MHQ Spring 2023

Rise of an Irish Special Forces Hero

Stonewall Jackson’s Dangerous Escape

HIROO ONODA

Hiding in the Philippines for 29 years, Japan’s famed WWII holdout left a trail of death

TODAY IN HISTORY

AUGUST 26, 1814

BROOKEVILLE, MARYLAND, BECOMES

“U.S. CAPITAL FOR A DAY” WHEN PRESIDENT JAMES MADISON TAKES REFUGE THERE.

EARLIER THAT WEEK, BRITISH TROOPS

HAD SET FIRE TO WASHINGTON, INCLUDING THE WHITE HOUSE AND CAPITOL BUILDING. MADISON FLED THE CITY, ALONG WITH MEMBERS OF HIS CABINET, AND SPENT THE NIGHT OF THE 26TH AT THE HOME OF BROOKEVILLE POSTMASTER CALEB BENTLEY. THE TOWN STILL CELEBRATES THE EVENT EACH YEAR.

For more, visit HISTORYNET.COM/TODAY-IN-HISTORY

OPENING ROUND

The history of bullets predates firearms by thousands of years. Bullets of many materials, even including lead, were used throughout the ancient and classical worlds by highly trained, deadly soldiers. Although the term conjures up images of suburban pranksters today, back then the “sling” was among the most feared weapons.

A sling would generally be as simple as two lengths of cord attached to a leather ammunition pouch. Slingers held both cords and spun the sling in a circle, generating centrifugal force, before letting one cord go with precise timing, sending the sling bullet flying. Different lengths of cord or release times could produce different speeds and ranges, and early slings are recorded as firing faster and farther than bows of the time. The current Guinness World Record for firing a sling bullet sits at 477 meters (about 1,565 feet), a distance reported as common by classical writers. The famed Welsh longbow, on the other hand, rarely exceeded 400 meters.

The earliest written description of the use of a sling as a weapon is the famous fight between David and Goliath in the Book of Judges. Goliath, described as a giant armored warrior, was challenged by David, a young Israelite shepherd. The sling was a common weapon used by shepherds to scare off predators, owing to its simple construction. The young David fired a single stone that struck Goliath’s forehead, killing him instantly.

Though David’s underdog victory is treated as unlikely by modern audiences, maybe we give the slinger too little credit. According to the fourth century bce Roman writer Vegetius, “Soldiers, despite their defensive armor, are often more aggravated by the round stones from the sling than by all the arrows of the enemy. Stones kill without mangling the body, and the contusion is mortal without loss of blood.”

The value of slingers is evident in the craftsmanship of lead bullets like this one, produced in Athens some time after 400 bce. One side bears the image of a winged thunderbolt, while the other features the Greek word “Dexai,” or “Catch!” Taunting messages like this were not uncommon on ammunition—a tradition soldiers across the world have kept alive ever since.

A bronze copy of the ancient Roman sculpture known as the Winged Victory of Brescia stands atop a World War I ossuary in the Passo del Tonale of Italy’s Rhaetian Alps. This is one of many remarkable scenes captured by photographer Attila SzalayBerzeviczy for his two-volume book series, “In The Centennial Footsteps of the Great War,” showcased by MHQ

FEATURES

34 Hero Soldier or Serial Killer?

by Zita Ballinger Fletcher

A documentary filmmaker on the trail of Japan’s most famous World War II holdout details his killing of civilians.

44 Peril at Port Republic

by Rick Britton

How a Union cavalry force separated Stonewall Jackson from his staff and gave him quite the run for his money.

52 Special Air Service’s ‘Irish Lion’

by Gavin Mortimer

He was a middle-class Irishman. His commander was an aristocrat. Only one of them would rise to greatness as a leader of World War II Special Forces in combat.

62 Retracing World War I

PORTFOLIO Photographer and adventurer Attila Szalay-Berzeviczy takes readers on a haunting visual world tour of World War I.

70 Challenging Poseidon

by Justin D. Lyons

The sea had long protected the city of Tyre from invading forces. But Alexander the Great had other plans.

78 Korea’s Game of Thrones

by M.G. Haynes

Three rival kingdoms on the Korean peninsula struggled for power in a high-stakes chess game of battle and wars.

DEPARTMENTS

6 Flashback

12 Comments

15 At the Front

16 Laws of War

Japan’s Enemy Airmen’s Act

19 Battle Schemes

World War I in the Alps

20 Experience

Between suicide and capture

24 Behind the Lines

Ancient Persia’s roads of war

26 War List

History’s least violent conflicts

31 Weapons Check

The Uzi submachine gun

32 Letter From MHQ

85 Culture of War

86 Classic Dispatches

Rome’s revenge on the Rhine

90 War Stories

First Jewish American MOH

94 Reviews

Caesar’s civil war

96 Faces of War

U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Elwin Miller

On the Cover

Hiroo Onoda, deployed to the Philippines as a soldier in the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, hid in the jungles of Lubang Island from 1945 until 1974. His story of “no surrender” made him a hero in Japan and something of a pop culture icon. But many Filipino civilians lost their lives at Onoda’s hands.

a light on these brutal killings.

COVER: TORU KAWASHIMA/YOMIMURI SHIMBUN (ASSOCIATED PRESS); CHANSOM PANTIP (ISTOCK.COM); PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BRIAN WALKER

Filmmaker Mia Stewart sheds

CROMWELL MUSEUM, HUNTINGDON

THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR BEGINS, AUGUST 1642

Parliamentarians and Royalists clash in England’s bloody Civil War which would see the rise to power of Oliver Cromwell and the infamous beheading of King Charles I. TODAY: Archaeologists excavating a site in Warwickshire, England in 2023 near the Civil War’s first battle site discover a bullet-riddled gatehouse and evidence suggesting a previously unknown Civil War skirmish.

FLASHBACK

ZULU VICTORY AT ISANDLWANA, JANUARY 1879

British forces are soundly defeated by a force of about 20,000 Zulu warriors led by King Cetshwayo at Isandlwana during the first battle of the Anglo-Zulu War. TODAY: Thousands of members of the Zulu nation recreate the events of the battle in South Africa alongside British reenactors in a commemoration of the historic victory anniversary, with the current Zulu king among guests.

THE EINSATZGRUPPEN TRIALS, 1947-48

Benjamin Ferencz, left, Chief Prosecutor for the United States, presents evidence against Nazi war criminals of the SS Einsatzgruppen mobile death squads during their war crimes trial in Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice. TODAY: After a long career pursuing human rights and criminal justice, Ferencz, the last surviving Nuremberg Trials prosecutor, is awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in January 2023 at age 102.

COMMENTS SPIES, MINES AND GUERRILLA WARFARE

Grant, so I was inspired to read more about him. Mosby seems politically complicated. He claims to have hated slavery, but owned a slave? He felt it was his duty to fight for the south, but he always believed the war was about slavery? His men executed captured Union soldiers, but only in retaliation? I wonder if Mosby was truly so principled during his guerrilla operations, or if former Confederates only grew a conscience after the war ended.

Lars Ostbrook, Bethesda, Md.

Animal War Heroes

I loved learning about animals in war (“Animal Healers,” Winter 2023 issue) and seeing their pictures. They are heroes too. I also liked reading the Letter from MHQ about war’s effect on nature. War is so destructive and can make people, plants and animals suffer for generations. The stories are very dynamic and bring up so many different facets of war. Kudos to the new editor!

B.J. Collins, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Getting Smart-er?

Gray Ghost’s Gray Morals

I lived in Northern Virginia for a good while, where a lot is named after Colonel John Mosby, but I thought of him as purely a southern bandit. In “To Catch the Gray Ghost” in the Winter 2023 issue, I was surprised to learn that after the war, Mosby became a Republican, and campaign manager for General

ASK MHQ

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Something about military history you’ve always wanted to know?

Send your comments and questions to

mhq@historynet.com

I enjoyed the crazy gadgets in the Winter 2023 article “Devices of Deception.” It reminded me of the 1960s TV show Get Smart. I feel like TV and movies make us nostalgic for the low point of spying—Cold War espionage sure was secret, but it was just as often clumsy, ineffective, or wrong-headed on both sides. For real behind-the-lines heroes, with useful gadgets and techniques, look no further than the OSS or SOE of WWII. Then again, it’s not like clumsy Cold War spy work ever stopped. Just look at Russia’s bold-faced assassinations, or China’s weirdo balloon. Who knows what kind of hare-brained spy work is going on right now that we don’t know about?

Garth Morley, Chattanooga, Tenn.

Spain’s Coup de Grâce

What actually started the Spanish-American War? What were the reasoning and objectives behind it?

Geoffrey A. Walker, Worcester, Mass.

By 1825 the once-intercontinental empire of Spain had declined to the point that its mainland colonies had achieved independence, leaving it only strategic island possessions, including the Philippine, Mariana, Caroline and Marshall islands, Puerto Rico and Cuba. By the 1890s independence movements were challenging Spanish rule in the Philippines and Cuba. Concurrently, the United States had

achieved its self-proclaimed “Manifest Destiny” by expanding its borders from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean—and faced the question of whether or not it should extend its sphere of influence beyond the Western Hemisphere. As the country’s trade expanded, the perceived threat from growing rival powers such as Germany or Japan made control of naval coaling stations increasingly desirable.

In February 1895 a guerrilla war for independence broke out in Cuba, to which the Spanish commander, Gen. Valeriano Weyler y Nicolau, responded with a mass population “reconcentration” and other draconian measures that raised worldwide revulsion (although the British would soon be using

Col. John Mosby

concentration camps of their own on the South African Boers). Widespread American sympathy for the Cuban cause was intensified by the media—essentially Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst trying to outsell each other—although the presidency of William McKinley represented a widespread sentiment toward avoiding war with Spain. More on the material side was the 50 million dollar investment that American companies had in Cuba’s sugar crop.

This political standoff was dealt a decisive blow when the U.S. Navy battleship Maine visited Havana Harbor and blew up on the night of Feb. 15, 1898. The cause remains in dispute, but on March 28 a U.S. Navy court of inquiry declared it the result of an underwater mine exploding from outside and setting off Maine’s magazine. Over the following weeks, “Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain,” typified the popular mantra. On April 21 McKinley ordered a naval blockade around Cuba and on the 25th Congress declared war on Spain. Its ultimate outcome would be a coup de grâce to Spain as a global power and a turning point in the United States’ evolution into one, as it came away with control over Cuba and possession of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. To that would be added Hawaii, which the United States annexed on July 7 of that same year.

To Win The Battles But Lose The War

How often have there been conflicts like Vietnam and Afghanistan, in which one side won virtually all the battles, but ended up losing the war?

James Conway, Bedford, Pa.

More often than you may realize. As long as there have been armies there has been a difference between a tactical victory, taking an immediate objective, and a strategic victory, which involves achieving the war’s ultimate goal.

An ancient classic is Cannae, Hannibal Barca’s tactical masterpiece, on Aug. 2, 216 bce. His double envelopment and annihilation of 48,500 Romans, as well as 19,300 captured, against 5,700 Carthaginians killed, is still studied today. Yet it failed in its most important strategic mission. Although shaken, Rome refused to discuss peace and simply scraped together another army—making it clear to other kingdoms on the Italian peninsula that allying with Carthage would still be a bad

idea. Eventually the Romans found a general capable of matching Hannibal. Publius Cornelius Scipio brought them victory at Zama on Oct. 19, 202 bce

A more recent and bizarre example would be the invasion of British North America by the Irish Brotherhood, or Fenians, with the objective of seizing the Niagara Peninsula to be ransomed back for an independent Irish republic. The only real battle, at Ridgeway in 1866, was handily won by the invaders, most of whom were seasoned Civil War veterans facing inadequately trained Canadian militia. They still ended up having to withdraw from their untenable position—to be arrested by U.S. authorities for violating the Neutrality Laws.

Arguably the most forgotten comparison of strategy and tactics hides amid the American War for Independence. Gen. George Washington and his Continental Army lost most of their battles and only won four outright (Boston, Trenton, Princeton and Yorktown), but they were the right ones at the right time. The ultimate outcome showed that Washington, learning from experience as he went, had evolved into a superb grand strategist. The same could be said of the disciple he detached to retake control of the south, Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene, who also lost most of his battles but who, like Washington, did not defeat his enemy so much as wear him down. Or as Greene himself said in an analysis that the North Vietnamese Army or the Taliban might have recognized: “We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again.”

Jon Guttman is MHQ’s Senior Editor.

Gen. George Washington and his Continental Army lost most battles, but only had to win the right ones at the right time to beat the British.

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PROUDLY MADE IN THE USA

SPRING 2023 VOL. 35, NO.3

AT THE FRONT

LAWS OF WAR 16

BATTLE SCHEMES 19

EXPERIENCE 20 BEHIND THE LINES 24

WAR LIST 26 WEAPONS CHECK 31

DRIVEN OUT OF AFRICA

American soldiers look at the looming wreck of a Messerschmitt 323 at Tunisia’s El Aouina airport circa June 1943. The Germans hoped the six-engine transport plane, designed to carry 140 troops, could help reinforce their strength in North Africa, but Allied troops crushed the remnants of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s once-proud army. The year 2023 marks the 80th anniversary of key final battles in World War II North Africa.

LAWS OF WAR NO JUSTICE FOR AIRMEN

How the Japanese Enemy Airmen’s Act led to horrific war crimes.

By John A. Haymond

In spring 1942, Japan’s military was the virtual master of its area of operations. It had overrun most of Southeast Asia and a huge swathe of the western Pacific with startling speed after Dec. 7, 1941, and the campaigns in mainland China seemed well in hand. The Dutch and French colonial territories had fallen to the Japanese, as had the British territories of Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong, and besieged United States forces in the Philippines were on the verge of defeat. The Empire of Japan was ascendant. The imperial government assured its people that Japan’s Home Islands were safe from retaliatory attacks by any of the Allied powers.

That assurance was shattered at noon on April 18, 1942 when 16 B-25B Mitchell bombers, launched from the US Navy aircraft carrier Hornet, roared in over the island of Honshu, vectoring in from different points of the compass. It was a hit-and-run attack. After dropping their bomb loads on Tokyo and five other cities, the American aircraft made for the Chinese mainland, where all but one ditched or crash-landed.

In terms of battle damage assessment, the Doolittle Raid did not accomplish much physical damage to high-value military targets, but the psychological effects of the mission were tremendous. It provided a major boost to American morale, both in the military and on the home front, and it shocked the Japanese out of their illusions of invulnerability. The attack also provoked two Japanese reactions of far-reaching consequences that resulted in the deaths of thousands of people, most of whom had nothing to do with the raid.

A month after Doolittle’s strike, the Japanese army launched the Zhejiang–Jiangxi Campaign, a reprisal operation against Chinese who had assisted Doolittle’s aircrews. The campaign also sought to deny Allied access to China’s eastern provinces, either as a launching point or escape route. Japanese forces killed more than 10,000 Chinese civilians in direct retaliation for the air raid on the home island. In the four months of the punitive operation (May–September 1942) as many as 250,000 civilians were slaughtered.

While that death toll mounted, the Japanese government drafted official policies specifically aimed at Allied aircrews who carried out aerial attacks against Japanese targets—past, present, or future. In July 1942, the War Ministry issued Military Secret Order 2190, which stated: “An enemy warplane crew who did not violate wartime international law, shall be treated as prisoners of war, and one who acted against the said law shall be punished as a wartime capital crime.” The wording of that directive seemed straightforward enough, citing international laws of war as the determiner of what was lawful conduct and what was criminal. However, it quickly became clear that the Japanese applied a questionable interpretation on what constituted “criminal” conduct by enemy aviators.

On Aug. 13, 1942, Gen. Shunroku Hata, the Supreme Commander of the Japanese Forces in China, issued Military Order No. 4, an edict that later became infamous as the Enemy Airmen’s Act. The four sections of the order specified that “bombing, strafing, and otherwise attacking” civilians, private properties, or non-military targets was a crime punishable by death. While the language of the order seemingly allowed for contingencies, allowing for cases where “such an act is unavoidable” (as extant international laws of war had already determined), the Japanese chose to interpret every attack against targets in their sphere as criminal instead of as acts of legitimate warfare. The Enemy Airmen’s Act was also an ex post facto order since it stated, “This military law shall be applicable to all acts committed prior to the date of its approval.” That provision was specifically aimed at the American airmen who had flown in the Doolittle Raid.

Eight of Doolittle’s aviators fell into Japanese hands in China. They were tried by a Japanese military tribunal in a cursory trial where they were all sentenced to death, even before Military Secret Order 2190 was issued. When the Assistant Chief of Staff of Imperial Army Headquarters sent Order 2190 to Japanese forces in China, he amended a memorandum which stated, “concerning the disposition of the captured enemy airmen, request that action be deferred… pending proclamation of the military law and its official announcement, and the scheduling of the date of execution of the American airmen.” The condemned aviators were moved to Tokyo. The sentences of five were commuted to life imprisonment. The other three men—1st Lt. Dean Hallmark, 1st Lt. William Farrow, and Sgt. Harold

The law would be applied “to all acts committed prior” to its approval date.

Spatz—were executed on Oct. 15, 1942. The U.S. government knew about the executions during the war, but U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt suppressed the information. The Allies initiated a postwar investigation for a war crimes prosecution against the Japanese officers who conducted the trial of the Doolittle aviators.

The Enemy Airmen’s Act was the template for subsequent edicts that the Japanese enacted against captured Allied aircrews, especially as American air raids against the Home Islands escalated in intensity and destructiveness. Between 1944 and the signing of Japan’s surrender on Sept. 2, 1945, as many as 132 Allied airmen were convicted by the Japanese in summary courts-martial, condemned to death as criminals and executed. At Fukuoka, 15 captured airmen were executed after Emperor Hirohito’s announcement of impending surrender. This was the culmination of a practice repeated throughout the war, as the Japanese subjected captured Allied airmen to interrogations that used torture to extract confessions (usually written in Japanese without

English translation), summary trials, and execution by firing squad or beheading. Yet even that perfunctory process was not enough for some senior Japanese officials. Near the end of the war, the Commandant of the Military Police in Japan wrote an official memorandum to his subordinate commanders complaining that those field expedient trials, hasty as they were, unnecessarily delayed the executions of enemy airmen prisoners. As a direct result of that complaint, at least 90 American aviators were executed in the last weeks of the war.

After the war, Allied war crimes tribunals targeted Japanese personnel involved in the deaths of captured aviators. Senior military officers under whose authority the trials and executions of airmen were conducted were obvious targets for prosecution, but so too were rank-and-file Japanese soldiers personally implicated in the abuse and murder of prisoners of war. Tsuchiya Tatsuo, a prison camp guard, was tried as a Class A war criminal and charged with eight specifications of torture and cruelty to prisoners. In particular Tsuchiya was accused of the prolonged tor-

From top: The USS Hornet launches B-25B bombers for the first U.S. air raid on the Japanese Home Islands on April 18, 1942; Lt. Col. James Doolittle and members of his crew stand with Chinese officials following the April 18 raid; Gen. Shunroku Hata, Supreme Commander of the Japanese Forces in China, issued Military Order No. 4 that became known as the Enemy Airmen’s Act; U.S. Army Air Force Lt. Robert Hite is led away blindfolded in Japanese military custody.

ENEMY AIRMEN’S ACT

airmen captured within the jurisdiction of the Japanese 10th Area Army. The Formosa Military Law declared that “the severest punishment” would be applied to enemy airmen who bombed or strafed objectives of a non-military nature, who “disregarded human rights and carried out inhuman acts,” or who entered 10th Area Army’s jurisdiction with any intent of committing such acts. All 14 trials were completed in a single day. No defense was allowed. The defendants were not permitted to speak on their own behalf. Afterwards the 14 airmen were shot and buried in a ditch on the morning of June 19, 1945.

Isayama’s defense counsel (an American jurist) argued that because senior officials in Tokyo had approved the use of death penalty in the summary trials of the 14 American POWs, Isayama’s tribunal had no choice but to sentence the airmen to death. Isayama himself, his attorney insisted, was required to order capital sentences to be carried out. The American Military Commission found the argument unconvincing. Isayama and his co-defendants were all found guilty. The Chief of the Japanese Judicial Division and the military intelligence officer who oversaw the interrogations and torture of the POWs were both sentenced to death. Both sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment. Isayama and the others received prison sentences ranging from 20 years to life.

Mitsubishi G3M2s of the Imperial Japanese Navy fly over Chongqing, China in early 1940. Over 10,000 Chinese civilians there were killed amid 268 Japanese air raids.

ture of a prisoner named Robert Gorden Teas. Eight witnesses swore out affidavits detailing how Tsuchiya beat Teas to death over a period of five days. In December 1945, Tsuchiya was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment at hard labor.

In July 1946 a US Military Commission tried Lt. Gen. Harukei Isayama, former commander of the Japanese Formosan Army, along with seven of his subordinates. The charge against Isayama was that he “did permit, authorize and direct an illegal, unfair, unwarranted and false trial” of American prisoners of war, and that he then ordered a Japanese Military Tribunal to sentence those prisoners to death and ordered the carrying out of the executions. The American court charged Isayama for war crimes involving 14 American aviators shot down and captured between Oct. 12, 1944, and Feb. 27, 1945. The earlier date was critical, because that was when the Japanese had implemented the Formosa Military Law—an edict repeating the dictates of the Enemy Airmen’s Act but applying specifically to all

Aside from the fact that the Japanese treatment of enemy airmen was a clear violation of extant international military law, it was also a colossal hypocrisy. Beginning in 1937 with the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the Japanese military had repeatedly targeted Chinese cities with the deliberate intent of terrorizing and murdering the Chinese population. From August to December 1937, Japanese bombing raids hammered Nanjing, targeting power plants, water works, and even the city’s Central Hospital. Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chongqing were bombed numerous times. In Chongqing alone, more than 10,000 Chinese civilians were killed in at least 268 separate Japanese air raids. In a direct connection to the Doolittle Raid, the Japanese flew 1,131 bombing attacks against Chuchow— Doolittle’s intended destination—killing 10,246 people in that city alone.

In the Second World War, every major power conducted aerial attacks on its enemy’s civilian population. No nation could claim complete innocence of that. However, the Japanese implementation of the Enemy Airmen’s Act was war crime compounded upon war crime. 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).

BATTLE SCHEMES COMBAT ZONE IN THE ALPS

When Italy entered World War I in 1915, Italian Army Chief of Staff Luigi Cadorna set his sights on a 400-mile line down the Isonzo River from northeastern Italy to present-day Slovenia, offering options of either seizing the port of Trieste or threatening Vienna. Mountains, ridges and rivers favored the defense. The first offensive proved only one of 12 battles of the Isonzo, which added up to a bloodbath on a par with Verdun and the Somme. Although the Italians slowly gained ground over the next two years (with 950,180 Italian and 520,532 Austro-Hungarian casualties) it was all swept away when the AustroHungarians, with a contingent of Germans, counterattacked in the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo (Oct. 24 to Nov. 19, 1917), also known to posterity as the Battle of Caporetto. MHQ

EXPERIENCE DECISION TO SURRENDER

Reluctant Japanese soldier Shohei Ooka tried and failed to commit suicide before giving himself up to American troops in the Philippines.

By Shohei Ooka

Shohei Ooka was drafted into the Imperial Japanese army shortly after New Year’s Day in 1944. The 35-year-old Ooka was an unlikely soldier. A professional literary critic fluent in French and English, he loved European culture and considered himself a disciple of French philosopher Stendhal, famed for his romanticism and liberal principles. A husband and father of two young children, Ooka resented being drafted to fight in the war. Scribbling a caption on a February 1944 photo of himself in uniform, Ooka wrote: “Second Class Private—and not very happy about it. I must try to keep my hatred for the military from turning into a hatred for humankind.”

After reporting to a depot in Tokyo and receiving several weeks of poor training, he was packed off with a newly formed infantry battalion to the Philippines to help stave off the impending American landing on Mindoro. Two U.S. regimental combat teams landed there on Dec. 15, 1944 to pave the way for an assault on Luzon, facing less than 1,000 Japanese troops effectively abandoned by Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita. Wandering in the jungle, the Japanese prowled for food and succumbed to malaria as they sought to hide from American forces. Ooka and his comrades camped in the mountains for 40 days “until an attack by American forces on January 24 sent us scattering in every direction,” he wrote.

