by RNS | Feb 17, 2021 | Beating Tsundoku
Adrian Stewart, Kamikaze (Pen & Sword, 2020)
There are few more terrifying events for a sailor than coming under air attack. The idea that the pilot intends to crash into you ramps up that fear level exponentially. Yet that is what Allied sailors, mostly Americans, faced as the Pacific War reached its climax in 1944, when Japanese suicide pilots, known as kamikazes, pitched their planes into a dive, heading straight for American ships. This happened day after day, shredding nerves and shattering ships. Adrian Stewart tells the riveting story of a unique but ultimately doomed tactic.
Stewart traces the kamikaze to the code of Bushido, the loyalty code of the pre-modern Samurai warriors. That ethos outlasted the Samurai to become the backbone ideology of the modernized Japanese forces that entered World War II. Death, therefore, held few terrors for Japanese pilots tasked with flying their aircraft into American ships. Stewart points out that such a suicide was not that unusual for pilots who did not carry parachutes: it was the organisation of such men into squadrons for the purpose that was new. This was first tried for the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 where the tactic proved its worth but was too little, too late to change the outcome. Nevertheless, Vice Admiral Onishi pushed the idea further with solid support from the pilots who would fly the ‘special attacks’ missions. Indeed, Stewart sets great store in the sincerity of those men. The attacks continued around the Philippines and if the Kamikazes made it through the fighter and anti-aircraft screen, they caused considerable damage. The Japanese switched to mass attacks on a single target that proved very effective, and they used a variety of aircraft mixed in with normal bombing operations. But the Americans took the Philippines, which fatally cut the Japanese supply lines.
The threat of unconditional surrender motivated continued kamikaze attacks, including Shinyo boats and Kaiten midget submarines, though they had negligible impact. American counter-measures also reduced the Kamikaze’s effectiveness. Kamikazes still caused serious casualties at Iwo Jima in February 1945 and again at Okinawa when 355 planes in a single attack caused carnage followed by mass attacks on consecutive days. But the Japanese could not sustain their losses. Stewart detours to the desperate ‘banzai’ attack of the battleship Yamato group, which was a disaster but not a suicide mission. Another detour examines the Royal Navy’s dealings with kamikazes around Okinawa. In the end, the kamikazes caused many casualties and great damage, but they could not stop the American advance. Stewart concludes by wrapping up the Pacific War with Japan’s surrender and its aftermath.
Stewart’s Kamikaze is a solid overview of a unique wartime phenomenon. He is careful to place the concept of kamikaze into its historical context and provides detailed descriptions of many kamikaze attacks on Allied ships. Sometimes Stewart adds too much superfluous information for the battles where the attacks took place and he deviates into sideshows such as the firebombing of Tokyo and FDR’s untimely death. Stewart also seems a bit too trusting of his kamikaze pilot sources, though that could be just this reviewer’s Western cynicism. Nevertheless, air warfare and military history enthusiasts will enjoy this account of an important element in Japan’s Pacific War.
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by RNS | Feb 14, 2021 | Beating Tsundoku
Garry David Wills, Wellington at Bay (Helion, 2020)
The popular perception of Wellington’s Peninsular campaigns is one of strategic manoeuvre interspersed with great battles won by arguably Britain’s greatest general. But Garry Wills’ work on the Battle of Villamuriel on 25 October 1812 highlights something rather different: a stirring rearguard action fought as part of a long, miserable retreat.
Wills begins his narrative at the failed siege of Burgos and Wellington’s retreat back to Portugal. The French maintained a close pursuit of the Anglo-Portuguese army. Protecting river crossings was of prime importance, which was the case for Wellington’s 5th Division at Villamuriel on the River Carrion. Wills sets up the action to come with a detailed overview of the forces involved, including the quality of troops and their commanders, the battlefield, and deployment. The blowing of the bridge over the Carrion heralded the beginning of the combat, but that did not prevent the French cavalry from crossing at a nearby ford. The British withdrew to the high ground, ceding the riverbank and adjacent village to the French, then counter-attacked, driving the French back across the river. The action finished with nightfall, providing cover for Wellington to continue his retreat the next morning. Wills concludes his narrative with calculations of casualties and prisoners, a tricky task but authoritatively handled, and the continued retreat. In his analysis, Wills highlights the complexity of Division level Napoleonic combat, which was far more nuanced than the stereotypical column v line affair. He adds a chapter on wargaming the action, which is very useful, and appendices on French and Allied commanders and officers at the engagement, the story of Ensign George Young, the identity of ‘McK’ – a key source for the battle – and an honour roll of the British and French dead. Wills closes with a comprehensive bibliography that will keep Peninsular War enthusiasts in reading material for a long time.
