As Germany crumbled in fire and rubble in the final months of World War II, Adolf Hitler issued orders for four famous Germans to be held hostage—not living Germans, but dead ones. All of them had died before the war had even started; two, in fact, had died in the 1700s. 

The unlikely quartet of corpses consisted of two Prussian warrior kings—Frederick William I and Frederick the Great—plus the late German Weimar Republic President Paul von Hindenburg and his unassuming wife Gertrud. The bodies would be hauled cross country, transported by sea, dragged up mountains, carted through forests and eventually entrenched in darkness, where bewildered American soldiers accidentally stumbled upon them in April 1945.

Yet the story of the kidnapped corpses did not end there. The U.S. Army would soon discover that the dead could be just as troublesome as the living. 

Kidnapping Hindenburg

In view of Germany’s catastrophic military situation, most logical people would not have seen much point in the Third Reich’s focus on famous corpses. Yet Nazi officials placed uncanny emphasis on the dead. Deaths, funerals and memorial events were used for propaganda from the earliest days of the Nazi regime. The Nazis showed a total lack of respect for dead individuals as well as a perverse interest in human remains. Bodies of famous historical figures were frequently dug up, analyzed, poked at, made into centerpieces for speeches and heaped with swastika wreaths. One of the chief tomb violators was Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, whose minions became expert grave robbers in pursuit of famous bones and artifacts. Hitler and Goebbels became masters of funeral ceremonies, creating spectacles for dead compatriots that were less memorial services than political rallies.

Two famous Germans treated to funerary theatrics were the Hindenburgs. Mustachioed Prussian Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg went down in history as the lackluster second President of the Weimar Republic who appointed Hitler as Germany’s Chancellor and opened the door to one of the darkest chapters in world history. Little could he have known that the “Bohemian corporal” he infamously shook hands with would someday uproot his remains—and those of his late wife, Gertrud, who lay buried at the family estate.

When Hindenburg died, Hitler decided that the old man needed to go out in style—preferably with a boom of propaganda to impress the living. Therefore the deceased Field Marshal—along with Frau Hindenburg, unceremoniously dug up to come along for the ride—was hauled to the Tannenberg Memorial, a gargantuan stone temple in the plains of East Prussia partially designed to commemorate a 1914 battle and mostly designed to make Germans forget that the Teutonic knights had lost the first Battle of Tannenberg centuries earlier in 1410.

The memorial sported no less than eight towers and enough space in the middle for a large crowd and probably several orchestras. In 1934, during a long and elaborate ceremony in which the memorial brimmed with wreaths and glittering uniforms enough to make one’s eyes water, the Hindenburg couple were buried in their very own tower. It was complete with a statue of Hindenburg himself, who had expressly wished to be buried with his wife at home. For the pair to end up entombed in the wilderness of East Prussia was similar to being buried at a frontier outpost like Fort Apache.

The Hindenburgs weren’t the only dignitaries whose last wishes would be ignored. Destined to accompany them in a posthumous adventure were two famous kings of Prussia’s Hohenzollern dynasty—Frederick William I and his son Frederick II, known as Frederick the Great. Both kings had attained fame for extraordinary military achievements. Neither king had intended to keep traveling after death. Frederick the Great left instructions in 1769: “Bury me in Sans Souci [Potsdam]…in a tomb which I have had prepared for myself…” Yet the two royals were not destined to rest in peace.

A Salt Mine…and Red Crayon

As the Allies closed in across Germany in 1945, all four bodies ended up taking a wild ride to avoid being captured by combatants in a conflict they had taken no part in during their lifetimes. On Hitler’s orders, both Hindenburgs were pried out of the tower at the Tannenberg Memorial and shoved onto a ship; it was assumed that the Russians wouldn’t react well upon finding the memorial and realizing the fiercely anti-Russian Field Marshal was stuffed into its walls.

The cruiser Emden hauled the Hindenburg coffins to Berlin, where they were joined by the coffins of the royal Fredericks Senior and Junior. From there, the coffins were packed off cross-country to the rugged mountainous region of Thuringia, where they were intended to remain hidden underground until the time was appropriate for an underground Nazi resistance movement to bring them to the surface.

On April 27, 1945, men of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps shuffled wearily through the formidable Thuringian Forest and set to work clearing out a wickedly deep salt mine near the town of Bernterode. Navigating a network of tunnels stretching on for about 14 miles, they came across not only hidden ammunition reserves but a passageway sealed with rubble. Digging through six feet of debris, they found a secret chamber containing tapestries and valuable paintings. They also discovered four giant coffins staring back at them.

The soldiers were baffled. Thankfully the Germans had seen fit to label the coffins by writing the names of the dead on them in red crayon.

A Delicate Problem

Moving the coffins proved a hellish task. European dignitaries were often buried in sarcophagi forged of metal alloys. This process would seal the body in an airtight vacuum and prevent rapid decomposition, instead prompting a process of natural mummification. Such sarcophagi weren’t intended to be mobile—in fact they were, quite reasonably, built to stay in one place. It took the Americans an hour to get Frederick the Great’s casket, which weighed no less than 1,200 pounds, into an elevator for removal.

The U.S. Army trucked the bodies to a castle at Marburg, where the dead dignitaries were kept under guard in a cellar and stared at by wary soldiers for a year until the U.S. State Department, who classified the corpses as “political personages,” arrived at a decision about what to do with them. Lt. Gen. Lucius Clay, deputy U.S. governor in occupied Germany, was told to bury the dead in a dignified manner and delegated the task to Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Section Unit (MFAA), also known as the Monuments Men.

It turned out to be what the Monuments Men considered one of their strangest duties. They found that entombing the dead German dignitaries was almost as complicated as trying to make hotel arrangements for them. To bury these characters required navigating European history, international diplomacy and the wishes of next of kin—who were awkward political personages themselves.

No Room For Dead Militarists

The first version of the plan entailed that the Americans would take the two King Fredericks and their British cousins would relieve them of the Hindenburgs. A little bit of research would be required to decide appropriate locations—which would not become rally spots for any stray Nazis. After the logistics were settled, local German authorities were supposed to do the actual burying. The burials had to be kept secret.

Things went downhill quickly. The British were shocked to learn of the corpse problem and were “quite distressed” by the idea of having to put on a funeral for the infamously warlike Paul von Hindenburg, according to a 1950 article in Life magazine. After consultations in London, the British made it clear that Mr. and Mrs. von Hindenburg were not welcome to even set one skeletal foot in their zone, much less be buried in it. The U.S. Army scouted around for suitable old family castles to bury the two Prussian King Fredericks but inevitably found the properties in the possession of the French. The French, understandably, had no desire to do any favors for the two Hohenzollern kings.

Fourteen months later, the hapless Americans were still the unwilling guardians of four famous dead Germans and hoped to bury them like any other dead people. Debates were held about whether to bury the lot together or separate them. Many churches had been bombed so available real estate for private funeral services was scarce. Castles bustled with billeted troops and jazz orchestras.

The Americans eventually agreed not to split the lot but instead to bury the bunch together in St. Elizabeth’s church in Marburg, an ancient local church down the road from where the bodies were already being kept in a cellar. Before the burials took place, the Monuments Men decided to share the news with living relatives and ask for their approval as a kind gesture.

A Wedding or a Funeral?

The Americans had no trouble contacting the son of the Hindenburg couple, Maj. Gen. Oskar von Hindenburg, but matters got complicated when the proud Prussian signed his military title on a hotel registry and, to his great indignation, was promptly arrested. The Monuments Men secured his release. Unsurprisingly, he was fully supportive of his parents being given a normal funeral after the posthumous misadventures they had endured.  

Things got off to an awkward start with Crown Prince Wilhelm, the son of Kaiser Wilhelm II who had become infamous during the First World War. The Crown Prince, then age 64, was the head of the Hohenzollern family and thus the closest relative of the two King Fredericks. He found himself in the French zone, where the French guarded him peevishly and wouldn’t let him leave their sight. To clear the matter up while maintaining official secrecy, the Monuments Men sent the prince a message telling him that an American officer would come visit to discuss an important family matter, accompanied by the prince’s youngest daughter, Cecilia.

The Crown Prince assumed that the private family matter was something rather intimate when he saw Cecilia appear with U.S. Army Capt. Everett Parker Lesley Jr., known as Bill, of the Monuments Men. When Lesley broached the topic of holding the ceremony in a church, the suspicious father refused to give his permission.

“We are acting under orders from the Secretary of War!” rejoined Lesley. “What on earth has the Secretary of War to do with you marrying Cecilia?” demanded the prince. Lesley, astounded, explained he wasn’t there for marriage but for a funeral. The stern prince was overcome by laughter.

The Last Stop

After some problems digging in the church to clear room for the coffins, and some wandering tomb lids that almost got shipped to the Russian zone, the top-secret funerals were ready to happen. The Monuments Men expected it all to go quietly with nobody the wiser. Family members would attend but nobody else was supposed to know. However, on the day of the private burial ceremony, the Americans were mildly horrified to find about 500 Germans gathered around the church to watch.

The unlikely quartet of German dignitaries were buried together in Marburg, where they remained unobtrusively until the Hohenzollern family plucked their two King Fredericks out in 1952 and hustled them into a family castle. In August 1991, the two kings’ bodies were carted out again—this time they came full circle, returning to the starting point of their adventure at their original resting place in Potsdam. Their (hopefully) final reburial took place with a lavish televised ceremony following German Reunification.

The Hindenburgs remain in Marburg in a dignified but inconspicuous place, as the Monuments Men intended. Locals find the presence of Paul von Hindenburg a little bit awkward—even if the church pastor has expressed sympathy for the deceased’s overlooked wife.  

But, like them or not, nobody can think of a better solution than the Americans did in 1946. Local mayor Thomas Spies told Hessenschau news: “From the city’s viewpoint, there is no reason why Hindenburg should rest here, but of course the man has to be buried someplace.” 

The two frogmen slipped into the dark cold waters of the English Channel and started swimming towards the shore. The sea was lumpy and the pair could feel the current pulling them further east than they wished. The rain was torrential and all they could see was the lighthouse beam as they swam hard for land. They came ashore opposite the village of La Rivière, staggering up the beach at a crouch, relieved that they were screened from the lighthouse’s beam by buildings and trees.

For a few moments Maj. Logan Scott-Bowden and Sgt. Bruce Ogden-Smith recovered their breath in the lee of some groynes. From the buildings above them they could hear revelry. It was the last day of 1943 and the Germans were seeing in the New Year with plenty of beer and song. 

The two Englishmen set off down the beach, heading west for nearly a mile towards the original landing spot. The intelligence briefing had stated the beach was not mined. On this stretch of the Normandy coast the strong tides and shifting sand meant they would not stay in position. The rain was now nearly horizontal, a filthy night but a perfect one for their task.

Checking his map, Scott-Bowden announced that they had reached their place of work. They were to take samples of sand from the beach in an area designated in the shape of the letter ‘W’. The sand was collected by an auger, which, when inserted into the sand and given one half turn, dredged up a core sample. These were collected in twenty 10-inch tubes held in a bandolier worn by one of the men.

Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden worked swiftly, moving up and down the beach, taking samples but glancing now and again east to check that no Germans were clearing their groggy heads with a stroll down the beach. With their samples stashed in the bandolier, the pair left the beach and began wading through the breakers. But the wind had picked up and they were flung back into the sea. They tried again but without success. Apprehension began to rise. If they were caught on the beach with their bandolier the game would be up?

A Secretive Special Forces Unit

This was one of the most crucial moments of the war.  Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden ran up the beach. With the lighthouse beam to help them, they worked out the wave pattern. On the third attempt they made it through the surf and swam furiously towards the recovery boat. Suddenly Scott-Bowden heard a cry through the wind. Turning, he saw Ogden-Smith waving an arm. “I swam back somewhat alarmed, thinking he had either got cramp or his suit had sprung a leak,” recalled Scott-Bowden. “When I got close, he shouted ‘Happy New Year!’”

Bruce Ogden-Smith and Logan Scott-Bowden belonged to one of the most secretive special forces units in the British army. To those who served it was known by its acronym, COPP, short for Combined Operations Pilotage Parties. 

COPP was the brainchild of Lieutenant-Commander Nigel Clogstoun-Willmott, who had joined the Royal Navy between the wars, partly inspired by tales he’d heard as a young boy from his uncle Henry. He’d served in the First World War and had taken part in the disastrous Dardanelles campaign of 1915, when the Allies had attempted to knock Turkey out of the war by landing on the Gallipoli peninsula. It had been a bloody failure. Thousands of British, Australian and New Zealand troops were slaughtered attempting to establish a beachhead on clifftop ridges well-fortified by Turkish soldiers. Had the British planners been better briefed about the peninsula they might not have risked such an audacious amphibious assault. To Willmott’s dismay, the British military appeared not to have learned their lesson when the Second World War started. The Norwegian campaign in 1940, in which Willmott participated, was hampered by the Royal Navy’s ignorance of the fjords as they attempted to land British troops. 

Beach Surveillance

In early 1941 Willmott was appointed navigation officer for a planned invasion of Rhodes, a strategically important island in the Mediterranean Sea. There was scant intelligence on the approach to the beaches or shoreline itself. Might there be sandbars or rocks just under the water? Were the beaches mined? Were they suitable for vehicles? Were there accessible exit points so soldiers could quickly move inland? Answers to these questions had to be found. 

Willmott requested permission from Rear Adm. Harold Tom Baillie-Grohman, in charge of overall responsibility for planning the assault, to carry out a reconnaissance from a dinghy. It was a time in the war when the British, fighting a lone battle against the Axis forces, were at their most inventive out of necessity.

Small raiding units, dubbed ‘private armies’ were being formed with the encouragement of Prime Minister Winston Churchill: the commandos, the Long Range Desert Group and the Special Boat Section [SBS], the latter commanded by Maj. Roger Courtney, an adventurer before the war who had canoed the length of the White Nile in Africa. Courtney was only too happy to paddle Willmott ashore. Their reconnaissance proved invaluable, revealing perilous aspects of the shoreline that would have hampered any amphibious assault. 

Private Armies?

Not all British senior officers approved of ‘private armies.’ Some regarded these units as unbecoming of the British military and it was another 18 months before Willmott was authorized to raise a naval reconnaissance force. It took the shambles of the Dieppe Raid in August 1942 to convince the British that better reconnaissance was imperative for future operations. Intelligence about the Dieppe coastline had been so poor that the British planners were reduced to studying prewar postcards of the coastline for clues about its topography. Three thousand Canadians and British commandos were killed or captured because of this ignorance, plus three killed in action, five wounded and three POWs of the 50 U.S. Army Rangers that took part while assigned to a commando unit.

Willmott’s unit gathered intelligence for Operation Torch, the Anglo-American invasion of Vichy-controlled French North Africa in November 1942. As a consequence, the following month the force was expanded and officially designated COPP. 

Scott-Bowden was recruited to COPP as Willmott’s second-in-command in May 1943, a few months before Sub-Lt. Jim Booth. Scott-Bowden was a soldier but Booth volunteered from the Royal Navy, where he’d tired of life as a junior officer mine-sweeping in the North Sea. “I’d heard nothing of COPP prior to my arrival,” recalled Booth in a 2017 interview with the author. “But it was soon apparent that I was among a different breed. They were mad, really, but in a nice way. I think for most of us the motivation for volunteering was to do something different.”

New recruits to COPP underwent training at Hayling Island, off the south coast of England near Portsmouth. Willmot was ruthless in weeding out those men he judged to be deficient physically or mentally for his unit. “He was very nice but bloody tough,” said Booth. “During the autumn and winter of 1943, he led us in training every day. He was methodical in our navigational training because he knew the problems caused by poor navigation.” While Booth completed his training, Willmot and Scott-Bowden were told to report to Combined Operations HQ in London in December 1943. 

Invading France

The planning for the invasion of France was underway. A 50-mile stretch of Normandy coast had been identified as a potential beachhead. But there were concerns. “Scientists had anxieties about the beach bearing-capacity of the Plateau de Calvados beaches for the passage of heavy-wheeled vehicles and guns, particularly in the British and Canadian sectors,” said Scott-Bowden. In ancient times there been peat marshes close to the sea. These had been covered with sand over the centuries, but the Allies feared that peat was often accompanied by clay, which could be catastrophic for a large invasion force. 

The Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington wanted a conclusive estimate of how much beach trackway would be required for the invasion force. Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden undertook a trial run on Dec. 22, 1943 on a beach in Norfolk, eastern England. It was an opportunity to gain valuable practical experience of using the auger to collect samples. It was also a chance for COPP to prove to sceptical Allied planners that they could do their work undetected by sentries. Having proved their point, the pair sailed to Normandy on New Year’s Eve and the real thing was as fruitful as the dress rehearsal.

“[Lt.] General [Omar N.] Bradley commander in chief of all the American [D-Day assault] forces… having heard that we had examined the British beach [Gold] wanted Omaha Beach—as it came to be known—to be examined too,” remembered Scott-Bowden.

Omaha Beach

Omaha Beach was five miles west of ‘Gold’ beach. Bradley and his planners already knew it posed a formidable challenge to a putative invasion force. The beach was exposed, rising gently to a low sea wall, beyond which was a no-man’s land of marshy grassland. It was overlooked by bluffs, steep in places, which were cut by five valleys, the only exit points for vehicles and all heavily guarded by German concrete bunkers. COPP was instructed to bring back as much intelligence as they could about ‘Omaha’ beach in an operation codenamed Postage Able. Ogden-Smith and Scott-Bowden were again part of the team, accompanied by Willmot. 

However, there was a significant difference to this mission compared to the one undertaken on New Year’s Eve. This time the audacious men would be traveling in an X-craft—a midget submarine that COPP had been conducting training on for several weeks in Loch Striven, a sea loch off the west coast of Scotland.

The X-class, or X-craft submarines were powered by 4-cylinder 42 hp diesel engines of the type used in London double-decker buses, and a 30 hp electric motor. Its maximum surface speed was 6.5 knots (a knot less when submerged). The midget submarines were usually crewed by three: the commander, pilot and engineer. Some also carried a specialist diver/frogman as a fourth member of the crew. “The X-craft were 52 feet long and 5 feet in diameter,” Jim Booth recalled, adding that they could remain at sea for to 10 days. The worst aspect of the midget submarines, certainly for the six-foot Booth, was their size. “The facilities were very cramped,” he remembered. “You had a bunk, cooking facilities, a gluepot for a hot meal, and you could just about stand.”

COPP had two midget submarines—X-20 and X-23—and it was the former that sailed from Portsmouth for Omaha beach on Jan. 17, 1944 under the command of Lt. Ken Hudspeth. It was a joint effort, his pilotage skills and the navigation of Willmot. “To reach the destination precisely, at [low] speed and in the strong cross-rides of Baie de Seine, was a measure of Willmott’s remarkable navigational skill,” commented Hudspeth.

At 2:44 p.m. on Jan. 18, the midget submarine was about 380 yards from the beach. It was nearly high tide. The vessel beached at periscope depth in 8 feet of water on the left-hand sector of ‘Omaha’ beach. Willmott took a couple of bearings to be sure of their position, then turned over the periscope to Scott-Bowden. “I took a quick general view and was astonished to see hundreds of [German] soldiers at work, and how hard they were working,” he recalled. “From our low-level view and pointing slightly up due to the slope of the beach, it was often possible to see under the camouflage netting and so verify the types of [gun] emplacement being constructed.”

Inside the Submersible

That night, Scott-Bowden and Ogden-Smith swam ashore to get a closer look. “We examined the beach with our augers over a wide area as planned,” said Scott-Bowden. The pair had special instructions to investigate the shingle bank at the back of the beach to determine if it might impede the progress of armoured vehicles. “It appeared to have been man-made and was above normal high water,” noted Scott-Bowden. “There were masses of wire immediately behind and a probable minefield. We each took one stone.” The next night the pair carried out another beach reconnaissance.

During daylight on Jan. 20 the midget submarine moved along the coast, observing different areas of the beach through the periscope. Then in the late afternoon they sailed for England. It was another two hours before Hudspeth felt it safe to surface, to the relief of the five men on board (the fifth was the engineer officer). Willmott recorded in his journal that the air was “very bad (none fresh for 11 hours) and everyone showed signs of distress.”

They reached Portsmouth at 6:30 p.m. on Jan. 21—after no less than five days inside X-20. Several high-ranking officers were on the quayside to greet them but when the rear hatch was opened “the reception committee took a large step back.” Scott-Bowden didn’t blame them. The stench had been unbearable. A midget submarine was no place for a soldier.

The midget submarine had gathered vital intelligence on what became known as Omaha Beach for the planning for D-Day. Its role in assisting with the invasion of Normandy was not over. A new destination for X-20 was Juno Beach, the middle of the three Anglo-Canadian landing sectors with Gold to the west and Sword to the east. Arriving off the coast on June 4, the submarine acted as a beach marker for the main amphibious assault as they approached on the morning of D-Day.

COPP’s other midget submarine, X-23, was tasked with performing a similar task at Sword beach, the eastern extremity of the invasion task force. The crews of both vessels had been ordered to Portsmouth with their craft at the end of May. “We booked into the wardroom and so we knew it [the invasion] was imminent,” said Jim Booth. “Everything had been done in the greatest secrecy, however, and while we had done a lot of training, we had no clue to the date of the invasion or the location.”

On the morning of June 2, the skipper of X-20, Lt. George Honour, assembled his crew, which comprised Booth, Lt. Geoff Lyne (chief navigator), George Vause (engineer), and First Lt. Jimmy Hodges (diver). The invasion was on, he told them. They would depart in the evening. Their operational orders were to sail the 90 miles to Normandy and then lie on the bottom of the Channel a mile off Sword beach until the early hours of D-Day on June 5. Then they would surface, erect their masts with their lights shining seaward, activate their radio beacons and guide in the invasion fleet. 

