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OnlineCxtras
March 2006
You ll find mu ch m ore abou t
military history on the Web s
leading history resource:
The |—listoryNet.com
WHERE HISTQHV LIVES ON THE WE
WW W TheHistoryNet com
Discussion: W hich ultimately played
a greater role in stemming the
German submarine threat during
World War II—the convoy battles in
the Atlantic, or Britain's interdiction
campaign against outgoing and in-
coming U-boats in the Bay of Biscay?
Goto
www TheHistoryNet comJmhJ
for these great exclusives:
The Flying Porcupine Earns Its
Name—O n June 2,19 43, a lone Aus-
tralian Short Sunderland fought for
survival against eight German fight-
ers ove r the Bay of Biscay.
Bolshe\dk Wave Breaks at
Warsaw—Mikhail N. Tukhachevsl^
was the most brilliant general in the
Red Army. If the newly resu rrected
Polish nation wa s to survive, Marsha l
Jozef Pilsudski would have to be
even sma rter.
TraU
of Black Hawk
—
Outnumbered
and harried through trackless
swamps, Black Hawk's starving band
of Sauk and Fox Indians m ade its
last desperate s tand along the Missis-
sippi in August 1832.
Besieged hy
Thieves—
The army that
burned much of the second most im-
porta nt city in the New World to the
ground in 1671 recognized no flag,
save perhap s the Jolly Roger.
E D I T O R I A L
Farewell to a Navy m an w ho shaped
an editor s life.
AS ANY OF MILIT RY HISTORrS co n -
tributors know, getting interviews and
firsthand accounts from veterans of
World War II and Korea into print w ithin
their lifetime has become a race against
time. I've always known it, but the point
was more personally brought hom e to me
on October 21,2005, when leamed that
Paul D. Guttman, former U.S. Navy
Seabee and combat cameraman in the
Pacific theater, had died of pneum onia in
the Veteran's Administration nursing
hom e at M ontrose, N.Y.
His wartime record aside, my father
profoundly influenced my approach to
history. It was a Fokker DrI model Dad
gave me for my birthday that first sparked
my intere st in aviation history. And it was
while viewing Cecil B. DeMille's 1935 film
The Crusades that Dad, in the process of
explaining wby be regarded Saladin
ratber than Rich ard the Lion-Hearted the
hero of the story, instilled in me tbe
notion that there was more than on e per-
spective to history. Neither of us imag-
ined that I'd ever apply any of that pro-
fessionally, but...the rest, at least since
1988, bas been
Military History.
Bom at Tomkins Square in New York
City on January 31, 1920, Paul Dennis
Guttman had originally trained as an
artist, becoming a mem ber of the Ait Stu-
dents League at age 14. At 16. he enrolled
at Cooper Union, where he studied art
and engineering. Serving in the New York
National Guard's 23rd Infantry R egiment
before the United States entered World
W ar 11, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy in
1942, and after initial service in the 59th
Construction Battalion, be was offered
the opportunity to transfer to a special
photograph ic unit established by Captain
Edw ard Steichen. He spent the rest of tbe
war on temporary detache d duty from
the 59th Seabees. Many of the still and
motion picture images he shot have ap-
peared in numerous books and films,
most notably 20tb Century Eox's Acad-
emy Aw ard-winning 1944 documentary
Fighting Lady, filme n color aboard the
aircraft carrier Yorktown.
Guttman's photo assignments took him
into a variety of combat zones und er U.S.
Army and Marine as well as Nav>' jutis-
diction. He participated in nume rous am -
phibious landings, including Kwajalein,
Eniwetok, Hollandia, Saipan, Guam, Pele-
liu, Iwo Jima, Okinawa an d le Sh ima. H e
flew Ln the rear gunner's position in aircraft
from tbe carriers Yorktowti,
Honiet
dleati
Wood
Princeton and Fanshaw
Bay
during
airstrikes on Marcus Island, Truk Atoll,
tbe Philippines and the Bonin Islands, as
well as against Japanese warships during
the Battle of the Philippine Sea {also
known as the Marianas Turkey Shoot),
the Battle of Leyte Gulf and off the coast
of Okinawa. On one occasion his plane
was shot down off tbe Philippine coast,
and he and the pilot were rescued from a
life raft hours later by a destroyer. In
March 1945, he completed a com bat
patrol in the South Cbina Sea aboa rd the
submarine Spot (SS-413) and then flew
six bom bing missions over Japan aboard
Boeing B-29s of the Twentieth Air Eorce.
ARer photographing the demise of Japa-
nese battleship Yanmto s light cruiser
escort Yahagi on April
7,
and suhsequentlv
taking some of the last pictures of war
correspondent Eniie Pyle on Ie Shima, he
Continued on page 6 8
6 MILITARY HISTORY
MARCH 2006
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L E T T E R S
DOUGLAS MACARTHUR T INCHON
I am a new subscriber, and since I live in
Mexico, there is a delay in receipt of yo ur
magazine. I must comment on the Sep-
tember
2005
feature on General Douglas
MacArthur's Inchon landing. The idea
didn't just come to him. During the
Russo-Japanese War, Maj. Gen. Arthur
MacArthur was a U.S. observer and
young D ouglas was at his side when they
saw the Japanese take advantage of the
20-foot tide drop at Chemu lpo Harb or on
the Korean coast to land four battalions
of troops, starting a t 1800 hou rs on Feb-
ruary 6,1904, until 0300 on the 7th, taking
their foes by stupds e.
Chemulpo was later renamed Inchon.
Apparently MacA rthtir remem bered the
event very well.
Colonel William E . Bridges
U.S. Army (ret.)
Via
e mail
ANDATCHOSIN
Let me com ment on the concluding para-
graph of Jim Dorschner's superb article,
Douglas MacA rthur's Last Triumph, in
the Septem ber 2005 issue, and on Un-
flinching Courage: Royal Marines in
Korea, in the Decem ber 2005 issue. We
failed to secure the hard-w on victory at
Inchon not because of MacArthur. The
blam e lies squarely with President H arry
Truman's administration and its political
policy of providing privileged sanc tuary
to the enem y an d creating artificial limits
to the w ar effort.
MacArthur wanted to destroy all six
bridges across the Yalu River. Washing-
ton said No. Hun dreds of thousand s of
Chinese troops were thus able to cross
into Korea. MacArthur asked permission
to strike at enem y supply
bases
across the
Yalu along the Ma nchu rian
border.
Wash-
ington said
No.
An enemy's supply line
is the nervous system of its operation.
One cannot win a war decisively without
destroying it.
MacArthtir pleaded for approval for his
airmen to pursue enemy planes across
the Yalu under the time-honored pdn ci-
ple of hot pursu it. W ashington said
No.
MacArthtir and his successors were
therefore co mpelled to fight the wa r with
one arm tied behind their backs.
Truman's morbid fear of Soviet entty
into the wa r if he said Yes was com-
pletely baseless. Russia was still reeling
from the devastation of World War II.
Further, it had exploded its only atom
bomb (at a test site) months pdor to the
start of the Korean War. As the world's
sole superpow er at the time, the United
States enjoyed complete mastery of air
power, strategic bombers, industdal ca-
pacity and an atom ic arsenal.
Josef Stalin would not have gone to
war over little Korea or upstart China,
unless U.S./United Nations forces in-
vaded Russian terdtory. Truman squan-
dered a great opportunity after the
Inchon landing. He should have listened
to his field comm ander.
Mo C. Ludan
Camano Island, Wash.
MCCOOK ERRATA
Steven L . Ossad writes: Several readers of
The Fighting McC ooks, in the October
issue, pointed out my obvious mistake
when I stated that John James McCook
(1823-1842) attended the U .S. Naval
Academy at Annapolis. Since the Naval
Academy was established in 1845, three
years after John s death, it is clear he did
no t attend.
Jn my defense, because ofthe pau city of
papers from that time, less is proba bly
known ofthe first John James than the rest
of the family. I relied on James B. Rod-
abaugh s 1957 article in Civil War History,
one ofthe earliest comprehensive histories
ofthe
family,
as well as Henry Howe s His-
torical Collections of Ohio (1890) and
Bdef Histodcal Sketch of the 'Fighting
McCooks,' published in
Proceedings of
the Scotch-Irish Society of America
(1903). The Carroll County Historical So -
ciety Web site and publications, as well as
other sources, repeat the claim.
MEDIC MATTERS
I'd
like
to offer som e com me nts in regard
to the Novem ber 2005 interview, Field
Medic on the Italian Front, which I en-
joyed. As Jerome McMenamy notes, the
91st Infantry Division first went into
comb at north of Rome because the Fifth
Army lost
its
most expe denced units—^the
3rd, 4th a nd 36th Infantry divisions—^after
Rom e fell on Ju ne 4, 1944.
All
joined the
Seventh Army for the invasion of south-
em France on August
15 1
don't see how
the 442nd Infantry Regiment could have
still been in Italy when McMenamy was
there—it was p art of the 3rd D ivision.
The Cana dians of the FSSF (First Spe-
cial Service Fo rce) were finally aw arded
the Combat Infantryman's Badge—62
years
later. We
were pinned on August 13,
2005. When the FSSF was disbanded in
November 1944, the 442nd took our po-
sitions on the ddgeline between France
and Italy
William S. Storey
Executive Director, FSSF Assn.
Mon eta, Va.
I do not agree with two items in the
Jerome McMenamy interview in the No-
vember
2005
issue. The 92nd Infantry Di-
vision
was
not pu lled out of the line for the
remain der of World War
II.
It was greatly
reorganized. Two regiments were dis-
bande d, and m any of those men were or-
ganized into two engineer general service
regim ents. The division received replace-
ment regiments and was fighting in
northwest Italy when the wa r ended.
The photograph caption on P. 60 is also
incorrect. Acemo is in Italy, not France.
The 30th Infantry Regiment was in the
7th Infantry Division, which invaded
southern France on August 15, 1944.
Ma ster Sgt. David B . Leber
U.S. Army (ret.)
Conley, Ga.
Jerome B. McMenamy responds: When the
92nd Division w as pulled out ofthe line, I
don't know what happened to the 442nd
Regiment. The rest ofthe division w as used
to haul supplies u p to the
front.
1 remembe
a lot of smashed trucks as they raced away
from the front. The 36th Division was very
good and it was pulled out, but the 34th
and 88th Infantry and 10th M ountain divi-
sions were all there with the 91st in combat
Send letters to Military History Editor Pri-
media History Group, 741 Miller Drive,
Suite
D-2,
Leesburg
VA 20175, ore-mail t
MilitaryHistory@thehistorynet. com. Pleas
include your name, address and daytime
telephone number. Letters may be edited.
MILITARY HISTORY
MARCH 2006
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I N T R I G U E
Techniques that made ninjas feared in 15th-century
Japan still set the standard for covert ops.
By John Beitrand
THE HOLLYWOOD IMAGE of the Japa-
nese ninja is usually a villainous black-
hooded assassin who is dispatched with
relative ease by the m ovie s hero. In real-
ity, the ninja was an indispensable part of
warfare in Japan in the 15th through the
17th c enturies.
Although best known as silent assas-
sins,
th e ninjas were mo re often used for
reconnaissance and espionage. Their
equipmen t and techniques showed great
ingenuity for their day and presaged
those used by special forces units and in-
telligence operatives in the 20th century.
The first recorded appearance of ninja
activity dates from about the mid-10th
century in Japane se history, althoug h the
actua l term ninja—derived from the word
shinobi
an alternate reading of the Japa-
nese cha racter for ni n—did not appe ar
until the mid-15th century. So valuable
were the ninjas skills that a regular cot-
tage industry for their training and hiring
grew up around Iga province, where
entire villages were dedicated solely to the
creation of ninjas.
As with just ab out every other profes-
sion in Japan at the time, the techniques
of
ninjutsu
were passed from father to
son. It was extremely rare for someone
not bom to a ninja family or
village
to be
accepted for training.
Training started a t a young age and in-
cluded learning balance, swordsm atiship,
practice at staying underw ater for hours
at a time while using a bamboo reed to
breathe, and long periods living alone in
the wilderness. Ninja students also
trained in group s, learning climbing tech-
niques and scaling
walls,
which gave rise
to the m yth of the ninja s app arent ability
to defy gravity o r even fly. Ninja studen ts
were kept under the watchful eye of the
shonin
(village ninja leader) until they
were judged ready for their first mission,
usually when they reached their late
teens.
THE NINJA S EQUIPMENT
c o m b i n e d
practicality and ingenuity. It included
In a print by Tsukioka Yoshitoshi. a ninja tries to
assassinate Oda Nobunaga in Azuchi castle in
1573
only to be apprehended by two guards.
The ninja then comm itted suicide.
specially designed floats that attac hed to
the feet and allowed a ninja to literally
walk across a castle s mo at. Folding saw s
and other tools used for breaking into a
castle closely resem ble the sam e devices
used by rescue personnel today. Various
metal claws could be attached a roun d th e
palm and foot or over the tips of the fin-
gers for scaling walls or use in close
combat. The ninja even earned a simple
listening device mad e out of a metal tub e
that could be used to eavesdrop through
walls.
Ninja weaponry was designed to play
to the strengths of their peculiar training.
The ninja sword was typically shorter
than a samurai
katana
but that wasn t
necessarily a disadvantage. ninja would
usually avoid trying to match the samu-
rai s far superior sw ordsm anship. Instead
he would often use his sword in a uniqu e
fashion. Since the ninja usually worked
at night in total darkness during a castle
attack or an assassination mission, he
would hold his sword pointed in front of
him with the scabbard just over the tip
and the scabbard s suspensoiy cords be-
tween his teeth. That extended his reach
by up to 6 feet, and when he made con-
tact with an enemy, he dropped the scab-
bard and ad ministered a quick thrust.
Other ninja weapons included the
famous
s/iiinfeft
or throwing stars. Con-
trary to pop ular
belief shuriken
were not
designed—nor could they usually be
thrown hard or accurately enough—to
kill a man. Their main purpose was to
distract or disable an opponent so he
could then be dispatched with the sword.
Caltrops were used to hinder p ursuit, and
Continued on
p ge
19
12 MILITARY fflSTORY
MARCH 2006
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P E R S O N A L I T Y
Sir Redvers B uller w as a Victor ian hero but the
Boer W ar p roved to be one c am paign too m any.
By Steve Dymond
COLORFUL FIGURE
spo r t ing an im-
pressive mo ustache, brick-red cheeks and
steely eyes. Sir Redvers Buller seemed
every inch the Victorian-era hero as he
strode majestically across the wide
canvas of 19th-century British campaigns
for nearly four de cades. Viscount G arnet
Wolseley once said of him that he in-
spired general confidence and deserved
it.. .had a thun derbo lt bu rst at his feet he
would merely have brushe d from his rifle
jacket the earth it had thrown upon him,
without any break in the sentence he hap-
pened to be uttering.
Ho lder of the Victoria C ross, favorite of
Queen Victoria and adored by soldiers
and general public alike, it seemed that
nothing could stop BuUer's progress to
the very highest reaches of the military
establishment. Yet when he was 60, a
loosely organized army of fanners man-
aged to dislodge him from the pinnacle
Lieutenant Colonel Redvers Henry Buller displays
med als Inc luding the Victoria Cross.
of achievement, sending his fame crash-
ing to earth. A career tha t featured one il-
lustrious exploit after another was irre-
trievably marred by three costly defeats
in South A frica during the Black Week
of December 10-15, 1899, setting in
motion a sequence of events that would
lead to the general's downfall.
Bom in Crediton, Devonshire, on De-
cember 7, 1839, Redvers (pronounced
Reevers ) Henry B uller was educated at
Eton. Gazetted to the 60 th Rifles on M ay
23, 1858, as an ensign a t 18, Builer
learned the art of soldiering on cam-
paigns in India, China and Canada. It was
during the Red River Expedition to sup-
press a rebellion by the mixed-blood
Metis of Manitoba in 1869 that the young
captain first impressed his commander.
Colonel Sir G arnet Wolseley, with his re-
sourcefulness and ability. The conclusion
of that almost bloodless campaign began
an association with Wolseley
that would last throughout
Buller's career.
On his retum from Canada,
Builer attended the British
A rmy Staff C ollege. He was
frustrated and thirsty for
action, and in 1873 Wolseley
appointed him head of the In-
telligence Department for his
expedition against the West
A frican A shanti kingdom .
Buller seized the chance to
make a nam e for himself and
his succes s moved Wolseley to
write, First and foremost
among them, as one whose
stem deteimination of char-
acter nothing could ruffle,
whose resource in difficulty
was not suipassed by anyone
I ever knew was Redvers
Buller....
Buller was mentioned in
Wolseley s dispatches, eam ing
himself a brevet majority and a CB (Com-
panion of the Most Hono urable Order of
the Bath). A fter the successful exped ition,
he was given an audience with Queen
Victoria, during which he recounted his
adventures.
THE ST GE W S SET FOR
Bulle rs finest
hour, In 1878 he accompa nied Maj. Gen.
Frederic August Thesiger—later 2n d
Baron Chelmsford—to South A frica,
where the Sixth Kaffir War was in
progress. A ppointed to com mand the
Fron tier Light Horse, Buller trans fomied
its 250 ill-disciplined m en into a cap able
unil that earned a reputation for skillful
and bold tactics.
The Zulu emergency broke out in 1879,
and th e Frontier Light Horse formed p art
of Colonel Henry Evelyn Wood's Flying
Column. On January 22, the main Zulu
m p
(army) won a stu nning victory at Is-
Iandlwana that threw the entire three-
pronged British invasion of their king-
dom into disarray. Lord Chelmsford, in
need of a spectacular victory, ordered
Wood's column to raid the camp of Zulu
allies, the abaQulusi, on the summit of
Mount Hlobane, hoping to provoke an
attack on the British stronghold at K ham-
bula. The subsequent assault, on March
28,
did not develop as intended. The
abaQulusi tenaciously contested the
Frontier Light Horse's advance and then
the British found the main mp —22,000
Zulus—coming to cut them off.
Forced to lead his men to safet>- down
one oftwo paths in the west com er of the
mountain. Brevet Lt. Col. Buller de-
scribed his choices in a letter to his wife
on March 30, writing, Both of the latter
were paths such as no m an in cold blood
would try to get a horse dow n. Never-
theless, he tried, but as his men de-
scended, they were beset by advancing
Zulus and counterattacking abaQulusi.
In a moment the Zulus were among us
14 MILITAR Y HISTO RY MARCH 2006
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in the rocks, he wrote. How I got down
I shall never know.
A desp erate struggle ensued during
which Buller, commanding the rear
guard at Devils Pass, repeatedly re tum ed
to rescue fallen men from the boulder-
strewn cliff face. As long as on e m an re-
mained alive on the up per plateau, Buller
would not flee. When all were saved w ho
could be, Buller and the survivors rode
and fought their way clear of the pursu-
ing abaQulusi on to the plains and to the
safety of Khamb ula. Although most of the
British troopers escaped, they lost 17 of-
ficers, 82 enlisted men and about 100
irregular and native troops killed. In
addition, some 600 native troops who
managed to escape the debacle deserted,
leaving only 50 und er Buller's com ma nd.
Buller and four others were awarded the
Victoria Cross for their parts in the
action.
Buller further enhanced his glowing
reputation du ring the Zulu attack on the
British camp at Khambula the next day,
and would again at Ulundi on July 4,
when he led the cavalr>' charge after the
shattered Zulu impi He retumed home
exhausted, but Wolseley—who relieved
Chelmsford of command shortly after
Ulundi—w rote to Buller in glowing term s
on July 13; You will find that bo th you
and Wood will be received in England
with open arms, as you so well deserve.
You two are looked up on as the he roes of
the war, whose actions have pulled us
through the mess and redeemed the rep-
utation of the army. Appointed aide-de-
cam p to Queen Victoria, Buller was made
CMG (Companion of the Most Distin-
guished Order of St. Michael and St.
George) on Decem ber 19.
AFTER SHORT STAFF assignments within
the British Isles and a brief posting to
South Africa, Buller retume d to the lime-
light in August 1882 when Wolseley, by
then a general, appointed him chief of
the intelligence staff in Egypt during the
campaign against Said Ahmed Arabi's
rebelling Egyptian army. Buller carried
out a successful reconnaissance prior to
the decisive battle of Tel-el-Kebir on Sep-
tember
3
for which he was mentioned in
dispatches and made KCMG (Knights
Commander of the Most Distinguished
Order of St. Michael and St. George) on
November 24.
After a sho rt period at Aldershot, Buller
returned to Egypt in February 1884 to
join the campaign against the Sudanese
Mahdi Muh amm ad Ahmad ibn as Sayyid
abd Allah. He commanded the 1st In-
fantry Brigade under Maj, Gen. Sir
Gerald Graham at El Teb on Eebruary 29,
and Tamai on M arch 13. At Tamai tw o
brigade squares were formed. The square
commanded by Graham was broken by
cha ining Beja tribesm en. Panic followed,
and at one point a volley was fired at
Buller's unit by disoriented soldiers in the
broken square. Riding out of his square
to rally his own unit, Buller seized com-
mand of the deteriorating situation.
Grah am s me n took heart from the reso-
lution of Bullers men and stood firm.
Fo r his ac tions at Tamai, Buller was pro-
moted to major general and m entioned in
dispatches. Graham praised Buller for
coolness in action, knowledge of soldiers
and exp erience in the field. In August,
Bulier was made chief of staff of the
Khartoum Relief Expedition, replacing
Sir Herbert Stewart, who had succum bed
to wounds. Buller inherited a demoral-
ized, disorganized force and decided to
retreat. By his personal qualities the chief
of staff inspired and se ttled the m en, lead-
ing them safely back to Korti. Buller was
made Knight Comm ander of the Bath in
recognition of his service.
The following years were the most
peaceful of Bullers career. After a spell as
undersecretary for Ireland, he was m ade
quartermaster general in 1887 and adju-
tan t general to the forces in 1890. He called
upon his campaign experience to reorga-
nize support services and set about im-
proving conditions for ordinary soldiers.
In 1891 he was promoted to lieutenant
general a nd to a full general five years later.
IN JUNE 1899, as a crisis between the
British govem ment in Natal and the Boer
republics deepened, now-General Buller
was appointed to command Brit ish
forces in South Africa. Knowledgeable
abou t the region, possessing a good he ad
for administration and intelligence, he
seemed ideally suited to the task. In the
eyes of the nation it was unthink able that
the heroic Buller might fail. Yet, ap-
proaching
60,
Buller was not the man he
once was. Years of good living and a
robust appetite had taken their toll.
