And
the much-despised colonists had sharpened their skills in the French
and Indian War and with continual skirmishing with indians since they
were fighting almost in their front yards. The colonies were reasonably
wealthy and able to buy munitions, powder and equipment abroad.The
average militiaman had weapons at least as good as the British (and,
in the case of those units equipped with rifles, better than the British
regular's "Brown Bess" musket). From the outset the colonists
had artillery too. George Washington used artillery taken from Fort
Ticonderoga to force the British garrison from Boston, it was artillery
six years later that forced the British surrender at Yorktown.
The
colonists lacked organization, supplies for a long struggle, training,
and discipline, all deficiencies eventually remedied over eight years
of conflict. By the end of the Revolutionary War the Continental Army
had a Corps of Engineers, a Pay Department (later Finance Corps), A
Quartermaster Corps, a regiment of Artillery and another of Cavalry
(later to become the Armor branch), an Ordinance Department, a Provost
Corps and a precursor to the Judge Advocate General's Corps, a Medical
Department, and even some paid chaplains. Later army
branches were the Signal Corps (1860), Chemical Corps (1918), Military
Police (1941), Transportation Corps (1942), Military Intelligence (1962),
Aviation (1983), Special Forces (1987), and Air Defense Artillery,
now a separate branch, dates itself back to the earlier artillery too.
Along
with arms and supplies from Europe, the colonists imported military
talent. Baron von Steuben, a short, dour Prussian, offered his services.
Steuben, a veteran of European campaigns, had assumed that he would
be given command of a wing of the Continental army. But Washington
had enough commanders, he needed someone who understood training
and logistics. Steuben was probably disappointed but accepted the assignment
and more than anyone else, made the Continental army into a fighting
force.
In 1775,
George Washington realized that his militias, while enthusiastic,
were no match for a toe-to-toe slugfest with a European army. His policy
for eight years was simply to keep the army intact and in the field.
He knew that the English themselves were very divided about the war
and reluctant to support a large armed force fighting a long way
off,
across a wide ocean. All he had to do was not lose--and wait for
a change of government in England. Along the way he seized what opportunities
came his way, fought standing engagements when he thought he absolutely
had to (and almost always lost) and made a good enough show to convince
other nations not to support England and even, in the case of France,
to come to the support of the rebellious colonists.
The
Marquis de Lafayette was an oddity in French social circles, being
a young aristocrat with revolutionary tendencies. King Louis XVI
probably heaved a sigh of relief when Lafayette sailed for American
to offer
his sword to the colonists. But in no time Lafayette was importuning
his king to support the cause. Soon Benjamin Franklin was in Paris
too, spreading influence and money where it would do the most good.
The French king hated the very concept of revolution (wisely in
his case--he was to be guillotined by a home-grown revolution some
years
later) but he hated the English even more. By 1781 French armies
had occupied Rhode Island and moved south to assist the Continental
army
in besieging Yorktown. It took two more years to formalize a peace
treaty, but the fighting essentially halted at Yorktown.
By 1812
the Continental army was no more and when English forces marched south
from Canada and landed at strategic points by ship, America's only defense
was that it was just too big to conquer even if virtually undefended.
The English
armies marched where they wished, burning Washington, seizing whatever strong
points they needed. Only Baltimore's Fort McHenry withstood a British fleet
bombardment and confused night assault, still flying the "Star-Spangled Banner" when
the sun rose. The only major army victory came several weeks after the peace
treaty had been signed (communications were slow), when General Jackson, with
a polyglot collection of army troops, pirates, adventurers and townspeople, turned
back an ineptly-conducted English campaign at New Orleans.
By 1846 the new nation was expanding into the seemingly-limitless
western frontier and bumping up against Mexico's own expansion. A
brief war with Mexico served
as a training ground for young officers who, as senior commanders, would lead
battles
in the Civil War.
The bloodiest war Americans fought was also one of great technological
advances. The Civil War was the first "modern" war. Huge armies moved across
vast distances by train. Messages traveled instantly by telegraph. Weapons improved
faster than the tactics, resulting in great slaughter. By the war's end there
were machine guns, repeating rifles, long-range rifled cannon, changes in the
use of entrenchments, and some rudimentary changes in tactics. The old system
of forming lines and marching up to your opponent to exchange point-blank fire
had become suicide and we see the beginnings of the "fire and maneuver" concept.
