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ISLANDS TO WINDWARD. By Carleton Mitchell. D. Van Nostrand Co. New York, Toronto, and London, 1948. 287 pages, plus preface, appendices and index. 149 illustrations by the author; 3 maps. $12.50.
Reviewed by Captain E. John Long, United States Naval Reserve
Ever since the caravels of Columbus made landfall in the Western World, the Caribbees, as the West Indies are familiarly known, have been a place of high adventure, romance, and mystery. Their wind-swept blue waters and myriad green bays long have afforded battleground or hiding place for frigate or pirate craft, trader or slaver, or in more recent years, battleship, cruiser, submarine, and plane.
These were the first American beachheads, upon whose white coral strands explorers planted the standards of Spain, France, England, Holland, and other sea powers; here priests set up the first altars in the New World, captains careened their wounded ships, and buccaneers came to quarrel over or to bury their ill-gotten gains. “Banana revolutions” in the island jungles and brush trained many a Jack Tar and Marine for bigger battles to come.
Little wonder, then, that the fabulous saga of the Caribbees should seem inexhaustible. Yet, strangely enough, few really authentic books have been written about the West Indies; fewer than about any other region of comparable size and importance in the Americas.
Perhaps an explanation can be found in one word: inaccessibility. Not many steamship and airlines regularly serve the area, and inter-island boats are scarce and unreliable.
So, although they lie at our doorstep, the West Indies, by and large, are terra incognita. That is, they were until Carleton Mitchell and his wife decided one November evening to cruise the Windward Islands in their ketch, the Carib. Fortunately for the rest of us, they decided to make a record of the trip, and that very complete record, Islands To Windward, with a wealth of splendid illustrations, has just been published.
In his preface Mr. Mitchell says: “This book is essentially the story of a small boat cruise through the Caribbee Islands. But I have tried to make it go beyond the interests of yachtsmen: I have tried to tell of the islands stretching away in a lazy curve from continent to continent; I have tried to tell of the people, their history, their struggles. I have tried to convey something of their present lives, and the ‘feel’ of the Tropics, a contentment based on perfect weather, easy hospitality, and an inescapable sense of
mahana. ... In short, I have tried to make this a story for everyone who might travel to the West Indies—including those who make their voyages without leaving the chair by the fire.”
Yet, strictly speaking, Islands to Windward is not just another “travel book,” entertaining as it is. Nor is it a swashbuckling account of breath-taking experiences. With ingenuous frankness the author early in the volume cautions the reader: “I hope it is clear that this is not to be a tale of high adventure. No storms at sea, no clawing off a lee shore, no encounters with marine monsters, nor battling out of bar-rooms with the legs of chairs. We were adults cruising in a small boat, because we liked to live that way, visiting places we had always wanted to see.”
Islands To Windward, however, occasionally hits peaks of high excitement, such as the open sea run between Martinique and Dominica, and the landing at the tiny Dutch island of Saba. Navy and Air Force veterans of World War II may experience a touch of nostalgia as Mr. Mitchell describes some of the “Destroyer Deal” bases, now mere shells of their former importance and activity.
No respector of “sacred cows,” the author frequently takes issue with official publications of the Hydrographic Office and of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, but his points of disagreement are “based on the realities of small boat pilotage.”
In fact, the most valuable part of the book, for the nautically-minded reader, comes in four appendices, following the narrative account of the voyage from Trinidad to Annapolis, the author’s home.
In the first Mr. Mitchell describes his ketch in enough detail to provide practically a building plan for anyone wishing to follow in the wake of the Carib.
The second appendix, aptly called “Loose Ends,” embodies “a miscellaneous residue of information, scrawled on slips of paper or jotted in the margins of the first draft. For some reason, certain items refuse to lay neatly into the warp and woof of the whole, but dangle as verbal Irish pennants! This chapter is an attempt to tuck a few loose ends into place.” It includes a Pronouncing Gazetteer, and much practical advice concerning Fresh Water, Ground Tackle, Supplies, Repairs, Medicine, and “Comfort.”
West Indian sailing routes and Pilotage are meticulously discussed in the other two appendices.
I have reserved mention until now of the 140 superb black and white, and nine color, photographs which the author, who headed the Navy’s combat photography during World War II, somehow found time to take between turns at the wheel and sessions with his logbook. These, with three maps, help to make Islands To Windward the finest and most authoritative reference book on the West Indies, and one that will remain so, it is safe to predict, for many years to come.
THE UNITED STATES NAVY—A Description of Its Functional Organization.
Prepared by the Office of the Management
Engineer, Navy Department, Washington,
D. C., July 1948. NavExos P-435 (Rev.
7-48).
Reviewed by Captain Paul Dugan,
U. S. Navy
With the formation of the National Military Establishment by legislative action, and the incorporation of the Navy Department therein, many directives have been issued by the President or by the Secretary of Defense to establish the organization to carry out the intent of Congress. The 86 page pamphlet, The United States Navy—A Description of Its Functional Organization, gives in concise and convenient form the new organization of The Naval Establishment.
