Korea Under the American Military Government, 1945-1948 (review)

★ 285 Army’s log. The stirring, lengthy, Anglophobic screed offered by Clarence Huebner about the Sicily campaign is doctrinally wrong and also would have been eliminated by any military expert. The diaries of Bradley aide Chet Hansen, and the emotional, prejudiced views of Patton chief of staff Hobart Gay, have to be used extremely carefully but are widely quoted as fact. As a former staff college instructor, I found Hirshon’s judgment on military operations frequently wrong, probably due to his lack of original research into the context of Patton’s operations and the war itself. Even his occasional attempts to praise Patton sometime misfire. His statement that Patton’s Army suffered the lowest trench foot and cold weather casualties due to his leadership is patently false, easily disproved by checking the Army Medical Department’s official history. Hirshon’s exposure of and repetitive emphasis on Patton’s dark side is a good corrective to the hero worship paid to Patton, but the author’s own lack of balance does not confirm his admission that Patton was a great soldier, which he undoubtedly was, and leaves a balanced assessment of his subject hanging. While often interesting, Hirshon offers little new and falls far short of Martin Blumenson’s edited Patton Papers and Carlo D’Este’s more complete and balanced, Genius for War. As for Hirshon’s great claim that he has proven that everyone else is wrong, and that Patton was not dyslexic, one has to wonder, based on other instances, if his depth of research is as definitive as he believes.