Why was the last battle of the War of 1812 fought fully half a year after the official end of the war?

Qv RY dA hS AZ ml xh rG Wq ju yf Lb

As part of my research to answer this question, I came across a mention of the June 30, 1815 battle between the USS Peacock and the East India cruiser Nautilus (in the Indian Ocean) as being officially the last battle of the War of 1812.

Why did this battle occur so long-fully half a year-after the December 24, 1814, Treaty of Ghent, which officially ended the War of 1812?

Did the two ships involved simply not know about the treaty, or did they choose to fight because of some other factor?

---

From Wikipedia:

On 30 June she [the Peacock] captured the 16-gun brig Nautilus, which was under the command of Lieutenant Charles Boyce of the Bombay Marine of the British East India Company in the Straits of Sunda, in the final naval action of the war. Boyce informed Warrington that the war had ended. Warrington suspected a ruse and ordered Boyce to surrender. When Boyce refused, Warrington opened fire, killing one seaman, two European invalids, and three lascars, wounding Boyce severely, as well as mortally wounding the first lieutenant, and also wounding five lascars. American casualties amounted to some four or five men wounded. When Boyce provided documents proving that the Treaty of Ghent ending the war had been ratified, Warrington released his victims, though at no point did he in any way inquire about Boyce's condition, or that of any of the injured on Nautilus. Peacock returned to New York on 30 October. A court of inquiry in Boston a year later exonerated Warrington of all blame

It sounds like the British commander knew the war had ended and the American commander did not.

---

As I remember, the Treaty of Ghent allowed for the time it would take for news to reach different parts of the world and so set different dates for the cession of hostilities in different regions of the oceans.

ARTICLE THE SECOND. Immediately after the ratifications of this Treaty by both parties as hereinafter mentioned, orders shall be sent to the Armies, Squadrons, Officers, Subjects, and Citizens of the two Powers to cease from all hostilities: and to prevent all causes of complaint which might arise on account of the prizes which may be taken at sea after the said Ratifications of this Treaty, it is reciprocally agreed that all vessels and effects which may be taken after the space of twelve days from the said Ratifications upon all parts of the Coast of North America from the Latitude of twenty three degrees North to the Latitude of fifty degrees North, and as far Eastward in the Atlantic Ocean as the thirty sixth degree of West Longitude from the Meridian of Greenwich, shall be restored on each side:-that the time shall be thirty days in all other parts of the Atlantic Ocean North of the Equinoctial Line or Equator:-and the same time for the British and Irish Channels, for the Gulf of Mexico, and all parts of the West Indies:-forty days for the North Seas for the Baltic, and for all parts of the Mediterranean-sixty days for the Atlantic Ocean South of the Equator as far as the Latitude of the Cape of Good Hope.- ninety days for every other part of the world South of the Equator, and one hundred and twenty days for all other parts of the world without exception.

https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=20&page=transcript1

The treaty of Ghent was signed 24 December 1814 and was ratified by the US senate 16 February 1815. President Madison exchanged ratification papers in Washington DC 17 February 1815 and the treaty was proclaimed 18 February 1815.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Ghent2

February 16, 17, and 18 were the 47th, 48th, and 49th days of 1815. 90 days later would be the 137th, 138th and 139th days of 1815 - May 17, 18, 19 - and 120 days later would be the 167th, 168th, and 169th days of 1815 - June 16, 17, and 18. The battle between Peacock and Nautilus on 30 June 1815 was on the 181st day of 1815.

So obviously the course of the Peacock in April, May, and June 1815 would indicate how likely it was to have have heard news of the peace treaty by June 30, 1815, and whether the US government made sufficient effort to inform Warrington of the treaty.

Last battle of the War of 1812 fought in Alabama?

Here&rsquos an interesting newspaper article reporting that the latest research shows the final battle of the War of 1812 was not New Orleans, but a relatively overlooked fight in Alabama that took place in January 1815.

Here&rsquos an excerpt from the article:

&ldquo[The study] revealed the last battle of the War of 1812 was not fought in New Orleans, as commonly believed. Another battle was fought in St. Marys four days after Gen. Andrew Jackson led a group against British troops Jan. 12, 1815, in New Orleans.

And as the 200th anniversary of the battle approaches, talk of creating an event to commemmorate the war is at hand in St. Marys.

The HMS Dragon, with 74 guns, sailed from Cumberland Island to attack a battery at Point Peter, a lightly defended frontier outpost at what was then the southernmost point of the United States.

Archeologists called the battle &ldquoThe Forgotten Invasion&rdquo and hailed the conflict between British and American troops as the last battle of the War of 1812.

It turns out they were wrong. A member of the Guale Historical Society has found proof that the last battle was actually fought weeks later on Feb. 8, 1815, at Fort Bowyer in Mobile, Ala.&rdquo

For more Information Click Here

Fort Jackson
Wooden Stockade with blockhouse, built on the remains of the French Fort Toulouse (built in 1717) on April 17, 1814. At this site Red Stick Chief William Weatherford (Red Eagle) surrendered. On August 1, 1814 a general convention of the chiefs of the entire Creek Nation occurred with General Andrew Jackson to hear the final terms of the surrender and end of the Creek War. This surrender was signed on August 9, 1814.
Located at the junction of the Coosa and Tallapoosa Rivers, Elmore County, Alabama 4 miles southwest of Wetumpka, Alabama and 180 miles northeast of Mobile, Alabama.

Other sites associated with Jackson-Alabama- War of 1812 (First Creek War)

nscription. On this spot, camped his army, October 11, 1813, after marching from Fayetteville, Tenn.,

enroute to the Battle of Horseshoe Bend.

Erected 1951 by Erected by ACME Club, Huntsville.

Location. 34° 44.017&prime N, 86° 35.062&prime W. Marker is in Huntsville, Alabama, in Madison County. Marker is at the intersection of Holmes Avenue and Lincoln St., NE on Holmes Avenue.. Located in the triangle of Holmes Ave Ne, Lincoln St NE sign is facing Lincoln St. in the median. Marker is in this post office area: Huntsville AL 35801, United States of America.

Fort Bowyer
In the year 1813, on order of President Madison, Mobile Point from Spain by U.S. Regulars, under Gen. James Wilkinson, and militia, under Col. John Bowyer. A wood and earth stockade was quickly built here. It was in the shape of a D and armed with cannon taken from Fort Charlotte in Mobile. It’s mission was to protect the entrance to Mobile Bay from the Gulf of Mexico.
Located on the east side of the entrance to Mobile Bay, Mobile Point, Baldwin County Alabama, 30 miles south of Mobile, Alabama.

Inscription. At, or near, this site, the United States, after seizing this point of land from the Spanish in 1813, built Fort Bowyer, a structure of wood and sand. A small garrison of men courageously fought to defend the fort against two British attacks, one in September, 1814, again in February, 1815.

Erected 1972 by Alabama Society United States Daughters of 1812.

Fort St. Stephen
Established by the French about 1714, held afterwards by the Spanish, who made a settlement there about 1786, given up by the Spaniards to the Americans in 1799. Considered by the Creeks impregnable.Located on the west bank of the Tombigbee River, on a high bluff, Washington County, Alabama, about 67 miles north of Mobile, Alabama

.Fort Stoddart
Established by United States troops in July of 1799. This was a Stockade and bastion type. Port of entry into the United States where the Court of Admiralty was held. In 1804 Captain Schuyler of New York was commander of the post of eighty men, Lt. Edmund P. Gaines, Lt. Reuben Chamberlain paymaster. Duties were exacted on imports and exports, (In 1807 Natchez, Mississippi planters paid for Kentucky flour at $4.00 a barrel, the same flour brought through Spanish Mobile, and brought up the river to Ft. Stoddart cost the Tombigbee planters sixteen dollars a barrell. Located on the west bank of the Mobile River, Mobile County, Alabama, four miles due east of Mount Vernon, Alabama and 30 miles north of Mobile, Alabama

.
Fort Charlotte (Fort Conde)
Fort Conde was a classic 18th century brick and mortar square fort with large bastions on each corner, gunnery parapet, surrounding moat and outer earthworks. Built in the early 1700's by Bienville, the French founder of Mobile. When the English captured the fort in 1763, the name was changed to Fort Charlotte in honor of George III's Queen. Seventeen years later (1780) the Spanish took possession.
Located on the west bank of the Mobile River, Mobile County, Alabama, in the city of Mobile, Alabama

Fort Mims
Built in July 1813, as a wooden stockade, square in shape, enclosing nearly an acre, with a protected blockhouse on the Southwest corner, with two large gates- one on the west wall and the other on the east wall. Stormed and taken by the Creeks on August 30, 1813.
Located 35 miles northeast of Mobile, Alabama, in Baldwin County, Alabama, a ¼ quarter mile from the east bank of the Tensaw River.
Fort Pierce
Small wooden stockade built by the Pierce brothers, William and John of New England during the late 1700’s.
Located two miles southeast of Fort Mims.
Fort Glass and Fort Madison (Housed more than one thousand persons)
Fort Glass
Small wooden stockade built by Zachariah Glass and his neighbors. It’s dimensions were 60 yards by 40 yards, rectangular in shape. During August 1813 was occupied by Colonel Carson’s Regiment of two hundred mounted men.
Located on the eastern boundary of Clarke County Alabama, 225 yards south of Fort Madison.
Fort Madison
Built around August 1813. During the Creek War was occupied by settlers. Wooden stockade, square in shape, 60x60 yards, about an acre of ground. A trench three feet in depth was dug around the outside and the bodies of pine trees cut about fifteen feet in length were placed perpendicularly in the trench side by side, making thus a wall of pine wood twelve feet in height. Portholes were cut at convenient distances so as to enable the defenders to look out, and in case of an attack to fire upon the besiegers. It was lighted at night by means of the abundant "pine-knot" placed upon scaffolds, covered with earth, when used would light up the area with a powerful white light.
Located in the center of a large Fort Madison neighborhood. First store located due east, six miles on the Alabama River in 1812. First gristmill located four miles north in 1812. First cotton gin located two miles north in 1813. Surrounded by the first plantations in the area.
Located about ten miles east of Jackson, Clarke County, and Alabama. Six miles west of the Alabama River and ten miles east of Jackson, Alabama. About 55 miles north of Mobile, Alabama. Exact location: North-east corner of section one, township six, range three east of the St. Stephens meridian, on the water-shed line, which was then the eastern boundary of Clarke County.
Fort Sinquefield
A wooden stockade with a block-house built on a table-land or height of ground extending for a mile north and south. Eastward is a gentle slope which terminates finally in the Bassett’s Creek Valley. Westward are deep valleys and narrow, between large, high ridges of land. A spring supplied the fort with water is to the southwest, in one of the deep valleys, 275 yards away. The Creeks attacked this fort but was unable to take it.
Ninety feet distant from the stockade ground, in a northwest direction, are some graves. A few yards eastward of the forts location is supposed to be an old burial place, although the graves were not distinct in 1879.
Located about ten miles north of Fort Madison, on the western side of Bassett’s Creek, Clark County, Alabama. Exact location: section thirteen, township eight, range three east. One mile northeast of Whatley, Alabama and about 65 miles north of Mobile, Alabama.
Fort White
A small wooden stockade built a short distance northeast of the present Grove Hill, Clark County, Alabama.
Landrum’s Fort and Mott’s Fort
These two wooden stockades were located eleven miles west from Fort Sinquefield on section eighteen, township eight, range two east. Clark County, Alabama.
Fort Easley
This stockade was built on a small plateau containing about three acres. On the side next to the river the bluff is almost a perpendicular wall, there is a large spring of water flowing from it’s side. This steep plateau made the stockade a naturally strong position.

Fort Pierce
Small wooden stockade built by the Pierce brothers, William and John of New England during the late 1700’s.
Located two miles southeast of Fort Mims.
Fort Glass and Fort Madison (Housed more than one thousand persons)
Fort Glass
Small wooden stockade built by Zachariah Glass and his neighbors. It’s dimensions were 60 yards by 40 yards, rectangular in shape. During August 1813 was occupied by Colonel Carson’s Regiment of two hundred mounted men.
Located on the eastern boundary of Clarke County Alabama, 225 yards south of Fort Madison.
Fort Madison
Built around August 1813. During the Creek War was occupied by settlers. Wooden stockade, square in shape, 60x60 yards, about an acre of ground. A trench three feet in depth was dug around the outside and the bodies of pine trees cut about fifteen feet in length were placed perpendicularly in the trench side by side, making thus a wall of pine wood twelve feet in height. Portholes were cut at convenient distances so as to enable the defenders to look out, and in case of an attack to fire upon the besiegers. It was lighted at night by means of the abundant "pine-knot" placed upon scaffolds, covered with earth, when used would light up the area with a powerful white light.
Located in the center of a large Fort Madison neighborhood. First store located due east, six miles on the Alabama River in 1812. First gristmill located four miles north in 1812. First cotton gin located two miles north in 1813. Surrounded by the first plantations in the area.
Located about ten miles east of Jackson, Clarke County, and Alabama. Six miles west of the Alabama River and ten miles east of Jackson, Alabama. About 55 miles north of Mobile, Alabama. Exact location: North-east corner of section one, township six, range three east of the St. Stephens meridian, on the water-shed line, which was then the eastern boundary of Clarke County.
Fort Sinquefield
A wooden stockade with a block-house built on a table-land or height of ground extending for a mile north and south. Eastward is a gentle slope which terminates finally in the Bassett’s Creek Valley. Westward are deep valleys and narrow, between large, high ridges of land. A spring supplied the fort with water is to the southwest, in one of the deep valleys, 275 yards away. The Creeks attacked this fort but was unable to take it.
Ninety feet distant from the stockade ground, in a northwest direction, are some graves. A few yards eastward of the forts location is supposed to be an old burial place, although the graves were not distinct in 1879.
Located about ten miles north of Fort Madison, on the western side of Bassett’s Creek, Clark County, Alabama. Exact location: section thirteen, township eight, range three east. One mile northeast of Whatley, Alabama and about 65 miles north of Mobile, Alabama.
Fort White
A small wooden stockade built a short distance northeast of the present Grove Hill, Clark County, Alabama.
Landrum’s Fort and Mott’s Fort
These two wooden stockades were located eleven miles west from Fort Sinquefield on section eighteen, township eight, range two east. Clark County, Alabama.
Fort Easley
This stockade was built on a small plateau containing about three acres. On the side next to the river the bluff is almost a perpendicular wall, there is a large spring of water flowing from it’s side. This steep plateau made the stockade a naturally strong position.
General Claiborne had visited the fort at the end of August, 1813 on reports that the Creeks were going to attack it. This put his command about sixty miles from the real target Fort Mims.
Located on the east bank of the Tombigbee River, eighty miles north of Mobile, Alabama, and five miles west of Campbell, Clarke County, Alabama. The exact location is on section ten or eleven, township eleven, range one west.
Turner’s Fort
This fort was built of split pine logs doubled and contained two or three block-houses. The Turner, Thornton, Pace and other families used this fort for protection.
Located eight miles south and five miles west of Fort Easley, in the West Bend Community two miles east of the Tombigbee River near the residence of Abner Turner, or about 72 miles north of Mobile, Alabama. Three miles distant, on the Tombigbee River was the Choctaw reservation known as Turkey Town.
Cato’s Fort
Located on the west side of the Tombigbee River, five miles below Coffeeville, about a mile from the river.
Rankin’s Fort (housed about five hundred and thirty people)
This was a large wooden stockade and the most Western of the river group of forts.
Located in Washington County, Alabama.
McGrew’s Fort
This wooden stockade enclosed nearly two acres. Some of the palisades post were still in place as late as 1879, and around the fort locality was an old field. Here two brothers, William McGrew and John McGrew, British royalists and refugees, made an early settlement near the Tombigbee River. McGrew’s Reserve, an old Spanish grant, was a landmark in Clarke County for many years. They were known to have become exemplary Americans.
Located in the corner of section one, township seven, range one west, about three miles north of Fort St. Stephens, in Clark County, Alabama five miles north and eighteen west from Fort Madison.
Fort Carney (housed about four hundred people)
Built by Josiah Carney, who settled on the River in 1809.
Located six miles south from Jackson, Alabama, in Clarke County, at Gullet’s Bluff (now called Carney Bluff), on the line of travel to Mount Vernon, Alabama.
Powell’s Fort
Three miles south of Fort Carney, near Oven Bluff, was Powell’s Fort, where about six families, including those of John McCaskey, James Powell, and John Powell.
Lavier’s Fort
Built near the residence of Captain Lawson Lavier, who traded with the Choctaw Indians. Location not known
Mount Vernon
Headquarters for General Claiborne. Two Stockade forts were located here.Located 29 miles north of Mobile, Alabama in Mobile County.
Patton’s Fort
Located at Winchester, Wayne County, Mississippi.
Roger’s Fort
Located six miles north of Patton’s Fort in Wayne County, Mississippi.
Fort Montgomery
Built in the fall of 1814 by Colonel Thomas H. Benton. This was the staging and assembly area for General Jackson’s army for the attack on Spanish Pensacola, Florida.
Located two miles north of Fort Mims site. Located 37 miles northeast of Mobile, Alabama, in Baldwin County, Alabama, near the east bank of the Tensaw River.
Fort Strother
Built by General Andrew Jackson in October of 1813 as an advanced supply base.
Located at the junction of the Coosa River and Canoe Creek in St. Clair County Alabama on the east end of Hines Mountain, about ten miles southwest of the present city of Gadsden, Alabama.
Fort Deposit
Built by General Andrew Jackson in September 1813 as a main base for his army.Located at the southern most point of the Tennessee River in Marshall County, Alabama near the present city of Guntersville, Alabama.

