A History of War in 100 Battles

by Richard Overy

This aerial view shows the destruction inflicted on Egyptian aircraft – caught by surprise in the open – by an Israeli pre-emptive strike on 5 June 1967. The raids destroyed 286 of Egypt’s 420 aircraft and gave air supremacy to the Israeli air force.

  Self-deception also encouraged the Jordanians to take advantage of the battle in Sinai. Listening to constant communiqués on the smashing of the Israeli air force and the advance into southern Israel, Hussein’s commanders launched their own artillery attack with heavy guns from the West Bank, while Jordanian tanks tried to surround Jerusalem. Though Israel had wanted to avoid simultaneous conflicts to east and north, the threat could not be ignored and over the following three days fierce engagements, which resulted in some of the heaviest Israeli casualties, destroyed Jordan’s smaller armed forces and captured not only the whole of Jerusalem but the entire West Bank. Syria had been hedging its bets, but joined in the propaganda chorus of Arab victories. Syrian guns devastated northern Israel until finally, despite fears of Soviet intervention, Israeli forces battled onto the Golan Heights in southern Syria and were poised, if they wanted, to march to Damascus. At 6 p.m. on 10 June, Israel agreed to enforce a ceasefire. Its territory was now more than three times greater than it had been before the battle.

  The cost for the Arab cause was catastrophic. The Egyptians lost most of their air force and an estimated 10,000 military dead, as well as 85 per cent of their military equipment, while Jordan and Syria lost over 1,100 soldiers. Israel lost 679 dead and 36 planes, but the surprise attacks destroyed 469 enemy aircraft in the most comprehensive air strike of the century. Cairo radio’s broadcasts switched from strident fabrications of victory to sombre reflection on defeat. Nasser broadcast his resignation (later rescinded) after he described the shock of the Israeli deception: ‘We expected the enemy to come from the east and the north, but instead he came from the west.’

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  No. 69 TET OFFENSIVE

  30 January – 8 April 1968

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  In September 1967, General Vo Nguyen Giap, commander-in-chief of the communist North Vietnamese Army (NVA), announced a strategy to ‘directly hit the enemy in his deepest lair’. The enemy was the Military Assistance Command Vietnam, a force of almost half a million American men and women supporting the South Vietnamese government and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). Rather than engage in a single pitched battle on unequal terms, the North Vietnamese plan was to infiltrate the whole of South Vietnam and attack hundreds of government buildings and military bases simultaneously. For the strategy to work, absolute secrecy was required. The preparation for what became known as the Tet Offensive involved one of the largest and most complex deception plans ever mounted in warfare.

  Secrecy was necessary because the North Vietnamese Army and the southern communists, or Viet Cong, were not only greatly outnumbered by American and ARVN forces, but possessed only a fraction of the sophisticated military equipment available to the enemy. The deception involved two approaches: first, it was necessary to persuade the Americans that the real threat came in the North, from NVA incursions across the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam; second, it was necessary to infiltrate thousands of soldiers and guerrilla fighters into the towns and cities of the South in order to build up reserves of equipment and ammunition and to dig numerous bunkers and tunnels concealed from the enemy. This was done without divulging the overall plan to those involved, or the date of the operations. Over the winter months an estimated 65–80,000 communist regular and irregular troops moved into position around South Vietnam. To make surprise more certain, the North Vietnamese decided to launch the offensive during the Tet New Year celebrations at the end of January when a period of truce traditionally existed between the two sides. A seven-day truce was agreed from 27 January to 3 February, during which it was assumed that the South Vietnamese armed forces would be on low alert. The assault on the towns would also make it more difficult for the Americans to deploy the tanks, aircraft and helicopter gunships that they used in open country.

  On 20 January, the NVA began the active part of its deception by launching a surprise assault on the American Marine base at Khe Sanh, near the northern border of South Vietnam. The redoubts around the base were attacked using rockets, mortars and machine-gun fire. The base itself came under heavy fire and a 1,500-ton ammunition dump exploded. The runway was hit, leaving only a 600-metre (2,000-foot) strip still viable. Using trenches and bunkers dug almost up to the base perimeter, the NVA kept up a remorseless fire. Khe Sanh threatened to become another Dien Bien Phu.

