One could argue which was the main reason why Brazil entered the Second World War. In the early 40's, as a result of the diplomatic actions for the "good vicinity" politics, led by Pres. Roosevelt, fascist - oriented Brazilian strong man, Getúlio Vargas, had to realign his political cores with big brother United States, fighting for Democracy and the Free World.

Brazil was a very important strategic point for the Allies in the more intense scale of war in Europe and North Africa. Right after Pearl Harbor in 1941, Brazil cut relations with Axis countries. Sooner, United States was engaged in the war in Europe and North Africa. All this settled, in a short time there were several air bases in Brazilian land to help the American planes, ships, men and material reach North Africa, in what was called "The Springboard for Victory ". It is said that the American Air base in the city of Recife was one of the busiest in the world at that time.

This base along with another in the city of Natal, helped men, equipment and provisions reach North Africa, since these bases were in the Northeast seashore of Brazil. At the same time, American Army instructors started to train Brazilian troops and supply equipment to Brazilian Army, Navy and Air Force, in the hay days of 1942. With all this privileges to Roosevelt and the war effort of the Allies, the German U Boats that once were routing through the South Atlantic, using bases in Argentina and Chile, started to sink as many merchant ships as they could, being many of this ships with Brazilian flag, in territorial waters. This ragged the public opinion in Brazil so as to force a declaration of war against the Axis on August 1942.

When Brazil - the only country in South America who fought along the Allies - entered WWII, no significant victories of the Allies had occurred at that early stage of the war in the fields of Europe or the Pacific. Soon came the mobilization of men to form the Brazilian Expeditionary Force FEB, in a giant effort to upgrade a backdated army in its doctrine and equipment. It took two years to get these men ready to join the war effort against the Axis forces.

MEN IN ACTION

Later in 1944, the Brazilian Forces joined the Allies in Europe to help the actions in Italy, after a gross part of the more experienced troops left for Anzio, South of France and even Normandy. With very few time for proper training, the Brazilian troops compensated with great character and capacity of adaptation to war conditions in a very tough terrain and climate, being well honored by all the staff of the Allied High Command during their participation in the Italian Campaign. Many Brazilian soldiers were decorated with the highest medals of the American Forces. This has been the finest hour for the Brazilian Expeditionary Force FEB.

THE CAMPAIGN

In the first days of July, 1944, the first Echelon of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force FEB - left to Europe, aboard the American ship General Mann, in a total of 5.081 men. Originally, the ship should be going to Argel, where the troops would get preliminary training before landing in Italian soil. However, the convoy headed straight to Naples, where the troops disembarked and waited to join US Task Force 45. Later, on the 22nd July, two more ships, Gen Mann and Gen Meigs, left to Europe, with the Second and Third Echelons, with 10.369 men total. The last two Echelons, Fourth, with more 4.722 men and Fifth, with 5.128 men, left Brazil on the last days of November and first days of February '45, totaling 25.300 men.

The first moments of the Brazilian troops in Italy were dedicated to acquiring and training with new equipment, since the uniform and gear of the Brazilian Army would not fit the different climate and tough exigencies of a modern war (yes, it was obsolete). So that, all the gear used by the Brazilian Army was the average US G.I. equipment. The troops were moved to Tarquinia, 350 Km North of Naples, where the US 5th Army, commanded by the famous Gen Mark Clark, was based. The Brazilian troops were incorporated to the 4th Army Core, commanded by Gen Crittenberger. On the 19th August, Churchill himself visited the 5th Army in Cecina, where he was told that Brazilian troops were part of the Guard of Honor. He directed some of his speech to the Brazilian troops that now joined the war effort in Italy.

The Brazilian troops were filling the gap left by several divisions of the 5th US Army and French Expeditionary Force that went to the invasion in the South of France. This straight action with the fresh Brazilian troops was a necessity, due to the great operation at Anzio, to where so many American and British troops were issued. The overall command of Brazilian troops was made from the High Command of the 15th Allied Army Group, headed by Gen Mark Clark and Gen Crittenberger (5th Army and 4th Army Core, USA), Field marshal Alexander (8th Royal Army, England) together with the high staff of the Brazilian Army, Gen Euríco Dutra, Gen Mascarenhas de Moraes, Gen Zenóbio da Costa and Gen Cordeiro de Farias (commanders of several Infantry and Artillery Divisions among the whole of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force). On the 16th November, FEB occupied Massarosa. Two days later, Camaiore and other small towns and cities on the way North. During this period, the Brazilians G.I.s, or "pracinhas", created the FEB symbol, consisting of a badge with a snake over National colors (Green and Yellow), with a smoking pipe in mouth. This was a big irony to answer a group of the society opposing Brazil entering the conflict, who used to say that it was easier to see a snake smoking than to see Brazilian troops sent to fight the war...

In October, FEB conquered Monte Prano, controlled the Sercchio river valley and Castelnuovo, with first significant losses. Later that month, troops were directed to the Reno valley. This region, at the feet of the Appenines, was the place where FEB would spend the next three months, facing rigorous winter and the fierce resistance of the German forces up on the mountains and hills, the so called Bernhard and Gustav Lines, strong defenses made by the Axis to delay the advance of troops. It was there where one of the great achievements of the Brazilian troops took place: Monte Castelo. In the end of November, several attempts were made to kick the Germans out of this hill, from where they could spot all movements of Allied troops. The freshly created and debuting in the front 10th US Mountain Division, joined FEB in an 18Km front, having the task of clearing Monte Belvedere from the Germans atop of it. The days went by with head-on clashes with the well nested Germans, clearing off mine fields, "booby traps", ambushes, machine gun nests, all this under a heavy barrage of grenades and mortar fire. It was not until the 21st of February, 1945, that finally the Germans were battered off Monte Castelo. The Brazilian troops paid a heavy toll for this victory, but still there was more to come.

On 5th of March, FEB entered Castelnuovo. During this period, the Offensive for Spring was being prepared by the High Staff of Gen. Crittenberger and the Brazilian High Command. This was a large scale operation (which would endure till the last days of the War), ranging from the Adriatic to the Tirrene, using every single Division of every Army taking part in the campaign. The actions would start with a frontal attack on the enemy lines, and the city of Montese was the target to the Brazilian troops, so as to remove what was left of the German artillery, still causing great damage to the Allies. The city was taken, but late at night, the Germans counter attacked and it took a high number of casualties to finish off with the fight, again, a tough and bloody page in the actions of FEB during the Italian Campaign

At this point, the Germans were trying to regroup after escaping through road 64, the only path down the Appenines. The progress of the troops was fast and in a few days, the city of Parma was taken. Later on, FEB entered Bologne without any resistance. In the end of April, the actions of pursuing the enemy became the main occupation of the Allied Forces. So it was that FEB entered Collechio, still under German artillery. After surrendering a large number of Germans, the Brazilian Forces were preparing to face fierce resistance at the river Taro, from what was left of the retreating German Forces, this time through route 62. The German troops were surrounded near Fornovo and forced to surrender. So that, the entire 148th Wehrmacht Infantry Division, consisting altogether of more than 16 thousand(!) men, including the 80th Panzer division, several Italian divisions and more than a thousand vehicles(!), surrendered to the Brazilian Forces on 28th April.

On 2nd May, Brazilian Forces entered the city of Turin, in the Northeast of Italy, meeting French Mountain troops in the frontier, while in the North, FEB was on the heels of German Forces still on the run. At this date, the astounding news that Hitler was dead put an end to the fights in Italy. All German troops finally surrendered to the Allies in the following hours.

WAR IS OVER!

During eight months of the Italian Campaign, the Brazilian Forces managed to make 20.573 Axis prisoners, being two generals, 892 officials and 19.679 privates. FEB had 443 KIA, being 13 officials. Summing up with the lives of civilians and military that were in the ships of the Brazilian Merchant Navy - sunk in the South Pacific in Brazilian waters by U boats, more losses in the Brazilian Navy and Air Force, the Second World War stole the lives of nearly 2.000 Brazilians.

The 443 soldiers buried in the FEB cemetery in Pistoia were later removed to the WW II mausoleum and monument built in Rio de Janeiro, in the beginning of the 60's, where stands the eternal flame lit in the tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The Brazilian Air Force – FAB

The FAB had a group of pilots and land personnel trained in the United States, the 1º GAvCA (1st Fighter Group), sent to Italy and allocated in the 350th U.S. Army Air Force Fighter Group. The Brazilian pilots actually formed one of the 20 squadrons of the XXII Air Tactic Command, flying the updated P-47D. Their role was very important to the actions of all Allied forces in Italy and the Brazilian pilots were also very praised for their important air-to-ground operations. Many pilots were victims of heavy flack, some were downed , captured by Germans and taken to prisoner camps in Germany...

M.M.R.

It is not generally known that Brazil played a role in the Allied victory in World War 2, yet the forces of that country were actively involved in the war against the axis on two different fronts. The story of "Brazil's War" is presented here.

Overview

Since 1930, Brazil had been ruled by Getúlio Vargas, who seized power in the best South American style, with an armed column marching its way to Rio de Janeiro, then capital of the country. The country was seeing the rise of a harsh dictatorship that was to end only after the collapse of the Third Reich.

In 1937 a mock plan was devised inside the Army staff, its intention being to pass off warning of a fictitious plot threatening internal stability, and a repression apparatus was put into action. Thus, a coup d’état was given inside the other by the murky Vargas. He had a strong inclination for the totalitarian European dictatorships; his chief of staff openly sympathized with the German government, as well as many leading personalities of the country’s political life. With the outbreak of the war, Vargas stood for neutrality.

A representative part of the civilian officials working alongside Vargas, however, was profoundly distasteful of these pro-fascist manifestations and so they played an important part on the decision to join the Allies in the fight against Hitler.

During the negotiations between Americans and Brazilians, Vargas managed to gain technical advice from the U.S. to build the Volta Redonda steel mill. Even before the declaration of war on Germany, Brazil had been sending raw materials to Allied nations.

This would be the beginning of an all-out effort, which culminated with the Brazilian Expeditionary Force being sent to fight in Europe.