Switching on the Beacons

Booth’s job was to climb into a dinghy and erect the masts and switch on the beacons. The operation was codenamed “Gambit,” a word Honour explained to his men was a chess move in which a piece is risked so as to gain advantage later. The men laughed sardonically.

The rest of the day was one of frenetic activity as they loaded the midget submarine with equipment: 2 small CQR anchors, three flashing lamps with batteries, several taut-string measuring reels, two small portable radar beacons, an eighteen-feet-long sounding pole and two telescopic masts of similar length. Twelve additional bottles of oxygen were hauled down the access hatch, to complement the vessel’s built-in cylinders, and three RAF rubber dinghies were also brought on board.

A handful of submachine guns and revolvers (and false identification papers) were stashed inside the sub in the event they were forced to abandon the vessel and make for Nazi-occupied France. At 9:40 p.m., X-20 and X-23 sailed out of Portsmouth and rendezvoused with two naval trawlers that towed them part way across the Channel. 

The submarines slipped their tows at 4:35 a.m. June 3 and headed independently towards their respective beaches. X-23’s orders was to position itself at the point where the amphibious Duplex Drive Sherman [DD-swimming] tanks were to be launched onto Sword Beach. The pressure on the shoulders of Lt. Lynne, the navigator of X-23, was therefore immense: a slight error in position could have appalling ramifications.

The chief pre-occupation of X-23’s skipper, George Honour, was their oxygen supply; to conserve it as best he could he carried out a procedure every five hours of what submariners call “guffing through”—coming to periscope depth and raising the induction mast, then running the engine for a few minutes to draw a fresh supply of air through the boat. This brought obvious risks, particularly as they would lying just off the enemy coastline. 

At 8:30 a.m. June 4 Honour wrote in his log: “Periscope depth, ran to the East. Churches identified and fix obtained.” They had arrived at their position off Sword beach. The churches they could see were those at Ouistreham. Booth peered through the periscope. On the beach was a group Germans playing football. “Poor buggers don’t know what’s going to hit them,” he muttered.

Enough Oxygen?

In less than 24 hours the invasion would be underway—or so they thought. But when they surfaced at 1:00 a.m. Monday June 5 and hoisted their radio mast, they received bad news. “The postponement was sent out in a broadcast,” remembered Booth. “There were several messages and the phrase to let us know invasion was off was ‘Trouble in Scarborough’. [Scarborough is a coastal town in eastern England]. That caused a bit of tension because we didn’t know the length of the postponement and we weren’t sure we would have enough oxygen.” X-23 remained on the surface until 3:00 a.m. June 5. The men enjoyed the stiff wind on their faces and the fresh air in their lungs. 

Reluctantly they climbed back inside their 52-foot submarine, closed the hatch and bottomed. Honour said the lack of oxygen inside the midget submarine left him feeling like he’d drunk “a couple of stiff gins.” He added: “It was murky, damp and otherwise very horrible.” X-23 surfaced at 11:15 p.m. on Monday, June 5. They began their wireless watch. The weather was still foul.

The crew believed the invasion would again be postponed, but the message they received confirmed it was on. They dived once more, then surfaced at 4:45 a.m. on Tuesday June 6. The sea was too rough for Booth to launch his rubber dinghy so instead he rigged up the lights above the submarine. The lights flashed the letter D for Dog for 10 seconds every 40 seconds from 140 minutes before H-hour—the start time of the assault.

“We had a few problems with the boat because it was rocking and rolling,” recalled Booth. “We secured the main one, a green light, and also some red and white lights, and then because it was so cold and miserable out on deck we went down below and put the [tea] kettle on.” The radio beacon had also been activated. There was nothing else to do but have a cup of tea and wait. The tension was as unbearable as the foul air they breathed. Aircraft began bombing the German coastal positions. Soon the guns of the naval armada joined the bombardment. 

Invasion Day

Booth and his comrades went back on deck just as dawn broke on June 6. For several minutes they peered south through the murk, straining to see the armada they knew was coming their way.

“Suddenly we saw them,” recalled Booth. “It was a case of ‘bloody hell, look at that lot’! It was literally ships as far as the eye could see. A very spectacular sight.”

As the invasion fleet loomed into view another danger confronted X-23—being sunk or shelled by one of their own vessels. The commanding officer of the destroyer, HMS Middleton, Lt. Ian Douglas Cox, was standing on his ship’s brige when “a small submarine suddenly loomed out of the faint mist.” He and his lookout assumed it was an enemy vessel. Middleton gave orders for ‘full ahead.” “As we gathered speed to ram her, a figure stood up on the conning tower waving a large White Ensign,” he recalled. “We laughed nervously and sheared away.”

X-23 avoided any further unpleasant encounters and made its way to HMS Largs, the headquarters ship, where it rendezvoused with a naval trawler. A relief crew exchanged places with Booth and his comrades, who gratefully boarded the trawler. The operation had lasted 72 hours—of which 64 had been spent underwater. The men craved fresh air as much as they did sleep. Operation Gambit had indeed been a risk, but above all it had been a success.

The COPP force and the midget “X-craft” submarines were vital to the success of the D-Day landings, anddeserve more credit than has yet been given to them. Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of German-occupied France on the Normandy coast, was the single most complicated human endeavor undertaken before the “computer age,” and its success is due to the incrediblecoordination of all branches of service of the Allied powers.

Popular history and films tend to focus on the June 5–6, 1944 airborne operations and the deadly ordeal the infantry assault troops suffered and endured at bloody Omaha Beach, but the ultimate goal of the operation—establishing a secure Allied foothold on the European continent in the face of fierce German resistance, was only achieved by the total commitment and supreme effort of every single member of all Allied forces taking part—on land, sea and in the air. This article recounts only one of those efforts.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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Nazi wives and lovers tended to be mediocre women. They were not especially gifted or brilliant. They were content to be used as tools for their partners’ purposes—and to make the most of their proximity to power. That might surprise you. You might have expected Nazi-advertised attributes like “blonde,” “athletic,” “Nordic,” or “motherhood” to have had something to do with why certain women ended up in relationships with Adolf Hitler and his inner circle.

While it’s true that several top Nazis tended to be partial to blondes, they chose female partners for reasons of exploitation rather than personal admiration. Hitler, for example, scorned marriage and children, instead preying on naive teenage girls he could dominate; one such relationship was with his half-niece Geli Raubal. 

In most cases, the exploitation was mutual. While the Third Reich touted the ideal of “noble” and “simple” housewives, reality shows the women who stood at the prow of the Third Reich were anything but. They were willing to court monstrosity for money and privilege. Some became sadistic: like Brigitte Frank, who wore furs stolen from displaced Jewish women, or Unity Mitford, who toured a Jewish family’s apartment she wanted to confiscate while the owners wept in front of her. 

Nazi propaganda made people forget that attributes like blondeness, athleticism and motherhood are ordinary. In a world where mediocrity became an ideal, women who otherwise stood no chance of success were able to transform themselves into goddesses, thriving in an atmosphere of cruelty, materialism and superficial glamor.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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On the first day of the Allied offensive on the Somme River of northern France in July 1916 the British suffered 57,470 battle casualties, making it the bloodiest single day in that nation’s military history. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, commander of the British Expeditionary Force, realized he must change tactics. Thus, he gave orders that all the newfangled tanks that had reached the Western Front be employed in a subsequent assault on German-held French villages dubbed the Battle of Flers-Courcelette. A dozen Allied infantry divisions and all 49 available tanks attacked the German front line that September 15. The tanks psychologically shattered the Germans, instilling in them a fear they termed “Panzer Angst” and prompting many to flee. Those who held their ground found that their most potent weapons—artillery shrapnel and machine guns—were useless against the lumbering armored beasts. In the first three days of fighting the British captured more than a mile of German-held territory.

Thanks for the British success was due in part to an unlikely early proponent of armored mechanized warfare—Winston Churchill.

That summer Churchill’s service as commander of the 6th Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers had come to an end. He’d been serving on the Western Front for the past six months after having taken a break from politics. The reason for that break was his undeniable link to the disastrous Gallipoli campaign in Turkey. As first lord of the Admiralty, Churchill had been among the chief advocates for opening another front in the Dardanelles. In the wake of the sub-
sequent military fiasco, Churchill temporarily left politics and resumed his previous commission as a British army officer. What he witnessed in the trenches refocused his attention on a technological innovation he’d championed in the Admiralty—an armored vehicle that could break the stalemate on the Western Front.

Winston Churchill’s service to Great Britain as a cigar-chomping, no-nonsense prime minister during World War II has been the subject of countless books, articles and films. Less well known is his service as a British army officer after his graduation from the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. As a young cavalry officer he saw active duty in the far reaches of the empire, including Cuba, India and the Sudan. After having served some five years, he resigned his commission to pursue politics and was elected a member of Parliament in the House of Commons. While Churchill served primarily as a politician for the rest of his life, he never abandoned his interest or involvement in military matters.

In 1911, after a decade in public office, Churchill was appointed first lord of the Admiralty by Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith. Winston had always expressed a keen interest in naval matters, as a member of Parliament often pushing for increases in defense spending for the Royal Navy. As first lord he pushed for higher pay for naval staff, ramped up production of submarines and beefed up the nascent Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). Churchill encouraged the navy to determine how aircraft might be used for military purposes, coined the term “seaplane” amid debate in the House of Commons and ordered 100 of the latter for naval use. His advancements were timely. Three years into his appointment as first lord Britain entered World War I.

With the onset of war Churchill grew increasingly obsessed with the Middle Eastern theater. Hoping to relieve Ottoman pressure on Allied Russia in the Caucasus, he proposed a combined naval expedition against Turkish gun emplacements in the Dardanelles. Churchill hoped a successful outcome there might enable the Allies to seize the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), force Turkey out of the war and allow British naval forces to transit the Bosporus Strait into the Black Sea. Churchill anticipated that Romania, a neutral nation bordering the Black Sea that harbored hostility for its Austro-Hungarian neighbor, would ultimately allow Allied troops to use its territory to open a southern front against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

Allied representatives signed off on Churchill’s ambitious plan, and in February 1915 an Anglo-French fleet dubbed the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force sailed to commence a naval bombardment of Turkish defenses in the Dardanelles. On March 18 the Allied fleet, comprising 18 battleships and an assortment of cruisers and destroyers, launched its main attack against Turkish defenses at the narrowest point of the Dardanelles, where the straits between Asia and Europe are only a mile wide. The British first ordered civilian-crewed minesweepers into the straits, which soon retreated under significant artillery fire from Ottoman shore emplacements, leaving the minefields largely intact. At the outset of the attack the French battleship Bouvet struck a mine, capsized and sank within minutes; just 75 of its crew of more than 700 survived. The British battlecruiser Inflexible and pre-dreadnought battleship Irresistible also struck mines. Inflexible was severely damaged and compelled to withdraw. Irresistible was lost, though most of its crew was rescued. Sent to Irresistible’s aid, the battleship Ocean was damaged by shellfire and then struck a mine, sinking soon after its crew abandoned ship. Also damaged by shellfire, the French battleships Suffren and Gaulois had to withdraw. With his combined fleet bloodied, Rear Adm. John de Robeck, the British commander, ordered a withdrawal.

Churchill and others in favor of opening a southern front remained determined. If the Turkish emplacements could not be silenced by naval gunfire, then a ground invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula would serve the purpose. The planned assault called for Allied forces to conduct amphibious landings and then attack the Ottoman forts from the landward side. Initiated on April 25, the landings targeted several beaches on the peninsula. The Allied assault was conducted primarily by British and Commonwealth soldiers, including Australian and New Zealand troops, but also included a French contingent.

Organized on short notice, the amphibious assault suffered from a dearth of intelligence regarding enemy defenses and lacked accurate maps. Seeking to overcome both shortfalls, planners turned to seaplanes from No. 3 Squadron of Churchill’s vaunted RNAS. Unopposed by the small Ottoman air force during the preparation phase, the squadron initially provided aerial reconnaissance. Once the invasion was under way, the planes conducted photographic reconnaissance, observed naval gunfire and reported on Turkish troop movements. The squadron also conducted a handful of bombing raids in support of Allied ground troops.

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One handicap Allied planners were unable to overcome was the fact Ottoman forces held the high ground in the interior beyond the beachheads. The Turks knew their own geography and had modern artillery and machine guns provided by their German allies. The campaign devolved into a stalemate, with the Allies unable to break out from the beachheads, and the Turks unable to overrun them. A rare Allied highlight of the campaign was that Churchill’s Royal Navy was able to interdict most enemy merchant shipping seeking to resupply Ottoman forces in Gallipoli. That alone might have ultimately forced Turkey to sue for peace. But the Allied situation at Gallipoli soon devolved after Bulgaria joined the Central Powers. In early October 1915 the latter opened a land route through Bulgaria, connecting Germany and the Ottoman empire and enabling the Germans to rearm the Turks with modern heavy artillery capable of devastating the Allied positions. Germany also supplied Turkey with the latest aircraft and experienced crews.

‘Darth’ Tanker

Actually harking back in appearance to medieval Japanese samurai armor, this 1916-issue leather British tanker’s helmet with mask was designed to protect its wearer from head injury. When leather proved too flimsy, British tankers switched back to the steel Brodie helmet.

Seeing no realistic way to turn the situation to their favor, the British Cabinet made the difficult decision to evacuate in early December 1915. While Churchill hadn’t been the sole proponent of the disastrous campaign, he’d been among its most vocal, thus many ministers of Parliament held him personally responsible. The following May the prime minister agreed under parliamentary pressure to form an all-party coalition government on the condition Churchill be removed from his Cabinet position.

Unceremoniously booted from his appointment as first lord of the Admiralty, Churchill took a break from politics and resumed frontline service as an army officer. In January 1916 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and given command of the 6th Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers. After training, the battalion deployed to a sector of the Belgian front. For more than three months they experienced continual shelling and sniping while preparing to meet the expected German spring offensive. As the Germans were focused on taking Verdun, Churchill’s sector remained relatively quiet. In May the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers were absorbed into the 15th Division. Churchill didn’t seek a new command in the division, instead securing permission to leave active duty and return to politics. But his military contributions were far from over, and the seeds of an earlier endeavor were about to bear fruit.

In 1914, when the war slipped into stalemated trench warfare, First Lord Churchill had fished about for solutions and came to believe an armored motorized vehicle of some sort was the answer. Seeking ownership of the technology on behalf of the Admiralty, he’d labeled such futuristic armored vehicles “landships.” Eventually conceding the technology was more appropriately an army initiative, Churchill transferred £70,000 (more than $8 million in today’s dollars) from the navy to the army to develop what became known as the tank.

The man most often credited with having invented the tank is Lt. Col. Ernest D. Swinton. Appointed at the outset of the war by Secretary of State for War Horatio Herbert, 1st Earl Kitchener, as the official British war correspondent on the Western Front, Swinton moved back and forth between France and England and to and from the front lines. Witnessing the death, destruction and deadlock of trench warfare, he initially conceived an armored variant of the American-made Holt caterpillar tractor. While Kitchener proved lukewarm over Swinton’s armored tractor, it resonated with First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill, who in February 1915 ordered formation of an exploratory Landship Committee, tasked with developing the technology.

Under Churchill’s ministry oversight were naval air squadrons based in Dunkirk, France. Perpetually at risk of enemy attack, the squadrons were ably defended by armored car squadrons. Thus, Churchill recognized the importance of and need for armored forces. He kept abreast of developments as the Landship Committee experimented with armored vehicle designs. The initial versions were essentially wheeled automobiles with bolted-on armor. However, it soon became clear wheeled variants could neither traverse trenches nor function properly in mud. Churchill’s Admiralty experimented with attaching bridging equipment to such vehicles, but the results proved disappointing. Swinton’s Holt caterpillar tractor proved far more promising. Offering greater grip and more weight-bearing surface, the tracked vehicle was just the ticket for crossing the no-man’s-land between trenches.

On June 30, 1915, Churchill arranged a demonstration of a prototype tractor’s ability to cross barbed-wire entanglements. A manufacturing company working on the project eventually produced the Killen-Strait armored tractor. Capped with the superstructure from a Delaunay-Belleville armored car, its tracks comprised an unbroken series of steel links connected by steel pinions. Churchill and David Lloyd George, then head of the Ministry of Munitions, were present for tests of the Killen-Strait. The promising results prompted Lloyd George to assume the responsibility for producing a steady supply of landships once the Royal Navy settled on a satisfactory design. For his part, Churchill was a total believer, convinced the new machine would enable Allied forces to readily traverse the muddy, shell-pocked landscape of the Western Front and smash enemy defenses.

Meanwhile, Swinton managed to persuade the newly formed Inventions Committee in the House of Commons to fund development of a small landship. He drew up target specifications for the new machine, including a maximum speed of 4 miles per hour on flat ground, the ability to perform a sharp turn at top speed, reversing capability, the ability to climb a 5-foot earthen bank and the ability to cross an 8-foot gap. Additionally, the vehicle was to accommodate 10 crewmen and be armed with two machine guns and a 2-pounder cannon. Though the landship was no longer under the purview of the Admiralty, Churchill went out of his way to write Asquith in praise of Swinton’s developments.

Under Swinton’s oversight, the prototype landship, nicknamed “Little Willie” had 12-foot-long track frames, weighed 16 tons and could carry a crew of three at a top speed of just over 2 miles per hour. Its speed over rough terrain, however, dropped considerably. Moreover, it was unable to traverse trenches more than a few feet wide. But while the initial trials proved disappointing, Swinton remained convinced a modified version would prove a breakthrough weapon.

Its manufacturers immediately began work on an improved tank. The resulting Mark I, nicknamed “Mother,” was twice as long as “Little Willie,” keeping the center of gravity low and helping its treads grip the ground. Sponsons were fitted to the sides to accommodate two 6-pounder naval guns. During initial trials in January 1916 the tank crossed a 9-foot-wide trench with a parapet more than 6 feet high.

With that, Swinton decided it was time to demonstrate the new tank to Britain’s leading political and military figures. Thus, on February 2, under conditions of utmost secrecy, Secretary of State for War Kitchener, Minister of Munitions Lloyd George and Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald McKenna gathered with other key personnel to see the Mark I in action. Lord Kitchener remained unimpressed and skeptical of the tank’s potential contribution toward victory. Fortunately for the Allies, Lloyd George and McKenna, the two with oversight of the government purse strings, did recognize the Mark I’s potential and by April had placed orders for 150 tanks. Churchill was ecstatic.

Foreshadowing the German Wehrmacht’s Blitzkrieg tactics, Churchill believed the army should wait to field the Mark I until factories had rolled out 1,000 tanks and then employ the shock value of a combined armor assault to win a great battle. Though Field Marshal Haig harbored doubts about the value of tanks, the British Expeditionary Force commander did order all available Mark Is to assist during that summer’s Somme Offensive. Unfortunately for their advocates, many of the tanks broke down, and the British army was unable to hold on to its gains.

Truth be told, the tank’s debut was not as great a success as the British press reported it to be. Of the 59 tanks that had arrived in France, only 49 were in good working order. Of those, 17 broke down en route to their line of departure for the attack. It must be noted that Swinton had cautioned commanders to carefully choose fighting ground that corresponded with the tank’s powers and limitations. Had they followed his recommendations, the initial results would have been better. Regardless, the sight of the tanks created panic and had a profound effect on the morale of the German army.

For his part, Colonel John Frederick Charles “J.F.C.” Fuller, chief of the British Heavy Branch of the Machine Gun Corps (later Tank Corps), was convinced his machines could win the war and persuaded Haig to ask the government for another 1,000 tanks. Churchill, who by then had returned home as a politician, did everything he could to endorse Haig’s request.

Meanwhile, Fuller and others refined tank operating procedures, and just over a year later, during the Cambrai Offensive, Haig ordered a massed tank attack at Artois. Launched at dawn on Nov. 20, 1917, without preparatory bombardment, the attack wholly surprised the Germans. Employing more than 400 tanks, elements of the British Third Army gained up to 5 miles that first day, an incredible amount of territory to be captured so rapidly on the stalemated Western Front. Churchill’s belief in the tank as a combat multiplier had been validated. The British army remembered his tireless efforts, and at the outset of World War II it named its primary infantry tank, the Mk IV, the Churchill.

Retired U.S. Marine Colonel John Miles writes and lectures on a range of historical topics. For further reading he recommends Thoughts and Adventures, by Winston S. Churchill; A Company of Tanks, by William Henry Lowe Watson; and Eyewitness and the Origin of the Tanks, by Ernest D. Swinton.

This story appeared in the Autumn 2023 issue of Military History magazine.

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Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery is the most maligned general who served in World War II. Historians have labeled him arrogant and insufferable, heaping fuel onto the fire of their scorn by accusing him of military incompetence. A particular phrase attributed to Winston Churchill about him—one that has become trite due to its thoughtless repetition—refers to Montgomery as being “in defeat, unbeatable; in victory, unbearable.” Those cavalier words are often used—unjustly—to sum up Montgomery’s entire legacy. 

Bernard Montgomery was, in fact, a brave and self-sacrificing man who deserves far more respect than most historians seem willing to give him. Montgomery could fairly be described as cocky, but the majority of history’s great battlefield commanders are. It is necessary for a good general to possess a certain combination of boldness, confidence and aggressiveness to be an effective leader in battle. A shrinking violet makes a poor general.

Not a Narcissist

One of the most common charges leveled at Montgomery is that he was a narcissist. He was definitely not. Nor was he a “psychopath,” as some on the Internet have disgracefully called him. A narcissist is a toxic, self-centered person; a psychopath is dishonest and callously shows no empathy for others.