  Both deceptions worked up to a point. The Americans’ gaze was directed at Khe Sanh and their efforts went into reinforcing the threatened base. Although intelligence sources suggested that something was going to happen in the rest of South Vietnam, there was no clue as to when or how extensive the offensive might be. The Tet holiday was celebrated in North Vietnam a day early, a decision explained to the population by an apparently favourable configuration of the Earth and the Sun that day. In the South, soldiers began leaving for the annual celebrations, though a state of alert was finally ordered. The surprise was not total, but the scale of the offensive was quite unanticipated. In and around Saigon, the southern capital, two Viet Cong divisions and thirty-five NVA battalions had infiltrated, quite undetected.

  In the end the deception was undone by the need for secrecy. The local units in the South did not understand the importance of co-ordination. The date for the attack was changed at the last moment from the night of 30 January to the night following, but some units failed to receive the instruction, and in the early hours of the morning of 30 January attacks began in twelve towns in the north of the country. The American commander, General William Westmoreland, still thought that this was a diversion to mask a greater assault planned across the demilitarized zone. Only when the following night showed communist attacks right across the country did the nature of the offensive become clear. The insurgents hit 5 out of 6 cities,36 out of 44 provincial capitals and 64 out of 245 district capitals. Using automatic weapons, rockets and mortar fire, government buildings and military bases were either bombarded or, once communist sappers had done the work of cutting the wire and removing mines, infiltrated by NVA and Viet Cong forces. Fierce firefights broke out across the country, though in many cases the attacks were halted and the insurgents killed or captured. The strong assault on Quang Tri was defeated in a day of fighting. Only in three towns did a major battle develop, with heavy casualties on both sides.

  The longest battles took place in Da Nang, Hue and Saigon. Da Nang, headquarters of the US 1st Corps, was subjected to two weeks of intermittent attack, including the destruction of aircraft on the Da Nang airfield. The American forces suffered 681 casualties in the struggle, the communist forces 1,300. In Hue, the NVA succeeded in taking over and occupying the town citadel. Fighting in difficult conditions around the city, the US Marines assigned to the battle found conditions not unlike Stalingrad. When buildings were cleared of the enemy in the day, they were stealthily reoccupied again at night. Not until 2 March was the city again in South Vietnamese hands. In Saigon, the communists concentrated on the Chinese suburb of Cholon, though attacks were also made on the US Embassy and the presidential palace. The street fighting in Cholon lasted a month, though the rest of Saigon was secured in a few days. Across the South and the Mekong Delta, hundreds of incidents brought a countrywide series of skirmishes and ambushes, but nothing on the scale of the continued battle at Khe Sanh, which more closely resembled a conventional battlefield. Here major redoubts at Lang Vei Camp and Alpha 1 were overrun, with heavy American casualties. At Lang Vei, 300 of the 487 defenders were killed, wounded or missing. Reinforcements battled their way in, but the key effort was made to re-open Route 9, the main road to the base. ‘Operation Pegasus’ involved 30,000 troops, the largest single deployment of the war. On 8 April, the siege was lifted and the NVA retreated back to the North.

  The Tet Offensive failed on
a military level, leaving an estimated 32,000 communist dead. The communist purpose had been to use the offensive to spark a revolutionary uprising among the South Vietnamese population and this it failed to do. There was, however, one major political achievement: the deception shocked American military commanders and the American public and accelerated the winding-down of the American commitment in Vietnam. By 1972, the Americans had withdrawn altogether. World opinion understood that the American assurances given in late 1967 that the war was almost over were entirely misplaced. In this sense, Tet was a turning point in the communist struggle to create a single Vietnamese nation by attacking the ‘deepest lair’.

  A young girl soldier fighting for the North Vietnamese in the Cuu Long Delta prepares to fire an anti-tank gun during the Tet Offensive, which was launched in January 1968 against 105 towns and cities across South Vietnam. Though a failure militarily, the offensive stunned the American army stationed in Vietnam and brought North Vietnamese victory a step nearer.