The Northeastern coast of Brazil was considered the weakest point of a possible invasion of the Americas, which by 1941, with the Axis’ successful campaign in North Africa, was justly feared. After summits between Roosevelt and Vargas’ representatives, they both agreed on limited cooperation, and this would include permission for the Americans to establish a massive air base complex in the Northern city of Natal, which would become known as the "Springboard of Victory", bringing constant supplies to the troops in North Africa, and with the Brazilian Army maintaining coastal defenses in the area.

Soon German and Italian reprisals would be heard of. From 1941 to 1943, 32 Brazilian vessels fell victim of U-boats all along the coast, with painful consequences to the national spirit, which eventually led to the declaration of war on Germany and Italy in August 1942, a bold decision for a country such as Brazil, when the outcome of the war was far from predictable.

The first effective military actions were soon to follow, and the fledgling Brazilian Air Force managed constant patrolling of the country’s shores.

Patrolling was also a task of the Navy, and a part of the fleet escorted convoys along the Atlantic. By 1943, the outmost post occupied by Brazilians was the paradisiacal but unfamiliar island of Fernando de Noronha, 100 km off the coast of Pernambuco.

But this did not fulfill the population’s strong desire to take revenge for the casualties in the sunken ships, and as a point of honour, Vargas decided to form the core of an Expeditionary Force in August 1943. This also helped to divert attention from the atrocities committed by the government against those who dared to complain. This course of action was also a result of extensive talks between Roosevelt and Vargas. The Expeditionary Force was also an excellent chance for the Army to catch up with more modern weaponry.

Things are much easily said than done, especially when the Brazilian Army was living on WWI leftovers. The last shot in anger outside the border had been fired in 1870, in the war against Paraguay which started in 1865. Even though the 1932 Revolution, led by the state of São Paulo against the Vargas Government, saw on several occasions some very heavy fighting, in terms of ground operations it involved nothing more than traditional infantry line attacks and trench warfare. In 1943 the combat experience of officers and NCOs was scarcely above nil.

During the 20's and well into the 30's a French military mission was responsible for the formation of officers and the Army’s organization, so it closely followed the French doctrine of the 1914-18 war. By 1943 the standard weapons were the 1908 Mauser rifle, Hotchkiss and Madsen machine guns, C-96 and Luger pistols, ZB 26 and Hotchkiss automatic rifles, small mortars and the 75mm Krupp field gun. In 1940 the Army had bought a shipment of infantry weapons from Germany, but it was entirely seized by the British as soon as it left to Brazil by ship.

From the beginning it was agreed by both sides that the organization of the FEB (from now on, Brazilian Expeditionary Force will be referred to by its Portuguese abbreviation, FEB for Força Expedicionária Brasileira) would follow the U.S. Army pattern of multiple 3 units in the infantry division. Once only a single infantry division was hastily build up from an assortment of battalions, it would be the sole member of the FEB. General Mascarenhas de Moraes was nominated to command it, and he duly started working to put the division together, which he got to do only as late as December 1943, typical of Brazilian red tape and lack of quick decision making, if not by his fault, also due to many officers being contrary to direct involvement in the war. Volunteering was opened, reservists called up and conscription intensified.

There were a series of setbacks concerning the early stages of the FEB organization, especially regarding its training stages. It had been previously combined that the 1st Expeditionary Infantry Division (1st DIE, for Divisão de Infantaria Expedicionária), was to be sent to a theater of operations presenting the closest similarity possible to Brazilian climatic conditions. By the time of
its birth, the obvious front to send the FEB was North Africa, but the Allies ability to end the war in that theater seemed to top Brazilian enthusiasm. As a result, Gen. Mascarenhas visited the Italian battle fronts early in 1944, since that at least during summer time Italy’s climate would not be so hard to withstand for men accustomed to very hot weather, as it was thought by high ranking Brazilian officers. How wrong they were.

Infantry training consisted of every type of warfare possible but mountain warfare, and this was the typical terrain that the Brazilians faced in Italy. For the majority of the troops, training was given to a reasonable degree, but still far from what average U.S. infantry divisions were used to. All along the FEB campaign, dated tactical mentality would pose a grave hindrance for the FEB riflemen, not because lack of combat experience, which they painstakingly acquired, rather because sheer incompetence from commanders. This situation was to last until almost the very end of the war. Artillery, reconnaissance and engineering efficiency was satisfactorily achieved without major problems. Coordination between services, though, was still a point to be better worked on; this was done as far as circumstances allowed, even in the field.

The 1st DIE was organized after U.S. standards. The three infantry regiments chosen to form it were units with considerable tradition within the Brazilian Army. They were from different military commands of the country, but came all from about the same region, being uniform in composition as far as quality of the troops go. The wide majority of rank and file were in their early twenties, a number of the field officers were civilian reservists hastily drafted. For Brazilian standards of 1943, health conditions of the troops were above those of the Brazilian Territorial Army. All men sent to fight in Italy were under the "special class" category, but they still left much to be desired since there was a considerable rate of evasion during the conscription stages. Deficiency of health conditions was therefore more a result of simple rush to put the division together than difficulty to find able men. This fact can be compensated by mentioning that after the men were engaged, there were no more than a dozen deserters, and once in Europe, there were a mere two cases of desertion in a force of 25,445 men and women.

It seems like the Brazilian Division managed to maintain some pride in belonging, once they were a very small particle of an Army whose main body was to remain in peaceful shores.

About 80% of riflemen were between 22 and 25 years old, with some 2 or 3 years service. They were accustomed to the severe discipline of the caste like Brazilian Army. For example, regulations provided that a private must salute a corporal on all occasions; soldiers, when riding on a bus, were to yield their seat to officers. Even during peacetime, other ranks were not allowed to wear civilian clothes, a rule to which officers did not apply. There was no trace of friendship or camaraderie between officers and men whatsoever, rations and meals differed, enlisted men were very poorly fed. This state of affairs was to change dramatically after initial contacts with other Allied forces.

1a. DIE was shipped to Europe in three separate echelons. The first unit to embark was the 6th Infantry Regiment, from the State of São Paulo, along an artillery group and other support units. They landed in Naples on July 16th, 1944. The 1st and 11th Infantry Regiments, from the states of Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais, respectively, along with the remaining part of the division, arrived in Italy on October 6th. Repple Depple personnel and the rest of the force kept coming until February. In November, a fighting group of the Brazilian Air Force (FAB) arrived, with some 500 men, joining 357th Fighting Squadron with P-47s.

In view of its advanced training stage, the 6th IR was called upon in first place. They were a sort of spearhead, charged with the task of feeling up the ground for the remainder of the troops. Sent to the Arno and Sercchio river valleys, after a short adaptation period, they did well in the first minor actions, mainly reconnaissance and patrolling missions, having liberated a number of Tuscan villages. The first combat order was received on September 15th, it consisted of a reconnaissance action in the small city of Massarossa, but the Brazilians ended up taking the city. After Massarossa came Bozzano, Camaiore, Monte Prano and others. Due to the large amount of men of Italian extraction in the 6th Regiment, friendly contact with the Italian civilians was a positive trait of the whole campaign, and this can also be extended to the other Brazilian units.

Proceeding in its attempt to break the Gothic Line before the winter, IV Corps threw the 6th Regiment against the German positions in the vicinity of Castelnuovo di Garfagnana. On October 28th, the 6th IR took Barga and during the ensuing days it advanced and took Sommocolonia and other surrounding villages. On October 30th the 1st Battalion plus 7th company from the III Battalion (rifle companies were numbered 1 to 9) advanced against Hill 906 and held ground. They were facing the recently raised Monterosa Division. Though this unit had been trained in Germany, both the opponents’ front-line experience was about the same. The Brazilians attacked by surprise and took about 80 Italians prisoner. "We came through the woods, from where they were not expecting us", recalled Vicente Gratagliano, from 1st company. "We took two Italians, who were guarding a machine gun, and they led us to a tent where we captured a whole squad who was there playing cards, such was the surprise".

With the four companies thinly spread across the front and the rest of the regiment in reserve, peril lurked right in front of the battle weary Brazilians. They had advanced in the direction of the only German outfit in the whole area, 2nd battalion of the 284th Regiment, of the 148th Infantry Division. In the early hours of October 31st the four companies suffered a severe mortar barrage, which kept the men from receiving supplies. It didn’t take long to see the swarms of soldiers clad in filed gray advancing towards the Brazilians. With great determination, four infantry attacks were beat off, without artillery support, for the communication lines had been cut. All of the four companies were attacked subsequently, all having its ammunition extinguished to the very last round. A lieutenant from the 1st company would recall:

"One of the men came up to me and said 'Sir, I ran out of bullets'. Soon after this men asking about what to do surrounded me. I told them to let the Germans come as close as possible, and only shoot to kill. Then the Germans came again, and I could see them getting killed at no more than 5 meter from our foxholes. I clearly remember a German with a hand held machine gun and another one beside him feeding the weapon, coming towards us. After the fourth wave with all men having virtually ran out of all ammunition, we were forced to run away".

The 1st and 11th Infantry Regiments arrived at the front by early November. The whole division was then posted to the mountains to the south of Bologna, in time to get grasp of what the first blizzards would mean to them. Brazilians are not
accustomed to subzero temperatures, and snow was a true challenge to those men. Alongside Task Force 45 and Gardiner Force of the U.S. Army, they charged against Monte Castello and Monte Belvedere on three occasions under command of IV Corps, and again on November 29th and December 12th, under Brazilian commander’s supervision. These last two attempts would prove catastrophic for them. FEB generals had insisted on frontal assaults against heavily guarded positions, without air support and insufficient shelling. The ranks sustained 344 casualties in the last two attacks. The generals would learn the hard way, at the footsloggers expense, that those masses could not be taken short of diversionary actions. Though planning of operations was shameful, the men gave proof of extreme courage and valor, albeit this was useless against the devilish MG 42s in their way. Antonio Amaru, a private in the 1st Regiments 8th company commented about the December 12th attack "while advancing we started to draw machine gun fire. I threw myself into a ditch and wasn't able to raise my head for two hours, or else I would have been shot. My company, which was in the center of the attack echelon, had to close ranks to allow the other two companies in the III battalion to retreat."

