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ABSTRACT
Charles T. R. Bohannan was an instrumental figure in US successes in counter-insurgency in the immediate post-war era. These successes were not just vested in his wartime combat experience, but his pre-war training in archeology and anthropology. Brilliant, tough, and eccentric, Bohannan parlayed his extensive work with foreign and distant cultures into a view of guerrilla warfare that bolstered US successes in the Philippines and Vietnam, alongside his more celebrated boss Edward Lansdale. Here, we see how Bohannan’s view of war, culture, and statehood were impacted by a career among Native Americans, ancient peoples, and challenging orthodoxy at every turn.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Claring Bohannan, Rufus Philips, Mike Benge, Andrew Birtle, and Kalev Sepp for their support of this work. All errors, however, are his own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Bohannan to Joseph Starr, 3 August 1981, transcribed by Claring Bohannan, Charles Ted Rutledge Bohannan Personal Papers (hereafter cited as CTRB Papers).
2. Gray, “Irregular Warfare and the Essence of Strategy,” 34 http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub650.pdf.
3. Birtle, US Army Counterinsurgency, 3.
4. Andrew Birtle noted the bias against COIN helped created ‘amnesia within the military’s corporate memory by discouraging frank and open examinations of the Army’s experiences … A final influence upon the position of small wars in Army thought was the officer corps’ own self-image. American political philosophy was one factor that shaped this image. Another was the concept of officer professionalism that arose during the nineteenth century. Many officers believed that soldiers should devote themselves exclusively to purely military subjects to the exclusion of nonmilitary activities, especially politics. Such an attitude reinforced the Army’s predisposition to relegate the highly political realm of small wars to the periphery of professional thought.’ Birtle, 272–3.
5. The best selling though flawed work by Max Boot is the latest. See Boot, The Road Not Taken; Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars; Currey, Edward Lansdale; and Nashel, Edward Lansdale’s Cold War.
6. For key texts in his career, see Carlisle, The Red Arrow Men; Currey, The Unquiet American; Bohannan and Valeriano, Counter-Guerrilla Warfare; Rempe, “The Past as Prologue?”; and Toland, Captured by History, 157.
7. Charles Bohannan, I Am Ashamed: Confessions of a Citizen Soldier, n.d., unpublished memoir. CTRB Papers.
8. Ibid.
9. “Charles Dudley Bohannan” Evening Star 18 October 1956.
10. “A Preliminary Study,” 161–96.
11. Month Catalogue of United States Government Publications, 687, 1059. http://openlibrary.org/books/OL14029252M/Monthly_catalog_of_United_States_Government_publications.
12. Ibid.
13. Bohannan and Valeriano, 215.
14. Bohannan Lecture to AID workers, Hawaii, 14 December 1966, page 5, Rufus Philips Papers (hereafter cited as RPP).
15. Papers of Clyde Kluckhohn, University of Iowa, http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/MSC/ToMsC650/MsC640/kluckhohn.html Kluckhohn,” The Way of Life,” The Kenyon Review
16. Roosevelt, “The Strenuous Life,” 1.
17. Claring Bohannan interview by Jason S. Ridler, 10 May 2011.
18. Comments from Dorothy Bohannan on rough Draft of Unquiet America, n.d. Cecil Currey Collection, Fort Hayes State University Kansas, Forsyth Library Special Collections, Bohannan File (hereafter cited as CCC).
19. Bohannan, I Am Ashamed.
20. Claring Bohannan interview, 19 December 2012.
21. Bohannan, “Lecture to USAID, 13 December 1966,” RPP. This author has no data on his efforts in Mexico.
22. See note 19 above.
23. McCoy interviewed Bohannan for his book Policing America’s Empire, where he described himself in these terms. McCoy, 377.
