American Military Experience - Böcker

From the author's introduction: ""My purpose is a narrative history of the 1st Infantry Division from 1970 through the Operation Desert Storm celebration held 4th of July 1991. This story is an account of the revolutionary changes in the late Cold War. The Army that overran Saddam Hussein’s Legions in four days was the product of important changes stimulated both by social changes and institutional reform. The 1st Infantry Division reflected benefits of those changes, despite its low priority for troops and material. The Division was not an elite formation, but rather excelled in the context of the Army as an institution.""This book begins with a preface by Gordon R. Sullivan, General, USA, Retired. In twelve chapters, author Gregory Fontenot explains the history of  the 1st infantry Division from 1970 to 1991. In doing so, his fast-paced narrative includes elements to expand the knowledge of non-military readers. These elements include a glossary, a key to abbreviations, maps, nearly two dozen photographs, and thorough bibliography.The First infantry Division and the U.S. Army Transformed: Road to Vistory in Desert Storm is published with support from the First Division Museum at Cantigny.

General George S. Patton Jr. is one of the most successful yet misunderstood figures in American military history. Despite the many books and articles written about him, none considers in depth how his love of history shaped the course of his life. In this thematic biography, Furman Daniel traces Patton's obsession with history and argues that it informed and contributed to many of his successes, both on and off the battlefield.  Patton deliberately cultivated the image of himself as a warrior from ages past; the more interesting truth is that he was an exceptionally dedicated student of history. He was a hard worker and voracious reader who gave a great deal of thought to how military history might inform his endeavors. Most scholars have overlooked this element of Patton's character, which Daniel argues is essential to understanding the man's genius.

Loss and Redemption at St Vith closes a gap in the record of the Battle of the Bulge by recounting the exploits of the 7th Armored Division in a way that no other study has. Most accounts of the Battle of the Bulge give short-shrift to the interval during which the German forward progress stopped and the American counterattack began. This narrative centers on the 7th Armored Division for the entire length of the campaign, in so doing reconsidering the story of the whole battle through the lens of a single division and accounting for the reconstitution of the Division while in combat.

George S. Patton Jr. lived an exciting life in war and peace, but he is best remembered for his World War II battlefield exploits. Patton's War: An American General’s Combat Leadership: November 1942–July 1944, the first of three volumes, follows the general from the beaches of Morocco to the fields of France, right before the birth of Third Army on the continent.In highly engaging fashion, Hymel uncovers new facts and challenges long-held beliefs about the mercurial Patton, not only examining his relationships with his superiors and fellow generals and colonels, but also with the soldiers of all ranks whom he led. Using new sources unavailable to previous historians and through extensive research of soldiers' memoirs and interviews, Hymel adds a new dimension to the telling of Patton's WWII story.

This second of three volumes of Patton’s Warpicks up where the first one left off, examining General George S. Patton’s leadership of the U.S. Third Army. The book follows Patton’s contributions to both the Normandy and Brittainy campaigns; the closing of the Falaise Pocket in Normandy, and racing to the port cities in Brittainy. With the Pocket closed, Patton led his army to Nancy and Metz along the Moselle River, where he quickly captured the former and laid siege to the latter, forcing its surrender after three months of heavy combat. Now Patton planned for a war-winning campaign, interrupted by Hitler’s last, desperate attempt to win the war, the Battle of the Bulge. After some delays, Patton turned two of his corps north and attacked the southern flank of the Bulge, rescuing the besieged town of Bastogne.  As he did in the preceding volume, in Volume 2 Hymel relies not only on Patton’s diaries and letters, but countless veteran interviews, as well as veteran surveys and veteran memoirs to offer the most complete picture to date of Patton in World War II. Volume 2 also provides a unique insight missed by previous Patton authors. Instead of using Patton’s transcribed diaries, which were heavily embellished, Hymel consults Patton’s original, hand-written diaries to get the true story of how Patton felt and what he thought about people and events. Among the history-changing revelations gleaned from the original diaries is that Patton never predicted the Battle of the Bulge (his wife added his prediction of it in November 1944) and even tried to avoid being sucked into the last major campaign of the war.  The book also reveals General George C. Marshall’s influence on the European Theater of Operations; Operation Tink, the bombing campaign intended to break Patton out of the Saar region and help him reach the Rhine River, which had to be shelved due to the Bulge; and a thorough retelling of the Verdun meeting between Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, and Devers, as they planned how to fight the Battle of the Bulge.  Lastly, the book shows Patton at the height of his generalship, successfully leading his army into combat without the same types of mistakes and caustic behavior that almost got him sent home earlier. This is a Patton who takes risks because he understands his troops and the enemy, who visits PTSD wounded in the hospitals, who is constantly trying to motivate his men, and who is the continual student of war, always yearning to understand more. Unfortunately, this is also the Patton still guided by his racism and antisemitism.

