government with a rigid conservative at its head. Adolphe Thiers, a 5-foot-2 martinet and outspoken opponent of both Napoléon III and the revolutionary socialists, was named head of the new government. Among their first measures, Thiers and the National Assembly, which had moved to Bordeaux during the siege, passed the Law of Maturities, requiring all debts and rents that had been suspended during the siege to be paid within 48 hours— a mandate that bankrupted many small businessmen, caused tens of thousands of Parisians to default on their bills and put many families into the street. Thiers then suspended the pay of the politicized National Guard, which had been orga-

MILITARY HISTORY

nizing a rival government in Paris. The moves only solidified the bond between Paris’ poor and working classes, many of whom feared a return to the monarchy. With France’s wealthier families still holed up in their country estates, Paris was, in Merriman’s words, “under the control of ordinary people who demanded municipal rights and social reform.” In a bid to quell opposition, Thiers’ government banned leading leftist newspapers and condemned two popular socialist leaders to death in absentia. Talk of violent insurrection spread throughout Paris, and on March 17 Thiers took a step that virtually guaranteed it. The National Guard was in possession of hundreds of cannon left behind in Paris at war’s end. Thiers was unwilling to leave the guns in the hands of potential revolutionaries. Without notifying the respective district mayors of his intentions, he sent 20,000 regular army troops to seize the guns. When the soldiers arrived in the city the following morning they found large crowds in the streets, summoned by the bells in the city’s steeples. At first all was calm, some citizens even chatting amiably with soldiers. Tensions increased during an exchange of shots that killed a guardsman and a regular officer. But as the soldiers closed in to remove the cannon, guardsmen and citizens alike called on the troops to abandon their mission, and many complied. Throughout

AKG-IMAGES/DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY

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Thiers’ attempt to forcibly remove cannon from Paris provided the final spark for the 1871 uprising. The fighting culminated in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery, above, foreshadowing the fate of many of the Communards.

The reality of the situation became increasingly clear. The Commune was engaged in a civil war it could not win

MIDDLE: ALINARI ARCHIVES/CORBIS; BOTTOM: FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHER/PRIVATE COLLECTION/ARCHIVES CHARMET/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

the city more and more soldiers “turned up their rifle butts,” indicating their refusal to shoot. When an alarmed General Claude Lecomte ordered his men to fire into one gathering crowd, the troops ignored the command, instead allowing guardsmen to capture the general and his officers. In the early afternoon a mob of men and women seized Lecomte and General Jacques Clément-Thomas, beat them, stoned them, stood them against a garden wall and shot them. If any single act could be said to have sparked the 1871 revolution, it was their execution. Thiers had pressed the Parisians into violent insurrection, and there was no going back.

Amid the revolutionary turmoil, Thiers, citing his inability to “promise the assembly complete safety in Paris,” had relocated it to Versailles. By default the National Guard’s nascent Central Committee now became the leading governing body, and it sent guardsmen to take control of key strategic locations in the city. Choosing the Hôtel de Ville as their headquarters, the guardsmen replaced the French tricolor flying over the building with a red flag. Meanwhile, Thiers fled Paris and ordered the evacuation of all regular troops in and around the city to Versailles. Some of the more extreme leftists urged the Central Committee to have the National Guard pursue and destroy this contingent, but the soldiers were allowed to leave unhindered. Many committee members actually believed the men of the French army would ultimately refuse to fight their countrymen and join their cause en masse. Their failure to take the early offensive or to make adequate defensive preparations while they still had time doomed the revolution from its outset. Instead, the Central Committee busied itself staging elections for the new Paris Commune. The results were predictable, with the overwhelming majority of the 90 elected officials coming from the various groups on the political left. Within days of the election some 20 moderates and five radicals refused their seats, while tens of thousands of Parisians fled in anticipation of the coming storm. The remaining council members expended considerable time in long, increasingly heated meetings, organizing public services and enacting its revolutionary policies. The “Communards” who supported the new government represented a cross-section of Parisian workers—skilled and semi-skilled, artists and artisans, day laborers and domestic servants, shopkeepers and clerks. In the immediate wake of the election and subsequent reforms, a general euphoria pervaded the city. Liberal newspapers flourished, while the Commune shut down those sympathetic to Versailles. The reality of the situation, however, became increasingly clear. The Commune was engaged in a civil war it clearly could not win.

While the Commune leaders spent their days planning an egalitarian utopia, Thiers took aggressive action. He severed all communication with Paris and on April 2 began indiscriminately shelling the city. With the approval of Bismarck, whose army remained virtually at the city gates, Thiers bolstered his own army and prepared to invade Paris. The Commune had prudently refrained from taking over the Bank of France, as a seizure of its reserves would have collapsed the currency. Incredibly, however, the bank loaned the Commune nearly a half-million francs a day even as it financed Thiers’ military preparations to the tune of millions of francs. Belatedly, on April 3 an ill-supplied Communard force of some 27,000 guardsmen set out to attack Versailles. The result was catastrophic. Thiers’ army counterattacked, killing or capturing some 3,000 men. During the bitter fight

National Guard cannon and a stone barricade, placed by the Communards on Porte de Saint-Ouen, proved a weak defense against Thiers’ French army.

The Communards, here manning a makeshift barricade on Rue de Charonne, were outnumbered 5-to-1 during the “Bloody Week” clashes.

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REPUBLICAN FRENCH ARMED FORCES 877 killed 6,454 wounded 183 missing

Paris Commune Casualties COMMUNARDS 6,667 identified dead Estimated total 10,000 38,000 arrested 7,000 deported

Versaillais units shot many captured guard leaders as criminals. In retribution, the Commune took hostage many Parisians sympathetic to Versailles, including dozens of Catholic clergymen, and decreed that “every execution of a prisoner of war or of a partisan of the regular Government of the Commune of Paris, shall immediately be followed by the summary execution of a triple number of hostages.” Any remaining hope of accord swiftly dissipated.

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As word of the executions of generals Lecomte and

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Clément-Thomas had spread through the various quartiers, thousands of Parisians had thrown up barricades. Now the order came to erect even more. These generally comprised rows or piles of cobblestones, with space allotted for the placement of the National Guard’s cannon. The defenders armed themselves with everything from muskets to pitchforks to clubs, while the soldiers of the French army carried the Model 1866 bolt-action, breechloading Chassepot rifle—far superior to any weapon found behind the barricades. The Chassepot was fitted with a spring-latched sword bayonet, which boasted a 22.5-inch gracefully recurved and terrifying blade. In addition to superior artillery, the army also fielded one of the most modern rapid-fire weapons available, the Reffye mitrailleuse. It featured a cluster of 25 rifled barrels, which fired in succession as rapidly as the weapon’s gunner could turn its hand crank. The soldiers nicknamed it the “coffee grinder.” Hunkered behind their cobblestone barricades, the Communards would come to know it devastatingly well. The French army entered Paris on May 21. In the absence of any real defensive strategy the Commune itself collapsed almost immediately, although pockets of supporters by the thousands continued to fight ferociously in the streets for a hellish week. As the National Guard lacked a viable com-

