By Michael F. Duggan
The worst battles and phases of battles often take on grim nicknames. There was the “Hornet’s Nest” at Shiloh, “Bloody Lane” at Antietam, the “Slaughter Pen” at Gettysburg, and the “Bloody Angle” at Spotsylvania. During the Spanish-American War, U.S. forces were for a time pinned down at “Bloody Ford” at the base of San Juan Heights. The operational name for Verdun was Gericht, or “place of judgment.”1 And in Vietnam, Hill 937 became “Hamburger Hill.”
For several weeks, I have been listening to interviews of former U.S. military officers on the Russo-Ukrainian War. What seems to be emerging is a consensus about the nature of the much-discussed Russian winter-spring offensive. Rather than a front-wide blitzkrieg or an American-style “shock and awe” campaign, they anticipate an inexorable but targeted offensive that grinds away at key points on the Ukrainian lines as it steadily builds to a breakthrough. Such a campaign would be have elements of a First World War attrition offensive like the German assault on Verdun in 1916, and the Soviet offensives on the Eastern Front during the later phases of the Second World War. These ex-military men expect the Ukrainian Ground Forces to be effectively destroyed by this process. The battle in and around Bakhmut is already being called “The Grinder.”
One of these officers, Douglas Macgregor—a former tank commander, famous for the U.S. armor victory of the Gulf War called the Battle of 73 Easting—believes that not only are we watching the death of the nation of Ukraine (a point on which former Marine intelligence officer and United Nations weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, agrees), but the beginning of the end of NATO.
Note
Jay Winter and Blaine Baggett, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century, 157-58.