Chapter 4

Lining Up the Armed Services

In This Chapter

Understanding the military

Discovering the purpose of each branch of the service

Recognizing each branch’s role in history

People often refer to the branches of the armed forces as “the military.” Actually, this is a pretty vague term, sort of like referring to a carbonated drink as just a “soda” or a “pop.” Just as soft drink brands have stories and generate fierce loyalty, the same is true for the armed forces.

Each branch of the armed forces has its unique history, traditions, and distinctive purpose. For much of American history, the branches have been plagued by intense interservice rivalry; the source of the rivalries less visible to the public is competition for congressional budget dollars.

The very visible side of the rivalries comes from sheer pride. The Army and the Navy are big rivals; always have been, always will be. However, the Army and Navy agree that the Air Force is soft. On the other hand, the Marine Corps thinks of itself as the toughest of all. And so it goes.

At times, these rivalries have been so intense that the animosity they generated damaged national security. The best example is Pearl Harbor. Army and Navy intelligence shared little, if any, information on Japanese intentions. Adm. Husband Kimmel, the Navy commander of the Pacific Fleet, and his Army colleague, Lt. Gen. Walter Short, didn’t coordinate their efforts well enough at Pearl Harbor. The poor working relationship between the two branches made U.S. forces at Pearl Harbor quite vulnerable and contributed to the disaster that happened on December 7, 1941.

Fortunately, in recent years interservice rivalry is managed with a greater emphasis placed on the need to work together. This new mind-set, often called jointness, is the result of greater professionalism, more interservice integration, and a greater realization than ever before that all the services must cooperate for the good of the country. In this chapter, I explain the responsibilities of each branch, important moments in their histories, and what it takes to serve our country.

The Army

Born on June 14, 1775, the Army is the oldest and largest of America’s armed services. It’s also the most diverse and, by virtue of its size, most closely reflects the population. In combat, the Army is the main land force, although it has an aviation branch as well. The U.S. Army’s job is to defend the country’s borders and defeat enemy ground forces, wherever they may be.

The Army is made up of many parts, such as aviation, artillery, and infantry, and it’s equipped for a variety of missions, both combat and noncombat. Basically, the Army does it all. For example, in World War II, the Army built roads, hauled supplies, and handled administrative duties. Meanwhile, it also did most of the ground fighting that won the war.

As the oldest of the armed services, the Army is deeply proud of its history and traditions. For well over two centuries, the Army has carried the weight of America’s wars. From the Revolutionary-era soldier who toted a musket at Bunker Hill to the lavishly equipped GI carrying a Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) in Iraq, the Army is normally the first line of defense. This elicits great pride among soldiers. Every combat unit fiercely protects its colors. This flag, adorned with ribbon-like battle streamers, carries the unique emblem of the unit. For instance, one unit, the 7th Infantry Regiment, traces its heritage all the way back to the War of 1812. Soldiers from this regiment have fought in every American war since, earning more battle streamers than any other American combat formation.

You’re in the Army now

Members of the Army are known as soldiers. They are sometimes referred to as GIs (short for government issue), Joes (because American men are commonly named Joe), troops, or in the case of cavalry units, troopers.

Infantry soldiers are the backbone of the Army. These men fight the enemy at close quarters, killing them, capturing objectives, and controlling ground. When war comes, they do most of the fighting. Their job is the essential job of the Army — close with and destroy the enemy. Throughout the history of American wars, they have done most of the dying. In World War II, infantry soldiers comprised about 15 percent of the American armed forces, yet they suffered 70 percent of the casualties. In World War I, they were known as doughboys. In World War II, they were commonly called dogfaces or just doughs. Since Vietnam, they are usually referred to as grunts.

The Army features dozens of military occupational specialties (MOS), a term that mainly refers to the specific job a soldier performs. Just to cite a few examples, this service is home to doctors, engineers, transportation specialists, linguists, water-treatment experts, public relations specialists, logisticians, and helicopter pilots, as well as, of course, tankers, artillerymen, and infantrymen.

