To doubly celebrate Women’s History Month, we are kicking off a March (logistical pun very much intended) of pieces that will look at the work of Dr. Erna Risch as she wrote the history of US Army logistics. Why? With an opus that spanned the entire record of US military activities, the obvious answer is because she is the Mother of the field, and as such a critical piece of American strategic culture. Despite that, she is little reckoned in the wider field of Military History. I had never heard her name mentioned for the several years I worked in the field prior to starting my dissertation.
Through the course of her Army historian career and into retirement, she produced a collection of spectacular logistics history. In scope, themes, and detail, her histories unraveled a necessary story within the American military tradition. Yet she lingers in general ignorance within the minds of those charged to know better, lagging even with a field fawned over but rarely taken seriously when comes time to do the work. But here I want to dwell instead on creating the woman, not critiquing the system.
Beyond the visible output of her career, little is written of her. We certainly don’t know much of her state of mind when doing her work. And, like our good Rifleman Dodd, she would be entirely surprised to find future audiences contemplating her quotidian existence. — I imagine her, incorrectly of course, in my own terms; absolutely giddy at her access and opportunities, and quite willing to ignore her difference along with the others if they would abide, but certainly unwilling to take one single moment’s shit. — Her career was, though, an act of quiet but radical transgression. The early war-time opportunities with the Army were a lucky break, and one suspects military history was not the place returning GI’s were flocking to for jobs. She chose the Army. She chose logistics. I chose the Marine Corps as my first institution, but I can relate. And like her, I could not help but eventually come to contemplate the entirety of the record, though from a different perspective and lens.
Imagine this historian in her own context. She earned a doctorate as a woman in pre-WWII America. Mid-war, she left a prestigious university to work in Army history. She clearly thrived, remaining with the Army for an entire career (one of those bureaucrats!). One cannot help but be awed by her fortitude. She passed well before I even began in the field, but her context was not much different than mine. Even in the mid 90s, three decades past her retirement and a decade since her last work was published, the state of the field remained remarkably male. For my first years, if there were one or two other women in a panel *audience*, it would be notable. And yet, it could be perfectly open, accessible, and fascinating to a woman who skirted the barriers and snuck in somehow – she through a job, me as an academic insurgent.
She was remarkable woman.
So we will spend some time with her work and get to know a little bit better this scholar across the thousands of exquisitely chosen words in her volumes. No time is better than now for people to understand and think properly about the entire spectrum of logistics. And Risch is an excellent authority from which to examine every critical junction of the subject. Lastly, as a little known public servant, her quiet heroism and valiant efforts to tell important stories, to do her part for the Government’s obligations to the citizenry, needs celebrating in this moment.
This week, first up and last written, is the history of American Revolutionary Logistics, Supplying Washington’s Army. An important work in its own right, the story of a beleaguered underling without enough to win but certain of victory is an important narrative in this moment. Because while strong logistics are an easy lynchpin for success, they are no guarantee – and the weak can prevail if their strategy accommodates. Such a lesson is not the worst for the moment.