Fort Claiborne
Built by General Claiborne in mid October, 1813 in ten days. A wooden stockade, two hundred feet square, defended by three block-houses and a half moon battery which commanded the river. Used as a staging area for the Battle of Holy Ground.
Located on the east side of the Alabama River at Weatherford’s Bluff, Claiborne, Monroe County, Alabama thirty-five miles north of Fort Mims.
Pensacola Fort System, Florida
Fort San Miguel. Taken over, with Spanish consent, by the British in 1812 - 1814, renamed Fort St. Michael. Briefly captured by Americans in 1814. Nearby at Spring and Brainard Streets, 600 yards north, was British Crescent Redoubt (1778 - 1781), also known as Queen's Redoubt.
Fort George. A British fort once located in downtown Pensacola at Palafox and LaRua Streets (now a city park) on Palafox (Gage) Hill. Fort Waldeck at Seville Square was part of Fort George until named seperately in 1781. Captured by the Spanish in 1781, rebuilt in 1783 and renamed Fort San Bernardo (aka St. Bernard). Abandoned in 1821. British Prince of Wales Redoubt (aka Middle Redoubt) (1780) was located at Cerevantes and Spring Streets on Gage Hill. Captured by Spain in 1781 and renamed Fort Sombrero . British Pensacola Barracks (1778 - 1781), with two two-story blockhouses, was located at Zarragosa and Tarragona Streets (behind present-day Pensacola Historical Society). One building burned down before 1813, the other was destroyed in 1820.
Fort Barrancas System, Florida
Fort San Carlos de Barrancas, a log and earthen work, was located within remains of an old British redoubt called Royal Navy Redoubt (1780 - 1781). The Spanish also built the brick and mortar Bateria de San Antonio (1796), a semi-circular, water-level battery with seven mounted guns and a bomb-proof magazine, and a shelter for 150 soldiers, located below and south of Fort San Carlos de Barrancas. The British returned again in 1796 and occupied the fort until 1814, when the Americans destroyed the wooden Fort San Carlos de Barrancas after defeating the British. Bateria de San Antonio survived and is sometimes referred to today as The Water Battery.
Fort Santa Rosa, Santa Rosa Island, Florida
Fort Santa Rosa. An old Spanish fort located near Point Siguenza, near where Fort Pickens was later built. It was destroyed by a hurricane in 1752. Rebuilt later by the British. Renamed Fort St. Rose or St. Rose Battery by the British, and later American troops in 1814.
British Post (Later Negro Fort, and Fort Gadsden ) located in Spanish Territory , later Franklin County, Florida, 27 miles north of the Apalachicola River mouth, east bank. In 1814 Brevet Major (local rank Lt. Colonel) Edward Nicholls of the Royal Marines with British soldiers and the black and Indian recruits constructed a fort 500 feet from the river bank on Prospect Bluff, which they called British Post. Consisting of an octagonal earthwork holding the principal magazine and surrounded by an extensive rectangular enclosure covering about seven acres with bastions on the eastern corners having parapets 15 feet high and 18 feet thick, the fort was used as the British headquarters for negotiations between the black and Indian communities. In 1815 when the British withdrew from the area, the fort, including its artillery and military supplies, were given to the many blacks and a few Indians that had moved into it, seeking the protection it offered and cultivating successful and profitable plantations around it

Fort Stoddert was established in 1799 on the Mobile River near the boundary between the Mississippi Territory and Spanish West Florida. The fort was for a time a port of entry to the United States Territory, but is most well known as the western terminus of the Federal Road connecting central Georgia with the Tenesaw District. The Fort, along with the nearby post at Mount Vernon, served as the central command center for military actions in the Tensaw Region during the Creek War, as well as the place of refuge for settlers who fled the area in the wak of the attack on Fort Mims. A historic marker commemorating Fort Stoddert stands alongside Highway 43 in the area of the communities of Mount Vernon and Fort Stoddert in northern Mobile County, Alabama. The actual fort site, now a landing on the Mobile River, is located three miles eat of the marker and is unmarked.

.Fort Stoddertwas a Stockade of thebastion type intended to protect the port of entry into the United States where the Court of Admiralty was held. In 1804 Captain Schuyler of New York was commander of the post of eighty men, Lt. Edmund P. Gaines, Lt. Reuben Chamberlain paymaster. Duties were exacted on imports and exports, (In 1807 Natchez, Mississippi planters paid for Kentucky flour at $4.00 a barrel, the same flour brought through Spanish Mobile, and brought up the river to Ft. Stoddart cost the Tombigbee planters sixteen dollars a barrel.)

Battle of New Orleans Song Lyrics

Well, in eighteen and fourteen we took a little trip
along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip.
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans,
And we caught the bloody British near the town of New Orleans.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, I see'd Mars Jackson walkin down the street
talkin' to a pirate by the name of Jean Lafayette [pronounced La-feet]
He gave Jean a drink that he brung from Tennessee
and the pirate said he'd help us drive the British in the sea.

The French said Andrew, you'd better run,
for Packingham's a comin' with a bullet in his gun.
Old Hickory said he didn't give a dang,
he's gonna whip the britches off of Colonel Packingham.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, we looked down the river and we see'd the British come,
and there must have been a hundred of 'em beatin' on the drum.
They stepped so high and they made their bugles ring
while we stood by our cotton bales and didn't say a thing.

Old Hickory said we could take 'em by surprise
if we didn't fire a musket til we looked 'em in the eyes.
We held our fire til we see'd their faces well,
then we opened up with squirrel guns and really gave a yell.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, we fired our cannon til the barrel melted down,
so we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round.
We filled his head with cannon balls and powdered his behind,
and when they tetched the powder off, the gator lost his mind.

We'll march back home but we'll never be content
till we make Old Hickory the people's President.
And every time we think about the bacon and the beans,
we'll think about the fun we had way down in New Orleans.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin,
But there wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Well, they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go.
They ran so fast the hounds couldn't catch 'em
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin.
But there wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago.
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.

Contents

During his time in the Academy, Lee proved to have no talent for ninjutsu and genjutsu. When he was mocked by his peers because of this, Lee persevered, focusing on taijutsu. Η] After he succeeded in graduating he was added to Team Guy along with Neji Hyūga and Tenten. During the team's first meeting, Lee vowed to become a powerful ninja without using ninjutsu or genjutsu. Neji laughed at him, but their sensei, Might Guy, took a special interest in Lee. He encouraged Lee to keep at it and, in time, began teaching him powerful forms of taijutsu. ⎖] ⎗]

Why was the last battle of the War of 1812 fought fully half a year after the official end of the war? - History

By Blaine Taylor

As one island or island group in the Pacific was fought over by American and Japanese forces, it became clear that Japan’s days as a combatant in World War II were numbered. One after another, these Imperial outposts fell to the Americans, who were clawing their way ever closer to the Japanese home islands.

Just as Nazi Germany could only be defeated by the Allies seizing one mile after another on their way to Berlin, American planners had looked at the maps of the Pacific and plotted a roadmap across vast stretches of ocean, with the arrows all pointing at Tokyo.

Beginning in August 1942, at Guadalcanal, the war in the Pacific had been a bloodbath as American forces wrestled one tropical island after another from a tenancious enemy for whom the word “surrender” was the equivalent of “dishonor.” After the Americans, near the end of 1943, had seized the Gilbert Islands of Tarawa, Makin, and Apamama, the Marshall Islands were next in the crosshairs. The islands of Kwajalein, Majuro, and Eniwetok were taken, opening the sea lanes for further battles in the Marianas, where the defenders of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam waited to be slaughtered.

In the waters around the Philippines, huge naval and aerial battles erupted, and the Japanese were soundly defeated. Still the Japanese refused to give up, and so the American juggernaut rolled on, unchecked, crushing opposition at tiny places with such unfamiliar names as Peleliu and Angaur in the Palau Islands. More islands would continue to fall like dominoes—Biak, Noemfoor, Morotai—each one bringing the Americans and their devastating Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers closer to Japan.

Although islands such as Mindanao and Formosa were on the American hit list, they would be bypassed, their garrisons cut off and allowed to wither in favor of other, more strategic islands. On October 3, 1944, American commanders in the Pacific received orders to attack and seize Japanese-held territory in the 620-mile-long Ryukyu chain of islands that extend southward from Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost home island. The main island in the Ryukyus, located almost midpoint in the chain, is named Okinawa.

A new operation was conceived to invade Okinawa. Its code name: Iceberg.

In a top-level command conference on December 12, 1944, Japanese military leaders in Tokyo pondered the next move of their American opponents on the vast ocean highway leading to the home islands: Formosa or Okinawa? Japanese martial doctrine asserted “decisive battle” to defeat their enemy, both on land and at sea, and Okinawa seemed their best bet to inflict both as 1945 was about to dawn.

After hitting the invasion beaches at Hagushi Bay on Okinawa’s southwestern shore, American Army and Marine Corps troops fan out and push the defenders to the far ends of the island.

For their part, the Allies coveted strategic Okinawa as the final staging point for the projected twofold invasion of the Japan homeland itself—Operation Downfall and its twin parts, Operations Olympic (the attack on Kyushu) and Coronet (the invasion of the main island of Honshu).

Japanese Emperor Hirohito’s generals and admirals saw the coming island battle as their last chance to destroy the invading enemy before the home islands could be ground under the foe’s iron heel from the west. Thus, for both sides, Okinawa was to become the crucial battle of the entire war. It would also be the largest and costliest land battle of the Pacific campaign.

Indeed, due to the later two American atomic bomb attacks that ended the war in sudden flashes, the fight for the island fortress was to be the last such ground combat between them.

Okinawa is a rugged, mountainous island, a scant 350 nautical miles south of Japan’s sacred home islands. The Japanese landed on the island in 1609. When American Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry landed there with his “black ships” in 1853 on his way to Japan, he called Okinawa “the very door of the Empire.” He recommended that the U.S. fleet establish a base there. Okinawa was annexed to Japan proper in 1879, and in 1945 it was included in the 47 Japanese administrative prefectures.

The Japanese began to build up their defenses—artillery positions, bunkers, trenches, caves, tunnels, spider holes, and minefields—on the island in 1944. Imperial Lt. Gen. Mitsuru Ushijima—nicknamed the “Demon General”—was given command of the 877-square-mile “ocean island fortress” of Okinawa in August 1944. The island was defended by the 32nd Army, about 120,000 men strong. This initially encompassed the following units of the Imperial Japanese Army: the 9th, 24th, and 62nd Divisions, as well as the 44th Independent Brigade.

However, the loss of the 9th Division to shore up defenses in the Philippines before the start of the Okinawa battle forced Ushijima to enlist many native home-guard units from Okinawa proper to bolster his ranks. In March 1945, American intelligence estimated 53,000-56,000 enemy troops stationed on the island shortly before the invasion, this number was upped to 65,000.

In actuality, Ushijima had 77,000 Army troops at his command: 39,000 infantry combat troops and 38,000 “special troops” from artillery and other units. These included 20,000 Boeitai (drafted militia) native Okinawans, 15,000 nonuniformed laborers, 15,000 students in Iron and Blood Volunteer Units, and 600 more students in a nursing unit.

Mitsuru Ushijima was one of Japan’s most experienced commanders. He was born on July 31, 1887, in Kagoshima City, Japan, and graduated from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy in 1908, and from the Army Staff College in 1916 during World War I.

He took part in the Siberian Intervention and the Second Sino-Japanese War between the two world wars as well. A brigade and divisional commander between the world wars, Ushijima also was commandant of the elite Toyama Army Infantry School and in 1939 was promoted to the grade of lieutenant general.

During the early part of World War II, Ushijima commanded troops in China and Burma. He again became a commandant—both of the NCO Academy and the Army Academy—during 1942-1944.

Despite his rather gruff nickname, this Japanese commander was described as being a humane man who discouraged his senior officers from striking their subordinates and who disliked displays of anger because he considered it a base emotion. According to staff members, Ushijima was a calm and capable officer who evoked confidence among his soldiers.

Commander of U.S. ground forces, Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr. (right), surveys the battlefield in this photo taken just minutes before he was killed by an enemy shell, June 18, 1945.

In contrast to Ushijima was his temperamental chief of staff, Army Lt. Gen. Isamu Cho, termed “Butcher” Cho by author David Bergamini. Cho served Japanese Prince Asaka in that same capacity during the brutal “Rape of Nanking” in China in 1937, during which thousands were slaughtered (See WWII Quarterly, Fall 2011).

Isamu Cho was born on January 19, 1895, in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. He graduated from the Army Academy in 1916 and the Staff College in 1928. His early military service was in the radically politicized Kwantung Army in eastern China, and he also took part in several right-wing Army coups against civilian politicians in Japan.

His later service included tours of duty in the puppet state of Manchukuo, on the frontier with the Soviet Union, on the island of Formosa, and in Indochina.

During 1942-1944, Cho commanded the 10th Division. He was promoted to lieutenant general in 1944 before becoming chief of staff to Ushijima’s 32nd Army. In basic disagreement with his commander’s defensive shugettsu (bleeding) strategy, he felt that all-out aggressive action was the only way to defeat the Americans.

A violent man who both smoked and drank too much, Cho was known for slapping subordinates. While ruthlessly seizing all civilian food supplies for his troops, Cho asserted, “The Army’s mission is to win, and it will not allow itself to be defeated by helping starving civilians.”

