Crisis at Sea: The United States Navy in European Waters in World War I
William N. Still Jr. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2007. 1,008 pp. Illus. Maps. Bib. Index. $100.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel John J. Abbatiello, U.S. Air Force
William Still’s masterpiece will serve as the history of the U.S. Navy in the Great War for years to come. Without a doubt, this is the most important and complete survey to date of American naval operations in World War I and belongs on the shelf of every naval historian and serving naval professional in this country.
Still, an emeritus professor from East Carolina University’s well-known maritime history program, examines all of the essential aspects of American involvement in European waters during the war. The first group of chapters deals with command, doctrine, and Anglo-American relations. Here, he introduces the important characters of the story— Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, Admirals William S. Sims, William S. Benson, and Hugh Rodman—and their key subordinates both in the theater of operations and Washington. The author describes Sims’ frustration with the Navy Department’s apparent unsympathetic view of the British need for patrol vessels to deal with U-boats. Although Still relates Daniels’ and Benson’s mistrust of the British, his description of Anglo- American command relationships makes clear the willingness of American Sailors to serve under British admirals and to learn from their almost three years of wartime experience.
The middle chapters represent the most thorough treatment of World War I U.S. naval logistics and personnel issues ever published. The author thoroughly covers the establishment of naval bases, the difficulties of supply, and the issues surrounding the care and feeding of American sailors at British, French, and Mediterranean naval facilities. Of particular interest is Still’s fascinating description of relations with the Irish populace in the vicinity of the Royal Navy’s Queenstown Naval Station (in what is now the city of Cork). American Sailors were initially welcomed but soon faced resentment from Irishmen disappointed with U.S. support of the war effort and a lack of interest in their independence movement. Brawls with Sinn Feiners over women and politics abounded.
After setting the stage with these vital issues, the final third of the book examines U.S. naval operations in the European theater. Still investigates American support of antisubmarine patrols, convoy escorts, and battleship operations with the Grand Fleet. He gives the largely American “North Sea Mine Barrage” effort its own chapter and repeats previous assessments of the mining not being worth the investment of more than 56,000 mines. Naval aviation aficionados will be pleased to see the author’s thorough coverage of antisubmarine air patrols and unrealized plans for bombing U-boat bases in Belgium. In the end, Still correctly concludes that “the Allies could not have won without American help, including naval support.”
Crisis at Sea is thoroughly researched and referenced, with nearly 150 pages of endnotes and an extremely impressive bibliography. Still uncovered both official and personal primary sources— many of them previously untapped— in a wide-ranging assortment of U.S., French, and British archival collections. His command of the existing literature is likewise admirable, and historians will appreciate Still’s running commentary on current historiographical interpretations throughout the text. A solid collection of maps and pertinent photographs rounds out the solid presentation of this volume.
It is fitting that a former SECNAV Scholar in Naval History at the Naval Historical Center (1989-90) would publish such a comprehensive treatment of American naval operations during the Great War. Well-written and thoroughly researched, this tour de force might be the final word on this important subject in our nation’s naval heritage.
Guadalcanal: The U.S. Marines in World War II
Eric Hammel. St. Paul, MN: Zenith Press, 2007. 160 pp. Illus. Maps. Gloss. Bib. Index. $34.95.
Reviewed by Colonel Jon T. Hoffman, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve
This book can justly be described as the best collection of photos ever published about Marines on Guadalcanal. While there are a handful of official Marine Corps images not included, and there are undoubtedly more in private collections and Army archives, no one has ever assembled a more complete set and put it into print. Those familiar with the history of the campaign will recognize the many iconic shots that grace nearly every book on the subject, but there are dozens more that have never before seen the light of day. In total, they paint a fuller visual portrait of the Marine experience on that island than any compilation previously available.
The pictures are interspersed throughout a fairly lengthy narrative overview of the campaign. In the introduction to this volume, author Eric Hammel points with pride to his four- decade fascination with the Guadalcanal campaign. A prolific writer with a focus on the Marine Corps and the Pacific theater of World War II, he should have brought a wealth of knowledge to this project. Regrettably, the text in this prepublication manuscript does not come close, in either quality of content or style, to matching the images.
While the story adequately chronicles the main events, numerous factual errors detract from its value. Some of these mistakes, such as the rank of the commander of the 1st Marine Raider Battalion, are not vital, but others seriously muddle the actual accounts of battles. Two examples illustrate the problems. On the morning of 13 September 1942, the Raiders are credited with “regaining” ground lost the night before. In fact the Marine counterattack generally failed to do so, and Colonel Merritt “Red Mike” Edson ordered a withdrawal to more defensible terrain before the Japanese resumed their assault that night. The author then places the main part of the subsequent Battle of Henderson Field on this same terrain feature, repeatedly describing the Japanese attacks as having “spilled up the face of the ridge,” having “mounted the slope once again,” and being “contained on the forward slope of Bloody Ridge.” While part of Lieutenant Colonel Lewis “Chesty” Puller’s battalion did occupy the site of the Raider’s epic September stand, his October fight took place on relatively level ground hundreds of yards to the east.
