Category: The Green Machine
I always liked the Medics when I was in!America’s 233-Year-Old Shock at Jihad
Exactly 233 years ago this week, two of America’s founding fathers documented their first exposure to Islamic jihad in a letter to Congress; like many Americans today, they too were shocked at what they learned.
Context: in 1785, Muslim pirates from North Africa, or “Barbary,” had captured two American ships, the Maria and Dauphin, and enslaved their crews. In an effort to ransom the enslaved Americans and establish peaceful relations, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams — then ambassadors to France and England respectively — met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain, Abdul Rahman Adja. Following this diplomatic exchange, they laid out the source of the Barbary States’ hitherto inexplicable animosity to American vessels in a letter to Congress dated March 28, 1786:
We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their [Barbary’s] pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise
One need not conjecture what the American ambassadors — who years earlier had asserted that all men were “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” — thought of their Muslim counterpart’s answer. Suffice to say, because the ransom demanded was over fifteen times greater than what Congress had approved, little came of the meeting.
It should be noted that centuries before setting their sights on American vessels, the Barbary States of Muslim North Africa — specifically Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis — had been thriving on the slave trade of Christians abducted from virtually every corner of coastal Europe — including Britain, Ireland, Denmark, and Iceland. These raids were so successful that, “between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast,” to quote American historian Robert Davis.
The treatment of these European slaves was exacerbated by the fact that they were Christian “infidels.” As Robert Playfair (b.1828), who served for years as a consul in Barbary, explained, “In almost every case they [European slaves] were hated on account of their religion.” Three centuries earlier, John Foxe had written in his Book of Martyrs that, “In no part of the globe are Christians so hated, or treated with such severity, as at Algiers.”
The punishments these European slaves received for real or imagined offenses beggared description: “If they speak against Mahomet [blasphemy], they must become Mahometans, or be impaled alive. If they profess Christianity again, after having changed to the Mahometan persuasion, they are roasted alive [as apostates], or thrown from the city walls, and caught upon large sharp hooks, on which they hang till they expire.”
As such, when Captain O’Brien of the Dauphin wrote to Jefferson saying that “our sufferings are beyond our expression or your conception,” he was clearly not exaggerating.
After Barbary’s ability to abduct coastal Europeans had waned in the mid-eighteenth century, its energy was spent on raiding infidel merchant vessels. Instead of responding by collectively confronting and neutralizing Barbary, European powers, always busy quarrelling among themselves, opted to buy peace through tribute (or, according to Muslim rationale, jizya).
Fresh meat appeared on the horizon once the newly-born United States broke free of Great Britain (and was therefore no longer protected by the latter’s jizya payments).
Some American congressmen agreed with Jefferson that “it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them” — including General George Washington: “In such an enlightened, in such a liberal age, how is it possible that the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical States of Barbary?” he wrote to a friend. “Would to Heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into nonexistence.”
But the majority of Congress agreed with John Adams: “We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever.” Considering the perpetual, existential nature of Islamic hostility, Adams may have been more right than he knew.
Congress settled on emulating the Europeans and paying off the terrorists, though it would take years to raise the demanded ransom.
When Muslim pirates from Algiers captured eleven more American merchant vessels in 1794, the Naval Act was passed and a permanent U.S. naval force established. But because the first war vessels would not be ready until 1800, American jizya payments — which took up 16 percent of the federal budget — began to be made to Algeria in 1795. In return, over 100 American sailors were released — how many died or disappeared is unclear — and the Islamic sea raids formally ceased. American payments and “gifts” over the following years caused the increasingly emboldened Muslim pirates to respond with increasingly capricious demands.
One of the more ignoble instances occurred in 1800, when Captain William Bainbridge of the George Washington sailed to the pirate-leader of Algiers, with what the latter deemed insufficient tribute. Referring to the Americans as “my slaves,” Dey Mustapha ordered them to transport hundreds of black slaves to Istanbul (Constantinople). Adding insult to insult, he commanded the American crew to take down the U.S. flag and hoist the Islamic flag — one not unlike ISIS’ notorious black flag — in its place. And, no matter how rough the seas might be during the long voyage, Bainbridge was required to make sure the George Washington faced Mecca five times a day to accommodate the prayers of Muslims onboard.
That Bainbridge condescended to becoming Barbary’s delivery boy seems only to have further whetted the terrorists’ appetite. In 1801, Tripoli demanded an instant payment of $225,000, followed by annual payments of $25,000 — respectively equivalent to $3.5 million and $425,000 today. Concluding that “nothing will stop the eternal increase of demand from these pirates but the presence of an armed force,” America’s third president, Jefferson, refused the ultimatum. (He may have recalled Captain O’Brien’s observation concerning his Barbary masters: “Money is their God and Mahomet their prophet.”)
Denied jizya from the infidels, Tripoli proclaimed jihad on the United States on May 10, 1801. But by now, America had six war vessels, which Jefferson deployed to the Barbary Coast. For the next five years, the U.S. Navy warred with the Muslim pirates, making little headway and suffering some setbacks — the most humiliating being when the Philadelphia and its crew were captured in 1803.
Desperate measures were needed: enter William Eaton. As U.S. consul to Tunis (1797–1803), he had lived among and understood the region’s Muslims well. He knew that “the more you give the more the Turks will ask for,” and despised that old sense of Islamic superiority: “It grates me mortally,” he wrote, “when I see a lazy Turk [generic for Muslim] reclining at his ease upon an embroidered sofa, with one Christian slave to hold his pipe, another to hold his coffee, and a third to fan away the flies.” Seeing that the newborn American navy was making little headway against the seasoned pirates, he devised a daring plan: to sponsor the claim of Mustafa’s brother, exiled in Alexandria; and then to march the latter’s supporters and mercenaries through five hundred miles of desert, from Alexandria onto Tripoli.
The trek was arduous — not least because of the Muslim mercenaries themselves. Eaton had repeatedly tried to win them over: “I touched upon the affinity of principle between the Islam and Americans [sic] religion.” But despite these all too familiar ecumenical overtures, “We find it almost impossible to inspire these wild bigots with confidence in us,” he lamented in his diary, “or to persuade them that, being Christians, we can be otherwise than enemies to Mussulmen. We have a difficult undertaking!” (For all his experience with Muslims, Eaton was apparently unaware of the finer points of their (Sharia) law, namely, al-wala’ wa’l bara’, or “loyalty and enmity.”)
Eaton eventually managed to reach and conquer Tripoli’s coastal town of Derne on April 27, 1805. Less than two months later, on June 10, a peace treaty was signed between the U.S. and Tripoli, formally ending hostilities.
Thus and despite the (rather ignorant) question that became popular after 9/11, “Why do they hate us?” — a question that was answered to Jefferson and Adams 233 years ago today — the United States’ first war and victory as a nation was against Muslims, and the latter had initiated hostilities on the same rationale Muslims had used to initiate hostilities against non-Muslims for the preceding 1,200 years.
Sources for quotes in this article can be found in the author’s recent book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West; 352 pages long and containing over a thousand endnotes, it copiously documents what many in academia have sought to hide: the long and bloody history between Islam and the West, in the context of their eight most landmark battles. American Thinker reviews of the book can be read here and here).
Exactly 233 years ago this week, two of America’s founding fathers documented their first exposure to Islamic jihad in a letter to Congress; like many Americans today, they too were shocked at what they learned.