  CHAPTER 5

  COURAGE IN THE FACE OF FIRE

  This famous photograph of a field of dead troopers at Gettysburg was taken on 5 July 1863, two days after the battle, by the photographer Timothy O’Sullivan. The battle was an example of exceptional courage in the face of fire by both sides. Here, Union dead lie near the Emmitsburg Road south of Cemetery Ridge.

  In a very real sense soldiers and sailors through all the ages of battle have been called on to display remarkable courage in the face of enemy fire. It is what they were expected to do even if forced to fight rather than volunteering. For professional soldiers it is the test they are trained for. A French paratrooper trapped at Dien Bien Phu in the Viet Minh siege asked his commander what to expect as the enemy closed in. ‘You’re a para,’ was the reply. ‘You’re there to get yourself killed.’ Courage in this case, as in so many others, is about accepting the strong possibility of death but remaining steadfast under the most threatening of battlefield conditions.

  The psychology of courage is a complex question because it involves not only the explanation for why men keep their ground as they come under fire or attack but also the explanation for why that courage cracks at certain moments and terror-stricken flight takes over. For sailors the choices are, of course, narrower. Throwing yourself into the sea is not much of an option. For airmen, in the twentieth century, options were also very narrow, though in an emergency the parachute gave in most cases the opportunity of safety. For submariners the courage demanded was considerable, since from a stricken submarine there was often no escape. For armies the possibility of flight is usually an option, though throughout history it has often been as dangerous a choice as holding ground, since enemy horsemen and infantry give chase and cut down anyone they catch.

  The test of courage is evidently something that all soldiers think about. In some cases military service was required of all men, even of all ages, as in Mongol society or in Menelik’s Ethiopia, so that fighting was considered a social obligation and cowardice a sign of failed masculinity, to be punished usually by death. But even fighting as a sign of gender status will leave men pondering on the eve of battle what combat will be like and what are the chances of survival. Clearly group solidarity is a critical factor in explaining how men face fire. The universe of moral commitment becomes very small in battle, confined to you and your companions, for whom the pressure to give mutual aid and to fight as effectively as possible is, in battle, perhaps a stronger bond than the requirement to obey what chiefs or commanders order you to do. Prowess has little to do with it (though trained men will evidently fight more competently than an untrained mob), because courage can be displayed by men with little military experience or competence. The American Civil War exacted exceptional levels of casualty from men drawn from a civilian milieu and thrust within weeks into battle, where they learned to stand and fight through a brutal apprenticeship.

  Courage on the battlefield is also sustained by the superstitious hope, often cemented by religious faith in the hereafter, that you will not be the one killed that day. The ranks of French soldiers and cavalry at Borodino that stood in line waiting for the move forward while Russian ball and canister shot repeatedly smashed one or more of them to pulp, displayed an apparently inexplicable courage not to wheel around and run back out of range. The arbitrariness made battle a gamble and in most of the battles described here the overwhelming majority survives, even in the face of defeat. Complete or near complete annihilation, such as Custer faced at Little Big Horn or Harold at the Battle of Hastings, is unusual. The hope for survival acts as a counterweight to the inescapable anxiety felt by the average soldier about the prospect of death. One Confederate officer writing after Gettysburg confessed that ‘enthusiasm of ardent breasts in many cases ain’t there…the thought is most frequently, Oh, if I could just come out of this charge safely how thankful would I be!’ He charged nonetheless and half his division became a casualty.

  This painting of British Air Raid Precautions personnel was made by the artist Reginald Mills (1896–1950). Mills joined the Auxiliary Fire Service and, like thousands of other civil defence workers, endured the kind of dangers that had previously been experienced only on the front line. Courage was required not only of soldiers in the Second World War but also of millions of civilians.

