Richard M. Swain

This account of Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm, written from the perspective of the U.S. Army's highest command echelon during the conflict, U.S. Third Army, comes from the man who wsa the assigned command historian during the conflict, COL Richard Swain. Swain's account is unique in that he was there as the history was taking place, knowing to a greater or lesser extent the people making the decisions and leading Army combat formations into battle. Swain's position on Third Army's staff afforded him access to not only the key Army personalities, but also the messages, journals, and reparts that are an intrinsic byproduct of Army operations. This unique access permitted Swain to craft an insightful story with logical conclusions.

Published under the aegis of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, "Lucky War" contains 369 pages organized in nine numbered chapters, a list of illustrations, preface, acknowledgements, an introduction, nine appendices, a glossary, and a bibliography which really are bibliographic notes. The illustrations are limited to some black and white photographs with some poor captioning and a large number of PowerPoint briefing slides, some of which are used in the appendices. These slides represent the changing face of U.S. military history in that they replace more formal documents in the function of military staffs--a fact that will become more evident as U.S. military history is documented in the 21st Century. From a printing perspective, my copy of this work was thermally bound, which readily broke as I was reading the volume.

Swain spends more than half the text setting the stage for Desert Storm's ground war, which does not begin until Chapter 7. I feel this focus allows the credit for Desert Storm's success lay in the careful preparations made by the Army's theater level command, Third Army. What is sometimes forgotten in the telling of the Desert Storm story is that Third Army played three different roles in the course of Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm: the ground component of U.S. Central Command; the senior U.S. Army headquarters in the theater with mandated responsibilities; and, finally, a numbered field army controlling two corps as well as army-level formations. At times these roles conflicted with significant consequences for planners and operations.

In telling this stor from Third Army's perspective, Swain speaks about the roles and duties of various general officers and colonels in preparing the plans and the battlefields of Desert Storm. He notes the sacrifices made in logistics infrastructure made by the theater commander in order to move fighting power into the Kuwait Theater of Operations as quickly as possible and the consequences of those sacrifices. When the ground war actually begins on 24 February 1991, Swain tells the story from the headquarters of U.S. Third Army perspective in which he operated. The author could not afford to dive into details--other authors have already done this. Instead, Swain focuses on division and brigade level operations, as well as the dramas that unfolded at Army and theater level.

Swain's object in writing this book is more than simply a command historian recording command history. That object is made clear in the bibliographic notes at the end of the book when he rates earlier efforts to publish Desert Storm history. Swain clearly places Rick Atkinson's "Crusade" in the lead among these near contemporary history efforts, while other accounts do not fair nearly as well. He particularly excoriates Norman Schwartzkopf's autobiography "It Doesn't Take A Hero" both from the money perspective (the former CENTCOM Commander in Chief pocketed several million dollar from this publishing contract) as well as from the content perspective. Swain feels that Schwarzkopf's lambasting of CG Third Army (LTG John Yeosock) and CG VII Corps (LTG Frederick Franks) in particular overlooked the difficulties that both commanders encountered on the battlefield in the course of the "100 Hour War" as well as glossed over Schwarzkopf's own errors during the conflict.

Swain's very readable account is a must read for those students of military history looking for a balanced account of Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm.… (mer)