Things went badly from the outset. The
new com ma nde r was left out of the plan-
ning stage and arrived in Capetown to
find the situation rapidly spiraling out of
control. Ladysmith and Kimberley were
already encircled by Boer forces, com-
pelling the general to aba ndo n his defen-
sive strategy and go on the offensive.
Buller found himself commanding in-
16
MILITARY HISTO RY
MARCH 2006
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sufficient resources with which to turn
around
a
daily worsening position. Tra-
ditional British grit was not enou gh. This
was war on a scale unparalleled since the
Crimea, fought with new technology
under the watchful eyes of war corre-
spond ents repo rting daily hy telegraph to
avid readers. On Novemher 3 Buller
wTOte to hi.s bro the r Trem ayne, I am in
the tightest place I have ever been in a nd
the worst of it is that it is, I think, n one
of my creating.
The crisis worsened
in
what hecame
known as Black Week in December 1899.
Following defeats at Stormberg on the
10th and M agersfontein on the 11th
Buller felt compelled to cross the Tugela
River and attack a well prepared defen-
sive position at Colenso. He suffered
1,127 casualties and inexcusably lost 10
guns,
while
the
Boers, un der Louis
Botha, reported only 40 casu alties. The
British viewed the battle as a nationa l dis-
aster. Even worse, in a cipher m essage to
Sir George White, commanding the be-
sieged Ladysmith garrison, Buller
seemed to suggest surrender. Aghast, the
British govemment ordered Buller to
make fresh attempts to reach the encir-
cled town. He was replaced as com-
mander by Lord Frederick
S.
Roberts and
was left with only the Natal command.
Ill-fortune continued to dog Buller,
who suffered more costly defeats
at
Spioen K op during Janu ary 17-24, 1900,
and at Vaal Krantz on February 5. After
the Spioen Kop debacle, Buller's initial
dispatch was rejected. Asked to provide
another, he refused. The first dispatch
was finally published in full more than
two years later.
BuUer eventually relieved Ladysmith
on February 28 and enjoyed some suc-
cess before he left South Africa in Octo-
be r
1900.
H e retum ed to a hero's welcome
at Southam pton. Queen \^ctoria received
him, and Lord Roberts thanked him for
services rendered. Buller resumed com-
mand at Aldershot.
LTHOUGH BULLER W S heavily cri t i
cized by the press for his part in the
South African campaign and similarly
viewed by th e W ar Office, it is possible the
episode would have eventually blown
ov er^ ha d the general only let the m atter
rest. Badly stung by newspaper reports
and feeling ab andon ed by the military es-
tablishment, however, he demanded the
right to give his version of events.
Things came to a head a t a public func-
tion at th e Queen's Hall, Westminster, on
October 10, 1900, when Buller made an
impassioned speech. Reportedly
the
worse for drink during that ap pearance,
he refuted a series of articles in The
ondon Times newspaper and gave his
own vei-sion of the infamous Ladysmith
suirender dispatch.
The secretai-y for war called upon Gen-
eral Buller to resign over that indiscre-
tion. He refused, instead appealing
to
King Edward VTT, who did not intervene.
On October 21, Buller was relieved of his
command. Shunned by the army he had
served so well, Buller retired to his family
estate at Crediton, where he lived as a
country gentleman. He died a broken
man on June 2, 1908.
Redvers Buller was
a
contradictory
man. Recklessly brave, intelligent and a
capable organizer, he could also be
overindulgent, stubborn, indecisive and
muddled. His quick temper w s legendary,
eaming him the nickname Redrag.
It could be argued that early success
and the patronage of Viscount Wolseley
had led to Buller's overpromotion. Cour-
age and resourcefulness in action do not
necessarily indicate possession of th e
qualities required by a field com man der.
Buller had commanded successfully
in
Egypt and Sudan, but he was past his
prime at the time of the Boer War. Over-
weight and out of condition, the general
seemed confused, preoccupied with
caring for his soldiers rathe r than achiev-
ing the objectives set before him. All the
same, he was given a thankless task and
insufficient support with which to carry
it out. At the end, Redvers Buller w s de -
serted by the high er echelons of m ilitary
and civil life. Festering resentment
am ong officers outside Wolseley s favored
circle contributed to his demise. He was
left to take the blame for a govemment
trying to fight a modem war by ou tdated
methods. Undeservedly, his nam e
became synonymous with incompetence.
Yet his men remaine d loyal, speaking vol-
umes for the respect he inspired.
Perhaps the last word should be left to
his adversaries. Many Boei s felt he was
harshly treated and stated as much in af-
fidavits placed before the Royal Com mis-
sion into the War in South Africa. One of
the wiliest commando leaders, Christian
de Wet, wrote in his acco unt. hree Years
ar
I had no persona l experience of his
me thods. But this I will say, that w hatever
his own people have
to
say
to
his dis-
credit. Sir Redvers Buller had to operate
against stronger positions than any other
Eng lish general in Sou th Africa. MH
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f rom page 2
e shinobi-gama, a sickle with a chain at-
that proved as pop-
The ninja s ingenu ity did not stop with
weaponry and eq uipment. The ninjas
lage would appear normal to the naked
but was purposely laid out such that
shonin s
looked like a simple wood en struc-
but like a primitive castle keep it was
ing might contain nu merou s
n escap)e or conceal weapons.
ere specifically designed to squeak
s prese nce.
The golden age of the ninja came at a
history w hen the coun-
—w ho looked to ex-
nd the emp eror
As
mercenar-
ninjas were hired by daimyos to spy
s rigid class structure of the
irony
eneath
the many samu rai he had as
yet have no comp unction about
When conducting an espionage mis-
as w as that of the
komuso,
a trav-
komuso s
pletely covei ed the wea rer s fea tures,
A nother effective disguise sometim es
ted by the ninjas w as the garb of the
men who lived a monklike
quently traveled to populated areas to
In an e ra whe n
rarely traveled m ore
than a couple miles from where he had
been bom, the komuso and the yam-
abushi
offered both a means of conceal-
ing the ninja s identity and allowing h im
to travel far afield without arousing sus-
picion from the locals.
THE NINJA
PL YED
a significant part in
the unification of Japan between 1570
and 1600. Jap an s first great unifier, t he
daimyo Oda Nobunaga, who controlled
30 of Japan s 68 provinces at the heigh t of
his power, barely escaped assassination
in 1573. A ninja h ad man aged to pene-
trate Oda s castle at A zuchi in an attemp t
to kill him while he slept but was cap-
tured by two of Oda s body guards. The
ninja comm itted suicide, and Oda had his
body displayed in the local marketplace
to discourage any further attempts on
his life.
When Japa n s second great unifier, Toy-
otomi H ideyoshi, died in
1598,
several of
the most powerful daimyos vied to be his
5-year-old son s pr otec tor a nd effectively
becom e the shogun . By 1600, two power-
ful political camps had emerged to decide
Japan s future—the W estern unde r Ishida
Mitsunari and the Eastem under Toku-
gawa Ieyasu. Fortunately for Ieyasu, he
controlled most ofthe ninja provinces, in-
cluding Iga, and he made the most of their
reconnaissance and espionage talents lead-
ing up to the largest and most important
battle ever fought on Jap anes e soil, Seki-
gahara, on October 2 1, 1600. Ieyasu s vic-
tory led to his becom ing the first shogun
of a fully unified Japan and the creation
of a shogun ate that would last until Com-
modore Matthew C. Perry s visit in 1858.
In
21
st-century Japan, the ninjas are
recognized for their contribution to his-
tory, and not just movies and video
games. Museums and reconstructed
ninja houses, complete with trap doors
and fake walls, are located in the ninjas
two main provinces, Iga and Koga, the
latter of which lso boasts a completely re-
constructed ninja village. Both provinces
also include reenactors who dress in the
traditional black ninja garb and hold
demonstrations of wall climbing and
swordsmanship. Even in the United
States, there are martial arts instructors
who teach the ail of ninjutsu.
A lthough their past is shrou ded in
myth, the ninjas proved to be one of the
earliest and most effective speciai opera-
tions units in history. Today s covert o p-
eratives and elite troops owe a debt to the
silent, black-clad wa rriors of 17th-century
Japan. MH
AHKRICU
TH F
A M E R I C A N
R E V O L U T I O N
Revisit tlie birth of a
nation in this tniK defin-
itive l(H)k at A merica s
fighi or ndependence
and its world-changing
list to glory, THE /\MER-
ICAN
REVOUTION features ten poweriiil dcKumen-
taries.
From the Dedanuion of Independence lo the
Treaty of Paris, these are tlie stories and events sur-
rounding the remarkable achievemenLs of heroic
individuaLs seized by the epic forces nf
history.
Hear
the woitLs of the founding Mi er s and o ther ke\ fig-
ures, as read by leading acto rs such as KeLsev
Gramnier and Michaei Learned Thrilhng re-enact-
ments of great battles, compelling period images,
rare archival material, and commentary by leading
historians bring tbe past vividly
alive.
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F O U N D I N G
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The self-evident truths were
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A merica s first years,
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Hamilton,
Jefferson, A dams,
Madison and Burr struggled
to transform their disparate
visions into an enduring government. Ba.sed on
Joseph Elhs s Pulitzer Prize winning book. FOLM)-
ING BROTHERS exa mines six m ome nts when tbe
collisions and collusions of tbese towering figures
left an indehble imprint on the nation: tbe secret
dinner that deteniiined the sile ofthe capiial and
A merica s financ ial future; Benjamin Frankfin s call
for an end to slavery; George Washington s farewell
address lo tbe
nation;
Jobn A dams term as presi-
dent; Hamilton and Burr s famous and fatal duel,
and the final reconciliation between A dams and
Jefferson.
Viewing time approximately ,1-1/2 bours.
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P E R S P E C T I V E S
O f the thousands w ho lost lim bs dur ing A m er ica s
Civil W ar, a ha nd ful ca pitalized on their loss.
By Wayne Austerman
THERE CAN BE FEW PROSPECTS m o r e
teiriiying to any soldier going into battle
than the amputation of a limb, either by
bullet or surgeon's knife. Amputations
durin g the American C i\il War were typ-
ically ju.st an agonizing p relude to a rap id
death by shock and loss of blood. In a few
cases the wounded man might survive
the loss of a mangled limb and then die a
lingering death from gangrene as the
stum p became infected. At best, the sol-
dier who survived the twin traumas of
wound ing and surgerv' faced the prospect
of life as a cripple.
Thousands of men on both sides during
the war, ranging in rank from private to
general, lost limbs. Whether they were
destined for a quick death or long-term
survival, their response to the hand that
fate had so cruelly dealt to them some-
times revealed much about their charac-
ter Most accepted their destiny with
adm irable stoicism, while others went so
far as to feign complete indifference. A
few even sought to wrest notoriety and
political advantage from their loss.
Among the company soldier grade of-
ficers who lost limbs in com bat, two cases
stand out as exemplars of courage and
devotion to their respective causes.
During the Union siege of Port Hudson,
La., in the early summer of 1863, Captain
Richard M. Boone, comm ander of a Con-
federate batteiy, lost a leg just below the
hip when shrapnel from a shell burst
ripped into him. As he lay rapidly bleed-
ing to death fi om h is grievous wo imd, he
ordered his men to pick up the severed
limb, load il into a howitzer and fire it
back at the Yankees
Boone had a worthy counterpart in
courage at Gettysburg on July 1, 186 3, in
19-year-old Lieu tenant Bayard Wilkeson,
who comm anded Battery G, 4th U.S. Ar-
Major General Daniel
E.
Sickles shows off his missing leg for the camera while visiting Maj. Gen
Samuel
P.
Heinzelman In the Columbia Military District following the Battle of Gettysburg.
tillery, as it fired in sup port of Brig. Gen.
Francis C. Barlow's division from the
crest of a small hillock, now known as
Barlows Knoll, near Rock Creek on the
norihem edge of town. So effective was
his fire that the Confederates assigned
two of their own batteries the sole mis-
sion of silencing the defiant Union guns
that were lashing the advancing gray in-
fantry's ranks with shell and canister.
Wilkeson was directing his men's work
from the saddle when a shell slammed
into h is horse's flank, killing th e an imal
and leaving th e officer's leg dang ling by a
shred of mangled sinew. Crawling from
beneath his downed mou nt, Wilkeson let
his men bandage the stump of his leg
after he himself finished the amputation
with his own pocketknife. S pum ing evac-
uation to the rear, he stayed by his guns,
cheering on th eir sweating crews amid a
storm of enemy fire.
When enemy pressure finally forced
Batterv G to w ithdraw, the redlegs carried
Wilkeson to the fiel hospital, which had
been established at a nearby almshouse.
That night Wilkeson, hovering at the
point of death, asked for water. When an
orderly brought him a canteen, another
badly injured man beside him begged,
"For God's sake, give me
some "
Wilkeson
handed him the canteen, and the parched
soldier drained it. Wiikeson smiled at the
other man, then died.
Sueh self-abnegating compassion was
inspiring, although there were some offi-
cers who managed to carr\' it to dubious
extremes. That was the case with Brig.
Gen. Claudius Sears, who was leading a
division of the Confederate Army of Ten-
nessee at the Battle of Nashville in De-
cember 1864 when an artillery shell
ripped throu gh his horse's body and sev-
ered his left leg. Sears somehow stood
erect on his one remaining leg and wept
bitterly, seeking to offer comfort as he
Continued on p ge 7
2 MILITARY HISTO RY
MARCH 2006
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U B O T
I N T H E B Y
O F B ISC Y
The dramatic air-sea engagement on
July 30, 1943, was the first single action
of its kind in wh ich three Germ an
submarines were sunk.
BY NO RM N FR NKS
A
s the Battle of the Atlantic tum ed
against the submarine arm of
Adolf Hitler's
riegsmarine
in
mid-1943, Britain's Royal Air
Force Coastal Command began stepping
up its efforts to seek and destroy U-boats,
as they departed from or retum ed to their
ports on the westem coast of France.
Consequently, the Bay of Biscay became a
battleground between British and G erman
aircraft and the submarines that ran the
gantlet through it. Impro vem ents in RAF
Coastal Command's detection methods
made it necessary for German Admiral
Karl Donitz to give orde rs to his subm a-
rine captains that if they were unable to
crash-dive safely, they should remain on
the surface and fight back against attack-
ing airplanes. To make that possible, the thin-skinned U-
boats mounted a formidable array of anti-aircraft
weaponry, ranging from a rapid-fire quartet—or Vierling—
of 20mm ca nno ns on the winter garden aft of the con-
ning tower, to 37mm and even 88mm canno ns forward.
At that time U -boats were staying out longer o n patrol,
supplied at sea by specially designed subm arines capab le of
taking friel orpedoes an d supplies to the boats already out
in the A tlantic. It was also a time of hea\'ily arme d U-boats
heading out in small numbers to ward off lone attacking
planes. To counter them, the RAF ordered any of its air-
crews who spotted submarines to radio for other aircraft
to join them, and then attack together.
Late on July 27,1943, two supply submarines, or Milch
Cows, as the Germ ans called them,
U-46J
an d U-462,
headed out to sea with a third vessel, U-504. M aking a ren-
dezvous soon after dawn on the 30th, Captain Wolf
Stiebler,
U-46J s
comm ander, discovered that U-462 ha d
remained submerged all night, so its batteries needed
rech ar^n g. A lthough he knew it was dangerous to remain
surfaced, Stiebler decided to continue, but at about 0930
that moming a Consolidated B-24 Liberator of No. 53
Squadron, RAF, spotted the boats and circled out of gun
range while radioing for assistance.
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Senior engineering officer Hans Kruger aboard Bmno
U-462 survived to explain wha t followed: After
er a long voyage underw ater
Liberatoi remained just
range of our flak and called for reinforcements.
After we met up w ith the other two bo ats, our passage
water and the guns were manned , said
U-461.
The first [ad-
ber of aircraft increased to, in my m emory, six. They
circled us at a height of 3-4 000 meters. This lasted for two
or 2 A hours, while we were attacked simultaneously by
three different machines.
Next to arrive w as a Short Sun derland flying boat of
No. 228 Squadron, then a Consolidated Catalina of No.
210 Squadron, the latter cooperating with sloops of Cap-
tain Frederick J. Johnny Wa lkers 2nd Fscort Group in
the ou ter bay area. Very soon those ships w ere heading for
the scene as
well.
Near the subm arines an American B-24
Liberator of the 19th Antisubmarine Squadron had ar-
rived, then a Handley Page Halifax from No. 502 Heavy
Squa dron. The latter's crew decided to attack, but w as met
MARCH 2006
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by fierce anti-aircraft fire that struck the Halifax and
caused its three 600-pound bo mbs to miss the target.
A second N o. 502 Squa dron Halifax now arrived, joined
by a Sunderland from No. 461 Squad ron, Royal A ustralian
A ir Force (RAA F). The latter was s hort on fuel, as it had
already been out on patrol for some time and ha d rcceived
wrong information about the location of the subs.
"Having set course for home we received a message
from Group giving the position of three surfaced U-boats,"
navigator Jock R olland explained. "On arriving at or n ear
the position given, there was nothing to be seen but a n
empty Bay of Biscay. So, off on a square search for over
an hour. We were just on the ump teenth and last possible
leg when ano ther m essage arrived apologizing for having
ma de an error of one degree latitude on the first position.
By
then,
our reserves were practically nil, so the only thing
to do was lay a track through the new po sition. If contact
was established it allowed no more than ten minu tes for
action. If no contact, it was a case of 'Home James,' and
be veiy sparing with the horses."
BY THETIME THE AUSTRALIAN
flying boat arrived just
before noon, the action was beginning to heat up . Walker's
sloops werc racing toward the area, and the aircraft cap -
tains were preparing to attack, hoping to divide the Ger-
ma ns' anti-aircraft fire.
"When the lookout reported a single aircraft, our CO
looked on this machine—which was on its own, and be-
cause of our considerable arm ame nt—a s of negligible im-
portance," remembered A ble Seaman Gerhard Korbjuhn,
the signalman on
U-46rs
bridge. "So we continued on o ur
way undisturbed. Then h ea w radio activity was reported
in the area by the radio room, lt was already too late to
dive because by now we were being circled by 6-8 aircraft,
all just out of range of our weapons. When [ship] smoke
eventually appeared on the horizon, the aircraft decided
to attack, apparen tly to stop us from diving."
Flight Lieutenant D udley S. Marrows, captain of N o. 461
Squad ron's Su nderland , headed in. while the Halifax also
began an approach. The B-24 also edged in, taking some
of the flak. The Halifax pilot dropped a 600-pound bo m b
The large Milch Cow submarine
U 461
heads out to
sea,
its primary mission to
bring fuel and supplies to U boat wolf
packs at secret rendezvous po ints in
the Atlantic, which by mid-1943
required it to run a gantlet of British
warships and aircraft in the Bay of
Biscay [Norman Franks).
that scored a near miss on U-462
while M arrows straddled
U 4 6 1
with
depth charges.
"I had been relieved at 0600 and
went into the interior of the boat to
freshen up," recalled A cting Supply
Officer A lfred W eidem ann of U 4 6 1 .
"Later an air-raid warning was given
from the bridge. In trousers and deck
shoes, and still with a piece of sea wa ter soap in my han d,
I made my way up, hand over hand, to take up m y look-
out position. As our fire was reliant on a 2cm gun, I
jumped into the bandstand. I was no expert gunner but
having already ha d four years of warfare un der battle con-
ditions behind me I knew a bit about which way the wind
blows. The aircraft grew ever more in number and au-
dacity. We shot all that the gun held and joyfully tum ed it
round again hoping that the aircraft would enjoy a taste
of ou r juice, but it didn't happ en th at way. We played cat-
and-mouse until 1100. But then it cam e to the kill because
'Johnny' Walker was out with his destroyers on the
waipath. The aircraft were closer on the ball and had the
advantage."
"They attacked simul-
taneously from all sides,
firing with all guns and
flying at such low altitude
that they were barely a
few meters above the
water," said Korbjuhn.
"Our
Vierling
gun re-
ceived a hit on its m ount-
ing and wou ld no longei"
swivel. 1 lined u p the
cockpit of the Halifax as
the order came to open
fire, then let loose with
both barrels. Then eve n-
thing happened very
quickly."
"At around 1015 a Sunderland and a Catalina airived."
said Kruger of U-462. U-461 was the first boat to be at-
tacked by three aircraft. In the meantime five other air-
craft arrived and attacked both us and U-504. The boats
all fired everything they had."
"From the wireless traffic it started to b ecom e m ore in-
teresting and positive," Dudley Marrows recalled. "Obvi-
ously other aircraft had already arrived and w ere reporting
sightings of three subm arines Pilot Officer Jim my Leigh
sighted the first through binoculars whilst some distance
I LINED UP
O N THE O P EN
COCKPIT
OF
TH E
H LIF X
S
THE
O RDER CAME TO
FIRE
THEN LET
LO O SE W ITH
BO TH BARRELS.
24 MILITA RY HISTOR Y MARCH 2006
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there were indeed three in a tight V formation. I
go in as low as I could, hoping tha t there would
being attacked—the outer sub.
"I jinked violently as I lost height to sea level. As ex-
l the enemy guns and c annons were firing—ver\
into their own, and they did a marvelous job, other-
"I was just skimming the swell, submarine sitting low
ng abou t what was going to happen w hen I
U-461
w as in th e way. At any rate , there is a big factor
"The 53 Squadron Liberator and the American Libera-
ance to get at the su b, while their fire
side to side as if he w as flying a Tiger Moth
[Pearce] open up. Dudley sh outed:
oody good shooting Bubbles,' as he cleared the U -boat's
U-461
at 50 feet. I
the tail gunne r open up with his four Browning ma-
we passed over then he sh outed over the in-
half
skipper' Dudley was
BEGAN TO CIRCLE, FTS RUDDER damaged, an d
seen coming from the conning tow er Wolf
bler later said that at the m ome nt of attack he had tried
the bo at to the left, since he was unable to turn right
U-462 s
close proximity. He also saw the near miss
don ship just as the depth charges crashed about him .
U-461 s
back, and just then Stieblers
the water to some depth before he
"By this time the Halifax had bombed another U-boat
et—out of range of their 20mm guns," Pilot
ed on us. Bubbles Pearce held his fire to about
up and swept the decks. We just
Top Sunderiand OV960 H of N o. 461 Squadron on patrol.
bove \N6Q77 s crew on July 30,1943. From left, back row:
P.E. Tablin, J. Tainer, J.S. Rolland . Dud ley M arr ow s, P.C. Leigh,
D.C. Sidney,
P T
Jensen. Front row: R L Webster. G.M. Wa tson,
F. Bamber (with dog), A.M. Pearce and H.H. Morgan.
depth charges. They must have blown it apa rt. Then there
were about 20 men in the water so we circled and dropped
them one of our dinghies and took photos."
"At arou nd 1100 the radio room reported surface ships
moving toward us at great speed," recalled Kruger. "The
aircraft attacked without pause. U-461 shot at an aircraft,
then a Sunderland flew in low, attacked the boat and de-
stroyed it with depth cha ises. The com man der an d
4
of
the bridge personnel were saved; the other crew m em bers
went down with the boat."
"I think we still had five or seven m achine s aro un d us,"
recalled Able Seaman Alex Franz, "but when, after 2 A
hou rs of battle the anti-subm arine vessels came into view,
they grew braver and began to attack u s from all sides. At
the end we were being attacked by four mac hines at once.
The machines forward an d to starboard tu me d. The Sun-
derland aste m finished us off. Mea ntime, the pedal firing
system of the ierling was brok en. I was just going to fetch
the ha nd firing system when
noticed that my jacket was
covered in blood. I said to the 'old m an ' that I thoug ht I'd
been hit and h e told me to go straight und er and get myself
bandaged
u p,
but before I went took one last look rou nd
and saw that the bows were already under water.
"The 'old m an' gave the order to abandon ship," he con-
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U 46
crewmen who survived
to describe the action from the
receiving end included [top, from
ieft) Aiois Momper, Gerhardt
Korbjuhn and Alfred Weidemann,
as we ll as far left) Franz Alex
with Richard Wulff at left, who
had been killed in a bathing
accident on July 11,1943) and
Wilhelm Hdffken Photos: Norman
Franks).
tinued . I wanted to dive headfii^st from the 'winter ga rden '
because I was already up to my neck in water, but we were
washed overboard. The boat set itself on its head, the pro-
pellers turning high in the air. I'll never forget that scene.
Those who didn't get free in time or who hung around
were taken down w ith her. Like Herm ann Moesender, who
must have hung onto the
Vierling
because he cam e up full
of pan ic. He hadn't inflated his life jacket and so clung to
my neck and held it tight. told him that wouldn't do and
that w e'd both drown; we were not going to swim to shore
in any event He quickly calmed dow n an d let go of
me.
I
didn't have an aviator's life jacket, just the old six-cell
type—probably the only one on bo ard. It was more com-
fortable to wear, because we also had to sleep in them, bu t
now I had pro blems beca use I had tied it so loosely that
it came up when inflated. Since I was also handicapped
by my w oun d it was very difficult for me.
I fired at the machine attacking us from starboard,
Mom per recalled. It retu med fire, firing with all its guns.
They must have hit one of the loaders because all of the
ammunition had run out. I looked for him; he was lying
close to the gun, bleeding from a dreadful chest wound.
He must have been killed on the spot. At the same mo men t
the bombs began to fall. We were engulfed by a jet of
water, and I found myself eventually in the water again. I
saw another m an close to
me.
We swam toward each other
and tried to stay together. We thought we were the only
survivors when an aircraft, not too far away from us,
dropped something down. Later we heard a whistle from
this direction and sw am tow ards
it.
Soon we saw the other
survivors in the dinghy.
I believe that
U-462
was the first to cop some of the
damag e but then the airmen h ad designs on us, said
Weidemann. Their on-board weapons spat out everything
they had and pressed us hard. Our ierling gun left its
mou nting and o ur crew were the worst for it. One had his
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pieces.
Another was shot in the head or in the
t. I dived for cover behind the bridge quarter-
as I saw the mach ines flying tow ards us, I could
the bom bs as they fell; there m ight have been
felt
from above my left bu ttock.
"I didn't hear the order from the 'old man,' 'everybody
t/ because the boat had already gone under and taken
Weidem ann con tinued . "I had a n aviator's life
ith a bottle of compressed air. The going un der
the tearing open of the air bottle were as one. As I saw
5
of us left."
THE ATTACK OUR DOCTOR
told me to get
ng ready for an em ergency, in case we have to op-
om the control room:
Sani
to the tower '
efully laid him down. He ha d been hit in the chest an d
and w as bleeding heavily. Then he
died
At the same
ent there was an eno rmou s crack, the boat lifted an d
dge—'everyone overboard ' I heaved myself u pwa rd, I
the oxygen b ottle, then everything went b lack. As I
pw ards I cam e to again, and found myself directly
"I emptied my m agazine, I think I hit targets too, then
over to my loader
ht to clip on a new m agazine. It was only then
ced th at he had been hit and lay senseless and bleed-
o was he? I couldn't tell anym ore.
"There were losses on the 'winter garden' too, but at that
As I now know, the pilot of the
had released his bom bs and o ur boat had been
the boat gave way beneath me. It was a rem arkable
"Having surfaced at around 0600 we were still pump-
l when a lookout reported an aircraft at 1000,"
Able
Seaman Helmut Rochinski of U 461. "Within
f hou r or so, five aircraft were in the area. My
ion w as as helmsm an in the tower, so I could not
wh at was going on on th e bridge, but in one of the at-
ierling
must have received a direct hit on its
"We could only fire the 2cm gun and we had our first
Top
Captain Wolf Stiebler and his first officer scan the sea
ahead from the conning tower of
U 46L
Above Caught in
the Bay of Biscay, U 461 comes under attack by Sunder-
land U of No.
46
Squadron on July
30,
1943 (Photos:
Norman Franks).
the conning tower hatch. I caught him and he died in my
arms.
I laid my leather jacket under his head.
"Then came new orders for the helm, which I had to
follow, and overhead the aircraft continue d to attack. O ur
freedom of movement to starboa rd w as limited as we were
running in line abreast with the other submarines. U 462
was hit and then U 504 dived, lea\'ing U 46} alone. Then
the
CO
ordere d a call to
base:
'Am battling five aircraft, re-
quest aerial support.' I had just passed th is order on to the
radio room when a machine flew over us and dropped
bombs. A violent tremor ran through the boat.
"The CO asked the L.I. about the condition of the b oat,
but in the same mo men t someo ne called out that the boat
was going under and the CO ordered everyone out. That
was the last order from the CO that I passed on, then I
climbed the ladder, holding onto the handle of the tower
as the water came over me. On the bridge I made out a
couple of dead and wounded comrades, who went down
with the boat. No one followed me ou t of the tower. I was
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the last ma n out. I grabbed hold of the periscope but wa s
swept away by the w aves.
U 4 6 1
sank very fast and the air-
craft circled over us, the Sunderland dropping a dinghy.
We put some wounded men into it while the rest of us
clung to rope s. After som e houi s the corvette HM S Wood
pecker
picked us u p and after a few days we arrived in a
British port. Then we were sent off to a POW cam p.
HAVING GAINED
height an d distance from the scene of
action, we could see a bright orange pool of scum , oil and
wreckage below
us,
said Paddy
Wat.son. About 30 me n were
down there. We decided to dro p
them one of our thi'ee dinghies.
Meanwhile the Halifax had had
another go, fighting his way
through the flak and dropped
mo re bom bs, which fell close to
U 462
and crippled her. Soon
they were to scuttle her an d take
to their life-rafts. Dudley then
tum ed his attack to the one re-
maining U-boat— U 5 0 4 —but
flak was all around us and the
midships gunner called: 'Five
ships on starboard beam, they
are firing.' We abandoned our
attack, with
relief
to Captain Walker's ships which were
firing their heavy guns at the lone U-boat, which soon
dived.
In the meantime we had reached mid-day; the surface
ships arrived and entered the battle with their artillery,
said Kruger of
U 462.
The detona tions were close to us.
We
ran out of am mu nition b ecause of the flak ban ^g e an d
in the control room we were practically up to our knees
in empty cartridges. Then we were hit starboard astem
and the pressure resistant hatches through to the stem
were destroyed and the rudder jammed. The aft com-
T HE WHOLE CREW ,
INCLU DING T W O
MEN
GOT OUT
OFTHEBOAT
BEFORE IT SAN K...
L GS WAVING/
From left former enem ies Dudley
Marrows, W olf Stiebler and Peter
Jensen have a 1980 reunion in
Ma rrows native Sydney (Peter
Jensen via Norman Franks].
partment had to be closed off and
without our rudder we tumed in cir-
cles.
With our last bullets we gave
U 504
covering fire for an emergency
dive.
She dived undamaged but was
destroyed after eight hours of depth
charging by the frigates.
Then the order—everyone off the
boat. The whole crew, including two
seriously wounde d m en, got out of the
boat before it sank and she went down
flags waving. After eight hours in the
water we were picked up by an Eng-
lish ship and went into four years of
imprisonment.
We
were scattered [in the water] over about 50 m eters
and so meo ne yelled for us to get together, Fran z recalled.
When we had just about managed it a ma chine flew over
us and fired. The shots hit about 10-15 meters away so
none of us were hit. Later another m achine came towards
us and we thought that this was it. It tumed out to be a
Sunderland. F our m en were actually standing there next
to each other, with their elbows leaning on the op en door.
Suddenly they threw som ething down—a smoke bomb—
followed im med iately by a dinghy. I though t it
was
a depth
charge an d w anted to dive out of the way, but of course, I
couldn't with the life jacket on.
'The dinghy hadn 't inflated itself
so we
swam around until
we discovered the bottle, hanging d own d eep in the water.
The 'old ma n' took off his life jacket an d dived, found the
bottle straight away and finally the dinghy blew itself u p.
We
got the seriously wound ed into the boat and the others
hung onto the ropes at the side and waited for rescue.
Gradually
1
made out the heads that were swimming
close to me, Korbjuhn said. The CO urged us to stick
close together beca use a single straggler would have little
chanc e of rescue. It becam e painfully clear to me that all
the rest of my comrades were dead, no one else got out
from inside the boat. There was not m uch time to m ourn
them, for we were battling for ou r own lives. Fortunately
the sea was calm and fairly warm.
The Sunderland circled us once more, he continued.
In the open hatch several airmen were standing, waving
and mak ing Victory-V signs. Then it flew quite close to us
and they threw something o ut. When it became clear that
it was an inflatable dinghy and that these airmen wanted
to help rescue us, we were both relieved and thankful.
After about three hours an Fnglish warship arrived.
A
large scrambling net was hung over the side so that we
could clamber aboard, and be greeted by heavily armed
sailors.
We
were taken below and provided with warm , dry
clothes, chocolate and cigarettes. I got to know the 'Tom-
Continued on
p ge
6 9
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uccaneers
break
out at
M A R A C A I B O
Above On May
1 669
a fire ship sets Vice
Adm.
Don Alonso de l Campo y Espinosa s Magdalen
ablaze while othe r English privateers swarm over
a Marquesa
and
Santa
Louisa as the Battle of
Maracaibo reaches its climax. Opposite above Captain Henry Morgan scans the horizon during one
of his sorties against the Spanish treasure fleet Omages: Peter Newark s Historical Pictures].
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Not only had the Spanish adm iral caught
Henry Morgan red-handed, he thought he had
the privateer captain securely bottled up.
BY CHRIS STROUP
n A ugust 1668, a rag tag fleet of ships sailed into P ort R oyal, Ja-
maica, flags fluttering proudly as dru m s be at a victorious salute.
The rich Spanish town of Portobelo had been sacked against in-
_ . timidating od ds, and the ragged ban d of privateers were return -
ing victorious. As runners called out the news, shops, taverns and
brothels scurried to prep are for the influx of men an d riches tha t kept
the city thriving. On the deck of the
flagship stood 33-year-old Captain
Harry M organ, a sea raider of rising
reputa tion. W ithin a few sho rt years,
he would be Sir Henry M organ, also
known as the Buccaneer King.
Shortly after Christopher Colum-
bus' discovery of the New World in
1492,
Spain had asked for—and re-
ceived on May
4
49 —^a bull from Pope Alexander
VI,
who was deeply
in Spain's debt, legally recognizing all lands west of a line running north
and south at 1 leagues west of the A zores or Cape Verde Islands as
its exclusive dom ain. Any non-Sp aniard who v entured w est of tha t
Line of Dem arcation risked de ath at Spanish han ds. For the next 150
years,
Spain enjoyed a virtual monopoly on the riches of the Ameri-
cas,
save for Portuguese-owned Brazil. By the mid-1600s, however,
the Spanish empire had become an empty shell, dependent on the regu-
lar influx of gold and treas ure from the New World to pay its mo unt-
ing debts, with virtually none of that income invested in developing
u
Ol
Tlio
N
u
Uk
w j re
t l iinc]
JotJ,
nyii ip
1
live t iy liitlicr lies;
na
jrc ior. i l uvuic;
pcirls thai werc liis cyts;
.--i Iiim J otl i Lvli
uller Irjm se..) dunse
] m ^
L-KK .mJ ' tMHifc.
IS loiirly ring n i; knell:
irknow
licjr
tliciii
— 1. A n^-octii ,
Ivll.
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its indigenous economy. Meanwhile, the
Spanish treasure fleet had become the
target for v ry rival na\ y in E urope—and
between w ars for a growing underclass of
seagoing freebooters infesting the Carih-
bean Sea. Among the m ost successful of
those sea raiders was Henry, or Harrv,
Morgan.
Bom in Wales in 1635, Morgan came
of age during the turbulent years of the
English Civil War, in which two of his
uncles, Edward and Thomas, fought on
opposing sides. At the end of that war,
Oliver Cromwell turned his eyes to the far
west in an attempt to asseit English
power in the Spanish-dominated Ameri-
cas.
Trained in England as a soldier rather
than a sailor, young Harry Morgan joined an ex pedition to the
New W orld in 1654 led by General R obert Venables an d Vice
Adm. William Penn, father of the William Penn who later
founded Pennsylvania. After meeting w ith disaster during th eir
attem pt to invade Santo D omingo on the isle of Hispaniola, the
untrained and undisciplined force moved on to seize Jamaica.
The acquisition of that strategically important Island would
alter the balance of power
in
the New World by providing a safe
haven beyond the Papal Line from which smugglers and sea
raiders—both privateers under a wartime letter of marque and
freelance pirates—could operate.
In 1661 Morgan received a commission to captain his own
By October 1669,
word began to
circulate that Captain
Henry Morgan had a
new letter of marque
and was planning
another raid.
ship under the command of Comm odore
Christopher Mings. Over the next seven
years, Morgan worked to make a name
for
himself
The 1668 raid on Poriabelo
e.stablished him as one of the most suc-
cessful commanders in the Caribbean
and m ade him one of the most important
men in Jamaica, second only to Governor
Tho mas Modyford. T hat raid also left the
Spanish feeling far too vulnerable in the
New World. In an effort to thwart the
growing problem of English raids, the
Span ish viceroy co nsidered all possibili-
ties and concluded that the next English
target would most likely be the rich port
of Vera Cruz. He dispatched 300 soldiers
to fortify the tow ns defenses and to begin
a year-long waiting gam e, punctuated by rumo rs.
By October, word began to circulate tha t Captain M organ h ad
a new letter of marque from the Jamaican governor and was
planning yet another raid. All interested parties were to meet
him at Isla Vaca, know n to the p rivateers simply as Cow Island .
Eleven ships and more than 900 men gathered at the ren-
dezvous point, including the 26-gun Oxford which had recently
arrived from England. Morgan transferred his flag to xford
and, after a council of war, he and his lieutenants agreed on
their next victim: Cartagena, where Spain stored all the gold
from Peru until it could be sent to Havana, Cuba. During the
rum-fueled celebration of their new adve nture, a magazine on
A silver-laden convoy assembles at Havana
Cuba.
With most of the New World in Spanish hands other European nations found war
with that country
a
profitable excuse for their navies and the privateers that supplemented them to raid Spanish treasure ships.
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was accidentally ignited, blowing it
up.
M organ s life wa s
To
reach C artagena, Morgan s fleet was forced to sail into the
ring the entire voyage to the coast. Sailing to windw ard
lved a ba lancing act betw een the forces of wind an d w ater.
ps buckled timbers and damaged
ry few hou rs pu shed crews to the edge
one,
damaged ships dropped out to return
By
the time it arrived off th e Span ish Main,
leet had so diminished that he was forced to look for
By that time, rumo rs had begun to trickle into Vera Cruz and
organ was planning an attack somew here on
ain. That information was passed on to Havana and Vice
ish fleet.
To
intercept the raiders, Don Alonso immediately
This, he thoug ht, would keep him ahead of the pirates in
As Morgan debated a new target, a French captain stepped
Ollonais during his attack on M aracaib o thre e years earlier.
Morgan that he could lead the fleet through
the next day set a course for Cu rasao, where his fleet spent
fleet
of privateers sailed at night arou nd the island of Aruha
ed hy the S panish.
Steering tow ard th e western side of the Gulf of Venezuela, the
chm an kept the fleet in the center of the gulf
to
avoid being
gulf
they turned south toward the narrow,
channel leading into Lake Maracaibo. The entranc e
along the coast like the center of an hou rglass before
g in to the grea t lake. The channe l itself w as only 12 feet
s entranc e.
As
the sun rose the next morning, M organ began the treach-
through the channel. Since the Frenchman s visit
est p oint. As the privateers came within
, gunners inside the fori sounded the alarm.
While Morgan s ships w ere unde r fire from the Sp anish, a
vessels,
constantly checking the d epth
because of the fort s ca nnons, Moi^an ordered a land-
focating heat and hu midity sappe d the men s strength.
arly afternoon, as M organs men crept am ong the beach s
3 p.m ., a full gale was whip-
hreatened to drive the ships ag round.
As dusk settled in and the w inds abated, the privateers crept
An 1864 English map of Central America. Although the Spanish
considered Jamaica s loss to the English u nim porta nt its stra-
tegic location and Port Royal s loose regulation of privateers and
pirates made it a thorn in their side throughou t the 17th century.
open an d the fort ab andoned . W earily the privateers searched
the fort for loot and supplies until someone detected the famil-
iar smell of a slow burning match. Morgan yelled a warning to
his men as he swiftly snatched the match from a powder keg
intended to set off th e fort s mag azine.
When daw n broke the next morning, Morgan signaled for the
ships to begin moving through the channel and anch or
as
close
to the fort as p ossible. One group of privateers moved plundered
supp lies out to the ships while others sp iked the fort s 16 can-
nons and buried them in the sand.
Wanting to strike before the Spanish had time to construct
defenses, the main body of privateers set off on the
20 mile
jour-
ney to Mara caibo, using canoe s and othe r small ve.ssels to nav-
igate the extremely shallow w aters. The ships would follow later,
but it would take time for them to cross the bar
When the privateers reached M aracaibo, they found the town
deserted and most o fthe wealth hidden. Morgan stayed there for
three weeks, searching for treasure a nd torturing prisoners to get
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them to reveal their hiding
places.
By this
time,
the ships had m anaged to make their
way through the most dangerous part of
the channel to join up with the main hody
Morgan loaded the ships with treasure
and pro\'isions as well as several prison-
ers who would be used as messengers.
Nine days after Morgan sailed into
Lake M aracaibo , Don Alonso's flagship,
agdalenwas anch ored off the c oast of
San Juan, Puerto Rico. There was no
news of the sea raiders there, but at the
port of Santo Domingo he met a Dutch
captain who had just come hom Cu-
ragao. He told the admiral that Morgan
and his men had been there to huy sup-
plies and were off to sack Maracaibo.
Alarmed, Don Alonso imm ediately set sail in an attemp t to in-
tercept the m arauders.
When Morgan arrived at Gibraltar, he put a dozen o r so pris-
oners ashore with instnjctions to convince the mayor to sur-
rend er the town immediately—otherv^ise all the hostages would
he put to the sword. When one of the prisoners returned with
a defiant reply, Morgan weighed anchor and sailed toward
Gibraltar, anchoring just ou t of range of the town's cann ons.
Early the next morning, Morgan landed troops along the
sandy b eaches that skirted the jungle next to G ibraltar. W hen
Morgan and his men reached the town, however, they were met
by silence. Once again, the inhabitan ts had fled durin g the night
For the next
five weeks,
Morgan and his
men occupied
Gibraltar, committing
all manner
of atrocities.
Morgan and his men sack M aracaibo. Although he was operat-
ing under a wa rtime privateer s letter of marque, Morga n knew
the Spanish would regard him as a pirate.
with all their valuables. F or the next five
weeks, Morgan and his men occupied
Gibraltar, committing all manner of
atrocities, including rape, torture and
murder
During tha t time , Morgan released sev-
eral prisoners with instructions to tell
their families and friends that if the town
did not pay a ransom he would bum
every last house to the groun d. The pris-
oners returne d a few days later, asking for
more time. By that t ime, Morgan had
become concem ed that they had already
spent too much time inside the lake and
that if they stayed m uch longer, the S pan-
ish would have strengthened the fort at
its entrance. He agreed to giv them more
time bu t took all the prisone rs with him as he began his retire-
ment toward M aracaibo.
When Don Alonso arrived in the Gulf of Venezuela, he was
infoiTned that M aracaibo had already been sacked and that the
pirates—as the Spanish regarded them, letters of marque or
no—were at Gibraltar. The adm iral was elated at the pro spect
of trapping the entire force—its only means of escape was
through the Barra de Maracaibo, the narrow c hannel into the
Gulf of Venezuela.
Immediately Don Alonso sent for channel pilots, the nearest
of whom was 70 overland miles away in the town of
Coro.
He
also sent for ships and m en from the coastal towns of La Guyra
and C urasao. He then wrote to the governors of Mai^caibo an d
Merida, informing them of his arrival and asking them to do
evei>-thing in their power to delay the pirates' withdrawal.
When the pilots arrived, Don Alonso was delighted to find
that no enemy garrison had been left to defend the fort over-
looking the channel. Morale was high as the Spanish began
putting the fort's defenses back into action, digging up the can-
nons,
boring out the spikes and fortifying the fort with troops
and ammunition. The cannons were remounted on their gun
carriages and positioned facing the lake and the ch annel. While
all this acti\'ity was underway, crews worked to unload ballast
and supplies from agdalen so that it could he brought across
the dangerous sandbar at the entrance to the lake.
