"The Specht Journal" is one of the major diaries written by Braunschweig military personnel during the Burgoyne campaign of the American Revolutionary War. From the departure from Wolfenbuttel on February 22, 1776 to the end on Winter Hill near Boston on November 9, 1777, the narrator faithfully accounts for each day of the ill-fated campaign. He describes the astonishing affair at Ticonderoga, the short battle at Hubbardton, and the toilsome march south to Fort Miller via Forts Ann and Edward. The campaign ends after two indecisive battles at Saratoga, where Burgoyne, without supplies and badly outnumbered, has to sign a Convention with the victorious American commander Horatio Gates.

Hitler's tank divisions were some of his most feared troops and most lethal weapons in the taking and securing of territory during World War II. From success to failure, in victory and in defeat, each division played a role in Hitler's campaign against the Allies. This is the first guide to chronicle the history of each division from its inception to its destruction. With painstaking research and attention to detail, Mitcham describes the formation and organization of each, then discusses its overall combat history. He also includes a career sketch of every panzer divisional commander.

While this reference will serve as a valuable research tool, it contains more than facts and figures. Mitcham assesses the performance and quality of each division, including how and why it changed over time. He evaluates strengths and weaknesses during different phases of the conflict in terms of manpower, vehicles, and armor quality. He also analyzes commander performance and its impact on overall efforts. The story follows the panzer legions until their ultimate disposition-destruction or disbanding. Includes a comprehensive index of individuals, units, battles and campaigns.

Downsizing has become one of the defining phenomena of the post-Cold War era, a trend affecting few sectors of American life more than the armed forces. Between 1989 and 1996, the active duty Army was cut back by more than a third, from 770,000 soldiers to fewer than half a million. Additional cuts are virtually certain to follow.

How has the Army implemented this mandate to downsize? What common threads exist between past post-war cutbacks and today's redistribution of the "peace dividend"? How has downsizing affected the morale, devotion, and disposition of the Army's officers, whose commitment to the institution profoundly determines its effectiveness? Crucially, is it truly possible to institute the radical transformation that downsizing requires without affecting the Army's ability to fight and win future wars?

As David McCormick demonstrates in this authoritative volume, the Army's downsizing is a story of both failure and success. Unable to make a persuasive case for a larger force, the Army's leaders made dramatic reductions, particularly among the officer corps. Though executed with compassion and precision, these cuts have taken their toll, undermining morale and resulting in dangerous pathologies which threaten the Army at its core. While the downsizing of the Army is unique in that it was externally mandated, the Army's experience is instructive for all organizations--government, corporate, and nonprofit alike--faced with the need to streamline their operations.

Basing his conclusions on hundreds of in-depth interviews with officers across all ranks and senior civilian and military leaders, as well as exhaustive research with Pentagon documents, McCormick has given us a definitive portrait of today's U.S. Army in transition, one that will transform our thinking about both downsizing and the military.

This ethnography describes the intense contradictions that exist between the cultural values of American life and the cultural values needed to survive in combat, as represented through the experiences of forward-deployed U.S. Army units in Germany during the height of the Cold War. Living in constant military readiness, yet participating in peacetime community and family processes, Army personnel had to tolerate the contradictions and live by both sets of principles. In soldier perception, family life and community activities ought to have been guided by American rather than military values. Yet the military ran the community, and military activities penetrated and disrupted family life.

In Germany the penetration and disruption was much exacerbated by isolation, for these Americans did not generally have the language or cultural skills to escape from the military community. Rather, they were marooned in an intensely judgmental fish bowl community where there was no private life. The resulting scrutiny and the measures people took to avoid it and sustain autonomy corrupted the community, its families, and the units themselves. The scrutiny, with its attendant risks, and the intense contradiction in values led to feelings of profound alienation.

This short history is the first broad and selective survey of the phenomenon known as "jointness"--the co-operative operations of land and naval forces until the twentieth-century and of land, sea, and air forces since World War I. Touching on operational, doctrinal, and political dimensions, the survey ranges from the ancient Mediterranean to recent times while focusing on European and American experiences from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries, including Desert Storm. Illustrative cases and reference materials are attuned to the interests of scholars, defense analysts, and students of military affairs. Jointness, subject of major concern to military historians, policymakers, politicians, and military professionals has in the past been covered within certain periods on a case by case or topical basis. This history begins instead with a broad survey from ancient to modern times and then focuses more closley on joint operations since World War I with wide-ranging examples to illustrate trends and patterns of Jointness. The survey closes with a discussion of the central problem of friction and other paradoxes connected with joint military operations. A selected bibliography provides an array of sources both for general readers and military professionals. Maps and appendices further enrich this important history.

