Sgt. Maj. Farrell’s talk is wonderfully written and poetically touches his audience’s hearts and sensibilities. This is an ideal piece to reflect upon as we enter into the long weekend. My question (and I understand it may be impossible to answer) is what is it that separates those combat veterans who return to live generally normal well-adjusted lives and not allowing their remembrances to master their souls and those veterans who suffer and find it difficult or impossible to find peace within themselves?

"Many brave heroes lived before Agamemnon; but they are overwhelmed in unending night, unwept, unknown, because they lacked a sacred bard. " -Horace, Odes 4.9.25

Sgt. Maj. Farrell's piece has knocked me out - what a voice.

My son intends to enlist when he finishes high school in two years. I never served, so there's a lot of advice I can't offer about the choice. For those who do know - is this something he ought to read?

I have tears in my eyes. Especially when I look at my kids. God bless the "Roy's of the world". Mohammed needs to be honored. His family if they want should be allowed to come to the United States.

One issue that arose in recent years is the denial of veteran's benefits to those who are dishonorably discharged. That seems fair, but there are thousands of combat vets who come home a bit screwed up and get kicked out of the military for bad things.

PBS Frontline recently had a great show on this. It showed one Iraqi combat vet who got kicked out of a private party while drunk, so he drove by later and shot a few rounds into the house. No one was injured, but a hard ass judge gave him 15 years in prison, and he was dishonorably discharged.

I recall exceptions are now made, but I think we need an official law so that all combat vets receive free VA mental health and health care, even if they were dishonorably discharged.

Another issue this past decade is that judges no longer cut veterans any slack. At one time, most Judges served in WWII or Korea and understood that many vets face problems readjusting, so they were lenient when vets did crazy things.

This is no longer the case, as it is very, very rare for any judge to have served in the military. Judges in the USA are elected or appointed, and that requires lots of family money, so they are nearly all from wealthy families and never worked a job, much less served in our military. Vets are just another group of working class troublemakers to them.

Some states now have veterans courts, but this is controversial as unfair to all. I don't know the answer, but be aware that few judges in the USA care if someone served their nation in combat or otherwise.

Well done: imaginary, literary, thought through--like Vonnegut himself.

For all combat vets, within their "solitude", whatever place, whatever time--Barber's "Adagio for Strings."

I have done two runs in Iraq; the second as a Cavalry Squadron Commander in West Baghdad in 2006--an especially bloody and brutal year in the war.

So I guess these two runs, especially the second in 06, certify me as a combat vet and not some sort of fob soldier.

The Sergeant Major's speech as eloquent as it is does not work for today's combat soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan (in my view). His voice is a voice from a different era and a different perspective. The nature of war and of combat soldiering is not timeless, and each war and experience is unique.

Alas we still await the Sledge for Iraq and Afghanistan (no, Junger is not him nor is Mansoor or even Mullaney).

gian

ps; I liked Don's post as it did get at the question of strategy and the cost of war

"On Antiwar.com, I find a loutish American general, James Mattis, martial feminist, talking about the fun he has killing Afghans. Yes, fun, wheeee-oooo! and ooo-rah! too. He says, “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” adding “guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyways. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.” What must he do with prisoners?"

"A joyous killer, possibly orgasmic. Note mandatory flagly background, pickle suit, and stupid colorful gewgaws so he looks like a goddam stamp collection. Stern gaze is necessary to become a general. From defending the Constitution to the pleasure of watching Afghans die: The military has come a long way."

It’s just that General Mattis-Steinem makes killing sound like so much fun. And I guess it is, for some. You’ve seen the YouTube video of GIs machine-gunning people walking around a city street from a helicopter gunship. A hoot. But – can I offer a second opinion?

"I went off to Viet Nam because I was young and dumb and adventurous and they told me that I was fighting for Apple Pie, and Mom, and White Christian Motherhood (which I spent my high-school days dreading, but never mind). Actually I was just another sucker from the small-town South. The Pentagon depends, utterly, on small-town suckers. They are brave, trainable, not real thoughtful."

"Funny how things look if you think about them. Patriots talk about the tragic deaths of young Americans in Afghanistan. Well, okay. Other things being equal, young guys getting shot to death in a pointless war is not a swell idea. I’m against it. In fact, the more you see of it, and I’ve seen a lot, the worse an idea it seems. Of course, a logician might point out that if you didn’t send them to Afghanistan, they wouldn’t die there – would they?"

