Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 86 i History of War

Though he would later come to define an era, with almost unrivalled accomplishments on and off the battlefield, when the young general Bonaparte embarked on an audacious expedition to Egypt in 1798, his future triumphs were by no means certain. Already beloved by the French public for his battlefield victories, Napoleon was distrusted by some politicians in Paris, and his campaign in the Orient could easily have crushed his ascendant reputation. Despite eventually ending in strategic failure, the campaign did not slow the general’s rise to power, but instead now holds an almost mythical status in his legendary story.…

2-4 August 1990 INVASION OF KUWAIT Under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, Iraqi forces invade Kuwait to gain more control over its oil supply. Kuwaiti forces are overwhelmed and Saudi Arabia comes under the threat of invasion. A follow-up conquest of Saudi Arabia has the potential to leave 40 percent of the world’s oil reserves under Saddam’s dictatorial control. 2 August 1990 BATTLE OF DASMAN PALACE 01 Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah, Emir of Kuwait, is forced to leave his residence at Dasman Palace when it is attacked by Iraqi Special Forces and elements of the Iraqi Republican Guard. The emir vacates the premises in a helicopter to Saudi Arabia but his younger brother, Sheikh Fahd Al-Ahmad is killed. 2 August 1990 02 BRITISH AIRWAYS FLIGHT 149 385 passengers and crew of…

Aside from the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons stockpiles, a particular threat faced by the Coalition’s ground troops was his considerable arsenal of tactical ballistic missiles. These had successfully rained death and destruction down on Iran’s cities during the bloody eight-year long Iran-Iraq War. Coalition commanders were well aware of the threat posed by these missiles. As the Soviet-designed Scud was inaccurate, it was not really a viable military weapon, so Saddam once again resorted to using it as a terror weapon against civilian targets. During the Coalition build-up for Desert Storm/Desert Sabre, he harassed Saudi Arabia and Israel with repeated rocket and Scud missile attacks. Saddam first fired his Soviet-made Scud B missiles at Iran in 1982; this culminated six years later in the ‘War of the…

Edward of Westminster, Prince of Wales, spent most of his short life growing up in exile and the shadow of war. Born in 1453, he was the treasured only son of Henry VI and Margaret of Anjou. He witnessed his first battle when he was only seven years old at the Second Battle of Albans in February 1461, which apparently toughened his spirit. While he and his mother were living in exile in 1467 the Milanese ambassador to France reported, “He already talks of nothing but cutting off heads or making wars, as if he had everything in his hands or was the god of battle or the peaceful occupant of that (English) throne.” A fellow exile Sir John Fortescue also remarked, “As soon as he became grown up he…

A heroic leader of the abolitionist movement, Frederick Douglass (1818-95) was one of the greatest orators of his time. Born into slavery in Maryland as the son of an enslaved woman and her master, Douglass escaped and wrote a bestselling autobiography in 1845. Noted for his powerful command of language, Douglass toured the northern United States, Britain and Ireland to promote the cause of the abolition of slavery. Such was his international popularity that his British supporters bought his freedom in 1846. Douglass was a master of oratory and some of his many quotes include, “The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery,” and, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” Upon his return to America, Douglass edited anti-slavery journals and supported women’s rights…

Certificate: TBC Director: Lydia Dean Pilcher Cast: Sarah Megan Thomas, Stana Katic, Linus Roache, Radhika Apte Released: 23 October 2020 Super-charged by an excellent screenplay from Sarah Megan Thomas, who also headlines as pioneering secret agent Virginia Hall, A Call To Spy (2020) is a riveting, well-paced historical thriller about the lives of three remarkable women: an American ex-pat with a wooden leg, an Indian Muslim and a Romanian Jewish émigré. As shown in Lydia Dean Pilcher’s film, their individual and collective contributions to the Allied war effort via the French Resistance were ground-breaking and extraordinarily brave. Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army Of Shadows (1969) is and always will be the greatest film ever made about the years of the underground movement to disrupt and sabotage the Nazi war machine in Occupied…

