Military History 2017-07

American Sieges India vs. Pakistan Crimean Images Antony’s Intrigues WWI Railways Pontiac’s War HistoryNet.com

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34 AMERICAN HISTORY

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Features

Letters 6 News 8

30 His Own Worst Enemy Mark Antony’s star was on the rise in Rome—until Cleopatra pulled down the shades By Richard A. Gabriel

22 Werewolves of Aachen Nazi assassination squads targeted collaborationists as the Third Reich crumbled By Kelly Bell

Departments

2 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2017

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Interview Author Neal Bascomb

Valor He Built, He Fought

On the cover: In March 1945 22-year-old Nazi diehard Ilse Hirsch served as urban scout for a squad of Werewolves, assassins assigned to kill Franz Oppenhoff, mayor of Allied-occupied Aachen, Germany. PHOTO: Bundesarchiv

Reviews 70 War Games 78 Captured! 80

54 Narrow Path to Victory Tiny trains did the giant work of supporting frontline troops in World War I By Steven Trent Smith

48 War in Still Life Photographer Roger Fenton navigated technical challenges to capture the Crimean War By Deborah Stadtler

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62

Turning Point in Kargil

On the Inside Under Fire

Indian soldiers won a hardfought, high-altitude victory in the summer of 1999 By Paraag Shukla

Though lacking castles, moats and armored knights, America has had its share of sieges By Ron Soodalter

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What We Learned From... Operation Michael, 1918

Hardware Krupp 28 cm K5(E) Railway Gun

Hallowed Ground Bushy Run Battlefield, Pennsylvania

OPPOSITE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: BUNDESARCHIV; GRENOBLE MUSEE DE PEINTURE ET SCULPTURE/AKG-IMAGES; RANDY GLASS STUDIO: THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: FAYAZ KABLI; CHRONICLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; DON TROIANI; ROGER FENTON/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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Join the discussion at militaryhistory.com MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER ALEX NEILL EDITOR IN CHIEF

Sky Above, Mud Below Only those who endured the shrieking shells, stagnant water, rats and rotting corpses could truly convey the horrors of World War I trench warfare By Anthony Brandt

I N T HE ARCHIVES :

Mark Antony’s Persian Campaign The Parthian campaign was the turning point in Antony’s fortunes, a disaster from which he never recovered By Glenn Barnett

Interview Brig. Gen. Wilma Vaught (U.S. Air Force, Ret.) helped spearhead the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery

Tools The Norse knarr was a utilitarian

JULY 2017 VOL. 34, NO. 2

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Letters

Ron Soodalter’s excellent piece [“A Yank in the SS,” January 2017] on 1st Lt. Martin Monti’s treason prompted me to look at the record of trial in his courtmartial and his subsequent trial in U.S. District Court. The Army had no idea Monti had joined the Waffen-SS. On the contrary, while some agents who interviewed Monti in 1945 were suspicious of his story about escaping with the help of Italian partisans, his tale was not improbable. He was court-martialed only for desertion and larceny of the P-5E Lightning. As for President Harry S. Truman’s commutation of Monti’s 15-year sentence and his restoration to active duty as an enlisted soldier, this was typical for the immediate post–World War II era. Hundreds of soldiers with lengthy prison sentences for nonviolent offenses were languishing in prisons, and the Army

6 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2017

wanted to reduce its prison population as part of its own demobilization and reorganizing. So Monti’s restoration to active duty was not at all uncommon. The interesting story is his prosecution in U.S. District Court in New York. According to the court records in Monti’s federal prosecution, Monti’s decision to plead guilty was not a surprise. After Monti’s two defense lawyers (both of whom were highly respected) reviewed all the government’s evidence, they advised their client there was overwhelming proof of treason, and he would be found guilty if he proceeded to a fullblown trial. Additionally, they told Monti that his status as an Army officer was such an aggravating factor, he would probably receive a death sentence, or at least a life sentence. But Monti’s lawyers had learned from off-the-record conversations with the prosecutor

U-Boats I read with interest “Tightrope Walker,” by John Koster, in the July 2016 issue, since my father served on the destroyer escort USS Herbert C. Jones in the spring of 1945. In the article Koster states on P. 25 that USS PE-56 was the last warship sunk by direct enemy action during the Battle of the Atlantic. In fact, the destroyer escort USS Frederick C. Davis was torpedoed and sunk on April 24, 1945, the day after PE-56 was sunk. Davis and Jones were part of a hunter/killer group searching for U-boats that fateful day. The rest of the group depth charged U-546 and brought it to the surface, rescuing some of the crew. My father told me that crewmen on his ship had to be restrained from attacking the U-boat’s survivors, as they had friends on Davis. Ladislas Fargo mentions the incident in his 1986 work The Tenth Fleet, about the Navy’s intelligence unit during World War II.

Those interested in the “Little Ships,” the destroyer escorts, may want to visit USS Slater [ussslater.org], a restored destroyer escort moored on the Hudson River at Albany, N.Y. Wayne Wolff NEW FREEDOM, PA.

OSS Operative In the May 2017 news item on OSS veterans [“OSS Veterans Receive Congressional Gold Medal”]: You left out well-known author Walter Lord. Lord wrote the first comprehensive books on the Pearl Harbor attack and Titanic sinking plus many other books Stan Cohen MISSOULA, MONT. Editor responds: Truth be told, we simply ran out of room to mention all the notables who served with the OSS during the war. Baltimore native Walter Lord Jr. started as an OSS code clerk in 1942 and by war’s end rose to become the agency’s secretariat. He is perhaps best known for his 1955 nonfiction best seller A Night to Remember, which was adapted into the eponymous 1958 film. Lord also served as a consultant on James Cameron’s 1997 epic Titanic. The secret agent turned author died in 2002. Send letters to Editor, Military History HistoryNet 1919 Gallows Road, Suite 400 Vienna, VA 22182-4038 or via e-mail to [email protected] Please include name, address and phone number

BETTMANN VIA GETTY IMAGES

Yank in the SS

and the trial judge that if their client pleaded guilty to treason and threw himself on the mercy of the court, he would probably get 30 years in jail. When Monti in fact got 25 years in jail, it was clear his defense lawyers had given him good advice. Fred L. Borch III Regimental Historian & Archivist U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s School CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA.

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On April 6 the National World War I Museum and Memorial [theworldwar.org] in Kansas City hosted a national commemoration to mark the United States’ 1917 entry into World War I. Dubbed “In Sacrifice for Liberty and Peace,” the event was organized by the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission [worldwar1centennial.org] as part of its broader five-year mission to commemorate the war. Slated to attend at press time were President Donald J. Trump and cabinet members, congressional and military leaders, state governors, veteran groups, descendants of World War I veterans, and other dignitaries and VIPs. Also invited were heads of state from the onetime combatant nations, friend and foe. Invitees were asked to read excerpts of wartime speeches, reportage, literature and poetry. The ceremony also included period music, flyovers by U.S. planes and the Patrouille de France flight

demonstration team, color guard and ceremonial units, and video presentations. The twofold catalyst for America’s entry into the war was Germany’s attempt to forge a military alliance with Mexico in January 1917 and its resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare a month later. On April 2 President Woodrow Wilson, having kept the United States neutral for nearly three years, finally called on Congress to declare war. Four days later lawmakers did just that. In late June the first 14,000 doughboys landed in France. The war profoundly shaped the U.S. military, particularly in size: At its 1914 outbreak the standing Army numbered fewer than 200,000 soldiers, while by war’s end on Nov. 11, 1918, it had swelled to more than 4 million strong. Some 116,000 American soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and servicewomen died in the war.

‘The world must be made safe for democracy’ — President Woodrow Wilson, addressing Congress on April 2, 1917 8 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2017

ULLSTEIN BILD/GETTY IMAGES

AMERICANS MARK CENTENNIAL OF U.S. ENTRY INTO WORLD WAR I

WAR RECORD

WWI Museum Reveals Posters As part of its centennial offerings the National World War I Museum and Memorial [theworld war.org] in Kansas City has opened “Posters as Munitions, 1917,” spotlighting the prolific use of posters as wartime propaganda. The exhibit includes examples from the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy, underscoring the cultural differences in each nation’s visual approach and ideological strategy. The exhibit runs through Feb. 18, 2018.

Memoir From SEAL Who Shot Bin Laden

FROM LEFT: WALTER HINICK/THE MONTANA STANDARD; ASSOCIATED PRESS

Former U.S. Navy SEAL Robert O’Neill—the selfadmitted shooter who killed al-Qaida founder Osama bin Laden during a May 2, 2011, raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan—has published his memoir,

The Operator, which details a career spanning some 400 missions. Notably, O’Neill [robertj oneill.com] also helped rescue fellow SEAL Marcus Luttrell (Lone Survivor) in Afghanistan in 2005 and Captain Richard Phillips of the MV Maersk Alabama from Somali pirates in 2009.

June 9, 1999 The Indian air force steps up high-altitude bombing runs in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, targeting infiltrating Pakistani forces during the Kargil War (see P. 38).

June 22, 1945 Soviet troops round up more than 600 suspected Nazi partisans known as “Werewolves” (see P. 22) within Germany’s postwar Soviet occupation zone. The suspects— mostly boys aged 15 to 17—are either executed or imprisoned.

HAL MOORE, 94, HERO OF WE WERE SOLDIERS Retired Lt. Gen. Harold G. “Hal” Moore, 94, celebrated U.S. commander during the 1965 Battle of Ia Drang, Vietnam, died on February 10 in Auburn, Ala. A West Point graduate, Moore is best remembered as the lieutenant colonel who led the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, during the fierce four-day clash on Nov. 14–18, 1965, managing to hold off an enemy force more than twice his unit’s size while inflicting four times as many casualties. Moore was later immortalized in the book We Were Soldiers Once…and Young, which he co-wrote with friend and former war correspondent Joe Galloway. Actor Mel Gibson portrayed Moore in the 2002 film adaptation of the book.

BELGIUM RECALLS COSTLY PASSCHENDAELE OFFENSIVE Belgians will hold events in West Flanders this summer to mark the centennial of the 1917 Battle of Passchendaele (aka Third Ypres), a threemonth campaign that claimed the lives of more than a half-million Allied and German troops. The program [passchendaele100.org] includes a Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing [lastpost.be/ en/home] in Ypres on July 30—anniversary of the eve of battle—followed by live events in town. On July 31 the Tyne Cot Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery and Memorial to the Missing [cwgc.org]—resting place of nearly 12,000 of Passchendaele’s dead—will host the main ceremony.

July 10, 1855 Russian Admiral Pavel Nakhimov, commander of naval and land forces at the 1854–55 Siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War (see P. 48), is mortally wounded by a sniper while inspecting forward positions on the Malakhov-Kurgan ridge.

July 23, 1757 Amid the buildup to the siege of Fort William Henry (see P. 62) in New York a force of French troops and allied Indians ambush 350 British provincials on the shore of Lake George, killing or capturing some 250 of them.

July 31, 30 BC Forces under Mark Antony (see P. 30) initially repel Octavian’s Romans at the Battle of Alexandria, Egypt, during the Final War of the Roman Republic. But Antony’s army ultimately collapses, and he falls on his sword.

9

News Napoléonic Flag to Go on Display

Philadelphia’s long-anticipated Museum of the American Revolution [amrevmuseum.org] opens its doors on April 19, anniversary of the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord (aka “the shot heard round the world”). Two blocks from iconic Independence Hall, the 118,000-square-foot museum boasts immersive exhibits, re-created historical scenes and some 3,000 period artifacts, including weapons, personal objects, art and printed works. Themed galleries trace the chronology of the revolution and its aftermath, from “The Road to Independence” (1760–75) to “The Darkest Hour” (1776–78), “A Revolutionary War” (1778–83) and “A New Nation” (1783–present). Among the jewels of the collection is a campaign tent used by George Washington at Valley Forge during the brutal winter of 1777–78. The centerpiece of a mixed-media exhibit, it stands pitched as it would have appeared in the field, albeit in a sealed glass chamber within a dedicated 100-seat theater. Structural engineers designed an umbrellalike aluminum and fabric structure to support the fragile artifact. The tent was likely made in Reading, Pa., in early 1778 and used as a mobile command center up through the decisive 1781 Siege of Yorktown. The museum will place on rotating display some 500 items at a time from its collection. Highlights include Washington’s 13-star headquarters flag and silver camp cups; sculptor and Revolutionary War veteran William Rush’s 1817 bust of Washington, said by contemporaries to bear a striking resemblance to the commander; a King James Bible carried at the 1775 Battle of Bunker Hill by American soldier Francis Merrifield, who inscribed it with thanks to God for sparing his life; and a creamware mug that still smells of the rum it once held. The museum is at 101 S. 3rd St. Timed tickets run $19 for adults and $12 for youths aged 6–18. Admission is free for museum members and children 5 and under.

‘’Tis done! We have become a nation’ —Pennsylvania delegate Benjamin Rush, on ratification of the Constitution, 1788 10 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2017

SIG M17 Is New Army Sidearm The U.S. Army has awarded Swiss-German firearms manufacturer SIG Sauer [sigsauer. com] a $580-million contract for its 9 mm M17 (the military version of its P320 compact pistol), to replace the Beretta M9, in use since 1985. The selection follows a two-year, $17-million search involving a dozen contestants. The initial 280,000 M17s will cost the Army just $217 each.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION; NORFOLK MUSEUM SERVICE/BNPS; SIG SAUER GMBH

MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION OPENS IN PHILLY

This summer the Norwich Castle Museum [museums.norfolk.gov. uk] in Norfolk, England, will display one of the oldest surviving French Tricolor flags—an impressive 52-by-27-foot banner captured from the French ship of the line Généreux at the Feb. 18, 1800, Battle of the Malta Convoy. Victorious British Rear Admiral Horatio Nelson gifted the war trophy to his hometown of Norfolk. The restored flag will be on view from July 29 to October 1.

News Britain Reopens Army Museum

U.S. Retires F-4 Phantom The Air Force has retired the last active duty planes of more than 5,000 McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers to have served the Air Force, Navy and Ma-

rines over the past half-century. Introduced in 1960, the Phantom became a Vietnam workhorse and was the only jet used by both the Air Force Thunderbirds and Navy Blue Angels flight demonstration teams.

12 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2017

As commanders have often learned the hard way, weather can wholly alter the outcome of a mission. Witness the following interventions by Mother Nature:

Kamikaze

VIRGINIA TRANSFORMS YORKTOWN MUSEUM Virginia’s American Revolution Museum at Yorktown [historyisfun.org] celebrated its recent launch with 13 days of events commemorating the original colonies. The former Yorktown Victory Center combines indoor exhibits and outdoor living history—including its expanded Continental Army encampment and Revolution-era farm—to present the war from a national perspective. Its new galleries encompass five major themes: “The British Empire and America,” “The Changing Relationship—Britain and North America,” “Revolution,” “The New Nation” and “The American People.” The 20-minute introductory film Liberty Fever screens throughout the day in its 170-seat theater.

TRUST PRESERVES PRINCETON ACREAGE The Civil War Trust [civilwar.org] has added nearly 15 acres to New Jersey’s Princeton Battlefield State Park [state.nj.us/dep/parksand forests/parks/princeton.html], site of George Washington’s pivotal 1777 victory. The January 3 battle came at a turning point in the American Revolutionary War, capping a 10-day winter campaign that began on Christmas Day 1776 with Washington’s crossing of the Delaware River and subsequent rout of the Hessian garrison in Trenton. The trust paid $4 million for the 14.85-acre site, which comprises much of Maxwell’s Field, scene of the decisive Patriot counterattack.

In 1274 and 1281 tsunamis wiped out Mongol fleets under Kublai Khan as they sailed to invade Japan. The grateful Japanese dubbed the storms kamikaze, or “divine wind.” During World War II they bestowed suicide pilots with the same moniker.

Typhoon Cobra This December 1944 storm (aka Halsey’s Typhoon) struck the U.S. Pacific Fleet under Admiral William “Bull” Halsey Jr. in the Philippine Sea, sinking three destroyers, damaging nine other ships, wrecking more than 100 aircraft and drowning 790 men.

Atomic Bombing of…Kokura? On Aug. 9, 1945, the U.S. Army Air Forces B-29 Bockscar, carrying the atomic bomb Fat Man, took off from Tinian Island bound for the Japanese city of Kokura. But due to cloud cover Bockscar had to divert to its secondary target, Nagasaki.

Russian Winter After capturing Moscow in fall 1812 but failing to clinch victory, retreating French forces under Napoléon took a beating from both enemy troops and the Russian winter. Of the nearly 700,000 invaders, fewer than 100,000 made it home.

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: MCDONNELL DOUGLAS; AMERICAN REVOLUTION MUSEUM; YALE UNIVERSITY

The National Army Museum [nam.ac. uk] in London has reopened after a threeyear, nearly £24-million renovation. The reconfigured building in Chelsea presents more than 2,500 artifacts in five themed galleries—“Soldier,” “Army,” “Battle,” “Society” and “Insight.” Other offerings include a temporary exhibition space, a study center, a learning center, a café, a shop and a children’s educational play area. Museum officials expect annual visitation to reach 400,000 by 2026.

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Interview Livingg History With Neal Bascomb

New York Times best-selling author Neal Bascomb’s nonfiction narratives run the gamut from The Perfect Mile (2004), recounting the race to break the four-minute barrier, to his recent The Winter Fortress (2016), which follows the lives of Norwegian engineers and spies who, despite the constant threat of death, thwarted Germany’s plans to build the first atomic bomb, thus helping to secure Allied victory in World War II. Bascomb’s work has been featured in documentaries, optioned for film and TV and adapted into young adult novels. He recently spoke with Military History about his new book, the importance of good research and the lessons of history.

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What intrigues you most about your subjects? It’s absolutely the people—their stories, their arcs, how they change over the course of a situation, story or event. For instance, in the story of the sabotage of the German atomic bomb program you have scientists like Leif Tronstad, who basically had no military experience and over the course of the war transformed himself into this spymaster. It’s fascinating to figure out how he managed to do that, what motivated him, the challenges he faced and how he changed over the course of the war. Did you experience any revelations while researching the book? One of the most fascinating experiences was to go out to the countryside with the sons of the saboteurs to where the Norwegians conducted their operations. We stayed in their

cabins, I skied in their old skis, I shot their guns, I froze my ass off, and I got a tiny little glimpse of the challenges in the weather and terrain they had to navigate. That informed the writing beyond measure. Explain your approach to research. Primary source material is everything. I want to know what people were thinking, what they were feeling, what they were experiencing— the visceral details of how their stories unfolded. It’s human. So it’s less to me about the grand arcs of military history. What I try to get at in these books is that these were everyday people. The heroes of The Winter Fortress did not emerge from the womb in capes and boots. They were people with fears and challenges, with moments where they wanted to give up. You can’t really write about those moments unless you have material saying that’s what they were thinking. Research is about finding those moments. Does any one topic have a hold on you? I don’t want to call myself indiscriminate, but I’m sort of always in love with the story I’m telling, and they are in different realms. For me that’s part of the thrill—that I don’t just write about World War II, or about sports or any other of a range of subjects. It keeps the writing fresh, the stories fresh. However, it is harder, because every time I start a new book, I’m essentially learning a whole new field. If I just

RANDY GLASS STUDIOS

What sparks your interest in a particular subject? It’s really the stories themselves rather than necessarily military history or the range of other subjects I write about. It is the individuals who have experienced these remarkable events, played their roles in it, and plumbing what their motivations were and how they persevered. Most of my stories are about people doing remarkable things, and obviously in military history you have a great deal of that. I think this story [The Winter Fortress] of the Norwegians and the special operations they performed was a testament to that.

Bascomb’s The Winter Fortress relates how Norwegian saboteurs, seeking to thwart Germany’s atomic bomb designs, set out to destroy the Vemork heavy water plant.

wrote about World War I, for example, it would be a lot easier.

MUSEUMSYNDICATE.COM

You chose a World War I POW escape story for your next book. What can readers expect? I think that of all my books this one has the most compelling cast of characters. One soldier I’m writing about is Will Harvey, a soldier-poet, and his journey from war hero to prisoner—someone in the deepest levels of despair—to how he emerged from the Holzminden POW camp. The individual stories you have here, in sort of the Alcatraz of Germany during World War I, are fascinating. It has all these quirky, interesting characters, as well as the schemes and plots the soldiers put together in order to pull off this escape. Did that escape have any bearing on World War II’s “Great Escape”? They are intimately tied together. After

the war one of the individuals who was part of the Holzminden escape, a pilot named Bennett, volunteered to be part of the newly formed MI9, the World War II British escape and evasion service. Throughout the war he traveled in secret to air bases to meet with pilots and other crews and give them lessons on how to escape if they got shot down. So the great tunnel of World War II was in every way a child of Holzminden. Is there an untapped subject you’d particularly like to cover? I have trouble looking beyond what I’m doing now, but I am interested in doing something more contemporary. As much as I love the period details and culture of this World War I story, so much power comes from being able to actually interview people, something not available to me in this latest book. I would love to be able to do something that’s happened within the last few years.

Who are your favorite military historians? Stephen Ambrose is one, but I’m also influenced by other writers. One of my favorites is Tom Wolfe. The ability to get into a scene, a moment and a culture is something Wolfe did brilliantly in his military history The Right Stuff. A number of writers are on my shelf, so I hate to pick one over the other. What lessons does history teach us? I’ll put it in terms of The Winter Fortress: These saboteurs were not unalloyed heroes at the start. Few of them had any military background or training. Their country was invaded, and they decided they needed to fight for their country and for their freedom. What I hope people come away with is exactly that—that ordinary people can do extraordinary things if they are properly motivated and rise to the occasion. The book is about how that process happens and what exactly motivates people. MH

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Valor He Built, He Fought

Washington-born Marvin Shields lived out the Seabee motto: “We Build, We Fight.”

In the waning minutes of June 9, 1965, the sound of incoming mortar shells broke the calm near Dong Xoai, a village at a crossroads between the Cambodian border and Saigon where a U.S. Army Special Forces detachment was training three South Vietnamese Civilian Irregular Defense Force companies. As an estimated 2,000 Viet Cong (VC) attacked, the 11 Green Berets took up arms alongside their South Vietnamese allies and nine members of Seabee Technical Assistance Team 1104, a Naval Mobile Construction Battalion unit tasked to improve the camp’s defenses. The Seabees had been crafting and maintaining vital structures to support U.S. combat operations since World War II. The junior-ranking Seabee at Dong Xoai was Construction Mechanic 3rd Class Marvin Glenn Shields, a 25-year-old from Washington state whose reputation for diligence and selflessness had earned him the final slot on the elite team. Despite sustaining serious shrapnel wounds to his neck and back, Shields spent the next several hours running between the camp’s ammunition stores and the dug-in defenders, supplying the rounds to fend off the attack. By 2:30 a.m. on the 10th the VC had breached the camp’s defenses, forcing the Americans and their allies to fall back to the government headquarters building under heavy fire. Shields helped carry the immobilized senior U.S. officer. The men continued to fight from the surrounded building, but as dawn broke a VC .30-caliber machine gun about 150 yards to the south had them all gripping the concrete floor, unable to defend their position. Second Lt. Charles Williams, acting commander of the Green Berets, asked for a volunteer to help him knock out the enemy gun. Shields, who’d since taken a bullet to the jaw, raised his hand without hesitation.

Marvin G. Shields U.S. Navy Seabees Medal of Honor Vietnam June 10, 1965

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Williams and Shields sprinted across nearly 30 yards of open field with a rocket launcher before kneeling amid cover to load and fire. With a single shot they destroyed the enemy gun, but on the race back to the HQ building both were wounded, with Shields’ right leg nearly severed at the thigh. Two of his buddies dragged him the short distance into the building where, though unable to wield a weapon, he continued to toss ammunition to those still firing. Around midmorning the fog lifted, air support and reinforcements arrived, and a pair of UH-1 Huey helicopters evacuated most of the besieged Americans. Sadly, Shields died en route. In June 2015, on the 50th anniversary of the battle, former Lt. j.g. Frank Peterlin, the officer in charge of STAT 1104, remarked on his team’s bravery in one of the earliest major engagements between U.S. and communist forces in Vietnam. “These men never asked to be recognized with medals and newspaper articles, only to be measured by the work that was requested and accomplished by their Seabee motto: We Build, We Fight,” he said. “All gave beyond request.” Indeed, the 20 Americans received between them 20 Purple Hearts, nine Bronze Stars with Combat “V,” six Silver Stars, three Distinguished Service Crosses and two Medals of Honor—one for Williams and one for Shields, the only Seabee ever to receive the nation’s highest award for valor in combat. In presenting the medal to Shields’ widow and 2-year-old daughter in September 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson described Shields as “a new kind of fighting man, forged and tempered in a new kind of war… [who] spent his life generously for his country and for his friends.” MH

U.S. NAVY

By Jessica Wambach Brown

What We Learned From... Operation Michael, 1918 By David T. Zabecki

B

y spring 1918 American forces were pouring into France in significant numbers, so on March 21 Germany launched Operation Michael, the lead attack of a four-stage offensive known as the Kaiserschlacht (“Emperor’s Battle”). Its intent was to push the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) into the English Channel before the Americans could tip the strategic advantage irrevocably. With the British neutralized, the French would almost certainly collapse before enough U.S. troops arrived, and Germany might even achieve outright victory in World War I. The German plan called for an attack by 67 divisions under three field armies: the Seventeenth in the north, Second in the center and Eighteenth in the south. Spearheading the attack was the Second. The Seventeenth was to secure the northward pivot of the Second, as the latter sought to roll up the BEF’s flank from the south. The Eighteenth had the tertiary mission of splitting the British and French armies south of the Somme and preventing the French from moving reinforcements north. The three armies were initially under Army Group Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria. At the last minute, however, General Erich Ludendorff, the first vice chief of staff of the German army, put the Eighteenth under Army Group German Crown Prince, commanded by Kaiser Wilhelm II’s son, also named Wilhelm. Following the greatest artillery barrage in history thus far, the Germans surged forward. The British reeled, their southernmost Fifth Army practically disintegrating. While stunning, however, the results didn’t match Ludendorff’s intended scheme of maneuver. The Second and Seventeenth Armies made the least progress, while the supporting attack of the Eighteenth made the most. Ludendorff shifted the main effort to the latter and channeled reinforcements in that direction. Unfortunately for him, there was no decisive operational objective in that sector.

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Another flaw in the German plan was that Ludendorff should have targeted the BEF’s logistics network. The choke point was the railway hub at Amiens, through which traveled almost all the BEF’s north-south rail traffic. Had the British lost it, they would have had to evacuate the continent. By the time Operation Michael ended on April 5, the Germans had achieved the greatest gains of any single attack of the war. It was a huge tactical success—but a total operational failure. The Germans had gotten within 10 miles of Amiens but failed to take it. They had also added 33 miles to their front lines, which they had to man. Finally, they had suffered 240,000 irreplaceable casualties. The Allies had suffered slightly more, but by then the U.S. Army was landing some 300,000 troops a month into France.

Lessons: Maintain unity of command. By putting two armies under one army group and a third under another army group, Ludendorff unnecessarily complicated the command structure. Weight the main effort. Ludendorff initially allocated too many divisions and too much artillery to the tertiary attack by the Eighteenth Army under the kaiser’s son. Attack pivot points, not men. Avoid a force-on-force battle if you can instead exploit a critical enemy vulnerability. Don’t reinforce failure, but… At the tactical level this is a sound principle. At the operational level, though, it is far more complicated to shift the necessary forces and logistical support on time. As with many things in war, it depends on the situation. MH

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The Kaiserschlacht was Germany’s last chance to win World War I.

©Hawthorne Village.

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Forward platform truck Tube travel rest Equilibrator Recuperator Trunnion Breech Control panel Cartridge cradle Ammunition trolley Exhaust for auxiliary generator Auxiliary generator compartment Ammunition loading crane

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Weight: 240 tons Overall length: 98 feet (travel) 105 feet (combat) Barrel length: 70 feet 8 inches Bore: 283 mm Elevation: 50 degrees Traverse: 2 degrees Muzzle velocity: 3,675 feet per second Maximum firing range: 40 miles Rate of fire: 15 rounds per hour

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NEW VANGUARD 231, RAILWAY GUNS OF WORLD WAR II/OSPREY PUBLISHING LTD.

Hardware Krupp 28 cm K5(E) Railway Gun By Jon Guttman Illustration by Peter Dennis

F

irst proposed in the late 1840s, the railway gun didn’t see combat until the American Civil War. By World War I all major combatants on the Western and Eastern fronts were using these weapons, the size of the guns they could transport more than compensating for their limited mobility. In the lead-up to World War II Nazi Germany’s general obsession with advanced “wonder weapons” led to manufacture of the 1,490-ton Schwerer Gustav siege cannon, capable of firing an 80 cm shell up to 29 miles. The Germans only built two such monsters, but they also fielded 25 of the smaller but still formidable Krupp 28 cm Kanone 5(E) guns—the E signifying Eisenbahnlafette (“iron railway”). These fired 562-pound shells containing either 67 or 98 pounds of TNT. A later version, the K5Vz, fired a rocket-assisted shell with 31 pounds of explosive. Its limited traverse required the K5 to operate along curved stretches of track, from a cross-track or from a

Vögele turntable, if available. Late in the war the Germans tried to free the K5 from the rails by replacing its two pairs of 12-wheel bogies with two modified Tiger II tank chassis, but the war ended before they could field-test the concept. Germany stationed eight of the K5s in France, including three along the English Channel for use against Allied shipping, although they proved unsuccessful. An elusive gun the Allies dubbed “Anzio Annie” bedeviled the Italian beachhead until landing troops tracked down not one but two such weapons, named Leopold and Robert, on a railroad siding in Civitavecchia on June 7, 1944. German gun crews had done extensive damage to Robert. Leopold fared better, and after being shipped stateside and displayed at Maryland’s Aberdeen Proving Ground, it was moved to its present home at the U.S. Army Ordnance Training and Heritage Center [www.goordnance.army.mil/OTHC] at Fort Lee, Va. A second gun survives at the Todt Battery Museum [batterietodt.com] in Audinghen, France. MH

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An elderly German woman sobs as U.S. troops march into Aachen in late October 1945. The ruined city soon became a wholly different sort of battleground.

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In late 1944, as the noose cinched around the Third Reich, the Nazis formed assassination squads to target collaborationists and the Allies alike By Kelly Bell ULLSTEIN BILD/AKG-IMAGES

WEREWOLVES OF AACHEN 23

J

oseph Goebbels had spread his lies well. By the autumn of 1944 Germans of all stations and inclinations were convinced their country was about to be overrun by bloodlusting barbarians from both East and West. Goebbels was a masterful propaganda minister, able to convince many listeners his every word was fearful truth. The atrocities of the Soviet Union’s vengeful Red Army were already making headlines in Germany, and when U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. announced his punitive plan for administering postwar Germany, Goebbels made the most of this, too. Morgenthau proposed dismantling German industry and refashioning the country based on agriculture. Observers realized his plan to create a “pastoral state” would be utterly insufficient to support Germany’s estimated postwar population of 65 million, and Goebbels hammered home that point. That Morgenthau was Jewish was a bonus bit of propaganda the “Poison Dwarf” made certain to deafeningly exploit. Thus as the Allies bore down on the German frontier, they encountered increasingly fanatical resistance. On October 2 U.S. Lt. Gen. Courtney Hodges’ First Army besieged Aachen—the first German city directly attacked by Allied ground troops—and the Americans were shocked at the defenders’ ferocity. Not until October 21 did First Army units secure the urban wasteland that in the Middle Ages had been de facto capital of the Holy Roman empire.

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Joseph Goebbels

Although little remained of Aachen, civilians began trickling back to the charred rubble of their city, determined to rebuild and start over. The occupying authorities had the same idea. They needed someone competent and trustworthy to oversee the daunting task of resurrecting the medieval metropolis and guiding it into the post-Nazi modern era. They hoped to find a local who understood Aachen and was also politically acceptable to the occupying forces. When American officers asked Catholic Bishop Johannes Joseph van der Velden who was the best man for the job, the cleric instantly responded, “Oppenhoff!”

Franz Oppenhoff dearly loved his country but never had much use for the Nazis. He had been one of very few trial lawyers in prewar Germany willing to represent those indicted for anti-Nazi inclinations, and his zesty defense of such clients had branded him as one of them, garnering him a thick file at the local Gestapo headquarters. When war came, his unconcealed detestation of Nazism had put him at certain risk of passage aboard a cattle car to Dachau. But he had abandoned his law practice and cleverly taken a draft-exempt position as an executive with the Veltrup armament works in Aachen. By involving himself in a wartime industry and becoming proficient at it, he had hoped to make himself invulnerable to arrest, though his enemies kept trying. The final attempt by party authorities to draft Oppenhoff (this time into a Luftwaffe anti-aircraft unit) came in early September 1944 when he was 42 years old. Determined to remain a civilian, he fled his beloved home-

DUTCH NATIONAL ARCHIVES; BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

Henry Morgenthau Jr.

PNA ROTA/GETTY IMAGES

town just ahead of Hodges’ forces. He was living with his family in nearby Eupen, Belgium, when the Allies asked whether he would accept appointment as Bürgermeister (mayor) of Aachen and oversee its reconstruction. Ever the ambitious optimist, Oppenhoff agreed. Days later newspapers covering the unfolding situation in Aachen reached the German legation in Madrid, which forwarded the news to Berlin. When Adolf Hitler and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler learned a collaborationist civil government was administering Aachen, the Führer flew into one of his customary rages. The treasonous puppet must be eliminated, Hitler screamed. Himmler would see to it. As a typically frosty November broke over bleeding northern Europe, Himmler busily drew up plans for an organization he imagined would not only assassinate Oppenhoff but also bedevil the invading Allies. The

A three-man reconnaissance patrol from the U.S. 1st Infantry Division moves through Thimister, Belgium, some 15 miles southwest of Aachen.

Reichsführer selected General der Waffen-SS Hans-Adolf Prützmann to put together a team to kill Oppenhoff. Himmler dubbed the commandos “Werewolves,” a reference to the 1910 Hermann Löns novel Der Wehrwolf, in which Saxon peasants during the Thirty Years’ War form militias to repel marauding invaders. Prützmann was a war criminal many times over. From June through November 1941 he had arranged the murders of tens of thousands of Latvian Jews. Knowing the Soviets had a hangman’s noose waiting for him, Prützmann realized he could only stave off death as long as Germany remained in the war. Such motivation made him the perfect man to marshal the Reich’s remaining resources in a desperate attempt to check the Allied

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Werewolf Tracks

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teammates, Hirsch—a onetime member of the girls’ league of the Hitler Youth—was an unrepentant Nazi with few qualms about killing a turncoat countryman. She would be invaluable to the mission, as would the unit’s second, even younger scout. Sixteen-year-old Erich Morgenschweiss appeared as innocuous and disarming as a child. But after years of Hitler Youth brainwashing he was as eager to pull a trigger as his older comrades. The last two operatives were guides who would lead the killers from their drop zone into Aachen. Georg Heidorn had served in the area as an SS border patrolman and was familiar with every inch of the terrain. He was a dashing type with a jutting chin and deep-set, piercing eyes. Ostensibly willing as any to kill for his Führer, it would come to light he was nowhere near as courageous as he looked. Karl-Heinz Hennemann was the polar opposite of Heidorn. No one regarding his sagging jowls, perpetually agape mouth and overhanging forehead would dream that beneath his Neanderthal exterior hummed a mind full of energy, determination, nerve and cunning. He appeared a dullard but was actually a calculating, capable and ruthless soldier. Every member of Operation Carnival realized from the outset the Allies would likely regard Oppenhoff’s assassination as murder and those who perpetrated it as war criminals. Were they captured and their objective discovered, they would likely receive the same treatment as English-speaking fellow commandos who had donned captured British and U.S. uniforms and parachuted behind Allied lines during the Battle of the Bulge: Those captured had been hastily court-martialed, tied to stakes and shot. Yet none of the Werewolves backed out or deserted.

