Cascoly Books - Michael Shaara |
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Gone For Soldiers
a A Prequel to his civil war trilogy, Shaara's Gone for Soldiers
examines the United States - Mexican War through two major characters, a young
Robert E Lee, a fledgling captain of engineers, and the ancient veteran of the
War of 1812, General Winfield Scott. Highly worth reading on its own, it was
enhanced for me by the coincidental timing - I read it shortly after following
Bush's pre-emptive attack on Iraq. Shaara presciently sets out an amazingly
close similar precedent [the book was published in 2000] in which an American
president, losing popularity and control in domestic politics, uses a jingoistic
campaign to malign an enemy. He then
launches a pre-emptive attack based on contrived intelligence. Whether
'Manifest Destiny' or a new world order or a war on terror, the result is the
same - force invades a smaller, yet still sovereign country hoping superior
technology will make up for insufficent numbers. The initial invasions go
reasonably well, and early objectives are achieved, but the invasions soon bog
down when the mismatched enemy forces don't play by the rules and refuse the
invaders in open field battle. Political decisions often trump military sense
and strategy. While the president gives speeches supporting the troops, there is
inadequate logistics and planning to provide both guns and manpower, and no
thought is given to the aftermath. Initial dreams of an enthusiastic welcome as
liberators turns into the nightmare of guerilla war. As the army moves inland
General Scott is forced to deplete his already small detached forces with
numerous garrisons to contain and control his supply lines. Scott must also keep
casualties to a minimum knowing that public support for this war is thin, and
relies on a risky campaign of maneuver against a numerically superior but
technologically inferior enemy. The results are predictable, and
unfortunately recurring in history.
Many other young American officers appear in the book, who will later meet each
other in their own Civil War.
The Civil War Trilogy Top notch historical fiction, with Killer Angels covering the Gettysburg campaign, and the sandwiching volumes later written by the author's son to cover the preliminary and subsequent story of the civil war Other links:
For an alternative ending, try Newt Gingrich's Gettysburg trilogy
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