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ARMY
HISTORY
Winter 2010
PB 20-10-1 (No. 74) Washington, D.C.
IN THIS ISSUE
From Frontier Cavalryman to
the World Stage: The Career
of Army Judge Advocate
General George B
.
Davis
The British Occupation of
Newport, Rhode Island,
1776–1779
6
30
By Charles P
.
Neimeyer
By Frederic L
.
Borch
21
The “Cultural Turn” in U.S. Counterinsurgency Operations
By Martin G. Clemis
The Professional Bul let in of Army His tor y
1
The Professional Bul let in of Army His tor y
By Order of the Secretary of the Army:
he articles in this issue discuss American military
experiences from the Revolutionary War to the pres-
ent. Yet as distinct as are the periods on which these
articles focus, each addresses issues that are highly
pertinent to military decision making today.
Charles Neimeyer’s account of the nearly three-
year-long British occupation of Newport, which prior
to the American Revolution had been a prominent
seaport and Rhode Island’s largest community, il-
lustrates the counterproductive nature of a poorly
conceived military occupation. he nearly six thou-
sand soldiers and sailors the British garrisoned in and
around Newport did little to assist the royal cause
other than to provide a secondary anchorage for
British naval vessels between crown-held New York
and Halifax. he British troops ravaged their Rhode
Island outpost, never solved their supply shortages,
and ultimately withdrew without having been de-
feated in battle. Military deployments, now as then,
must be judged by their contributions to policy goals.
Frederic Borch explores the military career of
George B. Davis, who served as a cavalryman in the
Civil War and on the western frontier before becom-
ing an Army judge advocate and for ten years the
Army’s top legal authority. Davis was a man of great
intellectual breadth, which he imparted to cadets,
drew upon for assignments involving the docu-
mentation and remembrance of Civil War actions,
and demonstrated in his authorship of legal texts.
His most noteworthy contributions, though, were
his legal opinions objecting to the use of the “water
cure” and other extreme measures against Philippine
guerrillas, despite their sometimes brutal methods.
Martin Clemis examines eforts of the U.S. military
in the twenty-irst century to enhance its knowledge
of the cultures of the peoples in whose nations U.S.
troops serve. Recognizing that developing greater
cultural understanding will contribute to its coun-
terinsurgency operations, the Army has modiied
its training and obtained the assistance of civilian
anthropologists in its overseas engagements. he
latter collaboration, Clemis reports, has engendered
controversy in academic circles.
he need for a strategic overview of operations,
for care in the application of appropriate force when
dealing with uncooperative people, and for serious
attempts to understand the cultures of populations
antagonistic to U.S. military operations all remain
lively concerns today.
GEORGE W. CASEY, JR.
General, United States Army
Chief of Staf
Oicial:
JOYCE E. MORROW
Administrative Assistant to the
Secretary of the Army
Chief of Military History
Dr. Jefrey J. Clarke
Managing Editor
Dr. Charles Hendricks
Book Review Editor
Bryan J. Hockensmith
Editor
Diane Sedore Arms
Layout and Design
Michael R. Gill
he U.S. Army Center of Military History publishes
Army His-
tory
(ISSN 1546-5330) quarterly for the professional development
of Army historians and as Army educational and training litera-
ture. he bulletin is available at no cost to interested Army oicers,
noncommissioned oicers, soldiers, and civilian employees, as well
as to individuals and oices that directly support Army historical
work or Army educational and training programs.
Correspondence, including requests to be added to the distri-
bution of free copies or to submit articles, should be addressed
to Managing Editor,
Army History
, U.S. Army Center of Military
History, 103 hird Ave., Fort Lesley J. McNair, DC 20319-5058,
or sent by e-mail to army.history1@conus.army.mil.
hose individuals and institutions that do not qualify for free
copies may opt for paid subscriptions from the U.S. Government
Printing Oice. he cost of a subscription is $20 per year. Order
by title and enter List ID as ARHIS. To order online, go to http://
bookstore.gpo.gov. To order by phone, call toll free 866-512-1800,
or in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, 202-512-1800; by
fax, 202-512-2104; or by e-mail, contactcenter@gpo.gov. Send mail
orders to U.S. Government Printing Oice, P.O. Box 979050, St.
