The Great Emu War

Grizzled veteran of the Great Emu War
After the First World War, Australian veterans were given land to farm in Western Australia. In late 1932, the increased irrigation, the cleared and cultivated land, and the not-yet-harvested crops proved to be an attraction for emus. Emus are large flightless birds indigenous to Australia, and only slightly smaller than an ostrich. In October 1932, great feathered hordes of emus descended upon the farms of the Wheatbelt region in their annual migration from the coast to the interior.
 
The emus ate the crops, trampled the land, destroyed property, and made a horrible cacophony. Angry Diggers attempted to fend off the invaders, but these direct descendants of dinosaurs seemed to absorb rifle shots, and scattered before they could be brought down. Moreover, the farmers’ fences proved no obstacle to the avian menace, and provided infiltration points for fences’ original targets: rapidly breeding and garden and crop annihilating rabbits and dingos.
 
In late October 1932, a section from the Royal Australian Artillery under command of Major GPW Meredith with a few Lewis guns was ordered to stop the Emu Menace. However, rains prevented Meredith’s operations from commencing. Despite Mother Nature, on 3 November Meredith attacked. Meredith found great flocks of emus, perfect for slaughter by the machine guns. Unfortunately, emus did not act as soldiers did assaulting trenches in the First World War. As soon as Meredith’s Lewis guns opened fire, the emus scattered. In the great flocks of hundreds, the soldiers managed to kill only a few.
 
Most distressingly, the emus reformed out of contact and continued their pillaging and brigandage of the farms. Meredith would find them, set up, kill a few, and frustratingly have to repeat the process as the emus dispersed and evaded. He attempted to ambush the emus at a dam where the emus congregated in the evenings for a drink, but even this proved futile as the emus just found other places to patronize. Within a few days, the emus stopped traveling in great numbers and dispersed into the countryside in smaller groups. Furthermore, each small group seemed to have a leader, an alpha emu that usually stood over six feet with “a great dark plume” who watched over his emu flock, and warmed of the soldiers’ approach. Meredith attempted to motorize his firepower by bolting the guns on automobile hoods, but unlike the biplanes of the First World War, a moving vehicle jostling about the countryside was not a stable firing platform. On 8 November, the disconsolate Meredith withdrew from the area of operations.
 
Round One to the emus.
 
After the farmers complained to their representatives in the Australian Parliament, Meredith was sent back the next week, by direct order from the Minister of Defense. This time however, Meredith spent his time wisely and organized an anti-emu militia formed from the farmers. The renewed effort by Meredith’s machine guns and the farmer’s marksmanship had a greater impact. For the next three weeks, Meredith’s counter insurgency claimed the lives of over 300 emus, and possibly more due to the emu’s distinct lack of medical care for their wounded. But it still was not enough. The Australian press was having a hoot with the story, and the negative press for the “The Great Emu War” caused Meredith to be recalled in December.
 
Round Two to the Emus.
 
Despite appeasing the emus and halting direct military operations, the emus refused to curtail their deprivations of the Wheatbelt. The farmers continued to request military assistance, but the Australian government refused to authorize boots on the ground. They were unwilling to pay the political cost for a direct decades long War with the Emu. However, they didn’t surrender. The emu were akin to Napoleon’s corps and required forage to operate, so local governments invested in new emu/dingo/rabbit-proof fencing for the farmers. In essence, the new fencing isolated the emus from their logistics hubs. More importantly though, the Australian government issued a bounty on proof of every dead emu. In the mid to late 1930s, scalp hunting emu bounty hunters descended upon the Wheatbelt. Many tens of thousands of emus were killed over the next decade, giving credence to the impossibility of Meredith’s task, but ending the Emu Menace to the farmers.
 
Round Three to Australia.
 
Mission Accomplished.

The Second Battle of El Alamein: Operation Supercharge

For a week, the battle between Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Panzer Armee Afrika and Lt Gen Bernard Montgomery’s Eighth Army raged around an obscure railroad terminal in Egypt at El Alamein. In the previous weeks, both sides dug in and laid extensive minefields all the way from the coast to the impassable Qatarra Depression in the south. So far, the Second Battle of El Alamein was a constant cut, parry, and riposte by both sides, as the Eighth Army sought weak points in the German defenses, and slowly ground down Rommel’s forces. From Enigma intercepts, Montgomery knew of Rommel’s supply difficulties; it was only a matter of time before the Axis lines broke.

On 1 November 1942, Montgomery found his weak spot just above the Miteirya and Kidney Ridges in the north of the battlefield. There, dismounted engineers (the “light feet” of Operation Lightfoot, since they wouldn’t set off the anti-tank mines if they stepped on them) had cleared several passages through the German and Italian minefields. That evening, Montgomery reshuffled his forces and formed a composite division under the redoubtable Bernard Freyberg (Crete notwithstanding, Freyberg was still the best division commander the British had) and what remained of his 2nd New Zealand Division.