Context: in 1785, Muslim pirates from North Africa, or “Barbary,” had captured two American ships, the Maria and Dauphin, and enslaved their crews. In an effort to ransom the enslaved Americans and establish peaceful relations, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams — then ambassadors to France and England respectively — met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain, Abdul Rahman Adja. Following this diplomatic exchange, they laid out the source of the Barbary States’ hitherto inexplicable animosity to American vessels in a letter to Congress dated March 28, 1786:
Context: in 1785, Muslim pirates from North Africa, or “Barbary,” had captured two American ships, the Maria and Dauphin, and enslaved their crews. In an effort to ransom the enslaved Americans and establish peaceful relations, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams — then ambassadors to France and England respectively — met with Tripoli’s ambassador to Britain, Abdul Rahman Adja. Following this diplomatic exchange, they laid out the source of the Barbary States’ hitherto inexplicable animosity to American vessels in a letter to Congress dated March 28, 1786:
We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the grounds of their [Barbary’s] pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise
One need not conjecture what the American ambassadors — who years earlier had asserted that all men were “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” — thought of their Muslim counterpart’s answer. Suffice to say, because the ransom demanded was over fifteen times greater than what Congress had approved, little came of the meeting.
It should be noted that centuries before setting their sights on American vessels, the Barbary States of Muslim North Africa — specifically Tripoli, Algiers, Tunis — had been thriving on the slave trade of Christians abducted from virtually every corner of coastal Europe — including Britain, Ireland, Denmark, and Iceland. These raids were so successful that, “between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast,” to quote American historian Robert Davis.
Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/03/americas_233yearold_shock_at_jihad.html#ixzz5jlumrdN1
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
The treatment of these European slaves was exacerbated by the fact that they were Christian “infidels.” As Robert Playfair (b.1828), who served for years as a consul in Barbary, explained, “In almost every case they [European slaves] were hated on account of their religion.” Three centuries earlier, John Foxe had written in his Book of Martyrs that, “In no part of the globe are Christians so hated, or treated with such severity, as at Algiers.”
The punishments these European slaves received for real or imagined offenses beggared description: “If they speak against Mahomet [blasphemy], they must become Mahometans, or be impaled alive. If they profess Christianity again, after having changed to the Mahometan persuasion, they are roasted alive [as apostates], or thrown from the city walls, and caught upon large sharp hooks, on which they hang till they expire.”
As such, when Captain O’Brien of the Dauphin wrote to Jefferson saying that “our sufferings are beyond our expression or your conception,” he was clearly not exaggerating.
After Barbary’s ability to abduct coastal Europeans had waned in the mid-eighteenth century, its energy was spent on raiding infidel merchant vessels. Instead of responding by collectively confronting and neutralizing Barbary, European powers, always busy quarrelling among themselves, opted to buy peace through tribute (or, according to Muslim rationale, jizya).
Fresh meat appeared on the horizon once the newly-born United States broke free of Great Britain (and was therefore no longer protected by the latter’s jizya payments).
Some American congressmen agreed with Jefferson that “it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them” — including General George Washington: “In such an enlightened, in such a liberal age, how is it possible that the great maritime powers of Europe should submit to pay an annual tribute to the little piratical States of Barbary?” he wrote to a friend. “Would to Heaven we had a navy able to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into nonexistence.”
But the majority of Congress agreed with John Adams: “We ought not to fight them at all unless we determine to fight them forever.” Considering the perpetual, existential nature of Islamic hostility, Adams may have been more right than he knew.
Congress settled on emulating the Europeans and paying off the terrorists, though it would take years to raise the demanded ransom.
When Muslim pirates from Algiers captured eleven more American merchant vessels in 1794, the Naval Act was passed and a permanent U.S. naval force established. But because the first war vessels would not be ready until 1800, American jizya payments — which took up 16 percent of the federal budget — began to be made to Algeria in 1795. In return, over 100 American sailors were released — how many died or disappeared is unclear — and the Islamic sea raids formally ceased. American payments and “gifts” over the following years caused the increasingly emboldened Muslim pirates to respond with increasingly capricious demands.
One of the more ignoble instances occurred in 1800, when Captain William Bainbridge of the George Washington sailed to the pirate-leader of Algiers, with what the latter deemed insufficient tribute. Referring to the Americans as “my slaves,” Dey Mustapha ordered them to transport hundreds of black slaves to Istanbul (Constantinople). Adding insult to insult, he commanded the American crew to take down the U.S. flag and hoist the Islamic flag — one not unlike ISIS’ notorious black flag — in its place. And, no matter how rough the seas might be during the long voyage, Bainbridge was required to make sure the George Washington faced Mecca five times a day to accommodate the prayers of Muslims onboard.
That Bainbridge condescended to becoming Barbary’s delivery boy seems only to have further whetted the terrorists’ appetite. In 1801, Tripoli demanded an instant payment of $225,000, followed by annual payments of $25,000 — respectively equivalent to $3.5 million and $425,000 today. Concluding that “nothing will stop the eternal increase of demand from these pirates but the presence of an armed force,” America’s third president, Jefferson, refused the ultimatum. (He may have recalled Captain O’Brien’s observation concerning his Barbary masters: “Money is their God and Mahomet their prophet.”)
Denied jizya from the infidels, Tripoli proclaimed jihad on the United States on May 10, 1801. But by now, America had six war vessels, which Jefferson deployed to the Barbary Coast. For the next five years, the U.S. Navy warred with the Muslim pirates, making little headway and suffering some setbacks — the most humiliating being when the Philadelphia and its crew were captured in 1803.
Desperate measures were needed: enter William Eaton. As U.S. consul to Tunis (1797–1803), he had lived among and understood the region’s Muslims well. He knew that “the more you give the more the Turks will ask for,” and despised that old sense of Islamic superiority: “It grates me mortally,” he wrote, “when I see a lazy Turk [generic for Muslim] reclining at his ease upon an embroidered sofa, with one Christian slave to hold his pipe, another to hold his coffee, and a third to fan away the flies.” Seeing that the newborn American navy was making little headway against the seasoned pirates, he devised a daring plan: to sponsor the claim of Mustafa’s brother, exiled in Alexandria; and then to march the latter’s supporters and mercenaries through five hundred miles of desert, from Alexandria onto Tripoli.
The trek was arduous — not least because of the Muslim mercenaries themselves. Eaton had repeatedly tried to win them over: “I touched upon the affinity of principle between the Islam and Americans [sic] religion.” But despite these all too familiar ecumenical overtures, “We find it almost impossible to inspire these wild bigots with confidence in us,” he lamented in his diary, “or to persuade them that, being Christians, we can be otherwise than enemies to Mussulmen. We have a difficult undertaking!” (For all his experience with Muslims, Eaton was apparently unaware of the finer points of their (Sharia) law, namely, al-wala’ wa’l bara’, or “loyalty and enmity.”)
Eaton eventually managed to reach and conquer Tripoli’s coastal town of Derne on April 27, 1805. Less than two months later, on June 10, a peace treaty was signed between the U.S. and Tripoli, formally ending hostilities.
Thus and despite the (rather ignorant) question that became popular after 9/11, “Why do they hate us?” — a question that was answered to Jefferson and Adams 233 years ago today — the United States’ first war and victory as a nation was against Muslims, and the latter had initiated hostilities on the same rationale Muslims had used to initiate hostilities against non-Muslims for the preceding 1,200 years.
Sources for quotes in this article can be found in the author’s recent book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West
Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/03/americas_233yearold_shock_at_jihad.html#ixzz5jluef89M
Follow us: @AmericanThinker on Twitter | AmericanThinker on Facebook
Eight Times the National Guard Saved the Day
There’s this thing in the Army where the Active Component is always looking down its nose at the Reserve Component, specifically the National Guard. Why? Because the National Guard is part-time, of course, “weekend warriors” and all that. But also because the Active Component has some real fears that it can never actually live up to the incredible history that the National Guard has and is suffering from a rather embarrassing inferiority complex.
You’re probably at this point saying, “ASO, you’re off your rocker on this one, the National Guard has never saved anything other than discount beer.”
