Category: British Forces

The Soul of a Regiment

By Talbot Mundy

First published in Adventure magazine, February 1912

Talbot Mundy, perhaps the most incredible adventure writer of the 20th century, wrote “The Soul Of A Regiment” at the beginning of his career.  Voted the greatest story ever published in “Adventure,” this story cemented Mundy’s reputation.[1]

I


So long as its colors remain, and there is one man left to carry them, a regiment can never die; they can recruit it again around that one man, and the regiment will continue on its road to future glory with the same old traditions behind it and the same atmosphere surrounding it that made brave men of its forbears.       So, although the colors are not exactly the soul of a regiment, they are the concrete embodiment of it and are even more sacred than the person of a reigning sovereign.

The First Egyptian Foot had colors — and has them still, thanks to Billy Grogram; so the First Egyptian Foot is still a regiment.  It was the first of all the regiments raised in Egypt, and the colors were lovely crimson things on a brand new polished pole, cased in the regulation jacket of black waterproof and housed with all pomp and ceremony in the mess-room at the barracks.  There were people who said it was bad policy to present colors to a native regiment; that they were nothing more than a symbol of a decadent and waning monarchism in any case, and that the respect which would be due them might lead dangerously near to fetish-worship.  As a matter of cold fact, though, the raw recruits of the regiment failed utterly to understand them, and it was part of Billy Grogram’s business to instill in them a wholesome respect for the sacred symbol of regimental honor.

He was Sergeant-Instructor William Stanford Grogram, V.C., D.S.M., to give him his full name and title, late a sergeant-major of the True and Tried, time expired, and retired from service on a pension.  His pension would have been enough for him to live on, for he was unmarried, his habits were exemplary, and his wants were few; but an elder brother had been a ne’er-do- well, and Grogram, who was the type that will die rather than let any one of his depend on charity, left the army with a sister-in-law and a small tribe of children dependent on him.  Work, of course, was the only thing left for it, and he applied promptly for the only kind of work that he knew how to do.

The British are always making new regiments out of native material in some part of the world; they come cheaper than white troops, and, with a sprinkling of white troops among them, they do wonderfully good service in time of war — thanks to the sergeant instructors.  The officers get the credit for It, but it is the ex-noncommissioned officers of the Line who do the work, as Grogram was destined to discover. They sent him out to Instruct the First Egyptian Foot, and it turned out to be the toughest proposition that anyone lonely, determined, homesick, fighting man ever ran up against.

He was not looking for a life of idleness and ease, so the discomfort of his new quarters did not trouble him overmuch, though they would have disgusted another man at the very beginning.  They gave him a little, white-washed, mud-walled hut with two bare rooms in it and a lovely view on three sides of aching desert sand; on the fourth, a blind wall.

It was as hot inside as a baker’s oven, but It had the one great advantage of being easily kept clean, and Grogram, whose fetish was cleanliness, bore that in mind and forbore to grumble at the absence of a sergeant’s mess and the various creature comforts that his position had entitled him to for years.

What did disgust him, though, was the unfairness of saddling the task that lay in front of him on the shoulders of one lone man; his officers made it quite clear that they had no intention of helping him in the least; from the Colonel downward they were ashamed of the regiment, and they expected Grogram to work it into something like shape before they even began to take an interest in it.  The Colonel went even further than that; he appeared at Orderly Room every morning and once a week attended a parade out on the desert where nobody could see the awful evolutions of his raw command, but he actually threw cold water on Grogram’s efforts at enthusiasm.

“You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,” he told him a few mornings after Grogram joined, “or well-drilled soldiers out of Gyppies.  Heaven only knows what the Home Government means by trying to raise a regiment out here; at the very best, we’ll only be teaching the enemy to fight us! But you’ll find they won’t learn.  However, until the Government finds out what a ghastly mistake’s being made, there’s nothing for it but to obey orders and drill Gyppies.  Go ahead, Grogram; I give you a free hand.  Try anything you like on them, but don’t ask me to believe there’ll be any result from it.  Candidly, I don’t.”

But Grogram happened to be a different type of man from his new Colonel.  After a conversation such as that, he could have let things go hang had he chosen to, drawing his pay, doing his six hours’ work a day along the line of least resistance, and blaming the inevitable consequences on the Colonel.  But to him, a duty was something to be done; an impossibility was something to set his clean-shaven, stubborn jaw at and to overcome; and a regiment was a regiment to be kneaded, pummeled, damned, coaxed, and drilled till it began to look as the true and tried used to look in the days when he was sergeant-major.  So he twisted his little brown mustache and drew himself up to the full height of his five feet eight inches, spread his well-knit shoulders, straightened his ramrod of a back, and got busy on the job while his Colonel and the other officers did the social rounds in Cairo and cursed their luck.

The material that Grogram had to work with were fellaheen — good, honest coal-black negroes, giants in stature, the embodiment of good-humored incompetence, children of the soil weaned on raw-hide whips under the blight of Turkish misrule and Arab cruelty.[2]  They had no idea that they were even men till Grogram taught them, and he had to learn Arabic first before he could teach them even that.

They began by fearing him, as their ancestors had feared every new breed of task-master for centuries; gradually, they learned to look for instant and amazing justice at his hands, and from then on, they respected him.  He caned them instead of getting them fined by the Colonel or punished with pack drill for failing things they did not understand; they were thoroughly accustomed to the lash, and his light swagger cane laid on their huge shoulders was a joke that served merely to point his arguments and fix his lessons in their memories; they would not have understood the Colonel’s wrath had he known that the men of his regiment were being beaten by a non-commissioned officer.

They began to love him when he harked back to the days when he was a recruit himself and remembered the steps of a double shuffle that he had learned in the barrack room; when he danced a buck and wing dance for them, they recognized him as a man and a brother, and from that time on, instead of giving him all the trouble they could and laughing at his lectures when his back was turned, they genuinely tried to please him.

So he studied out more steps and danced his way into their hearts, growing daily stricter on parade, daily more exacting of pipe-clay and punctuality, and slowly, but surely as the march of time, molding them into something like a regiment.

Even he could not teach them to shoot, though he sweated over them on the dazzling range until the sun dried every drop of sweat out of him.  And for a long time, he could not even teach them how to march; they would keep step for a hundred yards or so and then lapse into the listless shrinking stride that was the birthright of centuries.

He pestered the Colonel for a band of sorts until the Colonel told him angrily to go to blazes; then, he wrote home and purchased six fifes with his own money, bought a native drum in the bazaar, and started a band on his own account.

Had he been able to read music himself, he would have been no better off because, of course, the fellaheen he had to teach could not have read it either, though possibly he might have slightly increased the number of tunes in their repertoire.

As it was, he knew only two tunes himself: “The Campbells Are Coming” and the National Anthem.

 He picked the six most intelligent men he could find and whistled those two tunes to them until his lips were dry, his cheeks ached, and his very soul revolted at the sound of them.  But the six men picked them up, and, of course, any negro in the world can beat a drum.  One golden morning before the sun had heated the desert air, the regiment marched past in really good formation, all in step and tramping to the tune of “God Save the Queen.”

The Colonel nearly had a fit, but the regiment tramped on, and the band played them back to barracks with a swing and a rhythm that was new not only to the First Egyptian Foot; it was new to Egypt!  The tune was half a tone flat, maybe, and the drum was a sheepskin business bought in the bazaar, but a new regiment marched behind it.  And behind the regiment — two paces right flank, as the regulations specify — marched a sergeant-instructor with a new light in his eyes — the gray eyes that had looked out so wearily from beneath the shaggy eyebrows and that shone now with the pride of a deed well done.

Of course, the Colonel was still scornful.  But Billy Grogram, who had handled men when the Colonel was cutting his teeth at Sandhurst and who knew men from the bottom up, knew that the mob of unambitious countrymen, who had grinned at him in uncomfortable silence when he first arrived, was beginning to forget its mobdom.  He, who spent his hard-earned leisure talking to them and answering their childish questions in hard-won Arabic, knew that they were slowly grasping the theory of the thing — that a soul was forming in the regiment — an indefinable, unexplainable but obvious change, perhaps not unlike the change from infancy to manhood.

And Billy Grogram, who above all was a man of clean ideals, began to feel content.  He still described them in his letters home as “blooming mummies made of Nile mud, roasted black for their sins, and good for nothing but the ash-heap.”  He still damned them on parade, whipped them when the Colonel wasn’t looking, and worked at them until he was much too tired to sleep, but he began to love them.  And to a big, black, grinning man of them, they loved him.  To encourage that wondrous band of his, he set them to playing their two tunes on guest nights outside the officers’ mess, and the officers endured it until the Colonel returned from furlough.  He sent for Grogram and offered to pay him back all he had spent on instruments, provided the band should keep away in the future.

Grogram refused the money and took the hint, inventing weird and hitherto unheard-of reasons why it should be unrighteous for the band to play outside the mess and preaching respect for officers in spite of it.  Like all great men, he knew when he had made a mistake and how to minimize it.

His hardest task was teaching the Gyppies what their colors meant. The men were Mohammedans; they believed in Allah; they had been taught from the time when they were old enough to speak that idols and the outward symbols of religion are the signs of heresy, and Grogram’s lectures, delivered in stammering and uncertain Arabic, seemed to them like the ground-plan of a new religion.  But Grogram stuck to it.  He made opportunities for saluting the colors — took them down each morning and uncased them, and treated them with an ostentatious respect that would have been laughed at among his own people.

When his day’s work was done and he was too tired to dance for them, he would tell them long tales, done into halting Arabic, of how regiments had died rallying around their colors, of a brand new paradise, invented by himself and suitable to all religions, where soldiers went who honored their colors as they ought to do; of the honor that befell a man who died fighting for them, and of the tenfold honor of the man whose privilege it was to carry them into action.  And in the end, although they did not understand him, they respected the colors because he told them to.


II

WHEN England hovered on the brink of indecision and sent her greatest general to hold Khartoum with only a handful of native troops to help him, the First Egyptian Foot refused to leave their gaudy crimson behind them.  They marched with colors flying down to the steamer that was to take them on the first long stage of their journey up the Nile, and there were six fifes and a drum in front of them that told whoever cared to listen that “The Campbells are coming — hurrah! hurrah!”

They marched with the measured tramp of a real regiment; they carried their chins high; their tarbooshes were cocked at a knowing angle, and they swung from the hips like grown men.[3]  At the head of the regiment rode a Colonel whom the regiment scarcely knew, and beside it marched a dozen officers in a like predicament; but behind it, his sword strapped to his side and his little swagger-cane tucked under his left arm-pit, Inconspicuous, smiling and content, marched Sergeant-Instructor Grogram, whom the regiment knew and loved, and who had made and knew the regiment.

The whole civilized world knows — and England knows to her enduring shame — what befell General Gordon and his handful of men when they reached Khartoum.  Gordon surely guessed what was in store for him even before he started, his subordinates may have done so, and the native soldiers knew.  But Sergeant-Instructor Grogram neither knew nor cared.

He looked no further than his duty, which was to nurse the big black babies of his regiment and to keep them good tempered, grinning and efficient; he did that as no other living man could have done it and kept on doing it until the bitter end.

And his task can have been no sinecure.  The Mahdi — the ruthless terror of the Upper Nile who ruled by systematized and savage cruelty and lived by plunder — was as much a bogy to peaceful Egypt as Napoleon used to be in Europe and with far more reason.[4]  Mothers frightened their children into prompt obedience by mentioning his name, and the coal-black natives of the Nile-mouth country are never more than grown-up children.

It must have been as easy to take that regiment to Khartoum as to take a horse into a burning building, but when they reached there not a man was missing; they marched in with colors flying and their six-fife band playing, and behind them — two paces right flank rear — marched Billy Grogram, his little swagger-cane under his left arm-pit, neat, respectful and very wide awake.  For a little while, Cairo kept in touch with them, and then communication ceased.  Nobody ever learned all the details of the tragedy that followed; a curtain was drawn — of mystery and silence such as has always veiled the heart of darkest Africa.

Lord Wolseley took his expedition up the Nile, whipped the Dervishes at El Teb and Tel-el-Kebir, and reached Khartoum to learn of Gordon’s death but not the details of it.  Then he came back again, and the Mahdi followed him, closing up the route behind him, wiping all trace of civilization off the map and placing what he imagined was an insuperable barrier between him and the British — a thousand miles of plundered, ravished, depopulated wilderness.

So a clerk in a musty office drew a line below the record of the First Egyptian Foot; widows were duly notified; a pension or two was granted; and the regiment that Billy Grogram had worked so hard to build was relegated to the past like Billy Grogram.

Rumors had come back along with Wolseley’s men that Grogram had gone down fighting with his regiment; there was a story that the band had been taken alive and turned over to the Mahdi’s private service, and one prisoner, taken near Khartoum, swore that he had seen Grogram speared as he lay wounded before the Residency.  There was a battalion of the True and Tried with Wolseley, and the men used methods that may have been not strictly ethical in seeking tidings of their old sergeant-major, but even they could get no further details; he had gone down fighting with his regiment, and that was all about him.

Then, men forgot him.  The long, steady preparation soon began for the new campaign that was to wipe the Mahdi off the map, restore peace to Upper Egypt, regain Khartoum, and incidentally avenge Gordon. Regiments were slowly drafted out from home as barracks could be built for them; new regiments of native troops were raised and drilled by ex-sergeants of the Line who never heard of Grogram; new men took charge; and the Sirdar superintended everything and laid his reputation brick by brick, of bricks which he made himself, and men were too busy under him to think of anything except the work in hand.[5]

But rumors kept coming in, as they always do in Egypt, filtering in from nowhere over the illimitable desert, borne by stray camel drivers, carried by Dervish spies, tossed from tongue to tongue through the fish market, and carried up back stairs to Clubs and Department Offices.  There were tales of a drummer and three men who played the fife and a wonderful mad feringhee who danced as no man surely ever danced before.  The tales varied, but there were always four musicians and a feringhee.[6]

When one Dervish spy was caught and questioned, he swore by the beard of the prophet that he had seen the men himself.  He was told promptly that he was a liar; how came it that a feringhee — a pork-fed, infidel Englishman — should be allowed to live anywhere the Mahdi’s long arm reached?

“Whom God hath touched—” the Dervish quoted, and men remembered that madness is the surest passport throughout the whole of Northern Africa.  But nobody connected Grogram with the feringhee who danced.

But another man was captured who told a similar tale, and then a Greek trader turned Mohammedan to save his skin, who had made good his escape from the Mahdi’s camp. He swore to have seen this man as he put in one evening at a Nile bank village in a native dhow.  He was dressed in an ancient khaki tunic and a loin-cloth; he was bare-legged, shoeless, and his hair was long over his shoulders and plastered thick with mud.  No, he did not look in the least like a British soldier, though he danced as soldiers sometimes did beside the campfires.

Three natives who were with him played fifes while the feringhee danced, and one man beat a drum.     Yes, the tunes were English tunes, though very badly played; he had heard them before and recognized them.  No, he could not hum them; he knew no music.  Why had he not spoken to the man who danced?  He had not dared.  The man appeared to be a prisoner, and so were the natives with him; the man had danced that evening until he could dance no longer, and then the Dervishes had beaten him with a kurbash for encouragement: the musicians had tried to interfere, and they had all been beaten and left lying there for dead.[7] He was not certain, but he was almost certain they were dead before he came away.

Then, more than three years after Gordon died, there came another rumor, this time from closer at hand — somewhere in the neutral desert zone that lay between the Dervish outpost and the part of Lower Egypt that England held.  This time, the dancer was reported to be dying, but the musicians were still with him.  They got the name of the dancer this time; it was reported to be Goglam, and though that was not at all a bad native guess for Grogram, nobody apparently noted the coincidence.