MILITARY HISTORY

mand structure, its various battalions were forced to fight as separate units, each defending its own district. Unable to form a cohesive force, they were no match for the well organized, highly motivated and better-armed Versaillais troops, who outnumbered them 5-to-1. Those guardsmen not killed outright in the fighting were summarily shot. The mortality was staggering. As the days passed the inadequacy of care for the wounded and injured became critical. There simply were not enough medical facilities, and the few that remained functional were overcrowded, understaffed and lacked suitable sterilization supplies. To cite one horrific example, 15 amputees at the Hôpital Beaujon all perished of gangrene or septicemia. From the beginning of hostilities, thousands of Communard women acted as nurses, caregivers and—in a number of instances—combatants. Many accompanied their husbands into battle, and as the number of dead and wounded escalated, the women took up arms to fight in their stead. They dubbed themselves the “Amazons of the Seine.” Thiers’ soldiers made no distinction—they shot men and women, prisoners and suspected sympathizers alike. Over the next six days the army stormed the barricades one by one, pouring through to slaughter the Communards singly, by the dozens and by the hundreds. Soldiers rampaged unchecked through the streets—often abetted by vengeful Parisians who had opposed the Commune. They even fired upon those who sought refuge by jumping into the Seine. Foreigners were shot out of hand on suspicion of being agitators. Over and over the commands, “To the line!” and “Take him to the brigade!” signified death sentences. The chatter of the mitrailleuses became a common sound through the streets of Paris. Finally, on May 28 the firing ceased. There was practically no one left to shoot.

LEFT: ANDREY KUZMIN/THINKSTOCK; RIGHT: ANDRE ADOLPHE EUGENE DISDERI/MUSEE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS, MUSEE CARNAVALET, PARIS/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

In its suppression of the revolt the French army slaughtered Communards with abandon, killing as many as 10,000. These Communards lay in crude coffins, but scores were left unburied.

The Communards shot some 63 hostages during the battle, including the archbishop of Paris and several priests. The Commune had arrested the archbishop in hopes of exchanging him and fellow priests for imprisoned socialist firebrand Louis Auguste Blanqui. Thiers had refused. The execution of the clergymen was a public relations gaffe of massive proportions, alienating any possible support from the few in devoutly Catholic rural France and elsewhere who might have empathized with their cause. Dwarfing the number of slain hostages, however, is the unchecked butchery of the French army. At the end of what came to be known as “Bloody Week,” an estimated 10,000 Communards lay dead in ditches, empty lots, building sites and in the streets. Some bodies were burned or dumped into mass graves, while others were simply thrown into the Seine. In the shadow of its scorched buildings, Paris had become a reeking abattoir, the stench of rotting corpses everywhere. A stunned journalist with the London Times reported on the slaughter:

FRENCH SCHOOL/MUSEE D’ART ET D’HISTOIRE, SAINT-DENIS/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

The laws of war! They are mild and Christian when compared with the inhuman laws of revenge under which the Versailles troops have been shooting, bayoneting, ripping up prisoners, women and children, during the last six days. ...The French are filling up the darkest page in the book of their own or the world’s history. Thousands of bodies were left to rot where they fell. “The ground is strewn with their corpses,” Thiers told the Assembly. “May this terrible sight serve as a lesson.” As one student of the rebellion noted, “The City of Light had become the City of Blood.” The sanctions that followed were as devastating for the Communards as the weeklong battle itself. Cavalrymen escorted nearly 40,000 Parisians to Versailles or Camp de Satory for imprisonment. While more than half were released, nearly 16,000 faced trial, the overwhelming majority of whom were found guilty. Dozens were executed, while thousands more served prison terms or were deported. Many ended up at the French penal colonies in New Caledonia and French Guiana, where— according to a chronicler—“death was certain, but came slowly and painfully.” The Commune was dead, crushed beyond all recognition or hope of revival. Adolphe Thiers, described by contemporary socialist newspaperman Henri Rochefort as a “sanguinary Tom Thumb,” rode his victory into the president’s chair.

Today the Paris Commune is remembered, when it is remembered at all, for the unthinkably vicious manner in which it was suppressed. Yet despite its more contentious doctrine and actions,

and the fact it was poorly structured, poorly led and slow to act, the Commune had managed to govern Paris for an extraordinary 10 weeks, during which it passed some measures far ahead of their time, including universal education, relief for the poor and infirm, establishment of homeless shelters and pensions for those killed in government service. It is intriguing to contemplate the achievements they might have made if granted the time to find their way. Ultimately, however, we are left with an image of a failed revolt, born of frustration and outrage, and doomed as much by its ungrounded optimism and naiveté as by the political and military forces against which it rose. MH Ron Soodalter is a regular contributor to Military History. For further reading he recommends Massacre: The Life and Death of the Paris Commune, by John Merriman; The Terrible Year: The Paris Commune, 1871, by Alistair Horne; and Unruly Women of Paris: Images of the Paris Commune, by Gay Gullickson.

This period painting sensationalizes the class divide in Paris, as wealthy citizens prod a Communard corpse in the wake of the Bloody Week violence.

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he June 8, 1862, Battle of Cross Keys, in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, was something of an embarrassment for the Union Army. Confederate Maj. Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson’s men were outnumbered 2-to-1, but when Union Maj. Gen. John C. Frémont ordered a frontal attack by Brig. Gen. Julius Stahel’s force—comprising five largely Germanspeaking infantry regiments—the Rebels held their fire until the Union brigade closed within 60 yards and then opened up with devastating flanking fire, forcing a ragged Union retreat. The Confederates, fielding fewer than 6,000 men, reported 287 casualties, including 42 killed and 230 wounded, while the Union, fielding 11,500 men, lost twice as many

dead and wounded. The German fighters suffered a loss of face they wouldn’t fully recover until the 1870–71 FrancoPrussian War. But Stonewall Jackson again proved his reputation for tactical genius. Cross Keys also made the reputation of Gustave Paul Cluseret, a French-born soldier and politician. Colonel Cluseret’s “skill and gallantry” during this battle and in the broader campaign earned him the gratitude of the United States and a brevet distinction as a brigadier general of volunteers. His service to the Union in turn prompted him to take out naturalization papers, which eventually led to American citizenship. This would be most opportune to him later in life. Cross Keys was neither Cluseret’s first nor his last time under fire.

SOLDIER OF MISFORTUNE BRADY-HANDY PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Frenchman Gustave Cluseret had a knack for combat—but a habit of choosing the wrong political horse By John Koster

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Union Army Brevet Brig. Gen. Gustave Paul Cluseret poses in his Civil War uniform. In his martial career Cluseret fought for France, Italy, the United States and Ireland, though not always on the winning side.

