Stephen A. Bourque

Published more than a decade after Operation Desert Storm, Stephen Bourque's book is a more detailed look at the conflict told at the Army corps level. Written under the auspices of the U.S. Army's military history organization, the Center for Military History, this book sets a different tone when compared with earlier CMH efforts released within the first five years after the war. The author was a field grade officer assigned to the 1st Infantry Division (a major unit in VII Corps) G-3 shop during Desert Storm, so he personally experienced the events described in this book.

The 514-page book contains 22 chapters, three appendices, and bibliographic notes. It is well provided with clear maps, charts and many b/w photos. There are endnotes provided at the end of each chapter. The first chapter dives into the history of the Army's VII corps and ends with a description of the organization's senior leaders in August 1990. From Chapter Two onward, the author explores the impact of Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm on VII Corps in chronological order.

While the earlier CMH publications on Operation Desert Storm pointedly avoided political controversies, Bourque's work tackles them headlong. The relationships among the senior Army leaders within U.S. Central Command, Third Army, VII Corps, and XVIII Airborne Corps were among the more controversial aspects of Desert Storm, and Bourque details those issues as they impacted VII Corps. The author extensively cites CENTCOM Commander in Chief General H. Norman Schwarzkopf autobiography, "It Doesn't Take A Hero", lambasting VII Corps commander Lieutenant General Frederick Franks on the performance of his command during the very brief ground combat phase of Desert Storm. Bourque, in turn, uses numerous sources to document the fact that both Schwarzkopf and Third Army commander Lieutenant General John Yeosock were both out of touch with their troops due to the placement of their headquarters and their unwillingness or inability to visit their subordinates to get the real situation on the ground. Desert Storm's ending was messy, and personality issues combined with ignorance of the ground truth led to a imperfect end to the conflict that postponed another contest for twelve years.

I am impressed with the author's professional courage and integrity in researching and analyzing the poor command relationships among CENTCOM's senior leaders, along with CMH's courage to publish a critical piece, especially when earlier authors or command policy glossed over CENTCOM's difficulties and mistakes. I was not impressed with the author's poor identification of foreign equipment in the body of the text as well as in some of the photo captions. However, this book is a great read for those truly interested in an official Army history that tells the Desert Storm story as it was and not how others would like to have seen it.… (meer)

Whatever other purpose this study serves it shines much-needed light on a subject that has mostly been glossed over; the collateral damage wrought by the USAAF and the RAF on friendly civilian populations in the pursuit of victory in the European Theater of Operation. While the more hard-hearted might shrug and simply say such is the cost of total war, Bourque notes that when one contemplates the prickliness of American relations with post-1945 France, it's easy to believe that 60000-to-70000 dead (due to the campaigns against transportation and the German "Vengeance" weapon installations) contributed to a sense of bad faith.

Most damning from Bourque's perspective was Bernard Montgomery's insistence that "choke points" were needed as barriers to German counter-offensives on D-Day, obstacles created by leveling a perimeter of towns on key roads via area bombing, and which Dwight Eisenhower gave his ground force commander total support on. The sad thing is that obliterating these communities seemed to bring no operational benefit whatsoever; "destroying the village to save it" indeed. Call this another corrective to the still prevalent "good war" narrative; at least I've always wondered about target towns such as St. Lo (at least since the 1970s), and the fate of the local people caught in the maelstrom.… (meer)

I pre-ordered this book standing outside the cathedral at Rouen, somewhat delighted that it was being published a few days later. I was sympathetic to the book's theme that this is an area of military history rarely touched upon, which is true.

However, it suffers from some woeful editing, some of which is merely irritating, and others detract from the main point being made. Examples of the former are (from Preface) "Andrew Knapp from the University of Redding deserves my special thanks" - meaning, University of Reading. Or (p7/8) "Other than the clash of Union and Confederate armies at Gettysburg in 1863, no military event has received more attention from American authors than the Anglo-Canadian-British landing on the Normandy beaches in June 1944" - Anglo-Canadian-British is, I hope, a mistake rather than an abominable coinage. An error that undermines the entire point being made, and a major theme of the book occurs on p141, referring to an attack on Boulogne on 12 May 1944. The text refers to the inaccuracy of the attack and the lack of any mention of this or the heavy civilian casualties. It cites the Bomber Command Diaries as evidence. Unfortunately, it refers to a Bomber Command attack of 19/20 May. The actual Bomber Command Diaries details for the 12th May indicate "Some bombs fell in the railway yards but the main weight of the raid missed the target and fell on nearby civilian housing. 128 civilians were killed". This error is compounded by the pious tone in the book, saying "So rather than 33 civilians as reported and now published in a variety of texts, the actual casualty count for that evening in the Fortress Boulogne was 212 French civilians killed or wounded." This entire section finishes with the undeniable observation "It was good that much of the city's population had already departed the center, or the casualties would have been much higher" which I suggest goes without saying.

The moralising tone does begin to wear thin, though obviously it is always an issue when discussing the bombing of civilians, especially the bombing of non-enemy civilians. However, a low point is reached on p142 with "The alleged targets were coastal gun positions, and some bombs hit those targets in the Letter Portel area on the coast southwest of Boulogne." It is hard to know exactly what is being suggested here, as it is never discussed or hinted at again. But *alleged* target?

I wanted to like this book, but in the end I couldn't. Better books that cover a similar topic in more detail are "Forgotten Blitzes" by Baldoli & Knapp, and "Bombing, States and Peoples" by Baldoli, Kanpp & Overy… (meer)