Let’s go back and take a look, shall we?
Louisbourg, 1745
Okay, so it’s 1744, and New England has suffered attacks and raids from the French forces from what now is Canada for over fifty years. The central base of the French is Louisbourg, a massive walled fortification on Cape Breton that provided a good defense to the inner harbors of New France and was strong enough that it could not be attacked from the sea. Now there had already been multiple colonial wars between England in France that had spilled over into their colonies. In these wars, British and French Regulars fought each other, augmented by their provincial forces and Native American allies. It was sort of an article of faith for the English that the colonial militias could not mount a sustained campaign by themselves; they were only considered effective if paired with Regulars.
New England was pretty ticked off about the constant raids from New France and the lack of support from the Crown to do anything about it. So Massachusetts Governor William Shirley decided to take care of things himself. He talks with his neighboring colonies and everyone agrees to pitch in: Massachusetts provides the bulk of the expedition, with about 3,200 militia from Massachusetts and Maine, while Connecticut and New Hampshire pitch in about 500 militia each. The other colonies provide cannons or funds and hey presto! There’s a suddenly a militia expeditionary force of over 4,200, commanded by Sir William Pepperell from Kittery, Maine, heading out on board their very own militia fleet of 90 ships in March of 1745.
They reach New Breton in May of 1745 and conduct a link-up with a Royal Navy force. Then they conduct an amphibious landing on May 11, covered by light infantry from Gorham’s Rangers. After some skirmishing with French defenders, the main force is able to land over 2,000 troops on the landward side behind the fort. The French retreat inside the fortress and the siege begins. Now, sieges are things that are supposed to be done by professional armies, not by untrained provincials. And yet, the tough New Englanders kept building batteries, constructing saps, and generally doing the whole siege thing wicked well. After several attempts by the French to force the militia off the point, they surrender their fortress on June 28 when they realize that there is no longer any hope of reinforcing it.
New England went nuts with celebration while London and Paris couldn’t believe their collective ears that an untrained militia force had conducted an amphibious assault, siege, and reduction of a proper European fortress. However, the rejoicing was short-lived, because in 1748 England traded Louisbourg back to the French in exchange for the Indian city of Madras that the French had captured. Figures.
The Formation of the Continental Army
Alright, we all know that the militia kicked off this whole American Revolution thing in 1775 with the running battles of Lexington and Concord. And then we all know how the militia – those undisciplined yokels – completely wrecked the British at Bunker Hill. But the thing is, they were far from undisciplined yokels. Because of the Colonial Wars, many of the militia regiments across New England had more combat experience than the British Regulars that they were facing.
Not only that, New England had united by April 23, 1775 to field what was called the New England Army. Nearly 20,000 soldiers had assembled around Boston to form this force. The fundamental basis for this force was from the longstanding militia regiments. In the New England tradition, each county was responsible for providing a regiment. During the chaotic early days of the revolution, a portion of each regiment was retained at home for local defense while the rest of it was sent off to the main Army outside Boston. So when George Washington arrived, he found that the basics needed for the creation of a Continental Army were right in front of him.
On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress voted to create a Continental Army, authorizing colonies outside New England to raise ten companies of riflemen – partially a ploy to get the Middle Atlantic colonies to start committing troops. At the same time, it basically made all the colonial organizations then at Boston part of the Continental Army. Essentially federalizing the militia – not for the first or last time, either. Congress appointed generals for the new Continental Army, and the majority were drawn from the militia.
Now, it would take time to grow a professional standing force – not until 1777-1778 could you say that the Continental Army was more than a part-time force, since enlistments kept running out, occasional desertion (run home, plants crops, return to the Army, run home, harvest crops, return to the Army) was rampant, and the Continental Congress was having a hard time actually paying anyone. But the seeds were there, and because of the pre-war militia system, we were able to actually field an army.
Little Round Top
Fast forward to 1863, when this whole American experiment is in trouble. Two armies clash at Gettysburg in July, and on the second day of the month, the battle hangs in the balance as Confederate assaults threaten to overwhelm the blue lines in the Pennsylvania hills and woods. Two Confederate regiments from Alabama are able to push around the left flank of the U.S. Army and strike right at the exposed left flank, where one single regiment stands in their way: the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment.
Now, the 20th was not a militia organization. It was composed of volunteers from around Maine. It brought 386 men to the fight that hot afternoon on Little Round Top. But 120 of those men were new to the regiment, but not new to the military. They had come from the 2nd Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment, which had been inactivated in 1863 because the majority of the men had signed two-year enlistments. Save for these 120 men, who had signed for three years, and now found themselves in this new outfit.
While the 20th was not a militia organization, the 2nd most definitely was. It was formed out of the existing volunteer militia companies from Bangor, Maine and the towns outside of it. It was the first regiment from the state to see combat, taking part in the Battle of Bull Run in 1861 where it was one of the few U.S. units not to hightail it back to D.C.
During the fighting on Little Round Top, the extra 120 rifles in the ranks tipped the scales in favor of the bluecoats, allowing them to keep fighting even after taking 125 casualties. Without the additional firepower, it is unlikely that the 20th could have held on as long as it did. The 2nd also brought an unlikely asset with them: seafarer-turned-soldier, Sergeant Andrew Tozier. As a sign of his trust in these additions to the regiment, the 20th’s commander, Lieutenant Colonel Joshua “Bayonets” Chamberlain made Tozier the regimental color bearer. At one point in the fighting on Little Round Top, Chamberlain recalled looking through the smoke and seeing Tozier standing alone – the color guard shot away – with the colors in the crook of his arm, loading and firing his rifle. The regiment reformed on the colors and – bereft of ammunition – attacked with the bayonet, driving the confused Alabamans down the hill. Tozier would later receive the Medal of Honor for his bravery. The National Guard had come in at just the right time once again.
World War I
When the U.S. entered World War I, the Regular Army numbered around 130,000 men. In military power, the U.S. ranked somewhere around 35th in the world. Suffice it to say, we were not ready to enter the most lethal war in human history to that point. What the U.S. did have, however, was a very strong National Guard, which fielded 17 divisions that would eventually go to France (as opposed to the seven Regular infantry divisions that took part in combat operations). And since many of the Regular units were made up of mostly new recruits, the Guard could actually boast more veteran soldiers in their ranks, who had either come off active duty to join the Guard, had participated in the Mexican Border call-up of 1916, or were veterans of the fighting in the Philippines at the early part of the 20th century.
Out of the first four divisions in France, two were National Guard – with the Guard’s 26th Division from New England being the first full U.S. division in France. While the 1st U.S. Division was the first to see combat in the late fall of 1917, the 26th Division was not far behind in February of 1918. The 42nd Division (from twenty-six states) would quickly follow, as would the 32nd Division, from Wisconsin and Michigan, and then the 37th, from Ohio. Without the Guard, the U.S. would not have been able to get enough troops into France to help the allies stabilize their lines after the German Spring Offensives of 1918, and then to counterattack. It was the Guard that enabled the U.S. to be able to hold the line long enough for the divisions formed of selective service draftees to enter the mix and begin the great push to end the war in the fall of 1918.
Throughout the war, the German general staff would rate eight U.S. divisions as “superior;” six of those were National Guard divisions. ‘Nuff said.
Guard Tanks the First to Fight in WWII
Ever hear of the 192nd Tank Battalion? Probably not. Mainly due to its not existing for very long. But what an existence it had. See, in 1941, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall could tell that Bad Things were in the offing, specifically in the Pacific. So he routed as many of the Army’s available M-3 Stuart Light Tanks as he could to the Pacific. But where to find available units? The National Guard, of course. One unit was the 194th Tank Battalion of the California National Guard, and the other was the 192nd Tank Battalion from, well, from National Guards all over the place. Company Acame from Janesville, WI, Company B from Maywood, IL, Company C from Port Clinton, OH, and Company D from Harrodsburg, KY.
