5 comments about George Thomas: Virginian for the Union (Campaigns and Commanders).

1. We hear from all of the writers who wish the South won in the Civil War and lionize those who sided with their states against the Constitution, but finally we hear about a solid, capable, Virginian who stayed with the United States. General Thomas was greatly chastised by his friends and family because of his choice to remain in the service of the United States, very much like Admiral David G. Farragut, USN. His excellent service was underrated by General Grant but does in no way diminish his service to this country. His high point had to be in the victory at Chickamauga. Politics were as bad then as they are now in the senior ranks of the armed forces and once labelled as "overly-cautious" by General Grant, he was side-lined. Of note in the book was a comment made by General Thomas as the middle south's Occupation Commander as he worked to protect and bring citizenship to the Freedmen. He stated that he was bewildered as to why "southeners tended to violence rather than obey the law", and was sickened as he witnessed the rise of Jim Crow.
   
   A very interesting book that shows the life of and the difficult career of General Thomas, a Virginian, who was a keystone to the success of the Union in the western campaigns.



2. In reading about the Civil War, I was intrigued by the story of Union General George Henry Thomas. How fortunate that Christopher J. Einolf recently published George Thomas: Virginian for the Union. This book does much to introduce 21st Century readers to this once famous general who has pretty much dropped off the radar screen.
   
   The background of George Thomas is very similar to Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Coming from a prominent Virginia family, Thomas went to West Point, served in the Mexican and Indian Wars, and then taught at West Point. But unlike Lee, when the Civil War began, Thomas placed his oath to the Constitution above his loyalty to his family and his state and sided with the Union. He never saw his homestead or his sisters again.
   
   While both armies had more than a few eccentric characters in key leadership positions (think Grant, Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, McClellan, J.E.B. Stuart, etc.), Thomas proved to be one of the most steady, consistent but understated generals during the Civil War. His friend and West Point roommate, William Tecumseh Sherman said of Thomas that "He was never brilliant, but always cool, reliable, and steady--maybe a little slow." After the war, Sherman praised Thomas as "the second-best general of the war, after Grant, and argued that Thomas was a better general even than Robert E. Lee."
   His greatest successes were at the Battle of Chickamauga and the Battle of Nashville. His actions at Chickamauga helped to save the Union army from total annihilation and earned him the nickname, The Rock of Chickamauga. He finished the Civil War as the sixth highest ranking general in the Union army behind Grant, Sherman, Halleck, Mead and Sheridan.
   
   While I found George Thomas: Virginian for the Union to be engrossing, it's very long on military information and short on personal facts. The reasons for this are the same reasons that Thomas is not very well known today. First, he had all his personal papers burned upon his death and he rarely spoke to his colleagues about his personal life. He never published his memoirs, unlike many of the key players from the war. He also was the first general to die after the war at the young age of 53 (in 1870). Three friends wrote biographies of Thomas after his death and respected his wish for privacy. This book doesn't even contain a photograph of his wife, Frances. Frances was also a very private person, and they had no children. While I would have preferred more personal information, I can't hold it against Einolf is very little is available to researchers.
   But despite this shortcoming, George Thomas is still an excellent book and one that I would strongly recommend to others.



3. Anyone who is mildly interested in history should read this biography. Mr. Einolf has thoroughly researched George Thomas and while providing an extensive account of his life, he has managed to create a work that is entertaining. Civil War buffs should enjoy this work as it shares an interesting and valid view of loyalties to fellow man and country.



4. Volume 13 of the "Campaigns and Commanders" series, George Thomas: Virginian for the Union is the in-depth biography of one of the Union's most prominent and successful generals, who was at one time considered for overall command of the Union Army. Remembered today as the "Rock of Chickamauga", George H. Thomas was a slaveholding Southerner who chose to fight for the North, and his experience with the heroism of black soldiers on the battlefield forever changed his view of African-Americans, transforming him into a defender of civil rights. While George Thomas: Virginian for the Union makes a solid case for Thomas' integrity and competence, neither are Thomas' flaws and ill decisions neglected. Notes, a bibliography, and an index enhance this evenhanded appraisal of a truly remarkable commander.



5. General George H. Thomas was a Southern born Union officer who commanded the outstanding Army of the Cumberland and he was one of the great generals of the American Civil War. In military circles he will forever be known as "The Rock of Chickamauga". However today, for a number of reasons, he is relatively unknown to the American public.
   
