A History of War in 100 Battles

Home > Other > A History of War in 100 Battles > Page 44
A History of War in 100 Battles Page 44

by Richard Overy


  A Royal Navy Sea Harrier jet flies into action during the campaign to recapture the Falkland Islands from Argentine occupation. In the background can be seen the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible. The small number of aircraft available represented a narrow margin between victory and defeat.

  By early June, the 5th Infantry Brigade had arrived and command of the whole of Operation Sutton was taken over by Major General Jeremy Moore of the Royal Marines. The new units were shipped to the south coast of East Falkland, where Argentine aircraft hit two vessels loaded with men, Sir Galahad and Sir Tristram, leaving fifty dead. The infantry were to march across the south of the island to attack Port Stanley from the southwest. On the night of 11 June, the 3 Commando Brigade moved forward to take the high ground around Stanley at Mount Longdon, Two Sisters and Mount Harriet. The defence was fierce, if brief. By the end, the Argentine garrison of around 5,000 fighting troops was encircled. At 4 p.m. on 13 June, in a snow storm, the British assault began. The Argentine marines dug in at Mount Tumbledown proved difficult to dislodge, but they were withdrawn by the following morning. British advance was methodical and by the morning had reached the outskirts of Port Stanley. The one remaining stronghold on Mount Sapper was about to be assaulted by 5th Brigade when a ceasefire was announced.

  The options had become increasingly narrow for Menendez. Galtieri ordered him to continue to fight with everything he could, but his troops had already taken high casualties and the conscripts were now of poor fighting quality. In the afternoon of 14 June, Menendez met British officers to discuss surrender terms. After agreeing to remove the term ‘unconditional surrender’, the British insisted that Menendez accept their conditions. The surrender was finally signed at 9.15 p.m. Three days later Galtieri resigned as Argentina’s president. Against all expectations, and in the face of almost universal pressure to accept further negotiations, the British task force had succeeded in overturning the Argentine occupation before the crisis of resupply or the weather undermined the whole operation. Timing had been critical on all fronts, military and international, and despite victory, the factors that might have turned Operation Sutton into a disaster were never far away.

  The cost was high to both sides: 649 Argentine dead, 1,657 wounded; 255 British dead and 775 wounded. A total of 11,313 Argentine soldiers, airmen, sailors and support troops were taken prisoner. The Argentine air force and army lost twenty-five helicopters and seventy-four other aircraft, the British twenty-four helicopters and ten fighters. The British were compelled to keep a substantial garrison in the islands thereafter. Despite a United Nations resolution passed on 4 November 1982 calling on the two sides to resume negotiations, the Falkland Islands have remained under British sovereignty to the present day, while Argentina has never abrogated its claim for the return of the Malvinas to Argentine rule.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  The following books and articles were used to provide the quotations and data in the introduction:

  Bennett, Matthew, ‘The Crusaders’ “Fighting March” Revisited’, War in History, 8 (2001), pp. 1–18

  Billington, James, The Face of Russia: Anguish, Aspiration and Achievement in Russian Culture (New York: TV Books, 1998)

  Bourke, Joanna, An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare (London: Granta Books, 1999)

  Carman, John, “Beyond the Western Way of War: Ancient Battlefields’ in Carman, John, Harding, Anthony (eds), Ancient Warfare (Stroud: The History Press, 2009)

  Crowley, Roger, Constantinople: The Last Great Siege, 1453 (London: Faber & Faber, 2005)

  Dudziak, Mary L., War-Time: An idea, its History, its Consequences (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)

  Dunn, John, ‘For God, Emperor and Country! The Evolution of Ethiopia’s Nineteenth-Century Army’, War in History, 1 (1994), pp.278–99

  Gillingham, John, Richard the Lionheart (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978)

  Goldsworthy, A. K., “The Othismos, Myths and Heresies: The Nature of Hoplite Battle’, War in History, 4 (1997), pp. 1-26

  Haas, Jonathan, ‘The Origins of War and Ethnic Violence’ in Carman, John, Harding, Anthony (eds), Ancient Warfare, pp. 16-21