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orn into a military family in 1823 in the western suburbs of Paris, Cluseret attended the French military academy at Saint-Cyr, joined the French army as a sublieutenant at age 20 and was a full lieutenant by the beginning of the February Revolution of 1848. Serving with the National Guard—a militia force with origins in the 1789 Revolution but used this time to put down the radical insurrection—Cluseret captured 11 barricades and three banners from the rebellious students and workers and was decorated a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. But Cluseret had backed the wrong horse. He was placed on the retired list after the revolutionaries overthrew the constitutional monarchy of King Louis-Philippe, the “bourgeois monarch,” only to pave the way for the Second Republic and the far more draconian reign of Napoléon III. During this unscheduled pause in his military career Cluseret became, of all things, a very credible studio painter, whose realistic pre-Impressionist works continue to bring

MILITARY HISTORY

good prices at Parisian galleries. When Napoléon III became president and later emperor of France, Cluseret’s military career revived. Reinstated in the army, he campaigned in Algeria, served in the Crimean War against imperial Russia and was promoted to captain. Charged with misappropriation of funds, he was forced to resign. Not content to return to his brushes, Cluseret instead took off for Italy and signed on with Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Genoese freedom fighter and among history’s greatest guerrilla leaders. Wounded during the 1860 siege of Capua, which clinched the campaign for Italian unification, Cluseret survived the Neapolitan hospitals—said to have claimed more men than the battlefield—and left Italy with Garibaldi’s greatest respect and letters of introduction from both the general and leading French republicans. In January 1862 Cluseret, a committed fighter for human rights and opponent of oppression, arrived in the divided United States. His first audience was with President Abra-

AKG-IMAGES/SERGE RABATTI/DOMINGIE

In 1860 Cluseret fought with Giuseppe Garibaldi’s “Red Shirts” and was wounded during the siege of Capua, which helped cement Italian unification.

TOP TO BOTTOM: J.H. BUFFORD/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; EDWIN FORBES/BATTLES AND LEADERS OF THE CIVIL WAR; PRIVATE COLLECTION/LOOK AND LEARN/ILLUSTRATED PAPERS COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

‘I did not like his appearance and declined his services; but without my knowledge or consent, [Secretary of War Edwin] Stanton appointed him a colonel on my staff. I still declined to have anything to do with him, and he was sent to the Mountain Department, as chief of staff, I think’ — Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan

ham Lincoln, who—apparently not impressed—shunted Cluseret to Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, commander of the Army of the Potomac. “[Cluseret] brought me a letter of introduction from Garibaldi, recommending him in the highest terms as a soldier, man of honor, etc.,” McClellan wrote in his memoirs. “I did not like his appearance and declined his services; but without my knowledge or consent, [Secretary of War Edwin] Stanton appointed him a colonel on my staff. I still declined to have anything to do with him, and he was sent to the Mountain Department, as chief of staff, I think.” Cluseret got along better with Frémont, commander of the Mountain Department, in part because of their shared French heritage and reputation for flamboyance, though more so for their fervent advocacy of abolition. Cluseret followed Frémont into battle at Cross Keys on June 8, 1862, and deftly commanded an independent brigade that fended off Confederate skirmishers, earning him a brevet promotion to brigadier general. While many Americans didn’t like Cluseret, he—like most Frenchmen of his era—liked Americans. He was particularly fond of the enlisted soldiers he met and was pleasantly surprised at their relative intelligence and literacy. Conversely in Napoléon III’s France, due to its convoluted system of conscription, the enlisted ranks were thick with soldiers who didn’t know how to read and some junior officers who couldn’t read a map, which proved troublesome in 1870. “If the American volunteers accomplished prodigies of patience, energy and devotion,” Cluseret wrote, “it is because they fought with knowledge of the cause.… The soldier paid up to 10 cents for the newspaper, stuffing it under the flap of his pack; and at the first break he ran his eyes quickly over it. After reading it, one could see his face light up or become somber. But whatever his feelings were, there would be a redoubling of his zeal and drive.” In March 1863, prompted by ongoing disputes with superior officers, Cluseret resigned from the Union Army and moved to New York City, where he became editor of The New Nation, a newspaper that called for the end of slavery and backed Frémont’s bid for the presidency. When McClellan secured the Democratic nomination— and then Lincoln won what some considered an upset victory—Cluseret realized his political wagon was hitched to the wrong horse, again.

Serving in the Union Mountain Department at the June 8, 1862, Battle of Cross Keys, top, Cluseret showed “skill and gallantry” and earned a brevet promotion. In 1867 he offered his services to the Fenians, Irish republican rebels seeking independence from Britain, above, but the revolt fell apart, and Cluseret fled.

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n 1867 Cluseret hitched his wagon to the Fenians, an Irish republican brotherhood fighting for independence from Great Britain. Many Americans blamed Britain for running guns to the Confederacy, and Frenchmen of the epoch before the debacle of 1870 were far more anti-British than anti-German, so Cluseret was at least consistent—if not pragmatic. Leading British journals soon accused him of planning, under an assumed name, a Fenian assault on Britain’s Chester Castle to capture weapons and ammunition. The March attack was aborted in the wake of an immobilizing two-week blizzard and then whistle-blowing by one of the informers that seem so ubiquitous in Irish revolutionary history. Cluseret—or perhaps the suspect who looked like him—beat it out of England. In 1868 he served two months in prison in his native France for defaming the government of Napoléon III in an article he wrote for an art journal. A year later Cluseret was again arrested for publishing articles critical of the army. This time he beat a prison term by pointing to his service record in the American Civil War and insisting, on the basis of an obscure wartime statute, that he was a naturalized citizen, a claim substantiated by U.S. Minister to France Elihu B. Washburne. Released from jail, Cluseret immediately left for more hospitable climes. He was cooling his heels in Switzerland when the Prussian military juggernaut crushed the armies of Napoléon III,

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ending the Second Empire in 1870. With the tyrant out of the way, Cluseret returned to France that October to assume command of the 10,000-man Ligue du Midi, Marseille’s nascent socialist committee. Within days of his arrival, however, French army forces reasserted its control of the city, and Cluseret found himself on the run. Jealous rivals even circulated a rumor he had actually fought for the Confederacy—not a good thing in European radical politics. Cluseret had better luck with the Paris Commune (see related story, P. 44), an angry coalition of socialist radicals who refused to hand over their weapons to the provisional Government of National Defense after the latter signed an initial armistice with Germany on Jan. 28, 1871. On April 2 Cluseret was named the Commune’s war minister. The day after that the National Guard in Paris, which was loyal to the Commune, struck out at the French national army based in Versailles. The assault ended in a rout—Cluseret said it reminded him of Bull Run, though that Union defeat had transpired prior to his arrival in the United States. Rallying the hotheads of the Commune, whom he characterized as “20-year-old scoundrels,” he convinced them to hold out within the massive fortifications that had protected Paris from the Prussians during their lengthy siege, which had succeeded only when Parisians ran out of food.

FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHER/MUSEE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS, MUSEE CARNAVALET, PARIS/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

In April 1871 the revolutionary Paris Commune tapped Cluseret—circled in this depiction of Commune members gathered at the Hôtel de Ville—as its war minister. Within weeks that revolt, too, failed, and he barely escaped death.

