Military History 2016-07

The Potato War Gallowglass Almost Victory Border Showdown Wartime Cartoons Lethal Greetings HistoryNet.com

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IN 1945 A GERMAN SUB CROSSED THE ATLANTIC FOR ONE FINAL FIGHT

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Letters 6 News 8 Reviews 72

Features

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Tightrope Walker

Game of Thrones

At the close of World War II the long-range German sub U-853 played a deadly cat and mouse with American warships By John Koster

Though saddled with a rather prosaic moniker, the “Potato War” brought to bear some of Europe’s diplomatic big guns By Richard Selcer

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Interview Warren Bernard

Valor Scaling the Wall

On the cover: During the 1939–45 Battle of the Atlantic Allied warships scoured the sea for German U-boats. PHOTO: AKG-Images/Ullstein Bild

War Games 78 Captured! 80

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Almost Victory

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Aleksey Brusilov had planned to bring an early end to World War I—but the failure of his offensive cost Russia dearly By Richard W. Harrison

What compels us to scrawl “drop dead” missives on outbound lethal missiles? By David Lauterborn

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Showdown on the Rio Grande

Scourge of the Gallowglass

When Congress declared war on Mexico in 1846, Americans had already won two battles By David A. Norris

These sturdy sons of Scottish clansmen and Norse raiders dominated warfare in Ireland By Ron Soodalter

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What We Learned From... Bryn Glas, 1402

Hardware Type IX U-boat

Hallowed Ground Hougoumont Farm, Waterloo, Belgium

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: AKG-IMAGES/ULLSTEIN BILD; JOSEPH HICKEL/PRIVATE COLLECTION/PHOTO © CHRISTIE’S IMAGES/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; EVERETT COLLECTION/NEWSCOM; FPG/HULTON ARCHIVE/ GETTY IMAGES; IMAGE FROM WARRIOR #143 GALLOGLASS 1250-1600: GAELIC MERCENARY WARRIOR BY FERGUS CANNAN, © OSPREY PUBLISHING, LTD/ILLUSTRATION BY SEÁN Ó’ BRÓGÁIN; IMAGE FROM NEW VANGUARD #55 KRIEGSMARINE U-BOATS 1939-45 (2) BY GORDON WILLIAMSON, © OSPREY PUBLISHING, LTD/ILLUSTRATION BY IAN PALMER; F&S PALMER/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; COURTESY WARREN BERNARD

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Join the discussion at militaryhistory.com MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DIONISIO LUCCHESI PRESIDENT WILLIAM KONEVAL ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

JULY 2016 VOL. 33, NO. 2

Why Hannibal Lost The Carthaginian commander ruled the battlefield on the Italian peninsula but never understood his role in the broader political struggle By Richard A. Gabriel

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IN T H E ARCHIVES:

In 1918 Woodrow Wilson committed to an Allied intervention in a reeling Russia and stumbled into a brewing Cold War By Anthony Brandt

Interview Documentary flimmaker Jessica Sherry ventured to the South Pacific island of Tanna to consider the John Frum cargo cult Tools Hannibal took 37 Carthaginian war elephants on his 218 BC crossing of the Alps, but only one would survive the campaign

Reviews Oxford professor Nicholas Stargardt takes a candid look at life in Germany under the Third Reich in his book The German War

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Letters The kilij is characterized by its heavy blade with chiseled back that bulges toward the point.

Greeks Bearing Swords [Re. the May cover, “Defying the Sultan”:] Though it portrays Greek rebels, Louis Dupré’s painting shows, to my keen Marine eye, swords with Mamluk hilts. A Marine officer’s version of this sword has been in use since the early 1800s and is the oldest weapon in continuous use in the Department of Defense. I guess with Greece being under Ottoman control, they would use Ottoman weapons. John H. Thompson OGDEN, UTAH Editor responds: Rebels generally use whatever they can get their hands on, and the Ottomans in Greece had plenty of weaponry at hand. The type of saber depicted in Dupré’s painting may actually be

6 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

Not Nicholas I believe you mistakenly used a picture of someone other than Russian Czar Nicholas II on P. 9 [“Ongoing Quest to ID Romanovs,” News, May 2016]. Nicholas so closely resembled his cousin King George V of Great Britain that they could have been twins. This is shown by the paintings and photographs in your feature article [“The Last Warrior-King,” by Richard Selcer, PP. 42–51]. But the photo of the bald-headed gentleman on P. 9 shows no resemblance to either. You may have meant to illustrate Alexander III, whose DNA is being used to confirm the found remains of Nicholas, his czarina, Alexandra, and their five children, all murdered by the Communists in 1918. Wayne Long CHESTER, MD. Editor responds: Yes, that is a portrait of Alexander III. The Russian Orthodox Church has asked for incontrovertible forensic identification of all seven family members before entombing the remains—considered holy relics—at the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Raising the BAR As a World War II veteran [Company C, 134th Infantry

Regiment, 35th Infantry Division] who carried a BAR [M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle] off and on from Bastogne to the Elbe River, I was disappointed that you failed to mention the weapon in your March feature on automatic weapons [“FullAuto Firepower,” by Jon Guttman]. It appeared late in World War I but saw much service in World War II and Korea. Each squad in an infantry company during World War II had a BAR man and an assistant who carried extra magazines and took over the weapon if the regular man became a casualty. During a combat patrol of the village of Hilfarth, Germany, on Feb. 24, 1945, I fired 11 of my 13 magazines. James Graff TOPEKA, KAN.

Rethinking Rommel [Re. “Rethinking Rommel,” by David T. Zabecki, January:] Zabecki writes Erwin Rommel “owed his spectacular interwar rise within the Wehrmacht to Adolf Hitler’s direct patronage.” This is not true. He owed it to his extraordinary World War I feats, his receiving the equivalent of the Medal of Honor for them and his well-received book about them. As commander of the 7th Panzer Division at the outset of World War II, Rommel adapted to the concept of blitzkrieg so successfully that the architect of it, Heinz Guderian, had nothing but praise for him. It was from these

achievements Hitler appointed Rommel to command the Afrika Korps to bolster the Italian front in Libya. Here we are still talking about Rommel 70 years later. Is that not proof in itself of his significance? B. Selby Haussermann NOVATO, CALIF.

Japan’s Last Fight Sir Max Hasting’s article “Japan’s Last Fight,” in the July 2015 issue of Military History, and particularly the illustrative maps on PP. 30–31, made me think perhaps it wasn’t Little Boy after all that convinced the emperor it was better to end the war but the declaration of war by the Soviet Union in Japan’s frontiers, particularly on the island of Sakhalin. Perhaps to have the Russian army at Japan’s gates was a menace too evident to ignore. Maybe, when Hirohito asked his people to “accept the unacceptable and endure the unendurable,” he knew a Soviet Japan would be really unacceptable and unendurable, so he decided to surrender to the Americans to avoid that possibility. Julio Ornano LIMA, PERU Send letters to Editor, Military History HistoryNet 1600 Tysons Blvd., Suite 1140 Tysons, VA 22102-4883 or via e-mail to

militaryhistory@ historynet.com Please include name, address and phone number

INTERFOTO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

the Turkish kilij, whose design derives from swords used by, among other predecessors, the Mamluks.

More than 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam. On my worst days I used to wish I was one of them. On my good days, however, I recall the funny, sad, quirky or poignant incidents that took place during my time in the World’s Largest and Cleanest Nuclear Navy. “Orange Socks & Other Colorful Tales” is a compilation of the stories I’ve told family and friends over the years. Like every veteran in every war, we did what we could, even when we were getting mixed messages from the home front. Vietnam-era vets know what I mean. They have stories, too— probably better than mine. Non-vets will wonder how you can laugh during a war. As my buddy Juli used to say, “You can laugh—or you can cry.” In Vietnam, I did both. “Orange Socks & Other Colorful Tales” is available as an e-book on Amazon and also the author’s website at www.jslstories.com

www.jslstories.com

By Brendan Manley

CENTENNIAL COMMISSION SELECTS MEMORIAL DESIGN

Bronze figures in relief and soldiers’ quotations will anchor the memorial.

The World War I Centennial Commission [worldwar1centennial.org]—tasked by Congress in 2013 with coordinating U.S. observances of the anniversary—has approved a design concept for the National World War I Memorial, soon to transform Pershing Park in Washington, D.C. “The Weight of Sacrifice,” by Chicago architect Joseph Weishaar and New York sculptor Sabin Howard, centers on bronze figures in relief and soldiers’ quotations inscribed on three retaining walls enclosing a raised central lawn. Set apart will be two freestanding sculptures—an existing figure of General John J. “Black Jack” Pershing, wartime commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, and “Wheels of Humanity,” Howard’s forthcoming bronze of an American field gun crew in action. A jury of experts in architecture, landscape design, art and other relevant fields selected the entry from more than 360 initial submis-

sions and five finalists. Jurors praised the two-level design for “creating both an evocative memorial space and a functional urban park.” The project will continue to evolve as it moves through the design process; the Centennial Commission, National Park Service [nps.gov], U.S. Commission of Fine Arts [cfa. gov], National Capital Planning Commission [ncpc.gov] and other stakeholders will advise the team, which must adhere to historic preservation and environmental regulations. That process may take time, as preservationists have opposed any sweeping changes to Pershing Park, designed in 1981 by modernist landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg. The project is expected to cost upward of $30 million in private funding, of which only $1 million has been raised. Regardless, planners expect to break ground in November 2017 and dedicate the memorial in November 2018 to mark the centennial of the Armistice.

‘No commander was ever privileged to lead a finer force’ —General John J. Pershing 8 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

WWI Museum Explores War Art The National World War I Museum and Memorial [theworldwar.org] in Kansas City, Mo., is spotlighting art and events from the first two years of the war in the exhibition “Images of the Great War: European Offensives, 1914–1916,” on view through October 9. Encom-

passing the initial invasions through the punishing campaigns on the Marne and Somme rivers, the exhibition includes works by French, British, Italian, German, Dutch, Austrian, Turkish and Swiss artists.

Wind Farm Scans Reveal WWI U-31 Dutch navy divers confirm that a wreck found 55 miles off the coast of Norfolk, England, by a North Sea wind farm developer is the lost German World War I submarine U-31. The 212-foot U-boat and its 35-man

crew vanished soon after leaving Wilhelmshaven, Germany, on Jan. 13, 1915; it likely struck a mine. U-31 turned up during a sonar survey of the seabed. The developer vows not to disturb the wreck, which is protected under international law as a maritime war grave.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: WORLD WAR I CENTENNIAL COMMISSION; FORTUNINO MATANIA/BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, COURTESY THE NATIONAL WORLD WAR I MUSEUM; FUGRO/SCOTTISHPOWER RENEWABLES/SWNS.COM

News

WAR RECORD Poppy Waterfall to Evoke Jutland

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: NIGEL RODDIS/1418NOW; IMAGE BY MARTA MIRAZON LAHR/ENHANCED BY FABIO LAHR/UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE; COURTESY NATIONAL D-DAY MEMORIAL FOUNDATION; PRISMA ARCHIVO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Through June 12 Scotland’s Orkney Islands will mark the centennial of the World War I naval Battle of Jutland with a cascade of red ceramic poppies [1418now.org. uk/commissions/poppies] out-

side St. Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall. The May 31–June 1, 1916, clash in the North Sea off Denmark claimed a combined 25 ships and 9,823 sailors from the British and German fleets. The Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet was based in the Orkneys’ Scapa Flow.

Auction Features Napoléon Nuptials French auction house Osenat [osenat.fr] recently sold Forbes publishing house scion Christopher Forbes’ extensive collection of First and Second Empire art and artifacts, including the

marriage certificate (€32,500) from Napoléon Bonaparte’s 1804 Catholic wedding to Joséphine de Beauharnais. Napoleon consented to the secret ceremony, held eight years after the power couple’s civil marriage, to placate both Joséphine and Pope Pius VII, who presided over the coronation ceremony (above) the next day.

WAS KENYA SITE OF EARLIEST CONFLICT? Researchers from Cambridge University [cam.ac.uk] have revealed their discovery of the earliestknown evidence of human conflict—the 10,000-year-old skeletal remains of slain hunter-gatherers. The find came at Nataruk, a dig site along the edge of an ancient desiccated lagoon in Kenya’s Rift Valley. The remains of the Stone Age foragers—including men, women and children—show signs of a brutal end, including bluntforce trauma, arrow lesions and broken hands, knees and ribs. Several victims had been bound. Competition for resources may have prompted the massacre.

LAST OF BEDFORD BOYS Allen Huddleston, 97, last of the World War II “Bedford Boys,” died February 10 in his hometown of Bedford, Va.—the community that suffered the nation’s highest proportional D-Day losses. Huddleston was a member of Company A, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division, which on June 6, 1944, assaulted Omaha Beach. The company included 35 men from Bedford, 21 of whom died during the landing and its aftermath. Two assigned to other companies also died. Fortunately for Huddleston, he’d been sidelined days before with a broken ankle. Rejoining his unit weeks later, he served through war’s end. Bedford is home to the National D-Day Memorial [dday.org].

June 21, 1570: In a rare set-piece battle between native and English forces in Shrule, Ireland, Scottish gallowglass mercenaries (see P. 64) swell the ranks of both armies. Descended from highlanders and Norse Vikings, the gallowglass fought in Ireland over nearly four centuries.

June 25, 1943: Germany’s Kriegsmarine commissions U-853 (see P. 22). The 251-foot-10-inch Type IXC/40 sub patrolled the Atlantic from May 1944 through May 6, 1945, when U.S. warships sank the U-boat off Block Island, R.I., killing all 55 of its crewmen.

July 5, 1778: At the outset of the War of the Bavarian Succession (see P. 32) the van of the Prussian army assaults the fortified Bohemian town of Náchod, only to be repelled by 50 Austrian hussars under Captain (soon Major) Friedrich Joseph, Count of Nauendorf.

July 16, 1846: After his Mexican War victories at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma (see P. 50), U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Zachary Taylor receives a Congressional Gold Medal for “good conduct, valor and generosity to the vanquished.”

July 28, 1916: Russian General Aleksey Brusilov (see P. 40) resumes his offensive along the World War I Eastern Front. But despite early gains, poor coordination between sectors had already doomed the offensive, with tragic consequences for Russia.

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News

More than a half-million Vietnamese war dead remain unidentified.

In history’s largest systematic identification effort to date, the Vietnamese government is turning to cutting-edge DNA analysis as it seeks to identify the remains of more than a half-million soldiers and civilians killed during the 1965–75 Vietnam War. The next largest effort of its kind came after the 1990s ethnic conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, when forensic investigators identified the remains of more than 20,000 war dead. More than 1 million Vietnamese died during the conflict. While the United States has accounted for all but 1,622 of its 58,209 war dead, the remains of only a few hundred Vietnamese MIAs have been identified. The first steps in the nation’s $25 million initiative will be to upgrade its three existing DNA testing facilities. The government has also engaged German genetics research firm Bioglobe [bioglobe.net/english] to train

Vietnamese scientists and advise on how to equip labs, collect specimens and conduct sequencing. Hurdles to DNA extraction include soil contamination and Vietnam’s tropical climate. In the most problematic cases the Sarajevo-based International Commission on Missing Persons [icmp. int]—which led the identification effort in Bosnia and Herzegovina—will analyze remains in its own lab using more exacting methods. The ICMP will also help train Vietnamese researchers. A forthcoming outreach program will seek citizens’ help in locating remains and encourage family members of the missing to donate saliva samples for DNA analysis and inclusion in a reference data bank. Once upgrades are complete and the initiative gains momentum, researchers expect to be able identify the remains of up to 10,000 people a year.

‘Victory was a high body count, defeat a low kill ratio’ —Philip Caputo, A Rumor of War 10 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

Vietnam Dog Tag Exhibit Returns In cooperation with the National Veterans Art Museum [nvam.org], Chicago’s Harold Washington Library Center [chipublib.org] has returned to public view the exhibit “Above and Beyond,” featuring more than 58,000 suspended dog tags, each bearing the name

of a U.S. service member killed in the Vietnam War. The display, created by veterans/artists Rick Steinbock, Ned Broderick, Joe Fornelli and Mike Helbing, had graced the entrance hall of the museum until its move to a smaller space in 2012.

Marine Footage to Go Digital Media experts from the University of South Carolina [sc.edu] are restoring and digitizing 2,000 hours of rare Marine Corps footage

spanning the late 1930s through the Vietnam War. The stockpile, from the Marine Corps University [mcu.usmc.mil] in Quantico, Va., comprises 16,000 reels of 16 mm and 35 mm silent color film and includes footage from Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Chosin Reservoir and Khe Sanh. The high-definition footage will eventually be available online.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: NGUYEN HUY KHAM/REUTERS; TIM BOYLE/GETTY IMAGES; ALEX SANZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS

VIETNAM TO ANALYZE DNA IN EFFORT TO ID WAR DEAD

WAR MOVIES The ‘Flyingest’ Test Pilot to Date Scottish-born test pilot Eric Brown—the most decorated flier in Royal Navy history—died in Redhill, England, on February 21. The 97-year-old started his career in the biplane era and retired in

LOOTERS HIT WWII DEATH CAMP SITES

Hollywood continues to look to military history for inspiration. Recent war films on DVD, in theaters or forthcoming include:

13 Hours (2016) Directed by Michael Bay, this film relates the story of the security team that fought to defend the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, from the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: JEFF J MITCHELL/GETTY IMAGES; DAVID HISER/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE; ELNAVEGANTE/THINKSTOCK PHOTO; COURTESY SOUTH CAROLINA HISTORIC AVIATION FOUNDATION

The Bombing (2016)

the Space Age. Among his countless aviation milestones, he flew 487 distinct types of aircraft— more than any other pilot in history—and executed 2,407 carrier landings, including the first by a jet. In World War II Brown flew combat missions over Europe.

Doolittle Reunion B-25C Heads Home Skunkie, a North American B-25C Mitchell bomber featured at reunions of the famed World War II Doolittle Raiders, is being restored by the South Carolina Historic Aviation Foundation [schistoricaviation. org] for eventual display in a permanent museum at Columbia’s Owens Airport. Columbia hosted the nation’s largest wartime B-25 training

base, where the raiders prepped for their 1942 Tokyo strike. Skunkie crashed into nearby Lake Greenwood during a 1944 training flight but was later raised and restored.

Two British teenagers caught stealing artifacts from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum [auschwitz.org] last summer now face trial in Poland. The boys initially admitted to pocketing a hair clipper, buttons and other items from the former death camp, whose Nazi overseers killed more than a million Jews during World War II. The teens were arrested and fined, but they have since recanted, and Polish officials will seek their extradition. If convicted, they face up to 10 years in prison. Meanwhile, staff archaeologists at the museum of the former Sobibór death camp in Poland have reported disturbances to mass graves, likely by looters in search of precious metal from victims’ fillings and dentures.