Men were too busy with their work; the rumor was only one of a thousand that filtered across the desert every month, and nobody remembered the non-commissioned officer who had left for Khartoum with the First Egyptian Foot; they could have recalled the names of all the officers almost without an effort, but not Grogram’s.

III

And with the proficiency, of course, came competition — matches between regiments for the regimental cup and, finally, the biggest event of the Cairo season, the match between the Civil Service and the Army of Occupation, or, as it was more usually termed, “The Army vs. The Rest.”  That was the one society event that the Sirdar made a point of presiding over in person.

EGYPT was busy with the hum of building — empire-building under a man who knew his job.  Almost the only game the Sirdar countenanced was polo, and that was only because it kept officers and civilians fit.  He gave them all the polo, though, that they wanted, and the men grew keen on it, spent money on it, and, needless to say, grew extraordinarily proficient.

He attended it in mufti always but sat in the seat of honor, just outside the touch-line, halfway down the field, and behind him, held back by ropes, clustered the whole of Cairene society, on foot, on horseback and in dog carts, buggies, gigs and every kind of carriage imaginable. Opposite and at either end, the garrison lined up — all the British and native troops rammed in together, and the native population crowded in between them and wherever they could find standing-room.

It was the one event of the year for which all Egypt, Christian and Mohammedan, took a holiday.  Regimental bands were there to play before the game and between the chukkers, and nothing was left undone that could in any way tend to make the event spectacular.

Two games had been played since the cup had been first presented by the Khedive, and honors lay even — one match for the Army and one for the Civil Service.[8]  So on the third anniversary feeling ran fairly high.  It ran higher still when half time was called and honors still lay even at one goal all; to judge by the excitement of the crowd, a stranger might have guessed that polo was the most important thing in Egypt.  The players rode off the pavilion for the half-time interval, and the infantry band that came out onto the field was hard put to drown the noise of conversation, laughter, and argument. At that minute, there was surely nothing in the world to talk about but polo.

But suddenly, the band stopped playing, as suddenly as though the music were a concrete thing and had been severed with an ax.  The Sirdar turned his head suddenly and gazed at one corner of the field, and the noise of talking ceased — not so suddenly as the music had done, for not everybody could see what was happening at first — but dying down gradually and fading away to nothing as the amazing thing came into view.

It was a detachment of five men — a drummer, three fifes, and one other man who marched behind them — though he scarcely resembled a man.  He marched, though, like a British soldier.

He was ragged — they all were — dirty and unkempt.  He seemed very nearly starved, for his bare legs were thinner than a mummy’s; round his loins was a native loincloth, and his hair was plastered down with mud like a religious fanatic’s.  His only other garment was a tattered khaki tunic that might once have been a soldier’s, and he wore no shoes or sandals of any kind.

He marched, though, with a straight back and his chin up, and anybody who was half observant might have noticed that he was marching two paces right flank rear; it is probable, though, that in the general amazement, nobody did notice it.

As the five debouched upon the polo ground, four of them abreast and one behind, the four men raised their arms, the man behind issued a sharp command, the right-hand man thumped his drum, and a wail proceeded from the fifes.  They swung into a regimental quickstep now, and the wail grew louder, rising and falling fitfully and distinctly, keeping time with the drum.

Then, the tune grew recognizable.  The crowd listened now in awe-struck silence.  The five approaching figures were grotesque enough to raise a laugh, and the tune was more grotesque and more pitiable still. Still, there was something electric in the atmosphere that told of tragedy, and not even the natives made a sound as the five marched straight across the field to where the Sirdar sat beneath the Egyptian flag.

Louder and louder grew the tune as the fifes warmed up to it; louder thumped the drum.  It was flat, and notes were missing here and there.  False notes appeared at unexpected intervals, but the tune was unmistakable.  “The Campbells are coming! Hurrah! Hurrah!” wailed the three fifes, and the five men marched to it as no undrilled natives ever did.

“Halt!” ordered the man behind when the strange cortege had reached the Sirdar, and his “Halt!” rang out in good, clean military English.

“Front!” he ordered, and they “fronted” like a regiment.  “Right Dress!”  They were in line already, but they went through the formality of shuffling their feet. “Eyes Front!”  The five men faced the Sirdar, and no one breathed. “General salute — pre-sent arms!”

They had no arms. The band stood still at attention.  The fifth man the bare legs and plastered hair — whipped his right hand to his forehead in the regulation military salute — held it there for the regulation six seconds, swaying as he did so and tottering from the knees, then whipped it to his side again, and stood at rigid attention.  He seemed able to stand better that way, for his knees left off shaking.

“Who are you?” asked the Sirdar then.

“First Egyptian Foot, sir.”

The crowd behind was leaning forward, listening; those that had been near enough to hear that gasped. The Sirdar’s face changed suddenly to the look of cold indifference behind which a certain type of Englishman hides his emotion.

Then came the time-honored question, prompt as the ax of a guillotine — inevitable as Fate itself:

“Where are your colors?”

The fifth man — he who had issued the commands fumbled with his tunic.  The buttons were missing, and the front of it was fastened up with a string; his fingers seemed to have grown feeble; he plucked at it, but it would not come undone.

“Where are—”

The answer to that question should be like an echo, and nobody should need to ask it twice. But the string burst suddenly, and the first time of asking sufficed.  The ragged, unkempt, long-haired mummy undid his tunic and pulled it open.

“Here, sir!” he answered.

The colors, blood-soaked, torn — unrecognizable almost — were around his body!  As the ragged tunic fell apart, the colors fell with it; Grogram caught them and stood facing the Sirdar with them in his hand.  His bare chest was seared with half-healed wounds and crisscrossed with the marks of floggings, and his skin seemed to be drawn tight as a mummy’s across his ribs.  He was a living skeleton!

The Sirdar sprang to his feet and raised his hat, for the colors of a regiment are second, in holiness, to the Symbols of the Church.  The watching, listening crowd followed suit; there was a sudden rustling as a sea of hats and helmets rose and descended.  The band of four, who had stood in stolid silence while all this was happening, realized that the moment was auspicious to play their other tune.

They had only one other, and they had played “The Campbells are coming” across the polo field; so up went the fifes, “Bang!” went the drum, and “God Save Our Gracious Queen” wailed the three in concert, while strong men hid their faces and women sobbed.

Grogram whipped his hand up to the answering salute, faced the crowd in front of him for six palpitating seconds, and fell dead at the Sirdar’s feet.

And so they buried him; his shroud was the flag that had flown above the Sirdar at that ever-memorable match, and his soul went into the regiment.

They began recruiting it again the next day around the blood-soaked colors he had carried with him, and the First Egyptian Foot did famously at the Atbara and Omdurman.  They buried him in a hollow square formed by massed brigades, European and native regiments alternating, and saw him on his way with twenty-one parting volleys instead of the regulation five.  His tombstone is a monolith of rough-hewn granite, tucked away in a quiet corner of the European graveyard at Cairo — quiet and inconspicuous as Grogram always was — but the truth is graven on it in letters two inches deep:

HERE LIES A MAN.

Endnotes:

[1] Talbot Mundy (born William Lancaster Gribbon, 23 April 1879 – 5 August 1940) was an English writer of adventure fiction.  Based for most of his life in the United States, he also wrote under the pseudonym of Walter Galt.  Best known as the author of King of the Khyber Rifles and the Jimgrim series, much of his work was published in pulp magazines.

[2] Fellah, plural fellaheen (Arabic) — a peasant or cultivator of the soil among the Egyptians, Syrians, etc. Webster’s Dictionary, 1913 edition.

[3] Tarboosh, tarbush (Arabic) — a red cap worn by Turks and other Eastern nations, sometimes alone and sometimes swathed with linen or other stuff to make a turban. Webster’s Dictionary, 1913 edition.

[4] Mahdi — Muhammad Ahmad ibn as Sayyid Abd Allah (1844-1885) – otherwise known as The Mahdi or Mohammed Ahmed – was a Muslim religious leader, a fakir, in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.  He declared a jihad and raised an army after declaring himself the Mahdi in 1881 and led a successful war of liberation from the Ottoman-Egyptian military occupation. He died soon after his liberation of Khartoum, and the state he founded fell victim to colonial maneuverings that doomed it to reconquest in 1899.

[5] Sirdar (Hindi from Persian) — here, the title given to the British commander of the Egyptian army.  For other meanings of this term, see the articles in The Hobson-Jobson Dictionary. 

[6] Feringhee (Hindi from Farangistan, “Land of the Franks,” i.e., Europe) — a European.  Platt’s Dictionary of Urdu, Classical Hindi, and English.

[7] Kurbash (Arabic) — a whip or strap about a yard in length, made of the hide of the hippopotamus or rhinoceros.  It is an instrument of punishment and torture that was used in various Muslim countries.

[8] Khedive – Vicroy

Algiers Revisited

Some Background

The practice of state-supported piracy was a common practice in the 18th and 19th centuries.  One may recall that the fledgling United States went to war with Great Britain for a second time because the British navy accosted U.S.-flagged ships and impressed their crew to serve involuntarily aboard British ships of the line.  The U.S. government regarded this sort of behavior as a form of piracy.  If not that, then bullying.[1]  Additionally, European maritime states hired privateers to attack each other’s shipping.  The decision of Great Britain and France to pay tribute to the Barbary pirates encouraged the scallywags to increase their piracy — which benefitted England and France through less competition in the Mediterranean.  And, of course, the navies of England or France were not huckleberries a pirate vessel would want to challenge.

Before American independence, extortion along the North African coast was not an American problem.  The North American colonies were British Colonies, so the problem belonged solely to the Royal Navy and British Parliament.  After independence, however, American shipping enjoyed no protection from England or France.  After independence, our English cousins quickly informed the Barbary Pirates that they could avail themselves of American shipping at their leisure.  It didn’t take long; in 1785, Dey Mohammed of Algiers declared war on the United States and captured several U.S. commercial ships.  The financially troubled American Confederation could not pay exorbitant ransoms for the return of ships, crews, or cargo.  Nor could the Americans afford to raise a navy — or pay tribute.  So, the United States attempted to negotiate with Islamic pirates.

The Barbary Coast included several North African states.  Morocco, an independent kingdom, seized U.S. merchant vessels in 1784 after the Americans ignored its diplomatic overtures.  However, once the U.S. acknowledged Morocco’s strategic position, negotiations progressed smoothly and productively; by 1786, a trade agreement did exist between the U.S. and Morocco.  Conversely, Algiers assumed a belligerent, condescending tone in demanding tributes that the United States could not afford.  To circumvent Algiers, the U.S. Minister of France attempted to establish a coalition of weaker naval powers to defeat Algiers.  Our minister was unsuccessful in this; his name was Thomas Jefferson.  However, Portugal was also at war with Algiers.  Its navy was strong enough to block Algerian ships from sailing past the Straits of Gibraltar, so American merchantmen had safe passage for a time.

A brief Portuguese-Algerian peace again exposed American merchant ships to extortion in 1793.  The efforts of diplomats sent to North Africa in 1795 concluded treaties with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.  The treaties agreed to pay tribute to these states, and the treaty with Algiers resulted in the release of about 80 sailors.

It wasn’t until after the ratification of the US Constitution in 1789 that the federal government had the authority to levy taxes and raise and maintain an armed force.  When Algiers seized American ships in 1794, Congress authorized the construction of six ships for a re-instituted U. S. Navy.

In 1797, William Eaton (a former Army officer) was appointed Consul General of the United States.  President Adams sent him to Tunis to negotiate peace and trade agreements with Tunis’s governor (Bey).  Tunis was the closest neighbor to Tripoli and the place of exile of the former Pasha of Tripoli, Hamet Karamanli (the elder brother of the reigning Pasha, Yusuf Karamanli).

While in Tripoli, Easton devised a plan whereby the United States would support the restoration of the deposed Pasha.  This, Eaton argued, would garner respect for the United States throughout the Mohammedan world.  However, Eaton had no support for his plan in Philadelphia.  Meanwhile, the Bey continued to demand tributes, and Eaton refused to convey his demands to the U.S. government.  Accordingly, the Bey of Tunis ordered Eaton to leave his country.  Hamet Karamanli, in fear for his life, fled Tunis for Egypt.

In 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli sought to punish the United States for its failure to make timely payments of tribute; he demanded higher tributes and polished off these demands by declaring war on the United States.  Algiers followed suit.  This was the first Barbary War — fought between 1801 and 1805.

For additional background about the United States’ involvement in two Barbary Coast Wars, seeAt Tripoli, Part I and At Tripoli, Part II.

The Fire Reignites

There was a continuing campaign by various European navies and the American navy to suppress Berber piracy.  The specific aim of this expedition, however, was to free Christian slaves and to stop the practice of enslaving Europeans, holding them for ransom, and stealing and selling ship’s cargo.  To this end, the campaign was partially successful.  However, Islamic barbarity did not completely end until the French conquered Algeria (c. 1830) and, in the process, sent many Algerians to meet their heavenly father.  Shamefully, the French were thrown out of Algeria in 1962. 

Yet, despite having been severely chastised by the United States Navy on two occasions, the Ottoman rulers of North Africa refused to cease their uncivilized behavior — which led to further confrontations with the Royal Navy in 1816.

Following the end of the Napoleonic Wars (1815), the Royal Navy no longer needed assistance from the Barbary States to provide supplies for Gibraltar and their Mediterranean fleet.  This lack of dependency allowed the British to exert political pressure on the Barbary states to end their piracy and practice of enslaving European Christians.

In 1816, Admiral Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth (Lord Exmouth), conducted a diplomatic mission to Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, backed by a small squadron of ships of the line, to convince the North African Ottoman Deys to stop the practice and free their Christian slaves.[2]  The Deys of Tunis and Tripoli unequivocally agreed to comply, but the Dey of Algiers was recalcitrant and the negotiations tempestuous.

Lord Exmouth, believing he had negotiated a successful treaty to stop Christian slavery, returned to England.  Sadly, confused orders sent Algerian troops to massacre 200 Corsican, Sicilian, and Sardinian fishermen who had been placed under British protection just after the treaty was signed.  The act caused outrage in Britain; Lord Exmouth’s negotiations were seen as a diplomatic failure, and his government ordered him back to sea to complete the job correctly and punish the Algerians.  Pellew’s squadron consisted of ships of the line HMS Queen Charlotte, Impregnable, Albion, Minden, and Superb, HMS Leander (a 50-gun frigate), HMS Severn, Glasgow, Granicus, and Hebrus (regular frigates), and four bomb ships, HMS Beelzebub, Fury, Hecla, and Infernal.

HMS Queen Charlotte (100 guns) served as Lord Exmouth’s flagship, with Rear Admiral David Milne as second-in-command aboard HMS Impregnable (98 guns).  The squadron was considered by many to be inadequate for the mission.  Still, Exmouth had already unobtrusively surveyed the defenses of Algiers, was very familiar with the town, and was aware of a weakness in the defensive batteries’ fire field.  He believed that more large ships would have interfered with each other without being able to bring much more fire to bear.  In addition to his main fleet, Lord Exmouth commanded five sloops, eight boats armed with Congreve rockets, and some transports to carry the rescued slaves.  When the British arrived in Gibraltar, Dutch Vice Admiral Frederik van Capellen (commanding a squadron of frigates) offered to join the expedition.  Lord Exmouth accepted van Capellen’s offer and assigned him to cover the main force from Algerian flanking batteries.

