The Indomitable Florence Finch
Robert J. Mrazek. New York: Hatchette Books, 2020. 312 pp. Biblio. Index. $28.
Reviewed by Commander Brooke Millard, U.S. Coast Guard
Robert Mrazek’s latest biography, The Indomitable Florence Finch, recounts the experiences of a young Filipino-American woman and future Medal of Freedom recipient whose life abruptly changed in December 1941. Three days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese bombers destroyed the U.S. Far East Air Force grounded in Clark Field and attacked the naval base at Cavite, located at the southern shore of Manila Bay, Philippines. With the Cavite fleet destroyed, General Douglas MacArthur implemented “War Plan Orange” and withdrew U.S. soldiers from Manila to Corregidor and Bataan prior to the inevitable Japanese invasion of the island nation.
Finch, along with hundreds of thousands of other native Filipinos, was left behind and subjected to the brutality of the Japanese occupation.
Yet Finch was determined to survive and help the U.S. war effort, as she had strong ties to the U.S. military. Before the war, Florence worked at Fort Santiago, which housed offices of both Navy and Army intelligence. It was at Fort Santiago that she became close friends with her American coworkers and fell in love with her husband, Charles Smith, a chief petty officer in the U.S. Navy, who withdrew to Bataan.
After months under siege without ammunition or food, U.S. forces surrendered in Bataan on 6 April; they surrendered Corregidor a month later. Those who did not die became prisoners of war.
Finch was deeply affected by the plight of U.S. and British soldiers in the Japanese prison camps. With little water, no medication, and hardly any food, they had little chance for survival. As her own personal funds were low, Finch earned a job as a clerk with the Philippine Liquid Fuel Distribution Union, run by a Japanese businessman in the service of Japan’s war effort to distribute fuel to various military entities and manufacturers. In an act punishable by death, Finch coordinated shipments of fuel for sale in the black market; proceeds funded medicine, food, and water for American POWs. These provisions found their way to her former colleagues, including Army Lieutenant Colonel Carl Engelhart, a notable leader whose harrowing story Mrazek also describes. Finch’s supplies helped Engelhart and others survive the Japanese prison camps for three-and-a-half years.
Mrazek’s book provides readers with a firsthand account of the importance of alliances. Through Finch’s experience we learn that Filipinos favored the American way of cooperation and partnership. They cherished how Americans treated them as equals and friends. They hated Japanese soldiers who, as authority figures, collectively acted inhumanely and committed atrocities against Filipinos and other non-Japanese. Mrazek illuminates this lesson well.
Readers also get a strong sense of the courage and fortitude demonstrated by both U.S. soldiers and Filipino civilians. What’s striking is the contrast between Finch’s quiet, steadfast determination and General MacArthur’s behavior. General MacArthur indeed returns to the Philippines after leaving Manila in 1942. But Mrazek makes a point to highlight MacArthur’s leadership flaws, including his unapproachability and showboating style. Yet the styles of both leaders were necessary to survive the Japanese occupation; many American POWs would not have survived without Finch’s covert assistance. MacArthur’s flashy rhetoric convinced Filipinos they would be liberated, which gave so many hope.
In a moment of history dominated by heroic stories of military men, Mrazek documents the selfless courage of a civilian woman (and eventual Coast Guard female reservist) who served so others might live.
Commander Millard is the speechwriter for the Commandant and Vice Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard. Previously, she was the Federal Executive Fellow at the U.S. Naval Institute.
The Day After: Why America Wins the War but Loses the Peace
Brendan R. Gallagher. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019. 308 pp. Notes.
Biblio. Index. $32.95.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander Ryan Hilger, U.S. Navy
The nation’s entire cadre of junior and senior leaders has grown up in an era in which the United States has enjoyed unequivocal military dominance on the battlefield—but failed to win the peace. In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, Navy and Marine Corps leaders have known both sporadic, low-intensity conflicts and the longest war in the nation’s history. When President George W. Bush declared “mission accomplished” for major combat operations in Iraq on 1 May 2003 on board the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72), the insurgency was just getting started. The global war on terrorism has been going on for 18 years now, a victim of poor postwar planning, according to Army officer Brendan Gallagher.
Bringing his experience on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq to bear in a strategic-level analysis of post-conflict outcomes, Gallagher argues that the United States fails routinely in Phase IV operations because of poor efforts at three crucial tasks: (1) defining a clear, achievable political goal, (2) adequately anticipating and attempting to mitigate the foreseeable postwar obstacles, and (3) aligning the correct resources to achieve the desired end state. While there is no one solution to these three questions, thorough consideration of these tasks, couched in historical precedents and outcomes, can improve postwar outcomes.