CONQUISTADORS LINGER IN PANAMANIAN DNA A recent genetic study reveals that the legacy of the 16th century Spanish conquistadors, who often took native women as partners, lives on in the DNA of present-day Panamanians. The study of 408 men from all corners of Panama found that while most derived from indigenous maternal ancestry, two-thirds had Y-chromosomes suggestive of European paternal ancestry. This genetic signature was more prevalent in areas heavily colonized by Spaniards, notably the Pacific coast, where drier weather favored ranching and agriculture. The Caribbean side, which provided natives refuge in its mountains and dense rain forests, retained a higher percentage of indigenous genes.

This big-budget Chinese drama directed by Xiao Feng portrays the 1943 Japanese bombings of Chongqing. Bruce Willis stars as a U.S. pilot who volunteers to fly in the city’s defense.

USS Indianapolis (2016) This Mario Van Peebles film relates the fate of the cruiser USS Indianapolis, which was torpedoed in July 1945 after delivering atomic bomb components to the Pacific island of Tinian. Only 317 of its 1,196 crewmen survived. “Sharks took the rest,” to quote another popular summer film.

Operation Chromite (2016) This Korean War film directed by Lee Jae-han is set amid the September 1950 amphibious invasion of Inchon (aka Operation Chromite). Liam Neeson stars as General Douglas MacArthur.

Dunkirk (2017) Set for release next summer, this Christopher Nolan film will depict the mass evacuation of 338,226 Allied troops from the Germanbesieged French port in May and June 1940.

11

Interview Warren Bernard Wartime Cartoonists

A leading expert on the history of editorial-political cartoons, Warren Bernard has amassed an extensive personal collection.

12 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

at the Library of Congress [loc.gov] and the Center for Cartoon Studies [cartoon studies], among other venues. Military History spoke with him about his collection, his new book and the power of cartoons to shape wartime opinion. How extensive is your collection? It encompasses more than 500 volumes of political cartoon books from the late 1890s to the present. There are more than 50 bound volumes of magazines that contain political cartoons from Germany, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Italy and the United States. The collection covers the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War. It also includes more than 60 scrapbooks comprising thousands of never reprinted and difficult to find American

political cartoons from World War II. Every day during the war people cut them from the newspapers, and such scrapbooks are a treasure trove of cartoons and information. When did editorial-political cartooning become an influential medium? It came into its own with the works of William Hogarth and James Gillray in 18th-century London. Cheap prints of their work were sold on the city streets, and by the late 1790s Parliament had recognized the influence of such prints/cartoons on public opinion. What were the earliest known war cartoons? In the 16th century Hans Holbein and Albrecht Dürer [see P. 69] drew illustrations about war that are considered

COURTESY WARREN BERNARD (2)

Warren Bernard, an avid collector and longtime lecturer on the history of editorial-political cartoons, recently published Cartoons for Victory (Fantagraphics, Seattle, $34.99, 2015), a history and showcase of the works of cartoonists who lent their talents to support efforts on the American home front during World War II. Former Sen. Bob Dole, 92, a wounded U.S. Army veteran of the 1943–45 Italian campaign, wrote the introduction. Many of the cartoons come from Bernard’s own collection, amassed over years of research through private collections and public archives. The works were rendered by such popular artists as Walt Disney, Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss), Charles Addams (The Addams Family) and Harold Gray (Little Orphan Annie) and include such iconic American characters as Superman and Mickey Mouse. Bernard has spoken

forerunners of the modern war cartoon. In terms of a specific conflict, one of the earliest to feature illustrated broadsides was the 1618–48 Thirty Years’ War. In the United States the first acknowledged political cartoon was Benjamin Franklin’s “Join or Die,” used to try to unite the colonies during the French and Indian War as well as the run-up to the American Revolution. Do you have a favorite wartime cartoonist? Without doubt the great David Low, of the London Evening Standard—considered the greatest British cartoonist of the 20th century. He spotted the evils of Adolf Hitler early on and was relentless in his casting of the Nazis as evil. He drew some of the most iconic cartoons of the period, including hard-hitting anti-isolationist cartoons in America. How effective are cartoons in shaping wartime public opinion? The history of the United States is full of examples in which cartoons played a big part in mobilizing support for war. During the Civil War Thomas Nast’s cartoons in Harper’s Weekly, especially his Christmas cartoons, put a bright light on the sacrifice of soldiers. President Abraham Lincoln called Nast “the best recruiting sergeant the Union ever had.” In the 1890s newly developed color Sunday cartoons in the newspapers of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer drummed up support for what became the Spanish-American War and gave us the term “yellow journalism,” for the color of Hearst’s comic character the Yellow Kid. In World War I the Woodrow Wilson administration created the Committee on Public Information to influence the American public’s view of the war, with a separate cartoon division that sent out ideas for the nation’s cartoonists to incorporate. During World War II the War Bond Division of the Treasury Department syndicated its own cartoons about war bond drives to the nation’s newspapers, while the Office of War Information had cartoonists create syndicated works on such topics as rationing, scrap drives and women in the armed forces.

In neither world war, as a rule, did the nation’s political cartoonists criticize the war itself. But the Vietnam era brought a different tone to the political cartoon world, as a number of prominent cartoonists—such as the widely syndicated, Pulitzer Prize–winning Herblock—did not support the war.

Belgium, to the demon-fanged Japanese barbarians killing American POWs, to the duplicitous North Vietnamese, to the again barbaric Saddam Hussein and Islamic State—stereotypes have pervaded the history of political cartoons during wartime because of the raw emotions they instill in the reader.

What is it about gallows humor that speaks to us? Men in combat need to find ways to cheer themselves up, and the easiest way is to make fun of the deadly circumstances surrounding their dire circumstances. Cartoonists caught on to this, so it is no surprise that the two most famous cartoonists who made extensive use of gallows humor were soldiers— namely, Captain Bruce Bairnsfather of the British army, and Sergeant Bill Mauldin of the U.S. Army. Bairnsfather’s use of gallows humor in World War I with his two frontline protagonists—Bert and Alf—was echoed in World War II by Mauldin’s popular Willie and Joe. But in Mauldin’s case the approach was seen as detrimental to the troops, with no less than Generals George Patton and Theodore Roosevelt Jr. complaining about his cartoons. It took Ike himself to clear the way for Willie and Joe to continue their gallows humor ways.

Have wartime cartoonists largely pushed their own political ideologies? Yes, cartoonists often pushed their own political views, such as Herblock and his successor at The Washington Post, Tom Toles. But at many other papers the political cartoonist was at the behest of the publisher and/or editor—for example, Winsor McCay, who worked more than 20 years for William Randolph Hearst’s famed editor Arthur Brisbane. Brisbane gave McCay specific assignments for the editorial page cartoons. Today, however, many political cartoonists are not tied to a specific newspaper and do not have an editor looking over their shoulder and worrying about circulation. They may have their work syndicated, or they may be online only, so they are free to push any ideology they want.

What makes a cartoon powerful and effective? Cartoons derive their emotional power by conveying any combination of hatred, patriotism, pride, caricature, demonization of the enemy and pity for those suffering. What role has demonization played in rallying Americans? There has not yet been a war in which the United States has fought that did not in some way generate cartoons stereotyping the enemy. From the barbaric Spanish oppressing the people of Cuba, to the Pickelhaube-wearing Germans committing atrocities in France and

That said, is political cartooning a lost art? The newspaper political cartoonist in the United States has been in decline for the last two decades. But one of the primary reasons is the risk-averse nature of editors. They don’t want to offend readers, advertisers or politicians, especially with social media ready to bring a rabble to the virtual front door of the publisher. As a result political cartoons have gone from being persuasive to simply reinforcing what one already knows and believes or, conversely, reinforcing what one despises and disagrees with. Seems they change few opinions. But great political cartoons are still being created in print and online, especially the latter. MH

13

Valor Scaling the Wall

Musician Calvin Pearl Titus U.S. Army Medal of Honor Boxer Rebellion August 14, 1900

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ens of thousands of young cadets have passed through the hallowed halls and across the parade grounds of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., since its 1802 founding, but only one, Calvin Pearl Titus, received the nation’s highest award while enrolled at the school. Born in Vinton, Iowa, on Sept. 22, 1879, Titus moved with his father to Oklahoma at age 10 after his mother’s death and later lived with his aunt and uncle, who were evangelists with the Salvation Army. A self-taught musician who learned to play the violin and coronet, Titus honed his technique at prayer meetings with his uncle’s traveling band. With the sinking of the battleship USS Maine and outbreak of the SpanishAmerican War in 1898 the patriotic

14 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

young traveling musician spontaneously joined the 1st Vermont Volunteers as a bugler. He never saw combat, though, as he contracted malaria while awaiting deployment. After his discharge Titus returned to the Midwest, but the restless teen soon learned the Army was seeking troops for occupation duty in the formerly Spanish-ruled Philippines. In April 1899 he enlisted in the 14th U.S. Infantry Regiment and shipped out to Manila as a musician and chaplain’s assistant. Within a year his regiment was sent to China with an 18,000-strong multinational force tasked with rescuing besieged diplomats and foreign nationals in Peking at the height of the Boxer Rebellion. The men of the 14th Infantry arrived outside their assigned city gate on Aug. 14, 1900, immediately drawing heavy fire from imperial troops atop the 30-foot outer wall and an adjacent tower. When regimental commander Colonel Aaron S. Daggett asked for volunteers to scale the wall

and clear it of enemy troops, Titus stepped forward. “With what interest did the officers and men watch every step,” recalled Daggett, “as he placed his feet carefully in the cavities and clung with his fingers to the projecting bricks.” What followed is summarized in Titus’ Medal of Honor citation, among the shortest on record: “Gallant and daring conduct in the presence of his colonel and other officers and enlisted men of his regiment; was first to scale the wall of the city.” Titus’ heroics encouraged other members of his company to clamber up and lay down suppressing fire, thus enabling American and Russian troops to enter the city. The next year Titus entered the U.S. Military Academy on a presidential appointment, and on March 11, 1902, at a ceremony marking West Point’s centennial, President Theodore Roosevelt personally pinned the Medal of Honor on the first-year cadet’s parade dress uniform. “Now don’t let this give you the big head!” quipped Roosevelt. Following the ceremony a fellow cadet approached Titus, admired his medal and exclaimed, “Mister, that’s something!” The cadet’s name was Douglas MacArthur. Titus had an active career following his 1905 graduation. He served several more years in the Philippines, participated in the relief of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake and fire, fought forest fires in Yellowstone Park, helped pursue Pancho Villa in 1916 and served in occupied Germany after World War I. He later directed the ROTC battalion at Iowa’s Coe College, retiring in 1930 as a lieutenant colonel. Titus, 86, died in San Fernando, Calif., on May 27, 1966, and is interred at Forrest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills. MH

FROM TOP: U.S. ARMY CENTER FOR MILITARY HISTORY; NATIONAL ARCHIVES

By John Bertrand

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What We Learned From... Bryn Glas, 1402 By Jon Guttman

For the loss of about 200 men, Glyndwr killed some 600 English troops and knights.

about 200 men, Glyndwr killed some 600 English, including several prominent knights, and captured Mortimer. When Henry refused to ransom Mortimer, Glyndwr persuaded the earl to join his cause. That fall Mortimer married Glyndwr’s daughter Catrin. As a consequence of the stunning victory at Bryn Glas the Welsh uprising persisted until 1415, the English ultimately regaining control through a combination of force and diplomacy. Glyndwr—who vanished from the record—remains a legendary catalyst of Welsh national identity.

Lessons: Let your reputation precede you.

16 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

north and mid Wales. Glyndwr captured Grey in early 1402 and held him for ransom. That year Parliament instituted a set of laws intended to further subjugate the Welsh, but the acts only drove more rebels to Glyndwr’s cause. That June 22, in one of the few pitched battles of the revolt, a 2,000-man AngloWelsh force under Sir Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, confronted Glyndwr and 1,500 followers near Pilleth in the lordship of Powys in mid Wales. Just before the clash Glyndwr divided his army, placing his archers in plain view on Bryn Glas (Green Hill) and concealing the rest of his men in flanking woodlands. As the Anglo-Welsh troops advanced uphill, Glyndwr’s Welsh longbowmen outdistanced Mortimer’s archers and exacted a terrible toll, forcing Mortimer to commit his men-at-arms to a charge. At that moment Glyndwr sprang his trap on the English rear and flank, prompting a rout. For the loss of

In an archery contest, gravity is your friend. Only overconfidence

can explain Mortimer’s decision to engage Welsh bowmen holding the high ground, as elevation offered Glyndwr’s archers a natural advantage in range. Division can pay great dividends.

As Robert E. Lee would discover at Chancellorsville, Va., 461 years later, Glyndwr proved that a divided force, aided by concealment, timing and the element of surprise, could overcome a stronger opponent. Diplomacy has its place in the art of war. Glyndwr knew the deposed

Richard II had named Sir Edmund Mortimer heir apparent to the throne. Once he’d captured Mortimer, the Welshman used that and Henry’s failure to ransom the earl to win over his captive—sealing the deal with Edmund’s marriage to his eldest daughter. MH

LORDPRICE COLLECTION/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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obleman Owain Glyndwr was born circa 1359 into a prosperous family in north Wales, studied law in London and was a loyal veteran of service to King Richard II of England. But in 1399 Henry Bolingbroke, exiled heir to the Duchy of Lancaster, deposed his cousin Richard and had himself declared King Henry IV. Reginald de Grey, 3rd Baron Grey de Ruthin—a member of the king’s council and confidante of Henry—took advantage of his position to seize a contested portion of Glyndwr’s land. At that Glyndwr led other disaffected Welshmen in revolt. On Sept. 16, 1400, the rebels proclaimed Glyndwr Tywysog Cymru (Prince of Wales), a title Edward I had expropriated a century earlier for heirs apparent to the English throne. Their selection was in essence a declaration of war. Henry moved to quell the uprising, but the revolt soon spread through

Early in the campaign foul weather sparked a rumor among the English that their Welsh opponent was a wizard who could control the elements, a myth Glyndwr was perfectly content to encourage.

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Hardware Type IX U-boat By Jon Guttman / Illustration by Ian Palmer

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Stern torpedo room Diesel engines 37 mm deck gun Electric motors Wintergarten platform 20 mm Flak guns Radar Attack periscope Conning tower Control room Keel Propellers Rudders 105 mm deck gun Galley Bow torpedo room

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18 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

Type IXC/40 Length: 251 feet 10 inches Beam: 22 feet 6 inches Height: 31 feet 6 inches Draft: 15 feet 4 inches Displacement: 1,144 tons surfaced, 1,257 tons submerged

Maximum speed: 18.3 knots surfaced, 7.3 knots submerged Endurance: 11,000 nautical miles surfaced, 63 nautical miles submerged Power: Two MAN 2,200 bhp diesel engines, two SSW 500 bhp electric motors

Standard armament: One 105 mm deck gun forward, one 37 mm deck gun aft, 20 mm flak guns on conning tower platform, six torpedo tubes (four bow, two stern), 22 torpedoes Crew: 48

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lthough the ubiquitous German Type VII Unterseeboot was a successful submarine fully capable of crossing the ocean during the 1939–45 Battle of the Atlantic, its crew had to operate under extremely cramped conditions (as graphically depicted in writerdirector Wolfgang Petersen’s 1981 war film Das Boot), and the Kriegsmarine desired a vessel capable of ranging even farther afield, into the South Atlantic or even the Indian Ocean. The result was the Type IX. First entering service in 1937, the Type IXA soon gave way to the longer range Type IXB, though Germany commissioned just 22 of both types. Types IXC and IXC/40, with significantly increased fuel capacity for even greater range, brought the series to its zenith, with 141 entering service. Rounding out the type were variants on the Type IXD, which was nearly 36 feet longer than the IXC and built to either be faster (20 knots on the surface in the IXD1) or much farther ranging (up to 31,500 nautical miles in stripped-down transport versions). In skilled hands the vessels proved very effective against Allied shipping. Despite its range and relative spaciousness, however, a number of surviving U-boat commanders expressed a preference for the Type VII, as the larger Type IX proved easier for Allied radar or sonar to acquire and was slower to dive—life-or-death factors for U-boats, particularly in the latter half of the war. Of the 194 Type IX U-boats built, only two dozen survived the war, reflecting an appalling attrition rate of 88 percent. MH

IMAGE FROM NEW VANGUARD #55 KRIEGSMARINE U-BOATS 1939-45 (2) BY GORDON WILLIAMSON, © OSPREY PUBLISHING, LTD.

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WILD WEST JUNE 2016 VOL. 29, NO. 1 WOLVES

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THERE IS GENERALLY NO MYSTERY ABOUT WHAT MOTIVATES NATIONS, ETHNIC GROUPS OR OTHER MASSES OF PEOPLE BOUND BY A PARTICULAR SET OF BELIEFS TO FIGHT WARS.

Conflict erupts because one group covets the territory or natural resources of another; or people are compelled to defend themselves and their lands against real or perceived threats of invasion; or those of one faith seek to forcibly convert the “infidels” who worship different gods. Of course baser human instincts— greed, hubris, jealousy, lust and the rest —have also sparked calamitous warfare since the dawn of time. History proves, unfortunately, that many members of our species are intensely attracted to —even thrive on—the chaos, carnage and calamity of war. Such are history’s “sell swords,” willing to fight anywhere, for any leader and any cause, simply because they are addicted to battle as the ultimate freedom, the ultimate rush, the ultimate empowerment. While such individuals go to war for sordid reasons, many others find their motivation in nobler aims, beliefs they may not even be able to articulate but which nonetheless drive them to engage in combat or continue fighting when all reasonable hope of victory— or even survival—is gone. Patriotism; a desire to protect one’s family, faith or way of life; an honest desire to check an obvious evil; a sense of duty to a higher cause or greater good; or a determination to uphold one’s honor or fulfill a scared oath—all have led human beings to take up arms. In the end, history ultimately teaches us that both types of motivations—the sacred and the profane—will remain part of our human nature. MH

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By the time U-853 arrived off the East Coast in early 1945 the U.S. Navy’s prowess in anti-submarine warfare made surface travel extremely risky.

THE PRINT COLLECTOR/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

TIGHTROPE WALKER At the close of the Battle of the Atlantic a long-range German U-boat played a deadly cat and mouse with American warships and aircraft By John Koster

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few minutes after noon on April 23, 1945, USS PE-56, a World War I–era Eagle-class patrol craft, came to a dead stop in the Gulf of Maine a few miles off Cape Elizabeth. Commissioned in 1919, the 200-foot-9-inch ship had distinguished itself earlier in World War II by rescuing survivors from USS Jacob Jones, a destroyer sunk by a German submarine off Cape May, N.J., in February 1942. But by 1945 the old tub, slow and never very seaworthy, had been reduced to towing a green cylindrical buoy nicknamed “the pickle” and used as a practice target by land-based Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bombers out of Naval Air Station Brunswick. The aged vessel still carried a 4-inch gun, a 3-inch weapon and three .50-caliber machine guns, but with the war in Europe nearing an end, the U.S. coastal waters were considered far less perilous than they had been two or three years earlier—a time when Adolf Hitler’s U-boats ranged up and down the Eastern Seaboard sinking merchant and naval vessels alike. But for an unspecified problem that had apparently prompted the ship’s commander, Lieutenant James G. Early, to bring PE-56 to a halt that afternoon, the training voyage had been entirely normal, and the 62 crewmen had relaxed to the point of near boredom. That all changed about 15 minutes after noon, when a tremendous explosion broke the patrol boat’s back. Five officers—including skipper Early—were killed outright or

knocked unconscious by the detonation and went down with the rapidly sinking vessel. The sole surviving officer, Lt. j.g. John Scagnelli, a former competitive swimmer at New York University, staggered to the rail and jumped for it. Some two dozen sailors also made it into the 40-degree water, though several soon succumbed to shock or hypothermia as Scagnelli and the hardier sailors struggled to survive. By the time the destroyer USS Selfridge reached the scene some 20 minutes after the explosion, rescuers were only able to pull Scagnelli and 12 enlisted men from the sea alive; 49 others had perished. Nine days after the sinking a Navy Court of Inquiry ruled the explosion that sank PE-56 and led to the deaths of most of its crew was the result of a boiler explosion. The true agent of the vessel’s destruction was something far less random and infinitely more lethal—and less than two weeks later it would claim another victim.