That was not Monty. I actually think it is difficult to find a top World War II general who was more selfless in his actions or who showed more personal empathy for his troops than Montgomery. He devoted himself heart and soul to the Allied cause without seeking personal comfort or respite—despite the fact that he had lost his home and all of his worldly belongings to German bombing. He did not flinch from the fight nor try to make things easier for himself. He threw himself into battles wholeheartedly and projected that cheerful swagger, which many people continue to mistake for hubris, for the very deliberate purposes of rallying his troops against German forces and to combat Nazi propaganda.

His hands-on and compassionate care for the men of the British Eighth Army restored their waning energy and transformed them into a close-knit and effective fighting force he aptly referred to as a “family.”

Montgomery’s care for his men and rejuvenation of the Eighth Army’s morale—accomplished with genuine compassion and personal attention to others’ basic human needs—is something that neither a narcissist nor a psychopath could ever have achieved, and is an accomplishment that even his fiercest critics have not been able to dispute.

Honest despite Criticism

Bernard Montgomery did not have an easy life, and his courage in admitting to his imperfections and the difficulties he faced made him the target of much derision. It would have been easier for a public figure of his fame—especially in socially self-conscious Britain—to fabricate a happy childhood and be “more agreeable” altogether. Indeed Monty faced pressure from relatives to “keep up appearances.”

Yet Montgomery did not care about appearing awkward. He publicly rejected and criticized his Christian fundamentalist mother, with whom he cut ties. He candidly disagreed with other Allied commanders on matters of strategy during World War II; this was not backbiting, but divergences of opinion he aired openly and which he overcame with firm soldierly obedience. He was frank in his memoirs, yet tempered his criticisms with great magnanimity and fairness, and did not descend, as did several of his military contemporaries, to personal attacks.

Being true to and open about his beliefs was one of Monty’s greatest virtues.

Montgomery’s willingness to be disagreeable, to stand against the tide of public opinion and peer pressure, made him many enemies. It also makes him a true example of courage of conviction, and a model worth following.

Independent Yet Loyal

Montgomery was a strong, wild horse of a man who wouldn’t let anybody control him. If he truly believed in something, he wore his heart on his sleeve.

This sense of fierce independence commonly rears its head among the great Scots-Irish fighters of Northern Ireland, a region often called Ulster. Robert Blair “Paddy” Mayne became a Special Forces legend because of that spirit. Field Marshal Alan Brooke was known to glare rebelliously back at Prime Minister Winston Churchill when inner principle demanded it.

“Stiff-necked Ulstermen,” grumbled Churchill of Brooke’s occasional cussedness, adding that “there’s no one worse to deal with than that!” However it is the individual greatness of these men—not only their great fearlessness and independence, but also their great and profound loyalty—that made all the difference to attaining victory.

Behind all the hype around the supposed intolerableness of Montgomery is the story of a simple and dedicated soldier who suffered and sacrificed much, complained little, and utterly spent all for the good of others. He was a warmhearted and brilliant man who never stopped trying to make a positive difference for his country, his troops and the world at large. His memory deserves to be honored.

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For two nights have waited on quayside lying on ground, finally in shattered steel box numbed by noise of bombing. I was sleeping fitfully, almost despairing, woken every few minutes by the Scumbarda battery blazing away to keep Jerry awake, and reflected I was living worse than a tramp, absolutely filthy. Unbathed for eight days, clothes not off, ditto, gradually losing all gear, and no home—choice either crowded, dusty, smoky, overcrowded tunnel on hill or overcrowded Iti [Italian] naval headquarters, where Itis having nothing else to do but rush in and out, although bombers miles away. Then wake with start to find a destroyer alongside, and troops slid down chute, scrambled down ladders, ammo dumped ashore. “Well done, arrival of these troops should make all the difference.”

Such were the candid, if dismal, impressions of Leonard Marsland Gander, the only Allied war correspondent on the Greek island of Leros during a five-day battle for its control, as recorded in his notebook on Nov. 15, 1943. Whomever Gander quoted regarding the landing of British reinforcements was overly optimistic. They would make no difference whatsoever.

Leros is one of 15 main islands among 150 smaller ones that constitute the Dodecanese archipelago in the southeastern Aegean Sea, which in the fall of 1943 was the unlikely setting for a series of air-sea landings by German forces. Two months later defending British troops were subjected to a humiliating defeat, with some islands remaining under German occupation until war’s end in Europe. The story of their capture is illustrative of history echoing as seemingly no one in authority listened.

The Dodecanese, populated mainly by residents of Greek extraction, fell under Ottoman rule in the 16th century. The islands then came under Italian administration in the wake of the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–12. In the early stages of World War II Il Duce Benito Mussolini joined forces with German Führer Adolf Hitler, the latter seemingly unstoppable in his occupation of neighboring countries. By the spring of 1943, however, the Axis was faltering. The Soviets had stemmed the German advance into Russia, and that May Axis forces surrendered in North Africa. Soon after, the Allies landed in Sicily and on the Italian mainland, and American-led forces began pushing north toward occupied Europe. In July the Italian populace turned against Mussolini, replacing him with Maresciallo Pietro Badoglio. An armistice followed in September.

Having anticipated events, Hitler initiated Fall Achse (Operation Axis) to forcibly disarm Italian forces and assume control of the territory they held.

Given the upheaval, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill considered it an opportune time to open a new front in the eastern Mediterranean. He and others felt such a move would add to the mounting pressure against Germany and might even encourage Turkey to join the Allies. It was a strategy fraught with impediments and considered by many—Britain’s American allies in particular—a waste of time and resources. Churchill was undeterred.

Paramount to his plan was the seizure of Rhodes with its critical airfields. Italian co-operation was essential. Accordingly, a military mission was tasked with preparing the way for the main assault. Commandos of the British army’s Special Boat Section (SBS) would spearhead the occupation of other islands. Churchill approved the plan on September 9. “This is a time to play high,” he wrote. “Improvise and dare.”

Unfortunately for the British, their invasion plans were pre-empted that very day when the 7,500-strong Sturm-Division Rhodos turned on their erstwhile allies and wasted little time in taking control of Rhodes. In so doing the Germans captured some 40,000 Italians, thus quashing British hopes of significant Italian assistance in the Dodecanese. Nevertheless, there was optimism in the British camp they might still occupy and retain some of the lesser islands. Kos, Samos and Leros were duly secured and garrisoned, primarily by troops of the newly re-formed 234 Infantry Brigade, the battalions of which had arrived in the Middle East after having endured the 1940–42 siege of Malta. Also manning some of the island outposts were detachments of the SBS and the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG). Already on Kos were 3,500-plus cooperative Italians, including the majority of two infantry battalions.

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Of the British-occupied islands only Kos was suitable as an airbase. Soon arriving on-island were Supermarine Spitfire VBs of No. 7 Squadron of the South African Air Force and No. 74 Squadron of the Royal Air Force, with some 500 ground support personnel. Anti-aircraft defense was provided by army and RAF gunners equipped with 40 mm Bofors and 20 mm Hispanos, respectively. The British also garrisoned the island with 700 soldiers—mainly of 1st Battalion, the Durham Light Infantry—to counter any German landing attempts. Troops were dispersed between the main airfield at Antimachia and in and around the town of Kos. On the eve of battle some 100 troops of the RAF Regiment arrived as reinforcements.

In mid-September 1943 the Germans in central Italy were forced to pull back in the wake of the successful Allied landing at Salerno. But the situation in the southeastern Aegean was altogether different.

On September 23 Generalleutnant Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, commanding 22 Infanterie-Division, received orders to seize Kos and Leros. Müller made Kos his first objective, targeting it with a combined sea and airborne assault code-named Unternehmen Eisbär (Operation Polar Bear). At his disposal were transport ships and landing craft, air transports, bombers and all-important fighter cover. Additional landing forces included Luftwaffe paratroopers and paratroopers and other units drawn from the special forces Division Brandenburg.

At 0500 hours on October 3 Müller launched Eisbär, the first wave of assault troops coming ashore at Marmari beach in northern Kos. Further landings followed along the rugged southeast coast. Shortly after 0700 hours the Brandenburg paratroopers dropped in on southwest Kos. The Germans rapidly pushed toward their objectives, overrunning each in turn and arriving on the outskirts of town by dusk. That night demoralized remnants of the British garrison withdrew south to high ground. All that remained for the Germans the next day was a mopping-up operation. For the Italians it represented the latest in a series of defeats. But for the British it was a disaster, for without Kos there was no longer any possibility of providing crucial air support for those islands still in British hands.

The Germans next turned their attention to Leros. On September 26 Luftwaffe aircraft began targeting key installations and shipping at Portolago (present-day Lakki). The commander of the British 234 Brigade, Maj. Gen. Francis Gerard Russell Brittorous, had previously commanded the 8th (Ardwick) Battalion of the Manchester Regiment (Territorial Army) in Malta. Known for his punctilious observance of parade ground discipline, “Ben” Brittorous was an unpopular officer. On one occasion, as he rode in his jeep past a number of LRDG men on a break from training, he harangued them for having failed to salute him. According to one present, the general was apoplectic. “So you think yourselves tough, do you?” Brittorous hollered. “I’ll bloody well give you something to be tough about!”

Shortly afterward Captain John Olivey and 48 other LRDG troops left Leros in a pair of Italian speedboats with orders to occupy the tiny German-held island of Levitha, little more than 20 miles to the southwest. It was an ill-conceived and hastily conducted operation, launched without reconnaissance or preparation. Five LRDG men were killed during the failed assault, while most of the remainder were captured. Only Olivey, a fellow officer and five others made it back to Leros.

Eventually, a senior officer was sent on a pretext to British headquarters in Cairo to report on the relationship between Brittorous and subordinates, and on November 5 Brigadier Robert “Dolly” Tilney arrived on Leros as the new fortress commander.

POW Tag

Emblematic of the failed 1943 Allied campaign to seize the Italian-held Dodecanese islands in the wake of Italy’s signing of an armistice is the above German-issued POW identification tag. Most Allied prisoners spent the duration of the war in camps in Germany.

By then there was a substantial British presence on the island, including 2nd Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers (the Faughs); Company B of 2nd Battalion, Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment (the remainder of which was on Samos); 4th Battalion, Royal East Kent Regiment (the Buffs); and 1st Battalion, King’s Own Royal Regiment (Lancaster), plus artillery and supporting sub-units and detachments of the LRDG and SBS. The British garrison comprised some 3,000 troops of all ranks.

The Italian garrison numbered some 5,500, including an infantry battalion, two heavy machine-gun companies and part of a maritime reconnaissance squadron.

Müller’s assault on Leros, code-named Unternehmen Taifun (Operation Typhoon), commenced early on November 12. The assault force was split into three. The initial wave comprised four seaborne Kampfgruppen (combat groups) and a Luftwaffe parachute battalion. A second wave stood by with anti-aircraft and artillery units and heavy infantry weapons. Additional troops and Brandenburg paratroopers were held in reserve near Athens. (On November 13 the Brandenburg Fallschirmjägerkompanie would conduct its third operational jump within six weeks.)

It had been Müller’s intention to land each group simultaneously and seize control of central Leros before its garrison could react. But unforeseen circumstances and a determined resistance meant only certain elements of the invasion force made it ashore, and not all of them at their intended points. At around 1430 hours on the 12th German bombers and cannon-armed floatplanes escorted inland more than three-dozen Junkers Ju 52/3m transports carrying Kampfgruppe Kühne. Hauptmann Martin Kühne’s 470 paratroopers immediately established themselves in and around the central drop zone between Gourna and Alinda bays. In the north infantrymen led by Major Sylvester von Saldern quickly achieved their objectives and held, albeit temporarily, the high ground on and around the dominating Clidi feature to within 500 yards of the coast at Alinda Bay. Having established themselves in central Leros, the Germans had effectively divided the island in two.

Fighting continued for five days, each side losing and retaking ground in a series of seesaw actions. Meanwhile, the British ferried in additional Royal West Kents from Samos, and the Germans also brought in reinforcements. Despite their superior numbers, the British were greatly disadvantaged without air cover, while the Germans had Junkers Ju 87D-3 Stuka dive-bombers on call from dawn till dusk.

Both sides suffered from inadequate signaling equipment. The Germans sought to overcome that issue by adhering to their original plan, whereas the British seemed unable to cope, constantly having to adapt to the changing situation, using runners to try to maintain contact. Invariably, messages got through too late, if at all. Officers received conflicting and confusing orders, and men were flung into the attack, sometimes with little or no idea of their objectives. British communications eventually broke down altogether, and with it evaporated what remained of command and control.

On the morning of November 16, with the Germans on the verge of overrunning brigade headquarters on Mount Meraviglia, Tilney withdrew with his staff, hoping merely to shift his command post south to Lakki.

At 0825 hours the Germans intercepted a signal from fortress headquarters to general headquarters in Cairo. It advised the situation was critical; German forces supported by Stukas and machine-gun fire were reinforcing the Leros peninsula, and defensive positions on Meraviglia had been neutralized, leaving British troops demoralized and facing a hopeless situation. The message was translated, duplicated in leaflet form and airdropped over German positions with additional words of encouragement from Müller: “Now, let’s finish them off!”

But Meraviglia’s defending troops managed to stem the German advance, encouraging Tilney to return and try to restore order from chaos. It was hopeless. That afternoon a renewed German effort resulted in the capture of Tilney and staff. Elsewhere, British soldiers unaware of developments felt they held the upper hand, an opinion shared by many of those opposing them. The brigadier, however, concluded further resistance was futile and, to avoid further unnecessary bloodshed, called for an end to the fighting.

Samos, the final obstacle to Germany’s conquest of the Aegean, was abandoned by the British and fell without a fight on November 22.

Müller reported German casualties during the battles for Kos and Leros as 1,168 dead, wounded and missing, though actual figures are probably higher. The Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe also incurred considerable material losses during the two-month period of operations.

Allied losses tallied more than 5,000 army personnel (most of whom were captured), 500 naval personnel killed or missing and further losses among aircrews. The Germans had sunk three Allied submarines, 15 ships and various other craft, and damaged at least 10 other vessels. The Allies also lost more than 100 aircraft, including 11 American planes, with 28 more damaged.

The Italians suffered most of all. Of nearly 4,000 mainly Italian prisoners of war aboard the German-operated transports Gaetano Donizetti and Sinfra, some 3,400 went down when both ships were sunk that fall in separate Allied actions. Many more were lost while in transit outside Aegean waters.

In the end the Dodecanese mattered little, if at all, in the bigger picture. Anticipating the inevitable backlash from critics, Churchill recommended the foreign secretary adopt an evasive policy when the matter was raised in Parliament: “Not advisable to reflect in detail on such questions as to why the lessons of Crete in 1941 had not been learned.”

On November 20 the Cairo-based Egyptian Mail headlined events in Russia. Four days earlier, before Tilney’s surrender on Leros, correspondent Gander had been evacuated.His report on the island’s capture made P. 2 of the Mail.

Anthony Rogers is the author of several books about wartime events in and around the Mediterranean, including Churchill’s Folly and Swastika Over the Aegean. For further reading he recommends War in the Aegean: The Campaign for the Eastern Mediterranean in WWII, by Peter C. Smith and Edwin R. Walker.

The Loss of Oria

A tragic irony of the Italian armistice is that so many of the nation’s captured and surrendered troops failed to make it home alive. More Italians perished while in transit to destinations in the Reich than died fighting in the Dodecanese.

On Feb. 11, 1944, German guards on Rhodes crammed more than 4,100 Italian prisoners aboard the commandeered Norwegian steamship Oria for passage to Piraeus, Greece. A victim of rough seas and, it is suspected, poor navigation, Oria ran aground the next day off Patroklos,
an island in the Saronic Gulf some 25 miles southeast of Piraeus. The ship foundered, taking with it nearly all the passengers and crew. The Kriegsmarine initially reported that only the ship’s captain and 14 Germans had been saved. Later estimates suggest 21 Italians also survived the sinking, which ranks among the worst maritime disasters in modern history. —A.R.

This story appeared in the Autumn 2023 issue of Military History magazine.

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When the Second World War in Europe ended in May 1945, the United States military had custody of a staggering number of enemy prisoners of war: 4.3 million total worldwide, with more than 400,000 held in prison camps inside the domestic United States. German personnel represented the single largest group of prisoners. However not every soldier in German uniform who fell into American hands—whether through capture, surrender, or exchange of custody with another ally—was actually a German citizen.

Between 1939 and 1945, tens of thousands of Frenchmen, Poles, Dutchmen, and Norwegians wound up in German uniform, either voluntarily or through coercion. Nearly a million Soviet citizens, ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, and Cossacks had served in the German military for a myriad of reasons, plus many more millions of captured Soviet soldiers held as prisoners of the Germans were now in American or British hands; it was they who would represent one of the thorniest problems among the former allies in the war’s aftermath.

Forced Repatriation?

Prisoner of war issues during WWII were at least notionally governed by the 1929 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, but the conduct of Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union demonstrated all too clearly the limitations of international conventions and laws of war. The Soviet Union was not a signatory to the 1929 Convention; Japan signed it but never ratified it; Germany was a full signatory. The legal distinction between them was largely irrelevant, because those three nations were categorically guilty of the worst treatment of prisoners of war of any belligerents during that conflict.

As many as 3 million Soviet soldiers died in German captivity. Japanese treatment of captured Allied soldiers was infamously brutal, with a death rate estimated at 27.1 percent among prisoners of Western armies (the mortality rate for American POWs in Japanese hands was more than 30 percent). Japanese treatment of Chinese prisoners was even worse, with a nearly 100 percent death rate—only 56 Chinese prisoners were officially recorded as being released from Japanese custody at the end of the war, for the grim reason that Imperial Japanese forces killed most Chinese prisoners outright. The Soviets, at the end of the war, held as many as 3,060,000 German POWs. How many of those men died in captivity is debated, but of the 1.3 million German military personnel listed as missing in action, the vast majority of them are assumed to have died as Soviet prisoners. More than 50,000 Japanese POWs perished in Soviet prison work camps after the war was over.

The end of the conflict precipitated one of the most controversial episodes related to international conventions on prisoners of war: the question of forced repatriation. 

The 1929 Convention stipulated that “repatriation of prisoners shall be effected as soon as possible after the conclusion of peace.” What it did not account for, or at least did not anticipate, was how a nation should handle prisoners of war who did not want to return to their nation of origin. 

At the Yalta Conference in February 1945, the Soviets insisted that all Soviet citizens held as prisoners of war by the Germans or liberated from German custody by the Western Allies were to be repatriated without exception. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union with Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the Soviet government announced a policy that labeled all its soldiers who fell into enemy hands—whether by capture or surrender—as traitors. Order 270 issued August 16 that year, explicitly stated that Soviet soldiers’ only option was to fight to the last. To be taken prisoner, especially if one was a commander or political commissar, would be equated with desertion and defection to the Nazis. Stalin supposedly said, “There are no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors.” With that attitude in mind, Soviet insistence on repatriation of their captured soldiers did not sound particularly benevolent.

More than 800,000 Soviet soldiers had in fact changed sides once in German hands for a variety of reasons. After the grim years of the Great Terror of the 1930s and Stalin’s purge of the Red Army before the war, there was no shortage of Soviet citizens in the military who loved the Motherland but genuinely hated Stalin and the repressive USSR government. Stalin was especially unpopular among Ukrainians, Cossacks, and other ethnic groups who had suffered in the years following the Bolshevik victory in the 1917-1923 Russian Civil War.

Some senior Red Army officers, such as Lt. Gen. Andrey Vlasov, seem to have become turncoats for self-serving reasons, but led thousands of rank-and-file soldiers into peril. Other Soviet soldiers in German custody, faced with near-certain slow death by starvation and slave labor in prisoner of war camps, chose what seemed to be the lesser of two evils and signed on for what they were told would be labor battalions in German service, only to find out too late that they were deployed as frontline combat formations or as guards in Nazi death camps. 

A Promise at Yalta

The problem was that when the Soviets at Yalta extracted the promise from their British and American counterparts to repatriate all Soviet citizens, there was no consensus as to who fit that definition. The Soviets insisted that persons from the Baltic States and eastern Poland, annexed by the USSR in 1939-1940, were Soviet citizens, but neither the U.S. nor Great Britain recognized that claim. Nor had the Allies anticipated the problem of what to do with Soviet prisoners who did not want to return. The 1929 Convention made no provision for that situation, and it did not specifically allow a detaining power to grant asylum to prisoners in its control who asked to not be returned to their country of origin. 

As the war drew to its close, British and American officials, in both the civilian governments and military command structures, were confronted by this question: did the uniform a soldier wore determine the nation to which he should be repatriated? If a Soviet citizen fought in a German uniform and was captured as a German soldier, did the Geneva Convention say he was a member of the German armed forces and protected by that service as a prisoner of war, or was he a Soviet combatant who should be returned to his country of origin?

Legal specialists in the British Foreign Office argued “it was the uniform that determined a soldier’s allegiance and no government had the right to ‘look behind the uniform’ of any POW.” Part of the thinking behind that decision was a desire to avoid reprisals against British and American prisoners still in German control.

Unfortunately, they also had to worry about the risk their countrymen then in German POW camps faced from their own ally, the USSR. As Soviet forces advanced in the east and began overrunning German prison camps containing American and British prisoners, Britain and the U.S. wanted to do nothing that might cause the Soviets to delay the repatriation of those men. Previous Soviet behavior had repeatedly demonstrated this was no idle concern. Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary, told Churchill, “It is most important that they [British POWs] should be well cared for and returned as soon as possible. For this we must rely to a great extent upon Soviet goodwill and if we make difficulty over returning to them their own nationals I am sure it will reflect adversely upon their willingness to help in restoring to us our own prisoners.”

