LIBERTY's STEAMROLLER: GEORGE S. PATTON

20th Century Heroes

Liberty’s Steamroller
by William Norman Grigg

A cultured, perceptive man of principle, General George S. Patton fought for freedom as one of America’s greatest military geniuses.

O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee; my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary....

My soul followeth hard after thee. Thy right hand upholdeth me. But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth. They shall fall by the sword.... But the king shall rejoice in God; every one that sweareth by him shall glory, but the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped.

— From Psalm 63
General Patton’s favorite Bible verse


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‘‘Piety" is not a word commonly associated with the memory of General George S. Patton, also known as "Old Blood and Guts" — a man quite properly regarded as the embodiment of America’s martial tradition. The late George C. Scott’s Oscar-winning film portrayal of Patton, which was as much caricature as tribute, has immortalized the general as a human juggernaut to whom everything, including worship, was subordinated to an all-consuming passion for war. But as his posthumously published memoir War As I Knew It documents, Patton was a cultured and perceptive man of principle for whom war was a means of protecting freedom.

Although his granite-willed determination to destroy the enemy’s capacity for warfare is well known, Patton’s capacity for melancholy reflection upon war’s ugliness is not. Upon arriving in Normandy, Patton noted in his journal that he attended a Field Mass "where all of us were armed. As we knelt in the mud in the slight drizzle, we could distinctly hear the roar of the guns, and the whole sky was filled with airplanes on their missions of destruction … quite at variance with the teachings of the religion we were practicing."

George Gosselin, a much-decorated veteran of Patton’s army, observed that while the general was a "taskmaster" who demanded exemplary order and discipline within the ranks, he was also a man of profound and sincere faith. It should not be forgotten, wrote Gosselin, that "this man, who was so hard on himself and others, was totally soft on God." "I am a strong believer in prayer," declared General Patton on one occasion. "There are three ways that men get what they want: by planning, by working, and by praying. Any great military operation takes careful planning. Then you must have well trained troops to carry it out. But between the plan and the operation there is always the unknown. That unknown spells success or failure. Some people call that getting the breaks; I call it God. God has His part or margin in everything. That’s where prayer comes in."

As a believer, Patton’s God was Christ, not Mars. As a master strategist given to fits of tactical genius he couldn’t explain, Patton understood the need for focused ruthlessness in confronting an insurgent foe; as a Christian, he understood and practiced the virtue of mercy in dealing with a conquered enemy. These complementary aspects of Patton’s personality were on display during an interview with the Vicar of Sicily after Patton’s forces routed the Italian Army. "I assured him," wrote Patton, "that I was amazed at the stupidity and gallantry of the Italian Army; stupid, because they were fighting for a lost cause, and gallant, because they were Italians." Patton asked the Vicar to call upon the Italians to surrender in order to prevent needless bloodshed. "As a matter of fact," wrote Patton, "I called off the air and naval bombardments we had arranged, because I felt enough people had been killed, and felt that with the drive of the 2nd Armored Division we could take the place without inflicting unproductive losses on the enemy."

On another occasion, Patton referred reproachfully to what he called "the seemingly barbaric bombardment of the centers of cities" during the war, a practice that did not comport with Patton’s sense of martial chivalry and the moral principles of just warfare. "Kill all the Germans you can," urged the general during the Third Army’s unprecedented drive across Europe, "but do not put them up against a wall and kill them. Do your killing while they are still fighting. After a man has surrendered, he should be treated exactly in accordance with the Rules of Land Warfare, and just as you would hope to be treated if you were foolish enough to surrender. Americans do not kick people in the teeth after they are down."

George Smith Patton was born in California in 1885, and at the age of five he informed his parents of his intention of becoming a "great general." "When he learned to read, the first book he bought was a history of decisive battles," recounted Colonel Robert S. Allen in Lucky Forward, his memoir of serving in Patton’s Third Army. "In school he was always organizing sham battles. On his honeymoon in France, he took his young bride to historic battlefields and fortresses. Later, when stationed in Hawaii, he and his wife and young children would stage assault landings while on sailing trips. Even when playing his beloved polo, and fox hunting, he played at war." Patton received his Cavalry commission in 1909. After representing the U.S. at the 1912 Olympic Games, Patton took part in General John J. Pershing’s punitive raid into Mexico in 1916. Pershing took Patton to France in 1917 as a staff captain, and Patton finished World War I as a commander of a tank brigade.

During a mere 13 months of combat command in World War II — a little more than a month in northern Africa, 38 days in Sicily, 318 days in north-west Europe — Patton gradually showed himself to be America’s greatest fighting general. Under his command, the Third Army killed or captured 1.4 million soldiers of the Third Reich, while enduring the lowest casualty rate of any Allied army in the European Theater of Operations (ETO). A strategic assessment of Allied generals compiled by the German Oberkommando Herres (high command) described Patton as "the most modern, and the only, master of the offensive" among Allied commanders: "Patton is the most dangerous general on all fronts. The tactics of other generals are known and countermeasures can be effected against them. Patton’s tactics are daring and unpredictable. He fights not only the troops opposing him, but the Reich."

This ironic tribute from Patton’s enemies is made more ironic still in light of the post-war smear campaign, mounted by Soviet sympathizers in the press and acted upon by a pro-Soviet political establishment, depicting the general as a covert Nazi sympathizer. "It is not an exaggeration to state that Patton fought two wars in the ETO: one against the enemy and one against higher authorities for the opportunity to fight the enemy," notes Colonel Allen. After Germany surrendered on May 7, 1945, Patton realized that our Soviet "allies" — who had begun the war as co-aggressors with National Socialist Germany — were in fact our enemy, and he urged his superiors to evict the Soviets from central and eastern Europe.

In a conversation with then-Undersecretary of War Robert P. Patterson that took place in Austria shortly after the Nazi surrender, Patton complained that the "point system" being used to de-mobilize Third Army troops was destroying the Third Army, and creating a vacuum that the Soviets would exploit. "Mr. Secretary, for God’s sake, when you go home, stop this point system; stop breaking up these armies," pleaded the general. "Let’s keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to these people [the Soviets]. This is the only language they understand." Asked by Patterson — who would become Secretary of War a few months later — what he would do, Patton replied: "I would have you tell the [Red Army] where their border is, and give them a limited time to get back across. Warn them that if they fail to do so, we will push them back across it."

Patton knew that the Red Army was weak, under-supplied, and vulnerable, and that if Europe were to be freed from totalitarian despotism, the West would have to act before the Soviets consolidated their position. "Oh George," came the condescending reply from Patterson, "you … have lost sight of the big picture."

That "big picture," as leftist historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. explained in the July/August 1995 issue of Foreign Affairs, "was to commit the United States to postwar international structures before [victory] … could return the nation to its old habits." In order to keep our nation entangled in the growing network of international bodies, a credible foreign menace was needed, and the Soviets were perfectly cast in the part. "It is to Joseph Stalin that Americans owe the 40-year suppression of the isolationist impulse," wrote Schlesinger with approval.

Had Patton been permitted to drive the Soviets from Europe, millions of people would have been spared decades of abject oppression, and the criminal elite that continues to dominate most of eastern and central Europe might never have come to power. Patton understood, and warned his superiors, that if the Soviets were allowed to consolidate their grip, "we have failed the liberation of Europe; we have lost the war!" Patton, an honorable and patriotic man, was apparently unable to accept the fact that while he and his soldiers fought to liberate their fellow men from tyranny, those above him in policy-making positions were seeking to control the world, not to emancipate it. Thus Patton was traduced in the servile press as a covert "Nazi sympathizer" and stripped of his command shortly before his fatal automobile accident on December 9, 1945.

Patton "was a man who trained and disciplined his mind and body nearly every day of his life for the role he had always known he was to play," recorded Patton’s nephew, Fred Ayer, Jr., in his book Before the Colors Fade: Portrait of a Soldier. "[He was] a man who believed in the aristocracy of achievement and in the sanctity of his country’s course. He was conceited, sometimes ruthless, often inconsiderate and outwardly very, very tough. He was often too much the impetuous showman and yet a deep and careful thinker. But he was also magnificently well-read, deeply religious, softhearted, emotional and easily moved to tears."

It is quite likely that Patton possessed the finest military mind our nation ever produced, and that mind was the result of a deep and expansive study of history. "Papa always told me that the thing was to be a good soldier," recalled the general. "Next was to be a good scholar." It was Patton’s scholarly exertions that made his soldierly exploits possible. "To be a successful soldier you must know history," Patton advised in War As I Knew It. "Read it objectively. Dates and even the minute details of tactics are useless. What you must know is how man reacts. Weapons change, but man who uses them changes not at all.... To win battles you do not beat weapons — you beat the soul of man, of the enemy man." Because he was a diligent student of the past, noted Ayer, Patton "would accurately be able to foretell much of the future."

Not only was Patton an omnivorous reader, he was blessed with uncanny powers of retention, and could quote extensively from nearly anything he read — the Bible, military history, Shakespeare, even the Koran (which he read as preparation for his arrival in northern Africa). While Patton was stationed in Hawaii as a colonel, he maintained a personal library containing hundreds of books — histories, biographies, memoirs, and political works — nearly all of which had been read and annotated with margin notes.

His preternatural gifts of retention and recall proved indispensable during the Third Army’s mad dash across Europe. "He collected maps the way some men do art treasures," recalls Colonel Allen. "He knew the entire road net of France and Germany by memory, and the details of every major battlefield." Before his arrival in Normandy, Patton devoured Douglas Southall Freeman’s The Norman Conquest, paying particular attention to the roads used by William the Conqueror during his campaigns in Normandy and Brittany almost nine centuries earlier. Using those ancient roads, explained Patton, provided his army with valuable avenues of attack "when the enemy resorts, as he always does, to demolition."

Patton’s diligent study of military history could have spared our nation one of its most painful defeats, had Patton’s superiors been willing to listen to him. In 1937, during his assignment in Hawaii, then-Colonel Patton composed a detailed report predicting, in unsettling detail, the sneak attack by Japan against Pearl Harbor four years later. Taking note of the fact that Japan’s 1904 sneak attack upon Russian forces at Port Arthur began the victorious campaign in that war, Patton warned that "an attack like that is perfectly feasible if we’re off guard.... They haven’t forgotten how well it worked." Patton’s astute assessment, if followed, may have saved countless American lives, but his superiors had a different agenda. "I turned [the report] in to the ranking naval officer of the command and he just put it in his safe," Patton recalled later. "Nobody else had the combination except his own houseboy, [who] was, of course, a good loyal Japanese. Nobody ever saw the report again — not on our side, anyway."

As this incident illustrates, Patton’s devoted study and his intuitive gifts allowed him to get inside the head of an enemy, in this case the Japanese. He proved to be an equally pellucid student of the German military as well. "I have studied the German all my life," reflected Patton in War As I Knew It. "I have read the memoirs of his generals and political leaders. I have even read his philosophers and listened to his music. I have studied in detail the accounts of every damn one of his battles. I know exactly how he will react under any given set of circumstances. He hasn’t the slightest idea what I am going to do. Therefore, when the time comes, I’m going to whip the hell out of him."

‘‘Throughout his life, [Patton] completely dominated every unit he commanded," recalled Colonel Allen. "Yet in dominating, he did not domineer. Patton always led men. He did not rule them. This vital distinction explains many things about him. It explains why the troops called him ‘Georgie.’ Why his men and units were always the most soldierly, the most efficient, the most aggressive, and cockiest. Why he always got so much out of them." "I served with General George S. Patton," proudly recalls military historian Porter B. Williamson in his book Patton’s Principles. "No man served under Gen. Patton; he was always serving with us."

Patton’s well-publicized contempt for soldiers who professed to suffer from "battle fatigue," or who had dodged combat through self-inflicted wounds, was the obverse of his respect for personal courage. In War As I Knew It, the general recalled that whenever he would come across a soldier with self-inflicted wounds, "I would … say, ‘Now, all of you other soldiers listen,’ and would use about three lines of choice profanity and state that, by wounding himself, he not only showed he was a coward, but also added to the labor and risk of the brave men who did not use this means of getting out of battle."

