Snafu: Unexpected Military Disasters in History

By Max Horlick

Shooting and being shot may seem an integral part of war, but they may not necessarily be the most essential elements of a struggle. There is always the hidden war behind the war. Veterans of wars know that in wartime, normal is not normal. Fouled up is normal. During the Second World War, these mistakes became labeled as SNAFUs.

Max Horlick, who once fought in the Battle of the Bulge, shares narratives of ten historic battles covering from 450 BCE to 1945, in which the superior forces lost and often encountered the same flaw. While leading the reader through each battle, Horlick illustrates that generals, kings, presidents, and others in charge made terrible military decisions that caused soldiers to suffer. In the Battle of the Bulge, Eisenhower did not heed intelligence. On the other hand, Custer lost at Little Big Horn because he did. Other narratives highlight additional memorable battles such as Saratoga and the American Revolution, Agincourt and Shakespeare, Napoleon in Russia, and the battle of Salamis and Xerxes.

SNAFU shares ten insightful and colorful tales of military battles, leaders, and the decisions that changed the course of history around the world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Apr 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781480860483

Max Horlick

Max Horlick received training at the secret Camp Ritchie Military Intelligence Training Center; served in the European Theater of Operations in military intelligence in France, Belgium, and Germany; and fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He earned a PhD from Columbia University in 2007, retroactive to 1954. He wrote SNAFU, his third book, at the age of 99. Max Horlick passed away in April 2018 at the age of 100 as his book went to press.

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Copyright © 2018 Max Horlick.

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This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-6049-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-6050-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-6048-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018904617

Print information available on the last page.

Archway Publishing rev. date: 4/26/2018

Is blaming Eisenhower like assaulting a sacred cow?

To Ruth Horlick - wife and army buddy

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1     Colossal SNAFU, The battle of the Bulge, 1944-1945

Chapter 2     Churchill and the Boer War, 1899-1902

Chapter 3     Custer and Little Big Horn, 1876

Chapter 4     Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854

Chapter 5     Agincourt and Shakespeare, 1415

Chapter 6     Saratoga and the American Revolution, 1777

Chapter 7     Napoleon in Russia - 1812 Closure

Chapter 8     Bannockburn and King Robert’s heart, 1440

Chapter 9     Teutoburg Forest and the Dual Hero, 9 CE

Chapter 10   Battle of Salamis and Xerxes, 480 BCE

Sources and Comments

PREFACE

Our convoy of 40 US Army jeeps was wending its way through England on the second day of what would normally be a four-hour trip. We pulled up to a brick wall for a relief break. The second time at the same wall that same morning. Because we were blundering around western England was something necessarily wrong? Not at all. This was wartime and confusion was normal. In this author’s personal WWII observations very little ever went right. And yet we won the war.

Veterans of past, present and future wars know that in wartime normal is not normal. Fouled up is normal. During a war, things inevitably turn the wrong way. Things get temporarily lost. The ultimate expression of this concept emerged in WWII when possibly the most popular army slang expression of this truism was the term SNAFU (Situation Normal All Fouled Up). Centuries earlier, Scottish poet Robert Burns had understood and expressed the frustration as The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft a-gley.

Amos, a character on the Amos and Andy radio and television show of the 1930s and 1940s used to declare: There’s Always Sumpin.

Fouled up means that the generals receive credit or blame. The troops, to use another WWII expression, are always the ones screwed.

The English Dictionary lamely describes the term SNAFU as originally US military slang with a first quotation from 1941. It neglects to say that the world, especially the military world, needed such a verbal outlet for its mood.

INTRODUCTION

Shooting and being shot may seem an integral part of war, but are they the most essential elements of a struggle? Not necessarily. There is always the hidden war behind the war.

Wars have been the standard way to settle a dispute virtually since the beginning of what is known as civilization. The earliest pictographs of armies at war come from the ancient, middle east kingdom of Kish, dated to about 3500 BCE (before the common era). Jericho, which along with Uruk (known for its ruler Gilgamesh), has a claim to the title of the world’s oldest city, has provided archaeologists with solid evidence that a fortified city stood on the site before 7000 BCE. Then much more recently were the Peloponnesian Wars between the Greek city-states in the fifth century BCE, the Punic Wars of Rome in the second and third centuries BCE, the Hundred Years’ War of Western Europe between 1337 and 1453, and the thousand-year conflict of the Sunnis and Shiites. In each war, there were winners and losers. In each there were good guys and bad guys, depending on which side won in the end and survived to tell the tale.