Even so, some of the language coming out of the Foreign Office in London was starkly coldhearted. As one Foreign Office official stated in an official memo, “This is purely a question for the Soviet authorities and does not concern His Majesty’s Government. In due course all those with whom the Soviet authorities desire to deal must be handed over to them, and we are not concerned with the fact that they may be shot or otherwise more harshly dealt with than they might be under English law.” This attitude did not sit well with many British military officers, but it became the policy of repatriations as the war ground to a halt.

“A Battle of Discourtesy”

The same debate caused problems between civilian and military leaders on the American side. In early 1945 Gen. Dwight Eisenhower grew increasingly frustrated with the lack of good faith cooperation from his Soviet counterparts on POW negotiations—the Soviets demanded much but conceded nothing. It eventually got so bad that Eisenhower suggested to the Chief of the U.S. Military Mission to the USSR in the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Maj. Gen. John R. Deane, that he should simply stop cooperating with the Soviets until they proved more willing to collaborate as allies should. Deane said this would be pointless; there was absolutely no chance, he said, of “winning a battle of discourtesy with Soviet officials.” 

Statesmen in Washington also grumbled about the push to give into Soviet demands on the repatriation issue. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson vehemently opposed the idea of “turning over German prisoners of Russian origin to the Russians.” He put it bluntly: “First thing you know we will be responsible for a big killing by the Russians. … Let the Russians catch their own Russians.” The U.S. Attorney General agreed on grounds of legal precedent. “I gravely question the legal basis or authority for surrendering the objecting individuals to representatives of the Soviet Government….Even if these men should be technically traitors to their own government, I think the time-honored rule of asylum should be applied.”

But like the British, the Americans were most concerned about the fate of their own POWs who fell into Soviet control, which overrode all other issues. Edward Stettinius, the U.S. Secretary of State, expressed this clearly in a communique in February 1945 when he wrote, “The consensus here is that it would be unwise to include questions relative to the protection of the Geneva convention and to Soviet citizens in the U.S. in an agreement which deals primarily with the exchange of prisoners liberated by the Allied armies as they march into Germany… we believe there will be serious delays in the release of our prisoners of war unless we reach prompt agreement on this question.” By “agreement” he meant capitulating to Soviet demands, but there seemed no simple solution.

The Soviets knew very well their British and American allies were vulnerable on this point, and they kept the pressure on in a manner that was nothing less than outright coercion. That January, U.S. Attorney General Francis Biddle glumly told Stimson, “the Russians have already threatened to refuse to turn over to us American prisoners of war whom they may get possession of in German internment camps.” That threat was very much in plain view when Roosevelt and Churchill signed the Repatriation Agreement with Stalin at Yalta the next month.

Asylum Would not be granted

By the end of February nearly 370,000 Soviet POWs were in the custody of British and U.S. forces in Western Europe, and a great many of those were taken while wearing the uniforms of the German military. In accordance with the Geneva Convention, Allied command had at first issued orders that forced repatriation would only apply to POWs and Displaced Persons (DPs) who identified themselves as Soviet citizens. That arrangement did not last long.

On May 23, representatives of the Soviet High Command and Supreme Headquarters Allied European Forces signed the Leipzig Agreement, which specified that, “All former prisoners of war and citizens of the USSR liberated by the Allied Forces and all former prisoners of war and citizens of Allied Nations liberated by the Red Army will be delivered through the Army lines to the corresponding Army Command of each side.” The operative word was “all.” Washington passed instructions on to its military commanders in Europe that they were to hand all Soviet citizens over to the custody of the Red Army “regardless of their individual wishes.”

Asylum would not be granted, not even for persons whose status all but guaranteed that they would be executed as traitors when they were returned to Soviet control. Mass repatriations followed, and by the end of September 1945, 2,034,000 former prisoners identified as Soviet citizens were given over to the Red Army, sometimes by use of military force.

Nothing in the 1929 Geneva Convention provided for the forced repatriation of prisoners who did not want to return to their government’s control, so the American and British decision to comply with Soviet insistence on the matter was not compelled by law or treaty obligation. It was, instead, an unpopular course of action driven by the need to protect their own soldiers from an ally whose brutality was in some cases nearly as bad as that of their common enemy. 

Refusal to Release Prisoners

By citing the 1929 Geneva Convention in its insistence that Britain and the U.S. had to repatriate all Soviet prisoners whether they wanted to return or not, the USSR’s position was duplicitous in the extreme. The Soviets had refused to join the Convention themselves, but that did not prevent them, during the Yalta negotiations, from pointing to Article 75 with its requirement that “repatriation of prisoners shall be effected with the least possible delay after the conclusion of peace.”

The diametric contrast between the wording of that article and what the Soviets themselves did in practice was absolutely appalling. The Soviet Union kept nearly 1.5 million German prisoners of war as forced labor for an entire decade after the war ended. The last of them were not repatriated until 1955. “Fragmented archival sources,” as historian Susan Grunewald says, “imply that the Soviets primarily held onto German POWs out of economic necessity caused by the war’s destruction.” As many as 560,000 Japanese prisoners were held by the Soviets until 1950 under the same excuse. The USSR used those men to rebuild a national infrastructure damaged by the war, but such practice was directly contrary to the spirit, if not the actual letter, of the very international convention that the Soviets cited when it suited their purposes.

Soviet refusal to release their prisoners after the end of WWII directly influenced the drafting of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 when it replaced the 1929 Convention. Article 118 (Release and Repatriation) begins with the sentence, “Prisoners of war shall be released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities.” At that time, there was still no end in sight to Soviet delaying tactics.

The 1960 Commentary on the Convention discusses Article 118 in refreshingly simple language: “This is one of the most important Articles in the Convention and is intended to remedy very unsatisfactory situations. As a result of the changed conditions of modern warfare, the belligerents have on two occasions, and without expressly violating the provisions of the existing Conventions [of 1929], been able to keep millions of prisoners of war in captivity for no good reason. In our opinion, it was contrary to the spirit of the Conventions to prolong war captivity in this way.” It then explains in detail that the Geneva Convention (III) is interpreted to mean that forced repatriation is unacceptable, and that a Detaining Power has the right to grant asylum to prisoners it holds in any situation “where the repatriation of a prisoner of war would be manifestly contrary to the general principles of international law for the protection of the human being.” 

Both interpretations exist today precisely because of the long shadow cast by Soviet policies on the repatriation of prisoners at the end of the Second World War.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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Like it or not, war can sometimes be a fashion statement. Among the multivarious uniforms that distinguish one unit from another, senior officers may indulge in the privilege of distinguishing themselves with individual touches—to be identifiable to their own troops, though hopefully not to the enemy. History records Hannibal Barca going to battle dressed as a common soldier, less conspicuous to his Roman enemies but still recognizable to his men. During the Napoléonic wars the namesake French emperor, Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher and British Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, favored the casual route, confident they’d be recognized by the right people when it counted. For every such low profile, however, there were extroverts who, aided by singular flourishes, went the distance to be unmistakable to all.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Military History magazine.

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In February 1943 the Waffen-SS came to Yefremovka, Ukraine, a tiny, ethnic Cossack village west of Kharkov in the USSR’s Ukrainian SSR. Specifically, the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH) descended upon the unprotected and totally defenseless village—then a Soviet collective farm. When the LSSAH left hours later, nearly 1,000 old men, women and children from that village and hundreds of others rounded up from surrounding hamlets had been brutally murdered, including more than 100 civilians who had been herded into Yefremovka’s small local Orthodox church.

Trapped inside the church, they were horrifically and mercilessly burned to death. Two of the few survivors of this massacre—a mother (my wife’s grandmother) and her 8-year-old daughter (my future mother-in-law)—survived only because a Wehrmacht (German Army, not SS) transport driver warned them to hide in an underground root cellar while—risking his own life had his humanitarian act been discovered—he deliberately parked his truck over the cellar entrance to conceal them during the massacre. This disgusting mass slaughter was exactly the manner in which Hitler’s vaunted Waffen-SS consistently fought World War II.

Killers, Not Soldiers

From the very beginning of the war, these cold-blooded killers, masquerading as soldiers in uniform, murdered their way through combat on the war’s Eastern and Western fronts, starting with the May 28, 1940 Wormhoudt Massacre in France during which the LSSAH forced 87 British and French POWs—captured while serving as rearguard to the heroic Dunkirk evacuation—into a barn, then tossed hand grenades inside slaughtering 81 and wounding 6 of the helpless POWs. Countless other examples of Waffen-SS war crimes abound throughout the whole war.

Indeed, shortly after the Normandy invasion, from June 7–17, 1944, the 12th SS Panzer Division (Hitlerjugend) murdered 158 Canadian POWs. The Waffen-SS’s most notorious war crime atrocity was the infamous Dec. 17, 1944 “Malmedy Massacre” at Baugnez Crossroads, Belgium where LSSAH’s Kampfgruppe Peiper brutally executed 84 unarmed POWs, primarily G.I.s of the 7th US Armored Division’s 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion.

A few US soldiers survived and escaped the slaughter. When I interviewed one of the massacre’s several survivors four decades later, he somewhat ashamedly, but understandably admitted, “Even today, I don’t like Germans very much.”

The same day as the Malmedy Massacre, Hitler’s Waffen-SS proved to be “equal opportunity murderers” with another massacre of U.S. POWs not far away. The LSSAH perpetrated the “Wereth Massacre,” the beating, torture and execution of 11 Black soldiers in two batteries of the 333rd Field Artillery Battalion near Wereth, Belgium.

These horrific atrocities are only some examples of the Waffen-SS’s numerous war crimes, which happened throughout the duration of the war from start to finish—especially on the Eastern Front where their fanatical embrace of Hitler’s racial lunacy classified “Slavs” and Jews as “subhumans” who the Waffen-SS routinely murdered.

Misguided “Fan Base”

Yet perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the Waffen-SS’s story is that, starting a few decades after World War II, an admiring, fawning “Waffen-SS fan base” has emerged, mainly amongst younger military history buffs in the U.S. and the UK who celebrate the widely-acknowledged tactical/operational expertise and genuine military prowess of the Waffen-SS, but who stubbornly ignore the disgusting record of war crimes of these “killers in uniform”.

Having no “skin in the game” as the World War II generation did, these Waffen-SS “fans” admire them chiefly because the Waffen-SS had “cool” camouflage uniforms and innovative tanks and small-arms weapons. Sad and sorry reasons to celebrate and admire war criminals.

Waffen-SS vs. Soviet INfantry

UK-based author Chris McNab’s mission in writing another meticulously-researched, expertly-written, and highly informative book in Osprey Publishing’s excellent “Combat” series is not to detail the endless examples of the homicidal Waffen-SS’s countless war crimes—his job in this dual examination and insightful analysis of two opposing combat formations is to compare and contrast, within the context of the Rostov-on-Don and Kharkov battles of 1942–43, the composition, arms, equipment/weapons/tactics, training and combat records of both opponents, and to present and analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each combatant formation.

As usual, McNab—a regular author for MHQ—does an outstanding job in accomplishing that mission in only
80 pages.

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Of course, McNab brings out the contrasting ideological motivations and inspirations of the elite Waffen-SS units and the standard Soviet rifleman—the USSR’s version of what in the U.S. could be called the typical “G.I.”—particularly pointing out that while each member of the Waffen-SS swore an oath to Adolf Hitler personally, his Red Army counterpart pledged to “my last breath to be faithful to the people, to the Soviet Motherland, and the Workers-Peasants’ Government [aka The Soviet Union].”

Waffen-SS fighters fought for Hitler, waging a racially fueled war of aggression and conquest, while Red Army soldiers fought to defend their homeland against a ruthless enemy invader murdering his way across their nation.

How the Tables Turned

McNab’s expert analysis clearly reveals that in the beginning of the Eastern Front clash between the two combatants the more tactically skilled and better-trained, ideologically-motivated Waffen-SS volunteers held the early advantage over their mostly conscripted Soviet riflemen opponents defending their country, families and homes.

However as the war dragged on, Red Army soldiers and, importantly, their commanders and leaders at all levels—most of them fortunate survivors of Stalin’s disastrous Red Army purge of 1936–1941 but inadequately prepared for warfare in June 1941—learned valuable lessons in fighting, commandership and the tactical-operational art.

Arguably, the eventual Red Army victory in May 1945 over Hitler’s legions as the Soviets snuffed out the last vestiges of Nazi resistance in the rubble of Hitler’s capital, Berlin, might be attributed to a triumph of Soviet “mass” (overwhelming numbers of troops and weapons) over a more skilled but greatly outnumbered German opponent—as Stalin famously said, “Quantity [mass] has a quality all its own.”

Yet Red Army commanders had learned via blood and sacrifice from 1941–1945 how to fight and above all how to win against Hitler’s best. The Waffen-SS, clearly, were ruthless killers, but they inarguably were excellent teachers.

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When British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived at the Quebec Conference (code-name QUADRANT) in August 1943, he had a special guest with him. He was a small intense, rather odd-looking man, as Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, commander of the United States Army Air Forces, recalled: “You took one look at that face, like the face of a pale Indian chieftain, topping the uniform still smelling of jungle and sweat and war and you thought ‘Hell, this man is serious’.”

Brig. Orde Wingate had spent the first two months of 1943 in the Burma jungle, leading a guerrilla campaign against the Japanese that achieved little in terms of material damage: a few bridges blown, some railway lines cut and a few dozen enemy soldiers killed. The real significance of what Wingate and his 3,000 Chindits had achieved was psychological: they had attacked the vaunted Japanese army in its own territory.

The exploits of the British Special Forces unit were splashed across American newspapers, with the Ogden Standard-Examiner calling it “one of the greatest epics of the war” and the Waterloo Daily Courier hailing Wingate for his innovation in using aircraft for resupply. “Cuttingan army off from its base and penetrating deep into enemy territory is an exceedingly dangerous maneuver,” said the paper. “But the ability to summon supplies by radio and receive them from the air makes such a maneuver more feasible. It may be that the Wingate expedition in Burma is only the forerunner of a new kind of warfare.”

Going Behind Enemy Lines

Churchill took the 40-year-old Wingate to the Quebec Conference for exactly that reason: to show to his American allies that a new kind of warfare had been launched in Burma, what Wingate called “Long Range Penetration.” The brigadier addressed the American delegation on Aug. 17, and told them in his conclusion that “long range groups should be used as an essential part of the plan of conquest to create a situation leading to the advance of our main forces.”

The next day Wingate had an audience with Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt. FDR was so impressed that he authorized the deployment of American ground troops in Burma for the first time.

The official telegram of authorization from Washington was sent Aug. 31 to Lt. Gen. Joseph Stilwell. In February 1942 Stilwell had been posted to Burma as head of a small U.S. military mission to help train the Chinese army. It had not gone well. Stilwell and his men had been forced to flee the advancing Japanese on foot, trekking 140 miles north to India. In 1943 he was back in the China Burma India Theater, in charge of Northern Combat Area Command. Stilwell’s instructions were to recruit a total of 2,830 officers and men, all of whom had to be volunteers and “of a high state of physical ruggedness.” The force—codenamed “Galahad”—needed to be ready for combat deployment in February 1944: “Only 3,000, but the entering wedge,” Stilwell wrote in his diary on September 2. “Can we use them! And how!” Stilwell’s triumphalism was short-lived. On learning that Galahad would be under the command of Wingate–a man he considered (as others did), “an exhibitionist”—he raged: “That is enough to discourage Christ.”

On New Year’s Day 1944 General Order Number One redesignated Galahad the 5307th Composite Regiment (Provisional). As one of their officers quipped: “Where’d they ever get such a number? It sounds like a street address in Los Angeles.” That wasn’t the only change afoot. 

Working with Chinese Allies

The 3,000 Americans had arrived in India by troopship from San Francisco at the end of October 1943. They established a base at Camp Deogarh and that autumn they had been driven hard by their two commanding officers, Lt-Cols. Francis Brink and Charles N. Hunter. They had also benefited from instruction from Wingate’s Chindits, who were camped nearby and training for a second operation behind the lines in Burma.

“The Chindits were really tough guys, they put us through our paces,” recalled Bernard Martin, one of the American volunteers. “We went on these long marches with 50lbs on our back, and sometimes in the middle of the night they would start firing their weapons shouting ‘we’re the enemy, we’re the enemy!’. We had to react. They taught us well.”

Stilwell meanwhile was preoccupied with planning an offensive against the Japanese in Burma. On Dec. 18 Chiang Kai‐shek, China’s Generalissimo, agreed to allow him to command the 22nd and 38th Chinese divisions in the imminent invasion, the first time an American would lead Chinese soldiers into battle.

It was a three-pronged invasion. The Chinese Y [Yoke] Force would push into north-east Burma, and the British IV Corps would attack from the West across the Chindwin River. The third thrust would come from Stilwell’s two Chinese divisions, attacking down the middle. Stilwell’s force would be up against the elite Japanese 18th Division under the command of Lt. Gen. Shinichi Tanaka.

The offensive was launched on Dec. 24, 1943. The fighting was intense. In the first week Stilwell’s two Chinese Divisions lost 750 men killed or wounded, but they pushed back the Japanese. Emboldened by his initial gains, Stilwell demanded of Adm. Lord Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander South East Asia Command, that the 3,000 Americans of Galahad be placed under his direct command. Mountbatten gave Stilwell his wish at the Delhi Conference on Dec. 31.

New Leaders

Stilwell wasted no time in stamping his mark on his new force. As well as changing its name, he also changed its command, dismissing Brink and demoting Hunter to the second-in-command. The new C.O was announced on Jan. 4: 40-year-old Brig. Gen. Frank Merrill. It was a contentious decision, not least because Merrill was not physically robust, and Stilwell knew it. Merrill had been part of his military mission to Burma in 1942 and had collapsed with heart trouble during the retreat to India. Hunter was a combat soldier and his own man; Merrill was neither. What he was, however, was a yes-man, which was why Stilwell wanted him in command of the 5307th.

The news of Hunter’s demotion disappointed the men. “It had been our hope all along that Hunter would be the man who would be anointed to command us and carry us into combat,” reflected Lt. Sam Wilson, at 20 the youngest of the 5307th’s officers. “He put the unit together, trained the unit, got us into fighting fettle, and then we became a political football between the British…and Stilwell.”

Hunter and Merrill had graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. in 1929; that was about all they had in common. Hunter, born in Oneida, New York, in 1906, was a sinewy man with a temperament to match his tough physique. A contemporary described him as: “Very muscular with no excess fat. His athletic appearance and firm facial features created an aura of authority.” Hunter joined an infantry regiment on leaving West Point and served three years in the Philippines and two and a half in Panama, two postings where he gained valuable jungle training. In 1942 he was appointed Chief of the Rifles and Weapons Platoon Group of the Weapons Sections at Fort Benning, a frustrating role for a man who craved a combat posting. Hunter’s opportunity came with the formation of Galahad. “I had been selected from all other volunteer lieutenant colonels because of my extensive tropical jungle experience,” he recalled.

Merrill, in contrast, was a frail child who grew into a frail young man. He was accepted into West Point on the sixth attempt after the Academy finally agreed to overlook his poor eyesight. His peers at West Point nicknamed him “Pee-Wee” and mocked him in his yearbook entry. “We refuse to make predictions as to Pee-Wee’s future, for it is ever changing,” it ran. “First of all, his goal was to be a lawyer, then a politician, and last a soldier. Even this is slightly uncertain.” Merrill was never cut out to be a combat soldier. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1932 with a Bachelor of Science in military engineering and in 1938 he was sent to Tokyo as the Military Attaché. He then joined Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s staff in the Philippines and was appointed to a similar role under Stilwell when he arrived in Burma in March 1942.

But what Merrill lacked in physical strength he made up for in mental agility. Lt. Sam Wilson regarded his new C.O as “brilliant, innovative and probably a better strategic thinker than Hunter.” 

Birth of the “Marauder” legend

On Jan. 20, 1944 a posse of American war correspondents were invited to watch the 5307th undergo some training exercises at their Deogarh camp. Frank Hewlett of United Press described them as “the roughest, toughest bunch of infantrymen the U. S. army has ever put together.” His colleague from Life magazine, James Shepley, was just as taken. There was a hitch, however, and that was the name. The 5307th didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. As Merrill gave the correspondents a lift in his jeep to the Betwa River to see how mules carried their supplies across water, Shepley had an idea: why not call the unit “Merrill’s Marauders”?

A week later the Marauders had been reduced through the rigors of training to a strength of 2,600 and began the 1200 mile move east to Assam, in northeast India just across the border with Burma. Eight hundred tons of supplies had already made the journey, including radio equipment, medical supplies, crew-served weapons and 400 mules. These animals were a recommendation from the Chindits, who had found them tough and hardy on their first operation in Burma. Capable of carrying 200 lbs of equipment each, the mules’ biggest advantage over horses was that they ate the bamboo leaves in Burma whereas a horse required a larger amount of daily fodder. A few Marauders had been given a crash course in how to handle the animal from “Mule-skinners” of the 31st QM Pack Troop.

The Marauders didn’t linger long in Assam. Late in the evening of Feb. 7 the 1st Battalion was the first of the three Marauder battalions to hit the trail toward Burma. The men were wearing a dark green cotton herringbone twill uniform and either calf-high rubber-soled canvas boots or standard combat shoes for footwear, some with and others without canvas gaiters. Their backpacks contained essential equipment such as mess gear, blanket, poncho, spare socks and boxed, dried food combat rations.

In the vanguard of the 1st Battalion column was Lt. Sam Wilson’s Intelligence & Reconnaissance platoon (I&R). Each battalion had an I&R platoon, whose job it was to blaze a trail, reconnoitering the dense jungle for the signs of the enemy and also for good bivouac sites and suitable areas for air drops. The men chosen for these platoons had to have initiative, endurance and awareness. Few Marauders possessed these qualities in more abundance than a 25-year-old sergeant from California called Clarence Branscomb, a veteran of the Guadalcanal campaign. Over the course of 11 brutal days in January 1943 the 6 ft Branscomb had shown himself a superb exponent of jungle warfare. “I enjoyed fighting,” he reflected. 