Just after 0100 that night, Freyberg launched Operation Supercharge to crack the German lines and pass the 1st and 10th Armoured Divisions through so they could engage and destroy the remainder of Rommel’s ever dwindling supply of panzers. After a furious four hour bombardment, the Kiwi and British infantry forced the ridges doggedly defended by dug in Italian infantry, but expended themselves doing so. The only remaining static Axis defense was an anti-tank screen along the Rahman track. Freyberg had no infantry left to clear it, but with the breakout so close, a good old fashioned cavalry charge, Light Brigade-style, had to be tried.

The job fell to Brigadier Currie’s 9th Armoured Brigade, initially attached to Freyberg to fix Rommel’s inevitable counterattack after the infantry pierced the line. Now they were attacking directly into the teeth of German anti-tank guns. Just after dawn with the sun at their backs the British tankers rolled forward desperately trying to close the distance before the dreaded 88s shot them to pieces. But attacks that were suicide earlier in the year were merely exceptionally dangerous now. Thanks to Roosevelt’s stripping of tanks from America’s first armored division and sending them to the Middle East after the Fall of Tobruk, the thin skinned and light gunned Honeys, Cruisers, and Crusaders had been replaced by heavier and newer Churchill, Grant, and Sherman tanks, with thicker armour and longer ranged guns. For 30 intense minutes, Currie’s tanks dueled with Rommel’s guns. He didn’t break through, but there were few anti guns remaining. Rommel reinforced the line. However, only a counter attack could prevent the Eighth Army, a formation that Auchinlek and Montgomery spent months painstakingly building up, from breaking through and cutting the all-important coast road.

About an hour later, a Kiwi brigadier was wondering why the 9th Arm Brigade wasn’t supporting the defense. He found Currie dozing on a stretcher. “Sorry to wake you, John, but where are your regiments?” Currie waved to the half dozen tanks laagered around him. “Not your headquarters, your regiments?” Channeling Picket at Gettysburg, Currie groggily replied, “These are my regiments, Bill.”

Fortunately for Currie, Freyberg, and Montgomery, Rommel had little fuel and few tanks left to effect a counterattack. That afternoon, he threw the Littorio Armored Division and the 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions at the gap, where they were stopped cold by British and Kiwi anti-tank guns and artillery, supported by waves of RAF air support, who by this point in the battle had near complete control of the air. The Germans and Italians lost nearly 100 tanks in what became known as “The Hammering of the Panzers”. It was about the same number of losses as the British, but Rommel had no replacements. He had just 35 tanks remaining, little fuel, and there was a British armoured car squadron rampaging through his rear areas who had slipped through in the confusion. Rommel knew the battle was lost.

However, Rommel was determined to save as much of his command as possible. That night he radioed Hitler directly for permission to withdraw, which Hitler replied the next day that Rommel needed to stand his ground, and ended his message with, “you can show them no other road than that to victory or death.” Rommel decided to compromise, but waiting on Hitler’s reply cost him dearly. He planned on withdrawing six miles, but never had the chance. During the night Montgomery again reorganized his forces and launched three infantry brigades at what was left of Rommel’s defenses along the Rahman Track, and broke through. Only the determined and stalwart defense by several Italian units prevented the PanzerArmee’s complete destruction, as Rommel waited on Hitler’s response. The elite Folgore Parachute Division, which spent most of its existence preparing for an airborne assault on Malta, was encircled and destroyed. They literally fought until the last bullet was expended. The Afrika Korps’ longest serving Italian allies, the Ariete and Littorio Armored Divisions and the Trieste Motorized Division, were also destroyed in desperate rear guard actions to buy Rommel time for the rest to withdraw.

By the morning of the 4th, the situation was hopeless, and Rommel abandoned the line to fall back to Fuka, 50 miles west. But he couldn’t even stop there. Montgomery’s armoured divisions dogged him the entire way, and by the 11th, Rommel was thrown out of Egypt. Rommel deemed Cyrenacia untenable with what remained of his once feared PanzerArmee Afrika, and by 23 November was back at El Algheila, where he started nearly eleven months before. Despite Hitler’s order to stand and die, Rommel’s compromise to withdraw just six miles at the end of the 2nd Battle of El Alamein, turned into a retreat of over 650 miles. He would never return.

After the Second Battle of El Alamein, Churchill noted, “We can almost say that before Alamein, we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat”.

Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation

On All Hallow’s Eve, 1517, local teacher, professor of theology, and Augustinian monk, Martin Luther posted a proposal for a public debate on the door of Wittenberg castle’s church regarding the sale of indulgences by traveling Dominican friars. In 1517, indulgences were certificates guaranteed by the Pope that the bearer would not have to spend time in Purgatory for their earthly sins. Luther had drawn up a list of 95 theses which were his concerns, not specifically against indulgences themselves, but with their sale without any true contrition. He wanted to provoke debate, something he was very good at, and reform the Church, not break with it.

