The Greatest War Stories Never Told

by Rick Beyer

  Another animal almost drafted for service in the Cold War was the gerbil. The furry creatures can smell fear—or, more accurately, the increased adrenaline in a fearful person’s sweat. Spy-catchers in various countries considered using them in the 1970s. But when airport-security experts in Israel put them to work, they found that the fur-balls couldn’t tell the difference between a wrongdoer scared of being caught and a passenger afraid of flying.

  1969

  THE SOCCER WAR

  We’ve all heard of tough matches, but a soccer game that started a war?

  In June 1969, Honduras and El Salvador faced off in a soccer game, the first in a series of qualifying matches for the World Cup. The two countries were bitter rivals, and the fans in Honduras made sure the visiting Salvadoran team wouldn’t be able to sleep the night before the game by setting off firecrackers and honking horns outside their hotel. Not surprisingly, Honduras won 1–0.

  Fans in El Salvador were beside themselves. Eighteen-year-old Amelia Bolanios was so distraught she shot herself after Honduras scored the winning goal. Her death was mourned as a national tragedy. “The young girl could not bear to see her fatherland brought to its knees,” wrote the Salvadoran newspaper El Nacional. An army honor guard led her funeral procession, and the president of El Salvador walked behind the casket.

  With emotions running high, the Honduran team came to El Salvador for a second match a few weeks later. Salvadoran troops and tanks ringed the field. After El Salvador won, 3–0, vicious riots broke out among the fans, and several people were killed.

  It wasn’t only in the stadium that things got out of hand. The game’s outcome pushed a century-old border dispute to the boiling point, and war broke out on July 14. Although the fighting lasted only a hundred hours before a cease-fire was agreed upon, casualties were significant: five thousand people were killed and more than ten thousand wounded.

  It became known as “La Guerra del Fútbol”: The Soccer War. It started on the playing field and ended up on the battlefield.

  One reason many people have never heard of this war is that world attention was focused a quarter of a million miles away that week: on the Apollo 11 lunar-landing mission, which put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon July 20, 1969.

  1969

  LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

  A tour of duty with an unusual twist.

  During World War II, Mike Novosel flew a B-29 and participated in the firebombing of Tokyo. At age forty-two, with three children, he found himself so inspired by President Kennedy that he volunteered to fly helicopters for the army in the Vietnam War.

  He thought he would be used as an instructor, but instead found himself shipped off to combat, flying in the company of pilots half his age. Eventually he served two tours as a “Dustoff” medevac pilot in Vietnam, airlifting wounded soldiers from the battlefield. He flew more than two thousand missions and evacuated more than five thousand wounded. One particularly dangerous mission earned him a Medal of Honor.

  His son, Mike Novosel, Jr., graduated from Army Flight School twenty-seven years to the day after his father. The year was 1969, and he asked to be assigned to his dad’s unit, the Eighty-second Medical Detachment. “At the time I just wanted my dad to be proud of me,” says Mike Jr. But it was the first and only time in U.S. history that a father and son ever flew together in the same combat unit. And each would have the chance to save the other’s life.

  When Mike Jr.’s helicopter was forced down by enemy fire, his father flew to the scene and rescued him. Less than seven days later, Mike Jr. rescued his father under similar circumstances.

  In 1971, Mike Sr. was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Nixon, who told father and son that they wouldn’t be going back to Vietnam. “The Novosels have done enough,” he said.

  Mike Novosel, Sr., was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve when he decided to return to active duty. The air force told him they didn’t need him, so he walked away from his officer status and joined the army to fly as a noncommissioned “warrant officer.”

  During the thirteen-hour mission that won Mike Novosel, Sr., his Medal of Honor, he braved heavy fire to rescue a group of wounded South Vietnamese soldiers. Novosel was credited with saving the lives of twenty-nine men, himself sustaining shrapnel wounds in both legs in the action.

  1982

  SCRAP METAL WAR

  The scrap operation that triggered quite a scrap.

  Britain eventually retook the islands, at a cost of 256 men killed.

  Britain calls them the Falklands. Argentina knows them as Las Malvinas. In 1982 the centuries-old dispute between the two countries over the remote South Atlantic islands was heating up. Argentina’s ruling junta hoped to regain control of the British-occupied islands to help restore its fading popularity. But the possibility of war still seemed distant.

  Then a wealthy Buenos Aires scrap dealer named Constantino Davidoff sent a group of workmen to salvage scrap metal from an abandoned whaling station on one of the southernmost of the contested islands. He had a contract with the owner and permission from the British embassy to be there.

  But when Davidoff’s men raised an Argentine flag on the island, it caught the attention of scientists from the British Arctic Survey Team. They reported to British authorities that there had been an Argentine landing.

  The British, suspicious that something was up, sent a note of protest to Argentina, and dispatched the warship Endurance to watch over the scrap dealers. Argentina sent a warship of its own. The British landed marines. The Argentines sent more ships.

  Perhaps this was just the pretext Argentina was looking for. Perhaps it inflamed passions beyond the point of no return. In any case, less than a week later, Argentina invaded the islands.

  The salvage operation was over. The war was on.

  Nearly seven hundred Argentine troops were killed in the war. They are the only Argentines who have been allowed to stay on the windswept islands, which are still the subject of bitter disagreement between the two nations.

  “IF I HAD NEVER BEEN BORN, ARGENTINA AND GREAT BRITAIN WOULD NOT BE FIGHTING.”

  — CONSTANTINO DAVIDOFF, SIX WEEKS INTO THE WAR

  The junta saw the invasion as a way to appeal to patriotic pride and distract people’s attention away from 600 percent inflation and other economic problems. They did not expect the British would be willing or able to conduct a major military effort eight thousand miles from London, over a group of windswept islands inhabited by only two thousand people.

  The most well-known warrior in the British invasion force was HRH Prince Andrew, son of Queen Elizabeth II, brother of Prince Charles, and known to his fellow helicopter pilots simply as “H.”

  1991

  THE DOMINO’S THEORY

  An epic story of War and Pizza.

  At five A.M. on Wednesday, January 16, 1991, the word flashed out from Washington: war with Iraq was imminent, likely to begin within hours. Sure enough, later that day, the bombs began to fall. The Persian Gulf War was under way.

  The early warning came not from a high-placed presidential aide or a ranking military officer, but from a more unlikely source: A pizza man.

  Frank Meeks owned sixty Domino’s pizza franchises in the D.C. area. Meeks was famous for keeping a close eye on pizza orders, and the night before the war began he noticed a sharp uptick in the number of late-night pizza orders coming from the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department. White House pizza orders went through the roof, with more than fifty pies ordered between ten P.M. and two A.M.

  Meeks had seen the same thing happen the night before the invasions of Grenada and Panama. He was sure this meant war, so he called the news media and put out the word. The rest is pizza history.

  Will this slice of history prove the ultimate undoing of the republic? Is fast food the soft underbelly of American military might? Will foreign agents start infiltrating Washington pizza joints to see what’s baking in government offices? Are counterintellig
ence agents ready to swing into action with a “Pizza Interdiction Effort” (PIE) to order up a little Domino’s deception?

  Deliver us.

  Pizza prognosticators please take note: according to the Domino’s Pizza Team Washington Pizza Meter, the top pizza ordered by the White House in 2003 was a veggie, while the number-one pizza at the Pentagon was a pepperoni.

  According to one expert, the moral of the story is this: When the going gets tough, the tough get pizza.

  “I DON’T THINK THEY’RE SITTING AROUND WATCHING REDSKINS RERUNS.”

  — FRANK MEEKS, ANALYZING A SURGE IN LATE-NIGHT PIZZA ORDERS FROM THE PENTAGON

  SOURCES

  “Where do you find these stories” people often ask, and the answer is: “Everywhere.” Stories that I first saw online, heard from a friend, found in an old library book, are all here. The trick isn’t finding stories, it’s verifying them. Sometimes it’s easy. Other times it involves hours of research.

  I relied primarily on scholarly books, magazine articles, old newspapers, and a small number of websites that demonstrated a scholarly approach and/or a particular expertise with the material. There are several online sources that I consulted so constantly that I have chosen not to cite them every time. The Encyclopaedia Britannica (www.britannica.com) is a wonderful source for basic historical information. A sometimes useful variation on that is the 1911 edition of the Britannica (www.1911encylopedia.com) with its lengthy in-depth articles on subjects often overlooked today.

  For more recent stories, the New York Times archive, available to me (with my library card) through the Minuteman Library Network (http://www.mln.lib.ma.us/) allows word searching of stories going back to 1857. The Time magazine archive (www.time.com) allows word searching of articles back to 1923. These both offer an opportunity to go back many decades and see how a particular person or event was viewed at the time.

