Gavin at War
The World War II Diary of Lieutenant General James M. Gavin
Edited and annotated by Lewis Sorley
Casemate, Philadelphia, 2022, 240 pages
Book Review published on: June 16, 2023
World War I had seen the first uses of mechanized combat vehicles and of aircraft. Battles on and over the western front only hinted at the potential of these weapons. The technology behind them was still very immature but was rapidly catching up to the theory. The Armistice of 1918 put development and innovation at a snail’s pace, if not on hold for decades. Adolf Hitler’s 1939 invasion of Poland featured the use of tanks and aircraft that mated technology, theory, and practice in a sophisticated and rapid advance across its hapless neighbor. Months later when the Germans turned toward their western and northern neighbors, they demonstrated that the air domain was not only a place for air-to-air combat or a medium for delivering bombs against ground targets, but it was also a domain for maneuvering troops.
A series of victories from 1940 to 1941 in Belgium, Norway, and culminating in Greece on the island of Crete demonstrated the potential of delivering groups as small as a company and as large as a division using aircraft to seize key terrain and shape battles for ground forces. Britain, the United States, and others were observing or experiencing the first update to multidomain operations since ancients had used ships to attack their enemies amphibiously.
Capt. James Gavin, at this time, was an instructor at his alma mater: the United States Military Academy. He anticipated that within years, that the United States would be caught up in the European conflict. He responded to a call for volunteers to join the Army’s fledgling airborne forces that were organizing and training at Fort Benning, Georgia. Gavin had been captivated by the German tactics that had seized the “impregnable” Belgian border fort, Eben Emael, and later the island of Crete with glider-borne soldiers and paratroopers. After several rejections, his transfer was approved, and he reported to the Airborne Training Center in the summer of 1941. After weeks of training, he was appointed commander of Company C, 503rd Parachute Infantry Battalion, soon he was the battalion executive officer, and then elevated to the plans and training officer for the Provisional Parachute Group. In that role he authored Field Manual 31-30, Tactics and Techniques of Air-borne Troops, America’s first doctrinal publication for the training and employment of airborne troops. By the next summer, Gavin assumed command of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment.
The U.S. Army’s forecasted force design for an Airborne Division was built around three infantry regiments: two delivered by glider and one delivered by parachute. Accelerated production of combat aircraft left the design, testing, and manufacturing of gliders for the airborne divisions behind schedule and necessitated an early force structure change to enable the first available airborne division (the 82nd Airborne Division) to deploy into the Mediterranean theater. Gavin’s 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment was attached to the 82nd as a substitute for one of the yet-to-be trained glider infantry regiments.
Shortly after this union, then Col. Gavin began keeping a diary. It seems clear that he had no intent to publish these musings later; rather, the diary is a collection of thoughts in the moment and contains breaks that correspond to major actions that Gavin found himself involved in, whether they were the invasion of Sicily, the invasion of mainland Italy, Normandy, the invasion of Holland, or the Battle of the Bulge.
As the Army trains and prepares in 2023 for large-scale combat operations and multidomain operations, Gavin’s diary offers a glimpse inside of the thoughts of an early multidomain pioneer. Gavin advanced from captain to major general in four years as the subject-matter expert in a new and untried field. Throughout Gavin at War: The World War II Diary of Lieutenant General James M. Gavin, the reader sees Gavin’s focus on training, standards, and discipline. He constantly sought out junior leaders with “the right stuff” that could lead at higher levels. Prior to Normandy, it depicts Gavin as he served as the United States’ airborne advisor to the Operation Overlord planning committee, where he played the role of advocate as well as subject-matter expert. Similarly, Gavin at Warshows him to be self-confident and a sharp critic of the training, readiness, and standards of other units, both allied and American. He considered the potential of the airborne becoming part of the Air Force in postwar restructuring and pondered the potential role he, personally, could or would play.
Gavin at War is a fast and entertaining read that is a must for airborne afficionados. Those that have read Gavin’s intentionally published postwar reflections in On to Berlin: Battles of an Airborne Commander 1943-1946 will find this shorter volume to be a companion that re-treads much of the same territory. Other readers should approach this for what it is: the contemporary notes of an early pioneer and practitioner of multidomain operations engaged in large-scale combat operations. Gavin had literally written the book on airborne operations, and through this book, the reader is able to see him putting theory into action.
Book Review written by: Paul J. Narowski II, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas