War, by its very nature, pits one society’s – one culture’s – mechanical machinery against another in a contest of wills. In 2022, we are told that this is happening at an ever-accelerating pace with the coming of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. For warfare, this age has brought about the harnessing of cutting-edge technology for the purpose of making war; most prevalent today are the utilization of drones and other unmanned systems, with more innovation on the horizon.
In the closing days of 1959, the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force (RAF) received their first deliveries of Lightning F.1 fighter jets, produced by English Electric. The F.1 Lightning was on the cutting edge of military aviation technology. The Lighting, which acquired its nickname from its supersonic ability, was the first British-built jet that reached Mach 2 speeds – twice the speed of sound. The Lightning also had technical guidance systems for air-to-air missiles, which it displayed through on-board radar also capable of search functions. The 40-year-old RAF pilot flying the Lightning had, 20 years prior, flown single-engine propeller Hurricane’s and Spitfire’s in the climactic Battle of Britain in 1940.
Although 20 years later the tools and technology the RAF pilot used had changed, the human operating them had not; he needed very little re-training on the concepts of air-to-air combat when he took flight in his Lightning. Soldiers fight wars, and no matter how much the face of war may change, one thing will remain. Warfare is a human endeavor. As war, according to Clausewitz, is a contest of wills, technology will still need to be used to bend the wills of other people, therefore people will remain more important than hardware.
Theory on warfare, Clausewitz states, must never rise to the level of law. “No,” Clausewitz writes in On War, “it must also take the human factor into account, and find room for courage, boldness, even foolhardiness. The art of war deals with living and with moral forces.” This is what Field Marshal Lord Wavell was referring to when he wrote Sir B.H. Liddell-Hart, “If I had time and anything like your ability to study war, I think I should concentrate almost entirely on the ‘actualities of war’—the effects of tiredness, hunger, fear, lack of sleep, weather…. The principles of strategy and tactics, and the logistics of war are really absurdly simple: it is the actualities that make war so complicated and so difficult, and are usually so neglected by historians.”
Both men lived in a time of great technological innovation in military affairs; Lord Wavell commissioned into the British Army when cavalry and bolt action guns dominated. He capstoned his professional career after World War II. In that time, he had seen the development of the machine gun, the tank, more deadly artillery and massive air forces which opened up a new “domain” in war. Yet Wavell still emphasized the “actualities of war” – its human effects. True military history is the study of stories and people.
“So what?” is a fair question to ask of anything that you devote time on. (Military) history should not be exempt from this rule. Dates and places do not typically provide a sufficient answer to the question. After all, people and epics are what make dates and places worth memorizing in the first place. We can learn a lot for present or future application. True (military) history comes in when it becomes a laboratory for development. This is where one can fill the experience gap. Clausewitz writes that “Things are perceived, of course, partly by the naked eye and partially by the mind, which fills the gaps with guesswork based on LEARNING and experience.” (Emphasis added).
To do this, knowledge gained through the study of military history must go beyond dates, places and names. It requires knowledge that one can “weaponize” and turn into capability to answer the question, “So what?” Clausewitz provides further clarity, “Knowledge must be so absorbed into the mind that it almost ceases to exist in a separate, objective way… Continual change and the need to respond to it compels the commander to carry the whole intellectual apparatus of his knowledge in him. He must always be ready to bring forth the appropriate decision. By total assimilation with his mind and life, the commander’s knowledge must be transformed to genuine capability.”
Undisputedly, war is about fighting and a contest of wills, but in a certain sense it is also a contest of wits – a battle of outthinking the other. This is where the differences become distinguishable between someone who has been curious enough to study their profession, and someone who has not.
In early November 1943, the American Fifth Army was grinding its way up the Italian peninsula mountaintop by mountaintop. Mount La Falconara sat in the crosshairs of the American VI Corps – the corps objective. La Falconara was the main point of the defensive effort for the German 305th Division. The person who controlled the mountain could exercise control over the entire Upper Volturno River Basin, including the roads and valleys, which underpinned any movement in the mountains. Whoever held La Falconara held the key to the mountains, and in American hands it would badly shake the ability of the entire German 10th Army.
Spearheading the American advance was Colonel Reuben Tucker, commander of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Still almost three and a half miles from La Falconara, Colonel Tucker found himself at a disadvantage: the Germans had full observation of the river basin. The German infantry was in the small villages that sat just above the valley floor, guarding the roads. Fort Benning’s Infantry School was teaching impractical information.
Being a light infantry force with men of above-average physical condition, Tucker played his strength against the Germans’ strength. He employed artillery and good observation – and so he denied the Germans a target for their artillery. At night, Tucker would move his battalions one at a time across the valley floor and move them up on rugged high ground over the small villages in what he called a “reverse slope defense” out of view of La Falcanara. In the morning, the Germans in the village found themselves with a decision to make – stay and rot or withdraw. They always withdrew and the paratroopers were able to inflict casualties in a one-sided battle as they vacated.
