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Capt. John J. Pershing (rt) and Correspondent
Frederick Palmer in Manchuria |
Excerpted from: "The U.S. Army Military Observers with the
Japanese Army during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905)", John T. Greenwood,
Army History, Winter 1996
Searching for answers to the slaughter of the
trenches during the First World War, many military
writers and historians fixed on the Russo-Japanese
War as an unheeded warning signal of what was to
come ten years later. Without doubt, that earlier war
provided many lessons that were relearned at great and
tragic human and national cost from 1914 to 1918.
However, the tactical lessons of the Russo-Japanese
conflict were certainly more obvious after 1918 than
they were before 1914. Between 1905 and 1914 they
had not penetrated enough "military minds," staff
colleges, or field service regulations, except possibly
to a limited extent in Germany, to shake the dogmatic
foundations of prevailing beliefs and doctrines. The
war in Manchuria generated nearly ten years of intense
but inconclusive debate about its exact military meaning, but few lessons were ever really learned. "Prior to
the present European War," Judson said in a 1916
speech, "there does not seem to have been a very
thorough appreciation of the lessons of the Manchurian
War in some European armies or I might say in our
own."
One of the U.S. Army's most significant and least known
experiences in learning lessons was in the Russo-Japanese War (February 1904–September 1905).
By April 1904, 34 foreign officers had
gathered in Tokyo to accompany the Japanese field
armies—ten from Great Britain, five from Germany,
four each from France and the U.S., two each from
Spain, Austria-Hungary, and Switzerland, and one
each from Italy, Turkey, Sweden, Chile, and Argentina. Second only to the British team with the Japanese,
which eventually numbered 17 officers, during
the war the U.S. military dispatched 12 official
observers—three Navy and nine Army: Col. Enoch H.
Crowder, Capt. Peyton C. March, Maj. Joseph E.
Kuhn, Capt. John F. Morrison, Capt. Charles Lynch,
Maj. Gen. Arthur MacArthur, Capt. Parker W. West,
Capt. John J. Pershing, and Lt. Col. Edward J.
McClemand.
The Russian adoption early on of a largely defensive strategy meant that the Japanese infantry, with
only rare exceptions, attacked the Russians in their
prepared defensive positions. Thus the American
observers with the Japanese often saw the infantry in
the attack, while those with the Russians witnessed the
infantry on the defensive. Based on experiences in the
Boer War, some European military thinkers held that
infantry could not attack and take a defended position
in the face of modern small-arms and artillery fire.
Other theorists, usually of the French offensive school,
but also some British and Germans, contended that
nothing could stop the offensive when undertaken by
well-trained and highly motivated troops. To these
prominent tactical questions of the day, Manchuria
provided some interesting, yet contradictory and perplexing, answers.
After examining the Russian positions at the battle
of Nanshan (26 May 1904), Joseph Kuhn noted that
"according to the text-books it should be impossible to
carry such a position by frontal attack and yet this was
accomplished by the Japanese." He did not mention
that this success cost General Oku Yasukata's Second
Army over 4,500 casualties and was only won due to
the incompetency of Russian leadership and, as John
Pershing astutely noted, its poor handling of available
reserves. John Morrison, who later become the most
influential Army tactician and educator of the pre-World War I era, questioned Oku's tactical conduct of
the battle after studying reports of the Nanshan fighting. Rather than repeatedly attacking along the entire
Russian front, Morrison thought that the Japanese
should have concentrated on one point, broken through,
and rolled up the Russian lines—the result would have
been a quick, cheap victory.
Two factors had really made Japanese frontal
attacks successful—the attackers' aggressiveness and
willingness to absorb staggering casualties to take a
position combined with the repeated use of enveloping
movements to outflank the Russian defenses, which
often panicked inept Russian commanders into hasty
withdrawals. Few observers saw that this critical interaction in Japanese military operations essentially led to
prolonged stalemates rather than victorious conclusions. The threatening encircling movement on the
flank only forced the enemy's withdrawal to a new
fortified defensive line where the frontal struggle would
resume anew.