‘Mon cher ami, I have a very melancholy mission to perform,’ one of the Communards told Cluseret. ‘I am forced to arrest you’

AKG-IMAGES/JÉRÔME DA CUNHA

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luseret’s personal debacle came a month after his Communards acquitted their war minister, but now Cluseret appointment to the Commune—ironically after faced a more certain comeuppance—indeed, a probable death saving Fort d’Issy, one of the outlying bastions sentence. His defense of Fort d’Issy had cost the army 500 covering Paris. French army forces were bombard- casualties. French national forces at the time comprised largely ing the fortress, and the garrison had spiked the Bretons, the most Celtic and Catholic of Frenchmen, the same cannon and fled—without telling Cluseret, their nominal people who had opposed the 1789 Revolution and fought commander. When he arrived on the afternoon of April 30 at a guerrilla war against anti-Catholic revolutionaries in the the head of a small relief force, he found that the entire Com- 1790s. When the Bretons and other French regulars found munard garrison consisted of “an urchin of 16 or 17, weeping the archbishop’s ravaged body, they set off on a rampage of quietly upon a barrel of gunpowder placed on a wheelbarrow vengeance against the blasphemous Parisians, slaughtering under the entrance. He had a match with which to ignite the some 10,000 Communards and suspected sympathizers. barrel and was thus intending to blow up the fort and himself Cluseret wasn’t among them. His past kindness to the archwhen the enemy entered. I flew to him and embraced him, bishop had proved fortuitous. Granted refuge by a grateful weeping myself.” After relieving the young man from his priest, he hid for long weeks until slipping away from the suicide mission, Cluseret took an inventory of the fort and carnage clad in a cassock. He hid out in Switzerland, not renoted that most of the cannon had been improperly spiked. turning to France until 1884, four years after the Third RepubHe restored them to firing condition, called up reinforce- lic had issued a general amnesty. In 1889 he won election to ments and had Fort d’Issy manned and ready before he left. the Chamber of Deputies. He also became a pacifist. While On arrival back in Paris the war minister encountered Cluseret never expressed regret over his service in the Amerihis subordinates and the Commune’s special guard. can Civil War and his role, however slight, in ending slavery “Mon cher ami, I have a very melancholy mission to and preserving the Union, the fall of Paris under the Comperform,” one of the Communards told Cluseret. “I am mune may have been just one war too many for him. The forced to arrest you.” old soldier died in bed of pneumonia on Aug. 23, 1900. MH While Cluseret had been restoring the guns and bringing up reserves to Fort d’Issy, a rumor had gotten out that the John Koster is the author of Operation Snow (2012) and fortress had fallen, and that the war minister was somehow Custer Survivor (2010). For further reading he suggests to blame. Swept with revolutionary fervor and paranoia, the From Appomattox to Montmartre: Americans and the Communards hastily jailed Cluseret to await trial. They had Paris Commune, by Philip M. Katz, and The Fall of Paris: also locked up six senior Catholic priests, a number of former The Siege and the Commune, 1870–71, by Alistair Horne. policemen and accused spies, and the archbishop of Paris, Monsignor Georges Darboy—a kindly old Archbishop Georges Darboy faced a Communard cleric who had supported greater independence for firing squad, a fate that almost befell Cluseret. the French church and had helped care for Parisian wounded during the Prussian siege. When American expatriates learned of Darboy’s arrest, they asked U.S. Minister Washburne to intervene. He turned to Cluseret, who was able to secure a pass for Washburne to visit the archbishop. The Americans tried to get the archbishop released or exchanged, but soon after the French army broke into the city in late May, the Communards ordered Darboy’s execution by firing squad. He died serenely, blessing his fellow priests and the policemen and forgiving his killers, who were so unsettled that the first volley missed him completely. The archbishop fell to the second volley, and the riflemen delivered a bloody coup de grâce with their bayonets. Cluseret himself was literally on trial when the French army broke into the city. In haste the

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R A W OF 8 9 8 1

orn w e m i t rom a rtlingly f s e g a P ide sta of a v o r p k boo ages re m i e t a i immed ad ended me e th war tha fore its releas be weeks

By

uterb a L d i v Da

orn

Though the cause of the February 15 sinking of the battleship Maine remains in dispute, a U.S. naval board of inquiry at the time blamed a mine, a finding that plunged the nation into war with Spain.

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On Dewey’s famous order, “You may fire when ready, Gridley,” USS Olympia, far right, opened up on the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay on May 1. Olympia remains afloat as a museum ship.

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he book lay in the shop like some ancient shipwreck, beached amid rows of rattan bookcases, Art Deco clocks and threadbare rugs and left to the ravages of time. There was nothing especially appealing about its cover. Indeed, a prior owner had resorted to silver duct tape in a half-baked attempt to secure its crumbling binding, and the title had long since worn down into ghost lettering. It was the ghosts behind those few words that arrested one’s attention:

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THE STORY OF THE WAR OF 1898

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Peruse any present-day compendium of military history, and you’ll find no such conflict—ah, but there was one. And no one knew that better than the book’s author: U.S. George Dewey

MILITARY HISTORY

ALL IMAGES FROM: W. NEPHEW KING. THE STORY OF THE WAR OF 1898. NEW YORK: P.F. COLLIER, 1898.

Navy Lieutenant W. Nephew King. Long before it became known as the Spanish-American War, King and his fellow sailors and soldiers shipped off to confront imperial Spanish forces in the Caribbean and Pacific in a 109-day conflict that changed the destiny of all participant nations. There in the first few pages is a full-color plate of the battleship Maine anchored in Havana Harbor, Old Glory flying from its masthead, its gleaming white hull reflecting the Cuban sun. Flip the page to a stark black ink rendering of Maine blowing sky-high in a blast whose cause remains hazy but whose occasion prompted cries for “War!” from William Randolph Hearst and others with dubious agendas. Today the mast towers over Arlington National Cemetery, proudly flying the colors for the dead of many wars. Representing the Philippines is an emotive panorama of the Manila Bay battle between ships of the American Asiatic

Squadron under Commodore George Dewey and the outmatched Spanish Pacific Squadron under Rear Adm. Patricio Montojo y Pasarón. The May 1 clash was the first major engagement of the war, and it was over before noon. The decisive moment in the fight for Cuba came during the July 1 storming of San Juan Heights—famously by Colonel Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, though Buffalo Soldiers shared in the victory if not the glory. King credits the latter for having “aided no little in the repulse of the Spaniards,” yet the black troops are absent from period photos and the painting in the book. Hostilities ceased on August 12, and eight days later U.S. warships took a victory lap up New York’s Hudson River past the tomb of President Ulysses S. Grant—hero of a prior war—who had been reinterred there only a year before. King’s book reminds us of that not-long-past history. MH

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On August 20 warships of the North Atlantic Fleet under Admiral William Sampson joined a victory parade up the Hudson River past Grant’s Tomb, far left. The Navy had proven itself.

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In the most iconic and enduring image from the war, Roosevelt’s Rough Riders make their July 1 charge up Cuba’s San Juan Heights. Missing from the picture are Buffalo Soldiers.

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MILITARY HISTORY

Hostilities ceased on August 12, and eight days later U.S. warships took a victory lap up New York’s Hudson River past the tomb of Ulysses S. Grant

The war brought Roosevelt fame and, ultimately, the presidency. The United States gained control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines. Spain lost its empire overnight.

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HONOR AMERICAN WARRIOR The concept of honor is elusive and fragile, residing in the mind, heart and soul of the individual By Joseph F. Callo

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JOHN FAED/PRIVATE COLLECTION/PHOTO: CHRISTIE’S IMAGES/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

In a speech to the Continental Army, General George Washington —depicted here saluting his troops at Trenton—defined honor as a matter of character and principle.

The American military lexicon is replete with the concept of honor. John Paul Jones, portrayed in a 1780s bust, equated honor with patriotism.

JEAN-ANTOINE HOUDON/MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON/MUSEUM PURCHASE FUNDED BY JOHN F. BOOKOUT III, FRANK J. HEVRDEJS, JEFFERY D. HILDEBRAND, AND BOBBY TUDOR AT “ONE GREAT NIGHT IN NOVEMBER, 2014”/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on? How then? Can honor set to a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take away the grief of a wound? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honor? A word. What is in that word “honor”? Air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore, I’ll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism.