A BATTLE OF BRITAIN LOVE STORY Writer: John Willis Publisher: Mensch Publishing Price: £18.99 With the 80th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, we might reasonably have expected the publication of a plethora of new titles covering this well-trodden genre. Among those with a passion for the subject, there was doubtless a weary anticipation that we would see more of the ‘same old’. But Secret Letters is in a different league. John Willis’s truly superb work is based on letters written by Geoffrey Myers (the intelligence officer with 257 Squadron throughout the Battle of Britain) to his wife, Margot. Letters that were written, but never sent. This was because Myers had left his wife and children behind in France, and he expected that they would never be read – not…

TOM GARNER Tom spoke with Napoleonic expert Adam Zamoyski this issue, who discusses the myths behind Napoleon’s Egypt campaign (p. 32). Elsewhere, he explores the history of a famed African-American regiment in the US Civil War (p. 54). STUART HADAWAY For this issue’s Operator’s Handbook, RAF researcher Stuart takes a look at the prolific Yakovlev Yak-9. This Soviet fighter plane played a critical role in the battle for air superiority on the Eastern Front (p. 64). BERNARD WILKIN Father and son historians Bernard and René Wilkin turn their attention to the French Republic’s failed 1798 Egypt campaign in this issue. Turn to page 24 to discover why the ambitious expedition turned from triumph to disaster.…

GENERAL H. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF COALITION FORCES COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF USA By 1990 Schwarzkopf was a highly experienced combat commander. Born in Trenton, New Jersey he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1956. He served in Vietnam first as an advisor to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and then a battalion commander with the 6th Infantry. He was wounded four times in 1966 while leading an ARVN assault against the Viet Cong. In 1983 as a major general, he was deputy commander of Joint Task Force 120 under Vice Admiral Joseph Metcalf III. This conducted Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of Grenada designed to drive out Cuban troops. This was notable because it signalled renewed confidence by the US military for overseas expeditions following the humiliation of Vietnam. Five years…

Special Forces in support of Desert Storm were tasked with not only gathering intelligence and to vector in air strikes, but also if necessary destroy Saddam’s missile launchers themselves. One of the most well-known of these was the British SAS mission call-sign ‘Bravo Two Zero’. Their task was to go Scud busting but the patrol was soon compromised and most of its members captured. This operation was subsequently made famous by team member Steven Mitchell (using the pseudonym Andy McNab) who wrote a controversial book about their daring exploits. Later books by other team members conflicted with some details of Mitchell’s account, leading to accusations of fabrication. McNab went on to become a highly successful novelist of both fiction and non-fiction.…

Between 1798-99, Napoleon Bonaparte experienced one of the most dramatic campaigns in his long military career. Then a general in the French Army, he led an invasion of Egypt and a subsequent campaign into Syria and Palestine that propelled his career to new heights. His time in the Middle East has since been viewed as an intoxicating blend of heroic romance and huge bloodshed, that was ultimately a costly adventure. For Adam Zamoyski, a bestselling author of Napoleonic history, Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign was a crucial episode that set him on the path to ruling France. However, he also believes that Napoleon’s role, motives and actions during this experience have been misunderstood. Zamoyski reveals a confident young Napoleon who was ambitious and occasionally ruthless but also idealistic, religiously tolerant and hungry…

Born a slave in Virginia, William Carney (1840-1908) was secretly educated by a private school. His route to freedom is uncertain but he probably escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad and was able to join his parents in Massachusetts. Carney initially joined a black militia unit called the Toussaint Guards in February 1863, which soon merged with the 54th Massachusetts Regiment. Within a month he was a sergeant and he fought with distinction at Fort Wagner. When the regiment’s standard-bearer fell with the American flag, Carney dropped his weapon and picked it up. He later recalled, “As quick as a thought I threw away my gun, seized the colours, and made my way to the head of the column.” Already wounded, Carney was seen “pressing his wound with one hand…

