One Million Steps: A Marine Platoon at War
Bing West. New York: Random House, 2014. 266 pp. Append. Index. Notes. $27.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl, U.S. Army (Retired)
When I travelled in Iraq with Bing West in the summer of 2008 on a military-sponsored trip for defense analysts, Bing refused to wear a helmet like the rest of us. He was comfortable in his well-loved Red Sox cap, but was deeply perturbed that no insurgents took a shot at us—a regular feature of his first eight battlefield circulation visits.
He was a Marine infantryman and combat adviser during the Vietnam War, and while he has since served as an Assistant Secretary of Defense for President Ronald Reagan and as a noted military author, in his gut he’s still a grunt. Of all his books, this is the one that I believe is closest to his heart, for this book is about a platoon of grunts who endured the toughest sustained combat of any platoon in Afghanistan, and likely of any platoon since Bing’s first war: Vietnam.
In October 2010, the 3d platoon of Kilo company, 3d Battalion, 5th Marines, was assigned responsibility for a distant sector of Sangin District in the notorious Helmand Province. The British had fought to control it for four years, ultimately ceding control of the ground just outside their fortified bases to the Taliban.
The Marines vowed to take it back, a step at a time. Each Marine patrolled outside the wire two-and-a-half miles, through mud and muck and irrigation canals, each step at risk of triggering an improvised explosive device that could remove a foot or a leg or both legs. Six thousand of those steps a day, outside the wire, for six months adds up to the one million steps of the title.
Every step was more difficult than any most of us will ever take. Like infantrymen since the dawn of time, the Marines carried half their weight on patrol—weapons and ammunition, radios and mine detectors to find improvised explosive devices, and tourniquets in case the mine detectors failed. The weight made it hard for the Marines to respond quickly and aggressively when they came under rifle or machine gun fire from Taliban hiding in mud-walled farming compounds or treelines, but Marines eat hard for breakfast. They intercepted Taliban messages like “Marines run toward bullets” and “Marines have more bullets than we have” and, to their masters in Pakistan, “Why don’t you come over here and shoot at them?”
Ultimately, the Pakistani Taliban responded, sending in hardened cadre forces to replace the local farmer/fighters who were being killed relentlessly by the Marines. This is the story of a bitter, high-stakes battle for a province that was ungovernable by the national Afghan government in Kabul but that the United States and Pakistan each wanted to control—and both countries paid an enormous price in the attempt. Ultimately, America pulled out, and the Taliban won.
Bing is hard on the counterinsurgency doctrine that the high command in Afghanistan was attempting to implement and that the author of this review helped write. That doctrine describes a process in which friendly forces clear an area of insurgents, local forces hold the cleared area, and the local government builds lasting security and economic progress. In this book, the Marines never finished the clear phase, and couldn’t, not with the resources and fighters that Pakistan was pouring into Sangin. And the ultimate result of those one million unendurable steps are in question; they depend on the establishment of a government in Afghanistan that can continue to fight against a Taliban supported by Pakistan. That fight will only happen if America continues to support its Afghan partners, troubled as they are, with money, weapons, and advisers. Failure would give al Qaeda and its friends another base from which to plan and conduct attacks on the United States and our interests, which would require another invasion of Afghanistan, much like the reinvasion of Iraq in 2014 after our premature withdrawal from that country in 2011.
If that becomes necessary, as it will somewhere, sometime, the Marines will be ready. Bing states tongue-in-cheek that “today’s grunts are more muscular than we were back then, but not as good looking.” In fact, the faces of the grunts in Afghanistan today are the same as the faces of the men Bing fought next to in Vietnam, and the grunts in America’s next war will look the same and fight the same way. They will have to fight hard and well to come close to equaling the valor of 3/5 Marines.
Rising Sun, Falling Skies: The Disastrous Java Sea Campaign of World War II
Jeffrey R. Cox. New York: Basic Books, 2014. 344 pp. Notes. Index. $27.99.