   Any author writing a biography of George Thomas is faced with a major hurdle in that most of Thomas' private papers were burned at his request when he died, and the fact that he died suddenly of a stoke soon after the Civil War which left no chance for a memoir. The author addressed these problems by relentlessly researching every collection of Thomas Papers available and reviewing as many private letters that he could. Other authors may have done this also, and used them to influence their writing, but Mr. Christopher Einolf has done more. He quotes from the Thomas letters giving the reader a glimpse of the real Thomas.
   
   The author uses an understated writing style that I think would have been appreciated by Thomas himself. He lets the facts speak for themselves in many cases and lets his readers draw their own conclusions. However he is not shy about sharing any new understanding of Thomas that he has reached. His description of how Thomas' attitude about blacks changed, from one of a conventional Virginia land owner to a real Civil Rights advocate and that this change came not so much as an evolutionary process but more of a `frame-break' moment after the Battle of Nashville when he saw for himself how well his black troops fought, gives us a new major insight into the man. This view came as a revelation for me as I never agreed with some early Thomas biographers who assumed Thomas had some innate goodness in him that would not allow him to treat blacks unequally. With his aristocratic Virginia upbringing, it did not make any sense. To me Mr. Einolf's analysis rings true.
   
   The author's battle descriptions and analyses are very good with the notable exception of the Battle of Chattanooga. He basically subscribes to the standard `miracle theory' or to luck, as he has the soldiers saying, for the great success at Missionary Ridge. He states that `military historians' say the artillery was badly placed, and that the Union soldiers could scurry up the ravines unseen by enemy soldiers. This may be true, but the author misses the point that the prime factor in winning the battle was the effort of General Joseph Hooker and the fact that Thomas delayed his attack as long as he could to allow Hooker time to flank the ridge from Lookout Mountain. Confederate veterans on high ground and in good defensive positions would ordinarily not have been worried about any Federal charge, but with the added knowledge that a Union Corps was marching across their line of retreat, they decided it was time to skedaddle. That aside, the author's description of Stones River, Chickamauga, Nashville and the other battles is very good and his conclusions are astute.
   
   Mr. Einolf's chapters on Thomas' post war actions and decisions during the occupation and the early reconstruction periods are given the detail they deserve. The author shows how Thomas had a unique perspective on the situation due to his being a Southern gentleman, a Unionist and knowing first hand the qualities of the black men who fought for their freedom. These two chapters really differentiate this book from other Thomas biographies.
   
   In his concluding chapter entitled "Thomas in Historical Memory" Mr. Einolf goes into the reasons for loss of Thomas' place in history. This makes for very interesting reading especially in what he has to say about the Southern Historical Society. While I personally think he is too mild with regard to Generals U. S. Grant and William T. Sherman in their treatment of General Thomas during the war and later in their memoirs which contributed to the loss of George Thomas in history, Mr. Einolf's opinion on this matter has merit.
   
   Overall this biography is excellent and a very creditable addition to the literature on the American Civil War.

No comments about Guadalcanal Marine.

5 comments about Seize the Fire: Heroism, Duty, and the Battle of Trafalgar.

1. Good historical book should explain/elaborate WHY and HOW battles erupt, and "Seize the Fire" fulfills these two criteria. Author presents in depth psychological and economical study of French, Spanish and British societies, what factors were responsible for vast differences between France and England. Mental attitudes of citizens, rulers, aristocrats, seamen, officers and admirals create well constructed background. Eventually (Part II) we read gruesome details how the bloody and horrific battle evolved and ended. You will be surprised learning about Nelson's motivations and strategy (author calls it "mutually assured destruction"). Violence, humanity and nobility were happening almost at the same time. Shocking to me was to find out that NKVD was not the first in history to use "special methods" for stopping desertion. On the decks of ships, prospect of instantaneous execution by one's own officers might well have persuaded the reluctant to fight longer and harder than they otherwise would. In the end monstrous storm diluted the blood in the sea, sea gobbled ships taken as prizes. Revolution and republican idealism was dying in Europe. Road to Anglo-Saxon commercial Atlantic, materialist, go-getting entrepreneurial culture became well paved and secured. Some segments of this book are too philosophical, repetitive (IMO) and slightly boring. In general it is interesting, informative and worth of recommendation volume.



