This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
By Captain Peter G. Tsouras, U. S. Army Reserve
fthe Damned”;
At Kronstadt, as the Baltic Fleet readied itself to avenge the Pacific Squadron— defeated by the Japanese at Port Arthur in 1904—the warships looked imposing, the crews smartly dressed. But these ships were rusting, decrepit, top-heavy relics crewed mostly by ragtag, untrained, and demoralized peasantry. Their ensuing 18,000-mile voyage was a disgrace that the Soviets have never forgotten—or repeated.
The Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 is an important building bloek in the historical brief that Sergei G. Gorshkov has built to explain and justify major aspects of the naval expansion of the Soviet Union. In particular, the voyage of the Second Pacific Squadron to reinforce Port Arthur provides several strategic lessons that the Soviets have not been slow to absorb. As important as the expedition is to explaining modern Soviet naval developments, it also deserves to be remembered for the epic high drama of its synthesis of tragedy, heroism. and farce that has been so graphically described as the “Voyage of the Damned."
The Soviets continue the great tradition of the German General Staff by placing considerable emphasis on the study of military history. It is not surprising then that both of Gorshkov's major published works—an 11-article series published in Mor- skoy Sbnornik in 1972-73 (published as a book. Red Star Rising at Sea, by the Naval Institute in 1974) and Sea Power of the State—have a historical orientation that builds a consistent and comprehensive framework upon which he hangs his arguments on the development and use of sea power. Gorshkov specifically underlines the importance of the study and uses of mililtary history in his chapter “Problems of Naval Art" in Sea Power of the State.
The voyage of the Second Pacific Squadron represented such a complete fiasco that it exposed to thoughtful modern Soviet military historians the deficiencies inherent in the Soviet Union's geograph-
ical position that are as valid today as in 1904-1905. The remedies to these deficiencies are manifest, as Gorshkov points out. in the construction and strategy of the new Soviet Navy.
By seeing the voyage in some of the detail studied by Soviet military historians, not only are the strategic lessons clarified but something of the emotional impact of one of the most unusual naval campaigns in history becomes apparent in the context of the wounded pride of the Great Russian patriot.
The war against Japan was to demonstrate the fundamental incompetence of an autocracy to preside over the technical and cultural modernization of the perennial “backward” state. The catastrophes that fell upon Russian naval and military forces in the Far East in 1904 presented the tsarist autocracy of Nicholas II with a terrible dilemma. Russian prestige rested upon averting defeat by successfully standing at Port Arthur and reinforcing the trapped First Pacific Squadron. To send naval relief to the Far East seemed the only way to reverse the slide into defeat. The dilemma lay in the condition of the Russian Navy and the limitations of Russia’s geographical position. Both conspired to make the very idea of a naval relief force seem a fantastic if not absurd project.
For four months after the start of the war. no effort was made to improve the condition of either the Black Sea or Baltic fleets, an elementary precaution for a nation engaged in a major war. one would think. Only in June 1904 was the decision made to send a major part of the Baltic Fleet to the Far East. At that time, the first efforts were made to ready the Russian Navy for active service. The expedition was named the Second Pacific Squadron; it would not sail until October and would not arrive in the Far East until long after the fall of Port Arthur and the destruction of its sister squadron.
The task given to the new squadron commander. Admiral Zinovy Petrovitch Rozhdestvensky, was unprecedented. He was to pick from the largely obsolete Baltic Fleet enough vessels to travel 18.000 miles, join the beleaguered forces at Port Arthur, and then regain command of the sea. Even with first- class ships, experienced and dependable crews, and adequate bases of supply, such an assignment still would have been well-nigh impossible, involving logistical problems of the first magnitude.
The Baltic Fleet certainly did not represent an effective fighting force. Most of the professional, experienced officers and enlisted men were in the Far East. The incredible shortages in trained personnel had to be made up from reservists, conscripts, and men previously considered physically or politically unfit for active service. Up to one half of the enlisted strength of the squadron was made up of recent peasant conscripts who had been poorly trained and handled. The training of the reservists was outdated, which made them little more effective than the conscripts. “One half have to be taught everything," complained a gunnery officer, “because they know nothing, the other because they have forgotten everything: but if they do remember anything, then it is obsolete."1 Trained engineers were in such short supply that large numbers of merchant marine engineers were pressed from commercial shipping into active service with the squadron. The utility of the measure was questionable since the engineers were not familiar with naval engineering, and their attitudes were hardly positive.
