Concrete Hell: Urban Warfare from Stalingrad to Iraq

Abstract

By Louis A. DiMarco Oxford, UK: Osprey Publishing, 2012 232 pages $24.96 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In Concrete Hell, Louis A. DiMarco surveys historical trends in urban combat since World War II. Lieutenant Colonel DiMarco brings to his task both professional and personal interests. An experienced soldier and historian, DiMarco has focused his recent professional life on the problem of urban combat as a doctrine writer and teacher at the Army Command and General Staff College. DiMarco seeks to make three contributions related to understanding the urban battle space, providing insights into the nature of urban combat and its evolution-drawing from tactical, operational, and strategic considerations he believes will remain relevant. Regarding the last item, he explores the transition of urban combat from "simplistic conventional" fights in Stalingrad and Aachen to a "complex hybrid mixture" found in Chechnya and Iraq, concluding these "hybrid" fights in Chechnya and Iraq foretell the future. Generally, DiMarco makes his case effectively. He begins by noting that at the turn of the century the Army was "particularly wary" of urban combat. DiMarco is absolutely right. The Army and, for that matter, US armed forces sought to avoid fighting in cities. This tendency may have come, in part, from focusing on defending cities in Europe. The Army in Europe, in particular, gave considerable thought to how to fight in towns and cities in the context of defense but far less thought on offensive urban combat. At the end of the Cold War, few soldiers imagined the United States would find itself in any kind of urban combat. Moreover, there were a great many "defense experts" who claimed that various revolutions in military affairs precluded ground combat let alone urban ground combat. Some believed that the nature of warfare itself had changed and that "contactless" battle would result. But DiMarco's argument, at least where the US Army is concerned, would have benefited from reviewing what the Army did do. Shortly after Operation Desert Storm, General Fred Franks (commanding the Training and Doctrine Command) confronted the idea that urban combat would be among the missions the post-Cold War Army might have to undertake. He did not have the money to develop large urban combat training centers and instead focused on developing a single "world class" venue at Fort Polk. However, Fort Polk's urban combat venue was useful at the tactical level only. The absence of large venues did not prevent the Army thinking and writing about urban combat. DiMarco played an important role in this effort providing a chapter in one of several books on urban combat published by the Army. These included Roger Spiders' Sharp Comers in 2001 and William G. Robertson and Lawrence Yeats, Block By Block in 2003. These major studies were accompanied by lively arguments in journals as well. In the fall of 2002, the Army's angst over urban combat came to a head as the possibility of war with Iraq loomed. Accordingly, the Army organized Operations Group F within the Battle Command Training Program to study and teach the principles of urban combat to all deploying divisions including the 1st Marine Division. Although DiMarco did not personally play a role in this effort, he was part of the team at Fort Leavenworth that developed the means to educate units. Simultaneously, the Army sought to learn from the Israeli experience that DiMarco describes in his chapter on Israeli Operations on the West Bank in 1992. Despite this observation DiMarco, for the most part, delivers on his desired contributions. …