There is no evidence of Luther actually “nailing his theses to the door”. However, that day Luther did send copies of his 95 theses to Albrecht the archbishop of Mainz and Jerome the Bishop of Brandenburg, who forwarded them to the Pope. The bishops then let the matter drop. Stymied by his chain of command’s inaction, Luther sent his 95 theses to several friends throughout Germany. These friends promptly had many more copies made on one of the newest inventions of the Renaissance, the printing press. Luther gained a following and the Dominicans’ revenue from indulgences dropped. At the powerful Dominican order’s request, Pope Leo X issued a decree demanding the following of the Dominican practice of indulgences, which Luther and his adherents ignored. He wouldn’t give in without his debate.

Prominent German theologian John Eck took up Luther’s gauntlet. In July 1519, the two debated in Leipzig. Eck got the best of Luther, but only because Eck slandered him by pointing out that a century before, Jan Hus also thought indulgences were sacrilegious. This bit of sophistry horrified Luther, who had accepted Jan Hus and his failed Hussite rebellion in Bohemia in 1414, as the height of heresy. There were quicker ways to get burnt at the stake than by being called a “Hussite”, but not many.

Luther dug into Hus’ teachings to refute Eck. However, he found that he was actually fully in agreement with Hus, and speaking to his followers, said, “We are all Hussites without realizing it.” Luther began a proper campaign of book and pamphlet writing espousing and clarifying his thoughts on the Church, which due to the printing press, spread rapidly throughout Europe. It was at this point that Luther began calling for a break with the Church of Rome.

At several points in those formative years of the Protestant churches, Luther could have easily been declared heretical and burned at the stake. However, Luther had a powerful benefactor, the Elector Frederick of Saxony, who did not want his star orator and teacher, and Saxony’s most famous subject, harmed. When Luther was summoned to Rome to explain his views (where he would have almost certainly been killed), Frederick convinced the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximillian, to allow Luther to debate the Dominicans in Augsburg. The ailing Maximillian, who needed Frederick’s vote to get his grandson Charles elected as the next Emperor, was only too glad to accommodate Luther.

After Charles was elected Emperor, the politics of the Holy Roman Empire continued to be more important than the “Monk’s Quarrel”. Under Frederick’s protection, “Lutheranism” spread throughout Europe. In 1521, Luther was at the height of his popularity, and Charles requested that he explain himself at the Diet of Worms, fully expecting Luther to recant. But Luther did no such thing, and many of the members of the Diet called for his immediate execution. However, Charles honored his promise of Luther’s safe conduct. The Diet was called because Charles needed funds to fight the Turks, who had just recently captured Belgrade, which opened up the Hungarian Plain to Turkish raids and incursions. Frederick was by far the richest elector in the Empire, and Charles needed his support.

After securing Frederick’s support, Charles did outlaw Lutheranism, but by then it was too late. Luther translated the New Testament from Latin to German, so that “every man can be his own priest”, which broke the power of the clergy and “democratized salvation”. Due to Luther’s superior rhetorical skills, prolific book writing and pamphleteering, which was compounded by the printing press, Lutheranism could no longer be contained. It had spread throughout Germany, France, the Low Countries, and even England.

The Protestant Reformation would eventually set Europe on fire. It would take over a hundred years of bitter and bloody internecine warfare before most Catholics and Protestants realized religion wasn’t worth killing each other over.

The Battle of Milvian Bridge

For various reasons, there was no clear successor to the Roman Empire after the death of Emperor Constantius in 306 CE. In the following years, two clear candidates emerged: Maxentius, who held Rome and made himself emperor, and his brother in law Constantius’ son Constantine who was in Britain at the time. In 312, Constantine gathered his legions and marched to the Italian peninsula to challenge the usurper.

On the night of 27 October, Constantine said he had a vision (some accounts say his legions saw it also) of a symbol, and heard the words “Under this sign you shall conquer”. Although commonly thought to be the cross, the symbol was the early Christian Chi Rho (P with an X in the stem) made of the first two letters of the word “Christ”. That night Constantine had the symbol painted on his legion’s shields, helmets, and banners.

The next morning, Constantine’s legionnaires met Maxentius at Milivian Bridge over the River Tiber on the Via Flaminia. Constantine decisively defeated Maxentius, and killed most of his troops, including the usurper himself, as they tried to flee across the bridge or swim the river. Constantine claimed divine intervention of the Christian God as the reason for his victory.

Constantine was not a Christian himself. Like most Roman soldier-emperors he worshipped Sol Invictus and Mithras, but saw the Christian god as one of many, and for the rest of his reign he ended the persecution of Christians. Emperor Constantine I did much to promote and protect Christianity across the Empire and was baptized a Christian on his deathbed. Constantine is arguably the single most important secular reason for Christianity rising from a mostly Eastern slave, outcast, and women’s cult, to the state religion of both the Western and Eastern Roman Empires.

