The Anabasis of Cyrus
The Anabasis of Cyrus (Agora)
Arrived a few days ago. Now I am set for Lexington Green’s Xenophon Roundtable in September 2009.
….They decided, then, to pack up what they had, arm themselves, and proceed forward until they should meet with Cyrus. When they were about to set out, as the sun was rising, there arrived Procles, the ruler of Teuthrania, born of Demaratus the Laconian, and Glus, the son of Tamos. They said “Cyrus is dead” and said that Ariaeus had fled with the other barbarians….”
May 21st, 2009 at 6:03 am
Zen,
Great read, I am in book V and enjoying it more than the first time I read a different translation years ago.
May 21st, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Finished Book IV.
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Put it aside for a while to read Bernard Fergusson, The Watery Maze: The Story of Combined Operations (1961) — which is excellent.
May 21st, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Hi gents,
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Have not started yet, read the Penguin classic about 10-15 years ago. I may have to do a "summer reading list" post in a couple of weeks as a goad to myself to read through a healthy stack from the Antilibrary shelves. If I put in a solid couple of hours of book time daily I should be able to systematically complete quite a few books.
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:27 pm
I’m still waiting for my copy to arrive in the mail. But I look forward to cracking it’s pages for the first time!
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Lex-"Combined Operations,"–one of those military terms that has been generally dispensed with since about WWII. It’s surprising to see it being used in the 1960s.
May 22nd, 2009 at 2:58 pm
"Watery Maze" is a history of the British effort in World War II, when they had to make up everything from scratch. They called it Combined Operations at that time.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Lex-You are correct. Combined Operations was understood to be generally Army-Navy, or what would today be called "Joint" operations. Interestingly, Marine operations, since they are a brother service of the Navy, under the Department of the Navy, were never referred to as "Combined."
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Nowadays Combined Ops are understood to refer to operations between militaries of allied countries.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Greetings gentlemen-
Book ordered and received. Have read the intro, but now reading Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society and Sumida’s Decoding Clausewitz. Looking forward to the Xenophon roundtable this Fall and providing of course a Clausewitzian perspective.
Hope that the 4GW folks can provide a more convincing argument this next time round . . .
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:38 am
Nate, the British Combined Operations Command was meant to incorporate ground, naval and air forces.
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The badge had an eagle (air), tommy gun (ground, and the tommy gun was the canonical weapon of the early commandos) and an anchor (sea).
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http://www.combinedops.com/INDEX/unitred%20we%20conquer%20red.jpg
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All of the services balked at contributing assets, but the RAF in particular was heavily engaged at the time COC was set up.
Eventually, COC became a very important organization. I am not up to June 6, 1944 in the book yet, but it appears that COC will have a major role in preparing for the reentry of the allies onto the Continent.
May 23rd, 2009 at 4:23 am
Hi Seydlitz89
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"Hope that the 4GW folks can provide a more convincing argument this next time round"
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LOL! I’m not sure if I am "4GW" in William Lind’s eyes but I am sympathetic to some of the premises when they fit, which today is more often than not. Look forward to reading your insightful posts again, come September.
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Hi Lex and Nate,
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"….and the tommy gun was the canonical weapon of the early commandos"
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If you have ever read Hackworth’s About Face, there is a pic of as a Korean War commando, Jack Speed, Tommy gun in hand, between pages 172 and 173.
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:28 am
I was actually thinking earlier about writing a snarky comment on this thread about how the Anabasis represents a sort of dreadful outcome that Lind would be happy to predict because of his morose world-view. I seem to recall numerous "On War" posts on the DNI website where he pressed American battalions and companies to assemble their own stores of equipment so that their long, bloody exodus can be successful once the Muqtada al-Sadr and his militia cuts off the American supply lines from Kuwait to Baghdad and beyond.
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Fortunately, those supply lines have remained intact, and the fighting exodus was never necessary, nor is it likely to be. Nonetheless the idea of the military exodus remains powerful, where only the best victory that could be taken from such a rotten situation would be a strategic, fighting withdrawal. In the Bible, Exodus chronicles an entire race’s escape from slavery with little more than their clothes on their back and the Tabernacle. Marines today still celebrate their fighting retreat out of Korea, where the First Marine Division destroyed upwards of a half-dozen Chinese divisions. The idea of the Last Helicopter out of Vietnam, and later, Iraq, has been an animating idea for the anti-American-Victory elements of society.
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The fighting retreat seems to be a recurring theme. It represents the final assertion of the Will to Fight by men in the gravest of circumstances, and actual withdrawals of that nature need to be celebrated as assertions of the martial and human spirits as much as they are viewed as strategic defeats. Furthermore, grave people, like Bill Lind, are more likely to see grave circumstances, and as such, are more willing to recommend preparations for fighting withdrawals.
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I look forward to reading Xenophon’s Anabasis. It will be a great pleasure. In the meantime I’m reading "Three Cups of Tea" and "100 Days: The Memoirs of the Falklands Battlegroup Commander." Both are excellent books thus far.
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PS: Though Lind is indeed a grave person, I like him. He is unorthodox and there is a place for him in the realm of military intellectuals.
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Lex-
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True. Although the supreme military organ of the western powers was the Combined Chiefs of Staff, which was composed of the American and British service chiefs.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Chiefs_of_Staff
May 23rd, 2009 at 5:33 am
Speaking of Hack,
Quite a warrior who I had the chance to meet just before the invasion in 2003 when he conceded that his main worry was that we were going in light and unprepared to secure the peace. His last book Steel My Soldier’s Heart, is an excellent example of using small unit tactics to out guerilla the guerillas.
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Nate, that is correct. But COC was set up in mid-1940, around the time of the fall of France. That was a year and a half before the Americans got into the war. The initial idea was to be able to do amphibious raids on the occupied coast, to keep the Germans pinned down and distracted. It developed over time into a group which had the most expertise on opposed landings. COC started the process of creating a combined operations capability, by acquiring ships and men, training and practicing, developing doctrine, learning what worked and what did not. By the time the Combined Chiefs of Staff was set up and running, a lot of the spadework had been done in this area, to the benefit of all.
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Of course, in the USA, the Marines had spent the 1930s preparing for their campaign of amphibious assault on the Japanese-held islands. Unfortunately, not much of this knowledge got out of the Navy / Marine community, and the USA Army had to learn a lot of this this from scratch, and as it is, our Normandy beach assault went much less well than the British did because the Army had less practice and disregarded lessons they (and the USMC) could have taught them.
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:38 pm
Zen-
"LOL"?
I found it all a bit sad.
Better luck next time.
May 24th, 2009 at 2:46 am
Ah, seydlitz89, opinions vary.