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he above verses, spoken by the jaded and cynical Sir John Falstaff in William Shakespeare’s 16th century play Henry IV, Part I, may be the bestknown rumination on military honor, though it is certainly not the first. In his 5th century BC History of the Peloponnesian War historian and Athenian general Thucydides wrote, “The greatest dangers are ever the source of the greatest honors.” Other early references on the subject include the epic poem Beowulf, written about the year 1000, which included these verses: “Let him who may gain honor ere death. That is for a warrior, when he is dead, afterward best.” Other military notables, including Napoléon Bonaparte and theorist Carl von Clausewitz, sounded off on the subject, each with differing though generally encouraging perspectives. The subject of honor also appears early in U.S. military history, in the text of what was tantamount to the nation’s first declaration of war, otherwise known as the Declaration of Independence: And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. Warrior turned statesman George Washington embraced the concept, and various sources cite anecdotally how he attached the idea to character: “[In war] you must have men of character activated by principles of honor.” In 1777

Continental Navy hero John Paul Jones was more personal though no more specific when he wrote to a friend, “I would lay down my life for America but can never trifle with my delicate notions of honor.” Two centuries later General George S. Patton Jr. shared a similarly broad sentiment in a speech to the troops of the U.S. Third Army hours before D-Day: “A real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor.” One of the best known American references to military honor came in a farewell address General Douglas MacArthur delivered to the U.S. Military Academy’s Corps of Cadets on May 12, 1962. In that speech he at least gave some dimension to the idea of military honor by positioning it alongside the other ideals expressed in West Point’s motto: “Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.” The word “honor” is ubiquitous in the modern American military lexicon. The nation’s highest military award for valor is the Medal of Honor, and categories of discharge from the services include both honorable and dishonorable classifications. All three military academies have honor codes, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier has a 24-hour honor guard, and on repatriation to the United States an honor guard meets the remains of those killed in action overseas. Honor is clearly an important ethos in this country’s military culture. However, it remains a surprisingly difficult concept to pin down, and when one asks the simple question, What is military honor? brows furrow, and even

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Given the lack of a clear and universal definition of honor, the narratives of such American heroes as Nathan Hale are instructive toward gleaning the essence of it. In 1775 Hale, a Yale graduate and young schoolteacher, took up arms as a Connecticut militiaman in the American Revolution. A year later during the Battle of Long Island he accepted the dangerous assignment to don a disguise and slip behind enemy lines to report on British troop movements. At the time espionage was considered a somewhat unseemly aspect of warfighting, thus when captured, Hale was summarily hanged. By his execution the British hoped to undercut the fledging Continental Army’s morale. But Hale, who admittedly failed at a tactical level, ultimately handed his enemy a strategic defeat through his sense of honor, reflected dramatically in the last words attributed to him: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Those words, inscribed for posterity at the base of an iconic Bela Lyon Pratt statue of Hale in the oldest section of the Yale campus, in New Haven, Conn., are a reminder that powerfully informs our idea of military honor. Hale’s words delineated both physical courage and a commitment to the cause of liberty as core elements of U.S. military honor during a critical juncture in American history. Transcending death itself, they became part of the U.S. military ethos. In a 1776 letter to Continental Congress delegate Robert Morris, Hale’s compatriot John Paul Jones further clarified how those risking their lives in the struggle for freedom perceived their cause: “The situation of America is new in the annals of mankind; her affairs cry haste, and speed must answer them.”

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Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, Horatio Nelson,

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a contemporary of Jones and Hale and subsequent British hero of Trafalgar, articulated a narrower aspect of military honor in a 1783 letter to a friend: “True honour, I hope, predominates in my mind far above riches.” His comment came in an era of naval warfare steeped in the practice of issuing prize money to victorious crews, and it made the blunt point that military honor comes above self-interest, particularly financial self-interest. British author Adam Nicolson, who wrote about Nelson’s era in his 2005 book Men of Honour, takes the concept of military honor in a different direction: “The naval officer is a gentleman and acts with honour because he does his duty in bringing about the annihilation of the enemy.…Battle was the place where honour was validated.”

MILITARY HISTORY

Top, the British hanged Nathan Hale for espionage, but his honorable final words denied the enemy a sense of victory. Middle, in a farewell speech to West Point cadets General Douglas MacArthur linked honor with duty and country. Bottom, Rear Adm. Jeremiah Denton, a prisoner of war in Vietnam, associated military honor with national pride.

TOP TO BOTTOM: FELIX O. C. DARLEY/MABEL BRADY GARVAN COLLECTION/YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY; ARTHUR Z. BROOKS/ASSOCIATED PRESS; NATIONAL ARCHIVES

linguistic specialists fail us. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, for example, defines it—among other superficialities—as a “good name.” The American Heritage College Dictionary goes somewhat further, defining it as “a code of integrity, dignity and pride…maintained in some societies by force of arms.”

Both men add to the short list of universal qualities embraced by the idea of military honor.

In recent times some have questioned the entire concept of honor with regard to armed forces. During the Vietnam War, for example, journalists, politicians, teachers and even members of the clergy openly challenged the notion that honor existed in any of America’s military services. Some of the more vehement antiwar activist groups and individuals transformed their passionate opposition into overt denigration of members of the fighting forces— men and women, conscripts and volunteers alike. Back on the home front those in military uniform faced verbal abuse and sometimes even physical assault. Some protesters even besmirched the honor of U.S. prisoners of war and their families, summarizing their rationale in the dismissive phrase, “They are getting what they deserve.” As Nathan Hale answered those who sought to strip away his honor, so, too, the vast majority of American military personnel in the Vietnam War silenced their critics with honorable behavior under some of the most trying physical and psychological conditions. The bond they developed with fellow warriors and their sustained focus on the mission illuminate two more basic elements of military honor. Such attributes allowed those who survived that war to do so with honor. In his memoir When Hell Was in Session repatriated Vietnam War POW Rear Adm. Jeremiah Denton addressed those qualities: The vast majority of American prisoners in North Vietnam upheld their country’s honor, with enormous consequences for their nation’s pride and prestige. If we had come out of there defeated and bowed, our country would have too. In his thoughtful reflection Denton emphasized the importance of military honor not only to those in uniform but also to their civilian countrymen. His words are also a poignant reminder that American military personnel often face far more stringent moral standards than the general citizenry. An additional point raised by the Vietnam War, one also inherent in Hale’s story, is that military honor is not inexorably linked to victory. To seek victory may be part of a warrior’s honor code, but when victory proves elusive, honor is not automatically compromised. In fact, courage under the stressful circumstances of captivity— especially in the hands of a ruthless enemy—is at least on a par with courage in combat.