Driven to the edge of his sanity, Ooka attempted to hide in the jungles but was captured on Jan. 25, 1945. He spent the duration of the war in an American POW camp on Leyte. Repatriated to Japan at the end of 1945, Ooka became a writer and worked as a lecturer on French literature at Tokyo’s Meiji University. Ooka was haunted for the rest of his life by the war, which he documented in his autobiographical 1948 book Taken Captive. His 1951 war novel Fires on the Plain, based on his and other POWs’ gruesome experiences, was later adapted into an award-winning 1959 film.

The following excerpt is Ooka’s account of his failed suicide attempts and capture by American forces from an

English edition of Taken Captive, translated and edited by Wayne P. Lammers. Recurring themes in the book are Ooka’s feelings of guilt about comrades who died, his failure to understand his own behavior in brutal circumstances and his decision to stop fighting. The book opens with a quote from Tannisho, a 13th century Japanese Buddhist treatise, which reads: “It is not from goodness of heart that you do not kill.”

My life today owes itself to the accident that the hand grenade I carried was a dud. Of course, since they say that 60 percent of the hand grenades issued to Japanese troops in the Pacific were duds, my good fortune cannot be considered an especially rare stroke of luck.

The relative ease with which I was able to cross over the line that should have marked the end of my life probably owed to my physical infirmity at the time.

In my mind I tried to picture the faces of all those I had loved, but I could not bring any of their images into focus with the clarity of a picture. Feeling a little sorry for them as they milled vaguely about in the depths of my consciousness, I smiled, said, “So long,” and struck the head of the fuze against a nearby rock. The fuze assembly flew off, but the grenade failed to explode.

I examined the grenade minus its fuze. A hole ran down from the middle of the grenade from its now exposed top, and at the bottom of this hole was a small round protuberance—obviously the detonator. I looked at it and shuddered. This was the only time during my day and night alone in the woods that I consciously experienced genuine terror.

I gathered up the pieces of the fuze assembly and put them back together. The slender rod that fit down into the hole appeared too short to reach the detonator inside. I struck the assembly against the rock again, but the grenade remained intact.

I had to smile. The irony of fate that refused to grant me even a quick and easy death seemed funny to me somehow. Everything that had befallen me in the last twenty-four hours had been altogether one great irony. I clicked my tongue in irritation and hurled the grenade deep in the forest…

I next attempted to kill myself with my rifle. Sitting up, I removed my right boot and then held the barrel to my

Driven to the edge of his sanity, Ooka tried to hide in the jungles but was captured.

forehead with both hands as I tried to push the trigger with my big toe. (I had learned this arrangement from the veterans during basic training in Japan.) To my chagrin, I immediately lost my balance and rolled over onto my side. I’m sure to botch it up this way, I thought. Recalling a story I had read about a man who shot himself twice in the mouth but succeeded only in blowing away his cheek, I decided it would be wiser to wait until my fever subsided at least a little.

In this case, too, if I had been more determined, I would surely have thought to push the trigger with a stick…Instead, I behaved like a man who only halfheartedly wished to kill himself. At the same time, I must ultimately consider myself fortunate that the rifle barrel in my hands moved away from my forehead when I lost my balance and fell over, thus preventing me from realizing that I could in fact shoot myself in that position.

I laid the rifle down beside me. Instead of putting my right boot back on, I took off my left boot as well and lay down again. I seem to remember the sun having climbed quite high into the sky by this time. I had apparently been contemplating and going through the motions of my suicide in an extremely dilatory fashion. My thirst must have remained, but I have no recollection of it.

I do not know whether I dozed off or passed out, but the next thing I remember is gradually becoming aware

of a blunt object striking my body over and over. Just as I realized it was a boot kicking me in the side, I felt my arm being grabbed roughly, and I returned to full consciousness.

One GI had hold of my right arm, and another had his rifle pointed at me, nearly touching me. “Don’t move. We’re taking you prisoner,” the one with the rifle said.

I stared at him and he stared at me. A moment passed. I saw that he understood I had no intention of resisting.

Later, at the POW camps, the Americans often asked me: “Did you give yourself up, or were you taken prisoner?” No doubt they wanted to see if it was true that we Japanese would kill ourselves rather than give ourselves up.

I made a point of answering proudly, “I was taken prisoner.”

“Do you think we killed our prisoners?” they asked next.

“I’m not fool enough to believe that kind of propaganda,” I answered.

“Then why didn’t you give yourself up?”

“It’s a question of honor. I have nothing against surrendering as such, but my own sense of pride would not let me submit voluntarily to the enemy.”

Now that I am no longer a prisoner trying desperately to hold onto my self-respect, I can take a different view of the event. Since I gave up all resistance quite willingly

Japanese prisoners in the Philippines receive a meal. Because he was fluent in English, Ooka was frequently in demand as a translator. This duty took a toll on him and left him unwilling to speak English for years after the war was over.

when faced with that rifle, I can admit that I did, after all, give myself up. The difference between surrendering to the enemy with a white flag raised and casting down one’s arms when surrounded is merely a matter of degree.

The first GI gathered up my rifle and sword while the second kept his weapon trained on me. “Get up and start walking,” he said.

“I can’t walk.”

“Walk, walk,” they both repeated.

We went down the path I had come up the day before. I stumbled from one tree to the next as far as the dry streambed and then sank to my knees with nothing to hold onto. One of the GIs put his arm through mine to help me along.

Noticing the canteen at his waist, I said, “Water?”

He shook his canteen to show me it was empty and said, “No.” He turned to look at his companion.

“No,” he said.

We reached the clearing of the day before, where I had first descended into this canyon. Helmets, a mess kit, a pot of half-cooked rice, a crushed gas mask and sundry other items lay strewn about. I saw no blood, but I did not doubt that many men from my unit had died there. One of the sergeants had been carefully ripening some bananas. Seeing them scattered on the ground made my heart weep.

The climb to our former command post was arduous. As we neared the hut, the GI who was helping me walk shouted continually, “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.”

At the hut, they turned me over to four or five other GIs, who checked me carefully for hidden weapons. I was then escorted along the ridgeline to a plateau cultivated by the Mangyans [indigenous people of Mindoro island, Philip-

pines]. A force of some five hundred Americans had set up camp there…

The interrogation must have taken at least an hour. The commander repeated certain important questions several times. Trying to be sure I gave the same answer every time made me tense. The effort exhausted me.

The commander took out a Japanese soldier’s diary and told me to translate what it said. I welcomed this respite from the barrage of questions and set about translating the diary line by line. It was written in a childish hand, and the opening entry was from when our company had been stationed in San Jose [city in eastern Mindoro]. The author declared he had stopped keeping a diary after joining the army, but since he could not find anything else to do for diversion, he had decided that setting things down in a diary when off duty would in no way compromise the discharge of his responsibilities…The entry went on and on in this jejune vein—words placed there in case the diary fell into the hands of his superior officer, no doubt. That was all, however. There were no further entries.

The author had not inscribed his name, and I did not recognize the hand, but I knew it had to have belonged to one of our young reservists from the class of 1943. Though these greenhorns had proved themselves to be utterly ignorant of anything, they were also kind and generous and worked hard to cover for the cunning and indolence of us older men. They knew nothing about pacing themselves to conserve their strength, so when they fell ill they were quick to die.

I looked up from the diary. The commander was looking at me with eyes that seemed to hold both sympathy and familiarity. We spoke at the same moment.

“That’s all.”

“That’s enough.”

This brought my interrogation to an end.

The commander turned sideways and said in a low murmur, “We’ll get you something to eat, now. Someday

I saw no blood, but I did not doubt that many men from my unit had died there.

After the war, Ooka became famous for his 1951 novel Fires on the Plain, based on his war experiences, which was adapted into an award-winning 1959 film directed by Kon Ichikawa. A scene from the film is shown here.

DEATH AT EVERY TURN

you’ll be able to go home.” I lay there vacantly, my spirit too tired to respond.

One of the soldiers returned the papers to the haversack. The owner’s name stitched on the flap flashed before my eyes. It had belonged to “K,” the son of the rakugo [a type of Japanese solo stage performance] critic, the fellow who had protested “Aren’t we going together?” when we were preparing to evacuate the squad hut and I decided I would get a head start. My shock was immense. I turned my face away and screamed, “Kill me! Shoot me now! How can I alone go on living when all my buddies have died?”

“Be glad to,” I heard someone say. I turned toward the voice to find a man leveling his automatic rifle at me. “Go ahead,” I said, spreading my chest, but my face twisted into a frown when I saw the playful gleam in his eye. The commander walked away as though he had never even heard my cries.

A package of cookies fell on my chest. I looked up to see a ruddy young soldier with a dark stubble of a beard standing over me. His face was blank. When I thanked him, he silently shifted the rifle on his shoulder and walked away.

I resumed my observation of the American troops around me. Never before had I seen men of such varied skin tones and hair color gathered together in a single place. Most of them seemed to be off duty—though a few had work to do. A man with a mobile radio unit on his back stopped near me with the entire sky spread out behind him. He adjusted something and then moved on. One group of men was taking turns peering through what looked like a surveyor’s telescope on a tripod. Far away in the direction of the telescope pointed rose a range of green mountains. Somewhere among those mountains was the ridge over San Jose where our detached platoon was camped. I gazed off at the distant range, caressing each beautiful peak, each gentle mountain fold with my eyes. The platoon could be under attack even now, I thought. I mentally reviewed everything I had said during my interrogation, trying to reassure myself I had said nothing that could be harmful to them.

A burly, middle-aged soldier approached and took my pictures. Coming closer he said, “What’re you sick with?”

“Malaria,” I answered.

He felt my forehead with his hand. “Open your mouth,” he commanded. When I obeyed, he tossed in five or six yellow pills and said, “Now take a drink.” After watching me wash the pills down he explained, “I’m the doctor,” then walked off.

Flames rose from the hut that had housed our command post, as well as from the squad hut with the sick soldiers where I had first rested the day before. I had never seen columns of flame rise so high. Perhaps the huts had been doused with gasoline to help burn the corpses of the dead.

Evening approached. The American troops built fires in the holes I had thought looked like graves and started preparing dinner. An amiable-looking youth brought me some food. I had no appetite. I merely nibbled at a cookie… Except for being awakened several times during the night to take more pills, I slept soundly.

The next morning the commander said, “Today we return to San Jose. The troops will board ship directly south of here, but you will go from Bulalacao [a city on the southeast coast of Mindoro, opposite San Jose on Mindoro’s southwestern coast]. Can you walk?”

“I’ll do my best.”

With GIs supporting me on either side, I managed to stay on my feet all the way down the mountain. Several Filipinos carried me by stretcher from there to Bulalacao, ten kilometers away. Once they had hoisted the stretcher onto their shoulders, all I could see from where I lay was the bright sky and the leafy treetops lining both sides of the road. Watching the beautiful green foliage flow by me on and on as the stretcher moved forward, it finally began to sink in that I had been saved—that the duration of my life now extended indefinitely into the future. It struck me, too, just how bizarre an existence I had been leading, facing death at every turn. MHQ

Ooka, who became a successful writer postwar, is interviewed by the Asahi Shimbun in Japan in 1962. His wartime experiences influenced his views about society.

BEHIND THE LINES ANCIENT MILITARY HIGHWAYS

The Achaemenid Empire’s incredible highway system solidified imperial rule and sped its armies to victory in battle.

By M.G. Haynes

Everyone, it seems, is familiar with highways constructed by the ancient Romans. Those elegant, stone-paved roads pop up as supporting actors in every novel, film, or television show set in Roman times. Yet few people seem aware that this vast Roman transportation network was preceded by another system of imperial highways that was much older yet just as incredible—the Royal Road of Achaemenid Persia (ancient Iran).

It is no exaggeration to call the Achaemenid Empire (550 bce–330 bce) the world’s first superpower. Persia conquered lands and conducted military operations on three continents: Asia, Africa, and Europe. Not even the mighty Assyrian Empire in Mesopotamia which preceded it could make such a claim. The Persians were at first considered minor players in the region. Nobody suspected that Persia would rise to greatness as it accompanied Median allies to bring down the Assyrian Empire. Yet in 550 bce, Persian king Cyrus II—later dubbed “Cyrus the Great”—overturned his Median masters and established the first Persian Empire. The Persians became rulers of the civilized and densely populated Mesopotamian core. Over the next 64 years, Achaemenid Persia would push the boundaries of its expanding empire west into the Balkans, as far as modern Bulgaria, south as far as Libya in North Africa, and east into the jungles of the Indian subcontinent.

Persia inherited the problems of ruling a vast empire. Difficulties resulted from the vast distances between the Persian capitals and outlying satrapies. This problem proved a tough nut for the Persians to crack. Ironically, the Persians’ rapid rate of expansion throughout its early years would only exacerbate the issue. Persia’s third ruler, Darius I (522–486 bce) realized the potential benefit to be gained by connecting the empire’s various and distant parts. Along the way to earning the moniker “Darius the Great,” he initiated a program of road construction, maintenance, and administration that would last well beyond not only his lifespan, but that of his empire’s as well.

The terrain encompassed by the Persian Empire varied widely from the foothills of the Zagros Mountains in Iran to the plains, deserts, and even swampy marshes of Central Mesopotamia. It included the lofty peaks of the Hindu Kush and the vast deserts of Egypt. Innumerable rivers required bridging or permanent ferries to cross. Much physical labor was required to make steep slopes and soggy marshes traversable. Under Darius I, engineers connected the principal cities at the heart of his empire, including the royal palaces at Susa, Babylon, Ecbatana, Pasargadae, and Persepolis. The Persian court rotated annually between these locations, which also led to an interconnected network of garrisons and storehouses required to facilitate the security and transport of the mobile royal court. The intricate highway-based infrastructure expanded. Ancient Greek historian Herodotus described rest stations and inns located every 30 kilometers, essentially a day’s travel. These facilities provided fresh horses for royal messengers, food for travelling officials and merchants, and secure resting places for sanctioned trade caravans. The Persians regulated access to and use of the Royal Road through a system of licensing and taxation with the issuance of viyataka, a type of official pass.

Many royal posting stations were adapted to pass simple messages through the use of signal beacons, relaying from one station to the next and covering vast distances in an incredibly short period of time. These simple messages provided warning to the Great King of an impending situation or developing problem, to be followed up by a more detailed message carried by swift horse and imperial rider.

The Persian road system allowed news to be delivered from anywhere in the empire to the royal court within a day or two of its occurrence—a remarkable achievement in ancient times. This provided the Persians a significant military advantage in terms of being able to speedily react to intelligence. Imperial stations along the Royal Road ensured the king’s commands were delivered in the shortest possible time.

Today, the total length of the Royal Road network is estimated at 8,000 miles. This includes the identification of Persian highways stretching from Kyrgyzstan and India in the east, to Türkiye and Egypt in the west. The network crisscrossed the vital Mesopotamian heartland, connecting cities, regions, and cultures.

The Persians were at first considered minor players in the region.

Very few Persian highways were paved. Yet even Persia’s unpaved highways, with a standard width of roughly six meters, were considered flat and durable enough for traffic by wheeled vehicles that otherwise struggled to cross predominantly sandy or rocky terrain. These highways were more than sufficient to handle chariot, wagon, cavalry, and foot traffic.

Persian roads greatly facilitated the movement of large armies. Alexander the Great made extensive use of the Persian road network even while he was tearing that ancient empire to shreds. A failed 330 bce attempt by a Persian general to stop Alexander’s army from proceeding down the Royal Road through a natural chokepoint became known as the Battle of the Persian Gates. The value of the Persian highways appears to have been abundantly clear to Alexander. He took advantage of the interior lines they provided him throughout his eastern campaigns.

Persian roadways evinced mythological origin stories from Greeks who encountered them. One attributed the construction of the Royal Road to the Syrian warrior goddess Smiramis, who the Greeks believed to have founded ancient Babylon. Another Greek legend gave the credit to Memnon, a mythical king of Ethiopia and conqueror of all the territory between Susa and Troy.

When the Romans arrived on scene in the 2nd century bce, the decaying Persian road network no doubt contributed to the speed with which Pompey the Great subdued the entire Eastern Mediterranean. Many, if not most, of the Roman roads eventually constructed across Asia Minor, Judah, and Mesopotamia were laid atop the old

Persian thoroughfares. A portion of one such stretch has been positively identified near Gordium in modern Türkiye, displaying multiple strata of road construction stacked atop one another.

Considering the massive scope of the Achaemenid Persian road system, one might be surprised to find so little evidence of it today. In 2019, archaeologists discovered the long-buried ruins of a Persian postal station in the village of Toklucak, Türkiye. Ongoing excavations along the Syr Darya River in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan offer enticing insights into the Royal Road that once connected Mesopotamia with the ancient lands of Bactria and Ferghana. Bridge footings, deliberate cuts into steep slopes, and foundations of once bustling inns and postal stations are slowly emerging.

The principal reason why so few remnants of Persia’s road system have been found is the fact that people still essentially use it—the modern road system to a large degree still utilizes the routes first surveyed and graded by Achaemenid Persians some 2,500 years ago. Royal Roads passing through historically restrictive terrain as the Cilician Gates are now asphalted motorways through which thousands of vehicles and even more people traverse each day. Those commuters remain blissfully unaware that the foundation for their comfortable journey was first laid down in the 6th century bce.

M.G. Haynes is a 28-year U.S. Army veteran and a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He holds degrees in History and Asian Studies and is an award-winning author of military and historical fiction.

SUZUKI KAKU (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

MHQ

A road in present-day Iran follows the presumed path of the ancient Persian Royal Roads through the highlands of the Zagros mountains. Many modern motorways still utilize the routes blazed by the ancient Persians in the 6th century bce, which allowed for the swift transport of both military troops and news of vital importance to their empire.

WAR LIST TOP 10 BLOODLESS WARS

Some human conflicts were settled without getting around to the violence part.

By Jon Guttman and Alex Griffith

The Mongol Subjugation of Novgorod (1238)

In 1238, a 40,000-man Mongol horde led by Genghiz Khan’s grandson, Batu Khan, embarked on a campaign of conquest against the Rus. By the end of 1238 they had taken 14 major cities and razed them for failing to heed Batu’s ultimatums. Only two major cities in the northern Rus territories were spared: Pskov and Novgorod, which pledged fealty to the Great Khan and agreed to annually pay a tax based on 10 percent of their produce. Novgorod, a vital fur-trading center, was surrounded by potential enemies, including not only the Mongols, but the Swedes and an order of German warrior-monks known as the Teutonic Knights. Both western powers coveted the lands to the east, declaring their purpose to spread Catholicism while destroying the Eastern Orthodox Church. Appointed kniaz (prince) of Novgorod in 1236 at age 15, Alexsandr Yaroslavich was compelled to choose his friends and enemies carefully. He knew resisting the Mongols was suicide, but they tended to spare those who surrendered and left them to their own domestic affairs...whereas the Swedes would seize land and the Germans would kill nearly everybody. As the Mongols marched on Novgorod in 1238, the spring thaws hampered their horses, halting the campaign 120 kilometers short of its objective. Seizing his opportunity, Alexsandr met the Mongols and accepted their terms. Pskov did the same. The Mongols moved on, establishing their western headquarters at Sarai under a yellow banner for which their force became known as the Golden Horde. Alexsandr made the right choice. He would later have to battle both his western enemies, defeating the Swedes on the Neva River on July 15, 1240 (for which he acquired the moniker Alexsandr Nevsky) and the Livonian Knights at Lake Peipus on April 5, 1242. Credited with preserving Russian civilization at a time of terrible duress, Alexsandr did so by knowing both when to fight and when not to.

The 335-Years War (1651-1986)

What if they gave a war and nobody came? Better still, what if they gave a war and nobody noticed? During the English Civil War, the United Provinces of the Netherlands sided with the English Parliament. As one consequence many Dutch ships were seized or sunk by the Royalist navy, which by 1651 was based in the Isles of Scilly, supporting the last diehards in Cornwall. On March 30 Lt.

Adm. Maarten Harpertsoon Tromp arrived at Scilly, demanding reparation for damages to Dutch ships. Receiving no satisfactory answer, Tromp declared war but then sailed away—and never returned. Critics of that so-called “war” have since noted that as an admiral, not a sovereign, Tromp was really in no position to formally declare war. The issue seemed moot in June 1651 when a Parliamentarian fleet under General at Sea Robert Blake arrived at Scilly to compel the last Royalists to surrender.

So things stood until 1986, when historian Roy Duncan chanced upon Tromp’s idle threat and in the course of investigation concluded that, the utter lack of hostilities notwithstanding, the Netherlands and Isles of Scilly had spent the past 335 years at war but had never gotten around to declaring peace. That oversight was finally remedied on April 17, 1986, when Dutch ambassador to Britain Jonkheer Rein Huydecoper formally declared one of history’s longest conflicts at an end—adding that it must have horrified the islands’ inhabitants “to know we could have attacked at any moment.”

The Kettle War (1784)

Along with winning independence, in 1585 the Republic of the Netherlands closed off the Scheldt River to trade from the Spanish Netherlands to the south, adversely affecting Antwerp’s and Ghent’s access to the North Sea while serving to Amsterdam’s advantage. Spain accepted that arrangement again in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, but in 1714 Spain ceded the southern Netherlands to Habsburg Austria. Between 1780 and 1784 the Netherlands allied with the fledgling United States of America in hopes of gaining an advantage over Britain but was defeated. Seeking to take advantage of that situation, on Oct. 9, 1784, Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II sent three ships, headed by the large merchantman Le Louis, into the Scheldt. Calling his bluff, the Dutch sent the warship Dolfijn to intercept the Austrians, firing a shot through a soup kettle aboard Le Louis. At this point the Austrian flagship surrendered. On Oct. 30 Emperor Joseph declared war and the Netherlands began mobilizing its forces. Austrian troops invaded the Netherlands, razing a custom house and occupying Fort Lillo, whose withdrawing garrison broke the dikes and inundated the region, drowning many locals but halting the Austrian advance. France mediated a settlement signed on

From top: Prince Alexsandr Nevsky negotiated with Batu Khan rather than risk open war with the Mongols; Adm. Tromp of the Dutch navy declared war against the Isles of Scilly but sailed off without starting any fighting, creating a 335-year bloodless conflict; Great Britain and the United States of America nearly fought a war which began with the shooting of a pig, while France and Brazil in 1963 nearly waged a war over lobsters.

Feb. 8, 1785, as the Treaty of Fontainebleau, upholding the Netherlands’ control over the Scheldt but recompensing the Austrian Netherlands with 10 million florins.

The Anglo-Swedish War (1810–1812)

With the signing of the Treaty of Paris on Jan. 6, 1810, Emperor Napoleon imposed his Continental System throughout Europe and placing a trade embargo on one of his remaining enemies, Great Britain. That included Sweden, Britain’s longtime trading partner. A booming smuggling trade led Napoleon to issue an ultimatum on Nov.13, 1810, giving his reluctant ally five days to declare war and confiscate all British shipping and goods found on Swedish soil, or itself face war from France and all its allies. Sweden duly declared war on Nov. 17, but there were no direct hostilities over the next year and a half—in fact, Sweden looked the other way while the Royal Navy occupied and used its isle of Hanö as a base. Ironically, this delicate standoff was upset by a Frenchman, Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, who with the death of Sweden’s Crown Prince Charles August on May 28, 1810, was elected crown prince on Aug. 21. Although King Charles XIII was Sweden’s official ruler, his illness and disinterest in national affairs caused him to leave Crown Prince Bernadotte as the de facto ruler—who put Swedish interests above France’s. Relations with Napoleon deteriorated until France occupied Swedish Pomerania and the isle of Rügen in 1812. Bernadotte’s response included the Treaty of Örebro on July 18, 1812, formally ending the bloodless war against Britain and thus declaring a soon-to-be bloodier war against Napoleon’s France.

The Aroostook War (1838–1839)

Both the American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 ended with unfinished business regarding the boundaries between the United States and British North America. On several occasions both countries came to the brink of further conflicts. One such was the “Aroostook War” regarding unresolved land claims between Lower Canada and Massachusetts, exacerbated in 1820 when a new state, Maine, broke away from Massachusetts. By 1839 the U.S. had raised 6,000 militia and local posses to patrol the disputed territory while British troop strength rose to as high as 15,000. There were no direct confrontations. Two British militiamen were injured by bears. The decisive action came in 1842 in the form of negotiations between British Master of the Mint Alexander Baring, 1st Baron Ashburton and U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster. As was often the case, the resultant Webster-Ashburton Treaty was a com-

BLOODLESS WARS

promise. Most land went to Maine, leaving a vital area northeast for the Halifax Road to connect Lower Canada with the Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. In 1840 Maine created Aroostook County to administer civil authority in its expected territory, from which the incident got its name in the history books.