Colonel Hiromichi Yahara was the talented operations officer of Ushijima’s 32nd Army. Born October 12, 1902, he joined the Army in 1923, teaching strategy at the Army War College. It was he who persuaded Ushijima to adopt the defensive jikyusen (war of attrition) strategy employed on Okinawa to bleed white the Americans, as opposed to General Cho’s preferred massed banzai charges. Yahara and Cho clashed often over tactics, but the general eventually relented and allowed Colonel Yahara to return to his former tactical doctrine of “retreat and defend.”

After the war, Yahara’s U.S. Army interrogation officer noted, “Quiet and unassuming, yet possessed of a keen mind and a fine discernment, Colonel Yahara is, from all reports, an eminently capable officer, described by some POWs as ‘the brain’ of the 32nd Army.”

In the spring of 1945, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander of Pacific Ocean Area Forces, had an immense arsenal at his disposal. Practically every plane, ship, submarine, soldier, and Marine in the Pacific was made available for Iceberg.

Beneath Nimitz was the huge joint Army-Navy Central Pacific Task Forces headed by U.S. Navy Vice Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, commander of the Fifth Fleet. There were numerous subordinate commands, including Task Force 50, a naval covering force, and special groups that were also under Spruance’s personal command. Task Force 51, a joint expeditionary force, was under the operational control of Vice Admiral Richmond K. Turner, commander of Amphibious Forces Pacific Fleet. Task Force 57 included British warships. Air operations were under the command of Vice Admiral G.D. Murray, and Vice Admiral Charles A. Lockwood was in charge of American submarine forces.

In March the vast Allied naval armada commanded by Spruance approached the fortified sea bastion of Okinawa to launch Operation Iceberg—a battle later aptly described as “The Steel Typhoon.”

The American plan was based on experience gained from previous assaults of enemy-held islands. As the Army’s official history notes, “Iceberg brought together an aggregate of military power—men, guns, ships, and planes—that had accumulated during more than three years of total war.”

American warships support the amphibious landings by saturating Japanese positions with rockets and naval shells. Here a rocket gunboat unleashes a fusillade of explosives at the enemy.

United States Army Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., a veteran fighter since 1942, would lead the ground troops (Task Force 56). Buckner’s amphibious assault force consisted of seven combat divisions and their supporting units—about 183,000 men—thousands more than those who invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Buckner, the only son of famed Confederate Civil War General Simon Bolivar Buckner, Sr. (later governor of Kentucky), was born July 18, 1886, in Kentucky. After attending the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), the younger Buckner graduated in 1908 from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as an infantry officer. He then saw two duty tours in the colonial Philippine Islands and trained aviators during World War I.

Postwar, Buckner was again a training officer, at West Point, the General Service School at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and the Army War College. He was a tough taskmaster. Noted one parent, “Buckner forgets that cadets are born, not quarried!”

He first fought the Japanese as commander of the Alaska Defense Command during 1942-1943 at the battles of Dutch Harbor, Kiska, and Attu in the Aleutians. In July 1944, Buckner assumed command of the new American Tenth Army in Hawaii. It comprised both Army and U.S. Marine units preparing for the invasion of Taiwan, an operation later cancelled, with Okinawa substituted for it instead. Probably no one was better suited to lead the American ground forces at Okinawa than the fearless Buckner.

The opening act of Iceberg was performed in late March by the 77th Infantry Division, which hit the nearby Kerama and Keise Islands off Okinawa’s southwest coast. Then it was time for the main event.

On March 28, hell began to break loose along the western center of Okinawa. Bombers and fighters streaked over the invasion beaches and enemy airfields, bunkers, gun positions, barracks, warehouses, ammunition dumps, and other installations, unleashing a furious bombardment that kept up night and day for a week. Warships added their firepower to the effort, plastering predetermined targets. Minesweepers went in to clear the sea lanes, then underwater demolition teams came in to destroy any obstacles.

Millions of propaganda leaflets were dropped on the defenders, urging them not to resist the invasion and to surrender at the earliest possible moment. Okinawan civilians were also advised to seek shelter.

The 2nd Marine Division made a diversionary feint at the Minatoga coast, the southeast tip of Okinawa, in hopes of diverting Japanese attention away from the main landing beaches at Hagushi.

At 6 am on L-Day (Landing Day), Easter Sunday, April 1, 1945, the intensity of the naval fire against the Hagushi beachhead picked up until the noise was one continuous roar. In the hundreds of landing craft were the assault waves of the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions and the 7th and 96th Infantry Divisions of the U.S. Army the 27th Infantry Division was detailed as the floating reserve.

Mortar- and rocket-firing boats cruised close to shore, adding their ordnance to the din. A soldier in one of the landing craft waiting to go in said the noise “was like the world was coming to an end.”

Any Japanese soldier braving a look at the armada assembled offshore would have seen over 1,000 ships, including 10 battleships, nine cruisers, 23 destroyers, and 177 gunboats he, too, would have thought the world was coming to an end.

In the pre-invasion bombardment, 45,000 rounds of 5-inch or larger shells were fired, plus 33,000 rockets and 22,500 mortar shells. As the official history states, “This was the heaviest concentration of naval gunfire ever to support a landing of troops.”

William Manchester, a rifleman in the 29th Marine Regiment, 6th Marine Division, and later a prize-winning author, captured the moment in his searing wartime memoir, Goodbye, Darkness: “Now we descended the ropes into the amphtracs, which, fully loaded, began forming up in waves. Yellow cordite smoke blew across our bows, battleship guns were flashing, rockets hitting the shore sounded c-r-r-rack, like a monstrous lash, and we were, as infantrymen always are at this point in a landing, utterly helpless. Then, fully aligned, the amphtracs headed for the beach, tossing and churning like steeds in a cavalry charge.”

Spruance’s transport ships began landing Buckner’s Tenth Army on the Hagushi beaches at around 8:30 am, just as his enemy expected.

Operation Iceberg heats up as American Sherman tanks, one employing a flamethrower, burn fanatical Japanese defenders in their pillboxes at a point known as Rocky Crags, April 19, 1945. The tanks are supporting the 7th Infantry Division.

As the troops came ashore, they were startled to find the smoking, shell-pocked beaches virtually undefended, in sharp contrast to previous amphibious assaults. Astonishingly, more than 60,000 U.S. troops were ashore by the end of the first day, with two key objectives—Yontan and Kadena airfields—both taken at the loss of but 28 killed and 27 wounded.

Of the unopposed landing of April 1, 1945, famed American Scripps Howard newspaper chain columnist and war correspondent Ernie Pyle wrote, “We were at Okinawa an hour and a half after H-hour without being shot at, and hadn’t even gotten our feet wet!”

This relatively easy start of the campaign was deceptive, however, and before it was over a torturous 82 days later, it would go down in history as the bloodiest battle involving American forces since Gettysburg in 1863.

Over the course of 30 years, the author had occasion to interview late Maryland U.S. Senator Daniel B. Brewster many times about his war experiences on Guam and Okinawa. Commissioned in 1943, he retired as a colonel and died at age 83 on August 19, 2007. Following are some of his reflections on the ferocity of combat he encountered as a lieutenant on Okinawa:

“We were in the LSTs very early in the morning” of April 1, 1945. “On the second day, we attacked, deployed in a battalion column…. My job was to lead the point platoon…. We were attacking up a ravine…. The whole hillside above the rice paddy blazed with fire from scores of cleverly concealed caves in the almost vertical cliffs.”

Seven Marines were soon badly wounded. One platoon was pinned down, and another ran into heavy machine-gun fire. “As it gained the crest of a ridge,” he said, “a Marine who ran toward the cave with a grenade was killed before he could throw it. The entire machine-gun team was destroyed before it could fire a shot…. This was my covering base of fire.”

He said that his group was “hopelessly pinned down in the center of the ravine…. Six Marines were killed trying to reestablish communications.” By now, Lieutenant Brewster had been wounded twice. “We were pinned down and cut off for most of the day…. My walkie-talkie was hit, and my runner was killed. I sent two more runners back, and both were killed…. I managed to swim and crawl through an irrigation ditch to make contact between the two groups….

“The Japanese attacked both of our little units twice, but we fought them off with grenades and rifle fire. We could see them 20 feet away…. We’d shoot them at almost point-blank range, and throw grenades—and they’d throw the grenades back at us…. We were fighting for our lives! It was the worst day of my life! I thought I’d be killed…. When the day was over, I’d walked in with some 70 men—and 17 walked out. Everybody else was dead or wounded.

“My wounds were this scar you see on my forehead, so my face was all covered with blood. Another bullet grazed my heel. That was April 2, 1945.

“We thought we were better—and that the Marines were better than the Army—and that we were all better than the Japanese! This was part of our training, to think that our unit was the best.

The battered terrain feature known as “Sugar Loaf Hill,” where author and Marine veteran William Manchester said the life expectancy was “about seven seconds.”

“We took only a handful of prisoners…. The Japanese just didn’t surrender.… Our men weren’t much of a mind to take prisoners, and they [the Japanese] took no prisoners at all…. It was a battle to the death…. I’d already seen so many people killed—including my own men—that I had no feeling whatsoever for the Japanese. We really didn’t consider them human beings. They were the enemy…. There was very close—often hand-to-hand—combat, particularly on Okinawa….”

The new Japanese strategy was both simple and deadly: allow enemy forces to land, draw them ever inland, and only then annihilate their soldiers en masse. Thus, fierce, daily battles after the first week raged around the ancient royal Shuri Castle—Japanese headquarters—and at the capital city of Naha that changed hands under fire 14 times.

More ferocious fighting took place on Kakazu Ridge, the Rocky Crags, and atop Sugar Loaf Hill, where, wrote William Manchester, life expectancy was “about seven seconds.”

Time magazine reported, “There were 50 Marines on top of Sugar Loaf Hill. They had been ordered to hold the position all night, at any cost. By dawn, 46 of them had been killed or wounded. Then, into the foxhole where the remaining four huddled, the Japs dropped a white phosphorous shell, burning three men to death. The last survivor crawled to an aid station.”

The Japanese deployed their men well on Okinawa, firmly embedded in successive lines of vast complexes of above-ground pillboxes and bunkers, plus in dug-in mountainous caves and deep underground shelters.

Fanatical Japanese defenders—and many civilians who had been told by the Japanese that American GIs would rape and kill them and their children—either fought to their deaths or leaped over the edge of the island’s sheer cliffs to their doom, some clutching their children to them.

Other civilians became tragic victims. Eighty-five frightened student nurses had taken shelter from the fighting in one of the numerous caves that dot the island. Marines approaching the area heard strange voices, sounding much like Japanese, coming from the cave. An interpreter with the Marines called for those in the cave to come out. When they didn’t, the Marines shot a stream of fire from a flamethrower into the cave’s mouth, killing all the nurses. To this day, the cave is a sacred place known as the “Cave of the Virgins.”

As William Manchester later wrote, “My father [a wounded World War I Marine] had warned me that war is grisly beyond imagining. Now I believed him.”

A line of Marines passes the body of a dead Japanese soldier, May 24, 1945. The tenacious defenders preferred death over dishonor.

General Buckner landed his troops on the western side of the island’s narrow waist and advanced for the first five days almost without any enemy contact. Major contact with the Japanese was finally made on the 6th, as the Americans ran into the first enemy defense line along Kakazu Ridge.

General Buckner’s own “blowtorch and corkscrew” frontal assault tactics finally prevailed over the dogged Japanese resistance. The former referred to flamethrowing U.S. Army Sherman tanks that fried the enemy defenders alive in their emplacements, while the latter referred to blasting them out of their pillboxes and caves with satchel charges full of explosives.

Buckner rejected Marine pleas for a second, follow-up amphibious landing behind the enemy’s inland lines, choosing instead to slug it out inch by inch, yard by yard. For this, American General Douglas MacArthur accused rival theater commander Admiral Chester Nimitz of “sacrificing thousands of American soldiers,”one of many controversies still raging over the epic fight today.

Meanwhile, offshore an equally fierce battle raged at sea and in the air again, just as the wily Japanese had planned.

The Imperial Japanese Navy’s Combined Fleet launched 16 ships in Operation Ten-Go led by the world’s greatest battleship, the mammoth Yamato (“National Spirit”), on a grim suicide mission with just enough fuel to steam one way and attack the U.S. invasion force standing off Okinawa. Intercepted by U.S. aircraft carriers 210 miles north of Okinawa, however, the mighty Japanese battlewagon was sunk on April 6, 1945, in just under two hours by bombs and torpedoes. The other ships in the Japanese flotilla were lost as well.

Overhead, from April 6-May 25, the Japanese Navy’s Special Attack Corps launched seven mighty waves of more than 1,500 kamikaze (Divine Wind) suicide planes to crash into and hopefully sink the 1,200 American warships off Okinawa. At least 1,100 of the suicide planes were lost in action. The “Divine Wind” reference harkened back to the 13th century, when a storm destroyed a Chinese invasion fleet bound for Japan.

Japanese Rear Admiral Minoru Ota commanded 10,000 sailors of the Okinawa Naval Base Force’s Surface Escort Unit, and also local naval aviation units on Oroku Peninsula. His seven sea-raiding battalions—formed to man suicide boats to crash into U.S. warships—were mostly converted to naval infantry units fighting in the land battle instead.

Ashore, Buckner’s next advance was launched on April 11 and smashed through the Shuri Castle line, broken on both enemy flanks, forcing the Japanese to fall back to their third and last defensive line on the island’s southern tip. Two tough Japanese banzai counterattacks, ordered by General Cho, were crushed by massive American ground fire on April 12 and again during May 3-5.

On the morning of April 18, 1945, war correspondent Ernie Pyle was riding in a jeep with four others on Ie Shima, off the main island of Okinawa. Coming under enemy machine-gun fire, they leaped into a nearby ditch. Raising his head, Pyle was hit in the temple by a bullet and killed.

Buried still wearing his helmet, the 44-year-old Pyle was later exhumed from his wartime grave and moved to Hawaii’s famous National Memorial Cemetery (the “Punchbowl”). A stone memorial stands on Ia Shima where he was killed: “At this spot, the 77th Infantry lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, 18 April 1945.”

President Harry S. Truman said of Pyle, “More than any other man, he became the spokesman of the ordinary American-in-arms doing so many extraordinary things.” Pyle was one of the few civilians during the war to be awarded the Purple Heart medal as well.

On May 9 word came through that Germany had surrendered all the years of bloodletting in Europe were over. The news brought little comfort to the Americans half a world away on Okinawa, however. While they may have hoped the Japanese would follow suit and wave the white flag, experience had taught them that the Japanese rarely, if ever, surrendered.

General Buckner launched his third and final push on June 18, 1945, the very day he was slain. On June 18, exactly one month shy of his 59th birthday, Buckner ventured far forward against advice to observe the 8th Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division in combat.

The escort carrier USS Sangamon (CVE-26), operating near Okinawa, survives a near-miss by a kamikaze pilot, May 4, 1945. Another kamikaze attack later that day hit home, however, and caused extensive damage.

Standing between two boulders, he turned to leave when a Japanese 47mm artillery shell exploded overhead. Author John Toland said, “A fragment shattered a mound of coral and, freakishly, one jagged piece of coral flew up and embedded itself in the general’s chest. He died 10 minutes later.”

Succeeded briefly by Marine General Roy Geiger, Buckner was the highest ranking American killed in the Pacific Theater and in 1954 was posthumously promoted to full general by a special act of Congress.

