Welcome to the Military History Carnival #25. This month’s entries range from the Ancient World to the Cold War, from North Korea and China to the English Channel. There are links here to works on military medicine, on deception on the Eastern Front of World War II, and on Stephen Ambrose.
Ancient:
Nikolaos Markoulakis submitted an article entitled “Political strategy of the Seleucid Empire in the region of Central Asia.”
Early Modern:
Thomas Snyder pointed out a post on maritime medicine and the battle of Gravelines, August 8, 1588.
20th Century:
Rich Landers sent in the mail correspondence of a World War I doughboy and his sister from 1918 (letters in reverse order: oldest at bottom), supplemented by a post explaining the recovery process from being gassed in World War I.
Alan Baumler sent in a link to the last cavalry charge in history?
Graham Jenkins submitted a link on the Soviet use of deception and maskirovka during the 1944 summer offensive, Operation Bagration.
Alan Baumler submitted an article on the use of violence in Maoist China.
Alan Baumler sent in the story of a Korean interpreter during the Korean-American War and after.
Graham Jenkins submitted another on the US-UK ‘special relationship’ during the Falklands War.
David Silbey sent in a series of posts discussing Stephen Ambrose: I, II, and III.
Misc
James Holoka pointed to the Michigan War Studies Review for wide-ranging book reviews.
Enjoy!
The Edge of the American West 
16 comments
August 17, 2010 at 5:44 am
Vance
The Ambrose posts seem to have attracted some of the “groupies” Lori Cune refers to.
August 17, 2010 at 8:26 am
ajay
Here’s a rather different view on the value of US help in the Falklands…
http://yorksranter.wordpress.com/2007/05/27/falklands-myths-4-american-and-european-support/
August 17, 2010 at 8:45 am
silbey
@ajay I don’t find that article particularly convincing in a number of ways: it’s not cited, so I have no idea how to weigh some of things he says (the logistics issues at Ascension Island is a particular example), he underrates critically how important it was that the U.S. _not_ oppose the British operation (not mentioning the Monroe Doctrine issue is an oversight), and some of the things he just concedes (the speeding up of deliveries of the AIM 9L Sidewinders; the delivery of aviation fuel by the U.S.), but then waves off unconvincingly (i.e. yes, aviation fuel is available commercially, but the price the British would have had to pay to get 12.5 million gallons of it to Ascension Island in a war zone would have been astronomical and difficult to deliver).
Thanks for the link, though, as it’s an interesting perspective.
August 17, 2010 at 9:24 am
Anderson
I left a comment on the Cune post; it’s possible that Ambrose was plagiarizing Peter Lyon’s 1974 Eisenhower bio.
Lyon doesn’t give his source, so it would be possible they both used the same source; but in that case, presumably Ambrose would’ve cited to it.
So it may be more likely that Ambrose wrote with one eye on Lyon’s bio, and picked up that line as too good to miss. Lyon was often critical of Ike and would thus have been a biographer Ambrose was setting out to eclipse.
August 17, 2010 at 9:41 am
Anderson
… Hm, my comment at the Cune post got eated, it seems; anyone curious can read the Lyon quote here.
August 17, 2010 at 10:31 am
ajay
he underrates critically how important it was that the U.S. _not_ oppose the British operation (not mentioning the Monroe Doctrine issue is an oversight)
Sorry, does this sentence really mean “simply by not actually going to war on the side of Argentina, the US was incredibly helpful”? The Monroe Doctrine isn’t a force of nature and it isn’t an international treaty. It’s just something that the US has historically done.
Aviation fuel: Ascension Island wasn’t really a war zone, it was about 4,000 miles from the war zone.
And it’s also an interesting comparison of the US and French roles – certainly in terms of intelligence.
August 17, 2010 at 5:32 pm
silbey
@ajay It’s a note on how much of a precedent break it was for the US to allow a European power to wage war in the western hemisphere. Which it was, and whether you agree it was big thing, the author does at least need acknowledge it.
I don’t think Ascension’s distance from the Falklands affects whether it was considered part of the war zone for shipping purposes.
August 18, 2010 at 3:04 am
ajay
OK, I’ll grant you that the US in 1982 decided not to destroy NATO by launching an unprovoked and illegal attack on one of its closest nuclear-armed allies. But, as I say, I think that defining this as “valuable help” requires a fairly stretchy definition of “help”. In that respect, the Soviet Union was immensely helpful to the US in the invasion of Panama, in as much as they didn’t nuke Washington DC.
August 18, 2010 at 4:54 am
silbey
@ajay It’s not necessary to paint an extreme picture of a US-UK confrontation to see ways in which American opposition would hamstring British efforts. The Americans could have supplied Argentina with satellite intelligence of British movements, could have helped them buy more Exocets on the international market, and could have made it very difficult for the British to use the joint airfield at Ascension Island. That’s without even going into denying the British logistics support.
