Washington's Immortals

January 25, 2016
Military historian O’Donnell (First SEALs) turns from his usual focus on WWII to examine the Revolutionary War, following the fortunes of a Maryland regiment of Washington’s Army. The Marylanders played a key role in battles throughout the conflict, from the 1776 Battle of Brooklyn to the British defeat at the 1781 Battle of Yorktown. O’Donnell skillfully views the long-term strategies of the opposing generals in the context of the yearly ebb and flow of the war while conveying with immediacy the chaotic back-and-forth of individual battles. He also adeptly provides noteworthy thumbnails of both minor and major players, including American and British generals as well as ranking officers and the soldiers who shouldered the brunt of battle. Although O’Donnell writes from the American perspective, he objectively evaluates how the corps of both sides navigated the accouterments of war, injury, betrayal, reversals, and hardship, with credits given and criticisms made regardless of uniform. Surprisingly, O’Donnell manages to build a sense of drama as the war progresses, and though the writing can be stiff, readers with an interest in the Revolutionary period and military history generally will find this interesting and informative. Maps & illus. Agent: Andrew Zack, the Zack Company.

November 1, 2015
O'Donnell (First SEALs: The Untold Story of the Forging of America's Most Elite Unit, 2014, etc.) deploys a fusillade of fact and fresh research in a Revolutionary War history rich in irony and event. A Band of Brothers-like account of the Maryland Immortals, the first elite unit of the Continental Army and one of the few to fight in both the North and South, the book is a thorough chronicle of the nine-year saga of citizen soldiers who fought valiantly but that history had all but forgotten. The author concludes that were it not for this core group's girding of the American Army and its efforts at critical junctures, the war likely would have been lost. He vividly describes a war marked by slaughter, brutality, incompetence, and extraordinary privation, as well as valor, restraint, resourcefulness, and endurance, putting paid to many oversimplified accounts of a complex struggle, especially with regard to the vicious battle between the Whigs and the Tories. O'Donnell also presents a well-delineated cast of unheralded Marylanders (Mordecai Gist, John Eager Howard, William Smallwood, Jack Steward, Otho Holland Williams, and Nathaniel Ramsey), the major American commanders (George Washington, Nathanael Greene, Daniel Morgan, et al.) and their British counterparts (Richard and William Howe, Cornwallis, Henry Clinton, and Banastre Tarleton). Although readers will admire O'Donnell's exhaustive research, skilled organization of the material, and the high readability of the writing, the multitude of armies, brigades, regiments, companies, and divisions, etc., whose exploits he relates can be difficult to keep straight. This is no less true of the differing aggregates of Maryland units that turned the tide in many a battle, not just the 400 men who saved the army from annihilation at the Battle of Brooklyn. With a firm grasp of tactics, strategy, and the sociopolitical landscape, O'Donnell captures the horror and absurdities of the war better than most, but the density of detail may render it more appealing to confirmed military buffs than general readers.

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January 1, 2016

This elite unit of Marylanders, whose vital service in the Continental Army O'Donnell (First SEALs) narrates, was not under direct command of Gen. George Washington for all of the Revolutionary War, as the title indicates. For the latter half of the conflict, the unit was stationed in the Southern theater under the command of Gen. Nathaniel Greene. The "Immortal 400," as the Maryland regiment came to be known, received its nom de guerre from the mission of "forlorn hope" it performed for Washington during the Battle of Brooklyn, when British forces threatened to capture Washington's forces in August 1776. Washington needed time to evacuate the Continental Army, and on his orders, the unit made a series of desperate charges that delayed the British and allowed Washington to escape; however, the regiment lost most of its soldiers. Between 1775 and 1783, this special group fought in every major engagement of the war, in both Northern and Southern theaters. They provided stability among inexperienced soldiers and performed many missions of forlorn hope. VERDICT Using primary sources from both sides of the Atlantic, O'Donnell effectively traces the story of Maryland's immortals, describing the battles authentically along with the precariousness of the American cause. This book will be of interest to both general readers and scholars interested in the military aspect of the American Revolution.--Glen Edward Taul, Campbellsville Univ. Lib., KY

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