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ate on the afternoon of May 5 the 369-foot, 5,353-ton collier SS Black Point—loaded with more than 7,000 tons of coal destined for the Edison Power Plant in South Boston—was sailing northward past Point Judith, Rhode Island. The route was considered so safe that the vessel’s master, Captain Charles E. Prior, had posted minimal lookouts, though five U.S. Navy Armed Guards were aboard to man the ship’s main deck gun. Black Point was passing in sight of the Coast Guard lookout at Point Judith Light at 5:40 p.m. when a massive explosion

THE TRUE AGENT OF PE-56 ’S DESTRUCTION WAS SOMETHING FAR LESS RANDOM THAN A BOILER EXPLOSION AND INFINITELY MORE LETHAL

Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz

24 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

NATIONAL ARCHIVES/NAVAL WAR COLLEGE; OPPOSITE: PICTORIAL PRESS LTD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

U-853 ’s crew musters on the submarine’s deck. While the photo is undated, the stature of the saluting officer makes it likely he is 6-foot-5 Oberleutnant zur See Helmut Frömsdorf.

sundered the aft 50 feet from the vessel. The doomed collier immediately started to settle by the stern and list to one side as sailors scrambled to abandon ship through the blacked-out interior. From deep inside the wreckage crewmen could hear the terrified screams of the ship’s mascot, a pet chimpanzee. Black Point’s radio operator got off a distress signal, but the collier slipped beneath the waves within 15 minutes. While the majority of the 41-man crew survived, 11 merchant seamen and a member of the Navy gun crew died. PE-56 and Black Point were just two among the thousands of vessels lost during World War II, yet they hold a dubious distinction—they were the last American warship and last merchant vessel, respectively, sunk by direct enemy action during the Battle of the Atlantic. Contrary to the Navy’s findings, PE-56 had not succumbed to a boiler explosion—a torpedo had struck the patrol craft. The same was true for Black Point, which went to the bottom one day after Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander in chief of the German Kriegsmarine, had issued a cease-fire order to all U-boats. And, as it turned out, both American ships had been targeted by the same man: 24-year-old Oberleutnant zur See Helmut Frömsdorf of U-853.

Why would the young officer carry out such attacks when the war was so obviously over, and—in the case of Black Point—in direct contravention of his orders? Frömsdorf was never able to answer those questions, however, for in one of those ironies so common in war U-853 was the second to last German submarine sunk in combat in World War II.

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elmut Frömsdorf was born far from the sea, in Schimmelwitz, Silesia, on March 26, 1921. At that time the region’s people—40 percent ethnic German and 60 percent ethnic Polish—were engaged in a tumultuous plebiscite to decide whether Silesia would remain part of Germany’s Weimar Republic or join the reconstituted nation of Poland. The plebiscite, held the same month Frömsdorf was born, reversed the demographics: 60 percent of Silesians voted to stay German, and 40 percent voted to join Poland. The decision sparked years of fierce fighting between Polish irregulars and German Freikorps volunteers. Frömsdorf’s family was solidly in the German camp, and he became an officer candidate in the Kriegsmarine on Sept. 16, 1939, two weeks after Hitler ordered the invasion of western Poland and the day before Soviet forces

25

moved into the eastern part of the country. The young naval officer advanced steadily in rank, and by October 1943 he was an Oberleutnant zur See (equivalent to a U.S. Navy lieutenant, junior grade). Frömsdorf wanted to serve in submarines, but he faced one formidable obstacle— his own lofty stature. At 6 feet 5 inches he was far too tall for the cramped conditions aboard U-boats. But by 1944 attrition throughout the navy’s ranks had made such restrictions immaterial, and the tall young officer finally won assignment to a submarine, Lieutenant Helmut Sommer’s U-853. The vessel, a long-range Type IXC/40 submarine, was initially assigned to weather patrols in the mid-Atlantic. In honor of Sommer’s ability to elude enemy warships, its crew nicknamed the sub “Der Seiltänzer” (“Tightrope Walker”). Though not directly engaged in the fight against Allied shipping, the submarine did not escape combat. On May 25, 1944, while surfaced in proximity to the liner turned troopship RMS Queen Mary, it came under rocket attack from three carrier-based Royal Navy Fairey Swordfish but managed to escape unscathed after engaging the attackers with its anti-aircraft guns. Things did not go as well for U-853 three weeks later, however, when targeted by a hunter-killer group comprising the escort carrier USS Croatan and six destroyers. The American ships stalked the submarine for three days, and Croatan’s aircraft pounced when the German vessel surfaced to transmit weather reports and recharge its batteries. U-853’s gunners again fought back, but strafing

‘I’M NOT VERY GOOD AT LAST WORDS, SO GOODBYE FOR NOW, AND GIVE MY SISTER MY LOVE’

26 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

fighters killed two sailors and injured several others— among them Captain Sommer, who sustained 28 wounds from bullet fragments or shrapnel and ordered the boat to dive before collapsing. Sommer survived but was invalided home on U-853’s return to base at Lorient. The submarine was supposed to undergo repairs at the French port, but Allied forces had advanced so quickly after the recent D-Day landings in Normandy that U-853 was ordered back to Germany for the necessary work. Frömsdorf served as acting commander during the tense and dangerous voyage to Kiel, where over the following months repair crews returned the sub to a state of combat readiness. After an uneventful seven-week patrol in the Western Approaches of the British Isles, the sub headed north to the U-boat pens at Flensburg, Germany, for further upgrades. As part of the process workmen fitted the sub with a retractable air-intake and exhaust snorkel that enabled U-853 to run its diesel engines while submerged—an ability that might well have prevented both summer attacks. One other significant change occurred while U-853 was in port—on September 1 Helmut Frömsdorf assumed formal command. Though never a member of the Nazi Party, he was dedicated officer, and his new assignment filled him with both pride and foreboding. “I am lucky in these difficult days of my Fatherland to have the honor of commanding this submarine, and it is my duty to accept,” he wrote in a letter to his parents. “I’m not very good at last words, so goodbye for now, and give my sister my love.”

U-853 was similar to this unidentified Type IXC U-boat and in June 1944 came under the same sort of furious assault by Allied aircraft.

U.S. NAVY; CROSSHAIRS: POP_JOP/ISTOCKPHOTO; OPPOSITE: LT CHARLES A. BALDWIN/U.S. NAVY/NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Built for World War I service, PE-56 was by April 1945 obsolete and plagued by mechanical problems. Relegated to towing practice targets for Navy aircraft, it would soon become an all too real target.

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hen U-853 again headed to sea in late February 1945, the sub and its young captain had a new mission—instead of tracking the weather, they were to cross the Atlantic and harass shipping off the East Coast. The crossing was slow and tense, as the U-boat often ran submerged to avoid being spotted by enemy warships and aircraft. It remained undetected, however, and Frömsdorf celebrated his 24th birthday a few weeks before the submarine arrived on station. Pickings were slim until April 23, when the young officer spotted smoke on the horizon and submerged to close in for a better look. Peering through the sub’s periscope, he found himself looking at PE-56, apparently dead in the water. The surface ship’s shape, color and weapons marked it as a warship, and Frömsdorf lost no time in launching a torpedo. The fish ran hot and true over the 600 yards between hunter and quarry, and within seconds it slammed into the stationary patrol boat. The resulting explosion sent a geyser of water 200 feet in the air and lifted PE-56 from the water in two pieces. Certain the enemy vessel was doomed, Frömsdorf brief ly surfaced, then ordered an abrupt course change and took the sub back down. Within minutes of the attack the destroyer Selfridge arrived, picked

up survivors and began an intense sonar search that picked up a single, fleeting contact, but U-853 escaped into deeper water and later evaded a sonar-directed attack by the frigate USS Muskegon. Days later Frömsdorf sighted and sank Black Point, but this time he was unable to slip the enemy noose. Even as the collier settled to the bottom, the Yugoslav-f lagged freighter Kamen arrived on scene and—at considerable risk to itself—heaved to in order to pick up survivors. Its radio officer also transmitted an SOS reporting the attack. Within two hours a three-ship U.S. Navy hunter-killer group arrived off Point Judith. The destroyer escorts Atherton and Amick and frigate Moberly immediately began a coordinated sweep for the U-boat, which the veteran American commanders assumed would try to elude sonar contact amid East Ground, a steep shoal some 12 miles to the south. Although U-853 had descended below 100 feet and was running slow and silent, a sonar operator aboard Atherton detected the sub, and the sea hawks swooped down on their prey. Over the next 16 hours the American vessels dropped some 200 depth charges and launched repeated salvos of hedgehogs—forward-firing mortar projectiles. During the

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Early on May 6 two anti-submarine blimps joined the hunt for U-853 and in this photo are orbiting the U-boat’s last known position as the destroyer Ericsson drops another pattern of depth charges.

THE U-BOAT MADE REPEATED ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE, BUT THE ALL-HEARING SONAR INEVITABLY REACQUIRED IT 28 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG PHOTO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; SIGNAL MAGAZINE/THE IMAGE WORKS; U.S. NAVY/NATIONAL ARCHIVES

night the destroyer Ericsson joined the party, and while Amick had to break off contact, seven other warships formed a cordon around the search zone. By daybreak on May 6 two Navy anti-submarine blimps had arrived over the target area, dropping sonar buoys and smoke and dye markers atop U-853’s presumed position. The U-boat made repeated attempts to escape, but the all-hearing sonar inevitably reacquired it. After launching another salvo of hedgehogs, Atherton noted drifting oil slicks and debris. Within minutes sonar operators aboard both blimps reported sounds they described as “rhythmic hammering on a metal surface, which was interrupted periodically,” followed by “a long shrill shriek, and then the hammering noise was lost in the engine noise of the attacking surface ships.” As the explosion-roiled water calmed, a Kriegsmarine officer’s black cap floated to the surface.

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espite the wealth of wartime records and all that is known about the sinkings of PE-56, Black Point and U-853, several nagging questions remain regarding the loss of the three ships. The first—why Frömsdorf would endanger his ship and crew to sink the obsolete and decidedly nonthreatening PE-56—is perhaps the easiest to answer. Relatively harmless as the patrol boat may have been, it was a legitimate target. German forces were still fighting to defend Berlin and Dresden against the advancing Soviets when Frömsdorf launched the lethal torpedo that sank the American vessel on April 23. But two questions about the attack on PE-56 persist. Why, against naval regulations, had commander Early brought his patrol ship to a dead stop in a war zone, especially in the face of warnings from U.S. intelligence that U-boats remained operational and

The ladder to a U-boat’s conning tower (opposite top) was one of few escape routes for men trying to abandon ship. Another was the loading hatch in the overhead of the forward torpedo room.

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that Kriegsmarine commander in chief Dönitz was still calling for all-out resistance? And why had a Naval Court of Inquiry attributed PE-56’s demise to a boiler explosion, though several survivors reported having seen a U-boat and even described the red-and-yellow shield painted on U-853’s conning tower? We will never know the answer to the first question, given that Early was among those killed in the attack. And while it seems likely the Navy mischaracterized the nature of the sinking in order to play down the lingering U-boat threat, that answer will likely remain hypothetical, as supporting evidence has yet to surface. Turning to the sinking of U-853, we are faced with another nagging question. On May 4 Grand Admiral Dönitz—who had become titular president of Germany after Hitler’s April 30 suicide

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—ordered his U-boat fleet to cease hostilities against Allied shipping, yet Frömsdorf sank Black Point the next day. The most likely reason, of course, is that he simply hadn’t received Dönitz’s order—to elude Allied ships and aircraft, U-853 often remained submerged and could have missed the message from Germany. But there are other possibilities. The young U-boat captain may have been grieving the loss of his Silesian homeland—overrun by vengeful Soviet and Polish forces as the war in Europe drew to an end. Or perhaps he was ambitious for a medal—though his score of just two ships sunk for a combined total of only 5,968 tons certainly wouldn’t have vaulted him into the rarified company of Germany’s recognized submarine aces. Whatever Frömsdorf’s reasons might have been for his actions off the Eastern Seaboard, he killed 61 Americans

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: AKG-IMAGES/INTERFOTO; ASSOCIATED PRESS; MAP: BRIAN WALKER; BRIAN J. SKERRY/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC/GETTY IMAGES

An oil tanker burns after a U-boat attack off the Eastern Seaboard in 1942, as the collier Black Point did when torpedoed in April 1945.

and was indirectly responsible for the deaths of himself and the 54 other members of his crew—all in the closing days of a war whose outcome had long been foretold. None of the deaths served any practical purpose for either side.

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hough inextricably linked to the history of World War II in Europe, the stories of PE-56 and U-853 did not end in 1945. With regard to the American patrol craft, despite the Navy’s ruling its loss had resulted from a boiler explosion, naval officials—as well as survivors and relatives of those killed—continued to push for a broader investigation into the event. In 2000 naval historian and attorney Paul Lawton joined forces with Bernard Cavalcante of the U.S. Naval History & Heritage Command and German historian Jürgen Rohwer to review the facts surrounding the sinking. They concluded a torpedo fired by U-853 had sunk PE-56, and a year later the Navy reclassified the ship’s sinking as a combat loss. At a subsequent ceremony the service presented Purple Hearts to the three survivors still alive at the time and to the families of those who had perished in the sinking.

As for U-853, on the very day of its destruction Navy hard hat diver Edwin Bockelman, from the submarine rescue ship USS Penguin, descended to the wreck. He found the U-boat in 139 feet of water, its hull badly damaged and its conning tower hatch crammed with the bodies of crewmen wearing escape gear. After noting the number painted on the tower, he brought one sailor’s body to the surface as evidence of the kill. Another body was later found floating off the Rhode Island coast—both eventually received formal burials. Some years later a recreational diver thoughtlessly recovered a skeleton from the wreck, prompting protests from the German government, as the sunken U-853 qualifies as a war grave under international maritime law. Sadly, that status has not prevented other looters from bringing up countless artifacts from U-853, which remains a popular—if somewhat hazardous—destination for recreational divers. MH John Koster is a frequent contributor to HistoryNet magazines and the author of Operation Snow (2012). For further reading he recommends Due to Enemy Action, by Stephen Puleo.

Among the items recovered after U-853’s sinking were escape lungs and an officer’s black cap (above). The wreck still contains human remains, and is considered a war grave.

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The late 18th century grapple for Bavaria was small potatoes on the battlefield but brought in Europe’s diplomatic big guns By Richard Selcer

32 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

TOP TO BOTTOM: FINE ART IMAGES/HERITAGE/THE IMAGE WORKS; JOSEPH HICKEL/PRIVATE COLLECTION/PHOTO © CHRISTIE’S IMAGES/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; ANTON GRAFF SCHLOSS SANSSOUCI, POTSDAM, BRANDENBURG, GERMANY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Game of Thrones

In retrospect the Potato War may seem like comic opera, but it put three of Europe’s crowned heads at odds and changed history.

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Joseph dwelt in the shadow of two greater contemporaries —his mother, Maria Theresa, and Frederick

Frederick the Great

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s its formal name implies, the conflict emerged from the court politics of the Holy Roman Electorate of Bavaria. When Maximilian III Joseph, Prince Elector and Duke of Bavaria, died in 1777 without issue, a succession dispute broke out between Charles Theodore, Prince Elector and Count of Palatine, and his cousin Charles Augustus, Duke of Zweibrücken. Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II of the Austrian Habsburgs—who coveted Bavaria and had married Maximilian’s late sister Maria Josepha mainly to establish a foothold—interposed himself in the Wittelsbach family squabble and cut a secret deal. In return for one-third of Charles Theodore’s Bavarian lands, Joseph would support his claim and also find government positions in Vienna for the wayward prince elector’s many illegitimate children. In these negotiations Joseph was playing his own game, as his mother and co-ruler, Empress Maria Theresa, had no interest in Bavaria and even less in a war for control of it.

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Meanwhile, Frederick Augustus III, Elector of Saxony, Bavaria’s northern neighbor, supported the claim of Charles Augustus—who happened to be the elector’s brother-inlaw. Charles Augustus, hoping to enlist an ally in a higher weight class, appealed to Frederick II of Prussia. Frederick, who had already earned his moniker “the Great,” had only a mild interest in Bavaria but was very interested in checking Habsburg ambitions in Germany, so he supported Charles Augustus’ claim. All of the maneuvering constituted one of those dynastic-political squabbles in which it is virtually impossible to keep track of the players without a scorecard. The German expression for such squabbles is Kabinettskriege, or “cabinet wars”—quaint conflicts in which small coalition armies march to and fro while their governments negotiate behind closed doors. Of this particular dispute historian Ernest Flagg Henderson wrote that one would be hard-pressed to find a “manly member of the family” among all the contenders.

ANTON GRAFF SCHLOSS SANSSOUCI, POTSDAM, BRANDENBURG, GERMANY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

Few outside of academia have ever heard of the 1778–79 War of the Bavarian Succession, and for good reason. There were relatively few casualties (although it wasn’t bloodless), and the name itself hardly stirs the imagination. But the conflict changed European history, and (of considerably less import) it is the only war named for a tuberous vegetable. It is remembered in German as the Kartoffelkrieg—the “Potato War.”

FROM LEFT: JOSEPH HICKEL/PRIVATE COLLECTION/PHOTO © CHRISTIE’S IMAGES/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; FINE ART IMAGES/HERITAGE/THE IMAGE WORKS

Joseph II

Ultimately, the conflict became a test of wills between Frederick the Great and Joseph II. At the time Frederick (also known fondly though somewhat less grandly as “Old Fritz”) was in his sunset years, more interested in reconstructing and enriching his domain after years of war than in enlarging it through still more wars of conquest. Still, he was a bold and innovative ruler willing to push an advantage as far as he could. Among his military innovations was creating an entire government department tasked with administering all things military. He had created the first modern military state. Frederick’s opposite number, Joseph II, was a self-styled philosopher-king and would-be “great captain.” Both he and Frederick were ostensibly “enlightened rulers,” but that was little more than a catchy appellation. For most of his reign Joseph dwelt in the shadow of two greater contemporaries— his mother, Maria Theresa, and Frederick—and the Prussian thwarted his ambitions in Germany at every turn. Joseph pictured himself as a field commander cut from the same cloth as Frederick and said late in life that his first desire had always been to be a soldier. In truth he was no great shakes, though his own field marshals—principally Count Franz Moritz von Lacy and Baron Ernst Gideon von Laudon—lacked the courage to tell their headstrong ruler otherwise. Furthermore, Joseph’s army was not nearly as well trained and equipped as the Prussians, despite the fact

Maria Theresa

that nearly 40 percent of Austria’s annual budget went to the army. But the Holy Roman emperor had a particular bone to pick with Frederick. Ever since Frederick had pried Lower Silesia away from the Habsburgs in 1742, Joseph had schemed to get it back. Failing that, he saw Bavaria as the next best thing, a territorial tit for tat.

