Archives: Gazette Magazines

by Lt Col E. J. Robeson IV

War is far more complex than either the firepower-attrition or maneuver warfare models suggest. The campaigns of MajGen Nathan B. Forrest illustrate a third model that could prove devastating on the modem battlefield if we master the characteristics that made him successful.

The debate over the conflict in Indochina has prompted a renaissance in American military studies and has yielded essentially two schools of thought on how wars have been successfully fought throughout history; they are popularly known as maneuver warfare and firepower-attrition warfare.

The maneuver warfare school has been particularly vocal in advocating its position and in castigating firepower-attritionists. In fact, the debate has been singularly one-sided. Few strategists would openly advocate pure firepower-attrition (although several prominent leaders have come close in practice). Moreover, the skeptic must ask whether the firepower-attrition school is really nothing more than a “straw man” alternative developed by the maneuverists, for it has many detractors and no known champions.

I believe that warfare is much more complex than either of these two models suggests, and we should actually be striving to implement a third alternative. Let’s call it “Forrest war,” in honor of one of its foremost practitioners. MajGen Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate States Army (CSA).

Forrest war recognizes that both firepower and maneuver are essential components of warfare and that they must be integrated to obtain maximum effectiveness. Certainly, no one in the maneuver warfare school would argue with that; but there is a fundamental difference. Forrest war also postulates that firepower is not only essential, but that it must always come first. This is true because of the realities of war, especially at the level of the individual combatant. For the infantryman on the ground, every attack is a frontal assault. Here, weapons are for killing, wounding, or causing the enemy to cower. Assertions that a rifle is not for killing, but should be principally regarded as a means to maneuver are simply ludicrous. (Only when the rifle butt is placed under the arm and used as a crutch could a rifle be considered as a means to maneuver.) In truth, it is only after the enemy has been dominated by aggressiveness and firepower that maneuver can become an effective option at all. Educating the enemy to the consequences of firepower can be a brutal, personal struggle; but, if it is successful, it will make him susceptible to maneuver. Gen Forrest understood this very well and knew how to fully implement this third style of warfare to which we have attached his name.

Six characteristics quickly become apparent in an analysis of the art of Forrest war. These are: 1) fearsome reputation, 2) preparation and positioning, 3) surprise, 4) physical dominance through firepower, 5) moral dominance through maneuver, and 6) pursuit. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Gen Forrest initially gained reputation during the fight for Ft. Donelson, where Union forces captured the Confederate garrison with one notable exception: Forrest‘s command, which was then a Tennessee cavalry regiment. Here, in February 1862, strong winds, sleet, and snow brutalized the Confederate garrison trapped inside the fort by superior Union forces. Forrest and other junior commanders advocated a breakout attempt, but the senior leadership faltered, even after the initial Confederate attacks were successful, and decided the garrison should be surrendered. As R. U. Johnson writes in his history of the Civil War:

Colonel Forrest promptly announced that he neither could nor would surrender his command. He requested permission from General Pillow to cut his way out. He assembled his men, all as hardy as himself, . . .moved out and plunged into a slough formed by backwater from the river. An icy crust covered the surface, the wind blew fiercely, and the darkness was unrelieved by a star. There was fearful floundering as the command followed him. At length he struck dry land, and was safe. He was next heard of at Nashville.

It is from such character and stamina that the first requirement for successful prosecution of Forrest war is derived-the establishment of a fearsome reputation.

Cultivating this irreplaceable commodity is also essential. It can only be done through demonstrated excellence in the performance of duties in the field. Forrest accomplished this at the end of the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862. Forrest‘s cavalry regiment was assigned to cover the Confederate retreat, but even here, he was a dangerous opponent. When Forrest noticed momentary confusion in Sherman’s pursuing infantry, he ordered an immediate charge. Firing their double-barreled shotguns, Forrest‘s men rode over their opponents, shooting down men by the score. Sherman himself, says W. Sword in Shiloh: Bloody April:

. . .was caught in the tumult and nearly killed. He said ‘My aide-de-camp was knocked down, horse and rider, into the mud, and I and the rest of my staff ingloriously fled pell mell. . .closely followed by Forrest and his men. . . .’

It was for actions such as these that Sylvanus Cadwallader in Three Years with Grant observed:

Forrest was the only one whom Grant sincerely dreaded, largely because he was amenable to no known rules of procedure, was law to himself for all military acts, and was constantly doing the unexpected, at all times and places.

An excellent case study that clearly demonstrates all six tenets of Forrest war can be found in the Battle of Brice’s Crossroads, MS, which took place from 10-12 June 1864, between the forces of MajGen Nathan Bedford Forrest, CSA and MajGen Samuel Davis Sturgis, USA.

By May 1864, Sherman had advanced deeply into the South and was becoming increasingly concerned over the vulnerability of his lines of communication to Forrest‘s predations. Having previously met him at Shiloh, Sherman wrote to Sturgis, “I expect to hear every day of Forrest breaking into Tennessee from some quarter.” Forrest‘s reputation had not been lost on Gen Sturgis either. When ordered to tie up Forrest in Mississippi, he reported:

The force sent out was in complete order and consisted of some of our best troops. . . .I saw to it personally that they lacked nothing to insure a successful campaign. The number of troops deemed necessary by Gen Sherman, as he telegraphed me, was 6,000, but I sent 8,000.

In fact, Sturgis sent 8,300-3 brigades of infantry, 2 of cavalry with the latest repeating carbines (“which would give them a big advantage in firepower over their butternut opponents”) and 22 field artillery pieces.

This force left Memphis on 1 June in an unrelenting rainstorm that soaked the men and flooded fields and roads, and began to slowly move south toward Tupelo, MS.

At Tupelo, Forrest made known his presence in the area (Characteristic 1), permitting his previously established reputation to begin to prepare the terms of the battle. He then demonstrated the second characteristic preparation and positioning, by collecting his 4,800-man division for the fight.

A study of the terrain, possible Union objectives, and the axis of advance of the Union troops provided Forrest the intelligence he needed to complete his preparations and position his force. He chose his battlefield just south of Tishomingo Creek, MS, now flooded by a week of rain, at Brice’s Crossroads.

Meanwhile, Sturgis’ forces continued to crawl along through the nonstop deluge and muddy roads. Discouraged by his progress, as well as by the thought of all the Confederate troops gathering ahead, Sturgis remarked in his official report that his delay could provide time needed by the rebels to “concentrate an overwhelming force against us.” Like Sturgis, Forrest was also having thoughts about the comparative force ratio. Even though Sturgis would have almost a two-to-one advantage in men, and three times as many artillery pieces, Forrest believed that boldness and the nature of the terrain, which he knew well, would make up for the numerical odds he faced. He said:

I know they greatly outnumber the troops I have at hand, but the road along which they will march is narrow and muddy; they will make slow progress. The country is densely wooded and the undergrowth so heavy that when we strike them they will not know how few men we have. . ..Their cavalry will move out ahead of their infantry and should reach the crossroads three hours in advance. We can whip their cavalry in that time. As soon as the fight opens, they will send back to have the infantry hurried in. It is going to be hot as hell, and coming on the run for five or six miles, their infantry will be so tired out we will ride right over them.

Forrest‘s sensitivity to weather and terrain is clearly seen in this analysis. He had selected a battleground to which the enemy had only one avenue of approach, the narrow, muddy Guntown Road that crossed the flooded Tishomingo Creek bottom on an elevated dirt causeway before climbing for about one-half mile in a southerly direction to Brice’s Crossroads. It was near this intersection that Forrest intended to meet the enemy, but from an easterly direction, requiring the Union forces to make a 90 degree turn as they entered the battle area. This radical change of direction would most assuredly create problems of command and control. Next day, as the rising sun began to bake steam out of the muddy fields and roads, Union cavalry moved up the hill to the crossroads to find a sense of foreboding in the air.

Forrest‘s march to this same location had begun well before dawn in the cooler hours of the day and on as many parallel routes as were available, for he had over twice as far to come.

Forrest initially had few forces available, but he opened his attack suddenly with lines of dismounted gray soldiers moving rapidly forward and fixing the lead Union cavalry units in position. These vicious frontal assaults were merely designed to buy time for his units to close and force Gen Sturgis to commit his entire force. In this, he was eminently successful. The Union cavalry brigade commanders were soon desperately crying for reinforcement or relief, and Gen Benjamin H. Grierson even asked that his division be withdrawn, as it was being “overwhelmed by numbers” and was “exhausted and well nigh out of ammunition for its rapid-firing carbines.” In fact, however, the Confederate “desperate charges” were being successfully conducted against Union forces that were much larger and which overlapped the Confederates on both flanks; the Union forces had six cannons in action and four more in reserve, while Forrest‘s guns had not yet arrived.

