Battle of the Week 2011-08
A battle occurs in nearly every war that comes to represent the character of the fighting in that war. When Americans think of World War II, we think of the D-Day invasion of Normandy, of the Battle of the Bulge, and of Iwo Jima. When we think of the Civil War, we think of the Battle of Gettysburg. Vietnam's battle is usually the Tet Offensive. Bunker Hill and Yorktown epitomize the American Revolution.
For the First World War, the battles are Verdun and the related British offensive at the Somme.
We get an incomplete picture of the fighting in World War I here in the U.S. The truth is the war, considered among everything that has happened since, is an event of minor significance for us. The war was far away, yet another European war we wanted no part of. We only participated as a nation for some eighteen months, and never had to deal with the aftermath of industrial-age trench warfare on our own soil. The war is of value to us chiefly as an object of morbid fascination, an event we contemplate with the same breathless disregard we direct toward a particularly gruesome event when it occurs a long way off:
Did you hear about those poor people in New Jabib? How terrible! By the way, I love your new shoes.
So it's really no surprise we don't know much about The Great War, and less about Verdun and the Somme. Our impression of infantry combat in the war is colored chiefly by movies like All Quiet on the Western Front--sometimes we attack them, sometimes they attack us, but the trenches stay in pretty much the same place. And there's gas. It's a convenient way to simplify things, but we forget the movie was really about the soldiers and not really about the combat.
On the other hand, there is every reason to forget the horrors of World War I trench warfare. The hardware available to the armies of the day--accurate long-range repeating rifles and machine guns, barbed wire and land mines--heavily favored the defense, so a prudent army had every incentive to stay in its trenches and let the enemy dash himself to bloody shreds against its defenses.
Except that battles are not decided by the defense. Even the best defender must eventually get out of his trench and attack his enemy if he hopes to gain ground and win the battle. And in World War I, that meant he had to brave the very same sort of defenses he had just used to protect his own position. Small wonder the battles of the First World War showed so little gain for such a ghastly cost.
Of course, armies tried other ways to gain the upper hand in the offense. Giant long-range howitzers bombarded the enemy trenches for hours, sometimes days, before an assault. Mustard gas and chlorine gas and phosgene killed some, horribly wounded others, and kept the rest busy donning their gas masks in the crucial seconds and minutes before an assault could reach the trench line. 1916 saw the advent of tanks on the battlefield, and airplanes progressed from flimsy spotters to the war-chariots of the twentieth century. But for all the new developments, the commander of soldiers in the Great War knew he could count on an immense butcher's bill for every yard of gain.
No battle epitomizes such warfare like Verdun. The battle was the brainchild of the German Chief of Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, who recognized in late 1915 that the war had become one of attrition rather than maneuver--that victory might come to the nation who concentrated on killing as many enemy soldiers as possible rather than on taking ground. With that in mind, he recommended to the German king, the Kaiser, that the Germans attack the French fortress at Verdun. The French, he reasoned, held the fortress as an important national symbol and would defend it far more doggedly than any other target he might choose. He could, he decided, "bleed France white" at Verdun. He launched the offensive on February 21st with a 21-hour artillery bombardment meant to kill most of the defenders before the ground attack was even launched.
Bombardment might be too mild a word for what the French defenders endured those first three days at Verdun. Deluge or flood or storm might be a better descriptor. 100,000 high-explosive shells rocked Verdun every hour, leaving overlapping craters that remain there to this day. Surely not even a mouse could survive such a ferocious onslaught.
But survive they did, and when the shelling stopped they came out from their shelters--dazed, disoriented, ears ringing--but ready enough to fight. The Germans who attacked on the 24th of February found not a broken, half-strength garrison, but the same stubborn fighters they had faced for the last two years without a decision.
The French, for their part, played right into von Falkenhayn's hands. Not only did they come out of their bunkers and hold back the German attack--they began pouring reinforcements into Verdun as fast as the railroads could carry them. French general Robert Neville famously declared, "They shall not pass." French resolve to hold the fortress was clear: they would rather be bled white than surrender Verdun.
So the battle raged on. One by one the smaller forts outside Verdun fell to the Germans, but still the French held on. One French commander was replaced by another, then another. The British launched a massive offensive of their own at the Somme in July to relieve the pressure on Verdun. Von Falkenhayn was replaced as German chief of staff in August by Paul von Hindenburg, who had thought the offensive an act of folly from the start. Then, in October, the French began retaking the outlying forts one by one.
By the 18th of December, the lines had been restored to more or less what they had been before the battle began. Ten months of bitter fighting had produced exactly no result.
Except that almost a million young men had been killed, wounded, or captured. Total numbers were about even: 550,000 French casualties to 434,000 German. Half the total were killed. Von Falkenhayn had managed to bleed both armies--if not white, certainly to an unhealthy pallor.
A more efficient way to squander young men's courage has never yet been devised. That's the real character of combat in the First World War.
HN
Showing posts with label Battle of the Week. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Battle of the Week. Show all posts
Friday, March 18, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
The Capture of Fort Donelson, 13-16 February 1862
Battle of the Week 2011-07
It's fashionable across the south to talk about the first half of the American Civil War as a gallant struggle against overwhelming odds, a valiant defense of the Confederacy in which the brilliant Robert E. Lee, outnumbered and undersupplied, held off the inevitable for years by defeating army after army hurled against him by incompetent Federal generals. It's a romantic picture, and it puts the undeniable courage and devotion of the southern soldier in its best possible light, but it tells half the story at best. Because as brilliant as Lee was, as brave as his soldiers were, by the time he won his greatest victories at Fredericksburg in December 1862 and Chancellorsville in May 1863, victory was probably already inevitable for the Union.
That Union victory started in the west, with the armies that pushed south from Kentucky into Tennessee in January and February 1862 under Don Carlos Buell and Henry W. Halleck. Opposing them was Albert Sidney Johnston, another brilliant southern general outnumbered and undersupplied; but where Lee's task was to defend Richmond and threaten Washington, Johnston's was to keep the Yankees out of Tennessee and Mississippi and protect all of the Deep South. Such an ambitious mission left Johnston spread impossibly thin.
The plan was straightforward: in order to invade Tennessee, the Union first had to secure lines of communication--roads, rivers, and railroads--that would make it easier for them to move large bodies of men and supplies and concentrate them where needed. The first step of that plan was to secure the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. The Tennessee would allow the Federals to travel north to south easily through Tennessee, while the Cumberland would give them access to Nashville and the eastern half of the state. Fort Henry controlled the Tennessee; Fort Donelson, just eleven miles away, controlled the Cumberland. No gunboats or transports or supply ships could travel up or down either river until the forts, and their big guns, were in Union hands.
Halleck gave U.S. Grant the task of taking the forts, and Grant moved against Fort Henry, the weaker of the two, first; it fell easily on the 6th of February, 1862, most of its garrison evacuating to Fort Donelson. There the Confederates, under the combined leadership of Generals John B. Floyd, Simon B. Buckner, and Gideon J. Pillow, began feverishly strengthening their defenses, but made no attempt to move against Grant at Fort Henry before he could move against them.
Grant would have preferred to march on Fort Donelson immediately, but the weather was so bad his troops could not be resupplied for the new attack. He finally made his move on the 12th of February, marching from Fort Henry while a fleet of gunboats under Andrew H. Foote attacked the fort's batteries of heavy guns from the Cumberland river. But Foote launched his attack too close to the fort, and the big guns punished his fleet severely, knocked two of his gunboats out of action, and forced him to withdraw. Grant would have to make his attack without Foote's naval support.