In January 1778, pursuant to Joseph II’s deal with Charles Theodore, 15,000 of the emperor’s troops entered Bavaria to support the establishment of an Austrian administrative capital at Straubing. An alarmed Saxony, lying between Hohenzollern Prussia and Habsburg Bohemia, quickly allied itself with Prussia and even promised Frederick 20,000 troops in the event of war. But first came negotiations. For four months diplomats shuttled back and forth among Berlin, Vienna, and Munich (Bavaria). When it became apparent politics would not settle things, Frederick assembled an 80,000-man army and ordered it to the border between Lower Silesia and Bohemia. A second Prussian army under Prince Henry, Frederick’s younger brother, numbering more than 75,000 men, gathered on the Silesian border closer to Saxony. Meanwhile, Joseph ordered practically the entire Austrian army— 190,000 men and 600 guns—into Bohemia and Austrian Silesia. Joseph and Frederick joined their respective armies

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in April to pursue, in the words of Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, “politics by other means.” Ironically, the clash for control of Bavaria began not there but in Bohemia, where in early July General Johann Jakob von Wunsch led the Prussian vanguard from Silesia against the fortified town of Náchod. Commanding the Náchod garrison was Friedrich Joseph, Count of Nauendorf. Although greatly outnumbered, the Austrian cavalry captain sallied forth at the head of 50 lightly armed hussars. Nauendorf initially feigned allegiance with Wunsch in order to close in tight before driving back the surprised enemy, the count alone taking credit for having killed seven Prussians. For his bold action the captain won promotion to major and received 12 gold ducats out of Joseph’s own pocket. Nauendorf was just getting started. A few days later, however, the captain wisely withdrew when the entire Prussian army, with Frederick at its head, crossed the Silesian border and occupied Náchod. Frederick’s vague plan was to drive Austria out of Bohemia. He had miscalculated. Waiting for the Prussians atop the heights across the Elbe River was an Austrian army under Joseph’s nominal command but actually directed by Field Marshal Lacy, a veteran of the 1756–63 Seven Years’ War who had faced Frederick in battle. Stretching more than 9 miles, the Austrian position comprised a triple line of fortifications backed by 600 guns. Lacy’s heavy concentration of artillery behind near-impregnable lines checked Frederick’s signature mobile tactics. His highly disciplined troops and swarms of field guns could not gain an advantage. Instead, they sat in siege lines while dysentery and desertion took a toll. Meanwhile, a smaller Austrian force under Field Marshal Laudon, who had also fought Frederick, guarded the passes farther west between Silesia and Bohemia. But Prince Henry, who had racked up successive victories during the Seven Years’ War, led his army north, bypassing the Austrians and entering Bohemia at Hainspach. Recognizing the danger, Laudon withdrew behind the Iser River,

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which saved his army but left the main Austrian force in a vulnerable position, with Henry on its left flank and Frederick at its front. It was the kind of advantage Frederick had exploited for brilliant victories in the past, but this time neither side was eager to bring on a full-scale engagement. Growing impatient with the Sitzkreig (“sitting war”), Joseph ordered his hard-charging Hungarian hussars on a series of slashing raids behind Prussian lines. In early August the intrepid Major Nauendorf led two cavalry squadrons against a Prussian supply convoy in the Silesian town of Bieberdorf. Casualties were almost nil, but the Austrians captured three officers, 110 men, 476 horses, 240 flour wagons and 13 sutler carts. Nauendorf had flung down the gauntlet, and the Prussians responded in kind, sending their own cavalry deep behind Austrian lines to interdict supply routes. The respective raiders enjoyed success, forcing the main armies to depend largely on local resources for food and fodder. Officers on either side assigned more and more of their men to foraging, while the Bohemians wished a plague on both houses. Thus the summer campaign season dragged on. Prince Henry warned Frederick he would completely exhaust local supplies by the third week of August and recommended wrapping up military operations by then. The increasingly dire supply situation convinced Frederick, who had a well-earned reputation for tactical brilliance, to consider another way to drive the Austrians from their entrenchments. Were he to cross the Elbe, he might get around the Austrian right at Königgrätz and then launch a coordinated attack with brother Henry on both enemy flanks. Reluctantly, he came to the conclusion such an attack would entail unacceptable losses and expose Henry to a flanking attack by Laudon. In his younger days such odds would not have deterred Frederick, but Old Fritz wasn’t fighting for the survival of Prussia but only for a poor and distant province, and weakening his position would only open the door for Russia and perhaps Sweden to make a grab for more valuable Prussian territory. While not prepared to

MAP: MARTIN WALZ, PEGMOTIONS GROUP; RIGHT: GL ARCHIVE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Catherine the Great

Maximilian III Joseph

Frederick Augustus III

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: HERITAGE IMAGE PARTNERSHIP LTD/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; ANTON GRAFF/GEMAELDEGALERIE ALTE MEISTER, STAATLICHE KUNSTSAMMLUNGEN, DRESDEN/PHOTO: HANS-PETER KLUT/ART RESOURCE, NY; AKG-IMAGES/HEERESGESCHICHTLICHES MUSEUM, WEIN; AKG-IMAGES/ADOLPH VON MENZEL

cede the field, he settled back into the standoff. And as Joseph was convinced he still held the upper hand, the armies held their positions through the summer.

While waiting for the main event, both sides continued their raids and counterraids, interspersed with occasional cannonades that did little damage. Mostly they foraged, scavenging the Bohemian potato crop and roaming ever farther afield to find supplies. According to a story related by later historians, on one occasion Frederick himself went out to reconnoiter and was recognized by a Croatian sniper who drew bead on him. Frederick reportedly caught sight of the man and wagged his finger, as if to say, “Don’t you dare.” Depending on the version one reads, the sniper either withdrew quietly or approached the king and knelt deferentially. The consensus Habsburg hero was Nauendorf, the bold cavalier who won accolades for leading repeated raids far behind Prussian lines. Meanwhile, in Vienna, Maria Theresa sought a peaceful conclusion to the war through back channels, even asking Empress Catherine the Great of Russia to mediate an end to the stalemate on the battlefield. If diplomacy proved futile, Catherine threatened to send 50,000 troops to assist Frederick, her defensive ally by necessity. Hearing of his mother’s backroom diplomacy, a furious Joseph offered to resign, although it’s unclear whether he meant abdication or just surrendering command of all Austrian armies. In mid-September Frederick, who remained nervous about leaving his homeland virtually unprotected, broke the impasse by withdrawing much of his army. As he had earlier written in General Principles of War (1748), “On the whole, those wars are useless in which we move too far from our borders.” A month later Joseph followed suit, pulling back most of his own army. Each commander left behind a small force of hussars and dragoons (heavy cavalry) to watch the other. But as both sides continued alternately to raid and forage, the Bohemian people were only nominally better off.

Count Franz Moritz von Lacy

Joseph was not done, however. He appealed to France for 24,000 troops under the terms of the 1756 Treaty of Versailles. The response from Paris was a terse “Non,” but the remaining troops still saw more action that fall than had the full armies in summer. In November Field Marshal Dagobert Sigmund von Wurmser, commander of the wintering Austrian troops, ordered Colonel Wilhelm Klebeck to lead a cavalry assault on the Silesian village of Dittersbach. In the wildly successful raid Klebeck’s men killed 400 Prussians, captured another 400 and made it back safely to their own lines. When news of that and other successful raids reached Vienna, Joseph awarded Wurmser the Knight’s Cross of the Military Order of Maria Theresa, Austria’s highest decoration, which carried with it lifetime elevation to the nobility. The raiding persisted into 1779. In mid-January Wurmser himself crossed the Silesian border into Glatz (in presentday Poland), leading five columns supported by howitzers Frederick, depicted addressing his generals, personally led the Prussian army across the Silesian border—only to be stopped by Field Marshal Lacy.

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against the fortified Prussian city of Habelschwerdt. Two of his columns stormed the town and captured the garrison, including nearly 1,000 men, three cannon and seven stands of colors. Among the prisoners was Adolph, Landgrave of Hesse-Philippsthal-Barchfeld, a major general in the Prussian army. Wurmser led another column farther north against the blockhouse at nearby Oberschwedeldorf, also seizing its garrison. The Austrians then shelled both villages, setting them afire. The fourth and fifth columns, under Maj. Gen. Ludwig, Baron von Terzi, held back a Prussian counterattack, in the process bagging another 300 prisoners, while Austrian patrols fanned out across the countryside, venturing as far as the Silesian-Prussian border. Declining to further press his luck, Wurmser led his columns home with their spoils. It marked the standout campaign in an otherwise lackluster war.

Beneath the Peel

The War of the Bavarian Succession most likely became known as the Potato War because troops on both sides of the conflict spent more time foraging for scarce food than they did fighting each other.

On March 3, 1779, Austrian cavalry under

Nauendorf conducted the last engagement of the conflict, again raiding Bieberdorf. This time the major was at the head of a mixed force of infantry and cavalry and captured the entire garrison. On May 19 a grateful Joseph awarded him the second Knight’s Cross of the war. That same month the largely absurd Potato War wrapped up at a Silesian negotiating table with the Peace of Teschen. Forcing Austria and Prussia to the table were their respective allies, France and Russia, the latter chiefly interested with preventing a wider European war while preserving their own influence on the Continent. The treaty recognized Charles Theodore as Prince Elector and

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The little, forgotten war brought an end to a century and a half of cabinet wars, ‘games of thrones’ among princes great and small

Duke of Bavaria and handed Prussia the north Bavarian principalities of Bayreuth and Anspach. Against son Joseph’s wishes, Austrian Empress Maria Theresa returned most of lower Bavaria too, keeping only a strip of land southeast of the Inn River, which to Habsburg surprise turned out to have 60,000 inhabitants who were far from happy to find themselves part of the Austrian empire. Saxony received a payout of 6 million guilders to relinquish its claims on Bavaria. But Russia was the biggest winner. Without committing a single soldier or spending a ruble, Catherine the Great had mediated peace between her principal rivals in central Europe, stabilizing the region and strengthening her own empire. Austria, on the other hand, was the big loser. Having expended 65 million florins at a time when the nation’s total yearly revenue was only 50 million florins, it received a small alpine territory populated by a hostile citizenry. Total casualties in the Potato War are difficult to gauge. Historians agree that disease (cholera and dysentery) and starvation were the principal causes of death. German writers of the 19th century said little about battlefield casualties but claimed tens of thousands had died of disease and starvation. Nineteenth century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle, who wrote an epic six-volume biography of Frederick the Great, placed the number of dead at about 10,000 on each side. Modern estimates range slightly higher. Gaston Bodart, a 20th century Austrian statistician and expert on his nation’s wars, added the detail that five Austrian generals and 83 other officers, as well as one Prussian general and 87 other officers, died in the war (largely of disease), making it an exceptionally hard conflict on the upper ranks. An estimate of collateral civilian casualties is impossible, as no one bothered to record them. There are several schools of thought as to how this footnote in the history of warfare came to be called the “Potato

FROM TOP: AKG-IMAGES/ADOLPH VON MENZEL; YURIZ/ISTOCKPHOTO/THINKSTOCK

Having crossed the Elbe, Prussian troops await Frederick’s command to engage the Austrians. The war soon turned highly mobile, however, as Hungarian hussars mounted lightning raids behind Prussian lines.

FROM LEFT: BARTHOLOMÄUS IGNAZ WEISS/STAATLICHE GRAPHISCHE SAMMLUNG MÜNCHEN, GS20231D; SIEGMUND L’ALLEMAND/ KUNSTHISTORISCHES MUSEUM, VIENNA, AUSTRIA/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; AKG-IMAGES/DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY/A. DAGLI ORTI

Charles Augustus

Baron Ernst Gideon von Laudon

War.” One suggests it is because the armies spent more time foraging than fighting. Another points to the fact that the most serious clashes arose over food, not territory. A third insists it’s because the war was fought during the potato harvest season. Perhaps the most appealing, though certainly apocryphal, explanation is that whenever soldiers ran low on ammunition, they resorted to hurling potatoes at each other. At this point, who’s to state its origin with absolute certainty? The War of the Bavarian Succession was the last for both Maria Theresa and Frederick the Great. Ironically, both of their reigns had begun and ended with wars against the other, but unlike earlier conflicts, neither monarch was ever truly committed to this one. The only person who really wanted a war was Joseph II, who in the end was outvoted and outmaneuvered by his mother. Unknown at the time, Maria Theresa was the last Habsburg to wear the twin crowns of the Holy Roman empire and Austria. Frederick, by virtue of his performances in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–48) and Seven Years’ War (1756–63), had made himself “Great” and Prussia a major player in European politics, but this was the first open clash between Austria and Prussia for dominance in the German states. The little, forgotten war brought an end to a century and a half of cabinet wars, “games of thrones” among princes great and small for their own little piece of the Continent. It also marked the beginning of Austro-Prussian dualism that kept Germany weak and divided until 1871. Every ruler of Austria after 1779 considered it an article of faith that maintaining Habsburg influence in Germany was the first principle of Austrian foreign policy. Frederick and successors were just as determined that Prussia dominate the German states and Austria remain on its side of the Alps. The war had diplomatic reverberations far beyond the German states, however. Since France and Austria were united through both treaty and marriage (Louis XVI to

Charles Theodore

Marie Antoinette, Maria Theresa’s youngest child), France rightfully should have supported the Habsburg play. But French Foreign Minister Charles Gravier, Count of Vergennes, remained virulently anti-Austrian and had just forged a military alliance with the American colonies against the hated British empire. He did not want his schemes upset by a sideshow war in Europe. With peace on the Continent, Vergennes managed to involve the Dutch, Spanish and Russians in his war against Britain. Frederick the Great died seven years after the Potato War. His inability to secure victory on the battlefield or even fight a single engagement of consequence had tarnished his formidable reputation. That did not mean he was done with Joseph II, however. In 1785, as one of his last official acts, he put together the Germanic Fürstenbund (League of Princes) to thwart Joseph’s renewed designs on Bavaria. Almost immediately after Maria Theresa’s death in 1780 the Holy Roman emperor made overtures to Charles Theodore, proposing a swap of the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria. The Fürstenbund dissuaded Joseph from his ambitions, and thereafter he promised to abide by the Peace of Teschen. Turning his attention southward, in 1788 he personally led his army into Serbia and Transylvania to drive out the Ottoman Turks. Ironically, Prussia helped broker peace between the empires in the subsequent Treaty of Sistova, signed in 1791. Joseph wasn’t present for that humiliation, having died in 1790. He had asked for the epitaph on his Vienna tomb to read, “Here lies Joseph II, who failed in everything he undertook.” Even that was denied him. MH Richard Selcer is a professor of history at Weatherford College in Texas and an author with 10 books to his credit. For further reading he recommends The Army of Frederick the Great, by Christopher Duffy, and The German Way of War, by Robert Citino.

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The 1916 Brusilov offensive was intended to bring an early end to World War I —but Russia paid the price for its own failure By Richard W. Harrison 40 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG PHOTO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

ALMOST VICTORY

In 1915 General Aleksey Alekseyevich Brusilov, newly appointed commander of Russia’s Southwestern Front army group, argued for an attack against the AustroGerman forces facing him.

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One hundred years ago this summer the Russian empire’s massive Brusilov offensive, which played out along the southern sectors of World War I’s Eastern Front, came close to winning the war for the Allies two years before the 1918 Armistice. The ultimate failure of that effort had sweeping consequences that extended well into the postwar era. It is thus fitting on the anniversary of the campaign that we consider one of the most significant, if lesser known, what-ifs of modern military history.

W

hen the war began in August 1914, Great Britain and France placed a great deal of hope in the ability of the vaunted Russian “steamroller” to absorb some of the combat punch from the expected main German effort in the West. Those hopes died by month’s end following the First Battle of Tannenberg, in which the Germans destroyed the greater part of a Russian army—though it could be argued the ill-starred Russian invasion of East Prussia that led to Tannenberg spared France by drawing off German forces from the Western Front at a critical moment. In Austrian Galicia, however, the Russian armies scored a decisive victory over the heterogeneous elements of the Austro-Hungarian army, forcing it into the

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Carpathians and hobbling it for the remainder of the war. These events established a pattern that persisted throughout the conflict in the East—the qualitatively superior Germans could generally defeat the Russians, while the Russians held the same advantage over the Austro-Hungarians. In fact, it was the necessity of shoring up their faltering ally that forced the Germans to launch their Gorlice-Tarnów offensive out of the Carpathians in May 1915. What was initially conceived of as a local attack soon expanded far beyond its planners’ expectations, and by summer’s end the Central Powers had driven the Russians out of Poland and part of the Baltic coast. Russia’s manpower losses were correspondingly massive, its army suffering an estimated 1,410,000 killed and wounded and another 976,000 captured. Despite this disaster, which further exposed the incompetence of Russia’s command structure and seriously undermined public support of the war effort, by early 1916 Russian forces had largely rebounded from their losses. Furthermore, a shell shortage that had bedeviled the army the previous year was being rectified as the Russian economy gradually adjusted, however imperfectly, to the demands of modern war. Russia’s newfound confidence coincided with a decision by Allied representatives meeting in Chantilly, France,

AKG-IMAGES/ULLSTEIN BILD

Though bested by the Germans at Tannenberg in 1914 the Russians scored a decisive victory over Austro-Hungarian soldiers such as these in Galicia.

A German soldier—his pickelhaube helmet sheathed in a cloth cover to reduce visibility —awaits Brusilov’s Eastern Front juggernaut.

AKG-IMAGES

Brusilov’s pugnacious attitude seems to have sufficiently embarrassed the others into agreeing to launch supporting attacks in December 1915 to coordinate their attacks for the coming summer, in order to prevent the Central Powers from using their superior communications to shift reserves from one front to another. The British and French would attack along the Somme River, the Italians would renew their efforts along the Isonzo River, and the Russians would attack along their front—all within a month of each other. However, the massive German attack at Verdun in late February quickly drew off French reserves and eventually made the Somme offensive a mostly British affair. Representatives of the Russian high command met at supreme headquarters, Stavka, in Mogilev on April 14. Czar Nicholas II, who had assumed the role of commander in chief the previous fall, formally presided over the meeting, but General Mikhail Vasilyevich Alekseyev, his chief of staff, actually conducted the proceedings, the emperor

essentially rubber-stamping his recommendations. Despite the improvement in the army’s fortunes, both General Aleksey Nikolayevich Kuropatkin, commander of the Northern Front army group, and General Aleksey Yermolayevich Evert, his opposite number on the Western Front, opposed launching offensives in their sectors, citing the Germans’ powerful defenses and their own shortage of heavy artillery. Only General Aleksey Alekseyevich Brusilov, newly appointed commander of the Southwestern Front army group, argued for an attack against the AustroGerman forces facing him. Alekseyev, more than a little surprised, agreed to Brusilov’s proposal, although he warned him he could expect no reinforcements. However, Brusilov’s pugnacious attitude seems to have sufficiently embarrassed the others into reluctantly agreeing to launch supporting attacks.

