Re: WANNABE HUNTERS

[<Cfbernard@aol.com>]

Joe,

What are you working on now?  I'm pasting on some readings that I am working 
on with Mike Lynch.  Some will interest you.  Do see the last comment on an 
old French friend, distressing the world by his candor on the tortures for 
which he was responsible in Algeria.

Best,

Carl


You all,

The past several weeks have been fascinating.  Several books have given me a 
broader outlook on the world in which I've lived these 75 years, and some 
insights I want to share. The most recent one I've finished is an anthology 
by Don Vandegriff and a number of other competent young thinkers on defense 
matters.  It is titled Spirit, Blood, and Treasure.  Its focus is on 
personnel matters, one of my own long term concerns as some of you know from 
my appreciation of the message from Stouffer, "Assigning a stupid man to the 
infantry is tantamount to condemning him to death."  We have not yet faced 
this grievous, enduring problem.

One of Vandegriff's contributors, Chuck Spinney, wrote the book's remarkable 
last chapter that describes a fault that deserves much more attention than it 
has gotten in the past.  I refer to the inability of the Pentagon's managers 
to account each year for more billions of the dollars they are furnished.  
This complements the other personnel faults cited in this work.  Mike Lynch 
has my copy of the book now.  I will supplement my own cri de coeur with his 
hand written comments from each page when it is returned.

All of you were in my mind when I finished a new book, A War of Nerves, 
Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century, by Ben Shephard.  It got 
into my consciousness initially because of a brief note about it in the 
review section of the NYT's on June 3.  It spoke of the historical 
relationship between soldiers and the psychiatrists that treat them, the 
total focus of this historical work.  Some of us are old enough to recall 
hearing from old veterans about the "shell shock" of WW-One from persons 
exposed to it.  A number of us have ourselves been exposed to later versions 
of this disabling phenomenon.  Fortunately, we've missed one feature Shephard 
discusses, the use of poison gases and their horrible impact on men in the 
trenches.

This history of the psychic effects of combat on some soldiers was not my 
first academic exposure to such data.  It inspired me to consolidate some of 
my prejudices and send them to the author and a couple of the people he 
cites.  My personal acquaintance with the disability combat visited on me and 
a number of people with whom I've served has convinced me part of the history 
of "Love" Company, 21st Infantry should be reviewed by those concerned with, 
and responsible for our military's future. This theme is relatively simple:

        The psychic disabilities imposed on individuals in "Love" Company by 
the combat it endured for the first eight months of our service in Korea did 
not disable them during this time, nor after their military service.  The 
cohesion imposed on us by the character and capabilities of our NCOs and 
officers went far beyond its utility in Korea itself.  Our ability to become 
and remain a first class fighting command has critical lessons for today's 
Army.

        We learned how to be together as a solid element.  Our faith in one 
another was earned, imitated by newcomers, and never wavered. We loved one 
another.  All of this allowed us to avoid the disabilities that afflicted 
other individuals and units, including many of those from our own regiment. 

Shephard's very relevant history examines British and American units exposed 
to the disabling psychic impact of combat.  He has gone much further 
analyzing the effect of war on combatant's nerves than my own narrow 
experience in a Korean era rifle company.  He provoked my memory's return to 
that distressing era.  My/our experience provides another sort of solution to 
this problem (prevention of it, actually) besides the provision of 
psychiatrists to treat affected soldiers.  

The handful of stand-out NCOs who came intermittently with our sporadically 
assigned replacements after our catastrophic first battle (39 KIA, 54 POW, 5 
MIA, 4 WIA, 17 present for duty), made an incredible difference to what we 
became, as opposed to some other units. These NCOs were met by the only 
surviving SGT of our first fight, Hugh Brown, himself in the Company only 
four (?) days before we paid dearly to fulfill a "hold at all costs" order 
designed to buy more time for the defense General MacArthur had in mind.  The 
only assigned officer to survive this first fight (me!) had been gone from 
the unit nine days to help load out Task Force Smith, fight its first battle 
with them, and then spend three cautious days walking back to "Love" Company, 
my real home.  This background is to insist on the dimension of the recovery 
of our company and the difference that surviving sergeant made.

I underline "sergeant" because our regimental surgeon's treatment for the 
TFS' fight (medicinal alcohol, band-aids, and a night on a medic's stretcher) 
did not seem adequate for him to repeat after the second fight, and he sent 
me back to Japan.  Brown kept our remnants (17 men, including him) together 
and functioning.  My unauthorized return eight (?) days later set a pattern 
followed by many of us thereafter.  Stealing a jeep by our stand-out sergeant 
twice from the medics and coming home ("Love"Company) as soon as his wounds 
stopped bleeding made this the correct behavior for everyone.  His last two 
wounds on the same day in February were too severe for him to do this, but we 
all knew by then what it took to "keep the faith."  He had deserted "forward" 
to us from the Division Headquarters in early July, a pattern that did far 
more for our esprit than just keeping our personnel numbers higher.  (You may 
know of the late  Harry Summers, who later became a serious thinker on 
defense matters.  He got himself down from the Division's miserable tank 
outfit where he was a company clerk to join his friend, this Sergeant.)

The enclosed statement by another of our replacement officers, T.L. Epton: 
"I'll swear to my dying day we were different" describes how we treated one 
another.  It tells what we were and how we maintained our unit, despite the 
horrors we endured.  My belief is that our Army needs to follow the pattern 
established by that sergeant who had served in Merrill's Marauders in WWII, 
so we don't have to repair disabled men with the aid of psychiatrists.  We 
can't do this by peopling our infantry with men from such outfits as 
MacNamera's "Project 100,000."  We need hear and contend with the thrust of 
Stouffer's conclusions from WWII..  Our effort to get our POWs the Bronze 
Star for Meritorious Service they earned and were denied by bureaucrats 
thinking like clerks is underway and may succeed as did our effort with the 
CIB for them.

Professor William O'Neill's American High, the Years of Confidence 1945-1960, 
is another fascinating work for us would-be historians to use.  His ten 
chapters on this vital period make today's world far easier to understand.  
They do not make living in it more comfortable.

My reaction to General Wesley Clark's account of the air war in Kosovo, 
Waging Modern War, is the second enclosure.  I will give you Mike Lynch's 
reaction to it as soon as it is available.  Douglas MacGregor's concepts for 
the transformation of our Army and the rest of the Defense Department are so 
clear that they should be adopted now by SECDEF Rumsfeld.  My pious hope is 
that this is announced tomorrow.  Both men would probably be assassinated by 
the weekend, but it is a cost worth paying.  See Doug's Breaking the Phalanx.

A French general, Paul Aussaresses, has attracted much attention in Paris 
with his candid discussion of how torture was used in their war in Algeria.  
This somber tale became public a year ago when he was interviewed by Le 
Monde, their principal newspaper.  The book he wrote on the subject, Services 
Speciaux Algerie 1955-1957, was published seven weeks ago.  It has been on 
their "best-sellers" list since, # 4, this week.  It is expected to sell 
200,000 copies at the rate it is going now.  We should all read it, 
particularly given our need to understand and practice "urban warfare."

Paul and I became very close while I was at the Special Warfare School at 
Fort Bragg (61-63).  He used to come up most months to explain why they had 
lost their war in Indo-China; why we would lose ours; and why we should not 
go there.  The short-term intelligence success of torture, and its longer 
term failure with the people we were trying to help was proven by our own 
efforts in Vietnam.  Not incidentally, we got the concept for what we called 
the Phoenix program from him in 1962.  Sadly, our senior people could not 
hear his message about not going to Vietnam.