Concrete Hell is Out!

Concrete Hell is now out and available from Amazon and at many bookstores!

As some of you know, I teach urban warfare to US Army officers at the army Command and General Staff College. This book is based on my class research, my academic work in the area of Urban Geography and my work for the army writing Field Manual (FM) 3-06, Urban Operations.  Much of what is written here is what I teach to those who are and will practice urban warfare in the coming years.

This work revisits some familiar historical topics like the classic battles for Stalingrad and Hue. In looking at these topics I take the approach of evaluating them in terms of what timeless aspects of urban warfare are revealed in the historical record.

I also look at several urban battlefields that have received less attention. Two areas where I think this book breaks new ground is the evaluation of the Israeli Operation Defensive Shield (2002) and the look at US forces in the Battle of Ramadi (2006-7). I think Concrete Hell is the only comprehensive look at these operations currently in print.

Ultimately, what I intended, and what I think Concrete Hell achieves, is a thorough look at the evolution of urban warfare over the last fifty years. By isolating and focusing on this history, and what it tells us in terms of the conduct of warfare, I think Concrete Hell also describes the nature of the most important battlefield of the 21st Century: the urban battlefield. Thus, though a history, Concrete Hell presents not only an accounting of the past but a vision of the future. Recent battles in Lybia and current fighting in Syria seem to validate that vision.

The subject of urban combat and it’s relationship to today’s military issues is vitally important and one in which I’m intensely interested.  If you have any comments, questions, or want to air your own views on the subject please use the comment section here to do that, or email me at dimarcol@aol.com.

To give you an idea what the book covers here’s the table of contents:

Chapter 1 Urban warfare Past and Future

Chapter 2 An Operational Debacle:  Stalingrad 1942

Chapter 3 American Urban Warfare:  Aachen 1944

Chapter 4 Urban Warfare fro the Sea:  Inchon and Seoul 1950

Chapter 5 Complex Urban Warfare: The Battle for Hue 1968

Chapter 6 War inthe Casbah: The Battle of Algiers 1956-57

Chapter 7 The Log Urban War:  Operation Banner, 1969-2007

Chapter 8 Urban Death Trap:  The Russian Army in Grozny 1995

Chapter 9 Invading the Urban Sanctuary:  Operation Defensive Shield and the Bttle for Jenin 2002

Chapter 10 Systematic Urban Warfare:  “Ready First” in Rarmadi 2006-07

Chapter 11 Urban Combat in the 21st Century

War Horse: Sefton, British Army

Some times my various interests collide in interesting and unusual ways.  Recently I was discussing IRA bombing tactics as an example of the militant wing of an insurgent group dominating its political wing.  Nothing probably demonstrates this better than the July, 1982 bombing by the IRA of the British Household Cavalry guards.  The below is the report from the BBC as to what happened. 

Sefton, Lifeguard Cavalry Horse

One of the survivors was the Household Cavalry horse Sefton.  See his story here. 

The interesting aspect of this bombing is that it is really a major tactical mistake by the IRA.  Not in the sense that it didn’t achieve their objective of bring publicity to their campaign.  That was a tactical success.  But it was  a mistake in the strategic sense.  Killing horses and bandsmen had a huge public backlash against the IRA.  Even among the Catholic community of Northern Ireland, a bastion of IRA support, few could have sanctioned killing horses and bandsmen.  Especially when many of the horses were Irish breed.  

This attack makes the point that terrorism is really about information operations.  The side that manages the message the best wins.  Attacking bandsmen and horses is a terrible message.  In the years after 1982 the British army and government became expert at turning such IRA attacks against the terrorists.  The British were able to make such actions a net loss to the terrorists among their own supporters by carefully exploiting the negative images of the attack while avoiding an overt response to the bombing which would have increased support for the terrorists. 

See this discussion to see how the British strategy against the IRA changed over time. 

Many Americans were too young or have forgotten how savage the battle between the British and IRA was.  This might be a reminder.  

For additional reading on the time of troubles see: 

 

  

For more informaton on the Sefton story see: