Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

“No power on earth shall hold me in this tent today! If I am to be without a command, then I will fight in the ranks like a common soldier. But the men, God bless them, will follow me wherever I shall lead them.”

“But the soldiers … will follow me wherever I shall lead them.” Knew he must lead—& had complete confidence that Brigade would follow him. Fact that he could inspire them to 3 successive assaults, each more severe, is crux of whole matter.

He’d done it; he’d obeyed that fierce inner voice, followed its first impulse and it had been exactly and solely the right move to make.

There were only sergeants and they were as omnipotent as God.

Inflexibility—it was the worst human failing: you could learn to check impetuosity, you could overcome fear through confidence and laziness through discipline, but rigidity of mind allowed for no antidote. It carried the seeds of its own destruction.

salute as a ceremony of respect, not to the man, but the rank which he wears and of which he aspires to make himself worthy; at colors we salute, not the flag itself, but that fluttering symbol of this great nation, one and indivisible …” Captain Parrish caught himself up, barked a cough, and slapped his thigh viciously with the riding crop. “We are a family,” he pronounced. “A select and honorable family. We work hard and play hard, but at all times we practice good fellowship, personal honor, and fair play. We are the vanguard of the nation. We must be worthy of it.”

“The American soldier has always wanted to know why, Sergeant. Baron von Steuben remarked on it at Valley Forge. Don’t discourage it—it’s a good thing. It’s what distinguishes him from any other private soldier the world over—this feeling that it’s his right to know why he’s doing something. And why shouldn’t he know? It’s his life he’s risking, isn’t it?”

“Let me finish. It’s all part and parcel of being a good soldier. Because there’s going to come a time—and it’s not too far away, either—when you’re going to be where all hell’s breaking loose. Where you won’t be able to hear yourself think, and where the temptation will be to do nothing and care less … and if you’ve learned to obey commands, to move without having to think about it, it’ll make all the difference in the world.”

“Company punishment will ruin him, Dev. It’ll just feed his gripe—he’ll become a stockade rebel and be fit for nothing. This is between him and me: let’s keep it that way. If I can’t take care of him I’m not fit to wear three stripes.”

Make your orders brief ones, and above all encourage the greatest possible use of individual initiative by the men of your commands.”

The column was still as death, their faces white and childlike under the dish rim of their helmets, and to Damon it was as if he were seeing them all for the first time: brash, uncertain, voluble, happy-go-lucky, resentful—and as vulnerable as flesh alone can be. Going toward battle. The men he’d trained and threatened and cajoled, who were now standing fast, as he’d bidden them, without a ripple or a flutter. For the briefest of instants, gazing at their bright, eager faces he was swept with the most fierce and exultant pride—and then with the deepest, darkest sadness he had ever felt in all his life.

but he, Damon, owed a debt to the men he had lived with and trained for battle.

There is a price for everything, the thought came to him; a bleak solace. There are no free tickets to any land, and it doesn’t matter if—

“Opportunity once forsaken is opportunity lost forever.”

he had dreamed of a fellowship of danger and high sacrifice, a soaring affection that laughed at all adversity … and in its place he had found only squalor and bereavement. He had found out about the elephant. Turning

Self-righteousness. It’s the occupational disease of the soldier, and it’s the worst sin in all the world. Yes! Because it spawns arrogance, selfishness, indifference.

Don’t let the weight of things numb you. Read, think, disagree with everything, if you like—but force your mind outward. Promise me that.”

But he had known them, and loved them; and he would remember.

It was impossible it could come again! But if it were to come again there would always be the Dickeys and Brewsters—fearful, trusting, uncertain, looking for the glance, listening for the calm, easy word of reassurance …

Many men have done courageous things that have never been rewarded, and bushel baskets full of medals have been handed out to staff officers for no reason other than favoritism or propinquity.”

So how can anybody but God decide who is worthy of a medal and who isn’t?”