Meanwhile, on Guntown Road, the Union infantry brigades were marching to the sound of the guns. They were being hurried along by their officers and staff noncommissioned officers through the Mississippi summer heat. Gen McMillian was among the first to arrive at the crossroads, leading his infantry brigades and finding:

. . .everything was going to the devil as fast as it possibly could, he [McMillian] threw caution to the winds. Though many of his troops had already collapsed from heat exhaustion on the hurried approach march, and though all were blown and in great distress from the savage midday, mid-June Mississippi sun, he sent preemptory orders for his two front brigades to come up on the double quick and restore the crumbling cavalry line before the rebels overran it.

With these actions, Forrest had achieved the third important characteristic of surprise.

Physical dominance through firepower had become the key concern. Forrest had closed all his units on the battlefield, and he rode along putting the fire of battle into his lines of soldiers lying on the line of departure. At the bugle call, he had them up and surging forward. It was a brutal frontal assault, and everywhere “there was a grim struggle, much of it hand to hand, before the contest reached the climactic point and the time came to hit ’em on the ee-end.” The stage was set for the fifth characteristic-moral dominance through maneuver.

Forrest committed his final reserves, small units who were sent simultaneously around the right and left flanks of the Union lines to gain their rear. Because of the carnage occurring to their front, even veteran Union brigades were now susceptible to dislocation, and these actions “. . .made the whole line waver and cave in, first slowly, then with a rush.” As Gen Sturgis related in his official report:

Order gave way to confusion and confusion to panic. . . .Everywhere the army now drifted toward the rear, and was soon altogether beyond control.

The Confederate battery along with a captured Union cannon were now playing with deadly effect along the Union escape route, and the closely pursuing Confederates ensured “. . .that every attempt to make a stand only brought on a new stampede.”

As Gen Sturgis related to Col Edward Bouton during this retreat, “. . .for God’s sake, if Mr. Forrest will let me alone, I will let him alone.” Forrest, however, had other ideas. He directed his commanders to “keep the skeer on “em,” and they did just that, past sunset and on into twilight and full night. Forrest later reported that after 8 p.m.:

It being dark and my men and horses requiring rest, . . .I threw out an advance to follow. . .after the enemy, and ordered the command to halt, feed and rest.

Pursuit was now in full operation, and unlike his contemporaries of that era, he did not see darkness as an insurmountable obstacle to further combat operations. By 1 a.m., Forrest had his troopers back in the saddle and hard on the equipment-littered trail.

By dawn, Forrest caught up with the last Federal rear guard about four miles south of Ripley, MS, and smashed it. His official report stated;

From this place, the enemy offered no further organized resistance, but retreated in the most coplete disorder, throwing away guns, clothing, and everything calculated to impede his flight.

One Union commander described it thusly:

On we went, and ever on, marching all that day and that interminable second night. . .we marched, marched, marched, without rest, without sleep, without food.

An Ohio regimental commander reported that his troops became so stiffened they needed assistance to walk. Some of them crawled upon their hands and knees. These accounts are starkly indicative of the dangers that come when units are both physically and morally beaten.

As one Union cavalry major put it:

. . .it is the fate of war that one or the other side should suffer defeat, but here there was more. The men were cowed, and there pressed upon them a sense of bitter humiliation, which rankles after nearly a quarter of a century has passed. . . Just over 8,000 troops had been thrown into a rout and driven headlong for nearly a hundred miles by just under 5,000.

What can we learn today from this exhilarating victory and tragic defeat?

First, success in combat requires an excellent professional reputation that is only obtained in peacetime through hard, uncompromising training. Secondly, preparation and positioning of friendly forces for battle must ensure that they will end the initial engagement where they are advantageously deployed for the next event. (Every billiards player understands this instinctively as he lines up his “next” shot with his current one.) This, of course, often requires modification of the open-ended mission-type orders that the maneuver school advocates. Stipulating the commander’s intent for the current battle is important, but ensuring that subunits are properly positioned for the next sequence of engagements is essential. This often requires specific instructions that detract from the freedom of subordinates. Maneuver warfare extremists decry such “how-to” instructions, but a Forrest war proponent would counter that there is a middle ground between chaos caused by subunit “free play” and rigidity caused by instructions that are unnecessarily restrictive. When Forrest chose Brice’s Crossroads as his battleground, he positioned his brigades so that he could meet the enemy there or respond to enemy initiatives elsewhere. He also enhanced the effectiveness of his surprise by permitting the enemy to extend before he struck at an unlikely time and place.

Achieving physical dominance through firepower is perhaps the single greatest difference between the contemporary definition of maneuver warfare and the tenets of Forrest war. Gen Forrest stated when describing his 30th victim in personal hand-to-hand saber/pistol combat:

You know, if that young fellow had had sense enough to give me the point, I wouldn’t be here right now; but he tried to slash, which was his last mistake.

Military commanders today should recognize Forrest‘s symbolic intent: sophisticated movement will never compensate for failure to give the enemy “the point.”

War is a grim and bloody business. Maneuverists seem to forget this fundamental fact. Clever schemes to gain the enemy’s flanks or rear may appear eloquent and even delay the day of reckoning, but sooner or later the shooting must begin. As the Germans discovered again and again during OPERATION BARBAROSSA in Russia during World War II, bold maneuvers did not disconcert Soviet soldiers. In fact, the Red Army continued to resist even when surrounded and often succeeded in getting out large bodies of troops. Soviet soldiers, cut off in severe weather for days at a time, lay without shelter on the frozen ground in defensive positions until a breakout or exfiltration could be successfully accomplished.

Failure to recognize this hardiness and professionalism in our most dangerous adversary and his relative immunity to being “dislocated” by flank attack or even encirclement is the maneuver school’s greatest error. Only after the shooting is well underway can the door to maneuver be opened with any guarantee of success against a competent adversary.

However, “giving ’em the point” through vicious application of firepower can unhinge even professional soldiers from their organizational security and ensure the disintegration that is required for total victory. Tough, not fancy, infantrymen are required for this task. Demonstration of physical dominance through firepower sets the stage for moral dominance through maneuver-and successful maneuver produces the conditions required for the culminating phase of Forrest war-the pursuit.

In summary, Gen Nathan Bedford Forrest‘s campaigns stand as fine examples of how inferior forces led by hardened commanders with proven character and reputation can dominate a larger enemy. The six characteristics or phases of Forrest warfare form a pattern of building blocks that prove devastating when properly woven together on the battlefield.

So, while maneuver warfare advocates continue to press the Marine Corps to radically change its traditional mode of operations, perhaps the more prudent action would be to have confidence and believe in ourselves, to resist the current vogue, and to remember that at the core of every conflict is a rifleman, whose every attack will be frontal and brutal, and whose weapon is for killing, not for maneuver. The more effectively we institutionalize this truth in the souls of all Marines, the better able we will be to fight, maneuver, and pursue on the battlefields of tomorrow.

by Maj Gary W. Anderson

In the past decade the maneuver–attrition debate has forced the Marine Corps to examine and reevaluate some of its doctrinal concepts. One major element in the debate is the use of the term “maneuver warfare” and its corresponding association with the Wehrmacht. Unfortunately, use of German terms offends older officers who remember the “krauts” only as twotime losers. Even worse, the maneuver label has a whole bunch of lieutenants looking for tanks and armored personnel carriers that the Marine Corps doesn’t own, can’t afford, and couldn’t get to an objective area on time. Word has it that the uniform shop at Quantico has run short of Rommel glasses.

Maneuver warfare, as I understand the term, has a lot less to do with maneuver than it does with exploiting the mental and physical weakness of one’s opponents. Maneuverists stress that the secret of victory is in the process of helping the enemy to lose battles and campaigns. This is really what novelist Gordon Dickson calls the “Tactics of Mistake.” Quite simply, most of history’s battles have been lost rather than won. This article attempts to take the concepts of tactical and operational employment away from the Hegelian extremes of maneuver and firepower attrition. It will explore the art of finding the enemy’s weak links and exploiting them by helping him to beat himself. It is not a rejection of maneuver, but seeks to examine the tactical and operational realm from another angle.

The term “Schwerpunkt,” or focus of effort, conveys the idea that there is an actual physical point where any enemy should be attacked. Maneuverists would admit that this point can be mental as well as physical, but this idea isn’t communicated well enough. The tactics of mistake can be applied defensively as well as offensively. George Patton realized that they are best applied offensively, but even he knew that there are other ways to get inside the enemy’s “turning circle.”

History is replete with examples of battles being won through simple tactical error rather than initiative and tactical flair. At Crecy, and later at Agincourt, English leaders found sound defensive positions and dug in for an attritional battle. Their order of battle combined the longbow, wielded by sturdy English yeomen, with armored knights. The decisive factor in the battle hinged not on the range of the longbows, but rather on the illdiscipline of the French noblemen, who persisted in launching a series of uncoordinated attacks on English positions where they were slaughtered piecemeal.