2. I have never put up a review here before but this book has really affected me and I want to share it with others.
   
   I was a little leery when I read the jacket, thinking this book would be mainly a "social" history, but I have been pleasantly surprised. Nicolson knows the strategy and tactics well and the book remains focused on what actually happened at the battle. But his narrative technique is to flash back and zoom out from particular battle events to place them in their broader social and historical context. Along the way he is very deft and imaginative with primary sources. For example, in one intensely moving passage he skillfully contrasts an enlisted man's tortured letter to the parent of a dead shipmate with a much shorter, colder directive from another dead man's captain to the Admiralty (but not the family) to stop forwarding the man's pay to his family. He then observes that the only official notification to most enlisted men's families of a death at sea was that the money simply stopped coming. I'm also impressed with the emotional and descriptive power of the writing, which in passage after passage seems to transcend history and become almost poetic. I probably have more than a hundred military history books laying around my house but this book stands in a sub-genre all by itself.



3. This is a book about the Battle of Trafalgar, not so much about what happened there but why it happened.
   
   Much of the flavor of the book can be savored from these words in the preface: "There is a long tradition of English violence.... A higher percentage of the population died in the English Civil War than in the French Revolution.... All this was part of the nation from which Nelson came. He was able ... to summon a scale of aggression from his fleets that seems to have drawn on the deepest levels of common consciousness among his men. This is a difficult area to address, but essential: how does one read into the behaviour of a fighting fleet the deep half-conscious pre-occupations of the people who man its ship? how do the semi-understood but widely-inherited ideas about purpose, violence and victory, which are present in any evolved society, shape the way men behave in battle?"
   
   How does one read into the behavior? Well, Adam Nicolson uses the 317 pages that follow the preface to show us how he does it. (By the way, the English Civil War was just that, a war. The French Revolution was not. Wars, in whatever country and whatever period, tend to kill a lot of people. What percentage of the French population did Napoleon's Wars kill?)
   
   I am not sufficiently familiar with this subject to state that there is no new material in Nicolson's book. I am sufficiently familiar with this subject to state that there is no significant new material in Nicolson's book.
   
   Nicolson has fairly evidently come to this book carrying a considerable weight in baggage. For one thing, he is no warrior and he is both uncomfortable with and unable to appreciate those who are. (Yes, there are very definitely such things as warriors. I have no qualms about admitting that I was the mildest of military rabbits during my nine years in uniform, but I certainly knew and served with men who could only be described as tigers in human form, decorated veterans and, more significantly, survivors of World War II, Korea and Vietnam.)
   
   Nicolson is a determinist. Nelson and the English fleet won the Battle of Trafalgar because they had to. History, technology, economics, and sociology demanded that they win. Maybe. But Nicolson to the contrary, history repeatedly teaches that the battle plan is very likely to be the first casualty arising from any contact with an enemy. Nelson won a spectacular victory because he ignored the established tactical wisdom of his day by turning his fleet toward the enemy and cutting the Franco-Spanish battle line in two places. He did this because he was fighting not so much against the ships of that fleet as its commanders. He had reason to believe that if he did something tactically unsound, he could get away with it and achieve a great success. He was right.
   
   However, victory was not inevitable. The Franco-Spanish fleet outnumbered the English fleet. The individual French ships, at least, were better built, faster and better sailors than the individual English ships (as shown by the haste with which captured French ships were refitted and brought into service with English crews.) And more important than either of those considerations is the fact that the leading squadron of the Franco-Spanish fleet--roughly a third of its total strength--was left entirely unmolested while nearly the whole of Nelson's fleet was totally committed to near-immobilized close-in action during the main battle. If Nelson had been the commander of that squadron, he'd have turned back and gone straight down the attacking line, bringing overwhelming force against one ship after another in sequence and annihilating each one in turn.
   
   Forget about Nelson and that squadron, which failed in the event to do its duty because of the failure of its commander. Consider what would have happened at Trafalgar if Pierre-Andre de Suffren had been born in 1756 rather than 1726.
   
   Suffren was a pre-Revolutionary French admiral. He was a person of a type encountered by the Royal Navy on only two occasions during the 18th and 19th centuries: an aggressive enemy commander. (The other time, of course, was the War of 1812, when American commanders boldly took on English ships and when the surrender of a single American frigate to FIVE English frigates was written up in official despatches as a great victory!) Suffren had led a French squadron in the Indian Ocean, far from any hope of support or succor. He consistently beat the pants off massively superior British forces.
   
