Army Artillery Quotes

This coffee falls into your stomach, and straightway there is a general commotion. Ideas begin to move like the battalions of the Grand Army on the battlefield, and the battle takes place. Things remembered arrive at full gallop, ensign to the wind. The light cavalry of comparisons deliver a magnificent deploying charge, the artillery of logic hurry up with their train and ammunition, the shafts of wit start up like sharpshooters. Similes arise, the paper is covered with ink; for the struggle commences and is concluded with torrents of black water, just as a battle with powder.

I've been a soldier all my life. I've fought from the ranks on up, you know my service. But sir, I must tell you now, I believe this attack will fail. No 15,000 men ever made could take that ridge. It's a distance of more than a mile, over open ground. When the men come out of the trees, they will be under fire from Yankee artillery from all over the field. And those are Hancock's boys! And now, they have the stone wall like we did at Fredericksburg. - Lieutenant General James Longstreet to General Robert E. Lee after the initial Confederate victories on day one of the Battle of Gettysburg.

The troops arrived at the wall together and swept into the village, some through the gates and some through the holes blasted by the artillery. Then the slaughter began as they went from hut to hut, winkling out the defenders at bayonet point. The screaming showed the progress of the individual battles across the village until at last it was quiet.

The Army, however, found ways to adapt. It lobbied hard for atomic artillery shells, atomic antiaircraft missiles, atomic land mines.

So, the moral of that story, other than never underestimate an independent bookseller, was that the Continental Army and its commander in chief had a soft spot for Chief Artillery Officer Henry Knox.

Centuries old, but recently widened, the highway was the same road used by pagan armies, pilgrims, peasants, donkey carts, nomads, wild horsemen out of the east, artillery, tanks, and ten-ton trucks. Its traffic gushed or trickled or dripped, according to the age and season. Once before, long ago, there had been six lanes and robot traffic. Then the traffic had stopped, the paving had cracked, and sparse grass grew in the cracks after an occasional rain. Dust had covered it. Desert dwellers had dug up its broken concrete for the building of hovels and barricades. Erosion made it a desert trail, crossing wilderness. But now there were six lanes and robot traffic, as before.

all i know about the bible is that wherever it goes there's trouble. the only time i ever heard of it being useful was when a stretcher bearer i was with at the battle of dundee told me that he'd once gotten hit by a mauser bullet in the heart, only he was carrying a bible in his tunic pocket and the bible saved his life. he told me that ever since he'd always carried a bible into battle with him and he fled perfectly safe because god was in his breast pocket. we were out looking for a sergeant of the worcesters and three troopers who were wounded while out on a reconnaissance and were said to be holed up in a dry donga. in truth, i think my partner felt perfectly safe because the boer mausers were estimated by the british artillery to be accurate to eight hundred yards and we were at least twelve hundred yards from enemy lines. alas, nobody bothered to tell the boers about the shortcomings of their brand-new german rifle and the mauser bullet hit him straight between the eyes...which goes to prove, you can always depend on british army information not to be accurate, the boers to be deadly accurate, and the bible to be good for matters of the heart but hopeless for those of the head, and finally, that god is in nobody's pocket.

The Northwestern Carpathians, in which I was raised, were a hard place, as unforgiving as the people who lived there, but the Alpine landscape into which Zlee and I were sent that early winter seemed a glimpse of what the surface of the earth looked and felt and acted like when there were no maps or borders, no rifles or artillery, no men or wars to claim possession of land, and snow and rock alone parried in a match of millennial slowness so that time meant nothing, and death meant nothing, for what life there was gave in to the forces of nature surrounding and accepted its fate to play what role was handed down in the sidereal march of seasons capable of crushing in an instant what armies might--millennia later--be foolish enough to assemble on it heights. And yet there we were, ordered to march ourselves, for God, not nature, was with us now, and God would deliver us, in this world and next, when the time came for that.

So before and during the war, the Bush administration had to build up an image in people's minds of Iraq as a monstrous military superpower, in order to mobilize enough popular hysteria so that people here would go along with their policies. And again, the media did their job 100 percent. So I don't know how well you remember what was going on around the country back then, but people were literally quaking in their boots about the extraordinary might of Iraq―it was a superpower with artillery we'd never dreamt of, all this kind of stuff.93 I mean, this was a defenseless Third World country that was so weak it had been unable to defeat post-revolutionary Iran in eight years of warfare [from 1980 to '88]―and that was with the support of the United States, the Soviet Union, all of Europe, the Arab oil countries: not an inconsiderable segment of world power. Yet with all those allies, Iraq had been unable to defeat post-revolutionary Iran, which had killed off its own officers' corps and barely had an army left: all of a sudden this was the superpower that was going to conquer the world? You really had to be a deeply brainwashed Western intellectual even to look at this image―a defenseless Third World country threatening the two most advanced military forces in the world, the United States and Britain―and not completely collapse in ridicule. But as you recall, that's what all of them were saying―and people here really believed it.

Red Army cavalry divisions also ranged far into the rear, mounted on resilient little Cossack ponies. Squadrons and entire regiments would suddenly appear fifteen miles behind the front, charging artillery batteries or supply depots with drawn sabres and terrifying war-cries. The

The ground in front of his camp was ideal for deploying the army for action. The low hill on which the camp stood was of just the right width, on the side facing the enemy, for the legions to occupy in battle formation; on each flank it descended steeply to the plain, while in front it formed a slight ridge and then sloped gently down. On either side of the hill Caesar had a trench dug, running for about six hundred and fifty yards at right angles to the line along which the troops would be drawn up, and placed redoubts and artillery at both ends of each trench, to prevent the enemy from using their numerical superiority to envelop his men from the flanks while they were fighting. He left the two newly enrolled legions in camp, to be used as reinforcements wherever they were needed, and drew up the other six in front in line of battle. The enemy also had marched out and deployed for action.

Give me four days so that my planes can fly, so that my fighter bombers can bomb and strafe, so that my reconnaissance may pick out targets for my magnificent artillery. Give me four days of sunshine to dry this blasted mud, so that my tanks roll, so that ammunition and rations may be taken to my hungry, ill-equipped infantry. I need these four days to send von Rundstedt and his godless army to their Valhalla. I am sick of this unnecessary butchering of American youth, and in exchange for four days of fighting weather, I will deliver You enough Krauts to keep Your bookkeepers months behind in their work. “Amen.

It was turning out to be an anxious Christmas season. Too many were the early mornings spent sitting at the table, insomniac in the gray dawn, thinking to myself, Eggs would be good. Not for eating but for the viscous wrath of my ovobarrage. It seemed only a matter of time before I was lobbing my edible artillery out the window at the army of malefactors who daily made my life such a buzzing carnival of annoyance. I could almost feel the satisfying, sloshy heft of my weapons as I imagined them leaving my hands and raining down upon my targets: the pair of schnauzers two doors down, with their loathsome, skittish dispositions, barking and yelping all day long; their owner, with her white hair styled like Marlene Dietrich's in Blond Venus, who allows them to pee freely on the garbage that some poor sanitation worker then has to pick up; the leather-clad schmuck immediately next door, a cigar-smoking casual life-ruiner with his mufflerless motorcycle. All would taste my All Natural, Vegetarian Feed, Grade A Extra Large brand of justice!

