Military History March 2022

Gary Sinise Shangri-la Rescue U.S. V-1 Victims King Philip’s War Marine Heroes Meuse-Argonne HISTORYNET.com

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MARCH 2022

Letters 6 News 8

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Features

Seconds of Silence A German V-1 flying bomb hit London’s Sloane Court in 1944, killing 66 Americans.

By Ron Soodalter

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The ‘Oops’ War In the century since the end of World War I historians have pointed to many causes—but was the war even necessary?

By Daniel McEwen

Departments

14

Interview Gary Sinise Serving Those Who’ve Served

18

Valor Canada’s Indigenous Hero

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Reviews 72 War Games 78 Captured! 80

42

48

Charles Waterhouse painted all Marines and Navy corpsmen who received the MOH.

By Jon Guttman

Rhode Island colonists and Narragansetts were thrust into King Philip’s War.

By Douglas L. Gifford

A War They Didn’t Want

Honoring ‘The Few, The Proud’

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64

WAC Margaret Hastings lived to recount a 1945 plane crash.

By Richard Selcer

Spain’s Monte Bernorio has seen two epic battles, fought 2,000 years apart.

By David Malakoff

Rescuing the ‘Queen of Shangri-la’

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What We Learned From...

The 1918 Meuse-Argonne Offensive

A Mountain of Trouble

22

Hardware V-1 Flying Bomb

On the cover: British troops make their way through a trench near Arras, France, in 1917. Tens of millions of soldiers and civilians died amid the global maelstrom of World War I. (Cover: Imperial War Museums)

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MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL PUBLISHER ALEX NEILL EDITOR IN CHIEF

Join the discussion at militaryhistory.com

McArthur’s Gamble: The Bold 1814 Raid Amid the War of 1812 an American general raring to strike a blow against the British mounted a risky raid into western Upper Canada

By Bob Gordon IN THE ARCHIV E S :

Blood and Betrayal: King Philip’s War The discovery of a corpse in the winter of 1675 sparked war between New England’s Indians and settlers

By Anthony Brandt

Interview Jeanette Varberg of the National Museum of Denmark is recasting the history of Viking seagoing expeditions and warfare Hardware Laid down in England in 1899,

Mikasa was the last of six modern battleships ordered by the Imperial Japanese Navy

MARCH 2022 VOL. 38, NO. 6

STEPHEN HARDING EDITOR DAVID LAUTERBORN MANAGING EDITOR ZITA BALLINGER FLETCHER SENIOR EDITOR JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR DAVID T. ZABECKI CHIEF MILITARY HISTORIAN BRIAN WALKER GROUP ART DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JON C. BOCK ART DIRECTOR ALEX GRIFFITH PHOTO EDITOR C O R P O R AT E SHAWN BYERS VP Audience Development ROB WILKINS Director of Partnership Marketing STEPHEN KAMIFUJI Creative Director JAMIE ELLIOTT Production Director TOM GRIFFITHS Corporate Development GRAYDON SHEINBERG Corporate Development ADVERTISING MORTON GREENBERG SVP Advertising Sales mgreenberg@mco.com RICK GOWER Regional Sales Manager rick@rickgower.com TERRY JENKINS Regional Sales Manager tjenkins@historynet.com DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING MEDIA PEOPLE / NANCY FORMAN nforman@mediapeople.com © 2022 HISTORYNET, LLC

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Letters

While helping my in-laws with yard work near Beaugency in Tavers, France, I came across a bullet [see photo above] in the dirt. My father-in-law said he had found them before and that he had been told they were machine gun bullets from the Franco-Prussian War. My own research makes me think it is too big for that. It is about 42 mm long, 11 mm in diameter and weighs 48 gr.

I thought I might check in with the experts. Any ideas?

Troy Snell Honolulu, Hawaii Historynet Chief Military Historian David T. Zabecki responds: I’m almost certain this is a mitrailleuse bullet. Some models of the gun were chambered for 13 mm, but 11 mm was more common. The weight is also right. The standard was 50 gr. I am also certain this particular round was never fired. The mitrailleuse barrels were rifled. If this thing was in the ground for 100-plus years, the rolled paper tube and gunpowder disks would have long since dissolved. The brass base cap is probably still there in the ground somewhere.

Forgotten “Breakthrough at Saint-Lô,”

by Ron Soodalter (September 2021), mentions the four highest-ranking American soldiers killed in the war— Lt. Gens. Lesley J. McNair, Frank Maxwell Andrews, Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr. and Millard Harmon. I find it somewhat disappointing that Soodalter left out Maj. Gen. Maurice Rose, commander of U.S. 3rd Armored Division, who was killed in action on March 30, 1945.

Rose is considered one of the greatest combat generals of the war. Sadly, he’s also one of World War II’s greatest forgotten commanders, as is stated in the wellwritten book Major General Maurice Rose, World War II’s Greatest Forgotten Commander, by Steven L. Ossad and Don R. Marsh. I guess Ossad and Marsh hit the nail on the head.

David C. Diefendorf Banning, Calif.

Spies After reading the January 2021 issue, I felt compelled to locate and read both Agent Sonya, by Ben Macintyre [Interview, by Dave Kindy], and The Coastwatchers, by Eric Feldt [subject of a feature by Ron Soodalter]. Macintyre as always makes his-

chair stuff, and I’m surprised Hollywood didn’t make a feature film from his book.

Gary Cota Green Lane, Pa.

Not Second Best Enjoyed the May 2021 issue, but I must take opposition to the cover caption that links the U.S. 1st Infantry Division (“Big Red One”) with “Second to None.”

As a member of the 2nd Infantry Division (2ID) Association and the son of a 2ID Korean War veteran (1950–51, CO, heavy mortar company, 9th Infantry Regiment, aka “Manchus”), I need to point out that “Second to None” is the 2ID’s official motto, which the division tagged itself during World War I when it was the best U.S. Army infantry division in the war, regardless of the 1ID being Gen. Pershing’s favorite. I know the 2ID ranks, along with the U.S. Marine Corps’ 5th and 6th Regiments, also take offense.

I look forward to future issues of Military History.

Have a great history day.

Rolfe L Hillman III Abingdon, Va. Editor responds: No offense intended to the 2ID or Marines.

Editor Stephen Harding (a former 1ID mortarman) was carried away by esprit de corps.

Send letters via e-mail to militaryhistory@historynet.com or to Editor, Military History HISTORYNET 901 N. Glebe Road, 5th Floor Arlington, VA 22203 Please include name, address and phone number

PHOTO COURTESY TROY SNELL

Found in France

tory so enjoyable and colorful with his accounts that the text reads more like an action-adventure than a history book. I was not familiar with the name Ursula Kuczynski but have studied World War II special operations and intelligence organizations long enough to recognize her mentor, Richard Sorge. Macintyre is to be congratulated on the incredible amount of detail he presents for minor as well as major players in this work. Not all communist agents were fanatics but believers in their cause, husbands and wives with families hoping to contribute balance to world power by passing secrets to the Soviets. Sonya learned too late of Joseph Stalin’s purges, which claimed a number of her good friends and fellow agents.

I’ve studied the War in the Pacific but haven’t really seen or heard much about the role of the Coastwatchers until I read Soodalter’s article [“Not in Colorado Anymore”]. Whether Commonwealth or American, civilian or military, these men lived an extremely dangerous existence reporting on Japanese army and navy movements in the southwest Pacific islands from 1941–45. If captured or betrayed to the Japanese, few would survive. Royal Australian Navy Commander Eric Feldt was in charge of the “Ferdinand” [Coastwatchers] organization, and who better to write its history. His storytelling is edge-of-the-

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News

The forthcoming sound and light show Expressions of America will recapture the World War II years on a grand scale.

The legacy of the Greatest Generation is one of sacrifice, courage and determination. Thus it is only fitting that on Veterans Day (November 11) 2022 the National WWII Museum in New Orleans will relate its story in the premiere of a first-of-its-kind nighttime sound and light show. On a monumental scale Expressions of America will present the images, songs and personal reflections of the everyday men and women who served our nation during World War II. It will become a permanent evening attraction at the museum, with several ticketed showings per week.

An indoor preshow blend of live entertainment, exhibits, interactions, food and beverages will evoke wartime America. Then, incorporating the latest in soundscape and projection technology, the 20-minute outdoor show will render scenes spanning as high as 90 feet on the walls

of the Col. Battle Barksdale Parade Ground beneath the Bollinger Canopy of Peace. Using period images, objects, film footage and recordings drawn from the museum’s collection, the presentation will introduce visitors to soldiers, nurses, chaplains, factory workers, artists, entertainers and loved ones on the home front, each of whom contributed his or her own meaningful acts of sacrifice, ingenuity, bravery and love to preserve freedom. Hosted by actor and veterans advocate Gary Sinise (see Interview, P. 14), Expressions of America is presented by the Bob & Dolores Hope Foundation. Hope, the renowned showman who entertained countless U.S. troops during World War II, is featured in the program. For more information, including individual and group ticket sales, visit expressionsofamerica.org.

‘I saw more courage, more good humor in the face of discomfort, more love in an era of hate and more devotion to duty than could exist under tyranny’ —Bob Hope

COURTESY NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM, NEW ORLEANS

WWII MUSEUM CELEBRATES THE GREATEST GENERATION

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FROM TOP: COURTESY DOLE INSTITUTE OF POLITICS; NATIONAL WWI MUSEUM AND MEMORIAL, KANSAS CITY, MO.; LANCE CPL. TYLER HARMON, U.S. MARINE CORPS

By Dave Kindy

Snapshots Focus on World War I

FROM TOP: COURTESY DOLE INSTITUTE OF POLITICS; NATIONAL WWI MUSEUM AND MEMORIAL, KANSAS CITY, MO.; LANCE CPL. TYLER HARMON, U.S. MARINE CORPS

COURTESY NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM, NEW ORLEANS

World War I brought changes to the way we regard conflict. The advent of personal cameras meant that everyday people—service members and civilians alike—could document the course and horrors of war. In its new exhibit Snapshots (through

April 3, 2022) the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Mo., presents 300 such images and albums chronicling the span of the global conflict across five continents.

Crusader Camp Found in Israel In 1187 Muslim forces under the Ayyubid Sultan Saladin crushed a column of Christian Frankish knights at the Battle of Hattin (west of the Sea of Galilee in what today is northern Israel), sparking the Third Crusade.

Archaeologists have unearthed a camp the Crusaders made at Tzipori Springs on the eve of battle—the first such field encampment found in the Holy Land. Recovered artifacts include period coins, buckles, arrowheads, horseshoe nails and bridles.

REMEMBERING BOB DOLE, 98, WAR BOOSTER OF WWII MEMORIAL RECORD Bob Dole—wounded veteran of World War II, U.S. Senate leader from Kansas, advocate for the disabled, presidential candidate and champion of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.—died at age 98 on Dec. 5, 2021. Dole was a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division on April 14, 1945, when severely wounded by a German artillery shell in Italy. He lost much of the use of his right arm. Among the more visible members of the Greatest Generation, Dole served as a co-chair of the World War II Memorial campaign and proved integral to securing the $197 million in mostly private funding for the site on the National Mall, which opened in 2004. In his later years he regularly visited the memorial to meet veterans traveling to the capital gratis on “honor flights.” Dole was a recipient of the Bronze Star with V (for valor) device and two Purple Hearts.

JAPAN TESTS FIRST FIXED-WING CARRIER SINCE WORLD WAR II Izumo, the first Japanese aircraft carrier since World War II capable of operating fixed-wing warplanes, recently hosted a pair of U.S. Marine Corps F-35B Lightning II fighters in a test of the vessel’s capability.

The jets, from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, on Honshu, landed vertically on Izumo’s flight deck, then performed a rolling takeoff.

Further modifications are planned for Izumo and sister ship Kaga before Japan takes delivery of 42 F-35Bs in coming years. The carrier upgrades and Marine Corps deployment come amid China’s ongoing military buildup in the region.

Feb. 1, 1913

Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand writes of his hope to avoid war with Serbia by providing Slavs “a comfortable, fair and good life.”

The 1914 assassination of the archduke and his wife in Sarajevo by a Bosnian Serb was among the causes of World War I (P. 34).

Feb. 19, 1945

U.S. Marine Corps Pfc. Charles H. Waterhouse (P. 42) lands in the first wave to hit Iwo Jima, Japan.

He later paints every Marine Medal of Honor recipient from the Civil War through the War in Afghanistan.

March 1, 1904

Bandleader Glenn Miller is born. In 1944 the U.S. Army captain and his big band were billeted in London’s Sloane Court (P. 24). They moved out on July 2—the day before a German V-1 flying bomb struck the street.

March 22, 1945

A U.S. Army Air Forces C-47A transport snatches up two Waco CG-4A gliders bearing casualties from the Rhine bridgehead in Remagen, Germany. On May 13 a C-47 uses the technique to recover three survivors of a C-47 crash in a remote New Guinea valley (P. 56).

March 26, 1676

Narragansett warriors torch Providence, including the home of Rhode Island founder Roger Williams.

The raid is in retribution for the Dec. 19, 1675, militia victory in the Great Swamp Fight, the opening clash of King Philip’s War (P. 48).

9

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News

WAR CORRESPONDENT JOE GALLOWAY, 79 When Joe Galloway sat down with U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Hal Moore Jr. to write the book We Were Soldiers Once…and Young, about the Nov. 14–19, 1965, Battle of Ia Drang, he brought an insider’s perspective. The war correspondent had been on the ground with then Lt. Col. Moore’s 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, and supporting units as they engaged an overwhelming North Vietnamese force in the first large-scale helicopter air assault of the Vietnam War. Galloway later received a Bronze Star with a combat V device for having helped retrieve a mortally wounded soldier from the battlefield under fire. He was the only civilian awarded the medal by the Army during the war. The gung-ho journalist, who often sported a blue cavalry hat, seldom shied from danger. During his nearly half century career Galloway did four tours in Vietnam and later covered the 1971 Indo-Pakistani War, the 1990–91 Gulf War and the Iraq War. He died at age 79 on Aug. 18, 2021.

Born in Bryan, Texas, in 1941, Galloway, after a stint in the U.S. Army, became a reporter in 1959—first with local newspapers and then with United Press International. He was covering Vietnam for UPI in 1965 when he impulsively jumped on a Bell UH-1 Iroquois “Huey” helicopter and found himself in the middle of the maelstrom at Ia Drang. Decades passed before Galloway collaborated with Moore to write the 1992 book We Were Soldiers Once...and Young, which writer-director Randall Wallace adapted into a 2002 war film starring Mel Gibson as Moore and Barry Pepper as Galloway.

‘Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; But young men think it is, and we were young’ —A.E. Housman

From Vietnam to Head of the VA Former Veterans Affairs administrator and U.S. senator from Georgia Max Cleland died on Nov. 9, 2021, at age 79. Despite having lost both legs and

a forearm to a grenade accident in Vietnam, Cleland ran for public office and became a tireless advocate for veterans causes. President Jimmy Carter appointed him to head the VA in 1977. A U.S. Army captain, Cleland was a recipient of the Silver Star, the Bronze Star with V device and the Soldier’s Medal.

A War Crime Not Forgotten On May 8, 1864, Confederate soldiers summarily executed three black Union soldiers in Culpeper County, Va. Their names and remains may be lost to history, but the nonprofit Freedom Foundation has honored their service with a granite obelisk on the site of the killing.

“This is dedicated to those men who made the ultimate sacrifice,” said foundation president Howard Lambert.

LEFT: CHRISTOPHER MICHEL, CC BY-SA 4.0; RIGHT: ZUMA PRESS INC. (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Galloway received a Bronze Star for his valor while covering the 1965 Battle of Ia Drang, Vietnam.

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12/7/21 7:36 PM

News Some 80,000 American service members are listed as missing from World War II. Among those searching to repatriate their remains is the nonprofit Project Recover, a team of scientists, historians and veterans. The project relates its efforts to honor the fallen in the documentary To

What Remains, a blend of new and archival film footage and interviews with team members and families of the missing. To find a screening near you, visit towhatremains.org.

Spy for the Patriot Cause Experience the thrills and chills of going undercover as part of George Washington’s Culper spy ring with the “escape room game in a box” Spies of Liberty [escapenoticegames.com]. Players have an hour to solve puzzles, read ciphers, navigate vintage maps and unlock hidden doors to further the Patriot cause amid the American Revolution.

THE ‘KING’ AND ARIZONA If not for the “King of Rock and Roll,” the USS Arizona Memorial might have been a long time coming. A March 25, 1961, concert by Elvis Presley helped fund and refocus attention on efforts to memorialize the 1,177 crewmen killed aboard the battleship amid the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941. Narrated by CBS sportscaster Jim Nantz with actor Kyle Chandler, the documentary Elvis and the USS Arizona (viewable at wwiifoundation.org/lesson/elvis-and-the-uss-arizona) relates how the rock star donated more than $60,000 in ticket sales from the concert at Pearl Harbor’s Bloch Arena, making headlines and prompting Congress to contribute the final $150,000 in funding toward the memorial, which opened, appropriately enough, on Memorial Day 1962.

FAMED CUTTER BEAR FOUND IN ATLANTIC Among the most celebrated vessels in U.S. Coast Guard history was the steam- and sail-powered cutter Bear. Built in 1874, Bear joined the Revenue Service (predecessor of the Coast Guard) a decade later and was captained for a time by “Hell-Roaring Mike” Healey, the first black officer to command a U.S. military ship. It took part in the rescue of the 1884 Greeley expedition to the Canadian Arctic, aided in rescue efforts after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire, and served in both world wars. In 1963 the decommissioned cutter was being towed from Nova Scotia to Philadelphia when it sank in a storm. Maritime researchers have confirmed that a wreck discovered on the seafloor in that locale in 2019 is almost certainly Bear.

The pending sale of New Mexico’s storied Fort Wingate—a cavalry post dating from the 19th century Indian wars—got us thinking. Whatever happened to other closed military installations?

Scores of bases, forts and posts have found new uses since Congress enacted the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949. Among them are California’s Naval Air Station Alameda, staging point of the 1942 Doolittle Raid on Japan, now home to the “other” USS Hornet Sea, Air & Space Museum; Alabama’s Fort McClellan, one of the largest U.S. Army bases during World War II and postwar headquarters of the Women’s Army Corps and Military Police Corps, since converted into a master planned community; Massachusetts’ Boston Navy Yard, among the Navy’s first shipbuilding facilities, now administered by the National Park Service and home to the 1797 frigate USS Constitution, the world’s oldest commissioned warship still afloat; Indiana’s Fort Benjamin Harrison, the largest reception center for inductees during World War II, which now encompasses residential neighborhoods, a golf course and a state park, as well as offices for the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars; and Pennsylvania’s Camp Reynolds (aka Camp Shenango), through which more than 1 million troops passed en route to Europe during World War II, since converted into an industrial-residential community.

All of which prove there is life after military service.

FROM TOP: MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVE (GETTY IMAGES); PROJECT RECOVER; CORBIS (GETTY IMAGES)

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Interview Serving Those Who’ve Served

By Dave Kindy

What prompted you to contribute your time and energy to veterans’ causes?

While serving as the artistic director of the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago in the 1980s, I began looking for plays to direct that would reflect the Vietnam experience and stumbled across an ad for a play called Tracers. It was written and performed by Vietnam veterans,

How did your portrayal of Lt. Dan shape your perspective?

