Back Over There

Yes, I know I have been a very poor blogger this spring and summer. It's not that I've stopped being a history fanatic. It's just that I'm in the middle of learning how to be a math and science teacher! I know, can you believe it? Last year I taught social studies at a continuation high school here in the central valley of California. As you might have seen in the news, there is a definite shortage of math teachers. There was a need at the alternative education high school where I teach and I have a math and science background from my undergraduate days (35 years ago!). So I stepped up, or stepped in it, depending on how poorly I do teaching math and science during the next school year. However, I still made time to read some history, so here's a recommendation for you.

Book R & R: "Back Over There" by Richard Rubin.

Back in 2013 I read Richard Rubin's first book on WWI titled "The Last of the Doughboys" and really enjoyed it. In that book Rubin described interviewing the last few remaining WWI veterans who were still alive (must to most people's surprise). In "Back Over There," the author goes to France and tours the battlefields of the Western Front of World War I. Both of these books are very timely since we are currently in the one hundred year anniversary of the war.

I have to admit that I am jealous of Richard Rubin. You can tell by his writing that the author truly enjoyed his research. One of my favorite things to do is to walk a battlefield. In "Back Over There" Rubin travels on his own to the ground where battles of the "Great War" happened, not just American Expeditionary Forces but also our allies, the French and British. These battlefields are near the French border with Belgium and Germany, in many cases what is today and was then, in rural areas dotted with small farming villages. Often he makes contact with locals who know the history of the ground as well as any park ranger would at a National Historic Site in the United States. But the majority of the fields that Rubin walks are not protected national parks. They are farm fields where people continue to find artifacts, typically in the form of unexploded ordinance. The interesting thing about Rubin's trip to France is that while we have largely forgotten the battles and sacrifices made by our soldiers WWI, but other nations have not. They continue to That is evidenced strongly from Rubin's description of the formal remembrance ceremony at Belleau Wood to his interactions with the locals who drop what they are doing to take Rubin on a tour of a battlefield near where they live.

"Back Over There" is an enjoyable read with good pacing. The author seamlessly switches back and forth between historical background and travel narrative. He provides self-deprecating humor in describing his poor French language skills and the occasions where he gets lost looking for the spot where a particular event happened. These are two things that everyone who travels can relate to. So you see that this book is both historical and travel narrative. During this 100-year anniversary of an event that changed the course of history and our standing in the world, "Back Over There" is a good book to read and reflect on. Find out the sacrifices made by us, and more so by our allies. Ask yourself why other nations honor and remember, and are still grateful for what past generations of Americans have done, but we seem to have forgotten.

The Soccer Game That Probably Wasn't

The Christmas Truce of 1914

Christmas vacation has started for most public schools and colleges. Finally there is time to relax and pick up the blog again. I also have the time to watch one of my favorite news magazine shows on television, CBS Sunday Morning. This morning there was a segment on the Christmas Truce of 1914 (since we're now at the 100 year anniversary of the events of WWI).

You can click the link to read the whole story, or watch the video below. But along with the interesting anecdote about an event that occurred during the First World War, the more interesting thing for me was the way in which people remember it.

Here's the gist: during this time of year, military history buffs like to bring out the Christmas Truce that occurred spontaneously between British and German troops in 1914. The story goes that both sides were singing Christmas carols in their respective trenches and one side put up a tree, etc. With a verbal promise of "if you don't shoot, I won't either," troops from both sides met in the middle of "no man's land" and traded Christmas greetings. Before long, by popular belief, a friendly soccer game was started between teams from the units that were shooting at each other just hours before. The story has become mythologized, spawning multiple books, as well as movies.

There are two issues with that story. First, it is not an isolated event. Many enemies in many wars made temporary truces for reasons that range from clearing dead and wounded off of the field to celebrating a holiday. And second, while the associated Wiki article tells us that soccer games were played, the CBS story says that there is no evidence of a game of football during the truce of 1914.

That's one of the things you have to love about popular history. While we struggle for the facts, the truth is what people create for themselves. I really take pleasure in the story part of history, and I admit that sometimes you just have to say, "well, if it ain't true, it outta be." Enjoy.