24. See note 19 above.
25. Bohannan, “Lecture to USAID, 13 December 1966,” 1.
26. Bergerud, Touched with Fire.
27. Bob Utley, the official historian of the national parks and expert on Native warfare, surmised these elements of how Native Americans waged war with US soldiers at the turn of the twentieth century. Despite cultural diversity, the tribes shared certain characteristics that had important military implications. Utley, Frontier Regulars, 5.
28. Birtle, Passim.
29. Ortner, “Aleš Hrdlička and the Founding of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology: 1918,”; Michael A. Little and Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, eds, Histories of American Physical Anthropology, 87–104; and Montgomery, Register to the Papers of Aleš Hrdlička, 4–11.
30. Ortner, “Aleš Hrdlička and the Founding of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology: 1918,” passim.
31. Oppenheim, “Revisiting Hrdlička and Boas,” 92–103.
32. John L. Cotter, et al., Clovis Revisited, 2.
33. Hrdlička, The Anthropology of Kodiak Island, 204.
34. ibid., 204–38.
35. CTRB papers, File: Kodiak 1934.Aleš Hrdlička 22 April 1935.
36. Gantt, “The Claude C. And Lynn Coffin Lindenmeier Collection,” passim.
37. John L. Cotter letter to Dorothy Bohannan, CTRB Papers, undated, transcribed by Claring Bohannan, 27 May 2011.
38. John L. Cotter letter to Dorothy Bohannan, 19 January 1984, CTRB Papers, transcribed by Claring Bohannan on 8 July 2011.
39. CTRB Papers.
40. John L. Cotter et al., Clovis Revisited: 1.
41. Lyon, A New Deal for Southeastern Archeology, 63–7.
42. William S. Webb, quoted in Lyons, 97. CTRB Papers.
43. CTRB Papers, “Collins Letter to Dorothy Bohannan, undated.”
44. Lyons, 106–107; and Lee E. Hanson, The Hardin Village Site, n.p.
45. Pollock interview, 15 May 2011.
46. Bohannon, I am Ashamed, 15 August 1944, Headquarters 128th Infantry, Roll for Infantry Man’s Badge, 7 September 1944, National Archive, College Park, hereafter NARA, RG 407 WWII Operations Reports, 1940–1946 32nd Infantry Division 332 INF (128) 1.2–332 INF (128) 2.1 Box 8056, Runde, “The US Army Intelligence and Reconnaissance Platoon,” 26.
47. Mailer, “The Dead Gook,” Advertisements for Myself, 148.
48. Bohannan, “That Damn Anting-Anting,” article for Veterans Federation of the Philippines, CTRB Papers. The identity of Jabillo was provided by his niece.
49. Interview with Claring Bohannan, August 2015.
50. Bohannan, “That Damn Anting-Anting,” MacArthur pressed all the guerrillas of the Philippines to be intelligence gathering elements only and, when the official history of the guerrilla campaign was produced by the US Army (a work that is largely a collection of documents and weak on narrative and analysis), much of it bemoans the poor quality of the intelligence gathering of the Filipino guerrillas. See Willoughby, The Guerrilla Resistance Movement in the Philippines.
51. Carlisle, The Red Arrow Men, passim.
52. Interview with Bohannan’s goddaughter, 2015.
53. Ridler, “The Fertile Ground of Hell’s Carnival,” 15–20.
54. Ibid., 15–29.
55. Bohannan and Valeriano, ebook location 446.
56. See Luis Taruc, He Who Rides a Tiger.
57. There are three major works on Lansdale’s life, and many lesser efforts. See Currey, The Unquiet American; Nassell, Edward Lansdale’s Cold War; and Max Boot, The Road Not Taken.
58. Ibid.
59. See the reading list for his book, Counter-Guerrilla Warfare for a clue to the depth of his reading on this subject. Lansdale never included such lists in his own efforts, though he was also well read.