The Pig War (1859)

Since at least the 1844 American presidential election that got James K. Polk elected on a slogan of “Fifty-four-Forty or Fight,” the United States set its sights on raising the northern border of the “Oregon Territory” (including what is now Oregon, Washington, Idaho and British Columbia) to 54 degrees 40 minutes north latitude, rather than 49 degrees north as it had been in 1846. That border bisected San Juan Island, in the Straits of Juan de Fuca between Seattle and Vancouver, where on June 15, 1859, American resident Lyman Cutlar caught Charlie Griffin’s pig rooting in his garden and shot it dead. Cutlar subsequently offered to compensate his British neighbor $10 for his loss. Griffin angrily demanded that local authorities arrest Cutlar. The U.S. authorities would not countenance Britain arresting an American citizen. Soon both sides were reinforcing the island with troops and offshore warships. Things came to a head when the governor of British Columbia ordered the commander of the British Pacific Fleet, Adm. Robert Baynes, to invade the island. At that critical hour Baynes became the voice of reason when he disobeyed the order, declaring that he would “not involve two great nations in a war over a squabble about a pig!” News of the standoff spurred Washington and London to negotiate while reducing troop strength on San Juan to 100 each. Finally in 1872, an international commission headed by Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany settled the matter by ceding the entire island to the United States. Total casualties: one British pig.

The Pembina Raid (1871)

Following the American Civil War a committee of radical nationalists called the Irish Brotherhood, or Fenians, embarked on three attempts to capture large areas of British North America to ransom for an independent Irish republic. Although the participants were mostly hardened Civil War veterans—from both sides—their first attempt to seize the Niagara Falls peninsula in 1866 failed. A second attempt launched from New York and Vermont in 1870 was a greater failure—largely because the Fenians were facing better-prepared militiamen now defending their own sovereign state, the Dominion of Canada. Although the Irish Brotherhood itself had given up on the idea, Col. John O’Neill set out west for one more try, planning to invade Manitoba and form an alliance with the half-blood Métis, then rebelling against the Canadian authorities for land,

ethnic and religious rights. By late 1871, however, Ottawa was acquiescing to Métis demands. Consequently the Métis had no intention of allying with the Fenians.

Undeterred, at 7:30 a.m. on the morning of Oct. 5, 1871, O’Neill led 37 followers to seize the Hudson’s Bay Company trading post and the nearby East Lynne Customs House in Pembina. Of 20 people taken prisoner, a young boy escaped and ran to the U.S. Army base at Fort Pembina. While about a thousand Canadian militia marched south to deal with the threat, Capt. Loyd Wheaton led 30 soldiers of Company I, 20th U.S. Infantry Regiment to the settlement. O’Neill later said he was loath to fight bluecoats alongside whom he had served during the Civil War. The Fenians fled north, but O’Neill and 10 others were quickly captured. By 3 p.m. the crisis was over. Canada had seen off its last invasion threat without firing a shot. Taken to St. Paul, Minnesota, O’Neill was tried twice for violating the Neutrality Acts and twice acquitted on the grounds that he had not really done so. Unknown to O’Neill, in May 1870 the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had straightened out the disputed Canadian border, resulting in Pembina no longer being a quarter mile north of the border, but three-quarters of a mile south in Dakota Territory. O’Neill gave up his invasion ambitions under an avalanche of public ridicule over not only failing to conquer Canada but failing to even find Canada!

The Lobster War (1961–1963)

There have been numerous conflicts over territory and others over the natural resources they produce. One example began in 1961 when French fishermen seeking spiny lobsters off Mauretania tried their luck on the other side of the Atlantic and discovered crustacean gold on underwater shelves 250 to 650 feet deep. Soon, however, the French vessels were intercepted and driven off by Brazilian corvettes upholding a government claim that that part of the Continental Shelf was their territory, as was any sea life that walked on it. On Jan. 1, 1962 Brazilian warships apprehended the French Cassiopée, but the next time two Brazilian corvettes went after French lobstermen they were in turn intercepted by the French destroyer Tartu. By April 1963 both sides were considering war. Fortunately, an international tribunal summarized the French claim as being that lobsters, like fish, were swimming in the sea, not walking on the shelf. This prompted Brazilian Admiral Paolo Moreira da Silva’s counterclaim that that argument was akin to saying that if a kangaroo hops through the air, that

A map of northern Maine shows the disposition of the Maine militia as well as troops of the U.S. and British armies during the so-called Aroostook War. The border conflict ended with the 1842 Webster-Ashburton Treaty.

BLOODLESS WARS

their military capabilities while still eying one another suspiciously. On Oct. 18-20, 1986, India staged Operation Falcon, an airlift that occupied Zemithang and several other high ground positions, including Hathung La ridge and Sumdorong Chu. The PLA responded by moving in reinforcements, calling on India for a flag meeting on Nov. 15. This was not forthcoming. In the spring of 1987 the Indians conducted Operation Chequerboard, an aerial redeployment of troops involving 10 divisions and several warplane squadrons along the North East India border. China declared these activities a provocation, but India showed no intention of withdrawing from its positions. By May 1997 soldiers of both powers were staring down each other’s gun barrels while Western diplomats, recognizing similar language to that preceding the 1962 clash, braced for a major war. Cooler heads seem to have prevailed, for on Aug. 5, 1987, Indian and Chinese officials held a flag meeting at Bum. Both sides agreed to discuss the situation and in 1988 Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited Beijing, reciprocating for the first time Zhou Enlai’s April 1960 visit to India. The talks were accompanied by mutual reductions in forces from a Line of Actual Control that was agreed upon in 1993. With the crisis defused, there would be no major Sino-Indian border incidents again until 2020.

The Whisky War (1984–2022)

made it a bird. The matter was finally settled by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on Dec. 10, 1964. By it, Brazilian coastal waters were extended to 200 nautical miles but permitted 26 French ships to catch lobsters for five years in “designated areas,” paying a small percentage of their catch to Brazil. Otherwise the two nations might have warred for a pretender to the throne of the true lobster—spiny lobsters, a.k.a. langustas, don’t have claws like their North Atlantic cousins and are thus not considered true lobsters. Although often used for “lobster tails,” some might not find them tasty enough “to die for.”

The Sumdorong Chu Standoff (1986–1987)

While the United States and the Soviet Union were having a nuclear Cold War faceoff, in October 1962 border tensions in the Himalayas between India and the People’s Republic of China flared when Indian troops seized Thag La Ridge. The People’s Liberation Army reacted in force, inflicting a stinging defeat on the Indians at Namka Chu. Over the next 24 years both sides reformed and improved

The disagreement over the exact national boundaries dividing little Hans Island involved two of the least likely adversaries, both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization: Canada and Denmark. Lying in the Kennedy Channel between Ellesmere and the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland, Hans was divided in half by a line that left a gap in its exact border descriptions. That gap went ignored until 1980, when the Canadian firm Dome Petroleum began four years of research on and around the island. Matters took a more specific direction in 1984, however, when Canadian soldiers landed on Hans and left behind a Maple Leaf flag and a bottle of whisky. In that same year the Danish Minister for Greenland Affairs arrived to plant the Danish flag with a bottle of schnapps and a letter saying, “Welcome to the Danish Island.” These provocations heralded decades of escalating mutual visits and gestures that left all manner of souvenirs behind. Finally, on Aug. 8, 2005—following a particularly busy July—the Danish press announced that Canada wished to commence serious negotiations to settle the remaining boundary dispute once and for all. Even so, it took the Russian “special military operation” against Ukraine to remind the world how serious war could be, resulting in the rivals unveiling a plan on June 14 for satisfactorily dividing the unresolved remnants of Hans Island between the Canadian territory of Nunavut and Danish Greenland. MHQ

From top: Hans Island became the focus of the informal “Whisky War” between NATO members Canada and Denmark, who respectively left bottles of liquor behind on the island as “claims.” The “conflict” was settled in 2022.

WEAPONS CHECK UZI SUBMACHINE GUN

By Chris McNab

Pistol grip The combined pistol grip and magazine housing gives the weapon an excellent center of balance in the grip hand and fast reloading through an intuitive “hand-finds-hand” principle. As an additional safety feature, the button on the back of the grip had to be fully depressed by the grip hand before the weapon would fire.

Magazine The standard Uzi magazine holds 32 rounds, although shorter and extended magazines are available.

Telescoping bolt The front part of the bolt wrapped around and past the breech end of the barrel, to keep the bolt mass high but the weapon length short.

Receiver The main body of the Uzi was simple pressed steel with the cocking lever running along the top of the weapon.

The Uzi submachine gun (SMG)/machine pistol is an iconic firearms design, with a silhouette possibly as recognizable as that of the AK-47. It emerged in a unique time and space in post-World War II history. In 1948, the newborn State of Israel, surrounded on all borders by active enemies, recognized the need to rationalize and update its chaotic weapons inventory. Israel Military Industries (IMI), the official state arms manufacturer, commissioned two engineer officers to design a new SMG for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). One of them, Capt. Uziel Gal, lent his name to the winning weapon, which went into service as the 9mm Uzi SMG in 1954 alongside the 7.62mm FN FAL as the standard infantry battle rifle. Gal’s overall design was inspired by the Czech CZ 25, but he perfected it in a weapon cheap to produce, easy to fire, simple to service, and ruggedly dependable. As with the CZ 25, the Uzi incorporated the magazine housing into the pistol grip and used a telescoping bolt with a blowback action. It could race through a magazine at a cyclical rate of 600rpm and was accurate up

to 200 yards (fired in the semi-automatic mode; automatic fire accuracy is much less, about 50 yards).

The Uzi cut its teeth in the IDF’s wars of the 1950s and 60s, where it proved ideal for urban and close-quarters combat. It also achieved major export success, particularly to foreign special forces. The Uzi evolved over time, replacing its original wooden stock with folding metal varieties, developing even smaller Mini and Micro variants, and adopting various rails and accessories. Yet in regular Israeli military service, the rise of the assault rifle in the 1970s led to the IDF’s replacement of both the FN FAL and the Uzi by the 5.56mm Galil assault rifle. Uzis continued in special forces, armored crews, and auxiliary service until the 2000s, and endures to this day on international markets. MHQ

Chris McNab is a military historian based in the United Kingdom. He is the author of The Uzi Submachine Gun (Osprey Publishing, 2011).

CONFLICT IN ASIA-PACIFIC

Chinese spy balloons. North Korean nuclear “saber-rattling.” Taiwan invasion threat. South China Sea land grab. U.S. ICBM test targets Pacific island. Russia challenges Japan over Kuril Islands. With today’s news headlines filled with such reports from the Asia-Pacific region of the globe, the roots, history and background of the political, military, economic and cultural conflict in that strategically important hemisphere is a major theme in several articles in this issue of MHQ. Today in 2023 the rising hegemonic Asian-Pacific power increasingly dominating the region is the People’s Republic of China (PRC, formerly known during the half-century-long Cold War as “Communist China” or “Red China” led by Mao Zedong). U.S. politicians and military leaders long assumed throughout the Korean War era that Mao’s Communist China was simply a subservient client-state of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union. They assumed that the wily Stalin was Mao’s puppet-master and that all communist countries around the globe were centrally controlled from Moscow. It took the Korean War (1950–1953), the Sino-Soviet split and bloody border battles between the USSR and China (1961–1979), China’s “Cultural Revolution” purge of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (1966–1976) and, importantly, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon’s reopening of U.S.-China relations in 1972 for U.S. policymakers to finally realize that China controlled its own destiny.

In 1941 the principal, rising hegemonic power in the Asia-Pacific region was Imperial Japan, against which the U.S. and its Allies fought a brutal, costly war until victory was won in 1945. In this issue, a trio of articles focuses on the U.S. war against Japan during World War II in the Asia-Pacific Theater (1941-1945), providing graphic insight into how brutal, unforgiving and costly any conflict waged against a tough and dedicated enemy can be—hardearned lessons that should be kept in mind as tensions rise around the world today.

The stories of two Japanese soldiers, Shohei Ooka and Hiroo Onoda, who fought in the Philippines, present the horrors of war at the tactical level. Both men had very different personalities. Both endured brutal combat under extreme conditions opposing U.S. forces liberating the Philippines. Their fates, however, were nearly the opposite. After failing in his attempts to commit suicide, the starving and injured Ooka, suffering from malaria, reluctantly al-

lowed himself to be captured. By contrast, Onoda hid in the mountains for 29 years, reemerging periodically to terrorize and murder Filipino farmers tending their fields. Both men approached the topic of their war experiences differently after repatriation to Japan. Ooka—a sensitive and well-respected poet and author—dealt with the trauma of wartime philosophically, examining the moral choices a person makes in war with a critical eye and also turning his attention to postwar social issues. By contrast, when Onoda finally surrendered in 1974, he was honored as a national hero in Japan and spoke often of his convictions as a soldier in the emperor’s army, boosting public pride and nostalgia in the country towards the World War II era. In her upcoming documentary, filmmaker Mia Stewart— great-niece of a farmer murdered by Onoda—raises troubling questions about Onoda’s true legacy. Was he a hero or simply a multiple murderer?

Maintaining this issue’s focus on World War II in the Pacific, Laws of War examines the Enemy Airmen’s Act enacted by Japan—an analysis stainding as a cautionary tale about how easy it is for dictatorships to drift into state-sanctioned murder. In August 1942, aghast at the sheer effrontery that the Allies would actually do to Japan what Japanese army and navy air forces had been doing to Nationalist China since 1937 and the Allies since 1941, Japan enacted the Enemy Airmen’s Act which essentially legalized war crimes against captured Allied airmen. This act eventually authorized the trial and execution of hundreds of Allied airmen POWs. Military “kangaroo courts” condemned hundreds of Allied aircrew members to death. Helpless POWs were then shot, beheaded, beaten to death or tortured through sadistic “medical experiments.” It was, in effect the “bureaucratization of brutality.” This prompted the Allies to try those officers and soldiers found responsible as war criminals. Importantly, the Enemy Airmen’s Act shows that hubris combined with unlimited political power is a truly deadly mix.

We hope that examining the history of the Pacific theater of World War II from these different perspectives will educate readers about how the war shaped the region and the different effects that the Pacific War had on human beings across many nations. History, of course, cannot actually be “repeated,” but it would be foolish and a folly of the highest order not to study it and learn from it.

—Jerry Morelock

This issue of MHQ highlights different aspects of World War II in the Pacific, during which Japanese officers carried swords such as this one. Although the bloody conflict in the Pacific ended in Allied victory in 1945, geopolitical struggles are still taking place in the region which shape global politics today.

HERO SOLDIER OR SERIAL KILLER?

Three decades after World War II ended, Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda emerged as a valiant holdout. Now a documentary filmmaker reveals his murderous crimes against Filipino civilians.

By Zita Ballinger Fletcher

Hiroo Onoda, shown here during World War II, was sent to the Philippines at age 23 and remained in hiding there for 29 years after the war ended, killing many islanders before finally emerging in 1974.

Emelio Viaña went out to farm sweet potatoes with his two sons, Protacio and Diony, both in their early teens, at their farm near Yapusan on the western side of Lubang Island in the Philippines. It was March 8, 1961—the day before his 53rd birthday.

After a morning of hard work, Emelio sat down for a lunch break and was drinking a cup of coffee. Gunshots rang out. The first bullet shattered Emelio’s upper thigh. Another shot struck his young son Diony in the leg. The two boys frantically dragged their father into the shelter of nearby aroma bushes—the large hard thorns were piercing and painful, but their terror was worse.

Bleeding heavily, Emelio couldn’t move. His sons barely managed to drag him away as fast as they could to their small boat and row him to a small fishing port at Tubahin. Still in mortal fear of being shot at as they paddled away, they watched helplessly as their father bled to death in front of their eyes. By the time they reached safety it was too late. Emelio was gone. Amid all the horror there was one sight that Protacio would never forget. While hiding in the thorny bushes he had seen his father’s murderer stalking them. It was a Japanese soldier.

The murder of Emelio Viaña was one in a series of killings that plagued Lubang Island for decades from the end of World War II until the 1970s. All the victims were islanders going about their daily lives who were targeted and assaulted at moments when they were isolated and vulnerable. Their grieving family members have never forgotten them, and their deaths tore wounds in their closeknit community which are still unhealed.

Yet these victims have been forgotten in the world’s collective memory. By contrast, the man responsible for these grisly crimes—which he would later refer to euphemistically as “guerrilla warfare”—became something of a celebrity. His name was Hiroo Onoda.

Onoda shocked the world when, 29 years after World War II ended, he materialized from the wilderness of Lubang Island in 1974 still dressed in his Imperial Japanese Army uniform and formally surrendered. He claimed not to have known that the war had ended—a claim he reinforced with his 1974 autobiography, No Surrender: My Thirty Year War, in which he also claimed to have been conducting a so-called “guerrilla war” on Lubang Island without admitting to the details of what that meant. Returning to Japan as a hero, he died in 2014 and has passed into legend, frequently cast into the role of a “lone samu-

rai” type of character. His story has received renewed attention in recent years—such as in Arthur Harari’s 2021 film, Onoda: 10,000 Nights in the Jungle, and a fictionalized 2022 novel about him penned by eminent German filmmaker Werner Herzog. Onoda fascinates people.

Meanwhile, in the shadows of Onoda’s dazzling fame stands a host of his silent victims waiting to be noticed. The violence against local people that Onoda barely admitted to in his autobiography has so far done nothing to dim his glamor in popular imagination. The murders committed by Onoda and fellow Japanese stragglers under his leadership on Lubang Island have largely been forgotten and ignored. Until now.

“He committed acts of terror against these people for 30 years. No one has ever asked for their side of the story,” independent documentary filmmaker Mia Stewart told MHQ in an exclusive interview. Mia is Emelio Viaña’s great-niece. With a personal connection to Lubang Island and a dedication to historical research that has seen her gathering testimony from islanders and investigating Onoda for more than 10 years, she seeks to ensure that the voices of Onoda’s victims are finally heard in her documentary, Searching for Onoda. The documentary is in its final stages of production.

“The thing I want to bring out in my documentary is the resilience of the island and the Filipino people as a whole,” said Mia. “That’s something that I want to highlight.”

Onoda claimed to have been a soldier continuing to fight a war. Yet the people he attacked in cold blood were civilians, unarmed and incapable of self-defense. They were not only shot, but also often stabbed and mutilated. It begs the question: was he a soldier…or a serial killer?

Mia’s journey to create the documentary began in high school. Although she grew up in Australia, her mother was raised on Lubang Island and one day mentioned Onoda when Mia was doing research for a school project. Intrigued by Onoda’s story, Mia located his autobiography at a local library and discussed her findings with her mother. “I showed my mum the book and she said, ‘That’s interesting that he’s written all this stuff but he doesn’t actually mention the shootings.’ I asked, ‘What do you mean, shootings?’ And then she told me, ‘He killed people.’” That

From top: Lubang Island is home to the fishing and farming community of Looc; Documentary filmmaker Mia Stewart and her crew follow the hidden paths used by the Japanese holdouts, now known as the Onoda Trail; the brother of Onoda’s partner Kinshichi Kozuka calls out to Onoda in 1972 to ask him to turn himself in; Philippine police examine the scene where Kozuka was shot while raiding a local property with Onoda.

I asked, ‘What do you mean, shootings?’ And then she told me, ‘He killed people.’

Mia Stewart

HIROO ONODA

was when Mia learned about the murder of her great-uncle Emelio Viaña for the first time—and she soon found out there were even more victims. While their surviving relatives vividly remembered their murders, the victims and their deaths were omitted from Onoda’s autobiography, and thus from known history. “Afterwards I thought, ‘There are all these killings missing from the book. I want to find out about that side of the story.’ That’s how the documentary started.”

Fifty-square-mile Lubang Island, located about 90 miles southwest of Manila, is tranquil and beautiful—not the type of place one would expect to find death prowling in the shadows. Its beaches are serene and its mountains majestic. Local residents earn their livelihoods from farming and fishing. Mia’s family hails from Looc, a small fishing village on the southwestern tip of the island. Life there was simple but demanding, according to Mia. “The men worked hard on the farms to send their children to Manila to further their education, in order to support their families,” she said. Apart from work, the community is centered around church and family. Street parties and fiestas celebrate certain Catholic saints or feast days. During the postwar era, most families lived in nipa huts. The children there still walk to school and neighbors don’t feel the need to lock their doors. “My family in particular, the Viaña family, make up a large portion of the population in Looc—and everyone knows everyone. So a death in the community feels like a death in the family,” she said.

Murder stalked the island beginning in the 1950s. Onoda had made himself the de facto leader of a group of three other Japanese stragglers: Pvt. Yuichi Akatsu, Cpl. Shoichi Shimada and Pfc. Kinshichi Kozuka. Akatsu, later disparaged by Onoda in his book as a “weakling,” surrendered in 1950. Shimada did not last long, being shot in 1954 when the group was engaged in depredations. Kozuka and Onoda, who became best friends, went on together for 18 years. Working together as partners in crime, the pair were responsible for the murder of Emelio Viaña in 1961 and spent over a decade butchering local inhabitants of Lubang, who called them demonyo sa bundok, meaning the “devils of the mountains.”

“The 18 years that Kozuka and I spent together were the ones in which I was most actively engaged in guerrilla tactics,” Onoda states ambiguously in his autobiography, euphemistically referring to violence against civilians as guerrilla warfare as he usually did. “This was due to a large

extent to the rapport that existed between us. We nearly always saw things the same way, and frequently we needed only to look at each other to decide what we would do next.” Onoda claimed to be the brains of the pair, stating that Kozuka “deferred to me in matters of judgment.” Kozuka was ultimately shot by police in 1972, leaving only Onoda who decided to come out of hiding a mere two years later.

Onoda manages to sanitize any sense of criminal behavior from his narrative. Although his book gives the impression that he was fighting some type of war against some opposing enemy force, the reality was much different. The people Onoda targeted were local residents he ambushed when they were working, sleeping, eating lunch, walking, or doing ordinary activities in the company of their children or grandchildren. Many were violently slaughtered with knives. Residents lucky enough to survive their wounds after being shot at were often left crippled, Mia said, and rendered unable to perform manual labor to provide for their families. “They [the Japanese] were seen as a pest, thieves, and killers,” she said. If Onoda and his partner were really fighting a “war,” it seems to have been a war on innocent civilians.

“Quite a few people [I’ve interviewed] have talked about the killings. My documentary focuses on the killings that happened on the south of the island where my mother is from,” said Mia. “I have at least six official death certificates based on police reports which prove that Onoda actually killed these people due to the manner of their injuries.”

Stalked by hidden executioners, local people lived under a pall of fear. The island was deceptively quiet and peaceful at intervals before something horrible and bloody would happen. The murders were unpredictable but occurred regularly. Nobody knew who would be next. Not content with slaughtering civilians, the Japanese holdouts also sneaked into people’s huts and even the local school to steal items like pots and pans, bags of rice and other sundry items. Residents were constantly terrified. Nowhere was safe, and they had no recourse from predators who continuously victimized them.

“There was a shadow cast on their lives. They couldn’t go and farm. They couldn’t harvest without the fear of being attacked. Children couldn’t go play out at a certain time,” Mia said. “The value of their land and farmland was essentially reduced—they weren’t able to be as productive on their farms without the threat of someone being killed. They were taking their lives into their own hands whenever they ventured out.”

Mia’s research has found that a series of particularly twisted killings occurred during the time frame when Onoda and Kozuka were together as partners. One example was the murder of Ayong Tagle in 1964. His daughter

Stalked by hidden executioners, local people lived under a pall of fear.

Estelita was in grade school at the time. Accompanied by some other men, he went to a field just outside the village to harvest rice. Carabao hitched to carts helped them plow. It should have been a fairly easy workday, not far from home—the field was only 2 kilometers from the town center. The men took a midafternoon break. Ayong lay down to sleep in a small hut beside the field. Suddenly there was a commotion. Onoda and his partner Kozuka had arrived with homicidal intentions. Everyone fled. Ayong didn’t make it.

“When one of his coworkers came back, his body was found in the middle of where they had been plowing—in an open circle area—and he had been decapitated,” said Mia. His body, marked with wounds from a large blade, was brought back into the village with some difficulty. “It was hard to get to him because the fields were all in flames,” Mia said. The townspeople were horrified by the shock of the grisly murder in such immediate proximity to their homes, as well as by the sight of their neighbor’s bloodied corpse. “The whole town witnessed that. All the young kids witnessed that,” said Mia.