The titles of the five parts of the pamphlet indicate its broad scope; they are:
I. Organization for National Security.
II. The Naval Establishment.
III. The Navy Department.
IV. The Shore Establishment.
V. The Operating Forces.
Seven explanatory organization charts show the chain of high command, the lines of business and logistic administration, management and technical control, military command and coordination control, and policy control.
Admiral Louis Denfeld, Chief of Naval
Operations, regards this publication as “required reading on the part of Naval Officers,” and recommends “its study on the part of all others having the Navy at interest.”
THE U. S. ARMY IN WORLD WAR II; The Army Ground Forces; The Procurement and Training of Ground Combat Troops. By Robert R. Palmer, Bell I. Wiley, and William R. Keast of the Historical Section, Army Ground Forces. Washington, D. C.; U. S. Government Printing Office. 696 pages, tables, and index. $4.50.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel J. D.
Hittle, U. S. Marine Corps
Manpower, even in the so-called atomic age, is the common denominator of all armed forces, the sine qua non of national security. Always a problem of major magnitude in our Nation’s wars, the question of personnel utilization assumed even greater, and more complexing, status in the last war. This is an important book for it records authoritatively the constant struggle of the Army to solve its ever recurrent problems of personnel procurement and utilization during World War II.
Were it not for a book such as this, military readers would probably never know of the bitter conflicts that were waged within the Army over the question of personnel. The intra-Army personnel disputes revolved principally around the question of the allocation of what the authors refer to as “high- intelligence manpower,” or those in AGCT (Army General Classification Test) classes I and II. Under the policy of according the Army Air Forces preferential assignment of high-intelligence personnel, the AGCT level of the ground forces dropped proportionately. That portion of the text that chronicles the conflict between General McNair and General Arnold over the question of preferential manpower treatment for the Air Forces will probably become, from the historical standpoint, the most valuable of the entire book. Such future historical value will stem basically from the clear-cut manner in which the authors develop the issues involved in the problem arising from limited national manpower resources of the last war. Since such resources will not be materially augmented in a future war, the same scramble for high-intelligence personnel may well be re-enacted unless our manpower planners profit from the lessons of the past war, which are so well set forth in this study.
Indeed, those who today and in the future must wrestle with the problem of how best to utilize our national manpower will do well to contemplate the reasons that prompted McNair to insist on the policy by which “the Army must deal with the manpower of the country as it found it.” By so insisting, McNair was merely adhering to the basic military principle of doing the best possible with the material provided.
Another portion of the book that will probably be of interest to the service reader concerns the various attempts by McNair to raise the ground soldier’s prestige in the eyes of the services as a whole as well as instill in the ground fighting man a sense of pride in his position—admittedly a difficult task in view of the policies that created the situation calling for such remedial action.
A basic virtue of this volume, as well as the preceding one of the series, is the candidness with which the authors, officially writing under Army Ground Force sponsorship, so willingly indulge in exposing and discussing the Army’s self-recognized policy errors. For example, there is no attempt to conceal how disturbed General Marshall was by the 1943 survey that indicated “the low state of morale in the ground arms, especially the infantry”; nor do the authors evidence any reluctance in using McNair’s statement to the effect that corrective action in such a fundamental problem was initiated about two years too late. The Army’s replacement system is subjected to a thorough and highly critical analysis, and many readers will be startled by the candid reference to the breakdown of the replacement system in 1943.
As long as the authors concern themselves with the Army manpower problems, their writing is on a high scholarly level, their conclusions well substantiated by textual discussion and footnotes. It is somewhat disappointing however, to discover that these high standards of historical writing are not universally maintained throughout the book. The only basic criticism of the book stems
from the authors’ attempt to attribute at least some of the Army’s man power problems to personnel procurement policies of the Navy and Marine Corps. For one example, the statement is made that “by voluntarily enlisting or accepting a commission in the Navy or Marines, many thousands of men of the finest physical types . . . remained outside the operations of Selective Service and hence outside the Army. Not all of these men were used for combat duty by the Navy and the Marine Corps.”
Such a not too subtle implication that the naval service provided a means for evading combat duty certainly is not borne out by such statistical data that shows, for instance, that 88.9 per cent of Marine enlisted personnel and 98.3 per cent of Marine officers served overseas in World War II. Similar percentages for other elements of the naval service will conclusively disprove any false impression that the naval service offered sanctuary from combat. If the authors believed that such assertion had to be included in an objective history, they should have substantiated that assertion with factual data.
On the whole, with the exception of the deficiency noted, this is a valuable contribution to the history of World War II.
DIXIE RAIDER: THE SAGA OF THE C.S.S. SHENANDOAH. By Murray Morgan. New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc. 336 pages. $4.00.
Reviewed by Professor Charles Lee Lewis, United States Naval Academy
Dixie Raider is the third book on the Shenandoah to appear within the past two years. Stanley Horn’s Gallant Rebel was a factual story written in the style of fiction. Diamond Head, by Houston Branch and Frank Waters, was historical fiction with a background of New Bedford whalers and the Confederate raider Shenandoah. Murray Morgan’s account is entirely factual in both subject matter and style.