60. Bohannan and Valeriano, location 106.
61. Bohannan, “Anti-Guerrilla Warfare,” 19–29.
62. Bohannan removed any reference to his own name in Counter-Guerrilla Warfare, though Lansdale appears once. Bohannan makes almost no appearance in Lansdale’s In the Midst of Wars. Writing to Bohannan after the release of the Pentagon Papers, Lansdale said, ‘If only my book were being published soon, it would help. Our friends come out smelling like roses, untainted and heroic in it and against a proper background. As you know, from long ago, I decided that Asia needed its own heroes – so I’ve given them a whole bookfull of them, with us … merely being companionable friends to some great guys.’ 18 July 1971, CCC.
63. See note 19 above.
64. This is detailed in Bohannan and Valeriano.
65. Quoted in Ridler, “A Lost Work of El Lobo,” 92–312.
66. Boot, The Road Not Taken; and Bohannan and Valeriano, Counter-Guerrilla Warfare, passim.
67. Ridler, “A Lost Work of El Lobo,” 300.
68. Boot, The Road Not Taken, 130.
69. Bohannan and Valeriano, location 1898.
70. Currey, Edward Lansdale, 101–2; and, Bohannan and Valeriano, location 1904.
71. See note 69 above.
72. Currey, 98.
73. For an excellent discussion of Lansdale’s command of history, see Nashel, Edward Lansdale’s Cold War, passim.
74. Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion, 239.
75. There is no effective or authoritative single volume of this campaign. Please see the following: Bohannan and Valeriano, Counter-Guerrilla Warfare; Kerkvliet, The Huk Rebellion; Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars; and, Boot, The Road Not Taken.
76. Bohannan and Valeriano, location 2057; Boot, 124–5; and Bohannan, “Lecture to USAID, December 1966.”
77. Currey, 93–95; and, Dorothy Bohannan interview with Cecil Currey, 27 July 1985.
78. Bernard Fall, The International Position of South Viet-Nam, Part 3, 19.
79. Lansdale and Bohannan’s efforts were revealed in the Pentagon Papers, referencing meetings in August 1954. See Philips, Why Vietnam Matters, 44; Witek, “Review, Adventures in Viet-Nam; Michael Bernard,” 67–9; and Fall, The International Position of South Viet-Nam, Part 3, 19, Bernard Fall Papers, John F, Kennedy Library, Box P-1 Papers and Reports by Fall.
80. HIA Edward Geary Lansdale (EGL) Papers, Box 35, File: OPERATION BROTHERHOOD.
81. Lansdale, In the Midst of Wars, 95; and, interview with Claring Bohannan, August 2015.
82. Boot, 242, author interview with Bohannan, August 2015.
83. Philips, Why Vietnam Matters, 133–4.
84. Philip interview.
85. Currey, passim. Rufus Philip interview.
86. CTRB PP, Correspondence with Lansdale.
87. Philips, Why Vietnam Matters, 157; J. A. Koch, The Chieu Hoi Program In South Vietnam, 1963–1971; and Boot, 436, 465, 483.
88. Bohannan, “Antiguerrilla Operations,” 20.
89. Bohannan, “US Objectives in the Philippines, 1946–1950,” likely from 12 to 16 December 1964, 1–7. HIA Charles T. R. Bohannan Papers, Box 4, “File Bo’s Drafts.”
90. See note 19 above.
91. Boot’s recent work on Lansdale sees Bohannan as a tough, eccentric but otherwise secondary character in the drama of Lansdale’s life. It is my contention that such readings are misleading on how much these men were partners with each other and Magsaysay. See Boot, The Road Not Taken.
92. Bohannan, I Am Ashamed. Writing to Bohannan near the end of his life, Lansdale claimed “I decided that Asia needed its own heroes–so I’ve given them a whole book full of them, with us … merely being companionable friends to some great guys.” CCC, Edward G. Lansdale to Charles T. R. Bohannan, 18 July 1971.
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Jason S. Ridler
Jason S. Ridler, PhD, is a writer, historian, and actor. He is a Teaching Fellow for the Global Security Studies graduate program at Johns Hopkins University, designs and instructs courses on innovation and historical methodology. He also teaches creative writing at Google