About the Book
I’m writing a book that deserves a place in the historiography of World War II. The historiographical gap is real. Innumerable books cover WWII infantry operations, entire libraries on armor and air power, and stacks of command biographies. But histories of field artillery? Very few. Field artillery appears frequently in battle histories, but always as backdrop, never as subject. "Artillery softened defenses." "Fire support was provided." It’s always amusing to me to see how infantry historians recorded their unit histories vs other units.
Here’s the thing though, here’s why it gets dismissed: Field Artillery did their job so well and so consistently as to become the background. In fact, they did so well, the few stories that revolve around field artillery focus on their few failures, i.e. Kasserine Pass. You know why they failed at Kasserine Pass? They didn’t follow the book. The book that two decades of field artillery officers had dedicated an inordinate amount of time planning. The innovation of the fire direction center transformed artillery from a ponderous, battery-by-battery weapon into a flexible, devastating system capable of massing fires across entire corps fronts. It deserves serious historical analysis.
The King of Battle Series
???? volumes covering North Africa through the Pacific. Each uses different divisions to trace tactical evolution while maintaining focus on how artillery and infantry created effective combined arms warfare. The series title comes from artillery's historical nickname.
Book One: Desert Forge - North Africa 1942-1943
My thesis: American field artillery used interwar lessons and Fire Direction Center innovations to become so reliably effective it faded into the background of combat operations, thus explaining why it's been overlooked in the historical literature.
North Africa is the perfect proving ground for this argument. The 1st Infantry Division provides the narrative anchor, but I'm tracking the entire corps artillery system.
The story arc writes itself:
Early failures: The FDC system existed but doctrine was ignored. Coordination broke down. The potential was there; the execution wasn't.
The learning curve: How the system was fixed, how procedures were enforced, how the corps artillery structure was properly employed.
Demonstrated effectiveness: When the system functions as designed: massed fires, flexible reinforcement, devastating results. Artillery is becoming reliable enough to fade into the background.
Research in Progress
I'm currently in the foundation-building phase, which means two parallel tracks:
Understanding the system: Before I can analyze FDC effectiveness, I need to understand how it actually worked. Thankfully, I do not need to learn differential calculus!!!!!
Building the archival research list: This is a fun challenge: what do I need, what don’t I need, with the knowledge that it really doesn’t matter in the end I won’t use but a tenth of what I research LOL!
Why am I doing this?
Because I’m passionate about telling this story. I feel that leaving out the field artillery distorts our understanding of how American forces fought. Infantry operations that "succeeded" didn't succeed alone; they succeeded because artillery support was so effective it seemed unremarkable.
That effectiveness didn't happen automatically. It was built through interwar innovation, refined through doctrinal development, tested brutally in North Africa, and perfected through experience. The story of that development deserves the historical treatment.