Reviewed by Jon Parshall
Jeffrey Cox sets out here a one-volume treatment of the majority of the naval-related combat in the Western Pacific during the first three months of the Pacific War, culminating with the collapse of Allied resistance in the Netherlands East Indies in early March 1942. It is not a tale for the faint of heart. The ordeal of the joint Allied command that defended the Indies (known as “ABDA” to denote the American, British, Dutch, and Australian forces that comprised it) was a truly wretched affair. It pitted a weak, uncoordinated hodgepodge of ships and aircraft against the Imperial Japanese military at the height of its early-war prowess. With no commonality of equipment, language, underlying doctrine, or even signaling technique, ABDA’s tealeaves were not propitious to begin with. When a truly awful string of Allied bad luck was thrown in, the end result was a walkover of truly horrific proportions.
Cox is a fluid writer and organizes his material well. He works mainly from secondary sources, but he certainly also knows how to spin a yarn while drawing out the human element. In the Allied case around Java there was no shortage of pathos to be had, and Cox illustrates the grinding effect that defeat after defeat had on the morale of the men involved; men who in many cases knew very well they were going to a bad end. Inevitably, some reacted poorly, while others unexpectedly revealed themselves as heroes of the first order.
One of Cox’s main theses is that Admiral Karel Doorman, the ill-fated commander of the Allied Combined Strike Force at Java Sea, has been unfairly vilified. Variously portrayed as both over-cautious or over-aggressive, tactically inept, and ego-driven, Doorman has been castigated by most historians outside of The Netherlands. Cox’s well-stated argument is that Doorman was hardly a brilliant commander and certainly made some mistakes, but overall he behaved honorably, and, in most cases, logically. Doorman was in a horrible situation, laboring under impossible expectations from a superior (Admiral Conrad Helfrich) who demanded decisive results yet had no comprehension of the crippling handicaps that Japanese air supremacy were imposing on Allied naval forces. Saddled with orders to defeat the Japanese invasion forces aimed at Java, no matter the cost, Doorman fought on doggedly, knowing almost certainly that he would be made the scapegoat if things went wrong. Which, of course, they did. Cox’s treatment of this doomed admiral is clear-eyed but sympathetic.
It is at the level of technical detail that Cox sometimes falls down. It is not for lack of trying. This reviewer was pleased, for instance, to see that the author had utilized Garzke, Denlay, and Dulin’s recent forensic study of the demise of the Prince of Wales (The Royal Institution of Naval Architects, 2012), which reveals the catastrophic damage caused by the initial torpedo hit against her outboard port propeller shaft. Some of Cox’s other conclusions, however, are unsound. For instance, he points out in several passages that U.S. torpedoes were a major problem during the first two years of the war, which was certainly true. He is also quite right in noting that the destroyer-mounted Mk-15 torpedo suffered from many of the same defects in depth-keeping and faulty exploders that plagued the more notorious submarine-launched Mk-14. However, he overlooks the fact that all of the U.S. destroyers involved in the Java campaign were World War I–vintage “flush-deckers.” And these universally utilized the equally dated Mk-8 torpedo. Thus, the notable lack of success these older destroyers experienced with their torpedo attacks had nothing to do with the ills of the Mk-15.
Likewise, Cox’s attempts to reconstruct the maneuvers made during the climactic Battle of the Java Sea have important failures in logic and reasoning. Most notably, the author describes the decisive torpedo attack that sank the Dutch cruisers De Ruyter and Java (effectively ending the battle in Japan’s favor) as having been fired by the cruisers Nachi and Haguro from a point astern and to port of the Allied column. These fish then purportedly hit the Allied formation as it was in the midst of an echelon turn to starboard. This is in direct contradiction with the action report of Japan’s Cruiser Division 5, which narrates how the Japanese formation sighted the Allied cruisers off their port bow, to the southeast and on a reciprocal heading. Admiral Takeo Takagi, not wishing the Allied force to get ahead of his own (and potentially in amongst the invasion convoy he was screening), quickly reversed his course to stay off the Allies’ port bow. Having done so, he then ordered torpedoes fired over his shoulder to starboard, i.e., to the southeast.
Cox’s analysis also fails on the basis of geometry and timing. Had a spread of torpedoes been launched from off the Allies’ port quarter, at a range of some 9,500 yards, and almost certainly set at the lower speed setting of 36 knots preferred by the Japanese (in order to derive increased range), they could never have overtaken the 30-knot Allied formation in time to strike first the Java and then the DeRuyter some 13 and 15 minutes later. Likewise, the Japanese sources state that after the explosions, the burning Allied cruisers were observed at 144 degrees true, i.e., to Takagi’s southeast. Thus, the fish could only have been fired from ahead of the Allies.
