Brian M Downing
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
– William Shakespeare, Henry V
We’re stuck over here God knows how long, just waiting and sweating it out, and finding out things about yourself that, by God, it don’t pay to know.
– Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
At the outset of the war in Iraq, if told that an insurgency lasting over four years was in store, most Americans would have predicted serious trouble with cohesion and manpower in the military. Such views would be expected from opponents of the war, yet similar concerns would have come from cautious analysts, in and out of uniform.
Today, when veterans of the Vietnam War discuss the present wars (the subject arises naturally and quickly), many express puzzlement over continued high cohesion among our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps expectations are based more on memories of Vietnam than on a comparative look at cohesion in war.
Common backgrounds
Between 1940 and 1973, the military relied a great deal on conscription. Young men, from all regions and social groups, were called up to serve together in war and peace. Conscription, as is well known, became highly unpopular during the Vietnam War as fighting dragged on for years and deferments went to privileged sons. The draft ended in 1973 after which the nation relied on pay incentives and a sense of duty to attract volunteers. The social backgrounds of today’s volunteers are narrower than those from most previous wars, especially Vietnam. However harshly this might grate on senses of equity, especially in time of war, this homogeneity constitutes an important basis of cohesion now.
The rank and file of the US military come disproportionately if not mainly from small towns and rural areas, culturally distinctive parts of the country that instill beliefs and outlooks conducive to vigorous community life and also to ties among soldiers. While people in many urban and suburban areas over the last few decades have become highly individualistic, those in small towns and rural areas have maintained traditions of interdependence. Respect for authority in almost all forms took a beating during Vietnam, but regained strength away from the cities, especially during the Reagan years. Further, people in these communities view themselves as composing a redoubt of morality and tradition in a country that has become far too secular and hedonistic.
Pride in military service is an integral part of community life in small towns and rural areas, though it has faded if not disappeared elsewhere. American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars halls host local events and memorials. Parades are held on Memorial Day, July 4, Veterans’ Day, and other national holidays. The names of fallen servicemen are often engraved on walls in town commons. Civil War cannons outside courthouses attest to the longevity of pride in military service. Families fondly remember ancestors’ service in frontier militias, grandpa’s in World War II, dad’s in Vietnam, and now see tradition carried forth with a son or daughter in the Middle East. Vietnam has special meaning there. Returning veterans, they know, were treated shabbily and the war ended in humiliation.
Small towns and rural areas face the rise of corporate farms and big-box retailers, which undermine many existing businesses, leading to the oft-heard assertion that young people today enter the military because of lack of opportunity at home. No doubt this is part of the decision for many, but a non-pecuniary matter is more important. Military service offers something rarely available to young people in any part of the country: the opportunity to take part in something interesting, honorable, challenging, and important – if not historic. Few people can find that, regardless of age or local opportunity or family influence. Few people in later life do not wonder if they could have stood up.
At the outset of World War II, the United States was of course far less urbanized, suburbanized, and socially complex than today. (Indeed, the social structure of today is largely the result of the World War II economic boom, demographic dislocations, and postwar prosperity.) World War I and its tumultuous aftermath had also brought economic growth, rapid urbanization, and self-indulgence, but the Depression ended all that quite suddenly and at times seemingly irreversibly.
Americans had to return to small towns and ethnic neighborhoods and to traditional lifestyles. People were desperately poor and had to help family members and friends eke out a living until prosperity returned. When war came, Americans had been reacquainted, forcibly and for over a decade, with the need for perseverance and cooperation. The various Americans of the melting-pot platoon so idealized by Hollywood actually had much in common, including poor or working-class backgrounds and traditional work ethics – common themes in postwar novels. The army and marines took in those millions of young Americans and turned them into a powerful war machine.
By comparison, the young men who formed the combat units of the Vietnam War came from a more complex and affluent society than did their fathers. Racial integration in the military had just begun in World War II, accelerated in Korea (more due to high casualties than to presidential directive), but remained largely incomplete until years later. Conscription in the 1960s brought together urban and rural, black and white, poor and middle class. There were even a few from the upper crust where noblesse oblige had not yet perished. The youth of a greatly and rather suddenly changed nation came into swift and close collision for the first time.