The established German Army no longer had the physical power to overcome the uniformed private armies of Left and Right. This weakness was not due to a lack of rifles, machine guns, or artillery, or even to a lack of men, but to a shortage of trucks. The vital role of the truck had already been recognized by some military experts. In England Captain B. H. Liddell Hart greeted the six-wheel truck as a landmark in military evolution.

I prefer the war of the forest to the war of the plain; I have no wish to set a hundred thousand peasants in line, and exposed to Carnot's artillery and the grape-shot of the Blues. In less than a month I mean to have five hundred thousand sharpshooters ambushed in the woods. The Republican army is my game. Poaching is our way of waging war. Mine is the strategy of the thickets. Good; there is still another expression you will not catch; no matter, you will seize this: No quarter.

If you had to explain why the four major services could never work together,” Fleming said, “it’s because they all speak a different language. For example, if you needed to secure a building, the Navy would turn off the lights and lock the doors. The Air Force would sign a long-term lease or buy it outright. The Army would occupy the building and forbid entry to anyone else. And the Marines would assault the building and defend it to the death with suppressing fire and artillery support.

The most desperate need was for ammunition, which was expended at a rate exceeding two tons every minute of every hour of every day, despite incessant rationing in the second half of 1944. By late September, fewer than four rounds per day were available for the largest guns, such as the 8-inch howitzer. By early October, ammunition shortfalls were “truly critical” across the front, with many Third Army tubes down to a single shell per day—Patton wanted sixty—and 12th Army Group reported that supplies of artillery ammunition had “reached a state of almost complete collapse.

From Bourcet he learnt the principle of calculated dispersion to induce the enemy to disperse their own concentration preparatory to the swift reuniting of his own forces. Also, the value of a 'plan with several branches', and of operating in a line which threatened alternative objectives. Moreover, the very plan which Napoleon executed in his first campaign was based on one that Bourcet had designed half a century earlier. Form Guibert he acquired an idea of the supreme value of mobility and fluidity of force, and of the potentialities inherent in the new distribution of an army in self-contained divisions. Guibert had defined the Napoleonic method when he wrote, a generation earlier: 'The art is to extend forces without exposing them, to embrace the enemy without being disunited, to link up the moves or the attacks to take the enemy in flank without exposing one's own flank.' And Guibert's prescription for the rear attack, as the means of upsetting the enemy's balance, became Napoleon's practice. To the same source can be traced Napoleon's method of concentrating his mobile artillery to shatter, and make a breach at, a key point in the enemy's front. Moreover, it was the practical reforms achieved by Guibert in the French army shortly before the Revolution which fashioned the instrument that Napoleon applied. Above all, it was Guibert's vision of a coming revolution in warfare, carried out by a man who would arise from a revolutionary state, that kindled the youthful Napoleon's imagination and ambition. While Napoleon added little to the ideas he had imbibed, he gave them fulfilment. Without his dynamic application the new mobility might have remained merely a theory. Because his education coincided with his instincts, and because these in turn were given scope by his circumstances, he was able to exploit the full possibilities of the new 'divisional' system. In developing the wider range of strategic combinations thus possible Napoleon made his chief contribution to strategy.

More than 100,000 mostly urban Red Army troops were deployed, along with special Cheka detachments. After public executions, hostage taking, and conspicuous deportations of entire villages to concentration camps, by the third week of June 1920 only small numbers of rebel stragglers had survived.317 Tukhachevsky was flushing rebel remnants out of the forests with artillery, machine guns, and chlorine gas “to kill all who hide within.”318 At least 11,000 peasants were killed between May and July; the Reds lost 2,000. Many tens of thousands were deported or interred. “The bandits themselves have come to recognize . . . what Soviet power means,” the camp chief noted of his reeducation program.

THE NORTHWESTERN CARPATHIANS, IN WHICH I WAS RAISED, were a hard place, as unforgiving as the people who lived there, but the Alpine landscape into which Zlee and I were sent that early winter seemed a glimpse of what the surface of the earth looked and felt and acted like when there were no maps or borders, no rifles or artillery, no men or wars to claim possession of land, and snow and rock alone parried in a match of millennial slowness so that time meant nothing, and death meant nothing, for what life there was gave in to the forces of nature surrounding and accepted its fate to play what role was handed down in the sidereal march of seasons capable of crushing in an instant what armies might—millennia later—be foolish enough to assemble on it heights.

Ten miles to the southeast the war went on, badly, for Drake and his men. With nearly a thousand troops already dug in on Djebel Ksaira, Drake decided to herd the rest of his command—now bivouacked in various wadis southeast of Sidi bou Zid—onto Garet Hadid, a slightly loftier escarpment four miles west of Ksaira. Soon 950 riflemen, musicians, cooks, and clerks were perched on the barren rock like nesting birds. Nearly one-third lacked weapons. After watching the artillery flee near Djebel Lessouda, Drake had called McQuillin at eight A.M. on a field phone to report the makings of a rout. When Old Mac disputed his characterization, Drake snapped, “I know what I’m talking about. I know panic when I see it.” McQuillin hesitated, then told Drake: “You are on the spot. Take command and stop it.” The

The troops also edged toward that timeless state common to veteran armies in which the men trusted no one less wretched than themselves. Still they did not hate. But each time they had to bundle up unopened mail for the dead and return it to the rear, their blood rose. An officer noticed that American artillery barrages now elicited raucous cheers. “Lay it on them!” the men yelled. “Give it to the bastards!” And the poignancy of young men dying young intruded every hour of every day. This farewell note was found in a dead pilot’s sunglasses case: Mother, please do not grieve but rather console yourself in the fact that I am happy. Try to enjoy the remainder of your life as best you can and have no regrets, for you have been a wonderful mother and I love you. Jim. It was enough to incite a man to murder.

All the horrors of all the ages were brought together, and not only armies but whole populations were thrust into the midst of them. The mighty educated States involved conceived-not without reason-that their very existence was at stake. Neither peoples nor rulers drew the line at any deed which they thought could help them win. Germany, having let Hell loose, kept well in the van of terror; but she was followed step by step by the desperate and ultimately avenging nations she had assailed. Every outrage against humanity or international law was repaid by reprisals-often of a greater scale and of longer duration. No truce or parley mitigated the strife of the armies. The wounded died between the lines: the dead mouldered into the soil. Merchant ships and neutral ships and hospital ships were sunk on the seas and all on board left to their fate, or killed as they swam. Every effort was made to starve whole nations into submission without regard to age or sex. Cities and monuments were smashed by artillery. Bombs from the air were cast down indiscriminately. Poison gas in many forms stifled or seared the soldiers. Liquid fire was projected upon their bodies. Men fell from the air in flames, or were smothered often slowly in the dark recesses of the sea. The fighting strength of armies was limited only by the manhood of their countries. Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.

Once the mobilization button was pushed, the whole vast machinery for calling up, equipping, and transporting two million men began turning automatically. Reservists went to their designated depots, were issued uniforms, equipment, and arms, formed into companies and companies into battalions, were joined by cavalry, cyclists, artillery, medical units, cook wagons, blacksmith wagons, even postal wagons, moved according to prepared railway timetables to concentration points near the frontier where they would be formed into divisions, divisions into corps, and corps into armies ready to advance and fight. One army corps alone—out of the total of 40 in the German forces—required 170 railway cars for officers, 965 for infantry, 2,960 for cavalry, 1,915 for artillery and supply wagons, 6,010 in all, grouped in 140 trains and an equal number again for their supplies. From the moment the order was given, everything was to move at fixed times according to a schedule precise down to the number of train axles that would pass over a given bridge within a given time.