Ayong’s horrifying death came as a devastating blow to his daughter Estelita, then age 6. Yet more hardship was in store for the family. After losing her husband, Estelita’s mother went blind. “It was very hard for the children because they lost their father and their mother really wasn’t able to do much physical labor to help provide for them. It

kept them in a certain state of poverty,” said Mia. “Obviously it affected the whole trajectory of their lives.”

While Onoda was feted in popular legend over the years as some type of modern samurai warrior, not a single person ever asked Estelita to speak publicly about what had happened to her father until Mia interviewed her several years ago. “When I interviewed her, she said, ‘You know, this is the first time I’ve ever told this story…and whenever I hear the name Onoda, I get so angry.’”

Another child who spent a lifetime grieving for his murdered father was Bernardo Canals, who later became a local official. Bernardo was asleep one early morning when a neighbor woke him, yelling that Bernardo’s father Rafael had been shot by the Japanese and telling the boy to hurry and go to him. Bernardo frantically jumped onto a horse and rode down unpaved paths to the part of the island where his father had been working. He hoped to reach him and find him alive. Instead he ran straight into other locals carrying his father’s lifeless body down the road. “When I interviewed him, his anger was still palpable. He was still very hurt by what happened,” Mia said. “Like in many of these cases, he was the eldest son and then had to provide for his family. It changed his life. Aside from losing his father, he then had to look after siblings and then couldn’t pursue his own dreams.”

The murder was detailed in a police report—as was that of Francisco Villar, killed in front of his young grandson.

Left: Onoda, age 52, is escorted by local officials after coming out from hiding in 1974 and prepares to leave Lubang Island. His survival story continues to captivate popular imagination while the fates of his victims are overlooked. Right: Onoda offers a salute aboard a helicopter which will whisk him away on his homeward journey to Japan.

Mia’s grandmother, who has since passed away, gave an interview to Mia in which she recalled the day vividly. The women of the village went to a nearby river to wash clothes. Out of fear of being attacked, they always went in a large group for safety. One day gunshots rang out nearby and a boy came screaming into their midst, telling them to run and that the Japanese had shot his grandfather. They fled for their lives. “When local police returned to the location, they found the young boy’s grandfather shot, with knife wounds on his body,” said Mia, who obtained Villar’s death certificate.

None of these deaths appear in Onoda’s autobiography, which seems to overdo itself in trying to impress upon readers his supposed military goals. One thing, however, that the book cannot hide is the contemptuous attitude Onoda had towards Filipino civilians. His references to them are terse and cynical. His description of how he identified Norio Suzuki, a young explorer who ultimately secured his agreement to surrender, as Japanese is particularly telling. “If he [Suzuki] had not been wearing socks, I might have shot him…The islanders would never do anything so incongruous. The ones who could afford to wear socks would have had shoes on too,” Onoda expressed with dis-

dain. This offhand remark indicates that Onoda was not only well-aware of the poverty of local residents but would have been willing to shoot an islander merely at the sight of their sandals.

When Onoda finally surrendered in 1974, there was no investigation into his actions on the island. He received what amounted to an unconditional pardon by Philippines’ President Ferdinand Marcos. In a televised ceremony, Marcos embraced Onoda, said that he admired the latter’s courage and welcomed him to stay in the Philippines, according to a March 12, 1974 report from the New York Times. The families of victims on Lubang Island—and indeed the ghastly experiences of the islanders for three decades—had been ignored. “The local authorities had to hold people back. The day that Onoda surrendered, the locals had gotten wind of what was going to happen and people basically wanted to attack Onoda and kill him,” Mia said.

Bernardo Canals was one of many people who felt they had been denied justice. He and other islanders welcomed the opportunity to share their stories with Mia in the hopes of getting wider recognition for Onoda’s victims and surviving relatives. Sadly, Bernardo passed away during the

Onoda, center, is greeted by his elderly parents upon his arrival in Tokyo, where he was given a hero’s welcome. Mia interviewed many people who were close to Onoda in his later years, which added complexity to her documentary.

Covid-19 pandemic. Many of the other witnesses to events on the island and relatives of victims have also passed away due to their advanced age.

“That’s one of the most important things for me—80% of the people I’ve interviewed, including my own grandmother, have all passed away since I started filming and doing these interviews,” Mia said. “A lot of these interviews are the very first—and last—times that they are able to tell these stories.”

In fact, one person who Mia managed to get to agree to being interviewed was Onoda himself, who had previously refused to speak with her for five years; but he passed away at age 91 on Jan. 16, 2014 before the interview could take place. “I was in Japan the day he died,” said Mia, who had arranged to meet Onoda at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. “I couldn’t interview my main subject anymore. He had died and that changed the whole thing.”

Created in 1869, the Yasukuni Shrine is the official home, according to Japan’s Shinto religion, of the souls of war dead who died for Japan’s emperor. In Shinto belief, the souls of the dead become deities called kami, who are venerated by the living. The shrine currently includes war criminals among honored deities, regularly making it a focus of international political controversy. Two months after Onoda’s death, Mia traveled to the shrine for his memorial service.

“Four months earlier I had just been filming on the island and was interviewing relatives and people from the island who were talking about how difficult life was for them, how Onoda basically ruined their lives,” she said. “To be attending his memorial afterwards felt really odd.”

However, as part of her research, Mia was determined to gain a better understanding of this man who had taken so many lives.

“I was trying to be as respectful as possible to the process itself. But it was very strange to be at the shrine. There were a lot of people attending,” said Mia. She met Onoda’s elderly wife, then in a wheelchair, at the service. “I shook her hand and I was introduced to her, and someone said to her, ‘This is Mia. She’s from Lubang Island.’ She acknowledged my presence.”

Although she would have liked to have interviewed Onoda personally, Mia was glad to be able to witness his history from a different perspective. “It all happened not the way I intended or planned. But I’m thankful I was able to be a part of that.”

The Japanese people she has interacted with throughout her research for the documentary have been very accommodating. “I got to meet and become quite close to people who Onoda was close with in his life after Lubang Island. It’s almost like he was a different person to them,” she said. “They knew him as this kind old man. I got to know people

who worked really closely with him, who regarded him as a grandfather. For me that provided an unexpected complexity to my documentary.”

Mia visited the Onoda Nature School in Japan, a wilderness survival school for youth he founded in the 1980s. “Japanese hospitality is just amazing. They made me feel really welcome. They told me about what Onoda was like when he came back,” said Mia. She did broach the topic of the murders on Lubang Island but, like most people, her gracious hosts were unaware of the details of what had happened. “It was a mystery to them as well,” she said. “A lot of them didn’t even really know the full extent of the killings. They knew that Onoda had thought it was still wartime and was probably responsible for something, but they weren’t sure of the details. I think it will probably shock a few of them when they see my documentary to find out about how brutal some of the killings were.”

However not all Japanese are fans of Onoda. Mia uncovered some startling revelations from interviewing the

Top: Onoda hands his sword to Philippine President Marcos, who pardoned him without investigating the killings. Bottom: Onoda visits a memorial to his partner Kozuka on the island. No memorial for the victims exists.

sons of Tsuda Shin, the ghostwriter who helped write Onoda’s autobiography. Tsuda Shin felt guilty during his lifetime about the role he played in writing Onoda’s memoir. He published a book of his own detailing how Onoda’s famed autobiography was less of a candid testimonial than a carefully crafted document shaped by Onoda and a group of Japanese publishing professionals gathered at a nature

resort. Tsuda Shin also perceived darkness in Onoda’s character—something he details in his book, which Mia is working to publish in English. “His sons have given me permission to republish that in English. I have already translated it. I’m just going over it and editing it with another translator,” said Mia. “They also gave me permission to write my own foreword and that is where I am going to acknowledge the victims. I’m planning on publishing that along with the documentary.”

Mia understands why Onoda’s survival story has been spellbinding to many people. Like many others, she was intrigued by his tale when she first heard about him. “He basically went in when he was 22 and he came out when he was 54. It was this idea of a soldier trapped in time, who had sacrificed his youth. That was a strong image I had,” she said. “I almost had a sense of pity for him, thinking of all the years he had lost.” Yet after traveling to Lubang and collecting interviews from local residents as well as from her relatives, her perceptions changed. “That for me was the biggest shift. That happened very quickly as soon as I was at the island and able to see firsthand the anger that came out of people,” she said. “The thought came to mind, ‘It’s true that Onoda lost years, but these people lost their lives.’”

The true details of Onoda’s stay on the island have been lost within mythology. Mia says that many people perceive Onoda as a “lone survivor” and do not realize that he was with Kozuka for more than 20 years. “In a way, I can understand that there is an appeal to the story because you can have this romanticized view of a soldier and lone survivor surviving on coconuts, living in the jungles in this isolated place. But Onoda was actually not alone,” she said. “Then there’s also this myth that he was heroic. No, he wasn’t heroic. He killed people and he was actually a murderer.”

As to whether—or when—Onoda really knew the war was over? Another overlooked fact is that Onoda admitted to having looted a transistor radio in 1965. Various theories abound, according to Mia. “There are people who, without wanting to portray Onoda as a victim himself, want to comment on the way the Imperial Army trained their soldiers to never surrender and think a certain way. There are others who say that Onoda was trained to look at things differently as an intelligence officer. Then on the other hand you have people who say, ‘Well, if he was trained as an intelligence officer, then why couldn’t he work out that the war was over?’” Onoda’s knowledge of when the war ended is something that Mia cannot definitively prove and something she says people can form their own opinions about. Regardless of those details, she wants to draw attention to the cold-blooded murders of unarmed Filipino islanders which cannot be characterized as acts of war by any stretch of the imagination.

Top: Onoda’s outdoor survival equipment, including firearms used to shoot Filipino civilians, are exhibited in Tokyo in 1982. Center: The headstone of Emelio Via ña, killed in front of his children, is shown on Lubang Island. Bottom: Estelita Tagle stands in front of the field where her father was brutally murdered when she was 6 years old.

“When someone comes across him, the reaction is always like, ‘Wow, this guy was such a hero.’ Or, ‘What determination! What strength, what courage!’ No one ever really stops to think what the consequence of his ‘war’ actually meant,” she said. “If he was fighting a war, who was on the other end of that? Who was he fighting? It wasn’t an enemy. It was civilians. It was innocent people.”

Today a shrine stands on the spot where Kinshichi Kozuka, Onoda’s partner in the killings, died after being shot by Filipino police during one of the duo’s violent raids on the local community. It is supposed to be a peace monument. Nevertheless its memorialization of Kozuka’s death is inescapable. What about the murder victims—the people whose ancestors had lived and worked on the island for generations, who were simply going about their daily lives when they were brutally killed in front of their children and neighbors? Has anyone built a monument for them? “No,” answered Mia sadly when asked this question, adding that a memorial for the victims has been a main goal of hers that she has been unable to realize yet. She intends for the documentary and translated book to serve as lasting tributes to the victims. “But it would be great to have a physical place on the island.”

The documentary is in its final stages of production, but Mia has been struggling to pull together enough funding to complete it. Although local people from Lubang are “excited to have their story told,” it has been challenging to get people capable of sponsoring it interested in doing so. “My family is constantly asking me when it’s going to be finished. But I haven’t been able to get it over the line yet,” she

said. “It’s just a matter of getting enough funding together. That’s been one of my biggest challenges.” One fiscal sponsor for Mia’s documentary is the From the Heart Foundation. “People can make 100% tax deductible donations through that. That’s the main sponsor at the moment.”

The reasons for Onoda’s popularity might lie with the way that Onoda and people close to events chose to present the story. “He said he didn’t know the war was over and he represented this relic to a time in Japan that people were maybe feeling nostalgic towards and strengthened some sense of national pride or identity. I think that whole narrative really served his agenda, the [Japanese] government’s agenda, and also relations between the Philippines and Japan as well, because essentially Ferdinand Marcos forgave Onoda and pardoned him for his crimes. He was never put on trial for what he did.”

Mia wants people to question Onoda’s legend. “The main thing for me is getting this story out there as much as possible, so that when people come across Onoda and Google him, they will immediately also see the other side of the story.” MHQ

You can learn more about and support Mia’s documentary at https://searchingforonodadoc.wedid.it

The controversial Yasukuni Shrine honors Japan’s war dead, including war criminals. Mia visited the shrine to meet Onoda for an interview, which he agreed to but was unable to attend, and also to attend his memorial service.

“If he was fighting a war, who was on the other end of that?...It was civilians.”

PERIL AT PORT REPUBLIC

Cut off from his staff by daring Northern horsemen, Stonewall Jackson faced nearcertain disaster. How did he escape?

By Rick Britton

Confederate Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson established his headquarters in the scenic town of Port Republic only to be caught off guard by charging Union cavalry.

Sunday, June 8, 1862 dawned bright and cool in Virginia’s beautiful Shenandoah Valley. Confederate Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson was in the central valley town of Port Republic, headquartered at Madison Hall, the residence of Dr. George W. Kemper. The immediate area presented a busy scene. Behind the house was camped a brand-new untested unit, the Charlottesville Artillery. Beyond and across the adjacent road, farm fields were filled with the army’s herd of beef cattle and its massive 1,500-wagon baggage and ordnance train. Many of the wagons’ white “bonnets” (their tarpaulin covers), bore a large black-painted “U.S.”—proof positive of Jackson’s recent successes.

Sited atop a knoll on Port Republic’s southwestern edge, Kemper’s offered a splendid view of the picturesque inland harbor town tucked into the confluence of the North and South Rivers. Alongside the village’s southeastern edge, two fords offered access to the South River’s right bank. Small detachments picketed both. Jackson’s Valley Army was encamped across the North River—by way of a covered bridge. The men looked forward to church services and more much-needed rest. Their plans for the day included bathing, fishing, and perhaps a sightseeing jaunt to nearby Weyer’s Cave.

At about 8:30 a.m. Jackson and most of his staff officers were gathered on Dr. Kemper’s porch, awaiting their horses. Suddenly a Southern rider, 16-year-old Henry D. Kerfoot, galloped up to Stonewall with horrific news. “General!” he shouted while saluting, “Federals have charged across the lower ford of the South River...cavalry and artillery. They’re already in Port Republic!”

“Go back and fight them,” came Jackson’s calm response. With those words, firing erupted somewhere nearby.

An artillery shell exploded over the town. Anxious over this unexpected enemy activity, Jackson set off rapidly toward the combat, his staff officers streaming behind. Using long strides, he tramped to the head of the 400-yardlong Main Street and stopped. Usually quiet, the thoroughfare was now a blur of activity. Confederate horsemen— charged with defending one of the South River crossings—were fleeing in every direction. The Federal advance party was already on Main Street, shouting and firing.

Jackson’s staff rushed to his side, their thoughts racing. Had the Federals seen Jackson? Would they rush him? Was

this how the campaign would end, with Stonewall Jackson ingloriously gobbled-up by a platoon of blue-clad cavalry?

The aggressive Federal force that splashed across the lower ford into Port Republic—150 horseman and two pieces of artillery—posed several alarming threats. Once on Main Street and in possession of the North River Bridge, it completely separated Jackson from his army. The capture of Stonewall himself—a cataclysmic possibility—would terminate the campaign and alter the course of the war. Yet another disastrous potentiality also loomed large: The capture of the army’s cattle herd and its entire wagon train, what kept the soldiers fed and fighting. That loss would also end the campaign, and perhaps even cause Jackson to give up the Shenandoah Valley.

In May 1862, during Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign, his 16,000-man Valley Army, thanks to a series of lightning-fast marches and brilliant sucker punches, fought and won three battles—McDowell (on the 8th), Front Royal (on the 23rd), and Winchester (on the 25th)—in the process capturing hundreds of wagons and 2,300 prisoners. When Stonewall’s “foot cavalry” continued north “down” the valley threatening Harpers Ferry— and thereby threatening to cross the Potomac River—panic gripped several parts of the North. Late in the month, however, when Jackson learned that three Federal armies were converging on his position, he directed his force, captives and captures in tow, to move south, back “up” the Shenandoah via the Valley Turnpike.

On June 7, Jackson established his headquarters at Dr. Kemper’s in the strategically important Port Republic. Stonewall’s two closest antagonists—Maj. Gen. John Charles Frémont with 12,000 men, and Brig. Gen. James Shields with another 5,000—were pursuing him up the Shenandoah Valley on either side of Massanutten Mountain (the fifty-mile-long-range dividing the valley in two). Frémont advanced along the main valley to the west of Massanutten, while Shields, with an aggressive force out front, felt his way southwestwardly in the Luray Valley to Massanutten’s east. From his position at Port Republic— beyond the southwestern face of Massanutten—Jackson could lash out at whichever enemy approached first.

But the Confederates who set up camp in and around Port Republic were utterly exhausted. They’d marched 350 miles in 30 days. “Our whole force is nearly broken down and needs rest,” wrote staff officer Sandie Pendleton. “I am sadly in need of it myself... Gen. Jackson is completely broken down.”

That explains why the positioning of Confederate forces on June 8 was so flawed. The Valley Army was across the North River from Stonewall Jackson’s headquarters, with only a minimal force in between, guarding

The Federal advance party was already on Main Street, shouting and firing.

the two South River fords. A troop of 2nd Virginia cavalrymen under Capt. J. J. Chipley lounged along the left bank at the lower ford while a twenty-four-man detachment from Company I, 2nd Virginia Infantry, under Capt. Samuel J. C. Moore was guarding the upper ford at the other end of Port Republic.

Leading Gen. Shields’ advance force that morning was Col. Samuel Sprigg Carroll, an 1856 West Point graduate. His “flying column” included three companies of the 1st Virginia (Union) Cavalry, 150 horsemen, supported by Capt. Lucius N. Robinson’s Battery L, 1st Ohio Artillery, and two regiments of infantry: the 7th Indiana and the 1st Virginia (Union). Feeling aggressive, Carroll was pushing his men, as one wrote, “almost beyond the powers of endurance...” After learning from scouts that Jackson’s wagon train was lightly defended, he posted two of Robinson’s cannon on a hill overlooking Port Republic and ordered them to open up. Leaving his infantrymen in their support, Col. Carroll rushed the lower ford with all of his cavalrymen and the other two Ohio artillery pieces. Chipley’s horsemen broke and ran.

Watching this scene from the other end of Main Street, Jackson was incredulous. In that harrowing instant, thick with dire consequences—as more enemy rounds exploded

above the town—a servant appeared with Stonewall’s horse. He quickly mounted and, to the staff’s utter chagrin, galloped furiously toward the North River bridge and the enemy advance party. His staff officers followed suit.

Riding past the church now serving as a hospital— where Dr. Hunter McGuire was swearing at his drivers to get the wounded loaded—Jackson shouted an admonishment. As bullets whistled by, Stonewall and several of the staff, thundered through the covered bridge to the left bank and safety. Luck was certainly smiling on “Old Jack” that morning. Some said Jackson’s old blue V.M.I. officer’s coat had something to do with his successful escape. One Confederate witness later claimed that the Northern cavalrymen, in their random and disjointed advance, “probably didn’t notice Jackson...”

“I was the last to get over [the bridge],” remembered Henry Kyd Douglas, “and I passed in front of Colonel S. Sprigg Carroll’s cavalry as they rode up out of the water... [T]hey greeted me with sundry pistol shots.” Others weren’t so fortunate. Three of the staff fell into the hands of the blue troopers: Dr. McGuire, Col. Stapleton Crutchfield, Jackson’s chief of artillery, and his assistant Lieut. Edward Willis. At gunpoint, Crutchfield was directed over to Col. Carroll. In disgust, the 26-year-old Confederate surrendered his sword. Carroll told him to remain mounted and

Union Gen. James Shields (left) and Maj. Gen. John Charles Frémont (center) pursued Jackson up the Shenandoah Valley on either side of the Massanutten Mountain. Leading Shields’ advance guard was Col. Samuel Sprigg Carroll (right), who was eager to attack Jackson’s forces with his “flying column,” which included three Union cavalry companies.

placed him under the care of a single horseman nearby. Then the Federal colonel returned to the task of organizing his forces on Main Street.

Crutchfield grew extremely anxious when, just seconds later, a wide-eyed Northern cavalryman rode up shouting that the Confederate wagon trains were up ahead, just past the end of town. Carroll turned to Crutchfield and demanded to know if this was true. “You must find that out for yourself,” answered the artilleryman. When the Union colonel ordered one of his captains to immediately take a squadron in that direction, Crutchfield tried desperately to hide his apprehension. What a prize was but a few blocks away!

Meanwhile pandemonium reigned supreme at Dr. Kemper’s. Camp followers scurried every which way. Drovers herded the bellowing beef cattle away from town.

Some of the Confederate waggoners were just now hitching up their equines. Amid the dust and confusion, others were whipping their wagon-teams into the road leading to Staunton. This movement, noted one witness, was close to a “general stampede.”

In this moment of chaos, Capt. Sam Moore took decisive action. Tasked with protecting Port Republic’s upper ford, the one closest to Kemper’s, Moore had overnight learned the locations of headquarters, the green artillery unit encamped behind it, and the baggage and ordnance trains. He’d also discovered Madison Hall’s defensive possibilities. At the end of town, Main Street turned 90 degrees to the northwest and rose slightly for 150 yards before turning 90 degrees to the left into the Staunton Road. Sitting on a rise inside that last angle, Dr. Kemper’s generous yard was surrounded by a sturdy plank fence. To best overtake the fleeing wagons, a column of cavalry would have to turn right as it exited the village and pass along the fence, thus presenting its flank to fire.

Without hesitating, Moore sprinted his small force to Kemper’s yard and spread it out behind that plank fence. “My object,” he wrote years later, “was to defend the trains,

Jackson’s forces were exhausted when they set up camp in Port Republic, having marched 350 miles in 30 days. When Union cavalry launched a surprise attack, the Confederate forces barely managed to rally and fend the assault off.

This movement, noted one witness, was close to a “general stampede.”

and this seemed the best position for that purpose.” Moore’s soldiers didn’t have long to wait. When the Federal column-of-fours turned the corner and proceeded to parallel the fence unawares, Moore shouted, “Fire!” Startled, unable to deploy—and minus a few riders—the Union squadron staggered back into Port Republic. Riding along with this force was Dr. Hunter McGuire, who, seeing his guard shot from the saddle, galloped into an alley and escaped. So far, so good. But Moore knew he needed help. Just before the enemy advance he’d sent a runner to the Charlottesville Artillery.

Organized only three months earlier, the Charlottesville Artillery had been recruited from the city and the nearby University of Virginia. Led by Capt. James McDowell Carrington—a nephew of Confederate Maj. Gen. John Buchanan Floyd, former U.S. secretary of war—the battery boasted 6 guns: two 3-inch ordnance rifles, two 6-pounder smoothbores, and two 12-pounder iron howitzers. The unit had first joined the Valley Army in late May, just as Stonewall Jackson was commencing his skedaddle back up the Shenandoah. Unofficially attached to the Louisiana Brigade commanded by Brig. Gen. Richard Taylor—son of

former President Zachary Taylor—the unit nonetheless made the retreat to Port Republic among the army’s baggage and ammunition train.

Camped behind Dr. Kemper’s, Capt. Carrington had already been warned twice about the enemy proximity— warnings he’d disregarded—but then received the notice from Moore. Another, simultaneous message he remembered explicitly. “Some Confederate officer, whose name I have never found out,” Carrington later recalled, “had the presence of mind to ride by me and [in] a loud voice halloo, ‘Bring up the artillery’...” At this Carrington ordered his bugler to sound the alarm. While five of the guns were limbered up, one 12-pounder howitzer was rolled by hand, wrote Carrington, “so as to command the road from the angle...”

As the Federal horsemen reorganized, another Charlottesville gun joined the defense. In the heat of the moment, Carrington had mistakenly ordered the balance of his command to the rear. But, as Pvt. Leroy Cox later remembered, he rushed up to 2nd Lieut. John H. Timberlake pleading, “For God’s sake, don’t let us run without firing a

Stonewall Jackson, depicted here at the Battle of Cross Keys, had to scramble to get away from Union cavalrymen, who very nearly succeeded in capturing both Jackson and his baggage trains. He went on to fight in the Seven Days Battles. © KEITH ROCCO, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2023 (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES) JACKSON AND HIS DISCIPLES, © BRADLEY SCHMEHL, USED BY PERMISSION, BRADLEYSCHMEHL.COM

shot.” Looking “more a general than a lieutenant, his eyes lit up as only a gallant soldier’s will,” Timberlake drew his sword, then chased down one of the guns and ordered it onto the Kemper lawn. Just a few blocks away, Carroll was ready to launch another attack. As his men started at a trot toward Dr. Kemper’s, Col. Crutchfield “could only watch in mute misery.”