All of those things–well short of putting carrier battle groups in the South Atlantic–would have put the British in an almost impossible position.
August 18, 2010 at 6:49 am
Anderson
Ajay: Remember Suez, ’56?
August 19, 2010 at 2:34 am
yorksranter
Regarding Ascension Island, I don’t think some people have fully realised that it’s further from the Falklands than New York is from London. Anyway, Japanese and other fishermen continued operating around the islands throughout, and the Argentine air force managed to hit a completely unrelated oil tanker with a bomb that didn’t go off, so yes, merchant shipping was operating much closer to the war than Ascension.
August 19, 2010 at 5:54 am
silbey
@yorksranter Note that I didn’t say that it wouldn’t have been possible for the British to get aviation fuel delivered commercially to Ascension, but that it would be enormously expensive.
August 19, 2010 at 7:02 am
ajay
it would be enormously expensive.
Why? The article cites 12.5 million gallons of avgas. That’s 35,000t. A small to medium tanker full. Why would adding another small tanker to the task force – or even bringing it in independently to Ascension – have been prohibitively expensive? The task force already included several tankers, and there were other O-class and Tide-class RFAs that weren’t sent south.
Also, I think it would be useful to draw a distinction between “helping one side” and “not helping the other side”. Yes, there are lots of things the US could have done to help Argentina – even without armed force, the US could probably, if it chose, have made the invasion very risky or impossible.
That it did not do this does not really mean that it was helping the UK. That’s the point I was trying to make about vital Soviet help in Panama.
(BTW, RAF Ascension Island is an RAF base built on British territory and used under lease agreement by the USAF, not a joint base, by the way. It’s not extraterritorialised AFAIK; it’s under UK jurisdiction and has a RAF station commander. If USAF personnel stationed there had tried to interfere with RAF operations, they’d have been arrested.)
August 19, 2010 at 11:23 am
silbey
vital soviet help in Panama
Panama is not part of a hemisphere from which the Soviets have explicitly warned European powers. If the conflict had been over such an area, I’d feel perfectly comfortable calling a lack of Soviet resistance, the provision of intelligence by the Soviets, the gift of aviation fuel stockpiles, and so on, “help.”
August 20, 2010 at 3:22 am
ajay
By that reasoning, the US has offered “help” to Cuba over the last forty years by not invading the island again. I don’t think the Cubans would see it that way. I really don’t think that unilaterally declaring a sphere of influence encompassing half the planet and then failing to create the biggest diplomatic crisis in half a century by enforcing it against one of your key allies can be classed as “vital help”. More “good sense”.
the gift of aviation fuel stockpiles
You seem to have inadvertently typed “gift” when you should have typed “sale at market prices under an existing bilateral fuel exchange agreement”.
the provision of intelligence
Or not. According to “VULCAN 607”, a history of the Black Buck raids, UK defence secretary John Nott and CSA Ronald Mason went to Washington to ask for US satellite imagery of the area, and were denied it.
August 20, 2010 at 1:45 pm
silbey
By that reasoning, the US has offered “help” to Cuba over the last forty years by not invading the island again.
I don’t see that comparison. Cuba is not a European power attempting to intervene in the western hemisphere; it _is_ a western hemisphere power, albeit one we did not (and do not) like. When a European power did overstep itself military in regards to Cuba (ie the USSR in the early 60s), we did act aggressively to stop them.
You seem to have inadvertently typed “gift” when you should have typed “sale at market prices under an existing bilateral fuel exchange agreement”
No, I typed what I meant. As far as I know, the US was not required under the fuel agreements to sell its entire (or a substantial portion of it) stockpile on Ascension to the British. “Gift” is even more appropriate given that a commercial purchase of JP-5 military grade fuel, for delivery to Ascension within ten days to three weeks (when the British fleet got there) would have been difficult and enormously expensive.
Or not. According to “VULCAN 607″, a history of the Black Buck raids, UK defence secretary John Nott and CSA Ronald Mason went to Washington to ask for US satellite imagery of the area, and were denied it.
They were denied it early on because the U.S. didn’t have satellites looking at the South Atlantic and it took a substantial time to repurpose them. Once they were shifted, at least according to Simon Jenkins and Max Hasting in _The Battle for the Falklands_, satellite imagery was provided.
But if that’s a problem, I’ll list a couple of other ways the US helped, intelligence-wise: the NSA and British intelligence worked together to (successfully) break Argentinian communications codes and intercept Argentinian messages, and the CIA seems to have provided intelligence from its Buenos Ares office.