Vincent C. Jones, after graduating from Park College (Parkville, Missouri) with a B.A. in history, earned an M.A. degree at the University of Nebraska with a thesis on German public opinion in World War I and spent a year as a Sanders Fellow in History at George Washington University. Moving to the University of Wisconsin, he began work on a doctoral degree in modern European history just before the outbreak of World War II in Europe. During the war, he was a noncommissioned officer in a heavy weapons company of the 81st Infantry Division, participating in the Peleliu-Angaur and Leyte campaigns in the Pacific Theater. He was in training in the Philippines in August 1945, preparing for the impending invasion of Kyushu, when the Army Air Forces dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Following the surrender of Japan, he served in the American occupation forces in that country before returning to the University of Wisconsin as an instructor in history. Completing his doctorate at Wisconsin in 1952, Dr. Jones served a year as a research associate in American history at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and as an assistant professor of history at the Central State College of Connecticut. Since January 1955 he has been a historian on the staff of the U.S. Army Center of Military History, where he has been a major contributor to The Army Almanac and the ROTC textbook American Military History. In addition to the present volume, Dr. Jones is author of articles and reviews in professional journals and of biographical sketches of military figures in a number of encyclopedias.