Reviews
Keeping the Cause Alive
The Whites of Their Eyes: Bunker
Hill, the First American Army, and
the Emergence of George Washington. Paul Lockhart. Harper. 432
pages; black-and-white illustrations;
maps; index; $27.99.
By COL Cole C. Kingseed
U.S. Army retired
F
ew battles in American history are
remembered so well by name as
the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17,
1775. According to author Paul Lockhart, only Gettysburg and D-Day rival
Bunker Hill in collective memory. Subtitled “Bunker Hill, the First American
Army, and the Emergence of George
Washington,” The Whites of Their Eyes
presents a compelling case that this
particular battle captures the “essence
of American mythology—the stories
we tell ourselves about how America
came to be, what it means to be American, why it is that America is so very
distinctive, so different from the European roots from which it sprang.”
Lockhart, whose previous work is
The Drillmaster of Valley Forge, begins
his narrative on the 50th anniversary
of the battle that had actually taken
place on the slopes of Breed’s Hill outside Charlestown, Mass. By the time
that orator Daniel Webster delivered
his immortal commemorative address,
the landscape around Boston had
changed significantly, and the battle
had become shrouded in mythology.
Yet on this day, Bostonians laid the
cornerstone of a monument and recalled the heroic past when the sons of
Massachusetts, Connecticut and the
rest of New England fought the British
Empire in the first large-scale engagement of the American Revolution.
To his credit, Lockhart attacks the
familiar stereotypes associated with
the famous battle and concludes that
Bunker Hill was “a clash between
two young armies—one indifferently
trained and inexperienced, one slightly
better trained and equally inexperienced.” Contrary to popular belief,
opines Lockhart, the American army
was neither a band of rugged frontier
warriors nor skilled militiamen. In reality, the first American army was more
regional than continental and was
hardly different from any army in the
age: young men in their late teens and
early twenties, usually men without
families of their own. Only a handful of
the men were in their forties and fifties.
Nor was the British army that fought
in Massachusetts the finest army in the
world. Few of the British regulars were
seasoned combat veterans. In Lockhart’s view, the British army at Bunker
Hill was “an imperfect instrument”
composed of young soldiers who had
never been in action. Lockhart posits
that “British leadership was neither
unimaginative nor unaware of the
American military abilities.” The British attack plan was actually carefully
formulated by then-Lt. Gen. Thomas
Gage and a triumvirate of skilled officers, including William Howe, Henry
Clinton and John Burgoyne.
Lockhart contends that the real British failure on June 17 lay not in command, but in discipline. What Howe
actually intended on June 17 was a
demonstration on his left flank while
his main attack, consisting of elite
companies of grenadiers, struck John
Stark’s New Hampshire and Connecticut militia arrayed behind a fence next
to the Mystic River. Against this force,
the British regiments lost discipline
and halted, thus providing the Americans with easy targets until sufficient
casualties decimated the British ranks,
compelling them to withdraw.
With his attack plan in complete
disarray, Howe altered his original
stratagem and ordered a frontal assault against the strong breastworks
on Breed’s Hill. Repeated assaults carried the position, but the loss of life
was catastrophic. As the Americans
fled Breed’s Hill in wild disorder, the
British were too exhausted to pursue.
As appalling as the casualties were,
they were actually well within the
norm for a pitched battle at the time,
according to Lockhart. Most striking
were the excessive casualties within
the officer corps. Lockhart states, “Of
all the British officers who would fall
in battle in the eight years of the Revolution, nearly one quarter did so at
Bunker Hill.” Not surprisingly, Gage
reported to his superiors, the battle
was far too costly for a small army to
bear. Clinton concurred, noting that
the recent engagement proved a great
though “dear bought victory.”
American reaction, in contrast, was
one of “euphoric jubilation.” The triumphant defeat at Breed’s Hill inspired
the Continental Army that Congress
had recently created and appointed
GEN George Washington to command.