The end of the Cold War brought about dramatic changes in the militaries across Europe. The armed forces of former Communist European countries have undergone a double transition: the move to market-based liberal democracies and a rapid movement towards a radically different relationship with the civilian population. NATO has also played a leading role in the change process for the former Eastern Bloc. This book aims to give students a broad introduction to the military's role in the post-Cold War Europe.

Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. military forces have participated in an increasingly complex array of military operations, from disaster relief and peacekeeping to deadly combat. The unique nature of many of these missions calls into question what it means to be a soldier and may require adjustments not only in military doctrine, but also in the military's combat-oriented warrior identity. Franke examines the extent to which individuals who will lead U.S. forces in the 21st century are prepared cognitively to shift among mission requirements.

Using survey methods, Franke explores the social, political, and professional attitudes and values of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. By comparing cadets' responses across classes, he assesses the effects of military socialization on their commitment to the military's dual-mission purpose and their cognitive preparation for combat and non-combat assignments. By developing a dynamic model of social identity, Franke extends the applicability of social identity theory from the experimental laboratory environment to a genuine social field setting. Assessing the dynamic relationship between identity, values, and attitudes for identifications that are normatively meaningful to respondents, he illustrates the importance of individuals' identification with social groups for their behavioral choices.

"England's Last Hope" studies how the part-time auxiliary Territorial Force was raised, clothed, trained, housed and administered during the crucial years of its development in the years before the Great War. As such, it fills a fundamental gap in the understanding of how the force's units were able to take the field as part of the BEF in 1914.

An Army officer must lead men into frightening and dangerous situations and sometimes make them do things that they never thought they could do. This book recounts how British officers have led their men, and commanded their respect, from the days of Marlborough to the Second Iraq war of 2003. Anthony Clayton explores who the officers, men and now women, have been and are, where they came from, what ideals or traditions have motivated them, and their own perceptions of themselves. His account tells the fascinating story of how the role of the military officer evolved, illustrated by a selection of captivating images, and the personal memoirs, biographies and autobiographies of officers.

Although it is generally assumed that there have always been limits to what soldiers are permitted to do in war, it was not until 1863, in the heat of the Civil War, that the United States issued its first Army manual. Subsequently, manuals of land warfare were issued in 1914, 1934, 1940, 1944, 1956, and 1976 by the American military. In this volume, Wells provides a systematic examination of the evolution of American rules of warfare. In addition to providing the texts of key elements of the manuals and analyzing them, Wells relates the manuals to international attempts to set limits on war practices. This book will be invaluable to those concerned with military law, here and abroad, to students of international law, and to military policy makers.

For centuries, mounted cavalry dominated the battlefield through shock and mobility. Man maintained a symbiotic relationship with the horse, which became particularly sacrosanct on the battlefield and even created a new, exalted social class. These mounted warriors sought to preserve their prestige despite the advent of new technologies threatening to render them obsolete. In Cavalry from Hoof to Track, Roman Jarymowycz traces the evolution of the cavalry from the warhorse to the armored tank and demonstrates how its survival is a history of determined and creative responses to the changing dynamics of modern warfare. Ultimately, he argues, the very concept of cavalry exists as its own state of mind. The cavalry and its doctrine are misunderstood, and its tactics and operations remain a mystery for many civilians. New technology and the increased integration of the armed forces create the illusion that the cavalry no longer exists as a distinct military entity and philosophy. Jarymowycz clarifies these misconceptions by offering a comprehensible overview while explaining military terminology and outlining basic cavalry principles. The book concludes by suggesting how the cavalry will continue to evolve in response to contemporary third world conflicts, perhaps even reverting to its original, tactical role of close quarter combat.

Some semi-public, exclusive male settings, most noticeably in the military, encourage the production of intimacy and desire. Yet whereas in most instances this desire is displaced through humor and aggressive gestures, it becomes acknowledged and outright declared once associated with sites of heroic death. In his provocative study of interrelations between friendship in everyday life and national sentiments in Israel, the author follows selected stories of friendship ranging over early childhood, school, the workplace, and some unique war experiences. He explores the symbolism of friendship in rituals for the fallen soldiers, the commemoration of Prime Minister Yzhak Rabin, and the national infatuation with recovering bodies of missing soldiers. He concludes that the Israeli case offers an extreme instance of a much broader cultural phenomenon: declaring the friendship for the dead epitomizes the political "blood pact" between men, taking precedence over the traditional blood ties of kinship and heterosexual unions. The book underscores nationalism as a homosocial-based emotion of commemorative desire.

In 1987–1988 was die stowwerige Angolese dorpie Cuito Cuanavale die toneel van die laaste gevegte van die Grensoorlog. Sedertdien is dit die fokuspunt van ’n openbare debat oor wie eintlik hierdie oorlog gewen het.

