Book Review: Tubby: Raymond O. Barton and the US Army

Book by Stephen A. Bourque

Review by Richard Howe

This is a masterful biography of the U.S. Army general who, among other things, commanded the 4th  Infantry Division from D-Day through the Battle of the Bulge. Anyone interested in the pre-World War II U.S. Army and the fight across Northern Europe in 1944 will find this fascinating reading. Barton was a prolific letter writer and his aides kept a meticulous “war diary” throughout his command. Bourque uses both extensively to enrich the text with granular details. 

Barton grew up in the American Southwest in a politically-connected family and landed an appointment to West Point in the Class of 1912. Short and stocky but never obese, Barton’s leadership of the West Point wrestling team earned him the affectionate nickname “Tubby” which stuck with him his entire life. (At least in Barton’s case, “Tubby” had a different connotation then than it does now.)

His early assignments demonstrated a strong aptitude for training troops. When the U.S. entered World War I, Army leadership deemed Barton more valuable as a trainer of the rapidly growing Army than as a combat troop leader so he did not make it to Europe until after the Armistice. 

Between the wars, Barton rotated between field units and academic assignments. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, the U.S. Army had 180,000 active duty troops which placed it behind Portugal and ahead of Bulgaria in national army size. How the U.S. Army raced to grow in strength and competency in the next two years is an important and underappreciated story. This book adds much to that account since Barton was a central figure in the massive pre-war military maneuvers that helped prepare U.S. forces to fight Germany and Japan. 

Barton’s skill as a trainer was in full view when he took command of the 4th Infantry Division. Although the unit had not yet been in combat in World War II, when the division landed on Utah Beach on June 6, 1944, it fought like a veteran outfit. 

Tubby then follows Barton and the 4th Division through the breakout from Normandy, the liberation of Paris, the race across France, the deadly and ill-fated fighting in the Hurtgen Forest, and the Battle of the Bulge. By then, a longtime ulcer and the stress of consecutive months of command began to affect Barton’s judgment and performance and, at the urging of longtime friends, he asked to be relieved of his command. Although he expected to come back to a combat command, the war ended before that happened and he soon retired. He and his wife settled in Augusta, Georgia, where he became an active member of the community for the rest of his life. 

This book is particularly valuable in depicting the day-to-day experience of a division commander in the Northern Europe campaign. After the operations order was given, Barton spent almost every waking moment doing in person coordination, traveling to subordinate regiments and battalions, headquarters of neighboring units, and then to corps headquarters. This process was critically important for collecting and sharing information, but also for placing himself at the critical point on the battlefield, wherever that might be. This became even more important as the war went on. The devastating casualties sustained by the 4th Division robbed the unit of the highly trained troops and leaders who landed in Normandy. Their place was taken by replacements thrust into battle with little training and no experience. Still, because enough of the original leadership cadre survived, the 4th Infantry Division continued to perform superbly through the rest of the war. 

Bourque demonstrates how the clubbishness of the small pre-war officer corps had a substantial impact on how the U.S. Army operated once the war had begun. I cannot recall a single instance in which Barton encountered a fellow commander that he had not previously met, whether at West Point, in prior assignments, or at the War College. This familiarity undoubtedly aided coordination, but it also injected favoritism and politics into the command structure not always to the benefit of the units and troops involved. 

Finally, two outsized-characters make important appearances. Notwithstanding being the son of a president and a politician in his own right, Theodore Roosevelt Jr. had an outstanding record as a combat commander in World War I and earlier in World War II. Shortly before the Normandy invasion he was assigned to the 4th Infantry Division as a “spare” brigadier general. With Barton’s grudging consent, Roosevelt landed with the first wave on Utah Beach and provided decisive leadership from that point on. By Bourque’s account, Barton and Roosevelt developed a close and respectful relationship with Roosevelt providing an invaluable assist in the intra-unit coordination described earlier. Despite worsening cardiac problems which he kept to himself, Roosevelt followed a frantic schedule until his death from a heart attack on July 12, 1944, five weeks after the D-Day landing. The other big figure to appear is Ernest Hemingway who was a regular presence at the 4th Division from Paris until Barton’s departure. Hemingway’s day-to-day activities are reported elsewhere, but this book documents the strong friendship that arose between the famous author and General Barton.