Armies within the Army

From the very beginning, the Army has been divided into distinct subgroups. During the Revolutionary War and well into the 19th century, state militia units made up a significant portion of the Army. These minutemen, local volunteers, or militia only took up arms for a short time and usually served close to their homes with friends and neighbors. In contrast, regular Army soldiers served full time, in peace or war, in a variety of places. Regulars accused militia of being lackluster and undisciplined; militiamen didn’t understand why anyone would devote his life to the Army full time.

In the 20th century, the Army created a more modern organizational structure that has more or less endured ever since:

The National Guard: These are state formations mobilized into federal service in times of war or domestic crisis, like after a natural disaster. In normal times, guardsmen train one weekend a month and two weeks over the summer.

Reserves: These are specialist units, such as engineers, transportation experts, or mechanics. They are called up in time of war. Some of the Reserves are retired soldiers with combat specialties who, in wartime, return to the active-duty regular Army. At any given time, the National Guard and Reserves comprise about half of the Army.

The regular Army: This is the critical mass of the U.S. Army. These professional, full-time soldiers are on active duty all the time. They perform numerous jobs, but the main combat formations of the Army are regulars.

The modern Army is heavily involved in Special Operations warfare that is carried out by carefully selected, highly trained, elite soldiers. These men serve in Special Forces, Rangers, or in the case of the ultimate warriors, Delta Force.

The Army-Navy Game

The annual Army-Navy football game is the ultimate positive expression of interservice rivalry. Played between the United States Military Academy (West Point) and the United States Naval Academy, the game determines bragging rights each year. The two academies have squared off nearly every year since 1890. Even though the rivalry between Army and Navy is intense, the members of both services enjoy a deep and abiding camaraderie as well. After every Army-Navy game, the players line up and respectfully listen to the alma maters of both schools. On the strength of several victories in recent years, Navy has a 51-49 edge in the all-time series.

The Navy

The Navy is the primary maritime service of the United States. Its job is to secure the seas, lend air support, protect America’s overseas interests (such as vital shipping lanes), and provide coastal defense here at home.

Naval personnel are known as sailors. They perform a dizzying array of jobs in this highly technical, seafaring organization. The Navy includes sailors who specialize in such jobs as avionics, engine repair, nuclear propulsion, flight operations, sonar, medicine, gunnery, missile defense, diving, and communications.

Sailors always use nautical terms, even when they’re not at sea or aboard their ships. The floor is always the deck. Doors are hatches. The bathroom is the head. If they misbehave, they are sent to the brig, a naval term for jail. Gossip or rumors are called scuttlebutt. If something is on the left, it is on the port side. If it’s on the right, it’s referred to as the starboard side.

Important roles through history

Like the Army, the Navy’s roots trace back to the Revolutionary War. In the summer of 1775, the Continental Congress authorized the creation of a small naval force to defend ports, harass British supply efforts, and fight enemy warships. These early American sailors played a significant role in winning the Revolution.

The Navy also played an important role in the War of 1812 and the Civil War, blunting British seaborne offensives in the former and strangling the Confederacy by controlling vital river and coastal waters in the latter.

The naval service really came into its own in the 20th century. In World War II, the Navy grew to a force of more than 5,000 warships, including 105 aircraft carriers. By 1945, the United States Navy was the largest and most powerful navy the world had ever seen. Since then, it has remained as strong as ever, typically maintaining a fleet of several hundred ships.

The big Navy

Modern ships are basically floating cities. Sailors live, eat, and work aboard their ships for months at a time. The Navy’s fleet is basically divided into three kinds of warships:

Surface ships: This includes destroyers, amphibious warfare ships, frigates, or in an earlier age, cruisers and battleships.

Aviation: Aircraft carriers are, in the view of some naval strategists, the most important ships in the Navy. They carry airplanes and helicopters that allow the Navy to strike enemies from vast distances.

Submarines: These underwater craft can destroy enemy ships, scout hostile waters, gather intelligence, land special forces, and since 1960, launch nuclear missiles. Submarine crewmen wear a dolphin insignia on their lapel. They take enormous pride in the danger of their job and their elite status.

Many of the Navy’s aircraft carriers and submarines are nuclear propelled. They actually have a nuclear reactor aboard that serves as the engine.

Navy SEALs: Elite units

One of the more recent, but best known, branches of the Navy is Special Operations. Known as SEALs (Sea, Air, and Land), these men are true warriors. A typical SEAL platoon of about 18 sailors comprises a remarkable set of skills. SEALs can

Swim great distances

Fight under the water or on the water

Seize ships or oil rigs

Parachute from airplanes into combat

Fight at close quarters

Fight as infantrymen

Gather intelligence

Do just about anything with a variety of weapons

To become a Navy SEAL, you must endure two years of the toughest training in existence. Even then, there’s no guarantee that you’ll actually end up as a permanent member of a SEAL team and be deployed overseas.

Top Guns

The best known sailors in the Navy are the aviators, especially carrier-borne fighter pilots. They fly high-performance jets, like the F/A-18 Hornet, off the decks of aircraft carriers. Landing on the deck of a carrier is a real challenge, especially at night. Imagine trying to land a 13-ton, $40 million machine precisely onto a bobbing platform of steel, heading into a stiff wind. All of this must be done in such a way that the tailhook of your aircraft catches an arrestor cable perfectly enough to keep you and your aircraft from falling into the sea. That’s what naval aviators do routinely.

And that’s not even the most dangerous part of their job! Their mission is to engage enemy aircraft, protect the fleet, bomb enemy targets, attack enemy troops with gunfire, and fly close air support for ground troops.

The 1986 movie Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise, glamorized these fliers, solidifying the naval fighter jock as an normal in American pop culture. The movie’s success spawned documentaries, television specials, books, and articles on naval aviators.

The Marine Corps

The United States Marine Corps is an elite, select group of warriors whose primary mission is amphibious warfare. Those who join the Marines tend to be young, physically fit, and eager for combat. Marines fight on land and in the air, even though they often originate from ships. Marines are primarily trained to fight, so their units rely on the other services for most of their logistical support, including supplies, transportation, and administration. Although the Marine Corps is a separate service, it’s under the jurisdiction of the Navy. The Corps is arguably the most famous of the armed services. It’s also held in the highest esteem by the average American.

What it takes to be a Marine

Marines argue that their prowess in battle comes from a regimen of tough training combined with a unique fighting spirit that is present only in the ranks of the Corps.

In the modern era, every prospective Marine must first make it through boot camp, a three-month grueling ordeal of physical training, weapons training, occasional humiliation, history lessons, and indoctrination into Marine culture. Only when a recruit completes this training is he or she entitled to be called a Marine. The new Marine can then wear the coveted eagle, globe, and anchor insignia of the Corps (see Figure 4-1).

In the Marine insignia, the eagle represents service to the American republic. The globe symbolizes the Corps’ worldwide mission on behalf of that republic. The anchor is an acknowledgment that the Corps is a maritime service.

Figure 4-1: The Marine Corps insignia shown as part of a Marine Corps badge from World War I.

© Jim Sugar/CORBIS

Marine vernacular is liberally spiced with nautical terms, even though many Marines look down on sailors as mere squids. Marines are called leathernecks, jarheads, or in the old days, gyrenes (from a mixture of GI and Marine). A Marine infantryman is called a grunt, just like his Army counterpart. But never, ever call a Marine a soldier. If you do, be ready to run!