At Hastings, the battle turned not on William the Conqueror’s audacious, daring leadership, but on the excessive zeal of the Saxon’s right wing, which broke ranks at the moment of perceived victory to pursue the withdrawing Normans and was subsequently routed. William may not have fought Hastings brilliantly, but he took advantage of that single Saxon mistake to gain an empire. Douglas MacArthur emulated William on a grand scale in 1950 when he identified the North Korean weakness to be a supply line that was vulnerable from the sea. His decision to land at Inchon exploited this weakness to the fullest.

The ability to see the enemy’s weakness and exploit it is emphasized by Col John Boyd, USAF(Ret), in his theory of the observation-orientation-decision-action (OODA) cycle, but Boyd does not effectively cover the whole potential of the tactics of mistake. Some enemies simply don’t have OODA loops that are complicated and efficient enough to disrupt. For instance, the Soviets have launched numerous combined arms campaigns designed to paralyze the command, control, and communications of the Afghan resistance, but the Afghans simply don’t have a system that is susceptible to conventionaltype attack. Some observers point out that the Soviets, realizing this, have adjusted their tactics accordingly. Hence, they are now attempting to remove the local population so the guerrillas won’t have any “sea of people” to swim in. Further, these observers believe that the current Soviet terror campaign is a calculated attempt to drive the population out of vital areas in order to repopulate them with Russians or other “safe” Soviet citizens. This ruthless method of dealing with a hostile population worked in the Baltic states following World War II. It is an example of Liddell Hart’s indirect approach in a most brutal form.

The ability to exploit the weakness and mistakes of an enemy is the mark of true military genius. Alexander the Great possessed it at the tactical and operational levels. On the tactical level at Arbela in 331 B.C. he spotted a break in the Persian lines that allowed him to lead a brilliant cavalry charge that disrupted his opponent’s command group, throwing the numerically superior Persians into confusion. Operationally, Alexander had already beaten the superior Persian Navy by marching over land and destroying its seaports with his army. Denied its ports, the Persian Navy died before the Persian Army could react to support it. In both cases Alexander had the foresight to see his enemy’s weakness and react to it before the enemy force could learn from its own mistakes.

In early 1945 George Patton was continually frustrated by Gen Eisenhower’s attempts to construct a theater reserve following the Bulge offensive in December 1944. Patton instinctively knew that the Germans had exhausted themselves in the Bulge campaign. He opted for attack everywhere with all available forces. He could see the weakness of the enemy and wanted to exploit it while the time was ripe.

Despite these examples of successful maneuver, there are numerous examples in military history of ill-conceived maneuver that led to disaster. In 1876, LtCol George Armstrong Custer divided his small command of the 7th Cavalry in order to surprise an Indian encampment on the Little Big Horn River. In other circumstances Sitting Bull and company might have retreated as had other Indian forces, but the desperate Plains Indians were fighting for their lives when they attacked Custer’s small party, and in all likelihood they would have attacked any U.S. force of even greater size out of sheer desperation.

In the heat of battle Custer made a decision that a good maneuverist would approve of; he issued a mission-oriented order to Capt Fred Benteen, one of two subunit commanders detailed to carry out Custer’s plan. The order, dispatched by Custer’s trumpeter, read as follows: “Benteen-Come on. Big village bring packs. P.S. bring pacs.” (Spelling incorrection Custer’s own.) Benteen and Capt Marcus Reno didn’t respond to that order in timely fashion. There are any number of speculations as to why the order wasn’t followed, and there is good evidence that the result wouldn’t have been much different had Custer’s order been obeyed. Despite this, it is obvious that Benteen and Reno had no idea of their commander’s intent.

Custer used a clearly maneuverist reconnaissance pull approach in a situation where the tactics of mistake would indicate that an attritionist method of deliberate pursuit with a far larger force would have been more appropriate. Custer and the Indians both fought a bad battle, but Custer ran out of troops before Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse ran out of Indians. One could score this as an example of firepower attrition over maneuver, but it would more appropriately be chalked up to the tactics of mistake.

The difference between Custer in 1876 and Patton in 1945 was that Patton had correctly identified the enemy’s weakness. Patton knew his enemy, and he updated his knowledge continuously. Custer used a formula that had worked before, but he didn’t update it to meet the existing situation. This is a superb example of a maneuverist being defeated by allowing his own weakness to be exploited.

Gen U. S. Grant is much maligned as an attritionist, but many historians forget his brilliant Vicksburg campaign that, as J. F. C. Fuller points out, was a splendid example of maneuver. When faced with a tactically superior Gen Robert E. Lee, Grant applied the tactics of mistake. Grant knew that Lee had two great weaknesses-a paucity of replacement soldiers and a vulnerable southern supply system. By using Sherman to disrupt the supply system, Grant solved the greatest strategic problem. Grant’s operational plan of fighting Lee anywhere he could be engaged may have been mediocre, but it addressed Lee’s other great weakness. Again, the tactics of mistake transcended the attrition–maneuver arena and compensated for the relatively less competent Union personnel.

The maneuverists have been accused of overemphasizing blitzkrieg tactics, but in reality that’s not the case. One of their favorite historical examples is the early Israeli-Arab conflict, where the Israelis learned that Arab forces wouldn’t stand against a bayonet attack. This seemingly un-Israeli frontal assault tactic had a “breaking glass” effect along the entire front, having an effect all out of proportion to the actual attacks. This condition was repeated in the Falklands where the threat of the Gurkhas was far more effective than their actual physical presence.

The failure of Japanese cold steel in the Pacific from 1942-1945 and the ineffectiveness of the Gurkhas in Afghanistan in the 18th century are other examples of the situational nature of the tactics of mistake. Disciplined troops and religious fanatics are usually immune to panic at the appearance of bayonets.

The real key to the tactics of mistake is to create an atmosphere of confusion among your enemies. Once this atmosphere has been created, timely exploitation should follow. The following paragraphs expand on this theme:

Knowing One’s Enemy

George S. Patton, Jr., often observed that the only way to truly learn about one’s opponent is to fight him in a real battle. This experience must be updated constantly, even in the heat of battle. This concept is inextricably tied to the principle of mission-oriented orders and the ability to learn from experience. Let’s take a scenario: In a mideast campaign our best estimate of the prebattle situation tells us that the enemy will not stand up to sustained firepower. In actuality he moves smartly through all our suppressive fire and uses his own firepower effectively to suppress ours. However, we discover that he slows and stops when he runs low on ammunition. The obvious reaction to this is to find a way to go after his ammunition supply or to make him outrun it. What can easily get lost in the analysis is the ability to recognize this as an enemy weakness at the high command level in the first place. This is only possible if a “real time” lessons-learned communications link exists from the platoon level to the highest echelons of command. Some Marine Corps units do this instinctively, others never get the hang of it. We must institutionalize this art.

Wargaming in peacetime can help systematize this link if it is properly employed. First, it can help to develop a true team approach in rapidly identifying an enemy’s mistakes and weaknesses. Second, it can show us how to quickly disseminate those lessons back down to all elements of the command. Finally, and most important, wargaming can encourage us to develop a mission-oriented approach to making the enemy’s weak points the real objectives of our operations. Wargaming lets us learn about the enemy in an effective way.

The Danger of Reconnaissance Pull

The maneuverists make a good point that warfare shouldn’t be a function of checklists, but even the very progressive 2d Marine Division has an element on its Marine Corps Combat Readiness Evaluation (MCCRE) checklist that reads, “Did they use recon-pull tactics?” Reconnaissance pull has caused its users as many defeats as victories, if not more. Custer at the Little Big Horn, Varus at the Teutoberg Forest, and Samsonov at Tannenberg were all using a variation of this form when each met his respective demise. Reconnaissance is only one element of intelligence, and it shouldn’t be used in the absence of a feel for the character of the enemy. In the hands of Alexander against Darius III at Arbela, reconnaissance pull was masterful. In the case of Custer against the desperate Plains Indians, it was disastrous. Reconnaissance pull can be a brilliant exploitation or a disastrous ambush-such are the tactics of mistake.

Cohesiveness or Groupthink; A Fine Line

Adm Nelson’s “band of brothers” concept was one of the first articulations of the concept of mission-oriented orders, but there is a dark side to the concept. The phenomenon of “groupthink” can develop where a team becomes so cohesive that it cannot accept ideas contrary to its preconceived notions. Irving Janis identified this as one of the contributing factors to the debacles at Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs. A military force that cannot update its perceptions to accept changes in the external environment is more than half beaten before it becomes decisively engaged.

Nothing dies harder than a preconceived notion. In any large military organization, hundreds of rice bowls get knocked over when an element of doctrine fails to live up to expectations, but true military tactical greatness is the ability to recognize these failures early and change them. Erich F. W. von Ludendorff, our own H. M. Smith, Erwin Rommel, and George Patton were masters at this. Each in his own way was a genius at recognizing the strengths and limitations of his own forces as well as those of the enemy. All of those great commanders could translate these lessons into effective battlefield action. The crux of these skills lies first in the recognition of the enemy’s true weakness and the second in the ability to exploit that weakness in a timely manner. Let’s take a look at a theoretical example:

In an attempt to break out of the force beachhead line (Figure 1), a Marine amphibious brigade (MAB) commander encounters heavy resistance from enemy dug in a series of villages (A). Intelligence reports indicate that a reinforced Soviet-equipped motorized rifle battalion (MRB) is moving southeast toward the road junction (B). The MAB commander orders a reinforced rifle company from the MAB reserve to conduct a helicopterborne assault to seize (B) and delay the enemy MRB until (A) can be reduced. While flying over the brush country (C), the helicopters come under severe surprise attack from a squadron of Mi-24 Hind helicopters covered by jet fighters. Three CH-46s and two Cobras are lost; the attacking force turns back. In a hurried debrief, the surviving helicopter pilots and infantry officers confirm there was no ground fire or sightings of ground troops along the entire axis of (C). They also report numerous trails that didn’t show up on the maps. Reconnaissance teams inserted into the area confirm that it is free of enemy troops except for patrols; they further report that the woods are trafficable for armored and wheeled vehicles.

The MAB commander concludes that the opposing force is covering its flanks with airpower alone. Accordingly, he adjusts his main effort. Figure 2 shows the adjusted scheme of maneuver. The MAB commander knows that the enemy is surprised and is launching his counterattacks piecemeal; the MAB commander had identified the enemy’s counterattack force as the main area of weakness to be exploited through the medium of a two battalion attack through the woods at (B). This opens the Soviet force to the possibility of attack from the flank (Figure 2) or the rear (Figure 3) depending on the relative progress of the MRB making the counterattack. By employing a two-battalion flank attack, the MAB commander has changed the focus of his effort from a frontal attack to the flank in order to exploit the enemy weakness.

This quick identification of the source of enemy vulnerability is the real key to the concept of the tactics of mistake. In this case the combatants quickly reported the break on the MAB’s right flank, and the commander reacted to their observations in a timely fashion. This is much more easily written than accomplished. Despite what you choose to call it, maneuver warfare or the tactics of mistake, the success of such an operation depends upon early recognition of the enemy’s vulnerability, followed by the timely exploitation of that weakness.

Exploiting the tactics of mistake requires a true team effort. German buzzwords aside, a commander needs to keep asking one question . . . “How can these guys best be beat?” The key to victory resides in finding the answer to that simple question in a timely manner.

Bill Lind is correct when he points out that we can look backward for inspiration. In World War II up to the battle of Peleliu, Marines were able to use the Japanese banzai charge against the Japanese by inviting such forays over ground chosen by Marine commanders. These charges were generally considered to be the backbreaking climax of the battle because they drained the Japanese of their manpower. These defensive Marine Corps tactics didn’t celebrate firepower attrition any more than they rejected maneuver. By exploiting the Japanese tendency to play into the hands of our superior firepower, Marine planners validated the tactics of mistake . . . there is a lesson in that for us all.

The maneuverists have a lot of good ideas, but a position that ultimately rejects either firepower attrition or maneuver would be a step down the road to perdition. By thinking in terms of the tactics of mistake, we can start to develop a frame of reference that will help the enemy beat himself while allowing us to use our forces most effectively. The truly great organizations of military history have developed a corporate feel for the destruction of the enemy. Today’s training environment with assets such as the multiple integrated laser engagement system, modern wargaming, and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms can come close to giving the Marine Corps that capability before the first shot is fired. If we don’t maximize those assets, we have no one to blame but ourselves.

Quote to Ponder:

The “Information War”

“The improvements in sensing, electronic warfare, and command, control, and communications bring the “information war” to the forefront. The attempt to gain an information advantage by observing the other side’s forces and activities while denying them such information about one’s own forces becomes a primary rather than an ancillary part of direct conflict.”

-Seymour J. Deitchman

in “Weapons, Platforms, and the New Armed Services,”

Issues In Science and Techology, spring 1985.

by Maj A. C. Bevilacqua, USMC(Ret)

This astute observation on the employment of maneuver to achieve a decisive advantage could be considered as a capsule discourse on maneuver warfare in general. While at first glance it might appear to be an extract from the sudden plethora of contemporary writings on mobile operations and the indirect approach, it is in fact one of the maxims of an American of an earlier time-LtGen Thomas Jonathan Jackson, CSA. Known to history as “Stonewall,” and to his devoted soldiers as “Old Jack,” Jackson, who never ceased seeking to employ this dictum on the battlefield, comes down through the years as one of America’s premier practitioners of the art of maneuver. His Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862 and his last, greatest success at Chancellorsville the following year are still accepted as classic applications of maneuver in order to, “. . . hurl your entire force against only a part, and that the weakest part, of the enemy and crush it.”

This was Jackson’s appreciation of applying the maximum force at the critical time and placemaneuver not merely to dazzle the enemy but to create the opportunity to utterly and absolutely smash him. Far better than many of his day and ours, Jackson understood maneuver not as an end in itself but as the means to an end. That end being the exercise of tactical initiative in dictating the terms of battle.

A century and more have come and gone since Jackson sent his grey-coated infantry, “Howling,” in the words of one Union officer, “like all the demons from the pit set loose,” against the exposed flank of Gen Oliver O. Howard’s hapless XI Corps in the tangled woodlands below the Rappahannock. The intervening years have witnessed astounding changes in the technology of warfare. Today’s battlefields bear but a faint resemblance to those that Jackson knew so well. Still, the modern commander seeking to utilize maneuver to destroy an enemy remains faced with the same requirement that confronted Jackson as he sat in his last council of war with Lee in the lengthening shadows of a spring evening in 1863. Before the weakest link in the enemy chain can be smashed, it must first be identified and located.

Implications For Combat Intelligence

Thereby hangs the thread that inextricably weaves combat intelligence into the fabric of tactical operations in general and maneuver operations in particular. Perhaps more so than any other form of the military art, maneuver warfare poignantly illustrates that combat intelligence is decidedly not a combat support function. Instead, maneuver warfare provides solid evidence that combat intelligence is an integral component of combat, an element of combat power, and the prime means by which the commander can effectively apply that power at the decisive time and place. The critical areas of maneuver warfare, based upon the terrain to be negotiated and the enemy who must be destroyed, are without exception combat intelligence-dependent. Bereft of combat intelligence in these vital areas, the commander’s decisionmaking is reduced to haphazard guesswork, and maneuver becomes a minuet of the blind.

Yet it may justifiably be argued that these observations are not confined to a maneuver environment but are applicable to all forms of combat. Regardless of the specific form of combat, the commander is universally faced with the need for crucial information concerning the enemy and the environment. Command decisionmaking is a process of analyzing and evaluating risk. In this process, the objective of all combat intelligence is to eliminate or reduce the commander’s unknown risks.

Why, then, should there be any peculiar actions required of the intelligence structure in a maneuver environment if it creates no new or unique decisionmaking concerns for the commander? The answer lies in two distinct areas. First is the tendency of maneuver operations to encourage rnisperceptions of the purposes and procedures of combat intelligence. Second is that maneuver operations can change certain elements of the commander’s decisionmaking process.

Misperceprions and the Altered Combat Environment

Can a simple misperception of the purposes of combat intelligence be a near guarantee of failure? If this misperception exists on the part of the commander who directs the intelligence effort, the intelligence structure could go rocketing off in the wrong direction.

What misperceptions should the commander, or the intelligence officer himself for that matter, be on guard against? There are two such errors, and each is representative of an erroneous assumption of fact. First among these is the idea that the mission of the intelligence structure is to tell the commander what the enemy is doing, rather than what the enemy will be doing in the future. The second misperception can arise from regarding the enemy as a mere target array and considering the mission of the intelligence structure as designating an endless supply of targets for supporting arms.

What is quickly discernible is that in neither case is the command provided combat intelligence that will help resolve his unknown risks in the decisionmaking process. In the midst of an engagement in progress, the enemy situation is a known factor, derived from many battlefield reports. To rivet the efforts of the intelligence structure on this known element means that future enemy situations will remain unknown. Likewise, concentrating the intelligence effort on the acquisition of targets deprives the commander of vital decision-oriented intelligence. This latter condition encourages the enemy to be seen as nothing more than a passive, inert display of targets rather than a dynamic combat entity capable of the free exercise of will.

The potential for further aggravating these conditions is present in the very nature of maneuver operations, which, by their urgency and immediacy, tend to center command and staff attention on the engagement in progress. While this is a natural reaction to known events, it prevents the intelligence structure from looking at the future engagement that may take place this afternoon, tomorrow morning, or the day after. The mission of the intelligence structure in a maneuver environment remains unchanged: to provide the commander with decision-oriented combat intelligence of what the enemy will do at a given time in the future. Combat intelligence, then, is predictive, not reactive, in nature. This observation is especially valid in a maneuver environment where the commander must rapidly shift his thoughts to new missions and objectives.

In evaluating how maneuver operations alter the commander’s decisionmaking process, it is necessary to understand how maneuver operations alter the combat environment itself. In brief, maneuver operations dramatically alter the elements of time and space with which the commander must think, plan, and act.

The conduct of high speed, high intensity tactical operations reduces the time available for the commander’s decisionmaking process on a battlefield, where friendly and enemy forces are separated not only by space but also by time. Fast moving, highly mobile forces can rapidly traverse long distances and quickly shrink the time in which the commander may think, decide, plan, and act. Despite this, the requirement for the commander to arrive at timely, sound decisions remains unchanged.

Along with a reduced dimension of time, maneuver operations simultaneously expand the dimension of space in the employment of combat power and logistical support. The same mobile forces that are capable of such rapid movement can also operate over far larger distances, presenting the commander with much greater areas of influence and interest.

These same alterations to the combat environment that so markedly affect the commander’s decisionmaking process are transmitted directly to the intelligence structure. Simply stated, the intelligence structure will have less time in which to perform the same functions and produce the same material. Time, that most precious and most finite of battlefield commodities, will assume an even greater importance in the conduct of combat intelligence operations.

The increased dimension of space is also immediately transmitted to the intelligence structure. The vastly expanded areas of influence and interest facing the commander will confront the intelligence structure, requiring that the command intelligence effort encompass a far larger geographic area. First, the intelligence structure will be faced with collecting an increased amount of intelligence information from more widely scattered locations. For example, while a static tactical environment may present requirements for intelligence information collection no more than 30 miles forward of friendly forces, in a maneuver operation the collection of intelligence information could be undertaken as much as 300 miles or more in advance of the friendly force.

Operating in an Altered Environment

How does the intelligence structure perform in less time, and how does it produce intelligence of a greater geographic area with no increase in assets? This is the quandary facing the intelligence officer in a maneuver environment. Despite its seeming complexity, the problem is not insoluble.

Quite the contrary, the dilemma of attempting to do more in a shorter time with the same resources can be solved by applying one condition to the other. Specifically, the intelligence officer must use the increased dimension of space to offset the decreased dimension of time. The only way the intelligence structure can offset its reduced time is to extend the range of the intelligence effort in spacewhich automatically extends the commander’s available time.

To find the key in applying space to time, it is necessary to appreciate one of the most basic precepts of combat intelligence-namely, that all combat intelligence is derived from raw intelligence information, and that the resultant combat intelligence will be only as good as the intelligence information on which it is based.

Fundamental to this axiom is the requirement that all intelligence information collection be undertaken only as a planned effort. To fail in this requirement is to run afoul of the incontestable fact that intelligence information exists in staggering quantity and widely disparate quality. The unplanned, random collection of intelligence information in response to vague generalities will invariably result in paralysis due to information overload. Moreover, much of this information may be neither necessary, appropriate, nor accurate, and may or may not address command intelligence objectives and the commander’s unknown risks. Planning for the acquisition of intelligence information, an elementary task in all combat intelligence operations, is the critical element of combat intelligence in a maneuver environment.

With this in mind, it may be seen as necessary that each potential combat mission be analyzed by the commander, the operations officer, and the intelligence officer. This introduction of the intelligence officer into what is essentially the second step in the sequence of command and staff action may seem mildly surprising on face value. However, while it is readily understood that all missions generate tactical objectives, it is not as well appreciated that intelligence objectives are also generated. If these intelligence objectives are to in fact be the intelligence objectives of the command, the intelligence officer should be party to the decisionmaking process from the outset.

The need for the intelligence officer to participate in the analysis of the combat mission is doubly important, since all intelligence objectives are part and parcel of tactical objectives; the two are inseparable, each dependent upon the other. If such a procedure is followed, the intelligence objectives will appear as concise statements of the commander’s unknown risks-determining information requirements, which is the third step in the sequence of command and staff action. Following this process, the intelligence officer has laid down the needed groundwork for future efforts in applying the dimension of space to the dimension of time.

In compensating space for time, think of the commander who constantly evaluates situations in terms of time and space necessary to overcome an enemy force before it can be withdrawn or reinforced. He requires an accurate determination of how far away the enemy is in distance and how long it will take the enemy to make contact. In neither instance will a simple map location suffice. For each enemy force capable of influencing the mission, there must be a careful calculation of distance, which in turn must be converted into an element of time. Given, for instance, a friendly axis and rate of advance, how long will it be before the enemy force will be encountered? Or, given the present location of an enemy unit, how long will it take that unit to reach a position that might impact on the friendly course of action?

To ensure that this element of decisionmaking is available to the commander in time to allow him to act, the collection of intelligence information must be undertaken at far greater range and depth. The intelligence structure must extend its reach beyond the engagement in progress and obtain the information needed for combat intelligence bearing upon the next battle. If the intelligence structure is successful in extending the distance of its operations, it has automatically increased the dimension of time in which to function. Provided that the information thereby collected satisfies the identified intelligence objectives of the command, it will in almost every instance be possible to present the commander with decisionoriented combat intelligence in terms of hours . . . or yes, even days-instead of minutes.

It must be noted, however, that adequately extending the reach of the intelligence structure to overcome the compression of time is dependent upon the available means. Both the range and mobility of information collection agencies are important factors. Presently, aerial multisensor imagery, aerial electronic reconnaissance, and certain national-level overhead systems provide the most practicable means of realizing this requirement. These aerial information collection systems can project the collection effort hundreds of miles forward, shift from one area to another, and subject large areas to scrutiny. These systems represent the best means of stretching the range of the collection effort, and by so doing, expanding the dimension of time.

On the other hand, ground reconnaissance units and other ground-based information collection means are generally lacking in range and mobility. While the advent of the light armored vehicle (LAV) may open new possibilities in the employment of ground-based collection agencies, it must be recognized that, at present, these kinds of collection agencies are constrained to predominantly static roles. The employment of groundbased information collection agencies in depth will offer the best method of offsetting their inherent lack of mobility and range. In this fashion, amoving enemy force no longer within range of one collection element may be picked up by another and surveillance maintained.

It becomes apparent that the careful planning of the intelligence effort, with special emphasis on the collection of intelligence information, is the only guarantee of success. This requirement is fundamental to intelligence operations in any environment. But then, so much of all combat is basics, isn’t it? Regardless, if these fundamentals are provided for, the resulting collection effort will be able to trade space for time in a manner not usually associated with that term.

The Need for Conclusions

Eventually, as in all forms of combat, but particularly in a maneuver environment, the intelligence structure must present the commander with decision-oriented combat intelligence in the form of conclusions. These conclusions must state with reasonable accuracy what the enemy will do at a given time in the future.

However, the necessity for conclusions runs headlong into one of the most enduring arguments of the intelligence profession: should conclusions be strictly confined to enemy capabilities or should there be an appraisal of intentions in addition?

Or is it possible that there is an alternative consideration? Namely, that the argument is predominantly one of semantics.

The point has already been made that the enemy is an independent being with a will of his own. Further, the enemy is free to exercise his will and is not confined to one course of action. Of those capabilities available to the enemy, the one that will eventually be executed will be the one favored by time, space, terrain, and the situation. To identify this action, it is once again necessary to view the enemy situation as it will exist in the future, since it is for the future, not the present, that the commander must plan.

Can this be done? Provided that the proper steps have been taken to collect the intelligence information needed, the answer is always, yes. The enemy situation as it existed yesterday and as it exists now-the engagement in progress, expanded by the latest intelligence information collected in depthbecomes the basis for projecting the future enemy situation. In predicting future courses of action, the key lies in recognizing that the enemy will almost invariably undertake that course of action for which he has prepared. The constant question-and the central theme of the intelligence effort is this: What tactical activity is the enemy making preparations for?

What will the enemy do in the future? He will do what he is preparing for in the present. No military activity occurs spontaneously from a vacuum. Every tactical action requires certain logical, predictable, and identifiable preparations. If enemy preparations can be identified, the capability to be executed will be identified accordingly. Provided with an identification of the enemy’s future tactical actions, the commander can successfully compare his own future course of action with that of the enemy in reaching a combat decision.

It would seem that the argument of capabilities and intentions may very well be more one of semantics than substance. A carefully planned and properly conducted intelligence effort can unfailingly provide the commander with sound conclusions concerning the future enemy situation. In a maneuver environment such an effort is a precondition to success. Without it, the commander must be willing to accept an alternative spelling of maneuver-m-u-d-d-l-e.

by 1stLt John J. Tharp

In “Thinking Beyond the Beachhead” (MCG, Jan83), LtCol Michael D. Wyly cited the amphibious assault at Anzio as an example of what fate awaits an amphibious invasion force that fails to move forward rapidly. Anzio does indeed provide an excellent example of amphibious disaster that, when analyzed in the light of modern battlefield conditions, offers many insights into today’s amphibious operations. In fact, Anzio can offer as much to us today as Gallipoli did to the architects of our World War II amphibious doctrine.

It is somewhat ironic that Anzio and Gallipoli should both serve as paradigms of amphibious disaster, for both were primarily the product of Winston Churchill’s reluctance to leave military strategy to the military. It is also ironic that it was the Italian surrender, after the fall of Sicily, that made Churchill’s Italian campaign necessary. The surrender terms called for the occupation of Italy by Allied forces in order to prevent annexation by Germany. This meant that an Italian campaign would have to be fought.

German defenses of Italy consisted of a series of fortified lines running across the center of the peninsula. After the Salerno landing on 9 September 1943, the United States Fifth Army and British Eighth Army (from Messina) advanced slowly up the peninsula, fighting German rearguard units while the main body of German forces withdrew to the first and most strongly fortified of their positions, the Gustav line. This line traversed the peninsula south of Rome from the Tyrrhenian to the Adriatic, along the best natural line of defense. By late October, the Allied advance came to a standstill as the German forces dug in along the line. It was at this point that an amphibious assault at Anzio was first considered. The invasion force was to secure the Alban Hills, which dominated the southern approaches to Rome, in order to interrupt the German supply lines to the Gustav line. Upon securing the Alban Hills, the assault force would then link up with the advancing main body from the south and march to Rome. With D-day set for 20 December, the landing force, comprised of a single division, was to link up with the main armies breaking through the Gustav line in a matter of days. However, by the end of November, the Allied advance had stalled so completely that the early link up between assault forces and main army would be impossible, and the Anzio landing was temporarily scrapped.

At the Tehran Conference (28-30 November 1943), Churchill had convinced Roosevelt and Stalin of the need to widen the Italian campaign, pushing his “soft underbelly” thesis as the only viable option available to the Allies before the Normandy campaign could be mounted. The leaders had already agreed to postpone the Normandy invasion, Operation OVERLORD, until 1 June 1944 and so agreed that operations in Italy be given new life. The postponement of OVERLORD meant that more landing and assault craft could remain in the Mediterranean. British Gen Sir Harold Alexander, who had succeeded Gen Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander Mediterranean (SACMED), suggested to Churchill that strengthening the Anzio assault force to two divisions plus armor would enable it to operate independently of the Fifth Army long enough to allow the Fifth Army to break through the Gustav line. Thus, on 28 December Anzio was born again.

Dubbed Operation SHINGLE, the planning for the Anzio assault began immediately. The basic problem in conducting an amphibious assault along the west coast of Italy was noted by Gen Eisenhower when he stated: “If we landed a small force, it would be quickly eliminated, while a force large enough to sustain itself cannot possibly be mounted for a considerable period. . . .” The first mistake of Anzio was expecting too much of a small assault force. As Samuel E. Morison noted in his book Sicily-Salerno-Anzio: History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, “either it was a job for a full army, or it was no job at all; to attempt it with only two divisions was to send a boy on a man’s errand.” The Germans were believed to have the equivalent of four divisions available to defend Anzio, three of which could have been put into action within a week. How the Allied planners thought they could seize a sizable beachhead, cut vital enemy supply lines, seize strategic positions in the Alban Hills 25 miles inland, while protecting their own supply lines back to a beachhead, all in the face of superior enemy forces, was a mystery to MajGen John Lucas, VI Corps commander, who led the assault. Lucas saw no way to seize the Alban Hills without being cut off from the beachhead. Consequently, he made the establishment of a secure beachhead his first priority. LtGen Mark Clark, commander of the Fifth Army, to which VI Corps belonged, concurred with Lucas’ evaluation of the situation and framed his orders to Lucas accordingly. Both men had fears of another Salerno, where the German defenders nearly split the beachhead. Clark told Lucas before the Anzio landings not to “stick your neck out the way I did at Salerno.”

The availability of landing craft dictated the timing of the landing. OVERLORD would begin to draw landing craft away from the Mediterranean by the end of February. Thus, SHINGLE would have to begin at least a month before, in late January. Lunar and hydrographic considerations determined the exact date, 22 January. A night landing was decided upon in order to maximize surprise and to enable the landing forces to seize as large an initial beachhead as possible. With less than a month to plan the assault, there was barely enough time for a rehearsal. Gen Lucas insisted on one but it did little to raise his expectations for the operation’s success-it was an unmitigated disaster. However, there was no time for another.

SHINGLE was to be preceded by a renewed offensive along the main front, which began on 12 January and reached its peak on the 20th. The Fifth Army made little progress, but did force Gen Albert Kesselring, commander of the German forces in Italy, to commit two divisions of reserves from the Anzio vicinity. This meant little, however, because Kesselring, expecting an amphibious landing somewhere along the coast, had designed his defenses, with the exception of the frontline units, as one large mobile reserve. When the Allied assault began, the reserves would move rapidly to surround the beachhead, and as soon as enough troops had been massed, they would drive the invaders back into the sea. Thus Kesselring had only tripwire defenses along the coast, and Anzio and nearby Nettuno were garrisoned by only three engineer companies. Most of these were captured in their sleep by the Ranger force that took the port.

Though neither Clark nor Lucas expected it, total surprise was achieved because Luftwaffe reconnaissance planes could not reach the area after the successful bombing of the airfield at Perugia, and the Allies had gone to great pains to create a diversionary attack at Civitavecchia, north of Rome. The landing itself went like clockwork, despite the horrendous rehearsal. Rockets showered the beaches minutes before the landing craft roared in. The British landing at Peter Beach, six miles northwest of Anzio, encountered no opposition other than the sandbars and soft sand of the beach. On X-Ray Beach, four miles southeast of Anzio, the 3d Division (U.S.) landed with similar ease. By 0800 the Rangers reported the port secure, and by noon the British and American units had linked up, establishing the beachhead’s perimeter. By midnight, 90 percent of the assault convoy had been unloaded, including 36,000 men and over 3,000 vehicles, and a beachhead 15 miles wide and 7 miles deep was established, all at a cost of only 14 killed. Gen Lucas’ first priority was defense of the beachhead and port, however, and he went on the defensive almost immediately, expecting an imminent German counterattack.

Although the landing was virtually unopposed, Kesselring took little time to begin his defense. He gave the codeword for an assault on Anzio, “Case Richard,” sometime during the morning of the 22d. German intelligence knew that the Allied assault was only a two-division force and was nothing to cause a hasty withdrawal of forces from along the main front. Kesselring brought down Fourteenth Army headquarters from Rome, under Gen Eberhard von Mackensen, to coordinate the fight against the Anzio landing.

Gen von Mackensen’s first step in containing the invasion was to ring the beachhead with antiaircraft units from Rome using them as antitank batteries. Units were then fed into this perimeter as they arrived on the scene. By the morning of the 23d the flak batteries had arrived, along with elements of the 3d Panzer Grenadier Division and a regiment from the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division. By the 26th Gen von Mackensen had assembled six divisions around the beachhead. Allied patrols met initial resistance on 23 January. On the 25th the British took the agricultural center of Aprilia (known as “the Factory”) and 3d Division controlled the Mussolini Canal, but the weak patrols could gain no further ground against the rapidly building German defenses. Allied patrols were never able to reach the towns of Campoleone or Cisterna, which were considered intermediate objectives in the “advance” on the Alban Hills.

On 25 January Gen Alexander suggested to Gen Clark that an attack against Velletri be made, since the 45th Division (U.S.) was soon to be landed at Anzio in reserve. Gen Lucas agreed to go on the offensive on 30 January when the 45th Division was due to land. Gen von Mackensen was also waiting for enough troops to go on the offensive, which he was planning for 1 February. Both generals planned the same attack-along the Albano road that linked Anzio with the Alban Hills, running through the Factory and Campoleone.

Lucas managed to attack first. The British 1st Division’s advance up the Albano road began favorably, but the rugged terrain and soggy ground bogged down the tanks of the 1st Armored Division (U.S.). Without armor the British could not crack the German defenses at Campoleone and halted late in the afternoon of the 31st, occupying a salient south of the Campoleone station some 7,000 yards deep and 3,500 yards wide. The 3d Division, attacking Cisterna at the same time, depended on a successful infiltration by three Ranger battalions. The Germans ambushed the Rangers and blew the bridges across Cisterna Creek, however, and 3d Division was unable to advance beyond the Mussolini Canal. Gen Alexander, under great pressure from Churchill to maintain the offensive, did not like the situation. A German counterattack seemed imminent, however, so he and Clark acquiesced in Lucas’ request to go on the defensive.