All I know about the Bible is that wherever it goes there’s trouble. The only time I ever heard of it being useful was when a stretcher bearer I was with at the battle of Dundee told me that he’d once gotten hit by a Mauser bullet in the heart, only he was carrying a Bible in his tunic pocket and the Bible saved his life. He told me that ever since he’d always carried a Bible into battle with him and he felt perfectly safe because God was in his breast pocket. We were out looking for a sergeant of the Worcesters and three troopers who were wounded while out on a reconnaissance and were said to be holed up in a dry donga. In truth I think my partner felt perfectly safe because the Boer Mausers were estimated by the British artillery to be accurate to 800 yards and we were at least 1,200 yards from enemy lines. Alas, nobody bothered to tell the Boers about the shortcomings of their brand new German rifle and a Mauser bullet hit him straight between the eyes.’ He puffed at his pipe. ‘Which goes to prove, you can always depend on British army information not to be accurate, the Boers to be deadly accurate, the Bible to be good for matters of the heart but hopeless for those of the head and, finally, that God is in nobody’s pocket.

Damn it, Sir, I can’t fight a shadow. Without Your cooperation from a weather standpoint, I am deprived of accurate disposition of the German armies and how in the hell can I be intelligent in my attack? All of this probably sounds unreasonable to You, but I have lost all patience with Your chaplains who insist that this is a typical Ardennes winter, and that I must have faith. “Faith and patience be damned! You have just got to make up Your mind whose side You are on. You must come to my assistance, so that I may dispatch the entire German Army as a birthday present to your Prince of Peace. “Sir, I have never been an unreasonable man; I am not going to ask You to do the impossible. I do not even insist upon a miracle, for all I request is four days of clear weather. “Give me four days so that my planes can fly, so that my fighter bombers can bomb and strafe, so that my reconnaissance may pick out targets for my magnificent artillery. Give me four days of sunshine to dry this blasted mud, so that my tanks roll, so that ammunition and rations may be taken to my hungry, ill-equipped infantry. I need these four days to send von Rundstedt and his godless army to their Valhalla. I am sick of this unnecessary butchering of American youth, and in exchange for four days of fighting weather, I will deliver You enough Krauts to keep Your bookkeepers months behind in their work. “Amen.

exchanging practically all the British infantry and artillery in India for Territorial batteries and battalions, and the formation of the 27th, 28th and 29th Divisions of regular troops. The New Zealand contingent must be escorted to Australia and there, with 25,000 Australians, await convoys to Europe. Meanwhile the leading troops of the Canadian Army, about 25,000 strong, had to be brought across the Atlantic. All this was of course additional to the main situation in the North Sea and to the continued flow of drafts, reinforcements and supplies across the Channel. Meanwhile the enemy’s Fleet remained intact, waiting, as we might think, its moment to strike; and his cruisers continued to prey upon the seas. To strengthen our cruiser forces we had already armed and commissioned twenty-four liners as auxiliary cruisers, and had armed defensively fifty-four merchantmen. Another forty suitable vessels were in preparation. In order to lighten the strain in the Indian Ocean and to liberate our light cruisers for their proper work of hunting down the enemy, I proposed the employment of our old battleships (Canopus class) as escorts to convoys. Besides employing these old battleships on convoy, we had also at the end of August sent three others abroad as rallying points for our cruisers in case a German heavy cruiser should break out: thus the Glory was sent to Halifax, the Albion to

On the 22nd of September, Jansi was passed at a considerable distance. This city is the most important military station in the Bundelkund, and the spirit of revolt is strong in the lower classes of its population. The town is comparatively modern, and has a great trade in Indian muslins, and blue cotton cloths. There are no ancient remains in this place, but it is interesting to visit its citadel, whose walls the English artillery and projectiles failed to destroy, also the Necropolis of the rajahs, which is remarkably picturesque.   This was the chief stronghold of the sepoy mutineers in Central India. There the intrepid Rance instigated the first rising, which speedily spread throughout the Bundelkund.   There Sir Hugh Rose maintained an engagement which lasted no less than six days, during which time he lost fifteen percent, of his force.   There, in spite of the obstinate resistance of a garrison of twelve thousand sepoys, and backed by an army of twenty thousand, Tantia Topi, Balao Rao (brother of the Nana), and last not least, the Ranee herself, were compelled to yield to the superiority of British arms.   It was there, at Jansi, that Colonel Munro had saved the life of his sergeant, McNeil, and given up to him his last drop of water. Yes! Jansi of all places must be avoided in a journey where the route was planned and marked out by Sir Edward’s warmest friends!   After passing Jansi, we were detained for several hours by an encounter with travellers of whom Kâlagani had previously spoken.   It

the Cook expedition had another, far less benign result. Cook was not only an experienced seaman and geographer, but also a naval officer. The Royal Society financed a large part of the expedition’s expenses, but the ship itself was provided by the Royal Navy. The navy also seconded eighty-five well-armed sailors and marines, and equipped the ship with artillery, muskets, gunpowder and other weaponry. Much of the information collected by the expedition – particularly the astronomical, geographical, meteorological and anthropological data – was of obvious political and military value. The discovery of an effective treatment for scurvy greatly contributed to British control of the world’s oceans and its ability to send armies to the other side of the world. Cook claimed for Britain many of the islands and lands he ‘discovered’, most notably Australia. The Cook expedition laid the foundation for the British occupation of the south-western Pacific Ocean; for the conquest of Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand; for the settlement of millions of Europeans in the new colonies; and for the extermination of their native cultures and most of their native populations.2 In the century following the Cook expedition, the most fertile lands of Australia and New Zealand were taken from their previous inhabitants by European settlers. The native population dropped by up to 90 per cent and the survivors were subjected to a harsh regime of racial oppression. For the Aborigines of Australia and the Maoris of New Zealand, the Cook expedition was the beginning of a catastrophe from which they have never recovered. An even worse fate befell the natives of Tasmania. Having survived for 10,000 years in splendid isolation, they were completely wiped out, to the last man, woman and child, within a century of Cook’s arrival. European settlers first drove them off the richest parts of the island, and then, coveting even the remaining wilderness, hunted them down and killed them systematically. The few survivors were hounded into an evangelical concentration camp, where well-meaning but not particularly open-minded missionaries tried to indoctrinate them in the ways of the modern world. The Tasmanians were instructed in reading and writing, Christianity and various ‘productive skills’ such as sewing clothes and farming. But they refused to learn. They became ever more melancholic, stopped having children, lost all interest in life, and finally chose the only escape route from the modern world of science and progress – death. Alas,

