24 Ibid., pp. 79–82.
25 Ott, op. cit., p. 54.
26 Katcher, P., Armies of the Vietnam War, 1962–75 (London, 1980), p. 5.
27 Caputo, P., A Rumor of War (London, 1977), p. 81.
28 Tolson, op. cit., p. 252.
29 Palmer, op. cit., p. 97.
30 West, op. cit., p. 111.
31 Bird, the Christmastide Battle, op. cit., p. 169.
32 In West, op. cit.
33 Battles in the Monsoon, op. cit., p. 338.
34 Ibid., p. 357.
35 Ibid., p. 218.
36 Little, R. W., ‘Buddy Relations and Combat Performance’, in Janowitz, M., ed., The New Military (New edn., New York, 1969), p. 195.
37 Palmer, op. cit., p. 145.
38 Weller, J., Weapons and Tactics, Hastings to Berlin (London, 1966), pp. 116–138. Patton’s preference for ‘marching fire’, as opposed to rushes, is explained in English, op. cit., pp. 133–5.
39 Palmer, op. cit., p. 144.
40 Battles in the Monsoon, op. cit., p. 95.
41 Ambush, op. cit., p. 94.
42 Bird, the Christmastide Battle, op. cit., p. 137.
43 Middleton, D., ed., Air War Vietnam (USAF, reprinted in London, 1978), p. 102 ff.
44 Palmer, op. cit., p. 145.
45 Caputo, op. cit., p. 70.
46 Bird, the Christmastide Battle, op. cit., p. 24.
47 Battles in the Monsoon, op. cit., p. 296.
48 Rowan, R., The Four Days of Mayaguez (Norton, New York 1975).
49 A favourite slant is apparently provided in Summers H. G. Jr, On Strategy: the Vietnam war in context (Novato, California 1982).
50 The point is worth making, however, that the North Vietnamese were not bombed into abandoning any major national interest, only into agreeing that the Americans should leave Indochina.
51 The contrast between the vocabulary of management and the reality of combat is reported to have come home to McNamara himself in the case of the clearing of Ben Suc village, 1967: Schell, J., The Village of Ben Suc (Cape, London 1968).
52 The MLRS, or Multiple Launch Rocket System, is a ‘smart’, long-range version (about 30km) of the Russian Katyusha. The Assault Breaker system was originally designed to see deep into the enemy’s territory with realtime aerial surveillance, then to guide still bigger rockets on to a target, finally ‘closing the combat loop’ by scattering a cluster of homing warheads – top-attack anti-tank ‘pucks’, mines or airfield denial munitions. There is a bewildering range of other ET systems available, including surveillance equipment, target designators, fire control computers and warheads. Some of them use mortars or artillery pieces for delivery, instead of rockets: see general listing of weapons in Barnaby, F., and ter Borg, M., Emerging Technologies and Military Doctrine (Macmillan, London 1986), pp. 278–303.
53 TRADOC is the army’s Training and Doctrine Command, responsible for analysing weapons and tactics, and producing tactical manuals.
54 See Dickson, op. cit., passim, for the electronic battlefield and Vietnam: the pages of Military Review for subsequent discussion of FM100–5 – e.g. Wagner, R. E., Active Defense and All That in vol. 60, no. 8, August 1980, p. 4; or McCaffrey, B. R., The Battle on the German Frontier in vol. 62, no. 3, March 1982, p. 62.
Two strong champions of relatively static firepower-based defence were Hannig, N., The Defence of Western Europe with Conventional Weapons in International Defense Review vol. 15, no. 3, April 1982, pp. 1439–1442; and Mearsheimer, J. J., Maneuver, Mobile Defense and the NATO Central Front in International Security vol. 6, no. 3, winter 1981–2, pp. 104–22, and Why the Soviets Can’t Win Quickly in Central Europe in International Security vol. 7, no. 1, Summer 1982, pp. 3–39. Similar ‘engineer centred’ views are in the unpublished British thesis of Alford, J. R., Mobile Defense, the Pervasive Myth – an historical investigation (King’s College, London 1977).
