The men sat down to remove their boots and socks.

Their feet were wet.

Their socks were wet.

Their boots were wet.

The three combined provide the perfect conditions for jungle rot (if you imagine the men in Vietnam) or Trench rot (if you imagine them in WWI).

* * *

I asked Dad what he learned from Vietnam. He shared a few things, but the one I always think back to is: Keep your feet dry.

I expected him to go down the leadership and battles road. He paused and shared a bit at the fork and then went down the seemingly-little-things-that-matter-practical route.

Wear dry socks. Mucked-up feet will take you – and your brothers – down.

Don’t take shortcuts. It’s easier to walk along the side of a cleared road than it is to clear your own path in the jungle. Don’t go with what is easy.

Trust your instincts. This one arrived via an interview Steve Pressfield did with Gen. Sam V. Wilson, July 2010:

You are going along a jungle trail in North Burma when suddenly a voice in your head says, Duck Sam, Duck Sam, Duck!

And a Jap Nambu light machine gun cuts the empty air where you had been standing.

Premonition? Hardly.

The almost unnoticed odor of fish heads and rice and the slight discoloration in the leaves of the branches camouflaging the enemy machine gun telegraphed danger to you without your being fully conscious of it. Trust your instincts.

* * *

Big-picture war stories often are about battles. The lessons learned and shared take the form of strategies developed, weapons used, and so on.

If you have the opportunity to ask a veteran, ask about the things that kept him or her operating and alive, and you’ll find that the stories and examples shared are quite simple—as simple as “Keep your feet dry.”

West Point and Carlisle were winning teams. One featured two future generals—Eisenhower and Omar Bradley—and the other featured all-around athlete and gold-medal-winning Olympian Jim Thorpe and the now-legendary Coach Pop Warner.

Eisenhower and a team mate strategized and hit Thorpe high and low, doubling up on the already-famous young athlete. The three stopped play, sprawled across the field.

Play resumed.

Thorpe knew what to expect.

Carlisle won the game.

“Here and there, there are some people who are supremely endowed,” said Eisenhower in 1961. “My memory goes back to Jim Thorpe . . . he could do anything better than any other football player I ever saw.”

War stories are about victories and defeat—and then they are followed by remembering, dissecting, learning from, and honoring.

And then—as Shakespeare put it—what is past becomes prologue.

The earlier stories become opening acts for the future.

Eisenhower held onto that 1912 memory, as well as those from years before. Earlier in his 1961 speech:

“In my young years—high school and college—I was a member of some athletic teams, and in all of those years there were coaches who were men of character who were always telling us boys that when you had to take a defeat you had to be a good sport about it. I believed that, and I still believe it. But I never had a coach that told me I had to get used to it. . . .

“I find that every time there was a loss, they just took you out and instead of scrimmaging once a week or twice, you were doing it four times. You practiced not an hour and a half but two hours and a half. Then you got down to the fundamentals, whether it was in football or baseball or any other game you were playing.”

War stories have a way of sticking in your head, the way the coaches and Thorpe stuck in Eisenhower’s.

You remember them. You dissect them. You learn from them. When due, you honor them.

When they become the opening act, you use them to warm up for the headliner.

And when they are forgotten, and the warriors who lived them are long gone, wheels are recreated, and history repeats—without past’s prologue.

Lieutenant General Samuel Vaughan Wilson, retelling a Civil War story told to him as a child, by his “Auntie Mamie,” who spent much of the Battle of Saylers Creek “crouched on a pile of last fall’s potatoes there on the floor of the basement” in Lockett House, which was in the middle of the battle, and used as a hospital by both sides:

“There was another one right over here where you can see that other stain still there in the floor. He was a little Johnny Reb,  couldn’t have been more’n 12 or 13,  tow-headed and not even old enough to shave. He was in real bad shape, had been hit in the stummick, bleeding real bad and his guts were spilling out all over the place. They kept trying to stuff his guts back in his belly, but it looked like it wasn’t working. I can hear him now calling for his mama—’Mama, Mama, help me, Mama . . .’ Then he called real low one last time and was quiet, and I knew he was dead too.”

The War: An Intimate History, 1941-1945 by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns

Looking back years later at photographs of himself and his smooth-cheeked friends in uniform, Sid Phillips marveled that America had ever “considered these young volunteers as her defenders. . . . They had the heart but not the experience.” Nine out of ten of the men in his division really were boys (their average age was nineteen) and had no real idea before they landed what combat would be like. Luckily, as one officer recalled, there were veterans scattered among the ranks whose impact on them would be incalculable.

President Ronald Reagan, Nov. 11, 1985, Arlington National Cemetery:

It is, in a way, an odd thing to honor those who died in defense of our country, in defense of us, in wars far away. The imagination plays a trick. We see these soldiers in our minds as old and wise. We see them as something like the Founding Fathers, grave and gray haired. But most of them were boys when they died, and they gave up two live – the one they were living and the one that would have lived. When they died, they gave up their chance to be husbands and fathers and grandfathers. They gave up their chance to be revered old men. They gave up everything for our country, for us. And all we can do it remember.

Hitler’s War by Edwin Palmer Hoyt

Sometimes Hitler emerged to participate in some ceremony. On his birthday, April 20, he received a delegation of Hitler Youth who had been fighting at the front. They were just boys—but soldiers now—dying in a war that was already lost.

Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing

I can hear them. ‘Oh,the pain, Nurse, oh, Nurse, the pain.’ And my mother, who I maintain could have been an actress, made the sounds og the poor boys calling out for morphine painful, years and years later. ‘And the worst, you see, the worst was when they were calling for their mothers. They were just boys, that’s all. I remember one little lad, he was sixteen, he had pretended to be eighteen, but he was just . . . He died calling for his mother, and I …’ and Sister McVeagh, all those years later, wept, remembering how she had pretended to be his mother. “Yes, I’m here,” I said. Oh, and when I think of it . ..’

Well, she did think of it, a great deal, and at times two streams of war horrors went on together, my mother’s  ‘Oh, the poor boys’ like a descant to the Trenches.

