Grunts (3 page)

However, he greatly exaggerated the importance of battleships and the
primacy
of sea power in modern war. While accepting Mahan’s argument about sea power’s vital necessity (along with the subsequent arguments of aviation advocates for the importance of air power), I am asserting that land power is the most important element in modern war. More than anything else, land power equates to national power. My most powerful evidence for this argument is the simple realities of America’s recent wars. Obviously, American troops were highly dependent on air and sea forces for transportation, supply, and fire support. Planes and ships were of crucial importance in every war. I am not arguing otherwise. But the key word here is “
support
.” Ground forces, while dependent on much support, still took the
lead
in the actual fighting against America’s enemies. In fact, they did almost all the fighting and dying, even in World War II, when naval and air forces fought more battles than they have in all American wars ever since. In World War II, nearly two-thirds of American combat fatalities, and over 90 percent of woundings, occurred among Army and Marine ground forces. A generation later, some 58,193 Americans died in Vietnam. Over 53,000 of them died while fighting on the ground, in the Army or the Marines. Some 2,555 sailors lost their lives in that war, and it is a safe bet that a significant percentage of them were serving with ground forces as corpsmen or in special operations units like the SEALs. The unbalanced casualty ratios were even more pronounced in Korea, the Gulf War, Afghanistan, and Iraq (well over 90 percent of American combat deaths in those wars occurred among ground soldiers).
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These numbers simply reflect the obvious fact that, from World War II through Iraq, most of the fighting in America’s wars took place on the ground. Is it not rational to say, based on these numbers, that in these conflicts land forces took a leading role? In my opinion, this is beyond question. Perhaps it is then reasonable to say that land power has proven to be the preeminent element of American power in modern times. I base this statement not just on casualty numbers but on the indisputable fact that when war has happened, ground troops, particularly infantry soldiers, have fought most of the battles. If this trend held up for more than sixty years, between World War II and Iraq, at a time of explosive technological growth, why would we have any reason to believe that the future will be any different?

The second point I plan to make in this book has to do with the reality of combat. In modern wars, the actual fighting is
the
story, not simply an antecedent to larger strategic considerations. I will use an example to explain what I mean by that. I bristle whenever I hear the orthodox explanation as to why the Allies won World War II. It goes like this. Once the Big Three (the USSR, Britain, and the USA) were in place, Allied victory was then inevitable. The matériel, manpower, technological, and transportation advantages that the Big Three and their partners enjoyed simply guaranteed an Allied victory.
No, they did not!
They swung the probabilities in favor of the Allies. They did not make victory inevitable. To say so is to deny the importance of what took place on the battlefield. The Allies could not have won the war if their soldiers were not willing to fight, die, and sacrifice, in large numbers, under the most challenging of circumstances. Can machines or warehouses full of supplies force men to move forward, into a kill zone, at mortal risk to themselves, in order to attack and destroy their enemies? Certainly not. Only good leadership and a warrior’s spirit can do that. Material advantages can be very helpful (especially in the realm of fire support), but they cannot ever guarantee those vital ingredients of victory. From the Greco-Persian Wars through Vietnam, history is replete with examples of materially impoverished groups, kingdoms, tribes, or nation-states that triumphed over their better-heeled opponents.

That aside, I believe that too many American policymakers have sought to avoid seeing war as it really is, not just out of a natural preference for technological solutions to difficult problems, but also out of fear and disgust. Because American culture generally values individuality and the importance of human life, the truly awful face of war, as embodied in ground combat, is simply too ugly for many of us to behold. It is instead somehow more comforting, or humane, to assure ourselves that such unpleasant things are relics of an earlier, more barbaric age, easily suppressed under the weight of modern technology. War need not mean actual fighting and dying by ground soldiers. Instead it can be prosecuted from a distance, with smart weapons, and brought to an amicable conclusion with mutually reasonable enemies. Of course, the only problem with this well-meaning notion is that wars never happen that way. Once unleashed from its Pandora’s box, the plague of war slimes us all, but none more so than the combatants themselves.

In 1976, John Keegan published
The Face of Battle
, a truly landmark book. By investigating the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme, Keegan delved, like no previous historian, into the stark realities of ground combat for the average soldier. He almost singlehandedly inspired the school of socio-military inquiry that focuses on the experience of the common soldier. Keegan made the salient point that firsthand combat accounts were rare until only the last few hundred years. The perspective of the average enlisted soldier was almost nonexistent until the nineteenth century. Instead we were left with traditional battle rhetoric—grand, sweeping charges, trumpets and glory, heroic generals, cycloramic drama. Keegan was one of the first historians to penetrate that battle rhetoric in search of the actual human story for the average participant.
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With full acknowledgment of Keegan’s profound influence, I intend to employ the same approach to see how it holds up in a more modern time, for Americans from World War II through the present, at a time when there is definitely no paucity of sources from the common soldier. I have chosen to write about ten different battles or situations in recent U.S. history—Guam, Peleliu, Aachen, and the northern shoulder of the Battle of the Bulge in World War II; Operation Masher/White Wing, the Marine Corps combined action platoons, and the Battle of Dak To in Vietnam; the combat experiences of infantry soldiers in the Gulf War, the urban struggle for Fallujah; and, finally, the world of one infantry regiment fighting the counterinsurgency war in Iraq. Each chapter is based on a diverse blend of primary sources, some of them coming to light for the first time. I make liberal use of after action reports, unit lessons learned, official documents, personal diaries, unit journals, personal memoirs, letters, individual interviews, and even group combat after action interviews I conducted with Iraq War infantry soldiers. These sources help us puncture the clichés of battle rhetoric and discover what the modern battlefield smells like and looks like, how killing and fear affect the combatants, and how Americans behave in battle.

I realize that I can be accused of stacking the deck in my favor by choosing only battles that illustrate my larger arguments. That is a fair point, even though my arguments evolved from studying these battles rather than the other way around. What’s more, I could just as easily have chosen dozens of other battles or situations that would have illustrated my arguments every bit as well. In making my choices, one of my key intentions was to pursue variety. So I opted for a rich blend, from amphibious invasions to urban combat to pitched battles, to mechanized warfare and its diametric opposite, counterinsurgency. I chose no Korean War battles because I saw in them nothing tactically different from World War II. Only the reader can decide if this was an oversight. In any event, my goal is to illuminate, in the most unvarnished way, the troubling world of ground combat, as experienced by American soldiers of recent times. Mahan made his case by discussing naval history. I will make mine by writing about land warfare, in a way that I hope does justice to Keegan’s methods.

I want to be very clear that I am not writing all this from the perspective of a professional soldier or statesman. I do not base my arguments on personal experience, military training, or in-depth study at any military college. I am only a historian, trained in modern American military history, offering a perspective on the basis of that expertise. As such, I have constructed my arguments around the lessons modern history has shown us, nothing more, nothing less. And what are those lessons? They can be summed up in the words of one World War II combat soldier: “There is no worse place than where the Infantry is . . . or what it has to do. A war is not over until the Infantry is done with it . . . finished moving on foot more than the other, finished killing more than the other. And when it is all done, and the Infantryman is taken home again, some of him will remain in that place . . . forever.”
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CHAPTER 1

Guam, July 1944: Amphibious Combat Against a Self-Destructive Enemy

W-Day

THE UNDERWATER DEMOLITION TEAMS (UDTS) went in first. Their job was to blow holes through the coral reefs that served as a natural barrier for the American invasion force at Guam. With that accomplished, their next mission was to destroy obstacles and mines on the chosen landing beaches, and they were to do this in plain view of the Japanese defenders who sat in pillboxes, buildings, and bunkers, overlooking the beaches. Only a smokescreen and some covering fire from ships offshore would shield the Underwater Demolition Teams. Superb swimmers, trained explosives experts, and possessed of an adventurer’s mentality, these intrepid souls were the ancestors of U.S. Navy SEALs. For nearly a week before the invasion, they swept the area, paddling or swimming ashore, setting explosive charges, scouting enemy positions. They were seldom molested by the Japanese, who were often too busy taking shelter from naval gunfire to deal with the UDTs. Sometimes, the Japanese were just plain clueless, exhibiting a self-destructive penchant that was to plague their defense of Guam like a veritable millstone around the neck. One group of Japanese soldiers was practically within spitting distance of a demolition team but did not fire a shot. “No one gave us orders to shoot,” one of them later explained to his American captors. In the days ahead, of course, most of his countrymen would resist their American enemies much more forcefully, but always within the context of a deeply flawed plan that played to American strengths.