Gallagher analyzes the three strategic questions through the lens of four case studies: Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, with Kosovo elevated to the benchmark against which the other conflicts are measured. While Kosovo was not perfect, the political outcomes in the two decades since combat operations ceased show a high degree of stability, low rates of recidivism, and culminated in the Kosovar declaration of independence from Serbia in 2008.
Gallagher deftly weaves the narratives, interweaving personal experiences on the ground in two of the case studies, showing where the processes have broken down. Overall, he returns again and again to the tension between the U.S. Department of State, Department of Defense, and National Security Council as the source of many of the problems. Their collective failure to work together coherently and effectively significantly undermined the definition of the desired political objectives in both Iraq and Afghanistan. In Libya, President Barack Obama, Gallagher asserts, was well aware of the poor postwar planning for Iraq and Afghanistan and actively sought to not repeat the same mistakes. Yet similar issues at the senior levels of the Obama administration and the sudden, somewhat unintentional death of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 resulted in very muddy objectives and rapid mission creep for which they were unprepared.
While Gallagher focuses at the cabinet level of the administration as the perennial source of the problems, he offers explicit advice for junior and senior leaders in the military services: Prepare whether your seniors are or not. Junior leaders may not have the resources to generate deep studies of potential postwar obstacles, but as former Secretary of Defense James Mattis notes in Call Sign Chaos (Random House, 2019), every leader has the ability to read books to prepare for the assignments and challenges ahead. As Mattis relates, there is nothing new under the sun, and Xenophon’s Anabasis, 2,500 years old, was the first book he picked up to begin preparing for combat operations in Iraq in 2003—he knew then it would be a difficult, if not impossible, peace. Leaders at all levels have something to gain from The Day After as we enter an increasingly unstable world. Prepare wisely.
Lieutenant Commander Hilger is an engineering duty officer stationed in Washington, DC. He has previously served on board the USS Maine (SSBN-741) and Springfield (SSN-761) and had shore tours at OPNAV N97, the Naval Postgraduate School, and the CNO Strategic Studies Group.
From Texas to Tinian and Tokyo Bay: The Memoirs of Captain J. R. Ritter, Seabee Commander during the Pacific War, 1942–1945
James Ritter, edited by Jonathan Templin Ritter. Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2019. 165 pp. Notes. Index. $24.95.
Reviewed by Dustin League
“There are few books on the Seabees, and Ritter’s memoir gives an immediate and personal touch on them. His voice is pleasing enough and honest.” The jacket blurb, provided by Don Noble, author of the foreword to another book on the Seabees’ World War II service, gives Captain J. R. Ritter’s memoirs, From Texas to Tinian and Tokyo Bay, faint praise.
Captain James “Rex” Ritter’s memoirs help fill a gap in the literature on the U.S. Navy’s World War II history. The Seabees, active-duty Navy construction battalions, were created during the war to replace the civilian construction teams the Navy previously had employed to build facilities. As Captain Ritter describes in his clear, though often terse, account, arming of civilians in combat zones could lead to their classification as guerrillas and summary executions if captured. This undersung community of engineers and construction teams followed U.S. Navy invasion forces across the Pacific, building airstrips, ports, and other military facilities on islands that often were still being contested by the Japanese. There are indeed too few books describing their exploits.
Ritter’s writing has a detached, straightforward manner that is easy to read but often leaves the central character as little more than a cypher in his own memoirs. He takes half a page to describe his reaction to Pearl Harbor and transition from civil engineer at the Texas Highway Department to commissioned U.S. Navy officer. Likewise, he spends few words describing the men he served with during the war, failing to probe the character of subordinates, peers, or superior officers. The exception is an extended account of his battalion’s chaplain, one who so disappointed Ritter that he arranged for his relief.
The book is most interesting when Ritter details interservice rivalries and the lengths he and his men had to go to to fulfill their missions. Each posting brings its own challenges, as Ritter guides us from the Aleutians to the South Pacific as he rises from lieutenant to commander in charge of his own construction battalion (the 117th). In the best instances, these stories provide a slice-of-life account of brave, ingenious men living up to their motto: “The difficult we do now, the impossible takes a little longer.” Too often, however, they read as simple lists of tasks accomplished.
