and raised the brood. The men worked hard, and most served their country in time of war — all as enlisted men. Besides my father, I had cousins who served in World War Two; my brother served in the Korean War; and my sisters married men who served. I listened to the stories these men told with fascination and envy. To them, service was an obligation of citizenship and, more important, a rite of passage to manhood. That obligation was engraved on my young brain. It was part of what had to be done as you grew into adulthood. If you were fortunate, I thought, you might even see action.
In my neighborhood were ethnic families that included Italian, Irish, Polish, African American, and “Mayflower” Americans. I don’t remember much friction between these groups. The mixed neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces tended to bring everyone together. I attended public school for the first five grades, then switched to Catholic school for the upper grades and for high school. The good sisters ran a tight ship. We learned self- discipline and a strong work ethic, mixed with a good dose of right and wrong.
These are the particular influences that have shaped me. Other, larger events shaped my generation. Those of us who survived those changes, and were able to advance more than we retreated, may have had advantages not shared by many young people starting out today. Of course it always helps to have good genes and DNA, and to come from families that function normally. But we also grew up in school systems that actually taught us something and imprinted us with a code, which helped move us along the path toward being useful citizens. And for most of us, our religious upbringing gave us an acceptance of a Higher Being in one form or another, at the core of our beliefs.
Of the events that shaped us, some came to us as a legacy; some we actually lived through. One of the biggest was World War Two, which has proven to be both a blessing and a curse to my generation. The blessing was that the Greatest Generation preserved our freedoms and our way of life, lifted us out of a severe depression on a wave of prosperity, and moved us into a role of world leadership. The curse is that it was the last Good War — the last with moral clarity, an easily identified and demonized enemy, unprecedented national unity in mobilization and rationing, pride in those who served in uniform (shown by the blue star flags hung by the families of those who fought and the gold star flags by the families of those who died), and welcome home victory parades for those lucky enough to return from overseas. Every war should be fought like that.
After World War Two, I learned about war at the knees of my cousins, who’d fought at the Battle of the Bulge in Europe and all over the Pacific — on the ground and in the air. A few years later, my older brother was drafted and fought in Korea. Their war stories were remarkable: sometimes gory and horrible, but always positive in the end. It was like winning the Big Game against your archrival — always clean and always good. So this was my generation’s legacy: World War Two was the way you fight a war. And all throughout our four decades of service, this notion kept getting reinforced. Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger’s famous 1984 statement of doctrine about the six criteria for the use of military force[88] is a recipe for refighting World War Two — not for fighting the Operations Other Than War (OOTW) that we face today. In fact, if you read the Weinberger Doctrine and adhere to every one of its tenets, you will be able to fight no war other than World War Two.
I joined the Marines in 1961 and officially retired on September 1, 2000.
I’d like to shine a spotlight on who we were — the military generations who went through the past four decades, from the 1960s up to the new millennium. If you looked at a snapshot taken when I first came into the service, all the generals looked the same — distinguished older white males with Anglo-Saxon names and Southern drawls — while the troops they led came from lots of different places. Let’s just say that the generals didn’t speak Philadelphia the way I speak Philadelphia.
But things were changing in the 1960s. Marine Corps officers were still coming in from the service academies and military institutes, yet more and more were coming in from Catholic colleges in the Northeast (as I did), from state colleges and universities around the nation, and from other schools with strong NROTC units or other strong military traditions. At the same time, we were seeing people coming up through the enlisted ranks to become officers — not just the tough old mustangs or limited-duty officers with midgrade terminal ranks, but young people whom we would send to school as an investment in the future. Back then, whatever our various backgrounds, we all came into the service with a code imprinted on each of us by family, school, or church. Those who had come from military schools received the imprint from their officers. One way or another, all of us were programmed to believe that we were not just doing a job, or even a profession, but were pursuing a calling.
It was never a drag for me to go to work. The troops, the leaders and mentors, the day-to-day experiences, always gave me a charge. I just loved it from day one. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t always fun. There were bad times. And some of the times were truly harrowing. But I never tired of engaging with the challenges. I could wrap my entire self around them — body, mind, and spirit. I never once regretted that I took that course through life.
Around the turn of the millennium, I had occasion to talk with old World War Two vets. It was often unnerving to face the old guys who’d look at me and seem to say, “How in hell did you screw it up? We had it right and we did it right and we fought and we understood and we left this country an incredible legacy, and now look at where we are…”
It’s hard to escape the feeling “God, I’ve let them down,” because the second major challenge that affected us was the Vietnam War — our nation’s longest and least satisfactory. It was my second-lieutenant experience, and I was pretty green (that changed fast). I didn’t see then all the problems we see now — the war was fought in the wrong way; it was badly led. I went through serious pain and suffering. I was sick; I was badly wounded. Yet despite all these problems, I would do it again. We had to do it.
Not because it was a “good” war, but because even in our failure we delivered a message that had to be delivered. We have to understand Vietnam within its context. We were in the Cold War. We were fighting communism. We had to stop it from spreading. We made a stand and didn’t hold that line. But communism didn’t spread. You can’t tell me that the Soviets didn’t get the message that we would stand if we had to.
The veterans of that war, in their losing fight, were no less heroes than the veterans of World War Two; and in some ways their heroism goes deeper, because it was never truly recognized and appreciated by the American people.
As my time in Vietnam lengthened, I began asking questions… wondering just what in hell our generals — my heroes who fought in World War Two — thought they were doing. Those of us who were platoon commanders and company commanders fought hard, but could never understand what war our most senior leaders thought we were fighting. The tactics didn’t make sense and the personnel policies — such as one-year individual rotations instead of unit rotations in and out of country — were hard to comprehend.
Today, of course, we are seeing a stream of apologetic books by the policymakers and military leaders of that era — as though saying
The third major test we went through was the challenge of the ’70s. It was the toughest time for me in my four decades of Marine Corps service — racial problems, drug problems, generational problems, authority problems… flower children, peace marches, demonstrations (some of them violent), the loss of trust in the military by a large portion of the American people. But in passing through that tumultuous cauldron, our military has, in my view, put together its greatest achievement during that forty-year period. To name just one example, it is the one segment of society where integration of the races has fully taken hold. Sure, we still run into problems, but nowhere else in American society can a person of color find the kind of opportunity he or she can find in our military. And we in the military are far better off for their presence. I am proud of them. We want the best and the brightest, and we get them.
The fourth challenge that affected my generation was the Cold War — which was actually a forty-year commitment to refight World War Two, if ever the need arose. Once again, we were energized to engage in global conflict, but this time against the evil “Red Menace.” Problem was, we could never figure just how this particular war would actually start. After playing a bazillion war games at the Naval War College and other places, I still could not come up with a logical or convincing way such a war would kick off. It was just too hard to show why the Soviets would want to conquer a burning, devastated Europe, or how that could possibly benefit the communists in any way. So we would just gloss over the way the miserable war got started, jump into the middle of things, and
