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Post by EXO on Feb 5, 2021 7:21:12 GMT 8
I have been busy on Facebook lately. It doesn't mean I like Facebook, though. They are " useful" in getting the word around. I expect I need to get back to focus on the Battle of Manila, and not because its 76th anniversary is coming round this week. It's because I lament the lack of quality materials about it, and because I do not trust the lack of scholarship exemplified in Facebook community. So, for your penance, I suggest you read this paper by Cpt. Kevin T. McEnery which touches on the large unit doctrine for offensive urban combat, and the circumstances that determined that the city of Manila would become a battlefield. There was never any prospect that there wouldn't be a major battle, and the suggestion that the Japanese forces were trapped into the battle is the product of a feverish mind. The intent was to teach the U.S. Army how any invasion of the Japanese mainland would play out. It would literally put them in fear that the cost would exceed a million deaths. It is one of the great frauds of history that the battle, and its atrocities, were a simple, unintended consequence of a Naval Command gone rogue. The post-war efforts to revise history my colleague Peter Parsons has already dealt with at our website, Battle of Manila.Org This paper involves the doctrinal issues of a Corps caught inextricably in a meat grinder. These issues are far more complex than 95% of Facebook pests can conceive of.
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