The 192nd reached Manila in the Philippines in November of 1941, which just is not a great time to be in the Philippines because Bad Things are about to happen. The Japanese invaded in December, and the 192nd was ordered to counterattack. On December 22, elements from Company B made first contact with the Japanese 4th Tank Regiment, who were equipped with the Type 95 light tank. Both sides were equally matched when it came to armament – having a 37mm main gun – but the M3 was gas powered while the Type 95 was diesel. Predictably, the first U.S. tank that took a direct hit cooked off because of the gas. In the first tank engagement of the U.S. in WWII, the results were inconclusive. The U.S. lost one tank while the remainder took several hits and were able to draw back – until being destroyed by Japanese aircraft later that day, because of course.
The 192nd and 194th would fight on as long as they could, trying to support the beleaguered U.S. infantry units. On April 9, 1942, the U.S. garrison surrendered. The officers and men of the 192nd would spend the rest of the war trying to survive. Most did not. Of the 593 men that arrived in Manila in 1941, 328 would not survive to see the end of the war.
34th Division in North Africa
At the outset of World War II, the 34th “Red Bull” Division (from North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota) was rated as one of the most combat-ready elements of the U.S. Army – unsurprising because Midwesterners just like to fight. When the U.S. entered WWII, the 34th Division was quickly shipped to Ireland in order to help secure Britain from German attack, as part of a previously established war plan. The first elements reached northern Ireland in January of 1942.
While in northern Ireland, the commander of the 34th, Major General Russell Hartle, was tasked with forming a commander unit. He assigned his aide Captain William Darby to head up this new unit, which would eventually become the 1st Ranger Battalion. 281 men from the Red Bulls transferred into this new unit, forming the core of it. That’s right, Big Army, you don’t even get to claim the Rangers as your own; it was a National Guard thing.
The 34th Division formed part of the Eastern Task Force during Operation Torch, landing in Algiers on November 8, 1942. From then on, the division would be on the attack until the end of the war, amassing 517 days of front line combat – second only to the 654 days of the 32nd Division in the Pacific, also a National Guard outfit. Without the ability to rapidly deploy the Guard as part of the initial war plan, the U.S. could not have projected power so quickly into two theaters of war.
29th Infantry Division on D-Day
The amphibious invasion to break open Fortress Europe in 1944 was one of the most ambitious military operations in U.S. history. The toughest objective would be the landing at Omaha Beach. This mission was given to the 1st Infantry Division – veterans of fighting in North Africa – and the Virginia and Maryland National Guard’s 29th Infantry Division.
On June 6, 1944, two regimental combat teams (three battalions of infantry, augmented by engineers, field artillery, and armor) hit Omaha Beach. One was the 16th RCT and the other was the 116th RCT of the Virginia National Guard. As the day wore on, both units struggled to gain a beachhead, suffering horrendous casualties. Alpha Company of the 116th was almost completely wiped out, leaving a gaping hole in the community of Bedford, Virginia, where most of the men were from. For this reason, the decision was made to build the National D-Day Memorial here. Combat engineers from the 121st Engineer Battalion – nominally the D.C. National Guard, but in actuality composed mostly of engineers from the Ohio National Guard that day – worked feverishly to create breaches in the enemy defenses.
By mid-morning, troops from Companies B and F, 116th RCT joined with Ranger elements to gain the heights, and soon small parties of GIs worked their way through the maze of enemy bunkers and defensive positions, knocking them out one by one. By nightfall, the Big Red One and the Blue and Gray Division had punched a hole in the Atlantic Wall – Regulars and Guardsmen, fighting side by side.
Iraq and Afghanistan
So remember that time we did the whole invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and the whole Iraq thing in 2003? Well, the invasions went pretty damn well, all things considered. Then came that really awkward occupation part that got kinda messy. Well anyways, the National Guard played a role in the invasion, but where they really came to the forefront was in supplying units during the occupation.
See, the way the Army is set up, there’s simply not enough Active soldiers to conduct rotations through Iraq and Afghanistan, support missions around the rest of the world, train, and get a few days to see their families. So that’s why all of a sudden the Guard became one of the keys to fighting the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Guard units have filled every role, from combat to combat support, in both theaters. Simply put, OIF and OEF would have been impossible without the National Guard.
Which is why in 2014, when General Ray Odierno (now retired, then the Army Chief of Staff) disparaged the service of the Guard in OIF/OEF – and was then followed by more Active officers voicing similar opinions – it felt like a slap in the face. Not just to those of us who supported those operations, but to the hundreds of years where the Guard has more than carried its operational weight.
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About the Author: Angry Staff Officer is an Army engineer officer who is adrift in a sea of doctrine and staff operations and uses writing as a means to retain his sanity. He also collaborates on a podcast with Adin Dobkin entitled War Stories, which examines key moments in the history of warfare. Support this blog’s Patreon here.
LT. GEN. KURT SONNTAG LOWERS ARMY TRAINING STANDARDS TO RAISE GRADUATION RATES – SOCIETAL DECLINE INSIDIOUSLY LEAKS INTO MILITARY, WHICH COVERTLY WEAKENS AMERICAN MILITARY POWER
PROLOGUE:
Since the beginning of the Republic, the American people have frequently made the mistake of voting for people that tell them what they WANT to hear, and not what they NEED to hear. It’s been a problem for a very long time.
There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had finally created. His answer was prophetic: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”
The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people; they also depend upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.
And that’s the core of the problem, most Americans are too involved with their own lives to research issues in order to become a fully INFORMED VOTER. Sadly, many people rather believe the news media’s narrative that tells them what to think and who to hate. That’s much easier than doing all the work of searching for facts and listening to opposing sides in order to make up their own minds.
It first starts at home with dubious parenting techniques. The old adage of “spare the rod, spoil the child” is tossed out in favor “negotiating.” Parents do everything possible to make sure their child DOES NOT FAIL, not recognizing that failure has value of its own. As we know from the recent college admissions scandal, some parents pay literally millions to get their child in a prestigious school, most of which are laden heavily with Marxist professors.
America’s schools have become nationwide brainwashing factories to sell socialism. Frequently these young adults graduate but can barely read or write, and have very little knowledge of history and the monetary forces that have made American the greatest economic power on earth. Even though capitalism has its drawbacks, world history has proven time and again, that capitalism is frequently superior to any socialist model past and present.
THE LIBERAL CONCEPT THAT NO ONE IS A FAILURE
HAS INFECTED MILITARY LEADERSHIP
Did the Obama-Era school discipline policy (and mentality) also infect military policies and Pentagon leadership? Remember the horrific mass shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida in February 2018? The school district was one of the first to embrace what’s known as “restorative justice” that removes accountability for breaking the law.
Restorative Justice became one of the Obama administration’s darlings for its alleged effectiveness to focus on disciplinary equity. The theory was that if you forgive young people early in their lives, they will realize the error of their ways and become responsible citizens.
So-called “adults in the room” pointed to it’s success because it dramatically reduced arrests. But, they won’t talk about the sky-rocking recidivism rates and how many of those youngsters ended up as career criminals because they thought that crime does pay.
The new superintendent of the Broward County school system, Robert Runcie previously worked hand-in-hand with Obama’s Education Secretary Arne Duncan to screw up the Chicago Public School system. Robert Runcie was the leading force behind instituting new practices within the district for handling illegal misconduct by students without resorting to law enforcement involvement.
