Staff ride educates ASC leaders on battle tactics

ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill. -- Members of the U.S. Army Sustainment Command senior leadership learned about the Upper Mississippi River Campaign of 1814 during a staff ride in the Quad Cities, Oct. 22.

Staff rides are Army-approved training sessions where senior leaders visit historical military sites, learn about military strategies and conduct their own research into past leaders' thought processes.

"In essence, we do staff rides because the Army believes that we can learn from the past and that we learn even more by actually walking on the ground where something important happened -- in most cases a battleground," said George Eaton, command historian, ASC.

The event started with a class that overviewed the political, cultural and environmental contexts of the War of 1812 -- a war that the U.S. population was reluctant to join in and unprepared for.

The objective of the war was to push back on British influence in the upper northwest of the newly founded nation. The British never left the region after the Revolutionary War, as they had economic trading interests in the area.

According to Eaton, the Upper Mississippi River Campaign of 1814 consisted of primarily three key engagements with Native American and British forces at Prairie Du Chien in present-day Wisconsin, Campbell's Island in present-day Illinois and Credit Island in present-day Iowa.

Native Americans, led by the Sauk warrior Black Hawk, primarily fought the campaign on the British side. U.S. forces were defeated at each conflict.

The Battle of Credit Island was the only military defeat for Zachary Taylor, who later became 12th U.S. President.

The staff ride visited Campbell's Island and Credit Island for a better sense of the challenges related to the campaign, and the factors involved in the U.S. defeats at those locations.

Eaton said that full staff rides are typically very in-depth.

"In a full formal staff ride, participants do significant research into the event," said Eaton. "Different participants are assigned to a role -- say Lee or Grant -- and are expected to explain the thought processes and decisions of that key leader."

Eaton said that while this half-day staff ride was not quite as in-depth as other staff rides, participants were still required to be academically attentive.

"Even with less preparation, we expect that these leaders will start to understand that today's leadership challenges were faced by other leaders in the past, and we can learn from them," he said before the event.

Several senior leaders taught, and each related some aspect of the battles to current issues and lessons related to logistics, equipment, training and leadership. For example, Col. James Baker, G-2 (Intelligence), ASC, talked about how the U.S. military leader's failure to scout the shoreline at the Battle of Campbell's Island relates to the need for current forces to scout around military convoys.

Maj. Gen. Kevin O'Connell, commanding general, ASC, closed the event with a short overview of Gen. Mark Milley, the new Chief of Staff of the Army. He said that Milley is very energetic and "a real student of history." O'Connell also said that Milley's No. 1 priority is readiness, which is particularly important for the logistics field.

Participants said they thought the leadership training was valuable.

"I think it was awesome, I think it is important to learn leadership as it happened in the heat of battle," said Sgt. Maj. Lawrence Williams, G-3 (Operations). "I thought another intention of the exercise was to get (ASC) senior leadership to interact together, and I thought that was important for us to do."

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