by RNS | May 24, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Andrew W. Field, The French at Waterloo: Eyewitness Accounts (Pen & Sword, 2020)
Waterloo is the battle. Outside of the United States, the Battle of Waterloo, fought on 18 June 1815, has been the most discussed engagement in military history. Historians at all levels of competence have poured over the events of that day, producing hundreds of books and articles on every facet of what was undoubtedly the most decisive battle in European history. But beyond the broad-brush strokes, sketching in the major events, there is still no full agreement on the details of how or why the French under Napoleon Bonaparte lost to the combined Anglo-Dutch and Prussian armies. Andrew Field has written extensively on the battle, but he too concedes that his interpretations are open to question. The French at Waterloo: Eyewitness Accounts is Field’s presentation of the eyewitness evidence he used to create his analysis of the battle. It is an absorbing and stimulating read.
The French at Waterloo opens unusually and helpfully with a brief synopsis of his twenty-six eyewitnesses in his contents section. These are divided into four chapters: Napoleon’s own accounts; those from his Household; descriptions of events from the Imperial Headquarters; and the testimonies of those out in the field fighting the battle. Field is quick to intercept critics of his selections and translations, fending them off with a brief explanation of his motive and method and a survey of the pitfalls of dealing with this type of historical evidence. He also acknowledges that his editing of the sources inevitably supports his interpretation of the battle. Thus disarmed, we move on to the eyewitnesses. Field usefully prefaces each account with a short biography of the witness and their place on the battlefield and in the historical record. The accounts are judiciously edited to keep them on point, and along with Field’s descriptions are invariably interesting. Being from the ‘new’ school of ground-up military history, I enjoyed the accounts of soldiers more than the operational level machinations of senior officers, with Private Louis Canler’s chaotic experience my highlight of the collection. Field concludes with a perhaps unnecessary appendix for the French Order of Battle.
Sources are the backbone of history without which we are stumbling around in the darkness, searching for answers that cannot be found. They must be handled with care, however, and for such a cataclysmic event like Waterloo we need an expert guide. Field certainly fits that description for The French at Waterloo. He welcomes his readers into the debate over how Waterloo is interpreted, allowing them to work with the sources and come to their own conclusions. For a book like this, you cannot ask for anything more. I am looking forward to the second volume in this series with great anticipation. 10/10.
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by RNS | May 23, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Andrew Milburn, When the Tempest Gathers (Pen & Sword, 2020)
It is a sobering thought that the War on Terror has continued long enough for combatants to write their memoirs. Yet, how many of us really know anything about this strand of our history beyond basic and sporadic news items? Andrew Milburn’s When the Tempest Gathers is therefore quite the eye-opener.
After a prologue, recounting an attack in Mosul in 2016, Milburn begins his story with his joining the Marines just in time to miss the First Gulf War in 1991. He made it to Somalia, though, as a lieutenant in command of a mortar team, patrolling the notorious Green Line in Mogadishu where he saw his first combat against local insurgents. A while after he returned, Milburn took command of a Company then became a Battalion Operations Officer. He was in the Far East when 9/11 happened but took no part in the war in Afghanistan. As a Major, and part of the Coalition and Special Warfare Center (CSW), Milburn shipped out for the invasion of Iraq, leaving his role temporarily. Among his experiences, he assisted in friendly fire incidents and helped plan attacks on the enemy. The subsequent occupation was already turning sour when he returned to the US and the CSW.
Milburn was soon back in Iraq, at Fallujah on the eve of the US assault on that town. Milburn narrates his role in the bloody affair, fighting the Muj, in some detail. From there, he served in Anbar Province, where IEDs ruled, and onto Mosul. Milburn took command of the 3rd Battalion advisor team and was charged with securing the elections in his area. From there, Milburn was sent to Afghanistan as an advisor then back to Iraq. He left there in June 2005 and took up a planning position for a potential future war in Korea. He was promoted to battalion commander in 2007 and returned to Iraq and the town of Karma, and the beginnings of ISIS. His battalion pacified the town after a struggle, then Milburn returned to the US. His next hazardous assignment was helping arrange evacuations from Libya in 2011. The next year, Milburn took command of a Marine Special Operations Regiment. After a personal tragedy, Milburn was back in Iraq, fighting ISIS alongside the Peshmerga with considerable success. He concludes his memoir with his retirement and some sobering thoughts on US policy and the squandering of American lives in seemingly pointless wars.
