Category Archives: War

Mathew Brady’s picture of General U. S. Grant and the new American Hero

Americana, War, What's a man?

This is a very much modified copy of a post I made in 2009. I am reposting it now because, 150 years ago, the Army of The Potomac was in the middle of what is now known as The Overland Campaign. Grant  and Lee had battled to a draw in The Wilderness on May 5th through the 7th, 1864. This is where the Army of The Potomac learned that Grant was a different kind of general and they were going to become a different kind of Army.

Up until now, the Army of The Potomac would move south, fight the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, and win lose or draw – sadly, it was often lose – retreat to rebuild and re-provision for the next battle. This time, when Grant pulled his troops out of the battle-line, it was not to retreat, but to move further south to attack again at Spotsylvania Court House (May 8–21), then again and again. This was total war. Grant had said I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer, and he meant it.

Grant had come to do a job and he did it. The picture below shows just that.

This is a new kind of portrait and Grant was a new kind of general. The picture was probably taken during the Overland Campaign just after the battle of Cold Harbor. Grant is not the patrician hero, Grant, like Lincoln, was a mid-westerner. A common man. In this picture, he is tired, his eyes are sad, his boots are muddy. This is probably Matthew Bradley’s most famous photo. Not only because of it’s informality, but because it is so penetrating. I have read that a good portrait is an artifact of a relationship. This is a portrait of a real man, the dynamic new kind of American from the West.

Grant was the new American hero. The quiet man just doing his job. John Wayne. Gary Cooper in High Noon.  No braggadocio flourishes, just quietly getting the job done.

 

 

San Francisco from near Nike Missile Site SF-88-L

Americana, Around home, War

View from Nike Battery-1128

I had lunch with my daughter a couple of days ago and, concerned about traffic crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, I left for home early. There wasn’t any traffic, so I took a detour up to an old Nike Hercules battery overlooking San Francisco. Standing there, looking at the view, I remembered one warm summer morning in 1965, when I drove a general up to this battery.

I was a Sergeant – a buck sergeant, E5 – teaching Germans  at Orogrande, New Mexico, when I met General Lolli. He had recently taken over the 28th NORAD Region – I thought it was the Eighth Region, but Google tells me, No, it was the Twenty Eight NORAD/Western NORAD Region – and Lolli was on a tour of various training facilities. Since I was from the Bay Area, he asked me if I wanted to be stationed in Sausalito and be his driver. I said something like Yes! Sir! and told my fellow teachers and my commander that I would soon be transferred to San Francisco. Then…nothing happened; for just long enough for everybody to think I had become slightly delusional. It wasn’t until about two weeks later, on a Thursday afternoon, that I was called into my Battery Commander’s office and told to report to Major General Andrew Lolli at Hamilton Air Force Base by 8 AM the following Monday.

While we were stationed at Hamilton Air Force Base, Lolli was an Army general – the only Army commander of a NORAD region – and I was his Army driver so I had to live at an Army facility. Fort Baker was the closest Army barracks and I had a private room near the entry (General Lolli lived at the Fontana West in San Francisco). Almost every morning, he would drive across the Golden Gate bridge and pick me up at Fort Baker, I would salute him and then drive him to Hamilton. On this particular morning, Lolli told me to drive him up the hill to the Nike Hercules Missile Site overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge.

As an aside, this was the height of the Cold War and the country was in full, paranoic, war hysteria. Schoolkids would practice hiding under our desks when the air raid sirens went off outside; F 101 Voodoo fighters, would take off out of Hamilton Air Base, looking for nuclear armed Russian TU-16 Badger heavy bombers; and our final defence was a series of twenty four Nike Hercules Surface to Air Missile – SAMs to the cognoscenti – sites around the Bay Area. I am not sure if this battery had missiles armed with nuclear weapons but the system was designed for nukes. End aside.

As we drove up to the site, Lolli called in a mock attack and, when we got there, the klaxon was going off and everybody was running to their battle stations. The missile site had probably been at DEFCON 5, but Lolli had now called it up to DEFCON 1, Air Defense Warning – RED. I don’t know if targets had been assigned, but the blast doors were opened and the missiles were brought up on their elevators, ready to launch.

I was standing way out of the way – way out of the way, not being nuclear cleared – next to a guard, and, to make conversation, I asked him how he liked being stationed in Sausalito. I was shocked when he said, It is terrible duty, nobody likes military people in the Bay Area, San Francisco is too expensive, and the weather sucks. It was hard to not agree about the weather. It was a warm summer morning almost everyplace but here; here we stood in a cold wind that was pushing the wet fog past us and then through the Golden Gate. The pavement was wet and slick  and, in the distance, we could hear, but not see, lonely fog horns. Waiting for the All Clear, I thought, The weather may be crummy but this is San Francisco and my dating prospects are much better here than Orogrande or Korea.

When the All Clear finally did come and General Lolli got back in the car, he was furious. It had taken about fifteen minutes too long to come up to DEFCON 1 and Lolli has just relieved a full-bird-Colonel of his command. As we drove down the hill, the General said, If this had been real, I would have lost San Francisco.

Now, almost 49 years later, we are in a warm spell, the only fog is across The Bridge, the Nike Hercules Missile Site is no longer operational, and San Francisco is still there, sparkling in the sun. I watch a freighter go under The Bridge and a Raven joins me. Maybe she wants me to give her – and I am saying her with no idea if it is a him or a her – some food, maybe he is just enjoying the view like me, maybe she wants to chastise me for all the harm my race has done to the planet. I tell her,  Hey, it could be worse, we could have fired off those missiles, we could have destroyed everything in a flash, more than 10,000 flashes, actually. But since you are here, just stay still and look over here, let me get your picture.

View from Nike Battery-1136

View from Nike Battery-1137 View from Nike Battery-1147

 

Syria

Americana, War

Feeling lucky? I read a couple of days ago that only about nine percent of the American public wants us to get into a war over Syria. Count me in the other 93% on this one. It is easy to say that Americans are tired of war, and we are, but there also seems to be a no plan problem here. How does a Syrian intervention fit into our overall Middle Eastern Strategy? Oh, and by the way, what is out overall Middle Eastern Strategy?

According to Reuters, The United States made clear on Friday that it would punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for the “brutal and flagrant” chemical weapons attack that it says killed more than 1,400 people in Damascus last week. What wasn’t made clear is that any punishing of Bashar al-Assad is really punishing someone else. By killing them, or trying to kill them.

If revenge is a dish best served cold, punishment is a dish best served hot. The longer we wait, the less it seems like there is a connection between what we are doing and what Syria did.

Obama said yesterday that we have to attack Assad, because our credibility is on the line. In other words, he is saying we are going to to destroy stuff in Syria and kill people in Syria for reasons that have nothing to do with Syria. It is now because our credibility is on the line. If our reason becomes about us, it really is not legitimate. The only legitimate reason for bombing Syria is to save Syrian lives and suffering. Bombing to save face isn’t bombing Syria to help its people.

It also seems to me that if we threaten to bomb somebody next time it,  it would still be a threat even if we didn’t bomb this time. It still would depend on the circumstances.

Bradley Manning

Americana, War

Bradley ManningBefore, I start I want to acknowledge that Bradley Manning has much bigger attachments than most people and that includes me. He is one of the few people in the world that have been willing to make a huge personal sacrifice to do what they think is right.

Carol Burnett once said that Comedy is Tragedy plus Time. I think a corollary of that might be A Hero is a Traitor plus Time. Maybe you don’t think Bradley Manning  is a hero – although I think he is – and the judge has already ruled that he is not a traitor by throwing out the charge of  Aiding the Enemy, and it is still too early to look at Manning and see reality through the fog of our own preconceptions, but he has exposed to light a dark part of our National Character.

Today, most people think that Daniel Ellsberg, if not a hero, was a patriot and a positive contributor to our collective history.  But, that is now. In January of 1973, he was thought a traitor by the government and brought to trail under the Espionage Act as well as charges of theft and conspiracy. He would have gone to jail for up to 115 years if the judge hadn’t thrown out the case because of government misconduct. That is much less likely to happen in the military court where Manning is being tried.

What Ellsberg did do was embarrass the United States – or, more accurately, the Nixon, Johnson, and Kennedy Administrations, or, even more accurately, powerful, people in those administrations – by showing, in Ellsberg’s words, that the [Nixon and] Johnson Administrations had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance. Bradley Manning has done pretty much of the same thing only with alot more documents.

Among  91,731 other classified documents, Manning gave WikiLeaks videos of an American helicopter airstrike in Baghdad in 2007 and an airstrike in Granai, Afghanistan in 2009. Both airstrikes were most likely accidents and both were classified. The 2007 airstrike was  was against a journalist and two other men who were Reuters employees carrying cameras (the helicopter then fired on a van that stopped to help). The 2009 airstrike killed somewhere between 86–147 Afghan civilians (depending on who is counting).

We don’t like to admit that we kill journalists or civilians in our  hygienic wars and, when we do kill them, it often gets covered up. To kill journalists or civilians is embarrassing. I don’t think that making wars and killing seem civilized and controllable is in the best interest of the United States and I don’t think that the guy who exposes these cover-ups  should be put in jail.

Democracy is doomed without informed citizens, says Robert Meeropola, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg’s son, and I believe he is right. That is where I disagree with the Obama Administration. Maybe I don’t disagree with Obama himself, maybe he really does still believe in the transparency that he ran on. Maybe his administration is going after Manning only because they think they have no political choice, or, maybe they are only trying to cover their asses. I hope Obama still believes in transparency, but I don’t know and have no way of knowing, so I can only hope.

 

The Battle of Champion Hill

Americana, General U.S. Grant, War

..VicksburgCampaignAprilJuly63

In May, 2008, five years ago, Michele and I didn’t visit Champion Hill. We got close, we got to Vicksburg, but we didn’t get to Champion Hill. Today, one hundred and fifty years ago, on May 16th, 1863,  Ulysses S. Grant did.

He attacked the Confederate Army of General John Pemberton there. That battle, eventually, led to the fall of the Confederate fortress of Vicksburg, the separation of the South into two unconnected halves, the re-connection of the Midwest with the sea, and – I think – the end of the Confederacy. Lincoln said it best, We can take all the northern ports of the Confederacy, and they can defy us from Vicksburg. It means hog and hominy without limit, fresh troops from all the states of the far South, and a cotton country where they can raise the staple without interference.

It was one of, if not the greatest, military campaigns in our history. Grant was behind enemy lines  and outnumbered by almost two to one. All this, in an area that was swampy and mosquito infested. When Michele and I were there  – in 2008 on a pilgrimage – we didn’t even want to leave the paved roads. But Grant had been moving constantly since he and his army had crossed the Mississippi on April 3oth, two weeks before.

To distract and confuse the enemy, Grant had ordered two diversionary actions. One of them, Col. Ben Grierson’s raid, was  featured in the New York Times a couple of days ago.  Grierson made a 16 day, 600 mile, raid behind enemy lines. It was audacious, and typical of Grant, and it succeeded in diverting much of the southern cavalry – the eyes and ears of the army at that time – away from Grant’s Army.

When he crossed the Mississippi, Grant was deep in the delta flatlands – the Plantation South – and, as he captured territory, he freed slaves. Later, many of those slaves became Union soldiers, and some were immediately helpful to the Union. Without their help, Grant would have been blind; he didn’t know the country and he had no maps.  As an aside that amuses me, Grant also purchased, according to his son – freed?  liberated? captured? according to others – a horse from the plantation of Joseph Davis, Jefferson Davis’ brother. Grant renamed the horse Jeff Davis and rode him, along with Cincinnati,  for much of the war. End of asides.

Because he couldn’t attack Vicksburg directly, Grant moved east to cut off the city’s supply line. In doing so, he cut off all connection to his own base. Now he was alone, outnumbered, and surrounded. In his memoirs, Grant says, I therefore determined to move swiftly towards Jackson, destroy or drive any force in that direction and then turn upon Pemberton. But by moving against Jackson, I uncovered my own communication [and supply lines]. So I finally decided to have none–to cut loose altogether from my base and move my whole force eastward. I then had no fears for my communications, and if I moved quickly enough could turn upon Pemberton before he could attack me in the rear.

It was a blitzkrieg if I can use that word with an army mostly walking and using muledrawn wagons, oxcarts, and horses pulling buggies. According to Major-General J F C Fuller, an early theorist of modern armored warfare, Grant’s tremendous energy electrified his men, everywhere was there activity….reconnaissances were sent out daily to examine the roads and country, and foraging parties swarmed over the cultivated areas collecting supplies….Nothing was left undone which would speed up the advance, and assist in maintaining it at maximum pressure once the move forward was ordered.

On May 14th, two weeks after he crossed the Mississippi, in country he did not know and without maps, Grant took Jackson, about 60 miles from where he crossed the river, and as he says in his memoirs, his troops hoisted the National flag over the rebel capital of Mississippi. 

One more aside, in the Not everybody appreciates Grant’s humor department, the night after capturing, Jackson, Mississippi, Grant stayed at the best hotel in town, The Bowman House (in the same room that General Joseph Johnson had stayed in, for free, the night before). When the owner demanded payment, Grant’s aide-de-camp said No, but Grant agreed with the hotel owner and insisted on paying for the room…in Confederate money. End aside.

Grant then turned towards Vicksburg  from the east, and 27 miles west of where he slept two days before, he met Pemberton at Champion Hill. Again, Grant in his memoirs, The battle of Champion’s Hill lasted about four hours, hard fighting, preceded by two or three hours of skirmishing, some of which almost rose to the dignity of battle….We had in this battle about 15,000 men absolutely engaged. Our loss was 410 killed, 1,844 wounded and 187 missing. The south lost 4,082 men and were driven back into Vicksburg never to recover.

On our pilgrimage of only one day, we only had time to drive south to the area where Grant crossed the Mississippi and tour the Vicksburg Battlefield itself. Our guide for the day told us that Champion Hill was too far away (maybe he was influenced by our reluctance to leave the road earlier). He didn’t say Keep moving, there is nothing to see there, keep moving but that was the drift. Now I am sorry that I missed it, even if there was nothing to see, and I want to say that I am sorry that I will not be able to attend the 150th Anniversary, but that is not true, if I did go, all I would do is gloat.

But we did have time to get a Chinese dinner in Vicksburg  as is our ritual when traveling, and we did have time to see the Mighty Mississippi. From the bluff overlooking the River, we confirmed, as Lincoln said, that The Father of Waters again goes unvexed to the sea.
Vicksburg-2

And Thanks to Michele who really helped write this.