When the blue horsemen rounded the turn at the head of the street, however, they were greeted by brisk rifle fire. Bullets zipped overhead and underfoot. Some slammed into the buildings. The Northern cavalrymen recoiled and dashed back into the safety of the town. Riding among them, Carroll demanded that they halt and reform—he was not about to lose this opportunity. Carrington’s guns were now ready to fire—and he knew the enemy was about to return—but, fearing that Gen. Jackson had been captured and was in their midst, he hesitated to use canister. Gazing across the Kemper yard, Carrington saw the cavalrymen coming at them again. “[T]he order was given by the Yankee Colonel to charge,” wrote Carrington, and so—hesitation be damned—he told his gunners to fire. With the Federal horsemen filling the sights, the Charlottesville boys worked their guns like demons. On one loaded piece, they neglected to properly elevate the barrel. Its discharge blasted through Dr. Kemper’s plank fence, sending slivers and shards pinwheeling toward the enemy.

This artillery fire again sent the Northerners scampering back into Port Republic’s alleyways, behind the houses and outbuildings. Still a captive, Crutchfield “straightened himself in his saddle.” He could scarcely believe his ears. “Where on earth did those guns come from?” he wondered. (It was an interesting question. As Jackson’s Valley Army’s chief of artillery, he was supposed to know where his batteries were posted.)

Now more Charlottesville guns joined the fray. With pistol drawn “to enforce his commands,” 1st Lieut. James L. Dinwiddie ordered his section unlimbered so as to fire directly down Main Street. It was an extremely sound decision. Ordered to open up, these two guns barked viciously, sweeping Main Street from end to end. Extremely frustrated, Carroll was unable to regroup his overawed cavalrymen.

The combat’s focal point now shifted to the North River bridge. First, Ohio artillery posted there entered the fight at Kemper’s. Pvt. Wilbur Davis remembered seeing “a puff of smoke from a cannon, and a shell crashing through a frame building just in our left front...” The Charlottesville gunners replied with canister.

Meanwhile, Gen. Jackson, on the ridge above the span, was urgently seeking assistance. Confederate Capt. William T. Poague of the Rockbridge Artillery recalled that he “never saw Jackson as much stirred up at any other time.” Yelling, “Have the guns hitched up, have the guns hitched up!” as he rode past Poague’s command, Stonewall galloped on toward the infantry camp. There, he ordered several regiments to clear Port Republic of the enemy.

Riding back to the North River, Jackson overtook the Rockbridge Artillery and guided its first piece to a point directly above the covered bridge. As the crew unlimbered and loaded the gun, Stonewall spotted blue-uniformed artillerymen manning a piece at the bridge’s opposite end. Turning to the Rockbridge crew, Jackson gave them the command to fire.

When they protested, shouting that those men were Confederates, Stonewall loudly repeated his order. Riding up alongside Maj. Gen. Jackson, Capt. Poague stated that he knew they were Confederates. Then he explained that at headquarters, he’d seen a recently attached battery, Carrington’s, whose personnel wore uniforms similar to those men across the span.

Seemingly convinced, Jackson rode forward and shouted at the cannoneers across the river, “Bring that gun up here!” Not getting an acknowledgment, he yelled, “Bring that gun up here, I say!” At this, the blue-clad artillerymen fired a round that blasted into the bank below Jackson’s position. “Let ’em have it!” shouted the general as he turned to find the closest infantry unit. Poague’s gunners opened up but

The Northern cavalrymen recoiled and dashed back into the safety of the town.

This undated photograph shows the home of Dr. Kemper, where Jackson had set up his headquarters when Union cavalry suddenly rushed upon his troops at Port Republic.

couldn’t depress their muzzles sufficiently to hit the mark. Brig. Gen. William B. Taliaferro’s lead regiment, the 37th Virginia Infantry, however, soon double-quicked to Jackson’s assistance.

With Stonewall Jackson watching, the regiment unleashed a volley, then rushed down from the heights, charged through the covered bridge, and captured the Federal artillery. The 37th then pitched into Port Republic, drove Carroll’s cavalrymen across the upper ford, and, to the great relief of General Jackson, finally secured Port Republic. In the confusion of those last few moments, Crutchfield and Willis evaded their captors and rode away free men.

It had been, to paraphrase what the Duke of Wellington once said, “a near run thing.” Jackson and his staff had barely escaped capture, and the army’s cattle herd and wagon trains had just as luckily eluded the enemy. Thankfully, the North River bridge remained intact. The credit— for “snatching victory from the jaws of defeat”—went to the men under Captains Moore and Carrington. One participant commented on “the gallantry of Capt. Moor’s [sic] company...” Historian Douglas Southall Freeman wrote that Carrington “had displayed rare judgment.” And, amazingly, the action had cost the Charlottesville Artillery only one man wounded. By contrast, the head of Main Street was littered with 14 dead Federal horses. No doubt,

the battery’s close-range canister blasts had also wounded a number of Carroll’s troopers. Pvt. Leroy Cox noted with glee that after the fight, Gen. Jackson “came up and said when he saw where we had shot canister through the plank fence, ‘If it was a lot of green men, they seemed to know how to use canister.’”

Among Jackson’s battles during the Shenandoah Valley Campaign, those at Cross Keys and Port Republic stood out as decisive victories. Jackson’s tactical and operational genius in winning the March–June 1862 Valley Campaign forced Union forces to retreat, thereby permitting him and his army to rush unimpeded to reinforce Gen. Robert E. Lee’s defense of the Confederate capital, Richmond, against Union Army commander, Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan’s Peninsula Campaign (March–July 1862). Although Jackson’s subsequent battlefield performance achieved mixed results in that campaign’s decisive Seven Days Battles (June 25-July 1, 1862), it nevertheless contributed to Lee’s ultimate defeat of McClellan, saving Richmond.

For the men under the command of Moore and Carrington, however, there remained almost three years of grim war. But they’d always remember the morning of June 8, 1862—the morning they saved Stonewall’s bacon. MHQ

Rick Britton is a historian and cartographer who lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.

A statue of Stonewall Jackson and guns of the Rockbridge Artillery, a Confederate light artillery battery which fought at Port Republic, stood outside the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va. Jackson’s statue has since been removed.

SPECIAL AIR SERVICE’S ‘IRISH LION’

Amid rivalry with his commander on perilous World War II missions, Robert Blair

“Paddy” Mayne transformed from a deadly raider into an accomplished military leader.

By Gavin Mortimer

Mayne not only led hazardous raids into Axis-held territory but organized and trained troops of Britain’s elite covert Special Forces unit, the Special Air Service (SAS).

On the night before Christmas 1941, a tall athletic man crept unseen onto an Italian airstrip at Tamet, on the Libyan coast, midway between Tripoli to the west and Benghazi in the east. Lt. Robert Blair Mayne, “Paddy” to his acquaintances, was accompanied by five other raiders of Britain’s deadly Special Air Service.

A fortnight earlier Mayne and a similar-sized raiding party had visited Tamet for the first time, destroying 24 aircraft and bursting into an Italian billet, shooting dead about 30 startled aircrew. The Italians had since tightened security, but the 6ft 2in Mayne led his men onto the airfield without impediment. “The enemy was on the lookout and had greatly increased the guard, placing them in batches of seven, about thirty feet apart,” remarked the Irishman. But the sentries were complacent. Perhaps they didn’t believe any raider would risk his life on this of all evenings.

“They were chattering,” recalled Mayne, as he and soldiers stole across the desert airstrip, placing their bombs on the same spot on every aircraft—on top of the wing above the fuel tank. Each bomb had a 30-minute fuze.

“We hadn’t quite finished when the first bomb went off,” said Mayne. “The Italians could see us in the light of the burning planes and began shouting, ‘Chi va la? [Who goes there]. It was the first time I’d ever been challenged, so I replied ‘freund.’” Although dazed and frightened, the Italians knew very well this imposing silhouette was no friend. “They began firing,” recounted Mayne. “But they didn’t hit us, and we just slipped through them in the dark.” Back at their base at Kabrit, 80 miles east of the Egyptian capital of Cairo, the raiders regaled the rest of the SAS with their accomplishment.

Mayne was a natural warrior. He had the rare ability to process information and make the correct decisions in the blink of an eye. He was the officer with the golden touch— unlike the aristocratic British SAS commander, David Stirling, who had twice attempted to raid Sirte airfield, five miles east of Tamet, and had twice failed. Mayne’s abilities in the field earned him his supervisor’s jealousy—a rivalry which would result in Stirling being captured, and Mayne rising as a talented military commander as leadership of the fledgling Special Forces unit fell upon his shoulders.

A champion boxer and international rugby player, Mayne had read law at Queen’s University in Belfast. Quick-witted as well as light-footed, his mind never fogged with panic even in moments of great stress. His commander Stirling, by contrast, lacked nothing in courage or enthusiasm, but had none of Mayne’s physical or mental attributes. Clumsy, excitable and incautious, Stirling was unsuited to warfare by stealth.

The navigator who brought Mayne and his raiders to Tamet airfield on the first raid was Mike Sadler, then serving in the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), an elite reconnaissance unit prized by the British for its prowess at deep desert exploration—and infiltration of enemy-held wilderness. Sadler transferred to the SAS in early 1942 and fought in its ranks for the rest of the war, “Paddy felt his true vocation in war,” he remembered. “He was well suited to war and he enjoyed it. He was very good at fighting the Germans, but he was also a solicitor [lawyer] and a very able sort of chap.”

As the war in North Africa intensified in 1942, Mayne’s reputation as a guerrilla fighter grew. That summer the SAS took stock of a consignment of American Willys jeeps, liberating them from the LRDG, who for months had been ferrying the raiders to their targets. The jeeps were Mayne’s idea. On one raid, at Sidi Haneish on the night of July 26, 18 of the vehicles drove onto the airfield and destroyed or damaged 30 Axis aircraft. In September the SAS was awarded regimental status, comprising an HQ squadron and four combat squadrons with a total strength of twenty-nine officers and 572 other ranks.

Mayne, center, referees a scrum during an informal rugby game among his men in Darvel, Scotland in 1944. Mayne fostered competition and camaraderie among the SAS.

Promoted to major, Mayne took command of A Squadron. On Oct. 7 Mayne and his men left Kabrit in a fleet of jeeps and trucks for the Libyan desert with instructions to attack Axis lines of communication and ambush their motorised columns. Mayne thrived. “This sort of fighting was in his blood,” recalled the squadron’s Medical Officer, Capt. Malcolm Pleydell. “There was no give or take about his method of warfare, and he was out to kill when the opportunity presented itself.”

For two months Mayne and his men harried the Germans and Italians as they withdrew west across Libya from

the frontline at El Alamein, chased by the British Eighth Army. The LRDG’s intelligence officer, Bill Kennedy Shaw, had a low opinion of Stirling but only respect for Mayne. “Stories of their operations used to reach us,” he said. “Tales of trains mined, railway stations wrecked, road traffic shot up and aircraft burned on their landing grounds.”

On Nov. 29 Mayne’s A Squadron rendezvoused with B Squadron at Bir Zalten, a remote spot about 80 miles inland from the Libyan coast. Stirling was in command of B, defying orders from Middle East HQ in Cairo not to go on operations. He, too, had heard about A Squadron’s achievements—deepening his resentment and envy of Mayne. Stirling intended to make a name for himself by taking B Squadron further west towards the Libyan capital of Tripoli, and perhaps even beyond into Tunisia.

It was Stirling’s fantasy to become the leader of the first unit from the Eighth Army to contact the British First Army as it advanced eastward from Algeria into northern Tunisia. That, he hoped, would prove to his detractors that he was the Irishman’s equal.

The two squadrons threw a party on the evening of Nov. 29 and parted the next day. It was the last time Mayne would see Stirling until after the war. On Jan. 24, 1943 Stirling and a 14-man patrol were surprised by the Germans as they slept in a Tunisian wadi. Three men, including Sadler,

managed to escape. One of the German paratroopers, Sgt. Heinrich Fugner, remarked how easy it had been to capture the British soldiers. “They had not posted any sentries,” explained Fugner. “Maybe they felt so safe in their hideout.” The German was also struck by Stirling’s “tired and exhausted state.”

According to one SAS officer, Capt. John Lodwick, the regiment descended into “chaos” in the immediate aftermath of Stirling’s capture. “A great and powerful organisation had been built up, but it had been an organisation controlled and directed by a single man,” commented Lodwick. “Stirling alone knew where everybody was, what they were doing, and what he subsequently intended them to do.”

When Mayne learned of Stirling’s capture in the middle of February, he was with his squadron in the Lebanon, undergoing skiing instruction in the expectation that 1SAS would be deployed in the mountains of the Balkans in the spring of 1943.

Mayne had travelled to the ski school still absorbing the news he’d received from Northern Ireland that his father had died. He was now the paternal head of his family, responsible for his mother, on whom he doted, and his six siblings.

Maj. David Stirling, right, stands beside SAS raiders in North Africa in early 1943. The aristocratic and ambitious Stirling was Mayne’s commanding officer but lacked his field skills, giving rise to rivalry that saw Stirling captured.

The Early Exploits of the SAS LIBYA

standing and connections necessary to grow the budding SAS. “David was a very good organizer, had vast contacts and knew all the right people,” said Sadler.

Mayne, who came from a middle-class Irish family, was more at ease with the class below than the one above. At Kabrit he preferred to drink in the sergeants’ mess rather than share a glass with his fellow officers. In fact he had an antipathy towards most British upper-class officers. He had left the Scottish Commando after an altercation with his superior, Maj. Geoffrey Keyes, the son of the famous admiral and baronet (Roger, Lord Keyes), and kept his distance from upper-class officers recruited to the SAS by Stirling in 1942.

ing officer of No62 Commando (which in May 1943 became 2SAS) and in February 1943 was sent to Kabrit to assess the future of 1SAS.

Following his brother’s capture, Bill Stirling’s assessment of the situation in Kabrit resulted in March 1943 in a reorganisation of the SAS, as well as the other numerous ‘private armies’ that had sprung up in North Africa. Mayne was appointed CO of 1SAS, which for the duration of 1943 was redesignated the Special Raiding Squadron.

Bill Stirling had faith in Mayne’s ability to command a regiment. The Irishman had earned the respect—bordering on the reverence—of his men and also possessed what fellow SAS officer George Jellicoe described as “tactical genius.” Jellicoe was given command of the Special Boat Squadron (SBS) and this unit, along with 1SAS and a Greek raiding squadron, came under the aegis of Raiding Forces,

likely had conflicting emotions when he heard about Stirling.

whose commander was Lt. Col. Henry ‘Harry’ Cator, a 46-year-old decorated veteran of the First World War. Cator was in effect the chief executive of Raiding Forces, responsible for logistics and administration.

This freed up Mayne to focus on his regiment, many of whom had only recently joined the SAS. One new face was Lt. Peter Davis, who remarked: “As far as Raiding Forces Headquarters were concerned, they might just as well have not existed for all the effect they had on our training or our control. All decisions rested solely with Paddy.”

Like all newcomers to the SAS, Davis had heard tales of Mayne and his feats in battle, but still nothing prepared him for their first encounter in February 1943. He was stunned by Mayne’s “massiveness,” and recalled that, “his wrists were twice the size of those of a normal man, while his fists seemed to be as large as a polo ball.” Davis stared up at Mayne and trembled as “his piercing blue eyes looked discomfortingly at me, betraying his remarkable talent of being able to sum a person up within a minute of meeting

him.” Davis expected a voice and personality to match the imposing physique, but was surprised by quite the contrary. “I was struck by the incongruity of his voice and of his shy manner,” he recalled. “His voice was low and halting, with a musical singsong quality and the faintest tinge of an Irish brogue. I was soon to learn that when he was excited or intoxicated, this remarkable voice would become so Irish as to be hardly intelligible, and when he was angry it would reach such heights as to be almost a falsetto.”

Mayne and his men moved to a new camp at Azzib in Palestine at the end of March. The new recruits soon discovered that Mayne was a man who did nothing by halves. At Kabrit he drank in the sergeants’ mess until 2 a.m., but would be the first to appear four hours later for physical training, fresh and full of energy for the 6 a.m. start.

Throughout spring 1943, he pushed his men relentlessly during training, while also expecting them to keep pace with his revelry. Mayne devised and oversaw the training program. He had his men schooled in the use of American

Wrecked German aircraft lie in Tunisia circa early 1943. In his initial missions as an SAS raider, Mayne excelled at destroying enemy aircraft. He is credited with destroying as many as 100 planes, personally wrecking 47 on one raid.

and Axis weapons, light and heavy machine guns, and established a mortar section of one officer and 28 other ranks. He organized night exercises on the coastline from landing craft, and made sure the men received instruction in cliff scaling, wire-cutting and map-reading.

Mayne was a competitive animal, a man for whom sport was an essential part of his character. He cultivated a fierce rivalry between his three troops: One, Two and Three. This culminated in an exercise in late May in which each troop had to march from the banks of Lake Tiberias back to their coastal camp. “The distance was about 45 miles over rough and difficult country, and in the heat of the Palestine summer,” said Davis. It was a brutal march. Three Troop went first and only eight out of 60 completed the march within the designated time. One Troop erred in their map reading and took nearly 48 hours, while Two Troop endured all manner of agonies en route to Azzib.

The march achieved Mayne’s purpose of fostering not only competition within the SAS, but also strengthening camaraderie within each troop. Mayne was also growing during this time, maturing as a man and developing as an

officer. In the first year of the SAS’s existence, he was able to display his physical prowess. Now as commanding officer, he demonstrated his abilities as a military theorist. He divided each of the three troops into three sections, each one composed of approximately four officers and 70 men. These troops were then divided into two equal subsections under the command of an NCO. These subsections were further split into three parties of three-man specialists: a Bren gunner, a rifleman and a rifle-bomber. Lt. Peter Davis, who commanded one of the sections in Two Troop, recalled that Mayne created “a highly efficient little fighting unit, capable of providing its own support in many of the usual situations which one expects to meet in battle.”

A small signal and engineers’ section was attached to each Troop. The organisation was in marked contrast to how the SAS had functioned under David Stirling; a year after forming the SAS, Stirling had not even raised its own signal section, relying instead on the LRDG’s signallers to their great irritation.

The SAS left Palestine for Suez on June 6 and for the rest of the month they practised amphibious landings from LCAs in the Gulf of Aqaba and rehearsed neutralising clifftop gun batteries; they knew the real thing was imminent, and they guessed it would be somewhere on Sicily, but the exact objective remained a mystery.

On June 28, 1943, Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery inspected the SAS at Port Said in Egypt and expressed his confidence that it would achieve its objectives. The men then had a couple of days’ leave and most spent it in Cairo, enjoying the city’s many bars and restaurants.

Mayne had an altercation with Lt. Col. NGF Dunne, Provost Marshal of Cairo. Dunne’s nickname was “Punch,” suggesting he was also a pugnacious character who perhaps relished the chance to confront the legendary Mayne. Mayne had probably drunk too much during his unit’s final binge before departing on operations. The Irishman was taken into custody, which presented Lt. Col. Harry Cator with an awkward predicament. He explained the situation to his superior, Brig. George Davy, Director of Military Operations in Cairo, and secured the immediate release of Mayne. “Harry then brought the contrite Paddy into my office to apologise to me for causing so much trouble,” remembered Davy. “I thought that a bit unfair and turned the interview into a good laugh.”

The SAS sailed from Port Said on July 4. Once at sea, Mayne briefed his men on the actual target: a battery of four powerful guns situated on the southeast coast of Sicily on a promontory called Cape Murro di Porco [Cape of the Pig’s Snout]. It was imperative the battery was destroyed without delay in the early hours of July 10 for the main British invasion fleet would hove into view a few hours later.

From top: A view of the beachfront of Bagnara, Italy, where the SAS landed on the northern beach two hours behind schedule; Lt. Johnny Wiseman (right), a section leader of One Troop, is pictured with medic Dr. Malcolm Pleydell (center right) and other members of the SAS.

Mayne explained that One Troop would launch a frontal attack on the battery with Two Troop swinging west and striking from the northern side. Three Troop would come ashore half a mile further west and strike inland to capture two farms to the rear of the batteries that were believed to be a barracks. Lt. Johnny Wiseman, a section leader in One Troop, led the SAS assault, moving inland through the dense scrub that lay between the rocky shore and the guns. “We landed, got up the cliff and the area where the gun was, had barbed wire round it,” recalled Wiseman. “I got there first and we cut the wire. I thought it might be mined but it wasn’t so we went through a gap I’d cut and my troop took the first gun without any bother.”

Wiseman got on the radio to give Mayne a situation report but struggled to make himself understood to his CO. “I’d managed to lose my false teeth!” he remembered. His real teeth had been lost in a pre-war sporting accident and his false ones had literally shot out of his mouth as he barked out orders. Wiseman eventually got his message across to Mayne…and also managed to find his false teeth as dawn broke.

The arrival of morning also helped the engineers section prepare the charges to destroy the battery. At 5:20 a.m., Mayne was informed that the guns were no more. He fired a green star rocket to signal to the invasion fleet that the coast was clear. But it wasn’t. There was another battery, unknown to the SAS, approximately two miles northeast of the one just destroyed. It fired its first salvo as the SAS dozed in the morning light at one of the farmhouses seized by Three Troop. “We were roused by a sharp explosion from inland, which interrupted our peaceful reverie in the rudest way,” said Davis.

Mayne responded swiftly to the new threat, leading One and Two Troops towards the sounds of the guns, eliminating enemy pillboxes and other defensive positions as they moved northeast. The second battery was taken with the loss of just one man; in return the SAS had killed approximately 150 Italians and captured 500.

Lt. Gen. Miles Dempsey, commander of XIII Corps into which the SAS was incorporated, hailed the destruction of the batteries as “a brilliant operation, brilliantly planned and brilliantly carried out.”

Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery inspects a coastal defense gun at Benghazi, Libya in December 1942. SAS forces led by Mayne would lend vital help to Montgomery’s forces. Monty later personally recommended Mayne for the Victoria Cross.

Two days later the SAS came ashore at Augusta, an important naval port 12 miles north of Cape Murro di Porco that the Eighth Army wanted as a base. Germans were on the high ground overlooking Augusta. The intrepid raiders were subjected to withering fire as they scrambled over rocks and into narrow streets that led into the town center.

Sgt. Bill Deakins, in charge of engineer section, recalled that the one man who appeared indifferent to the incoming fire was Mayne, who strode down the street at the head of his men. “He had one hand in his pocket, his cuffs—as was his habit—turned back and behind him trotted his signaller, David Danger,” said Deakins. “It was never done out of bravado but simply to give the men confidence.” Danger remembered Mayne as “terribly brave” but also a man who could be hard to the point of unfair if he disliked someone. “He could be tough in chucking out those he didn’t feel fitted.”

The SAS held Augusta. Mayne was awarded a bar to the Distinguished Service Order he had received in North Africa. It was a reward for the accomplishment of the two operations in Sicily. The citation praised his “courage, determination and superb leadership which proved the key to success.”

The SAS spent August at Cannizzaro, a suburb of Catania on Sicily’s east coast. Mayne established his HQ in the

former home of a fascist doctor. His men slept outside in the courtyard and in the adjoining lemon grove. “We had many episodes with Paddy in Catania,” said Danger. “One night we had a party and we were all bedded down in the courtyard of this house. We didn’t have tents. Suddenly Paddy started pelting us with flowerpots and we had to take evasive action.” Mayne gave life his all, whether it was partying, training or fighting. A few days after boisterously showering his men with flowerpots, he raced them to the top of Mount Etna on a training exercise.

“Average time to climb Etna from end of road, 2 3/4 hours,” recorded the SAS war diary. “Major Mayne, DSO, 2 hours.”

On Sept. 1 the war diary noted that the SAS marched to Catania for embarkation. Their ultimate destination was Bagnara, a coastal town on the toe of the Italian boot, built at the foot of a steep hill. The main British invasion of Italy would be 11 miles south at Reggio. The SAS’s orders were to secure Bagnara and the road leading from the town up to the plateau far above. The SAS operation was bedevilled by problems with the landing craft. It wasn’t until 4:45 a.m. on Sept. 4 that they were put ashore on Bagnara’s northern beach, two hours behind schedule. “No one knew if the beach was mined or not,” said Alf Dignum, a signaller. “Paddy Mayne was first up the beach, walking all the way, and by the time we’d followed him up there was still only one set of footprints.”