55 A very important document issued by TRADOC, on 4 September 1981, was entitled Airland Battle 2000. It went beyond FM100–5 to look at the implications of still more high-tech weapons: see Ramon Lopez, The Airland Battle 2,000 Controversy – Who is being short-sighted? in International Defense Review, October 1983, pp. 1551–6. Similar futurism is in D. R. Cotter’s Potential Future Roles for Conventional and Nuclear Forces in Defense of Western Europe in Strengthening Conventional Deterrence in Europe, the report of the European Security Study (Macmillan, London 1983), pp. 209–53.
56 Starry, D. A., Extending the Battlefield in Military Review, vol. 61, no. 3, March 1981, pp. 32–50. Compare his stress on mobility in Mounted Combat in Vietnam, op. cit.
57 FM 100–5 consists of general operational guidelines for a specifically US army conventional land battle at corps level, in any theatre – i.e. it does not overrule NATO arrangements or strategic directives for Germany. The 1982 version was toned down a little in 1986, but its basic emphasis remained the same: see many articles in Military Review throughout the 1980s, particularly Richardson, W. R., FM100–5: the Air-Land Battle in 1986 in vol. 66, no. 3, March 1986, pp. 4–11, and related discussion in the rest of that issue; also Alcala, R. H., The United States and the Future of Land Warfare: the AirLand Battle in Pfaltzgraff, R. L., Jr, Ra’anan, U., Shultz, R. H., and Lukes, I., eds., Emerging Doctrines and Technologies (Lexington, Mass. 1988), pp. 173–87.
58 This point is elaborated, and a suitable force structure suggested, in Elmar Dinter and my Not Over by Christmas (Bird, Chichester 1983) pp. 14–16 ff.
59 USA alone of the NATO countries favours large-scale helicopter assaults on the enemy’s side of the front line. Many notes of caution have been sounded against ET: see e.g. Gouré, D., and McCormick, G., PGM: No Panacea in Survival, vol. 22, no. 1, Jan–Feb 1980, p. 15; or Dick, C. J., Soviet Responses to Emerging Technology Weapons and New Defensive Concepts in Barnaby and Borg, op. cit., pp. 220–38.
60 The attractions of getting away from force structures designed for rapid ‘knife fighting’ are mentioned in Pierre, A. J., ed., The Conventional Defense of Europe (Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 1986) especially pp. 141–3, 178–9; but see especially extensive debate in Barnaby and Borg, op. cit., pp. 89–124, 215–50. The interface between NATO doctrines and Airland Battle is in Bellamy, C., The Future of Land Warfare (Croom Helm, London 1987) pp. 124–48.
61 The high-tech light infantry debate is as flourishing today as ever, as is reflected by many articles in Military Review. See also English, op. cit., pp. 185–227; and even a direct link with Sir John Moore in Gates, op. cit., pp. 175–80.
62 Schlemmer, B. F., The Raid (MacDonald & Jane’s, London 1976) pp. 97–9.
63 Starry, Mounted Combat in Vietnam, op. cit., pp. 63–4, 73, 84–5. The Sheridan is discussed on pp. 142 ff.
64 Summers, H. G., Jr, United States Armed Forces in Europe in Gann, L. H., ed., The Defense of Western Europe (Croom Helm, 1987), pp. 299–307.
65 All this is itemised by ‘Cincinnatus’ in his Self Destruction (Norton, New York 1981).
66 Shy, J., and Collier, W., Revolutionary War, in Paret (ed.) Makers of Modern Strategy, op. cit., pp. 820–1.
67 Gabriel, R. A., Military Incompetence; why the American military doesn’t win (Hill & Wang, New York 1985), pp. 149–86.
68 Statistics often quoted in Civil War literature, but most fully presented in Moseley, T. V., The Evolution of American Civil War Infantry Tactics (unpublished PhD thesis, University of North Carolina, 1967) pp. 195–212.
