Editor’s note: This week marks one year since the Harding Project’s launch. Backed by senior Army leaders, the project aims to revitalize professional military discourse in the Army. To mark the occasion, MWI will feature several articles and other publications this week that highlight the project, its significance, and its accomplishments over its first year. Also to mark the project’s one-year anniversary, a special issue of Military Review was published and is available online, focused entirely on the Harding Project and serving as a how-to guide for the Army’s men and women to join us and begin writing.

The rancher was dead. Lieutenant John Heard had answered two shots with one.

The United States’ 1880s policy of curbing illegal sheep grazing made Heard an unpopular man. Posted as the acting commander of the garrison at Fort Thomas, Arizona, he was especially unpopular with one (now dead) rancher.

The ambush took place during the day. As Heard boarded a train, two shots rang out. A passerby handed his revolver to the unarmed Heard. Pistol in hand, Heard dispatched the assassin. A court acquitted him, and—having made enemies among the locals—the Army transferred him to a new post.

Stories like Lieutenant Heard’s are nearly lost. Fortunately, soldiers like Forrest Harding and Joseph Greene preserved these stories and thought hard about the future of warfare as they renewed professional writing in outlets like the Infantry Journal in the 1930s. As I looked into our professional writing landscape today, I came across the above story in the Infantry Journal Reader.

Published in 1943, Infantry Journal Reader provides an opportunity to consider the challenges the Army—and its units and individuals—faced in the past, but at the same time a uniquely valuable chance to think about the challenges of today’s armies from a new vantage point—and what renewed professional military discourse might look like today.

The Reader

The Infantry Journal Reader is the product of a renewal in military writing. At a low point in the early 1930s, with about four thousand subscribers, Major Forrest Harding renewed the Infantry Journal into a world-class military outlet. Colonel Joseph Greene, the Infantry Journal Reader’s editor, then built on Harding’s work. He shepherded the Infantry Journal through World War II and published the Reader.

Both the Army and the Infantry Association invested in professional discourse. While the Infantry Journal had volunteer uniformed editors from 1904 to 1920, the Army detailed full-time, active duty editors after 1920. Because of this investment by the Army, the scope of the Infantry Journal was wide:

The Infantry Journal scope is the Infantry scope. For a long time back good infantry have habitually thought in terms of the whole damned Army as the team of fighters it takes to win a war. [The scope of the magazine] covers the whole vast scope of warfare itself . . . all of war and everything connected with war, including science, world politics, and the social and even the religious aspects of life that make the fighting flier, sailor, soldier what he is.

That scope of the Infantry Journal is decidedly bigger than today’s Infantry. The Infantry Journal folded into ARMY in the 1950s when the Infantry and Field Artillery Associations and their journals merged. The Infantry Journal competed, to an extent, with the Mailing List, the official publication of the Infantry School. The Mailing List compiled teaching supplements on topics like the supply of motorized infantry or advanced guard map problems and is the direct parent of today’s Infantry magazine. Conversely, the Infantry Journal provided more commentary and perspectives on current events for infantry and other Army officers.

Soldiers and scholars will find something of interest in the Infantry Journal Reader. When Infantry recently featured an issue on Alaska and Arctic issues, it followed in the thematic footsteps of the Infantry Journal Reader, which published “Defending Our Last Frontier” eighty-eight years earlier—a striking illustration of the stubborn persistence of thorny challenges despite decades of technological advancement, geopolitical change, and the ever changing character of warfare.

Likewise, the Infantry Journal Reader features timeless issues like uniforms, the use of military history, “rotten majors,” and leadership—and often from names we know today. George C. Marshall offers his thoughts on “Profiting by War Experiences,” while George S. Patton Jr. defines “Success in War.”

Beyond the broad subject matter, I was also impressed by the curiosity demonstrated in the pages of the Reader. The section “Other Armies” includes eleven essays by a mix of American and international authors. B. H. Liddell-Hart, the famous British military theorist, offers his thoughts on resuming offensive operations. Likewise, the Reader includes prewar submissions like a twenty-three-page study by Heinz Guderian, who became one of Hitler’s primary field commanders, on armored forces in modern combined arms operations. Japanese officers also offer their thoughts on the United States Army before World War II. In all, the reader is left with an impression of remarkable collegiality between the militaries of all countries despite political differences. While Military Review has transitioned over the years from a review of military literature from around the world toward a more American-focused outlet, one wonders whether greater curiosity about the world and the world’s militaries might help us today.