   If Suffren had been in charge at Trafalgar, he would cooly have bloodied and certainly blunted the effect of the English charge during the appallingly dangerous turn-in phase of their attack. Then he would have ordered that free squadron to bring about the destruction of the fleet from the nation of shopkeepers.
   
   And two centuries later, Adam Nicolson would have written a book to explain why Admiral Suffren's famous victory off Cape Trafalgar had been inevitable.
   
   In the event, Nicolson's book doesn't really tell us much about the Nelsonian navy, certainly no more than might be gleaned from the fictional adventures of Horatio Hornblower or Jack Aubrey or from the works of Captain Marryat (who had been at Trafalgar as a boy.) It tells us rather more about Adam Nicolson, who doesn't much care for the not particularly gentle men who sailed in King George's ships. He's a familiar character. Shakespeare, in fact, described him to a "T" in "King Henry IV, Part One":
   
   Came there a certain lord, neat, and trimly dress'd...
   And as the soldiers bore dead bodies by,
   He called them untaught knaves, unmannerly,
   To bring a slovenly unhandsome corpse
   Betwixt the wind and his nobility....
   And that it was a great pity, so it was,
   That villainous saltpetre should be digg'd
   Out of the bowels of the harmless earth,
   Which many a good tall fellow had destroy'd
   So cowardly; and but for these vile guns
   He would himself have been a soldier.



4. Mr. Nicolson has done a fine job of writing a book about the notions of Heroism and Duty, with even a dash of Honor thrown in. Societal woes and the blossoming of the bourgeois class are well navigated and occasionally set to a backdrop of one of, if not the greatest of Britain's (perhaps I should say England's) Naval victories. The first half of the book is a muddled read. The author alternately credits Nelson with brilliance of command with a complete denial that this particular engagement was anything more than a continuation of the changing norms of the various nations involved.
   
   Still, a good read, but not one for insight into either Nelson or Trafalgar.



5. This is a five CD book. The author does not actually begin discussing the battle until well into the FOURTH CD. Need I say more?

2 comments about Grasshopper Pilot: A Memoir.

1. This book is a collection of writings by Julian Cummings and assembled into a book by his wife as he lay terminally ill in 2002. As such, the book has a number of problems: it's too short to say much; it's erratic in that some chapters have a nice amount of detail and others are just a page or two long; the writing style varies from pretty good to annoying.
   
   Most people seem to be able to write well about their own experiences, whether they are professional authors or not. You can see glimmers of that here, but it's not consistent. These wartime memoirs are best written in the first decade or two after the war. Beyond that the story just doesn't seem fresh, and parts of this book show that symptom.
   
   That said, the subject is an interesting and somewhat neglected one; although there are other books out on these small planes and their pilots they're expensive and hard to find.
   
   If you're at all curious about this aspect of WW2, you'll enjoy reading through this, but I recommend you check it out of a library or find a used copy cheap. I did not find it to be a "keeper".



2. The stories of the air war in Europe and Japan have concentrated on the stories of mighty bombers going off to bomb Germany or Japan and of sleek, fast, agile fighters defending Britain or the bombers. Bill Cummings did it differently. He flew a 'Grasshopper' the military version of the Piper Cub - 65 glorious horsepower (finally expanded to a mighty 100 hp).
   
   His story begins with being fascinated with flying as a kid and learning how to fly before WW II started. With 60+ hours of flying time, and an ROTC commission as a second lieutenant he was getting ready to put in for the air corp when a notice came down that all the officers who had sixty hours or more of private flying were to put in for flight training. Suddenly he was a military pilot.
   
   His military career took him to North Africa, Sicily, Italy and finally to the Philippines. Most of the time he flew in one plane, 'Maggie the Faithful,' 485 missions. His story is quite a different one from the usual Army 'I was there' book. He helps to fill a niche in an understudied dimension of the war.

No comments about Defenders of Fortress Europe: The Untold Story of the German Officers during the Allied Invasion.

5 comments about George B. Mcclellan: The Young Napoleon.

1. Has anyone of so much purported skill and promise failed so spectacularly at such a critical moment in American history as General George B. McClellan? If there is, I can't imagine who it would be. Douglas MacArthur comes to mind as a possible analogue (indeed, Harry Truman turned to Lincoln's dealing with McClellan for inspiration in dealing with MacArthur), but at least MacArthur ultimately prevailed in the Pacific in WWII and can at least point to Inchon as a moment of triumph.
   
   This biography is heralded as scrupulously balanced and fair. If so, few actors on such a large stage have had so few redeeming qualities, the fascist and communist dictators of the twentieth century included. The man that Stephen Sears describes is incorrigible - there is no other word for it. Sears paints a portrait of a fool. Several Union generals matched wits and nerve with Robert E. Lee and suffered humiliating defeat, but such men as Ambrose Burnside were, at least, self-aware. They recognized the enormity of their task, felt inadequate, but pressed ahead to the greatest of their ability to fulfill their duty. McClellan, as Sears portrays him, was delusional. His arrogance and conceit were colossal. As he stumbled from one miscue to the next - and the Lincoln administration fretted over how to prod their field general into action - McClellan was convinced that history would confirm his genius and place him in the pantheon of military greats. Not American military greats, mind you, but alongside the likes of Napoleon, Caesar, and Hannibal.
   
   The only positive things that Sears has to say about McClellan is that he was not disloyal to the Union (he was committed to seeing re-union as a precondition to peace with the South, but disagreed vehemently with the Emancipation Proclamation), he never intentionally contributed to the defeat of another Union general, such as Pope at Second Manassas, and he had a loving and tender relationship with his wife. Beyond that, this biography is essentially an indictment of McClellan's military conduct at the head of the Army of the Potomac and his character as a military officer and human being.
   
   What this biography fails to do is explain why so many people - from the front ranks of business, politics and the military - thought so highly of McClellan, so consistently and for so long. McClellan was one of the highest paid railroad executives in the country while in his early 30s. He received the vigorous patronage, as Sears describes it, of Jefferson Davis when he was secretary of war in the Pierce administration and Salmon Chase when he was secretary of the treasury in the Lincoln administration, but Sears never describes how or why those relationships developed or why those men had such confidence in McClellan. When the Civil War broke out, the governors of the three largest states in the Union - New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio - all turned to McClellan as their first pick to lead their state militias. McClellan clearly had the ability to impress intelligent and experienced men - the type of men one would expect to be good judges of talent and character - yet the reader gets no sense of this from the Sears biography. Moreover, for all of the failure and hardship endured by the Army of the Potomac while under McClellan's command, the rank-and-file largely remained loyal to the general, often enthusiastically so.
   
   Sears emphasizes several themes throughout the biography. First, McClellan had utter disdain for civilian control of the military and the performance of non-regulars in the army, an opinion that emerged during his early days of service in Mexico and that he carried, unaltered, through the Civil War and to his grave. Second, McClellan harbored a personal animus against his superior, Abraham Lincoln. He felt that Lincoln was his social and intellectual inferior (McClellan regularly referred to Lincoln as "the gorilla" in his correspondence with his wife), and resented the commander-in-chief's meddling in military matters. Third, Sears argues that McClellan was paralyzed by the unknown and unexpected. If a maneuver met with unanticipated resistance or a plan seemed to go awry, McClellan's impulse was to freeze and react to enemy movements. Sears frequently contrasts McClellan's timidity with Lee's flexibility in the face of regular surprises and setbacks. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Sears stresses how badly the Army of the Potomac intelligence apparatus, run by Allan Pinkerton, failed to understand the order of battle of the Confederate Army of Virginia. Throughout McClellan's tenure as commander, the general belief was that the Union troops were outnumbered by as much as two-to-one, when the reverse was usually the case. The catastrophic intelligence failure of the Union (and McClellan's eagerness to believe the inflated numbers) raises the question: if McClellan had accurate intelligence on Confederate numbers, would it have changed his behavior and battle plans? Sears never addresses that question directly, but one can anticipate his response: no, it wouldn't have changed anything.
   
   Political scientists Eliot Cohen and John Gooch argue in "Military Misfortunes" that readers should be suspicious of the "man-in-the-dock" explanation to failure on the battlefield. In short, large scale military failure is rarely the result of one man's actions (or inactions). Yet, it seems to me that McClellan has been squarely put in the dock by history for the failures of the Union forces on the Peninsula and for not destroying the Army of Virginia at Antietam after receiving Special Order 191. Is that fair? This biography suggests that the answer is "yes," but I'm not convinced. I'm no fan of McClellan, but there had to be more to this man than Sears conveys here.