69 The official record is that 46,498 Americans died in combat in Vietnam, and 10,388 from accidents or otherwise outside the firing line: Lewy, G., America in Vietnam (Oxford UP, New York 1978) pp. 450–1.
70 Gabriel, Military Incompetence, op. cit., pp. 179–81, suggests this was the number of helicopters lost since lower, officially-quoted figures did not include the helicopters lost by special forces teams before H Hour. Less credibly, Gabriel goes on to suspect that helicopter losses in Vietnam may have been as high as 10,000 rather than the 4,000 normally accepted.
71 Gabriel, op. cit., p. 184.
72 E.g. Creveld’s conclusions in Fighting Power, op. cit., pp. 164 ff.
73 Montgomery, El Alamein to the River Sangro, op. cit., p. 38; d’Este, op. cit., p. 86.
74 E.g. Caputo, op. cit., part I, The Splendid Little War; Mason, op. cit., pp. 21–50.
75 See Schlemmer, B. F., The Raid, op. cit.
76 This assumption is apparent in many novels and volumes of memoirs, and see e.g. Baker, M., Nam (First published 1981, Sphere edn., London 1982).
77 The US casualty lists for each of the ‘battles’ in Vietnam were tiny by the normal standards of conventional warfare, with around 300 dead at the la Drang Valley in 1965, or around 350 at Khe Sanh in 1968. The total US casualties in even the biggest battles were between one and two thousand, and no unit larger than a company was ever overrun. This contrasts with the French loss of some 19,000 at Dien Bien Phu, of which more than a third were killed and wounded.
These considerations did not, of course, apply to either the North or South Vietnamese. The obsessively Americano-centric nature of much of the post-war discussion is far from lost on the many ex-ARVN émigrés now living in the West.
78 The phrase is Joseph Conrad’s, climaxing his novella Heart of Darkness. It was borrowed by Francis Ford Coppola for his 1979 Vietnam film Apocalypse Now; and put on the lips of Marlon Brando.
79 Keegan, op. cit.
80 Extensively discussed in Creveld, Gabriel and Herzog.
81 Manning, F. J., Continuous Operations in Europe: Feasibility and the Effects on Leadership and Training in Parameters, vol. 9, no. 3, autumn 1979; Hunt-Davis, M. G., and Freeman, D. M., Continuous Operations in JRUSI, vol. 125, no. 3, September 1980, p. 11.
82 Lopez, op. cit., p. 1554.
83 Dinter, Hero or Coward, op. cit.
Chapter 6
1 Graham and Bidwell, op. cit., pp. 233–8, for British attempts to collect data and update tactical doctrine during WWII – an undertaking in which the West has always been outclassed by the Red Army. Pfaltzgraff, et al., op. cit., p. 184, for the US army’s Fort Leavenworth ‘lessons-learned’ cell.
2 Pride in the 1967 ‘revolutionary’ new tactic of leaving the armour unsupported is exhibited in Luttwak, E., and Horrowitz, D., The Israeli Army (Lane, London 1975). For an example of how it was still being used – unsuccessfully – even at the very end of the October War, see Rogers, G. F., The Battle for Suez City in Military Review vol. 59, no. 11, November 1979, pp. 27–33.
3 Ra’anan, U., ‘The New Technologies and the Middle East: ‘ “Lessons” of the Yom Kippur War and Anticipated Developments’ (in Kempt, G., et al., eds., The Other Arms Race, Lexington, Massachusetts, 1975), pp. 79–90. General histories of the war include Palit, Return to Sinai (London, 1974), and Herzog, C., The War of Atonement (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1975).
4 For technology see Lessons of Lebanon in Defence Attaché no. 4, 1982, p. 23 ff; and Bellamy, The Future of Land Warfare (Croom Helm, London 1987) pp. 27–32, 196–8. Casualties are listed in Herzog, C., The Arab-Israeli Wars (Arms & Armour, London 1982) p. 361. Israel lost 480 killed, 2,611 wounded or prisoner, which compare with almost 3,000 dead in 1973, and some 6,000 dead in 1948: ibid., pp. 374, 106.