And So It Goes—Kurt Vonnegut: A Life by Charles Shields

“You were just babies then!” she said.

“What?” I said.

“You were just babies in the war—like the ones upstairs!”

I nodded this was true. We had been follish virgins in the war, right at the end of childhood.

“But you’re not going to write it that way, are you.”

That wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.

“I-I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, I know,” she said. “You’ll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you’ll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we’ll have a lot more of them.”

Iowa governor Albert B. Cummins, during his Nov. 23, 1906 speech, dedicating monuments at Shiloh (as appears in The Untold Story of Shiloh: The Battle and the Battlefield by Timothy Smith):

I have been impressed, as we have gone from day to day, by one phrase which we have constantly employed. We look at a monument and we say, “the boys were worthy of this tribute.” Why do we call them boys? Why is that name so dear to the hearts of the succeeding generation? We call them boys because they were boys. Of the eighty thousand men the first day, and of the one hundred thousand the next day, upon this field, I venture to say the average age was under twenty-one; not more, at least, than twenty-one. Your boys, fighting for the honor of your country’s flag and the permanence of your country’s institutions. Ah, I do not wonder that we come here weeping. To their mothers, to their wives, to their sisters, to the maids who loved them, these men, some now gone beyond the river, some now sharing the gratitude of a succeeding generation, will always be boys. And to us they shall always be boys. The thought in my mind, however, is this, and it should fill us with transcendent hope when we reflect upon it—that boys of eighteen, twenty and twenty-one could, by the summons of war, change in the twinkling of an eye into the mature heroes of conflict. The boys who climbed the banks of the Tennessee River, and here offered themselves up that their country might live, became men—stern, unyielding men—when the storm of shot and shell fell upon them. The days of their boyhood were gone forever, and they stood, as stalwart giants, full of the sense of responsibility, with minds attuned to the music of the Union, and with arms strong to execute a high and sacred purpose.

“Killed in Action” by M.P.B

Oh dirty, grimey little lad,
How proud I was to be your dad.
So brave and fearless and alert, With both feet bare, nor trace of shoes,
Sans hat, with overalls of blue,
One leg rolled nearly to the pocket,
Avoiding clutch of chain and sprocket,
You were my constant pride and joy,
Oh dirty, grimey, little boy.

Oh dirty, ragged, little man,
Remembering you as best I can,
The things you carried in your pocket,
A string, a worm, a broken locket,
The things you did, that time you hid,
When you were just a little kid
And I suspected you of smoking,
To find you only had been joking,
That time you grabbed my hat and ran,
Oh dirty, ragged, little man.

Oh dirty, grimey little lad,
The years too few were those we had.
Those many hours you spent afishin,
Are equaled by the ones I’m wishing
That, with our lives to live again,
‘Tis just a fancy sure but then,
We’d have more time to spend together,
And so the chance of proving whether
Your ways would any more annoy,
Oh dirty, grimey, little boy.

“The war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they date from it.”

Mark Twain’s Civil War by Mark Twain

The war is the great chief topic of conversation. The interest in it is vivid and constant; the interest in other topics is fleeting. Mention of the war will wake up a dull company and set their tongues going, when nearly any other topic would fail. In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they date from it. All day long you hear things “placed” as having happened since the waw; or du’in’ the waw; or befo’ the waw; or right aftah the waw; or ‘bout two yeahs or five yeahs or ten yeahs befo’ the waw or aftah the waw. It shows how intimately every individual was visited, in his own person, by that tremendous episode. It gives the inexperienced stranger a better idea of what a vast and comprehensive calamity invasion is than he can ever get by reading books at the fireside.

At a club one evening, a gentleman turned to me and said, in an aside:

“you notice, of course, that we are nearly always talking about the war. It isn’t because we haven’t anything else to talk about, but because nothing else has so strong an interest for us. And there is another reason: In the war, each of us, in his own person, seems to have sampled all the different varieties of human experiences; as a consequence, you can’t mention an outside matter of any sort but it will certainly remind some listener of something that happened during the war,—and out he comes with it. . . . ”

The poet was sitting some little distance away; and presently he began to speak—about the moon.

The gentleman who had been talking to me remarked in an “aside:”  “There, the moon is far enough from the seat of war, but you will see that it will suggest something to somebody about the war; in ten minutes from now the moon, as a topic, will be shelved.”

The poet was saying he had noticed something . . .

Interruption from the other end of the room . . .

I was not sorry, for war talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.

“War is evil”

Winston Churchill, Dec. 24, 1941, at the White House Christmas Tree lighting ceremony

For the best part of twenty years the youth of Britain and America have been taught that war is evil, which is true, and that it would never come again, which has been proved false. For the best part of twenty years the youth of Germany, Japan and Italy have been taught that aggressive war is the noblest duty of the citizen, and that it should be begun as soon as the necessary weapons and organization had been made. We have performed the duties and tasks of peace. They have plotted and planned for war. This, naturally, has placed us in Britain and now places you in the United States at a disadvantage, which only time, courage and strenuous untiring exertions can correct. . . .

“War is kind”

War Is Kind by Stephen Crane

Do not weep, maiden, for war is kind.
Because your lover threw wild hands toward the sky
And the affrighted steed ran on alone,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Hoarse, booming drums of the regiment,
Little souls who thirst for fight,
These men were born to drill and die.
The unexplained glory flies above them,
Great is the battle-god, great, and his kingdom—
A field where a thousand corpses lie.

Do not weep, babe for war is kind.
Because your father tumbled in the yellow trenches,
Raged at his breast, gulped and died,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

Swift, blazing flag of the regiment,
Eagle with crest of red and gold,
These men were born to drill and die.
Point for them the virtue of slaughter,
Make plain to them the excellence of killing
And a field where a thousand corpses lie.

Mother whose heart hung humble as a button
On the bright splendid shroud of your son,
Do not weep.
War is kind.

“War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale.”

On War by Carl Von Clausewitz

War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale. If we could conceive as a unit the countless number of duels which make up a War, we shall do so best by supposing to ourselves two wrestlers. Each strives by physical force to compel the other to submit to his will: each endeavours to throw his adversary, and thus render him incapable of further resistance.