The 1990–91 Gulf War and more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were marked by unfamiliar adversaries, evolving tactics and game-changing new weapons—notably

drones—all of which raised a host of ethical questions related to combat. There has been, however, no apparent diminution of the importance of honor in the American armed forces. For example, the U.S. Navy SEALs— whose origins stretch back to the World War II–era Amphibious Scouts and Raiders—recently adopted a warrior creed that includes a clear statement on the subject: “Serve with honor and integrity on and off the battlefield.” Other statements in the SEAL code also speak directly to the concept of military honor, such as, “Ready to lead, ready to follow,” “Take responsibility for your actions,” “Excel as warriors through discipline and innovation,” and “Train for war, fight to win, defeat our nation’s enemies.” Given the ongoing U.S. military stand-down in the Middle East, the question arises, What about the future? There are worrisome signs. Among the most immediate is a general trend away from traditional values in America. As military institutions evolve, will that erosion of values threaten the traditional concepts of military honor? Time will tell. The quality of civilian leadership of the U.S. military will also influence traditional concepts of military honor. If, for example, civilian leaders are overly political in their decisions, or if they use the military as an incubator for social experimentation, they risk sacrificing honor to inevitable cynicism. Perhaps the most serious threat to the preservation of honor in our armed forces is a potential nationwide loss of a commitment to political liberty. Such resignation would shake the foundation of the U.S. military’s honor code. There is, however, an important wild card in play, a factor that may ensure such concepts survive as part of the greater American culture—namely the time-honored process of internalizing honor. Despite the numerous external factors that accompany a military career, it is ultimately the individual warrior who must cultivate a sense of honor, a process nurtured by one’s commitment to unit cohesion and the well-being of one’s fellow warriors.

Perhaps the only conclusions one could draw about American military honor is that it is a dominant but inexact—and possibly impermanent—concept, one that can never be committed fully to paper by scholars or pundits. It is written and rewritten daily by the warriors who stand for the United States, day and night, in dangerous places throughout the world. And it is often written in blood. MH Joseph Callo is a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral and the author of John Paul Jones: America’s First Sea Warrior. For further reading he recommends Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America’s First Spy, by M. William Phelps; Men of Honour: Trafalgar and the Making of the English Hero, by Adam Nicolson; and Nelson: The Admiral, by Colin White.

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Reviews ‘Old Hickory’ and the Battle of New Orleans Glorious Victory: Andrew Jackson and the Battle of New Orleans, by Donald R. Hickey, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md., 2015, $55

SEPTEMBER 2014

The latest entry in Johns Hopkins’ Witness to History series, this book was released to mark the bicentennial of the Battle of New Orleans, considered by contemporaries a “glorious victory” over British regulars by a motley American army commanded by colorful future President Andrew Jackson. Hickey, a recognized War of 1812 scholar, elegantly recounts America’s “Second War of Independence” and Jack-

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son’s emergence as a conquering man of the people who became perhaps the most pivotal figure in American history between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. In 1812 the United States was goaded into an unpopular war it was ill prepared to wage as a byproduct of Britain’s war with Napoleonic France and enforcement of a naval blockade that seized hundreds of American ships and impressed thousands of naturalized U.S. citizens into the Royal Navy. Greatly outmatched, the United States endured a series of military disasters, in particular the British burning of

MILITARY HISTORY

Washington, D.C. Victories at Baltimore and Plattsburg provided only partial mitigation, and while peace negotiations were under way in Europe, the war’s final campaign played out on the Gulf Coast. Jackson, a Scotch-Irish frontiersman who became a prominent member of the Tennessee gentry, combined innate intelligence with grim determination in defeating both the Creek Indians and the British army in a series of battles. Hickey convincingly argues that Jackson’s culminating victory over the British at New Orleans on Jan. 8, 1815, validated the Amer-

ican war effort and ultimately induced the British to adopt more conciliatory diplomacy in the future. Hickey also effectively corrects several popular myths, notably that the war ended before the battle was fought. In fact, both sides were required to ratify the Treaty of Ghent, signed on Dec. 24, 1814, which the British did a few days later, while it took the United States until Feb. 18, 1815, a month after the battle, to proclaim the treaty. —William John Shepherd The Last Cavalryman: The Life of General Lucian K. Truscott Jr., by Harvey Ferguson, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2015, $29.95 First consider Patton—arrogant, abrasive, self-aggrandizing. Then Truscott— quiet, so modest he kept his name out of press releases, and certainly not someone who would ever slap a soldier mentally broken by war. It remains an open question which was the tougher or more effective commander. Wartime editorial cartoonist Bill Mauldin said Truscott could have “eaten a ham like Patton for break-

fast any morning and picked his teeth with the man’s pearl-handled pistols.” In contrast to Patton’s ivoryhandled Colts, Truscott wore a trademark white scarf while quietly compiling his impressive list of victories and promotions. Still, it was Patton who grabbed the glory. Truscott, who called for creation of the modernday Army Rangers, broke through at Anzio, helped plan and execute the invasion of southern France, and took over the Fifth Army from Mark Clark to drive the Germans from Italy. If a soldier could have chosen to fight under a standup, honorable, oldschool guy, someone who spent as much time on the front lines as in HQ, he would likely have chosen Truscott. At a ceremony honoring the Anzio dead right after the win in Europe, the general stood before the assembled dignitaries and VIPs, turned his back on them and spoke instead to the dead in their rows upon rows of graves. Mauldin described the scene: “[Truscott] apologized to the dead men for their presence here. He said everybody tells leaders it is not their fault that men get killed in war, but that every leader knows in his heart this is not altogether true.…Truscott said he would not speak about the glorious dead, because he didn’t see much glory in

Unknown Wars of Asia, Africa, and the America’s That Changed History brings to light many epic events that are not known and yet have had a great impact on our world to this day.

a, n Wars of Asi the Unknow ic of m s ys ie cl or ta st The were ca he America’s es liv e th Africa and T ok to events that to this and bloody ct our world pa im d an rdly ha e ar of millions s of these war t os oks. m bo t, xt Ye te day. even in articles or mentioned

vered are: of the wars co its’ Among some of China over e Great Wall th ed lv vo in r. s that fensive barrie s The war long story as a de e 1,049 year 1,865 year hi th as w ch hi w ry e th sto d hi an in na ar hi ngest w ence from C s The loam ar of Independ ance and the U S out of W e es tn Vie pt Fr ould have ke lessons that sh ely . na hi and the unlik Indo-C (802 - 1431) hmer Empire K e . th 77 of 11 s in ar s The wthat emerged in a time of crisis rused the Empe hero 2 - 136) that ca ons gi (13 lt Le vo an Re m n Ro r Kokhba of two vetera e cr sa as . m ng e s The Jewiriashn Ba di me to succee to cover up th or Had se the revolt ca American about how clo conquer the to and the truth s Conquistador d the Native ish an an y Sp ur e nt th ce s The warasstofand Southwest in the sixteerenictha that followed. Southe of orth Am t the colony ocalypse in N e to wiping ou American ap me very clos ca at th s ar W rokee e s The Che e lives of mor a. e that took th South Carolin ic Slave Trad bean and nt ib ar tla C e s-A th an of Tr revolts s of the and the slave s The w12arm illion Africans than onfucian a. caused by a C South Americ 1871) that was and started a – ct 1 tra 85 (1 el sp on d go belli orly translate po a od s The Taripwinhog Re sto . misunder ietschola million deaths ria, Japan, V led to over 30 disasters in Sy d an rebellion that na hi C . of re st pi ue Em nq l Mongol co the Mongo 84 e breakup of s The 74anyed arJava hina 1857 - 18 that led to th est of Indo-C qu nam, on C ch and en , Fr ns e ia Th ist te Wars Jews, Chr s England’s Pira s that half of the world’s population of s The futusrearwe arexpecting in the near future. Muslim

GET YOUR COPY TODAY AT: amazon.com (US) amazon.co.uk (Great Britain) amazon.ca (Canada) Alibris.com

Steven Johnson has been a regular contributing author to Military Heritage and Strategy & Tactics Magazines and has taught History at the college and university level in South Carolina for more than 20 years. Steven Johnson’s style of narrative writing of History is as a master storyteller of true events that are stranger than fiction that makes for a riveting reading experience.