Gen von Mackensen wasted little time switching over to the offensive. On 2 February he began attacking the flanks of the British salient. The typical German attack was a thrust at the flank of a British unit. The terrain and night fighting were well suited to the German tactics of infiltration and isolation and the frontlines along the salient became extremely fluid. By 4 February the British were being forced to conduct a fighting withdrawal, finding their positions infested by German units. Counterattacks by the 1st Armored Division could not stem the German advance. The 5th of February was perhaps the nadir of the Anzio campaign as lines were being pushed back rapidly. Gen Lucas, in his obsession to hold the beachhead, ordered intermediate and final beachhead defenses prepared. Construction of these lines took every available man from behind the lines and many more from the front where they were badly needed.

The British managed to hold their line intact during their withdrawal and, with the help of intensive artillery action, stopped the German advance about a mile north of the Factory. Gen von Mackensen switched the attack to the Cisterna front during the morning of 5 February and nearly broke through to the intermediate line of defense. MajGen Lucius K. Truscott, commanding 3d Division, decided that a strong forward defense was the only way to hold off the Germans. Gen Truscott counterattacked, regaining his original positions, and set to work restoring his frontline units to full strength and leaving the preparation of other defensive lines to the clerks and cooks in the rear.

After Gen Truscott’s successful counterattack, Gen von Mackensen switched the offensive back to the 1st Division. At 2100 on 7 February the Germans opened up an attack all along the 1st Division’s front. They were most successful on the left flank where they succeeded in pushing the British from their positions along Buon Riposo Ridge. Elsewhere the British defenses fell back slowly but intact. The Factory was overrun by noon of the 9th. The German advance was stopped here as Lucas brought up the 45th Division from reserve. A two-pronged counterattack against the Factory nearly dislodged the Germans, but it proved too small and was repulsed.

Phase one of the German offensive ended with the capture of the Factory. For the next three days fighting was limited to active patrolling as Gen von Mackensen marshaled all his forces for the drive through the beachhead. The Allies dug in feverishly. German prisoners captured in the first offensive informed the Allies that the major drive of the German offensive would be launched on 16 February, and true to their word German artillery opened up along the Albano road on the morning of the 16th. Against six German divisions, Lucas had the 45th Division astride the Albano road, 3d Division and Special Service Force on the right flank (along the Mussolini Canal), the British 56th Division on the left flank (the Molleta River), and 1st Division (British), and 1st Armored Division (U.S.), considerably weakened, in reserve.

By that evening, the Germans had driven a gap between regiments of the 45th Division in the center of the line. The next day Gen von Mackensen poured everything he had into the gap, and by the morning of the 18th he had driven the Allies back to the final defense line of the beachhead. The weakened 1st Armored Division was brought up from reserve to help man the line and every piece of available artillery bombarded the German wedge. The Germans continued to press forward, however, until the afternoon of the 19th, when their advance abruptly stalled. Gen von Mackensen had run out of reserves to hurl against the Allied line. Counterattacks later that day recaptured some of the ground lost to the Germans.

Despite their heroic stand, the Allied forces were extremely discouraged. The Germans had pinned them in for a month. The weather was miserable, there was not a dry place on the entire beachhead, and Lucas’ defense-mindedness had been debilitating to morale. The soldiers at the front were not the only ones dissatisfied with this state of affairs. Churchill had been pressing Alexander to remove Lucas since the early days of the operation. Complained Churchill, “I had hoped we were hurling a wildcat onto the shore, but all we got was a stranded whale.” By this time both Gens Alexander and Clark were inclined to agree that Lucas’ caution was excessive and replaced him on 23 February with Gen Truscott, who had been appointed deputy corps commander a week earlier as a prelude to the change.

Adolf Hitler was enraged by the failure of the Fourteenth Army to cut out the “abscess” at Anzio, and ordered another offensive, this time against the Cisterna sector. While the bulk of the German forces had tried to penetrate 1st Division’s lines, 3d Division, along the Cisterna front, had plenty of opportunity to solidify its defenses and was ready when the Germans attacked on 29 February. After four days of futile and halfhearted efforts to crack 3d Division’s lines, Gen von Mackensen ended the offensive and ordered his troops to dig in.

In March and April a stalemate settled over the beachhead as both armies sought to regroup and resupply. This was becoming increasingly difficult for both. The German supply lines were battered constantly by the Allied Air Force’s Operation STRANGLEHOLD, and VI Corps faced supply problems due to preparations for Operation OVERLORD. Action during these months was limited to active patrolling and artillery duels. By this time Allied forces numbered 6 divisions and 90,000 men facing a comparable number of Germans.

During the lull, Gen Truscott prepared plans for the breakout. He presented Clark and Alexander with four options. Clark favored Operation TURTLE, an advance on Rome via the Alban Hills, but Alexander approved only Operation BUFFALO, a drive through Cisterna, up through the Lepini Mountains into Cori and to cut Highway 6 at Valmontone. Clark suspected Alexander of directing the American divisions away from Rome in order to allow the British to enter the capital first, and told Truscott to keep Operation TURTLE ready in reserve. In fairness to Clark, TURTLE was not without tactical merit, but his obsession with being the first to enter Rome was undoubtedly the primary reason he favored the plan, as later events indicated.

None of Truscott’s plans could go into effect until the main offensive in the south began. Finally, on 11 May the decisive battle for the Gustav line began. On 14 May the French Expeditionary Corps made the first breakthrough. By the 16th, the British Eighth Army had crossed into the Liri Valley, and on the 17th Monte Cassino, stronghold of the line, fell.

Alexander ordered the breakout from Anzio for 23 May. The 3d Division and 1st Armored Division were to take Cisterna. The 36th Division was then to pass through and cross the valley below Velletri. The 36th and 3d Divisions would then advance together to Valmontone. The assault on Cisterna was a two-pronged attack that surrounded the town on 24 May and stormed it on the 25th. Gen von Mackensen, believing that the breakout attempt would be directed up the Albano road to Campoleone, kept his main forces opposite the 45th Division, which did its best to make the Germans feel that they were absorbing the brunt of the Allied offensive. On the 25th Anzio ceased to be a beachhead as elements of the 1st Armored Division ran into patrols from the II Corps, Fifth Army near Borga Grappa.

Truscott’s successful advance toward Valmontone was interrupted on 25 May by Clark, who ordered VI Corps to shift its attack to the northwest and Rome. Campoleone fell on 30 May after hard fighting in the Alban Hills, and Lanuvio fell on 3 June. The Germans were being pushed back along the entire front, and late in the afternoon of 4 June tanks from the 1st Armored Division rumbled into Rome. Clark had managed to add his name to the select list of conquerors of the eternal city.

In the end, Anzio was of great strategic value to the Allies for, along with the main front, it helped occupy more than 20 German divisions that might otherwise have been sent to Normandy or Russia. More important to us today, however, are the tactical lessons learned from Anzio and their relevance to modern amphibious warfare.

Anzio’s greatest lesson is its reemphasis of Nathan B. Forrest’s recipe for success on the battlefield: “to get there first with the most men.” After the initial landings at Anzio, Allied forces were neither. The assault force of two divisions proved entirely too small, and Lucas’ determination to secure the beachhead cost him the opportunity to exploit the extremely successful landing by seizing objectives inland.

Being first necessitates being fast. Mobility has become increasingly important on the modern battlefield with the trend toward mechanization, the development of the helicopter, and the exponential growth in electronic warfare capability. Maneuver warfare has now become the buzzword among tacticians. The concept of maneuver warfare has been expressed in the Boyd theory of conflict. William S. Lind explained the Boyd theory in a 1980 GAZETTE article like this:

. . . in any conflict situation all parties go through repeated cycles of observation-decisionaction. The potentially victorious party is the one with an observation-decision-action cycle consistently quicker than his opponents (including the time required to transition from one cycle to another).

The advent of modern battlefield information systems makes it even more important to be the first side comprehending the battlefield situation. Once this is accomplished, true maneuver warfare is made possible. Successful maneuver warfare forces the enemy into a maelstrom of problems, threats, challenges, and changing situations so rapidly that the enemy cannot adequately respond. Gen Lucas failed to grasp the essence of maneuver warfare at Anzio by being unaware of the local situation. A patrol sent to Rome would have discovered that the city was undefended and the rear of the Gustav line lay exposed. Virtually any offensive action immediately after the landing would have kept the Germans off-balance, disrupted their supply lines, and prevented them from threatening the beachhead by taking the battle elsewhere. Gen Lucas failed to adequately consider the options in between the extremes of a mad dash to the Alban Hills or an excessively cautious defense of the beachhead. He could have challenged the Germans by fortifying any number of objectives en route to the Alban Hills. Cisterna and Campoleone certainly could have been taken on the first or second day of the landing. Lucas’ expectation of a violent German counterattack at the beachhead became a self-fulfilling prophecy: by holing up at the beachhead he gave the Germans no choice but to attack him there.

Today, it is likely that an amphibious assault will encounter defenses superior in weaponry, manpower, or both. The goal of an amphibious assault is to land where the enemy is not, but even if this goal is achieved, as it was at Anzio, it is still likely that the assault force will quickly have to face large concentrations of enemy forces, as VI Corps did at Anzio. Tactics must then be formulated to keep the enemy off balance with rapidly changing, fluid battlefield situations that will prevent the kind of bottling up of the landing achieved by Gen von Mackensen at Anzio.

The presumed superiority of the defense has led some to regard the amphibious assault as an anachronism. The development of the doctrine of vertical envelopment with its use of helicopter assaults to the rear of the objective area was a partial response to these doubts. It breathed new life into amphibious doctrine and, in fact, divided modern amphibious warfare from that of World War II.

Helicopters bring the flexibility and mobility required to realize the principles of maneuver warfare to the battlefield. But, it would be a mistake for the Marine Corps to put too much emphasis on the helicopterborne portion of the amphibious assault. Anzio vividly demonstrated the need not only for mobility, but also of the need for muscle. Vertical envelopment’s critical weakness is the limited payload of helicopters. Any landing force larger than a Marine amphibious unit necessitates a surface assault of some sort. Since helicopters cannot supply a large landing force with either the artillery, armor, ammunition, or food necessary to conduct sustained combat operations, helicopterborne forces cannot operate independently for prolonged periods of time. Moreover, once the helicopters depart, these forces lose their tactical mobility. The original doctrine of vertical envelopment as developed by the Hogaboom Board called for approximately a 70/30 ratio between surface and helicopterborne forces in an amphibious operation. However, several new factors must be figured into the equation that may require a rethinking of certain aspects of the amphibious assault.

Vertical envelopment creates difficulties for the enemy’s defense against amphibious invasion, but if it is relied on too heavily, the enemy’s tasks will be made easier. The proliferation of very capable air-defense weapons will greatly complicate helicopterborne portions of the assault and helicopter attrition could be quite high in a mid- to high-intensity air defense environment. The Marine Corps needs to recognize this threat and formulate either a hardware or doctrinal response.

There are other weaknesses that need to be addressed. For example, there is a need for a greater ability to resupply and build up the beachhead. The decline of the United States’ amphibious lift capability has long concerned the Marine Corps. Today the Navy could not land or support a force even the size of the original Anzio force-two divisions. The American Merchant Marine will be of some help, but its decline has exceeded that of the Navy. The ability to provide naval gunfire has also declined, though the recommissioning of New Jersey, Iowa, and Missouri should help. The Navy is also deficient in minesweepers. With only 25 minesweepers in service, any assault force faces a serious danger from mines, which are a cheap, effective defensive measure. They were a continual hazard at Anzio, where they sank at least four ships.

Part of “the most” that never arrived at Anzio was close air support. The vast majority of sorties flown by the Allied air forces during the four month campaign were part of Operation STRANGLEHOLD, a strategic bombing campaign designed to cut the German supply lines and to isolate the battlefield. STRANGLEHOLD did do a great deal to hamper the German resupply efforts, but it failed to isolate the battlefield, as evidenced by Gen Mackensen’s rapid buildup of forces around the beachhead. Close air support (as we know it today) during the initial phases of the assault might have helped Lucas expand the beachhead much more rapidly. Fortunately, the validity of the Marine Corps’ concept of air power in direct support of ground operations has been accepted in the United States Armed Forces, and current amphibious doctrine places great emphasis on receiving such close air support. Again, however, it may be unwise to place too much emphasis on this facet of the assault.

As noted by Capt J.D. Williams, Canadian Armed Forces, in his article, “Role of the Fighter Aircraft on the Modern Battlefield, (MCG, May84, p.86) fighter aircraft could enter as many as nine surface-to-air missile (SAM) engagement envelopes en route to the battlefield. Granted this is a “high intensity” European-Warsaw Pact scenario, but the worldwide proliferation of these weapons will force the Marine Corps to deal with a SAM threat in many possible theaters of operation. Connected to this, as Capt Williams points out, will be the devastating psychological impact of losing aircraft in close air support missions. At Anzio it was artillery, not aviation, that provided VI Corps with its most effective fire support. Close air support is no substitute for firepower organic to the ground units. In many ways it is much less effective and can only complement and not replace artillery and armor.

As previously noted, Lucas’ major mistake was failing to seize the initiative and exploit his initial tactical advantage. His caution serves to highlight two other facets of the amphibious assault that have not received enough consideration, reconnaissance and leadership. Counterreconnaissance and countersurveillance are the keys to thwarting counterattacks against an amphibious landing. They would certainly have helped VI Corps. More aggressive patrols would have been able to report to Lucas just how weak the enemy forces were during the first days of the assault. Reconnaissance-in-force can help gather intelligence, foil enemy intelligence, and guard the flanks of the main forces.

Gen Lucas can hardly be blamed for failing to dash to the Alban Hills. His orders were unclear, his tasks extremely difficult, and his superiors uncritical. Lucas was a conservative soldier, and given the uncertainties and difficulties he faced, he chose conservative tactics. Some of the blame should lie with Lucas’ superior, Gen Clark, who chose the wrong man for the job. With the growing need for mobility and the emphasis on maneuver warfare, amphibious operations will require audacious, daring officers who are willing to take the initiative and think creatively. There are serious questions about whether the current officer evaluation system, with its emphasis on a clean slate rather than on quality of performance is capable of producing such officers. Unfortunately, many of our best potential combat leaders cannot survive the “paper bullets” of peacetime. Perhaps the Marine Corps should look at ways to restructure the officer selection system to ensure that leadership in the United States military continues to be as superior to that of the Soviet Union as we claim-and hope-that it is.

Gen Lucas might have been less cautious had he been given enough troops to accomplish his mission. The Anzio planners did a poor job in analyzing the operation’s requirements based on what we now call METT-mission, enemy, terrain, troops and fire support. There were different interpretations of VI Corps’ mission; the enemy’s defensive capabilities were underestimated; the problems posed by the various terrain of central Italy and the Italian winter were not considered adequately, and the forces and supporting materiel available to VI Corps were in high demand elsewhere and so were only available for a limited period. Careful consideration of METT has become even more crucial to success in today’s high-technology combat environment, where the increased accuracy and lethality of modern conventional weapons greatly reduce the time available to react and adapt to unanticipated battlefield situations.

A final tactical lesson from Anzio lies in the fact that most of the battles took place at night. German tactics of night infiltration and maneuver greatly disrupted Allied operations throughout the Anzio battle. In that connection, the Marine Corps must prepare its forces to fight offensively and defensively at night in order to maximize the effectiveness of its maneuver and counterintelligence tactics. Given the capabilities of modern defensive weapons, an invading force may well have to operate at night. The Marine Corps will have to be better prepared and equipped for night combat than were the troops at Anzio.

Much of the Marine Corps’ institutional life since the end of World War II has been spent defending its raison d’etre-the amphibious assault-against critics who claim that such operations are no longer possible. The Marine Corps has given such critics more attention than they deserve, for the question of the feasibility of amphibious operations is largely irrelevant-the Nation must be able to assault successfully by sea in order to guarantee its security. Tomes have been written on the simple fact that the United States is a maritime nation; it always has been and it always will be. The capability to conduct amphibious operations is an indispensable facet of the seapower upon which the economic and political security of our Nation rests. The Marine Corps must therefore continue to improve and adapt its amphibious doctrine in accordance with historical performance and analysis of the realities of modern warfare.

Most of the historical analysis of Anzio centers around the question of which was more important, establishing the beachhead or driving forward to the Alban Hills. In answering this question, the Marine Corps should remember the painful lessons of Operation SHINGLE. It stands to remind us of the fundamental importance of offense, maneuverability, and mass. Had SHINGLE’S planners emphasized these principles from the outset, the Anzio campaign might have been much more successful.

The concept of maneuver warfare offers promise with its emphasis on both mass and mobility. The realization of such a concept of fighting, however, is not without problems. For instance, the logistical necessitities of maneuver warfare require (among other things) a beachhead secure and large enough to handle the logistics operations as well as an amphibious capability large enough to support the invasion force. However, the Corps can and must overcome these constraints, and in conducting a forcible entry, it must avoid the same mistakes made by Gen Lucas at Anzio. A secure beachhead operation is not an end unto itself; it is a means of accomplishing the mission-to locate, close with, and destroy the enemy.

Quote to Ponder:

Teaching

“Instead of blaming people, mistakes should be an occasion for careful examination of work habits. A Marine is not necessarily a bad or inferior person because he or she makes mistakes. He may be doing things the wrong way because no one has taken the trouble to teach him better.”

-SgtMaj Melvin Bray

Henderson Hall News