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Eastern Front, 1914–16

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llied planners had anticipated that overwhelming Russian manpower reserves on the Eastern Front would draw off German forces from the Western Front and bring an early end to the war. The German victory at Tannenberg, East Prussia, in the fall of 1914 and advance through Poland and along the Baltic coast the following year crushed any such hopes. The Russians did manage to punish the Austro-Hungarians in Galicia, however, and that’s where General Aleksey Brusilov, newly appointed commander of the Southwestern Front army group, directed his 1916 offensive. By launching simultaneous attacks along his entire 280-mile front, he hoped to confuse the Central Powers as to the direction of his main thrust into the soft Austro-Hungarian underbelly from Lutsk south to the Carpathians. The key to a successful offensive lay in the timing and coordination of Russian forces.

Brusilov Offensive, 1916

The offensive opened on June 4 with a sustained barrage along all Southwestern Front sectors, followed by a coordinated assault by shock troops on known weak points. At the tip of the spear Aleksey Kaledin’s Eighth Army broke through Austro-Hungarian lines along a 50-mile sector and captured Lutsk within days, but results elsewhere were mixed. While Dmitry Sakharov’s Eleventh Army remained largely on the defensive, Dmitry Shcherbachev’s Seventh Army pushed the enemy across the Strypa River, and Platon Lechitskii’s Ninth Army crossed the Prut River and captured Chernovtsy on June 18. Promised support from Brusilov’s counterparts to the north was slow and uncoordinated, however. The push ran out of steam by fall, and the war dragged on two more years.

MAPS BY STEVE WALKOWIAK/SWMAPS.COM

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n April 24 Stavka issued a directive assigning Evert’s Western Front army group to make its main effort from the Molodechno area in the general direction of Ashmyany and Vilnius, while the Northern Front would support it with a converging attack from the Illkust– Lake Drisvyaty area in the direction of Novoalexandrovsk, or from the area south of the lake toward Vidzy and Utsyany. The Southwestern Front was to make its main push along the northern wing in the direction of Lutsk. Brusilov’s plan called for the Eighth Army to make a two-pronged effort toward Lutsk and Kovel’. That attack by his northernmost army would offer the most immediate assistance to the neighboring Western Front and threaten the vital railroad junction of Kovel’, the capture of which would greatly impede the ability of the Central Powers to maneuver men and materiel from north to south. The two center armies (Eleventh and Seventh) would carry out strictly supporting attacks along their front, while the Ninth Army would make a secondary attack along the front’s left wing in order to draw off enemy reserves and perhaps prompt Romania to join the Allies. The Southwestern Front would attack with 573,000 infantry and 60,000 cavalry, supported by 1,938 guns, of which only 168 were heavy caliber. The Central Powers forces opposing them included the Austro-Hungarian First, Second, Fourth and Seventh armies and the German South Army, which collectively numbered 437,000 infantry and 30,000 cavalry, plus 1,846 guns, of which 545 were heavy. Thus, while the Russians enjoyed a significant manpower

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advantage and were almost equal in the number of guns, they were notably inferior in the all-important category of heavy artillery. However, the fact that the majority of enemy forces facing them were Austro-Hungarians, hobbled by poor training and ethnic divisions, gave the Russians a reasonable chance of success. Brusilov decided on a novel method for conducting his attack. Up till then combatants on both the Eastern and Western fronts had organized their attacks around a single sector. Such attacks involved enormous masses of artillery and men, as had been the case at Verdun in February and during the Russians’ unsuccessful offensive around Lake Naroch in March. It was virtually impossible to keep such large-scale preparations hidden from the enemy, who generally had plenty of time to move in reserves to blunt the attack. Thus such assaults usually collapsed in short order with a great loss of life for the attacker and miniscule territorial gains. Rather than repeat such a costly and ineffective gambit, Brusilov instead decided to launch several simultaneous attacks along the entire 280-mile front. Each army commander was instructed to organize the forces in his sector, while a number of corps commanders were in turn instructed to prepare breakthrough zones in their sectors, for a total of four army and nine corps breakthrough sectors. Brusilov calculated that the widespread preparations would confuse the enemy as to the direction of the main attack. Russian intelligence had revealed the presence of at least three fortified enemy defensive zones, approximately 1 to 3 miles apart, girded by multiple rows of barbed wire.

SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG PHOTO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

German lancers cross a frozen lake while scouting the Russian lines. Though soon to be rendered obsolete by modern weaponry, cavalry remained important to both sides during the offensive.

Brusilov goaded his fellow generals into supporting his plan, but their hesitation had consequences.

General Aleksey Kaledin General Mikhail Alekseyev

General Vladimir Sakharov

General Aleksey Kuropatkin

General Aleksey Evert

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: PRINT COLLECTOR/HERITAGE/THE IMAGE WORKS; SPUTNIK/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; AKG-IMAGES/ ULLSTEIN BILD; EVERETT COLLECTION/NEWSCOM; IAM/AKG-IMAGES; IAM/AKG-IMAGES/WORLD HISTORY ARCHIVE

At dawn on June 4 Russian guns launched an opening barrage along the entire front, in places lasting from six to 46 hours Each of these zones, in turn, comprised no fewer than three trench lines, each 150 to 300 paces from each other. The enemy had strengthened these defenses with communications trenches, electrified wire and explosive devices. Russian tactical preparations for overcoming these defenses were unusually thorough. Their intelligence had studied the enemy positions and supplied commanders at all levels with the appropriate maps. The Russians also moved up their trench line at night until by the time of the attack they stood no more than 100 paces from the enemy positions. So as not to give away the time of the attack, troops of the first assault wave moved up to their jumpingoff positions only a few days before the start of the offensive.

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nce again, however, the Central Powers upset the Allies’ plans by launching an offensive of their own—this time by Austro-Hungarian armies in the Trentino region of northern Italy on May 15. When Italy urgently appealed for assistance, Russia responded by moving up the date of the Southwestern Front’s offensive to June 4. The Western Front’s offensive was to begin on June 10 or 11.

At dawn on June 4 Russian guns launched an opening barrage along the entire front, in places lasting from six to 46 hours. The most impressive advance took place along the main attack axis, where General Aleksey Maksimovich Kaledin’s Eighth Army broke through Austro-Hungarian defenses along a 50-mile front, advanced 15 to 21 miles and captured Lutsk on June 7. According to General Erich von Falkenhayn, then chief of the German General Staff, “The part of the Fourth Austro-Hungarian Army, which was in line here, melted away into miserable remnants.” South of the breakthrough the Russian Eleventh Army under General Vladimir Sakharov made almost no progress and, in fact, was forced to fend off enemy counterattacks. General Dmitry Shcherbachev’s Seventh Army advanced slightly, throwing the enemy behind the Strypa River. On the far southern flank General Platon Lechitsky’s Ninth Army pushed the defenders across the Prut River and captured Chernovtsy on June 18. By June 9 Brusilov claimed to have taken more than 70,000 prisoners and 94 guns, plus large amounts of other military equipment. The commander’s pleasure at a well-earned success was short-lived, however. On June 14 Alekseyev informed him

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Evert would be unable to attack on the appointed date, supposedly due to bad weather, although he assured Brusilov the Western Front army group would launch its offensive on June 18. However, Alekseyev also said Evert was reporting that enemy forces opposite his attack sector were too strong. The Western Front commander then appealed to the emperor to shift the attack toward Baranovichi, and the latter agreed, with the proviso the attack be launched no later than July 3. Brusilov later bitterly recalled that his worse fears had been realized, writing, “I would be abandoned without support from my neighbors, and that in this way my successes would be limited only to a tactical victory and some forward movement, which would have no influence on the fate of the war.” He knew that in the absence of support the enemy would be free to throw all available reserves against him. Brusilov suspected that Alekseyev’s references to the emperor were merely a convenient screen, as Nicholas II was, in his words, “a child” when it came to military affairs. He instead believed the fault lay in Alekseyev’s lack of moral courage in facing up to Evert and Kuropatkin, who had been his superiors during the 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War. Had the Russians another supreme commander in chief, he concluded, Evert would have been relieved for insubordination, and Kuropatkin would never have received a responsible command. The Central Powers were quick to exploit the Russians’ dithering and began to transfer sizable reinforcements, mostly German, to the threatened zones. The transfers brought in units not only from the northern sector of the Eastern Front but also from France. Taking advantage of their superior rail links, they quickly rushed forces east, and as early as mid-June they were attacking the Russian penetration around Lutsk. However, as the German assaults were delivered piecemeal, they achieved little and succeeded only in temporarily halting the Russian advance. A lull then settled over the front, as each side prepared to renew its efforts. Meanwhile, to the north the Western Front’s long-delayed Baranovichi offensive began on July 3 and almost immediately collapsed in bloody failure, just as Brusilov had predicted. Given the continued inertia along Kuropatkin’s Northern Front, this meant the enemy remained free to shift his available reserves against the Southwestern Front. Regardless, Brusilov pressed gamely on, though he must have realized the time for achieving any real gains had passed. On July 5 the Eighth Army, supported by General Leonid Lesh’s Third Army, which had been transferred from the Western Front, renewed the assault on Kovel’. By mid-month they had reached the Stokhod River immediately west of the city and had captured several bridgeheads. Lieutenant General Erich Ludendorff, who with General Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg commanded German forces along the northern sector of the Eastern Front, later recalled the action: “This was one of the greatest crises on the Eastern Front. We had little hope that the Austro-Hungarian troops would be able to hold the line of the Stokhod, which was unfortified.” However, the Austro-

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Hungarians, supported by the Germans, were just able to stem the Russian advance through the swampy terrain along the river. There the exhausted Russians bogged down, then prepared to renew the offensive. To the south Eleventh Army remained essentially in place, fighting just to hold its gains against fierce counterattacks. Territorial gains were greatest in the south, where the Seventh and Ninth armies again pushed Austro-Hungarian forces back to the Carpathians before also running out of steam. As Russian troops along the decisive axis continued preparations for a renewed attack, Stavka belatedly started shifting reserves to Brusilov’s front. These reserve forces formed the core of the new Special Army, which with Third Army was directed to capture Kovel’. Eighth Army was directed due west toward Volodymyr-Volyns’kyy, while Eleventh Army was to attack toward Brody and Lwow. The Seventh and Ninth armies were to move west toward Halych and Stanislav. On July 28 the Russians resumed their offensive along the entire front. Brusilov later recalled, “I continued the fighting along the front, but without the previous intensity, trying to spare people as much as possible and only insofar as it was necessary to tie down as large a number of enemy forces as possible, thus indirectly assisting in this way our Allies—the Italians and French.” To what degree this self-serving statement is true is open to interpretation. What is not is the attack’s lack of success toward Kovel’, where the Russians were held to miniscule gains and heavy losses along the Stokhod. Farther south the Russians captured Brody and Stanislav, but by early August it was clear the offensive had run its course, although sporadic fighting continued into the fall.

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espite its disappointing conclusion, the so-called Brusilov offensive nevertheless achieved impressive results. The general himself later claimed that from June through mid-November his forces had captured more than 450,000 of the enemy and inflicted some 1,500,000 casualties. While these figures are likely exaggerated, it was clear the AustroHungarian army had suffered a catastrophic defeat and would henceforth require German support to keep fighting. In exchange for German assistance the Austro-Hungarians were forced to accept an extension of Hindenburg’s authority as far south as Brody. The fate of the dual monarchy was bound to that of Germany to the bitter end. Brusilov’s offensive did succeed in having an impact on other fronts. In France the Germans were compelled to limit operations around Verdun to forces already at hand, while farther north they had to cancel plans for a preemptive attack against British offensive preparations along the Somme. Likewise, the Austro-Hungarians had to call off their Trentino offensive and dispatch forces to Volhynia. Brusilov’s initial success also convinced Romania to throw in its lot with the Allies and declare war on the Central Powers on August 27. By then the crisis had passed, however, and the Germans and Austro-Hungarians were able

More than 200,000 Russian troops were taken captive during the ultimately failed summer offensive of 1916.

SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG PHOTO/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Dissent spread, the desertion rate climbed, and as early as autumn 1916 there were reports of soldiers refusing to attack not only to halt the Romanian offensive in Transylvania but also launch a decisive counteroffensive that crushed the Romanians by year’s end. In the end the Brusilov offensive had been a near thing and could have achieved much more had the Russian high command been able to organize anything approaching a coordinated offensive along the entire front. The drain on German reserves might have enabled the Russians to destroy the opposing Austro-Hungarian armies and perhaps bring about the collapse of the empire itself. That, in turn, would have opened the Italian and Macedonian fronts to Allied penetration, as was eventually the case in 1918. The resulting strain on the German war effort would certainly have been too much, conceivably leading to an Allied victory in 1917, obviating the need for American involvement in the war. Such an outcome would have not only spared the combatants two more years of bloodshed but also enabled Europe to put its own house in order. The failure of the offensive to achieve such a decisive strategic result had especially tragic consequences for Russia.

Its losses in 1916 totaled more than 2 million dead and wounded and 344,000 captured, with 1.2 million casualties and 212,000 prisoners in the summer campaign alone. On the home front an initial patriotic upswing prompted by the initial successes gave way to bitter disappointment over the high command’s bungling, in turn undermining what little faith the country’s educated elite retained in the czarist system. As for the peasant masses, they had grown increasingly weary of dying for a cause they did not understand. Dissent spread, the desertion rate climbed, and as early as autumn 1916 there were reports of soldiers refusing to attack. All of this presaged the collapse of the imperial army in early 1917 and the country’s descent into revolution, military defeat and civil war. MH Richard W. Harrison is a researcher living in Moscow. He has previously worked at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow as an investigator with the Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. For further reading he recommends his The Russian Way of War: Operational Art, 1904–1940, as well as John R. Schindler’s Fall of the Double Eagle.

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On May 13, 1846, the U.S. Congress declared war on Mexico, unaware American troops had already fought and won two battles By David A. Norris

Dramatically illustrated newspaper accounts of the border clashes between U.S. and Mexican troops fascinated Americans and galvanized support for the war.

F&S PALMER/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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When the United States annexed the Republic of Texas in

Mariano Arista

1845, it acquired both a vast new territory and a potential war. Despite his defeat and capture at the 1836 Battle of San Jacinto, and his pledge in a subsequent secret treaty to recognize Texas’ independence, President Antonio López de Santa Anna had never accepted the loss of the breakaway province. Mexico had officially repudiated the treaty, prompting nine years of cold war broken by sporadic border clashes and abortive invasions. The admission of Texas into the Union turned the boundary dispute with Mexico into a federal issue. Washington adopted Texas’ claim that the Rio Grande marked the international border, while Mexico insisted it ran along the Nueces River, more than 30 miles farther north. The diplomatic impasse worsened after annexation, and President James K. Polk ordered troops to southern Texas to defend the disputed tract between the rivers. Soldiers began landing at the mouth of the Nueces near Corpus Christi in July 1845. It took months for the U.S. Army to scrape up an expeditionary force from men posted at its lonely frontier posts and sleepy, undermanned coastal forts. Even then dragoons turned up without mounts, while artillery units arrived with neither horses nor guns. Eager to save money, the Quartermaster Department had resisted sending Army horses, insisting instead that units capture and break Texas

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mustangs and adding that the tough, wiry animals could live off prairie grass instead of expensive feed. According to one disgruntled officer, however, the mustangs were about as useful as goats when it came to pulling heavy guns and wagons. By October some 3,500 men were camped at Corpus Christi; they comprised more than half the entire U.S. Army and were by far the largest assembly of American troops since the War of 1812. Officers who for years had only drilled companies of men had to learn to maneuver as part of a regiment or a brigade. As cavalry made up a high proportion of the Mexican army, the men frequently practiced forming infantry squares to repel horsemen. A great tent city sprawled across the wide, sandy beach. It dwarfed Corpus Christi, at the time a small, scruffy settlement that survived in large part on revenues from smuggling. On a map that stretch of the Texas coast seemed a good disembarkation point, but its waters were so shallow that none of the ships could land, thus goods and men had to be transferred aboard lighters. Smugglers turned an honest dollar by renting their shallow-draft boats to the Army. The U.S. commander, Zachary Taylor, was born in 1784 on a Virginia plantation and reared on the Kentucky frontier before joining the Army in 1808. Nicknamed “Old Rough and Ready,” the tobacco-chewing 61-year-old veteran of the War of 1812 and Indian wars cared nothing for military pomp and splendor. On campaign he often dressed more like a dirt farmer than a general. Taylor’s men loved his courage, his willingness to share their hardships and his sense of humor, and they were happy to follow him when in February 1846 he finally received orders to march south into the disputed Rio Grande territory. Among his junior officers were Ulysses Grant, Jefferson Davis, George Meade, James Longstreet, William J. Hardee and Braxton Bragg—men who would make their names in a later, far bloodier conflict. Supporting Taylor’s infantry was an artillery contingent of four 18-pounders and three of the Army’s five batteries of “flying artillery.” Under the command of Major Samuel Ringgold, the latter units were renowned for their extraordinary readiness and mobility. Gunners rode their own mounts, rather than having to hold on to the caissons and limbers, thus they could move, emplace and fire their brass 6-pounders far faster than regular artillery. The coming battles would be their first test in combat. En route to the disputed zone Taylor split his army, sending a detachment to set up a coastal supply depot at Point Isabel while the rest pushed on to the border. On March 27 the Americans raised the Stars and Stripes on the Rio Grande across from Matamoros. There, under the glare of a Mexican army fast building its own fortifications, the troops built a strong earthen star fortress ringed by a moat. They dubbed it Fort Texas.

CLASSIC IMAGE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

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he hot days at Fort Texas were about to get a lot hotter. In the three weeks since their arrival in late March 1846 soldiers of the 7th U.S. Infantry Regiment had watched as Mexican troops rolled guns into position along the south bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, opposite the Americans’ rough earthwork fortress. Now a large procession across the river flowed from gun to gun, as priests in turn blessed each of the cannon pointing north. The 500 men at Fort Texas were caught between those guns and nearly 4,000 troops of Mexican Maj. Gen. Mariano Arista’s Army of the North, which had crossed the river on April 24. The Americans’ only possible relief force, 2,200 men under Brig. Gen. Zachary Taylor, was two days’ march away. The governments of the United States and Mexico were not yet officially at war, but military events on the Rio Grande would soon outpace politics.

GRANGER, NYC

American 18-pounder fieldpieces firing solid iron shot wreak havoc on Mexican cavalry during the opening phases of the Battle of Palo Alto.