Die leierskorps van die Suid-Afrikaanse Weermag (SAW) hou vol hulle is nooit verslaan nie, terwyl die alliansie van die Angolese MPLA-regering, Kuba en Swapo beweer hulle het die SAW uit Angola en Suidwes-Afrika verdryf. Hulle glo voorts die SAW wou Cuito Cuanavale beset en as afspringplek gebruik om Luanda in te neem.

Maar was Cuito Cuanavale ooit regtig ’n doelwit vir die Suid-Afrikaners? Dit is die vraag wat Leopold Scholtz vra wanneer hy onlangs gedeklassi-fiseerde dokumente in die weermagargief bestudeer en die taktiese en strategiese besluite ondersoek wat ’n bepalende rol in die ses groot veldslae van dié veldtog gespeel het.

Sy kritiese ontleding wys hoe maklik propaganda en politiek in die pad van feite kan staan.

This new addition to the popular Seminar Studies series looks at the origins, development and organisation of the Military Orders during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, showing how they functioned as a form of religious life and concentrating on their role in the Crusades and in the government and defence of the Christian kingdoms in the Holy Land. Dr Nicholas Morton offers coverage of the Templars, Hospitalers and Teutonic Knights, as well as various smaller orders. Perfect for undergraduate students studying the Crusades, and for anyone with an interest in this popular topic, this concise and useful history contains numerous primary source materials as well as features to aid understanding.

A ground-breaking study of how literature both reflected and contributed to the eclipse and subsequent revival of militarism in the nineteenth century. Focusing on four major disputes in the Crimea, India, the Sudan, and South Africa as well as the role of the army in Britain, John Peck examines how Victorian writers responded to military issues. At the heart of the book is a dilemma that characterises the Victorian period: the impossibility of reconciling imperial aggression with liberal domestic values.

The first book-length treatment of an important Confederate regiment composed mostly of Irish immigrants who were involved in most of the important Civil War battles in the East.

Feuer has fine-tuned our understanding of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection by unearthing and publishing for the first time an illuminating combat diary. . . . Serious students of American military history will appreciate the opportunity to compare nearly a century of changing interpretations with a most valuable primary source. The editor of the "Bilibid Diary," Feuer has once again rendered conspicious service to the historical profession.

" Barry F. Machado Professor of History Washington and Lee University "

The story of the Old Army as revealed through the eyes of Colonel Jacob Kreps, this book dramatically portrays life in action with the U.S. Infantry on the Western frontier, in the Spanish-American War, and in the Philippine Insurrection. Drawing on the first hand accounts preserved in the diary of Kreps, who served for more than 30 years with the U.S. Twenty-second Infantry Regiment, A. B. Feuer details the hardships endured by the soldiers in combat action.

Feuer recounts the experiences of the distinguished U.S. Twenty-second Infantry Regiment beginning in 1883. He also discusses numerous other U.S. Army units--infantry, cavalry, artillery, engineering, medical, quartermaster and signal--and offers important data on the U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps. Some of the accounts, such as that of the Pasig River battle and the Mindanao campaign, fill in missing chapters in the chronicles of war history. This book, which includes original maps and photographs, is valuable to anyone interested in military history.

Between September 1939 and June 1940, the British Expeditionary Force confronted the German threat to France and Flanders with a confused mind-set, an uncertain skills-set and an uncompetitive capability. This book explores the formation's origins, the scale of defeat in France and the campaign's considerable legacy.

Why, despite the appalling conditions in the trenches of the Western Front, was the British army almost untouched by major mutiny during the First World War? Drawing upon an extensive range of sources, including much previously unpublished archival material, G.D. Sheffield seeks to answer this question by examining a crucial but previously neglected factor in the maintenance of the British army's morale in the First World War: the relationship between the regimental officer and the ordinary soldier.

Describing the radical transformation in German Infantry tactics that took place during World War I, this book presents the first detailed account of the evolution of stormtroop tactics available in English. It covers areas previously left unexplored: the German Infantry's tactical heritage, the squad's evolution as a tactical unit, the use of new weapons for close combat, the role of the elite assault units in the development of new tactics, and detailed descriptions of offensive battles that provided the inspiration and testing ground for this new way of fighting. Both a historical investigation and a standard of excellence in infantry tactics, Stormtroop Tactics is required reading for professional military officers and historians as well as enthusiasts. Contrary to previous studies, Stormtroop Tactics proposes that the German Infantry adaption to modern warfare was not a straightforward process resulting from the top down intervention of reformers but instead a bottom up phenomenon. It was an accumulation of improvisations and ways of dealing with pressing situations that were later sewn together to form what we now call Blitzkrieg. Focusing on action at the company, platoon, and squad level, Stormtroop Tactics provides a detailed description of the evolution of German defensive tactics during World War I--tactics that were the direct forbears of those used in World War II.