William Manchester recalled a horrific scene in a cemetery when he heard a shell screaming his way and ducked into the doorway of a tomb: “I wasn’t actually safe there, but I had more protection than Izzy Levy or Rip Thorne, who were cooking breakfast over hot boxes. The eight-incher beat the thousand-to-one odds. It landed in the exact center of the courtyard. Rip’s body absorbed most of the shock. It disintegrated, and his flesh, blood, brains, and intestines, encompassed me….

“My back and left side were pierced by chunks of shrapnel and fragments of Rip’s bones. I also suffered brain injury. Apparently I rose, staggered out of the courtyard, and collapsed. For four hours I was left for dead.” A corpsman found Manchester and evacuated him to a hospital on Saipan.

The fighting in the ancient graveyards led Geiger’s successor, the fiery U.S. Army General Joseph W. Stilwell, to comment, “The poor Okinawans have had even their ancestors blown to pieces!”

It was just as bad for the Marines. Twenty-one-year-old Marine Lieutenant Daniel Brewster never forgot the fight for Okinawa. He recalled that in May, “I called over my platoon sergeant.… As I was talking to him, a mortar shell landed on his shoulder and blew his head off, and put fragments through both my legs, knocking me down. We dug in as fast as we could…. We were shelled all night long and we took several direct hits and heavy casualties….

“The flamethrower tanks were the very best weapon we had, where the cannon barrel was used for napalm instead of the usual 75mm shell…. The tank would lead the way.

“In the whole battle … I never took a prisoner. My unit never took a prisoner, and we killed hundreds of Japanese…. When we saw them, we would shoot them wounded or not, they would still throw grenades.”

Brewster was standing with two others when “suddenly, there was a blinding explosion, and a shell went off between the two men. One was severely wounded, and the other was blown to pieces…. I felt something sting my face.”

Brewster’s unit proceeded into the city of Naha. He said, “A day or so later, I rejoined the unit for the attack on Oruku Peninsula and the Admiral’s Cave where Ushijima and Ota had committed suicide. We took that hill, cave, and little peninsula in the same type of hand-to-hand fighting…. We were in the line day after day…. When [the Japanese] got out in the open, we slaughtered them.”

One day, exhausted, Brewster was taking a nap in a hole when, suddenly, “I felt somebody stumble in on top of me. I pushed him up while he was stabbing me with a knife. My runner killed him.

“The civilians took a terrible beating…. We would wait until anybody coming our way was literally on top of us before we’d open fire with everything we had, and in the morning, discover that we had slaughtered civilians…. Japanese soldiers herded civilians down in front of us…. Women and children, all dead—and mixed in with them were Japanese regulars.”

Another U.S. infantryman noted, “There was some return fire from a few of the houses, but the others were probably occupied by civilians. We didn’t care. It was a terrible thing not to distinguish between the enemy and women and children.”

When he received the American commander’s demand to surrender on June 17, 1945, General Ushijima answered, “As a Samurai, it is not consonant with my honor to entertain such a proposal,” a dignified rejection that was typical of the man.

Five days later, the beaten Japanese commanders in their final headquarters cave—Hill 89 near Mabuni—could hear the approaching explosions of American hand grenades. The end had come. Before dawn, after drinking considerable amounts of alcohol, Generals Ushijima and Cho knelt together on a quilt, with Cho lowering his head. A captain standing by with a samurai sword brought it down on Cho’s exposed neck, but the blow didn’t cut deeply enough. Sergeant Kyushu Fujita grabbed the weapon and cut the general’s spinal column with a surer stroke. His final message asserted, “I depart without regret, shame, or obligations.”

Summoning all their courage, Marines make an uphill assault against the entrenched enemy. A Marine (at left) carries a radio and another a spool of wire

General Ushijima sliced open his own abdomen, and then his spinal cord was also severed by a sword stroke. Seven of his staff members shot themselves as well. Today, the former Japanese Navy underground headquarters is open to the public. Traces of mass suicide—hand grenade blast scars on the walls—are visible. The farewell message left by Ota on a wall also remains clearly visible.

Before his demise, General Ushijima wisely refused to allow Colonel Yahara to kill himself: “If you die, there will be no one left who knows the truth about the Battle of Okinawa! Bear the temporary shame, but endure it! This is an order of your Army commander.”

The colonel obeyed and escaped from the death cave disguised as an English teacher but was eventually captured. In 1973, Yahara published his firsthand account of the fighting, The Battle for Okinawa. He died on May 7, 1981, at age 78.

Rather than surrender, other Japanese soldiers, knowing the chance of victory was nil, killed themselves with hand grenades rather than submit to the shame. As the official U.S. Army history said, “When cornered or injured, many of [the Japanese] would hold grenades against their stomachs and blow themselves to pieces—a kind of a poor man’s hari-kari. During the last days of the battle many bodies were found with the abdomen and right hand blown away—the telltale evidence of self-destruction.”

The island finally fell to the Americans on June 22, 1945. The 82-day Battle of Okinawa resulted in the deaths of 110,000 Japanese soldiers, while the surprising number of 10,775 were captured. The U.S. Army, Navy, and Marines lost a total of 12,520 men killed, 38,916 wounded, and 33,096 noncombat injuries—including the highest rate of combat fatigue of any campaign in the war. The U.S. Navy suffered greater casualties in this one campaign than in any other battle of the war: 368 ships and landing craft damaged and 28 sunk, while 458 planes were lost to enemy action and another 310 were lost due to mechanical failure or operational accidents.

Smashed between the meat grinder of two determined and ruthless foes, the native Okinawan population suffered somewhere between 42,000 and 150,000 dead from a pre-battle population of 450,000 (today the population is 1.4 million), making Okinawa the costliest battle in the Pacific for both combatants and civilians. Actual casualty, rape, and suicide figures are still debated.

British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill called the fight for Okinawa “among the most intense and famous battles in military history.” The Army’s official history said, “The military value of Okinawa exceeded all hope. It was sufficiently large to mount great numbers of troops it provided numerous airfield sites close to the enemy’s homeland and it furnished fleet anchorage helping the Navy to keep in action at Japan’s doors. As soon as the fighting ended, American forces on Okinawa set themselves to preparing for the battles on the main islands of Japan, their thoughts sober as they remembered the bitter bloodshed behind and also envisioned an even more desperate struggle to come.”

William Manchester was forever haunted by the wanton death and destruction visited upon the civilian population. He called it “the callousness with which we destroyed a people who had never harmed us.”

As a gesture of goodwill, Okinawa was returned to Japan by the United States in 1972. By agreement with Japan, the United States still keeps a sizable military presence on the island—but not always to the civilian population’s liking.

In 1995, the prefecture dedicated the Cornerstone of Peace Memorial at Mabuni, scene of the final fighting, to be inscribed with the names of those who died, 240,734, by 2008.

8. Peter the Great (1672-1725)

Godfrey Kneller, Portrait of Tsar Peter I (1698).

Alas! I have civilized my own subjects I have conquered other nations yet I have not been able to civilize or to conquer myself.

— Pyotr Alexeevich Romanov

Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov was one of Russia&aposs greatest Tsars, ruling from 1682 to 1721. He was born in Moscow, then Russia&aposs capital. As ruler, he introduced elements of Western culture to Russia, making his courtiers shave their traditional beards and adopt the fashions and manners of their Western European counterparts. He sent foreign delegations to study and learn trade and industry in the West.

As a commander, Peter I modernized the Russian army and established its first naval fleet. In 1712 he moved the capital to St. Petersburg on conquered lands convenient to the sea. Under his command, Russia became a world superpower and an empire with the Romanov dynasty at the helm until the Bolshevik revolution in 1917.

In January 1725, Peter I died of bladder gangrene. He was 52, having reigned 42 years.

Wargear

Pre-Heresy Era

The Primarch Roboute Guilliman arrayed in his fearsome panoply of war during the Horus Heresy.

• Armour of Reason - Known in the legends of his Legion as the "ever-reforged" armour, it was said that Roboute Guilliman himself had this set of Artificer Armour remade and adapted countless times if ever a flaw or weakness was discovered in battle, and at various times the artisanship both of Mars and his fellow Primarchs Vulkan and Perturabo influenced its design in the days before the sundering of the Imperium in the fires of the Heresy.
• Gladius Incandor and the Hand of Dominion - As with many of his brother primarchs, Roboute Guilliman possessed a vast selection of weapons and wargear, both to wield on the battlefield as desire and need dictated, and in Guilliman's case also to study and contemplate, so that his arts of war and that of his Legion could be continuously honed and improved. Perhaps the most iconic of these arms were the Power Fist known as the Hand of Dominion and the glittering master-crafted Power Sword known as the Gladius Incandor. These were not merely weapons of surpassing quality, but symbols for the UltramarinesLegion of its master's might and authority.
• The Arbitrator - One of Roboute Guilliman's favoured side arms when in open battle was a heavily customised Combi-bolter which he was able to wield as deftly as one of his Astartes might handle a pistol. Dubbed by him the Arbitrator for the matters it settled, it was tooled to tolerances beyond any but the Archmagi of the Mechanicum could fathom, while its bolt shells were hand-crafted by the finest Ordnancer-wrights of the XIII Legion's forges and fitted with micro-atomantic compression warheads.
• Cognis Signum - The Cognis Signum was an advanced array of sensory devices, Cogitator-assisted communications, and telemetry arrays built into the suit of Power Armour worn by the primarch by the Mechanicum, and was similar to those used in its own Thallax cybernetic warriors.
• Frag Grenades - The primarch always made sure to keep several of the simple, but effective, Frag Grenades on his person for use where appropriate during battle.

Era Indomitus

The resurrected Primarch Roboute Guilliman, arrayed in his new panoply as he prepares to lead the Imperium of Man in throwing back the forces of Chaos in the late 41st Millennium.

• Armour of Fate - Crafted by the armourers of the Adeptus Mechanicus, its inner workings enhanced with advanced life-sustaining technologies, this glorious suit of highly advanced and unique Artificer Armour fits Guilliman perfectly, and protects him from even the most dolorous of blows.
• The Emperor's Sword - This famed sword was wielded by the Emperor Himself during the Great Crusade and was passed on to Guilliman after he assumed the mantle of Lord Commander of the Imperium. Touched by the Emperor's own psychic might, this finely wrought, master-crafted blade is lit from hilt to tip with leaping flames. When it is swung, the burning blade draws pyrotechnic arcs through the air, able to slice through the stoutest of armour with ease.
• Hand of Dominion - A more advanced version of the mighty powered gauntlet worn by Guilliman during the Horus Heresy, this godly Power Fist not only allows the primarch to crush the life from his foes like its original incarnation, but to annihilate them in storms of armour-piercing gunfire with its built-in Bolter.
• Iron Halo - The Iron Halo is a halo-shaped ring that is positioned above the head of the wielder, usually mounted on the backpack of Space Marine Power Armour but sometimes mounted in the gorget. The Iron Halo is a prestigious honour that is granted only to the most exceptional of the Astartes within a Space Marine Chapter as a reward for uncommon initiative and valour. It is most often worn by the Chapter's Captains and Chapter Master, though Veteran Astartes and Sergeants can also earn the right to add it to their armour in certain circumstances. The Iron Halo appears to share the same basic technological mechanisms as the Space Marine Chaplain's Rosarius, as they both produce a protective effect using gravitic and now poorly-understood Conversion Field technology. Guilliman wears a specially-crafted Iron Halo whose protective field has been resized for his greater height and mass than a normal Astartes.

AT PEACE, AT LAST: AFTER 11 YEARS AND AN EMOTIONAL PARADE, VIETNAM VETS FINALLY FEEL WELCOME

At 9:30 a.m. on Friday, June 13, three men left the entrance to Navy Pier and began moving west along Grand Avenue. The three were old soldiers, the point men leading tens of thousands of their comrades in Chicago`s belated parade to welcome home the Vietnam veterans. As grand marshal there was the general who had commanded more than half a million men in the war. As honorary parade marshal there was the paraplegic veteran in a wheelchair who at a suburban swimming pool just a week before the parade had again become a hero. As chairman of the parade organizers there was the much-decorated ex-platoon sergeant who was still fighting to survive the aftereffects of the war.

Gen. William Westmoreland, Jim Patridge and Tom Stack had started the parade a half hour early because far more men and women had turned out to march than they had expected. The trio hadn`t marched more than 25 yards when they had to stop. A car pulled up, and Bob Wieland emerged, fresh off an airplane, eager to join the parade.

Wieland was drafted in 1968 after attending the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse and just as he was going to sign a contract to play baseball with the Philadelphia Phillies. On June 14, 1969, two months after arriving in Vietnam as an Army medic, he stepped on a booby-trapped mortar round. When he woke up in a hospital five days later, the 6-foot 205-pound athlete discovered that both of his legs had been blown off almost at the hips. His new weight was 87 pounds.

Exactly a year after he lost his legs, Wieland won a gold medal in weight lifting in the middleweight division of the bench press in the National Wheelchair Olympics. Not satisfied with wheelchair competition, he competed for the next 10 years against able-bodied lifters. He did well, too, eventually establishing four bantamweight world records. The records never were recognized by the Amateur Athletic Union, however, for of a number of technical reasons revolving around his disability, one being that he was not wearing shoes.

Bob Wieland is an irrepressible sort, though. The 40-year-old Milwaukee native, who now lives in California, had arrived in Chicago that morning. He was determined that he would march and march his own way. That meant pulling himself along with his hands, dragging himself upright, the bottom of his torso fitted with a specially tailored pad. He had, in fact, just a month earlier finished a three-year walk from California to Washington, D.C., to raise money to fight world hunger.

The parade organizers were delighted that he had showed up, but they weren`t quite sure where to put him in the line of march.

``Would you mind walking at the head of the parade with Gen. Westmoreland?`` somebody asked Wieland. Westmoreland, after all, had emerged from America`s most unpopular war as a controversial figure, even among the men who served under him. As leader of all United States military personnel in Vietnam at the height of the conflict, he is often used, fairly or unfairly, as a symbol of the failed leadership of the war. No matter. Wieland said he would be proud to march with Westmoreland.

``Would you mind if Bob Wieland marched with you?`` somebody asked Westmoreland. After all, another legless vet, Jim Patridge, was to travel the parade route in his wheelchair alongside Westmoreland. Only seven days before the parade Patridge had dropped out of his chair and dragged himself through 60 feet of underbrush to reach and save a drowning 1-year-old from a swimming pool in west suburban Pleasant Hill. Because of his heroics, he was made honorary parade marshal. Officials weren`t sure if Westmoreland would want to be flanked by two paraplegic veterans.

Westmoreland was resplendent in full uniform for the parade. That was unusual, as he has rarely appeared in uniform since he retired from the military. But the general had confided to a friend that morning that he wanted to be in uniform for the parade because ``somehow today it just feels right.`` And, no, he wouldn`t mind at all if Bob Wieland joined him, Patridge and Stack at the head of the column.

It was a minor last-minute hitch, but Stack, 42, was relieved that it was resolved. For 13 months Stack, a professor of criminal justice at Richard J. Daley College, had been the driving force organizing the parade. As a sergeant he had led a combat platoon with the Army`s 9th Infantry Division through Vietnam`s Mekong Delta region in 1968 and 1969, winning Purple Hearts and Silver Stars along the way.

Indeed, he says he had dreamed of organizing an event such as the parade since he was called a ``baby killer`` by an antiwar protester on the day he returned to the U.S. from the war in 1969. Too many men had gone to Vietnam, serving honorably and with valor, and too many had died to be dismissed by their own countrymen as unfortunate dupes caught up in an accident of history, collectively thought of as a bunch of baby killers and drug addicts.