I saw the role as a way to honor Vietnam veterans. Lt. Dan was a soldier to the core, tried-and-true. He wanted to serve and have a long career in the military. When he was wounded, that

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GARY SINISE FOUNDATION

Respect for American veterans is an inherited trait for Gary Sinise.

Members of the acclaimed actor’s immediate and extended family have served in the military for more than a century. Listening to their stories of service, Sinise developed a deep respect for those who’ve worn the uniform. That reverence grew into action as he found ways to help veterans. In 2011 the actor established the Gary Sinise Foundation, which provides programs, services and events for wounded veterans, first responders and their families, including mortgagefree “smart” homes for veterans with severe disabilities. The charity has since raised more than $200 million.

Military History recently reached out to Sinise, who shared the spirit behind what he does for America’s veterans.

based on their experiences before, during and after the war. We were able to secure the rights. I wanted so much to honor our Vietnam veterans, especially those in my own family, with a great production. The play opened in February 1984, and it was an immediate hit.

Throughout the rest of the ’80s and into the ’90s I supported Chicago area veterans’ groups in various ways. I’m proud to have played a role back then in raising funds and awareness to build the Lansing Veterans Memorial in Illinois.

Ten years later I felt the role of Lt. Dan Taylor in Forrest Gump was a way to honor our nation’s Vietnam veterans.

From those early days, and now through the Gary Sinise Foundation, I am continually inspired when I’m in the presence of our incredible servicemen and servicewomen. They have welcomed me into their community, and I am honored by that. I’ve seen firsthand their extraordinary dedication. They and their families are the reason I continue to serve. Whether visiting our troops in war zones, in hospitals or across our nation, putting on hundreds of concerts with my band or helping to raise money, along with donating my own personal income, for several veteran/first responder programs and support nonprofits, having spent countless hours away from my family, it has all been part of a driving passion to give myself wholeheartedly to this service life.

RANDY GLASS STUDIO

Gary Sinise

You have veterans in your family. What does their service to our country mean to you?

My grandfather Daniel Sinise served in the U.S. Army as an ambulance driver on the front line in France during World War I. He and my grandmother raised three boys. My uncles Jerry and Jack served in World War II, and my father Robert served in the Navy in the early 1950s during the Korean War. I met my wife, Moira Harris, in the 1970s, and her two brothers and her sister’s husband all served in the Army during the Vietnam War. So much of what I have tried to do comes from having veterans in my own family. It all starts there. I was in high school during the Vietnam War, and when I met Moira’s brothers and brother-in-law shortly after graduating, their sharing of their experiences with me really opened my eyes, and I wanted to find ways to support veterans locally in the Chicago area. Getting to know them in turn made me think more about the veterans in my own family and have a greater appreciation for what my grandfather and my uncles went through in World Wars I and II. I am proud of my grandfather, my uncles, my dad and Moira’s family for having served our country.

GARY SINISE FOUNDATION

RANDY GLASS STUDIO

was all taken away, and like so many Vietnam veterans he withdrew into the shadows. I believed our military men and women could relate to him and his passion to serve our nation. But the unique thing about Lt. Dan, unlike so many stories that had been portrayed about Vietnam veterans, is that he moves on and is successful in life.

He puts his war experiences behind him, mentally and physically, and is standing up again by the end of the film.

A month after Forrest Gump opened, I received an invitation to attend the Disabled American Veterans convention in Chicago, on Aug. 21, 1994. They presented me with the National Commander’s Award for having portrayed a wounded veteran in a positive way and brought the wounded veteran back into the consciousness of the American people. I was humbled and moved beyond words by the reaction I received—thousands of veterans and their family members applauded me for having played a part in a movie.

Little did I know how significant the role of Lt. Dan and that moment would become in my life.

How did you prepare for the role?

The experiences I had had in the ’80s with Vietnam veterans, and the relationship I had with the Vietnam veterans in our family, had prepared me somewhat already. I was committed to playing the role as honestly as I could because of the veterans I knew. I did do some research on what it would be like to go through life without legs, confined to a wheelchair. And I read the book Fortunate Son, by Lewis Puller Jr., son of the famous and highly decorated Marine Lt. Gen. Lewis “Chesty” Puller.

The younger Puller lost both legs in Vietnam and struggled terribly afterward. Sadly, unlike Lt. Dan, he lost his battle with the demons and took his own life in May 1994, two months before Forrest Gump opened.

Did the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks change your perspective?

After the tragic and devastating attacks I began devoting much of my time to supporting the men and women answering the call to duty. In some ways the veterans support work I had

Gary Sinise chats with Air Force service members while working the chow line at Naval Base Ventura County, Calif., in 2018.

done in the ’80s and ’90s prepared me for a new level of service. I began volunteering my time with the USO and many other nonprofits supporting our nation’s heroes. It became clear my journey was now a lifelong service mission, and everything came together in June 2011 with the launch of the Gary Sinise Foundation.

How did the Lt. Dan Band come to be?

I started playing music in fourth grade when I got my first guitar. I played all throughout school, but when I started the theater company, that took over all my time. In the late 90s I picked up playing again, and after September 11 I started doing USO tours. I would go out and shake hands, sign autographs, take pictures and visit with the troops.

There were other musicians I would play with for fun.

Our first concert for the troops, in Chicago in June 2003, was just a little

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On a 2018 visit to Grapevine Christian School, Texas, Sinise greets Vincent Losada, a World War II bombardier who lost an arm in combat.

jam session, and we invited the local USO to bring over some troops for pizza and music. I went to Iraq a few weeks later, and Kid Rock was on that tour, rockin’ for the troops. I wanted to do more than shake hands and take pictures, and after a half dozen “handshake tours” that year the USO agreed to let me take a band on a tour. It’s now been more than 530 concerts, and we’ve been all over the world. The band is a program of the Gary Sinise Foundation [raising money for disabled veterans].

Why did you launch the Gary Sinise Foundation?

I wanted to do more for the men and women who defend our country and protect our cities, and having been involved with so many veterans and first responder support organizations, I knew that starting my own was the next step. In 2011 we established the foundation to serve our nation by honoring our defenders, veterans, first responders, their families and those in need. With the support of the American people I have been able to raise additional funds, expand programs and hire a great team to carry on the mis-

sion 24/7, which allows us to provide more of the services that support our defenders and families.

Do you recall any particularly meaningful interactions with veterans?

There have been so many over the years.

In my book Grateful American: A Journey From Self to Service I wrote about the veterans and families I have met over the years, people whose resilience has inspired me to do more and moments on this journey that have affected me and changed me.

How does it feel to be an honorary Navy chief?

In 2012 I was invited to Washington, D.C., to the Navy Memorial and Naval Heritage Center to be named an honorary chief petty officer. Our youngest daughter was going to school in D.C., and I remember walking with her to the ceremony. Fleet Master Chief Michael Stevens presented me with the plaque, and our daughter pinned me. It was a wonderful ceremony, with a full Navy band and all. Just a very proud moment.

Do you regret not having served in uniform?

At the time I graduated high school,

What more needs to be done to support veterans?

Government can only do so much. I believe citizens have a role to play.

After all, less than 1 percent of our population actually defends the rest of the country, and we all benefit from their sacrifices as we enjoy the freedom they take an oath to protect.

While there are many wonderful nonprofit organizations that need support (and the Gary Sinise Foundation is one of them), I always recommend the personal touch—to not only donate to military charities, but also go where the veterans, active-duty service members and families are, to shake their hands, give them hugs, entertain them, buy them a meal, listen to their stories and let them know that their service to our country is appreciated, and that we do not take their service for granted.

They are our freedom providers, and I know that my freedom must be fought for and protected.

I am glad there are people willing to serve. Along with that service are challenges, as it is a dangerous business.

If every citizen in every neighborhood, in every community, in every town and city in every state would make it a priority to seek out and identify the military families and veterans within those communities—stepping up to honor and serve those who may have special needs because of their service—the difficult issues and challenges facing our veterans would be greatly reduced. MH Read the full interview at Historynet.com.

GARY SINISE FOUNDATION

the Vietnam War was just ending. It was not something I was going to do.

When I met my wife’s brothers, and I learned more about the Vietnam experience and what it was like for them, I felt guilty that I had not paid much attention when I was in school. I suppose out of that guilty feeling arose a commitment to do something to help our veterans. Those early seeds grew into a full-time commitment. So I suppose I am trying to make up for not having served in uniform by giving back to those who did.

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Valor Canada’s Indigenous Hero

Captain Alexander Smith was one of the most highly decorated indigenous Canadians of World War I. While more than 4,000 men of the First Nations served in the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), few were officers.

Smith ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the army and later became chief of his Cayuga tribe.

The eldest son of a Six Nations Cayuga chief, Alexander George Edwin Smith was born on Aug. 12, 1879, on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in Ontario. As a young man Smith joined the 37th Haldimand Rifles, a militia unit with many indigenous members. By the outset of World War I he’d served in the rifles for 18 years and been promoted to captain. Smith volunteered for the CEF. He was assigned to the 20th (Central Ontario) Battalion, 4th Infantry Brigade, 2nd Canadian Division, as a lieutenant, despite his militia rank and experience. After initial training in Britain, Smith’s unit shipped out to France in September 1915. Two months later Smith was back in Britain for medical treatment after having been deafened during close calls with German artillery shells.

Smith returned to his unit in France in June 1916. On July 1 Anglo-French forces launched the Battle of the Somme, though the divisions of the Canadian Corps didn’t make their combat debut for another 76 days. On September 15 the Canadian 2nd and 3rd divisions, along with nine British divisions, pressed the attack until September 22. Then, following three days of artillery preparation, the Canadians resumed attacking on September 26. The next day Smith led his company in a supporting attack for a main effort by the 8th Battalion (90th Winnipeg Rifles). Advancing in front of his company’s main body with a party of soldiers armed primarily with hand grenades, Smith captured a German trench and 50 prisoners. Twice during the course of the attack he was buried by earth thrown up by shell fire. He was awarded the Military Cross for his actions.

Alexander Smith Canadian Army Military Cross France Sept. 27, 1916

Diagnosed with shell shock, Smith was again evacuated to Britain. In April 1917 he returned to Canada and was assigned to the 1st Depot Battalion at Ontario’s Niagara-on-the-Lake training camp. Among the recruits he trained there for the French army were some 23,000 Polish-born volunteers from both Canada and the United States.

France later awarded Smith the Colonial Order of the Black Star (Officer class) for his contribution to the French war effort. He was one of only five Canadians to receive the decoration.

After the war Smith succeeded his father as chief of the Cayuga tribe. His injuries left him with permanent disabilities, including hearing loss and chronic headaches. Despite his war hero status, the veteran officially remained a ward of the state, his $49 a month disability pension doled out by the Canadian Department of Indian Affairs.

With the help of his sons and nephews, he tried to run his 100-acre farm, but eventually it proved too much. In 1942 he moved to Buffalo, N.Y., where he died at age 75 on Aug. 21, 1954.

Alexander’s brother, Charles Denton Smith, was also a captain in World War I, with the 18th (Western Ontario) Battalion, in the same brigade as his brother. Charles Smith was also awarded the Military Cross, for heroic actions on Nov. 9, 1918. On that day he led his platoon in an attack against German positions near the Belgian village of Frameries, personally taking out both a demolition party and a machine gun and crew. Another notable member of this remarkable family was Alexander’s son Harold. After his father moved to Buffalo, Harold too moved to the United States. He ended up in Hollywood, where he landed bit parts playing Indians. Changing his screen name to Jay Silverheels, he achieved onscreen immortality as Tonto to Clayton Moore’s Lone Ranger. MH

NIAGARA ON THE LAKE MUSEUM; INSET: AUCKLAND MUSEUM

By David T. Zabecki

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! t u O t i k c e Ch

THIS WEEK IN

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

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LINCOLN FORUM

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

HISTORYNET.COM

Our yearly November symposium is attended by scholars and enthusiasts from all over the nation and abroad.

It attracts speakers and panelists who are some of the most revered historians in the Lincoln and Civil War fields.

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What We Learned From...

The 1918 Meuse-Argonne Offensive

By David T. Zabecki

T

he Meuse-Argonne Offensive (Sept. 26–Nov. 11, 1918) was the largest U.S. operation of World War I. It was also the deadliest for the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), with 26,277 doughboys killed in action and 95,786 wounded in just 47 days of combat. Significant errors in the initial operations plan contributed to that high casualty count.

Following the September 12–15 Franco-American attack at SaintMihiel, the U.S. First Army had just 11 days to move more than a half million troops, 900,000 tons of supplies, and nearly 2,800 artillery pieces up to 60 miles into attack positions for the Meuse-Argonne. The AEF had only 900 trucks and few horses. Most of the infantrymen had to walk, leaving them exhausted when they arrived. The First Army had committed most of its trained and experienced divisions at Saint-Mihiel and could not refit and reposition even a few of them by September 26. As a result, three of the nine first-echelon divisions committed to the initial attack had completed training but had yet to see combat.

On September 20 First Army headquarters issued Field Orders No. 20 for the offensive. No main effort was designated. Each of the three attacking American corps along the 24-mile front had three first-line divisions and one in corps reserve. The First Army general reserve had three divisions. The artillery, too, was evenly strung out. The deployment thus resembled one huge frontal attack.

A main effort emerged by default—the fortified hill at Montfaucon, in the V Corps sector at the center of the American line. That piece of key terrain gave the Germans observation over much of the battlefield. But Montfaucon lay little more than a mile to the west of V Corps’ right boundary with III Corps. Even today the coordination of fire and maneuver across unit boundaries is one of the most difficult and complex of all combat tasks. The way the boundaries were drawn severely limited V Corps’ ability to operate against Montfaucon from both flanks. Complicating matters, within V Corps’ sector itself Montfaucon straddled the boundary between the 79th Division on the right and the 37th Division in the center. Thus each division could only operate against a single of the objec-

Lessons: Weight the main effort. The AEF’s V Corps should have had more forces and artillery than either the I Corps or III Corps on its flanks.

Don’t piecemeal the reserves.

The divisions of the First Army reserve should have been positioned to support the drive on Montfaucon.

Maintain unity of command.

The capture of Montfaucon should have been assigned to one division, with supporting divisions on each flank, and all should have been controlled by one corps headquarters.

Assign critical missions to seasoned troops. The 77th, the first-echelon division with the most combat experience, should have been assigned to take Montfaucon.

Instead, it was shunted off to the far left flank of the American attack. MH

MONDADORI PORTFOLIO (GETTY IMAGES)

Though American troops assigned to the Meuse-Argonne Offensive had completed training, many had yet to see combat.

tive’s flanks. It was an extremely difficult tactical problem, one neither the 37th nor the 79th was up to. Both were green and only partially trained units.

The operational plan had no basis in reality. The American forces were expected to advance more than 8 miles on the first day, in the process taking Montfaucon, 4 miles from the line of departure. The French commander, Gen. Philippe Pétain, doubted the Americans would even be able to advance beyond Montfaucon before the onset of winter. Thanks to a tenacious fight put up by the untrained Americans, Montfaucon did fall on the 27th, albeit at a terrible cost. Burned out by the effort, however, the troops stalled.

Not until October 14—20 days from the starting gun—did the Americans reach all their first day’s objectives. Another month of brutal fighting lay ahead.

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TODAY IN HISTORY MAY 1, 1931 THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING OFFICIALLY OPENS. IN ITS FIRST YEAR ONLY 23% OF THE AVAILABLE SPACE WAS SOLD. THE LACK OF TENANTS LED NEW YORKERS TO DISMISS THE BUILDING AS THE “EMPTY STATE BUILDING.” IN YEAR ONE THE OBSERVATION DECK HAULED IN APPROXIMATELY $2 MILLION IN REVENUE, EQUAL TO WHAT ITS OWNERS COLLECTED IN RENT. THE BUILDING FIRST TURNED A PROFIT IN THE 1950s.

For more, visit

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Hardware V-1 Flying Bomb

By Jon Guttman Illustration by Jim Laurier

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V-1 (Fieseler Fi 103) Engine: Argus As 109-014 pulse-jet engine Length: 27 feet 4 inches Wingspan: 17 feet 7 inches Fuselage diameter: 2 feet 9 inches Weight: 4,740 pounds Armament: 1,870-pound Amatol

high-explosive warhead Launchers: Ground launched from a Walter WR 2.3 ramp (with six to eight modular sections totaling between 118 and 158 feet long) or air-dropped in pairs from a Heinkel He 111H-22 bomber Guidance: Askania autopilot with gyro inertial platform and magnetic compass Operational range: 160 miles

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Air pilot propeller Magnetic guidance compass Belly impact fuze Main warhead exploder tube Warhead explosive filling Reinforcement support for launch rail 7. Main wing spar 8. Stamped metal wing reinforcing rib

4 9. F orward and rear compressed air bottles 10. Fuel flow control 11. Electrical battery 12. Flight control 13. Askania flight-control box 14. FuG-23 radio transmitter 15. Control surface servos 16. Trailing FuG-23 radio antenna 17. Rudder 18. Rear pulse-jet engine yoke

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19. Argus As 109-014 pulse-jet engine 20. Engine ignition spark plug 21. Venturi assembly 22. Engine shutter assembly 23. Forward engine support yoke 24. Pitot tube 25. Fuel tank 26. Center lifting lug 27. Fuel filler cap 28. Front and rear Z80A fuze pockets

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y 1942 Adolf Hitler was keen to wreak vengeance on Britain, both for the humiliation it had handed him in 1940 and for its ongoing bombing campaign against Germany. That June the Luftwaffe began development of a cheap, disposable guided flying bomb with a welded sheet steel fuselage and plywood wings. The Fieseler Fi 103 (also known as the V-1, as it was the first of Germany’s proposed Vergeltungswaffen, or “retaliatory weapons”) achieved its first powered launch that Christmas Eve, though not until June 13, 1944—a week after Allied forces landed in Normandy, France—were the first V-1s launched at London.

Germany hurled more than 10,000 V-1s at Britain and some 2,500 at Belgium before its last launch site was overrun on March 29, 1945.

The “buzz bombs” (so nicknamed for their distinctive engine stutter) killed an estimated 11,000 people in both nations. Thankfully, Allied anti-aircraft and air-to-air defenses knocked down thousands of “divers” (as British Royal Air Force fighter pilots called them).

By carefully slipping a wing tip beneath that of a V-1 and then “turtling” it, a pilot could disrupt the flying bomb’s gyros and send it spiraling out of control, though scores of crewmen paid for such daring with their lives.

The only warning of an imminent V-1 strike was when a cutoff sequence killed the buzz bomb’s noisy engine, sending it into a silent 10- to 12-second dive. Yet the V-1 never sparked the level of terror Hitler hoped would pressure the Allies to sue for peace. After the war the United States, France and the Soviet Union each reverseengineered the V-1, which is regarded as a crude progenitor of the modern-day cruise missile. MH

FROM V-1 FLYING BOMB, 1942–52 (NEW VANGUARD NO. 106), BY STEVEN J. ZALOGA (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING)

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SECONDS OF SILENCE American service members billeted in London’s Sloane Court had only moments to react when a V-1 flying bomb dropped from the sky on July 3, 1944

By Ron Soodalter

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Buildings on the north side of Sloane Court were especially hard-hit by the detonation of the V-1’s 1,870-pound warhead.

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The first V-1 fell on London in the early morning hours of June 13, 1944. This rudder, in the collection of the Imperial War Museums, is from a V-1 that struck south London on July 9, injuring 10 people.