Commanding the Mexican forces arrayed against them was 43-year-old General Mariano Arista, who had enlisted as a teenage cadet in Spanish forces toward the end of the colonial era. After Mexico gained its independence, he rose to command the Army of the North. Entrusted with defending Mexico’s claimed border with Texas, his force contained some of the nation’s best units. Though war had not yet been declared, tensions flared across the riverine border over the next few months. In the most serious incident 1,600 lancers under Brig. Gen. Anastasio Torrejón crossed the Rio Grande upstream from Matamoros. On April 25 an 80-man force of U.S. dragoons under Captain Seth Thornton went to investigate and rode straight into an ambush. Torrejón’s men killed 11 dragoons, wounded six and captured the rest, including Thornton. As far as Taylor was concerned, hostilities had begun. As serious a blow as the Thornton affair was, Taylor was actually more worried about his supply lines. His army was running low on food, and the lightly guarded Point Isabel depot was vulnerable to capture. In order to secure the vital port, Taylor and most of the army marched back to Point Isabel on May 1, leaving Major Jacob Brown, the 7th Infantry and a handful of artillerymen to hold Fort Texas. While Arista believed an all-out attack on the fort would prove too costly, he thought a siege might reduce it.

On March 27 the Americans raised the Stars and Stripes across from Matamoros On May 3 the guns in Matamoros opened fire on Fort Texas, to which the Americans responded with counterbattery fire from their 18-pounders, quickly dismounting two of the Mexican guns. A Mexican heavy mortar emplaced behind the fort, set deep in the ground and protected by earthworks, was harder for the American guns to seek out. “No one can tell where the confounded things are going to fall,” wrote one soldier of its shells. Casualties mounted, and on the third day of the siege Brown himself was mortally wounded. The defenders also began running low on ammunition.

On March 7 Taylor was finally able to leave for the Rio Grande with his 2,200 men, 200 wagons and two more 18-pounders, each pulled by six yokes of lumbering oxen. Two batteries of flying artillery, under Ringgold and Captain James Duncan, rounded out the force. They marched about 7 miles before halting to make camp.

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Taylor didn’t know it, but Arista was also on the move. Early on the morning of May 8 his 4,000 men waited for Taylor on the Matamoros Road at a place called Palo Alto (“Tall Timber”). The name derived from low ridges crowned with trees and brush that stood out from the surrounding prairie. The Mexican line, anchored by cavalry on each flank, stretched more than a mile. Around and behind it were dense thickets of chaparral, while between the armies lay coastal prairie pocked with rain-filled hollows. By noon Taylor’s men had closed to within a dozen miles of Fort Texas when they caught flashes of sunlight glinting off polished Mexican lance tips and bayonets. The Americans approached through stiff, shoulder-deep prairie grass that 2nd Lt. Ulysses S. Grant of the 4th U.S. Infantry described as “pointed at the top, and hard and almost as sharp as a darning-needle.” There was no natural shelter for the supply wagons, and the men suffered from heat and thirst during the march, but they arrived on the prairie to the welcome sight of a pond. Perched atop his horse, Old Whitey, and calmly chewing tobacco, the general ordered a halt. While “Old Rough and Ready” planned their opening moves, each company dispatched a platoon, loaded down with canteens, to the waterhole.

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GRANGER, NYC; MAP: MARTIN WALZ, PEGMOTIONS GROUP

Major Samuel Ringgold, commander of the American “flying artillery,” was wounded by Mexican fire on May 8 and died three days later.

JOHNSON, FRY, AND COMPANY/HERITAGE AUCTIONS, DALLAS

Even on horseback Taylor lacked a clear view of the enemy line, as it was largely obscured by the prairie grass and chaparral. But Lieutenant Jacob Blake, a young engineer with his advance guard, had made a daring horseback reconnaissance within 150 yards of the Mexican line, and his reconnoiter had revealed the location of concealed enemy batteries, as well as the swamp and wooded rise that protected Arista’s flanks. At about 2 p.m. Arista’s guns opened fire on the American line, which had formed behind its batteries about a half-mile away. The Mexican guns—eight 4-pounders and two 8-pounders—threw copper projectiles that landed well short of their targets. Experiencing his first action, Grant recalled the enemy shot “ricocheted through the tall grass so slowly that the men would see them and open ranks and let them pass.” Given the distance, the American gunners instead used solid iron shot, and their 18-pounders ripped into the Mexican line with especially deadly effect. Noting the carnage wreaked by Taylor’s guns, Arista sent Torrejón’s lancers to either turn the American right or fall upon the wagon train. A flustered German-speaking messenger ran to warn Taylor, pointing frantically toward the right flank and sputtering, “Die Mexican! Die Mexican!” But stands of brush obscured the general’s view of the approaching enemy. After several anxious moments a staff officer who knew some German was able to coax more details from the messenger, and Taylor immediately advised Lt. Col. James S. McIntosh of the 5th U.S. Infantry to form an infantry square. McIntosh’s voice boomed out: “Fifth Infantry! Form square!” The tedious drilling at Corpus Christi was about to pay off. Two sides of McIntosh’s square, bolstered by two of Ringgold’s guns under Lieutenant Randolph Ridgely, faced the onrushing horsemen. Torrejón’s lancers, slowed by the soggy field and peppered by American musket volleys, drew up some 40 yards short of the square. The lancers returned fire but were soon driven back. Torrejón regrouped and struck at Taylor’s left, but the Americans again repelled the charging horsemen. Two hours into the fight burning wads from the American guns sparked fires in the prairie grass, choking the battlefield with smoke and suspending the fight for nearly an hour. Torrejón’s cavalry hadn’t returned to its original position on the Mexican left, and under cover of the smoke Taylor pushed his right to about where the enemy line had been. When the smoke had cleared sufficiently, the American gunners immediately opened fire. The gaps they tore through the Mexican ranks were plain to see, but Taylor recalled that the “constancy” of the enemy troops under this terrible fire was “a theme of universal remark and admiration.” Arista’s artillerymen brought their guns to bear on the deadly artillery, particularly Ringgold’s battery, which had pushed out well out in advance of Taylor’s right. The major was surveying the action from atop his cele-

‘Don’t stay with me!” barked the mortally wounded Major Ringgold. ‘You have work to do’ brated white thoroughbred, Davy Branch, when a 4-pounder ball hit saddle-high, breaking two pommel-holstered pistols, killing the horse and tearing through Ringgold’s upper thighs without breaking the bones. Thrown to the ground, the mortally wounded major waved on his men. “Don’t stay with me!” he barked. “You have work to do.” The fighting surged back and forth, neither side gaining a decisive edge by the time darkness fell. Taylor held the position the Arista’s army had occupied that morning, but he had not been able to break the Mexican line. Still, the Americans had sustained only four killed and 48 wounded, compared to Arista’s 250-plus casualties. The moon shone gently through the haze of the still-smoldering grass fires as the exhausted men settled into camp. Lieutenant Blake, who had survived his daring gallop before the entire Mexican line that morning, tossed aside his pistols before turning in. One struck the ground and discharged a ball that killed him.

Early on May 9 Arista fell back from Palo Alto and staked out a new defensive line at Resaca de la Palma, 5 miles south along the Matamoros Road. Buffered by stretches of

By 1846 Zachary Taylor (aka “Old Rough and Ready”) was 61 years old and a seasoned combat commander.

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Fellows to Foes

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The wild-eyed, bearded captain managed to round up his dragoons for a return sweep, and when they reached the enemy guns May found Mexican Brig. Gen. Rómulo Díaz de la Vega pinned between the wheels of one of the pieces, refusing to surrender to anyone but an officer. When May confirmed he was a captain, the combative general agreed to turn over his sword. His opponents and American newspapers alike admired de la Vega’s stubborn valor, and Taylor later handed him back his sword. Back home May’s charge became the most celebrated incident of the battle, inspiring countless romanticized prints. His superiors, though, scoffed at the public perception of the young dragoon captain single-handedly winning the Battle of Resaca de la Palma. Indeed, caught in a heavy infantry crossfire with no reinforcements on the way, May was forced to abandon the captured guns and return to Taylor with his prisoners. His men didn’t even pause to spike the pieces, and Mexican gunners re-manned them as soon as the dragoons galloped away. As May returned to the American line, Taylor snapped to his infantry officers, “Take those guns, and by God, keep them!” The 8th Infantry, which had just come up, joined the 5th in an attack that ultimately overran the enemy batteries. Around the captured guns desperate Mexican foot soldiers clawed their way into the chaparral, shoving their comrades ahead of them into the interlocking tangle of thorns. Musket balls cut branches and slashed leaves. Whole companies dissolved into bands of a half-dozen or fewer men, and the battle disintegrated into countless little skirmishes and bayonet fights. Retreat, at least fast enough to avoid being shot in the back, was impossible. Grant, finding himself temporarily in command of his company, wrote that he pushed blindly through the chaparral somewhere on the right flank, “taking advantage of any clear spot that would carry me towards the enemy.” Although he and his men couldn’t see their opponents, the lieutenant recalled that “balls commenced to whistle very thick overhead…so I ordered my men to lie down, an order that did not have to be enforced.” When the firing died down, Grant again moved forward and soon found a clearing in the brush. Spotting a handful of Mexican soldiers, he and his men charged, capturing them with no resistance. Grant was sending the prisoners to the rear when a private appeared from the front with a wounded American officer. The disappointed young lieutenant realized his men had “recaptured” Mexican troops already secured by advancing Americans. “The Battle of Resaca de la Palma would have been won, just as it was,” he mused, “if I had not been there.” About the time Grant was rounding up his prisoners, the entire Army of the North was crumbling. The terrific slaughter, the capture of their guns and their loss of confidence in Arista had doomed their stand at the resaca. As retreating Mexicans burst from the brush near Fort Texas, heading for the Rio Grande, the men in the fort opened fire on their former besiegers. The crossing proved as deadly

FROM TOP: ULYSSES S. GRANT, PERSONAL MEMOIRS OF U.S. GRANT. NEW YORK: C.L. WEBSTER & CO, 1885; GRANGER, NYC

dense chaparral and trees, the dry former riverbed of the Rio Grande made a fine breastUlysses work. Arista knew the superior American S. Grant artillery would be of little use in this tangled labyrinth. On the other hand, his cavalry also couldn’t maneuver in the chaparral. Just after dawn Taylor summoned 13 of his officers to a council of war. Their mood was cautious; while they had held their own against a larger enemy force, only four of the officers favored an aggressive attack. The rest wanted either to dig in and await reinforcements or to return to Point Isabel. Taylor thanked them for their opinions, then stated bluntly, “I will be in Fort Texas before night, if I live.” Of course the only clear route to the fort was along the Matamoros Road, by then well covered by the muzzles of Mexican artillery where the road crossed the resaca. Arista, certain the American commander would Thomas J. Jackson consider his line impregnable and leave it alone, settled into his tent to write reports. Taylor sent his wounded to Point Isabel, left the supply train under the protection of the 18-pounders and a pair of 12-pounders, and set off after Arista. Around 2 p.m. the light companies Taylor had sent probing through the chaparral reported contact with the enemy. The light troops and Ringgold’s battery, now under Ridgely’s command, engaged the The Mexican War was Mexican guns on the Matamoros Road, while a first combat test for the 3rd, 4th and 5th U.S. Infantry regiments many American offispread out to either side in the chaparral. cers who would later Ridgely faced three Mexican batteries, gain fame—on both numbering eight guns in all. Backing the sides—during the Civil guns was the Tampico Battalion, among the War. Besides Grant and Army of the North’s finest units, whose men Jackson, they included never wavered, even as Ridgely’s guns tore such other future generals as Robert E. Lee, into their ranks. After sustaining heavy return George McClellan, cannon and musket fire and repulsing a charge P.G.T. Beauregard, by Mexican lancers, Ridgely sent for help. Joseph E. Johnston, Taylor sent Captain Charles May of the James Longstreet 2nd Regiment of Dragoons to charge the Mexand Joseph Hooker. ican batteries. As May approached Ridgely’s position, he asked the artilleryman to point out the enemy guns. “Hold on, Charley, till I draw their fire, and you will see where they are.” After a furious exchange, and before the Mexican gunners could reload, the bugle sounded the charge, and May’s 60 dragoons broke into a gallop, disappearing into the smoke between the lines. The dragoons rode down or stampeded the enemy gunners from their pieces, but the momentum of the charge carried them past the guns. May’s dragoons were so scattered by the time he reined up, he found himself with scarcely a half-dozen men.

Captain Charles May’s 2nd Dragoons charge the Mexican gun line at Resaca. In so doing they captured Mexican Brig. Gen. Rómulo Díaz de la Vega.

as the battle itself. Many soldiers drowned while trying to swim the river. Still others died when a Mexican officer capsized a ferry by jumping his horse onto it.

JOHN LUDLOW MORTON/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

American losses over the two days of fighting at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma totaled 37 killed and 137 wounded. Arista claimed 600 casualties, although U.S. reports put his losses far higher. Taylor’s men captured the Mexican general’s personal papers and baggage, as well as eight guns (six of which were loaded when captured), hundreds of British-made flintlocks marked with the arms of King George IV, and the colors of the Tampico Battalion. To the average American foot soldier, though, the most important items captured were thousands of Mexican cigars. News of Taylor’s victories reached Washington on May 23, 10 days after Congress—responding to news of the Thornton skirmish—had declared war on Mexico. Up to that time many Americans, including senior government officials, had considered it a waste of money to maintain a standing army, not to mention the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Volunteers and militia, they had argued, could handle any national emergency better than the “epauletted loafers” of the professional ranks. Now, however, just such an army filled with West Point– trained officers had smashed a larger enemy army, and with minimal American casualties. The general public was

News of Taylor’s victories reached Washington 10 days after Congress had declared war thrilled, and many doubters were convinced of the value of the national military academy. New tunes such as the “Palo Alto Triumphant Grand March” and “The Battle of Resaca de la Palma” waltz swept the country. Theatrical productions, heroic poems and Currier & Ives prints celebrated the battles. Several towns popped up named Palo Alto, Resaca and Ringgold. Two such towns in Georgia—Ringgold and Resaca—hosted Civil War battles. And the roar of guns would again echo across Texas’ own Palo Alto battleground. On May 12–13, 1865, nearly 19 years to the day after Zachary Taylor’s unlikely victory, the last battle of the Civil War raged at nearby Palmito Ranch. MH Freelance writer David A. Norris is a frequent contributor to HistoryNet magazines. For further reading he recommends John S.D. Eisenhower’s So Far From God: The U.S. War With Mexico, 1846–1848, and the website of the Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park [nps.gov/paal].

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SIGNED, SEALED, DELIVERED Since the advent of warfare adversaries have scrawled missives on outbound missiles, with ‘drop dead’ as the underlying sentiment By David Lauterborn

What is it about human nature that compels us to craft weapons designed to kill or maim our enemies and then inscribe them with snarky sayings we know they’ll never read? Obviously we don’t really want the Führer to have a HAPPY CHRISTMAS! or the ayatollah to have a ROCKIN’ R AMADAN! Yet as the photos on the following pages attest, we don’t just labor over the lettering and legibility of such smack talk, we actually enjoy the process. There’s just something cathartic about dashing off a warm greeting before dealing cold death. We send the message—and pray they don’t return to sender.

Of course such sentiments aren’t meant as much to daunt our enemy as to hearten ourselves. And so we smile and laugh and jostle for our turn with the pen or brush because it’s good to be alive in the midst of chaos and violence. “A sense of humor,” wrote Cold War correspondent Hugh Sidey, “is needed armor.” For a moment then, before the engines of war roar to life and rain death, we shout at the devil. MH

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PAUL POPPER/POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES

It’s an ancient tradition that persists to the present. Last fall U.S. troops scrawled FROM PARIS WITH LOVE (a reference to the November 2015 terrorist attacks) on Hellfire missiles and JDAM-guided bombs bound for ISIS targets in the Middle East. And in recent weeks Iran test-fired a pair of ballistic missiles emblazoned—in Hebrew—with ISRAEL MUST BE WIPED OFF THE EARTH. (No one said Tehran was subtle.) The immediacy of modern media outlets and social networking means even undeliverable “love bombs” find their mark. And if the sender does manage on-time delivery—message received, loud and clear.

It’s Aug. 27, 1918, on the Western Front in France —120 shopping days till Christmas—yet this thoughtful “Tommy” has already picked out the perfect gift for “Jerry.”

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A

A Ancient Greeks often inscribed projectiles with symbols or words directed at an enemy. DEXAI (TAKE THAT!) reads the raised legend on this 4th century BC lead sling bullet from Athens.

B

B Iron ration—the term for a British soldier’s emergency field ration of preserved meat, cheese, biscuit, sugar, salt and, of course, tea —takes on new meaning at the Somme in 1916.

D In March 1945, as the war in Europe winds down, these American artillerymen in Remagen, Germany, are happy to collect a basketful of 155 mm “eggs” (that is, shells) for the Führer. E On the Pacific island of Tinian just days before the Aug. 9, 1945, atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan, physicist Norman Ramsey, a member of the Manhattan Project, proudly signs his work.

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C

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM; U.S. ARMY/NATIONAL ARCHIVES; DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY/NATIONAL ARCHIVES; FPG/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES; THE PRINT COLLECTOR/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

C A U.S. airman chalks RUN, ROMMEL! RUN! on a bomb affixed to a B-25 Mitchell bomber early in the Tunisia campaign of World War II. By 1943 Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps was in full retreat.

D

E

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F F Kneeling beneath an F-4B Phantom II fighterbomber in Vietnam in 1965, U.S. Air Force Corporal Robert Grice addresses a 500-pound bomb from his hometown of Raleigh, N.C. G During Israel’s 2006 clash with Hezbollah militants in Lebanon Israeli girls line up at a mobile artillery staging area to write defiant messages on shells with a colored marker. H The exposed noses of 40 mm high-explosive grenades packed in a bandolier provide the canvas for an American infantryman’s rallying graffiti in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley in 2007.

G

J In late 2010 a soldier puts his final touches on the face of an M18A1 Claymore mine as U.S. forces harden their compound in the former Taliban stronghold of Talukan, Afghanistan.

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H

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: KEYSTONE-FRANCE/GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES; OE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES; MAX BECHERER/POLARIS; TIM HETHERINGTON/MAGNUM PHOTOS; PEDRO UGARTE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

I There’s no hiding the 120 mm main gun of a U.S. M1A1 Abrams tank supporting a sweep for weapons in Baghdad in 2003. To tangle with it might well occasion a call to the coroner.

I

J

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It was not unusual for members of the same gallowglass clan—here, battling MacSweeneys —to find themselves serving opposing lords.