. . . In line with what the observers with the Russian side
had observed so clearly, the Russians more often than
not repelled numerous Japanese attacks until forced
out by an endangered flank or a premature decision to
retire. And yet, enough successful assaults were made
to substantiate Kuhn, Morrison, and McClemand, and
anyone else who claimed that frontal assaults worked
against entrenched positions. So again, the lessons
were confused and contradictory—the observers with
the Russians watched defensive tactics and disclaimed
the success of frontal attacks while those with the
Japanese saw the very opposite. As with all such
observations, much depended on where, when, and
what the observers personally witnessed versus information they gleaned from other observers or received
from detailed Japanese briefings. Such ambiguous
"lessons" were difficult for any army to digest and
accept as the basis for major doctrinal changes.
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| A View of the Future: A Japanese Trench in the War with Russia |
From his Manchurian observations, Judson clearly
saw that the improvements in field fortifications would
force infantry tactics to change. In a prophetic description of the trench warfare to come, he wrote: "The
properly fortified line then becomes practically continuous... These short trenches are not in a continuous
line parallel to the front, but occupy what may be called
a defensive belt, of a width between 200 or 300 yards
and half a mile, depending upon the ground and importance of the sector... With three or four thousand men
to the mile of front, including all reserves, a fortified
line of the belt type is invulnerable to frontal attack...
For many reasons, the lessons and recommendations that the American observers reported went largely
unheeded. Even though many specific things that the
observers mentioned were subsequently either introduced or implemented, often no obvious connection
can be made to their recommendations. On the other
hand, some recommendations had distinct impacts.
Sometimes this was because the recommendations
tipped ongoing debates in favor of a particular course
of action, such as with the adoption of the sword
bayonet as a standard infantry weapon or of a new
entrenching tool.
At other times, the personal influence of an observer was clearly discernible as a deciding factor. One
case of direct influence was that of Peyton March.
Assigned to the Artillery Reorganization Board, March
incorporated many ideas from his Manchurian experience into the Artillery Reorganization Act of 1907.
The separation of field and coast artillery and the
reorganization of artillery into regiments was partly
due to March's experience in Manchuria. However,
years of debate and discussion of the effect of technological change on artillery equipment, organization,
and doctrine had also conditioned the artillerymen to
the need for change and to these suggestions. Many
artillerymen saw the Russo-Japanese War as critical
proof of the need for additional change in directions
they were already moving or seriously discussing. Few
other such obvious instances can be singled out.
Alfred Vagts has argued that the lessons and recommendations carried home by the observers from
most countries could not percolate up through the chain
of command. While his contention was only partly true
in most cases, it was most assuredly not true for the
U.S. Army. With a small and closely knit officers
corps of only 3,709 officers in 1906, the observers
knew and were known by most of the important officers of the General Staff, the various bureaus and
departments, their own branches, and the War Department.
In addition, the American observers an spent some
time on the General Staff upon their return from the Far
East. Many of them gave lectures to the General Staff,
at the Army War College, at various officers' associations, and to the public; and they wrote numerous
articles for professional military journals. They also
spoke at length about their experiences with the chief
of staff, with the secretary of war, and with President
Roosevelt upon their return to Washington. The observations and opinions of the American observers most
likely percolated fairly well through Washington's
military circles, the General Staff, and the Army.
In the years following the Russo-Japanese War,
debates over organization, tactics, doctrine, and equipment filled American military journals, lecture halls,
and classrooms. Numerous articles and translations
were published on all aspects of the war in Manchuria
and its impact on American military doctrine. New
books on the war were avidly reviewed and recommended. Students at the Army War College, and the
School of the Line and Staff College at Leavenworth
studied the war's campaigns in detail, and some officers even visited the battlefields to study the operations
on the original terrain.
Because their observations provided the most cogent new information available on key tactical and
technological issues, the works of the American ob
servers were heavily read and used within the U.S.
Army. The observer's Reports and articles were studied and used freely to support all sides of the various
ideas then under debate, from the role and importance
of machine guns to medical service, field fortifications,
cavalry, the bayonet, and training. Where possible, the
branches and schools incorporated relevant information into their manuals. The
Engineer Field Manual of
1912 explicitly states that "much valuable information,
especially as to railroads and field fortifications, was
obtained from the reports of military observers with the
Japanese and Russian armies..." While the observers'
recommendations resulted in few concrete changes,
their works certainly shaped much of the discussion of
military organization and doctrine through 1916.
