Military History January 2022

Nazi or Not? Lost Fortress U.S. vs. Canada Tsushima, 1905 Swiss Soldiers Midway Martyr HISTORYNET.com

GI JOURNALISTS CHRONICLED EVERY ASPECT OF WORLD WAR II— FROM THE FRONT

JAUNUARY 2022

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JANUARY 2022

Letters 6 News 8

Features

24

32

American GI reporters, photographers and artists went in harm’s way to cover every theater of World War II.

By Peter Zablocki

In 1905 a Japanese admiral who saw himself as the reincarnation of Horatio Nelson decimated a Russian fleet at Tsushima Strait.

By Alan George

Generation Yank

Departments

Japan’s Trafalgar

14

Interview Jeanette Varberg A New Look at Vikings

18

Valor Vindicator at Midway

2 MILITARY HISTORY JANUARY 2022

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Reviews 72 War Games 78 Captured! 80

42

Nazi Vulture or Prussian Eagle?

Alexander von Falkenhausen navigated the complicated politics of wartime Germany.

By John Koster

50

58

Amid the War of 1812 a bold American general raided deep into British Canada.

By Bob Gordon

Willing and able to defend itself against all enemies, Switzerland has thus spent centuries in relative peace.

By Jon Guttman

McArthur’s Gamble

Neutral Unless...

64

The Lost Citadel Armenian residents of the Transcaucasian stronghold of Kars endured centuries of strife—until a final betrayal.

By Richard F. Selcer

20

What We Learned From...

The 1419–34 Hussite Wars

22

Hardware HIJMS Mikasa

On the cover: From 1942 through ’45 frontline American soldiers filed stories, took photos and rendered art for Yank, the Army Weekly, covering all aspects of World War II for a select readership—themselves.

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Hallowed Ground Cowpens National Battlefield 3

10/20/21 9:28 AM

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

Join the discussion at militaryhistory.com

Twilight of the Galleys off Lepanto On Oct. 7, 1571, at the dawn of the Age of Sail, Christian and Muslim fleets met off the coast of Greece and rowed into battle one last time

By Michael D. Hull IN THE ARCHIV E S :

The Last Imperial German Hermann Ehrhardt fought for his country in WWI and later fought to save it from communists and Nazis

By John Koster

Interview Paul Morando welcomes visitors to explore American military history at the National Museum of the United States Army Tools Dating from the 3rd millennium bc, the oceangoing war galley ruled the seas of the ancient world well into the 16th century

JANUARY 2022 VOL. 38, NO. 5

STEPHEN HARDING EDITOR DAVID LAUTERBORN MANAGING EDITOR ZITA BALLINGER FLETCHER SENIOR EDITOR JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR DAVID T. ZABECKI CHIEF MILITARY HISTORIAN STEPHEN KAMIFUJI CREATIVE DIRECTOR 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 ROB WILKINS Director of Partnership Marketing TOM GRIFFITHS Corporate Development GRAYDON SHEINBERG Corporate Development SHAWN BYERS VP Audience Development JAMIE ELLIOTT Production Director ADVERTISING MORTON GREENBERG SVP Advertising Sales mgreenberg@mco.com RICK GOWER Regional Sales Manager rick@rickgower.com TERRY JENKINS Regional Sales Manager tjenkins@historynet.com DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING MEDIA PEOPLE / NANCY FORMAN nforman@mediapeople.com © 2022 HISTORYNET, LLC

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Letters

I was surprised to see history being revised in the September 2021 issue [“A Turn for the Worse,” by Douglas L. Gifford] when I saw, not once but twice, that the “shot heard round the world” had been moved from Lexington Green to the North Bridge at Concord, Mass. Hopefully there are enough people in Massachusetts, especially the Lexington area, who fired off memos protesting this infringement on their heritage. The reason the minuteman statue is at Lexington Green is because the first shots were fired there, the first casualties occurred there, and it was clear New Englanders meant to fight.

Mark Prose Oracle, Ariz.

Editor responds: The minutemen at Lexington Green did fire first on the British on April 19, 1775, eight Ameri-

cans paying for that resistance with their lives. But the first organized battle followed at Concord’s North Bridge, and the phrase “shot heard round the world” derives from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn.” Here’s the first stanza: “By the rude bridge that arched the flood / Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled / Here once the embattled farmers stood / And fired the shot heard round the world.” Emerson wrote the poem for the dedication of a monument to the Battle of Concord, the location of his “rude bridge.”

Afghanistan I always read my history magazines in the order I receive them. I opened up the September 2021 issue on Aug. 17, 2021, not more than 48 hours after Kabul fell to the Taliban. The timeliness of this issue was no doubt planned by your editors, but

Brothers-in-Arms Paul X. Rutz’s article [“Honor Before Glory,” September 2021] on the tragic death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan brings up an interesting dilemma—brothers serving together in combat zones.

Back in November 1942 the five Sullivan brothers, all serving aboard USS Juneau, died together when the light cruiser was sunk. Since then the military has frowned on brothers serving together.

Amid the Vietnam War I returned to the States from a tour in South Korea. Because Korea is considered a hardship tour, when my artillery unit at Fort Bliss, Texas, was scheduled to deploy to South Vietnam, I didn’t have to go.

However, wanting to stay with my unit, I signed waivers at my new station and

went with them. My older brother, Joe (19 years my senior), also volunteered to go to Vietnam, and I got to see him there. Joe was a Korean War veteran, wounded in that war while serving as a combat engineer. I had not seen him for a few years, so it was a nice surprise to see him in Vietnam.

In regard to Pat Tillman, unfortunately in wartime friendly fire does occur, more often than we would like. All wartime deaths are tragic, of course, but there is something very unsettling about friendly fire. I am sad to say my artillery unit accidently hit our own troops in a couple of instances. Some faulted unreliable maps or miscommunication from our fire-direction section to our 8-inch guns. As several articles in Military History have pointed out, when these horrible incidents happen, they often involve green troops. When my artillery unit tried to get jungle training, we went out on patrols we were not familiar with, and on one such patrol a young officer was killed by his own men who mistook him for a Viet Cong. After that our patrols ceased. We left it to the infantry units who were more qualified.

Tom R. Kovach Nevis, Minn.

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

DON TROIANI (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

Shot Heard Round the World

the reality of reading the issue while watching thousands of Afghans try to flee their country really hit home.

I have been to Afghanistan on a few occasions throughout Operation Enduring Freedom. I am sickened by the way our troop withdrawal turned out. None of us expected the Afghan National Army or Afghan National Police to put up much of a fight, but the way the citizens were abandoned and the resurgent Taliban handed billions of dollars in first-rate military equipment is truly sad.

Too many American, NATO and Afghan military and police lives were given for it to end this way.

Dave Stanley Bethesda, Md.

6 MILITARY HISTORY JANUARY 2022

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News

A SOLDIER’S SOLDIER: COLIN POWELL, 84 Powell was born to Jamaican immigrant parents in New York City on April 5, 1937. In 1962 his first tour as a military adviser in Vietnam was cut short when the young captain stepped on a contaminated punji stake placed by the Viet Cong. He returned to Vietnam in 1968 as an Army Ranger and served as chief of staff of operations of the 23rd (Americal) Infantry Division. An Army officer for 35 years, he oversaw the 1989–90 invasion of Panama (Operation Just Cause) and the 1991 Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm), as well as 26 other major military operations, while chairing the Joint Chiefs. Among his military peers Powell will perhaps be best remembered as the first black national security adviser, during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and first black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

‘General Powell is an American hero, an American example and a great American story’ —President George H.W. Bush

NATIONAL WWI MUSEUM

The helicopter crash-landed with a heavy thud. A young U.S. Army major was thrown clear of the wreckage with a broken ankle. As flames spread, however, he disregarded his pain and personal safety, hobbled into the debris field and pulled three soldiers to safety. Among them were his division commander, Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gettys, and Col. Jack L. Treadwell, a World War II Medal of Honor recipient.

For his selfless actions that day in Vietnam in November 1968 Colin Powell was presented the Soldier’s Medal, the highest award a U.S. armed forces service member can receive for noncombat heroism. He went on to serve his country in myriad capacities throughout his military and political careers. The retired four-star general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state died at age 84 on Oct. 18, 2021.

8 MILITARY HISTORY JANUARY 2022

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FROM TOP: LANCE CPL. ZACHARY T. BEATTY, U.S. MARINE CORPS; ASSOCIATION OF THE U.S. ARMY; SENIOR AIRMAN CARLIN LESLIE, U.S. AIR FORCE

By Dave Kindy

Nonprofits to Mark U.S. 250th With the 250th anniversary of the United States approaching in 2026, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) and the American Battlefield Trust (ABT) have joined forces. DAR (which promotes historic preservation, education and patriotism) and ABT (which preserves battlefields) will create a digital experience relating the fight for independence and have pledged to work with the National Park Service to preserve an additional 2,500 acres of Revolutionary War battlefields by 2026.

FROM TOP: LANCE CPL. ZACHARY T. BEATTY, U.S. MARINE CORPS; ASSOCIATION OF THE U.S. ARMY; SENIOR AIRMAN CARLIN LESLIE, U.S. AIR FORCE

NATIONAL WWI MUSEUM

‘Wild Bill’ Gets Graphic Novel During World War II U.S. Army Maj. Gen. William Joseph “Wild Bill” Donovan achieved legend

THE MARINE WHO ORDERED THE IWO JIMA FLAG RAISINGS

Dec. 12, 1901

Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic message on his wireless telegraph. Four years later his invention played a crucial role in the naval Battle of Tsushima (P. 32) when Japanese warships used wireless radios to report the position of the Russian fleet.

Dec. 28, 1945

Colonel Dave Severance, 102, the U.S. Marine Corps officer whose company raised two successive American flags atop Mount Suribachi during the 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima, died on Aug. 2, 2021. On Feb. 23, 1945, then Capt. Severance sent men from Company E, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines, up the 554-foot hill to place the first flag. After the secretary of the Navy requested that one as a souvenir, Severance directed men back upslope with a larger flag. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal’s iconic image of the second raising was re-created in bronze for the Marine Corps War Memorial, near Arlington, Va., and today both flags are housed at the National Museum of the Marine Corps, in Triangle, Va. Severance later became a Marine Corps pilot and flew nearly 70 combat missions in Korea.

LAST DOOLITTLE RAIDER PROMOTED TO COLONEL

status as director of the Office of Strategic Services, a wartime intelligence agency and forerunner of the CIA. But it is his exploits in World War I that are the subject of a graphic novel published by the Association of the U.S. Army, available online [ausa.org/Donovan].

WAR RECORD

The U.S. Air Force has honored Richard E. “Dick” Cole—recalled as the last living member of the Doolittle Raiders—with a posthumous promotion to full colonel. Cole, who died at age 103 on April 9, 2019, was a lieutenant when assigned as Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot for the April 18, 1942, raid on Tokyo and other targets on the Japanese island of Honshu. The carrier-based assault by 16 B-25B Mitchell bombers—the first air strike of the war to target Japan—came in retaliation for the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

The closing issue of Yank, the Army Weekly (P. 24) rolls off the presses.

Staffed by U.S. enlisted men, the World War II magazine printed more than 2 million copies each week.

Jan. 14, 1772

Duncan McArthur is born in New York. As a brigadier general of volunteers in the U.S. Army amid the War of 1812 he led troops on a monthlong 1814 raid of Upper Canada (P. 50).

Jan. 19, 1920

The League of Nations recognizes the Republic of Armenia, which chooses the fortress city of Kars (P. 64) as capital of its Vanand province. Turkey and Russia refuse to recognize the republic, however, and partition Armenia in 1921.

Jan. 30, 1930

General Alexander von Falkenhausen (P. 42) retires from the German army.

Recalled to active duty in the Wehrmacht during World War II, he opposed Nazi extremism in Belgium and was sent to a concentration camp for his suspected role in the July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

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News

WORLD WAR I MEMORIAL MARKS ITS CENTENNIAL On Nov. 1, 1921, more than 100,000 people gathered on a hill overlooking Kansas City, Mo., to watch Allied military leaders—including Gen. of the Armies John J. Pershing of the United States, Adm. of the Fleet David Beatty of Britain and Marshal Ferdinand Foch of France— break ground on the Liberty Memorial, a monument inscribed in honor of those who served in the World War in defense of liberty and our country. In a 1919 fundraising drive residents of the Midwestern city had collected an astonishing $2.5 million (more than $40 million in today’s dollars) toward construction of the 265-foot limestone tower and adjacent exhibit halls.

Opened in 1926, the memorial is the centerpiece of the present-day National World War I Museum and Memorial, one of the world’s foremost institutions dedicated to the 1914–18 global conflict. In 2004 Congress declared it the nation’s official World War I museum, and construction began on an 80,000-square-foot exhibit space and the Edward Jones Research Center, beneath the tower. Today the museum houses state-of-the-art displays and a growing collection of more than 350,000 war-related items.

Chosen to present flags to dignitaries at the 1921 groundbreaking was a Missouri-born U.S. Army veteran who’d served as an artillery captain on the Western Front and later helped raise funds for the memorial. The native son returned to the museum for various observances, including the 40th anniversary of the groundbreaking in 1961. On that occasion he appeared as a former president of the United States—Harry S. Truman.

‘[The Liberty Memorial] has not been raised to commemorate war and victory, but rather the results of war and victory, which are embodied in peace and liberty’ —President Calvin Coolidge at the dedication of the Liberty Memorial on Nov. 11, 1926

What did combat look like during the American Revolutionary War? Don Troiani has made a career of rendering realistic paintings depicting that conflict, as well as the War of 1812 and the American Civil War. His work will be on display at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia through Sept. 5, 2022. Included are scenes from Bunker Hill, Gen. George Washington’s raid on Trenton and the Franco-American victory at Yorktown.

Buffalo Soldiers at West Point The U.S. Military Academy at West Point has erected a memorial to the famed buffalo soldiers—black troops of the 9th and 10th Cavalry regiments and 24th and 25th Infantry regiments who fought in the Indian wars, the Spanish-American War

and other conflicts. The larger-than-life bronze by sculptor Eddie Dixon depicts a soldier astride a stallion—a tribute to the buffalo soldiers who taught horsemanship to cadets there in the early 20th century.

TOP: CHRISTOPHER MICHEL, CC BY-SA 4.0; BOTTOM: JOHN PELLINO, USMA PAO

Its first block set in 1921, the Liberty Memorial is the centerpiece of the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Mo.

Revolutionary Work by Troiani

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News The new podcast series True War Stories: Mission Report [voyagemedia.fm/show/truewar-stories-missionreport-1] relates the combat experiences of everyday American veterans from World War II through the Vietnam War. Produced

by Voyage Media, the podcast presents inter-

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Nazis Bunkered in Roman Fort

INTEL HALL OF FAME INDUCTS TUBMAN During the Civil War former slave turned abolitionist Harriet Tubman was many things, including an Underground Railroad conductor, cook, field nurse, scout, military planner and intelligence operative. For that latter role Tubman was recently inducted into the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame in the U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. Tubman used her skills, connections and knowledge of the South to go undercover for the Union Army. The intelligence she gathered with her network of spies led to several battlefield successes. Tubman was also the first woman to direct a military assault during the Civil War—a Union Army raid to seize supplies and liberate slaves from plantations along coastal South Carolina’s Combahee River.

MAINE STATUE HONORS DELTA FORCE SNIPER

One of the bestpreserved Roman forts in Britain bears an interesting feature: a Nazi redoubt. During recent excavations at the “Nunnery,” as the compact Roman bastion on the Channel Island of Alderney is known, archaeologists discovered that occupying German troops in World War II had bunkered within its 10-foot-thick walls.

The site dates from ad 350, 60 years shy of the Roman withdrawal from Britain.

As insurgents closed in on a downed U.S. Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter in Mogadishu, Somalia, in 1993, Delta Force sniper Gary Gordon repeatedly requested insertion on the ground to protect the wounded crewmen. The third time he was granted permission. His selfless act cost the master sergeant his life, and he received a posthumous Medal of Honor. Gordon’s hometown of Lincoln, Maine, has erected a statue of him in honor of his sacrifice. On hand for its dedication was Michael Durant, the helicopter pilot Gordon and Sgt. 1st Class Randy Shughart managed to save. Shughart was also killed and received the Medal of Honor. Their heroic actions were recounted in the 1999 book and 2001 film Black Hawk Down.

For his “duty to queen and country” for 15 years actor Daniel Craig has been made a commander in the British Royal Navy—just like James Bond, the MI6 agent he portrays on-screen. Of course, Craig’s rank is honorary, as are those bestowed on other civilian celebrities who have supported the troops. Atop the list is the late actor and comedian Bob Hope, who between 1941 and ’91 headlined 57 USO tours worldwide. In 1997 Congress made him an honorary veteran of the U.S. Armed Forces—all branches.

For her decades of service to the USO actress Martha Raye was made an honorary colonel in the Marines and honorary lieutenant colonel in the Army. Actor Gary Sinise, who played Navy Lt. Dan Taylor in the 1994 film Forrest Gump and has devoted decades to veterans’ causes, was made an honorary chief petty officer in the Navy and an honorary Marine. For bringing positive attention to the armed forces Top Gun actor Tom Cruise was made an honorary naval aviator, Stargate SG-1 star Richard Dean Anderson was made an honorary brigadier general in the Air Force, and cartoon character Bugs Bunny was made an honorary master sergeant in the Marines (for his role in the 1943 animated short Super-Rabbit). Last but not least are the honorary colonels of American Legion Hollywood Post 43, which since 1932 has recognized stars for their support of the U.S. military. Actor Joe Mantegna—who since 2005 has co-hosted with Sinise the National Memorial Day Concert on the Mall in Washington, D.C.—received the recognition in 2016.

FROM TOP: RANDY DUCHAINE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); VOYAGE MEDIA; SPECIAL FORCES CHARITABLE TRUST

HONORARY

Veterans Share True War Stories

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10/18/21 5:20 PM

Interview A New Look at Vikings

By Zita Ballinger Fletcher

How long have you been researching Viking warfare?

Since 2014, when I wrote my first book, Past Battlefields. It described the changing nature of warfare from the Stone Age until the Viking Age. Warfare in the Viking Age was a special part of my research focus.

Jeanette Varberg Jeanette Varberg is one of Denmark’s leading historians with expertise on Viking warfare and Bronze Age history. An archaeologist and scholar, she has written numerous books and articles about Danish history and Viking raids. Varberg’s book Viking, published in Denmark in 2019, recast the history of Viking battles and global expeditions with a focus on interpreting artifacts as well as written sources. A curator at the National Museum of Denmark, she is a driving force behind a new exhibition entitled “The Raid,” which opened in June 2021 and will run for three years. Varberg’s research continues to shed light on Vikings at war.

To chronicle the Vikings’ raiding history must have seemed an impossible task.

It was an impossible task! I missed having a book that was not thematized about the Vikings but rather told me the chronological story of how they became powerful raiders, sailors and conquerors of kingdoms and new lands. Since I focus on prehistoric Europe, I also wanted to give the impression that the history of the Vikings is not without connection to early history. That is why I started my book about the Vikings with the Fall of Rome, the rise of Christianity and the Migration Period.

In other words, I wrote the book I missed about the Vikings. I wrote an overview of their travels—both raids and adventures across the North Atlantic and to all parts of the known and unknown world. I wanted to give

them a solid front seat in the grand history of early medieval Europe.

What are the most common misconceptions people have about the Vikings?

The most common misconception about the Vikings is that they wore helmets with horns! They didn’t.

Another misconception is that all Scandinavians were warriors. First and foremost, the Vikings were formidable sailors, able to cross the open sea in well-built, streamlined ships. Next, they were fierce and skilled warriors. Last but not least, they were hardworking farmers always on the lookout for new lands to put under their plows.

Have you learned anything surprising about Viking military customs?

I was surprised when I realized Scandinavian warriors fought like pirates who went for soft targets: administrative centers in the cities; granaries; rich, remote and unprotected monasteries; and men and women from distinguished families who could be held for ransom.

Enriching themselves on gold, silver and slaves, the Vikings also had no reservations about hiring themselves out as mercenaries and were not shy about changing sides if the other paid better.