the military-industrial-scientific complex, because today’s wars are scientific productions. The world’s military forces initiate, fund and steer a large part of humanity’s scientific research and technological development. When World War One bogged down into interminable trench warfare, both sides called in the scientists to break the deadlock and save the nation. The men in white answered the call, and out of the laboratories rolled a constant stream of new wonder-weapons: combat aircraft, poison gas, tanks, submarines and ever more efficient machine guns, artillery pieces, rifles and bombs. 33. German V-2 rocket ready to launch. It didn’t defeat the Allies, but it kept the Germans hoping for a technological miracle until the very last days of the war. {© Ria Novosti/Science Photo Library.} Science played an even larger role in World War Two. By late 1944 Germany was losing the war and defeat was imminent. A year earlier, the Germans’ allies, the Italians, had toppled Mussolini and surrendered to the Allies. But Germany kept fighting on, even though the British, American and Soviet armies were closing in. One reason German soldiers and civilians thought not all was lost was that they believed German scientists were about to turn the tide with so-called miracle weapons such as the V-2 rocket and jet-powered aircraft. While the Germans were working on rockets and jets, the American Manhattan Project successfully developed atomic bombs. By the time the bomb was ready, in early August 1945, Germany had already surrendered, but Japan was fighting on. American forces were poised to invade its home islands. The Japanese vowed to resist the invasion and fight to the death, and there was every reason to believe that it was no idle threat. American generals told President Harry S. Truman that an invasion of Japan would cost the lives of a million American soldiers and would extend the war well into 1946. Truman decided to use the new bomb. Two weeks and two atom bombs later, Japan surrendered unconditionally and the war was over. But science is not just about offensive weapons. It plays a major role in our defences as well. Today many Americans believe that the solution to terrorism is technological rather than political. Just give millions more to the nanotechnology industry, they believe, and the United States could send bionic spy-flies into every Afghan cave, Yemenite redoubt and North African encampment. Once that’s done, Osama Bin Laden’s heirs will not be able to make a cup of coffee without a CIA spy-fly passing this vital information back to headquarters in Langley.

We had also learned many simple things about combat that war games and training can’t teach you, but can only be acquired from experience. We now knew exactly what an artillery shell sounded

Towards the end of the evening, British soldiers had dragged a man to see Tennant, explaining that he was a spy who had tried to smuggle himself into Dunkirk, and should be shot. Tennant was soon clear that the man was exactly who he claimed to be, an RAF officer who had been shot down over German-held territory, had found a bike and had cycled to Dunkirk. On way, he said, he had heard a noise and hidden behind a hedge while the tanks went by. It was then that he realised the panzers were going the wrong way – for some reason, they were driving away from Dunkirk. It was the first indication for Tennant that there might still be a lull in the German advance long enough to collect the bulk of the BEF after all. The problem was that the BEF had not yet reached Dunkirk in force, and it was the other flank protecting their retreat, the one looking east, that was now under threat. The Belgian army was now down to its last auxiliary troops, using First World War artillery from the training college. They told Gort at 10pm that they had agreed to an armistice with Germany, starting in just one hour. It left a 25 kilometre gap that would need to be filled to protect them against the other side of the advancing enemy army.

Forward into Battery!” At Guinea Station, Virginia, tragedy struck Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia in the wake of the spectacular victory at Chancellorsville.

8 “Forward into Battery!” At Guinea Station, Virginia, tragedy struck Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia in the wake of the spectacular victory at Chancellorsville. There, on May 10, the wounded Stonewall Jackson died. For days thereafter Union army telegraphers were busy tapping out the news.1

To Lt. Alonzo H. Cushing and his men, the first sign of Hooker’s intention to abandon the Fredericksburg-Falmouth front came in the form of a telegram received at Second Corps headquarters on June 6, which directed that the soldiers of the corps have three days’ rations in their haversacks, and that all wagons be loaded with stores and the trains put in readiness for any order to move. The order, the telegram stated, “may possibly be given to move early tomorrow.”8

Never had Lon seen such carnage, such suffering. For all his youth and his excitement for war, Lon was glad to see the sun set on September 17, 1862. 6 “The Army Is Extremely Disgusted

Hitler, at the behest of von Rundstedt to reinforce France, sent Rommel to the area to shore up German defenses. Finally, as Hitler anticipated an Allied invasion in 1944, he asked Rommel to inspect the Atlantic Wall, in what Young calls “a fake, a paper hoop for the allies to jump through.”[121]  No wonder Rommel was “appalled” as he moved from Denmark into France to make a report on Germany’s lauded defenses.  Young lists the deficiencies Rommel discovered in his inspection tour: army artillery with no cover, lack of concrete shelters at the strongholds, lack of minefields for defense, and a general lack of coordination between the navy and army defenses.[122] Rommel set to work on addressing the issues, but was not given a position of command until January of 1944, which would prove to be too late to save Germany from the Normandy invasion.

The Wilderness and Spottsylvania battles convinced me that we had more artillery than could ever be brought into action at any one time. It occupied much of the road in marching, and taxed the trains in bringing up forage. Artillery is very useful when it can be brought into action, but it is a very burdensome luxury where it cannot be used. Before leaving Spottsylvania, therefore, I sent back to the defences of Washington over one hundred pieces of artillery, with the horses and caissons. This relieved the roads over which we were to march of more than two hundred six-horse teams, and still left us more artillery than could be advantageously used. In fact, before reaching the James River I again reduced the artillery with the army largely.

Little did the soldiers of the Second Corps know at that time that General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the formidable Confederate army ahead of them, had been wounded and disabled in the day’s action. Temporarily, Maj. Gen. Gustavus W. Smith had assumed command, but within days a new commander would take over the reins of the butternut and gray legions—none other than Gen. Robert E. Lee.53

IN 1943 POLISH SOLDIERS TRAINED AN ADULT brown bear to help them fight Nazis in an old monastery atop a mountain in the Italian Alps. Yes, this is a true story, not the plot of the next Pixar film. The bear doesn’t sing or dance or talk, but it does carry artillery shells, take baths, and smoke cigarettes, even though smoking is really bad for you. Voytek the Soldier Bear’s story starts back during the German blitzkrieg against Poland at the very beginning of the war. As the Nazis were crushing their way through western Poland, the brave Polish defenders suddenly felt the stab of a knife in their back when the forces of the Soviet Union came rolling across Poland’s eastern border, eager to grab land for the USSR while the Polish were preoccupied with getting punched in the head by the German Army. One of the few, outnumbered defenders who stood his ground against the Soviet juggernaut was Captain Wladislaw Anders, a resolute cavalry officer who valiantly launched a charge against Soviet troops but was wounded in battle and taken as a prisoner of war. For over a year he rotted in Lubyanka Prison, one of Stalin’s worst and most inhospitable one-star prison facilities. Then a weird thing happened. On August 14, 1941, the Red Army guards unlocked the prison cell and told Anders he was a free man. The Germans had invaded Russia, and now the Soviets were prepared to offer Anders and 1.5 million other Polish citizens their freedom if they’d help old Uncle Joe Stalin battle those big evil Nazis. Anders cocked an eyebrow. He wasn’t exactly crazy about the idea of trusting his life to the men who had just shot and imprisoned him, but he agreed anyway. He was shipped out by rail and reunited with twenty-five thousand other Polish soldiers who had been similarly released from the Soviet prison system. Anders immediately

To supply Fourth Army's basic needs it was estimated that 31 trains must reach the front every day, bringing the day-to-day supplies as well as massive amounts of ammunition, food, water and trench stores that must be gathered for the main offensive. More than 3,000,000 shells were stockpiled close to the artillery batteries, ready to open the bombardment on 24 June.

Italy also demanded that Britain should fund Italy's part in the war and provide the Italian Army with artillery.

The French Army expended more artillery ammunition in September 1914 than it had done in the whole of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71. Total French production of the 75 mm shell in 1914 amounted to 14,000 shells a day, at a time when one single battery of 75 mm guns could easily shoot off 1,000 shells a day.

The Russian Army had always believed in the power of artillery.