War therefore is an act of violence intended to compel our opponents to fulfil our will.

“War is inevitable.”

Out of My Mind by Andy Rooney

When I was quite young, I thought I might be a pacifist. Pacifists believe that any peace is better than any war. I liked that idea, but I learned that most pacifists were impractical dreamers. It’s nice of them to talk about not going to war, but then what do they do when another country attacks theirs to take land or property? Do they sit back and watch because they’re pacifists, or do they abandon their ideals and pick up a rifle? The answer is, they fight, and that’s why war is  inevitable until human nature changes. I should live so long.

“War is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble.”

War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges

The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict foes the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those who have the least meaning in their lives, the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the legions of young who live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world, are all susceptible to war’s appeal.

“War is ugly”

The Life of Greece by Will Durant

Of the events and aftermath of the war we can relate only what the poets and dramatists of Greece have told us; we accept this as rather literature than history, but all the more for that reason a part of the story of civilization; we know that war is ugly, and that the Iliad is beautiful. Art (to vary Aristotle) may make even terror beautiful – and so purify it – by giving it significance and form.

“The war is ended”

“Tell the Boys the War is Ended” by Emily J. Moore

“Tell the boys the war is ended,”
These were all the words he said;
“Tell the boys the war is ended,”
In an instant more was dead.

Strangely bright, serene, and cheerful
Was the smile upon his face,
While the pain, of late so fearful,
Had not left the slightest trace.

“Tell the boys the war is ended,”
And with heavenly visions bright
Thoughts of comrades loved were blended,
As his spirit took its flight.

“Tell the boys the war is ended,”
“Grant, O God, it may be so,”
Was the prayer which the ascended,
In a whisper deep, though low.

“Tell the boys the war is ended,”
And his warfare then was o’er.
As, by angel bands attended,
He departed from earth’s shore.
Bursting shells and cannons roaring
Could not rouse him by their din;
He to better worlds was soaring,
Far from war, and pain, and sin.

“War is not pretty.”

A Soldier of Life by Hugh de Selincourt

It was a chance remark. Nothing more. Corinna was standing by the fireplace, eating a sandwich. She said: “Oh, what’s that” Why it’s jam,” and took out her handkerchief to wipe the back of her hand. Now the connection was of the vaguest, and I had taken a firm hold of myself not to think of certain aspects of war. As a sensible man I had reasoned it out with myself. The war had to be; war is not pretty, but to brood on horrors means lunacy. There is much heroism, much suffering;  I have done my bit, and there’s an end or it. I smoothed it all over, too, with patriotic sentiments and made the best of it. What else could a sensible man do? It was no good going about with a glum face as well as with a maimed arm and leg.

Now, Corinna’s innocent remark brought to life another remark that I had heard. “God! What’s that?” a man near me had cried out in the trenches, but he answered his question by violently retching, for the stuff that trickled down his face was warm and human, and my neighbor was new to the trenches.

There was no reason whatever why her words should have startled this memory, or why the memory should have overwhelmed me.

SOB=Love and Respect

From, Clare Boothe Luce’s foreword to GEN Victor H. Krulak’s First to Fight:

My only brother enlisted in the Marine Corps at the age of eighteen when the United States entered World War I. . . . Strangely enough his letters from the war zone complained more about the cruel Simon Legree-like character of his battalion’s colonel than about the food, the privations, the fierceness of the Boche enemy he and his comrades were facing, or the wound he received at Belleau Wood. When the war was over, and my brother returned on leave to regale us with his war experiences, I asked him about that terrible colonel. Whereupon something very strange happened. “Oh,” he said in the flattest of flat voices, “he was killed.” And then, after a silent moment his young eyes grew moist. “Sorry, Sis,” he said, furtively wiping away a pair of tears, “but we loved that SOB; he took such damn good care of us.”

SOB=Son of a Bitch (Competitor/Competition)

From I’m Staying With My Boys: The Heroic Life of SGT. John Basilone, USMC by Jim Proser with Jerry Cutter

This match was for all the marbles. I wasn’t really looking forward to twelve rounds with this Danish farmer, a machinist’s mate on a Navy destroyer, who looked like he could bend horseshoes in each hand. I was 19–0, all knockouts but these were against guys in the outfit. The Dane had a dozen pro fights, at least that was the rumor. My CO and every man in camp had laid down a month’s pay on the bet that I was going to take this swabbie apart like the other guys I fought. But this big shitkicker looked like he enjoyed his work. I’d heard he stove in a guy’s ribs with his right hook and that soldier never walked straight again. He was that raw-boned kind of farmhand I used to toss hay bales to. The kind that worked all day in leather. You have to kill them to get them to stop.

After three years of garrison duty in Manila, these Army buddies of mine were near stir-crazy and would have bet their left nut on a roach race. Jesus Christ if there wasn’t a war soon, these guys would start one. I could hear them screaming for blood—mine, the Dane’s they didn’t care. They just wanted to see someone get the shit beat out of them. My hands were getting taped when the CO came in. I made a move. “At ease,” he said. “Basilone, you are a bastard breaker of hearts and killer of men. Am I right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are going to teach this swabbie son of a bitch something about pain, are you not?

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s good son, how you feel?”

“I feel like getting into a fight, sir.”

“I’ll bet you do. I’ve got fifty bucks that’s saying you’re going to knock this guy out. Should I get my money back?”

“No, sir.”

He clapped me on the shoulder and left trailing cigar smoke and I went in to my hunker-down before a fight. I see the punches landing. I see the Dane swing and miss. I see my combination find its mark and the big Dane hit the canvas. Soon it’s going to be time to go, so I say an “Our Father” hoping this Danish shit-shoveler doesn’t break my neck.

SOB=Pain

From On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman

The magnitude of the trauma associated with killing became particularly apparent to me in an interview with Paul, a VFW post commander and sergeant of the 101^st Airborne at Bastogne in World War II. He talked freely about his experiences and about comrades who had been killed, but when I asked him about his own kills he stated that usually you couldn’t be sure who it was that did the killing. Then tears welled up in Paul’s eyes, and after a long pause he said, “But the one time I was sure…” and then his sentence was stopped by a little sob, and pain racked the face of this old gentleman. “It still hurts, after all these years?” I asked in wonder. “Yes,” he said, “after all these years.” And he would not speak of it again.

