MHQ Spring 2022 by HistoryNet

THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF MILITARY HISTORY

De Gaulle Invades North America The Logistics of Grass

CHURCHILL’S SECRET WEAPON

The inside story of how a scientific genius thwarted the Luftwaffe in World War II

SPRING 2022 HISTORYNET.com

MHQP-220400-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1

3/2/22 5:24 PM

Subscribe Now! Bloody Angle, 1775 Tillman Cover-up Bocage Battle Finnish Buffalo Gunpowder Debut Irish SAS Hero HISTORYNET.com

IF THE CONFEDERATES HAD WON H WORKHORSE MODEL 1816 MUSKET H

DEATH TRAP

HISTORYNET.COM

A BLOODY ASSAULT ON A TINY PACIFIC ISLAND PROVED THE FOLLY OF “MOPPING UP” OPERATIONS

DECADES OF WAR

S P R I N G 18 64

READY TO

ENDURING

ROBERT E. LEE’S ARMY

G.I. EXECUTED Plus SSWHEN GUARDS AT DACHAU

WAS A FINELY TUNED WAR MACHINE

20 FREEDOM YEAR S

SEPTEMBER 2021

MIHP-210900-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1

FIGHT

U.S. Army troops and armor head ashore on Angaur Island in October 1944 for the final phase of the invasion.

Y ENDLESS 11 THE SEEMINGL E 9/ ARKED BY TH CONFLICT SP —OR IS IT? ER OV ATTACKS IS

SHE WAS A FAMED AMERICAN PILOT—AND SECRETLY ON THE NAZI PAYROLL

DECEMBER 2021

6/30/21 12:05 PM

December 2021 HISTORYNET.com

WW2P-211200-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1

9/23/21 11:01 AM

“WE SHOULD RECEIVE THE SAME PAY” BLACK TROOPS WRITE TO LINCOLN HOW STONEWALL RUINED GEN. IRVIN MCDOWELL’S CAREER

CWTP-211200-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1

9/14/21 10:14 AM

Tulsa Race Riot: What Was Lost Colonel Sanders, One-Man Brand J. Edgar Hoover’s Vault to Fame The Zenger Trial and Free Speech

THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF MILITARY HISTORY

Yosemite

HALLER’S MEN IN BLUE

THE AMERICAN FRONTIER

200th ANNIVERSARY

santa fe trail

The twisted roots of a national treasure

commemorating america’s first commercial highway

In World War I, a military dropout assembled an army that helped put Poland back on the map.

Last Gasp at Granville The Hellfighter December 2021 HISTORYNET.com

SUMMER 2021 HISTORYNET.com

MHQP-210700-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1

5/27/21 10:43 AM

back to oshkosh: eaa airventure’s triumphant return

AMHP-211200-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1

9/12/21 8:44 AM

H friends of wyatt earp H quanah parker in photos H texas desperadoes

OCTOBER 2021 HISTORYNET.COM

WIWP-211000-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1

7/23/21 3:01 PM

Special Ops Air Force Crews Tackle High-Risk Missions

HOMEFRONT Hijacker D.B. Cooper jumps to infamy

Rushing the Hedgerows 1st Cav faces enemy death trap

Outdueling the

Gray Ghost

Riverboats Run and Gun

chasing bears

russia’s tupolev tu-95 turboprops still send fighters scrambling “bombs away” lemay: unapologetic champion of waging total war

Brown water Navy blasts VC in the Mekong Delta

Union troopers hand John Mosby and his Rangers a rare setback

To Kill or Not to Kill

Plus!

One soldier’s agonizing decision

d.b. cooper mystery: what really happened NOVEMBER 2021 to the infamous hijacker?

Unlikely Peacemaker Sherman tries to end the war

Get Vaxxed! The armies battle smallpox

DECEMBER 2021 HISTORYNET.com

Known for their swashbuckling looks, Mosby and his Rangers wreaked havoc throughout Northern Virginia.

JANUARY 2022

HISTORYNET.COM

AVHP-211100-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1

8/25/21 5:49 PM

VIEP-211200-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1

9/21/21 11:56 AM

ACWP-220100-COVER-DIGITAL.indd 1

10/11/21 8:47 AM

HISTORYNET is the world’s largest publisher of history magazines; to subscribe to any of our nine titles visit:

HOUSE-9-SUBS AD-11.21.indd 1

11/28/21 8:24 AM

matte finish

36149…$42

56/58 mm-1/30 Scale

Hand-Painted Pewter Figures

36160

French Imperial Guard Company Officer $45.00

British 1st Foot Guard Standing Defending

36134…$42

British 1st Foot Guard Kneeling Firing

36189…$45

36187…$42

36184…$42

French Imperial French French Imperial Guard Imperial Guard Guard Standing Defending Company Drummer Officer, No. 2

36179…$42

French Imperial Guard Kneeling Make Ready

Mention this ad for a FREE CATALOG Free Mini Backdrop with your first purchase!

36177…$42

French Imperial Guard Standing Make Ready

French Imperial Guard Kneeling Firing

British 1st Foot Guard Kneeling Defending

British 1st Foot Guard Standing Firing

French Imperial Guard 2nd Rank Standing Firing

36178…$42

British 1st Foot Guard Ensign with Regimental Colour

36132…$42

36133…$42

36175…$42

Each one of our 1:30 scale metal figures is painstakingly researched for historical accuracy and detail. The originals are hand sculpted by our talented artists before being cast in metal and hand painted – making each figure a gem of hand-crafted history. Please visit wbritain.com to see all these figures and more from many other historical eras.

36142…$54

36176…$42

French Imperial Guard 3rd Rank Standing Firing

36161…$42 British 1st Foot Guard Standing Firing, No.2

The products shown and the entire W.Britain range can be purchased from the retailers listed below:

For The Historian ........... Tel: 717-685-5207 • www.forthehistorian.com • web@forthehistorian.com 42 York Street, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 17325

Treefrog Treasures ......................................... Tel: 507-545-2500 • www.treefrogtreasures.com 2416 E. River Road NE, Rochester, Minnesota 55906

Hobby Bunker .................... Tel: 781-321-8855 • Fax: 781-321-8866 • www.hobbybunker.com 103 Albion Street, Wakefield, Massachusetts 01880

The History Store............. Tel: 740-775-7400 • www.thehistorystore.net • info@thehistorystore.net

101 North Paint Street, Chillicothe, Ohio 45601

Michigan Toy Soldier Co............... Tel: 248-586-1022 • 888-MICHTOY • www.michtoy.com 1400 East 11 Mile Road, Royal Oak, Michigan 48067 Sierra Toy Soldier.............Tel: 408-395-3000 • Fax: 408-358-3966 • www.sierratoysoldier.com

See our complete collection of 1/30 scale W.Britain historical metal figures at:

wbritain.com • Tel: U.K. (0)800 086 9123 and

are registered trademarks of the

W.Britain Model Figures, Chillicothe, OH

Subscribe to us on YouTube: W.Britain Model Figures

WBMHQ 02-02-2022.indd 1

2/1/22 10:19 AM

MHQP-220400-003 Wbritain.indd 1

2/14/22 3:44 PM

TODAY IN HISTORY JANUARY 16, 2001 THEODORE ROOSEVELT BECAME THE ONLY U.S. PRESIDENT EVER TO RECEIVE THE MEDAL OF HONOR. PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON AWARDED THE MEDAL TO ROOSEVELT POSTHUMOUSLY FOR HIS SAN JUAN HILL BATTLE HEROICS. THEODORE ROOSEVELT JR. ALSO RECEIVED THE MEDAL OF HONOR AS THE OLDEST MAN AND ONLY GENERAL TO BE AMONG THE FIRST WAVE OF TROOPS THAT STORMED NORMANDY’S UTAH BEACH. For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ TODAY-IN-HISTORY

TODAY-ROOSEVELT-LHP.indd 22

2/17/22 10:30 PM

OPENING ROUND

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS

Beginning in September 1940, Nazi Germany sought to terrorize Britain into submission by raining more than a million incendiary bombs on its cities and towns, causing the fearsome fires that would epitomize the Blitz. (See “The Man Who Outwitted the Luftwaffe,” page 34.) The B1E—for Brandbomb 1kg Elektron—shown below was the predominant ordnance in the Luftwaffe’s incendiary bombloads, and by 1941 Britain’s Ministry of Home Security had even created a cartoon character, “Firebomb Fritz,” as part of its campaign to enlist ordinary citizens in the effort to neutralize the German incendiary bombs, which caused some of the most extensive damage of World War II. The cartoon character’s comic—rather than evil—expression was intended to reassure the British people that the incendiaries could be rendered harmless if tackled in time. Nonetheless, the incendiary bombs burned at temperatures high enough to melt steel, and when dropped en masse could set entire city districts on fire. The B1E, measuring a little more than 12 inches long, consisted of an ultralight—and flammable—magnesium-alloy body, an incendiary filling of Thermite, and a threefinned steel tail. The bomb was designed not to explode but to set a fire on impact when a pin on its nose was driven into a small percussion cap, igniting the Thermite filling—and, ultimately, the cylindrical casing—and spewing molten metal into the surrounding area. At least eight variants of the B1E are thought to have been deployed against Britain, including the “Tile Breaker,” a heavier model whose steel nose was designed to penetrate tile roofs and set fires inside buildings. Many of the B1Es dropped on Britain were neutralized by members of the country’s Fire Guard Organization, local fire brigades, and volunteer “fire watchers,” who were trained to use stirrup pumps (portable, hand-operated water pumps with a footrest resembling a stirrup) to extinguish fires or to scoop up the bombs and either drop them into a water-filled bucket or remove them from the property.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-OPNRND-BLITZBOMB.indd 3

3 3/3/22 10:23 AM

ALBUM (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Volume 34, Number 3 Spring 2022

Batu Khan (far right), the Mongol commander whose “Golden Horde” conquered Russia on its way to Hungary, welcomes Prince Michael of Chernigov to his camp in 1246. (Batu would order the prince to be killed for refusing to bow before him.)

MHQP-220400-CONTENTS.indd 4

3/2/22 5:28 PM

34 FEATURES 34 The Man Who Outwitted the Luftwaffe

70 24

by Robert O. Harder Reginald V. Jones, a genius in physics, developed new technologies and tactics that enabled Britain to repeatedly thwart the German High Command in World War II.

44 The Logistics of Grass

by Wayne E. Lee The essential nutrient for their herds dictated where—and when—the armies of the Mongol Empire went in search of conquests.

54 Military Time

54 62

3 Opening Round 6 Flashback 12 Comments 15 At the Front 16 Experience

My evening with Grant

20 Laws of War The odious order

23 Weapons Check Vespa 150 TAP

24 Behind the Lines

Revolution of the underdogs

28 Battle Schemes Target: U-boats

30 War List

Thanks for the memoirs

32 Letter From MHQ 81 Culture of War 82 Classic Dispatches

PORTFOLIO A gallery of watches owned by some of history’s most famous—and notorious— military figures

A war correspondent’s journey through “the danger belt”

62 Showdown on the Saint Lawrence

The military muralists

by Jon Guttman A year into the War of 1812, the United States hatched an ill-fated plan to invade Canada and capture the city of Montreal.

70 De Gaulle’s 1941 Coup

by Ed Offley When the Allied powers refused to buck Vichy France, the exiled leader of the Free French resistance forces decided to take matters into his own hands.

ALBUM (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

DEPARTMENTS

85 Big Shots

George P. Scriven

86 Artists 90 Poetry Ogden Nash

92 Reviews

When Rome roamed north

96 Drawn & Quartered On the Cover

In December 1941 British prime minister Winston Churchill visited President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C., and then went on to Ottawa, Ontario, where, after delivering an electrifying speech in the House of Commons, he was photographed by Yousuf Karsh. “My portrait of Winston Churchill changed my life,” Karsh later said. “I knew after I had taken it that it was an important picture, but I could hardly have dreamed that it would become one of the most widely reproduced images in the history of photography. COVER: YOUSUF KARSH (LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA)

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-CONTENTS.indd 5

5 3/4/22 5:22 PM

FLASHBACK

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-FLASHBACK.indd 6

2/28/22 10:57 AM

BATTLE OF MABILA, MODERN-DAY ALABAMA, 1540 Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto’s army reaches the Mississippi River after decimating Chief Tascalusa’s forces in one of the bloodiest battles in North American history. TODAY: An Alabama archaeologist announces that he may have found the lost battle site, which one scholar has called “the predominant historical mystery of the Deep South.”

ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL

MHQP-220400-FLASHBACK.indd 7

MHQ Spring 2022

7 2/28/22 10:58 AM

FLASHBACK

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-FLASHBACK.indd 8

BATTLE OF AUSTERLITZ, MORAVIA, AUSTRIA, 1805 Napoleon I achieves one of his greatest victories when the Grande Armée of France crushes a larger coalition army led by Emperors Alexander I of Russia and Francis I of Austria. TODAY: Skeletons of 12 men believed to have fought in the battle are discovered in a previously unknown mass grave in Brno, the former capital of Moravia, in the Czech Republic.

RMN-GRAND PALAIS, PARIS

3/3/22 10:24 AM

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-FLASHBACK.indd 9

9 3/3/22 10:24 AM

FLASHBACK

THE AMPEZZO DOLOMITES, ITALY, 1917

An Austrian sentry mans a lookout post in the mountains that have emerged as an icy front in World War I after Italy switches sides and declares war against Austria-Hungary. TODAY: Melting glaciers in the Alps of Northern Italy continue to reveal long-frozen relics left behind by soldiers who fought in what became known as the White War.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-FLASHBACK.indd 10

2/28/22 10:58 AM

OESTERREICHISCHE NATIONALBIBLIOTHEK

MHQP-220400-FLASHBACK.indd 11

MHQ Spring 2022

11 2/28/22 10:59 AM

COMMENTS

ADDENDA AND ERRATA

Lionel “Buster” Crabb relates some of his experiences as a frogman to a group of Scottish schoolchildren in 1950.

Crabb Coda Thanks for the article on Lionel “Buster” Crabb [“The Frogman Who Vanished,” MHQ, Autumn 2021], a very interesting update on a still mysterious case. I can add a tidbit to the story. The “tall, slim American going by the name of Bernard Smith” who was Crabb’s minder was almost certainly an Englishman named Bernard S. Smith, a Russian- language officer who worked for the British Foreign Office, the parent organization of MI6. By 1959 Smith had left the British government; exactly

why, he would not say. When he died last year, an obituary noted that he took his obligations under the Official Secrets Act seriously and never discussed his work for the Foreign Office. In any case, after leaving the British government, Smith landed on his feet, pursuing a graduate degree in history at Harvard University and becoming a distinguished medievalist at Swarthmore College, where he was one of my professors. He pointed me in the direction of a graduate degree in history— one small part of the chain of events that started in

The two-page photograph of the damage from the Southampton Blitz wreckage [“Flashback,” MHQ, Autumn 2021] is quite informative, and I suspect I recognize a fellow American marching in the VIP procession. In the last row, gazing toward the camera, I believe I see the face of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., who at the time was the U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s and also in Britain’s disfavor as a pessimist. It seems strange to me that he is only one of two in the whole group responding to the visible catastrophe, while the demeanor of the others seems so detached, marching eyes ahead, disinterested, appearing more pessimistic than Kennedy. Frederick N. Brown Wickenburg, Arizona FROM THE EDITOR: While the resemblance is striking, the man in question isn’t Kennedy, who had announced his resignation from the United States four days earlier, saying that he would not return to London as ambassador. He was reported at the time to be

Striking Gold

One “life saver” that should have been included in the Portfolio feature of the Winter 2022 issue of MHQ is the $20 gold piece recovered during the excavation of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley in 2003. Lieutenant George Dixon, the Hunley’s captain, carried the coin as a good-luck charm (he called it his “life preserver”) because, during the 1862 Battle of Shiloh, while in his pocket, it had deflected an enemy bullet. Theodore Kuhlmeier San Antonio, Texas FROM THE EDITOR: Unfortunately, the “life preserver” didn’t work in 1863 when the Hunley failed to surface after a drill. All eight members of its crew, including Dixon, were killed.

Question of Origin

“The Seven Voyages of Zheng He” [MHQ, Autumn 2021] is an informative and enjoyable read. I especially commend Otto Kreisher, the author, for his adherence to documented facts and for his engaging writing style. Being a spatially minded fan of MHQ, I have a comment about a geographic reference and a

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-COMMENTS.indd 12

3/3/22 10:26 AM

U.S. NAVY NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NAVAL AVIATION

I Spy Joe?

vacationing at the family compound in Palm Beach, Florida.

KEYSTONE (GETTY IMAGES)

Portsmouth, England, in 1956. While this may not matter to history with a capital H, it did make a difference in my life. Nicholas Reynolds Arlington, Virginia

map. The article states that during Zheng He’s sixth voyage, elements of the fleet sailed to “Hormuz, Aden, and Western Africa,” and forays to West Africa are also mentioned in the article’s summation. Neither the map illustrating the fleet’s ports of call nor the contextual information indicates voyages to the west side of Africa. I am certain the error was unintended. The caption notes that the map is believed by some to be Zheng He’s but does not elaborate about the contention, which is grounded in flimsy and questionable evidence. The map was more likely to have been drafted sometime in the 18th century or later and probably is a crude copy of one introduced to China by Jesuits during the 1600s. William Preston San Luis Obispo, California

U.S. NAVY NATIONAL MUSEUM OF NAVAL AVIATION

KEYSTONE (GETTY IMAGES)

First Things First

I’m an enthusiastic subscriber to MHQ. It’s usually very accurate, but I believe the article “Last Gasp at Granville” in the Summer 2021 issue includes an error. It says: “The incident, which claimed the lives of nine German soldiers and injured several others, occurred on March 7, the same day American infantrymen crossed the Ludendorff railway bridge at Remagen and entered Ger-

Two U.S. Navy McDonnell F3H Demons in 1963.

many for the first time.” The last clause of this sentence is wrong. The Rhine River does not form the border of Germany for its entire length. At Remagen, the Rhine is about 40 miles inside Germany. The American unit was already in Germany before it even reached the river. Western Allied ground forces had first crossed into Germany six months earlier, in September 1944, and they captured the first German town (Aachen) the following month. By March 7, the Allies had already conquered nearly a third of the German territory west of the Rhine. Rick Kirkham Seattle CORRECTION: A caption in “Life Savers,” the Portfolio feature in MHQ’s Winter 2022 issue, ascribed an incorrect date to the Battle of Sailor’s Creek, which was fought on April 6, 1865, near Farmville, Virginia. We regret the error.

ASK MHQ

Spirits in the Sky Why did the McDonnell Douglas company name all its jet fighters after supernatural creatures? Donald Smith St. Petersburg, Florida In 1967 McDonnell Aircraft and the Douglas Aircraft Company merged to form McDonnell Douglas. One of its two founders, James Smith “Mac” McDonnell, was reputed to be a believer in the occult and used all manner of supernatural names for the aircraft he designed, such as the Banshee, Demon, Goblin, Moonbat, Phantom, and Voodoo. Donald Douglas did no such thing with his aircraft, which were at least as well known for their designation codes, such as the DC-3 (called Dakota by the British), SBD Dauntless, DC-6, and DC-8. In 1979 the James S. McDonnell Foundation, presumably at McDonnell’s

direction, established the McDonnell Laboratory for Psychical Research, under the auspices of Washington University in Saint Louis, to investigate such parapsychological phenomena as extra sensory perception, mind over matter, and clairvoyance. But McDonnell died a year later, and the laboratory bearing his name became the target of public ridicule when, in 1983, its investigators failed to detect a spoon-bending hoax perpetrated by James Randi, a stage magician who specialized in exposing paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims, which he called “woo-woo.” The laboratory closed two years later. Jon Guttman is MHQ’s research director. Have thoughts about a story in MHQ? Something about military history you’ve always wanted to know? Send your comments and questions to MHQeditor@historynet.com.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-COMMENTS.indd 13

13 3/4/22 5:23 PM

XXXXXXXXXX

MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN AND PUBLISHER

THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF MILITARY HISTORY SPRING 2022 VOL. 34, NO. 3

EDITOR BILL HOGAN ELIZABETH G. HOWARD CONSULTING EDITOR JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR BRIAN WALKER GROUP ART DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JON C. BOCK ART DIRECTOR ALEX GRIFFITH PHOTO EDITOR

Arms Race In 1775 the Continental Army needed weapons—and fast. By Willard Sterne Randall

Search Online Visit HISTORYNET.com, with more than 13,000 articles and exclusives

MHQ Subscriptions PRINT, TABLETS, and READERS Shop at SHOP.HISTORYNET.com

KINDLE AMAZON.com NOOK BARNESANDNOBLE.com ZINIO ZINIO.com

Follow MHQ FACEBOOK FACEBOOK.com/MHQMAG TWITTER TWITTER.com/MHQMAGAZINE E-NEWSLETTER Sign up at: HISTORYNET.com/NEWSLETTERS

CONTRIBUTORS ROBERT O. HARDER, PETER HARRINGTON, JOHN A. HAYMOND, WAYNE E. LEE, CHRIS MCNAB, ED OFFLEY, BRENDAN SAINSBURY C O R P O R AT E KELLY FACER SVP Revenue Operations SHAWN BYERS VP Audience Development MATT GROSS VP Digital Initiatives ROB WILKINS Director of Partnership Marketing JAMIE ELLIOTT Production Director ADVERTISING MORTON GREENBERG SVP Advertising Sales mgreenberg@mco.com RICK GOWER Regional Sales Manager rick@rickgower.com TERRY JENKINS Regional Sales Manager tjenkins@historynet.com DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING NANCY FORMAN/MEDIA PEOPLE nforman@mediapeople.com SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION: SHOP.HISTORYNET.com United States/Canada: 800.435.0715; foreign subscribers: 386.447.6318 Subscription inquiries: MHQ@omeda.com MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History (ISSN 1040-5992) is published quarterly by HISTORYNET, LLC, 901 North Glebe Road, Fifth Floor, Arlington, VA 22203. Periodical postage paid at Vienna, VA, and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send subscription information and address changes to: MHQ, P.O. Box 31058, Boone, IA 50037-0058. List Rental Inquiries: Belkys Reyes, Lake Group Media, Inc. 914.925.2406; belkys.reyes@lakegroupmedia.com Canadian Publications Mail Agreement No. 41342519, Canadian GST No. 821371408RT0001 © 2022 HISTORYNET, LLC. All rights reserved. The contents of this magazine may not be reproduced in whole or in part without the written consent of HISTORYNET, LLC. PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AMERICAN HISTORY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

JOIN THE DISCUSSION AT MHQMAG.COM

DANA B. SHOAF MANAGING EDITOR, PRINT CLAIRE BARRETT NEWS AND SOCIAL EDITOR

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-MASTONLINE.indd 14

2/28/22 11:00 AM

AT THE FRONT EXPERIENCE 16 LAWS OF WAR 20 WEAPONS CHECK 23 BEHIND THE LINES 24 BATTLE SCHEMES 28 WAR LIST 30

HARRIS & EWING COLLECTION (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

MODEL BEHAVIOR

In 1918, as the United States was preparing to enter World War I, the government commissioned artist J. C. Leyendecker to create a poster that would invoke two patriotic icons to help sell war bonds. When he asked for an image from which to paint, the Washington photographic studio of Harris & Ewing came through with flying colors.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-ATFINTRO-MODELS.indd 15

15 2/28/22 11:24 AM

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-EXP-GRANT.indd 16

2/28/22 11:29 AM

EXPERIENCE

MY EVENING WITH GRANT

In 1866 William H. Smith visited General Ulysses S. Grant at his home in the nation’s capital. Decades later he wrote about what Grant had told him.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

William H. Smith’s storied career in journalism began in 1858, when, at age 18, he became a cub reporter for the Daily Evening Atlas, a short-lived Indianapolis newspaper. The following year he found himself covering presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln as he delivered a speech in Indianapolis that was all but lost to history until an employee of the Indiana State Library stumbled on Smith’s account some 70 years later. Smith voted for Lincoln in 1860, and in 1861, following the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, he joined the 11th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which was mustered into the Union army, and went on to serve under Major General Lew Wallace. With the end of the Civil War, Smith returned to journalism, working for two other newspapers in Indianapolis and, later, as a Washington correspondent for the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette. A Washington correspondent, Smith once observed, “was given full rein and could throw his personality into his writings without fear of the blue pencil in the home office.” Smith also found time to write a half dozen books, including a two-volume history of his home state of Indiana, a history of the Cabinet of the United States, and a collection of biographical sketches of speakers of the U.S. House of Representatives. By the 1920s Smith had retired from daily reporting, but he kept active as a frequent contributor to the Washington Post. In one of his pieces for the newspaper, reprinted in slightly abbreviated and modernized form below, Smith recounts in great detail his 1866 interview with Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant. In 1929 the Washington Evening Star dubbed Smith, who by then was in his 90s, “probably the oldest newspaper man in the Capital,” and two years later it said that he was “believed to be the oldest active newspaper man in the United States.” Smith, though, just kept on writing. He died in Washington in 1935 at age 96. Although I had seen General Grant many times, on the battlefield, on the march, and in camp, I never met him personally until the night of January 1, 1866, when in company with [Major] General [William] H. Emory, [Major] General [Oliver] P. Gooding, and Captain [Philip] Forney, I called at his residence in Georgetown. It was a late hour when we reached his home, and we found some half dozen callers still there.