  I make no claims to this being a scholarly work. But even in a “popular” work of history, readers deserve to know the principal sources of the information, and where to go to find out more.

  The Sacred Band: 100 Decisive Battles by Paul K. Davis. Soul of the Sword by Robert L. O’Connell. Plutarch’s Lives, translated by John Dryden.

  Archimedes’ Secret Weapon: Dio’s Roman History (volume II: Fragments of Books XII–XXV), translated by E. Cary. Universal History by Polybius. (These works excerpted online at http://www.mcs.drexel.edu). Buffon by Otis E. Fellows and Stephen F. Milliken. “Archimedes’ Mirrors: Some New Reflections,” by Malcolm Browne, New York Times, March 11, 1978.

  Up Against the Wall: Rubicon by Tom Holland. 100 Decisive Battles by Paul K. Davis.

  Warrior Princess: Gladiatrix by Amy Xoll. “The Celtic War Queen Who Challenged Rome,” by Margaret Donsbach, Military History, online archive (http://www.thehistorynet.com/mh/blceltic_war_queen).

  Daring Dancer: Condemned to Repeat It by Wick Allison et al. Procopius, History of the Wars (volume I), translated by H. B. Dewing, excerpted online at the Internet Medieval Sourcebook (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook.html). The Crusades by Antony Bridges.

  An Islamic Europe?: 100 Decisive Battles by Paul K. Davis. Encyclopedia of Events That Changed the World by Robert Ingpen and Philip Wilkinson.

  Spoils of War: Tilt by Nicholas Shrady. Through My Eye: 91st Infantry Division in the Italian Campaign, 1942–45 by Leon Weckstein.

  History’s Hitmen: The Assassins, A Radical Sect in Islam by Bernard Lewis. The Crusades by Antony Bridges.

  The Swallows of Volohai: The Mongols by David Morgan. The Mongol Empire: Genghis Khan: His Triumph and His Legacy by Peter Ludwig Brent. Encyclopedia of Events That Changed the World by Robert Ingpen and Philip Wilkinson.

  Divine Wind: Storm from the East: From Genghis Khan to Kublai Khan by Robert Marshall. The Divine Wind: Japan’s Kamikaze Force in World War II by Captain Rikihei Inoguchi and Commander Tadashi Nakajima.

  Arms Race: “Chinese Bombard” by John H. Lienhard, in Engines of Our Ingenuity (http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1744.htm). “The Oldest Representation of a Bombard” by G-d Lu, J. Needham, and C-h Phan, Technology and Culture, vol. 29, no. 3, 1988, pp. 594–605. Gunpowder: Alchemy. Bombards, and Pyrotechnics by Jack Kelly.

  Dangerous Games: Golf: A Pictorial History by Henry Cotton. The Sackville Illustrated Dictionary of Golf by Alan Booth and Michael Hobbs. “The Perfect Substitute for War,” by Paul Auster, New York Times Magazine, April 18, 1999.

  God Is in the Details: 100 Decisive Battles by Paul K. Davis. Encyclopedia of Events That Changed the World by Robert Ingpen and Philip Wilkinson.

  Weapons Wizard: The Inventions of Leonardo da Vinci by Margaret Cooper. Leonardo, the First Scientist by Michael White.

  Siege of Bread and Butter: “A Loaf of Bread: Price and Value” by John Pearn, M.D., Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1998) 7(1):8–14.

  Fighting Turtles: New History of Korea by Ki-bai Lee. The Reader’s Companion to Military History, edited by Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker. “Admiral Yi Sun-Shin,” by Alan Burse, Korea Herald, March 19 1997.

  A Falling-Out in Prague: Fighting Words: From War, Rebellion, and Other Combative Capers by Christine Ammer. “The Empire Strikes Out,” New York Times, April 18, 1999. Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms by Stephen Jay Gould. Visit by the author to Hradcany Castle in Prague, August 2004.

  Drebbel’s Dream: Submarines and Deep Sea Vehicles by Jeffrey Tall. The Navy Times Book of Submarines: A Political, Social, and Military History by Brayton Harris. “The Saga of the Submarine,” by Brett McLaughlin, All Hands Magazine, September 1967.