The Battle of Santa Cruz Islands

 “Strike – Repeat, Strike.” With those three words, ViceAdm Halsey unleashed the US Navy in the South Pacific to stop the Japanese juggernaut headed southeast down the Solomon chain. Yamamoto was under the mistaken impression that the Japanese Army on Guadalcanal had seized Henderson Field, or at worst, were close enough to prevent the Cactus Air Force from taking off. This was simply not true. And the Tokyo Express paid for it the next day.
 
Yamamoto sent a vanguard force of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers down the Slot to assist the army in securing the rest of Guadalcanal, and prevent an American evacuation. Ever vigilant Australian coast watchers spotted them, and on the afternoon of 25 October, 1942, the Cactus Air Force sank the cruiser Yura, heavily damaged a destroyer, and forced the remainder to turn around. However, Yamamoto’s staff took the strike as proof that the American carriers were near Guadalcanal, and not that Henderson Field was still in American hands.
 
Halsey dispatched the cruisers and destroyers of Task Force 64, under Rear Adm Willis Lee and reinforced by the battleship Washington (the indefatigable Norman Scott was 2IC because battleship admirals usually outranked cruiser admirals) to assist the Marines with naval gunfire, and if possible seek out and destroy the Tokyo Express. They wouldn’t get a chance. That left just the Japanese carriers. Nagumo would never risk his carriers in the confined waters of the Slot, which meant that they could only approach from the open seas to the north of the Solomon Islands.
 
Nagumo’s plan was to bait the American carriers with an advanced force of battleships and the light carrier Junyo. And then destroy them with a strike from his fleet carriers, the Shokaku and Zuikaku, and another light carrier Zuiho. The first commander to launch a strike on his adversary’s fleet carriers was usually victorious. In the waters south east of Guadalcanal, Nagumo knew the Americans would have the advantage in reconnaissance. His plan was for the American first strike to hit his advance force.
 
Nagumo was right. B-17s and PBYs from Santa Cruz spotted both of the Japanese carrier forces on the afternoon of the 25th. However, unable to reciprocate and find the American carriers, the furious Nagumo prudently turned north and took his ships out of range. During the night, he would close the distance. The move saved his carriers from total destruction. Task Force 61 under Rear Adm Thomas Kinkaid was sprinting north with his own carriers, the Hornet and Enterprise. In the spirit of Halsey, Kinkaid risked a strike which would have caught Nagumo had he not turned around. In the end, it just forced his pilots to land in the dark to the loss of eight planes. As both sides closed the distance that night, the battle would be decided the next day.
 
On 26 October, 1942, both commanders closed to within 200 miles of each other, and both found each other just after dawn. In fact, their opposing strikes ran into each other heading to their respective targets, causing a furball as the escorting fighters from both sides engaged. Nonetheless, they each eventually found their targets. The American flyers set fire and disabled the Junyo and the Skokaku, and heavily damaged another cruiser. The Japanese pounded the Hornet, which would eventually have to be abandoned (The burning hulk was sunk by Japanese destroyers the following morning). And the Enterprise took a few bombs, but she managed to contain the fires and repair the damage. The Enterprise took on as many of the Hornets pilots as it could. Those that couldn’t land, were sent on to Guadalcanal. (As an aside, with each American carrier sunk, the Cactus Air Force got stronger. To the Marines, it seemed that this was the only way they got new pilots and planes.) At dusk both sides retired out of range. There would be no battle the next day.
 
In terms of ships sunk, the Battle off of the Santa Cruz Islands was a solid Japanese tactical victory. Nagumo had two carriers damaged, but two more were unscathed. Kinkaid had one sunk, and one damaged and unable to continue operations. However, the fight north of Santa Cruz was the first taste the Japanese pilots got of state of the art anti-aircraft fire. The Japanese planes had a horrible time penetrating the flak put up by the specialized anti-aircraft cruisers, such as the Juneau and San Juan, whom bristled with radar controlled 5” guns. Moreover, these same guns were thick on the carriers and the battleship South Carolina. It was argued later that the only reason the Hornet was hit was because a new ensign in charge of the Hornet’s forward battery accidentally threw the guns into maintenance mode as the first Japanese bomber began its dive, which locked the barrels straight up in the air. Also, several Japanese planes resorted to flying into the American ships, the Hornet especially, whose flight desk was awash in aviation fuel from one proto-Kamikaze.
 
But the Japanese paid a heavy price. Nagumo lost 100 planes, and 148 aircrew. Kinkaid lost only 37. The Battle off of the Santa Cruz Islands saw more Japanese pilots killed than Midway. Almost 2/3rds of the pilots who participated in the raid on Pearl Harbor were dead. Nagumo turned north that night not for lack of carriers, but for lack of planes and pilots to fly off of them. However, Halsey didn’t know that, and for the next ten days, every workman on Noumea was dedicated to getting the Enterprise, the only remaining American carrier in the Pacific, back in the fight.
 
