"At all costs avoid blame." Such is the creed of dictators and
politicians, tycoons and company chairmen, media celebrities, and spin
doctors the world over. But what about men at war, where the penalties
for errors of judgment can be devastating? History is full of tales of
those who have been wrongly castigated in the rush to find a culprit;
only later, sometimes much later, when the real truth comes out, is the
scapegoat exonerated. Exposed here are the real stories behind the myths
that allow the listener to make a balanced judgment on history's
fairness to the individual, including those of: Captain Alfred Dreyfus,
exiled and imprisoned on charges of treason in 1895; Lieutenant General
James Longstreet, blamed for the failure of Pickett's Charge in 1863;
Major General Jackie Smyth, removed from the Army after ordering the
destruction of the Sittang Bridge in 1942; Lieutenant General Roméo
Dallaire, let down by the United Nations over the Rwanda massacres of
1994. This superbly researched book by a former professional soldier
uncovers what might be termed the most disgraceful miscarriages of
military justice.