In other words, students could violate the law with impunity just like those folks in Washington. Example; little Johnny stole someone purse, and the angry woman wanted to press charges, but a new program intervened and prevented an legal accountability. Then little Johnny went on a stealing spree and ended up with a bedroom full of stolen purses.
Runcie’s new program quickly became a national model for ending zero-tolerance policies in schools. The Broward school district decided to hire Robert Runcie as their new superintendent to implement his new “restorative justice” program down in warm sunny Florida.
Shortly after assuming the job as school superintendent in Broward County, student-related arrests plummeted down by 65 percent and people applauded the new “positive numbers.”
This new “restorative justice” program stopped authorities from arresting or even investigating former high school student Nikolas Cruz who walked into school one day and murdered 17 people. It was all about numbers. In the liberal mind, arrests were down which meant hope was on the rise.
So-called school leaders didn’t want to hold anyone accountable for their illegal behavior, so Nikolas Cruz was given a pass and went on a horrific murder spree. If people want gun dealers arrested for murder for selling the gun, how about arresting the stupid people who created policies that protected the murderer.
LOWERING STANDARDS TO IMPROVE GRADUATION NUMBERS
The military noticed the high dropout / failure rate of those attempting to graduate from the Army’s Special Warfare School and Center (SWCS) where Green Berets are selected, trained and graduated. They put Lt. General Kurt Sonntag in charge and everything went to hell.
Soldiers are fearful of retribution for speaking out, which resulted in a total breakdown of unit morale. Standards at the school’s prestigious Qualification Course (Q-course), where Green Berets are graduated, began to dramatically slide after Sonntag took command in May 2017.
Breitbart.com did a great job exposing the Army’s attempt to lower standards when no one was watching. They listed the specific instances where Lt. Gen. Sonntag was lowering standards and destroying unit morale. Here’s his playbook to increase the number of graduates for the Army’s elite Green Beret fighting force…
- A student could no longer fail the course for not passing any physical standard or test. Before, failing to pass two separate times would have resulted in being kicked out of the course. Now, students are increasingly being passed by a relief board or the training group commander.
- Land navigation required students to navigate open terrain and find set points using a map and compass is no longer a “pass or fail” event. It was turned into a “practical exercise.”
- Students had to pass the language portion before receiving their Green Beret. Now, students can receive their Green Beret before passing it on a “conditional” basis and are allowed to retake the language portion as many times as they need in order to pass it.
- Ethical standards have become increasingly lax. At a 2017 party, a student pulled a knife on someone. Despite the incident being reported to higher command, it was dismissed as merely a “personal” incident, and the student was allowed to continue the course. Before Sonntag, the student would have been tossed out on his ear.
- The GT score, which determines eligibility for specific jobs in the Army, has also been recently lowered from 110 to 107 for aspiring Green Berets.
- The ability to discipline students by instructors was also dramatically reduced. One of the most important things in this type of intensive training is for instructors to have the authority commensurate with their responsibility.
- Students leaving the course voluntarily or involuntarily are being personally called and asked if they would like to come back and finish. Past policy required them to be sent on an overseas assignment or to the 82nd Airborne.
- Lt. Gen Sonntag initiated an “open door” policy, so students can walk into Sonntag’s office and appeal to him directly to be able to continue the course even if they fail.
- After Sonntag arrived, students who had either repeatedly failed phases of the course or failed the course were being recycled back over their recommendations and rules that dictated how soon a student could be put back in.
- Lt. Gen Sonntag punished instructors whose students would fail, or were seen as too tough on their students. In October 2017, one instructor asked his students to show up for physical training the Thursday before a four-day weekend. When only three students showed up out of 40, he called another mandatory training session that weekend. Two hours later, he was fired.
Unit morale had plummeted to a point where Sonntag had to do something to make everyone think he really cared about them. Lt. Gen. Sonntag decided to hold a “town hall” meeting. He declared the meeting was “classified” and prohibited anyone from recording it.
But according to several witnesses, Sonntag told the roomful of about 150 instructors, “I have a client. I have a customer — the first Special Forces Command. They have a number set of missions, and I have to provide a specific number” of graduates.”
One instructor decided the general was just pandering and wrote a scathing 6,399-word anonymous email detailing everything happening at SWCS. He blasted it out to more than 2,000 members of the Army special operations community worldwide. It became known as the “night letter” among Green Berets. One called it the “email heard around the world.”
This is when the general popped his cork. Several days after the email was sent, Sonntag called a formation of instructors, both civilian and military. According to several witnesses, he took off his Army combat uniform top and challenged those who disagreed with him to step forward and fight him.
“He took his top off,” one witness said. “He said, ‘If anybody had any problem with me … my rank just came off, I will fight you guys one-on-one.’” According to another witness, Sonntag also said the email author could be punishable by “death.” The general was losing it and people were worried about his sanity.
Sonntag narrowed down his “hit list” to seven suspects who might have sent the email that exposed how he was gutting the special warfare school. He was like a bull in a china closet, suspending security clearances,and using a slew of administrative, non-judicial punishments that included firing, reassignment, negative evaluation reports, and other actions. He was doing everything he could to find the evil bastard(s) that sent out the “night letter.”
By June of 2018, Sonntag’s witch hunt narrowed down the email suspects to three instructors at the Green Beret school. He issued them all a non-judicial punishment under Article 15, alleging that they were likely behind the email as well as other things. He didn’t need proof. The military doesn’t need proof to convict anyone of anything… We keep telling you the system is rigged in favor of the system and generals who are part of the military swamp.
The author of the email — who was one of the three suspects — admitted to writing the email and accepted the punishment. He was stripped of his Special Forces tab and returned to the conventional Army, which is the biggest disgrace to befall any Green Beret.
The two other suspects (instructors Robertson and Squires) said they had nothing to do with the email, but Sonntag accused them of using their work computers to develop and launch an online application and using their positions as instructors to have students sign up for it. The general didn’t give a shit… he just wanted hides to nail to the wall.
Robertson and Squires decided to fight the accusations by requesting a court-martial where they could plead their case in front of a military judge. It was a risky move, because who do you think picks the jury and writes their career propelling (or ending) efficiency reports, the convening authority which would be Lt. Gen. Sonntag.
IF YOU CANT COURT-MARTIAL,
THEN ATTACK WITH THE POWERS OF A GENERAL OFFICER
Sonntag was probably worried that even more truth would leak out and withdrew the Article 15 non-judicial punishments which denied any request for a court-martial.
Instead, he used his power as general in the Army to administratively attack them by issuing them both a permanent General Officer Memorandum of Reprimand (GOMOR). A GOMOR is a letter of reprimand that can be a career-ender, and cannot be fought.
A GOMOR is a non-rebuttable presumption of guilt that cannot be challenged. Sonntag GOMORs triggered discharges for both instructors from the Army. And that my friends, is how the United States Military treats their elite soldiers.
To make it look like they care about justice and fairness, the Pentagon’s inspector general is allegedly investigating Lt. Gen. Sonntag. The military will circle the wagons for about a year pretending to investigate one of their card-carrying members of the original good-old-boy club.
That elite club is the flag-ranking members of the United States military who enjoy many perks, but the most important perk is being allowed to retire to avoid any accountability.
In about a year, after everything has died down, Sonntag will be transferred to another job or allowed to retire. Our brave fighting men and women will be cast aside to protect the general and all will be forgotten. But MCC won’t forget, we guarantee it.
We have seen this before… Years ago, a commanding officer and five of his staff officers in the naval reserves were trying to artificially prop up their reserve retention numbers by paying reservists for work they never did. Chief Petty Officer Michael Tufariello reported their massive payroll fraud scheme, and they had him imprisoned in a military mental hospital on a trumped up charge.
More recently, the superintendent of the Broward school system wanted better numbers, so they quit holding people accountable which ended up causing the deaths of 17 people.