The rule of thumb for a force attacking a fortified position is to launch the attack with a three-to-one numerical superiority over the defender; an even better advantage is five to one. But Grant understood that audacity--doing vigorously what your enemy least expects you to do--and initiative--following up one success with another as quickly as possible, leaving the enemy no time to adjust his plan or take action against you--often count for more than numbers. On the night of the 14th and 15th of February, he blocked the landward approaches to the fort with 25,000 men, against some 21,000 Confederates inside.
But the Confederates within Fort Donelson had been far from idle since Fort Henry had fallen. Rather than wait within their fort, they had built lines of entrenchments that gave them a measure of defense in depth--only after the Union forces had breached the outer defenses could they approach the fort itself. After some initial probing by sharpshooters and skirmishers on the 14th, followed by an unsuccessful attack, Grant decided to settle in and lay siege.
An aggressive attack from the fort by well-led and spirited troops might have broken Grant's lines and forced him to abandon his plan, but none of the Confederate commanders, Floyd or Buckner or Pillow, was aggressive or spirited or a talented leader. Instead of resolving to hold the fort, they decided on a breakout; they would attack Grant's right where it lay exposed some distance from the river, push him back far enough to open the Charlotte Road toward Nashville, and abandon the fort with as many men as could escape.
The Confederates launched their attack at dawn on the 15th. It worked beautifully; by noon, the Union right had been broken and pushed south past the Charlotte Road, leaving the way open for the bulk of the Confederate forces to escape. But there Floyd lost his nerve, ordering his men back to their entrenchments for fear of a Union counterattack instead of ordering the evacuation. He was too late. Grant, guessing correctly that the Confederates had weakened their own right in order to attack with their left, ordered his division on that side to attack. As night fell, both sides had resumed the positions they had held the night before--except that Grant's right no longer blocked the Charlotte road, and Union troops now occupied the formerly Confederate trenches on the Union left.
That broke Floyd's nerve completely, and he and Pillow decided to escape in the night and leave Buckner to surrender the fort. They used boats to escape across and upriver on the night of the 15th and 16th while Nathan Bedford Forrest and a brigade of cavalry escaped down the Charlotte Road. Buckner, now with some 11,500 men against Grant's 23,000 remaining, sent a messenger to Grant asking for terms of surrender on the morning of the 16th.
Grant's reply was brief and pointed, and gave him the nickname he carries to this day:
SIR: Yours of this date, proposing armistice and appointment of commissioners to settle terms of capitulation, is just received. No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.
Translation: surrender now, with no conditions or agreements, or I attack. Buckner surrendered immediately without condition, and "Unconditional Surrender" Grant was born.
The taking of Fort Donelson opened the way into middle Tennessee and closed the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers to the Confederates. This allowed the Federal armies to start pushing south, both through Tennessee and down the Mississippi; in April, Grant and Johnston met at Shiloh near Memphis, and Johnston never left the field of battle. By Independence Day, 1863, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi, Vicksburg, had surrendered, leaving the Union in complete control of the largest waterway in North America. From there the Union troops turned east, pushing through Tennessee and Georgia to attack what was left of Lee's army from the south. Donelson was far from the end of the Civil War--but its capture set the conditions for ultimate Union victory.
Go get your nerd on!
HN
It's fashionable across the south to talk about the first half of the American Civil War as a gallant struggle against overwhelming odds, a valiant defense of the Confederacy in which the brilliant Robert E. Lee, outnumbered and undersupplied, held off the inevitable for years by defeating army after army hurled against him by incompetent Federal generals. It's a romantic picture, and it puts the undeniable courage and devotion of the southern soldier in its best possible light, but it tells half the story at best. Because as brilliant as Lee was, as brave as his soldiers were, by the time he won his greatest victories at Fredericksburg in December 1862 and Chancellorsville in May 1863, victory was probably already inevitable for the Union.
That Union victory started in the west, with the armies that pushed south from Kentucky into Tennessee in January and February 1862 under Don Carlos Buell and Henry W. Halleck. Opposing them was Albert Sidney Johnston, another brilliant southern general outnumbered and undersupplied; but where Lee's task was to defend Richmond and threaten Washington, Johnston's was to keep the Yankees out of Tennessee and Mississippi and protect all of the Deep South. Such an ambitious mission left Johnston spread impossibly thin.
The plan was straightforward: in order to invade Tennessee, the Union first had to secure lines of communication--roads, rivers, and railroads--that would make it easier for them to move large bodies of men and supplies and concentrate them where needed. The first step of that plan was to secure the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers. The Tennessee would allow the Federals to travel north to south easily through Tennessee, while the Cumberland would give them access to Nashville and the eastern half of the state. Fort Henry controlled the Tennessee; Fort Donelson, just eleven miles away, controlled the Cumberland. No gunboats or transports or supply ships could travel up or down either river until the forts, and their big guns, were in Union hands.
Halleck gave U.S. Grant the task of taking the forts, and Grant moved against Fort Henry, the weaker of the two, first; it fell easily on the 6th of February, 1862, most of its garrison evacuating to Fort Donelson. There the Confederates, under the combined leadership of Generals John B. Floyd, Simon B. Buckner, and Gideon J. Pillow, began feverishly strengthening their defenses, but made no attempt to move against Grant at Fort Henry before he could move against them.
Grant would have preferred to march on Fort Donelson immediately, but the weather was so bad his troops could not be resupplied for the new attack. He finally made his move on the 12th of February, marching from Fort Henry while a fleet of gunboats under Andrew H. Foote attacked the fort's batteries of heavy guns from the Cumberland river. But Foote launched his attack too close to the fort, and the big guns punished his fleet severely, knocked two of his gunboats out of action, and forced him to withdraw. Grant would have to make his attack without Foote's naval support.
The rule of thumb for a force attacking a fortified position is to launch the attack with a three-to-one numerical superiority over the defender; an even better advantage is five to one. But Grant understood that audacity--doing vigorously what your enemy least expects you to do--and initiative--following up one success with another as quickly as possible, leaving the enemy no time to adjust his plan or take action against you--often count for more than numbers. On the night of the 14th and 15th of February, he blocked the landward approaches to the fort with 25,000 men, against some 21,000 Confederates inside.
But the Confederates within Fort Donelson had been far from idle since Fort Henry had fallen. Rather than wait within their fort, they had built lines of entrenchments that gave them a measure of defense in depth--only after the Union forces had breached the outer defenses could they approach the fort itself. After some initial probing by sharpshooters and skirmishers on the 14th, followed by an unsuccessful attack, Grant decided to settle in and lay siege.
An aggressive attack from the fort by well-led and spirited troops might have broken Grant's lines and forced him to abandon his plan, but none of the Confederate commanders, Floyd or Buckner or Pillow, was aggressive or spirited or a talented leader. Instead of resolving to hold the fort, they decided on a breakout; they would attack Grant's right where it lay exposed some distance from the river, push him back far enough to open the Charlotte Road toward Nashville, and abandon the fort with as many men as could escape.
The Confederates launched their attack at dawn on the 15th. It worked beautifully; by noon, the Union right had been broken and pushed south past the Charlotte Road, leaving the way open for the bulk of the Confederate forces to escape. But there Floyd lost his nerve, ordering his men back to their entrenchments for fear of a Union counterattack instead of ordering the evacuation. He was too late. Grant, guessing correctly that the Confederates had weakened their own right in order to attack with their left, ordered his division on that side to attack. As night fell, both sides had resumed the positions they had held the night before--except that Grant's right no longer blocked the Charlotte road, and Union troops now occupied the formerly Confederate trenches on the Union left.
That broke Floyd's nerve completely, and he and Pillow decided to escape in the night and leave Buckner to surrender the fort. They used boats to escape across and upriver on the night of the 15th and 16th while Nathan Bedford Forrest and a brigade of cavalry escaped down the Charlotte Road. Buckner, now with some 11,500 men against Grant's 23,000 remaining, sent a messenger to Grant asking for terms of surrender on the morning of the 16th.