Marching Into Burma

The Marauders marched across the Indian border into Burma and bivouacked at Shingbiyang on Feb. 18, enjoying what would be their last proper hot meal for months. Fifteen miles southeast was Stilwell’s HQ at Ningam Sakan, and it was there that Merrill received his orders for the forthcoming operation.

The Chinese 22nd and 38th divisions were slowly but steadily pushing the Japanese back from the Hukawng Valley. A pivotal role was being played by the Chinese 1st Provisional Tank Group under the command of Col. Rothwell H. Brown. They were driving south along the Kamaing Road toward Maingkwan, the main Japanese base in the valley. In front of a map at his HQ, Stilwell pointed to the village of Walawbum, 15 miles south of Maingkwan, and told Merrill this would be the site of their attack. The Chinese would launch a frontal assault on Walawbum, while the Marauders would cut their way through the jungle, and hit the enemy on their eastern (right) flank. Before setting off, the Marauders received a resupply by air. The C-47 transport aircraft of the First and Second Carrier Units dropped containers from a height of 400ft or less which were suspended from color-coded parachutes: blue for ammunition, white for rations, and green for medical supplies.

The honor of leading the Marauders as they deployed fell once more to Wilson’s 1st Battalion I&R platoon, which headed south on the morning of Feb. 24 to reconnoiter the villages to the east. The I&R platoons of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions, under the command of Lts. William Grissom and Logan Weston, set out a few hours later on the same trail before turning south and seeking out the enemy’s flank. 

A Savage Environment

The terrain in northern Burma was savage: hills carpeted in forest and jungle, and rivers that were wide and powerful. The nights could be cold, giving way to a dawn mist and then intense heat as the sun climbed. The ground was thick with rotting vegetation and the air was damp and humid. The environment was a breeding ground for disease and abundant in menacing wildlife such as tigers, snakes and the creature the Marauders would come to hate most of all: the leech. Leeches, remembered Capt. Fred Lyons, were these “horrifying grayish-brown parasites that bury their heads in your veins and suck till they are bloated several times larger than normal size with your blood.” They were about an inch in length and would suck the blood from victims until dropping off on their own accord. They got everywhere: ears, noses and even testicles. 

For Wilson and most men in his I&R platoon, Burma was an overwhelming sensory overload. They had never encountered such an inhospitable environment, nor had they ever met the enemy face to face. Wilson did not have the arrogance of youth, however, and readily tapped into the experience of his veteran sergeant Clarence Branscomb, who told him the average Japanese soldier was “tough, capable and skillful.” 

Wilson didn’t have long to wait for his introduction to the enemy. “We were moving along a trail parallel to a river when we came to a kind of open glade,” he recalled. “I saw some horses by the river so I walked toward them. About halfway across the Japanese hiding along the river bank opened up on me. Shot my canteen off my belt and riddled my pack. I fell to the ground stunned.” Wilson recovered his senses and saw a Japanese mount one of the horses. “I opened my full-bore carbine on him and hit him with the first round but kept pumping rounds into him as he was sliding off the horse. Then a grenade came sailing through the air.”

Wilson flicked away the grenade. It exploded in the long grass but the force of the blast knocked him cold for a few seconds. He regained consciousness and saw a Japanese “running at me with his bayonet.” Wilson raised his weapon, squeezed the trigger and heard the click of an empty magazine. “Back to my left rear, maybe 30 or 40 yards away, Sgt.  Clarence Branscomb stood up and hit the charging [Japanese] in the chest with three quick rounds,” remembered Wilson. “He practically fell on top of me.”

Race To The River

The Marauders met the Japanese in force for the first time on March 4. The previous evening Lt. Logan Weston had led the 3rd Battalion’s I&R platoon across the Numpyek river with orders from Lt-Col. Charles Beach, the battalion commander, to protect their north flank as they advanced toward Walawbum. Weston and his men were now effectively isolated from the rest of the 3rd battalion deep inside Japanese territory, and the enemy was aware of their presence. 

Gen. Tanaka, commander of the 18th Division, ordered the bulk of the 55th and 56th Infantry regiments to move south and “destroy” the Americans threatening their flank. At daylight on March 4 the Japanese approached Weston’s platoon bivouacked close to a swamp. Weston let them advance and then gave the order to fire. “The enemy soldiers hit the ground and fanned out, crawling closer and shooting ferociously,” said Weston. “They chattered among themselves, some seemed to be giving orders.”

Weston called over his Nisei (a Japanese word meaning Second Generation American) interpreter, 23-year-old Henry Gosho from Seattle, one of 14 Japanese-Americans who had volunteered for the Marauders. In between the mortar shells and small arms fire, Gosho heard the orders shouted by the Japanese officer and translated them for Weston. They were attempting to encircle the Americans. Forewarned, Weston began withdrawing his platoon across the Numpyek but not before his radioman had sent a message to the 3rd battalion dug in on the other side of the river, requesting suppressing mortar fire.

It was now a race to get over the river. The Americans jumped into the water and began wading across, urged on by Weston who stood in the middle of the Numpyek counting his men as they passed. Two had been badly wounded and were being carried on litters constructed from combat jackets and bamboo poles. It took time to get them into the water. The shrieks of the pursuing Japanese got closer. Then a 3rd Battalion platoon under the command of Lt. Victor Weingartner appeared on the far bank and opened fire. PFC Norman Janis, an Oglala Sioux and one of the sharpest shots in the outfit, spotted a Japanese crew setting up a Nambu Type 92 7.7mm machine gun. Janis raised his M1 Garand rifle. “He squatted down behind the gun so I shot for his head,” remembered Janis, who did not miss. “Another one got in his place, I hit him, got him out of the road.” Seven Japanese soldiers tried to pull the the Nambu’s trigger, but Janis killed them all.

Weston and his men got safely across to the eastern bank but the Japanese would not give up the chase. “They just kept coming across and we kept shooting at them,” said Weingartner.

The Japanese launched a fresh assault across the Numpyek early on March 6. It was repulsed with more heavy losses for the attackers; they came again in the afternoon with the same result. “I respected the Japanese very much, or the soldiers I did,” reflected Bernard Martin, a radioman with the 3rd Battalion. “They weren’t afraid. But they had poor commanders. The Japanese always launched frontal attacks. On several occasions they could have outflanked us but their commanders were stupid. On this occasion this officer appeared in shiny boots and pressed pants, waving his sword, and leading a charge across the river.”

“We’re The Marauders!”

The officer was killed along with an estimated 800 of his men in the two days of contacts with the Marauders. American casualties amounted to eight dead and 37 wounded. “Gen. Stilwell has sent a message that he is pleased,” Merrill informed his senior officers at a staff conference on the evening of March 7. “Between us and the Chinese, we have forced the Japanese to withdraw farther in the last three days than they have in the last three months of fighting.”

It was during the fight at the Numpyek River, recalled Martin, that the “Merrill’s Marauders” moniker was adopted by the men. “It was Lt. Col. Beach who told us that the newspapers were calling us Merrill’s Marauders,” he said. “We liked that name…when we were screaming abuse at the [Japanese] across the river we started yelling, ‘We’re the Marauders”.’ 

The man himself, Merrill, was beginning to feel the strain. He had been lightly admonished by Stilwell for not exploiting the casualties inflicting on the Japanese by the 3rd battalion and allowing them to withdraw south. 

The Chinese pursued the Japanese into the Mogaung Valley down the main trail while the Marauders swung east through the jungle to attack them in the rear. Hunter led a mixed force of the 2nd and 3rd battalions to block the enemy retreat when the Chinese launched their assault. They clashed with the Japanese at first light on March 24 between the Kamaing Road and the east bank of the Mogaung River. The first Japanese banzai attack came just after 7:30am and the sixteenth and last was in mid-afternoon. “I had bodies piled up so high in front of my machine guns that I had to get out and kick the bodies out of the way so we could fire our machine guns,” remembered Lt. Phil Piazza. Just before 4:00pm a flight of P-51 fighters attacked the Japanese positions, the cue for the 2nd Battalion to withdraw across the Mogaung. They had lost two men, the Japanese around 200. 

Hunter wanted only a temporary withdrawal before counter-attacking his weakened enemy. He radioed Merrill and requested permission to advance south with the 3rd Battalion and capture the lightly-held town of Kamaing. “I was disappointed when instead of getting permission to attack I was told to withdraw,” said Hunter. “This golden opportunity should have been seized and exploited with all resources available.”

To Capture An Airfield

Merrill was a sick man by now, and on March 28 he suffered a heart attack at his HQ in the hilltop village of Nhpum Ga. He was evacuated by air. Hunter assumed command. He led the Marauders for the next six weeks, two of which entailed the besiegement of the 2nd Battalion in Nphum Ga.

When the siege was lifted on April 9, Easter Sunday, all three battalions of the Marauders were exhausted. The final tally for holding Nhpum Ga revealed it had cost the Americans 52 dead and 163 wounded (the Japanese lost 400 men) but by now many of the Marauders were riddled with disease. By April 16, more than 100 soldiers of the 2nd Battalion had been flown out suffering from amoebic dysentery, malnutrition, skin diseases and fevers. For the 1,600 Marauders who remained, there were fresh uniforms, their first mail in two months and the chance to lie in the sun doing nothing. Above all, there was the knowledge that their mission in Burma was over, as they’d been promised by Merrill weeks earlier. 

Stilwell had other ideas. He saw an opportunity to capture the airfield at Myitkyina from the Japanese. This would deny their fighter planes a base from which to attack American cargo aircraft flying over the Himalayas “Hump” to resupply China from India. It would have to be a surprise attack if it were to succeed. He ordered Hunter to lead his men on a 70-mile march up and through the 6,100-ft Naura Myket Pass, which was unguarded by the Japanese because they considered it impassable.

Hunter set out at the head of the 6000-strong Myitkyina Task Force (which also comprised two Chinese infantry regiments) on April 28. “Raining,” wrote Staff Sgt. James McGuire in his diary. “6:30am started hiking, went up 2600 ft, really a tough climb. We have 6000 ft mt to go over and it’s really raining and muddy. Bivouacked at village, water scarce. The path is a 20% incline.” That first day set the pattern for what radioman Bernard Martin described as “a trail of sadness.” It took the Marauders and their Chinese allies nearly three weeks to reach the airstrip at Myitkyina during which time they lost men to combat, disease and exhaustion.

On the evening of May 16, Hunter ordered Wilson’s I&R platoon to recce the airfield. Wilson was too sick with amoebic dysentery to lead the mission so Sgt. Clarence Branscomb selected two men and they set out for the airfield. The intelligence they brought back was described by Hunter as “remarkable” and the next morning he launched a successful assault on Myitkyina airfield.

Broken Promises

Prime Minister Winston Churchill called the capture of Myitkyina “a brilliant feat of arms,” and Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander, issued an Order of the Day addressed to Stilwell in which he declared the seizure “a most outstanding success…the crossing of the 6,100-foot Naura Myket Pass is a feat which will live in military history. Please convey my personal congratulations and thanks to all ranks.” 

But Stilwell didn’t. Nor did he keep his promise that the Marauders would be evacuated as soon as the airstrip had been captured. Bitterness grew among the Americans, as did the casualty list as more Marauders succumbed to sickness. When they were finally relieved on Aug. 3, few remained of the 2,600 who had marched into Burma six months earlier: 93 had been killed in combat, 30 had died of disease and 301 were wounded or missing. An additional 1,970 Marauders had been hospitalized with sickness. It was claimed only two men from the original 3,000 volunteers went through the whole Burmese campaign untouched by sickness. Master Sgt. Joe Doyer was one and Charles Hunter the other.

Hunter had objected to Stilwell about the broken promises and their general mistreatment—criticism that ultimately harmed his career. He died in 1978 in Cheyenne, Wyoming, largely overlooked by the American public compared to Frank Merrill, whose name is forever associated with the Marauders. Only the men themselves knew the truth. “He got the credit for the thing, got his name in it, but he never did anything,” said Clarence Branscomb of Merrill in 2013. “Hunter was doing the job at Mitch [Myitkyina] that Merrill should have been doing.”

Wilson was more charitable toward Merrill, but shared Branscomb’s view of Hunter. “An excellent tactician, an absolutely super troop leader,” he reflected. “A better name for the outfit would probably have been Hunter’s Harbingers or Hunter’s Hawks, or something like that rather than Merrill’s Marauders. But as you know, history doesn’t always work like that.”  

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When World War I settled into static trench warfare, even the most advanced armored cars were effectively immobilized by the Western Front’s combination of muddy terrain, trenches, barbed wire, heavy machine guns and artillery.

To meet such challenges, in February 1915 British First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill formed a Landship Committee tasked with designing an armored vehicle capable of mastering mud, bridging an 8-foot gap, climbing a 5-foot earthwork and other specifications outlined by British army Lt. Col. Ernest Swinton. Under the guidance of mechanical engineer Major Walter Wilson of the Royal Naval Air Service and agricultural engineer Sir William Tritton, the committee purchased twin “creeping grip” track assemblies from the Bullock Tractor Co. of Chicago, Ill., and fitted them beneath a boxlike crew compartment of riveted steel plates. Powering the vehicle was a Daimler-Knight 6-cylinder, 105 hp tractor engine provided by Tritton’s Foster & Co., of Lincoln, England. On discovering the Bullock tracks were too small to accommodate the vehicle’s weight, Tritton designed longer, wider tracks. He also added twin rear wheels to facilitate steering. A proposed round turret packing a 2-pounder Vickers gun was never installed.

Officially known as the No.1 Lincoln Machine or Tritton Machine, the prototype landship was nicknamed “Little Willie” (a derisive name then applied to Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia). When not undergoing testing, it was kept under the strictest wraps, a backstory claiming it was a new mobile “water tank.” The abbreviated tank reference became universal for Little Willie’s descendants.

Little Willie was found to be top-heavy, but by that time a better design was in development, with a rhomboid-shaped track running above and below the superstructure and 6-pounder guns in sponsons on either side. Nicknamed “Mother,” the improved variant was further refined into the Mark I tank, which first saw combat at the Somme on Sept. 15, 1916. Today the tank’s forebear, Little Willie, is in the collection of the Tank Museum in Bovington, England.

This story appeared in the 2023 Autumn issue of Military History magazine.

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The 1806–07 War of the Fourth Coalition, which pitted France against an alliance led by Prussia and Russia, climaxed in the Prussian burg of Friedland (present-day Pravdinsk, Russia). It was there the French field-tested doctrines that would dominate artillery tactics for the next 130 years.

On June 13, 1807, Napoléon sent some 15,000 troops of his reserve corps under Marshal Jean Lannes north to invest the port of Königsberg (present-day Kaliningrad), on the Baltic Coast. Moving to intercept him were 65,000 Russians led by Count Leonty Leontyevich Bennigsen, a German in the Russian service. That night Bennigsen detached 46,000 troops to cross the Alle (Lyna) River on pontoon bridges to engage the small French force at Friedland. Though outnumbered 3-to-1, Lannes managed to hold his position for nine hours.

Just before noon Napoléon arrived with the main body of the Grande Armée. Marshal Michel Ney, commanding the VI Corps and the French right wing, was tasked with securing Friedland and the Alle River bridges in order to cut off the Russians’ escape routes. Around 1 p.m. two dozen guns at Posthenen, behind the center of the French line, signaled the main attack. With that, the French center and left wing advanced slowly, while Ney’s two divisions pressed on to the village of Sortlack, coming under Russian artillery fire from across the river.

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At that crucial moment Brig. Gen. Alexandre-Antoine Sénarmont, commanding the artillery of a reserve corps at the center of the French line, obtained permission to move up independently and test his theories on the use of massed artillery. Gathering 20 six-pounders, four 4-pounders and six 5.5-inch howitzers, he divided them into two 15-gun batteries supported by an infantry battalion and four dragoon regiments. He then advanced each battery in turn in 500-yard increments. Approaching to within 60 paces of the enemy, Sénarmont had his guns loaded with canister shot and crushed one infantry attack after another. The distraction enabled Ney to seize Friedland. As the beaten Russians fled back across the pontoon bridges, Sénarmont redirected his guns and destroyed the spans.

Sensing victory, Napoléon ordered his center and left wings to hasten their advance. General Andrey Ivanovich Gorchakov, commanding the opposing Russian center and right, tried to fend them off, but Ney and Lannes soon had his troops pinned against the river, where many drowned or were skewered on French bayonets. Survivors surged across a fortuitously discovered ford on the Alle. Only nightfall and French cavalry General Emmanuel de Grouchy’s unwillingness to pursue them in the dark spared the Russians from annihilation.

As it was, the Russians suffered 20,000 casualties, while French losses totaled 8,000. Among those killed were four of Sénarmont’s officers and 62 of his gunners, but his men alone had accounted for some 4,000 Russians.

Königsberg fell the next day, and a month later Napoléon and Tsar Alexander I signed the Treaty of Tilsit, ending the war.

Lessons:

Know thine enemy. Bennigsen later claimed he’d believed Lannes’ corps was isolated, and he hadn’t expected French reinforcements to march the same distance in 12 hours his own force had taken 24 to cover. Given his previous encounters with Napoléon, he should have known better.

Nothing beats real-world testing. Sénarmont’s innovative use of leapfrogging artillery and concentrated targeting proved decisive. Had he not asked permission, the result may have been different.

Follow through. Though the French all but won the war at Friedland, Grouchy’s reluctance to pursue his fleeing enemy meant the Russians lived to fight another, well, few days.

This story appeared in the Autumn 2023 issue of Military History magazine.

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As a housekeeper for the German Embassy in Paris, Marie Bastian had two tasks. She was expected to gather the day’s paper trash twice a week…unless she recognized something worth pocketing to pass to her other employer, Maj. Hubert-Joseph Henry of the Section de Statistiques (“statistics section,” the innocuous-sounding title for French counterintelligence). Making her rounds on Sept. 26, 1894, she noticed a handwritten note in French lying torn up in the wastebasket of German military attaché Maximilian von Schwartzkoppen. She wasted no time in taking it to Henry, who passed it to his superior, Lt. Col. Jean Sandherr.

Pieced together, it proved to have only minor military secrets. Far more serious was the evidence of its origin. Someone in the French General Staff was passing secrets to the Germans. 

A Spy In Their Midst

It had been 23 years since the Franco-Prussian War, in which the Second Empire of Napoleon III collapsed and the collection of kingdoms and duchies that brought it down united into a single entity called Germany. Peace had reigned since then between the French Third Republic and the German Second Reich, but each power eyed the other suspiciously.

Behind a seeming high point in European civilization, spy games went on as secret agents from all the powers sought out any foreign secrets that might give them an edge, should another war ever break out. Although the French army had recovered from its humiliating defeat, it remained insecure to the brink of paranoia. This new revelation seemed to suggest that the paranoia was warranted.

Sandherr had been aware that someone was leaking information to Schwartzkoppen, but the note was the first solid evidence to fall into his hands. Matching the handwriting against documents among the General Staff, he found at least two specimens that seemed to match. Since the intelligence being passed was a list of new artillery components, including technical details for a hydraulic brake in a new 120mm howitzer and modifications to artillery formations, Sandherr narrowed the search down to an artillery captain on the staff: Alfred Dreyfus. 

Soldier and Patriot

A thorough examination of Dreyfus suggested dubious spy material. Born on Oct. 9, 1859 in Mulhouse, Alsace, he was the youngest of nine children whose father had risen from a street peddler to a textile manufacturer. When the Germans seized Alsace and Lorraine in 1871, the Dreyfus family moved to Basel, Switzerland, then to Paris. There Alfred chose to pursue a career in the army, enrolling in the Ecole Polytechnique to study military sciences.

In 1880 he was commissioned a sub-lieutenant and from then until 1882 studied artillery at Fontainebleau before being assigned to the 31st Artillery Regiment at Le Mans and then the 1st Mounted Artillery Battery of the First Cavalry Division in Paris. In 1885 he was promoted to full lieutenant and in 1889 served as adjutant to the director of the Etablissement de Bourges with the rank of captain.

Dreyfus married Lucie Eugènie Hadamard on April 18, 1891. Three days later he was admitted into the Ecole Superieure de Guerre (war college), from which he graduated ninth in his class in 1893. He was assigned to the headquarters of the Army General Staff—and ran into the first serious career obstacle stemming from his being the only Jewish officer on the staff.

One of his evaluators, Gen. Pierre de Bonnefond, gave him high marks for his technical acumen but lowered his overall score with a zero rating for “likeability” (what in modern U.S. Army jargon amounted to an “attitude problem”), adding that “Jews were not desired” on his staff. Although admitted to the staff, Dreyfus and some supporters protested Bonnefond’s blatant bias—an act that would be used against him when he came under investigation. 

Dreyfus Framed

Despite two of three examiners expressing doubts as to the similarity between Dreyfus’ writing samples and the handwriting on the note, Sandherr made it the cornerstone of his evidence against the captain. On Oct. 15, Dreyfus was ordered to appear at work in civilian clothes and was questioned by a self-styled handwriting expert, Maj. Armand du Paty de Clam, who, feigning an injured hand, asked Dreyfus to write a letter for him. Dreyfus did, giving no indication that he recognized the message he was transcribing as the same one to Schwartzkoppen. Upon his completing it, Du Paty fleetingly examined both documents and informed Dreyfus he was under arrest.

