Novel Approach to Overlord Decision-Making
The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower. Michel Paradis. HarperCollins. 528 pages. $35
By Col. Kevin Farrell, U.S. Army retired
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Allied landings at Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, remembered since as D-Day. It is only fitting, therefore, that there is renewed interest in that landmark event.
Arguably, no one was more important to the success of the world’s greatest amphibious invasion than Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, and it is not surprising that hundreds of books have been written about him and the “Longest Day.” A new release from human rights lawyer and Columbia University of New York adjunct professor Michel Paradis suggests there is more to learn.
Almost conversational in tone, The Light of Battle: Eisenhower, D-Day, and the Birth of the American Superpower presents a novel approach to this World War II topic, with its focus clearly on Eisenhower, his intimates and key political and military Allied leaders. Presuming the reader is well acquainted with Operation Overlord—the code name for the Allied invasion of northwest Europe—interesting and little-known details abound, such as the suggestion that Eisenhower and George Patton Jr. bootlegged bathtub gin together. With prose that is often colloquial, and even earthy at times, the chapters unfold quickly.
Not many books addressing Eisenhower use the language —and the profanity—encountered in this book, some of which cannot be repeated here. U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall is described as a man “circumspect like a mob boss,” and the reader learns Eisenhower’s perspective on a senior staff officer: “What incensed Eisenhower most was [British Air Marshal Trafford] Leigh-Mallory’s incessant spotting of concerns without offering solutions, which did nothing except cover Leigh-Mallory’s ass.”
Some conversations are presented in a manner that could not be known with certainty, since there was no third-party account of the meeting, while others are factually incorrect, such as, “Hill 609 was a shrubby near-mountain … with a clear view of Tunis from its heights. The US Army had tried to take it for three days. … It had been the site of the heaviest concentration of artillery fire of the war.” Although there was certainly heavy artillery fire in Tunisia, there were greater concentrations on the Eastern Front and later, in the Italian Campaign and northern Europe.
Of particular interest in this new approach to Eisenhower is Paradis’ account of Eisenhower’s selection to be Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force over Marshall, who was the more likely and expected officer to assume the role. Although the episode has been well documented and is known to students of World War II, Paradis breathes new life into the sequence of events and makes it a lively and interesting read.
Organized into 45 chapters with a prologue and an epilogue, this is not a concise work. An unconventional approach, it is neither a traditional history nor biography despite its extensive documentation. Instead, each chapter serves as an essay unto itself connecting significant events, important relationships and key decisions in the months before D-Day.
The Light of Battle is recommended for anyone looking for a new and unique understanding of Eisenhower, his many interwoven relationships and important decisions leading to D-Day.
Col. Kevin Farrell, U.S. Army retired, is the former chief of military history at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. He commanded a combined arms battalion in Iraq. His most recent book is The Military and the Monarchy: The Case and Career of the Duke of Cambridge in an Age of Reform. He holds a doctorate in history from Columbia University, New York.
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Focusing on the Unsung Heroes of World War II
Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II. Lena Andrews. Mariner Books. 368 pages. $32.99
By Stephanie Hinnershitz
Browse the shelves at your local bookstore and you will encounter figures who loom large in World War II history: Churchill, Eisenhower, Patton and Roosevelt. Book spines and covers memorialize the commanders as well as the enlisted men who undoubtedly will have a permanent place on the shelves.
By contrast, popular books on the role of women who served in the military during the war are few and far between—a result of men writing the history of World War II for generations, and one that author Lena Andrews sets out to correct in her timely book, Valiant Women: The Extraordinary American Servicewomen Who Helped Win World War II.
As a military analyst with the CIA, Andrews noticed this gap in the popular narrative of World War II and wondered what new version of the war would emerge by centering on women. She traveled across the U.S., scanned newspapers for stories of World War II veterans and interviewed women such as Lt. Vivian “Millie” Corbett, who served in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (later Women’s Army Corps), receiving firsthand accounts of heroes who barely receive secondhand acknowledgment in books or films.
Like many of the other women featured in the book, Corbett was surprised that Andrews was interested in her service. After all, she and the thousands of other women who enlisted in all branches of the military and found themselves in all theaters of the war were simply doing the job they had signed up to do: win.