Wellington at Bay follows the standard structure for a battle narrative, which makes for comfortable if unremarkable reading. That is no bad thing and Wills rises above the commonplace with the quality of his research and rich array of embedded quotes from contemporary sources that illuminate the text. It is also refreshing to read an account of a medium sized Napoleonic battle with its more ground level approach. That will also be very appealing to wargamers who will appreciate Wills’ diligence in digging out the details. Wills’ engagement with other historians that have studied this battle adds a sense of authority to his book, which must surely be considered definitive for the Battle of Villamuriel.
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by RNS | Feb 7, 2021 | Beating Tsundoku
Andrew Bamford ed., Life in the Red Coat The British Soldier 1721-1815 (Helion, 2020)
This book of essays, relating to British soldiers, is compiled from the Proceedings of the 2019 Helion and Company ‘From Reason to Revolution’ conference. The linking theme is the wide range of soldiers’ experiences in their various roles in and out of combat. The eight writers are at various stages of their writing or academic careers, and they are as varied as their subjects. Collectively, under Bamford’s watchful eye, they have produced an entertaining and informative book.
Bamford leads the charge with a chronology and introduction to the essays. Andrew Cormack follows with an analysis of Chelsea Pensioner records between 1715 and 1755. Jonathan Oates considers the rank and file soldiers of the British Army at Culloden, closing a hole in our understanding of that battle. The essays leap forward to Robert Griffith’s survey of foreign soldiers serving under Wellington in the Peninsular War from 1808 to 1814. Alexander Burns returns to the 18th Century to probe the extent and effects of Methodism in the British army from 1739 to 1789. Brendan Morrisey’s topic is the role of the army in suppressing the bloody Gordon Riots in June 1780 and their civic role in general when things went wrong. Robert Tildesley takes us to Minorca in 1756 and how soldiers experienced that losing battle. Zack White also examines soldiers’ reactions to defeat and victory as we return to the Peninsular War, then Carole Divale stays in the 1792 to 1815 period to describe how soldiers experienced battle.
The essays in Life in the Red Coat are of varying quality and originality, but they are uniformly interesting and informative. As an introduction to the experiences of British soldiers in the long 18th Century, this little collection works very well, though sometimes you have to hit the ground running to follow them. To his credit, Bamford acknowledges that these essays are not definitive but doorways to further exploration, and the footnotes and bibliographies will certainly help with that. This is an enjoyable and entertaining read for novices and experts alike.
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by RNS | Jan 31, 2021 | Beating Tsundoku
Dr. Ilkka Syvänne, The Military History of Late Rome AD425-457 (Pen & Sword, 2020)
This is the fourth in a series of seven books by Ilkka Syvänne, presenting the military history of an Empire in deep trouble. And while it seems a short period to cover in a book, this was an action packed and turbulent three decades that Syvänne calls the Age of the Warlords. For Romans it was an era spent on the precipice of disaster.
Syvänne outlines an Empire united but fragile in 425. That integrity could not hold without a strong centralised power, however, and that was tragically missing. The West though was in much greater trouble than the East as becomes obvious when the narrative unfolds. Enemies surrounded Rome’s frontiers, and some were already inside; others, like the Huns, emerged from out of the vast emptiness beyond the frontier to threaten Rome’s existence. Policies of divide and rule against the barbarians and sometimes effective management of resources, along with almost constant firefighting under the brilliant general Aetius, stemmed the tide.
The Eastern Romans helped the West when they could, but they had their own problems, mainly with the Persians but also the Arabs and Huns. The latter threatened both Roman spheres, and led by Attila they invaded Gaul in 451, leading to the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields, which he lost to Aetius. Undaunted, he invaded Italy the following year and lost again. When Aetius was murdered in 454, Attila had been dead for over a year, and the door was open for the Vandals to attack and sack Rome in 455. Marcian, by then Emperor in the East since 450, sent some help, according to Syvänne, but he was also busy in his own backyard. By his death in 457, the East at least was in a stable position. And that is where Syvänne ends this volume.
In telling this often complex story, Syvänne makes the best of patchy sources and is quite happy to lay his analytical steps out for all to see; perhaps too much so at times when he interrupts the flow to dig around in the weeds. He also has an irritating habit of referring to his other published works in lieu of straightforward explanations. Nevertheless, his interpretations are interesting, particularly when he goes against the orthodoxy; for example, on army sizes. He supports his descriptions with frequent maps and illustrations, and the centre section features multiple colour photographs of reenactors, which are visually appealing though it isn’t clear what value they add to the text. I would not say this is a book for beginners studying the late Roman Empire, but for those who have some background, they will find this stimulating and provocative.