T

More than 2,400 V-1s struck London, resulting in massive damage and some 6,200 dead weighing 4,740 pounds. Propelled by a gasoline-fueled pulse-jet engine with a top speed of 400 mph and an operational range of 160 miles, it carried a warhead packed with 1,870 pounds of Amatol, a high-explosive mix of TNT and ammonium nitrate. Catapulted from an inclined launch ramp pointed roughly toward its target, the V-1 relied on a guidance system comprising gyroscopes, a magnetic compass, barometer, vane anemometer and an odometer. The flying bomb maintained a cruising altitude of around 2,000 to 3,000 feet until it reached the

vicinity of its target, when a cutoff device set the rudder in neutral, putting the V-1 into a steep terminal dive.

The device flew too fast for most piston-engined aircraft to catch and too fast for anti-aircraft gunners to get a good bead on it, and when Allied planes and ground guns opened up on an inbound V-1 at the same time, the result was often catastrophic. “The AA guns were supposed to stop firing once they picked up any fighters chasing the V-1s,” British historian Graham Thomas writes in his history of the flying bomb, Terror From the Sky, “but in many cases they didn’t, and some good, experienced pilots were lost because of it.”

The V-1 so closely resembled a piloted plane that Allied spotters frequently mistook it for one—until they heard telltale sounds emanating from it. Its pulse-jet engine emitted a staggered, popping noise variously described like that of “a Model T Ford going up a hill” or “a motorbike without a silencer.” In a post–V-E Day letter to his mother Sgt. Eric Stern of the G-5 Division of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), who was billeted on Sloane Court at the time of the bombing, wrote, “They sounded like outboard motors on small boats, kind of irregular.” The V-1’s telltale engine stutter prompted the Allied nickname “buzz bomb” or “doodlebug.” Once the cutoff device sent the flying bomb diving toward its target, however, its engine stopped, and replacing the buzz was a terrifying 10 to 12 seconds of silence as the V-1 plunged to earth. “The dreaded moment,” wrote Stern, “was when the motor cut out. Then you could look for cover, count to 5 or 10 and hope it wouldn’t hit you.”

Germany launched the first wave of V-1s against London on June 13, 1944. Although many of the flying bombs

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The word “bomb,” when referring to a device carried and dropped by an airplane during World War II, generally conjures an image of an explosives-packed cylindrical shell with stabilizing fins at its tail and no internal guidance system. Such a description is grossly inadequate when describing a V-1 and how it functioned.

Purportedly launched by Adolf Hitler in retribution for the devastating Allied bombing campaign against German cities and towns, and precipitated by the D-Day landings, the V-1 was the first in a proposed series of Luftwaffe Wunderwaffen (“wonder weapons”). The “V” stood for Vergeltungswaffe (“retaliatory weapon”), a role for which the V-1 was well suited. It was an ingeniously designed pilotless aircraft, more than 27 feet long and

PREVIOUS SPREAD: ALEX SCHNEIDER, LONDONMEMORIAL.ORG; THIS PAGE: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS

he “Londoner’s Diary” section on Page 2 of the Jan. 7, 1944, Evening Standard included what to citizens of the bomb-ravaged British capital must have seemed a rather uninteresting news item. Under the heading Still Empty it read in part: “Down in Chelsea two rows of houses in Sloane Court were requisitioned over three months ago. Tenants had to pack up and find other accommodation. The flats are still empty.” Six months later those former residents had reason to give thanks they no longer lived at Sloane Court. The same could not be said for the military service personnel who had displaced the tenants, many of whom belonged to the U.S. Army’s 130th Chemical Processing Company.

Shortly before 8 a.m. on Monday, July 3—just shy of a month after the Allied D-Day landings in Normandy, France—a German V-1 flying bomb struck the residential Chelsea street, causing massive destruction and killing dozens of soldiers and several civilians. It marked the single worst incidence of loss of life for American servicemen due to a V-1 blast and the second worst V-1 incident in London during the war.

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A reconstructed V-1 site in Normandy demonstrates how the weapons were launched from an inclined rail. Below left: Spotters of the Royal Observer Corps provided early warning of inbound V-1s. Below right: Anti-aircraft guns massed along the British coast downed many of the “buzz bombs” before they could hit targets farther inland.

never reached their targets, either crashing or being downed by Allied air and ground defenses, thousands more were successful. More than 2,400 of the weapons struck London, resulting in massive destruction of property and the loss of some 6,200 lives. Nor was Britain the only target; Germany launched flying bombs into Belgium up until just weeks before its May 1945 surrender. They caused stunning devastation, killing some 5,000 people, mostly in Antwerp, Brussels and Liège, in a last-ditch attempt to stop the Allied advance. “It was,” says Tom Hopkins, a curator at the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, “a pretty ferocious beast.”

One such beast fell on Sloane Court in early July 1944.

At the time of the attack more than 1.5 million American military personnel were posted in Britain and Northern Ireland. In London, where Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower himself was headquartered, accommodations for U.S. troops honeycombed the city.

Some were in the brick buildings lining the Chelsea district street known as Sloane Court. “The respectable brick apartments spanning the residential lane were now practically a barracks,” writes Jamie Holmes, author of 12 Seconds of Silence. “Twenty prime addresses there were set aside for American soldiers.”

Among the units billeted along Sloane Court was the 130th Chemical Processing Company. It had arrived in 27

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Army CWS

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London on May 7, a month before D-Day, and outwardly resembled an average Army company. Its roughly 150 soldiers ranged in age from their late teens to mid-30s and came from cities and towns across the United States.

That was where the similarity ended. The highly trained 130th was assigned the specialized task of addressing chemical warfare.

Thus far Germany’s shells and bombs, while destructive, had been limited to conventional explosives. Early in the war, however, senior American leaders had considered the possibility Hitler might unleash devices The 130th Chemical Processing Company with chemical or biological warheads. By was a specialized comJanuary 1944 the prospect Germany would ponent of what was resort to such weapons loomed ever larger in founded during World the minds of U.S. commanders. The federally War I as the U.S. Army appointed Joint New Weapons Committee Chemical Warfare Service. In 1946, followconveyed its very real concerns to the Joint ing World War II, the Chiefs of Staff that the enemy’s new raft of CWS was redesignated Vergeltungswaffen might include such lethal the Chemical Corps. agents as botulism, anthrax and that highly effective holdover from World War I, mustard gas.

In 1942 the Army had established a vast training base in Alabama, dubbed Camp Sibert, as the nation’s first chemical weapons training facility. As the tide of the war shifted, the post assumed ever increasing significance.

“The purpose of the 37,000-acre camp of rolling Alabama farmland,” Holmes writes, “was to provide ample space for large-scale ‘live agent’ training.”

It was on that rolling farmland the officers and men of the 130th received their training, which was beyond

intensive. Camp Sibert featured, among other things, a chemical mine testing area, a 6-square-mile toxic gas yard and flyover simulated chemical air attacks. Soldiers were trained to decontaminate virtually everything a chemical weapon might taint—including their own uniforms. “In case of a gas attack,” Holmes writes, “the 130th had the job of protecting Allied troops by infusing their clothing with defensive chemicals.” Part of this process involved impregnating the clothes in a “secret chemical formula that included chlorinated paraffin.”

The unit had been activated in April 1943 as the 130th Chemical Impregnating Company, and over the course of their training its original members had formed close friendships, despite the disparity in age, prewar occupations, prior military experience and educational status.

By the time they arrived at their London billets at Nos. 4, 6 and 8 Sloane Court East, they constituted a tightly knit, well-trained unit that had already received a letter of commendation for its “zeal and industriousness.”

The 130th was not the only U.S. unit billeted on or near Sloane Court. Men of the G-5 Division of Eisenhower’s SHAEF had also taken up residence on the street, as had members of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC).

Given the crowded conditions in the neighborhood’s air raid shelters, U.S. military residents were precluded from sleeping or sheltering in them. “Most of us, however, were fatalistic about the Doodlebugs,” Stern recalled. “There wasn’t really anything we could do about protection.”

On arrival in London that June celebrated swing trombonist Glenn Miller and his 50-member big band had been billeted on Sloane Court, but the frequency of V-1 strikes in the neighborhood led him to request a change of address. According to Miller biographer George T. Simon, in those early weeks of the V-1 campaign Sloane Court acquired the epithet “Buzz Bomb Alley.” Miller was either

TOP LEFT: FELIX MAN (GETTY IMAGES); TOP RIGHT: ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY; LEFT: U.S. ARMY

Famed bandleader Glenn Miller narrowly escaped death at Sloane Court, having left the billets the day before the V-1 strike. Above right: Members of the 130th Chemical Processing Company trained at Camp Sibert, Ala.

While anti-aircraft fire and the guns of fast RAF fighters were the preferred methods of downing incoming V-1s, the flying bombs could also be grounded by “turtling,” an effective but extremely dangerous tactic that required a bold fighter pilot to nudge a V-1’s wing, destabilizing its guidance gyroscope.

already full. Just then the V-1 appeared overhead. Running into an adjacent street, Hatch “fell facedown on the pavement with my arms outstretched.” As he recalled some 70 years later, “If there had been room for one more soldier on that truck outside, I would have met the same fate.” Injured by the blast, Hatch was taken to a medical facility.

Men like him who had run around the corner proved more fortunate than those who had sought shelter in the cellars. The bomb completely destroyed No. 6, and severely damaged the buildings to either side, killing many inside and trapping others below street level—some for hours, one man for four days. Exacerbating the situation,

Most men of the 130th were standing TOP: TIPPING POINT BY MARK DONOGHUE, HANGAR 7 ART; RIGHT: ALEX SCHNEIDER, LONDONMEMORIAL.COM

TOP LEFT: FELIX MAN (GETTY IMAGES); TOP RIGHT: ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF ARCHIVES AND HISTORY; LEFT: U.S. ARMY

prescient or extremely lucky. He and his band members left Sloane Court for Bedford, England, on July 2—the day before the bombing.

Shortly after their arrival in London the men of the 130th had set up a chemical impregnation plant in a warehouse on Crinan Street, 5 miles north in the King’s Cross district. New to the city’s stringent air raid procedures, they were soon helping locals clear away rubble and search for survivors in the wake of V-1 attacks. That was how they had spent the weekend of July 1 and 2.

By 7:47 on the hazy Monday morning of July 3 they had finished breakfast and were preparing to board trucks for work when their world exploded.

around outside their buildings while the first group boarded their waiting truck.

Suddenly, a V-1 plummeted silently out of the haze. The company commander and several other men spotted it and in the seconds before impact shouted, “Buzz bomb! Buzz bomb!” saving lives with their frantic warning. Some of the soldiers standing on the sidewalk ducked into the cellars of their buildings, while others dashed around the corner. Those seated in the back of the truck had no chance to react; the V-1 blast blew the truck into the side of a building, killing all inside.

Eighteen-year-old Massachusetts native Samuel Edward Hatch was luckier than most. Delayed by cleaning chores, he had just left his quarters to board the first truck, but found it

In the aftermath of the V-1 strike rescuers both searched for survivors and recovered remains.

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The V-1 Threat

B

y mid-1942 World War II was well into its third year in Europe. Germany remained in control of the Low Countries and France but had failed to cow Britain. That summer British and American air assets combined forces in a punishing strategic bombing offensive against German cities, targeting wartime manufacturing facilities with a dual goal of crushing civilian morale. Adolf Hitler cited that campaign as an impetus for developing Germany’s Vergeltungswaffen (“retaliatory weapons”), of which the V-1 was the first.

Approved for development in June 1942, the V-1 made its maiden flight that December. While engineers refined the flying bomb, Luftwaffe crews installed launch sites along the French coast.

The first of some 10,000 V-1s fired at Britain struck London in the early hours of June 13, 1944. MH

Cotentin Peninsula

The Germans set up V-1 sites on the Cotentin Peninsula to target the docks and other facilities at Plymouth and Bristol. Fortunately, the Allies captured the sites before they went operational.

D-Day Invasion, June 6, 1944

Though Hitler cited the ongoing Allied bombings of German cities as a reason for the V-1 attacks, Germany didn’t launch its first flying bombs until June 13, a week after the Normandy landings.

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V-1 Flying Bomb

The V-1 had an operational range of 160 miles, more than enough to reach key British targets from launch sites along the French coast.

(For specifics on the weapon see P. 22.)

Sloane Court, London

The guidance system on a V weapon was only adequate for area bombing (improved to within 7 miles by war’s end), thus the V-1 that hit Sloane Court on July 3, 1944, did so largely by chance.

Such knowledge would be cold comfort for the 66 American servicemen and nine British civilians killed in the bombing.

Operation Crossbow

The first Allied bombing strikes against V-weapon sites came in August 1943, and this operation to destroy them continued until May 2, 1945.

It proved a costly diversion with limited results.

V-1 Launch Sites

Allied intelligence identified nine general V-1 launch zones in France as early as May 1943.

The ramps at four were aligned toward London, while others targeted British industrial centers.

MAPS BY STEVE WALKOWIAK/SWMAPS.COM

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the explosion started a fire that burned a number of those trapped inside the buildings.

The building housing the G-5 soldiers also suffered major damage. Stern had been seated atop the secondfloor staircase when the V-1 struck. “I never heard or saw a thing until several seconds after it happened,” he recalled in the letter home, written a year to the day after the bombing. “Then I found myself lying on the floor,

‘All we heard was what we thought was a motorcycle. ...Then hell broke loose’ covered with parts of the ceiling, wall and a large painted window.…I couldn’t move, because some soldier was lying across my legs moaning like mad. Personally, I looked like a mess. My uniform was torn to pieces, I was bleeding from several places, and my right hand was covered with blood and quite painful.…Almost all of the staircase had crashed in, except the part where I had been.”

The street was a nightmarish jumble of debris and bodies. RAF gunner Bill Figg was on leave in his home

district and witnessed the grisly aftermath. “I saw this big Army truck with four bodies slumped over the back,” he recalled. “In the middle of the road there was a head.

All down Sloane Court East there were more bodies than you could shake a stick at.”

Within minutes rescue squads, honed to rapid response during the years-long Blitz, were on scene. Some fortunate men of the 130th and G-5 stumbled from the wreckage with only minor injuries. Others—those rescuers could find—had to be carried out. Stern’s friend and co-worker had miraculously survived a three-story fall to the street, albeit with cuts, bruises and two badly broken legs. Stern helped carry his inexplicably conscious friend to an ambulance. “I went along with the same ambulance,” Stern himself recalled, “as I was getting a little weak, probably due to shock and loss of blood.”

After receiving morphine and plasma at a first aid station, they were transported to a civilian hospital. At one point Stern called their commanding officer to explain why “we couldn’t make it to the office today.”

The WACs’ quarters had also taken a hit. A year after the bombing the Chicago Tribune published WAC Sgt. Jean Castles’ account of the bombing. “All we heard was what we thought was a motorcycle swishing by,” she told the reporter. “Then hell broke loose. That is the only way it can be put. The building not only rocked; it did ground loops. [My roommate] dashed from the window over to me, as the concussion had knocked me against the closed

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Faulty engines or guidance systems meant that some V-1s—like this example discovered by Canadian troops—never crossed the channel.

WORTH (GETTY IMAGES)

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door. I picked myself up, and we began jamming each other under the bed, thinking the ceiling would collapse.

Plaster fell, and the floorboards came up, one at a time, but our room was lucky.” They emerged to the same horrific scene. “I have never seen so much blood in my life—and disconnected arms and legs,” Castles recalled.

“We collected all the blankets we could find to cover bodies and parts of bodies.”

The human cost of the Sloane Court bombing was high.

Owing to wartime censorship and official reluctance to let the Germans know the extent of their bombs’ effectiveness, the number of fatalities and other details were not released to the public. As near as can be determined, 66 servicemen perished. Sixty-two were members of the 130th, three served in G-5, and one was a member of SHAEF’s 2nd Civil Affairs Unit. Dozens more service members were injured, including WACs. Among the nine British civilians killed was a female air raid warden.

Like much of the rest of war-torn greater London, Sloane Court has been completely rebuilt, and today it is a fashionable and desirable address. The only indication of the tragedy that befell American military personnel billeted in the neighborhood on July 3, 1944, is a pair of memorial plaques. Privately funded and installed in 1997 and 1998—one on Sloane Court and the other around the corner on Turk’s Row—they briefly detail the event and its mortal toll.

A few years after the bombing philosopher and poet Edward Pols—an Army lieutenant who had witnessed the aftermath—wrote “Elegy: The Walk Between (July 1944)” in commemoration. One section relates in graphic but evocative detail a specific heartbreaking moment:

TOP: ALEX SCHNEIDER, LONDONMEMORIAL.ORG; ABOVE: WASHINGTON IMAGING (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

WORTH (GETTY IMAGES)

In Turk’s Row one of our six-by-sixes waited, piled high with dead open to any view, till an old Coldstream major who stood by— his head held erect by a leather brace— spoke to the driver, who then dropped the canvas flap to hide that sight which did no honor to young men who just yesterday were quick and in their grace. When the makeshift hearse—ready to leave for some unit tasked with the dead— came to life and crept through the dazed watchers, the Coldstreamer moved to solemn attention and salute; our young man next; then others in uniform one by one; and all stayed so, till riverwards the hidden burden passed from sight. Each then turned, this small honor paid, back to his own living lot that war had cast. MH

Top: Rebuilt after the war, Sloane Court is once again a fashionable and sought-after London address. Above: Many of the 66 American dead from the V-1 attack are among the 3,811 U.S. service members interred at Britain’s Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial.

Ron Soodalter is a frequent contributor to Historynet publications. For further reading he recommends 12 Seconds of Silence: How a Team of Inventors, Tinkerers and Spies Took Down a Nazi Superweapon, by Jamie Holmes, and Hitler’s Terror From the Sky: The Battle Against the Flying Bombs, by Graham A. Thomas. For his scholarly research, as well as his detailed account of all aspects of the Sloane Court bombing, the author thanks Alex Schneider, grandson of U.S. Army veteran and Sloane Court survivor Samuel Edward “Eddie” Hatch and strongly recommends a visit to Schneider’s comprehensive website [londonmemorial.org].

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THE ‘OOPS’ WAR In the century since the end of World War I historians have pointed to many causes—but is it possible none of the combatant nations wanted war?

By Daniel McEwen

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Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and wife Sophie descend the steps of Sarajevo’s city hall on June 28, 1914. Their assassination minutes later has long been considered the spark that ignited World War I.

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The 9 mm pistol with which Serb assassin Gavrilo Princip fired the shot that echoed round the world was a Belgian FN Model 1910 of gunsmith John Browning’s design.

False Hopes

pro-war argument. By the time Germany effectively conceded that race in 1912, Britain had 61 top-of-the-line warships to Germany’s 31 of middling quality. A single brief sortie at Jutland in 1916—though a tactical victory for the Imperial German Navy—was enough to keep it docked for the duration of the war. An angry Vice Admiral Curt von Maltzahn was heard to fume, “Even if large parts of our battle fleet were lying at the bottom of the sea, it would accomplish more than it does lying well preserved in our ports.”

