speakers for our second panel. we dr. robert sutton, author of nazis on the potomac the top secret intelligence operation that helped win world war two. dr. sutton is the former chief historian of the national park service, culminating a 33 year career for the agency. in addition to his current, his most recent book, he is the of stark mad abolition ists lawrence, kansas. the battle over slavery and the civil war era, which was recognized a kansas notable book and features a foreword. the late senator bob dole. dr. sutton teaches courses in the johns hopkins osher senior program and is a resident historian for viking ocean cruises. he also serves as the chair of the montgomery county historic preservation commission in maryland. we have a major howard simkin united states army, retired of home run, the allied escape invasion and world war two heroism. mccain is a senior concept developer in the capability, development and directorate of the us army special operations command. he's retired special forces officer. with over 40 years of combined law enforcement, defense and government experience, mr. simkin holds a master's degree in administrative science. the johns hopkins university, and he has written articles for art publications such as small wars journal, journal and is a us army training and doctor and command certified medicine scientist and used to be in charge of the math sciences program. so i'm glad to have you. and then we we also have colonel david dworak, ex-army, retired author of war of supply by world war two, allied logistics, the mediterranean. dr. barak is a deputy provost for the united states army war college in carlisle, pennsylvania, where he also teaches classes in history military logistics, strategic planning. he retired from the u.s. army at the rank of colonel after a 30 year career, serving as logistics officer, supporting operations in peace and war, back to work as a as a history. i'm sorry, american from the maxwell school of syracuse university and a master's degree in strategic studies from the u.s. army war college. and he is a certified master logistician. and we have a lieutenant. last but not least lieutenant colonel tim stoy, united states army. uh, author of sharpen your bayonets a biography of lieutenant general john wilson, iron mike, commander of the third 13th division of world war two. colonel stoy, a classmate of mine from the class of 81 at west point and, served 31 years in infantry. the infantry and as a foreign area officer. he served six and a half years, some of them with me in the third infantry division. while i was headquartered in germany during the cold war. colonel starr is a former president of the of the society of the third division and served as its historian, for over ten years. and he's currently the and historian of the 15th temporary regimental association. so gentlemen very happy to have you here today. and we look forward to your presentations. we'll start with you. i believe, dr. sutton. thank you very much. i would like to thank joe craig as but in addition to everybody thanking him for the book that they have just he was my editor for the book i did on kansas and you actually came up with the title which helped sell it. so thank you so much, joe. i really appreciate it. a fellow, the name of george white anger went to school one day in in austria in october. of 1938. he went to school on a monday morning. he was into the principal's office. now, i don't know about you, but every time i was called into principal's office, it was never good. never, ever good. well, it wasn't for him either, because when he went to the principal's office in the school, the principal. you can no longer attend school. well, that was a shock. but then he was told the which because he was jewish. well, that was a shock as well because unbeknownst to him his parents had had become christian before he was born. they had they had and they were no longer jewish. but because of the situation at the time he was considered jewish, so he had a double shock. he couldn't attend school and he was jewish. eventually he and his family were able to immigrate to the united states. they settled cleveland. he eventually able to join the army and he was one person in the story that i'm going to tell you about a second man by the name of rudy pins two years earlier who lived in germany. he went to school one day and like george, he was called into the principal's office. he was told that he could not go on a field trip from, his school. and the reason was because he was jewish. no, he knew he was jewish. he knew that he and his were the only jewish family in the small town that they lived in in germany. but before that time, he really didn't think anything was there's really anything different with being jewish this town because all of his friends were not jewish. he had friends that were just the as anybody else but he began to realize that things were different. his parents found that there was a program in the united states that allowed jewish children to emigrate if they had either family or foster families to take care of them. they had to be under 16 years old. there were about a thousand who were part of this program and they sent him to the united states. he also went to cleveland, was with a foster family there. his family, like many jewish families in austria and germany at this time, they this was perfectly fine to send their children to the united states because. they thought hitler was an aberration. at some point, be voted out of office. everything will be fine. we'll all have a big happy family again. well, of course, that wasn't the case. these two men were part of a group of 65 former veterans that we in the national park service were able to interview. 