The Army’s Civilian Historians

QUESTION: What organization solicits professional historians for career-track positions in historical research, writing, and teaching?

ANSWER: The United States Army.

As of early 1986 the US Army carried on its rolls approximately 104 perma­nent professional civilian historians. Their assignments ranged from the Center of Military History (Washington, DC), through the Training and Doc­trine Command (Ft. Monroe, Virginia), the Military Police School (Ft. McClellan, Alabama), the Strategic Defense Command (Huntsville, Alabama), the Chaplain’s School (Ft. Monmouth, New Jersey), or V Corps (Frankfurt, West Germany).

Along with those of the academic world, the US Army’s history pro­grams declined precipitously over the past decade and a half, shouldered out of military classrooms and research pro­jects by management science, operations research, systems analysis, and other ahistorical panaceas. In 1975 mandated military history instruction was eliminat­ed from all but one branch school­ Armor. But where academic history still may not have plumbed its nadir, Army history has enjoyed a strong comeback, dating from the time, two years later, when that Armor school Commandant, General Donn A. Starry, advanced to the command of the Army’s Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC).

Soon, General Starry made known his conviction that “a knowledge of military history—the acquisition of a sense of historical mindedness is a necessary component of an officer’s technical competence.” (Henry O. Malone, Jr., “Military History, Command Support, and the Mission: The TRADOC Experi­ence,” The Army Historian, Winter, 1986, p. 4.) By the spring of 1983 TRADOC had begun the recruitment of profes­sional civilian historians for each of its sixteen centers and schools.

But the roots of the Army’s historical program go back to before the end of the Civil War, when on January 26, 1864, Senator Henry Wilson introduced a resolution in Congress “to provide for the printing of the official reports of the Armies of the United States.” One result was the landmark The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. Ap­pearing between 1878 and 1901, this documentary collection still is prized by Civil War scholars.

Even earlier, between 1870 and 1889, the Army Surgeon General had pub­lished six oversize volumes, The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, another invaluable research aid. (A graphic supplement will be the Army’s forthcoming Pictorial History of Military Medicine in the Civil War, by Stanley Burns, a selection of photo­ graphs taken by Union Army doctors during the war, and definitely not rec­ommended for lunchtime perusal.)

However, it was not until March 1918 that the US Army organized its general staff with a historical section comparable to that of contemporary European ar­mies. The new office barely survived postwar demobilization. As a result, the official history of the US Army in World War I did not appear until 1948, and was a far less comprehensive ven­ture than Official Records.

This meager effort would be trans­formed by the second world war. Presi­dent Franklin Roosevelt, early in 1942, directed that all executive departments and agencies arrange for the preserva­tion of their significant documents and the publication of their wartime experi­ences. The Army responded whole­heartedly and planned for no less than one hundred or so volumes. For the task the Army seconded eminent academic historians, including James Phinney Baxter, president of Williams College, and Kent Roberts Greenfield, Chair­man of The Johns Hopkins University history department.

A significant wartime development was the organization of Army historical contact teams, consisting of two commis­sioned historians and two enlisted men; their job was to provide records retriev­al and to conduct oral interviews with the troops. Such jeep-mobile detach­ments, in reorganized form, would serve through America’s next two wars, Korea and Viet Nam.

Again, postwar funding exigencies threatened the entire Army historical program, well before the publication of the first World War II volume. But strong support came from the Army’s Chief of Staff, General Dwight Eisen­hower, who directed in 1947 that “The history of the Army in World War II now in preparation, must, without res­ervation, tell the complete story of the Army’s participation, fully documented with references to the records used,” and added that this task was to be ac­complished “without reservations as to whether or not the evidence of history places the Army in a favorable light.” Funding was eventually found from, of all things, post exchange profits of the war years. (Col. John E. Jessup, Jr., and Robert W. Coakley, “A Century of Army Historical Work,” from their A Guide to the Study and Use of Military History, US Army Center of Military History, Washington, DC, reprint 1982, pp. 290-91.)