"The dead are not the only casualties. Go to a Veterans Hospital, and watch the leftovers come in. You might be surprised how much fun they didn't think it was. Or what they think of General Mattis-Firmstare. You might be very surprised."

Fred Reed

I’ll guess he fell just shy of graduating from third grade. He sure ain’t much of a general, no ways, I reckon. Just the fellow I want representing me in the world.

Does General Dworkin-Mattis speak of manhood? Odd, since his military is being badly outfought by the unmanly Afghans that are fun to kill. By the Pentagon’s figures the US military outnumbers the resistance several to one. The US has complete control of the air, enjoying F16s, helicopter gun-ships, transport choppers, and Predator drones, as well as armor, body armor, night-vision gear, heavy weaponry, medevac, hospitals, good food, and PXs. The Afghans have only AKs, RPGs, C4, and balls. Yet they are winning, or at least holding their own. How glorious.

Man for man, weapon for weapon, the Taliban are clearly superior. They take far heavier casualties, but keep on fighting. Their politics are not mine, but they are formidable on the ground. If I were General Dworkin, I’d change my name and go into hiding. Maybe he could wear a veil.

Perhaps the US should recognize that it has a second-rate military at phenomenal cost – an enormous, largely useless national codpiece. It is embarrassing. The Pentagon’s preferred enemies are lightly armed, poorly equipped peasants, which makes for a long war and thus hundreds of billions of dollars in juicy contracts for military industries. Yet the greatest military in history (ask it) gets run out of Southeast Asia, blown up and run out of Lebanon, shot down and run out of Somalia, with Afghanistan a disaster in progress and Iraq claimed as an American victory rather than Shiite. Do the aircraft carriers intimidate North Korea? No. Iran? No. China? No. For this, a trillion dollars a year?

The reasons for the mediocrity are clear enough. First, the Pentagon has become a contracting agency for buying gorgeous and elaborate arms of little relevance to the wars the US fights. (If the Martians attack, we’ll be ready.)

Second, the US is no longer a nation of hardy country boys who grow up shooting and loading hay bales into pick-ups for spare change. (For the uninitiated, hay bales are heavy.) I often see headlines such as “More than two-thirds of Texas schoolchildren flunked the state's physical fitness test this year…” If Texas has gone all soft and rubbery, you can forget about Massachusetts. The American pool of hardy, manipulable kids without too much schoolin' isn't what it was. The lack of troops of course pushes the Pentagon toward more pricey gadgetry and greater imbalance.

Now, it is regarded as treasonous to question that Our Boys are the best trained, best armed, toughest troops in the world, and I’ll probably get punched out in bars for pointing out the awful truth. Let’s imagine an experiment. We take Killing-is-Fun General Mattis-Abzug, and a thousand GIs, and a thousand Taliban, and let them fight it out in any patch of wretched barren mountains of your choosing. On equal terms. What you think? Same weapons.

Good idea, General? You eat what they eat, wear what they wear, they have no medical care, and neither do you. If they get lung-shot and die the hard way, you do too. It will come down to guts and motivation.

Motivation: It counts, general. I believe it was Bedford Forrest who said of some of his troops, “Them cane-brake boys jest plain likes to fight.” I guess there must be just a whole lot of cane in Afghanistan. The Taliban will go to any length to cut your freaking throat because you have been killing their wives and children, fathers and brothers, and you will fight for…for…well. Uh. Big oil, AIPAC, Ann Coulter. Or a promotion for General Mathis-Abzug. Anybody want to put odds on the outcome?

Or what if they had the air power, the gun ships…?

And General, killing them might be a tad less fun when you couldn’t do it from the safety of a gunship. Just a thought, General.

Fred Reed

What kind of a man would kill someone he didn’t know for someone else he didn’t know? I suppose our opinion of such an individual would depend on the circumstances. Most people would condemn a hit man for hire even as they would praise a man who came to the defense of a little old lady in a parking lot who was being attacked with deadly force by a gang of thugs.

But what kind of a man would kill someone he didn’t know, who had never harmed or threatened him, his family, his friends, or anyone he knew for someone he didn’t know, who didn’t know him, and had never been harmed or threatened by the person he wanted killed?

And even worse, who would do such a thing at a moment’s notice, without giving it a second thought, laugh while he did it, brag about it afterward, and then expect to be lauded as a hero?

It pains me to say that the answer is a soldier in the U.S. military.

Contrast the modern-day soldier who is willing to kill for U.S. presidents with Benjamin Salmon (1889–1932). Soon after the United States declared war on Germany during World War I, Salmon wrote to President Wilson:

Regardless of nationality all men are brothers. God is "our father who art in heaven." The commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is unconditional and inexorable. . . . The lowly Nazarene taught us the doctrine of non-resistance, and so convinced was he of the soundness of that doctrine that he sealed his belief with death on the cross. When human law conflicts with Divine law, my duty is clear. Conscience, my infallible guide, impels me to tell you that prison, death, or both, are infinitely preferable to joining any branch of the Army.

Salmon soon began writing letters, giving speeches, and distributing pamphlets against the "Great War." He returned his Army registration questionnaire with a note explaining why he was refusing to fill it out: "Let those who believe in wholesale violation of the commandment, ‘Thou Shalt not Kill’ make a profession of faith by joining the army of war. I am in the army of peace, and in this army, I intend to live and die." He was subsequently arrested, tried, and convicted. While out on appeal, he was then re-arrested for refusing to report for induction into the Army. After being charged with desertion and spreading propaganda, Salmon was court-martialed on July 24, 1918, and sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to 25 years. All charges could have been dismissed if Salmon had agreed to make a deal and serve as a clerk in the Army, but he refused to cooperate with what he said was an institution "antithetical to Christianity."

The armistice soon ended the war, but not Salmon’s prison time in Leavenworth. After suffering in solitary confinement for five months, he was transferred to a military prison in Utah where he was beaten, starved, and stripped; that is, he was treated like some U.S. prisoners at Abu Ghraib. After spending two weeks on a hunger strike, Salmon was force-fed and then sent to a mental hospital. Thanks in part to the ACLU, he was dishonorably discharged in 1920 – from an army he never joined.

Although initially denounced by the New York Times and forsaken by his own church, Salmon persevered in his refusal to kill for Wilson. God only knows how many Americans have willingly killed for U.S. presidents since then.

Laurence Vance

I'm going to ask Gian Gentile, a man for whom I have the utmost respect, an active duty soldier whom I believe to be the most cogent military voice out there, to expand on why the sergeant major's talk doesn't "work" for him. As a Vietnam contemporary of the sergeant major's, I'm often conflicted about the whole narrative that results in me being fatally flawed or otherwise damaged as a result of combat duties. Is that what Gian's getting at? That the modern guys won't be damaged? That earlier veterans were somehow weaker? That the nation and the military/veterans system is now so good that the issues with which many of my peers and those who went before are no longer applicable?

Does Vietnam haunt me? I don't know. We're usually young when we go to war, which means we weren't fully formed as human beings when we went. My parents and friends always said I was different after the second tour. Who knows? I was in my 20s still, which means I was still developing; maybe I would have turned out the same. Fact is, I've never felt particularly debilitated from Vietnam service; I went on to serve a career in the Army and was then moderately successful in civilian life. But, honestly, yeah, I'd say there is an impact. There has to be. Combat is a life-changing experience. That the majority deals with it and turns out well is more a tribute to the strength of human beings than a testament to the beneficial aspects of war. Fact is, war sucks. Wars of choice suck even more.

I'd also like to ask Colonel Gentile if his comments are based on personal experiences or were made as a historian. The reason I say this is that Gian first went to war as a field grade commander, which means that his experience was far different than those of PFCs, sergeants and lieutenants. Everybody gets a different war, usually based on rank. Patton's war was a whole lot different than the war experienced by the troops he ordered to wear neckties. Westmoreland's war was different than mine. Everybody's perspective on war is different. We've all seen Robert Duvall in "Apocalypse Now," right? Well, you know what? Over the top as it is, we had guys like Duvall in Vietnam. A lot of guys didn't much appreciate them. Those guys are in every war. Check the casualty rates for field grades and above vs company graders and junior enlisted. Then check the PTSD rates and who suffers.

War touches everybody differently. So how about it, Gian? Care to flesh your comments out a bit?

Best, Publius

Sometimes you'd meet the combat veteran plebe, among your new classmates at the Academy, and wonder how easy it must be to bear the trivial torture of the Academy's first year after returning from the crucible.

A lot of them at that time left, now I understand why.

Tom, thank you.

Like the "Admiral" I was bothered by General Mattis's quip a while back about how war and killing is "fun" and somehow contributes to “manhood.” Maybe for him as a senior general it was, everybody is different, although one probably should inquire as to how much direct killing officers (especially generals) do in any kind of modern war. But be that as it may, personally, I thought war as I experienced it on the mean streets of Baghdad in 2006, generally sucked and sucked bad. I have never had the sensation of a "high" from war, and that once back home in the arms of my wife and children that I ever wanted to go back. To be sure I would if duty ever called as I am a serving soldier and duty bound, but I certainly don’t relish the idea or even look forward to it.

Publius is right in his previous post that combat experience is different for those who fight wars from the lowest enlisted to the highest generals. Problem is that today many experts and the MSM have turned certain senior serving generals into some kind of combination of the ultimate warrior who have elements of Alexander, Chamberlain, Sergeant York, Patton and Puller, all rolled into one. An inaccurate caricature to say the least based on their actual experience in these current wars.

Which brings me to respond to my trusted friend and big brother, Publius, as he challenged me to flesh out why the Sergeant Major’s speech “didn’t work” for me as an Iraq War combat veteran. To restate I found the speech to be supremely eloquent and masterly in its use of language. Still his voice is of a war gone by, and its message is largely from that past war—Vietnam. It rings of tropes from that war; of the combat soldier who returned from Vietnam as being isolated-at times often freakish—suffering from all of the maladies of PTSD and other psychological ailments. But then through the SGM’s voice the combat soldier is given encouragement through the notion that even if the politics of the war was wrong or misguided he can find solitude in his “golden moment,” that he did his duty. Again, Publius, these were all things that came out of your war in Vietnam. Equally the combat experience of the men who fought in World War II or World War I or American Civil War combat experience and their experiences after the war were different. Same for today’s war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And sorry but the Sergeant Major’s speech also has the tinge of militarism in that the only true way to experience life and of citizenship is through the crucible of war and combat.

I agree Publius that combat is a life changing experience. It certainly changed mine. I am proud of the performance of my Cavalry Squadron in Iraq in 2006 even if the proprietor of this blog soiled it. Too that experience is a part of me now, and makes me what I am.

Perhaps my feelings on these things are similar to yours and the men who fought from your generation in Vietnam that during the fighting of the War there was a sense by you and others that the vets from World War II and even Korea didn’t get your war and what it was about: So too with my feelings and thoughts when I read the Sergeant Major’s talk.

It is the notion of the “timelessness” of combat experience in war that I reel against. But that powerful trope has been used over and over again in so many recent works on Afghanistan and Iraq. My colleague and friend at West Point Elizabeth Sammet in her brilliant book “A Soldier’s Heart” actually falls into that trap. So does Pete Mansoor, Craig Mullyaney, and many others in their writings about these current wars. They all draw on this “timelessness” theme but in so doing they drown out the particulars of this war and the unique combat experience of the men and women who experience it. One of the worst violators is Junger’s new book “War” which is mostly to me nothing more than war-porn. Or to put it another way Junger’s book is artificial since it constructs a caricature of fighting men in Afghanistan as if they were in a direct line with the dough-boys at St Mihiel, Dog 1 at Normandy, the Marines and Chosin, and grunts at Hamburger Hill.

So then what we are left with is an empty explanation of these current wars. To me therefore they have no real meaning or deep resonance.

gian

Gian Gentile: "So then what we are left with is an empty explanation of these current wars. To me therefore they have no real meaning or deep resonance."

Well said, Gian. Thanks.

I had SGM Farrell as a teacher for 2 years and his class was always the most challenging and enjoyable. He always said that he won't teach you French ... he'll teach you how to think.

Every minute of his class was an amazing experience.

Durk 12:

Look, and this may seem to contradict what I said in previous posts since I emphasized the personal, but this is "business" and not "personal." In that I mean tt is about intellectualism and criticism. In no way should my criticism of SGM Farrell's speech be read in any way that takes away from his greatness as a teacher, scholar, and soldier. I have no doubt that he is a superb teacher and I imagine that one of things that he emphasizes to his students is the ability to think critically and to apply independent judgment to things. That is what I tried to do when I read his speech and commented on it. I may be wrong to be sure, but this was the way that it struck me.

gian

Gian,

I have not read anything that you have posted. I simply posted my thoughts of the man after reading the article.

I see, when I just typed in the Comment box it came out as a reply to your previous comments.

Did not meant to.

No worries Durk, your post was an important one as it got to the excellence of Sergeant Major Farrell as a teacher, soldier, and scholar. It gave me an opportunity to highlight that point.

Eric, sorry, to clarify I was talking about Junger's book "War" and not his documentary Restrepo.