By this time the United States had a training academy for officers
at West Point but generals were often selected for their political
connections. The Union in
particular took a long time to find competent generals and this delay probably
lengthened the war and certainly cost many lives.
Strategically, armies could move by rail and resupply by rail. Sherman's
infamous march across Georgia was actually a throwback to an older
time when armies traditionally
lived off the country as they marched, and had no supply train to speak of.
But Sherman brought a new dimension to "foraging". By marching on a 60-mile
front and eating or burning everything in his path, he brought war's destructiveness
to home-front civilians.
The army fought "wars" with indians from 1790 through 1891. These were
wars of conquest and the indians, despite occasional successes at Little Big
Horn and other places, never stood a chance against numbers and technology. They
may have been better at negotiation than we give them credit for though; to this
day the Native American tribes enjoy a special status.
The army next went to war with Spain in 1898, achieving easy victories
in Cuba and the Philippines. Cuba was granted independence but the
United States kept
the Philippines, and the army had to fight Philippine guerillas from 1899 to
1913.
Lessons learned in the Civil War proved valuable in World War One.
When the Americans finally joined that great conflict (with American
commander John "Black
Jack" Pershing announcing to the beleaguered French, "Lafayette, we
are here") American troops actually used better tactics than the combatants
who had been fighting for three years. The Americans fought a number of engagements
but their real value to the allies was simply that they were there. The Germans,
exhausted and disillusioned after years of pointless slaughter over a few yards
of mud, suddenly faced an unlimited supply of fresh and well-armed troops. Germany
simply gave up in the face of overwhelming odds.
World War Two saw the army reduced again to a minuscule peacetime
establishment and it took several years to get up to strength. In
the Pacific the army enjoyed
some advantages: the Japanese had managed to alienate every country they conquered,
so that they had no base of support, strongly defended islands could be bypassed
and left to starve, and the Japanese economy was not capable of withstanding
a blockade and aerial bombardment.
In Europe and North Africa the Germans were more technologically
sophisticated. But again the Allies won because American troops kept
coming and there was no
way to damage their factories or training grounds. Tactics again evolved. Fire
and maneuver was incorporated into the "combined arms team" which hit
the enemy with too many challenges to defend against. Dig in for the infantry
assault- and the tanks run over you after the artillery pounds you to pieces.
Go mobile to get the flexibility to defend against tanks--and air power picks
you off while the infantry occupies the strong points. Try to bring up reinforcements
and supplies--and air power and artillery pound all the road intersections, isolating
the battlefield.
The Korean "Police Action" of 1950-1953 was a seasaw affair of surprises.
The North Koreans attacked successfully because the United States miscalculated
their intentions. Possibly the most dangerous and daring amphibious assault in
history (at Inchon) destroyed the North Korean army and permitted the allies
to drive to the Yalu River, effectively conquering the entire Korean peninsula.
Then Chinese intervention came as a surprise and drove the Americans and their
allies south again. The Americans were frustrated tactically. They had a superior
technology and air superiority but were opposed by the largest light infantry
force in the world and constrained by political considerations that would come
to a head years later in another Asian war. General MacArthur got into a fight
with President Truman and was fired. Matthew Ridgeway took over, announced that
his job was "to kill Chinese" and managed to dig in and hold.
The American army's experience in Vietnam was even more exasperating.
Everywhere American troops went they dominated. They won virtually
every battle. Supplies
and manpower seemed unlimited. But ironically, American leaders had forgotten
the lessons of their own war for independence and Vo Nguyen Giap played out
the role of George Washington to Lyndon Johnson's King George III.
Giap won because
he refused to quit, had popular support, and was on the other side of a big
ocean. Johnson lost because he lacked political support, the war
was too expensive and
drawn-out, and a new factor, television, brought the war to the home front
even more effectively than had General Sherman.
The Army went through a painful reassessment after Vietnam. Morale
had disintegrated. The Army was held in low esteem by the public
while officers and NCOs blamed
the public for not supporting the otherwise-successful Army. The Cold War was
evolving too, and political leadership was less hysterical about every Soviet
move and inclined to pick the battles more carefully.