In the eyes of the Christian commanders who opposed them, they were disloyal heathens, and they were certainly guided by a very different code of honor than the Christians. The Vikings had no qualms about attacking during the holidays, such as Christmas and Easter, when Christians normally abstained from warfare and engaged in celebrations.

RANDY GLASS STUDIO; OPPOSITE, TOP: ARTEPICS (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); BOTTOM: MARTIN DE THURAH, KASPER TUXEN AND ULRIK JANTZEN, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF DENMARK

How did you first get interested in Viking history?

When you live in Denmark, in southern Scandinavia, and are interested in our past, there is no way around the Vikings. Theirs is one of the most fascinating periods of our history.

They lived right where I live today.

In that respect, the answer is that I’ve been interested in Vikings since my childhood.

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RANDY GLASS STUDIO; OPPOSITE, TOP: ARTEPICS (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); BOTTOM: MARTIN DE THURAH, KASPER TUXEN AND ULRIK JANTZEN, NATIONAL MUSEUM OF DENMARK

Varberg designed an immersive museum experience featuring a sea battle in which visitors “die” and travel to the realm of Ran, Viking goddess of the drowned.

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Far left: Contrary to popular myth, Viking helmets did not feature horns. Left: This elegant Valkyrie figurine from Haarby is one of Varberg’s favorite artifacts. Below: The Vikings built a vast trading empire through exploration, conquest and commerce.

How did your book inspire “The Raid” exhibit at the National Museum of Denmark?

The narrative in the exhibition follows the book in how it is chronologically built and sectioned by the three main centuries of the Viking Age. It begins with an overview of the time before the Viking Age, called “Between Jesus, Muhammad and Odin.” It ends with the reign of Canute the Great and the colonies in Greenland. It is not sectioned according to themes, unlike other exhibitions about the Vikings.

In part of the exhibition we follow the Vikings on their biggest adventure —the voyage to the Mediterranean in 859–861. That’s a chapter in my book.

That is how it began. But toward the end of the Viking Age the Scandinavian kingdoms themselves became Christian. They then had armies that held their own against the powers of Europe—their power culminating when Danish Viking king Canute the Great ascended to the English throne. That was perhaps their biggest achievement.

What are some of the most fascinating Viking artifacts you have worked with?

That is a hard question for an archaeologist. I think the big stories in small objects are what fascinate me the most —for example, the small figurine from Haarby, Funen, Denmark. It is a small warrior woman with riding dress, shield and sword. She is very beautiful and is probably one of the Valkyries, servants of Odin—one of the principal gods in Norse mythology. The Valkyries accompanied warriors killed on the battlefield to Valhalla.

How has your research changed perceptions about the Vikings?

I hope to make evident that in just a few hundred years—from 750 to 1050 —Scandinavia went from a region of non-Christian, unstable petty kingdoms to one of the most powerful Christian kingdoms. During that period the Scandinavian kingdoms underwent tremendous development and established a trading system that made Scandinavia a hub for trade between Asia, Russia, western Europe and as far as Canada.

The Vikings built cities and colonies in the British Isles, in the Frankish kingdoms, along Russian rivers, on the North Atlantic Isles, in Greenland and in Canada. With ships, swords, battlefield skills, trading savvy and a strong belief that fortune favors the brave, they left their mark throughout the known world. My book tries to cover it all and keep the red thread of the Viking tale through the centuries,

What was your role in creating the new exhibit?

I was the exhibition director and had the final call and responsibility in all processes from choosing artifacts and writing the texts to making a film, book and documentaries, while leading a fantastic and skilled museum team.

What do you hope people will learn from the exhibit?

Visitors should learn something not just by looking and observing. They are invited to acquire new knowledge through play—and by participating as active co-creators of history.

The museum experience concludes in a sea battle in an immersive room where the visiting explorer is “killed” and travels to one of the Vikings’ imagined kingdoms of the dead—the realm of Ran, goddess of the drowned.

I want visitors to reflect on the consequences of pillaging and raiding: If you succeed, you get a great name and silver, but you can also die trying. MH

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: KULTURHISTORISK MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF OSLO; NATIONAL MUSEUM OF DENMARK; WERNER FORMAN/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP (GETTY IMAGES)

and hopefully it will give a more nuanced understanding of the age.

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Valor Vindicator at Midway In a last desperate attempt to turn around a losing battle, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto ordered Cruiser Division 7, comprising Mogami, Mikuma, Suzuya and Kumano and the destroyers Asashio and Arashio, to make a night bombardment of Midway airfield. At 0255 hours on June 5, however, Yamamoto reconsidered and ordered a general retirement. At 0342 the cruisers spotted the American submarine Tambor, and as they took evasive action, Mogami collided with Mikuma, damaging both.

Later that morning six SB2Us of VMSB-241 set out to check reports of Japanese battleships west of Midway.

They found none, but at 0800 hours they located Mogami and Mikuma.

Captain Bruce Prosser was behind Fleming as they made their bombing run. “It appeared to me that [Fleming’s] plane might have been hit…because it In the midst of the North Pacific some 1,300 miles Richard E. Fleming wavered uncertainly, and a puff of lightwest of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, U.S.-claimed Midway U.S. Marine Corps colored smoke was emitted,” Prosser Atoll hosted a telegraph cable station and dockside Medal of Honor facilities for Pan American Airways flying boats until recalled. “Out of the corner of my eye Battle of Midway early 1941, when the Navy began constructing an air it appeared to me that the plane struck June 5, 1942 station. After the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl the aft port quarter of the Mikuma and Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, the United States sent re- sort of semi-cartwheeled into the sea.”

“I saw a dive-bomber dive into the inforcements to Midway. Formed there on March 1, 1942, Marine Aircraft Group (MAG) 22 comprised fighter squadrons VMF-221 and VMF-222 (equipped last turret and start fires,” recalled Capt. with Grumman F4F-3 Wildcats and Brewster F2A-3 Buffalo) and scout bomber Akira Soji, who witnessed the attack squadron VMSB-241 (operating 19 Douglas SBD-2 Dauntless and 17 older Vought from Mogami. “He was very brave.”

Whether or not he’d deliberately SB2U-3 Vindicator dive bombers). When the Battle of Midway began on June 4, 1942, it saw the last American combat use of both the Buffalo and Vindicator. aimed his doomed plane at the cruiser, Among VMSB-241’s flight leaders was Capt. Richard Eugene Fleming. Born in his Vindicator ended up in the sea—not St. Paul, Minn. on Nov. 2, 1917, he enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve in 1935. on Mikuma’s turret as popular legend In 1940 Fleming finished training at Naval Air Station Pensacola, Fla. First as- has it. There is no doubting Soji’s testisigned to NAS San Diego, he transferred to Midway 10 days after the Pearl Harbor mony, however, as to Fleming’s courage.

On June 6 thirty-one carrier-based raid. He was promoted to first lieutenant in April 1942 and to captain in May. On June 4 aircraft from the Japanese carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu and Hiryu SBD-3s sank Mikuma, killing 650 of pounded the Marine defenders on Midway. Already in the air, VMSB-241 counter- its crew. Another 240 were rescued by attacked but was badly mauled by Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero fighters, losing eight Mogami and the destroyers.

On Nov. 24, 1942, President Franklin SBDs. Although comparatively obsolescent, only two SB2Us were lost. Fleming reached Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo’s flagship, Akagi, and dove to 400 feet D. Roosevelt awarded a posthumous before dropping his 500-pound bomb, missing nevertheless. He returned to Distinguished Flying Cross to Fleming’s rear gunner, Pfc. George A. Toms, while Midway with 179 bullet holes in his SB2U and minor wounds.

Later that day Navy SBD-3s from the carriers Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet Fleming received the only Medal of fatally damaged all four enemy carriers, though Hiryu’s planes crippled Yorktown. Honor awarded to a participant in the At 1900 hours VMSB-241 set out after a reported enemy carrier but found none. Battle of Midway. MH

NATIONAL ARCHIVES; INSET: CONGRESSIONAL MEDAL OF HONOR SOCIETY

By Jon Guttman

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What We Learned From...

The 1419–34 Hussite Wars Fighting from within a wagenburg, Hussite troops repel an attack by enemy horsemen and foot soldiers.

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n 1415 Roman Catholic Church officials condemned Czech Christian theologian and reformer Jan Hus for heresy and burned him at the stake. But attempts to suppress his followers (Hussites) in the Kingdom of Bohemia failed. When King Sigismund of Hungary inherited the throne of Bohemia in 1419, he sought Pope Martin V’s aid in launching an anti-Hussite crusade.

That triggered a general revolt in Bohemia, pitting the Hussites and their supporters against those loyal to Sigismund, the pope and the Catholic Church.

The Hussite armies comprised primarily militiamen drawn from the peasantry or urban commoners. Thus Hussite soldiers were never as well equipped as their enemies, who possessed far greater numbers and resources. What the Hussites could boast was a cadre of highly skilled military leaders, of whom the most prominent was the one-eyed and later blind general Jan Zizka (c.1360– 1424). He developed the innovative tactical system known as the Hussite wagon fort, or wagenburg, which proved almost unbeatable.

For at least a century prior European armies had used the ubiquitous wagon for support and to create temporary field fortifications. Zizka’s war wagons, however, were purpose built. Manufactured according to a common template, they were heavily reinforced and had side loopholes to accommodate projectile-firing weapons. Each wagon was essentially a mobile fortress, manned by a crew of some 20 soldiers armed with field guns, hand cannons, crossbows and polearms.

In battle the Hussites formed the wagenburg by chaining their wagons together in a square or circle, providing their crews the protection necessary to operate their weapons effectively. It also allowed them to concentrate their fire, whereas on a battlefield they would have been more widely dispersed. Worn down by the Hussites’ concentrated fire, exposed attackers would lose momentum and cohesion. The Hussite infantry would then exit the wagenburg to attack the enemy’s

flanks and rear, pinning them against the wagons. In the final stages of battle the Hussite cavalry would emerge and pursue fleeing enemy troops, transforming defeat into utter catastrophe.

While the Hussites defeated five papally declared anti-Hussite crusades, infighting between their two main factions—the moderate Utraquists and radical Taborites—proved their undoing. Ultimately, the Utraquists accepted an invitation from Sigismund and the Catholic Church to negotiate an accord, while the Taborites objected, sparking civil war. In a May 30, 1434, clash at Lipany in central Bohemia attacking Utraquists feigned retreat to lure Taborites from their wagenburg.

Sending their cavalry into the open wagenburg, the Utraquists killed, drove off or captured the Taborites, subsequently burning alive hundreds of prisoners in nearby barns. The Utraquists then made peace with Sigismund and Catholic authorities.

Lessons: Continually innovate. Innovation doesn’t require creating something entirely new. Combining old tactics or technologies in new ways can produce highly effective results.

Fight the battle you want to fight. The Hussites adhered to the defensive tactics of their wagenburg in battle after battle, negating their enemies’ tactical advantages and forcing them to make costly assaults.

Maintain a united front. Despite impressive victories, the Hussites ultimately succumbed to infighting.

Beware the feigned retreat.

The Utraquists lured the Taborites’ out of their wagenburg and soundly defeated them in the open. MH

ART BY GERRY AND SAM EMBLETON IN MEDIEVAL HANDGONNES, BY SEAN MCLACHLAN (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING)

By Robert C.L. Holmes

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TODAY IN HISTORY FEBRUARY 28, 1995

DENVER INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT OPENS. FEATURING AN EXTERIOR DESIGN WHICH BEARS RESEMBLANCE TO BOTH THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS AND TEPEES OF NATIVE AMERICANS, THE AIRPORT SPRAWLS OVER 52.4 SQUARE MILES OF LAND, 1.5 TIMES THE SIZE OF MANHATTAN. COST OVERRUNS AND CONTROVERSIAL PLANNING DECISIONS HAVE LED TO CONSPIRACY THEORIES RELATED TO THE ILLUMINATI AND THE PRESENCE OF DOOMSDAY BUNKERS. For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ TODAY-IN-HISTORY

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Hardware HIJMS Mikasa

By Jon Guttman Illustration by Paul Wright Specifications Machinery: 25 Belleville boilers, two vertical

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triple-expansion (VTE) steam engines

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Coal: 700 tons (standard load); 1,521 tons (full load) Length: 432 feet Width: 76 feet Draft: 27 feet Standard displacement: 15,140 tons Speed: 18 knots Maximum range: 7,000 miles at 10 knots

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with standard load Crew: 830 Armor: Krupp cemented armor (main belt 4–9 inches) Armament: Four 12-inch, 14 6-inch, 20 12-pounder, eight 3-pounder and four 2.5-pounder guns; four 18-inch submerged torpedo tubes

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18 1. A ft twin 12-inch gun turret 2. Ship’s boats 3. Secondary bridge 4. Mainmast with 2.5to 3-pounder guns 5. Air intakes for engineering spaces 6. Stacks 7. Foremast 8. Fighting top with 2.5to 3-pounder guns

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9. Navigational bridge 10. Conning tower 11. Searchlight 12. 2.5- to 3-pounder guns 13. Forward twin 12-inch turret 14. Turret barbette 15. Magazine

18 16. Shell handling room 17. Boilers 18. 6-inch gun 19. Machinery and engine rooms 20. 76 mm guns

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aid down by Vickers in Barrow-in-Furness, England, on Jan. 24, 1899, launched on Nov. 8, 1900, and commissioned on March 1, 1902, Mikasa was the last of six modern battleships ordered from Britain by the Imperial Japanese Navy. While its five predecessors were protected by Harvey nickel-steel armor, Mikasa boasted the latest cemented steel armor from Krupp. On each of the six battleships the Japanese concentrated armor along the starboard and port main belt and in the gun turrets and forward conning tower rather than in the entire hull, as the Russians did on their warships, thus gaining 2 knots more speed. The armor was only 4 inches thick at either end, however, leaving the Japanese battleships vulnerable to mines. This led to the sinking of Hatsuse and Yashima off the Russian naval base at Port Arthur, China, on May 15, 1904, amid the Russo-Japanese War. Although outnumbered and outgunned by the Russian battleships, Adm. Heihachiro Togo (who made Mikasa his flagship) and his officers trained to operate with their armored cruisers at 3 miles or closer in order to bring all their guns into play. They held their own in the Battle of the Yellow Sea on Aug. 10, 1904, although Mikasa and Asahi were damaged.

The Japanese line proved devastating against Vice Adm. Zinovy Rozhestvensky’s poorly organized and trained squadrons in the Tsushima Strait on May 27–28, 1905. (See related story, P. 32.)

On the night of September 11–12—a week after the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed, formally ending the war—Mikasa caught fire, exploded and sank at its moorings, killing 251 crewmen. Raised and repaired, it served through World War I and supported the postwar intervention in Siberia.

Decommissioned in 1923, it was kept as a war relic and survived Allied bombing attacks in 1945. Although the Soviet Union wanted it destroyed, U.S. Navy Fleet Adm. Chester Nimitz—an admirer of Togo—supported Mikasa’s restoration. In 1961 the historic pre-dreadnought battleship reopened as a museum ship at Yokosuka, where it remains. MH

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FROM THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE NAVY OF THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR, BY MARK STILLE (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING)

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GENERATIO From June 1942 through 1945 frontline American soldiers filed stories and photographed World War II and its aftermath for a select readership—themselves

By Peter Zablocki

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Yank journalists wore a variety of identifying patches, including this bright version intended for wear on Class-A (noncombat) uniforms.

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President Roosevelt’s open letter to U.S. troops in Yank’s first issue spotlighted the magazine’s mission—to give soldiers a voice of their own.

for a new war. White’s writers, photographers and artists would understand the ordeal of the enlisted man because they would wear the same uniform, have the same lowly ranks, be excluded from the same officers’ clubs and endure the same risks, indignities, fears and frustrations.

In April 1942 the Army accepted White’s proposal, commissioned him a lieutenant colonel and gave him oversight of the publication. He held the post only briefly, however, as that September he was relieved from his post for lack of proper judgment after allowing one of his writers to publish an unflattering piece about First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The Army sent White to oversee the Mediterranean office of Stars and Stripes. Replacing him at Yank for the duration of the war was Joe McCarthy, a former sportswriter from Boston (not to be confused with the later U.S. senator from Wisconsin).

Yank—a name picked for its simplicity—was headquartered at 205 E. 42nd St. in New York City. The Army recruited prospective staffers from the ranks, leaving it to McCarthy to pick those he wanted. The editor organized Yank like a military unit sized somewhere between a platoon and a regiment. McCarthy had the men do calisthenics to keep fit, and a first sergeant maintained an up-to-date duty roster of the magazine’s globe-trotting members. Staffers were required to spend at least six months in the field before returning to a rear office, as was the common practice in frontline combat units.

The Army gave Yank’s GI reporters largely free rein— barring expected wartime censorship—to write about what they witnessed in Europe, Africa or the Pacific.

The opening page of the first issue solidified that promise with a letter to the troops from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. “[Yank] cannot be understood by our enemies,” he wrote. “It is inconceivable to them that a soldier should be allowed to express his own thoughts, his ideas and his opinions. It is inconceivable to them that any sol-

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Yank was the brainchild of Egbert White, a World War I infantry veteran who’d written for the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes. Tracing its origins to a Civil War–era regimental newspaper, the latter publication saw its heyday in 1918 and ’19, when a reported half million soldiers turned to it for news on matters concerning the American Expeditionary Forces on the Western Front. It remains in print today. As a complement to Stars and Stripes, White envisioned a magazine written in the authentic voice of enlisted soldiers—a new magazine

YANK ISSUES BY U.S. ARMY; PREVIOUS SPREAD: DESIGN BY BRIAN WALKER; THIS PAGE, TOP: JAMES MOUNTAIN ANTIQUES

olomon Islands, spring 1944.

Sergeant Barrett McGurn moved cautiously atop Hill 260, the notorious “Bloody Hill” northeast of the Empress Augusta Bay beachhead on Bougainville Island. Suddenly, a Japanese knee-mortar shell exploded in front of him with a bright red-orange burst, knocking him onto his back. The ground shivered, as did his hands. A reporter for Yank, the Army Weekly, McGurn watched the smoke dissipate and then took out a pencil and notepad to record how it felt to take a direct hit. But he could find no dry surface on the pad—the paper was drenched in the blood pouring from his face and chest.

McGurn felt no regret. After all, he was a soldier. But he was also a reporter. Perhaps I can remain conscious long enough to dash off a dispatch for Yank, he thought. Then he passed out.

diers—or any citizens, for that matter—should have any thoughts other than those dictated by their leaders.”

With the presidential blessing, and its philosophy and intent communicated to the Army, Yank debuted on June 17, 1942. By its final issue in December 1945 the magazine boasted 21 editions in 17 locations worldwide.

Its 127 active-duty staff members filed stories from every corner of the globe in which the U.S. military operated.

The editors believed enlisted men wouldn’t trust any publication handed them free of charge, thus the 24-page weekly tabloid carried no ads and cost a nickel an issue.

That was roughly half the cover price of popular periodicals at the time and usually enough to foot the magazine’s bills. Yank’s patron, the Army, absorbed any overrun costs.

McCarthy was not permitted to sell Yank on newsstands, as it would pose unfair competition to commercial titles.

For that reason, despite printing more than 2 million copies each week, the magazine so popular among GIs remained virtually unknown by the American public.

TOP: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

YANK ISSUES BY U.S. ARMY; PREVIOUS SPREAD: DESIGN BY BRIAN WALKER; THIS PAGE, TOP: JAMES MOUNTAIN ANTIQUES

Shared copies of Yank were popular with Allied service members, though their obvious enthusiasm may have landed these flanking Russian soldiers in hot water.

For its many readers Yank was a substitute for family, friends or a sweetheart back home. In addition to articles relating the grim realities of war, it touched on current events, history, sports, entertainment and sex, energizing

soldiers and reminding them of the people, places and values for which they were fighting. The most popular department was “Mail Call,” a letters section in which GIs could blow off steam, air issues and seek frank answers to pressing questions.

No topic was too big or too small. Scores of the 16 million Americans in service wrote in and/or scanned the section for answers to their concerns, commiserating Created by Army Sgt. George Baker, the comic with their brothers-in-arms worldwide.

The open bickering in “Mail Call” wa- strip debuted in Yank’s June 17, 1942, first issue. vered between humorous and serious. In By depicting the hapless one issue Tec 5 Fred O. Nebling, writing Pfc. Sack’s constant—and from Hawaii, complained of having pur- usually losing—struggles chased from his post exchange a Hershey with bureaucracy and bar that contained only seven almonds, regulations, the strip took the sting out of the real while a fellow GI got one with nine. In struggles of Army life. a subsequent issue Capt. Frank Kirby, writing from his hospital bed in West Virginia, jokingly clarified that “through some gross and unpardonable error the other soldier undoubtedly received an officer’s Hershey bar.” On a more serious note, the April 28, 1944, issue included a letter from Cpl. Rupert Trimmingham,

The Sad Sack

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at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., reporting with dismay that he and fellow uniformed black soldiers had been denied service in the lunchroom of a segregated railroad depot in Louisiana while two white MPs—and their two dozen German POWs—were promptly seated and served. Reaction to the letter was wholly supportive. In a follow-up in the July 28 issue the corporal said he’d received 287 letters from fellow GIs (183 of them whites, including many Southerners) expressing outrage at his mistreatment.

When it came to elevating soldiers’ spirits, no section came close to Sgt. George Baker’s beloved comic strip The Sad Sack. The title character, a lowly private first class, gave the enlisted man hope that no matter what troubles he faced, someone else—albeit fictional in this case—

was always worse off. Week after week Pfc. Sack suffered aggravation and humiliations galore at the hands of aloof officers. By making light of the common soldier’s plight, Baker’s strips took the sting out of the real annoyances it depicted. “The one that still cracks me up is The Sad Sack featured at the swinging gate in a personnel office,” recalled a veteran decades later. “His paperwork is never right, so he keeps going in twice for every time he comes out.”

Baker’s Jan. 5, 1945, strip depicted Sack on patrol, stumbling across a German bunker similar to his own, with one notable distinction—the enemy bunker had a swastika flag pinned to the wall, while Sack’s wall was festooned with posters of Yank pinup girls.

Yank’s weekly pictures of beautiful women became as familiar as the M1 Garand rifle or combat helmet in soldiers’ shared war experience. For lonely GIs the pinups served as reminders of faraway wives or girlfriends, easing the frustrations of men separated from everyday

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FROM TOP: UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES (GETTY IMAGES); ASSOCIATED PRESS; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

In addition to news from the war’s far-flung battlefronts, Yank offered readers stateside sports news, humorous features on, say, the perils of mess hall food and, of course, the perennial favorite pinup photos.

social life. “Any place we could stick those girls up we did,” one former GI recalled. “When you moved out, they went into your trunk.…But the second you were in a room or a house, anything like that, and the war settled down for five minutes, back up they went.”

More than 100 actresses appeared in Yank, as Hollywood knew full well the advertising potential of their starlets. Ingrid Bergman of Casablanca fame, Lauren Bacall of The Big Sleep and Jane Russell of The Outlaw graced the pages of Yank, often in bathing suits or evening gowns. While relatively modest in comparison to pinups of later decades, they still managed to raise hackles.

On several occasions soldiers wrote to “Mail Call” that their counterparts should hang up pictures of their wives and girlfriends instead of strangers. Writing from Italy just before Christmas 1944, Sgt. John F. Urwiller praised the magazine for having run a wholesome photo of actress Betty Jane Graham, “a typical American girl with the kind of beauty that every man dreams about.”

FROM TOP: UNDERWOOD ARCHIVES (GETTY IMAGES); ASSOCIATED PRESS; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Yank was not just about “Mail Call,” comics or pinups.

The feature stories, photos and illustrations produced by staffers serving alongside enlisted men on all fronts make the magazine as vital today as it was during the war.

Some of Yank’s illustrators came directly from art school, while others left long-held jobs as commercial artists. The same went for writers and photographers who’d honed their trade for popular publications before the war. Harold Ross, co-founder and editor of The New Yorker, once quipped the military weekly was to blame for one of his own especially lengthy wartime editorials.

“Of course it was too long, but I have to fill space,” he said.

“All my writers are on Yank!”

Distinct from their civilian counterparts, however, Yank’s staffers were fighting men, which often placed them in the thick of combat. In that regard its reporters were granted unusual freedom to roam the battlefield.

Often left to their own devices, armed only with a camera, a notepad or a field typewriter, the correspondents risked life and limb so that other American soldiers understood why they were risking theirs.

In one daring exploit Sgt. Walter Bernstein, guided by partisans, walked seven days across rugged mountains through German-occupied territory to become the first English-speaking correspondent to interview Marshal Josip Broz Tito, the communist revolutionary leader fighting the Nazis in Yugoslavia. The headline-stealing coup caused quite an uproar within the Allied high command, as the territory fell within the British purview. Published in Yank on June 16, 1944, the interview was the magazine’s most heralded exclusive. Bernstein became a noted screenwriter and film producer after the war. Ironically, the very Hollywood studios who’d hired him blacklisted him in the 1950s for his favorable views on communism and the dictator who gave his career a boost.

Though Yank photographers documented the war across all theaters, some of the more memorable images came from the Pacific. Top: Men of the Army’s 37th Inf. Div. advance on Bougainville. Middle: Mason Pawlak captures GIs inspecting wrecked enemy boats on Angaur. Above: John Bushemi caught this machine gunner trying to stay dry on New Georgia.

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potentially booby-trapped souvenirs—Pawlak was pinned down by sniper fire, bracketed by mortars and ultimately knocked unconscious by a nearby explosion. The photographer was left partially blinded in his left eye for life.

Yank’s artists claimed an advantage over its photographers in that they had the luxury of time. Not having to wait for proper lighting or rush headlong into action to capture the perfect shot, they could make mental notes and render their illustrations later. That said, they still took risks. Howard Brodie, a onetime sports artist, gained renown in Yank for his initially censored depiction of the field execution of a German prisoner. Though not released until after war’s end, the sketch showed the dead man tied to a post and slumped forward with blood and drool running from his mouth. It certainly remained true to Yank’s promise to reveal the authentic experiences of those who fought the war. Lost to history was mention of Brodie’s

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After being struck by shrapnel from a Japanese mortar shell while climbing “Bloody Hill,” Sgt. McGurn—who would live the rest of his life with a pinhead fragment lodged in his heart—turned his experience into a cover story about the Second Battle of Bougainville. Yet, in keeping with Yank’s dictum that the reporter was the chronicler and not the story itself, McGurn downplayed his involvement and wounds, insisting in a postwar memoir, “The soldiers in the beachhead dugout were suffering far worse.” Often by McGurn’s side was his trusted Navy photographer, Chief Photographer’s Mate Mason Pawlak, whose images starkly depicted the carnage of war. Like McGurn’s stories, they did not record the experience of the man behind the viewfinder. After snapping one of his better known photos during the 1944 Battle of Angaur in the Palau Islands—an image in which a GI steps over a Japanese corpse, not daring to check for

BOTTOM LEFT: SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE LIBRARY

Howard Brodie, left, covered both the Pacific and Europe, becoming one of Yank’s bestknown staff artists. Among his memorable drawings are those of a German executed for spying (top left) and GIs during the August 1942–February 1943 Guadalcanal campaign.

Bronze Star, which he received for heroism amid the Battle of the Bulge. After the field hospital in which he was being treated was shelled, the artist swapped pencil and notepad for bandages and tourniquets as an emergency medic.

As the war expanded, so did the number of Purple Hearts presented to Yank journalists. Sometimes bringing stories of hope to their fellow soldiers cost them their lives. One of the magazine’s busiest cameramen, Sgt. Pete Paris, made history with his first-ever cover story of a black unit in combat in the early stages of the war in Africa and Sicily. In the thick of action during the D-Day landings in 1944, Paris managed to avoid machine-gun fire only to step on a land mine and have his leg torn off at the hip. He was evacuated from Normandy aboard a Navy LST but never made it back to England—the ship was bombed and sunk in the English Channel, killing all aboard. Paris received his Purple Heart posthumously.

Described by his accompanying correspondent, Merle Miller, as a photographer “from a rifle’s length vantage point,” Sgt. John A. Bushemi was known to crawl out in front of advancing GIs to get the perfect picture. His skills landed him the classified mission of chronicling the November 1943 through February 1944 campaign in the Gilbert and Marshall islands. By the time his photographs graced the pages of Yank, however, Bushemi was dead.

Mortally wounded by a mortar shell during the Battle of Eniwetok, he made a dying request of Miller to ensure his images were sent to Yank headquarters in New York.

An undated editorial from the magazine said it best.

“Yank’s correspondents will go to every battlefront,” it read. “If they live, they will send back stories of the actions in which they fought. If they are killed, other correspondents will take their place.” Through the sacrifices of its writers, artists and photographers Yank remained true to its mission, faithfully depicting the American GI’s experience in World War II by presenting the individual stories of those who covered it.

TOP: FRANK SCHERSCHEL (GETTY IMAGES)

BOTTOM LEFT: SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE LIBRARY

Yank was given its walking papers on Sept. 25, 1945,

by War Department Circular 292. Initiated by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, the document stated it was time to mute “the official voice of the enlisted man,” as war’s end had eliminated “material suitable for the mission of Yank.” After finishing work on issues that recounted soldiers’ reintegration into civilian life, the magazine published its last issue on Dec. 28, 1945, and formally closed its New York office four days later.

In a final gesture of respect Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower issued Yank an “honorable discharge” certificate to publish on its closing cover, solidifying its reputation as “just one of the GIs” and ensuring its legacy.

Accompanied by French Resistance members, two Yank journalists and a photographer drive through the crowded streets of liberated Paris— in a captured and suitably marked German Kübelwagen—on Aug. 25, 1944.

Below: Yank’s final issue included the magazine’s official “discharge.”

Yank created a unique record of the American fighting man’s role in World War II. The magazine also strove to address the anticipated morale issues that come with conscripting an army of citizens, aiming to humor GIs when they were discouraged or sad, provide an outlet for their frustrations and inspire them to push through the hell of war, knowing they were not alone. It was not just the features written by its correspondents that reflected the story of American spirit and grit. The story of Yank itself—its origins, its mission and, above all else, its writers, artists and photographers—became one of World War II’s enduring tales. MH Peter Zablocki is a New Jersey–based historian, educator and author. For further reading he recommends Yank, the Army Weekly: Reporting the Greatest Generation, by Barrett McGurn, and The Best of Yank, the Army Weekly, 1942–1945, selected by Ira Topping, as well as the Unz Review online archive of Yank [unz.com/print/yank].

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JAPAN’S TRAFALGAR In 1905 a Japanese admiral who fancied himself the reincarnation of Horatio Nelson waged a battle for the ages against a Russian fleet at Tsushima Strait

By Alan George

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Having “crossed the T,” the ships of Adm. Heihachiro Togo’s Japanese fleet fire on those of the Russian Second Pacific Squadron at Tsushima Strait in this contemporary depiction.

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Zinovy Rozhestvensky

Heihachiro Togo

O

Chinese civilians look on as Russian troops march into Mukden (present-day Shenyang), Manchuria, in 1900. Russia’s desire to control Manchuria was a proximate cause of the war with Japan.

first major war of the 20th century. Hostilities commenced when the Japanese made a surprise attack on, sought to blockade and then laid siege to the Russian base at Port Arthur, on the Liaodong Peninsula. Subsequent naval clashes—all won by Japan—culminated in the Aug. 10, 1904, Battle of the Yellow Sea, a strategic victory for Japan, albeit tactically inconclusive.

Russia’s Pacific Fleet was much diminished by that battle and the ongoing siege of Port Arthur. Were it to remain in the war, it would need reinforcement. Czar Nicholas II and his advisers resolved to send much of the Baltic Fleet (subsequently designated the Second Pacific Squadron) to the Far East. Rozhestvensky, the man tapped to command the flotilla, was a highly regarded veteran of the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War and former chief of the imperial Russian naval staff. He was also known for a fiery temper that terrified subordinates.

Unfortunately, the chaotic, seven-month-long voyage to the Far East only served to spotlight Russian inefficiency. While transiting the North Sea’s Dogger Bank one foggy night that October the squadron passed among British fishing vessels, which spotters mistakenly identified as Japanese torpedo boats. The Russians opened fire, sinking one trawler, damaging four others, killing two fishermen, wounding a half dozen others and in the process almost sparking war with Britain. Further confusion followed when the warships fired on one another, inflicting further casualties and damage.

By the time the squadron reached the Far East the following spring, it was in a pitiable state and certainly

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The February 1904 to September 1905 Russo-Japanese War centered on rival expansionist ambitions, erupting over which nation would dominate Manchuria and Korea. Russia was desperate to acquire a warm-water port of its own in the Pacific, while Japan wanted to expand its sphere of influence north of its home islands.

Negotiations between the two nations—which proposed Russian control of Manchuria and Japanese hegemony over Korea—ultimately collapsed, sparking the

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n the night of May 26–27, 1905, two battle fleets—one Russian, the other Japanese—sailed toward the Tsushima Strait, the eastern channel of the Korea Strait between that nation and Japan. The Russian commander, Vice Adm. Zinovy Rozhestvensky, desperately wanted to avoid contact and take his ships safely into Vladivostok, his nation’s primary naval port in the Pacific. His Japanese counterpart, Adm. Heihachiro Togo, was determined to locate, engage and destroy the Russian fleet and thus effectively end the Russo-Japanese War in his country’s favor.

Rozhestvensky’s hopes to evade a fight were soon shattered. The ensuing clash—the first between fleets of modern steel battleships—was to be as much of a defining moment in naval, political and diplomatic history in the 20th century as the Battle of Trafalgar had been a century earlier. By the time the smoke cleared, imperial Russia had involuntarily ceded both its naval dominance and considerable political influence in the Far East to a newly resurgent and expansionist imperial Japan.

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With the ships of Togo’s fleet providing fire support, Japanese army troops land on China’s Liaodong Peninsula to lay siege to Russian-held Port Arthur.

not battle ready. The majority of its 11 battleships, eight cruisers, support ships and auxiliaries had steamed 18,000 nautical miles via the Cape of Good Hope and Cam Ranh Bay in French Indochina (present-day Vietnam) and needed extensive refitting. The voyage had also proved hard on crewmen, leaving them weary and demoralized. More important, only four of the Russian battleships were of the latest Borodino-class type, based on a successful French design. And even those vessels —Borodino, Knyaz Suvarov, Oryol and Imperator Aleksandr III—were not ready to fight at full capability, as they were manned by new, ill-trained crews. The remaining seven battleships were older and less technically advanced.

Unfortunately for the Russians, their opponents would bring to the fight both better vessels and a far more competent commander.

On emerging from its self-imposed isolation in the mid19th century, Japan had embarked on a rapid modernization of its military forces. Part of that effort was the development of a modern battle fleet based on the doctrines of American historian, naval officer and strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan. The sole object of Mahan’s tenets was starkly simple—command of the sea through the neutralization or destruction of the enemy fleet.

Japan set about building a modern bluewater fleet from the ground up, basing it on mostly up-to-date vessels built either in British yards or locally to British specs. The new-build ships were fitted with technologically advanced guns, ammunition, range finders, radios and other equipment. Their The Russian warships mostly British-trained crews were disci- at Tsushima all flew plined, competent and highly motivated. the “St. Andrew’s flag,” By the time the Russian squadron arrived in bearing the blue cross of St. Andrew—Russia’s the Pacific, the Combined Fleet of the Im- patron saint. Personally perial Japanese Navy boasted five modern designed by emperor battleships, 27 cruisers, 21 destroyers and Peter the Great, the flag fell out of use in 1918, a few dozen torpedo boats.

Just as important for Japan was the man but was revived in 1992 by the Russian Federation. who would command the fleet in action against the Russians.

Fifty-six years old at the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War, Adm. Heihachiro Togo had spent many of his formative professional years with the British Royal Navy.

That time included academic work, time at sea aboard various warships and work as an inspector during the construction of one of three battleships being built for Japan in British yards. As a result of his seven years in Britain, Togo acquired much of the culture and professionalism of the Royal Navy and eventually saw himself

Naval Ensign

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JAPAN

FIVE BATTLESHIPS, 27 CRUISERS, 21 DESTROYERS, 37 TORPEDO BOATS

117 KILLED

583 WOUNDED, THREE TORPEDO BOATS SUNK

RUSSIA

EIGHT BATTLESHIPS, THREE COASTAL BATTLESHIPS, EIGHT CRUISERS, NINE DESTROYERS

following in the wake of his naval hero, Adm. Horatio Nelson. Togo commanded the cruiser Naniwa at the Battle of the Yalu River amid the 1894–95 First Sino-Japanese War. He later served as commandant of the Naval War College in Tokyo and in 1903 was named commander in chief of the Combined Fleet. The following year Togo led the fleet into battle against the Russians at Port Arthur and the Yellow Sea, in each of which he demonstrated an innate grasp of modern naval warfare.

It was a talent he would soon reveal to his Russian counterpart.

4,830 KILLED

As he approached Tsushima, Rozhestvensky hoped to take advantage of the thick fog the Russian vessels encountered to evade the Japanese and slip into the harbor at Vladivostok undetected. It proved a vain hope, however.

The patrolling Japanese auxiliary cruiser Shinano Maru caught sight of the navigation lights of the hospital ship Oryol, at the rear of the Russian line, and subsequently identified the profiles of the Russian warships through the gloom. The cruiser’s captain radioed the enemy’s position to Togo, who sailed to intercept the Russians. It marked

803 WOUNDED, 5,907 CAPTURED, SIX BATTLESHIPS SUNK, ONE COASTAL BATTLESHIP SUNK, 14 OTHER SHIPS SUNK, FIVE BATTLESHIPS CAPTURED, SIX SHIPS DISARMED

the first time wireless signals were used operationally by underway warships.

“When the enemy’s fleet first appeared in the south seas, our squadrons, in obedience to imperial command, adopted the strategy of awaiting him and striking him in our home waters,” Togo later wrote. “We therefore concentrated our strength at the Korean straits.” Continuous radio reports from Shinano Maru guided the larger Japanese fleet toward the Russians, and at daylight the fog dispersed, allowing 5 miles of visibility. By early afternoon on the 27th both fleets could see each other.

On closing with the enemy, Togo carried out the classic naval maneuver known as “crossing the T,” taking his ships in line astern across the front of the Russian formation at a range of 7,500 yards. This allowed the main armament of each Japanese ship to bear on the van of the Russian line, while Rozhestvensky’s vessels were only able to deploy their forward guns. The Japanese tactic, combined with their better gunnery knowledge and technique, gave Togo’s gunners the ability to hit their targets more accurately and at longer ranges than could their adversaries. As firing was about to begin, Togo sent a signal reminiscent of Nelson at Trafalgar: “The fate of the empire depends on the result of this battle—let every man do his utmost.”

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; RIGHT: NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH

Battle of Tsushima

BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

In a post-battle propaganda image produced in St. Petersburg Russian sailors attempt to return fire as Japanese gunners send the ships of Vice Adm. Rozhestvensky’s squadron to the bottom.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; RIGHT: NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH

BROWN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Japanese sailors from the torpedo boat Sazanami board a Russian torpedo boat during the battle.

At an initial disadvantage because of his flotilla’s lineastern formation and the need to protect his slow and cumbersome supply ships, Rozhestvensky was eventually able to turn his squadron into a line of battle parallel to the Japanese, allowing most of his ships’ guns to fire at the enemy. By then the Japanese were focusing their fire on Knyaz Suvorov, the Russian flagship, which was hit repeatedly and sank after attempting to withdraw.

The battleship Oslyabya suffered the same fate. Rozhestvensky, injured by shrapnel aboard Knyaz Suvorov, transferred to the destroyer Buinyi and handed over command of the squadron to Rear Adm. Nikolai Nebogatov, aboard the battleship Imperator Nikolai I. The change of leadership did little to alter the course of the battle. The Japanese ships were equipped with the latest British-made Barr & Stroud gunnery range finders, which had a greater range and enabled a higher rate of fire and far better accuracy than the Russians’ sighting equipment, which mostly dated from the 1880s. As the battle raged on, the Russian battleships Borodino and Imperator Aleksandr III were repeatedly struck and severely damaged, causing them to fall out of the line of battle and eventually sink.