My favorite essays in the Reader focused on the “Old Army.” “Tales of the Old Army” further describes the opening vignette of this essay, while “Indian Fighting” draws parallels between the need to understand terrain when fighting Native Americans and the Army’s contemporary challenges fighting the Japanese in the Pacific.

Language is also a common subject. Authors skewer “military English” in essays like “Animadversions Anent Anfractuose and Obfuscatory Locutions” and “Polysyllabification” that would resonate with any soldier today. While commentary comprises most of the contents, there’s also martial poetry, which is a tradition that continues to this day.

Despite this wealth of material, the takeaways from this volume are unclear. The final essay is an editorial penned in 1943 titled “In the Middle of the Fight.” Based on the title and writing, perhaps the reader should take away that much fighting remained in World War II, and that the “unarmored, unwinged infantry is in the heart of the fight.” But surprisingly for an infantry-focused reader, the volume’s editor, Joseph Greene, does not seem to have imagined soldiers as the audience for the volume.

Instead, Greene appears to have had civil-military relations in mind as he compiled this book. His introduction specifically calls out the nonpartisan nature of Infantry Journal’s writings. Likewise, a contemporary review in The Saturday Review concludes that the “citizen will know his army better” after reading it. After all, I find it hard to imagine lugging a 679-page book over Omaha Beach or jumping from the sky to capture one bridge too far. Furthermore, Greene says in the introduction that he handpicked “the most interesting things from the Infantry Journal for readers in general” not the most necessary for the soldier in war.

Based on this broad audience, it makes sense that Infantry Journal Reader would be more at home on a coffee table than on a reference desk. The entries are very short, often just one or two pages, and abridged from the original. They are also only loosely organized. The book lacks an index, organized only by rough category and in subject rather than chronological order. While each article begins with the date of publication, these dates are not listed in the table of contents at the start of the book. As subjects and views evolve over time, this lack of organization can make that evolution tricky to track. Despite these issues, civilians and soldiers considered it a resource on military thinking for decades after its publication.

Renewing Professional Writing

The Army that wrote for the Infantry Journal is different from today’s Army. Where recently only Military Review includes a military member on its masthead, uniformed editors of the Infantry Journal went on to notable positions. The concluding appendix lists the fates of forty-six editors and associate editors. Twenty-one rose to brigadier general or above. Individuals like Staff Sergeant Robert Gordon rose to the rank of captain in the United States Marine Corps, while famous names like General of the Army George C. Marshall leap from the page.

The Infantry Journal Reader also shows that renewing the Army’s writing enterprise is hard, but important. Greene recognized that:

The soldier’s writing is writing done when his official tasks are over for the day or week. The writing of articles is such hard work for many otherwise able military men that they do not attempt it. But a surprising number have done so, thus to give special aid to their Army and country beyond their regular military duties.

These challenges have not changed. A recent survey of military writers concluded that time and other commitments remained the biggest barrier to professional writing.

Despite these difficulties, the Infantry Journal Reader shows us how to renew professional military writing today. In the introduction, Greene showers credit on Lieutenant Colonel (and ultimately Major General) Forrest Harding who restored the Infantry Journal by encouraging “Army men to write of their profession in a more lively style.”

Today, the Army’s Harding Project directly channels this legacy. As Harding focused on improving both accessibility and quality, the Army is renewing our journals with an eye on both. In October, Army University Press will launch a web-first, mobile-friendly platform that consolidates our eleven branch journals as we also work to better archive content going all the way back to the days of Harding and Greene. But this focus on accessibility is matched by an emphasis on quality. Our twelve Harding Fellows are hard at work as editors-in-chief of our branch journals, while applications for the first competitively selected Harding Fellows closed today. They’ll be headed to the University of Kansas this summer and then onto their branch centers the following summer. With these and other changes, the Army’s journals are better stimulating and disseminating military thought.

Flip through the Infantry Journal Reader

All officers and military historians should spend a few minutes with the Infantry Journal Reader.

Skim it online, or pick up a copy for $13. As the United States Army transitions into a multi-domain capable Army of 2030, the Infantry Journal Reader provides a way to peer into the thinking of the Army about one hundred years earlier. As that Army grappled with the transition from frontier fighting to mechanized warfare in Europe, our Army struggles to figure out how to retain the lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan as it faces down Russia in Ukraine and China in the Pacific.

Thoughtful writing of the Army’s officers guided the Army’s transition then, as thoughtful writing must guide our transition today.

Zachary Griffiths is an Army officer. He directs the Harding Project to renew professional military writing.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.