Upon greeting us, General Grant told us to go into the library and he could come there as soon as his visitors had departed. General Emory objected, saying we had only called to extend our greetings for the new year and did not want to add to his burdens after the strenuous day he had passed. At that point Mrs. Grant interrupted, saying, with one of her winning smiles: “Oh, General Emory, you and your friends go to the library. It will actually rest Mr. Grant to have a chat with you. You will find a box of cigars on the table, and you must know that the library is liberty hall in this house.” We hesitated no longer but went into the library where we were joined in a few minutes by General Grant, and for two hours I had the time of my life listening to stories of West Point and the war. My three companions were all West Pointers, Emory having been a tutor at the academy when Grant was a cadet. I especially recall a story told by General Emory of a contest he witnessed at the Point between Cadet Grant and an unbroken horse, in which he described Grant as sometimes being on the neck of the animal, sometimes in the saddle, and sometimes on the horse’s rump. Grant said he remembered the incident very well; that he had established some little reputation as a horseman, and when this wild steed was brought in for him to ride, some of his fellow cadets were very free in giving him over his chances. Grant told his particular chum, Rufus Ingalls, that he knew but of one way the horse could prevent him riding him and that was to kill him. “And,” said the general, “there were moments when I thought the beast would win out and I lose my chance of serving the country in the army.” Presently the conversation veered to incidents of the war that had so lately closed, and some mention was made of [General Philip] Sheridan, when General Grant told us how his attention was first attracted to Sheridan. It was while the army was near Corinth, Mississippi. Sheridan had been appointed colonel of a Michigan cavalry regiment and in a very few days found himself at the head of a brigade. He was at Booneville with his brigade when he received information that the enemy in large force was moving in his direction. “This information,” said General Grant, “was wired to his immediate commander, who instructed him to watch

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-EXP-GRANT.indd 17

17 2/28/22 11:29 AM

MY EVENING WITH GENERAL GRANT

“He said the most perfectly planned battle of the war was that of Five Forks.”

During the conversation General Grant said that he considered Sheridan to be the real military genius produced by the war; that he was the only commander since Napoleon who could with equal success command infantry, cavalry, or artillery, separately or combined. He said the most perfectly planned battle of the war was that of Five Forks, and it was the only battle that was fought from start to finish according to the first plan. He said that in the Army of the Potomac there were two officers he could always rely upon being at a given point at the very moment when ordered to be there—[Major General Winfield Scott] Hancock and Sheridan. He said they never failed him; that he could rely with absolute certainty that if either of them was ordered to open the battle at a certain hour, the hands of the clock would no sooner point to the hour than the opening guns would be heard. Later in the conversation he said that Sheridan was the greatest strategist in either army; in fact he regarded him as

next to Hannibal as a strategist. He instanced the strategy of [Union major general William Tecumseh] Sherman in maneuvering [General Joseph E.] Johnston from one strong position after another in the march from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and how he bewildered and confused the whole South by his strategy on the march to the sea. [Major General George Henry] Thomas he regarded as the greatest of tacticians. Of him he said: “Thomas always kept a supply of everything that was needed and saw to it that it was at the point where it would be needed; always nervous and somewhat excitable, but the sound of the guns restored his coolness, and he intuitively knew where to place his men to obtain the best results.” At one time during the conversation General Grant turned to me and asked where I had served. I told him I belonged to Lew Wallace’s division, when, much to my gratification, he said: “Wallace was the real savior of Washington. He did what few generals have the moral courage to do, go into a fight when defeat is absolutely certain. This Wallace did when he went out to meet [Confederate lieutenant general Jubal] Early at Monocacy. He knew Early was strong enough to crush him, but he also knew Washington was practically defenseless. If he could, by fighting, delay Early it might give me time to throw troops into Washington. That he accomplished, and thus really saved the city. For some reason, I never knew just what, he was relieved from his command by orders from Washington, just after the battle. When I heard of it, I promptly restored him to his command, complimenting him for his brave fight and for causing Early to delay more than 24 hours his march on Washington. Those hours were very valuable to me, giving me time to send troops from City Point.” I said to him: “General, I recall seeing you on two different occasions when the contrast between your mental condition was truly remarkable.” He inquired what two occasions I referred to and what was his mental condition on each occasion. I replied: “The first was when you came to our division just after the close of the first day’s fight at Shiloh. You appeared then, and we all thought you to be the only person on the field who was not in the least excited. To us you appeared to be no more concerned that you would have been if sitting by your own fireside, quietly smoking your after-dinner cigar.” “Well,” said the general, smiling, “what was there to be excited about? I knew all you boys would be anxiously ready to renew the fight next morning, and I felt certain you would win. Now, what was that other occasion?” “It was at Pike’s Opera House in Cincinnati, when the people of that city gave you a reception on your way to

TOP: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION; BELOW: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

the enemy closely but be careful and not bring on a fight. It was Sheridan’s reply to this that attracted me. Sheridan, so the story went, replied to his corps commander, ‘It is not I who wants to fight, but the other fellow.’ He did fight, however, and won a very decided victory. When I heard the story of the reply, I felt there was a young officer who really knew what he was in the army for.” General Emory had served with Sheridan in the [Shenandoah] Valley and was in command of a corps at Opequon, Fisher’s Hill, and Cedar Creek. He gave us a graphic description of the arrival of Sheridan when the troops were retreating from Cedar Creek, and then related an amusing story of a message conveyed to him after the battle by one of Sheridan’s aides. He said: “In re-forming the army for the new battle, I was ordered by Sheridan to take my corps to a certain point in the field where a rail fence would show some shelter, and to cling to the position at all hazards. When the enemy left my front I threw myself down on the ground for a little rest. Shortly afterward a young lieutenant on Sheridan’s staff rode up. Saluting me, he said: ‘General Emory, I am instructed by General Sheridan to convey to you his compliments and to say to you that you stuck to that fence like a buzzard on a dead horse.’ I told Sheridan how his staff officer had carried out his instructions when Sheridan, laughing heartily, said that was the language he had used, but had supposed his messenger would reconstruct it and put it in better shape.”

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-EXP-GRANT.indd 18

2/28/22 11:30 AM

TOP: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION; BELOW: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (2)

Clockwise from top: General of the Army Philip Sheridan; Major General Lew Wallace; and Major General William H. Emory, who visited Grant with the author in 1866. Washington to assume command of all the armies. If there was ever a nervous man who wished himself somewhere else it was you on that occasion. I was in the audience. They brought you out on the platform by some accident before they were ready to present you. They gave you a chair; you placed your hat on one knee, seeing no other place for it; then crossed your leg over it. In a minute you noticed it, straightened the hat out and put it on the other knee, changed legs and again was crushing your hat. I think you changed knees for that hat at least half a dozen times before the introducer was ready to proceed.” This story of his nervousness when called to appear before the public seemed to amuse him and was greeted with laughter by the others present.

To me the most memorable of my several meetings with General Grant was on his return from his tour of the world. Arriving at Chicago on his way to Philadelphia, the starting point of his tour, he was invited to visit Louisville and accepted the invitation. Going thence from Chicago he would pass through Logansport and Indianapolis, and both cities extended him an invitation to “stop off.” I was living at Logansport and was made chairman of the committee on reception. The program included a parade through some of the streets of the city and a luncheon at the leading hotel. As we were returning to the train after the luncheon, General Grant invited me to go with him to Indianapolis and, it is needless to say, I gladly accepted. On the way, after relating to me a number of incidents of his tour, the conversation took a turn toward our late war, and I said: “General I would like to know just what was in your mind when you wrote that now famous phrase, ‘I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.’ I remember that some of the critics then claimed you did not fight it out on the same line but switched over to the line of [Major General George B.] McClellan’s trail in 1862, and the Chicago Times of yesterday repeats that criticism.” “Well,” said the general, “perhaps they did not realize just what the word line may mean in military parlance. I expect they confused line with road. There had been a constant cry in the North for the capture of Richmond, and McClellan, [Major Generals Ambrose] Burnside, [John] Pope, and [Joseph] Hooker had made efforts in that direction, and as my army was headed that way, naturally they thought I was after Richmond. The fact is I did not want Richmond at that time. It would have been a white elephant on my hands, requiring half of my army to hold it, leaving me with only a half to fight [Confederate general Robert E.] Lee. I thought then, and I think now, I could easily have captured Richmond. As you know, Sheridan rode through a part of it. I could have readily supported him with infantry and taken the city at that time had I wanted it. I was after Lee. I knew if I got Lee, I would get Richmond without having to fight for it. If I got Richmond and did not get Lee I would still have to fight. I do not recall all the circumstances about how that dispatch was written, but my recollection is that someone, probably Representative [Elihu B.] Washburne, was at my headquarters and said the president would like to know how I was getting along, and I wrote that I was fighting away, having in my mind the word pegging, but thought such a word was hardly dignified enough for a letter to the president, and that I intended to keep on fighting, or pegging, if it took all summer to win out completely.” Then, with a twinkle in his eye, he continued, “Well, it did take all summer and all winter, and part of the spring, but I kept pegging.” MHQ

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-EXP-GRANT.indd 19

19 2/28/22 11:30 AM

LAWS OF WAR

THE ODIOUS ORDER

In 1942 the Nazis decreed that any Allied paratroops captured by German forces be turned over to the Gestapo and “annihilated.” By John A. Haymond

The order called for captured Allied paratroops to be remanded to the Gestapo.

enemy hands. Such caution was warranted, as the third section of the order contained the following language: “From now on all men operating against German troops in so-called Commando raids in Europe or in Africa, are to be annihilated to the last man.” The instructions applied to all such raiders, whether soldiers in uniform or saboteurs, armed or unarmed, fighting or escaping. “Even if these individuals on discovery make obvious their intention of giving themselves up as prisoners, no pardon is on any account to be given.” This was nothing less than a criminal order, contrary to the international laws of war. Under the order, the Germans executed at least 54 British and Norwegian paratroops and special operations personnel from October 1942 to July 1943. The fact that this was an outright violation of the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War was not lost on the German commanders whose troops carried out these executions. After the Germans executed six captured British Royal Marine commandos in December 1942, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, high commander of the German navy, wrote in his official war diary that the execution was “new in international law since the soldiers were wearing uniforms.” Raeder did not, however, issue any orders forbidding further such actions by forces under his command, thereby making himself complicit in criminal violations of the laws of war. This was one of the charges on which he was convicted by an Allied tribunal after the war and sentenced to prison. Other German officers paid more severe penalties. On March 22, 1944, a 15-man commando team of the U.S. Army led by First Lieutenant Vincent Russo landed on the Italian coast under cover of darkness. Their mission, under the direction of the Office of Strategic Services, was to blow up a tunnel on the Genoa–La Spezia rail line between Levanto and Bossanola. The target was unquestionably military: Demolition of the tunnel would have seriously affected German resupply operations in that sector. The soldiers assigned to the mission—all Italian-Americans—wore official- issue U.S. Army uniforms with their appropriate rank insignia. Their ability to speak Italian would be an asset in the covert mission against an Italian target. The original mission, code-named Ginny I, was canceled when it became too problematic. The March 22 landing,

U.S. AIR FORCE (GETTY IMAGES)

hroughout modern history, international conventions on the laws of war have struggled to clearly define who is a lawful combatant in a conflict and who is not, as well as what a belligerent party can or cannot do to those persons. Because technology and tactics are always evolving, established laws of war sometimes do not specifically address recently developed military formations, and sometimes a warring nation attempts to reinterpret the extant laws of war in ways that are contrary to established conventions. Both of those factors were at the heart of the two variations of the Kommandobefehl (Commando Order) that the German High Command issued in 1942 at the height of World War II. Paratroops were a new combat asset when that war began, and the tactical potential of such forces was recognized immediately (and occasionally exaggerated). On June 21, 1942, Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt ordered that any Allied paratroops captured by German forces were not to be treated as prisoners of war but instead immediately turned over to the Gestapo. This was not an order to ensure that actionable intelligence was gathered from captive enemy soldiers. The Wehrmacht had its own military intelligence units as well as an intelligence and counterespionage service in the form of the Abwehr, and all were highly adept at interrogating Allied prisoners within the limits of international laws of war. The Gestapo, on the other hand, was the Nazi regime’s infamously brutal secret police. The order to remand captured Allied paratroops to the Gestapo was a clear declaration that Nazi Germany would not treat them as combatants protected by the laws of war but as illegitimate soldiers. Later that year the High Command of the Wehrmacht doubled down on the order. On October 13, in accordance with Adolf Hitler’s express instructions, Colonel General Alfred Jodl, the army chief of staff, distributed classified copies of the Commando Order to 22 senior army officers, with specific instructions that the order must not fall into

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220000-LAWS-COMMANDO.indd 20

3/3/22 10:27 AM

Members of the 504th Regimental Combat Team of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division line the sides of a Douglas C-47 transport plane on their way to Sicily, Italy, in July 1943 to take part in Operation Husky.

U.S. AIR FORCE (GETTY IMAGES)

Ginny II, a second attempt on the same target, was doomed from the outset. After the team was landed at the wrong spot on the coastline, the operation ran into more trouble, and the soldiers were not extracted as planned. Shortly afterward, Russo’s commando team was captured by a combined force of Italian Fascists and German soldiers. The Wehrmacht’s 135th Fortress Brigade took the captured Americans into custody, and German intelligence officers interrogated them about their mission, as was the legal prerogative of any capturing army. No allegation of torture or illegal interrogation methods was ever made against the Germans after the fact. But during the questioning, one of the American soldiers revealed that his team was a commando unit on a mission to attack a target vital to German operations. That revelation changed everything. This information was sent up the chain of command to General of Infantry Anton Dostler at 75th Army Corps, who then passed it on to his superior, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, the commander of all German forces in Italy. Kesselring, in accordance with the Commando Order, called for the summary execution of the American prisoners. Dostler then signed an execution order, and the next morning, on March 26, all 15 commandos were shot. They were still dressed in their official U.S. Army uniforms, a fact that

clearly proved they were not acting as spies or engaging in a false-flag operation, and nothing in their conduct or their mission had violated the recognized rules of lawful warfare. Soon after Germany surrendered to the Allies in 1945, American investigators questioned both Kesselring and Dostler about their roles in the execution of the Ginny II commandos. Kesselring claimed to have no recollection of the incident and escaped prosecution on that case, in part because his records pertaining to the incident had been destroyed before the end of the war. Dostler, however, admitted to issuing the execution order that bore his signature. He tried to excuse his actions by saying that he was following the orders of a superior officer, and he characterized the executions as a “lawful reprisal.” In the first war crimes prosecution mounted by the Allied powers, Dostler was brought to trial for the unlawful execution of soldiers who should have been afforded the status and protections of lawful prisoners of war. His assertion that the American soldiers wore no distinctive uniform or insignia was proved false when the commandos’ bodies were exhumed. The military court that tried Dostler specifically rejected his “lawful reprisal” argument. “No soldier, and still less a Commanding General,” it declared, “can be heard to say that he considered the summary shooting of prisoners of war legitimate even as a reprisal.” In a noteworthy con-

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220000-LAWS-COMMANDO.indd 21

21 2/28/22 11:22 AM

XXXXXXXXXX

trast to Dostler’s conduct in the affair, one of his senior staff officers, Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten, objected to the execution order precisely because it violated Articles 5 and 6 of the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War. Dohna was stripped of his rank and dismissed from the Wehrmacht for taking this position, but he left the army with his honor intact and his morality unstained, and he survived the aftermath of the war. His commander did not. Dostler was convicted of war crimes and was executed by a U.S. Army firing squad on December 1, 1945. The military tribunal’s rejection of his “following orders” defense set the precedent for the prosecution of senior Nazi officials in the Nuremberg war crimes trials. One of the “Nuremberg Principles” later adopted by the International Law Convention of the United Nations held: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” This articulation of the laws of war endures to this day. Anyone familiar with the history of World War II knows that the German military carried out precisely the same types of operations it attempted to criminalize in the Commando Order. Germany had pioneered the use of paratroops in combat when it deployed its Fallschirmjägers in the invasion of Norway and the attack on the Belgian fortress of Eben Emael in 1940, and again in the invasion of Crete in 1941. German commandos, especially the airborne forces commanded by Otto Skorzeny, had carried out special operations missions on the Eastern Front, the Balkans, and in Italy—actions that led some to call Skorzeny “the most feared man in Europe.” General Jodl

was fully aware of this conundrum, as he had included the following language in Section V of the Commando Order: “This order does not apply to the treatment of those enemy soldiers who are taken prisoner or give themselves up in open battle, in the course of normal operations, large-scale attacks; or in major assault landings or airborne operations. Neither does it apply to those who fall into our hands after a sea fight, nor to those enemy soldiers who, after air battle, seek to save their lives by parachute.” Accordingly, Allied airborne forces such as the American, British, and Polish paratroops who fought in Operation Husky in Sicily, Operation Overlord in Normandy, or Operation Market Garden in Holland, should have been regarded as legitimate combatants and treated as prisoners of war under the terms of the 1929 convention. Any illegal actions taken against those troops was the fault of subordinate German units, rather than the overarching official policy expressed in the secret 1942 order. But in acknowledging the legality of “large-scale attacks” or airborne operations while also attempting to criminalize small-scale raids or commando operations, the Commando Order articulated an outright violation of the laws of war and was itself a criminal order. This wholly disingenuous aspect of the order was one of the central charges brought against Jodl in the Nuremburg war crimes trials, and he was hanged on October 16, 1946. MHQ John A. Haymond is the author of Soldiers: A Global History of the Fighting Man, 1800–1945 (Stackpole Books, 2018) and The Infamous Dakota War Trials of 1862: Revenge, Military Law, and the Judgment of History (McFarland, 2016).

LEFT: BUNDESARCHIV; RIGHT: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

From left: Colonel General Alfred Jodl distributed the Commando Order to senior officers of the Wehrmacht; General Anton Dostler is tied to a stake before his execution by a firing squad in Aversda, Italy, in 1945.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220000-LAWS-COMMANDO.indd 22

2/28/22 11:22 AM

WEAPONS CHECK

VESPA 150 TAP By Chris McNab

M20 recoilless rifle The M20 had a maximum range of just under four miles. Its 75mm high-explosive antitank (HEAT) shell could penetrate 3.9 inches of armor. Storage racks These racks, designed to carry ammunition, could hold three M20 rounds on each side. Frame The strengthened frame took the vehicle weight up to 246 pounds, compared with 216 pounds for the equivalent civilian model.

RUOTE DA SOGNO

Engine The engine, a singlecylinder 145.5cc two-stroke motor, delivered a top speed of about 40 miles per hour. The Vespa scooter, first manufactured by Piaggio in 1946, is a timeless icon of Italian style and exuberance. Less well known is its weaponized offshoot, the Vespa 150 TAP, some 600 of which were manufactured under license in France from 1956 to 1959 by Ateliers de Construction de Motorcycles et d’Automobiles. TAP stands for troupes aéroportées, the French paratroops for whom the vehicle was specifically designed. The tactical rationale was to give them a light, mobile, and fuel-efficient antiarmor system that could be dropped from the air. The TAP was a civilian Vespa modified for military use. Its frame was strengthened and its engine given lower gear ratios. Equipment racks were fitted to its sides and front, and the scooter could also tow a small trailer for extra ammunition. But the most arresting feature was an M20 75mm recoilless rifle that ran under the seat and out through the left side of the leg shield, projecting well beyond the front wheel. A gunless Vespa carrying spare ammunition and tools would accompany the TAP into action, the pair of bikes dropped on a special parachute-

retarded pallet. Once the bikes were recovered at the drop site, the two riders would also act as gun crew. Although the M20 worked on recoilless principles, it was not intended for on-bike firing; instead it was detached and mounted on an M1917A1 Browning machine-gun tripod, also carried on the gun bike. Although the M20 was largely ineffective against newer generations of tanks, French paratroops made effective use of the Vespa 150 TAP system during the Algerian War (1954–1962), as its gun could take out enemy bunkers and light vehicles. The bike ran for 124 miles on a single tank of fuel, could handle tough off-road terrain, and was incredibly cheap to produce, each vehicle costing just $500. Yet the Vespa 150 TAP’s undeniable quirkiness and the advent of new antiarmor weapon systems meant that it fell out of use in the 1960s. MHQ Chris McNab is a military historian based in the United Kingdom. His most recent book is Armies of the Iran–Iraq War: 1980–88 (Osprey, 2022).

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-WEAPONS-VESPA.indd 23

23 2/28/22 11:31 AM

BEHIND THE LINES

REVOLUTION OF THE UNDERDOGS Fidel Castro’s Cuban rebels lost their first battle against the government’s well-armed troops. It was all uphill from there. By Brendan Sainsbury

At the time of his abortive landing on Cuba’s swampy coast, the 30-year-old Castro was already a well-known figure in his homeland. After the Cuban government captured him and put him on trial following a failed attack on a military barracks in Santiago de Cuba in 1953, it had jailed him—and 29 coconspirators—on the Isle of Pines. Released in 1955 in a prisoner amnesty, Castro made tracks to Mexico City where, under the umbrella of the newly formed 26th July Movement (M-26-7), he recruited and trained a guerrilla force with the intention of returning to Cuba to start a revolution. Despite 18 months of planning, the voyage from Mexico and subsequent disembarkation in Cuba was a disaster. Having survived a baptism of fire in the cane field, Castro and his two remaining companions crept furtively inland toward the safety of the Sierra Maestra, the mountain range that rises sharply from the southeast coast of Cuba. Bereft of supplies and weak with hunger, they dodged army patrols, crawled through sewage pipes, and sucked on sugarcane for subsistence.

By 1956 Fidel Castro was already a well-known figure in his homeland.

Finally, a week later, they met up with Guillermo García, a farmer who was sympathetic to the rebel cause, and their luck started to change. In mid-December 1956 at the small village of Cinco Palmas, Castro’s brother, Raúl— who unbeknownst to Fidel had also escaped from the skirmish in the cane field—emerged from the jungle with three men and four weapons. Castro was elated. Three days later, eight more soldiers, including Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos, showed up, swelling the ranks of weary rebels to 15. “We can win this war,” a reinvigorated Castro told his small band of ragged soldiers. “We have just begun the fight.” History likes to portray the early days of the Cuban revolution as a classic David-and-Goliath battle between a bullying government and a small band of poorly equipped rebels. It wasn’t quite that simple. Despite his charismatic personality and dogged determination to succeed whatever the cost, Castro wasn’t Cuba’s only revolutionary in the late 1950s. Others, acting clandestinely in Cuba’s towns and cities, were equally intent on bringing down Batista’s authoritarian government, which had brazenly seized power in a 1952 coup. Without these rebels and the grassroots support they sowed among the Cuban people, the revolution might not have been possible. One of them was Frank País, a young teacher from Santiago de Cuba who had become increasingly politicized after Batista’s audacious power grab. Forming a small opposition group in Santiago, he secretly merged with Castro’s 26th July Movement in 1955. Rather than relocating to Mexico, however, País decided to remain in Santiago, where he coordinated a well-organized underground resistance to the Batista regime. It was from here that he planned an urban uprising in late 1956 to coincide with the landing of Castro’s expeditionary force on the southern coast. Later, when Castro was safely installed in the mountains, País collaborated closely with the rebels, forming a vital link between the underground cells in the cities and the revolutionaries in the Sierra Maestra. More visible and vulnerable than Castro in the hot, sticky backstreets of Santiago, País was ultimately tracked down and murdered by Batista’s police in July 1957. He was just 22. But even in death, his ideas lived on. He had already played a vital part in launching the Cuban revolution.

FROM LEFT: AFP, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (GETTY IMAGES, 2)

he revolution didn’t get off to a very good start. Several days after they landed their leaky cabin cruiser on Cuba’s isolated southern coast in December 1956, an exhausted expeditionary force of 82 rebel soldiers led by a cigar-puffing ex-lawyer named Fidel Castro had been decimated by wellarmed government troops. Some of the rebels had fled; others had been captured and killed. Escaping from the chaos, Castro took cover in a sugarcane field with two compatriots: Universo Sánchez, his bodyguard, and Faustino Pérez, a doctor from Havana. “There was a moment when I was commander-in-chief of myself and two others,” Castro later admitted. In a little over two years, however, Castro and his small band of revolutionaries had mustered enough support to overthrow the military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. How did they do it?

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-BTL-CUBA.indd 24

2/28/22 11:03 AM

From left: Cuban revolutionaries Camilo Cienfuegos and Ernesto “Che” Guevara (in beret) in Havana in 1959; Fidel Castro and two of his fellow guerrillas pose with their rifles at their Sierra Maestra hideout in eastern Cuba.

FROM LEFT: AFP, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (GETTY IMAGES, 2)

Celia Sánchez was the daughter of a Cuban doctor from Manzanillo, a small city on the cusp of the Sierra Maestra. Inspired by Castro’s 26th July Movement, she formed her own cell in Manzanillo and provided a vital conduit for the nascent rebel army, sending supplies and new recruits up into the mountains. By 1957 she had moved permanently to the Sierra Maestra hideout, becoming the first woman to join the revolutionaries and ultimately forming the Mairana Grajales Brigade, an all-female military platoon, in 1958. In time, she also became Castro’s lover and closest confidant. A cornerstone of Castro’s early success was his ability to use the news media to advance his cause. In February 1957, with Celia Sánchez’s help, Castro lured Herbert L. Matthews, a reporter for the New York Times, to meet him at a secret location in the Sierra Maestra for an exclusive interview. Ever since the skirmish in the cane field, the Cuban press had erroneously reported that Castro was dead. Incensed, Castro wanted to loudly announce to the world that he was very much alive and ready to fight. During his meeting with Matthews, Castro boldly exaggerated the size of his army and arranged for the same handful of men to repeatedly march by to give the journalist the impression that he was harboring a significant military force. The trick worked. Matthews was smitten. His story in the New York Times a week later began: “Fidel Castro, the rebel leader of Cuba’s youth, is alive and fighting hard and successfully in the rugged, almost impenetrable fastnesses of the Sierra Maestra.” It was one of the biggest newspaper scoops of the 20th century and the first of several propaganda coups for

Castro in which he was able to paint himself as a heroic outlaw to the foreign press. If Castro was Robin Hood, Batista was quickly becoming an unsavory Prince John. As challenges to his increasingly corrupt regime mounted, so did the resulting repression. An attempted attack on the presidential palace in Havana in March 1957, led by student leader José Antonio Echeverría, was ruthlessly suppressed. A naval mutiny in the city of Cienfuegos in September was snuffed out with bombers and tanks. Concealed in the Sierra Maestra, Castro and his growing band of revolutionaries managed to avoid that fate. Emerging sporadically from the mountains and using guerrilla tactics, the rebels scored an early victory in January 1957 when, with just 23 functioning weapons, they stormed a small army barracks on Cuba’s south coast. Four months later, the rebels, now numbering 127, successfully overran a military garrison in the coastal town of El Uvero. From the humid days of spring 1957 until the final rebel victory in 1959, Cuba remained in a simmering state of civil war. Many in Castro’s original expeditionary force, having no military experience, could barely fire a rifle. But forced to learn fast in the active “training fields” of the Sierra Maestra, a significant proportion of those who survived the disastrous landing evolved into competent soldiers and leaders. Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine doctor, had joined the mission in Mexico City in 1955 as group medic. After forsaking his medical kit for a box of ammunition during the ambush in the cane field, he quickly grew into a fearless warrior.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-BTL-CUBA.indd 25

25 2/28/22 11:03 AM

REVOLUTION OF THE UNDERDOGS

By 1958 Batista was beginning to see Castro as a genuine force and thorn in his side.