“It seemed impossible even to count the number of projectiles striking us,” recalled Capt. Vladimir Semenoff

of Knyaz Suvarov. “I had not only never witnessed such a fire before, but I had never imagined anything like it. Shells seemed to be pouring upon us incessantly, one after another.…The steel plates and superstructure on the upper decks were torn to pieces, and the splinters caused many casualties. Japan’s official naval Iron ladders were crumpled up into rings, ensign since 1889, this flag was flown by all the and guns were literally hurled from their vessels of Togo’s fleet mountings.…In addition to this, there was at Tsushima. Though it the unusual high temperature and liquid became a hated emblem flame of the explosion, which seemed to of Japanese militarism spread over everything. I actually watched during World War II, it remains in use as the a steel plate catch fire from a burst.” ensign of Japan’s MariThe main engagement between the Rus- time Self-Defense Force. sian and Japanese fleets was largely over by sunset, the former losing four battleships sunk and others badly damaged. The Japanese suffered no serious losses.

With the coming of darkness, most of the surviving Russian warships desperately steamed toward Vladivostok. But Togo was not done with them yet—he ordered his numerous destroyers and torpedo boats to continue the attack.

In those days before radar there was inevitably little cohesion or coordination in either fleet, and the night attacks quickly became a chaotic series of ship-on-ship

Rising Sun

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Naval Clash of Empires, 1905 T

he monthslong siege of Port Arthur isolated the Russian Far East Fleet, and subsequent naval clashes with Japan had proved costly. Were Russia to remain in the war, it would need to lift the siege and reinforce the bottled-up fleet.

Thus Czar Nicholas II dispatched much of the Baltic Fleet to the Far East, placing it under Vice Adm. Zinovy Rozhestvensky. The seven-month voyage around the Cape of Good Hope sorely taxed the crews and the 11 battleships, eight cruisers and support ships of the redesignated Second Pacific Squadron.

Waiting for the Russian relief force was the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, comprising five battleships, 27 cruisers, 21 destroyers and a few dozen torpedo boats. Commanding the formidable armada was Adm. Heihachiro Togo, an admirer of British Adm. Horatio Nelson and proponent of American naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan. Togo tracked the approaching Russians and sprang his trap at Tsushima Strait. MH

MONGOLIA

RUSSIAN EMPIRE

M A N CHURIA Russian Occupation

CH IN A VLADIVOSTOK Battle of Port Arthur Feb. 8–9, 1904 PEKING (Beijing)

KO REA

Japanese Occupation

HANSEONG (Seoul) Battle of Tsushima May 27–28, 1905

PORT ARTHUR

Battle of the Yellow Sea Aug. 10, 1904

YE LLOW S EA

JAPANESE EMPIRE

TOKYO

KO

RussoJapanese War

S EA O F JA PA N

R

EA

ST

R

A

IT

PACIFIC OCEAN

Having emerged from isolation in the mid-19th century, imperial Japan sought to extend its influence north onto mainland East Asia. By the turn of the 20th century imperial Russia had expanded south into Manchuria, threatening Japan’s ambitions.

When negotiations between the rivals broke down in early 1904, Japan went to war, attacking the Russian base at Port Arthur, on Manchuria’s Liaodong Peninsula.

A series of naval clashes ensued, culminating in the tactically inconclusive Battle of the Yellow Sea, which set the scene for the decisive showdown at Tsushima Strait.

M

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The Pursuit

By sundown Togo’s superior ships, tactics and technology had cost the Russians four of their eight main battleships and sent the surviving Russian ships scurrying for the safety of port at Vladivostok. But Togo ordered his destroyers and torpedo boats to press the attack. Only three Russian ships made it home.

Togo ‘Crosses the T’

On May 27 radio updates from the auxiliary cruiser Shinano Maru regarding the position of the Russian fleet enabled Togo to anticipate his enemy. By 2:45 p.m. the Japanese ships, steaming line astern perpendicular to the Russian van, were able to “cross the T,” bringing all their guns—fore and aft—to bear.

MAPS BY STEVE WALKOWIAK, SWMAPS.COM

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skirmishes. Several Japanese vessels collided with each other, and some Russian ships added to their own misery by switching on Newer is often better. searchlights to spot their attackers. This only The Japanese victory served to reveal their own positions, making at Tsushima was due them easy targets for Japanese torpedo atin large part to the fact their vessels were tacks. By morning the Russians had lost two generally newer, more more battleships and two armored cruisers advanced and more against the loss of just three Japanese torpedo capable than their boats. Russian losses included the battleship Russian counterparts.

Navarin. Left dead in the water by a mine Know your Mahan. strike, it was hit by four torpedoes, capsized Togo’s adherence to Alfred Thayer Mahan’s and sank. Only three of its nearly 700-man theories of naval warcrew lived to tell the tale. fare enabled him to The battleship Sissoi Veliky, already ablaze outthink and outfight from the gunnery exchange between the batRozhestvensky. tle fleets, sustained a torpedo hit that damLoss has results... aged its screws and rudder. An attempt to ...beyond the strictly military. The debacle beach the foundering vessel near Tsushima at Tsushima helped Island was foiled by the arrival of two Japafuel Russia’s 1905 nese cruisers, prompting the Russian captain and 1917 uprisings. to surrender his ship, which promptly sank.

The armored cruiser Vladimir Monomakh likewise fell victim to Japanese torpedoes, while a Japanese destroyer collided with the armored cruiser Admiral Kakhimov.

The captains of both crippled warships ordered them scuttled after dawn.

Meanwhile, Nebogatov continued north toward Vladivostok with six of the remaining ships, but Togo caught

them off the east coast of Korea near Takeshima Island.

Realizing further fighting was futile in the face of the now overwhelming Japanese force, Nebogatov surrendered. Refusing the order, the captain of the cruiser Izumrud fled with his ship, though the vessel later ran aground off the Siberian coast, and the captain ordered it scuttled.

Of the other scattered Russian vessels that had no part in the surrender, most were caught and sunk by the Japanese. However, three warships did manage to reach Vladivostok, and a few others—including the cruiser Aurora—were interned in neutral ports.

The crushing Russian defeat at Tsushima prompted the government of Czar Nicholas II—justifiably fearful of revolution amid the unpopularity of the war and increasing unrest on the home front—to sue for peace.

Their economy gravely strained by the conflict, the Japanese were themselves ready to end hostilities. Accordingly, Tokyo requested the help of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who was asked to arrange a peace conference.

The event was held at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, and resulted in the September 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth, ending the war. The international community recognized Roosevelt’s role in bringing about a negotiated peace, and he was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.

Togo had a quite different take on the battle, afterward writing in his diary, “I am firmly convinced that I am the reincarnation of Horatio Nelson.”

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TOP: THEODORE ROOSEVELT BIRTHPLACE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE; BOTTOM: NESNAD, CC BY-SA 3.0

Tactical Takeaways

CHRONICLE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Russia’s humiliating defeat at Tsushima and in the broader Russo-Japanese War helped fuel revolutionary fervor in Russia.

TOP: THEODORE ROOSEVELT BIRTHPLACE NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE; BOTTOM: NESNAD, CC BY-SA 3.0

CHRONICLE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

As noted in the British Admiralty’s confidential staff history of the Russo-Japanese War, written in 1915 by prominent British naval historian and strategist Sir Julian Corbett, the Battle of Tsushima established Japan as both a major naval power and the foremost nation in the Far East. It also helped foster Tokyo’s expansionist aspirations. “So was consummated perhaps the most decisive and complete naval victory in history,” Corbett wrote. “No major Japanese unit had been seriously damaged, and only three torpedo boats sunk. One hundred seventeen Japanese officers and men had been killed, and 583 wounded. On the Russian side 12 major units, four destroyers and three auxiliaries had been sunk or scuttled after being disabled, and four major units and a destroyer captured. Of all Rozhestvensky’s motley but imposing array, only one armed yacht and two destroyers got through to Vladivostok. The toll in casualties was terrible, in the worst Russian tradition: 4,830 killed, 5,907 prisoners, 1,862 interned.…Not in [Britain’s] most successful war had we obtained a command of the sea Theodore Roosevelt (center) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize so nearly absolute as that which Japan now enjoys.” for his efforts to mediate peace with the Treaty of Portsmouth.

The Battle of Tsushima had lasting ramifications.

Expressed through its naval prowess, Japan saw itself 125 years ago have been preserved and are open to the as one of the world’s front-rank nations and the leading public. Both Togo’s flagship, the battleship Mikasa, in nation in East Asia. Tokyo gained international recogni- Yokosuka, and the Russian cruiser Aurora, in St. Peterstion as having the world’s sixth most powerful navy. burg, are museum ships. Aurora has a further and more That navy’s successes in the Russo-Japanese War, coupled symbolic claim to fame—or perhaps notoriety—as the with the successes of Japan’s army ashore, fostered a ship that in 1917 fired its forecastle gun within hearing widespread belief among the Japanese in their country’s of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, signaling the start superiority. That perception likely contributed to Japan’s of the October Revolution. MH unrestrained and violent behavior in China in the 1930s and ultimately to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

Alan George is British journalist, historian and former The negative impact of the battle on imperial Russia U.K. Ministry of Defence press officer who sailed with the was equally significant. Having forfeited its naval strength task force that recaptured the Falkland Islands from Arin the Far East, it suffered a huge loss of face in both Asia gentina in 1982. For further reading he recommends Big and Europe. Among its potential enemies, Austria-Hun- Fleet Actions, by Eric Grove; The Battle of Tsushima, gary and Germany were particularly emboldened. More- by Capt. Vladimir Semenoff; and Maritime Operations in over, the defeat helped foster unrest within the Russian the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905, by Julian S. Corbett. navy, which resulted in mutinies at Sevastopol, Vladivostok and Kronstadt and the 1905 Potemkin uprising. These, in turn, were background Sunk in 1905 by the accidental explosion of its factors to the 1917 revolutions and subsequent magazine, Mikasa was raised and repaired. Since civil war in Russia.

1922 it has been a museum ship at Yokosuka.

As Israeli historian Rotem Kowner points out in his 2006 book The Impact of the Russo-Japanese War, Tsushima substantiated Mahan’s arguments about the decisive importance of the battleship. It validated the supremacy of firepower and speed, influencing warship design and providing the impetus for British First Sea Lord Adm. John “Jacky” Fisher’s HMS Dreadnought. On its commissioning in 1906, that first all-big-gun battleship immediately rendered existing warships obsolete.

An extraordinary footnote to Tsushima is that two of the ships that squared off in battle nearly 41

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An aristocrat by lineage and a soldier by choice, Falkenhausen managed to navigate and survive the complicated politics of wartime Germany.

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NAZI VULTURE OR PRUSSIAN EAGLE? Alexander von Falkenhausen led Turks against the British and Chinese Nationalists against the Japanese, spared Belgian hostages and conspired in Adolf Hitler’s assassination

By John Koster

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Though the Boxer Rebellion was largely over by the time Falkenhausen arrived in China as a young lieutenant, he came away with a lifelong fascination with the Far East.

J

onathan Fenby, Chiang Kai-shek’s British biographer, called Alexander von Falkenhausen “a First World War veteran with a vulturelike head and pince-nez.” Historian Barbara Tuchman described Falkenhausen as a skilled commander who led from the front but got nowhere with Chiang, who was the villain in her biography of American Gen. Joseph Stilwell. In 1953 Chiang, by then president of the Republic of China on Taiwan, sent Falkenhausen 75th birthday wishes and an enclosed check for $12,000 (more than $120,000 in today’s dollars). But it was a Chinese woman named Qian Xiuling, “China’s female Schindler,” who helped Falkenhausen—a hero in China and a villain in Belgium— beat a 12-year prison sentence as a Nazi war criminal.

Der Stahlhelm

Japanese War the German General Staff showed a growing interest in Japan’s military potential. Falkenhausen was seconded to the General Staff and spent 18 months studying the sometimes maddeningly imprecise Japanese language and parsing diplomatic reports on Japan, China and Korea. In 1912, after promotions to senior lieutenant and then captain, he was appointed a military attaché in Tokyo.

In August 1914 Japan, a formal ally of Britain since 1902, declared war on Germany and took over the Shandong Peninsula, which the Germans had leased under treaty from China since 1898 and turned into their largest overseas naval base. The German military staff in Tokyo was recalled, and by November 1914 Falkenhausen was serving as a major on the Western Front. He later transferred to the Eastern Front.

In 1916 Falkenhausen joined the German military mission to Turkey, an assignment requiring the utmost tact. Kaiser Wilhelm II’s primary military commander in the Turkish army, Generalleutnant Otto Liman von Sanders, had viewed the Turkish “evacuation” (read genocide) of Armenians with horror and warned the Turks that if they touched a single Armenian soldier in his own command he would withdraw to Germany and take his men and ammunition with him. German diplomats and mis-

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BUNDESARCHIV (2)

before his birth. Genealogy establishes him as a descendant of Karl Wilhelm Friedrich, margrave of BrandenburgAnsbach, by his mistress, Elisabeth Wünsch, making Falkenhausen a distant member of the Prussian royal family.

The future general himself was born on Oct. 29, 1878, in Blumenthal, Silesia, to Baron Alexander von Falkenhausen and wife Elisabeth (née Schuler von Senden).

The second of seven children and son of a baronial family, young Alexander initially attended a Gymnasium (classical secondary school) in Breslau but at age 12 transferred to the military academy at Wahlstatt as a cadet. In 1897 the teenager was assigned to an Oldenburg infantry regiment as a second lieutenant. When the Boxer Rebellion Founded just after the broke out in 1900, Falkenhausen volunend of World War I, the teered and was sent to China. Most of the Steel Helmet paramilitary fighting was over by the time he arrived, organization comprised veterans who shared both but he developed a lifelong fascination nostalgia for the vanished with both China and Japan.

German monarchy and In 1904, while teaching at the Prussian a hatred of communism. military academy, Falkenhausen married Initially anti-Nazi, in 1933 Sophie von Wedderkop, the daughter of it became part of that party’s Sturmabteilung. a military commander from Oldenburg’s

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Falkenhausen seemed destined for controversy long hereditary dynasty. In the wake of the 1904–05 Russo-

BUNDESARCHIV (2)

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sionaries also protested the outrage. The Turks ultimately killed an estimated 1 million Armenians through outright murder, thirst or starvation. Falkenhausen arrived after the crisis abated and fought Russians in the Caucasus, then in 1917 was transferred to Palestine. As chief of staff of the 7th Ottoman Army he inflicted a series of temporary defeats on the British. When the Turks suggested that resident Jews in Palestine were British spies and proposed another “evacuation,” the German military officers objected, likely preventing another genocide.

Germans serving with the Turks could only hope to stave off collapse as long as possible. One trooper of the Australian Light Horse noted “how the Turk fights till the very last charge, until the pounding hooves are upon him, then he drops his rifle and runs screaming, while the Austrian artillerymen and German machine-gun teams often fight with their guns until they are bayoneted.” Wilhelm considered himself a protector of the Jews and appreciated Falkenhausen’s diplomacy as well as his leadership. In 1918 the kaiser awarded the major the Pour le Mérite, imperial Germany’s highest award for outstanding leadership in combat, and in the final weeks of the war Falkenhausen was made chief military adviser to Constantinople.

Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles the postwar German army was to be reduced to 100,000 men with

Top: Following World War I Falkenhausen remained in the vestigial German military, and in 1930 the Nazi Party claimed he had joined its ranks. Above: Falkenhausen had, in fact, declined the Nazis’ overtures, having instead aligned himself with the anti-communist Stahlhelm veterans movement.

4,000 officers. Falkenhausen kept his job, and when navy Korvettenkapitän Hermann Ehrhardt refused to dissolve his 6,000-man Freikorps (free corps) marine brigade, the major was sent to the rebel’s guarded camp outside Münster to facilitate the unit’s peaceful disbandment. While the government had issued a warrant against Ehrhardt for

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Hans von Seeckt

high treason (despite his having signed orders from his superiors), the captain had promised his men that anyone not kept on in the much-reduced military would have a job before he himself left the brigade. His men refused to give him up—indeed, they wanted to march on Berlin.

“At my request, Major Falkenhausen took over as my chief of staff,” Ehrhardt later wrote. “He was exceptionally efficient. He worked not only with understanding, but also with his heart. I owe him my profound thanks.” Ehrhardt shaved off his beard and made himself scarce once Falkenhausen found his men jobs.

Falkenhausen also negotiated with the Poles to resolve border disputes after a 60–40 plebiscite vote allowed Weimar Germany to retain Upper Silesia. Many members of the Polish majority voted to remain German— perhaps due to concern about Soviet Russia—while some upper-class Germans voted to merge with Poland because the Weimar Republic was much further to the left than Gen. Józef Pilsudski’s militaristic government in Warsaw. The Poles were expected to respect inherited estates or large businesses.

Giving all inhabitants (ethnic Germans and Poles alike) equal rights temporarily resolved the question.

The Nazi movement—even before Adolf Hitler came to power—was anathema to Falkenhausen. In 1930, when the Nazi Party urged then Generalleutnant Falkenhausen

to join, he declined, yet the party newspaper crowed he had indeed signed up. The false report prompted the Weimar government to sack him, at which point leading Nazis suggested he join the paramilitary Sturmabteilung (SA) for a substantial salary increase. Falkenhausen again refused and instead joined the Stahlhelm, an anti-communist veterans’ group that made overtures to Jewish combat veterans and opposed Hitler’s dictatorial aspirations.

Falkenhausen also joined the German National People’s Party, a conservative monarchist group that garnered about 10 percent of the popular vote and included senior officers, industrialists and aristocrats as supporters. By 1933 it had dissolved, opening the path to dictatorship.

“People accepted the incomprehensible misconception it would be possible merely to use Hitler as a ‘rallying drummer,’” Falkenhausen later recalled. “It was clear to me the coalition of the German Nationalists with the National Socialists could only be compared to the friendship of the defenseless lamb with the hungry wolf.” He stuck it out with the Stahlhelm until it federated with the SA during the Depression amid the growing fear of communism.

When Hitler came to power through the back door, Falkenhausen knew he was finished in German army politics. But then a door to the East opened: Chiang Kai-shek offered Falkenhausen command of his staff of German military advisers. After obtaining approval from senior commanders, the general moved to Nanjing.

His new employer, Chiang, had transformed from something of a rebel in Manchu times into a hard-core antileftist who had purged communists and trade unionists in Nanjing and Shanghai in 1926–27 amid the brewing civil war. (Oft-reproduced photos of kneeling Chinese being shot by Chinese soldiers were presented falsely in Frank Capra’s 1944 documentary Why We Fight: The Battle of China and Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1987 epic The

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PICTURES FROM HISTORY (GRANGER, 2)

In 1934 Falkenhausen (center front) took command of the German military advisers modernizing and training Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese Nationalist army. Falkenhausen remained in the post until recalled to Germany in 1937.

LEFT AND BELOW: BUNDESARCHIV (2); RIGHT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Chiang Kai-shek

PICTURES FROM HISTORY (GRANGER, 2)

LEFT AND BELOW: BUNDESARCHIV (2); RIGHT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Last Emperor as depicting Japanese atrocities.) But no such atrocities happened on the German watch. Falkenhausen’s own solution to communism was militaristic rather than terroristic. “China must resist in two ways: morally and materially,” he wrote.

Already advising Chiang was Generaloberst Hans von Seeckt, the monocled “Sphinx” who rebuilt the German army in the 1920s by turning the 100,000-man Reichswehr into a cadre to train officers and sergeants. Seeckt had been dumped by Hitler in 1926 ostensibly because the latter believed the general’s wife was of Jewish origin—though in fact she was of ethnic German origin, from Friesland, and she and her husband were antiSemites. Seeckt’s real offense had been to allow Prince Wilhelm, grandson of the former emperor, to participate in army maneuvers. Hitler hated the Jews but feared the Prussian royals and their influence on the officer corps.