France is often portrayed as thirsting for revenge after its humiliating 1870 defeat by Prussia, as well as being keen to recover Alsace-Lorraine. “Even a cursory knowledge of events shows there’s no truth to this claim,” counters Michael Neiberg, chair of War Studies at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. In his book Dance of the Furies: Europe and the Outbreak of World War I Neiberg drives a stake through the heart of this argument, revealing it was a lurid murder trial, not AlsaceLorraine, that preoccupied the French public during the July Crisis of 1914. He cites polling showing that scarcely 4 percent of French citizens considered the region worth going to war over.

Scholarship by Notre Dame political scientist Sebastian Rosato confirms that neither Germany nor France noticeably increased the size of its army in the decade leading up to the war. So unprepared was France that some 95 percent of the artillery shells it fired in 1914 were made in Germany, while its textile mills could only

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Whether the war was inevitable or avoidable depends on which books one reads. Many stand by the notion that in the decades leading up to 1914 all Europe was enthusiastic about going to war, that its nations were armed camps, and that by amassing million-man armies it only fed what Australian historian Sir Christopher Clark has called “the illusion of a steadily building causal pressure.” In this version of the story imperial Germany was an emergent dynamo infused with visions of finding its well-deserved “place in the sun” and got into a race for colonies and naval superiority that dangerously upset the balance of power.

In what is known as the “Scramble for Africa,” from the mid-1880s up till the eve of World War I nearly 90 percent of the continent was colonized by Western European powers, primarily Britain and France.

Though Germany fired the starting gun, its ambitions went unfulfilled. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had convened the The governments of 1884–85 Berlin Conference for the express most European nations purpose of partitioning Africa in a manner that went to war in 1914 believed—and encouraged designed to avoid stumbling into a war. The scramble itself was marked by a number their people to believe— the conflict would be a of “international incidents” involving some short one, as this early combination of Germany, Britain or France, British recruiting poster implies. Sadly, any hopes but these were resolved peacefully.

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P

eople still regard World War I with horrified disbelief. That four-year “ecstasy of fumbling” killed some 10 million soldiers and perhaps as many civilians, numbers that defy comprehension. Shell-shocked governments had little to show for the fields of white crosses popping up on their pockmarked landscapes. Grieving families the world over wanted to know who was to blame for having sent their sons, fathers and husbands to die ghastly and useless deaths in what American diplomat and historian George F. Kennan termed “the great seminal catastrophe,” or Urkatasrophe (“original catastrophe”) to Germans.

Who indeed? And why? Over the decades since the guns of the—apologies to H.G. Wells—“War That Didn’t End War” fell silent, the writers of some 30,000 books, technical reports and scholarly papers have debated the chain of events prompting unprecedented historical, social, economic and technological consequences that left Eurasian politics radioactive through century’s end. New research continually adds to this library, often bringing more controversy than clarity.

That there were knights and knaves in all camps is a given. However, if they appeared to have acted like fools, scoundrels or madmen, judge them “in the context of their times, not ours,” urge historians, which sounds suspiciously like having to accept “it seemed like a good idea at the time” as an explanation.

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produce blue uniforms. “There was no broad public support for war among the working classes of Europe,” Rosato notes. “Voters in prewar France and Germany voted consistently for anti-military parties.”

Nor did the families of the last four sovereign empires of Europe want war. The Hohenzollerns of Germany; the Hapsburgs of Austria-Hungary, whose emperor Franz Joseph had paradoxically declared, “It is the first duty of kings to keep peace”; the Romanovs of Russia, notorious for shooting crowds of demonstrators; and the Three Pashas, whose faltering Ottoman empire was on life support when the war broke out. This group refused to go gently into the good night of constitutional monarchism, clinging to wealth and power by suppressing pentup movements for political independence, social reform, religious freedom and democratization that had roiled their empires through the 19th century. Their populations were eager to get on with making what Oxford University historian Margaret McMillan terms “the transition from subject to citizen.” The thought a war might give these unruly masses the means and opportunity to do just that kept these families up nights—and rightly so.

By 1918 a royal diaspora had cast them all to the wind.

In his book 1913: In Search of the World Before the Great War British-Australian historian Charles Emmerson describes a Europe celebrating a gilded age of peace, progress and prosperity. “It would be very, very hard to imagine this wonderful, glossy, wealthy, globalized, prosperous, civilized construct which had been built over the last hundred years…could be shattered by war in a moment of madness,” Emmerson notes. Indeed, as late as May 1914 British Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs Sir Arthur Nicolson was moved to declare, “Since I have been at the foreign office I have not seen such calm waters.”

But if “war fever” was absent in the years leading up to 1914, what explains the military parades mobbed by cheering onlookers, overflowing recruiting stations and trains crowded with smiling men waving goodbye to wives and mothers as captured in grainy films of the day?

Franz Joseph

Gavrilo Princip

Russian Czar Nicholas II and his family pose for a portrait before the outbreak of a war they would not survive.

“It is critical to understanding World War I to understand how deeply the men who enlisted on all sides truly bought into the ‘short war’ myth,” Neiberg says. Since the idea of war was so far removed from the public consciousness when it suddenly broke out, every combatant government found itself rushing to assure its anxious populace it was acting purely in their defense—an argument made with varying degrees of credibility. Belgium could rightly make that claim. France made it a point of national pride not to strike the first blow. Indeed, it had withdrawn its army several miles from the German border at AlsaceLorraine to avoid any incidents that might trigger gunfire.

Germany, meanwhile, loaded its men onto trains, claiming to be responding in kind to Russian mobilization. “We draw the sword with a clean conscience and with clean

Alfred von Schlieffen

Wilhelm II

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Contrary to fears among European governments that the outbreak of war would cause widespread civil unrest among their peoples, the news about military mobilization was initially greeted with almost hysterical public enthusiasm. Crowds across the continent cheered on the troops (top and middle), and national leaders both civil and royal (such as Nicholas II, above) boosted military morale with speeches and visits to the troops.

hands,” Kaiser Wilhelm II swore solemnly, although his military junta had trouble explaining why trains carrying a “defensive” army were heading toward Belgium, which hadn’t fired a shot in anger, rather than Serbia, where assassin Gavrilo Princip had killed Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and wife Sophie in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914.

Generals in both the Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies had ample reason to fear that patriotic loyalty to a monarch who’d mistreated his populace in times past might not motivate men to answer call-up orders. They were wrong. Conscripts showed up by the millions.

Standing shoulder to shoulder were capitalists, socialists, royalists, nationalists, peasants and princes, most of whom believed passionately they were fighting to defend their homeland from an unprovoked attack that threatened their nation’s survival. Who wouldn’t be eager?

Men were also quick to enlist because they believed just as fervently they would be home by Christmas, wearing medals and regaling the ladies with war stories. Such patriotic flimflam became an article of faith among the men who’d answered their respective country’s call and would haunt all who touted it. The kaiser promised his boys they’d be home “before the leaves fall” because faith in short, decisive wars was the bedrock of German military planning in 1914. Had Prussia not beaten Austria in seven weeks in 1866 and France in six months in 1870?

The commanders of all European armies had learned the wrong lesson from the relatively brief regional wars of the 19th century. Their observers had witnessed firsthand how technological innovation—the steady increase in range and rates of rifle fire, and the advent of early machine guns and artillery shells 10 times more powerful than Napoléon’s cannon balls—was making the battlefield increasingly lethal for soldiers. These were omens of a frightening trend that military establishments of every uniform misread wildly.

On Oct. 25, 1854, amid the Crimean War, the infamous charge of a British brigade of light cavalry into the muzzles of Russian cannons left 110 of the 600 horsemen dead and another 161 wounded. The survivors were immortalized for their gallantry. At the Aug. 16, 1870, Battle of Mars-LaTour another “death ride” saw 800 hot-blooded Prussian cavalrymen charge headlong into the teeth of withering French fire. Half their number were shot from their horses.

Such suicidal bravado aroused admiration. The 1904–05 Russo-Japanese War witnessed the largest land battle to date at Mukden but remains renowned for tiny Japan’s masterful defeat of giant Russia’s imperial fleet in the decisive encounter at Tsushima Bay (see “Japan’s Trafalgar,”

by Alan George, in the January 2022 Military History).

Incredibly, the message apparently gleaned by military observers was that troops infused with patriotic élan could overwhelm even the stoutest enemy defenses. This naive, if not callous, calculation meant the only thing inevitable about World War I was its horrendous death toll.

No discussion of how the war got started omits the

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At the close of the 19th century Polish entrepreneur and military theorist Jan Gotlib Bloch sought to methodically quantify modern warfare. His conclusions came as the mother of all inconvenient truths to military planners of the day. In essence he declared war had become just too big, too destructive, too deadly, too expensive and too unpredictable to be an effective instrument of “politics by other means.” Bloch was ignored. In 1914 machine guns turned the valiant charges of troops across open country into obscene massacres at up to 600 rounds per minute.

Even more were blown to pieces by massed rapid-fire artillery. Germany alone sustained more than a third of all its casualties in the first three months of the conflict.

Thus the trenches have become the icon of World War I.

Schlieffen Plan. That German military scheme to quickly knock France out of a future war proved more than they could handle. The Allies’ 1914 “Miracle of the Marne” stopped the kaiser’s gray-clad divisions within 50 miles of Paris. Failure of the plan is considered Germany’s first misstep on the road to disaster. Yet, Rosato argues, Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen’s proposal, written a decade earlier, was never more than a “theoretical paper exercise” to justify expansion of the German army. The plan, such

Satirical maps lampooning the combatant nations were common across Europe in 1914 and ’15, though their popularity waned as casualties rose.

as it was, was designed only to hold France in check while Germany took on its real enemy, Russia; there was never supposed to be a left hook around Paris. In 1914 the Germans had planned only a series of small defensive firefights, but given the rapid French retreat, their troops were compelled to follow. Thus the operation was a classic case of mission creep that only looked like the Schlieffen Plan.

Men were also quick to enlist because they fervently believed they’d be home by Christmas By the end of 1914, with millions dead and no end in sight to the killing, the “short war” promise lay exposed for the murderous myth it was. So why didn’t the opposing forces stop the insanity and seek a negotiated settlement? Because by then each combatant nation believed it was fighting a defensive war it had to win if it were to survive. As in all wars, the death of comrades only made

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Later revisions of the Treaty of Versailles downgraded the war to an unfortunate accident winning. Their opposite numbers in London, Moscow and Washington would have had zero tolerance for the German tricolor flying atop the Eiffel Tower.

Meanwhile, anchored across the English Channel was a navy with a three-century tradition of scoring warwinning victories over rival navies. The largest maritime force on earth, Britain’s Royal Navy, projected and protected the power of the then largest empire on earth. Had Germany triumphed on the Continent, Berlin would have had

no means of impeding Britain from using its vast human, financial, natural and industrial resources to wage war.

Royal Navy ships seized or sank a quarter of the kaiser’s merchant shipping in just three months, while Germany’s submarines did little more than make serious enemies.

Whether czarist or communist, Russia has always been vast. No nation then or now has ever possessed the military scope to conquer it. That’s why Germany enabled an unknown and unemployed malcontent named Vladimir Lenin to do its dirty work, allowing the military brain trust in Berlin to conveniently avoid the insurmountable problem of putting German boots on the ground in Moscow.

The United States, for its part, was simply too rich for Germany to take on. By the outbreak of the war its factories were already producing a quarter of the manufactured goods used by Europeans without breaking a sweat. An isolationist Congress kept it out of the fray as long as possible despite growing public unease with selling war materiel to Germany. When the Zimmerman Telegram made headlines, however, public opinion shifted overwhelmingly in favor of taking the war to the villains they were certain had started it all—the Huns.

With the benefit of hindsight, we know what would have happened had the Schlieffen Plan worked in 1914, as it did in the summer of 1940 when the Wehrmacht employed an updated version to roll over France in a

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those still alive more determined to kill the enemy in revenge. “The intensity of the hatred already engendered on all sides made peace impossible,” Neiberg says.

So the war ground its bloody grist for three more years.

Historians earnestly discuss the various opportunities that arose for one side or the other—especially Germany—to have struck a decisive blow that would have “won” the war. Yet it is unrealistic to believe Germany had the capability to win the war as its leaders envisioned

EVERETT COLLECTION HISTORICAL (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Whatever hopes the combatants might initially have had that World War I would be brief and relatively painless soon died amid the trench lines and barbed wire.

matter of weeks. Adolf Hitler and his generals then proceeded to slavishly repeat all of Erich Ludendorff’s greatest mistakes, ultimately reducing Germany to a smoldering ruin in fighting the same well-armed enemies and the same daunting geopolitical realities with the same predictable result. The scale was vastly greater, and it took longer, but the outcome only seemed doubtful at the time.

Even more words have been written about how the war

LEEMAGE (GETTY IMAGES)

EVERETT COLLECTION HISTORICAL (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

ended than how it began. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles initially placed all the war guilt on Germany’s shoulders.

Later revisions downgraded it to an unfortunate accident, with no one country to blame—call it the “Oops War.” Then, in 1961, German historian Fritz Fischer published a damning 900-page indictment of his nation’s role in starting Europe’s “March of Folly,” reviving the debate with a vengeance. Exhibit A was the kaiser’s infamous “blank check” of support that egged AustriaHungary into punishing Serbia for the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.

But American historian Samuel R. Williamson Jr. is among those who reject what he calls the “German Paradigm.” Instead, he makes a compelling case that Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph I and his foreign minister, Leopold Berchtold, played the kaiser like a fiddle, cravenly manipulating the blank check to launch not a punitive raid but an all-out attack on Serbia. It’s worth noting that despite losing nearly a third of its population during the war, the highest percentage of any nation, Serbia emerged a winner at the peace talks. The postwar borders ultimately expanded it into the Slavic superstate of Yugoslavia. Seen from that perspective,

Williamson brands the Sarajevo assassination “the most successful terrorist act of all time.”

Any implied villainy was shared, historian Clark contends. “While each nation had a limited understanding of the complexity of what was unfolding,” he says, they all came to see Balkan volatility as offering beneficial strategic circumstances for advancing their respective political agendas. German diplomat Kurt Riezler summed up the attitude in a letter to his fiancé: “The war was not wanted, but still calculated, and it broke out at the most opportune moment.”

Is it because of our lingering contempt for World War I that we celebrate World War II, the deadliest six years in human history, as the “Good War”? It killed at least three times as many people, mostly civilians, with fire-bombing, concentration camps and nuclear weapons, among other horrific means. That its end was celebrated with Victory Days (as in, “We’re glad we won”) versus the end of World War I, which was dubbed Armistice Day (as in, “We’re just glad it’s over”) speaks volumes. Speaking of volumes, there will undoubtedly be more of those too, and the debate will continue. MH

World War I JULY 1914–NOVEMBER 1918

18,357,000 ALLIED POWERS KIA, WIA, MIA

MILITARY DEATHS BY COUNTRY: RUSSIA: 1,811,000 FRANCE: 1,398,000 BRITAIN: 1,115,000 ITALY: 651,000 SERBIA: 275,000 UNITED STATES: 117,000 BELGIUM: 88,000 GREECE: 26,000 PORTUGAL: 7,000 MONTENEGRO: 3,000 JAPAN: <1,000

4,000,000

CIVILIANS KILLED

12,774,000

CENTRAL POWERS KIA, WIA, MIA MILITARY DEATHS BY COUNTRY: GERMANY: 2,051,000 AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: 1,200,000 OTTOMAN EMPIRE: 772,000 BULGARIA: 88,000

3,700,000

CIVILIANS KILLED

Retired corporate wordsmith Dan McEwen writes primarily on history topics. For further reading he recommends Dance of the Furies, by Michael S. Neiberg; The Eastern Front, 1914–1917, by Norman Stone; and The Three Emperors, by Miranda Carter.

Vladimir Lenin addresses a crowd as revolution sweeps czarist Russia—one outcome many heads of state feared when Europe blundered its way into a world war in 1914.

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HONORING ‘THE FEW, THE PROUD’ Charles Waterhouse devoted his last years to portraying all Marines and Navy corpsmen who earned the Medal of Honor

By Jon Guttman

O

Marine vs. Marine On May 15,

1862, a U.S. Navy sortie up Virginia’s James River to test Richmond’s defenses fell afoul of Confederate batteries atop Drewry’s Bluff, against which the warships were unable to effectively elevate their guns.

The thinly armored ironclad USS Galena took the worst punishment, but amid the carnage Cpl. John Freeman Mackie seemed to be everywhere, trading shots with Confederate marines or helping man Galena’s guns until it withdrew. For his dogged courage under fire he became the first U.S. Marine to receive the Medal of Honor.

CHARLES WATERHOUSE ART COURTESY JANE WATERHOUSE, FEATURED IN VALOR IN ACTION (SCHIFFER PUBLISHING, 2020)

“

nce a Marine, always a Marine,” goes a popular saying, and if the U.S. Marine Corps ever had to prove the point, it need only refer to Col. Charles H. Waterhouse.

He was just another kid in the corps when he hit the sulfurous beach with the first wave at Iwo Jima, Japan, on Feb. 19, 1945, only to fall with a wound that inflicted permanent nerve damage to his left hand. Regardless, after World War II he studied art at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts in New Jersey. On graduation in 1950 he embarked on a successful career that drew him Charles back to illustrating moments in Marine history.

Waterhouse That led to his being commissioned a major and named the first—and thus far only—Marine Corps artist in residence. He ultimately painted more than 500 portraits or scenarios depicting an array of events, from the formation of the corps, on Nov. 10, 1775, to the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At age 82 Waterhouse set his sights on rendering portraits of every Marine and Navy corpsman awarded the Medal of Honor and portraying the acts for which each received the award. At the time of his death at age 89 on Nov. 16, 2013, he had produced 332 such paintings—the most comprehensive output of Medal of Honor moments by a single artist. His daughter Jane Waterhouse, a successful author of novels and mysteries, showed equal devotion in publishing all those paintings and a personal tribute to the man who created them in a stirring volume entitled Valor in Action. Images from that book appear on the following pages. MH

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CHARLES WATERHOUSE ART COURTESY JANE WATERHOUSE, FEATURED IN VALOR IN ACTION (SCHIFFER PUBLISHING, 2020)

‘THE FEW, THE PROUD’

Beat the Odds Flying a Liberty DH–4 over Flanders, Belgium, on Oct. 14, 1918, 1st Lt. Ralph Talbot and Gunnery Sgt. Robert G. Robinson encountered 12 enemy planes. When Robinson collapsed from wounds, Talbot fought off the Germans and landed at a Belgian aerodrome, where a surgeon reattached Robinson’s nearly severed arm. Both Marines were awarded the Medal of Honor. Armored Hero On June 16, 1944, four M4 tanks of Company A, 4th Tank Battalion, were advancing toward Saipan’s Aslito airfield when the lead tank was disabled by Japanese fire. As enemy soldiers swarmed the vehicle, platoon leader Gunnery Sgt. Robert H. McCard ordered the other tanks back and his own crew to bail out. He then engaged the enemy with grenades and one of the tank’s machine guns. McCard was later found dead in the midst of 16 slain Japanese.

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One-Man Army Pfc. Arthur J. Jackson of the 7th Regiment, 1st Marine Division, brought his aggressive spirit into play on Peleliu on Sept. 18, 1944, when Japanese defenses drove his platoon to ground. He sprinted 100 yards through kunai grass and gunfire to the main pillbox, which he neutralized with his Browning automatic rifle, phosphorus grenades and explosive charges, killing 35 Japanese.

He went on to destroy a dozen more pillboxes.