From Texas to Tinian and Tokyo Bay is competently written and constructed, but there is little about it that is compelling or dramatic. Captain Ritter’s grandson, Jonathan Templin Ritter, provides explanatory footnotes scattered throughout, though he misses the opportunity to connect his grandfather’s personal career history to the larger Pacific campaign. The younger Ritter is honest from the beginning that he has not built a history out of his grandfather’s memoirs, allowing the work to speak for itself, which is a bit of a double-edged sword. It is easy to understand the importance Jonathan places on these memoirs, but aside from a well-written introduction, he does little to elicit a similar response from a less familiar audience.
The book tells the story of one man’s wartime experience and does so in a way that is both honest and pleasing enough. For those with a special interest in the Seabees, it provides a glimpse into their origins and early years, but it may not have much appeal to a wider audience.
Mr. League is a military operations analyst and former U.S. Navy submarine officer. He studies submarine warfare issues for the U.S. and Australian Navies.
The Russian Who Saved the World: A Novel of the Cuban Missile Crisis
Captain Steven E. Maffeo, U.S. Navy (Retired). Annapolis, MD: Focsle, 2019. 269 pp. $30.
Reviewed by Captain Bill Hamblet, U.S. Navy (Retired)
This Cold War, Cuban Missile Crisis novel takes place on board the Soviet Foxtrot-class diesel submarine B-59 in the fall of 1962. The story is based on true events, told through the recollections of the chief of staff of the 69th submarine brigade, Captain Second Rank Vasiliy Arkhipov, who was on board for the deployment from the Kola Peninsula to Cuba. Four diesel submarines from the brigade got under way from their base at Polárni, near Murmansk, at the end of September, each loaded with one nuclear-tipped torpedo, on a mission to transit, undetected, to Cuba to establish a permanent Soviet Navy presence there. That these diesel submarines were carrying nuclear-armed torpedoes was unknown to the U.S. Navy and intelligence services. The rules of engagement for employing the nuclear torpedo were to use it only if under attack or otherwise ordered by Moscow.
Describing the submarine’s transit around the North Cape and into the North Atlantic, author Steven Maffeo shares much about operations of a 1960s-era diesel submarine: the cramped conditions, hot racking, running on battery and diesel, navigating through a violent storm, and maintaining course without the advantages of modern navigation tools such as GPS. After passing through the Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) Gap, the Soviet submarines find themselves hunted by a massive U.S. antisubmarine warfare (ASW) effort. They dodge efforts to locate them for a time, and then, as they near Bermuda and the Sargasso Sea, they can no longer stay hidden. U.S. destroyers and an ASW carrier hound them day and night. Temperatures and humidity inside the submarines soar. Foxtrot-class subs were built to operate in the cold waters north of the GIUK Gap—not the warm waters of the Gulf Stream.
Attempts to shake the ASW hunters fail, and the B-59 comes under constant harassment from the destroyers above. The U.S. Navy drops practice depth charges over and over—not powerful enough to harm the submarine, but loud enough to keep the crew awake nonstop and to keep them from snorkeling to refresh the air within the boat and recharge batteries. With oxygen levels dropping and CO2 levels rising, the submarine captain’s nerves begin to fray. Believing he is actually threatened by the U.S. Navy, he orders the nuclear-tipped torpedo loaded into a tube and begins the firing sequence.
Nuclear armageddon is about to be started by a lone submarine captain, who cannot communicate with higher headquarters and cannot think straight because of oxygen and sleep deprivation. All of this actually happened. The exact dialogue, however, was never recorded, and those who lived through the events died with their stories untold. Maffeo has created a plausible drama of what might have happened within the B-59. It is a compelling story that shows how the world came closer to the nuclear brink than most think. I grew up believing the nuclear showdown occurred at the presidential level, with Kennedy and Khrushchev facing off. But nuclear war could have been started by the captain of a Soviet diesel submarine carrying a weapon that normally would not have been on board his boat.
The book is well researched and told with the help of experts. Maffeo has a strong understanding of the geopolitical backstory and the tools used to locate, pinpoint, and track a submarine. He interviewed a number of Cold War diesel submariners to get the tactics and technical details of at-sea operations right. He also spent time on the former Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine B-39, part of the Maritime Museum of San Diego, to get the interior details and feel of the boat.
I enjoyed this book, with one caveat. Maffeo sprinkles Russian words (spelled phonetically in English) in almost every paragraph—sometimes every sentence. This is a useful practice in the first chapter, to draw the reader into the story and the dialogue. By the end of the book, however, I found it distracting and unnecessary. Maffeo has done such a thorough job developing the characters, the strategic and tactical drama, and the feel of being on a submarine that he does not need word tricks to keep the reader’s attention. That aside, The Russian Who Saved the World is a compelling story, richly told, full of historical fact, and entertaining.