The task presented to Corbett and her sisters in arms—an Allied victory—serves as the framework for Valiant Women. On a more personal level, working for the war effort was an opportunity to have a career during a time when that goal was more difficult to come by in male-dominated sectors like administration and technical fields, particularly for Black women like Corbett. From a more strategic standpoint, these women came together within and across branches to mobilize for war and coordinate logistics at home and abroad.
This two-pronged approach—personal and strategic—to understanding women’s service is the strength of Andrews’ work, which is “more than just a recollection of noteworthy stories” but an entirely “new perspective” of the well-trod conflict, the prologue states. This total war “stretch[ed] the capacity of even the largest and best prepared combatants,” Andrews writes. It made women “necessary … because victory required an unprecedented supply and support infrastructure to sustain forces on the front lines,” so they handled the jobs that could not be performed by men serving overseas.
Andrews tends to overstate her case when she suggests that stories of women in service have rarely been covered—historians have written about women’s auxiliary units in journal articles and monographs for decades—but she is the first to offer a broad, strategic view of these units for a general audience.
Organized into two parts—“The Problem” of labor shortages and “The Solution” of allowing women to serve—Valiant Women uncovers the undervalued yet crucial work of women in the military. Of particular interest are members of the Women’s Army Corps, including Katherine Keene, who found herself working in the Office of Strategic Services and analyzing intelligence while based in London. Historians have often overlooked the role of women in intelligence operations that were crucial for an Allied victory.
Keene’s experience is just one example of the largely unsung women’s service during World War II highlighted in Andrews’ book. Valiant Women is recommended reading for anyone searching for an engaging military history of World War II from a new, more inclusive angle.
Stephanie Hinnershitz is an assistant professor of security and military studies at the Air Command and Staff College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. She holds a doctorate in American history from the University of Maryland. She is the author of several books, including Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor During World War II.
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GI’s Valor Saved Wounded Allied Soldier
I Have Your Back: How an American Soldier Became an International Hero. Tom Sileo. St. Martin’s Press. 256 pages. $27
By Col. Cole Kingseed, U.S. Army retired
In recent years, there has been a veritable avalanche of books depicting the U.S. Army’s combat exploits since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. One of the most engrossing accounts is Tom Sileo’s I Have Your Back: How an American Soldier Became an International Hero.
I Have Your Back relates the heroism of Staff Sgt. Michael Ollis, 24, who gave his life for a coalition soldier during a Taliban attack on Forward Operating Base Ghazni in Afghanistan on Aug. 28, 2013.
Sileo is the author or co-author of six books about heroes of America’s post-9/11 wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As is his custom, Sileo sprinkles his texts with personal letters to enhance his subject’s stories. He is also a contributing senior editor of The Stream Christian website and the recipient of the Marine Corps Foundation’s General Oliver P. Smith Award for distinguished reporting. After interviewing Ollis’ parents in 2014, Sileo agreed to tell their son’s story.
Ollis enlisted in the Army’s Delayed Entry Program in 2006. After basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, now known as Fort Moore, and a stint in Germany, Pfc. Ollis deployed to Iraq in 2008. Two years later, then an NCO, Ollis deployed to Afghanistan with the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). His performance was stellar, and his commanders noted that Ollis had “demonstrated excellent stamina and mental fortitude [by leading his] fire team in over 250 combat patrols and seven [battalion-]level Air Assault operations.”
Ollis’ defining moment occurred during his third combat deployment, this one with the 10th Mountain Division, when a coordinated enemy attack involving vehicle-borne IEDs and small-arms fire penetrated the perimeter of Forward Operating Base Ghazni. Also defending the forward operating base was a contingent from the Polish army as part of NATO’s international Provincial Reconstruction Teams.
After accounting for his soldiers, Ollis, along with Polish 2nd Lt. Karol Cierpica, moved toward the point of attack without their personal protection equipment and armed only with their rifles. Under continuous fire, Ollis and his comrades moved from position to position to engage the enemy.
Then, an insurgent came around a corner and engaged Ollis and Cierpica with small-arms fire. Ollis positioned himself between the insurgent and Cierpica, who had been wounded in both legs and was unable to walk. Ollis fired on and incapacitated the insurgent, but as he approached the enemy, the insurgent’s suicide vest detonated, mortally wounding Ollis.