By this time, soldiers of the division had adopted an arm patch depicting a green snake smoking a pipe, a pun at a pre-war joke that went by saying it was more likely to see a snake smoking than a Brazilian fighting in Europe. However, according to many Brazilian veterans, the slang "the snake is going to smoke" was created among the troops meaning that a fight was about to happen.

For the remainder of the winter, the 1st DIE, along with 5th Army, kept the pressure against the Germans. The main actions during winter months were basically patrolling, something which Brazilians quickly learned to do very well. Several of them received American, British and French decorations due to this type of action, especially in the 6th Regiment. It seems like the Germans gave importance to the presence of a Brazilian force in Italy, since they bothered to send pamphlets and broadcasts in Portuguese, through a propaganda radio station called the "Goldgreen Hour".

By January 1945 the 1st DIE was flanking the famous 10th Mountain Division, a new arrival to the front. The Brazilians would then have to support the 10th Division’s main attacks against Mounts Belvedere and Gorogolesco, and on February 21st, the 1st Regiment took Monte Castello from II Battalion of the 1043 Regiment of the 232nd German Division.

Monte Castello is more a symbolic victory than a decisive one. It served as a means for the soldiers to gain confidence in their commanders, to renew their self-esteem after a very intense period of distress, since it was the division’s first successful major operation.

After Monte Castello and other actions, the 1st DIE played an important role in the conquest of a series of mountains in the Reno Valley, until time came for the Spring Offensive and the final thrust into the Po Valley.

On April 14th, flanked by the 1st Armored Division, they attacked the city of Montese, a strong point of the last Nazi attempt to hold the Allies before the Po Valley. Montese was the bloodiest episode in which the Brazilians got involved, sustaining 426 casualties in four consecutive days until the city and neighboring hills were completely dominated, a fight that engaged almost all of the division’s infantry battalions.

A curious happening was to follow the battle for Montese: on April 29th, the 6th Regiment plus a few M-8 scout cars of the Reconnaissance Squadron captured 1 German division plus what was left of Italian divisions Monterosa and Italia that formed Kampfgruppe Fretter-Pico in the Parma area. It is interesting to observe that this battle group comprised the remains of the 90th Panzergrenadier Division and the almost intact 148th Division, the first unit to inflict a defeat on the Brazilians. One thing that makes a Brazilian veteran proud to talk about his experience in the war was the human treatment they gave to war prisoners, regardless of previous skirmishes. There is a vast array of wartime snapshots showing cheerful Brazilians side by side with their former German opponents, still in uniform. This version is sustained by German accounts.

The participation of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force in the Italian Campaign may seem a minor detail of a war that involved millions of men and women, but it is worthwhile to remember that the simple but valorous soldiers of the division overcame terrible odds, regarding both training and leadership.

Most of the soldiers were conscripts, from a rural background. Their ascendance included Japanese, Polish, Russian, African, German, Italian, Portuguese and many other origins. The Brazilian Army was not segregated, one of its positive points.

Recently, it has been speculated that the FEB does not stand up for the time and money spent on it. However, its history is still to be written. Not too much information is available outside Brazil, apart from US and British official records.

Moreover, the Brazilian soldiers fighting in Europe faced an ironic dilemma: "How can we be fighting for Democracy if we don’t have it back home?" When the troops returned to Brazil, Vargas was finally overthrown.

They had lost 480 men killed, 2064 wounded and 34 MIAs. On the other hand, the FEB captured 20, 573 prisoners prior to the end of the war.

LINK

M.M.R.

Jennifer Keene, (see her bio here) in her study of the experience of American soldiers who served in World War I, sets as goal to fill what she contends is a significant inequality in the focus of scholars of World War I when compared to more popular conflicts: the Civil War, World War II, and the Vietnam War. She suggests that in light of other wars, World War I is seen by many as a “dissatisfying experience with little transcendent significance.” She states as purpose a quest for the true importance of the Great War in American history by telling the story of the generation who served in that war and the way in which their experience shaped American society. Her thesis is that World War I was, in fact, a pivotal experience because it led to a transformation of the federal Army into a stronger national institution. Critical to this change was what she considers the most sweeping social welfare legislation in American history, the G.I. Bill, driven by the generation who would fight in the Great War. Her conclusion is that the Bill changed dramatically the experience of the millions of American men who would participate in mass military service in the twentieth century and was a direct result of the mistakes made by the military in the care of World War I servicemen. She approaches the subject less as an examination of the traditional themes of military battle tactics and strategies and more as a study of the experiences of citizen-soldiers. This allows an in-depth view of topics such as training, combat, discipline, race relations, experiences in France, health care, and the re-entry process after the war. The result is a sobering view of war’s realities at the troop level, a far cry from typical ideologically-based accounts of the Great War. One of the most important conclusions of Linn’s work is that this generation of citizen-soldiers refused to conform to the expectations of military officials and so found their collective voice, becoming political and societal advocates for military reform. Their biggest effort was on adjustment in postwar compensation, a cause they eventually won in 1936 after prolonged lobbying and activism. At issue was the government’s contract with citizen-soldiers, and the debate expanded to include the government’s obligations to the poor.

Keene chooses a chronological organization of her material and follows the experience of the common soldier through conscription, training, and deployment overseas. She describes in a fresh manner the experience of black soldiers abroad and the startling revelation that they were more highly regarded and better treated by the French than by their own countrymen. She continues their story through the post war years and their battles for compensation, finishing with the history of the G.I. Bill.

Keene brings strong academic credentials to the work and an impressive resume. At the time of this book's publication, she was an assistant professor of history at the University of the Redlands in Redlands, California. She is currently the Chair of the Department of History and a Professor of History at Chapman University. She has been recognized with the Wang-Franklin Professorship in Scholarly Excellence award (2007-2009). Professor Keene received her Master of Arts from George Washington University and Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University.

Her work should be of interest to both military and social historians as well as those investigating the experience of black soldiers in the military. She provides an impressive notes section revealing a plethora of primary source materials. Keen’s work is noteworthy for its examination of the pluralistic military tradition of professional and citizen-soldiers. America had to conscript, train, and deploy a huge army in a short period of time and made many errors in the process. Her coverage of this aspect the Great War was exceptional. The text also provides an interesting take on America’s commitment to civilian control of the military. The power of the states and the federal government to raise and manage a large conscription force was tested as was the responsibility of civilian government to those soldiers upon return to a peacetime society. Fascinating issues of contractual obligation to fair wages are covered in depth. Inherent in the latter issue is that fact that rational military considerations alone rarely shape military policies.

Keene demonstrates that once again, that the United States was able to raise an army fairly quickly in support of a perceived threat to the nation’s security. However she also highlights the cost in lives of that rushed effort.

This is an impressive addition to the scholarly base of American military history albeit of decidedly different focus. Highly recommend.

Making up fairy stories about Humpty

Humpty Dumpty was NOT a Civil War cannon in Colchester.

In fact, the rhyme doesn't even have such a specific historical basis. In all likelihood, none of them do. All those cute little origin stories for nursery rhymes? Like "Ring-a-ring-a-roses" being about the Black Death? BS. Made up. They're attempts to understand, satirise, play with words, or even just plain pull the wool over the eyes of the reader. But they aren't history. And like backronyms and urban myths, these damn things have a tendency, once staked by the debunker, to rise from the proverbial grave.

Humpty Dumpty is first recorded in 1797 and transformed 70 years later by Lewis Carroll into an anthropomorphic egg. It's often ascribed some speculative historical significance or other (often a king, for obvious reasons) and a popular origin story at the moment, thanks to this new book called "Pop Goes the Weasel - The Secret Meanings of Nursery Rhymes". The story (reproduced here in detail) goes like this. In 1648, during the English Civil War, Colchester found itself occupied by Royalist forces and under siege from the Parliamentarian army. A lone gunner and his big cannon ("Humpty Dumpty") mounted on top of a church tower on a Roman wall ("sat on the wall"), caused so much trouble for the attackers that they concentrated fire on his position, blowing the top of the tower clean off ("had a great fall"). The cavalry ("all the King's Men") tried to right the cannon, but "couldn't put Humpty together again".

This story is being used heavily to promote the book, because it sounds so damn plausible, and specific, just as statements made by a bogus psychic can. The author evens claims to have discovered a lost verse;

In Sixteen Hundred and Forty-Eight

When England suffered the pains of state

The Roundheads lay siege to Colchester town

Where the King's men still fought for the crown

There One-Eyed Thompson stood on the wall

A gunner of deadliest aim of all

From St. Mary's Tower his cannon he fired

Humpty-Dumpty was its name

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall...

Needless to say, the local press loved it. But as you've probably guessed, and as this journalist reports, this story, this part of the book, and perhaps even ALL origin stories for nursery rhymes, are BS. But let's focus on Humpty and Colchester. First off, this is NOT a new discovery. The siege origin has been online for some time (1996 in fact, more on that below). There are also serious problems with the language and structure used in the expanded rhyme. The language used is not 17th century English, in my opinion. It's also far more detailed than any nursery rhyme, and is in fact a fully-fledged poem. Even if period, it would make sense only as an historical piece based upon an existing rhyme, not, as advertised, the other way around.

As far as I can tell, this interpretation of the story originally concerned Gloucester, NOT Colchester. That town got in on the act some time later (I'll touch on this later on). It's also completely fictional. To quote the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes;

"Professor David Daube, in one of a series of spoof nursery-rhyme histories for The Oxford Magazine (1956), put forward the ingenious idea that Humpty Dumpty was a siege engine in the Civil War."

Yes - a spoof. No doubt a relatively subtle one for this day and age, but a spoof nonetheless. This 1880s review gives a flavour of its remit. Even if taken literally, the leaps of logic the involved make Daube's a nonsense hypothesis. Iona Opie put it best when she said of this and other made-up origins that;

"This is ingenuity for ingenuity's sake; but the inventor must also feel some satisfaction if, as with the current craze for horrific "urban legends", he can watch his story spreading to a public gullible enough to repeat it in earnest".

