This Side Toward Enemy

by Patrick McDermott

Reference Notes

Pardon my Draft

I'm making these chapters available here even though they aren't polished. Eventually the typos will be cleaned and extensive links will be in place.

For your further reading and research, I have placed links to more information. Links to the source on Amazon.com where you can research or purchase are in Olive Drab.

Chapter 2. Why We Fight

“People give up their lives for many reasons. For friendship, for love, for an ideal. And people kill for the same reasons…” —Opening of the martial arts movie Hero.

Li Feng, Zhang Yimou & Wand Bin (screenplay & story), Jet Li, Maggie Cheung & Zhang Ziyi (actors), Hero, Burbank: Miramax Films / Quentin Taratino (38012), 2002, introduction voiceover.

“On the Rainy River”

O’Brien, Tim, The Things They Carried, New York: Broadway Books (0-7679-0289-0), 1998 (1990), p. 61.

“I do not know why men fight wars, though I make an attempt to sketch an answer in the pages that follow.”

Keegan, John, War and Our World, New York: Vintage Books / Random House (0-375-70520-1), 2001 (1998), p. ix.

“The deeper we delve in search of these causes the more of them we discover, and each cause or series of causes appears to us equally valid in itself, and equally false by its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the event.”

Quoted in Ehrenreich, Barbara, Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War, New York: Metropolitan Books / Henry Holt (0-8050-5077-9), 1997, p. 4.

“For most of the troops, the war might just as well have been about good looks, so evanescent at times did its meaning and purpose seem.”

Fussell, Paul, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, New York: Oxford University Press (0-19-503797-9), 1989, p. 129.

“This absence of political purpose is one of the many surprises uncovered by recent research into the supposedly Good War.”

Carnes, Mark C. (editor), Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront America’s Past (and Each Other), New York: Simon & Schuster (0-684-85765-0), 2001, p. 324.

“Benjamin L. Alpers noted a study by the Office of War Information which found one out of three servicemen had never even heard of the Four Freedoms and only one out of ten could name all four.”

Carnes, Mark C. (editor), Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront America’s Past (and Each Other), New York: Simon & Schuster (0-684-85765-0), 2001, p. 325.

“That crap has nothing to do with it”.

Webster, David Kenyon, Parachute Infantry: An American Paratrooper’s Memoir of D-Day and the Third Reich, New York: Delta / Dell / Random House (0-385-33649-7), 2002, p. 30.

“My sacrifice was not for the Iraqi people. It was for the American people” She volunteered for service in Iraq, but says she would have voted against it if she had been in Congress at the time.

Duckworth, Tammy, interview on This Week with George Stephanopolous, ABC, December 18, 2005.

“We all thought that was a great idea and that it was heartwarming we could agree with the locals on something.”

Crawford, John, The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier’s Account of the War in Iraq, New York: Riverhead Books / Penguin Group (1-57322-314-X), 2005, p. 116.

“War is a continuation of politics by other means.”

Clausewitz (1833), book 1, chap 1, sec 24: politics by other means: von Clausewitz, Carl, Hans W. Gatzke (translator from German), Principles of War in Roots of Strategy: Book 2, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books (0-8117-2260-0), 1987 (Vom Kriege, 1833).

“What men say, the speeches diplomats give, the reasons states go to war, all this ‘in word’ (logos) is as likely to cloak rather than to elucidate what they will do ‘in deed’ (ergon). Thucydides teaches us to embrace skepticism, expecting us to look to national self-interest, not publicized grievances, when wars of our own age inevitably break out.”

Hanson, Victor Davis, A War Like No Other: How The Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War, New York: Random House (1-4000-6095-8), 2005, p. 7.

The Savage Wars of Peace, the title of which underscores the ambiguity of these limited wars: 1. Punitive; 2. Protective; 3. Pacification; and 4. Profiteering.

Boot, Max, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, New York: Basic Books / Perseus Books (0-465-00721-X), 2003 (2002), p. xv-xvi.

The Influence of Sea Power upon History

Mahan, Alfred Thayer, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1805, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall (0-13-464537-5), 1980 (1890).

