Dispatches
News from the Old Headquarters Building
When, in 1991, John Sayen and I founded the ink-and-paper version of The Tactical Notebook, we imagined it as a means of sharing ‘history in the raw’. That is, rather than providing the end products of the historians craft, the loose-leaf magazine would supply its subscribers with copies of first-hand reports, excerpts from classic works, and descriptions of establishments.
The direct descendant of that ‘two guys with a laser printer’ publication takes more than its name from its ancestor. At a time when many other Substacks specialize in long-form essays, it offers shorter pieces that, more often than not, end short of proper conclusions. In other words, in calling itself a ‘notebook’, this blog practices ‘truth in advertising’.
Speaking of which … a peek into the queue of half-baked pieces sitting on my desktop tells me that, in the course of the month to come, readers of The Tactical Notebook will enjoy:
one of the historical map problems posed to students at Fort Benning in the 1930s
several posts on establishments for infantry units adopted by the US Marine Corps in 1949
an article about the Marines, both German and American, who served in Tsingtao, North China, in the first half of the last century
a speculation about the effect of artificial intelligence on ‘selfie tactics’
the resumption of the translation of the memoirs of Stoßtruppführer Lydding
For Further Reading