And now, Lt. Gen. Sonntag wanted to increase the number of graduates from SWCS, so he initiated measures to quit holding people accountable which produced some graduates with dubious skills. How many lives that will cost in the future, no one knows. Sadly, the only people he held accountable were the Green Beret instructors who spoke truth to power. They were ultimately ruined.
Folks, if you are on active duty and someone says, “Tell me what’s on your mind, you can trust me. I won’t tell anyone.” Are you really going to fall for it? If you want to keep your military career, you had better go along to get along.
Make no mistake; the military brass in the Pentagon knew exactly what Sonntag was doing because it was the Pentagon that ordered him to do it. Now, they are pretending to investigate Sonntag…. Give me a fricking break.
Until real reforms are made that actually hold the admirals and generals accountable, you had better get out of the service as soon as you possibly can. We say this because we love you.
Kurdish gals ready for anything
American gal rocking at the range.
IDF chick shoots a shorty
And I think that not one of these ladies need a safe space any time soon!
This one came over the mil-email transom…
Odd little ‘facts’…
Odd little ‘facts’…
-Nimitz class aircraft carriers get refuelled approximately every 20-25 years. Since the lifespan of an aircraft carrier is about 50 years, that means they only get refuelled once. (This is the nuclear fuel for the reactors – the ship gets jet fuel every few days.)
-Almost all of the food has to be manually carried down to the mess and storage decks. This is a constant painstaking feat considering you’re feeding almost 6000 people, and you’re dealing with anywhere from about 4-8 stories worth of stairs, which can take as much as 10 hours in one resupply.
-All USN Aircraft Carriers are powered by steam from the nuclear plants.
-Machinery and non-airwing personnel can go longer than many submariners without seeing the sun. Many go 90-120+ days straight.
-The screws (propellers) installed on the USS Dwight D Eisenhower weight 366,200lbs (166,105kg) each and there are four of them.
-The Screws are each 25 feet tall.
-In even remotely rough seas, the showers alternate between hot and cold with the rocking of the ship. This is hilarious if you’re just using the bathroom, it’s horrible if you’re the one taking the shower.
-The total anchor weight including 1,082 feet of chain for one (of two anchors) is 735,000 lbs. (333,390kg).
-The machinery spaces are so far below the flight and hanger decks, there are emergency crews trained in mountain rescue, called deep rescue crews. They’re trained to rescue personnel out of the escape shafts which are roughly 80ft tall.
-The total number of crew members including the deployed air wing is over 6,000 personnel.
-Nimitz and later class nuclear carriers have 2 dump-truck size nuclear reactors for power. The one Enterprise class carrier has basically 8 submarine-size nuclear reactors powering it. That may seem trivial, but 8 nuclear reactors on a floating ship, each with essentially independent systems for control and safety, is nothing short of insanity.
-The height of the keel to the mast is the equivalent to a 24-story building.
-The Flight Deck is 4.5 acres.
-Steam piping in the machinery spaces is so hot, it will kill nerve cells before someone realises they touched the wrong thing.
-You can water ski behind an aircraft carrier going full speed, not that it’s safe.
-Aircraft carriers don’t have sonar – the carriers are too noisy for it to be effective. (In truth, they do have sonar depth finders, but those point straight down and are only used when you’re fairly close to shore.)
-Additionally, there’s very little shielding from radiation on the underside of a carrier since it’s usually facing the entire ocean, so a person must be certified and wear a radiation monitoring device to be under the ship in dry dock.
-The USS Midway (obviously a retired carrier) has about 5,000 miles (8046 kilometres) of wiring. A modern carrier, despite having much more electronic equipment, has only about half as much wiring because much of the data is now transported by fibreoptics.
-When the engines are engaged, the shafts rotate/twist more than an entire revolution before the propeller/screw actually moves.
-Nuclear operators on carriers, and submarines and formerly cruisers for that matter, receive much less radiation than normal citizens. You get more radiation commuting to work than the people running nuclear reactors. (Chernobyl, 3 mile island, Fukushima, SL1, and some others notwithstanding)
-Many of the dining tables in the enlisted mess can be converted to hospital beds and even surgical tables in the event of mass casualties.
-Thanks to a sophisticated network of supply ships, fresh milk and soft-serve ice cream is almost always available.
-When resupplying the ship, they actually use a gun with a rope attached to it, to initially retrieve the cables from the supply ships. Just picture cruising at 20 knots with a sailor literally shooting a gun at a supply ship from the hanger deck.
-There are small ramps around the edge of the flight deck, each about 18 inches wide or so, that lead out over the water. These are “bomb chutes,” and provide a way to quickly get bombs and other aircraft weapons over the side and away from the ship in case there’s a fire.
-Any time weapons are brought up from or taken down to the magazines, it always requires two elevators to accomplish. They’re taken about half the way, at which point they have to switch elevators since none of them go the whole distance. This is to eliminate one potential path of escape for any fire or explosion that might break out. It’s not at all uncommon to be eating a meal on the mess decks, with a cart full of bombs or missiles sitting a few feet away as they’re waiting to complete their journey up or down.
-Procedures have been developed and are sometimes practiced that allows for the launching and recovery of aircraft without the use of radios – no speaking whatsoever. It’s called “zip lip.” This is done when the ship is in EMCON condition, or “emissions control,” when radio-based equipment like radar and radios aren’t used in an effort to remain “silent” to enemies that might use the signals to detect the ship.
-There has never been a nuclear accident or uncontrolled release of radioactivity in the history of Naval Nuclear power, including submarines.
-The stern area of the ship at the hangar deck level is home to what’s called the “jet shop.” This is where in-depth repairs are made to jet engines that have been removed from airplanes. That area has jet fuel plumbing so that the engines can be tested at high power while attached (strongly) to the ship.
-It takes more than 2000 people to spell out “Ready Now” or a similarly large phrase on the flight deck.
-Every carrier landing is recorded on video, and each pilot is graded on how well they did. The best you can do is an OK-3wire, which means both the plane and pilot can be used again.
-During daytime and in good weather, during an aircraft recover (landing) cycle, the goal is to have an airplane land every 45 seconds. That means each one should land, come to a stop, get free of the cable it caught and taxi out of the way in 45 seconds or less.
-A deployment is referred to as a cruise by recruiters.
-The actual speeds for a carrier are classified.
October 30, 2013 – Photo by Staff Sgt.Tim Chacon
“…the expectations of a Major are very different than those of a captain, and not everyone knows what these expectations are or the impact they have on personal and professional success.”
-MG(R) Tony Cucolo, “In Case You Didn’t Know It, Things Are Very Different Now: Part 1”
While attending the Command and General Staff College (CGSC), instructors and mentors constantly drove two points home. First, transitioning to the rank of Major and the expectations of a Field Grade Officer is a difficult and steep learning curve. Second, what made an officer successful at the company grade level does not necessarily translate to success as a Major.
I have been a combined arms battalion S3 for ten months now and during this period I’ve planned, resourced, and executed field training exercises, live fire events, gunneries, an NTC rotation, and spent enough hours on my Blackberry that I never want to see one again.
However, I can definitively say two things about my instructors’ advice: They weren’t kidding about either point … and they vastly downplayed both.
The transition to Major is less of a learning curve and more of a sheer cliff. There is less tolerance for officers who need to “grow into it,” and the expectation is you are value added on day one.
Finally, the room for mistakes grows smaller and smaller. What follows are the hard lessons I’ve learned either through personal shortcomings or watching peers fall by the wayside.
Failure #1: Believe Help is Coming
When things became supremely difficult or complex as a captain or lieutenant, we would often look for a field grade to give refined guidance and direction. The Major knows the answer.