Morgan arrived hack at Maracaibo the same day agdalen
crossed the bar He had been away for mo re than eight weeks—
sufficient time, he knew, for the Spanish to refortify M aracaibo
and the channel. Surveyed fl om a safe distance, the town looked
deserted, just as the piivateers had left it, and they cautiously
entered it.
A
man who had been left behind because he was ill
told Morgan that the fort overlooking the channel had been
refortified and well stocked. In addition, three Spanish men-
of-war waited at the mouth of the lake. Morgan immediately
dispatched a ship to investigate. Its crew confirmed the m an's
story—and Morgan's worst fears.
Once again, Morgan sent a Spanish prisoner ashore with in-
stRictions to tell the town to either pay ransom or Maracaibo
would be buTTied to the ground. While the prisoner was gone,
Morgan o ccupied the town's fort as a protection against a sur-
prise attack. Two days later the prisoner returned—with a letter
from Don Alonso. The letter informed Morgan th at, in addition
to the three m en-of-war, there w ere many smaller craft on their
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ve unharm ed if he surren-
ities against Spa in aga in. If M organ
so warned, he would de-
Gathering his men in the market-
Mo rgan explained the situation
read Don Alonso s letter H e then
meant nothing to the
them as pirates. With a roar, they
Morgan s m en set to work building
out of the largest vessel in
logs were cut and stuck throug h
orts to look like cannons.
The wind would he with the priva-
crew of 12. They would
n the ship once they were cer-
would co llide with the S panish
Santa Louisa. The rest
a Marquesa.
Spies informed Don Alonso that the pirates might be p repar-
ire ship, so he sent carpenters asho re to cut long boo ms
d off that possibility. He also had large tubs of wa ter placed
instructed his crews to he ready to fight a fire.
s the sun rose on April 30, Morgan an d the privateers set off
the e ntrance of the lake, led by the fire ship packed w ith
er and flammable material. By dark, they reached the
ed anchor, and the two sides anxiously watched
hrough out the night.
s daw n slowly broke the next morning, M organ drew up h is
Morga n encou nters resistance at Gibraltar. Withdrawing from cannon range, he put a
landing pa r^ ashore the next mo rnin g-to discover that the town s garrison had
fled.
anchors and dropped sail, setting a course for the waiting
Spaniards. The fire ship steered directly for Magdalen appar-
ently intending to trade broadsides with it. Don Alonso re-
ma ined at ancho r, out of fear of mane uvering such a lai^e ship
in the shallow w aters of the lake, particularly aro und the san d-
ba r From the rigging of the fire ship hun g grappling hook s that
were intend ed to tangle in the Spanish ship s rigging.
s M oi^an s fl t advanced, his three leading ships spread out.
One steered for Magdalen s bow, anoth er headed for its stem and
the third headed amidships. s they drew near, Magdalen fired a
few shots at the privateers, but held off loosing a full broadside
until they were parallel to each o ther s th e
fir
ship came within
boarding d istance, its crewmen threw their grappling hooks and
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the two ships became entangled.
Spanish hoarding parties were waiting
coniidently in
Magdalen s rigging
ready
to board the pirate, when they saw smoke
start to billow up from its decks and
hatches. The crew of the fire ship ran to
the stem, dived into the water and swam
to the small boat they had in tow. The
other two pirate ships suddenly veered
away. For a moment the Spanish froze,
paralyzed in
disbelief.
The ship stuck
alongside them was empty now, except
for the logs dressed to look like men . Sec-
onds later the Spaniards realized the
truth and tried to push the pirate ship
away—too late. The fire ship bucked vio-
lently as explosions sent tar-covered
pieces of flaming wreckage into the air, igniting
M agdalen.
T he
grappling hoo ks becam e even more entangled in the rigging as
the Spanish desperately tried to cut the bu rning ship away. An-
othe r series of explosions ignited the fire ship s m ain mag azine,
sending another rain of buming debris onto the now-doomed
Seizing the
opportunity, the
privateers quickly
swarmed aboard
La Marquesa before
it could
get underway.
L a Marquesa also cut its anchor in hopes
of making it to the protection of the fort.
One of its sail s rop es, however, be cam e
entangled in a pulley. While the Span ish
sailors fought to free the line, the ship
drifted backward. Seizing the opportu-
nity, the privateers quickly swarmed
aboard L a M ar q u e s a before it could get
underway. The 150 Spaniards on board
were taken priso ner along with survivors
from M agdalen.
Don Alonso managed to escape death
on Magdalen at the last second. Swim-
ming to a nearby longboat, he rowed for
his life, with several canoes full of p irate s
in pursuit. When Moi^ans men gave up
the chase, the admiral found himself
miles to the south of the fort and the battle. In just under two
hours, Morgan s ragtag band had destroyed the entire Spanish
war fleet in the New World. Their spirits high, the privateers
swarmed ashore to attack the fort. They soon found, however,
that their muskets were no match for its defenses. By the time
Morga n s guile trumps Spanish (irepower as his men assault their w ould-be nemeses. The privateers boarded and seized La
Marquesa
while Santa Louisa s crewmen escaped, ran their ship aground before the fort at M aracaibo and destroyed it themselves.
flagship. The tubs Don Alonso had put on the decks went en-
tirely unused as the fire quickly spread to the rigging. Within
minutes Magdalen was completely engulfed in flames. Desper-
ate to save their own lives, the crew dived into the water. Their
ship soon slipped .silently beneath the surface.
Fearing that the vessel headed toward him was also a fire
ship, Sania Louisa s captain cu t his ancho r away and sailed di-
rectly for the fort. Pursued by thi ee pirate ships,
Santa L ouisa
beached itself in front of the fort, and the Spanish q uickly began
cutting the ship apart so it could not be taken by Moi^an s m en.
it was dark, they w ere forced to re tire to the safety of the ships.
From the pilot of the cap tured L a Marque sa Morgan leamed
details about the fort s defenses. He also leam ed that there had
been gold and silver on board Magdalen w orth 40,000 pieces of
eight. Morgan immediately ordered that the treasure be recov-
ered while his musketeers kept the m en in the fort pinned down.
A
stalemate ensued, with the Spanish trapped inside the fort
and the privateers trapped inside the lake, their only way out
covered by th e fort s c ann ons .
Continued on page 72
6 MILITARY HISTORY
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•iors of the Sauk and Fox, a compo site naUon of the Al
language family whose insistence on letuming to i ts ancestral
territory east of the M ississ ippi R iver In 1832 led Lo trou ble w ith
the white settlers of Il l inois CHistorical Picture Archive/Cortais).
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S t i l l m a n s R u n
M I L I T I A S F O U L E S T H O U R
rmlitia debacle led to th e sta rt of the B lack H awk W ar of 1832
BY SCOTT D DYAR
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I
t was well past m idnight o n May 15, 1832, when the
first disheveled militiamen from Major Isaiah Still-
man's command rode or stumbled into the militia
army's encampment at Dixon's Ferry, Illinois (present-
day Dixon). The m en w ere part of an exped ition that had
left Dixon's Ferry on May 13 with the intention of scout-
ing out a group of some 1,500 Sauk, Fox and Kickapoo
that h ad crossed the M ississippi River to farm. W ith this
crossing, the American Indians had violated several
treaties and agreem ents m ade with the United States, and
Stillmans troops had been ordered to coerce them into
submission.
When the men staggered into the firelight several of
them spoke wild-eyed of the epic battle that they had
fought with the Sauk between the Sycamore River and
Old Man's Creek, some 25 miles to the north. They also
told of a slaughter, and at first their stories seem ed to hold
some weight, for by the moming there were still 53 men
unaccounted for out of the 275 who had ventured out of
Dixon's Ferry on the 13th. It was soon determ ined, h ow-
ever, that most of those suspected dead had actually by-
passed the militia camp and headed straight for home.
With that confirmed, it only added a mm unition to the crit-
ics of the mihtia, mostly members of the Regular Army,
who w ere soon calling the May 4 engagem ent Stillman's
Run due to the appa rent flight of the expedition's com-
ma nde r along with his troops.
Governor John Reynolds of Illinois was present at
Dixon's Ferry that night o fth e 15th, along with a sizable
militia force, and was imm ediately informed of the disas-
ter. He acted quickly. The governor w rote a h asty no te to
Brevet Brig. Gen. Henry Atkinson, who was several miles
down th e Rock River with the army's provisions and ab out
350 U.S. Army Regu lars. Deciding the affair to be war,
Reynolds also called for 2,000 more militia in hope of
ending the escalating crisis. With the defeat of the Still-
ma n expedition, the Black Hawk W ar of 1832 had begun
in earnest, an d th ere was now little hop e for bringing it to
an end without more bloodshed.
The road to Stillman's Run arguably began in 1804, with
the cession of a large tract of land by the Sauk to the
United States. The swath of land covered thousands of
acres through what is now Missouri, Iowa, Illinois and
Wisconsin, and included the traditional ce ntral village of
the Sauk, Saukenuk, which sat at the confluence of the
Rock and Mississippi rivers. The Sauk disputed this ces-
sion due to the questionable circumstances of its signing,
and one of
its
strongest critics was a Sauk wa rrior know n
as Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, or Black Sparrow Hawk,
better known to the whites by the abbreviated name of
Black Hawk . After ye ars of resisting the A mericans, Black
Hawk finally retreated from Saukenuk in
1831,
unde r in-
tense pres sure from an advan cing army. However, having
been deceived that his people could return if their inten-
tions were peaceful a nd th at if they we re
attacked by the Americans, other tribes
and even the British would aid the Sauk
in their fight. Black Hawk crossed the
Mississippi on April 5,1832. Numbering
about 1 500^00-600 of whom were
warriors, the rest women and children—
Black Hawk's party headed east up the
Rock River and proceeded into Illinois.
On April 13, General Atkinson notified
Governor Reynolds that the Sauk had
moved u p the Rock River and said he felt
that the frontier is in great danger, but
said nothing about calling for militia.
Reynolds received the warning on the
16th and immediately declared, No citi-
zen ought to remain quiet while his coun-
try is invaded, and sent out written
orders for the militia commanders to
muster their men. They would ren-
dezvous at Beardstown, 111., on April 22
and then ma rch against the hostiles.
One of the first com ma nders the gover-
nor contacted was Isaiah Stillman.
A 35-year-oId Massac hussetts native,
Stillman had lived in Illinois for only
about four vears, where he had become
A portrait by George Catlin of the Sauk
chief Ma-k a-tai-me -she-kia-k iak or Black
Sparrow Hawk better known to the
whites as Black Hawk.
40 MILIT ARV HIS TOR Y MARCH 2006
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e ranks, and by the spring of 1832 Reynolds had
him as a general, though he had not yet approved
ad mo re to do with a person's social position and or-
Stillman's orders were to organize his 4th B rigade of the
d then range the frontier of the state from the
nts. While Stillman had no problem attaining the
have been 750 men available in this region. Yet he
to mus ter
1
men, wh o then w ere split into
l the troopers received at the infrequent militia m uster
At Peoria Stillmans men helped themselves to rations
eant to be split between their unit and another,
the two formations. M eanwhile, Stillman and his
s Ferry, that abou t 500 men besides wom en and
of the Sauk had passed up the river on April 28,
headed north for Dixon's Ferry, where Bailey and
ere assigned to patrol. Despite heavy rains that
nds arrived on May 10, then w aited for the rest of the
eding u p the Rock River.
rigadier General S amuel Whiteside, Governor
Reynolds and the mounted militia section of the
aiTny arrived in Dixon's Ferry on May 12, w hile Gen-
at Dixon's Ferry, Reynolds discovered tha t Stillm ans
Baileys units had performed litde or no service since
were organized. Stillman's and Baileys men imm e-
y began to warmly request that Reynolds permit
y were lodged. Although Atkinson was appoin ted
Stillma ns and Bailey's troops had n ot yet been sworn
ce, and therefore they m aintained that they only
ered to Revnolds or other m ilitia commandei s. As a
f their persistent requ ests, and because he thoug ht
would be better moving abou t than camped,
oved sending the two m en ou t.
Stillman an d Bailey were both given the rank of major,
alship^was given overall command of the merged forces,
with the agreement that the 275 men could vote for their
comm ander when they returned
xtm
the expedition. That
decision, although necessary, did little to improve the
esprit de corps of the unit, as many of Baileys men were
still upset abou t the stolen rations. On May 12, Reynolds
personally wrote orders for Stillman's new command to
ma rch on Old Man's Creek, 25 miles to the no rth of Dixon's
where the Sauk were supposed to be, and take all cau-
tious measures to coerce said Indians into submission.
It seems, however, that nobody wished to assume full
responsibility for sending the expedition. The orders,
which were vague to say the least, were in Rey nolds' hand-
writing but under General Whiteside's name and signed
by Nathaniel Buckmaster Any comm ander who protested
the expedition did so with good reason. As one militia of-
ficer would later point out, If it was necessary to ord er
out 2,000 men to whip these Indians, it was certainly er-
roneous policy to order 200 men to make an attack.
Moreover, nothing had been sent to General Atkinson to
ask his permission, and the troops who were going to be
sent out had had little training— and there was a growing
animosity b etween those in the ranks and between the ex-
pedition's joint com ma nde rs. Nevertheless, und er an over-
Appointed by Govemor John Reynolds to deal with the
Indian incursion. Major Isaiah Stillman easily ga thered arms
but had more difficulty training 200 militiamen [Abraham
Lincoln Digitization Project Northem Illinois University^
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Dixon's Ferry, from which Stillman's battalion sallied forth against
the Sauk a nd Fox on M ay 13,1832, accompanied by local citizens
ou t t see the fun.
cast sky on May 13 the battalion, num bering between 218
an d
280,
rode ou t of Dixon's Ferry along with an unkno wn
number of men such as Colonel James Strode, com-
mander of the 27th Infantry of Militia, who had come
along from Galena to see the fun.
Up the east side of the Rock River the battalion rode,
throug h rolling hills dotted w ith groves of trees breaking
up the spring green prairie, which was crisscrossed by
swollen streams emptying into the Rock River. The sky
had been threatening since daybreak, and not long after
the march had commenced, the clouds opened and let
loose a pelting rain . Despite the fact that the battalion had
only traveled abou t 1 miles, the troops halted and set up
camp to wait out the downpour.
T
he rain that persuaded the men to cut their march
short continued well into the moming of the 14th,
so the battalion was somewhat delayed in getting
started. The rain finally sputtered out, and the men
mo unted up for another day of riding north along the east
shore of the Rock River Progress was made through the
day, and by noon the force received reports of wide and
deep paths of tom-up soil made by Sauk travois, as well
as Indian dogs, moccasin tracks and a few sightings of
actual Indians.
Even thoug h the rain had stopped, the soggy landscape
plus the runoff from a very wet Illinois spring h ad mad e
the going slow for the men of Stillman's new command.
The baggage wagons also retarded the advance, frequently
becoming mired in the mud. Around noon the men de-
cided to empty som e of the wago ns to lighten their loads.
The volunteers descended upon the wagon bearing the am-
munition, powder and whiskey. Subsequently one man
present explained; One barrel of whisky was therefore un -
headed an d all our canteens filled A quan tity w as still left
which could not be lost, and was finally saved in a sum-
mary way. While man y sources main tain that Stillman's
entire command became raucously drunk, that seems un-
likely. Given the testimony of several other participants it
seems m uch m ore probable that while the command con-
tinued on its trek toward Old Mans Creek most of the
troops were sober, thoug h the re were a few w ho were well
on their way to being corned pretty heavily.
With about an hour of sunlight left, the men of Still-
man's battalion reached a me andering stream that was re-
ported ly lined on bo th sides with tall willows, flowing
west into the Rock River Stillman had reached Old Man's
Creek. After determining that the south side was too
swampy to camp on, the men forded the stream and set
up cam p in an open area surrounded by oak trees. It was
later said of the site that a handful of resolute men cou ld
defend themselves there against overwhelming odds.
Whether or not the troops took into consideration the
military error of encamping with a body of water to the
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A view of Stillman's Battlefield near Old Man's Creek, where Black Hawk's attempt to negotiate a
surrender turned into a military debacle for the militia me n-an d the start of a tragic wa r
l rear or decided that the strength of the po-
§ sition outweighed the risk is uncertain.
Most likely, however, they had no idea that
they were less than seven m iles south of the
Sauk encampment.
'hile Stillman's men began to
unpack their tents. Black Hawk
leamed of their arrival near his
y sent a pea ce party of three men to ne-
er for his band and five more m en to ob-
ve the proceedings. He had found no support among
ore—and he had abando ned h is hopes of
1831, "I would have remained and b een
ner by the regulars, but was afraid of the mu l-
who had no prope r interpreter and little formal mili-
ne. Som e were intoxicated, and all were eager
In the militia camp, the baggage had been stacked and
eal. As the last bits of sun poked over the hills
ity and hardly noticed Black Haw ks em bassy
se the sentinels had returned for dinne r Eventually,
d, they were recognized, and the
grew excited. The call went through the camp :
ians." An armed part>' of militia quickly rode out
p, where the visitors dismounted and
were surroun ded by curious troops—only to find that nei-
ther side understood the other's language.
At about th e same time, a white man spotted the five
Sauk observers on a hilltop about three quarters of a mile
to the north. Under the general assumption that the Indi-
ans on the hill indicated an u nderhan ded ruse, what dis-
cipline the militia had began to melt away, as a party of
perhaps 20 men mounted up, without orders, and raced
after the fiv Sauk. More groups of three to fiv men con-
tinued to ride after them , creating a long line of militia gal-
loping to the north.
Seeing the troops coming toward them in such an ag-
gressive manne r, the fiv Sauk observers wheeled arou nd
and furiously rode back to their camp to warn the people
there that the white flag had been d isregarded. Two of the
observe rs were shot down as their played-out ponies failed
them, b ut the militia, only briefly distracted by the blood-
shed, continued north.
The remaining three observers completed the five-mile
ride to the Sauk e ncam pmen t and went straight to Black
Hawk. Most of the warriors were out hunting, and all
Black Hawk could gathe r was about 40-60 men to com bat
the on com ing troop s. According to Black Hawk, however,
he rallied the warriors by yelling: "Some of our people
have been killed Wantonly and cruelly murd ered We
must avenge their death " With only mo me nts to spare, he
placed his braves behind a few bushes to conceal their
small number. Within minutes, the sound of pounding
horses' hooves and the yelling and sh outing militiamen
alerted the Sauk that they were coming. When the horse-
men were as close as 3 yards . Black Haw k gave a yell and,
as he later said, "Eveiy man ru she d...an d fired."
To the surp rise of the Sauk w arriors, who believed they
were doom ed to perish in the attack, the volunteers pulled
up on the reins of their horses, turned tail and rode for
their lives in the opposite direction. The Sauk, sensing the
MARCH 2006
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A monum ent marks the site of That disgraceful Affair of Stillman
s.
The
Sauk warriors, who were resigned to death, were astonished to see their
mounted adversaries turn tail and ride off in the opposite direction.
mo me ntum of battle was shifting in their favor, m oun ted
up and began an energetic pureuit ofthe militia troopers.
The fleeing volunteers almost immediately e ncountered
fellow militiamen who were still headed north. Each one
of those successive parties was told that hordes of Sauk
were coming and that they had better run to save iheir
hides. Now, like a telescoping train wieck, the men who
had been pursuing the Sauk observers came together to
form a bewildered an d disorganized mass num bering as
many as
50,
which soo n b egan spilling into the militia en-
campment with a small but determined force of Sauk
behind.
W
hile the Sauk observers had been chased and
then their pursuers repulsed and chased back,
there had been some communication between
the three emissaries and the militia. According to the
emissaries, one volunteer was found who could speak
some of the Sauk language, and they infoimed him that
Black Hawk had "given up all intention of going to war."
Near the end o fthe talks—w hich, given the hnguistic lim-
itations, understand ably took quite a while—the m en who
had gone out to catch the Sauk observers came racing into
the camp. Some yelled, "Parade, Parade," while most
simply tore through the camp and kept on riding. The
camp,
now lit only by
flickering fir s
and pale m oonlight,
became a scene of utter disarray as officers shouted
orders, men desperately attempted to find their horees or
even their guns, and the panic-stricken troops continued
to pour throug h the cam p. The hysteria quickly spread to
the rest of the men, and su ddenly it seemed to them that,
as one observer noted, "as if by magic, each tree and
stump appeared to send hn h a band of savages." The
militiamen, now su re that they had been led into a trap by
the three parleying Sauk, turned on them. In the camp,
someone yelled out to "kill those damned Indian prison-
ers,"
and before the Sauk emissaries could defend them-
selves, they were fired on. One of them fell dead, and the
other two escaped in the confusion and
darkness.
The Ilhnois troops now abandoned
their persona l belongings (some even left
their horses and guns) and began to run
for Dixon's Ferry. "Right there was con-
fusion," one remembered. We did not go
to the right or left but right square for
home." They plunged into the cold
muddy water of Old Man's Creek, where
some became bogged down in the muck
of the opposite shore, wh ich gave time for
the Sauk to catch them .
For the few who did turn and attempt
to shoot their f irelocks, many heard
only a hollow sna p of flint on m etal, and
realized with certain horror that their
rush to cross the creek had dampened
their gunpowd er. Still, even if the pow der
did ignite, in the darkness there was a
muc h greater chance of the m ilit iamen
hitting one of their own comrades than
an advancing Sauk.
The whereabouts of Major Stillman during this critical
moment are still very much a mystery. In his own fanci-
ful version of the action, which he submitted to a news-
paper, the
M issouri Republican
he made no mention of
where he was during the fight and that one of the only
orders he issued was for a "retrograde manoeuvre"—in
other words, a retreat.
As some of the men shouted useless orders like Still-
man's, othere who could not locate their horses called out,
"For God's sake don't leave us." However, som e individu-
als, such as Private James Phillips, distinctly rem em bered
well after the battle that at least one man. Captain John
G. Adams, seemed bent on fighting the oncoming Sauk,
shouting, "Damn it, stop and fight " even while his men
stream ed by him . Adams vainly tried to sto p the flight of
his men bu t was soon cut down by either the Sauk or his
own troops.
Stillman's men were mostly out of danger by then. Black
Hawk stated that only about 25 Sauk crossed the creek
and then abandoned the pursuit after going about five
miles south becau se the m ilitia rode so fast that the S auk
"found it useless to follow them."
