Tag: History

Mr. Wilson’s War

Today, I finished reading the 500-page book “Mr. Wilson’s War” by John Dos Passos. My primary historical interest is World War I, and one of my many gaps in knowledge about the war is how it ended, and also President Woodrow Wilson and the other presidents from his era. I’ve heard that he was a terrible president, and I’d like to find out for myself which means reading different books by different people, getting a wide view of the man and what he did, who he was, what he believed.

I’m still not sure if the United States should have been in this war; I’ve listened to lectures and various opinions, but like Vietnam, I haven’t rendered judgement on it yet. If you have an opinion on either one, I’d like to know what you think.

This volume was stolen from my Dad (by me) when I organized and catalogued the historical side of his library last month, in part because I wanted to read it, and also because he didn’t have a section for that kind of book; his library is more Old West and Civil War. The amazing thing is that the book is sixty years old, yet is in perfect shape aside from a little bit of aging in the paper. The original receipt was inside the book as well as a ‘library of’ marker from the original owner!

Most of the book is about Woodrow Wilson and his life, but it does leave him behind for a while and goes into the war like any regular book on The Great War, and then it ends with his determination to establish the League of Nations, the major intent of which was to provide a way to prevent wars through rules and procedures designed to avoid future conflicts.

Unfortunately, I believe that however well-intentioned that concept was, his methods would never have worked due to the negative basics of humanity. Just getting everybody to agree on the details of the Versailles Treaty to end the war was a mess, and the rules of the League of Nations charter were also difficult for everybody to agree on.

Also interesting is the way they brought the war to an end obviously led to World War II. Some of these decision-makers were not up to the task of thinking long-term, even if they believed that was exactly what they were doing.

(Page 479)
Harold Nicolson: First, one May morning at Lloyd George’s flat: “Lloyd George shows them what he suggests. They ask for Scala Nova as well. ‘Oh no, says Lloyd George ‘You can’t have that. It’s full of Greeks?’ He goes on to point out that there are further Greeks at Marki, and a whole wedge of them along the coast towards Alexandretta.

‘Oh no, I whisper to him, ‘there are not many Greeks there? But yes, he answers, “don’t you see it’s colored green?’ I then realize that he mistakes my map for an ethnological map, and thinks the green means Greeks instead of valleys, and the brown means Turks instead of mountains. Lloyd George takes this correction with great good humor.

“It is appalling,” Nicolson adds, “that these ignorant and irresponsible men should be cutting Asia Minor to bits as if they were dividing a cake. The happiness of millions being decided that way… Their decisions are immoral and impracticable… But I obey my orders.” (end of excerpt, Page 479)

I have other books on or related to this topic that I’m either going to read for the first time, finish reading, or read again.

One of which is another book of a similar title: “Wilson’s War” by Jim Powell.

“Over There” is a book I read in 2007, but it is time to re-read it. It covers the Americans and our getting involved, the logistics, and of course the fighting.

“Wilson” is a water-damaged book from 2013 I picked up for a dollar. I like leather-bound books, library books, new hardbacks, worn hardbacks, paperbacks… they are all good. Using a damaged book like this feels good as just because it came across some bad luck doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any value! Other than the water damage, it is of decent quality, materials-wise, and was $45 new!

“The Proud Tower” is one I have been reading in paperback, even though I have three other books by the author in hardback. I had to “rescue” that paperback from the thrift store. Looking it up on Amazon, I decided that due to being unemployed, now is not the time to buy the hardback, and it was a good thing I passed on that because like the book I just finished reading, this turned out to be in my Dad’s library! (I stole this one, too). And it was previously purchased and owned by the same person as “Mr. Wilson’s War”.

“Dreadnought” I bought this one for a dollar about ten or fifteen years ago at Thriftiques in Arvada… they had a big basement and a nice library-book section where every book was a dollar. This is a big one, and I got maybe a hundred pages in before I was distracted by a different book (that happens a lot. It is good to sample books like this, though, in order to better understand what one has in one’s library). It is a great copy, and what a deal! I don’t know why it is named after the class of ships, although they were a breakthrough design of the time, but I’ll figure that out when I finish reading it.

“Paris 1919” Here, I’ll find out more about the many hi-jinks involved in settling the details of the German surrender and the formation of the League of Nations. It is frustrating though, to hear about how these leaders lived and how they took their time with things, eating well and living opulent lives while innocent civilians in Germany were starving to death from the blockade. Not an uncommon thing in history.

I have more books that cover this topic, but these are the ones I have lined up in my brain to read next, among others. That’s the great thing about having a great library is the many directions and options one has. I’ve been “channel-surfing” with books for a while which is a great way to have a better understanding of what the collection consists of and to weed out any weaker books, which doesn’t happen much as I’m pretty selective when I buy them.

In any case, it feels great to finish a book like this, especially a book that has never been read in sixty years. A great book, forgotten in the depths of a library, rescued, read, and appreciated, and now among one of my important core volumes instead of just another unread book with potential.

History of the World War

It seems these days, that most people don’t have the concept of a library; they just see someone who has “too many books”. I have been asked on more than one occasion: “You’re never going to be able to read that many books!” While it would be nice to have the ability to read all of my books, (I actually know a guy who can do this, but alas, I am a slow reader) one of the many benefits of having an actual library is the ability to wander and select something I hadn’t thought about in a long time. I’m a custodian of this custom library, full of volumes that people have put an immense amount of work into creating. It definitely isn’t just a “collection” of books.