2. Stephen W. Sears proves once again that he is a master of Civil War histories. A must ead for students of America's greatest conflect.



3. Billed as neither an indictment nor an apologia, Sears makes it pretty plain that George B. McClellan was a failure as a military leader. Overly cautious, slow to act, seeing the worst in every situation, McC was probably his own worst enemy. It's easy to see why so many of the soldiers liked him, though: fighting with McC meant there was a good chance you wouldn't see much action and if you did it was with the utmost planning for the soldiers' safety and well-being. He always thought he was outnumbered by the enemy and let opportunities for victory slip quickly through his fingers. Sears makes the point that McC always planned his campaigns and battles as if facing an overwhelming enemy force, and in that regard they were superb plans. Unfortunately, that wasn't the way it was on the field. Antietam probably should have been McC's best chance to destroy Lee's army and perhaps end the war then and there, but he squandered every opportunity and left a third of his army in reserve. Even worse, and what surely makes the man detestable, was his tremendous ego and feelings of self-importance. Sears' biography covers McC's entire life, though 90% of it deals with the Civil War years. Well written and interesting.



4. History and historians have, on the whole, not been very kind to Major General George B. McClellan. Lately a trend, or better, the beginning of a trend, can be discerned in Civil War historiography towards a kinder view of McClellan. I'm referring to books like: "McClellan's War" by professor Ethan S. Rafuse, the book on McClellan by professor Thomas Rowland and to the 3 books on the Army of the Potomac by Russell Beatie.
   All these books are very good and offer many valuable insights.
   
   Yet I remain convinced that the reputation of George B. McClellan is quite beyond saving and that that there is only one man who comes in for the lion's share of blame for this: George B. McClellan.
   
   On the plus side, and this has to be acknowledgded, McClellan never got near enough credit for his greatest achievement: he MADE the Army of the Potomac. He really did, and it was a magnificent job, considering the time he had to do it in.
   So often we read about McClellan: "oh well he was a great organizer, but a very bad general" but that -unfairly- belittles his tremendous skills in that respect. So more kudos to McClellan for that. It is very, very hard to organize, to build, to equip arm, feed and clothe an army, and then to train and drill it in preparation for it's deadly work. Then of course there was another task: he had to select it's leaders, from the senior command level on down. Don't think to lightly about this. McClellan did so superbly. He gave men like John Gibbon, George Meade, Henry Hunt, Rufus Ingalls, John Buford, Winfield Scott Hancock, John Sedgewick, Charles Griffin and Andrew Humphreys their first commands on brigade level.
   
   He should never have led it out to fight himself, though, his beloved Army of the Potomac. He was distinctly unqualified for that. I think that deep down inside of him, he was aware of this, read his correspondance (also compiled in a magnificent book by Stephen Sears, buy it!!!): his letters offer a case-study of a man plagued by insecurities, complexes and paranoia.
   
   mr. Sears comes down hard on McClellan, very hard. But the points he argues are correct: McClellan was singularly unfit to lead an army.
   Yet he was so boastful and arrogant that he put himself first and the Union war effort second, as is witnessed by his behaviour during the interlude in august 1862, when Major General John Pope commanded half of MacClellan's army aginst Lee. McClellan preferred to let Pope (who possessed as annoying a personality and as large an ego as McClellan) be beaten by Lee than come to his aid.
   
   By then Lincoln was don with him: he let McClellan lead the army for the Antietam campaign, in order to drive Lee from Mary land, but when McClellan again started whining and dragging his feet he fired him.
   "Alas, my poor country"McClellan wrote his wife after his removal from command. Alas indeed: the war was to last another two and a half years, while he could have ended it in one day, had he not so utterly mismanaged the battle of Antietam.
   That is McClellan's enduring bequest to his country: two and a half more years of war.
   