In a similar fashion, bold statements are tossed off without much regard for how well they describe what was happening. Hammel paints the Ichiki Detachment as being outnumbered 15 to 1 in its August assault against the 1st Marines. While that was true if one counted all American forces on the island, in reality the odds were more like 2 to 1 at the point of attack. Tactics— sound on the part of the Marines and reckless on the part of the Japanese— determined the outcome, not numerical odds. At the start of the campaign, the Marine invasion force is described as a “division of amateurs.” While the majority of the men were untried and not fully trained, there were many officers and senior NCOs with ample experience who were more than capable of leading them to victory. Likewise, the decision to launch the invasion is dubbed “insane,” far too powerful an adjective for a plan that was bold and risky, but certainly not foolhardy. Even routine metaphors are lazily chosen and seemingly out of place. Following the arrival of the first Marine aviation units on the island, the author remarks that “there was dancing in the streets.”
The photo captions are better than the main text, but even they are occasionally problematic. A beached torpedo is said to be evidence that Japanese submarines must have been in the area, although it just as easily could have been launched from a plane or surface ship, and the numerical odds would strongly favor the latter two. The caption for a photo of a field telephone switchboard discusses the state of radio communications.
Despite the book’s narrative flaws, anyone interested in Guadalcanal will find it useful to peruse this volume, but solely for the visual depiction of that critical chapter of Marine Corps history. In this case, the pictures really are much more valuable than thousands of words.
One Square Mile of Hell: The Battle for Tarawa
John Wukovits. New York: NAL Caliber, 2006. 269 pp. Illus. Notes. Bib. Index. $24-95.
Reviewed by Beth L. Crumley
In the early morning hours of 20 November 1943, U.S. Marines crawled over the sides of troop transports and down cargo nets, to board landing craft that carried them toward the shores of Tarawa Atoll’s Betio Island. For students and scholars of Marine Corps history, that date brings thoughts of the 2d Marine Division, and images of Marines waist deep in bloodstained water and huddled behind Betio’s seawall. It brings thoughts of recognizable names: Colonel David Shoup, Major Henry Crowe, or Staff Sergeant William Bordelon and First Lieutenant Alexander Bonneyman Jr., both recipients of the Medal of Honor. Many remember the horrific casualties of the campaign— 3,407 Marines dead or wounded.
In One Square Mile of Hell, author John Wukovits recounts the horror and loss, the courage, determination, and sacrifice, that was the battle for Tarawa. This isn’t a campaign history. It is, rather, a masterful account of the battle as seen through the eyes of the men who experienced it.
Wukovits introduces his readers to the Marines and Navy corpsmen who stormed Tarawa’s heavily defended beaches. Through the author’s personal interviews with both survivors and the families of those who died, the reader comes to know these men, know their hometowns, their families, their sweethearts, their hopes for a future after war with Japan. No longer are these nameless Marines who hit the beach through a hail of enemy fire. They are someone’s son, brother, father, or husband.
It is through their eyes and memories that Wukovits offers a vivid portrait of combat. The reader can almost feel the tension, fear, brutality and exhaustion of battle. Descriptions are graphic, sometimes shockingly so, painting a hellish nightmare of death and destruction that was Tarawa. Yet through the horror, Wukovits also captures the determination and courage for which the U.S. Marines are known. The reader is witness to countless acts of bravery, Marines who left the safety of the seawall “because a battle had to be won, and the path to victory lay in rushing forward.” These were the men who ran a gauntlet of fire and death just to reach the shore, men who stood in a hail of enemy fire to lead their men forward, who moved from relative safety to destroy enemy pillboxes, to eliminate one machine-gun nest after another. It brings home the tragedy that is war, as time and again, a young Marine with whom the reader feels a kinship is killed.
One Square Mile of Hell does something few other military history books do. It gives the reader a glimpse into what the families of the Marines serving in the Pacific endured. People on the home front read the casualty figures from Tarawa with shock and disbelief. Said Major General Julian Smith, “Tarawa cost the lives of nearly a thousand American boys and brought sorrows to as many homes.”
One Square Mile of Hell is a gripping account of one of the most ferocious battles in Marine Corps history. Few other books capture the reality that is war with such honesty and with such poignancy. Wukovits has provided scholars and students alike with a fine complement to the best campaign histories of the battle for Tarawa. For them, it will become required reading.