Mayne quickly realised they had landed on the wrong beach—the northern beach instead of the southern one. Standing on the broad promenade at Bagnara, a popular vacation spot before the war, he coolly issued instructions to his men. He gave Two Troop the task of moving inland through the sharply ascending streets to secure a road bridge. Cpl. Sid Payne of Two Troop was last man but one as his section moved in single file through the town in their rubber-soled boots. “The chappie behind me tapped me on the shoulder, pointed to his ear, then down the road,” remembered Payne. “I could hear marching. So I tapped the bloke in front of me and signalled to him, and we all spread out on the road and round this bend came the first ranks of this column of Germans, carrying their rifles at ease.” The Germans were engineers, sent to Bagnara to blow the bridge after news broke of the main Allied landing. “They got quite a surprise,” said Payne.

Mayne gave his life his all, whether it was partying, training or fighting.

This photo shows men of SAS Two Troop. Mayne personally led Two Troop at Cape Murro di Porco in a battle described as “a brilliant operation.” At Bagnara, Mayne tasked Two Troop with moving inland to secure a bridge.

Most of the engineers were killed or wounded in the initial ambush. Those that weren’t fled out of town. There was sporadic fighting throughout the day against the Germans dug in among the terraced vines overlooking Bagnara. At daylight on Sept. 5, the British 15 Brigade began pouring into Bagnara. Then a cruiser appeared and shelled the Germans on the hillside. By dusk on Sept. 5 the Germans had fled and the SAS had secured yet another objective. Five men were killed at Bagnara and a further 16 wounded. A month later at Termoli, a port on the east coast of Italy, the SAS lost 20 men and a further 22 were captured. It was a battle that the SAS shouldn’t have fought, being one more suited to the infantry as opposed to highly-trained but lightly-armed commando force.

Nonetheless, Mayne and his men distinguished themselves by dint of their courage and steadfastness. On Oct. 10, 1943, Dempsey addressed the SAS at their billet in Termoli, praising them for what they had achieved in Sicily and Italy. “In all my military career,” he said, “I have never yet met a unit in which I had such confidence as I have in yours.” Dempsey then listed the reasons for the success of SAS, all of which were proudly recorded in the war diary: 1) Well Trained, 2) Fit, 3) Discipline as a unit and as individuals, 4) Careful planning but no over confidence, 5) Long experience of fighting, 6) Spirit. In short, they were men who had been molded by Mayne in his

own image. Not so much ‘Who Dares Wins,’ the gung-ho SAS motto devised by David Stirling in 1941, but Who Trains Wins. This philosophy continued to underpin Mayne’s command in 1944 when the regiment returned to the UK. The SAS expanded into a brigade, comprising 1 and 2SAS, two French regiments and a Belgian company. 1SAS operated behind Nazi lines in Occupied France throughout the summer of 1944, and Mayne received a second bar to his DSO.

In April 1945 Mayne led his regiment into Germany, and was recommended for Britain’s highest gallantry honor, the Victoria Cross, for rescuing some of his men under heavy enemy fire. The medal never materialized and Mayne instead received a third bar to his DSO. Ten years later he was dead, killed in a car crash in his native Northern Ireland. “It may seem a strange fate that Col. Blair Mayne should have survived so many hazards as a soldier, and at 40 lose his life in a motor accident,” remarked the Belfast Telegraph in its Dec. 14, 1955 edition. “But he lived hard in peace, as well as in war...Men like him are made for conflict.” MHQ

Gavin Mortimer is the author of books on wartime special forces including David Stirling: The Phoney Major: The Life, Times and Truth about the Founder of the SAS (Constable, 2022). His next book will appear in 2023.

British troops wade ashore from landing ships on Sicily in July 1943. Mayne’s SAS troops helped pave the way for the British advance inland on Sicily and Italy that year, earning the confidence of British Eighth Army commanders.

RETRACING WORLD WAR I

How photographer Attila Szalay-Berzeviczy revisited the scenes of a truly global war.

By Zita Ballinger Fletcher

In his two-volume book series, “In the Centennial Footsteps of the Great War,” photographer and author Attila Szalay-Berzeviczy not only recreates famous battle scenes but revisits former battlefields and key war-related sites around the globe. His photog raphy collection creates an immersive experience of World War I, taking the reader on a poignant and informative journey from the wildernesses of the Western Front to the deserts of Saudi Arabia. Szalay-Berzeviczy’s images succeed in capturing the essence of both the triumphant and tragic milestones of this sweeping conflict, which he believes deserves greater attention. “The world we are living in was created by the First World War,” he told MHQ. “It was important for me to remind people of its importance by using a totally new approach. I wanted to bring a new visual effect to history lovers.” MHQ highly recommends Szalay-Berzeviczy’s book series and is pleased to share a selection of these outstanding images which bear witness to how the scourge of the Great War touched all corners of the earth.

Above: Szalay-Berzeviczy was inspired to capture this image of British reenactors based on an iconic photo taken at Passchendaele by Australian war photographer Frank Hurley, which is one of his favorite World War I images. Right: Gavrilo Princip’s Model 1910 Browning pistol, used to assassinate Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, is today housed at Vienna’s Military History Museum.

Above: The Tolmin bridge crosses the Isonzo River in Slovenia in a formerly fiercely contested region of the Italian front. “This was a scene of major bloodbaths,” said Szalay-Berzeviczy, noting that 12 battles were fought in the area. Below: The ruins of a church formerly on no-man’s-land stand “totally out in nature in splendid isolation,” near Smarhon, Belarus, according to SzalayBerzeviczy. The area was a hotspot for heavy fighting on the Eastern Front from 1915-18.

Above: Reenactors wearing Cossack attire that would have been seen during battles against the Ottomans in the Caucasus pose for Szalay-Berzeviczy’s lens during 2017 centennial commemorations near Minsk, Belarus, marking the anniversary of the Russian Kerensky offensive in 1917. Below: Original trenches northeast of Reims, restored by volunteers, form the historic frontline of La Main de Massiges in France where the Germans and French fought. “This is probably the best-quality World War I trench system that has been preserved. It’s a very exciting place to visit.”

PHOTOS

BY ATTILA SZALAY-BERZEVICZY; PREVIOUS SPREAD, INSET: JACK SULLIVAN (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

RETRACING WORLD WAR I

are the pride of Hungary.” Below: At the Stelvio Pass in Italy, bordering Switzerland, Austro-Hungarian and Italian troops battled and also succumbed to mountain perils. “It’s a really scary drive up there. You have

Above: Riders of the Equestrian Department of the Hungarian military’s Honvéd Zrínyi Sports Association reenact the Hungarian hussars’ decisive role in the 1914 Battle of Krasnik on location in present-day Poland. “This is one of my favorites,” Szalay-Berzeviczy said of the image. “The red-trousered hussars

the abyss on your left side and rocks on your right.”

Above: A small local fishing boat lies on the beach at Anzac Cove in Gallipoli, Turkey, at the site where Australian and New Zealand troops famously landed on April 25, 1915. The famous rock formation known to the troops as “the sphinx” is visible on the right. Below: The ruins of a portion of a train and the Hejaz Railway lie in the desert near Hadiyah, between Medina and Mdain Salih, in Saudi Arabia. “These are huge inaccessible deserts,” noted Szalay-Berzeviczy. “You can still find the ruins of the Hejaz Railway that were the casualties of the Arab Revolt and Lawrence of Arabia.”

Above: A 149mm Italian artillery gun sits on Cresta Croce in the Adamello-Presanella Alps.

“They pulled it up there with horses with tremendous effort onto a glacier, but the glacier melted, leaving a huge abyss behind the cannon so nobody can ever take it down again,” said Szalay-Berzeviczy, who camped on the ridges.

“You can only get up to see the cannon if you are a trained mountaineer.” Below: Fort Verena in northern Italy was armed with four 149mm guns, but was hit by a powerful Austro-Hungarian 305mm Skoda mortar that killed most artillerymen inside in June 1915.

somehow creating a ring around the head of the statue. It gives you the feeling that there is a gas cloud.”

Above: Local reenactors dressed in German uniforms relax at Gizycko, Poland amid a reconstruction of the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes in 1914. Pyrotechnics and cavalry charges feature at yearly battle reenactments at the nearby Boyen Fortress. Below: The St. Julien Canadian Memorial, also known as the Brooding Soldier, stands in Langemarck, Belgium, honoring Canadians who faced the war’s first poison gas attacks. “There was a storm. I waited for this special situation where two clouds were

CHALLENGING POSEIDON

Alexander the Great’s 332 bce Siege of Tyre was won by his daring strategy, innovative engineering, coordinated naval and land attacks, and led—as usual—by his personal bravery.

By Justin D. Lyons

The inhabitants of Tyre at first mocked Alexander for his arrogance in challenging Poseidon, god of the sea, as he sought to build a causeway to besiege the city. They soon learned he would not relent.

On the same day Alexander III of Macedonia was born in 356 bce, the famous temple of Artemis at Ephesus was destroyed by fire. The soothsayers wailed that somewhere in the world a torch had been lit that would consume all Asia. The portent proved true. Alexander swept into Asia like a devouring blaze whose intensity none could endure. As he surveyed the fortress city of Tyre, a high island of rock severed from the mainland by a deep, windswept channel, perhaps even he wondered if here the flame would be quenched.

In the early spring of 334 bce, Alexander marched to the Hellespont, the narrow strip of water dividing Europe from Asia. The strait was not only the most practical crossing place, it also held symbolic significance as the very passage taken by the Persian king Xerxes when he invaded Greece nearly 150 years before. The subsequent battles at Thermopylae (480 bce), Salamis (480 bce), and Plataea (479 bce) were enshrined in Greek memory as imperishable monuments to the defense of freedom against despotism. Alexander sought such associations to support the claim that his conquest was a panhellenic crusade to avenge wrongs done to the Greeks by the Persians rather than a quest for personal gain or glory.

Yet Alexander’s status as an advocate of Greek freedom was problematic. He had commanded the left wing of the Macedonian army at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 bce) that destroyed the independence of the Greek city states. His father, Philip II, had united all the Greeks except the Spartans into a single federation called the League of Corinth. with himself as Hegemon. To place the final seal upon this unity, he put before the Federal Council his greatest project—a war against Persia. When Philip died, the Greeks rebelled against Macedonian rule. But the gifted father had a gifted son. Alexander quickly put down the rebellion and took for his own the powers of Hegemon and Captain-General of the League war against Persia. But even as he moved forward in their name, he had always to guard against an uprising of the rebellious Greeks.

After Alexander won his first major victory against the Persians at the Granicus River (334 bce), he set about bringing Asia Minor under his control. The center piece of that project was liberating the Greeks who lived there, which strengthened his propaganda as well as serving a strategic purpose. Alexander could not safely proceed farther without leaving a stable political structure in his wake.

He intended no mere hit-and run raid, but a steady, ordered conquest that replaced the rule of the Great King with his own. He knew that the Persians ruled the Greek-inhabited cities through oligarchies hated by their subjects. By offering these cities freedom and self-determination, he was progressively undermining Persian control and securing a friendly country that would not have to be held in subjection with large garrisons.

The coastal cities were important. If those were won, the Persian navy would be deprived of its bases in the eastern Mediterranean, undermining its ability to interdict Alexander’s communications and supply—and allowing him to push farther inland. Knowing that victory over the Persians at sea was unlikely, Alexander disbanded most of his navy, committing himself to a land-based strategy.

After having secured Asia Minor, Alexander was again victorious at the battle at Issus (333 bce) in Hollow Syria. This time the Great King Darius III was himself present but fled the field as his army disintegrated under Alexander’s furious assault. Rather than pursue him toward the heart of the empire, Alexander continued his coastal strategy by marching south to Phoenicia. The Phoenicians were expert sailors, and their many coastal cities contributed a great number of ships to the Persian navy. Unwilling servants of the Persians, the cities of Marathos, Arados, Tripolis, Byblos, and Sidon surrendered to Alexander. But the city of Tyre still lay in his path. Though it stood practically alone, it was strong and stubborn.

As he approached Tyre, Alexander was met by envoys sent by the populace to declare they would do as he ordered. Pleased, Alexander told them to return and tell the Tyrians he wished to enter their city and sacrifice in the ancient temple of Heracles, as the Greeks named the Phoenician god Melkart. Alexander’s arrival in February of 332 bce corresponded with a great festival in honor of the god.

The prospect of Alexander’s participation and likely domination of the festival was viewed by the Tyrians as a direct challenge to their sovereignty and independence which they were unwilling to accept. They refused, returning word to Alexander that he was welcome to make his sacrifice at a sanctuary outside of the city, but that they would receive neither Persian nor Macedonian within their walls. In this war for an empire, the conqueror would not accept such a declaration of neutrality. He prepared to take the city by siege.

Alexander’s decision to besiege Tyre flowed from several strategic considerations. First, it would be damaging to his reputation as an invincible conqueror to leave behind any city that had successfully resisted him. Such a spark could easily ignite rebellions in the vast territory he had already conquered in Asia, binding him to the task of

Alexander swept into Asia like a devouring blaze whose intensity none could endure.

maintaining rather than extending his rule and encouraging resistance in those yet to face him. Such a failure would also embolden rebels in Greece, most notably the Spartans, but also Athens and every other city held in the League by fear rather than devotion.

Second, Tyre’s continued independence would undermine his coastal strategy to gain command of the sea. Left intact, Tyre would serve as a base and a rallying point for Persian naval forces. But with Tyre taken, he would advance his control of the coast and open the path to Egypt. He would no longer be shackled to the Mediterranean, allowing him to march inland where he might strike at the heart of the Persian Empire.

Third, the fall of Tyre would complete the conquest of Phoenicia, the source of the largest and strongest contingent of the Persian navy. Those forces, he reasoned, would join with him because the Phoenician oarsmen and marines would not continue to serve the Persians while their cities were under his control.

This point indicates a reconsideration of Alexander’s neglect of naval forces. His earlier decision to disband the navy was risky and very nearly disastrous. In the year following, the Persian navy threatened to carry the war back into Europe. The Persians seized the island of Chios and all of Lesbos apart from the city of Mytilene, which they blockaded. There were even rumors of plans for an invasion of central Greece. The risks inherent in Alexander’s decision to abandon his fleet had now become realities. With Persian successes in the northern Aegean, Alexander’s bridgehead at the Hellespont was endangered. In response, he commissioned a new fleet, but the Persians wrought havoc

before it could be mobilized. Mytilene was captured along with Tenedos at the mouth of the Dardanelles, a mere thirty miles from the crossing point at Abydos.

Alexander was saved from possible disaster by his enemy. At that moment Darius decided to recall the bulk of his mercenary forces to Asia, depriving his fleet of manpower in preparation for a single, massive, pitched battle on land. In so doing, he abandoned the attack where Alexander was weakest to meet him where he was strongest. The outcomes of the battles of Issus (333 bce) and Gaugamela (331 bce) would reveal Darius’ fatal mistake.

Alexander rarely relied upon strategic considerations alone when justifying an action or military operation. It is a prominent feature of his campaigns that he frequently sought favorable omens from the gods and desired to follow in the path of heroes. His first act when he entered Asia Minor was to travel to Troy where he sacrificed to Athena and evoked the champions of old by laying a wreath upon the tomb of Achilles. Nor were foreign gods necessarily to be spurned. The Greeks often viewed the gods of the near east as local manifestations of their own gods, and they were willing to pay them devotion—hence, Alexander’s desire to sacrifice to the Tyrian Heracles. This easygoing polytheism played a prominent role in Alexander’s absorption of conquered peoples into a vast, multi-ethnic empire. His intention to take Tyre was fortified when he had, or claimed to have had, a dream in which Heracles led him by the hand into the city.

Set on an island protected by deep water patrolled by a strong fleet, its sheer, high walls defended by a skilled and

This Italian mosaic depicts Alexander the Great in action (left) during the Battle of Issus in 333 bce Alexander used a unique blend of personal leadership, political savvy and religious devotion when he set out to achieve victories in battle.

resolute citizenry, Tyre’s capture would be no easy task. Daunted by neither man nor nature, Alexander’s plan was to bridge the gap between the city and the mainland by building a causeway. His siege engineers packed rocks between piles driven into the mud, which served as cement, and covered this foundation with beams of timber gathered from the forests of Lebanon. He secured an abundance of stone by demolishing Old Tyre on the mainland, and the project initially proceeded rapidly under Alexander’s personal direction.

At first the Tyrians ridiculed this ambitious project, jeering at the soldiers carrying loads on their backs like beasts, and mocking Alexander’s arrogance for daring to challenge Poseidon, god of the sea. But, increasingly disturbed by the swift progress of the work, they began to construct extra mechanical artillery and strengthen their defenses.

When the causeway left the shallows behind and began to approach the city itself, the workers came within range of missiles and arrows from the wall as well as being harassed by triremes sent out to hinder them. Dressed for work rather than combat, they suffered badly under these attacks. To counteract these dangers, Alexander ordered two towers built on the edge of the causeway. Screened with skins and hides to defend against flaming

darts, mounted with siege engines (such as catapults), and manned by archers, the towers proved a successful countermeasure.

Thwarted by the towers, the Tyrians changed their tactics. They loaded a cavalry transport ship with the greatest amount of burnable material it would hold mixed with pitch, tar, and sulfur to encourage combustion. Cauldrons of naphtha were hung from the yardarm where these accelerants would fall on the burning material below. The stern was weighted with ballast to raise the bow so that it would carry up onto the causeway. Waiting for a favorable wind, they then towed the fire ship forward with triremes, increasing their speed as they approached so that, when released, its momentum would carry it forward. At the last moment, those aboard set the pile alight and jumped over the side. Lodging firmly on the causeway near the towers, the ship became a furious conflagration when the yardarm burned through, dumping the naphtha onto the hungry flames. The siege towers became pillars of fire. Seizing the moment, many small ships from the city landed on the causeway, tearing down the protective palisade and destroying the siege engines the fire had not consumed. There is no record of Alexander’s reaction to this thwarting of many long months of effort. We only know that he began again with an improved plan.

While the new causeway, now wider and guarded by more towers, was being constructed, Alexander’s prediction began to come true. Geostratos, the king of Arados, along with Enylos of Byblos, learning that their cities were in Alexander’s hands, sailed to join him. Their example

During the 331 bce Battle of Arbela, also known as the Battle of Gaugamela, Alexander defeated the Persian army led by King Darius III. Alexander was uncompromising in his quest to undermine Persian rule and seize control of areas under their influence. He set his sights on Tyre during his coastal campaign to cut off the Persian navy’s access to ships.

Dressed for work rather than combat, they suffered badly under these attacks.

was soon followed by ships from Rhodes, Cilicia, Cyprus and Sidon. News of Darius’ defeat at Issus and Alexander’s control of Phoenicia was causing the disintegration of the Persian fleet.

When all of these kings and captains had sailed to him, Alexander pardoned them for past offences on the grounds that they had served with the Persians under duress rather than by choice. He now had a fleet of 220 warships at his disposal, a force greater than the Tyrian navy. He was also reinforced with nearly four thousand Greek mercenaries from the Peloponnese.

Having gathered the fleet at Sidon, Alexander sailed to Tyre, hoping the Tyrians would engage him in a sea battle. But, alarmed by the unexpectedly large number of ships, they adopted a defensive posture, blocking the entrance to their harbors with triremes. Disappointed, Alexander anchored his fleet along the shore near the causeway. The next day he ordered the Cyprians to blockade the Sidonian harbor in the north of the island and the Phoenicians to guard the southern Egyptian harbor on the other side of the causeway. Now the attack on Tyre transformed into the unusual spectacle of a water-borne siege.

Alexander put engineers from Cyprus and all over Phoenicia to work building engines of war mounted on ships. With rams and catapults, Alexander tested various sections of the wall, probing for a weak spot, while the Tyrians attempted to halt their efforts by launching flaming arrows, sending out divers to cut anchor cords, and littering the water with obstacles.

Alexander’s Path of Conquest

When the Macedonians countered these measures by securing their anchors with chains rather than cords, roofing and fireproofing the ram ships, and clearing the obstacles from several approaches to the walls, the Tyrians had little choice but to attempt an attack by sea. For several days, they concealed their preparations behind a screen of unfurled sails stretching across the mouth of the Sidonian harbor. They assembled their most powerful ships and manned them with their best crews and finest marines. The timing of their attack was planned carefully to maximize the chances of success. The Tyrians had observed that many of the crews of the blockading Cyprian ships withdrew to the mainland around noon for their midday meal. At this same time, Alexander, who was usually with the Phoenician fleet, withdrew to his tent to eat and rest.

Seizing the opportunity, the Tyrians launched their surprise sortie. Initially, the attack was very successful. Many of the ships were empty or nearly so. They sank several and drove others on to the beach to smash them apart. Unfortunately for the Tyrians, Alexander changed his habits that day and rejoined the Phoenician fleet earlier than usual. When news of the attack reached him, he was in position to react immediately. Ordering part of the fleet to guard the southern harbor against a similar breakout, he sailed around the island with five triremes and several other warships to support the Cyprian fleet. Observing this action from the walls, the Tyrians within the city tried frantically to signal their fleet to withdraw. In the tumult of combat, their warnings were unheeded by the Tyrian crews until Alexander was nearly upon them. Several Tyrian ships

The young Alexander the Great cut his teeth at military leadership at the Battle of Chaeronea alongside his father Philip II. Rising to power after his father’s assassination, Alexander subsequently went on to achieve victories at Issus, Granicus, Gaugamela and Tyre. He took an active role in combat and fought on the frontlines among his leading troops.

CHALLENGING POSEIDON

were destroyed and others captured as they attempted to reach the safety of the harbor. The only consolation they could grasp was that most crews were able to swim to safety. Siege engines continued to batter the fortifications. Eventually a section of the southern wall crumbled. The final assault of Tyre began. Transport ships fitted with gangways sailed toward the breach while triremes were stationed at the harbors to prevent another breakout. When the gangways dropped, the Macedonians poured forth onto the wall, Alexander himself among the foremost.

Alexander’s active role in combat was a consistent element in his campaigns. He exercised heroic command. Not only was he present on the battlefield, he fought in the front lines at great personal hazard. Again and again, Alexander led the charge of the Companion Cavalry and was among the first to scale the walls of a besieged fortress.

The list of his wounds tells the tale of his command style. At the Granicus, Alexander’s helmet was cleft through to the scalp; at the Battle of Issus, he suffered a sword wound in the thigh; at Gaza he was hit by a missile from a catapult that passed through his shield and breastplate and struck his shoulder; at Maracanda in Sogdiana, an arrow pierced his leg fracturing the fibula; later in that same year, while besieging a fortified town on the Iaxartes River, he was struck by a stone on the head and neck; in western India he received wounds in the shoulder and ankle; and an arrow punctured his lung while he was attacking a city

of the Malli in India. It was with justification that he would chide the mutineers at Opis that there was no part of his body but his back that did not bear a scar.

After a fierce battle on the wall, the Macedonians descended into the city itself. At the same time, Alexander’s naval forces broke through the blockades in both harbors, destroying the enemy ships and landing troops on shore. A great slaughter followed. Pockets of resistance within the city were wiped out with ferocity. The Macedonians were in a rage and, after the frustration and casualties of a seven-month siege, in no mood to show mercy. The blood of 8,000 Tyrians stained their island city red. When the butchery had ceased, Alexander walked through the blood and the smoke to the temple, where he made his long-delayed sacrifice. Alexander reinforced the lesson of the futility of resistance through further penalties. Granting amnesty to all who had fled to the shrine of Heracles, including the king of Tyre and ambassadors from Carthage, he sold 30,000 others, mainly women and children, into slavery. According to some ancient historians, Alexander also ordered the crucifixion of some 2,000 remaining military-aged males along the shore. The message conveyed by this grisly ornamentation could hardly be missed. Tyre became a stronghold of the growing Alexandrian empire. MHQ

Justin D. Lyons is an associate professor of history and government at Ohio’s Cedarville University.

Opposite page: This depiction of Alexander’s Siege of Tyre demonstrates his ingenious construction of a causeway over the sea to reach the recalcitrant island city. Siege towers allowed his troops to launch protective fire. This page: Inhabitants of Tyre are depicted under siege from Alexander’s forces. Although he granted amnesty to those who took refuge in the shrine of Heracles, Alexander exacted punishments on residents of the city after its capture.

KOREA’S GAME OF THRONES

Locked in constant war, three ancient kingdoms waged a desperate political struggle to create the first unified Korea.

