Yeah, I know. This is as much an editorial as a story - posted nine years ago. I dunno - It's the shag-end of February, it's snowing and business is both slow, a pain in the ass, and too good to be true.

Time to meditate on the little dark cloud of confusion hovering over my head. When the snow gets deep enough, I'll shake it off and go shovel.

Toy Soldiers

Gaming the System

Back in my teens we played war games. I’m surprised none of our games made the transition to digital - not enough action, I guess. We played Avalon Hill and Strategy & Tactics games - war games, involving fire and maneuver across a hexagonally gridded battlefield with small pieces of cardboard moving as anything from corps to battalions. The games were called “historical simulations,” because ideally, if the players made the same moves and made the same mistakes as their historical personae, the cardboard battle would mirror the real-life historical battle.

Our group consisted of (surprise!) geeky and nerdy teenaged boys. We’d be down in someone’s basement rolling the dice, consulting the Combat-Results tables, crowing at successful mayhem, cursing a bad roll, complaining about the rules. Occasionally our host’s father would come downstairs to look at these boys who should exercise more, or at least be outside, and puzzle at wtf we were doing.

Unreality Check

We were mostly AF service brats. Our Dads were active duty. Didn’t bother us. I remember one game of Avalon Hill’s D-Day. I was the German commander, and I wasn’t going to make Hitler’s mistakes. I released the 21st Panzers at the first sign of Allied troops on the French coast. I was busy crushing the 101st and 82nd Airborne, when a random Dad appeared to pick up his son.

“Who’s winning?” he asked.

“Germans,” I said. “Allies came in at the Pas de Calais.”

“Dad was at D-Day,” said the man’s son. That gave us pause, I’m glad to report. Not much pause, but some.

“Yeah,” he said. “I was a glider pilot. Is that the 82nd? I was with them.” Well, that was awkward. The 82nd was surrounded by cardboard Panzer Divisions, and was a doomed die roll away from obliteration. He peered at the board. He didn’t seem to have any trouble reading the military symbols on the cardboard pieces. “Huh. Looks bad for them, no? Yeah, it could’ve gone that way.”

We kind of stood at “Parent-acting-weird” teenage parade-rest until he packed up his son and left. Then I proceeded to murder the 82nd Airborne. This was less than two decades after June 6, 1944.

BoysTown

I remembered this today [i.e. nine years ago - AM] reading the latest installment of the NYT “Disunion” series, a reverent article about the participation of the Cadet Corps of VMI in the Battle of New Market in 1864.. They evidently acquitted themselves well. Glorioski, it was a grand adventure. Only 10 of the fourteen to sixteen year olds died. Their names are still read at roll call. Forty-five others were wounded. Evidently their names are not read, but they had the wounded’s suppurating pustules and broken bodies to remind them of their glory days for the truncated remainder of their lives.

The article left me queasy. All those future officers being fed all that drek. Reminded me of boys in a basement “simulating” carnage for fun. Reminded me of this:

At the Corner of Azimuth and Cloverleaf

In 1969 I was with a very jungle-tight cavalry company footing it through the woods and abandoned Michelin Rubber plantations west and slightly north of Saigon. We were quiet and professional - and if we weren’t, our nasty captain would personally get right in the face of whoever was fucking up noise or light discipline and explain it all in no uncertain terms.

When he did that, the afflicted soldier would get no comfort from his buddies. This was a life or death thing. Do it right, we all go home. Do it wrong, and you better hope all that happens to you is an ass-chewing.

We were doing azimuth and cloverleaf patrols. We moved along an azimuth. We stopped every four or five hundred meters and sent out two platoons to circle out about 200 meters right and left. Then back to movement. We never used a trail. That’s how you get ambushed. That goes double and triple for roads, locally known as “redballs” in honor of the RedBall Express and the fact that they were mostly red clay.

We never got ambushed doing azimuth and cloverleaf while I was in the company. What would happen is that we would encounter casual NVA and VC at sling-arms bopping down the trails or roads. We would also locate anyone setting up camp in our AO.

Locate them first, see them first. That is a huge advantage that you give up if you go the easy way down a trail.

Ten Clicks

So it was upsetting, to say the least, when one day we were told that we had to be at a certain place 10 clicks away by nightfall. No way to move that far safely. Our CO decided we were going down the redball for about six of those kilometers. It was a calculated risk. The local NVA and VC knew by now that we never used a redball, so maybe they wouldn’t see the point of setting up an ambush. We understood orders. We understood military necessity. Obviously Command had decided they needed us to take some risks. Suck it up.

