Honored Veteran Also Fought Bureaucracy
The Ballad of Roy Benavidez: The Life and Times of America’s Most Famous Hispanic War Hero. William Sturkey. Basic Books. 464 pages. $35
By Col. Keith Nightingale, U.S. Army retired
The Ballad of Roy Benavidez: The Life and Times of America’s Most Famous Hispanic War Hero, by William Sturkey, is not only an exceptional biography; it also is an exceptional story.
Sturkey has written a well-documented and easily readable text about a truly great American, Roy Benavidez, a recipient of the Medal of Honor. Benavidez’s life is meticulously described, from an impoverished childhood in Texas to the highest echelons of military recognition, culminating in a meeting in the Oval Office and sharing jelly beans with then-President Ronald Reagan.
While the book takes a linear approach, it is not a simple biography. Rather, it uses moments of Benavidez’s life to expand upon the larger issues that affected him, his fellow Vietnam War veterans and all Americans. Sturkey’s scrupulous research shows the many people and specific events that were part of the journey.
It would be easy for an author to get mired in the moment of service for a Medal of Honor awardee, but Sturkey avoids that by choosing to focus on the totality of Benavidez’s life story. In this, the reader will be amply rewarded. Benavidez had a difficult life, especially after his heroic actions on the battlefield, which are just a stage setter for the rest of the story.
Sturkey’s focus is on how Benavidez fought his way through the military bureaucracy—first, to get the award, and next, to survive the nation’s less-than-perfect medical support for its honored citizens. The author demonstrates that in many ways, Benavidez had a tougher fight with the vicissitudes of the then-Veterans Administration and the Social Security Administration than he had during a few hours of combat in Cambodia.
The book recounts Benavidez’s primary postwar motivation: to educate America on its own promise and to call upon every citizen to serve in some capacity. Throughout his battles with the bureaucracy and his own health issues, Benavidez drew strength and focus from speaking to citizens. This is amply described as we follow him from El Campo, Texas, to the U.S. Capitol.
Sturkey does an excellent job articulating how a simple man from the poorest of circumstances rose above it all, converting his medal into an opportunity to educate U.S. citizens on what it means to be an American. This is not a puff piece or literary anointment. It shows Benavidez’s warts and prejudices, as well as his ability to rise above them, to tell a story of the potential locked in us all.
Sturkey does a great service by revealing ground truth about not only an honored citizen, but also the inherent flaws in our nation’s support to its veterans, honored and otherwise.
Col. Keith Nightingale, U.S. Army retired, served two tours in Vietnam, participated in the 1980 Iran hostage rescue attempt and managed U.S. Southern Command’s program to capture Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. After retiring from the Army, he joined Science Applications International Corp. and managed several security teams in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is the author of four books, including The Human Face of D-Day.
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WWII Fighting Took a Toll on General
Tubby: Raymond O. Barton and the US Army, 1889–1963. Stephen Bourque. University of North Texas Press, (An AUSA Title). 512 pages. $34.95
By Col. James Scott Wheeler, U.S. Army retired
Tubby: Raymond O. Barton and the US Army, 1889–1963 is a well-written, readable biography of the life of one of the finest American infantry division commanders of World War II. The portrait that author Stephen Bourque paints of Maj. Gen. Raymond Barton is of an “aggressive yet balanced leader” who led the 4th Infantry Division to greatness in the European Theater in 1944.
From its landing on Utah Beach in Normandy, France, on D-Day to its defense of the city of Luxembourg during the Battle of the Bulge, the 4th Infantry Division was at the center of the Allied liberation of Europe. Barton trained the division and led it through its toughest battles of the war.
Bourque observes that Barton’s “career is a window into the US Army in the critical years between the end of the Spanish-American War and the Second World War.” A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, Barton was fortunate to have served in an Army that invested heavily in its Officer Education System. From 1912 to 1940, he attended all the appropriate schools, including the Command and General Staff School (now the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College) and the U.S. Army War College.
The Officer Education System prepared officers in an Army whose units seldom exceeded 1,000 soldiers to think in terms of tens and hundreds of thousands of men arrayed in divisions, corps and armies. Bourque does a fine job describing the schools Barton attended and how they allowed him to think in terms of the large formations of the future war. These educational experiences also allowed Barton to meet and network with many officers with whom he worked during his career.