When the Tempest Gathers is a remarkable memoir on many levels. It is full of action and incident. Milburn has you on the edge of your seat as you follow him around the chaotic modern battlefield, fighting enemies you rarely see but when you do it is often up close and personal. Milburn’s account is full of tactical insight, as you might expect, but he is also an expert through experience on the psychology of combat. In addition, Milburn weighs up America’s allies and enemies with nuance rather than discrimination, which is refreshing, and he is scathing on US policy in Iraq. Finally, Milburn brings out the personal and emotional side of being a soldier, and you will see why he refers to his ‘gallery of ghosts’ that still haunt him. As a writer, Milburn is a well-read man, able to set his experiences into a literary context as well as the pragmatic; he is a throwback in some ways to the warrior poets of the Twentieth Century’s conflicts. This memoir will stand the test of time and be read and understood by soldiers in the future. It is a pity that poor editing let him down on a few jarring occasions, but that does not detract from the excellence of Milburn’s memoir. 10/10
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by RNS | May 22, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Carl Rudolph Small, Memories Unleashed (Casemate, 2019)
How do we ‘see’ the Vietnam War? Not as a Hollywood movie with beginning, middle, and end set to orchestral waves of emotion. No, this was the first media war, told in snippets on the nightly news, digested in discordant bite-size chunks over TV dinners and ultimately found unpalatable. We do not know many names from Vietnam, a war with apparently few heroes, just shared suffering and sacrifice among everyone involved. Carl Rudolph Small’s, Memories Unleashed reflects that cultural fragmentation with forty-three memories strung together into a patchwork of experience, with no names but all pack-drill.
Small joined the Marines in 1969 as a private, served 13 months in Vietnam, received three promotions, and came back changed forever. The marine, as Small calls himself, came under fire on his first night in Vietnam, saw his first casualties, lost his first friends. And for the next year he fought the elusive enemy and their booby-traps, and the environment; the heat, monsoon rains, rats, bugs, leeches, snakes, and a trapped tiger that stopped the war just for a moment. The firefights that run through the book were short, intense affairs of flashing light and noise; men died, others were wounded, then came the next mission and the next firefight. Along the way he found a puppy and wrote letters home to the girl he knew he would marry. That along with childhood memories and his religion motivated the marine to survive and do the best he could for his men. The marine describes the food, going for a swim, the dirty duty of latrine cleaning, giving lectures to new arrivals on how the enemy might kill them, and Christmas; he attended a Bob Hope show, sort of, then it was back into combat to become the hunter and the hunted. More fighting, more killing, then he went home, but Vietnam came with him and stayed in his nightmares.
Small’s memoir is not an enjoyable read, but it is a necessary one for those interested in how the Vietnam War was fought on the ground. Small achieves total emotional immersion for the reader, not an easy effect to pull off in a slim volume. He brings the sights, smells, and sounds of the war to the page, assisted by his snapshot kodak photographs of young men sent into a situation for which few were prepared. Small rarely considers the wider war and what it meant, concerned more for his squad and their small and often violent world. That might be a failing in other works on Vietnam, but here it adds to the intensity. Reading Small’s unleashed memories is an experience in itself.
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by RNS | May 21, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Paul Westermeyer, The United States Marine Corps (Casemate, 2019)
Paul Westermeyer’s slim volume on the US Marine Corps (USMC) is part of Casemate’s Short History collection. It is split into six chapters, each defining an era of USMC history. It is a longer history than some might suspect, having been weaned on John Wayne WWII movies, grainy Vietnam War footage, and shocking HD television news stories from the blurred frontlines of Iraq.