2006 and 2007, and they were all stationed at a place near here. it was called post office 1142. now, of course they weren't all in a post office box, but that became the code name for hunt, which is if you're familiar with the washington, d.c. area, alexandria and mount vernon on the george parkway. now, the park service actually owned and managed fort hunt before war two. the army took over during world war two, and then it became a park afterwards. and for for many, many, many years, literally about the middle 2000, five or six, we not know in the park service really the history of what had happened at fort hunt. we knew that there was it was a coast artillery that was built around 1900. in fact, the gun placements there makes it very obvious that it was a coast artillery fort, but we didn't really know happened there during world war two. we were beginning to find out as documents were declassified, beginning to find out what happened there. and we that there was this top secret operation took place there. we that there were still some veterans that were alive, but they were all had been sworn to secrecy. and the first one that we interviewed, a fellow by, the name of fred michel, who was in kentucky he was very reluctant to say anything. so we had to show him some of actual interviews that he had done his name on them before he would talk and. this was true of most of the folks that were there. well, what we found was this story that place at fort hunt during world war two, there three programs that functioned there. one was called i'm not military was not military. so i have to be a little careful when i start using military acronyms. wasn't very good with them. even in the park service on my best days, i could barely tell you what nps stood for, but anyway, that one program was my dash. and what this was a program they they interrogated the highest level or highest nazi prisoners. about 3500 went through fort hunt during war two. they were interrogated sometimes more than once generally they could most most of the fellows who did these interrogations could tell within a few minutes whether they have value or not. another part of the program was surveillance or eavesdropping on all the conversations that took place. the fort. so they would have hidden microphones in their quarters around the fort. one of the things that was very helpful for for this and for this program eavesdropping is they would recruit military german military folks who were unhappy with hitler. they agreed to be stool pigeons. so they would they would draw out information from these veterans in their in some of their cells another was called mers, which military intelligence section. and that was section that that translated and captured german documents is one of the things that came out of this program was, what was called the red book. it was called the red book because had a red cover, but it was the of battle of the german army. now, apparently, we have to explain to you what that meant but it essentially was a compendium of all the different german organizations to the division level, the the volume that published in 1944 could possibly have been one of the most valuable things that was used for d-day, because it told all the different organizations that were in in germany or excuse me, in france and belgium, the time of d-day, the thing that was useful for this, for the irs, by the way, one of the one of the soldiers who was stationed said that he saw that every time a german it was documented. one of the things that came that that was discovered was that germans had to carry a card with them when they were when they visited a brothel. now the germans had official brothels that were part of the part the program for soldiers, but they were required to carry a card, told where they had been and, who they had been with. and of course, the reason was to determine whether it was bad or not. so became useful for interrogating soldiers. let's say one of them was married, had a girlfriend, had a mother that they didn't want to know that they'd gone to a brothel. well, of course they felt guilty and were willing to talk about it or in other instances they said, well, they know so much about us anyway. we might as well just tell them everything we know. well, one thing that was very very important about these two programs, especially interrogation program, was that the that we interviewed the park service, the 65 soldiers we interviewed made it absolutely clear that they never, ever tortured, used any corporal punishment, any of the soldiers. now, that said, they have some ways to get them to talk right. one of them, the part of the best one was there were two russian american soldiers at fort hunt. there were dressed up in red army uniforms. so say a german didn't want to talk maybe some radical nazi didn't want talk. so the thing be the soldier they'd call into one of these russian american soldiers you don't want to talk to us. how about if we have i have been here take you to the soviet union. maybe they would to hear what you have to say. and that worked remarkably well. there was another program and i won't spend time talking about it, but there was another program my dash x, which was and evasion. then they developed kits for four pilots so that they were shot down. they would have means of escaping. and the other thing was that they had if if they were captured, sent to p.o.w. camps, they set up a cryptology communication system so that from fort hunt, they could communicate with at least one person in every p.o.w. camp, and then they would send care and the care packages include transmitters were in baseballs, transmitters that were in cribbage boards, maps that in monopoly boards, money that was in the mail, monopoly boards, a tremendously successful program. but this was this was a story that could have very, very been lost to the dustbin of history had we not stumbled onto a soldier who had been there during world war two, who was willing to tell us his story. thank you so much. so good afternoon. well, my book is on is home run escape, invasion and world war two. and the title kind of says broadly what it's about. but before i before i talk about the book, i at next slide please i like to say, you know, i'm indebted to a lot of people but i'm also indebted to god just for being i mean, i've done i've been i've been so close to being a darwin award winner so many times that, you know, it's just it's just amazing to me that i'm but you know, dr. taguchi is my boss, told me about about the program and then joe craig again. i came kudos for the man because he to be along and i'm sure i aggravated the daylights out of him but still it was a wonderful experience working with joe and i'm i'm hoping to do a few more, few other books. my wife of, 48 years, she's put up with me, encouraged me and, you know, kind of pushed me along at times when i was sort of i don't know if, i'm going to do this. she was like, yeah, you are. so