A Soldier's Story [antikvár]

PrefaceHOW AND WHY THIS BOOK WAS WRITTENOriginally, the publication of A SOLDIER'S STORY was scheduled for the fall of 1951, closely following my in^ tended retirement from active duty. But with the outbreak of the Korean war in 1950 I knew that my plans for retirement would be delayed. Rather than defer publication, I requested permission to write and publish the book while on active duty. To avoid em-' barrassment to those who granted me this permission I have refrained from showing the manuscript to any officer or office, except^ of course, for security clearance.In this book I have tried to achieve one purpose: to explain how war is waged on the field from the field command post. For it is there, midway between the conference table and the foxhole, that strategy is translated into battlefield tactics; there the field commander must calculate the cost of rivers, roads, and hills in terms of guns, tanks, tonnageand most importantly in terms of the lives and limbs of his soldiers. How, then, did we reach our critical decisions? Why and how did we go where we did? These are the questions I have been asked most often. And these are the questions that give me justification for writing this book.Despite the enormous quantities of documentation available to historians of this last World War, the real reasons behind many of our decisions are comparatively obscure. For many of our most important moves were decided upon at informal conferences where no memoranda were kept. Many of the most important instructions