Warriors and Scholars
A Modern War Reader
Publication Year: 2005
Published by: University of North Texas Press
CONTENTS
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pp. iii-iv
Foreword
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pp. v-vi
This volume marks another step toward realizing the goal of the Department of History at the University of North Texas (UNT) to make military history one of its areas of excellence. As a result of vigorous recruiting, military historians in the department now number six. Wide-ranging course offerings attract large numbers of eager students...
SECTION I: WORLD WAR II, EUROPE
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pp. 1-3
The first two sections of this work touch upon the war both in Europe and in the Pacific. For the European Theater, two papers address the war from very different perspectives: on the ground and in the air. The first analyzes the epic struggle that began with...
Fact and Fancy: The Soviet Great Patriotic War, 1941–1945
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pp. 4-27
I am going to address a massive topic, a topic that cannot be adequately addressed within the limited confines for this paper. My goal, however, is to give some sense of the immensity of what the Soviets called for fifty years, and what the Russians still call today...
Life in the Bloody 100th
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pp. 28-46
I want to share with you briefly some of my experiences with the “infamous” 100th Bomb Group in England during World War II. It is personally gratifying that there seems to be a genuine resurgence of interest in first-person accounts of happenings in World War II, although, I suppose, that is not really too surprising since those of us...
SECTION II: WORLD WAR II, PACIFIC
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pp. 47-49
The Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor marked the entry of the United States into World War II. A determined president and a newly united nation pledged to pursue the war in the Pacific until the final capitulation of the Japanese enemy. This section presents three papers that cover the gamut of warfare experiences from the young...
An Enlisted Marine’s Perspective on the Pacific War
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pp. 50-63
...observations of the abortive landing at Kiska and the fighting University of North Texas) in Denton. Upon graduating, he found employment with the local newspaper, the Denton Record-Chronicle, starting out in classified advertising sales. He advanced through the newspaper’s ranks, becoming head of advertising in 1951, general ...
B-29 Operations Against Japan: A Survivor’s Story
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pp. 64-84
I graduated from advanced aerial navigation school in June 1944 at Selman Field in Monroe, Louisiana. I was nineteen years old and a brand-new second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Forces. My first act, due to that “substantial” increase in pay and responsibility, was to subscribe to Time magazine so that I could be better informed...
Ending the War with Japan: The Decision to Use the Atomic Bombs
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pp. 85-101
As a people, we seem to be unusually fond of anniversaries. We ignore history year after year until suddenly, as if to make up for decades of neglect, we indulge in an orgy of celebration. In the 1960s, it was the Civil War Centennial; in the 1970s, the Bicentennial of the American Revolution. Our latest national binge has been the fiftieth...
SECTION III: THE EARLY COLD WAR
The Cold War spans most of the chronology of this work, commencing in the days of Allied victory in 1944–45 through the Korean War and the Vietnam conflict and into the 1990s. The section on the Cold War has been divided into two parts, one on the early Cold War and a second entitled “The Late Cold War.” The papers...
Leadership During the Cold War: A Four-Star General’s Perspective
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pp. 104-124
The United States Air Force, from which I retired in 1977, is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year (1997), having been created through congressional legislation in the summer of 1947, with its first secretary, Stuart Symington, sworn in on September 18, 1947.1 The forty-five-year period in our history that we call the “Cold War” can...
SECTION IV: THE KOREAN WAR
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pp. 125-127
In a short span of five years, the victorious Allied coalition that had defeated the fascist powers unraveled and became a distant memory. In its stead, a Cold War had developed pitting two great alliances of nations against each other under the threat of nuclear war. Winston Churchill called it an Iron Curtain separating the Soviet Union and...
The Korean War: Are There Still Military Lessons to be Learned?
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pp. 128-147
The North Korean invasion of South Korea was a veritable blitzkrieg, both in technique and in time. It began at 4:00 AM on June 25, 1950. After a thunderous forty-five-minute artillery bombardment, six North Korean infantry divisions, an armored brigade, and three border constabulary brigades crossed the 38th Parallel into South Korea...
Combat in Korea: Reflections by a Once Young Soldier
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pp. 148-165
Combat has been described as 1 percent terror and 99 percent boredom, but I found it to be low-grade fever, fatigue, blackheads, and defecating in the woods, usually at a time and a place not entirely of one’s own choosing. I intend to convey my sense of being a combat soldier in Korea. The essence of the experience is in the details within...
SECTION V: THE VIETNAM WAR
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pp. 166-168
During the 1960s and 1970s, the United States was engaged in one of the most difficult conflicts in its history. Working to contain the spread of communism in Asia and motivated by the desire to foster democracy among the nations of the region, the United States became entangled in a difficult struggle on the periphery of Asia. Its...
The Reluctant Warrior: LBJ as Commander-in-Chief
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pp. 169-189
Whatever his wish, Johnson is remembered as a war president, and among America’s commanders-in-chief, he generally rates with the least effective. He is, of course, popularly viewed as the only American president to lose his war, something he greatly feared and on more than one occasion vowed he would not let happen. He is scored,...
A POW in Vietnam: “Smart People, Dumb War”
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pp. 190-205
There is a story they tell in Santa Barbara about an elderly dowager and her Rolls Royce in a parking lot. She found a parking spot but had to back up to swing wide. As she was about to turn in, a young sport zipped his Volkswagen into the slot. The woman rolled her window down as the young man slammed the door of his Bug. She...
SECTION VI: THE LATE COLD WAR
Lt. Gen. Charles Hamm transforms the reader from the broad world of nuclear strategy and limited war to another important element of national security affairs: intelligence gathering. General Hamm was appointed to the demanding position of the defense attach� stationed in Moscow with the primary responsibility for gathering...
Cold War Duty as a Defense Attach� in Moscow
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pp. 207-226
I always welcome the opportunity to think back and to reminisce about my experiences in the Soviet Union twenty years ago. In recent years, however, I have not really thought much about the Soviet Union. I spoke a great deal about my experiences there, after I returned from that tour, for a few years, trying to tell people what I had...
SECTION VII: TERRORISM
This final section concentrates on what some believe is a new form of military conflict: terrorism. But, is it really new? History books are filled with examples of individuals and organizations dedicated to inflicting violence on an adversary or his/her government, but terrorism may be different. As the West struggles to understand the hatred...
Old Whines in New Bottles: Some Thoughts on the Psychology of Terrorists and Terrorism
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pp. 229-253
I want to share some thoughts on the topic of the psychology of terrorism and terrorists. One of the outcomes of the horrific events of September 11, 2001 [9/11], was to focus the attention of our nation and the world on terrorism and terrorists. Prior to 9/11 terrorism was largely something that happened to other people in far-off places, and...
Foreshadowing Postwar Iraq: The U.S. War in the Philippines, 1899–1902
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pp. 254-273
Watching the operations in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and now currently in Iraq, one can quote the great American philosopher Yogi Berra: “It’s like déjà vu all over again.”1 A number of distinguished authors have identified the connections between the Philippine War of 1899–1902 and the current conflicts. Robert Kaplan, for example...
Index
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pp. 275-288
E-ISBN-13: 9781574414028
Print-ISBN-13: 9781574411973
Page Count: 296
Illustrations: 5 maps
Publication Year: 2005