Author: Hamish de Bretton-Gordon Publisher: Headline Price: £20 Most people would consider chemical warfare to be a modern phenomenon, but as Hamish de Bretton-Gordon outlines in this fascinating book, its use has been documented for thousands of years – the ancient Spartans employed it around 2,400 years before it was unleashed on the battlefields of World War I. It is doubtful that anyone has fond memories of encounters with chemical weapons, but the author (known conveniently as DBG), had a particularly harrowing introduction. Caught in a supposed sarin gas attack in Iraq, in 1991, he found that his gas mask was not functioning properly and was faced with the impossible choice of either suffocating to death, or taking his mask off and dying from exposure to the gas. As it…

Author: Moritz Föllmer (Translated by Lesley Sharpe and Jeremy Noakes) Publisher: Oxford University press Price: £20 Released: Out now Moritz Föllmer’s Culture Of The Third Reich sets out to examine not only the cultural identity of the Third Reich, but how the careful cultivation of that identity played a vital part in the acceptance of the regime. Much has been written on the subject but Föllmer approaches the material from a new angle, shining a spotlight on what culture actually meant in the Reich, from committed supporters of the Nazis at one end of the spectrum, to those who were its innocent victim at the other. Föllmer guides the reader through the cultural landscape of the Third Reich from 1933 until 1945, as Goebbels strove to create a cultural identity…

The scientific expedition that accompanied the French Army to Egypt has been celebrated for its discoveries. Over 160 scientists and scholars (known as the ‘savants’) were selected to study everything there was to find out about Egypt. Their achievements included biological discoveries, technical archaeological drawings and revealing the secrets of mirages. However, the most spectacular result was the discovery of the Rosetta Stone by Pierre-François Bouchard. This find enabled Egyptian hieroglyphics to be read for the first time in centuries and was the birth of modern Egyptology. Zamoyski states that this unique aspect of the campaign was advocated by Napoleon himself, “He would often discuss the fact that while people knew about Ancient Greece and Rome, almost nothing was known about Ancient Egypt. He thought it would be marvellous to…

The enemy position was formidable. At the eastern end of the fortified Hindenburg Line, the Germans had prepared a veritable killing ground to greet any assault in the sector between the winding River Meuse and the dense, dark Argonne Forest. In less than a month, the Armistice would cause the guns to fall silent. However, until then, Allied and German troops continued fighting and dying on the Western Front as the holocaust of World War I played out in the terrible autumn of 1918. By September, the 42nd ‘Rainbow’ Division of the US Army had become a veteran outfit, blooded in battle and absorbing tremendous casualties. The fighting in the spring and summer had cleared the St Mihiel salient, but the troops had suffered badly, losing hundreds to concentrated enemy…

"WAIT FOR ME, DADDY" This iconic image was captured on 1 October 1940, by American photographer Claude P. Dettloff. The photo shows The British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught’s Own Rifles) marching in New Westminster, Canada, en route to a secret posting now known to be Vancouver Island. A NEW CITIZEN Pictured, Albert Einstein swears the oath of allegiance to the USA, during the ceremony making him a US citizen. Einstein left Germany during the 1930s to live abroad, during which time Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power. Of Jewish descent, Einstein realised the dangers of returning to Germany and settled in New Jersey. Though born in Ulm, Germany, he had already renounced his German citizenship in 1896, and became a Swiss citizen five years later. While living…

Writer: Christopher M Bell Publisher: Oxford University Press Price: £12.99 The First World War campaign in the Dardanelles was famously one that very nearly destroyed the career and reputation of Winston Churchill for good. However, his decades-long battle to clear his name and restore his standing in both the military and the political arena would ultimately pay off and set the stage for his eventual appointment as prime minister in Britain’s ‘darkest hour’ and to thus steer the nation to its ‘finest hour’. At first sight, this appears to be a somewhat ‘academic’ book which might be a difficult work to wade through. However, it is an extremely absorbing and highly readable work which casts new light on not only Churchill himself but on the much wider issues of the…