Not until early March 1945 did the Werewolves complete their training, mission briefing, scouting and other assorted preparations.

FROM LEFT: BUNDESARCHIV; FILMINSPECTOR.COM; BUNDESARCHIV

juggernaut. Thanks to Goebbels’ propaganda-sown, nationwide xenophobia, Prützmann had little trouble finding volunteers for his first Werewolf operation. In a whirlwind recruiting campaign he collected almost 5,000 young militants by year’s end and established a clandestine Modeled after a medieval training complex in medieval Hülchrath wolf trap, the Wolfsangel Castle, some 45 miles northeast of Aachen. (above) was a common The surrounding village was not only isoGerman heraldic charge. lated, but also conveniently near the WestThe Nazi Party and various ern Front, where the battered Allies were Waffen-SSS units adopted soon embroiled in the Battle of the Bulge the symbol, as did the and unlikely to launch any major offenWerewolves, drawing inspiration from its use sives before spring. Just after Christmas, by the resistance fighter Prützmann and his officers code-named protagonist in Hermann the Aachen mission Operation Carnival Löns’ novel Der Wehrwolf. and began selecting a team. Chosen to command the squad was 30-something SS-Untersturmführer (lieutenant) Herbert Wenzel, who, perhaps to make himself difficult to track in postwar Europe, gave each of his fellow operatives a different account of his background and wartime service. None was likely true, and Wenzel indeed soon proved adept at vanishing without a trace. Second-in-command was massive SS-Unterscharführer (sergeant) Joseph Leitgeb from Innsbruck. The hulking blond Austrian was around 30 and reportedly not too bright. Still, he was surprisingly resourceful, blindly obedient and utterly fearless. A battle-tested veteran of the Russian front, he was a natural pick as an assassin. Before the war 22-year-old Ilse Hirsch had lived in Aachen, and her familiarity with the city would make her a first-rate urban scout. As a woman, she was also less likely to be arrested by U.S. Army patrols more suspicious of military-age men wandering the streets. Like her

JOHN FLOREA/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

Heinrich Himmler (opposite left) set in motion the operation to kill Franz Oppenhoff. Ilse Hirsch (opposite middle, on the cover of a 1940 Nazi Party magazine) was chosen for her familiarity with Aachen. Werewolf chief Hans-Adolf Prützmann (opposite left) arranged the team’s infiltration into the war-torn city (right).

Their plan was relatively straightforward: After parachuting into the Belgian countryside near the village of Gemmenich, they would move to their first base camp in dense woodlands along the German-Belgian frontier southwest of Aachen. Morgenschweiss and Hirsch would enter town and search for their target. After pinpointing Oppenhoff and memorizing his daily schedule, they would pass the information to Wenzel and Leitgeb. Following the assassination, the team would make their way east toward friendly lines. They were to stick to the plan even if separated. Traveling strictly at night, they would hide in foresters’ and game wardens’ cabins during daylight. All carried forged papers identifying them as members of the Reich’s Organisation Todt labor force. If captured, they were to try to convince their interrogators they were working on nearby border fortifications. By March 20 the fighting had died down, and all was momentarily quiet on the Western Front. At 9 p.m. the half-dozen infiltrators heaved themselves aboard a captured, Luftwaffe-operated B-17 Flying Fortress at Hildesheim airfield south of Hanover in central Germany, and within minutes the bomber turned special operations aircraft was rumbling westward. Just before midnight the commandos leapt into the frigid night air over their designated drop zone. Once on the ground they quickly reassembled and collected their parachuted canister of supplies. But as they moved to their prearranged base camp, they stumbled across 20-year-old Dutch border guard Joseph Saive, who was strolling with his girlfriend when he spotted shadowy figures in the woods. As Saive swung his rifle off his shoulder and shouted a challenge, the infiltrators shot him dead. But the girl escaped and soon alerted authorities. The clock was ticking. The assassins hurriedly split up and headed for Aachen via different routes. Hirsch arrived first and doffed her Luftwaffe coveralls to reveal the blouse and skirt she wore underneath. At dawn on the 21st she walked brazenly into the rubble-strewn city. With a stolen basket draped over her arm, the young agent made a convincing show of being an unremarkable citizen out foraging. Finding Oppenhoff’s house was absurdly easy—she simply asked a passing old woman for directions. The condemned lived at 251 Eupener Strasse. Hirsch trekked to the neighborhood and spent the rest of the day casing it. She then had a fortuitous encounter with a young woman who had served with her in the League of German Girls. The friend gave Hirsch a place to stay. Fortunately for the male members of the team, the Americans did not investigate Saive’s killing or bother to

increase their patrols in and around the city. The men soon regrouped and resumed their march toward Aachen. Early on the morning of the 22nd they reached its outskirts and bivouacked in the forest. Wenzel decided to send Leitgeb and Morgenschweiss to reconnoiter the city, and the two soon happened across Hirsch. Once the trio had rejoined their confederates, the team pitched camp in the woods near the Belgian hamlet of Hauset, about 90 minutes by foot from Oppenhoff’s residence. There they finalized their tactical plan. Hirsch, Morgenschweiss and Heidorn—the latter of whom had gotten cold feet—would guard the camp while Hennemann led Wenzel and Leitgeb into town to carry out the hit. At twilight on March 25, Palm Sunday, the gunmen,

Finding Oppenhoff’s house was absurdly easy—Hirsch simply asked for directions dressed in their Luftwaffe coveralls, set out for Aachen, about the time Franz and wife Irmgard Oppenhoff were putting their children to bed before strolling next door for a get-together with friends. Just after 9 p.m. the assassins reached Oppenhoff’s house, Wenzel and Leitgeb entering through a basement window. Finding no one home except the children and the housekeeper, they woke the latter and explained they

27

perors had employed to carry out vigilante death sentences. “Destroy the enemy or destroy yourself!” the broadcast urged repeatedly in coming weeks. An elated Prützmann ordered loyal Nazis on both sides of the front to liquidate every Bürgermeister in Allied-held territory. Oppenhoff’s death would prove an isolated incident, but for the moment it gave the Allied powers many sleepless nights. Meanwhile, the Operation Carnival assassins were simply trying to get home.

Franz Oppenhoff were downed German airmen who needed passes from Oppenhoff in order to return to their own lines. The girl ran to fetch the Bürgermeister. Wenzel and Leitgeb were waiting outside when Oppenhoff arrived with his neighbor. Sending the housekeeper back inside to make sandwiches, Oppenhoff spoke with the “airmen” while his suspicious neighbor excused himself and rushed off to alert the Americans. Left alone with their quarry, the assassins made their move. Wenzel had assured his accomplices he would do the shooting. But when the moment of truth came, he lost his nerve. With a silencer-equipped Walther automatic in his shaking hand, he merely stood there, even when Leitgeb hissed, “Do it!” Snatching the pistol in disgust, the hulking Austrian barked, “Heil Hitler!” and put a bullet through Oppenhoff’s brain. After alerting Hennemann, who had been standing watch in a nearby vacant lot, the assassins vanished into the night. As Goebbels had so dearly hoped, Oppenhoff’s murder made front-page news worldwide, and paranoia gripped the Allied high command as the toxic propaganda guru’s hysterical threats of unceasing covert warfare suddenly seemed legitimate. On April 1 a clandestine transmitter calling itself Radio Werewolf came on air. Signing on with a shrill wolf howl, it bragged about the assassination and announced the resurrection of the medieval Germanic Vehmgerichte, a secretive tribunal system Holy Roman em-

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from Wenzel and Hennemann. Only he made it back to their base camp. Gathering up Hirsch, Morgenschweiss and Heidorn, he led them eastward into ever-deeper peril. On the morning of the 27th, as the team crossed a meadow outside Rollesbroich, Leitgeb himself triggered a land mine and blew his face in half. The following afternoon Hirsch walked into a trip wire, setting off an explosion that crippled her right leg, tore open Morgenschweiss’ back and injured Heidorn’s right arm. Concealing Hirsch in some bushes, the men left her to her fate. The next morning a farmer rescued the she-wolf. That same morning, as Heidorn and Morgenschweiss continued eastward, the exhausted boy collapsed and refused to go any farther, which was fine with the selfinterested Heidorn. After the war the teen claimed a local woman he knew only as “Frau Sülz” found him and coaxed him to an infirmary in the village of Vussem. Half dead from blood loss, Heidorn struggled on alone, bound for an isolated farmhouse outside the nearby town of Mechernich. Though it was a designated safe house, he was stupefied to find Wenzel and Hennemann waiting inside. After resting briefly, the trio again set off east. When they reached the Rhine, Wenzel bid the other two farewell and split off without any further explanation. Heading to another farm set aside as a refuge, he worked hard and kept quiet until August, when he caught a ferry across the river, struck out eastward and disappeared from history. Heidorn and Hennemann managed to swim the Rhine, only to be arrested by a U.S. patrol. Assuming their prisoners were run-of-the-mill POWs, the Americans sent the pair to a nearby internment camp—in Aachen. Released soon after, they returned to their homes in what became East Germany. At war’s end Prützmann surrendered to the British. But before they could identify him as one of the most wanted war criminals in Europe, he committed suicide by biting into a cyanide capsule. It was 1949 before the Allies could unearth and examine enough captured documents in chaotic postwar Germany to identify Oppenhoff’s killers. Wenzel eluded capture, but that fall Heidorn, Hennemann and Hirsch were brought to trial in Aachen. Morgenschweiss turned state’s evidence, appearing as a prosecution witness.

WESTDEUTSCHER RUNDFUNK; OPPOSITE: FRED RAMAGE/KEYSTONE/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES

After shooting Oppenhoff, Leitgeb became separated

Most assumed the accused would be speedily convicted and executed for the murder, as they had freely admitted their guilt and were brazenly unrepentant. However, Hennemann’s attorney won a reprieve for all three defendants by producing a surprise witness named Lennertz. A former partner in Oppenhoff’s law practice, Lennertz claimed to have seen Oppenhoff in a German army uniform in September 1944, just before he fled to Belgium. According to Nazi German law, this made the deceased a military deserter, without the right of trial before execution. The prosecution was able to convince the tribunal to find the assassins guilty, but their sentences were token. Hennemann got 18 months, Heidorn one year. Hirsch was acquitted and released. Morgenschweiss was never even indicted. Even if Lennertz had told the truth, and Oppenhoff had been an army deserter, the sentences were absurdly cheap for the life of a noble man who sought nothing more than to rebuild his beloved country after the Nazi nightmare. In his absence and despite the broadcast

The hulking Austrian barked ‘Heil Hitler!’ and put a bullet through Oppenhoff’s brain threats, many others stepped forward to heal the destruction and desecration wrought by the malevolence of the Third Reich. Their murder of Oppenhoff was the only time the Werewolves howled loudly enough to be heard outside Germany’s borders. As it had for their one noteworthy victim, death ultimately came calling for them. MH Kelly Bell is a military history writer whose work has appeared in World War II, Vietnam, Aviation History and other magazines. For further reading he recommends The Last 100 Days, by John Toland, and Werewolf and The Battle of Hürtgen Forest, both by Charles Whiting.

Allied-occupied Aachen held other dangers besides Werewolves. Military police held these boys, aged 14 and 10, after they were caught sniping with rifles at passing U.S. soldiers.

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HIS OWN WORST ENEMY Mark Antony’s victories and political alliances with Julius Caesar and Octavian set his star on the rise—until Cleopatra pulled down the shades By Richard A. Gabriel

‘He made himself so great that men thought him worthy of greater things than he desired’ —Plutarch

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MUSEUM OF THE VATICAN/BETTMANN VIA GETTY IMAGES

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Antony began his military career at age 27 when invited by Syrian proconsul Aulus Gabinius, a family friend, to participate in a 56 BC expedition to suppress a Jewish revolt in Judea. Given command of the cavalry, Antony was the first to storm the wall at Alexandrium, a fortified town overlooking the Jordan River northeast of Jerusalem. Honored for his exploit, Antony led follow-up sieges against the Dead Sea forts of Hyrcania and Machaerus, forcing them to surrender. During the campaign the young commander endeared himself to his troops by eating, drinking and carousing with them, a habit he maintained throughout his military life. The next year Ptolemy XII, deposed king of Egypt, hired Gabinius and his army to restore him to the throne. Again permitted to take the lead, Antony’s cavalry cleared the route for the main army and soon arrived outside the fortress city of Pelusium. Catching the enemy by surprise, Antony captured the city by encouraging its garrison to revolt. Ptolemy wanted to put all prisoners to the sword, but Antony pleaded successfully for their pardon, earning him the Egyptians’ affection. The army then marched on Alexandria, where Antony led another daring cavalry raid, encircling the enemy and forcing its surrender. It was there the dashing Roman commander first met Ptolemy’s daughter Cleopatra, then 14-year-old heir to the Egyptian throne.

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Antony resumed his self-indulgent life of drinking, gambling and womanizing in Rome before joining his mother’s distant cousin, Gaius Julius Caesar, as a legate in Gaul in early 54 BC. A staff officer, Antony likely accompanied Caesar on his invasion of Britain. The fighting there was arduous, and Antony must have performed well, as by following spring Caesar had marked him as a promising unit commander and political agent. In 52 BC he sent his young relative to Rome to stand for election as quaestor, the bottom rung of public office. After winning election, Antony rejoined Caesar in Gaul, rising through the ranks to command of a legion and participating in the brutal suppression of the Gauls. Returning to Rome in 50 BC, Antony won election as a tribune. Within months senators opposed to Caesar’s rising power ejected Antony when he tried to speak in his commander’s defense. With civil war imminent, Antony returned to his legion. In January 49 BC Caesar and his army crossed the Rubicon River and marched toward Rome. At the head of the cavalry and some 2,000 infantrymen, Antony marched west across the Apennine Mountains then south on the Cassian Way, capturing Arretium (present-day Arezzo) and opening the road south to the capital. Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (Pompey the Great) and the Senate fled east, crossing the Adriatic to the Roman province of Epirus in Greece, and Caesar and Antony spent the next two months securing all of Italy. In April Caesar left Rome to fight Pompey’s legions in Spain, appointing Marcus Lepidus as acting consul of Rome and Antony as governor of Italy and commander of its forces.

In early January 48 BC Caesar led an army of seven legions and cavalry (about 25,000 men) from Italy to Epirus to deal with Pompey, leaving behind the rest of the troops (some 20,000 men and 800 horses) under Antony’s command. Bibulus, admiral of Pompey’s fleet, bottled up Antony’s ships at Brindisi for three months, preventing his reinforcement of Caesar. On learning Bibulus had fallen deathly ill, Antony braved the blockade, landed north of the opposing Roman armies and linked up with Caesar. Caesar besieged Pompey’s larger army at Dyrrhachium (present-day Durrës, Albania) from April through July, during which time Antony distinguished himself in action. On July 10 Pompey used his superior numbers to outflank the besiegers on both ends of the line. When Caesar’s army broke under the attack, Antony rushed into the fray, rallied the troops and counterattacked, robbing Pompey of his momentum. Antony then held while Caesar

HULTON FINE ART COLLECTION/HERITAGE IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES

arcus Antonius (83–30 BC) would have been no one’s pick to become a great leader of men in battle. A hedonist given to drunkenness, debauchery, partying and pranks, always in debt, and oft married and divorced, Mark Antony (as he is familiarly known) was anything but a sterling character by either ancient Roman or modern standards. Like Alexander and Hannibal before him, Antony was a spotty strategist who often failed to appreciate the larger political context in which he was operating. Incapable of long-term planning and lacking the discipline to carry it out, he was a man who lived for the moment, at his best when circumstances were at their worst. Like Napoléon Bonaparte, Antony was capable of dashing bravery and tactical brilliance. Also like Napoléon, when he blundered, he did so on a colossal scale. Yet despite his many flaws Antony came within an ace of being the most important figure of his day.

Mark Antony, depicted dining with Cleopatra in a romantic work by Dutch painter Gerard de Lairesse (1641–1711), was a notorious hedonist who fell under the young Egyptian queen’s sway, to his ultimate detriment.

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withdrew the main body of his army inland. The tribune’s boldness burnished his reputation as a field commander and, more important, solidified Caesar’s trust in him. Marching southeast to Thessaly, Caesar regrouped his remaining 12 legions (30,000 men) and 1,000 cavalry. Pompey soon arrived with his 60,000 men and 7,000 horses. The armies camped on opposite sides of the Pharsalian plain and met in battle on August 9. Stationing himself on the right opposite Pompey, Caesar held six cohorts of infantry in reserve, hidden from sight behind his cavalry. When Pompey attacked, Caesar’s horsemen resisted only briefly before withdrawing. Pompey’s cavalry fell for the ruse and rushed in, exposing its flank to Caesar’s hidden troops. Armed with thrusting spears, his infantrymen drove through the onrushing horsemen straight into Pompey’s camp, forcing him to flee. Antony, commanding the VIII and IX legions, had held the left flank despite being heavily outnumbered and defending poor ground. Caesar lost 250 dead and 2,000 wounded to Pompey’s 15,000 dead and 24,000 captured. At that the Roman protectorates and provinces in Greece and Asia declared for Caesar.