It's not just the public though, several academics have cited this invention as plausible or even definitive. Daube's inspiration was a genuine piece of history; a paragraph in Rushworth's "Historical Collections" about the English Civil War. It describes a plan to overcome the besieged town's defensive wall and ditch using siege engines - covered mobile bridges. Unfortunately these were never used, because Gloucester's defenders simply widened the ditch. Daube imagines that one machine could have been called "Humpty Dumpty" because of the sound it would have made, and decided that the "great fall" was the failure to bridge the gap. You see the problem with taking this interpretation literally!

How did Colchester get sucked into this mess? Uncertain. Certainly it's not the only UK town to have got in on the act, perhaps independently of the Daube article, but the dates of the available evidence suggest otherwise. An opera based on Daube's article ("All The King's Men - believed by this school at least") was staged in 1968, stating that the combatants actually referred to the war machine as "Humpty Dumpty". Between these two pieces of fiction, one or more Colchester natives (consciously or otherwise) seem to have appropriated the origin story for their town by co-opting another piece of genuine Civil War history - the aforementioned Siege of Colchester. Instead of the attackers using a "Humpty Dumpty" weapon, this time it's the defenders. Instead of a siege engine, it's an artillery piece (manned by "One-Eyed Thompson"). Instead of town walls, we have a hastily fortified church. And instead of a failure to span a gap, the "great fall" is the cannon being blasted from the walls by concentrated fire from the Parliamentarian besiegers.

On the face of it, it's actually more plausible than the Gloucester version! Until you realise that the "Humpty Dumpty" in question would have been a saker - a medium sized cannon at best. In fact, the standard size and type of gun used by both sides during the Civil War. No Mons Meg. Not something that is likely to have been called "Humpty Dumpty". Getting a saker into the tower of St Marys Church would have been fairly straightforward using block and tackle - a "large" cannon, not so much.

I've already mentioned the additional "undiscovered" verse of the Colchester myth, as touted by this new book. To really bury this one, I'd need to establish where the hell that came from. No written source could I find (the author of the new book gives none). The comprehensive "History and Description" of 1826 AND an earlier book from 1803 both mention the saker and its one-eyed gunner deployed at the church (the 1803 source even describing the saker as being "broken in pieces"), but do not refer to any local tradition of a rhyme. That line would have been evocative to anyone reading the source with a mind to concocting a myth, whether they knew of Daube's Gloucester one or no. And it's the same story with all the online versions of the poem - only one is sourced. Tracy Lightfoot of Griffith University in Australia gave as her source way back in '96, the East Anglia Tourist Board (now the East of England Tourist Board)! Clearly some form of promotional material of the time featured the poem - where that came from, who knows? If anyone has seen a leaflet or even signboard at the church itself, referencing this myth, please let me know! I can then go to the council and/or tourist board and attempt to find their source.

As with all nursery rhymes, Humpty Dumpty, if it ever had a cogent origin rooted in historical events, has lost it forever. More than likely, these rhymes were conceived from the start as entertaining nonsense - like schoolchildren inventing rhymes in the playground to keep time with a skipping rope. Any meaning attached to them has been added later on - making for fun bits of folklore, but nothing more insightful into historical events than that.

If you do take a liking to a particular story - check it with the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, as well as Snopes and the Straight Dope websites.

Antebellum America: Prelude to Civil War (starts November 3rd)

This course is an analysis of the conditions existing in the United States in the first half of the 19th century. The course focuses on the political, cultural/social, economic, security, leadership, and other issues that played roles in starting and shaping the Civil War. We will analyze the issues in the context of war and peace to determine whether or not such conflicts as civil wars can be avoided prior to their inception.

Required Texts:

TBD once the syllabus is available. For now, the list is as follows which is very light in comparison with my last class:

Publisher: W. W. Norton and Company

Half Slave and Half Free : The Roots of Civil War by Bruce Levine

Road to Disunion : Secessionists at Bay, 1776-1854, Volume 1 by William W. Freehling

"This company... Left Halifax Harbor at 4.15 Sept 29, arrived at Liverpool and disembarked at 12 midnight Oct 9/17 and boarded train at 2 am oct 10/17..."

More letters and postcards home are now soon to follow. Going forward they will be published here on the date they were originally written. In this way we will continue to march along with Sam and the 103rd Infantry, 26th "Yankee" Division in "real time" as they fight in what was then called "Our Greatest Battle."

Brian Linn recounts the military operations that took place between the opening months of 1899 and July 1902 in what some of his reviewers have labeled as the “definite study” of the Philippine War. Ultimately, his goal is to set the record straight on the myths surrounding the conflict and recount its history as the complex and challenging event it was. Written from the American perspective, he concludes that the war was nothing less than the most successful counterinsurgency campaign in U.S. history.

He sets out to write a narrative history of the conflict but admits to encountering challenges because the war varied so greatly in the different locations in which it took place. The geographical expanse of the Philippines thus becomes a part of the story of the war itself. These challenges lead Linn to organize the book around two broad themes. The first section describes conventional military operations on the island of Luzon that took place in 1899. The second focuses on operations in other parts of the archipelago which can be categorized as guerrilla warfare and pacification activities.

While the book’s focus is on United States military activities, Linn provides excellent historical background on the Philippine leadership cadre as well. He makes specific mention of the need for a study that more comprehensively represents the Filipino perspective of the conflict. Linn is blatantly honest about the strengths and the foibles of both the United States military and the Philippine Army of Liberation. He captures the intra-service rivalries and associated squabbles and maneuvering for notice and promotion among officers on both sides. He also describes the performance of America’s volunteer citizen-soldiers, who distinguished themselves by behaving with aggressiveness, courage, and élan, and yet were at times difficult to restrain.

Linn captures well instances of the fog of war and its impact on both sides. He provides a fascinating description of the recruitment, training, transport, and sustaining of volunteer American troops engaged in the conflict. His review of the Battle of Manila reveals superior preparation and discipline among American troops and yet the recklessness of officers who ordered repeated frontal attacks over open ground against armed fortifications. He notes that most of these attacks were successful due primarily to insurgents shooting high. Linn points out that this gave the Filipinos the impression of American invincibility, increasing the fear, uncertainty, and doubt that at times caused native soldiers to flee.

Linn arrives at several important conclusions. First he refutes the clichés so often attributed to the Philippine War. He posits that while the U.S. military was victorious, this occurred as a result of the ineptitude of the independence movement and its “titular leader,” Aguinaldo, as opposed to the prowess of the Americans. Some guerrilla leaders showed brilliance at the small unit level but there was never a successful prolonged defense of any area or recovery of any areas once lost. Rebels also failed to effectively win the broad support of the populace. American forces struggled with a number of problems including maintenance of forces levels, diseases, and logistics.

Americans did have clear advantages in weaponry and this added to their effectiveness. The Krag rifle, armed gunboats, and field artillery were all contributory to American success. The U.S Navy was also a key contributor to the win providing not only transport of men and matériels but also blockade functions and support for amphibious operations. Linn also points to the role of civic action or social reform as a crucial component of the American victory.

Because of the unique nature of this conflict, and its counter insurgency flavor, Linn suggests that it has much to offer readers of both civilian and military cadres. I agree. The book’s notes section is impressive as is the bibliography. The book has received the following honors: Army Chief of Staff's Professional Reading List, Air Force Chief of Staff's Professional Reading List, Winner of the Society for Military History Distinguished Book Award, Selection of the History Book Club.

At the time of the book’s publication, Brian Linn was professor of history at Texas A & M University, a post he has held since 1998. He received a B.A. with High Honors from the University of Hawaii, and M.A. and Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. He has also taught history at Old Dominion University and the University of Nebraska as a visiting professor. He is widely published and the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships.

Overall, Linn’s work was an excellent choice for this class and an important contribution to U.S. military scholarship.

Squad Battles 5: THE KOREAN WAR

The Operational Art of War 3

Maj. Patrick C. Roe, USMC (Ret.)

The surprise appearance of Chinese Communist Forces (CCF) in late October 1950 and their major offensive in November was a nearly disastrous intelligence failure. Gen. Omar Bradley called it the worst failure since the Battle of the Bulge. Bradley underestimated it. The Battle of the Bulge was a temporary setback in what was otherwise a successful war. The battles in North Korea totally changed the course of our effort in Korea. They ended one war, the war against the North Korean Army, a war which had been won, and opened another war, one in which we settled for an armistice at the 38th parallel. The changed outcome of the war has had effects that remain with us today.

Intelligence Resources

At division level and below, intelligence was principally based upon the reports of patrols, frontline units, prisoner interrogation, reports by both strike aircraft and light observation aircraft, and occasional translation of captured documents, sources all with a classification no higher than Secret. In northeast Korea, the reports of civilians provided much useful information but they were not given much credence at higher levels.

Production of combat intelligence was severely hampered by the lack of the needed intelligence teams, another casualty of the lean postwar years. Prisoner interrogation, normally a very productive source, was crippled by lack of Mandarin- speaking personnel. Interrogation had to be done through interpreters, Mandarin speakers were scarce, and those available had difficulty understanding CCF military terms.

At Eighth Army and X Corps—particularly at the Far Eastern Command— other sources of information had a higher and perhaps more restrictive classification. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), for example, produced Intelligence Memoranda and National Intelligence Estimates at the Secret level as well as a Top Secret Situation Summary that contained all-source intelligence.1 The Top Secret versions were made available to Maj. Gen. Charles A. Willoughby, Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s G–2.