Captain Hamblet is a retired naval intelligence officer and the editor-in-chief of Proceedings.
New & Noteworthy
The Return of the Russian Leviathan
Sergei Medvedev. Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2020. 286 pp. $24.95.
Reviewed By Commander Graham Scarbro, U.S. Navy
Sergei Medvedev, a Russian professor of social science, explores the psyche of Russian policy and politics as only a Russian can. As dense and poetic as a work of Solzhenitsyn or Tolstoy, this book winds through topics ranging from the annexation of Crimea, to the war for cultural supremacy within Russia’s borders, to the lawlessness and corruption that touches everyday life in the world’s largest country.
Replete with strange and fascinating anecdotes and references to Russian culture, the book is not for the faint of heart. Translator Stephen Dalziel’s helpful notes illuminate the more obscure references, bringing the anguish of Russia’s internal conflicts over its relationships with the West and a modernizing world into focus for the American reader.
Far from describing a revanchist, resurgent superpower, Medvedev paints his home country as deeply insecure, torn between past and future, and in the thrall of a paranoid and despotic ruling elite. A fascinating read for those interested in the Russian political psyche.
A Young Sailor at War: The World War II Letters of William R. Catton Jr.
Theodore Catton (ed.). Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 2020. 260 pp. $34.95.
A Young Sailor at War traces the wartime service of Bill Catton, an aircraft mechanic and prolific letter writer who served on board the USS Ticonderoga (CV-14). Edited by his son, Theodore, Bill’s letters chronicle his transformation from an eager young enlistee, commenting on haircuts, training, and waiting around, to a world-traveled combat veteran, praying for peace, dealing with uncertainty, and still waiting around.
The letters touch on the routines of shipboard life, reveal a young man’s complicated thoughts on the war, and speak to his deep desire to connect to his family amid the trials of combat. Wartime censorship rules push the battles, losses, and terror of warfare to the edges of Bill’s letters, and broader context is helpfully illuminated by the editor’s commentary.
This book is an intimate and enlightening look at World War II through the eyes of the enlisted sailors whose combined efforts were integral to victory but often prove hard to discover among the tales of globe-spanning campaigns and mammoth battles that typify books on the war. Through his letters, Bill Catton brings another welcome human dimension to America’s victory at sea.
Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, the Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
Iain MacGregor. New York: Scribner, 2019. 340 pp. $30.
Iain MacGregor uses the Berlin Wall and its famous crossing point in the heart of a divided city as the thread to weave together disparate stories from the Cold War. Firsthand stories and eyewitness recollections put a human spin on tales of intrigue, espionage, and heartbreak. From the frantic efforts to resupply Berliners during the famous Berlin airlift to the strange sequence of bureaucratic missteps that led to the wall’s collapse, the book brings a ground-level view of what the geopolitical contest between the United States and the Soviet Union looked like for everyday citizens, government officials, spies, and military personnel.
The book mixes chronological stories spanning the half-century of a divided Germany with focused chapters on spycraft, crises, famous speeches, and the individual stories of defectors and escapees. Checkpoint Charlie excellently ties the individual stories of Berlin’s division with the greater arc of the Cold War and provides an interesting look at the conflict’s most contested city.
Churchill’s Phoney War
Graham T. Clews. Annapolis, MD: Naval. Institute Press, 2019. 339 pp. $44.95.
Winston Churchill looms as one of the 20th century’s defining characters. The resolute speeches, the defiant determination, and the clear-sightedness with which he fought the Axis have so completely transformed the prime minister into a larger-than-life legend that his early missteps at the outset of World War II are usually dismissed as footnotes or brief asides.
In Graham Clews’ Churchill’s Phoney War, the famous statesman’s performance in the opening act of World War II comes in for focused scrutiny. Churchill fans need not fear a revisionist look at his service as First Lord of the Admiralty and subsequent rise to Prime Minister, as Clews is keen to point to both Sir Winston’s successes and blunders, underscoring how each brought valuable lessons for Churchill’s later wartime service at 10 Downing Street.
The book is a tale of an ambitious and talented man who had to quickly find his footing and rise to the challenge of rallying a nation, an empire, and its allies in history’s greatest war.
Commander Scarbro is an active-duty naval flight officer and the 2019 Proceedings Author of the Year.