After the Korean war, despite more fiscal ups and downs, new tasks and projects proliferated. In addition to vol­umes on that conflict, Army historians produced headquarters and staff his­tories, volumes on German campaigns in the Soviet Union, logistics, the occu­pation of Germany, and an ROTC text. By FY ’86 Army historians were work­ing on no less than 110 historical publi­cations. Some examples of Army scholarship more recently published include the continuing multi-volume US Army in World War II series, and such spe­cialized studies as Erna Rish’s Supplying Washington’s Army (1981) (“A model of research,” American Historical Review), G. M. Foster’s Demands of Humanity: Army Medical Disaster Relief (1983), and Vincent Jones’ Manhattan: The Army and the Atomic Bomb (1985). And mono­graphs on the Viet Nam War are al­ready being published.

Today, the headquarters of US Army history is the Center of Military History (Washington, DC). Within the Center, the Histories Division produces the major narrative and analytical vol­umes, while the Historical Services Divi­sion establishes the official lineages and honors of Army units, provides general reference services, and is responsible for historical artifacts, including Army museums and the Army Art program. The Army Medical History Division produces volumes, monographs, and special studies on Army medical history. The Army Military History Institute, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, is a complex of library and research facili­ties, special collections, and archives of primarily US Army military history. Finally, fifty Army schools, centers, in­stitutes, and commands employ over fifty civilian historians. (At any one time the numbers will likely vary due to reor­ganizations, transfers, resignations, etc.) Obviously, history in the US Army is now well-established. In fact, one prom­inent academic historian asserted re­cently that “Military men have the wit to know that the past is a heavy burden. They study military history with a deep commitment and a seriousness of pur­pose that you don’t find among engi­neers and managers studying technolo­gy.” (Interview with Professor Thomas Hughes, University of Pennsylvania, “We Get the Technology We Deserve,” with J. Hal Bowser, American Heritage, October/November, 1986, p. 80.)

The Army historical program is any­ thing but a closed military/academic complex. The Center of Military His­ tory and the major commands and schools work closely with public and private agencies, particularly those with­ in the historical profession. Many Army civilian historians are widely known in academia. For example, the Chief of the Medical History Branch, Albert E. Cow­drey, received the 1985 American His­torical Association Herbert Feis award for the distinctly unmilitary study This Land, This South: An Environmental His­ tory (University of Kentucky Press, 1983). The support Army civilian historians receive for research and publica­tion, presentation of papers, and atten­dance at professional meetings seems well above the academic norm. In addi­tion, CMH grants two dissertation-year fellowships to civilian graduate stu­dents, and supports the preparation of articles by its civilian historians in ser­vice and other professional journals. Army historians also publish outside their specialties, and, as in any well-run academic history department, local ser­vice is encouraged.

While most Army civilian historians, quite naturally, are military history spe­cialists, some are not, and become so on the job. Many have other professional interests. For example, some of the best and most productive scholars in the Army were originally trained as Euro­pean or American historians, and the Army did not hesitate to recruit a Ren­aissance scholar to supervise its massive US Army in World War II series.

The Army is “civilianizing” its ROTC history requirements, and military per­sonnel now teach military history only if the campus history department will not or cannot. Selected academic instructors are prepared for this duty at a four­ week, all expense-paid course at the US Military Academy, West Point, New York. (Interested historians should contact their campus professor of mili­tary science.)

But aren’t these “kept” historians? Isn’t their history suspect because they write what they are told? (This in con­trast to academic historians, who write, of course, from the pure joy of their subject.) The criticism might well be made of any “public” historians, wheth­er they labor in the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, IBM, or MGM. But it seems to take on a sharp edge when it comes to historians in the military. The question was bitterly de­ bated at the politicized AHA 1967 An­nual Meeting (Toronto) and, of course, was not resolved. More recently, attend­ees at the 1984 American Military Insti­tute’s Annual Meeting, held in conjunc­tion with the AHA’s Annual Meeting in Chicago, vividly recall the disruptive ef­forts of those fellow historians who rau­cously opposed (US) historical military studies.

Yet it should be noted that some of the most penetrating, documented criti­cism of US Army policies and per­formance can be found in official Army histories. Examples are the official his­tories of the Korean War, R. E. Apple­man’s South lo the Naktong, North to the Yalu (1960) and W. E. Hermes’ Truce Tent and Fighting Front (1966). Ronald Spector’s 1983 Advice and Support, The Early Years of the US effort in Viet Nam pulls no punches. The Employment of Negro Troops in World War II (Ulysses Lee, 1966) is a depressing, massively documented account of the misuse of human resources in a time of total war, and has been described as “incontest­ably the finest of the military histories concerning the negro.” (Benjamin Quarles, Journal of Negro History.)

The Army historian, like any public historian, will find significant differ­ences between his/her career conditions and those in academe. First, he or she will work a twelve-month year, with a two-week leave to begin with. He or she will be expected to put in an eight-hour day, five days a week. But many com­manders realize that their historians are professionals, who should be trusted to make, more or less, their own hours, and that time spent in the library may well be more productive than paper shuffling at the office.

Teaching opportunities will vary from post to post. Some Army histori­ans, such as those at the Combat Studies Institute (US Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas) conduct graduate-level semi­nars and classes. Others organize classes in their organization’s specialty, such as field artillery (Ft. Sill, Oklahoma) or military intelligence (Ft. Huachuca, Ari­zona), as well as more general courses in US military history, etc. Since Army students, NCOs and officers, plus a large proportion of foreign officers, seem well aware of the link between military history and their profession, interest is usually more keen than that found in the average college history classroom. And Army historians do not seem unduly disturbed by the  absence of much opportunity to teach Western civilization or world history.

QUESTION: How are these Army his­torian posts filled?

ANSWER: These are Civil Service posi­tions, with a Civil Service pay scale. Historians usually are hired  at the GS-11 or GS-12 level, with starting salaries of $26,381 and $31,619 respectively. These are starting salaries, but they are also for a twelve-month year.

As in academia, a military historian nowadays must have the PhD. There are excellent historians in the govern­ment without the “union card,” but the Army isn’t likely to hire any more.

Beyond this academic certification, certain definite steps must be taken. The candidate must put himself/herself on the Federal Government’s Office of Personnel Management’s Mid-Level Ca­reer Register, and keep current on that register. Copies of OPM’s SF 171 form should be kept on hand at all times. Some Army positions are open for only a few weeks, and candidates should not waste their time locating the nearest OPM office with spare SF-171s, and filling one out all over again. Electroni­cally reproduced copies are acceptable, but must carry an original signature and date.

Candidates should also be on as many Army mailing lists as possible. An­nouncements of Army historian open­ings are often tacked to cluttered bulle­tin boards in widely scattered local OPM offices, alongside (or obscured by) an­nouncements for Exterminator, GS-09, or Word Processor Technician, GS-05. The TRADOC Historical Office (ATTN: ATCS-H, Ft. Monroe, VA 23651-5026) and the Army Center of Military History (ATTN: DAMH, 20 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20314-0200) maintain lists of interested historians, and, along with other Army facilities, are quite conscien­tious about forwarding notices of his­torian openings. If at all possible, candi­dates should talk to these people; they are always interested in historian talent.

When an opening arises, OPM forwards a list of eligibles to the Army Command historical office involved, which then makes its own recommenda­tions and forwards its list to the Army installation with the opening. The local Civilian Personnel Office (CPO), the in­stallation historian(s), and the TRA­DOC Historical office then jointly consider candidates. Generally speaking, OPM and CPO place more weight on veterans’ preference and affirmative ac­tion than do Army historians, who are, understandably, more concerned with academic qualifications. Notification of candidates is considerably swifter and more businesslike than the “drop dead” attitude affected by many academic his­tory departments today.

All of the above may sound a lot more complicated than reading about an opening in the AHA “Employment In­formation” or the Chronicle of Higher Education, forwarding vitae and letters of recommendation, and presenting oneself to the AHA Annual Meeting’s Job Register. But over the last fifteen years or so, there have been few “buy­ers” for the many job candidates, so the Army methods should seem worth the trouble.