  Bees in Battle: “Bees in Warfare,” by John T. Ambrose, Gleanings in Bee Culture, November 1973. “Bees Go to War,” by Roger Morse, Gleanings in Bee Culture, October 1955. “War and Bees: Military Applications of Apiculture,” by Conrad Bérubé (http://www.apiculture.com).

  The Siege That Gave Birth to the Croissant: A History of Food by Maguelonne Touissant-Samat. Reader’s Digest Facts and Fallacies.

  The War of Jenkins’ Ear: “Earmarked for War,” by Jack Rudolph, American History Illustrated, February 1984. A Brief History of the Caribbean by Jan Rogozinski.

  A Dandy Tale: America’s Song: The Story of Yankee Doodle by Stuart Murray. “Yankee Doodle,” Library of Congress website (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/today/apr19.html).

  Old Man’s Fight: Paul Revere’s Ride by David Hackett Fischer.

  Fighting Words: Fighting Words: From War, Rebellion, and Other Combative Capers by Christine Ammer.

  The General’s Gambit: The George Washington Papers at the Library of Congress, 1741–1799 (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/gwhtml/gwhome.html). Gunpowder: Alchemy. Bombards, and Pyrotechnics by Jack Kelly.

  Forgotten Fight: The Battle for New York by Barnett Schecter. “The True Story of Nathan (‘The Torch’) Hale: No Wonder They Hanged Him,” by Thomas Fleming, New York Magazine July 14, 1975.

  Miracle at Saratoga: Saratoga by Richard M. Ketchum. “Benedict Arnold, Hero: A Revolutionary Turning Point,” by R. W. Apple, New York Times Magazine, April 18, 1999.

  Trick or Treason?: Unsolved Mysteries of History: An Eye-opening Investigation into the Most Baffling Events of All Time by Paul Aron. The Life of Daniel Boone by Lyman Copeland Draper. “Daniel Boone,” by Carole D. Bos, Lawbuzz.com (http://www.lawbuzz.com/famous_trials/daniel_boone/daniel_boone.htm).

  Bulldog of the Black Sea: John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy by Evan Thomas.

  Revolutionary Pencil: “Get It on Paper,” the history channel® documentary written and produced by Kate Raisz; Rick Beyer, executive producer. The Pencil by Henry Petroski.

  America’s Worst General: Duel by Thomas Fleming. The War of 1812 by Donald R. Hickey. Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography. “General Wilkinson’s Forbidden Realms,” by Dianna Serra Cary, Wild West Magazine, February 1999.

  Blind Man’s Bluff: Fighting Words: From War, Rebellion, and Other Combative Capers by Christine Ammer. Horatio Lord Nelso
n by Brian Lavery.

  The Fever Factor: Jefferson’s Great Gamble by Charles Cerami. “Insects, Disease, and Military History: The Napoleonic Campaigns and Historical Perception,” by Robert K. D. Peterson, American Entomologist. 41:147–60.

  Shell Shock: Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography. “Honour for the Man Who Changed the Face of War,” by June Southworth, London Daily Mail, July 28, 1994. “General Henry Shrapnell,” Fresh-ford.com (http://www.freshford.com/shrapnell).

  Rum Rebellion: Captain William Bligh by Philip Weate and Caroline Graham. The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty by Caroline Alexander. Merriam-Webster’s Webster’s New Biographical Dictionary, 1995.

  The War of Bad Timing: The War of 1812 by Donald R. Hickey.

  An Army of Two: “Along the South Shore” by S.G.W. Benjamin, Harper’s Monthly Magazine, June 1878, vol. 57, no.337. To the Point: The Story of Cedar Point Light by David Ball. Interview with David Ball, president, Scituate Historical Society, December 9, 2004, along with various documents supplied by the society.

  Star-Spangled Banner: Various documents and clippings from National Museum of American History.

  Bad Day at Waterloo: A Brief History of Disease, Science, and Medicine by Michael Kennedy. An Underground Education by Richard Zacks.

  Spearheading a Revolution: The Washing of the Spears by Donald R. Morris. “Shaka: Africa’s Black Napoleon,” by Truman R. Strobridge Military History, online archive (http://www.thehistorynet.com/mh/blafricasnapoleon).

  Budding Statesman: Encylopaedia Britannica. Merriam-Webster’s Webster’s New Biographical Dictionary. “The Paul Ecke Ranch Story,” Ecke Ranch website (http://ecke.com/new1/corp_story/corp_story.asp).