The Army will Kill You: Or it Won't
If you ever put on a military uniform, you might feel a few things that others do not. That is normal. Because by donning that uniform, in this case the U.S. Army's, you become part of something that is bigger than you, that has many different meanings; you as an individual have to reconcile who you are and what the uniform is, and your duties as such as a member of this service, and who you belong to and who you are subordinate to, and where that might lead. Where it will lead.
Where will it lead? Not everyone knows, no one knows. As told to me by an early Army interviewer, who had confidence in his rank and knowledge: you as a soldier will get the right people killed and save the right people from being killed. Bottom line up front. Kind of blunt, true, but more or less accurate. The Army has the intent of killing some people. Saving the rest. That is what a military organization does at the end of the day. Prevents wars, starts war, ends wars.
People do get hurt and killed in all the interims of military service. But, or however, or nevertheless, we in the United States Army try to mitigate those contingencies. Nice words to say: we will prevent the loss and losses of human life to the best of our ability. We will risk our own lives and that of others to stop the unnecessary loss of lives that should not happen. Check any U.S. conflict or war. That is what we tried to do, every single time. No matter how controversial, like Vietnam for fifteen years from Eisenhower to Ford, or the Second Iraq war from Bush to Obama, or arguably into the Biden years, we have gone to those places to save lives and take a few, too.
We in the Army belong to our respective units; we attach to other elements and units and commands. We answer to immediate bosses, but there are bosses above them and a whole gamut of private and public personas who become our mentors, coaches, cheerleaders, detractors, haters and lovers. We are owned by them; we own ourselves to a degree, but the uniform and its oaths and duties oblige us to be owned. We are not our own free agents, to come and go as we please. We have autonomies, limited or wider freedoms, much of the time, but we know that ultimately our lives and dispositions our not ours for the giving or taking. We will be at the beck and call of the commander, and to the fates and intentions of the enemy, and at times lucky or cursed fate.
Accidents happen, beyond our best plans, intentions, and precautionary measures. An economist at UCLA that I studied with said more or less that the Army was really good at one thing, for sure: "getting people killed". Fair enough. My interviewing readiness sergeant would sort of echo those words about purposeful death a few years later, when I joined as an older soldier, having already done a Master's degree in Los Angeles. So much for formal education! What gets us what we want?
Education and degrees? Military experience and deployments? Great job movement and productivity as a worker or manager, or investor? Networking and meticulous attention to detail in our respective careers and particular professions? Yes, yes, and yes. The rule of law protects us in all these matters, law enforcement allows us to thrive or at minimum survive as workers in whichever industry or endeavor. Militaries exist to provide those circumstances. Militaries topple enemies of those values and institutions. The United States came to be in order to throw off the shackles of the British monarchy. It had to fight off its former oppressor again in the War of 1812.
By the early 1800s the U.S. Army and its European-based citizens were used to accomplishing their own types of oppressions and extreme forms of power and control. American Indians succumbed in land and sovereignty for centuries, as the African-Americanized enslaved peoples went under the lash and boot of their white human owners. The U.S. Army fought for the rights of white men and their properties more than any single cohort. And thus it was.
In the 1840s Texas and the Western North American territories were at stake with the Washington-based government; the U.S. Army and Marines tangles with the Government of Mexico and its forces to create vast holdings of land across to the Pacific. Then the United States truly did become united as a land of continuous states and territories, filling out its continental girth as the other peoples of the New World would eventually do.
In answer to the slavery issue, a barbaric practice that needed to be remedied, the U.S. Army faced itself from 1861 to 1865. Half a million troops died in order to resolve that conundrum and travesty. Some, or many, argue that the reverberations of those generations of human bonded peoples still are felt into the 21st century. However, the U.S. Army prevailed, the Northern one commanded by D.C. under Lincoln. The Army is about collective liberation, not totalitarian regimes and restrictive human conditions.
Spain fell next, as did its former colonized peoples in the possessions of the Caribbean and the farther Pacific islands. Germany, Austro-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire would be up next for our dough boys and devil dogs, assisted by the Navy, and burgeoning Army air forces. Germany had to be thwarted again a short generation later, throwing in Italians and Romanians in that continent, plus the potent empire of Japan on the other side of the planet. The Army of our great land learned to serve defeat to two huge threats across two separate oceans.
And so it was in the Korean peninsula, and southeast Asia, and Grenada in the Caribbean, and Panama and Kuwait, and more recently Iraq, Afghanistan, plus the constant threats of Somalia and elsewhere Insurgents, near peers, terrorists and even illegal drug sellers face our wrath and determination. The U.S. Army commits to topple and subdue enemies of the country and its friends and allies. All these acts and actions require the utmost commitments and dedicated sacrifices of the soldiers that undertake these assignments, missions, operations, and orders.
Who is next? China? Russia? Iran? Someone else? We fight all enemies, foreign and domestic, even ourselves. Suicide is another worthy or deadly opponent of the U.S. Army. Apathy, neglect, low morale, attrition, abuse of power, poor training or budgets, all sorts of setbacks and challenges defy the great U.S. Army. These are internal issues and problems that soldiers of all ranks and stations deal with, not to count or mention the official enemies that we line up with across time and space. Drones, cyber threats, enemies lurk in every corner and pocket of the imagination, and again ourselves.
Our consciences, our own motivating factors and selfish wants, our own standards or thresholds of competencies may threaten our status within the U.S. Army. From Commander-in-chiefs to top generals and political appointees and other authorities, to local commanders and bosses, to our families and our friends. Why submit? Why commit? Why join? Why stay? Why not quit? Why not have your life back from the caprices and fickle mandates of the U.S. Army, big and small? Your freedom, your days and years, late or early hours, or both, demanded on so heavily by the vagaries or exigencies of the uniform, the duty to God and country.
Who is your God? Whom do you serve, to quote Joshua of the Bible? Is the Army the ultimate arbiter of your greater destiny? No. God is the same, uniform or not. He is in charge. But then again, your master is the U.S. Army. You are owned, sworn soldier in oath and writing. The U.S. Army owns you, you fall under their command and desires. The uniform and enlistment or commission signifies and portends to your ownership, and it belongs to Uncle Sam, the U.S. military and its Army.
You answer to them. You are owned by them. As long as you put on that uniform, they own you. Are you free? Yes and no. Will they kill you? Yes and no. Will you save others from death? Yes and no. Will the U.S. Army protect and serve? Yes and no. Will the Army kill and/or subdue its enemies? Yes and no. Will the U.S. Army be triumphant? We work in that way so it should be. Will the U.S. Army be defeated? Possibly, someday.
Will every soldier win? No. Will the greater group survive and obtain victory? Usually yes.
Again, the Army will kill you. Or it won't.
Long live the U.S. Army. Or die trying. But what we all recommend: go forth and do great things, and never leave a battle buddy behind. Come home with honor. Be worthy of dignity at all times.
Alive or dead.
Oh, yeah. And don't give up. Give in, relinquish power or control when appropriate or necessary, but don't quit. Concede defeat, but never give up hope. Do the right thing. Survive and conquer.
The Army, with or without all its soldiers, will keep rolling along.
[To be continued.]