Fortunately, Gage seemed content to
avoid another major engagement as the
Americans contented themselves to lay
siege to Boston. On July 3, Washington
assumed command of the militia forces
August 2011 ■ ARMY
67
investing the besieged city. The Army
that he fashioned into a professional
force over the succeeding year was
no longer Massachusetts’—no longer
New England’s—but an army national
in scope.
By the time that Washington’s Continental Army liberated Boston in March
1776, the army that had fought and
bled on Breed’s Hill—the first American army—had long since faded into
history. Few of the leaders who fought
outside Boston in 1775 fit into the mold
of the professional Army that Washington had assembled over the course
of the previous year. Even such a
valiant fighter and a charismatic leader
as Israel Putnam, who remained at
Washington’s side for an additional
year, lacked the mind for grand strategy and for complicated maneuvers required on a modern battlefield.
T
oday the names of Stark, Putnam,
Artemas Ward and William Heath
are but footnotes in history, but their
actions on Charlestown Heights “condemned the colonies and Britain alike
to a long war.” After Bunker Hill, states
Lockhart, differences between the colonies and Great Britain were irreconcilable. The engagement also had an important consequence on the defeated
New England militia, however. Even
the sainted Washington was inhibited
in his efforts to construct a truly professional Army if the first American army
of militiamen outside Boston could
stand toe to toe, albeit temporarily,
with British regulars.
Fortunately for the country, the first
American army gave way to the type of
army commanded by Washington that
actually won the American Revolution.
But the first American army that fought
at Breed’s Hill “kept the Cause alive
until Americans could decide just what
that Cause was, and precisely what it
was that they were fighting for.” This
legacy proved the enduring contribution of the Battle of Bunker Hill.
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ARMY ■ August 2011
Lions of Kandahar: The Story of a
Fight Against All Odds. Major Rusty
Bradley and Kevin Maurer. Random
House. 304 pages; black-and-white photographs; $26.
COL Cole C. Kingseed, USA Ret., Ph.D.,
a former professor of history at the U.S.
Military Academy, is a writer and consultant.
2011 AUSA
68
Varied Fare
Lions of Kandahar: The Story of a Fight
Against All Odds by MAJ Rusty
Bradley and Kevin Maurer is a firsthand account of “the most strategically significant battle in Afghanistan
that you never heard of.” Bradley
commanded a Special Forces operational detachment Alpha (A-team) in
Afghanistan in the summer of 2006
during the Battle of Sperwan Ghar.
Maurer is an award-winning reporter
who has been embedded with the U.S.
Special Forces and the 82nd Airborne
Division in Afghanistan and Iraq
more than a dozen times in the past
five years.
Bradley’s A-team of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Special Forces Group, was
tasked to “clean out the Taliban and
foreign fighters, mitigate their influence, reinstate local, legitimate governance, and assist in the reconstruction
and security of an underdeveloped urban area the size of Rhode Island.” The
team, part of Task Force 31, was given
the command guidance after arriving
in Kandahar to pressure, pursue and
punish the Taliban. Translation: You
are expected to go anywhere, anytime,
anyplace and be prepared to do damn
near anything.
Task Force 31 consisted of 30 Green
Berets and about 60 Afghan soldiers.
Outmanned and outgunned, they relied on airpower to level the playing
field and in 11 days, as part of Operation Medusa, NATO’s largest combat
operation, they completed a clandestine desert crossing; survived a massive ambush; assaulted a known enemy fortified position; seized a key
and decisive terrain feature; repelled
two counterattacks and two direct assaults; killed or wounded nearly 800
enemy fighters; and liberated a valley
the Soviets never conquered.
This is a story about American soldiers engaged in combat operations in
Afghanistan in support of the war on
terrorism. If that was all it was, it
would be worth reading, but there is
much more. It’s about how the uncommon characteristics of courage,
resilience and self-sacrifice became
commonplace—how ordinary men
were able to accomplish extraordinary
things. Bradley gives us a rare glimpse
inside one of the Army’s elite units—
the storied Green Berets.