The U.S. 1st Infantry Division (1st ID), familiarly known as the Big Red One, adapted to dynamic battlefield conditions throughout the course of its deployment during World War II by innovating and altering behavior, including tactics, techniques, and procedures. The evidence shows that both the Division’s leaders and soldiers did so by thinking critically about their experiences in combat and wasting little time in putting lessons learned to good use. Simply put, they learned on the job—in battle and after battle—and did so quickly. This is remarkable in that the terrain, weather, and the enemy changed as the Division fought its way through North Africa, Sicily, France, Belgium, Germany, and finally Czechoslovakia; equally important were constraints imposed on the 1st ID by manpower shortages (some of them critical), structural changes, and even weapons capabilities, all of which required continual adjustment.In telling the Division’s WWII story, not only in the historical narrative but in an extensive Photographic Essay—which comprises 65 images, many of which have never been reproduced—to appear in the center of the work, Gregory Fontenot includes the stories of individual members of the Big Red One, officers as well as enlisted men, having gleaned information from the hundreds of memoirs, diaries, and postwar interviews he either consulted or personally conducted, making his third volume in the American Military Experience series a meaningful and memorable one.

After the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army considered counterinsurgency (COIN) a mistake to be avoided. Many found it surprising, then, when setbacks in recent conflicts led the same army to adopt a COIN doctrine. Scholarly debates have primarily employed existing theories of military bureaucracy or culture to explain the army’s re-embrace of COIN, but Peter Campbell advances a unique argument centering on military realism to explain the complex evolution of army doctrinal thinking from 1960 to 2008.In five case studies of U.S. Army doctrine, Campbell pits military realism against bureaucratic and cultural perspectives in three key areas—nuclear versus conventional warfare, preferences for offense versus defense, and COIN missions—and finds that the army has been more doctrinally flexible than those perspectives would predict. He demonstrates that decision makers, while vowing in the wake of Vietnam to avoid (COIN) missions, nonetheless found themselves adapting to the geopolitical realities of fighting “low intensity” conflicts. In essence, he demonstrates that pragmatism has won out over dogmatism. At a time when American policymakers remain similarly conflicted about future defense strategies, Campbell’s work will undoubtedly shape and guide the debate.

General George S. Patton Jr. is one of the most successful yet misunderstood figures in American military history. Despite the many books and articles written about him, none considers in depth how his love of history shaped the course of his life. In this thematic biography, Furman Daniel traces Patton’s obsession with history and argues that it informed and contributed to many of his successes, both on and off the battlefield.  Patton deliberately cultivated the image of himself as a warrior from ages past; the more interesting truth is that he was an exceptionally dedicated student of history. He was a hard worker and voracious reader who gave a great deal of thought to how military history might inform his endeavors. Most scholars have overlooked this element of Patton’s character, which Daniel argues is essential to understanding the man’s genius.

While working on his first book, Bob Korkuc became intimately familiar with the 381st Bombardment Group of the Mighty Eighth Air Force and met the group’s chaplain, James Good Brown. Brown kept a diary during his time with the bomb group (1943 to 1945) in which he chronicled the daily experiences of the men. Years after the war, Brown self-published his diary, which today is hard to find. Through his friendship with Brown, Korkuc gained access to and chose to edit the original docu - ment so that more readers might appreciate this insightful wartime eyewitness account. Serving in his early forties alongside men twenty years his junior—whom he called the “Mighty Men of the 381st”—Brown took part in morning briefings, shared meals with crews, and anxiously awaited their return from dangerous daylight bombing missions. Flying as a noncombatant, an unnecessary eleventh crewmember, Brown describes his own observations of a Flying Fortress combat mission over Germany. Writing with extraordinary candor, Brown documents the inner workings of a bomb group that flew 297 combat missions over Europe, providing vivid character assessments of his fellow airmen and capturing both their victories and devastating losses. In addition to judiciously editing Brown’s original diary for readability, Korkuc created a unique appendix, which reveals the fate of every airman who served with Brown. The immediacy of Brown’s narration combined with Korkuc’s meticulous editing make this a promising new resource for scholars and general readers alike.