First Call: The Making of the Modern U.S. Military, 1945-1953
Thomas D. Boettcher. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1992. 464 pp. Bib. Ind. Notes. $27.50 ($24.30)
Reviewed by Dr. Douglas Brinkley
An unpopular man when he left the White House in 1953, Harry Truman would have felt vindicated by his current high standing with the press, politicians, presidential historians, and the American citizenry. In public-opinion surveys, he invariably ranks in the five-greatest-presidents category. His two most popular biographers— Robert Donovan and David McCullough— trod perilously close to an apotheosis of our 36th President, preserving for posterity the image of the iconic American politician: an honest, no-nonsense guy with a common touch; an average Joe who it just so happened also was a statesman of superior judgment and unflappable courage. With this book—a narrative tribute to Truman’s record as Commander-in- Chief—Thomas D. Boettcher, a Virginia lawyer, magazine editor, and author of Vietnam: The Valor and the Sorrow (Little, Brown, 1985), joins this caravan of praise. Indeed, probably not since the 1948 presidential election, when Clark Clifford churned out glowing campaign literature from the Democratic National Headquarters, has Truman looked bolder and wiser.
After their victory in World War II, U.S. servicemen returned home thirsting for normal lives; they were ready, in Averell Harriman’s words, to “drink Coca Cola and go to the movies.” However, such an Eden-like scenario was not to be.
Many people thought that the United States was vulnerable. America might have won the war, but it still had enemies. Hitler and Tojo had been soundly defeated, but our erstwhile ally, Stalin loomed large—showing off Soviet might, bullying his neighbors, and boasting of future Communist hegemony.
The shock of Pearl Harbor fed this sense of vulnerability. From the corridors of Congress to the halls of county courthouses, the question echoed throughout the nation: “Why had our armed forces been so painfully unprepared?” Back-door-to-war conspiracy theories abounded, but no one in government with half a brain gave them credence. The most commonly accepted, rational explanation for the prewar unpreparedness focused on the rapid disarmament after World War 1 and the disturbing lack of coordination between the various services during the interwar years. Therefore, by the end of the war, it was a foregone conclusion that the Truman administration would have to reorganize the U.S. military establishment, even though, as Boettcher points out, “for all concerned, including [Army Chief of Staff, General of the Army George C.] Marshall, the thought of what it was going to take to reorganize was dreadful.” The advent of atomic weapons made the prospect even more daunting.
First Call is a well-written account of how Harry Truman, with the indispensable aid of George Marshall, tackled this monumental task: creating the Defense Department—with the Joint Chiefs of Staff headed by a Cabinet-level secretary—and the Department of the Air Force, thus putting the United States on “red alert,” in “a permanent war-time” defense posture to contain Soviet expansionism. Before long, this Truman administration policy —articulated by George Kennan, and given teeth by Paul Nitze—brought about U.S. entry into the Korean War.
Boettcher regards these policies and decisions as right on the money. First Call reads like a legal brief, taking a posture of advocacy that ignores the other sides of the story. Normally this would be a drawback, but with “clients” the likes of Dean Acheson, James Forrestal, Harry Truman, and George Marshall, Boettcher has a good case to argue. Nevertheless, sometimes Boettcher goes overboard. For example, he runs on for 22 straight pages of fulsome praise of the late General Matthew Ridgway, whom he characterizes as “the model American soldier of the New Age.” This is unadulterated hyperbole, for the more one reads about General Ridgway, the more of an Old-Age general he appears. At least he was not a Douglas MacArthur, one of the few leading drama- tis personae of First Call whom Boettcher does not praise extravagantly. There also is a distinct Air Force bias to the book, which allows the first Secretary of the Air Force, political wheeler-dealer Stuart Symington, to emerge as a guileless man.
Boettcher unblushingly pronounces “the world is a safer place for Truman having been Commander-in-Chief.” He bases this vaporous conclusion on Truman’s refusal to use atomic bombs in order to save the Eighth Army in Korea during the Communist Chinese offensive during the winter of 1950:
“Perhaps he did not because he had used them before and had time and occasion to think about the matter more deeply than anybody else possibly could. Or perhaps it was simply a matter of his being the kind of person who, while President of the United States, carried on by hand an active correspondence with his mother, sister, brother, aunts, uncles, cousins and thus being someone who did all he could to confine the casualties of war to the battlefront where soldiers die.”
Unfortunately, the book is marred by more than a dozen such passages.
True historical scholarship requires a more dispassionate approach based on primary sources (Boettcher depends on secondary sources for his chronicle). In short, First Call may be a wonderful read but Cold War scholars and military buffs will find it pedestrian and overly simplistic.
Opening Moves: Marines Gear Up for War
Henry I. Shaw, Jr. 25 pp. Washington, DC: History & Museums Division, U.S. Marine Corps, 1992. Illus. Maps. Photos.
Outpost in the North Atlantic: Marines in the Defense of Iceland
Colonel James A. Donovan, USMC (Ret.) Washington, DC: History & Museums Division, U.S. Marine Corps, 1992. 32 pp. Illus. Maps. Photos.
Infamous Day: Marines at Pearl Harbor 7 December 1941
Robert J. Cressman and Michael Wenger. Washington, DC: History & Museums Division, U.S. Marine Corps, 1992. 33 pp. Maps. Photos.
First Offensive: The Marine Campaign for Guadalcanal
Henry I. Shaw, Jr. Washington, DC: History & Museums Division, U.S. Marine Corps, 1992. 52 pp. Illus. Maps. Photos.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel R.J. Sullivan, U.S. Marine Corps
In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of World War II, the History and Museums Division of Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps is publishing a series of 32 monographs devoted to the Marine Corps of that era. These pamphlets—the first four of the series—go a long way toward accomplishing the division’s goal of educating today’s Marines—and, incidentally, the public—about their predecessors of a half- century ago.