His book is based on extensive research in the reports of the masters of the ships destroyed by the raider and of American consular officials, as well as in the accounts of the cruise by Captain Waddell and several of his officers. Much interesting information was also found in contemporary newspapers in the United States, Australia, and England. The author has accordingly been able to write the most detailed narrative of this cruise that has yet appeared. It probably merits the adjective “definitive.” There are numerous quotations from this varied source material which restore the past with remarkable clarity, and give to the old story a realism not to be found in purely imaginative writing. Such narration could not produce the simple but effective description of the end of the cruise of the Shenandoah at Liverpool. “Men and officers stood at quiet attention,” writes Morgan. “Sorrow and uncertainty diluted their relief at reaching port. On the poop deck Whittle stood erect, his arms folded across his chest, tears streaming down his cheeks. At a signal from Waddell, the quartermaster stepped forward and slowly, in dead silence, ran down the last flag of the Confederacy. Carefully he rolled up the ensign. With the slowness of a funeral march he carried it to the captain. The cruise was over. The last Confederate had surrendered. The Shenandoah was again in British hands.” Many are beginning to realize that the greatest sea story in American history has been largely neglected for nearly a century. It is a story with an unusual variety of characters and incidents, which runs the gamut of human emotions. It is truly an American Odyssey. Murray Morgan has written this saga with historical accuracy and balance, with realistic simplicity and directness, and with sympathy for men caught in the great net of war.
INTELLIGENCE IS FOR COMMANDERS. By Lieutenant Colonel Robert R. Glass and Lieutenant Colonel Phillip B. Davidson. Military Service Publishing Company: Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. 1948. 189 pages, including foreword, introduction, forms, and index. $3.85.
Reviewed by Lieutenant John P. C.
McCarthy, U. S. Naval Reserve (Inactive)
The authors of Intelligence Is For Commanders have produced a text primarily for
the nucleus of a course in tactical army intelligence. It is natural that these men should not include in their orderly text, except for basic definitions, a discussion of long range, over-all, high level intelligence. Intelligence of such wide scope as to affect the entire national security does not interest the company or battalion officer. One could hardly expect these echelons to need the complete intelligence findings processed by the Soviet Political Warfare section of G-2, by the Agricultural Division of a Board of Economic Warfare, or by the Research and Analysis branch of an Office of Strategic Services. The specialized use of specific battle intelligence is made very clear by the authors in their excellent discussion of tactical decisions which is found throughout the text.
Colonels Glass and Davidson have written an informative little book for young officers to use in gaining experience by planning what the British call “war games.” In fact the book might well have been entitled “How to Plan Battle Operations for Young Army Officers.” To this reviewer as an experienced teacher and former instructor in a British intelligence school, the pedagogical organization of Intelligence Is For Commanders has been extremely well done. It is proof that the authors have both had considerable experience using military intelligence under battle conditions. There are some very useful field problems and situa- ations which will stimulate the student, and there is also a profusion of illustrations, supplementary maps, and intricate forms which the student of battle intelligence will do well to study. To those interested in textbook writing, your attention is invited to the variety of allusions with which Colonels Glass and Davidson have enlivened their book. For those interested in finding a book which does a good job of concentrating upon an exposition of battle intelligence for student- officers, this reviewer advises them to read Intelligence Is For Commanders.
THE MARITIME HISTORY OF MAINE. Three Centuries of Shipbuilding and Seafaring. By William Hutchinson Rowe. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1948. 333 pages. $6.00.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander H. 0. Werner, U. S. Naval Reserve (Inactive)
This fine study merits a place beside Samuel Eliot Morison’s familiar The Maritime History of Massachusetts. Mr. Rowe’s subject is more diffuse, his prose less distinguished, but the comparison is as unnecessary as it is obvious, for these two maritime histories complement, rather than compete with, each other.
Every reader who in the least enjoys the sea and ships, who enjoys the sounds, sights, and smells of a boatyard in the spring, who has cruised the Maine coast, even by automobile, will find pleasure in the perusal of this work. It should be noted that Mr. Rowe is eminently qualified for his task. For the past fifteen years he has been Secretary of the Maine Historical Society.
Chronologically, Mr. Rowe’s narrative extends from the building of the “pretty pinnace Virginia” at the mouth of the Kennebec in the summer of 1607 by members of the Plymouth Company—this was the first vessel to be built by Englishmen in the New World—to the great six-masted schooner Wyoming, 3,730 tons, built in Bath in 1909, the largest wooden fore-and-after ever built. Although iron ships are mentioned, Maine’s maritime glory belongs to the age of wooden ships under sail.
Most readers will be somewhat surprised by the great variety of down-Maine ships, by the way that changing economic demands were met time and again, and by the multiplicity of the contributions of sailing ships to the commercial life of that state and of America for over three hundred years. Indeed, Mr. Rowe’s book is, of its kind, first- rate reading from cover to cover.