I am sure there are good combat soldiers who "enjoyed" war. To be honest, or me there was a sense of supreme accomplishment after completing a year of command in Baghdad. There was also the day to day sense of mission and purpose that is hard to find in any other kind of human endeavor. But what I find objectionable is the reduction of these complex feelings to tropes and buz words that mostly makes up Junger's book. Too, such hyperbole of the "enjoyment" and "high" of war helps to fuel the new American militarism in which the American people are treated to the spectacle of war, without bleeding in its process, and feel comfortable about it all because book like Junger's make it seem cool and that the soldiers in it dig and enjoy it.

gian

After reading this essay last night I found myself compelled to reply in the comments thread below and then decided that I didn't have anything of importance to add. I was not sure that I--someone who hasn't been horribly scarred by my experiences--would come across as genuine. After all, no less an authority than Corporal Vonnegut says that there's nothing good to be said about war, and BG Farrell--a man with such weight that some people will follow to any conclusion--says that by and large, you're screwed as a combat vet. And that's a problem, because sure as hell I have been there, twice (which isn't saying much these days), and was shot at and mortared and IEDed and dealt with the nonsense just like everyone else.

I slept on it last night and decided that if the only two allowable outcomes of war and combat are the extremes of:

"I love war, I can kill a whole battalion of (insert the enemy of the day) and then go back to my breakfast coffee without batting an eye."

And

"I am irrevocably ruint by war and my soul is an empty shell that may never know peace or love or beauty again."

Then I am a rare breed indeed, the combat veteran who is game to fight when there's a fight, but not overly romantic about it. But I know that I am not rare, and in fact that among the veterans I have kept company with I am about normal. The vast bulk of us are just people trying to get along with our lives and our families and our expanding waistlines and the growing complexity of our lives as children and responsibilities multiply. This I believe is the true norm and center of gravity for the combat veteran. The norm does not lie at the extremes, though BG Farrell must draw from his experience the extreme outcomes he encountered to make his point. Otherwise his speech would be so uncomfortably complex as to leave his audience unsettled.

BG Farrell's experiences are his, I'm not going to gainsay him, but mine were different than his. I left Iraq more sure of the destiny of our people, and more sure that we as a people sure as hell didn't deserve to be attacked in the way that we did. And that generally, given the technological overmatch we have over our enemies and the capacity for true wholesale slaughter that our equipment gives us, that we've been on the restrained side. Now whether we have the best elected officials? Whether we go to the best wars and prosecute them at the best time for the best reasons? That's for the voters to decide, and I don't burden myself unduly with imponderables and things that aren't mine to decide. I go where I'm told to go and I conduct myself according to how I think a man and a Soldier of the United States ought to act. Do I abuse my power, or do I conduct myself properly? That's for me to decide and since I didn't do badly I don't feel badly. Is that arrogance or is that right thinking? The right categorization into what is mine and what is not mine, it seems to me, to be a basic life skill.

Probably the best part of the whole speech is ths discussion about how he hopes as an instructor of men and women who may see combat that he will instill in them the necessary stuff of life to endure. Now, that part is as true as anything I've ever seen written about war. If a person goes into a terrible experience without sufficient reserves of will and no context for why they're suffering, then it should be no surprise that their psyche, when pushed so far back that it's like the last defense of the foxhole with knives and entrenching tools, will come out tattered. The preparation of people to endure and to do well after is no light matter and it deserves better than it's gotten. Sadly, we're not in an era where blooding our youths with how to deal with godawful situations is in vogue. We've got to somehow come to grips with that and make sure that our youths get their first bloody nose under controlled circumstances so that they don't just collapse in a heap when they meet setbacks in life.

As far as I can tell, the common refrain of the combat veteran, even one as lightly touched by combat as myself, is not being able to comprehend the bitching and the stupidity of our fellow man over trifles. And hopefully, for our troubles we are more keen about what really matters. To me, this would constitute a net gain over someone who had not gone to combat. That's where I believe the vast majority of combat veterans reside, in that slightly impatient, intolerant of fools, old curmudgeon in the making position.

BG Farrell is a wise man. He's got me beat for sure as a thinker. But we have got to bring more light to that murky middle ground where most combat veterans lie. The problem is, that work doesn't lend itself to nicely packaged homilies and it is work that never ends. Go down that path and you'll find yourself like Schliemann, digging endlessly trying to find the true Troy.

Let the digging commence.

Best,

John

Oh, and by the by, I am a little confused by the whole SGM/BG thing and my Google-fu was weak, so I never was able to figure out Dr. Farell's proper rank, so if the BG up there is wrong, I beg correction. I understand he prefers the rank of Sergeant Major.