Basically, identifying the location of a target means that you can deliver ordnance on it. Either by yourself, with a rifle, grenade, or heavier weapons like a mortar or Javelin missile, a fireteam can do a lot of damage. For targets beyond the effective range of weapons available to a platoon, you can use the most deadly device ever developed: a radio. One of my instructors told me that four soldiers with rifles are a fireteam, but one soldier with a radio is an army. With a radio, you can call in battalion artillery, or close air support, and rain hellfire down on a target.

was a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment of the French Army.

Croatia, with hundreds of thousands of Serbs within its boundaries, was not ready to accept such an outcome. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman had long dreamed of establishing Croatia as an independent country. But the boundaries of his “country,” drawn originally by Tito to define the republic within Yugoslavia, would contain areas in which Serbs had lived for centuries. In the brief war in Slovenia the Yugoslav Army seemed to be defending the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia; when that same army went to war only a few weeks later against Croatia, it had become a Serb army fighting for the Serbs inside Croatia. The Croatian-Serbian war began with irregulars and local incidents, and escalated rapidly to full-scale fighting. In August 1991, an obscure Yugoslav Army lieutenant colonel named Ratko Mladic joined his regular forces with the local irregulars—groups of young racists and thugs who enjoyed beating up Croats—and launched an attack on Kijevo, an isolated Croat village in the Serb-controlled Krajina. There had been fighting prior to Kijevo, but this action, backed fully by Belgrade, “set the pattern for the rest of the war in Croatia: JNA [Yugoslav] artillery supporting an infantry that was part conscript and part locally-recruited Serb volunteers.”12 Within weeks, fighting had broken out across much of Croatia. The JNA began a vicious artillery assault on Vukovar, an important Croat mining town on the Serbian border. Vukovar and the region around it, known as eastern Slavonia, fell to the Serbs in mid-November, and Zagreb was threatened, sending Croatia into panic. (The peaceful return of eastern Slavonia to Croatia would become one of the central issues in our negotiations in 1995.) After exhausting other options, the European Community asked the former British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington to take on the task of bringing peace to Yugoslavia. Carrington, an urbane man of legendary integrity, told me later that he had never met such terrible liars in his life as the peoples of the Balkans. As the war in Croatia escalated and Vukovar crumbled under Serb shells, Carrington put forward a compromise plan

In the Army of the Potomac were fifty-one brigades of infantry, eight brigades of cavalry, and three hundred and seventy guns of artillery. The artillery appointments were so superior that our officers sometimes felt humiliated when posted to unequal combat with their better metal and munitions. In small-arms also the Union troops had the most improved styles.

The Russian and pro-Russian militants fighting in the Donbas are therefore giving the Ukrainian Army a crash course in real warfare, although the price of error is of course extremely high. For all intents and purposes, these militants are light mechanized infantry. They are armed with conventional and rocket artillery, heavy armor (including tanks), and air defense systems. They wage combined-arms warfare; they launch intelligent offensives and they have a well-organized defense. In other words, they are a real army.

I knew that the first Europeans to arrive in Ethiopia had addressed the monarchs of that country as ‘Prester John.’ This use of the sacred relic as a war palladium – and as an effective one at that – was not, according to Archpriest Solomon [Gabre Selassie, Head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Britain], just something that had happened in Ethiopia’s distant past. On the contrary: ‘As recently as 1896 when the King of Kings Menelik the Second fought against the Italian aggressors at the battle of Adowa in Tigray region, the priests carried the Ark of the Covenant into the field to confront the invaders. As a result of this, Menelik was very victorious and returned to Addis Abada in great honour.’ I re-read this part of the reply with considerable interest because I knew that Menelik II had indeed been ‘very victorious’ in 1896. In that year, under the command of General Baratieri, 17,700 Italian troops equipped with heavy artillery and the latest weapons had marched up into the Abyssinian highlands from the Eritrean coastal strip intent on colonizing the whole country. Menelik’s forces, though ill prepared and less well armed, had met them at Adowa on the morning of 1 March, winning in less than six hours what one historian had subsequently described as ‘the most notable victory of an African over a European army since the time of Hannibal.’ In a similar tone, the London Spectator of 7 March 1896 commented: ‘The Italians have suffered a great disaster… greater than has ever occurred to white men in Africa.

When your army is inferior in numbers, inferior in cavalry and in artillery, a pitched battle should be avoided. The want of numbers must be supplied by rapidness in marching; the want of artillery by the character of the maneuvers; the inferiority in cavalry by the choice of positions. . .

Oman’s book Wellington’s Army is 400 pages in length but just a single page is devoted to the artillery with the opening, ‘only a short note is required as to Wellington’s use of artillery’. Historians ever since

Whether the army was capable of carrying out such an operation was a question never asked. The officer corps had been repeatedly purged, those ousted replaced by some 2,000 Ba’thist-indoctrinated ‘educators.’ “I worked as a teacher in the staff college,” remembered Ibrahim Isma’il Khahya who, in 1966, became commander of the 8th Infantry Brigade. “My officers were mostly teachers, too. They weren’t ready for war.” The head of intelligence for the Golan district, Col. Nash’at Habash, had been kicked out and replaced by a mere captain, brother of a high-ranking Ba’th official. Ahmad Suweidani, the former military attaché in Beijing, had been boosted from colonel to lieutenant general and chief of staff. Though Syria’s 250 tanks and 250 artillery pieces were generally of more recent vintage than Israel’s, their maintenance was minimal. Supply, too, could be erratic; deprived of food, front-line troops had been known to desert their posts. The air force was particularly substandard. An internal army report rated only 45 percent of Syria’s pilots as “good,” 32 percent as “average,”‘ and the remainder “below average.” Only thirty-four of the forty-two jets at the Dmair and Saiqal airfields were operational. Yet, within the ranks, morale had never been higher. Capt. Muhammad ‘Ammar, an infantry officer serving in the fortress of Tel Fakhr, recalled: “We thought we were stronger, that we could cling to our land, and that the Golan was impenetrable. We were especially heartened by the unity between Syria, Egypt, and Jordan.” Another captain, Marwan Hamdan al-Khuli, heard that “we were much stronger and would defeat the enemy easily.

During the nineteenth century, corps commander was the highest level of command to still require skills of an operator for success. A corps commander was still able to see a problem develop and to dispatch soldiers or artillery to solve it on the spot. But at the army level of command the dynamics were for the first time different. The army commander was much more distant from the battle and consequently had no ability to act immediately or to control soldiers he could not see. The distance of the army commander from the action slowed responses to orders and created friction such that the commander was obliged to make decisions before the enemy’s actions were observed. Civil War army commanders were now suddenly required to exhibit a different set of skills. For the first time, they had to think in time and to command the formation by inculcating their intent in the minds of subordinates with whom they could not communicate directly. Very few of the generals were able to make the transition from direct to indirect leadership, particularly in the heat of combat. Most were very talented men who simply were never given the opportunity to learn to lead indirectly. Some, like Generals Meade and Burnside, found themselves forced to make the transition in the midst of battle. General Lee succeeded in part because, as military advisor to Jefferson Davis, he had been able to watch the war firsthand and to form his leadership style before he took command. General Grant was particularly fortunate to have the luck of learning his craft in the Western theater, where the press and the politicians were more distant, and their absence allowed him more time to learn from his mistakes. From the battle of Shiloh to that of Vicksburg, Grant as largely left alone to learn the art of indirect leadership through trial and error and periodic failure without getting fired for his mistakes. The implications of this phase of military history for the future development of close-combat leaders are at once simple, and self-evident. As the battlefield of the future expands and the battle becomes more chaotic and complex, the line that divides the indirect leader from the direct leader will continue to shift lower down the levels of command. The circumstances of future wars will demand that much younger and less experienced officers be able to practice indirect command. The space that held two Civil War armies of 200,000 men in 1863 would have been controlled by fewer than 1,000 in Desert Storm, and it may well be only a company or platoon position occupied by fewer than 100 soldiers in a decade or two. This means younger commanders will have to command soldiers they cannot see and make decisions without the senior leader’s hand directly on their shoulders. Distance between all the elements that provide support, such as fires and logistics, will demand that young commanders develop the skill to anticipate and think in time. Tomorrow’s tacticians will have to think at the operational level of war. They will have to make the transition from “doers” to thinkers, from commanders who react to what they see to leaders who anticipate what they will see. To do all this to the exacting standard imposed by future wars, the new leaders must learn the art of commanding by intent very early in their stewardship. The concept of “intent” forms the very essence of decentralized command.