Hadn’t armies historically comprised homogeneous peasants, farmers, or townsmen since the days of the Greek hoplite, the German Landsknechte, the medieval guild army, and well into the 20th century? Had any ethnically and racially mixed nation that had just undergone such rapid social and economic dislocations ever before embarked upon a sizeable war? Early in the Vietnam War, the disparate groups of the new America served reasonably well together, in and out of combat. But as it wore on, cohesion frayed, quite often along social, racial, and regional lines. The antagonisms and conflicts became well known in the US (and quite exaggerated as well). They were more common in rear areas, but frequent enough in combat units to pose problems.
Prewar expectations
Young people entering the military today have different expectations of war than those of their fathers. The post-World War II decades saw a celebration of war as an honored means of righting wrongs and spreading democracy, followed soon enough by hearty welcomes home from a grateful nation and a faithful girlfriend. B-movies and tall tales, neither of which was in short supply after 1945, conveyed romantic and absurd expectations of war to a generation of boys who became eager to have a war of their own someday, to have the experience of glory and victory their fathers had known and toward which their culture had long been guiding them.
In this respect, soldiers of the mid-1960s shared the naivete of those who went off to the Argonne and Chateau-Thierry in World War I, who had believed as fervently in Civil War myths as they had in America itself. War had been sanctified into a rite of passage into manhood, the true test of virility and patriotism, a safeguard against excessive materialism. By the early 1960s, American boys were watching an action movie entitled War is Hell, recreating its scenes in backyard play, and hoping for their war. Fortune did not refuse them.
The romantic image of war imparted to them by Hollywood and perhaps an uncle or two disintegrated after a few weeks in the rugged mountains along the Cambodian border or the hostile villages of Quang Ngai. Bitterness and disillusionment from the excruciatingly divisive unfolding of the war laid the foundation for new and bleak themes that recurred in war films of the post-Vietnam period. Though the themes were intended to convey anti-war sentiment, paradoxically they had a definite attraction to many boys.
This post-Vietnam image of war, though not realistic (it was usually far from it), was at least inconducive to romantic illusions. War in these films is hard and cruel, often pointless. Politicians are inept, spineless, and corrupt – polar opposites of the idealized soldier, who is often a maltreated Vietnam veteran. Victory in the traditional sense is elusive or even irrelevant; heroism goes unrewarded; suffering ennobles; and tragedy is simply part of the deal, raw as it is. Meaning is found not in shining victory or effusive homecomings, but in a brooding sense of honor and in initiation to the brotherhood. Despite this cultural background, young people heading off to Afghanistan and Iraq for the first time will nonetheless fall from illusion – that is inescapable. Their falls will at least be shorter and less painful than those of many forebears.
In this respect, they have more in common with those who went to war in World War II. World War I had left the nation with a bitter and uninspiring image of war that was widely depicted in book and film. Though in some sense victorious, the war had seen over a hundred thousand Americans killed in a year. Modern war had ended the days when individual valor, inspiring leaders, and spirited athleticism determined who won and lost, who lived and died. Visions of glorious charges and capturing the foe’s colors did not last long against machine guns and mustard gas in no-man’s land.
By the mid-1930s, it was evident that the peace treaty was unraveling and another of Europe’s bloody paeans to Mars was in the offing – a poor basis for romantic views of war. Robert Sherwood said of the period: “Morale was never particularly good nor alarmingly bad. There was a minimum of flag waving and parades. It was the first war in American history in which the general disillusionment preceded the firing of the first shot.” William Manchester remembers the coming of war in less than mythic terms: “Unlike the doughboys of 1917, we had expected very little of war. We got less.”
Cultural stability
The Vietnam War began at an inauspicious point in American history for fighting a war – any war – let alone a difficult and protracted one. An immense demographic boom, then reaching its late teens and early adulthood, was making its presence felt in colleges, the military, and political life. Some were steeped in traditional American beliefs, including those about war. Others felt alienated from traditional America and looked for new beliefs, especially those regarding war. The two groups could still find many things in common in 1965, but not much thereafter.
As the war crept on at a petty pace and casualties mounted, social and demographic changes became an upheaval affecting the entire nation. The doubts, and later the animosities, about the war entered the military, an institution that had previously thought itself insulated from the passing fancies of American society. All forms of authority suffered, perhaps especially those in the military. Conflict between young and old in civilian life during the period is well known; parallel conflict in the military between “lifers” and the rank-and-file might not be. Anger flared, disciplinary troubles soared, and unit cohesion suffered – in Germany, Korea and the United States, but of course most notably in Vietnam.