Book R & R: Verdun

This Book Review and Recommendation is on "Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War" by Paul Jankowski.

We are quickly approaching the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War. I think that, apart from military history aficionados, this benchmark will pass with little examination, even though veterans of WWI lived until just a few years ago. I'm afraid also that even less attention will be paid to the significant events of the "Great War" that occurred prior to the United States' entry into the war in April, 1917.

With the recent release of "Verdun: The Longest Battle of the Great War," American historian and writer Paul Jankowski has turned his focus to one of these key battles of the war that took place prior to American involvement. Verdun is in northeast France, where the battle between the French and Germans began on February 21, 1918. The ten month battle lasted until December 18, 1916. The battle kicked off with the German Fifth Army launching an offensive against the French Second Army in fixed defenses near the Meuse River. The stubbornness of French commander Marshal Joseph Joffre and German commander General Erich von Falkenhayn turned the extended battle into a war of attrition. One village in the area of operations changed hands sixteen times during the course of the battle. Verdun is noteworthy mostly for the number of casualties compared to the lack of results for either side. Estimates for combined casualties range from over 714,000 to 976,000. The French lost more men, but held their terrain. Verdun became known as one of the longest, and most costly battles in history.

Paul Jankowski is a professor of history at Brandeis University in Massachusetts. Appropriately, he has devoted more attention in his book to the cultural and political ramifications of Verdun, rather than the nuances of combat operations. His writing is clear on concise, helping both the military historian and the lay reader to understand the battle, the results, and the influence (or lack there of) on the war as a whole.

Although the French are able to claim victory at Verdun, for the number of casualties and lack of net gains for either side the battle had little influence on the outcome of the First World War as a whole. However, Verdun is a good battle to study in that it speaks to the futility of the war and way it was fought with modern technology and outdated tactics. As Jankowski writes, "Verdun remains the epitome of senseless industrial warfare."

Comanche Code Talkers

Photograph from the article "Charles Chibitty: Comanche Code Talker"

posted on the U.S. Army website.

It never ceases to amaze me how much I don't know. I'm working as hard as I can to fix that, the not knowing part, but I'm afraid I'm going to run out of time. Whenever I run across some factoid that I'm not familiar with or I don't think was explained well enough, I have to run down some more information on it. Here's a perfect example from this morning: I ran across a newspaper article that caught my eye while doing an Internet search for something completely different (yep, that still happens). This article in the Lawton Constitution informed me (before I hit information cutoff and they demanded a subscription to read the rest of the article) that the annual Comanche Fair this year would be honoring the Comanche Code Talkers from World War II. In fact, if you can't make it to the fair, there is a museum exhibit dedicated to the Code Talkers that you can visit year-round at the Comanche National Museum and Cultural Center, in Lawton, Oklahoma.

I know what you're thinking, Comanche Code Talkers? I thought the Code Talkers were Navajo, like the movie, right? I had to do some quick research on this. Turns out, members of several tribes served as Code Talkers during both WWI and WWII. Code Talkers are soldiers who can use their native language in radio and telephone communications like a code, since to the enemy the language is so obscure they have virtually no hope of translating it. During WWI the Army started the practice using Native American soldiers of the Cherokee, Choctaw, and Comanche tribes. They proved to be very effective. So much so that during the inter-war years, Adolf Hitler sent about thirty anthropologists to Oklahoma to try to learn Native American languages. They failed. The languages were too difficult and there were too many dialects.

During WWII the United States Marine Corps accelerated the program and recruited more than 400 Navajo Code Talkers. (The USMC also experimented with the Basque language, utilizing about 60 native speakers of that language.) The size of the Marines' Code Talker program and exposure in popular culture has resulted in most of us associating "Code Talkers" with the Navajo tribe. Because of Germany's attempt to learn Native American languages, the U.S. Army was hesitant to use Code Talkers in the European Theater. However, on a limited scale, the U.S. Army employed some Native American speakers against the Germans. That included recruiting from 27 Meskwaki (Fox) men from Iowa who joined the Army as a group. Eight of them eventually became Code Talkers and served in combat against the Germans in North Africa.