“Imperialist officers such as Leonard Wood and Douglas MacArthur argued that the security of the United States depended on trade and power projection”.

Linn, Brian McAllister, Guardians of Empire: The U.S. Army and the Pacific, 1902-1940, Chapel Hill & London: The University of North Carolina Press (0-8078-4815-8), 1997, p. xii.

“Even though their Commander in Chief tells them they are fighting in Iraq to protect American freedom, few would be shaken to discover that they might actually be leading a grab for oil.”

Wright, Evan, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New face of American War, Berkley Caliber, New York: Berkley Publishing Group (0-425-20040-X), 2005 (2004), p. 6.

“The war in the Pacific was started over oil.”

Dunnigan, James F. & Albert A. Nofi, The Pacific War Encyclopedia, New York: Checkmark Books (0-8160-4393-0), 1998, p. 455.

“The history of the United States shows that in spite of the varying trend of the foreign policy of succeeding administrations, this Government has interposed or intervened in the affairs of other states with remarkable regularity, and it may be anticipated that the same general procedure will be followed in the future.”

Quoted in Boot, Max, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power, New York: Basic Books / Perseus Books (0-465-00721-X), 2003 (2002), p. xii.

“I thought this war was probably wrong, didn’t want to go. The lies that got us here, that killed some of us, that wounded and maimed more of us: Only the most messed-up-patriotic-head-up-his-ass-blind-faith-my-country-right-or-wrong soldier believed them.”

Williams, Kayla with Michael E. Staub, Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army, New York: W.W. Norton (0-393-06098-5), 2005, p. 14.

“That was what kept me going: hoping I could make a difference; hoping I could provide good intelligence that saved even one life.”

Williams, Kayla with Michael E. Staub, Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army, New York: W.W. Norton (0-393-06098-5), 2005, p. 70.

“What I have seen is the commitment of youth who, in good faith, believed that Bolshevism was their common foe; a cause that in their eyes was noble, even greater than mere patriotism because it united young patriots from many countries of Europe.”

Voss, Johann, Black Edelweiss: A Memoir of Combat and Conscience by a Soldier of the Waffen-SS, Bedford, Pennsylvania: The Aberjona Press (0-9666389-8-0), 2002, p. 7.

“Athens and Sparta each oversaw alliances of many smaller city-states, as complex and difficult to manage as either bloc in the Cold War.”

Kaplan, Robert D., Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands A Pagan Ethos, New York: Vintage Books / Random House (0-375-72627-6), 2002 (2001), p. 46.

“Thucydides’ description of naked and labyrinthine calculations of power and interest” between the changing partners is therefore “utterly confusing”.

Kaplan, Robert D., Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands A Pagan Ethos, New York: Vintage Books / Random House (0-375-72627-6), 2002 (2001), p. 47.

He collected the letters and diaries of over a thousand soldiers on both sides, and examined what they said about why they were fighting.

McPherson, James M., For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought In The Civil War, New York: Oxford University Press (0-19-512499-5), 1997, p. viii.

The Killer Angels.

Shaara, Michael, The Killer Angels, New York: Ballantine Books (0-345-34810-9), 1993 (1974).

Gettysburg

Maxwell, Ronald F. (screenwriter & director), Tom Berenger, Jeff Daniels, Martin Sheen (actors), Gettysburg [based on the novel The Killer Angels by Jeff Shaara], Burbank: Ted Turner Pictures / Warner Video (0-7806-3277-X), 2005 (1992).

“If everyone would only fight for his own convictions, there’d be no war.”

Tolstoy, Count Leo, Constance Garnett (translator from Russian), War and Peace, New York: The Modern Library / Random House, (1869), p. 19 (Part I, V).

“Some came mainly because we were bored at home—thought this looked like it might be fun. Some came because we were ashamed not to. Many of us came because it was the right thing to do.”

