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Young Man's Work
By Slab
The Captain's Journal has an excellent piece on the infantry this morning. W. Thomas Smith of the National Review wrote an article after patrolling with 1st Battalion 4th Marines about the timelessness of the grunt life. No matter how sophisticated warfare has gotten, ours is still a dirty, exhausting line of work.
Infantry campaigning is difficult, and it has been ever since man first picked up a few stones, shouldered a club, and moved against a neighboring tribe. And despite modern weapon-systems and many of the new modes of delivery — helicopter, various ground conveyances — that difficulty has not changed.
....
Ground combat — including fighting, campaigning, and surviving in the wild — is a young man’s work. It means bearing heavy loads (In the modern world, much of a unit’s gear can be carried in vehicles. But because soldiers today have so much gear, a lot of it — particularly personal equipment — simply has to be borne on one’s back, shoulders, and hips.), surviving in remote environs and severe weather conditions, and maintaining a level of proper hygiene for good health: None of which are easy in an environment where men are hunting one another.
Herschel porvides a snippet from Ernie Pyle for comparison with conditions from 60+ years ago.
I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end they are the guys that wars can’t be won without.I wish you could see just one of the ineradicable pictures I have in my mind today. In this particular picture I am sitting among clumps of sword-grass on a steep and rocky hillside that we have just taken. We are looking out over a vast rolling country to the rear.
A narrow path comes like a ribbon over a hill miles away, down a long slope, across a creek, up a slope and over another hill.
All along the length of this ribbon there is now a thin line of men. For four days and nights they have fought hard, eaten little, washed none, and slept hardly at all. Their nights have been violent with attack, fright, butchery, and their days sleepless and miserable with the crash of artillery.
The men are walking. They are fifty feet apart, for dispersal. Their walk is slow, for they are dead weary, as you can tell even when looking at them from behind. Every line and sag of their bodies speaks their inhuman exhaustion.
On their shoulders and backs they carry heavy steel tripods, machine-gun barrels, leaden boxes of ammunition. Their feet seem to sink into the ground from the overload they are bearing.
They don’t slouch. It is the terrible deliberation of each step that spells out their appalling tiredness. Their faces are black and unshaven. They are young men, but the grime and whiskers and exhaustion make them look middle-aged …
Compare that to the pictures from two of my deployments, after the jump.
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Comments
As we used to say, a long time ago in a different place, "It's all good training."
Going along nicely with Smith's piece is Patterico's Pontification's ode to the sheepdogs among us, and what sets them apart (in short, the manly virtues Smith describes.)
During the first days of the run-up to Baghdad, not wanting to miss anything, I vividly remember a night that lasted to about 3:00 am for me watching Marines.
It happened that one of the embedded reporters was with them with a cameraman. There was a rather large building from which they had taken fire. No specifics, I just remember watching these young Marines, for a couple of hours, with their bodies stretched out on the concrete road, not moving, just watching, seemingly never changing position.
There would be an occasional shout, water would be tossed. But, these young men maintained that stretched out position..... for hours. In the daylight.
I was fascinated observing them from the comfort of my home. Incredible young men. We are truly blessed.
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We all need to read Ernie Pyle's books: "Here Is Your War", and "Brave Men".
T.R. Fehrenbach's "This Kind Of War" (about Korea) I also recommend.