Immortal: A Military History of Iran and its Armed Forces
Steven R. Ward. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2009. 361 pp. Notes. Bib. $29.95.
Reviewed by Colonel Norvell B. De Atkine, U.S. Army (Retired)
This is not only a timely book, and one that fills a gap of information and analysis on the Iranian military, but it also cogently argues that policy makers involved with the Middle East take a cautious
approach to Iran. Warnings are germane to those who contemplate military means of subduing the expansionist policies of the Iranians, as well as to those who advocate a simple meeting of the minds between Western leaders and the militarized clerical leadership of Iran.
The book's title refers to the royal guard and elite warriors of the Old Persian Empire, a unit that was destroyed in the Khomeini revolution.
Ward deftly traces the history of the Iranian military from the time of the Achaemenids to the bloody Iran-Iraq war with an analysis of the Iranian armed forces in the 21st century.
What sets this historical study apart is the depth of the research, the synthesis of political-military factors relevant to each era, and the quality of the writing, making it possible for non-academics or those without special Middle East backgrounds to profit from reading it.
The most compelling section of this history is the highly readable chapter on the Iran-Iraq War; in particular the sacrifice of the poorly led, armed, and maintained Iranian soldiers who demonstrated a tenacity and courage that surprised not only the Iraqis but most Western observers. Iran's ability to keep complicated modern U.S. equipment operating without the presence of thousands of U.S. military and contractor technicians and trainers was a continuing revelation. Prevailing opinion at the time was that the Iranians would crumble before the Iraqi onslaught.
While lauding the attributes of the Iranian soldier, the author also details the defects of the Iranian military establishment, including the competing dual land forces consisting of a distrusted regular army and the revolutionary praetorian guard, the Pasdaran. Problems remain in spite of a developing professional military leadership. A politicized officer corps, a fragmented society with a regime distrust of minorities in the armed forces, and lack of innovative and realistic training are vulnerabilities that continue to inhibit the effectiveness of the Iranian forces. However, nothing has so degraded their effectiveness as the political meddling of a religiously zealous and megalomaniac leadership that sent thousands of Iranian soldiers to their deaths unnecessarily against a much better-equipped Iraqi army. Despite many opportunities to end the war after 1983, the Iranians kept throwing their soldiers against an Iraqi army defending its own territory with minimal gains and maximum casualties.
In assessing the lessons of the United States-Iranian confrontation called the "tanker war," Ward makes a telling point. Iranians are not swayed by half-measures nor rhetoric, but step back when confronted with superior power. The author views the historical Iranian propensity to overestimate their own power and underestimate that of their opponents as a major vulnerability, and more important, a greater danger, leading to the possibility of an accidental conflagration.
Many will rightly see this book as a cautionary tale in advocating any military solution to the Iranian expansionist quest, but the author has also thrown yellow flags in warning against a facile assumption that sitting down and having a heart-to-heart with Iranian leadership will bring mutual understanding. As Ward concludes, "As a minimum, because the new leaders are closer to the revolutionary form of Shi'a Islam preached by Grand Ayatollah Khomeini, they are likely to pursue an Iranian foreign policy inimical to the West and the United States."
The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat
Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. New York, NY: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2009. Afterword. Bib. Appen. Index. 336 pp. $24.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel Frank G. Hoffman, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
Iwo Jima was not the only Marine battle in which "uncommon courage was a common virtue." The Last Stand of Fox Company is a magnificent micro-epic about the Chosin Reservoir campaign in Korea. Its authors give a vivid account of courage, endurance, and sacrifice that has few parallels in Marine lore or military history.
As Thanksgiving Day, 1950 approached, the 1st Marine Division found itself overexposed following General Douglas MacArthur's misguided drive to the Yalu River. Under the command of General Oliver P. Smith, the division had clawed its way up to the west side of the Chosin Reservoir and seized the town of Yudam-ni. Here it was pressed by swarming divisions of Chinese soldiers. Smith had two regiments, the 5th and 7th Marines, around Yudam-ni. The other regiment, Colonel Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller's 1st Marines, was 14 miles south, at Hagaru-ri.