  Jones, Michael, ‘The Battle of Verneuil (17 August 1424): Towards a History of Courage’, War in History, 9 (2002), pp. 375-411

  Keegan, John, The Face of Battle: A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme, 2nd edition, (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1988)

  Keeley, Lawrence, War before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)

  Kristiansen, Kristian, ‘The Emergence of Warrior Aristocracies in Later European Prehistory and their Long-term History’ in Carman, Harding (eds), Ancient Warfare, pp. 175-88

  Lorge, Peter, The Asian Military Revolution: From Gunpowder to the Bomb (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)

  Moore, Aaron, Writing War: Soldiers Record the Japanese Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013)

  Morgan, David, The Mongols (London: Basil Blackwell, 1986)

  Ostrowski, Donald, ‘Alexander Nevskii’s “Battle on the Ice”: The Creation of a Legend’, Russian History/Histoire Russe, 33 (2006), pp. 289-312

  Remarque, Erich Maria, All Quiet on the Western Front (London: Jonathan Cape, 1994)

  Reynolds, David, The Long Shadow: The Great War and the Twentieth Century (London: Simon & Schuster, 2013)

  Scarre, Christopher (ed), Herodotus: The Histories (London: Folio Society, 1992)

  Schieder, Theodor, Frederick the Great (London: Longman, 2000)

  Stephenson, Michael, The Last

  Full Measure: How Soldiers

  Die in Battle (London: Duckworth, 2013)

  Wharton, William, Shrapnel (London: HarperCollins, 2013)

  Wilson, Peter, ‘German Women and War, 1500-1800’, War in History, 3 (1996), pp, 127-60

  Ziftu, Ismat, Karari: The Sudanese Account of the Battle of Omdurman (London: Frederick Warne, 1980)

  The following books and articles were used for the Battle texts:

  Allison, William T., The Gulf War, 1990-91 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012)

  Ayton, Andrew, Preston, Philip, The Battle of Crécy, 1346 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005)

  Barr, Niall, Pendulum of War: The Three Battles of Alamein (London: Jonathan Cape, 2004)

  Baur, Hans, I Was Hitler’s Pilot: The Memoirs of Hans Bauer (Barnsley: Frontline Books, 2013)

  Beeching, Jack, The Galleys at Lepanto (London: Hutchinson, 1982)

  Bellamy, Chris, Absolute Ware: Soviet Russia in the Second World War (London: Macmillan, 2007)

  Bercuson, David, Herwig, Holger, Bismarck (London: Hutchinson, 2002)

  Bicheno, Hugh, Crescent and Cross: The Battle of Lepanto 1571 (London: Cassell, 2003)

  Black, Jeremy, Waterloo: The Battle That Brought Down Napoleon (London: Icon Books, 2010)

  Blond, Georges, The Marne: The Battle that Saved Paris and Changed the Course of the First World War (London: Prion Books, 2002)

  Boog, Horst et al., Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg: Band 6: Der globale Krieg: Die Ausweitung zum Weltkrieg und der Wechsel der Initiative (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1990)

  Bowlus, Charles, The Battle of Lechfeld and its Aftermath, August 955 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006)

  Brooks, Richard, Solferino: The Battle for Italy’s Freedom (Oxford: Osprey, 2009)

  Caddick-Adams, Peter, Monte Cassino: Ten Armies in Hell (London: Preface Publishing, 2012)

  Carey, Brian T., Hannibal’s Last Battle: Zama & the Fall of Carthage (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2007)

  Carman, J., Harding, A. (eds) Ancient Warfare (Stroud: History Press, 1999)

  Carpenter, Stanley, Military Leadership in the British Civil Wars 1642-1651 (London: Frank Cass, 2002)

  Chandler, David, Blenheim Preparation: The English Army on the March to the Danube (Staplehurst, Kent: Spellmount, 2004)

  Clot, André, Suleiman the Magnificent (London: Saqi Books, 2012)
r />   Collier, Simon, Sater, William, A History of Chile, 1808-1994 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)

  Cooper, Bryan, The Ironclads of Cambrai (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2010)

  Crompton, Samuel, Tenochtitlan (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2002)

  Cruickshank, Charles, Deception in World War II (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981)