And playing out these wars have been kings and generals, usually remembered by how they won or were beaten. Perhaps the most noteworthy exception to the traditional emphasis on violent conquest was the unique example Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus, named the Cunctator, or the delayer. His tactic was to wear the enemy down by stalling and basically doing nothing. Eventually the enemy would give up or leave. Fabius Maximus waged a war of slow attrition, avoiding direct engagement whenever possible. Fabianism or Fabian strategy has come to mean a gradual or cautious policy, adopted by political leaders up to our own time.

So, one side usually wins and one side usually loses. Is it always the strongest? The most virtuous? History has given a variety of answers to this question over the ages. In ancient times, in epics such as the Iliad, it is the gods who intervene and decide. According to the Iliad, the Trojan War began when Paris, Prince of Troy was awarded Helen, the wife of Menelaus the King of Sparta, and the most beautiful woman in the world. He had been chosen to be the judge in a beauty contest between goddesses. Frustrated, husband Menelaus sent armies to attack Troy to get Helen back. The gods took sides in the conflict and cast the deciding vote. As described in perhaps the most famous war story ever, the Iliad, the Greeks triumphed and made off with the captured Trojan women as their prize. The fate met by these women was subsequently commemorated in European literature for centuries.

The snatching of Helen of Troy may seem like a flimsy pretext for starting the 20-years war celebrated in the Iliad, but history illustrates that there have been even flimsier pretexts. Remember the Maine? Remember the Lusitania? Remember the Alamo?

The SNAFU factor? The Trojan horse was the trick the Greeks used to sneak through the impenetrable walls of Troy. It will be recalled that the Greeks built a huge horse and filled it with warriors. The Trojans were curious about it and pulled it within their wall, with disastrous results.

Wars and war heroes have always been worshipped, especially when knighthood was in flower. The tales of the King Arthur of the Round Table, have always inflamed the imaginations of school children and adults. There was at least one exception however. In the Middle Ages when chivalry was glorified and when knights were bold, a French song-story writer wisely and anonymously dared to mock fighting in a story called Aucassin et Nicolette. The plot, which is secondary here, concerns a battle in which the foes hurled food at one another instead of weapons.

"Store of cheeses fresh and fair,

Wild crab-apples roasted through,

And great meadow mushrooms too.

He who troubles best the fords,

Is proclaimed their lord of lords.

Aucassin, the noble knight,

Began to watch them at their fight,

And laughed outright."

A seemingly subversive tale for that era, an insult to Camelot? Then at the end of the age of chivalry there was Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

In history, large, well-trained, well-equipped, very successful armies were beaten by much lesser foes. Statistically they had 100% chance of winning and yet did not. The 100% expectation did not take into account the SNAFU factor.

SNAFU situations are very serious, yet the first reaction to the word is usually laughter at the expression and the idea. A veteran will usually recall his own wartime experiences, particularly when all did not always go well. However, actual events are usually complex and SNAFU may have different implications for generals who are responsible for the planning and directing, as for the troops who are the casualties. For us troops, it may be the little things rather than grand strategy that matter, aside from survival of course.

So what, if any, is the common thread to be found in the ten examples presented here? Is there a common thread? Is there a lesson to be learned? Is it that you are condemned to repeat history if you do not pay attention to it?

The ten episodes cover a long period of man’s past, going chronologically from 450 BCE to 1945 CE (common era). Geographically they involve a significant portion of the civilized world.

Of the ten examples presented here, most occurred as just one episode in a string of battles or of wars. There is no indication that each unfortunate experience provided a lesson which should have avoided the next event.

Did the great hero General Eisenhower and the villain Custer encounter the same flaw? Yes, and it was intelligence. The former did not trust the information he received and the latter trusted it too much.

In several instances, the arrogance of the commanders blinded them to the realities of the impending situation. In the one example, young Winston Churchill’s warning of a poor decision was ignored by snobbish superiors.

Then there was the performance of weapons in very poor weather. In the clash between the French and the British at Agincourt they did perform. In the clash between the Romans and the Germanic tribes they did not.

Logistics is an unglamorous aspect of war. Yet that is one of the factors that brought down arguably the greatest general ever, Napoleon, in his Russian campaign.

Some combats were so SNAFU that they were doomed in advance to a tragic ending; The Charge of the Light Brigade, and the British at Ticonderoga, for example.

The Battle of Bannockburn between the Scots and the English involved just about all of the elements of potential failure.

So what lessons can be drawn from these historic blunders? To