How should a historian be utilized by our military?

1LT Private RallyPoint Member — Fri, 01 May 2020 20:32:41 -0400

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/March-April-2020/Loveland-Historians/

Some thoughts:

One major point I see us talking about here is strategy. If one can't tell by the vast portion of his sources that are centrally focused on strategic theory, it's evident in the final portion of his article as he brings his thoughts into application:

"Nonlinear systems are those that are far more complex. Actions made in such a system can create effects not easily anticipated since identifying relationships between variables is difficult and properties are not known values... A historian who is an expert on the operational variables can begin to understand the relationship dynamics in the nonlinear systems in which the Army operates."

This gives more substance to the utilization of historians than the simple fact that historians are "experts in causation," as he notes in the beginning. And when we arrive at his conclusion he states that the role of the historian should be shifted from solely focusing on documenting our own organization to that of a position that contributes to operational effectiveness. This is a practical application: history teaches us where we were, where we are, and where we need to be. A former mentor of mine often said, "History may not always repeat itself, but it certainly echoes". If we aren't learning from the mistakes and successes of our predecessors then we are failing as leaders.

The history of tactics and equipment in war are important command considerations, they directly inform the mission in the present. But moreover, historians can be trained experts on society, culture, language, politics, economy, religion, and ethnicity. These factors are a significant part of our operational environment and crucial to not only combat effectiveness, but the reconciliation process that must happen after combat in order to truly resolve the war.

Loveland-Historians

Response by SFC Herve Abrams made May 1 at 2020 10:21 PM

SFC Herve Abrams — Fri, 01 May 2020 22:21:26 -0400

I recently assisted in a union organizing drive for civilian employees of the U.S. Army Center of Military History, including all of the civilian employees in the various Army Museums throughout the world. Although I played a small roll, I spoke with several Military Historians about the work they do. I learned they are understaffed, underutilized, lack cooperation, but are all highly dedicated to preserving history.
I urge all who have combat experience or have served in significant operations to contact the appropriate military history office and offer to share any knowledge you may have, as appropriate.
They are especially interested in hearing from Vietnam Veterans.

Response by MAJ Ken Landgren made May 1 at 2020 10:25 PM

MAJ Ken Landgren — Fri, 01 May 2020 22:25:25 -0400

To me, an effective historian understands the strategic, operational, and tactical components of war to include doctrine, and Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Let's discuss actions leading up to, during, and after the Battle of the Bulge. Germany was low on supplies, fuel, low on experienced pilots, planes, and the quality of the soldiers were not to their standard, but they still had a large armored force. The US had plenty of supplies, soldiers, vehicles, tanks, and planes as they maneuvered toward Germany.

From Normandy is was slow going for the US due to the terrain and the area was heavily defended. Our Sherman tanks were inferior to German tanks due to the doctrine of Sherman tanks tasked as infantry support vehicles and very little improvement were made to fight the German tanks effectively. When the Battle of the Bulge commenced, the US had air superiority due to the superiority of the P-51 which was also an RMA. It is alleged the P-51s shot down 4,500 German planes and destroyed another 4,500 on the ground. Our lines were thin in many places because Eisenhower wanted a broad front.

At the Battle of the Bulge the Germans threw heavy armor divisions at us with a very limited fuel and supplies. Tactically speaking our fighter planes attrited the German units and attacked supply trains. The 101st and soldiers in the Ardennes Forest fought against the German armor divisions. The soldiers in the Ardennes Forest fell back but never retreated. The Germans eventually ran out of fuel and supplies and they retreated or surrendered en masse. Patton used the tactic of using fighter planes to attrit the enemy and decisively engage the enemy forward of his army. It gave him great intelligence and the freedom of maneuver to attack at his time and place of his choosing. His ability to move the army was unmatched in human history.

This is what I want from a historian. I want the historian to go from the big picture or strategic level to the tactical level. I also expect to learn about doctrine and RMAs that impacted wars. I also want to get a straight answer to why did we have air superiority at the time of the Battle of the Bulge if I asked that question. What were the conditions, plans, doctrine, tactics, RMAs, and other variables that impacted the battlefield, the campaign, and the war. That's my 2 cents.

A historian should be able to discuss the strategic, operational, and tactic aspects and how they are interconnected to paint an accurate picture. Military history can be a deep reservoir of lessons learned for future applications like:

- Tanks fight Tanks.
- Use air power to attrit and fix the enemy before we commit ground forces.
- Use air power to attrit the enemy air force.
- Light infantry need better weapons to fight armor units.
- Ensure supply trains are robust.
- Sometimes we need better intelligence.
-

Response by LTC Jason Mackay made May 2 at 2020 1:17 PM

LTC Jason Mackay — Sat, 02 May 2020 13:17:24 -0400

1LT Private RallyPoint Member So really fired up on a Saturday....This paragraph summed this up for me:

"What is not commonly seen is a historian who applies history and the related professional skill sets as an integrated member of the staff to enhance the operational effectiveness of the unit. This is not limited to just the Army; the historical field in general has trended away from applying its expertise in a utilitarian matter and has instead concentrated on producing academic history. The Army’s current practice of not integrating historians into the Army’s operational processes does the Army a disservice. This needs to change. Historians have unique capabilities and knowledge that can increase the Army’s ability to fight and win our nation’s wars."

This is a good article in that it articulates what we have and what they are supposed to be doing and what they could be doing. The problems I see are as follows:
- RANDOM: I have bumped into historians three times over 22 years. They show up at random. There is no time for introspection to provide them with something meaningful. So they get random ham hand handed comments they scribble down and leave. Example: I am eating lunch in our FOB DFAC and I happen to sit down with Richard Killblane. For those that don't know, US Army TC Historian and recognized historian and author. Probably the only one doing professional work on gun trucks. No IDEA he was in the AO. As a Sustainer directing all the distro operations in the Battlespace it should have "come up". Wasted opportunity.
- DENSITY: dovetailing with above, the density of these wonderful folks is so low, they tend to collect at "history making" HQs at the 3 and 4 star levels. Below that is hit or miss. The irony is that documentation is MORE likely to exist and survive at these levels vs the PLT, CO, BN, and even BDE. Maybe at DIV. Historians are too few and far apart to capture it "all".
- WHAT: So ALL the information. If you've worked a command post for a minute you know that there is a hierarchy of info routine, critical and exceptional (if you've never heard of this, google it). We captured barrels of routine information at the staff officer level. We capture and filter Commander's Critical Information Requirements to drive decision making (PIR, FFIR, EEFI, again google it). Exceptional info which is not anything you were tracking, but like porn, you know it when you see it. This is info that is so hot and unexpected it demands that the commander makes a decision. The problem with History is you don't know 20 years ago you were going to need to capture all of "these" to analyze "theses" to make decisions about "those". Google the concept of Known-Knowns (see picture).
- FRYING INFO IN THE NAME OF OPSEC: I was absolutely flabbergasted that units were directed to wipe hard drives and purge everything in order to leave theater with it. The Army's History Enterprise was either ignorant of this or they were quietly overruled. So now one is completely reliant on CENTCOM and SHAPE to provide granular detail. The great shame of this all is, particularly ground warfare services are very precise about WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, HOW and sometimes WHY, trained observers from pups. Further, ad hoc JTFs and CJTFs are not enduring, when they go away, everything is lost unless there is a conscious effort to transition it or capture it. This is the exception and not the rule.
- UNIT LEVEL: The unit history program rides on some collateral duty LT, who may or may not know they are the unit historian. I have been drafted at the 11th hour to write than "annual history" which tends to look like 'arent we great' rather than what we do, what it feels like, what is the experience at all levels, how we do things and why, rich and tangible for future people. I have also aided the poor S1s who have been drafted to write this.
- WASTED OPPORTUNITIES: I have never seen a contemporary unit citation recommendation package published as history. Granted it is slanted a little, but capturing a unit's experience at the brigade or battalion level in the absence of anything else would be very important. Summaries lead trained researchers to find other sources, some of those "primary" which are critical to scholarly research. Besides, the ass-kicker of it all is they SUBMIT IT TO HQDA. We already have it.....and pissed away because its not in the right inbox. Make use of what we have!
- SWISSARMY KNIFE CRISIS: When you try and justify existence, the tendency is to pull in everything and anything you do, half-assed do, could do, etc to paint the picture of multi-disciplinary utility. See! no one does what we do!. What the hell is wrong with you people? Can't you see I have People skills! So according to the article these are special staff that could be leveraged for operations and MDMP in the historical dimension (not exactly a pervasive attribute); they can do unsolicited research and studies they see a need for; they can do historical collection (again not incredibly pervasive); they can do targeted research and studies on demand for a senior supported commander. According to the article they can do anthropology/cultural human terrain type work....yeah ok, how much, how far?