A few weeks ago, I found two small, old volumes at the thrift store, and they were part of a set of five. Upon checking “The Registry”, also known as my spreadsheet, it turned out that I had the compilation of all five, a complete and singular volume in my library already. I had a tough time finding it though, because all of my World War I books are supposed to be in the same place, but I had to search and discover this was mistakenly among my older World War II books. But, it couldn’t hide, as The Registry doesn’t lie, it had to be here somewhere!

World War I was known as “The Great War”, or as in the case of this book, which was published in the same year as the war ended, 1918, “The World War”. There was no “World War II” yet, so nobody knew to call it “World War I”.

I found a piece of newspaper from what has to be a newspaper more than a hundred years old, and an invitation card from 1919, both used as bookmarks.

It is really neat to read books like this, written so soon after the war, and totally ignorant of the even worse war to come in just twenty years time from the publication of this one. There is a great amount of bias by the author, who was eventually a Brigadier General in the U.S. Army, but a lot of that comes from the perspective of the author and is very interesting to read. Francis A. March was active in that second war, so he saw a lot of violent history in his time.

Military Parades • U.S. Army 250th Anniversary Parade

I’ve been watching the annual Russian Victory Day parades for five years or so now, beginning-to-end. As someone who is actively interested in military history, it is fascinating to contemplate the logistics of putting such a precise performance with so many moving parts, with so many things that could go wrong. And they do it every year. And being a former marching band member (A-West High School), their 1,100-person marching band performance at the end is very impressive to witness.

Also, when I see photos or old newsreel of parades from as far back as World War I, these Russian parades are a frame of reference as to what it was like, similar to how Saving Private Ryan brought out some of the realism of grainy black and white World War II footage and photos in my mind’s eye.

There was criticism of the idea of the U.S. having a military parade, and all of it seems to be from people who didn’t think through how we’ve done this before, the last time was in 1991 after the first Gulf War. We do it a bit differently than Russia or North Korea, but it isn’t unusual. I did expect something more similar to the Russian parade, but some of their motivations for a parade are different, and they do it every year, so they have all of the repetitive logistics worked out over time, as where ours was a one-off for a 250th anniversary. A big difference I noticed is that the Russians are very precise with their marching in their parades, whereas our guys were very casual, many of them were more walking than marching. I would encourage anybody reading this to watch some of the Russian parades, they are quite different. Those have an additional purpose to show off their power to their “friends”, aka, “don’t mess with us, here is a sample of what we have and how precise we are”. Putin had all of his allies at the last parade, (And Fat Steven Segal, too!) and that was part of why they were there… to be warned that Russia is still strong and not to be messed with.

Our parade was more of a basic, narrated history lesson about the U.S. Army, with marching examples of the different uniforms from the major conflicts, and some examples of vehicles and equipment. The scale of the units involved were far smaller than the Russians’ parade, and the marching was VERY casual, and the parade street width was far narrower. A totally different kind of parade, but still a good one for such a big anniversary.

I did like how we had twice as many Abrams tanks as the Russians had T-90s this year, that couldn’t have been by accident. If I read this right, they got away with having 70-ton tanks on city streets by putting a different kind of track on them, but I’m not sure if that was all they did. I think the T-90s are about 50-tons or so, if not less.

In the days running up to the parade, there were also some neat boot-camp challenges, and opportunities for people to post near, on, or in Abrams tanks, Strykers, Bradleys, and choppers, as well as with various hand-held weapons. I would really have liked to have done that! (I did get to pose on a S-7 Priest 105mm Howitzer Motor Carriage self-propelled gun back in 1980, though, that was cool.)

Unfortunately, the Spanish-American war and the War of 1812 weren’t represented in the parade due to difficulties in getting the right uniforms. Something that doesn’t happen when you do this every year like the Russians do.

A lot of people are going to politicize this and try to paste-and-cut the idea that any military parade is exactly like parades put on by regimes throughout the world, but I would go ahead and disagree with that. The U.S. Army is celebrating its 250th anniversary, and armies do parade as part of being… well, armies. We did it at the end of all of our wars, and to some extent in parades across the country every year. We have a military as every other country does, and it is okay to have some parades every once in a while. The Army deserve a big celebration for everything they’ve done for this country over 250 years, and I would argue this parade should have been bigger than it was because of all the sacrifice that has been done on our behalf over the existence of our country.

It is also nice that although the Russians have a far bigger and more precise parade, and do it every year, we get to show off how our equipment is far better than theirs. That’s a smaller point of parades like this. There’s no way a little T-90 would hold up against a big Abrams, and we rolled out twice as many for our little parade than they had for their annual parade. And Abrams tanks look cooler, too. And don’t pop their tops with ammunition cook-offs.

Anyway. When reading history, especially military history, it is a good thing to recognize all the different facets of it: empathy for what it must be like in military life, and to be in battle. The logistics, the strategy, how things are made, how they work, the politics, foreign policy, the actual history and effects of outcomes, alternate possibilities, and of course, the human side of it, including the horrors of war for soldiers and citizens alike. And there are many lessons to be learned from history.

I know that a lot of people are going to knee-jerk react due to their politics, but I hope that this can be put aside for a day in order to recognize how fortunate we are to have had a military such as the U.S. Army, for the past 250 years. Plus, Abrams tanks are really cool!