I stood duty from 0700 on Saturday until 0700 on Sunday (as my special request chit was shot down). Therefore, the topic of this entire post is going to be Military. It is pretty rare that I get guard duty but it seems like I always get it on a Saturday when I do. Saturdays are 24-hour shifts but, due to Daylight Savings Time, I only had to stand 23 this weekend. It still demolished my plans for this weekend. Now, as it is guard duty, I am allowed to only work on language or military topics to stave off the boredom. This weekend I brought my stack of books from the Commandant's Reading List and devoured 6/7 of them.
The last time I just sat down and read a book was during the December Exodus break so it was actually nice to get in all that reading. The books were also quite good and each one provoked some thought or another...
As an aside, I hate sleep. I really do. I liken sleep to death. However, at the tail end of a 23 hour shift, my body really, really craves sleep and it feels so good when I finally do lie down.
Rifleman Dodd: This novella by C. S. Forester used to be issued and be mandatory reading in boot camp so I started with it first. It's the story of a British rifleman who is separated from his regiment during the Napoleonic wars. He was part of the British campaign in Portugal. The book details his journey back to his regiment.
Along the way he has to contend with being cut off from supplies, with being surrounded by the enemy, with being the only English-speaker for miles, with having no new orders to guide him... He has to take a lot of initiative. He works with his commander's intent. He knows why his regiment is there in the broadest of terms and, even though there is no chain of command where he is, he thinks of what would be the best thing to do for mission accomplishment and acts autonomously towards that goal. I think that the most important lesson from Rifleman Dodd is contained within the following quote:
"The only reward for the doing of his duty would be the knowledge that his duty was being done. That was how honour called; and glory--the man in the ranks did not bother with glory,..."
For Rifleman Dodd, honor wasn't measured by the amount of accolades he had in his SRB or the ribbons on his chest. He was given nothing for his service except a re-issue of his unserviceable gear and a warm meal. He wasn't promoted, given a medal, or even a pat on the back. The only thing that mattered to him was that he completed his duty and that is how he preserved his honor: away from the eyes of everybody.
A Message to Garcia: This was actually an old magazine article that became a phamplet that became an international sensation. It was inspired by an America officer who accepted the near-impossible task of delivering a message to a Cuban rebel. He had no idea where the rebel leader was. He had no supplies. He had no support. He was dropped offshore of Cuba and emerged three weeks later on the other side having completed his mission.
The article isn't a retelling of the story but rather focuses on what kind of person that officer was. It talks about the plague of society: People who will do anything to get out of doing work. People who ask questions they don't need to know the answers to. People who are just lazy and/or stupid. The writer talks about how all these people are throwing fits over the misfortune of the poor 'working' man... but he has to ask about all the employers who are desperately trying to find one man willing to actually work.
Really, I think the article boils down to "Shut up, listen to your commander's intent, and do your job." There's plenty of stuff you don't need to know so don't ask. You don't need to have your hand held by your superior - just keep in mind what he is trying to accomplish (what your stated mission is) and take the necessary steps. Never abandon your duty.
Of course, he said it a lot more eloquently and thoroughly than I have. It is a good read.
The Soldier's Load and the Mobility of a Nation: This is a treatise written by a colonel in 1950. At first it talks about the problem of over-loading troops and how that destroys their combat effectiveness. It talks about how fear and fatigue have the same effects, about the importance of letting troops rest, about how over-loading troops rapidly destroys their physical capabilities, etc. It doesn't start getting really interesting until later.
While I can keep in mind the weight concerns of highly-mobile and combat-ready troops, I found the writings on why we have this problem to be much more interesting. The colonel wrote about how staff members are killing our own troops because they make troops carry something for every possible occurrence. Troops carry too much junk to handle tasks they will never encounter on the battlefield. Troops even carry too much ammunition, water, and rations. Staff members are so worried that something will go wrong that they plan for every contingency, load the troops up, then make something go wrong (like drowning during an amphibious landing because the four cartons of cigarettes you were ordered to load in your pack soak up water).
It also talked about how the American public and the military is harming it's soldiers by coddling them. Rather than keep the supply lines trim, efficient, and fast with the necessary supplies, the rear is over-loaded with all the miscellaneous extras that troops don't need. Our military is under the impression that its troops need to live the civilian life, even when at war, so the rear is choked by all the comforts of home: junk food, extra clothes, entertainment facilities, etc. The reality is that, when troops were questioned in combat scenarios, they actually preferred the sparser lifestyle and took pride in what they were doing. There are other ways to stave off boredom then carting in a shipment of ocarinas (no joke).
Obviously I have no controls over the logistics in my life but it is something to keep in mind as I climb the ranks. I can control what extra gear I stick in my pack or what gear I toss as soon as I hit dirt. Then the arguments for a sparser, more-military lifestyle are always relevant.