For more than a year, then, Stack and a small group of fellow veterans had sweated, cajoled, begged and borrowed the Chicago parade into existence. The idea of seeing the day when he and his fellow veterans could look back with pride on their service and their sacrifice may have had a special urgency for Stack. He is battling lymph cancer, now in remission after a year and a half of chemotherapy. It is the type of cancer that many thousands of Vietnam veterans now are battling, linked to Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant widely used to uncover the jungle sanctuaries of the enemy.

And so it was that at 9:30 on this balmy Friday morning in the middle of June that four men, each wounded in his own way and still suffering from a war that ended 11 years earlier, led off a parade in its remembrance. And the collection of humanity they were leading was awesome.

Two hundred thousand men and women veterans from every state in the union had gathered patiently at Navy Pier. Each had come because he or she wanted to come, underscoring that each in some fashion or degree also felt wounded by the war. Some had come alone, some in twos and threes. Many came with large groups of fellow veterans. Thousands brought their wives and children to march with them. Some came with their fathers, veterans of earlier wars. A few mothers came alone, bearing photos of dead sons, yearning for a moment of public recognition of their sacrifice. They were white, black, Hispanic, Oriental and American Indian. They were shod in sturdy work boots and supple wingtips. They wore pinstriped suits and motorcycle jackets. Their mood was an almost eerie combination of jubilant pride and funereal solemnity.

And as the parade stepped off, nobody, including Tom Stack, knew what the reaction would be along its 2 1/2-mile route. Would there be a respectable crowd lining the sidewalks? Did enough people care to turn out for the march? Would they be respectful? Or would there be protesters and catcalls and ugly incidents reminiscent of the war years? Given that 200,000 veterans had gathered, however, it didn`t seem to matter how many people came to see their parade. This was the largest such gathering of veterans ever, and they, at least, understood each other and why they were there.

Just as the group was leaving Navy Pier, Bob Wieland said something that put just the right spin on the spirit that would pervade the city for the rest of the day. He began to pull himself along with his hands and, laughing, turned to Stack, Westmoreland and Patridge.

``If I go too fast for you fellas,`` he told them, ``let me know, and I`ll slow up.``

``My God,`` Westmoreland said to a friend marching behind him, his eyes brimming with tears, ``what guts. What guts.``

Westmoreland`s tears may have been among the earliest shed during the day, but they would not be the only ones. The spectacle of 200,000 veterans of an unpopular, unsuccessful war touched an emotional chord in the city that had not been touched since the last Americans escaped from Vietnam by way of the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon in 1975.

For the first few blocks along Grand Avenue the crowds were thin but enthusiastic. Scattered clumps of spectators cheered and clapped from the sidewalks, while construction workers perched high above the street yelled down encouragement and draped ``welcome home`` signs from the skeletons of their buildings. As the marchers approached the bridge carrying Michigan Avenue over Grand, the crowds thickened, and so did the emotion.

Office workers from Michigan Avenue began pouring out of skyscrapers, joining the housewives, children and retirees who had come downtown early to line the route. Young women who must have been infants during the war, now in dressed-for-success suits and jogging shoes, were sobbing and yelling to the veterans. Middle-aged men, eyes red-rimmed, stood in business suits transfixed by the spectacle marching past.

At Michigan Avenue the veterans began craning their necks, wide-eyed in wonderment at the reception they were getting. The men marching with their old units, such as 3d Marine, 11th Airborne and 1st Cavalry divisions, for the most part were marching as strangers. It had been a long and widely scattered war, and it was hard to find anybody else who had served in the same company or regiment at the same time and place.

No matter. As the spectators swelled in number and support, the veterans spontaneously began chanting old marching cadences and singing service songs that most of them likely hadn`t sung in years. Good-natured rivalry began to break out between units marching in succession. ``Air Force! Air Force!`` one group would begin to shout in unison. ``Marines! Marines!`` would come the answer. ``Airborne! Airborne!`` ``Air Cav! Air Cav!`` Tears began to streak the battered faces of veterans who looked so hardened that they would rather die than show such emotion. Arms began to entwine in the ranks, to drape and hug shoulders. Wives marching with their men leaned into them, kissed them, adored them, while their children seemed bedazzled by it all.

The endless columns of marchers continued under Michigan Avenue along Grand, up to State Street, south across the river. The crowds continued to deepen along with the emotion. West along Wacker Drive, then south into La Salle Street, which was to be the focal point, the glory ground of the parade, billed by its promoters as the biggest ticker-tape welcome in the nation`s history.

As Westmoreland, Stack, Patridge and Wieland turned the corner, the sidewalks of La Salle Street were eight deep with people, and the air was a blizzard of shredded paper. It was a blizzard that would fall for five continuous hours, until the very last of the 200,000 veterans had marched down the street. As the ticker tape piled up on the ground, spectators picked it up and threw it again. Veterans standing on the sidewalks who had chosen not to march began to slip out of the crowd and into the stream of their comrades.

``Welcome,`` the crowds shouted to the marchers. ``Welcome home. We love you.``

``Thank you, Chicago,`` the marchers shouted back. ``Thank you. Thank you.``

With only eight bands and a few floats interspersed in the long lines of soldiers, it became less of a parade and more of a mass embrace. Women began rushing into the line of march, randomly hugging veterans. Veterans complied by surging out of the line of march and into the crowds, hugging the women and shaking every extended hand they encountered.

Westmoreland dropped out of the parade near City Hall to view the procession as it passed in front of the the official reviewing stand. Again, nobody knew what the reaction would be from his former troops as they passed him. Much of Westmoreland`s reputation is in tatters now, all the more so since he dropped a multimillion-dollar libel suit against the Columbia Broadcasting System in February of last year. He had charged that CBS falsely accused him of deliberately doctoring enemy troop strengths, but his case was irreparably damaged by testimony from his own wartime subordinates that supported the network.

Indeed, if there was any controversy at all about the Chicago parade, it came from honoring Westmoreland as parade marshal. Many veterans are at least ambiguous about Westmoreland`s role in the war and his style of leadership, which seemed more managerial to them than warriorlike.

No matter. Most of the veterans marching in the parade weren`t aware that Westmoreland was present until they reached the reviewing stand. And when they did, invariably there was an undercurrent of amazement that passed through their ranks.

``Hey! Westy`s here!`` ``Look! It`s Westmoreland!`` ``The old man came!`` And invariably each unit, each clump of men and women, would stop in front of the reviewing stand to cheer the old general. Whatever their personal feelings about Westmoreland may have been, he has become such a lightning rod for criticism of his war--and their war--that a real sense of sympathy seems to have grown between him and his ex-troops.

Most of the units that stopped to salute Westmoreland lingered until the parade`s public-address announcer pleaded for them to move on, to keep the procession moving.

Move on it did. To the end of La Salle Street and around the corner, east on Jackson Boulevard to Grant Park, ending with a concert at the Petrillo band shell. Ironically, the parade route passed sites of some of the most intense antiwar battles and demonstrations during the Vietnam years. It passed the Dirksen Federal Building, site of the infamous ``Chicago Seven`` trial in which seven protest leaders stood accused in 1969 of conspiring to disrupt Chicago`s 1968 Democratic Convention. It ended in the park where protesters demanding an end to the war and expressing support for the communist Vietnamese cause fought pitched battles with Chicago police during the convention week in 1968.

No matter. A long time has passed since the streets of Chicago reverberated with the chant: ``Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh! Ho Chi Minh is going to win!`` On parade day the streets reverberated only with welcome. The welcome followed the parade right into the park. The parade watchers, including thousands of office workers who gave up any pretense of returning to their jobs that day, stayed with the veterans, shaking their hands, buying them beers in the park.

How many people turned out to honor the veterans is difficult to pin down. The official estimate is 300,000, though it could have been more, given that it was a normal working day and so many Loop workers rushed back and forth from their jobs to see the parade in bits and pieces. It is even more difficult to establish why the parade provoked the emotional response that it did. If there were in fact 200,000 marchers and 300,000 observers, it must have been the most intimate gathering of half a million individuals in the history of the city.

To watch it on television was not enough. The four local stations that covered the parade live had set up their cameras as though it would be a conventional march, using lots of wide-angle shots to capture the panoply of crowds, bands and floats. The essence of the spectacle, however, was much narrower in focus. It was as if half a million individuals were caught up in singular private reveries and spontaneous one-on-one displays of emotion.

``There was such a spontaneity about the event,`` says Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at Northwestern University, ``such an all-pervasive feeling of friendliness, good will and unity. The only thing I can think of that ever happened before in this country that had the spirit of that day was Woodstock (the music festival).

``That might sound strange, given the tenor of the times when Woodstock was the ultimate happening, with all its antiwar undercurrents. But I`m beginning to think of the Chicago parade as a sort of Woodstock for Vietnam veterans, the ultimate event to symbolically begin to close the real and imagined rifts between them and the rest of their countrymen. It`s a pity that none of the networks or the national news magazines paid much attention to the parade because I don`t think there`ll ever be another one quite the same as this one.``

A woman interviewed by The Tribune shortly after the parade ended perhaps best explained what was going on that day:

``I didn`t want to leave while some of them hadn`t come yet. I kept looking for the end, but the line went back forever. But it was more than that. You just couldn`t leave. I don`t know. It was those times. I guess there was more bottled up inside me from those times than I was aware of.``

The idea that it isn`t just the Vietnam vets who have bottled up some dark memories for the last 15 years was one of the reasons that Tom Stack says he thought the parade was necessary.

``The whole country still has some healing to do,`` he says, ``not just the veterans. This parade turned out to be the biggest group therapy session I`ve ever seen.``

In 1972, a year when American troops still were in combat in Vietnam, a nationwide Louis Harris poll indicated that 61 percent of all Americans thought Vietnam was a war ``we could never win.`` The same poll indicated that 49 percent of all Americans thought Vietnam veterans ``were made suckers, having to risk their lives in the wrong war at the wrong time.`` A follow-up poll by the Harris organization in 1979 indicated that the number of Americans who thought the veterans were ``suckers`` had grown to 64 percent.

``Sucker.`` That is a hard word. Vietnam is a small country, and the American war there will never be considered a big one. Because of that, and because the three presidents during the war tried to minimize the scope of our involvement there, it is easy to forget what a big war it was. Lasting from 1961 to 1973, it was longer than the Civil War and our years in World Wars I and II combined. World War II was our biggest war, during which 15 million Americans were in uniform. Through the years in Vietnam 9 million Americans served in the military, 3 million in the war zone. That is a lot of people for two-thirds of all Americans to regard as suckers.

``There were 27 million men who came of age during the Vietnam era,``

says Phil Meyer, a combat veteran and a parade organizer who works as a counselor at the Veterans Center at 547 W. Roosevelt Rd., ``and only 9 million of them went into the military. Two-thirds of their own generation had deferments and were excused from the war. One of the big problems among the men who come here for counseling is the notion that they were duped.

``No one wants to live with that rage. `Why was I so dumb? Why didn`t I see it?` It is a false notion, but a lot of veterans have gone through a long period of shutting themselves off from such feelings, of not recognizing them and examining them.``

Of those who went to Vietnam, a remarkable number went out of a sense of idealism. In World War II the majority of men were drafted. In Vietnam 80 percent who served there volunteered. And after arriving in the war zone, the soldiers in Vietnam had a lower combat-desertion rate than Americans in any other war.

But war is war, and idealism does not wear well in combat. For the soldier in battle, war is reduced to a desperate contest to survive. The classic studies of combat have confirmed that the overwhelming impetus for the average soldier in battle is to protect his buddies in his immediate unit--and thus himself--from harm. Soldiers in Vietnam, as in every war, forged bonds in battle that in many ways are stronger than those between brothers.

To believe that comrades who were killed in battle next to you died for nothing, that they, like you, were duped into serving, has been a bitter pill for Vietnam veterans to swallow. Yet it is a bitterness that many veterans have chosen to chew on alone, in solitude, because of the way they were sent to and brought back from the war.

In World War II most men who saw combat were trained in battalions in the U.S., sent overseas intact as a unit and fought together for the duration of the war. When they came home, they came home as a unit, generally on a long ride in a slow-moving ship. And once they were home, though most did not have a homecoming parade, they were welcomed universally. The people who had remained back home supported the war and the reasons for fighting it. Indeed, they themselves had suffered during that war from, if nothing else, strict government rationing of such necessities as food and gasoline.

But in the case of Vietnam most soldiers were sent into the war under a one-year rotation system. After receiving combat training in the U.S., they were sent to Vietnam individually rather than in units, obligated to serve for one year from the day of their arrival. Once they were ``in country`` in Vietnam, each was assigned to a unit that needed a new body to replace one that had been killed, wounded or rotated home. If they survived their year intact, they were plucked from the field one day by a helicopter, shuttled to an airbase and put on a plane for America.

The average age of the Vietnam combat veteran was 19, compared to 27 in World War II. The speed with which they could be moved from combat back to the U.S., and the anonymous nature by which it was done, allowed them no time to decompress from the battle zone. Nor did they have time to talk out their experiences with someone they could trust to understand them.

``Never in the history of this country was a veteran taken out of battle in the field to the living room of his home in the U.S. within 36 hours,``

says Vietnam vet counselor Meyer. ``One day you had a gun in your hand, grenades hanging around your neck and the balance of peoples` lives in your hands. The next day you were home among people who often were fed up with the war. They didn`t want to understand what you had been through, and, in fact, they felt some hostility towards you, blaming you for fighting, for the war itself.``

One of the most painful aspects of the Vietnam War was the way it divided an entire generation of Americans--the young people who went to war and those who didn`t. ``Our harshest critics as veterans,`` says Meyer, ``were our own people, our own generation.``

It wasn`t hard to stay out of the military during the war. The government was liberal with college- and graduate-school deferments. And it wasn`t long before a preponderance of men going to war came from lower-class and lower-middle-class families. As American involvement expanded in Vietnam, the antiwar movement and political radicalism exploded on campuses at home. By 1968 the nation was as riveted by the fighting on campuses--by full-scale riots, seizures of buildings and bombings--as it was by the war itself. The radical politics of the antiwar movement soon spilled into other areas of American life. It fueled and radicalized older existing issues such as Black Power, the feminist movement, gay rights, the American Indian movement.

And the war, if it did not in fact give birth to it, at least was midwife to the phenomenon called the ``counterculture.`` The young men and women who scorned the war showed their scorn for the system that allowed it to happen. They became what 20 years later seems an almost quaint term: ``hippies.`` They rejected the values of their parents` generation by adopting long hair and beards, outlandish clothing, drugs and promiscuity. In many ways the allure of the counterculture was as seductive to the GIs in Vietnam as it was to their counterparts back home. But the more searing reality of their experience in the war served also to cut them off from the counterculture, whose disciples often regarded returning veterans as enemies.

When the veterans flew home from Vietnam, usually eager to find their niche in the topsy-turvy world that America had become, they were often violently turned away. Jim Bowen was barely 20 years old when he came home from Vietnam just before Christmas in 1967 from a year of heavy combat with the 1st Cavalry Division. The 1st Cav had taken heavy casualties that year, many of them Bowen`s friends. He was on a plane with 250 men he didn`t know, all of them rotating home. The plane landed in Tacoma, Wash., where the men were loaded on buses and driven to Ft. Lewis Army base to receive their pay, new uniforms, a handshake and a ticket to their hometowns. In Bowen`s case, it was Chicago. ``I couldn`t wait to get home,`` says Bowen, 39, now a stockbroker in California. ``I wanted to get into college and get back into life. We`d been reading in Nam about all the stuff going on Stateside, and some of it sounded real good. Like the sexual revolution. If there was one of those, I wanted to join it right away.