Where the men in the Far East had been at least reliable, those in the Baltic Fleet contained many revolutionary and dissident elements. The chief engineer on board the battleship Orel, a regular navy officer, operated what amounted to a revolutionary lending library for the enlisted men. His pride was a copy of Das Kapital hidden behind his icon of Saint Nicholas. Revolutionary agitation and the incidence of sabotage were becoming such problems that long before the squadron sailed, shore leave had to be severely restricted. Included among the targets of sabotage were the engines of the Orel, incapacitated by steel shavings.
It was obvious that the crews had little faith in the great project; there was a manifest lack of patriotic animation. Many openly hoped for delays that would prolong departure until the war ended. Others, echoing wide civilian sentiment, saw a Russian victory as serving only to strengthen the autocracy and postpone pressing reforms. Many among the credulous peasant conscripts were simply terrified by their ignorance of the unknown. From this unstable human material, a real consensus or unity of purpose was never to coalesce.
If the enlisted men were such a problem, the officers were also to prove a disappointment. Despite a ruthless weeding out of the obviously unfit and incompetent, the squadron commander was still unable to rely on the leadership and technical skills of his officers to overcome or minimize the gargantuan training and morale problems among the crew. Years of neglect in officer training at all levels could not be compensated for overnight. There simply were not enough good officers to go around. An observer wrote of the older officers:
“They knew nothing about, or were unsympathetic towards, the mechanical and electrical devices which had completely transformed naval warfare, and which the Japanese, a far less conservative people than the Russians, had so heartily and intelligently adopted."2 An example of this failure to modernize was the maintenance of the old master-serf discipline that poisoned the relationship between officers and enlisted men. The same observer quoted above—a
senior noncommissioned officer on board the Orel— commented bitterly:
“The officers believed themselves to be beast- tamers. A bluejacket must obey orders smartly, without reflection, like a well-trained dog. For many of the admirals and captains such subserviency to the effects of drill was the only indispensable requisite to success in war. Yet our officers failed to perceive that mechanical toys, the automata thus produced were unfitted to handle efficiently the highly complicated instruments ot a modern warship and made very poor marksmen.”3
Personnel deficiencies were matched by deficiencies in the ships of the Baltic Fleet. Numbering more than 100 vessels, the fleet was simply not capable °f active service. Along with the best men, the best ships had also been sent early on to the Far East. The Baltic Fleet had too long been a backwater fleet; it was staffed with the sons of the aristocracy, with billets close to the social centers of St. Petersburg.
The hope of the expedition lay in five new battleships being rushed to completion in Baltic naval Vards. They were the sister ships Kniaz Suvorov. tflagship) Alekscmder III. Borodino. Orel, and Slava. ^ased on foreign designs, this class was disastrously modified during construction. They were made extremely top-heavy, and the excessive weight put most of the armor belt under the waterline. These ships—minus the Slava, which was not completed in time to sail with the others—formed the first division. One other new battleship, the Osliabia, two other battleships, Navarin and Sysoi Veliky, and an armored cruiser, DmitriDonskoi, formed the second division. These last three ships and the flagship of the cruiser division, Admiral Nakhimov, had been returned from the Far East in 1901 as unfit for active service. The cruiser division contained one old armored cruiser and six protected cruisers (four new), hhe rest of the squadron contained 20 auxiliary eruisers and support ships and nine destroyers.