Halfway between them stood Fox Company, 2d Battalion, 7th Marines, commanded by Captain Bill Barber of Kentucky. Barber's 240-plus Marines were posted on a hill overlooking the critical Toktong Pass. Control of that pass was critical to the communication lifeline that connected Smith's main force with the rest of the division. If the Chinese could seize the hills surrounding Toktong pass, they could cut off Smith's thin line of communication.
This modern-day Thermopylae centers on Fox Company. Barber's Marines held that vital pass for almost a week, but only barely. The company was attacked nightly, and its fate hung by a thread. Barber's position was barely within range of his artillery support positioned just outside Hagaru-ri, about six miles away. Three times his regimental commander, Colonel Homer Litzenberg, tried to get a relief column up toward Barber, and each time the force was rebuffed.
Marine aircraft dropped ammunition and critical supplies (but no food) with great accuracy. Helicopters braved withering small-arms fire to deliver batteries for the radios. Close air support from Marine Corsairs and Australian aviators kept the hilltops surrounding Barber's outpost clear of Chinese formations.
Barber's beleaguered force was being slowly ground down. A third of the company was killed or wounded the first night, and several Marines were dragged out of their foxholes as prisoners. Barber himself was wounded early by a sniper, who clipped him and broke his pelvis. He continued to rally his men and carefully husbanded his organic and supporting fires.
But the Chinese were winning the inevitable game of numbers. Barber's force of 246 had been cut in half and was becoming ineffective in the extreme cold, which was so bad that bloody wounds were freezing quickly.
The commanding officer of the 7th Marines, Colonel Litzenberg, ordered Lieutenant Colonel Ray Davis, commanding 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, to reinforce Toktong Pass. Davis had a remarkable combat record, having led a company on Guadalcanal and earning a Navy Cross as a battalion commander on Peleliu.
Davis pulled together an audacious plan. His battalion climbed to the top of the mountain ridges and worked its way in knee-deep snow all night to a position to the rear of the Chinese that were pinning down Fox Company. The Chinese would not expect this route or a night attack from the supposedly road-bound Marines. Davis tried to guide his column by the stars and using illumination rounds. But a blizzard blinded his ability to navigate or communicate with any form of fire support. The cold weather slowed the battalion to a crawl, but the shrieking wind also masked the approach of his exhausted troops.
Nevertheless, Davis pushed himself and his unit across the trackless terrain. By morning, the ragged battalion had scattered the Chinese forces pressing on Fox Hill. To get into Barber's perimeter, they literally walked on a carpet of Chinese bodies.
Davis arrived just in time. However, without Barber's persistent defense, there might not have been a unit to save. Fox Company had fought off three Chinese battalions, who left almost a thousand corpses. More important, without the door at Toktong Pass being held open by Fox Company's dogged defense, the two Marine regiments farther up the road could have been cut off.
While this story has been told before, The Last Stand of Fox Company is a rare jewel and a wonderfully detailed tactical narrative. It reveals the human dimension of combat and offers lessons for today's Marines and Sailors about the grim realities of warfare. When the Commandant begins looking for a new book of the year for professional military education, he will not have to look further.
The Culture of War
Martin van Creveld. New York: Ballantine Books, 2008. Notes. Index. 466 pp.
Reviewed by Rear Admiral William J. Holland Jr. U.S. Navy (Retired)
Even those who spend their lives in military pursuits rarely appreciate the philosophy of war or the underlying aspects of war's nature. While not as prescriptive as his Command in War or as predictive as his Transformation of War, this volume of Martin van Creveld's is in some ways a survey and summation of his previous 17 books on military history and science. The thread throughout the book is van Creveld's assertion that much of military thought and practice is as old as mankind and bears only peripheral relation to the affairs of state. The implements may be new, but the same motivations are at work in modern soldiers as they were in tribal warriors. Central to his theme and one that all professional military officers will recognize is his assertion that "any army is a separate organization held together by bonds, which we have called culture of war, that civilian society shares, if at all, only to a limited extent." But he also makes clear that unthinking adherence to the culture has its dangers. Using as an example the dilapidation of the Prussian officer corps after Frederick the Great, he warns that the effect of mechanical application of that culture's features made officers "conceited, timid, and unwilling and unable to think."
Van Crevald is critical of Carl von Clausewitz and others who write that wars are fought for well-defined political purposes. Only someone with the author's immense understanding of warfare in general and military history in particular could make this argument so effectively. While many of the insights are based on informed speculation, he never loses a chance to advocate that, "The culture of war is alive and well" as he sets out to argue that war is a natural event, more admired than peace.
Van Creveld restricts himself to the soldier's point of view. There is no citation of Alfred Thayer Mahan, only one mention of Sir Julian Stafford Corbett, and not a single allusion to a sea battle or campaign save one mention of the Battle of Salamis. Even those instances in which sea power contained the essence of a conflict, as in the Anglo-Dutch Wars, or determined the dominance of one civilization over another as Rome did over Carthage, find no mention, while engagements of tribes in the millennia before Christ provide fodder for the author's arguments.
Buried in the middle of the book is a succinct discussion of nuclear deterrence, its history, and its future relevance. Advancing his argument that nuclear weapons have made war between nuclear-armed states unthinkable, he writes, "The sudden (and entirely unexpected) waning of major war between major states constitutes a reversal of historical trends that go back to the early Middle Ages. If there ever was a world-historical event, this is it."
This is the heart of van Creveld's conclusion, which he has advanced in previous works, that the wars of the future will be waged only by weak or undeveloped states or non-state organizations. While nuclear weapons may limit major wars, they will not eliminate armed conflict, because they cannot change the nature of man.
Though not for the dilettante, The Culture of War is readable history with valuable insights that a professional officer or military historian will find enlightening.
Leathernecks: An Illustrated History of the United States Marine Corps
Lieutenant Colonel Merrill L. Bartlett, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired) and Jack Sweetman, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2008. 479 pp. Notes. Illus. Index. $60. USNI Members: $48.
Reviewed by Colonel John Grider Miller, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
Over the years, entry-level Marines have had certain immutable truths hammered into their brains by insistent drill instructors, to wit: Philadelphia's Tun Tavern was the first Marine Corps recruiting station in 1775, and Marine officers and non-commissioned officers began wearing the red "blood stripe" on their dress blue trousers shortly after the Battle of Chapultepec in 1847.
Well, perhaps not. In their illustrated history of the Corps, award-winning authors Skip Bartlett and Jack Sweetman acknowledge legends but gently separate myth from fact, quoting the venerable Scottish verdict: "Not proved."
The authors, well-respected historians who have both taught at the U.S. Naval Academy, state clearly that theirs is not an official history. Yet they have used a wide range of official sources and consulted an impressive array of military historians and archivists in compiling their work. Particularly noteworthy are the photographs the authors retrieved from the National Archives—an often-painful process that eminent historian Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons once described as akin to making a round trip across the River Styx.
The book's paintings and photographs dovetail nicely with the text, which itself maintains a fine balance between commentary and presentation of historical evidence. Too often, military writings are replete with mind-numbing lists of particulars that may be a historian's delight but put off the general reader. Bartlett and Sweetman sidestep that trap by providing enough detail to describe significant historical trees without losing sight of the surrounding forest. Exciting high points of major battles and individual acts of heroism are linked by connective tissue that describes the development—and indeed the fate—of the Corps. The venerated historian Colonel Robert D. Heinl, for example, recorded 18 attempts on the life of the Corps—equally divided between the Army and the Navy—over the years. The colorful and often clashing personalities that punctuate Marine lore emerge in capsule form, adding spice to the narrative.
The authors present the history of the Marines not as a collection of isolated actions, but rather as a continuum of action and reaction, as the Corps continually shapes and re-shapes itself to meet emerging requirements. This makes the book essential reading for Marines and those who wish to know more about Marines—to gain a sense of the esprit de Corps that has endured for more than 23 decades.
Leathernecks has already received the 2008 Gold Medal for Military Non-Fiction from the Military Writers Society of America. May many more accolades be forthcoming.