The Proving Ground
G. Bruce Knecht. Boston: Little, Brown, 2001. 320 pp. Photos. Index. $24.95 ($22.45).
Reviewed by Captain John Bonds, U.S. Navy (Retired)
On the day after Christmas 1998, 115 ocean racing yachts started a race from Sydney, Australia, to Hobart, Tasmania. It was an ideal time of year for a yacht race, at the height of summer in the Southern Hemisphere and over a long holiday for amateur yachtsmen. Every year since 1945 the race has been run by the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia. The 630-mile course always is challenging because the fleet has to cross Bass Strait, the 140-mile gap between Australia and Tasmania. The 40th parallel, home of the "Roaring Forties," goes right down the middle of the passage. Thus, wind is a given at this latitude—but Bass Strait also is shallow. From 2,000 or more fathoms, the bottom rises to as little as 30 fathoms. This results in waves that are higher and steeper than anywhere else. This is why this race is considered to be the most challenging sail race in the world.
Drawing on a well-established pattern for adventure literature, G. Bruce Knecht weaves a tapestry of survival and death among the racing fleet. Focusing principally on three boats, he uses narrative to create three-dimensional portraits of very human characters.
Larry Ellison, the American CEO of Oracle, was the owner and skipper of the Sayonara, an 80-foot state-of-the-art "maxi-boat," so called because it was built to the restricting limits of the handicapping rule. Ellison was an experienced offshore racer who had won the Hobart Race in 1995. His objective in 1998 was the course record.
The Sayonara was crewed primarily by highly skilled professionals, including Chris Dixon, who brought an international reputation in offshore and America's Cup racing.
The Sword of Orion was a more typical ocean racing boat, 43 feet overall and of comparatively light displacement. Her skipper was nearly an offshore novice. The Sword of Orion was his first offshore boat and it was his first Hobart race. The crew included his amateur friends and three professionals, two of them local sailors with significant experience. The third was a young British Olympic dinghy sailor, Glyn Charles, who did not like ocean racing but went along for the "consulting money" that had been offered by the owner.
The Winston Churchill was a boat of quite different character and history. She was a 51-foot classic wooden ocean racer built in 1942. She had participated in the very first Hobart race in 1945 and in 15 subsequent contests.
She had been rebuilt completely to make her ready for another competition at sea. Her amateur skipper was a successful businessman who enlisted primarily his friends as crew. They ranged from a grizzled veteran of 15 Hobart races to a 19-year-old young man on his first ocean race.
Knecht presents the story chronologically, in parallel glimpses of these boats and their crews as they at first reached briskly down the coast and then began to encounter what turned out to be an exceptional storm. In the end, only the Sayonara and her crew finished the race among the three, and only after crushing effort and long anxious hours watching the hull steadily delaminate under pressure. Once on the dock in Hobart, Larry Ellison vowed never to do the race again.
The tragic fates of the other two boats are recounted in Knecht's prose; lives were lost on both the Winston Churchill and the Sword of Orion as they tried futilely to weather the tempest. A good deal has been written already about this storm, and there is a decent video from Australian television as well. But Knecht illustrates the human dimension of this real drama in a thoroughly convincing way—well beyond the usual report of such things. Unlike Sebastian Junger in The Perfect Storm, Knecht makes no attempt to describe the last thoughts of those who were lost. Rather, he sticks close to official reports and interviews in his portrayal. He loses nothing in this approach, however, and the story is every bit as powerful as its literary antecedents. It holds the same fascination for us, viewing vicariously the struggle to survive on a savage sea. It is combat without bullets.
John Adams
David McCullough. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. 751 pp. Illustrations, Maps, Notes, Index. $35.00 ($31.50).
Reviewed by John B. Hattendorf
John Adams was no sailor. And yet, at the windswept entrance to Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay, a bronze bust of Adams stands on a pedestal facing the sea, not far from the massive walls of the old fort that bears his name. Not many come to the remote little soldiers' cemetery to admire Gerald Denison's bust, cast in 1934 during the fort's final decades under the Army's Coast Artillery. Nevertheless, for the Naval War College families who live nearby today it serves as an appropriate reminder of Adams's singular contributions to the U.S. Navy. A Massachusetts farmer and lawyer, he knew well the importance of the sea for New England and for all of America. Throughout his long public career, as a member of Congress, ambassador, vice president, and president, he consistently pointed out the importance of a navy to the young republic he helped create. Among the country's Founding Fathers, Adams was the Navy's earliest supporter.
Almost immediately on its publication, David McCullough's biography, John Adams, shot to the top of the best-seller list, and if we are to believe the newspaper reports, its sales reached record numbers for a historical biography within a few months. Given the subject and the extraordinarily rich manuscript material that exists about Adams, this is not entirely surprising. McCullough's masterly presentation and selection of material have created a fascinating portrait. In his hands, the 650-page narrative of John Adams's life is like a vast blockbuster novel, ever vivid, ever fascinating, but unlike a novel, very carefully documented and historically accurate.