Grant's reply was brief and pointed, and gave him the nickname he carries to this day:
SIR: Yours of this date, proposing armistice and appointment of commissioners to settle terms of capitulation, is just received. No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.
Translation: surrender now, with no conditions or agreements, or I attack. Buckner surrendered immediately without condition, and "Unconditional Surrender" Grant was born.
The taking of Fort Donelson opened the way into middle Tennessee and closed the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers to the Confederates. This allowed the Federal armies to start pushing south, both through Tennessee and down the Mississippi; in April, Grant and Johnston met at Shiloh near Memphis, and Johnston never left the field of battle. By Independence Day, 1863, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi, Vicksburg, had surrendered, leaving the Union in complete control of the largest waterway in North America. From there the Union troops turned east, pushing through Tennessee and Georgia to attack what was left of Lee's army from the south. Donelson was far from the end of the Civil War--but its capture set the conditions for ultimate Union victory.
Go get your nerd on!
HN
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Operation Cerberus (the Channel Dash), 11-13 February 1942
Battle of the Week 2011-06
Occasionally, victory in battle is the result of a commander's talent at reading the tactical situation, devising and communicating a plan to his subordinates, then directing its execution so flawlessly the enemy is left wondering what happened. Often it's the product of a sound but unimaginative plan executed against an incompetent or unsuspecting enemy. Sometimes it's the product of boldness and luck.
But most often, it's a combination of these factors: a sound plan, executed boldly against an enemy expecting something else, can prove as decisive as the presence of a Napoleon or a Lee or a Rommel.
Operation Cerberus--or as the British call it, the Channel Dash--was such an operation. Poor reading of the tactical situation, poor communication and coordination, bad weather, and bad luck made what should have been an impossible task for the German navy into a major naval embarrassment for Britain.
The German battle cruisers Gniesenau and Scharnhorst were key players in the early months of the Battle of the Atlantic. Fast and well-armored, they were ideally suited to hit-and-run raids against the merchant and supply ships that became critical to Britain's survival after the Blitzkrieg cut it off from the continent. Between them, they sank more than 115,000 tons of British merchant shipping in early 1941, making them extremely valuable to the German war effort--and extremely valuable targets for the Royal Navy.
The two warships returned to port in Brest for repairs in March 1941, but remained vulnerable; Brest, on the peninsula of Brittany, was easily within the range of British bombers. The sinking of the Bismarck in May threw their vulnerable position into new light, and the German navy, on orders from Hitler, began making plans to return them to less exposed ports in Germany. The order came in January 1942: the Gniesenau, the Scharnhorst, and the Prinz Eugen, which had joined them in June, would sail for the German ports on the North Sea to defend the Fatherland against a potential invasion from Norway.
The Royal Navy knew at once the ships were preparing to sail; French partisans reported they were being loaded, and Royal Air Force reconnaissance flights showed increased activity all along the Channel coast. Reconnaissance flights were increased accordingly, a submarine positioned to watch the Brest harbor, and swift, light torpedo craft called motor torpedo boats (MTBs) stationed where they could easily intercept any traffic trying to run up the Channel to Germany. All this, and the navy scrambled to add to the more than a thousand mines already scattered through the Channel passages.
But by the thirteenth of February, the three ships and their escorts lay berthed in German ports on the North Sea, having accomplished the impossible--without the loss of a single ship.
How had they done it? First, with a sound plan and excellent coordination between the component forces of the operation; the German Navy and the Luftwaffe had coordinated fighter cover for every segment of the operation well before it kicked off, and every ship in the convoy (the three cruisers were escorted by six destroyers, plus assorted support vessels) understood its mission and what it was to do at every point of the run. Every detail, from radar jamming to meteorology to minesweeping to spreading false rumors throughout Brest to deceive the partisans, was considered and dealt with.
The British, for their part, misread the German plans spectacularly. To their credit, they did not fall for the Germans' deceptive indications the ships would sail south, but their read of the German intentions seems to have broken down from there. The British believed the Germans would leave Brest in daylight, so as to run the Straits of Dover, the narrowest point of the crossing, in darkness; in fact the German fleet left Brest at 10:45 on the evening of the 11th of February, and was crossing below the Isle of Wight by daybreak.
British coordination seems to have suffered a catastrophic breakdown, as well. The submarine watching Brest harbor had ended its day's watch an hour before the German ships left port; an RAF reconnaissance flight failed to see the ships in the darkness because of unreliable radar; radar failures at Coastal Command and Fighter Command went unreported; the MTBs stationed to intercept the Gniesenau and her fleet were being refitted and rearmed from an action on the previous day; and, to top it all off, an RAF patrol passed directly over the fleet, identified the German vessels--and maintained radio silence, not reporting the sighting until it returned to its airfield.
The weather, too, worked solidly in the Germans' favor. Low clouds concealed the ships from British bombers; most did not even release their bombs, and those that did missed their targets. Heavy fog for most of the run kept shore-based spotters from seeing the fleet, and kept the shore batteries at Dover from hitting the ships as they pushed through the narrow strait. And the airfield Bomber Command's planes had planned to fly from to intercept the fleet, North Coates, was snow-bound and useless to them.
The result was embarrassment for the Royal Navy--but little gain for the Germans. The three cruisers spent the rest of the war in the North Sea, making Allied supply runs to the Soviet Union difficult but accomplishing little else. And bottled up in the North Sea, they could do nothing to influence the strategically more critical Battle of the Atlantic, which from that point the Germans left largely to their U-boats, or to hamper the even more critical Allied invasion of Europe.
So once again, a massive and expensive undertaking went off with hardly a hitch--and accomplished almost nothing. Such are the fortunes of war: the side that can see where their limited resources can be put to most effective use is the side most likely to push on to victory. The side that overextends itself, wastes its effort on operations that are unlikely to decide anything, soon finds itself asking for the terms of surrender.
Now go get your nerd on!
HN
Occasionally, victory in battle is the result of a commander's talent at reading the tactical situation, devising and communicating a plan to his subordinates, then directing its execution so flawlessly the enemy is left wondering what happened. Often it's the product of a sound but unimaginative plan executed against an incompetent or unsuspecting enemy. Sometimes it's the product of boldness and luck.
But most often, it's a combination of these factors: a sound plan, executed boldly against an enemy expecting something else, can prove as decisive as the presence of a Napoleon or a Lee or a Rommel.
Operation Cerberus--or as the British call it, the Channel Dash--was such an operation. Poor reading of the tactical situation, poor communication and coordination, bad weather, and bad luck made what should have been an impossible task for the German navy into a major naval embarrassment for Britain.
The German battle cruisers Gniesenau and Scharnhorst were key players in the early months of the Battle of the Atlantic. Fast and well-armored, they were ideally suited to hit-and-run raids against the merchant and supply ships that became critical to Britain's survival after the Blitzkrieg cut it off from the continent. Between them, they sank more than 115,000 tons of British merchant shipping in early 1941, making them extremely valuable to the German war effort--and extremely valuable targets for the Royal Navy.
The two warships returned to port in Brest for repairs in March 1941, but remained vulnerable; Brest, on the peninsula of Brittany, was easily within the range of British bombers. The sinking of the Bismarck in May threw their vulnerable position into new light, and the German navy, on orders from Hitler, began making plans to return them to less exposed ports in Germany. The order came in January 1942: the Gniesenau, the Scharnhorst, and the Prinz Eugen, which had joined them in June, would sail for the German ports on the North Sea to defend the Fatherland against a potential invasion from Norway.
