Trust Is the Glue During Heated Combat

21 Days to Baghdad: General Buford Blount and the 3rd Infantry Division in the Iraq War. Heather Marie Stur. Osprey Publishing. 320 pages. $35

By Lt. Col. Tim Stoy, U.S. Army retired

21 Days to Baghdad: General Buford Blount and the 3rd Infantry Division in the Iraq War is a thorough analysis of the lightning-fast campaign fought by the 3rd Infantry Division in the opening days of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Based on interviews with the division commander, Maj. Gen. Buford Blount, it covers the three weeks from the division’s crossing into Iraq from Kuwait until the toppling of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad in April 2003.

The book provides critical information on the political, cultural and social environment in which the division’s soldiers fought and, more importantly, in which the division found itself in the aftermath of victory.

Author Heather Marie Stur covers Blount’s successful military career that led to his commanding the division. Of importance was his extensive experience in Saudi Arabia training the Saudi Arabian National Guard as he learned about Middle Eastern people, culture and the region’s complicated history.

She emphasizes the importance of the command team Blount developed, which proved critical to the 3rd Infantry Division’s success in Iraq. She also explains the importance of the U.S.-Saudi relationship from its beginnings and its impact on U.S.-Iraq relations.

Stur’s narrative and analysis of the warfighting illustrate the importance of fighting as a well-established team. Trust up and down the chain of command allowed then-Col. David Perkins, head of the division’s 2nd Brigade, to make the critical decision to execute the famed “Thunder Run” into Baghdad—even as higher echelons remained wary of his unit becoming trapped in an urban area without assured resupply.

She ably describes how this trust enabled junior leaders and soldiers to exercise initiative in even the most heated combat situations. The heroic effort of soldiers jumping into burning fuel tankers that Iraqi soldiers had attacked while a resupply convoy was moving into Baghdad inspires awe. The soldiers understood the criticality of their mission, getting fuel to 2nd Brigade Abrams tanks and Bradley Fighting Vehicles for their occupation of the capital.

The reader sees how the competing and conflicting strategic priorities and players involved in Iraq shaped the campaign plan and, sadly, led to a disastrous lack of planning for postwar contingencies. The book makes clear that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s insistence on leaving as quickly as possible after Saddam was deposed resulted in the chaos and violence that later engulfed U.S. forces.

Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the transitional government of Iraq after the March 2003 invasion by coalition forces, also is taken to task for his ill-advised de-Baathification program and its dissolution of the Iraqi army, which drove former Iraqi officers and soldiers, now unemployable, to join the insurgency. 

Stur includes stories of 3rd Infantry Division soldiers and their Iraqi colleagues to illustrate how Blount worked to address the many critical needs of the civil populace. She makes clear that Blount’s extensive understanding of Middle Eastern culture and social norms greatly enhanced the division’s efforts to help Iraqis under difficult circumstances, despite many decisions made by the Coalition Provisional Authority that ran counter to Blount’s informed approach.

Stur summarizes the reason for the 3rd Infantry Division’s success: “Courage and trust at all levels of command fueled the division’s soldiers and officers during those 21 days and the days that followed.” The same can be said for every combat situation: Trust remains the cornerstone of unit cohesion and success.

21 Days to Baghdad is a must-read for anyone wishing to learn how such trust enabled the 3rd Infantry Division’s outstanding performance in Iraq.

Lt. Col. Tim Stoy, U.S. Army retired, is a military historian. He served 31 years in the Army as an infantry and foreign area officer. He is the author of Sharpen Your Bayonets: A Biography of Lieutenant General John Wilson “Iron Mike” O’Daniel, Commander, 3rd Infantry Division in World War II.

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Washington’s Fate Hung in the Balance

Twelve Days: How the Union Nearly Lost Washington in the First Days of the Civil War. Tony Silber. Potomac Books. 400 pages. $36.95

By Col. Cole Kingseed, U.S. Army retired

The period between the evacuation of Fort Sumter, South Carolina, on April 14, 1861, until the arrival of federal militia in Washington, D.C., on April 25 has received scant attention in popular literature of the American Civil War. Author Tony Silber hopes to correct this imbalance in Twelve Days: How the Union Nearly Lost Washington in the First Days of the Civil War.

In examining the critical first two weeks of the war, Silber draws upon his journalistic background by exploring hundreds of contemporary sources written by actual participants, both at the time and in the decades following the war. The result is the intriguing story of the tense period that President Abraham Lincoln’s secretaries termed “an epoch in American history.”