The next day he told me, “You know, the questions you’re asking, you must be very careful not to hurt anyone with these questions. Not me, you know, I can take it, but some of these young guys are still hurting very badly. These guys don’t need to be hurt anymore.” These memories were the scabs of terrible, hidden wounds in the minds of these kind and gentle men.

SOB=Son of a Bitch (Target)

From Chosen Soldier: The Making of a Special Forces Warrior by Dick Couch

The second field exercise amounts to camping out on the firing ranges at Fort Bragg. The cadre and support staff truck in weapons and ammunition, and the Bravo candidates are treated to a final round of shooting, firing as many of the weapons systems as possible. The most popular event during this field evolution is the combat range. Each candidate is armed with his personal M4 rifle and standard Beretta 9mm pistol—primary weapon to secondary weapon when speed counts.

“You guys got to be aggressive—this is the business of killing,” Rick Blaylock tells them. “If you’re going to your secondary weapon in a tactical situation, you’re in trouble. If that rifle jams or you’re out of ammo, you have to get to that pistol—fast.  It’s kill or be killed—you or him. Most of your range time has been static firing—shooting for nice groups or double-tapping a silhouette target. In a gunfight, you’re going to shoot that son of a bitch until he goes down, and you’re going to keep shooting him. Get aggressive; get mean; get pissed. You kill him, or he kills you.”

SOB=Motivation to Remain Strong and Fight Back

From With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge

During prolonged shelling, I often had to restrain myself and fight back a wild, inexorable urge to scream, to sob, and to cry. As Peleliu dragged on, I feared that if I ever lost control of myself under shell fire my mind would be shattered. I hated shells as much for their damage to the mind as to the body. To be under heavy shell fire was to me by far the most terrifying of combat experiences. Each time it left me feeling more forlorn and helpless, more fatalistic, and with less confidence that I could escape the dreadful law of averages that inexorably reduced our numbers. Fear is many-faceted and has many subtle nuances, but the terror and desperation endured under heavy shelling are by far the most unbearable.

SOB=Son of a Bitch (Friend and Foe)

From Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley with Ron Powers

With their cargo of telephone wire, batteries, and American flag, the five boys set off up the mountain, unreeling the wire as they climbed. Doc had remained atop the mountain.

They reached the rim around noon. Mike reported to Lieutenant Schrier and explained the delivery of wire and batteries, and Johnson’s desire to preserve the first flag. As Rene handed Mike the replacement flag, the sergeant decided an explanation was in order.

“Colonel Johnson wants this big flag run up high,” he told the lieutenant, “so every son of a bitch on this whole cruddy island can see it!”

Mike directed Ira and Franklin to look for a length of pipe. He and Harlon started clearing a spot for planting the pole, and Harlon began stacking stones.

* * *

On his descent from the crater, Lowery encountered Joe Rosenthal, Bill Genaust, and Bob Campbell picking their way upward. Lowery told the group that he’d photographed the flagraising. The three photographers considered turning around and heading back. But Lowery had a different idea. “You should go on up there,” he said. “There’s a hell of a good view of the harbor.” The three photographers trudged on.

A good view of a different sort greeted Rosenthal when he reached the summit, a little after noon: the American flag, in close-up, snapping in the strong breeze. “I tell you, I still get this feeling of a patriotic jolt when I recall seeing our flag flying up there,” he told an interviewer some years later.

Then Rosenthal spotted another interesting sight toward the far side of the crater: a couple of Marines hauling an iron pole toward another Marine, who was holding a second American flag, neatly folded.

SOB=Joy

From In Love and War: The Story of a Family’s Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam Years by Jim and Sybil Stockdale

It was easy to tell that Rabbit and Chihuahua had gone over to Cat’s office; I could hear my just-recorded voice booming out of his recorder through the early-morning darkness of the courtyard. Then I started realizing that I had stumbled into winning! I had all the trends going in my direction: I was well into a hunger strike, I was unpresentable in public and would take pains to reblacken my cheeks every day. Rabbit and even Chihuahua were getting fed up with me, and fed up with Cat’s pretentious ambitions.

I put my good right arm back and worked my way onto my blanket where it lay on the floor and thought of the picture of Jimmy that Rabbit brought in and taunted me with and just started to sob—sob for joy! I had learned how to make these sons of bitches work every step of the way! I had finally learned to not be reasonable. The only thing they had going for them was to try to get a person to take options, their options, which were dresses up as “the only sensible way to go.” I was finally learning what Dostoevsky’s “underground man” knew: “What a man craves is not a rationally desirable choice, but an independent choice!” I pray I can pull it out with honor. And that I will make Syb and those boys of our proud.

SOB=Son of a Bitch (Asshole)

From Once a Marine: An Iraq War Tank Commander’s Inspirational Memoir of Combat, Courage, and Recovery by Nick Popaditch, with Mike Steere

One morning during the week before Christmas, before my visual skills session with John, a voice comes over the intercom saying I have a call. Since I’m still in my room all I have to do is pick up the phone to take it.

The caller IDs himself as Colonel McSomething, whom I will call Colonel McMoney. He’s in D.C., responding to my PEB appeal, which went out when I flew up here.

The exact words escape me, but in pogue Colonel-ese he says he can fix everything for me right now over the phone with no need for pursuing the appeal any further.

He opens with an offer of an additional 10 percent disability for my facial scars.

What? That was on my medical record but we never tried to claim it as part of my disability, first time around or in the appeal. At this point my bullshit alarm goes off.

Ten percent takes me to 75 percent disability, which the Colonel says rounds up to 80 percent.

This puts me at the max in terms of Marine Corps medical retirement money.

I can’t believe it. The son-of-a-bitch wants to haggle, like I—my career, my honor, my war wounds, my life—am a trade-in at a used car lot. The Colonel even adapts that smarmy used car salesman manner.