A decade before World War II, American life showed many signs of upheaval too. The 1920s had been a period of prosperity, rapid change, normlessness, and self-indulgence – the perpetual green light and orgiastic future that F Scott Fitzgerald wrote of and succumbed to. The Depression ended that, swiftly and seemingly permanently. Though there was considerable disaffection with traditional beliefs and dalliance with radical ideas from the left and right, the cultural tide beat back most Americans toward the traditional past – thrift, cooperation, and work when it could be found. Toughened by hard times, Americans were better able to endure the shock of three hundred thousand battle deaths over the next four years. If depressions cause wars, they might also prepare us for them.
The attacks on New York and the Pentagon in September 2001 forced many Americans to question their self-indulgence, realize that their country was not invulnerable to attack, and recognize that they were in for a long arduous conflict unlike any in their history. Words like “duty” and “commitment” were spoken more often and more passionately, sometimes in mythic and romantic timbres, than at any time since 1945.
The words were used less often and less passionately in a year or so, and the ardent timbres faded even faster. These wars, long and arduous though they are, have so far not called for national mobilization or sacrifice or even a tax increase. There is little likelihood of a cultural upheaval. America has no demographic bulge bringing youthful discontent to the fore. Soldiers today come voluntarily from traditional redoubts, not through national conscription. Anti-war sentiment is widespread but shallow, confined mainly to festival-like demonstrations and deftly imprecise electoral oratory.
Unit continuity
Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have trained together, lived in the same barracks and eaten the same chow for many months, if not more, long before deployment to the Middle East. They serve overseas in these same units, share a hard education, and most come home together. Back at Bragg or Pendleton, they are reunited with family and loved ones and integrate new soldiers into the unit to replace casualties and those who have finished their enlistments. Then they prepare for the next deployment.
Strong continuity from deployment to deployment has thus far been helped by relatively light casualties compared to other American wars, high re-enlistment rates, and the retention of most non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and junior officers. Many of them, out of loyalty to their men, are reluctant to leave the service, even after their terms of service have ended and despite personal anxieties and growing doubts. Like Robert Graves and Siegfried Sassoon during World War I, they feel obliged to remain with their men, regardless of personal views on the war, knowing that their experience will save some of their men’s lives.
During World War II, combat units were made up of young men, conscripts and volunteers, who had been posted to one of the divisions being assembled according to General Marshal’s mobilization plan. Then, according to schedule, they boarded troop ships together and headed for England or the Solomons, where they awaited orders to go into battle together. Casualties were often fearsome. Paratroopers suffered 75% casualties in the weeks after D-Day. Some divisions suffered over 200% casualties in the course of the war. Units had to be taken off the line to recuperate after sharp losses or a few months of numbing combat.
This presented challenges to cohesion. The military did not recognize the importance of unit continuity; in keeping with the assembly-line thinking of the period, it saw patched-up soldiers as interchangeable parts, like refurbished bolts for damaged M-1s or reground bearings for a P-47. They did not return to their old platoons, companies, or even battalions. Instead, they were trucked to a large replacement depot (“repple depple”), where impersonal personnel offices with no understanding of combat efficacy allocated them to whatever units required them that day.
Of course, soldiers in all wars and from all nations demonstrate great handiness in eliding rules. Officers wrote former battalion commanders asking to be requisitioned. Enlisted men would simply show up at their old units, draw equipment, and let the company clerks handle the paperwork. Continuity was also helped by experienced soldiers’ inclinations, after tortuous considerations (though perhaps not) to send replacements on particularly dangerous patrols. If they survived, they became more experienced and valuable. If not, fewer experienced soldiers were lost.
Vietnam presents a wholly different model – one assiduously avoided today. Early in the war, not much later than 1967, units left together from US posts and did their 12-month tours (13 for marines). As casualties rose and tours ended, units seemed to have revolving doors and continuity suffered. Every month, 8.5% of soldiers finished their tours and headed home. (Short-timers were usually cut some slack and allowed to finish their last month or so on a base or at least a relatively secure firebase.) Furthermore, every month another 10%, if not more, left because of transfer to another company, rest and recreation, compassionate leave, being deemed unfit for combat, illness, and of course wounds and death. It all added up to high and problematic turnovers – 50% in three months or so.
Eager to increase the numbers of young infantry officers, the army rotated platoon and company commanders every six months or so, exacerbating continuity problems at the company level.