Other sources of information available at theater level included information from the Chinese nationalists on Taiwan, the U.S. Consul in Hong Kong, other diplomatic sources, and covert agencies. Information from nationalist sources, forwarded directly to Far Eastern Command by the U.S. military attaché in Taipei, was suspect. Col. James Polk, Willoughby’s executive, reported, “No one trusted what they produced because it was invariably biased or self serving.”2 The Communist takeover on the mainland had drastically limited American covert assets there, although the nationalists still had some contacts. In Korea, Willoughby had established the Korea Liaison Office (KLO) in the summer of 1949 with the mission of penetrating North Korea’s governmental, military, and industrial organizations.3 The reports of KLO agents were available to Eighth Army and X Corps. KLO agents occasionally provided some useful information, but they were not especially successful.4 They failed to give warning of the initial North Korean attack in June and again failed to warn of the arrival of Chinese forces in Korea in October and November.

The Far Eastern Command Daily Intelligence Summary lists a Far Eastern Command Survey Group, the cover name for what apparently were agents controlled directly by Willoughby. This was probably the remnant of the Navy external survey group established in Manchuria after the close of World War II, which, in turn, was the remnant of a network established by Adm. Milton E. Miles in China to assist in landings that were then planned on the Chinese mainland. During the immediate postwar period, the Navy external survey group operated closely with the consulate in Mukden. The activities of this group were the cause of the arrest, detention, and trial of consul Angus Ward and his expulsion, along with the other American members of the consulate, in September 1949.

Aerial Reconnaissance

General MacArthur believed that aerial reconnaissance would warn of any large-scale Chinese intervention. Meeting with the U.S. ambassador to Korea on November 17, MacArthur stated he was sure “the Chinese Communists had sent 25,000 and certainly no more than 30,000 soldiers across the border ... they could not possibly have got more over with the surreptitiously covert means used. If they had moved in the open, they would have been detected by our Air Force and Intelligence.”5 But the economy years had robbed the Air Force of much of its reconnaissance capability. Aside from the Mosquito AT–6, the airborne controllers at Fifth Air Force had no visual reconnaissance capability. Much of the focus of the three available photoreconnaissance squadrons concentrated on the Yalu River crossings, where air efforts sought to prevent the Chinese from crossing. What photoreconnaissance capability remained was limited to areas immediately adjacent to the main roads that the Chinese avoided. A further limitation was a shortage of photo interpreters to read what coverage was available. Not until November 21 did MacArthur order the FEAF to conduct intensive reconnaissance of the area between Eighth Army and X Corps. By then, most of the CCF reinforcements were already in place.6

Signals Intelligence

Far and away, the most important source available at the Far East Command, and possibly in Washington, was signals intelligence supplied by the Army Security Agency (ASA) units deployed in the Far East and the Armed Forces Security Agency (AFSA), precursor of the National Security Agency (NSA). NSA has only recently released some general information on signals intelligence during the Korean War, very little on methods, and none at all on actual product. With all sources of information on intelligence production in the Korean War being, like the NSA releases, limited and fragmentary, the complete picture may never be known. Still, relying on what NSA has made available, together with a close scrutiny of intelligence reports and other material available in the National Archives and at the MacArthur Library in Norfolk, Virginia, and by making some elementary conclusions, a fairly good picture can be developed, and flaws, detected.

The very successful and highly prized signals intelligence system developed during World War II had been reduced, as had much of the rest of the armed forces. Intercept facilities in the Pacific region were relatively few. Efforts were focused on the Chinese communists’ activities and the Huk rebellion in the Philippines. After World War II, ASA had collected some Chinese civil communications. Beginning in March 1950, after the communists seized power, cryptologic efforts against mainland Chinese targets were intensified. But it took nearly two more years to develop effective processing of Chinese military messages. 7 In the meantime, efforts continued against Chinese civil plain-text messages. That effort produced intelligence on the Chinese economy and on the transportation, logistics, and positions of military units.8 Before the Korean War, AFSA employed eighty-three analysts against the People’s Republic of China. By November 1950, the number was 131, and by February 1961, it was 156, plus additional part-time assistance.9

At the start of the war, two fixed ASA stations and three mobile units were performing fixed-station missions in the Pacific. They were the 8069th Army Administrative Unit (AAU), Clark Field, Fort Stotsenberg, Philippine Islands; the 8621st AAU, Tokyo, Japan; the 111th Signal Service Company, Okinawa, Japan; the 126th Signal Service Company, Kyoto, Japan; and the 51st Signal Service Detachment, Chitose, Japan.10

The 50th Signal Service Detachment, whose mission was to monitor U.S. forces to enforce communication security, was diverted to wartime support. Provisions were made to provide signals intelligence capabilities to both the Eighth Army and X Corps. The 60th Signal Service Company from Fort Lewis, Washington, arrived in the Far East in early October and was assigned to support the Eighth Army. A provisional unit, the 226th Signal Service Company, and the 2d Signals Intelligence Unit were attached to X Corps.11 In Tokyo, Far East Command was also provided with intelligence developed by the British monitoring facilities in Hong Kong.12

The initial communications intelligence product was the result of plain-text intercepts and traffic analysis. In fact, at many points in the conflict, traffic analysis, that is, examination of message externals, often constituted the only form of signals intelligence for Americans. Because of problems with mountainous terrain, no steady or reliable information was available from direction finding, which had been an important source of intelligence in World War II. Not until 1952 could traffic analysis detect from military communications when communist Chinese units entered and left Korea. Much of the initial reconstruction of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) order of battle (OB) came from traffic analysis.13

ASA units also encountered problems finding Chinese linguists. The large Chinese population in the United States produced few candidates because most American-born Chinese spoke a southern dialect rather than the Mandarin used by the PLA radio operators. To fill the need, a number of Chinese Nationalists from Taiwan were hired as civilians to work with ASA, although some special training was needed to acquaint them with the differences in military vocabulary between the nationalists and communists.14

Reading the plain-text traffic produced some useful information and some misleading information. Early in the war a message from Shanghai identified General Lin Biao as the commander of PLA forces that would intervene in Korea. Lin Biao declined the opportunity to command in Korea, and Peng Dehuai took his place. Yet intelligence agencies throughout the war, and some histories afterward, continued to list Lin as the PLA commander. Late September traffic carried the information that Zhou Enlai, the PRC foreign minister, had notified neutral diplomats that China would intervene in Korea if U.N. forces crossed the 38th parallel. That information arrived in Washington by the diplomatic route as well. And as early as July, translation and analysis of civil traffic indicated that elements of the Chinese Fourth Field Army had moved into Manchuria. Later, in September and October, traffic analysis provided information that these forces had continued to move toward the Sino-Korean border. As will be seen, this was only partly correct and ultimately quite misleading.

Estimates of Growing CCF Strength

The Far East Command Daily Intelligence Summary reported increasing CCF strength in Manchuria, some of it near the Yalu border. On September 21 it stated that 35 divisions in 9 armies were confirmed and that an additional 24 divisions in 8 armies were possible. The October 5 summary stated that 38 divisions in 9 armies were confirmed and an additional 24 divisions in 8 armies were possible. By October 24 it confirmed 44 divisions in 11 armies and thought 18 divisions in 6 armies were also possible.15

By early October, intelligence officers in Washington, who had previously warned of Chinese intervention, began to have second thoughts. Agencies differed over the strength estimates of PRC units. CIA analysis tended to think that a signals intelligence reference to an army element meant the army had moved intact. Military intelligence officers began to doubt that entire armies had relocated. On October 4, the Army’s G–2 issued an estimate saying although China’s entry was not “wholly to be discounted,” the evidence was insufficient to indicate such a development was “either highly probable or imminent.” On October 5, the Watch Committee, a group chaired by the CIA, ventured that even though the PRC had a large force on the border, intervention was less likely than it had been earlier. The committee noted that Beijing’s propaganda supporting North Korea had diminished and the PRC leadership probably did not want to expose China to retaliatory U.S. air strikes.16

In response to a request from President Harry Truman, the CIA issued an estimate October 12 stating: “While full-scale Chinese Communist intervention in Korea must be regarded as a continuing possibility, a consideration of all known factors leads to the conclusion that barring a Soviet decision for global war, such action is not probable in 1950. During this period, intervention will probably be confined to continued covert assistance to the North Koreans.” One of the reasons given was: “From a military standpoint the most favorable time for intervention in Korea has passed.”

Evaluation of CCF Strength

On October 24, MacArthur ordered all units “to drive forward with all speed and with full utilization of all their forces” toward the Yalu. The next day, the Eighth Army along the Chongchon and Republic of Korea (ROK) forces on the road to Chosin collided with what were believed to be advance elements of the PLA. Over the next two weeks, United Nations Command (UNC) forces in the west, widely scattered with limited logistic support, were driven back to bridgeheads along the Chongchon River.

Three CCF armies of three divisions each, totaling approximately 35,000 men per army, had begun entering western Korea on the night of October 20. Just before they entered Korea, those three armies were redesignated. The 38th Army became the 54th Unit, the 39th became the 55th, and the 40th became the 56th. The divisions in each army were referred to as the 1st, 2d, or 3d Battalion of that unit. Some prisoners captured in the subsequent fighting gave unit identifications accordingly, but not all prisoners got the word. A reinterrogation report by the 164th Military Intelligence Services (MIS) Detachment on November 8 reported on nineteen Chinese prisoners of whom twelve reported they belonged to a division in the 40th Army, six reported they belonged to the 39th Army, and one reported, the 66th Army. Six mentioned belonging to some “unit”: three identified the 56th Unit; two, the 55th Unit; and one was from some unknown unit.17 Review of twenty-three prisoner of war reports found in the Eighth Army War Diaries for the period October 25 through November 6 finds that only eight of those interrogated mention membership in a task unit. Nevertheless Tarkenton, the Eighth Army G–2, and Willoughby stuck with the “unit” theory for the next three weeks. It led to a drastic underestimation of the Chinese strength.

Further study of those twenty-three interrogation reports shows something else quite interesting. Individuals with the closest ties to the Communist Party were more likely to give the deceptive “unit” identification. The former nationalists, and there were quite a number of them, were more likely to give their proper unit identification. That would lead to the conclusion that some of the prisoners were specifically briefed to be captured with misleading stories. Later in the war the Chinese did brief soldiers to be captured so they could bring instructions to the prisoner of war compounds.