i did it, you know. and general cleveland wrote wrote a foreword for the book. it was really, really kind of him. general cho reviewed it. and then i have a number of people that made sure that i didn't put any current tips in there, you know, tactics, techniques and procedures so that i could get my published and that was paul tompkins and rex dodson, the the paul jacobs meyer. he works for the prep hub security review. great guy. he he reviewed my book taught at west point as a taught history at west point and he said you know, i learned a lot from your book and i was it was probably one of the best complements i have. i still have the email that he sent me and then colonel leonard gaddis dinner reviewed the book was very exacting in an editorial changes and so forth and. finally the team at case me they did a great job and they and they deserve all praise really. okay next slide please that's the outline the book i kind of went to sort of a soup to nuts a treatment you know the first thing of course i talk about was gi just introduced generally, but the the try to get people the into the mindset of world war two you know because we're in a 90 you know 2022 mindset and kind of hopefully get us to understanding them on their terms not our terms and it talk a little bit about escape escape most of the escape devices that were made were originated in the mind of a guy named clayton hutton who was and he was at an absolute genius. we our our m i am i as which was the american version of the escape organization and i nine was the british they proceeded us they gave us a they gave us a lot of guidance but you know we also kind of cut our own swath to because our methods of production were different than the british methods of production. so we kind of had to wing it. you where they made records a certain way so they knew to put stuff in records so that record could be broken apart and you'd get a map out of or you get something, know, paper or documents ours. we made them different way so we had to insert the stuff different, but we overcame those and we worked together. i, you know, i talk about the escape lines each. it was kind of hard to pick, you know, a, a pick, a line and say, okay, this is the one i'm going to use for europe or this we use for asia. so i picked several, but i couldn't do justice to all the lines because there were a of lines that operated in in both europe and particular in europe and in asia. finally, i went ahead i talked a little bit about you know i have a couple examples of different escapes that were like area naive. for example when he escaped from colditz castle with a lieutenant tony luton out of they made their home run to switzerland and then eventually had to go from switzerland and through france. then spain then to gibraltar and then home. so they, they had a bit of a of a job but they, but they did did, you know, they, they were creatures of the time. you know, they, they didn't really see it as, as that big of deal. i know that, that sounds may sound odd to some people, but the the when you you know, when i read when i would read like transcripts, interviews with them and stuff like that there's no pretension, no, hey, look at me kind of stuff. it just very matter of fact. yeah, we did this, did that. and there were also pretty merciless about their about their failings when they, when they would screw up, particularly airey neave. he was very, very, almost brutal about himself and finally, i talk a little bit about liberation. and finally the conclusion, you know, hey what happened to most these? how did they how did they end up their lives? and it's kind of interesting because it kind of runs the board the next slide. every you know, every presentation's to have some statistics in it. but the bottom line was they were all, you know, around 35,000 that were return to duty by escape lines and or by people just winging out on their own. so it was a significant contribution to the war effort. as a matter of fact, when during during the war, oh, from about 40 to 1 was if you were shot down in in france holland, belgium or luxembourg, you had a 50% chance of being repaid. now, sometimes you take couple of months, but you're chances of getting out were pretty good. and that was a big you know, when you consider the losses bomber command and the eighth air force were taking, the fact that you had a very good chance of making it home, that was that was big deal. that was a big deal. a morale booster. so next slide, please. and the one liner we'll talk about just because i thought i had to talk, at least one was the comet line, because comet line was really kind of a kind of sewage generis. i mean, it was it's really its own. it it was a belgian line. it was totally the belgians ran it. the belgians manned it. they had some help from my nine, but they administered the line purity. they there were no question about that. the, the a lady andre de jong who was called she was she a 23 year old nurse. and she decided, hey, i want to do something for the allied war effort. so she took a a private who was in belgium and three guys who want to do a fight for the allied cause and started the line she went from to from from brussels to and then she to paris, then down to anglais and in near biarritz, across the border to san sebastian and delivered her first goods and the and the guy who is the the british consul at the time didn't know what to do with he was kind of but he said, know i'm going to take a shot. i'm going to take a chance. he gave her some money. he said, bring me back some and she did. and she kept doing that till 1943. she over 23 trips, round trips carrying up escape routes that evaders that they and for which were children, you know, infants and when she when she was finally taken by the gestapo because of a a traitor, several people stepped in. but the person who really shown the most and eventually as control the line was elvira and her nickname was time to go and, go. and she returned go because her dog was named gogo and had died so one of the password cards in the line early on was gogo and mort. you know, go, who's dead? so she became aunt go and she was brilliant. she was absolutely brilliant one of the first things she did was become a boy black market specialist to only the high gestapo right security police and so forth. those were the only people she