“I’m offering you the max on money, what more do you want?” McMoney says, like he’s doing me a favor that I’d be foolish to turn down.

“I want it right,” I say a little too loudly, because I’m not just suspicious, I’m mad, and heading toward furious.

He asks me what isn’t right, and I bring up the TDRL, the temporary disability status that means the board will review and rule again on my case in 18 months. What is temporary here? What can be fixed?

“If you have some miracle cure, you might want to share it with my doctors,” I say. This, along with the blunt and increasingly salty language, takes me as close to insubordinate as I want to get.

The Colonel has the nerve to say this, voice full of concern: “The TDRL is for your benefit.” In case things get worse, he says, the board can make adjustments, which is, of course, total bullshit because if I’m maxed out already, how do I get more maxed? Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.

War Stories is taking the day off and will be back next week. For now, here’s a re-run of a post that ran August 29th.

One of these things is not like the others:

Crackpot. Problem Child. Great Fighting Leader.

Or is it?

What does a leader look like?

Eisenhower called Patton a “crackpot” and a “problem child” and a “great fighting leader in pursuit and exploitation.” (See letter below from General Eisenhower to General Marshall.)

“Old Blood and Guts” Patton was like many of history’s great warriors. He came with flaws—and those working with him had to decide if they could accept him, warts and all.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response after being asked about Patton during a press conference:

I think probably that you may, if you want to write a piece, stick in there the story of a former president (Lincoln) who had a good deal of trouble in finding a successful commander for the armies of the United States.

And one of them turned up one day, and he was very successful.

And some very good citizens went to the president and protested: “You can’t keep him. He drinks.”

“It must be a good brand of liquor,” was the answer.

He scared people during battle, just as much as he scared some during public appearances, with a microphone in front of him. No one knew what he was going to say or do.

He was admired.

General Eisenhower, after Patton’s death:

He was one of those men born to be a soldier, an ideal combat leader…It is no exaggeration to say that Patton’s name struck terror at the hearts of the enemy.

And he was disliked.

President Harry Truman:

[I] don’t see how a country can produce such men as Robert E. Lee, John J. Pershing, Eisenhower, and Bradley and at the same time produce Custers, Pattons, and MacArthurs.

He was a born warrior—and wanted to be in battle.

I love war and responsibility and excitement. Peace is going to be hell on me. I will probably be a great nuisance.

He was raw.

War is bloody, killing business. You’ve got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours! Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt off your face and realize that instead of dirt it’s the blood and guts of what once was your best friend beside you, you’ll know what to do!

He was undiplomatic.

The more I see of people, the more I regret that I survived the war.

He was honest.

Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he’s not, he’s a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.

He was thoughtful.

Through a Glass, Darkly

by General George S. Patton, Jr.

Through the travail of the ages,
Midst the pomp and toil of war,
I have fought and strove and perished
Countless times upon this star.

In the form of many people
In all panoplies of time
Have I seen the luring vision
Of the Victory Maid, sublime.

I have battled for fresh mammoth,
I have warred for pastures new,
I have listed to the whispers
When the race trek instinct grew.

I have known the call to battle
In each changeless changing shape
From the high souled voice of conscience
To the beastly lust for rape.

I have sinned and I have suffered,
Played the hero and the knave;
Fought for belly, shame, or country,
And for each have found a grave.

I cannot name my battles
For the visions are not clear,
Yet, I see the twisted faces
And I feel the rending spear.

Perhaps I stabbed our Savior
In His sacred helpless side.
Yet, I’ve called His name in blessing
When after times I died.

In the dimness of the shadows
Where we hairy heathens warred,
I can taste in thought the lifeblood;
We used teeth before the sword.

While in later clearer vision
I can sense the coppery sweat,
Feel the pikes grow wet and slippery
When our Phalanx, Cyrus met.

Hear the rattle of the harness
Where the Persian darts bounced clear,
See their chariots wheel in panic
From the Hoplite’s leveled spear.

See the goal grow monthly longer,
Reaching for the walls of Tyre.
Hear the crash of tons of granite,
Smell the quenchless eastern fire.

Still more clearly as a Roman,
Can I see the Legion close,
As our third rank moved in forward
And the short sword found our foes.

Once again I feel the anguish
Of that blistering treeless plain
When the Parthian showered death bolts,
And our discipline was in vain.

I remember all the suffering
Of those arrows in my neck.
Yet, I stabbed a grinning savage
As I died upon my back.

Once again I smell the heat sparks
When my Flemish plate gave way
And the lance ripped through my entrails
As on Crecy’s field I lay.

In the windless, blinding stillness
Of the glittering tropic sea
I can see the bubbles rising
Where we set the captives free.

Midst the spume of half a tempest
I have heard the bulwarks go
When the crashing, point blank round shot
Sent destruction to our foe.

I have fought with gun and cutlass
On the red and slippery deck
With all Hell aflame within me
And a rope around my neck.

And still later as a General
Have I galloped with Murat
When we laughed at death and numbers
Trusting in the Emperor’s Star.

Till at last our star faded,
And we shouted to our doom
Where the sunken road of Ohein
Closed us in it’s quivering gloom.

So but now with Tanks a’clatter
Have I waddled on the foe
Belching death at twenty paces,
By the star shell’s ghastly glow.

So as through a glass, and darkly
The age long strife I see
Where I fought in many guises,
Many names, but always me.

And I see not in my blindness
What the objects were I wrought,
But as God rules o’er our bickerings
It was through His will I fought.

So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.

He was a crackpot. He was a problem child. He was a great fighting leader.

They tried to sift out the best from the mass of existing manuscripts, and to guide the reading of the people; they made lists of “best books,” the “four heroic poets,” the “nine historians,” the “ten lyric poets” the “ten orators,” etc.

Every time I open Will Durant’s The Life of Greece, a smile yanks at the corners of my lips.

I know he doesn’t bore me to sleep.

I know I’m in love with the way he shares history.

And yet. . .

Every time I open the book, I’m surprised, as if I’ve forgotten what I know.