By M.G. Haynes

This golden crown originated in ancient Korea’s Silla kingdom, one of three realms that battled continuously with foreign nations and with each other for power.

MHQ Spring 2023

In October 663 ce, at the decisive Battle of Baekgang, a historical era ended in bloody fashion. At the mouth of the Keum River, a combined Korean-Chinese force soundly defeated a Korean-Japanese one in a momentous event that had profound effects upon the region for the next millennium. The unlikely conclusion to over 400 years of Korea’s division into three separate, perennially warring kingdoms, was now visible on the horizon.

The story of Korea’s Three Kingdoms—Goguryeo, Baekje, and Silla—cannot be told without placing it in context within the wider East Asian historical continuum. The first centralized government beyond the city-state level on the Korean Peninsula was Gojoseon, or “Old Joseon.” This near-legendary early Korean civilization established by the 4th Century bce reportedly stretched from the Liao River in the north to modern Pyongyang in the south. It was both neighbor and potential rival to both the Chinese Ch’in and subsequent Han dynasties, fast consolidating power to the west.

In 194 bce, Wiman Joseon emerged as a kingdom stretching north from modern Seoul to the Yalu River, with its capital at Wanggeom near Pyongyang. Established at a time of aggressive expansion by Han China, Wiman Joseon received material support from the Han to secure China’s northeastern border against the Manchurian Yemaeks. Chinese funds were used to help the nascent Korean kingdom expand control east and south into the peninsula. Growing in power, the kingdom’s ruler, King Ungo, provoked the Han through cross-border raids along the Yalu. This resulted in the first documented Chinese invasion of Korea in 109 bce, a twopronged combined operation over land and sea that set a pattern for future Chinese incursions onto the peninsula. The 50,000-strong Han force was checked at the walls of Wanggeom city, resulting in a year-long siege. Failing to take the city by force, the Han resorted to treachery. Amid the siege, Ungo was assassinated and his government collapsed.

This left a power vacuum the Han were all-too-happy to fill. Wiman Joseon’s territory was divided into four commanderies, which would be ruled by Han China for the next 400 years. The rest of the peninsula continued to be inhabited by multiple tribal confederations including the Jin, the Dongye, and the Okjeo, to name but a few. Yet, as

the Han Dynasty waned under unrelenting external and internal pressures, its ability to protect those Korean territories decreased. Korea’s next warring kingdom would hasten its demise.

Founded as early as 37 bce, the Kingdom of Goguryeo developed out of the Buyeo city state in central Manchuria. Goguryeo carved out a position in the northeastern corner of modern Korea, stretching far into Manchuria, through military conquest and deft political maneuvering. Establishing an initial power base through the conquest of Okjeo at the end of the second century ce, Goguryeo turned its military attention to the Han commanderies. The rising kingdom hammered relentlessly at those foreign holdings, forcing one reorganization and consolidation after another until, by 313, the Han were ejected from the peninsula.

Fielding a mighty army famed for its cavalry and uncanny ability to endure the harsh mountainous environment of North Korea, Goguryeo pushed the Chinese back beyond the Liao River. The Korean kingdom subsequently seized and successfully defended expansive tracts of land stretching from modern Jiamusi west to the Shuangtaizi River and south beyond the modern city of Seoul. With such a large territory it’s not surprising that Goguryeo would remain in an almost constant state of warfare throughout its existence. The Manchurian tribes grew stronger and more aggressive as one traveled west along the northern frontier including the Xianbei, Hsiung-nu, and the Khitans. That said, Goguryeo generally learned to handle the nomadic raiders well.

It was the ever-present threat of invasion by hostile Chinese dynasties that posed the greater danger. Wei China invaded the fledgling Goguryeo in 242, nearly toppling the budding Korean state and for a time greatly inhibiting the development of that kingdom. Yet Goguryeo’s defeat of the Wei in Yemaek territory in 259—accomplished with a force of elite cavalry—did much to rebuild the state’s reputation as a regional powerhouse. The Chinese Sui Dynasty would invade Goguryeo no fewer than four times—in 589, 612, 613, and 614, all of which failed. The 612 attempt resulted in the loss of some 300,000 Sui troops in the rugged, mountainous terrain of northern Korea. The extensive expenditure in men and material required to launch these unsuccessful campaigns have been cited as a significant cause of the Sui Dynasty’s collapse in 618.

The Tang Dynasty invaded Goguryeo in 645, using the classic land-sea approach, resulting in the seizure of 10 border fortresses. Yet the Tang ultimately failed to breach the walls of Ansi—despite an epic, three-month siege— and were forced to retreat back beyond the Liao River, sustaining heavy losses. Ultimately, though this invasion was unsuccessful, the Tang were fated to play a significant role in Goguryeo’s downfall.

Amid the siege, Ungo was assassinated and his government collapsed.

As early as 18 bce, the Kingdom of Baekje established itself by seizing control of the once powerful Mahan Confederacy in the southwestern corner of the peninsula. Baekje’s strength derived from the rich agricultural lands of the Han River valley and the southwestern region of the peninsula. With its first capitals at Wiryeseong and then Hanseong, both located in or near modern-day Seoul, Baekje may have initially been the most populous of Korea’s three kingdoms. With Goguryeo forever distracted by disputes along its extended Manchurian border, Baekje made significant inroads from the south, securing territory as far north as Pyongyang, which it seized in 377.

The kingdoms of Baekje and Goguryeo fought almost nonstop beginning in 369. During this period Baekje remained in an alliance with Silla that lasted until its dramatic repudiation by the latter in 550. Losing its capital to Goguryeo in 475, Baekje moved its seat of power south of the Han River to Ungjin. It would move again in 538 to the more defensible Sabi (modern Buyeo) which remained the capital until falling in 663. From its central position along the southwestern coast of the peninsula, Baekje maintained significant relations with external powers and a profitable trade relationship with Jin and Former Song

Dynasties China. Relations with the Sui never seemed quite as close. The kingdom’s relationship with the Tang would be truly catastrophic.

Baekje also sought and ultimately established a trade and military relationship with Yamato Japan in 397. This began the practice of sending royal princes to live abroad in the Japanese court. While initially content to trade with the Gaya city-states, eventually Baekje would conspire with Silla to dismantle the confederation and take by force the iron resources for which it was previously required to trade.

There seems to be little in the historical record to indicate how the armies of Baekje managed to do so well for such a long period. Trade relations with Gaya, China, and Japan contributed to a thriving economy, yet there seems to have been little development of Baekje’s military to fully explain its early rise. Yet, over time, as Baekje’s economic ties were removed, its military experienced a corresponding reduction in efficacy. Successive campaigns involved fewer and less effective troops while the upstart kingdom of Silla trended in the opposite direction.

Ultimately the most dangerous of the three kingdoms lay ensconced beyond the Taebaek Mountains that run

This painting depicts the conquests led by King Gwanggaeto the Great, who ruled Korea’s Goguryeo kingdom from 391 to 413 and sought to expand his territory. Goguryeo was famed for its cavalry and ability to wage mountain warfare.

Korea’s Three Kingdoms

These elite Hwarang, literally “Flower Knights”, gave Silla a significant advantage in the final rounds of Korea’s wars of unification. When not fighting Goguryeo or Baekje, Silla routinely fended off raids by Malgal and Ye peoples to the north, Gaya rebels to the west, and Japanese

Silla took a pan-Korean approach in dealing with its neighbors. Independent rulers of Gaya city-states decided that life under Silla looked more promising, handing over their lands, troops, and in one case, the royal treasury, to the King of Silla. In return, Silla placed these former leaders back in charge of the regions they’d brought over. This policy seemed to pay off over time not only in Gaya, but with the various anti-Tang resistance movements that

Silla’s betrayal of its longtime ally Baekje in 550, after which it seized the bountiful Han River valley, came as a shock to the latter, initiating a century of vicious warfare along the line of Taebaek mountain fortresses. Baekje’s late-breaking alliance with Goguryeo, and close association with Yamato Japan, however, left Silla in an awkward strategic situation, with enemies on all sides.

With desperation, the isolated kingdom of Silla reached out to the newly-established Chinese Tang Dynasty in 643. The alliance they brokered, and what it achieved, would forever change the map of East Asia and set many histori-

The Tang-Silla invasion of Baekje in 660 left the latter in shock. Facing initially separated allied forces—130,000 Chinese troops on the west coast and 50,000 from Silla east of the Taebaek Mountains—Baekje took decisive action. Seeking to defeat the two enemy armies piecemeal before they could converge on the capital, Baekje dispatched 5,000 picked men under Gen. Kyebaek into the mountains to the east. Baekje and Silla fought five successive engagements in the narrow mountain passes. Baekje won the first four, but the odds caught up with it in the fifth. The force was destroyed in a disastrous turn of events which deprived the capital of its finest troops when they were needed most.

lected promising aristocratic youth and trained them as cohorts in a professional military academy. Rather than scattering these men in leadership positions across the army, they formed elite units serving at the discretion of the king. Over time this resulted in a large corps of highly motivated, professional troops who became even more effective as they trained and ultimately fought together.

The Tang and Silla Armies converged on Sabi and took the fortified city despite a stubborn defense. Nonetheless, Baekje’s King Uija, Crown Prince Hyo, and their family were captured and transported to China as trophies for Tang Emperor Gaozong. In Baekje, the Tang settled down to administer the former kingdom while preparing, along with Silla, for the second phase of the ambitious operation, launching what turned out to be a failed invasion of Goguryeo the following year.

Yet Baekje had one final roll of the dice. Having called to its Yamato allies as soon as the Tang-Silla attack manifested, Prince Puyo P’ung—residing with the Yamato court at Nara—returned to the peninsula to defend his family’s

birthright at the head of 5,000 Japanese troops. These men linked up with loyalist forces led by the colorful Gen. Poksin and the monk Toch’im, already fighting an effective campaign against the Tang occupiers. Concerned with the rebels’ success, Silla dispatched troops to assist its partner in putting down the rebellion. Feeling the pinch, and having lost both Poksin and Toch’im to internal squabbling, the loyalist armies decided to consolidate at Churyu Fortress north of the Baek River.

Thus, in 663, the final battle for Baekje independence took place. At the Battle of Baekgang, 27,000 Japanese troops entered the mouth of the Baek River on ships, intent to link up with besieged loyalist troops inside Churyu. The Tang navy, however, established a blocking position that the Japanese failed, over the course of four attempts, to penetrate, despite taking heavy losses.

The fall of Churyu Fortress soon after the naval disaster sounded the death knell for Baekje’s royal family, and that kingdom ceased to exist as a separate polity on the peninsula.

Following its victory at the Baek River, Tang and Silla prepared once again to invade, and hopefully subdue, Goguryeo. Yet, this was not the same Goguryeo that had successfully resisted so many previous invasions. Internal dissent and succession disputes had fractured its once-leg-

endary resistance. In 667, the Tang-Silla alliance launched a massive campaign which included a Tang army from across the Liao River as well as a combined Tang-Silla force from the south. Pyongyang fell in 668, bringing an end to the 700-year-old state as well as the Korean Three Kingdoms era.

The two allies settled down to administer their newly acquired lands, but the Tang seemed unaware that Silla intended a third operational phase. What began as local resistance to Tang occupation led to alliance between Silla armies and the many rebel groups fighting across Goguryeo. This, in turn, led to open warfare between Silla and the Tang resulting in the ejection of all Chinese forces from the peninsula—and the first true unification of the Korean Peninsula—in 677.

The wars of Korea’s Three Kingdoms Period left a significant imprint on all participants. For Japan, that fledgling nation’s only alliance to date with a continental power led to military disaster. It also left the imperial court in Nara fearing invasion by Tang, Silla, or both. This sparked a castle-building program across the archipelago which capitalized on the number of Baekje refugees with a knowledge of masonry who escaped to Japan during the army’s retreat. Intended to fortify Kyushu and key strongpoints between there and the capital, these were Japan’s first stone-walled fortifications, forerunners of the magnificent medieval cas-

These funerary artifacts from the 5th Century originated in the Silla kingdom and depict mounted warriors. The Silla kingdom created a military elite comprised of promising youth known as the Hwarang, meaning “Flower Knights.”

KOREA’S GAME OF THRONES

tles that would play such a large part in that nation’s future internal conflicts.

More importantly, the experience taught Japan to see the continent as a threat—a generalized fear that would manifest itself in the late 16th Century and again during the Meiji Period with invasions of Korea, Manchuria, and even China itself. This fearful perception of the Asian continent underwrites popular views still today.

The Tang were clearly shocked by Silla’s betrayal after so much Chinese treasure and so many lives had been lost in the fight against Baekje and Goguryeo. Diplomatic relations were only reestablished with Silla in 734 when the Tang court begrudgingly recognized the value in having at least one stable frontier.

The Tang would have their hands full elsewhere but would survive until its ultimate demise in 907 after a century-long struggle with internal dissension. The animosity between China and Korea persisted, however, complicating both peoples’ attempts to resist Mongol encroachment beginning in 1205. It’s worth noting that after 676, Chinese armies would only venture onto the Korean Peninsula when requested by the Koreans themselves—in 1592 at the request of the King of Joseon, and then in 1950 at the request of Kim Il-sung of North Korea.

The impact on Korea itself is both easy and difficult to assess. Silla had finally unified the entire peninsula, but old divisions died hard. When Unified Silla, as it is termed today, finally fell from power in 935, the peninsula again split into three kingdoms, each named for its previous regional polity. It took generals and armies from former Goguryeo lands to once again stitch Korea back together again permanently as the Kingdom of Goryeo.

A case can be made that the wounds which festered for half a millennium survive in the deep political divisions of Korea today. People from Jeolla Province in the southwest have a deep distrust of those from Gyeongsang Province in the southeast. And neither of them trust North Korea. Meanwhile relations with both China and Japan remain complicated at best. Thus, King Gwanggaeto of 4th Century Goguryeo might easily recognize the geopolitics of the peninsula some 1,800 years after his demise. The ripples from Korea’s early and turbulent history have truly been long-lasting. MHQ

M.G. Haynes is a 28-year U.S. Army veteran and a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He holds degrees in History and Asian Studies and is an award-winning author of military and historical fiction.

Gongsanseong Fortress was a military stronghold of the ancient kingdom of Baekje, which fought nearly nonstop with the kingdom of Goguryeo. Betrayed by its ally Silla in 550, Baekje waged a bitter conflict but was ultimately defeated in 663.

CULTURE OF WAR

CLASSIC DISPATCHES 86 WAR STORIES 90 REVIEWS 94

Against the protests of his staff, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery used an M3 General Grant tank to get close to the frontlines during World War II battles in North Africa as he commanded his troops. This silver model of Monty’s tank was mounted on a piece of phosphor bronze recovered from the El Alamein battlefield as well as a fragment of 300-year-old oak from a building in Coventry destroyed by German bombing. The model was presented to Montgomery by Leamington Spa Borough Council in 1947 when he was made Freeman of the town. Monty kept the tank on his desk. It is now on loan to the Fusilier Museum Warwick as part of the museum’s World War II display. Learn more at: https://fusiliermuseumwarwick.com

CLASSIC DISPATCHES ROME’S REVENGE ON THE RHINE

By Tacitus

Varus! Give me back my legions!” shouted the enraged Roman Emperor Augustus according to ancient Roman historian Suetonius in The Twelve Caesars. Augustus was raging against his losing commander in one of Rome’s greatest military defeats—the disastrous Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, c. September 9 ce. Publius Quinctilius Varus, governor of Rome’s Germania province (modern-day northwestern Germany) since 6 ce, known for favoring mass crucifixion as his preferred “crowd control” method, was tricked into leading three Roman legions (XVII, XVIII and XIX) plus six cohorts of Germanic tribesmen auxiliary troops and three cavalry squadrons—about 20,000 soldiers—into a fatal, days-long “ambush” by tens of thousands of Germanic warriors. Formed primarily of four of the era’s 50 Germanic tribes (Cherusci, Bructeri, Marsi and Chatti), the trap was cleverly planned and orchestrated by a turncoat, Arminius (c. 17 bce -21 ce), a Cherusci tribesman prince and adopted Roman citizen. Varus’ legionaries, traveling in a thin column stretching from nine to 12 miles long, were encumbered by thousands of civilian camp followers who sloshed alongside them through the mud of the rain-soaked, dense forest bordered by swamps (near today’s Osnabrück, between the Ems and the Lippe Rivers). The ambush struck Varus’ column when it was most vulnerable. The weather, terrain and the tribesmen’s fortified ambush positions robbed the three Roman legions of their usual keys to battlefield success: mobility, flexibility, and tactical cohesion. The Germanic warriors’ swords, long lances, axes and javelins annihilated Varus’ entire command within three days. While a few Romans fled or escaped capture, all 20,000 were killed, ritually executed after capture, or enslaved. Senior Roman officers captured alive were singled out for gruesome tortures before execution. Many Roman commanders—notably Varus himself—chose suicide. The strategic result of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest was that it permanently ended Rome’s northeastward expansion at the Rhine-Danube River barrier, altering Europe’s future development. British historian and military theorist J.F.C.

Fuller wrote that, had the battle not occurred and failed to stop Rome’s expansion [eastward to the Elbe River, possibly beyond]: “The whole course of our history would have been different...There would have been no Franco-German problem...no Charlemagne, no Napoleon, no Kaiser William II, and no Hitler.” After losing Varus and his legions, Roman leaders had no intention of expending further efforts in blood and treasure trying to expand northern European dominions east of the Rhine.

But the Romans would have their revenge. This excerpt from The Annals of Tacitus, written by famed Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus and translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb in 1906, recounts what happened when Germanicus Julius Caesar (Emperor Tiberius’ adopted son) marched into Germany to avenge the honor of the empire. The Roman soldiers make a gruesome discovery—the remains of Varus and his legions. At a time when forensics were nonexistent, we witness the Romans trying to piece together their own past by using eyewitnesses and examining the terrain. Because they lacked the technology we now benefit from, the Romans were unable to identify skeletal remains. In a particularly moving passage, Tacitus describes how this lack of closure added to their sense of agony—and also fueled their desire for retribution.

Ironically, while seeking revenge, veteran Roman commander Aulus Caecina Severus nearly falls prey to the same fate as Varus. In a truly chilling passage, the Germans stalk Caecina through the woods near the Rhine as he suffers from gruesome nightmares of the slain Varus trying to pull him into a swamp, and his men began to lose their nerve. Arminius—the executioner of Varus and his legions—is circling them and seems to take sadistic pleasure in waiting for the dark forest to take its psychological toll on the Romans before moving in for the kill. But Caecina— a veteran of 40 campaigns—isn’t going down so easily, and the Romans’ desperation to make it home alive proves stronger than their fear.

Lucius Stertinius [Germanicus’ legate, a high-ranking Roman general] was dispatched by Germanicus with a flying column [in 15 ad] and routed the Bructeri [rebellious Germanic tribe in northwestern Roman Germania] as they were burning their possessions, found the eagle [standard] of the XIX legion which had been lost [along with XVII and XVIII Legions] with Varus. The troops were

Lack of closure added to their sense of agony and fueled Roman desire for retribution.

then marched to the furthest frontier of the Bructeri, and all the country between the rivers Amisia [Ems River, emptying into the North Sea] and Luppia [Lippe River, a Rhine tributary] was ravaged, not far from the forest of Teutoburgium [Germany’s Teutoburg Forest], where the remains of Varus and his legions were said to lie unburied.

Germanicus upon this was seized with an eager longing to pay the last honor to those soldiers and their general, while the whole army present was moved to compassion by the thought of their kinsfolk and friends, and, indeed of the calamities of wars and the lot of mankind. Having sent on Caecina [Aulus Caecina Severus, another of Germanicus’ legates] in advance to reconnoiter the obscure forest passes, and to raise bridges and causeways over the watery swamps and treacherous plains, they visited the mournful scenes, with their horrible sights and associations. Varus’ first camp with its wide circumference and the measurement of its central space clearly indicated the handiwork of three legions. Further on, the partially fallen rampart and the

shallow fosse [encircling moat] suggested the inference that it was a shattered remnant of the army which had there taken up a position. In the center of the field were the whitening bones of men, as they had fled, or stood their ground, strewn everywhere or piled in heaps. Near, lay fragments of weapons and limbs of horses, and also human heads, prominently nailed to the trunks of trees. In the adjacent groves were the barbarous altars, on which they had immolated tribunes [military rank below legate and above centurion] and first-rank centurions [commanders of 80 and up to several hundred legionaries]. Some survivors of the disaster who had escaped from the battle or from captivity described how this was the spot where the officers fell, how yonder the eagles were captured, where Varus was pierced by his first wound, where too by the stroke of his own ill-starred hand he found for himself death [i.e., committed suicide]. They pointed out too the raised ground from which Arminius had harangued his army, the number of gibbets [execution gallows] for the captives, the pits for

Germanicus and his troops are depicted finding and burying their fallen comrades. The Romans grieved at being unable to identify individuals and at “the calamities of wars and the lot of mankind” feelings still experienced by people today.

REVENGE ON THE RHINE

the living, and how in his exultation he insulted the standards and the eagles.

And so the Roman army now on the spot, six years after the [9 ad] disaster, in grief and anger, began to bury the bones of three legions, not a soldier knowing whether he was interring the relics of a relative or a stranger, but looking on all as kinsfolk and of their own blood, while their wrath rose higher than ever against the foe. In raising the barrow [burial mound] Caesar [i.e., Germanicus Julius Caesar] laid the first sod, rendering thus a most welcome honor to the dead, and sharing also in the sorrow of those present…

Soon afterwards Germanicus led back his army to the Amisia, taking his legions by the fleet [ship transport on the Ems River], as he had brought them up. Part of the cavalry was ordered to make for the Rhine along the seacoast. Caecina, who commanded a division of his own, was advised…to pass Long Bridges [where extended causeways and bridges over otherwise impassable terrain existed] with all possible speed. This was a narrow road amid vast swamps…Around were woods on a gradual slope, which Arminius now completely occupied, as soon by a short route and a quick march he had outstripped [Roman] troops heavily laden with baggage and arms…

The barbarians attempted to break through the outposts and to throw themselves on the engineering parties, which they harassed, pacing around them and continually charging them. There was a confused din from the men at work and the combatants. Everything alike was unfavorable to the Romans, the place with its deep swamps, insecure to the foot and slippery as one advanced, limbs burdened with coats of mail, and the impossibility of aiming their javelins amid the water. The Cherusci [another rebellious tribe], on the other hand, were familiar with fighting in fens [wetlands]; they had huge frames, and lances long enough to inflict wounds even at a distance. Night at last released the legions, which were now wavering, from a disastrous engagement. The Germans whom success rendered unwearied, without even then taking any rest, turned all the streams which rose from the slopes of the surrounding hills into the lands beneath [low-lying areas]. The ground being thus flooded and the completed portion of our works submerged, the soldiers’ labor was doubled…

This was Caecina’s 40th campaign as a subordinate or a commander, and with such experience of success and peril, he was perfectly fearless. As he thought over future possi-

bilities, he could devise no plan but to keep the enemy within the woods, till the wounded and the more encumbered troops were in advance…

It was a restless night for different reasons, the barbarians in their festivity filling the valleys under the hills and echoing glens with merry song or savage shouts, while in the Roman camp were flickering fires, broken exclamations, and the men lay scattered along the entrenchments or wandered from tent to tent, wakeful rather than watchful.

A ghastly dream appalled the general [Caecina]. He seemed to see Quinctilius Varus, covered with blood, rising out of the swamps, and to hear him, as it were, calling to him, but he did not, as he imagined, obey the call; he even repelled his hand, as he [Varus’ apparition] stretched it out to him.

At daybreak the legions, posted on the wings, from panic or perversity, deserted their position and hastily occupied a plain behind the morass. Yet Arminius, though free to attack, did not at the moment rush out on them. But when the baggage was clogged in the mud and in the fosses, the soldiers around it in disorder, the array of standards in confusion, everyone in selfish haste and all ears deaf to the word of command, he ordered the Germans to charge, exclaiming again and again, “Behold a Varus and legions once more entangled in Varus’ fate.” As he spoke, he cut through the column with some picked men, inflicting wounds chiefly on the horses. Staggering in their blood on the slippery marsh, they shook off their riders…trampling on the fallen. The struggle was hottest around the eagles, which could neither be carried in the face of the storm of missiles, nor planted in the miry soil. Caecina, while he was keeping up the battle, fell from his horse, which was pierced under him, and was being hemmed in, when the first legion threw itself in the way. The greed of the foe helped him, for they left the slaughter to secure the spoil, and the legions, towards evening, struggled onto open and firm ground.