Maxwell, Ronald F. (screenwriter & director), Tom Berenger, Jeff Daniels, Martin Sheen (actors), Gettysburg [based on the novel The Killer Angels by Jeff Shaara], Burbank: Ted Turner Pictures / Warner Video (0-7806-3277-X), 2005 (1992), disk 2, 27:00.

Storm of Steel,

Jünger, Ernst, Michael Hofmann (translator from German), Storm of Steel, New York: Penguin Books (0-14-243790-5), 2003 (Stahlgewittern, 1920).

Testament of Youth.

Brittain, Vera, Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925, New York: Penguin Books (0-14-018844-4), 1989 (1933).

“But it seems to me that to refrain from fighting in a cause like this because you do not approve of warfare would be about as sensible as refusing to defend yourself against the attacks of a madman because you did not consider lunacy an enlightened or desirable condition.” I

Brittain, Vera, Alan Bishop & Mark Bostridge, editors, Letters from a Lost Generation—First World War Letters of Vera Brittain and Four Friends: Roland Leighton, Edward Brittain, Victor Richardson, Geoffrey Thurlow, Boston: Northeastern University Press (1-55553-379-5), 1999 (1998), p. 29.

“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

As quoted by James Boswell, collected in Congressional Research Staff, Suzy Platt, editor, Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations, New York: Barnes & Noble Books (0-8802-9768-9), 1993, # 1306, p. 247.

“Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.”

As quoted by Slidell Mackenzie, collected in Congressional Research Staff, Suzy Platt, editor, Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations, New York: Barnes & Noble Books (0-8802-9768-9), 1993, #346, p. 70.

“that honor and integrity are personal qualities, not institutional ones, not ones we should expect the state to always have. If you don’t like the policy, tough. Bad things happen in this world.”

Quoted in Kaplan, Robert D., Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground, New York: Random House (1-4000-6132-6), 2005, pp. 27-28.

“Promises like these would not have put fire in the bellies of many Allied troops”.

Harries, Meirion & Susie, Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army, New York: Random House (0-394-56935-0), 1991, p. 323.

Crusade in Europe

Eisenhower, Dwight D., Crusade in Europe: A Personal Account of World War II, Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1948.

Col. David Hackworth: “I was interested in sex and adventure. And it seemed to me the Army provided both.”

Hackworth, Colonel David, Interview re About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior on Brian Lamb’s Booknotes (transcript retrieved from Va href;"www.cspan.org" target="_blank" >www.cspan.org July 6, 2006), CSPAN Television, May 7, 1989.

“The Most Dangerous Game”. In the short story of that name, the most dangerous game is revealed to be—other men.

Connell, Richard, “The Most Dangerous Game”, 1924. Widely available in anthologies and reprints and at http://eserver.org/fiction/the_most_dangerous_game.html.

“As an Irishman, he could not hate the Germans or love the English; his impulse to enlist came from an existential love of adventure.”

Nims, John Frederick, Western Wind: an introduction to poetry: New York: Random House (0-394-31231-7), 1974, p. 163.

“I joined the army in 1964 to become a helicopter pilot.”

Mason, Robert, Chickenhawk, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books (0-14-007218-7), 1984 (1983), p. 17.

“I did know that I wanted to fly.”

Mason, Robert, Chickenhawk, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books (0-14-007218-7), 1984 (1983), p. 18.

“I was not committed to a cause. To paraphrase Mohammad Ali, I had no enmity toward these little people.”

Dockery, Martin J., Lost in Translation: A Combat Advisor’s Story, New York: Presidio Press / Ballantine Books (0-89141-808-3), 2003, p. 14.

“So why did I volunteer? The answer is that I asked to go to Vietnam for the excitement and adventure it promised.”

Dockery, Martin J., Lost in Translation: A Combat Advisor’s Story, New York: Presidio Press / Ballantine Books (0-89141-808-3), 2003, p. 14.

Many in the current volunteer army enjoy the soldiering life for its own sake.

Kaplan, Robert D., Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground, New York: Random House (1-4000-6132-6), 2005, p. 8.

“the military would probably be a more adventurous version of camping and hunting, which I’d always loved. Whatever I did in the Army would be better than bagging groceries at the supermarket or fixing outboards with my dad.”

