Book Review - Backfire: a History of Friendly Fire from Ancient Warfare to the Present Day by Geoffrey Regan

 Backfire: a History of Friendly Fire from Ancient Warfare to the Present Day by Geoffrey Regan

London: Robson Books, 2002 (First published 1995)               ISBN 1861055013

This is a somewhat disappointing book about a fascinating subject. Many years ago (before the internet) I was doing some family research on my Great-Grandfather and his brothers, all of whom served in World War One. My Great-Grandfather was killed in action on 20 September 1917, during the Battle of Menin Road. Trying to find out more, I headed naturally to C.E.W. Bean's Official History where it is mentioned that during the course of forming up for the battle the Australians suffered considerable losses due to the artillery barrage falling short. I hadn't considered the concept of "friendly fire" before that time, but since then have found it peeping through the curtains of many a memoir or history of wartime events.

So, when I found this book, I took it up with some interest. Regan has skimmed the surface of the concept of friendly fire, and expanded the concept beyond what I think most people would think it to mean. He skips between generalizations and "how it must have been" to specific details of other incidents. One gets the feeling that he was trying to write this book with limited time to research and think about the project.   

It seems to me from the Introduction that Regan was moved to write this book after the friendly fire incident that killed six British soldiers during the first Gulf War, but he begins the book proper with a description of Ancient Greek warfare, and a discussion of how there must have been much "friendly fire" in the phalanx, purely through the way the formation was structured. He continues the theme into Medieval warfare, noting along the way that the lack of uniforms caused much confusion as well. The problem with this section of the book is that Regan provides little actual evidence for the theories that he puts forward.

Moving to the early modern period, Regan begins to draw more on written accounts of friendly fire incidents during the Napoleonic Wars, and start to elaborate on the main cause of friendly fire - confusion. The development of tightly drilled infantry (squares etc.) was an effort to try and reduce confusion, but of course war is confusion, so much of the drill went out the window after a couple of volleys, or if officers were early casualties of the action. Confusion was often the cause of incidents in the armies opposing the French - allies often engaged other allies owing to lack of knowledge of their whereabouts, or even what their uniforms looked like.

These observations set the scene for the major part of Regan's book, concerning World War One and Two, and later conflicts. It's these sections of the book that I found most disappointing. In all probability, and as Regan suggests, mis-directed artillery fire was the cause of most friendly-fire casualties during World War One. Regan in my opinion skates over the reasons why such fire might be mis-directed, and focuses instead on the outcomes of the few incidents which he writes about.

There are two reasons for this, in my opinion. Firstly, Regan has chosen to write a journalistic style of book rather than a more academically focused one. And the second, which comes from the first, Regan has used mostly secondary sources for his information (and to be fair he admits this).

In World War Two it was aircraft that were at the centre of the main friendly fire incidents that he discusses. Aircraft dealt out a lot of friendly fire (Operation Cobra), and also received a lot (Invasion of Sicily). Regan, in describing both World Wars, uses mostly material about the Entente and Allied forces - I assume because he was tied to English language material. The result is that we know a lot about the inadequacies of the USAF in particular, but not so much about the Axis forces (although he does mention Operation Bodenplatte).

I remember reading or hearing the following phrase, about bombing in World War Two "When the Luftwaffe flies over the battlefield, the Allies take cover, when the RAF flies over, the Germans take cover, when the USAF flies over everybody takes cover!" Regan doesn't use that quote, but he does imply in his book that is was the US that seemed to be the worst offender...even bombing Switzerland several times.

Again, sometimes, confusion and lack of information led to tragedy. Often vehicles on the ground were showing appropriate identification symbols, but the fliers were not told about them. Often, aircraft were flying fixed routes at fixed heights at fixed times, but the Flak gunners were not notified. As Regan points out, often these problems could have been and should have been fixed.

My main problem with this work is the patchy nature of it - the lack of detail on the why, the intense focus on a few events, the lack of an overview. However, there are another few annoyances.....the chapter on execution of troops for various offences gets quite a few pages in this book, but I really don't think this issue comes under most commonly thought of definitions of friendly fire: there are other books that cover this much better. There is an interesting chapter on "fragging", but again, not enough detail, evidence or statistical information to be more than frustrating for the reader.