They are the responsible adult in the room. The Major may get cranky and hand out a butt chewing, but they would bring resources to bear on the problem. They were help when we needed it.
As a Major, YOU are now that responsible adult who has the answers and can bring resources to bear. You ARE the help that’s coming.
There is no help coming for YOU. Majors are the Army’s problem solvers and workhorses. If a room of Majors looks around and cannot tell who among them is lead on an issue, then the issue is probably not being addressed.
Majors don’t get to look around and wonder who will solve the problem. They must own the problems as they appear and work with peers to solve them.
Failure #2: Burn Bridges and Fail to Cultivate and Maintain Relationships
Early on in my time as a BN S3 something went wrong during our FTX. A situation changed that was outside of my control and I blamed the brigade.
Over the phone, I got into a heated discussion with the BDE S3 and XO and lost my temper and composure.
When I was done venting, the BDE S3 said something I will never forget: “Do you want to keep complaining or do you want to solve the problem?” Those words stuck with me. I apologized, we moved on, and we fixed the issue.
The argumentative Major, the one who picks fights, protects their own rice bowl, and never gives an inch will quickly find themselves isolated without a seat at the table.
In the end, their unit will suffer for it. Conversely, the Major is willing to give more than they take, willing to put the brigade’s success over what’s easier for their battalion and work well with peers to find solutions and compromises will succeed.
Leaders do not have time for personality conflicts, especially Majors.
The biggest power Majors have is that knowing where to look, who to call, and having a network of friends, peers, classmates, warrants, and NCOs that can be leveraged to solve problems.
Most problems in a brigade are solved by the S3s and XOs sitting around the table, developing a course of action, and moving out to attack the challenge at hand.
That requires well-cultivated and maintained relationships. More than anything, those relationships and connections are the most powerful resource at your disposal.
This is also the point in our careers where many of us will begin to regularly interact with DA Civilians. Do not forget about them.
The GS-14 serving as your Division Chief of Training could well be a retired LTC and former Battalion Commander. They have either been where you are now, or they have seen many in your position come and go, and they often serve as the long-term continuity in higher headquarters and support functions that are critical to your success.
Stop by and talk to your peers regularly. Take time to talk to DA Civilian, get away from email, and drop by offices.
Come to meetings early and stay a little after to talk to each other, even if it’s just letting each other vent for five mins. It will pay dividends when you need to move a mountain and get a short notice task done.
You cannot afford to have personality conflicts or fight with your peers. Ever. Period. Learn to swallow your pride and be the first one to apologize or mend a relationship after a heated exchange.
Failure #3: Confusing Leadership and Management
Leadership and management are not the same thing and are easily confused when assuming organizational level leadership for the first time.
Leadership is about people while management is about systems. While these concepts may appear obvious, it took me about three months to learn this and I am still working to improve my management skills.
As a Major, your primary concerns are building and managing systems. Majors are about touch points. Identify critical touch points for your organization, develop systems to manage that information, and use those systems to recognize where the train wrecks and pitfalls are.
The Major’s aperture is so wide that there is no way you can directly affect it all with personal involvement or presence. If you try, you will fail.
Time is now your most precious resource. Systems help manage the information flow so you can focus your limited time on things that are commander priorities, mission-critical, or something only YOU can do based on knowledge, skills, or relationships.
For everything else, develop your staff to handle routine business, empower them to make the routine decisions, and train them to know when things require your personal involvement. If you don’t develop systems to manage the massive amounts of information coming in, you will quickly become overwhelmed and remain in crisis management.
This is not to say that personal leadership is not important as a Major. It simply means the balance has shifted. Your personal leadership is still critical in two areas: training your staff and mentorship.
Do not expect to walk into a staff that can do MDMP perfectly with just an occasional guiding nudge from you. You will have to train your staff.
MDMP is just the beginning. How to write emails, brief the commander, write orders, develop courses of action, work as a team, interact with the higher headquarters staff, Army culture and expectations of officers, and a thousand other things you now take for granted after over a decade of service.
All of this requires your personal presence, time, and effort. If you do not teach them, no one else will.
The Major is also a mentor to younger officers, especially the staff officers they interact with daily. This mentorship requires personal leadership and is just as important to the Army’s success as the next round of MDMP is to your unit’s training event.
I am wearing an oak leaf because of the mentorship two Majors provided at critical junctures in my career. Officers in your organization will look to you as a model for future service: how to act, how to look, and the path they should chart through the Army, just as I looked to those Majors when I was a Lieutenant and a Captain.
Failure #4: Fail to Predict the Future
Majors must forecast out, identify implied tasks, determine conditions that need setting, and execute without guidance, FRAGOs, or WARNOs from BDE or higher.
If you fail to do this, the train wreck is waiting and, remember, no help is coming. Your higher HQ may give some guidance, but never enough, and never on the timeline you want it. If you wait, it will be too late.
Predicting the future allows planning to occur that can mitigate future problems. This is critical because at the battalion and brigade level dynamic re-tasking is never dynamic.
As a BN S3, I can pick up the phone and redirect the work, efforts, and lives of 700 Soldiers, officers, warrant officers, leaders, and their families.
However, a battalion has a certain organizational momentum and inertia that is hard to overcome and shift on a dime. Every dynamic shift exponentially increases the chance of details being missed, mistakes being made, and can push you into crisis management.
Look deep, develop a concept, and address potential gaps through FRAGOs, IPRs, and update briefs as necessary.
As Majors our words, actions, and decisions carry serious weight as BN and BDE S3s/XOs, planners, and action officers.
An errant email, simple misspeak, or a rash outburst will affect entire organizations exponentially more than when we were company commanders or staff captains.
As such, the tolerance for those who fail to grasp this and make the transition is low. Unfortunately, many Majors step into these pitfalls, sometimes irrevocably, without ever knowing they have made a fatal error.
Fortunately, the Army is a learning organization and just maybe sharing my own shortcomings can help another Major avoid failure as they climb the cliff and make the transition.
Terron Wharton is currently serving as the BN S3 for 4-6 IN, 3/1ABCT at Fort Bliss, TX. An Armor Officer, he has served in Armor and Stryker Brigade Combat Teams with operational experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He is also the author of “High Risk Soldier: Trauma and Triumph in the Global War on Terror,” a work dealing with overcoming the effects of PTSD. His other works include “Becoming Multilingual”, discussing being multifaceted within the Army profession, “The Overlooked Mentors” which speaks to NCOs as mentors for junior officers, and “Viral Conflict: Proposing the Information Warfighting Function” which proposes establishing an Information Warfighting Function.
Being a Rebel Leader: Disciplined Disobedience in the Army
First off, no, this is not a discussion on the merits of leaders within the Rebel Alliance in the Star Wars universe, though if it were, I’d have to say that the Rebel leadership had very few merits and we should probably not emulate their chaos-based approach to warfare.
What’s I’d like to talk about is disruptive thinking in the Army, and I’ll lead off with this:
“Disciplined disobedience to achieve the higher purpose.”
– GEN Mark Milley, Army Chief of Staff, 2015
In all large organizations, there is a severe temptation to follow by-the-book procedure. And this for the simple reason that when you’ve got just around one million people in your organization – as in the case of the U.S. Army – it’s a lot safer and efficient for everyone to be on the same page. In our case, we have doctrine, which is the fundamental building block of how we think and operate in the Army. Doctrine offers us our left and right limits in which to operate; provides a common language; and ensures that the organization operates uniformly. It even provides the Army definition of leadership and leadership principles; all in one handy twenty-six page document. And yet in that discussion of Army leadership, there is not one mention of willful disobedience – save for when not following orders that are unlawful or immoral.