By the time Seeckt arrived in China, he was dying of cancer. Before he returned to Germany for the last time in 1936, however, he and Falkenhausen made plans to drastically reduce the size of Chiang’s army to 60 welltrained divisions loyal only to Chiang, not to regional

Top: Women thank German-armed and -equipped Chinese Nationalist troops for holding out against Japanese invaders during the 1937 Battle of Shanghai, though the Japanese ultimately prevailed. Above: During his time in China Falkenhausen helped put a stop to atrocities committed by Nationalist troops.

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warlords. They also directed the generalissimo to erect thousands of blockhouses near communist strongpoints, to be garrisoned by stalwart troops with supplies dropped off by trucks so the communists could not raid lackluster government troops or peasants for food.

The 1937 Japanese invasion of China caught Falkenhausen unprepared, with only 80,000 trained Chinese troops in eight divisions, but he tried to exude a confidence he never actually felt. At Shanghai that fall he led his soldiers in person, and they put up a fight that astounded the world. “We [Germans] all agreed that as private citizens in Chinese employment there could be no question of leaving our Chinese friends to their fate,” he wrote. “Therefore, I assigned German advisers wherever they were needed, and that was often in the front lines.”

Everyone knew the Chinese would lose, but the fact they held up the Japanese for three months, and that some units fought virtually to the death, won them considerable respect. The survivors fell back on Nanjing, capital of the republic. Falkenhausen urged the Chinese to evacuate and declare Nanjing an open city, thus sparing it destruction under international law. Chiang decided to fight to the death to save face, then escaped by seaplane. When the Japanese broke through the city walls, some of the Chinese trained by Falkenhausen fought to the death. Others formally surrendered in full uniform after hard fighting.

In the aftermath the Japanese executed tens of thousands of soldiers and suspected troops in what has come to be known as the Nanjing Massacre. Japanese troops also engaged in widespread looting and rape. The international committee (comprising Americans, British, Germans and Danes) of the Nanjing Safety Zone investigated and signed off on 360 rapes and 41 murders of obvious civilians.

Appalled by the wanton killing and unpunished rapes, Falkenhausen subtly pointed out to the Chinese that Japanese officers were easily distinguished by their map

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RIGHT: WORLD WAR II DATABASE; BOTTOM: OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, REPUBLIC OF CHINA

Top left: Belgian soldiers march into captivity following their nation’s May 1940 surrender. Falkenhausen was soon appointed military governor of Belgium. Top right: Though he had no hand in the July 20, 1944, attempt to kill Hitler, Falkenhausen was arrested on suspicion and sent to Dachau.

Above: His imprisonment through war’s end spared him a Nazi-run trial.

TOP LEFT: ULLSTEIN BILD, DTL. (GETTY IMAGES); BELOW AND RIGHT: BUNDESARCHIV (2); BOTTOM RIGHT: CHINA DAILY NEWS

Qian Xiuling

RIGHT: WORLD WAR II DATABASE; BOTTOM: OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, REPUBLIC OF CHINA

TOP LEFT: ULLSTEIN BILD, DTL. (GETTY IMAGES); BELOW AND RIGHT: BUNDESARCHIV (2); BOTTOM RIGHT: CHINA DAILY NEWS

cases, binoculars and samurai swords, and that a few Chinese snipers could do the Nationalist cause far more good than doomed last stands against Japanese artillery and tanks. German-trained Nationalist troops won a night attack against the Japanese at Taierzhuang in early 1938, but by that time Falkenhausen and his fellow advisers had been ordered home—reportedly under Nazi threat to their families—and Germany had signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan and Italy.

When war broke out with Britain and France in September 1939, Falkenhausen was recalled to duty by Nazi Germany. He was conflicted, for despite his dismay at Hitler’s policies, he remained firmly anti-communist. The following spring he followed in his uncle Ludwig von Falkenhausen’s footsteps when appointed military governor of Belgium and northern France. While Falkenhausen readily deported Belgian leftists as slave laborers to Germany, he tended to drag his feet where Jews were concerned.

One “Belgian” who remembered Falkenhausen was Chinese-born Qian Xiuling, whose family members were influential friends of Chiang and whose cousin had served as a general under Falkenhausen’s oversight. A gifted student who had traveled to Belgium in 1929 to study advanced chemistry, Qian later broke her arranged engagement to a Chinese fiancé in order to marry Belgian physician Grégoire de Perlinghi in 1933. Her family reminded her Falkenhausen was a man who could be trusted. When members of the Belgian resistance killed three Gestapo officers in the town of Écaussinnes on July 7, 1944, in the tense wake of the D-Day landings, superiors in Berlin ordered the arrest of 97 random townsmen to be shot in retaliation. Qian, though expecting her first child, drove to Falkenhausen’s headquarters on a rainy night and pleaded with him to spare the hostages. She must have been persuasive, for the governor did exactly that, for which he was immediately summoned to Berlin and removed from command. Two weeks later he was again called on the carpet and immediately sent to Dachau.

Falkenhausen’s arrest had nothing to do with the Belgian hostage issue. He had been in contact with members of the failed July 20 plot to kill Hitler, having agreed in principle to place the German garrison in Belgium and northern France at their disposal while they sought to negotiate a separate peace with the Western Allies.

Though not tried for lack of evidence, Falkenhausen spent the closing months of the war in various concentration camps. He was liberated by American soldiers on May 5, 1945, only to be promptly arrested by Belgian authorities as a war criminal. Belgian leftists pressured him to incriminate King Leopold III as a pro-Nazi collaborator, but Falkenhausen, a monarchist, flatly refused. For nearly six years he cooled his heels in a cell awaiting trial.

In 1951 Qian, by then a heroine of the Belgian resistance, showed up at 72-year-old Falkenhausen’s trial,

Falkenhausen wears the sash and decoration of the Republic of China’s Order of the Sacred Tripod, awarded to him in 1958 on his 80th birthday.

producing Belgian witnesses to his act of mercy and words of praise from a grateful President Chiang. His defense attorney also pointed to the general’s known role in the July 20 plot. Though the court sentenced Falkenhausen to a dozen years of hard labor, it released him after three weeks, citing time served. “Ungrateful Belgium, you will not have my bones,” he proclaimed on crossing the border into Germany after his release.

Childless after two marriages (his second Created in 1929 to honor to a Belgian resistance fighter he’d met in significant contributions to the security of the prison), Falkenhausen lived another 15 Republic of China, the years, dying at age 87 on July 31, 1966.

Order of the Sacred For her part, Qian remained in Belgium Tripod (Pao Ting) is and never returned to her homeland. She organized in nine grades received a medal from a grateful Belgian and presented by the president. Falkenhausen government, was the central heroine of a was recognized for his 16-episode Chinese TV series and lived activities in the 1930s. well into her 90s. Asked once by a Chinese reporter to describe Falkenhausen, she said simply, “He was a man with morals.” MH

Pao Ting

A frequent contributor to Historynet publications, John Koster is the author of Hermann Ehrhardt: The Man Hitler Wasn’t, and Operation Snow. For further reading he recommends Falkenhausen’s own Mémoires d’Outre-Guerre, and Chiang Kai-shek: China’s Generalissimo and the Nation He Lost, by Jonathan Fenby.

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S ’ R U H T R A C M E L B M GA eral eager n e g n a ic r e m A n a 812 Amid the War of 1 inst the British mounted a a to strike a blow ag western Upper Canada bold raid deep into

By Bob Gordon

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Kentucky mounted volunteers prevailed against the British at the 1813 Battle of the Thames, depicted here, and also proved decisive in Brig. Gen. Duncan McArthur’s fall 1814 raid some 200 miles into Upper Canada.

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McArthur was the perfect candidate to lead a band of fluence of the Scioto River and Paint Creek, and was ultihorsemen some 200 miles into the British rear. Tougher than shoe leather, born poor and raised on the Pennsylvania frontier with no formal education, he became one of the earliest American trailblazers to Kentucky. He later helped survey Ohio’s first capital, Chillicothe, at the conBelow: As a young militiaman McArthur took part in Brig. Gen. Josiah Harmar’s 1790 campaign against British-allied Miami Indians. Bottom: The head of a spontoon, a type of polearm carried by British infantry sergeants as both weapon and tool.

mately elected that state’s 11th governor. Along the way he accumulated vast tracts of land. But the uncompromising influence of the then-savage Kentucky backwoods never left him. McArthur exemplified a popular expression of the era, later attributed to David Crockett, that Kentuckians were “half horse, half alligator, tipped off with the snapping turtle.” While not a Kentuckian by birth, he was by temperament and action.

McArthur (his father spelled it MacArthur) was born in 1772 in Dutchess County, on the Albany River 80 miles

William Hull

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TOP: OHIO HISTORY CONNECTION; RIGHT: CANADIAN WAR MUSEUM

I

n late October 1814, deep into the War of 1812, a flying column of American horsemen riding east under a full moon reached the Thames River near Moraviantown, a settlement of Christianized Delaware Indians who had retreated to Upper Canada in the wake of the American Revolution. Led by Brig. Gen. Duncan McArthur, the riders had left Fort Detroit eight days earlier bound for the British army base at Burlington Heights, on the western tip of Lake Ontario.

The mission of the American incursion was twofold. First, McArthur intended to destroy mills, bridges, livestock and foodstuffs across western Upper Canada (present-day southeastern Ontario), thus rendering the region incapable of supporting British troops. Second, he hoped to isolate the Niagara Peninsula, between Lakes Ontario and Erie, and force the British to abandon Upper Canada west of York (present-day Toronto).

In his 1816 history of the war Robert B. McAfee, an American veteran of the campaigns in Upper Canada, described what became known as “McArthur’s Raid” as “an expedition which was not surpassed during the war in boldness of its design and the address with which it was conducted.”

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Some of the militiamen who opposed McArthur’s raiders carried muzzle-loading flintlock blunderbusses, an early form of shotgun.

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north of New York City. The eldest of seven siblings, he lost his mother when still very young. In 1780 his father moved the family to western Pennsylvania, the frontier of the nascent United States. By the time Duncan was 12 he was hiring out to neighboring farms as a laborer—once he’d helped harvest his father’s crops.

Soon thereafter he began working as a mule skinner with the packtrains beginning to cross the Appalachians.

Remarkably, he somehow managed to learn to read and write, a comparatively rare skill on the frontier. At age 18 he joined the Pennsylvania militia and participated in brevet Brig. Gen. Josiah Harmar’s disastrous 1790 campaign against British-allied American Indians in what is now the Midwest. Young McArthur also participated in an unsuccessful follow-up campaign in 1792.

In the spring of 1793 surveyor Nathaniel Massie hired McArthur as a rodman on his Northwest Territory expedition to map the Scioto River valley from its juncture with the Ohio River north to Paint Creek and beyond. Massie took to the young man, encouraged him to study rudimentary mathematics and continued to employ him as an assistant. At the time it was customary for a surveyors to be paid all or part of their fee in kind as a percentage of the land surveyed. Further, while performing the contracted survey, they would keep an eye out for any land to which they could lay claim. According to an 1838 biography by John McDonald—McArthur’s biographer, brother-in-law and former quartermaster—“McArthur made tomahawk improvements [i.e., informal claims] in many of the finest bottoms on the east side of the Scioto River.”

Historian Andrew R.L. Cayton argues that as land speculation and settlement “was by design a highly individualistic, competitive business…men simply took as much land as they could obtain warrants to cover.” McDonald was blunt regarding his brother-in-law’s ambition.

“Although he has been successful in his land speculations,” he wrote of McArthur, “his conduct in this line of business is not worthy of imitation, but rather reprehensible, and has created him more vexation and enemies than all the other acts of his life.” That ruthlessness carried over into his military career. A hard officer who did not hesitate to burn Indian villages, McArthur was undaunted by wilderness and seemingly immune to his own pain and that of others.

In 1798 McArthur was appointed a militia captain in the Northwest Territory. In 1806, three years after Ohio was admitted into the union, he was elected colonel of the 1st Regiment, 2nd Brigade, 2nd Division of the state militia. Two years later he was promoted to major general and given command of the division. He proved as much of a comer in politics. In 1804 McArthur was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives. A year later he was elected to the Ohio Senate, and in 1809 he became speaker of the Senate.

Duncan McArthur

In May 1812, with war looming, McArthur rallied the militia and was commissioned colonel of the newly formed 1st Regiment of Ohio volunteers. He led the regiment north to Detroit, arriving on July 5. By then Congress had declared war against Britain. A month later, as British Maj. Gen. Isaac Brock prepared to assault Detroit, Brig. Gen. William Hull, the governor of Michigan Territory, detached troops to meet a vital supply column. On August 14, with 500 men between them, Cols. McArthur and Lewis Cass were sent to escort the 150-man column north through the Great Black Swamp. After a day’s march they were summoned back to Detroit with all haste. They arrived on August 16 to the shocking news Hull had surrendered the garrison after only a perfunctory British Used both for ceremonial bombardment and had included their re- purposes and to maintain spective regiments in the terms of capitu- cadence during route marches, snare drums lation. Though technically a prisoner of were common in the war, McArthur was free to return home on American and British a promise not to resume arms. Having liter- armies during the War ally and figuratively fought for everything he of 1812. This example had in life, the situation must have rankled. belonged to a the Nova Scotia Fencibles, a He’d been defeated by proxy.

Canadian militia unit.

In April 1813 McArthur was included on paper in a parolee exchange, freeing him for service, and he immediately enlisted in the U.S. Army with the rank of brigadier general of volunteers. While that summer proved relatively uneventful, fall brought welcome action. On September 10 Master Commandant Oliver

Snare Drum

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Hazard Perry’s Lake Erie squadron of nine ships soundly defeated their British opposites, claiming all six enemy vessels as prizes. With command of the lake lost, British Maj. Gen. Henry Procter abandoned and burned Fort Malden, at the mouth of the Detroit River, and fled east.

Brig. Gen. William Henry Harrison set off in pursuit of the retreating Redcoats, bringing them to battle on October 5 along the Thames just shy of Moraviantown.

Retreating in disorder, the British fled farther east.

McArthur, though second-in-command of the Army of the Northwest, was not present at the Battle of the Thames. Harrison had ordered him to remain at Detroit in command of the garrison. Thus tasked with literally “holding the fort” three days’ march west of the action, he was deprived of an opportunity to get in on the victory.

After two campaigning seasons McArthur remained unbloodied and frustrated.

He returned to Chillicothe for the winter. But the next spring personal hardship only added to his frustrations. McArthur resided in Fruit Hill, an elegant stone mansion overlooking town and the Scioto River valley.

On the morning of April 15, 1814, a massive conflagration razed the house.

Over the following months of relative inactivity McArthur smoldered. The hand of fate had frustrated him through three campaign seasons, leaving him on the fringes of battle. As the leaves turned color, he grew hellbent on finally making his mark in a war that had thus far sidelined him. “The summer of 1814 was passing away on the northwestern frontier without affording his enterprising genius an opportunity of striking a blow at the enemy,” McDonald wrote. “He began to think of making an excursion through Upper Canada, to pass through the enemy’s country till he should join the army of Gen. [Jacob] Brown near the falls of Niagara.”

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MAP BY BRIAN WALKER; RIGHT: DON TROIANI (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

McArthur hoped to avoid engaging British regulars, who were well-trained and -equipped veterans of combat in Europe.

TOP: U.S. ARMY CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY; BELOW: DON TROIANI (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

Brig. Gen. Winfield Scott’s victory over the British in the July 5, 1814, Battle of Chippawa helped fuel McArthur’s determination to launch a raid into Upper Canada.

LAKE HURON MILES 0

UPPER CANADA Oxford

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Burford Malcolm’s Mills

T H A M ES RIVER

Moraviantown Detroit

Port Dover LAKE ERIE

Most of McArthur’s mounted volunteers would have carried a weapon like that of this contemporary Ohio militiaman—an extremely accurate Kentucky long rifle in .40 or .48 caliber.

MAP BY BRIAN WALKER; RIGHT: DON TROIANI (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

TOP: U.S. ARMY CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY; BELOW: DON TROIANI (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

McArthur’s Raid According to McArthur’s after-action report, the force he assembled for his foray behind enemy lines comprised “mounted troops, consisting of 600 volunteers, 50 United States rangers and 70 Indians.” Each rider carried 12 days of rations. Most of the volunteers were Kentuckians under the field command of Maj. Peter Dudley, the remainder McArthur’s fellow Ohioans. No artillery, no baggage and no wagons would slow them down.

As McArthur proposed to spend weeks marauding through Upper Canada, secrecy and dissimulation were essential. Even the men assigned to the raid were kept largely in the dark. McArthur’s general orders enjoined his troops “to prepare for a short, rapid and, it is believed, a brilliant expedition—one which may be attended with some danger and may require all their fortitude to produce a successful issue.” The general encouraged an erroneous rumor the operation was headed north to a restive Indian village at the mouth of the Saginaw River on the western shore of Lake Huron. To reinforce that impression, he had the column initially march north along the western shore of Lake St. Clair before crossing east into Upper Canada north of the lake on October 25.

Advancing rapidly up the Thames Valley, McArthur took precautions to ensure no word of his progress preceded him. As the column approached Moraviantown, he had his rangers surreptitiously flank the hamlet and establish roadblocks to prevent escapees from spreading word east of the American incursion.

In his report McArthur boasted that his precautions bore fruit. “We were very fortunate at this place [Moraviantown] in taking a sergeant in the British service who was proceeding to Burlington with the information that the detachment had passed into the enemy’s territory.”

The Americans were able to maintain that surprise—or so it seemed. “We were thus enabled to arrive at the town of Oxford, 150 miles distant from Detroit, before the inhabitants knew that a force was approaching,” McArthur wrote. On his arrival in each successive settlement the general announced his troops would respect private property provided residents remained peaceably within their homes. Mills, bridges and public buildings would be destroyed.

Unknown to McArthur, however, the enemy had already been alerted to his presence. On October 26 British Lt. Col. William Smelt of the 103rd Regiment of Foot sent a dispatch from his position at Burlington Heights to the commanding officer at York, noting, “There is a report of another party coming down from Detroit.” On November 3 Oxford residents George Nichol and Jacob

Each rider carried 12 days of rations; no artillery, baggage or wagons would slow them down Wood, having gotten wind of the Americans’ imminent arrival, dashed east some 16 miles to Burford, alerting Lt. Col. Henry Bostwick and his 1st Regiment of Oxford militia to the incursion. Bostwick duly reported to the commanding officer at Port Dover, on the north shore of Lake Erie, that a force of “undisciplined” Kentuckians was rampaging through intent on “ravaging this district.”

On arriving in Oxford the next day and learning of Nichol and Wood’s intelligence mission, McArthur, true to his word, burned their houses and outbuildings, Wood’s joiner’s shop and Nichol’s mill.

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McArthur’s raid came on the heels of the Oct. 5, 1813, American victory at the Battle of the Thames, which resulted in the British losing control of what is now southeastern Ontario and in the death of British-allied Shawnee chief Tecumseh.

720 1

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Declining combat, McArthur left a small rearguard at the ford and wheeled south. His strategy relied on speed and surprise, and he had no intention of being drawn into a set-piece battle against British regulars established on the opposite bank of a swollen river. On reaching a safe distance from the ford, McArthur’s troops bivouacked for the night. The next morning they resumed riding south. As the raiders passed through Mohawk (presentday Mount Pleasant), they burned homes in the hamlet and Thomas Perrin’s gristmill on Mount Pleasant Creek.

Around noon on November 6 McArthur’s vanguard arrived at Maple Grove, two miles north of Malcolm’s Mills.

South of Maple Grove the terrain rises gradually to a low ridge just north of Malcolm’s Mills. From atop the ridge the ground drops to a 200-yard-wide plain bisected by Malcolm’s Creek before rising sharply again on the south side. To the right of the plain, beside a millpond some 220 yards west of a central bridge over the creek, stood brothers John and Finlay Malcolm’s gristmill and sawmill.

Having had days to prepare, the local militia had removed the planks from the bridge, prepared defensive positions atop the ridge south of the creek and constructed a roadblock of brush and logs between the creek

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The next morning McArthur advanced to Burford, 9 miles west of Brant’s Ford on the Grand River (opposite present-day Brantford).

