Keep slogging

Letters

Vol. 27 No. 15 · 4 August 2005

From Benjamin Spencer

In the course of his piece about the delusions of the First World War commander-in-chief Douglas Haig, Andrew Bacevich says that American generals – Norman Schwarzkopf, Wesley Clark and Tommy Franks – have a habit of turning short-lived military successes into long-term disasters, or fast attacks into nightmares of military hubris (LRB, 21 July). It’s clear that these political warriors aren’t ‘genuine great captains’, and other American generals could be added to his list.

How about Ulysses S. Grant? His winning of the Civil War led him to the presidency, but why so easily, when his prosecution of the war came at a cost to human life that many thought unbearable? Grant’s obvious disadvantages – slowness, alcoholism, lack of rhetorical stature – didn’t seem to hold him back, though those were admittedly different times. So different, indeed, that even the Confederate general Robert E. Lee was thought to have statesman potential. At least he (unlike Schwarzkopf) got a proper job after the war: he became president of Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. People say that Lee had greatness, but that he did not have the talent for knowing the moment when a successful defence should be turned into a successful attack.

Perhaps recent American generals have another problem: they don’t have the talent for knowing the moment when a successful attack should be turned into a successful defence. In this regard, they may have found their mentor in another person who could go on Bacevich’s list: General William C. Westmoreland, commander in Vietnam between 1964 and 1968. Westmoreland died last month, and he died believing that the South-East Asia campaign was both just and winnable. I don’t know if Grant or Lee spoke about God being on their side, but Westmoreland certainly did. I suppose one can’t blame generals for saying they’re going to win, but making a religion of the hunger for victory or an ideology of ‘our way of life’ must simply be part of the charlatanism that goes with the job nowadays.

Benjamin Spencer
Boston, Massachusetts

Vol. 27 No. 16 · 18 August 2005

From Martin Axford

Andrew Bacevich writes that the name of Douglas Haig ‘became a byword for mindless slaughter and soldierly incompetence’ (LRB, 21 July). My grandfather remembered hearing cheering break out somewhere east of his position (‘it began near Switzerland’) and move along the trenches. His company thought peace had broken out, but were almost as pleased to learn that Haig had been made junior to Marshal Foche. He said the cheering ended ‘somewhere in the North Sea’.

Martin Axford
Bridge of Weir, Renfrewshire

From Jack Pole

Benjamin Spencer mentions Ulysses S. Grant’s drinking habits (Letters, 4 August). On receiving reports about them from Grant’s enemies, Abraham Lincoln said that he would like to know the brand of whiskey Grant drank so that he could send a barrel to each of his other generals.

Jack Pole
Oxford