Preparation

The day before Lord Exmouth’s assault, HMS Prometheus arrived at the station.  Admiral Pellew assigned the commanding officer, Captain W. B. Dashwood, to rescue the British Consul and his family.  The Algerians discovered the rescue attempt and arrested some of the party.

Pellew’s plan of attack was for the larger ships to approach in a column, sail into the zone where the majority of the Algerian guns could not be brought to bear, and then come to anchor and bombard the batteries and fortifications on the breakwater (mole) to destroy the Algerian defenses.  Simultaneously, HMS Leander was to anchor off the mouth of the harbor and bombard the shipping inside the mole.  To protect Leander from the shore battery, HMS Severn and Glasgow were to sail inshore and bombard the battery.  Troops would then storm ashore on the mole with sappers and the Corps of Royal Engineers.

Go Signal

Admiral Pellew, aboard Queen Charlotte,anchored approximately eight yards off the mole facing the Algerian guns.  Several other ships anchored out of their position, notably Admiral Milne aboard Impregnable, 400 yards from his assigned station.  This error reduced the effectiveness of these ships and exposed them to accurate enemy fire.  Some other ships sailed past Impregnable and anchored in positions closer to the plan.  The frigate Granicus and the sloop Heron closed the gap created by the misplaced Impregnable.

Before hostilities, Lord Exmouth and the Dey of Algiers agreed that neither would fire the first shot.  Why Exmouth would even converse with an enemy about this is beyond me.  But the Dey’s plan was to allow the British fleet to anchor, sortie from the harbor, and board the ships with an overwhelming force of men.  Poorly disciplined Algerians mistakenly fired a gun at around 1515 hours, prompting Pellew to order an immediate response.

The Algerian assault force attempted to board Queen Charlotte, but that was a mistake of epic proportions — British broadsides sank 28 boats — running the rest to shore.  After an hour, the British silenced the cannon on the mole, which allowed Lord Exmouth to turn his attention to the shipping in the harbor, destroying those ships by 1930 hours.  The British destroyed one unmanned Algerian frigate by boarding her and setting it on fire.  Mortars and rockets destroyed three additional frigates and five corvettes.

The battle produced flotsam adrift in the harbor, some of it on fire and drifting toward ships at anchor.  These conditions forced some of Exmouth’s ships to weigh anchor and relocate for safety.  As these ships maneuvered out of the way, Impregnable became isolated from the other ships and vulnerable to enemy attack.  It didn’t take the Algerian gunners long to target the ship and began raking the 98 fore to aft.  Impregnable took 268 hits, suffering injury to her hull and damage to the mainmast in fifteen places.  Algerians killed fifty crew members and wounded 164 others.  At around 2000 hours, Admiral Milne asked Pellew to send an explosion vessel against a lighthouse battery that was mauling his ship.  The British exploded the vessel but to little effect.

With Algerian batteries unable to maintain their rate of fire, Lord Exmouth ordered the squadron to weigh anchor and withdraw out of range, leaving Minden behind to offer suppressive fires to further Algerian fire.  Wind changes permitted Exmouth’s squadron to move out of range, and by 0130, all ships were re-anchored, and the ship’s officers were caring for their wounded crews.

British casualties exceeded 900 men.  The British/Dutch force had fired over 50,000 shots and used 118 tons of gunpowder and 960 mortars.  Algerian forces employed 308 guns and seven mortars.  A covert inspection of the city by British cease-fire negotiators revealed that the Deylik of Algiers was destroyed.  The bay was filled with the smoking hulks of what was left of the Algerian navy; floating dead bodies filled the harbor.

Aftermath of Battle (August 28, 1816)

At noon, Lord Exmouth sent a letter to the Dey:

Sir:

For your atrocities at Bona on defenseless Christians and your unbecoming disregard of the demands I made yesterday in the name of the Prince Regent of England, the fleet under my orders has given you a signal chastisement by the destruction of your navy storehouse and arsenal, with half your batteries.  As England does not war for the destruction of cities, I am unwilling to visit your personal cruelties upon the unoffending inhabitants of the country, and I therefore offer you the same terms of peace which I conveyed to you yesterday in my Sovereign’s name.  Without your acceptance of these terms, you can have no peace with England.

Admiral Pellew warned the Dey that the action would continue if he did not accept his terms.  Wisely, the Dey took Lord Exmouth’s terms, not realizing that Exmouth was bluffing.  His squadron was out of shot and gunpowder.  If the action were to continue, it would have to be after replenishment at Gibraltar. Upon the signing of the formal treaty on September 24, 1816, the Dey freed 1,083 enslaved Christians.  He would later free 3,000 more.

Endnotes:

[1] The Royal Navy was not without some justification for at-sea impressments.  Service in the Royal Navy was at all times a hard life, and more than a few English sailors deserted their ships and signed on as deck-hands aboard commercial vessels, where life was easier, as a means of earning their income.  It was bad enough that the Royal Navy began the practice of stopping ships at sea and apprehending deserters.

[2] Dey is a title given to commanders or (from 1710) governors of the Janissaries of Algiers and extended to other Ottoman officials by Western writers—also, Bey.

Voyage into Hell

Japan assaulted the Philippine Islands beginning on 8 December 1941.  American and Philippine Army troops defended the island through May 8, 1942.  The Japanese invasion came from the sea, from staging locations on Formosa (Taiwan) island.  In raw numbers, Philippine defenders outnumbered the Japanese invaders 3:2 — but the defense force was a mixed force of inexperienced regulars, national guards, constabularies, and untrained and highly disorganized commonwealth units.  The Japanese employed top-tier troops and concentrated their efforts on attainable objectives.  They massed their forces and swiftly overran most of the island of Luzon in the first thirty days.

But the Japanese field command had made a serious mistake.  Believing they had defeated the Americans, Japanese commanders redirected their best divisions for an assault on Borneo.  Meanwhile, American and Filipino forces withdrew to Bataan, where they formed defensive works.  Doing so enabled the fledgling allied force to hold out for another four months.  The defensive strategy allowed the U.S. Navy to reorganize and regroup its fleet after Pearl Harbor.

Japan’s conquest of the Philippine Islands is often spoken about as the worst military defeat in America’s short history.  Perhaps this is true — but it wasn’t because the men on the ground weren’t trying their best.  It was simply that their best wasn’t good enough.  In 1942, the Imperial Japanese Army killed or captured 23,000 U.S. military personnel and around 100,000 Philippine soldiers.

Beginning in April 1942, after three months of intense fighting at Bataan, the Japanese organized their prisoners for an overland march to several P.O.W. sites.  The Japanese did not have unlimited resources in the Philippines, and they were not prepared for the massive number of prisons suddenly demanding their attention and logistical support.  American and Philippine troops were moved from Saysain Point, Bagac, Bataan, and Mariveles to Camp O’Donnell, Capas, and Tarlac via San Fernando.

The Japanese forced their prisoners, many of whom were malnourished, suffering from malaria and other diseases, and some who were wounded, to trudge 65 miles in unbearable heat.  The Japanese did not care whether these prisoners survived the march — and between 5,000 and 18,000 Filipinos and around 650 Americans didn’t.  The rules were simple: any American falling to the ground would be instantly killed.

One of the men serving in Manilla when the Japanese seized the islands was John M. Jacobs.  Jacobs was taken prisoner in 1942.  Assigned to the Bilibid Prison, Jacobs and his fellow prisoners perform hard labor under the front sight of Japanese weapons.  When the Allied forces prepared to retake the Philippines in 1944, the Japanese began moving their prisoners to POW camps in Japan.  After herding American prisoners aboard Japanese cargo ships, where they were confined to dark holds, they were moved to the home islands.  These ships routinely carried supplies, weapons, and munitions to Japan’s forward bases, which made them primary targets for Allied aircraft and submarines.  Jacobs ended up on the Oryoku Maru.

Being placed aboard a Japanese ship was a frightful experience.  The holds were packed so tightly with men that some men, already suffering from disease and psychological trauma, could not breathe.  Panicked men began fighting and biting other prisoners.  To escape the melee, prisoners began climbing ladder wells — which prompted the Japanese soldiers to shoot them.  On the first night, Jacob reported between twenty and thirty prisoners had either died of suffocation or were murdered by fellow prisoners or Japanese guards during the night. Oryoku Maru shown at right.

An even greater danger to the prisoners was allied aircraft and submarines — whose crews did not know the ships contained American and Allied prisoners.  In mid-December 1944, allied forces attacked and sank the Oryoku Maru.  Jacobs, fortunate enough to find himself in the water, survived his ordeal by swimming to shore through shark-infested waters.

See also: Death on the Hell Ships: Prisoners at Sea in the Pacific War.

Little Ships — Massive Punch

Most people may know what an aircraft carrier is, but they may need help recognizing the designations CVA, CVB, CVL, CVS, CVAN, or CVN.  And there are ample reasons why they should.  The designations only have significance to the Navy and Marine Corps.  In essence, the designations are Carrier-Aircraft-Attack, Carrier-Large, Carrier-Small, Carrier-Anti-submarine, Carrier-Nuclear Powered Attack, and Carrier-Nuclear.[1]

If you imagined that the Navy has other nautical designations, you’d be right — we will talk about a couple of them.  Designations BB stood for battleships, and SS stands for submarine.  But the topic of our conversation today is DD and DE.  DD is the designation for destroyer, and DE stands for destroyer escort.  Some see these ships as tiny little fellows similar to coastal patrol boats (PCs) and torpedo patrol boats (PTs) — but they’d be wrong.

A destroyer is a fast, maneuverable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels of the fleet, convoy, or carrier battle groups and defend them against a wide range of general threats.  The destroy was a concept of the Spanish naval architect Fernando Villaamil as a defense against torpedo boats.  They were initially called torpedo boat destroyers (TBDs), shortened to Destroyer since World War I.  Between then and the beginning of the Second World War, destroyers were light ships with little endurance for unattended ocean operations.  In the U.S. Navy, the Allen M. Sumner class Destroyer grew to a displacement of 2,200 tons.  The more modern Arleigh Burke Class ship has a displacement of 9,600 tons.  The Burke-class guided-missile destroyer packs quite a wallop.

Currently, destroyers are the global standard for surface-combat ships.  Only the United States and Russia operate heavier cruisers.  No battleships or battle cruisers remain on active duty.  In terms of weight and size, today’s destroyers are the equivalent of cruisers from World War II.  In terms of firepower, there is no comparison.  Today, the destroyer averages 510 feet in length, displaces 9,200 tons, and carries more than 90 missiles.  Many navies use the term “frigate” for their destroyers, which leads to some confusion.[2]

Only a foolish sea captain will want to “take on” an American destroyer or escort — true from around 1931 – 1932, the U.S. Navy’s first post-World War I design.  The Navy’s redesign of the destroyer led to the Destroyer Escort.  During the interwar years, the Navy’s school of ship design, favoring some smaller destroyer design, drove home the point that the fleet should have a small ship favoring many of the destroyer’s features but constructed to perform chores too minor for the newer, larger, destroyers.  The debate was an important one leading up to the Second World War.

The destroyer escort originated in 1940, around fifteen months before Pearl Harbor.  On paper, the Navy was already wrestling with the problem of transatlantic convoys.  Fortunately, the quest for a smaller substitute for destroyers began when the British Navy completed its trial of small destroyers.  These were the twenty Hunt class ships measuring 272 feet, 28-foot beam, and 904 tons displacement.  According to a United States naval officer familiar with the background of the DEs, the Royal Navy ships came in for intensive study by U. S. naval observers.[3]  At top speed, they logged 32½ knots (37 mph), which took them out of the slow-poke escort category.  The Hunt class lent itself nicely to the evolution of the type of U. S. vessel under consideration. However, it must have been patent that a U. S. ship intended for transatlantic convoy rather than North Sea sweeps should place cruising radius ahead of speed.  At any rate, the small British destroyers furnished so many fundamental hints that what we can say about these World War II-era vessels is that they did bear a resemblance to their British cousins.

There were two geniuses behind the U.S. Navy’s development of destroyer escorts.  In 1940, the son of U.S. Marine Corps Brigadier General Henry Clay Cochrane, (then) Captain Edward L. Cochrane, and Commander Earle W. Mills, U.S. Navy.[4]  Both went to work with a will. While showing some kindship to the British Hunt class, the result was a distinctly new ship designed for convoy protection over long stretches of sea.

The compromise between destroyer and escort vessel is reflected even in the designation of the DE. Admiral Cochrane returned to the United States with his findings early in 1941.  He was Assistant to the Head of the Design Division of the Bureau of Ships until November 1942, when he was promoted to Rear Admiral and made Chief of the Bureau.  Commander Mills, promoted to Rear Admiral, became Assistant Chief.  In the meantime, the DE took substance on the drawing boards and then on the shipways.  Everyone in the Navy with surface combat experience immediately recognized the worthiness of these “small ships.”

There is adequate proof of this — forever embedded in the heroism of the men who manned these fantastic ships in World War II — and who man their newer versions today.

Destroyers (DDs) and Destroyer Escorts (DEs) are named after U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps heroes.  And some are even named for combat ships — to honor the memories of their entire crews.  USS Samuel B. Roberts is one of these.

Samuel Booker Roberts, Jr. (1921 –1942) was a Coxswain (pronounced Cox’in) killed in the Battle of Guadalcanal and the namesake of three U.S. Navy warships.  Roberts enlisted in the Navy in 1939.  He served aboard USS California (BB-44), USS Heywood (AP-12), and USS Bellatrix (AK-20).  Bellatrix was assigned to Task Group Four and became part of the Guadalcanal assault force.  As a coxswain in command of small boats, Roberts helped ferry supplies from the transport ships to the beachhead.

Japanese counterattacks began on August 7, 1942, forcing Admiral Fletcher to withdraw his landing fleet (for their own preservation).  Roberts volunteered to remain behind to support the Marines who had recently gone ashore.  He was attached to the beach master at Lunga Point.  The unit included both Navy and Coast Guard personnel, transporting Marines and supplies to beaches along the island’s northern coast — and evacuating wounded Marines.

On the morning of September 27, 1942, Roberts again volunteered — this time for a rescue mission to save a company of Marines that an estimated Japanese battalion of naval infantry had surrounded.  The rescue group of several Higgins boats was taken under heavy fire, which brought the mission perilously close to failure.  Roberts distracted the enemy fire by taking his boat directly before the Japanese firing line, drawing away their fire.  Roberts’s efforts permitted the evacuation of the Marines, but Roberts was mortally wounded.  Coxswain Samuel B. Roberts was awarded the Navy Cross medal for his valor in the face of enemy fire.  Three warships have been named in the young warrior’s honor: DE-413 (sunk on October 25, 1944).  Sam Roberts’s younger brother, Jack, was a USS Samuel B. Roberts crew member.  DD-823 was commissioned in 1946 and struck in 1970.  FFG-58, a guided missile destroyer, was commissioned in 1986 and decommissioned in 2015.

Our friend at Pacific Paratrooper recently publicized the announcement by Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro to name an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer in honor of Ernest Edwin Evans, the first American Indian in the U.S. Navy, to earn the Medal of Honor — and one of only two World War II destroyer captains to attain it.

Taffy Three 

The Battle of Samar was the centermost action of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the most significant naval battles in history, which took place in the Philippine Sea off Samar Island in the Philippines on October 25, 1944.  It was the only major action in the larger battle in which the Americans were largely unprepared.  After the previous day’s fighting, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) mobile striking force, under the command of Admiral Takeo Kurita, had suffered significant damages and appeared to be retreating westward.  However, by the next morning, the Japanese force had turned around and resumed its advance toward the Leyte Gulf.  With Admiral William Halsey lured into taking his powerful Third Fleet north after a decoy, the Seventh Fleet engaged to the south and recently landed 130,000 men of the Sixth U.S. Army, who were left vulnerable to Japanese assault at Leyte.