If through some immense mistake on the part of fate I ever become Chief of Staff I personally am going to break every God damned swagger stick in the American Army over the head of every God damned officer carrying one.

“Because it’s a rotten symbol of caste, that’s why. Like this damn Sam Browne belt. They’re as obsolete and silly as a halberd. Their only function is to set the officers and enlisted men still farther apart.”

a man has to do what he can think well of himself for doing, or he’s nothing. It might be all right for some of them to go into business,

“All that—all that struggle. That’s what life is, isn’t it? Struggle. Struggle to breathe, to grow, to learn, to be good. Look at him!…”

and all the others, and his eyes filled with tears. This was for them, this boy: for their dreams, their passion, their tremulous mortality. They were not dead, they still lived on in memory, and in the promise of this boy

To lead, to lead, not to drive—there’s the essence of command, my dear.”

“Nope—God protects all fools, drunks and field-grade brass.”

The best way to delegate authority—assuming that was what you wanted to do—was to delegate it directly.

Give me an officer who can do anything a PFC can, and do it double. And then do it again. For Christ sake, give me an officer who thinks like a private soldier!”

“Every man—well, almost every man—is afraid. And fear makes for worry, and worry for pessimism. That’s where you come in. You must check it at the source. It’s your job to bespeak confidence, calmness, optimism.”

Christian and Negro and Jew, patrician and laborer: all of them were good enough to die, to sink to mortality and lie together.

“Sir,” Damon answered, “I will be pleased to inform the men. They did it.”

A soldier never gets to know his kids well enough: you should be able to but you don’t—military life is too unsettled, confused, full of external artificialities to permit it.

Ah God. God, help me. Help me to be wise and full of courage and sound judgment. Harden my heart to the sights that I must see so soon again, grant me only the power to think clearly, boldly, resolutely, no matter how unnerving the peril. Let me not fail them.

“That’s the whole challenge of life—to act with honor and hope and generosity, no matter what you’ve drawn. You can’t help when or what you were born, you may not be able to help how you die; but you can—and you should—try to pass the days between as a good man …”

But the higher you went the farther away you were pushed from the things that meant the most. He missed the moments with Frenchy and Jimmy Hoyt and Stan Bowcher, the arguments at mess, the bets, the needling and horsing around.

He can’t love that guy at the sink, trying to work the grease out of his knuckles. And because he can’t love him he himself is only half a man.

Now there was nothing to do but wait, and move around like this, to show some frightened GIs a two-star general wasn’t too good to put his ass on the line with the rest of them.

… If you hurt the Old Man, he said silently, traversing the gun a few degrees, peering through the thin screen of guava bushes and vines, if you so much as touch a hair of his head I’ll kill you myself, all of you. With my hands. Till the black end of time. “And that’s a promise.”

All dead were alike: all emptied, putrescent flesh was one. It was life that gave individuality, a bright sacredness …

Massengale smiled his charming smile. “In point of fact I don’t care what they think of me as long as they fear me. That’s the driving gear that turns the wheels of war.”

And who would protect the kids? Who would be left to show them how to file the stacking swivels off their M1s so they wouldn’t catch in the creepers, how to tape their dogtags so they wouldn’t jingle, how to wear their grenades on the sides of their belts so they wouldn’t get in their way while crawling? With him out of the way, Massengale would be ruthless: they’d be given the dirty end of every operation, every logistics detail. Who would fight for them?

he had been closer to Dev and Raebyrne and Brewster than to any of these friends of his youth.

But there is nothing glorious about killing one’s fellow man, or being killed by him, or passing many, many days in hatred and misery and fear. And whoever says it is a matter for glory lies in his teeth …”

“Oh yes. You have a very rare capacity for empathy, and a deep sense of justice. Like others of your countrymen. Other good revolutionaries. Like Adams and Jefferson and Hancock. Paul Revere.

if it comes to a choice between being a good soldier and a good human being—try to be a good human being …”