For his heroic action against the Taliban, Ollis posthumously received the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for valor against the enemy. In 2017, Polish President Andrzej Duda posthumously awarded Ollis the Star of Afghanistan and the Gold Medal of the Polish Army, the highest honor that country can give to an allied soldier.
Ollis’ legacy lives on with the SSG Michael Ollis Freedom Foundation. The organization sponsors service projects involving local schools and has established scholarship programs to help students wanting to become service members, police officers, firefighters or other first responders. Additionally, the SSG Michael Ollis 5K Run and 2-Mile Walk has grown into one of Staten Island, New York’s largest annual running and walking events.
In I Have Your Back, Sileo captures the heart and soul of the American soldier, reminding us that heroes come in all sizes, nationalities, genders, races and creeds. Ollis epitomizes the highest standards of the Army’s NCO corps. We are in Sileo’s debt for making Ollis’ story accessible to the Army and the American public.
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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Transforming to a New System of Fighting
The Arms of the Future: Technology and Close Combat in the Twenty-First Century. Jack Watling. Bloomsbury Academic. 264 pages. $29.95
By Scott Gourley, Contributing Editor
With an analysis time frame of “between today and 2050,” The Arms of the Future: Technology and Close Combat in the Twenty-First Century presents what author Jack Watling describes as “choices that armies face in building a combined arms formation that will remain competitive over the coming decades.”
Published in collaboration with the Royal United Services Institute in the U.K., where Watling is a research fellow, the book offers a trans-Atlantic perspective on military modernization. Against that background, Watling perceives a dichotomy between some of today’s military modernization efforts and the capabilities he believes will be required in the future.
Watling asserts that modernization planners face contradictory imperatives of being “caught between continuity and transformation.” In the case of the U.S. Army’s cross-functional teams, he cautions that “intentionally mimic[king] the Army’s modernization process from the 1980s” could lead to “a refinement of mechanized warfare rather than a transformation to a new system of fighting.”
The first section of the book, called “From mechanized to informatized warfare,” examines technologies Watling believes will create “fundamental problems for how ground forces have historically operated.”
Watling highlights technologies—the majority of which he observed in development, experimentation or being used in operations—that can stymie a modern force’s ability to maneuver and concentrate force. An array of modern sensors, such as active, electronically scanned-array radar or Russia’s Torn-MDM electronic warfare system, combined with advanced processors, have made the battlefield transparent. The challenge for survival, let alone tactical surprise, is clear.
In the second section, called “The arms of the future,” Watling posits ways that modern forces can overcome these threats. He analyzes in-depth the four critical combined arms systems needed to win on that future battlefield: maneuver, fires, assault and support systems.
These systems will combine to perform an operation’s key tasks, but they also need to be distinct, each with its own command-and-control and training requirements. Watling outlines their tasks and details how they might be equipped and structured to succeed on the future battlefield.
Just as the combined arms systems need to work together, armies will need to work in a joint context. The third section of the book, “The continuation of policy,” outlines future strategic landscapes.
Addressing aspects of what Watling terms “the US-driven concept of multi-domain operations,” he notes that “the logic of each domain is distinct and is evolving because of different physical constraints and pressures.”
Watling shows how ground forces can integrate with all domains across the levels of war. He summarizes his resulting vision of “a future environment in which land forces will become increasingly integrated with space-based capabilities at the technical level, must deconflict and dynamically cooperate with air forces at the tactical and operational level, must coordinate and plan with maritime forces at the operational and strategic level and have a shared appreciation of intent with cyber forces at the strategic and institutional level to inform operational resource allocation.”
Throughout the book, Watling’s views are supported by extensive footnotes, reflecting academic research, the author’s personal observations of U.K., U.S. and European military exercises and capability demonstrations, as well as the author’s visits to places ranging from Mosul, Iraq, in 2016 to Ukraine in 2022. Although most of the notes are clear and informative, some are almost frustratingly abbreviated.
The Arms of the Future provides an interesting academic perspective on many of the considerations surrounding ground force modernization efforts over the next quarter-century.