On arriving in Vietnam and being assigned to a platoon, new soldiers faced iciness and hostility. It was partly from the coarseness and xenophobia of combat units, partly the functionalism of preparing inexperienced guys for what was to come, and partly resentment of the destruction of much of their pre-war identities, reminders of which are written on the affable and sanguine faces of new guys. Integration came only after a very tough initiation period, which further weakened continuity.
Stable force levels
During World War II, the army expanded over thirty-fold and the marines sixteen-fold, necessitating rapid promotions of tens of thousands into the NCO and officer ranks. The military churned out young buck sergeants and lieutenants almost as rapidly as assembly lines produced Garands, but not always with the same quality control. A PFC in 1941 might easily have become a platoon sergeant in two years. A lieutenant before the war might have risen to lieutenant colonel in the same period. A captain in a lackadaisical reserve unit might have soon commanded a regiment. Many performed exceptionally well; others rose to positions for which they had little qualification – as those who had to serve under them would readily attest. Postwar literature, film, and television teemed with bitter or comedic accounts of what became known in the business world as the Peter Principle.
Similarly, though not to the same degree, the military expanded rapidly between 1965 and 1970 as it deployed over a half million troops to Southeast Asia while maintaining North Atlantic Treaty Organization commitments and reserve levels. Again, there was a cost to promoting unqualified personnel, most notably Lieutenant William Calley, who had dropped out of junior college before enlisting, going through Officer Candidate School, and leading his platoon into My Lai.
Thus far in the wars in the Middle East, force levels have remained relatively constant, with reserve units and contractors alleviating some of the strain on active duty components. Increases have been recently authorized, though nothing near the proportions of World War II or even Vietnam. A modest increase in promotion rates has begun, mainly in order to help retain sorely needed NCOs and officers with combat experience.
The experience of war
The ties among men in war have been romanticized into a mysterious all but preternatural phenomenon, but the bases of those ties can be understood, unedifying though many are. Military training seeks to undermine an individual, civilian identity and build a group, military one. War greatly accelerates the process. Looking about amid an operation, soldiers feel part of an immense apparatus operating far outside the norms of ordinary society and taking part in events of extraordinary significance. Far away, exposed to hostile fire and sensing mortality for the first time, soldiers feel various degrees of dissociation from civilian experience and come to rely on one another far more than their upbringings and training could suggest. Wishing a guy good luck as he goes out on a patrol might contain more meaning than anything one will ever utter again.
In battle, soldiers face fears and dangers together and most of them survive. Soldiers share observations to hone their unit’s efficacy and better their chances of survival. Combat, when not accompanied by devastating casualties, builds senses of pride and accomplishment, though not in the uplifting way the cinema conveys. After the firing halts, a sense of elation sweeps over soldiers – likely a chemical response to the sudden end of intense danger. Joking and boasting abound, even among previously reticent and disliked soldiers.
Reluctance to talk about war experiences stems from several reasons. Battle reinforces coarseness and violence, which are present to various extents in previous civilian life and brought out in basic training. In war, they strengthen to an extent that no society could tolerate and become the combat unit’s lingua franca and identity. Musicians build cohesion through song, soldiers do so through violence. Combat can lead to pride in collective venting of anger, wreaking destruction, and killing. Some seek trophies and souvenirs – strange fruit of victory guaranteed them, they believe, by an unwritten law dating back to Achilles. It can be a culminating point for darker aspects of personalities and upbringings that found resonance in a subculture of putatively controlled violence and that sensed endorsement in a place where laws and morals barely exist. Reactions vary from revulsion to a sense of totemic kinship.
Support from home
Most of the public believes that support for soldiers in the field is crucial. And so today they display tokens of support on their cars, regardless of their views on the war. This only underscores the divide between soldiers and those whose understanding of war is based on the products of Hollywood, not events like Belleau Wood. Many studies have found little connection between support from home and unit cohesion. War is usually too dissociating.
There is an immediacy and enormity to the experience of war that renders “home” either into a utopia in which everything in life will be grand again or into a nebulous idea that becomes less and less distinguishable from an evocative passage out of a dimly remembered book. Preoccupation with surrounding death and destructiveness makes expressions of support from home seem an incongruous voice from far away, attached to irrelevant things like eschewing swear words and sitting up straight, and amounting to nothing more than trite words on a subject they are ignorant of.