Reviews RECOMMENDED

Scapegoats, by Michael Scott

In military failure there is always someone to blame. Scott looks at 13 men who were wrongly accused and exposes the truth behind the accusations that led to their humiliation, shame, dishonor or death. His compelling histories offer a balanced perspective of events, challenging readers to rethink any preconceptions they may have about history’s military losers.

SEPTEMBER 2014

81 Days Below Zero, by Brian Murphy

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Days before Christmas 1943 a B-24 test flight in Alaska went devastatingly wrong, leaving 1st Lt. Leon Crane the lone survivor of a fiveman crew. Murphy recounts the harrowing tale of how Crane survived the crash, kept alive, endured the subzero Yukon winter and eventually made it back to Ladd Field.

MILITARY HISTORY

getting killed in your late teens or early 20s.” Then he sat down. Who wouldn’t prefer to serve under such a man? Ferguson’s biography of Truscott is the third in the past half-dozen years, a sign of the increased attention being paid to the man. The most interesting chapters come in the interwar years, a little-known period in the history of the U.S. armed forces, when Truscott, a poor boy from Texas, became a cavalry officer, learned to play the “Sport of Kings,” polo, and rose in the ranks partly because of it but primarily due to his obvious talent as a military planner and leader. Eisenhower recognized his worth and gave him important assignments as World War II reached our shores. Truscott had never seen combat, but he soon did in North Africa, then Sicily, Anzio, Cassino and on to France. Yet even as his reputation in the ranks continued to grow, to the press he was never glamorous enough. He ended his career in a postwar role with the CIA. Seven years after Truscott retired, the United States added a fourth, honorary star to the three he had earned in World War II. Ferguson’s book is workmanlike and thorough, written by an amateur who served, years later, in a division Truscott had once commanded. Don’t expect brilliant writing, but do

expect to find an extraordinary general, one of the best we’ve ever had. —Anthony Brandt The Ghost Army of World War II, by Rick Beyer and Elizabeth Sayles, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2015, $40 This interesting history bears the unusually long subtitle How One Top-Secret Unit Deceived the Enemy With Inflatable Tanks, Sound Effects and Other Audacious Fakery. Guile and deception are common tactics military forces use to lull enemies and gain tactical advantages during warfare. Co-authors Beyer and Sayles relate the story of the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, a U.S. Army unit created expressly to deceive Axis troops in Europe in 1944– 45. Through the use of such ruses as inflatable tanks, sound effects, phony uniforms and clever acting, this versatile and highly mobile Army unit mimicked the appearance, behavior and sounds of various divisions in France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. The authors detail the development of the Ghost Army and how its existence remained a highly guarded secret—even from its own forces and friendly civilians—to protect the artists,

engineers and other personnel within its ranks from becoming targets. The Ghost Army’s skillful trickery discouraged potential enemy attacks and bought valuable time for real military units to move into more advantageous strategic positions. Illustrated with numerous period drawings and photographs, The Ghost Army is packed with humorous, moving and dramatic recollections from the soldiers and officers who served in this unique unit. It is a marvelous homage to an exceptional military force whose talent and bravery saved many Allied lives and ultimately helped win World War II. — S.L. Hoffman On the Devil’s Tail: In Combat With the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front 1945, and With the French in Indochina 1951–54, by Paul Martelli with Vittorino dal Cengio, Helion & Co., Solihull, United Kingdom, 2015, $49.95 The wartime memoir On the Devil’s Tail was written by Paul Martelli with Vittorino dal Cengio, but the relationship between the two remains unclear and the narrative ends abruptly in what must have been 1955, without any comment or reflection. Exacerbating the tale’s opacity is the widespread use of pseudonyms and the

 
    Your Key to History

absence of numerous dates, locations and units. Martelli was (or perhaps is) a French citizen born in 1929 to an Italian father and German mother, and the tale charts 12 years of his life, beginning with his work for the engineering group Organisation Todt. He joined the Waffen-SS in 1944 and fought with the reserve battalion of the 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne in Pomerania during the final two months of the war. His brief service was followed by three years spent either in prison or on the run from authorities until his conscription into the French army for a year of garrison duty in Tunisia. He re-enlisted at age 22 and was posted to French Indochina as a corporal in 1952–54. Only three of the seven chapters of this book will be of interest to military historians. Although presented entirely from Martelli’s point of view, the descriptions of the World War II Battles of Körlin and Kolberg and the human-wave assault at Zouk To, French Indochina, are rich, visceral and authentic. The title recalls George Robert Elford’s Devil’s Guard, the fictional neo-Nazi memoir of Indochina published in 1971. Martelli is equally as unpleasant and reluctant to provide verifiable details as Elford’s narrator but has much less combat experience about which to boast. —Rafe McGregor

“See what a lot of land these fellows hold, of which Vicksburg is the key! The war can never be brought to a close until that key is in our pocket… We can take all the northern ports of the Confederacy and they can defy us from Vicksburg!” President Abraham Lincoln

Vicksburg’s key position on the mighty Mississippi River sets the stage for one of the most defining episodes in American history: The Siege of Vicksburg in the Civil War. You can relive that history in our museums and tour homes and the Vicksburg National Military Park. Scan this QR to visit our mobile site and get your keys to Vicksburg.

/VisitVicksburg

Moroni and the Swastika: Mormons in Nazi Germany, by David Conley Nelson, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 2015, $29.95 In Moroni and the Swastika author Nelson, who served six years as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, relates the experience of German Mormons under Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. His historical conclusion is that—with rare exceptions such as Helmuth Hübener, who was executed at age of 17 for using his congregation’s typewriter to produce anti-Nazi tracts—the vast majority of Germany’s Mormons collaborated with the Nazi regime. While the original worshippers of Jehovah became the targets of Hit-

ler’s Final Solution, 184 Mormons died fighting for the Nazi cause, while 120 others died on the German home front. The author identifies several elements of doctrine in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints that he believes to be compatible with National Socialist theories. For example, the Mormons believed in the privilege of polygamy for men and shared the Führer’s viewpoint that German women were intrinsically inferior to the nation’s men. The Mormon belief that the Christian church had been corrupted under the influence of Roman Emperor Constantine also aligned

    

with Hitler’s views. And the Mormon obsession with genealogical research bears some surface similarities to the Nazi quest to seek out everyone of “pure” Aryan blood. In 1969 World War II veteran Walter H. Kindt stated in Berchtesgaden: “As a member of the Wehrmacht I once proudly served my Führer. Now as a member of the [Mormon] church I proudly serve another Führer.” Readers interested in the relationship of religious minorities to Nazi Germany will find Moroni and the Swastika a disturbing but ultimately important read. —Thomas Zacharis

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Hallowed Ground Anzac Cove, Gallipoli, Turkey

