Page 1 of 2 All together now, US troops stand firm
By Brian M Downing
But we in it shall be remembered -
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. - William Shakespeare, Henry V
We're stuck over here God knows how long, just waiting and sweating it out, and
finding out things about yourself that, by God, it don't pay to know. - Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
At the outset of the war in Iraq, if told that an insurgency lasting over four
years was in store, most Americans would have
predicted serious trouble with cohesion and manpower in the military. Such
views would be expected from opponents of the war, yet similar concerns would
have come from cautious analysts, in and out of uniform.
Today, when veterans of the Vietnam War discuss the present wars (the subject
arises naturally and quickly), many express puzzlement over continued high
cohesion among our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps expectations are
based more on memories of Vietnam than on a comparative look at cohesion in
war.
Common backgrounds
Between 1940 and 1973, the military relied a great deal on conscription. Young
men, from all regions and social groups, were called up to serve together in
war and peace. Conscription, as is well known, became highly unpopular during
the Vietnam War as fighting dragged on for years and deferments went to
privileged sons. The draft ended in 1973 after which the nation relied on pay
incentives and a sense of duty to attract volunteers. The social backgrounds of
today's volunteers are narrower than those from most previous wars, especially
Vietnam. However harshly this might grate on senses of equity, especially in
time of war, this homogeneity constitutes an important basis of cohesion now.
The rank and file of the US military come disproportionately if not mainly from
small towns and rural areas, culturally distinctive parts of the country that
instill beliefs and outlooks conducive to vigorous community life and also to
ties among soldiers. While people in many urban and suburban areas over the
last few decades have become highly individualistic, those in small towns and
rural areas have maintained traditions of interdependence. Respect for
authority in almost all forms took a beating during Vietnam, but regained
strength away from the cities, especially during the Reagan years. Further,
people in these communities view themselves as composing a redoubt of morality
and tradition in a country that has become far too secular and hedonistic.
Pride in military service is an integral part of community life in small towns
and rural areas, though it has faded if not disappeared elsewhere. American
Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars halls host local events and memorials.
Parades are held on Memorial Day, July 4, Veterans' Day, and other national
holidays. The names of fallen servicemen are often engraved on walls in town
commons. Civil War cannons outside courthouses attest to the longevity of pride
in military service. Families fondly remember ancestors' service in frontier
militias, grandpa's in World War II, dad's in Vietnam, and now see tradition
carried forth with a son or daughter in the Middle East. Vietnam has special
meaning there. Returning veterans, they know, were treated shabbily and the war
ended in humiliation.
Small towns and rural areas face the rise of corporate farms and big-box
retailers, which undermine many existing businesses, leading to the oft-heard
assertion that young people today enter the military because of lack of
opportunity at home. No doubt this is part of the decision for many, but a
non-pecuniary matter is more important. Military service offers something
rarely available to young people in any part of the country: the opportunity to
take part in something interesting, honorable, challenging, and important - if
not historic. Few people can find that, regardless of age or local opportunity
or family influence. Few people in later life do not wonder if they could have
stood up.
At the outset of World War II, the United States was of course far less
urbanized, suburbanized, and socially complex than today. (Indeed, the social
structure of today is largely the result of the World War II economic boom,
demographic dislocations, and postwar prosperity.) World War I and its
tumultuous aftermath had also brought economic growth, rapid urbanization, and
self-indulgence, but the Depression ended all that quite suddenly and at times
seemingly irreversibly.
Americans had to return to small towns and ethnic neighborhoods and to
traditional lifestyles. People were desperately poor and had to help family
members and friends eke out a living until prosperity returned. When war came,
Americans had been reacquainted, forcibly and for over a decade, with the need
for perseverance and cooperation. The various Americans of the melting-pot
platoon so idealized by Hollywood actually had much in common, including poor
or working-class backgrounds and traditional work ethics – common themes in
postwar novels. The army and marines took in those millions of young Americans
and turned them into a powerful war machine.
By comparison, the young men who formed the combat units of the Vietnam War
came from a more complex and affluent society than did their fathers. Racial
integration in the military had just begun in World War II, accelerated in
Korea (more due to high casualties than to presidential directive), but
remained largely incomplete until years later. Conscription in the 1960s
brought together urban and rural, black and white, poor and middle class. There
were even a few from the upper crust where noblesse oblige had not yet
perished. The youth of a greatly and rather suddenly changed nation came into
swift and close collision for the first time.
Hadn't armies historically comprised homogeneous peasants, farmers, or townsmen
since the days of the Greek hoplite, the German Landsknechte, the
medieval guild army, and well into the 20th century? Had any ethnically and
racially mixed nation that had just undergone such rapid social and economic
dislocations ever before embarked upon a sizeable war? Early in the Vietnam
War, the disparate groups of the new America served reasonably well together,
in and out of combat. But as it wore on, cohesion frayed, quite often along
social, racial, and regional lines. The antagonisms and conflicts became well
known in the US (and quite exaggerated as well). They were more common in rear
areas, but frequent enough in combat units to pose problems.
Prewar expectations
Young people entering the military today have different expectations of war
than those of their fathers. The post-World War II decades saw a celebration of
war as an honored means of righting wrongs and spreading democracy, followed
soon enough by hearty welcomes home from a grateful nation and a faithful
girlfriend. B-movies and tall tales, neither of which was in short supply after
1945, conveyed romantic and absurd expectations of war to a generation of boys
who became eager to have a war of their own someday, to have the experience of
glory and victory their fathers had known and toward which their culture had
long been guiding them.
In this respect, soldiers of the mid-1960s shared the naivete of those who went
off to the Argonne and Chateau-Thierry in World War I, who had believed as
fervently in Civil War myths as they had in America itself. War had been
sanctified into a rite of passage into manhood, the true test of virility and
patriotism, a safeguard against excessive materialism. By the early 1960s,
American boys were watching an action movie entitled War is Hell,
recreating its scenes in backyard play, and hoping for their war. Fortune did
not refuse them.
The romantic image of war imparted to them by Hollywood and perhaps an uncle or
two disintegrated after a few weeks in the rugged mountains along the Cambodian
border or the hostile villages of Quang Ngai. Bitterness and disillusionment
from the excruciatingly divisive unfolding of the war laid the foundation for
new and bleak themes that recurred in war films of the post-Vietnam period.
Though the themes were intended to convey anti-war sentiment, paradoxically
they had a definite attraction to many boys.
This post-Vietnam image of war, though not realistic (it was usually far from
it), was at least inconducive to romantic illusions. War in these films is hard
and cruel, often pointless. Politicians are inept, spineless, and corrupt –
polar opposites of the idealized soldier, who is often a maltreated Vietnam
veteran. Victory in the traditional sense is elusive or even irrelevant;
heroism goes unrewarded; suffering ennobles; and tragedy is simply part of the
deal, raw as it is. Meaning is found not in shining victory or effusive
homecomings, but in a brooding sense of honor and in initiation to the
brotherhood. Despite this cultural background, young people heading off to
Afghanistan and Iraq for the first time will nonetheless fall from illusion -
that is inescapable. Their falls will at least be shorter and less painful than
those of many forebears.
In this respect, they have more in common with those who went to war in World
War II. World War I had left the nation with a bitter and uninspiring image of
war that was widely depicted in book and film. Though in some sense victorious,
the war had seen over a hundred thousand Americans killed in a year. Modern war
had ended the days when individual valor, inspiring leaders, and spirited
athleticism determined who won and lost, who lived and died. Visions of
glorious charges and capturing the foe's colors did not last long against
machine guns and mustard gas in no-man's land.
By the mid-1930s, it was evident that the peace treaty was unraveling and
another of Europe's bloody paeans to Mars was in the offing - a poor basis for
romantic views of war. Robert Sherwood said of the period: "Morale was never
particularly good nor alarmingly bad. There was a minimum of flag waving and
parades. It was the first war in American history in which the general
disillusionment preceded the firing of the first shot." William Manchester
remembers the coming of war in less than mythic terms: "Unlike the doughboys of
1917, we had expected very little of war. We got less."
Cultural stability
The Vietnam War began at an inauspicious point in American history for fighting
a war - any war - let alone a difficult and protracted one. An immense
demographic boom, then reaching its late teens and early adulthood, was making
its presence felt in colleges, the military, and political life. Some were
steeped in traditional American beliefs, including those about war. Others felt
alienated from traditional America and looked for new beliefs, especially those
regarding war. The two groups could still find many things in common in 1965,
but not much thereafter.
As the war crept on at a petty pace and casualties mounted, social and
demographic changes became an upheaval affecting the entire nation. The doubts,
and later the animosities, about the war entered the military, an institution
that had previously thought itself insulated from the passing fancies of
American society. All forms of authority suffered, perhaps especially those in
the military. Conflict between young and old in civilian life during the period
is well known; parallel conflict in the military between "lifers" and the
rank-and-file might not be. Anger flared, disciplinary troubles soared, and
unit cohesion suffered - in Germany, Korea and the United States, but of course
most notably in Vietnam.
A decade before World War II, American life showed many signs of upheaval too.
The 1920s had been a period of prosperity, rapid change, normlessness, and
self-indulgence - the perpetual green light and orgiastic future that F Scott
Fitzgerald wrote of and succumbed to. The Depression ended that, swiftly and
seemingly permanently. Though there was considerable disaffection with
traditional beliefs and dalliance with radical ideas from the left and right,
the cultural tide beat back most Americans toward the traditional past -
thrift, cooperation, and work when it could be found. Toughened by hard times,
Americans were better able to endure the shock of three hundred thousand battle
deaths over the next four years. If depressions cause wars, they might also
prepare us for them.
The attacks on New York and the Pentagon in September 2001 forced many
Americans to question their self-indulgence, realize that their country was not
invulnerable to attack, and recognize that they were in for a long arduous
conflict unlike any in their history. Words like "duty" and "commitment" were
spoken more often and more passionately, sometimes in mythic and romantic
timbres, than at any time since 1945.
The words were used less often and less passionately in a year or so, and the
ardent timbres faded even faster. These wars, long and arduous though they are,
have so far not called for national mobilization or sacrifice or even a tax
increase. There is little likelihood of a cultural upheaval. America has no
demographic bulge bringing youthful discontent to the fore. Soldiers today come
voluntarily from traditional redoubts, not through national conscription.
Anti-war sentiment is widespread but shallow, confined mainly to festival-like
demonstrations and deftly imprecise electoral oratory.
Unit continuity
Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have trained together, lived in the same
barracks and eaten the same chow for many months, if not more, long before
deployment to the Middle East. They serve overseas in these same units, share a
hard education, and most come home together. Back at Bragg or Pendleton, they
are reunited with family and loved ones and integrate new soldiers into the
unit to replace casualties and those who have finished their enlistments. Then
they prepare for the next deployment.
Strong continuity from deployment to deployment has thus far been helped by
relatively light casualties compared to other American wars, high re-enlistment
rates, and the retention of most non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and junior
officers. Many of them, out of loyalty to their men, are reluctant to leave the
service, even after their terms of service have ended and despite personal
anxieties and growing doubts. Like Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon during
World War I, they feel obliged to remain with their men, regardless of personal
views on the war, knowing that their experience will save some of their men's
lives.
During World War II, combat units were made up of young men, conscripts and
volunteers, who had been posted to one of the divisions being assembled
according to General Marshal's mobilization plan. Then, according to schedule,
they boarded troop ships together and headed for England or the Solomons, where
they awaited orders to go into battle together. Casualties were often fearsome.
Paratroopers suffered 75% casualties in the weeks after D-Day. Some divisions
suffered over 200% casualties in the course of the war. Units had to be taken
off the line to recuperate after sharp losses or a few months of numbing
combat.
This presented challenges to cohesion. The military did not recognize the
importance of unit continuity; in keeping with the assembly-line thinking of
the period, it saw patched-up soldiers as interchangeable parts, like
refurbished bolts for damaged M-1s or reground bearings for a P-47. They did
not return to their old platoons, companies, or even battalions. Instead, they
were trucked to a large replacement depot ("repple depple"), where impersonal
personnel offices with no understanding of combat efficacy allocated them to
whatever units required them that day.
Of course, soldiers in all wars and from all nations demonstrate great
handiness in eliding rules. Officers wrote former battalion commanders asking
to be requisitioned. Enlisted men would simply show up at their old units, draw
equipment, and let the company clerks handle the paperwork. Continuity was also
helped by experienced soldiers' inclinations, after tortuous considerations
(though perhaps not) to send replacements on particularly dangerous patrols. If
they survived, they became more experienced and valuable. If not, fewer
experienced soldiers were lost.
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