Silber’s narrative alternates between four scenes of action: Washington; insurrectionist Maryland; the advance of federal troops; and Confederate planning and military movements.

The 12 days of Silber’s saga witnessed the evacuation of Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina’s harbor; Lincoln’s initial call for the mobilization of state militias to suppress the insurrection; Virginia’s Ordinance of Secession culminating in Col. Robert Lee’s resignation from the U.S. Army; the loss of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry and the Norfolk Naval Yard, then both in Virginia; and the bloody riots in Baltimore as regiments from New York and Massachusetts traversed the city. Small wonder that Lincoln was so anxious for Northern troops to arrive before Southern forces captured Washington.

At the heart of Twelve Days is the Lincoln administration and its efforts to reinforce the city before Confederate forces invested the region. Silber describes Washington as a “Southern city … conservative and aristocratic, its views largely secessionist, especially among the permanent residents.” As the fate of the nation’s capital hung in the balance, Silber is highly critical of Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, the commanding general of the U.S. Army, and his three most senior officers in the War Department, who he describes as “broken-down old men, long past their prime as warriors.”

In contrast to his assessment of the War Department, Silber credits Lincoln as the true savior of the republic. He also affords high accolades to newly elected Massachusetts Gov. John Andrew, who put five fully equipped regiments into the field within a week of the president’s mobilization order, Col. Edward Jones of the 6th Massachusetts Regiment and Col. Marshall Lefferts of the elite 7th New York Regiment, who first reached Washington.

In Silber’s opinion, Confederate attempts to seize Washington in April 1861 appear half-hearted at best. Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, the victor at Fort Sumter, seemed more concerned about reinforcing Charleston than seizing Washington. Lee, the commander of Virginia forces, called for a defensive strategy. In retrospect, both officers failed to seize the opportunity to capture the federal capital. Never again was Washington more vulnerable to capture than it was in the spring of 1861. 

Silber concludes his narrative by opining that the Confederate designs on Washington were “foiled by the fast pace of Northern mobilization.” Excellent maps and mobilization charts greatly enhance Silber’s text. In outlining the events during the first two weeks of the Civil War, Silber adds an important chapter to the history of the nation’s most deadly conflict.

If there is a central theme that is most relevant to today’s Army, Twelve Days reinforces the importance of war mobilization and detailed contingency plans prior to armed conflict.

Col. Cole Kingseed, U.S. Army retired, a former professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York, is a writer and consultant. He holds a doctorate in history from Ohio State University.

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Rugged Mountains Took Their Toll in Italy

The Savage Storm: The Battle for Italy 1943. James Holland. Atlantic Monthly Press. 480 pages. $32

By Col. Gregory Fontenot, U.S. Army retired

In the postscript to The Savage Storm: The Battle for Italy 1943, author James Holland writes that what he heard from more than 40 combatants about the fighting in Italy made him “shudder to think” of what they endured. And well he might. This book is a brilliant follow-on to his Sicily ’43: The First Assault on Fortress Europe. The fighting in Italy was as horrific as any other in World War II.

Holland tells the story from the top down, the bottom up and from the view of civilians caught in the crossfire. His characters enable us to see that fighting up the shank of the Italian boot was the height of misery, perhaps made most famous by Ernie Pyle’s account of the death of Capt. Henry Waskow in his book Brave Men.

Holland’s interviews and research produce a riveting story ranging from tactical to strategic levels. He weaves the accounts of strategic decisions with the impacts these choices have on those who carry the spears. The result is a grand story of a neglected part of the history of World War II and those who lived through it. He also answers the important question of why the Allies invaded Italy.

There were four objectives for invading the Italian mainland. These were: driving the Italians out of the war; tying down German units in Italy, the Balkans and Greece; seizing airfields from which to bomb fighter production facilities in Austria; and seizing Rome. These reasons notwithstanding, invading Italy was a compromise between the British and American strategic views. The U.S. wanted to execute a cross-channel invasion while the British were inclined, according to Holland, to think “opportunistically.”

The British saw opportunity in Italy, in particular to secure their imperial possessions, and were influenced by what British Prime Minister Winston Churchill called “the fearful price we had to pay in human life and blood for the great offensives of the First World War.” Churchill presumed that fighting in Italy would somehow be less bloody than invading the Continent. The U.S. agreed, in return for a firm commitment for executing the cross-channel invasion in 1944 and strict limits on resources committed to the Italian Campaign.