The Royal Navy knew at once the ships were preparing to sail; French partisans reported they were being loaded, and Royal Air Force reconnaissance flights showed increased activity all along the Channel coast. Reconnaissance flights were increased accordingly, a submarine positioned to watch the Brest harbor, and swift, light torpedo craft called motor torpedo boats (MTBs) stationed where they could easily intercept any traffic trying to run up the Channel to Germany. All this, and the navy scrambled to add to the more than a thousand mines already scattered through the Channel passages.
But by the thirteenth of February, the three ships and their escorts lay berthed in German ports on the North Sea, having accomplished the impossible--without the loss of a single ship.
How had they done it? First, with a sound plan and excellent coordination between the component forces of the operation; the German Navy and the Luftwaffe had coordinated fighter cover for every segment of the operation well before it kicked off, and every ship in the convoy (the three cruisers were escorted by six destroyers, plus assorted support vessels) understood its mission and what it was to do at every point of the run. Every detail, from radar jamming to meteorology to minesweeping to spreading false rumors throughout Brest to deceive the partisans, was considered and dealt with.
The British, for their part, misread the German plans spectacularly. To their credit, they did not fall for the Germans' deceptive indications the ships would sail south, but their read of the German intentions seems to have broken down from there. The British believed the Germans would leave Brest in daylight, so as to run the Straits of Dover, the narrowest point of the crossing, in darkness; in fact the German fleet left Brest at 10:45 on the evening of the 11th of February, and was crossing below the Isle of Wight by daybreak.
British coordination seems to have suffered a catastrophic breakdown, as well. The submarine watching Brest harbor had ended its day's watch an hour before the German ships left port; an RAF reconnaissance flight failed to see the ships in the darkness because of unreliable radar; radar failures at Coastal Command and Fighter Command went unreported; the MTBs stationed to intercept the Gniesenau and her fleet were being refitted and rearmed from an action on the previous day; and, to top it all off, an RAF patrol passed directly over the fleet, identified the German vessels--and maintained radio silence, not reporting the sighting until it returned to its airfield.
The weather, too, worked solidly in the Germans' favor. Low clouds concealed the ships from British bombers; most did not even release their bombs, and those that did missed their targets. Heavy fog for most of the run kept shore-based spotters from seeing the fleet, and kept the shore batteries at Dover from hitting the ships as they pushed through the narrow strait. And the airfield Bomber Command's planes had planned to fly from to intercept the fleet, North Coates, was snow-bound and useless to them.
The result was embarrassment for the Royal Navy--but little gain for the Germans. The three cruisers spent the rest of the war in the North Sea, making Allied supply runs to the Soviet Union difficult but accomplishing little else. And bottled up in the North Sea, they could do nothing to influence the strategically more critical Battle of the Atlantic, which from that point the Germans left largely to their U-boats, or to hamper the even more critical Allied invasion of Europe.
So once again, a massive and expensive undertaking went off with hardly a hitch--and accomplished almost nothing. Such are the fortunes of war: the side that can see where their limited resources can be put to most effective use is the side most likely to push on to victory. The side that overextends itself, wastes its effort on operations that are unlikely to decide anything, soon finds itself asking for the terms of surrender.
Now go get your nerd on!
HN
Sunday, February 6, 2011
The Tet Offensive Begins, 30 January 1968
Battle of the Week 2011-05
The weapons of the battlefield are not the only weapons of war. In some cases, they are not even the most effective. A spy's report, a builder's schematic, or an assassin's dagger have at times proven more decisive to a war than anything that happened between the armies in the field. In many ways, the information a commander has going into a fight is more important than the weapons he will use to kill the enemy.
But there is another weapon a savvy enemy can use, a weapon whose effect is often unrelated to anything that happens on the field of battle. This weapon is particularly effective against a society that values the free flow of information, a society whose Constitution enshrines such liberties as freedom of speech and of the press. The weapon, information contrary to official reports, is usually directed not at the military might of such a state--but at the people hungry for knowledge of what is happening to their loved ones serving in that military. The information must be fed to its targets gradually and with great subtlety, much like a slow-acting poison. It cannot blatantly contradict the official reports; it must erode them, gradually destroying the faith of the people in the words of their government. Make them believe the people they are supposed to trust are lying to them, and they will become much more ready to believe what they hear from your sources.
The information machine of North Vietnam used this strategy to masterful affect against the American war effort in Vietnam. To be sure, the American media seem to have assisted with some enthusiasm--this was the first war waged on television, after all, and no one really knew how to wage war, or report it, on television. Faced with a military unwelcoming to their requests for information, a Vietnamese population distrustful of foreigners, and stateside editors demanding material for the evening newsreels, reporters on the ground snatched up whatever bits of information they could get.
That meant they got a lot of information from Saigon and other major cities where fighting was rare and reporters were relatively safe--and the propaganda agents of North Vietnam were operating in force. Not that they had to work very hard; exposing the corruption of the South Vietnamese government, ensuring rumors of American abuses came back to reporters, inviting them along to see the struggles of the noble Viet Cong or the people they claimed to represent and protect, all set the conditions for a major public relations coup to come.
The coup came on the 30th of January 1968, when North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) forces attacked across the length and breadth of Vietnam, hitting 36 provincial capitals, 64 district capitals, and Saigon in violation of a cease-fire proclaimed in observance of Tet, the Vietnamese new year. The attacks were highly organized, highly coordinated, and highly synchronized, and made for the kind of news footage the reporters had been dreaming of. A small team of VC even made it inside the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, fighting with American Military Police for more than six hours before they were all killed or captured.
In a tactical and military sense, the Tet Offensive was a complete disaster for the NVA and VC. Not a single attack accomplished its tactical objective, and all were beaten back with heavy losses. But the offensive accomplished its broader objective; everywhere the VC attacked, the news cameras sucked up reel after reel of the action. And the word went back to the states: the enemy is much stronger than we have been led to believe. Yesterday he was on his last legs, and victory was coming soon, we were told. But today he has shown us otherwise.
The offensive marked a turning point in the war. For many Americans, it was the end of trust in our national authority. If they could lie to us about the strength of the enemy, or at best be so appallingly wrong, what else were they wrong about? Why should we believe what they told us any more? Why should we continue to support this war when the men fighting it clearly have such an incomplete picture of who and what they are fighting? Support for the war was at least relatively strong before Tet, with many Americans seeing it as their patriotic duty to support the military and the president and to oppose communism wherever it appeared. After Tet, the antiwar movement gained strength.
No free country can long prosecute a war its people oppose, and Vietnam proves the point. U.S. forces would continue to slog it out for another five years, but we could no longer win the war for anything like a cost the American people would accept. Before long, the number of troops committed to the war began to decrease, and our politicians began talking about Vietnamization and peace with honor. The war, at least for the United States, began to end with Tet.
And so began an era of national shame--shame at failing to defeat communism, shame at allowing ourselves to become divided in the face of an overseas war, shame at the way we had treated our brave service members. Shame, self-doubt, and anger characterized the 1970s, gradually fading as we regained our military power in the 1980s and our economic power in the 1990s and through the 2000s, but the echoes of them remain part of us. I like to think facing our own weaknesses and surviving the ordeal has made us stronger as a nation, just as it does for an individual. There are many who disagree with me. But that discussion is beyond the scope of this page.
It's almost time for the Superbowl. If you plan to watch the game--as I do--enjoy it. Good luck to your team (unless, of course, you are rooting for the Steelers)!
Get your nerd on!
HN
The weapons of the battlefield are not the only weapons of war. In some cases, they are not even the most effective. A spy's report, a builder's schematic, or an assassin's dagger have at times proven more decisive to a war than anything that happened between the armies in the field. In many ways, the information a commander has going into a fight is more important than the weapons he will use to kill the enemy.