SEPTEMBER 2015

I

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n February and March 1915 an Anglo-French naval task force tried and failed to force passage through the Dardanelles strait in an attempt to reach Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) and knock the Ottoman empire out of World War I. Turkish shore batteries and minefields proved too strong, so Allied military planners decided they would have to neutralize the shore batteries by taking the Gallipoli Peninsula, which runs the length of the northwest side of the Dardanelles and juts out into the Aegean Sea. On April 25 an Allied ground force of some 75,000 troops under British General Sir Ian Hamilton came ashore at three points. British forces landed in the center at Cape Helles, on the southwest tip of the peninsula at the mouth of the strait. French forces made an initial diversionary landing to their right at Kum Kale, on the Turkish mainland on the opposite side of the mouth. The troops of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed to the left of the British, farther north on the peninsula near Gaba Tepe, a place known today as Anzac Cove. The Turks and the Germans were ready for them. German General of Cavalry Otto Liman von Sanders, inspector general of the Turkish army, had deployed six divisions of the Turkish Fifth Army along the rocky high ground of the peninsula. Colonel Mustafa Kemal—who after the war became the founder and first president of modern Turkey, assuming the name Atatürk (“Father of the Turks”)— commanded the 19th Division. Within a matter of days the French redeployed from Kum Kale to join the British at Cape Helles. The two Allied lodgments were some dozen miles apart, too far for mutual support, and the fighting disintegrated into trench warfare similar to that on the Western Front. In places the opposing lines were mere yards apart, well within hand grenade range. The Turks were well dug in with excellent observation posts, and their artillery umbrella covered the beaches. The Allies were pinned down, fighting uphill with their backs to the water.

MILITARY HISTORY

The fighting slogged through year’s end, with each side committing 10 additional divisions. On August 6 the British landed two divisions at Suvla Bay, about 5 miles north of Anzac Cove, in order to support an attempted breakout from the cove’s perimeter; but Kemal, by then in command of a corps, also held this landing to little more than a toehold. Liman von Sanders, meanwhile, skillfully shifted his forces up and down the peninsula, keeping the Allies bottled up. After several more months of stalemate the Allies finally decided to withdraw. On the night of December 18 they started evacuating the beachheads at Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove. The Turks were caught totally by surprise, and by dawn on the 20th the Allies had broken contact relatively unscathed. The evacuation from Cape Helles followed on Jan. 7–9, 1916, again with relatively few losses. With little to show for the 259-day campaign, the Allies had incurred some 141,000 casualties, including 44,150 dead. Estimates of Turkish casualties run as high as 300,000. ANZAC casualties accounted for about a quarter of the Allied total, and people in Australia and New Zealand regard the crucible of Gallipoli in the way Americans view Valley Forge. Both nations consider the Ottoman campaign their baptism of fire, marking their emergence as independent nations. Since the 1920s both have observed April 25 as a national holiday, dubbed Anzac Day. Today 127 square miles of the Gallipoli Peninsula are preserved as a Turkish national historical park. The trench lines and fighting positions at the three landing sites are all well marked, and a battlefield museum stands at Gaba Tepe, about a mile inland from Anzac Cove. One of the memorials bears an inscription written by Atatürk in 1934: Y OU ,

THE MOTHERS WHO SENT THEIR SONS FROM FARAWAY

COUNTRIES, WIPE AWAY YOUR TEARS. YOUR SONS ARE NOW LYING IN OUR BOSOM AND ARE IN PEACE. AFTER HAVING LOST THEIR LIVES ON THIS LAND, THEY HAVE BECOME OUR SONS AS WELL.

MH

TOP: PRIVATE COLLECTION/KEN WELSH/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; BOTTOM: CLASSIC IMAGE/ALAMY

By David T. Zabecki

Today 127 square miles of the Gallipoli Peninsula, including the sands of Anzac Cove, are set aside as a Turkish national historical park.

A view of Anzac Cove in 1915, when Australian and New Zealand Army Corps troops came ashore under the guns of Turkish and German troops.

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War Games 2

1

Honor Among Enemies Even amid the most divisive conflicts noble warriors have set aside their bloodlust. Recall any of the following?

3

4

5

6

Gallipoli Aftermath 1. To which ailing enemy did Saladin send his personal physician in 1192?

1. Sir Thomas Blamey

A. Philip II

2. Otto Liman von Sanders

C. Richard I D. Conrad of Montferrat

3. Winston Churchill 4. Henri Gouraud 5. Mustafa Kemal 6. Sir Ian Hamilton

8

7

zu Pappenheim

8. Maurice Bailloud

B. Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly

9. Sir Harry Chauvel

C. Sigismund III Vasa

10. Mehmed Esad Pasha

D. Albrecht von Wallenstein

____ A. Commander, Desert

____ C. Commander, Australian Corps ____ D. Commander, Ottoman

Third Army, Caucasus ____ E. Commander, French 156th

Infantry Division, Greece ____ F. Commander, Australian

Military Forces, 1942–45 ____ G. British Minister of Munitions ____ H. Commander, French

Fourth Army ____ I. Founder and first president

of Turkey ____ J. Commander, Ottoman army

in Sinai and Palestine

Fought at Fredericksburg Union or Confederate, clean-shaven or sideburned, see whether you can ID these officers of the 1862 battle: ____ A. Brig. Gen. C. Feger Jackson

(USA) ____ B. Brig. Gen. Alfred Sully (USA) ____ C. Maj. Gen. Thomas Meagher

(USA) ____ D. Brig. Gen. Lafayette McLaws

(CSA) ____ E. Brig. Gen. Nelson Miles (USA) ____ F. Colonel Porter Alexander (CSA)

3. At Waterloo in 1815 whom did Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, order his troops to avoid shooting and “give the brave man time to gather up the wounded”? A. Nicolas-Jean de Dieu Soult B. Louis-Nicolas Davout C. Dominique-Jean Larrey D. Michel Ney 4. Which pilot did Ernst Udet swear saluted him and flew away on seeing his guns were jammed during a June 1917 dogfight? A. Georges Guynemer B. Albert Deullin

____ G. Brig. Gen. John Gibbon (USA)

C. Charles Nungesser

____ H. Major John Pelham (CSA)

D. René Fonck

Answers: A1, B7, C5, D3, E4, F8, G2, H6

____ B. Recalled to Britain, retired

2. During the 1632 Battle of Rain to which dying opponent did Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden send his personal physician? A. Gottfried Heinrich Graf

7. Sir John Monash

Mounted Corps

B. Leopold of Austria

Answers: 1C, 2B, 3C, 4A

Answers: A9, B6, C7, D10, E8, F1, G3, H4, I5, J2

LEFT TO RIGHT: MUSTAFA KEMAL: FRENCH SCHOOL/PRIVATE COLLECTION/ARCHIVES CHARMET/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; FREDERICKSBURG MATCHING: CENTURY ILLUSTRATED MONTHLY MAGAZINE; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (4); NATIONAL ARCHIVES; HERITAGE AUCTION GALLERIES, DALLAS (2); GEORGES GUYNEMER: FRENCH PHOTOGRAPHER/PRIVATE COLLECTION/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

What roles did these Allied and Turkish survivors of the 1915–16 campaign assume in later years?

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The Shirt off Her Back Turning heads and stopping traffic, a young woman barrels through New York’s Times Square in 1945 to promote the United National Clothing Collection’s relief effort, which sent clothing, shoes and bedding to war-ravaged Europeans.

MILITARY HISTORY

ARTHUR “WEEGEE” FELLIG/INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY/GETTY IMAGES

SEPTEMBER 2015

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