But because of the Japanese inability to replace its veteran pilots, there wouldn’t be another carrier battle in the Pacific for 18 months. Though they didn’t know it, from this point on in the Second World War, the Americans had nothing to fear from Japanese naval airpower. The Kido Butai was dead.

The Battle for Henderson Field

Since the Battle of the Coral Sea, the Japanese way of war in the Pacific can be characterized as the search for the “Kantai Kessen”, or Decisive Victory, that would end the war, just like the victories that defeated the Mongols in the 13th Century, brought the Tokugawa Shogunate to power in the 17th, or defeated the Russians in the early 20th. In late September, 1942, Yamamoto belatedly recognized that the Americans were committed to holding Guadalcanal, and therefore it could be used as bait for a decisive victory over Nimitz’ Pacific Fleet.
 
The problem was Henderson Field. It had to be captured or neutralized before Yamamoto would risk Nagumo’s remaining carriers and the Combined Fleet’s battleships in the South Pacific. At great pains, the Tokyo Express put two divisions of Gen Harukichi Hyakutake 17th Army on Guadalcanal. They had the task of securing Henderson Field. When this was accomplished, Yamamoto would unleash Nagumo and the battleships to sink the remains of the US Pacific Fleet as it inevitably came to the support of the Marines on Guadalcanal. After several delays, Hyakutake was scheduled to attack on the 23 October, 1942.
 
But the impenetrable jungle creased by steep ravines south of the airfield meant that the 2nd Sendai Division was still not in place by the afternoon of the 23rd. Hyakutake ordered another 24 hour delay. But the message never reached the fixing force that was to attack across the Matanikau River. At dusk on the 23rd, two Japanese regiments surged across the shallow water and along the north beach led by nine Type 97 medium and Type 95 light tanks. The Banzai didn’t even make it across the river. Marine artillery and 37mm anti-tank guns made short work of the tanks, while the waist deep Matanikau made a perfect moat that slowed the Japanese charge down just enough to prevent any breakthroughs. 600 Japanese died in the attempt with an unknown number of wounded. The Marines had about 50 casualties.
 
The attack did cause BGen Geiger to shift some forces west in response to the attack (Vandegrift was meeting with Halsey at Noumea on the 23rd and 24th) to cover the southern flank of the Lunga Point panhandle, which was normally only covered by patrols. They arrived just in time to stop the late flank attack on the Matanikau River line. However, this left Edson’s Ridge and 2500 yards of the southern perimeter covered by just LtCol Lewis B “Chesty” Puller’s 1st Battalion of the 7th Marines. But the Japanese attacked there in September and were slaughtered. They wouldn’t do so again, or so the thinking went.
 
Unfortunately, Chesty Puller’s patrols completely missed the buildup of the 2nd Sendai Division over the previous two weeks. But it mostly wasn’t their fault. The Japanese assembly areas were much further south than they expected. Not that Hyakutake planned it that way. Most of his men thought they were four miles from Henderson Field, but they were actually eight. The Japanese had complete disregard for the Marines and didn’t even conduct reconnaissance in the direction of the airfield, no checking routes to the assault positions, no recce of the defenses, nothing. They figured they’d just do a movement to contact, roll over any Marines they encountered, and seize the airfield.
 
And had the entire division attacked at the same time, they would have at least broken through to the airfield. However, on the afternoon of the 24th, Mother Nature dropped a thunderstorm on the island that threw the Japanese approach marches into chaos. Between the driving rain, and the marches north being almost double the distance than they were expecting, the Japanese attacked piecemeal against Puller’s Marines.
 
Around 2130 that night, one of the Marine listening posts rang up the headquarters, Puller answered.
 
“Colonel, there about 3,000 Japs between you and me.”
 
“Are you sure?”
 
“Positive. They’ve been all around us singing and smoking cigarettes heading your way.”
 
The first attacks began at 2200 and lasted all throughout the night, as individual Japanese units made contact, they attacked. The listening post was mistaken, there wasn’t three thousand but over seven. However, the piecemeal attacks allowed Puller to reinforce threatened parts of his line. Near continuous artillery support and canister fire from the anti-tank guns broke up the attacks. Still, the night was a near run thing, and his headhunter’s staff fought off their share of Japanese. And his water-cooled machine guns got so hot that the water evaporated and had to be replaced with only liquid readily available, urine. Puller requested help and received it from a battalion of the US Army’s 164th Infantry. As the soldiers filtered into the line the next morning, Puller attacked some stubborn Japanese that had pushed a bulge into his line. That was as far as they would get.
 
The Japanese attacked again on the night of the 25th, and received the same fate. By the morning of the 26th, Hyakutake called off the relentless but futile attacks. His men had suffered over 3000 killed, and many more wounded, most of whom would be found dead by the advancing Marines and soldiers in the months that followed.
 