He gets my brain going faster than a gallon of Red Bull and Carl Lewis sprinting through the 80s.

This morning he got me thinking about how we remember:

Thoughtful men felt that the creative inspiration of Greece was nearing exhaustion, and that the most lasting service they could render was to collect, shelter, edit, and expound the literary achievements of a bolder time. . . .

They wrote biographies of great writers and scientists; they gathered and saved the fragmentary data which are now all that we know concerning these men. They composed outlines of history, literature, drama, science, and philosophy; some of these “short cuts to knowledge” helped to preserve, some replaced and unwittingly obliterated the original works they summarized.

This morning he got me thinking about how we write:

It was above all an age of intellectuals and scholars. Writing became a profession instead of a devotion, and generated cliques and coteries whose appreciation of talent varied inversely as the square of its distance from themselves. Poets began to write for poets, and became artificial; scholars began to write for scholars, and became dull.

This morning he got me thinking about how we try to backtrack and correct:

Saddened by the degeneration of the Attic Greek into Orientalized “pidgin” Greek of their time, Hellenistic scholars compiled dictionaries and grammars, and the Library of Alexandria, in the manner of the French Academy, issued edicts on the correct usage of the ancient tongue. Without their learned and patient “ant industry” the wars, revolutions, and catastrophes of two thousand years would have destroyed even those “precious minims” which have been transmitted to us as the shipwrecked legacy of Greece.

Durant is my connector between the past and present. He talks Greece, I read 2011. In the quotes above, he talks Hellenic and I hear modern. He reminds me of the back and forth, the parallels, and the repeats of history.

This morning, with me head still lost between dreams and reality, he woke me with:

Normally the philosophy of one age is the literature of the next: the ideas and issues that in one generation are fought out on the field of research and speculation provide in the succeeding generation the background of drama, fiction and poetry. But in Greece the literature did not lag behind the philosophy; the poets were themselves philosophers, did their own thinking, and were in the intellectual vanguard of their time. That same conflict between conservatism and radicalism which agitated Greek religion, science, and philosophy found expression also in poetry and drama, even in the writing of history. Since excellence of artistic form was added, in Greek letters, to depth of speculative thought, the literature of the Golden Age reached heights never touched again until the days of Shakespeare and Montaigne.

He left my waking head asking, Where are we today?

More specific: Where are we with our war stories? How are they remembered, written and backtracked? What should be recommended reading? How do we find the gems? Who decides what is a gem?

More to come.

My gut reaction: Tell him he’s off his rocker. His kids need him, too.

But then he explained that the kids in Afghanistan needed someone to fight for them. His wife was strong and could do that for their children in the United States, but he wanted to go fight for other children around the world—the ones who didn’t have someone. He liked it and he was good at it.

“Because they like it” was the first comment I received to last week’s post, “Why Fight?” It took me back to the conversation with the operator. Though it took place a few years ago, it plays on repeat in my mind—I keep going back to it. I have two young children and struggle with parents who leave their own children behind. But I also know that this operator is no different from the doctor working long hours away from home because he believes in helping his patients more than making money, or the social worker spending just as much time with other families as she does with her own. In every profession there are men and women who are passionate and good at what they do. This takes them away from family and friends. But for them, it is that thing they live out loud. The same holds true for warriors on the battlefield.

“War is so obviously evil and wrong that the idea there could be anything good to it almost feels like profanity. . . .” wrote Sebastian Junger, in War.

When men say they miss combat, it’s not that they actually miss getting shot at – you’d have to be deranged – it’s that they miss being in a world where everything is important and nothing is taken for granted. They miss being in a world where human relations are entirely governed by whether you can trust the other person with your life. . . .

For some reason there is a profound and mysterious gratification to the reciprocal agreement to protect another person with your life, and combat is virtually the only situation in which that happens regularly. These hillsides of loose shale and holly trees are where the men feel not most alive—that you can get skydiving—but the most utilized. The most necessary. The most clear and certain and purposeful. If young men could get that feeling at home, no one would ever want to go to war again, but they can’t.

And for the operator, that’s when he felt most “utilized” and alive, too—helping others/saving lives.

Sugar Ray Leonard offered another perspective in The Big Fight: My Life In and Out of the Ring:

In the ring, for the first time in my life, I felt I could conquer any force. Strange isn’t it? The ring is where men try to do great harm to one another, and where I felt the safest.

And then there’s Bob Dylan, in a Playboy interview years ago:

Dylan: . . . you have to have belief. You must have a purpose. You must believe that you-can disappear through walls. Without that belief, you’re not going to become a very good rock singer, or pop singer, or folk-rock singer, or you’re not going to become a very good lawyer. Or a doctor. You must know why you’re doing what you’re doing.

Playboy: Why are you doing what you’re doing?

Dylan: [Pause] Because I don’t know anything else to do. I’m good at it.

And just like Dylan’s “very good lawyer” or doctor or musician, the warrior is good at what he does. And, yes, he likes it, too.

Throughout history, as seen in fiction and non-fiction writing, the reasons for fighting are often much simpler than the wars being fought. Country, family, friends, self-preservation are often the reasons.

The following are excerpts from different books and papers, on why different people/groups have fought through the years.

Lions of Kandahar: The Story of a Fight Against All Odds by Rusty Bradley and Kevin Maurer,

“My family is why I fight”

Airman’s Odyssey by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

If, at dawn to-morrow, I fight again, I shall know finally why I fight. . . . I believe that what my civilization calls charity is the sacrifice granted Man for the Purpose of his own fulfillment. Charity is the gift made to Man present in the insignifigance of the individual. It creates Man. I shall fight against all those who, maintaining that my charity pays homage to mediocrity, would destroy Man and thus imprison the individual in an irredeemable mediocrity.

I shall fight for Man. Against Man’s enemies—but against myself as well.

The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present, Shannon E. French

When my Naval Academy students have finished reading the Iliad, I often ask them to tell me which of Homer’s characters they admire most, and why. A popular reply is Hector, prince of Troy, and the reasons they give most concern their sense of why he fights. It may surprise some to learn that competitive young American students would favor a character who champions the losing side of the battle. But it is Hector’s humanity and nobility of character, not his unhappy fate, to which they are drawn.

Homer’s Prince Hector is a man who fights with tremendous ferocity on the battlefield but who is not driven by rage or bloodlust. Although he relishes his moments of small-scale victory, we are given the impression that Hector fights not because he wants to but because he has a duty to his people. He would rather be at home with his wife and young son, Astynax, but he is the greatest warrior that the Trojans have. If he does not defend the city, it will certainly fall to the Greeks. His exceptional physical prowess and martial skills, combined with his standing in the community as a respected member of the royal family, create special responsibilities for him. By rights, his brother Paris (the cause of the crisis) should have offered himself up for the protection of Troy. However, since Paris chooses not to live up to his obligations, the burden shifts to Hector’s more capable (and unshirking) shoulders. The defense of the city is placed in his hands, and all the hopes of the Trojan people are pinned on his performance as a fighter and a leader.

Senator T.W. Palmer, during the Seventeenth Reunion, Society of the Army of the Cumberland

We have been taught by the books that war was destructive; that schoolmasers were the creatures and promoters of peace. We have been told that the pen was mightier than the sword, a saying which implies that they were two rival and not congenial forces. The cloister and the camp have been regarded as typifying the antipodes of human life, and yet the pupil of Socrates—the man who perpetuated and developed the philosophy of his master, the man who gave his whole life to metaphysical study and dreamy meditation—said that the men who fought at Marathon and Salamis were the schoolmasters of all Greece. What he meant was a matter of inference, but we may deduce from his surroundings that he wished to impress upon his people that the devotion of the 10,000 who met and defeated eleven times their number at Marathon was an example more ennobling and more lasting than all the speculations of the Academy, than all the eloquence of the Agora. He meant more: he undoubtedly meant that their example showed that the refinement and culture of Athens had not enervated her sons; that while other Grecian states had consented to become tributary to the Persian king, the men who won those victories knew what independence and nationality meant, and proposed to maintain them; that the true soldier, the man who fights for a principle, knowing what he fights for and why he fights for it, is the man who not only had been trained in the gymnasium, but has listened in the schools. He must also have referred to that spectacle of other leaders generously giving away their right of command that Miltiades might lead them on that fateful day.

Undersea Warrior: The World War II Story of “Mush” Morton and the USS Wahoo by Don Keith

“People ask me why I go to war and fight. Right out there is the reason.”

He pointed toward his wife and children and had them stand up for applause.

The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great by Steven Pressfield

I have always wished to become a man of wisdom. That is why I fight and why I have pursued the vocation of arms. Life is a battle is it not? And how better to train for it than to be a soldier? For have you not noticed of these sages, my friends, that they are the consummate soldiers? I inured to pain, oblivious to hardship, each takes up his post at dawn and does not relinquish it for thirst, hunger, heat, cold, fatigue. He is cheerful in all weathers, self-motivated, self-governed, self-commended. Would, Alexander, that we had an army with such a will to fight! We would cross this river before the count of three hundred.

“Are you saying, Telamon,” I inquire, “that your training as a soldier prepares you for the vocation of sage?”

The party responds with amusement. But I am serious. Telamon answers that he wishes he were that tough. “These men are beyond me, my friends. I must apprentice myself to them for many lifetimes.”

Patton’s Panthers: the African-American 761^st Tank Battalion in World War II by Charles W. Sasser

Lieutenant Long, Baker Company CO, had come an impressive distance since starting out in the army at Fort Knox as a cook, one of the few positions open for Negroes. He was still an excellent gourmet cook. After graduating from OCS, he and Lieutenant Ivan Harrison became the first two black officers in the U.S. tank corps.

“Not for my God and my country, but for me and my people, that’s why I fight,” he told reporter Trezzvant Anderson, who was always interviewing men in the battalion. “I swore to myself when I entered the army that there would never be a headline saying my men and I chickened. A soldier in time of war is supposed to accept the idea of dying. That’s what he’s there for; live with it and forget it. I expect to get killed, but whatever happens I am determined to die an officer and a gentleman.”

“The Compromises of Life and other Lectures and Addresses” by Henry Watterson

I take it for granted that there is no one of you who has enlisted for a soldier who does not want to be a soldier and who has not resolved to be a soldier. That much at least is the heritage of the Kentuckian. But even in soldiership there is a right way and a wrong way. The famous Confederate General Forrest said of war that “it means fighting and fighting means killing.” He also said of success in battle that it is “getting there first with the most men.” Some of us are old enough to remember the delusion that once had a certain vogue among the unthinking that one Southerner could whip six Yankees. We got bravely over that; and now that we are all Yankees, let it not be imagined that one Yankee can whip six Spaniards. It is always better to overrate than to underrate the enemy. He fights best who fights truest. He fights best who knows why he fights and for what he fights, and who, when he goes under fire, says to himself, “I have but one time to die, and, please God, I am as ready now as ever I shall be.” The Irish have a couplet which declares:

“Not man, nor monarch, half so proud

As he whose flag becomes his shroud.”

That is only another way of repeating the old Latin heroic that it is sweet ot die for one’s country.

The Red Book of Guerrilla Warfare by Mao Zedong

Although discipline in guerilla ranks is not as severe as in the ranks of orthodox forces, the necessity for discipline exists. This must be self-imposed, because only when it is, is the soldier able to understand completely, why he fights and why he must obey. This type of discipline becomes a tower of strength within the army, and it is the only type that can truly harmonize the relationship that exists between officers and soldiers.

Willing Obedience: Citizens, Soldiers, and the Progress of Consent in America, 1776-1898 by Elizabeth D. Samet

The citizen-warrior knows why he fights. “Military service makes men equal,” writes J.G.A. Pocock, “Because men in arms defend the same things without distinction, they come to have the same values; because they are not all disciplined to accept the same authority, they are all obedient to the res publica; because the public authority monopolizes force, there can be no subjection of one private citizen to another.” Thus militia service theoretically removed the relation of arbitrary private subjection—precisely the relation on which slavery itself was predicated.