5 An overview of the war is in Gabriel, R. A. Operation Peace for Galilee (Hill & Wang, New York 1984), with a summary of lessons on pp. 191–213.
6 Prosch, G. G., Israeli Defense of the Golan, an interview with Brigadier General Avigdor Kahalani in Military Review vol. 59, no. 10, October 1979, pp. 2–13.
7 Bellamy, C., The Future of Land Warfare, op. cit., p. 291.
8 Chris Bellamy does just this in his otherwise exemplary and most penetrating book (ibid., p. 42). He thereby perhaps betrays that his primary interest lies rather with the technological hardware than with the human software that must use it?
9 Ibid., pp. 19–26, for a summary of a war that has proved exasperatingly hard to follow through the pages of newspapers.
10 Sources are Chandler, D. G., The Campaigns of Napoleon (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1967); Terraine, The Smoke and the Fire, op. cit., pp. 44–7; and Ascoli, op. cit., pp. 210, 287.
11 Terraine, ibid; Playfair and Molony, op. cit., pp. 78–9; D’Este, op. cit., p. 517.
12 Herzog, op. cit., with additional material from Carver, M., Conventional Warfare in the Nuclear Age in Paret, Makers of Modem Strategy, op. cit., pp. 779–814, especially pp. 797, 809.
13 Ardant du Picq, op. cit., p. 126.
14 Ibid., p. 44.
15 Battles in the Monsoon, op. cit., p. 349. It has sometimes been remarked that S. L. A. Marshall’s occasional slighting comments about Ardant du Picq were far from accidental. His debt to the French writer was profound, but he did not wish it to be noticed.
16 E.g. Baron Larrey, quoted in Chandler, op. cit.
17 E.g. General Sherman after the American Civil War, quoted in Ross, S., From Flintlock to Rifle, Infantry Tactics 1740–1866 (London, 1979), p. 183. Compare Fuller,
J. F. C., The Conduct of War, 1789–1961 (London, 1961), pp. 105–6, 120 and 130, for a selection of late nineteenth century obituaries on the bayonet.
18 Most of these developments are summarised in Bellamy, The Future of Land Warfare, op. cit., pp. 177–273, and Bailey, J. B. A., Field Artillery and Firepower (The Military Press, Oxford 1989), pp. 303–36.
19 Bellamy, The Future of Land Warfare, op. cit., p. 198. For a suggested way to employ lighter formations in a dispersed battle, see my essay Countering Surprise by Mobility in The Sandhurst Journal vol. I, no. 1, autumn 1989.
20 Bellamy, Red God of War, op. cit., Chapter 3; Bailey, op. cit., passim.
21 German strategic geography is well described in Faringdon, Hugh, Confrontation (RKP, London 1986), pp. 249–315.
Bibliography
A selection of the more interesting and accessible works consulted.
Histories, Commentaries and Technical Works
General and Strategic Thought
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J. Colin, Les Transformations de la Guerre (Flammarion, Paris 1911)
T. N. Dupuy, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare (First published 1980; Jane’s edn, London 1982)
E. M. Earle, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton University, 1943)
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?. M. Lloyd, A Review of the History of Infantry (Longmans, London 1908)
P. Paret, ed., Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton University, 1986)
S. Ross, From Flintlock to Rifle, Infantry Tactics 1740–1866 (London 1979)
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J. Terraine, The Smoke and the Fire (Sidgwick & Jackson, London 1980)
T. Wintringham and J. N. Blashford-Snell, Weapons and Tactics (Pelican edn. London 1973)
Napoleonic Wars and Earlier
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J. Arnold, Column and Line in the Napoleonic Wars. A Reappraisal in Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research vol. LX, 1982, pp. 196–208
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