``When the plane landed in Tacoma, everybody on it was going nuts. I think we all got on our hands and knees and kissed the ground. When we got on the bus, it had bars all over the window, and I couldn`t figure out why. Then when we got to Lewis, there were pickets outside throwing eggs and stuff and screaming that we were baby killers and war criminals. They were young kids like us. Then I thought the barred windows were to protect us, not the other way around. Boy, the guys were mad. If we had gotten out, we would have taken their heads off. Nobody was going to tell me that my friends died for nothing. ``At Lewis I got my pay and new uniform with a combat infantryman`s badge. I was real proud of it and wore it to the Seattle airport on my way home to Chicago. If you had a patch showing you were in combat, you were something special. There were more protesters at the airport, and as soon as they saw my uniform, they started yelling at me. When I got home, I wouldn`t wear it at all. My mother wanted me to wear it to midnight mass because it was Christmastime. No way. I didn`t want to be yelled at anymore.``

Bowen enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire in 1968 using GI Bill benefits: ``You try going to college in 1968 as a 21-year-old freshman and a combat veteran when practically the whole school is mobilized against the war. The students, they`re hating your guts, thinking you`re a killer, afraid of you. There was a vets club there, and I joined it. There were about 100 of us guys, and we helped each other through. Otherwise I wouldn`t have made it.

``One time, after the students were killed at Kent State, we heard that the (antiwar) movement people were going to pull the main flag on campus down to half-staff in their memory. That got our guys real mad. Nobody had pulled it down to half-staff to honor our friends when they got killed. So we slept around the pole that night, all 100 of us. The next morning there were about 5,000 of them and 100 of us, but they didn`t get to the flag. There were some fistfights, but they were afraid of us, thank God. I kept arguing with those people that they shouldn`t do anything to hurt the guys who were still over there (in Vietnam).``

In the late 1960s and early `70s the Vietnam veterans started appearing at the threshholds of more traditional veterans organizations, such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion. More often than not they received a chilly reception. Those organizations were dominated from the national level down to the smallest local posts by older generations of men from World Wars I and II and the Korean War.

The Vietnam vets, understandably, were attempting to adapt to the lifestyle and appearance of their own generation, which meant beads, bellbottoms and beards. That was anathema to older veterans, proud of their own service in the ``big`` wars, proud they had won their wars and angered by the turmoil and destruction of traditional values that were represented by the Vietnam generation. As a result, very few Vietnam vets initially joined their organizations.

Both the VFW and the Legion have since actively recruited 600,000 and 700,000 Vietnam-era veterans respectively. But many Vietnam vets have a hard time to this day forgiving the earlier rejection and have instead formed their own, burgeoning organizations, such as Vietnam Veterans of America and Viet NOW.

The federal government wasn`t prepared to handle the men and women who served in Vietnam, either. In the case of World War II only 45 percent of the discharged veterans had high school degrees. But after using the GI Bill, they were 46-percent more likely to have received a college diploma than their nonveteran contemporaries. In the Vietnam War 79 percent of the discharged veterans had high school diplomas. But the GI Bill offered them only one-third the comparable benefits given to World War II veterans. As of 1978, according to a Veterans Administration study, Vietnam veterans were 45-percent less likely to have gotten a college diploma than their nonveteran contemporaries. In the 1970s Agent Orange, the chemical defoliant dropped over thousands of square miles of combat areas in Vietnam, was linked to frightening health problems among veterans exposed to it. The problems include birth defects in the babies of veterans and an unusually high rate of cancer among the veterans themselves. Rep. David Bonior (D., Mich.), in a 1984 book, ``The Vietnam Veteran: A History of Neglect,`` charges the Veterans Administration and Congress itself with ignoring the plight of Agent Orange victims. He documents a long history of neglect and obstructionist measures by Congress and the VA that forestalled compensation and help for those affected.

When the wounded began arriving from Vietnam, the VA had trouble accommodating them. The giant national network of hospitals it operates were staffed and equipped mainly to treat geriatric patients and chronic problems of older veterans. The VA`s efforts to cope with the influx of Vietnam casualties sometimes resulted in disgrace. Photographs appeared in national magazines of rats running underneath hospital beds occupied by Vietnam amputees assigned to hallway quarters in overcrowded hospitals.

It isn`t surprising that many, perhaps the majority, of the Vietnam vets tried to stop thinking about the war. They packed away their memories with their photographs and uniforms.

``The fashionable thing to do since the war finally ended has been to pretend it never happened,`` says Joe Yount, a psychologist at the VA`s West Side Medical Center. ``That pretense has been damaging not only to the veteran but to all of us.``

Some of the more insidious wounds that have resulted from the war have been drug and alcohol abuse, high rates of divorce, chronic unemployment, loneliness and depression. The VA only in recent years has attempted to reach out to vets through special neighborhood counseling centers, such as the one where Phil Meyer works.

Despite the unhappy experiences of coming home, the alienation so many veterans seem to feel may be based more on illusion than fact. The same Harris poll in 1972 that branded Vietnam vets as ``suckers`` also indicated that 95 percent of all Americans thought the Vietnam veterans deserved respect for having served in the armed forces during the war. When confronted with the statement that ``the real heroes of the Vietnam War are the boys who refused induction and faced the consequences, and not those who served . . . ,`` 83 percent of those polled disagreed.

The survey concluded that the most striking disclosure of the poll was the ``deeply seated guilt feelings on the part of the American public regarding the way veterans of this war are being treated.``

``The relatively quiet, hidden suffering these guys have been going through all these years may well be based on a couple of false assumptions,`` says Yount, the VA psychologist. ``A nonveteran can always assume that vets don`t want to talk about the war. On the other hand, it is easy for vets to assume that civilians don`t want to talk about it.

``The natural tendency is to shut up and wait. But an event like the war can`t tolerate that kind of silence. That defense has to break down because whether we`re veterans or civilians, we still have this growing sense of irritation that this thing will not die. When you`ve been through a major trauma--and the war was certainly that for everybody in this country--it will simply continue to come back until it is treated.``

The silence that surrounded Vietnam began to break down in 1982, and it began to break down through the efforts of the veterans themselves. That was the year that the Vietnam monument, now known almost universally simply as

``The Wall,`` was unveiled in Washington, D.C. Its design was commissioned by a group of concerned veterans, who collected the money for its

construction. The money came chiefly from other veterans, including donations of more than $1 million from the American Legion, which by then had become far more open to the plight of Vietnam vets.

The unveiling of The Wall in November, 1982, attended by 150,000 marching veterans, provoked a national outpouring of sympathy and tapped a reservoir of grief for the 58,000 whose names are on it. A similar ceremony in 1984 dedicating a statue near The Wall depicting three exhausted combat soldiers in Vietnam had the same effect. In May, 1985, New York City, at the unveiling of its own Vietnam memorial, held a ticker-tape parade down Broadway for 27,000 veterans.

Three of the marchers in the New York parade were Chicagoans Tom Stack, Roger McGill and Julio Gonzalez. Stack knew McGill, 43, a middle-level executive at Illinois Bell Telephone Co., and Gonzalez, 38, a janitor for General Motors Corp., from an organization of vets suffering from effects of Agent Orange. All three were moved by the outpouring of good will from the bystanders along Broadway. Stack revived his dream of doing something in Chicago.

Two days after the New York parade Stack was in Mayor Harold Washington`s office, asking to see the mayor or one of his top aides. His idea for a parade sparked some cautious interest among some of the mayor`s aides, as it did with aides to Ald. Bernard Stone, chairman of the City Council`s special events committee. Stack and his friends were encouraged enough to start planning.

``From the start,`` Stack says, ``we wanted the parade to be something organized by veterans for veterans. We needed backing from the city, of course, and help from others. But we didn`t want a hint of politics in the parade or anything that hinted of jingoism or the idea of `hooray for war.` We wanted to put together something memorable, something that would show veterans in a different light, something with a healing spirit to it.``

Through the summer of 1985 the veterans met frequently at one another`s houses. As word traveled through the grapevine, veterans whom Stack and the others didn`t know joined them. Phil Meyer came in, as did Angelo Terrell, assistant Illinois director of the U.S. Department of Labor, and Larry Langowski, another Illinois Bell executive. So did Connie Edwards, a former nurse who served in Vietnam, and John Wright, an ex-helicopter pilot who runs his own media-consulting business in Oak Park. Ken Plummer, another Oak Parker and a retired Army colonel who had served in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, came in with a wealth of knowledge on organizing special events.

In fact, when the group announced its first organizational meeting at City Hall last September, they reserved a room seating 50, but 500 veterans showed up, eager to help out. There were some surprising encounters at the meetings. Men who worked in the same large corporations and banks and knew each other professionally were shocked to find out they were fellow veterans. A lot of the men, because of the stigma surrounding Vietnam vets, had found it convenient professionally not bring up their service histories unless asked.

Two vets who are executives with Jefferies and Co. Inc., a brokerage firm at 55 W. Monroe St., called and offered a vacant suite in their offices. Thus, without any money, the committee acquired a posh office with four telephones at a toney address. Early on the committee members thought they could do the whole show for $1.5 million. They hoped to attract large corporate donations but never raised more than $300,000. The city promised $75,000 in seed money to get them started but dragged its feet until March, 1986, before releasing the first $25,000. ``We were just an ad hoc committee with no track record whatsoever,`` says Langowski. ``We didn`t have any credibility with the business community, and in a way I can`t blame them. They had no idea who we were, whether we were trying to stage something to bolster some left-wing or right-wing cause. We had this image problem (characteristic) of all Vietnam vets, of being pictured as a group of ponytails and fatigue jackets.``

Most corporate donors they solicited were polite but unresponsive. The committee`s lack of credibility hurt them with military organizations as well. Bands from the various services at first begged off appearing in the parade, claiming they were already booked. Similarly the VA said it would be impossible to bring busloads of hospitalized vets to ride in the parade.

But letters with $5 and $10 donations enclosed began to come in from veterans and nonveterans who had heard about the parade. Neighborhood bars began throwing benefit nights in support of the parade that raised $200, $500 or $1,000 at a time.

Even so, in January of this year, the committee was barely paying for the postage. Starting with a mailing list of 2,500 veterans organizations and individuals around the country, it sent them notices of the parade and asked them to spread the word. The list grew to 12,400 names. Positive responses began to pour in. ``We were sure all along,`` Stack says, ``because Chicago is in the Midwest and is such a transportation hub that we would have no trouble getting more veterans to march here than in New York. We were thinking of 35,000 to 50,000, and I was beginning to think maybe even 100,000.``

``We didn`t want just veterans,`` Stack says, ``we wanted them to bring their families, too, so we wrapped four days of activities around our parade, hoping people would make a mini-vacation out of it.``

Mindful that few blacks had turned out for the Washington and New York events, the committee drew black vets into the group at the outset and held many of their organizational meetings in the city`s black neighborhoods. As an added draw for out-of-town vets the committee arranged four-day reunions of the various national divisional associations in downtown hotels. The associations are made up of men who have served in divisional units such as the Americal or 101st Airborne divisions in the Army or the 3d Division in the Marines.

More than two dozen associations held reunions on parade weekend, including a group of Australians who had fought in the war and came to Chicago for the parade. Some of the divisional reunions attracted several thousand men in their own right.

The committee also brought in the half-sized traveling replica of The Wall in Washington, D.C. They placed it in Grant Park a week early to stir interest in the parade all week long.

By appealing to veterans of America`s earlier wars to join the parade, the committee was trying to make a point, too. ``We thought the parade should be a unifying influence in all ways,`` says Ken Plummer. ``The idea was,

`Let`s close the gap between Vietnam veterans and vets of other eras and get over the estrangement.` That`s why we brought in 80 Medal of Honor winners from four wars, to symbolize the continuity of service and valor.``

But the parade was, ultimately, for the Vietnam vets. The organizers built the theme of the parade around problems growing out of the war that continue to confront Vietnam veterans: Agent Orange, soldiers missing in action, prisoners of war, an unemployment rate of 24 percent among black veterans.

Two weeks before the parade the committee knew their meticulous planning was paying off. From responses they were getting by mail and telephone, it predicted that 100,000 veterans would march, even though most of the local news media and city officials rolled their eyes in skepticism.

The last four days before the parade the four phones at the parade headquarters never stopped ringing.

``A lot of those phone calls in the last few days were really touching,`` Ken Plummer recalls. ``A lot of them were from wives who were anxious for their men to march and get their feelings out in the open, wanting to know how to convince them to come. Were they too late? they wanted to know. Did they have to wear their uniforms?

`` `No. No,` we`d tell them. `Just come. Wear an old patch if you want to or a whole uniform. It doesn`t matter. What`s his old unit?` Sometimes you`d hear her muffled voice, asking somebody about his old unit. The guy must have been standing right there and was too nervous to call himself.`` The fact that 200,000 veterans turned out on the morning of the parade is testament to how badly they wanted to come.

Tom Lewis, 39, a Chicago security guard supervisor was 19 in 1967 when he fought with Company A, 1st Battalion of the 1st Cavalry Regiment in the 1st Cavalry Division. He saw heavy action. Afterwards he was never comfortable with memories of the war, so, he says, he decided not to march. ``The night before, though, I started rethinking it. I got two brothers in California who were there (in Vietnam), too, and they got Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts. I figured somebody should represent the family. The next morning I went to Navy Pier and found the 1st Cav unit, and I started feeling more comfortable with the whole idea.``

Once the parade started, Lewis says, he looked over and saw another 1st Cav vet, and a look of recognition spread over their faces. It was Jim Bowen, the veteran who had been harassed by antiwar protesters on his return from Vietnam and then in college. They had served together in the same company.

Before the weekend was over, Lewis and Bowen found two other men from the company, including their old captain. They learned from the captain that on the basis of a fierce battle they had fought on March 21, 1967, their entire company had been awarded a Presidential Unit Citation. The citation is a distinction rarely bestowed on a company-sized unit and was awarded so many years after the fact that only a few members of Lewis and Bowen`s company were tracked down and informed of the honor. They found out, too, that their medic had been awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions that day. ``I can`t tell you how glad I was that I went to that parade,`` Lewis says. ``To see these guys and to find out what we had done, I can`t express the pride I feel now. To see people on both sides of the street cheering us, well, it made me feel good, but it was good for the country to feel it, too.``

Jim Hennigan, a 40-year-old Chicago policeman who had been a military policeman running convoys around the Saigon area in 1968, hadn`t planned to march until the day before the parade: ``I think I was like a lot of other guys, worried that the parade would end up being some big political statement one way or the other, expressing something I didn`t believe in.``

But the day before the parade his 18-year-old nephew, who had read every letter Hennigan had written home to his mother and father during the war, asked if he would march so that the nephew could march with him. The night before the parade Hennigan pulled out an old shoebox and sorted through pictures of buddies and Vietnamese friends from the war. In the morning, before he and his nephew left home for the Loop, he stuck several of the photos in his shirt pocket over his heart.

``These are the ones who won`t be here to march,`` he told his nephew.