After four days of a secret court martial, Dreyfus was convicted of treason on Dec. 22 and sentenced to life imprisonment. At a public ceremony on Jan. 5, 1895, he was publicly stripped of every accoutrement on his uniform and had his sword broken before being sent to serve his life imprisonment at the penal colony on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. His last statement before being taken away was: “I swear that I am innocent. I remain worthy of serving in the army. Vive la France! Vive l’Armée!”

As Dreyfus was led away, he faced a barrage of insults, not only from brother officers but crowds stirred up by army provocateurs to undermine any sympathy for the traitor. The emphasis was on his religion, the most common cry being “Death to the Jews!” One Hungarian correspondent covering the event for the Austrian Neue Freie Presse took special notice.

Although he then believed Dreyfus guilty, he commented on the nature of the aftermath in his diary in June 1895: “In Paris, as I have said, I achieved a freer attitude toward anti-Semitism…above all, I recognized the emptiness and futility of trying to ‘combat’ anti-Semitism.” Despairing of his co-religionists ever finding acceptance anywhere in Europe, Theodor Herzl turned his thoughts toward the idea of their finding a homeland of their own.  

In Search of Justice

While Dreyfus endured heat, insects, malaria, dysentery and all the horrors that gave Devil’s Island its dreaded reputation, his older brother Mathieu spent all the time, energy and money at his disposal to have Alfred’s case reexamined, seemingly in vain. One appeal after another was rejected. The French army staff, obsessed with maintaining an image of infallibility, was not about to reconsider its rush to justice against the homegrown “foreigner” in its midst.

When Sandherr, promoted to colonel, left the Section de Statistiques to command the 20th Infantry Regiment at Montauban on July 1, 1895, his successor, Lt. Col. Marie-Georges Picquart, was instructed by Assistant Chief of the General Staff Charles-Arthur Gonse to find more incriminating evidence to ensure that Dreyfus stayed right where he was. 

Picquart, however, proved to be of different moral fiber. Investigating more on his own than his superiors authorized, the more he found the less the case against Dreyfus rang true to him—especially in March 1896, when he found a telegram from Schwartzkoppen, intercepted before it left the embassy, addressed to the actual author of the note.

That and other handwritten documents revealed a more precise handwriting match than Dreyfus’s. The handwriting was traced to Maj. Charles Marie Ferdinand Walsin-Esterhazy, another staff officer who had served in intelligence from 1877 to 1880. In a scenario common in the world of espionage, Esterhazy had fallen deeply in debt and sought a way out by selling secrets to the Germans. Confronted by Picquart on April 6, he made a full confession. Picquart submitted his revised report, with a recommendation that the Dreyfus case be reexamined. 

A Military Cover-Up

The response was hardly what he expected. His demand ran into brick walls at every turn from senior officers like Chief of Staff Gen. Raoul le Mouton de Boisdeffre and Minister of War Gen. Auguste Mercier, who remained determined that army intelligence not be sullied with having to admit that a mistake led to a miscarriage of justice. In regard to letting the real traitor slip away, Gonse went so far as to say, “If you are silent, no one will know.” “What you say is abominable,” replied an outraged Picquart. “I refuse to carry this secret to my tomb.” 

Picquart’s strong sense of justice led to his undergoing a series of transfers “in the interest of the service,” first to a unit in the French Alps and ultimately to command the 4th Tirailleurs Regiment in Sousse, Tunisia. In a further attempt to discredit his findings, Boisdeffre and Gonse ordered Picquart’s deputy in the Section de Statistiques, Maj. Henry, to fortify Dreyfus’ file with more incriminating evidence. This Henry did on Nov. 1 by producing what he declared to be further correspondence between Dreyfus and the Germans. However, when Boisdeffre and Gonse brought the most incriminating letter to then-Minister of War Jean-Baptiste Billot, they realized that it was a forgery clumsily created by Henry himself. 

Dreyfus’ innocence was becoming too clear to deny. Yet Billot joined Boisdeffre and Gonse in agreeing that the verdict must stand—and to persecute Picquart, “who did not understand anything.” Henry conjured up an embezzlement charge against his former superior and sent him an accusatory letter. This only brought Picquart back to Paris, armed with a lawyer.

Far from being buried, by mid-1896 the Dreyfus case had grown into a cause célèbre attracting partisans on both sides. Most French journals upheld the guilty verdict and opposed a retrial, reinforcing their arguments with accusations that Jews could only be expected to betray any country they inhabited. 

Besides the army, the partisans who came to be called “anti-Dreyfusards” were mainly conservatives, nationalists and traditionalists. The tradition they conserved was hundreds of years of antisemitism that had supposedly ended with the Revolution and the Rights of Man, but which the General Staff tacitly encouraged in its ongoing campaign to keep the brand of traitor on Dreyfus. Among the foremost civilian mouthpieces was Edouard Drumont, whose publication La Libre Parole became an open forum for anyone with bile against Jews in general.

The Spy Escapes

In spite of all this, a growing cross-section of the French intelligentsia began taking up Dreyfus’ case. The first of these “Dreyfusards” was anarchist journalist Bernard Lazare, who after examining the existing evidence published an appeal from Brussels, Belgium. The conflict between of the Revolution’s ideals and the revival of old prejudices in “defense” of a Catholic France came to virtually split the entire country in two, breaking up lifelong friendships even in the world of impressionist art. Claude Monet, Mary Cassatt, Paul Signac and Camille Pisarro, for example, were Dreyfusards, while Edgar Degas, Paul Cézanne and Pierre-Auguste Renoir were anti-Dreyfusards.

With evidence of Esterhazy’s guilt and Dreyfus’ innocence leaking into public scrutiny, the General Staff took a new step to address the matter head-on. On Jan. 10, 1898, it tried Esterhazy before a closed military court, Mathieu and Lucie Dreyfus’ appeals for a civil trial having been denied. The three army-supplied “experts” testified that Esterhazy’s handwriting did not match that on the bordereau. The next day, after three minutes of deliberation, the court acquitted Esterhazy and all officers present cheered. Dreyfusards protested in the streets, to be beaten down by mobs of rioting anti-Dreyfusards and antisemites.

Dreyfus suffered on, but the trial’s real victim was Picquart, who was discredited, subsequently arrested for “violation of professional security” and imprisoned in Fort Mont Valérien.

Having been publicly exonerated, Esterhazy was discretely discharged from the army and exiled to Britain via Brussels. Settling in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, he lived out his life comfortably until 1923.

The Dreyfusards swiftly changed tactics, doubling down on Lazare’s use of the press with a vehement 4,500-word open letter to President Félix Faure by novelist and social critic Emile Zola in the Jan. 13, 1898 issue of the newspaper L’Aurore. It was aimed directly at the high command’s perfidy with a title suggested by fellow journalist Georges Clemenceau:“J’Accuse!”

Clemenceau himself was equally accusatory when he declared, “What irony is this, that men should have stormed the Bastille, guillotined the king and promoted a major revolution, only to discover in the end that it had become impossible to get a man tried in accordance with the law.” Others who took up Dreyfus’ cause included Léon Blum, Anatole France, Marcel Proust, Sarah Bernhardt and even Mark Twain.

A Forgery discovered

J’Accuse exposed all that was known of the army’s morally corrupt handling of both Dreyfus and Esterhazy and included the General Staff members involved by name. L’Aurore’s circulation was normally 30,000 but it sold 200,000 copies on Jan. 13. The anti-Dreyfusards’ reaction was so violently negative that Zola needed a police escort to walk to and from his home. On Jan. 15 Le Temps called for a new public review of Dreyfus’ case. Minister of War Billot struck back by filing a public complaint against Zola and Alexandre Perrenx, manager of l’Aurore, for defamation of a public authority, which was approved by the Chamber of Deputies by a vote of 312 to 22.

Held at the Assises du Seine between Feb. 7 to 23, the trial ended with Zola condemned to the maximum sentence, a year in prison and a 3,000-franc fine. Again, the verdict was accompanied by street riots against Zola and against Jews. After another trial on July 18, Zola took friends’ advice and exiled himself to England for the following year. In the process, so much of the Dreyfus Affair was exposed to public scrutiny that Zola’s two courtroom defeats ultimately amounted to a tide-turning victory. 

France got a new minister of war, Godefroy Cavaignac, who was eager to prove Dreyfus’ guilt but was completely in the dark about the high command’s obstruction of justice. He ordered the case files examined and was astonished to find out how much evidence had been withheld from Dreyfus’ defense. 

On Aug. 13, 1898 one of his staff, Louis Cuignet, holding a key document before a lamp, noticed that the head and foot were not the same paper as the body copy. The forgery was soon traced to Major—now promoted to lieutenant colonel—Henry.

A court of inquiry was called for Esterhazy, who admitted his treason and revealed the high command’s collusion in framing Dreyfus. On Aug. 30 the council questioned Henry in the presence of Generals Boisdeffre and Gonse. After an hour of interrogation from Cavaignac himself, Henry broke down and confessed to having falsified the evidence. He was promptly arrested and imprisoned in the Fort Mont Valérien. The next day he was found with his throat cut. Nobody found a straight razor on his person when he entered his cell. How it got there—and whether his death was suicide or murder—remains a mystery.

With the news reports of Henry’s act of deceit, the anti-Dreyfusards declared him a martyr. Lucie Dreyfus pressed for a retrial. Cavaignac still refused, but the president of the council, Henri Brisson, forced him to resign. Boisdeffre also resigned and Gonse was discredited. While the partisans continued to struggle, sometimes violently, new revelations were gradually shifting the political landscape. A growing number of French Republicans recognized the injustice that hid behind the military’s veneer of “patriotism.” 

Pardoned?

On June 3, 1899, the Supreme Court overturned Dreyfus’ verdict and sentence. Dreyfus himself had little or no access to news of the maelstrom brewing in the wake of his arrest. It was days later that he learned that he was being summoned back to France. 

On June 9 Dreyfus departed Devil’s Island—only to be arrested again on July 1 and imprisoned at Rennes, where he was to undergo his retrial. This began on Aug. 7, presided over by Gen. Mercier, who was still determined to maintain the guilty verdict, and attended by as much popular rancor as before. On Aug. 14 one of Dreyfus’ lawyers, Fernand Labori, was shot in the back by an assailant who was never identified. As the original case against him crumbled, the president of the council, Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, sought a compromise. 

Although five of the seven court members upheld the original verdict, on Sept. 9 Waldeck-Rousseau declared Dreyfus guilty of treason “with extenuating circumstances” and reduced his life sentence to 10 years. The next day Dreyfus appealed for another retrial. Eager to put the “affair” behind France, Waldeck-Rousseau offered a pardon. Exhausted from his time on Devil’s Island, Dreyfus accepted those terms on Sept. 19 and was released on Sept. 21. Still, being pardoned implies guilt. Dreyfus’ supporters remained unsatisfied with anything short of exoneration. Beyond France, protest marches broke out in 20 foreign capitals.

Not Guilty

Among other literary responses, Zola added to his previous essays, L’Affaire and J’Accuse! with a third, Verité (truth).  On Sept. 29, 1902, however, Zola died, asphyxiated by chimney fumes from which his wife, Alexandrine, narrowly escaped. In 1953, the newspaper Liberation published the dying confession by a Paris roofer that he had blocked the chimney. Dreyfusards like socialist leader Jean Jaurès kept up the pressure for the next several years. 

On April 7, 1903 Dreyfus’ case was investigated once more—and eventually its conclusion was finally reversed. On July 13, 1906 he was declared innocent. He accepted reinstatement in the army with the rank of major, backdated to July 10, 1903, and was also made a chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. He commanded the artillery depot at Fort Neuf de Vincennes until June 1907, when he retired into the Reserve. Also exonerated was Georges Picquart, who rejoined the ranks, was promoted to brigadier general and served as Minister of War from 1906 to 1909. He died in a riding accident on Jan. 19, 1914.

On June 4, 1908 Dreyfus found himself literally the target of residual antisemitic hatred. As he attended the transfer of Emile Zola’s ashes to the Pantheon, journalist Louis Grégory fired two revolver shots, slightly wounding him in the arm. Although apprehended, Grégory was acquitted in court.

The question of Dreyfus’ loyalty to his country got a final test when World War I broke out. Returning from the reserves at age 55, he commanded an artillery depot and a supply column in Paris but as the French army suffered heavy attrition in the field, in 1917 he transferred to take up an artillery command on the Western Front, fighting at Chemin des Dames and Verdun. His son, Pierre, also served as an artillery officer, being awarded the Croix de Guerre. Two nephews also became artillery officers but were both killed in action. The only other major player in the Dreyfus Affair to see combat during the war was Armand du Paty de Clam.

In 1919 Dreyfus’ honors were upgraded to Officier de la Légion d’Honneur. He died on July 12, 1935, aged 75, and was buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery. For all the French military’s efforts to make it go away, the Dreyfus Affair long outlived its namesake, leaving behind a number of political, legal and social aftereffects. In France it held up a mirror that showed two psyches—which would recur five years after Dreyfus’ death with new evocative names, such as Charles de Gaulle and Pierre Laval. Sadly, it still hasn’t gone away.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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Keep cool, men!” shouted Winston Churchill as Mauser bullets whizzed uncomfortably past him and violently struck the ground around him. It was Nov. 15, 1899, and the future cigar-smoking British prime minister was in the thick of a vicious firefight with a Boer commando. Churchill thrived on adventure and danger, and he appeared to witnesses on that fateful day to be in his element as he barked out orders to British soldiers. 

The armored train in which Churchill had been riding had become victim of a well-executed Boer ambush, and the soldiers manning the train were now paying the heavy price of military incompetence. Many who survived the attack certainly had Churchill to thank for their lives. Yet this exciting incident was only the start of his escapades in Southern Africa. 

By the time of the outbreak of the Second Boer War in 1899, Churchill had already left his military career behind him. He had earlier entered Royal Military Academy Sandhurst on his third attempt in September 1893. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant into the 4th Queen’s Own Hussars in February 1895, having passed out twentieth of 130.

Characteristically, Churchill had managed to embroil himself in a public controversy during his final term at Sandhurst. Mrs. Ormiston Chant, an eminent moral reformer of the day, had been actively campaigning for what she viewed as immoral women to be banned from the bar at the Empire Theatre of Varieties in Leicester Square, London. As a compromise, screens had been erected to separate these “fallen women” from normal theatregoers, which Churchill, while inciting several of his fellow cadets to join him, pulled down in wild protest. This boisterous little riot prompted Churchill to spontaneously exclaim, “Ladies of the Empire, I stand for Liberty!”

Churchill’s first experience of shots fired in anger did not, as one might expect, come as a consequence of his service in the British Army. He had travelled to Cuba as a correspondent for the Daily Graphic newspaper to get shot at. It was on Nov. 30, 1895—his 21st birthday—that Churchill heard these first shots while accompanying Spanish forces attempting to put down a rebellion. Afterwards, Churchill said, “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as being shot at without result!” It is said that during his time in Cuba, Churchill acquired his two lifelong habits of smoking fat cigars and taking afternoon siestas. 

In October 1896, Churchill traveled with his regiment to India, where he saw action as part of Brig. Gen. Sir Bindon Blood’s Malakand Field Force during the Northwest Frontier risings of 1897. That year, Churchill published his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, based on his experiences. In summer 1898, he managed, despite strong objections from Herbert Kitchener, to take part in the closing stages of the campaign in Sudan, doubling as a correspondent for the Morning Post. 

It was during the climactic Battle of Omdurman on Sept. 2 that Churchill took part in the epic but disastrous charge of the 21st Lancers, shooting dead at least three of his enemy at point-blank range with his C96 “Broomhandle” Mauser pistol.

Luckily for Churchill, prior to the battle he had injured his sword hand and had thus armed himself in the charge with his Mauser pistol. It clearly saved his life when he was cut off and surrounded by several Mahdists whom he then dispatched with his pistol—had he only a sword, they would surely have killed him.

Again, he wrote a book about his experiences, publishing the two-volume The River War in 1899. Military service, however, was viewed by Churchill as a means of getting on in politics. As such, he resigned his commission in 1899 to campaign for election to Parliament. 

That same year, however, Britain began fighting its most challenging colonial war of the Victorian era—a conflict that young Churchill was determined not to miss at any cost. 

The causes of the conflict between the Boers and the British interlopers in South Africa are deeply rooted, complex, and remain debated by historians to this day. A key issue lay in the desire to control gold mining in Witwatersrand within the borders of the Boer South African Republic (SAR). At that time much of the world’s monetary systems were underpinned by gold reserves, and Witwatersrand was then the largest gold mining operation in the world. Although located within Boer territory, many Uitlanders (non-Boer “outlanders”) working in the gold mining industry were British. 

Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner for South Africa, sought to use the British Uitlanders to exert influence over the SAR. In 1897, he demanded that the Boer leaders of the republic modify their constitution to grant the Uitlanders political rights. Because the British Uitlanders were so numerous, this would effectively allow Milner to dominate SAR government policy.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Paul Kruger, the President of the republic, was not keen to grant virtual political control to the British. Marthinus Steyn, the President of the Boer Orange Free State, organised a conference at Bloemfontein (May–June 1899) between Milner and Kruger in the hope of averting potential conflict. Kruger agreed to some concessions but Milner inevitably rejected them out of hand for not going far enough. 

To force the matter, Milner requested London send additional British troops to South Africa, who began arriving in August and September 1899. The arrival of these troops caused great alarm amongst the Boers. The Boers now believed war was inevitable and reasoned that it would be to their advantage to take to the offensive before the British. On Oct. 9, 1899, the Boers delivered an ultimatum to the British, demanding they withdraw their troops or face war. The British unsurprisingly refused to comply. On Oct. 11 the Second Boer War began.

Meanwhile, Churchill had narrowly lost the Oldham by-election on July 6, 1899. He later viewed the defeat as fortunate, since he was free to travel to South Africa following the war’s outbreak. The capacity in which Churchill went to South Africa was again as a war correspondent for the Morning Post. The newspaper offered to pay him the huge sum of £1,000 for the first four months, followed by £200 a month plus expenses for subsequent months. 

With his finances arranged, Churchill boarded the RMS Dunottar Castle for the voyage to Cape Town. Also onboard was Gen. Sir Redvers Buller, who would initially command British troops in South Africa. 

Like many others at the time, Churchill did not believe the Boers would last long in a fight with the British. Indeed, he believed he would be home before the Derby horserace at the end of May 1900. Such confidence appeared justified to Churchill when the Dunottar Castle passed by a small tramp steamer that was three days out of Cape Town. Displayed on the steamer was a chalk board, upon which was written the message, “Boers Defeated—Three Battles—Penn Symons Killed.” Other than the fact Gen. Sir William Penn Symons had died—he had been mortally wounded at the Battle of Talana Hill—the news appeared so positive that Churchill worried he would miss the action before he got to Cape Town. However, the war soon began to go badly for the British.

When Churchill landed at Cape Town, he immediately attempted to make his way to Ladysmith. By Nov. 2, however, the town was under siege by the Boers. Again, Churchill’s misfortune turned into a positive. Had he reached Ladysmith before the siege began, he would have been stranded there for months. Instead, he opted to make for Estcourt, where he hoped to bide his time before joining British forces sent to relieve Ladysmith. 

Early on the morning of Nov. 15, 1899, Col. Charles Long, commander of British forces at Estcourt, instructed Capt. Aylmer Haldane to take an armoured train and conduct a patrol. Onboard the three trucks that made up the train were men of the Dublin Fusiliers and Durham Light Infantry. Also placed in one of the trucks was a 7-pounder naval gun. This was a small, rifled, “mountain howitzer” in British Army use from 1866 through the end of the Second Boer War and often described as “mounted on armored trains.” The projectile weighed only 7 lbs, making it a very small artillery weapon. The ever-enthusiastic Churchill jumped at the chance to accompany the patrol. It was a fateful decision that would have a major impact on his life. Haldane spotted some Boers on the journey out, but Churchill persuaded the captain to push on with the patrol and not turn back.

As the train thundered north toward Chieveley, a Boer commando discretely watched. The Boers surreptitiously placed rocks on the tracks after a bend near the Blaauwkrantz River in the hope of stopping the train on its return journey. When the Boers opened fire on the train, the engineer reversed at full throttle, falling into the Boer trap. The train violently smashed into the rocks, incredibly remaining on the tracks, though the the impact derailed several trucks. 

At that moment, the Boers increased the volume of their artillery and rifle fire. The naval gun was quickly put out of action. Although Churchill was partly to blame for the train lumbering into the Boer trap, he sprang into action and displayed reckless courage under fire. 

Churchill got some of the dazed soldiers out of the derailed trucks and organised them to start heaving them off the track to free the engine. He was heard to say, “This will be interesting for my paper.” Even under fire Churchill was thinking about his writing. 

When a bullet grazed the head of the engineer, Charles Wagner, Churchill quickly intervened to prevent the man from running off, saying to him, “No man is hit twice on the same day.” With the engine freed, about 40 to 50 wounded men were crammed into the train’s locomotive before it steamed off as the unwounded soldiers ran beside it, using the locomotive to block Boer fire. Wagner, however, decided that to save the wounded he’d have to race back to Estcourt at full throttle, thereby leaving the soldiers on foot to fend for themselves. 

As the engine departed, Churchill rallied the remaining soldiers in their fight against the Boers. The British were greatly outnumbered and taking casualties. Little option remained but to surrender, and the survivors were taken prisoner by the Boers. Haldane and 56 of his men were captured, thirty of them wounded. At least four others had been killed during the ambush. Churchill, a civilian and no longer a soldier, had left his Mauser pistol on the train. Again, what might have been a misfortune turned to his advantage—if he had been taken prisoner while armed, he may have been treated very differently by his captors and had he tried to shoot his Boer pursuers, they surely would have shot him dead.