Hyakutake’s assault on Henderson Field was a complete failure. But Yamamoto wouldn’t know that for several more days. In fact he believed the exact opposite: on the evening of the 24th, with the second phase of the battle barely begun, a Japanese soldier reported that he saw green and white flares over Henderson Field, the signal that the air field was captured. The flares were almost certainly American. Nonetheless, Hyakutake’s staff triumphantly reported to Yamamoto’s headquarters that the airfield was secure. Yamamoto ordered his fleet south.
 
At that moment, 900 miles further south, Vandegrift met with his new boss Halsey. Halsey asked him if he could hold, and Vandegrift replied, “I can hold, but I’ve got to have more active support than I’ve been getting.” It might as well have been a shotgun blast to Halsey’s chest. Even though he had been in charge less than a week, it was unfathomable to him that anyone would think his Navy was not doing its job. Halsey assured him that would change.
 
On the evening of the 24th, signals intelligence picked up a massive increase in Japanese traffic, and a bit later in the nearly full moonlight, US Army Air Corps long range reconnaissance spotted the bulk of Yamamoto’s fleet heading south. Just before midnight, Halsey sent a message to his commanders that resonated throughout the theater. It said simply,
 
“Strike – Repeat, Strike.”

America Enters the Trenches

 On 18 October, 1917, the first battalions from the 1st Division (US) left their training camps around Gondrecourt for the front at Sommerville, France. As part of their training, the American units would relieve the French 18th Division in the trenches. The “trench rotation” was a complicated night relief in place, and was old hat for French and British units after three years, but new for Americans unused to the realities of modern war on the Western Front.
 
The Sommerville sector was considered a quiet part of the front and used to rest and recuperate tired veteran units, or ease new ones into the war. The American battalions, with their attached machine guns and support units, would spend three days in the second line French trenches to familiarize themselves with the sector, then occupy the first line trenches for a week. As part of the training, these ten day rotations were done under French officers. American officers maintained command of companies and platoons, while French officers and staffs controlled the battalions and brigades, as the American counterparts watched and learned. The American 1st Battalion of the 16th Infantry Regiment entered the French second line trenches on 21 October 1917, and the first shell fired in anger by American artillery during the First World War was shot the next morning in support by Battery C, 6th US Artillery. Three days later, the battalion entered the first line trenches opposite the German army across No Man’s Land.
 
The Germans knew something was going on and planned to find out during the next rotation. On the night of 2 November, just as the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry was settling into their muddy trenches after relieving the 1st Battalion, the Germans raided for prisoners. They isolated the targeted American sector with artillery and Sturmtruppen (specially trained German assault troops, or “Stormtroopers”) flooded the trenches of F Company. The Germans killed three, wounded four, and took ten prisoners back to their lines. Those soldiers were the first American casualties of World War One.
 
The Americans wouldn’t be surprised again. Another raid two weeks later was beaten back with heavy casualties. By the beginning of December all of the 1st Division’s battalions had rotated through the trenches and were trucked back to Gondrecourt to finish training. Their stint in the trenches wasn’t long, but it was long enough to let the surprised Germans know the United States was now truly in the war.

The Second Battle of El Alamein: Operation Lightfoot

Ever since Rommel arrived in North Africa in Feb 1941, he used virtually the same tactic to defeat the British: He would make a wide sweeping movement with his tanks in the open desert around the flank of the British line which would inevitably obligate every British tank to counterattack in a grand charge to defeat the German maneuver. Rommel would then ambush and destroy the British force with his long range and very destructive 88mm anti aircraft guns. The only thing left was to pursue the routed and flanked British force.

In mid Sep, 1942, Rommel sought to do this again but the British 8th Army’s new commander, General Bernard Law Montgomery, had other ideas. Instead of gallantly charging into the teeth of German firepower, he let the Germans turn the flank and ambushed them behind the British lines at Alam Halfa Ridge. All of the British armour was dug into defensive positions along the ridge, effectively turning the tables on the German maneuver. The Battle of Alam Halfa was Erwin Rommel’s first serious defeat.

The Panzer Armee Afrika retreated to their former positions and awaited the expected British counter attack. But it never came. Gen Montgomery knew that in order decisively defeat Rommel he had build up an overwhelming superiority in men, weapons and equipment. An immediate counterattack would initially be successful but it would eventually run out of supplies as the British pushed Rommel back towards his own supply bases in Libya. If that happened the see saw campaign in North Africa would continue. So Montgomery used the time after Alam Halfa, when he was still close to his supply dumps in Cairo and Alexandria, to build up an overwhelming superiority in combat power while Rommel was still stuck in Egypt and a thousand miles from his supplies.

On 23 October 1942, just when Rommel was on sick leave in Germany, Montgomery’s Eighth Army launched Operation Lightfoot, named for the infantrymen and engineers who had to clear the anti tank mines but were too light to set them off when they stepped on them. Operation Lightfoot initiated the Second Battle of El Alamein and by 2 November 1942, Montgomery defeated Rommel, and the Axis forces would be in full retreat back to Libya against Hitler’s specific orders to stand and die. Unlike previous withdrawals, Rommel would never recover the lost ground.