dealt with the top echelon. she them the best goods at bargain prices. and any time she was stopped or even questioned suddenly, whoever it was that that happened to commit that mistake rode a rocket and sometimes to the eastern front because after all, dealing in in black market goods, even for those senior people, was a crime. but she had ensnared enough of them that she was pretty well proof her husband worked at the comment on tour and he was a real interesting because fernand happened to purloin enough forms to over 300 evaders have absolutely authentic document to include the stamps so he he had a he had a full service organization going there and the bottom line it from may 1940 till september 44 they operated the line and out over 800 of evaders and escapes and that's a that's a pretty darn good record particularly with the homegrown organization it was absolutely belgian from start to finish and i would also point out i did a typo on here. there was a and 56 members of the of the organization executed. but no matter how many times someone got got got the chop as, our british friends would say someone would up and resist, you know, the face of all terror and the reason why i wanted to pick above all the comment line to talk about a little today. all right. and other than that, i i think that we're doing question at the end. yes. okay. well, then, good. i thank you. and. you have to end everyone. thank you for coming today. i certainly appreciate it. my name is david dworak. a few years ago, i was in sicily on a staff ride and we're talking about the mediterranean. and i thought, you know, this is really phenomenal stuff. i wish more people knew about it. and being a logistician, i realize is looking around for some resource materials there. there isn't a lot to talk about out there. so said, maybe this is an opportunity at least to enlighten us a little bit. not just about the importance of logistics and campaign planning, but what happened in that training campaign is a fact, on the rest of northwest europe, and i thought more about it. you know, we talk about a theater of war and its importance and its how it plays a role in campaigning. and i realize there's an analogy here to just a regular theater. so if you go down to broadway right theaters we always focus on the people out front, don't we, the actors. we're seeing hamilton and all of that. but what about all those people behind the stage that made it happen? you doing the scripting, the lighting, the sets, all of that. we never talk about them, but without them that, production is really never possible. next slide, please. any amateur can shove tanks, planes and, infantry around on a map. the real business of war is gas, ammunition and spare parts to people. when need them and where they need them. that quote is from general emile smith, the ten year old beetle smith, who was eisenhower's chief of staff, served with eisenhower through the military campaign in up to northwest europe. it's interesting, if you think about that quote and what it means, even today's contemporary situation, how important that remains even today. just a quick setting, i think not only importance of reflecting on what was back there in the 1940s in the mediterranee. ian, but also relevance even today. so the mediterranean is a phenomenal story really. i would argue the and u.s. military first adventure if you will our experience and expeditionary warfare. in the modern era we have mechanized forces. we have aircraft now we're going to an austere environment a long way away with no set in place. we've never really that before. some would argue world war one. that's not true. where we got to when we got to france. the theater was already set in it. even the first world war with the american expeditionary. if the war hadn't ended when it did, the probably would have failed within a matter of months because its lack of logistic support. so this is really our first experience in trying to do this at the at the upper tier levels. so it's the story to the mediterranean of us know we go into north of operation torch and then we continue the flow, if you will, of establishing the theater through sicily and to italy and then into southern france, eventually driving up a southern line of communication that will marry up with the northwest europe operation as we go through and finish out. the war was intriguing story. next slide, please. that is really about learning, i would argue, on a phenomenal scale. so it's a series of productions. we start off africa that it's an amazing story in that the actual invasion on november 8th of 1942. the military is beginning three months to plan the invasion by the president. so after roosevelt makes decision, yes, we're going in. we're going into north africa. we can't even imagine planning another major operation day. and that amount of time is. incredible story. they're as successful as they are, but it's also amazing how close we really came to in north africa. it's a little bit hard to see the pictures up there, but on the beach this is a picture of the landings and the western task force along the atlantic ocean. atlantic ocean normally is known for very high sea states, very treacherous landings on that day of november 8th, the atlantic is like a bathtub and yet even though it's as flat as can be the western task force due to a lack of experi and the quality of equipment loses, the majority loses or wrecks the majority. the landing craft in that operation and people who read the book tell me there's no way you've got the numbers wrong. no, the actual numbers come out of the the report of operations from the the people went through it of 300 some landing craft. we damage over 200 of again at landing in a sea state that should have been very to accomplish. so have a lot of learning to go is as we learn in north africa there's an individual there tom larkin. most people probably never heard of him. he's one of the true story, one true heroes, i would argue, of the mediterranean. he was a services of supply to star. he's initially with the center task force who initially ultimately will become responsible for the whole support effort for the mediterranean across north africa and the leading off through the rest of the campaigns. but we've never heard him because he's a very humble person to begin with. never kept a diary, released it. but one of the reasons he's so successful, it is not egotistical and flamboyant like some of his counterparts, he's just very, very capable, a very personable is able to get the job done. and then we learned throughout north africa is a technical side to warfare as. you'll see a. picture there we have an issue of there's a lack of transportation in if you will we just don't have enough ships to get the equipment we need to where we need them. we never had that problem today. right. yeah. so we have issues with transportation. there's not enough protection to escorts to protect them. so we have to. well, first of all, the landing nation is going to reduce by the number of truck transports by 50%. so it's going to cost some issues that eisenhower is going to have to deal with. secondly, we we had this problem of how do we now we get all this equipment to the theater, we really need it. so we get innovative and. we start what's called a tough sell program, a ten unit pack in a single unit pack. we realized if we don't ship vehicles assembled instead we break them down into a series containers they're never really been assembled, just a four or five crates with parts. we send to theater, we can save 60% of our shipping space. so why don't we do that? that's great. so in this show, we ship, all these cases of material to a austere environment north, africa. now what you have to do with it, it's easy. you just got to put them together. so the army very quickly will have they'll establish a manufacturing capability of over a million square feet and a muddy desert using just really elementary tools to assemble these vehicles. their goal is to get a build up to a capacity of 100 vehicles per day at top production, they're producing 143 vehicles per day, assembling. and they expand that, not to just include trucks, but locomotives as well. it's a story that we never hear, but it's really essential to giving the combat commanders the capability they need to pursue operate their operations, which is what this is really all about. so we learn from north africa. we realizing we had a few things we have to get better. so we move now into sicily. sicily is going to be the 9th of july, 1943. so we're wrapping up operation north africa, getting ready for another major operation in sicily. now, while we're continue to think about we're continuing combat operations, we have to pull units back, bring in the units embarked and get them ready for cease storage, which means now have to get them waterproofed and all that with the equipment because you just don't load equipment on a boat expected to be serviceable when get there as sicily is again where we see that army is beginning to learn and this is now organizational change. we had no specialized beach units, engineer beach units which are formed to take control of the beaches and hopefully resolve some of the mess themselves. north africa and resolve for sicily. this is a it's a source of. change in doctrine is a change in organization it's a change in prioritization for the theater. critically important? unfortunately it's a great idea. not successfully out because we still don't know exactly what we're in sicily. ultimately, it becomes a good idea that we're going continue to build on for north africa or sorry, four for italy. the other story about sicily, though, is if you flip it around to the german side, one of the true successes of the war for the axis is the evacuation of sicily and how effectively they're able to do it in a very short amount of time. tremendous numbers of people and equipment are able to across the strait of massena essentially opposed by our side for for a number of reasons. but it's learning on both sides as we go along. well, not also have now in sicily new equipment's called duke these are the amphibious. if you go up to the wisconsin or somewhere in the u.s., you can still see these things in operation right there floating around doing their thing. this is the army, again, being innovative, a material standpoint, producing materials of war. and we got the doctrine quite straight on it. yet, but we're putting them in to use in a very imaginative way. and they're now making a difference on these beaches. and we're going to learn from this. our next operation is going to be in italy. that's ninth, the september in 43, where we taking now these new units, this new doctrine, these new pieces of equipment, and then from top to bottom, our experience and putting it to work. so when we go into italy, what we don't see is a lot of the same problems we saw earlier in the mediterranean. what we see now is much more effective operation beach landings moving onward, establishing the theater for logisticians now, it's almost recurring day to day business. there's expanding the theater as we go along. italy is a story about ports and maintenance, the access, because especially the germans become very adept at sinking ships into ports, ruining the keys. now the allies have to go in and fix it all. we have to go in and all the railways that the germans are ruining, they go along. there's a story of operations that we continue to have to i'm afraid we have to learn again here in the future. but how ineffective motorized equipment is in mountains? you on human effort and mules animals such as that we saw in a gas tank just four years ago. it's a story about is really interesting about limitations of equipment with landing ship tanks. let's so there's only a certain number of cities that are available in the whole. you think about this point in war who looking for these things everybody they name in the pacific they need them in europe they need them in europe. ultimately the or the management of cities is going to fall upon to create to keep people winston churchill and franklin delano roosevelt. they were going to personally match think about the heads of government or individual allies the allocations across the theaters. they will later write history will never believe that this is a problem that's coming us for resolution. but it is. finally, we're going to move our and so in france is now going to be august of 44. normandy has already happened. but now what we have is a subtle line of communication. and when you do the numbers you realize that what itis eisenhower is trying to accomplish with his landings, normandy and his move now into germany, he