Indifference and even opposition from home are unlikely to have the seriously harmful effects that politicians, most of whom remained a-bed when war beckoned in their youths, like to proclaim. Indeed, opposition from back home commingles with and reinforces the grim outlooks of combat units. A sense of being overworked, unappreciated, mistreated, of doing far more than peers, is simply part of combat culture. GIs are almost always certain that their platoon or company gets the toughest assignments and never receives proper recognition.
During World War II, members of the 1st Infantry Division, which fought from North Africa to Germany and took very high casualties along the way, liked to say that the army was composed of the Big Red One and a few million replacements. In that war’s other theater, many marines believed that after the war they were to be quarantined offshore until their bloodlust abated and they were deemed fit (by Eleanor Roosevelt, in some versions) to re-enter society.
It’s unlikely that soldiers in any war think they are appreciated back home – or even back at battalion. An oft-heard credo in Vietnam proclaimed: “We are the unwilling, led by the unqualified, to do the impossible, on behalf of the ungrateful.” (It probably predates as well as postdates Vietnam.) Lack of public support, paradoxically enough to most in the civilian world, can be a source of pride and identity, one that resonates with and reinforces the bleak almost paranoid ethos of combat units and the sense that they are the Evil in the Valley – another Vietnam-era moniker infused with mordant gratification that remains opaque to outsiders.
There was a piece of folklore floating about Vietnam – a jungle legend, one might say – that told of a package from a “commune” at a Midwestern university, sent not to an individual GI but to an entire company. The package contained Gaines Burgers (a dog food shaped like hamburger patties) with a note reading, “You live like dogs, now eat like dogs – we hope you die like dogs.”
Charming sentiment from the home front. But was it hard on the guys? They are said to have had a ball chowing down on Gaines Burgers that night, which were probably no worse than C Rations.
The nature of the wars in the Middle East today and the technological developments of the past few decades offer a different situation for soldiers today. Cell phones, call cards and Internet telephony allow them to talk to loved ones back in the US on a more or less routine basis. (A cashier recently apologized to me for being on the phone: her husband had just called her from Iraq.)
Most soldiers have regular Internet access, which makes e-mail and even video-conferences routine experiences during deployments. Technology and relatively short tours (though the latter are lengthening) make the emotional detachment from home less problematic than it was for soldiers in previous conflicts, who had no comparable communication and served longer tours. Accordingly, unit cohesion rests on shared hope and duty rather than on shared resignation and duty. It is noteworthy that soldiers in the Middle East do not typically refer to home, far away though it is, abstractly and maybe even despairingly as “the world” – a revealing piece of Vietnam slang.
The individual
The military does not prize individualism – few organizations do. But personal gifts of war leadership have been identified from George Washington back to Charlemagne, Alexander and Joshua. From Antiquity onward, countless legends and histories, paintings and films, have shown us the charismatic leader inspiring his men and winning the day. Of course, speeches like that of King Harry before Agincourt are rare, if not fictitious, parts of the sentimentalization of war reaching back millennia, but the human element in unit cohesion is unmistakable. It can be more important than most of the other elements presented here combined, though its basis in personal charisma makes it difficult to delineate.
Post-war studies found great importance in the platoon sergeants of the German army of World War II. Soldiers looked to their NCO for sound judgment in combat, fairness in administration and encouragement in bad times. His presence was critical to cohesion, his demise the same to disintegration. One naval intelligence officer who served with marines at Peleliu and Okinawa reports that Japanese soldiers, on the deaths of or separation from their unit leaders, were willing to surrender, foregoing the famed but caricatured warrior code, which was more binding to elites than to the rank and file.
It is part of the job description of the NCO and officer to intermingle command with banter, authority with wit. So expected is this, that every newly-minted buck sergeant and second lieutenant makes a point of asking soldiers their hometowns then inquiring if they roll up the sidewalks at night. Such ordinariness and lack of imagination are everywhere in any large organization. The weary lines don’t work, but they help soldiers to appreciate the ease and spontaneity from the genuinely charismatic figure, whose words and earnestness convey control and understanding. Many veterans will readily recall the numbers of imitators and frauds, then appreciate an Anderson or a Sabatini.
The individual’s effect on cohesion is not limited to NCOs and officers, though the military, quasi-feudal institution that it is, might think differently. Wit from the ranks is at least as important as that from above, breaking the terror of a mortar attack with a quick line. In the Legend of the Gaines Burgers, it is a PFC or so who ritualistically breaks open one of the cellophaned patties, pointedly takes a bite, and then passes around the rest to his appreciative brethren.