So we moved out. The FNGs thought it was nice to not have to hack our way through brush. Everyone else was twitchy and hyper-alert. We got to our objective sooner than we expected because, hey, road. We came in and settled down in battle formation - don’t unruck, keep your gear about you, eat from the can, no fires, no cigarettes - expecting something military to happen at any moment. Nothing.

The next morning we got our marching orders. Ten kilometers back the way we came. No explanation. Back we went. The risk was significantly more this time. We had left unmistakable slick marks on the trails and redball we had used. Slickmarks were what we used to locate our ambush positions. No reason the local NVA and VC wouldn’t do the same. Nevertheless, we arrived safely, set up in battle formation, waited for something to happen. Nothing again.

This went on for four more days - random movement in random directions, always with orders to be at some specific location by such and such a time. Then nada.

Orders is Orders

Finally, we got a log day. Our Bn CO came out, which was a good thing because my Captain had a few questions that probably shouldn’t be voiced on the radio. But first, RHIP, the Colonel spoke. “What the hell are you doing out here, Captain? You’re moving about six to ten clicks a day. Are you using roads? That’s dangerous! How can you patrol properly and move that far?”

Good questions - all of them. I’ll spare you the rest of the conversation. Happily, our CO had saved his daily operation orders.

And they were such good operation orders! Perfect. Textbook. In the field, that means that your OP Orders are coming from G2 through G3, or Corps, or even the Pentagon. It means that some large plan is being concocted at division or corps level, and that you have a part to play in some grand operation, and you’d better redball your sorry ass where directed or the whole thing will fail, and it’ll be your fault!

Babes Not Quite in the Woods

Or... Let us contemplate the usual trajectory of cadets in time of war. The VMI tragedy is more revered and honored because it is unusual. Cadets don’t march off to war. They graduate. They become 2LTs who are schooled and prepared to be generals, but not platoon leaders. They are already honored members of an elite and select (and self-serving) officer community within their respective services. When they hit a war zone, they are snarfed up by higher ranking officers to serve as general’s aides, aides de camp, aides. It might’ve been good for them to shadow generals in the days when generals were actually on the battlefield. Not so much in Vietnam.

A few of the newly minted academy 2LTs manage to fight their way through the crowds of generals and make it to the field, but it’s a struggle. I know from personal experience that the Army can sense what you want, even if it’s the duty everyone else is trying to avoid, and frustrate your desires just as a matter of principle. Most former cadets in Vietnam ended up in an air-conditioned environment with an over-developed left arm from slinging those huge academy rings up in people’s faces.

All that academic training for war, and then this - Flunkydom. How one West Point 2LT managed to dribble all the way out to the Battalion S-3 of one particular cavalry battalion is beyond me. But he did. He was the Assistant S-3, by God. He was at the nightly operations briefing where our Colonel would say things like, “I want Alpha to patrol up in this direction.” And then the Colonel would point to the map. “I want Bravo to move through here.” And he’d point again.

Then everyone would bag out, and the cadet/Lieutenant would be left all alone to draft up daily Operation Orders for everyone. He was West Point, ferchristsakes! What could go wrong? He’d carefully put a grease-pencil “X” on every fingerprint the Colonel had left on the map. Then he would draft academically perfect Operation Orders for the units in the field.

<sigh>

Third Lieutenants

Robert Heinlein in Starship Troopers imagined a rank for cadets who were ready to graduate - Provisional, Supernumerary Third Lieutenant. Before they assumed rank, the cadets would be required to shadow a real lieutenant in the field.

I think that Third Lieutenant is an actual US Navy rank from time to time. Heinlein’s rank came with a set of “pip” insignia for the new officer. Those pips were returned to the Officer School, because the rest of the military had no use for them. Sometimes they were returned personally and with honor, at which time the cadet graduated. Sometimes they came back with honor but without their Third Lieutenant and a Wounded Lion decoration. All pips had history. Some were unlucky, some deadly, some revered.

I liked that reverence. It’s a real/fictional reverence - honest, knowledgeable. Heinlein’s OCS cadets were all battle vets. All of them were tested in battle before they took command of soldiers.

It frightens me that our Assistant S-3 2LT could easily be a general now.

Dipped in the Sticks

We should do that with our highest-trained soldiers - dip them in the Styx and test them in the Sticks. The boonies can kill you, but they don’t make you stupid. Can’t say that for military school.

For God’s sake, somebody has to tell these over-trained and coddled youngsters that whatever the size of the ring they’ve been given, they’ve just spent four years in Dad’s basement. Time to go outside. Time to get some exercise.