  Dam, Raymond van, Remembering Constantine at the Milvian Bridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)

  David, Saul, 100 Days to Victory: How the Great War was Fought and Won (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2013)

  David Saul, Zulu: The Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879 (London: Penguin Viking, 2005)

  Denton, Barry, Cromwell’s Soldiers: The Moulding of the New Model Army 1644-1645 (Huntingdon: Denton Dare Publishing, 2004)

  Duffy, Seán, Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2013)

  Edwardes, Michael, The Battle of Plassey and the Conquest of Bengal (London: Batsford, 1963)

  Englund, Peter, The Battle that Shook Europe: Poltava and the Birth of the Russian Empire (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003)

  Esdaile, Charles, Napoleon’s Wars: An International History (London: Allen Lane, 2007)

  Evans, Martin, Burton, Peter, Westaway, Michael, Naseby:

  English Civil War – June 1945 (Barnsley: Leo Cooper, 2002)

  Falkner, James, Blenheim 1704: Marlborough’s Greatest Victory (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2004)

  Fine, John V, The Late Medieval Balkans (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1992)

  Fox, Robin L., Alexander the Great (London: Penguin, 2004)

  France, John, Western Warfare in the Age of the Crusades 1000-1300 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999)

  Freedman, Lawrence, Strategy: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)

  Freedman, Lawrence, Gamba-Stonehouse, Virginia, Signals of War: The Falklands Conflict of 1982 (London: Faber & Faber, 1990)

  Freeman, Philip, Julius Caesar (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008)

  Friendly, Alfred, The Dreadful Day: The Battle of Manzikert, 1071 (London: Hutchinson, 1981)

  Galinsky, Karl, Augustus (Cambridge: CUP, 2012)

  Garland, Robert, Hannibal (London: Bloomsbury, 2010)

  Gat, Azar, War in Human Civilization (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)

  Gates, David, The Napoleonic Wars, 1803-1815 (London: Arnold, 1997)

  Gentles, Ian, The New Model Army in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1645-1653 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)

  Ginion, Eyal, ‘Mobilizing the Ottoman Nation during the Balkan Wars (1912-1913)’, War in History, 12 (2005), pp. 156-77

  Gilliver, C. M., The Roman Art of War (Stroud: Tempus, 1999)

  Glass, Stafford, The Matabele War (London: Longmans, 1968)

  Grant, Michael, Caesar (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974)

  Grant, Michael, Julius Caesar (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969)

  Hall, John W., Cambridge History of Japan. Volume 4: Early Modern Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)

  Hall, John W., Nagahara, Keiji, Yamamura, Kozo, Japan before Tokugawa: Political Consolidation and Economic Growth 1500-1650 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980)

  Hellie, Richard, ‘Alexander Nevskii’s April 5, 1242 Battle on the Ice’, Russian History/Histoire Russe, 33 (2006), pp. 283-87

  Herwig, Holger, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918 (London: Arnold, 1997)

  Hill, Paul, The Viking Wars of Alfred the Great (Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2008)

  Hillgarth, J. N., The Spanish Kingdoms 1250-1516 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976)

  Hollins, David, Marengo 1800: Napoleon’s Day of Fate (Oxford: Osprey, 2000)

  Horne, Alistair, How Far from Austerlitz: Napoleon 1805-1815 (London: Macmillan, 1996)

  Housley, Norman, The Later Crusades 1274-1580 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)

  Howard, Michael, Strategic Deception in the Second World War (London: Pimlico, 1992)

  Hunefeldt, Christine, A Brief History of Peru (New York: Facts on File, 2004)

  Jonas, Raymond, The Battle of Adwa: African Victory in the Age of Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011)

  Kelly, Christopher, The End of Empire: Attila the Hun and the Fall of Rome (New York: Norton, 2009)

  Kitson, Frank, Old Ironsides: The Military Biography of Oliver Cromwell (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004)

  Krentz, Peter, The Battle of Marathon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010)

  Kulikowski, Michael, Rome’s Gothic Wars from the Third Century to Alaric (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007)

  Lamb, Harold, Suleiman the Magnificent: Sultan of the East (London: Robert Hale, 1952)