While Patton certainly understood the horrors of combat, he also understood that it was useless to "take counsel of one’s fears" when there were battles to fight. "I don’t admit the existence of battle fatigue, because in war you can’t admit the existence of things like that," he explained. "Once you concede its reality, you admit the reality of demoralization. You can’t win battles with demoralized troops." Nor did he allow himself ever to display even the slightest hint of fear or doubt in the midst of battle. "Patton was scared, discouraged, and weary on many occasions, as he would frankly admit afterward," notes Colonel Allen. "He never claimed to be devoid of fear. It was not unusual for him to return from the lines and relate that he had been frightened."

"If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man," reflected Patton. "All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more frightened they are. The courageous man is the man who forces himself, in spite of his fears, to carry on. Discipline, pride, self-respect, self-confidence, and the love of glory are attributes which will make a man courageous even if he is afraid."

Among Patton’s keys to victory were preparation and discipline. "A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood," he noted in his memoirs, and he had the advantage of inheriting an exceptionally well trained Third Army from Lt. General Courtney H. Hodges. He also demanded that his army meet the highest and least forgiving standards of discipline and comportment, because it is through discipline that men overcome their fears on the battlefield.

"All human beings have an innate resistance to obedience," wrote Patton. "Discipline removes the resistance and, by constant repetition, makes obedience habitual and subconscious. Where would an undisciplined football team get?... Battle is more exigent than football. No sane man is unafraid in battle, but discipline produces in him a form of vicarious courage which, with his manhood, makes for victory. Self-respect grows directly from discipline. The Army saying, ‘Who ever saw a dirty soldier with a medal?’ is largely true."

Patton also displayed "intense loyalty to his men," recalled Colonel Allen, and he gave personal attention to men of outstanding courage. On one occasion he came across a soldier who had been run over by a tank and nearly cut in two. The general personally administered morphine and tended to the injured man as he succumbed to his fatal injuries. According to Patton, nearly 80 percent of an army commander’s mission "is to arouse morale in his men." Patton’s carefully cultivated image — the spit-shined cavalry boots, ivory-handled revolvers, the bulldog demeanor — was not merely an exercise in vanity, but a reflection of his leadership strategy.

Patton was also "the only army commander in the ETO who was briefed by enlisted men," notes Allen. "He listened to them as attentively as he did to officers." Patton demanded that the officers "talk with the troops": "They know more about the war than anybody. Make them tell you all of their gripes. Make sure they know we are doing everything we can to help them. The soldiers have to win the war. We cannot do it." Williamson points out that while Patton understood and strictly enforced the discipline of rank, he readily mingled with his men. "He talked with all of the soldiers," writes Williamson. "He touched the soldiers with a handshake or a slap on the back." Although Patton’s insistence upon obedience to uniform regulations was legendary, he also respected those soldiers who had dirtied themselves in combat, and no soldier "was so dirty or greasy that Gen. Patton would decline to shake his hand.... If a man deserved a compliment, Gen. Patton would snap to attention and salute the man for his work." Patton was also "the only senior ETO commander who always thanked and commended his troops upon the completion of a campaign, not with a merely perfunctory ‘well done’ statement, but a heartfelt message that he wrote himself," recalls Colonel Allen.

Williamson testifies that the respect shown by Patton to his troops was heartily reciprocated: "When we were in the dust and dirt of the desert and the salute was not required, I have seen soldiers try to form a straight line and salute Gen. Patton when he would drive past their area." The devotion of Patton’s men, summarizes Colonel Allen, was the product of "three deep-seated beliefs: That he was invincible in battle; that he was loyal to his men and always looked out for their interests; that he was as courageous as he demanded others should be."

Following the Allies’ disastrous loss to Rommel’s German-Italian panzer army at Tunisia’s Kasserine Pass in February 1943, Patton was appointed to replace Lt. General Lloyd Frendenall as head of the 2nd U.S. Corps. Upon taking command of a demoralized force that had suffered great losses in men, matériel, and momentum, Patton — at the time a two-star general — issued what he described as "a simplified directive of war: Use steamroller strategy; that is, make up your mind on course and direction of action, and stick to it." But he understood that strategic inflexibility depends upon tactical flexibility: "[I]n tactics, do not use steamroller strategy. Attack weakness. Hold them by the nose and kick them in the pants."

Few if any field commanders in history have been as tactically adaptable as Patton, and while he was an assiduous student of both warfare and history, he was quite at a loss to explain his gifts. "Whether these tactical insights of mine are the result of inspiration or insomnia, I have never been able to determine, but nearly every tactical idea I have ever had has come into my head full-born, much after the manner of Minerva from the head of Jupiter," Patton reflected. But his tactical decisions always served his overall strategy, which was rooted in Napoleon’s maxim that "the purely defensive is doomed to defeat."

"Wars are not won by defensive tactics," he explained. "Pacifists would do well to study the Siegfried and Maginot Lines, remembering that these defenses were forced; that Troy fell; that the walls of Hadrian succumbed; that the Great Wall of China was futile; and that, by the same token, the mighty seas which are alleged to defend us can also be circumvented by a resolute and ingenious opponent," admonished the general. "In war, the only sure defense is offense, and the efficiency of offense depends upon the warlike souls of those conducting it."

"General Patton always hated those military and political leaders who delayed, regrouped, consolidated gains, defended land, dug foxholes, or would permit any act which would prolong the war without any thought of the soldiers on both sides that would die from the delay," observed military historian Porter B. Williamson. "It’s a waste of fine young men to stay in fixed positions and see who can send over the most shells," explained General Patton. "It costs too many men to stay in fixed positions where the enemy can strike. We will keep moving and the enemy will always hit where we have been and not where we are. When the enemy is firing at where we have been, we can tell exactly where they have their firepower. We will move fast and destroy the enemy where he can be easily killed." To his Third Army Patton attached the nickname "Hell on Wheels" — an apt summary of his strategic vision. Patton’s key tactical insight was, "Never let the enemy pick the battle site. We will fight where we want to fight and not where the enemy wants to fight. We will always keep the odds on our side."

During his 13 months in combat in WW II, recalls military historian Colonel Paul D. Hawkins, Patton "never issued a defensive order. His theory — attack, attack, attack, and, when in doubt, attack again — shortened the war by never giving the enemy a chance to organize or reorganize enough to make a concerted attack against him." Although Patton, like most men of accomplishment and ambition, had a flair for self-promotion, he readily acknowledged that his successes were not the product of his unaided genius and the disciplined, capable troops under his command. "God has been very good to us," he acknowledged on the eve of his dramatic relief mission at Bastogne. "We have never retreated; we have suffered no defeats, no famine, no epidemics. This is because a lot of people back home have been praying for us. We have to pray for ourselves, too."

By September 1944, the Patton-commanded Third Army had blitzed across France, crushed German defenses, and was poised to strike at the very heart of the Reich. Within sight of the German border, Patton’s drive literally ran out of gas and ammunition. Supreme Allied Commander General Dwight Eisenhower had diverted the crucial supplies from Patton’s Army to British Commander Bernard Montgomery, who was staging an airborne invasion of Holland. Montgomery’s operation was a debacle that cost the lives of 17,000 British and American soldiers, while Patton, immobilized by the diversion, could only watch in impotent frustration. "It was my opinion that this was the momentous error of the war," Patton wrote in his memoir.

As journalist Jeffrey St. John wrote in an earlier profile of Patton in The New American, "Stopping Patton’s army from a thrust into Germany prolonged the war and cost greater Allied casualties." Patton, who understood that to make war means to sacrifice the lives of good men, found the needless waste of lives unconscionable. Compounding this outrage, observes St. John, was the fact that Eisenhower’s decision "gave the Soviets the necessary time to advance toward Germany from the east and to occupy Eastern Europe. Eisenhower’s later decision to allow the Soviets to capture Berlin has been defended on the grounds of saving lives — but he threw away lives earlier by halting Patton in August 1944. Keeping Patton from taking Prague proved equally favorable to the Soviets."

In April 1945, the Third Army had crossed the Rhine, rolled across Germany, and were within 50 miles of Berlin, when Patton’s superiors issued a nearly inexplicable order: He was ordered to withdraw 100 miles west, over captured territory. The vacuum was quickly filled by the Red Army, which swarmed over Czechoslovakia and eastern Germany.

"This war stopped right where it started," observed Patton during a closed, off-the-record press conference on May 8, 1945. "Right in the Hun’s backyard which is now Hitler’s graveyard. But that’s not the end of this business by any means. What the tin-soldier politicians in Washington and Paris have managed to do today is another story you’ll be writing for a long while.... They have allowed us to kick hell out of one b****** and at the same time forced us to help establish a second one as evil or more evil than the first. We have won a series of battles, not a war for peace. We’re headed down another long road to losing another peace."

Over the next several months, as Patton’s understanding of the betrayal grew, he became resolved to speak out publicly. "I will resign when I have finished this job [as military governor of Bavaria], which will be not later than Dec. 26," wrote Patton in an October 1945 diary entry. "I hate to do it, but I have been caged all my life, and whether they appreciate it or not, America needs some honest men who dare say what they think, not what they think people want them to think."

Unfortunately, Patton’s voice was stilled before it could be raised to protest the perfidy of our political establishment. On December 9, 1945, Patton and General Hobart Gay were backseat passengers in a military staff sedan speeding along the autobahn en route to a pheasant hunt. An army truck traveling in the opposite direction suddenly crossed their lane, creating the conditions for a head-on collision. Both drivers swerved to avoid a direct collision, but the side-swiping impact threw the general forward, striking his head on the sedan’s interior dome light, and then whiplashing him back. Although both the driver and General Gay were uninjured, Patton suffered crushed vertebrae in his upper spinal column, leaving him paralyzed from the neck down and mortally wounded.

"This is a hell of a way for a soldier to die," protested Patton as he lay paralyzed in an Army hospital bed in Heidelberg. For 12 days the indomitable 60-year-old general fought a rearguard action against death, valiantly battling an injury that would have killed most men within, at most, 72 hours. But on December 23rd the hero finally succumbed to pneumonia while in the company of his wife, Beatrice. "It is too dark; I mean too late," whispered the general as death came to claim him.

"He was buried in the drizzle of a fog-shrouded December morning on the day before Christmas in the American Military Cemetery at Hamm in Luxembourg," writes biographer Ladislas Farago. There he joined 5,076 other fallen Third Army heroes, whose honored remains repose beneath crosses and Stars of David. In death, as on the battlefield, Patton could be found amid his men. "The dead, most of whom had been killed fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, came from all of what were then the forty-eight states, from the District of Columbia, and from Alaska and Hawaii," records Farago.

Given Patton’s bottomless courage, his voracious appetite for the written word, and his unyielding sense of honor, his legacy is perhaps best summarized in his favorite quotation from Pilgrim’s Progress: "‘My sword I give to him that will succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My works and scars I carry with me to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who will now be my rewarder.’ So he passed over and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side."
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© Copyright 2003 American Opinion Publishing Incorporated

NOTE:
For those interested in further online reading on Patton....
~~~~~~~~~~
This is...
Gunny G's...
GLOBE and ANCHOR
Marines Sites & Forums
By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Semper Fidelis
~~~~~~~~~~

SOLEMN DAY GIVES WAY TO MARINE CORPS CELEBRATION

This page has been printed from the following URL:
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11-9-2003

Solemn day gives way to Marine Corps celebration

By Karen Sanborn
news@seacoastonline.com

KITTERY - Darby Healey stood somberly in the frigid, blustery air at John Paul Jones Park Saturday morning.

As the Seacoast Detachment of the Marine Corps League fired three shots into the air and set a wreath in front of the Marine memorial, tears crept from her eyes as she remembered her father.

J.T. Jenkins was his name. He served as a Marine for 30 years and was a prisoner of war for four. Healey still wears his dog tags, rectangular and gold in color.

She recalled how her father told her the tags kept him safe when he was taken prisoner.

Healey said her father helped start the Seacoast Detachment. He died before he ever saw the park’s memorial.

"He was proud to be part of this group," Healey said. "And I was proud of him."

Healey was one of a small group who gathered to watch the Marine Corps League honor wounded and departed Marines. With Marines dressed to the nines in red jackets and blue pants, the ceremony also marked Corps’ 228th birthday.

Commandant Frank Wisinski read a tribute to express "gratitude and pride to those who fought for the preservation of life."

Former Gunnary Sgt. Vic DiSilvestro set a wreath in front of the memorial, then saluted it. After a brief prayer, a six-gun salute cut through the air. Taps was played as the Marines stood at attention.

After the ceremony, Corps members stopped to reflect.

"This is a very significant event," said Wisinski, who served from 1957 to 1961. "The motto of the Marine Corps is to continue the honor the dignity, the bravery, the courage and the patriotism. Most of all, this is for fallen Marines and many who are disabled, for all those who have made a sacrifice on behalf of this country."

Ray Maher, a Marine from Hampton, served from 1969-1974. He believes the Corps is one of the few military organizations that celebrates its birthday each year.

"I think it’s just the brotherhood that makes the Marine Corps," Maher said. "It’s ‘once a Marine, always a Marine.’ That about sums it up. It never goes away."

The Marine Corps League members looked forward to the evening ball, held on Saturday evening.

Healey remembered how her parents looked forward to the event each year.

"When I was a child, I used to watch my parents get dressed up for the ball," Healey said. "My dad in his blues and my mom in a fancy dress. That was the big deal."

~

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Copyright 2003 Seacoast Newspapers, a division of Ottaway Newspapers Inc., all rights reserved.



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This is...
Gunny G's...
GLOBE and ANCHOR
Marines Sites & Forums
By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Semper Fidelis
~~~~~~~~~~

ONE FORTIFYING FIGHTER: FALLEN MICHIGAN MARINE....

ONE FORTIFYING FIGHTER: Fallen Michigan Marine didn't dodge harm's way

http://www.freep.com/news/mich/garza14x_20030414.htm
http://www.freep.com/news/mich/garza14x_20030414.htm

Newbie wrote the book on bravery, say comrades left behind

April 14, 2003

BY ANDREA GERLIN
FREE PRESS FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- To hear his buddies tell it, Pfc. Juan Garza Jr. was a Marine's Marine, a man who volunteered for anything, who never complained about a mission, whose gung-ho attitude shamed his older brothers-in-arms.

So it was in character Tuesday when Garza, 20, was one of those who volunteered to provide covering fire from a sandbagged bunker as the rest of his platoon used a berm to fight Iraqi forces for the Baghdad side of a bridge across the Diyala River.

Garza, who lived most recently in Temperance, Mich., put a cigarette in his mouth, recalled Pfc. Charles King, and told King to get in the hole.

"All of a sudden, he turned around," King sobbed. "Two shots rang out. . . . We yelled for the corpsman. We looked at his flak jacket, and blood just poured out. The staff sergeant said 'Just stay with him.' The last words I heard from him were, 'I'm OK.' "

But he wasn't.

He died less than an hour later, wounded in the chest. His body was wrapped in an American flag and placed aboard the helicopter that had been summoned to evacuate him. He was the only man of the 1,000-member 1st Battalion 4th Marine Regiment to die during the march to Baghdad.

On Sunday, his battalion gathered at its base in eastern Baghdad to remember Garza, who entered the Marine Corps last summer.

About 150 of his fellow Marines -- led by his buddies in Bravo Company's 1st Platoon -- sat around a makeshift shrine fashioned from his vest, rifle and helmet. Voices choked with grief as they described Garza as a small but tough guy who, despite his hardscrabble youth, had a very generous heart.

A native of Harlingen, Texas, Garza was a newly graduated infantryman when he joined the battalion at Camp Pendleton, Calif., in December. Garza constantly talked about his wife, Casey Garza, a soldier based at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Md. They'd married Dec. 26 after the battalion learned that it would be going to Kuwait and possibly Iraq.

Garza's family, which included two sisters, had broken up when he was a child, and he'd been raised by an aunt and uncle in Michigan. He hadn't had any contact with his mother for five years, his friends said. But before the battalion left Kuwait for Iraq a month ago, Garza's wife wrote that his mom had been in touch and had sent photos of two younger half-siblings Garza had never met.

He proudly showed the photographs and said he was looking forward to the family reunion that his mother was planning.

Casey and Juan Garza had met in January 2002 at their after-school job -- a Wendy's in Lambertville, Mich. She was a senior at Start Senior High School in Toledo and he at Summerfield High School in Petersburg, Mich.

After the war, Casey Garza said Sunday from the Temperance home of her husband's aunt, they planned on having a wedding ceremony for family and friends. Starting a family was also a priority, she said, and they wanted two or three children.

But Casey Garza said she takes solace in knowing that Iraqi "children are free and men and women are free for the first time because my husband gave his life." Though his life was cut short, Casey Garza said, Juan Garza accomplished all of his goals: finishing high school and being a U.S. Marine.

She last spoke with her husband Feb. 25, the day he arrived in Kuwait. His last words were perhaps a hint that he would not return.

"This is definitely the last time I can talk to you," he told Casey.

They repeatedly told each other "I love you" until the 30-minute phone card beeped, a hint that they were out of minutes.

Free Press staff writer Rodney Thrash contributed to this report.

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THE MARINES' PERFECT WAR

September 17, 2003, 9:00 a.m.
The Marines’ Perfect War
“They wanted to die, and we wanted to kill them.”

n 400 BC, the Athenian general Xenophon led 10,000 hoplites in a march up the Tigris and Euphrates valley — Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers, which today is called Iraq. The Greeks defeated every army that challenged them, including the 100,000-man force that the Great King of Persia sent against them. Xenophon entitled his account of this campaign the Anabasis, "the march up," which became the bane of many a young student of Greek.

Now two old Marines have given us a modern-day Anabasis — an account of the march of the 1st Marine Division from Kuwait to Baghdad, which mirrored the route taken by Xenophon's hoplites some 2,400 years ago. The March Up: Taking Baghdad with the 1st Marine Division by "Bing" West and Major General Ray "E-tool" Smith, USMC (ret) provides a remarkable description of a campaign conducted by some truly remarkable young Americans.

The Marines permitted West and Smith complete access to the battlefield — as long as they kept out of the way. Like the embedded journalists, they spent time with the Marine infantrymen, tankers, and artillerymen who raced toward Baghdad, but they were also free to move around, to hitch rides in helicopters or on amphibious tractors (amtracs). At one point, they were given use of a commandeered Baath-party official's SUV. All they had to do was find gasoline for it.

But while the reports from the embedded journalists have been described as akin to the "view through a soda straw," West and Smith were able to visit mobile Marine headquarters and listen in as commanders briefed their subordinates. West and Smith thus had the context that embedded journalists, no matter how riveting their reports, usually lacked.

In the pages of The March Up, the commanding general of the storied 1st Marine Division, Major General James Mattis, emerges as something of a latter-day Xenophon. An innovative leader who also led the task force that seized an advanced airbase in Afghanistan at the opening of that campaign, much to the chagrin of Army officers (see my NRO article, "Marines Turned Soldiers") Mattis "led from the front." He clearly had prepared his command well and it responded to his style of leadership.

His "message to all hands" issued at the outset of the campaign contains echoes of Henry V at Agincourt. "While we will move swiftly and aggressively against those who resist, we will treat all others with decency, demonstrating chivalry and soldierly compassion for people who have endured a lifetime under Saddam's oppression…Demonstrate to the world there is 'No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy' than a U.S. Marine."

West and Smith write that military theory suggests

that the ideal location for the general is one where he can observe the battlefield firsthand, gauge the fighting condition of his troops and the enemy, and still communicate with his key subordinates so that he can exploit what he is observing….By being on scene during this battle, Mattis was employing what theorists call the coup d'oeil, when the commander is able to select and focus on the battle's key elements. He could see that the Marines, although tired, were continuing to press forward, while the enemy had retreated into the town. He could see with his own eyes that his troops had the initiative.

On one occasion Mattis offered some water to a tired Marine passing his vehicle. "The Marine refilled his canteens, took a deep gulp, and patted Mattis on the shoulder. 'Thanks, man,' he said, trotting off, apparently unaware that he was talking to his division commander."

The fact that West and Smith praise Mattis is a tribute to his leadership. These are two men who are not easily impressed. West was a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam where he commanded both a platoon and a company. He was assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the Reagan administration and is the author of several books, including the recent, well-received novel, The Pepperdogs.

Smith is one of the most-decorated Marines since World War II. He commanded a company during the fight for Hue City during the Tet Offensive of 1968. He began the battle with 146 men. Thirty-four days later, only seven of his men had not been killed or wounded. He was an adviser to the South Vietnamese Marines during the 1972 Easter Offensive. He commanded a battalion during the Grenada operation and later a division.

My daughter asked about his nickname. "E-tool" is an abbreviation for "entrenching tool," military jargon for the small shovel that soldiers and Marines carry for digging their fighting holes. Trying not to be too graphic, I explained Smith's nickname by paraphrasing his own words: "Unlike a rifle, a shovel doesn't jam." As is the case with most legendary characters, the story of how he earned his sobriquet has many variations. Let's just say that the incident involved Ray Smith, a small shovel, and one or more North Vietnamese soldiers.

The March Up doesn't sugarcoat the campaign After all, even the best plan founders on "friction," e.g. map-reading errors, failures to communicate, unexpected enemy actions, and the like. As well-trained and well-led as they were, things often went wrong. . Leaders made mistakes, but they learned as they went. Rumors about Iraqi car bombers and deceptive surrenders spread quickly, adding to the anxieties of the young Marines who would pay the price for complacency or a lack or vigilance. The authors' account of the fight for Nasiriyah is particularly harrowing.

As one might expect of two men who have led Marines in combat, West and Smith demonstrate a deep and abiding affection for the young Marines who fill the pages of this book. West and Smith understand the bond that develops among men at war. They experienced it. "Jobs — staying alive — determined a Marine's family on the march up, not rank or ethnicity. Those you lived with were those you fought with and who would keep you alive."

The Marines faced some sharp fights on the road to Baghdad and more once they arrived. They encountered Iraqi soldiers of all kinds: soldiers of regular units, some of whom fought and some of whom didn't; militia, who preferred not to fight but sometimes did because they wee intimidated by Saddam's fedayeen; and foreign jihadis.

The jihadis asked no quarter and the Marines gave them none. The Marines

knew the difference between these jihad fighters and the militia. Consequently the Marines shot them in the ditches and in the field. They threw grenades into the bulrushes and shot the fighters when they ran out. They threw grenades into the drainage pipes running under the road…A few of the foreign fighters surrendered, but most did not — they had come to Iraq to die, and die they would.

As one Marine put it, this was the perfect war. "They want to die, and we want to kill them."

The March Up, like the Anabasis, is destined to be a classic.

— Mackubin Thomas Owens, an NRO contributing editor, is an associate dean of academics and professor of strategy and force planning at the Naval War College in Newport, RI. He led a Marine infantry platoon in Vietnam in 1968-1969.

http://www.nationalreview.com/owens/owens091703.asp

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Gunny G's GLOBE and ANCHOR Weblog
by R. W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Gunny G's...
Marines G&A Sites & Forums!
http://www.angelfire.com/ca/dickg/gunny.html
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EVANS CARLSON AND LEWIS PULLER ON ESPRIT DE CORPS....by Gunny G!

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EVANS CARLSON AND LEWIS PULLER ON ESPRIT DE CORPS....by Gunny G!
by DickG

Gung Ho!


The basis of Carlson's thinking was what he called Gung Ho, basically, "work together." But his concept of this was not merely a battle cry, a slogan or a motto, etc.; it is an ideal that goes to the very root and core of leadership and the social structure of the military unit.

He held open " Gung Ho Talks" with his troops with all hands having a say in the matters at hand. Leaders were those who were recognized by their ability to lead, rather than being appointed to rank. Of course, this all came from his experience with the Chinese 8th Route Army, where he had first recognized that the true basis of leadership was ethics itself (something he had pondered upon all his life to that point).

Thus he attempted to teach and guide his raiders in what he referred to as Ethical Indoctrination. Some thought that he carried this too far, but not his own men. He did not carry his ideals of leadership and organization beyond the confines of Marine Corps regulations, but others feared that he would.

Carlson insisted on officers and enlisted alike eating the same food, being provided the same quarters, etc. They sang hymns and patriotic songs together, often with Carlson playing his harmonica. He not only allowed, he insisted each of his own men make decisions on their own.

Carlson had a grasp of what it is that makes men fight. His long and varied service plus his constant study and reflection upon the subject left him with beliefs and theories that he had been developing for many years. These he used in establishing his 2d Raider Battalion. He knew it was necessary for men to know why and for what they were fighting.

He taught his Marines the implications involved between the war in Europe and the war in the Pacific. And every man could ask questions and state his views. They also discussed matters such as what kind of society they wanted after the war, etc.

Interviewed by Robert Sherrod aboard ship just prior to the Tarawa invasion Carlson said, "You spoke about espirit de corps...the Marine Corps has it to a high degree.

But when the going gets toughest, when it takes a little more drive to stay sane and to keep going, and a man is hungry and tired, then he needs more than espirit de corps. It takes conviction....Our greatest weakness is the caliber of our officers, and that, of course, is a reflection of our system of education." Carlson went on to state that the best officers were enlisted men after they had proven themselves in battle.

Within a few days after the battle for Tarawa, Carlson was flown home. He spoke before a meeting of one thousand officers at Camp Pendleton. "Tarawa was won," Carlson told them, "because a few enlisted men of great courage called out simply to their comrades, 'Come on, fellows. Follow me!'

And then went on, followed by men who took heart at their example, to knock out, at great sacrifice, one Jap position after another, slowly, until there were no more.
Tarawa is a victory because some enlisted men, unaffected by the loss of their officers, many of whom were casualties in the first hour, became great and heroic commanders in their own right.

"But--" He paused for a long time. "But with all that courage and fortitude and willingness to die on the part of some of the men, too many others lacked initiative and resourcefulness.

They were not trained to understand the need for sacrifice. Too many men waited for orders--and while they waited they died. What if they had been trained not to wait for orders?"

He was deeply angry. Lives could have been saved. It was this very matter he had mentioned to Robert Sherrod of Time...."What if they had been trained not to wait for orders?" Carlson had asked.

And how extraordinary was the resourcefulness of the few!...But if all had been trained to act by themselves...."Our leaders did not give them that chance," Carlson told the thousand Marine officers at Camp Pendleton."

*************

Lieutenant Geneneral
Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, USMC (Ret.)
Now, Chesty Puller is so well known to every Marine that just about anything that could be written here about him would be redundant. Outspoken and Outstanding, The Marine's Marine! What more could be said? Very little more, and much, much more, both answers would be correct at the same time.

But here is one thing that might be mentioned here. This is in regard to the infamous Ribbon Creek incident and court-martial of the 1956 Marine Corps . The following is neither as well known nor as often quoted as most other stories about Chesty Puller, yet it stands as much as any other to present a clear picture as to who he was and what he stood for, and what he always will be in the eyes and hearts of Marines everywhere.

"On the dimly moonlit night of April 8, 1956, a platoon of Marine recruits at Parris Island, South Carolina, was marched into a tidal arm of Broad River by a thirty-one-year-old veteran drill instructor, Staff Sergeant Matthew C. McKeon. Six recruits drowned."
McKeon had had several drinks of vodka that day, the CMC relieved the commanding officer of the recruit depot, and told Congress that McKeon would be punished.
McKeon was court-martialed.

Amid a nationwide public outcry regarding the whole matter of the drownings in particular and Marine Corps training practices in general, LtGen Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller was recalled to active duty to testify at the trial regarding Marine training and tradition. Mrs. Puller protested to her husband citing previous trouble and controversy in Puller's career. Puller told her, "...The important thing is the Marine Corps. If we let 'em, they'll tear it to pieces. Headquarters won't speak up. It's my duty to do it."

At the trial, Puller was asked questions pertaining to his own military service, the mission of the Marine Corps, the most important element of Marine training, etc. In part, Puller replied that:, "...The definition of military training is success in battle. In my opinion, it is the only objective of military training..."
He quoted Napoleon. "He stated that the most important thing in military training is discipline. Without discipline an army becomes a mob."
Puller was asked what he had learned here (PISC) as a recruit. He replied, "Well, the main thing--that I have rememberd all my life--is the definition of esprit de corps. Now my definition--that I was taught, that I've always believed in--is that esprit de corps means love for one's military legion. In my case the United States Marine Corps. I also learned that this loyalty to one's Corps travels both ways, up and down."

"Q: Now, general, I want you to assume that what is the evidence in this case is a fact. That on a Sunday evening a drill instructor took a platoon that was undisciplined and lacked spirit and on whom he' tried other methods of discipline. And that for purposes of teaching discipline and instilling morale he took that platoon into a marsh or creek--all the way in front of his troops--would you consider that oppression?
A: In my opinion it is not."
"Q: So, in your opinion, was this act of this drill instructor in leading his troops, under those conditions and for that purpose, good or bad military practice?
A: Good...
...I would train my troops as I thought--as I knew they should be trained--regardless of a directive."
"Q: ...I lead these recruits into water over their heads and I lose six of those men by drowning. Would you say that some action should be taken against me?
A: I would say that this night march was and is a deplorable accident."
"Q: Would you take any action against me if I were the one who did that, if you were my Commanding Officer, sir?
A: ...I think, from what I read in the papers yesterday of the testimony of General Pate before this court, that he agrees and regrets that this man was ever ordered tried by general court-martial."

"Puller went into the noncom's club that night with Berman, two Marine generals and other officers; the big crowd stood, shouting until he spoke:
'I've talked enough for today. This will be my last request. Do your duty and the Marine Corps will be as great as it has always been for another thousand years.'
The applause was deafening."

Re
The book, " Marine, The Life of Lt. Gen. Lewis B. (Chesty) Puller, USMC (Ret.)"
By Burke Davis, 1962, Bantam

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USMC BIRTHDAY BALL SPEECH BY CRAIG ROBERTS

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http://www.riflewarrior.com/usmcspeech.html

Marine Corps Birthday Ball Speech Given by Craig Roberts, Marine Vietnam vet and author, to the US Marine Reserve Anti-Tank Battalion, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Nov 9, 2002.



I want to thank you for inviting me to be your speaker on this 227th Birthday of our Beloved Corps. It is quite an honor, and one that I never even considered happening to me when I was a young hard- charging Marine in Vietnam in the mid nineteen sixties. I only wish my father, who was a World War II FMF Marine, Pvt. William F. Roberts, Jr., USMC, serial number 555502, and who passed on last year, could be present to hear his son talk about his Marine Corps.

I know that many of you are wondering why a lance corporal is your speaker. It may because I�m a combat vet, or because I�m known as a writer of military tales, or because I can tell some great war stories. But it might also be because the rank of lance corporal is the best rank to hold in the Marine Corps. At least it was when I was in. A lance was too high a grade to do dirty details, but not high enough to take any responsibility. We supervised working parties of PFCs and Privates, but if anything went wrong, we blamed the Corporal who should have been there supervising, but was down at the slop chute or the gedonk instead, and left us in charge. Yes, lance corporal was a great rank, and a lofty one as well. At least in those days when it was not uncommon for a PFC to re-up after four years to make Lance. And the rank lasted a long time too....at one time I was senior lance corporal of the Marine Corps. I had more time in grade with a clean record than any other lance in the Corps. I was kind of like Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps...but for lance corporals.

Also, there is one misnomer I would like to clear up. There is no such thing as an "ex-Marine." There are only Marines. Some are on active duty, some on reserve duty, and some, such as I, which we can specify as not-presently-serving Marines. The formula is simple: Once a Marine�Always a Marine.

People ask me why I later joined the National Guard and eventually transferred to the Army Reserve instead of joining the Marine Corps Reserve. In 1972 the Vietnam war was still going on, and the USMC reserve unit here was a truck company. I was FMF infantry, and "Motor T" was not something an FMF grunt is interested in. At the time I thought the Guard infantry battalion here could use my experience to train their troops. I could tell you horror stories concerning that decision that would plague me for years, but I won�t. The bottom line is that after 26 years, and various duty assignments�some good and some bad�I managed to retire as a lieutenant colonel in 1999, Infantry branch. During this time with the Army I told my colleagues that if I did a good job, worked hard, and kept out of trouble, I�d eventually get my old rank back as a lance corporal. When I did retire, a Marine gunny I�ve known for years, began referring to me as a "lance colonel." So, in a way, I did come full circle. I am now the only "lance colonel" existing in any branch of the service.

I sometimes am asked what it was like in the Old Corps. Well, I wasn�t in the old corps. When I was in, between 1964-68, the old Korean War salts who served with us called us "boots" and "the new corps." At this point I must clarify what a "boot" is. According to our NCOs in days past, a boot is someone who enters the gate at MCRD ten minutes or more after you do. From then on, he is boot to you and you�ll never let him forget it.

As time passed, the "New Corps" criteria changed with each generation, and my generation now is considered by the WWII and Korean Marines as "the semi-old Corps" or the "not-quite-so-old" Corps.

But a few years back the Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps, standing next to the Commandant at Parris Island during a training inspection said "Sir, There�s the old corps, the new corps, and whatever in the hell this is." I can�t comment on that, just reporting it. But now those lads at Parris Island then are now probably considered Old Corps by today�s young Marines.

I�m also sometimes asked what boot camp was like in the sixties, before Vietnam. It was rough. It was the hardest training I ever went through. It was the same as it was in the Korean War era, except the M-1s had been replaced by M-14s. In fact, my platoon commander, Staff Sergeant Joe Vierra, carried a .50 caliber receiver out of the Chosin Reservoir on his shoulder. He worked for a gent named Colonel Lewis B. Puller. Vierra was the most sadistic, meanest, most cruel bulldog-faced cigar-chomping gorilla who ever wore a campaign cover. But if there�s anyone I owe the successes of my life, and my survival in Vietnam to, it�s him.

If you remember the TV series "Gomer Pyle" you know what our utilities looked like. They were faded forest green cotton sateen utilities that we scrubbed with scrub brushes on the wash racks by hand until they looked turquoise�what we considered salty. Then they were starched like boards until the crease in the trousers could cut raw meat. Our boots were rough-out brown boots that we dyed black and spit shined, and our covers were starched and ironed until they could be used as a deadly weapon.

All this changed in Vietnam. Our boots rotted, our utilities fell apart, and our 782 gear was next to useless for the amount of gear we had to carry. Imagine a place where it is 125 degrees with 98% humidity day in and day out. It was like working in a blast furnace. Then monsoon season came and it rained hard 24 hours a day until the entire TAOR was nothing but a sauna bath of mud, and lakes of chest deep stinking rice paddies. We finally were issued jungle utilities, jungle boots, and pack boards with willie peter bags to carry our gear. The WWII canvas 782 gear, or what was left of it, was turned in or discarded. Our M-14s rusted no matter how well we tried to keep them, and M-16s wouldn�t be issued until the year after I was medevaced out of country. Our meals consisted of green cans of C-rations, normally cold, two, and if we were lucky (or unlucky), three times a day, for weeks on end, and our rifle cleaning gear was simply the butt-well gear, an old skivi shirt torn into bore patches, and a bottle of motor oil drained from a six-by. So began Vietnam for the Corps.

We learned a lot of things in Vietnam. Never return from a patrol on the same trail used in going out; tie and tape down anything that rattles; always use hand and arm signals instead of talking; always carry extra dry socks and plenty of ammo and grenades, make sure your canteens are always filled, and a thousand other things. But we also learned of danger areas when some of our Marines said certain things. For instance:

A PFC when he says "I learned this in boot camp."

A Sergeant saying, "Trust me sir..."

A 2nd Lieutenant saying "based on my experience..."

A 1st Lieutenant saying "I was just thinking..."

A Captain saying "I think I know a short cut..."

A Major saying "Chow and ammo should be on the way..."

A Colonel saying "One more mission this week won�t hurt us..."

A General saying "last night I had a dream..."

And a gunny saying, "Watch this..."

Since my walking tour of Southeast Asia, I�ve written about Vietnam, the Corps, and other wars and services. But I�m often asked why I haven�t written about other "elite" services such as the Green Berets and the SEALs. After all, aren�t they America�s super warriors?

My response is that the Green Beanies, if used according to their mission and charter are school teachers, and capable of doing a great job of working with indigenous populations. But they are not a fighting force like our Corps. But on the other hand, in Vietnam we proved to be excellent school teachers as well... evidenced by our Combined Action Platoon Marines who worked, taught, fought, organized, and lived in the villes with the locals. We didn�t need any Green Berets, we did it ourselves.

And SEALs? They are simply Marine wannabees who were afraid to go to Marine Corps boot camp, so they joined the Navy. What do they do that Marines haven�t done for years? Especially our Force Recon warriors? Can anyone name one mission the SEALs do that the Marines can�t? I can�t think of a single one.

Now, I do have great respect for the Navy. They provide us with three things: transportation to the battlefields, ships to launch our aircraft, and most importantly, our Docs.

A critical part of the Marine Corps family is our FMF Corpsmen. Unlike SEALs, they aren�t afraid of Marine Corps training. So who is the real Naval Hero here? Think about this: when you see your Doc in the field, and the bullets fly and all of us are on the deck taking up firing positions, Doc is the only guy up and running around to take care of us. Unlike some of the old jokes about Army medics, our Corpsmen do make house calls.

Since I have served in the Marines, spent time on Naval Bases and on ships, served in the Army and was attached to the Air Force, I can give you a first-hand observation of comparing the branches. I agree with Col. David Hackworth when he wrote this:

The Air Force is like a French Poodle: always looks pretty, sometimes a bit pampered and always travels first class. But the Poodle was bred as a hunting dog and in a fight it is very dangerous.

The Army is like a St. Bernard. It�s big and heavy and sloppy and a bit clumsy. But it�s powerful and has lots of stamina and is built for the long haul.

The Navy is like a Golden Retriever. They�re good natured and great around the house. Their hair is a bit long and they often go wandering off for long periods of time. They love water and kids love them.

The Marines come in two breeds, Rottweilers and Dobermans. Some are big and mean and some are skinny and mean. All are mean. They�re aggressive on the attack and tenacious on the defense. They�ve got really short hair and they always go for the throat.

My thanks to Colonel Hackworth for those observations. Now here are a few of my own:

From my perspective, a major difference can be seen in how the services build their bases and installations. I now give this insight to our younger Marines so you can see how the system works.

When setting up a new base, the Air Force first decides where to build the clubs and swimming pools and PX, then if any money is left over, where to build the runway and hangars. They know they can still go back to Congress and say, "gee, we ran out of money and we still need a runway," and they know they�ll get it.

The Army first brings in the engineers to build the golf course, then barracks that would put a mid-eastern sultan to shame, a fantastic officer�s club, a recreation center, and a huge PX, all hosted by civilian contractors. They then request more money to build ranges and training areas. And they get it.

The Navy builds a port by erecting a pier or two, while the chiefs develop a liberty call plan and arrange for transportation for the sailors to the bar district. When all is said and done, they have a great facility and all the comforts of home. And they usually have a few bucks left over, hidden in accounts in the budget of the submarine base, which is all secret�but accessible.

The Marines do it different. We find a mud-flats stretch of beach, slog inland until we find a steep hill, build a swamp on one side and a desert on the other, a rifle range at the bottom, and call it a base. If there�s any money left over, which there normally isn�t, we might think of building barracks.

Tactically and politically, there is also something that needs to be said about the Marine Corps. The Marines are the worlds greatest pacifists. According to the dictionary, a pacifist is someone who wants to end war, establish peace, and resolve political unrest. This is exactly what the Marines do best. If you want to pacify a world hot spot, send in the Marines. Twenty-four to forty-eight hours later the place is pacified.

Our motto, First to Fight, is more than that. It is a way of life. Since November 10th, 1775 when a group of fighting men gathered for the first time in a little tavern in Philadelphia to form the Continental Marines, to the fighting tops of the Bonhomme Richard, to the Barbary Coast, and from the Halls of Montezuma to Belleau Wood, Nicaragua and China, and on to Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Okinawa, then the frozen Chosin and the bloody hills of Korea, and then to the steaming jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam, and beyond to the Mayaguez mission, Beirut, Grenada, the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, and now Afghanistan, and a thousand other battlefields, our Marines have truly been the "First to Fight" and have distinguished themselves with honor, bravery, sacrifice, and love of God, Country and Corps.

The Marine Corps is more than a service. It is more than a team. It is a family. I want to tell you a little bit about MY Marine Corps Family.

When I was working on my book, "Combat Medic�Vietnam," I had the honor of interviewing and telling the story of many medics and corpsmen. But one gentleman stuck in my mind for years, Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Douglas Wean, a silver star recipient who served with Kilo Battery, 4th Battalion, 12th Marines at Dong Ha, Vietnam in 1968. He told me of an incident that we can all relate to.

One of the Marines in his unit had been wounded during a resupply run, bringing 155 howitzer rounds up the road to the firebase at Camp Carrol on the DMZ. The word came that the resupply truck had hit a mine. Doc Wean ran down the trail to where the smoking six-by rested, twisted and riddled with holes. Doc Wean worked on the wounded until he came to a personal friend, Jimmy. Jimmy was in bad shape, and Doug knew that the best he could do would be to cheer him up by telling him he was going home.

"Doc, ya can�t medevac me," said Jimmy. "Ya gotta fix me up so I can stay."

"You�ve done all you can do here, Jimmy. It�s time to go home.

"But you don�t understand, Doc. My battery needs me. I gotta drive the roads to bring up the rounds. If I don�t deliver, they can�t fire the missions. They all depend on me. I gotta take care of MY guys."

There was that word again. My. My guys. My Marines. At first I hadn�t really understood. What was it that brought men so close together that they would do anything�including die�for their fellows? Now I was beginning to understand. It wasn�t any one thing. It was a combination of several factors that all meld together to form a bond stronger than steel. The war, the terror, the dying and every other unspeakable horror men face in combat is countered by a combination of comradeship, trust dedication, an ingrained instinct for survival, and in the Marine Corps, history and tradition. These guys weren�t only responsible to each other, but to ALL the Marines who had come before. It was a family where one generation followed another and each passed a code of honor to the next. It wasn�t really patriotism or loyalty to a higher authority, it was a sense of responsibility to fellow Marines�past and present. Everybody felt like they were an important part of a family, or a team. They were made to feel that way. A feeling of need built dedication, and the dedication built pride, and a special spirit known as esprit d�Corps. Nowhere at home, or anywhere else in life, did a man feel as needed by his friends as he did here. It was all beginning to make sense. And I was beginning to feel a part of it. They made me feel just as needed and as important too. I was part of the team. I was THEIR Doc. And they were MY family. My Marine Corps family.

The Marine Corps Family. It kind of boils down to that. A team. A tradition. Brothers and sisters in arms, ready to go into harm�s way at a moment�s notice.

And our ancestors all had something in common with those who serve today, and we with them. A common link, and a common bond, forged by uncommon men and women. When we look back to such places as the misty, muddy forest of Belleau Wood in World War II, where the Fifth and Sixth Regiments of Marines earned the nickname of Teufel Hund, or Devil Dog, by the Germans who respected them for their bulldog tenacity and fighting spirit, we find they wore a small badge of recognition that set them apart from all other services: the Eagle, Globe and Anchor.

The China Marines, who patrolled the Yangtse River and the Leathernecks who patrolled the jungles of the Philippines and Nicaragua in the 1920s, also wore the Eagle, Globe and the Anchor.

During World War II, our Marines went ashore at places like Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Okinawa and dozens of other islands and atolls, and shed blood in the sand and coral, their utilities stenciled with the Eagle, Globe and Anchor.

On the rugged hills of Korea, and at the famous Chosin Reservoir, our Marines fought against odds that were often greater than ten-to-one, and we won every battle and fought the greatest marching battle since Napoleon left Moscow when we came out of the Chosin to the coast bearing all of our equipment and our wounded and even our dead. And in the process, destroyed 13 communist Chinese divisions. On the left pocket of the field jacket of every man was printed the Eagle, the Globe and the Anchor.

In Vietnam, we conducted thousands of combat patrols, hundreds of sweeps, dozens of major operations, and fought in steaming jungles, muddy rice paddies, and even house to house in cities. We endured, we fought, and we won every engagement. And we, America�s young men who volunteered for America�s most unpopular war, also proudly wore the Eagle, the Globe and the Anchor.

In Beirut, 242 Marines died in a horrible terrorist atrocity that is yet to be avenged. But it will be. And for all of those brothers that died and those that did come home, they had one thing in common: They all wore the Eagle, Globe and Anchor.

In Grenada, Somalia, Bosnia, and Afghanistan, our brethren also all wore with pride and honor the Eagle, the Globe and the Anchor. Through all of these campaigns, and through all of these generations, we have all shown that our beloved Corps, and our beloved emblem have literally, as our hymn says, served "in every clime and place."

It�s a small emblem, but it says it all. We serve on in the air, on the land, and on the sea. We go anywhere, accomplish any mission, and are indeed, as the popular saying goes today, America�s 911 service.

And there�s one more family member that ranks alongside every Marine here and in the past. The Marine Corps Wife. God Bless her, she puts up with us, suffers when we suffer, supports us through good and hard times, and above all, understands us. No other wife in the world can claim the honor of being a Marine Corps wife. These women are special, and in their own way, also wear the Eagle, the Globe and the Anchor.

So here�s to OUR Marine Corps family. Here�s to MY Marines, past, present and future, and ....

As we used to scream in unison in boot camp in 1964: God Bless the United States Marine Corps, and Chesty Puller, wherever you are!

Happy Birthday, Marines, and Semper Fi!

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THE MAN IN BLACK....

Monday, Sep. 22, 2003
The Man In Black
Country star, Christian, rocker, rebel. Johnny Cash showed the world how to walk the line
By RICHARD CORLISS

The three-day shoot for the video was about to wrap, and director Mark Romanek needed just one more shot from his singer star, Johnny Cash. As Romanek recalls, "I said to John, 'This is the last take. So if you want to get angry or smash something up, this is your last chance.'" Cash didn't get it. He thought Romanek meant this would be the final shot in the ailing star's life, so he had better make it good. Cash wouldn't, couldn't surrender to such defeatism. "I hope it's not the last take," he said in that baritone growl, which for nearly a half-century brought matters of death to musical life.

When Cash did the video for Hurt last year, he was hurting. Indeed, for 15 years he had been in near constant pain. Decades of drug dependency, since conquered, had sapped him. So had heart surgery, diabetes and the medication he took in 1998 for Shy-Drager syndrome, a fatal neurological disease. (The diagnosis was incorrect, and Cash weaned himself from the medication.) Failing eyesight made it difficult for him to read his beloved books on Roman and early Christian history. A dentist, tending to Cash's teeth problems, had broken his jaw and never fixed it properly, the singer once said. Cash was then told he could have surgery, which might end his singing career, or take pain-killers, which could retrigger his drug addition. He chose instead to live with the pain—all of it. "He told me that the only time he didn't feel pain," says author Charles Hirshberg, who spent much time with Cash in his last years, "was when he was onstage."

Moreover, the song Cash had to enact, by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, is an intense cry of pain dished out and taken—a dirge for a life misspent in rancor. "The facet of John that it explores is serious, somber and angry," Romanek notes. "But between takes, the John Cash I saw was someone more active and sprightly than he looks in the video." When Romanek asked the singer's wife June Carter Cash if she would appear briefly in the video, the Man in Black puckishly suggested, "Yeah, honey, why don't you dance naked on the piano here while I'm playing?" The room roared.

"I can't go on, I'll go on," wrote Samuel Beckett, whose plays and novels are no more depressing than your average country lament. John R. Cash (his first producer, Sun Records boss Sam Phillips, dubbed him Johnny) had every right to sing the country blues. Demons found him even when he wasn't looking for them. He dressed like a hip coroner and sang like a gunman turned Pentecostal preacher. His haunting songs perfectly matched his haunted voice. Rarely before Cash had a singer taken vocal pain—not the adolescent shriek of most rock singers but the abiding ache of a veteran victim—and made it so audible, so immediate, so dark and deep. Rarely, before or since, has a voice also shown the grit to express, endure and outlive that misery. His songs played like confessions on a deathbed or death row, but he delivered them with the plangent stoicism of a world-class poker player dealt a bum hand.

That—and his determination to transcend or ignore musical genres—made Cash's death last week, at 71, an event that provoked a serious sense of loss among people of all ages. Children of the '50s remember the startle of his first eminence: the one Southern star who was not a rebellious kid but a grownup with cavernous eyes and a voice to match. Kids of the '60s recall his pop hits, the TV show he was host of for two years and the easy alliances he formed with musicians beyond country's borders. The X and next generations know his old songs as if they were standards, and his boldly simple later work—especially Hurt, which was nominated for six MTV awards—as emblems of moral and musical purity, an antidote to the glitz and aggression of teen icons. Cash made patriarchal integrity cool.

He carried that integrity around the world. "He's loved in countries that don't even like Americans," says singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson, who was a janitor at a Nashville recording studio in 1965 when he first met Cash. "I've seen that firsthand in the places we've played. People love him because of everything he represents: freedom, justice for his fellow man. He is unlike any other artist I've ever known. He's as comfortable with the poor and prisoners as he is with Presidents. He's crossed over all age boundaries, all political boundaries. I like to think of him as Abraham Lincoln with a wild side."

The stature Cash embodies is not so much out of fashion as above it. His CDs are found in the country section of the music store, but he doesn't quite fit there. He came up with rockabilly phenoms like Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis, but few of his songs were hard-driving rave-ups. I Walk the Line, Ring of Fire, Folsom Prison Blues—these are, if anything, contemporary folk songs. Cash sang of specific injustices and eternal truths; he was the deadpan poet of cotton fields, truck stops and prisons. He was a balladeer, really, a spellbinding storyteller—a witness, in the Christian sense of the word. Here was a man who knew the Commandments because he had broken so many of them.

As the decades wore on, and Cash notched his annual eight months on the road, experience and excess left their marks on his face, like a hammer pounding tin. He had the battered charisma of an action-movie star who did his own fights. Here was a man who had earned his craggy good looks, his Old Testament God voice, his unique hold on the pop-cultural imagination. Here, three generations of music lovers agreed, was a man—in all his imperfections and grandeur.

If a fighter is sucker punched by fate, as the characters in many Cash songs are, then the heroic thing is to punch back. Cash, as a man and an artist, had the strength to see that bad times may be not a curse but a challenge. His biggest pop hit, the Shel Silverstein song A Boy Named Sue, might be considered comic frivolity for a man whose voice and choice of material more typically dealt in darkness. But the story of a man searching out the father who gave him a girl's name has its own Cashian moral. At the end of a brutal brawl, the father mutters, "You oughta thank me before I die/ For the gravel in your guts and the spit in your eye/ 'Cause I'm the son of a bitch that named you Sue." Adversity made Cash a man, mature and honorable.

He was born into adversity, in 1932, as the fourth of five children of farmers in Kingsland, Ark. For his family, as with others in the Depression-wracked area, cotton was the Cash crop. "We planted cotton in the spring, and we picked it in the fall," says Merline Hall, 77, a childhood friend of the Cash children. "And you used your fingers. There were not any [mechanical] pickers back then. At least, none of us had one." She recalls John as "a good kid" who sang (while his mother Carrie played piano) at the Central Baptist Church. "It was not a false voice," says Hall. "How do you describe it? Let me just say that when he sang, he meant every word he sang. It was the Christian in him."

After high school, Cash worked at an auto plant in Pontiac, Mich., and in 1950 joined the Air Force. He came home, married Vivian Liberto and settled with her in Memphis, Tenn. This was in 1954, and by the next year he had a deal with Sun Records, which had launched Presley's career. Hey, Porter, backed by Cry, Cry, Cry, was his first hit. Around that time, with the help of Phillips and producer Jack Clement, Presley (who would shortly move on to RCA Victor and megastardom) and two other young men, Perkins and Lewis, would create the rockabilly branch of rock 'n' roll.

After Presley's contract was sold to Colonel Tom Parker for $25,000, Perkins had a pop-and-country smash with Blue Suede Shoes, and Lewis followed a year later with the primal boogie Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On. On Dec. 4, 1956, Cash joined the rockers, now known as the Million Dollar Quartet, for an impromptu jam session. Astonishingly, Lewis—the all-time most reckless rock 'n' roller, whom Cash flew in to comfort when Lewis nearly died in the '80s—is the last man standing. "You know," he said in sad wonder last week, "I'm the only one left." (Lewis interrupted his Jacksonville, Fla., concert last Friday night to perform the sacred song Vacation in Heaven in Cash's honor.)

In any class portrait, one notices the similarities. But in this group, Cash stood out—not just with his grave voice and lifer's stare, but with the somber production of his songs. The lyrics Cash wrote for his signature hit I Walk the Line express an unexceptional sentiment: because I love you, I behave. But the thumping bass line and Cash's delivery ("I keep my eyes wide open all the time") make the mood part predatory, part paranoid. Even the upbeat love story Ballad of a Teenage Queen has a spooky side; it sounds as if it's beamed from the bottom of the well of loneliness. Phillips used acoustical reverbs on many Sun productions, but Cash hardly needed it. His voice was its own eerie echo chamber. "His voice was painful, it emoted so much ache and realness," says country star Tim McGraw, who, with his wife Faith Hill, forms a new-generation Cash-Carter duo. "There wasn't anything unreal when you heard Johnny Cash. Faith said today, 'He's the only man in black who can walk straight through the Pearly Gates.'"

Cash moved to Columbia records in 1958, where he had more menacing hits, including the admonitory Ring of Fire ("Love is a burning thing,/ And it makes a fiery ring / Bound by wild desire,/ I fell into a ring of fire"). Some think this was the time of prime Johnny Cash. "He was at his most powerful in the early '60s," says writer-publisher Jack Hurst, author of a book on the Grand Ole Opry. "Back then he was so deeply into the amphetamines that he had lost an awful lot of weight. He looked like a wraith, but a powerful wraith. He was like a prowling tiger onstage. You could see the man fighting demons. This was around the time he was recording Ballads of the True West, and I think he saw visions of himself as an outlaw, with a noose around his neck. He re-created this in his own persona. Against the other side of him it created this huge dramatic tension." Inside Cash, the churchman and the outlaw were having a brawl.

Being on the road for weeks, driving from one town to the next, was exhilarating and exhausting. Country star George Jones, 72, recalls the days when Cash hired him, the Statler Brothers, Stonewall Jackson and other scrounging singers to fill out his tour bill. "Lord, I don't know what we would have done without him," Jones says. "He was our meal ticket." The nonstop nights on the road led to drug and alcohol binges. "We went through those hard times together," Jones says. "We would try to help each other pull through. We'd get together in the dressing room after a show, talk about the mistakes we were making—the pills, the booze, what have you. His first wife Vivian was a wonderful lady. She went through a lot of hell with him. I know she couldn't stand it any more."

It takes a sinner to appreciate the blinding glare of grace. Cash saw the light in 1967, when he began spending quality time with June Carter, of the legendary country clan the Carter family. Carter urged Cash, who was trying to kick his addiction to prescription drugs, to attend services with her at the First Baptist Church of Hendersonville, Tenn. "He said he didn't think he was ready for that," recalls the church's minister Courtney Wilson. "But she told him they could go late and leave early. They came late and sat in the back." That day marked the revival of Cash's churchgoing and the beginning of his great love. He and Carter were married in 1968.

He was even closer to June than to Jesus, but his two loves were connected. "They had a deep, really mystical bond—their love for one another," says Hirshberg, who collaborated with author Mark Zwonitzer on Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone? The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music. "It was deeply undergirded with both religion and a total sense, a real deep-down-where-it-counts belief that God had brought them together. They considered their marriage—the fact that they had found each other—to be a miracle of their faith. Their marriage was an absolute religious experience for both of them."

A solid marriage doesn't guarantee career longevity, but Cash managed both. "We had more than one discussion about the ageism of country and rock," says rocker Tom Petty, who recorded and toured with Cash. "When something's gone past that demographic of appealing to people in their 20s, they don't think it's good anymore. Yet here was the perfect case of a guy who was growing older and his music was growing with him." It was Cash who took Bob Dylan to Music City to make the 1969 Nashville Skyline. Later, he guested on songs with Ray Charles, Emmylou Harris and U2. In the '80s, he teamed with Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Kristofferson for a sometime supergroup called the Highwaymen.

Cash was also loyal to old friends down on their luck. "Johnny always carried people who needed help," says Knox Phillips, Sam's son. "He hired Carl Perkins as part of his band and put him on his TV show, out of love. He did the same for Jerry Lee. No matter how down someone might be or how negative his reputation had become, Johnny always had a come-on-in-and-help-yourself attitude for them." And in 1994 Cash found a sympathetic producer in Rick Rubin, co-founder of the rock-and-rap label Def Jam. It was Rubin's inspiration to return Cash to his roots: the voice, a guitar and the sparest backing. The result was the four American albums. These CDs didn't go platinum—they barely went rhinestone. But they validated Cash's status and towering stature. The latest one, The Man Comes Around, proves to be the perfect send-off for an artist who was failing in everything but artistry. It's Cash's own elegy, eulogy and last words.

The 15 songs include a mess of heartbreak and three wrongful deaths. Throughout, the gravity of Cash's voice lends something sepulchral to the fondest lyrics. When, in his version of Ewan MacColl's The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, he intones, "I know our joy would fill the earth," he could be singing from under it. And in Hurt (the song and the soul-whammingly evocative video) his performance synopsizes a lifetime of anguish. "I hurt myself today/ To see if I still feel," he drones. "I will let you down. I will make you hurt." It is the testimony of a man apologizing for living while preparing for death. On June's next-to-last album, Press On, she duetted with John on Terry Smith's Far Side Banks of Jordan—a song that Cash felt perfectly described their relationship. It's about two elderly people facing the end of their lives, and inevitable separation. June Carter Cash made that trip first, on May 15 of this year, after complications from heart surgery.

Cash was devastated. He knew that if he was to survive June's death, it would be through the thing he knew best: work. "About three days after June passed away," says country music star Marty Stuart, who toured with Cash for 24 years and was for a time married to Johnny's daughter Cindy, "John's son John Carter called me and said, 'Daddy wants to record.' It was the best news I heard in a long time. We all gathered around him and made close to 50 songs." The microphone seemed to be a source of healing and comfort.

Can a wound like the death of the love of one's life ever heal? Not easily; maybe not ever. "He tried to contain himself," Reverend Wilson says, "but her passing took his last spark, the last bit of his heart." Cash admitted as much. "I don't know hardly what to say tonight about being up here without her," he said at his first public appearance after her death, at the Carter Family Fold country music festival in Hiltons, Va. "The pain is so severe there is no way of describing it."

The pain could be described not in words but in sobs. "One day there was just the two of us sitting there," Stuart recalls, "and he broke down and started crying and said, 'Man, I miss her so bad.' I didn't know what to say, so I held his hand. He loved my wife Connie, who's been a friend to that family for a long time. He grabbed my hand and said, 'Son, cling to her; cling to her; cling to her.' What I saw at that moment is that he would have traded every bit of fame, fortune—everything that Johnny Cash meant to the world—for five minutes with June."

Two weeks before Cash's death, Jones and his wife Nancy paid a visit. "He had just gotten back from the dentist," Jones says. "He had numb lips and all. He stayed seated just about the whole time we were there. But he was in a good mood. He said he was fixing to get up and throw that wheelchair away, and he was going back to work." But to others Cash revealed his resignation. Wilson, who visited Cash at Nashville's Baptist Hospital, says, "He was aware things were closing down for him, and he was at peace. He was ready to go home to God."

So many Cash songs speak of the hereafter as if it were waiting, patiently, urgently, in the next room, as if it were comforting—especially for a man who had wrestled his demons to a draw and learned to walk the line—to think of death not as a psycho killer but as a kindly escort. In September When It Comes, a duet recorded this year with his daughter Rosanne, Cash speak-sings this poignant prophecy: "They will fly me, like an angel,/ To a place where I can rest/ When this begins, I'll let you know,/ September when it comes."

For Cash, September came last week, as Americans coped with a more general mourning. And if some felt shock at the news of Cash's passing, they could segue into celebration over a difficult life made exemplary, an outlaw redeemed by a woman's devotion. Besides, if you believe, the Man in Black is now garbed in white, and the doting husband has eternity to spend with his beloved. In a song she composed on the day of Cash's death, country singer Shelby Lynne imagines a sweet reconciliation—the next act of a beautiful duet on a new stage:

Hey, my darlin'
Hey, my sweet
I've waited on the day when I knew we would meet
Hey, my sun
Hey, my moon
Today's the day when Johnny met June

Reported by Jackson Baker/Memphis; Steve Barnes/Dyess, Ark.; Sean Gregory and Jyoti Thottam/New York; Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles; and David E. Thigpen/Chicago
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,485696,00.html

Copyright © 2003 Time Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. Privacy Policy
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Gunny G's GLOBE and ANCHOR Weblog
by R. W. "Dick" Gaines
GySgt USMC (Ret.)
1952-72
Gunny G's...
Marines G&A Sites & Forums!
http://www.angelfire.com/ca/dickg/gunny.html
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MARINE TO THE END...

URL: http://www.myinky.com/ecp/news/article/0,1626,ECP_734_2188470,00.html
Marine fights last battle with friends by side

By Len Wells, Southern Illinois Correspondent
August 17, 2003

Retired Marine Corps Gunnery Sgt. Jesse C. Rockett Jr. drew his final breath last Monday at a hospital in Evansville.

To some, he was just one of thousands of World War II veterans who died across this country last week. To his family and friends, this Springerton, Ill., native and resident of Carmi, Ill., was the epitome of the Marine Corps.

Rockett and a friend from Cisne, Ill., joined the Marines in 1945, taking a train to the induction center in St. Louis. After completing basic training, Rockett was shipped off to Okinawa, where he helped mop up Japanese resistance.

During his 20 years in the Marines, Rockett served on the Chinese mainland and was one of the few remaining members of the China Marine Association.

Rockett served with one of the most infamous Marines, Lee Harvey Oswald.

Rockett once told the story that he was the one who had to drive Oswald to an aid station after Oswald shot himself in the foot trying to get out of the military.

During his lengthy military career, Rockett fought in the Korean War, earning the Bronze Star after engaging the enemy in bloody hand-to-hand combat.

But Rockett's greatest battle was with cancer. In 1984, he contracted throat cancer. He recovered, taught himself to speak again and continued with life, operating a service station in Carmi for many years.

In later years, the cancer spread. He would beat it again, and it would return. A few weeks ago, Rockett was admitted to a hospital in Evansville where he would fight his final battle.

In the last hours of his life, Jesse Rockett asked to see his nephew, Braden Willis II of Enfield, and his grand-nephew, Braden Willis III of Fairfield - both Marine Corps veterans.

Rockett, unable to speak, scrawled his last request on a piece of paper and handed it to his nephews.

"Get as many Marines as you can to carry me out," Rockett wrote. "I want someone singing the Marine Corps Hymn when they pack me out of the church."

Braden Willis III knew how much Marine Corps life meant to his uncle. He stepped out of the hospital room and phoned the USMC recruiting station in Evansville.

"I explained that my uncle was dying, and how much it would mean for him to see Marines in dress blues one more time before he died," Willis said. About 7 o'clock, two Marine Corps sergeants walked into Rockett's room.

"My God, Dad, there are two Marines here," said Rockett's oldest daughter. The Marines - one from Pennsylvania, the other from Maine, leaned over, shook Rockett's hand and thanked him for his service to his country.

A smile crossed Rockett's face as he acknowledged the Marines' presence. Neither had ever met Jesse Rockett Jr., but they understood the unspoken bond that exists between Marines.

By now, as many as 30 family members and friends had crowded into Rockett's room. His breathing became more labored - the end was drawing near.

"It was Aunt Linda Duckworth that started singing an old gospel song," said Braden Willis III. "The rest of us joined in. We sang 'Amazing Grace,' 'Victory in Jesus' and 'The Old Rugged Cross.'"

Two nurses heard the sweet harmony of gospel music flowing from the room and drew closer. Standing at the doorway, tears filled the nurses' eyes.

It was somewhere in the middle of "The Old Rugged Cross" that Jesse Rockett Jr. drew his last breath.

An old Marine who had fought two wars, Rockett's last battle was fought with friends and relatives by his side.

A true Marine to the end.

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THE BREVET RANK...

Brevet Rank In The Civil War

Brevet rank, usually an honor, was borrowed from the British and introduced into the American army during the Revolutionary War. Over the years Congress, in legislation, specified reasons for granting brevet ranks and gave the senate the right to approve or reject them after they were recommended by the president. Army Regulation, published periodically, stipulated that an officer functioned at this brevet rank on special assignment of the president in commands composed of different corps and when in detachments or on courts-martial composed of different corps. In these instances the officers ordinarily received pay based on their brevet rank.

In early 1861 some recent graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point were named brevet 2nd lieutenants because there were not enough vacancies in the Regular Army to give them commissions as 2nd lieutenants. Many officers held brevet commissions higher than their ordinary rank, usually for gallant actions or meritorious service in combat or to allow them to serve in a staff position.
The Civil War encouraged the granting of hundreds of brevet commissions to both Regular and volunteer army officers and to at least one enlisted man, Pvt. Frederick W. Stowe, who was brevetted a 2nd lieutenant. About 1,700 Union officers held brevet rank as brigadier or major general.

The awarding of Numerous new brevets often created confusion, such as in the case of George Armstrong Custer. In addition to holding rank as major general of volunteers in the the Civil War, Custer was a lieutenant colonel in the Regular Army when in 1876 he was killed at the Little Big Horn, and also held brevet commissions as major general of volunteers and major general in the Regular Army. For a long time after the war, the army had to determine the official of many an officer and the rank he should show on his uniform.

Although brevet commissions were provided for in Confederate Army regulation, evidence indicates that officers were not awarded them.
In the years after the Civil War these commissions were issued to some U.S. Army officers for various reasons, but few were awarded after the Spanish-American War. In 1918 Tasker H. Bliss received the last brevet commission.

Source: "Historical Times Encyclopedia of the Civil War" Edited by Patricia L. Faust

RETURN TO CIVIL WAR ARMIES PAGE
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http://www.civilwarhome.com/brevetrank.htm
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THE BREVET RANK USMC

United States Marine Corps Brevet Medal BREVET MEDAL

In its simplest terms, a brevet promotion is an advancement in rank without corresponding advancement in either pay or position. Brevet promotions were widely used in the past to reward outstanding service or gallantry in action. Although they no longer exist in the American military establishment, brevet promotions have a long, colorful and important history. A knowledge of the concept is crucial to understanding the significance of the Brevet Medal and is equally important to understanding the evolution of officer rank in general. Brevets did not originate in this country, but like so many of our other traditions, came to us from England.

As a natural part of the system Their use was limited by Act of Congress on April 6, 1818, which authorized the conferring of brevets on officers of the Army, but required that they be conferred only by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. This Act of Congress also authorized awarding brevet promotions for either extraordinary merit or for the completion of ten years of service. The reason for this provision was simple. Promotions could only be given if there were vacancies through death, resignation, or dismissal and since the Army was so small there were few positions and advancement was slow. Brevet promotions were seen as a solution to the problem. From a cost perspective they had another advantage. Brevet rank entitled the holder to the pay of the brevet rank only if he held a command consistent with that rank. If a captain held a brevet commission as a major but filled a captain's slot, he would only be paid as a captain.

An Act of Congress on April 16, 1814, authorized brevets for the Marine Corps by providing, '7hat the President is hereby authorized to confer brevet rank on such officers of the Marine Corps as shall distinguish themselves by gallant actions and meritorious conduc4 or shall have served ten years in any one grade. " In the 86 years that followed, a total of 121 brevet promotions were granted to 100 Marine Corps officers. Although most of these officers only received one such promotion, fifteen received two and three officers were breveted three times. The first brevet promotion was given to Captain Anthony Gale on April 24, 1814, promoting him to major by reason of not having been a captain for ten years. This Act of Congress did not open a floodgate of brevet promotions; only three other officers received them that year, and no more than seven were granted in any given year until the war with Mexico.

The law authorizing brevets for Marines was modified twenty years later by Act of Congress on June 30, 1834, which also granted Marine Corps officers pay equality with Army officers. In addition, this Act repealed the granting of brevets for ten years service in grade (although those officers who had received such brevets were allowed to retain their rank). This provision made brevet promotions a reward for gallantry in action or meritorious service thereby making the brevet commission one of the most significant ways in which an officer of the Marine Corps could achieve recognition. For the next 81 years it was the highest award a Marine Corps officer could receive

As a result, the need for brevets passed into history - but not until one final chapter had been written: the establishment of the Brevet Medal which was to become unique among American decorations. The following lists the recipients of brevet promotions.

In April 12,1921, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, John A. LeJeune recommended to Secretary of the Navy Edwin Denby, that "an appropriate medal or badge or ribbon be prescribed as an article of uniform to denote the holder of a brevet commission." General LeJeune pointed out that brevet commissions had been conferred upon certain Marine Corps officers for "distinguished conduct or public service m the presence of the enemy" during the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Insurrection, and the Boxer Rebellion. He went on to note that there was no authorization for the award of a decoration or badge to denote a brevet promotion and, in actual practice, the brevet commission, once conferred was quickly forgotten by the service at large. The time-honored brevet had become nothing more than an empty honor and lacked any visible sip of the distinguished service it represented. A different condition, he remarked, existed for officers who had earned distinction in the recently concluded First World War. They had earned several newly created decorations, including the Army's Distinguished Service Cross, the Navy Cross, and the Distinguished Service Medals of both the Army and Navy.

The Marine Corps generally followed the Army's lead in regard to rules and regulations of arms, accouterments, manner of dress, wearing of insignia, and the awarding of decorations and medals. Therefore, by first endorsement to General LeJeune's letter the Secretary of the Navy wrote to Secretary of War John W. Weeks to coordinate action on LeJeune's proposal. He pointed out that the Marine Corps was governed by the same general statutes concerning brevets as the Army and asked for comments from the War Department on LeJeune's proposal. The Navy's position was that any badge prescribed for holders of brevets should be the same for both the Army and the Marine Corps. The Secretary of War replied on May 3, 1921, and his answer was short and to the point The Army did not wish to support LeJeune’s proposal. Since there were no longer any Army officers on active duty who held brevet commissions, and since when such officers were on active duty they wore the insignia of their brevet rank, the War Department did not wish to further distinguish brevets by any kind of special decoration.

Regardless of the negative position of the Navy Department, Brigadier General Charles L. McCawley indorsed the effort, and on June 27, 1921, General LeJeune issued Marine Corps Order Number 26. The importance of the Brevet Medal with respect to other decorations was not recognized at its inception. It was original placed after the campaign in which the brevet was awarded. Shortly after that, it was changed. The Brevet Medal indicated the recipient was holding a commission issued by the President and confirmed by the Senate, "For Distinguished Conduct and Public Service in the Presence of the Enemy." To insure its distinction it was to be worn immediately after the Medal of Honor.

The following twenty men are the only known recipients of the Brevet Medal.

*Information from the book, "The Brevet Medal" by John E. Lelle.
Ref
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/5990/militeria/militia_01.html
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RETHINKING MILITARY PROMOTIONS...

Richard Sinnreich


Time to rethink the military promotion system?

Last week, the Washington Post reported the formal censure by the acting Secretary of the Navy of the retiring commander of Marine Corps forces in Central Command and the Pacific. The censure cited his "lack of judgment" in requiring a subordinate selected for promotion to brigadier general to wear the stars of his new rank prior to receiving the prerequisite Senate approval.

In the military, awarding the insignia of rank in advance of actual promotion is called "frocking." It occurs because a considerable time may elapse between selection for promotion and the date on which the latter legally takes effect. Meanwhile, assignment exigencies may require the selected officer to assume the duties of his or her new rank before actually receiving it.

Usually, such a "promotable" officer must simply operate for a time at the lower rank. In some cases, however, and especially where interaction with foreign military forces is involved, sporting a lower rank than the job requires invites unnecessary complications.

In those circumstances, senior commanders may decide to frock the officer, granting him or her the outward status of the new rank without the associated pay and juridical authority. But the rules governing this practice are very restrictive, especially for flag officers.

In the case in question, the officer was assigned a sensitive command in Kuwait. Although he had been selected for promotion to brigadier general a year earlier, the selection still had not been confirmed. In preempting that confirmation, however well intended, the officer's superior violated an important element of civilian control of the military, to say nothing of a jealously guarded Congressional prerogative.

His scolding thus was justified. But the episode merely highlights a longstanding problem with the way military rank is awarded. In most occupations, the job determines the rank. In the military almost uniquely, the rank at least nominally determines the job.

But today, military rank once awarded is permanent. That wasn't always the case. Until the last century, primarily to accommodate wartime force expansion and peacetime contraction, it was common to "brevet" an officer temporarily to a higher rank.

Like frocking, breveting reflected assignment. Unlike frocking, however, breveting awarded the officer all the pay and privileges of the rank.

More important, when the assignment ended, so also did the brevet. While permanent rank, having been confirmed by Congress, could be reduced or removed only by court-martial, a brevet could be terminated at the stroke of a pen.

For that very reason, breveting was vulnerable to abuse. But it had the virtue of allowing prompt and flexible matching of rank to mission requirements. And because it conferred no permanent authority, it presented no threat to civilian supremacy.

As American military and naval forces transform themselves to accomplish with smaller formations tasks that formerly required much larger ones, it may be time to resurrect the brevet in some modernized form.

Consider, for example, a contingency requiring a relatively small U.S. force — a brigade task force, say — to deploy independently and collaborate with a larger allied or indigenous military organization.

Today, typically, to provide the necessary senior representation, the brigade would be subordinated to a higher headquarters, duplicating commanders and increasing the deployed footprint. Instead, breveting the brigade commander and augmenting his or her staff might well be cheaper and more effective.

Or consider a current Defense Department proposal to replace component commands in overseas theaters — each headed by a 4-star flag officer — with standing joint task forces commanded by 3-stars. The objective, endorsed by most military professionals, is to improve the routine integration of multi-service forces.

But at least one senior commander in Europe has warned that reducing the rank of a task force commander from 4 stars to 3 would seriously diminish his or her ability to deal on an equal level with allied counterparts. In Europe, he contends, credibility tends to be associated with rank more than with position.

Here too, breveting might just as effectively satisfy the representational requirement without permanently inflating general officer ranks or requiring additional and unnecessary headquarters echelons.

Finally, it may be time to reconsider altogether the relationship between promotion and assignment. The traditional model, in which rank is associated with the officer rather than the job, is by no means the only one possible and may no longer be the best.

Any alternative system must reflect the reality that military officers, unlike civilians, lack the freedom to reassign themselves at volition. It must assure them reasonable financial stability and career progression. And of course, it can't be permitted to diminish the basic accountability of military officers to civilian political authority.

Within those broad parameters, however, there remains considerable scope for innovation. Maybe now is the time to begin exploring it.

Lawton’s Richard Hart Sinnreich comments on military issues for The Sunday Constitution.
http://www.lawton-constitution.com/sinnreich/sinnreich.htm


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THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS: PARALLELS IN HISTORY

The Cuban Missile Crisis: Parallels in History
Oct 20, 2003


Summary

The Cuban missile crisis under President John F. Kennedy holds some apt parallels to the challenges currently facing U.S. President George W. Bush.

Analysis

October always reminds us of the Cuban missile crisis. This is the 41st autumn since the defining moment that ended the first phase of the Cold War. In 2003, the memory of the missile crisis is, we believe, particularly apropos. Americans in general tend to think that everything the country is facing at a particular moment is unprecedented. Americans tend to think in extremes. Everything is either worse or better than ever before. Leaders are more corrupt, more perfect, more brilliant or more stupid than they have ever been. Americans lack nothing more than a sense of proportion. It is therefore interesting to look at what historian Barbara Tuchman called a distant mirror to compare the current situation with circumstances the United States faced in the past. This is not intended to either praise or condemn the current administration or the Kennedy administration. It is meant simply to gain some perspective on the current state of affairs.

The Cuban missile crisis started in a series of intelligence blunders that began under one administration and continued into the next. U.S. intelligence under Dwight
Eisenhower misunderstood the nature of Fidel Castro's insurgency and miscalculated the likelihood of his victory. Eisenhower responded by initiating a covert war against Castro that suffered from Eisenhower's desire that it not only work, but that the war be completely deniable.

The result was the Bay of Pigs plan, which had little chance of working in the first place and no chance of working once U.S. President John F. Kennedy tinkered with it. The entire plan was based on a misreading of the mood of the Cuban people. It was based on the assumption that Cubans would welcome an invasion and that, in addition, they would be in a position to rise up against Castro. Whatever the true reason for the failure of the Cubans to rise, U.S. intelligence was wrong: There was no rising.

Intelligence under Kennedy also miscalculated the Soviet Union's intentions toward Cuba. That was an intelligence failure, but it was also a failure on Kennedy's part to appreciate how Soviet leaders viewed him. Kennedy came to power in part over his persistent claim that the Soviets were ahead of the United States in strategic nuclear capability -- what was called the missile gap. In fact, the strategic balance heavily favored the United States, and Kennedy knew it. He hammered the issue because it was a strong plank in his electoral platform.

From Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's point of view, however, the victory of a man who did not seem to grasp the realities of the nuclear balance opened up interesting possibilities. Khrushchev's meeting with Kennedy in Vienna left him with the conclusion that Kennedy was inexperienced, poorly informed and timid. The Bay of Pigs fiasco simply confirmed to Khrushchev that Kennedy was out of his league. Indeed, years of hagiography notwithstanding, Kennedy had little grasp of the international reality when he took office or in the following year.

Khrushchev understood what he thought Kennedy did not, which was that the United States, with missiles in Germany and Turkey and a large intercontinental bomber fleet, could devastate the Soviet Union. The Soviets, on the other hand, could hardly touch the United States. Khrushchev's decision to put missiles into Cuba was a desperate attempt to rectify the balance of power. He assumed, based on Kennedy's abysmal performance to date, that U.S. intelligence might miss the missiles until after they were operational and that, even if they were detected, Kennedy would not have the nerve to take decisive action.

Three things led to the Cuban missile crisis:

1. Consistently poor U.S. intelligence.

2. A prior administration that failed to react to the threat in a timely fashion and in essence passed on the Cuban problem to its successor.

3. A new administration whose president struck his adversaries -- and allies -- as a deer frozen in the headlights.

We will allow our readers to draw the obvious parallels to the current situation.
In spite of these defects, Kennedy recognized that the Soviet move represented a fundamental challenge to U.S. security. He understood that it was much preferable, from the U.S. point of view, for American nuclear weapons to be menacing the Soviet Union rather than have Soviet missiles threatening the United States. While ethically shaky -- if we assume that the basis of ethics is equal treatment -- the view was practically sound for an American president. Thus, in spite of global criticism that he was threatening nuclear war, Kennedy understood that geopolitically he had no choice.
It is interesting to recall that Kennedy -- caught between those who wanted an invasion of Cuba and those who wanted to take no action that might trigger a nuclear war -- chose a compromise path in which the United States announced its commitment through a quarantine policy, without unleashing an invasion. It is also interesting to note that there was a tremendous global uproar over Kennedy's actions. Many allied governments, while publicly supportive, were privately appalled by what they saw as an overreaction. Crowds in European cities -- not to mention the communist world -- demonstrated against U.S. aggression and portrayed Kennedy as a simplistic cowboy, irresponsibly playing with the lives of millions.

Khrushchev's perception was quite different. Realizing that he had miscalculated, he sought a line of retreat. Khrushchev realized too late that however unsophisticated Kennedy might have appeared in Vienna and Berlin and during the Cuban missile crisis, there was no escaping the physical threat that Soviet missiles in Cuba posed to the United States. The physical danger to the United States, more than any other factor, focused Kennedy's mind. Kennedy knew that there was room for error on everything but the physical security of the country. He understood that, geopolitics aside, Khrushchev had crossed a threshold when he introduced the threat, and crossing that threshold changed the entire equation. That Europeans thought him a cowboy was immaterial once the direct security of the United States was at stake.

Kennedy's actions were seen as extreme and disproportionate to the threat. He struck many in the world as reckless and incautious. Countries worldwide pointed at the nuclear threat the United States posed to the Soviet Union and argued that the Soviets were simply balancing things. Kennedy didn't want the threat to be balanced. He wanted the Soviets to remain at risk and the Americans to be safe. As he famously said in connection to other matters, "Life is unfair." It wasn't great philosophy, but it made sense to Americans.

The United States threatened overwhelming force but actually used very little. In the end, Kennedy negotiated a settlement with Khrushchev and then lied about it. In a private deal with the Soviets, the United States agreed to exchange its missiles in Turkey for the Soviet missiles in Cuba. Kennedy's rationale for this was sound. The missiles were obsolete. However, he also understood that -- given his record of weakness in foreign affairs -- he needed to appear to win even if he only tied.

Therefore, holding open the possibility of invasion and even nuclear war as the threat, he extracted a concession from the Soviets that made the withdrawal of the Turkish missiles a secret part of the agreement, which would be void if it were publicly revealed.

In other words, Kennedy lied about the letter and nature of the agreement. He lied explicitly when he asserted that there had been no quid pro quo over the missiles. He then lied in spirit when he made it appear that the Soviets had capitulated in the face of his resolute courage. In fact, there had been a quid pro quo and -- though the United States certainly came out ahead in the immediate deal -- Washington had to give up its own missiles and guarantee that it would not support attempts to overthrow Castro. The United States stopped the missiles. The Soviets secured Cuban communism.

It is interesting to see these parallels:

1. Both Kennedy and current U.S. President George W. Bush were widely perceived as inexperienced in foreign affairs. Their foes perceived them both as bunglers.

2. Both focused intensely on anything that physically threatened the United States.

3. The rest of the world regarded both presidents as overreacting and as cowboys, risking world security on minor provocation.

4. Both were casual with the truth when it suited the national -- or their political -- interests.

It is not clear how much deeper these parallels run.

Kennedy's missile crisis ended in a temporary stalemate. It also triggered a massive Soviet commitment to increase its strategic nuclear capabilities and led to the construction of a massive ICBM force able to threaten the United States from within the Soviet Union. By the end of the decade, the Soviets achieved the strategic nuclear parity they had sought in Cuba. In that sense, Kennedy simply bought a few years -- which was not trivial, but not decisive.

However, Kennedy's next decision -- to increase the U.S. commitment to Vietnam while supporting the overthrow of the Diem government -- proved disastrous. Some claim that Kennedy wanted to withdraw from Vietnam. Perhaps, but we note two facts. No withdrawal took place while he was alive and, more important, it was Kennedy's foreign policy team (including Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara and McGeorge Bundy) who engineered the Vietnam War under former President Lyndon Johnson. Kennedy could have fired them all and built a new team, but we suspect he also would have retained them and followed their advice. They were the winning team in Cuba, after all.

At the decisive moment, Kennedy set the stage for the decline in the second phase of the Cold War. Cuba represented a push. It was a punctuation mark, not a definitive solution to anything. On the contrary, it was an intermediate peak to which the United States would not return until the end of the Cold War. Bush has not yet had his Cuban missile crisis. He has not yet been able to maneuver the war to its decisive moment. He is facing an adversary that is committed to avoiding any decisive moment.

However, the danger that a Cuban missile crisis poses is that of an illusory solution.
All of that is intended to be thoughtful and deep. The point of this essay is simpler however. Americans tend to think of each moment as extraordinarily unique and the present leaders as particularly incompetent. Those who opposed President Bill Clinton thought he was particularly venal, and those who oppose Bush think him uniquely incompetent. It is useful to look back on moments like the Cuban missile crisis, which we tend to see through the prism of time as a particular moment of U.S. courage and decisiveness. Like the current circumstance, it was a moment born of failure, ineptitude and dishonesty, and it ultimately gave rise to the things it was intended to prevent. The president that presided over the crisis is revered today. There are few who were alive in September 1962 who would have thought that Kennedy would be remembered for his strategic acumen. And there are many historians who still wonder what the shouting was about.

Bush's critics should take note of this. And Bush should remember that the kind of victory he gains -- if he gains one at all -- is as important as the victory itself.


Copyright 2003 Strategic Forecasting LLC. All rights reserved.


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By R.W. "Dick" Gaines
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1952-72
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