   What baffles me is this: why wasn't he brought to account for this in his own time??? Instead he was honoured, admired and even nominated for the Presidency in 1864!!!
   McClellan lost the 1864 election to Lincoln, thank God. Had he won the world would not have been the same: maybe America would still be split in two countries: the USA and the CSA, or the Civil War would have restarted and be contested with even more bitterness and more ruinous consequences for the nations after his presidential term, or even terms.
   Why he was not impeached, tried or court-martialled after his inept campaign in september and october 1862 is a question I ask myself. Surely others must have too?
   
   Lincoln should have made McClellan Quartermaster-General in Chief of the Union army and put him in charge of supply, armament, recruitment, equipment and training. That was what he was good at. He would have been the Union's Lazare Carnot: "the Organizer of Victory" of the French Revolution. There is litle doubt in my mind he would have done a very good job.
   
   A solid biography on this remarkable man. Well done Stephen W. Sears!!! Keep 'em coming.



5. I'd like to knock some sense into this little brat General.
   
   Lee rules Dixie! Long Live the South.

5 comments about Charlie Rangers.

1. CHARLIE RANGERS is a very entertaining grounds-eye view of life in an elite Army Ranger unit during the height of the Vietnam War, told by two of its former members, Don Ericson and John L. Rotundo. It's an adventure story which also proves that America was perfectly capable of adapting to jungle warfare and could have operated much more successfully in Vietnam if the Pentagon East brass had shown a little more common sense and mental flexibility.
   
   Like hundreds of thousands of other young guys vacuumed into the draft, Ericson and Rotundo, ordinary apple-pie Americans, ended up in "the Nam" and, for reasons that had to do as much with a desire to stay alive as for the challenge of trying, transferred from their parent unit, the 173rd Airborne Brigade, to an elite company in the 75th Ranger Infantry Regiment known as "Charlie Rangers." Charlie Rangers was known throughout the land as a unit that fought the VC and NVA on their own turf and using their own tactics - infiltration, stealth, and ambush - and racked up a kill ratio of 27 enemy dead for every one American killed in action. Only the toughest, most disciplined, independent-minded and frankly, craziest people were permitted to join this outfit, and only after a seemingly endless rigamorole of training designed to separate the rams from the sheep. Hunter-killer teams of five or six men were choppered deep into the Vietnamese or Cambodian jungles and prowled the trails, hunting for enemy soldiers - who were often as not hunting for them.
   
   Told firsthand from alternating points of view, RANGERS differs somewhat from many firsthand Vietnam accounts. C/75 was an elite unit made up of very aggressive soldiers ("killers", they referred to themselves as) and so a lot of the bitterness, soul-searching and remorse which mark other "grunt's-eye view" books is absent here. In fact, the authors are brutally frank about the rush they experienced from hunting the most dangerous game in the world - other armed men - and express zero remorse, and indeed, some pleasure, in killing and sometimes even mutilating enemy soldiers. After describing how he blew away an NVA grunt and then casually knocked his skull apart with a rifle butt while his comrades laughed, one of the authors pointedly remarks in a footnote, "What tragedy exists in this story is that the [expletive] was dead. War isn't pretty, and if you don't want things like this to happen, don't then don't send people to war." His counterpart, after a bit of honest self-examination about whether America should have been in Vietnam at all, concludes, "If I had it all to do over again I'd ride into battle playing `Born in the USA' from the helicopter." He also points out that after the Kent State shootings, the Rangers joked that it was "National Guard 4, Kent State 0." (They also sent a petition to John Lindsay, mayor of New York, telling him to "GET F'D!" after Lindsay remarked that the real heroes of their generation were the antiwar protesters.) Statements like that aren't going to sit well with some readers, but I don't imagine the authors care. They are relating war as they experienced it physically and emotionally and, I imagine, pointing out the hyporisy of the unspoken but all-prevading view held by civilian society, which seems to be, "kill the enemy, but feel bad afterwards." (Remember the scandal after the Gulf War, when American A-10 pilots were feted for their exploits but ordered to remove the "kill tallies" on their fuselages so not to upset civilians?)
   
   RANGERS is not a perfect book. The transitioning between Ericson and Rotundo blur together very quickly, and there are some boring stretches when the team can't seem to "make contact" with the enemy to save its life, which probably should have been edited down a bit to spare the reader this mundane reality. But viewed as a whole, CHARLIE RANGERS is an enjoyable and ruthlessly honest look at the mentality of ordinary men who did what their country told them was their patriotic duty - and refuse to be ashamed of it.



2. There is nothing fictional in this book. The stories are written much as would tell our stories to each other, which is the highest rating I can give. John - Thank you for writing "Charlie Rangers" (I've already thanked Don personally).



3. This book is interesting enough, and a page-turner, but I thought it read more like a silly movie that glorifies war rather than a serious memoir. Although I know these men were there, and it provides some real insight into what they went through and the bond between the men there, it really did not stand out to me as a very good book.



4. This book is a page turner describing the experience of the two authors' tour in Vietnam as members of a Rangers company. It's full of detailed missions where they were inserted right behind enemy lines inside the Vietnamese jungle, sometimes as members and other times as leaders of small 6 persons hunter-killer teams that specialized in ambushing and killing the North Vietnamese guerrillas.
   
   This book is almost up there with others great LRPs(long range patrol) books like "SOG: The Secret Wars of America's Commandos in Vietnam", I totally recommend it if you like non-fiction special forces books.



5. Don Ericson and John L. Rotundo are truly American heroes. They served their country for 3 years with tenacity and courage. This book provides a realistic and heart felt story of the 75th Rangers, (LRPS) in the VIETNAM WAR. From the carnage of a jungle ambush to the love the men shared for one another, CHARLIE RANGERS is the best war book any person can read. It tells of the lives and war experiences of the authors, including their training. These men displayed acts of courage, bravery, and often pure hatred for the enemy. This book is not for the peace loving hippie I might add. The soldiers in CHARLIE RANGERS often mutilated bodies, cut off ears, and showed signs of slight insanity. One must understand that this is what happens in war, because war isn't a happy thing. "WAR IS DELIGHTFUL AND EXITING TO THOSE WHO HAVE NOT EXPERIENCED IT"

1 comments about STEEL BOATS, IRON HEARTS: The Wartime Saga of Hans Goebeler and U-505.

1. During WW2, this author completed every single war patrol aboard the German submarine U-505. Towards the end of the war it was the author himself - as a very junior crewman, who had the final task of trying to sink his U-Boat after it had been forced to the surface by enemy fire. It was a gallant attempt that was thwarted only by an equally gallant American Navy which finally captured the submarine intact - complete with all it's operational codes.
   
   In 1954, Han Goebeler read an article which informed him his beloved U-Boat was now part of an exhibition in Chicago and promptly moved with his wife to be near the machine that once meant so much to him. It wasn't long before he would be found giving personal talks to visitors. Over the years he also brought former adversaries together in reunions.
   
   This book is his story. From those early beginnings in the Kriegsmarine until his death in 1999, he recalls just about everything that ever happened to him. He was not a Nazi, nor was he a demon or monster - just an ordinary man who was called upon to serve his country as did what any of us would do - he served. It is a moving story in which the reader will soon become gripped by the reality of life - and death!, on board a German U-Boat at time of war - although there is much to it than just that.
   
   Rest in Peace Hans Goebeler - you earned it.
   
   NM

3 comments about Spirit of the Blue: Peter Ayerst: A Fighter Pilot's Story.

1. I've not read this yet, it's a gift for my significant other. It's in great shape. I can hardly wait to give it to him when the time is right. Thanx josie padilla



2. This is NOT an "excellent book of the author's experiences." In the first place, the author is writing about someone else's flying career, not his own. In the second place, the book isn't written in an engaging or vivid manner. Instead, it links terse quotes from the flying log of a WWII pilot with descriptions of where the pilot was posted, etc. I found it very easy to put down.
   
   But judge for yourself! Here's what the author chose to put on the book cover:
   
   "I would commend this excellent story to young and old if they wish to have an accurate and truthful account of someone whose knowledge, experience, and integrity will convey, particularly to younger readers, the courage and qualities that were the making of the free world as we enjoy it today."
   
   If you want a terrific account of what it was like to be a WWII fighter pilot, try: "Thunderbolt," "Sinking the Rising Sun," "Samurai!," "The Second-Luckiest Pilot," "The Big Show," or "Big Friend, Little Friend."



3. Excellent book of the author's experiences--I had a hard time putting it down.

1 comments about The G Stands for Guts.

1. This book relates what transpired during WWII. The story is riveting and you want to keep reading to see the outcome of each dangerous situation.
   You feel the author is personally relating the events and I felt compassion for his safety. I recommend it excellent reading for all pilots who may have similiar challenges.