He found the village undefended. Bostwick, realizing he was outnumbered, had moved his militia southeast 7 miles to Malcolm’s Mills (present-day Oakland). There the British coloU.S. TROOPS nel laid plans to link up with other militia units and assemble a force capable of engaging McKILLED Arthur. Meanwhile, after plundering for proviSIX WOUNDED sions and torching the schoolhouse, the Americans marched west to the ford.

There for the first time they encountered UPPER CANADA/ significant resistance. Captain Adam Muir BRITISH TROOPS and 50 British regulars of the 41st Regiment of Foot had raced to the ford from Culver’s Inn, south of Simcoe, arriving late the preKILLED NINE WOUNDED, vious afternoon. Soon joining them were 111 TAKEN PRISONER elements of the 19th Light Dragoons under Capt. Peter Chambers and Mohawk warriors of the Six Nations under Capt. John Norton. Deploying on the east bank of the Grand, they intended to contest any crossing and were expecting further reinforcements and cannons from Burlington Heights.

SARIN IMAGES (GRANGER)

Battle of Malcolm’s Mills

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

SARIN IMAGES (GRANGER)

and the heights. Bostwick believed the millpond and adjacent marshy ground were sufficient to secure his left flank, while the swift, deep creek itself would thwart any attempt to cross. Richard Shaver, the retired director of the Canadian Military Heritage Museum in Brantford, describes the colonel’s selection of a battlefield and defensive preparations as “absolutely excellent.” Bostwick’s force comprised some 550 militiamen and one British regular, Sgt. Charles Collins, detached from the 41st Regiment. Though the colonel had chosen the battlefield wisely, he was no match for a determined McArthur.

To give the false impression of a direct assault, the American commander had his Kentucky militiamen keep up a steady fire on Bostwick’s front. He then personally led the Ohio militia through the woods on a sweeping probe downstream, where they had the good fortune to find a raft of driftwood spanning the creek. Once across, his men attacked the militia from the rear, signaling the Kentuckians to pour across the frame of the bridge. Alerted to the pincer attack by whoops from McArthur’s excited Indians, the Canadians were able to flee from their strong defensive position before the raiders could bag the entire party.

“One captain and 17 privates killed, nine privates wounded, and three captains, five subalterns and 103 privates made prisoners,” McArthur reported of Canadian losses. His own casualties numbered one killed and six wounded. The figures conflict with Canadian reports of only two fatalities—namely Sgt. Collins and Pvt. Edwin Barton of the 1st Regiment of Norfolk militia. Regardless, the militia broke and ran, leaving the Americans free to proceed unmolested.

McArthur did not pursue the fleeing militia, but he did burn the Malcolm brothers’ mills. Riding south, the raiders skirmished with the British and destroyed two other mills before reaching Port Dover and also disabling its mills. On November 8 they withdrew west along the north shore of Lake Erie, arriving in Detroit on the 17th, their mission accomplished. “The resources of the enemy have been essentially impaired,” McArthur crowed in his report, “and the destruction of the valuable mills in the vicinity of the Grand River, employed in the support of the army in the [Niagara] peninsula, together with the consumption of forage and provisions necessary for the troops has added to the barrier…against any attempts which may be made this winter in the direction of Detroit.” The raiders had struck a significant blow against the British and secured the approaches to the vital American garrison, all at very little cost in terms of resources and casualties. McArthur’s Raid had been a stunning success.

The raid reveals a great deal about both McArthur’s concept of warfare and his character. His objective had been economic—to render western Upper Canada incapable of provisioning British troops—and he had no qualms about destroying public and private property if it harmed

Tactical Takeaways

the enemy. He had been equally determined to avoid a pitched battle with British regulars and suffer casualties he could ill afford.

A consummate strategist, McArthur under- Hit the soft spots. stood he could not allow combat to distract By avoiding direct combat with enemy from the mission objective. forces whenever McArthur’s Raid also provides a textbook possible, McArthur example of asymmetric warfare. Living off wreaked havoc on the land, relying on speed and avoiding important economic combat, his small, mobile force had wreaked targets without sustaining significant havoc in the enemy’s vulnerable rear areas. losses to his force.

American irregular forces had won a light- Travel light and fast. ning guerrilla campaign against an estab- Raids behind enemy lished, hegemonic British empire. At some lines generally only level the raid presaged Maj. Gen. William fare well when they are conducted swiftly with Tecumseh Sherman’s March to the Sea pre- highly mobile forces. cisely 50 years later. Whereas McArthur Asymmetrical works. focused on destroying mills, making it im- But only when the possible for the enemy to render grain into smaller force avoids flour and timber into lumber, Sherman tar- set-piece battles with stronger and usually geted railroads, breaking the enemy supply better-equipped foes. line. A half century almost to the day before Sherman’s army set off for Savannah, leaving behind a smoldering Atlanta, McArthur rode triumphantly into Detroit. If Sherman’s March to the Sea represented the dawn of total war, McArthur’s Raid at very least presaged, and perhaps informed, that apocalyptic rampage. MH Ontario-based historian Bob Gordon specializes in Canadian military and social history. His most recent book is The Bad Detective: The True Story of a Victorian Sleuth. For further reading he recommends History of the Late War in the Western Country, by Robert B. McAfee; Biographical Sketches of Gen. Nathaniel Massie, Gen. Duncan McArthur, Capt. William Wells and Gen. Simon Kenton, by John McDonald; and Malcolm’s Mills: The Last Canadian Battle of the War of 1812, by Andrea Westfall.

In some respects McArthur’s 1813 raid into Upper Canada presaged Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman’s 1863 March to the Sea during the Civil War—though Union troops targeted supply lines rather than mills.

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A gunner with the military police detachment of the Special Forces Command scans an alpine border area from a helicopter in 2017.

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NEUTRAL UNLESS...

Due in part to its readiness to fight, Switzerland has spent centuries in relative peace

By Jon Guttman

B

ehind Switzerland’s long-standing policy of armed neutrality is a tradition of maintaining a strong citizen militia ready to defend the nation’s land and airspace with proven ferocity.

Beginning with the victory of the cantons of Schwyz, Uri and Unterwalden over Hapsburg Duke Leopold I at Morgareten on Nov. 15, 1315, Switzerland expanded into a confederation of cantons that united against any threat—as demonstrated in battle against Austrians at Sempach on July 9, 1386.

Although Swiss national expansion ended after its defeat by a FrancoVenetian force at Marignano on Sept. 13–14, 1515, Swiss mercenary companies continued to provide foreign armies with a formidable edge. That tradition survives in the Vatican’s Swiss Guard.

Switzerland’s last major conflict was the internal Sonderbund War of Nov. 3–29, 1847, after which its principal martial—or rather,

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NEUTRAL UNLESS... anti-martial—contribution was Henry Dunant’s conceptualization of the International Red Cross in 1863. The Swiss managed to keep largely out of both world wars, although venturesome individuals fought in the French Foreign Legion and other forces. In World War II the Swiss air force did clash with German aircraft that violated its airspace in May–June 1940, shooting down 11 for the loss of two fighters and a reconnaissance plane. Swiss fighters and antiaircraft batteries also shot down 15 encroaching Allied aircraft, killing 36 airmen, while losing one plane to combat with a U.S. fighter in September 1944.

The present-day Swiss armed forces comprise a small nucleus of regulars, the rest being male conscripts aged 19 to 34 and male or female volunteers aged 18 to 49. Obligatory service lasts 300 days, followed by 10 years in reserve. Like the U.S. Army National Guard, Swiss forces assist in the event of local emergencies. In 2003 Switzerland deployed 31 soldiers to Afghanistan for service alongside Germans in the NATO-affiliated International Security Assistance Force. Its last two officers returned home in 2008. MH

A Legend, Tradition & Reality

A Konrad Grob’s painting of the 1386 Battle of Sempach shows Swiss hero Arnold von Winkelried sacrificially impaling himself on Austrian pikes to create a gap through which his comrades stormed and routed the enemy, killing Duke Leopold III and some 1,500 of his soldiers. While the decisive victory cemented the Old Swiss Confederacy, Winkelried’s very existence remains the subject of debate. B German and Swiss soldiers meet along their shared border in 1917.

Switzerland remained neutral through World War I, although Swiss volunteers fought on both sides. C During World War I a soldier patrols the Pennine Alps along the Italian border, with Monte Rosa in the background. D An army officer instructs a young enlistee on a rifle range in 1938. E Members of the 3rd Howitzer Battery train on their 150 mm gun during World War I.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: PHILIPP SCHMIDLI, SWITZERLAND DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE, CIVIL PROTECTION AND SPORT (VBS); THIS PAGE, ABOVE: VBS; A: BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; B: BUNDESARCHIV; C, E: SWISS FEDERAL ARCHIVES (2); D: HORACE ABRAHAMS/FOX PHOTOS (GETTY IMAGES);

Although the populace, depending on region or canton, speaks German, French, Italian or Romansh, the Swiss armed forces shoulder tab is in French.

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: PHILIPP SCHMIDLI, SWITZERLAND DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE, CIVIL PROTECTION AND SPORT (VBS); THIS PAGE, ABOVE: VBS; A: BRIDGEMAN IMAGES; B: BUNDESARCHIV; C, E: SWISS FEDERAL ARCHIVES (2); D: HORACE ABRAHAMS/FOX PHOTOS (GETTY IMAGES);

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NEUTRAL UNLESS...

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H

Aerial Incidents & Mechanized Mobility

F A Swiss Messerschmitt Me 109E-3 sports the red-and-white identification bands adopted during World War II. Nazi Germany’s 1940 invasion of France was attended by intrusions into Swiss airspace, resulting in several dogfights, with Hermann Göring’s Luftwaffe getting the worst of it. G One of scores of interned Allied aircraft, an American Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress of the 337th Bombardment Squadron, 96th Bombardment Group, wears Swiss crosses at Dübendorf Air Base in 1944. H Northrop F-5E Tiger fighters of the Swiss air force undergo maintenance in an underground hangar amid the Swiss Alps in 1998. I A British-made Swiss army Centurion tank negotiates city streets during winter maneuvers in 1970. J French-built Aérospatiale Alouette III helicopters participate in combined-arms maneuvers in 1986. K A McDonnell Douglas F/A-18D Hornet is towed out of its hardened hangar for a patrol in 2008. L A Panzer 87 Leopard, a Swiss-made variant of the German Leopard 2A4, participates in winter maneuvers in 2013. M Swiss soldiers, their faces masked against the COVID-19 virus, greet the visiting chief of staff of neutral Liechtenstein at the Castelgrande in Bellinzona, Ticino, on Aug. 31, 2021. Switzerland responded to the COVID-19 threat with its largest troop mobilization since World War II.

F: HERMANN KEIST; G: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; H: ARCHIV FESTUNG GOTTHARD; I, J: ULLSTEIN BILD, DTL. (GETTY IMAGES, 2); K: MIKE NIEDERHAUSER, VBS; L: NICOLA PITARO, VBS; M: ALEXANDER KÜHNI, VBS

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F: HERMANN KEIST; G: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; H: ARCHIV FESTUNG GOTTHARD; I, J: ULLSTEIN BILD, DTL. (GETTY IMAGES, 2); K: MIKE NIEDERHAUSER, VBS; L: NICOLA PITARO, VBS; M: ALEXANDER KÜHNI, VBS

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The 1828 Russian siege of Kars was just one of many battles in the long, tortured history of the massive hilltop fortress.

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THE LOST CITADEL

For centuries Armenian residents of the Transcaucasian stronghold of Kars watched invaders come and go—until its final betrayal

By Richard F. Selcer

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The origin of the name Kars is itself a matter of continuing dispute—is it Kars, Qers or Qars? Is it of Armenian, Georgian or Turkish origin? The fortress lies just west of the Turkish-Armenian border on the Akhuryan (or Arpachay) River, between the Black and Caspian seas and south of the Caucasus RUSSIA Mountains. The great historical emBLACK pires of Persia, Ottoman Turkey and SEA Russia intersected in the region.

KARS Also claiming ground here at variT U R K E Y PRESENT-DAY BORDERS ous times were the Armenians, ByzIRAN antines and Mongols.

SYRIA Coalescing around this hub of IRAQ empires in the 4th century bc was the Kingdom of Armenia, which in ad 301 became the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion. With the later rise of Islam to the south and east, the kingdom became increasingly isolated and vulnerable.

In the 9th century, with the threat of Muslim invasion ever present, the Armenians built the first fortifications

at Kars, on the rocky heights overlooking the regional capital. Byzantine forces seized the stronghold in the mid-11th century, only to relinquish it a few years later to the Seljuk Turks. Kars changed hands several times between the Turks and Georgians until 1387, when feared Mongol conqueror Timur (better known in the West as Tamerlane) wrested the city from its cowed defenders and incorporated it into his empire. Turks retook the city in 1585, declared it neutral and destroyed its fortifications. It remained under Ottoman rule in the 18th century when Sultan Murad III rebuilt the stronghold to block Persian encroachment in the region, touching off the 1730–35 Ottoman-Persian War. Although not as comprehensive as the earlier military outworks of James of St. George or Sébastian Le Prestre de Vauban in Western Europe, the Ottoman fortifications were imposing. An abundance of existing basalt enabled the construction of a massive structure whose walls were as solid as concrete. Perched atop a sheer height hundreds of feet above the adjacent valley, Kars citadel was built on a concentric plan with two ringwalls, the lower one backed by an inner wall 36 feet high and nine feet thick. The walls stretched for nearly 2 miles around the rocky summit, punctuated at intervals by 220 circular and square towers. These bastions allowed defenders to pour enfilading fire on any attackers managing to scale the heights. Unlike Western European castles, the parapets of Kars were not crenelated, and no moat was necessary.

Kars’ principal defensive feature was its lofty vantage.

A single narrow road ascended to its gates. Attackers

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TOP LEFT: MIKHAIL GERASIMOV; TOP RIGHT: VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM; RIGHT: GRANGER

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he very mention of the world’s great fortresses often inspires admiration—Masada, the Alamo, Gibraltar. Such names recall battles synonymous with heroic resistance and national pride. The history of Kars, however, is one of continual strife, humiliating treaties and the final betrayal and embarrassment of a proud people.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: ARTILLERY MUSEUM, ST. PETERSBURG; TOP: ELIZAVETA BECKER (AKG-IMAGES); LEFT: MAP BY BRIAN WALKER

From its 9th century origins as a small hilltop fort built by the Armenians, Kars evolved into one of the most powerful citadels between the Black and Caspian seas.

would either have to advance up that narrow defile or scale the heights before charging the walls. A secondary kill zone lay between the walls, designed to isolate any attackers who succeeded in breaching the outer defenses.

In the age of ballistae and catapults, Kars was virtually impregnable. While the garrison was heavily fortified, however, the town below remained virtually defenseless.

TOP LEFT: MIKHAIL GERASIMOV; TOP RIGHT: VICTORIA & ALBERT MUSEUM; RIGHT: GRANGER

PREVIOUS SPREAD: ARTILLERY MUSEUM, ST. PETERSBURG; TOP: ELIZAVETA BECKER (AKG-IMAGES); LEFT: MAP BY BRIAN WALKER

In late 1734 Nader Shah Afshar—the last notable Asiatic conqueror, known as the “Sword of Persia”—took the Ottoman-Persian War into Transcaucasia when he claimed the region and led an 80,000-man army against a 140,000man Ottoman force. The Persian army had field artillery but no heavy siege guns, a distinct disadvantage when it came to reducing fortified strongpoints like Kars.

Nader hoped to draw the Turks out of Kars by threatening neighboring cities. When Abdullah Pasha Koprulu did finally march out to meet him, Nader split his army, leading an advance guard of 15,000 men forward while the balance of his force followed within striking distance.

On June 19, 1735, the armies clashed near Yeghevard. Despite being outnumbered more than 5-to-1, Nader quickly captured the Turkish artillery and routed the enemy troops, who fled with Persian cavalry close on their heels.

Leaving upward of 50,000 dead and wounded comrades on the field, the survivors took refuge within the walls of Kars. A shrewd Nader then gathered the Turkish wounded and sent them back to the city along with the beheaded remains of their commanders, including Koprulu. That strategic one-two punch served to overwhelm the city’s medical facilities and demoralize its garrison.

Flush with his victory in the field, Nader shifted his full attention to Kars. However, his troops not only lacked siege artillery, but also were novices at siege warfare.

So instead he had them blockade the city and cut off the garrison’s water supply. Thus avoiding a long, potentially costly siege, the Persian commander subsequently used Kars as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Constantinople. In the final settlement he allowed the Turks to keep the fortress in exchange for the Armenian city of Yerevan.

Kars was thus saved from destruction and thereafter marked the border between Ottoman Turkey and Persia.

In 1744 Kars was the locus of a rebellion against Nader’s rule led by Safi Mirza, a pretender to the Ottoman throne.

Nader raised another army and marched on the city, reaching it on July 23. This time he brought along a siege train and encircled the city with forts and trenches. Again, however, he eschewed costly direct assaults in favor of cutting off the garrison’s water supply. But the Turks had learned from experience and managed to keep water flowing. On October 9 Nader broke off the siege due to a sudden illness. After recuperating, he returned in June 1745 and encamped near Yerevan.

That summer a 140,000-strong Ottoman army led by Grand Vizier Yegen Mohammad Pasha marched out from

Nader Shah Afshar Timur

The Ottomans destroyed Kars after capturing it in 1585, but the threat of Persian encroachment in the region in the 18th century prompted Sultan Murad III to order the rebuilding and enlargement of the hilltop fortress.

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if they surrendered. As all of Anatolia was threatened, Sultan Mahmud I wisely capitulated. Kars had again dodged a bullet, and the Persians went home. Two years later Nader was assassinated by his own officers, and Persia never again threatened the Ottoman empire.

Fenwick Williams

Nicolay Muravyov Kars to engage the Persians, who were encamped some 10 miles away on the battlefield where they’d fought a decade before. On August 9 the armies met and fought a daylong battle. Nader routed the Turks, and the next day his troops encircled the enemy, blocking their escape route to the castle. Pinned in place for more than a week, the

Given the strength of its walls and daunting elevation, Kars remained a key stronghold panicked Ottoman soldiers ultimately mutinied and killed Yegen Pasha before fleeing in disarray back to Kars, leaving some 28,000 dead and wounded on the field, compared to 8,000 Persian casualties. As he had done a decade earlier, Nader sent the Ottoman wounded into the city, overwhelming caregivers and damaging morale. He then extended an olive branch, vowing to spare the inhabitants

In August 1854 Field Marshal FitzRoy Somerset, Lord Raglan, commander of all Allied forces in Crimea, dispatched Maj. Gen. Fenwick Williams and an “advisory team” to stiffen Kars’ defenses. (In the Victorian era the British would notoriously repeat the pattern, sending inadequate forces to near hopeless situations in distant corners of the empire—notably Lord Chelmsford in Zululand in 1879 and Maj. Gen. Charles Gordon at Khartoum in 1884.) Williams arrived at Kars in late September 1854 to find a demoralized conscript garrison of 17,000 Turks armed with obsolete weapons and manning crumbling defenses. Pushing aside Mustafa Pasha, Williams took command and virtually single-handedly worked a military miracle over the next six months, reinforcing the fortifications and whipping the Turkish garrison into fighting

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LEFT: ARMENIAN REVOLUTIONARY FEDERATION ARCHIVES; TOP RIGHT: HULTON ARCHIVE (GETTY IMAGES); RIGHT: SHAPIRO AUCTIONS

Ivan Paskevich

Lord Raglan

weapons had significantly eroded Kars’ defensive value.

Not entirely, though, for even if attackers were to bomb the citadel into rubble, they would still have to storm the heights to take the fortress. Given the strength of its walls and daunting elevation, Kars remained a key stronghold in the border region. Though Ottoman military leaders recognized its strategic importance, their defensive forces were stretched thin—from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean, and from Egypt to the Persian Gulf. The Turks constructed new works below the citadel, while largely assuming its natural defenses would deter aggressors.

A series of 19th century wars with Russia would expose the folly of that assumption.

In 1807 the Turks repulsed one Russian army, but the latter returned in 1828, this time led by Ukrainianborn Lt. Gen. Ivan Paskevich, an experienced and adept field commander. After a three-day battle, during which the Russians pummeled the fortress walls with artillery, the attackers captured Kars and its 11,000-man garrison.

The occupation proved short-lived, however, for Russia returned the citadel to Turkey a year later amid peace negotiations. In 1854, at the outset of the Crimean War, the Russians again knocked at the door. With an imperial army gathering in Georgia, Turkey’s European allies became alarmed Transcaucasia might fall into Russian hands, putting Istanbul and the Black Sea straits at risk.

Even discounting that threat, the fall of Kars would imperil the Allied siege of the Russian fortress of Sevastopol.

As the timid provincial governor, Zarif Mustafa Pasha, seemed neither willing to emerge and give battle nor capable of holding the capital against a determined attack, it seemed only a matter of time before Kars fell.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM, ST. PETERSBURG; BRITISH MUSEUM; ARTOKOLORO (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); BRITISH MUSEUM

By the 19th century the widespread use of gunpowder

shape. In the process he discovered his Turkish troops were not bad soldiers—just badly led.

Rather than cower within the citadel walls, Williams extended the defensive works until the city itself was ringed with eight forts and redoubts interconnected by trench lines that provided interlocking fields of fire. Thanks to his efforts, for the first time in its history Kars comprised a truly fortified city, as opposed to a lone While Armenia traces citadel overlooking a city. its origins to the 9th The anticipated Russian atcentury bc, it was often tack came in June 1855 with some invaded and subjugated.

25,000 troops and 96 guns led After World War I the Turks were forced to cede by Gen. Nicolay Muravyov, who the region—and Kars for- probed the defenses before mounttress—to the newly estabing a siege. Muravyov had no lished First Republic of heavy siege guns, and his supply Armenia, but the latter line back to Georgia was vulnerlasted only until 1920. able, but that didn’t matter. His primary objective was to relieve Allied pressure on Sevastopol. Over the next three months Russian troops overran the fortress’ outer defenses and established a foothold on the heights, but they were unable to push into the city itself. Kars’ British-trained Turks fought with a ferocity that surprised the attackers. The siege continued into fall, by which time the defenders suffered from cholera and were dangerously short of supplies. Williams cut rations repeatedly and sent dispatches begging for help, but the British high command turned a deaf ear to his entreaties. Finally, on September 6 the Ottoman commander in Crimea, Omar Pasha, pulled 45,000 troops from the line at Sevastopol to go to Kars’ relief. Had he done so any earlier, it might have proved a devastating blow to the siege of the former, but Sevastopol fell to the Allies three days later.

Omar Pasha landed on the Black Sea coast north of Kars in late September, about the time Muravyov launched an all-out assault on the city. The starving defenders managed to repulse the seven-hour assault while inflicting nearly 7,000 casualties on the attackers. But Omar Pasha dallied, spending his army’s strength on attacks against secondary targets that failed to tilt the strategic balance.

By late October the garrison at Kars was beyond desperate. The first snow had fallen, and supplies were nearly exhausted. The Ottomans landed yet another army on the Black Sea coast, this one under Omar Pasha’s son Selim Pasha, but he too marched away from Kars, in an effort to save western Anatolia. By then Muravyov was so confident of success that he detached a small force to deal with Selim Pasha, stopping the latter’s advance on November 6.

Finally, on November 28, having abandoned all hope of relief, Williams surrendered his surviving British and

LEFT: ARMENIAN REVOLUTIONARY FEDERATION ARCHIVES; TOP RIGHT: HULTON ARCHIVE (GETTY IMAGES); RIGHT: SHAPIRO AUCTIONS

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: STATE HERMITAGE MUSEUM, ST. PETERSBURG; BRITISH MUSEUM; ARTOKOLORO (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); BRITISH MUSEUM

Free Hayastan

Top: An illustration from the London News of Aug. 24, 1877, depicts Ottoman artillery bombarding Russians, though the latter ultimately did capture Kars. Above: Though defeated by the Russians at the 1915 Battle of Sarikamish, the Turks regained Kars under the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Turkish officers and men to the Russians. On entering Kars, the victors were horrified at the conditions they found. Unburied victims of starvation and disease lay stacked in the streets, the survivors simply too weak to bury them. Many others died over the coming days. In the final weeks of the siege only Williams’ iron will and the city’s mighty fortifications had held the enemy at bay. The British general’s after-action report praised his men: “They fell dead at their posts, in their tents and throughout the camp as brave men should who cling to their duty

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Armenians, Turks and Russians weren’t the only ones to play a role in the history of Kars. In 1855 British Maj. Gen. Fenwick Williams surrendered the Ottoman fortress to the Russians after a spirited defense.

his family to forever tout his triumph. While the capture of Kars hardly made up for the loss of Sevastopol, it served to assuage Russian pride.

More important, Kars again became a diplomatic bargaining chip in peace negotiations, the Russians returning it to the Ottomans in the 1856 Treaty of Paris. That is, until the next round of fighting, which came amid the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War. In November 1877 Russian forces under Gens. Mikhail Loris-Melikov and Ivan Lazarev again captured the fortress from the hapless Turks. This time, however, in the 1878 Treaty of San Stefano, they kept

In November 1914 Ottoman Turkey entered World War I on the side of Austria-Hungary and Germany, largely to reclaim territory lost to Russia, including Kars. Within weeks an Ottoman army invaded Transcaucasia. Though it lost at the Battle of Sarikamish in January 1915, it nevertheless regained Kars in the 1918 Treaty of BrestLitovsk. Once again the Turkish flag flew over the embattled city and its restive, largely Armenian population.

Ottoman troops occupied the city on April 25, 1918, but at war’s end the Allies ordered Turkey to return to its prewar borders, an arrangement formalized in the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres.

Unwilling to cede territory to the Soviet Union, the Allies recognized Armenia in the treaty as an independent republic. Tasked with ensuring the peaceful transfer of Kars from Turkish to Armenian control, British Col. Alfred Rawlinson deemed it an impossible assignment that “could only have been carried into effect by the permanent occupation of the [region]…by considerable forces of European troops”—something that was never going to happen. The United States refused to accept a proffered

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EKIN YALGIN (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Doubtless glad to be alive, the Armenians bore the shame of not having fired a single shot

it along with other chunks of Ottoman territory. Under Russian sovereignty the city became the provincial capital of the Kars Oblast (province), marking the southwestern edge of Romanov territory. When the Russians imposed Eastern Orthodox Christianity on the region, thousands of Muslims fled across the border into Turkey, including 11,000 from Kars alone. In a reverse migration, Christian Armenians and Greeks streamed into Kars from Ottoman territory, setting the stage for the next great struggle.

NATIONAL ARMY MUSEUM (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

through the slightest glimmering of hope of saving a place entrusted to their custody.”

Following the siege the combatant nations honored their respective heroes. In recognition of Williams’ remarkable stand, Queen Victoria created him 1st Baronet of Kars. On the winning side Emperor Alexander II was so pleased with the results that he pinned medals on the deserving Muravyov, as well as the emperor’s own brother Grand Duke Michael, the regional governor general, whom Allied officers derided as “frightened as a rabbit on the battlefield.” Alexander also authorized Muravyov to change his surname to Muravyov-Karsky, allowing

League of Nations mandate over Armenia to keep the peace, setting the stage for yet another round of warfare.

The transfer of Kars was anything but peaceful. Armenian troops roamed the countryside committing atrocities against Turks, while the city’s Ottoman military governor refused to accept the treaty terms, proclaiming a provisional Turkish government over the region. The Ottomans weren’t strong enough to back the claim and were ousted in April 1919 by a joint British-Armenian force.

The troops entered Kars and arrested all Turkish officials who had not fled, sending them into captivity on Malta.

A month later Armenia named Kars capital of its Vanand province. Once again it was a besieged city, not in the classic sense, but as the target of an insurgency against Armenian rule with the backing of the new Turkish nationalist government under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Turkey launched a full-scale invasion of Armenia in September 1920. Four divisions under Brig. Gen. Kâzim Karabekir crossed the border and bore down on Kars.

Having expected the assault, the Armenians had upgraded the city’s defenses, starting with the ancient citadel on the heights. They optimistically pronounced it “impregnable,” figuring Kars could withstand any siege long enough for an Armenian relief force to arrive. It was not to be.

On October 30 the commanding officer at Kars threw open the city gates and allowed the Turks to walk in. The Turks in turn marched thousands of bewildered officers and enlisted men out into captivity. Though doubtless glad to be alive, the Armenians bore the shameful knowledge they had not fired a single shot. It was an unprecedented act of treason as well as a military fiasco, although it went little noticed in the West, in which Gibraltar and Verdun were historical measuring sticks for “holding the fort.” One top Armenian army general committed suicide

Tactical Takeaways

rather than face the shame. “Kars fell, but it was not defeated,” the city’s civil governor said. “It became the victim of our criminal negligence.” In the subsequent humiliating Location is key.

1920 Treaty of Alexandropol, Armenia gave Set atop a steep back Kars and all the other Turkish territory promontory that dominated strategic it had received in the Treaty of Sèvres. terrain, Kars was an The city made one more notable appear- obstacle any invader ance on the stage of history. Soviet forces had to reckon with. occupied Armenia in 1921, imposing a treaty Be proactive. on Turkey that established the border be- On taking command of Kars, Fenwick Williams tween Turkey and the Soviet Union’s three improved its defenses Transcaucasian republics. Signed in Kars on and raised the morale October 13, the treaty left the fortress in of its garrison, thereby Turkish hands—one of few concessions postponing the citadel’s surrender to Muravyov. the Soviets made to a weakened Turkey. A Technologies change. century later the Treaty of Kars remains an The advent of gunobject of Armenian scorn. powder and largeThough the present-day historic fortress caliber artillery made is a popular tourist attraction among foreign Kars’ massive walls far more vulnerable visitors, its dark history remains largely to enemy penetration. unknown in the Western world and is celebrated neither by the Turks nor by the Armenians. Like the city’s former Armenian Holy Apostles Church— which was converted into a mosque in 1993—Kars fortress stands as a monument to a turbulent past. MH Richard Selcer is a Texas-based author and professor of history. He has published 13 books and taught for more than 40 years. For further reading he highly recommends The History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present, by Simon Payaslian, and The Sword of Armenia: Nader Shah, From Tribal Warrior to Conquering Tyrant,

by Michael Axworthy.

EKIN YALGIN (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

NATIONAL ARMY MUSEUM (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

Though Kars fortress is a popular destination among foreign tourists, its contentious history remains a bitter pill for Armenians to swallow.

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Reviews

The Manhattan Project research facility at Oak Ridge, Tenn., was one of Soviet spy George Koval’s primary espionage targets.

Sleeper Agent: The Atomic Spy in America Who Got Away, by Ann Hagedorn, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2021, $28

To be successful and survive, spies must have various qualities, including topical expertise, in-depth knowledge of their enemy, the ability to avoid detection and, often, sheer luck.

Most of all, they must have a highly developed sense of self-preservation to determine when and how to flee from enemy territory.

Ann Hagedorn’s Sleeper Agent relates the absorbing story of Russian spy George Abramovich Koval, an ostensibly patriotic American with engineering training and a top-secret clearance. Born in Sioux City, Iowa, to Russian-born Jewish immigrants, Koval was deeply influenced by his parents’ socialist views, as well as anti-communist and anti-Semitic sentiments within American society. In 1932 his parents returned to Russia with son George, who was subsequently recruited by Soviet intelligence. Koval returned stateside in 1940 and for eight years successfully hid the fact he was a Russian agent. During that time he infiltrated the deep security

around nuclear development work at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Dayton, Ohio, connected to the Manhattan Project. Working through contacts, Koval provided intelligence about the project to Soviet scientists, enabling Russia to develop and detonate its own nuclear weapon a mere four years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Hagedorn details how Koval was able to hide in plain sight due to multiple factors, such as his unobtrusive behavior, his shrewd determination of which assignments to accept, his knowledge of American society and fluency in English, and his hardworking nature, not to mention insufficiently deep background security checks.

Sleeper Agent is a detailed study of the motivations and psychological development of a spy. It is also a veiled warning of the great damage a talented espionage agent can wreak and the danger of accepting information at face value without thorough security clearances.

—S. L. Hoffman

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

The Atomic Spy

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U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

George Jellicoe: SAS and SBS Commander, by Nicholas Jellicoe, Pen and Sword Military, Barnsley, U.K. $38 George Jellicoe undertook some of the most spectacular raids in the Mediterranean during World War II, including blowing up aircraft behind enemy lines in Crete and parachuting into Rhodes on a mission to save the Dodecanese Islands. This was an atmosphere in which Jellicoe thrived, leaping in to engage the enemy where others dared not go. In this detailed account, his son provides a fitting tribute to his father.

In the elder Jellicoe’s early days, the British army’s No. 8 Commando was made up of “lots of sprigs of spriglets of aristocracy,” many of whom were members of London’s very exclusive White’s club, from which they’d been recruited. By the time George Jellicoe joined the SAS in 1941 as David Stirling’s second-in-command, the men were undergoing rigorous training in the North African desert, hiking 60 miles or more while carrying backpacks full of bricks, and jumping from moving trucks.

As a leader of men, Jellicoe gained the respect of those around him, although he

loathed discipline. He fitted in well as commander of the Special Boat Squadron, a post he took up in April 1943. The men of the SBS were a seagoing “bunch of raggle-taggle daring-doers,” whose “filthy and often haphazardly assembled uniforms were in themselves symbolic, reinforcing the raiders’ solidarity and accentuating their disdain for the rule that applied to the rest of the army.”

Jellicoe saw his early foray into action at Tobruk, Libya, as rather a jaunt. By the time he got to the Greek island of Leros, he was taking the war more seriously as he saw the deaths of his fellow soldiers mount up. In 1943 he fought in the battle to defend Leros and, once the island fell to the Germans, helped soldiers escape. He was still only 26 when made acting brigadier for supposedly chasing off the Germans, having “liberated Athens on a bicycle.”

Though Jellicoe went on to postwar careers in the British foreign service, Parliament and business, three quarters of this well-researched biography justly covers his very active military life up to 1945.

As his son states, “The war had been the highlight, the ‘glanzpunkt’ [highlight] of his life.” A fascinating read.

—Julie Peakman Churchill, Master and Commander: Winston Churchill at War, 1895– 1945, by Anthony TuckerJones, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, U.K., 2021, $30 Endorsed in the foreword

by Winston Churchill scholar Andrew Roberts, this balanced biography by former British intelligence officer

and military historian Anthony Tucker-Jones traces Churchill’s rise from a young military officer to his emergence from World War II as a victorious Allied prime minister. Neither a hagiography nor a polemic, Master and Commander explains how Churchill’s formative years shaped him as a military commander, and what he got right and wrong once he attainted high political office. It also examines his propensity to take risks and his fortitude to withstand criticism, opposition and defeat.

Described by the author as an “adrenaline junkie,”

Churchill used the British army as a means of self-promotion and political advancement, combining military service with combat journalism. Between 1895 and 1900 such pursuits took him to Cuba, India, Sudan and South Africa, informing his military thinking and winning him valuable friends.

During World War I Churchill served briefly on the Western Front in France. In all he was attached to nine different regiments in the British, Indian and South African armies. Tucker-Jones argues that Churchill, like his enemies Adolf Hitler and

Recommended

Battle Tactics of the American Revolution

By Robbie MacNiven This study, featuring specially commissioned artwork, investigates the tactics of various forces, including the British and American opponents and their European allies.

MacNiven argues the British army had to relearn lessons from the Seven Years’ War, while the Continental Army largely followed the guidance of Prussian-born Maj. Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben.

The Erawan War

By Ken Conboy Penned by a former Southeast Asian policy analyst, this first volume of a series sheds light on the “Secret War” in Laos, in which the CIA trained indigenous guerrillas to fight communist forces.

Covering the years 1961–69, the book details CIA and Royalist paramilitary operations against communist troops and is vividly illustrated with photos of case officers, equipment and battle scenes.

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Reviews Recommended

Caribbean Volunteers at War

By Mark Johnson This volume details the Caribbean men and women who volunteered for Britain’s Royal Air Force during World War II. Based on press accounts, the author’s own interviews with veterans and other personal accounts, the book provides insights into such volunteers’ everyday experiences, culture clashes and wartime heroism.

Antigonus the One-Eyed

By Jeff Champion This volume takes a strictly military look at Alexander the Great’s “oldest and greatest” successor. Antigonus seized power following Alexander’s death, and after conquering the Asian portion of the empire by 315 bc, he waged war against his rivals until killed in battle in 301 bc.

Benito Mussolini as well as his ostensible ally Joseph Stalin, became a warlord. Yet however impatient for action and prone to autocratic tendencies he might have been, Churchill never overruled his military service chiefs, though he wasn’t shy about trying to verbally batter them into submission.

The author’s focus on the years 1895–1945 is problematic. It makes sense to begin a military study of Churchill with his 1895 graduation from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, as a cornet (second lieutenant) of cavalry, and subsequent service in India and Sudan.

But while terminating his study in 1945 with the Allied victory makes literary sense, Tucker-Jones unfortunately ignores Churchill’s less exciting but still vital second administration from 1951– 55. Increasingly deaf, aging and unwell, he presided over Britain’s actions in cooperation with the United States during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, a hot war with China and North Korea, and covert action against Iran. Churchill also bore responsibility for imperial security operations in Egypt, Cyprus, Kenya and Malaya.

This very readable and critical account of Churchill as warlord is tough but generally fair, though TuckerJones does include an odd, almost throwaway statement about Churchill possibly having Asperger syndrome.

Amply supported with maps, illustrations, endnotes, a bibliography and an index, Master and Commander is an

excellent addition to the Churchill literary corpus.

—William John Shepherd Red Star Versus Rising Sun, Vol. 1: The Conquest of Manchuria, 1931–1938,

by Adrien Fontanellaz, Helion & Co., Warwick, U.K., 2021, $29.95 World War II officially began when Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Many historians, however, point to Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria as the true beginning of that conflict. Like the fall

of a set of dominos, they note, that act of aggression triggered a series of events leading the worldwide cataclysm.

Yet neither was the invasion of Manchuria an isolated incident. In Red Star Versus Rising Sun author Adrien Fontanellaz places that incursion in the context of a protracted intermittent conflict between Japan, Russia and, eventually, the Soviet Union over the economic and political control of northeast Asia.

After some 200 years of isolation, the opening of Japan in the mid-19th century triggered rapid modern-

ization of the nation and its military. By the last decade of the century it aimed to exert its imperial influence over China and northeast Asia. Those ambitions butted up against the simultaneous expansion of the Russian empire across Siberia to the Pacific Ocean.

As China fell under the influence of numerous foreign powers, and its central government increasingly degenerated into chaos, Russia and Japan sought to exploit the situation to extend their influence over the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria.

The former was important to Japan, as it represented a jumping-off point on the Asian mainland for a possible invasion of China, while the latter was vital to both empires as a source of natural resources for modern industry. Thus conflict between the expansionist empires was inevitable—and it didn’t cease after Russia’s humiliating defeat by the Japanese in 1905, or after the 1917–23 Russian Revolution.

In this first volume of a series Fontanellaz describes the origins and history of the rivalry between Russia and Japan, which had far-reaching repercussions. It is a fascinating account of an aspect of 20th century history rarely covered in the West.

—Robert Guttman The Katyn Massacre 1940,

by Thomas Urban, Pen & Sword Military, Barnsley, U.K., and Havertown, Pa., 2020, $34.95 Decades ago this reviewer

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worked at a British mill that employed many Polish exservicemen. Captured by the Russians in 1939, they had been sent via Iran in 1942 to serve in North Africa and Italy, later refusing to return home to communist postwar Poland. One day a Polish co-worker asked whether I’d heard about the wartime Katyn massacre.

I had not. Then, with tears in his eyes, he recounted how one of his friends, a cadet officer around my age, had been murdered alongside thousands of other officers.

