MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History Winter 2019-2020

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Call for Entries MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History is pleased to invite submissions for the 2020 Thomas Fleming Award, named for an esteemed historian who was a valued contributor to MHQ in a writing career spanning more than 50 years. For the past three years MHQ has sought to honor Tom Fleming’s remarkable contributions to the field by inviting our readers—some of the world’s most knowledgeable amateur and professional military historians—to submit original articles on topics that relate to military history. The winner will receive $5,000, and MHQ will publish the winning article in a future issue. The Fine Print Articles submitted must be original and must not have been published elsewhere in whole or in part. Articles must be between 1,500 and 5,000 words. One submission per entrant. Entries must note…

For 47 unspeakably horrific days in 1918, millions of artillery shells rained from the sky during the deadliest military campaign in U.S. history: the Meuse-Argonne Offensive of World War I. Launched by the Allies in northern France on September 26 and fought until the armistice was signed on November 11, the offensive—designed to break Germany’s railway network and push its army out of the country—involved some 1.2 million members of the American Expeditionary Forces, led by General John J. Pershing. By the end of the battle 26,277 American servicemen had been killed and another 95,786 wounded. The most forbidding terrain of the entire offensive was the pockmarked landscape along the road from the village of Avocourt to the seemingly impregnable German fortress at Montfaucon, which the French had nicknamed “Little Gibraltar.”…

SHANGHAI, CHINA, 1937 Ground combat troops from Japan’s Special Naval Landing Forces wear gas masks and rubber gloves to protect themselves as they attack Chinese forces during the Battle of Shanghai. TODAY: A historian unearths an official report that documents the Imperial Japanese Army’s use of banned chemical weapons during the Second Sino-Japanese War. TARAWA ATOLL, GILBERT ISLANDS, 1943 More than 1,000 U.S. Marines and sailors die in the Battle of Tarawa after American forces launch an amphibious assault on the Japanese-held island of Betio in the central Pacific. TODAY: After demolishing an abandoned building on Betio, a nonprofit search-and-recover mission finds the graves of at least 22 U.S. servicemen killed during the three-day battle. ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA, 1925 Western Marine and Salvage Company recovers machinery and other scrap metal from one of 232 wooden steamships…

Double Duty Thank you for a couple of close-to-home surprises in the Autumn 2019 issue of MHQ. First was the photograph of the USS Wasp (CV-7) burning after it was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine on September 15, 1942 (“Flashback,” page 8). My father, the late Lieutenant Kent M. Cushman, was on board at the time and soon found himself swimming in the Coral Sea. Later, on board the USS Lexington (CV-16) in 1943 (“Steichen’s War,” page 52), he and other pilots were photographed by Edward Steichen in the ready room before a strike on Kwajalein Island in the Marshall Islands. Steichen documents this encounter in his 1947 book, The Blue Ghost: A Photographic Log and Personal Narrative of the Aircraft Carrier U.S.S. Lexington in Combat Operation. Curtis D. Cushman Olympia, Washington Factory Second Sadly, my friend…

1ST AIRBORNE In 1961, when Curtis E. LeMay put his pooches through the paces during a photo shoot for Life magazine, he’d just been named chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, a position he held until his retirement from the military in 1965. The gruff, cigar-chomping general, who had been a top air combat leader in World War II and the commander of the Berlin Airlift in 1948, was best known as the father of the Strategic Air Command. In 1968 he joined segregationist George C. Wallace as his running mate in an unsuccessful third-party presidential campaign.…