The final bone I have to pick is with language, specifically Regan's use of the term "amicide" as a synonym for friendly fire. While friendly fire is in itself an ungainly term for what is being described, amicide, to me, is completely misleading. Genocide, suicide all imply the deliberate taking of life, whereas ("fragging" aside), friendly fire incidents are not deliberate - they are tragic errors. This book is the first time I have come across the term - I hope it is the last, although with the way the English language is increasingly mauled as the years go on, I fear it won't be.

So, for me, not a lot to recommend here.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Hubris: the Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century by Alistair Horne

 Hubris: the Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century by Alistair Horne

New York: Harper, 2015                    ISBN 9780062397805

Those few who regularly read my blog will know that I've read a few books written by Alistair Horne, and enjoyed them all. I enjoyed this one too, as it is well written and informative, but I must state that I found the premise of the book a little thin. Horne, in his introduction to Hubris, states his aim to be to show how that state of over-confidence can lead to disaster, and how, often after a great victory, hubris creeps in and infects (Horne likens it to a virus) the body politic and the body military and leads to inevitable downfall.

To illustrate his point he chooses key battles from the first half of the Twentieth Century, Tsushima, Nomonhan, Moscow, Midway, MacArthur in Korea, and the battle of Dien Bien Phu. His contention is that in each case it was hubris that led to defeat, and that victory could lead to the development of hubris in the winners. This theory is fairly self-evident to any serious student of military history, and Horne does not add significantly to thinking in this area in my opinion.

Nevertheless, he does show the links between Japan's victory in 1905 and their over-confidence in Mongolia in 1939 and at Midway in 1942. America's crushing of Japan can be argued to have instilled a sense of inevitability to the United States and MacArthur's view that the Korean War would lead to a speedy victory; and the similar racist views of the French (as well as their internecine bickering and arrogance) led them to grievously underestimate the Viet Minh and General Giap.

Although Horne only touches on them, to me two other themes loom large in this book - racism, and ruthlessness. Much of the hubris shown by the Russians, Germans, Americans and French was engendered by their racist view of their opponents. European commanders - and political leaders for that matter - had a very dim view of their Asian brothers. What is fascinating to see is how these views remained unchanged, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Japan in particular suffered from European scorn, despite destroying the Russian Fleet in 1905 and conquering Manchuria and Korea after that. This meant little to the Americans and British who continued to see the Japanese and other Asians as less than human.

This racism led directly to their hubris when facing the "Asian hordes", as did their lack of understanding of the ruthlessness of their foes. Both MacArthur, and the various French leaders in Indochina (the revolving door of French military leadership at the time surely didn't help their cause) looked at their opponents through their own eyes. They failed to understand that the North Koreans, Vietnamese and Chinese were prepared to sustain much greater casualties than their Western counterparts could bear, and, although they may not have had the latest technology, they had a greater will.

No-one was more ruthless than Stalin. Unlike his Western "comrades" of World War Two, he had no racist limits to his thinking, so when Japanese troops encroached on his Mongolian border, he threw in his best troops, his best tanks, and Zhukov, his best general. In fact, when it came to the battle of Nomonhan, it was the Japanese who underestimated their Slavic opponents - not racially, but ideologically. Stalin smashed them, as he eventually smashed Hitler. Hitler's hubris came from his victory in France, and his racially inspired theories that led him to think that the Russians were less than human. Stalin was prepared to not only destroy his country to deny it to Hitler, but send millions of his countrymen and women to their deaths to stop him.

While Hitler was just as ruthless than Stalin, he didn't have as many men to sacrifice, and so lost.

As always, Horne writes smoothly and well - Tsushima is fading into history, and Nomonhan has always been obscure, so to re-read the narratives of those battles is pleasing. Horne provides good context for those battles and the others he discusses. He uses his narrative flair to take the reader right into the history of each battle, but his theoretical strength is less gripping; at times the hubris angle seems tacked on, or an afterthought to his racing narrative history.

So, what to make of this book? As narrative history it's gripping, as a theoretical work less so. I note that some of this book first appeared in the Military History Quarterly, and that makes sense to me, as I think the issue with this book is the lack of connexion throughout the book. It seems that Horne may have thought of these episodes separately and tacked them together. Perhaps I'm doing him a dis-service but, for me, this book was less than I hoped for given how it was marketed, but still was a good read.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Zombie Myths of Australian Military History

Zombie Myths of Australian Military History edited by Craig Stockings

Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2010        ISBN 9781742230795

I hope this book sold well - while it didn't really drop any bombshells on my understanding of the subjects it covered, it is a good corrective to the self-serving pap that is sometimes dished up to readers and called "History". Ranging across two hundred years of Australia and warfare, the essays in this book remind the reader that sometimes the story that gets told is not only not quite the truth, it's not even the truth.

The ten essays in this collection are written by different authors, and as such the quality does vary, but overall they hit their mark very well. Writing as I am in 2019, it is interesting that some of the myths in this book (published in 2010) have in fact been laid to rest in the intervening decade. The first chapter, about the concept of a Frontier War, is a case in point. John Connor points out that not only did Aboriginals fight each other, but they also did quite often fight the settlers and British Army who came onto their land: this fact is now much more accepted today than when this essay was written, and there would be few that would today deny that a state of warfare, however one might define the term, existed on the frontiers of the settled areas of this Continent.

Not all myths do die, and the authors of the next few chapters are fighting an uphill battle to convince the public of the truth. The story of Breaker Morant, which is covered in chapter two, is a fine example of fiction overtaking history, with the successful Bruce Beresford film - which was more fiction than fact - becoming the default story of a man who was by turns conman, drunkard and murderer.

And then there is World War One, where the myth of the Australian Digger was truly born, and where story upon story has been laid down like a geological deposit, and one must sift through the false to get to the real. The reasons for this are varied, with propaganda being a major source of many myths and - especially in the carnage of the Western Front - trying to give sense to the senseless. Rhys Crawley's chapter on the August offensive at Gallipoli smashes quite a few myths, with a very thorough and reasoned argument that the offensive was doomed to fail no matter what the British did at Suvla. This chapter for me underlines how and why the myths develop. My great-great uncle was killed at the Battle of Lone Pine, and another took part in the battle and survived. It's only natural that the loved ones of those who pay the ultimate sacrifice want to know that they died as part of something worthwhile, and that they had a chance of success, and if that success is elusive it's not their fault. On all these feelings myths grow; growing on grief, anger, and belief.

The next couple of chapters are much more specific in their outlook, with Elizabeth Greenhalgh showing that Australians weren't the first to breach the Hindenburg Line, which is correct, but it's also clear that the Australian Corp was an important part of the final offensive, and Craig Stockings, through a detailed look at the Desert Campaign against Italian troops, shows that it is training and logistics which make effective troops, not some mythical idea of the bronzed Aussie being a natural soldier.

The highlight of the book for me was the chapter on the loss of HMAS Sydney II. This chapter shows how advances in technology destroy myths. It has always been clear to those who work with a historical mindset that there was no conspiracy about the loss of the Sydney: it was a tragedy that was possibly avoidable, but Peter Dennis describes very well why Captain Burnett may have gotten too close to the Kormoran, thus sealing Sydney's fate. Of all Australian military events, the loss of the Sydney has been the source of the most ridiculous rumour-mongering and cockamamie theories; partly in reaction to the immense tragedy of losing over 600 men, and partly that the myth of Australian military prowess couldn't allow the Sydney to be destroyed by a mere raider. Dennis scythes through all the theories, and hopes that the recent discovery of the wrecks may help to put them to rest. It has.

The two chapters that deal with our war against the Japanese show how governments can create myths when they think it's in their interests to do so. That Japan never planned to invade Australia is quite clear. That politicians and soldiers at the time talked about the possibility is understandable. What is less forgivable is the creation of "Battle for Australia" day, which suggests that the invasion was a possibility, and has skewed the history of what actually happened to fit a political agenda. Likewise the idea that Japan was stopped on the Kokoda Trail is dealt with in a logical and documented manner. No-one doubts the bravery of the troops that fought there, but it was the Japanese pulling back from the Trail after the Allied forces threatened their rear bases, rather than any particular battle on the Trail itself, that was the catalyst for them turning back.

Jeffrey Grey's essay on Vietnam shows the reader how some myths can badly affect those that are the subject of mythologising, pointing out that service in Vietnam was no more or less dangerous than other wars, both in the field and in what returned servicemen suffered after they got home. The final essay covers Australia's troubled relationship with East Timor, having invaded in World War Two when they didn't want us there, and in 1999 being very reluctant to save them from the depredations of the Indonesians when they did want us, with governments on both occasions painting us as heroes saving the day.

