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"United States. Army -- History -- 20th century"
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Not a Gentleman's War
Wars are not fought by politicians and generals--they are fought by soldiers. Written by a combat veteran of the Vietnam War,Not a Gentleman's Waris about such soldiers--a gritty, against-the-grain defense of the much-maligned junior officer.Conventional wisdom holds that the junior officer in Vietnam was a no-talent, poorly trained, unmotivated soldier typified by Lt. William Calley of My Lai infamy. Drawing on oral histories, after-action reports, diaries, letters, and other archival sources, Ron Milam debunks this view, demonstrating that most of the lieutenants who served in combat performed their duties well and effectively, serving with great skill, dedication, and commitment to the men they led. Milam's narrative provides a vivid, on-the-ground portrait of what the platoon leader faced: training his men, keeping racial tensions at bay, and preventing alcohol and drug abuse, all in a war without fronts. Yet despite these obstacles, junior officers performed admirably, as documented by field reports and evaluations of their superior officers.More than 5,000 junior officers died in Vietnam; all of them had volunteered to lead men in battle. Based on meticulous and wide-ranging research, this book provides a much-needed serious treatment of these men--the only such study in print--shedding new light on the longest war in American history.
eBook
A Nation Forged in War
World War II shaped the United States in profound ways, and
this new book—the first in the Legacies of War
series—explores one of the most significant changes it
fostered: a dramatic increase in ethnic and religious
tolerance.
A Nation Forged in War is the first full-length study
of how large-scale mobilization during the Second World War
helped to dissolve longstanding differences among White
soldiers of widely divergent backgrounds. Never before or since
have so many Americans served in the armed forces at one time:
more than 15 million donned uniforms in the period from 1941 to
1945. Thomas Bruscino explores how these soldiers' shared
experiences—enduring basic training, living far from
home, engaging in combat—transformed their views of other
ethnic groups and religious traditions. He further examines how
specific military policies and practices worked to counteract
old prejudices, and he makes a persuasive case that throwing
together men of different regions, ethnicities, religions, and
classes not only fostered a greater sense of tolerance but also
forged a new American identity. When soldiers returned home
after the war with these new attitudes, they helped reorder
what it meant to be white in America. Using the presidential
campaigns of Al Smith in 1928 and John F. Kennedy in 1960 as
bookend events, Bruscino notes a key change in religious bias.
Smith's defeat came at the end of a campaign rife with
anti-Catholic sentiment; Kennedy's victory some three decades
later proved that such religious bigotry was no longer an
insurmountable obstacle. Despite such advances, Bruscino notes
that the growing broad-mindedness produced by the war had
limits: it did not extend to African Americans, whose own
struggle for equality would dramatically mark the postwar
decades. Extensively documented,
A Nation Forged in War is one of the few books on the
social and cultural impact of the World War II years. Scholars
and students of military, ethnic, social, and religious history
will be fascinated by this groundbreaking new volume.
eBook
The sexual economy of war : discipline and desire in the U.S. Army
\"Discusses how during the first four decades of the twentieth century the U.S. Army regulated almost all forms of sexual behavior and expressions by soldiers and uses the concept of a sexual economy of war to highlight the interconnectedness of everything from homosexuality to rape and sexual violence\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Armed with Abundance
Popular representations of the Vietnam War tend to emphasize violence, deprivation, and trauma. By contrast, inArmed with Abundance, Meredith Lair focuses on the noncombat experiences of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam, redrawing the landscape of the war so that swimming pools, ice cream, visits from celebrities, and other \"comforts\" share the frame with combat.To address a tenuous morale situation, military authorities, Lair reveals, wielded abundance to insulate soldiers--and, by extension, the American public--from boredom and deprivation, making the project of war perhaps easier and certainly more palatable. The result was dozens of overbuilt bases in South Vietnam that grew more elaborate as the war dragged on. Relying on memoirs, military documents, and G.I. newspapers, Lair finds that consumption and satiety, rather than privation and sacrifice, defined most soldiers' Vietnam deployments. Abundance quarantined the U.S. occupation force from the impoverished people it ostensibly had come to liberate, undermining efforts to win Vietnamese \"hearts and minds\" and burdening veterans with disappointment that their wartime service did not measure up to public expectations. With an epilogue that finds a similar paradigm at work in Iraq,Armed with Abundanceoffers a unique and provocative perspective on modern American warfare.
eBook
US Intervention Policy and Army Innovation
US Intervention Policy and Army Innovation examines how the US Army rebuilt itself after the Vietnam War and how this has affected US intervention policy, from the victory of the Gulf War to the failure of Somalia, the Bosnian and Kosovo interventions and the use of force post 9/11.
Richard Lock-Pullan analyzes the changes in US military intervention strategy by examining two separate issues: the nature of the US Army as it rebuilt itself after the Vietnam War, and the attempts by the US to establish criteria for future military interventions. He first argues that US strategy traditionally relied upon national mobilization to co-ordinate political aims and military means; he subsequently analyzes how this changed to a formula of establishing militarily achievable political objectives prior to the use of force. Drawing on a vast body of material and on strategic culture and military innovation literature, Lock-Pullan demonstrates that the strategic lessons were a product of the rebuilding of the Army's identity as it became a professional all-volunteer force and that the Army's new doctrine developed a new 'way of war' for the nation, embodied in the AirLand Battle doctrine, which changed the approach to strategy.
This book finally gives a practical analysis of how the interventions in Panama and the Gulf War vindicated this approach and brought a revived confidence in the use of force while more recent campaigns in Somalia, Kosovo and Bosnia exposed its weaknesses and the limiting nature of the Army's thinking. The legacy of the Army's innovation is examined in the new strategic environment post 9/11 with the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Introduction 1. The US Army and American Strategic Culture 2. The Vietnam War and the US Army 3. The All-Volunteer Army 4. Innovation in US Army Doctrine 5. The Influence of Army Thinking 6. Interventions: Panama, The Gulf, Somalia 7. Back to the Gulf Conclusion
eBook
In the Company of Generals
Pierpont Stackpole was a Boston lawyer who in January 1918 became aide to Lieutenant General Hunter Liggett, soon to be commander of the first American corps in France. Stackpole's diary, published here for the first time, is a major eyewitness account of the American Expeditionary Forces' experience on the Western Front, offering an insider's view into the workings of Liggett's commands, his day-to-day business, and how he orchestrated his commands in trying and confusing situations.
Hunter Liggett did not fit John J. Pershing's concept of the trim and energetic officer, but Pershing entrusted to him a corps and then an army command. Liggett assumed leadership of the U.S. First Army in mid-October of 1918, and after reorganizing, reinforcing, and resting, the battle-weary troops broke through the German lines in a fourth attack at the Meuse-Argonne—accomplishing what Pershing had failed to do in three previous attempts. The victory paved the way to armistice on November 11.
Liggett has long been a shadowy figure in the development of the American high command. He was \"Old Army,\" a veteran of Indian wars who nevertheless kept abreast of changes in warfare and more than other American officers was ready for the novelties of 1914–1918. Because few of his papers have survived, the diary of his aide—who rode in the general's staff car as Liggett unburdened himself about fellow generals and their sometimes abysmal tactical notions—provides especially valuable insights into command within the AEF.
Stackpole's diary also sheds light on other figures of the war, presenting a different view of the controversial Major General Clarence Edwards than has recently been recorded and relating the general staff's attitudes about the flamboyant aviation figure Billy Mitchell. General Liggett built the American army in France, and the best measure of his achievement is this diary of his aide. That record stands here as a fascinating and authentic look at the Great War.
eBook