Admiral Rozhdestvensky was probably the best choice the Russian Higher Naval Board could have made to command the expedition. He was probably the “only” choice since, of the available flag officers. he alone had not actively avoided the assignment. In fact, Rozhdestvensky was a glutton for responsibility who lived for his duty. He had the Proverbial iron determination that brooks no interference with the accomplishment of his mission. Utterly without tact and openly abusive of his officers and enlisted men (equally), he became thoroughly disliked and feared, not only by the men in uniform hut also by the bureaucrats and merchants he had to bully and browbeat to quicken the preparation of his squadron. His normally foul temper terrorized his subordinates; it was this high-strung harshness that denied him the vital confidence of his men. Rozhdestvensky worked the squadron to the breaking point, but complaints were stilled by the knowledge that he worked himself the hardest of all. Scrupulously honest, he fought with some success the pervasive graft and corruption that delayed everything in Russia. No man in Russia's naval service could have infused the effort to ready the squadron with so much energy and success. It was Rozhdestvensky’s dynamism and sense of duty that breathed the only trace of hope into the expedition. The fact that he ultimately failed was not so much a judgment against him, but a measure of the magnitude of his task. His effort was genuinely heroic; the tragedy was that even heroism could not undo years of neglect and sloth. Had he commanded at Port Arthur, the Japanese would have had a more dangerous opponent.
Seven weeks was the most time the admiral could allow for all stages of training—only two of them for intensive battle drill. The results were uniformly discouraging and marked by accidents, collisions, ships running aground, and constant mechanical failures. Gunnery practice appeared to be a waste of time for all the good it did. "We did not make a single strike,” reported one veteran gunnery officer during this brief training period. One morning, the admiral ordered a surprise drill, which resulted in
the mortified tone of the following message to the squadron:
“Today at 2 a.m. I instructed the officer of the watch to issue the signal for defense against torpedo attack. Eight minutes afterward there was no sign of anyone taking up his station. All officers and men were sound asleep. And when at last a few hands of the watch did appear, what did they do? Nothing. It seemed that they did not know where to go, nor was there a single searchlight ready for use.”4
Rozhdestvensky failed in his determination to take only the newest and fastest of the available ships. The tsar succumbed to the pressure of contractors eager to refit useless ships and to the ridiculous argument that a plethora of targets would confuse the Japanese! Millions of rubles were spent on these old ships when high-grade ammunition was considered too expensive to purchase. The old ships not only slowed the squadron to the speed of the most sluggish vessel but multiplied the logistics and maintenance problems beyond all reason.
It was logistics, specifically the procurement of coal, that preoccupied Rozhdestvensky as he readied the squadron. During the voyage, it would grow into an obsession. The squadron needed 500,000 tons of coal for the 18,000-mile voyage. Where was it to come from? Russia had no colonies or coaling stations along the way. British sea power, on the other hand, was infinitely facilitated by the fact that the sun never set on its country’s empire. The squadron would consume 3,000 tons a day at cruising speed and 10,000 tons at full speed; even in port it would use 500 tons a day. To make matters worse, Russia had few allies to offer assistance, and neutral ports were closed to belligerents. The only solution was to coal at sea which, at the time, was considered only an emergency procedure. Even the British scoffed at the thought of coaling 30-40 times at sea. Nevertheless, the Russians contracted with the German Hamburg-Amerika Line to provide 60 colliers from Libau to the Yellow Sea. That and the Russian sailor’s ability to load—sack by sack—500.000 tons of coal at sea would do the job!
The provision of fresh meat was addressed by the contracting of the French refrigeration ship Esper- cmce. Repairs were the responsibility of the maintenance ship. Kamchatka, which herself was to set the squadron record for breakdowns and malfunctions. Never more than a backup for the Baltic naval yards, she now would have to go it alone and service almost 50 ships on a journey halfway around the world.
The squadron had not even been gone three days when it damaged three Danish colliers during a coaling operation near the Great Belt. Breakdowns were increasing, and the ships were frequently forced to halt or to steam at reduced speed as individual ships made repairs. At the same time, Rozhdestvensky was nervously goading his captains to keep to his strict timetable, which added to the overall tension pervading the squadron.
Before departure time, Japanese intelligence agents in Europe had spread the story that Japanese torpedo boats would attempt to ambush the Russians in the North Sea. Russian intelligence had passed on the story unchecked to the navy, and it soon became common knowledge in the press and among the crews. The story found credulous listeners from the admiral to his peasants in uniform, so even before the Russians sailed, nerves had already begun to fray.
On the night of 22 October, the first division stumbled onto a British fishing fleet in a fog on the Dogger Banks. Already alerted by the Kamchatka to the presence of torpedo boats at which she had fired while in position trailing the squadron, gun crews were ready as the ships were at battle stations. Fire discipline broke first on the flagship, Kniaz Suvorov, as gun crews fired without permission; the other ships followed suit. Before Rozhdestvensky could order a cease-fire, several fishing boats had been sunk and British seamen killed. Realizing the mistake but still fearful of torpedo boats lurking in ambush. the Russians made matters worse by sailing on without offering assistance to the survivors. The tsar’s navy had also taken casualties in this onesided engagement; both the old cruisers Dmitri Don- skoi and Aurora had been badly damaged in the wild shoot-out by the ships of the first division.
So great was the storm of outrage in Great Britain that war seemed a possibility. Though this incident was to blow over, the Russians suffered a great moral defeat because of this incident; the laughter and snickers of world opinion followed the squadron around the globe. So did the enmity of British sea power which did its best to obstruct the voyage of the squadron.
Rozhdestvensky’s first major coaling stop was to be in Vigo Bay, but he was told by Spanish authorities that as a belligerent he could not coal in a Spanish port. The cause of this icy reception became obvious as a British squadron cruised off the coast. Frantic diplomatic efforts eventually allowed the ships to coal, but when the Russians left Spanish waters, they found themselves escorted by a powerful British cruiser squadron.
The precise maneuvers of the British both amazed and humiliated the Russians, for whom nothing seemed to go right. His self-composure cracking. Rozhdestvensky said to his watching staff, “That is a real squadron. Those are real seamen. Oh. if only we . . . .” He left the bridge, his voice choked with sobs.’ On the Kniaz Suvorov, an officer.openly stated in formation that it was a pity the two fleets did not
have it out there and then. When asked what he nteant by that, he said that a fight would spare them all the trouble of going halfway around the world to he sunk.6
The only friendly stop of the voyage was at Tangier, where the Sultan of Morocco was happy to show his disdain of great power politics by offering (he Russians every hospitality. Unfortunately, the hospitality was not well returned by the Russians. Port departures were not one of the squadron’s better maneuvers. At Tangier, the departure became Pandemonium as the Russians tried to sort themselves out into a complicated new formation. In the confusion, the anchor cable of the cruiser Anadyr fouled the Mediterranean telegraph cable to Europe. Knowing Rozhdestvensky's sensitivity to delays, the cruiser’s captain ordered the cable cut, leaving Tangier without communications for four days. At this Point, Rozhdestvensky split his forces, sending the older and smaller ships east through the Suez Canal while taking the newer ships around the Cape of Good Hope. He feared that the older ships would not survive the wild seas around the Cape and telt the larger battleships might not fit through the canal. The fleet was to rendezvous off Madagascar.
Rozhdestvensky hoped next to coal his ships at Dakar in French West Africa, but was informed that despite the Russo-French alliance, he had to leave the port within 24 hours; the French—like the Spanish—had succumbed to British pressure. The admiral dared the Frenchmen to fire because he was going to coal. Having no shore defenses, the port authorities could only inform Paris. T his bluff was to work again and again, as Rozhdestvensky defied
or evaded the instructions of colonial officials all the way to French Indochina and Cam Ranh Bay.
Worried by the possibility of only one more coaling stop between Dakar and Madagascar, the admiral ordered each of the battleships to take on 2.200 tons of coal—with bunker capacities of only 1.100 tons. He had to balance the risk of losing overloaded ships in bad weather against running out of coal well short of a rendezvous with colliers. Luckily, the weather held out.
Coal was stored everywhere space could be found. Piled up in officers' quarters, heads, gun turret passages, and even loose on gun decks, the coal was an overpowering and depressing presence. The inevitable clouds of coal dust fouled the food, equipment, and finally crew morale. It was under such conditions that the first threats of strike and mutiny were heard. Rozhdestvensky threatened to put any offenders adrift in a dinghy, which settled the matter for awhile.
The Russians missed their next port of call in West Africa by 30 miles. The chief navigator on board the Kniaz Suvorov was so confused that a destroyer had to be detached to find a lighthouse and ascertain the squadron's location. The Russians bumbled and barged their way around Africa, stopping constantly for major repairs, defying French or Portuguese orders to leave their waters while stuffing more coal into every corner. Rozhdestvensky ordered fleet maneuver training, but he gave up in despair over the consistently miserable results. The Russians were learning to recoal at sea perfectly, though, and would set a world record. That and simply keeping under way seemed the limit of the squadron's abilities.