I'd recommend this book in anyone interested in Australian military history, no matter how much you know. For those that know little, it is an education, and for those that know a lot there is still something of interest to be gained from its pages.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Battle of Dienbienphu by Jules Roy

The Battle of Dienbienphu - by Jules Roy, translated from the French by Robert Baldick, introduction by Neil Sheehan

London: Faber and Faber, 1965

If you want a dry factual account of the battle of Dienbienphu, this is not the book to read. If you want a heart-felt paean to both the French and Vietminh soldier, on the stupidity and wastefulness of the whole French effort in Indochina, this book is a must-read. The Battle of Dienbienphu is a very French book about a very French military catastrophe. It is a story of pride, hatred, and incompetence on the French side, and of determination and ruthlessness on the side of the Vietminh.

Jules Roy was a former member of the French Air Force, who had resigned his commission in response to French policy in Indochina. His initial idea was to write a book about the battle and the heroism of the French troops, but as he researched more he realised that that the true story of Dienbienphu was one of the generals and government, the pettiness of the former and the cynicism of the latter, who didn't want to remain in Vietnam, but couldn't bear to loss of face a withdrawal would require.

It pays, as a reader, to have a basic idea of the course of the battle before you come to this book. Written about ten years after the battle, by a Frenchman in France, there is an assumption that some knowledge of events will be brought to the book by the reader. Written in a diary format, Roy begins his book with the appointment of Navarre as commander in Vietnam, and with his idea to provoke Giap by investing Dienbienphu to cut the Vietminh off from Laos and to draw them into pitched battle, while also providing a base from which to patrol and attack. This was a lot to accomplish, but Navarre was very sure of himself despite his inexperience in Indochinese warfare and refused to listen to the doubts his juniors cast on his scheme when they voiced them, which they perhaps didn't do aggressively enough.

That they didn't push their doubts may have been partly down to the contempt in which most French officers held the Vietminh troops. There was little doubt from the French that they could not only hold Dienbienphu, but also destroy any attack the Vietminh might like to launch. Navarre envisaged that Dienbienphu would draw the Vietminh in and allow him, while the bulk of the enemy were fighting there, to clear the Delta of enemy combatants.

This underestimation was fatal for the French. Not only could Giap get an army to Dienbienphu, he could also feed them and keep them in ammunition. More importantly, and to the complete surprise of the French, he could get heavy artillery into the hills surrounding the French base and dig them in well enough to survive any bombardment.

The geographical position of Dienbienphu was an appalling one in which to survive a siege: the bottom of a basin ("the Chamber Pot"), surrounded by jungle-covered hills, far from air support (fighters could only spend ten minutes over the base before they had to return), it was impossible for the French to effectively deny the hills to the Vietminh, and thus protect themselves.

The ambivalence of the French Government - unwilling to expand their commitment to Indochina - led to the French forces being short of the equipment they needed. Most of the Air Force consisted of war surplus US equipment, and Navarre stinted on ramping up Dienbienphu, insisting that it was the decoy for his larger Delta campaign long after it was obvious that Dienbienphu was in fact becoming the decisive battle for control of Vietnam.

Roy is quite naturally angry about this aspect of the debacle: men were being sent to die in the weeks before the final surrender in the full knowledge that it was pointless, with the Generals knowing that Dienbienphu was lost. This makes the many heroic actions of the troops on the ground poignant and tragic.

Roy does not ignore the Vietminh story, with respectful (too respectful?) interludes describing the herculean efforts of the Viets to undertake the logistical effort as well as the fighting to win a historic victory.

The diary-like structure that Roy has chosen does much to add to the drama of his telling of this story: each day brings the inevitable end closer, and the horrors suffered by the French are well conveyed. Roy pulls no punches in his views of the French leadership - Navarre the cynic, Cogny the schemer, Castries, hopelessly out of his depth, Langlais keeping it all together on the ground, Bigeard the hero. Roy builds his story around these personalities, and others such as Grauwin the chief medic.

Roy's conclusion is that Dienbienphu didn't have to happen, or that it could have turned out differently. But, the particular combination of both military and civilian leaders that were on the spot at the time led to the inevitability of the final disaster.

