The compact history of the United States Army

"This is a soldier's survey of the American Army. Insofar as the happenings of the past fifty years are concerned, it is also, to some extent, a personal reminiscence, since the author has been linked to the Army during all that period in one way or another - at first in military school, then for eight years in the New York National Guard, and, finally, for the remainder of the time, in the Regular Army. In 1937 the late Major John H. Burns, Inf., brilliant editor of the Infantry Journal, raised this point when he wrote : "The officer who believes that American civilization as it is evolving will give him the same human material that fought at Gettysburg or in the Argonne is living in a fool's paradise... Whether this American will make a different or better soldier no one can say..." This book is an attempt to answer the question posed by Major Burns, who did not live to see his Army tested in action in either World War II or the Korean War." --from the Preface.