Speaking to the Costs of Close Fighting

Understanding Urban Warfare. Liam Collins and John Spencer. Howgate Publishing. 392 pages. $29.95

By Lt. Col. Russell Glenn, U.S. Army retired

That more of Earth’s population now lives in urban areas than elsewhere is well known. The implications for those conducting warfare in these environments are less so.

We need only look at recent conflicts to recognize that cities and their populations will constitute vital terrain even in theaters typified by rurality. Ukraine demonstrates that urban populations are likely to suffer a disproportionate number of military and noncombatant casualties in wartime.

Liam Collins and John Spencer, the authors of Understanding Urban Warfare who have written for ARMY magazine, organize their book, essentially a collection of interviews, into two parts. The first seeks to provide an overview of urban attributes. Insights provided by those interviewed address such issues as economic links between select cities and countries, challenges of governing within these hyperheterogeneous environments and the difficulties posed by urban terrain for military operations.

These opening chapters seek to offer context for the case studies presented in Part II and provide valuable information to military leaders preparing for or conducting urban combat operations.

Reliance on the half-dozen interviews in Part I alone, however, unavoidably fails to weave interviewee observations into a coherent whole. While their comments rightly highlight urban complexity, for example, the nature and implications of that complexity during urban operations mandate further discussion.

It is a complexity broad in scope and potentially overwhelming in detail, one extending well beyond the confines of an urban area to other communities with which the city has symbiotic relationships, communities that sometimes range worldwide. Readers would have benefited from an overarching summary of this first part in preparation for what is to come.

Part II’s case studies span a period from World War II to 2020. Both conventional combat operations and more diverse actions receive attention. Among them is Jayson Geroux’s detailed consideration of tactical operations in 1944 Ortona, Italy. Geroux underscores the essentiality of urban intelligence, tactical coup d’oeil and innovation. Four participants of 1993’s Battle of Mogadishu, Somalia, provide specifics previously unavailable while reinforcing lessons no leader should forget.

It is in this chapter that the unforgiving character of urban conflict comes to the fore. The ill-advisedness of leaders not insisting—and checking—that their soldiers insert all plates in their protective gear and carry night-vision goggles even during what was expected to be a short daylight raid were lessons gained at the expense of comrades killed.

Charles Knight’s similarly excellent synopsis of the brutal fighting in 2017 Marawi, Philippines, is both informative and disturbing. It is disturbing due to lessons overlooked from previous conflicts, insights that—again—could have saved both Philippine military and noncombatant lives.

Perhaps it is this last observation that captures the potential value of this and similar publications: History’s lessons too often remain undiscovered by those preparing soldiers for these toughest of combat environments. The 21st century war that is not significantly influenced by urban environments will be an anomaly. Existent urban training facilities are too small, too undemanding. Facilities of sufficient size and complexity are prohibitively expensive. Training should demand—and reward—innovation when readying for urban combat.

More training in actual urban areas, integrating the consequences of short-term decisions on long-term success and better incorporation of other-than-military considerations: these and more are essential if preparations are to reduce the high costs of urban fighting. This book is a step in the right direction. Others need to follow.

Lt. Col. Russell Glenn, U.S. Army retired, was director of plans and policy, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Eustis, Virginia. Following his military career, he served in the think tank community and on the faculty of the Australian National University. He continues to conduct defense-related analysis with Innovative Defense Research LLC. His recent books include Trust and Leadership: The Australian Army Approach to Mission Command (an AUSA title) and Come Hell or High Fever: Readying the World’s Megacities for Disaster. A Civil War novel, Gods’ War, is pending publication. He holds a doctorate in American history from the University of Kansas.

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Black Cavalry Unit Rode on Union’s Side

Riders in the Storm: The Triumphs and Tragedies of a Black Cavalry Regiment in the Civil War. John Warner Jr. Stackpole Books. 464 pages. $34.95

By Maj. Thomas McShea

The 5th Massachusetts Volunteer Cavalry Regiment was the only African American cavalry regiment to serve in the U.S. Army during the Civil War as a state volunteer regiment. There were a total of seven all-Black cavalry regiments during the war, but the other six were designated as United States Colored Cavalry regiments.