  The courage required in the face of fire is near universal since no part of a battlefield is particularly safer than another; even the baggage train will be captured, ransacked and put to the sword in the event of defeat. The spectrum of courage displayed is nevertheless a wide one, and in battle the example set by commanders, who even as late as the eighteenth century could be monarchs as well, plays a critical part, spurring on more timid troops or trying to stop a pell-mell flight if it occurs. The Ethiopians understood this at Adwa and told marksmen to pick out the Italian officers, in their splendid white uniforms and coloured sashes, knowing that the troops they commanded would flee once their leaders were dead. Courage was as infectious as fear, but once troops become leaderless, uncertain and conscious of probable defeat, the psychological power that kept them fighting bravely can evaporate in moments. Courage in the face of fire needs to be nurtured and sustained in the heat of battle. Natural courage is rarer, but it certainly exists.

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  No. 70 BATTLE OF MARATHON

  Summer 490 BCE

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  The Battle of Marathon is best remembered today for the 42-kilometre (26-mile) race named after it. Following the battle, the Athenian messenger Thersippos (or Phidippides – there remains some uncertainty) ran from the plain of Marathon all the way to Athens where he shouted out the news of the Athenian victory and fell down dead. This story, like many accounts of Marathon, is probably a fiction. But running did feature in the battle itself, and may well be the explanation for the Greek victory that Thersippos died for.

  There might never have been a battle at Marathon had it not been for the persuasive skills of the Athenian general, Miltiades. In the summer of 490 BCE the Greek city was faced with a difficult choice. After taking part in a raid in Anatolia against the vast Persian Empire, ruled by the emperor Darius I, the Athenians knew that they faced the threat of retaliation from an army that held the whole of the Middle East in thrall. Darius is generally thought to have been a benign autocrat towards those peoples who accepted Persian suzerainty; to those who crossed him, however, he was capable of a studied cruelty. In 490, he ordered Datis, a Mede in his service, to lead an expedition to capture the islands of the Aegean and enslave the Athenians. He set off in an estimated 300 boats. The number of men and horses with him grew much larger in the telling. Modern estimates suggest around 12,000 soldiers and perhaps 1,000 horses, more than enough, it was assumed, to complete the task. The Athenians had no cavalry and lacked the large body of trained and toughened archers and horsemen Datis brought with him.

  Datis took a winding route from Rhodes, past the island of Naxos (which he sacked) and on to the city of Eretria, which was a
lso slated for destruction and enslavement. After a six-day siege, traitors let in the Persians, who burned and looted the town and put 780 in chains on a temporary prison island. Athens faced a victorious and potentially unstoppable force. The Athenian assembly debated their prospects. Miltiades, who had already clashed with the Persians elsewhere, was in favour of fighting, and his arguments won the day. Athens was the largest Greek city and could raise perhaps 10,000 hoplites (the heavily armed infantry) and 8,000 lightly armed men, but no horsemen. The Greek commander was Kallimachos, but Miltiades seems to have been the inspiration behind the Greeks’ subsequent strategy.

  Datis arrived with his boats off the coast of the plain of Marathon. He probably chose the site because it afforded ample ground for his cavalry to deploy. He camped and waited. The Athenians, joined by perhaps 1,000 allies from Plataea, marched to the southern side of the plain. Here the ten Athenian generals (one for each of Athens’s tribes) argued again about whether to fight or not. Miltiades prevailed with the casting vote of Kallimachos (not for nothing was Athens the home of democracy). The fighting began when it was the turn of Miltiades to be the general in charge.

  Recent accounts suggest that it was Miltiades who worked out how Athens might defeat the larger, more experienced and well-armed enemy in front of it. He probably observed that the cavalry was camped some distance from the infantry, possibly divided from them by a small lake, and that it would take time for all the horses to deploy onto the plain. Some historians have suggested that the cavalry had already gone back on board ship, with a view to sailing round to Athens by sea, but that would seem a strange decision, given the importance of the battle, and horses are evident on a sarcophagus in the northern Italian city of Brescia, on which the Greek painting of the battle, made just thirty years after the event, was reproduced in marble. The Athenians’ plan was to urge the Greek army to run across the plain (approximately a mile) and engage the Persian archers and infantry before the cavalry could intervene. This was a risky plan, and it forced the Greeks to shed some of their protective armour to run as lightly burdened as possible. It also meant that the whole Athenian army would be exposed during its ten-minute run across the plain to the withering fire of the Persian archers. This required a special courage.