In the final analysis, if you’re looking for a good read about men under pressure, and the almost farcically ill-fated political and command arrangements surrounding ABDA’s doomed struggle, Cox provides an interesting account. On the other hand, if you are looking for a definitive technical, tactical, or forensic analysis of what went on during the actual naval battles around Java, you need to look elsewhere.
Small Navies: Strategy and Policy for Small Navies in War and Peace
Michael Mulqueen, Deborah Sanders, Ian Speller, Eds. Surrey, UK: Ashgate, Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies Series, 2014. 247 pp. Biblio. Index. Illus. $124.95.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander Benjamin Armstrong
There is plenty to occupy the minds of American sailors. From their practical studies, systems and shipboard knowledge to Russian investment in rebuilding its naval forces and China’s rising capability on the world’s oceans, it would be easy to disregard a study of “small navies” as a low priority. In the new book from the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy, Small Navies: Strategy and Policy for Small Navies in War and Peace, the editors attempt to convince the reader otherwise.
The collection of essays, which approach the subject from a number of directions, is based on selected papers from a conference held at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. Noted navalists Geoffrey Till’s and Eric Grove’s chapters open the book with a discussion of the issues involved in defining what is, and is not, a small navy, and lay out some parameters. The essays that follow range from historical examples of small navies to analysis of modern forces and even exploration of policy through the lens of business modeling, with all the required innovation jargon and futurist language. Some of the contributions read like direct transcripts of the talks given at the conference, while others were obviously edited. As a result, there is some unevenness to the book.
The collection is regionally diverse, and readers focused on the littorals of the Pacific or the geopolitics being played out in European waters will find essays of interest. Discussion of the rising tide of naval power in Asia must include these smaller navies, and retired Rear Admiral Michael McDevitt, senior fellow at CNA Corporation, does a solid job of offering a region-wide view. Other authors look at specific navies including the Republic of Korea and Singapore. European-centered chapters address the maritime-security challenge of trafficking and migration in the Mediterranean, as well as the development of naval forces in Romania, providing a timely window into the Black Sea’s naval balance.
Two chapters that stand out are Nikolas Granholm’s analysis of the Swedish Navy and Jon Robb-Webb’s historical case study of the Royal Navy’s Pacific Fleet at the close of World War II. While many of the chapters address policy issues and the dilemmas of fleet acquisition, Granholm is the most successful at bringing strategy into the pages of the book. His analysis of how the Swedish Navy has approached its responsibilities and balanced them against resources over the past several decades provides interesting parallels for all navies, not just small or medium-sized forces. His analysis of the future of Sweden’s sea service and the strategic questions that underlie decisions about force structure is more broadly relevant than just a focus on the Baltic.
Robb-Webb’s historical look at the British Pacific Fleet in 1944 and 1945 illuminates the relationship between a small naval force and the much larger and theater dominant U.S. Navy. With the U.S. Navy’s 21st-century focus on partnership building and interoperability with like-minded navies, this case study should be particularly interesting to today’s sailors and naval analysts. Modern maritime operations have demonstrated that command relationships, operational integration, and the sometimes personality driven nature of these relationships at the senior level are all critical elements of how small and large navies work together. Robb-Webb’s essay provides good fodder for considering how today’s partnership building can be done more effectively.
The editors of the volume state that it is not intended to be a final word on the subject, or even necessarily authoritative. Instead, they hope the work provides a starting point for discussion and future study. On this mark they certainly succeed. If you are looking for a definitive or all-encompassing collection, though, you will not find it. The essays the editors have collected are relevant, interesting, and contribute greatly to broading the discussion of naval forces.
The majority of the maritime partners with which today’s U.S. Navy will work are likely to fall in the small-navy parameters set out early in this book. Operating with those forces will require an appreciation for how they view naval affairs and the challenges that are unique to small forces. It is also apparent that a number of challenges are shared by all navies, but the size of the force might inspire different solutions. As a result, studying small navies can also offer new perspectives and new solutions that would not be approached otherwise. For these reasons and others, the understanding of small navies must rise on the ladder of priorities, and this collection helps move that dialogue forward.