Month: August 2013

History Friday: Trenches Don’t Work Well If They Aren’t Messy

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I recently purchased Trench Warfare 1850-1950 by Anthony Saunders. I know of no other book that covers the topic over this span of time. We all know about the American Civil War and its premonitions of the Western Front trench works in its later stages, e.g. before Petersburg. Also, I was struck when reading the Memoirs of Lord Wolseley by his depiction of the fighting before Sebastopol during the Crimean War, and how much it sounded like World War I.

Upon receiving the book, I opened it at random and found this:

The quality of the British trenches varied according to which battalion had been responsible for their original construction and the attitude to trench maintenance of those who came afterward. One aspect that was universal in the early days was was uniformity and neatness, much prized initially as evidence of soldierly bearing and professionalism. Uniformity and neatness were soon discovered to be the worst possible qualities in an entrenchment. Indeed, they came to symbolize inexperience and lack of skill in trench fighting. Such trenches were killers because even the slightest movement or change that broke the neat orderliness were instantly seen; and German snipers soon learned the locations in the Allied trenches where men were careless. Almost from the start of trench warfare, German snipers made British parapets dangerous places for the unwary and they took a steady toll of the incautious. Ideally, trenches not only blended into their surroundings, but the parapet was disordered, uneven and camouflaged, all of this designed to hide the location of the trench and prevent movement in it from being noticed. There are few straight lines of the sort so favoured by peace-time sergeant-majors to be found in nature. Such military orderliness had no place in the trenches of the Western Front.

Nicely put. It appears I am in good authorial hands.

History Friday: Where Legends Were Born – The Long Trail Cattle Drives

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For no good reason that I have ever been able to figure out – the figure of the cowboy remains about the most dominant figure in our mental landscape of the Wild West – the version of the 19th century American frontier that the public usually knows best, through novels, movies and television. The version of the Wild West which most people have in mind when they consider that period is post-Civil War as to time frame and available technology, and most often centered on aspects of cattle ranches, cow-towns, and long-trail cattle drives – and the hired men who performed the grunt work involved – or those various forces arrayed against them; homesteaders, rustlers and assorted other stock baddies. The long-trail drives actually took place over a fairly limited time; about ten or fifteen years, but those few years established an undying legend, especially in the minds of people anywhere else or at any other time. The realities of it all, of course, are a bit more nuanced, a bit more complicated, and perhaps a bit more interesting.

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History Friday: Validating a Pro-MacArthur Story

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In my last column (History Friday — MacArthur: A General Made for Another Convenient Lie) I opened with the following point about General Douglas MacArthur —

“One of the important things to know about General Douglas MacArthur was that almost nothing said or written about him can be trusted without extensive research to validate its truthfulness. …”

…and explained how MacArthur’s very personally poisonous relations with Australian Military Forces commander General Blamey polluted the historical record of the events around the Sandukan Death March.

General Douglas MacArthur decorates General George Kenney
General Douglas MacArthur decorates General George Kenney

This week is a MacArthur story from 180 degree opposite direction than the Blamey one, via General George L. Kenney’s book “The MacArthur I Know”. Kenney was General Douglas MacArthur’s 3rd and final air commander for WW2 and, while not part of the “Bataan Gang,” he became a fierce partisan for MacArthur. This is story is from the book’s Chapter III. I Join MacArthur’s Command at page 56 —

At every opportunity I talked MacArthur to the kids. I told them that he appreciated the place of air power and that his backing of me was responsible for the improvement in food and living conditions during the past few weeks. We had started flying fresh meat to New Guinea and screening all mess halls and kitchens. The dysentery and malaria rates had dropped amazingly. Men were even beginning to get back some of the weight they had lost. MacArthur had approved my action, in spite of the expressed disapproval of many of his staff and Service of Supply people.

It turns out that this pro-MacArthur story Kenney told was not the whole truth…it was over a longer period and -A LOT- more complicated.

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