Admiral Kurita, aboard Yamato, took his large force of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers from the San Bernardino Strait and headed south toward Leyte, where they encountered Task Unit 77.4.3 (Call Sign Taffy Three), the northernmost of the three escort carrier groups under Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague (comprising the only American forces remaining in the area).  Composed of only six small escort carriers, three destroyers, and four destroyer escorts, Taffy 3 was intended to provide shore support and anti-submarine patrols and did not have guns capable of penetrating Japanese naval armor.

The Japanese opened fire shortly after dawn, targeting Taffy 3’s escort carriers, which Kurita mistook for the main carriers of the Third Fleet.  The escort carriers fled for the cover of rain squalls and launched their aircraft in defense, while the three destroyers, led by USS John V. Johnston, launched a torpedo attack that sank one ship and sent the Japanese strike force into disarray.

Japanese aircraft from a base at Luzon launched a kamikaze attack on the retreating American task force, sinking one escort carrier and damaging three others.  When aircraft assigned to Taffy Two joined the battle, the increasing severity of the air attack further convinced Kurita that he was engaging the Third Fleet’s surface carriers.  Satisfied with sinking what he believed were multiple carriers and worried the bulk of the Third Fleet was approaching, Kurita withdrew his fleet north, failing to carry out his orders to attack the landing forces at Leyte Gulf.

Taffy 3 sustained heavy losses, losing two escort carriers, two destroyers, a destroyer escort, and numerous aircraft.  Over 1,000 Americans died, comparable to the combined losses of American men and ships at the Coral Sea and Midway.  Three Japanese cruisers were sunk by air attack, and three others were damaged.  The Japanese had over 2,700 casualties.  Taffy 3 was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation.

Commander Ernest E. Evans, USN, served as the captain of the USS Johnston, serving in command since the ship’s commissioning on October 27, 1943.  Upon assuming command, Evans told his crew, “This is going to be a fighting ship, and I intend to take her in harm’s way.  Anyone who doesn’t want to go along had better get off right now.”

When the Japanese fleet was first sighted, Commander Evans did not hesitate.  After laying a smoke screen to help hide the escort carriers from enemy gunfire, he ordered his helm hard to port, and he led his destroyer out of the task unit’s circular antiaircraft disposition in favor of charging the enemy alone to make a torpedo attack.  Some claim that Evans told his crew over the ship’s intercom: “A large Japanese fleet has been contacted.  They are fifteen miles away and headed in our direction. They are believed to have four battleships, eight cruisers, and a number of destroyers.  This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected.  We will do what damage we can.”

Charging in against the Japanese along with USS Johnston was USS Samuel B. Roberts.  Roberts’ captain was Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland (1910 – 1973) (later promoted to Rear Admiral).

The fate of Johnston‘s captain was never conclusively established and remains the subject of debate among survivors of the ship’s crew.  Some say that Evans was hit by Japanese naval shellfire; others claim he was last seen boarding a damaged motor whaleboat.  What is known is that Commander Evans was seriously injured during the battle and lived long enough to order his crew to abandon ship.  He was not among the rescued crew.

Copeland was a recipient of the Navy Cross Medal.  Commander Evans was a posthumous recipient of the nation’s highest award: The Medal of Honor.

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, after the Battle of Samar, wrote, “The success of Taffy 3 was nothing short of special dispensation from the Lord Almighty.”  Historians have cited the Battle of Samar as one of the greatest last stands in U.S. Naval History.

Sources:

  1. Copeland, R. W.  The Spirit of Sammy B.  Ocala, Florida 2007.
  2. Cutler, T.  The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23-26 October 1944.  Naval Institute Press, 2001.
  3. Friedman, N.  U.S. Destroyers: An illustrated Design History.  Naval Institute Press, 2005.
  4. Hornfischer, J.D.  The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailor.  Bantam Books, 2004.
  5. Thomas, E.  Sea of Thunder: Four Commanders and the Last Great Naval Campaign, 1941 – 1945.  Simon & Schuster, 2006.

Endnotes:

[1] The letter V is a designation for heavier than air (fixed wing) aircraft.  In Latin and Italian, the word “to fly” is volare; in French, it is volplaner.  Volplane means to soar or glide.  Lighter than air aircraft were designated by the letter Z (Zepplin).

[2] The word frigate has evolved from the 17th and 18th centuries.  It was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed and maneuverability, but today, its usage has little consistency.  Today’s U.S. frigates take on a guided missile role, anti-submarine operations, air defense, and littoral combatant ships.  The designation may also apply to destroyers and destroyer escorts — it all depends on who’s doing the talking. 

[3] The Royal Navy rated their Hunt class ships as true destroyers.

[4] Both Cochrane and Mills were promoted to Rear Admiral.

A Soldier’s General: William Slim — Part 2

Continued from last week

The Battle of Kohima was critical to both sides.  It took place in three stages from 4 April to 22 June 1944 around the town of Kohima (now the capital city of Nagaland in Northeast India).  From 3 to 16 April, the Japanese attempted to capture Kohima Ridge, a dominating feature adjacent to the road that became an MSR to British forces.

Once Slim could reinforce his infantry, he initiated a counter-attack between 18 April – 13 May 1944, which drove the Japanese from the ridge (although they continued to block the Kohima-Imphal Road).  From 16 May – 22 June, British forces pursued the retreating Japanese and reopened the road.  The battle ended on 22 June when British forces met at milestone 109.  According to historians, nowhere in World War II was a battle more savagely fought than at Kohima.

Field Marshal Alan Brooke sat on pins and needles throughout this fight, worried that the Japanese would defeat Slim’s force.  General Slim, on the other hand, was confident that his men would prevail.  It wasn’t an easy battle, but Slim judged that his men knew the stakes and that they would do their part.

Unlike the Japanese, who killed their seriously wounded men, General Slim insisted that his men receive optimal medical care if injured, including evacuation to sophisticated hospitals in India.  This is the sort of thing good commanders do — and it is precisely this sort of thing that prompted Slim’s men to fight their best fight.  They knew Slim would look after their interests.  On 8 August 1944, William Slim advanced to permanent lieutenant general.

By the end of 1944, most men serving in the British Fourteenth Army weren’t British at all.  Of 12 infantry divisions, two were British, and ten were Commonwealth organizations.  There were also three Chinese divisions, two U.S. Army regiments, and several Burmese tribal militias raised and trained by the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) and Special Operations Executive (S.O.E.).  Dealing effectively with many different national and ethnic groups was a full-time job.

General Slim launched his invasion of Burma in 1945 — but to accomplish such a feat, he had to extend his supply lines across hundreds of miles of jungle track.  In his assessment of the Japanese 15th Army’s performance, Slim concluded that what hurt the Japanese Army most was that its logistics had broken down.

The Japanese Army in Burma had become a trainwreck, but what kept the enemy’s soldiers going was their radical devotion to the Japanese code of bushido — and their emperor, which demanded their willingness to die by any means necessary.  Knowing the enemy and his likely course of action, General Slim concluded that it would be a far better strategy to bypass the enemy and let him wither on the vine than to vanquish him in combat.

Sensible strategies aside, General Slim knew it would be impossible for him to replace his battle losses.  There was no “conscription” in India, and there were no more “volunteer recruits” from India or colonial Africa.  Most Anglo soldiers were fighting in Europe.  For these reasons, Slim had no intention of allowing the Japanese to grind his Army down in Burma, and he was determined to kill 100 Japanese for every one of his men killed in action.

That said, General Slim maintained a positive relationship with his officers and the men under his command.  Beyond Slim’s superior logistical skills, he trusted his officers to make correct decisions without deferring to him, and he was willing to delegate authority while retaining responsibility.  General Slim inspired his subordinates to excel in their tasks, no matter how mundane they seemed.

The Elephants

When General Slim turned to James Howard Williams for engineering help, he seemed to have borrowed from U.S. Marine Corps doctrine, “Improvise, Adapt, Overcome.” Williams was the son of a mining engineer from Cornwall, England — employed as a forest manager with the Bombay-Burma Trading Company.  He became captivated by the strength, intelligence, and (he said) the sense of humor displayed by elephants that used to haul fallen timber. He was a man that some say might have stepped right out of the pages of any good Rudyard Kipling tale.

After the Japanese invaded Burma in 1942, Williams joined a British special forces unit specializing in guerrilla warfare.  Deep in the Burmese jungle, Williams’ elephant company built bridges and ferried weapons and supplies to forward operating units.  People referred to Williams as “Elephant Bill,” and his favorite “lead” elephant was Bandoola.[1]

Williams operated as part of Force 136 of the British S.O.E.  At the Burma Campaign’s peak, he had more than 1,600 elephants and riders (mahouts) working for him.  Slim employed Williams (and Bandoola) to build bridges and rescue refugees.  Of course, Slim faced the same problems going into Burma that the Japanese had faced going through Burma, but Slim had made logistical issues his top priority.  For example, the Chindwin River is one of the most expansive rivers in the world and could qualify as a “war stopper.”  To cross this river, Slim’s engineers constructed the longest Bailey Bridge in the world (at the time).  To distract and confuse the enemy, General Slim ordered his Chinese divisions to initiate an offensive, causing the Japanese to believe there was an Allied interest in opening the Burma Road in central and southern Burma.

Slim began his advance by sending two Corps toward Mandalay and another along the coast toward Rangoon.  After receiving intelligence that the Japanese intended to defend Mandalay (from the east bank of the Irrawaddy River), Slim directed a feint attack on Mandalay from the north while crossing the Irrawaddy with another corps south of Mandalay at Meiktila.

The Irrawaddy’s characteristics made it an excellent defensive barrier: fast moving and as wide as the Rhine River — factors which caused the Japanese to believe that the British could not cross it.  However, much of the countryside surrounding the Irrawaddy consists of plains that favored the offensive.  General Slim employed a combined arms approach to his offensive, laying down overwhelming firepower against every effort by the Japanese to block his advance.  Slim first seized Meiktila and then set his sights on Mandalay.

Military historians argue that Slim’s plan was an operational masterpiece because seizing Meiktila left the Japanese with no chance of resupply — and with little interference, Slim captured the mouth of the Irrawaddy, where it flowed into the Bay of Bengal. For their part, the Japanese chose not to surrender — they intended to use old British forts and the maze of pagodas in downtown Mandalay to fight to the last man.  The following urban battle destroyed most of the city, finally falling to the British on 20 March 1945.

Combined with General Slim’s assault, Force 136 organized a popular uprising against the Japanese.  In addition to fighting the British from the front, native insurrectionists forced the Japanese to defend themselves from behind.[2]   

Toward the end of the campaign, the Army raced south to capture Rangoon before the start of the monsoon season.  Slim considered it necessary to capture the port quickly because monsoons would significantly restrict his ability to resupply his forward units.  Eventually, Slim seized Rangoon through overland, airborne, and amphibious operations.

After the Burma Campaign, higher headquarters informed General Slim that he would relinquish command of the Fourteenth Army to command the Twelfth Army to mop up residual Japanese forces in Burma.  Slim refused — saying that he preferred retirement rather than handing over the Army he created and cared for over so many months.  As the word spread about this decision, Lord Mountbatten, Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia (SACSEA), was obliged to rescind the order relieving Slim.  On 1 July 1945, Slim advanced to full (4-star) general and assumed command of Allied Land Forces, Southeast Asia.  His post coincided with Japan’s surrender.

Later years

Shortly after returning to the United Kingdom at the end of 1945, the British Crown invested General Slim as a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire.  In 1946, he assumed the post of Commandant of the Imperial Defense College.  A year later, he was appointed Aide-de-Camp to King George VI, and after two years of service, he retired from active duty on 11 May 1948.

In November 1948, Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, then serving as Chief of the Imperial General Staff, submitted his proposal to British Prime Minister Clement Attlee, recommending that General John Crocker succeed him as CIGS.  Attlee, who was no fan of the argumentative Montgomery, rejected the recommendation and recalled General Slim from retirement.  In January 1949, the Army promoted General Slim to Field Marshal and appointed him as Chief of the Imperial General Staff with a concomitant assignment to the Army Council of the United Kingdom.[3]

In November 1952, Field Marshal Slim stepped down as CIGS to assume the post of Governor-General of Australia, which he began in March 1953.  Slim was a popular choice for Governor-General because he was an authentic war hero who had fought alongside Australians at Gallipoli and in the Middle East.  In 1954, Governor-General Slim welcomed Queen Elizabeth II on the first visit by a reigning monarch to Australia.  In 1956, Slim published his Burma campaign narrative, Defeat into Victory.  This work is so popular that it has never been out of print.  Moreover, professional officers appreciate Slim’s honesty in discussing his failures, mistakes, and successes.

Second Government Retirement

In 1959, Slim retired and returned to Britain, where he published his memoirs, Unofficial History.

On 15 July 1960, he was created Viscount Slim of Yarralumla, Capital Territory of Australia, and Bishopston in the City and County of Bristol.  He has been succeeded in this honor by his son, John, and his grandson, Mark.

After his government service, Field Marshal Slim served on several boards of directors of British companies and as Constable and Governor of Windsor Castle on 18 June 1964.  He passed away on 14 December 1970 at the age of 79.

Reflections

Military author and historian Max Hastings stated, “In contrast to almost every other outstanding war commander, Slim was a disarmingly normal human being, possessed of notable self-knowledge.  He was, without pretension, devoted to his wife, Aileen, their family, and the Indian Army.  His calm, robust leadership style and concern for his men’s interests won the admiration of all who served under him … His blunt honesty, lack of bombast, and unwillingness to play courtier did him few favors in the corridors of power.  Only his soldiers never wavered in their devotion.  The spirit of comradeship Slim created within the Fourteenth Army lived on after the war in the Burma Star Association, of which Slim was a co-founder and first President.

A statue of Field Marshal Slim stands outside of the Ministry of Defense, unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990.  Slim’s papers were collected and cataloged by Ronald Lewin, Slim’s biographer, and presented to the Churchill Archives Center by Slim’s widow, Aileen, Viscountess Slim.  Mr. Lewin’s biography is titled Slim: The Standard-bearer.

Sources:

  1. Croke, V.  Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II.  Random House Publishers, 2015.
  2. Dower, J.  War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War.  New York Pantheon, 1986.
  3. Fraser, G. M.  Quartered Safe Out Here: a recollection of the war in Burma.  Harper Collins, 1995.
  4. Hastings, M.  Retribution.  Knopf Publishers, 2008.
  5. Hayashi, S.  and A. D. Cox.  Kogun: The Japanese Army in the Pacific War.  Marine Corps Association, 1959.
  6. Louis, A.  Burma: The Longest War.  Dent Publishing Company, 1959.
  7. McLynn, F.  The Burma Campaign.  Vintage Publishing, 2011.
  8. Worrall, S.  How Burmese Elephants Helped Defeat the Japanese in World War II.  National Geographic Magazine online, 28 September 2014.

Endnotes:

[1] Bandoola was an Asian elephant claimed to have been the same age as Williams.  He stood nine feet tall at the shoulders, he was a lavender color, and his ears were adorned with pink freckles.  According to Williams, Bandoola had a sense of humor — occasionally pretending that something was too large or too heavy to move until he garnered the attention of his riders/operators, then he would easily dispose of the material.

[2] As Slim advanced into Burma, he discovered gruesome evidence of the nature of Japanese rule in Burma, finding in village after village, the remains of Burmese peasants that had been tied to trees and bayoneted to death.  Whether wartime propaganda, it was said that the Japanese preferred to use real people in bayonet practice, rather than sandbags, which is normal in civilized countries.

[3] Reconstituted as the Army Board in 1964, the government created an Army Council in 1904 to correct certain deficiencies in the command and control of British forces arising from the Crimean War. 

A Soldier’s General: William Slim — Part 1

Here is, perhaps, World War II’s greatest general, and hardly anyone today knows his name.  Field Marshal William Slim is best known for commanding Fourteenth Army in Burma during the Second World War (1939-45).  In taking command, he inherited a disastrous situation in which, with practical skill and quiet charisma, he turned into victory.

Early career

Born in Bristol, England, in 1891, he was the son of John Slim and Charlotte Tucker.  John’s vocation was that of an iron wholesaler.  After completing his primary education at St. Bonaventure in Bristol, William enrolled at St. Brendan’s College to complete his secondary education until his father relocated the family to Birmingham.  His family, only moderately middle class, could not afford to send more than one son to university, and that opportunity went to William’s older brother.  After finishing his college work, William taught school and worked as a clerk at a company called Stewarts & Lloyds.

Despite his inability to attend university, Slim joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps at the University of Birmingham in 1912.  This decision led him to apply for an officer’s commission at the beginning of World War I (1914).  The government offered him a temporary commission as Second Lieutenant and assigned him to the Royal Warwickshire Regiment of Foot in August.  Given his middle-class upbringing and calm, unpretentious manner, many assumed that Slim had “come up through the ranks” to commissioned officer status.

In 1915, while serving at Gallipoli — an eleven-month battle that ended in defeat, Lieutenant Slim was severely wounded and required medical evacuation.  Upon his recovery, in October 1916, Slim returned to his regiment, which was then serving in Mesopotamia.  While serving as a temporary captain, he was wounded again in 1917 and evacuated to India.  During his recovery, his earlier battlefield gallantry earned him the Military Cross, Britain’s third-highest medal for displaying courage under fire.  After his return to full duty, the Army promoted him to temporary major and assigned him to the 6th Gurkha Rifles in November 1918.  At the war’s end, he reverted to captain and joined the British-Indian Army in 1919.  In 1921, he returned to the 6th Gurkha Rifles as a regimental adjutant.

In 1926, Captain William Slim married Aileen, the daughter of Rev. John Anderson Robertson of Edinburgh, Scotland.  Eventually, the couple would raise a son and a daughter, but soon after their marriage, the Army ordered Slim to the Officer’s Staff College in Quetta.

In 1930, while serving as a staff officer, the Army promoted Slim to Brevet Major, advancing to substantial major three years later.  In 1934, the Army assigned Slim as an instructor at the staff college in Camberley, England, where he taught through 1937.[1]  He afterward attended the Imperial Defense College, after which the Army promoted him to lieutenant colonel.  After his promotion, he returned to the Gurkha Rifles, where he assumed command of the 2nd battalion, 7th Gurkha Regiment.  In 1939, Slim advanced to regular colonel in the Indian Army, with a temporary promotion to Brigadier.  In June, he was appointed to head the Senior Officers School in Belgaum, India.

Second World War

At the outbreak of World War II, the Army appointed Brigadier Slim to command the Tenth Indian Infantry Brigade of the 5th Indian Infantry Division.  During the East African campaign, Slim led his brigade in Sudan — in operations intended to liberate Ethiopia from fascist Italians.  While fighting near Eritrea, Slim received his third combat wound during an assault on enemy positions at Agordat.

Although successfully treated for his wound, his injury prevented him from additional field service, so the Army assigned him to the General Staff in Delhi, India.  There, he performed operational planning and logistics duties in preparation for operations in Iraq.  In May 1941, the Army promoted Slim to Brigadier General Staff.  In the following month, Major General William Fraser, commanding the Indian Tenth Infantry Division, fell ill.  Slim was appointed to take his place with the acting rank of major general.

General Slim led the Division as part of the British “Iraq Force” throughout the Syria-Lebanon campaign and the invasion of Persia.  In 1941 alone, Slim was “mentioned in dispatches” twice.[2]

In Burma

In March 1942, Indian Army HQ promoted Slim to temporary lieutenant general and assigned him command of the Burma Corps — which included the 17th Indian Infantry Division and 1st Burma Infantry Division.  At the time, the Corps was under heavy assault from the Imperial Japanese Army and found wanting in battlefield mobility and military technology.  Initially, Slim had no choice but to withdraw the force from Burma into India, where he would refit and retrain for subsequent action.  During this period, Slim took command of the XV Corps of the Eastern Army, responsible for the coastal approaches from Burma to India east of Chittagong.

Soon after, Slim had a substantial difference of opinion with his senior officer, General Noel Irwin, Commander of the Eastern Army.  In essence, relieving Slim of his command, Irwin took personal charge of the XV Corps’ advance into the Arakan Peninsula, which ended in a complete disaster for the British forces.  Higher headquarters restored Slim to his command and removed Irwin from his.  At this time, the British HQ decided to reshape the Burma Force.

The newly created Fourteenth Army included IV Corps (United Kingdom), XV Corps (Arakan), and XXXIII Corps (Reserve Force), and General Slim assumed command in January 1943.  According to the analysis of two American historians, General Slim was a hardened field officer whose skill in training and troop leading was unsurpassed in the East Asian theater.  He had a solid grasp of soldiering in a jungle environment and knew his enemy well enough to defeat him.  Beyond his professional skills, Slim was judged as an introspective officer honest enough to anticipate inadequacies and fix them before they became debilitating problems.

One of his best moves as the Fourteenth Army commander was his decision to build the Division around his Gurkha Rifles division, as there could be no better example of combat readiness and aggressiveness than the Gurkhas.

Slim quickly got on with training his new Army to take the fight to the enemy.  The General’s basic premise was that off-road mobility was his biggest challenge.  Realizing that he could not rely on heavy equipment in low-lying marshy areas or thick jungles, he exchanged land-based equipment for mules and air transportation.  Slim kept the number of motorized vehicles to a bare minimum.

To facilitate combat resupply of forward units, General Slim revised his force operational template so that each unit operating on the forward edge of the battle area did so within an imaginary rectangular area.  Within these areas, Slim’s aerial logistics effort could drop supplies with reduced chances of air-dropping rations, munitions, petroleum, or equipment into the enemy’s hands.  These rectangular operating areas (tactical areas of responsibility (TAOR)) would also help to isolate the enemy should the Japanese attempt to cut the Army’s lines of communication. It was also effective against the Japanese-favored infiltration strategy.

Additionally, General Slim increased offensive patrolling, night-time operations, and low-altitude air insertion. He also taught the men to hold positions whenever the Japanese attempted to outflank Allied movements. In time, Slim’s troops overcame their belief that the Japanese were a superior army and their fear of the jungle.

The Chin Hills region formed a natural defensive barrier to Burma.  General Slim would have preferred to avoid this area, if possible.  Ideally, he would have preferred to conduct an amphibious landing further down the Burmese coast, but since there were no amphibious ready groups available, Slim had no choice but to make an overland thrust into Burma.

Complicating General Slim’s offensive planning was that his enemy, the Japanese 15th Army, had grown from four divisions at the beginning of 1943 to eight divisions before the year’s end.  Also, by the end of 1943, the Japanese had completed their Burma Railway, allowing the Japanese to quickly reinforce their Burmese area army.[3]

As Slim began training his men for the rigors of jungle warfare, he clashed with British Brigadier Orde Wingate, who took away some of Slim’s best-trained Gurkha, British, and African field units for his Chindit commando group.  Wingate’s argument was sound, however, especially given his task of creating a commando force that, once inserted by air, could not be quickly withdrawn.

Eventually, Slim approved Wingate’s plan to aid and employ the Burmese hill tribes against the Japanese.  Because of the suffering imposed on the Burmese people by the Japanese forces, most of these tribal groups remained loyal to the British.[4]  By using the hill tribes against the Japanese, the 15th Army would have to divert troops away from Slim’s Army to deal with them.

During the Second Arakan Offensive in January 1944, Japanese forces quickly surrounded the Indian 7th Infantry Division, along with parts of the 5th Indian Division and 81st West African Infantry Division.  The 7th Division based its defense on what was then called the “administrative box,” a defense formed mainly of logistical and administrative personnel (supply, clerical, cooks, mechanics, etc.).  It was an effective strategy for “holding the line” against counter-attacking Japanese, but it did not allow the 7th Division commander to push through his assault on the Japanese opposition.

At the start of 1944, William Slim held the official rank of colonel with a war-time rank of major-general and the temporary rank of lieutenant general, an appropriate rank for commanding a field army.  

Just after the new year, Japanese Prime Minister General Hideki Tojo approved a plan for victory in Asia, calling it Operation U-Go[5] and code-naming the invasion of India Operation Ichi-Go, intending to defeat China once and for all through its back door.[6]  These two operations (in India and China) were closely linked because American air forces regularly flew supplies over the Himalayan Mountains to China.  For this reason, the Japanese wanted to close American air bases in India.  South Asia and Southeast Asia were so important to the Japanese that they dedicated two million troops to these operations.[7]

Japan’s senior Burma-Area officer, General Renya Mutaguchi, launched his invasion of India on 12 March 1944, boasting that it was Japan’s road to Delhi.[8]  General Slim knew of Mutaguchi’s attack plan from early March through the efforts of signal intelligence, but there was nothing Slim could do about it but to meet it head-on with what he had.  Given Slim’s force levels, he could not invade Burma and defend against Mutaguchi simultaneously.  The principle of economy of force strongly suggested that Slim’s best course of action was to fight a defensive strategy.[9]

By fighting the Japanese from defensive positions, Slim would require the Mutaguchi to expend his human resources while preserving his own.  Slim’s advantage in defense was his superior tank, well-developed logistical system, and air power.  General Slim reasoned that he could proceed with his invasion plan after he had destroyed Mutaguchi’s combat force.

What caught Slim unaware was the rapidity of General Mutaguchi’s movement over Burma’s muddy and washed-out roads into India.  The situation forced General Slim to disengage the Japanese at Arakan, move two entire divisions to the north, and re-engage the Japanese defensively at the new location.  He could not have accomplished this without the exceptional support of the R.A.F. and U.S.A.A.C. that relocated these combat forces, resupplied them, evacuated the wounded and dead from the battlefield, and flew combat sorties against Mutaguchi’s forces.

What made General Slim stand out from other British commanders was his devotion to his men — and the degree to which his men reciprocated. General Slim ordered his men to hold their ground, forbade any retreat, and kept them informed about the battleground’s true nature. Slim’s troops trusted his judgment and his word.  No one retreated.

(Continued Next Week)

Sources:

  1. Croke, V.  Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II.  Random House Publishers, 2015.
  2. Dower, J.  War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War.  New York Pantheon, 1986.
  3. Fraser, G. M.  Quartered Safe Out Here: a recollection of the war in Burma.  Harper Collins, 1995.
  4. Hastings, M.  Retribution.  Knopf Publishers, 2008.
  5. Hayashi, S.  and A. D. Cox.  Kogun: The Japanese Army in the Pacific War.  Marine Corps Association, 1959.
  6. Louis, A.  Burma: The Longest War.  Dent Publishing Company, 1959.
  7. McLynn, F.  The Burma Campaign.  Vintage Publishing, 2011.
  8. Worrall, S.  How Burmese Elephants Helped Defeat the Japanese in World War II.  National Geographic Magazine online, 28 September 2014.

Endnotes:

[1] Between 1934 – 1937, Slim wrote short stories and novels under the pen name Anthony Mills.  Writing supplemented his meager income as a military officer.

[2] In the British forces, the term mentioned in dispatches means that a serviceman’s performance in battle was such that it deserved special mention to higher headquarters.  It usually reflects well on an individual’s gallantry or courage in combat.

[3] The Japanese achieved the construction of the Burma Railway through the labors of thousands of Allied prisoners of War — a story fictionalized in a novel by Pierre Boulle and a film by David Lean starring William Holden, Alec Guinness, and Jack Hawkins titled Bridge over the River Kwai. 

[4] These hill people numbered around 7 million of Burma’s 17 million total population.

[5] Launched in early March 1944, the operation was directed against British forces in the northeast Indian regions of Manipur and the Naga Hills (then part of Assam) but targeting the Brahmaputra Valley.

[6] Translated, “Operation Number One” involved a series of campaigns between Japan and the National Revolutionary Army of the Republic of China (fought between April – December 1944, targeting Henan, Hunan, and Guangxi, China.

[7] The Japanese knew that they lacked the logistical capability to sustain an invasion of India, so one of their assumptions was that the British Fourteenth Army would collapse, allowing the Japanese 15th Army to capture enough food to prevent its men from starving to death.  By enlisting the support of Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose, the Japanese expected the British Indian Army to mutiny, kill all of its British officers, and lay down their arms to a superior Japanese race — in this way, Japan could conquer all of India. 

[8] Scholars characterize Renya Mutaguchi as a reckless eccentric and certified fanatic.  His stubborn decision to limit his troops to twenty days of rations over a four-month-long campaign resulted in the starvation death of 55,000 of his 90,000-man Imperial Army.  Further note: Of Japan’s 5.5 million men serving in uniform during World War II, roughly 2 million served in the region of Indochina.

[9] Carl von Clausewitz developed nine principles of war.  One of those was the economy of force: employing all available combat power in the most effective way possible, in an attempt to allocate a minimum of essential combat power to and secondary effort.

The Battle of Plattsburgh (1814)

Background

In 1814, most of Britain’s army was engaged in the Peninsular War in Iberia.  When Napoléon admitted his defeat and abdicated the French throne, Great Britain could transfer 16,000 troops to the American shore.  Additionally, the British dispatched several experienced major generals from Lord Wellington’s army to command those troops.

The British

Britain’s Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, the Earl of Bathurst, sent instructions to Lieutenant General Sir George Prévost, Commander-in-Chief and Governor General of Canada, authorizing him to launch offensives into American territory, but cautioning him against advancing too far and thereby risking being cut off.  Lord Bathurst suggested that Prévost prioritize attacking Sackett’s Harbor on Lake Ontario — the American naval base, and then seize control of Lake Champlain as a secondary objective.  Prévost lacked the means to transport the troops necessary for an attack on Sackett’s Harbor and the supplies for them up the Saint Lawrence River.  Furthermore, the American ships controlled Lake Ontario, making an attack impossible until the British launched HMS St. Lawrence on 15 October, too late for major operations to be undertaken.

Prévost, therefore, prepared to launch his major offensive to Lake Champlain, up the Richelieu River (the only waterway connecting Lake Champlain to the ocean, trade on the lake naturally went through Canada).  Prévost’s choice of route on reaching the lake was influenced by the attitude of the American state of Vermont, on the eastern side of the lake.  The state had shown itself to be less than wholeheartedly behind the war, and its inhabitants readily traded with the British, supplying them with all the cattle consumed by the British army and even military stores such as masts and spars for the British warships on Lake Champlain.  Prévost determined to advance down the western (New York) side of the lake to spare Vermont from becoming a seat of war.  The main American position on this side was at Plattsburgh.

Prévost’s troop list for Major General Sir Francis Rottenburg’s division included the 1st Brigade under Major General Philipse Robinson (elements of the 27th, 39th, 76th, and 88th Regiments), the 2nd Brigade under Major General Thomas Brisbane (elements of the 8th, 13th, and 49 Regiments), and the 3rd Brigade under Major General Manley Power (elements of the 3rd, 27th, and 58th Regiments).[1]  Additionally, field artillery and cavalry provided general support to each brigade.  The effective troop list involved around 8,000 men, most of whom were seasoned combat veterans.[2]

The Americans

Major General George Izard commanded the Northern Army on the American side of the frontier.  In late August, Secretary of War John Armstrong ordered Izard to take most of his force (around 4,000 men) to reinforce Sackett’s Harbor.  Izard complied with his orders, leaving Brigadier General Alexander Macomb to command 1,500 men at Plattsburgh.  Most of Macomb’s men were casuals (sick, lame, lazy, or recruits).     

Macomb ordered New York Militia Major General Benjamin Mooers to call up the state militia and appealed to the governor of Vermont for militia volunteers, as well.  Eventually, two-thousand troops reported to Plattsburgh under Major General John Strong.  Macomb put these men to work digging trenches and building fortifications.

General Macomb’s main line of resistance was a ridge on the south bank of the Saranac River.  The fortification was laid down by the field engineer, Major Joe Totten.  It consisted of three redoubts and two linked blockhouses with other fieldworks.  The position was reckoned to be well enough supplied and fortified to withstand a three-week siege, even if the American ships on the lake were defeated and Plattsburgh was cut off.

After Izard’s division departed, Macomb continued improving his defenses, including a firing battery on Crab Island, adjacent to the field hospital, where wounded men could man the artillery pieces.

However, Plattsburgh’s three-thousand or so townspeople demonstrated their confidence in Macomb by fleeing the city — leaving it to the American army, lock, stock, and barrel.

On Lake and Sea

The British gained naval superiority on Lake Champlain in June 1813 when two American sloops surrendered to British field artillery along the Richelieu River.  Under Lieutenant Colonel John Murray, British land forces reinforced lake and riverine forces serving under Commander Daniel Pring (Royal Navy).  The combined force initiated provisioning raids along the New York and Vermont shores of Lake Champlain during the summer.  The losses and restrictions they imposed contributed to the defeat of Major General Wade Hampton’s assault on Montreal.

Lieutenant Thomas Macdonough, commanding U.S. Naval forces on Lake Champlain, established a secure base at Otter Creek (Vermont) to construct several gunboats.  What Macdonough needed were seamen, shipwrights, and supplies.  For manpower and critical supplies, however, he had to compete with Commodore Isaac Chauncey, commanding the navy on Lake Ontario.  It wasn’t until after a direct appeal to the Secretary of the Navy that Macdonough began receiving the men and materials needed to complete his mission.

In April 1814, the American Navy launched the corvette USS Saratoga (a ship of 26 guns) and USS Ticonderoga (a sloop of 14 guns, originally a partially-completed steam vessel).  The Americans gained naval superiority along with the sloop USS Preble (7 guns), the USS Eagle (a 20-gun Brig), and the substantial navy base at Plattsburgh.

The loss of naval superiority on Lake Champlain prompted the British to construct the 36-gun frigate HMS Confiance at Ile aux Noix.[3]  Captain George Downie, R.N. was appointed to command soon after the frigate was launched on 25 August, replacing Captain Peter Fisher.

As with Lieutenant Macdonough, Captain Downie was hard-pressed to obtain men and materials from the more senior officer on Lake Ontario.  Macdonough had managed to intercept several spars sold to the British by Vermont loyalists, which made Downie’s task all the more difficult.  The British knew full well what Macdonough was up to.  One story has a British midshipman named Joel Abbot conducting a raid against the U.S. Navy base and destroying several intercepted spars. 

Even so, the earliest Downie could deliver Confiance was 15 September — with no better than an untrained crew.  The promise of winter weather made General Prévost anxious to begin his campaign as early as possible; he continually pressed Captain Downie to prepare Confiance for battle. 

Shaping the Battle

General Prévost began marching south on 31 August.  General Macomb sent 450 regulars under Captain Sproud and Major John E. Wool, 110 riflemen under Major Dan Appling, 700 New York militia under Major General Mooers, and two six-pound guns under Captain Leonard.  Their joint mission was to fight a delaying action.

The Americans established their first contact with Prévost at Chazy, New York.  After an initial exchange of fire, the Americans fell back to set up a series of roadblocks and hampered British progress by burning bridges and mislabeling streets.  Unperturbed, the British steadily advanced.  When Prévost reached Plattsburgh on 6 September, the American rearguard retired across the Saranac, tearing up the planks from the bridges.

Having no firsthand intelligence about the Americans, General Prévost did not order an immediate attack.  When he did order the assault on 7 September, he had no more information than he had the day previously, which annoyed Major General Robinson to no end.  It meant he would have to probe the American lines and discover intelligence about their dispositions.  Wool’s regulars repulsed each British probe.

By the next day, General Prévost had abandoned his initial effort and instead began constructing batteries.  The Americans responded by using cannonballs heated red-hot to set fire to structures occupied by the British inside Plattsburgh.  American field guns forced the British to withdraw.

On 9 September, Captain George McGlassin led a company-sized night raid across the Saranac River, targeting a British Congreve rocket battery only 500 (or so) yards from Fort Brown (one of three American fortifications).  The Americans killed one officer and six enlisted men while wounding several others.  Having destroyed British artillery, the Americans withdrew, having suffered no casualties.

As the Americans and British continued exchanging fire, British patrols located a Ford across the Saranac three miles above Macomb’s defenses.  General Prévost decided that once Captain Downie’s ships arrived, he would order an attack on the American vessels in Plattsburgh Bay.  Concurrently, Brisbane would feint across the bridges over the Saranac as Robinson’s brigade crossed the Ford and made the main attack against the American’s left flank.  Once the American navy had been destroyed, Brisbane would transform his feint into a real assault.

Naval Action

Lieutenant Macdonough dispatched gunboats to harass the British advance, but he realized that his fleet was outgunned — particularly in long guns.  That realization convinced him to withdraw back into Plattsburgh Bay, forcing the British to engage at close range.  In that instance, the British and American squadrons would be roughly even in numbers and more evenly matched.

Macdonough used his time wisely to drill his crew for fighting at anchor.  He anchored the ships fore and aft in line, north to south, ordered as Eagle, Saratoga, Ticonderoga, and Preble.  He also laid out extra kedge anchors from the quarters of his flagship Saratoga, allowing him to spin the ship completely around.  Finally, Macdonough anchored his ten gunboats between the larger vessels.

Although Commander Pring’s fleet was already on the lake and at anchor, it took him two days to tow the frigate Confiance up the Sorel River from Ile aux Noix against wind and current.  Captain Downie finally joined the squadron on 9 September, but carpenters and riggers were still at work on the frigate, and a company of the 39th Foot augmented the ship’s incomplete crew.  To General Prévost’s fury, Captain Downie could not initiate an assault on 10 September because of unfavorable wind.

The British squadron sailed in the early hours of 11 September and announced their presence to Prévost’s army by “scaling” their guns.[4]  Downie reconnoitered the American dispositions from a rowboat shortly after dawn before ordering the British squadron to attack.

The British squadron looked magnificent as it rounded Cumberland Head, in line, abreast, with the largest ships northward and the gunboats to the south.  Historians tell us it was a fine autumn day with light and variable winds.  Downie could not maneuver Confiance to the place intended, across the head of Macdonough’s line.  Confiance suffered increasing damage from the American ships, forcing Downie to drop anchor around 400 yards from Saratoga.  Confiance’s broadside killed or wounded a fifth of Saratoga’s crew.  Macdonough was stunned but quickly recovered — and a few minutes later, shot from Saratoga stuck a cannon from its carriage, crushing Captain Downie.

Elsewhere along the British line, the sloop Chubb was badly damaged and drifted into the American line, where her commander surrendered.  The brig Linnet, commanded by Pring, reached the head of the American line, and opened a raking fire against Eagle.  At the tail of the line, the sloop Finch failed to reach station and anchor, and although hardly hit at all, Finch drifted aground on Crab Island and surrendered under fire from the 6-pounder gun of the battery fired by Macomb’s invalids.

Half of the British gunboats hotly engaged their enemies, and Ticonderoga responded well but was too heavily engaged to assist Saratoga.  The rest of the British gunboats intentionally held back from action — their commander later deserted to the American cause.

After about an hour, Eagle had the springs to one of her anchor cables shot away and was unable to bear to reply to Linnet‘s raking fire.  Eagle‘s commander cut the remaining anchor cable and allowed the brig to drift down towards the tail of the line before anchoring again astern of Saratoga and engaging Confiance but allowing Linnet to rake Saratoga.  Both flagships had fought each other to a standstill.  After Downie and several other officers had been killed or injured, Confiance‘s fire had become steadily less effective, but aboard Saratoga, almost all the starboard-side guns were dismounted or put out of action.

Macdonough ordered the bow anchor cut and hauled in the kedge anchors he had laid out earlier to spin Saratoga around — allowing Saratoga to bring its undamaged port battery into action.  Confiance was unable to return the fire.  The brave frigate’s surviving Lieutenant, James Robertson, tried to haul in on the springs to his only remaining anchor to make a similar maneuver but succeeded only in presenting the vulnerable stern to American fire.  Helpless, the ship’s only option was to surrender.

Macdonough hauled in further on his kedge anchors to bring his broadside to bear on Linnet.  Pring sent a boat to Confiance only to find Downie dead, and the ship had struck its colors.  Linnet also could only surrender after being battered almost into sinking.  The British gunboats withdrew unmolested.

After the fight, surviving British officers boarded Saratoga to surrender their swords to Macdonough.  The lieutenant refused, saying, “Gentlemen, return your swords to your scabbards, you are worthy of them.”  Commander Pring and the other surviving British officers later testified that Macdonough demonstrated every consideration to his enemy’s wounded and prisoners.

Land Action

Although General Prévost planned his attack to coincide with the naval engagement, it was slow to get underway.  Prevost’s staff did not issue orders to move until mid-morning when the battle on the lake had been underway for over an hour.  American and British batteries settled down to a duel, and the Americans gained a slight advantage.  Brisbane’s feint at the bridges was easily repulsed.  When a messenger arrived and notified General Prévost that Captain Downie’s ship had been defeated on the lake, he realized that without the navy to support his further advance, any military advantage gained by storming Plattsburgh would have been without merit.  Prévost considered that his only option was to retreat, and he called off the attack.  Bugle calls ordering the retreat sounded out along the British lines.

Some British staff officers had misdirected Robinson’s brigade and entirely missed the Ford, which was their objective.  Once they had retraced their steps, Robinson’s brigade, led by eight light infantry companies, soon drove the defenders back, and the British had already crossed the Ford and prepared to advance when orders arrived from General Prévost to call off the assault. 

The light company of the British 76th Regiment skirmished in advance of the main body.  When the bugle calls to retire were heard, it was too late to withdraw safely.  Americans quickly surrounded the company and spared no effort to shoot their enemy down.  While attempting to surrender his company, an American bullet killed Captain John Purchas while he was waving a flag of truce — which no one seemed to notice.  One additional man fell dead, three soldiers received injuries, and three officers and 31 other ranks surrendered to American authority.

In these few moments of chaos, Major General Brisbane protested his superior’s order to retreat but complied.  The British began their withdrawal into Canada after dark.  British officers ordered their men to destroy ammunition and stores that were too burdensome to move, but in the interest of quickly moving away from danger, large quantities of these supplies remained intact.

Until General Prevost’s order to retreat, there had been very little desertion in the British Army.  But during the retreat, 234 British soldiers decided they’d had enough and disappeared into the dark forests.  Very few deserters were from among the Peninsular War veterans or the two Canadian units in Prévost’s force.  Most deserters were from the Regiment de Meuron.[5]

Macdonough’s victory stopped the British offensive in its tracks.  Additionally, General Prévost managed to accomplish what the U.S. government had failed to do: bring Vermont into the War of 1812.  Up until the Battle of Plattsburgh, the British had used their victories at Bladensburg and Washington to counter any American demands during the peace negotiations — even despite the American success at the Battle of Baltimore, it was the American victory at Plattsburgh that allowed the United States to demand exclusive rights to Lake Champlain and denied the British claim to exclusive use of the Great Lakes.

 Success has many fathers; failure is a bastard.  General Prévost was relieved of his duties in Canada due to his failure at Plattsburgh.  When he returned to Britain, his version of the events leading up to defeat was initially accepted as the truth.  However, during the traditional post-defeat court-martials (held aboard HMS Gladiator at Portsmouth, England, in August 1815, Commander Pring was acquitted of misconduct, and the dispatches of Captain Sir James Yeo, Royal Navy, placed the blame for the naval disaster squarely on General Prévost’s shoulders for forcing Captain Downie into action prematurely.

As was his right, General Prevost demanded a court-martial to clear his name.  He died in 1816 before the trial could convene.

Alexander Macomb was eventually promoted to major general and became the Commanding General of the United States Army in 1828.  In recognition of their service at Plattsburgh, Thomas Macdonough was promoted to captain and appointed to the honorary rank of commodore.  Congress ordered Gold Medals and awarded them to Captain Thomas Macdonough, Captain Robert Henley, Lieutenant Stephen Cassin, U.S. Navy, and Alexander Macomb of the U.S. Army.

Sources:

  1. Borneman, W. R.  1812: The War that Forged a Nation.  Harper Press, 2004.
  2. Elting, J. R.  Amateurs, To Arms!  A Military History of the War of 1812.  Algonquin Books, 1991.
  3. Everest, A.S.  The Military Career of Alexander Macomb and Macomb at Plattsburgh 1914.  Clinton County Historical Association, 1989.
  4. Forester, C. S. The Age of Fighting Sail.  Doubleday, 1956.
  5. Herkalo, K.  September Eleventh, 1814 – The Battles at Plattsburgh.  Plattsburgh, New York, 2007.

Notes:

[1] Rottenburg served as the Lieutenant Governor of Lower Canada.

[2] Prévost’s command was not an altogether happy one.  The tension between the brigade and regimental commanders was at times, palpable.  Whereas Wellington had emphasized rifle marksmanship and tactical efficiency within the regiments, Prévost focused more on the appearance of the soldier’s uniforms than field skills.   

[3] HMS Confiance was a fifth-rate frigate.  Under the classification system used by the Royal Navy in 1814, a fifth-class ship was its second smallest class of warships.

[4] Firing naval artillery without shot to clear scale or rust from inside the barrels. 

[5] The Regiment de Meuron was a regiment of infantry originally raised in Switzerland in 1781 for service with the Dutch East India Company.  At the time, French, Spanish, Dutch, and other armies employed Swiss mercenaries.  The regiment was named for its commander, Colonel Charles-Daniel de Meuron.  The regiment entered British service in 1799 with participation in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War, the Mediterranean and Peninsula Campaigns of the Napoleonic War, and the War of 1812.  At times when the regiment was unable to receive replacements from Switzerland, the regiment recruited men from Spain and Portugal.  The regiment, along with all other Swiss military units in British service, disbanded in 1816.

Our National Anthem

O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light

What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight

O’er the ramparts we watch’d were so gallantly streaming?

And the rocket’s red glare, the bomb bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there,

O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Most Americans can get through the first five words of their national anthem, some as far as the first ten words, but after that, they begin humming.  Some would argue that it’s shameful that Americans don’t know their national anthem — and maybe that’s true.  But most Americans know the story of the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore, and they probably know it because that is the story told in the poem by Francis Scott Key, now titled The Star Spangled Banner.

There are three additional verses — which I imagine that no more than three or four Americans have ever heard recited, much less sung.

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep

Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,

In full glory reflected now shines in the stream,

’Tis the star-spangled banner – O long may it wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore,

That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion

A home and a Country should leave us no more?