While a handful of such units have received popular and scholarly attention in recent decades, like the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the 1989 film Glory, most of the all-Black regiments remain an untapped wealth of compellingly informative Civil War stories waiting to be unearthed by historians. John Warner Jr. in Riders in the Storm: The Triumphs and Tragedies of a Black Cavalry Regiment in the Civil War does just that and draws from the shadows the story of an all-Black regiment that has gone almost entirely overlooked by scholars since the war’s conclusion.

Regimental histories represent one of the most enduring genres within Civil War studies. Though this genre has fluctuated in popularity with Civil War scholars over the years, there remains a steady public interest in these basic fighting units of both the U.S. Army and the Confederacy.

Focusing on the shared experiences of no more than 1,000 men, these histories are like core samples pulled from the common soldiers and lower-echelon officers who formed the bedrock of these armies, and skilled historical writers like Warner leverage them to extract stories ranging from camp life and everyday struggles against racial prejudice to gripping battlefield accounts and eyewitness observations of historical events.

Though this book is centered on a unique Civil War regiment, it follows the conventional chronological format common to regimental histories. The first three chapters detail the context of African American service in the U.S. Army during the Civil War, along with accounts of the difficult recruiting process, selection of white officers and the formation of this unprecedented Black cavalry regiment.

Warner leans heavily on the correspondence of men like Massachusetts Gov. John Andrew and Adjutant General William Schouler to display the pragmatic and noble intentions behind their insistence that Massachusetts’ Black regiments maintain designations as state volunteers, as white regiments did. The subsequent chapters document the 5th’s wartime experiences and mustering out in October 1865.

The narrative includes the regiment’s deployment to Virginia as part of Maj. Gen. William “Baldy” Smith’s XVIII Army Corps under Maj. Gen. Benjamin Butler during his 1864 Bermuda Hundred campaign outside Petersburg and Richmond.

Stripped of their horses in transit to City Point, Virginia, the members of the 5th Massachusetts underwent their baptism by fire fighting as infantrymen at Baylor’s Farm outside Petersburg, where they sustained their first battlefield casualties. A rapid retasking brought the regiment to Point Lookout, Maryland, where it remained for several months guarding Confederate prisoners.

By April 2, 1865, the regiment was remounted and redeployed to the outskirts of Richmond. It was among the leading elements to triumphantly enter that city after its fall. Subsequently sent to the Mexican border in Texas, the regiment was mustered out of service in Clarksville, Texas, in October 1865, when it returned to Boston.

Throughout this narrative, Warner provides exhaustively detailed research and analysis of a comprehensive array of archival material, official records and newspaper sources. Warner adeptly zooms in and out of the broader historical context throughout this book, making it a wonderful addition to anyone’s bookshelf of Civil War history.

Most importantly, Warner gives a voice to the Black soldiers of the 5th Massachusetts Cavalry who remained overlooked by scholars until now, and who fought not only to destroy slavery but also to demonstrate their right to citizenship by serving America honorably and admirably during the nation’s darkest hour.

Maj. Thomas McShea is an Army strategist and an instructor in the History Department of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. He has served as an armor officer in the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) and the 4th Infantry Division. He graduated from West Point in 2010.

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Soldiers Fought Mistrust, the Enemy in Pacific War

Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II. Bruce Henderson. Knopf. 480 pages. $35.00

By John McManus

The Japanese American men of the storied 100th Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, are justly famous for their incredible valor in the European Theater of World War II. The Japanese American soldiers who served as interpreters, translators and intelligence analysts in the Pacific Theater are not as well known, but their contributions to Allied victory were arguably even more significant.

Many in the 442nd came from families that had been consigned to incarceration centers by President Franklin Roosevelt’s infamous Executive Order 9066. In Bridge to the Sun: The Secret Role of the Japanese Americans Who Fought in the Pacific in World War II, author Bruce Henderson tells the story of these dedicated, courageous soldiers.

Most were graduates of the Military Intelligence Service Language School at Camp Savage, Minnesota. They deployed to the Pacific Theater, usually as part of squad-sized intelligence teams or as lone interpreters who interrogated the occasional enemy prisoner or translated captured documents. They served in every corner of the war against Japan from Burma, to New Guinea, to Okinawa and countless battlefields in between, sometimes dealing with the mindless racism of their fellow soldiers.

Far more commonly, though, their comrades deeply respected them, understood their great value and even sometimes went out of their way to protect them. Indeed, because many of the language specialists had once lived in Japan or still had relatives living there, they risked terrible reprisals if they were captured, and thus served at more peril than the average American soldier.