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by RNS | Jan 26, 2021 | Beating Tsundoku
Jonathan Eaton, Leading the Roman Army (Pen & Sword, 2020)
Imperial Rome was born out of the fires of civil war. In the last century of the Republic, armies maintained allegiance to their generals who fought on and off for power in Rome. The ultimate victor, Augustus, the first Emperor to all intents and purposes, created a system whereby the army remained loyal only to him. Despite a couple of hiccups, his system of Imperial control remained useful for generations of Emperors. In Leading the Roman Army, Jonathan Eaton examines how that management worked.
Eaton takes a thematic approach to his study to avoid chronological pitfalls. In doing so, he peels back the layers of military management and analyses how the army adapted to political and strategic circumstances. Eaton also considers command as a series of power relations, with the highest power, of course, reserved for the Emperor. Eaton’s analysis begins with the Rome garrison with which the Emperor had to cultivate good relations for obvious reasons as they protected him or didn’t as the case may be. We then move into the field army, starting with discipline and morale, which sometimes broke down into mutinies, demonstrating the Legions were not the automatons as they are sometimes portrayed. Eaton turns to the Centurions, men of prestigious rank who formed the professional backbone of the army and controlled the rank and file while spreading their loyalty to the Emperor. Up next is the Roman upper class and their attitude to military duty. Almost inevitably, Eaton finds politics at play, particularly the role of Imperial patronage that favoured loyalty over expertise. Returning to the lower ranks, Eaton asks how politically aware they were. He stresses the importance of Imperial coinage and statues for spreading identification and loyalty, otherwise control of information helped shape political opinion. Eaton closes his argument with the Emperor’s direct connections to his troops through campaigns or other military exercises, sometimes bringing his family along to stress dynastic elements. In short, his message was that he was one of them. In his conclusion, Eaton argues that “no emperor could survive without the support of the army” and his book goes a long way to establishing the truth of that.
Leading the Roman Army is not an easy read or a beginner’s book for the Roman Army, as you might expect given it is based on Eaton’s PhD thesis, but it’s certainly not out of reach either for the non-academic. Eaton’s thematic approach is different, but works for what he is trying to achieve, and his examples and deployment of sources make this an argument to reckon with for other historians examining the power dynamics of Imperial Rome. Overall, while this is not a book of battles and campaigns, Leading the Roman Army is an excellent addition to Roman Army studies.
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by RNS | Jan 23, 2021 | Beating Tsundoku
Mike Roberts, Rome’s Third Samnite War (Pen & Sword, 2020)
In Rome’s Third Samnite War, Mike Roberts reminds us that if you are going to build a great Empire, you need to beat your neighbours first. At least that was the case for Rome that became involved in a desperate struggle for survival and supremacy against the Samnites and their allies between 298 and 290 BCE. Rome emerged victorious, and the rest is, well, history.
Roberts begins with an honest assessment of the sometimes unreliable sources for the crucial decade in the 290s when Roman expansion could have been halted. Far from the opulent place where all roads would one day lead, he describes Rome in 300 as ‘shabby and labyrinthine’ with about sixty-thousand people living there. The Romans were, therefore, just one group among many in Italy but had fought their way to prominence, a rise Roberts describes well. But to expand, Rome had to defeat the Samnites and their allies, not an easy prospect as they soon found out. The First Samnite War was a small affair, but the Second was a major war, which the Romans lost in humiliating fashion.
It takes a while for Roberts to hack his way through the undergrowth of Rome’s ascendancy to get to the Third Samnite War. When he does, Roberts describes the causes and opening of the war, exercising caution with his sources along the way. Then the narrative of strategy, campaigning, and battles begins with Roberts analysing as he goes. Although mostly penned into their towns, the Samnites opened a new front with their allies in the north. The Romans met them at Sentinum in 295 BCE and crushed the Samnite coalition. This was the turning point of the war, according to Roberts. But the Samnites were not yet finished, and plague and attrition took their toll on the Romans. Thus, the final defeat of the Samnites took two more years until the Battle of Aquilonia destroyed their lingering hopes along with their much vaunted, elite Linen Legion. Mopping up followed, but the war was mostly over. Roberts concludes with the Samnites cowed until a final hurrah and another defeat in the 1st Century BCE saw them eradicated as a functioning people.
Rome’s Third Samnite War is a fascinating story and well told by Mike Roberts. He handles his sources respectfully but is not afraid to cut loose with his imagination when warranted. In particular, his exciting narratives of the battles are built on his knowledge of the terrain and his sources. Roberts also has a novelist’s eye for character when describing the main players in this drama and rarely becomes bogged down in their sometimes esoteric biographies. Above all, Roberts questions the evidence, allowing the reader to work with him through the events, and making his book a richer reading experience for it. Anyone interested in the Early Roman Republic will enjoy Roberts’ narrative and interpretation of a pivotal time in Roman history.
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