But there is another weapon a savvy enemy can use, a weapon whose effect is often unrelated to anything that happens on the field of battle. This weapon is particularly effective against a society that values the free flow of information, a society whose Constitution enshrines such liberties as freedom of speech and of the press. The weapon, information contrary to official reports, is usually directed not at the military might of such a state--but at the people hungry for knowledge of what is happening to their loved ones serving in that military. The information must be fed to its targets gradually and with great subtlety, much like a slow-acting poison. It cannot blatantly contradict the official reports; it must erode them, gradually destroying the faith of the people in the words of their government. Make them believe the people they are supposed to trust are lying to them, and they will become much more ready to believe what they hear from your sources.
The information machine of North Vietnam used this strategy to masterful affect against the American war effort in Vietnam. To be sure, the American media seem to have assisted with some enthusiasm--this was the first war waged on television, after all, and no one really knew how to wage war, or report it, on television. Faced with a military unwelcoming to their requests for information, a Vietnamese population distrustful of foreigners, and stateside editors demanding material for the evening newsreels, reporters on the ground snatched up whatever bits of information they could get.
That meant they got a lot of information from Saigon and other major cities where fighting was rare and reporters were relatively safe--and the propaganda agents of North Vietnam were operating in force. Not that they had to work very hard; exposing the corruption of the South Vietnamese government, ensuring rumors of American abuses came back to reporters, inviting them along to see the struggles of the noble Viet Cong or the people they claimed to represent and protect, all set the conditions for a major public relations coup to come.
The coup came on the 30th of January 1968, when North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Viet Cong (VC) forces attacked across the length and breadth of Vietnam, hitting 36 provincial capitals, 64 district capitals, and Saigon in violation of a cease-fire proclaimed in observance of Tet, the Vietnamese new year. The attacks were highly organized, highly coordinated, and highly synchronized, and made for the kind of news footage the reporters had been dreaming of. A small team of VC even made it inside the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, fighting with American Military Police for more than six hours before they were all killed or captured.
In a tactical and military sense, the Tet Offensive was a complete disaster for the NVA and VC. Not a single attack accomplished its tactical objective, and all were beaten back with heavy losses. But the offensive accomplished its broader objective; everywhere the VC attacked, the news cameras sucked up reel after reel of the action. And the word went back to the states: the enemy is much stronger than we have been led to believe. Yesterday he was on his last legs, and victory was coming soon, we were told. But today he has shown us otherwise.
The offensive marked a turning point in the war. For many Americans, it was the end of trust in our national authority. If they could lie to us about the strength of the enemy, or at best be so appallingly wrong, what else were they wrong about? Why should we believe what they told us any more? Why should we continue to support this war when the men fighting it clearly have such an incomplete picture of who and what they are fighting? Support for the war was at least relatively strong before Tet, with many Americans seeing it as their patriotic duty to support the military and the president and to oppose communism wherever it appeared. After Tet, the antiwar movement gained strength.
No free country can long prosecute a war its people oppose, and Vietnam proves the point. U.S. forces would continue to slog it out for another five years, but we could no longer win the war for anything like a cost the American people would accept. Before long, the number of troops committed to the war began to decrease, and our politicians began talking about Vietnamization and peace with honor. The war, at least for the United States, began to end with Tet.
And so began an era of national shame--shame at failing to defeat communism, shame at allowing ourselves to become divided in the face of an overseas war, shame at the way we had treated our brave service members. Shame, self-doubt, and anger characterized the 1970s, gradually fading as we regained our military power in the 1980s and our economic power in the 1990s and through the 2000s, but the echoes of them remain part of us. I like to think facing our own weaknesses and surviving the ordeal has made us stronger as a nation, just as it does for an individual. There are many who disagree with me. But that discussion is beyond the scope of this page.
It's almost time for the Superbowl. If you plan to watch the game--as I do--enjoy it. Good luck to your team (unless, of course, you are rooting for the Steelers)!
Get your nerd on!
HN
Monday, January 31, 2011
The Battle of Holtzwihr, 26 January 1945
The Battle of the Week 2011-04
The Congressional Medal of Honor is the United States' highest award for valor. Originally commissioned during the Civil War to recognize valor in combat, it has grown more important--and harder to receive--in the years since. Official criteria for the Medal read in part:
...is awarded in the name of Congress to a person who...distinguished himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States....
The part about "gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty" makes the Medal appropriately hard to receive, and it means many recipients don't survive earning it. Since the U.S. entered World War II, 856 men have received the Medal of Honor; 527 of those awards were posthumous. Since Vietnam, Congress has awarded ten Medals, nine of them posthumously. Reading a Medal of Honor citation is often enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up as I wonder, "How could a human being do that?"
Audie Murphy's actions at Holtzwihr on 26 January 1945 evoke just that sort of reaction. His name is almost cliché in Army circles, a catchphrase for bravery we use when we want to praise (or make fun of) another soldier. "That guy's a doggone Audie Murphy" probably means he's done something exceptionally brave or gone out of his way to get the job done; "You're a real Audie Murphy" probably means you're talking too much about yourself and you need to shut up and get to work. But for all we throw his name around, surprisingly few of us really know the details of his heroism in World War II--and heroism it certainly was, whatever you think of his career after the war.
Murphy's Company B, 15th Infantry Regiment, assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division, was part of the Colmar Offensive, an operation intended to push the last German troops out of France in late January 1945. On the 24th and 25th of January it had been cut to pieces in an attack through heavy woods on the fortified village of Holtzwihr. All the company's officers except Murphy (by this time a first lieutenant) were killed, and 102 of its 120 men killed or wounded.
By the morning of the 26th, Company B faced Holtzwihr from the edge of the forest. Murphy and his 18 remaining men, reinforced by two M10 tank destroyers, sat astride a road that ran into the forest behind them--a road the Germans needed to control if they were to mount a counterattack into the woods with their armor. Murphy's mission was to hold his position until he could be relieved by fresh troops, but by two o'clock no relief had come. The Germans decided it was time to start their counterattack.
The men of Company B watched as six tanks and 250 or so infantrymen began forming in front of the village for an attack. Murphy immediately called for artillery support, but artillery could only even the odds so much--the company was going to have a hard fight on its hands very quickly.
As soon as the enemy tanks came within range, the two tank destroyers opened fire with their 90mm main guns--to no effect. The shells bounced off the Panzers' thick armor. See, a WWII tank destroyer looked much like a tank, but mounted a heavier gun and much thinner armor. The German tanks paid little attention to either, and shortly one tank destroyer was burning and the other, after doing some damage to the infantry with its machine guns, slid into a ditch and became useless. Company B faced the counterattack alone.
Murphy knew his handful of men could never hold the road on their own, so he ordered them to fall back into the woods while he stayed behind directing artillery fire over a field phone. The shells fell thick among the advancing Germans, but still they came on. Shortly his carbine was out of ammunition.
He was preparing to fall back and rejoin his men in the woods when he noticed the .50 caliber machine gun on the burning tank destroyer was still undamaged. Realizing the machine gun was his best chance to slow the Germans down and keep his men alive, he jumped onto the vehicle and started firing.
Very few weapons on the battlefield convey moral authority to an infantryman like a .50 cal. The M2, or "Ma Deuce", our soldiers use in Iraq and Afghanistan today is much the same weapon Murphy used that day. It can fire its half-inch-diameter bullet more than a mile with devastating force; nothing that walks on a battlefield, and not many that roll, will take a .50 cal bullet and keep going. A single shot will go through two men and into a third. Infantrymen stop moving and put their heads down when they hear the thud-thud-thud of a .50 and see their friends going down around them. And tanks don't like to roll into forest without infantry covering them--without them, enemy infantry can easily use the cover of the trees to get close.
