The Way of the Sword
A précis of two recent posts by Michel Goya
Marine, scholar of the Great War, and observer of current military affairs, Michel Goya is a man after mine own heart. It therefore occurred to me that readers of the Tactical Notebook might enjoy a digest of a pair of articles that Colonel Goya recently posted on his blog, The Way of the Sword.
Dated 7 May 2023, the most recent post tells the tale of the events of the six weeks leading up to the armistice of 11 November 1918. Extracted from a book Colonel Goya published five years ago (The Victors), the account begins with another armistice, the one, signed at Thessalonica on 29 October 1918, that took Bulgaria out of the war. (“Soft underbelly of Europe,” please call your answering service.)
In keeping with his gift for casting wide nets, Colonel Goya describes the interaction of a number of decisions, ranging from the attempt by Germany to negotiate directly with the United States (rather than the “Allies and Associated Powers” as a whole) to the senseless continuation of the submarine campaign. (The first came close to success. The second ought to be filed in the folder marked “never do a small injury.”)
On 30 April 2023, Goya reposted a substantial article on three operations conducted by French forces in western Africa during the “times of lightning strikes” [temps de la foudroyance] of 1977 and 1978. Largely forgotten in the English-speaking world, the first of these took place in Mauritania, the second in (what was then known as) Zaire, the third in Chad.
In Mauritania, French actions consisted largely of attacks by Jaguar ground-attack aircraft against columns of pickup-riding partisans of the Polisario movement. In Zaire and Chad, however, France employed several composite battalions. Known as groupements tactiques interarmes (GTIA), each of these consisted of elements from several different single-arm regiments. (For more on the GTIA, see the inaugural article of The Order of Battle.)