It was this tight core of “comandantes” who helped establish Castro’s first permanent base in the Sierra Maestra in 1958, a well-camouflaged military camp nestled in the cloud forests ringing Cuba’s highest peaks that became known as Comandancia La Plata. La Plata was rustic but sophisticated and well hidden: Batista’s troops never found it. It was from here, under the supervision of Che Guevara, that the rebels set up their own radio station, Radio Rebelde, as an alternative source of news and propaganda to Cuba’s state-controlled press. As Batista’s repression spread, so did his unpopularity. Refusing to take the growing military threats seriously, the Cuban president chose to use his secret police to harass, torture, and publicly execute people suspected of aiding and abetting Castro’s band of barbudos (bearded ones). Not surprisingly, the ugliness prompted a backlash, not just

among Cubans—who gradually deserted the government in favor of the 26th July Movement—but also among Batista’s foreign allies. In March 1958, as the regime’s excesses grew ever more discomforting, the U.S. government imposed an arms embargo on Cuba and recalled its ambassador. At the same time, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, hedging its bets on the outcome of the conflict, secretly began channeling some $50,000 to the 26th July Movement (an irony given its later plots to assassinate Castro). By the summer of 1958, Batista was beginning to see Castro as a genuine force and a perennial thorn in his side. Understanding the need to smoke the rebels out of their mountain hideout for good, he dispatched General Eulogio Cantillo to the Sierra Maestra to oversee a major military offensive that was dubbed Operation Verano, or “Plan FF” (Fin de Fidel). With his popularity imploding and his foreign allies abandoning him, it was Batista’s last throw of the dice. But despite a minor victory at the Battle of Las Mercedes in August 1958, Operation Verano failed to quash the rapidly spreading rebellion. Part of the problem was poor military intelligence. Many of Cantillo’s decisions were based on his assumption that the rebel army was far bigger than it actually was (it was perhaps 3,000-strong by summer 1958, but historical reports vary and Castro’s own reported figures fluctuated wildly). One certain advantage that Castro had was the motivation and morale of his followers. The rebels were bonded by the spirit of the underdog. Not only were they fighting for their lives, but—in the days before Castro cast his lot with the Soviet Union—they were inspired by ideology and the dream of a better future. Sympathetic journalists and photographers elevated them to the realm of romantic myth. Before the 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle and friendly visits to Moscow soured the relationship with the United States, the revolutionaries were seen as virtuous cowboys cleaning up Cuba’s “wild east.” On the contrary, Batista’s army of 12,000 paid conscripts was carrying out the dirty work of an increasingly embarrassing dictator. Many soldiers refused to fire their weapons. Some even secretly defected.

LEFT: HULTON ARCHIVE (GETTY IMAGES); RIGHT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Guevara became Castro’s right-hand man, an effective and ruthless guerrilla fighter who expounded a rigid socialist ideology and led by example in battle. Brave, disciplined, and zealously committed, he also had a darker side. Showing little mercy for captured informants, he sometimes executed them himself. But at the same time, Guevara played a key role in advancing the lot of the impoverished people in the mountains. Under his leadership, schools were established and bread ovens built. These and other such smallscale infrastructure projects that took root in remote Cuban villages were crucial in sealing the continued support of the rural working class. Without their backing as runners, guides, and volunteers, Castro would have struggled to gain a foothold in the mountains. Cienfuegos, a Cuban from Havana who had been one of the last recruits to join Castro’s expeditionary force in Mexico, proved to be Guevara’s equal as a soldier and leader. He was made a military commander in 1957, and the following summer he formed one of two columns that Castro sent west to ultimately occupy the rest of Cuba. Guevara and Cienfuegos were complemented at the top of the rebel command chain by Raúl Castro and Juan Almeida, both veterans of the Moncada Barracks attack in 1953. They had served their prison senten ces alongside Fidel on the Isle of Pines. Raúl was young (only 25 in 1956), impulsive, and less charismatic than his hotheaded brother. Almeida was the rebels’ only Afro- Cuban commander and an important symbol for a revolution that professed to be nondiscriminatory and egalitarian.

With Operation Verano derailed and Batista’s tactical decisions becoming increasingly irrational, the end looked to be in sight. Sensing a groundswell in popular support across the country, Castro sent Guevara and Cienfuegos, his two senior commanders, on a long march west to Las Villas Province in an attempt to cut the country in two. It was the first time in nearly two years that the rebel army had come down from the mountains to face the enemy on open ground.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-BTL-CUBA.indd 26

2/28/22 11:03 AM

XXXXXXXXXX

LEFT: HULTON ARCHIVE (GETTY IMAGES); RIGHT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

From left: Fulgencio Batista fled Cuba with more than $300 million he had amassed through graft and kickbacks; Castro and his revolutionaries greet jubilant crowds as they arrive in the capital city of Havana on January 8, 1959.

The tentative and largely clandestine advance took seven weeks, with the rebel columns mostly covering ground at night in tough, unfavorable conditions. But support across the country was growing. The inexperienced but tightknit group of revolutionaries found they picked up new recruits wherever they went. Their numbers quickly doubled. By late December 1958, both columns had taken up strategic positions in central Cuba: Guevara outside the city of Santa Clara and Cienfuegos 50 miles to the east near the settlement of Yaguajay. Cienfuegos acted first, attacking a well-defended military garrison on the settlement’s outskirts. The government soldiers managed to hold out for 11 days before they ran out of ammunition on December 30. By this point, Guevara was in the midst of a battle for Cuba’s fourth largest city, Santa Clara, with his force of 350 men, many of them barely out of their teens, outnumbered 10 to one. Undaunted, the rebels fearlessly derailed an armored train, capturing its weapons and cutting communications. Tired, dejected, and torn by conflicting loyalties, the city’s leaders surrendered. The action that turned out to be the death knell for the Batista regime had ultimately been achieved with a couple of bulldozers and a hail of Molotov cocktails. Hearing of Santa Clara’s capitulation at a glitzy New Year’s Eve party at Camp Columbia in Havana, Batista panicked and fled the country. Boarding a plane with 40 cohorts and $300 million in cash, he headed to the Dominican Republic (the U.S. government refused to have him), where he was greeted by President Rafael Trujillo, another soon-tobe-deposed despot.

Acting swiftly to offset a military coup, Castro stationed himself on the western approach to Santiago de Cuba and threatened to invade the city if it refused to surrender. Protecting him on his eastern flank, Raúl Castro stood guard over Guantánamo, while Guevara and Cienfuegos headed directly for Havana. Facing a juggernaut of revolutionary fervor, Santiago’s military leaders surrendered without a shot being fired, and from the balcony of the city hall on New Year’s Day in 1959, an ecstatic Fidel Castro announced the “triumph of the revolution.” Across Cuba, jubilation was mixed with confusion and trepidation. In Havana, casinos were looted, parking meters were smashed, and a Cuban farmer marched his pigs into the lobby of the five-star Hotel Riviera, then owned by Meyer Lansky, the richest and most powerful American mafia boss. The war seemed to be over. Castro began a triumphant, weeklong procession across the country, Guevara took up residence in Havana’s Cabaña fort, and in a middle-of-thenight interview with Ed Sullivan, the U.S. television host, in Matanzas, Cuba’s new Maximum Leader claimed in faltering English that he was a democrat. The euphoria, however, didn’t last long. Within just six weeks, ruthless reprisals, including show trials and executions, were being meted out with fresh zeal by Cuba’s fledgling revolutionary government. The cycle seemed to be starting all over again. MHQ Brendan Sainsbury, a freelance travel writer who lives near Vancouver, Canada, is the author of the last seven editions of the Lonely Planet Cuba guidebook.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-BTL-CUBA.indd 27

27 2/28/22 11:04 AM

XXXXXXXXXX

MHQP-220400-BTSCHMS-ATLANTIC.indd 28

2/28/22 11:28 AM

XXXXXXXXXX BATTLE SCHEMES

TARGET: U-BOATS This colorful pictorial map, one in a series of six that the U.S. Navy produced in 1944, dramatizes the Battle of the Atlantic and the Allies’ strategic bombing campaign against key enemy targets in France and Germany. Five numbered captions trace the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck on May 27, 1941. The legend above the large blue arrow that sweeps across the Atlantic Ocean reads, “Our navy breaks the U-boat scourge on the Allies’ supply lines...” The Nazi submarines, British prime minister Winston Churchill would write in 1949, were “the only thing that ever really frightened me during the war.” MHQ

DAVID RUMSEY MAP COLLECTION

MHQP-220400-BTSCHMS-ATLANTIC.indd 29

MHQ Spring 2022

29 2/28/22 11:28 AM

WAR LIST

THANKS FOR THE MEMOIRS

Many of these World War II autobiographies hit the best-seller lists, but the reviewers weren’t always as uncritical as the reading public.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (1948)

Eisenhower, who had achieved his greatest fame as the supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe, was all but guaranteed that his memoir would be a blockbuster. Douglas M. Black, the president of Doubleday & Company, told reporters that his publishing house was planning “one of the largest first printings in recent history, with simultaneous publication all over the world in a dozen languages or more, and worldwide newspaper syndication.” Like Omar Bradley, Eisenhower didn’t even write his book—he dictated it to Kenneth McCormick, his editor at Doubleday, and Joseph Fels Barnes, the former foreign editor of the New York Herald Tribune, which had purchased the syndication rights. Kevin McCann, one of Eisenhower’s top aides, helped get the manuscript in final form. Eisenhower benefited from an unprecedented ruling from the Treasury Department that his $635,000 advance wouldn’t be taxed as ordinary income but as a capital gain, saving him something in the neighborhood of $400,000. Eisenhower scored again in 1949 when his best-selling

memoir became the basis of a 26-part documentary on the ABC television network—the first such series produced especially for the small screen.

Audie Murphy, To Hell and Back (1949)

He killed hundreds of Germans in combat and once jumped onto a burning M10 “Wolverine” tank destroyer that had been abandoned in a ditch and turned its caliber machine-gun on enemy troops. Murphy’s .50- memoir, largely ghostwritten, earned a priceless review in the Louisville Courier-Journal from Robert Ruark, a wildly popular syndicated columnist, who called it “the best bad book, or maybe the worst good book, that I have read on the war.” Ruark went on to amp up his praise for the book, calling it “the best and truest description of lower-case combat I’ve read.” Murphy, who would become an actor in 1948, later played himself in the 1955 film adaptation of his book, which became the biggest hit in the history of Universal Studios until that time.

Omar Bradley, A Soldier’s Story (1951)

Bradley, one of the U.S. Army’s top generals in World War II, dictated some two and a half million words into a tape recorder for this memoir, but only 230,000 of them made it into the published book. Hanson W. Baldwin, the military editor of the New York Times, found the book to be “balanced and on the whole fair” and most useful for its portraits of Bradley’s contemporaries, including General George S. Patton Jr. But his praise pretty much ended there. “Unfortunately, the future historian will get little help in reconstructing the character, abilities, the weaknesses and the accomplishments of General Bradley himself,” Baldwin wrote. “As a whole much of this book is ‘old hat’ and it is too subjective and too full of chit-chat to rank as a comprehensive military record.”

Heinz Guderian, Panzer Leader (1952)

He was known, at least to some, as “Hurrying Heinz,” and his self-centered memoir, originally published in German in 1950, was for many years the primary account of panzer warfare. Guderian had surrendered to U.S. forces in May 1945, but on being released three years later, he began work

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-WARLIST-MEMOIRS.indd 30

2/28/22 11:13 AM

XXXXXXXXXX

The legendary U.S. Army general known as “Old Blood and Guts” churned out the manuscript for this memoir in 1945 after the end of World War II, but when he died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident in December of that year, his widow, Beatrice Ayer Patton, took over the project and saw it through to publication. In reviewing the book for scores of American newspapers, Edward D. Ball, the Associated Press correspondent assigned to Patton’s Third Army from July 1944 until long after the German surrender, said that it “makes good and interesting reading but doesn’t add much to what a lot of people already knew.” Only four paragraphs of the 425-page book were devoted to the controversial soldier-slapping incidents in Sicily that nearly ended Patton’s active-duty career. Patton complained about being kept “under wraps” by his superiors and admitted to only one “error” during the war: sending a task force instead of a combat command on a secret—and ultimately disastrous—raid to liberate OFLAG XIII-B, a Nazi POW camp near Hammelburg, Germany, that housed nearly 1,300 American officers.

XXXXXXXXXXFROM TOP LEFT: INTERIM ARCHIVE (GETTY IMAGES); NATIONAL ARCHIVES; HERITAGE AUCTIONS; CLOCKWISE EVENING STANDARD (GETTY); AMAZON; GOODREADS; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA

George S. Patton Jr., War As I Knew It (1947)

on the book in which he would grandly portray himself as the architect of the armored blitzkrieg. Even Sir Basil Liddell Hart, the esteemed British military writer and himself a pioneer of tank tactics, burnished Guderian’s account by contributing the foreword to his book. Right out of the gate, the London Observer published a scathing assessment of Panzer Leader, calling it “the defiant apologia of a narrow ‘nothing-but-soldier,’ who refuses to see anything questionable about carrying out the military orders of a tyrannical and murderous dictatorship.” But the book was more warmly received in the United States, with the Boston Globe called it “a book of importance” by “a soldier of genius, especially in the field of tactics,” and the New York Times describing it as one of the best written by ex-Nazi generals. In Panzer Leader, Guderian made no mention of the war crimes he’d authorized or condoned, and for the most part reviewers did the same.

Britain’s top military commander in World War II waited until his retirement, at age 70, to publish this postmortem, which played to mixed reviews. “Viscount Bernard Montgomery,” the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News observed, “is the latest to come forward with memoirs suggesting that World War II could have been ended sooner if someone had only listened to him.” Then came the president of the Italian Nationalist Association in Rome, who challenged Montgomery to a duel for writing in the book that Italian troops were “unreliable when it came to hard fighting” and that Italy’s change of sides during the war was “the biggest double-cross in history.” (Montgomery declined the challenge, telling reporters that he would “do nothing about it except frame it and stick it on the wall.”)

Winston S. Churchill, Memoirs of the Second World War (1959)

XXXXXXXXXX

XXXXXXXXXXFROM TOP LEFT: INTERIM ARCHIVE (GETTY IMAGES); NATIONAL ARCHIVES; HERITAGE AUCTIONS; CLOCKWISE EVENING STANDARD (GETTY); AMAZON; GOODREADS; LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA

Bernard Law Montgomery, The Memoirs of Field Marshal Montgomery (1958)

In 1948 Sir Winston, the two-time prime minister of Great Britain began publishing what would become a six-volume, million-plus-word history of World War II (The Second World War), but in the years after the final volume appeared in 1953, his publisher saw great potential in an abridged, single-volume version of the original. The result, according to the New York Times, was “the great story… told with all the Churchillian gusto and ornate skill; the best of all records of the causes of the conflict and the long, bitter, complicated struggle itself.” A half-century later, however, historian David Reynolds, in his book In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (Random House, 2005), documented how Churchill often mishandled or manipulated the facts in his mammoth memoir to fit his desired narrative. MHQ

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-WARLIST-MEMOIRS.indd 31

31 3/3/22 10:28 AM

n 1918, as the United States was preparing to enter World War I, the government commissioned J. C. Leyendecker, a famous illustrator in New York, to create a poster for its Third Liberty Loan Campaign, which aimed to enlist members of the Boy Scouts of America in the drive to sell war bonds. Leyendecker nearly always used models for his illustrations, as he’d done with his famous renditions of the Arrow Collar Man, and so George Harris, of the Washington photographic studio of Harris & Ewing, was given the assignment of producing the image from which Leyendecker would paint his “Weapons for Liberty” poster. The tableau Harris created, and photographed, had a kneeling scout handing a massive sword engraved with the crest and motto of the Boy Scouts to Lady Liberty, who is draped in the American flag and holds a shield embossed with the Great Seal of the United States. (See “At the Front,” page 15.) Harris, for his part, may well have been the finest portrait photographer of the 20th century. He photographed every president from Teddy Roosevelt to Harry Truman, and the lens of his camera became the eye of the nation. It captured world leaders (David Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau), heroic aviators (Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart), tycoons (Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford), labor bosses (Samuel Gompers, John L. Lewis), virtuosos (Ignace Paderewski, George Gershwin), sports legends (Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey), and screen idols (Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.), along with thousands of governors, members of Congress, and other newsworthy notables. Those notables included untold hundreds of military folk, most of whom made the trip to Harris’s studio in downtown Washington, D.C., to have their official portraits made. More than a dozen of these portraits have appeared since 2018 in MHQ, including those of Joseph T. Dickman, John Foster Dulles, Frederick Funston, John Archer Lejeune, Douglas MacArthur, Peyton C. March, and Julia C. Stimson. Even Huang Xing, the first commander in chief of the Republic of China, sat for Harris when he was in Washington. In 1919 President Woodrow Wilson asked Harris to accompany the U.S. delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, which was called to establish the rules of peace after World War I. While there he made portraits of nearly all the participants, including a member of the British delega-

tion who walked around Versailles in a kaffiyeh and thobe. Harris and T. E. Lawrence—“Lawrence of Arabia” (or T. E. Shaw, as he sometimes signed his letters)—would remain friends until Lawrence’s death in 1935. From the moment Harris opened the Harris & Ewing Studio in 1905 (his original partner, Martha Ewing, sold her interest in the firm 10 years later), his quest for perfection in portraiture was nearly a point of honor. He insisted, whenever possible, on natural lighting, and few others in the business could match his eye for highlight and shadow. As a result, Harris’s portraits (and many of his candid shots) feature unusual degrees of detail, depth, and richness. Harris liked to tell the story of how President Theodore Roosevelt had lured him to the nation’s capital. “Teddy Roosevelt was speaking from a train in the San Francisco Bay Navy Yards,” he once recalled. “He turned to me and said, ‘Why don’t you take this crowd?’ I said I’d have to stand on a boxcar to do it, and he asked, ‘Well, why don’t you?’ I turned around and said, ‘If the train starts when I’m up there, will you pull the string to stop it?’ ‘The train started to move and I yelled at him, ‘Pull the string.’ He did. Later he said, ‘You should go to Washington. Anyone who can tell the president what to do has what it takes.’ ” In its heyday the Harris & Ewing Studio employed some 120 people, including 12 portrait specialists and six news photographers. (Its news photo service was shut down in 1956.) Harris died in 1964 at age 92, and the studio he founded closed its doors 13 years later. While many of the 7 million negatives in the brick warehouse where they were stored were later discarded or destroyed, some of the studio’s finest portraits were donated to the National Portrait Gallery by Harris’s daughter, and more than 41,000 of its glass negatives, as well as some 28,000 film negatives, found their way to the Library of Congress. More often than not his subjects were the rich, the powerful, and the famous, but George Harris never allowed them to get in the way of art. “Don’t be afraid of a man because he’s a big fellow,” he once told an interviewer. “The bigger the man, the easier he is to boss around. When you’re taking pictures, it’s the little man who resents being told what to do.” —Bill Hogan

HUNTINGTON LIBRARY

THE PORTRAITIST

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220600-LETTERFROM.indd 32

3/3/22 5:05 PM

HUNTINGTON LIBRARY

Illustrator J. C. Leyendecker based his famous “Weapons for Liberty” poster on the Harris & Ewing photograph that appears on page 15 of this issue.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220600-LETTERFROM.indd 33

33 3/3/22 5:05 PM

THE MAN WHO OUTWITTED THE LUFTWAFFE

POPPERFOTO (GETTY IMAGES)

Reginald V. Jones, a genius in physics, developed new systems and tactics that thwarted the German High Command. By Robert O. Harder

MHQ Spring 2021

MHQP-JONES.indd 34

3/2/22 5:54 PM

POPPERFOTO (GETTY IMAGES)

British air raid wardens on the roof of a government building in central London scan the sky for any sign of incoming Luftwaffe bombers during the Blitz in February 1941.

MHQP-JONES.indd 35

3/2/22 5:54 PM

cy’s No. 2 intelligence position, specializing in electronic and radio defenses against air attack. The advent of commercial broadcast radio in the mid1920s was as close to magic as anyone could have imagined. It was only three decades removed from Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi’s initial discovery that radio waves could send messages through the ether, which led to his pioneering transatlantic long-distance radio transmission in 1901 (from St. Johns, Newfoundland, to Cliveden, Ireland). Initially, the system could transmit only the dits and dahs of Morse code, but within a few years voice transmission became possible. With that development and a few readily available components, anyone at home with a bit of technical skill could construct a workable radio set and, as Jones would later write, “conjure speech and music out of the air.” In the mid-1930s, Jones’s research focused on detecting infrared radiation emitted from hot aircraft engines approaching the British Isles. While that intriguing work eventually led to a dead end, it advanced his growing reputation as a young man to watch. Most important, his work had caught the eye of Frederick Lindemann.

MIRRORPIX (GETTY IMAGES)

n the afternoon of June 12, 1940, Frederick Lindemann, whom British prime minister Winston Churchill had just appointed as his scientific adviser, convened a meeting at the Air Ministry. Lindemann, known to everyone as “the Prof,” extended a last-minute invitation to 28-year-old Reginald V. Jones, the relatively obscure deputy director of intelligence research. The sole topic of the meeting was Germany’s progress in developing and deploying defensive radar systems, research that Britain was already doing with its own secret Chain Home radar stations. As the meeting came to an end, Jones stunned everyone in the room with an alarming piece of intelligence he had learned about only that morning. He now believed, he told the others, that the Germans had made a breakthrough in electronic bomb-aiming that, if successfully implemented, could very well cause Britain to lose the war. Jones, the son of a London postman, was, from an early age, something of an academic prodigy. By age 22, having earned a doctorate in physics from Oxford University’s Balliol College, he embarked on a civilian career in the Air Ministry that within just a few years had him in the agen-

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-JONES.indd 36

3/2/22 5:55 PM

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: KEYSTONE-FRANCE (GETTY IMAGES); ROBERT HUTTON COLLECTION; FRED RAMAGE (GETTY)

Firefighters in Birmingham, England, tread through the rubble on August 25, 1940, after the Luftwaffe begins pummeling the city, an important industrial center, with high-explosive bombs and incendiaries.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: KEYSTONE-FRANCE (GETTY IMAGES); ROBERT HUTTON COLLECTION; FRED RAMAGE (GETTY)

MIRRORPIX (GETTY IMAGES)

REGINALD V. JONES Jones first came to Lindemann’s attention in 1931 while the former was still a graduate student in physics at Oxford. One day, the prickly Prof told Jones in a post-examination interview that no student had ever answered his questions so effectively. Neither could have known that years later they would be working together on vital defense work at the Air Ministry. On the morning of June 11, 1940, Jones received telephone calls from both Lindemann and Group Captain Lyter Fettiplace Blandy, the head of the Royal Air Force’s Y Service, which was responsible for intercepting and decoding German radio signals. Each call invited Jones to a meeting the following day. Lindemann’s afternoon meeting was to discuss Germany’s capability to detect incoming aircraft by using radio waves; Blandy’s morning meeting was more of an informal update on Y Service activities. Jones carried the highest security clearance, including access to intercepts from Bletchley Park, where British intelligence analysts regularly decoded German radio messages sent through their Enigma cypher machine network as part of an Allied intelligence program known as Ultra. Blandy opened a drawer in his desk and got right down to business. “Does this mean anything to you?” he asked Jones, handing him a scrap of paper. “It doesn’t seem to mean anything to anyone here.” Jones read the Ultra English translation: “Cleves Knickebein is established at position 53 degrees 24 minutes North and 1 degree West.” Jones instantly realized that the specified position was a point in England, determined to be on the Great North Road about a mile south of Retford in the Midlands. He knew that Germany had a radio beam transmitter called Knickebein at Cleves (or Kleves, a city on its western border) and that the British had confirmed the existence of this narrow wave beam over England. To Jones, the name Knickebein (“crooked leg,” in English) suggested an intersection of some sort, perhaps a second beam that intersected the first—in short, a precision “X marks the spot” bomb-dropping device. Further, he said, it presented an opportunity to put up a false cross-beam that would cause the Germans to drop their bombs on decoy targets. In any event, the decoded message meant that the Luftwaffe, the German air force, was developing the ability to precision- bomb England in any weather, day or night. When Jones was asked about Germany’s defensive radar capabilities at the Lindemann meeting, he said that while he was convinced the Germans had them, he knew few details. He mentioned what had become known as the Oslo Report—an eight-page paper on German technology anonymously sent from Norway that only Jones and a few others had taken seriously. Near the end of the meeting,

Clockwise from top: British prime minister Winston Churchill scans the sky from an antiaircraft post; Reginald V. Jones, the scientist who would repeatedly foil the Nazis; Frederick Lindemann, Churchill’s top scientific adviser. Jones matter-of-factly dropped a bomb of his own. He reported his analysis of the Knickebein Ultra transmission, which he had read that morning in Blandy’s office; with that, he said, the pieces all fit together, leaving him convinced that the Germans had an electronic two-beam intersecting system for bombing England. Asked to expand on his extraordinary assertion, Jones said that based on this evidence and secretly recorded conversations of Luftwaffe prisoners, he believed Knickebein had been derived

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-JONES.indd 37

37 3/2/22 5:55 PM

REGINALD V. JONES

LORENZ SYSTEM

Top: German soldiers man the 10-foot-wide radar dish that came to be known as a Würzburg-Riese (Giant Würzburg). Bottom: Jones correctly theorized that Luftwaffe bombers equipped with the “Lorenz” blind-landing system, which enabled pilots to land by following two radio beams, would also be able to bomb targets in England with near impunity.

from the German “Lorenz” blind-landing set installed in German bombers: an electronic aid designed to guide aircraft safely to the ground in any weather by following a radio beam. The concept certainly wasn’t new to the Royal Air Force; it had a similar low-frequency radio-range-type landing system installed in its aircraft as well. What was new, Jones explained, was this new built-in two-beam precision bomb-dropping capability. Jones had been tipped off to Germany’s scheme in a discussion with a Royal Aircraft Factory engineer who had examined some of its crashed bombers. The man had mentioned that the only thing unusual about the Lorenz system was that it was much more sensitive than would be required for blind landing. These blind-landing, “in the soup” cockpit radio-range landing devices had become fully mature in the mid-1930s. Pilots also used them for point-to-point navigation and holding patterns. These versatile systems had various names, including “four-course radio range,” “A-N,” “Adcock radio range,” or sometimes simply “the range.” With the Lorenz, the pilot, after setting up on final approach, would listen to the Morse code signals coming through his head-

On June 21 Churchill chaired a high-level meeting with Lindemann sitting on his right and Lord Beaverbrook, the minister of aircraft production, on his left. Across the table sat Air Minister Archibald Sinclair and all the senior leaders of the Royal Air Force. Jones was admitted 25 minutes after the meeting started. His first impression recorded the lack of any secretaries; clearly this was to be an off-the- record discussion. After sitting silently for a time, he was startled when Churchill abruptly asked him “about some point of detail,” as Jones later described it. “Would it help, sir,” Jones responded, “if I told you the story right from the start?” Momentarily taken aback, Churchill then said, “Well, yes, it would!” Jones proceeded to speak with poise and without notes for 20 minutes. “When Dr. Jones finished,” Churchill would later recall, “there was a general air of incredulity.” In particular, Sir Henry Tizard, an influential scientific adviser to Churchill, vehemently opposed Jones’s conclusions. After a rather chaotic discussion, Churchill finally cut to the chase. Turning to Jones, he asked: “What can we do?” The existence of the beams, Jones replied, should first be confirmed through a flight test. Then, he said, it was essential to develop countermeasures to foil them. Much to Jones’s delight, Churchill agreed, setting the plan in motion. Two years later, Lindemann told Jones that Churchill had said, “If we had listened to Tizard in 1940, we should not have known about the beams.”