Balding and increasingly rotund, Adams was not a handsome man, but he had a subtle sense of humor, a keen eye, and an open, sometimes acerbic, manner of speaking and writing. All of this was captured in his diary, his voluminous and frank correspondence with his wife, Abigail, and in letters with family, friends, and colleagues such as Thomas Jefferson. Any author approaching the subject of John Adams cannot help but be captivated by Adams's own words. While one easily finds fault with authors who quote excessively, McCullough skillfully uses quotes that add rather than detract from his fast-paced text. "Politics are a labyrinth without a clue," Adams once wrote during his first months in Congress. Outraged by a Pennsylvania colleague whose Quaker relations extolled pacifist sentiments, Adams declared, "If I had such a mother and such a wife, I believe that I should have shot myself." And he could characterize one of his Braintree townsmen as "a rare collection of disagreeable qualities."
For men and women of the U.S. Navy today, there is much of professional interest. Naval details do not dominate the story, but they are there to be found in small nuggets throughout the volume. It was Adams who in 1775 first nominated George Washington to head the Continental Army; in June and July 1776 he played a major role in creating the Declaration of Independence; and he led the debate that resulted in the purchase and arming of the first ships for the Continental Navy on 20 October 1775—the date we remember today as the Navy's birthday. Assigned to the naval committee, it was Adams who drafted the first naval regulations. As envoy to France, it was Adams who adamantly urged the French Navy to come to the aid of the colonies, months before the French ministry thought it a reasonable course. As envoy to Holland in 1781, Adams stressed the importance of maritime commerce as the binding cement for alliance with the Dutch Republic, and in 1783, he, Benjamin Franklin, and John Jay were the key figures who negotiated peace. As Washington's successor as President, it was Adams who championed the creation of a new and permanent naval service. Finally, it was Adams who saw—far better than other Americans—that it was Horatio Nelson's victory at the Nile in 1798 that created the conditions to end America's Quasi-War with France.
John Adams may not have been a sailor, but to him the Navy owes much. Every U.S. naval officer and seaman should understand John Adams's contribution to our national and naval heritage.
The Human Face of Warfare: Killing, Fear, and Chaos in Battle
Michael Evans and Alan Ryan, eds. St. Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2001. 265 pp. Notes. Bib. Index. $19.95 ($17.95).
Reviewed by John Allen Williams
Ordinarily, it is well to be wary of books edited from papers delivered at conferences, but such skepticism is unwarranted with this collection from an important 1999 conference in Canberra, Australia, entitled "The Human Face of War." The contributions are eclectic in the best sense: each illuminates a different aspect of the problem, and the whole work is greater than the sum of its parts. The premise of the book, in the words of the Australian Chief of Army, Lieutenant General F. J. Hickling, is that technological advances of the information age will not change the "essential and age-old human features" of combat. As one who continually is amazed at the relative lack of attention to social science as opposed to engineering in our own Navy, this reviewer confesses a strong disposition toward this position.
The editors believe the "materialist, instrumental" conception of war ignores the reality of combat for the foreseeable future, and that "while the near-bloodless war is an appealing vision. . . war is still a fundamentally human act." Meanwhile, despite evidence to the contrary, leaders fear that citizens will not support military actions that involve personnel casualties. The NATO actions against Yugoslavia were based on this assumption—as is the continuing U.S. emphasis on force protection in peacekeeping operations.
The heart of the book is 11 well-written studies by conference attendees on various aspects of what author Stephen Tetlow calls "human factors" in combat. Space does not permit a discussion of all of these, but several should be highlighted. Dave Grossman's illuminating discussion of the psychology and physiology of soldiers in close combat dispels a number of myths about combat effectiveness and shows the importance of psychological conditioning to help soldiers overcome their natural resistance to killing and to enable them to deal with the emotional consequences afterward. Tetlow's useful contribution is to discuss how these and other human factors can be included in simulations.
Hugh Smith's well-researched and reasoned piece on "public perceptions of bearable cost" for combat operations deserves close attention. The perception that citizens of Western democracies (at least) will not bear casualties, whether true or not, has implications for enemies, political leaders, and these nations' armed forces. The notion of the "surgical strike" is compelling, if misleading. (One notes there is collateral damage even in surgery.) Smith points out that sustained low-intensity warfare is more foreign to the United States than to countries such as Britain and France, with their long colonial histories. He wisely suggests that the public does demand accountability, but "justifiably wants to know that operations are for an important purpose and that they are competently conducted."
Persons opposed to the integration of women in all combat roles will be unconvinced by Eleanor Hancock's lawyer's brief on behalf of that position, but the arguments are well laid out for examination. Her discussions of the factors causing an increased acceptance of gender integration and of the differing policies among modern militaries are particularly worthwhile. Other chapters on biographies of war heroes, the nature of future war, post-traumatic stress disorder, and various aspects of the new battlefield environment and their impact on leadership also are well reasoned and deserve serious attention.
This book is not always pleasant reading, for the same reason that many combat veterans choose not to speak of their experiences. But it is important reading for leaders who may have to send others into battle or lead them personally in combat.