Franks, General Tommy with Malcolm McConnell, American Soldier, New York: 10 ReganBooks (0-06-073158-3), 2004, p. 34.

“The most extreme experience a human being can go through is being a combat infantryman”,

Quoted in Fussell, Paul, Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic, Boston: Little Brown (0-316-29717-8), 1996, p. 123.

“The medal that is worn above all others is the Combat Infantryman’s Badge. For the career man, combat is the essential experience—both as a man and as a soldier.”

Just, Ward, To What End: Report From Vietnam, New York: BBS Public Affairs (1-891620-77-0), 2000 (1968), p. 62.

“For some, the Army is a path up from the gangs and violence of the inner city or the despair of poverty. For many it is a way to make their own way in the world.”

Clancy, Tom, Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment, New York: Berkley Books (0-425-15836-5), 1994, p. 198.

a bonus of $400 to enlist or re-enlist for three years.

Kautz, August V., The 1865 Customs of Service for Non-commissioned Officers and Soldiers, Second Edition, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania: Stackpole Books (0-8117-0399-1), 2001 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1864), p. 17.

“There are many reasons to join the Army. But without a doubt it’s a great way—leaving aside the whole prospect of getting maimed or killed—to better your career prospects.”

Williams, Kayla with Michael E. Staub, Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army, New York: W.W. Norton (0-393-06098-5), 2005, p. 41.

cited money for grad school as one of her motivators.

Williams, Kayla with Michael E. Staub, Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army, New York: W.W. Norton (0-393-06098-5), 2005.

The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell,

Crawford, John, The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier’s Account of the War in Iraq, New York: Riverhead Books / Penguin Group (1-57322-314-X), 2005, p. xii.

“To the question ‘Why war?’, therefore, Sandhurst supplied the answer that the professional soldiers of constitutional states fight wars because it is their duty to do so.”

Keegan, John, War and Our World, New York: Vintage Books / Random House (0-375-70520-1), 2001 (1998), p. xi.

“were all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed captains and majors and lieutenant colonels.”

Lamb, Brian, Booknotes: America’s Finest Authors on Reading, Writing, and the Power of Ideas, New York: Times Books (0-8129-2847-4), 1997, p. 335.

“But we were ready to go, and this was the great adventure of our young military careers.”

Lamb, Brian, Booknotes: America’s Finest Authors on Reading, Writing, and the Power of Ideas, New York: Times Books (0-8129-2847-4), 1997, p. 335.

We aren’t no thin red ’eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too, But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you; An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints, Why, single men in barricks don’t grow into plaster saints

Kipling, Rudyard, Rudyard Kipling: Complete Verse, Definitive Edition, New York: Anchor Books / Random House (0-385-26089-X), 1989, 1940 (1891-1935), p. 397.

“In many cultures, during much of history, soldiers were seen as the dregs of society, and were recruited from the gutters.”

Clancy, Tom, Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment, New York: Berkley Books (0-425-15836-5), 1994, p. 197.

“People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

Quoted in Kaplan, Robert D., Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground, New York: Random House (1-4000-6132-6), 2005, p. 191.

The Caine Mutiny,

Wouk, Herman, The Caine Mutiny, New York: Pocket Books (0-671-82816-9), 1973 (1951), pp. 571-572.

Robert Fromme, wrote an article Vietnam magazine about SSgt. Andujar, whom he remembered and respected three decades after his death.

Fromme, Robert, “Death of a Staff Sergeant”, Vietnam, June 2002.

“Although I dueled more than sixty times, never once did I lose.”

Miyamoto Musashi, Thomas Cleary (translator), The Book of Five Rings, Boston & London: Shambhala Pocket Classics (0-87773-998-6), 1994 (Go Rin no Sho, 1643), p. 2.

“For an unemployed warrior, fighting in battle gave him a chance to be noticed for his skills and, if he excelled, to be taken on as a martial arts instructor under the patronage of the lord whose forces he had joined.”