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Antony’s stalwart defense in the decisive victory at Pharsalus earned him a glorious return to Rome to assume dictatorial powers as sole magistrate, while Caesar pursued Pompey to Egypt, confirmed the latter’s assassination, then helped Cleopatra depose her father, Ptolemy. Antony, meanwhile, fell back into his former debauched lifestyle, his tenure marked by corruption and misrule. Regardless, when Caesar returned to Rome in October 47 BC to assume the consulship, he retained Antony as his deputy, making him the second most powerful man in Rome. Following Caesar’s assassination on March 15, 44 BC, Antony for once proved disciplined. Seeking to avoid civil war, he granted amnesty to the assassins and their Senate supporters, permitting them to leave the capital. Among the lead conspirators, Marcus Junius Brutus fled north to Cisalpine Gaul, Cassius east to Syria. Antony was left the most powerful person in Rome, though the presiding Republicans judged he lacked the genius, selfcontrol, ambition and ruthlessness to be another Caesar. Fresh from military training, Octavian—Caesar’s great nephew, adopted son and heir—arrived in the capital in May. When Antony refused to recognize the 18-year-old as Caesar’s political heir or turn over his inheritance— which Antony had spent to keep his own troops loyal —Octavian rallied Caesar’s veterans from Campania and began to amass an army. Seeking to avoid political

NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Heeding Cleopatra’s self-protective advice not to invade Italy, Antony allowed Octavian to cross the Adriatic unopposed, sever his opponent’s supply line and then defeat Antony’s fleet and army at Actium, Greece.

API/GAMMA/GAMMA/GAMM-RAPHO VIA GETTY IMAGES

machinations in Rome and to retain an army of his own, Antony marched to Cisalpine Gaul that December and besieged Brutus in Mutina (present-day Modena). In early January 43 BC the Senate, led by Antony’s enemy Marcus Tullius Cicero, declared him an outlaw, appointed two new co-consuls, Aulus Hirtius and Vibius Pansa, ratified Octavian’s army and sent their collective legions north to relieve Brutus. A forewarned Antony left his brother in charge of the siege and marched to meet them. On April 14 Antony led a masterly ambush of Pansa’s troops amid a forest and marsh near the northern Italian village of Forum Gallorum. Pansa was mortally wounded, his troops routed, but Antony’s men cut short their spontaneous celebration when surprised by Hirtius and his fresh troops. Antony’s cavalry fought bravely, but by nightfall half of his men were dead, the survivors on the run. Six days later Octavian’s legions combined forces with those of Hirtius, forming a 45,000-man army that defeated Antony’s exhausted, vastly outnumbered men at Mutina, though Hirtius was slain in the fight, leaving Octavian in sole command. In an arduous march Antony led his survivors over the Alps into Transalpine Gaul, where he joined forces with Lepidus and other commanders still loyal to Caesar. Six weeks later Antony reentered Italy with 17 legions (90,000 men) and 10,000 cavalry. At that point Octavian compelled the Senate to appoint him consul, acknowledge him as Caesar’s heir and declare Caesar’s assassins outlaws. Also eager to avoid a civil war, Octavian came to an accommodation with Antony and Lepidus at Bologna, thus launching the Second Triumvirate (43–33 BC). Having gained Antony’s support, Octavian freed himself to deal once and for all with his great uncle’s killers Brutus and Cassius. The latter duo had gathered an army of 80,000 infantry and 17,000 cavalry and crossed into Thrace. In September 42 BC Octavian and Antony moved to confront them with 100,000 infantry and 33,000 cavalry. On October 3 the armies met at the First Battle of Philippi. Octavian had taken ill, so Antony led their joint forces in a surprise attack against Cassius’ camp at the edge of a marsh. At the same time Brutus led an unexpected thrust against Antony’s left wing, broke through and seized Octavian’s camp, forcing him to flee. An oblivious Cassius, still pressured by Antony, thought the battle lost and killed himself. Twenty days later at the Second Battle of Philippi Antony again led in the indisposed Octavian’s stead. Placing Octavian’s army at the center to focus Brutus’ attention, he advanced through the marsh to envelop the enemy commander’s left flank, taking him by surprise and forcing a rout. Brutus escaped but later committed suicide. Having finally eliminated Caesar’s assassins, the triumvirs—Octavian, Antony and Lepidus—settled into their prior arrangement, Octavian and Lepidus ruling the west, Antony the east. Around 41 BC, while passing through the province of Cilicia (in present-day southern Turkey),

Antony sought to end the campaign quickly, the sooner to return to Cleopatra in Egypt Antony again encountered Cleopatra, who had been forced into exile by her younger brother, husband and co-ruler, Ptolemy XIII. Antony was 41, Cleopatra 18. It was a fateful meeting, launching of one of the most famous—and disastrous—love affairs in history.

Meanwhile back in Rome, Antony’s wife, Fulvia, and brother Lucius had in his absence taken up arms against Octavian. In a public rebuke of Fulvia, Antony returned to Rome and reiterated his support for Octavian. On Fulvia’s death in 40 BC Antony married Octavian’s sister, Octavia, further cementing his relationship with the future Augustus. The division of the empire was subsequently revised, Antony gaining control of everything east of the Ionian Sea, Lepidus placated with a governorship in Africa before fading into obscurity. The triumvirs also ceded territory to General Sextus Pompey, who took control of Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the Peloponnese. Of course, political power is no guarantee of military control. Before leaving for Rome, Antony had appointed Publius Ventidius Bassus his proconsul in the east. In March 40 BC the Parthians had attacked Syria, reaching Antioch before Ventidius managed to drive them back out of the province. On his return from Rome, however, Antony planned a punitive invasion of Parthia, in part to recover the standards and prisoners left behind by Crassus after his disastrous 53 BC defeat and death at Carrhae. It was not one of Antony’s better decisions. In the summer of 36 BC, having assembled an army of more than 100,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, Antony marched through Armenia and into the Parthian province of Media Atropatene (present-day Azerbaijan) toward the capital of Phraaspa. Plutarch suggests Antony sought to end the campaign quickly, the sooner to return to Cleopatra in Egypt. As a result he In the 1963 epic film pressed ahead in haste, failing to rest and Cleopatraa Elizabeth refurbish his troops in Armenia after the Taylor portrayed the Egyptian queen who long march from Greece. Further extend- brought eventual ruin to ing himself, Antony left his baggage train Richard Burton’s Antony. and siege engines behind, ostensibly pro- Though it was the highesttected by 6,000 Armenian cavalry. But when grossing film that year, a Parthian army under King Phraates IV the production was beset by cost overruns and closed in, the Armenians bolted for home, ended up losing money. allowing the enemy to destroy the baggage The real-life couple also train and forcing the Roman general to came to a dismal end.

Costly Queen

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This circa 39 BC silver tetradrachm was minted in Ephesus to mark the union of Antony and Octavia (sister to Octavian). Antony (top) appears in profile wearing an ivy crown, while Octavia is in profile above a sacred cistaa (chest) flanked by interlaced snakes.

The Parthian debacle marked the turn-

ing point in Antony’s fortunes. He had failed to avenge Carrhae, and his terrible treatment of Octavia had alienated her powerful brother, Octavian. The Roman people also turned against him over his relationship with Cleopatra. Of more immediate importance, his materiel and manpower losses had crippled Antony’s military capabilities. Octavian, meanwhile, had consolidated his hold on the west, driving Sextus Pompey from the region and then pacifying Dalmatia, Illyricum and Pannonia. He upped the ante in 33 BC by launching a propaganda campaign against Antony, convincing the Senate a year later to declare war against Cleopatra and revoke her lover’s triumviral title. Anticipating war, Antony had raised a massive army of more than 150,000 soldiers, 12,000 cavalrymen and a fleet of some 800 warships and transports. He deployed his army and fleet in and around the harbor at Actium in Greece to discourage Octavian from venturing east. Seeing the deployments as a threat, Octavian mustered his own considerable force—80,000 men, 12,000 cavalry and some 400 ships—at Brindisi. Antony should have followed the advice of his senior officers and invaded Italy, but Cleopatra was opposed to such an invasion, fearing it would leave Egypt exposed. So the Roman commander overruled his generals in what Plutarch termed “one of the greatest of Antony’s oversights.” In midsummer Octavian crossed the Adriatic without opposition and deployed his army on high ground 5 miles north of Actium. Antony’s army was at the end of a long supply line linked to Egyptian granaries by a chain of island bases. Spotting the weakness, Octavian’s admiral, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, set about seizing the bases in turn. By September he had severed Antony’s communications and choked off his food and supplies, isolating his troops. Antony twice sought to provoke Octavian to into a land

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battle, but the enemy commander refused to engage. In August 31 BC Antony sent an army north to break the siege and his ships west to break the blockade, but both efforts failed disastrously. Cleopatra insisted Antony retreat, believing her 60 ships and some of Antony’s might escape to Egypt, where they could raise more troops to continue the war with Octavian. Antony had more ships than rowers to power them, so on September 2 he burned the vessels he could not man, leaving him with 230 to Octavian’s 400. Taking Cleopatra’s advice, Antony sought to break free from his untenable position and live to fight again. His ships first engaged the Roman right, the maneuver having the calculated effect of thinning the center of the line so Cleopatra’s ships could break out and escape to the open sea. Antony soon followed. He lost 15 ships and some 5,000 sailors, with scores more captured, but almost half the serviceable fleet escaped to Egypt. The real disaster came on land. When Antony’s subordinate Canidius Crassus tried and failed to break out of the encirclement, the army mutinied and surrendered to Octavian. Antony knew any hope of further resistance depended on his army making it back to Egypt. On learning it had surrendered, he plunged into a suicidal depression. Octavian pursued Antony and Cleopatra to Egypt. Antony’s remaining troops drove back the invaders in a brief battle at Alexandria, but Octavian renewed his attack in October, this time successfully. By then most of Antony’s men and ships had gone over to Octavian, leaving the onetime consul of Rome only a token force. Mistakenly believing Cleopatra had killed herself, Antony fell on his sword. Mortally wounded, he died in her arms, ending a life that had earlier showed such promise. That night Cleopatra took her own life.

Antony’s legacy suffered under the styli of ancient historians, all of whom were admirers of Octavian and the Augustan empire. The most damaging claim was that Antony’s fervor for Cleopatra had driven him to war against Octavian and in turn clouded his strategic thinking. In fact, the most defensible aspect of Antony’s ragged strategy was his regard for Egypt itself. Like Octavian, he realized Rome’s very survival depended on its possession of Egypt’s grain, money, ships and manpower. Straddling the east-west trade route, Egypt was so important that Octavian, as Augustus, declared it a personal possession of the emperor, and that no Roman official could visit without his permission. Antony doubtless would have done the same had he been victorious. MH Richard A. Gabriel is the author of more than 50 books. For further reading he suggests Mark Antony: A Biography, by Eleanor Goltz Huzar, and The Life and Times of Mark Antony, by Arthur Weigall.

GORNY & MOSCH GLESSENER COIN AUCTION; OPPOSITE: EUGÈNE ERNEST HILLEMACHER/GRENOBLE MUSEE DE PEINTURE ET SCULPTURE/AKG-IMAGES

She Who Lost the Coin Toss

abandon his siege. Worse yet, winter was approaching, and Antony was trapped, with the enemy across his line of communication and supply. During the subsequent retreat to Armenia, the Persians relentlessly ambushed and harassed the Roman column, forcing 18 engagements in just 27 days. Antony lost some 20,000 soldiers and 4,000 cavalrymen during the campaign, many of hunger and cold during the frigid winter march through Armenia. Hearing of his misfortune, Octavia wrote to say she was sailing from Athens to console her husband. But Antony told her not to come, choosing instead to retire to Egypt with Cleopatra.

Depressed by his crushing defeat at Actium, Antony fell on his sword and was brought to Cleopatra, as conceived in an 1863 oil by French painter Eugène Ernest Hillemacher.

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In the summer of 1999 one infantry battalion secured a hard-fought victory for the Indian army in its bitter mountain conflict with Pakistani forces By Paraag Shukla

FAYAZ KABLI

Indian soldiers raise their national flag after clearing Pakistani intruders from a peak near Dras, along the Line of Control between the two nations.

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A

t 7:30 p.m. on June 12, 1999, a mountain along India’s de facto border with Pakistan seemed to erupt as more than 120 artillery shells landed simultaneously on its peak. The exploding rounds intermittently lit the mountain against the dark sky before smoke obscured its summit. Indian gunners fired their howitzers directly at the solitary peak, and at close range the fire was devastating. To the soldiers of 2nd Battalion, Rajputana Rifles Regiment (2 Raj Rif), huddled along the mountain’s southern approaches, the intense bombardment was only slightly reassuring. Major Vivek Gupta, leading the reserve platoon of the Indian regiment’s Company C on the mountain’s southeastern spur, had to look away from the conflagration atop the peak. The men’s eyes had long adjusted to the darkness and the bright flashes lingered stubbornly in their vision. They could do nothing about the concussive force of the exploding shells except to continue climbing. Gupta scrambled on, sometimes on all fours, the handpicked soldiers around him mirroring his movements. When they reached their jumping-off point, they paused to catch their breath in the thin mountain air. Ahead, his two leading platoons were preparing to assault the ridge. Suddenly, the radio crackled with voices and the tinny staccato of small-arms fire. Company D was advancing up the mountain’s southwestern spur, and the enemy atop the summit had discovered the advance. Gupta settled back and dug his boots into the arid soil. If the enemy had already spotted and engaged Company D, no matter—its assault was a feint. The maneuver would draw the enemy westward, away from Company C, which would make the final assault straight up the exposed mountainside.

decades had passed since their last direct war, and despite a Pakistan-backed insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir and nuclear weapons tests by both countries in 1998, it appeared Islamabad was ready to discuss with New Delhi a bilateral solution to the Kashmir issue. But not all concerned parties supported a negotiated settlement, least of all the Pakistani army, which decided to act—covertly. The focus of the generals’ attention was India’s National Highway 1. Winding eastward from Srinagar—summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir—to the mountainous Leh district, it is the main supply route for the Indian army’s outposts along the Line of Control. Those stone bunkers on barren peaks at 16,000 feet and above were considered unsupportable during the winter due to heavy snowfall. Thus the local army brigade routinely left them vacant until drifts in the high passes began to melt in late spring. Hoping to reignite the Kashmiri insurgency and internationalize the dispute, Pakistan’s army launched Operation Badr (“full moon” in Arabic), sending soldiers of the Northern Light Infantry Regiment across the Line of Control in a phased infiltration across a 90-mile front. The troops occupied more than 120 vacant Indian outposts, erected stone fortifications covered with iron girders and corrugated metal, and stockpiled arms and supplies. The new vantage points on the Indian high ground gave the Pakistanis clear, commanding views of the valley, enabling artillery batteries on their side of the border to accurately target Indian vehicular traffic snaking along National Highway 1. The audacious maneuver placed the Pakistani army’s boot on India’s lifeline in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir.

In early May shepherds in the Kargil district, on the Indian side of the Line of Control, informed the local Indian

Britain in mid-August 1947, it was a twin birth so bathed in blood that the two nations remain bitter foes. Arguably the most contentious issue is the status of Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Indian state in the Himalayan foothills. Pakistan claims the northern part of the region, and three initial wars the two nations fought over the area—in 1947–48, 1965 and 1971—failed to resolve the dispute. The Simla Agreement, signed after the 1971 conflict, stipulated that neither country would attempt to alter the cease-fire line, dubbed the Line of Control, and neither party has expressed a real interest in converting that temporary boundary into a permanent border. By early 1999 it seemed India and Pakistan were well on their way to improving their relationship. Nearly three

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Lieutenant Saurabh Kalia and his five-man patrol went to investigate but vanished; it was later determined they had been captured and tortured to death. As reports of additional ambushes poured in, and local Indian units proved unable to evict the infiltrators, New Delhi approved Operation Vijay (“victory” in Hindi), initiating the redeployment of nearly 30,000 troops to Kargil. Even as local Indian commanders continued to downplay the extent of the incursions in their areas of responsibility, mounting pressure from political and army leadership provoked several infantry battalions to attack early. But the Indian soldiers who rapidly deployed from the lower altitude and hot clime of the Kashmir Valley were physically unprepared for the thin mountain air and single-

VIJAY GUPTA/GETTY IMAGES (2)

When India and Pakistan gained their independence from brigade commander of heavily armed men atop the ridges.

Initial Indian efforts to provide air support to infantry assaults proved unsuccessful, as Mi-17 helicopters like the one above struggled at high altitude; one was shot down near Tololing in late May. Artillery, including these 155 mm howitzers, proved decisive in routing out the Pakistanis.

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As men made their way up the exposed slopes, heavy enemy fire stopped them cold transit camp. Given the urgency of the summons, he told his commanders to trim superfluous items and focus on rations, water, medical supplies and ammunition. Ravindranath found the camp buzzing with activity, but no one had any reliable intelligence on the situation. All he could gather were sketchy reports of unidentified men—assumed to be Pakistani or Kashmiri insurgents— who had occupied the heights along National Highway 1 between the towns of Dras and Kargil. While firsthand knowledge was nonexistent, rumors abounded.

