geofflambert
Posts: 14863
Joined: 12/23/2010 From: St. Louis Status: offline
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There is another matter which perhaps a forumite could help me with. I have great respect for the historian Barbara Tuchman. If you haven't read her The Guns of August it is imperative that you do. I am currently reading Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911 - 1945. I'm going to quote here a passage from it that puzzles me. "He [Stilwell] reached Leavenworth for the school year of 1925-26. What Leavenworth taught was "solution of the problem" based on statement of mission, analysis of the enemy, choices of action, solution, decision and plan. In lectures, map problems and terrain exercises the course covered mobilization, movement of units, march, relief, supply, reconnaissance and security, delaying action, withdrawal, change of direction, pursuit and all those maneuvers which man has indefatigably devised to make a science out of fighting. The course was exacting and the pressure to excel so great as to cause a series of suicides in the 1920's that later led to the closing of the school." End of passage. This school is the one that W.T. Sherman established in eighteen seventy something or other. I have been unable to confirm that the school was ever closed for even one semester and is in fact still in operation today. Is there an alum present or anyone who knows what she was talking about?
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