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Hell on the Beach When Staff Sgt. William J. Bordelon landed on Tarawa on Nov. 20, 1943, he was one of only four men to make it from his tracked landing vehicle to shelter behind a 4-foot-high seawall. He assaulted three pillboxes before being hit. Refusing medical attention, he was wounded again while retrieving two wounded Marines and then attacked a fourth pillbox before being fatally struck. Bordelon was the only enlisted Marine on Tarawa to receive a posthumous Medal of Honor. Cold Courage During the retreat from North Korea’s Chosin Reservoir on Nov. 28, 1950, Pvt. Hector A. Cafferata Jr. twice found himself defending wounded fellow Marines against Chinese assaults. Despite multiple wounds, Cafferata held until the enemy withdrew, only afterward noticing he had fought all night in 6 inches of snow without his boots.

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‘THE FEW, THE PROUD’ Back Into the Fray On July 18, 1966, Staff Sgt. John James

McGinty III and Company K, 3rd Battalion, 4th Marines, were serving as rear guard for his besieged battalion when North Vietnamese soldiers attacked, cutting off 20 men of his platoon. Although wounded in his left eye, McGinty rushed through enemy fire to join his men, all of whom were wounded.

After reloading their weapons, he directed them in a defense against enemy assaults, shooting five NVA troops point-blank with his pistol and calling in air strikes to within 50 yards of the Marines’ position. They ultimately routed the NVA force, which suffered some 500 casualties. Keep on Trucking On Sept. 8, 2009, a mixed force of U.S. Marines and Afghan government troops were ambushed near Ganjgal by more than 50 Taliban fighters. Learning that four men of his Embedded Training Team 2-8 were cut off, Cpl. Dakota Meyer and another Marine carried out five trips in three gun trucks, returning fire with a rifle and machine gun. Ignoring a shrapnel wound to his arm, Meyer recovered the bodies of his teammates along with two dozen Afghan troops, inspiring the others to fight and ultimately disrupt the Taliban attack over the course of a 6-hour battle.

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A WAR THEY DIDN’T WANT Rhode Island colonists and native Narragansetts kept a tenuous peace—until an invading English army dragged them all into King Philip’s War

By Douglas L. Gifford

Though this 1677 map is confusing to modern eyes, as it is tilted on its side with north to the right, it neatly depicts New England at the time of King Philip’s War.

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Armed with matchlocks, muskets and a hodgepodge of sidearms and uniforms, militiamen drill in preparation for action against the Narragansetts and Wampanoags.

well as those in the United Colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth and Connecticut, all sought to keep the Narragansetts—who occupied most of present-day Rhode Island —neutral in the war and prevent them from joining forces with Metacom. To that end colonial officials, at the urging of Rhode Island founder Roger Williams, held several councils with the Narragansetts and their sachem, Canonchet (or Quanonchet). The Narragansetts also realized war with the English would be a disaster, and Canonchet assured the colonists he had not allied with Metacom.

During the summer of 1675, however, Wampanoag refugees drifted south into Narragansett territory, and

felt was a violation of Narragansett neutrality, the commissioners of the United Colonies met in Boston in late September 1675. In attendance were several Narragansett sachems, including Canonchet, who agreed to turn over the enemies of the English they were harboring by October 28.

But when that day arrived, Canonchet didn’t turn over the refugees. When asked if he would surrender them, the sachem reportedly answered, “No, not a Wampanoag nor the paring of a Wampanoag’s nail.” Although the Narragansetts still insisted they had no formal alliance with Metacom, they would not betray their fellow Algonquians to appease the English.

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Settlers in Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, as Canonchet gave them shelter. In response to what they

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I

n June 1675 warriors of the Wampanoag sachem, or elected chief, Metacom—known to New England colonists as King Philip—laid siege to the Plymouth Colony town of Swansea, killing settlers, burning homes and igniting a conflict known today as King Philip’s War. Although the murder trial and execution of a trio of Wampanoags by the English had been a pretext for the war, tensions had long been building between the tribe and colonists in Plymouth and adjacent Massachusetts Bay. “The pent-up passions of many years, fanned into flame, were past suppression,” one observer later noted.

Bordering Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth to the south and west was the tiny colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (united by royal charter in 1663). Of all the English colonies it was the smallest in population, the most divided in sentiment and the least effectively organized for the carrying out of any public policy. Yet it was at this point that Rhode Island, which had been excluded from the military alliance of the United Colonies of New England, was thrust into conflict with the powerful native Narragansetts and their fellow Algonquians the Wampanoags.

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Colonial fears of an alliance between the Wampanoags and Narragansetts became so great that on November 2 the commissioners of the United Colonies took the extraordinary step of authorizing a pre-emptive attack against the Narragansetts to knock them out of the war before they had a chance to join forces with Metacom.

Canonchet’s claims of neutrality were not good enough.

“In the excited state of mind that existed among both magistrate and people of New England at the time, neutrality was impossible,” wrote George Ellis and John Morris in their 1906 history of the conflict. Rhode Islanders were oblivious to the coming invasion.

The commissioners selected Governor Josiah Winslow of Plymouth to command the colonial army. Massachusetts provided 527 militiamen (under Maj. Samuel Appleton), Connecticut 315 (under Governor Robert Treat) and Plymouth 158 (under Maj. William Bradford). Some 150 allied Mohegan and Pequot warriors from Connecticut accompanied the column. The officers chose “Smith’s Castle,” Richard Smith Jr.’s fortified trading post in Cocumscussoc (present-day Wickford, R.I.), as the rallying point and forward supply base.

While the colonists were preparing for war, the Narragansetts were settling in for the winter. They established their principal settlement in the Great Swamp—thousands of acres of wetlands, open marshes, forest and impenetrable undergrowth roughly a dozen miles southwest of Smith’s Castle. The settlement was huge for an American Indian village. Spanning anywhere from 3 to 6 acres, it held some 500 lodges sheltering the Narragansett warriors, the Wampanoag refugees and thousands of women, children and older men.

Around the settlement the Narragansetts erected a defensive palisade of logs set vertically into the ground with an inner rampart of stacked stone and clay. While the tribe had constructed such fortified villages long before the arrival of English settlers, this one was particularly stout. The Narragansetts built blockhouses at intervals along the perimeter wall to create interlocking fields of fire at every approach. As a final measure they arranged felled trees outside the wall as a defensive abatis to slow the advance of any attacking force. Yet the palisade had a chink in its armor. As one period chronicler noted after the battle, “They had not quite finished the said work” before the English attacked.

The Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth regiments of the colonial army arrived at Smith’s Castle on December 13.

Metacom (King Philip)

Five days later they united with the Connecticut militiamen and their tribal allies at Jireh Bull’s recently ransacked farm in Pettaquamscutt, 7 miles to the south. The winter of 1675–76 was brutal even by New England standards. In Narragansett country 2-foot-deep snow with drifts up to 3 feet covered the ground. When Winslow’s men reached the smoldering ruins of Bull’s farmhouse, they went into bivouac—without tents.

That night Winslow held a council of war with his officers. The army was in a precarious position. They were deep in Narragansett country, short on provisions in the midst of winter, and the men lay exposed to the elements. Had a Narragansett informer with the English name Peter Freeman not betrayed the location of his tribe, the colonists would have had no idea where to find their adversaries. Furthermore, Freeman had agreed to lead the army to the fortified village in the Great Swamp, about 8 miles west of Bull’s homestead. Having come that far, faced with the choice of attacking or retreating, Winslow chose to attack.

Bone Breaker While the Narragansetts and their allies had access to firearms, many warriors relied on bows and fighting clubs.

This example from 1666 is hand-carved maple, with the handle transitioning to a curved neck and heavy burl head.

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Josiah Winslow

While many New England militiamen carried flintlock muskets, older matchlock rifles were also common. Among the most prized of the matchlocks were those produced by Dutch gunsmiths, such as this circa 1640 example from the workshop of Utrecht master Jan Knoop.

Before dawn on Sunday, December 19, the largest army ever assembled by the United Colonies marched off to find the Narragansett stronghold. A Massachusetts company under Capt. Samuel Moseley led the vanguard, followed by the remainder of the Massachusetts regiment. The smaller Connecticut and Plymouth regiments brought up the rear, while the Mohegan and Pequot scouts screened the army’s flanks.

Aware of the approaching English, the Narragansetts initially chose not to contest their advance. Then, shortly after noon, the lead elements of the army were ambushed not far from the Narragansett stronghold.

After firing a volley, the warriors retreated COLONIAL TROOPS inside “ostentatiously” by the principal entrance. But Freeman led the Massachusetts companies around to the right, directly to CASUALTIES an unfinished section of the palisade. While a blockhouse guarded that section of the wall, and a large log spanned the gap, no ALGONQUIAN abatis of felled trees obstructed the approach.

WARRIORS In another stroke of good fortune for the English, the bitterly cold temperatures had frozen the normally swampy ground solid, CASUALTIES granting them good footing over terrain that in warmer temperatures would have been an impassable quagmire.

On spotting the gap, the three Massachusetts companies in the vanguard rushed in without conducting reconnaissance or waiting for the remainder of the army to advance. Their field officers paid a heavy price for such impulsiveness, as on entering the fort, the men were raked by a deadly enfilading fire. Captain Isaac Johnson was

King Philip’s War

3,500

2,500+ 3,400 3,000

slain outside the palisade, while Capt. Nathaniel Davenport entered the fort only to be killed by a withering volley that decimated his company. The two other Massachusetts companies entering the fray were similarly battered.

Stunned by the ferocity of the Narragansett defense, the Massachusetts men poured from the gap in retreat, Capt. Samuel Gardner barely gaining the swamp before being shot dead. Just then Maj. Appleton arrived in their midst. “They run!” he shouted, seeking to rally his men.

“They run!” Appleton then led the Massachusetts troops into the breach once more. Again the Narragansetts poured musket fire into the attackers, but the English pressed forward. Driving into the fort, they passed the point where enfilading fire from the blockhouses could reach them. Waiting Connecticut troops, who were taking heavy fire from the walls and blockhouses, then forced the gap, followed by the two Plymouth companies.

The English surged forward, pushing the Narragansetts deeper into the village. The warriors continued to resist, pouring fire on the militiamen from all directions, many attackers taking shots to the back from defenders atop the palisade. The soldiers set fire to a lodge or two, and soon the village was ablaze. As the Narragansett powder supplies ran short, the resistance collapsed.

What followed was not war, but murder.

As Narragansett women, children and older men fled the burning village, the advancing English indiscriminately cut down scores of them with musket and sword.

“The shrieks and cries of the women and children, the yelling of the warriors, exhibited a most horrible and appalling scene,” one participant recalled. Survivors fled into the brutally cold winter night. To screen their escape,

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Dutch Matchlock

Benjamin Church

FROM LEFT: NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY; OLD PAPER STUDIOS (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY; BELOW: RIJKSMUSEUM

Roger Williams

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Combat between Algonquian warriors and colonial militiamen was often close and frequently brutal, with quarter rarely given.

warriors remained outside the palisade to snipe at any English foolish enough to go in pursuit.

Though the militiamen had won the battle, they were the midst of enemy territory and surrounded by a dangerous foe. Furthermore, they were out of provisions and had not eaten all day. Temperatures were dropping, and the men were exhausted from lack of sleep, having marched all morning before fighting a four-hour battle.

Winslow’s aide, Capt. Benjamin Church—an experienced Indian fighter—suggested the army stay the night in the village. That way the men could gather what supplies remained, cook a meal, treat their dozens of wounded and get a good night’s sleep in the shelter of the blockhouses before returning to Smith’s Castle. But a certain doctor accompanying the expedition insisted the wounded be kept moving, or they would grow stiff and be difficult to transport. With few good options, Winslow chose to heed the doctor’s advice and reject Church’s suggestion. Then, despite his men’s desperate need for the food stored in the Narragansett lodges, he ordered the village razed. Not until dusk did he start his depleted army on the long march back to Smith’s Castle.

The journey proved as horrific as Church had predicted.

As the soldiers trudged through the deep snowdrifts,

the temperatures plummeted further. Despite the doctor’s counsel, nearly two dozen wounded succumbed during the retreat.

After an 18-mile forced march the main body of the army finally reached Smith’s Castle at 2 a.m. Winslow and a smaller contingent got turned around in the dark and didn’t arrive for another five hours. But the famished, exhausted soldiers weren’t out of the woods yet, as the castle was out of food.

Soon after the English marched out, Narragansetts began returning to their settle- A standard European ment, only to find the bodies of their kin infantry weapon from littering the ground and their food stores the 14th through 16th centuries, the halberd largely destroyed. After gathering what sup- remained in use by colonial plies and provisions remained, they aban- militias in North America doned the village. From the Great Swamp into the late 1600s. The they traveled north through the freezing device combined an ax cold to seek shelter among friendly tribes head, a pike blade and a downward-turned beak in western Massachusetts. Estimates of fixed atop a wooden pole.

Narragansett casualties at the Great Swamp Fight vary wildly from a handful to hundreds of warriors killed. “Although badly hurt by the English raid, the Narragansett threat had not been extinguished,” wrote Len Travers and Sheila McIntyre of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. “In fact, the colonists’ actions transformed the formerly neutral survivors into committed enemies.”

Halberd Head

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one in four Englishmen was a casualty, a testament to the ferocity of the Narragansett defense. Casualties among the officers were particularly appalling. Half of the 14 men commanding militia companies were slain on the field or soon died of their wounds, three each from Massachusetts and Connecticut, and one from Plymouth.

The Connecticut regiment had been so severely mauled that it was forced to withdraw from the campaign, over the protests of the other colonies. Winslow did not report Mohegan and Pequot casualties.

At Smith’s Castle the timely arrival of a supply ship sent by the United Colonies spared the army from starvation.

Still, English casualties in what was remembered as the Great Swamp Fight were fearful. More than 70 militiamen were either killed immediately or died of their wounds.

Another 150 were wounded but survived. Thus nearly

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Top: Massachusetts militiamen storm the Narragansett stronghold at the outset of the Great Swamp Fight on Dec. 19, 1675, finding their way into the compound through an unfinished section of the palisade.

Above: A company of colonial rangers killed King Philip on Aug. 12, 1676.

posely left a section of their palisade unfinished, then allowed the English to capture the traitorous Peter Freeman so he might lead them to the killing zone the defenders had established. Such a strategy seems overly complicated and fraught with danger, however. Without Freeman’s help the English wouldn’t have been able to find the enemy settlement, let alone exploit the gap in the palisade.

It seems improbable the Narragansetts would prepare such an elaborate fortification to defend their families and food stores only to have the English led to its very gates.

Given the casualties suffered during the Great Swamp Fight, the withdrawal of the Connecticut contingent and the poor condition of survivors, Winslow had no choice but to hold position at Smith’s Castle until the colonies sent sufficient reinforcements for him to resume the offensive. Not until late January 1676 was the army strong enough to retake the field. After leaving Rhode Island, the colonists marched into western Massachusetts in a fruitless search for the Narragansetts, who had withdrawn deep into the wilderness. Again the English nearly starved before Winslow abandoned the campaign.

Meanwhile, the vengeful Narragansetts pursued alliances with other tribes, and by March they were ready to take the offensive. The United Colonies had launched their winter campaign without a formal notice of war, so residents of Rhode Island were unprepared for the coming storm. While rogue Narragansetts had attacked individual settlers, the colony had largely escaped the destruction experienced by Massachusetts and Plymouth.

Thanks to the pre-emptive English attack in the Great Swamp, however, the Rhode Island settlers and Narragansetts were soon embroiled in a war they didn’t want.

Retribution was swift and deadly. On March 17 Narragansett warriors entered deserted Warwick, burning the settlement to the ground. Residents of Simsbury, Marlboro and Providence had likewise fled before the Narragansetts struck on March 26 and torched most of their houses, including the Providence home of Rhode Island founder Roger Williams. That same day a force of Narragansett warriors all but annihilated a Plymouth company comprising 63 colonists and 20 Indian allies. Two days later they attacked old Rehoboth (present-day East Providence). By then all but the troops and the most resolute settlers had

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Some historians have suggested the Narragansetts pur-

Erected and dedicated in 1906, the Great Swamp Fight Monument, in South Kingstown, R.I., marks the site of the Narragansett fort.

abandoned Narragansett Bay. The destruction of Rhode Island was complete. Survivors fled to Aquidneck Island, where they lived in constant fear of Indian attack.

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Despite their successes, time was running out for the Narragansetts and Wampanoags. On April 3 Connecticut troops captured Canonchet encamped by a hill on the fringes of present-day Pawtucket, R.I., and transported him to Stonington, Conn. There colonial authorities offered to spare his life if he would order the Narragansetts to end the war. He refused. Officials then turned Canonchet over to his enemies the Pequots and Mohegans, who shot the sachem, quartered and burned his remains, then sent his head to the capital at Hartford as a trophy.

With the arrival of spring colonial armies struck back, burning Indian villages, destroying crops, and killing warriors and noncombatants alike. By midsummer Algonquian resistance had collapsed. On August 12 a company of colonial rangers and Indian allies, led by Winslow’s former aide, Capt. Church, killed Metacom near his headquarters at Mount Hope (in present-day Bristol, R.I.).

The Narragansetts never recovered from King Philip’s War. “The Indians had been practically exterminated,” wrote Ellis and Morris. “Their lands had passed to the whites; a few scantily inhabited villages were all that was left of the mighty tribe of the Narragansetts.…Never again did the southern New England tribes menace the people of these colonies.” As another writer put it, the Narragansetts were “scattered to the winds of Heaven.” Several hundred captive Narragansetts were sold into slavery in the English-held Caribbean and later in Spain. While Rhode Island officially prohibited the enslavement of Indians, officials allowed for the bondage of Narragansetts within its boundaries for a number of years. One small enclave of surrendered Narragansetts remained free in southern Rhode Island, while other individuals settled

Tactical Takeaways

among the English, often as apprentices. Still other Narragansett survivors drifted west to join tribes in upstate New York. Some evenBetrayal can help. tually migrated west to Brothertown, Wis. Individual settlers and Rhode Island offi- Turncoat Peter Freeman’s revelation of the cials continued to seize Narragansett lands. Great Swamp village By 1880 the tribe had lost most of its remain- location allowed the ing lands, and the state stripped it of tribal colonists to attack status. The Narragansetts persevered, and in before the palisade 1978 Rhode Island returned 1,800 acres of was completed.

Finish your defenses. tribal land. Five years later the Narragansetts Defenses at the Great received federal recognition as a tribe.

Swamp village were Neither the Narragansetts nor the settlers unusually stout, with of Rhode Island wanted war. Most under- a palisade and sturdy stood the conflict would bring only devas- blockhouses. But an unfinished section tation to their people. It took an invasion of wall enabled the of Rhode Island and Narragansett territory attackers to enter the by an uninvited colonial army, followed by fort and wreak havoc. a massacre of Narragansetts at the Great Stay alert, stay alive.

Swamp, to spawn the bitter war both sides King Philip died in an ambush he of all people had avoided. “By the United Colonies [the should have expected.

Narragansetts] were forced to war,” one Rhode Island historian noted, “thereby involving us in such hazards, charges and losses.” Although the colony soon rebounded, the English victory in King Philip’s War forever crushed the power of the Narragansetts. MH Retired Army officer Douglas L. Gifford specializes in American military history. For further reading he recommends King Philip’s War: The History and Legacy of America’s Forgotten Conflict, by Eric B. Schultz and Michael J. Tougias; King Philip’s War: Based on the Archives and Records of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Rhode Island and Connecticut and Contemporary Letters and Accounts, by George W. Ellis and John E. Morris; and A Brief History of the Warr With the Indians in New England, by Increase Mather.