So what does it mean to exercise disciplined disobedience, as Milley calls it? Harvard Professor Francesca Gino has written extensively on what she calls “rebel leadership” in organizations: “When I think of rebels, I think of people who break rules to explore new ideas and create positive change,” she says. So it’s not that these leaders are breaking the rules and being detrimental to their organization; rather, they are always looking for new ways of doing things, refusing to accept “that’s the way we’ve always done it” as an answer, and constantly innovating. By the way, read her eight principles of rebel leadership in the link above; they are excellent.
Now, the Army is a massive institution with a very important mission: to protect the United States. Lives depend on leaders making the right decisions. So should we as leaders diverge from our doctrine and think up new ways of doing things?
Yes and no. First off, there are some things that you just shouldn’t diverge from or change. Procedural things, like the 9-line medical evacuation formula or calling for artillery fire. These processes are put in place to ensure that communication is streamlined for maximum efficiency. Diverging from these processes can cost lives.
Now, lets take something like battle drills. Are these scripts for absolute victory every time? Not at all – they merely combine best practices (flanking, infiltration tactics, suppressive fire, obscuration, etc) gathered over the last century or so of combat in order to provide the leader with a baseline from which to operate. One can and should (using our good ol’ METT-TC) diverge from battle drills should variables change. Strict adherence to the letter of the law in these cases will get people killed. And that has always been the case throughout history. The British Royal Navy adhered so much to strict line of battle principles that they were never able to gain a victory over a near-peer force until 1782 when Admiral George Rodney broke from doctrine and defeated the French fleet at the Battle of the Saintes. Tactical leadership requires innovation and ingenuity and some elements of disciplined disobedience: operating within the commander’s intent but outside the norms of Army doctrine.
Ok, so, how about everything else? We all know that leadership doesn’t begin and end on the battlefield. In fact, often the most effective moments of leadership are the common ones in day-to-day life. And operating within Milley’s guidance and the examples provided by Professor Gino, there are a myriad of things that one can do as a leader to make subversive yet positive changes to an organization. After I took command, I examined the number of meetings the company was having and eliminated or consolidated them down to the bare minimum needed to keep communication flowing, even though they were meetings that people said “had to be held.” They really didn’t. Everyone hates meetings, so this not only made the organization more efficient but also raised morale. Win-win.
You can also be a little more subversive and can enter the gray area that characterizes disciplined disobedience. Take taskings from higher, for example. All units get them, there are always too many, and sometimes you feel like you’re drowning under the pile of them. We all have limited time and limited resources. So by attempting to do everything, we will necessarily be less effective at our priorities. My rule of thumb is to gauge the tasking by what line of effort it falls under, and if it’s not in my top three – and if it by ignoring it or missing it I do not put undue stress or more work on my subordinates – then I drop it to the bottom of my priority list. It’s not literally disobeying an order, it’s prioritizing effectively according to the resources available.
Disciplined disobedience needs to be explored more as a theme within the Army, because it has obvious pitfalls if it goes awry or if people misinterpret it to mean “disobey all orders.” Discipline is a fundamental part of the Army and we still have to be mindful of it. Therefore, this concept needs to be a discussion between leaders. It should be held at the lowest levels of the force and should be championed by mid-level leaders who can use it as an opportunity to encourage this kind of thinking rather than stifle it. In order to maximize resources, retain and promote talented leaders, and gain an edge over our adversaries, we need to build rebel leaders.
What’s I’d like to talk about is disruptive thinking in the Army, and I’ll lead off with this:
“Disciplined disobedience to achieve the higher purpose.”
– GEN Mark Milley, Army Chief of Staff, 2015
In all large organizations, there is a severe temptation to follow by-the-book procedure. And this for the simple reason that when you’ve got just around one million people in your organization – as in the case of the U.S. Army – it’s a lot safer and efficient for everyone to be on the same page. In our case, we have doctrine, which is the fundamental building block of how we think and operate in the Army. Doctrine offers us our left and right limits in which to operate; provides a common language; and ensures that the organization operates uniformly. It even provides the Army definition of leadership and leadership principles; all in one handy twenty-six page document. And yet in that discussion of Army leadership, there is not one mention of willful disobedience – save for when not following orders that are unlawful or immoral.
So what does it mean to exercise disciplined disobedience, as Milley calls it? Harvard Professor Francesca Gino has written extensively on what she calls “rebel leadership” in organizations: “When I think of rebels, I think of people who break rules to explore new ideas and create positive change,” she says. So it’s not that these leaders are breaking the rules and being detrimental to their organization; rather, they are always looking for new ways of doing things, refusing to accept “that’s the way we’ve always done it” as an answer, and constantly innovating. By the way, read her eight principles of rebel leadership in the link above; they are excellent.
Now, the Army is a massive institution with a very important mission: to protect the United States. Lives depend on leaders making the right decisions. So should we as leaders diverge from our doctrine and think up new ways of doing things?
Yes and no. First off, there are some things that you just shouldn’t diverge from or change. Procedural things, like the 9-line medical evacuation formula or calling for artillery fire. These processes are put in place to ensure that communication is streamlined for maximum efficiency. Diverging from these processes can cost lives.
Now, lets take something like battle drills. Are these scripts for absolute victory every time? Not at all – they merely combine best practices (flanking, infiltration tactics, suppressive fire, obscuration, etc) gathered over the last century or so of combat in order to provide the leader with a baseline from which to operate. One can and should (using our good ol’ METT-TC) diverge from battle drills should variables change. Strict adherence to the letter of the law in these cases will get people killed. And that has always been the case throughout history. The British Royal Navy adhered so much to strict line of battle principles that they were never able to gain a victory over a near-peer force until 1782 when Admiral George Rodney broke from doctrine and defeated the French fleet at the Battle of the Saintes. Tactical leadership requires innovation and ingenuity and some elements of disciplined disobedience: operating within the commander’s intent but outside the norms of Army doctrine.
Ok, so, how about everything else? We all know that leadership doesn’t begin and end on the battlefield. In fact, often the most effective moments of leadership are the common ones in day-to-day life. And operating within Milley’s guidance and the examples provided by Professor Gino, there are a myriad of things that one can do as a leader to make subversive yet positive changes to an organization. After I took command, I examined the number of meetings the company was having and eliminated or consolidated them down to the bare minimum needed to keep communication flowing, even though they were meetings that people said “had to be held.” They really didn’t. Everyone hates meetings, so this not only made the organization more efficient but also raised morale. Win-win.
You can also be a little more subversive and can enter the gray area that characterizes disciplined disobedience. Take taskings from higher, for example. All units get them, there are always too many, and sometimes you feel like you’re drowning under the pile of them. We all have limited time and limited resources. So by attempting to do everything, we will necessarily be less effective at our priorities. My rule of thumb is to gauge the tasking by what line of effort it falls under, and if it’s not in my top three – and if it by ignoring it or missing it I do not put undue stress or more work on my subordinates – then I drop it to the bottom of my priority list. It’s not literally disobeying an order, it’s prioritizing effectively according to the resources available.
Disciplined disobedience needs to be explored more as a theme within the Army, because it has obvious pitfalls if it goes awry or if people misinterpret it to mean “disobey all orders.” Discipline is a fundamental part of the Army and we still have to be mindful of it. Therefore, this concept needs to be a discussion between leaders. It should be held at the lowest levels of the force and should be championed by mid-level leaders who can use it as an opportunity to encourage this kind of thinking rather than stifle it. In order to maximize resources, retain and promote talented leaders, and gain an edge over our adversaries, we need to build rebel leaders.
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About the Author: Angry Staff Officer is an Army engineer officer who is adrift in a sea of doctrine and staff operations and uses writing as a means to retain his sanity. He also collaborates on a podcast with Adin Dobkin entitled War Stories, which examines key moments in the history of warfare.