Their blood has wash’d out their foul footstep’s pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand

Between their lov’d home and the war’s desolation!

Blest with vict’ry and peace may the heav’n rescued land

Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto – “In God is our trust,”

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Francis Scott Key is an enigma to many historians — as many of our founding fathers are.  Looking back in time, which is history, we are free to criticize those who went before us, but we can do nothing to change it.  History is history.  No one can change what has already happened.  They might learn from it, though.

Early Development

Mr. Key was born into an affluent family — his father, John Ross Key, was a lawyer and a judge.  During the Revolutionary War, John Key served as a commissioned officer.  Francis Scott Key’s mother was Ann Phoebe Dagworthy Charlton (1756 – 1830).  Her father was a tavern keeper in Frederick, in the colony of Maryland.

Francis Scott Key (1779 – 1843) was born and grew up on the family’s plantation, which the Key family named Terra Rubra.  The main house was constructed in 1770 by Mr. Francis Key, John Ross’s father and Francis Scott’s grandfather.  The property continues to exist near Keysville, Carroll County, Maryland.  The home was rebuilt in the 1850s due to structural deterioration and is not part of the federal registry of historic buildings.

After graduating from St. John’s College in Annapolis (1796), he read the law under his uncle Philip Barton Key, a British Loyalist during the Revolutionary War.  In 1802, he married Mary Tayloe Lloyd.  She was the daughter of Edward Lloyd IV — a very wealthy Maryland planter and politician.

Career 

For many years, Francis Scott Key was a leading attorney in Frederick, Maryland, and Washington, D.C..  He bought, sold real estate, and operated a successful trial practice.  In 1805, he and his family relocated to Georgetown (now part of Washington).  Key served as co-counsel to his uncle in the sensational conspiracy trial of Vice President Aaron Burr and the related expulsion trial of Ohio Senator John Smith.  He made the first of many arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1807.  For the next several years, he participated as legal counsel in several other high-profile cases.  From 1833 to 1841, he served as the district attorney for the District of Columbia while continuing to operate his private law firm.

Slavery

Francis Scott Key purchased his first slave around 1800.  Twenty years later, he owned six slaves.  In the 1830s, he freed seven slaves.  When he died, he owned eight slaves.  Several of his slaves continued to work for him for wages, which suggests that Key may have been kind to those who served his needs.  In his career, Key represented the interests of several enslaved persons seeking their freedom and slave owners seeking the return of their runaway slaves.  As the executor of the last will and testament of John Randolph, who, upon his death, freed more than 400 slaves, Key fought in court to enforce the will for over ten years, which involved procuring land with which the slaves could support themselves.

As a matter of humanity, Key openly criticized the institution of slavery because of its associated cruelty and represented the interests of blacks free of charge.  One quote, frequently attributed to Key by under-educated persons, has Key stating that black Africans were “a distinct and inferior race of people,” which is untrue.  He never said such a thing.  The misattributed statement comes from a letter he wrote to Rev. Benjamin Tappan of Maine in which he sought to describe the attitudes of some Americans toward people of color.  The fault may have been that of his biographer, Edward S. Delaplaine, in 1937.

Another issue was that some claimed Key sought to remove blacks from American shores because they could not earn wages in regularly paid work.  This is also untrue.  Key was a founding member of the American Colonization Society, as well as a fundraiser, but he did not participate in the forced repatriation of any black person to their African home.[1] 

Francis Scott Key died at the home of his daughter, Elizabeth Howard, on 11 January 1843.  Despite efforts to prevent it, city officials dismantled his Georgetown home in 1947. Key’s sister, Anne Phoebe Charlton Key, was married to Roger B. Taney, who served as Chief Justice of the United States.  One of his daughters married U.S. Senator George H. Pendleton, and another married a naval officer. Key’s son, Philip, was shot and killed by U.S. Congressman Daniel Sickles when he discovered that Key was having an intimate affair with Mrs. Sickles. Key’s grandson, Francis Key Howard, was ordered imprisoned at Fort McHenry by President Abraham Lincoln (along with Baltimore Mayor George William Brown), suspected of being Confederate sympathizers.   

Although Key had written poetry with heavily religious themes, his works were not published until 1857.  Two of his poems were adopted as Christian hymns.

The Story

The Revolutionary War did not solve the issues between the United States and the United Kingdom.  Tensions originated in long-standing differences over territorial expansion in North America and British support of American Indian tribes who opposed American colonial settlements in the Northwest Territory.

These tensions escalated in 1807 when the Royal Navy began enforcing restrictions on American trade with its enemy, France.  As part of enforcing those restrictions, the Royal Navy started impressing American seamen to serve in the Royal Navy.  The British claimed that these impressed men were British citizens, which gave the U.K. the right to conscript them into naval service — and in fact, some of these men (but not all) were British citizens who had abandoned their duties as members of the Royal Navy to serve aboard American commercial ships.

President James Madison would not abide by the continuation of Great Britain’s assault on the sovereignty of U.S. shipping.  Popular opinion was divided on the issue of whether the United States should declare war on the British for their transgressions.  Political majorities in the U.S. House and Senate voted for War, with Democrats favoring war and Republicans (Federalists) voting against the war.

The United States declared war on 18 June 1812.  At the time, the British were heavily engaged in the Napoleonic Wars and offered certain concessions to the Americans.  Unfortunately, news of those concessions did not reach the Americans in time to avoid armed conflict.

Initially, the British employed a defensive strategy because they were more concerned about defeating Napoleon than squabbling with the Americans.  With Napoleon’s defeat and abdication on 6 April 1814, the British turned their attention to the American shore.  Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane commanded the British fleet, while Major General Robert Ross commanded all land forces on the East Coast of the United States.

Encouraged by their victory at Bladensburg on 24 August 1814 and the subsequent arson of Washington, D.C., the British turned north to capture the major port city of Baltimore, Maryland.  Militarily, Baltimore was more important than Washington because of its thriving port and strategic location.  The British hoped the loss of Washington and Baltimore would cripple the American war effort and force peace.  However, the citizens and militia of Baltimore had been preparing for such an assault for more than a year.[2]  Fort McHenry, situated at the mouth of the inner harbor, became the primary linchpin for the American defenses of Baltimore Harbor.

Fort McHenry, constructed in 1800, resembles a large star.  Its purpose was to guard the inner harbor at a bend on the Patapsco River.  Admiral Cochrane and General Ross planned to land troops on the city’s eastern side as the Royal Navy reduced the fort.  Doing so would allow the Royal Navy to provide artillery support for ground troops when they assaulted the defenders of Baltimore City.

On 7 September, Francis Scott Key and American Agent for Prisoners of War, Colonel John Stuart Skinner, dined aboard HMS Tonnant as the guest of Vice Admiral Cochrane, Rear Admiral George Cockburn, and Major General Robert Ross.  Skinner and Key were present to plead for the release of Dr. William Beanes, an elderly resident of Upper Marlboro, Maryland — and a friend of Key — who the British had captured in his home on 28 August.  The British accused Beanes of aiding in the arrest of some British soldiers (actually, stragglers) who were pillaging homes.

After making a convincing case for the release of Dr. Beanes, Admiral Cochrane ordered it and permitted Skinner, Key, and Beanes to return to the truce ship under guard, and they were not allowed to leave the fleet.  Their presence had familiarized them with the strength and positions of British military units and their intentions to attack Baltimore.  But what Key, Skinner, and Beans did have was excellent seats for a most spectacular fireworks display. 

On 12 September, the British landed a combined force of soldiers, sailors, and Royal Marines at North Point, a peninsula at the fork of the Patapsco River and the Chesapeake Bay.  These troops landed unopposed and advanced toward Baltimore.  Maryland militia Major General Samuel Smith ordered Brigadier General John Stricker to delay the advance by provoking an engagement.

At midday, as the British halted their march for their noon meal, Stricker ordered artillery and small arms fire upon the British bivouac.  General Ross, who could hear the distant fire, rode out to assess the situation.  While conducting this surveillance, General Ross (the man responsible for setting fire to Washington) was mortally wounded in the chest.  Command of the land force passed to Colonel Arthur Brooke.

Colonel Brooke reorganized his formation and pressed forward.  At around 1500, Brooke ordered an assault on the American positions.  Initially, the Americans held their positions.  Lacking proper artillery canisters, the Americans began firing scrap metal, which inflicted heavy losses upon their British enemies.  Yet, despite their stalwart defense, the British fought tenaciously, and the Americans began to withdraw.  As the Americans began filtering into Baltimore City, Colonel Brooke ordered a halt to the assault to rest and reorganize his attacking force.  It was a humane act by Brooke, but it also gave the American extra time to consolidate their defensive positions.

On 13 September, the Americans assembled 10,000 riflemen and 100 cannon astride the Baltimore/Philadelphia Road, blocking the British advance.  It was a far stronger defense than the British had anticipated.  Naval support would be needed to dislodge them; to do that, the British would have to eliminate Fort McHenry.

One-thousand American troops at Fort McHenry came under the command of Major George Armistead.[3]

 In the early morning of 13 September, British warships began their bombardment of Fort McHenry.  Shallow water prevented Admiral Cochrane from employing his deep draft heavy warships, so he relied instead on the bomb vessels HMS Terror, Volcano, Meteor, Devastation, and Aetna.

The British ships fired exploding mortar shells at high angles into the fort.  The rocket ship HMS Erebus (firing newly invented Congreve rockets) joined the bombardment.  These munitions inspired Francis Scott Key to write his lines, “and the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air.”

Initially, the British fleet exchanged fire with Fort McHenry’s artillery but soon withdrew out of range.  For the next 27 hours, British warships hammer the fort in driving rain.  More than 1,500 cannonballs, shells, and rockets land inside the fort but only inflict light damage because of the fortification efforts made before the battle.  During the night, Admiral Cochrane ordered a landing party to slip past the fort and attempt to draw troops from the force opposing Colonel Brooke, but beyond diverting some fire from the American fort, the plan was unsuccessful.

On the morning of 14 September, the defenders at Fort McHenry lowered their battered storm flag and raised the large 30’ by 42’ garrison flag (made by Mary Pickersgill).  Except during inclement weather, the men at Fort McHenry would normally raise the garrison flag promptly at reveille each morning.  But this particular morning, it had special significance.  The failed bombardment forced Colonel Brooke to abandon his land attack on Baltimore, and the British set sail for New Orleans.

On 13 – 14 September 1814, Key could not do much of anything beyond watching the 27-hour bombardment upon Fort McHenry.  On 14 September, Key observed the large American flag waving over the fort at dawn.  It prompted him to write a poem on the back of a letter he had kept in his pocket.  On 16 September, Key, Skinner, and Beanes were released from the British fleet.  When they arrived in Baltimore that evening, Key completed the poem at the Indian Queen Hotel, where he was staying,

The finished manuscript was untitled and unsigned.  When printed as a broadside the next day, it was titled “Defence of Fort M’Henry” with the notation: “Tune – Anacreon in Heaven.” [4]  This was a popular tune that Key had already used as a setting for his 1805 song “When the Warrior Returns,” celebrating American heroes of the First Barbary War.  It was published in newspapers and given its new title, The Star Spangled Banner.  The song was difficult to sing, yet with time, it became increasingly popular and competed with Hail Columbia.[5]

Of the battle, American casualties included 28 killed, 163 wounded, and 50 captured.  British losses totaled 46 killed, with 251 – 295 injured. 

Sources:

  1. The American Battlefield Trust, online.
  2. Leepson, M.  What so Proudly We Hailed: Francis Scott Key: A Life.  Macmillan, 2014.
  3. Lineberry, C.  The Story Behind the Star Spangled Banner.  Smithsonian Institute, 2018.
  4. The Kennedy Center: The Star Spangled Banner: The story behind the son.  Online.

Notes:

[1] The American Colonization Society (ACS) was modeled on another program initiated by the British to return and resettle London’s black poor in Africa.  African-Americans and abolitionists opposed this project, arguing that it reflected the hatred felt by whites toward blacks, whether they were enslaved, emancipated, or freeborn.  This could be true in some instances, but just as likely that members of ACS regarded the long-term interests of the blacks as most beneficial in their own land.  In 1837, members of ACS apparently did not understand that no one on earth treated blacks more cruelly or unacceptably than other blacks.  It is also possible that Key and others simply could not envision a multi-racial society.

[2] Early Americans had adopted popular British attitudes against maintaining standing armies.  Accordingly, outside of a very small regular U.S. Army/U.S. Navy organization, the Americans relied on volunteer state militias to fight the British.

[3] Uncle of Brigadier General Lewis Addison Armistead killed at Gettysburg in 1863.

[4] “To Anacreon in Heaven” was the official song of the Anacreontic Society, a popular gentleman’s club of amateur musicians in London.  Composed by John Stafford Smith, several writers later used the tune as a setting for patriotic lyrics, including Key’s poem — which became known as the Star Spangled Banner and was adopted as the national anthem of the United States in 1931.

[5] Hail Columbia was composed by Philip Phile (1789) for the first inauguration of George Washington’s presidency, then titled The President’s March.  In 1798, the song became Hail Columbia with lyrics by Joseph Hopkinson after the Quasi-War with France.  By the time of the Mexican-American War and American Civil War, Hail Columbia had been generally accepted as the U.S. National Anthem.

Captain Evelyn Waugh (Royal Marines)

He might have been the best sort of English writer.  He drank too much, smoked too much, never attended chapel, hardly ever attended classes at Oxford, and in 1927, polite society deemed him morally unsuitable for the institution of matrimony.

He also kept unsuitable company and were it not for his father’s allowance of £4.00 weekly, he would have had to give up drinking altogether.  He wanted to become a writer but initially could not find a publisher who was very interested in his efforts.  The main thing standing in his way was his profanity.  Fortunately for him, social and publishing standards were soon low enough to support his many detestable habits.  His first work in 1928, titled Decline and Fall, was very well received.

Those who argued amongst themselves that Evelyn Waugh was not suitable for marriage were rewarded with news of his divorce in 1928.  It was a messy affair and left him a bitter man.  Mr. Waugh was a rolling stone for the next ten years, gadding about the world, writing travel advisories and occasional articles for London newspapers.

In 1939, the thirty-six-year-old writer applied for a commission in the Royal Marines.  Given their reputation for rigorous training, no one knows why Evelyn Waugh chose the Royal Marines.  According to Waugh’s biographer, field training caused him so much pain that he could not even pick up a pen to write letters home — but the British have a tradition of taking on challenges and seeing them through, no matter what.

After his commission, Waugh revealed himself as an inadequate leader — he was entirely too curt with his men, who deeply resented him.  In a short time, he was removed from command and assigned to the regimental staff as an intelligence officer.  A year later, he was in a Marine Commando unit working for Colonel (later, Brigadier) Robert Laycock. Waugh’s editors claim that his books about World War II closely paralleled Waugh’s actual wartime adventures. If true, then his readers should presume Brigadier Laycock to be as mad as a hatter — but such descriptions do not seem reflective of Laycock, who had a distinguished career during and after the war.

Waugh’s account of World War II is titled Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and Unconditional Surrender.  The trilogy was later made into a film titled Sword of Honor, starring Daniel Craig (2001).  If you enjoy reading fictional history, you’ll appreciate these books as a glimpse into a remarkable period.  He was also the author of Brideshead Revisited.

Captain Waugh tells us of one of his experiences and (possibly) reveals why he was an inadequate leader of troops.  During training, a British captain injured his knee during parachute training and was rushed to the nearest military hospital.  It was a medical clinic run by the Royal Air Force.