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As Ravindranath later noted, the hearsay “lionized Pakistani forces, interfered with planning and had a corrosive effect on morale.” When the army called up 1st Battalion, Naga Regiment, which had fared poorly in its initial assaults, six of its officers went on sick call. If he could not quell the rumors, Ravindranath reasoned, he could at least keep his battalion from hearing them. Relocating his men to an isolated valley 2 miles from the transit camp, he split the companies into their own areas of operation and set to work. He focused their efforts on the knowledge that successful mountain operations hinged on three elements: altitude acclimatization, flexible assault tactics and a sound logistical support plan. Given that ongoing operations were mountain assaults at elevations well above 10,000 feet, Ravindranath worked with battalion medical officer Captain Somnath Basu to devise an eight-day altitude acclimatization plan, starting with level walks and gradually increasing to faster and strenuous climbs to 15,000 feet with full battle load. The soldiers also ensured their small arms— a mix of 7.62 mm AK-series assault rifles and new, domestically produced 5.56 mm INSAS rifles—were properly zeroed for the thin mountain air. Ravindranath knew the years his troops spent focused on counterinsurgency missions had dulled their ability to conduct conventional mountain operations, so all four companies ran mock assaults on nearby peaks, emphasizing flexible small-unit tactics against fixed enemy positions. It was crucial to maintain the initiative, Ravindranath repeatedly told his command team. “If you can find the solution to what causes your attack to bog down, the objective will be yours.”

FAYAZ KABLI; INSET PHOTO: PARAAG SHUKLA

digit temperatures. Furthermore, they had scant intelligence about enemy positions or strength, and the inhospitable terrain along the Line of Control hindered movement and resupply. Thus these early responding units suffered terribly. Pinned down on exposed mountainsides, some assault teams went days without food or water, subsisting on snow and cigarettes. While Indian units struggled to grasp the full extent of infiltration along the Line of Control, 2 Raj Rif was conducting counterinsurgency operations 90 miles to the west. The commanding officer, 39-year-old Lt. Col. Magod Basappa Ravindranath, was an experienced veteran with three prior deployments. The battalion had just started settling into its area of operations when Ravindranath received orders to relocate to the Sonamarg

FAYAZ KABLI/REUTERS VIA ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; FAYAZ KABLI

On June 1 the soldiers of 2 Raj Rif boarded trucks and moved east to the Dras sector, where a fierce battle raged on the heights. Shortly after the regiment’s arrival, brigade headquarters ordered Ravindranath to recapture Tololing, a dominant peak looming 16,000 feet over National Highway 1 scarcely 3 miles northwest of town. Pakistani positions atop Tololing represented the deepest point of the Badr incursion, and Indian commanders counted on Ravindranath to establish a foothold from which the army could launch subsequent operations. The 18th Battalion, Grenadiers Regiment, had initiated operations to recapture Tololing on May 22. As its companies made their way up the exposed slopes, heavy and coordinated Pakistani mortar and artillery fire stopped them cold. The grenadiers conducted three more assaults in vain, suffering more than 150 casualties. On May 28 an Indian air force Mil Mi-17 helicopter, struggling in the thin air as it provided fire support, was hit by a shoulder-fired missile and crashed on a nearby peak, killing its four-man crew. In response the air force suspended attack helicopter operations. On June 2, after the grenadiers’ fourth desperate attempt to storm the peak, brigade headquarters ordered them to cease attacks, dig in as best they could and await relief. The next day the brigade handed the task of taking Tololing to 2 Raj Rif. After linking up with the exhausted grenadiers and gathering intelligence from their officers, Ravindranath led his command team on extensive reconnaissance on June 5–6. Examining Tololing from the south, they noted two main ridgelines ascending to three distinct features at the summit. The southwest spur rose to a peak called Point 4590, for its altitude in meters. The

Ill-equipped Indian units initially struggled in the unforgiving climate and terrain (opposite), though by June they received cold-weather gear and clothing. Despite the challenges, Lt. Col. M.B. Ravindranath (above, left) prepared his battalion well for its mountain assault on Tololing. They recovered a trove of enemy small arms from the summit (above).

ground then dropped and leveled off for 300 yards, a stretch code-named Area Flat, before rising sharply to the mountain’s pinnacle, Tololing Top. To the north a knobby ridgeline dubbed the Hump bridged the rear of Tololing to nearby enemy-held Point 5140. Ravindranath elected to send two companies up each spur—one attacking, the other in reserve—to split the Pakistanis’ attention. Companies D and A, in turn, would advance up the southwest spur to attack Point 4590, while C and B would concentrate on Area Flat and Tololing Top. Meanwhile, the battalion’s commando detachment, under Lieutenant Neikezhakuo Kenguruse, would position itself to the north near the Hump to isolate Tololing by fire, calling in artillery on any enemy forces trying to reinforce the summit. Ravindranath and his company commanders noted at least eight bunkers, with more hidden positions likely, and the assault teams would have to secure each of them and hold off inevitable counterattacks. There was, however, one silver lining—120 artillery guns had arrived in Dras and would support the assault, a crucial support element previously unavailable to the grenadiers. Indian commanders hoped the guns, many of them in low-trajectory direct-fire mode, would neutralize the Pakistanis’ tactical advantages. Ravindranath established ammunition and water supply points on each axis of advance, and on the nights

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Flashpoint Kashmir

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he flashpoint of ongoing tensions between India and Pakistan is the Kashmir Valley, a contested 85-mile-long basin of fertile soil and moderate climate hemmed in by the Pir Panjal Range to the southwest and soaring Himalayas to the northeast. An ancient center of Hinduism and Buddhism, it fell to a Muslim conquest in the 14th century, then in the early 19th century was annexed along with neighboring Jammu by the Punjab-based Sikh empire. On the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan into independant nations, Pakistani forces invaded the Muslim-majority region. Seeking help to evict the invaders, the maharaja of

Jammu and Kashmir signed an instrument of accession, placing his princely state under the dominion of India. Pakistan gained control of the Northern Areas (present-day Gilgat-Baltistan), while China later claimed the eastern territory of Aksai Chin. The border between the disputed areas is known as the Line of Control. India and Pakistan have fought four wars over the region—in 1947–48, 1965, 1971 and, most recently, 1999. During the last clash, known as the Kargil War, Pakistani troops crossed the Line of Control in winter to infiltrate abandoned Indian outposts high in the mountains of Jammu and Kashmir. At the heart of the 90-mile-wide incursion was the district and namesake capital of Kargil.

Pakistani Incursions In Kargil the Line of Control parallels National Highway 1, India’s main supply route for its border outposts, which comprised rough stone bunkers at 16,000 feet and above. Aware that Indian troops abandoned the outposts in winter, Pakistani forces slipped south and occupied them in early 1999.

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Battle of Tololing May–June 1999 In May, after shepherds reported the presence of Pakistani troops in the Kargil high country, India launched Operation Vijay to push the invaders back north of the Line of Control. In early June commanders called on Lt. Col. Magod Basappa Ravindranath and his 2nd Battalion, Rajputana Rifles (2 Raj Rif), to quell stubborn resistance atop Tololing, the dominant peak in the district. On June 12 its four companies ascended from the southwest and southeast to simultaneously assault the peak, while another unit to the north helped pin down the Pakistanis under heavy fire. They secured their objective after a bitter 12-hour firefight.

Jammu and Kashmir

DISTANCE: DRAS TO KARGIL 24 MILES/39KM

MAPS BY STEVE WALKOWIAK/SWMAPS.COM

Scarcely 100 miles (as the crow flies) separates the Pakistani capital of Islamabad and Srinagar, summer capital of the Indian-adminstered state of Jammu and Kashmir. Neither nation is willing to surrender its claims on the region, while Kashmiris themselves split along predictable ethnic and religious lines.

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Mountain combat is by nature difficult, given the thin air, extreme weather and harsh terrain. Even the rocks themselves pose a The earsplitting thunder of Brigadier hazard, providing defenders Lakhwinder Singh’s artillery batteries with cover and turning into signaled the start of 2 Raj Rif ’s assault potentially lethal shrapnel on Tololing. The gunners paused briefly, when struck by shell fire.

hoping to draw out the defenders, then resumed the barrage in earnest. Major Mohit Saxena began the infantry assault at 8:30 p.m., and Company D reached its initial objective within an hour. But Pakistani forces on Point 4590 detected the Indians’ approach and engaged the attackers with machine gun and mortar fire. Saxena led the company forward, sprinting from boulder to boulder, until his men had closed to within 100 yards of the nearest Pakistani positions. Unable to advance farther, they sheltered behind a line of boulders and kept firing uphill, waiting for an opportunity. Meanwhile, to the southeast, came Company C, which had started its advance 30 minutes after Company D. As the men climbed, the two leading platoons noticed the Pakistanis appeared to be falling for the feint, many of them scurrying west to face Saxena’s attack. Seizing on their inattention, one of Company C’s platoons rushed forward and took Area Flat—splitting the Pakistaniheld terrain on Tololing—while the other platoon veered toward Tololing Top and rushed over its crest, suddenly appearing amid the enemy positions. The alarmed Pakistanis began spraying automatic fire to scatter the attackers. As the men of the leading section

Desperation set in as the company’s casualties mounted and its ammunition ran low scrambled forward, they failed to notice a well-concealed bunker on their flank; its machine gun killed all of them. The shock of their sudden loss threatened to stall the Indians’ momentum, until 23-year-old Lieutenant Praveen Tomar stepped up to resume the assault. With the Pakistani forces on Tololing Top focused on Tomar’s platoon, Major Gupta, on standby with the reserve platoon, led his men up the right side of the spur. As Corporal Digendra Kumar followed him up the steep incline, he saw what appeared to be an exposed rock

46 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2017

jutting from the snow and reached out to steady himself. Only when he closed his hand around the object did he realize it was a machine gun barrel. As Kumar instinctively grabbed hold of the barrel, the Pakistani gunner fired a burst, shooting the corporal through the hand and wounding him in the chest. Reacting with remarkable calm, Kumar armed a grenade, let it “cook” in his palm a moment, then tossed it through the bunker’s firing slit. The explosion silenced the gun. As the platoon moved to assault the three remaining bunkers, it came under intense fire. Kumar field-dressed his own wounds and continued to crawl to high ground, all the while hurling grenades and firing his light machine gun. The platoon’s progress was marked by bitter closequarters fighting. Amid the confusion Gupta and a Pakistani nearly collided in the darkness and, standing barely 6 feet apart, killed one another. By 2:30 a.m. the platoons had finally cleared the bunkers. Tomar updated Ravindranath and then scrambled to reorganize the company. Over the next hour Pakistani soldiers fiercely counterattacked Company C on Tololing Top and Area Flat, trying to throw back the Indians before they could consolidate their positions. The Indians repulsed each attempt, but desperation set in as the company’s casualties mounted and its ammunition ran low. Ravindranath rushed a platoon from Company B to reinforce C. But confusion still reigned in the darkness. As Tomar awaited reinforcements, one of his NCOs pointed to a trio of unidentified men climbing toward their position. Both parties paused, anxiously trying to identify the other in the dim starlight. The NCO called out to them—only to realize they were Pakistani soldiers. In the fierce exchange of automatic fire that followed, Tomar was wounded in the leg, and the Pakistanis scrambled away. As the men of Company B approached Tololing Top, Pakistani forces launched three more counterattacks in quick succession. The Indians held and by the third attempt had eliminated all resistance on Tololing Top. Before anyone could celebrate, however, 2 Raj Rif’s commando detachment radioed reports of Pakistani reinforcements rushing south toward the summit from Point 5140. The Indians immediately called in accurate artillery strikes along the Hump, stopping the surge. Ravindranath then led Company B to reinforce the summit, and at 4:10 a.m. he radioed brigade headquarters with a simple message: “Sir, I am on Tololing Top.” Pakistani soldiers still held positions on Point 4590. Almost certainly realizing they were surrounded, they directed fire across Area Flat up toward Tololing Top. With dawn rapidly approaching, Ravindranath could either isolate Point 4590 and attack it later that day, or order Company A to clear it. He chose the latter. Holding Company A in reserve on the southwestern spur, Major Padmapani Acharya and Lieutenant Vijyant

ISTOCK

Combat on the Rocks

before the attack his men and 400 porters carried the weapons, ammunition, equipment, rations and medical supplies up the steep gradient in an exhausting, sevenhour climb to the firebases. By June 12 the buildup was complete, and the four companies, assembled at their launching points, spent the day huddled in defilade on Tololing’s slopes under heavy clouds, waiting for darkness.

FAYAZ KABLI

Thapar had been eager to get into the fight and quickly advanced through Company D’s position to launch their assault. As the defenders fell back, Corporal Tilak Singh set up his light machine gun on high ground overlooking one of the last enemy-held bunkers. He watched as two Pakistanis—one dressed in a tracksuit, the other in civilian clothes—retreated inside. After repeated calls to show themselves, the two emerged, but one still held his assault rifle and, inexplicably, kept switching it nervously from one hand to the other. Someone fired, and both Pakistanis were killed in the ensuing commotion. Company A mopped up the remaining resistance, while Company B pushed on and cleared the northern slopes of Tololing. Around 6:15 a.m. on June 13, with the sun rising over the mountains of Dras, Ravindranath informed brigade headquarters 2 Raj Rif had achieved its objective: Tololing was secure. It was his 40th birthday.

The capture of the Tololing complex by 2 Raj Rif marked the end of the first phase of the Kargil conflict. M.B. Ravindranath’s professionalism, methodical planning and emphasis on flexible tactics—coupled with the courage and determination of his platoon and section leaders—had enabled his battalion to secure a difficult objective. The mountain provided a much-needed foothold from which to push the Pakistanis back north of the Line of Control. The gains came at a cost, however.

Despite repeated denials from Islamabad of army participation in the incursion, Indian troops identified the enemy dead, shrouded in flags above, as members of Pakistan’s Northern Light Infantry Regiment.

The battalion had lost 10 killed and 25 wounded in the fight for Tololing. The Pakistani defenders had suffered twice as many killed and an unknown number wounded; captured documents revealed they were from Company D, 6th Battalion, Northern Light Infantry. On June 16 another infantry battalion relieved 2 Raj Rif and assumed responsibility for Tololing, giving the men an opportunity to rest and refit. By month’s end Ravindranath would be ordered to lead 2 Raj Rif in the recapture of a trio of craggy mountains with reinforced enemy positions, limited avenues of approach and presighted artillery. The punishing task would claim the lives of three more officers and 10 soldiers and wound another 52 men. But for the moment, in the wake of their remarkable and hard-fought victory at Tololing, the men of 2 Raj Rif took time to clean their weapons, eat square meals and catch up on much-needed sleep. MH Paraag Shukla is the senior editor of World War II and Aviation History. For further reading he recommends Conflict Unending, by Sumit Ganguly, and Limited Conflicts Under the Nuclear Umbrella, by Ashley J. Tellis, C. Christine Fair and Jamison Jo Medby.

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For this 1855 self-portrait a playacting Fenton dressed in a French Zouave infantryman’s distinctive uniform of short open-fronted jacket, baggy trousers, sash and cap.

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WAR IN STILL LIFE British photographer Roger Fenton navigated technical challenges and cultural mores to capture tactful images of the Crimean War By Deborah Stadtler

ROGER FENTON VIA LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (ALL)

T

hough Roger Fenton (1819–69) achieved icon status as a pioneering war photographer, his career behind the camera spanned just 10 years. Born into a wealthy British family, he had studied law at Oxford and dabbled in painting before delving into photography on an 1852 trip to Russia. Fenton founded the Royal Photographic Society in 1853 and a year later was named the first official photographer of the British Museum. He transformed the medium with his coverage of the Crimean War in 1855. That conflict broke out in 1853 when the Russian empire, seeking to expand its sphere of influence south to the Black Sea, faced a military alliance of Turkey, France, Britain and Sardinia. In 1854 British photographer Richard Nicklin sailed to the heart of the fighting in Crimea, but a violent storm sank his ship at port in Balaklava, killing him and destroying all his work. In early 1855 Fenton arrived in his stead. The British government hoped his images would help boost flagging public support for the war.

Fenton arrived in Crimea in early March with more than 30 crates of materials and a horse-drawn van he’d outfitted as a portable darkroom. Over the next three and a half months he created more than 350 large-format glass negatives. Limited by long exposure times and cumbersome gear, Fenton recorded largely stationary or posed subjects, including striking landscapes, portraits and studies of camp life. Respecting Victorian sensibilities, he refrained from photographing corpses or the miseries of trench life. His most celebrated image, Valley of the Shadow of Death (see P. 53), captures a stark landscape strewn with expended cannonballs, mute testimony to the savagery of combat. After the war Fenton pursued commercial photography at home. But his interest in the medium faded, and in 1862 he abruptly sold all his equipment and negatives, resigned from the Royal Photographic Society and resumed his law practice. Regardless, in scarcely a decade he had demonstrated the validity of photography as an art form to rival painting and drawing, and for the first time brought home the true impact of war. MH

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WAR IN STILL LIFE

A

B

A Limited by long exposure times, Fenton preferred such stationary scenes as this camp near Balaklava, where the Light Brigade battled the Russians.

50 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2017

C

B Fenton made prints of his subjects, including this portrait of Royal Artillery Captain Thomas Longworth Dames, from glass negatives.

C Fenton’s assistant Marcus Sparling, seated on the horsedrawn mobile darkroom the pair brought to Crimea, was a photographer in his own right.

D Posing atop a defensive gabion ringed by his soldiers, General György Kmety served in the Ottoman army at Crimea under the name Ismail Pasha.

D

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E

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WAR IN STILL LIFE

F

G

H

E Austrian-born Prince

F Five scruffy Croat laborers

Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte served his famed family’s native France as a general in the Crimean War.

pose for a portrait in camp. Subjects had to keep still up to 20 seconds, while prints took far longer to process.

G A man hands a pocket pistol to a British horseman prior to the Battle of Balaklava, which ended with the disastrous charge of the Light Brigade.

H Fenton’s best-known work, Valley of the Shadow of Death, centers on a road littered with expended cannonballs, which soldiers would collect for reuse.

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54 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2017

PHOTO12/UIG VIA GETTY IMAGES

French soldiers guard a captured German narrow-gauge rail line in 1916. The major belligerents all used similar track systems to move men and supplies from rear areas to the front lines.

NARROW PATH TO VICTORY Though almost comical in aspect, narrow-gauge trains proved a lifeline to frontline troops in World War I By Steven Trent Smith

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Military railroads have been around since the Crimean War, when in 1855 British engineers built a 7-mile double-track line northward from the port of Balaklava to support the siege of Sevastopol. During the American Civil War the U.S. Military Railroad, a separate agency within the War Department, oversaw the movement of Union troops and supplies on captured Southern rail lines. Combatants in most of the late 19th century conflicts made extensive use of railroads, but those lines operated on standard gauge (4 feet, 8½ inches) track. Prewar military planners sought narrow-gauge lines that crews could quickly erect and move as the tactical situation dictated. In the mid-1870s French civil engineer Paul Decauville invented just such a portable track system, initially intended for use on farms and industrial work sites. He chose a gauge of 60 cm—soixante, in French—3/8 inch shy of 2 feet. Key to his design were prefabricated track sections (think model train set) of varying lengths that one or two men could carry and place with minimal effort. The Russian army was the first to see the military potential of narrow-gauge railroads. In 1880 Czar Alexander II’s war ministry purchased from Decauville 22,000 sections (about 64 miles) of track, several hundred freight cars and a pair of small steam locomotives, all for use in Turkistan. A year later the French army followed suit with an order for 41 miles of track. France purchased another 300 miles of track in 1888 to connect a string of forts along its border with Germany. For that deployment

NEURDEIN/ROGER VIOLLET/GETTY IMAGES

A

merican railroaders dubbed it “Dead Man’s Curve,” and it was certainly a dangerous place to drive a train. Though little more than a jug handle in the line near Beaumont village in the Meuse River valley of northeastern France, the wriggle lay within range of German artillery. From their aerie atop nearby Montsec eagle-eyed enemy observers watched for any sign of movement on the Woëvre Plain. The slightest Allied twitch would trigger a relentless barrage. But the troops in the trenches depended on regular supplies, so each day the railroaders risked their lives on the ribbon of line known as the soixante. The narrow-gauge military railways of World War I looked like the kind of toy a rich man might run on his estate for the amusement of friends and family. The gauge spanned 2 feet. The engines were tiny, the cars almost cute. But during the 1914–18 clash on the Western Front these little trains served a deadly serious purpose, hauling to the front the myriad materiel required to wage war: heavy-caliber ordnance, ammunition, poison gas, rations, medical supplies, fresh troops. Armies on either side of no-man’s-land had voracious appetites, and keeping them dependably supplied was a Herculean task, best accomplished by the Lilliputian trains that crisscrossed the front on thousands of miles of track. Operated by the British, French, Germans and, later, Americans, the light railways represented literal lifelines to the trenches.

CHRONICLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

Decauville designed special carriages to transport 48-ton artillery pieces between the installations. The German army began developing its own 60 cm Heeresfeldbahn (“Army Field Train”) in the mid-1880s. The Germans had a broader vision of how light railways could be used offensively. “The narrow gauge was conceived as a means of quickly producing a transport infrastructure which could follow the armies in the field as they advanced,” railroad historian Charles S. Small noted. In 1897 the German army deployed its Feldbahns (“field trains”) to German South-West Africa (present-day Namibia) to support its ongoing fight against insurrectionists, providing its railway brigades with an instructive real-world trial. Drawing on the experience, the Germans set about redesigning their equipment to meet the needs of a truly mobile rail system. The French gained their own practical experience constructing commercial 60 cm lines in Morocco. The British were well behind their Continental counterparts in developing a narrow-gauge military rail system. Not until 1904 did the Royal Engineers build an experimental 2-foot-6-inch line (76.2 cm) at Longmoor Camp in Hampshire, mainly to instruct soldiers how to build and operate rail lines. But the service gave little thought as to how to apply this new means of transport in wartime. In fact, when it came to tactical transport, prewar British policy specified the use of trucks and buses.

Hostilities commenced in Europe on Aug. 5, 1914, when the Germans attacked Liège, Belgium. The medieval city

fell 11 days later. By the 20th the attackers had occupied Brussels and begun a push toward Paris. In anticipation of supplying the fast-moving troops, Kaiser Wilhelm II’s planners had stockpiled Feldbahn track and rolling stock along the border. By August 22 the narrow-gauge trains were supporting three army corps on a network that soon spread across Flanders and Wallonia. At the war’s outset France’s soixante resources were limited to permanent installations, though the government had set aside some portable track and cars in case of war. It quickly sent those to Belgium. The British army, adhering to its prewar transport policy, immediately pressed into service 1,000 civilian trucks, 300 buses and tens of thousands of horses. By mid-September 1914 the “war of movement” had devolved into a stalemate, giving rise to static trench warfare. The resourceful Germans were quick to repurpose their Feldbahns to directly serve frontline sectors. The French followed suit and soon had a considerable narrowgauge network in place. The British continued to eschew light rail service until February 1916 when the army high command, recognizing the shortcomings of road transport on the muddy front, belatedly ordered the development of tactical narrow-gauge lines. By then domestic Since the mid-19th century armies have employed standard-gauge railways (left) to transport troops and supplies. But in World War I portable narrow-gauge track systems (below) proved a more popular transportation mode among armies on both sides of the trenches.

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Nearly Missed the Train

The entry of the U.S. into the war in April

1917 brought a new spirit and vigor to Allied military railway operations. The first Army Corps of Engineers light The British Corps of railway unit, the 12th Engineer Regiment, Royal Engineers built mobilized in June 1917 with a compleits nation’s first narrowment of 1,600 officers and men recruited gauge military rail line in 1904, yet at the outset from among experienced railroaders and of World War I official engineering professionals. The regiment policy still specified the arrived in France’s Somme region in late use of trucks and buses August. Three months later the rookie railfor tactical transport. waymen were stunned when sucked into the Battle of Cambrai, a tactical draw between British and German forces best remembered for the first massed attack by a new weapon known as the tank. On November 30 the trainmen, all noncombatants, were nearly overrun when the Germans tried to capture the soixante during a counteroffensive. “Thus it was,” notes the regimental history, “that the first Americans fought in the world war. Caught without arms, they fought with whatever they had at hand.” In their case that meant clubs, picks, shovels and any weapon they might recover from fallen friends or foes.

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The U.S. 21st Engineer Regiment (Light Railway), organized in August 1917, comprised two battalions—one for construction and maintenance, the other to operate the 60 cm lines. The regiment shipped out for France in December and on arrival deployed to the Lorraine region of northeastern France, in the open countryside between Verdun and Nancy. In cooperation with the French National Railway the 21st first built a massive depot and rail yard at SorcySaint-Martin, just 11 miles from the trenches. The U.S. railroaders then set about reorganizing the soixante to meet their requirements, building new lines and rebuilding large sections of track with more substantial roadbed and heavier rails. The flow of narrow-gauge equipment seemed endless, as Allied ships transported hundreds of locomotives and thousands of railcars across the Atlantic. In late March 1918 the French army officially handed off its narrow-gauge operations in the area to the Americans.

A typical soixante line on the Western Front centered on a terminus, like Sorcy, well behind the front lines and outside the range of most enemy artillery. There standard-gauge trains off-loaded supplies for transfer to the narrow-gauge trains, whose branch lines radiated out to forward sectors. Within the terminus was a workshop for the repair and maintenance of rolling stock. Providing the motive power were chunky six- or eightwheeled steam locomotives fired by smoky low-grade coal that made the little trains easy targets for enemy artillery and aircraft. To reduce the risk of detection, railroad-

FROM TOP: ROBERT HUNT LIBRARY/CHRONICLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; MJL MILITARIA

factories were so overburdened that Britain was forced to order much of its 60 cm railroad equipment from the ostensibly neutral United States. Within a year Britain’s light railways were hauling more than 200,000 tons of supplies each week.

ROBERT HUNT LIBRARY/CHRONICLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

With a small steam engine providing the motive power, a Royal Engineers work party (opposite) sets out to maintain the tracks near Arras. Their efforts helped ensure the web of narrow-gauge lines could support heavy boxcars carrying troops to the front.

ers used gasoline-powered rail-tractors to pull cars the last mile or so to supply dumps. The rolling stock comprised mostly boxcars, gondolas and flatcars with a capacity of 22,000 pounds. As the war progressed, the Allies introduced special cars to haul huge 120 mm and 240 mm guns, as well as U.S.-designed 2,000-gallon tankers to tote fresh water to the troops. The British and Germans also pioneered the use of light railways to evacuate wounded soldiers. Once a train arrived at its destination and offloaded its cargo, crews quickly fitted the empty cars with racks to support stretchers. With the wounded aboard, the train ran directly to rear-area casualty clearing stations, ensuring the men received medical care hours earlier than had they been transported by road. Manpower on the U.S. lines included both seasoned professionals and raw recruits. It was not unusual for locomotive engineers to be in their 30s or 40s, while dispatchers—so critical to the smooth operation of the lines —boasted years of experience. By necessity the civil engineers laying out the lines, bridges and tunnels were professionals. But any grunt work—digging, hauling, grading, laying and repairing track—was left to the young and fit. Because the demand for supplies was unrelenting—a 12,000-man division, for example, required an estimated 1,000 tons of supplies daily—the light railways ran both scheduled and ad hoc service. The first few miles to the front were almost pleasant, pastoral outings, as the trains streamed through dense forestland and traversed rolling countryside past fields and farms barely touched by the war. But on the approach to the battlefields the woods

were devoid of trees, the fields pockmarked with craters, the farmhouses in ruins. The trains were at greatest risk when crossing open country, especially in daylight. As Private Leland McCrady of the 21st Engineers recalled, “German observers in balloons and observation posts on Montsec kept lookout for signs of steamers or tractors operating throughout these points and were ever ready to shell us.” To camouflage the rails in especially vulnerable spots like Deadman’s Curve, the Allies strung tall screens comprising woven branches or burlap strips along the roadbed. Whenever possible the trains made their runs under cover of darkness. But even that was no guarantee of success. “German planes,” McCrady recalled, “[were] always on the lookout for sparks from the steamer and quick to turn

The trains were at greatest risk when crossing open country, especially in daylight their machine guns on them or to drop bombs.” Aircrews also dropped parachute flares, which illuminated large swaths of the battlefield for long minutes, enabling artillery spotters to pinpoint the trains. Though fired on often, the diminutive trains rarely suffered a direct hit. The soixante lines terminated anywhere from a few hundred to a few dozen yards from the trenches. From there goods and munitions moved forward by manpower

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Weighing in at nearly 300 pounds, the British 9.2-inch high-explosive shell was typical of the rounds fired by heavy siege howitzers on either side of no-man’s-land. Combatants used the narrow-gauge lines to move these and millions of other shells up to forward firing batteries.

or horsepower, sometimes on 40 cm tramways running through the trenches. Shells went straight to concealed ammunition dumps, while the daily train of rations trundled farther forward to frontline mess kitchens. Derailments and accidents were all too common occurrences. “The engineer simply had to trust in Providence not to tip over, hit a cannon, a column of squads, some wooden-shoed women or a French general,” quipped 21st Engineers Sergeant Clarence P. Hobert in the official unit history. The hazards were magnified at night. “[One] night,” Hobert recalled, “a French truck loaded with gasoline rammed into an ammunition train, causing an explosion, the flames lighting the skies for miles around. Many gas shells exploded, and the men were obliged to wear their gas masks and lie in a muddy ditch for some time.” In a similar incident the situation was reversed: The train hauled a pair of tankers full of gasoline, the French truck munitions. Slipping over a hill in the dark, the locomotive smashed into the truck, hurling it aside and setting it on fire. The engineer called for brakes, and as luck would have it, the tankers rolled to a stop adjacent to the burning

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vehicle. It was another recipe for disaster. One of the brakemen, Private Sanford C. Johnson, saw that the driver was pinned beneath his truck. He and a fellow crewman ran to the stricken man but couldn’t budge him. “We were under the truck, working like mad,” Johnson explained, “when the truck blew up. The jar evidently lifted the weight from our comrade, as we freed him.” As the crewmen ran for cover, dragging the Frenchman between them, the 75 mm shells began cooking off. “[They] were coming thick and fast from the camion,” he recalled. “As we were straightening to carry the wounded man, a huge explosion threw us all on our faces.” The tankers had blown. The resulting conflagration destroyed four railway cars and three French ammunition trucks. When the fire died down, bystanders found the charred remains of a French soldier. “The fire and explosion caused considerable excitement,” Johnson noted laconically. The lightweight rails were often in lamentable condition, but one great advantage of the soixante was the ease with which it could be repaired. If intense shelling took out a couple hundred feet of track, repair crews got straight to work, first filling the craters, then connecting new sections of Decauville rails to the undamaged line. “‘Dead Man’s Curve’ was subjected to shelling for months, but comparatively infrequent repairs to the track were necessary,” wrote civil engineer Marshall R. Pugh after the war. “It is about as impracticable to destroy such a railway by shell fire as it is to get rid of cooties in the same manner. This fact is their protection.”

FROM TOP: MJL MILITARIA; CHRONICLE/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO; LT. ERNEST BROOKS/IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM; BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES

Handle With Care

LT. ERNEST BROOKS/IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM

Whenever either side planned a great offensive seeking to gain or regain territory, the railway engineers began stockpiling track, ballast and tools near the front to facilitate the rapid construction of a link with the enemy’s 60 cm rail network. After the breakout, as soon as commanders were certain the assault had succeeded and positions were consolidated, rail crews commenced laying track across no-man’s-land—a process that took only a day or two before the trains were up and running. Any captured enemy rail equipment was put to use on the victor’s lines. Of course, sometimes the enemy pushed back, overrunning the newly gained territory and taking back their railroad. Conditions at the front were tough on the narrowgauge crews. “We were under shellfire every night,” reported Lieutenant O.C. Whitaker of the 21st Engineers. “It was no uncommon thing for one to spend the better part of the night with his gas mask in the alert position, his teeth chattering and his knees knocking together.” Despite the dangers, casualties were relatively light. Thirty-six men from the 21st died while on duty in France. That’s not to say operating the soixante was a milk run. Far from it.

On Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918, the U.S. Corps of Engineers controlled some 1,350 miles of narrow-gauge railways in France, more than half of which had been captured from the Germans. By the time the rail service wound down at the end of January 1919, U.S. trains had transported more than 860,000 tons of supplies to the front, those of the British and Germans millions of tons more.

The war proved the zenith of military light railways. The indispensable contribution they made was due largely to the static nature of trench warfare, for which soixante operations were uniquely qualified. But narrowgauge railroads never again played a significant role in war. Colonel William B. Parsons wrote a fitting tribute in his official history The American Engineers in France: “In short, the Lilliputian railway that at the beginning of hostilities was little more than a toy with apparently limited possibilities had grown into a very husky system.” The tiny trains were a vital part of the supply system. It is difficult to see how the armies could have functioned without them. MH Steven Trent Smith is a five-time Emmy Award-winning television photojournalist and author of two books, The Rescue and Wolf Pack, about the submarine war in the Pacific. He is a frequent contributor to World War II, MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History and Civil War Times. For further reading Smith recommends Narrow Gauge to No Man’s Land, by Richard Dunn; TwoFoot Rails to the Front, by Charles S. Small; and Railways and War Before 1918, by Denis Bishop and W.J.K. Davies. Narrow-gauge rail was a practical means of moving British 15-inch howitzer shells (opposite, top left), which were five times heavier than the 9.2-inch rounds. To get the shells aboard cars required basic manpower (opposite, bottom left). The lines themselves were often targeted by artillery (middle). VIPs such as Britain’s King George V (seated at left) also traveled by rail.

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ON THE INSIDE UNDER FIRE Sieges in American history may lack castles and siege engines, but those who endured them demonstrated ample bravado By Ron Soodalter

When French-allied Indians moved to slaughter surrendered British soldiers and their families after the 1757 Siege of Fort William Henry, Brig. Gen. Louis-Joseph de MontcalmGozon reportedly tried to intervene.