“Band of Brothers—Warrior Ethos: Unit Effectiveness and the Role of Initial Entry Training,” Col Donald M. Sando, U.S. Army War College

WHY SOLDIERS FIGHT

Studies of combat motivation often identify the importance of primary group dynamics and group attitudes, beliefs and behaviors to explain in part why men fight when they might not otherwise.  Most notably S.L.A. Marshall in World war II, Roger Little in the Korean War, and Charles Moskos during Vietnam War all observed the importance of strong group ties and interpersonal relationships within the primary group on behavior and attitude of soldiers in combat. Nora Kinzer Stewart’s examination of both British and Argentine forces in the Falklands conflict reinforces the primacy of cohesion, morale and motivation in small unit performance in battle. More recently, a study of combat motivation among U.S. Infantrymen and Marines in Operation Iraqi Freedom concludes that “cohesion, or the strong emotional bonds between soldiers, continues to be a critical factor in combat motivation.” Although these studies included exclusively male units, the role of primary group influence and horizontal bonding is assumed to have similar effects in female and mixed gender units.

A less immediate but no less important aspect of small unit cohesion and success in battle is a cultural trust of the army as an institution and commitment to the moral validity of the fight.  This appears to be especially true of professional armies.  The survey of soldiers in Iraq concludes that “because our soldiers trust the Army as an institution, they now look to the Army to provide the moral direction for war.” Research of Israeli and American combat stress casualties suggests that soldiers “committed to a principle of patriotism, a just war, an ideology, or a belief in the nation’s principles” are more likely to withstand the stress of combat.  Loyalty and patriotism to national objectives, or societal cohesion, were observed as contributing factors for both belligerents during the Falklands conflict.

Strong bonds among soldiers; faith in comrades and commitment to unit goals; and a culture of trust in institutional values are critical to success on the battlefield.  The cultural attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of Warrior Ethos – disciplined initiative, teamwork, determination, sacrifice – enable unit effectiveness.  A review of other armies and services informs our understanding of how cultural attitudes, beliefs and behaviors contribute to Warrior Ethos and unit effectiveness.

“Enhancing Warrior Ethos in Soldier Training: The Teamwork Development Course” by Gerald Klein, Margaret Salter, Gary Riccio, Randall Sullivan, United States Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences

What is a Warrior

In the  Iroquois tongue Warrior means  “one  who protects the  Sacred Origins,”  the man  or woman whose honor and  duty before God  flows from  a  commitment to protecting  the people  and the whole web  of life that ensures the people’s  well being.  According to the Lakota Brave Heart Warrior Society,  a  Soldier follows  orders  and  fights because  he is told to.  He is externally motivated and disciplined  by his commanders.  The Warrior, by contrast,  is self-disciplined.  A Warrior  knows why  he  fights because he has  searched his  own heart’s motives  and has consciously  and intentionally  chosen to pay the price with full  awareness  of what will  be needed off the  battlefield  when it is over.  [Muse,  S. (2005). Fit for Life, Fit  for War:  Reflections  on the Warrior Ethos.  Infantry Magazine.  94-2, 23-27.]

Motivated by  a Sense of Calling.

Warrior  Ethos means  motivation  from Army values and  belief in the  cause  for which the  Army  fights – Duty,  Honor, Country.  Soldiers need to  know why they are  fighting and to  believe it is  right. For some this  comes with  the  Oath of Allegiance;  for  others the beliefs  and practices  of a religious  faith;  for  others it is  simply the knowledge that what they are  doing is the  right thing to do. This helps  Soldiers persist  in the  face  of danger  or defeat; it helps  us display  behavior consistent with  the Warrior  Ethos of an American  Soldier.

Faith in  Themselves and Their Comrades.

Underlying the  four tenets of Warrior Ethos is knowledge  that other  Soldiers  also behave  with Warrior Ethos.  Once we  are  sure we are  being looked after,  and  as  much as possible,  our personal  safety assured,  we can  maintain the  fight, knowing  we are not  alone. This  is important because  it relates to protecting  each  other, and provides  some relief from combat stress.  Soldiers want to know that if they are wounded their buddies  and unit will  fight to prevent their capture.  They expect medical treatment in  a timely manner,  and if needed,  their remains repatriated.  This gives  a level  of comfort and trust among Soldiers that is  essential  to combat performance  at the  small  unit level.  This  is Warrior Ethos.

Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif from the movie "Lawrence of Arabia"

Alas, I can’t recall the date of the letter or the circumstances of its writing or even the person it was written to. I cut it out and saved it as an example of vivid, immediate, riveting prose.

I used to copy these two paragraphs over and over on my ancient Smith-Corona, trying to teach myself the rhythm and punch of the thing.

Given the carnage of the scene described, we might expect the writer to be appalled or moved to pity. Not Lawrence, or at least not Lawrence in this moment. He seems to be having the time of his life.

The real "El Aurens"

The last stunt was the hold up of a train. It had two locomotives, and we gutted one with an electric mine. This rather jumbled up the trucks, which were full of Turks, shooting at us. We had a Lewis, and flung bullets through the sides. So they hopped out and took cover behind an embankment, and shot at us between the wheels, at 50 yards. Then we tried a Stokes gun, and two beautiful shots dropped right in the middle of them. They couldn’t stand that (12 died on the spot) and bolted away to the East across a 100 yard belt of open sand into some scrub. Unfortunately for them, the Lewis covered the open stretch. The whole job took ten minutes, and they lost 70 killed, 30 wounded, 80 prisoners, and about 25 got away. Of my hundred Howeitat and two British NCO’s there was one (Arab) killed, and four (Arab) wounded.

The Turks then nearly cut us off as we looted the train, and I lost some baggage, and nearly myself. My loot is a superfine red Baluch prayer-rug. I hope this sounds the fun it is. The only pity is the sweat to work them up and the wild scramble while it lasts. It’s the most amateurish, Buffalo-Billy sort of performance, and the only people who do it well are the Bedouin. Only you will think it heaven, because there aren’t any returns, or orders, or superiors, or inferiors; no doctors, no accounts, no meals, and no drinks.