After x-rays, the captain was transferred to an army clinic, where he was treated and retained overnight.  The following day, two officers from his training unit went to visit him, not realizing that he had been transferred away from the R.A.F. facility.

The two officers entered the facility and checked in with the medical staff attendant at the front desk.

“I beg your pardon,” said the one officer, “we have come to see Captain Crouchback.”

The attendant answered, “Right.  Well, d’you know where to find him?”

“Actually, no; perhaps you can tell us.”

“I’m sure I don’t know.  Did you say ‘captain’?  Well, there you go … we don’t take army blokes here.”

“He came in yesterday for an emergency x-ray.”

“Right.  Well, I suppose you can try radiology, then.”

“Where’s that?”

After rolling his eyes, the airman said, “Check the board out front; it should tell you.”

Captain Freemantle turned to his companion and said, “I suppose it would be no good putting that man on a charge for insolence.”

“Not in the slightest,” said Captain de Souza.  “Insubordinate behavior isn’t an offense in the air service.”

Military Medals — British and American Traditions

The Cousins

It has only been since the seventeenth century that acts of bravery, merit, or service during war gained recognition of participation or individual acts of courage.  Before then, the ordinary British soldier was usually rewarded with a state pension.  In any case, during the English Civil War, the public’s opinion of soldiers was quite low and remained so for many years.  Usually, only the most desperate fellows volunteered for military service — and in some cases, joining the army was an alternative to going to jail.

After the Napoleonic Wars (1799 – 1815), public opinion improved due to the well-publicized heroic actions of soldiers and their officers.  During this period, medals were only awarded to high-ranking officers and members of the aristocracy for services rendered to the Crown.

The first British Army Medal (B.A.M.) awarded to ordinary soldiers was the Waterloo Medal, issued between 1816 – 1817.  The B.A.M. was awarded to every soldier who could prove that they were present during the campaign against Napoleon in which the British Army, alongside their Dutch and German allies, suffered while performing feats of heroism.  The medal was unique for two reasons: (a) it was the first of its kind, and (b) each soldier or officer who received it had their name stamped into the medal.

Even though 39,000 medals were issued, the B.A.M. received mixed reactions among the senior officers and N.C.O.s who had not been present at Waterloo; they, instead, fought the War of 1812 in the United States/Canada and the Spanish Peninsula campaign.  In subsequent years, this particular controversy resulted in B.A.M. awards as a matter of routine whenever troops were sent to battle, no matter where in the world it was.

After gaining the approval of Queen Victoria and Parliament, the Ministry of Defense agreed to create a Military General Service Medal in 1847.  The process required the men to apply for the medal if they thought they thought themselves entitled to wear it. Not many men applied for the medal because not many men were literate enough to know what to do. The government only issued 26,000 medals. 

In the following decade, the government struck a dozen different medals: The Indian General Service Medal (1854), the Victoria Cross (after the Crimean War) — a gallantry medal awarded to men of any class or service for acts of heroism in the face of the enemy at risk of death.  There is no higher recognition for courage under fire in the United Kingdom than the V.C.

The Victoria Cross is a simple design, the prototype of which was a product of the London jeweler Hancocks & Company.  Hancocks still make the V.C.  Legend tells us that the medal prototype and the first 111 crosses came from the bronze guns captured by the Russians in Crimea.  Since its creation, the Crown has issued 1,356 Victorian Cross Medals.

During the twentieth century, the British Army witnessed bloody action in both the First and Second World Wars.  Each conflict produced a unique series of campaign and service medals.  There was the 1914 – 1915 Star, the British War Medal, and Victory Medal for those fighting in the First World War.  The government awarded 2.3 million medals to frontline soldiers and support personnel, including Royal Navy and Canadian service members.

After World War II, the men serving in that conflict received a unique version of the general service medal, the 1939 – 1945 Star, worn alongside appropriate medals and campaign ribbons.  For example, those in the North African campaign received the African Star.  If they also served during the Italian Campaign or on D-Day, the appropriate specific awards to wear alongside it.  Commonwealth soldiers (Indian, Australian, Canadian, and South African) received proper recognition alongside their other entitlements.

The Americans

In the U.S. military, the history of personal decorations and awards is not part of the curriculum in basic training.  Military medals have had an important role in its history, but it is also rarely discussed.  Military personnel wear their decorations and awards with pride and reflect on them: they are symbols of a demanding job well done and trigger memories of good men, pulling together, and perhaps also lost forever —but they don’t brag about those medals.

Military personnel understand the difference between Decorations and Awards — most civilians do not.  Among civilians with no military service connection, there is no difference between decorations and awards, but they are two vastly different things.  A presented decoration recognizes specific acts of bravery or achievement.  An award or service medal confirms service in a particular role or geographical area (campaign) and citations issued by foreign governments and approved by the U.S. government.

Typically, a U.S. medal is struck with a design to commemorate an event.  It is a creative process involving various methods — including pressure stamping.  In the past, bronze, silver, and gold were used, but most U.S. military medals today are made of various alloys.  Modern medals are nothing like the medal invented by Antonio di Puccio Pisano in 1438.  This process remained exclusively in Italy until the 16th Century when it spread to other European nations.

In the American colonies, the oldest military decoration was the Fidelity Medallion, created by the Continental Congress in 1780 and presented to those who captured British Major John André — the officer who worked with Benedict Arnold to betray the colonies.

The Congress conferred the Fidelity Medallion on three soldiers who were members of the New York militia: Privates Isaac Van Wart, David Williams, and John Paulding.  The medal was never again awarded — and it is for this reason that the first United States (as opposed to Continental) medal awarded was the Badge of Military Merit, created in 1782.  In the new egalitarian America, it is also significant that the first medals awarded to American troops were awarded to enlisted men, not officers.[1]

On 7 August 1782, General George Washington designed the Badge of Military Merit.  It was a cloth or silk figure of a heart, recognizing meritorious or gallant conduct.  But it was General Washington who instigated the practice of awards of recognition, and only three men received this decoration: (a) Sergeant Elijah Churchill: 2nd Regiment, Light Dragoons.  He was awarded the badge for his part in two successful raids behind British lines in Nov. 1780 and in October of 1781.  (b) Sergeant William Brown: 5th Connecticut Regiment. Awarded the badge for leading an advance party — with only bayonets — penetrating the British lines at Yorktown, VA on 14 October 1781, and (c) Sergeant Daniel Bissell: 2nd Connecticut Regiment. Awarded the badge for masquerading as a British soldier from August 1781 to September 1782.[2]  Again, all three recipients were enlisted men — and the design was the forerunner of the modern Purple Heart Medal.

Between General Washington’s Merit Badge and the American Civil War, government officials issued certificates of merit and “brevet promotions” to recognize courageous conduct and meritorious service.  The first military decoration formally authorized by the United States government to symbolize valorous conduct was the Medal of Honor, approved for enlisted men of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps.  President Lincoln signed the authorization on 21 December 1861.  In July 1862, Congress approved a Medal of Honor suitable for the U.S. Army (and Volunteer Army of the United States).

One should recall that the early American colonists migrated from England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. When they went to the New World, they took with them their long-held cultural values and traditions.  Among these was a general loathing for standing armies and the profession of arms.  See also: Citizen Soldier and the American Militia.  The reason for their profound contempt for the military was simple enough: British soldiers were instruments of government tyranny — a view reinforced throughout the American Revolutionary War.  This distrust of standing armies lasted from 1775 through 1941.

At the beginning of the American Civil War, the Union Army was comparatively small.  To build an armed force capable of defending the Union, it was necessary to augment it with federalized state militias.  Recruiting men to serve in the Civil War was no easier in 1861 than in 1776, and it became even more difficult once the knowledge of the horror of combat made its way into America’s living rooms.

Thus, the civil war gave the U.S. Congress two good reasons for instituting an American decoration for valor.  The first was the obvious: to honor American servicemen for their sacrifices.  The second reason was to incentivize enlisting in the Army — every romantic young man wants to become a hero.  The Navy was the first to adopt the Medal of Honor because it was the one service facing the gravest shortage of skilled crewmen.

Congress’s authorization for the Medal of Honor made certain stipulations.  Only acts of gallantry performed during the present conflict —the Civil War— would be recognized, and the Secretary of the Navy’s authorization was limited to two-hundred medals.

A new authorization signed in 1862 gave the Navy much more room for maneuver when it came to awarding the Medal of Honor and even authorized further rewards for committed, intrepid seamen. Now, a Sailor could earn a promotion by way of “extraordinary heroism” rather than wait until he aged into a higher rank, the usual practice. And now, unlike under the 1861 act, a Sailor could receive this promotion and a Medal of Honor for acts of heroism performed “in the line of his profession” and not necessarily in a combat situation. The first Medals of Honor struck resulted from this second act — of 1862.

The Purple Heart Medal

When Gen. John J. Pershing and the American Expeditionary Force arrived in Europe in 1917, the only existing American decoration was the Medal of Honor.  Pershing, his subordinate commanders, and the men of the rank and file soon became acutely aware that the British and French armies had a variety of military decorations and medals to recognize valorous service.

By the end of the First World War, the Army and Navy had developed additional medals to recognize exceptional heroism that does not meet the test of the Medal of Honor: The Navy Distinguished Service Medal, Navy Cross and Army Distinguished Service Medal, and Army Distinguished Service Cross.

These new medals (while giving much-deserved recognition to many servicemen) also required a high degree of combat heroism or meritorious service, and a few civilian and military leaders in Washington believed another decoration was needed — one that could be used to reward individuals of more junior rank for their valuable wartime services.

In the 1920s, the War Department studied the issue.  A few officers with knowledge of George Washington’s dormant Badge of Military Merit recommended that the merit medal be resurrected and renamed the Order of Military Merit.  Further, they suggested that the medal be awarded to any soldier in recognition of heroism not performed in actual combat or exceptionally meritorious service.

Ultimately, no action was taken on these proposals for another ten years — until General Douglas MacArthur assumed the office of Army Chief of Staff.  He revived interest in the merit medal by writing to Charles Moore, Chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts.  He informed Moore that the Army intended to revive General Washington’s old award on the bicentennial of his birth.

As a result, on 22 February 1932, the War Department published General Order No. 3 announcing that “the Purple Heart, established by General George Washington in 1782,” would be awarded to persons who, while serving in the Army of the United States, performs any singularly meritorious act of extraordinary fidelity or essential service.” Then, within a single parenthetical, the Army included this sentence: “A wound, which necessitates treatment by a medical officer, and which is received in action with an enemy of the United States, or as a result of an act of such enemy, may . . . be construed as resulting from a singularly meritorious act of essential service.”

This meant that the Purple Heart was an award for high-level service. But it also meant that an individual serving “in the Army” wounded in action could also receive the Purple Heart.  Not all wounds, however, qualified for the new decoration.  Rather, the wound had to be severe enough to necessitate medical treatment.

From 1932 until the outbreak of World War II, the Army awarded around 78,000 Purple Heart Medals to living veterans and active-duty soldiers who had either been wounded in action or had received General Pershing’s certificate for meritorious service during World War I.[3]

While the Army issued most Purple Heart Medals to men who had fought in France from 1917 to 1918, a small number of wounded soldiers from the Civil War, the Indian Wars, and the Spanish-American War applied for and received the Purple Heart.  However, there were no posthumous awards for this early edition of the Purple Heart Medal.  General MacArthur made it clear in 1938 the Purple Heart — like Washington’s Badge of Military Merit — was “not intended to commemorate the dead; it was to animate and inspire the living.”

After Imperial Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and the deaths of thousands of soldiers in Hawaii and the Philippines, the War Department abandoned MacArthur’s “posthumous award” policy.  On April 28, 1942, the Army announced that the Purple Heart would be awarded to “members of the military services killed  (or who died of wounds) on or after December 7, 1941.”

This policy change only applied to those killed after the Japanese attack on Hawaii.  Posthumous awards of the Purple Heart for pre–World War II conflicts were still not permitted.  Five months later, the Army made another significant change in the award criteria for the Purple Heart: it restricted the award to combat wounds only.  

While MacArthur’s intent in reviving the Purple Heart in 1932 was that the new decoration would be for “any singularly meritorious act of extraordinary fidelity or essential service” (with combat wounds being a subset of such fidelity or service), the creation of the Legion of Merit in 1942 as a junior decoration for achievement or service meant that the Army did not need two medals to recognize the same thing.  As a result, the Purple Heart became a decoration for those wounded or killed in action.

One additional change in the evolution of the Purple Heart Medal was President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s decision on 3 December 1942 to allow the Secretary of the Navy to award the decoration to Sailors, Coast Guardsmen, and Marines.

The next significant change to the award criteria for the Purple Heart occurred during the presidency of John F. Kennedy.  When certain American service members in South Vietnam began being killed and wounded, they were deemed not eligible for the Purple Heart because they served in an advisory capacity (rather than as combatants).  Additionally, as a matter of law, the United States was not a formal participant in the ongoing war between the South Vietnamese, communist insurgents, and their North Vietnamese allies.  Thus, there was no “enemy” to satisfy the requirement of a wound or death received “in action against an enemy.”

President Kennedy signed an executive order on 25 April 1962 authorizing the Purple Heart Medal to any person killed or wounded “while serving with friendly foreign forces” or “as a result of action by a hostile foreign force.” By 1973, thousands more Americans had been awarded the Purple Heart.

Kennedy’s decision to expand the award criteria for the Purple Heart also meant that servicemen killed or wounded in lesser-known actions (such as the Israeli attack on the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967 and the North Korean seizure of the U.S.S. Pueblo in 1968) could also receive the Purple Heart.

A successive change to the Purple Heart regulations occurred in February 1984 when President Ronald Reagan recognized the changing nature of war and signed an executive order announcing that the Purple Heart would recognize those killed or wounded as a result of an “international terrorist attack against the United States.” Reagan also decided that the Purple Heart should be awarded to individuals killed or wounded “outside the territory of the United States” while serving “as part of a peacekeeping mission.” President Reagan’s decision resulted in a small number of Americans receiving the Purple Heart who otherwise would have been denied the medal.

On 25 April 2011, the Department of Defense announced that the Purple Heart Medal could be awarded to any service member sustaining “mild traumatic brain injuries and concussive injuries” in combat.  This decision acknowledged that brain injuries caused by improvised explosive devices qualify as wounds, even though such damages may be invisible.  Awards for traumatic brain injury were retroactive to 11 September 2001, the day of Al Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

On the issue of the severity of a brain injury, a serviceman or woman need not lose consciousness to qualify for the Purple Heart.  If a medical officer or health professional diagnoses concussive injury, and the “extent of the wound was such that it required treatment by a medical officer,” this is sufficient for the award of the Purple Heart.

One remaining issue is whether a Purple Heart is appropriate for someone with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D.).  In 2008, after increasing numbers of men and women returning from service in Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom were diagnosed as suffering from P.T.S.D., some commentators proposed awarding the Purple Heart for these psychological wounds.  After carefully studying the issue, the Defense Department concluded that having P.T.S.D. did not qualify a person for the Purple Heart because the disorder was not a “wound intentionally caused by the enemy — but rather a secondary effect caused by witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event.”

Endnotes:

[1] The Continental Congress did vote to award George Washington, Horatio Gates, and John Paul Jones with gold medallions in recognition of their efforts in defeating the British forces, but none of these were awarded until after the end of the Revolutionary War, in 1790.

[2] The information gathered by Sergeant Bissell helped the Continental Army prepare for an attack on the British in New York City.

[3] Printed certificates signed by Pershing that read “for exceptionally meritorious and conspicuous services.”