By November 9, Tucker was miles ahead of the next closest American unit. He was in striking distance of La Falconara itself. On that day, General Joachim Lemelsen, commander of the German 10th Army, saw the writing on the wall. He reported to Commander in Chief – South (OB-S) that 10th Army “had done about all that could be done under difficult circumstances and in view of clever enemy infiltrations that were being carried out without offering artillery targets and were causing considerable casualties.”
Within days, Colonel Tucker had sacked La Falconara with a company-sized force. They held the mountain until relieved by heavier American units which could exploit the gains. The entire German 10th Army felt the loss of La Falconara Gen. Wentzell, Chief of Staff for 10th Army, told his counterpart at OB-S, “The enemy has retaken…the hill at Colli [La Falconara]. It is simply impossible to do anything. Superiority in the air and of his artillery directed from the air are so great that nothing can move. It is simply impossible to do anything, he has everything concentrated right there. One cannot make a counter-attack, the troops would be wiped out.”
Pulling back the layers of what allowed Tucker’s regiment to accomplish this mission can reveal many lessons. It can teach us a lot about platoon and company leadership, morale, logistics, and communications. However, there is also a danger where military history could prove fatal. What works in one situation may not work in another. But, if we wrongly apply the lessons, or apply them to the wrong situation, we can cause detrimental results.
Scholars have highlighted the role of technology in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War of 2020 to exhaustion. “The war has been used to prove that the tank is dead as a weapon of war, that the tank remains a useful weapon in a combined arms context, that the drone has replaced the manned aircraft, and even that urban warfare has become the dominant and decisive environment,” Paul Barnes writes. The Armenian side, Barnes illustrates, “operated a formidable and integrated radar-controlled antiaircraft defense system; the Azerbaijanis knew it would be expensive and difficult to try to penetrate this ‘snow dome’ conventionally.”
The Azerbaijanis, much like the Germans in the Upper Volturno River Basin, had good artillery. But they had little answer to the antiaircraft defense systems of their opponent.
So, like Colonel Tucker, the Azerbaijanis found a clever way to leverage their strength against that of their opponents. They filled the air with drones and obsolete aircraft. It generated “recognizable radiation signatures, and giving away the defensive system’s shape and position. Precise targeting by Azerbaijani artillery and loitering munitions destroyed the identified positions. This gifted the Azerbaijanis air superiority and allowing ground-based formations to break in… If the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War proved anything, it was that age-old problems could be solved in age-old ways, supported by modern technology.”
Surely, a misinterpretation of ‘lessons learned’ in this instance can easily lead to future investment in fantastical, unrealistic military technologies that can lead to disastrous consequences. Similarly, a misinterpretation of Colonel Tucker’s actions in the Volturno Valley could lead to false conclusions. These false conclusions could result in a reckless deployment of troops in incongruent situations.
In both examples, one low tech and one high tech, people – not technology – found a way to adapt. Through technology, tools may change, but people and principles are relatively constant. Each war and each engagement is unique. When studying military history, we should place careful thought on terrain, context and the totality of the elements. One of the true utilities of military history is developing the mental habits. These models allow to assess a situation and adjust to the changing circumstances. Clausewitz referred to this as fighting with what you have in reality, not with what you think you’ll have. Then we can recognize the commonalities of victory that stem from that. Developing these habits of mind is where knowledge of military history turns into capability.
Gaining experience is another utilities of military history. This is especially true as it relates to the lowest levels of leadership. It allows us to get reps in areas where it’s not possible to develop otherwise, such as in peacetime. Soldiers fight wars, and they must understand the change they can have on the battlefield. They must internalize the realities of combat.
In a book entitled, Battle Leadership, Adolf von Schell wrote of leading men in the opening movements of the First World War. When everything seemed to be going wrong, inexperienced, but highly trained, soldiers reacted poorly in their first intense combat. They wavered and ran for cover.
“We must teach our men in peace that battles differ greatly from maneuvers,” he wrote. “[A]and that there will often be critical periods when everything seems to be going wrong. […] It is exceedingly difficult to teach men what to expect in war, but something along this line may be accomplished if we study military history and teach its lessons to our soldiers.”
von Schell continually writes about the importance of the knowledge of men. He remarks how important it is for leaders to understand the effects of battle on them. He refers to these as the actualities of war. Battle Leadership, in part, examines how to fill this experience gap using military history. It provides a useful roadmap for using history as a training tool.
War, in many ways, is constant, even despite technological advancement. And even technology is not changing these actualities as quickly as some might thing. We are seeing this play out in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. When studied this way, military history contributes to the development of something Aristotle referred to as “practical wisdom.” It is about being able to perceive and understand a situation holistically, determine what the end goal is, and what the best way of accomplishing that goal is. Military history is an important, tangible tool for development and training. Its tactical lessons in allowing a junior officer to game’ an engagement and see himself as a lieutenant making a decision in the battle is just as important as what the lessons of that battle tell for guiding practicality in policy on modern military capabilities.
History’s guidance should be taken advantage of to its fullest extent. We face nothing new under the sun.
Tyler Fox is the author of two books and a contributor to Mission Command II: Who, What, Where, When and Why, An Anthology. Other short works have appeared at the Modern War Institute and the Small Wars Journal. He is an Honorary Member of the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, where he regularly works on history projects.
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