In what has been described as a crime without parallel the Soviets slaughtered some 22,000 Polish military officers—from ensigns to generals—in April and May 1940. Loved ones simply stopped receiving letters, while anything sent to the missing men was returned as undeliverable. It was later revealed that in the days prior to their murders most of the men had been rounded up amid the vast forests near Katyn, just west of Smolensk.

It was in that region in January 1943 that a German

officer noted a wolf frantically digging in the snow close to a birch cross. As the snow melted, two peasants and a railway worker, whose father had been shot by the NKVD (the Soviet secret police), led German military police troops to the same spot. Exploratory digging revealed scores of corpses in Polish uniforms. (Coincidentally, Rudolf-Christoph von Gersdorff, the officer who reported the discovery to Berlin, had escaped Gestapo detection after having participated in a failed attempt to assassinate Hitler at an exhibition of captured Soviet weapons.)

By mid-June digging parties had located eight graves containing 4,143 corpses.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, a notorious liar and manipulator, for once told the truth as he trumpeted the discovery in hopes of driving a wedge between the Allies.

Meanwhile, in secret dispatches to Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin blamed the Germans for the massacre and complained that the Polish government in exile in London had adopted a “hostile attitude” to the Soviet Union. American intelligence sources subsequently confirmed Katyn as a Soviet war crime in eight separate reports, but presumably for reasons of political expedience and Allied wartime “solidarity” the Roosevelt administration dismissed the reports and buried all relevant records.

Author Thomas Urban succinctly guides the reader

through the multiple investigations, as well as the numerous conflicting claims and counterclaims as to who was responsible for the massacre. The book’s epilogue draws attention to several mysterious—and still unsolved—deaths across the years of people with connections to the investigations.

Urban also notes that the location of the 7,305 other murdered Polish officers remains known only to those with access to secret NKVD archives. Their fate should never be forgotten.

—David Saunders Richard III: The Self-Made King, by Michael Hicks, Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 2019, $35 For more than five centuries Richard III, despite his brief 26-month reign, has retained his dubious distinction as the most infamous of British monarchs. Granted, history is invariably written by the victors, and most of that history was written by Richard III’s usurping successors, the Tudors. It was no coincidence that Shake-

speare’s namesake play about the last Yorkist king was written during the reign of Elizabeth I, granddaughter of Henry VII, the very man who seized Richard’s throne. In recent years “Ricardian” revisionist historians have attempted to rehabilitate Richard III, arguing that the monarch’s evil reputation was solely based on Tudor propaganda.

In this fascinating new biography British medieval historian Michael Hicks delves beneath the hyperbole, seeking to uncover the character of the real Richard and explain how he became the man he was.

Born during the turbulent Wars of the Roses, Richard was the youngest surviving son of the Duke of York, a wealthy and powerful magnate who arguably had a better claim to the throne than reigning monarch Henry VI. Although Richard’s father and brother Edmund were killed, his 20-year-old eldest brother succeeded Henr y VI as King Edward IV. Richard thus became, at age 8, a royal duke and third in the line of succession after brothers Edward IV and George, Duke of Clarence.

He took it from there. But just how far did he go to secure his place in the monarchial succession? Richard III: The Self-Made King presents its protagonist as a product of both the feudal system into which he was born and the turbulent era of conspiracies and civil wars in which he lived.

—Robert Guttman

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Hallowed Ground Cowpens National Battlefield, South Carolina, 1781

V

irginian Daniel Morgan was a crack-shot frontiersman and soldier. Few men in American history hated the British more than Morgan. Having survived the usually fatal sentence of 500 lashes for striking a British officer during the French and Indian War, he repaid the Redcoats in spades during the American Revolution. This was especially true on Jan. 17, 1781, at Cowpens, S.C., a battle that set the stage for the Franco-American victory at Yorktown, Va., that October, effectively ending the war and ensuring the United States’ hard-won independence.

Facing a stalemate in the Northern colonies, British strategists looked to help Southern Loyalists (aka Tories) regain control of their region and then use those recruits to augment British forces on a northward march to crush the rebellion. The campaign began well with the British capture of Savannah, Ga., NC in late 1778. In May 1780 they took COWPENS Charleston, S.C., compelling an NATIONAL BATTLEFIELD American army under Maj. Gen. SOUTH Benjamin Lincoln to surrender.

CAROLINA That August at Camden, S.C., the GA CHARLESTON British destroyed another AmeriSAVANNAH can army, led by Maj. Gen. Horatio Gates—the victor of Saratoga and rival of Gen. George Washington.

The Southern theater was the scene of a brutal civil war between Loyalists and Patriots (aka Whigs). Both sides organized militias and devastated the countryside. In October 1780 Washington, hoping to turn the tide of conflict, appointed Maj. Gen. Nathanael Greene the new American commander in the South, assisted by Brig. Gen. Morgan.

Both were trusted lieutenants of Washington. Greene divided his army soon after his arrival, sending a detachment under Morgan southwest of the Catawba River to hamper British operations in the Carolina backcountry. The British commander in the South, Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis, sent Lt. Col. Banastre Tarleton to block Morgan. Patriots widely despised Tarleton for having allowed his men to kill surrendering American soldiers at the May 1780 Battle of Waxhaws, an action derisively known as “Tarleton’s Quarter.”

On Jan. 12, 1781, British scouts pinpointed Morgan’s army on South Carolina’s Pacolet River, and Tarleton gave chase. Morgan retreated north and by January 16 was traveling west on the Green River Road. That day, as Tarleton closed in, Morgan resolved to make a stand at Cowpens, a frontier pasture some 500 yards long and wide with scattered trees but little undergrowth. Morgan called for militia units to gather there, and they began to arrive overnight.

January 17 dawned clear and cold. The British had been on the march since 3 a.m. Tarleton’s approaching army, anchored by his veteran Loyalist British Legion, numbered 1,150 men, including 300 mounted dragoons, more than 600 infantrymen and two 3-pounder cannons. Morgan waited with some 1,900 men, comprising 182 Continental and state dragoons, 300 Continental infantrymen and some 1,400 Southern militia. Tarleton was confident of victory and deployed his men along the Green River Road.

As Morgan expected, Tarleton attacked head-on. Morgan’s first line of troops were sharpshooters who drove off the British dragoons before falling back to join the Southern militia in the second line. That line fired two volleys before withdrawing to the third line, comprising the Continental infantry. Interpreting the pullback as retreat, the British infantry, led by the 71st Regiment of Foot, confidently advanced. Amid the noise of battle militiamen on the American right mistakenly turned to retreat. Sensing victory, the British broke ranks and began to charge. At that moment Morgan rode up and ordered his troops to turn and fire, which they did, inflicting heavy losses. The reorganized American militia and dragoons then enveloped the fleeing British. Tarleton and survivors fled back to Cornwallis’ main army.

Calling the battle “a devil of a whipping,” Morgan reported just 12 Americans killed and 60 wounded, while Tarleton lost 110 killed and more than 700 captured. After rejoining the main American army, an ailing Morgan retired to his Virginia farm, leaving Greene to harry Cornwallis to final defeat at Yorktown that fall.

Established in 1929 and managed by the National Park Service, Cowpens National Battlefield—near Chesnee, S.C., just south of the state line with North Carolina—features battle relics and displays relating the Southern campaign. MH

TOP: DON TROIANI (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES); BELOW: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

By William John Shepherd

76 MILITARY HISTORY JANUARY 2022

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TOP: DON TROIANI (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES); BELOW: NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

Top: Sensing victory as American militiamen mistakenly turned to retreat, the British 71st Regiment of Foot was routed when Daniel Morgan's Regulars abruptly turned and fired.

The Green River Road runs through the park.

77

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War Games 1

2

3

4

5 6

Mary Walker

Saving Lives Amid Death

2. Noel Godfrey Chavasse 3. Arthur Martin-Leake 4. Richard Rowland Kirkland

8

9

5. James Henry Reynolds 6. Clarence Sasser 7. Dominique Jean Larrey 8. Mary Walker 9. James Mouat 10. Desmond Doss

10

____ A. Aspern-Essling, 1809 ____ B. Rorke’s Drift, 1879 ____ C. Chattanooga, 1863 ____ D. Somme, 1916, Passchendaele, 1917 ____ E. Okinawa, 1945

Celebrated Citadels

____ F. Gallipoli, 1915

Can you identity these targets of siege across the centuries?

____ G. Fredericksburg, 1862

___ A. Fort Carillon/Ticonderoga

___ F. Alhambra

____ H. Dinh Tuong Province, 1968

___ B. Marienburg/Malbork

___ G. Valenciennes

____ I. Vlakfontein, 1902, Zonnebeke, 1914

___ C. Acre/Akko

___ H. Chapultapec

___ D. Aberystwyth

___ I. Fort Pulaski

____ J. Balaklava, 1854

___ E. Harlech Castle

___ J. Stirling Castle Answers: A6, B9, C5, D1, E8, F2, G3, H4, I7, J10

Answers: A7, B5, C8, D2, E10, F1, G4, H6, I3, J9

78 MILITARY HISTORY JANUARY 2022

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10/20/21 9:01 AM

BUNDESARCHIV

1. John Simpson Kirkpatrick

LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; 1: JOHN PRIOR IMAGES (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); 2: AJAY SURESH, CC BY-SA 2.0; 3: HEMIS (ALAMY); 4: LION05, CC BY-SA 2.0; 5: CHATEAU DE VERSAILLES; 6: FRANK PAUL (ALAMY); 7: EDWIN REMSBERG (ALAMY); 8: MARKUS TRIENKE, CC BY-SA 2.0; 9: ALL CANADA PHOTOS (ALAMY); 10: IMAGEBROKER (ALAMY)

7

Can you match these caregivers with the battle/campaign in which they distinguished themselves?

THE LAST JAPANESE HOW MANY TIMES SOLDIER HAS THEFROM DESIGN WORLD OF THE WAR U.S.IIFLAG SURRENDERED CHANGED? IN THIS YEAR

Raiders on Review “Hit ’em where they ain’t” is an ancient alternative to direct confrontation, as related below:

27, 31, 36 or 40?

- 1945 - 1947 - 1950 - 1974 For more,search visitDAILY QUIZ For more,

Askari Forces

WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ at HistoryNet.com.

MAGAZINES/QUIZ HistoryNet.com

ANSWER: 1974. PRIVATE TERUO NAKAMURA, A TAIWANESE NATIONAL,27.

ENLISTED IN THE JAPANESE ARMY IN 1943.

ANSWER: THE CURRENT DESIGN HAS BEEN IN HE HELD OUT ON 1960 MORTAI IN INDONESIA HE WAS CAPTURED PLACE SINCE WHEN THE FLAGUNTIL WAS MODIFIED IN DECEMBER 1974. EARLIER THAT YEAR, HIRO ONODA, WHO TO INCLUDE THE 50thFINALLY STATE. SURRENDERED. HELD OUT INHAWAII, THE PHILLIPINES,

enemy’s supplies

B. He slew Gen. Yuan Shao C. He captured a sacred

D. He captured the enemy’s

enemy talisman main force 2. To what end did Edward III stage his 14th century chevauchées (mounted raids) in France?

A. Deprive the enemy of resources B. Demoralize the populace C. Avoid the risks of open battle D. All of the above

BUNDESARCHIV

3. What made Col. Ranald S. Mackenzie’s 1874 raid into Palo Duro Canyon decisive in the Red River War? A. AmericanHOUSE_FLAGCHANGE-square Indian casualties B. 1,500-plus horses killed C. Supplies destroyed D. B and C 4. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck and his Askari force survived into 1918 by raiding whose African colony in November 1917?

A. Britain B. Portugal C. Belgium D. France

MIHP-220100-GAMES.indd 79

Answers: 1A, 2D, 3D, 4B,

LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; 1: JOHN PRIOR IMAGES (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); 2: AJAY SURESH, CC BY-SA 2.0; 3: HEMIS (ALAMY); 4: LION05, CC BY-SA 2.0; 5: CHATEAU DE VERSAILLES; 6: FRANK PAUL (ALAMY); 7: EDWIN REMSBERG (ALAMY); 8: MARKUS TRIENKE, CC BY-SA 2.0; 9: ALL CANADA PHOTOS (ALAMY); 10: IMAGEBROKER (ALAMY)

1. Why did Cao Cao’s raid on Wu- chao turn the ad 200 Guandu campaign in his favor?

A. He destroyed the

40

STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION (required by Act of August 12, 1970: Section 3685, Title 39, United States Code). 1. Military History 2. (ISSN: 0889-7328) 3. Filing date: 10/1/21. 4. Issue frequency: Bi Monthly. 5. Number of issues published annually: 6. 6. The annual subscription price is $39.95. 7. Complete mailing address of known office of publication: HistoryNet, 901 N Glebe Rd, 5th Floor, Arlington, VA 22203. 8. Complete mailing address of headquarters or general business office of publisher: HistoryNet, 901 N Glebe Rd, 5th Floor, Arlington, VA 22203. 9. Full names and complete mailing addresses of publisher, editor, and managing editor. Publisher, Michael A. Reinstein, HistoryNet, 901 N Glebe Rd, 5th Floor, Arlington, VA 22203, Editor, Stephen Harding, HistoryNet, 901 N Glebe Rd, 5th Floor, Arlington, VA 22203, Editor in Chief, Alex Neill , HistoryNet, 901 N Glebe Rd, 5th Floor, Arlington, VA 22203. 10. Owner: HistoryNet; 901 N Glebe Rd, 5th Floor, Arlington, VA 22203. 11. Known bondholders, mortgages, and other security holders owning or holding 1 percent of more of total amount of bonds, mortgages or other securities: None. 12. Tax status: Has Not Changed During Preceding 12 Months. 13. Publisher title: Military History. 14. Issue date for circulation data below: September 2021. 15. The extent and nature of circulation: A. Total number of copies printed (Net press run). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 41,484. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 45,548. B. Paid circulation. 1. Mailed outside-county paid subscriptions. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 24,242. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 23,471. 2. Mailed in-county paid subscriptions. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 0.

Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 3. Sales through dealers and carriers, street vendors and counter sales. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 5,028. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 6,711. 4. Paid distribution through other classes mailed through the USPS. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 0. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. C. Total paid distribution. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 29,270.

Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date; 30,182. D. Free or nominal rate distribution (by mail and outside mail). 1. Free or nominal Outside-County. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 0.

Number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 2. Free or nominal rate in-county copies. Average number of copies each issue during the preceding 12 months: 0. Number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 3.

Free or nominal rate copies mailed at other Classes through the USPS. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 0. Number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. 4. Free or nominal rate distribution outside the mail. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 600. Number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 619. E. Total free or nominal rate distribution. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 600. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 619. F. Total free distribution (sum of 15c and 15e). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 29,870. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 30,801. G. Copies not Distributed. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 11,614. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 14,747. H. Total (sum of 15f and 15g).

Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 41,484. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing: 45,548. I. Percent paid. Average percent of copies paid for the preceding 12 months: 98.0% Actual percent of copies paid for the preceding 12 months: 98.0% 16. Electronic Copy Circulation: A. Paid Electronic Copies. Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 0. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 0. B. Total Paid Print Copies (Line 15c) + Paid Electronic Copies (Line 16a). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 29,270. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 30,182. C. Total Print Distribution (Line 15f) + Paid Electronic Copies (Line 16a). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 29,870. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 30,801. D. Percent Paid (Both Print & Electronic Copies) (16b divided by 16c x 100). Average number of copies each issue during preceding 12 months: 98.0%. Actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date: 98.0%. I certify that 50% of all distributed copies (electronic and print) are paid above nominal price: Yes. Report circulation on PS Form 3526-X worksheet 17. Publication of statement of ownership will be printed in the January 2022 issue of the publication. 18. Signature and title of editor, publisher, business manager, or owner: Shawn G. Byers, VP, Audience Development & Circulation. I certify that all information furnished on this form is true and complete. I understand that anyone who furnishes false or misleading information on this form or who omits material or information requested on the form may be subject to criminal sanction and civil actions.

10/20/21 9:01 AM

11/1

Captured!

Rope Trick

REG SPELLER/FOX PHOTOS (GETTY IMAGES)

Carrying a day pack and a Thompson submachine gun, a U.S. Army Ranger traverses a river on a single rope during training conducted in March 1943 by British army commandos at Achnacarry in the Scottish highlands.

80 MILITARY HISTORY JANUARY 2022

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ROMAN GLADIATORS FROZEN IN TIME FOR OVER 1,600 YEARS

Found: 1,600-Year-Old Roman Gladiator Coins Hold the Glory of Rome In the Palm of Your Hand

W

hen your famous father appoints you Caesar at age 7, you’re stepping into some very big sandals. But when that father is Emperor Constantine the Great, those sandals can be epic!

Constantius II, became Caesar at 7, and a Roman Emperor at age 20. Today, he is remembered for helping continue his father’s work of bringing Christianity to the Roman Empire, as well as for his valiant leadership in battle.

But for many collectors, his strongest legacy is having created one of the most fascinating and unique bronze coins in the history of the Roman Empire: the “Gladiator’s Paycheck”.

the Gladiators Paycheck

Roman bronze coins were the “silver dollars” of their day. They were the coins used for daily purchases, as well as for the payment of wages. Elite Roman Gladiators—paid to do battle before cheering crowds in the Colosseum—often received their monthly ‘paycheck’ in the form of Roman bronze coins.

But this particular Roman bronze has a gladiator pedigree like no other! Minted between 348 to 361 AD, the Emperor’s portrait appears on one side of this coin.

The other side depicts a literal clash of the gladiators. One warrior raises his spear menacingly at a second warrior on horseback. Frozen in bronze for over 1,600 years, the drama of this moment can still be felt when you hold the coin.

Surrounding this dramatic scene is a Latin inscription—a phrase you would never expect in a million years!

Happy Days are Here Again The Latin inscription surrounding the gladiators reads: “Happy Days are Here Again” (Fel Temp Reparatio). You see, at the time these coins were designed,

the Emperor had just won several important military battles against the foes of Rome. At the same time, Romans were preparing to celebrate the 1100th anniversary of the founding of Rome. To mark these momentous occasions, this new motto was added and the joyful inscription makes complete sense.

A Miracle of Survival for 1,600 Years

For more than sixteen centuries, these stunning coins have survived the rise and fall of empires, earthquakes, floods and two world wars. The relatively few Roman bronze coins that have survived to this day were often part of buried treasure hoards, hidden away centuries ago until rediscovered and brought to light.

These authentic Roman coins can be found in major museums around the world. But today, thanks to GovMint. com, you can find them a little closer to home: your home!

Claim your very own genuine Roman Gladiator Bronze Coin for less than $40 (plus s/h). Each coin is protected in a clear acrylic holder for preservation and display. A Certificate of Authenticity accompanies your coin.

Unfortunately, quantities are extremely limited. Less than 2,000 coins are currently available. Demand is certain to be overwhelming so call now for your best chance at obtaining this authentic piece of the Roman Empire.

Approximately 17-20 mm

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1-800-558-6468 Offer Code RGB159-02 Please mention this code when you call.

GovMint.com • 14101 Southcross Dr. W., Suite 175, Dept. RGB159-02 • Burnsville, MN 55337

GovMint.com® is a retail distributor of coin and currency issues and is not affiliated with the U.S. government.

The collectible coin market is unregulated, highly speculative and involves risk. GovMint.com reserves the right to decline to consummate any sale, within its discretion, including due to pricing errors. Prices, facts, figures and populations deemed accurate as of the date of publication but may change significantly over time. All purchases are expressly conditioned upon your acceptance of GovMint.com’s Terms and Conditions (www.govmint.com/ terms-conditions or call 1-800-721-0320); to decline, return your purchase pursuant to GovMint.com’s Return Policy. © 2021 GovMint.com. All rights reserved.

THE BEST SOURCE FOR COINS WORLDWIDE™

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10/18/21 5:12 PM

We’re Bringing Flexy Back

The Stauer Flex gives you vintage style with a throwback price of only $79.

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ust like a good wristwatch movement, fashion is cyclical. And there’s a certain wristwatch trend that was huge in the 1960s and then again in the 1980s, and is ready for its third time in the spotlight. We’re talking, of course, about the flexible stretch watch band.

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10/18/21 5:17 PM