physically cannot get the number of and the amount of material through that northern line of communications. he has to augment it somewhere. this is a saw line of communication so it's a story. just to wrap it up very quickly about how we we grow as an army, as a military, i think our industrial grows as well to i and i finish up the book just talking a little bit about some of our underrepresented population, which are really interesting. a lot of people know this but in the 1940 9.8% of our population was black. of the american army, 28% of our service forces were black and 43% of the quartermaster corps was black, whereas just a portion disproportionate in the infantry, in the combat forces. so we find is there's and so people ask me, you know, did i write this book? if you look at the cover, you're not going to see journal, eisenhower, general patton on here. what you see are privates and sergeants doing the business of war loading vehicles they're not tanks and artillery men tacked on here is a picture of a case of tomato juice that they're getting ready to load. but a number of these are people of color and these are the really people who who are doing the business of war and including this dentist, people of color. we now have women being introduced into our combat as well to not just military, but combat. there's an interesting little story about. there's a detachment of white of women that are coming in to to serve at the theater level they had their ship is torpedoed off the atlantic coast. and they have to be and lose all their uniforms and journal marshal is visiting them on as well as theaters to north africa. he finds that they're wearing clothes and they don't have replacement uniforms. he said, well, why don't we give you some replacement uniforms? because it's not allowed by regulation. so marshall, out of his own pocket, buys replacement uniforms for women. but as this is how far our experience with with women in the military has gone, well, we see there is a growing usefulness and a growing need for them all through the operations. and by the time get in italy, they're a part of the operation far forward as the army. so it's it's a very amazing story. i hope you get a chance to read at some point. i think success for this book is not by you to how many copies sells. next slide, please. but more or less, do we still understand the value of force design? do we understand the value of a systems thinking approach for what it means for army and for our military in supporting forces? and do we have really an appreciation how we allocate talent across all of our force? thank you very much. good afternoon. i'm tim storey and my subject is iron mike o'daniel. he was a survey 40 years from the mexican border in 1916 until the beginnings of. our work in vietnam in 1956. why iron, mike? why, why? why choose iron mike? i mean, he's long gone. he was just a division commander, world war two. well, he was an example, a relentlessly aggressive combat commander as a division. he never gave the enemy any rest. but why did i choose him? i mean, there are a lot of other really aggressive out there. well i as sean mentioned, i six and a half years in the third infantry division, and if you've been in the third infantry division, you've heard of mike or daniel along with lucian truscott, a terrible tandem to follow the troops. they loved them both, but they really put them through their paces. before i begin my presentation, i'd like to thank my wife, monica, who, if it weren't for her, i'd still be doing the research and never have gotten the darn book written. so thanks. keeping my nose to the grindstone, sweetheart, along with joe and ausa. i'd like to thank my publisher, case-mate who chose to publish this great book. and then also joe's predecessor, sir, as the book program manager, dr. roger cirillo, who gave me the courage to actually approach ausa to see if they would be in my book. and then i'd like to congratulate fellow authors. i think this is a tremendous honor to be chosen by. ausa to have our books in your program for our army. so thank you, joe thank you. general brown. wherever you are. and i also like to thank the third id, world war two veterans that we my wife and i have met and dealt with the mid 1990s when we served with the third i.d. and sean mcfarland. these guys, most of them came sort of the 1944 timeframe. so division commander was general o'daniel and it was their stories this this incredibly you could call them a character caricature of general, you know, always on push the talk. boom, boom, boom. but they loved him. and so this book is my attempt to tell his story. i hope you're going to like it. next slide, please. now, this book is also the story of the united states army from world war until the mid 1950s. and there tremendous stories in there that have been lost over time, stories that had nothing to do with war fighting, but with training, taking care of soldiers and doing armies. armies do. so daniel started as a militiaman in the delaware militia in 1914, 1916, it became the national guard federalized and sent his delaware battalion, sent new mexico or to mexico to the mexican border in new mexico. he sat there for months doing all those things, missed a full semester of college and never got his degree because by the he got back, he finished one semester and was chosen to go to the officer training camp at fort myer, virginia, to train, which was meant to train 5000 officers to be the future officer corps of our mobilized army. his great good fortune. the thing that had the biggest impact on career was that his first company commander, united states army, was lieutenant mark wayne clark, the 11th infantry regiment at time stationed at fort oglethorpe georgia. they deployed world war one, fought in france. clark was wounded and on the same in the saint meal offensive or three day offensive as the first combined offensive by the united army in world war one. iron mike was the acting company commander of k company leading it shot through face led the company he passed out from loss of blood and he received the dsc. that was sort of the launch of his career. he was chosen this is interesting. few people know this. we didn't always have an old guard. we needed a ceremony a whole regiment to do all those victory parades in europe. well, the third army provisional regiment was