From obscurity to prestige

The Corps cherishes its history and traditions more than any other service, even the lineage-conscious Army. Every Marine knows that the Corps was born on November 10, 1775. In those days of wooden ships and boarding parties that raided enemy ships, Marines served as naval infantry. They guarded U.S. ships, raided enemy ships or enemy coastlines, and protected naval bases. For the first century of its existence, the Corps was a tiny, obscure force of only a few thousand men.

In the 20th century, the Marines really came into their own. During World War I, their dauntless courage in the Battle of Belleau Wood (see Chapter 14) earned them acclaim all over America. A generation later, the Marines saw action all over the Pacific during World War II, invading numerous Japanese-held islands. The best known Marine battle is Iwo Jima (see Chapter 16), where five Marines and a naval corpsman raised a flag atop Mount Suribachi, producing the most famous image in U.S. military history (see Figure 4-2).

Since World War II, the Marines have served in every American war, proving themselves time and again to be among the best fighters on earth.

Figure 4-2: Marines raise the U.S. flag at Iwo Jima (now renamed to Iwo To) during World War II.

©CORBIS

Notable Marine movies

For many Americans, knowledge of military history comes through movies. This is a bit disconcerting to stuffed-shirt military historians (like me) because filmmakers often get things wrong. Overall, though, military movies can be informative and fascinating.

The three best known Marine movies are Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), Full Metal Jacket (1987), and Jarhead (2005). All these films significantly influenced how people view the Corps.

In Sands of Iwo Jima, John Wayne is a demanding sergeant who leads a squad of newbies into combat. His men think he is overly harsh until they get to Iwo and find out that he’s only looking out for their welfare. The theme is that intense Marine training is designed to help men survive in combat.

The same message resonates in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. Actor R. Lee Ermey’s portrayal of a sadistic drill instructor is so ingrained in the popular culture that Ermey has often entertained real Marines with this shtick. Ermey served in Vietnam and did a stint as a drill instructor. Originally during the filming of Full Metal Jacket, he was only supposed to be Kubrick’s expert advisor, but he persuaded the director to let him play the drill instructor. The rest, as they say, is history.

Jarhead depicts the same sense of Spartan discipline, killology mind-set, and commitment to a unique brotherhood among Marines, but with almost psychotic overtones.

There are many more good military movies. In Chapter 24, I tell you my ten favorite military movies.

The Coast Guard

The Coast Guard was founded in 1790. Its job is to, well, guard the U.S. coast using smaller ships than you would generally see in the Navy. With 40,000 active-duty personnel, the Coast Guard is the smallest of the services, but it engages in all kinds of missions beyond just guarding the coast. The Coast Guard assists mariners of all types, warning them of approaching storms and generally watching out for them. The service’s aircraft and ships also play a vital role in helping to prevent drug cartels from moving their products into the U.S. by air and sea.

One of the primary missions of Coast Guardsmen is search and rescue. If any sort of vessel is in peril in American waters, Coast Guard ships scramble to help, no matter what the weather. During the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Coast Guard helicopter crewmen and boat teams roamed the area, searching for people to help.

In spite of the name, the Coast Guard does not serve exclusively at home. During World War II, Coast Guard vessels participated in many amphibious invasions. The most notable Coast Guardsmen were coxswains of landing craft. The coxswains navigated their shallow draft boats onto the beach, where their boatloads of soldiers or Marines would then invade, all under fire. Coast Guardsmen also served in Vietnam and Iraq.

Unlike the other services, the Coast Guard is not part of the Department of Defense. It used to be under the Department of Transportation but was made part of the newly created Department of Homeland Security in 2003.

The Air Force

The Air Force is the baby of the services because the technology of flying developed after the other forms of warfare. Instead of being its own branch, the Air Force was part of the Army in both world wars. Only in 1947 did the Air Force, after years of lobbying by its leaders, become an independent service.

The Air Force’s mission is to fly and fight in air, space, and today, even in cyberspace against anti-American computer hackers. This is because it’s the most technologically advanced of all American armed forces. The Air Force possesses a diverse array of weapons, from high-performance fighters to heavy bombers to missiles. One of the Air Force’s most potent assets is its ability to airlift massive amounts of supplies or troops to most anyplace in the world. All told, the Air Force has about 9,000 aircraft.