However, this biography is not hagiography. Barton had his share of troubles as a division commander. As the burdens of command weighed on his mind, he became testy and short with several of his regimental commanders during the Battle of the Bulge.
Mounting casualties also took a toll. For example, in one week of combat, the division’s 22nd Infantry Regiment suffered 1,379 casualties, roughly half its strength. Additionally, a significant number of the division’s regimental and battalion commanders were killed or wounded in combat. Such losses affected Barton psychologically and medically. He suffered from ulcers throughout much of his career, and the pressures of command greatly aggravated his condition.
During the fighting in the Hurtgen Forest in November 1944 and the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944, Barton was quite ill and sometimes short with his subordinate commanders.
Perhaps his most important mistake was not asking to be relieved of command due to his medical condition before December 1944. He finally realized he needed to step aside, and it is a testament to his sense of duty that he did so.
This biography would serve as a great guide to staff rides conducted in Europe, to include the D-Day invasion, Operation Cobra, the penetration of the Siegfried Line and the Battle of the Bulge. Bourque’s descriptions of the 4th Infantry Division’s part in all these events is lucid, well-researched and compelling.
I highly recommend this book for military leaders of all ranks and for anyone interested in Army history. Its research is impeccable, and Bourque’s assessments are logical and well-defended. It is a great addition to understanding high-level leadership.
Col. James Scott Wheeler, U.S. Army retired, is a retired professor of history at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. He is the author of several books, including The Big Red One: America’s Legendary 1st Infantry Division from World War I to Desert Storm and Jacob L. Devers: A General’s Life.
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Narrative Goes Beyond America’s Bloodiest Day
A Day in September: The Battle of Antietam and the World It Left Behind. Stephen Budiansky. W.W. Norton and Co. 304 pages. $32.50
By Col. Cole Kingseed, U.S. Army retired
At the Battle of Antietam, Maryland, on Sept. 17, 1862, in the second year of the Civil War, more Americans died in combat than on any other single day in American history. In A Day in September: The Battle of Antietam and the World It Left Behind, author Stephen Budiansky sheds new light on the pivotal battle that altered the course of the war and gave President Abraham Lincoln the victory he needed to later issue the Emancipation Proclamation.
What separates this narrative from previous accounts of the battle is Budiansky’s emphasis on how the battle changed its participants and shaped a generation of Americans.
Budiansky is a historian, biographer and author of 18 other books, including Code Warriors: NSA’s Codebreakers and the Secret Intelligence War Against the Soviet Union and The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox. In his examination of this pivotal battle, Budiansky relies on published editions and archival collections of soldiers’ letters and diaries to take the reader beyond the battlefield.
Each chapter highlights a distinguished participant of the battle along the banks of Antietam Creek. Budiansky’s cast of characters includes Confederate Gen. Robert Lee, Union commander Maj. Gen. George McClellan and Lincoln, but he also examines less familiar names such as U.S. Army physician Jonathan Letterman, future Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., photographer Alexander Gardner and nurse Clara Barton, whose monument now stands on the northern end of the battlefield.
Lee and McClellan do not receive high accolades from Budiansky, but the author characterizes Lee’s chief lieutenant, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, as “a master of both [war’s] art and science.” “The essence of Longstreet’s emerging thinking,” he writes, “was the combination of strategic offense with tactical defense.” Lee, on the other hand, “found it hard, the enemy in sight, to withhold his blows.”
In a similar vein, Budiansky credits Letterman, Gardner and Barton for making lasting contributions to their respective fields of endeavor. Letterman served as the medical director of the Army of the Potomac. His key management and insights of triage and evacuation by the U.S. Army’s trained Ambulance Corps saved thousands of lives. Gardner’s combat photography displayed in Mathew Brady’s studio in New York City offered “the first actual images taken of American dead on a battlefield, the first such photographs of the realistic horrors of war to be widely viewed anywhere in the world.”