put together by hand-selected people nominated by their chain of command for their outstanding performance. and he was one of the company commanders. so for months, he traveled europe with john j. pershing and i think he got a lot of pershing's aggressive spirit, the spirit of the bayonet, which why sharpen the bayonets is the title of the book. because that was his motto his attempt to infuse the aggressive spirit fighting spirit into soldiers. then he had a fairly army career advisor training with the national guard commander's course. pretty interesting command out as the detachment commander of fort shafter in hawaii. uh, then 1933 tdy with the gold star mothers, which brought mothers and other female relatives close to the fallen in france, back to france to visit the graves. and for him it was particularly meaningful because his brother died in 1918. in july as a pilot in france and was buried there. and he escorted his aunts because his mother had already passed away, spent significant time with the triple c, which for him was a great though he was not renowned on in his army career as an administrator. he was a great organizer and he helped the camps in his area, spent a tour as a professor of military science and tactics. like many of the senior officers in world war two such as sandy patch and then went to fort leavenworth right before the war. graduated with a comment. general mcnair not suited for military education due to deficiency which would have been a death knell. a career had war two not happened but world war two did happen. and that's where iron mike made his bread and butter. so next slide, please. first, 1930 941 at camp brady, michigan, for his army command area instructor, civilian military training camp to turn civilians into army officers. lots of experience, especially from his world war one. when you read book, which i hope you will, you'll find out it was all negative learning. he found out what not to do. and he did it right in world war two, beginning of the war right before war started, he commanded the second of the 24th infantry, the command with black troops. he was accompanying commander nogales before, and then he went to work for walter kruger, third army commander, who had a determining influence on the of his career. he commanded the junior training center for third army, which basically at that time functioned like what we would have four force common trade off today training all the troops go be sent out to all the units at that when he completed that mark clark reached out and grabbed him because they were just establishing the eto under eisenhower was his corps commander of two corps in charge of training and he grabbed o'daniel to be the amphibious training center commander, worked closely. the british learned a lot from their techniques and procedures and, set up that training. his reward regimental command in the 34th division of the 168. he had the command for two months long enough to take it through torch and do very well and taking algiers in algeria promoted in december of 19 4042. he was 591 on a list of 592 and seniority of brigadier generals in the army. but as soon they got pinned on general clark, grabbed them again, established the fifth army training center, which all the troops for sicily and italy then was partially because he was an expert help the various divisions helped third division go into sicily, operating the beachhead. then in september he worked for general fred walker, taking the 36th in and helped organize that rather chaotic beachhead as the as the germans counter-attacked and then finally was assigned as the assistant division commander to general trust up to truscott for the last fighting in italy before the division pulled out, per franco, and then in oslo, once general lucas removed truscott promoted, he command of the third division, he fought it through. the breakthrough at anzio up into rome. and then they were pulled out to prepare for southern france. the rest is history that much you know most of this parallels with colonel dwyer think because those were the theaters that we learned logistics and it's also we learned amphibious operations he went successfully through the the combat fighting and next slide. please 1945 commanding general fort benning, the man chosen by general marshall, general eisenhower, who was successor as the chief of staff to get the combat lessons of the infantry and build the new infantry with those lessons, looking into the future that they could foresee at that time. and then a really cool assignment. interesting one, because he was not a diplomat. military out of shame in moscow, the cold war began to heat up his notes, hurt the heck, got daily notes of what he did in there. great insights, short working for clark again as the inspector of infantry. uh, at army field forces and in 5152 commanded i corps korea at that transitionary stage between the active combat and the stalemate had along the dmz had a great command there worked very well. general van fleet uh, from 1952 to 1954, he was commanding general u.s. army, pacific. during that time, general radford, who was the pay com commander, said, hey, you need to go check what the french are doing over in indo-china. we're worried. we need you to light a fire underneath general navarre because they're losing and we need to keep indo china free. and one of the cool lessons i learned in the research was why did we care about indochina in the first place? it's because all the raw materials that were being used to rebuild the japanese economy, which was the linchpin of our asian strategic plan for the defense of asia we needed a free basically vietnam. so that's why we were involved in vietnam in the first place. so we went looked at it and says, yeah, we, the french can do this. we need to keep helping them. finally, the french failed, but we decided to take over the mission because even the secretary of state said this is our number one priority in asia assigned as the m&g vietnam chief. he's the one who came up with the initial proposal further south vietnamese army structure and why it was structured way and then was involved in the evacuation of 750,000 north vietnamese refugees out of north vietnam as part of the geneva agreement with, the french completed his service in late 1955 retired in 1956, became the president, the american friends