So wow, what a marvelous problem set. What do we do? I recommend the following.
- BIG DATA: We live in an age of big data, data mining, knowledge management, and shared archives. We need to leverage technology to capture the raw data and information before it is lost.
- Describe the history we capture. Are we capturing strategic level history? operational history? tactical history? plight of the average soldier? All have value at different levels with different audiences.
- IF YOU CAN'T GET THE CRAFTSMEN TO THE WORK, GET THE WORK TO THE CRAFTSMEN: We will never have sufficient depth of academically trained historians as long as there is a requirement for the 5X identifier, TAA and a force cap. So how do we maximize the work (present and future) of fewer highly skilled experts? You get the work to them. Much like the Calibration and Repair Pyramid of TMDE, you ship the hardest of the hard and most complex of the complex to the Primary Standards lab rather than give every Transfer Team the capability. We are talking about moving information which we may or may not have an immediate need for. This would require DEEP collaboration of time, money, architecture, and SHARING in general. We also can't be everywhere at once. So if we targeted the following and had the "rest" dumped into a deep archive that needed preparation for further exploitation:
---Capturing a monthly snap shot of the EXISTING unit manning rosters for the purpose of building focused, vetted interview lists. This would form the center of History Detachment visits
---Hard Drive contents: cyclic reports; story boards; C4ISR system data (like BLUFOR Tracker, CPOF and NATO's JOC Watch) that has units locations, patrol tracks (yes it exists), etc; Contract Statements of work; plans; orders; BUBs; CUBs; Sworn Statements; etc Looking to capture major unit operational artifacts that would be structure for data mining based on tiered key word queries.
---Specific Hard Drives: #1 Any "battle captain" "battle NCO" of "watch" officer/NCO. Staff Primaries. Commanders. Contracting Officers. You'll be able to figure out "noise level" of the events and then target searches down and across. LOGSTATS and logistics reporting at all levels to drive forecasting tools not depending on voluntary contributions. Rip it from the hard drives.
---Raw award recommendations to tie events to individuals. Personally a great tool to really look hard at the corrosive "got screwed out of it because I was a ______" bias narrative in the decorations zeitgeist.
- Archive the remainder of hard drives
- Announce the movement of History Personnel by FRAGO and unit announcements so they can receive personal accounts from people with something to say. Stick them in a DFAC and let the collection begin.
- CIO G6 and TAA would have to build an IT supporting team to integrate with the Historians. It would also be of value to have operations SMEs (forensics almost) for the period they are looking at to know WHERE and HOW that info would have been collected, especially in a tactical command post. Perhaps a lash up and enduring operational relationship with CALL.

Finally I would recommend doing the total mission analysis. What do we want our Historians to do that they will add value to. Is the human terrain domain something we expect from them, or is this more the realm of the Intelligence community? DO we go to a another provider? I think drafting academics for human terrain teams could have more value, as you get history and culture understanding targeted to the region instead of a generalist reading the same pile of books I could read as a staff officer or commander.

Its either important or it is not.

Response by SSG Samuel Kermon made May 2 at 2020 1:51 PM

SSG Samuel Kermon — Sat, 02 May 2020 13:51:46 -0400

Your comment, as stated by your mentor, is spot on. We must learn from the mistakes, and successes, of our past. But military leaders cannot stop there. Leaders must be able to adapt the present to the lessons learned and be able to apply the new reality into their planning. The new reality is that Asymmetrical Warfare is the new landscape but a historian would show how the past, via guerilla tactics of the Viet Cong, Che Guevara (sorry for my misspelling), and other "irregular forces", taught war planners vital lessons in how to deal with the problems of this new reality.

Response by MSG John Duchesneau made May 3 at 2020 1:01 AM

MSG John Duchesneau — Sun, 03 May 2020 01:01:55 -0400

One thing to keep in mind when writing history is that you have to assume that somebody is going to look at it 100 years from now with no prior knowledge of the subject.
Basically, a unit history will be read by two groups of people - those who served with the unit to see if they agree with its focus and researchers in the future.
With that in mind a history should give a brief background as to why the unit was in that place at that time and what its mission was. There should be a listing of key events during the deployment as well as "nice to know" information such as a list of unit personnel and significant awards. Individuals with outstanding achievements should be mentioned but its more about the unit as a whole than its individual soldiers.
I noticed that the Army has historical teams at the Corps and Division levels. This is good for a 35,000 foot view but not good for seeing what's going on at the unit level. I think there should be historical teams at the brigade battalion levels as well - at least for deployed units.