Louis, MO 63197-9000.
he opinions expressed in
Army History
are those of the au-
thors, not the Department of Defense or its constituent elements.
he bulletin’s contents do not necessarily relect oicial Army
positions and do not supersede information in other oicial Army
publications or Army regulations. he bulletin is approved for of-
icial dissemination of material to keep the Army knowledgeable
of developments in Army history and to enhance professional
development. he Department of the Army approved the use of
funds for printing this publication on 7 September 1983.
he reproduction of images not obtained from federal sources
is prohibited.
Cover Image:
A civilian member of a human terrain team attached to the 30th
Armored Brigade Combat Team in central Iraq greets a resident of an area recently
hit by insurgents, 15 September 2009./Department of Defense
Charles Hendricks
Managing Editor
THE CHIEF’S CORNER
Dr. Jeff Clarke
H
istorians, academic and institutional alike, have
the unfolding of events as they occur and the real-time
reaction of those playing history’s major and minor roles.
So close are these historians to key decisions, processes,
and actions on a continuous basis that they oten have
diiculty fully appreciating their unique vantage point.
Such proximity to history-making events also puts their
professional values and abilities to the test, especially re-
garding balance and objectivity. he ability to watch the
play of history and yet to stay above it, always analyzing
impartially and objectively, is the true measure of the
historical professional.
Institutional historians are also in an excellent posi-
tion to make other critical observations. Oten only they
can fully appreciate the frequently wide divergence be-
tween what they have actually witnessed and the initial
interpretations of those same incidents by participants,
journalists, and other outside commentators, many of
whom are inluenced by their own personal or political
agendas. Oten only they can set matters right by quickly
challenging the myths that inevitably surround contro-
versial current afairs. At the very least, they can ensure
that adequate source material, hard copy or electronic,
audio or visual, is preserved and provisionally archived
for the future. But to accomplish this crucial task, they
must rapidly identify the most signiicant decisions and
actions associated with key contemporary events, pre-
serve their essence, and begin to make some of the basic
historical interpretations regarding their signiicance.
From the treatment of Guantanamo detainees to the
actions among the rocky outposts along the Pakistan-
Afghanistan border, what better way to guarantee the
vigorous collection of evidence than through the com-
missioning of early historical products. Surely nothing
focuses the energy of historians more regarding the
vital collection efort than the knowledge that they will
be expected to prepare professional historical accounts
relatively quickly for all interested to read and evaluate.
Already the histories published or initiated by the U.S.
Army Center of Military History and the U.S. Army
Combat Studies Institute on current engagements,
campaigns, and programs have generated signiicant
amounts of focused source material that might not
long disparaged histories that cover contem-
porary events. Such products, most believed,
could never be based on the full documentary record
available to later generations and were apt to be fatally
lawed by current concerns, bias, and perspectives (“pre-
sentism”). Indeed, most historians have concluded that
such tasks were better let to journalists, politicians, and
participants, with the full weight of professional histori-
cal judgments coming much later. In the ield of military
history, exceptions might be made for accounts of small-
scale tactical engagements, where the initial sources were
rich; for oral histories, truly a form of autobiography;
and for oicial command histories that are normally
highly factual in nature with original documents and
statistical tables appended. But the overall approach of
the larger historical community has been to discourage
professional historians from addressing current events
and to be extremely skeptical of those who do.
hat said, no historian would deny the value of care-
fully crated narratives by journalists, from Edgar Snow’s
Red Star over China
, chronicling his experiences with
Mao’s Red Army in the 1930s, to Rick Atkinson’s more
recent telling of his adventures with a younger General
David Petraeus in the early months of the war in Iraq.
And what historian worth his salt would not wish that
there had been a Snow or an Atkinson walking with
Rome’s legions, with William’s Normans, or with Wash-
ington’s Continentals? Such irsthand accounts impart
both a sense of the times and a feel for how things actually
happened—even if the perspective is somewhat narrow.