Finally reaching the rendezvous point off Madagascar, Rozhdestvensky discovered the other half of his squadron engaged in overhauls which would delay the expedition at least two weeks. At the same time, news reached the Russians of the fall of Port Arthur and the destruction of the First Pacific Squadron, which meant that the Second Pacific Squadron would have to face the victorious Japanese alone. Another blow came with the news that a Third Pacific Squadron—consisting of those ships the admiral had refused to take—was being sent. Rozhdestvensky was ordered to wait at Madagascar the eight to ten weeks it would take the ships to reach him. With splendid timing, the Esperance's refrigeration equipment then broke down, and 700 tons of rotten meat had to be thrown overboard; it was washed back into the harbor by the tide to float around the Russian ships.
At this point, the admiral suffered a well-deserved nervous breakdown. In a supreme act of will and dedication, he dragged himself from his bed to address the sullen crew of his flagship. He spoke with such fire and sincerity that the men’s faith was almost magically rekindled. They would have followed him anywhere in that moment. The next day, the mail boat arrived without any personal mail, and morale crashed once more. Eight weeks of floating off the port which France used as its alternate Devil's Island, with food going bad in the tropical climate, ensured the destruction of crew morale and the hope of working the squadron into a cohesive fighting force.
With Rozhdestvensky sick in bed, the squadron sank into anarchy. It reached an extreme with the destruction of French property ashore, followed by a complaint from the authorities. This shocked Rozhdestvensky out of his depression and into a fury of work. The squadron drilled until the men were ready to drop. It kept them occupied and reestablished the authority of the command, but did nothing for operational efficiency. The Kniaz Suvorov, for instance, made only one hit during gunnery practice—on the bridge of the tow ship, Dmitri Donskoi. Several mutinies broke out at this time. Fourteen mutineers were shot on board the Admiral Nakhimov, and the successful mutineers on the prison ship Malay were forced to surrender by a boarding party and the guns of the Kniaz Suvorov.1
It was under these conditions that the squadron set off on the most difficult part of its journey: straight across the Indian Ocean, past Singapore, and north to French Indochina to the shelter and coal awaiting at Cam Ranh Bay. Once there, the squadron practiced a ritual of sorts: the French ordered the Russians out of the harbor each day, the Russians sailed and then returned as soon as the French had departed. The French had become rather lax in their neutrality, but their assistance amounted to little more than winking at the Russian presence.
Seven months to the day from the time it had left Russia, the Second Pacific Squadron sailed north from Cam Ranh Bay to engage the Japanese fleet and be destroyed at the Battle of Tsushima.
In Red Star Rising at Sea, Gorshkov discerns three special lessons to be learned from the Russo- Japanese War: (1) ships were not designed to meet conditions under which they would operate; design ignored the “requirements unique to Russia, stemming from her geographical location,” (2) a need existed for inter-theater maneuver of forces, which required ships of great cruising range and endurance to compensate for a lack of bases, and (3) strategic foresight was necessary to concentrate forces. Gorshkov's writings and Soviet naval developments since 1956 have been quite clear as to the use of these lessons. Of course, there are a great many other profound historical factors that have influenced the development of Soviet sea power; Gorshkov's interest in German submarine operations is a good example. Nevertheless, there is a discernible relationship between the lessons learned from the
1904-1905 war and current Soviet naval thought and development.
Until Stalin’s death, Soviet ship designs differed little from Western models. Only thereafter, with a flowering of Soviet military thought and the rise of Gorshkov, did Soviet naval design make a sharp departure from tsarist and Stalinist traditions. Gorshkov explains in Red Star Rising that the over- afl improvement in Soviet science and industry “. . . has made it possible for naval development to approximate the Navy’s vital needs to the maximum degree, without copying naval construction in the Western countries. . . .”8
. These conditions result largely from the climactic •imitations imposed on Soviet bases and trom the Soviet Union’s lack of overseas bases, which require the Soviet Navy to traverse great distances to Sain access to the world’s oceans.