So even though he couldn't kill the tanks with the .50 cal, Murphy could stop their infantry cover--and that stopped the tanks. The smoke billowing around him from the burning tank destroyer obscured him from view, and the artillery bursting around them masked the sounds of his firing so the German infantry could not tell where it was coming from. For more than an hour he stayed there, gunning down any Germans that tried to move toward him. Finally the clouds cleared enough to allow American aircraft to start strafing the German positions, and they began to fall back. Murphy, by this time bleeding from a leg wound, returned to his company and organized a counterattack that drove the Germans from the field and regained the company its earlier position. American forces took Holtzwihr the following day.
Audie Murphy received the Medal of Honor for his actions at Holtwihr. And historians and soldiers alike read the story of his bravery, scratch their heads and wonder, "How does a human being do that?"
It's just the sort of over-the-top ridiculous hero story we scoff at when we see it in movies and books. The kind of story we say could never happen. Except Audie Murphy really did it.
Have a historical story you want to see here? A battle you want me to write up? Let me know! And in the meantime...
Get your nerd on!
HN
The Congressional Medal of Honor is the United States' highest award for valor. Originally commissioned during the Civil War to recognize valor in combat, it has grown more important--and harder to receive--in the years since. Official criteria for the Medal read in part:
...is awarded in the name of Congress to a person who...distinguished himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States....
The part about "gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty" makes the Medal appropriately hard to receive, and it means many recipients don't survive earning it. Since the U.S. entered World War II, 856 men have received the Medal of Honor; 527 of those awards were posthumous. Since Vietnam, Congress has awarded ten Medals, nine of them posthumously. Reading a Medal of Honor citation is often enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up as I wonder, "How could a human being do that?"
Audie Murphy's actions at Holtzwihr on 26 January 1945 evoke just that sort of reaction. His name is almost cliché in Army circles, a catchphrase for bravery we use when we want to praise (or make fun of) another soldier. "That guy's a doggone Audie Murphy" probably means he's done something exceptionally brave or gone out of his way to get the job done; "You're a real Audie Murphy" probably means you're talking too much about yourself and you need to shut up and get to work. But for all we throw his name around, surprisingly few of us really know the details of his heroism in World War II--and heroism it certainly was, whatever you think of his career after the war.
Murphy's Company B, 15th Infantry Regiment, assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division, was part of the Colmar Offensive, an operation intended to push the last German troops out of France in late January 1945. On the 24th and 25th of January it had been cut to pieces in an attack through heavy woods on the fortified village of Holtzwihr. All the company's officers except Murphy (by this time a first lieutenant) were killed, and 102 of its 120 men killed or wounded.
By the morning of the 26th, Company B faced Holtzwihr from the edge of the forest. Murphy and his 18 remaining men, reinforced by two M10 tank destroyers, sat astride a road that ran into the forest behind them--a road the Germans needed to control if they were to mount a counterattack into the woods with their armor. Murphy's mission was to hold his position until he could be relieved by fresh troops, but by two o'clock no relief had come. The Germans decided it was time to start their counterattack.
The men of Company B watched as six tanks and 250 or so infantrymen began forming in front of the village for an attack. Murphy immediately called for artillery support, but artillery could only even the odds so much--the company was going to have a hard fight on its hands very quickly.
As soon as the enemy tanks came within range, the two tank destroyers opened fire with their 90mm main guns--to no effect. The shells bounced off the Panzers' thick armor. See, a WWII tank destroyer looked much like a tank, but mounted a heavier gun and much thinner armor. The German tanks paid little attention to either, and shortly one tank destroyer was burning and the other, after doing some damage to the infantry with its machine guns, slid into a ditch and became useless. Company B faced the counterattack alone.
Murphy knew his handful of men could never hold the road on their own, so he ordered them to fall back into the woods while he stayed behind directing artillery fire over a field phone. The shells fell thick among the advancing Germans, but still they came on. Shortly his carbine was out of ammunition.
He was preparing to fall back and rejoin his men in the woods when he noticed the .50 caliber machine gun on the burning tank destroyer was still undamaged. Realizing the machine gun was his best chance to slow the Germans down and keep his men alive, he jumped onto the vehicle and started firing.
Very few weapons on the battlefield convey moral authority to an infantryman like a .50 cal. The M2, or "Ma Deuce", our soldiers use in Iraq and Afghanistan today is much the same weapon Murphy used that day. It can fire its half-inch-diameter bullet more than a mile with devastating force; nothing that walks on a battlefield, and not many that roll, will take a .50 cal bullet and keep going. A single shot will go through two men and into a third. Infantrymen stop moving and put their heads down when they hear the thud-thud-thud of a .50 and see their friends going down around them. And tanks don't like to roll into forest without infantry covering them--without them, enemy infantry can easily use the cover of the trees to get close.
So even though he couldn't kill the tanks with the .50 cal, Murphy could stop their infantry cover--and that stopped the tanks. The smoke billowing around him from the burning tank destroyer obscured him from view, and the artillery bursting around them masked the sounds of his firing so the German infantry could not tell where it was coming from. For more than an hour he stayed there, gunning down any Germans that tried to move toward him. Finally the clouds cleared enough to allow American aircraft to start strafing the German positions, and they began to fall back. Murphy, by this time bleeding from a leg wound, returned to his company and organized a counterattack that drove the Germans from the field and regained the company its earlier position. American forces took Holtzwihr the following day.
Audie Murphy received the Medal of Honor for his actions at Holtwihr. And historians and soldiers alike read the story of his bravery, scratch their heads and wonder, "How does a human being do that?"
It's just the sort of over-the-top ridiculous hero story we scoff at when we see it in movies and books. The kind of story we say could never happen. Except Audie Murphy really did it.
Have a historical story you want to see here? A battle you want me to write up? Let me know! And in the meantime...
Get your nerd on!
HN
Sunday, January 23, 2011
The First Battle of Monte Cassino, 17 January-11 February 1944
Battle of the Week 2011-03
By January 1944, Allied troops had been slogging their way up the boot of Italy for four months. They had already broken through two of the three German defensive lines across the peninsula, and now stood poised to begin their assault on the third and strongest, the Gustav Line.
But the Allies in Italy were exhausted from their efforts. Four months on the move, facing stubborn German resistance, had taken their toll: the U.S. 36th Infantry Division, the National Guard "T-Patchers" from Texas, went into the battle severely understrength--and more than 1,100 of its officers and men were green recruits who had just joined the division during a two-week rest out of the line.
But key to a successful offensive is an army's ability to keep pressure on its enemy, so back into the fight the 36th had to go. The next phase of the liberation of Italy was to be a two-pronged attack: two divisions of the Fifth Army were to make an amphibious landing at Anzio, above the Gustav Line, and drive toward Rome, while the remainder attacked the defenses directly to keep the Germans from repositioning forces to the north and driving the Anzio divisions back into the Mediterranean. It was an ambitious plan, and a risky one, but it carried at least a reasonable chance of success.
The attack was to happen in three phases: first, the British X Corps would cross the Garigliano River on the 17th of January and seize the high ground above the Rapido (Rah-PEE-do) river to protect the Americans' left flank as they crossed. The American II Corps, led by the 36th Infantry Division, was then to cross the Rapido and occupy the high ground beyond the town of Cassino. These two assaults were to attract German reserves from Rome and Anzio, clearing the way for the landings. The Gustav Line breached, the Fifth Army would then march on Rome from Anzio and the Cassino area simultaneously.
Of course, it didn't quite work out that way. The British attack kicked off on the 17th as scheduled, surprising the Germans and making significant progress the first night. But by the 19th, the Germans had moved two armored divisions to the area to block the Allied advance and the attack stalled.
The T-Patchers were supposed to begin their attack across the Rapido on the night of the 20th. But the Brits were supposed to be on their left, securing their flank, and they weren't. What's more, the engineers couldn't bring the boats they had assembled for the crossing any closer to the river than two miles because the Germans covered the entire river valley with observation and artillery fire. The already-exhausted infantrymen would have to carry them the rest of the way themselves.