New and Notable Naval DVDs
Reviewed by Eric Mills
“Captain Horatio Homblower” (1951)
Fans of seafaring cinema have long yearned for this one to surface on DVD—the original Warner Brothers Technicolor classic celebrating the exploits of C. S. Forester’s great fictional hero of the Age of Fighting Sail. Directed by the eye-patched, always-reliable action-helmer Raoul Walsh, “Captain Horatio Hornblower” is a splashy, colorful, old-school adventure movie. It’s well anchored by a solid performance from Gregory Peck as the British naval officer who brings equal measures of cool intelligence and bold risk-taking to his intrepid leadership style. (It was one of Peck’s personal favorites among all his roles.) Based on the original trilogy of Hornblower novels (Beat to Quarters, Ship of the Line, and Flying Colours) and adapted for the screen by Forester himself, the film packs in a couple of stand-alone adventures, the first involving South American Pacific coast geopolitical intrigue, the second involving action against Napoleon’s forces in Europe. Linking these multiple-ocean episodes is a doomed love affair between Hornblower and Lady Barbara Wellesley (a ’50s-fetching Virginia Mayo).
“Captain Horatio Hornblower” drags only slightly in the mushy middle act; otherwise, it’s admirably loaded with plenty of sea fights, swordplay, shipwrecks, audacious escapes and other naval derring-do. It stands up nicely alongside the 1998-2003 A&.E television Hornblower films starring loan Gruffud; Gruffud is playing Hornblower at a younger age, in adventures based on the novels set earlier in Hornblower’s career. Peck, portraying the older Hornblower as captain, captures the same character aged a bit Like the A&E Hornblower movies, the ’51 “Hornblower” is a must-have for the naval-history lover’s DVD library. The restoration to disc was worth waiting for—it looks spectacular, with a sharp, clean image and vivid hues.
“The Cruel Sea” (1953)
Here’s one of the all-time great naval-movie classics. Based on Nicholas Monsarrat’s phenomenally successful novel of stoic British courage in the Battle of the Atlantic, “The Cruel Sea” was adapted for the screen by the great thriller-author Eric Ambler. When first released, it must have seemed revolutionary in its gritty realism. Presented in the same sort of semi-documentary style as such film- noir police procedurals as “The Naked City,” “The Street With No Name,” and “He Walked by Night,” “The Cruel Sea” exists in a black-and-white visual world that has almost an art-house quality. Bleak urban streetscapes greet the sailors on shore leave; tense moments on board a World War II convoy escort fending off U-boats are presented in shadowy angles with no swelling-soundtrack melodramatics, just silence and suspense.
Jack Hawkins, as the indefatigable but all- too-human skipper, has his finest hour here—talk about perfect casting. Hawkins had been toiling away in the movie business for decades at this point, but it was with the smash-hit success of “The Cruel Sea” that he suddenly became an “overnight” star. A solid cast of then-unknowns provides all-around excellent acting support, most notably by Donald Sinden as Lockhart, the point-of-view character.
Modern audiences are most apt to recognize an extremely young Denholm Elliott, here as an officer with a tragic homefront story arc, beloved by later generations as befuddled curator Marcus Brody in the “Indiana Jones” movies.
Previously available in the United States only as part of a hit-and-miss “British War Classics” boxed set, “The Cruel Sea” is now available stateside as a stand-alone purchase. Its stature as one of the most evocative renderings of naval wartime experience makes it a no-brainer acquisition for the enthusiast. Sadly, the DVD quality is less than top-notch. The picture quality is superlative, but the audio track is muddled; its slight fuzziness combined with the British accents puts a strain on the dialogue-following. What’s worse, you can’t even go the subtitles route to clarify what’s being said; none are offered. In fact, there are no special features whatsoever. While it’s a bare- bones release, “The Cruel Sea” still is highly recommended—the movie’s the thing.
“Mutiny on the Bounty” (1962)
Epic, lavish, exotic, and expensively made, this flawed giant from the era of bloated big-budget blockbusters can’t hold a candle to the classic 1935 version starring Clark Gable and Charles Laughton. It’s still a blast, though. Shot in Ultra Panavision 70, the ’62 “Mutiny” is as wide a wide-screen movie as you’ll ever see. Filmed on location in Polynesia, featuring a splendid replica ship, buoyed by Bronislau Kaper’s lush musical score, S it’s a feast for the senses, at least.
As the tyrannical Bligh, Trevor Howard serves up a performance that’s more nuanced and less cartoon-villainish than Laughton’s, but also less memorable. The root of the movie’s dysfunction is the bizarre presence of Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian. With his mincing, high-school- play English accent and weird behavioral flourishes, he drags the whole costly enterprise down to an unintended level of campiness. While this version of “Mutiny on the Bounty” is not an absolute essential for the collector, it does look stunning on DVD. The two- disc offering comes loaded with extras, including the never-before-seen original prologue and epilogue.