I recommend this book for military
buffs as well anyone interested in the
growing body of literature on 21stcentury Americans at war. My only
complaint is that we would like to
know more about the warriors on
Bradley’s team—the “Band of Brothers,” the men who supplied the sweat,
grit and, in some cases, the blood
needed to win. This is a good story
well told about very real combat. Four
stars.
—CSM Jimmie Spencer, USA Ret.
Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of
Survival, Adventure, and the Most
Incredible Rescue Mission of World
War II. Mitchell Zuckoff. Harper. 400
pages; black-and-white photographs; index; $26.99.
Former journalist Mitchell Zuckoff’s
latest book is a fascinating account of a
real-life calamity in the South Pacific
in 1945. On May 13, 24 servicemembers of the U.S. military—nine Army
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ARMY ■ August 2011
officers, nine Women’s Army Corps
members and six enlisted soldiers—
climbed aboard a C-47 Skytrain for a
pleasure ride taking off from what was
then called Hollandia, Dutch New
Guinea. COL Peter Prossen, the captain of the flight, wanted to provide an
afternoon’s diversion for members of
his staff on the small American base.
He planned to pass over the Baliem
Valley, thought to be only recently discovered by an Army pilot, which was
nestled between two mountain ranges
and surrounded by thick jungle, peopled by indigenous tribes who seemed
to have had no contact with the outside world.
A risky flight that both the captain
and copilot were undertaking for the
first time, the trip turned into a nightmare when the plane crashed into
a cliff and caught fire. Only six passengers survived, and three of them
died within hours. The three who
remained, two gravely injured, beat
their way down the mountainside
through thick vegetation, negotiating
treacherous terrain along cliff edges
and over streams until they reached a
clearing three days later. There they
managed to catch the attention of a
search plane passing overhead. CPL
Margaret Hastings, SGT Kenneth
Decker and 1LT John McCollum had
been found, but their challenges were
far from over.
The clearing was a patch of sweet
potatoes and wild rhubarb, and its
farmers emerged from the trees to
make contact with the three survivors.
The inhabitants of the valley lived
Stone Age lives, surviving on sweet
potatoes and the pigs they raised.
They had not discovered the wheel
and used stone adzes for cutting. Living in small villages, various tribes
frequently rose up against each other
in a never-ending cycle of an eye for
an eye. Some of the tribes ate the flesh
of their slain enemies.
Luckily the crash survivors managed to make friends with those whose
garden they had turned into a camp.
Now it was up to the Americans back
on base to figure out how to rescue the
survivors from a valley with no viable
runway, accessible by land only via
an arduous trek through mountains
populated with natives and possibly
Japanese soldiers hiding out. CPL
Hastings and SGT Decker’s injuries
ruled out the latter option, and the air
above the mountains was too thin to
provide enough lift for a helicopter.
After CPL Camilo Ramirez and SGT
Benjamin Bulatao—two medics from
the Army’s 1st Reconnaissance Battalion (Special), a Filipino unit—volunteered to parachute into the jungle
near the clearing to reach the survivors quickly, eight more members of
their unit and their commander, CPT
C. Earl Walker Jr., landed in the valley,
establishing a base camp that the survivors joined once they had healed
enough to relocate with the paratroopers’ help. There the Americans spent
more than a month recuperating and
interacting with the tribespeople while
waiting for rescue, which eventually
came by dropping gliders into the valley that planes then snatched up, using hooks on their undercarriages to
catch loops of nylon wire connected to
the gliders. At long last they landed in
Hollandia on June 28, 1945, finally
safe.
Meticulously researched and written with compassion and humor, Lost
in Shangri-La resurrects one of the
most astonishing stories of wartime
rescue in World War II.
—Sara Hov