194. TURKEY TROTS TO WATER

The World Wonder'd

There's a new book out about one of my favorite Pacific War battles titled The World Wonder'd: What Really Happened Off Samar. This title is designed to appeal to people who already know something about the battle, and to keep Admiral Halsey spinning in his grave.

I've written about the battle before, but, I can't recall if I've written about the radio message. Nelson's flag message before Trafalgar may be more famous, but no radio message is more famous in the history of the U.S. Navy. 

At the time, coded messages were padded at both ends with more-or-less nonsense phrases. In this case, the phrase at the beginning of the message was TURKEY TROTS TO WATER GG. Followed by the actual message FROM CINCPAC ACTION COM THIRD FLEET INFO COMINCH CTF SEVENTY-SEVEN X WHERE IS RPT WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR RR. Now, at the time, the part in bold was enough to upset Halsey, as Nimitz (CINCPAC) was questioning where the task force he wanted covering San Bernardino Straight was, and Halsey hadn't dispatched it. But then came the final padding phrase, that seemed so relevant that the people decrypting the message had not removed it, but sent it to Halsey along with the message, THE WORLD WONDERS. This drove Halsey into a rage as it sounded like Nimitz was very openly questioning his conduct of the battle -- which he was, but THE WORLD WONDERS was just a freak accident on the worst day of Halsey's life. (There's actually a Wiki entry for this message, HERE.)


There are two famous "action" tropes, one of which goes back to Homer. There's the scene where the protagonist puts on all his armor and weapons, at the end of The Odyssey, Ulysses, together with his son and father, armor up with Athena to assist them. In Predator 2, Danny Glover's character does the same thing, out of the trunk of his car, before going into the meat locker building for the big fight. The other trope is that the hero loses his main weapon or weapons and has to overcome while at a disadvantage. In Predator, Arnold Schwarzenegger's character has to improvise explosive arrows in that final fight after losing all his commando gear. 

The events leading up to the sending of the message above, demonstrated that Halsey lacked the intuition (which Spruance, at that moment Nimitz's Chief of Staff, had in spades) of knowing where he should be on the battle field and what he should be doing. As a result, we get the battle I've written about before, with the escort carriers, destroyers and destroyer escorts, the sub-junior varsity, facing off against the cream of the Imperial Japanese Navy off Samar. A U.S. force intended and trained for anti-submarine and landing air support, took on and fought off -- arguable defeated, when you consider the loses on each side and who ended up in control of the battle field -- the Japanese in the battle that came closest to being the Decisive Battle both navies had planned on for decades. (The Battle of the Philippine Sea, won by Spruance, was actually more "decisive" but it looked nothing like what everyone had expected, as it was fought entirely by aircraft and submarines).

Had the battle been fought the way Nimitz and Lee (the U.S. battle force commander) would have preferred, the Japanese battleships and cruisers would have been confronted by a similar array of U.S. Navy ships. That would have been the battle everyone had long imagined. Instead, thanks to Halsey, we get the action movie trope which is far more interesting. Though, to this day, the world still wonders and speculates about how that other battle, between USN and IJN battleships, would have played out.


The YouTube series "The Great War" is currently covering the Third Battle of Ypres and has just explained how British general Plumer has noticed a way to counter Ludendorf's new defensive in depth approach on the Western Front. After three years of unimaginably bloody fighting, Ludendorf noticed that it was better to hold the front with lighter forces, but in depth, and counter-attack any advance. Plumer noticed that this meant the Germans would give up the first lines of their positions with very little fight. By taking only what the Germans were willing to give up, over time the British could make substantial gains a little at a time. This is not Patton's rock soup, but it is related to rock soup. 

I mention this, along with what I've said above about Halsey and Spruance, because it shows how long it can take -- three years during the Great War -- before commanders with a knack for noticing the crucial weakness of the enemy under new circumstances can work themselves into positions where they can achieve something. 

In retrospect, the First Battle of Verdun (we've just started the Second Battle) looks like madness, because the French seem to have been acting as though it was Sedan in the Franco-Prussian War. It would have made so much more sense to have treated Verdun like it was the same as anywhere else along the front. The value of that position, in 1916, was not worth the price paid to defend it. 

Stalingrad, thanks to its position on the river, might have been worth the price paid on both sides to capture and to defend it, though I'm not at all sure of that. But Verdun, if lost, could easily have turned into a dangerous bulge in the German lines, especially if the French had thrown their forces on its flanks rather into its teeth. Just speculation, of course.

The European armies viewed the American Civil War as an amateur show, and since the troops were almost entirely militia, there's some truth to that. But the lack of a large standing army, with an entrenched officer corps, made it easier for junior (and retired) officers like Grant and Sherman and Sheridan to rise to positions of command. I think Grant (and Lee) have reputations as field commanders that are better than they deserve, but Grant could have schooled the Entente Powers on how to go about winning their war. (The main difference being that, at the end, all the Union armies were under Grant's command, whereas the Entente was herding cats with five distinct major national armies in the field.)

A Failure To Thrive

I've collected a list of potential book titles including A Failure To Thrive. Has anyone ever started out with a title and then written a book to fit? And what would this book be about? Ignoring the non-fiction options, I suppose this would be about a person who passes through childhood and adolescence and into young adulthood so damaged that there is no future for him or her. The only question is how will the person destroy him or herself. Lucy Barton and Renee, from The Elegance of the Hedgehog, turn out to be surprisingly resilient, to thrive despite their early circumstances. 

It would probably be more striking, and even more believable, if the protagonist came from a more generous background. Of my young online acquaintances, the one most likely to fit this title is the one with, in many ways, the most going for her. (Actually there would be a tie here, with a guy with pretty stereotypical issues.) 

But why would anyone want to read this book? It could well turn out like Hunger (the one by Knut Hamsun -- it turns out there are several books with that title) -- and that book was a pretty complete waste of my reading time. Though I do like to tell the story of reading that and pleading with the character, by the end, to finally fucking die. In a way this is the ultimate anti-hero. 

Next time, Paper Bullets of the Brain (from Much Ado About Nothing).