Henderson tells their story by focusing primarily on six individuals—Roy Matsumoto, Grant Hirabayashi, Kazuo Komoto, Takejiro Higa, Nobuo Furuiye and Tom Sakamoto.

The book relates their experiences chronologically, from Pearl Harbor to V-J Day and beyond. Most of the chapters focus on one individual, such as Matsumoto’s legendary exploits with Merrill’s Marauders in Burma (now known as Myanmar) during the spring of 1944; and Okinawa, Japan-born Higa’s tragic experiences as an interpreter during the titanic battle fought on the island during the spring of 1945.

What emerges is a compelling, intimate portrait of these six remarkable soldiers, a microcosm for many hundreds of their fellow interpreters. Although the narrative sometimes moves slowly as Henderson explores the minutia of their lives and those of their families back home (often in internment camps), Bridge to the Sun adds much to our knowledge of the major role played by Japanese American soldiers in the defeat of their ancestral homeland. As most of their admiring fellow soldiers quickly understood, these men were Americans first and Japanese Americans second.

For anyone interested in the vital role of modern interpreters and intelligence analysts, as well as the Japanese American experience in World War II, this book is a must-read.

John McManus is Curators’ Distinguished Professor of U.S. military history at Missouri University of Science and Technology. He is the author of 15 books, including a trilogy about the Army in the Pacific War. He holds a doctorate in history from the University of Tennessee.

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Mobilizing Resources to Win a Global War

Churchill’s American Arsenal: The Partnership Behind the Innovations that Won World War Two. Larrie Ferreiro. Oxford University Press. 432 pages. $29.95

By Col. Bruce Jette, U.S. Army retired

In the early days of World War II, Britain stood on the brink of strategic catastrophe following the disastrous loss of men and equipment at Dunkirk, France. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill needed time, space and safe haven to rebuild his forces—all of which he found through partnership with the United States.

Churchill’s American Arsenal: The Partnership Behind the Innovations that Won World War Two, by historian Larrie Ferreiro, lays out the tremendous challenge and heroics of those who developed, then produced, the war machine that would win World War II.

Ferreiro presents unbiased facts with clearly presented analysis in a series of vignettes that demonstrate Allied cooperation for producing military technology. He shows how war planners, scientists and engineers on both sides of the Atlantic identified military needs, recognized technology opportunities and rapidly developed innovations. Most importantly, they worked together to ready solutions in time to be of value.

Much can be learned, given the existing acquisition process of the U.S. military.

Churchill knew the war would come to England and that he needed to disperse industrial production to protect from destruction the whole of the capability rather than any individual plant. He used the U.S. and Canada as his own shadow manufacturing sites.

The U.S. and the U.K., as Churchill aptly stated, had a “special relationship” that endures today—rooted in the past but defined by an intimate sharing of both operational challenges and the means to overcome them.

For example, the genesis and evolution of radar emerged from the need to see German bombers at sufficient distance to react. Initially addressed by the large British Chain Home radar system, collaboration led to joint U.S. and U.K. development of smaller, more accurate airborne and ground-based detection systems. Other efforts produced radio-based geolocation systems used until the advent of GPS.

Collaboration extended to production of the British-designed Landing Ship, Tank and the Liberty ship. Plans were hand-carried to the U.S., converted to American production specifications and mass-produced in time to meet the needs. This model worked for many of the Allies’ most important weapons: the P-51 Mustang fighter, the proximity fuse and even penicillin.

Such cooperation compensated for destroyed facilities in the U.K. and provided an enormous increase in volume production. Ferreiro specifically presents the impact that meeting those needs had on the greater inclusion of women and African Americans in the industrial workforce.

Requirements were developed in collaboration between soldiers, scientists and industrialists, each leading at different times depending on the opportunities, needs and realisms at the time. This is a lesson the U.S. military should relearn.

Had the industrial capabilities at the end of the war been in place at the beginning, the war would have been much shorter. A clear lesson is the need for preparedness in the face of an industrial adversary, particularly when time, space and safe haven are not possible.

Written to inform any military aficionado in an enjoyable way, Churchill’s American Arsenal should be essential reading for every officer aspiring to higher rank and required for every general officer independent of branch or duties. 

Col. Bruce Jette, U.S. Army retired, formerly was assistant secretary of the Army for acquisition, logistics and technology. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York, he holds a doctorate in materials science, solid state, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.