To actually be present on the ield of action, to watch the
progression of events just as they occur, and to observe
the true interaction of historical factors in real time is
more than most historians could possibly wish for. Yet
such experiences are the daily fare of the institutional
historian, and they provide insights, however imperfect
or even myopic, that later academic historians can never
truly know.
Institutional historians, including Army historians,
indeed occupy the catbird’s seat of history and, like the
proverbial ly on the wall, have the opportunity to view
Continued on page 53
3
Features
21
Commentary
The “Cultural Turn” in
U.S. Counterinsurgency
Operations: Doctrine,
Application, and
Criticism
By Martin G. Clemis
46
Book Reviews
54
Chief Historian’s
Footnote
Ar t icles
6
30
From
Frontier
Cavalryman to the
World Stage:
The Career of
Army Judge
Advocate General
George B. Davis
By Frederic L. Borch
The British
Occupation of
Newport, Rhode
Island, 1776–1779
By Charles P. Neimeyer
C
enter
of
M
ilitary
H
istory
i
ssues
n
ew
P
ubliCations
and Shi’ite militiamen in the suburbs
of Baghdad, at Fallujah in the west,
and at Najaf and three other locations
south of Baghdad. Half of the encoun-
ters described took place in 2004, with
the remainder equally representing
actions occurring in 2006 and 2007. A
twelve-page introduction summarizes
the course of the war from April 2003
to January 2007. his 201-page book
has been issued in paperback as CMH
Pub 70–113–1. Hofman is chief of
the Center’s Contemporary Studies
Branch.
The Army Medical Department,
1917–1941
, is the fourth and inal vol-
ume by Mary C. Gillett on the history
of medical services in the Army. he
book examines how the U.S. Army
redesigned its approach to evacuation
during World War I; struggled to limit
the damage to health and efectiveness
caused by poison gas, an unfamiliar
and deadly weapon; began its research
into the unique problems of aviators;
and desperately tried but failed to
control the 1918 inluenza pandemic,
leaving behind a mystery concerning
this episode that still endures. The
book reveals that military budget cuts,
resulting from the popular conviction
that there would never be another war
as horrible as the First World War,
initially retarded the eforts of Medi-
cal Department leaders to organize for
another major conlict. he outbreak
of World War II in Europe in 1939,
however, permitted President Frank-
lin D. Roosevelt to prepare the nation
and its military for the possibility of
the United States joining the new con-
lagration, and this enabled the Medi-
cal Department ultimately to organize
its resources for this war in advance
more efectively than it had for earlier
struggles. he Center has issued this
book in a cloth cover as CMH Pub
30–10 and in paperback as CMH Pub
30–10–1. Gillett was a historian with
the Army Medical Department and the
Center of Military History from 1972
until her retirement in 1996.
he Panama Canal: An Army’s En-
terprise
is a 106-page pamphlet that
describes the critical role of U.S. Army
officers in planning and organizing
the construction of the Panama Canal,
one of the engineering marvels of the
twentieth century, and in protecting
from malaria and other diseases the
workforce that accomplished that mis-
sion. Ater addressing the construction
Continued on page 20
he U.S. Army Center of Military
History has published a collection
of historical accounts of combat ac-
tions of small U.S. Army units in Iraq
between 2004 and 2007, a history of
the U.S. Army’s Medical Department
from the nation’s entry into World
War I in 1917 to its entrance into
World War II in 1941, and a pamphlet
on the construction of the Panama
Canal in the irst two decades of the
twentieth century.
Tip of the Spear: U.S. Army Small-
Unit Action in Iraq, 2004–2007
, edited
by Jon T. Hofman, presents descrip-
tions of eight small but intense military
engagements in Iraq written by four
historians at the Center of Military
History, the historian of the U.S. Army
Transportation Corps, and two oicer
coauthors who served in Iraq with the
2d Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment,
one of the units whose story is told.
Mark J. Reardon, a retired armor of-
icer who is now a civilian historian,
contributed three of the chapters.
he volume relates episodes of U.S.
soldiers’ combat with Sunni insurgents
5
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