High-flying airmen and aces

Members of the Air Force are known as airmen. This is true even of women, who make up a substantial part of the service. Any pilot who shoots down five or more enemy aircraft is known as an ace. The Air Force employs thousands of technicians, computer specialists, air traffic controllers, medics, and weather analysts, to name only a few specialties.

Air Force officers generally face more danger than lower-ranking enlisted personnel, who often perform safer support jobs on the ground. The opposite is usually true in the other branches of the military. But in the Air Force, most aviators are officers, and the aviators do much of the fighting. They fly fighters, helicopters, bombers, fuel tankers, and transports. They rely on many thousands of support airmen who perform vital maintenance and logistical tasks.

The Air Force, like the other services, has highly trained, elite Special Operations warriors. Air Force pararescuemen (generally known as parajumpers or PJs) are trained to rescue downed aircrew in any and all environments, whether that’s a raging sea or a remote, snow-covered mountain. Their motto is “So that others might live.”

Air Force outfits (No, not their shirts and shoes)

Like the Army, the Air Force is divided into three main components:

The active-duty force: These are the full-time, professional airmen, who serve year-round on active duty. This force consists of about 350,000 airmen.

Air Force National Guard: They belong to state units that, in time of war, can be called into federal service. These 100,000 airmen serve one weekend per month and two months over the summer.

Air Force Reserves: These are mostly part-time specialists in finance, administration, and aerospace engineering. The Reserves number some 72,000 airmen.

In a show of interservice cooperation, specialized Air Force units work with Army troops to provide support and protection. The Air Force has tactical air control parties that deploy with Army Special Forces teams to provide them with air support. The same is true of forward air controllers who live and work with the Army’s conventional ground combat units.

Ever since the start of World War II, Air Force commanders have sometimes disagreed with their colleagues in the other services over the proper role of the Air Force. Air power is such an awesome weapon that Air Force leaders have often viewed their service as the first line of defense. In World War II, they even argued that they could win the war on their own by bombing Germany and Japan into submission. Since then, some Air Force officers have argued the same thing, most notably during the Kosovo conflict and the Persian Gulf War. Time and again, though, their ideas have been proven wrong, especially in 21st-century Afghanistan and Iraq. Air power is very important, but most wars are won by ground troops, and that will probably never change.

A formidable opponent through history

Even though the Air Force is the newest of the military services, it has a rich history. In World War I, American pilots like Eddie Rickenbacker flew crude biplanes and earned everlasting fame for dueling with German fliers high above the trenches.

In World War II, the Air Force was the most glamorous branch to be a part of. Young men volunteered in droves to become bomber crewmen and fighter pilots. Their jobs were anything but glamorous, though. Bomber crewmen endured flak (antiaircraft fire), enemy fighters, and freezing temperatures at great heights while flying deep into enemy-controlled skies. Many were shot down. Fighter pilots grappled with enemy pilots, strafed (fired on) ground targets, flew reconnaissance missions, and escorted friendly bombers. In the process, the fighter jocks suffered heavy losses.

In Korea, Air Force fliers were so effective against North Korean, Chinese, and Russian pilots that the U.S. enjoyed mastery of the air. During the Vietnam War, the Air Force suffered heavy losses in bombing raids on North Vietnam. Most Air Force aviators in that war, though, flew in support of ground forces.

During the Gulf War, the Air Force unleashed every nonnuclear weapon in its formidable arsenal, including precision bombs, on Saddam Hussein’s overmatched military. The Iraqi air force never even contested the skies, and this has been a pattern for America’s enemies ever since. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, those enemies have fought primarily on the ground, in unconventional warfare. This has relegated the Air Force to flying resupply and close air support for the Army, a prime example of the jointness of the modern military.