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For nearly four centuries these sons of Scottish clansmen and Norse raiders dominated the mercenary ranks of feudal Ireland By Ron Soodalter

IMAGE FROM WARRIOR #143 GALLOGLASS 1250–1600: GAELIC MERCENARY WARRIOR, BY FERGUS CANNAN, © OSPREY PUBLISHING, LTD./ILLUSTRATION BY SEÁN Ó’ BRÓGÁIN

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The English army—knights, yeomen, halberdiers and billmen—under Richard Talbot, Lord Deputy of Ireland and Archbishop of Dublin, stood arrayed on the field, bracing for the Irish attack. Suddenly, an advance force of skirmishers, unarmored and barefoot, rushed forward, hurling their light spears at the English ranks. As they ran back to their lines, a swiftly advancing wall of iron-helmeted Celtic giants descended on the English, screaming their battle cries to the cacophonous squealing of bagpipes. Each man carried a huge battle ax, and their momentum, bulk and determination carried them easily through the first English ranks as they skillfully wielded their terrible weapons to deadly effect.

among their ranks were staggering. And, of course, most died in the employ of foreigners rather than for Ireland. Legend has it that as he lay dying after the 1693 Battle of Neerwinden, Patrick Sarsfield— 1st Earl of Lucan and commander of French King Louis XIV’s Irish Jacobite army—uttered these bitter last words: “Would God it were for Ireland.”

Among the notable sects of mercenaries to arise out of Ireland’s roiling history were the Gallowglass. From the mid-13th to the early 17th centuries they had the distinction of fighting for hire in Ireland itself. Their lyrical and intriguing name is an Anglicization of the Gaelic word gallóglach (roughly pronounced GAHL-o-glukh), which translates as “foreign warrior.” They are descendants both of Scots native to the western Highlands and Hebrides and of Vikings—those fearsome Norse raiders who initially ventured to Scotland for plunder but stayed to build settlements and intermarry with the locals. The battle ended swiftly, leaving scores of the English As Scottish historian Fergus Cannan notes, dead and others in full retreat. The victors saw to the Gallowglass “lived for war.…His sole function was to fight, and his only contribution to their own wounded and slain, then leaned on their society was destruction.” These were men who blood-spattered axes to rest. They had earned their pay had renounced the backbreaking toil common this day; they were mercenaries, universally known to the rocky Highlands and wind- and sea-swept and feared as the Gallowglass. Western Isles in favor of a life of adventure, combat and, hopefully, rich rewards of booty, land and title. The first Gallowglass to settle in Ireland had Ireland has a millennia-long tradition of providing merce- fought in the Wars of Scottish Independence. They soon naries for the world’s armies. According to the Honourable found work repelling another English invasion, this one Society of the Irish Brigade, the Celtic ancestors of the prompted by the perpetually feuding Irish lords. present-day Irish invaded Greece with Persian King Darius, A century earlier when Dermot MacMurrough, deposed fought for the pharaohs, served as Cleopatra’s bodyguard and exiled ruler of the Irish Kingdom of Leinster, had and crossed the Alps as Hannibal personal retinue. sought help from English King Henry II to regain his throne, Irish soldiers of fortune fought for English King Edward I he opened a Pandora’s box. In 1169 the English and Welsh in France and along the Scottish borderlands and for the did indeed arrive in force, liked what they saw and decided Yorkists during the 1455–87 Wars of the Roses. They battled to stay. Two years later Henry claimed the island as the the Welsh for England, and served in both Catholic and self-styled Lord of Ireland, sparking a grassroots resistance Protestant armies during the religious wars that swept that proved almost wholly ineffectual. Europe. Over the centuries they served in the Dutch, French, The English soldiers were better armed and trained than Polish, German and Swedish armies and at various times the locals, and after long decades of setbacks the exasfought both for and against Spain. In the 1700s Irishmen perated Irish lords brought in various Gallowglass clans fighting for Spain did battle in the New World in Honduras, to check the invasion. Among the first to arrive were the Mexico, Cuba and Florida. And according to some accounts MacSweeneys, MacDonnells, MacSheehys, MacDougalls, Frederick the Great of Prussia so prized the Irish as fight- MacCabes and MacRorys. Landing in the north and dising men that he captured them from other armies and persing throughout Ireland, they stopped the English cold formed his own Irish regiment. in their tracks—and for the next three and a half centuries In the 18th century alone an estimated half-million Irish they remained the premier fighting force on the island. mercenaries served abroad. They were a military elite— The Gallowglass were soldiers of fortune in the truest trained professionals skilled at close-quarters fighting who sense. They fought for gain, and they were canny enough stood out among raw enlistees and unwilling conscripts. to know that only the upper classes had the wherewithal to Their prominence had a price, however, as attrition rates provide it. In true mercenary fashion they hired out to

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IMAGES FROM WARRIOR #143 GALLOGLASS 1250-1600: GAELIC MERCENARY WARRIOR BY FERGUS CANNAN, © OSPREY PUBLISHING, LTD/ILLUSTRATION BY SEÁN Ó’ BRÓGÁIN (2)

County Meath, Ireland, 1423

War-dogs, hungry and grey, Gnawing a naked bone, Fighters in every clime— Every cause but our own —Emily Lawless, “With the Wild Geese” (1902)

whichever side offered the best deal, be it the feuding Irish lords or the Anglo-Irish interlopers who occupied Dublin and environs—an area known as the Pale—and they never lacked for work. The Ireland of their time was not a unified nation but rather a collection of proud and often hostile clans, and greater antipathy often existed among the clan chiefs than toward the English.

Scottish historian Cannan describes the Gallowglass as

Gallowglass training sessions were rigorous and often ended in bloodshed. Under the guidance of a “constable”—typically one’s father, uncle or cousin—recruits started with staves but learned to master battle axes and a virtual armory of other weapons.

“among the most visually impressive warriors of all time.” Chiefs chose individual warriors specifically for their size, strength and fighting ability. Richard Stanihurst, a 16th century Anglo-Irish alchemist and historian, described the Gallowglass he met as “grim of countenance, tall of stature, big of limb, burly of body, well and strongly timbered.” In his epic poem The Faerie Queene Edmund Spenser patterned the warrior giant Grantorto on the Gallowglass—many of whom the English poet had personally seen—describing his character as “huge and hideous” with “great skill in single fight.” Given the weight of the Gallowglass’ preferred weapons, muscle was clearly a prerequisite. The fully armed and armored warrior went into battle with a spear, a dirk,

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The fully armed and armored warrior went into battle with a spear, a dirk, a bow, arrows and a hefty double-handed claymore broadsword

Well-Armored and -Heeled

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Slight in stature compared to the Gallowglass, they were nonetheless tough and aggressive. The Kern and cavalry generally engaged in ambushes and skirmishes rather than direct engagements, whereas the Gallowglass were trained to stand and fight, each man swearing an oath never to show his back to the enemy. It was understood they would always lead the charge on the field and form the rearguard in retreat. Most battles in which the Gallowglass participated ended swiftly, in what Cannan refers to as a “blizzard of ax blows.” English noble Sir John Dymmok wrote in the late 1500s, “The greatest force of the battle consisteth in them, choosing rather to die than to yield.” The Gallowglass’ reputation ensured they attracted what we might term “intense media interest.” In 1521 German artist Albrecht Dürer rendered a well-known and quite detailed sketch (see opposite) of three of their number— sturdy, forbidding men armed with pike, bow, claymores and dirks—attended by two barefoot, poleaxe-bearing Kern. Nearly a century later William Shakespeare named both classes of fighting men in Act I, Scene II of Macbeth, as the hired fighters whom the title character heroically confronts: The merciless Macdonwald— Worthy to be a rebel, for to that The multiplying villanies of nature Do swarm upon him—from the Western Isles Of kerns and gallowglasses is supplied.

Over time the Gallowglass fell into two categories—those who served a specific lord, and the freelance soldiers who wandered from job to job, not unlike the feudal Japanese ro¯nin, or unattached samurai. Gallowglass who fought for a single lord—be he Irish or Anglo-Irish—served as his house guard and were at hand for whatever task of arms he deemed necessary. Lords often rewarded the constables of such units with legal contracts granting them land and privileges. An exceptional warrior, one of unquestioned loyalty and skill with weapons, might serve as the “lord’s Gallowglass,” taking responsibility for his employer’s safety and answering all challenges to personal combat levied against him. Only the wealthiest lords could afford the long-term investment of a personal force of Gallowglass, however. Among the privileged was Maurice FitzGerald, 1st Earl of Desmond, who boasted eight permanent battles of Gallowglass, hundreds of cavalrymen, 3,000 Kern and a battle of gunners and crossbowmen. He was unique; most lords and chiefs strove to hire a single

HELMET © NATIONAL MUSEUMS NORTHERN IRELAND/COLLECTION ULSTER MUSEUM, BELUM.A1151.1911

a bow, arrows and, from the 15th century on, a hefty doublehanded claymore broadsword, a traditional weapon of the Scottish Highlands. But the Gallowglass’ signature weapon was the battle ax. A weapon passed down from their Norse forebears, it had a 2- to 4-pound iron head with a razor-sharp, 8- to 12-inch blade edge, socket-mounted on a 5-foot wooden haft. In some instances the head was inlaid with silver scrollwork to reflect the status of the bearer. It took a powerful man to carry the ax, let alone wield it in battle. Used effectively, it was, in the words of one 16th century English observer, “deadly where it lighteth.” Another chronicler was more specific: “When they strike they inflict a dreadful wound.” To parry an enemy’s blows, the Gallowglass sheathed his torso, arms and thighs in mail worn over a padded shirt of cloth or leather. A peaked iron helmet protected his head and added inches to his already prodigious stature. Training among the Gallowglass was rigorous, dangerous and often bloody. It was also hereditary, the instruction being given by fathers, uncles and cousVery well paid by the ins. The commander of each Gallowstandards of their time, glass contingent was referred to as the many gallowglass could constable, and his authority was beyond afford the finer things in challenge. Discipline was strict where it life, including protective mattered most. A man might literally headgear like this fine get away with murder—as was the case iron helmet with bronze when Gallowglass Gorre Mackan was nasal and brow found pardoned for killing a local woman in in County Down and dated to about 1400. 1545—but he could hang for disobeying his constable or lord. In 1558 one Gallowglass who had drawn his sword in camp against orders was spared the rope but nailed to a post. When going into battle each Gallowglass was generally accompanied by two attendants, or “knaves”—a harness bearer, who toted the warrior’s weapons, and a young man or stout boy who hauled his provisions. This three-man subset was known as a spar. The Galloglass were organized into units known in English as “battles,” comprising 200 to 400 men. Groups of spars made up one section of the battle, while the remaining ranks consisted of native Irish cavalry and a caste of native Irish light infantrymen known as Kern. The latter fought unarmored and bareheaded, wielding a dirk, darts, javelins and perhaps a sling or small bow.

ALBRECHT DÜRER/BPK, BERLIN/KUPFERSTICHKABINETT, STAATLICHE MUSEEN/ART RESOURCE, NY

Albrecht Dürer’s 1521 sketch depicts a trio of sturdy gallowglass (at left) armed with claymores, dirks, bow and pike. Attending them are two shaggy-haired, barefoot Kern carrying poleaxes.

battle of Gallowglass, while others could afford only them as needed. The freelance Gallowglass fought in what was referred to as the “Scottish habit,” selling their services on a temporary basis, generally for periods of around three months. While their term of service was also secured by contract, it was strictly for pay. The leaders of these roaming Gallowglass clans aspired to become a part of the first group, serving a single lord in hopes of acquiring their own lands, stock and stronghold. In addition to being provided with room and board, a Gallowglass received one silver groat (fourpence) per day, an amount that doubled by 1562. This equates to nearly $16 in today’s dollars. In lieu of coin, however, they often accepted goods equal to the value of their pay. According to period records, each Gallowglass received “one beef for his wages and two beefs for his feeding and diet.” In addition to his deed of land, the constable generally earned 10 to 20

times the pay of his subordinates. For those extra considerations, tradition and honor dictated he lead his men into battle from the front. No one—least of all his followers— would have argued he didn’t earn his pay.

Inevitably, as the ranks of the original Gallowglass thinned from attrition and age, local Irish lads of sufficient strength, stature and ambition applied to join the elite group. And although they continued to be referred to as Scots, a number of the Gallowglass clans eventually comprised mainly Irishmen. The selection process remained strict, the training brutal and the prospect of violent death high, but to many young Irishmen death in battle was preferable to spending their lives grubbing in the dirt as feudal vassals. Such vassals initially viewed the Gallowglass as heroes and liberators. That perception was short-lived, however. As far as the mercenaries were concerned, the peasants existed merely to serve. Part of the arrangement lords made with their hired soldiers was to billet them with the vassals, who had scarcely enough to sustain themselves. The practice was called “coyne and livery,” and it was at

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best a form of extortion. As one English writer observed in 1572: “There will come a kern or Gallowglas…to lie in the churl’s house. Whiles he is there, he will be master of the house; he will not only have meat but money also allowed him, and at his departure the best things he shall see in the churl’s house, be it linen cloth, a shirt, mantle, or such-like. Thus is the churl eaten up.” To his unwilling host, the mercenary was, as one chronicler succinctly put it, “a parasite.” In his downtime the Gallowglass generally caroused, boasted, drank and ate sufficient beef to keep up his bulk and strength, while his knaves cleaned, honed and polished the weapons. When he was called to duty, all semblance of comfort vanished. The chief or constable would order a muster, or “rising out,” and each man was expected to immediately join his comrades armed, armored and prepared to march, his knaves in strict attendance. This is what he what he was paid for —and indeed lived for. The fight itself could take any of a number of forms: large-scale battle, single combat, reive (raid), siege or skirmish. The Gallowglass might even be required to aid in the theft of an opposing lord’s livestock. Cattle stealing was acNot a weapon for the cepted as an honorable pursuit in Ireland, and weak-kneed or faint it was common practice to drive off a rival’s of heart, the twoherds and burn his house and outbuildings. handed broadsword known as the claymore The Gallowglass typically formed the rear(from the Scots Gaelic guard, shielding the lord and his vassals as claidheamh-mórr, or they drove home the beasts. “great sword”) could A muster might also precede a clash between cut a man in half if the lord’s Gallowglass and English soldiers wielded by an expert. representing their Anglo-Irish master. More often, however, it was a proper battle between two feuding lords, each with his own retinue of Gallowglass. One lord would invade the lands of another, and the respective Gallowglass detachments would deploy to advance or repel the incursion. Inevitably, Gallowglass came face to face with members of their own clans and families in fights to the death, with quarter neither given nor expected. As Anglo-Irish jurist and politician Robert Cowley observed in 1537, the Gallowglass “serveth for their wages, and not for love, nor affection.” Then there were assassinations for hire, in which a lord would select Gallowglass singly or as a unit to murder those thought hostile or dangerous. The hit list might include

Now That’s a Sword

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members of the lord’s own family. The Annals of Connacht recorded in 1316 that a chief ’s daughter “hired a band of Galloglass and gave them a reward” for killing her own cousin. The Gallowglass dealt in death, and whether it meant killing individually or in battle, they were at the ready.

Even during a particularly violent era the Gallowglass earned a reputation for excessive brutality. In describing their “most barbarous life and condition,” Spenser observed, “They spoil as well the good subjects as the enemy; they steal, they are cruel and bloody, full of revenge and deadly executions, swearers and blasphemers, ravishers of women and murderers of children.” Stanihurst ascribed to them an odium humanitatis—hatred of humanity—while Dymmok denounced them as “naturally cruel—without compassion.” Cannan deemed them “especially, often needlessly, destructive,” adding, “Reveling in the chaos of war and repulsed by peace, [they] combined many of the worst aspects of medieval Scotland and Ireland—a chimera of Scottish excessive violence and Irish anarchic nihilism.” To be frank, that lack of compassion almost certainly stemmed from daily exposure to—and dismissal of—death as merely an occupational happenstance. The Gallowglass himself professed to have no fear of death, and considering his place in the forefront of battle and as rearguard in retreat, and given the stunning rate of attrition in the ranks, such a claim seems beyond question. That he committed atrocities is also beyond dispute; chilling though it might seem to modern sensibilities, however, his was a generally accepted form of warfare. Barbarism was both an outlet and an officially sanctioned deterrent. Ultimately, the Gallowglass was a consummate killer for hire, and his success in finding consistent employment over the span of nearly four centuries testifies to both his effectiveness and the unqualified demand for his services. As ruthless as the Gallowglass was in combat, he did adhere to a code of honor. One precept was a refusal to desert the lord who had hired him, even under the most hopeless of circumstances. In 1582, during a revolt against English rule, forces loyal to Queen Elizabeth ambushed Gerald FitzGerald, 15th Earl of Desmond, and his 80 Gallowglass bodyguards. While a handful of his men spirited the disabled Earl across the bogs in a blanket, (see P. 67) the rest staged a doomed rearguard action against overwhelming odds. Desmond made it to safety (although his head would adorn London Bridge within the year), but more than half his Gallowglass lay dead in his wake.

FITZWILLIAM MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, UK/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; OPPOSITE: IMAGES FROM WARRIOR #143 GALLOGLASS 1250-1600: GAELIC MERCENARY WARRIOR BY FERGUS CANNAN, © OSPREY PUBLISHING, LTD/ILLUSTRATION BY SEÁN Ó’ BRÓGÁIN (2)

‘Reveling in the chaos of war and repulsed by peace, they combined many of the worst aspects of medieval Scotland and Ireland’

For most Gallowglass life was brutal, bloody and short. Their enemies were legion, and many survived battle only to be slain in roadside ambushes or in their own homes. Those rewarded with land and chattel found it difficult to pursue a farmer’s existence, having grown addicted to the exhilaration of lethal combat. Some chiefs and constables did achieve the Gallowglass’ ultimate objective, enriching themselves with estates and castles bearing their clan names, but they were a fortunate few indeed.

Elizabeth eventually wearied of the incessant rebellions levied by the disparate Irish lords, and her impatience came to encompass the Gallowglass. The line between the mercenaries fighting for the rebellious lords and those serving at Her Majesty’s pleasure grew too indistinct for her comfort. To exacerbate matters, in several instances lords who found themselves at Elizabeth’s mercy treacherously laid the blame for their seditious conduct on their own Gallowglass. Admittedly, the mercenaries—whether serving the queen or the fractious Irish lords—were an unruly lot at best, and in the late 1500s Elizabeth excluded them from both her retinue and her plans to remake Ireland in England’s image. Neither she nor her minions in Dublin saw any further need for the services of the wild Irish Gallowglass. In the last two decades of the 16th century a series of abortive rebellions brought a bloody end to the days of the feudal Irish lords and their Gallowglass clans— the MacSweeneys, MacDonnells, MacSheehys and the rest. English authorities killed many of the mercenaries. Others abandoned Ireland to fight abroad, as had their ancestors centuries before. Those choosing to stay kept their heads down and hands to the plow on small farms or simply blended into the peasantry they had once disdained and whose enforced hospitality they had so long abused. The purge even claimed the “lucky few” who had retired to their estates, as the English took the land to make room for their own kind. With the subjugation of the feudal clan system, the warrior caste that had dominated the battlefields of Ireland for more than three centuries was no more. MH

The Gallowglass earned a reputation for brutality. While adhering to a code of honor of sorts on the battlefield, it did not prevent them from abusing the peasants with whom they billeted (top) or from helping lords they served rustle cattle belonging to rivals (above).