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ALBERT BOBBETT/LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

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During the French and Indian War what now constitutes upstate New York was a hotly contested battleground between the colonists of British America and those of New France, the 32-mile-long stretch of Lake George forming an uncertain barrier between the two. In late 1755 the British constructed Fort William Henry on the southern shore of the lake as a potential staging ground for incursions into Canada. The British fortress looked impressive. Built on an irregular square, it boasted bastioned corners and 30-foot-thick walls, surrounded on three sides by a dry moat and on the fourth by the lake itself. The walls, however, comprised earthen berms faced with logs and—as the garrison would soon discover—were no match for artillery. Some 16 miles southeast of Fort William Henry stood Fort Edward, on the banks of the Hudson River. Connecting the two was a recently cleared wilderness road, over which Fort William Henry could presumably draw support from Fort Edward should the French attack. Attack they did. In the summer of 1757 French Brig. Gen. Louis-Joseph de Montcalm-Gozon, resolving to launch a preemptive strike, assembled a formidable army of some 6,200 regulars and militia and 1,800 Indians from allied tribes, supported by 36 cannon and five mortars. Getting wind of the French plans, Maj. Gen. Daniel Webb, commanding at Fort Edward, reinforced the garrison at Fort William Henry to around 2,400 men. The fort itself could only house up to 500, however, so the bulk of the force occupied an entrenched camp within a half-mile southeast of the fort. A number of British soldiers were suffering from smallpox and were quartered in either the fort’s makeshift hospital or sick huts. After boating down Lake George with the bulk of his army, Montcalm arrived outside Fort William Henry the night of August 2–3. The next morning, having failed to convince British Lt. Col. George Monro to surrender his post, the French general commenced siege operations. In the days that followed, Montcalm’s gunners kept the British under near continual bombardment while his sappers dug trenches toward the fort, bringing the French guns ever

Fort William Henry

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closer. Monro sent several couriers to Fort Edward, appealing for help. But Indians and militia blocked the road, and on August 4 they shot down a rider carrying a reply from Webb. The dispatch they recovered from the courier’s body advised Monro to surrender. Three days later, as the French closed to within 1,000 yards of the fort, Montcalm shared the intercepted missive with the British commander. On August 9, with little hope of relief, Monro capitulated. Montcalm offered generous terms: He would allow the British to march out in parade order, under their colors, in return for a pledge not to bear arms against the French for 18 months. They could keep their personal belongings, weapons and one symbolic cannon, but no ammunition. French doctors would tend their sick and wounded, who would be returned to Fort Edward when well. The terms seemed too good to be true—and they were. The Indians, angered by Montcalm’s leniency, plundered the surrendered fort and killed 17 of the incapacitated soldiers. The next morning, as the British column marched away ostensibly under French escort, the Indians attacked, at first robbing and beating, then killing and scalping unarmed soldiers and their families. Discipline among the British collapsed, as men, women and children broke for the woods, pursued by hundreds of screaming Indians. In coming days only about 500 of the 2,308 British troops and followers who had surrendered made it to Fort Edward. Lurid reports claimed the Indians had butchered as many as 1,500. But scores of the British had escaped, and the Indians took hundreds more captive. A more accurate count of those killed and missing falls between 69 and 184. In the weeks following the attack dozens of fugitives trickled into Fort Edward and other British bastions, while French and British authorities successfully negotiated the release of hundreds more. But the slaughter remained a blot on Montcalm’s otherwise impressive military record. The first siege of the American Revolution followed on the heels of the April 19, 1775, Battles of Lexington and Concord. Lasting nearly a year, it resulted in a key strategic victory for the young nation and its commander in chief, George Washington. Pursuing the British from Lexington and Concord, Mass., the Patriots blockaded the land approaches to Boston and established a siege line from Roxbury to Chelsea, corralling Lt. Gen. Thomas Gage and his troops within the strategically vital town. The only remaining access was via Boston Harbor, through which, over the months that followed, the British reinforced the garrison to a peak of some 6,000 troops. At that point the Continental Army was little more than a disparate gaggle of ill-trained, ill-equipped militiamen

Boston

FROM TOP: RON EMBLETON/LOOK AND LEARN/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

T

he concept of the siege is as old as human conflict itself, dating from man’s earliest efforts to “fort up” against hostile forces. The written record of American sieges stretches back to colonial times. Some of these sieges were monumental, some personal, others simply quirky. All met the requisite criterion: people on the inside striving desperately to keep people on the outside from either getting in or forcing them out.

Above, another depiction of the melee as French-allied Indians robbed, beat and killed British soldiers and civilians following the surrender of Fort William Henry. Below, George Washington rides through Boston after a successful 11-month siege forced British troops to vacate the city.

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In the mid-1880s the Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA), comprising the territory’s leading cattle barons, suffered a spate of bad luck. First came drought and the resultant dearth of grass. Then came the “Big Die-up”—two consecutive winters (1885–86 and 1886–87) so brutal they killed 80 percent of the stock, bankrupted many of the big spreads and all but wiped out the cattle industry. Then came organized rustlers. While the cattlemen could do nothing about the weather, they could certainly put an end to human depredations. Consequently, in 1892 WSGA members resolved to invade Johnson County, suspected hotbed of rustling in the region. They compiled a hit list of 70 names, including a number of small ranchers who, while perhaps guiltless of rustling, had had the temerity to start a competing association. Topping their list was Nate Champion, a Texas-born cowboy who had made his reputation in Wyoming—first as a top hand, then as owner of a small herd. Champion was admired by many and trusted by most. But as unofficial leader of the small ranchers, he represented a thorn in the side of the big cattle interests. Champion had survived an earlier attempt on his life, and the cattlemen were eager to keep him from implicating them in that attack. The barons hired nearly two-dozen Texas gunmen at $5 a day, plus a $50 bounty for every man on the list they killed. Far from a clandestine mission, their plan had the

KC Ranch

PETER NEWARK AMERICAN PICTURES/BRIDGEMAN IMAGES

who felt little kinship with one another. By that summer desertion had further thinned its ranks. Worse yet, Washington lacked sufficient artillery to mount an effective siege. Arriving at a solution, the American commander sent Colonel Henry Knox, a resourceful young officer, to Fort Ticonderoga, N.Y., which Benedict Arnold and Ethan Allen had captured from the British that May. His mission? To haul the fort’s artillery back to Boston. In early December, after selecting some five dozen cannons, mortars and howitzers from Ticonderoga’s arsenal, Knox proceeded to haul and float his 60 tons of ordnance nearly 300 miles through winter gales down Lake George, across icebound rivers, over snow-covered mountains and through dense forests, finally delivering the guns to Washington in Boston in late January 1776. On the night of March 4–5 Washington ordered a diversionary bombardment while hundreds of Patriot soldiers silently mounted guns atop Dorchester Heights, overlooking the British troops and ships. Finally wielding sufficient firepower, the American commander gave the British little choice but to evacuate the town. On March 17, with the arrival of favorable winds, General William Howe—who had replaced Gage as garrison commander—embarked his troops and thousands of terrified Loyalists and sailed for Nova Scotia. Despite its shortcomings, the fledgling Continental Army had successfully besieged a British army for nearly a year.

The 1892 siege of KC Ranch inflamed the Johnson County War, an armed clash between Wyoming’s big cattle operators and supposed rustlers and small ranchers, such as Nate Champion (astride his horse at right in the photo opposite) and this unidentified Winchester-bearing fellow.

WAVELAND PRESS, INC. (2)

entries he shot back whenever a target presented itself. The firing remained intense. “Boys, there is bullets coming in like hail.” Around midmorning Champion wrote, “Nick is dead—he died about 9 o’clock.” He then bluntly assessed his situation: “I don’t think they intend to let me get away this time.” “Boys, I feel pretty lonesome just now,” Champion mused as the siege dragged on past noon. “I wish there was someone here with me so we could watch all sides at once.” By 3 p.m. he’d begun to lose hope. “It don’t look as if there is much show of my getting away.” Late that afternoon Champion heard the sound of splitting wood, as the invaders filled a wagon with splintered pitch pine and hay. “I think they will fire the house this time,” he wrote. He was right. While the others kept up a steady fire, a handful of men ran the burning wagon up against the outside of the cabin. Flames engulfed the structure as Champion wrote his final entry: “The house is all fired. Goodbye, boys, if I never see you again.” Signing the entry, he pocketed the notebook and, armed with a rifle and six-shooter, bolted from the cabin toward the nearby ravine—straight into the muzzles of waiting gunmen. Champion got off a single shot before his attackers poured round after round into him. After inspecting their quarry’s lifeless body, one of the killers pinned a hastily scrawled placard to Champion’s bloody vest: CATTLE THIEVES, BEWARE! By delaying the invasion a day, Champion had allowed an alert neighbor to get word to Buffalo, where Johnson County Sheriff William “Red” Angus threw together a force of more than 200 outraged citizens. They intercepted the invaders on the morning of April 11, trapping them in the barn of a nearby ranch. Within hours, however, Gov. Barber telegraphed President Benjamin Harrison, pleading on behalf of the now besieged besiegers. On Harrison’s authority a cavalry troop from Fort McKinney soon rescued the cattlemen and their hired killers. Ultimately, not a single invader was convicted of a crime. The Texans went home after collecting their blood money, and the cattle barons returned to their ranches. Nonetheless, by his stand in the face of certain death Champion had thwarted mass vigilantism in the lawless early days of Wyoming.

tacit support of Wyoming Gov. Amos W. Barber, a onetime association member, who would rally a far higher authority to their defense when things didn’t go as planned. The little army’s first stop was Champion’s remote cabin on the KC Ranch, south of Buffalo. At dawn on April 9 the party of 52 armed cattlemen and hired killers—joined, bizarrely, by two newspaper reporters—surrounded the cabin. Inside were an unsuspecting Champion, partner Nick Ray—whose name was also on the list—and two visiting freighters. The men outside quietly nabbed the visitors as they emerged to collect water. But when Ray left the cabin, they opened fire, mortally wounding him. Moments later Champion bolted from the cabin. Rapid-firing his rifle at the attackers, he ran to his partner, grabbed him by the collar and—bullets kicking up dust all around him—dragged Ray back inside. The besieged cabin soon came under a torrent of gunfire from the stable 75 yards to the northeast, from the riverbank to the northwest, from behind the house and from a ravine 50 yards south. Remarkably, as his partner lay dying and his own hopes of mercy or rescue ebbed away, Champion opened a small noteHired by the cattle barons, nearly two-dozen Texas gunmen rode to book and began to write: Wyoming expecting to kill rustlers “Me and Nick was getting breakfast when the and collect a bounty. This Colt .45 attack took place,” he opened. “Nick is shot but belonged to J.A. Garrett, one of not dead yet. I must go and wait on him.” Two four men charged with murdering hours later he wrote, “Nick is still alive.” Between Nate Champion and Nick Ray.

Colt Peacemaker 67

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Freelance writer Ron Soodalter is the author of Hanging Captain Gordon and The Slave Next Door. For further reading he recommends Adobe Walls: The History and Archaeology of the 1874 Trading Post, by T. Lindsay Baker and Billy R. Harrison, and Wyoming Range War: The Infamous Invasion of Johnson County, by John W. Davis.

UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS; OPPOSITE: SMITHSONIAN BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY

One of the most storied sieges in the history of westward expansion began on June 27, 1874, at Adobe Walls, a settlement amid the ruins of an abandoned Texas Panhandle trading post. Ten years earlier at Adobe Walls some 400 enlisted men and Indian scouts of the 1st New Mexico Volunteer Cavalry under Colonel Christopher “Kit” Carson had successfully fought off several thousand Comanche, Kiowa and Kiowa-Apache warriors. History was set to repeat itself. The buffalo trade was brisk in 1874, and that spring a handful of Kansas entrepreneurs had built a makeshift trading post near the ruins to service the dozens of hunters ranging the surrounding countryside. By June it comprised two stores, a corral, a blacksmith shop, a restaurant and, not surprising, a saloon. Determined to drive out the intruders, several hundred of the region’s Comanches and Cheyennes, along with a handful of Arapahos and Kiowas, banded together for what Comanche medicine man Isa-tai had guaranteed would be a successful campaign. He further promised his “magic” would protect the warriors from the buffalo hunters’ bullets. At dawn on the 27th the army of allied Indians, under the leadership of Isa-tai and Comanche Chief Quanah Parker, swooped down on the encampment. Inside the complex were one woman and 28 very surprised merchants, drovers, hunters and skinners. Among them were Bat Masterson and Billy Dixon, two young men destined

Adobe Walls

to become Western legends. Among the hunters were veterans of earlier Indian fights. They were proficient marksmen, and their favored weapon was the long-range .50-caliber Sharps rifle. From 1,000 yards a single wellaimed round could kill a buffalo, let alone a man. Inside the stores were cases of the Sharps “Big Fifties” and thousands of rounds of ammunition. They outshone the Indians’ weapons in range, power and accuracy. When the warriors attacked, the besieged buffalo men took refuge in the saloon and both stores, sheltering behind stacked hides, grains sacks and anything else they could find. The Indian fire was daunting, and three men died in the initial onslaught. “At times,” Dixon recalled, “the bullets poured in like hail and made us hug the sod walls like gophers.” As sod doesn’t burn, at least there was no danger of being burned out, and the defenses held. Over the next several days the buffalo men repelled repeated charges, during which some foolhardy warriors rode in close enough to pound on the doors and windows. Digging gun ports through the sod walls, the hunters picked off their exposed attackers one by one. “We tried to storm the place several times,” Quanah recounted, “but the hunters shot so well, we would have to retreat.” It seemed no matter how far they withdrew from the sod buildings, the .50-caliber rounds continued to find them. On the third day of the siege Dixon reputedly dropped an Indian from his horse at a distance of nearly a mile. By then the Indians belief in Isa-tai’s prediction had faded. And when Quanah himself took a blow to the shoulder from a spent bullet, they wholly lost faith. Although they remained in the area a few more days, the warriors staged no more direct attacks on the encampment. When the last of them drifted away, the buffalo men emerged from their fortifications. The bodies of more than a dozen warriors still lay on the surrounding plain. In addition to the three buffalo men killed in the initial assault, a fourth died as he descended a ladder and his own gun accidently discharged, tearing off the top of his head. The allied Indians raided the area throughout the summer, destroying settlements, outlying homesteads and wagon trains and killing an estimated 190 settlers over a 1,000-mile swath from Texas across the Plains states into Colorado. As devastating as the raids were, they only prompted relentless military pursuit, resulting in the ultimate subjugation and relocation of the Southern Plains tribes and the opening of the region to permanent settlement. The failed siege of Adobe Walls was merely a harbinger of the inevitable defeat that followed. MH

Comanche Chief Quanah Parker (here and opposite) co-led the 1874 Siege of Adobe Walls with medicine man Isa-tai, whose “magic” was no match for the Texas buffalo hunters’ longrange “Big Fifty” Sharps rifles.

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Reviews

My Lai: Vietnam, 1968 and the Descent Into Darkness, by Howard Jones, Oxford University Press, New York, 2017, $34.95

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The massacre of Vietnamese civilians by U.S. soldiers at My Lai on March 16, 1968, was a war crime. When the story broke, many Americans refused to believe it. But the truth eventually emerged during the courtsmartial of platoon leader 2nd Lt. William Calley, company commander Captain Ernest Medina and brigade commander Colonel Oran Henderson. Medina was ultimately acquitted of war crimes, and Henderson was acquitted on charges of having covered up and failed to properly investigate the allegations. Only Calley was convicted of murder, although a federal judge quickly commuted his sentence. Thus, while almost no one today denies the massacre happened, many continue to believe Calley was made a scapegoat for the entire incident. Jones’ volume is a meticulous and detailed review of what happened in My Lai, the subsequent investigations and the courtsmartial. His analysis is brutally frank yet fair,

objective and balanced. He relates the combat stress soldiers of Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, were under in the weeks before the attack on the village, yet he affirms the massacre was still cold-blooded murder. Jones also details the moral heroism displayed by Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson Jr. and his two helicopter door gunners, Lawrence Colburn and Glenn Andreotta, as they tried to stop the carnage. Knowledgeable readers’ only complaint will be that Jones makes several factual errors, albeit on peripheral points that in no way detract from the main story. For example, he says that during the Tet Offensive U.S. Marines finally regained control of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, when, in fact, soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division deserve the credit. In another passage he repeats the oft-quoted canard that Audie Murphy “received more awards than any other American soldier in World War II.”

EVERETT HISTORICAL COLLECTION/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO

My Lai Murders

Though three U.S. Army officers were courtmartialed for the events at My Lai, only 2nd Lt. William Calley, center, was convicted of murder.

The author correctly concludes that the cause of the My Lai massacre was a failure in leadership from the division level down to platoon level, but especially between company commander Medina and platoon leader Calley. Some of the most distinguished soldiers of the Vietnam War concurred with that conclusion. Among them, Colonel David Hackworth, who bluntly said, “Calley should have been lined up against the wall and shot—the guy’s a murderer.” Every graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, ROTC and OCS should be required to read this book before pinning on the gold bars. —David T. Zabecki

The Quartermaster: Montgomery C. Meigs, Lincoln’s General, Master Builder of the Union Army, by Robert O’Harrow Jr., Simon & Schuster, New York, 2016, $28 For much of the American Civil War the Union Army was well supplied but poorly commanded. Many were to fault for the latter problem. The former success was due mainly to one man— Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs, logistical mastermind and subject of this engaging biography. Meigs vaulted onto the national stage thanks to an early and ironic benefactor, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, future president of the Confederacy. At the outset of the war Meigs’ management skills prompted newly elected President Abraham Lincoln to assign him a critical mission: the resupply of Florida’s Fort Pickens, which the Corps of Engineers officer accomplished with rapid efficiency. He was soon destined for greater things as appointed quartermaster general of the Union Army. Meigs soon found himself personally responsible for the largest single outlay in the federal budget. While other generals fought the enemy on the field, the quartermaster general

waged war against hunger, supply shortages and rampant corruption. Meigs coordinated the massive task of purchasing and distribution, forever seeking efficiencies in the market and counseling restraint in the field. Unsurprising for a man constantly assessing the cost of war, he advocated having armies on the march live off the land and was especially delighted when Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman began making the South—and not him —pay for the war. If logistics intrinsically calls for a behind-the-scenes look, O’Harrow brings such potentially lackluster content to life. While Meigs made his principal accomplishments from behind a desk, he did witness combat on occasion, observing the 1863 Battle of Chattanooga in person (an earned privilege, as he did much to supply the city) and commanding field units resisting Lt. Gen. Jubal Early’s 1864 attack on Washington. Finally, Lincoln’s oft-overlooked quartermaster general sought to ensure Americans would not overlook the sacrifices of others by serving as a principal architect of Virginia’s Arlington National Cemetery. Meigs, who had met Confederate General Robert E. Lee before the war, insisted war dead of both sides be buried on the acres immediately surrounding the former Custis-Lee Mansion. Profoundly conscious of the material cost of war, he made certain his foe would never forget its human toll. —Anthony Paletta

Caesar’s Greatest Victory: The Battle of Alesia, Gaul, 52 BC, by John Sadler and Rosie Serdiville, Casemate Publishers, Oxford, United Kingdom, 2016, $32.95 “There were a large number of reasons, of course, why the conflict at Alesia became famous: It was the occasion for deeds of daring and skill the like of which have never been seen in any other battle.” So wrote Plutarch, perhaps the greatest of Julius Caesar’s ancient biographers, of the 52 BC

WORLD WAR I

Pershing’s Crusaders The American Soldier in World War I Richard S. Faulkner “This superb study is absolutely essential reading for anyone interested in America’s first great expeditionary army.”—Mark E. Grotelueschen, author of The AEF Way of War: The American Army and Combat in World War I 772 pages, 31 photographs, Cloth $39.95, Ebook $39.95

NEW IN PAPERBACK

Doughboys on the Great War How American Soldiers Viewed Their Military Experience Edward A. Gutiérrez “What Gutiérrez has discovered ought to make Americans proud, for, although the veterans returned with an understandable hatred of war, they were almost universally proud of what they had done.” —Wall Street Journal 320 pages, 30 illustrations, 1 map, Cloth $34.95, Paper $19.95, Ebook $19.95

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

MODERN WAR STUDIES

Reviews Recommended

The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weaponry Chuck Wills Spanning the globe and nearly 5,000 years of human warfare, this photo-intensive compendium highlights hundreds of weapons from the Berman Museum of World History in Anniston, Ala. Those selected— from rudimentary stone axes to cutting-edge firearms—trace the history of weapon technology.

Waging Insurgent Warfare Seth G. Jones Despite the rise of asymmetrical warfare and insurgencies like those in Iraq and Syria, Jones argues, we know little about how insurgencies function. Appealing to anyone interested in modern warfare, this volume outlines factors that contribute to insurgencies, their basic components and how best to combat them.

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siege of Alesia (near presentday Alise-Sainte-Reine in central France). Facing Caesar was the huge army of Vercingetorix, the ruthless Gallic leader who had burst on the scene after the recent assassination of his father, Celtillus. The subsequent rebellion against Roman rule triggered warfare on a scale and intensity not previously witnessed in Gaul. Within a matter of days his followers torched more than 20 cities to deny them and all they contained to the Romans. One remained intact: Avaricum (near present-day Bourges), which stood on a prominent spur surrounded by marshes. The Romans besieged it, and when they ultimately breached the defenses, the legionnaires engaged in a ruthless slaughter. According to Caesar, the death toll reached 40,000 with only 800 making their escape. Among the survivors was Vercingetorix, who resolved to rally the whole of Gaul, for only such an unprecedented effort would drive out the Romans. Vercingetorix made his stand at Alesia, considered a second Troy, such were the formidable defense lines surrounding the plateau. The authors suggest the Gallic commander sought to weaken the Roman forces through ambush, skirmishing and siege work. Masterly tactics, though not masterly enough, as Caesar, having seized a hill that threatened the defenders’ water supply, ultimately gained his victory—justly counted among

history’s most remarkable feats of arms. The casualties numbered in the tens of thousands. Vercingetorix surrendered and languished in prison for six years before his captors quietly strangled him. He remains a legendary figure in French military history and is memorialized near Alise-Sainte-Reine with a statue commissioned by Napoléon III. A visitor center [alesia.com] overlooks the battlefield (one of three proposed sites, anyway), but those seeking a primer on Alesia need look no further than this excellent book. —David Saunders

Praetorian: The Rise and Fall of Rome’s Imperial Bodyguard, by Guy de la Bédoyère, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 2017, $35 A history of the Roman Praetorian Guard from its beginning through its disbanding by Constantine, this volume centers on the unit’s formation, role, structure, conditions, deployment, leadership and, most important, the part it played

within the larger context of Rome’s imperial history. Augustus formed the Praetorian Guard in 27 BC following his victory against Mark Antony at Actium (see related story, P. 30). During the Roman civil wars personal bodyguards were common among rival commanders, who justly feared assassination by enemies— and even their own troops if things went badly. Augustus’ guard was relatively small—some dozen cohorts (4,800 men), about the size of a single legion. Only a few cohorts were stationed in Rome itself, the rest being dispersed throughout Italy. Under Tiberius the guard expanded to 15,000 men, almost all of whom were stationed at a separate base in Rome. Not unlike Adolf Hitler’s Sturmabteilung or Josef Stalin’s Soviet secret police, the guard ultimately posed a threat to the ruler himself and over the next three centuries often played a role in removing and installing new emperors The Praetorian Guard is without doubt an important subject for an ancient historian, but it is one fraught with difficulty. The greatest problem is that evidence for the guard’s activities makes only erratic appearances in the ancient sources, usually as passing commentaries to the sources’ larger narratives—the lives of the emperors themselves. For long periods, from 98 to 180 for example, the sources make no mention at all of the guard. During only a few

periods is the information sufficient. Bédoyère’s command of the general narrative of Roman history, however, allows him to assemble what information there is on the stronger framework of events concerning the emperors themselves. The author admits the evidence is complex and incomplete, suggesting readers also examine the two other major works on the guard (The Praetorian Guard, by Boris Rankov, and Roman Guardsman, 62 BC – AD 324, by Ross Cowan). If not for the lay reader, this book is valuable for students of all things Roman, filling gaps in our knowl-

edge of a pivotal institution in Roman history. —Richard A. Gabriel

Heligoland: Britain, Germany and the Struggle for the North Sea, by Jan Rüger, Oxford University Press, United Kingdom, 2017, $34.95 A far-reaching view from the rocky island of Heligoland in the North Sea, this unique volume relates Britain’s fraught relationships with Napoleonic France in the 19th century and confrontational Germany in the 19th and 20th centuries. From his opening lines Rüger paints a dramatic

picture: “Out in the North Sea, five hours northwest of Hamburg and 300 miles off the coast of England, sits Heligoland.…Its imposing cliffs can be seen from more than a dozen miles, rising abruptly to 85 feet above the crashing waves. It is a steep, triangular bastion of an island.” But as the author relates, there is more to the island than its appearance. Over the centuries Heligoland has served as a key North Sea waypoint, a smugglers’ way station between Britain and the Continent, a spy center, a regal summer resort, a gamblers’ haunt, a celebrated artist colony, a naval base and, following

World War II, a British Royal Air Force practice bombing site. Heligoland was once part of Denmark. It has been a British colony. It served Nazi Germany as a strategic naval base and an evocative symbol of Aryan identity. Indeed, its strategic relevance stretches from the Napoleonic Wars through both world wars into the politically complex Cold War. The author identifies Heligoland as a “hinge” between Great Britain and the Continent, and the analogy holds true for the ongoing relationship between Britain and Germany. Rüger’s epilogue focuses on that BritishGerman connection:




 



 
 
 
 

In October 1777, a 6,000-strong British army surrendered in defeat after the American victory at the Battles of Saratoga. For the first time in history, a British General surrendered his sword. 

  

 
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Reviews Recommended

Coexistence seemed so much of an everyday fact that those growing up at the beginning of the 21st century could be forgiven if they struggled to appreciate just how conflictridden and violent the AngloGerman past had been.…Britain and Germany are more closely bound up with one another today than at any point since the late 19th century. But none of this is irreversible.

Sea Power

Rüger’s book is not merely the exploration of an obscure island and its storied history; it’s a thought-provoking treatise of how nations coexist—or don’t. —Joseph Callo

Admiral James Stavridis Throughout the course of human history sea power has often equated to geopolitical power. Stavridis, a retired American four-star admiral, provides useful insight into naval battles ranging from classical times through the Cold War and looks forward to the likely sites of future engagements, such as the Arctic or South China Sea.

The Ambulance Drivers James McGrath Morris In war Ernest Hemingway found adventure and a cause, while John Dos Passos saw only oppression and futility. Their 20-year friendship began in World War I and eventually dissolved into a public fight over their political differences. Morris profiles the writers who gave voice to a generation united and divided by war.

74 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2017

America’s Sailors in the Great War: Seas, Skies and Submarines, by Lisle A. Rose, University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 2016, $36.95 Given the approaching centennial of America’s entry into World War I, it seems fitting historians should reexamine the nation’s participation in that epochal conflict. While most such works stress the activities of the soldiers, Marines and airmen who battled on and above the trenches of the Western Front, Rose has chosen to focus on the part played by the Navy. Although the U.S. battle fleet didn’t engage in any major fleet actions during the war, the Navy nevertheless contributed to the Allied victory. That said, the Great White Fleet of capital ships so carefully built up by Theodore Roosevelt did have to

adapt to an entirely new kind of war, one for which it had not been designed. It was the smaller warships— destroyers, subchasers, submarines, minesweepers, etc. —that were to see most of the action. The battleships made an appearance, but mainly as a deterrent to Germany’s High Seas Fleet, which would not sortie again until the war was over. World War I prompted the U.S. Navy to develop new warships and new ways of using them. The conflict also witnessed the introduction of naval aviation in the form of seaplanes and flying boats. It had yet to mature into the carrier-based aviation that was to play so pivotal a role in the next war. —Robert Guttman Rendezvous With Death: The Americans Who Joined the Foreign Legion in 1914 to Fight for France and Civilization, by David Hanna, Regnery History, Washington, D.C., 2016, $29.99 The Americans who rushed to fight for France in 1914 today may appear naive idealists. But while a few sought

adventure, those who volunteered more often regarded World War I as a crusade to save civilization from Teutonic militarism. When war erupted in August 1914 many sympathetic Americans answered the call. Hanna focuses on seven volunteers, touching on nearly 30 others who rushed to the Tricolor by year’s end. The magnifique seven included Ivy Leaguers, an artist, an ad man and a boxer. The best known was poet Alan Seeger, uncle of future folk singer Pete Seeger. As enlistment in the Legion was nominally legal for Americans, Hanna’s subjects took that route. In the industrialized slaughter of the Western Front, many of the American volunteers lost their idealism, though most remained in the French service. Three of the seven—Kiffin Rockwell, Victor Chapman and William Thaw—transferred from the legion to the Aéronautique Militaire, helping form the Lafayette Escadrille. Five other enlistees later joined them in the air service. Hanna’s main source for the history of the escadrille is Herbert Molloy Mason’s outdated 1964 history, and Hanna repeats myths about wartime aviation, such as the preponderance of canvascovered aircraft and the twoweek life expectancy of new pilots. Overall, though, Rendezvous With Death hits on all cylinders with its depiction of a conflict with present-day ramifications. —Barrett Tillman

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Hallowed Ground Bushyy Run Battlefield, Pennsylvania

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ollowing Britain’s 1763 victory in the French and Indian War, Crown authorities earned the ire of tribes previously allied with the French by allowing settlers to occupy Indian lands in violation of treaty terms. Assuming the British intended to drive them out or destroy them, many called for action. The frontier exploded into Pontiac’s War, named after the Ottawa chief who helped organize a confederation of disaffected Indians from across the Great Lakes region and Ohio and Mississippi valleys, including a few thousand Ottowas, Ojibwes (Chippewas), Potawatomies, Hurons, Miamis, Kickapoos, Delawares, Shawnees, Mingos, Wyandots and Senecas. Maj. Gen. Sir Jeffery Amherst, Britain’s North American commander, sought to establish Crown authority on the frontier and reaffirm claims to the Ohio Valley. He tasked Swissborn Colonel Henry Bouquet with relieving British forts west of the Allegheny Mountains, the most formidable of which was Fort Pitt, with other key garrisons at Detroit and Niagara. Indian forces laid siege to Fort Detroit in May, Pitt in June and other British forts on into summer. Fort Pitt commander Captain Simon Ecuyer—like Bouquet, a professional Swiss officer—fortified his defenses, but his supply line to the east was problematic, as Forts Bedford and Ligonier were small and difficult to reinforce. In late June Amherst dispatched detachments of Scottish Highlanders from the 42nd and 77th regiments of foot from New York to Carlisle, Pa., to join Bouquet and the 60th (Royal American) regiment in relief of Fort Pitt. Bouquet first reinforced Forts Loudoun, Bedford and Ligonier, but the fate of Pitt was uncertain, given that Forts Presque Isle, Le Boeuf and Venango had all fallen. The resolute Bouquet had assembled nearly three-dozen wagons, some 340 packhorses and thousands of pounds of flour and gunpowder. Meanwhile, a relief force under Captain James Dalyell had crossed Lake Erie seeking to relieve Fort Detroit, but on July 31 Pontiac’s men met and defeated Dalyell’s column at the Battle of Bloody Run. Fort Pitt remained cut off as Bouquet arrived at Fort Ligonier two days later. Leaving the wagons behind, he set out on August 4 with the packhorses and some 450 soldiers for a rapid march

76 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2017

to beleaguered Pitt. Bouquet planned to rest and water the horses at Bushy Run, an outpost roughly midway between Ligonier and Pitt. But the Indians besieging Pitt learned of his approach, and on August 5 they ambushed the column at Edge Hill, a mile east of Bushy Run. Bouquet consolidated his forces around the supply train, using flour bags to protect the wounded. On the morning of August 6 the Indians renewed their attack. The British repulsed several assaults, but the situation looked bleak. Bouquet then hatched a plan to lure the enemy into a killing zone. Ordering two companies to withdraw in seeming resignation, he prompted the overconfident Indians to advance into the gap. As the latter penetrated the line, two companies positioned out of sight behind a hill struck the enemy’s right flank. The surprised Indians retreated across the front of two stationary companies, who raked them with fire. The four companies then chased off the survivors. Bouquet later reported British losses as 50 killed, 60 wounded and five missing. Though difficult to determine, contemporaries estimated Indian losses as upward of 50 dead, with an undetermined number of casualties spirited away by surviving braves. After the battle Bouquet marched his men to water at Bushy Run. After destroying any supplies they could not carry, they proceeded with caution, making the 25-mile march to Fort Pitt in four days. With the road to Fort Pitt reopened, the British evacuated noncombatants and resumed supply convoys. In the autumn of 1764 Bouquet, then in command of Fort Pitt, led nearly 1,500 British soldiers and militiamen more than 100 miles into the Ohio country. At the Muskingum River (near present-day Coshocton) tribal representatives sued for peace and returned more than 200 white captives. Bouquet earned promotion to brigadier general and was given command of British forces in the southern colonies. But in 1765 he died in Florida—likely of yellow fever—forever prompting speculation as to what role he might have played in the coming American Revolution. Now a state historic site, Bushy Run Battlefield [bushy runbattlefield.com] recalls the past with re-enactments, tours and interpretive and educational programs. MH

FROM TOP: DON TROIANI; MAPIO.NET

By William John Shepherd

British forces under Colonel Henry Bouquet repulsed several Indian attacks (above) before drawing the enemy into a devastating trap. Today Bushy Run Battlefield is a Pennsylvania state historic site.

77

War Games

1

2

3

Civil War Roman Style Can you match the following Roman civil war clashes to their victorious commanders?

5 6 7

Colline Gate, 82 BC Pistoia, 62 BC Dyrrhachium, 48 BC Thapsus, 46 BC Alexandria, 30 BC First Bedriacum, AD 69 Second Bedriacum, AD 69 Lugdunum, AD 197 Margus River, AD 285 Milvian Bridge, AD 312

____ A. ____ B. ____ C. ____ D. ____ E. ____ F. ____ G. ____ H. ____ I. ____ J.

Diocletian Octavian Constantine Marcus Antonius Primus Aulus Vitellius Gaius Julius Caesar Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus Lucius Cornelius Sulla Septimius Severus Antonius Hybrida

Answers: A9, B5, C10, D7, E6, F4, G3, H1, I8, J2

78 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2017

8 10

9

Border Patrol Identify these weapons used by India and Pakistan from 1947 to present. ____ A. ____ B. ____ C. ____ D. ____ E.

Martin B-57 Canberra (PAF) Dassault Mirage 5 (PAF) HAL HF-24 Marut (IAF) M24 Chaffee (Pakistan) English Electric Canberra (IAF)

____ F. PT-76 (India) ____ G. M47 (Pakistan) ____ H. HAL Type 77 (IAF) ____ I. Shenyang F-6 (PAF) ____ J. Centurion (India)

Answers: A9, B8, C1, D3, E5, F2, G6, H10, I4, J7

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

4

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The Wild, Wild East It was Indians east of the Mississippi who first sought to keep settlers from sweeping across North America.

Fallen Timbers (1794)

1. What English moniker for Wampanoag Chief Metacomet gave name to a 1675–76 war? A. Squanto B. King Philip C. Massasoit D. John Sassamon 2. Who in John Forbes’ expedition led the 77th Highlanders to a bloody setback at the hands of the French and Indians on Sept. 14, 1758? A. George Washington B. Henry Bouquet C. James Grant of Ballindalloch D. Hugh Mercer

4. Who led the Shawnees in 1791 to the greatest Indian victory ever against the U.S. Army? A. Buckongahelas B. Tecumseh C. Michikinikwa D. Weyapiersenwah Answers: B, C, C, D

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3. Who trained and led the Legion of the United States at the 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers? A. Henry Lee B. Daniel Morgan C. Anthony Wayne D. Benjamin Lincoln

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ASTRIDE THIS HORSE, GEORGE WASHINGTON ACCEPTED BRITAIN’S SURRENDER AT YORKTOWN - Blueskin - Chinkling - Nelson - Silver For more, visit

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HistoryNet.com ANSWER: NELSON. WASHINGTON RODE MANY HORSES DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR, WITH BLUESKIN AND NELSON BEING HIS TWO FAVORITES.

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CLASSIFIEDS SPECIAL EVENTS 7/13TH ARTILLERY (VIETNAM) REUNION ALL RED DRAGON BATTERIES. Savannah, Georgia. Fall 2017. Dates TBA. Call Robert Adams: (859) 8065199 or Jon Taylor: (603) 677-6570. For information on placing a Direct Response or Marketplace ad in Print and Online contact us today: Military History 800.649.9800 / Fax: 800.649.6712 [email protected] / www.russelljohns.com

Keep Your Powder Dry In May 1966 an M60 machine gunner with the U.S. 101st Airborne Division in Chu Lai, South Vietnam, hangs his 7.62 mm ammunition belts out to dry after a heavy rain.

80 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2017

ROLLS PRESS/POPPERFOTO/GETTY IMAGES

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