Response by LTC Gary Earls made May 3 at 2020 2:58 PM

LTC Gary Earls — Sun, 03 May 2020 14:58:02 -0400

I am the unit historian for my Vietnam Aviation Company. I was assigned as the awards and decorations officer without any instructions on what to do. I failed in my duty. In the 1990s the historian of the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association recommended that all aviation units write their unit histories. I took on the challenge. I'm now at over 3800 words and still adding information. I read the books on the units in Northern I Corps from 1969-1972 to see if our unit is mentioned. Usually nothing is mentioned about the aviation units that took them into battle. We worked with the 101st, 1st Arvn Division, 5th Mech Division and Special Forces. An example is "Hamburger Hill". My unit was required to land the South Vietnamese Army unit on top of Hamburger Hill to block the NVA from retreating. The Battalion Commander of the 3/187th Infantry ordered that the ARVNs be removed because he wanted all of the honor go to his unit for capturing the Hill. My unit came back in and took the ARVN's back to their base. The American infantry battalion took heavy casualties. The other three units in our aviation battalion got the Presidential Unit citation. My unit got nothing. The reason that I am reading and researching my unit is for the future generations of my fellow aviation personnel can' find out what their ancestors did in Vietnam. The Division historians will write about what the division did but probably nothing at the company level. Just my opinion.

Response by COL Private RallyPoint Member made May 18 at 2020 10:51 PM

COL Private RallyPoint Member — Mon, 18 May 2020 22:51:56 -0400

This issue is more complex that it appears. There are two types of military historians. There are the joint historians. They focus on the joint and unified commands such as USCENTCOM, USSOCOM, USPACOM as well as war fighting headquarters such as Multi-National Forces-Iraq, Multi-National Corps-Iraq, United States Forces- Iraq and United States Forces-Afghanistan. The joint historian is focused on the strategic issues associated with the joint side of the fight. The uniformed historians who work on the joint level are usually senior officers (senior O-4, O-5 and O-6) who have experience working as a service component historian. The joint historians usually have security clearances that start at the TS level and include numerous SAP read-ons. The joint historians usually are individuals matched up against a billet on the Joint Manning Document.
The service component historian works within their specific component (Army, Air Force, Navy, etc.). For Army historians, they can be an individual such as a division or corps historian or a member of a Military History Detachment (MHD). Usually they are working at the SECRET level and below as opposed to the TS level. The MHD has 3 different constructs. There is a Team A which is a LTC and COL. There is a Team B which is a Major and 2 NCOs. The Team C consists of 2 NCOs. Each of the three MHD Teams has a specific mission and focus. Over the last 20 years the performance of the MHDs has been mixed. Some have performed very well. Others performed horribly and damaged the historical collection effort within a theater environment (Relief fort Cause, GO Letters of Reprimand, etc.).
Just focusing on Army Historians, the uniformed historians who deploy downrange are there to collect.y collect documents, photographs, interviews and artifacts. The uniformed service component historians while deployed should not be tasked to write. they should be focused on collecting. The civilian historians are the ones who focus on writing. They take the products collected by the MHDs and the individual service component historians and prepare the monographs and pamphlets such as the Green Books published by the US Army Center of Military History.
The historian is there to collect the documentation necessary and to tell the accurate and truthful history of the army during a certain time period. Their collection can be used to prove or disprove doctrine or commander's decisions. They can be used to trace the changes in war fighting. History can also be used as a means to react to changes in war-fighting, such as reaching back to the gun trucks of Vietnam to counter AQI IEDS in Iraq in 2004-05.
In a side note about artifacts, the joint historians do not collect artifacts as there is no joint artifact program. Each service component is responsible for their own artifacts.

Response by SSG Edward Tilton made Sep 11 at 2021 8:10 PM

SSG Edward Tilton — Sat, 11 Sep 2021 20:10:48 -0400

Unit histories are lost in the Army. Units don't stand for anything.