Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 12, 1991 TAG: 9102120066
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But they'll be using the same strategies and tactics Stonewall Jackson used on the Civil War battlefields of the Shenandoah Valley.
Jackson - a quirky, obscure Virginia Military Institute professor at the outset of the war - is regarded as such a military genius that his campaigns are still studied in war colleges around the world as classic examples of how to fight a war of maneuver and surprise.
In fact, two years ago, about 30 U.S. Marine generals visited the Shenandoah Valley to study the ground of Jackson's famed Valley campaign firsthand, said Col. John W. Ripley, a former Marine trainer who now heads the Marine and Navy units at VMI.
And despite vast changes in technology - Jackson never used air strikes or parachuted men behind enemy lines - the modern-day applications of what military theorists call "Jacksonian warfare" can be seen today in the Persian Gulf war.
Allied forces lack the 3-1 advantage that conventional military theory requires for an invasion, so Pentagon war planners say they won't attack the dug-in Iraqis head-on across a broad front - as in the D-Day invasion during World War II.
Instead, U.S. officials have indicated the American forces will offset numerical disadvantage through speed and surprise - quick, heavy thrusts at selected points aimed at getting behind the Iraqis' lines, cutting them off from other units and drawing them out of their prepared positions. That's the way Jackson fought his battles.
"The Jacksonian model of maneuver is one of the great principles of warfare, the predominant example of which is the way we're fighting now," Ripley says. "The Jacksonian model is the pre-eminent military model of how aggressiveness and rapid, fast strikes remove the initiative of the enemy."
A 19th-century war where armies moved by horses and mules seems to have little in common with a modern conflict featuring M1 tanks, night-vision goggles and laser-guided missiles. But military historians consider the Civil War the first modern war; it was the first with rapid-firing rifles, a technological leap that spawned new modes of warfare.
As a result, "There are lessons from the Civil War that are still applicable," says Col. H.T. Link of the Army War College, a sort of graduate school for prospective generals, in Carlisle Barracks, Pa.
Until the Civil War, Link says, generals operated on Napoleonic doctrine, which called for mass formations and formal, almost scripted battles, based on what today would be "human wave" assaults. "That worked pretty well against a musket," Link says, "but at the time of the Civil War, the musket had improved and the artillery had improved, and it just chewed 'em up."
The result was such slaughters as Pickett's charge at Gettysburg.
It took time for Civil War generals to adapt, but, by war's end, two modern doctrines had emerged, says James "Bud" Robertson, a Virginia Tech history professor and Civil War scholar. One was William Tecumseh Sherman's concept of "total war" - that you don't make war just against an opposing army, but against the society that supports it, the way Sherman did on his infamous march through Georgia. The other was the hit-and-run attacks of Stonewall Jackson.
Jackson was not necessarily the first general to fight that way, military historians say, but his Shenandoah Valley campaign in spring 1862 epitomized essential concepts still embraced today.
Facing four Union armies that sought to clear him from the Valley, Jackson marched his weary men so fast and far they became known as the "foot cavalry." Jackson kept the Federals off-balance by popping up where least expected, scoring victories at McDowell, Cross Keys and Port Republic, and then disappearing again.
In three months, Jackson's men marched 600 miles and defeated four armies - three within a three-week span. Throughout, Jackson was outnumbered 4-1. "But without exception, when he did attack, he had numerical superiority on the field," Robertson says.
Overcoming a larger army by rapidly flanking it and concentrating on its weak spots was the essence not only of Jackson's Valley campaign but also the Confederate victory at Chancellorsville in May 1863.
It also appears to be the essence of the American plan in Kuwait.
Military historians regard Chancellorsville as a classic example of Jackson's uncanny ability to get around enemy lines and defeat a superior foe.
"Chancellorsville is the ultimate of all battle strategies," Ripley says. "It's still taught in every war college in the world. It's taught at St. Cyre in France, at Sandhurst [in Britain]. The Japanese study it. It's the ultimate example of the underdog overcoming a stronger enemy. Every single principle of war can be taught in that battle. All those principles - maneuver and lightning-fast strikes, similar to the German blitz - will be very important in a desert war."
In fact, during the 1930s, Erwin Rommel - the "Desert Fox" of the Germans' North Africa campaigns - even sent his chief of staff to the Shenandoah Valley to survey Jackson's valley campaign, Robertson says. And some historians see Jackson's cavalry attacks as the forerunner to the tank-led German blitzkrieg that overran Poland, and later France, during World War II.
In turn, a heavy emphasis on tanks to burst through enemy lines and race for a distant objective instead of fighting across a solid front has formed the model for offensive warfare ever since. That was best seen in the Israeli dash across the Sinai Peninsula during the Six-Day War in 1967 and the overnight Iraqi capture of Kuwait last August.
"The blitz is about as Jacksonian as there is. Quick movements, heavy concentrations," Robertson said.
Jay Luvaas, a civilian Civil War expert who teaches classes in national security and strategic planning at the Army War College, cautions against drawing too many parallels between Civil War battles and modern warfare.
Timeless principles can be duplicated, but not exact plans, he notes.
Nevertheless, the Civil War forms the basis for much of the study at the war college, partly because the battlefields are so near and the records of both sides are available (and in English), he says.
In his classes, students - mostly colonels and lieutenant colonels - study Civil War battles to learn leadership styles and commanders' decision-making during battle.
The North's Ulysses S. Grant is admired for his knack of making his intentions clear to subordinates, so they could improvise. The siege of Vicksburg is held up as a model of Army-Navy cooperation.
Luvaas recalls recently leading a group of Army Special Forces officers over the Gettysburg battlefield. They wanted to learn about operating in enemy territory with inadequate maps, so Luvaas designed a lesson around how Southern generals coped with that problem during their invasion of Pennsylvania in 1863.
Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general whose exploits in the Deep South rivaled Jackson's even if his fame didn't, is also studied by modern war planners.
"Hit fast, hit hard, do the unexpected," Link says, repeating Forrest's lessons. "If you look at what we're doing in the Persian Gulf, we're not doing the expected. [Defense Secretary Dick] Cheney said we will fight the war on our terms, not Saddam Hussein's, so we're still living that principle."
by CNB