of vietnam, an organization probably very few had ever heard of was a lobby group that was established to basically lobby congress for funds to fund them regime in vietnam did that job for seven years, resigned shortly before end assassination primarily he disagreed with us government policy was basically cutting generals. i mean president zim luce 63 to 75 wrote a lot conservative articles in. publications and in 75 he passed away shortly before fall of saigon, which for him would have been a blessing. he would have been apoplectic. next slide. the great thing the case may did is accepted. all my pictures i have over 100 pictures in my book. i mean, that's rare. i thought they're going to make me cut about 90 of them out. i'm very happy they did. and found some really interesting pictures. of course, the one on the left there is sergeant o'daniel on the border in 1916. and then as a newly promoted temporary in grade captain while he was working the provisional regiment with his nice distinguished service cross and his prodigal. the next slide, this is his company and 2 to 4 in nogales, arizona. one of the great regrets is in any of the papers i have no commentary that he made on with black troops. but understand general o'daniel, as i did from the research, he couldn't care what color they were. he trained their -- off and expect nothing but the highest and he would have achieved it and in his report card show next slide please. then here you have him with general kruger, a third army, and then he's in charge of algeria running the center for general clark and king george the sixth. next slide. and this is him in front, the division colors where they received the fuhrer's air croix together from the french government for battle of comber pocket. and he himself received the french legion of honor. next slide. and although general daniels not in this he was instrumental in the third division. third division liberated hitler's compound on the saltsburg and the and the eagle's not the one or first. even general taylor admits in his in his in his memoirs this is a picture of them raising the flag over. what was hitler's compound on the morning of 5th may 1945? next slide, please. and then there's just a plug for the third division. since i'm a third division man, i'm wearing their tie. but the third i mean, iron mike's career was pretty much parallel to almost those red lines. next slide, please. and then i wouldn't have wanted to be the third division commander in eye corps in korea, because that was that, the apple of iron mike's. i luckily though they had a series of good division commanders. he was pleased with their service and this is him visiting division after they took one of the hilltops along the dmz in the battle, the outposts, and just a little note, the guy at the bottom there, the first lieutenant, that's his aide de camp. he was a 1949 all-american tackle football team, joe steffey. i had a chance to interview him about, his boss, iron mike, and it's the book. next slide, not too many generals, the opportunity to go on inspection tours, riding elephants through swamps and, bayous. he got to do that. vietnam. next slide, please. and this is him with presents. he had a very good close relationship with presencia. every commander he ever met had every oira ever received. he is noted as being loyal to seniors and to his subordinates, and he remained loyal to president zim when most of the united states government was willing to cut him loose. and in the book, have he wrote a eulogy for publication in newspapers six pages long about what he felt about him. next slide, giving a book. he wrote a book. it's a very simple book extolling the virtues of president gm in 1960. it's called the nation that refused to starve. next slide. next to last. i think you can read yourself, but the one that i liked was from his pacom commander recommending for the navy distinguished service, where he says, in conclusion, i apologize for the length of the six page twits. i'm not a hero worshiper, but general daniels, the type of man who makes proud he is an american. mean that's pretty good. i like that. and then my final slide here is he talks biggest really got in the army was when he was promoted to corporal in new mexico 1916 after having made three star general in korea and getting all army's medals. one of his great general orders he issued in 26 september 44, after the fighting in southern france and in the vote says officers are never tired and he indication by an officer that he is tired is epidemic with the many commands. therefore that word is taboo. and then we talked to a couple, his junior officers who reported in as replacement officers that the two great quotes that we had one was my lieutenant's die like flies, but we gain ground. good luck. and the one is there are three third divisions. the one in the line, the one in the hospital and the one in the cemetery. that's iron mike, if that's a good taste of the man, i hope. you take the book. it's a really cool read. i'm not the greatest writer, but i think told a good story. and i think joe, again, for the book up in the program. thank you very much. jim. great. uh, summaries of your books, gentlemen. thanks, but unfortunate. we're out of time for public questioning. what i recommend is our are going to stay here for a while. so if you have any questions for you'll be able to come and ask them. but but you all these are fascinating books very relevant to our time as we return to large scale combat operations where we're going to have to do logistics at scale, at the theater, expeditionary logistics. we're going to have large numbers of ep or p.o.w.s behind enemy lines that we're going to have to recover and we're going to have to master art of human intelligence in to get the most out of our our our operations, and and we're going to need leaders, uh, with, uh, with backbone to to get us through the tough days are bound to happen in large scale operations like general daniel. so thanks to all of you for helping us apply the lessons of the greatest generation to today and and for all of you. thanks for attending. and please, if you have for our authors, they'll be available for them. i assume. right. okay. thank you, gentlemen. well, here on book tv, we want to introduce you to stephen kent. he has written a book called how the force can fix the world