Persistence in the “unit” theory seems to indicate that Willoughby and Tarkenton had some other source that outweighed the evidence from prisoner interrogations, a source that was purposely misleading. Overlooked in the various estimates was the puzzle of finding task force “units” opposite Eighth Army in northwest Korea, but fully formed regular divisions opposite X Corps in northeast Korea.

On November 7, both in the east and in the west, the Chinese broke off their attack and mystifyingly receded into the hills. The following day, the Defense Investigative Service estimated total CCF strength in Korea to be the 54th, 55th, 56th units at 9,000 each, division-sized, in western Korea, and the 124th Division, at 6,700, in northeast Korea, for a total of 33,700.18 The mystery was why, with such huge strength in Manchuria, so little was in Korea? Imaginative rationalizations appeared.

At a meeting of the Joint Intelligence Indications Committee, agency representatives puzzled over the “lack of aggressiveness” on the part of the PRC forces. The intelligence officers who thought only elements of armies had deployed to Manchuria now used the same reasoning to estimate how many troops participated in the First Phase Offensive. The Watch Committee believed the Chinese had made only “piecemeal commitments of small forces...from various divisions of three different armies.” The committee reasoned the PRC wanted to promote “the fiction of volunteer forces but also...to create the impression of greater strength than was actually present.”19 That was the opposite of what the Chinese successfully tried to achieve—make a large force look small.

The CIA believed that while huge forces in Manchuria were capable of halting the UN advance or forcing withdrawal to defensive positions farther south, their initial effort was only to halt the U.N. advance and keep the North Korean regime in-being on Korean soil.20 In an estimate on November 24, the CIA believed the Chinese would, simultaneously, maintain Chinese–North Korean holding operations in North Korea, maintain or increase their military strength in Manchuria, and seek to obtain U.N. withdrawal from Korea by intimidation and diplomatic means.21

Willoughby’s conclusion was that the units in contact had been token forces, only the vanguard of CCF forces tasked with the mission of holding off U.N. forces, while the remainder crossed into Korea.22 On November 25th, with the Eighth Army’s renewed offensive underway, he estimated the enemy strength in Korea as 46,693 to 70,935 in 12 divisions with an additional reconstituted North Korean strength of 82,779. He reported further:

There are some indications that point to the possibility of a withdrawal of Chinese communist Forces to the Yalu River or across the border into Manchuria. In unconfirmed reports, heavy casualties and the lack of a will to fight are given as possible reasons for such a move. Equally unconfirmed reports furnish a possible link with political factors which might well be influential in making such decisions. The lull in fighting along most of the front, and the actual loss of contact in some sectors might well be indications that such an operation is underway. The report of the return by the Chinese Communist of twenty-seven American PWs to UN lines could also be interpreted as a possible indication that the Chinese have plans to withdraw from Korea.23

Those “unconfirmed reports” were very likely from plain-text intercepts and deliberately deceptive.

In fact, the Eighth Army was facing a total of six armies, eighteen divisions, a total strength of some 220,000 to 240,000. In the east, three new armies of the 9th CCF Army Group, with twelve divisions totaling 150,000 men, had entered Korea undetected and were poised to assault the 1st Marine Division and then the remainder of X Corps. That evening, the Chinese struck Eighth Army in full force. Two days later the Chinese offensive began at Chosin.

The Chinese Deception Plan Historians have concentrated on the unreadiness of American military forces. Equally unready, perhaps even more so, were the Chinese. The PLA was exhausted from twenty-two years of war. It was huge in number but poorly armed and equipped. It has been described as a World War I army without the trucks or artillery. Within the PLA, the ability of the army to fight a modern military force was debated fiercely. The solution to the problem was typically and traditionally Chinese, a coordinated campaign of deception, as expected from dedicated students of General Sun Tzu. The objective was to make the initial forces in Korea appear much smaller than they were and, when the main offensive was launched, make the available forces look much larger than they were.

The keystone to the plan was to capitalize on American technological advantage and provide misleading OB information by simulating the presence of various units through false radio traffic. General Nie Rongzhen, the PLA’s acting chief of staff during the Korean War, had practiced a variation of that technique in the Wutai Mountains of North China while withdrawing before a Japanese offensive in the spring of 1941. Willoughby’s identification of the units assembling in Manchuria had to have come from traffic analysis by ASA units. Had that information come from an agent network, or a highly placed agent, such a source would surely have warned of large forces crossing into Korea. Plain-text traffic supplemented the effort.

To make that deception work, the next most important supporting element was total secrecy of movement. By moving only at night and maintaining a draconian march discipline, the communists were able to deploy some 220,000 men in western Korea and 150,000 in northeast Korea, without revealing their strength. To achieve further mobility, they left behind much of their artillery and other heavy equipment. Until the actual offensive began, they totally escaped observation by aircraft. It was a superlative achievement.

Deceptive prisoners briefed to give misleading unit designations supplemented the signal deception effort. The misleading “unit” designation caused intelligence officers to drastically underestimate the size of Chinese forces in Korea. One prisoner, captured on November 6, could have explained the deception. Liu Piao-wu was a company cultural officer and explained that the change of designation had been made just before the Chinese entered Korea, changed specifically to confuse the Americans. The reinterrogation of nineteen prisoners on November 8 confirmed what Liu said. Only six of them stuck to the “unit” designation. The rest gave a regular regimental and division designation. Still, Tarkenton and Willoughby stuck by their original estimates.

Further causing confusion was the Chinese withdrawal, starting on November 6. Frontline troops in the Eighth Army were startled to see columns of Chinese retreating into the hills. On the road to Chosin, the 124th Division withdrew, and we secured the Funchillin Pass. In Washington, D.C., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), General Bradley, thought perhaps the Chinese had only intervened in moderate numbers and that these few had suffered such a bloody nose that they may have lost the taste for battle. It was classic Chinese communist guerrilla tactics of luring the enemy in deep. General Peng Dehuai, the Chinese commander, told his officers, “In order to catch a big fish you have to let the fish taste your bait.”

Reinforcing the belief that the PLA was of limited strength and preparing to withdraw was the release of twenty-seven U.S. prisoners just before the Chinese commenced their offensive on November 26. Later in the war, release of prisoners came to be recognized as an indication of an impending Chinese offensive.

Capping the deception plan was a diplomatic ruse. At the United Nations a resolution had been introduced calling on China to withdraw. The Chinese were invited to come to the United Nations and participate in the discussion. They declined, but did accept a previous invitation to debate U.S. “aggression” in the Taiwan Straits. The delegation departed Beijing on November 15 and was due in New York on the 19. Pannikar, the Indian ambassador to China, reported they were empowered to discuss the entire question of Korea. This led to some relaxation of concern; a political settlement might be possible. But the Chinese delegation dawdled along the way and did not reach New York until after the Chinese counteroffensive had commenced; it then delivered a blistering condemnation of U.N. action in Korea. There is little doubt that the delegation represented a bit of misdirection, part of the overall deception plan.

In the days leading to resumption of the UNC advance, the basic assumption was that while there were huge forces in Manchuria, CCF forces in Korea were only modest. If the Chinese chose to intervene by reinforcing those forces, the reinforcement would become known, it would take time, and time would be allowed to reevaluate the UNC plans. So the size and strength of the Chinese November offensive was a stunning surprise to the troops in the field, to Tokyo, and to Washington.

In the following days, Willoughby, the Army’s G–2, and the CIA all assumed that the rest of the Chinese forces in Manchuria were pouring across the border to reinforce those CCF units already in Korea. Gen. Charles L. Bolté, the Army G–3, thought that with no reinforcement available we should withdraw from Korea. The UNC force could be destroyed—the entire U.S. ground establishment. General MacArthur told the JCS that unless ground reinforcements of the greatest magnitude were promptly supplied to him, the U.N. command, which was “mentally fatigued and physically battered,” would be forced into successive withdrawals or into beachhead bastions, with little hope of anything but defense. Unless some positive and immediate action was taken on our part, he could only foresee “steady attrition leading to final destruction.”24 He told Gen. J. Lawton Collins that without air attacks against China and no reinforcement, UNC forces would have to be withdrawn from Korea and that it “should be done as soon as possible.” MacArthur thought the CCF force in contact or available numbered more than 500,000, was backed by the entire war potential of the PRC, and was reinforced with rehabilitated North Koreans numbering 100,000, all supported by the logistic and advisory assistance of the USSR.25

Willoughby’s estimate of enemy strength jumped dramatically from his November 25 estimate. On December 6, he estimated 429,381 CCF and North Korean People’s Army troops present, in contact, or on the immediate front of U.N. forces. He noted that the remaining eight CCF armies with twenty-four divisions, 204,000 troops, located along the Yalu were available as strategic reserve, with two more armies along the far northeastern border. He reported to the Department of the Army, “The bottomless well of CCF Manpower in Manchuria continues to overflow into Korea with an unrelenting surge.”26

By December 9, Far Eastern Command had identified nine armies, 20th, 26th, 27th, 38th, 39th, 40th, 42d, 50th, 66th, believed to total twenty-seven divisions, with the possibility that two more armies, the 24th and 30th, were already in Korea, and that an additional two, the 25th and 37th, would soon appear. These latter four, not in contact, would probably have been identified through traffic analysis. He thought the total might be 268,000 CCF troops in immediate contact with U.N. ground forces, with a minimum of 550,000 additional within supporting distance, and an additional 200,000 expected soon to augment the 550,000. “From the above figures it can be readily ascertained that over a million CCF troops are poised as a threat to UN ground forces. This total does not include 160,000 North Korean troops (presently estimated) or 370,000 CCF militia in Manchuria.” They pointed, he believed, “to the probability of unlimited Chinese commitment.”27 Plans were underway for the withdrawal of all UNC troops from Korea.

The Reality

What was the reality of the situation? In his book Mao’s Military Romanticism, 28 Shu Gang Zhang has made an exhaustive study of Chinese records and compiled the Chinese OB at various points during the war. It is perhaps the most authoritative OB available. A comparison of the CCF units in Korea that Zhang reported with the estimates in Willoughby’s reports gives a picture of the actual Chinese situation.