Early in the Vietnam War, NCOs and junior officers could rely on strong cultural patterns to establish and retain their prestige vis-a-vis their troops. The legacy of World War II bestowed on them an aura of charisma that conveyed to young soldiers legitimacy and continuities to the men and institutions that had served at Normandy and Iwo Jima. These cultural patterns were quite powerful in the mid-sixties, however, they decayed rather rapidly in the next few years amid broader social changes in American life. Many NCOs and junior officers had relied heavily on those patterns, but by 1968 or so no longer could.
They were left with only personal leadership skills, which were by no means evenly distributed, and a purely rational-legal basis of legitimate authority, which would prove unsound after months of combat and years of social change. NCOs and junior officers who felt that legitimacy and leadership skill stemmed from the devices on their lapels and shoulders became commonplace and served, inter alia, to weaken unit cohesion.
The cohesion of America’s military is remarkable. It will likely be the subject of inquiry by sociologists and general staffs around the world for quite some time. It has belied predictions of disintegrative effects in a protracted and unpopular war. Cohesion is important for matters related to the war outside of combat. It shapes the way soldiers perceive the unfolding of the war. As long as cohesion is intact, soldiers will perceive their unit’s operations, repetitious and costly though they often are, in a confident and optimistic light. Operations are unit achievements that form a basis for their understanding of the war. Soldiers continue to see patrols and skirmishes as small but important steps in getting the job done and earning the right to return home, as tactical successes that must entail strategic ones as well.
Turning to final causes, continued strong cohesion amid an unpopular war might contribute to the weakening of constitutional principles. By obviating the need for conscription, cohesion keeps public opposition to the war at the tepid and politically manageable levels of talk radio and folk festivals. It also allows Congress to avoid its constitutional responsibilities in foreign policy. And it allows a president to continue a war with low public support. Regardless of one’s position on the present war, anyone willing to think beyond the issues and passions of the day might look at these trends and feel concern over the weakening or circumvention of constitutional processes regarding a matter as crucial as war and peace.
Cohesion has remained strong despite four years of war, but only the imprudent politician or general can ignore the strains, many of which have been reported for eighteen months or so now. There has been an unexpected rise in the numbers of West Pointers who elect to leave the service upon completing their stipulated terms of service. Polling data show that disaffection is on the rise even in formerly staunchly supportive military families. Wives, children, and other relations are far less buoyant than in the months following the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue. They increasingly ask why their loved ones must continue to face dangers, especially while most Americans do not.
Related here is the sentiment that the burdens are insufficiently shouldered by privileged strata – a view heard in almost every lengthy conflict since the Civil War and deeply ingrained in American political culture since Vietnam. Memories of Vietnam in the redoubts of traditional America are not confined to the “see it through” credo and so cannot be relied upon to be entirely supportive of the ongoing war in Iraq.
A third or fourth tour almost certainly raises the idea in many soldiers’ minds that their number will come up this time. Cycles of deployment, home, deployment, home are probably unprecedented in military history and hence their effects are unknown. Upon return from overseas, soldiers must tell themselves to stop looking for improvised explosive devices as they drive to the commissary and for snipers as they walk around Fayetteville. Just when they are able to allay those anxieties (they don’t go away; veterans of earlier wars report similar habits to this day), they receive orders to go back. The mind has no reliable on/off switch for such things. The psychological effects of this cycle will strike many veterans and psychologists as likely to be serious and long lasting.
Cohesive dynamics continue to prevail over disintegrative ones, but caution is warranted. Some statistics to watch include AWOL/desertion rates, psychological treatment rates, company-level punishments, courts martial, and reenlistment figures. It is unclear if generals today, most of whom oddly enough have little combat experience, will recognize strains and their implications in a timely manner. It is also unclear if political leaders, most of whom have no military experience, will either. It merits mention, however, that the allegory of the straw and the weakening back has a Middle Eastern setting.
Brian M Downing, a veteran of the Vietnam War, is the author of several works of political and military history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com. (The author would like to thank the many veterans he has interviewed and especially Daniel Karasik (navy, World War II), Peter Sweda (army, World War II), John A Mele (marines, Vietnam), and an anonymous colleague (army, Afghanistan and Iraq) for helpful comments in the development of this essay. Je vous salue.