After the bloodbath of the First World War, army commanders from western democracies were under great pressure at home to reduce their own casualties, so they relied on a massive use of artillery shells and bombs. As a result far more civilians died. White phosphorus especially was a weapon of terrible indiscrimination.

Realizing he wouldn’t get more soldiers, Schoomaker told his subordinates to squeeze more out of what they had. Each of ten regular Army divisions raised a fourth maneuver brigade, adding ten more deployable BCTs to the pool. Divisions shut down long-established but now extraneous headquarters: the division engineer brigade, the division artillery, the division support command, the MI battalion, and the signal battalion. All of their subordinate battalions and companies got divvied up and assigned to the new BCTs. Short-range air-defense battalions converted to cavalry squadrons—every BCT got one, yet another reflection of the critical importance of finding the enemy in this war. Along with the new cavalry squadrons, brigades cut to two infantry or armor battalions, giving up their old third-maneuver battalions to help create the new BCTs. Inside the heavy battalions, the ones with tanks and Bradleys, the model became two tank and two Bradley companies, plus an armored engineer company, a formidable array. The light battalions (airborne, air assault, and light infantry) also kept four companies: three rifle units and a weapons company. Cold War air defense, heavy artillery, chemical defense, and headquarters went away, cashed in to create the new BCTs.

The Germans advanced at breakneck speed into Poland, with their heavy panzers, tanks and artillery. They bombed fiercely and disrupted trains, destroyed roads and bridges. The Poles had no chance against the German war machine. On September 8, the attackers had reached Warsaw. The world learned what Blitzkrieg meant. (lightning-war) Poland was defeated in 18 days. The Soviets streamed in from the East in order to occupy the Eastern half of that trampled country; that occupation started on September 17. The Germans mopped up the remaining army outfits; the Pole's didn't even try to defend themselves against the Russians. It became a fait accompli, Poland was dismembered for the fourth time in its tragic history.

Heavy Equipment Recovery Combat Utility Lift and Evacuation System (HERCULES) (M88A2) Mission Provide towing, winching, and hoisting to support battlefield recovery operations and evacuation of heavy tanks and other tracked combat vehicles. Entered Army Service 1997 Description and Specifications The M88A2 HERCULES is a full-tracked, armoured vehicle that uses the existing M88A1 chassis but significantly improves towing, winching, lifting, and braking characteristics. The HERCULES is the primary recovery support vehicle for the Abrams tank fleet, the heavy Assault Bridge, and heavy self-propelled artillery. Length: 338 in Height: 123 in Width: 144 in Weight: 70 tons Speed: 25 mph w/o load; 17 mph w/load Cruising Range: 200 miles Boom Capacity: 35 tons Winch Capacity: 70 tons/670 ft Draw Bar Pull: 70 tons Armament: One .50-calibre machine gun Power train: 12 cylinder, 1050 HP air-cooled diesel engine with 3-speed automatic transmission Crew: 3 Manufacturer

They’re not shooting at us, they’re not shooting at us,” one infantry commander insisted, even as French artillery plastered his battalion.

And what’s happened to you?” Patton asks the young man. His name is Pvt. Paul Bennett. He has been in the army four years, serving with C Battery of the Seventeenth Field Artillery Regiment. He is just twenty-one years old. Until a friend died in combat, he had never once complained about battle. But he now shakes from convulsions. His red-rimmed eyes brim with tears. “It’s my nerves, sir. I can’t stand the shelling anymore.” “Your nerves, hell. You’re just a goddamned coward.” Bennett begins sobbing. Patton slaps him. “Shut up,” he orders, his voice rising. “I won’t have these brave men here who’ve been shot see a yellow bastard sitting here crying.” Patton hits him again, knocking off Bennett’s helmet, which falls to the dirt floor. “You’re a disgrace to the army and you’re going back to the front to fight,” he screams. “You ought to be lined up against a wall and shot. In fact, I ought to shoot you right now.” Patton

Zelensky wanted—he needed—air defenses. F-16 fighter jets, to maintain air supremacy against the far larger Russian Air Force. A no-fly zone. Tanks. Advanced drones. Most important, long-range missile launchers. There was one in particular that the Pentagon, with its penchant for completely unintelligible acronyms, called the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). Zelensky wanted to arm these launchers with one of the crown jewels of the U.S. Army, a missile known as ATACMS that could strike targets nearly two hundred miles away with precision accuracy. That, of course, would give him the capability to fire right into command-and-control centers deep inside Russian territory—exactly Biden’s worst fear. In time, Zelensky added to his list of requests another weapon that raised enormous moral issues: He sought “cluster munitions,” a weapon many of the arms control advocates in the Biden administration had spent decades trying to limit or ban. Cluster bombs are devastating weapons that release scores of tiny bomblets, ripping apart people and personnel carriers and power lines and often mowing through civilians unlucky enough to be living in the area where they are dropped. Worse yet, unexploded bomblets can remain on the ground for years; from past American battlefields—from Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq—there were stories of children killed or maimed after picking one up years later. Blinken told colleagues he had spent much of his professional life getting weapons like this banned. Yet the Pentagon stored them across Europe because they were cruelly effective in wiping out an advancing army. And anyway, they said, the Russians were using cluster munitions in Ukraine. With each proposal it was Biden who was most reluctant: F-16s were simply too provocative, he told his staff, because they could strike deep into Russia. The cluster munitions were simply too dangerous to civilians. Conversations with Zelensky were heated. “The first few calls they had turned pretty tense,” one senior administration official told me. Part of the issue was style. Zelensky, in Biden’s view, was simply not grateful for the aid he was getting—a cardinal sin in Biden’s world. By mid-May 2022, his administration had poured nearly $4 billion to the Ukrainian defenses, including some fifty million rounds of small ammunition, tens of thousands of artillery rounds, major antiaircraft and anti-tank systems, intelligence, medical equipment, and more. Zelensky had offered at best perfunctory thanks before pushing for more.

Specific details of the 2014 assault underline this point: over a period of fifty-one days in July and August of 2014, Israel’s air force launched more than 6,000 air attacks, while its army and navy fired about 50,000 artillery and tank shells. Together, they utilized what has been estimated as a total of 21 kilotons (21,000 tons, or 42 million pounds) of high explosives. The air assault involved weapons ranging from armed drones and American Apache helicopters firing US-made Hellfire missiles to American F-16 and F-15 fighter-bombers carrying 2,000-pound bombs.