Holland’s cast of characters ranges from Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, in command of all German forces in Italy, to German pilot Gerhard Waag, to Italian soldiers and civilians. Audie Murphy and Lt. Gen. John Lucas are among the Americans, while the Canadians include the great author Farley Mowat. Other Commonwealth figures include Field Marshal Harold Alexander, who commanded Fifteenth Army Group, directing operations of Lt. Gen. Mark Clark’s U.S. Fifth Army and Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery’s British Eighth Army.

Fighting along the rugged Apennine Range running down central Italy challenged both sides. Holland ably conveys the tactical and operational difficulties of logistics. He makes no counterfactual argument claiming some other course of action would have worked better.

Some will be surprised to hear that Holland believes Clark deserves better than he received at the hands of historians since the war ended. He similarly believes Alexander merits more respect. In contrast, Holland argues convincingly that Kesselring’s reputation, burnished by his own efforts to portray himself as a good German, is unwarranted.

The Savage Storm deserves a place on the shelves of professionals because it conveys the story from the theater strategic level to company level, and from the cockpits of those who flew to battle to those slipping in the mud of their foxholes. To add a finishing touch, Holland’s maps are well done and illustrate the story brilliantly.

Col. Gregory Fontenot, U.S. Army retired, commanded a tank battalion in Operation Desert Storm and an armor brigade in Bosnia. A former director of the School of Advanced Military Studies, his most recent book is No Sacrifice Too Great: The 1st Infantry Division in World War II.

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Powerful Nations Seek Warfare Advantages

The Origins of Victory: How Disruptive Innovation Determines the Fates of Great Powers. Andrew Krepinevich Jr. Yale University Press. 568 pages. $40

By Col. Paul Berg, U.S. Army retired

The Origins of Victory: How Disruptive Innovation Determines the Fates of Great Powers analyzes strategic theory, bolstered by historical case examples of revolutionary military technologies, to form a foundation of thought about the future of great powers and future victories. 

Military historians often know this topic of discussion as “revolutions in military affairs,” which is taught extensively at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and the National War College. In The Origins of Victory, author Andrew Krepinevich Jr. thoroughly explains the theory of disruptive technologies for a near-peer future conflict through the relationships of weapons and technological advantages that create a competitive advantage. His premise for the book is that the U.S. military must create or exploit disruptive technologies to achieve essential advantages for American national strategic security goals.

Krepinevich, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, is a highly credentialed national strategist with a Ph.D. from Harvard University in Massachusetts. His strategic expertise comprises decades working at the highest strategic levels of the Pentagon and years of academia and research. His extended time at the Pentagon working in the Office of Net Assessment provides a unique aperture on precision technology connections to revolutions in military affairs.

Krepinevich’s key points in the book are to explain how disruptive technologies  will create a strategic advantage, but the real question is which military force will achieve such innovation before the others. The strength of his argument comes from examples of disruptive technologies across the past two centuries of warfare.

These examinations of militaries pursuing revolutionary warfighting innovations address mature precision warfare regimes, stealth aircraft and navigational and communication technologies. His best examples are of military leaders and their decisions in conflict. He shapes his theory from examples of World War I trenches and the resultant effects of World War II to the Cold War, when more advanced and lethal equipment was developed. He wraps up this case study section with a concise joint perspective of operations that culminates in the quick coalition victory of 1991 in Iraq.

Krepinevich further leads the reader through a detailed analysis of current military technologies of near-peer threats of North Korea, China and Russia, and shows how these countries are on the verge of surpassing U.S. technologies. He effectively ties in his disruptive technology thesis from historical wars to current and future conflict discussions.

Krepinevich wraps up the book by examining how the U.S. compares with its strategic competitors in embracing disruptive innovation. Most importantly, he shows how history suggests some steps on the path forward, including a revision of the U.S. Army’s professional military education to incorporate disruptive technology theory into classrooms, training centers and doctrine. The true challenge of implementing this paradigm change is not the Army’s combat-experienced corps and division commanders, but the service’s Pentagon leadership. 

The Origins of Victory is a thorough, historically based discussion of past and future military strategic policies. It provides thought-provoking insights into future conflict and will challenge established military paradigms. I highly recommend this book for Army strategists, institutional military historians and national strategic policymakers. 

Col. Paul Berg, U.S. Army retired, is an associate professor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and a former editor in chief of Military Review, Journal of Military Learning and the Army University Press Large-Scale Combat Operations Series book set. A 28-year Army veteran who served as an aviation officer and battalion commander, he deployed four times to Afghanistan and Iraq. He holds a doctorate in adult and continuing education from Kansas State University.