``At least I can share it with them this way.``

Hennigan says he was staggered by his own reaction to the parade. ``I wasn`t prepared for all the things that happened back then to start unfolding again now. That was the surprise--the emotional release on all sides. If you`ve never been cheered by half a million people before, you`d like to do it every Friday.``

David King, 37, a house painter in Cornucopia, Wis., says he rejected the idea of the parade when he heard about it earlier this year. ``My feelings were that it was much too late to attempt something like this,`` he says. ``At least 15 years too late.``

Vice commander of his local Vietnam Veterans of America chapter, King says he and the chapter commander had argued about the merits of coming down to Chicago. Both have had serious problems adjusting since the war, he says. The commander wanted to go but couldn`t afford to King could afford to but didn`t want to. But at midnight before the parade he changed his mind, called his buddy, picked him up, lent him $100 and set off for Chicago.

They drove all night, 500 miles, stopping only for gas and coffee. They arrived after the parade had started. King parked his camper on the south side of the Loop, and the two men raced down the parade route, looking for their units. Breathless, King came on his, the 1st Cavalry, in time to march past the reviewing stand. ``Seeing all those guys,`` he says, ``it was like I was back in 1970, coming home looking ragged and tired. I was higher than a kite from pure emotion. It brought me down to earth and took me up at the same time. It`s the first time in a long time that I lost that angry attitude I`ve had since the war.

``I spent the next three days wandering all over the city, looking at faces, trying to find somebody I knew back then. I didn`t find anybody I knew, but I spent a lot of time at The Wall because my best friend is on there. Our tours were up about the same time, and we were taking care of each other over there so we could go home together. He went out on a survey detail a week before I left and got blown up. I don`t know, it just felt nice to be by the wall, to know that somebody who knew him was there during this thing.``

Though many men were wary of marching in the parade, nothing could keep Tim Sheehe, 40, a steelworker from Newark, N.Y., from coming to Chicago. He had been to the Washington and New York parades, and he says the spiritual lift that he gets from being with other veterans has turned his life around.

``The thing for me,`` he says, ``is to find guys from my own unit. You didn`t use name tags when you were in combat, so you didn`t know guys` real names unless you asked. For me, I didn`t ask. I knew most guys by the nicknames they used. `Ski` if he was Polish. `Detroit` if he was from Detroit and so on. I didn`t want to get real close with no one in case something happened. But I didn`t realize until later that these were the best friends I ever would have, and it was too late to track them down. The thing is, if you run into these guys now that you knew back then and they`re healthy and their kids are healthy, you can`t describe the lift it gives you.``

Sheehe joined a 1st Cavalry company as a replacement in March, 1968, as the ``FNG.`` FNG is a GI acronym that when spelled out is partly unprintable but was used to describe the new guys coming into the unit. As an FNG Sheehe was assigned to a black squad leader from Chicago who had to break him into the reality of combat. The squad leader gave Sheehe a rough time for a few weeks. He gave him the dirtiest details until he was satisfied that Sheehe was made of the right stuff. Then they became good friends.

``I never got to know his real name,`` Sheehe says of the squad leader,

``but I never forgot him. We got to be real tight over there. We were together just before Christmas, and he was just a few days short. He didn`t know where he was hit, but we both knew it was bad, and they pulled him out. It was like the lights went out of the world.``

Once in Chicago Sheehe spent much of his time circulating throught the 1st Cav contingent looking at faces, looking for somebody, anybody who seemed familiar. He finally came across a black face

``You carried the radio for the lieutenant,`` were the black`s first words.

``That`s right,`` Sheehe replied. ``You were the squad leader.``

They had found each other again. Jim Walker, 39, a CTA bus driver for the last 16 years, had been wondering since 1968 about Sheehe but didn`t know Sheehe`s full name. The day before he was wounded, Walker says, he attended a mass at which the chaplain spoke about death and how to know, if you were hit, whether you were dead or alive. ``Just blink your eyes,`` the chaplain had said. ``Death is like night and day, and you`ll know if you`re still alive.`` ``When I got hit the next day, I blinked my eyes,`` Walker says, ``and I thought, `Hey, I`m going back to the world.` I got back and just put it all behind me, got a steady job, a lovely wife and two beautiful kids and got on with my life.

``You wanted to stick your chest out, being a veteran and all, but it just wasn`t that way for us guys.

Notes

1. ↑ Robson, Stuart: The First World War, Harlow 2007, p. 103.
2. ↑ Ayres, Leonard: The War with Germany. A Statistical Summary, Washington 1919, p. 120. Also available online: http://net.lib.byu.edu/estu/wwi/memoir/docs/statistics/statstc.htm Gilbert, Martin: The First World War: A Complete History. New York 1994.
3. ↑ These figures include AEF actions in North Russia and Siberia, 1918-1920. See: Principal Wars in Which the United States Participated, U.S. Military Personnel Serving and Casualties, 1775-1991, issued by the Department of Defense, online: https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/pages/report_principal_wars.xhtml (retrieved: 11 January 2013).
4. ↑ War Department, Annual Report, 1919, Washington, D.C. 1920, vol. 2/1, p. 2051.
5. ↑ United States Coast Guard Roll of Honor, April 5, 1917 – November 30, 1918, Supplement to Report of the Secretary of the Navy, Washington, D.C. 1919.
6. ↑ Principal Wars in Which the United States Participated, issued by Department of Defense Ayres, The War With Germany 1919, p. 105.
7. ↑ Merchant Marine in World War I, issued by American Merchant Marine at War, online: http://www.usmm.org/ww1.html (retrieved: 10 January 2013).
8. ↑ War Department, Annual Report, 1919, vol. 2, p. 1124.
9. ↑ Love, Albert G.: War Casualties. Their Relation to Medical Service and Replacements, Army Medical Bulletin No. 24, (1931), p. 68.
10. ↑ Ortiz, Stephen (ed.): Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics. New Perspectives in the Modern United States, Gainesville 2012 and Skocpol, Theda: Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States, Cambridge, MA 1992.
11. ↑ Love, Albert G.: A Brief Summary of the Vital Statistics of the U.S. Army during the World War, in: Military Surgeon (1922), p. 144.
12. ↑ Dillingham, Walter: Federal Aid to Veterans, 1917-1941, Tallahassee 1952, p. 233.
13. ↑ Department of the Navy, Annual Report, 1919, Washington, D.C. 1920, p. 257.
14. ↑ Center of Military History, United States Army, Order of Battle of the United States Land Forces in the World War, vol 3/1, Washington, D.C. 1988, p. 248.
15. ↑ War Department, Office of the Surgeon General, Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War, vol. 11, Washington, D.C. 1921-1929, pp. 64-71.
16. ↑ Medical Department in the World War, vol. 11, pp. 70- 71.
17. ↑ Medical Department in the World War, vol. 14, Table 3, p. 274.
18. ↑ Medical Department in the World War, vol. 14.
19. ↑ Medical Department in the World War, vol. 14, Table 16, pp. 290-91.
20. ↑ Medical Department in the World War, vol. 10, pp. 369-70.
21. ↑ Medical Department in the World War, vol. 10, p. 504.
22. ↑ Keene, Jennifer D.: World War I. The American Soldier Experience, Lincoln 2011, pp. 171-72.
23. ↑ Medical Department in the World War, vol. 10, p. 361.
24. ↑ Medical Department in the World War, vol. 10, pp. 398-400.
25. ↑ Medical Department in the World War, vol. 9, p. 17.
26. ↑ Medical Department in the World War, vol. 9, p. 263.
27. ↑ Medical Department in the World War, vol. 9, p. 68 and Byerly, Carol R.: Good Tuberculosis Men. The Army Medical Department’s Struggle with Tuberculosis, Fort Sam Houston 2013.
28. ↑ War Department, Annual Report, 1919, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 2328.
29. ↑ Ayres, The War with Germany 1919, pp. 125-26.
30. ↑ War Department, Annual Report, 1919, p. 1448.
31. ↑ Department of the Navy, Annual Report, 1919, Washington, D.C. 1920, p. 2458.
32. ↑ Navy, Annual Report, 1919, p. 2427.
33. ↑ Medical Department in the World War, vol. 4, pp. 49-50.
34. ↑ War Department, Annual Report, 1919, p. 2755.
35. ↑ Medical Department in the World War. vol. 9, p. 138.
36. ↑ Byerly, Carol R.: Fever of War. Influenza Epidemic in the U.S. Army during World War I, New York 2005, p. 99.
37. ↑ War Department, Annual Report, 1919, pp. 1429-41.
38. ↑ Byerly, Fever of War 2005, pp. 167-75.
39. ↑ Furman, Bess: Profile of the United States Public Health Service, 1798-1950, Washington, D.C. 1973, p. 328.
40. ↑ Cumming, Hugh S.: A Tuberculosis Among the Ex-Service Men, in: Journal of the American Medical Association,79 (1922), pp. 373-74.
41. ↑ Byerly, Good Tuberculosis Men 2013, Chapter 5.
42. ↑ Medical Department in the World War, vol. 9, p. 200.
43. ↑ Weber, Gustavus A. / Schmeckebier, Laurence F.: The Veterans' Administration. Its History, Activities, and Organization, Washington, D.C. 1934, p. 459.
44. ↑ President’s Commission on Veterans' Pensions, The Historical Development of Veterans' Benefits in the United States, Washington, D.C. 1956, pp. 130-32.
45. ↑ Secretary of the Treasury, Annual Report of the State of the Finances for the Fiscal Year Ended 30 June 1919, Washington, D.C. 1920, p. 509.
46. ↑ Annual Report of the Administrator of Veterans’ Affairs for Fiscal Year 1932, Washington, D.C. 1932, p. 12.
47. ↑ Dillingham, Federal Aid to Veterans 2009, p. 50.
48. ↑ Goldberg, Benjamin: A Presidential Address. War and Tuberculosis, Diseases of the Chest, October 1941, pp. 322, 324.
49. ↑ Byerly, Good Tuberculosis Men 2005, p. 129.
50. ↑ Keene, Jennifer D.: The Long Journey Home. African American World War I Veterans and Veterans’ Policies, in: Ortiz, Veterans’ Policies, Veterans’ Politics 2012, pp. 146-70.
51. ↑ Duggan, Paul: Last US World War I Veteran Frank W. Buckles dies at 110, in: The Washington Post, 28 February 2011.

Offbeat Robotics

Weapon: Vertical spinning disc on articulated arm

Above: Sidewinder experiences what is collectively referred to as an “uh oh”.

Sidewinder. This fucking thing. Chris Rose describes Sidewinder as the possible lovechild of Tombstone and Free Shipping. Yeah, if they were related. Sidewinder’s design looks like whoever made the CAD drawing wasn’t aware there was an “undo” button. This robot is the physical embodiment of mis-clicking one of the menu options in that terrible BattleBots game that was released for Game Boy Advance 15 years ago and accidentally sticking your weapon on sideways and just having to run with it because you fucked up and can’t fix it. Sidewinder’s weapon is a horizontal blade but the gimmick here is it’s mounted on the left side of the robot instead of being front and center. There’s a wedge in the front rather than the weapon. Even though I’m talking shit I “get” Sidewinder’s design it’s all about flanking the opponent and being able to land hits as you drive past someone instead of into them. Sidewinder is firmly in the same category of robots like Huge where their designs seem too stupid to work but actually do work. Case in point, Sidewinder has beaten someone. By KO. Care to guess who? Parallax! Remember that? It’s well on its way to having none of its fights aired again this year if the damn thing is losing to shit like Sidewinder.

Sidewinder deploys tactical jump ropes in a move dubbed “the Double Dutch (not the robot)”.

Both of these robots are 1-0 right now. I can’t believe I’m saying that. But Skorpios is an easier pill to swallow because this robot managed to redeem itself from its rocky debut a few years ago and has been nothing short of impressive. It’s not the best robot here but it’s consistent and no matter if it’s Orion Beach or Zach Lytle at the helm Skorpios is a difficult opponent to handle. If I were Billy Mays I’d say something like “the secret is in the unique dustpan scoop technology” because really that’s the key thing here: Skorpios wins because it takes control of its opponents and prevents them from getting away. Once Skorpios has you hooked on its barbed wedge it brings down its arm which has a moderately powerful spinning disc on its end. Think of it like Whiplash except backwards. Skorpios managed to batter Copperhead into submission earlier this season and at the recent Amazon exhibition event Skorpios beat both of its opponents. It might not seem it, but you’re looking at one of the true underdogs here.

Before the fight Zach says his strategy is going to be to come at Sidewinder from the side its weapon is on in order to lure Sidewinder into pointing its weapon at the wall. Zach attempts this but the plan doesn’t work as expected because Sidewinder instead just turns all the way around. Depending on how experienced you are with driving a combat robot Sidewinder’s maneuverability is either “like a semi truck” or “like a robot with about 10% charge left in its batteries”. Sidewinder is only effective when it’s about two feet to the right of its opponent and Skorpios isn’t going to let Sidewinder achieve that awkward distance. Zach also said his plan was to bust up Sidewinder’s weaponry and I doubted that was going to happen until sure enough Skorpios takes a bite out of Sidewinder and Sidewinder’s weapon just fucking explodes. There’s a lot of multi-level marketing scams in the state Sidewinder is from so I guess this is what happens when you fund a robot entirely by selling Melaleuca and Lularoe to people on Facebook. Yeah, both of those are actual company names. That’s what happens when you run so many scams that you run out of fucking words to name things.

“Any hole is a goal.” – Skorpios

Most robots with spinning weapons use one or two belts to run their weapons, usually one if we’re talking about a chain. I don’t know what the fuck is going on with Sidewinder but there is a mess of belt spaghetti flailing out of this robot’s gaping wound and by my count there has got to be at least a half-dozen of these goddamned belts dangling around now. Is there an MLM for low quality V-belts too? Where its spinner once was Sidewinder is now armed with a jump rope and Skorpios just keeps going in for more. I’d be concerned that one of those belts would get sucked into the disc but I guess Zach knows better than I do because he carves off a piece of Sidewinder’s ass and starts pulling apart the front right corner with two consecutive hits that are scarily accurate. Sidewinder gets corralled into the side of the arena and the cameras cut to Josh Coates who does his best impression of Al Kindle and asks if Skorpios is going to let go. Hang on, Sidewinder might get another win to its name because I’m about to die from fucking laughter.

And the winner for the most literal sign is…

Chris reminds us that a “sidewinder” is a kind of snake and says the robot looks like one with all of its guts trailing around behind it. I don’t think this man has ever seen a snake before. Sidewinder’s driver believes he’s still got a chance in this fight and you can kind of tell he’s trying to find an advantageous position but unfortunately when you build a robot as clumsy as Sidewinder you tend not to get a lot of options when shit starts to break. Skorpios chases its opponent down and karate chops its lid hard enough to cause smoke to start emanating from everywhere there’s a hole on the robot. Sidewinder is still moving so I guess it’s fair game. Skorpios shoves it under the Pulverizer for nearly a dozen straight blows from the hazard and follows that up by literally pulling the robot’s face off. Doesn’t matter what you considered Sidewinder’s weapon to be, now it has none. There are now batteries and all kinds of shit hanging out of the shotgun murder scene that is Sidewinder’s face but somehow this goddamned robot refuses to die. It takes a combination of these batteries getting shredded and Sidewinder becoming stuck on its own parts to finally kill this machine.

Hope you’ve got an essential oil for that because god damn.