  Lawrence, Mark, Logevall, Fredrik (eds), The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007)

  Lincoln, W. Bruce, Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989)

  Logevall, Fredrik, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012)

  Lomax, Derek, The Reconquest of Spain (London: Longman, 1978)

  Luckett, Richard, White Generals: An Account of the White Movement in the Russian Civil War (London: Longmans, 1971)

  Lynch, John, San Martín: Argentine Soldier, American Hero (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009)

  Macfie, A. L., The End of the Ottoman Empire 1908-1923 (Harlow: Longmans, 1998)

  Mancaron, Charles, Austerlitz: The Story of a Battle (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1966)

  Manstein, Erich von, Verlorene Siege (Bonn: Athenäum-Verlag, 1955)

  Martin, Colin, Parker, Geoffrey, The Spanish Armada (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988)

  Martin, H. Desmond, The Rise of Chingis Khan and his Conquest of North China (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1950)

  Mason, Philip, The Birth of a Dilemma: The Conquest and Settlement of Rhodesia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958)

  Mawdsley, Evan, The Russian Civil War (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000)

  Mawdsley, Evan, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War 1941-1945 (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005)

  McDonald, Joanna, “We Shall Meet Again”: The First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)

  McKitterick, Rosamond, Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)

  McNab, Chris, Verdun, 1916 (Stroud: History Press, 2013)

  McPherson, James, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)

  Megargee, Geoffrey, Inside Hitler’s High Command (Lawrence, KA: University Press of Kansas, 2000)

  Merriman, Roger B., Suleiman the Magnificent, 1520-1566 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1944)

  Moorehead, Caroline, Dunant’s Dream: War, Switzerland and the History of the Red Cross (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1999)

  Nicolle, David, Crusader Warfare: Volume 1, Byzantium, Europe and the Struggle for the Holy Land 1050-1300 AD (London: Continuum, 2007)

  Nicolle, David, Manzikert 1071: The Breaking of Byzantium (Oxford: Osprey, 2013)

  Nicolle, David, Poitiers AD 732: Charles Martel Turns the Islamic Tide (Oxford: Osprey, 2008)

  O’Callaghan, Joseph, The Gibraltar Crusade: Castile and the Battle for the Strait (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011)

  Oren, Michael, Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East (London: Allen Lane, 2002)

  Osgood, Josiah, Caesar’s Legacy: Civil War and the Emergence of the Roman Empire (Cambridge: CUP, 2006)

  Overy, Richard, The Battle of Britain, 2nd ed (London: Penguin, 2010)

  Overy, Richard, Russia’s War (London: Penguin, 1997)

  Parker, Geoffrey, The Thirty Years’ War (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984)

  Philbrick, Nathaniel, The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull and the Battle of
the Little Big Horn (London: Bodley Head, 2010)

  Pike, Frederick, The Modern History of Peru (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1967)

  Pleshakov, Constantine, The Tsar’s Last Armada: The Epic Voyage to the Battle of Tsushima (New York: Basic Books, 2002)

  Porch, Douglas, Hitler’s Mediterranean Gamble: The North African and the Mediterranean Campaigns in World War II (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004)

  Rawson, Andrew, Tet Offensive 1968 (Stroud: History Press, 2013)

  Ray, John, The Battle of Britain: Dowding and the First Victory (London: Cassell, 2009)

  Ready, Dee, The Battle of Yorktown (Mankato, Minnesota: Capstone Press, 2002)

  Reid, Stuart, Wolfe: The Career of General James Wolfe from Culloden to Quebec (Staplehurst, Kent: Spellmount, 2000)

  Roberts, Michael, Gustavus Adolphus: A History of Sweden 1611-1632 (London: Longmans, 1958)

  Runciman, Stephen, A History of the First Bulgarian Empire (London: G.Bell, 1930)

  Sassoon, Siegfried, The War Poems (London: Faber & Faber, 1983)

  Schom, Alan, Trafalgar: Countdown to Battle 1803-1805 (London: Michael Joseph, 1990)

  Sears, Stephen, Gettysburg (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003)

  Sheffield, Gary, The Somme (London: Cassell, 2003)

 

‹ Prev