By the eve of the July 21 invasion (code-named W-day by the commanders), the teams had accomplished all their missions with the loss of one man killed. They had cleared paths through the reefs, negating palm log barriers filled with coral cement, wire cable, and four-foot-high wire cages also filled with coral cement. They had also blown up, mainly with hand-placed charges, nearly one thousand obstacles on the beaches. They even had time to leave behind a nice message for their Marine brothers who would soon hit the beach. They nailed a large sign to a tree that read: “Welcome Marines! USO that way!” Rear Admiral Richard Conolly, commander of Task Force 53, whose responsibility was to transport, land, and support the invasion troops, later wrote that none of this would have been possible without the work of the UDTs and their “successfully prosecuted clearance operations.” The only downside was that the UDTs, through the sheer weight of their efforts, made it quite obvious to the Japanese where the invasion would happen.
¹

In July 1944, the Americans wanted Guam for several reasons. It had once been an American colonial possession. The Japanese had seized it in 1941. The population, mainly Chamorros, had always been pro-American but were especially inclined toward the Americans after several years of difficult Japanese occupation. The locals were itching for liberation and the Americans intended to give them just that. Guam, with excellent airfields, anchorages, and hospitals, was a vital stepping-stone to Japan and ultimate victory.

The Americans planned a two-pronged invasion. In the north, the entire 3rd Marine Division, consisting of three infantry regiments and one artillery regiment, plus many attached units, would land between Adelup Point to the north and Asan Point to the south. The 3rd Marine Regiment would hit Red Beach on the left (north) flank. The 21st Marine Regiment would land in the middle at Green Beach. On the right (south) flank, the 9th Marine Regiment would take Blue Beach. The artillerymen would follow in successive waves. A few miles to the south, just below Orote Point—a fingerlike peninsula that jutted into the sea—the 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, consisting of the 22nd and 4th Marine Regiments, were to land at Yellow and White Beaches, respectively, near a village called Agat. They would be reinforced by the Army’s 77th Infantry Division, a New York National Guard outfit nicknamed the “Statue of Liberty” Division. All of these ground forces were lumped under the III Marine Amphibious Corps, commanded by Major General Roy Geiger, a judicious, meticulous Marine with an aviation background. The obvious post-invasion plan for all of these units was to push inland, subdue Japanese resistance, and secure the island.
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Aboard the troopships that were cruising a few miles off Guam’s shores in the early hours of July 21, most of the assault force Marines were actually eager to go ashore. Because they had comprised a floating reserve for the previous invasion of Saipan, they had been cooped up aboard their cramped, hot, austere ships nearly every day since the middle of June. Enlisted men slept belowdecks in cramped bunks stacked from the floor to the ceiling. The bunks inevitably sagged under the weight of their occupants. Only a few inches separated a man’s nose from the hindquarters of the Marine above him. Showers were of the saltwater variety, making true cleanliness a veritable impossibility. The heads were usually crowded. Sometimes toilets overflowed, spilling a nauseating brew of salt water and human waste that flowed from the head into adjacent areas, including sometimes troop quarters. Navy chow was pretty good but, on most of the troopships, meals were only served in the galley twice a day. One ship was permeated with the stench of rotting potatoes in the galley “spud locker.” Officers and sergeants put their Marines through physical training each day, but the fitness level of the men was bound to taper off in such conditions. Men passed the time by playing cards, writing letters, conversing with their buddies, or just plain thinking in solitude. Tempers flared and morale declined. “We were fighting each other,” Private First Class William Morgan, a rifleman in the 3rd Marine Regiment, recalled. “We’d have fought hell itself . . . to get off that damned ship.”
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