As the militiamen disapp eared into the darkness head ed
toward Dixon's Fen y or hom e, the Sauk went through the
militia camp and collected scalps off the nine dead vol-
unteers they found in the immediate area. The Sauk soon
realized the magnitude of their victory and the long fight
that they now faced. They picked their way through the
camp, finding lead, powder, a few barrels that had con-
tained whiskey, and other desperately needed provisions.
The next mom ing, after carefully burying their three dead,
the Sauk headed north to try to evade the army that they
knew would be coming.
The Sauk were right in leaving when they did, as Gen-
eral W hiteside and his army arrived at the battlefield the
evening of May 15. They had come to bury the 53 men
Continued on p ge 72
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E N G L A N D S
BLOODIEST
D Y
The armies of
two
kings Henry VI and Edward IV collided at
owton
on March 2Q 1401.
The
outcome
would determine
which
one
would rule
England.
BY D JOHN SADDLER
6 MILITARY HISTORY MARCH 2006
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y the somnolent banks of the Dordogne on
a hot day in July 1453, England s septua-
genarian paladin, John Talbot, Earl of
Shrewsbury, his son and several thousand
astillon in the last battle of the Hun -
ers had routed the French at Crecy, Poitiers and
court—now belching canno ns and French pro-
onals swept the English inva ders from the field.
e proved to be an o verture
ine strife for the n ext 30 years.
The seeds of the discord that W illiam Shakespe are
give its rom antic if inacc urate n am e, the
s of the Ro ses, could be traced to the ove rthrow
1402 of Richard II by Hem y Bolingbroke, Duke of
rpers son, Henry V, was a iiithless, dvnam ic luler
on undying fame at A gincourt in
4 5
and had
ccum bed to dysentery in 1422. His son,
VI, was a pious, decent man who was prone
of campaign or the intrigues of a succession of op-
portunistic court favorites. A predatory and fractious
regency council ruled on Henrys behalf until 1436,
by which time the war in France degenerated from
an English triumph to a doomed rear-guard action.
Disloyalties and private feuds pervaded England
at that tim e, as the duk es of Norfolk and Suffolk
openly warred against each other, Devon fought
Wiltshire, and the Percies clashed with the Nevilles.
In 1450 popular unrest exploded in Kent as rioters,
led by Jack Cade, plundered their way to London
and the government crumbled. Richard, Duke of
York, descended from the disinherited line of the
Plantagene ts, had to be recalled from Ireland to he lp
deal with this state of near anarchy. Endowed with
vast estates thoug h usually in debt, York was emb it-
tered by the gov ernm ent s failure to repay 30,000
pou nds sterling that he had spent in France. Now,
seeing his oppo rtunity, he confronted the king s
forces at Blackheath, but a truce was reached that
postponed an outbreak of war for the time being.
In August
1453,
however, Henry seemed to lose his
tenuou s grip on reality. The ba rons backed Richard
of York to rtile as th e incap acitated king s regent. But
He nri s qu een, Marg aret of Anjou, along with
Edm und Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, whom many
suspected w as her paramotir, squabbled for the reins
of power until York imprisoned Somerset in the
Tower of London .
Early in 1455, Henry recovered his wits, and one
of his first a cts was to free Somerset from the Tower
A disap poin ted York, his father-in-law, Rich ard
Neville, Earl of Salisbury, an d the latter s so n,
Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, left London to
rally sup porters. On May 22, Yorkists clashed w ith
royalists in the streets of St. Albans. The opening
round of the Wars of the Roses was won when 600
Yorkists chopped a bole through a wooden wall to
enter the town and split the royalist forces. Among
the royalist dead were Henry Percy, Earl of
Northumberland, and the Duke of Somerset. After
capturing Henry VI in the market square, York and
Warwick pledged the ir loyalty to him, then took h im
to London.
Half a year of queasy calm followed while York,
assum ing his late rival s office as con stable of E ng-
land, ruled as virtual dictator. The king reigned
impo tently as York s pup pet, but his fiery consort,
Margaret, had no intention of surrendering the pat-
rimony of her child. Prince Edward, and began as-
sembling a coalition to oppo se York. John Beaufort,
Duke of Somerset, eager to avenge the death of his
father, Edmund, and the Percies, rivals of the
Nevilles in the north, rallied to Margaret s side.
In Janu ary 1456, KJng Henry relieved the Duke of
York of bis positioas as protector and con stable, then
anno unce d before Parliamen t that he was fit to rule.
York and Salisbury retired to their castles, and War-
wick fled to Calais, France.
On September 29 , 1459, James Tuchet, fifth Lord
With the winter
wind to their backs,
Yorkist archers
prepare to loose a
deadly volley while
King Edward IV
and his knights
advance through
their ranks to
engage the
approaching
Lancastrian forces,
in Graham Turner s
attle o Towton
(Graham Turner/
Studio 88, Ltd.].
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Above Edward,
Earl of March, was
still in his teens
when he learned of
his father s death
attheendof 1460,
but proved even
then to be a formi-
dable commander.
Above right Given
to spells of instabil-
i^ , King Henry VI
was ill-equipped to
deal with court
intrigues or war.
Audley, tried to intercept Salisbury at Blore H eath.
Outnumbered but more cannily led, the Yorkists
emerged victorious, leaving Audley and some 2,000
of his followers de ad. A subsequ ent confrontation at
Ludlow Bridge saw the Yorkists disintegi^ate, how-
ever, as one of their s upp orters, A nthony TroUope,
defected to Henrys side. York fled back to Ireland,
while Salisbury, Wan.\'ick and York's eldest son,
Edw ard, Earl of March, withdrew to Calais.
That debacle did not spell the end of Yorkist hopes,
however. Warwick maintained an aggressive stance
across the English Channel, and by June 1460, he
had secured a beachhead at Sandwich. Erom there,
he and Salisbury, with swelling support, m arched on
the capital. Caught unprepared, Henry scurried
southward from mustering in the Midlands while
the Yorkists came north to force an encounter at
Northampton, which ended with the hapless king
again becoming a prisoner
The Duke of York retum ed to England on October
10 to find himself again de facto ruler of the realm.
By a swiftly eng ineered Act of Settlem ent, the y oung
Prince of Wales was excluded from the royal suc-
cession and York instated as HemVs heir. That was
too much for Queen Margaret. Retiring northward,
she summoned her supporters. York and Salisbury
pursued her, celebrating Ch ristmas at Sandal Castle,
near Wakefield. On December 30 , York cam e out to
fight, bu t he died in the ensu ing battle; Salisbury was
captured. On York's order. Sir Robert Aspall tiled to
take the duke s young son, Edmund , Earl of Rutland,
to safety, but Lord John Clifford broke away in pur-
suit, capturing them at Wakefield Bridge. Clifford
then killed them both, allegedly saying as he
butchered E dm und , By God's blood thy father slew
mine and so will do thee and all thy kin. York's,
Rutland's and Salisbury's heads were subsequently
mounted on the wall over Micklegate, and legend
has it that M argaret ordered that roo m be left there
for the head s of the earls of March and Warwick.
E
dward, Earl of March, was at Shrewsbury
when he learned of his father's death. Though
still in his teens, he showed the m ettle of on e
of the great comm anders of
his
age.
Hearing that th e
earls of Wiltshire and Pembroke were advancing
through Wales, he moved to intercept them . At Mor-
timer's Cross on Eebruary 2,1461, he routed the Lan-
castrians and killed 3 000 of his enemies.
Meanwhile Margaret swept southward, reaching
Dunstable by Eebruarv 16. Warwick, leading forces
drawn from the south and East Anglia, advanced to
engage the q ueen at St. Albans, scene of his earlier
triumph, on the 17tb. The Second Battle of St.
Albans, however, had a disastrously different out-
come than the first. Overextended and overconfident,
Warwick had failed to properly deploy his levies
wben Trollope struck his amiy in the rear Amid the
rout. King Henry was recovered and reunited with
his strong-willed royal consort.
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Edward
was,
to say the least, critical of his cousin's
When the C ouncil of Lond on refused to let his
ing to hazard a final advan ce on the capital, thus
London. On February 26, Henrys army
shing a defensible line on the north bank of
Warwick had failed as a general, but he was a
led politician and diplom at, immensely wealthy,
asses. Long the guiding han d
n. There would be no mo re pretense of fight-
o rescue Henry from evil counselors. On M arch
the Earl of March rod e to Westminster, wh ere his
is older cousin, Warwick, would
know n thereafter as the Kingmaker.
Edward IV, 6 feet 4 inches tall, dazzling and charis-
n to indolence wh en n ot steeled for war He was
demonstrated a consummate understanding
of strategy at M ortime rs Cross. Warwick h ad
proved to be a flawed tactician at the Seco nd
Battle of St. Albans, but William, Lord Fau-
conberg, who was uncle to both men, was an
experienced and able co mmander.
H
aving seized the initiative—or rath er
having it handed to h im^ Ed wa rd,
after being acclaimed by a great
gathering in St. John's Fields orchestrated by
Warwick, wasted no time. He dispatched
John Mowbry, Duke of Norfolk, to the east-
em counties to raise his tenancy and adher-
ents while Warwick went to the Midlands to
recruit. On March 11, Fauconberg marched
northward with a strong vanguard, followed
two days later by E dward.
Leaving King Henry, Queen Margaret and
Prince Edward in York, Somerset had been
making his dispositions for battle. In addition
to the dough ty TroUope, he had fiery Clifford,
Henry Percy and Randolph Lord Dacre of
Gilsland. Perhaps as many as 40,000 Lan-
castrians were massing on the gentle plateau
that swells between the villages of Towton
and Saxton, crowding behind the formidable
S natura l barrier of the Aire.
5 Unwilling to keep them waiting, Edw ard
gathered his divisions and crossed the Trent,
although he lacked Norfolk's eastem contingent,
which lagged behind, probably because of the earl's
failing health. Edw ard stormed across the Don River
and on the cold, blusteiy Friday of March 27 ap-
proached Ferrybridge. It was plainly vital to secure
a bridgehead across the Aire, and Edward sent out
a party co mm anded by John Radcliffe, L ord Fitzwal-
ter, to secure it. After driving back the Lanc astrians,
Fitzwaller found the bridge broken up, but his men
had replaced the planks by the end of the day.
With Ferrybridge seem ingly secured, the Y orkists
camped on the north bank that evening, perhaps
lulled in to a sense of well-being by the lack of enem y
activity. That complacency cost Fitzwalter his life,
along with that of Warwick's bastard brother. Sir
Richard Jenny of Salisbury, and numerous others,
when a 500-man laiding party led by Lord Clifford
attacked his headquarters at dawn on the 28th.
Chronicler William Gregory placed Warwick in the
thick of that action, wounded in the thigh by an
anx W as he rallied the survivors, then retrea ting back
across the
river
Joining Ed ward at Pontefract Castle,
Warwick delivered a histrionic report of the debacle.
Undismayed, the young king elected to retaliate
by sending Warwick back to Ferrybridge at noon,
but only as a feint. While Warwick kept Clifford en-
gaged, Fauconberg led a strong party that included
the veteran captains Sir Richard Blount and Robert
Home of Kent across the swollen Aire, four miles
upstream at Castleford, to fall upon Clifford's right
Henry V l s queen,
Margaret of Anjou,
made up for many
of his deficiencies,
both in strength
of will and her
choice of military
commanders, as
she moved to deal
with Edward of
March-who had
been proclaimed
King Edward IV on
March 4 ,1461.
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l A N C A St K I A N S
Y 0 R K 1 S T 5
The Yorkists made
good use of their
advantages of
high ground and
wind at their
backs to goad
the Lancastrians
into depleting
their arrows and
then forcing them
to charge
flank. sprawling, untidy melee spread northward
fiom the rivers banks as Clifford sought a fighting
withdrawal, noticeably unaided by the main Lan-
castrian force, which could scarcely have been un-
aware of what was happening. Fauconberg attacked
the retreating L ancastrians in Dinting Dale and over-
whelm ed the survivors. Clifford, it was said, had in-
judiciously chosen to remove his neckguard, or
bevor, and an arrow ended his life. His 7-year-old
son, who m ay have been p resent, survived to fight at
Flodden m ore than half a century later J ohn N eville,
a knight from the Lan castrian side of tha t clan, also
fell in the skirmish.
Somerset has been censured for not supporting
Clifford and for subsequently remaining inert while
the Yorkist forces were still vulnerably strung out
along the line of march. Edward, in the m eantime,
had n o intention of fighting any mo re tha t day. Cap-
italizing on Fau conb erg s victory, he led the ma in
body of his army north again, probably crossing at
Castleford, rejoining his uncle later in the day.
B
y the time darkness fell, Edward s vanguard
had moved up as far as Saxton, but the rest
still struggled be hind . He had left h is baggage
train at Ferrybridge, so his army spent the night with
neither food nor protection. Both armies were to
spend an uncomfortable night in the open in freez-
ing wind laced with snow, their pickets probably only
half a mile apart.
The ground on which Somerset elected to make
his stand, and from which he seemed so unwilling
to budge, lies south of York with the Wharfe River
runn ing b ehind an d the Ouse to the east. York
itseif
capital of the north, could not be su rrendered, a nd
to retreat farther would mean crossing the
windswept barrier of the n orth Yorkshire moors—
an admission of defeat.
Past Towton, the land rises gently to a low plateau.
The climb is barely perceptible except in the west,
where there is a sharp fall toward the Cock Bum.
The valley below was more densely forested in the
15th century tha n it is today w ith scrub, alder an d
birch, and was less well drained than it is now. To
the so uth, west up beyon d Bloody Meadow, the rise
is more noticeab le, still topped by a stand of trees at
Castle Hill Wood.
The rise is neatly bisected by a lateral depression
known as Towton Dale, which falls to what w as then
a marshy gully in the west. The generally accepted
position for the Lancastrian line is along the crown
of the ridge north of the dale, immediately to the
south of the presen t m arker. The Yorkists inevitably
came to deploy over the higher ground to the sou th.
It has been suggested that the Lancastrians might in
fact have been positioned some 300 yards farther
south, with Towton Dale to their rear In any event,
Somerset was too bright to neglect the possibilities
of Castle Hill Wood, and he is credited with con-
cealing a strong com man d party there.
Edward was in no hurry to begin the fight. His
forces m ay still have been in disarray, and he lacked
Norfolk s division, leaving h im at a distinct num eri-
cal disadvantage. It was March 29, Palm Sunday, and
the chaplains would have been busy on both sides.
Religion and superstition w ere impo rtant in the me-
dieval mind, and the imminent prospect of battle
tended to con centrate men s thoughts on the ques-
tion of whose side God favored.
It is possible that Fauconberg commanded the
Yorkist van, with Edward on the left and Warwick
on the right. For Lancaster, Som erset and E xeter led
the right battle, Northum berland— who carried King
Henry s banner—and Trollope com man ded the van-
guard , and Dacre the left. As the Yorkist battles jos-
tled along th e ridge, at abo ut 10 a.m. a stro ng
southerly wind brought the first of several brisk
showers of snow and sleet, driven over the exposed
heath into the faces of the waiting Lancastrians.
Richard Beauc hamp , Bishop of Salisbury, wrote tha t
the outcome rem ained Iong in dou bt.
The veteran Fauconberg w as quick to discern the
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emy flanks, then fell back. The ruse
castrians respond ed w ith a volley
as comp ound ed by a lack of dis-
line,
until
ere empty.
Again Fauconberg advanced his bowmen, whose
eved by the Yorkist arch ers. The deluge of missiles
le, and Som erset saw no choice but
un. W ith a cry of "King Henry " the
ntinued to exact a toll, the Lancastrians
hed into their oppon ents'
ranks.
Fauconberg or-
where they exchanged their bows for swords
formed a reserve. With his own division
unted and told his men that he would
their
side.
At some poin t there-
prevent it from rolling up his beleaguered left flank.
Step by step the Lancastrians pushed their foes
back up the northern slope of the southern plateau.
Edw ard's division was near collapse, but the youn g
king was everywhere, his great height a noticeable
advantage and his conspicuous valor an inspiration
as he rode along the lines extolling his men to fight,
occasionally dismounting to join the battle. At one
point, Welshman Da\y dd ap Mathew saved Edward's
life.
After the battle, the king appointed him standard
bearer of England and gave him a land grant, and
the word "Towton" was added to the ap Mathew
family crest.
The casualties mounted, and the weather deterio-
rated. Both sides declared brief truces to clear the
field, so they could continue fighting without trip-
ping over the dead and w oun ded. At one point Lo rd
Dacre removed his helmet to get a drink, only to be
shot dead by a Yorkist archer. By midday, the out-
numbered Yorkists were in serious trouble, though
there is some suggestion that Northum berland had
been slow to engage, and th us the pressure on them
was uncoordinated.
D
eliverance for the Yorkists, in the form of
Norfolk's long-awaited banner, appeared
through the swirling snowflakes. Norfolk
himself had fallen ill at Pontefract Castle on the
evening of March 28 (he would die in November).
With his own
division bearing
the brunt of John
Beaufort, Earl of
Somerset s charge,
King Edward
dismounted and
told his men that
he wouid live or
die fighting by
their side.
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A lithograph by
Richard Caton
Woodville captures
the murderous last
act of the drama at
Towton,
as Edward s
victorious men-at-
arms slaughter the
routed Lancastrians
at the Cock River.
But he marched his division across the Aire on the
morning of the 29th and followed the old London
road through She rbum in Elmet, past Dinting Dale,
and finally deployed on the Yorkist right. Out-
flanked, Somerset had to redeploy men fiom his
center and right battles to counter the threat to his
left. For Edward, the crisis had passed, though he
might be excused if he did not immediately notice.
Somerset still had plenty of fight leR, and his men
battled on.
As the greater numbers of Norfolk's fresh troops
foreed their line to curve backw ard, the weary L an-
castrians began to give way. By the rim of Towton
Dale their line finally broke, though a scattering of
diehards, clustered arou nd their banners, sold their
lives dearly. Most, however, fled—or slid—down the
snowy, icy slope toward the Cock River, with the
Yorkists in murde rous pu rsuit. Bloody Meadow a nd
the m iry g round arou nd it beca me a killing field. To
the north, survivors fought each other to reach the
narrow timbe r bridge over the Cock, which the day's
precipitation had changed from a fordable s tream to
a raging torrent. Armor or water-soaked p added gar-
ments dragged men under to drown.
Some Lancastrians reportedly crossed the Cock
on a bridge of bodies and fled through Towton to
Tadcaster, where further fighting in the streets w as
reported. Edward sent a body of horsemen in a pur-
suit that strewed the road with corpses virtually to
the w alls of York King Henry, his queen an d thread-
bare court were hustled away to the relative safety
of Northumberland, where they separated, with
Margaret going to France, hoping to get help from
its king. Henry spent the remainder of his life as a
prisoner of King Edward.
Som erset and Exeter escaped, but the toll on Lan-
castrian gentry was
high.
Besides Clifford and Dacre,
Northumberland succumbed to his wounds, and
Lords N eville de M auley an d W elles also died on the
field. Thomas Courtney, Earl of Devon, was taken
prisoner, and his head soon replaced that of
Edw ards father on M icklegate.
The Yorkists lost Lord Fitzwalter and Robert
H om e. Overall casualties are impo ssible to confirm,
but 16th-century historian Po lydore Virgil estimated
them at 20,000. Chronicler Edward Hall gave the
precise but unsubstantiated figure of 36,776. The
Paston letters, apparently written by another con-
temporary chronicler, mentioned 28,000 casualties,
of which two-thirds or m ore were Lancastrian.
rea-
sonable a ssessm ent m ight be 12,000-15,000 of Som-
erset's men, dead or wounded, either on the field or
in the rout, while Edward lost about 5,000.
What is certain about Towton is that the victory
assured Edward's crown and ruined his enemies'
cause, though hostilities, mainly in Northumber-
land, dragged on for another three years. The battle
also established the youn g kings reputation a s a bril-
liant commander. In the long run, however, York's
triumph would only be temporary. The civil war
would last another quarter century, ultimately
ending in the destruction of both
rival
houses of York
and Lancaster, and the emergence ofth e Tudors. MH
Northumberland
lawyer
and
re enactor D .
John Sad
dler is the
author
of Battle of No rthum bria, Pioneers
of Tyneside and Scottish Battles. F or further
reading
he recommends: The B attle of Towtoa by
Sir
Clement
Markham; and A
Political History of England 1377-
1485,
by
Charles
Oman.
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loody Lane
roken
At Ko m arow in 1920 Polish and Bolshevik
troo pers fought the last cavalry battle on
European soil.
Y SIM ON REES
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N AUGUST 30 1920
Bolshevik G eneral
Semyon M ikhailovich B udyonny and his
dreaded Cossack army, the Konanniya
were facing disaster in Poland. Stuck in a
-mile cul-de-sac su rrounde d by a resurgen t enemy,
to find a me ans of escape, and quickly.
y compo unde d the miseiy, turning
An easterly rou te lead ing from the village of Czes-
ces in the area, Budyo nny w as confident tha t they
Kon-
could escape in comparative safety. Bud-
• • i.
yonny's Cossacks prepared for the next mornings
breakout—a gambit that led to Europe's last grand
cavalry battle.
MANY OE THE CAUSES OE the R usso-Polish War
of 1920 can be traced back to World War I and the
Treaty of Versailles. Under the banner of self-deter-
mination, the Polish state was resurrected from the
original kingdom, the last of which had been carved
up am ong Prussia, Russia and Austria in
1795.
Wfiile
the new country's western borders were relatively
secure, its eastem and southeasterly limits were so
poorly defined that conflict with its neighbors, par-
ticularly Com munist Russia, was almost gu aranteed.
Marshal JozefPilsudski, Poland's founding father
and nationalist leader, believed that conflict with Bol-
shevik-dominated Russia was inevitable. He also
knew that Britain and France, Poland's main "guar-
antors ," were unlikely to make a con certed effort to
protect his country's newly won independence
(indeed, when the time came, Britain remained ap-
athetic; the French merely sent militai'y advisers and
some poor quality equipment). Relying on the old
maxim that a good offense is the best form of de-
fense, Pilsudski also thought the cuirent climate
right for a strike. Retreating German units had left
a pow er vacuum that Russia, in the throes of a civil
war, could not fill.
Pilsudski's prima ry go als were twofold: secure the
eas tem borders to their 1795 limits (not to their 1772
boundaries, as some comm entators have suggested),
and then if possible liberate Ukraine and with its
people form a united front against their common
enemy, Bolshevik Russia. The Polish offensive began
in Febioiary 1919, and the advance was relatively
swift; Wilna (now Vilnius), Minsk and Dvinsk were
all taken by 1920. In April 920, the Poles advan ced
into Ukraine. On May 6, the Polish army (aided by
the Inde pende nt Ukrainian A rmy) took Kiev.
then , however, the Red Army, victorious aga inst
its White opponents (apart from a notable enclave
in Crimea), was free to respond to th e Polish incur-
sion. Two strike groups were prepared—a large
northern one and a small but rapid southern for-
mation, to which the
onarmiva
had been assigned.
Astute commentators predicted that the Bolshevik
leaders, gripped by the Marxist dream of interna-
tional communism, would also press on into Ger-
many. Their fears were well grounded; in a May
proclamat ion Marshal Mikhai l Nikolayevich
Tukhachevsky, the commander of Russia's northern
strike force, declared; "Tum your eyes to the West.
In the West the fate of World Revolution is being de-
cided. Over the corpse of White Poland lies the road
to World Conflagration. On our bayonets we will
bring happiness and peace."
The Konanniya. kno wn officially as the First Cav-
alry Army, was created in Novemb er 1919 under the
auspices of Josef Stalin. Initially its role was to
combat White cavalry and tsarist Cossacks. Calling
During the Battle
of Komarow on
August
3 1 ,
1920,
troopers of the
Polish 9th Cavalry
Regiment charge
the battered
Bolshevik 4th
Cavalry Division
and the nth
Cavalry Division
just arriving to
relieve it, in a
painting by Jerzy
Kossak Polish
Institute, Lond on/
Bridgeman A rt
Library).
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General Klimenti
Voroshilov Geft
and Semyon
Budyonny meet
during the Russian
Civil War in 1919.
Both Bolshevik
commanders
distinguished
themselves, with
Budyonny special-
izing in the use of
Cossack cavalry.
their troop s Red Cossacks was slightly disingenu-
ous, as most of the cavalrymen were from peasant
stock. Some were urban proletarians, and many had
never ridden a ho rse. A few me mb ers of the Com-
mu nist intelligentsia ha d also crept in. Isaac Babel,
a Russian Jewish author, was assigned to the
Kon
anniya s 6th Division during the Polish cam paign. In
his 1920 diary he tried to cap ture the essence of the
Red cavalryman, writing; What sort of person is ou r
Cossack? Many-layered: looting, reckless daring,
professionalism, revolutionary spirit, bestial cruelty.
On ano ther occasion Babel adm itted; We are de-
stroy ers.... We move like a w hirlwind, like a stream
of lava hated by everyone. They were jointly com -
manded by a political officer, Klimenti Voroshilov,
and militaiy commander Budyonny, a former tsarist
cavalry corporal. It was to Budyonny, however, that
the Cossacks owed th eir allegiance.
A tail, powerful man w ith a hand lebar m oustach e,
Budyonny looked like a color sergeant
but behaved like a swashbuckling pirate.
He joined the Bolshevik cause during the
9 7 revolution. A natural leader with the
right class credentials, he shot up through
the ranks and assumed command of the
Konarmiya
upon its formation. Although
rash and impetuo us, Budyonny had cha-
risma. Even the harshest of his critics rec-
ognized his courage and decisiveness.
By the spring of 1920, after a number
of successful campaigns against the
Whites, the First Cavaliy Army had grown
to four full divisions of horse—about
18,000 sabers. They were accompanied
by 52 field gun s, five arm ored trains a nd
a squadron of 15 aircra ft^tho ugh the
latter were still in the packing cases be-
cause no one in the Konamiiya fiad leamed
to fly. The First Cavalry horsem an's per-
sonal equipment was rather basic. An
American volunteer pilot fighting in the
famous Kosciuszko Eskadra (a sort of
Polish version of the WWI Lafayette £5-
cadrille) saw them from the air and w rote,
Each man carried an amazingly long
saber hung not bxtm his saddle but his belt
line, row after row of carbines hung aslant
over their backs.
Their tactics w ere basic and well suited
to the sweeping vastness of Russia. They
tried to avoid charging prepared posi-
t ions—the machine gun had made
such cavalry tactics virtually suicidal^—
and looked instead for a weak spot in the
enemy's lines. Then, attacking en masse,
they would punch through and quickly
fan out to create as m uch havoc as pos-
5 sible. Bathing in the glow of its succe ss
s and elite rep utatio n, by 1920 the
Kon
armiya saw itself as an invincible and
inexorable force.
DESPITE SOME ACCOUNTS of Red Army
hordes, the Polish campaig n was on a relatively
sma ll scale. At the s tart of the conflict abou t 115,000
frontline Bolsheviks opposed 95,000 Poles. The
Soviet counterattack began in mid-May, with the
Konarmiya—led by the triumvirate of Stalin, A.I.
Yegorov and Budyonny—seeing action in the south
of central Ukraine. The plan was to smash through
local oppos ition before head ing to Kiev and joining
in the destruc tion of the Polish Third Army. Oppo s-
ing them were about
3 000
troops led by General
Aleksander Kamicki, who had been one of Bud-
yonny's comm and ing officers in the tsarist days.
In a desperate attempt to gain time for the Third
Army to withdraw, Kamicki authorized a n um ber of
swift raids to throw the
Konarmiya
off balance.
Other Polish formations were hunkered down in
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defenses. Once the Red cavalry came near
Konarmiya
was a
ting sight. This swarm of hoi^em en, a Polish
ing out everything for miles around , and giving
ression of a great, fast-moving an d fantastic
ce p ouring into every free gap, and finally kindle
ing of utter im potence.
Worried about the impact of Polish resistance upo n
orale of his troopers an d keen to achieve a de-
ive result, Budyonny personally led an assault o n
sh positions. The ground w as boggy and treach-
t the gamble paid off. Exhau sted and faced
On June 6, 1920, Budyonny and his command
tow ard the ea sier pick-
s of Zh itomir an d Berdi-
Konarmiya
frus-
ted its fury upt)n
and more than 600
its rampage until
y good order.
began to ^
mom entum. n July
the
Konanniya
crossed the Horyn River and en-
mp eting the dawn of global revolution in-
ied. We shall fight on endlessly, one pam phle t
dently declared. Russia has throw n down the
shall advance into Europe and con quer
Marxist drea ms , however, were the last
average Cossack's min d. This isn't a
revolution, Babel mo aned . It's a Cossack
out to win all and lose noth ing. On an-
Our army is out to line its pockets.
Communication between Tukhachevsky's large
hevik army in the north and the supporting
cause of
distance,
an inllexible comm and struc-
the clash of
personalities.
Dispatches, rather
than going directly to the leaders in the field, dis-
patches went through the hands of the Bolshevik
supreme commander. Lev Borisovich Kamieniev,
and then back down the chain of corresponding
leaders. Information, intelligence and orders crucial
to joint plann ing were often outda ted an d, in a fast-
moving cam paign, obsolete by the time they were re-
ceived. It was a recipe for disaster.
Under a hastily formed plan, the
Konarmiya
was
tasked with sweeping through the Galician provinces
before hooking up with the northern forces assault-
ing Warsaw. But once again Stalin, Yegorov and
Budyonny h ad o ther ideas. Their goal was the con-
quest of the former lands of Austro-Hungaiy. Most
historians regard their objectives as an insatiable if
not insane, effort to
gi ab
gloiy and prestige at the ex-
pense of their colleagues, though othere argue that
the former Austro-Hungarian states were a sou nder
target than Germany, where the Allies were sure to
have intervened. Whatever the reasoning behind
their decision, it severed \ital cooperation between
northern forces and the
K oiiamiiva.
THE FIRST CAVALRY ARMY LEFT ROVTIO in late
July. The advance was rapid but unorganized. With
supply lines stretched or nonexistent, the Cossacks
were forced to pillage {or in the party langu age ex-
propriate ) rations. Violence by both sides toward
the population had become increasingly common,
but the biTint of aggression was b om e by Jews.
Steaming ahead, the Konanniya created a long,
narrow salient that the Poles started to close up
once the Russians had reached the town of Brody.
Budyonny, realizing the threat, sought to extricate
his forces from the trap . His brilliant leadei ship car-
ried the day. The historian Adam Zamoyski wrote,
He and Voroshilov hardly slept at all during those
days; they were always to be found at any point
Members of
Budyonny s First
Cavalry Army,
also called the
onarmiya ride
through a town
during the Russian
Civil War.
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Horsemen of
the First Cavalry
Army approach
Warsaw from the
south in 1920.
Budyonny s failure
to coordinate
his efforts w ith
General Mikh ail
Tukhachevsky gave
Poland s Marsha l
Jozef Pilsudski a
critical opportunity
to concentrate
on one threat at
a time.
whe re m orale was beg inning to flag, Voroshiiov ex-
horting, Budyonny leading charges. The Cossacks
escaped, but Budyonny himself admitted that the
affair had taken his me n to the ou ter limits [of]
human resources.
Events turned in the
Konarmiya s
favor when Pil-
sudski moved a lai^e portion of his south ern forces
to the north in preparation for a masterstroke
against Tukhachevsky, that moment rushing toward
Warsaw. Kamieniev, keen to succeed in the eyes of
his political masters, decided to offer all available
support to Tukhachevsky. He ordered the Cossacks
to proceed to Lublin an d aw ait Tukhachevsky's com -
mand. Yegorov, however, held the
Konanniya
back
and, along with Stalin and Budyonny, made plans
for an on slaught to the southw est via Lwow.
n August
12,
Kamieniev issued an othe r directive
instructing Stalin and Yegorov to place the Kon-
armiya
unde r Tukhachevsky's control. The ord er was
received on August
15,
by which time Budyonny had
begun the drive on Lwow, and he disregarded them.
His excuse was simple: The co mm and er in chief's
orders had failed to mention a specific target on
which to advance.
The Cossacks forced the remaining Polish forces
across the Bug River. By August 15, they too had
crossed, carrying the fight farther into Poland. Re-
sistance stiffened accordingly. Armed schoolboys
helped defend the village of Zadworze. One deter-
mined Polish c om man der visited his men's positions,
bolstering their morale armed only with a stick and
a bottle of vodka—one to keep up his own spirits and
the other to keep up those of his troop s. The fledgling
Polish air force also played its part. Flying more tha n
200 sorties in three days, pilots strafed the C ossacks
until they ran out of ammun ition. Even then , some
airmen continued their attacks by trying to strike the
horsemen with their aircrafts' wheels.
While its advance on the map had looked impres-
sive,
the Russian juggernaut was in a precarious po-
sition. Tukhachevsky's reconnaissance was at best
unorganized, and vital support units lagged many
miles behind. On August 16, Pilsudski launched a de-
cisive counterattack into the flank and rear of the
Red Army. Obli\'ious to the dange r, Tukhachevsky de-
man ded his me n quicken their pace toward W arsaw.
The battered troops ignored their commander, flee-
ing either into neutral Germany or back into Soviet
territory across the Niemen River.
Meanwhile, the Konarmiya was making slow
progress in its advance on Lwow. On August 18,
Budyo nny ignored orders from a rattled Tukhachev-
sky. The following day, further demands from the
northern commander arrived—accompanied this
time by a telegram from Leon Trotsky, the su prem e
commander in chief of the Red Army, who dem anded
better cooperation between the two Russian forces.
Budyonny was in no position to ignore Vladimir L
Lenin's heir apparent. Under the gaze of Lwow's
spires, the Cossacks turned north.
Pilsudski was concemed that the
Konarmiya
al-
though too small to tum the tide back in the Soviets'
favor, was still lai^e enough to throw a wrench in the
works. To ham per Budyonny's progress he appointed
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the south, where they were to shadow,
f the enem y was delayed long enough , Polish
y destroyed once an d for all.
oviet high comm and, un aware o fthe disas-
d befallen Tukhachevsky s army, dem anded
Konanniya advance toward Zamosc to alle-
thou gh a ware tha t the task would be danger-
knew that he could no longer disobey direct
ving at Zam osc, the Cossacks found the tow n
sh 10th Di\ision and three
Haller s 13th Division an d som e ar-
el s cavalry w as also closing in, trying to close
Konanniya had formed.
ement and destruction.
Although Budyonny correctly guessed that the
y a m atter of time before fresh an d m ore
effective units would be broug ht u p against him . He
and Voroshilov decided to withdraw eastward via the
town of Czesniki. To ensure that there was no repeat
of the Brody debacle, Budyonny decided to secure
his flanks by taking the high ground near Ko marow.
Unfortunately for the Bolsheviks, however, Romm el s
men reached that key objective first.
FEARING A RUSSIAN BREAKOUT ne ar Kom arow,
Rommel had ordered Colonel Wladyslaw Brze-
zowski to move h is little brigade to th e village on the
evening of August 30. Brzezowski, aware that the
on nniy was nearby a nd that the high giT)und {Hill
255) was th e key to the area, rush ed his nearest regi-
ment, the 2nd Hussars, to positions there. The regi-
ment had only 2 men, and their orders were simple:
Hold out until reinforcements anive.
Informed that a small Polish presence was defend-
ing the objective, Bud yonny chose his elite 6 th Divi-
sion to clear the way. Once in po ssession of Hill 255,
the 6th would act as a rear guard for the rest of the
Konanniya As a precaution, other Cossack units had
been sent north to find an altemate escape route,
while a large segment of the 11 th Division had been
dispatched to the south to stall Haller. Once this was
done, they too would retreat und er the 6th Divisions
A detachment of
the First Cavalry
Army at its peak.
As renowned for
their brutality as for
their mobility the
Red Cossacks met
their match at the
hands of traditional
enemies-Polish
cavalry-in 1920.
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Although his
original v^/araims
proved unrealistic,
Marshal Pilsudski
brilliantly master-
minded Warsav / s
defense and
ultimately saved
Poland-and
perhaps W estern
Eu rope-fro m
being overrun
by the Bolsheviks
in 1920.
protective screen.
The Battle of Komarow was fought on groun d that
had been saturated with rain. The fight began at 7:45
a.m., when the Soviet 7th Brigade enveloped the tiny
hussar regiment. The Poles fought just to survive
until the 8th Prince Jozef Poniatowski Lancers ar-
rived and raced into the m elee. The sound of clash-
ing swords was b roken by the crack of revolvers and
carbines. Desperate, Brzezowski, who had raced to
the field with the rest of his brigade, com mitted the
9th Galician Lancers. The impetus of their charge
sent the
Konanniya
reeling back to the forests out-
side Czesniki. Casualties had been heavy, especially
for the ou tnum bered Poles. The 9th L ancers, for ex-
ample, had lost all its squadron leaders.
The Russians, rallied and reinforced, made an-
other dash for the hill. One Polish witness remem-
bered: "There was no mercy here. Minds ceased to
react to the danger, and men grew oblivious to the
moa ns of their dying and wounded comrades being
trampled under the hooves."
Tom and tired, both sides eventually disengaged.
As they stood eyeing each other, two opposing squad-
ron leade rs emerged from the ranks, and like knights
from a bygone age, began to duel—using pistols in-
stead of swords. The distance, however, was too great
for any degree of accuracy, and both com batants' shots
flew harmlessly wide. At that point, ano ther horse-
man sprang forth from the Polish ranks and cut the
Russian officer down. Fuiious and insulted by this lack
of chivalry, the Cossacks launched another assault.
Outnum bered, the Polish squ adrons continued to
fight on regardless of casualties. The Konanniya s
Ith Division and th e Soviet Independ ent Brigade
anived, having broken off their skirmishing with
Haller's forces. These relatively fresh troops were
promptly used to make a double pincer attack. To
meet that new danger, Brzezowski threw in his last
reserves, the 12th Poldolian Lancere. Weapons raised,
they plunged in to the attacking Russians' flanks, only
to be sucked into the swirling m ass. Again the Polish
lines wavered. Fortunately f^or the Poles, two more
regiments sent by Rommel arrived in the nick of
time. Their intervention was enough to push the
Cossacks back to Czesniki again.
Budyonny, feaiful that the prolonged fighting was
wasting valuable time, ordered thi'ee of his divisions
to retreat via a northerly route through the hamlet
of Werbkowice. However, the
Konamiiva s
pride as
an inxincible cavalry force w as now at stake— taking
Hill
255,
although no longer a tactical concem , had
become a matter of honor and reputation. The 6th
Division was given o ne last chance to secure it. This
done, it too would retreat \ia Werbkowice.
In a frantic attem pt to stall the Cossacks, Rom mel
decided to use his relief regiments to seal off their
escape route. Brzezowski's shattered men were or-
dered to foiiow at 5:30 p.m. Exhausted, the 8th
Prince Jozef Poniatowski Lancers and the 9th Gali-
cian Lancers were running half an hour late and
were just abo ut to leave when d ark waves of Cos-
sacks began pouring out of the woods 700 yards
away. The 6th Division had launched its final attack.
Isaac Babe was probab ly in this last assault. Ac-
cording to the diary, his particular unit had spent
most of the day destroying beehives in the local or-
chards. Budyonny and Voroshilov were both there,
but it was the latter who did the rousing. Waving his
revolver, Voroshilov shouted, "Show the Pohsh gents
no mercy " Keyed up, the Cossacks were tmleashed
in a fearsome charge, but to the su iprise of some of
their fresh ti'oopers the Polish ca\'air\- refused to scat-
ter. Dum bfounded, Babel wrote: "They're waiting for
us on the hill, drawn up in columns. Amazing—not
one man budges. '
The 200 remaining members of the 9th Galician
Lancers galloped down the hill, only to disappear
amid the Cossack ranks; most were cut to pieces, and
those who could reeled back for their lines almost
straightaway. The 9ths sacrifice was not an empty
one, however. It had taken the wind out of the Rus-
sian onslaught, and the 8th Prince Jozef Poniatowski
Lancers, charging behind the 9th, slammed into the
Cossacks anew. The 6th Division, unused to facing
such a charge, promp tly cracked and fled—this time
for good Amazingly, Brzezowski's b rigade had faced
three quarters of the
Konanniya
and had emerged
victorious in what was Europe's last great battle of
cavalry against cavalry. MH
Simon Rees writes from London. England and is a
regular contributor to MH. or more about Komarow,
read Red Cavalrv, by Isaac B ahei
6 MILriARY HISTORY
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R E V I E W S
Another book about Winston Churchill and World
War II? Yes-and it s an original.
By Michael O ppenheim
WINSTON CHURCHILL WAGED World
War II twice: as Britain's prime minister
from 1940-45, and as its principal histo-
rian in six thick volumes from 1948-54.
An international bestseller.
The Second
World War
continues to influence, per-
haps excessively, posterity's view of both
Churchill and WW II. As he liked to say
when locked in wariime controversy,
writes veteran British historian David
Reynolds in his new book
In Command
of History:
Churchill Fighting
an d
Writing
the Second World War
(Random House,
New York 2005, $35), *I sha ll leave it to
history, but reme mb er tha t I shall be one
ofthe historians.'
Churchill lived for politics but eamed
his living writing. Four youthful accou nts
of military adventures in India and Africa
launched his career His first purely his-
torical work was the 1906 two-volume bi-
ography of his famous father, Randolph.
As a member of the Cabinet most of the
time between
1908
and 1929, he wrote in-
num erable new spaper articles for which
he expected to be well paid. His six-
volume h istory of World War
I
The World
Crisis, app eared from 1923 to 1931.
The Great Depression of
1929
led to the
Tories losing an election and Churchill
losing his 5,000-pound salary as chan-
cellor of the Exchequer as well as his
American investments in the 1929 Wall
Street crash. While the popular 1930s
image of Churchill is the pugnaciou s bat-
tler against appeasement, he spent most
of his working hours frantically pouring
out articles and books to pay his bills.
Many readers are familiar with the four-
volume history of his famous ancestor,
John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough,
finished in 1938, and History ofthe Eng-
lish Speaking
Peoples,
not quite complete
when he return ed to office in 1939. That,
however, was only the tip of the iceberg.
Does anyone remem ber
Great Bible Sto-
ries Retold?
CHURCHILL FIGHTING ND WRITING
THE SECOND WORLD W R
n
C O M M A ^ I D
o
H I S T O R Y
D VID
REYNOLDS
Revnolds begins his story w ith the July
1945
British election, an unexpected Tory
defeat that made Churchill's great work
possible, since no serving prime m inister
would have had the time to write a m ajor
history. Added to the shock and hum ilia-
tion was the loss of a generous salary an d
government quarters, forcing him to
move into his niece's apartment.
Even in 1945 several war mem oirs h ad
appeared, mostly written by Americans
and all containing unflattering c om men ts
on Churchill. That helped relieve his de-
pression and increased his motivation to
tell his story, but he had a more urgent
need: money, which com pelled h im to tell
his representatives to sell his rights. There
followed a bidding scramble from pub-
lishers across the world, often in combi-
nation with magazines and newspapers
anxious to publish excerpts. In the end,
he collected 2% million, worth perhaps
$20 million today. That ensured his fi-
nanc ial security, but patience would have
eame d him far more in royalties.
No stranger to massive histories,
Churchill set to work, starting with as-
sembling a research team, many of
whom were young academics who had
served him before. Several additions to
his crew had held high positions under
Churchill du ring the war. Access to gov-
ernment documents proved no prob-
lem—in fact, less of a problem than other
historians faced, since ex-Cabinet officers
had free access to personal papers. Inter-
preting th e regula tions liberally, Church ill
had labeled almost everything with his
signature as personal and often took it
home. Access to colleagues' documents
was not automatic, so The
Second
WorU
War
gives the im pressio n (noted by all
critics) that Churchill fought the war
almost single-handed.
What makes Tlie
Second
World War the
most unique history since Gaius Julius
Caesar's
Gallic Wars
was that its author
(like Caesar) was a leading p articipa nt in
the events he describes. While this con-
tributed to its end uring popularity, it also
allowed Churchill to enhance his image,
answer critics and shift the blame for
controversial actions. Although an un-
abashed admirer, Reynolds examines
each volume with a delightfully skeptical
fine-toothed comb. After an account of
Churchill's actions during each part of the
war, he skips ahead to describe what
Churchill planned to write about it, then
details the fascinating process that fol-
lowed before the volume appeared, with
the account always much altered. Read-
ers will find plenty of occasions to roll
their eyes.
Readers will also blink to learn C hurch-
ill submitted the work for government
approval. In his defense, Reynolds ex-
plains that it was regarded, informally, as
the official British history, and the help
Churchill received vastly exceeded ethi-
Continued
on
page
6 8
6 MILITARY HISTORY MARCH 200B
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E A P 0 N R Y
The U.S. Navy's Great White Fleet served a foreign
policy purpose in 1907.
By Thom as Lohr
PRESIDENT THEODORE ROOSEVELTS
dispatch of
6
battleships on a worldwide
cruise in 1907 ranks as the most astute
use of sea pow er as diplomacy in the 20th
century. It embod ied the geopolitical phi-
losophy of meshing international rela-
tions and military strength.
At the tu m of the 20th century, Russia
clashed w ith Japan over aspects of China's
Open Door policy and Japanese regional
expansion . Diplomacy failed to prevent
war, and Japan launched a surprise
attack on the R ussian fleet a t Poil Arthur
on F ebruary 8, 1904, severely weakening
Russia's position in the Pacific. Tsar
Nicholas II dispatched his Second Pacific
Squadron from the Baltic Sea to replen-
ish naval strength, but on May 27, 1905,
the Japanese intercepted that force in
Tsushima Strait and sank 22 Russian
warships for the loss of three torpedo
boats. For all intents and puipose s, Japan
ruled supreme in the Pacific Ocean.
After the Russo-Japanese War, the
The battleship
onnecticut
leads the A tlantic Fleet to sea at the
start of its globe-girdling cruise to show the flag in 1907
United States' relations with Japan
deteriorated when C alifornia passed leg-
islation segregating schools, and Anglo-
Americans committed acts of violence
against Japanese immigrants. The emo-
tional atmosphere in Japan spurred
many to call for military action. Roose-
velt knew the United States was at a dis-
advantage— the bulk of the
U.S.
Navy, in-
cluding all of its battleships, was in the
Atlantic, while the cruiser squadron it
had in the Pacific was little threa t to the
Japanese. Roosevelt elected to cool the
heated rhetoric by striking a deal with
Japan: He personally intervened to re-
verse the segregation decision and
pressed for action against th e violence, in
return for which Japan agreed to curb
emigration. No formal accord was
signed, but each party took the other's
word in what became known as the Gen-
tleman's Agreement.
Meanwhile, the British and German
navies were growing at an alarming rate
as G ermany's K aiser Wil-
helm II strove to match
Bri tain ' s preeminent
naval strength. Roose-
velt's advisers cautioned
him to keep the bulk of
the U.S. Navy's battle-
ships in the Atlantic to
deal with the growing
threat there. William S.
Sims, the president's
naval aide, estimated it
would take 90 days to
transfer the American
battleships into the Pa-
cific if necessary—too
long for the cruisers to
hold out if Japan moved
against the United States'
newest prize; the Philip-
pines. Roosevelt was
worried and told Secre-
tary of War William
Howard Taft that he considered the
Philippines America's Achilles' heel, par-
ticularly since Japan began reneging on
its promise to curb emigration, causing
the situation in California to flare up
again. Extremists on b oth sides of the Pa-
cific were screaming for an armed reso-
lution.
The Japanese were wary of Roosevelt.
He had brokered the Treaty of Portsm outh
that ended the Russo-Japanese war, a
treaty which ensured Tokyo did not re-
ceive war reparations from Russia and
also garnered Roosevelt the Nobel Peace
Prize. Roosevelt needed a way to imp ress
upon the Japanese that the U.S. Navy was
capable of surging into the Pacific, and
also convince the British and Germans
that the United States was still a formi-
dable naval force. His predicament gave
birth to the concept of the Great White
Fleet.
On December 16, 1907, all the battle-
ships in service— Alabaina Connecticut
Georgia Illinois Kansas. Kearsarge Ken -
tucky. Louisiana Maine. Minnesota Mis-
souri New Jersey. Ohio Rliode
Island
Ver-
mont
an d
Virginia
—paraded past the
presidential yacht ayflower in what was
publicized as a naval maneuver. Roose-
velt, a staunch proponent of Alfred
Thayer Mahan's principle of concentrat-
ing naval firepower to overwhelm any
enemy, shrugged off several advisers who
suggested splitting the fleet between the
Atlantic and the Pacific. As the ships em-
barked upon the most momentous un-
dertaking in U.S. Navy history, he stood
on the deck of
Mayflower
and boasted:
Did you ever see such a fleet? Shou ldn't
we all feel proud?
Despite Roosevelt's pride in the fleet,
and the seriousness of the expedition (in
a letter to a friend he proclaime d, It was
time for a showdown [with Jap an], I had
great confidence in the fleet ), there were
those who considered it wasteful flag-
64 MILrrA RY HISTORY MARCH 2006
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M AR I NES
Magazine presents
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WWII fea turing com-
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major combatants. From the .Meti t ians to Austra l ia ,
fro tTi d ie Himala jas to Pearl Harbor, t l ie re has never
been a war l ike tha i be tween t i ie Empire of Japan
and the .American a l l ies. Unriva led in i ts scope , the
wa r i n t h e Pa d f l c sa w a c k sh o f c u l t u re s t h a i
r e d u c e d t ro p ic al i s l a n d s t o k i ll i ng g ro u n d s a n d l a id
wa s i e t o d d e s w id i we a p o n s o f m a ss d e s t r t i c ti o i i,
Ii
t i i m e d U b r l d W a r
11
in t o a ^ o b a l wa r t h a t e n d e d
only
witii
j a p a n ' s u n c o n d i t i on a l s u r r e n d e r T e n
mili ta rv ' l i isioria i is describe each rfep ofthe confl ia
with exhaust ive de ia i l . , \ l l ground, sea and a ir
o p e ra t io n s a re i n t e g ra t e d in t o d i sc u ss io n o f e a c h
h a t t le . So f tc o ver . I n rg e fo rm a t : 1 3 " . t 9 - 1 / 2 'w i t h 1 1 6
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1
1 4 h i s t o r i c a l p h o t o g ra p h s .
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w a v i n g . T y p i f y i n g t h e B r i t i s h v i e w ,
L o n d o n ' s
Sunday Observer
c a l l e d i t " a
b lu ff a n d i n d i s c r e t io n . . .a p r o f o u n d m i s-
t a k e . "
T h e
Globe
d e c i d e d t h a t i t w a s " a
p i e c e of Am e r ic a n b o m b a s t q u it e u n w o r -
t h y o f n o t i c e . " T h e r e w e r e a l s o t h o s e i n
t h e U n it ed S t a te s w h o a lle g e d t h e d e m o n -
s t r a ti o n w a s a w a s t e o f fu n d s , m e r e ly a
s p e c t a c l e i n v e n t e d b y R o o se v e lt t o p u s h
n a v a l a p p r o p r i a t i o n s t h r o u g h C o n g r e s s .
T h e v o y a g e t o t h e s o u t h e r n t ip o f S o u t h
A m e r i c a p a s s e d r o u t i n e l y , d e s p i t e s o m e
c l o s e c a ll s d u e t o c o a l s h o r t a g e s . R e a r Ad-
m i ra l R ob le y D . E v a n s , in c o m m a n d o f
t h e f l e e t , s p o n s o r e d c o n t e s t s f o r f u e l e ffi-
c i en c y , a n d
N ew Jersey
c a m e d a n g e r o u s ly
c l o se t o b e i n g t o w e d i n t o R io d e J a n e i r o ,
B r a zi l. T h e r e w e r e n o Na v v c o a l i n g s t a -
t io n s a l o n g t h e r o u t e , a n d t h e n u m b e r o f
U.S. Na v>' c o l l i e r s w a s in s u f f i c ie n t t o s u p -
p o r t a la r g e f le e t; t h e w a r s h i p s h a d t o r e l y
h e a v i l y o n f o r e i g n s h i p s t o s a t i s f y t h e i r
v o r a c i o u s a p p e t i t e f o r 1 , 5 0 0 t o n s o f c o a l
p e r d a y . T h e a b i l i t y t o t a k e o n f u e l a t
s t ra t e g ic a l ly l o c a te d c o a l i n g s t a t i o n s w a s
v i t a l. B r i t a i n , w i t h i t s v a s t e m p i r e , h a d
l it t le t r o u b l e i n p r o v i d i n g f o r i ts m a s s i v e
f l e e t , b u t t h e U n i t e d S t a t e s h a d o n l y t w o
s t a t io n s in t h e P a c if ic : B r e m e r t o n , W a s h .,
a n d M a r e Is la n d ,
Calif
Af te r r o u n d i n g S o u t h A m e r i c a a n d a t -
r i v i n g i n S a n F r a n c i s c o , A d m i r a l E v a n s ,
w h o h a d b e e n ill at t h e b e g i n n i n g o f th e
v o y a g e a n d c o n t i n u e d t o s u f f e r a s t h e
v o y a g e c o n t i n u e d , w a s r e l i e v e d b y R e a r
A d m . C h a r l e s S . S p e n y . A d d i t io n a l l y t w o
b a ttl e sh ip s, A/fl/jf ljHfl
^.nd Maine
w e r e r e -
p l a c e d b y N ebraska a n d Wisconsin b e -
c a u s e o f m e c h a n i c a l p r o b le m s a n d e x -
c e s s i v e c o a l c o n s u m p t i o n . F r o m S a n
F r a n c i s c o t h e
fleet
m o v e d w e s t w a r d , le a v-
i n g li tt le d o u b t t h a t R o o s e v e l t h a d b i g g e r
p l a n s t h a n a s i m p l e t e s t o f m o b i li ty .
T h e U n i te d S ta t e s c o n t i n u a l ly w o r r ie d
a b o u t J a p a n e s e i n t e n t io n s . J a p a n h a d n o t
f o r g o tt e n t h e h u g e w a r i n d e m n i ty t h a t
R o o se v e lt b r o k e r e d a w a y i n t h e T r e a ty o f
P o r t s m o u t h . R o o s ev e l t in a l l p r o b a b i l it y
b e l i e v e d t h a t J a p a n w o u l d t r y t o e x a c t
t h a t i n d e m n i ty ' b y s e i zi n g t h e i ll -d e f e n d e d
P h i li p p i n e s , d e s p i t e t h e
1905
T a f t - K a t s u r a
a g r e e m e n t i n w h i c h J a p a n p l e d g e d n o t t o
m a k e a d v a n c e s o n t h e i s l a n d s . J a p a n
f a i l e d t o l i v e u p t o i t s w o r d u n d e r t h e
G e n t le m a n ' s Ag r e e m e n t , a n d R o o se v e lt
f elt t h a t T o k y o m i g h t r e g a r d T a f t - K a t s u r a
w i t h s i m i l a r d i s d a i n .
A fle r a l a y o v e r i n H a w a i i , t h e fl e e t
p r e s s e d o n t o A u s t ra l ia . As w o r d s p r e a d
o f its i m p e n d i n g v i s it to t h e P a c if ic b a s i n ,
r e q u e s t s f o r p o i t v i s it s e x c e e d e d t h e h o s t s '
a b i l i tv t o a c c o m m o d a t e t h e m . T h e re -
qu e s t t h a t s tu n n e d t h e a d m i n i s t r a t io n ,
R o o se v e lt i n c l u d e d , w a s o n e f o r t h e f l e e t
t o p a y a c a l l in Y o k o h a m a . As i t t u r n e d
o u t , h o w e v e r, t h e J a p a n e s e w e r e g i 'a c io u s
h o s t s a n d e a g e r t o c o o l i n f la m m a t o r y
r h e t o r ic . T h e Y o k o h a m a v is it c a m e t o b e
r e g a r d e d a s t h e c o u p d e g r a c e o f t h e
v o y a g e . T h e J a p a n e s e , a s R o o s e v e l t
h o p e d , w e r e d u ly i m p r e s s e d w i th t h e s i ze
a n d c o n d i t io n o f t h e f le e t , a n d a f t e r t h e
p r e s s p u b l i s h e d a c c o u n t s o f t h e v i s i t ,
f e a r s of w a r b e g a n t o s u b s i d e .
FT RTH
STUNNING
s u c c e ss o f t h e c a ll
o n J a p a n , t h e fle et e n g a g e d i n t a r g e t p r a c -
t i c e , a n d g u n n e r y s c o r e s p r o v e d t h a t a
f l e e t t h a t lo g g e d t h o u s a n d s o f m i le s c o u ld
s t i l l a i r i v e i n b a t t l e - r e a d y c o n d i t i o n .
R o o s e v e l t h a d p r o v e d h i s p o i n t : T h e
U n i te d S t a t e s c o u l d s u r g e i t s
fleet
n t o t h e
P a c if lc a n d a r r i v e r e a d y t o c o u n t e r a n y
h o s t il it i e s a g a i n s t i t s in t e r e s t s t h e r e .
T h e U n i te d S t a t e s ' d e m o n s t r a t i o n o f it s
a b i li ty t o p r o j e c t s e a p o w e r o n a g l o b a l
s c a le d id n o t g o u n n o t i c e d i n L o n d o n o r
B e r li n , c o n f i rm i n g a n o t h e r d o c t r i n e : Se a
p o w e r is m o r e th a n s i m p l e sh i p to n n a g e ;
i t i s t h e p e r c e p t i o n o f n a v a l s t r e n g t h .
R o o s e v e l t p a r l a y e d t h e s p e c t a c l e o f t h e
v o y a g e s n a v a l m i g h t b y r e m a r k i n g t o
K a i s e r W i lh e l m , w h o i n t h e s p r i n g of
1 9 08 w a s p r o t e s t in g t h e c h a n g e o f Am e r i-
c a n a m b a s s a d o r s in B e r lin : "I t r u s t y o u
n o t i c e t h a t t h e A m e r i c a n b a t t l e s h i p f l e e t
h a s c o m p l e t e d i ts to u r of So u t h A m e r i c a
o n s c h e d u l e d t im e , a n d is n o w h a v in g i ts
t a r g e t p r a c t i c e o f f t h e M e x i c a n c o a s t .
T h e i r t a rg e t p r a c t ic e h a s b e e n e x c e l le n t ."
T h e p r o v i n c ia l b a c k w a t e r o f Am e r ic a
h a d c o m e o f a g e , b u t R o o s e v e l t w a s n o t
f in i sh e d . H e o r d e r e d t h e fl e e t t o p r o c e e d
h o m e v i a t h e S ue z: C a n a l a n d t h e
M e d i t e r ra n e a n S e a .
W h i le t h e jo u r n e y c o n t in u e d t o im -
p r e s s n a v i e s a r o u n d t h e w o r l d , R o o se v e lt
t o o k t h e f l e e t ' s v i s i t t o t h e p o r t - r i c h
M e d it e n :a n e a n a s a n o p p o r t u n i t y t o s h o w
t h e f la g . T h e f le e t s p l it i n t o s m a l l e r u n i t s
t o a c c o m m o d a t e a s m a n y r e q u e s t s a s
p o s s i b l e . T h e c r o w n i n g j e w e l o n t h e
M e d i t e i r a n e a n le g w a s t h e g o o d w i ll g a r -
n e r e d w h e n o}mecticut a n d Illinois w e r e
d i v e r t e d f r o m t h e i r o r i g i n a l p o r t s o f c a l
t o r e n d e r a s s i s t a n c e t o t h e e a r t h q u a k e -
r a v a g e d t o w n o f M e s s i n a , S ic il y .
A f t e r a w h i r l w i n d t o u r i n w h i c h t h e
f l e e t v i s it e d A l g ie r s . At h e n s , B e i r u t , M a l t a ,
M a r s e i l l e , N a p l e s . P o r t S a i d , S a l o n i c a ,
S m y r n a , T a n g i e r a n d V i ll ef r a n c h e , t h e
s h i p s r e u n i t e d t o t r a n s i t t h e S t r a i t o f
G i b r a l t a r , w h e r e B r i t a i n p a i d i t t h e r e -
s p e c t it h a d e a m e d w i th a g u n s a l u t e
6 6 M I L I I A R Y H I S T O R Y MARC H 2 0 0 6
8/11/2019 Military History 2006-03
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/military-history-2006-03 49/55
its
bastion.
in 1909, a
was sched-
to
leave
the
White Ho use,
the
Navy
its
farewell pre sen t: 16 glisten-
them, steaming into Chesa-
Bay. Roosevelt
was
there
to
greet
ashing his trademark toothy g nn
Connecticut s
crew.
THE VOYAGE o the
hite Fleet as
a
practice in politics
the
United States mixing mili-
scle with diplomacy. At
the
time,
it
was revolutionai-y. Prio r to
it,
any
nation
had
sent
a
eet was the Ru ssian B altic squa d-
its destruction
in
was
the condition in
it
arrived—sending
a
fleet
on a
any
means
of
was
a
risky undertaking. Japan
a
sensation
of
naval supe-
to
write
to
of
State Elihu Root: I am more
hank heaven we
the
navy
in
good shape. Roosevelt
on
the Navy and w on.
the way for
had
written some years before,
no
foreign establishments,
or militar>', the ships of
of
the United States,
in
war, will
be
birds , unab le to fly
far
from their
shore s. Ultimately,
the
United
at
Hawaii
and the
Philippines,
and
at
Guam
and
Japan.
Sending the
fleet
nto the Pacific issued
and it
is no co-
the im-
ve show ing
at
Yokohama the Japa-
gned the Root-Takabira agreement
to
the
U.S.
West
s saber-rattling averted
a
and
deflated Europe's
His Great White Fleet ma neu-
of
the m ost underrated geopo-
of
the 20tb century, and
the
of
diplomatic finessing
by
a melange
of
pressure
and
power.
diplomatic successes are reno wned
ending war, and the fact that Theodore
one is
a trib-
to its greatn ess. R oosevelt himself
that his sending the Great White
to tbe
Orient was tbe mos t impor-
1 rendered to peace.
MH
Featuring:
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jol lcrs
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MARCH 2006 MILITARY HISTORV 67
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REVIEWS
Con t inued f rom page 6
cal boundaries. Senior civil servants
worked closely with him, writing many
sections, rewriting others, anticipating
problems, cajoling superiors to accept
controversial passages and discouraging
rival historians.
Reynolds also points out that Church-
ill's history om its im portan t details. Most
understandable is his silence on U ltra, the
breaking of German codes, which was
classified top-secret until 1974.
Churchill worked hard to burnish his
legend. History Channel documentaries
portray the 1930s Churchill as the un-
compromising foe of cowardly British
prime ministers. The truth is he yearned
for office and toned down his rhetoric
when ever this seem ed a possibility. Sim-
ilarly, legend presents the 1940-41
Churchill as prepa ring B ritain to fight to
the death. Other historians (but not
Churchill) relate riveting Cabinet d ebates
on scenarios for a negotiated peace.
Churchill passes lightly over major
events. Among tu rning point ba ttles. El
Alamein receives several chapters,
Midway one. Four scattered pages men-
tion Stalingrad—and these appeared only
after Churchill's advisers insisted. The im-
mense, three-year Siege of Leningrad is
absent. Minuscule in comparison, the
Siege of Tobruk takes up thousands of
words. Lackofmaterial was not the prob-
lem. Already opp ressed by the Cold War,
Churchill was not inclined to praise the
Soviet Union's contributions in the last
conflict.
Churchill spends a great deal of time
insisting he favored O peration O verlord.
American m emo irs invariably com plain
of Churchill's obsession w ith imag inative
offensives in the Mediterranean and
Balkans, the epony mou s soft unde r-
belly of Eu rop e. Although Churchill per-
sonally wrote only a fraction of his his-
tory, he is probably responsible for 100
percent of several dozen pages packed
with arguments and memos to prove
them wrong. Reynolds is not convinced.
Churchill devotes even more pages to
explaining d isasters and controversial de-
cisions, such as Norway, Dakar, Greece,
Crete, Dieppe, and the firings of Archi-
bald Wavell and Claude Auchinleck. Here
Reynolds strikes gold. As a practicing
politician (he became prime minister
again in 1951), Churchill refused to criti-
cize other powerful leaders, such as
Dwight D. Eisenhower and Charles de
Gaulle. Most of the remaining blame-
worthy figures were alive at the time of
publication and not shy in defending
themselves, occasionally threaten ing hbel
suits. What finally emerged in print has
modest historical interest, but Reynolds'
accounts of Churchill's tortuous efforts to
shift blame are relentlessly entertaining.
In Command of History solidifies
Churchill's position a s the least boring po -
litical leader of the 20th century, who also
wrote one of the half dozen essential
works on World War II. Reynolds ac-
complishes this while revealing that The
Second World W ar teems with so m uch
distortion, selective amnesia, personal
prejudice and outrageous editing of his-
torical records to support Churchill's ar-
guments that sensible readers will keep
In Command of istory at their side as
they read his work in future.
Soldiers Gho sts: A History of attle
in C lassical Antiquity, by J.E. Lendo n,
Yale University Press, N ew Haven,
Conn., 2005, 35.
War, regardless of a person's opinio ns o r
feelings upon it, is an integral part of
Western society, and Western social and
cultural roots are buried deep within the
fertile past of Greece and R om e. Soldiers
Ghosts explores the relationships that
Greece and R ome had w ith warfare and
how their pasts interacted with their
philosophies regarding war.
Throughout his work, J.E. Lendon
seems to exhaust classical Greek and
Roman writings through referencing and
quoting, both of which are a testament
and a distinct credit to his expansive
knowledge and grasp of these two ancient
societies. With ease and informality
Lendon examines the Greeks' relation-
ship with H omer's epic The Iliad and how
that affected their method of waging w ar
Lendon also examines the past that the
Romans had imagined for themselves,
and how that imagined past influenced
their own style of w arfare.
Lendon's presentation of his theories
and evidence is done in a clear and con-
cise man ner Soldiers Ghosts is an ex-
cellent starting point for readers inter-
ested in the military histories of Greece
and Rome. Lendon's work and bibliogra-
phy are extensive, both serving as doors
through which the reader may step and
discover the rich histories the auth or h as
reintroduced.
Nicholas E. Efstathiou
E ITORI L
Cont inued f rom page 6
spent late April and May 1945 flying 22
air-sea rescue missions in M artin PBM-5
flying boats from Kerama Retto.
Guttman was attached to the U.S.