Ron Soodalter is a regular contributor to Military History and the author of Hanging Captain Gordon: The Life and Trial of an American Slave Trader. For further reading he recommends Galloglass, 1250–1600: Gaelic Mercenary Warrior, by Fergus Cannan, and Galloglas: Hebridean and West Highland Mercenary Warrior Kindreds in Medieval Ireland, by John Marsden.

71

Reviews Friends Like These Eisenhower’s Armies: The American-British Alliance During World War II, by Niall Barr, Pegasus Books, New York, N.Y., 2015, $35

Although unique in history, the cooperative relationship between Britain and the United States during World War II was not the wholly harmonious crusade of a band of brothers often portrayed on the History channel. The reality was frequently disagreeable but always entertaining, and Barr, senior lecturer in defense studies at King’s College, London, makes that clear in 500 pages that never flag. Passing lightly over the history of tumultuous relations between the two nations, he pauses for a long chapter on the painful lessons of World War I, during which the Allies didn’t appoint a commander in chief until the last year of the conflict. Thereafter Barr delivers an astute, detailed and engrossing account of how President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill—with their respective chiefs of staff, General George Marshall and Field Marshals Sir John Dill and Alan Brooke —oversaw the formation, training and deployment of their nations’ immense armies across half the world. After the war’s outbreak in 1939, America’s industry and president were helpful, but by 1940 Marshall was

72 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

complaining that military exports were hobbling rearmament. After Pearl Harbor, much secret activity (consultation between military leaders and actual construction of facilities in the United Kingdom) became public. Atop the Allied command structure were the Combined Chiefs of Staff, which established strategy with FDR’s support but much interference from Churchill. Historians, Barr included, largely approve of Maj. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1942 appointment as commander in chief in Europe. Barr makes it clear reality trumped the grand design. Roosevelt and Churchill had agreed to prioritize Germany’s defeat, but the strike on Hawaii turned Americans’ attention toward the Pacific, and the stubbornly anti-

British Admiral Ernest J. King (appointed to the Combined Chiefs in 1942) dug in his heels. As a result the United States ended up devoting equal resources to the fight in the Pacific (where General Douglas MacArthur’s contempt for British and Australian forces went unchecked), but it was wealthy enough to manage. The respective armies and navies preferred to fight separately, as integration of units caused technical and supply difficulties in addition to persistent national biases. Americans disliked British food, while Britons resented U.S. soldiers’ comparatively high salaries and indulgent amenities. American generals tended to dislike their British counterparts and vice versa—never mind Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, whom almost no one except Churchill liked. Few argue Eisenhower handled these personality clashes with aplomb. It’s de rigueur to fill military histories with voices from the ranks, and Barr’s excerpts from personal writings and newspapers are especially revealing. But while national prejudices figure prominently, officers and men were more likely to be amused than repulsed. American-British cooperation from the outset of World War II limited the frustrating

quarrels that had complicated Allied strategy in World War I. Barr never makes a case this shortened the war, but readers will enjoy his detailed, opinionated history of the effective, if surprisingly turbulent, alliance. —Mike Oppenheim The Democratic Soldier: The Life of General Gustave P. Cluseret, by William J. Phalen, Vij Books India, 2016, $17.95 With this book historian Phalen, author of How the Telegraph Changed the World (2014), makes his first foray into military biography, choosing as his subject French-born mercenary Gustave Paul Cluseret, among the many hundreds of obscure American Civil War generals. Phalen suggests Cluseret could have made an excellent general but fell out of favor due to his relentlessly self-serving agenda and endless confrontation with Union Army superiors. Operating from an intense desire to serve those seeking independence, the Frenchman fancied himself a 19th-century Marquis de Lafayette, though in truth he was more the real-life incarnation of Sir Harry Paget Flashman, novelist George MacDonald Fraser’s comically inept anti-hero. Cluseret (subject of “Soldier of Misfortune,” by John Koster, in the September 2015 issue of Military History) was perpetually search-

ing for ways in which to satisfy what he called his “love of gunpowder.” A graduate of Saint-Cyr, France’s foremost military academy, he fought in Algeria and the Crimean War in the 1850s and served with Giuseppe Garibaldi’s Redshirts in Italy in 1860. The next year he sailed for America, offered his services to the Lincoln administration and was appointed an aide-de-camp to Maj. Gen. George McClellan, with the rank of colonel. He rose to the rank of brigadier general but took part in only one battle before resigning in March 1863. He went on to entangle himself in a number of other military misadventures—the 1866– 67 Fenian uprising, the 1871 Paris Commune and the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War —before giving up battle for the often more brutal arena of French politics until his death in 1900. The only real shortcomings of Phalen’s profile are its brevity (100 pages) and the lack of detail regarding Cluseret’s service before the American Civil War. But it offers an interesting glimpse into the life of a true soldier of fortune. —Frank Jastrzembski Fall of the Double Eagle: The Battle for Galicia and the Demise of AustriaHungary, by John R. Schindler, Potomac Books, Lincoln, Neb., 2015, $34.95 With war clouds again looming over Ukraine, Schindler, a former intelligence analyst

with the National Security Agency and professor at the U.S. Naval War College, focuses on events in the region a century ago. In Fall of the Double Eagle he tracks the Austro-Hungarian army from its preparations for World War I through the crushing defeat it suffered at the hands of the Russian army in Galicia in 1914. The central figure in the narrative is Field Marshal Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, the Austro-Hungarian chief of staff and leading war planner. Conrad’s principal mistake from the onset was to plan simultaneous offensives against both Serbia and Russia—a serious miscalculation of the real capabilities of an aging Central European power on the wane. By the 20th century the Austro-Hungarian military lagged well behind its rivals. Aside from its fearsome Skoda 305 mm howitzer, which helped the German army destroy Belgian fortifications, Austro-Hungarian artillery was inferior to that of the Russians and even the Serbs, yet Conrad had done nothing to modernize it, as the country had largely diverted available funds to its navy to construct dreadnaughts. Of the 714 cannon and 54 howitzers set up to defend the fortified city of Przemysl in Austrian Poland, 299 guns dated from 1861. Another prewar shock to the Austro-Hungarian system came on May 25, 1913, when

Colonel Alfred Redl, former head of counterintelligence in the Evidenzbureau (directorate of military intelligence), committed suicide after being exposed as a Russian spy. Among his acts of betrayal had been to deliver Austria’s plan for the invasion of Serbia to the Russians, who promptly forwarded it to the Serbs. Thus, when the Austro-Hungarian Second Army moved against Serbia, leaving behind only one corps, the Serbs were ready, while two-thirds of the Russian army moved against the advancing AustroHungarians in Galicia. Catastrophe was inevitable. In 1931 Churchill summarized the inevitable outcome: “Of all the campaigns that were ever fought, the Austro-Hungarian campaign in Galicia required most of all the use of time. Of all the armies that have ever existed since Hannibal marched into Italy, the Austro-Hungarian army needed the most careful handling. Conrad broke their hearts and used them up in three weeks.” Readers will undoubtedly agree with that conclusion. —Thomas Zacharis The Mathews Men: Seven Bothers and the War Against Hitler’s U-Boats, by William Geroux, Viking Books, New York, N.Y., 2016, $28 In spite of the fact the U.S. Merchant Marine has partic-

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Saladin, by John Man

In this well researched biography Man recounts the life of the iconic Muslim commander, from his birth in Tikrit (in presentday Iraq), through his training under the powerful emir Nur ad-Din, to his uniting of Muslims against Christian forces in the Holy Land, to his establishment of the Ayyubid dynasty.

73

Reviews RECOMMENDED

Paris at War, by David Drake

Drawing on an array of period sources, the author—a specialist in French cultural and intellectual history— relates the dramatic, engrossing story of life in the “City of Light” during five of its most harrowing years, from September 1939, when the war came to France, until the August 1944 liberation of Paris.

Wings of Empire, by Barry Renfrew

At a time when several nations’ air arms are engaged in combat in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria, author Renfrew’s well researched and highly readable book —subtitled The Forgotten Wars of the Royal Air Force, 1919–1939 —provides a timely, sobering examination of the limits of airpower when used against irregular forces.

74 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

ipated in every war fought by the nation from 1775 to present, and that it suffered a higher casualty rate than the military services during World War II, the civilian service always goes unmentioned in Memorial Day and Veterans Day celebrations. Merchant mariners have suffered worse fates, however, than simple disregard. During World War II the seafarers who voluntarily risked their lives to supply the military forces of the United States and its Allies were frequently derided as draft dodgers, war profiteers and political undesirables. Author Geroux was surprised to learn that by 1942 German submarines were regularly sinking ships along the Eastern Seaboard and in the Gulf Coast, and that more American seamen lost their lives off the coast during the first six months of the war than military personnel were killed at Pearl Harbor. That discovery led him to research the wartime activities of the Merchant Marine, which in turn led him to the story of a unique community. Mathews County, Va., is a small, remote municipality on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay with a presentday population around 9,000. It is surrounded on three sides by the bay and connected to the Virginia mainland by roads of such poor quality that most residents prefer to travel by boat. As one resident summed up life there: “There was nothing in Mathews but the

faced each day as a matter of course. —Robert Guttman First Over There: The Attack on Cantigny, America’s First Battle of World War I, by Matthew J. Davenport, Thomas Dunne Books, New York, 2015, $28.99

water. You farmed, you fished the bay, or you went to sea.” Therein lay the core of Geroux’s narrative, the story of a handful of families from a little-known backwater that, incredibly, during World War II produced more shipmasters than any other American community. The Mathews Men follows the numerous mariners who hailed from the county, many of whom were related to one another, including no less than seven captains from the Hodges family and eight from the Callis family. During the course of the war the Mathews Men encountered danger around the world, from the coastal waters of the United States to northern Russia, Brazil to Antwerp, and the Mediterranean to Okinawa. To those hereditary mariners, whose families had been making their living at sea since before the American Revolution, war was simply one more danger added to the hazards they already

Army veteran and attorney Davenport has crafted a rare work of impeccable research, insightful analysis and eloquent prose focused on the U.S. 1st Infantry Division’s May 28, 1918, attack on Germans holding the French village of Cantigny. The division was the first of General John J. Pershing’s fledgling American Expeditionary Forces to land in France, the first to enter the trenches, the first to fight and the first to suffer combat casualties. Davenport argues the victory at Cantigny announced to the world that the tide of war would thereafter flow against the Germans. The battle was a relatively small affair, tolling less than 2,000 combined casualties, but the morale boost to the beleaguered Allied powers and expectant American home front were incalculable. The “Big Red One” would thereafter be at the forefront of U.S. military action, through the November 1918 Armistice, the battles of World War II and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Ably led by Maj. Gen. Robert Lee Bullard, the only

American officer to command a division, a corps and an army on the Western Front, 1st Division included such future generals as George C. Marshall, architect of victory in World War II, and D-Day commanders Theodore Roosevelt Jr. and Clarence Huebner, the latter of whom led the division ashore at Omaha Beach. Davenport’s wonderfully descriptive book includes eight useful maps and 20 photographs, as well as extensive endnotes and a comprehensive bibliography. —William John Shepherd 1916: A Global History, by Keith Jeffery, Bloomsbury Publishing, New York, 2016, $32 While lacking the dramatics of 1914 and 1918, much happened during the second year of World War I. Historians often concentrate on the fighting in France with nods toward Russia and the Middle East. Keith—a professor of British history at Queen’s University Belfast—casts a wider net. Here in chronological order the author presents 12 unrelated but engrossing essays either on the 1916 campaigns or events related to the war that usually, though not always, began that year. In January 1916, for example, the last Allied soldier left Gallipoli. Keith skips the fighting to describe the evacuation, which, unlike the disastrous campaign itself, succeeded brilliantly. February marked the first attack on Verdun. This time Keith pays close attention to the campaign—the last German offensive until the desperate finale two years later. Verdun was that nation’s Gettysburg, a battle the Germans had to win or face defeat by an enemy with superior numbers and resources. It represents the epitome of the awfulness of industrial warfare, and Keith demonstrates that with a brilliant account chock-full of personal recollections from both sides.

March featured the Fifth (of nine) Battle of the Isonzo, on the Adriatic coast just north of Trieste. The combatants in France held a low opinion of the Italian and Austro-Hungarian armies, and subsequent historians have not disagreed, but the slaughter on the Italian front was no less gruesome. Turning to the Easter Rising that April, Keith notes that the opponents in that side match fought with an incompetence matched on the war front, though Ireland ultimately did its part; despite the absence of conscription, nearly one-third of its young men served in the British forces. Military buffs will have little trouble predicting subsequent chapters. May brings Jutland and the war at sea. June the Brusilov offensive and the Eastern Front down to the dramatic

U.S. presidential election in November and Rasputin’s murder in December. July will trip them up, as Keith moves the Somme to September to emphasize its drawn-out miseries. July features a little-known but bloody uprising in Central Asia against Russian recruitment, which serves as an introduction to the immense contribution of India, China, Japan and other Asian nations. Even within these scattershot chapters Keith is not shy about detouring to barely related subjects that capture his interest. The only recurring feature is lively, opinionated, consistently fascinating writing, so few readers will complain. —Mike Oppenheim

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Hallowed Ground Hougoumont g Farm, Waterloo, Belgium

T

he fight for Hougoumont farm was the pivotal battle within the decisive Battle of Waterloo. Château d’Hougoumont itself is a medium-size manor complex on the extreme western flank of the battlefield and at the base of the low ridge atop which the Duke of Wellington formed his defensive line on June 18, 1815. Napoléon centered his forces on La Belle Alliance, an inn complex at the center of a parallel ridge little over a mile south of Wellington’s line. The Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem (aka Knights of Malta) had acquired the 60-acre tract of land at Hougoumont in 1474, and over the succeeding decades the estate passed through many hands. By the time of the battle the complex included the château, a chapel, a large barn and other farm buildings, a formal garden and a gardener’s house, all hemmed in by stout stone walls. Though almost a half-mile forward of Wellington’s line, the complex was an ideal strongpoint on which to anchor his right flank and was the scene of some of the bitterest combat at Waterloo. When Napoléon opened battle around midmorning on the 18th, Hougoumont was among the first points the French forces hit. The emperor’s intent was to draw Wellington’s reserves to the British right flank, and then launch the French main attack through the Allied center, just to the west of the neighboring Haye Sainte farmhouse. Initially defending Hougoumont was a mixed force of British guardsmen and their Hanoverian and Nassau allies, all light troops. Lt. Col. James Macdonnell of the Coldstream Guards was in overall command. During the first assault the British lost control of most of the surrounding woods, but with massive support from the Royal Artillery they managed to beat back the French. A renewed French assault managed to reach the compound’s north gate, sparking one of the more famed clashes of the battle. After a stout French sous-lieutenant named Legros, who went by the moniker l’Enfonceur (“the Smasher”), softened up the barred gate with an ax, some 30 French troops bulled into the compound behind him. Led by Macdonnell, a contingent of guardsmen shoved through to close the gates by brute strength. In the ensuing melee the defenders cut down all the intruders but for a fortunate French drummer boy.

76 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

As Wellington later remarked, “The success of the battle turned upon the closing of the gates at Hougoumont.” The fight for the farmstead continued all day, each side committing ever more troops to the fray. With the British tenaciously holding the main house, Napoléon personally ordered his artillery to set it afire by shelling the manor. Observing the flames from a distance, Wellington dispatched a messenger, ordering its defenders to hold out at all costs. Despite being invested by French infantry and cavalry, Hougoumont remained in British hands. By day’s end Wellington had committed 21 battalions to defending the manor and the narrow connecting corridor to the Allied main line. The French had committed 33 battalions, and Napoléon’s intended diversion had ballooned into a protracted fight that consumed an inordinate amount of French manpower and firepower. More than 6,000 men of both armies fell at Hougoumont. Today the Lion’s Mound, a 141-foot artificial hill raised in 1826, sits about a quarter-mile in front of the Allied main position. Visitors may climb the 226 steps to the top of the mound for excellent views of the battlefield. At its base are the new visitor center and interactive Memorial 1815 museum [waterloo1815.be], opened last year to mark the bicentennial of the battle. Unfortunately, Wellington’s line has been paved over for the most part, with gas stations and shopping centers lining either side of the road. Hougoumont is the most significant surviving feature on the battlefield. Private property at the time of the battle, it remained a working farm until close to the end of the 20th century. In 2003 its owners sold the property to the local historical trust, and volunteers coordinated an extensive restoration effort [projecthougoumont.com], supported by the current Duke of Wellington, writer Bernard Cornwell and the late historian Richard Holmes, among others. The site is well marked with memorial plaques and interpretive signs explaining what happened during key stages of the battle. The restored Great Barn houses an impressive multimedia show about the battle within a battle. Hougoumont was to Waterloo what Little Round Top was to Gettysburg, and it remains a historical treasure. MH

FROM TOP: ARTERRA PICTURE LIBRARY/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; NATIONAL ARMY MUSEUM/MARY EVANS/THE IMAGE WORKS

By David T. Zabecki

The site of intense fighting during the 1815 Battle of Waterloo (above), Hougoumont remained in private hands until 2003. It has since undergone extensive restoration and is now open to visitors.

77

War Games 3 Hugh Gough

2 1

5

Under Foreign Flags Can you match each Irish fighting man to the foreign force in which he served and the year of a notable achievement? 1. Joseph Finegan 2. Antonio O’Kelly 3. Godfrey Banfield 4. Hugh Gough 5. Brendan Finucane 6. Peter O’Brien 7. John Barry 8. George McElroy 9. Peter Lacy 10. Walter Butler ____ A. Russian army, 1719 ____ B. Royal Flying Corps, 1918 ____ C. Confederate army, 1864 ____ D. U.S. Navy, 1797

Equipage à la Hussar

____ E. Austro-Hungarian navy, 1916

A Polish winged hussar had to keep track of far more than just his horse. Can you identify the following gear?

____ F. Spanish army, 1808

____ A. Kopia — His primary weapon, it usually got the point across

____ G. U.S. Army, 1865

____ B. Kolczuga — More protective gear than fashion statement

____ H. Imperial army, 1634

____ C. Skóry lamparcie — More fashion statement than protective gear

____ I. Royal Air Force, 1941

____ D. Skrzydlo — Historians still debate its practical function

____ J. British army, 1846

____ E. Kon Turecki — Nominally Turkish, indisputably essential Answers: A3, B2, C4, D5, E1

Answers: A9, B8, C1, D7, E3, F2, G6, H10, I5, J4

78 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2016

FROM LEFT: PICTURES FROM HISTORY/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; IMAGE FROM WARRIOR #94 POLISH WINGED HUSSAR BY RICHARD BRZEZINSKI, © OSPREY PUBLISHING, LTD/ILLUSTRATION BY VELIMIR VUKSIC; OPPOSITE: LOUIS-CHARLES BOMBLED/AKG-IMAGES

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5. Which Japanese naval victory ultimately had no effect on the Guadalcanal campaign?

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Germany’s Artillery Genius Nathanael Greene’s Game of Posts, 1781 Hard Lesson in

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Foot Patrol British soldiers of the 7th Armored Division based in North Africa in 1941 undergo a routine health inspection. Such checkups helped head off ailments prompted by long marches in the hot sand.

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