Reorganization to meet new challenges moved more swiftly than ever
before. The nation came to rely on an all-volunteer army for the
first time.
Although it might seem obvious that, once you had spent the money
and time to equip and train troops, you did not send them home again
in the middle of a war,
the United States has done exactly this throughout history. Only during World
Wars One and Two were enlistments or conscriptions "for the duration".
The United States has always relied for defense upon wide oceans and the ability
to swiftly mobilize citizen-soldiers to fill out an army led by a small core
of regular officers, NCOs, and permanent troops.
Today that tradition continues, but the investment in each soldier
is so high, and the time available for mobilization so shortened,
that the nation for the
first time depends upon its army, as-is, for defense. Today's military operations,
as planners like to say, are "come-as-you-are wars" and if you aren't
ready, with trained and equipped troops, with stockpiled supplies, with transportation
already standing by, then you can't come to the party.
Examples of this new order were the invasions of Grenada (1983) and
Panama (1990) where American troops simply overwhelmed local forces.
But the real test came
in the Persian Gulf in 1990 1991. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was a godsend
to the American army. Here was an opponent, armed with Soviet weapons and trained
by Soviet advisors, exposed on an open battlefield. No civilians cluttered
up the situation, there was no triple-canopy jungle, the enemy had
dug in with World
War One entrenchments in front and only a few inadequate highways to his rear
and to supplies, reinforcements and communications. Allied commander General
Schwarzkopf remarked that Saddam Hussein had crammed his army into Kuwait, "like
stuffing them into a sack." The Americans literally licked their chops in
anticipation.
The public saw the Gulf War as a "Nintendo war" of button-pushing televised
death and destruction. And it was, but the Army used the opportunity to exercise
its unmatched supply and transport capabilities. A massive airlift brought most
of the half-million troops in by air. While pre positioned ships rushed equipment
to secure the Saudi border, an unprecedented sealift brought equipment from the
United States and from Europe. Except for one reconnaisance-by-fire at Kafji,
Saudi Arabia, Hussein sat and watched for almost six months while the allies
readied for the assault.
The assault was overwhelming. Never in the history of warfare was
a war so one-sided. A 38-day bombing campaign obliterated communications
between Baghdad and the
front lines, chopped up all transport routes into Kuwait, and reduced effectiveness
of Iraqi troops by at least fifty percent. Then a 100-hour lightening strike
across the desert by mobile forces saw the fiercest armor battles since Kursk
in World War Two. The battles were worse than one-sided; Army tanks and helicopters
picked off Iraqi vehicles at will, firing through dust storms and darkness
at an enemy that could not see them, let alone shoot back.
Iraqi troops surrendered to allied troops, to news crews covering
the fighting, even to robot reconnaissance aircraft. Allies lost
about 150 men and women in
combat, almost half from a lucky Scud hit on a barracks behind the lines. Iraqi
losses have never been verified; initial allied estimates had the figures of
deaths in excess of one hundred thousand, but it was probably lower.
Nevertheless, a battlefield casualty ratio of 1000:1 was eye-opening.
Could the American army expect such victories in the future? The
answer came quickly in
Somalia, where a gang leader managed to humiliate the U.S. because political
leaders in Washington would not permit their military leaders to use their
tactical training properly.
Somalia served as a rude wake-up call that both the political leadership
and the Army has listened to in Bosnia. Seeing Bosnia and Somalia
as typical of the
kind of limited engagements the Army can expect to encounter in the post-cold-war
world, military leaders have again reassessed their TO&E. The U.S. Army went
into Bosnia in overwhelming force. Troops are kept isolated from the civilian
centers, reducing likelihood of terrorist attack. U.S. Army troops vowed "to
be the meanest dog on the block" and the strategy has worked thus far.
The next century will bring new challenges, new enemies, new organization
and equipment requirements. But the U.S. Army has already begun to
adapt beyond the
Gulf War model and to a limited-engagement, urban-conflict capability as well.
Whatever the future brings the Army will be quick to adapt to the challenge.
— end —
Copyright,
2005, by Stephen Morrill
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