Wilson, William Scott, The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi, Tokyo: Kodansha International (4-7700-2942-X), 2004, pp. 32-33.

learn valuable skills that they could use in the Irish War for Independence from Britain that he incorrectly expected would soon come.

Keneally, Thomas, The Great Shame: and the Triumph of the Irish in the English-Speaking World, New York: Anchor Books / Random House (0-385-72026-2), 1999 (1998).

“gave to the war, the real war, the one the United States was fighting at that very moment.”

Timberg, Robert, The Nightingale’s Song, New York: Touchstone Book / Simon & Schuster (0-684-82673-9), 1996 (1995), p. 163.

“Any objective study quickly reveals, however, that most wars are begun for reasons which have nothing to do with justice, have results quite different from those proclaimed as their objects, if indeed they have any clear-cut result at all, and visit during their course a great deal of casual suffering on the innocent.”

Keegan, John, The Face of Battle, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books (0-14-004897-9), 1983 (1976), p. 59.

“If I wanted to save people, I’d have joined the Salvation Army or the Peace Corps.”

Hackworth, Colonel David H. & Tom Mathews, Hazardous Duty: One of America’s Most Decorated Soldiers Reports from the Front with the Truth About the U.S. Military Today, New York: Perennial / HarperCollins (978-0-380-72742-1 0-380-72742-0), 2001 (1996), p. 130.

“truly believed we were right to help the South Vietnamese. It was as good a place as any to take a stand against the Communists, who were behind the Viet Cong (I was an avowed and enthusiastic proponent of the ‘better to fight them in Southeast Asia than on the beaches of Santa Monica’ philosophy), and besides, wasn’t that what America was all about, to help the poor and downtrodden, to help preserve freedom for those who couldn’t do it alone?”

Hackworth, Colonel David H. & Julie Sherman, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, New York: Touchstone / Simon & Schuster (0-671-69534-7), 1990 (1989), p. 446.

“I’m fighting this war because I believe that inside each gook is a freedom loving American waiting to get out.”

Quoted in Chattarji, Subarno, Memories of a Lost War: American Poetic Response to the Vietnam War, Oxford: Clarenson Press / Oxford University Press (0-19-924711-0), 2001, p. 4, fn.

“Man, did he love these people.”

Wolff, Tobias, In Pharaoh’s Army: Memories of the Lost War, New York: Vintage Books (0-679-76023-7), 1994, p. 102.

“opinion of the people of Vietnam was not high. It would become even lower with more experience.”

Lanning, Michael Lee, The Only War We Had: A Platoon Leader’s Journal of Vietnam, New York: Ivy Books (0-8041-0005-5), 1987, p. 45.

“I hated Vietnamese men.”

Santoli, Al, Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Thirty-three Americans who Fought It, New York: Ballantine Books (0-345-32279-7), 1981, pp. 36-37.

“What you do is, you load all the Friendlies onto ships and take them out to the South China Sea. Then you bomb the country flat. Then you sink the ships.”

Gibson, James William, The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam, New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press (0-87113-799-2), 2000 (1986), p. 8.

“I didn’t trust the South Viets any more than their guerrilla brothers and cousins.”

Hackworth, Colonel David H. & Eilhys England, Steel my Soldiers’ Hearts: The Hopeless to Hardcore Transformation of 4^th Battalion, 39^th Infantry, United Sates Army, Vietnam, New York: Rugged Land (1-59071-002-9), 2002, p. 364.

“The officers were aware from their own surveys that over 40 percent of the Marines disliked the Vietnamese. The problem was particularly acute among the small unit leaders—the lieutenants and sergeants—whose opinions had considerable effect on their men.”

West, Bing, The Village, New York: Pocket Books (978-0-7434-5757-6; 0-7434-5757-9), 2003 (1972), p. 13.

“suggest that of our squad leaders graduating from NCO Leadership School less than one in five marches forth with a positive attitude toward the ARVN and PF, and that probably one-third go forth with a strong dislike for the local people.”

West, Bing, The Village, New York: Pocket Books (978-0-7434-5757-6; 0-7434-5757-9), 2003 (1972), p. 13.