The United States Army also recruited seventeen Comanche Indians to serve as Code Talkers. As a further safety measure they developed a "code within a code" by coming up with over 100 code words within their own language. Fourteen of these men were assigned to the 4th Infantry Division and landed on Utah Beach on D-Day. Two of the Code Talkers were assigned to each regiment in the division and the rest were assigned to division headquarters. Their unique skills were put to work on their first day in Normandy. Although several were wounded, all of the Comanche Code Talkers survived the war.

The last Comanche Code Talker passed away in 2005. However, a grateful nation does not stop honoring these men who through their special skill and service saved untold numbers of their fellow American soldiers.

Book R & R: The Last of the Doughboys

Today's Book Review and Recommendation is "The Last of the Doughboys: The Forgotten Generation and Their Forgotten World War" by Richard Rubin.

The Doughboys are what we called the soldiers and marines who fought in WWI, like calling the soldiers of the WWII era "G.I.s." The 100th anniversary of the First World War is going to be upon us very soon. I don't know as much as I'd like to about that conflict, so I thought I'd pick up a couple of titles to rectify that situation. One that caught my eye was Richard Rubin's "The Last of the Doughboys" that was just recently released (May 2013). The book's back cover said that Rubin had interviewed some of the last surviving World War I veterans. Being into applied history and oral history interviews, I thought this book would be a great place to start. Well, every once in a while I make a brilliant decision without even knowing that I'm doing it. "Last of the Doughboys" was a great book on so many levels.

I really enjoy Richard Rubin's writing style. His voice is very conversational and his pacing in this book keeps the reader engaged. I suspect that comes from Rubin's experience in writing feature articles for magazines like the Atlantic, The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and others. He has one other book out, but it is not a work of military history. You see, what I like about Richard Rubin is that not only is he an outstanding writer, but he follows through on his natural curiosity. And as a result he accomplished something that I think the rest of us who are "doin' history," whether it's academic or popular, should be a little chagrined that we didn't think of it first and then act on it.

So one day around 2003, Richard Rubin the writer hears the declaration that many of us have heard in one form or another: "We're losing up to 1,000 WWII veterans every day! We have to hurry and collect their stories while we still can!" But Rubin took the thought process one step further and asked himself if there were any veterans of WWI still alive, and was anyone scrambling to get their stories. Rubin then went about finding out. Initially, no one knew the answer. The Department of Veterans Affairs didn't have a list, they only estimated (based apparently on actuarial tables) that there were as many as fifteen hundred still living. After repeated inquiries from Rubin, the VA then reduced that estimate to "fewer than two hundred."

Rubin did find dozens of WWI veterans to interview: men and women, American and Canadian, Army, Marine, and Navy, all between the ages of 101 to 113. His best and main source for locating these veterans was the French government, who maintained a list of recipients of the Legion d'Honneur. The French awarded this medal during the late 1990s to American veterans who had served on French soil during the "Great War." Others he found through media research. It turns out that this forgotten war from our distant past wasn't so distant after all. Rubin traveled the country, conducting his interviews from 2003 to 2010. Some of his subjects had vivid memories of the events that had occurred eighty-five years or more in their past and were interviewed on more than one occasion. Others, let's just say they proved to be less than successful. His last interview subject was the last surviving American veteran of WWI, Frank Buckles, who passed away in February 2011.

I'm amazed at what Rubin did as far as thinking up this project, and then unrelentingly following up until the last veteran of WWI had passed away. In addition, I am more than impressed with what he did with the information. If the veteran was a combat veteran of say, Belleau Wood, then Rubin explains the circumstances, events, and effects of that battle to the reader. You'll also hear about what conditions were like on the home front, how we treated the immigrant population, the military's handling of "shell-shocked" soldiers, how we suppressed free speech with the Sedition Act of 1918, and how we deployed cavalry (yes, still using horses) to guard the Mexican border. You'll even learn about media coverage of the war and popular culture as expressed in song lyrics of the day. Every aspect of the war is covered, and accompanied by the voice of the young person who lived through it and experienced it. This book is a "page turner." The history is accurate and provided in a voice that is entertaining and engaging.