Of late, there has been a growing interest in how non-Western peoples have been and continue to be depicted in the literatures of the West. In anthropology, attention has focused on the range of literary devices employed in ethnographic texts to distance and exoticize the subjects of discourse, and ultimately contribute to their subordination. This study eschews the tendency to regard virtually all depictions of non-Western "others" as amenable to the same kinds of "orientalist" analysis, and argues that the portrayals found in such writings must be examined in their particular historical and political settings. These themes are explored by analyzing the voluminous literature by military authors who have written and continue to write about the "Gurkhas", those legendary soldiers from Nepal who have served in Britain's Imperial and post-Imperial armies for more than two centuries. The author discovers that, instead of exoticizing them, the military writers find in their subjects the quintessential virtues of the European officers themselves: the Gurkhas appear as warriors and gentlemen. However, the author does not rest here: utilizing a wealth of literary, historical, ethnographic sources and the results of his own fieldwork, he investigates the wider social and cultural contexts in which the European chroniclers of the Gurkhas have been nurtured.

Having evolved over the past two and a quarter centuries to become the premier military force in the world, the U.S. Army has a heritage rich in history and tradition. This historical dictionary provides short, clear, authoritative entries on a broad cross section of military terms, concepts, arms and equipment, units and organizations, campaigns and battles, and people who have had a significant impact on Army. It includes over 900 entries written by some 100 scholars, providing a valuable resource for the interested reader, student, and researcher.

For those interested in pursuing specific subjects further, the book provides sources at the end of each entry as well as a general bibliography. Appendixes provide a useful list of abbreviations and acronyms and a listing of ranks and grades in the U.S. Army.

This overview explores the use of black people, either through coercion or enticement, in the armed forces of predominantly white societies in times of crisis when the supply of white soldiers was exhausted or when whites refused to fill the ranks of a wartime army. A chronological review, the study begins with references to Biblical armies and ends with the technological environment of the modern world, looking at how blacks were employed, exploited or rewarded for their service over the centuries. While the balance sheet is mixed, military institutions have proven to be leaders in integration and equality for blacks both in the United States and in Europe. Inequality still exists in the modern American military; however, the authors contend, it is more likely to be based upon educational disparities than on the color of a soldier's skin.

African American soldiers played a significant role in the creation and expansion of the United States. The authors write about conquistadors who utilized blacks as soldier slaves. They recount the stories of the black men who fought during the Revolutionary War. They detail the experience of the Buffalo Soldiers in securing and protecting the western wilderness and follow the black soldier fighting alongside Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. From the decks of the battleship DEGREESIMaine DEGREESR to the Philippine Islands, from the hills of Vietnam and the deserts of the Middle East, and, finally, to the all-volunteer army, this book reveals the impact that black soldiers have made on American history.

I would have climbed up a mountain to get on the list to serve overseas]. We were going to do our duty. Despite all the bad things that happened, America was our home. This is where I was born. It was where my mother and father were. There was a feeling of wanting to do your part.
--Gladys Carter, member of the 6888th

To Serve My Country, to Serve my Race is the story of the historic 6888th, the first United States Women's Army Corps unit composed of African-American women to serve overseas.
While African-American men and white women were invited, if belatedly, to serve their country abroad, African-American women were excluded for overseas duty throughout most of WWII. Under political pressure from legislators like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the NAACP, the black press, and even President Roosevelt, the U.S. War Department was forced to deploy African-American women to the European theater in 1945.
African-American women, having succeeded, through their own activism and political ties, in their quest to shape their own lives, answered the call from all over the country, from every socioeconomic stratum. Stationed in France and England at the end of World War II, the 6888th brought together women like Mary Daniel Williams, a cook in the 6888th who signed up for the Army to escape the slums of Cleveland and to improve her ninth-grade education, and Margaret Barnes Jones, a public relations officer of the 6888th, who grew up in a comfortable household with a politically active mother who encouraged her to challenge the system.
Despite the social, political, and economic restrictions imposed upon these African-American women in their own country, they were eager to serve, not only out of patriotism but out of a desire to uplift their race and dispell bigoted preconceptions about their abilities. Elaine Bennett, a First Sergeant in the 6888th, joined because "I wanted to prove to myself and maybe to the world that we would give what we had back to the United States as a confirmation that we were full- fledged citizens."

Filled with compelling personal testimony based on extensive interviews, To Serve My Country is the first book to document the lives of these courageous pioneers. It reveals how their Army experience affected them for the rest of their lives and how they, in turn, transformed the U.S. military forever.