Dienbienphu was not the end in Vietnam: there was another twenty years of warfare ahead of it. One outcome of the French defeat was that the United States was drawn in to the quagmire, only in the end to fail just as the French did.

For a powerful, if partisan and opinionated, description of Dienbienphu, I recommend this book.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Dispatches by Michael Herr

Dispatches by Michael Herr

New York: Vintage International, 1991 (first published 1977)  ISBN 9780679735250

Vietnam Vietnam Vietnam, we've all been there. When Michael Herr wrote those words to end this classic book of reportage, I imagine he little thought that, thirty years later, many would indeed have been to Vietnam, on package tours or backpacker holidays.

Dispatches is a story of a different Vietnam to that seen today, a story of being in the midst of one of the worst wars of the Twentieth Century. Herr was a freelance correspondent, and Dispatches is not his account of this time in Vietnam, but more a reflection of the War: what it did to him, what it did to the US soldiers that were there, and in some ways what it did to the USA as a nation.

When it was first published in 1977 Dispatches was quickly hailed as the best book so far about the US involvement in Vietnam: that may still be the case thirty years later. It should be remembered that in 1977 the wounds that Vietnam had caused in America were still fresh: no heroes return for the troops, no victory - in fact an ignominious retreat and loss. Herr does not go into any detail as to why that happened, as his story is about the troops and the correspondents that wrote about them.

With a fine ear for the unintentional ironies of command-speak, Herr shows us that talk of "kill ratios", "pacification" and so on were meaningless to the "grunts" that risked all to retake Hue or who fought and died at Khe Sanh. It is the regular solider who is the hero of Herr's book, with his savagery, beauty and desire to go home (or, in rare instances, stay), described with respect and care.

Whether Herr supported the War - whether he was a "hawk" or a "dove" - is meaningless in the context of this book. He knew that many ordinary troops were suffering and dying for illusory gains on a map: that when the troops left the VC would return. The US military were like Canute, trying to turn back the tide of the North Vietnamese advance.

That there is in fact no meaning at all to this waste becomes clearer as the reader progresses through the book. The centre-piece of the book is the "siege" of Khe Sanh, a pointless exercise in waste. The Marines at the base die for lack of suitable cover ("Marines don't dig"), and the NVA die because they are told to. What is described by the Generals as a "keystone" to the defence of the South is, several months later, all but abandoned by both sides. Whenever a meaning for the War might be almost discernible through the mists of propaganda and psyops, it quickly disappears, like a night stoned on weed, or changes course like the tracer rounds that curl away from the target at the last moment.

Herr writes as well about his fellow correspondents. About how you only saw the War you wanted to see. About how he couldn't understand the way some could get anything useful from interviewing Generals, just as they couldn't understand how he could get useful material from being with the troops. He describes the soldiers disbelief that anyone could voluntarily spend time in Vietnam, he describes the fear engendered by close shaves, he describes the sadness at the loss of friends. It was a strange thing being a correspondent, the friendships, fear and dreams were similar to enlisted men, but the ability to fly out of the hot zone back to Saigon or China Beach, gave the war a surreal quality that Herr has done a lot to convey with the structure of his book, which moves from overhearing Marines talk during a firefight, to the conversations of "spooks" at HQ, to the chatter of fellow correspondents over drinks at the Continental Hotel in Saigon.

I read somewhere a description of Dispatches as an anti-war book. It is, in the sense that no-one who has been involved in battle could be pro-war, but the book is alive to the fact that there are things that happen during the horror of war that are meaningful, and even at times beautiful. He quotes Tim Page, after being asked by a publisher to write a book that would "once and for all take the glamour out of war."....[Page] "I mean, how the bloody hell can you do that?.....It's like trying to take the glamour out of sex, trying to take the glamour out of the Rolling Stones." This passage occurs late in the book, and by then the reader knows that Herr does not entirely disagree with Page on the issue.

What does stay with Herr are the memories - in the short last section of the book entitled "Breathing Out", he is trying to cope with the dreams, the loss (ironically) of meaning in life outside of Vietnam, and tries to find solace in his old friends. Herr was an advisor on the film Apocalypse Now, and it was a character in that film, Kilgore, who cryptically says "Someday this war's going to end." The final pages of Herr's book suggests that, for those that were there, it never will.

A classic.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell