Every Private Was a General
Sgt. Timothy Dyas was knocked unconscious when he hit the ground near Gela, Sicily. Jumping from three hundred feet, there was barely time for his parachute to open before he made a hard landing. When he regained consciousness, he started gathering scattered soldiers together. He knew his mission was to keep enemy reinforcements from moving down to the invasion beaches. With only a dozen men, he engaged and stopped a German panzer column. When his bazooka team killed the German commander, confusion spread in the enemy ranks. Dyas made this pointed observation:
Without their leader they didn’t know what to do. In the American Army every private is a general meaning they could adapt. This wasn’t the case with the German army. When their chain of command was broken they were helpless and didn’t know what to do. It took them a good two or three hours to get a junior officer to organize them.217
Timothy Dyas was somewhat overstating his case. Any unit is adversely affected by the loss of a commander, and German units were able to regroup under such circumstances. However, I believe his main point is valid. The hallmark of American soldiers has always been individual initiative. They think for themselves and do what has to be done.
This trait causes nightmares for their officers in peacetime. Young enlisted men are very imaginative in their pranks and subversion of regulations. However, in combat this individualism comes to the forefront. This trait comes straight from our Founding Fathers, who knew that human dignity and rights flow from God to individual citizens, not to governments or organizations. The individual has always stood at the top of the hierarchy in America, as it is the individual’s relationship to God that is sacrosanct. As the Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image.”
—Genesis 1:26