Army's 77th Infantry Division on Okinaw a
when he was wounded and invalided
home with combat fatigue in July 1945,
arriving in New York on V -J Day. His un-
usual melange of decorations included
the Silver Star (for saving two wounded
Marines un der fire on Saipa n on Ju ne 16,
1944),
the Distinguished Flying Cross (for
rescuing three dow ned B ritish airmen off
Ishigaki Shima on April 21, 1945), the
Purple Heart, the Air Medal, two Presi-
dential U nit Citations (for service aboa rd
Yorktown
and
Hornet),
the Navy Unit
Com men dation (for service with Air-Sea
Rescue Squadron VH-3), and the Sub-
marine Combat Pin.
After the war Paul Guttman worked as
an art director at the New York advertis-
ing agency Diener and Dorskin. Later, in
spite of failing to com plete h is engineer-
ing degree, he embarked on a variety of
industrial engineering projects and, after
his retirement in 1985, remained on
Stauffer Chemical's staff as an engineer-
ing consultant.
In 1995 Guttman was prevailed upon
to exhibit 70 samples of his extensive col-
lection of wartime still photographs at the
Pearl River Library. Public interest in the
display caused the library to extend the
exhibition for an additional two months.
A resid ent of Palisade s, N.Y., since
1955, Paul Guttm an is survived by his
wife, Lee, as well as his four children, Jon,
Nancy, Robe rt and N ora. His fascination
with history—and his own participation
in it—influenced both sons. I served 20
years in the Army National Guard^
doing my first field drills at Camp Smith,
N.Y, the same base where my father had
drilled w hile in the 23rd Infantry, 49 years
earlier. Roberi served 30 years in the U .S.
Merchant Marine (participating in two
Gulf wars) and is also a contributing
writer to
World War II, Aviation History
and other Primedia p ublications.
As with all lives, Paul G uttman 's has left
behind its share of legacy, good and ill.
Though I have mentioned it in past edi-
torials, that legacy has included Military
History and its sister publications—to
various degrees, there's been a little of
him in all of them . J.G.
68 MILITARY HISTOR Y MARCH 2006
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BO T HUNTERS
rom page 28
in various situations, as fair sailors
highly ever since.
Later the antisubmarine vessels ar-
to us, said Mom per. Eventually
f these ships retum ed to pick us up.
ur eyes bound, but treat-
f interrogation cam ps I arrived
15, w here I met the commander
to England in July 1946 an d
ficers from ou r
n 1 94 7.
Rescue came after a
while
from above,
An aircraft [airman] threw
us. We laid the wounded
ly m y left foot began
t tum ed out later, when we were
th bones in the center of my foot were
remained in England through-
went through
fiv
POW cam ps and
home on October 6, 194 6.
AIR SEA EN GAGEMEN T IN the
15 men of the 68 aboard
U - 4 6 1
sur-
U-462 with just three men lost.
ilch Cows were credited to Nos.
53 men aboard U-504
l victim to Walkers escort grou p.
demise—and the salvation of 15
4 6 1 S qua dron , RAAF. Its identifica-
letter was U. MH
aviation h istorian and author
ranks has written m ore than 50
including four on aircraft and
Over the years he ha s been in con-
gathering them together
recollections o f sitnnvors.
further
reading
try
Franks books
Con-
an d Dark Sky, Deep
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PERSPE TIVES
Continued from page 20
watched his beloved m oun t die in agony.
Only then d id he consent to be placed in
an ambulance and evacuated rearward.
As the Con federate forces collap sed
before the Union onslaught, Sears went
several days before his wound was
dressed and treated by a surgeon. He
somehow beat the odds, evading shock,
blood loss and infection, and survived
captivity as a p risone r of war to live until
1891, serving as a professor at the Uni-
versity of Mississippi. He mourned his
steed to the en d.
Confederate Brig. Gen. W illiam H.
Young seemed to attract bullets. He suf-
fered the first of a total of seven g unsho t
wounds
on
December 31, 1862,
in the
battle at Murfreesboro, Tenn., when a
Minie ball ripped into h is left shoulder. In
later combat he endured wounds to his
right thigh, left chest, neck, jaw and left
leg, which was subsequently am putated.
When the stump became infected, nitric
acid was poured into the wound—but
Young survived even that experience, and
was fitted with a wooden leg. He was
wounded yet again during the 1870s
when his rifle exploded in his face while
he was
hun ting buffalo in Colorado Terri-
tory. He sur^dved that injury as well and
lived until 1 901, when heart d isease
claimed him at age 63.
THE
MOST NOTED AMPUTEE general of-
ficer in the Confederacy must have been
the aggressive John Bell Hood of the
Army of No rthern Virginia, whom even
an admiring Robert E. Lee once de-
scribed as being all lion and no fox.
Crippled in his left arm by a wound sus-
tained as a di\ 'ision commander at Get-
tysburg
on
July
2
1863, Hood lost
his
right leg at Chickam auga, Tenn., the fol-
lowing September. He should have been
medically retired, for he moved on
crutches and ha d to be strapped into the
saddle when he rode. Instead Hood was
transferred to the Army of Tennessee,
where he led a corps during the futile strug-
gle to keep Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman
out of Atlanta in the sum me r of 1864, an d
then succeeded General Joseph E. John-
ston as his ill-starred army's com man der.
One modem physician who studied
Hood's career subsequently asserted that
his wounds prompted a psychological
change in the young general , who
showed marked behavioral changes upon
assuming corps command under John-
ston. Previously a deferential and correct
subordinate, he became improper, crit-
ical, and insubordinate on matters of
strategy and, later, of tactics, according
to the physician. Hood's intrigues a gainst
Johnston have been well documented.
Upon succeeding Johnston in army com -
mand, he consistently manifested behav-
ior that was, according to the physician,
unusual and exceptional considering the
circumstances, bordering on that of an
obsessive psychoneurotic reaction.
As She rma n left the ruins of Atlanta to
begin his March to the Sea, the brash
Hood elected to launch an invasion of
Union-occupied Tennessee
in a
doomed
bid to draw the Norihem ers out of the
Southem heartland and capture the
enemy's rich supply base at N ashville.
The cripple with
a
berserk ers heart saw
it as an op poriunity to alter the entire
course of the war. As the ragged Army of
Tennessee forged northward from Geor-
gia, the pain-wracked Hood directed its
course w hile un der the influence, at least
occasionally, of opiates.
The resulting cam paign was a pilgrim-
age of disasters, as the opiates carried
Hood's sword for him from Allatoona to
Nashville. At Spring Hill on November 29,
his forces trapped a brace of Union Army
corps as they retreated before the Confed-
erates' advance. The exhausted H ood w ent
to sleep tha t night w ithout first supervis-
ing his units' dispositions, and the entire
enemy force slipped through an absurdly
naiT w gap in his lines in da rkness, leaving
him wrathy as a rattlesnake, according to
an eyew itness, when he discovered in the
mo ming that the bluecoats had escaped.
The next day Hood hurled his army
against the fugitives after they had
reached the safety of the breastworks
fronting the town of Eranklin. The two
Union corps
of
22,000 men entrenched
the re inflicted
7 000
casualties on the tat-
tered Army of Tennessee, and crippled its
leadership cadre by killing or wounding
15 out of 28 Southem generals. Some
Rebel infantry regiments suffered 64 per-
cent casualties in the futile bloo dba th.
Having crippled the attackers' spirit, the
defenders slipped off to join Maj. Gen.
George
H.
Thomas' Army
of
the Cum-
berland as it deployed in defense of
Nashville, leaving Hoo d to count his dead
and com mun e with his laudanu m bo ttle.
He left his finest attributes and his
common sense on the surgeon's table,
judged one student of his career.
70 MILITAR Y HIST OR Y MARCH 2006
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the obsessive Rebel
on the
s sou th of Nashville. There, he saw his
and
ith another 4,400 casualties,
as
waged a classic battle of envel-
the help of a dismounted
re-
It was the end of the
of
Tennessee
as an
effective major
and Hood's hopes
or
a de-
victory becam e just ano ther opium
He was finally forced into retire-
his failing body had be-
his despairing will.
settled in New Orleans after the
a living seOing insu ranc e. He
11 children in 11 years (including
of twins) before yellow fever
him in
1879.
H is death left many
of
the Army
of
to ponder the bitter lyrics ap-
to The Yellow Rose of Texas":
k a bou t yo ur Stonewall/And
of Bobby Lee/ But the gallant Hoo d
s played hell
in
Tennessee "
bl ighted his
and subsequent
who
to
capitalize upon their loss
of
in advancing the cause of their mili-
and political fortunes. A handful
the value of their
in
winning popular favor
and
was certainly the case with Daniel
who lost a leg at G ettysburg on
2. Sickles had won national notori-
the war when, as a New York
e became the first m an
in
avoid conviction for murde r by
the
attorney for the District of Columbia,
A
skilled
his
political influ-
to win
a
major general's rank upon
of the
Civil War.
He and
Maj. Gens. Joe Hooker
of
the Aimy of the Potomac's head-
combination barroom and
of the
of
the P otomac's
Corps, Sickles
the
position even after
his
crony
was
relieved and replaced by Maj.
G. Meade, as Lee's Army of
rn Virginia foiled into Pennsylva-
in late June .
During the second day at G ettysburg,
Corps in a sector
de-
fending Cemetery Ridge. Sickles decided
that the chosen ground was too long and
too low for his liking. He abruptly moved
his corps foru'ard to a new position
within a peach or chard without asking or
informing Meade. His rash advance un-
covered the left flank of the neighboring
II Corps as well as leading both flanks of
his own unit exposed. When Confederate
Firet Corps commander Lt. Gen. James
Longstreet's assault rolled forward that
afternoon, it struck the
Corps, and the
Union front line began
to
crumble
as
Sickles men were forced back from their
exposed position.
He
was tiying
to
stabilize
the situation when a cannonball shattered
his leg as he rode near the Trostle F arni.
The
leg was
amputated within an hour,
and Sickles was evacuated from the bat-
tlefield, taking h is severed limb with him.
Better soldiers than Sickles helped
to
plug the hole in the Union line and pre-
vent its collapse. In the aftermath of the
battle. Sickles received severe criticism
for his reckless disregard of Meade's
orders. When he requested restoration
to
his corps command
in
October 1863,
Meade refused, citing the am putee's phys-
ical incapacity. During subsequent testi-
mony before Congress, Sickles defended
his actions at Gettysburg and criticized
Meade's leadersh ip. Meade's partisa ns re-
sponded
in a
debate
of
mou nting acri-
mony
in
the public p ress. Sickles politi-
cal influence kept him
on
active duty a s
a
general officer until 1867, but he never
again received a major field c omm and.
President Ulysses S. Grant subsequently
appointed him ambassador to Spain,
where he conducted
a
public affair with
the deposed Queen Isabella
II
and was
called the "Yankee King of Spain."
Ever eager
to
keep his name before the
public. Sickles donated his severed leg to
the U.S. Army's medical museum, where
the shattered bone was placed on public
display.
He was
fond
of
showing
it off
to
visiting constituen ts and numerous lady
friends, and once boasted that the entire
battlefield at Gettysburg was a monument
to his own courag e, sell-sacrifice and su-
perior tactical acumen. Becoming influen-
tial in the ascendant Republican Paity, he
lived until 1914, acquiring a new mistress
while
in
his 80s and surviving
a
second
major scandal when, as head of the New
York State M onumen ts Com mission, he
was an-ested in
9 2
at age
93
and chained
with skimming $28,000
br m
its accounts.
His political allies made restitution for
the missing funds, and Sickles reclined
amid the roses once m ore.
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MARCH 2006 MILITARY HIS TO RY
71
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MARACAIBO
Continued from page 6
In an attempt to break the standoff
Morgan sent a messenger demanding
free passage out of the lake and ransom
for the town. Although Don Alonso re-
fused, the town's inhabitants agreed to
the terms . M oi^an, however, did not trust
Don Alonso and told the Spanish the
hostages would stay on board until he
was safely past the fort.
Morgan did not really believe that Don
Alonso cared if he executed the hostages ,
but time was running out—Spanish re-
inforcements were on the way. Morgan
told the prisoners that if he did not get
sale passage, then he would hang them
all. The prison ers drew u p a petition that
they sent to the fort. The admiral's reply
accused them of cowardice. Those accu-
sations left no questions in Morgan's
mind abou t Don Alonso's resolve.
Morgan knew that Don Alonso was ex-
pecting an attack on the fort from the
water, and consequently all his guns—
probably six to eight—would be facing
the lake. If
he
could somehow get Alonso
to move some of them land ward, the pri-
vateers' chances of a successful breakou t
would be that much greater. Moving La
Marquesa up toward the fort, Morgan an-
chored just out of range of the guns. He
then began transfening men to a stretch
of beach where the Spanish view was
blocked.
All day Don Alonso and his men
watched the pirates row boats full of
armed men toward the shore and return
to the ship empty: From the sheer num ber
ol men Morgan was putting ashore, the
adm iral was certain tha t the pirates were
going 10 make a full-scale assault on the
fort, in all likelihood after dark, leaving
almost no one on board their ships. He
therefore began moving all the catinons
to the other, landw ard side ofthe fort. As
the sun set that evening, ail Spanish at-
tention was focused on listening for any
sign of the impending attack. Suddenly,
to their surprise, the defenders heard
seven slow cannon shots from the lake
below. They rushed to see what was hap-
pening, only to discover that Morgan a nd
his ships had passed by the fort an d were
ancho ring well out of range of their guns.
The boats Don Alonso had seen putting
men ashore all that day were in reality the
same men being rowed back and forth
fl-om ship to shore. When they got to
shore, where the Spanish view was
blocked, they wotild lie down in the bo at,
making it look empty. Once back at the
ship,
they rowed to the stem, w here—out
of the Spa niard s' sight—^they w ould sit up
again, giving the appearance of yet an-
other load of men being put ashore.
After
dark
when the curre nt was right,
Moi^an's privateers weighed anchor but
did not drop their sails. Instead, they dar-
ingly allowed the current to carrv them
past the fort. With their sails stiU
up,
their
ships seemed to be still at ancho r rath er
than underway. s each ship came abreast
ofthe castle, the privateers dropped their
sails and fired a parting salute.
Don Alonso had fallen for the ruse
completely. Morgan an d his m en escaped
without firing a shot in anger or having
to kill any ho stages. The Spanish adm iral
initially believed that the sh ips w ere being
sailed with skeleton crews, but when no
attack cam e, he had the cannons moved
back toward the water and began firing.
By then, it was too late, as the ships were
anchored safely out of range.
With nothing between him and the
safety of the sea, Morgan freed the
hostages from Maracaibo but kept those
from Gibraltar, because their ranstim had
never been paid. Once again leaving the
humiliated Spanish to lick their wounds,
Morgan set a course for Jamaica and
home, earn ing with him yet another haul
of Spanish treasure.
Caving in to pressure from the Sp anish
govemment in 1672, London recalled
both Henn Morgan and Sir Thomas
Modyford for Morgan's devastating raid
on Panama in 1671. While Mod\'ford was
imprisoned in the Tower, Morgan was
knighted , given the title of lieuten ant gov-
ernor and returned to Jamaica in
1676.
In
1678 Morgan became governor of Ja-
maica and commander in chief of all Ja-
maican forces. He died on August 25,
1688,
and was buried in a cemeten' at
Port Royal. An earthquake hit the island
in
1692,
and Port R oyal, the town that Sir
Heni>' Morgan more than anyone else
helped to flourish, w as destroyed. Am ong
the thousands of buildings and other
structures swallowed up by the sea was
the grave of the Bu ccane er King. MH
Chris Siroup. who writes from Norm an
Okla. recomm ends for further reading:
The B uccaneer King: The Biography of
the Notorious Sir H enry Morgan, 1635-
1688,
by Dudley Pope; and Pillaging the
Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500-
\750 bv
Kris
Lane.
STILLMAN S RUN
Continued from page 44
feared dea d, but all they found were nine
disfigured troopei's (two more would be
found later) and no dead Sauk. After bury-
ing the bodies and spending an uncom-
fortable night in the
field
Whitesides m en
(including a future president. Captain
Abraham Lincoln) paraded on the m om -
ing of the 16th in an effort to draw the
Sauk out, which of course was useless.
After they had concluded that maneuver
they ma rched back to Dixon's Ferry.
T
he Black Hawk War of 1832 would
sput t e r on throughout the
summ er, and the m ilitia of Illinois
would do better on severai other occa-
sions than they did at Stillman's Run—
thougii that shouid not have been hard to
do . The Sauk would try to surrender two
more times before—tired, starving, cor-
nered and outnumbered—they were at-
tacked and defeated on August 2, 1832, in
the Battle of Bad Axe, which m any main-
tain was a one-sided slaughter. Black
Hawk would give himself up severai days
later and soon documents were signed
that would officially bring about a merci-
ful end to the war.
Stillman's Run stands as a textbook ex-
ample of why training, discipline and
good leade rship are all essential to a unit
in the field. If S tillman s men had had the
restraint not to gallop off after the Sauk
obsei V'ers, a neg otiated peace couid have
taken place. If the men had held their
ground at the camp , they could have re-
pulsed the Sauk and maybe captured
Black Hawk.
As several othe r battles invoHing mili-
tiamen demonstrated, however, the free
and sometimes wild nattire that is often
the militia's pride and strength turned out
to be its worst liability. Or as Zachar\-
Taylor, a participant in the Black Hawk
War of
1832,
would write, I am decidedly
of opinion that that attack made on the
Indian s, brou ght on the war. MH
Scolt Dyar lives an d works as a teacher in
Eau Clair Wis. He is currently working o
two books related to the Black Hawk War.
For
further reading
he
recommends: Black
Hawk: An Autobiography,
edited hy
Donald Jackson; The Black Hawk War,
1831-1832, com piled and edited by E llen
M. W hitney; and Cecil D. Eby s That Dis-
graceful Affair The Black Haw k War.
72 MILITAR Y HIS TO BY MARCH 2006
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E S T L I T T L E S T O R I E S
Jim Bo w ie, W illiam Travis and Davy Croc ket t w e re the Big
Three, but there we re other heroes at the A lam o.
By C. Br ian Kelly
WITH JIM OWIE too ill to main tain com -
man d during the
final
Mexican assault on
the Alamo back in 1836 and his altem ate-
in-command, Lt. Col. William Barret
Travis, apparently killed in the ea rly going,
who would have been next in line to take
charge of the defenders in their heroic
stand ag ainst overwhelming odds?
According to logic and the chain of com-
mand, he would have been John Hu bbard
Forsyth, 38, a New Yorker by birth w ho
had drifted southw ard after his wife Deb-
orah died in 1828, eventually reaching
Texas as the captain of a volun teer cavalry
group from Kentucky. Originally from
Avon, N.Y., he ha d stud ied me dicine but
tum ed to farming instead.. .until deciding
to seek a new life after his wife's death.
He had arrived at the Alamo at San
Antonio with the men accompanying
William Travis early in 1836, as Texas
fought for its ind ependen ce from M exico.
In Texas, notes
T he Handbook of T exas
Online the younger Forsyth obtained a
commission as a captain in the Regular
Texan Cavalry an d used all of his available
cash to outfit and supply his company.
Thus, he would be joining the relative
handful of men expected to defend a
hastily fortified old Spanish mission
against an expectantly sizable Mexican
army returning to rebellious Texas after
suffering a stinging defeat at the ha nds of
the rebels at nearby San Antonio late in
1835 (known as the B attle of Bexar).
With both the sick Bowie and the m or-
tally wounde d Travis removed from com-
ma nd early in the final Mexican assault
on the Alamo, it is highly likely that the
the Alamo that grim day of March 6,
1836, which ended in the massacre of all
250-plus (the
final
count varies by source)
defenders of the old Spanish mission
tum ed makeshift fort. Taken altogether,
the New Yorkers on hand played a sig-
nificant role in the a ction.
AM ONG FORSYTH S FELLOW E m p i r e
State companions w ere two doctors, both
originally from Massa chusetts, and a p air
of Englishmen who, like the doctors,
reache d Texas after stop s of some length
in New
York
AU told, six of the Alamo de-
fenders apparently were native to New
York, and ano ther
five—for
a total of 11
with New York ties— had resided in the
State before making their way to the
Texas frontier, add s John son's accou nt.
Of that number, certainly one of the
most important after Fo rsjih would have
been the Enghshman William Blazeby,
who had immigrated to New York to
ma ke his fortune. He woun d up in Texas
as lieutenant of the O rleans Greys, a Texan
Volunteer regimen t from Louisiana, and
he arrived at the Alamo as com man der of
an infantry company after fighting the
Mexicans in the B attle of Bexar.
One of the Massach usetts-bom doctors,
WiUiam D. HoweU, 4 5, who had p racticed
medicine in New York and New O rleans
on his way to Texas, also fought a t Bexar
and served as a rifieman in Blazeby's in-
fantry unit.
The second doctor from Massachu-
setts—and the n New York—to give hi s life
in defense of the lamo was mos Pollard,
at the A lamo, by the way.
An Irish-b om New Yorker also figured
in the dram atic history written by the de-
fenders of the Alamo. Robert Evans, 36,
a major and chief of ordnance, survived
until Mexican General Antonio Lopez de
Santa Anna's men finally broke throug h
the chapel door. He was seen by survivor
Sus ann a Dickinson racing with a flaming
torch to blow up the Texans' powder
magazine to the rear. He was gunned
down before he could get there.
As others may recall also, wh en Travis
some days before the final Mexican as-
sault on the Alamo issued an appeal for
help—for reinforcements for his pitifully
sma ll band—^the only organ ized troops to
respond in person w ere 32 mem bers of
the Gonzales (Texas) Ranging Company
of Mounted Volunteers, commanded by
Lieutenant George C. Kimbell, 33, co-
owner of a hat factory in tiny Gonzales.
That same small town generally is cred-
ited as the scen e, in October 1835, of the
first real skirmish of the Texan War for
Independen ce from Mexico.
Still anothe r of the N ew Yorkers w ho
gave their
lives
at the Alamo, Kimbell was
married and had two children. He and
the rest of his Gonzales defenders arrived
at the Alamo on M arch 1, 1836. Among
them , too, wotild be Sus ann a D ickinson's
husband—also Kimbell's partner at the
hat factory—^Almaron Dickinson. Later,
an independent Texas would gratefully
nam e a coun ty for Kimbell.
Few, if any, of the New Yorkers are very
well known today, but then that's true of