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The Douglas C-47 Skytrain on which Margaret Hastings crashed is one among many wrecked World War II aircraft—like this C-47 in Australia— that litter jungles across the Pacific.

In 1945 Women’s Army Corps Cpl. Margaret Hastings went down aboard a C-47 in a remote New Guinea valley, launching an improbable story of survival

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Born in northeastern Pennsylvania on Sept. 19, 1914, Margaret Julia “Maggie” Hastings grew up in Owego, N.Y., on the banks of the Susquehanna River south of the Finger Lakes. By all accounts she was a feisty tomboy with a rebellious streak that could get an otherwise “nice girl” into trouble. At the time of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States’ subsequent entry into World War II she was 27 years old, unmarried and working as an office secretary. In January 1944 she enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) and spent most of the year in basic training, earning promotion to corporal.

That December Hastings shipped out with fellow WACs to New Guinea. She was 30, stood 5 feet 2 inches, weighed 100 pounds soaking wet and was pretty in a pouty sort of way that attracted suitors like honey draws bees. She was posted to the USAAF base in the port city of Hollandia, a former Japanese stronghold backed by jungle roughly midway along the north coast of the 1,560-mile-long island. She was among some 20 WACs doing secretarial work at the base. Though by that point in the war Hollandia was a backwater, the ranking WAC officer reportedly had been issued a pistol and instructed, in the event the Japanese overran them, to kill her sisters and herself rather than be captured.

The more than 350,000 American women who served in the U.S. military during the war were volunteers, as only men were subject to the draft. Over the course of the conflict women served in the WAC, in the Navy WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), and in the Marine Corps and Coast Guard women’s reserves. WACs, WAVES and their sisters in the other branches served in such noncombat roles as nurses, secretaries, cooks, mail sorters, translators and drivers. They wore uniforms and held regular military ranks. Women

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TOP: UNIVERSAL HISTORY ARCHIVE (GETTY IMAGES); FRANK FILAN (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

T

hrough most of World War II no one outside Margaret Hastings’ family and small circle of fellow soldiers knew her name, let alone the details of her life or service in uniform.

All that changed dramatically after May 13, 1945, when a sightseeing flight aboard a U.S. Army Air Forces C-47 transport went horribly wrong, catapulting the diminutive corporal into stateside headlines amid a fight for survival in the jungles of New Guinea.

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Pennsylvania-born Hastings was working as a secretary in upstate New York when she enlisted in the Women’s Army Corps in January 1944.

who entered the nation’s military services had to fight prejudice and the soft bigotry of Victorian ideals.

When the WAC bill was being debated in Congress, one representative opposed to putting women in harm’s way lamented, “What has become of the manhood of America?” Another argument against allowing women to serve was a lingering aversion to women wearing male clothing. Not too many years had passed since a woman could be arrested for such an affront to public decency. Women joining men at the front also had to fight scurrilous rumors they were sexually promiscuous, having enlisted only as a “geisha corps” to boost male morale.

Exhibit A in the case for women in uniform was U.S. Army Nurse Corps Capt. Maude C. Davidson, chief nurse of the Philippine Department at the outset of the war, who remained with her fellow caregivers and patients amid the Japanese invasion, even in the face of imminent capture. When Corregidor fell on May 6, 1942, the nurses were taken prisoner and spent the next three years in captivity. Nearly a half century after the war Davidson was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for her leadership. Such women were why Gen. of the Army Douglas MacArthur called WACs “my best soldiers,” whom he insisted worked harder and complained less than men. MacArthur had plenty of opportunities to see women in action, as more than 5,000 of them served in the South Pacific. Only Margaret Hastings made headlines.

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On Sunday, May 13, 1945, Col. Peter J. Prossen— maintenance chief of the USAAF’s Far East Air Service Command, headquartered in Hollandia— arranged for a group of personnel to take a Douglas C-47 Skytrain on a sightseeing flight southward over the island’s interior. Their turnaround point that Mother’s Day was a verdant vale (the present-day Baliem Valley) high in the Oranje Mountains (presentday Jayawijaya Mountains), which form the backbone of central New Guinea. A pilot on a reconnaissance flight in May 1944 had stumbled across the dale and dubbed it “Hidden Valley.” Surrounded by tall peaks, it is more than 30 miles long and 10 miles wide with a river meandering from end to end. Though it lay within 150 miles of Hollandia, no path into or out of the valley was visible from the air. But there were ample signs of human activity, as the valley was home to tens of thousands of Dani, spear-wielding hunter-gatherers living a Stone Age existence. Explorers had made first contact with the Dani seven years earlier. Nevertheless, rumors persisted they were headhunters who practiced cannibalism and human sacrifice. The beauty and isolation of the valley fascinated every American who came to Hollandia, so much so that Army Air Forces pilots provided regular sightseeing

Top: The USAAF’s C-47 Skytrain and its Navy variant, the R4D, were the backbone of air transport operations in the Pacific Theater. Above: But as Hastings and fellow survivors Kenneth Decker, left, and John McCollom learned, even the rugged “Gooney Bird” wasn’t indestructible.

tours. A couple of reporters who took one of those tours dubbed the valley “Shangri-la,” and the name stuck.

On the afternoon of May 13 two dozen Army personnel—including five crewmen and nine WACs—boarded the C-47. Nicknamed Gremlin Special and piloted by Prossen himself, the Skytrain took off in clear weather for what was officially termed “navigational training.” The aircraft was scheduled to return in time for Hastings to keep a date—a moonlight swim with Staff Sgt. Walter L. “Wally” Fleming of Lanse, Penn. They never got that swim.

By the time the C-47 reached the valley, clouds had closed in. Unable to determine his exact position, Prossen circled for a few minutes and then opted to descend. Given

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After hiking down from the crash site to the base camp prepared by paratroopers from the Army’s 1st Filipino Regiment, Hastings and fellow survivors spent the time awaiting rescue interacting with the Dani—activities captured by Canadian filmmaker Alexander Cann.

pal news services of the era, the Associated Press and the International News Service, respectively dispatched reporters Ralph Morton and Walter Simmons to the scene. They immediately latched onto the “Shangri-la” angle, and newspapers back in the States ran with it. Americans were familiar with the eponymous mythical hidden valley of James Hilton’s 1933 novel Lost Horizon and the 1937 Frank Capra film of the same name. This Shangri-la, however, was no utopian paradise in the Himalayas but an isolated valley amid inaccessible jungle, as remote from civilization as Mars. That left a blank slate for newspapermen to create their own mythology, equal parts Lost Horizon, Robinson Crusoe and Tarzan of the Apes.

FROM TOP: NATIONAL ARCHIVES (2); BETTMANN (GETTY IMAGES)

When word of the crash leaked out, the princi-

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FROM TOP: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; MAP BY BRIAN WALKER; UNIVERSAL LIVE AUCTIONS

the weather and the surrounding terrain, it was a poor decision. Within moments of beginning the descent Gremlin Special slammed into the side of a mountain overlooking the valley floor. Nineteen of those aboard—including Prossen and his copilot, Maj. George H. Nicholson—died instantly. Despite burns and cuts on her legs Hastings was able to walk away from the wreckage, as were Lt. John S. McCollom and Staff Sgt. Kenneth W. Decker.

McCollom had minor cuts and bruises, while Decker had an ugly head wound, a broken right arm and severe burns. From the wreckage the trio pulled two critically wounded WACs, Staff Sgt. Laura E. Besley and Pfc. Eleanor P. Hanna.

Both died soon afterward from their injuries.

On his flight plan Prossen had listed his destination as Shangri-la but included no other details, which isn’t surprising for a sightseeing flight. Thus, though the Skytrain was reported missing that same day, searchers didn’t spot the wreckage until midday on May 16, nearly 72 hours after the crash.

The Army initially embargoed news of the accident, which didn’t make it into stateside newspapers for nearly a month. Even then early reports were sketchy and laden with errors. For instance, some accounts referred to Decker as “Beckham,” and the extent of the survivors’ injuries was unknown. The B-17 search plane that found the wreckage reported there was no place to land, so follow-up planes dropped medical supplies, field rations, beer and a walkie-talkie. “We are all right,” said the trio in their first message. “Just keep sending us supplies.”

Meanwhile, the Army worked to organize a rescue.

But first the pilots conducted funeral rites from 11,000 feet above the crash site, the survivors listening in over their walkie-talkie. The circling planes then dropped 20 wooden crosses and one Star of David with which to mark the resting places of the dead.

FROM TOP: NATIONAL ARCHIVES; MAP BY BRIAN WALKER; UNIVERSAL LIVE AUCTIONS

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They spun the story as an inspirational tale of heroism and human survival. Weary of reports of death and destruction on distant battlefields, Americans embraced the new Shangri-la. Dramatic reports from the scene described a valley populated by savage headhunters who, when not making war on each other, raised boars “as big as donkeys.” Reporters played up the human-interest angle, such as the fact that WAC crash victim Sgt. Belle G. Naimer’s fiancé, an USAAF lieutenant, had died in an earlier plane crash in Europe, and that John McCollom’s twin brother, Robert, was among those killed in the C-47 crash. The details didn’t matter as much as the story. Wire reports differed on whether it was cloud cover or a sudden downdraft that precipitated the crash, and whether the mountain was 17,000 or 13,000 feet high. But who was counting when there were supposed headhunters and a damsel in distress? In fact, the Dani were more curious than hostile and ultimately brought the survivors pork and sweet potatoes to supplement their C-rations. The rescue planes later dropped seashells for trade with the natives.

On May 26 two paratrooper medics from the U.S. Army’s 1st Filipino Regiment chuted in near the crash site to care for Hastings and her companions before leading them on a 10-mile trek down the mountain. Meanwhile, another eight paratroopers jumped in to establish a base camp in the valley, while relays of fighter aircraft reportedly circled overhead “to see that the natives behave.” The Army’s press releases focused on the alluring WAC, noting that crews of the rescue planes could hear her “clear, firm voice” over the walkie-talkie, assuring them, “I am fine and enjoying it all.” For its own reasons the Army portrayed the event as a great adventure rather than a senseless tragedy.

The rescue plan Army planners ultimately conceived was to land a Waco CG-4A glider on a landing strip carved out of the jungle, load survivors and paratroopers aboard, then yank the engineless aircraft back into the air.

The latter feat would be accomplished by having a lowflying C-47 fitted with a dangling steel hook snatch the glider’s tow rope, which the rescuers would suspend above the ground by two poles. The transport’s grappling hook was attached to 1,000 feet of steel cable on a winch, which would further reduce shock loading. Until March 1945 the system had only been used to retrieve empty gliders, though a medevac mission conducted that month showed it could be done with a glider carrying human passengers. Getting wind of the operation, Canadian adventurer Alexander Cann parachuted into the valley with a film camera to document the rescue on behalf of the Netherlands Indies Information Service; his 12-minute documentary, Rescue From Shangri-la, is viewable on YouTube.com.

For obvious reasons the Army did not plan to release the news to the public until after the attempt. The challenge of carving out a landing strip suitable for a

The “Shangri-la” to which the C-47 had ventured on a sightseeing trip was home to the isolated Dani people.

MILES

HOLLANDIA

0

150

SHANGRI-LA ORANJE MOUNTAINS

ENLARGED AREA

NEW GUINEA

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glider was left to an American officer on the ground with labor provided by the Filipino paratroopers and friendly Dani. They completed that part of the operation in record time. On June 28 Hastings, McCollum, Decker and the two paratrooper medics took their seats in a CG-4A piloted by Lt. Henry Palmer that had landed on the rough strip just 30 minutes earlier. Moments later a low-flying C-47 of the 374th Troop Carrier Group snatched the glider into the air, then climbed rapidly to 12,000 feet to clear the surrounding peaks. The nerve-wracking trip back to Hollandia took an hour and 20 minutes. A cheering throng was waiting on the airstrip to welcome the three survivors, who had been stranded for 47 days.

One of the most daring rescue missions of World War II was over. Miraculously, no casualties had been incurred.

WACs to War On its 1942 creation the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (as the Women’s Army Corps was initially named) adopted Pallas Athene, or Athena—the Greek goddess of war and wisdom—as its symbol.

WACs wore it, and the traditional “U.S.,” as uniform lapel devices.

In the aftermath of the rescue the media focused most their attention on Hastings, whose story had gripped Americans for weeks. Initial news reports said she looked “extraordinarily fit” after the ordeal. “Her hazel eyes sparkled…[and] her face was tanned,” noted one report, making it sound like Hastings had returned from a beach vacation rather than a month and a half in

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the jungle. “Brushing back her windblown locks,” the dispatch continued, she offered this jaunty quote: “I’m sure glad to be back. Hollandia never looked better.” A little later she appeared at a press conference with “a fresh hairdo, new clothes and bright-red nail polish,” seemingly none the worse for wear. One newspaper heralded Hastings as “the most celebrated young woman of the war.”

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MARGARET HASTINGS COLLECTION, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Top: McCollom, Hastings and Decker (at center from left) and members of the rescue team pose for a group photo in front of the Waco CG-4A glider.

While the CG-4 proved its worth in both the European and Pacific theaters, it was a stop-gap aircraft and declared surplus immediately after the war.

Another turned her into a pinup girl: “She’s blonde. She’s cute. She’s the No. 1 Adventure Girl in World War II.” The Army doctored the details of the crash to make the story less embarrassing. A press release dubbed the fatal joyride an “orientation” flight and emphasized the survivors had tried to nurse others only to watch them tragically die of their wounds. Such snippets were word games at best, flat-out lies at worst. But in the interest of home front morale, the military had no problem treating the truth as malleable. Army spokesmen who before the rescue had vilified the Dani as “headhunters” turned to calling them “very happy people,” though they allegedly lived in “absolute filth.” They were so friendly and apparently conversant with Western greetings that on approaching the survivors their leader had “stuck out his hand to shake.” A rumor circulated the Dani had wanted to make Hastings “queen of the valley.” When one snarky reporter asked her, “Would you like to have remained as queen of the valley?” she reportedly answered no “with a twinkle in her eye.” Finally, an Army spokesman was compelled to assure the American people that “no romantic attachments were formed” in Shangri-la, noting that Hastings wore a school class ring on her engagement finger, and McCollom had a girl back in Dayton, Ohio.

Neither the Army nor the press wanted the uplifting story to end the minute the survivors made it home. After granting them extended furloughs, the Army sent the trio around the country for seven weeks on the war’s last

TOP: FRANK FILAN (ASSOCIATED PRESS); LEFT: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE U.S. AIR FORCE

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Liberty bond tour. Hastings eventually grew tired of repeating her story, later admitting, “I wasn’t as nice as I should have been to a lot of people.” The Army also sprang for an all-expenses-paid trip to New York City, where she was photographed attending Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral while awaiting her “boyfriend,” Staff Sgt. Wally Fleming of moonlight swim fame. The Army also flew him to New York and gave the couple a night out on the town.

It was a romance cooked up entirely by the Army; the couple had never been serious.

In the summer of 1945, as crowds in Allied nations worldwide basked in the afterglow of the victory in Europe and the Battle of Okinawa raged, the feelgood Shangri-la rescue story shared the headlines.

Hastings was America’s sweetheart and the Army’s million-dollar bond baby. In July attention would shift to President Harry S. Truman’s attendance at the Potsdam Conference, in August to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in September to V-J Day. But for a few weeks that June readers nationwide scrambled to find New Guinea on their maps and re-read Hilton’s Lost Horizon as they thrilled to the story of the brave little WAC who’d been marooned in the jungle and brought home safely.

MARGARET HASTINGS COLLECTION, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

TOP: FRANK FILAN (ASSOCIATED PRESS); LEFT: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE U.S. AIR FORCE

After being mustered out of the Army in December 1945, Hastings returned home to Owego. For months afterward strangers stopped her on the street to ask for an autograph, a photograph or both. By July 1946 she was still decompressing, living with her widowed father, when This Week magazine came calling. When the interviewer pressed about her marital plans, Hastings, in a shocking burst of candor, said, “I’m not sure I go for the kind of man who’s supposed to make a good husband.”

Just home from the war, she wanted only to attend Syracuse University on the G.I. Bill and perhaps join a sorority.

When those plans didn’t pan out, Hastings took a job as a hotel secretary in New York City, where she finally met her future husband, insurance salesman Robert C. Atkinson. They wed quietly on June 24, 1949. Three years later Mrs. Atkinson—who remained, if not a celebrity, at least an object of curiosity—was invited onto Ralph Edwards’ new NBC TV show This Is Your Life. In the preshow rehashing of her story a creative screenwriter had natives throwing spears at the C-47 as it came down and the survivors spending 46 days in an “island paradise.” The actual story did not get the in-depth treatment it deserved for decades. In 1997 retired Army Air Forces Col. Edward T. Imparato, a former commander of the 374th Troop Carrier Group, concisely related the operation in his book Rescue From Shangri-la, while Mitchell Zuckoff’s 2011 New York Times best seller Lost in Shangrila fully dispelled the Army propaganda and newspaper myth that had shrouded accounts of the crash and rescue.

During her post-rescue press tours Hastings met, and charmed, many Americans—apparently including Gen. of the Army Dwight Eisenhower.

Hollywood never latched onto the story. The glut of war stories offered up after 1945 likely dampened any enthusiasm, and when the starring heroine herself showed no interest in a B-movie treatment, the limelight shifted to more willing subjects. Perhaps in the era of female empowerment the tale will finally merit big-screen treatment. Behind the scenes the Army didn’t forget the incident that had brought the corporal notoriety. In 1958 a team from the American Graves Registration Service finally recovered the remains of the 21 victims buried at the crash site in 1945. They were reinterred the following summer at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery south of St. Louis. As for the “Queen of Shangri-la,” Margaret (née Hastings) Atkinson raised a son and daughter, later divorced, continued to work as an admin for the Air Force and died at age 64 on Nov. 24, 1978. MH Richard Selcer is a Texas-based author and history professor who has published 13 books and taught for more than 40 years. He gleaned much of Hastings’ story from period newspapers. For further reading Selcer recommends Lost in Shangri-la: A True Story of Survival, Adventure and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II, by Mitchell Zuckoff, and Rescue From Shangri-la, by Col. Edward T. Imparato.

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A MOUNTAIN OF TROUBLE At Monte Bernorio in northern Spain epic battles fought 2,000 years apart helped shape that nation’s history

By David Malakoff

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Though separated by two millennia, Caesar Augustus and Francisco Franco each encountered the same tactical problem—how to take Monte Bernorio.

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Worn by those who besieged Monte Bernorio in 26 bc, a Roman legionary’s helmet (or galea in Latin) protected the head, cheeks and neck.

the fortified settlement—known as an oppidum in Latin —atop Monte Bernorio had existed for generations and was a significant cultural, political and economic center.

That made the oppidum a key target for invading Roman legions pushing up from southern Iberia. “They couldn’t ignore it,” Brown says. “They needed to eliminate it.”

The Romans realized that subduing the Cantabri and neighboring Astures would be a formidable task. Mercenaries from each tribe had fought both with and against Roman forces in previous conflicts and had a reputation as cunning warriors. Since the 2nd century bc Rome had periodically tried—and failed—to dominate the region.