The USMC dates to 1775 when Congress authorized its formation. They performed like other marines, fighting ship-to-ship or carrying out amphibious landings. With independence secured, it would not be long before the USMC became the spearhead of US foreign policy, performing the role of an Expeditionary Force against the Barbary Pirates among other actions. Ever since, the USMC has been involved in every major combat from capturing John Brown at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 to patrolling the chaotic streets of Fallujah in the 21st Century. Westermeyer argues that the USMC came of age from 1899 to 1919, covering the Spanish-American War and World War I. The latter also saw the USMC deploy two aviation units. The inter-war period was a time of learning and putting doctrine into place, which was timely given the work they had to do in the island-hopping campaign against the Japanese in WWII, though they made their WWII reputation defending Guadalcanal. The USMC has rarely seen peace, and during the Cold War they fought in Korea, saving themselves and Korea with their legendary withdrawal from the Chosin Reservoir, and Vietnam where they fought the Tet Offensive to a standstill in key locations such as Hue. By the 21st Century, the USMC had developed into a powerful combined-arms force, incorporating the latest technology on land and in the air, but each Marine is never allowed to forget that no matter his specialty he is a rifleman first. As such, the USMC has fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, developing their tactical abilities while maintaining their strategic role as America’s expeditionary force.
Westermeyer’s tidy narrative of USMC history is interspersed with vignettes, describing the USMC’s various roles and adding colour to the story. His accounts of pivotal battles highlight the multiple roles the Marines have adopted, though he allows some of the lengthy quotes to escape his authorial control. The United States Marine Corps also contains useful illustrations and photographs that assist the narrative. Though more detailed histories exist, this is certainly an excellent introduction to the USMC and a great companion to take along if you visit the superb USMC museum in Virginia. 8/10.
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by RNS | May 20, 2020 | Beating Tsundoku
Jim Thayer, Tango 1-1 9th Infantry Division LRPS in the Vietnam Delta (Pen & Sword, 2020)
Jim Thayer volunteered to fight in the Vietnam War as Long Range Patrol Ranger. The personnel specialist in charge of assigning Thayer thought he was either mentally impaired or possessed of an insatiable death wish. He may have had a point. Tango 1-1 is Thayer’s memoir of his immersion into combat at the very tip of the American spear and it is a hair-raising ride.
Thayer was already a soldier when he re-enlisted to fight in Vietnam, but he had never seen combat. He was familiar with the routines of army life, though service in the LRP was anything but routine. He joined Team 1-1, a small unit of warriors inserted by helicopter, truck, or boat into potentially lethal situations in the Mekong Delta. Most missions were interesting but uneventful, Thayer writes, but his team also captured Viet Cong guerrillas; conducted reconnaissance missions that ended in firefights; set ambushes as hunter/killer teams; and fought pitched battles against NVA regulars. The Rangers used a variety of weapons to suit their missions. Some of those were conducted in a jungle environment but most were out in the open among paddy fields and along riverbank villages. Vietnamese PRUs sometimes went with the LRPs and proved themselves able soldiers.
Thayer became team leader through attrition, and was awarded numerous medals, including the Silver Star, which he paid for with a serious wound that earned him some time in Japan. When he returned, Thayer took to going on patrol in bare feet and wore a headband rather than a hat; he “looked more like a Mandalay pirate”. Thayer’s memoir also discusses his down time at USO shows, barracks life, eating a captured pig, and drinking beer, but he focuses more on the drama of Vietnam where he endured falling off a truck at high speed, fire ants, snakes, searing heat, monsoon rains, booby traps, enemy ambushes, watching comrades die, being wounded slightly but eventually severely, and a failed marriage. During the end phase of his tour of duty, Thayer began experiencing PTSD and recognized that combat had worn down his mental acuity and self-confidence and that luck played a large part in his survival. While on compassionate leave, Thayer was assigned to a training unit. After more surgery, Thayer left the army for a career in law enforcement.
Tango 1-1 is more than a personal memoir, but a homage to Thayer’s unit and the men he fought alongside. While the usual Vietnam tropes of heat and smell and culture-shock are in the book, Thayer avoids the sometimes wearisome ‘literature’ of the Vietnam War to tell straightforward stories of men in combat, although why he opted for simple chapter headings rather than give his stories titles eludes this reviewer. In addition, the blurb taken directly from a Stars & Stripes propaganda piece on Rangers does him no favours by casting some doubt on the veracity of his experiences. Nevertheless, Thayer’s memoir is testimony to the real courage these men displayed in alien conditions against a tenacious enemy. Those interested in Vietnam, and in particular LRPs and their tactics will enjoy Thayer’s memoir and learn a lot from it. Highly Recommended. 8/10.
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