Of the CCF armies that Willoughby reported to be in Manchuria in late October, four—the 38th, 39th, 40th, and 42d—together with two armies Willoughby had not identified—the 50th and 60th—took part in the Chinese first-phase attack. Those same six, with three more that had not been identified to be in Manchuria at that time, took part in the second-phase attack in late November, an attack by thirty divisions, approximately 370,000 men.

The Chinese received no more reinforcements until March of the following year when three other armies identified to be in Manchuria in October, together with three more that had not been previously identified, appeared. By August 1952, another army, plus three more previously unidentified, appeared. But eight of those October armies identified in Manchuria, an estimated 200,000 men, never appeared in Korea during the entire war, and given the difficulties the Chinese had of supporting their armies in Korea, may well have never been in Manchuria. Of the four armies Willoughby reported in his summaries of December 9, the 25th and 30th were never in Korea during the war, and the 24th and 37th appeared much later. So, twelve CCF armies did not exist, at least then, eight from the October 24th report and another four from the December 9 report. They were the Ghost Armies of Manchuria.

Even more confounding, by December 12, the three armies, twelve divisions, of the 9th CCF Army Group were out of action, devastated by their fight with the 1st Marine Division, by air attacks, and by the terrible cold.29 Song Shilun, the 9th Army Group commander said he needed 60,000 replacements. Not until April of the following year did one army, the 26th from the 9th Army Group, appear on the line.30

The Eighth Army was withdrawing south before the six armies of the 13th CCF Army Group. Originally numbering 240,000 men, it had suffered heavy casualties. The 38th, 39th, and 40th Armies had suffered 15,000 casualties each. The 42d, 50th, and 60th lost about 5,000 each, for a grand total of 60,000. Rather than being driven south by more than a million men, the Eighth Army was fleeing from eighteen tired, primitive, understrength, and poorly supplied divisions, totaling no more than 180,000 men but reinforced by a small group of Chinese radio operators pretending to be the oncoming Ghost Armies of Manchuria.

No doubt the Chinese—knowing of U.S. reliance on signals intelligence—set out carefully and craftily to turn that technological advantage against us. Just as the initial view of the Chinese was that they were poor fighters with no staying power, American hubris could not believe that such a group they thought so primitive could even think of, much less mount, such a deceptive campaign. It was a textbook application of the lessons of Sun Tzu:

When you are near make yourself look far away

When you are big make yourself look small

When you are small—make yourself look big.

In the first-phase offensive, the Chinese used deceptive unit identifications, making divisions look like battalions. In the second phase, they made six armies look like twenty. They succeeded all too well.

Notes

Based on Patrick C. Roe , The Dragon Strikes and the Korean War (Navato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 2000)

1. “COMINT and the PRC Intervention in the Korean War” National Security Agency. No date. pp. 10–11. This is apparently a declassification of an article in Cryptologic Quarterly a Top Secret publication of NSA now available on the NSA web site. Hereafter referred to as COMINT.

2. Interview with Polk quoted in Blair, Clay. The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950–1953., New York: Random House, 1987 p 337.

3. Report by Lt. Col. Leonard J. Abbot to Willoughby, May 18, 1951, MacArthur Library RG 23 Folder 2.

4. Eighth Army PIRs No. 82, 89, and 90 dated 2, 9 and 10 Oct 50, I Corps PIR 54, Nov 8, 1950 and Eighth Army SitRep SitRep 292 101520 Nov 50 all contain reports of covert agents.

5. Schnabel, James F. and Robert J. Watson. History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy. Vol. III The Korean War. Part 1. Wilmington, Delaware: Michael Glazier, 1979 pp. 308–309.

6. Futrell, Robert F. The United States Air Force in Korea: 1950–1953.Washington: Office of Air Force History. 1983. Revised edition.

7. Hatch, David A. and Robert Louis Benson The Korean War: The SIGINT Background. October, 2000. National Security Agency. p. 12. This is a preliminary monograph on signals intelligence during the Korean War available on the NSA web site. Hereafter cited as NSA Monograph.

8. COMINT p 10.

9. David A. Hatch and Robert Louis Benson, The Korean War: The SIGINT Background, p. 8. (National Security Agency, nd.) Hereafter referred to as NSA Monograph.

10. Deptar msg W97801 2 Dec 50 to CINCFE NAR.

11. NSA Monograph p 8 and Annex A, Task Orgn to Open O No. 6, X Corps

14 Nov 50 NAR.

12. JCS to CINCFE 20 Mar 51, RG 90 MCAL.

13. COMINT p 9 and NSA Monograph pp 8, 14.

14. NSA Monograph p 14.

15. FEC DIS 2934, 2948, 2967.

16. COMINT p 15.

17. 8A PIR 119 8 Nov 50—PW Interrogation Report 164th MIS Det—correction sheet.

18. FEC DIS 2982 8 Nov 50.

19. COMINT p 15.

20. CIA National Intelligence Estimate 8 Nov in FRUS p 1101.

21. CIA National Intelligence Estimate 24 Nov 50 in FRUS 1220 ff.

22. DIS 2983-2986.

23. FEC OIS 2999, Nov 22, 1950.

24. FEC msg C-50332 to JCS 3 Dec 50.

25. Memo for Gen Collins 4 Dec 50.

26. DA Telecons 4099 6 Dec 50 and 4105 7 Dec 50.

27. FEC DIS 3013 9 Dec 50.

28. Zhang, Shu Guang. Mao’s Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950–1953 .Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995.

29. Li, Xiaobing and Glenn Tracy (trans.) “Mao Telegrams during the Korean War: October -December 1950” Chinese Historians Vol V. No. 2 (Fall 1992).

30. An Evaluation of the Influence of Marine Corps Forces in the Course of the Korean War (4 Aug 50–15 Dec 50) 2 vols. U. S. Marine Corps Board 1952.

When San Francisco mayor James Rolph signed the order to evict cemeteries from San Francisco city limits, many graves found their way to the town of Colma for reburial while others were quietly covered up by construction. Among those moved were some of the nation’s well known historical personalities. However not every cemetery in the city was kicked out. Tucked away on the grounds of San Francisco's Presidio is the San Francisco National Cemetery.

Opened in December 1884, the San Francisco National Cemetery was the first national cemetery on the west coast. Located at 1 Lincoln Blvd (a short walk from the Presidio's parade grounds), the cemetery is open for visiting from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Many military heroes are buried here including over thirty Medal of Honor (America’s highest military decoration) recipients and men who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their county from the Civil War to today’s war in Iraq.

Keep in mind that this is a military cemetery so please treat this place with the greatest respect possible.

Near the cemetery’s entrance you can find an electronic database of the courageous people buried here - so if you are looking for a specific individual, you can find the plot number as well as print out a small map of the cemetery as av guide. If you need further help, you will have to contact the cemetery office at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California as SF National does not have its own office on site.

For those just visiting the cemetery for the history aspect, you will find that the center of SF National is Section OS (OS meaning Officer’s Section). Buried here are many officers ranking from Lieutenant to Lieutenant General and representing all branches of the armed services.

Among the officers buried in this section is one that is extremely important to San Francisco history. Most people remember Maj. Gen. Frederick Funston for his role in bringing in the Army to help put out the fires that ravaged the city after the 1906 earthquake. However a few years before this, then Col. Funston was already a national hero for his service during the Philippine Insurrection. As commander of the 20th Kansas Infantry, he was awarded the Medal of Honor for bravery in 1899 and in 1901, captured Philippine president Emilio Aguinaldo. Funston’s military career was cut short by his death in 1917 and today you pay your respects at Section OS, Row 3, Grave 68.

Links to the legend of George Armstrong Custer’s last stand at the Battle of Little Big Horn are also represented here. The most notable is Col. Charles Albert Varnum in Section OS, Row 3-A, Grave 3. A Lieutenant at the time of the battle, he fought along with Maj. Marcus Reno’s detachment thus saving his life. Receiving the Medal of Honor in a later battle against the Native Americans, Varnum is more often remembered as the last surviving officer from the Little Big Horn.

Another officer who earned the Medal of Honor but is often remembered for his service at another time and place is at Section OS, Row 30, Grave 3. Major General William Rufus Shafter received his MOH during the Civil War. However he is more commonly remembered for his role in the Spanish-American War in 1898, where he served as commander of American forces invading Cuba.

Even though California was spared the most of the destruction and conflict of the Civil War, many veterans of the war can be found buried in SF National. Among them are two of the first California men to be killed in the war and San Francisco’s last survival veteran of the war. Perhaps the most important of them however, is Major General Irwin McDowell. With the outbreak of the war, McDowell was appointed commander of the Army of the Potomac defending Washington D.C. It was he who would lead the Union Army into the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21, 1861, which ultimately ended with a disastrous Union retreat. Spending his last years of his life in San Francisco, Gen McDowell now rests in Section OS, Row 1, Grave 1.

There are just so many heroes buried here that I just can’t name them all. Among them are Union spy Maj. Pauline Cushman-Fryer and Lt. Colonel Charles Boxton, who at one week was the shortest surviving mayor of San Francisco. Also there is Col. Edward Dickinson Baker, the US Senator from Oregon who was killed in action leading his men at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff in 1861, and Maj. Gen. Robert T. Frederick who commanded the legendary Devil’s Brigade during World War Two.

However, putting aside the more well known residents, just driving along the road through the cemetery is enough to make you think about all those who sacrificed for their country. Even though most of those buried here are American veterans, one can also find veterans of the British, Canadian, and Chinese forces if you looked hard enough.

Reaching the very back of the cemetery, one can look across the row upon row of markers and see a beautiful view of the San Francisco Bay, a view that these veterans are lucky to have as a final resting place in a city that once was so negative towards the dead.

San Francisco National Cemetery is a place that military history buffs will just love. The number of historic personalities that have found peace here gives you a great chance to reconnect with the past. But there is more to the cemetery then just this. All the people who are buried here are heroes in one form or another. All of them deserved to be visited and honored and as a result, the cemetery is a great place to visit whether you may know someone here or not.

