What’s the link between a Maine Civil War general and the surprising survival of Ukraine in its war with Russia?

In 1864, the Union Army of the Tennessee, previously led by Generals U.S. Grant and W.T. Sherman, needed a new leader. Sherman, who had become commander of the entire Union Army in the West, controversially jumped over the expected choice and named General Oliver Otis Howard, originally from Leeds, Maine.

Howard, a graduate of Bowdoin College and West Point, understood military strategy and tactics. But equally important, he knew how to supply an army of tens of thousands moving constantly with everything from rations to gunpowder. He became Sherman’s chief deputy in probably the longest march of any major Civil War command.

Though the word did not yet exist, Howard was a master of what came to be called “logistics.” Sherman understood logistics, revealed by his destruction in Atlanta of the railroads supplying Confederate troops.

His emphasis on logistics was evident in the Grand Review Parade in Washington at the end of the war. At the head of the line, riding a step behind Sherman came Howard. Trailing Sherman’s troops of the West past the reviewing stand was a herd of cattle, a sort of mobile supply chain.

Few supply wizards are rated as war heroes. The work may seem boring, but it is vital and armies are mostly composed of support troops. It has been estimated that as little as one solder in 10 actually faces the enemy in combat.

A Defense Department official decades later would state: “Logistics isn’t rocket science…it’s much harder.” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky got it.

According to the New York Times: “In the first days of the war Mr. Zelensky set three priorities for his government’s ministries …: weapons procurement, shipments of food and other goods, and maintaining supplies of gasoline and diesel. The ministries were told to rewrite regulations to ensure swift delivery on all three tracks.”

For weapons procurement, Zelensky got strong help from the U.S. and other NATO countries. Weapons were transported by them right to the border of a nation at war. The initial defensive armaments could be transported from the Poland-Ukraine border on trains.

Zelensky seemed intuitively to know that Ukraine could benefit from its situation. He did not need to deploy his soldiers over long supply lines. Russia’s vast size might be a cause of weakness, because of long supply lines and poor logistics.

President Vladimir Putin, having no military experience, thought his troops would win in days and obviously gave little thought to logistics. His forces stalled on the road to Kyiv, making his tanks and armored vehicles easy targets for the hand-held rockets supplied to Ukrainian soldiers who could focus on combat not logistics.

Good supply beat poor supply. Putin failed to take Kyiv, because Ukraine’s resistance halted Russia’s advance and could pick off Russia’s mechanized convoy, strung out over 40 miles. Even when Putin later shifted his troops to the East, they had to wait days for supplies before they could attack.

Much has been said about how the Russian Army greatly outnumbers Ukraine’s forces. On the strength of those numbers, the conventional wisdom was that Russia could easily crush Ukraine. But it’s likely that gross numbers have been misleading when logistics was taken into account.

Although we cannot know for sure, here’s some possible math in round numbers. If Russia had 200,000 troops poised for invasion, possibly only one-in-five or 40,000 could be committed to combat. On the Ukraine side, perhaps one soldier in three, as many as 60,000, could serve on the front lines. And Ukraine’s troops have proved to be far better trained.

The difference is in weapons, which might explain Zelensky’s repeated requests for more and better arms. Also, Russia freely attacks Ukraine, which can do little to destroy the Russian supply lines across the border.

While Ukraine did not seek war, it is providing an immense service in revealing Russia’s weakness, showing that its great power status relies on its nuclear arsenal. U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III has said that the American objective is “to see Russia weakened to the degree it cannot do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

Zelensky knew what Sherman, who also fought almost surrounded by hostile territory, knew. Perhaps we will never know the names of Ukrainian logistics generals, just as few remember Howard.

The man who Sherman passed over was John A. Logan, who ran for vice president with Maine’s James G. Blaine in his losing run for president in 1884.

Recognition for Howard came from a university in Washington, D.C. named for him, recognizing his historic fight for racial equality. Vice President Kamala Harris is a graduate of Howard University.

Gordon L. Weil formerly wrote for the Washington Post and other newspapers, served on the U.S. Senate and EU staffs, headed Maine state agencies and was a Harpswell selectman.

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