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-JONES.indd 38

3/2/22 5:55 PM

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS (2)

‘N’ STREAM

RADIO TRANSMITTERS

BUNDESARCHIV; ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN WALKER

‘A’ STREAM

set. If the airplane was to the left of the desired landing course, he would hear the A stream (a repeating letter A in Morse code: di-dah, di-dah, …); if he was to the right he would hear the N stream (dah-dit, dah-dit, …). When he corrected and finally heard a steady tone, he knew he was on the “equisignal”: on proper heading to land. (American pilots called this being “on the beam.”) If Jones’s theory—and to Lindemann and the others it was still a theory—was correct, and the Lorenz system had been cleverly modified as well as concealed, the Germans would be able to bomb England with near impunity. Almost predictably, the always difficult Lindemann was the biggest skeptic. The beam would not work, he said, because the short waves would not bend around the curvature of the earth. Jones, armed with computations from Thomas Lydwell Eckersley of the Marconi Company, assured Lindemann that the waves would bend. The next day Jones met with Lindemann and showed him Eckersley’s report. Lindemann then withdrew his objection and sent a note to Churchill about the importance of the new device. On June 14 a freshly captured Luftwaffe prisoner of war admitted during interrogation that Knickebein was indeed a bomb-dropping system involving radio beams. To Jones, the evidence was almost conclusive.

XXXXXXXXXX

From left: Chain Home, Britain’s radar defense network, employed towers like these at Woody Bay, Isle of Wight; plotters and duty officers at work in a Royal Air Force Fighter Command operations room at Wiltshire in 1943.

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS (2)

BUNDESARCHIV; ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN WALKER

The very next day three two-engine Avro Anson utility aircraft were sent up, fitted with U.S.-made Hallicrafters S-27 wide-band receivers (essentially ham radio equipment), as well as operators, to locate the Knickebein transmission frequencies. After a long period without result, one of the Ansons finally picked up a beam. Then they found a second signal. The bearings were consistent with transmitters at Cleves and Bredstedt, Germany. Jones was jubilant. “In the course of ten days [we went] from a conjecture to a certainty,” he later wrote. “[My work had] brought me from obscurity to the highest level of the war.” By September 1940, the Knickebein countermeasures were working well, especially during German night raids when alternative visual aids were generally unavailable. The electronic countermeasures had been made increasingly powerful, to the point where they degraded the enemy Morse code patterns into so much static. The German beams had been nicknamed “Headaches,” so it was only fitting to call the British jammers “Aspirins.” Despite this success against Knickebein, for several months Jones had suspected that the Germans were developing another two-beam navigation-bombing system. Its

existence was soon confirmed by Ultra intercepts, coupled with yet more surreptitious recordings of recent Luftwaffe POW chitchat. The Germans called the system X-Gerät: X referring to the intersection of the beams, and gerät meaning “device or apparatus.” British radio direction finders had identified the transmitting stations as Cherbourg and the Pas de Calais, both on the French coast. Within a few weeks that summer, the signals were linked to a single bomber unit, Kampfgruppe 100 (KGr.100), which appeared to be operating independently of other bomber units. British jammers were quickly modified to block these new “X-beams.” Following the earlier “Aspirin” precedent, the new jammers were called “Bromides.” But a supremely tragic communication error regarding jammer frequencies resulted in a failure to disrupt an X-beam attack on Coventry on November 14, 1940, and Luftwaffe bombers devastated the city. (Some historians have posited that Churchill covered up advance knowledge of the Coventry raid to preserve the Ultra secret, but Jones’s book contradicts such assertions.) Jones’s unrelenting work in the “Battle of the Beams” led him in that busy fall of 1940 to discover another radio navigation-bombing system. The main clue to its existence

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-JONES.indd 39

39 3/2/22 5:55 PM

REGINALD V. JONES

was something he had long suspected from references in the Oslo Report. He had also held in the back of his mind a mysterious Ultra intercept from June 27, 1940, which read: “It is proposed to set up Knickebein and Wotan installation near Cherbourg and Brest.” What was this Wotan? Jones wondered. He then telephoned Frederick “Bimbo” Norman, a friend and fellow Bletchley Park associate, whose scholarship in German heroic poetry was highly regarded, and asked him about Wotan. “He was head of the German Gods,” Norman told Jones. “Wait a moment…he had only one eye.” But then Norman excitedly exclaimed “One eye—one beam!” and asked Jones if he could think of a system that would use only one beam. Jones said that indeed he could, and the resulting conversation opened the door to the possibility of a third, and potentially most devastating, radio bombing system the Germans had devised. In November 1940 an Ultra-encrypted message intercepted from a German transmitting station contained only a single set of coordinates for a target. When cross-checked

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-JONES.indd 40

3/2/22 5:56 PM

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS (2)

This Nazi propaganda photo montage depicts a Heinkel He 111 releasing bombs over the Surrey Commercial Docks in southeast London during the Blitz in September 1940.

As World War II ground on, Jones stepped up his own war against German technology. The Oslo Report was continually reviewed for new leads; references earlier dismissed received renewed scrutiny. Jones had long been haunted by a particular reference in the report to radar, a technology the British—with their still secret Chain Home network—regarded with almost proprietary interest. In July 1940, during the same period he was uncovering the Knickebein and Gerät secrets, Jones came across a cryptic enemy intercept that mentioned an air defense warning system it called “Freya.” Jones recognized Freya as a Norse fertility goddess, but that alone wasn’t of much help. On further investigation, however, Jones discovered that Freya had a necklace, guarded by the watchman Heimdall, that gave her the ability to see from horizon to horizon day or night. Now we’re getting somewhere, Jones thought: Heimdall had vision equivalent to radar. (These compromising German code names, incidentally, are the primary reason that secret projects today are given completely random names.) As Jones and his associates sought to locate the Freya early warning radar stations, an Ultra decrypt mentioned a second, similar German radar—confirming yet another item in the Oslo Report—code-named Seetakt (Navy Tactical). This shipboard and coastal radar was devoted to locating British ships. At that point the British still didn’t realize that the Germans were in many respects ahead in radar technology. In 1939 Seetakt systems had been installed in the light cruiser Königsberg and the heavy cruiser Graf Spee. The two Seetakt-armed cruisers prowled the Atlantic, sinking British ships until April 1940, when they

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS

on a map, the coordinates matched a British Army training center in Dorset. It all clearly pointed to a navigation system that needed only one beam: the Germans had cleverly modified X-Gerät to re-radiate a second signal on a slightly different frequency. The improved system provided a distance measuring signal to go along with the course line beam. When the signals overlapped, the enemy bomber would be over the target. According to Ultra, the Germans had named this third beam variant Y-Gerät. The British immediately developed new countermeasures, which, oddly enough, utilized the British Broadcasting Company’s large commercial transmitter in London. By February 1941, the British were able to shoot Y-Gerät beams back at the enemy on the same frequency, only with much higher power. But by May 1941, with Operation Barbarossa—the invasion of the Soviet Union—imminent, the Luftwaffe had transferred most of its bomber forces to the Eastern Front. With that, the “Battle of the Beams” was largely over, though the electronic tit for tat continued off and on for the rest of the war.

XXXXXXXXXX

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS (2)

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS

From left: An Avro Lancaster B Mark I releases the aluminum-foil strips known as “Window” in October 1944 to conceal its location from German radar; a British factory worker tends a machine that cuts the foil into strips.

were sunk and scuttled. By the time the British discovered Seetakt, the Germans were deploying it mostly in destroyer- size patrol boats in the English Channel, and they soon were forced to fall back on optics as their primary maritime range-finding method. By mid-1941, for Jones and his colleagues, the “Wizard War,” as it was sometimes called, had hit full stride. They were now focusing on the Freya network, rightly judging it to be the greater threat to Bomber Command than X-Gerät. Unbeknownst to the British at the time, the Germans had first used Freya successfully in December 1939, when it detected a daytime raid on Wilhelmshaven by a force of Vickers Wellington twin-engine bombers. It is not well understood even today that in 1941 Freya was more technically advanced than the British Chain Home system, offering higher resolution and detection of smaller targets. The British have successfully nurtured the myth that their Chain Home radar was technically superior during the early war years, but it was instead the unique ability of the warning system’s Filter Room at Bentley Priory, Fighter Command’s headquarters, to sort out available intelligence and erect the best possible defense. Fortunately for the British, during the Battle of Britain the Freya network was incomplete, leaving large gaps in its coverage, while Chain Home was fully operational. Some scholars have suggested that this disparity came about because the British were in a defensive posture, while the Germans, with the most powerful military in the world, were strictly offensively oriented and had a blind spot when it came to their own defense.

Nonetheless, by late 1941, as a result of Britain’s intensifying attacks on their cities, the Germans had become fully engaged in strengthening their air defense network, with Luftwaffe commander Hermann Göring putting Colonel Josef Kammhuber in charge of the effort. The Allies dubbed the new air defense network, which incorporated the Freya stations, the “Kammhuber Line,” and it proved very effective. The RAF Bomber Command aircrew losses were staggering, with more than 55,000 men killed in action out of a total of 125,000; the U.S. VIII Bomber Command had about 44,000 crew members killed in action.

By early 1942 the tables in the “secret war” began turning in favor of the Allies.

By early 1942 the tables in the “secret war” began turning in favor of the Allies. Jones, who was now mainly concentrating on electronic countermeasures against enemy air defenses, was becoming increasingly influential in other areas. On learning of the loose formations and timetables of Bomber Command attacks, for example, Jones urged a shift to steady, concentrated bomber streams, which overwhelmed German defenses. Meanwhile, the introduction of the Allied Gee and Oboe radio navigation bombing systems (combining electronic course and distance signals) to air operations made deep penetration missions even more successful. The initial use of this new bomber stream tactic resulted in the

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-JONES.indd 41

41 3/2/22 5:56 PM

immensely successful first 1,000 RAF bomber raids against Cologne on May 30, 1942. Yet the cat-and-mouse game continued: German electronic defenses once again caught up when the Kammhuber Line was completed and Luftwaffe fighters enjoyed renewed success against British bomber raids. It was during this period of the war that Jones’s reputation as a scientist soared. As early as 1937, he had posited that metal foil falling through the air would create radar echoes. After war broke out, he and Welsh physicist Joan Curran devised a way for British bombers to mask their approach by dropping strips of foil, which they called “Window,” cut to the wavelength of the enemy’s radar. (The same technology, now known as chaff, is still used today.)

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-JONES.indd 42

3/2/22 5:56 PM

POPPERFOTO (GETTY IMAGES)

From top: One of the grainy reconnaissance photos of the German radar site at Bruneval, a coastal village near Le Havre, France; the British captured this sighting device for the Freya system in a raid on Bruneval in February 1942.

Window was first used in the weeklong Operation Gomorrah against Hamburg in July 1943, with outstanding results. Near the end of 1941, another line of Jones’s research led to one of his most spectacular accomplishments. Examining what the Nazis were calling the Würzburg radar, Jones had become increasingly convinced that it was now the RAF’s primary radar threat. He requested intensive aerial reconnaissance missions over the many known Freya sites, hoping that they might stumble on a Würzburg installation as well. On November 22, 1941, a Photo Reconnaissance Unit Spitfire brought back grainy images of a radar site at Bruneval, a coastal village near Le Havre, France. The photos revealed a suspicious object at the end of a well-trodden path leading from the station. A daring PRU Spitfire pilot, Flight Lieutenant Tony Hill, volunteered to make a dangerous low-level recon pass over the site on December 5. His pictures revealed a 10-footwide radar dish—what came to be known as a Würzburg- Riese (Giant Würzburg). Jones was galvanized. He realized the British had much more to learn about this long-sought mystery radar, which Ultra intercepts had hinted at. Although he hesitated to recommend a commando raid, fearing that many lives would be lost, he finally decided that such a raid was justified. After carefully analyzing the radar’s location on detailed maps, he found a nearby beach with a sloping approach that was nearly ideal for a raid to capture as much of the site’s equipment as possible. With Prime Minister Churchill always enthusiastic about such adventures, Jones’s proposal quickly made it up the chain of command. The Bruneval raid—code-named Operation Biting and led by Major John Frost on February 27, 1942— was a great success. The most important result of the Bruneval raid was a fuller understanding of the capabilities of German air defense radars. The British discovered that while the Würzburg types were much better built than their own radars, they had no provisions to handle countermeasures. The British would go on to deftly exploit this key weakness. Yet another of Jones’s counterintelligence coups was during the latter stages of the Malta Siege of 1940–1942— what some have called “The Great Malta Bluff.” The Germans had installed powerful new jammers on Sicily, which rendered useless the radar on the British-held island of Malta, a mere 60 miles south of the Sicilian coast. Malta was directly in the path of enemy shipping lanes from Italy that supported Italian and German forces in North Africa. The new enemy jammers could take out the island’s air defense early warning system, leaving Malta extremely vulnerable. The island’s Signals Organization asked Jones and his team in England for help. No electronic countermeasures were available. Jones knew, however, that the Germans judged the success of their jamming

TOP: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; BELOW: MUSÉE DE L’ARMÉE, PARIS, CC BY-SA 2.0

REGINALD V. JONES

XXXXXXXXXX

by monitoring British radio and radar activity, and lacking an alternative, he signaled Malta to continue radar scanning normally and give no clues that they were in difficulty. The bluff worked. After a few days, the Germans gave up and switched off their jammers.

POPPERFOTO (GETTY IMAGES)

TOP: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; BELOW: MUSÉE DE L’ARMÉE, PARIS, CC BY-SA 2.0

In October 1940, after the British shot down this Messerschmitt Bf 110 “destroyer,” it was put on display outside Finsbury Town Hall in London. The fighter-bomber became the most photographed Luftwaffe plane of World War II.

Jones didn’t learn the identity of the author of the anonymous Oslo Report until a chance encounter in the early 1950s, a fact he didn’t reveal until after the author died in 1987. Appalled by Hitler’s invasion of Poland, Ferdinand Mayer, a German mathematician and physicist, had elected to send his eight-page report to British intelligence. Though he would be arrested by the Gestapo in 1943 for political activity and sent to concentration camps, Mayer survived the war. The Nazis never learned about the Oslo Report. In recognition for his role in the conception and planning of the Bruneval raid, Jones was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire. It would be the first of many such honors. Meanwhile, his war “wizardry” continued through May 1945, most notably unraveling the

Kammhuber Line; discovering V-2 rockets at Peenemünde, Germany, and Blizna, Poland; finding the launching tracks of the first V-1 pulse-jet “buzz bombs” in the Baltic; and intelligence gathering for D-Day at Normandy. Jones, who died in 1997 at age 86, was undoubtedly responsible for saving the lives of thousands of Allied soldiers. In 1993, as a final testament to his dual positions as the “father of electronic countermeasures” and dean of the World War II intelligence wizards, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency created the R. V. Jones Intelligence Award to recognize “scientific acumen applied with art in the cause of freedom.” Fittingly, the first recipient of the award was Jones himself. MHQ Robert O. Harder, an FAA-certificated flight instructor who flew 145 combat missions during the Vietnam War as a B-52D radar navigator-bombardier, is the author of The Three Musketeers of the Army Air Forces: From Fortress Europa to Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Naval Institute Press, 2015).

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-JONES.indd 43

43 3/2/22 5:56 PM

THE LOGISTICS OF GRASS The steppe nomads invented the operational level of war, with the essential nutrient for their herds dictating where—and when—they fought. By Wayne E. Lee

The Mongols left the grasslands of their homeland (shown here) to move west across the Eurasian steppe, raiding and conquering as they went.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-GRASS.indd 44

2/28/22 11:49 AM

HAKBONG KWON (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

MHQP-220400-GRASS.indd 45

MHQ Spring 2022

45 2/28/22 11:49 AM

THE LOGISTICS OF GRASS

The Mongols’ blinding speed deprived their victims of any kind of advance warning.

diers. Then, as the Mongol forces concentrated on the business of fighting, they were able to move almost entirely unencumbered by logistical considerations—at least for a week or so. Their blinding speed deprived their victims of any kind of advance warning. The primary Mongol army under Batu, according to Master Roger, pressed through the “Russian Gate” (most likely the Verecke Pass in the Carpathians) and directly engaged the main Hungarian defenses. Meanwhile, a second Mongol force removed a potential Hungarian ally from action, blazing through Poland in three columns and uniting at Liegnitz (Legnica), in the southwestern part of the country, where on April 9, 1241, it defeated the Poles and Teutonic Knights. That army then turned south to enter Hungary from the north. Two further Mongol armies skirted the Carpathians to the south, entered the Hungarian basin by crossing the mountains through two other passes, and then turned north to ravage the plain and unite with the other Mongol columns. These coordinated movements took place within days of each other, and they swept all before them, ultimately pursuing the Hungarian king to an island in the Adriatic. Master Roger’s account is a veritable succession of “meanwhiles”—the Mongols were seemingly in simultaneous motion everywhere. It is now widely accepted, even assumed, that military activity has three levels: tactical (how troops act in combat); operational (how forces are moved in space and time to gain an advantage at the moment of contact); and strategic (how leaders allocate resources and determine a target or targets that will lead to the submission or destruction of an enemy). For much of history, armies marched along relatively linear and predictable paths from their own usually urban point of mobilization to some point within enemy territory where they could apply pressure, either by destroying crops and villages or by laying siege to a major urban center. The concentration of wealth, population, and political authority in cities—authority both real and symbolic—made them frequent targets, but cities were usually also fortified, if not literally then by the natural density of the defending population. In many ways, therefore, the real function of an attacking army was often to “deliver the siege”—protecting its troops and the matériel that would accomplish that critical work. The defender’s army of course sought to interrupt the attack. Strategic planning typically involved deciding first what the point of pressure would be: enemy territory, enemy cities, or perhaps the

PICTURES FROM HISTORY (GRANGER)

he forces of the expanding Mongol Empire swept across the steppes of western Eurasia from 1236 to 1240, folding in many nomadic populations as they went. Along the way the Mongols also sacked and came to rule the cities of the Rus principalities, ultimately establishing what would become known as the “Golden Horde.” For the 1241 campaign season, Batu Khan, the Mongol commander who was directing the westward advance, set his sights on the Kingdom of Hungary. The kingdom was centered in the Great Hungarian Plain, a thumb-shaped extension of the Eurasian steppe, encircled by the Carpathian Mountains to the east and assorted other mountain ranges to the west, north, and south. King Béla IV of Hungary, aware of the wave of Mongol conquests just beyond the Carpathians, remained hopeful that the ring of mountains would prove defensible, especially after he had welcomed as nominal allies the Cuman Turks (also known as the Kipchaks or Pechenegs), who were fleeing the Mongols. The Hungarians, however, failed to reckon with their enemy’s enormously flexible and long-range operational capabilities. The Mongols didn’t campaign as a single force along predictable paths—they arrived everywhere at once. One of the best accounts of the Mongol invasion of 1241 comes from Roger of Torre Maggiore, an Italian prelate known as “Master Roger” who was on assignment in the Hungarian city of Várad when it was captured by the Mongols. He described how the Mongol wave had first crested against the Carpathians the previous year, pushing the Cumans over the mountains into Hungary, and then, in a crucial hint of how the Mongols operated, how “they retreated to the distance of four to five days, leaving untouched the borderlands adjacent to Hungary, so that when they returned they would be able to find food and fodder for themselves and their horses and so that no news might reach the Hungarians about them.” The Mongols’ logistics and operational technique went hand in hand. As the Mongol armies moved over fresh grasslands outside Hungary during their approach, the green pastures fed the horses in a way that sustained the soldiers for days afterward—a kind of logistical “running start”—as the fattened horses provided milk for the sol-

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-GRASS.indd 46

2/28/22 11:50 AM

PICTURES FROM HISTORY (GRANGER)

This illustration from the Jami al-tawarikh (“Compendium of Chronicles”), produced in the early 14th century, shows armored Mongols routing their fleeing adversaries in a pitched cavalry battle.

concentration of enemy forces in a defending army. At the moment of contact, generals would consider the appropriate tactics for the local terrain and the nature of the troops involved. But between the strategy and the tactics were simply marching and logistics. Because traveling in a single large unit was safer, most armies avoided splitting into smaller pieces. “Operations” as such were confined to movements from point A to point B, perhaps with a small, localized cloud of raiding and foraging forces that didn’t stray far from the main unit. The defender’s army, not knowing where the attacker would show up, was often forced to divide into smaller units to man frontier garrisons or observation posts. Fortunately for the defender in a conflict between adjoining states, most paths were relatively predictable. In short, for an attacking or invading force, the operational level of war under these conditions usually involved the movement of a single combat element, with some screening or obscuring forces occasionally changing direction and using a mountain or river to hide the intended route or ultimate target. None of these actions required the coordination of multiple independent combat elements moving separately across the campaign space.

There were some striking exceptions to this pattern before the late 18th century, especially in armies that could naturally divide into independent elements. The legions of Rome provide a notable example: Caesar regularly dispatched cohorts on independent operations within Gaul in the 50s bce. Many Chinese armies seem to have had this capability as well, although even the massive clashes of the Warring States era (475–221 bce) generally followed the same pattern of single armies fighting over specific urban objectives, often after one army followed a predictable route of attack. Even Sun Tzu’s legendary aphorisms mostly seem to apply to a state with a single army moving on a single axis of advance. Later armies in the internal wars of China may have been so big as to necessitate independent operations. But a study of the campaigns of Sparta against Athens, or Alexander in Persia, or Edward III in France, or even Frederick the Great’s almost desperate maneuvers in his 18th-century wars quickly reveals the limited extent to which major “detachments,” or separate forces within the same army, coordinated movements with a single strategic objective. In Europe this pattern changed only under the pressure of ever-larger armies (as it likely had in China). Most fa-

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-GRASS.indd 47

47 3/3/22 10:31 AM

XXXXXXXXXX

mously, Napoleon mastered the art of moving many inde- ish, Soviet, and German theorists looked for new ways to pendent corps d’armée along separate but coordinated paths, move military assets that would allow multiple operations devising ways to use the logistical limitations he encountered to be combined for maximum strategic effect. In the postto his advantage. His operational goal was to achieve an ad- war United States, however, a kind of stagnation set in as vantage in a decisive battle of annihilation. That battle would the immense power of nuclear weapons seemed to render destroy the enemy’s armed forces and render the defending ground maneuver irrelevant. state existentially vulnerable. Ultimately, in the wake of the failure in Vietnam, the In Napoleon’s wars, submis- U.S. Army, after a period of critical reflection, determined sion and a forced alliance that its leaders had lost touch with operational art and quickly followed, with some vowed to relearn it and train for it. states politically obliterated. Or at least this is the story as it’s usually told. Far too Napoleon, like his 18th- much military history is not only too Europe-centric but century predecessors, was also too state-centric. And even analyses of nonstate warsolving not so much a cam- fare too often focus on tactical techniques rather than strapaign geometry problem as a tegic acumen or operational skill. To be fair, this is in part logistical one: Only so many a source problem. When Native Americans attacked Eurothousands of troops could be pean forces, for example, the witnesses who recorded the sent down a single axis of ad- events were generally the Europeans, who focused on the vance and still move and eat. In the process of wrestling with fighting rather than on the strategic intent of their adverthis problem, he discovered operational art. saries. Fortunately, some of the Eurasian nomads created This notion of an operational art became ever more so- territorial empires, established bureaucracies, and wrote phisticated as weapons systems and their associated logis- histories that clarified their strategic goals, especially once tical requirements proliferated in the 20th century. To they had become imperial powers. Nonetheless, historians some, World War I appeared to be a massive failure of op- have tended to focus on these nomads’ tactical skills as erational technique. It was followed by a surge of interest in horsemen and archers rather than looking at their camnew possibilities for restoring operational maneuver sug- paigns as a series of connected events designed to support gested by tanks and the internal combustion engine. Brit- a military strategy, which in turn supported a political goal.

ALBUM (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Napoleon found ways to use the logistical limitations he encountered to his advantage.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-GRASS.indd 48

2/28/22 11:50 AM

ILLUSTRATION BY WAYNE REYNOLDS, IN MONGOL WARRIOR 1200–1350, BY STEPHEN TURNBULL (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING)

The Mongols arrested Russian prince Mstislav III after handily defeating his forces at the Battle of Kalka River in 1223. Nearly 20 years later Mongol commander Batu Khan would set his sights on the Kingdom of Hungary.

XXXXXXXXXX

Nomads on the Eurasian steppe typically lived in camps of eight to 50 people, surrounded by their herds, migrating with the seasons, and sheltering in gers—round, easy-to-erect tentlike dwellings—as they moved.

