What Are You Currently Reading? 2009

[carl]

I finally got around to reading the Small Wars Manual, USMC 1940 version. It is the remarkable work it was cracked up to be. I kept thinking to my self "Gee, we knew all this stuff in 1940." In parts of it, each sentence seemed to deserve an essay unto itself. The Strongest Tribe was like that too.

Now I am interested in the various small wars that caused the Manual to be written. Does anyone have recommendations beyond the two listed in the SWJ reading list-Banana Wars and With the Old Corps in Nicaragua?

[TT]

Carl,

I would recommend Keith B. Bickel, Mars Learning: The Marine Corp’s Development of Small Wars Doctrine, 1915-1940 (2000) as possibly of interest to you. Focus's more on the institutional learning than on the 'small wars' themselves, and lessons derived from those wars, though.

TT

[CR6]

Carl,

I would recommend Keith B. Bickel, Mars Learning: The Marine Corp’s Development of Small Wars Doctrine, 1915-1940 (2000)

2nd that recommendation.

Also Jon Hoffman's bios of Chesty Puller and "Red Mike" Edson have excellent sections on USMC operations in Haiti and Nicaragua.

[Tukhachevskii]

Though not a fan of alternate/counter-factual histories in general I picked up P. G. Tsouras (Ed), Cold War Hot: Alternative Decisions of the Cold War Pub. 2003and to my surprise actually found it quite interesting. There are excellent short articles on the invasion of North Vietnam by US forces; the destruction of the Red Army in Operation Red Lightning (an ingenious plan to drop sub-munitions containing alcohol from rockets fired by MLRS launchers) which renders the Krasnaya Armee completely immobile/legless (literally); also chapters on the Sino-Soviet nuclear exchange of the 60s; and the Soviet DPRK victory in the Korean Conflict. Of particular interest to SWC readers wll be the article on Soviet Victory in Afghanistan which leads to an Indo-Pakistan war and an article on how the US could have won Vietnam. Fascinating if only to remind us of what B. H. Liddel-Hart called 'the personal factor in war'. (Also, there's a rather witty footnote regarding powerpoint...'How did Patton manage Cobra without it?")

Links added:http://www.amazon.com/Cold-War-Hot-A.../dp/185367530X or http://www.amazon.co.uk/Cold-War-Hot...8235872&sr=8-1

[Umar Al-Mokhtār]

U.S. Marines and Irregular Warfare, 1898-2007 (Anthology and Selected Bibliography) by Stephen S. Evans.

[carl]

Gentlemen:

thank you for the recommendations. and thanks in advance if there are more.
now i must get busy and send money to amazon.

[CR6]

When you're middle-aged with four kids, Saturday nights are kinda slow, so thanks for the research project Carl.

Check out this website: sandinorebellion.com

As well as this 1967 American Heritage article

and lastly, you can search the USMC Gazette archives for a variety of small wars articles, to include a 1928 contribution written by then CAPT Mike Edson on his conduct of the Coco River patrol. Articles are $4.00 a pop; however you choose from a variety of levels of access which allow you to pay less per article.

Also, George Clark's With the Old Corps in Nicaragua.

[slapout9]

I finally got around to reading the Small Wars Manual, USMC 1940 version. It is the remarkable work it was cracked up to be. I kept thinking to my self "Gee, we knew all this stuff in 1940." In parts of it, each sentence seemed to deserve an essay unto itself. The Strongest Tribe was like that too.

Now I am interested in the various small wars that caused the Manual to be written. Does anyone have recommendations beyond the two listed in the SWJ reading list-Banana Wars and With the Old Corps in Nicaragua?

carl, something I wanted to pursue but don't have the time to do was trying to find the operations log books that were kept per the recomendation in the Small Wars Manual. I believe these still exist because a while back I found a link at some Marine Corps history site that kept AAR's from past operations they went back a long time. Not all were online but many were. I don't have the link anymore but it had something to do with the Marine Corps Museum site as I remember.

[Umar Al-Mokhtār]

The Marine Corps Search for a Mission, 1880-1898 by Jack Shulimson gives a good background to how the Marines reinvented themselves for the challenges of “colonial” warfare in the 20th Century.

Marines in the Dominican Republic 1916-1924 by S. M. Fuller and Graham A. Cosmas

The United States Marines in Nicaragua by Bernard C Nalty

Garde d'Haiti, 1915-1934: Twenty years of organization and training by the United States Marine Corps by James H McCrocklin

The United States Marines: A History by Edwin Howard Simmons

Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps by Allan R. Millet

Fix Bayonets! And Other Short Stories by John W. Thomason Jr. while technically “fiction” is more like an anthology of Thomason’s Marine Corps experiences. Several stories on Nicaragua and Haiti form the “And Other Short Stories” portion (the original Fix Bayonets! is WWI).

If you can access the Marine Corps University Library at Quantico there are a couple of decent Marine Corps histories written before WWII that cover the Banana Wars to some extent.