 Following his capture, Churchill argued for his release since he was a civilian. However, because he was seen giving orders and behaving like a combatant during the train ambush, the Boers decided to imprison him. He was transferred to the State Model School Prison in Pretoria. The life of a prisoner of war was particularly difficult for Churchill. He was not a man who tolerated being restricted. He would later write: “Hours crawl like paralytic centipedes. Nothing amuses you. Reading is difficult, writing, impossible. I certainly hated every minute of my captivity more than I have ever hated any period of my life.” Nevertheless, he found some solace in studying butterflies and writing letters. 

It is hardly surprising then, that Churchill sought to escape and return to British lines. On Dec. 12, when the Boer guards were not looking, Churchill climbed over the prison fence behind the lavatory. Several other prisoners, including Haldane and Sgt. Maj. Adam Brockie, were also present for the escape attempt. However, both Haldane and Brockie seemed to hesitate, much to Churchill’s annoyance. 

He later wrote: “I jumped on to the ledge of the wall and in a few seconds had dropped into the garden safely on the other side. Here I crouched down and waited for the others [Haldane and Brockie] to come. I expected them to come every minute. My position in the garden was a very anxious one because I had only a few small and leafless bushes to hide behind, and people kept passing to and fro, and the lights of the house were burning. Altogether I waited more than an hour and a half in the garden for the others to join me.” 

Churchill later claimed that Haldane and Brockie urged him to return, but he had refused. When they realized he was not going to return, they gave Churchill their blessing. 

Now out of prison, Churchill found himself nervously wandering through the streets of Pretoria. He reasoned that he would need to make his way to neutral Portuguese East Africa. However, that was a 300-mile journey, for which he had no map, no compass, no food, and no water. Worst of all, he could not speak Afrikaans, the Boers’ Dutch-based language. Having made his way through Pretoria, remarkably without being spotted, he managed to climb aboard a coal train, hiding himself amongst the coal sacks. Unfortunately, it turned out that the train was going in the wrong direction, and so he was forced to jump off. 

Hungry and lost, Churchill decided he needed to take the risk of finding someone to aid him in his escape. He knocked on a farmhouse door at a kraal (livestock enclosure typical of Boer or native African farms/stock-raisers and small villages) and to his pleasant surprise an Englishman by the name of John Howard answered. 

Howard was a mining engineer, and he led Churchill into one of his mines to hide him. After three days there, Churchill found himself put into the bottom of a railway coal wagon bound for Lourenço Marques, the capital of Portuguese East Africa. Once he finally arrived on Dec. 22, he was taken to the British Consul by some local British inhabitants. He then took a hot bath and was given clean clothes. Churchill was upset to learn his original dirty clothes had been burned, because, as he later boastfully wrote, “I wanted them for Madame Tussaud” (founder of the famed wax museum in London).

Leaving Lourenço Marques, Churchill took a boat to Durban, where he was welcomed by a large and enthusiastic crowd who had learned of his spectacular escape. As one might expect of Churchill, he then gave an impromptu speech to the crowd, which was rapturously received. 

The war had gone particularly badly for the British between Dec. 10 and 15, during which they suffered high casualties in what became known as “Black Week.” It was now clear that the Boers were not going to be as easily defeated as Churchill had once thought, and the war would last longer. Churchill was now offered a commission in the South African Light Horse by Buller. The position was unpaid, but Buller allowed Churchill to continue his war correspondent work in order to receive pay. Churchill then returned to the war as a soldier. Almost immediately he was back to risk-taking when he volunteered to take a message from Col. Julian Byng to Maj. Gen. Sir Francis Clery, the latter almost 20 miles away with unknown numbers of Boers in between.

Churchill boldly told Byng that he wanted to win the Distinguished Service Order, because he thought it would one day look good on his robes as Chancellor of the Exchequer. To this, Byng replied, “he must first get into Parliament, if he could get any constituency to have him!” Nevertheless, Churchill was adamant that he would have his choice of constituencies upon his return home. He was now a war hero, after all. 

On Jan. 23-24, 1900, Churchill was present at the Battle of Spion Kop, which ended in disaster for the British as 8,000 Boers defeated 20,000 British soldiers. His role was to act as messenger between Gen. Sir Charles Warren and Col. Alexander Thorneycroft. The battle was poorly managed by senior British officers—with Thorneycroft even leading an assault up the wrong hill. As Churchill witnessed this poor example of command, a bullet scraped the feathers on his hat.

The following month, on Feb. 12, Churchill was accompanied by his 20-year-old younger brother Jack, who was also serving in the South African Light Horse, on reconnaissance during the Battle of the Tugela Heights. Jack was shot through the leg. Of his brother’s wounding, Churchill later wrote: “Outwardly I sympathised with my brother in his misfortune, which he mourned bitterly, since it prevented him taking part in the impending battle, but secretly I confess myself well content that this young gentleman should be honourably out of harm’s way for a month.” Churchill would be present during the relief of Ladysmith on Feb. 28 (besieged by the Boers since November 2, 1899). He finally got to the destination that he had been so eager to reach upon his first arrival in South Africa. He later wrote in his 1930 book, My Early Life, of this moment: “On we pressed, and at the head of a battered street of tin-roofed houses met [Lieutenant General] Sir George White on horseback, faultlessly attired. Then we all rode together into the long beleaguered, almost starved-out, Ladysmith. It was a thrilling moment. I dined with the Headquarters staff that night.”

In May 1900, Churchill would have yet another book published, this time about his experiences in South Africa, called London to Ladysmith via Pretoria. His subsequent Boer War adventures included entering Pretoria with his unit on June 5, and liberating those still held in the same prison in which he had himself been interned. He was also present at the Battle of Diamond Hill on June 11-12. Gen. Ian Hamilton later stated that Churchill showed “conspicuous gallantry” during the battle and tried to get him a gallantry award, but it was denied because of Churchill’s principal status as a war correspondent. 

Nevertheless, Churchill had quite the experience during his time in South Africa. The war itself would drag on until May 31, 1902, but Churchill now thought it time to return home. He now felt ready for a life in politics.

Churchill arrived back in Britain on July 20, 1900 and was welcomed home not only a war hero but also as a national hero. As he had expected, he was asked to stand for election for no fewer than 11 Conservative constituencies. However, he decided to stand at Oldham, where he had been defeated before the war. On Oct. 1, he narrowly won one of the two seats for Oldham, beating a rival by only 392 votes. 

By the time Churchill finally sat in the House of Commons, he had served in four wars. He had taken part in one of the most famous cavalry charges in history, escaped from prison, published five books, and written more than 200 newspaper and magazine articles. Born Nov. 30, 1874, he was still about two months short of his 26th birthday when elected to Parliament on Oct. 1, 1900.

this article first appeared in military history quarterly

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The trailer for director Ridley Scott’s (“Gladiator,” “Black Hawk Down”) epic on the rise of French emperor and military mastermind Napoleon Bonaparte has arrived.

The aptly titled “Napoleon” stars Joaquin Phoenix (“The Joker”) as history’s most eponymous warlord. And by all appearances, the intensity of the ruthless conqueror’s rise from soldier to French emperor will be shown in vivid detail — and muted color.

While the film’s battlefield scenes appear as images of utter chaos, the trailer juxtaposes Napoleon’s thirst for power with his lust of romantic pursuits to get an artistic oeuvre about what it means to be a conqueror in all aspects of life.

“The film is an original and personal look at Napoleon’s origins and his swift, ruthless climb to emperor, viewed through the prism of his addictive and often volatile relationship with his wife and one true love, Josephine, played by Vanessa Kirby,” according to an Apple TV+ press release. “[It] captures Napoleon’s famous battles, relentless ambition and astounding strategic mind as an extraordinary military leader and war visionary.”

The trailer concludes with Napoleon lording over a bloody, wintry assault, bombarding soldiers as they fall through thin ice.

“I’m the first to admit when I make a mistake,” he says in the trailer. “I simply never do.”

“Napoleon” debuts in theaters on Nov. 22 before appearing on Apple TV+.

Originally published by Military Times, our sister publication.

It was 1760, in the midst of the Seven Years’ War, and 16-year-old Cornet Patrick Ferguson was having the time of his life. He and another young officer were on horseback a few miles out in front of the British army when they ran afoul of a party of French-allied German hussars. Deciding it prudent to retire, they turned and spurred their mounts. As his horse jumped a ditch, Ferguson dropped one of his pistols. The naive lad, thinking it improper for an officer to return to camp without all his weapons, recrossed the ditch in the face of the pursuing enemy and dismounted to recover his pistol. The hussars, perhaps surmising a British dragoon wouldn’t be so foolhardy unless he had spotted friendly reinforcements, halted in their tracks. They looked on warily as Ferguson remounted, jumped his horse back over the ditch and joined his companion. The fortunate young men regained the British camp undisturbed.

Though Ferguson seemed to lead a charmed life in uniform, such reckless behavior in action would one day catch up to him.

Patrick Ferguson was born in on June 4, 1744, in Pitfour, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, the son of a titled and well-connected lawyer. The Fergusons had a long tradition of military service, and from childhood Patrick resolved to pursue a career in the army. Accordingly, when the boy reached the tender age of 12, his father sent him to a military academy in London. At that time in European history a gentleman desiring to be an officer in the military could purchase his commission from a regimental commander. From there he might earn merit-based promotions, but he could also purchase ranks in turn. Ferguson’s father purchased his son’s first commission, as a cornet in the 2nd (Royal North British) Dragoons (aka “Royal Scots Greys”), when Patrick was just 14. Dragoons were mounted infantry, who rode horses into battle and then fought on foot. In 1760 Ferguson’s regiment deployed to continental Europe, where he got his first taste of combat in Flanders and Germany and lived to tell of his close encounter with hussars.

In 1768, though Ferguson had cut his teeth with eight years of service, his father again purchased a commission for him, as a company commander in the 70th (Glasgow Lowland) Regiment of Foot, then serving in the West Indies. Late that year Captain Ferguson sailed to join his company in Tobago. Attuned to the well-being of his men, he had them take advantage of the tropical climate and grow vegetables as a supplement to their usual provisions of salted beef. While there, however, Ferguson himself contracted what was probably extrapulmonary tuberculosis. Related tubercular arthritis racked his knees with pain for the remainder of his life. After a brief stopover in the North American colonies, Ferguson returned to Britain in 1774.

By then it was clear that unrest with oppressive taxation and domineering British governance was approaching a breaking point in the American colonies. When British officers spoke among themselves, one oft-discussed point of concern was the colonials’ possession of precision hunting rifles—not in terms of numbers of weapons, which was not great, but because in the hands of skilled marksmen they were deadly at long range. In the event of war, of course, British officers would be the favored targets of such sharpshooters.

The standard long arm in the British military of the era was the “Brown Bess” muzzle-loading smoothbore flintlock musket, though it was notoriously inaccurate. An 1841 Royal Engineers test of the Brown Bess (in service from 1722 till 1838) recorded hits on man-sized targets at 150 yards only 75 percent of the time. Beyond that range the musket failed to hit even larger targets. Its point-blank range—the distance at which a round remains on a horizontal line of flight—was just 75 yards.

The rifle, while more accurate, also had its drawbacks. Foremost was its slow reload time. While an adept soldier with a musket could fire some three to five rounds a minute, with a rifle he might manage only one or two shots a minute. Most rifles also had no means of attaching a bayonet, at a time when bayonet charges often proved decisive.

In set-piece battles of the day opposing armies lined up opposite one another, approached within effective range, fired by volley, then reloaded and repeated. Given the unlikelihood of scoring a hit, the line infantry drilled to reload as fast as possible and put more lead in the air, improving their odds. This madness continued until one side or the other appeared vulnerable, at which point the side sensing an advantage would launch a bayonet charge to finish the fight. Thus muskets, given their rate of fire and the ability to mount a bayonet, remained the long arm of choice for the rank and file. Realizing the limitations of his weapon, each soldier generally aimed at an enemy formation and hoped to hit someone, anyone. But soldiers tasked with reconnaissance and surveillance, such as the German Jägers, preferred rifles. Tasked with observing and reporting on the enemy from a distance, they required a weapon with long-range accuracy. God help them were they in bayonet range.

On his return to Britain in 1774 Captain Ferguson resolved to develop a faster-loading service rifle than those in use. If he could do so, it would eliminate the hidebound British military’s primary reasons for retaining the wildly inaccurate smoothbore. European gunmakers started experimenting with rifling as early as 1498, originally applying grooves to the insides of barrels in order to collect fouling. The black powder propellant of the era left a tremendous amount of residue, about 80 percent of the powder in each charge remaining behind to foul the weapon. Stabilizing the bullet was a happy and unexpected side effect of adding the rifling. If Ferguson could conceive of a faster action and add a bayonet lug to his new rifle, all the better. After searching for technological advancements and examining a range of existing weapons, he settled on a breechloader.

Breech-loading rifles had been in regular use for decades prior to Ferguson’s interest. What he did do was use his force of will, coupled with his family connections as minor nobility, to oblige senior military officers to listen to his proposals. Using family money, the captain contracted with the head armorer at the Tower of London to design a breechloader according to his specifications. After a period of trial and error, the Ferguson rifle was born. It centered on an innovative screw breech. With a working model in hand the inventor again wielded his political connections to arrange a demonstration for Lord George Townshend, master general of the Ordnance, and senior British officers. After winning them over, Ferguson was invited to Windsor Castle to demonstrate the rifle before King George III himself.

During his tests Ferguson was able to fire between four and six shots a minute and hit the bull’s-eye consistently at 200 yards. He was also able to reload his breechloader from the prone position, an impossibility for musketeers, as they had to at least kneel to pour powder down the barrel and manipulate a ramrod to force a ball down the muzzle. Ferguson simply rotated the trigger guard to open the screw breech and poured in powder, all from the ground. In a further demonstration of his rifle’s merits, he doused the loaded breech with water. In the black powder era a soggy charge wouldn’t fire—hence the expression, “Keep your powder dry.” To remove a wet charge from a musket, its owner had to thread a steel screw on the end of his ramrod, drive it down the barrel until it hit the ball, twist the screw into the soft lead, pull out the ball, dump the wet powder and then reload. The tedious process required the assistance of another person, to either hold the musket or manipulate the ramrod. In the midst of combat such fumbling might well prove fatal. Ferguson was able to screw open his breech, tap out the damp charge, add dry powder and screw it closed, again while remaining prone.

Duly impressed, his superiors placed an order for 100 Ferguson rifles and assigned the captain command of a light infantry unit, to be armed with his breechloader and employed in the American colonies, by then in open rebellion against the Crown. The men in his command would be volunteers, drawn from the assorted regiments already serving in the colonies.

While Ferguson prepared to ship overseas, a complication arose. As the Industrial Revolution remained in its earliest stages, Britain lacked factories able to mass produce firearms. Each weapon had to be produced individually by a gunsmith. Furthermore, fabricating the lands and grooves inside a rifle barrel was labor intensive, taking far longer to complete than the smoothbore barrel of a musket. Even with multiple gunsmiths working to create Ferguson’s rifles, there were nowhere enough to complete the 100 ordered weapons before he embarked.

In the end only 67 of Ferguson’s rifles were ready by the time he left in March 1777 to join Maj. Gen. Sir William Howe’s army in North America. On arrival the captain traveled among the various regiments to demonstrate the rifle and recruit 100 soldiers for his command. Finally, he began training his enlistees how to operate as light infantrymen armed with rifles. Due to the shortage of his namesake gun, Ferguson had to arm the remainder of his troops with traditional muzzle-loading rifles already in use; the remaining 33 Ferguson guns shipped from Britain that June. When he deemed his men ready, Ferguson was assigned to Hessian Lt. Gen. Wilhelm von Knyphausen’s command, then in New York.

The Ferguson rifle was about to get its trial by fire.

On Sept. 11, 1777, during the British campaign to capture Philadelphia—then capital of and largest city in the nascent United States—Howe’s British army met General George Washington’s Continental Army near Chadds Ford, Penn. The subsequent Battle of Brandywine was the second longest single-day battle of the war, with continuous fighting lasting 11 brutal hours. More troops fought at Brandywine than at any other battle in the North American theater of the war. Marching in the vanguard, Ferguson’s rifle corps was tasked with screening the main British army, so American forces couldn’t get a clear picture of Howe’s plans. The resulting British victory enabled Howe to capture Philadelphia two weeks later, prompting the Continental Congress to flee, first to Lancaster and then York, Pa.

Although his rifle corps performed its tasks admirably at Brandywine, Ferguson had been struck by a musket ball that shattered his right elbow, a wound that sidelined him from active duty for some months as he recovered. All things considered, he was fortunate. In the days before orthopedic trauma care, a wound such as he’d received would often lead to amputation, or at least medical retirement from the military. Ferguson refused to have his arm amputated, and he quite literally wouldn’t surrender his officer’s sword. Since the shattered elbow cost him full use of his arm, the right-handed major taught himself to wield his saber left-handed. It was such single-minded dedication and dogged determination that earned Ferguson the nickname “Bulldog.”

Brandywine was uniquely linked to Ferguson for another incident—one that proved among the most remarkable and enduring stories (or perhaps legends) of the war.

While he and his men were engaged in screening duties far in advance of British lines, Ferguson observed two American officers conducting a similar reconnaissance of the British. One was mounted on a bay horse and wore an especially large bicorne hat. The officers appeared unconcerned, as they remained well out of musket range. They were not out of rifle range, however, and Ferguson ordered three of his men to prepare to fire. Harboring reservations, Ferguson thought it advantageous to try and capture the American officers. Thus, he stepped into the open and called for them to ride toward him and surrender, or he would have his men shoot. At that, the Continentals simply turned their horses to ride away. Being out of musket range, they didn’t even feel it necessary to spur their mounts beyond a walk. Before Ferguson could give the order to fire, he again had second thoughts. The American officers posed no immediate threat to the British, and it certainly wouldn’t be sporting to have them shot in the back, so he had his riflemen stand down.

Later that day, when Ferguson was at the field hospital getting treated for his elbow wound, he struck up a conversation with a British surgeon who had also treated several wounded American officers. From details the surgeon gleaned from the wounded captives it seemed the two officers Ferguson had spared were none other than General Washington and an aide-de-camp. Lieutenant John P. de Lancey, Ferguson’s second-in-command, who had seen Washington before the war, later suggested the enemy officer in the cocked hat had been Brig. Gen. Casimir Pulaski, the Polish volunteer credited as the “father of American cavalry.” Whether it was Pulaski or Washington, and Ferguson had missed his chance to end the war on the spot, he later wrote that he didn’t regret his decision.

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While the Bulldog was recovering from his injury and mourning the death of his father back in Britain, the British were formulating a new strategy for their campaign in North America. The first few years of the war had primarily been fought in New England and mid-Atlantic colonies, and though the British had won most of the battles, they had yet to deliver a knockout blow. Meanwhile, the populace back home had grown increasingly weary of sending off their sons and spending their tax money to fight a seemingly endless war. Thus, in late 1778 Lt. Gen. Sir Henry Clinton launched a campaign in the South, hoping to spark an uprising of Loyalists, colonists born in North America but remaining loyal to the Crown. Were that successful, Clinton hoped to force the Americans to capitulate. The campaign began auspiciously enough with the capture of Savannah, Ga., that December 29, which the British successfully defended in October 1779. The day after Christmas Clinton and his second-in-command, Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis, left Knyphausen to garrison New York City and sailed for Savannah with a substantial army.

Having recuperated enough by then to return to active duty, Ferguson was commissioned a major in the 70th Regiment of Foot and embarked with the expedition. In the absence of its dynamic founder, however, Ferguson’s rifle corps had disbanded, its men returning to their original regiments, their rifles either put in storage or parceled out to other units. The major returned to service without a command to lead.

Regardless, his superiors recognized Ferguson’s leadership ability, and Cornwallis gave him command of a battalion of provincial Loyalist militia. In that capacity Major Ferguson would participate in the largest all-American battle of the war.

From Savannah the British army marched north to Charleston, S.C., which Clinton captured on May 12, 1780, after a six-week siege. He then returned to New York, tasking Cornwallis with subjugating the Carolinas. By summer Cornwallis had pushed north to Charlotte, N.C., and was concerned about protecting his flank. The threat he envisaged came from “Overmountain Men,” hardscrabble frontiersmen from west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the leading edge of the Appalachian Range. Cornwallis assigned Ferguson’s battalion to counter the threat posed by the Patriot riflemen. The stage was set for the Battle of Kings Mountain.

Resolving that the best defense was a good offense, Ferguson departed Charlotte for the Appalachian reaches. According to American sources, en route Ferguson captured a Patriot and had the man relay a message to the “Backwater Men,” as the British called their foes west of the Blue Ridge. They were to lay down their arms in surrender, Ferguson warned, or the British would burn their farms and villages and hang their leaders. Whether those were truly Ferguson’s words or shrewd Patriot propaganda is unknown. As the message wasn’t written down, it cannot be proved or disproved. Regardless, at word of the threat the Overmountain Men mustered a superior force to repulse Ferguson’s militia. On September 30 Patriot deserters brought word of the onrushing American force. Ferguson gave the order to fall back on Cornwallis’ main army at Charlotte. He made it as far as Kings Mountain, straddling the border of North and South Carolina some 30 miles west of Charlotte.

On Oct. 7, 1780, an advance party of 900 Overmountain Men on horseback surrounded Kings Mountain and attacked Ferguson’s command. Though caught by surprise and soon in desperate straits, the major rode back and forth among threatened points, repeatedly leading his men in bayonet attacks to repel the determined frontiersmen, who fought independently by detachment. Despite being severely wounded and having multiple horses shot from under him, Ferguson continued to fight and animate his men by example. Toward the end of the battle his second-in-command earnestly recommended the major surrender. Ferguson refused and in short order received a fatal rifle shot to the chest. Survivors later counted seven bullet wounds on his body. It was an abrupt end to a promising military career at age 36. In a battle that lasted just over an hour, 290 of Ferguson’s Loyalists were killed, 163 wounded and 668 captured, while the Patriots suffered 28 killed and 60 wounded. In its wake Cornwallis abandoned his ambitions in North Carolina and withdrew south.

