 |  |
 
October 2012
August 2012 July 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 August 2003 July 2003 June 2003 May 2003 April 2003 March 2003 February 2003 January 2003
     |
 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! October 9, 2005 An Army at DawnBy GreyhawkI - A Desert War in Black and White An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943 September 1, 1939, was the first day of a war that would last for 2,174 days, and it brought the first dead in a war that would claim an average of 27,600 lives every day, or 1,150 an hour, or 19 a minute, or one death every 3 seconds.A war for which the US was not prepared. The book describes an Army at something less than what we now call level 1, but one we well know was able to ultimately achieve that status, albeit at great and painful cost: Jeremiads derided the nation's martial potential. A Gallup Poll of October 1940 found a prevailing view of American youth as "a flabby, pacifistic, yellow, cynical, discouraged, and leftist lot"... Time magazine reported on the eve of Pearl Harbor that soldiers were booing newsreel shots of Roosevelt and General George C. Marshall, the Army chief of staff, while cheering outspoken isolationists.Arguments were put forth that mounted cavalry would still be the most effective fighting force: "The idea of huge armies rolling along roads at a fast pace is a dream," Cavalry Journal warned in 1940, even after the German blitzkrieg signaled the arrival of mechanized warfare. "Oil and tires cannot like forage be obtained locally." The Army's cavalry chief assured Congress in 1941 that four well-spaced horsemen could charge half a mile across an open field to destroy an enemy machine-gun nest without sustaining a scratch... The last Regular Army cavalry regiment would slaughter its mounts to feed the starving garrison on Bataan in the Philippines, ending the cavalry era not with a bang but with a dinner bell.Although combat had been ongoing in the Pacific, it was late October 1942 - nearly 11 months after Pearl Harbor - before an allied invasion fleet set sail for North Africa, and America's first real confrontation with Hitler's Wehrmacht: As the hour of departure grew near, anarchy ruled the docks. Sometimes Patton contributed to the disorder. On one especially hellish morning his quartermasters changed the loading plan six times between eight and nine A.M.One example of such was the acquisition and outfitting of the proper ships for the mission: No less dramatic was the saga of the S.S. Contessa. The War Department for weeks had sought a shallow-draft ship capable of navigating a dozen miles up a serpentine Moroccan river to the Port Lyautey airfield, one of Patton's prime objectives. A worldwide search turned up the Contessa, a salt-caked, rust-stained scow that drew just over 17 feet and had spent most of her undistinguished career hauling bananas and coconuts from the Caribbean. She was ordered to Newport News. There the skipper, Captain William H. John, a thick-browed Briton with an untended mustache and a long, saggy face, learned he was to load more than a thousand tons of bombs, depth charges, and high-octane aviation fuel for a destination to be named later. The crew promptly jumped ship.Fortunately, most of the 34,000+ GIs converging on the area did not require armed guards. Still... Military policemen patrolled the tracks and bus stations to watch for deserters. The Army in the past six months had charged more than 2,600 soldiers with desertion and convicted 90 percent of them. Indiscipline also plagued units that had been staging in southeast Virginia for weeks. So many men were sentenced to the crowded brig at Solomon's Island in Chesapeake Bay during amphibious training that there was a waiting list to serve time; on October 3 alone, thirty men had been court-martialed for various infractions.In spite of the obstacles, in late October Task Force 34 set sail, launching Operation Torch. The rest, as they say, is history. The idea that victory was inevitable is one that only arose years later - nothing tangible about the world of 1942 supports the theory. But by late that year the sleeping giant was awake, and America's ability to produce material and soldiers coupled with an overwhelming desire to win led ultimately to victory. "Americans love a winner", Patton said, and of the Army described above he said this: "We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do". If Americans love a winner they love a victorious underdog even more. And as should be obvious, the US Army of 1942 was not the odds-on favorite. But as another blunt leader once stated, you go to war with the army you have. So in late October of that year America's sons began the long march to the Rhine. The cost to the world of that unprepared underdog's long march to victory was noted at the beginning of this post; 27,600 lives every day, or 1,150 an hour, or 19 a minute, or one death every 3 seconds. (Part two is here.) Postscript: For those interested, Amazon currently offers An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943, Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy Posted by Greyhawk / October 9, 2005 12:56 PM | Permalink 4 Comments |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
Comments (0) |
|
The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
is Rick Atkinson's Pullitzer Prize-wining story of America's early campaigns in World War II:
I really like this blog site and as you can see I'm sorta new on this thing.
I retired back in 91.
I read this book about a year ago. Highly recommended reading, it is the first of a trilogy that he is writing about the US Army in WW2. The next one covers the Italian campaign.
Cavalry may have been obsolete for the US, but the Russians were still using horses in 1945 - they brought them to Berlin.
GreyHawk,
My father served in the 124th Cavalry Regiment in WWII. The "last active duty cavalry regiment" in Bataan was probably truly the last one to serve with their horses. My father trained with horses in 1942 and 1943 in Marfa, TX (He was a farm boy, so horses were pets to him). When they deployed to Burma in 1944, as part of the Mars Task Force, which followed up the successes of Merrill's Marauders, they traded in their horses for mules and became dismounted cavalry. I can assure you that life was not easy for the cavalry in those days.
So the portrayal of the regiment on Bataan as the last active duty cavalry in the war is not technically accurate, but is close enough to Truth to be the spitting image. And those battles and the slaughter of Polish and Russian cavalry during the war was the death knell for mounted cavalry. When the 124th was decommissioned at the end of the war, they were the last horse cavalry regiment (dismounted, of course) in the Army, ever.
My Dad fondly remembered his horse, "Lippy", till he died in 1981. And he vividly remembered his service and the difference between American soldiers and the Japanese and German Armies. There is no doubt that the American GI is the finest ambassador we have. The dogfaces exemplified by "Willie and Joe" cartoons are fondly remembered by the Japanese, Thai, Filipino, Burmese, Chinese, English, German and Italian people who lived through that bloody war and its aftermath and it continues today, despite what we read in the press. Those who don't know better (those born after 1950) would be wise to read Mr. Atkinson's book to find out what life in 1944 was truly like.
This is a great post, and makes me ever more certain that we live in amazing times and in a country that cares more about humanity than any other in the world. It is easy to gripe about what Americans do. It is harder to find people who will act for the good of other people instead of wishing for good works. As they say, in TRs Man In The Arena speech, we know where the credit for a better world belongs.
Rest easy, Dad. Your children and grandchildren are pressing on.
Subsunk