WINNER: Skorpios, KO

Why was the last battle of the War of 1812 fought fully half a year after the official end of the war? - History

Just a few operations and a glance at our beginings

War of the American Revolution

Marines raise flag in Bahamas.
Waterhouse painting

American Revolution 1775-1783
President: George Washington
Commandant of the USMC:
Capt. Samuel Nicholas 1775-1781
Manning of the USMC: 131 officers, 2000 enlisted
USMC Causalities: Dead- 49, wounded-70
Weapons Used:
.75 cal. Brown Bess musket

In Congress, Resolve of 10 November 1775
"Resolved, That two Battalions of marines be raised, Consisting of one Colonel, two Lieutenant Colonels, two Majors, and other officers as usual in other regiments and that they consist of an equal number of privates with other battalions that special care be taken, that no persons be appointed to office, or inlisted into said Battalions, but such as are good seamen, or so aquatinted with maritime affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea when required: that they be inlisted and commissioned to serve for and during the present war between Great Britain and the colonies, unless dismissed by order of Congress: that they be distinguished by the names of the first and second battalions of American Marines, and that they be considered as part of the number which the continental Army before Boston is ordered to consist of."

Raid on New Providence, Bahamas Mar. 2-3 1776
Alfred and Cabot vs. Brit ship Glasgow, Apr. 6 1776
Second Battle of Trenton Jan. 2 1777
Battle of Princeton, Jan. 3 1777
Reprisal vs Brit ship Swallow, Feb. 5 1777
Hancock vs. Brit ship Fox Jun. 27 1777
Raleigh vs. Brit ship Druid Sep. 4 1777
Randolph vs. Brit ship Yarmouth Mar. 7 1778
Boston vs. Brit ship Martha Mar. 11 1778
Raid on Whitehaven, England Apr. 22, 1778
Ranger vs. Brit Ship Drake Apr. 24, 1778
Penobscott Expedition Jul. 24 to Aug. 14 1779
Battle of Banks island Jul. 26 1779
Battle of Majarbiguyduce Peninsula Jul. 23 - Aug. 13 1779
Bonhomme Richard vs. Brit ship Serapis Sep. 23 1779
Trumbull vs. Brit ship Watt Jun. 2 1780
Alliance vs. Brit Ships Atlanta & Trepassy May 28-29 1781
Congress vs. Brit ship Savage Sep. 6 1781
Hyder Ally vs. Brit ship General Monk Apr. 8 1782
Alliance vs. Brit ship Sybylle Jan. 20 1783
Significant Events:

First USMC Amphibious landing
First time American Flag raised on a facility captured by the Marines
Captain S. Nicholas was the first officer of the Sea Services who's Commission was ratified by Congress
The mission of the Corps of that time was to provide Boarding Parties, Landing Forces and internal security aboard the ship.

Jump to Battle: Select Battle War of the American Revolution 1775-1783 Quasi War with France, or the French Naval War 1798-1801 War with Tripoli / Barbary Pirates 1801-1805 War of 1812 Battle of Twelve Mile Swamp (Florida) 1812 Battle of Quallah Batto (Sumatra) 1812 Florida Indian War 1836-1842 Mexican War 1846-1847 Commadore Perry's Expedition Harper's Ferry (Virginia) 1859 U.S. Civil War 1861-1865 (Both US & CSA Marine Corps) USS Wyoming in Straits of Shimonoseki (Japan) 1863 Battle of Salee River Forts (Korea) 1871 War with Spain 1898 Philippine Insurrection 1898 Battle of Tagalii (Samoa) 1899 Boxer Rebellion or China Relief Expedition 1900 Panama 1902 1st Nicaraguan Campaign 1912 Invasion of Veracruz (Mexico) 1914 Occupation of the Dominican Republic 1916-1924 Occupation of Haiti 1915-1934 World War I 1917-1918 2nd Nicaraguan Campaign 1927-1933 World War II 1941-1945 Police Action / UN Korea 1953 Lebanon 1958 Thailand 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 Dominican Republic Intervention 1965 Vietnam War 1962-1973 (Officially closed 1995) Operation Eagle Pull, Cambodia 1975 Operation Frequent Wind, Fall of Saigon 1975 Mayaguez Rescue Operation, Cambodia 1975 Iranian Hostage Rescue attempt Iran 1980 Grenada 1983 Beirut, Lebanon 1984 Occupation of Panama, Operation Just Cause 1989 Operation Sharp Edge, Liberia 1990 South West Asia, Kuwait Liberation 1991 Somalia 1991 Haiti 1991 Yugoslavia Non-combat operations

Marine Corps Leadership
The Marines have always been recognized at producing good leaders. Below are some of the things that Marines not only must know, but they must demonstrate if they want to be a leader of Marines. All of these can be applied to any leadership position, whether it be as a Fire Team Leader, Platoon Sergeant, a Battalion Commander, a Fortune-500 CEO, or parent.

Leadership Principles
Know yourself and seek self-improvement.

Be technically and tactically proficient.

Develop a sense of responsibility among your subordinates.

Make sound and timely decisions.

Know your Marines and look out for their welfare.

Keep your Marines informed.

Seek responsibility and take responsibility for your actions.

Ensure assigned tasks are understood, supervised, and accomplished.

Train your Marines as a team.

Employ your command in accordance with its capabilities.

Leadership Traits
Dependability - The certainty of proper performance of duty.

Bearing - Creating a favorable impression in carriage, appearance and personal conduct at all times.

Courage - The mental quality that recognizes fear of danger or criticism, but enables a man to proceed in the face of it with calmness and firmness.

Decisiveness - Ability to make decisions promptly and to announce them in clear, forceful manner.

Endurance - The mental and physical stamina measured by the ability to withstand pain, fatigue, stress and hardship.

Enthusiasm - The display of sincere interest and exuberance in the performance of duty.

Initiative - Taking action in the absence of orders.

Integrity - Uprightness of character and soundness of moral principles includes the qualities of truthfulness and honesty.

Judgment - The ability to weigh facts and possible solutions on which to base sound decisions.

Justice - Giving reward and punishment according to merits of the case in question. The ability to administer a system of rewards and punishments impartially and consistently.

Knowledge - Understanding of a science or an art. The range of one's information, including professional knowledge and an understanding of your Marines.

Tact - The ability to deal with others without creating offense.

Unselfishness - Avoidance of providing for one's own comfort and personal advancement at the expense of others.

Loyalty - The quality of faithfulness to country, the Corps, the unit, to one's seniors, subordinates and peers.

Troop Leading Steps (BAMCIS)
Begin the planning - if you want to succeed at something you must plan

Arrange for reconnaissance - decide what things need to be researched to make your plan work

Make the reconnaissance - do the research

Complete the planning - make final modifications to your plan taking the information you gathered in the previous step into account

Issue Orders - delegate tasks and authority as needed (see SMEAC below)

Supervise - make sure that orders are understood and followed

5-Paragraph Order (SMEAC)
Situation - describe what the current situation is

Mission - describe what the current mission is

Execution - describe how the mission will be carried out

Administration and Logistics - describe how administrative duties and logistical support will be handled

Command and Signals - describe who the persons in authority are and any special signals that need to be recognized

Three Leadership Styles
Autocratic (Authoritarian)

Pvt, PFC, LCpl
Rifleman Dodd by Forester
Starship Troopers by Heinlein
A Message to Garcia by Hubbard
The Bridge at Dong-Ha by Miller
U.S. Marines: 1775-1975 by Simmons
U.S. Constitution
Fields of Fire by Webb

Cpl, Sgt
The War of the Running Dogs: The Malayan Emergency, 1498-1962 by Barber
The Old Man's Trail by Campbell
Ender's Game by Card
Uncommon Men: Sergeants Major of the Marine Corps by Chapin
Red Badge of Courage by Crane
Marine!: The Life of LtGen Lewis B. (Chesty) Puller, USMC (Ret) by Davis
Fire in the Streets: The Battle for Hue, Tet, 1968 by Hammel
Strong Men Armed: The United States Marines Against Japan by Leckie
The Buffalo Soldiers: A Narrative of the Negro Calvary in the West by Leckie
Soldier's Load and the Mobility of a Nation by Marshall
The Right Kind of War by McCormick
Battle Leadership by Von Schell
The Defense of Duffer's Drift by Swinton
Fix Bayonets! by Thomason
Battle Cry by Uris

SSgt, WO-1, CWO-2, CWO-3, 2ndLt, 1stLt
Band of Brothers: E Co., 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle Nest by Ambrose
Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944 by Ambrose
War in the Shadows: The Guerrilla in History by Asprey
Common Sense Training: A Working Philosophy for Leaders by Collins
On Infantry by English & Gudmundsson
Grant & Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship by Fuller
How We Won the War by Giap
American Gunboat Diplomacy and the Old Navy, 1877-1889 by Hagan
Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle by Holmes
Flights of Passage: Reflections of a World War II Aviator by Hynes
The Face of Battle by Keegan
Terrorism Reader: A Historical Anthology by Laquer & Alexander
Strategy Liddell by Hart
Maneuver Warfare Handbook by Lind
The Middle Parts of Fortune: Somme and Ancre, 1916 by Manning
We Were Soldiers Once and Young: Ia Drang, the Battle that Changed the War in Vietnam by Moore & Galloway
The U.S. Marine Corps Story by Moskin
The Military: More than Just a Job by Moskos
Operation Buffalo: USMC Fight for the DMZ by Nolan
Challenge of Command: A Reading for Military Excellence by Nye
Attacks by Rommel
Iwo Jima: Legacy of War by Ross
The Forgotten Soldier: The Classic WWII Autobiography by Sajer
Firepower in Limited War by Scales
The Killer Angels by Shaara
Tarawa: The Story of a Battle by Sherrod
Falls of Eagles by Sulzberg
Arts of War (Sun Tzu) by Sun Tzu
U.S. Constitution
Unaccustomed to Fear: A Biography of the Late General Roy S. Gieger, United States Marine Corps by Willock

GySgt, MSgt, 1stSgt, CWO-4, Capt
Battle Studies: Ancient and Modern Battle by Ardant du Picq
Guerrilla Strategies: A Historical Anthology from the Long March to Afghanistan by Chailand
The Breaking Point: Sedan and the Fall of France, 1940 by Doughty
Street Without Joy by Fall
Profession of Arms by Hackett
Battle for the Falklands by Hastings
Victory at High Tide: The Inchon Seoul Campaign by Heinl
The War of the American Independence: Military Attitudes, Policies, and Practice by Higginbotham
Once a Lengend: Red Mike Edson of the Marine Raiders by Hoffman
Maneuver Warfare: An Anthology by Hooker
Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 by Horne
Infantry in Battle (U.S.) Infantry by School
The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War: Its Theory, and its Practice in the Pacific by Isley & Crowl
The Price of Admiralty: The Evolution of Naval Warfare by Keegan
First to Fight: An Inside View of the U.S. Marine Corps by Krulak
The Dynamics of Doctrine: The Changes in German Tactical Doctrine During the First World War by Lupfer
Reminiscences by MacArthur
Company Commander by MacDonald
Mao Tse-Tung on Guerrilla Warfare by Mao Tse-Tung
Defense of Hill 781 by McDonough
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era by McPherson
Panzer Battles: A Study of the Employment of Armor in the Second World War by Mellenthin
Company Command: The Bottom Line by Meyer
Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps by Millett
For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America by Millett & Maslowski
Gallipoli by Moorehead
The Anatomy of Courage by Moran
Once an Eagle by Myer
Small Wars Manual by NAVMC 2890
Follow Me, Human Element in Leadership by Newman
No Victory, No Vanquished: Yom Kippur War by O'Ballance
History of U.S. Military Logistics, 1935-1985 A Brief Review by Peppers
Fortunate Son: The Autobiography of Lewis B. Puller, Jr. by Puller
Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam by Sears
With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa by Sledge
Douglas Southall Freeman on Leadership by Smith
On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War by Summers
The Easter Offensive, Vietnam, 1972 by Turley
Airpower & Maneuver Warfare by Van Creveld

CWO-5, Maj
Morale: A Study of Men and Courage by Baynes
Grant Takes Command by Catton
On War by Clausewitz
Patton: A Genius for War by D'Este
Hell in a Very Small Place: The Seige of Dien Bien Phu by Fall
This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness by Fehrenbach
Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account by Frank
Knight's Cross: A Life of Field Marshall Erwin Rommel by Fraser
Forward Into Battle: Fighting Tactics from Waterloo to Vietnam by Griffith
Che Guevara on Guerrilla Warfare by Guevara
Chosin: Heroic Ordeal of the Korean War by Hammel
George Washington & The American Military Tradition by Higginbotham
Reminiscences of a Marine by Lejeune
U.S. Marine Corps Aviation: 1912 to the Present by Mersky
Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age by Paret
At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor by Prange
Dieppe: The Shame and the Glory by Robertson
It Doesn't Take A Hero by Schwarzkopf
History of Marine Corps Aviation in WWII by Sherrod
A People Numerous & Armed: Reflections on the Military Struggle for American Independence by Shy
Defeat Into Victory by Slim
Eagle Against The Sun: The American War With Japan by Spector
Command in War by Van Creveld
Supplying War: Logistics From Wallenstein to Patton by Van Creveld

MGySgt, SgtMaj, LtCol
One Hundered Years of Seapower: The U.S. Navy, 1890-1990 by Bear
Ultra in the West: The Normandy Campaign, 1944-1945 by Bennett
The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance by Buell
The Generals' War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf by Gordon & Trainor
The Years of MacArthur by James
The U.S. Marine Corps and Defense Unification 1944-1947: The Politics of Survival by Keiser
Eagle and Sword: The Federalists and the Creation of the Military Establishment in America by Kohn
The Army in Vietnam by Krepinevich
Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant by Long
In Many a Strife: General Gerald C. Thomas and the U.S. Marines Corps, 1917-1956 by Millet
The Making of Strategy by Murray
Follow Me II: More on the Human Element in Leadership by Newman
Moving Mountains: Lessons in Leadership and Logistics from the Gulf War by Pagonis
How the War was Won by Travers
Take That Hill: Royal Marines in the Falklands War by Vaux
The Enlightened Soldier: Scharnhorst and the Militarische Gesellschaft in Berlin, 1801-1805 by White
100 Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands by Woodard

Col
The Supreme Commander: The War Years of General Dwight D. Eishenhower by Ambrose
Foundation of Moral Obligation: The Stockdale Course by Brennan
The Campaigns of Napoleon by Chandler
Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War by Cohen
General of the Army: George C. Marshall, Soldier and Statesman by Cray
Seeds of Disaster: The Development of French Army Doctrine, 1919-1939 by Doughty
Logistics in the National Defense by Eccles
War Secerts in the Ether: The Use of Signals Intelligence by the German Military in WWII by Flicke
The General by Forester
From Beirut to Jerusalem by Friedman
A Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 by Horne
To Lose a Battle: France, 1940 by Horne
The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery by Kennedy
Military Innovation in the Interwar Period by Millett & Murray
Luftwaffe by Murray
A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home and Abroad in WWII by O'Neil
The 25-Year War: America's Military Role in Vietnam by Palmer
Nimitz by Potter
Korean War by Ridgeway
A Bridge Too Far by Ryan
The Marine Corps Search For a Mission 1880-1898 by Shulimson
Race to the Swift: Thoughts on Twenty First Century Warfare by Simpkin
Pershing, General of the Armies by Smythe
The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides
The Killing Ground: The Battle Army, The Western Front, & the Emergence of Modern Warfare by Travers
Our Great Spring Victory: An Account of the Liberation of South Vietnam by Van Tien Dung
Once a Marine: The Memoirs of General A. A. Vandergrift, USMC by Vandergrift
Eisenhower's Lieutenants: The Campaign of France and Germany, 1944-1945 by Weigly

Watch the video: 1812 War - The Battle at Baltimore