“I speak the language, and I have Arab friends, so I believe I’m better equipped than most soldiers to see these civilians as people. Not simply as the enemy. But even for me there are times I am feeling overwhelmed by the situation. God, why can’t we just kill everyone—or leave them to fucking kill each other?”

Williams, Kayla with Michael E. Staub, Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army, New York: W.W. Norton (0-393-06098-5), 2005, p. 238.

“There is something in human nature that seduces us into reducing war and its offspring into clearly divided teams of good and evil.”

Hackworth, Colonel David H. & Tom Mathews, Hazardous Duty: One of America’s Most Decorated Soldiers Reports from the Front with the Truth About the U.S. Military Today, New York: Perennial / HarperCollins (978-0-380-72742-1 0-380-72742-0), 2001 (1996), p. 114.

“view that the oppressed look admirable only until they win”.

Ryan, Alan, Bertrand Russell: A Political Life, New York: Hill and Wang (0-8090-2897-2), 1988, p. 204.

“But on any given day it could be hard as hell to tell the good guys from the bad guys.”

Hackworth, Colonel David H. & Tom Mathews, Hazardous Duty: One of America’s Most Decorated Soldiers Reports from the Front with the Truth About the U.S. Military Today, New York: Perennial / HarperCollins (978-0-380-72742-1 0-380-72742-0), 2001 (1996), p. 114.

“America’s initial motivation in involving itself had been that the loss of Vietnam would lead to the collapse of noncommunist Asia and to Japan’s accommodation to communism. In terms of that analysis, in defending South Vietnam, America was fighting for itself, regardless of whether South Vietnam was democratic or could ever be made so.”

Kissinger, Henry, Diplomacy, New York: Simon & Schuster (0-671-65991-X), 1994, p. 658.

“Successive American administrations insisted that fundamentally it wasn’t about Vietnam at all. It was about communist expansionism. It was about dominoes tumbling to Singapore. It was about the Soviet Union and what the Red Army would do in Europe if the American army failed to hold the line in South Vietnam.”

Just, Ward, To What End: Report From Vietnam, New York: BBS Public Affairs (1-891620-77-0), 2000 (1968), pp. xiv-xv.

“The United States believed we had to meet the communist challenge wherever it occurred because our freedom and way of life were ultimately at stake. That is the reason we were willing to help South Vietnam, which had a non-communist, totalitarian government, defend itself. It was thought to be in our own interest.”

Dockery, Martin J., Lost in Translation: A Combat Advisor’s Story, New York: Presidio Press / Ballantine Books (0-89141-808-3), 2003, p. 10.

“burned to fight the enemy. Who was the enemy? Nobody knew.”

Quoted in Keegan, John (editor), The Book of War: 25 Centuries of War Writing, New York: Penguin Books (0-14-029655-7), 2000 (1999), p. 249.

“We’d as soon as fought the French or Belgians as the Germans.”

Quoted in Holmes, Richard, Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle, New York: The Free Press / Macmillan (0-02-915020-5), 1986 (Firing Line, 1985), p. 286.

“We’ll do it; what is it?”

Major Tom Bridges of the 4^th Dragoon Guards, in 1914. Quoted in Holmes, Richard, Acts of War: The Behavior of Men in Battle, New York: The Free Press / Macmillan (0-02-915020-5), 1986 (Firing Line, 1985), p. 286.

“The Pentagon Papers”

Herring, George C. (editor), The Pentagon Papers, Abridged Edition, New York: McGraw-Hill (0-07-028380-X), 1993 (1967).

“Though I was pleased at the president’s decision to oppose a colonialist policy, I would have carried out his orders in a different direction with full commitment.”

Ellsberg, Daniel, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, New York: Viking (0-670-03030-9), 2002, p. 29.

“Among professional soldiers there is seldom hate down at the dying level.”

Hackworth, Colonel David H. & Tom Mathews, Hazardous Duty: One of America’s Most Decorated Soldiers Reports from the Front with the Truth About the U.S. Military Today, New York: Perennial / HarperCollins (978-0-380-72742-1 0-380-72742-0), 2001 (1996), p. 103.