Gorshkov considers both endurance on long cruises and rear service support provided at sea to be important preconditions for modern naval development.9 In Understanding Soviet Naval Developments (Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1981), •he point is made that the Soviets have indeed been successful at building long endurance into their ships and that rear service support, while not up to Amer- lcan standards, is steadily improving.
The Soviets appear to have put a premium on doing without foreign bases—originally out of ne- eessity: Witness the months spent at sea without Port calls, the investment in repair ships rather than fixed facilities, and the absence—until recently—of available foreign ports or facilities. Nevertheless, •he Soviets recognize that complete independence from overseas bases and ports is no longer practical °r a compelling necessity. While ports and bases have always been sought eagerly, they have only recently been found in useful numbers. Yet Admiral Edward Wegener, in his book The Soviet Naval Offensive, makes the point that only a base under a Nation's own sovereignty is “truly politically secure,’’ and that the lack of such bases is a major impediment to the achievement of real sea power hy the Soviets.11’ It is then with no little chagrin that Gorshkov rails at the tsarist failure to secure the many islands and overseas territories discovered by Russians. The cause of the chagrin is evident in the damage done to the Soviet presence in the Mediterranean when expelled from Valona in 1961.
Tied to both long-range endurance and overseas bases is the capacity to engage in inter-theater maneuver or, as Gorshkov’s Western counterparts might Put it, crisis reaction. Gorshkov does not discuss inter-theater maneuver at any length in The Sea Power °f the State, only commenting that the deployment and concentration of forces in “particular areas of •he oceanic theaters will greatly grow in the future.” Soviet naval responses to crises have shown, howler, that the ability to deploy and concentrate forces
has already become an impressive operation.
The classic example of inter-theater maneuver was the response to the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. The Soviets were able to concentrate 95 ships in the Mediterranean by 31 October, up from 52 ships on 5 October. The delay in the semiannual relief of Soviet submarines resulted in two reliefs of submarines being on hand by 5 October and may indicate the “strategic forethought” that Gorshkov considers to be a vital part of inter-theater maneuver. Counting the additional submarine relief, the Soviets were able to more than double their forces in little more than three weeks. Apparently, the increase in firepower was of an even greater degree of magnitude. At the same time, the Soviets retained powerful additional forces on hand in the Black Sea Fleet tor further reinforcement. The implications of this demonstration of Soviet naval capabilities fell upon many observers like a thunderclap.
A greater contrast than the one between intertheater maneuvers of 1904-1905 and 1973 cannot be found. Whereas the Russian Navy was given the bum’s rush out of European waters and hampered over the entire voyage by British sea power, the Soviet Navy faced the heir to British sea power and forced what some would charitably call a draw." Granted, the inter-theater distances were short in the 1973 case, but other deployments show an increasing ability to send stronger forces farther and farther afield.
That West Africa and Indochina, witness to the tragic journey of the Second Pacific Squadron, are now witness to a far different Russian presence is no little irony. If the ghost of Admiral Rozhdestvensky—who was seriously wounded at Tsushima and taken prisoner—lingers, he may take comfort in knowing that the growth of Soviet naval power is partially indebted to the “Voyage of the Damned."
'Richard Hough. The Fleet That Had to Die (New York: Viking Press. 1958). p. 21.
-Aleksei A. NovikolT-Priboy. Tsushima (Westport. CT: Hyperion Press. 1936). pp. 55-56.
’Ibid., p. 34.
JHough, op. cit., pp. 25-26.
'Denis and Peggy Warner. The Tide at Sunrise (New York: Charterhouse. 1974). p. 346. "
'’Ibid., p. 345.
7Hough, op. cit.. p. 109.
“Adm. Sergei G. Gorshkov, Red Star Rising at Sea (Annapolis. MD: Naval Institute Press, 1978). p. 129.
’Ibid., pp. 132-33. .
"'Edward Wegener. The Soviet Naval Offensive (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1975), pp. 22-23.
"Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.. On Watch!New York: Times Books. 1976), p. 446.
Mr. Tsouras is a full-time graduate student in the Russian Area Studies Program at Georgetown University and has a B.A. degree in history from the University ol Utah. Mr. Tsouras is a captain in the U. S. Army Reserve, currently assigned to the Headquarters, 352d Civil Affairs Command in Riverdale. Maryland.