Of course, after they got the boats to the river, they then had to get them across the river, assemble, and begin the long climb to their objectives. If you've ever hiked in the mountains, you can appreciate the challenge of a good climb--but imagine making that climb through barbed-wire obstacles and minefields, loaded down with 50 pounds of gear or more, all while machine guns dug in above you pour fire down at you and observers higher up direct artillery down on your head. The outcome of the Rapido River assault was entirely predictable, and it met the predicted outcome so thoroughly that after two days of fighting, the battered T-Patchers had to withdraw. Their enemies, unaware they had just beaten back a major offensive, reported to their superiors that the Allies had conducted a reconnaissance in force across the river and inflicted minimal casualties.
The attack continued for three more weeks, the 36th Division replaced on the line by the 34th, but in the end the Americans couldn't penetrate the Gustav line and the battle ground to a halt. In all, the Allies fought four battles over the same ground in their attempt to breach the Gustav line, finally managing to push north by the end of May.
It's likely the operations on the Gustav Line had a positive impact on the outcome of the war: after all, they ultimately resulted in the liberation and conversion of Italy, and they certainly forced the Germans to commit troops to the peninsula they might otherwise have moved to France to resist the Allied invasion there. But the men of the T-Patch division had to swallow the reality that their attack, for all the blood and sweat they had spent and all the friends they had left in that bloody river valley, had accomplished nothing.
See you next week!
HN
By January 1944, Allied troops had been slogging their way up the boot of Italy for four months. They had already broken through two of the three German defensive lines across the peninsula, and now stood poised to begin their assault on the third and strongest, the Gustav Line.
But the Allies in Italy were exhausted from their efforts. Four months on the move, facing stubborn German resistance, had taken their toll: the U.S. 36th Infantry Division, the National Guard "T-Patchers" from Texas, went into the battle severely understrength--and more than 1,100 of its officers and men were green recruits who had just joined the division during a two-week rest out of the line.
But key to a successful offensive is an army's ability to keep pressure on its enemy, so back into the fight the 36th had to go. The next phase of the liberation of Italy was to be a two-pronged attack: two divisions of the Fifth Army were to make an amphibious landing at Anzio, above the Gustav Line, and drive toward Rome, while the remainder attacked the defenses directly to keep the Germans from repositioning forces to the north and driving the Anzio divisions back into the Mediterranean. It was an ambitious plan, and a risky one, but it carried at least a reasonable chance of success.
The attack was to happen in three phases: first, the British X Corps would cross the Garigliano River on the 17th of January and seize the high ground above the Rapido (Rah-PEE-do) river to protect the Americans' left flank as they crossed. The American II Corps, led by the 36th Infantry Division, was then to cross the Rapido and occupy the high ground beyond the town of Cassino. These two assaults were to attract German reserves from Rome and Anzio, clearing the way for the landings. The Gustav Line breached, the Fifth Army would then march on Rome from Anzio and the Cassino area simultaneously.
Of course, it didn't quite work out that way. The British attack kicked off on the 17th as scheduled, surprising the Germans and making significant progress the first night. But by the 19th, the Germans had moved two armored divisions to the area to block the Allied advance and the attack stalled.
The T-Patchers were supposed to begin their attack across the Rapido on the night of the 20th. But the Brits were supposed to be on their left, securing their flank, and they weren't. What's more, the engineers couldn't bring the boats they had assembled for the crossing any closer to the river than two miles because the Germans covered the entire river valley with observation and artillery fire. The already-exhausted infantrymen would have to carry them the rest of the way themselves.
Of course, after they got the boats to the river, they then had to get them across the river, assemble, and begin the long climb to their objectives. If you've ever hiked in the mountains, you can appreciate the challenge of a good climb--but imagine making that climb through barbed-wire obstacles and minefields, loaded down with 50 pounds of gear or more, all while machine guns dug in above you pour fire down at you and observers higher up direct artillery down on your head. The outcome of the Rapido River assault was entirely predictable, and it met the predicted outcome so thoroughly that after two days of fighting, the battered T-Patchers had to withdraw. Their enemies, unaware they had just beaten back a major offensive, reported to their superiors that the Allies had conducted a reconnaissance in force across the river and inflicted minimal casualties.
The attack continued for three more weeks, the 36th Division replaced on the line by the 34th, but in the end the Americans couldn't penetrate the Gustav line and the battle ground to a halt. In all, the Allies fought four battles over the same ground in their attempt to breach the Gustav line, finally managing to push north by the end of May.
It's likely the operations on the Gustav Line had a positive impact on the outcome of the war: after all, they ultimately resulted in the liberation and conversion of Italy, and they certainly forced the Germans to commit troops to the peninsula they might otherwise have moved to France to resist the Allied invasion there. But the men of the T-Patch division had to swallow the reality that their attack, for all the blood and sweat they had spent and all the friends they had left in that bloody river valley, had accomplished nothing.
See you next week!
HN
Monday, January 17, 2011
The Siege of Leningrad, September 1941 - January 1944
Battle of the Week 2011-02
Imagine a war unlike any you've ever heard of--more troops, more guns, more tanks, more planes than have ever been put into the field before. Imagine death and destruction on a scale you've read about in novels, but never dreamed could be real, could find its way to your home, your doorstep.
Imagine a vast army deployed across a front wider than any that's ever been attempted before, and winning. Advancing mile after mile across your own country, seemingly unstoppable. Everything your country has thrown at it has been crushed, mangled, destroyed, annihilated. Nothing seems to stop the relentless march.
Imagine that army is made up of soldiers who have been trained to believe your people, the people of your country, are less than they. Less than people, in fact. Less than dogs. Unfit to live. To them, you and your family are fit only to be killed--the strong worked to death, the weak and young and old shot or bayoneted or thrown from high places to reduce the burden they might otherwise put on the army's resources.
And that army has surrounded your city, cut off all access except a narrow avenue across a lake, and settled in to starve you out. No assault, no occupation. All you have to do is survive. But as days drag into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years, as your daily allowance of food is cut in half and then in half again until you are eating less in a day than you did in a meal before, that seems less and less likely. And crows and rats and dogs look more like food than anything else.
It's never happened here. But it happened to Leningrad, the city the world now calls St. Petersburg, in Russia.
We don't study much about the Eastern Front of World War II here in the U.S. After all, we weren't involved directly, although we invaded Normandy partly to draw the Germans west and ease the pressure on the Soviet Union. And for most of the years since the war, the Soviets were our enemies, anyway--and who needs to study the history of one's enemy, right?
Turns out we could learn a thing or two from a study of the Eastern Front. Many of the greatest battles of World War II were fought there: the Battle of Kursk was the largest tank battle ever fought, and more Soviet soldiers fell in the battle for Stalingrad than American soldiers fell in the entire war. In all, perhaps twenty million Soviet citizens died on the Eastern Front. If the war between Germany and the Soviet Union comprised the entire scope of World War II--if the Germans had never invaded France, had never tried to subdue Britain, if the Japanese had never invaded Manchuria or bombed Pearl Harbor, if the United States had never become involved in the war at all--it would still have been the deadliest, most destructive war in human history.
Leningrad was only one act in that vast drama, but to those who lived and died there, it was the central act of the war. The city languished under siege for nearly nine hundred days; a child born on September 8th, 1941, when the siege began, would be walking and talking before he knew a day of peace, if he survived that long. Some time around the 12th of January, 1942, the Soviet army managed to open a narrow corridor across the frozen Lake Ladoga, and this remained open off and on until the siege was lifted, carrying supplies in and people out. But for a city whose population was three million when the siege began, a single corridor was not nearly sufficient. As many as three quarters of a million Leningraders died in the siege.
It's never happened here, or anywhere else. Only in Leningrad. We would do well not to forget, wherever we come from.