“We must kill him, of course, before he kills us.”

Hackworth, Colonel David H. & Tom Mathews, Hazardous Duty: One of America’s Most Decorated Soldiers Reports from the Front with the Truth About the U.S. Military Today, New York: Perennial / HarperCollins (978-0-380-72742-1 0-380-72742-0), 2001 (1996), p. 103.

“But when the shooting is over, most grunts have more in common with other grunts, even old enemies, than they ever will have with the politicians who sent them.”

Hackworth, Colonel David H. & Tom Mathews, Hazardous Duty: One of America’s Most Decorated Soldiers Reports from the Front with the Truth About the U.S. Military Today, New York: Perennial / HarperCollins (978-0-380-72742-1 0-380-72742-0), 2001 (1996), p. 103.

“Tactical stability springs from the psychological conditions that induce men to face life, conditions such as loyalty, friendship, confidence and responsibility to others.”

Fox, Richard Allan, Jr., Archaeology, History, and Custer’s Last Battle: the Little Big Horn Reexamined, Norman: Red River Books / University of Oklahoma Press (0-8061-2998-0), 1993, p. 46.

For Cause & Comrades.

McPherson, James M., For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought In The Civil War, New York: Oxford University Press (0-19-512499-5), 1997.

“Brotherhood”.

McManus, John C., The Deadly Brotherhood: The American Combat Soldier in World War II, New York: Presidio Press / Ballantine Books (0-89141-823-7), 2003 (1998), p. 321.

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother.”

Shakespeare, William, King Henry V, Act IV, Scene III, London, 1599.

“Sure, I was fighting for America, all that was “right” and “true”, for the flag, the national anthem, and Mom’s Apple Pie. But all that came in second to the fact that the reason I fought was for my friends.”

Hackworth, Colonel David H. & Julie Sherman, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior, New York: Touchstone / Simon & Schuster (0-671-69534-7), 1990 (1989), p. 111.

“U.S. troops fought to preserve the lives of men in their primary group while ideological reasons were of much less importance.”

Gibson, James William, The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam, New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press (0-87113-799-2), 2000 (1986), p. 219.

“As a professional warrior, politics and ideology really don’t enter into his thoughts about why he is here in the desert, waiting to invade a country.”

Quoted in Wright, Evan, Generation Kill: Devil Dogs, Iceman, Captain America and the New face of American War, Berkley Caliber, New York: Berkley Publishing Group (0-425-20040-X), 2005 (2004), p. 31.

“Our objective is to kill him before he kills us. Out here, there are no international politics.”

Herbert, Lt. Col. Anthony B. with James T. Wooten, Soldier, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston (0-03-091456-6), 1973, p. 233.

“I took an oath saying that I’d protect this country from all enemies foreign and domestic—I didn’t say I’d determine who the enemies were!”

Bryan, C.D.B., Friendly Fire, New York: Bantam Books (0-553-10858-1), 1977 (1976), p. 346.

“I’m a professional soldier. They say ‘go’ I go. The politics of the war, that’s not my job.”

Stewart, James B., Heart of a Soldier: A Story of Love, Heroism, and September 11^th, New York: Simon & Schuster (0-7432-4098-7), 2002, p. 146.

“The U.S. military’s men and women are professionals; they are soldiers by choice; it is their chosen career. For whatever reason they joined—love of country, money for college, avoiding jail, a taste for violence, a desire to travel, shelter from a competitive economy, or a hundred other reasons—the contract is as it was in ancient times: In return for getting what you sought by enlisting, the nation sends you where you are needed and you die if necessary.”

Anonymous [Michael Scheuer], Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror, Washington, DC: Bassey’s (1-57488-849-8), 2004, p. 243.

“Liberalism at home and a pragmatic, at times ruthless policy abroad have not been uncommon in the history of some empires.”

Kaplan, Robert D., Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground, New York: Random House (1-4000-6132-6), 2005, p. 12.

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Copyright ©2009 Patrick McDermott