Although easy to read and relatively short (between 25 and 52 pages), these monographs are scholarly narratives. They focus, to some degree, on individual Marines—both officers and enlisted—their stories, their experiences, and their lives and deaths. Sidebars interspersed throughout the text detail a specific uniform, piece of equipment, weapon, or aspect of everyday life. There are plenty of photographs, sketches, drawings, charts, and maps to illustrate these accounts of the Marines’ struggles. For those who want to read more on these topics, the authors provide a list of sources that should whet the appetite of any serious student of Marine history.
Chronologically, the series starts with Opening Moves. Mr. Shaw, former chief historian of the History and Museums Division, served as a Marine in both World War II and the Korean War. Drawing on his personal knowledge as a veteran, writer, and historian and using personal papers and interviews with members of the “Old Corps,” he skillfully captures the state of the Marine Corps after World War I. He examines the functions and missions of the interwar Corps, as well as its training, organization, and equipment, up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He concludes that on the eve of war, Marines of all ranks strongly identified with their proud past and were ready to fight—anybody!
In the second monograph, Outpost in the North Atlantic, the adversary that the 1st Marine Brigade (Provisional) faced in the “snow of far off northern lands” of Iceland was not the Germans but boredom and the harsh environment. As a young officer, Colonel Donovan participated in the eight-month occupation of Iceland from mid-1941 to early 1942. He provides a number of his contemporary sketches for this work (and for Opening Moves). He uses his own experiences and primary and secondary sources to write an informative account of this little-known Marine operation. There is no “gunsmoke” in this story, just the account of the brigade’s day-to-day battle against the elements and its attempts to accomplish its defensive mission under unsatisfactory conditions with unsuitable equipment.
The next monograph, Infamous Day, takes the reader to a tropical island paradise on a warm December morning and describes how its peaceful tempo was shattered by a surprise attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy. The authors approach their subject through the accounts of the actions of Marines who fought and, in some cases, died on that day in December 1941. Indeed, the monograph’s strength is how the authors weave together so many heroic individual actions into a panorama of the day’s events. This worthwhile work helps the reader gain an appreciation for what Marines of all ranks and specialties experienced and accomplished.
Within eight months of the Pearl Harbor attack, Marines again faced an enemy on an undesirable and hostile island: Guadalcanal. This struggle for this island is the subject of the longest of the monographs, First Offensive. Many books and articles have been written on this campaign, and the monograph neither pretends to interpret the campaign differently nor bring to light long-lost or new material. Nevertheless, Bud Shaw succeeds in relating the story of a complex operation without overwhelming the reader with details, and his narrative effectively spells out the successes and failures of both sides.
These narratives do not include every aspect of their respective topics. They were not written for that purpose. However, for their intended audience—young Marines who want to know more about their Corps as it was 50 years ago—these monographs are on target.
Other titles in the Marines in World War II Commemorative Series include: A Magnificent Fight: Marines in the Battle of Wake Island by Robert J. Cressman (1992) and Bloody Tarawa: The Marine Landing on Betio (1993) by Colonel Joseph Alexander, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired). The monographs may be purchased through the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402.
Books of Interest
By Lieutenant Commander Thomas J. Cutler, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Tin Can Sailor: Life Aboard the USS Sterett, 1939-1945
C. Raymond Calhoun. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993. 224 pp. Append. Illus. Ind. $23.95 ($19.15).
Readers of the excellent Typhoon: The Ocher Enemy will be pleased to know that Calhoun has written another book. This time his focus is a World War II destroyer and the men who provided her collective personality. The Sterett (DD-407) fought in the grueling Solomons campaign, participated in many shore-bombardment actions, and faced the dreaded Kamikazes at Okinawa. Calhoun’s own experiences encompass the period from the ship’s commissioning until he was transferred in April 1943. Supplementing his own recollections with those of many of the 800 officers and sailors who served in this gallant destroyer during the war, Calhoun has provided yet another vivid glimpse into the era when the U.S. Navy met some of its greatest challenges.
Signal! A History of Signalling in the Royal Navy
Captain Barrie Kent. Hampshire, UK: Hyden House, 1993. 384 pp. Append. Bib. Illus. Ind. Maps. Photos.
This history of communications in the Royal Navy is great reading and is an important component of the U.S. Navy’s history as well, since much of the two navies’ development is linked. The “shutter system” of communicating (a fascinating method of pre-wireless signalling), the different methods of visual signalling that have been employed, the development of wireless communications, and the role of communications in battles in the two world wars make this book worthwhile, but there is a great deal more. Besides a complete history of signalling in the Royal Navy that encompasses the days of sail and modem satellite communications, there is an anthology of related accounts by various individuals and several informative appendices.
“Mad Jack”: The Biography of Captain John Percival, USN, 1779-1862
David F. Long. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993. 288 pp. Bib. Gloss. Illus. Ind. Maps. Notes. $55.00 ($49.50).
This biography not only reveals the fascinating eccentricities of a maverick naval officer, but provides a detailed look at the U.S. Navy in the decades encompassing the War of 1812 and the Civil War. The Cape Cod-born Percival’s unusual 40-year career included hunting down mutineers, a circumnavigation of the world in the frigate Constitution, and the first U.S. armed intervention in Vietnam (May 1845). Nathaniel Hawthorne, who met Percival in the Boston Navy Yard in 1837, later described this iconoclast as “the very pattern of old integrity; taking as much care of Uncle Sam’s interests, as if all the money expended was to come out of his own pocket.”