HN
Imagine a war unlike any you've ever heard of--more troops, more guns, more tanks, more planes than have ever been put into the field before. Imagine death and destruction on a scale you've read about in novels, but never dreamed could be real, could find its way to your home, your doorstep.
Imagine a vast army deployed across a front wider than any that's ever been attempted before, and winning. Advancing mile after mile across your own country, seemingly unstoppable. Everything your country has thrown at it has been crushed, mangled, destroyed, annihilated. Nothing seems to stop the relentless march.
Imagine that army is made up of soldiers who have been trained to believe your people, the people of your country, are less than they. Less than people, in fact. Less than dogs. Unfit to live. To them, you and your family are fit only to be killed--the strong worked to death, the weak and young and old shot or bayoneted or thrown from high places to reduce the burden they might otherwise put on the army's resources.
And that army has surrounded your city, cut off all access except a narrow avenue across a lake, and settled in to starve you out. No assault, no occupation. All you have to do is survive. But as days drag into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years, as your daily allowance of food is cut in half and then in half again until you are eating less in a day than you did in a meal before, that seems less and less likely. And crows and rats and dogs look more like food than anything else.
It's never happened here. But it happened to Leningrad, the city the world now calls St. Petersburg, in Russia.
We don't study much about the Eastern Front of World War II here in the U.S. After all, we weren't involved directly, although we invaded Normandy partly to draw the Germans west and ease the pressure on the Soviet Union. And for most of the years since the war, the Soviets were our enemies, anyway--and who needs to study the history of one's enemy, right?
Turns out we could learn a thing or two from a study of the Eastern Front. Many of the greatest battles of World War II were fought there: the Battle of Kursk was the largest tank battle ever fought, and more Soviet soldiers fell in the battle for Stalingrad than American soldiers fell in the entire war. In all, perhaps twenty million Soviet citizens died on the Eastern Front. If the war between Germany and the Soviet Union comprised the entire scope of World War II--if the Germans had never invaded France, had never tried to subdue Britain, if the Japanese had never invaded Manchuria or bombed Pearl Harbor, if the United States had never become involved in the war at all--it would still have been the deadliest, most destructive war in human history.
Leningrad was only one act in that vast drama, but to those who lived and died there, it was the central act of the war. The city languished under siege for nearly nine hundred days; a child born on September 8th, 1941, when the siege began, would be walking and talking before he knew a day of peace, if he survived that long. Some time around the 12th of January, 1942, the Soviet army managed to open a narrow corridor across the frozen Lake Ladoga, and this remained open off and on until the siege was lifted, carrying supplies in and people out. But for a city whose population was three million when the siege began, a single corridor was not nearly sufficient. As many as three quarters of a million Leningraders died in the siege.
It's never happened here, or anywhere else. Only in Leningrad. We would do well not to forget, wherever we come from.
HN
Saturday, January 8, 2011
The Battle of New Orleans, 8 January 1814
Battle of the Week 2011-01
The War of 1812 was, for the most part, a series of embarrassments for the young United States.
It was ill-conceived by both sides: the British, busy with Napoleon in Spain, had neither the manpower nor the resources to fight a decisive campaign on this side of the Atlantic, while the Americans, busy expanding into the lands opened by the purchase of Louisiana, had no business declaring war against what was still one of the world's three greatest military powers. But British impressment of American sailors and a continued British presence in Canada were unacceptable insults, so off to war we marched.
The next two and a half years saw sporadic conflict, a good many men killed and wounded, and no change whatsoever in the combatant's relative positions on the world stage. It saw a few indecisive American victories and a number of indecisive American defeats, including perhaps the greatest embarrassment ever to American arms: the capture of Washington, D.C. and the burning of the White House and Capitol.
But it also brought a few of the moments we remember as our finest, such as the U.S.S. Constitution's many victories against British men-of-war and the defense of Fort McHenry--the incident that inspired Francis Scott Key to pen "The Star-Spangled Banner."
It's ironic that the greatest American victory of the war took place two weeks after it ended. The Peace of Ghent ended hostilities between the United States and Great Britain on 24 December 1814. But in 1814, word could travel no faster than a man could ride on horseback or by ship, so neither Andrew Jackson nor his adversary, Major General Sir Edward Pakenham, had heard the news by the time their forces clashed on the 8th of January.
The battle itself was an entirely one-sided affair: the British regulars, in true British fashion, advanced across a wide field against Jackson's motley force of riflemen from Kentucky and Tennessee, militiamen from the city, pirates, freed slaves, and Indians, who lay, in true American fashion, armed with rifles and entrenched behind a canal. In such conditions the British Brown Bess was no match at all for the American rifles, and the numbers tell the story as well as I can. In half an hour more than two thousand British soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured, to just seven killed and six wounded on the American side. Among the British dead was Pakenham himself. The British withdrew to their camps, and a week later took to their ships and left New Orleans to the Americans.
The battle itself decided nothing, since the war was already over, although we may speculate whether the British would have been inclined to give up control of the Mississippi River, treaty or no treaty, had they won the battle and captured the town. But it provided a needed shot in the arm for the young United States, a victory to be proud of on the heels of a war that gave us few such moments. And it made an American hero of Jackson, who rose to widespread fame thanks to his wartime exploits and became President of the United States in 1829.
I'll be back next week with another battle. Go get your nerd on!
HN
The War of 1812 was, for the most part, a series of embarrassments for the young United States.
It was ill-conceived by both sides: the British, busy with Napoleon in Spain, had neither the manpower nor the resources to fight a decisive campaign on this side of the Atlantic, while the Americans, busy expanding into the lands opened by the purchase of Louisiana, had no business declaring war against what was still one of the world's three greatest military powers. But British impressment of American sailors and a continued British presence in Canada were unacceptable insults, so off to war we marched.
The next two and a half years saw sporadic conflict, a good many men killed and wounded, and no change whatsoever in the combatant's relative positions on the world stage. It saw a few indecisive American victories and a number of indecisive American defeats, including perhaps the greatest embarrassment ever to American arms: the capture of Washington, D.C. and the burning of the White House and Capitol.
But it also brought a few of the moments we remember as our finest, such as the U.S.S. Constitution's many victories against British men-of-war and the defense of Fort McHenry--the incident that inspired Francis Scott Key to pen "The Star-Spangled Banner."
It's ironic that the greatest American victory of the war took place two weeks after it ended. The Peace of Ghent ended hostilities between the United States and Great Britain on 24 December 1814. But in 1814, word could travel no faster than a man could ride on horseback or by ship, so neither Andrew Jackson nor his adversary, Major General Sir Edward Pakenham, had heard the news by the time their forces clashed on the 8th of January.
The battle itself was an entirely one-sided affair: the British regulars, in true British fashion, advanced across a wide field against Jackson's motley force of riflemen from Kentucky and Tennessee, militiamen from the city, pirates, freed slaves, and Indians, who lay, in true American fashion, armed with rifles and entrenched behind a canal. In such conditions the British Brown Bess was no match at all for the American rifles, and the numbers tell the story as well as I can. In half an hour more than two thousand British soldiers were killed, wounded, or captured, to just seven killed and six wounded on the American side. Among the British dead was Pakenham himself. The British withdrew to their camps, and a week later took to their ships and left New Orleans to the Americans.
The battle itself decided nothing, since the war was already over, although we may speculate whether the British would have been inclined to give up control of the Mississippi River, treaty or no treaty, had they won the battle and captured the town. But it provided a needed shot in the arm for the young United States, a victory to be proud of on the heels of a war that gave us few such moments. And it made an American hero of Jackson, who rose to widespread fame thanks to his wartime exploits and became President of the United States in 1829.
I'll be back next week with another battle. Go get your nerd on!
HN
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)