Armies in Retreat

Chaos, Cohesion, And Consequences

Review By Tom Vance

Article published on: September 1, 2025 in the Army History Fall 2025 issue

Read Time: < 5 mins

I was an Army ROTC cadet sitting in a Military Science tactics class when I raised my hand and asked how to retreat. Of course, my classmates met my question with great laughter. Our instructor, however—an infantry captain with combat experience in the Vietnam War—was not laughing. It turns out that a retreat is one of the most difficult military maneuvers.

This volume, Armies in Retreat: Chaos, Cohesion, And Consequences, comprises eighteen case studies. ¹ Per the introduction: “Some failed on the battlefield while others retreated to prepare for counterattacks or to buy time. While retreating, some armies were unable to maintain cohesion and hold together while others succeeded. Some remained relatively stable, others did not” (3). With that, we have the genesis of the subtitle and the book’s three themes: chaos, cohesion, and consequences, arranged chronologically within each section.

Both editors serve in uniform. Timothy Heck is a reservist and a joint historian with the Marine Corps History Detachment and Joint History Office. Trained as an artillery officer, Heck is the author of Enduring Success: Consolidation of Gains in Large-Scale Combat Operations (Army University Press, 2022). He coedited On Contested Shores: The Evolving Role of Amphibious Operations in the History of Warfare (Marine Corps University Press, 2020) and wrote chapters in Deep Maneuver: Historical Case Studies of Maneuver in Large-Scale Combat Operations (Army University Press, 2018).

Walker Mills is a Marine Corps infantry captain with a bachelor’s degree in history from Brown University and a master’s degree in international relations and modern war from King’s College London. He is a nonresident fellow at Marine Corps University’s Brute Krulak Center for Innovation and Future Warfare and a nonresident fellow with the Irregular Warfare Initiative, a collaboration between West Point’s Modern War Institute and Princeton’s Empirical Studies of Conflict Project. Mills’s writing includes chapters in three books and more than sixty articles.

Heck and Mills bring together a diverse group of authors, including both armed forces and civilian military historians, active-duty and retired personnel, and independent scholars. In-depth notes support this collection, and they are positioned at the end of each chapter for easy reference. This volume is visually engaging, featuring subheads, thirty-two color maps, dozens of black-and-white photos, and organizational tables, charts, and orders of battle. The addition of an index may have been useful, especially for those looking for particulars such as rearguard actions.

This broad brush of history takes us from a night evacuation during the Peloponnesian War to the book’s conclusion, addressing the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.According to Mills, Afghanistan was “a tragic validation of one of the initial sparks for this volume: that the U.S. military needed to study historical cases of withdrawals and retreats because it would one day need to draw on that knowledge” (423).

World War II receives the most coverage, with five chapters. There are two chapters each on the Revolutionary War, the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, World War I, and the Korean War, as well as one chapter each on the Seven Years’ War (focused on Frederick the Great) and cyber warfare. Students of the Napoleonic Wars (such as me) will be surprised that Napoleon Bonaparte’s infamous 1812 retreat from Moscow does not make the cut, but is mentioned as an example of how retreat studies are often undervalued. Perhaps the most dramatic chapter is Eric Allan Sibul’s account of the “spectacular logistical operation” of the fighting withdrawal of X Corps, 1st Marine Division, during the Korean War—trains continued to move supplies forward to the rear guard while personnel, refugees, and materiel
withdrew (253).

In keeping with the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary, the American Revolutionary War chapters deserve special mention. Writing in the cohesion section, Jonathan D. Bratten, a National Guard officer and Army historian, brings us “Retreat to Victory: The Northern Army’s Campaigns, 1775–1777.” Bratten pens the most notable comment in the book when he states, “The birth of the U.S. Army lies in retreat” (137). He recounts the 350-mile-long retreat of the Continental Army following an unsuccessful attack on British forces in Canada. To maintain their army’s integrity, this retreat provided the opportunity for victory at Saratoga in 1777, marking the first surrender of a British field army in the war. Bratten’s reasons for this success: Northern Army’s generals “shared the hardships of their soldiers and led by personal example,” the retreat “bought the time to concentrate more forces,” General George Washington “was willing to take operational risks,” retreat into interior lines allowed for resupply, and “leaders at all levels did not lose their fighting spirit or desire to seize the momentum again.” He also notes that the Continental Army realized that keeping the army intact was more important than holding ground (151).

In the first chapter of the consequences section, Patrick H. Hannum shares, “Cornwallis in the 1781 Yorktown Campaign: When an Attack Becomes a Defense, a Siege, and a Surrender.” Hannum, a retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel and a recently retired civilian professor at the National Defense University, reminds us that the American Revolution was a global war “involving great powers using proxies to engage in direct conflict” (280).Thus, Yorktown was not a traditional retreat. As part of what the British Army called its southern strategy, they “envisioned liberating the rebellious southern colonies” (281). Lt. Gen. Charles Cornwallis faced strong resistance, particularly from irregular warfare between patriot and loyalist militias. Even with battlefield victories, he could not sustain offensive operations and sought safety at Yorktown, Virginia. Although the Royal Navy typically enjoyed command of the North American coast, a two-month window of British naval repositioning allowed the French navy to control the Chesapeake Bay, preventing the British navy from reinforcing or evacuating Cornwallis, and bringing the war to an end. Overextended lines of operations and the lack of a British joint commander in the theater were other causes for failure. Overall, the British “did not possess the numbers of ground troops needed to seize, pacify, and secure the countryside” (284).

Acknowledging the importance of chance and uncertainty in warfare, Walter Mills concludes that, “During the confused chaos of a retreat or collapse, armies and units are held together by their leaders—whether generals, admirals, captains or sergeants. These leaders—more than any other single factor—determine whether cohesion is maintained or lost” (427).

Congratulations to the Army University Press for publishing this readable and well-documented collection of lessons learned in a neglected genre of military studies.

Notes