The Battle of Coutras

1587 was a critical year in the Counter Reformation. Protestant Queen Elizabeth I of England was funding and supporting the Dutch revolt against the Catholic Spanish in Eighty Years War in Flanders and the Spanish Netherlands. When Elizabeth beheaded Mary Stuart in February, it deprived English Catholics of a leader to rally around, and Phillip II of Spain decided that the only way England could be brought back into the Catholic fold was to invade. Phillip authorized “the Enterprise”, the Spanish Armada, to invade England that summer. The plan was for the Armada to defeat the English at sea, then convoy the Duke of Parma’s army, then in Flanders, to seize London, with the support of England’s beleaguered Catholics. Upon the news, Elizabeth’s most devoted champion, Francis Drake, immediately put to sea, and raided the Spanish anchorage of Cadiz. He destroyed thirty Spanish ships destined for the Armada, including the Marquis of Santa Cruz’ flagship. As devastating as this was, it paled to Drake’s subsequent raids off of Portuagal’s Cape St Vincent where Drake destroyed nearly a year’s production of barrel staves, without which the Armada was delayed a year. But before these consequences were realized, the Duke of Parma masterfully seized the port of Sluys on the North Sea for an embarkation point. But Sluys was suboptimal, what would be even better was a French port on the English Channel.

France was caught in the middle of the Anglo-Spanish War and the Counter Reformation in general. France’s Catholics were fighting the Protestant Huguenots in France’s “Wars of Religion” but in reality the conflict was a complicated three sided civil war known as the “War of the Three Henrys”. The first Henry was Henry De Guise, an influential French noble and an ardent Catholic. He was France’s most vocal member of the Holy League who took his instructions more from Spain and the Pope than the French monarch. The next was the last of the House of Valois and current French King, Henry III. Henry III was Catholic, and former King of Poland-Lithuania (long story), and a French nationalist. However, he was opposed to Habsburg hegemony through Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, and secretly thought that an alliance with England was the best way to prevent this. However, as a Catholic he had to officially oppose the third Henry, Henry of Navarre, the leader of Huguenot resistance in France. Henry, the King of Navarre, was next in line for the throne, but was a Protestant. In 1587, on behalf of France’s semi-independent Protestant nobles, he fought both Henry III’s ideas of a centralized monarchy and De Guise’s militant Catholicism. On the morning of 20 October 1587, the normally very competent and professional Henry of Navarre found himself surprised by a Catholic army under one of Henry III’s dandies, Anne de Joyeuse.

But Joyeuse wasn’t any ordinary courtier of the French king. Though an amateur, Joyeuse threw himself into warfare with as much enthusiasm as he did court politics.  Joyeeuse’s superior force stole a night march on Henry and cornered him at the village of Coutras. The village was in a cul de sac between two rivers and Henry planned only to stay long enough to water his horses and rest for the night. However, he misjudged how far Joyneuse’s army was away, and was surprised to hear his pickets firing on the morning of 20 October 1587. Henry’s first thought was escape as a pitched battle would risk the entirety of the Huguenot leadership. And the village was a decidedly bad place to defend. However, he could possibly get away with the leadership and the cavalry, but the bulk of the army would have to be sacrificed. All he had was his reputation as a leader of men, and if he abandoned his army, that would never survive.

Henry began organizing his men in the field outside the town when Joyeuse’s army broke through the woods into the clearing opposite him. Fortunately both sides were equally disorganized, as the night march wreaked havoc on Joyeuse’s formation. By what seemed mutual agreement, both sides spent the next two hours forming battle lines. Joyeuses’ army was larger and better equipped. She had the crème of Catholic French nobility, the Gendarme, and the best troops De Guise’s money could buy. But Henry’s men were solid professionals and veterans of a hundred skirmishes and battles.

On the left, Henry’s cannon, masked by a marsh, were in place first and savaged the Catholic formation, forcing Joyeuse into a premature attack. Though on Henry’s right the tired light cavalry fell back, any Catholic advance was stopped amidst bitter fighting in the town. On the far right, Henry’s arquebusiers held strong along a shallow ravine. But these didn’t matter, the battle was decided in the center.

A thousand Catholic armoured knights in full plate and mail began at a walk, then a trot, then about a third of the way across the field, at a charge. It was too soon. The timing of a charge is a delicate matter: too late, and the knights were not at full speed, too soon, and the formation was ragged as the lesser horses couldn’t keep up. There was no such problem among Henry’s veteran heavy cavalry. They smashed the Catholic charge with a well-timed counter charge of their own. A massacre ensued. Joyeuse surrendered and offered a hundred thousand gold pieces in ransom, but was summarily shot though the head seconds later.

