A Cavalryman's Story: Memoirs of an Twentieth-Century Army General

Howze graduated from West Point in 1930 and retired in 1965 as a full general. He spent his first years in the horse cavalry developing his skills as a polo player. During WW II, he proved an able armored officer. In the 1950s he became a leading advocate of air mobility; the Howze Board of 1962, which he chaired, established the principles for comprehensive use of helicopters in today's army. Howze gives little sense of the intellectual process involved in this development, instead presenting his career as a series of pragmatic responses to specific circumstances. This approach underrates his own significant contributions to American military doctrine. But his unpretentious account offers valuable insight into the long-standing self-image of the U.S. Army's senior officer corps as problem solvers rather than theorists. Photos. (Mar.)