The loss of Mecca threatened Sultan Mahmud II’s authority and finances, and in 1811 he ordered the Ottoman Governor of Egypt, Mohammed Ali Pasha, to expel the Wahhabis. Mohammed Ali Pasha and his son, Ibrahim Pasha, campaigned for seven years to destroy the First Saudi State. When Imam Saud al-Saud died in 1814, his son, Imam Abdullah, withdrew to the Nejd pursued by Ibrahim Pasha and an army of 5,000 infantry, 2,000 cavalry, and 150 artillerymen with howitzers, mortars, and cannon.14 This largely Egyptian army besieged the then Saudi capital of Dir’iyyah, where the vastly outnumbered and outgunned Wahhabis, who had no artillery, held out for six months before surrendering on September 11, 1818.

To get leather, each department procured its quota of hides, made contracts with the tanners, obtained hands for them by exemptions from the army, got transportation over the railroads for the hides and for supplies. To the varied functions of this bureau was finally added that of assisting the tanners to procure the necessary supplies for the tanneries. A fishery, even, was established on Cape Fear River to get oil for mechanical purposes, and at the same time food for the workmen. In cavalry equipments the main thing was to get a good saddle which would not hurt the back of the horse. For this purpose various patterns were tried, and reasonable success was obtained. One of the most difficult wants to supply in this branch of the service was the horseshoe for cavalry and artillery. The want of iron and of skilled labor was strongly felt. Every wayside blacksmith-shop accessible, especially those in and near the theatre of operations, was employed. These, again, had to be supplied with material, and the employees exempted from service.

On September 1, 1969, for example, members of the 196th Infantry Brigade in Quang Tin Province spotted a group of Vietnamese. Officers and sergeants, peering through binoculars, conferred about the situation. After about ten minutes of observation the senior officer, Captain David Janca, ordered his machine gunners to open fire and called in an artillery fire mission. A small patrol was then dispatched to the kill zone. “Upon arrival,” assistant machine gunner Robert Gray said later, “we found dead and wounded Vietnamese children.”28 Patrol member Welkie Louie described the scene: “I observed about four to six Vietnamese children lying in one pile, dead. About five meters from this position were two or three wounded Vietnamese children huddled together.”29 Afterward, artillery forward observer Robert Wolz told army investigators that he saw an official document in which “the dead were listed as VC.”30 Another report even referred to them as “NVA”—that is, North Vietnamese army troops.31 In death, this small group of children had morphed into guerrillas and then into uniformed enemy soldiers as the body count wound its way through the military’s statistics generation machine.

Close studies reveal that the debacle of 1962 didn't occur for want of men and equipment., for there was enough of both, but it was rather spread out all over India. It may not have been available at a particular place, because we had to face the situation rather suddenly and we didn't have time. General Thimayya, then COAS, wrote an article in July 1962 that as a soldier, he couldn't envisage India taking on China in an open conflict on its own because China's military strength, with the full support of the USSR, exceeded India's military resourced a hundredfold. The only way to counter Chinese aggression on the border, according to him, was to attack the enemy in the Himalayan passes, which were practically impossible to cross for six months of the year. Here, the Indian Army could make full use of its manpower and light equipment against a Chinese force deprived of the use of its heavy equipment including tanks and heavy-calibre artillery. In case the Chinese got through to the plains and foothills, guerrilla tactics would have to be used to harass their lines of communication. The Indian Army's superior firepower and manoeuvrability would then have to be brought into play to defeat the enemy forces. As Air Chief Marshal Arjan Singh later pointed out, there was insufficient appreciation of the problems of operating aircraft from high altitude airfields. If those problems had been thought through, there wouldn't have been as much reluctance to use Indian air power in support of our operations in 1962 as there actually was.

Warfare has changed, no doubt. The king and queen of battle are no longer the artillery and infantry. Now surprise is king, and speed is queen.

You were working for Army Artillery." "These were our own aircraft, coming from Ault. Why would I report them?" "What did they look like?" It was Woods who asked that question. I looked directly into those flat, gray eyes. "Mr. Woods." My pretense of a fragile feminine voice evaporated as I spoke with confidence and a touch of temper. "It was a world war. We still have enemies. If I had seen experimental American planes, I certainly wouldn't describe them to two perfect strangers who showed up at my door and asked me a lot of odd questions." Woods blinked but gave no other sign that he had taken in my insult. Harrison cleared his throat and fiddled with his notebook, but he didn't seem to know what to say next.

Though the Russians technically won, the world watched as the Red Army suffered losses in the snowy woods at the hands of a few proud Finns on skis, their artillery pulled by reindeer.

Of course, had the British Army been used in a more all-out fashion, concentration camps, air raids, artillery bombardments and the rest of it, the result might have been different.

As the battle began Ivo Taillefer, the minstrel knight who had claimed the right to make the first attack, advanced up the hill on horseback, throwing his lance and sword into the air and catching them before the English army. He then charged deep into the English ranks, and was slain. The cavalry charges of William’s mail-clad knights, cumbersome in manœuvre, beat in vain upon the dense, ordered masses of the English. Neither the arrow hail nor the assaults of the horsemen could prevail against them. William’s left wing of cavalry was thrown into disorder, and retreated rapidly down the hill. On this the troops on Harold’s right, who were mainly the local “fyrd”, broke their ranks in eager pursuit. William, in the centre, turned his disciplined squadrons upon them and cut them to pieces. The Normans then re-formed their ranks and began a second series of charges upon the English masses, subjecting them in the intervals to severe archery. It has often been remarked that this part of the action resembles the afternoon at Waterloo, when Ney’s cavalry exhausted themselves upon the British squares, torn by artillery in the intervals. In both cases the tortured infantry stood unbroken. Never, it was said, had the Norman knights met foot-soldiers of this stubbornness. They were utterly unable to break through the shield-walls, and they suffered serious losses from deft blows of the axe-men, or from javelins, or clubs hurled from the ranks behind. But the arrow showers took a cruel toll. So closely, it was said, were the English wedged that the wounded could not be removed, and the dead scarcely found room in which to sink upon the ground. The autumn afternoon was far spent before any result had been achieved, and it was then that William adopted the time-honoured ruse of a feigned retreat. He had seen how readily Harold’s right had quitted their positions in pursuit after the first repulse of the Normans. He now organised a sham retreat in apparent disorder, while keeping a powerful force in his own hands. The house-carls around Harold preserved their discipline and kept their ranks, but the sense of relief to the less trained forces after these hours of combat was such that seeing their enemy in flight proved irresistible. They surged forward on the impulse of victory, and when half-way down the hill were savagely slaughtered by William’s horsemen. There remained, as the dusk grew, only the valiant bodyguard who fought round the King and his standard. His brothers, Gyrth and Leofwine, had already been killed. William now directed his archers to shoot high into the air, so that the arrows would fall behind the shield-wall, and one of these pierced Harold in the right eye, inflicting a mortal wound. He fell at the foot of the royal standard, unconquerable except by death, which does not count in honour. The hard-fought battle was now decided. The last formed body of troops was broken, though by no means overwhelmed. They withdrew into the woods behind, and William, who had fought in the foremost ranks and had three horses killed under him, could claim the victory. Nevertheless the pursuit was heavily checked. There is a sudden deep ditch on the reverse slope of the hill of Hastings, into which large numbers of Norman horsemen fell, and in which they were butchered by the infuriated English lurking in the wood. The dead king’s naked body, wrapped only in a robe of purple, was hidden among the rocks of the bay. His mother in vain offered the weight of the body in gold for permission to bury him in holy ground. The Norman Duke’s answer was that Harold would be more fittingly laid upon the Saxon shore which he had given his life to defend. The body was later transferred to Waltham Abbey, which he had founded. Although here the English once again accepted conquest and bowed in a new destiny, yet ever must the name of Harold be honoured in the Island for which he and his famous house-carls fought indomitably to the end.