Online Resources:

Google Map: San Francisco National Cemetery in the Presidio

San Francisco National Cemetery

The Origin of Railroads

Europe’s mining enterprises began to utilize primitive rail systems to haul coal and iron ores as early as the sixteenth century. Because mine shafts were muddy and uneven, ore haulers placed parallel wooden rails along the mine floors to keep the cartwheels above the ruts. By the late eighteenth century, iron rails had come into common use and some enterprises had begun to extend their tracks from the mine entrances to the coal ports. These colliery railways were especially thick in the coal-mining regions of northeast England, near the Tyne and Wear rivers, where they were known as “Newcastle roads.”

Most historians date the beginning of the “Railroad Age” with the opening of the 44-kilometer-long Stockton and Darlington Railway, a steam-powered freight line that cut the cost of coal transport by more than half, in 1825; and the 50-kilometer-long Manchester and Liverpool Railway, a passenger and freight line that linked two of England’s most important urban-industrial centers, in 1830. Both were designed by George Stephenson, Great Britain’s first great railroad engineer.

Railroad Mania in the Nineteenth Century

By the 1840s Great Britain was in the grips of a “railroad mania,” a period of boom-and-bust construction that led to a fourfold expansion in British tracks from 2,340 kilometers to over 9,700 kilometers within a decade. This period also witnessed the rise and fall of George Hudson, the “Railway Napoleon,” the first of many rail swindlers whose stock manipulations and shady dealings spawned numerous lawsuits, bankruptcies, and political scandals. “Britain is at present an island of lunatics, all railway mad,” Judge Cockburn declared in 1845 (Blum 1994, 14–15).

Railroad mania spread quickly to the coal-producing regions of northwestern Europe—Belgium, northern France, and Rhineland Prussia. This was where the world’s first international line was built, linking Liege, Belgium, and Cologne, Rhineland Prussia. Governments played a greater role on the continent than in Great Britain in promoting rail development and determining the routes. So did international bankers, most notably the Rothschild family, a name that became all but synonymous with continental rail construction in the nineteenth century. Government-business collaboration resulted in a construction frenzy, and by 1907 Europe (excluding Russia) was crisscrossed with 263,000 kilometers of track. Germany alone possessed 58,000 kilometers, followed by France (47,900 kilometers), the Austro-Hungarian empire (41,800 kilometers), Great Britain and Ireland (37,300 kilometers), Italy (16,600 kilometers), Spain (14,800 kilometers), and Sweden (13,400 kilometers).

Railroads also played a major role in achieving the nation-building ambitions of the United States, the Dominion of Canada, and Czarist Russia. The first U.S. rail link, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, began operation in 1830, and for the next three decades construction occurred almost exclusively east of the Mississippi. The discovery of gold in California in 1849, however, put a premium on a fast and secure land route to the Pacific Ocean. Generous subsidies from the U.S. government made it possible for the Union Pacific and Central Pacific companies to jointly finish a line between Sacramento and Omaha in the years 1863 to 1869. Several other lines followed, including the Southern Pacific (1881), Northern Pacific (1883), and Great Northern (1893). Meanwhile, Canada completed the first true transcontinental railroad, the Canadian Pacific, which linked the eastern port of Montreal to the western port of Vancouver, in 1885. The Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific followed in the early twentieth century. Last, the Russian government constructed the Trans-Siberian Railway, linking Chelyabinsk and Vladivostok, between 1891 and 1916. At 7,600 kilometers, it is still today the world’s longest railroad. By 1907, the United States had laid a total of 382,100 kilometers of tracks (more than all of Europe combined), Canada 36,300 kilometers, and Russia 63,100 kilometers.

Colonial and Foreign-Financed Railroads

The Railroad Age coincided with the peak years of European colonization and imperialism, and consequently most of Africa’s and Asia’s early railroads were built with European capital and know-how. The British jump-started India’s rail network in 1853, with the construction of a 34-kilometer-long line between Bombay and Thana, and by 1880 all of its major cities were connected by rail. Various European governments built lines in China, but construction proceeded at a snail’s pace until the Qing dynasty finally bowed to the inevitable and commissioned a U.S.-trained Chinese engineer, Zhan Tianyou, to build the Beijing-to-Zhangjiakou line in 1905. By 1907, Asia possessed a total of 77,110 kilometers of tracks, not counting those portions of Asia under Russian control. British India alone accounted for 48,230 kilometers, followed by Japan (8,000 kilometers) and China (6,800 kilometers). During the same time period, Africa’s rail network grew to 29,800 kilometers, most of it concentrated in South Africa (11,300 kilometers) and Egypt (5,600 kilometers). Cecil Rhodes’s dream of a transcontinental Cape-to-Cairo railroad, however, remained unfulfilled.

In the Americas south of the U.S. border, national authorities and international investors together provided most of the impulse for the 80,500 kilometers of tracks that were laid there between 1846 and 1907. Argentina developed the largest network (22,100 kilometers), followed by Mexico (21,900 kilometers of tracks) and Brazil (17,300 kilometers). British entrepreneurs financed the most construction in Argentina and Brazil, while the Mexican government managed to finance many of its own tracks.

Technology, Organization, and Regulation

The success of the railroad depended on several key inventions, chief among them the locomotive. Richard Trevithick demonstrated in 1804 that a steam engine could be used to propel railcars, but it was not until the 1820s that George and Robert Stephenson constructed the first modern locomotives, the “Locomotion” and “Rocket,” for use on Britain’s rail lines. Other important breakthroughs include the sleeping car, developed by George Pullman (U.S.) in 1857; pneumatic brakes, invented by George Westinghouse (U.S.) in 1869; the automatic car coupler, patented by Eli Janney (U.S.) in 1873; the electric locomotive, invented by Werner von Siemens (Germany) in 1879; and steel rails and steel cars, which came into widespread use in the early twentieth century. Equally important for a fast, safe, and smooth ride were track lines that followed an even gradient despite changes in the terrain. Two inventions were particularly useful in this regard: the iron bridge, pioneered by Robert Stephenson in Newcastle in 1849, and the railroad tunnel, first used in the Italian Alps in 1871.

Organizational breakthroughs also played a major role in the success of the railroad. The first was the introduction of Greenwich Mean Time (“railroad time”) in 1840, which made it possible for rail companies to establish uniform timetables and for passengers to plan their trips and make their connections. The second was the use of the telegraph for purposes of signaling and traffic control, a necessity especially on one-track lines where the danger of a head-on collision was always present. Station managers, signalmen, switchmen, and brakemen were all as essential to a safe and trouble-free journey as the engineer.

Track width was the one major technological organizational problem that was never fully resolved. Most European and North American railroads adopted the same track width used in Britain—1.44 meters (56.5 inches)—which came to be known as “standard gauge.” Some countries, however, chose a “broad gauge.” Russia and Finland picked 1.52 meters (60 inches),while Spain, Portugal, and India chose 1.68 meters (66 inches). “Narrow gauge” railroads (less than 1.435 meters) were also built, especially in mountainous regions. The chief advantage of a nonstandard gauge is that it offers some protection against a military invasion. The chief disadvantage is that it inhibits the free flow of goods and passengers across borders.

IN WAR

Many nineteenth-century liberals and radicals welcomed the railroad as a tool for bringing the world together in peace and harmony, but rails proved equally useful as a tool of empire-building and warfare.

The railway system of Prussia was more extensively developed than that within Austria during the Austro-Prussian War. Railways made it possible to supply larger numbers of troops than had previously been possible, and also allowed the rapid movement of troops within friendly territory. The better Prussian rail network therefore allowed the Prussian army to concentrate more rapidly than the Austrians. Von Moltke, reviewing his plans to von Roon stated, "We have the inestimable advantage of being able to carry our Field Army of 285,000 men over five railway lines and of virtually concentrating them in twenty-five days ... Austria has only one railway line and it will take her forty-five days to assemble 200,000 men". Von Moltke had also said earlier, "Nothing could be more welcome to us than to have now the war that we must have".

In the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), the Prussian army skillfully used the German rail system to invade and conquer northern France. Russia’s decision to build the Trans-Siberian Railway through Manchuria was one of the principal causes of the Russo-Japanese War (1904– 1905). Plans to construct a Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway in the early twentieth century contributed to the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

The ‘cult of the offensive’ which preoccupied military planners before 1914 was understandable in the light of their past military experience, but failed to take proper account of the nature of modern industrial war. Rapid railway mobilisation allowed armies to be rushed to the front, but once detrained they were limited to the speed of man and horse.

Confederate railroads in the American Civil War

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Trench railways

Feldbahn

Armoured train

Anderson sets out to examine New England provincial soldiers and their experiences during what he terms the “last and greatest of America’s colonial wars.” He considers it a work of social history because of the quantitative data on which it is based but caveats that its focus is a single conflict, the Seven Years’ War, as opposed to a long term study. His focus is on ordinary men. His conclusion is that the Seven Years’ War was nothing less than world-shaping and thus unifying to the lives it impacted. Their common experience marked them as a unique generation, like others in later times who would be identified with the major events of their lifetime.

He also considers this work to be one of military history because of its focus on war and military service. But he claims an intentional diversion from the classic approaches of military historians whose focus is more on campaigns and the “analysis of generalship.” Anderson’s focus is the story of the common citizen-soldier inclusive of their shared values and their beliefs concerning war and military service.

He divides his study into three parts. The first section titled “The Contexts of War,” provides background for military service of men in Massachusetts. A key conclusion of this section is that “the way in which provincial armed forces were recruited strongly influenced their performance in the field.” The second section, “The Experience of War,” looks at the details of daily life in the military. Anderson examines both the nature and impact of variables such as diet, shelter, disease, discipline, work, and combat. He concludes that the delta between the experiences of these men before and after military service began was so large that it created a unique frame-of-reference from which they subsequently viewed their experience. The third section, “The Meaning of War,” explores in more depth the unique frame of reference possessed by soldiers from Massachusetts and how that remained incomprehensible to both their superiors and British regular officers. Much of the content of the book comes from primary so