Anticipating fierce resistance, Augustus assembled an army

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TOP: IMBEAC (3); BELOW: AGEFOTOSTOCK (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

A topographic quirk made Monte Bernorio a likely battleground. Amid the southern foothills of the arid Cantabrian Mountains, the 3,839-foot peak stands astride the intersection of two natural transportation routes.

One leads east, connecting inland Spain to the Mediterranean Sea. The other threads north through the mountains to the Bay of Biscay on the Atlantic Ocean.

People took up temporary residence at the crossroads as early as 5,000 years ago, archaeologists have determined, establishing permanent settlements in the late Bronze Age, some 3,000 years ago.

By 26 bc, when Augustus launched his campaign to subdue the last independent peoples of northern Iberia,

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F

rom a distance Monte Bernorio, a flat-topped mountain carpeted with grass in northern Spain, has a tranquil and inviting look. Don’t be deceived, warn scholars. Recent research, including archaeological digs that have unearthed a trove of military artifacts, reveals the strategic role the peak played in two fierce battles waged nearly 2,000 years apart.

Some 85 years ago, amid the Spanish Civil War, Republican forces aligned with the government in Madrid fought Nationalist rebels led by Generalissimo Francisco Franco for control of the summit, which overlooks key travel corridors. The battle lines were uncomfortably close in 1936 and ’37.

“If you raised a shovel above the edge of the trench,” one combatant recalled, “[snipers] riddled it with bullets.”

For shelter the 20th century defenders relied on Iron Age fortifications that two millennia prior had witnessed another battle. In 26 bc a Roman army commanded by Emperor Caesar Augustus—aka Octavian, the adopted son of his maternal great-uncle Julius Caesar—stormed a massive fortress erected atop the mountain by the tribal Cantabri people of the Iberian Peninsula (present-day Spain). The assault was critical to the emperor’s plan to conquer northern Iberia, a goal that had eluded Rome for two centuries. In 2018 a team led by archaeologists Jesús F. Torres-Martínez of the Complutense University of Madrid and Manuel Fernández-Götz of the University of Edinburgh deemed Monte Bernorio “one of the most impressive defensive works in the whole of Iron Age Europe.”

Over the past two decades research has revealed the epic scale and ferocity of these dispaMONTE rate battles atop Monte Bernorio. Archaeologists have documented an extensive network BERNORIO of Iron Age ramparts, ditches and limestone walls up to a dozen feet thick that enclosed S PA I N a settlement of some 70 acres—making it one of the region’s most substantial Cantabrian fortifications. They’ve also mapped Spanish Civil War trenches, bunkers and observation posts, some comprising the very stone blocks hewn by the Cantabri. On the plain below they’ve demarcated one of the largest Roman army camps ever documented in Europe, believed to have held a force of some 15,000 legionaries. Thousands of recovered artifacts speak to the weapons and tactics used during each battle, including Iron Age arrowheads and 20th century rifle bullets and grenade fragments. Among the bleak relics was a helmet pierced by a bullet during the Spanish Civil War. “Monte Bernorio is a remarkable site,” says archaeologist Craig J. Brown of the University of Edinburgh.

“You have evidence of one battle superimposed on top of another.”

TOP: IMBEAC (3); BELOW: AGEFOTOSTOCK (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

PREVIOUS SPREAD, LEFT: GLYPTOTHEK, MUNICH; RIGHT: MINISTERIO DE DEFENSA DE ESPAÑA; THIS PAGE, TOP: ALEX’S PICTURES (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); MAP BY BRIAN WALKER

Monte Bernorio (top and above) dominates the surrounding terrain.

Right: In 1936 Nationalist defenders repurposed the Iron Age ruins, dubbing this exposed bunker the “parapet of death.” Below: What remains of a gladius, the short sword carried by Roman legionaries.

of eight legions and associated auxiliaries totaling some 50,000 men. He split the force into three columns tasked with dividing and conquering Rome’s tribal enemies.

Among the key early battles was the assault of a mountaintop fortress named “Bergida” in surviving Roman accounts of the campaign. Many historians and archaeologists believe Monte Bernorio is Bergida. Regardless of what the Romans called the oppidum, there is little doubt it posed a daunting military challenge. Making effective use of terraced cliffs on the mountainside, the Cantabri

had built concentric rings of defenses around a settlement that at its peak may have housed more than 1,000 inhabitants. Archaeologists have identified an imposing, limestone-faced wall some 15 feet high, 10 to 12 feet thick and more than a mile long that encircled a town center crowded with structures. At least three gates, one with a tower, controlled access. Outside the wall a V-shaped ditch some 12 to 15 feet wide and 6 feet deep, as well as multiple rings of earthen ramparts likely studded with sharp wooden stakes, expanded the fortified area to some

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Scutum

(A) of approach/withdrawal. KOCOA helps archaeologists “see the battlefield the way an ancient army saw it,” says Brown, and thus identify promising research sites.

In a 2017 paper published in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology Brown noted that at Monte Bernorio the KOCOA analysis and unearthed artifacts indicate the Romans eschewed a lengthy siege in favor of a rapid direct assault up the southern flank. “The Romans likely marched across the intervening plain to within a kilometer or so of the outer earthworks, where they were met by a Cantabrian army of unknown size,” Brown wrote. “The Cantabrians were probably forced to meet the Romans outside their main defensive fortification,” he added, as they needed to protect the oppidum’s only source of water—springs flowing from the mountain.

By all appearances it was a lopsided fight. The tribal Cantabri practiced hit-and-run warfare in relatively small units and thus armed themselves with daggers, swords and javelins, effective weapons for close-quarters combat.

A javelin, for example, had a range of about 100 feet. In contrast the Roman army “was a very large and very disciplined war machine,” says Fernández-Götz, “probably the best…in the ancient world.”

The Romans boasted weaponry with far greater reach, including bows that could shoot arrows 300 feet or more, and light artillery and catapults that could rain sharp metal darts or rounded stones on targets at least 500 feet away. “Some of these machines produced an incredible amount of power,” Brown notes, firing projectiles with such force that 2,000 years later archaeologists found Roman darts firmly embedded in fortress walls. While the Romans likely had a large stockpile of weapons, the Cantabri would have had a limited armory. “Remember,

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225 acres. “Building this very complex set of defenses would have been an immense collective effort, involving a lot of people,” Fernández-Götz says.

Cantabri lookouts atop the mountain would have readily spotted Augustus’ legions as they approached—not that they were trying to hide. The Romans made camp in plain sight on a low plateau within 2 miles of the oppidum’s southern gate, according to discoveries made in the early 2000s by researchers from Spain’s Royal Academy of History. At that campsite, dubbed “El Castillejo,” researchers have found many telling artifacts—including period Roman coins, distinctive triplebladed arrowheads, fragments of javelins One of several types of shields employed and tent poles, and nails used to make

by Roman soldiers, sandals—as well as the remains of exthe oblong and slightly tensive earthen and stone fortifications. convex scutum was El Castillejo encompassed more than 100 made of plywood covacres and likely housed “a large force, perered in hard leather.

Light enough to carry haps 15,000 men,” says Brown. Roman with one hand, it proaccounts suggest Augustus personally tected its carrier’s body commanded the column. from knees to throat.

To better understand how the fight unfolded, Brown spent several weeks in 2016 at El Castillejo and the oppidum, analyzing the terrain using a process developed by the U.S. military. The method, known by the acronym KOCOA, is designed to help field commanders evaluate a battleground. It prompts them to identify key (the K) terrain, observation (O) and fields of fire, cover (C) and concealment, obstacles (O) and avenues

TOP: PETER CONNOLLY (AKG-IMAGES); LEFT: WHPICS (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Before attacking Monte Bernorio, the Romans erected a sprawling siege camp to serve as a base of operations. Opposite: An attack by well-armed, highly disciplined Roman troops was difficult for any opponent to repulse.

TOP: © GIUSEPPE RAVA, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2021 (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES); LEFT: CHIARAMONTI MUSEUM, VATICAN MUSEUMS; RIGHT: BETTMANN (GETTY IMAGES)

TOP: PETER CONNOLLY (AKG-IMAGES); LEFT: WHPICS (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

you are living in an Iron Age society where metals are at a premium,” Brown explains. “So a spear is a major investment, and if you throw it, you basically lose it.

They couldn’t afford to lose many.”

The mismatch ultimately forced the Cantabri to retreat toward the summit. Just inside and beyond the main wall archaeologists have unearthed hundreds of rounded river stones, suggesting the defenders sought to resolve their ammunition shortage by dropping or hurling cobbles at Roman soldiers trying to climb the walls and penetrate the gates. In the end it was all for naught. Inside the walls researchers have documented the charred remains of buildings and an ample number of Roman arrowheads and other artifacts, indicating the attackers ultimately breached the walls, overwhelmed the defenders and burned the settlement to the ground.

The Roman victory came in a matter of days, Brown believes, their shock-and-awe tactics likely motivated by a desire to save the cost and time necessary to mount an extended siege. “This army was made up of professional soldiers, not militia call-ups,” he explains. “These guys are getting paid. So this is a pretty expensive endeavor, and there’s probably an incentive to get things done.”

The Romans extended little mercy to the Cantabri of Monte Bernorio and other recalcitrant Iberian tribes.

“Along with the wholesale destruction and mass enslavement of indigenous settlements, the conquest witnessed some particularly gruesome events—such as chopping off the hands of defeated Cantabrian and Asturian fighters,” wrote Torres-Martínez and Fernández-Götz. “Roman sources record that many Cantabri chose to commit suicide rather than surrender.” The few survivors fled north to other hillforts.

During his 41-year reign Augustus recorded military victories across Europe, the Balkans, North Africa and the Middle East. In his 39 years as caudillo Franco lost virtually all of Spain’s colonial possessions.

It took the Romans until ad 19 to complete the military conquest of northern Iberia. However, the rebellion simmered for decades afterward, requiring the emperor to station two legions in the region to maintain control.

At Monte Bernorio the Romans built a small fortress atop the charred remains of the oppidum and stationed a garrison there to keep watch over the well-traveled roads.

Over time the occupiers were absorbed into local communities, historians note, raising families and helping found towns in nearby valleys. Succeeding generations lived to see the decline and fall of the Roman empire, and thousands of years later their descendants witnessed

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In the mid-1930s Spain was a nation in crisis, battered by the Great Depression, labor unrest, class struggles, and chronic political and religious conflict. Anarchy ruled the city streets. Events reached the boiling point in July 1936 when a group of Spanish military officers and men declared a coup against the government, plunging the country into a protracted civil war.

In the initial stages of the conflict Monte Bernorio remained relatively quiet, historian and writer Wilfredo Román Ibáñez noted. “Despite its obvious strategic value, [it] does not appear to have attracted the attention of either side,” Torres-Martínez, Fernández-Götz and colleagues echoed in a 2021 paper published in the International Journal of Historical Archaeology.

All that changed on October 10 when Republican forces launched an offensive and occupied the summit.

The force assigned to its defense, the Malumbres Brigade, was poorly trained and had no combat experience. When

Astra Model 902 In 1927 the Spanish arms producer Astra began manufacturing licensed versions of the German Mauser C96 semiautomatic pistol. The 902 was a machine pistol variant widely used by both sides in the Spanish Civil War.

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LEFT: SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG PHOTO (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); RIGHT: BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA

the rise of a new conflict that once again put Monte Bernorio in the crosshairs of a violent struggle.

Nationalist troops launched a midnight counterattack just six days later—following roughly the same path used by Augustus’ conquering Roman army millennia earlier—they were able to retake the summit by morning.

Nationalist commanders moved quickly to fortify their position, recognizing Monte Bernorio’s value as an observation and fire-direction post for nearby artillery batteries, including one at the old Roman camp of El Castillejo.

Troops dug trenches, piled up earthworks and recruited residents from surrounding villages to help build a road and string a telephone line to the summit. Archaeologists have found that soldiers pried blocks from the Iron Age walls, recycling them for bunkers, machine gun nests and other structures, and used the surviving limestone defenses for cover. They even repurposed the old Roman fortress, using part of it to store munitions.

It was dangerous work for the up to 300 Nationalist soldiers stationed on the summit. “The Republicans had not resigned themselves to losing Monte Bernorio,” wrote Torres-Martínez, Fernández-Götz and colleagues, “and continually attacked the Nationalist troops, who put all their efforts into defending the position during the day and digging trenches and shelters at night under the cover of darkness.” Republican rifle fire, grenade attacks, artillery bombardments and periodic air raids inflicted steep Nationalist casualties.

In many places the opposing lines were in direct line of sight and within 700 yards of each other. “During the day we spent the whole time in the trench, silent and without moving,” one former Nationalist soldier told Román Ibáñez. “There was practically no talk or anything. If anybody stuck their head up, they were fired at straight away.”

Snipers posed a particular risk to Nationalist soldiers working at a rectangular bunker on the mountain’s steep eastern flank. The casualty rate there climbed so high that black-humored fighters dubbed it el parapeto de la muerte (“the parapet of death”). One day a Republican artillery shell penetrated the munitions store within the old Roman

LEFT: SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG PHOTO (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); RIGHT: BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA; BOTTOM: ALBUM (ALAMY)

Above: Nationalist troops parade through Salamanca in January 1937.

Some soon found themselves dug in atop Monte Bernorio. Above right: The peak’s defenders lived in sod-covered rock bunkers—this one named “Hotel Navarra”—for protection against Republican shells and bombs.

LEFT: SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG PHOTO (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); RIGHT: BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA

LEFT: SUEDDEUTSCHE ZEITUNG PHOTO (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); RIGHT: BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL DE ESPAÑA; BOTTOM: ALBUM (ALAMY)

Poorly trained Republican troops held the peak for less than a week before withdrawing.

Right: Nationalist reinforcements en route to Monte Bernorio pause for a propaganda photo.

fortress, detonating an estimated 11,000 rifle cartridges and hand grenades and inflicting heavy casualties.

Over the course of digs and surveys conducted on and around the mountain since 2004 archaeologists have found thousands of artifacts that testify to the intensity of the fighting, including shell casings and bullets—mostly 7 x 57 mm ammunition for Spanish-made Mauser-style rifles—as well as shrapnel from grenades, artillery shells and bombs. The presence of 7.92 x 57 mm cartridges, with markings indicating they were made in Germany, hint at the Spanish Civil War’s broader strategic significance.

Nazi Germany and fascist Italy backed Franco’s forces, using the war as a testing ground for weapons and tactics they would use in their World War II campaigns, while the Soviet Union similarly backed Republican forces. Archaeologists have also made more mundane finds that illuminate everyday life atop Monte Bernorio, including empty food tins and jars, razors and a telltale fork that had been bent in half. “This was common practice, to make [the fork] fit into a combat jacket pocket and keep it safe,” wrote Torres-Martínez, Fernández-Götz and colleagues.

Such small comforts likely took on greater meaning as winter took hold and conditions grew harsh on the snow-covered mountain. Soldiers often skipped dinner, one Nationalist fighter recalled. “Because you had to queue up outside the kitchen, in the open, and it was so cold,” he explained, “we preferred to continue sleeping rather than waiting half an hour to eat a plate of beans.”

Life within in the dark, low-ceilinged barracks wasn’t much better. “At first you can’t see anything but a fire on the floor,” another soldier recalled. “You can’t stand up, because the ceiling isn’t high enough. And it leaks like a sieve!” Sleep was a luxury, as beds comprised straw strewn atop the hard ground.

Despite such hardships, the Nationalists repelled repeated Republican efforts to reclaim Monte Bernorio, though Republican forces did briefly occupy part of the northern slope before withdrawing to more secure

Tactical Takeaways

positions. The summit became such a key Nationalist stronghold along what was known as the Civil War’s Northern Front that Franco himself came to inspect the troops. “It’s very Terrain will tell. interesting to imagine these two historical Holding the high figures, Franco and Emperor Augustus, look- ground has been —and will likely ing out from the same mountain,” Fernández- always be—of vital Götz notes. tactical importance.

Though the broader Spanish Civil War Battlefield déjà vu. would not officially end until April 1, 1939, High ground is one the fighting around Monte Bernorio began to among many landscape features that wane in the summer of 1937 after National- influence where ist forces broke through nearby Republican ground battles are lines and consolidated control of the re- fought, as terrain gion. By year’s end the “Second Battle of largely dictates Monte Bernorio” was over, and the pastoral tactical movement.

You can take ground... slopes again grew quiet. After the war farm- ...and may be able ers returned to graze livestock and harvest hold it for decades, hay on its slopes, in the process obscuring or even centuries, but signs of both the ancient Roman assault and the ground you fight for today will someday the modern-day civil war. But there remains belong to someone else. plenty to discover atop the mountain. Few places, researchers say, offer such rich opportunities to study Iron Age life and military tactics or to document not just one, but two great military clashes that helped shape the history of modern Spain. MH David Malakoff is a journalist based in Alexandria, Va. A deputy news editor at Science, he has spent decades covering scientific discoveries, the politics of science and environmental issues. Malakoff has freelanced for numerous publications and served as a senior editor and correspondent on the science desk at National Public Radio. For further reading he recommends Iberia: Protohistory of the Far West of Europe, From Neolithic to Roman Conquest, edited by Martín Almagro Gorbea, and The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939, by Antony Beevor.

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Reviews

Browning held patents for 128 firearms, including the M1917 Browning machine gun, below, and the Colt M1911 pistol.

The Guns of John Moses Browning: The Remarkable Story of the Inventor Whose Firearms Changed the World, by Nathan Gorenstein, Scribner, New York, 2021, $28

It is no exaggeration to say that inventor John Browning’s firearms changed the world.

The holder of 128 firearm patents, he invented such seminal military guns as the Colt M1911 semiautomatic pistol, the Winchester Model 1897 pump-action shotgun, the M1895 gas-operated machine gun, the .50-caliber M2 (“Ma Deuce”) machine gun and the M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle (the BAR of World War II fame). According to author Nathan Gorenstein, manufacturers worldwide have rolled out an estimated 35–40 million firearms patterned after the inventor’s designs. That number, Gorenstein concedes, is almost certainly too low when one considers the countless knockoffs, as well as firearms influenced by Browning’s designs. “As Henry Ford was to automobiles, and Thomas Edison was to electricity,” the

author writes, “Browning was to firearms.”

Yet for most of his life the brilliant inventor remained obscure. Gorenstein aims to remedy that with this first comprehensive biography of Browning.

Browning came from humble, prodigious stock. Born in Ogden, Utah Territory, in 1855, he was the son of Mormon gunsmith Jonathan Browning, who with his three wives fathered 22 children. John (No. 13) tinkered in his father’s workshop from age 6 and by his mid-teens was a skilled metalworker who could repair or copy any gun dropped off at the shop. It was a living, but not enough for the talented and curious young man. As he’d handled virtually every available firearm, Browning’s mind hummed with ideas for improvements and entirely novel actions.

“As soon as I started to make the gun,” he

BROWNING ARCHIVES

A Genius With Guns

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BROWNING ARCHIVES

recalled, “I found my head so full of parts that my greatest difficulty was sorting them out.” Thinking in three dimensions, he eschewed blueprints in favor of trial-anderror cutting, chiseling, drilling and filing in the workshop. In 1879 the 24-year-old filed his first patent, for what would become the Model 1885 single-shot rifle, with Browning’s innovative and robust falling-block action— the debut design of many that remain in use today.