By March 1916, the various armies of Europe had devised a simple rote method for attacking their entrenched foes: a sustained artillery bombardment of the enemy’s forward defenses, one that might last a few hours or several days depending on the scale of the planned assault, followed by an infantry rush across no-man’s-land. The problems with these tactics were manifest at every step. Most such bombardments caused relatively few casualties, since the defenders simply retreated to back trenches—or, in the more sophisticated trenchworks of the Western Front, into heavily protected underground bunkers—to await their conclusion. Naturally, these preliminary barrages also alerted the defenders both that an assault was coming and its precise location.

But in essence they had both remained in the era of the Wars of Succession, she with artillery in her head, he with genealogical trees; she who dreamed for us children a rank in an army, it didn't matter which, he who saw us instead married to some grand duchess elector of the empire . . . Despite all this, they were excellent parents, but so distracted that the two of us were left to grow up almost on our own.

What had happened at My Lai may have shocked the American public. But it was not news to the Army. Hugh Thompson, the helicopter pilot who had tried to stop the massacre, reported what he had seen. So did at least five other pilots. The word went steadily up the chain of command—all the way to the division commander, Major General Samuel W. Koster. No one took any action. Instead, the brigade log was falsified to say that 128 Viet Cong had been killed by U.S. artillery. The slaughter was covered up. The Army Public Information Office released a widely disseminated story that described an operation that “went like clockwork” in which the “jungle warriors” of the Eleventh Brigade had killed 128 Viet Cong in a running “day-long battle,” chalking up the largest body count in the brigade’s history. On the strength of reports like these, General Westmoreland had sent his official congratulations.

He holds in the clutch and gives the bike some gas, the ThunderHead pipes making plenty of noise as lightning flashes in the distance and a dark army of retweeting clouds wastes its artillery over the sea.

The most important training involved the latest American breakthrough in communications technology: a handheld, portable, two-way radio transceiver that made ground-to-air communications possible for the first time. A predecessor of the mobile telephone, the equipment had been designed at the RCA electronics laboratories in New York before being refined and developed for the OSS by De Witt R. Goddard and Lieutenant Commander Stephen H. Simpson. The device would eventually become known as a “walkie-talkie,” but at the time of its invention this pioneering gizmo went by a more cumbersome and quaint title: the “Joan-Eleanor system.” “Joan” was the name for the handheld transmitter carried by the agent in the field, six inches long and weighing three pounds, with a collapsible antenna; “Eleanor” referred to the larger airborne transceiver carried on an aircraft flying overhead at a prearranged time. Goddard’s wife was named Eleanor, and Joan, a major in the Women’s Army Corps, was Simpson’s girlfriend. The Joan-Eleanor (J-E) system operated at frequencies above 250 MHz, far higher than the Germans could monitor. This prototype VHF (very high frequency) radio enabled the users to communicate for up to twenty minutes in plain speech, cutting out the need for Morse code, encryption, and the sort of complex radio training Ursula had undergone. The words of the spy on the ground were picked up and taped on a wire recorder by an operator housed in a special oxygen-fed compartment in the fuselage of an adapted high-speed de Havilland Mosquito bomber flying at over twenty-five thousand feet, outside the range of German anti-aircraft artillery. An intelligence officer aboard the circling aircraft could communicate directly with the agent below. As a system of communication from behind enemy lines, the J-E was unprecedented, undetectable by the enemy, easy to use, and so secret that it would not be declassified until 1976.

Prayer to the saints is as the great artillery to an army—of great use to defend them, and of as great force to do execution upon their enemies; it therefore needs the stronger guard to be set about it, lest it be taken from them, or turned against them by the enemy.

At the age of twenty-one, as a second lieutenant just out of St. Cyr, Gallieni had fought at Sedan and been held prisoner for some time in Germany, where he learned the language. He chose to make his further military career in the colonies where France was "growing soldiers." Although the Staff College clique professed to regard colonial service as "le tourisme," Gallieni's fame as the conqueror of Madagascar brought him, like Lyautey of Morocco, to the top rank of the French Army. He kept a notebook in German, English, and Italian called Erinnerungen of my life di ragazzo, and never ceased studying, whether it was Russian or the development of heavy artillery or the comparative administrations of the colonial powers. He wore a pince-nez and a heavy gray mustache that was rather at odds with his elegant, autocratic figure. He carried himself like an officer on parade. Tall and spare, with a distant, untouchable, faintly stern air, he resembled no other French officer of his time. Poincare described the impression he made: "straight, slender and upright with head erect and piercing eyes behind his glasses, he appeared to us as an imposing example of powerful humanity.

I have described the total and terrifying dependence of the modern combat soldier on the competence and trustworthiness of others in the army. This all-inclusive dependence not only means relying on the army to provide ammunition, intelligence, food, water, and medical evacuation, but also relying on your own not to kill you with weapons intended for the enemy. The soldier's vulnerability is never more dramatically apparent than when artillery, bombs, or napalm intended to support troops in a fight with the enemy kill the very men they are meant to protect.

Additionally, visitors can learn some interesting lessons in military logistics since a section of George Spangler’s acreage behind the hospital site served as a camp for some of the Army of the Potomac’s Reserve Artillery.8

He nodded. “I know. Many, many Leningraders sent their boys there yesterday.” His face was blank. “Alexander, the Germans are down in Crimea,” said Tatiana. “Comrade Molotov said so himself. Didn’t you hear his speech?” “Yes, they are in Crimea. But we have a border with Europe that’s two thousand kilometers long. Hitler’s army is on every meter of that border, Tania, south from Bulgaria north to Poland.” He paused. She didn’t say anything. “For right now, Leningrad is the safest place for Pasha. Really.” Tatiana was skeptical. “Why are you so sure?” She became animated. “Why does the radio keep talking about the Red Army being the strongest army in the world? We have tanks, we have planes, we have artillery, we have guns. The radio is not saying what you’re saying, Alexander.” She spoke those words almost as a rebuke. He shook his head. “Tania, Tania, Tania.” “What, what, what?” she said, and saw that Alexander, despite his serious face, nearly laughed. That made her nearly laugh herself, despite her own serious face. “Tania, Leningrad has lived for so many years with a hostile border with Finland only twenty kilometers to the north that we forgot to arm the south. And that’s where the danger is.” “If that’s where the danger is, then how come you’re sending Dimitri up to Finland where, as you suggest, all is quiet?” Alexander was silent. “Reconnaissance,” he said at last. Tatiana felt he left something unsaid. “My point is,” he went on, “all of our precautionary defenses are focused in the north. But south and southwest, Leningrad does not have a single division, a single regiment, not one military unit deployed. Do you understand what I’m telling you?” “No,” she said, a little defiantly. “Talk to your father about Pasha,” he repeated.

Critics forget that Lee’s army proved twice, first with Wright’s Brigade on July 2 and then with Armistead on July 3, that it was possible to reach that position. But he knew after July 2 that to maintain a foothold on Cemetery Ridge and force the Yankees to run would require more artillery and infantry coordination than existed on the second day. In hindsight, Lee’s army proved incapable of achieving such coordination on any of the three days at Gettysburg.