The Defense of Duffer's Drift: This is also a military manual but it is much more interesting than the previous one. It's told as a recollection of a series of dreams where the author is charged with defending a point from a numerically superior force. He doesn't know why this point needs to be defended (but that is revealed later). I found the manual to be interesting and even humorous as it used a fresh British officer as the vehicle for the teachings. The contrasts between what he was taught at school, what he thought was proper, and what actually worked were entertaining and informative.
It is also a good way of making the material stick. While I couldn't recite the 22 rules the officer stumbled upon during his dreams, I can remember and contemplate the different things he did and what didn't work, what did work, and why. Therefore, in the future, as a small unit leader charged with setting up a fighting position, I can think back to Duffer's Drift and recall the story.
The Constitution of the United States of America: This was my third or fourth time reading the US Constitution and I get a little more out of it every time. I think the most disturbing thing all day was the sheer quantity of people who walked up to the duty desk and asked me why I was reading the Constitution. I don't know... It may have something to do with this little part of MEPS:
"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. That I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."
I think knowing what I am supporting and defending is important. Besides brushing up on what my individual rights are I also learned just how un-constitutional our government of the past century plus some change has been. The Constitution clearly states that all powers not clearly outlined in the Constitution belong to the states or to the people. The federal government isn't supposed to be this all-encompassing behemoth that it is. It's supposed to unite the states for matters that they couldn't handle well on their own. Matters such as international diplomacy, interstate trade, international trade, and warmaking. That's really it. Not education, crime, national resources, etc. States are supposed to handle that on their own.
I'm looking at you, Congress. You're curiously absent from my Oath of Enlistment and you are paid far too much for doing far too little except bloating the system.
Now to figure out just how a 20 year-old Marine goes about making a more constitutional federal government...
The Killer Angels: This is a novel written by Michael Shaara. I hear it's his best one and that his other works aren't really worth reading. Fortunately, I enjoyed this novel that retold the Battle of Gettysburg by piecing together the recollections of the generals there from their journals. It raised a lot of interesting questions for you.
The southern enlisted men said they were fighting for their rights but didn't know what those rights were. The southern generals used the analogy of joining a gentleman's club that promptly shoved its nose in their private lives and then, when they tried to quit the club, refused. I can actually see that as being true when I look at the bloated size of our federal government and how it's stomping all over states' rights. A northern general talked about how the south was trying to bring back the European aristocracy and that also seems true with the talk of how some men were common, some men were slaves, and the like. They even had European officers there mingling with the southern officers and the Englishman saying how much like England they were. The north and Europe thought the war was over slavery. Just seeing how all these different people could have the same viewpoints over the reasoning behind the war and how, ultimately, the reason ceased mattering... It was interesting.
The southern concept of honor was also interesting. The generals did a lot for their honor, including ignore the strategically superior option in favor of a 'glorious' massed charge on a fortified position. We had an officer who felt like he had to fall in battle because Jackson court marshaled him for cowardice (despite the fact that no one who knew him suspected him of such). We had these self-fancied gentlemen, with all their pomp and airs, talking about honor and God and glory... Then they pushed their men through a meat grinder to appease those same ideas.
I contrasted their definition of honor and glory with that of Rifleman Dodd's. Rifleman Dodd preserved his honor by accomplishing his mission and was not concerned with glory in the least. In order to complete his mission he had to do some under-handed things such as sabotage, ambushes, and night assaults. The southern generals, in particular General Lee, felt like they had to attack the northern forces (who were across an open field, atop a steep hill, behind cover, and supported by artillery) with a charge to preserve their honor rather than loop around and try to outflank the northern forces. They would be shamed if they didn't. Even the northern officers, such as Chamberlain, seemed to think the display was 'beautiful.'
I don't. I think it's disgusting. I've concluded that there was no honor in what the southern forces did that day and that, in fact, they dragged their honor through the dirt. The author felt compelled to describe the southern generals charging into the fray as 'knights' but I find that metaphor to be wholly inaccurate. Rifleman Dodd had the right idea.
You don't win honor through the pomp and ritual of being a 'gentleman' and foolhardy charges if you lose the battle. There is no honor is failing to accomplish your mission. Sir Charny, an actual knight and without peer in his day and age, said that honor was found in prowess and he did some classically under-handed things in his attempts to accomplish his mission. You can dress yourself up, make a show of being polite, and throw your broken body upon the altar of popular opinion... But that isn't honor.
That is chasing glory. They are two distinct things. Honor is reaching down, grabbing hold, and pressing on to accomplish your mission even when no one is looking. Glory is making a show of being brave so that later people will talk about you and say how brave and 'honorable' you were. Rifleman Dodd had it right. People should concern themselves with honor and not glory.
This is something I need to meditate upon and keep close to my heart...
Personal: 7
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