Nor did this end their miseries. Entrenchments had to be thrown up, materials sought for earthworks, while the army had lost to a great extent their implements for digging earth and cutting turf. There were no tents for the rank and file, no comforts for the wounded. As they shared their food, soiled by mire or blood, they bewailed the darkness with its awful omen, and the one day which yet remained to so many thousand men.

It chanced that a horse, which had broken its halter and wandered wildly in fright at the uproar, overthrew some men against whom it dashed. Thence arose such a panic from the belief that the Germans had burst into the camp that all rushed to the gates…Caecina, having ascertained that the alarm was groundless, yet being unable to stop or stay the soldiers by authority or entreaties or even by force, threw himself to the earth in the gateway, and at last an

“Behold a Varus and legions once more entangled in Varus’ fate.”

appeal to their pity, as they would have to pass over the body of their commander, closed the way. At the same moment the tribunes and centurions convinced them that it was a false alarm.

Having then assembled them at his headquarters, and ordered them to hear his words in silence, he [Caecina] reminded them of the urgency of the crisis. Their safety, he said, lay in their arms, which they must however use with discretion, and they must remain within the entrenchments till the enemy approached closer, in the hope of storming them; then there must be a general sortie; by that sortie the Rhine might be reached. Whereas if they fled, more forests, deeper swamps, and a savage foe awaited them, but if they were victorious, glory and renown would be theirs. He dwelt on all that was dear to them at home, all that testified to their honor in the camp, without any allusion to disaster…

There was as much restlessness in the German host with its hopes, its eager longings, and the conflicting opinions of its chiefs. Arminius advised that they should allow the Romans to quit their position and, when they had quitted it, again surprise them in swampy and intricate ground. Inguiomerus [a Cherusci leader and Arminius’ uncle], with fiercer counsels, heartily welcome to the barbarians, was for beleaguering the entrenchments in armed array, as to storm

them would, he said, be easy, and there would be more prisoners and the booty unspoilt. So at daybreak they trampled in the fosses, flung hurdles [logs or branches to help cross the moats] into them, seized the upper part of the breastwork, where the troops were thinly distributed and seemingly paralyzed by fear. When they were fairly within the fortifications, the signal was given to the [Roman] cohorts [units composed of multiple 80-man centuries], and the horns and trumpets sounded. Instantly with a shout and sudden rush, our men threw themselves on the German rear, with taunts, that here were no woods or swamps, but that they were on equal ground, with equal chances.

The sound of trumpets, the gleam of arms, which were so unexpected, burst with all the greater effect on the enemy, thinking only, as they were, of the easy destruction of a few half-armed men, and they were struck down, as unprepared for a reverse as they had been elated with success. Arminius and Inguiomerus fled from the battle, the first unhurt [Arminius was assassinated six years later by rival tribal leaders], the other severely wounded. Their followers were slaughtered as long as our fury and the light of day lasted. It was not till night that the legions returned, and though more wounds and the same want of provisions distressed them, yet they found strength, healing, sustenance, everything indeed, in their victory. MHQ

A monument of German tribal leader Arminius, a cavalry officer who rebelled against Rome and massacred Varus’ legions, stands on a hill in Germany’s Teutoburg Forest. Arminius hoped to trap Roman general Caecina, but failed.

WAR STORIES THE KID FROM BROOKLYN

A broken drum and an ailing comrade led Ben Levy to become the first Jewish American to receive the Medal of Honor.

By Jon Guttman

He is a frequent and faithful and capable officer in the civil service, but he is charged with an unpatriotic disinclination to stand by the flag as a soldier, like the Christian Quaker.” So wrote Mark Twain in Harper’s magazine in 1897, reflecting a virtually worldwide stereotype of his time and all too often still believed today. In contrast to his contemporaries, however, Twain was not averse to publicly admitting how wrong he was just a year later. Having more closely checked the “statistics,” he discovered that Jews had taken up arms for the United States since the Revolution. As to an “unpatriotic disinclination to stand by the flag as a soldier,” Twain could have kept his foot out of his mouth had he checked the Civil War career of Pvt. Benjamin Levy.

Aside from being born in Brooklyn, New York on Feb. 22, 1845, little or nothing is known of Benjamin Bennett Levy’s prewar schooling or employment. The only known photograph of him was taken years after the war, but confirm descriptions of his being a small, scrawny individual. What is recorded is that he enlisted in the Union Army on April 22, 1861, just days after war broke out. Not yet 17 years of age, he was assigned to Company G of the 1st New York Infantry Regiment of Volunteers as a drummer boy. Commanded by Col. Garret W. Dyckman, the 1st N.Y. was then part of the 1st Brigade, 1st Division, Department of Virginia. It may be added that Ben’s younger brother, Robert, also enlisted and was likewise assigned as a drummer boy to the 7th New York Infantry.

October saw the 1st New York in Newport News, Virginia. Besides his regular training, Pvt. Levy spent some of his time there assigned as an orderly to Brig. Gen. Joseph King Fenno Mansfield. In February 1862, Levy was carrying dispatches from Mansfield to Maj. Gen. John E. Wool at Fort Monroe aboard the steamboat Express when the vessel came under attack near Norfolk by CSS Sea Bird, a sidewheeler seized by the Confederates, armed with a 32-pounder smoothbore cannon and a 30-pounder rifle

and made the flagship of the small but aggressive “Mosquito Fleet” harassing the Union coastal blockade. Express was unarmed and towing a water schooner, whose weight and drag clearly favored the enemy gunboat’s prospects of overhauling its prey.

Swiftly assessing the situation, Levy cut the schooner loose. This resulted in its capture by the Rebels, but gave Express the extra knots it needed to outrun its pursuer. After its safe arrival at Fort Monroe, Levy was commended by both generals Mansfield and Wool for his quick-thinking initiative. CSS Sea Bird did not last much longer—after participating in the unsuccessful defense of Roanoke Island from Feb. 7–8, it was rammed and sunk by the Union warship Commodore Perry off Elizabeth City, North Carolina on the 10th.

Levy subsequently returned to the 1st New York, which on June 6, 1862 was attached to Brig. Gen. Hiram G. Berry’s 3rd Brigade, Brig. Gen. Philip Kearny’s 3rd Division, Brig. Gen. Samuel P. Heintzelman’s 2nd Corps of the Army of the Potomac. Under the overall command of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan, the army marched up the Virginia Peninsula to seize the Confederate capital of Richmond— which would have been a brilliant lightning stroke if only McClellan hadn’t executed it at a snail’s pace.

As Confederate forces resisted the Army of the Potomac’s slow but seemingly inexorable advance, they lost two generals in quick succession: Joseph E. Johnston, wounded at Seven Pines (aka Fair Oaks) on May 31, and the ailing Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith, who proved too indecisive to lead the army. With nobody else available at that point, Confederate President Jefferson Davis placed his military adviser, Gen. Robert E. Lee, in charge of Richmond’s defenders, who Lee reorganized into what became the Army of Northern Virginia. Benefitting from a wealth of talented subordinates, Lee suddenly took the offensive at Gaines’ Mill on June 27, defeating the Union 5th Corps and initiating a week of battles which, while costly and sometimes ending in tactical defeat, wrested the initiative from McClellan and drove his army back down the Peninsula.

The penultimate battle of Lee’s Seven Days campaign centered on Glendale Crossroads (also called Frayser’s Farm). McClellan’s army had to pass through it to reach the relative safety of Harrison’s Landing on the James River,

Levy was commended by both generals for his quickthinking initiative.

This battle flag carried by the 1st Regiment of the New York Volunteer Infantry shows the U.S. national pattern as prescribed by the U.S. Army in January 1862. Levy saved the regimental flags from being captured and used them to rally fellow New York troops against Confederate forces. Levy was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1865,

where U.S. Navy ships and vitally needed supplies awaited. With the opportunity to cut off the Army of the Potomac from its base and split it in two, Lee devised a complex plan to launch attacks to the north and south of Glendale, to be followed by a final blow to the Union center. With a demoralized McClellan agonizing aboard the ironclad warship USS Galena, the Army of the Potomac’s fate lay in the hands of his field officers and individual soldiers fighting for survival.

Among them was Pvt. Levy, whose regiment was then on the right (northern) flank when it faced an onslaught by elements of Brig. Gen. Roger A. Pryor’s 5th Brigade of Maj. Gen. James Longstreet’s Division at 3:30 p.m. This was just a small element of Lee’s effort to trap the Army of the Potomac, with Longstreet’s and Maj. Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill’s divisions advancing north and south of the Long Bridge Road to seize Frayser’s Farm, in the process of which they crashed into the 5th Corps’ Pennsylvania Reserve Division under Brig. Gen. George A. McCall. Although Brigadier Generals Phil Kearny, Joseph Hooker and John Sedgwick launched counterattacks to support them, the Pennsylvania Reserves were routed and McCall, taken prisoner. The Confederates pressed on to cut off the Union southward retreat route along the Willis Church Road.

Levy’s drum was destroyed in the course of the afternoon’s fighting. He retired to a tent at Charles City Crossroads, assisting the company surgeon, as was the standard secondary role played by the Musician Corps. While there, he came upon a tentmate, Jacob Turnbull, suffering with malaria, just as the sound of gunfire in his sector was reaching a crescendo. Snatching up Turnbull’s rifle and equipment, Levy rushed off to join his comrades in the line. Just as the 1st New York launched a countercharge, he saw another friend holding the regimental colors, Charley Mahorn, suddenly fall, shot in the chest.

In a war dominated by line infantry, each firing a single-shot rifle musket, the unit flag was, as much as the drum or the bugle, an essential means of communication. The rifles were most effectively used if fired all at once, essentially constituting a horizontal shotgun. To form the line, the company literally “rallied ‘round the flag.” Beyond that, the battle flag was an object of unit pride, whose presence or absence in the field affected morale. Company G lost cohesion and was in danger of breaking and running in the face of a Confederate attack. Realizing that, Levy ran over, recovered the flag and, waving it and shouting amid the pandemonium, rallied the wavering New Yorkers, whose restored line checked the enemy advance. The unit then

conducted a fighting retreat, during which Levy spotted another flag on the ground and recovered that as well. As the 1st New York emerged from the tree line, Brig. Gen. Kearny noticed Levy carrying a flag on either shoulder. Heartily commending him, he promoted Levy to color sergeant on the spot.

Thanks to its soldiers’ collective efforts, the battered Army of the Potomac escaped Lee’s trap and retired south along the Willis Church Road to Malvern Hill. Although inconclusive, the Battle of Glendale had been a bloody affair, with 3,673 Confederate and 3,797 Union casualties representing the wide range of ranks involved, from Sgt. Levy, who was slightly wounded, to his corps commander, Heintzelman, who was badly bruised in the left wrist by a spent bullet and unable to use it for several weeks. The next day, July 1, saw Lee’s last bid to maul the Army of the Potomac at Malvern Hill, but this time Brig. Gen. Fitz John Porter had installed his 5th Corps on the high ground, backed by 171 guns and three nearby warships, against

which Lee hurled three assaults with inadequate artillery support. The result was a disastrous 5,650 Confederate casualties compared to some 3,000 Union. At one point, however, the wind and dust gave the 1st New York’s uniforms such a grayish patina that some of the Union guns began firing on its position. In response, Col. Dyckman ordered Levy to advance on the field and unfurl the colors. That identified the regiment to the artillery, but it also attracted Confederate sharpshooters who put several bullet holes in the flagstaff and in Levy’s equipment but miraculously missed him.

Malvern Hill ended the Seven Days battles with a stinging tactical defeat for Lee, but McClellan’s only follow-up was to continue his retreat, ending his Peninsula Campaign with Lee the strategic victor. For almost three years thereafter the eastern United States was bathed in blood as the Army of the Potomac and the Army of Northern Virginia battled it out. Levy served through this succession of campaigns until May 1863, when the 1st New York’s term

This map shows the Battle of Glendale which took place on June 30, 1862, in which Levy demonstrated heroism in retrieving two battle flags and managing to hold the line against a Confederate advance. Brig. Gen. Kearny promoted Levy to color sergeant immediately as he saw him victoriously carrying the battle flags on his shoulders.

of service expired. He was among the troops mustered out. Levy seems to have been unable to accept a life of relative peace amid an ongoing war. On Jan. 18, 1864, he re-enlisted in Company E, 40th New York Volunteer Infantry, with the rank of private.

The 40th New York was attached to the 1st Brigade, 3rd Division, 2nd Corps, Army of the Potomac. Although the army’s latest commander, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, had won a resounding victory at Gettysburg in July 1863, Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia remained a force to be reckoned with. In March 1864, however, the Union Army got an aggressive new commander in chief, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant. And in late April Grant launched a multipronged offensive against the Confederacy in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, in Georgia and in eastern Virginia. Seeking battle with the Army of Northern Virginia, the Army of the Potomac was officially led by Meade, but Grant, accompanying him, would truly lead the campaign.

On May 5, 1864 the Army of the Potomac was marching through the Wilderness when it was intercepted by its Southern nemesis. On roughly the same ground where he had defeated it in the Battle of Chancellorsville a year ago, Lee hoped to repeat history. Late that morning Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock’s 2nd Corps, including the 40th New York, moved down the Orange Plank Road. The formation behind it, Maj. Gen. John Sedgwick’s 6th Corps, was attacked by Maj. Gen. Henry Heth’s division of Lt. Gen. Ambrose Powell Hill’s 3rd Corps. Hancock pulled back to assist Sedgwick, while Hill reinforced Heth with Maj. Gen. Cadmus M. Wilcox’s division. In the fiery exchange of ordnance that followed, Levy became one of 213 casualties suffered by the 40th New York in the battle when a Rebel

bullet inflicted a compound fracture on his left thigh. The Battle of the Wilderness ended on May 6 in a narrow tactical victory for Lee. But unlike Chancellorsville, which ended with Maj. Gen. “Fighting Joe” Hooker ordering the Army of the Potomac to retreat, Grant spread the word that the army was to resume its march on Richmond—an order that dictated the entire course of the campaign to its ultimate conclusion on April 9, 1865 with Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House.

At the end of the war the 40th New York recorded the deaths of 10 officers and 228 enlisted men killed in action. Two officers and 170 succumbed to disease. Its unit history includes: “Sergeant Levy, Benjamin, age 19 years, enlisted at Eighth District New York, to serve three years, and mustered in as private, Co. E, January 18, 1864; wounded in action, May 5, 1864, at the Wilderness, Va., letter of company changed to B, July 7, 1864; discharged for disability, May 31, 1865, at Washington, D.C.; prior service in First Infantry; veteran.” What the 40th New York overlooked in its chronology was that on March 1, 1865, Levy was awarded the Medal of Honor with the following citation: “This soldier, a drummer boy, took the gun of a sick comrade, went into the fight, and when the color bearers were shot down, carried the colors and saved them from capture.” Details of his postwar civilian activities are unknown.

Levy was 76 when he died on July 20, 1921 and was buried in Cypress Hills Cemetery, Brooklyn. There is also a historical marker in Henrico County, near Richmond, in the approximate place where he became the first Jewish American to receive the Medal of Honor. At least five other Jews are known to have received the medal during the Civil War and many more would follow thereafter. MHQ

Left: The grave marker of Sgt. Benjamin Levy honors his Civil War service, Jewish heritage and the Medal of Honor he received for his heroism. He is one of at least five Jews to have received the medal during the Civil War. Right: Records indicate that Brooklyn-born Levy, pictured here in later life, remained active in veterans’ groups after the Civil War.

REVIEWS TOTAL WAR FOR POWER

heavy infantrymen (legionaries) were individually-protected by a large shield (scutum), chain mail and/or segmented armor and helmets, and wielded weapons perfectly suited for closing with and efficiently killing their enemies (such as light and heavy spears and, notably, the gladius short sword aptly described as “a nasty little meat-axe.”) They typically overmatched their opposing forces by capitalizing on unequaled organization, mobility and flexibility. Ruthless as they conquered territory after territory for Rome, the legions rightfully earned the harsh judgment rendered by one Roman enemy, the Caledonian Calgacus, who Tacitus quotes in Agricola (c. 98 ce): “[The Romans] make a wasteland and call it ‘peace.’”

49–44 BC

By Adrian Goldsworthy

144 pages.

Osprey Publishing, 2023. $20.

Reviewed by Jerry Morelock

Arguably, the deadliest “war machine” prior to the invention of gunpowder was the Roman Legion, particularly after the “Marian Reforms” instituted by Gaius Marius circa 107 bce improved Roman legionaries’ tactics, discipline and, especially, killing effectiveness. Discipline was strictly enforced. Minor infractions were immediately and ruthlessly punished, while if an entire unit failed, mass punishment—such as “decimation,” the cold-blooded execution of 1 of every 10 legionaries in a legion— firmly implanted the “don’t ever do that again!” message within the surviving ranks. Well-led, highly-disciplined, long-serving professional

Yet, in 49 bce Roman legions began fighting an enemy equally as deadly as they were— themselves. The leaders of Rome’s competing political factions, Gaius Julius Caesar (100–44 bce) and Pompeius Magnus, known as Pompey (106–48 bce), unleashed their potent legion-killing machines against each other, beginning a long and bloody civil war that altered the course of Rome’s history and turned a republic into an empire.

Prior to the Roman Civil War, the city-state that had conquered the Italian peninsula, the Mediterranean littoral and today’s Middle East, the Balkans, Gaul (modern France) and Germania (Germany east of the Rhine River boundary) was ruled from Rome as a nominal republic— although buying the “plebs’” votes (i.e. outright voter fraud) to attain political office was commonplace, fully-expected and, of course, eagerly embraced by the masses of beneficiaries of the political aspirants’ largesse. But with the conclusion of the Roman civil wars circa 30 bce (after Caesar’s bloody assassination in the Roman senate in 44 bce, excused by the assassins’ claimed justification that Caesar’s “ambition” threatened Rome’s republic) with the victory of Caesar’s adopted son and protégé Octavian over the forces of Mark Antony, Rome became an empire

ruled by him as Caesar Augustus (from 27 bce–14 ce).

The focus of the Roman Civil War in this book is the 49–44 bce portion of the longer struggle fought between Julius Caesar’s—and Octavian’s— forces and those of his former ally but subsequent bitter rival and opponent, Pompey. The history of this phase of the Roman Civil War is largely known via the “commentaries” written by the victor, Caesar himself. Although one of the 20th century’s best-known quotes by Winston Churchill is, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it,” two millennia earlier Julius Caesar had beaten him to the punch when he wrote his own predictably glowing account of his civil war exploits in his 49–48 bce Commentarii de Bello Civili trumpeting, in effect, “How Caesar (written in the third person) Won the Roman Civil War.” Coming on the heels of Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico, an equally laudatory personal account of his 58–50 bce campaigns against the barbaric Gauls and Celtic Britons, Caesar’s Roman Civil War commentaries are generally considered today to be not so much “historically accurate accounts” as they are extremely effective self-promotions—cleverly written but easily-read propaganda tracts meant to influence the “plebs” whose votes he sought.

Adrian Goldsworthy’s excellent, compact (144 pages) account of Caesar’s civil war is a revised, updated edition of his definitive 2002 book on the subject. The intervening two decades of further research and scholarship on the subject have not only provided Goldsworthy with valuable new facts, perspectives and analysis upon which to reflect and reinterpret the subject, they’ve provided him the time for thoughtful contemplation of the Roman Civil War’s major participants, events and implications. Goldsworthy has obviously put that time to exceptionally good use. Enhanced by very useful full-color maps to help readers follow the “action,” as well as 40 new images (notably ancient Roman-era contemporary busts of Caesar,

Pompey and all the principal figures), Goldsworthy’s updated history of Caesar’s civil war is a “must have” volume in every library of those interested in how personalities, politics and military power intersect and combine to shape the history that’s formed our world.

Home Run: Allied Escape and Evasion in World War II

By Howard R. Simkin

(Author) and Gen. Charles

Cleveland (Foreword)

216 pages.

Casemate Publishers, 2022, $34.95

Reviewed by Jon Guttman

Part of a soldier’s duty is, if he finds himself behind enemy lines, to try to evade capture and, if captured, to seek and take advantage of any opportunity to escape. World War II is replete with stories of prisoners of war who slipped away and eventually scored what the baseball-obsessed Americans called a “home run” to rejoin their comrades. For every one of the hundreds of thousands of Allied POWs who beat the odds in a daredevil escape, however, there were dozens and even hundreds who got away with the help of local resistance groups and special British and American units devoted to improving those odds. In Home Run Howard R. Simkin, whose military background includes 16 years in Special Operations, surveys the activities of the British MI9, the American MIS-X and their various disciples, the techniques and equipment they developed and how they contributed to the total of 7,498 American and 28,347 Commonwealth service personnel who found their way out of even the most “inescapable” prison camps. With the organizations, the book follows the “lines” they established to relay the evaders and escapees out of German or Japanese occupied territories.

It also describes the different nature of the warders with whom the POWs had to match wits. With a few exceptions—most notoriously the Berga concentration camp—the Germans treated their Western POWs far better than they did Soviet and others they considered to be “Untermenschen,” to say nothing of the civilians in their death camps. The Japanese, whose Bushido Code recognized any soldier captured alive as dishonored past redemption, subjected their prisoners to a general brutality in which humane treatment was the individually opted exception to the ruthless rule. Simkin’s survey provides a fascinating look at all aspects of escape and evasion.

The Battles of El Alamein: The End of the Beginning

By Ben Skipper

64 pages.

Pen & Sword, 2022, $28.95

Reviewed by Zita Ballinger

Fletcher

This book is a unique combination of a historical narrative and a guide for military modelers. It focuses on the war in the desert between Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps and the British Army in the difficult early stages of the desert war and subsequently under the successful leadership of Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery.

While there are a few errors in the text, for instance with regard to some biographical details, it provides a solid overview of the desert war in terms of a timeline and chronicling events. There are many good historical photographs which bring the war to life; most desert war enthusiasts will likely already be familiar with the images.

The real strength of the book is the insights it gives about military modeling with regard to the Western Desert battles. In this aspect, it is a real jewel. In addition to providing useful images of camouflage paint colors, the

book also highlights modeling kits for various types of tanks and aircraft, with commentary evaluating different types of kits. Historical photos of the tanks and aircraft are accompanied by images of the appropriate paint and markings. This book will be a great asset to modelers seeking to try their hand at recreating scenes from World War II North Africa.

New & Noteworthy

THE REDCOATS OF WELLINGTON’S LIGHT DIVISION IN THE PENINSULAR WAR: Unpublished & Rare Memoirs of the 52nd Regiment of Foot, by Gareth Glover & Robert Burnham (Frontline, $49.95) This collection of previously unpublished memoirs from soldiers of Wellington’s renowned Light Division, often the first into battle and last to withdraw, sheds new light on a famous force.

THEMISTOCLES: The Powerbroker of Athens, by Jeffrey A. Smith (Pen & Sword, $28.95) This new biography of a Greek military commander in the Persian Wars examines his war experience in light of his earlier career and political maneuverings.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA’S SECRET AIR FORCE, by James Patrick Hynes (Pen & Sword, $29.95) The diary of aircraft mechanic George Hynes, supplemented with operational records, reveals the missions of X Flight, a close air support group commanded by T.E. Lawrence which engaged in bombing, reconnaissance and ground attack missions.

BIRDS IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR: We Also Serve, by Nicholas Milton (Pen & Sword, $49.95) The author examines the roles played by birds such as pigeons during World War II and also the cultural impact of birdwatching on the British war effort, including in songs and movies. It also notes military figures who were avid birdwatchers in WWII.

FACES OF WAR

SOLDIER AND SURVIVOR

Wartime artist Howard Brodie captured this portrait of war-weary U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Elwin Miller, recipient of the Purple Heart, Silver Star and British Military Medal, smoking a cigarette in Germany during World War II in 1945. The portrait was drawn just after Miller had witnessed heavy casualties in his unit and had survived being clipped by a machine gun bullet that went through his helmet. The bullet hole is visible in the sketch.

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 toseeall these figures andmore from many other historical eras.

The birth of the modern United States Army can be traced to the early 1790s when it was transformed from a mere constabulary regiment to the Legion of the United States.

Under General Anthony Wayne the regular army (often referred to as Wayne’s Legion) marched

into northwestern Ohio where they engaged Native warriors in a battle known as Fallen Timbers.

This action led to the Treaty of Greenville, followed by the Jay’s Treaty, the withdrawal of British military presence in the area and thus opening the land for westward expansion.