Patrick Ferguson was buried on the spot along with a female companion named “Virginia Sal,” who was possibly his mistress. Their shared grave was marked by a stone cairn that still stands in present-day Kings Mountain National Military Park.

Retired U.S. Marine Colonel John Miles writes and delivers lectures on a range of historical topics. For further reading he recommends Every Insult and Indignity: The Life, Genius and Legacy of Major Patrick Ferguson, by Ricky Roberts and Bryan Brown; Biographical Sketch: Or, Memoir of Lieutenant Colonel Patrick Ferguson, by Adam Ferguson; The Philadelphia Campaign: Vol. 1: Brandywine and the Fall of Philadelphia, by Thomas J. McGuire; and Kings Mountain and Its Heroes, by Lyman C. Draper.

This story appeared in the 2023 Summer issue of Military History magazine.

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There has been no shortage of literature about the North Vietnamese Army’s final advance on Saigon and the many and varied means by which the last withdrawing Americans got various South Vietnamese out of town before the Presidential Palace sprouted the gold star on a red and blue field of the Viet Cong (soon to be permanently replaced by the gold star on red of a united Socialist Republic of Vietnam). Each is about as personal as every participant’s story. Ralph White’s memoir Getting Out of Saigon is no exception—which is to say that it’s its own sort of exceptional.

White was an employee at Chase Manhattan Bank’s Bangkok branch when higher-ups gave him a special assignment in April 1975: Keep Chase’s Saigon branch open as long as possible and, if (well, when really) the communists prevailed, get out with all the senior staff he could. White had been in Vietnam before, in 1971, but his principal assets for this assignment were that he was young (27), competent, single, and most of all expendable. Fortunately for him, he also seems to have been open minded, resourceful and, when it came to sorting out the right people to assist him from among what he called “delusionals,” “pilgrims,” and “realists,” he was a quick study.

While the American ambassador to South Vietnam and chief “delusional” Graham Martin clung to the illusion that Saigon could never fall to the communists—who were a few days’ march away—White got a different perspective from the brother of a teenaged prostitute who greatly appreciated his efforts to get her out of the country and into a better life. Her brother happened to be a Viet Cong and he gave White all the help he could as well as a summation of the “bloodbath” to come: “Not happening. They just want us to leave. They want their country back. As far as they’re concerned their choices have narrowed to capitalist occupation or communist independence. This day has been inevitable since President Truman turned down Uncle Ho’s pleas for help against the French.”

Even with that cold comfort, White faced obstacles aplenty on his own side when he took it upon himself to get all the Vietnamese Chase employees out of the country—a challenge that came down to knowing the right “realists” and finding the right vehicles for passage by water or air (both, as it turned out). In the course of an intriguing tale worthy of Graham Greene—which White fully realized he was now living—the author learned as he went and got by with a little help from his friends. While admitting that he took some artistic license with the dialogue, White adds that, “The events related herein are entirely true.” What emerges from his memory is a bona fide page-turner. —Jon Guttman

Getting Out of Saigon: How a 27-Year-Old American Banker Saved 113 Vietnamese Civilians

by Ralph White.Simon & Schuster, 2023, $28.99

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This book review appeared in the 2023 Summer issue of Vietnam magazine.

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The earliest depictions of war served one purpose: to emphasize the invincible might of the leaders who commissioned them. A stroke of accuracy might be useful toward establishing credibility, but only so long as it served the warlord’s purposes. Pharaoh Ramses II, for example, employed what amounted to a private propaganda bureau to back up his claims to godhood. Witness Egyptian depictions of his 1274 bc victory at Kadesh. His Hittite opponents commemorated it as their victory, though in reality it ended in an inconclusive standoff. Over the subsequent millennia war artists have wrestled with the matter of balancing accuracy and the lionization of their subject, who was very often the supporting patron.

However effective a depiction of battle may be in its own time, posterity often brings out the nitpickers. Often even the most well-meaning attempts at accuracy miss something. Just as often errors, accidental or deliberate, can be glaring. In any case, the advocates of historicity have their own leg to stand on in their conviction that a true act of valor can and should stand on its own merits.

This story appeared in the 2023 Summer issue of Military History magazine.

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An estimated 20,000 men perished on June 18, 1815, on the plains of Waterloo, Belgium, the site of Napoleon Bonaparte’s downfall and a dramatic coda to the decades-long Napoleonic Wars.

On that day, Napoleon sought to capture Brussels and separate and divide the armies of the Duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. Despite defeating the Prussians on June 16 at the Battle of Ligny, Napoleon was unable to force them to retreat entirely, meaning they were still free to support Wellington’s force. Needing a decisive victory to prevent an invasion of France, Napoleon decided to attack, according to Antara Bate of HistoryHit.

The climatic one-day battle ranks as the third bloodiest of Napoleon’s campaigns and signaled the beginning of a nearly 50-year peace in Europe.

Today, the hallowed grounds draw over a quarter-million visitors, a number boosted by the area’s panoramic views and serene surroundings.

At least, that was until this month.

Beginning June 1 and running until the end of the month, a “unique dining experience” has popped-up over the battle’s landscape. Advertised as “Dinner in the sky,” the restaurant boasts that adventurous foodies can eat 164 feet above where Wellington defeated Bonaparte once and for all.

According to The Brussel Times, “a total of 3,000 guests will be hosted at a table perched 50 metres above the Lion’s Mound, highlighting the history of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington.”

“Aside from a four-course menu (two starters, a main course, and a dessert),” The Times continued, “diners will be served entertainment by soldiers in full regalia, campfires, cannon, drums and a video mapping animation on the facade of the panorama.”

Tourists making the trek for the 208th anniversary of the battle and perhaps seeking a more somber experience, however, “Couldn’t escape [the pop-up] if [they] wanted to.”

Hoisted by a large crane near the famed Lion’s Mound, the attention-grabbing restaurant went even further on June 18 by treating diners and tourists alike to the dulcet tones of ABBA blasting across the hallowed grounds.

One visitor took to Twitter to describe the tourism-gone-rogue experience, as he was subjected to the famed Swedish quartet’s hit, “Waterloo” as he surveyed the battlefield.

The original Twitter post lamented that “Belgian commercial interests turn[ed] the #Waterloo battlefield into Disneyland.”

The experience ranges from €150 (roughly $164) for cocktails to well over €300 ($328) for an evening dinner.

It remains unclear, however, if Beef Wellington is on the menu.

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There it was again. He was sure of it now. Muffled by the dense Amazonian undergrowth came the low rumbling of a vehicle moving at barely a crawl. Ecuadorian Corporal 1st Class José Maria Marasco froze stock-still in his outpost as he tried to determine the vehicle’s direction of movement. It seemed closer now, and he could hear the snapping of branches beneath the vehicle’s tires. Then he heard their muted voices—the hated Peruvians. An officer giving orders. A sergeant giving directions. And they were all coming toward him. The war he knew was coming had arrived in the Cenepa Valley.

Marasco whispered what he heard and saw into the mouthpiece of his landline and then silently made his way back to his unit.

Ecuadorian and Peruvian units had patrolled the disputed valley for years without incident, despite their mutual hatred. Sometimes their officers even got together for talks. Then, in 1995, Peruvian forces invaded the disputed area, seeking to evict the Ecuadorian troops dug in on the high ground overlooking the river basin.

The Cenepa War, a fierce little fight of 34 days, was the latest in a series of wars between the South American neighbors over their disputed boundary. The two had most recently come to blows in 1941 and 1981. Ecuador had not defeated Peru since the 1829 Battle of Tarqui.

Bolívar’s Role

Though Simón Bolívar is memorialized as the “Liberator” who freed what would become Peru and Ecuador from Spanish colonial rule, he ironically sowed the seeds of the Cenepa War via territorial claims when carving out his idealistic united state of Gran Colombia in 1819.

The dispute was a complex one, dating from Spain’s colonial rule, when Madrid oversaw most of Latin America through its Viceroyalties of Peru and New Granada and many smaller political units. Spain frequently changed the borders and responsibilities of the viceroyalties to ease the administration of its colonies and deal with Portuguese incursions along the Amazon River. One such change occurred in 1802 when a royal decree transferred much of what comprises present-day Ecuador to the jurisdiction of Peru. In 1803 another royal decree transferred jurisdiction of the province of Guayaquil to Peru. Based on these decrees, Peru claimed the disputed lands on the legal principle of uti possidetis (as you possess, so shall you possess). However, in 1819 the Liberator, Simón Bolívar, through the Congress of Angostura, claimed the province of Quito (in present-day Ecuador) and parts of Jaén and Maynas provinces (in present-day Peru) for his Gran Colombia.

Ten years later an army under Marshal José de la Mar, president of a newly independent Peru, attempted to seize southern Ecuador. However, a Gran Colombian army under Grand Marshal Antonio José de Sucre beat back the Peruvians at the Battle of Tarqui and forced de la Mar to sign the Treaty of Girón, by which Peru recognized the boundary as it had existed in 1810. That treaty, however, did not resolve the dispute.

Over the next century Ecuador and Peru argued and sometimes battled one another for control of the disputed lands. At one point Peru seized the port of Guayaquil in retaliation for Ecuadorian incursions. Each sought to exploit the other’s internal political problems. On several occasions the parties asked the king of Spain to arbitrate. In 1936 the United States offered to arbitrate the dispute. Those efforts came to naught, and in 1938 Peruvian and Ecuadorian troops again engaged in border skirmishes.

In July 1941, taking advantage of the world situation and the United States’ distraction with events in Europe, Peru marched against Ecuadorian outposts in Casitas, Cero del Concho and elsewhere. The Peruvian commander, Brig. Gen. Eloy G. Ureta, was so insistent on an offensive operation that he’d threatened to march his troops against his own government were he not permitted to attack the Ecuadorians.

Peru greatly overmatched Ecuador in military might. It had modernized and reorganized its army, while Ecuador had not. Within weeks the Ecuadorian army was a fantasy. Although Peru suspended its operations to capture Guayaquil, abiding by the terms of a July 31 cease-fire between the belligerents, it nevertheless managed to seize the Ecuadorian province of El Oro.

In January 1942 the foreign ministers of Peru and Ecuador, together with representatives from the United States, Brazil, Argentina and Chile, hammered out the Rio de Janeiro Protocol, under the terms of which Peru evacuated El Oro province but retained control of Jaén, Maynas and Tumbes provinces.

That remained the status quo until Jan. 22, 1981, when Ecuadorian troops in the Cordillera del Cóndor of the Andes Mountains fired on a Peruvian reconnaissance helicopter. A day later they fired on another Peruvian reconnaissance chopper. Meanwhile, in the Cenepa Valley, Ecuadorian troops occupied three abandoned Peruvian outposts.

Ecuador justified its presence and actions, arguing that though the Rio Protocol had called for demarcation of their respective borders, that process remained incomplete, and unaccounted terrain features made what had been surveyed inaccurate. Thus, it argued, the 1942 agreement was invalid. Peru insisted the agreement did remain valid, and Ecuador had no legitimate complaint.

Peru, still militarily superior to Ecuador, resolved to retake its outposts and evict the Ecuadorians from the valley. Ever since its 1932–33 drubbing by Colombia over territory in the Amazon rainforest, Peru paid particular attention to its military: rebuilding it, retraining it, rearming it, and obtaining professional military advice from such European powers as France and Italy. In contrast, Ecuador used its military primarily to suppress internal unrest and failed to heed the threat posed by its historical enemy. In short, Peru prepared for war, Ecuador did not.

The results were painfully predictable and humiliating for Ecuador. At the outset of what became known as the Paquisha War, Peru twice attempted to assault the namesake Ecuadorian-held outpost before abandoning its efforts. On the third attempt, however, a Peruvian helicopter armed with rockets destroyed an Ecuadorian anti-aircraft battery, allowing helicopter-borne Peruvian soldiers to land and engage the Ecuadorians, driving them off after a short but intense firefight. A day later, on January 30, the Peruvians assaulted a second Ecuadorian outpost using attack helicopters and fighter-bombers. Landing air assault troops, the Peruvians quickly drove off the Ecuadorians. On February 1 the Peruvians recovered the third outpost.

The same scenario applied when the Peruvians attacked three more outposts occupied by Ecuadorian troops in the interim. Ecuador, lacking air support, was unable to respond and forced to abandon its positions and much of its equipment. Each side lost more than a dozen killed and two dozen wounded.

Ecuador had learned its lesson. When it instigated the next war, in 1995, it came prepared. In early January Ecuadorians seized the high ground in the Cenepa Valley and dug in. They had modern weapons, including anti-aircraft missiles and significant modern air assets, including French-built Dassault Mirage F1JA and F1JE fighters with air-to-air missiles and Israel Aircraft Industries Kfir C.2 and TC.2 fighters. They changed their tactics as well. Instead of directly confronting the Peruvians, as they had in the past, the Ecuadorians employed ambush and hit-and-run tactics, which one authority likened to tactics utilized by the Viet Cong in Vietnam. The Ecuadorian strategy was the same as in previous encounters in the disputed region: occupy positions Peru had abandoned in order to fight the Maoist Shining Path insurgency elsewhere. Ecuador would thus present a fait accompli to anyone interested, especially Peru. The challenge to Ecuador was to hold those positions.

The disputed area is roughly the size of the District of Columbia, less than 60 square miles, and lies approximately 50 miles east of the Ecuadorian city of Loja and 60 miles southeast of Cuenca. The Peruvian capital of Lima is about 600 miles to the south. The Cenepa River drains its watershed and ultimately sends its flow to the Amazon. The Cenepa basin is ringed by mountains, notably the Cordillera del Cóndor to the west. The very northern tip of the disputed area is a salient flanked by undisputed Ecuadorian territory. It is blanketed in dense jungle, some of which had never seen a human footprint other than those of the indigenous peoples. Indeed, many of those killed in the conflict weren’t found until years later, while others remain missing. Ecuador chose to begin offensive operations in this seemingly impenetrable salient.

Aided by Israeli advisers, Ecuadorian special forces units infiltrated and seized the Peruvian outposts at Tiwintza, Base Sur and Cueva de los Tayos, which were little more than clearings in the jungle large enough to accommodate a helicopter and a small garrison.

The Ecuadorians took position on high ground in the 6,500-foot Cóndor range. There they placed artillery that could effectively sweep the basin below and laid land mines to solidify their positions. They also made good use of the jungle canopy, which provided cover and concealment from Peruvian aircraft. The prevailing weather was also on their side. Cloud cover and rain often prevented effective use of the numerically superior Peruvian air assets. The Ecuadorians exploited their interior lines for good communication. They also used GPS to pinpoint targets and took a page from the U.S. Army’s AirLand Battle doctrine. Utilizing roads through the Cóndor mountains, the Ecuadorians made excellent use of their logistical support system. The Peruvians were limited to long-distance helicopter airlifts.

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Ecuador quickly established air superiority. Peru would lose a reported seven aircraft altogether: one medium bomber, two fighter-bombers, one light attack aircraft and at least three helicopters. The Ecuadorian air force suffered only damage to one light attack aircraft.

Peru’s military resources were numerically superior in almost every respect. But after more than 15 years of fighting Shining Path guerrillas, its army was worn down and dispirited. Once thought to be the most potent air force in Latin America, the Peruvian air force was a shell of its former self. It suffered from poor maintenance and a dearth of spare parts. Further, the Peruvian economy was in shambles, still reeling from long-term hyperinflation.

Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was keenly aware his military was in poor shape to fight anyone. Indeed, he met with Ecuadorian President Sixto Durán-Ballén to advise him Peru would be withdrawing some of its forces in the Cenepa basin to commit them to the fight against the Shining Path. He expressed his hope Ecuador would understand and not take advantage of the situation but maintain the peace. Unfortunately for Fujimori, Ecuador did take advantage of the situation. It would suffer no further humiliation. As one regional expert put it, Ecuador’s 1941 loss of access to the Amazon “went against the Ecuadorian soul.”

Despite their setbacks, the Peruvians were able to muster a task force of 2,500 men to recapture the outposts. By late January, supported by Soviet-built T-55 tanks and artillery, they launched a counteroffensive against the Ecuadorian positions. Again the Ecuadorians avoided direct conflict by using ambush and hit-and-run tactics. By mid-February Peru had recaptured the outposts at Base Sur and Cueva de los Tayos, but they were unable to recapture Tiwintza. The Ecuadorians, aided by their artillery high in the Cóndor range, refused to yield.

Despite its maintenance issues and lack of spare parts, the Peruvian air force flew as many as 16 sorties per day against Ecuadorian positions, but at a price. Ecuadorians armed with ground-based weapons, including the British-made Blowpipe shoulder-fired missile, shot down several Peruvian helicopters and attack aircraft. On February 6 a Peruvian English Electric Canberra B.68 bomber was lost with all aboard when it flew into the side of a mountain, apparently due to poor weather conditions. In an air-to-air battle on February 10 two Ecuadorian Kfir C.2s intercepted several Peruvian U.S.-built Cessna A-37B Dragonfly light attack aircraft and downed one, while two Ecuadorian Mirage F1JAs shot down two Peruvian Sukhoi Su-22M attack aircraft, though Peru denied the latter two were combat losses.

A problem faced by ground-attack aircraft of both air forces was the asymmetrical nature of the battlefield. Peruvian pilots in particular had difficulty distinguishing between friendly and enemy positions. For the most part the war was fought by platoon-sized elements. There were no “front lines.” A Peruvian unit might have an Ecuadorian platoon to its rear or vice versa. When the combatants finally agreed on a cease-fire and their respective armies were to disengage, the effort took more than two months due to the battlefield asymmetry.

“Clearly, Ecuador holds the key terrain,” one military analyst noted. “I know they have sufficient firepower, so that if they really wanted to take out the Peruvians, they could do so.…Ecuador can hold out for a long time.”

It didn’t have to. By early March both sides had agreed to a U.N.-brokered cease-fire calling for the separation of the combatants, demobilization of their armies, substantive negotiations and a normalization of diplomatic relations.

The butcher’s bill for the conflict came to a reported 34 killed for Ecuador and 60 for Peru. The war was estimated to have cost $1 billion.

Though sporadic fighting broke out, generally the cease-fire held. Not until 1998 did the four original guarantors of the 1942 Rio de Janeiro Protocol—Chile, Brazil, Argentina and the United States—hammer out a permanent solution. Even then, the agreement was only possible because both Ecuador and Peru had significantly altered their long-held positions. Ecuador, in a massive sea change, agreed to work within the parameters of the Rio Protocol. Likewise, Peru reversed its long-held position there was no legitimate dispute.

The negotiations almost came to an abrupt halt when Ecuador buried its war dead in a cemetery it had created within the disputed zone. After months of negotiation on that issue alone, the guarantors devised a compromise by which the cemetery was deemed owned by Ecuador but under Peruvian sovereignty. Peru, in turn, agreed to give up any right to confiscate Ecuadorian property. The parties also agreed the area should be a demilitarized zone, and peacekeeping troops from the guarantor nations were to deploy in the zone as observers. Finally, Peru agreed to Ecuador’s unfettered access to the Amazon River. Both parties signed the Brasilia Presidential Act on Oct. 26, 1998, thus putting a definitive end to a more than 150 years of dispute.

Ecuador emerged the victor. Some commentators call it a stalemate, but the fact remains Ecuador was not, as the Peruvians had long intended, ejected from the Cenepa basin, but left of its own accord under the cease-fire protocol. It had prevailed by careful planning, improved logistics, shrewd choice of terrain and the use of modern technology, and after having revamped and rearmed its military. As Ecuadorian President Durán-Ballén stated, the victory was due to 14 years of military preparation since the 1981 debacle.

The Cenepa War has changed international thinking in several ways. First, it dispelled the long-held view that democracies don’t war with other democracies. Clearly, they can and do if the circumstances and national interests are right. Second, Ecuador’s successful use of modern technology proves a small state can fight a larger one on equal terms, thus presenting a real deterrent to its larger neighbor. Third, the war destroyed the notion Latin America has become a generally peaceful region not requiring close attention by third parties, such as the United States. U.S. foreign policy ignores Latin America at its peril.

Durán-Ballén emerged as one of Ecuador’s most popular presidents and elder statesmen, though scholars debate the legacy of his presidency. He died, much revered by the Ecuadorian public, at age 95 in 2016.

Although his administration defeated the Shining Path insurgency, significantly improved the economy and won re-election in April 1995 by a wide margin, President Fujimori became increasingly authoritarian. Facing charges of corruption and human rights abuses in 2000, he fled to Japan. Then, on a 2005 visit to Chile, he was arrested and later extradited to Peru. In 2007 Fujimori was convicted of illegal search and seizure, and two years later he was convicted of embezzlement, bribery and human rights violations, including the use or approval of death squads and torture. He is serving a 25-year prison sentence. Fujimori’s son, Kenji, served as a member of the Peruvian Congress from 2011 to 2018. His daughter, Keiko, ran for the presidency in 2011, 2016 and 2021, but was defeated each time.

Jerome Long is a former instructor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff Officers’ Course who taught classes on such topics as military intelligence, operational warfare and military history. For further reading he recommends Latin America’s Wars, Vol. II: The Age of the Professional Soldier, 1900–2001, by Robert L. Sheina, and Air Wars Between Ecuador and Peru, Vol. 3: Aerial Operations Over the Cenepa River Valley, by Amaru Tincopa.

This story appeared in the 2023 Summer issue of Military History magazine.

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