Working in partnership with the Winchester Repeating Arms Co., Browning went on to create the popular Models 1886, 1892, 1894 and 1895 lever-action rifles, as well as the Model 1887 lever-action shotgun and the Model 1897 pumpaction shotgun (the devastating American “trench gun” of World War I that, ironically, drew diplomatic protests and threats of retaliation from Germany). When Browning ultimately sought royalties from Winchester rather than the single-fee payments he’d been receiving, the company declined, prompting him to pitch his designs to other manufacturers, including Remington, Savage, Stevens and Belgium’s Fabrique Nationale (FN). Perhaps the biggest beneficiary was Colt, which produced his M1895 “potato digger” (the world’s first successful gas-operated machine gun) and the M1911, history’s most enduring semiautomatic pistol design, variants of which remains in use by military and law enforcement organizations worldwide. Browning also invented the popular .45 ACP cartridge and a half dozen other cartridges of various calibers.

G o re n s t e i n m a k e s n o bones about the dichotomy of the gun itself. “Firearms indisputably occupy both ends of a moral spectrum starting at good and ending at evil,” he writes. “Pistols, rifles and machine guns can defend a nation and liberate a people, or conquer a land and slaughter its inhabitants.” He is also cognizant of their undeniable influence on world events. “One is hardpressed to cite a major historic event since the mid–19th century that was not started, finished or changed by a gun.” Integral to the development and improvement of that transformative tool was Browning. “His inventions,” the author notes, “changed how hunters hunted, how armies fought, how people protected themselves, how crimes were committed, what laws were passed and how people were killed, the innocent and guilty both.” Gorenstein delves into the details behind Browning’s designs and storied career, which brought him great wealth and, ultimately, the fame he’d largely avoided in his lifetime.

That remarkable life ended in 1926 after the tireless 71year-old inventor suffered a heart attack on the FN factory floor in interwar Belgium.

—David Lauterborn Brutal War: Jungle Fighting in Papua New Guinea, 1942,

by James Jay Carafano, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder, Colo., 2021, $55 Military history is rife with battles, campaigns and wars that have left posterity asking how someone could have

launched them with seemingly so little understanding of the potential consequences.

According to Brutal War author James Jay Carafano, the World War II battleground

Recommended

The Bayonet

of Papua New Guinea may be unique in that the combatants truly had no idea what they were getting into—not the Japanese, who hoped to neutralize Australia as a threat by seizing Port Moresby; not the Australians, few of whom had ever been on the island; not the Americans, who arrived to aid their Aussie allies and spearhead the counterattack; not even the indigenous population, whose “world” seldom extended beyond a handful of neighboring villages.

Less familiar to Americans than the parallel struggle for Guadalcanal in the adjacent Solomon Islands, New Guinea had little beyond its seaports other than muddy, disease-wracked jungle trails like the Kokoda Track. Even if one side or the other could deliver weapons, food and other supplies to their respective coastal bases, they still faced the extreme challenge of transporting those necessities to frontline troops. In consequence, the

By Bill Harriman Dating from the early 17th century, the bayonet over time became more knifelike, a trend that continued through the world wars. Though it had a reputation as a visceral fighting tool, its greatest impact was psychological. Featuring full-color artwork with archival photographs, this absorbing book charts the complementary weapon to every soldier’s firearm from the army of Louis XIV to modern-day forces.

Cromwell Against the Scots

By John D. Grainger Grainger examines the last war between Scotland and England as independent states, detailing exiled King Charles II’s alliance with the Scots Covenanters and Oliver Cromwell’s decisive defeat of the Scots/Royalist army at the 1651 Battle of Worcester.

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Reviews Recommended

Skis in the Art of War

By K.B.E.E. Eimeleus This translation from Russian on ski warfare outlines techniques and movements from Scandinavia and Finland for ski troops in modern war.

The Finnish army developed Eimeleus’ ideas during the 1939–40 Winter War against the Soviet Union, which in turn mobilized its own skiequipped battalions.

Rorke’s Drift and Isandlwana

By Chris Peers This detailed account of the 1879 Battle of Isandlwana and the British army’s stand at Rorke’s Drift analyzes testimonies from both sides to piece together the battles, exposing Victorianera myths and cases of cowardice and incompetence.

The book also details the later careers of key participants.

more one army or the other advanced along the trails, the more stretched its logistic lifeline became. Compelled to make do with whatever they had, soldiers of both sides waged a savage, pointblank ordeal for control of a vast, inhospitable island, the outcome of which was ultimately determined by which side was able to prevail in the logistics war.

Although Carafano is repetitive at points, Brutal War makes effective use of his research into the grim truth behind both sides’ propaganda regarding the horrific battles for such way stations as Kokoda, Giruwa, Buna and Gona. He explains the on-the-spot logic—right or wrong—behind the senior officers’ decisions and spends equal time at the enlisted level, with enough survivors’ accounts from all quarters to immerse the reader in the mud alongside soldiers for whom malaria and starvation were a more prevalent threat than bullets. For World War II scholars already perhaps too familiar with Guadalcanal, Brutal War should provide a new and necessary perspective on a contemporaneous turning point.

—Jon Guttman 1066: A Guide to the Battles and the Campaigns, by Michael Livingston and Kelly DeVries, Pen and Sword Military, Barnsley, U.K., $24.95 American military historians Michael Livingston and Kelly DeVries present a lav-

ishly illustrated and authoritatively written guidebook detailing the battles and campaigns of the most decisive year in British history.

Drawn from a series of Medieval Warfare magazine articles published in 2017, 1066 is supported by a compact bibliographic essay, a thorough index, six maps and 107 illustrations. These last

include on-site photos taken by the authors as well as 32 images from the Bayeux Tapestry (really an embroidery), the 230-foot-long 11th century epic scroll that depicts the Norman conquest, culminating with the Battle of Hastings.

Following an introductory chapter on the history of Anglo-Saxon England, the five chapters relate the course of the 1066 campaign with narrative text and a related tour itinerary.

The tours support the theme of each chapter, starting with Norman sites associated with William the Conqueror (including Falaise and Caen) and continuing to places tied to English traitor (and brother to King Harald Godwinson) Tostig, who led the

Norwegian Vikings to their monumental defeat at Stamford Bridge outside York.

Next follow the Norman landing site on the southern English coast at Pevensey, nearby Hastings battlefield and Battle Abbey, and, finally, William’s victorious march via Dover to London, culminating with his coronation on Christmas Day. Throughout text blocks address such period topics as “consanguinity” and “oath-breaking.”

The authors argue that prior to Hastings, the most famous battle in English history was the largely forgotten triumph of King Athelstan over the Vikings, Scots and Britons at Brunanburh in 937, noting that the latter was fought for the existential survival of England while the former was an act of political vengeance that ended it.

They also examine the overshadowed victory at Stamford Bridge that September, where the combatant armies (numbering some 13,000 each) were twice the size of those at Hastings a month later.

Despite minor errors, such as misdating the reign of Kings Alfred the Great and Ethelred the Unready, this well-designed book is a delightful addition to the body of literature on the Norman conquest.

—William John Shepherd Robert E. Lee: A Biography,

by Allen C. Guelzo, Knopf, New York, 2021, $35 Cancel culture politics aside, Robert E. Lee remains a beloved and respected figure among American military

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historians. Reverential biographies, led by Douglas Southall Freeman’s fourvolume Pulitzer Prize– winning 1934–35 work, have poured out since his death. Princeton historian Allen Guelzo’s latest offering brings matters up to date by emphasizing Lee’s racial views without detracting from his real achievements.

Lee’s father, Virginia planter and Revolutionary War hero Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee III, went bankrupt in his retirement, was severely injured in the Baltimore riots of 1812 and abandoned his family when Robert was a child. Although never poor, concern about money preoccupied the younger Lee, and Guelzo suggests that insecurity drove him seek appointment to West Point, which he was granted in 1825. The pre–Civil War army had no retirement system; officers received a salary until the day they died.

The outbreak of the war found him a well-respected, conscientious, middle-aged colonel with no blemishes on his record, so it was no surprise he was offered the

command of Union forces defending Washington, D.C., in April 1861. No secessionist, but inextricably attached to his role as a member of the Southern aristocracy, he opted instead to command the forces of Virginia, which had just voted to secede. He spent a year constructing defenses and fighting minor actions without distinguishing himself, but matters changed in June 1862 when he assumed command of the army opposing Union forces headed toward Richmond. Routing them in aggressive attacks, he became a Southern icon.

His insecure opponent, Maj. Gen. George McClellan, believed his forces were vastly outnumbered. Historians rarely speculate what would have happened had Lee instead faced a more resolute general— as happened in the Wilderness in 1864, when he again attacked a superior Union force, only this time under Ulysses S. Grant, who fended him off with an outcome that brought glory to neither commander.

Guelzo delivers a mostly admiring account of Lee’s actions over the course of the war. That said, the Confederate commander was a deeply unoriginal thinker who believed battlefield victories would win the war.

When that proved clearly impossible, he nevertheless continued the fight, believing such resistance would discourage his opponents, who, after all, lacked Southern fortitude.

In recent years Confederate generals, Lee perhaps foremost, have suffered bad press. Apologists insist he opposed slavery. In fact, like many educated Southerners (including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison) he believed that owning slaves damaged a gentleman’s character, like drinking too much or having a mistress. That slaves suffered was of little consequence. To him the greater harm was to one’s own reputation. In the wake of the war he opposed Reconstruction and publicly testified that efforts to help freed slaves would prove fruitless. Despite such unedifying warts, Guelzo’s Lee remains in the mainstream.

—Mike Oppenheim

and Cedric Hill work up a mind reading and magic show to entertain their fellow captives. They succeed so well, they can’t dissuade their audience it’s a ruse.

Rumors run through the guards to camp commander Kiazom Bey, who demands Jones and Hill perform for him. Impressed, he enlists the pair in his quest to find gold rumored to have been buried by Armenians before they were expelled from the region. Resolving to exploit his greed and naivete to facilitate their escape, Jones and Hill make “contact” with an Armenian in the spirit world who will only reveal the location of the gold if the pair are on the open sea. Kiazom Bey buys it, and the

The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History, by Margalit Fox, Random House, New York, $28 Had author Margalit Fox presented this story to an editor as fiction, it would have been rejected out of hand.

From the unlikely cast of characters to the improbable deus ex machina that drives the plot, it is unbelievable.

An award-winning linguist and historian who cut her chops writing for the New York Times obit department, Fox has sunk her teeth into a whopper of a World War I tale here. And it’s all true.

Imprisoned in a Turkish POW camp in Anatolia, British officers Harry Jones

trio sets off for the coast— Kiazom Bey to seek his fortune, Jones and Hill their freedom. Not improbably, the odyssey ends in failure, and Jones and Hill are forced to resort to an even zanier Plan B. This is simply the most entertaining military history I have read in years.

—Bob Gordon

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Hallowed Ground Brandywine Battlefield, Pennsylvania

T

he United States of America declared its independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776, and chose Philadelphia as its capital. Fresh from their major victory in New York City, the British looked to crush the fledgling nation in 1777 with a twopronged offensive—Maj. Gen. John Burgoyne would advance from Canada to gain control of the Hudson River valley and isolate New England, while Maj. Gen. Sir William Howe, the British commander in North America, would sail from New York to capture Philadelphia.

Howe’s 260-ship fleet approached the U.S. capital from the Chesapeake Bay, landing at present-day Elkton, Md., about 45 miles southwest of Philadelphia, on August 25.

As the 17,000-man British army moved north, Gen. George Washington and the residents of Philadelphia were confident they could resist the attack. Scouting the British advance were American light infantry, a mix of Continentals and militia. On September 3 they ambushed the Hessian P E N N S Y LV A N I A mercenaries in the British van BRANDYWINE BATTLEFIELD at Cooch’s Bridge, just south of PHILADELPHIA Newark, Del. Calling up reinforcements, the British drove WILMINGTON back the Americans. Days later MD NJ when Howe pushed north toward DE the main road between Baltimore and Philadelphia, Washington redeployed his 14,600-man army along the intervening Brandywine River.

On the morning of September 9 Washington positioned his forces to guard the most direct crossing at Chadd’s Ford, as well as Pyle’s Ford to the south, and Buffington’s Ford and Wistar’s Ford to the north. The American commander believed he had all crossings covered and that the nearest unguarded ford was a dozen miles distant—too far to do the British any good. But Howe had better intelligence about the terrain, and his tactical expertise proved decisive. Two days later, on reaching Kennet Square, Pa., he sent a 7,000-man force of mostly Hessian troops under Lt. Gen. Wilhelm von Knyphausen directly east to demonstrate against the waiting Americans at Chadd’s Ford, while he and Maj. Gen. Charles Cornwallis took their 10,000 British troops on a roundabout march north of Wistar’s Ford to cross the river at fords un-

known to Washington. Not for the last time, September 11 would be a disastrous day in American history.

On that day in 1777 fog screened the British march, and Washington still believed Howe’s entire army was en route to Chadd’s Ford. Meanwhile, Howe and Cornwallis took position north of the Americans. Only when the British appeared on his right flank did Washington realize he’d been outmaneuvered. Though surprised, the Americans rallied on nearby high ground. They fought bravely, but at nightfall they retreated north to Chester, leaving behind most of their fieldpieces. Howe’s exhausted men camped on the field and plundered surrounding farms. The Americans suffered an estimated 300 killed, 600 wounded and 400 captured to British losses of 93 killed, 488 wounded and six missing.

Though defeated, the Americans were not demoralized and dismissed the loss largely to poor intelligence. After the battle the opposing armies maneuvered in search of advantages, but over the next two weeks little military action occurred aside from an abortive September 16 skirmish north of Chester known as the Battle of the Clouds and the horrific ambush of an American detachment under Brig.

Gen. “Mad Anthony” Wayne at nearby Paoli four days later.

Regardless, it was too late to save Philadelphia. Congress fled west, ultimately to York, while military supplies were moved northeast to Reading. Patriots in the countryside did what they could to supply Washington’s army with food, clothing and reinforcements sent by Congress, but on September 26 Howe marched into the capital unopposed. Philadelphia's loss was a severe blow to the American cause, not to mention Washington’s prestige. Fortunately for the Patriots, Burgoyne’s defeat at Saratoga, N.Y., a month later, followed by the Franco-American alliance early the next year, forced the British to evacuate Philadelphia in June 1778. Howe was recalled to Britain, and Cornwallis eventually lost the war at Yorktown, Va., in October 1781.

Brandywine Battlefield Park is owned by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission and operated in partnership with the Brandywine Battlefield Park Associates. Established in 1949, the park encompasses 50 acres, a fraction of the 35,000-acre 1777 battlefield. Thanks to a 2021 National Park Service grant, a land acquisition and preservation plan is in the works. MH

MAP BY BRIAN WALKER; OPPOSITE TOP: BATTLE OF THE BRANDYWINE BY F.C. YOHN, 1898, COURTESY THISTORIC BEVERLY, 2021; BOTTOM: HOLLY HIGGINS, CC BY-SA 2.0

By William John Shepherd

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TOP: BEVERLY HISTORICAL SOCIETY; BOTTOM: HOLLY HIGGINS, CC BY-SA 2.0

Above: American troops under Gen. George Washington, having been outflanked by British troops at Brandywine, seek to hold the line. The present-day park encompasses 50 acres, a fraction of the 35,000-acre 1777 battlefield.

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War Games 3

George Washington 2

1

Win Some, Lose More Most of Continental commander George Washington’s battles ended in defeat. Which are which?

1. Harlem Heights, 1776 2. Trenton, 1776

4

5

6

7

3. Princeton, 1777

6. Germantown, 1777 7. White Plains, 1776 8. Monmouth, 1778 9. Long Island, 1776 10. Yorktown, 1781

____ A. Fails to trap Howe’s army ____ B. Ends in a standoff ____ C. Flees to Manhattan ____ D. British advance through Manhattan

8

9

10

Players at the Outset of World War I Can you match these commanders to their mugs above?

____ E. Washington crosses Delaware, routs Hessians

___ A. Oskar Potiorek (Austro-Hungarian army)

___ F. Aleksandr Samsonov (Russian Second Army)

____ F. Cornwallis’ army trapped ____ G. Surrenders fort to French

___ B. Pavel von Rennenkampf (Russian First Army)

____ H. Won with guns from Ticonderoga

___ C. Mitsuomi Kamio (Allied forces, Tsingtao)

___ G. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck (German East African Schutztruppe)

____ I. Washington kicks British rear guard

___ D. Alexander von Kluck (German First Army)

___ I. Paul von Hindenburg (German Eighth Army)

____ J. Patriots driven from Westchester

___ E. Radomir Putnik (Serbian army)

___ J. Sir John French (British Expeditionary Force)

___ H. Joseph Joffre (French army)

Answers: A10, B3, C4, D9, E8, F6, G5, H2, I1, J7

Answers: A6, B8, C9, D1, E2, F10, G5, H4, I3,J7

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

5. Fort Necessity, 1754

LEFT: METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART; 1, 9: STAATSBIBLIOTHEK ZU BERLIN (2); 2, 3: BIBLIOTHEQUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE (2); 4: NEW YORK TIMES (UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO); 5: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; 6: SOTK2011 (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); 7: BRITISH LIBRARY; 8: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; 10: IMAGNO (GETTY IMAGES)

4. Boston, 1776

Over the Meuse-Argonne While ground forces slugged it out on Sept. 26, 1918, their respective air services also dogged each other.

1. Who was the Jagdstaffel 13 commander who shot down four American aircraft that first day of the offensive?

A. Herbert Mahn B. Hermann Becker C. Max Näther D. Franz Büchner 2. Which French ace was credited with his second sextuple victory?

A. René Fonck B. Georges Lienhart C. Armand Berthelot D. Pierre Gaudermen

A majestic forbidding land, a very dark desert, magnificent desolation, or a really groovy place?

For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ MAGAZINES/QUIZ

ANSWER: MAGNIFICENT DESOLATION. BUZZ ALDRIN, THE SECOND MAN TO WALK THE LUNAR SURFACE, SPOKE THESE WORDS SHORTLY AFTER NEAL ARMSTRONG SAID “THAT’S ONE SMALL STEP FOR A MAN, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND.”

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

3. Which American bomber unit lost five out of seven Liberty DH-4s?

A. 11th Aero Squadron B. 20th Aero Squadron C. 96th Aero Squadron D. 166th Aero Squadron 4. Which German ace scored his 61st and 62nd victories, only to be put out of the war days later with a thigh wound?

A. Erich Löwenhardt B. Hermann Göring C. Hermann Becker D. Ernst Udet Answers: 1D, 2A, 3B, 4D,

LEFT: METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART; 1, 9: STAATSBIBLIOTHEK ZU BERLIN (2); 2, 3: BIBLIOTHEQUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE (2); 4: NEW YORK TIMES (UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO); 5: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; 6: SOTK2011 (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); 7: BRITISH LIBRARY; 8: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; 10: IMAGNO (GETTY IMAGES)

Liberty DH-4 gunner

HOW DID BUZZ ALDRIN FIRST DESCRIBE THE LUNAR LANDSCAPE?

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Drool, Britannia!

Suitably attired in a steel helmet, a bulldog stands guard outside a row of London townhouses 10 days after Britain’s Sept. 3, 1939, declaration of war against Nazi Germany.

FOX PHOTOS (GETTY IMAGES)

Captured!

80 MILITARY HISTORY MARCH 2022

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Upper Class Just Got Lower Priced

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