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| A Group of Foreign Observers at the Siege of Port Arthur |
Actually, one of the most prominent pressures
against the acceptance of the observers' recommendations came from the man most intimately interested in
the Russo-Japanese War and the observers' experiences therein. President Theodore Roosevelt wrote to
Chief of Staff Adna R. Chaffee on 3 July 1905 expressing his concerns about accepting the apparent lessons
of the victorious Japanese Army:
I think we must be careful about following in
anything like servile fashion the Japanese merely be
cause the Japanese have won. Doubtless you remember how, after the Franco-German war, it became the
fashion to copy all the bad points as well as the good
ones of the German Army organizations, so that in our
own army they actually introduced the preposterous
spiked helmets for the army; as foolish a kind of
headgear for modem warfare as could be invented. We
should be on the lookout now not to commit a similar
kind of fault as regards the Japanese. Not all of the
things they have done have been wise, and some of the
wise things they have done are not wise for us.
While the recommendations derived from the
Russo-Japanese War were of relatively little immediate benefit to the U.S. Army in doctrine, organization,
or equipment, the service of these officers in Manchu
ria constituted an important career experience. Duty as
an observer in the Far East was not the determining
factor for future promotion and a successful military
career. A number of the American attachés were later
to hold important positions in the Army, but most of
them were already considered exceptional officers and
that is why they were selected for such critical duty in
the first place. Pershing, March, Morrison, Crowder,
Kuhn, and Judson all played significant roles in World
War I. March and Pershing were successive Army
Chiefs of Staff from 1918 to l924. Yet it would be most
difficult to assess the exact impact that service as a
military observer in Manchuria might have had upon
these officers' careers. So closely witnessing history's
greatest war to that time must have left deep and lasting
impressions on the more astute observers—as obviously happened with Peyton March, John Pershing,
and John Morrison.
In a series of lectures on his role as the Army's
wartime chief of staff to the Army War College during
the 1930s, March frequently returned to the importance of his tour with the Japanese armies in Manchuria. In April 1933, he said:
There I began a careful and practical study of the
operations of a General Staff...it was soon apparent to
me that our General Staff was not either organized
along modern lines at that time, nor did anyone who
had the power to reorganize it have the knowledge
necessary to effect such a reorganization.... I found
myself regarded, upon my return from Japan, as a
firebrand, because of my outspoken opposition to
many things which then existed; but I was not successful in forcing any reorganization of the General Staff at
that time.... The conception of a true General Staff,
which I acquired in my observations of a General Staff
in operation in the field in Manchuria formed the basis
of the orders which I issued on the organization of our
own General Staff when I became Chief of Staff of the
Army."
As with March, John Pershing subsequently acknowledged the value of his duty as an observer in
Manchuria. Pershing told Frederick Palmer, his friend
and colleague whom he had first met in Manchuria, that
his Manchurian experiences had been "Invaluable!"
Although he had missed the major battles, Pershing
had seen for the first time large modem armies in a
wartime setting with all the problems of command,
logistics, training, manpower, and so on played out on
the battlefield. He would carry those impressions with
him to France and beyond. Frank Vandiver, in his
biography of Pershing, concludes of his experience in
Manchuria; "He had gone to Manchuria an accomplished small-unit leader, a master of light tactics; he
came out skilled in the management of mass."
In Morrison's case, his experience in Manchuria
was the primary reason that Army Chief of Staff
Maj. Gen. J. Franklin Bell selected him to go to
Leavenworth as an instructor in tactics in 1906. During
his next six years at Leavenworth, Morrison personally
shaped the development of the Army's Leavenworth
schools, the content of the basic Field Service Regulations, and the tactical thinking of a generation of Army
leaders who became his disciples, including General
George C. Marshall, the Army's chief of staff during
World War II.
The exact value of their Manchurian experiences
on later career and actions of Pershing, March, Morrison,
and the other observers defies accurate appraisal. Detail
as an observer with either army in Manchuria provided
valuable personal and professional experience for the
American officers. Such a unique career experience
had to affect each officer's perceptions of his own
army, its doctrine, organization, tactics, and equipment, and also his future role therein. For those
observers with the Japanese, it was also a rare opportunity to watch closely as a vastly different, complex,
non-Western culture and society organized, planned,
and conducted war. The observers came away with
great admiration for the spirit and discipline of Japanese soldiers, the skills of their officers, and the preparedness of the nation but also with great fears about
the future course of Japanese-American relations and
growing Japanese hostility toward Americans.
Dr. John T. Greenwood at the time of this publication was Director of Field and International Programs at the Center and Chief, Field
Programs and Historical Services Division.
