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It’s Monday again and I’m not in the mood to dig into all the filth of politics this morning, plenty of week for that left/ So let’s go back to my first live, American military history.
First, let’s look at an almost perfectly conducted battle in the Revolutionary war., Cowpens. The American commander was a giy by the name of Brigadier General Faniel Morgan, he went by the moniker of “The Old Waggoner” and he was a rough tough frontiersman And that should tell you why you never heard of him, he would have not been overly welcome in the homes of the wealthy of Philadelphia or Boston. His British opponent was Banastre Tarleton, who has come down in American history as “The Butcher” because of his tendency to slaughter civilians, even those merely ambivalent about the war. So, let’s see how this plays out
Some call this the most perfectly conducted battle ever fought in the Americas, and I think they might be right.
Compared to almost any battle in the Civil War almost any battle in the Revolutionary War looks like a skirmish. And in fact, the bloodiest battle in American history happened in 1862, at Antietam Creek in Maryland. Here we have the Army of the Potomac under George B. McClellan, a man who thought he was equal to Napoleon, but was a very timid general, facing off against of the greatest commanders in history, let alone American history, Robert E. Lee, and his Army of Northern Virginia. You might recall that I have said often enough that American casualties in the Civil War were only exceeded in all of our other wars sometime in 1967 or in Vietnam. Here is where one of the very first modern battle battles were fought, in The Cornfield, the Sunken Road, and other diverse places.
The American way of war has always been (since the Mexican War, anyway) composed of daring ingenuity, accompanied by amazing logistics, and in the 20th century, we added technological leadership.
That is showing again as American weapons (with some UK ones) too) are allowing Ukraine to bleed the Russians to the point that even if they win it will be meaningless.
This, like the Abrams tank, and the A10 Warthog is the legacy of the long years the 11th Cavalry (The Blackhorse) spent watching in the Fulda Gap waiting for the Soviets to come and try to make those few kilometers to the Rhine. The Sovs, of course, never dared. For those troopers, like the guys in SAC who proudly stood the watch know that “Peace is our Profession”.