ILLUSTRATION BY WAYNE REYNOLDS, IN MONGOL WARRIOR 1200–1350, BY STEPHEN TURNBULL (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING)

ALBUM (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

In many ways, however, as with Napoleon’s corps d’armée, the steppe nomads made a virtue of necessity, maneuvering large independent forces across long distances and wide spaces, and they did so while conforming to the iron laws governing the logistics of grass. Nomads on the Eurasian steppe moved because they had to. Moving served the vast pasture needs of their herds of sheep, goats, yaks, and horses. Though seemingly an endless grassland, the steppe was relatively arid. Its grasses grew slowly, and seasonal temperature variations were severe. The animals periodically had to be moved to new pastures, at least seasonally, and under normal conditions it was not feasible for too many people to live too close together: A few people required many animals, and many animals required vast quantities of grass, and that grass could quickly disappear. The herds provided meat, skins, and dairy, the first two of which (along with horses) could be traded for goods and grains from sedentary peoples. The usual mode of life was the small familial camp of eight to 50 people, surrounded by their herds and migrating seasonally either from north to south or from low elevation to high. They did not “wander,” however. Families or groups of families (clans) had customary pastures, and human or nature-induced threats to those customary claims could lead to war. Under the pressures of war, strong leaders could assemble a confederation of clans, some merely turning to pred-

atory raiding of fellow nomads or nearby farmers, but the most successful could convert local success into regional ambition, and then beyond; some ultimately pursued the conquest of more distant parts of the steppe or even the sedentary world. These conquest migrations have sometimes been attributed to climatic pressure, but they were also often a political requirement of success itself: A nomadic chief who had gathered the reins of numerous clans under his leadership needed to reward them to retain them. Success did not just breed success, it demanded it. There are many examples of steppe confederations, some of which became imperial rulers over sedentary lands. There is some evidence of this nomadic style of warfare even among the ancient Scythians—nomads on the western steppes bounding the classical Greek and Persian worlds. But the best evidence comes from the Mongol expansion, and the following examples derive from the period of imperial expansion after the rise of Temujin to rule the united Mongol tribes, who elected him to be Chinggis Khan in 1206, and continuing through the first generation of expansion after his death in 1227. The nomad story always begins with grass. While large conglomerations of nomads could not remain together in a single location for long, war required the concentration of men and horses. The challenges of that scenario mostly had to do with the calories in a steppe warrior’s ration and

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-GRASS.indd 49

49 2/28/22 11:50 AM

THE LOGISTICS OF GRASS

Eurasian steppe nomads on the move generally subsisted on dairy products.

the primary food. Rubruck suggested that a single sheep could feed 100 men, a figure that matches our calculations here quite neatly, as a sheep could indeed provide 120 halfpound portions. Historian David Morgan found evidence that a full campaign season might demand 30 sheep per soldier, though another source suggests that the entire Kwharazm campaign (roughly encompassing modern Afghanistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and more, lasting from 1219 to 1221) required only three dried sheep per 10 men. Furthermore, none of these calculations include the yogurt that could be produced from the sheep’s milk or the additional meat supplied by hunting. This very modest amount of food provided a lot of calories. But how many animals would be needed to meet even this fairly minimal requirement? And ultimately, how many acres of grass would those animals need? The documentary record for the Mongols on campaign varies, suggesting that each warrior brought along as few as two and as many as 18 horses. That’s an enormous variation, but most historians have settled on five or six, mostly mares, with some geldings. In addition, at least during the Mongol imperial campaigns, there is solid evidence for sheep being brought along with the army, even on its more rapid movements. The more limited evidence from other steppe peoples, who had similar subsistence and logistical systems, supports this use of sheep even when on the move. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus, for example, hints at the ready availability of flocks of sheep kept near the army in his account of the nomadic Scythians’ defense against Persia. The historian John Masson-Smith Jr. suggests that Mongol armies used essentially two kinds of logistical arrangements. One was for the relatively fast operational columns, primarily sustained by its horses and possibly some sheep (what we might call pure “horse-string logistics”). The other was the army accompanied by its a’urughs—the host of women, flocks, and ox-drawn carts, some of which would bring siege equipment. Campaign operations, including the Hungarian invasion already described, were conducted at the leading edge of larger movements and were therefore primarily horsestring logistics. The Mongol army wintering in the western steppe in 1240, for example, was probably sustained by the full a’urughs, but when they then moved toward Hungary in 1241, first across those four or five days of carefully husbanded grass and then across the Carpathians, they probably did so almost purely based on horse-string logistics. In terms of food production, five horses and one sheep per soldier would produce approximately 120 days of meat (at a half pound per day—obviously sharing the sheep among a group of men and then killing another messmate’s sheep

MAPS BY BRIAN WALKER

the acres of grass required for a large herd of horses. Unlike state-based armies, nomadic forces had no notion of a daily “official” ration, but one can start with the rough calorie count associated with European state armies: about a pound of meat and a pound of bread per day. According to modern calorie calculators, and assuming the meat is fresh, such a ration would provide just under 2,000 calories a day. This diet would have been fleshed out by alcohol rations and small portions of cheese, butter, peas, and so on. Eurasian steppe nomads on the move generally subsisted on horse and sheep dairy products. They fermented the mare’s milk into a beverage called airag in Mongolian, qumis in Turkish, and they churned the sheep’s milk into yogurt or a cheese paste or curd. To this foundation they added mutton and other meat from whatever animals they could hunt. The mix of dairy and meat, which varied over the course of the year, provided a substantial amount of calories. Beginning with the mutton, we can use a generous figure of 60 pounds of meat per sheep, at 1,340 calories per pound. Mare’s milk is also highly caloric, but the mares produced it in varying amounts depending on the season. Foaling season lasts from mid-June to early October. One modern estimate suggests that a mare will produce approximately 2.3 quarts per day above what the foal needs, and at 280 calories per cup that’s 2,688 calories per day. These calculations are supported by a near contemporary Chinese source that suggested that one mare could produce enough milk per day for three men. The amount of meat or milk a Mongol warrior ate per day would depend on the season—more milk in foaling season; more meat after the sheep fattened and as winter approached. Even so, we can combine them into a kind of average and suggest that a half pound of mutton per day and two quarts of the highly caloric airag per day, varying slightly with the seasons, would provide at least 3,300 calories—well above contemporary Western ration standards. That warriors were drinking at least that much airag per day was suggested by John of Plano Carpini, a medieval monk who traveled deep into the Mongol Empire as an emissary to the khan in the late 1240s, and who pointedly observed that the Mongols drank “great amounts” of airag every day during the foaling season. William of Rubruck, another European traveler in the Mongol Empire, agreed that during late spring, summer, and fall mares’ milk was

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-GRASS.indd 50

2/28/22 11:50 AM

EQUALS 1 TÜMEN

The Mongol Rule: Follow the Grass

MONG OL INVASION ROUTES

LIEGNITZ

VERECKE PASS

APRIL 9, 1241

MOHI

BUDA

APRIL 11, 1241

MARCH 12, 1241

ORDA

MONGOL INVASIO ROUTES

CAPTURED HUNGARIAN TOWNS AND FORTS UNCAPTURED HUNGARIAN TOWNS AND FORTS

BATU

N HÜLEGÜ’S WINTER CAMP 1256–1257

BEDZSAK

HAMADAN

RADNA PASS

APRIL 11, 1241

BAGHDAD

HUNGAR IAN UTES ESCAPE RO

DANUBE RI VER

T IGRI S

OLT

MARCH 31, 1241 MILES 0

200

RI VER

Hülegü’s Approach to Baghdad, 1257–1258

MAPS BY BRIAN WALKER

The map on the left shows how the Mongol armies moved over fresh grasslands during their approach to Hungary, feeding their horses in a way that sustained their soldiers for days afterward; the map on the right shows how Hülegü Khan divided his army into three wings—left, right, and royal center—for the final march on Baghdad.

and so on) and 280 days of airag. The normal maximum load for a steppe horse is about 100 pounds (the rider rotated mounts to rest the horses). Taking into account that some milk would accumulate during the period when the horses produced more milk each day than could be drunk, this calculation dovetails well with the documentary record of a five-horse string per warrior: one to be ridden, two to carry loads (accumulating airag, drying meat, armor, and so on), and two resting without loads. These numbers answer the first question: Five horses and one or two sheep could sustain a steppe warrior for a campaign season extending for as much as two-thirds of a year. But how much grass did even that minimal amount require? Steppe horses are unique in that they require only grass for sustenance, and sheep are similarly hardy and adaptable. And if you ask modern-day Mongolian nomads how much grass their herds need, they tend to answer, “It depends.” And indeed it did depend—especially on campaign—as the terrain changed or the weather shifted and, given the scope of Mongol campaigns, as lines of latitude were crossed. But even if we avoid the complex and uncertain math needed to determine how many acres of grass per horse were necessary in a given year, we can turn to some key documentary evidence to show how royal nomadic households not involved in military actions had to move and spread out. Christopher Atwood has reconstructed an itinerary for Ong Qa’an, a 12th-century ruler of the Kereids, a Turco-Mongol tribe that was later defeated by Chinggis Khan and incorporated into the Mongol confederation.

As Ong Qa’an moved his army along a seasonal migration route, he divided it into three forces: the chiefly entourage itself and the “left” and “right” wings. This was not a campaign, although Ong Qa’an was on alert, so the division was likely a simple necessity of pasture. In a similar way, Batu’s royal camp (ordo) in the western steppes after the conquest of Hungary—which it must be emphasized was a vast conglomeration of people— received its daily ration of mares’ milk from 30 satellite encampments, each a day’s journey away and each shepherding 100 mares. In an illuminating contrast, the ruling successors to Chinggis Khan used a different kind of imperial itinerancy. Their movements were designed to project political power over territory they had already conquered. It was neither the necessary mobility of pastoral subsistence nor the planned mobility of the army on campaign. As a deliberate political move of a large population (the royal court and bodyguard), it did not necessarily follow the seasons, and therefore the khans had to build a logistical infrastructure to import the food that each encampment needed. For smaller steppe forces in intertribal wars, the pasture limits would have been relatively easy to manage, provided that the forces kept moving. With confederation and con-

Their movements were designed to project power over already conquered territory.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-GRASS.indd 51

51 2/28/22 11:51 AM

THE LOGISTICS OF GRASS

The Mongols adapted a hunting drive known as the nerge into a military tactic.

Accounts of other nomadic peoples’ campaigns suggest how the logistics of grass and consequently of distributed operations were common, at least when army sizes rose to high enough levels. Herodotus’s account of the Scythians defending their homeland against a Persian invasion, for

example, seems to show how the nomads could use their ability to easily separate and reunite in defensive operations on the steppe as well, particularly since it seems clear from his account that the Persian army advanced in the usual manner of sedentary states—as a single unitary army. Once on the steppe the Persians found themselves chasing a divided Scythian army that devastated the landscape in front of them while retreating deeper into the steppe. At one point when the Persians pursued a Scythian force and could not catch it, they found themselves drawn into a futile chase, incidentally incurring the wrath of other, previously neutral tribes. Herodotus repeatedly tells us how the Scythians changed directions, divided and reunited, and at one point operated in at least three separate divisions that could concentrate to hit the demoralized Persian army or make a surprise move toward the bridge guards the Persians had left behind. Returning once more to the Mongols, we can see a full season of offensive campaigning, including the launch from a distributed winter camp into distributed divisional (tümet) operations in Hülegü Khan’s (Chinggis’s grandson) march on Baghdad in 1257 and 1258. The broader campaign began much earlier, in 1255, as Hülegü and the army departed Mongolia, with a broad array of scouts and imperial officials preceding them to secure pasturage on the long march across the steppe to the jumping-off point on the south shores of the Caspian Sea. Mongol occupation forces in between were literally moved aside to leave their normal pastures available for the passage of the royal army. During this long slow march, the army was accompanied by its full “baggage,” the a’urughs, although in some stages of the campaign the army surged ahead for a month or more in short offensive campaigns, primarily against the strongholds of the Assassins, an Islamic religious military order based in Persia. Finally, in the winter of 1256–1257, Hülegü went into a winter camp near the southern shores of the Caspian, although we should assume that this was a distributed camp, with forces dispersed around the countryside. In John Masson-Smith’s reconstruction of the campaign, it becomes clear that although our main documentary sources followed the royal army as if it were a single body, in fact the full army had traveled in separate bodies. Additional tümet appear in the records, presumably having marched separately from the royal army, or even arriving from other parts of the empire, until ready to fall under Hülegü’s direct command for the approaches to the Assassins, and then ultimately to Baghdad. In addition to Hülegü’s semiconsolidated army on the Caspian, two additional tümet arrived from the west, presumably from Anatolia, and approached Baghdad from the north. For the final march on Baghdad, Hülegü divided his own army into three wings (left, right, and royal center), and each approached the city from a different direction, dis-

PRIAKHIN MIKHAIL (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

quest, however, steppe armies grew to the point that they had to be divided while they moved. Although debate remains on the exact size of Mongol campaign armies, the math of pasture requirements makes clear that their conquest armies of at least tens of thousands simply had to spread out on the steppe to sustain themselves, and they had to be kept moving. Fortunately for the Mongols, there was already a long steppe tradition of subdividing troops into units of 10, 100, 1,000, and 10,000—in Mongolian, these units were called arban, jaghun, minquan, and tümen (pl. tümet), respectively. Although, as in much of military history, such unit sizes were an unrealized ideal, they established a relatively uniform mechanism for distributing forces across the landscape, one tümen here, one there, and so on, unlike the ad hoc units in contemporary medieval armies whose sizes simply corresponded to the political clout and personal retinue of their leading nobles. Tümen commanders were major figures in the imperial army, and when our sources indicate the arrival or departure of an important name, it generally indicates the movement of that person’s tümen as well. Another aspect of the nomadic lifestyle lent itself to distributed military operations. The communal nomadic hunt—a central political and cultural institution on the steppe—proceeded as a vast line of horsemen, moving across the plains, driving animals before them, with the far ends of the line advancing more quickly, and curving in toward each other, slowly converting the line into a circle. The horsemen would drive the animals into an ever- decreasing space until a royal order was given to begin the killing. This form of hunting drive, known as the nerge, proved adaptable to both tactical and operational level wartime applications. A royal hunt might have a line whose two ends were invisible to each other over the horizon, so nomads regularly practiced moving in a coordinated manner, even when out of sight of each other. The Mongols, and presumably other nomadic armies, seem to have scaled up the nerge to its operational equivalent, imagining their distributed tümet moving long distances to dislodge, disrupt, and ultimately surround their slower-moving, often unitary enemy.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-GRASS.indd 52

2/28/22 11:51 AM

This 131-foot-tall stainless steel statue of Chinggis Khan astride his mount stands on top of a visitor center near the bank of the Tuul River at Tsonjin Boldog, Mongolia.

PRIAKHIN MIKHAIL (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

lodging defenses and leaving the caliphate’s forces uncertain as to where the main threat came from. The end was nearly a foregone conclusion, awaiting only the outcome of the siege—a siege enabled by the slow movement of the a’urughs, which had brought the equipment and which was manned by the sedentary soldiers and “arrow fodder” troops of already conquered peoples. The Mongol imperial armies, and very likely their steppe predecessors and successors, were thus natural practitioners of synchronized separate operations in pursuit of a single strategic objective. The logistics of grass encouraged the wide distribution of forces. The traditional tactics of the hunt lent their shape to widely spaced operations of encirclement. In combination, those operations produced decisive strategic results. Some historians have suggested that these techniques and capabilities persisted among steppe peoples into the 19th century, influencing the Russian military and perhaps ultimately even affecting the later emergence of operational art in the Soviet Union after World War I. As the Russian Empire of the 19th century expanded across the steppe, it encountered and struggled with an array of nomadic steppe peoples—Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Mongols, and more, many of them still claiming direct political and lineal descent from the empire of Chinggis Khan and many of them still fighting in the steppe nomadic cavalry style. To cope with the mobility of these forces and with the dis-

tances involved, the Russian army had to adapt, and much of it grew to resemble steppe cavalry. Their experience with the nomads’ vast, self-sustained, sweeping movements designed to encircle and harass slower-moving sedentary armies, found its way into the Russian imperial military’s training program. A Russian study of the nomadic way of war, first published in 1846 and revised in 1875, was used as a textbook at the Russian General Staff Academy (officially the Nicholas General Staff Academy). Through this study, the nomadic way of war likely influenced key figures in the early Red Army, especially Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky. “Over…three centuries the idea of using mobility and mass to hit deeply and decisively,” historian Bruce Menning observes, “has remained a surprising constant in Russian military thought—if not always in practice.” Menning specifically points to a long history of Russian armies using large independent forces of cavalry to strike deep in the enemy’s rear and sow confusion. Much of the rest of the story is more widely known. Tukhachevsky and his followers worked out a theory of “deep battle,” partly in response to the stalemate of World War I but heavily influenced by the challenge of operating over the long distances of the Eastern Front. The objectives of deep battle closely matched the Mongol methods: deep penetrating columns that would dislodge defenders, disrupt their ability to respond, and surround them, all while logistically self-sustaining during the deep penetration. These ideas in turn influenced the emergent armor theorists of the interwar German army that trained in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, at a time when the Treaty of Versailles banned the German army from having tanks. German bewegungskrieg (maneuver warfare), popularly known as blitzkrieg, followed its own doctrinal path and certainly became more famous. In reality, however, the fully developed Soviet doctrine was far more sophisticated and was more realistically attuned to the problems of logistics and successive combined operations. Ultimately, it was the Soviet formulation of “operational art” that would find its way slowly into the books and manuals and then the training of the American army of the 1980s. All because of the logistics of grass. MHQ Wayne E. Lee, the Bruce W. Carney Distinguished Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, is now serving as the Colin S. Gray Visiting Professor of Strategic Studies at the U.S. Air Force’s School for Advanced Air and Space Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. He is the author of many books on military history, including Waging War: Conflict, Culture, and Innovation in World History (Oxford University Press, 2015).

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-GRASS.indd 53

53 2/28/22 11:51 AM

MHQP-PORT-WATCHES.indd 54

LEFT: ANTIQUORUM (2); ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN WALKER; OPPOSITE, FROM LEFT: RMN-GRAND PALAIS, FRANCE; PHOTO 12 (GETTY IMAGES)

While it’s known that General Douglas MacArthur owned the JaegerLeCoultre Reverso shown at left—that’s his Art Deco–style monogram enameled on the back side of its stainless steel case—it’s not clear whether he ever wore it. When the watch came up for auction in 2015, the Swiss company that originally made it spent nearly $100,000 to buy it back. MacArthur’s wristwatch was manufactured in the mid-1930s and originally purchased from Golay Fils & Stahl, an old-line jeweler in the historic lakefront area of Geneva that also maintained a retail store in Paris.

3/2/22 5:48 PM

MILITARY TIME LEFT: ANTIQUORUM (2); ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN WALKER; OPPOSITE, FROM LEFT: RMN-GRAND PALAIS, FRANCE; PHOTO 12 (GETTY IMAGES)

A gallery of watches owned by some of history’s most famous— and notorious—military figures

n 1802 Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Napoleon I, becoming the first Frenchman to hold the title of emperor in 1,000 years. Determined to establish Paris as Europe’s center for lavish design, Napoleon appointed as his court jeweler Marie-Étienne Nitot, who had founded the House of Chaumet in 1870. Nitot, with the help of his son François Regnault, set about creating objects symbolizing the power Napoleon wished to convey, including his ceremonial sword and the enamel-cased and pearl-encrusted dress watch shown below, which was probably intended to be a gift.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-PORT-WATCHES.indd 55

55 3/2/22 5:49 PM

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-PORT-WATCHES.indd 56

3/2/22 5:49 PM

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ANTIQUORUM; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; YOUSUF KARSH (LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA); SOTHEBY’S, LONDON (2)

From top: Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, purchased the elegant pocket watch at top in August 1815 when the British Army occupied Paris after defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Ironically, Napoleon’s brother Joseph had originally commissioned the piece from master watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet but later refused to buy it. The gold-filled lady’s pocket watch at bottom, made by the Elgin National Watch Company of Elgin, Illinois, was presented in 1901 to Elizabeth “Libbie” Custer, the widow of Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer, by veterans of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment, which was under his command at the disastrous Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: WELLINGTON MUSEUM, APSLEY HOUSE; STRATFIELD SAYE PRESERVATION TRUST, CC BY-SA 4.0; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; HERITAGE AUCTIONS (2)

MILITARY TIME

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: ANTIQUORUM; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; YOUSUF KARSH (LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA); SOTHEBY’S, LONDON (2)

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: WELLINGTON MUSEUM, APSLEY HOUSE; STRATFIELD SAYE PRESERVATION TRUST, CC BY-SA 4.0; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; HERITAGE AUCTIONS (2)

XXXXXXXXXX

The wristwatch at top, made by the Swiss firm Patek Phillipe for Tiffany & Company, was presented as a birthday gift in 1921 to French marshal Ferdinand Foch, the supreme commander of Allied Forces in World War I, by U.S. Senator Alton T. Roberts of Michigan and Franklin D’Olier, the first national commander of the American Legion in France. British prime minister Winston Churchill received the watch at bottom as a Christmas gift in 1945 from a group of prominent Geneva citizens who commissioned individual timepieces designed by the legendary Louis Cottier for each of the four Allied commanders in World War II. The dial on Churchill’s watch depicts Saint George slaying the dragon. MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-PORT-WATCHES.indd 57

57 3/2/22 5:49 PM

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-PORT-WATCHES.indd 58

3/2/22 5:49 PM

TOP: HERITAGE AUCTIONS (2); CENTER LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; BOTTOM LEFT AND RIGHT: HERMANN HISTORICA, MUNICH; BOTTOM CENTER: MONDADORI PORTFOLIO (GETTY IMAGES)

The brass-and-silver-cased pocket watch at left belonged to German field marshal Erwin Rommel, who was dubbed the “Desert Fox” for his audacious exploits as the commander of the Afrika Korps. Rommel’s watch was made by Junghans, a German watch and clock manufacturer founded in 1861; a shield bearing his monogram is engraved in the case back. Otto Skorzeny, a scar-faced Nazi SS officer, gained fame in 1943 for the daring raid that rescued Benito Mussolini from captivity in the Abruzzi Mountains at the hands of his fellow Italians. “Il Duce” later thanked Skorzeny with the gold Wintex wristwatch shown here; its case back is engraved with a facsimile of the first letter of Mussolini’s signature.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: BUNDESARCHIV; ALEXANDER HISTORICAL AUCTIONS (2); BUNDESARCHIV; WILLIS HENRY AUCTIONS, INC.

XXXXXXXXXX

TOP: HERITAGE AUCTIONS (2); CENTER LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; BOTTOM LEFT AND RIGHT: HERMANN HISTORICA, MUNICH; BOTTOM CENTER: MONDADORI PORTFOLIO (GETTY IMAGES)

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: BUNDESARCHIV; ALEXANDER HISTORICAL AUCTIONS (2); BUNDESARCHIV; WILLIS HENRY AUCTIONS, INC.

MILITARY TIME

General George S. Patton Jr. was given the Tiffany pocket watch at top on graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1909. “The day after graduation Papa, Mama and I went to Tiffany and they bought me a watch,” Patton later recalled. “It was a stop watch repeater priced at $600.00 but we got it for $350.00....It keeps perfect time.” Hermann Göring, the highest ranking Nazi official tried by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, was sentenced to hang as a war criminal in 1946, but the night before his execution he gave his wristwatch (a Universal Genève Compax) to one of his guards as a gift, took a poison capsule secreted in a jar of pomade, and died in his cell. MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-PORT-WATCHES.indd 59

59 3/2/22 5:50 PM

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-PORT-WATCHES.indd 60

3/2/22 5:50 PM

TOP LEFT AND RIGHT: NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION (2); CENTER: CPA MEDIA PTE LTD (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); BELOW LEFT: HERITAGE AUCTIONS; BELOW RIGHT: U.S. AIR FORCE

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: RALEIGH DEGEER AMYX COLLECTION; GEORGE SKADDING (LIFE PHOTO COLLECTION); NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE MARINE CORPS; U.S. MARINE CORPS HISTORY DIVISION

In 1951 Rolex aimed to find a notable recipient for its 150,000th officially certified chronometer and, through an intermediary, persuaded General Dwight D. Eisenhower to accept it as a gift. Rolex produced the solid gold Datejust model at top expressly for Eisenhower, who was photographed for Life magazine the following year wearing the watch. Lieutenant General Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller (above, far right), the most decorated member officer in the history of the U.S. Marine Corps, wore this military-issue Hamilton wristwatch throughout World War II and in the Korean War. Engraved on the back with his name, it’s now in the collection of the National Museum of the Marine Corps.

TOP LEFT AND RIGHT: NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION (2); CENTER: CPA MEDIA PTE LTD (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); BELOW LEFT: HERITAGE AUCTIONS; BELOW RIGHT: U.S. AIR FORCE

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: RALEIGH DEGEER AMYX COLLECTION; GEORGE SKADDING (LIFE PHOTO COLLECTION); NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE MARINE CORPS; U.S. MARINE CORPS HISTORY DIVISION

MILITARY TIME

The Universal Genève Tri-Compax wristwatch at top was given to aviation pioneer James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle after he took command of the Eighth Air Force in 1944 and was promoted to lieutenant general. It was a gift from Lieutenant Colonel Peter De Paolo, a former auto racing champion who served alongside Doolittle in the U.S. Army Air Forces. In 1947 Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager had a Rolex chronometer on his wrist when, as a 24-year-old test pilot for the U.S. Air Force, he became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound. Fifty years later, when he broke the sound barrier again on an anniversary flight, the retired brigadier general wore a Rolex GMT-Master II like the one at bottom. MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-PORT-WATCHES.indd 61

61 3/2/22 5:50 PM

SHOWDOWN ON THE SAINT LAWRENCE A year into the War of 1812, the United States hatched a plan to invade Canada and take the city of Montreal. By Jon Guttman

MHQ Spring 2021

MHQP-STLAWRENCE.indd 62

LOUIS DODD (AKG-IMAGES)

3/4/22 5:36 PM

The original U.S. battle plan was for two American forces to meet and take the city of Kingston at the mouth of the Cataraqui and Saint Lawrence Rivers on Lake Ontario.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-STLAWRENCE.indd 63

63 3/4/22 5:36 PM

XXXXXXXXXX

John Armstrong Jr., the U.S. secretary of war, conceived the Saint Lawrence campaign with the intention of commanding it personally. His plan, launching from New York, was to have Major General James Wilkinson lead 8,000 troops, accompanied by a squadron of supporting gunboats and

bateaux, out of Sackett’s Harbor along the Saint Lawrence River, while Major General Wade Hampton led another 4,000 men north from Plattsburgh. The two forces would meet and take the city of Kingston, at the mouth of the Cataraqui and Saint Lawrence Rivers on Lake Ontario—an objective subsequently changed to Montreal as a prelude to conquering all of Lower Canada. But the plan went awry virtually from the beginning, as Armstrong fell ill and left it to his two division commanders to carry out the invasion. Moreover, though both men were veterans of the War for Independence, Hampton was loath to work alongside Wilkinson, with whom he had not been on speaking terms since 1808. Hampton was not alone in despising his erstwhile partner. Wilkinson, who had been serving since 1800 as general in command of the U.S. Army, carried a careerlong reputation for shady dealings that frequently attracted indictment but somehow always eluded conviction. (Only in 1854 would it be confirmed that Wilkinson, using the codename Agent 13, had been keeping Spain informed of all American activities in the western frontier—even when he was commander in chief of the U.S. Army.) The War of 1812 gave Wilkinson a last chance at redemption, but by the summer of 1813 his principal achievement had been the occupation of Mobile in Spanish West Florida. When he replaced Major General Henry Dearborn in command at Sackett’s Harbor that July, he had more substantial prospects, but soon after Armstrong’s arrival with his invasion plans, Wilkinson also fell ill. As Armstrong and Wilkinson convalesced, Hampton, a 61-year-old South Carolinian who was one of the wealthiest landowners in the United States, discovered that most of his troops were poorly trained and his supplies barely sufficient to sustain a march, let alone a siege along the way—on top

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-STLAWRENCE.indd 64

2/28/22 12:42 PM

SIX NATIONS PUBLIC LIBRARY

ost American history textbooks explain that the War of 1812 grew out of American grievances over U.S. vessels being stopped by British warships and their seamen being pressed into Royal Navy service as “deserters,” with the added provocation of the British helping Native American tribes that resisted the settlement of the western frontier. A less mentioned casus belli, however, was the push to conquer Canada advanced by the young “War Hawks” faction in the U.S. Congress. Just weeks after it declared war on Great Britain on June 18, 1812, the United States launched its first invasion of Upper Canada (now Ontario Province) from Michigan Territory on July 12. Under the unsteady hand of Brigadier General William Hull, the operation did not go well, ending with Hull’s withdrawal to Detroit and followed, on August 16, by the only surrender of a U.S. city to a foreign invader. A succession of subsequent attempts also came to nothing, including the taking, partial burning, and ultimate abandonment of York (now Toronto) in April 1813. The Saint Lawrence campaign, as the eighth of these U.S. invasions came to be known, was another grand effort, involving two armies acting in concert to seize control of the Saint Lawrence River and Lower Canada (now Quebec Province). A classic study of the failure to coordinate an offensive at both the strategic and tactical levels, it would also feature one of the war’s bloodiest land battles and an encounter that became iconic to a nation that had yet to exist.

FROM LEFT: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION (2); CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM

From left: U.S. Secretary of War John Armstrong Jr.; Major General James Wilkinson, who saw a last chance for redemption in the War of 1812; Lieutenant Colonel Charles-Michel d’Irumberry de Salaberry of Canada.

XXXXXXXXXX

of which was the fact that British gunboats dominated Lake Champlain. He was also so averse to taking orders from Wilkinson that Armstrong had to assure Hampton that they would be forwarded through the War Department instead. Hampton set out from Burlington, Vermont, on September 19, but on reaching Plattsburgh he turned west to bypass Lake Champlain and the 900-man British army and naval base on Île de Noix. Hampton established his next base at Four Corners on the Châteauguay River. He resumed his march on October 18, when he received a communiqué from the still-ailing Armstrong, who had left Sackett’s Harbor two days earlier, stating that Wilkinson’s division was about to get underway. But Hampton’s 1,400-man brigade of New York militia adamantly refused to cross the border and fight people with whom they had been on friendly terms for decades. Consequently, when Hampton entered Lower Canada, his force totaled 2,600 U.S. Army infantrymen, 200 cavalry, and had 10 field guns. SIX NATIONS PUBLIC LIBRARY

FROM LEFT: NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION (2); CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM

Salaberry, a hardnosed veteran of the Napoleonic Wars, leads a combined force of Voltigeurs, local militia, and Indians to victory over a much larger U.S. force at the Battle of the Châteauguay on October 26, 1813.

After more than a year of hostilities, Britain still viewed the “American War” as an unwelcome distraction from its main priority: fighting Napoleon’s armies in Spain. It had increased its regular army forces in America to more than 13,000 men, but to supplement their meager numbers these scattered units depended on five fencible regiments—

defense units made up of local conscripts with British commanders—as well as a variety of local militia units and allied Indian tribes. On learning that his city was the target of the next U.S. invasion on September 17, Major General Louis de Watteville, the Swiss-born commander of the Montreal District, ordered the militia raised, while the governor general of North America, Lieutenant General George Prevost, ordered the 1st Light Battalion, a composite of British regulars and Canadian militiamen led by Lieutenant Colonel George MacDonnell, to march from Kingston to a blocking position south of Montreal. In the meantime, the principal force standing in Hampton’s way was a mixed bag of militia north of the Châteauguay River, near the junction with the English River. Its nucleus, the Voltigeurs de Québec, was a light infantry regiment of French Canadians who, while loyal enough to the British Crown, refused to wear red coats, preferring militia gray uniforms with black bearskin hats. Its commander, Lieutenant Colonel Charles-Michel d’Irumberry de Salaberry, trained his men with hardnosed professionalism acquired during previous service in the Napoleonic Wars. About a hundred of the Voltigeurs had gained some experience at the First Battle of Lacolle Mills on November 19, 1812, when Salaberry led them and 230 Kahnawake Indians to repulse some 650 U.S. Army invaders.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-STLAWRENCE.indd 65

65 2/28/22 12:42 PM

XXXXXXXXXX

Once MacDonnell arrived to supplement his Voltigeurs and local militia, Salaberry established an abatis of tree branches to block the road at a ravine near the English River junction. There he waited with 150 of the Voltigeurs, 50 Canadian Fencibles, 100 sedentary militia, and two dozen Indians. Behind that first line of defense he left MacDonnell in charge of a series of reserve lines, totaling 300 Voltigeurs, 480 troops of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of Select Embodied Militia, 200 sedentary militia, and 150 Indians, to guard the river, including Grant’s Ford. While local farmers kept Salaberry and his officers well informed about enemy movements, the Americans proceeded blindly. Hampton did know about Grant’s Ford, however, and on the evening of October 25 he dispatched Colonel Robert Purdy with his 1st Brigade and the light companies of the 5th, 12th, and 13th U.S. Infantry Regiments on a 16-mile march to cross the Châteauguay and flank the enemy from the south the following dawn. Poorly guided, Purdy’s 1,000 troops got lost in the woods and spent a miserable night under a pouring rain. The next morning, October 26, Hampton received a dispatch from Armstrong stating that he was departing Sackett’s Harbor and leaving overall command to Wilkinson. He ordered Hampton to prepare winter quarters for 10,000 troops along the Saint Lawrence. Sensing that the whole campaign was being written off, Hampton wrote a

COURTESY UPPER CANADA VILLAGE, MORRISBURG, ONT. (ST. LAWRENCE PARKS COMMISSION, AN AGENCY OF THE GOVERNMENT OF ONTARIO)

The Battle of Crysler’s Farm, fought on a marshy field beside the Saint Lawrence River on November 11, 1813, ended in ignominious defeat for the Americans, though Wilkinson would later try to claim just the opposite. letter resigning his generalship, and he would have withdrawn forthwith but for Purdy’s lost brigade. Instead, he committed his 2nd Brigade, under Brigadier General George Izard, to a frontal assault. Meanwhile, at dawn, Purdy had found the correct path north, but his brigade was again misguided, so that at midmorning most of it emerged from the woods just south of Salaberry’s first line of defense. The 3rd Select Embodied Militia attacked the Americans but was driven back, with its two highest ranking officers wounded. Hotly engaged by more militia and Indians, some of Purdy’s troops retreated only to come under fire from the next line of Americans. Around midday Izard’s 1,000 troops reached the ravine and lined up to engage 300 dug-in defenders with rolling volleys more suited to a European battlefield than the uneven terrain they faced. A U.S. officer reportedly rode up and ordered Salaberry to surrender, but since the officer was not carrying a white flag of truce, the colonel shot him. In the next three-quarters of an hour of fighting, part of Izard’s force drove back the Canadian Fencibles on Salaberry’s right flank, but reinforcements arrived in time to restore the line. Throughout, Salaberry encouraged a cacophony of bugle calls, cheers, and whoops from the woods to deceive the Americans as to his actual numbers. Allegedly a bugle signal to advance finally convinced Izard that he was outnumbered, and his force retreated three miles.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-STLAWRENCE.indd 66

2/28/22 12:42 PM

COURTESY UPPER CANADA VILLAGE, MORRISBURG, ONT. (ST. LAWRENCE PARKS COMMISSION, AN AGENCY OF THE GOVERNMENT OF ONTARIO)

XXXXXXXXXX

Just as Purdy reached the point where he hoped to contact Izard and have his wounded ferried across the river, his brigade came under fire from Salaberry’s advance element and spent another wretched night retracing its steps through the forest before finally rejoining Hampton. At a subsequent council of war Hampton’s adjutant general, Colonel Henry Atkinson, reported 23 men killed, 33 wounded, and 29 missing; Salaberry later accounted for 16 of the latter as prisoners of war, while recording 2 of his own men dead, 16 wounded, and 4 missing. Hampton then withdrew to Four Corners while Atkinson rode off to report the situation to Armstrong. Arriving at the Châteauguay at the end of the battle, Generals Prevost and de Watteville inflated their role in their dispatches, reporting a brilliant victory by 300 militiamen over 7,500 Americans. Salaberry, furious at their distorted accounts, considered resigning his commission, but the truth stood on its own merits, and he ultimately got due recognition and thanks from the Legislative Assembly of Quebec. Both he and MacDonnell were also made Companions of the Bath. As Hampton was moving on Montreal, Wilkinson finally got his 8,000-man division underway on October 17. He planned to seize Kingston before joining Hampton, but Commodore Isaac Chauncey, commanding the boats accompanying Wilkinson’s army, vetoed the idea, arguing that the British had a more powerful naval force. Wilkinson’s troops, marching northwest along the Saint Lawrence, reached French Creek (near present-day Clayton, New

York) on November 4. There the Americans’ anchorage was bombarded by British brigs and gunboats commanded by Commodore William Howe Mulcaster until Lieutenant Colonel Moses Porter’s artillery drove them off. On November 6, Wilkinson learned of Hampton’s defeat at the Châteauguay. Dispatching orders for Hampton to march west and join his force, Wilkinson resumed his advance, bypassing Fort Wellington, the British post at Prescott, on the 7th, to land east of Galop Rapids. From there he planned to shoot the Rapids du Plat and the Long Sault Rapids between Morrisburg and Cornwall. At Kingston, Major General Francis de Rottenburg, the lieutenant governor of Upper Canada, learned of Wilkinson’s movements from Mulcaster. Although he was primarily concerned with Kingston’s defense, Rottenburg dispatched Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Wanton Morrison, the commander of the 2nd Battalion, 89th Foot, to harass the Americans with a 650-man “corps of observation,” consisting primarily of the 89th Foot, the 49th Foot, and a contingent of Royal Artillery. Mulcaster transported the corps as far as Prescott, where the river became too shallow for his largest vessels. Bolstered by the Fort Wellington garrison’s fencible and militia units, as well as three companies of Voltigeurs and 30 Tyendinaga and Mississauga Mohawks, Morrison’s corps grew to almost 900 men as they marched after the largest army yet to invade Canadian soil. On the evening of November 10, Wilkinson’s vanguard, led by Brigadier General Jacob Jennings Brown, encountered 500 members of the Stormont and Glengarry militia at

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-STLAWRENCE.indd 67

67 2/28/22 12:43 PM

XXXXXXXXXX

Provincial Artillery serving the third 6-pounder, with a gully between them and the Americans. In the woods to the British left, the Voltigeurs, Dundas County Militia, and two dozen Indians took up skirmishing positions. Boyd, like Hampton at the Châteauguay, sought to flank the British from their left, starting with a thrust by the 21st Infantry that drove the Canadians a mile back through the forest. Pausing for breath, the 21st was then joined by the 12th and 13th Infantry and emerged from the woods on the left flank of the 2nd Battalion, 89th Foot, as planned. Instead of falling back, however, the well-drilled British wheeled about and engaged the Americans with a withering series of volleys that drove them to cover in disorder. Meanwhile, the U.S. 4th Brigade (9th, 16th, and 25th Infantry), led by Brigadier General Leonard Covington, struggled across the ravine and reached the open field to behold a line of gray-clad soldiers. “Come on, lads,” Covington shouted, “let’s see how you will deal with these militiamen!” Under the gray raincoats, however, were the red coats with green facings of the crack 49th Foot, whose return fire showed why the British called them “the Invincibles” and the Americans would call them “the Green Tigers.” Covington fell mortally wounded, and when his second in command died shortly after, the entire brigade lost order. At that point Wilkinson’s six cannons belatedly came up the road along the riverbank, unlimbered, and began an effective bombardment. Directed to seize the guns, the 49th Foot advanced in echelon, struggling over several fences and suffering heavy casualties before nearing its objective. In a last effort to save the guns, Colonel John Walbach, Wilkinson’s adjutant general, led the 2nd Dragoons against the 49th’s exposed right flank, but the Invincibles re-formed

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-STLAWRENCE.indd 68

2/28/22 12:43 PM

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARIES

Hoople Creek, northeast of what is now Morrisburg, Ontario, and drove them off. Meanwhile, Morrison arrived at John Crysler’s farm, just east of Morrisburg, where his troops bedded for the night. The American rearguard, under Brigadier General John Parker Boyd, was encamped just two miles downstream. November 11 was dawning raw and rainy when a few of Mulcaster’s shallow-draft gunboats fired on Americans encamped at Cook’s Point. Farther inland, a Mohawk shot at an American scouting party, which returned fire, sending half a dozen Canadians rushing back to report that the Americans were attacking. Dropping their half-eaten breakfasts, Morrison’s redcoats stood to arms. This activity likewise roused the Americans to form up for battle. The rain abated, and at 10:30 a.m Wilkinson got General Brown’s report that his success at Hoople Creek had opened the way to the Long Sault Rapids. Wilkinson, however, wished to eliminate the annoyance to his rear before proceeding. Since he still claimed illness—as did his second in command, Major General Morgan Lewis—Wilkinson delegated the task to Boyd, a veteran of the battles of Tippecanoe and Fort George, heading a detachment of 2,500 soldiers of the 1st, 4th, 9th, 16th, 21st, and 24th Infantry and troops of the 2nd Light Dragoon Regiment. Despite the muddiness of the open fields, Morrison judged them ideal for the sort of musketry at which his redcoats excelled. While the 500 regulars lined up in the center, supported by two 6-pounder cannons, Morrison anchored his right flank against the Saint Lawrence with Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Pearson, Fort Wellington’s commandant, heading a detachment of the light and grenadier companies of the 49th Foot, the Canadian Fencibles and the Canadian

LAKE CHAMPLAIN MARITIME MUSEUM COLLECTION

After their devastating loss at Crysler Farm, Wilkinson’s forces withdrew to Plattsburgh, New York. The fleet of British gunboats on Lake Champlain attacked the American forts there in 1814.

The lay of the land—and water—at Plattsburgh is illustrated in this map from The Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812 (Harper & Brothers, 1896), by Benson John Lossing, a prolific and popular American historian.

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARIES

LAKE CHAMPLAIN MARITIME MUSEUM COLLECTION

in time to throw them back. The dragoons charged again, only to be caught in a crossfire between the 49th, Pearson’s detachment, and all three British cannons. At the cost of 18 casualties out of 130 troopers, the dragoons’ sacrifice allowed the artillery to recover five of its guns. The sixth bogged down in the mud and was taken by the 89th Foot. By 4:30 the Americans were in full retreat, save for soldiers of the 25th and some boat guards covering them until Pearson’s troops threatened to flank them. As darkness fell, the British ended their pursuit while the Americans took their boats to the south side of the river. If Crysler’s Farm had been an exceptionally conventional pitched battle by the standards of the War of 1812, its butcher’s bill was also exceptionally high. The British lost 31 men killed and 148 wounded; the Americans suffered 103 dead, 247 wounded, and 120 taken prisoner. On November 12 Wilkinson’s force moved on aboard its boats past Long Sault Rapids to reach a small settlement three miles above Cornwall, where it reunited with Brown’s vanguard. Colonel Atkinson arrived to report Hampton’s decision to retire to Plattsburgh, and Wilkinson held another council of war, which unanimously agreed to curtail the campaign. He withdrew to French Mills and then, with supplies running low, to Plattsburgh.

Wilkinson planned additional invasions that winter, but his only offensive move, with 4,000 troops, was thwarted by 80 defenders and 420 reinforcements at Lacolle Mills on March 30, 1814. Wilkinson had previously asked a court of inquiry to evaluate his performance on March 24, and he received its appraisal on April 11, when he was relieved of command. Although in another court-martial he evaded conviction for negligence and misconduct, his career in the U.S. Army was over. Lewis was also retired, and Boyd was sidelined to reararea commands as Armstrong began winnowing the senior ranks and refilling them with younger men of recently proven merit, such as George Izard (who replaced Wilkinson), Jacob Brown, and Winfield Scott. Although the humiliating Saint Lawrence campaign is given short shrift in American histories of the War of 1812, it is better remembered north of the border, where Crysler’s Farm is known as “the battle that saved Canada.” Even more legendary is the Châteauguay, in which an army of U.S. Army regulars met ignominious defeat at the hands of a small group of local militiamen of English, Scottish, French, and First Nations, a cross-section of peoples who would compose, 54 years later, the Dominion of Canada. MHQ Jon Guttman is MHQ’s research director.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-STLAWRENCE.indd 69

69 3/3/22 10:33 AM

A torpedo officer in the Free French Naval Forces, posted on the bridge of the destroyer Le Triomphant in January 1941, scans the horizon for signs of enemy activity.

MHQP-SEPARATEWAR.indd 70

2/28/22 11:36 AM

DE GAULLE’S 1941 COUP When the Allies refused to buck Vichy France, the exiled leader of the Free French resistance forces decided to take matters into his own hands. By Ed Offley

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-SEPARATEWAR.indd 71

71 3/3/22 10:34 AM

DE GAULLE’S 1941 COUP

The news that French sailors were landing on the two islands exploded like a bomb.

Less than three weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into World War II, Chur chill had braved the German U-boats to cross the North At lantic for a summit with Roosevelt. Arriving in Hampton Roads, Virginia, aboard the newly commissioned battleship Duke of York, Churchill and his staff had arrived in Wash ington on December 22, where they immediately met with Roosevelt and his commanders to wrestle with a host of dif ficult issues confronting the new wartime alliance. The mood in Washington was dire. In the Pacific, Japa nese troops had invaded the Philippines, Borneo, Thailand, Burma, Malaya, and the Chinese cities of Hong Kong and Shanghai and had taken U.S.-held Guam and Wake Island—all in less than three weeks. In western Europe, the swastika flew over the capitals of five conquered nations, and the German army at the six-month milestone of Oper ation Barbarossa had overrun most of eastern Europe and was entrenched at the outskirts of Moscow. At sea, German U-boats were hunting allied merchant ships from South Africa to the coast of Labrador. The Arcadia Conference participants were confronting issues as profound as agreeing on a “Germany first” policy for the conduct of the war, combining the chiefs of staff of the two militaries, coordinating wartime operations, and setting a timeline for the liberation of North Africa and western Europe. The sudden news that French sailors were landing at Saint Pierre and Miquelon—without so much as a by-yourleave from de Gaulle to Washington, Ottawa, or London— exploded like a bomb at the Arcadia Conference. But it was much more than an unwanted surprise: The independent military action illuminated a serious fault line in the Anglo- American partnership, landing Roosevelt and Churchill on opposite sides of the thorny issue of how to deal with occu pied France. It was also a warning from de Gaulle that he would not allow the leaders of the alliance to interfere with his plans to become his country’s liberator.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: POPPERFOTO (GETTY IMAGES); THIS PAGE: ASSOCIATED PRESS; MAP BY BRIAN WALKER

n the predawn hours of Christmas Eve 1941, four warships closed in on their target: a small archipel ago of eight rocky islands off the southern coast of Newfoundland. While the United States and Great Britain at that moment were organizing a multina tional alliance against Nazi Germany and the em pire of Japan, this was a different operation altogether. The target was French, the invaders were French, the enemy was French, and the isolated residents designated for liber ation were French. The ships—four Flower-class corvettes and a giant, oneof-a-kind cruiser submarine armed with twin 8-inch naval guns—were manned by 330 French sailors who had ea gerly volunteered for the secret mission. Officially, they were a French component of the Royal Navy’s Western Ap proaches Command in Liverpool, a fleet of more than 300 escort ships responsible for protecting merchant convoys traveling between North America and the British Isles. On this day, however, the warships were following orders from someone else: an exiled French army officer who had renounced his country following its surrender to Nazi Germany. Eighteen months after he announced the creation of les Forces françaises libres—the Free French—in a broadcast from London on June 18, 1940, Brigadier Gen eral Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle had just launched his own war against the collaborationist govern ment of Vichy France. Under the ruse of a routine training mission, Vice Admi ral Émile Muselier, de Gaulle’s naval commander in chief, had traveled from London to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he had ordered the warships to sea. Rather than carrying out routine U-boat tracking exercises, the force steamed steadily east-northeast on the 330-mile voyage into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and toward the French territory they intended to liberate. In the end, the mission to the archipelago islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon—the oldest French possession in the Western Hemisphere—would have scant military impact on the wider global war. But the political conse quences for the Western Alliance would be profound. The incident occurred as the critical Arcadia Conference be tween U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston S. Churchill was entering its third day in Washington, D.C.

Even though it shocked the Arcadia conferees, de Gaulle’s invasion of the French archipelago shouldn’t have been a complete surprise. Even before France fell to the invading German army in June 1940, the fate of Saint Pierre and Miquelon was under intense scrutiny in Ottawa and Wash ington. On June 5, two weeks before France surrendered to Germany on June 22, Jay Moffat, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, had approached the government of Canadian prime minister MacKenzie King with the possibility of American or Canadian occupation of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. But Moffat soon reversed course and urged

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-SEPARATEWAR.indd 72

3/3/22 5:32 PM

QUEBEC

AT L A N T I C OCEAN

NEWFOUNDLAND

PREVIOUS SPREAD: POPPERFOTO (GETTY IMAGES); THIS PAGE: ASSOCIATED PRESS; MAP BY BRIAN WALKER

Canadian officials worried that pro-Vichy officials on Saint Pierre might use the island’s powerful radio station to transmit coded messages about Allied convoys to German U-boats.

Ottawa to take no action while Washington and the newly formed Vichy government negotiated diplomatic relations. The issue of the French islands south of Newfoundland briefly receded. Coming to power after the fall of the French Third Republic, World War I hero Marshal Philippe Pétain had acceded to the brutal terms of the armistice with Germany. The Nazi regime annexed the Alsace-Lorraine region. The German army occupied France’s northern and Atlantic coast provinces, among them Île-de-France, which included Paris. German engineers began building five massive bases along the Brittany coast to give the U-boat force direct access to North Atlantic shipping lanes. Pétain was left with nominal power to administer the rest of mainland France from the small city of Vichy. Vichy, however, still officially controlled vast French colonial holdings in Africa, Southeast Asia, the Levant, and French Polynesia. In North America, the French Empire had all but disappeared by the beginning of the 20th century. Where once France had controlled the interior of North America from Quebec to New Orleans, by 1941 it controlled only a handful of Caribbean islands as well as the tiny archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. Pétain also remained commander in chief of the second largest navy in Europe. In June 1940, the French fleet included 1 aircraft carrier, 5 battleships, 19 cruisers, 71 destroyers, and 76 submarines. They were dispersed in ports as far afield as Toulon, France; Plymouth and Portsmouth,

SAINT PIERRE AND MIQUELON

England; Dakar, Senegal; Mers-el-Kébir near Oran, Algeria; and Alexandria, Egypt. From the moment of France’s surrender to Germany, the United States and Britain chose starkly different strategies to deal with the Vichy regime. With the United States still neutral, Roosevelt quickly established diplomatic relations with Vichy and sent Admiral William D. Leahy, the retired chief of naval operations, to France as ambassador. Churchill and his cabinet took a much harsher stance. On July 3, 1940, just 11 days after the surrender, Churchill, fearful that the French fleet might fall into the hands of the Nazis despite the formalities of its neutral status, ordered Operation Catapult, dispatching a Royal Navy task force in the Mediterranean to neutralize or destroy the French warships at Oran and Alexandria. Britain also commandeered a half dozen French warships and submarines that had sought sanctuary in English ports. While the French naval commander at Alexandria agreed to neutralize his ships, the situation in Oran turned bloody. Approaching the anchorage at Mers-el-Kébir on July 3, British warships opened fire on the French, sinking one battleship and damaging two more and a pair of destroyers. The raid resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,300 French sailors. In retaliation, the Vichy government broke off relations with Great Britain and launched several air raids against the British colony of Gibraltar. Having abandoned all ties with the Pétain regime, Churchill turned to the only alternative: Charles de Gaulle.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-SEPARATEWAR.indd 73

73 3/3/22 5:33 PM

DE GAULLE’S 1941 COUP

From the very outset, de Gaulle had his eye on Saint Pierre and Miquelon.

The following morning, de Gaulle flew to London on the British plane that had brought him to Bordeaux just the day before. Carrying only a pair of suitcases with his personal possessions, de Gaulle, once in London, immediately began his dogged effort to create the Free French. On June 18, the exiled general broadcast via the BBC a historic entreaty to his fellow countrymen: I speak to you with full knowledge of the facts and tell you that nothing is lost for France. The same means that overcame us can bring us to a day of victory. For France is not alone! She is not alone! She is not alone! She has a vast Empire behind her. She can align with the British Empire that holds the sea and continues the fight. She can, like England, use without limit the immense industry of [the] United States.…I, General de Gaulle, currently in London, invite the officers and the French soldiers who are located in British territory or who would come there…to put themselves in contact with me. Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not be extinguished and will not be extinguished. Over the next five months, as he recruited staff and volunteer soldiers from the French émigré community and struggled with multiple internal struggles that at times threatened to paralyze the movement, de Gaulle launched a two-pronged campaign to create the Free French military. While shaken by the failure of a British naval task force to seize Dakar from Vichy in September 1940, de Gaulle’s allies in French Equatorial Africa soon scored a series of victories, persuading the colonial governments of Chad, Cameroon, and French Congo to switch allegiance from Vichy to the Free French. In England, de Gaulle and Muselier toiled to assemble a small naval force from the vessels seized in Operation Catapult, as well as newer warships provided by the Royal Navy. The setback at Dakar and lingering resentment among many French émigrés in England over Operation Catapult slowed—but did not thwart—the emergence of the Free French navy. From the very outset of this seemingly impossible quest, de Gaulle had his eye on Saint Pierre and Miquelon. But he would have to wait until he had a military force to do something about the islands.

FROM LEFT: KEYSTONE-FRANCE, UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES (GETTY IMAGES, 2)

A combat veteran of World War I who was wounded three times and taken prisoner by the Germans, de Gaulle had risen steadily through the ranks of the French army during the interwar years. An expert in armored warfare, the 50-year-old colonel had been preparing to take command of the newly formed 4th Armored Division when Germany struck through the Ardennes in May 1940. Within a week, de Gaulle and his understrength division were in action in northern France. In two separate battles, de Gaulle managed to slow the German advance, dealing huge losses to its artillery and aircraft. Then-French president Paul Reynaud, recognizing de Gaulle’s bravery, promoted him to brigadier general and shortly afterward appointed him undersecretary of state for national defense and war with a prime responsibility for coordinating efforts with the British government. It was while serving in this ill-fated role in the French government just as his country was at the verge of collapse that de Gaulle met Winston Churchill. On June 9, 1940, de Gaulle flew to London for the first of several meetings with Churchill. The gaunt, 6-foot-5 Frenchman deeply impressed Churchill, who described his visitor as “a young and energetic general [who had given] a more favorable impression of French morale and determination” than his morose colleagues and superiors. The two men would meet several times over the following weeks, quickly forming a personal relationship that would survive numerous personal clashes over wartime decisions affecting the fate of France. This friendship would have deep consequences for Western Europe long after the war. In the last week of the existence of the French Third Republic, de Gaulle was primarily an observer of the defeat of his army and, shortly thereafter, the collapse of the Reynaud government. In the escalating chaos, de Gaulle witnessed or worked on a series of desperate and stillborn plans to enable France to continue the fight: organizing a guerrilla war against the invaders inside metropolitan France; evacuating the government, first to a redoubt in Brittany, then to the Atlantic port city of Bordeaux, and finally to a safe location in French North Africa; even joining with Great Britain in a formal union to continue the struggle. But other French leaders by now were counseling armistice. Returning from a second trip to London on June 16, de Gaulle learned that Reynaud had resigned, Pétain was now president, and a formal surrender to Germany was imminent. De Gaulle would have none of it.

By mid-1941, sailors flying the Free French flag with the Cross of Lorraine were commissioning corvettes and destroyers that became an integral part of the allied North Atlantic convoy escort program. After the seizure of the French ships in British ports, the Free French navy had taken possession of several warships,

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-SEPARATEWAR.indd 74

3/3/22 5:33 PM

FROM LEFT: KEYSTONE-FRANCE, UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES (GETTY IMAGES, 2)

From left: General Charles de Gaulle walks with officers of the Free French navy on the submarine Surcouf; Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt meet at the White House in 1941.

including two World War I–era battleships, and the oneof-a-kind cruiser submarine Surcouf. While the two battleships never saw action at sea—serving instead as stationary depots or storeships—the Surcouf, under the command of Georges Louis Blaison, traveled to Halifax, Nova Scotia, in early 1941, where it occasionally sailed was an escort for allied convoys. But the massive 3,300-ton submarine, which carried an observation floatplane in a closed hangar and sported a sealed turret with two 8-inch naval guns, proved to be an ungainly escort ship. Other seized French warships, including the destroyers Le Triomphant and Léopard, later joined the escort force with Free French crews. The Royal Navy also came to the aid of its Free French counterparts, providing nine Flower-class corvettes that would be flagged under the Cross of Lorraine. Between the first week of July and Christmas Eve 1941, seven of the corvettes joined the Mid-Ocean Escort Force, a naval command of several hundred Allied warships that bore vital supplies to the British Isles. After a period of intense antisubmarine warfare training at Tobermory Bay on Scotland’s Isle of Mull, each ship was then assigned to a convoy escort group.

Like their British, Canadian, and Norwegian comrades who also served in the Flower-class corvette, de Gaulle’s sailors soon came to appreciate the small warship’s ability to operate in the storm-tossed North Atlantic. Each of the 925-ton vessels, just 205 feet long with a beam of 33 feet, carried a solitary 4-inch deck gun, two 20-millimeter Oerlikon cannons, and as many as 70 depth charges. Later, the corvettes would receive the forward-throwing Hedgehog antisubmarine mortar. The corvette’s biggest limitation was its relatively slow speed. The Royal Navy by necessity had thrust the corvettes, essentially modified whaling vessels intended for service in coastal waters, into the midocean escort role. The corvette had only a single propeller shaft, and its maximum speed of 16 knots was slower than that of a Type VIIC U-boat on the surface. Nevertheless, the small warships became effective convoy escorts when teamed with the larger frigates and destroyers. But their crews paid a price. One British corvette commander later spoke of his vessel’s tendency to “corkscrew” in heavy seas. “About the third dip [of the hull] and you get tons and tons of water come over the fo’c’s’le [forecastle], and if you happened to

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-SEPARATEWAR.indd 75

75 3/3/22 5:33 PM

DE GAULLE’S 1941 COUP

The Battle of the Atlantic threatened to erupt in savage violence at any moment.

the Atlantic crossing. The third and most significant factor was an accidental gift from Adolf Hitler. Shortly before launching the invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Hitler ordered his U-boat force to avoid any confrontation with the U.S. Navy in the North Atlantic while the massive land operation was underway. Despite those conditions, the Battle of the Atlantic threatened to erupt in savage violence at any moment. Three combat incidents—the encounter between the destroyer USS Greer and U-652 on September 4 with no casualties; the attack on destroyer USS Kearny by U-568 on October 17 that damaged the ship and killed 11 crewmen; and the sinking of USS Reuben James with the deaths of 100 of its 144-man crew on October 31—hardened the posture of the U.S. government toward Germany and quickly shifted the Atlantic Fleet from neutral patrols into an undeclared war against the U-boats. During those five months, the Free French warships served in escort groups that ferried 37 convoys safely to and from the British Isles, protecting 1,665 merchant ships. All but 10 of the formations got through without a single combat loss. The escorts, including the Free French corvettes, were becoming a well-trained naval force. So when de Gaulle and his naval commander, Vice Admiral Muselier, decided in early December to prepare a unilateral takeover of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the Free French– manned Surcouf and three corvettes were at the ready. By mid-December 1941, the 6,500 residents of Saint Pierre and Miquelon were in dire need of help—and the Vichy government had so far failed to provide it. An impoverished, storm-lashed rocky fishing outpost, the French colony had experienced a series of economic slumps in the previous 40 years, interrupted only by a brief boom during the era of American Prohibition, when the islands became a major transshipment point for alcohol from Europe to the United States. When the 18th Amendment was repealed in 1933, the residents of Saint Pierre and Miquelon suddenly found themselves dropped into the Great Depression. The situation worsened after the fall of France, when the Vichy government ordered all fishing vessels to remain in port at Saint Pierre. The Vichy administrator at Saint Pierre, Baron Gilbert de Bournat, a die-hard supporter of Pétain, faced an impossible situation. On July 12, 1940, in a secret message to Vichy, he warned: “Food situation is critical and worsening steadily.” In another message, de Bournat warned that a majority of the islands’ residents were considered “active or passive partisans of the de Gaullist movement.” In yet another message he lamented that there had been no mail deliveries from France in four months, while British and Gaullist propaganda was pouring in via British suppliers to the colony.

FROM TOP: POPPERFOTO, KEYSTONE-FRANCE (GETTY IMAGES, 2)

be in the waist [of the ship]…you probably get washed astern,” former Lieutenant Harold G. Chesterman recalled telling one of the corvette design engineers. “He looked quite surprised when we told him how good they were. Uncomfortable and lively and wet, but safe. And it didn’t matter what the weather was, we could go into the gale, down the seas, and when merchant ships were heaved to with the wind on the port bow…we could go anywhere.” The first of the corvettes to take to sea was the Alysse, commanded by Lieutenant Jacques Marie Lehalleur with a crew of 70 Free French sailors. Commissioned at the George Brown & Company dockyard in Greenock, Scotland, on June 17, 1941, the corvette’s first deployment came four weeks later when it joined westbound Convoy OB349 for an Atlantic crossing. After 11 days at sea without a combat incident, the 59 merchant ships dispersed at a point in the western Atlantic 237 nautical miles northeast of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Having gathered enough escorts by midsummer 1941, the Western Approaches Command reorganized the escort fleet into four groups: western and eastern local forces for protection at either end of the crossing, and a pair of midocean escort formations that would operate between North America and Iceland, and Iceland and the British Isles. Between July 22 and November 3, 1941, six more Free French–manned corvettes followed Alysse into the convoy escort force. Four of them—Lobelia, Renoncule, Roselys, and Commandant Détroyat—served on the eastern leg of the midocean convoy routes. Two others—Aconit and Mimosa—joined Alysse operating out of Halifax with the western midocean convoy force. Compared to 1942 and 1943, which saw horrific convoy battles, the second half of 1941 was relatively quiet on the North Atlantic. Several factors contributed to the respite. First, the success of British code breakers in identifying U-boat movements and ordering timely route changes for the convoys helped most of them avoid detection. A second factor was the quiet entry of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet’s destroyer force into convoy escort duties. Following the secret meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt at Argentia, Newfoundland, in early August 1941, American destroyers began shepherding convoys as they traveled from North America toward Iceland and back; in addition, the United States mounted a massive buildup of patrol aircraft in Iceland. During the next four months, U.S. warships would escort 17 convoys along the Grand Banks–Iceland leg of

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-SEPARATEWAR.indd 76

3/3/22 5:34 PM

From top: Sailors in the Free French Naval Forces man twin antiaircraft guns on the deck of Le Triomphant in January 1941; Aconit, one of the Flower-class corvettes loaned to the Free French by the Royal Navy and flagged under the Cross of Lorraine. By December 12, 1941, Saint Pierre and Miquelon had reached a boiling point. U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, an ardent advocate of diplomatic relations with neutral Vichy, concluded negotiations with the Pétain regime to guarantee a hands-off approach to French possessions in North America in return for their neutrality. Then, at the last minute, Canadian officials became concerned that pro-Vichy officials on Saint Pierre might be using the island’s powerful radio station to assist the U-boats with coded messages about Allied shipping. De Gaulle was already prepared to act. He had dispatched Muselier to Canada and Newfoundland (then an independent British dominion) to consult with senior government officials. The French admiral briefed them on de Gaulle’s plan, but it failed to win unanimous support. While British and Newfoundland officials favored the move, Canadian officials were divided. The Roosevelt administration—Hull in particular—adamantly opposed it. Muselier reluctantly prepared to abandon the operation and fly back to London. But just before he boarded the plane on December 17, he received a telegram from de Gaulle: Our negotiations here [in London] have shown us that we cannot do anything in St. Pierre and Miquelon if we wait for permission from all those who say they are interested. This was to be expected. The only solution is an action of our own initiative.

FROM TOP: POPPERFOTO, KEYSTONE-FRANCE (GETTY IMAGES, 2)

A day later, British officials told de Gaulle that Canadian officials had decided to take over the radio station on Saint Pierre. The general instantly fired off a second telegram to his naval commander that said: “We know…that the Canadians intend to take over the St. Pierre radio station. Under these conditions…proceed to the rallying of St. Pierre and Miquelon on your own and without saying anything to strangers. I take full responsibility for this operation.” The liberation of Saint Pierre and Miquelon was on. To no one’s surprise, the actual invasion of Saint Pierre and Miquelon succeeded without a single shot fired. Approaching from the north of the harbor entrance in the predawn darkness, Aconit paused alongside Surcouf to take on a landing party of 25 heavily armed sailors. Aboard one of the corvettes was Muselier’s most powerful weapon: Ira Wolfert, a reporter for the New York Times. Muselier wanted the seizure of the islands to make headlines.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-SEPARATEWAR.indd 77

77 3/3/22 5:34 PM

XXXXXXXXXX

The Surcouf, a massive 3,300-ton submarine, carried an observation floatplane in a closed hangar and sported a sealed turret with two 8-inch naval guns. But the one-of-a-kind cruiser proved to be an ungainly escort ship.

News of the Free French takeover reached Washington immediately. Learning of the event through a telegram from Maurice Pasquet, the U.S. consul general in Saint Pierre, Secretary of State Hull crashed a meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill at the White House to inform them of de Gaulle’s invasion. While the immediate reaction of the two leaders was reportedly to chuckle and brush off the matter, Hull was livid. He saw the seizure of Saint Pierre and Miquelon as a direct threat to his policy of mutual neutrality with Vichy France. On Christmas Day, as Muselier was organizing a plebiscite to have the residents of Saint Pierre and Miquelon choose between Vichy and the Free French, Hull condemned the takeover and asked the Canadian government what it was prepared to do to restore Vichy control. His blistering statement contained a phrase that quickly backfired when it became public: “Our preliminary reports show that the action taken by three so-called Free French ships at St. Pierre and Miquelon was an arbitrary action contrary to the agreement of all parties concerned and certainly without the consent of the United States government.” (italics added) The same day, the New York Times published Wolfert’s story on its front page under banner headlines that for the first time since 1939 referred to the invasion of a country by someone other than the German or Japanese armies.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-SEPARATEWAR.indd 78

3/3/22 5:34 PM

LEFT: KEYSTONE-FRANCE (GETTY IMAGES); ASSOCIATED PRESS

“Vive de Gaulle, at last I can say it,” an elderly fisherman yelled. “Vive de Gaulle!”

French: “Neat home-made de Gaulle flags that had been kept hidden for a long time broke out,” he wrote in his story for the Times. “Cries of ‘Vive Admiral Muselier!’ and ‘Vive de Gaulle!’ rose in a steady roar as people flung up windows or dashed from their bedrooms in varying stages of undress.” Within a half-hour of the warships’ arrival, Saint Pierre was in the hands of the Free French.

ALBERT HARLINGUE (GETTY IMAGES)

As the cruiser submarine guarded the entrance to the harbor, Aconit led the other two corvettes into port. Lookouts on the three vessels reported no activity on shore. Mimosa briefly stopped a small postal vessel heading to Miquelon and then allowed it to pass. A fishing dory was also permitted to continue out to sea. A local gendarme observed Mimosa tying up to the snow-covered coal pier and approached, followed by an elderly fisherman who, spotting the Free French flags, started cursing the Vichy president. “Pétain, le sacre bleu cochon, le old goat!” he yelled. Sailors on one of the ships tossed him a mooring line, and as he secured it to the bollard, the fisherman continued, “Vive de Gaulle, at last I can say it. Vive de Gaulle!” The landing party raced through Saint-Pierre, the capital city of the island, quickly securing the town hall, post office, telegraph station, and radio station as residents began streaming from their homes to cheer. The sailors met no resistance. The island’s 11 gendarmes welcomed the occupiers, surrendering their weapons and offering to help round up suspected Vichy supporters. As sailors marched de Bournat to the Aconit, a growing crowd of islanders taunted the Vichy administrator with shouts of “Vive de Gaulle!” Pausing at the gangplank, de Bournat spun around, silenced the crowd with a glare, and snapped off a crisp “Vive Pétain!” Wolfert, the only independent eyewitness to the invasion, reported the overall support by the residents for the Free

DE GAULLE’S 1941 COUP

LEFT: KEYSTONE-FRANCE (GETTY IMAGES); ASSOCIATED PRESS

ALBERT HARLINGUE (GETTY IMAGES)

From left: De Gaulle meets Free French volunteers from Saint Pierre and Miquelon in London on March 31, 1943; Admiral Émile Muselier, de Gaulle’s naval commander, salutes as he arrives at Saint-Pierre on December 25, 1941. Wolfert’s breathless description of the invasion and Muselier’s speedy organization of a vote by the islanders on their future status quickly drowned out the protest from the U.S. State Department. In a subsequent dispatch Wolfert reported that 98 percent of the votes cast in the plebiscite favored the Free French. In the days after the vote, American public opinion turned against Hull and the State Department. Reactions included a public statement issued by 125 American luminaries, including Carl Sandburg and Helen Keller, urging Roosevelt to halt the State Department’s efforts to return the islands to Vichy control. The diplomatic tug-of-war over de Gaulle’s invasion went on for more than two weeks as Hull tried to convince Churchill and Canadian prime minister King to evict Muselier and his corvettes from Saint Pierre. Both leaders declined to do so. Eight days after the takeover, Roosevelt signaled that getting the Free French out of Saint Pierre and Miquelon would be more trouble than it was worth. “I told the Secretary of State,” FDR wrote in a memo, “[that] I thought it inadvisable to resuscitate this question by making a statement; that the French Admiral has already declined to leave St. Pierre-Miquelon; that we cannot afford to send an expedition to bomb him out, and that Sumner Welles [FDR’s policy adviser] could best handle this verbally when he gets to Rio [de Janeiro].” A conference of inter-American governments was scheduled to begin in the Brazilian city in several weeks. For the next two weeks, diplomats in Washington, Ottawa, and London debated how to ensure the neutrality of Saint Pierre and Miquelon and persuade Muselier to remove his warships from the archipelago. Hull even at-

tempted a conciliatory move when at a news conference he tried to take back his impugnment of the occupation forces. “No insult to the Free French had been intended when the term ‘so called Free French ships’ was employed in the State Department’s statement in connection with the Christmas Eve occupation of St. Pierre and Miquelon,” Hull said. “The ‘so called’ referred to the ships and not to the Free French.” Hull’s explanation didn’t fool anyone. On January 14 Anthony Eden, Britain’s foreign secretary, met with de Gaulle, having been ordered to tell him the islands must be neutralized under Allied control and without the participation of the Free French. Eden hinted that Roosevelt might send a warship or two to Saint Pierre to force the issue. “What will you do then?” Eden asked de Gaulle. “The Allied ships will stop at the limit of territorial waters,” de Gaulle replied, “and the American admiral will come to lunch with Muselier, who will be delighted.” Eden continued to press de Gaulle. “But if the cruiser crosses the limit?” he asked. “Our people will summon her to stop in the normal way,” de Gaulle replied. Eden kept pushing. “If she holds on her course?” he asked. “That would be most unfortunate,” de Gaulle replied, “for then our people would have to open fire.” After returning to London from the Arcadia Conference, on January 22, Churchill summoned de Gaulle for a second meeting with Eden. He proposed a compromise in which Saint Pierre and Miquelon would remain liberated from Vichy but the three Allied governments would publish a joint communiqué on the islands’ neutrality that would satisfy the U.S. State Department. De Gaulle agreed. Even so, the communiqué was never published. Muselier headed to London on February 28, 1942, leaving behind Alain Savary, a 25-year-old Free French officer, as governor.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-SEPARATEWAR.indd 79

79 3/3/22 5:34 PM

Baron de Bournat and his German-born wife were repatriated to France with the State Department’s help. Meanwhile, the Free French corvettes rejoined their Allied comrades on the North Atlantic convoy runs. On December 27, Convoy SC62 departed from Sydney, Cape Breton, for the British Isles with 32 merchant ships. The formation would arrive on January 12 with all but one vessel intact. Escorting the formation from its meeting point south of Newfoundland to the Iceland meeting point were four Canadian warships and the Free French corvettes Alysse and Aconit. The Free French takeover of Saint Pierre and Miquelon quickly faded from public view. After the Arcadia Conference ended, the United States carried out one of the top agenda items: sending U.S. Army troops to Iceland and Northern Ireland as a symbol of American resolve to get into the war in support of the Allies. But that military action was soon overtaken by a sharp escalation in the Battle of the Atlantic when German U-boats launched concerted attacks against Allied shipping along the U.S. and Canadian east coasts in what was termed Operation Drumbeat. Liberating Saint Pierre and Miquelon was Muselier’s only operation as commander of the Free French navy. On returning to London, he became embroiled in a struggle with de Gaulle over the leadership of the Free French and was retired. For most of the sailors who served under Muselier at Saint Pierre, a harsher end came all too soon.

Ed Offley, a longtime military reporter, is the author of two books on the Battle of the Atlantic: The Burning Shore: How Hitler’s U-Boats Brought World War II to America (Basic Books, 2014) and Turning the Tide: How a Small Band of Allied Sailors Defeated the U-Boats and Won the Battle of the Atlantic (Basic Books, 2011).

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-SEPARATEWAR.indd 80

3/3/22 5:35 PM

XXXXXXXXXX

U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, an ardent advocate of diplomatic relations with Vichy France, condemned de Gaulle’s takeover of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.

On February 8, 1942, just six weeks after it had left Saint Pierre, corvette Alysse was escorting westbound Convoy ON60 about 420 miles east of Cape Race, Newfoundland, when it was struck by a torpedo from the Type VIIC U-654. The blast killed 36 of the 70 men on board. The corvette was taken under tow but sank soon afterward. Just 10 days later, the submarine Surcouf sank with all 118 hands when it vanished while traveling west in the Caribbean Sea, en route to the Panama Canal and service in the southwest Pacific. A freighter transiting the area later reported colliding with an unknown underwater object. The wreckage was never located. Corvette Mimosa’s wartime career came to an abrupt end four months after that. Part of a warship group escorting westbound Convoy ON100, it was torpedoed by the Type IXB U-124 some 600 miles southeast of Cape Farewell. Its commander and all but four members of the 68-man crew perished. Only corvette Aconit survived the war, and with a combat distinction that put the little warship in the news once more. During the night of March 10–11, 1943, the Free French warship was one of eight escorts for eastbound Convoy HX228 when the 60-ship formation came under attack by a wolf pack of 13 U-boats. In the ensuing melee, the Aconit rammed and sank U-444 on the surface—the sub had already been damaged by a British destroyer—and then located and sank U-432. For the islanders of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the return to obscurity was swift, but their brief moment in the international spotlight brought at least one improvement: The Canadian government agreed to give them $80,000 a month from funds that had been impounded from the Vichy government. In the months after the seizure of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, de Gaulle and the Free French steadily increased in stature—despite Roosevelt’s lingering resentment and Churchill’s occasional fits of pique. Outmaneuvering several other French flag officers for leadership of the Free French, de Gaulle would personify the liberation of Paris upon his entry to the city on August 25, 1944. But he never forgot Saint Pierre and Miquelon. In 1967, while traveling to Canada on a French navy cruiser, President de Gaulle ordered a stopover at Saint Pierre for an emotional reunion with the French islanders he had freed nearly a quarter-century earlier. MHQ

HARRIS & EWING COLLECTION (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

DE GAULLE’S 1941 COUP

CULTURE OF WAR CLASSIC

DON TROIANI COLLECTION (MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION)

DISPATCHES 82 BIG SHOTS 85 ARTISTS 86 POETRY 90 REVIEWS 92 Don Troiani has built an impressive reputation as a historically exacting artist “who plumbs the past to inform and entertain the present,” as the New York Times once put it. Liberty: Don Troiani’s Paintings of the Revolutionary War, the first major exhibition of his original artwork, immerses visitors in some of the pivotal events of America’s fight for independence, pairing more than 40 of his paintings with dozens of artifacts from his personal collection, including this British grenadier’s bearskin cap. Museum of the American Revolution, Philadelphia, through September 5, 2022

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-COWINTRO-TROIANI.indd 81

81 3/3/22 10:36 AM

CLASSIC DISPATCHES

THE DANGER BELT By Arthur Oakeshott

“Forty-two roaring streaks of streamlined death, each carrying two torpedoes...”

of looking down—I repeat ‘down’—on the Heinkels and Junkers as they roared past the ships and turned sideways to launch their loads.” In early 1945 Reuters sent Oakeshott to France to cover the war, and by March of that year he was with the U.S. Army’s 44th Infantry Division when it crossed the Rhine River into Germany, where he would file such stories as an interview with Adolf Hitler’s personal physician and a detail-laden account of Nazi medical experiments and atrocities at a “wholesale extermination plant” in the Bavarian town of Kaufbeuren. After the war Oakeshott left Reuters to become the editor of a small newspaper in suburban London, but to this day he is remembered mostly for his dramatic Arctic convoy dispatches. The one that follows appeared in dozens of American newspapers, including the Des Moines Register, where it ran under the headline “Nazis ‘Shot the Works’ But Great Allied Convoy Was Ready for It.” ABOARD THE BRITISH CRUISER SCYLLA, CONVOY FLAGSHIP, AT SEA (REUTERS TO AP)—The largest convoy ever taken to Russia is feeling its way through the danger belt north of Scandinavia. All hands are at action stations keyed up for the inevitable clash. We know that a powerful German air force is lurking in wait. Then loudspeakers crackle. The tension breaks. Words we have been expecting blare their warning: “A large group of enemy aircraft approaching on starboard bow.” Beside me the yeoman of signals, binoculars to eyes, counts them aloud. “One…two…three…10…42 coming in, sir, where’s me bloody tin hat? I can never find it when I wants it.” They are coming in. Forty-two roaring streaks of streamlined death, each carrying two torpedoes…some are [Junkers] 88s. Others are Heinkel 111s—all twin-engined heavy bombers. They come in a long line only a few feet above the surface of the water, fanning out as they approach. The vast convoy stretches out on either side of the Scylla protected by the largest destroyer escort ever known. Then battle is started while the enemy still is many miles from the merchant ships. We hear the flash and roar

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS

Arthur Oakeshott was surely one of the Reuters news agency’s bravest correspondents in World War II. He was aboard 10 of the 78 Arctic convoys that sailed from the United Kingdom, Iceland, and North America to escort some 1,400 merchant ships destined for northern ports in the Soviet Union. The journey—through a narrow passage between the Arctic ice pack and German military bases in Norway—was treacherous, especially in winter when the sea ice pushed farther south. German submarines, warships, and aircraft attacked many of the convoys, and 85 merchantmen and 16 Royal Navy cruisers, destroyers, and other escort ships were lost. The Arctic convoys not only demonstrated to the world that the Allies were committed to helping the Soviet Union, which Germany had invaded in June 1941, but also tied up a large part of Germany’s dwindling naval and air forces. Oakeshott was aboard HMS Scylla, a Dido-class cruiser, when Convoy PQ18 left Loch Ewe, Scotland, on September 2, 1942, to escort more than 40 Allied freighters from Scotland and Iceland to the Russian port of Arkhangelsk. As the convoy made its way through hundreds of miles of Arctic waters off northern Norway, it was attacked by U-boats, bombers, and torpedo aircraft. But British code breakers at Bletchley Park and elsewhere, thanks to Ultra decrypts of German naval signals and eavesdropping on the Luftwaffe’s wireless communications, provided the convoy with detailed information on the enemy’s intentions. On September 25, the British Admiralty announced that “a great majority” of the ships had reached their destinations and that at least 40 Nazi planes and two U-boats had been destroyed. Oakeshott’s reports from the Arctic convoys appeared in newspapers all over the world—he “dodged shot and shell and filed many dramatic dispatches,” by one contemporary account—and his gift for making readers feel that they were in his shoes provided Reuters with a decided edge in its coverage of the war at sea. (One of Oakeshott’s striking sentences: “I shall never forget the extraordinary sensation

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-DISP-OKSHTT.indd 82

3/3/22 10:37 AM

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS

A crewman navigates the snow-covered deck of HMS Scylla as the cruiser escorts a convoy of more than 40 Allied freighters through the North Atlantic in 1942.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-DISP-OKSHTT.indd 83

83 3/3/22 10:37 AM

THE DANGER BELT From time to time we hear a crash as the torpedoes find their mark—there were losses but nothing like the Nazis hoped. Columns of smoke rise up into the low-hanging clouds. Bursts of flame spout forth and yells of triumph rise as plane after plane hits the sea and sinks. Now the battle takes on a new phase. Hurricanes rush off from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Dogfights are going on above the clouds, below the clouds, and in breaks through the clouds or low over the seas. Junkers and Heinkels twist and turn, dive and climb, slip and roll to avoid the relentless pursuit. Gradually the noise of the battle dies away as the surviving Germans, having dropped their loads, streak for home—followed by myriads of shells.

of big guns from the outer screen of destroyers followed immediately by the staccato rattle of multiple pom-poms. Shell bursts are soon joined in the Arctic air by long streams of cerise-colored tracer shells from the Oerlikon guns (antiaircraft weapons). Then as the planes zoom over the destroyer screen, hell breaks loose. Nothing else can describe it. The port guns of the destroyers open up, followed immediately by every gun in the convoy from the smallest merchant ship to the “big stuff ” aboard the Scylla—heavy pom-poms, Oerlikons, antiaircraft guns of every description, machine-guns, and even Bren guns. From then on the battle becomes a whirling maelstrom of shells, bullets, tracers and of black, blue, brown, and gray smoke bursts. The zoom of aircraft and the crashing of bursting shells add to the din. “The worst bombing attack of the war,” Rear Admiral [Robert] L. Burnett, commodore of the escorting force, called it.

The minesweeper Harrier comes alongside and, although we are traveling at considerable speed, she lashes herself to us and lands some 80 survivors from a torpedoed merchant ship. This happens again when HMS Sharpshooter transfers more survivors amounting to well over 100 in all. Many of those survivors are Americans. They are only too eager to help. Some of them get revenge when they are permitted to man an Oerlikon gun. They put shells into a couple of Heinkels. Now we are on the return journey with another convoy of ships. We are not troubled much this time by German aircraft but again the Germans send out U-boats. Figures are difficult to obtain, but already I hear it claimed that the convoy has bagged five U-boats. A crisp voice from the bridge loudspeaker: “Those planes above are friendly Hurricanes.” Says the yeoman of signals, “Blarney, all ’urricanes is friendly.” MHQ

IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS

This photograph, taken from the cruiser Scylla, shows some of the other Allied ships in its convoy passing through pack ice on their way to the Russian port of Arkhangelsk.

Those that dive low to the sea to avoid the high bursts are met with cunningly placed Oerlikon tracer shells that ricochet off the water and “plunk” into fuselage and cockpit. It seems hardly any time before a calm voice announces that there are 25 more Junkers 88s or Heinkels coming at us. This time they carry bombs as well as torpedoes—but they have miscalculated. They are met before they reach the convoy by a drove of Hurricanes which breaks up the formation. This time there are no sinkings and the Luftwaffe loses more planes to our aircraft and ack-ack ships. Another short breather. Then the alarm goes again— but not before a seaman has time to approach an officer and say, “Please sir, can we borrow some darts to pass the time away.”

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-DISP-OKSHTT.indd 84

2/28/22 1:16 PM

BIG SHOTS

HARRIS & EWING COLLECTION (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS)

George P. Scriven graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1878 and later returned to teach modern languages there, but it was his assignment to the U.S. Signal Corps, which he called “the nerve system of the army,” that changed his life—and the future of military aviation. In 1913, after he’d served in a variety of military posts, Scriven was promoted to brigadier general and made the chief signal officer of the U.S. Army. Soon he was warning that in Europe airplanes were no longer being used just to gather information but were also carrying out attacks on personnel and matériel. He championed the creation of the Signal Corps’ aviation section, the forerunner of the U.S. Air Force, and he would become the first chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the direct predecessor of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Scriven died in 1940 at age 86 and was buried at West Point.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-BGSHOT-SCRIVEN.indd 85

85 2/28/22 1:18 PM

ARTISTS

THE MILITARY MURALISTS

During World War II the U.S. Army enlisted artists to run programs that would help dress up its training camps around the country. By Peter Harrington

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City did its part to boost the arts in army camps.

1941, a group of soldier-artists who styled themselves the “Fort Custer Illustrators” began creating paintings and murals that represented army life at the camp, and they held a number of exhibitions at the Camp Service Club. The nation’s art establishment began to take notice. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City appointed James Thrall Soby to direct its Armed Services Program, which was designed to further encourage the arts in camps. The program’s three primary objectives were to provide facilities and materials, to make use of the talents of artists for therapeutic work among soldiers and sailors with disabilities, and to make the museum’s facilities available for the entertainment of men in the armed services and merchant navies of the Allied nations. To finance the program, the museum organized a sale of paintings in May 1942 featuring 566 works donated by trustees and friends. The sale raised $16,000 that went toward the creation of studios and the purchase of art materials for nearly a dozen camps. Competitions for soldier-artists were announced around the country, including one sponsored by Life magazine in the spring of 1942. In 1943, the Special Service Division published a booklet titled Interior Design and Soldier Art, which called for greater efforts “to improve interiors of recreational buildings and other places of assembly; to surround military personnel with a cheerful and attractive environment,… and to produce an atmosphere that will be conducive to the development of esprit de corps, a spirit of sacrifice, and a will to win.” Proceeds from the MOMA sale funded the printing of some 25,000 copies of the booklet. It included photographs of murals at various camps and offered designs for decorating service clubs, recreation rooms, and mess halls.

Many of the murals produced under the auspices of the Special Service Division had heroic and patriotic themes At Keesler Field in Biloxi, Mississippi, two such soldier- and focused on the history of the U.S. Army. Soldier-artists artists, Privates Manuel Bromberg and Harry Dix, began at Fort Meade, Maryland, spent six months in 1943 painting spearheading art activities at the camp. Along with other a mural that depicted the Battle of Gettysburg on a wall of a artists, sculptors, and photographers, Bromberg and Dix developed an extensive program to improve the camp’s Opposite: Lew Davis, who organized the art workshop at cultural atmosphere and physical surroundings. One of the Fort Huachuca, Arizona, created a five-panel mural for the earliest and most successful programs was at Fort Custer segregated Mountain View Officers Club titled The Negro in near Battle Creek, Michigan. There, in the early summer of America’s Wars. Four of the panels are shown here.

HOWARD UNIVERSITY GALLERY OF ART (4)

n September 16, 1940, with war seeming inevitable, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Selective and Training Act, instituting the first peacetime draft in U.S. history. The new law required all men age 21 through 35 to register with their local draft boards. Soon, following the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, tens of thousands of young men and women were inducted into the armed forces and sent around the country to train. To house the new recruits, the U.S. government hastily constructed hundreds of new camps from coast to coast, at a total cost of more than $165 million. Camp Adair in Corvallis, Oregon, established in late 1941, for example, was home to some 1,800 buildings, including 500 barracks, a hospital, a bakery, a bank, a post office, 13 post exchange stores, 5 movie theaters, and 11 chapels. More than 100,000 men trained at the 57-acre site. The buildings at Camp Adair and its counterparts around the country were typically drab, mostly wooden structures that offered little in the way of decoration or comfortable surroundings for off-duty hours. The U.S. Army’s Morale Division—and its successor, the Special Service Division—aimed to provide better environments at the camps for the multitude of recruits, many away from their homes for the first time. In addition to devising activities built around reading, sports, photography, music, and other forms of entertainment, the Special Service officers created a variety of art programs— not only to provide classes for those who were interested but also to explore ways to decorate the buildings.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220000-ART-MURALS.indd 86

2/28/22 1:21 PM

HOWARD UNIVERSITY GALLERY OF ART (4)

MHQP-220000-ART-MURALS.indd 87

2/28/22 1:21 PM

XXXXXXXXXX

Other scenes were designed to make soldiers feel at home or provide a calming atmosphere and distraction from the rigors of the training ground. On the walls of a chapel at Fort McClellan, Alabama, Sergeant Robert N. Blair executed a large full-color mural depicting the Sermon on the Mount, while for the dining room of the Officer’s Club at Keesler Field, Corporal Claude Marks painted a mural depicting the harvesting and processing of sugar cane in Louisiana in the mid-1800s. Many recruits were intrigued to watch the artists at work, and on one occasion at Camp Davis, North Carolina, as soldiers formed a huge semicircle while a mural was being painted, one of them exclaimed, “That’s me over there—I’m the fuse cutter.” On another occasion an artilleryman corrected an artist: “That guy ain’t holding that shell right; he’s gonna get his fingers cut off.” Captain John Sackas, of the Office of the Chief of Special Services, felt that soldiers seeing themselves in artwork boosted morale. “Very few soldiers can or care to talk about esthetic subject[s],” he told the camp newspaper. “However, give them something in the way of art that will hold their interest, and they will take more pride in their camp surroundings.”

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

service club. A recreation hall at Keesler Field got a mural of General Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, while at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, Lew Davis painted a fivepanel mural for the Black officers’ club titled The Negro in America’s Wars. (The U.S. military wasn’t desegregated until 1948.) Sergeant Dean Ryerson created a more contemporary scene for the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1943. His massive mural portrayed three helmeted and shirtless young soldiers in partial combat gear, two of them with M-1 carbines hanging from their shoulders; banners above and below are emblazoned with the legends “Duty Honor Country” and “As We Follow the Guidon.” The vast majority of the murals focused on daily life in the army, from the trials of the recruits to KP (kitchen police) duties, early morning route marches, and convoys. Others focused on training and reinforced experiences familiar to the recruits from their daily regimen. A 2,000-square-foot triptych in the service club at Keesler Field, painted by Sergeant Manuel Bromberg, portrayed a color guard, recruits arriving at camp with their duffel bags, and mechanics working on a fighter plane; a striking mural in the recreation hall, painted by Sergeant James Tupper, showed two massive bombers on a runway.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220000-ART-MURALS.indd 88

2/28/22 1:22 PM

ANNE S. K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION, BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Four soldier-artists work on murals at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, in 1942. The murals, typically depicting military or patriotic subjects, were intended to decorate barracks, mess and recreation halls, chapels, and other public spaces.

XXXXXXXXXX

ANNE S. K. BROWN MILITARY COLLECTION, BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Artist Horace Day painted this oil-on-canvas mural, depicting a group of exhausted soldiers drinking beer and unwinding around a jukebox after a day of training, for the music room of a service club at Camp Howze, Texas.

The soldier-art projects attracted considerable public support. Art societies and other organizations, as well as newspapers and magazines, came through with financial contributions, exhibitions, and competitions. Recognizing the importance of art in the nation’s overall war effort, many civilian institutions were eager to showcase the work of the soldier-artists. In 1943, for example, the Abilene Museum of Fine Arts, which was close to Camp Barkeley, Texas, held an exhibition of 12 paintings by Corporal Sam Smith; they were also exhibited at the Texas Federation of Women’s Clubs. Similarly, in 1942, at Raleigh, North Carolina, the State Art Society sponsored a show of pictures by 25 soldier-artists from Fort Bragg. By all available accounts, such events were popular. It is also significant that the military establishment saw soldier-art as a way to of improve morale and contribute to the development of soldiers, and many camp commanders and Special Service Officers helped make the program a success. In April 1943, however, general orders were issued to strip the military machine of all activities not directly contributing to the war effort. Some art projects continued, but by then many of the artists were in Europe or elsewhere. In 1945, many deactivated camps were bulldozed. Recreation halls and service clubs met similar fates over the

coming decades. The soldier-artists had gone their separate ways on returning home after the war and presumably had given little thought to the fate of their artwork. Although few of the murals survived for long after the war, the camp art programs were a remarkable achievement and had far-reaching influence. What was conceived merely as a way to decorate buildings and as a recreational after-hours activity developed into full-blown U.S. Army and Navy–sponsored art programs in more than 50 training camps. Participants ranged from complete amateurs and very young artists to established professionals, and in most cases they received active encouragement from their camp commanders. In addition to the handful of murals intentionally preserved and the several found buried beneath subsequent layers of paint and plaster or in storage, these unique vestiges, along with photographs and descriptions in the press, offer a glimpse of this long-forgotten art from a crucial time in American history. MHQ Peter Harrington is the curator of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection at the Brown University Library in Providence, Rhode Island.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220000-ART-MURALS.indd 89

89 3/3/22 10:38 AM

POETRY

MOCK WARFARE

Ogden Nash was born in 1902 in Rye, New York, and from an early age was fascinated with rhyme. (“I think in terms of rhyme, and have since I was six years old,” Nash would tell an interviewer in 1958.) He entered Harvard University in 1920 only to drop out the following year, and after working for a while in New York City as a bond salesman, he took a job writing copy for streetcar advertising cards. Nash then landed a position as an editor at Doubleday, the publishing house, and began submitting short rhymes to the New Yorker. Harold Ross, the magazine’s editor, liked Nash’s quirky rhyming style so much that he asked for more of his short poems, saying, “They are about the most original stuff we have had lately.” At Ross’s invitation Nash joined the New Yorker’s editorial staff in 1931—the same

year he married Frances Leonard—but stayed for only a few months, as his stock as a poet soared when Simon & Schuster published his first collection of verse, Hard Lines. In 1934 Nash and his family moved to Baltimore. By then he was so well known that he was a frequent guest on popular radio shows, appearing with such celebrities as Don Ameche, Edgar Bergen, Charles Coburn, Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, Ginger Rogers, and Rudy Vallee. (Nash would make the transition to television in the 1950s.) He also traveled extensively, giving lectures at colleges and universities, civic auditoriums, and other venues. Among his most popular poems were a series of short verses about animals that featured the off-kilter rhyming devices that had become his trademark. (Example: “If called by a panther / Don’t anther.”) After the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in 1941, Nash started thinking about volunteering for military service, but he was nearly 40 years old, married, with two daughters, and so nearsighted as to have no hope of passing a vision test without his eyeglasses. Early the next year, hoping to enlist in the U.S. Naval Reserve, he submitted a biography and application of sorts, but the navy never got in touch with him. Meanwhile he had embarked on a lecture tour that would take him from Saint Louis to San Antonio, Texas, and then on to Kansas City, Detroit, and Indianapolis. In 1942 the U.S. Treasury Department asked Nash to help sell war bonds and stamps, which he did through a series of humorous poems that appeared in newspapers all over the United States. Gib Crockett, a cartoonist for the Washington Evening Star, illustrated the little newspaper features, which were branded “G-Nashing the Axis, by Ogden Nash.” Later in the war Nash was asked to appear with other celebrities at war bond rallies around the country. In June 1944, for example, he was the master of ceremonies at a “Book and Authors War Bond Rally” in York, Pennsylvania, that featured such literary luminaries as Edna Ferber, Vincent McHugh, and Roy Carlson. Nash died in Baltimore in 1971. The New York Times observed in an obituary that Nash’s “droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country’s bestknown producer of humorous poetry.” Here are seven of the short verses that Nash wrote for the Treasury Department’s war bond campaign in 1942.

HULTON ARCHIVE (GETTY IMAGES); OPPOSITE: HISTORYNET ARCHIVE

Ogden Nash

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-POETRY-NASH.indd 90

3/2/22 5:39 PM

MHQP-220400-POETRY-NASH.indd 91

3/2/22 5:39 PM

HULTON ARCHIVE (GETTY IMAGES); OPPOSITE: HISTORYNET ARCHIVE

WHEN CAESAR RULED BRITTANIA Julius Caesar lands on the coast of Kent in southern England in 55 bce as his legionaries fight the resisting British warriors.

By Richard Hingley 336 pages. Oxford University Press, 2022. $29.95. Reviewed by Claire Barrett

Julius Caesar is said to have coined the phrase Veni, vidi, vici in reference to his speedy victory over Pharnaces II of Pontus at the Battle of Zela in 47 bce. In the case of Britain in 55 bce, however, Caesar merely veni, vidi. In his latest work, Conquering the Ocean: The Roman Invasion of Britain, Richard Hingley, a professor of Roman archaeology at Durham University, explores what the Romans have ever done for us (to paraphrase Monty Python) and why Caesar came to Britain but did not conquer it. Diving into the narrative of the Roman conquest of Britain, Hingley relies on fresh archaeological research,

which, he writes, supports a nuanced perspective of the Roman Empire’s two invasions of Britain and provides new insights into the invading forces and the people who resisted their rule. For centuries, Caesar was thought to have viewed Britons as bellicose “barbarians.” That remained the predominant view until the 1960s, when archaeological discoveries contradicted this longstanding belief. More-recent archaeological research, Hingley writes, buttresses the new interpretation. Contemporary archaeological excavations are helping historians better understand both the chronology and the strategy of the Roman conquest, Hingley writes, while the newly revealed strongholds of the Late Iron Age and the towns of early Roman Britain, challenge the common assumptions derived from classical texts. Caesar originally pitched the invasion as practical, pointing out to his generals that his enemies had received reinforcements from Britain in almost all the wars he had fought in Gaul. In truth, however, Caesar’s motivations largely boiled down to one thing: vanity.

WELLCOME COLLECTION, LONDON

REVIEWS

Conquering the Ocean: The Roman Invasion of Britain

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-REVIEWS.indd 92

3/3/22 1:13 PM

! t u O t i k c e Ch

THIS WEEK IN

HISTORY

AN ORIGINAL VIDEO SERIES

Join hosts Claire and Alex as they explore—week by week— the people and events that have shaped the world we live in.

JOIN T O D AY ! T H E

WELLCOME COLLECTION, LONDON

LINCOLN FORUM

What began as a modest proposal to bring Lincoln enthusiasts together for a small East Coast-based yearly history conference at Gettysburg has blossomed into one of the leading history organizations in the country.

HISTORYNET.COM

Our yearly November symposium is attended by scholars and enthusiasts from all over the nation and abroad. It attracts speakers and panelists who are some of the most revered historians in the Lincoln and Civil War fields. Visit our website:

thelincolnforum.org for more information

MHQP-220400-REVIEWS.indd 93

9/16/21 11:20 AM

CWTP-LINCOLN AD-nov21.indd 4

3/3/22 1:14 PM

REVIEWS Caesar so wanted to emulate, and perhaps surpass, the legacy of Alexander the Great, who was the first to expand the known borders of the ancient world with his forays in India, which began in 327 bce. Alexander the Great himself was echoing the travels of the mythical Heracles, the son of Zeus, who some believe traversed the Atlantic Ocean through the Strait of Gibraltar. Heracles, however, did not reach the islands of Britain. Caesar wanted to be the first. “Caesar intended to supplement Roman knowledge by obtaining information about the island and its people and by forcing their leaders to submit to him,” Hingley writes. The potential for plunder drove his avarice. The Romans, Hingley notes, inherited their worship of the seas from the Greeks, and they believed that the waters surrounding the inhabited world were endless. The faraway isles of Britain were too great a temptation to ignore. “The island was of incredible size, and the subject of great dispute among many writers, some of whom averred that its name and story had been fabricated, since it had never existed and did not then exist,” the Greek-Roman historian Plutarch observed in his Life of Caesar. “In his attempt to seize [Britain], Caesar carried Roman supremacy beyond the inhabited world.” From the first failed invasion in 55–54 bce to the second successful one and to the maintaining of order through Hadrian’s Wall, Britain slipped in and out of Roman control until the Romans were finally forced out in 410 ce. While Hingley’s writing can at times can feel academic, even stilted, Conquering the Ocean is an ambitious road map to that foundational and chaotic period of history. Claire Barrett is MHQ’s digital editor.

From MHQ Contributors ARMIES OF THE IRAN–IRAQ WAR, 1980–1988, by Chris McNab (Osprey Publishing, $20.) The author examines the little-known war that would become the largest conventional conflict of the period, fought along the border in a series of battles that often degenerated into attritional struggles reminiscent of World War I. THE FOUNDERS’ FORTUNES: How Money Shaped the Birth of America, by Willard Sterne Randall (Dutton, $29.) An ambitious and engaging look into the private financial affairs of the founders, illuminating how they waged war, crafted a constitution, and forged a new nation, influenced in part by their own financial interests. THE WAR THAT MADE THE ROMAN EMPIRE: Antony, Cleopatra, and Octavian at Actium, by Barry Strauss (Simon & Schuster, $30.) A gripping account of the littleknown campaign that culminated, in 31 bce, in one of the largest naval battles of the ancient world.

New & Noteworthy THE GREAT WAR AND THE BIRTH OF MODERN MEDICINE, by Thomas Helling, MD. (Pegasus Books, $32.) An authoritative account of how cases of gas gangrene, hemorrhagic shock, poisoning, brain trauma, influenza, and even “shell shock” on the battlefields of the Western Front spurred medical innovations that would last far beyond the armistice of 1918. AGAINST ALL ODDS: A True Story of Ultimate Courage and Survival in World War II, by Alex Kershaw. (Dutton Caliber, $30.) A best-selling author retraces the steps of four of the most decorated soldiers of World

War II, from the beaches of French Morocco to Adolf Hitler’s mountaintop retreat. THE ROAD TO DIEN BIEN PHU: A History of the First War for Vietnam, by Christopher Goscha. (Princeton University Press, $35.) A leading historian of the Vietnam War examines how, in the First Indochina War, Ho Chi Minh turned a ragtag guerrilla army into a fighting force capable of bringing down the formidable French army—and how that foreshadowed the U.S. experience there many years later. TO THE UTTERMOST ENDS OF THE EARTH: The Epic Hunt for the South’s Most Feared Ship—and the Greatest Sea Battle of the Civil War, by Phil Keith and Tom Clavin. (Hanover Square Press, $29.99.) The story of the 14-month chase that ended off the coast of France in a spectacular battle that pitted the Union warship Kearsarge against the Confederate raider Alabama. THE FACEMAKER: A Visionary Surgeon’s Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I, by Lindsey Fitzharris. (Farrar Straus & Giroux, $30.) The amazing—and inspiring—story of British physician Harold Gillies, who, on being thrust into “the brutal hothouse of frontline surgery,” established one of the world’s first hospitals dedicated entirely to facial reconstruction. FIRE & STEEL: The End of World War Two in the West, by Peter Caddick-Adams. (Oxford University Press, $34.95.) In the concluding volume of his trilogy, the author traces the final days of World War II, beginning in late January 1945 and continuing through May 8, 1945, when the German High Command surrendered unconditionally to all Allied forces.

MHQ Spring 2022

MHQP-220400-REVIEWS.indd 94

3/3/22 1:14 PM

THE M SERIES PATTON TANKS ARE NAMED FOR GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON. WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING GENERALS NEVER HAD A TANK NAMED IN HIS HONOR? John J. Pershing, Jeb Stuart, Walton Walker,

MHQP-220400-001 Tupelo Tourism .indd 1

2/14/22 3:39 PM

Adna R. Chafee Jr., or Stonewall Jackson?

For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/MAGAZINES/QUIZ HISTORYNET.com ANSWER: STONEWALL JACKSON. THE M46 PATTON WAS ONE OF THE U.S ARMY’S PRINCIPAL MEDIUM TANKS OF THE EARLY COLD WAR, WITH MODELS IN SERVICE FROM 1949 UNTIL THE MID-1950s.

MHQP-220400-REVIEWS.indd 95

3/3/22 1:14 PM

PROPAGANDA IN SPADES

In 1942 the U.S. government brought Mexican artist Antonio Arias Bernal, an accomplished caricaturist known as “The Brigadier,” to Washington, D.C., to turn out editorial cartoons in support of the Allied war effort—among them a “deck” of 56 prints, in the style of playing cards, many of which subjected Axis leaders to his trademark savage ridicule. (Four are shown here.)

FROM TOP: HERITAGE AUCTIONS; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS (3)

DRAWN & QUARTERED

96 MHQP-220400-DNQ-CARDS.indd 96

2/28/22 1:24 PM

Supporting Hospitalized Veterans & Deployed Troops Since 2006 Alicia, Army Veteran

Gina Elise’s

PIN-UPS FOR VETS

Pin-Ups For Vets raises funds to better the lives and boost morale for the entire military community! When you make a purchase at our online store or make a donation, you’ll contribute to Veterans’ healthcare, helping provide VA hospitals across the U.S. with funds for medical equipment and programs. We support volunteerism at VA hospitals, including personal bedside visits to deliver gifts, and we provide makeovers and new clothing for military wives and female Veterans. All that plus we send care packages to our deployed troops.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

PINUPSFORVETS-nocal.indd 22

visit: pinupsforvets.com

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHH

8/5/21 7:02 AM

MHQP-220400-002 US Precious Metals.indd 1

2/23/22 8:05 PM