Compass Points - Fight Like Hell

Not just an academic exercise.

Compass Points - Fight Like Hell

Not just an academic exercise.

December 22, 2024

.

Sunday is a good day for reflection.

William Tecumseh Sherman said, “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.”

Extraordinary world events are won by unsung heroes. For the history books to write of some great good for many – like the fall of the Soviet Union -- requires many battles across many years to be fought and won by a few.

This month is the anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union. After World War II ended in 1945, the US stood alone as the most powerful nation in the world. Within a few years, however, the Soviet Union multiplied its power and became a worldwide implacable foe to the US and the entire free world. Over the decades the US and her allies opposed the Soviet Union by direct deterrence and through the fighting of proxy battles around the world. Even in the late 1980s, as nations won their independence, the Soviet Union appeared to be as strong as ever. It was thought the Soviet Union would last one hundred more years. In reality the age of the Soviet Union was nearly over.

It is ironic today with Ukraine fighting against Russia that it was Ukraine's declaration of independence on December 1, 1991 that finally tipped the Soviet Union into the dust bin of history. Ukraine's declaration of independence was followed by the formation of a commonwealth of former Soviet states. Finally, on December 25, 1991, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev announced his own resignation and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Great events are recorded in the history books, but great world events stand on the deeds of young warriors. Without young warriors no battles can be won.

The Marine Corps today is filled with young Marines and there are younger Marines-to-be on the way. It is these young Marines who will carry the burden of the next battle. All the discussions about the future of the Marine Corps are not mere academic debates. We are discussing the future of young Marines. Will the young Marines be trained, organized, and equipped as they need to be to fight and win the next battle?

When Marines fight the next battle, what kind of fight will it be? Some say that technology will make the next battle clean and simple, a push button, war at a distance, with no need for warriors. But technologist have been promising the end of brutal, bloody ground combat since the invention of the long bow And the technologists are always wrong. No technology can change the fundamental nature of war. No matter the advances in technology, the next war will be once again bloody and cruel and will need to be won, once again, by warriors.

William Tecumseh Sherman said, “War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.”

James Webb, a Marine, Secretary of the Navy, US Senator, and Presidential candidate provided a graphic portrait of the cruelty of war.

.

===============

.

We would go months without bathing, except when we could stand naked among each other next to a village well or in a stream or in the muddy water of a bomb crater. It was nothing to begin walking at midnight, laden with packs and weapons and ammunition and supplies, seventy pounds or more of gear, and still be walking when the sun broke over mud-slick paddies that had sucked our boots all night. We carried our own gear and when we took casualties we carried the weapons of those who had been hit.

When we stopped moving we started digging, furiously throwing out the heavy soil until we had made chest-deep fighting holes. When we needed to make a call of nature we squatted off a trail or straddled a slit trench that had been dug between fighting holes, always by necessity in public view. We slept in makeshift hooches made out of ponchos, or simply wrapped up in a poncho, sometimes so exhausted that we did not feel the rain fall on our own faces. Most of us caught hookworm, dysentery, malaria, or yaws, and some of us had all of them.

We became vicious and aggressive and debased, and reveled in it, because combat is all of those things and we were surviving. I once woke up in the middle of the night to the sounds of one of my machinegunners stabbing an already-dead enemy soldier, emptying his fear and frustrations into the corpse’s chest. I watched another of my men, a wholesome Midwest boy, yank the trousers off a dead woman while under fire, just to see if he really remembered what it looked like.

We killed and bled and suffered and died in a way that Washington society, which seems to view service in the combat arms as something akin to a commute to the Pentagon, will never comprehend. And our mission, once all the rhetoric was stripped away, was organized mayhem, with emphasis on both words. For it is organization and leadership, as well as the interdependence sometimes called camaraderie, that sustain a person through such a scarring experience as fighting a war.

-- James Webb, November 1979 Washingtonian

.

===============

.

The author John Stuart Mill said,

“War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.”

It would be an ugly thing indeed if when the next battle comes young Marines are not properly trained, organized, and equipped. Marines must get prepared now for the ugly thing that is coming soon.

There is an ongoing fight for the future of the Marine Corps. While all Marines want a Marine Corps that is strong today and stronger tomorrow, some argue for a depleted, regional, defensive force. Many others advocate for an upgraded, flexible Marine MAGTF that can respond to any global crisis ready to deter, assist, and fight.

It is not an academic exercise. The fight for the future of the Marine Corps requires robust discussion, discourse, and debate. But the purpose is not to win a debate, it is to make sure Marines are ready for the battle that is coming.

Extraordinary world events like the fall of the Soviet Union are won by unsung heroes. For history to record great good news for many, requires battles to be fought and won by a few.

Compass Points thanks Jim Webb for his leadership in war and in peace. All across the broad Marine community, experienced Marines and friends of the Marine Corps must continue to persevere in the efforts to enhance and restore the global, combined arms, Marine, air, ground, logistics task force. We must continue to discuss and debate like hell today so that the Marines of tomorrow can fight like hell and win.

.

- - - - -

.

Washingtonian - 11/01/1979

Women Can't Fight

By Jim Webb

https://www.washingtonian.com/1979/11/01/jim-webb-women-cant-fight/