If you are looking for a book that covers only the military actions, strategy, etc., of the First World War placed on a timeline, then "The Last of the Doughboys" is probably not the book for you. If instead you are looking gain an insight on the whole of the war and its effect on regular people whose lives were forever changed by it, then I cannot urge you strongly enough to read this book. It will have a prominent place on my bookshelf, ready for a re-read in the near future.

"War is a Racket" by Smedley Butler

The other day I picked up a copy of Steinbeck's "Cannery Row" and gave it a read. I kind of feel like my cultural literacy is lacking somewhat because I haven't read all the greats of American literature, especially Steinbeck, Hemingway, and Twain. Often I feel the same way about the classics of military history. You know, there are books out there that have been talked about for decades, but I never got around to reading them. Like Robert Leckie's "Helmet for my Pillow" or Cornelius Ryan's "The Longest Day." (No, just watching the movie doesn't count.) So I decided to start working some of these books into my reading pile. It's really pretty easy to acquire a large selection, between the library, Amazon, and used book sales. The other day I found a copy of Pappy Boyington's "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep" at my library's used book sale and picked it up for only fifty cents! But before I could even begin reading it, something (I don't remember what now) reminded me of this quote:

“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.” 

- Major General Smedley D. Butler, USMC 

Smedley D. Butler

I first heard that quote in a Military History class at Cal State Fresno (a requirement for the ROTC program) in 1983. The professor read that quote to the class and he immediately had my attention. Thirty years later it popped in my mind again and I had to go to the library and check out General Butler's book and read it... again. That's a classic: a book that speaks to you so loudly you are compelled to read it again decades later.

Smedley Darlington Butler served in the United States Marine Corps for 34 years. He was awarded the Marine Corps Brevet Medal (one of only twenty to receive it) and two Medals of Honor. At the time of his death, he was the most highly decorated Marine in U.S. history. He served and fought in the Philippine-American War, the Boxer Rebellion in China, the "Banana Wars" in Central America and the Caribbean that included service in Haiti and Nicaragua. He was part of the occupation of Veracruz, Mexico in 1914, and served in France during WWI. In the later part of the 1920s, Butler commanded the Marine Expeditionary Force in China. I suppose that you can draw the conclusion that Smedley Butler knew about war.

Butler was an outspoken man. Because of his progressive views about big business capitalism, defense, and military spending in the early days of the Great Depression, he ran afoul of the Hoover administration. Butler was threatened with court martial for public statements criticizing the new fascist dictator in Italy, Benito Mussolini (in the early 1930s some folks in this country admired fascism as an effective methodology for dealing with the worldwide economic depression). Although he was obviously the best choice for Commandant of the Marine Corps, he was passed over for the job. Major General Butler quietly retired from the Marine Corps in 1931.

After his military service, Smedley Butler became an outspoken isolationist during the 1930s. He gained notoriety after being called to testify before a Congressional Committee investigating charges that there had been a fascist plot to overthrow President Roosevelt. Butler claimed that a group of businessmen had approached him about leading the insurrection army. (This is the subject of Jules Archer's book "The Plot to Seize the White House." I find the concept believable, but I admit I have not read the book.) During this period, some of Butler's speeches were combined into a short - 66 page - book that became an antiwar classic.

"War is a Racket" by Smedley Butler was first published in 1935. In the book, Butler lays out an argument that America's wars of the twentieth century were all fought for the profit of corporations, culminating with his listing of facts and figures on the profits made by industry as a result of supplying Allied armies (and in some cases alleging that we sold equipment to the enemy) during WWI. In his view, Butler saw the same situation occurring with the world gearing up for WWII. He advocated strictly using our military for defensive purposes only. His plan to ensure it included a constitutional amendment that forbade ground troops from every leaving the continental United States.

Smedley Butler did not live to see the mood of the country turn from isolationism in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. He passed away on June 24, 1940. But his book became an antiwar classic, and also a military history classic. Because, despite the fact that in my opinion his message rings as true today as it did when he wrote it, "War is a Racket" also lets us see a viewpoint held by a large segment of the American population during the Depression years and the build up to the Second World War. A view that is often downplayed in historical texts of today. And in case you're wondering, reading this antiwar book did not make me question my decision to become an Army officer. It actually had the opposite affect. If anything, hearing both sides of any argument is a good thing.