In Times of War and not before
God and soldier we adore
But in times of peace and all things righted
God is forgotten and the soldier slighted.
—Rudyard Kipling
The strategic circumstances in today’s wars reflect the fact that the gods of war have a sense of irony. For the most part, the ships have sailed back to port, and the bombers and fighters are secure at home bases. The steel phalanx that rolled over Iraq has been evacuated. The few remaining Soldiers in Afghanistan are performing “grunt” tasks no different from those of the British Army in Palestine in the 1930s and Northern Ireland in the 1970s—or, for that matter, the Roman army in first-century Judea. In all wars in the American era, infantrymen have borne most of the burden. Yet, Army and Marine grunts make up less than 4 percent of the U.S. military—a force only slightly larger than the New York City Police Department.
The tasks these Soldiers perform are timeless to be sure—and dangerous. By day, Afghan streets bustle with commerce much as they did when Soldiers of the British Raj patrolled them. But at night across the country, these same streets turn into free-fire zones where the thugs, criminals, and Islamic fanatics come out to kill. Those who have seen war firsthand and close up know the debilitation that comes with facing the constant fear of violent death. Unlike firemen and cops on the beat, a Soldier goes out on patrol every night expecting to kill.
During fourteen years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, a Soldier’s routine has remained pretty much the same. In the afternoon, young Soldiers undergo the necessary routine of briefings, inspections, and rehearsals. At dusk they don heavy body armor, helmets, weapons, night-vision devices, radios, and all the other impedimenta that make up a Soldier’s burden. At dark they move out into a miserably hot, humid, and dusty night to do the job. Only a Soldier can describe the gut-churning fear that accompanies the moment when the “search and clear” team kicks in a door to confront whatever is inside. Within the confines of a tiny room, the Soldier looks through the two dimensional, grainy-green image of his goggles to determine if his welcome will come from a Taliban terrorist or a child huddling with its mother in terror. Dripping with sweat, gripped with anxiety and fear, the Soldier has only an instant to determine whether to shift his finger into the trigger well or reassure the occupants inside. Today, this scene is repeated daily in Afghanistan, as well as other places too secret to recount here. These young Soldiers “walk point” for a thousand dollars a month and the promise of a trip home to a nation that, they hope, understands and appreciates the true meaning of sacrifice.
These young men do not usually talk about war. They think about their buddies. They talk about families, wives, and girlfriends and relate to each other through very personal confessions. For the most part, they are volunteers from middle- and lower-class America. They come from every corner of our country to meet in harsh and forbidding places. Soldiers suffer, fight, and occasionally die for each other. It is as simple as that. Patriotism and a paycheck may get a Soldier into the military, but fear of letting his buddies down gets a Soldier to do something that might just as well get him killed. What makes a person successful in America today is a far cry from what makes a Soldier successful. Big bucks gained in law or real estate and big deals closed on the stock market are making some of their peers rich, but those comforted souls have no buddies. There is no one whom they are willing to die for or who is willing to die for them. William Manchester served as a Marine in the Pacific during World War II and put the sentiment precisely right: “Any man in combat who lacks comrades who will die for him, or for whom he is willing to die is not a man at all. He is truly damned.”
The Anglo-Saxon heritage of buddy loyalty is long and has been frightfully won. Almost six hundred years ago the English king Henry V waited on a cold and muddy battlefield to face a French army many times the size of his own. Shakespeare captured the pathos of that moment in his play Henry V. To be sure, Shakespeare was not there, but he must have been there in spirit, because he understood the emotions that gripped and the bonds that brought together both king and Soldier. Henry did not talk about a failed national strategy. He did not try to justify faulty intelligence or ill-formed command decisions that had put his Soldiers at such a terrible disadvantage. Instead, he talked about what made English Soldiers fight and what in all probability would allow them to prevail the next day against terrible odds. Remember, this is a monarch talking to his men:
This story shall the good man teach his son; And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by, From this day to the ending of the world, But we in it shall be remembered—We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition; And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.1
Our young Soldiers and Marines fighting in far places inherit the spirit of St. Crispin’s Day. They alone know and understand the strength of comfort that those whom they protect, those in America now abed, will never know. They live lives of self-awareness and personal satisfaction that those who watched them from afar in this country, who hold their manhood cheap, can only envy.
I care deeply that America honors but does not well understand the service these young men perform today. It bothers me that war is a television image, one that 99 percent of the American people, those who have not served, would rather ignore. I wrote this book because I am afraid that this serial ignorance and institutional neglect will inevitably lead to the collapse of U.S. ground forces again. In fact, it is happening now. The administration is fond of telling America that we have “the best military in the history of the world.” We do have the best air and sea forces. They are dominant and undefeatable.
On the ground, it is a different story. Most of your Army is poorly trained and has no hope of receiving training above the squad level for another five years. The Soldier’s best friend, his rifle, was unreliable and weak fifty years ago. Our Soldiers carry the same rifle today, and their grandchildren will carry it for decades. While the Air Force and Navy are in the midst of a rebuilding renaissance, the Army has essentially ceased the purchase of new weapons. Gen. Mark Milley, the Army’s chief of staff, has admitted that the Army has not the money to field a new suite of tanks, infantry carriers, helicopters, and artillery for at least a decade. My grandchildren will fight with Reagan-era weapons.
If present budget trends continue, the Army will “break” for the fifth time in my lifetime. It will happen in about three years. An Army breaks about six months before the Army knows it is broken, but the signs will be there. First, noncommissioned officers will vote with their feet and leave the service. Fewer young Soldiers will sign up. The best and the brightest young officers will transition into civilian life after serving for four or five frustrating years in an Army they see falling apart.
Sometime in the near future, an incident will occur that tells America that it has a broken army on its hands. It could be another Desert One, the hostage-rescue operation that failed so tragically. It could be a spike in indiscipline, chaos emerging after the backbone of the Army, its NCOs, is gone. Or it could be a silent, creeping atrophy that sends the Army into another tragic dark age.
History tells us that armies break quickly and need at least a generation to rebuild. It takes at least fifteen years to educate and acculturate a good platoon sergeant or battalion commander. It takes at least as long for today’s turgid weapons-buying bureaucracy to build a new helicopter or tank. In the meantime, our enemies adapt and learn and get better. They will continue to spread their Islamism across the Middle East and Levant to the far reaches of Saharan and equatorial Africa . . . and eventually and inevitably to our homeland.
Inside the Beltway the perennial promise from all administrations is that they will not put “boots on the ground,” but they will. The day will come when the nation needs its army, and the U.S. Army, as always, will respond with boots on the ground—just like in 1950, when President Truman sent Task Force Smith to Korea. When called to battle, Task Force Smith was performing constabulary duties in Japan. Its Soldiers were eager but soft and untrained. Its equipment was worn and out of date. The task force had only six rounds of antitank ammunition to face a North Korean division equipped with the newest-model Soviet tanks. The North Korean army quickly overran these poor, wretched Soldiers. Many died. Many others were wounded. Many survivors were in such bad physical shape that they could no longer run away and became prisoners of war.
Most of these poor young men were infantry. And it is the infantry who are America’s “canary in the coal mine.” When the infantry loses its edge, America loses its ability to win its wars. And, very sadly, that day is just around the corner.