In 1587, there was no love lost between Catholic and Protestant in France. The Catholic French nobility was slaughtered, and the power of De Guise was diminished. More important, there would be no French Catholic support for a Spanish invasion of England. But Henry was also a nationalist, and didn’t want to see a weak French monarchy at the mercy of powerful French dukes. The slaughter of the radical French Catholics at Coutras directly led to the rise of nationalism at the expense of religion in France during the Thirty Years War (See Cardinal Richelieu). The Battle of Coutras kept France out of the Anglo-Spanish War, and two years later Henry III was assassinated by a Dominican monk who thought Henry III was not doing enough against the Huguenots. By Salic law, Henry of Navarre was crowned King of France, the first of the Bourbon line.

Chuikov and Khruschev Hold Stalingrad

In September 1942, the Rattenkrieg, or War of the Rats, in Stalingrad had reached a fever pitch. For almost a month, German General Frederich Paulus’ Sixth Army and Gen. Herman Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army fought LtGen. Vasily Chuilov’s Soviet 62nd Army in the rubble of the industrial city of Stalingrad. Chuikov instituted a policy of “hugging the enemy” to neutralize the Germans’ superior firepower. In effect, the Germans had to fight for every street, every block, every building, every floor, and every room. Germans complained of seizing “the kitchen” only to be “stopped at the living room”. Entire companies fought pitched battles through holes in the floor or ceiling, or in the sewers beneath the city.

But the Soviets weren’t passive. They were constantly attacking the northern flank of the Paulus’ drive at Kotluban to ease pressure on the city. After Stalin’s “Not one step back” order, more than 15,000 Soviet soldiers and civilians were killed by the NKVD trying to cross the Volga to safety, but it forced the remaining civilian population to join the fight against the Germans, and stiffened the flagging resolve of Chuikov’s troops in the city. Despite horrific losses, the Soviets continued to poor troops into the city by ferrying them across the Volga, which was under constant bombardment by German artillery and the Luftwaffe.

By the second week of October, Paulus and Hoth had for the most part cleared the southern and central portions of Stalingrad, with the exception of a small beachhead in the center, and could place direct fire on the crossing sites in the north, reducing Soviet reinforcement to nighttime operations only. In the north of the city, the Soviets were anchored on three massive industrial complexes, the Red October Steel Works, the Barrikady Ordnance Factory, and the Stalingrad Tractor Factory. Until recently, the Tractor Factory continued to produce T-34 tanks whose issue were fed directly into the fight, sometimes within minutes of leaving the complex. The T-34s had no sights, so the adhoc crews, mostly civilians, had to aim down the empty barrel, then load and fire the main gun. On the 11th and 12th, the Germans ceased major assaults. It was just the calm before the storm.

At dawn, Paulus assaulted the factory complexes with 90,000 men, 300 tanks, 2000 guns, and waves of Stuka dive bombers and Heinkel level bombers, against Chuikov’s 30,000 men and 80 tanks. The German force was not so much a bludgeon as a giant scalpel carving up the city. German radio direction finders pinpointed Soviet headquarters and blasted them, and then turned to Soviet strongpoints, such as Pavlov’s house, many of which had been a thorn in the German side for over a month (Pavlov’s House held out for 58 days defended by single platoon under the command of Lt Ivan Avanaslev and Sgt Yakov Pavlov). But the initial focus on Soviet headquarters had the detrimental effect of allowing the strongholds to prepare and weather the bombardment. Most Soviet units were out of contact with their commands anyway, and the initial Germans assaults were repulsed. However, the surprised Germans regrouped and seized their initial objectives. (Never trust and artilleryman or air force officer who says, “No one can live through that.”)

The fighting dragged for two days as the panzers prowled the factory floors, assault pioneers reduced Soviet strongpoints with explosives and flamethrowers, followed by intense close combat by what remained of the infantry. The Barrikady Ordanace Factory fell on the 13th and the Red October Steel Works on the 14th. That night the entire elite 37th Guards Division died to a man in the Tractor Factory. Chuikov’s army was split in two, and his headquarters was just 800 yards from the Volga. 3500 seriously wounded men were evacuated across the Volga that night alone.

About 2200 on the 15th, Chuikov, “the Stone of Stalingrad”, requested permission to withdraw. His commissar, Nikita Khruschev, demanded he rescind the request and even had him fired later that night. Chuikov was reinstated, but having won his power struggle with Khruschev asked again. However, Khruschev again protested but contacted STAVKA directly. And this time Stalin came down hard on Chuikov’s immediate superior, Gen. Yeryomenko, to provide Stalingrad with more support (Yeryomenko was hoarding troops on the far side of the river for the planned counterattack). On the night of the 15th, the 138th Rifle Division crossed the Volga and reinforced Chuikov’s battered and broken defenses, sometimes within the sight of the river.
By the night of the 16th, the Germans were spent. It says a lot about the state of the fighting that a single understrength and poorly trained, but fresh unit, could turn the tide of a battle. However, four days of no sleep and constant fighting is about all a human being can handle. The factories of Stalingrad for the most part were taken, but Chuikov and the 62nd Army still held on to a small sliver of the city along the river.