Budiansky’s assessment of Barton is mixed. It was the Battle of Antietam that propelled Barton’s fame as the “Angel of the Battlefield.” Barton later founded the American Red Cross, and her work “reflected the experiences of thousands of other women for whom the Civil War created new opportunities without abandoning old expectations,” Budiansky writes. Barton’s management techniques later were called into question, according to Budiansky, which is why he opines that Barton would be more important as the symbol she made herself into, as a woman leading the way into a man’s world, than for any of her actual accomplishments.
What was the significance of the Battle of Antietam in the U.S. Army’s evolution as a modern force? “Young officers of the [20th] century, trained in modern staff procedures and drilled in the paramount need for clear written orders,” would study this battle, Budiansky writes. “Antietam would be an enduring link in the transformation of war from an art to a science, and generalship from the realm of individual inspiration to rigorous study and procedure.”
Well over a century and a half after that battle in September 1862, Budiansky’s words resonate. We are in his debt for providing a fresh perspective on the bloodiest day in Army history.
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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Fifth Army Takes Back the Eternal City
Cassino ’44: The Brutal Battle for Rome. James Holland. Atlantic Monthly Press. 672 pages. $35
By Col. Gregory Fontenot, U.S. Army retired
James Holland’s Cassino ’44: The Brutal Battle for Rome reviews the Allied campaign to seize Rome from December 1944 through June 5, 1944, when U.S. Fifth Army took the city. This includes the savage fight to break through the Gustav Line that bisected the Italian Peninsula. The bloody disaster at the Rapido River, the struggle for Monte Cassino and the eventual breakout from Anzio were hard-earned milestones as the Allies fought their way north along the spiny ridges and peaks of Italy’s Apennine Range.
Cassino ’44 completes Holland’s trilogy, which includes 2020’s Sicily ’43: The First Assault on Fortress Europe and 2023’s The Savage Storm: The Battle for Italy 1943.
Although Lt. Gen. Mark Clark, commander of Fifth Army, is the chief protagonist of Cassino ’44, Holland tells the story in the rich context of British Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander’s 15th Army Group. Holland considers the leadership of generals on both sides with a critical eye. He is at his best here and when illustrating the consequences of their leadership as experienced by their subordinates.
This is a story of joint and combined warfare in difficult terrain, biblically miserable weather and a shortage of resources, coupled with competition for what resources were available. The Apennine mountains and the weather, albeit inanimate, seemed to those doing the fighting as hostile. Holland’s excellent maps illustrate the essential problem in the campaign. Italy is dominated by the ridges and rugged peaks of the Apennines, which rise to 3,000 feet or more. Thanks to torrential rains early in the new year of 1944, the ground in the valleys turned to a muddy morass when a vehicle drove across it. The slopes turned to mush as soon as man or animal trod upon it.
Holding the high ground along some 100 miles of rugged terrain christened the Gustav Line mitigated Germany’s lack of resources. The line originated on the west coast of Italy about 35 miles north of Naples and ran eastward to the Adriatic Sea. An amphibious assault to flank it was the only alternative to bloody uphill frontal assaults.
Shipping needs, particularly for the Landing Ship, Tank, required the landing at Anzio to take place no later than Jan. 22 so the vessels could be released for D-Day in Normandy, France. Therefore, Operation Shingle, the Anzio landing, had to be planned and executed in less than three weeks.
Clark faced three chief problems for the operation: the landing itself, crossing the Rapido River and seizing the heights at Monte Cassino. How he handled these problems, the eventual breakout and the final attack drive the narrative. Postwar criticism of Clark stemmed from the Rapido River crossing and decisions he made following the breakout at Anzio and through the Gustav Line.
Besides horrible weather, difficult terrain and a lack of shipping, Clark had to deal with commanders who performed poorly, as did Maj. Gen. Fred Walker at the Rapido River; those who struggled, such as Maj. Gen. John Lucas at Anzio; and those who were in above their capacity, like New Zealand’s Maj. Gen. Sir Bernard Freyberg. Holland, on balance and after critical analysis, approves of Clark’s generalship but is not unaware of his faults.
In Cassino ’44, Holland delivers a compelling account of the war in Italy from private to field marshal in the context of combined and joint warfare. His analysis of general officer leadership and of Clark in particular warrants owning this book.
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.