Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

“You can’t help what you were born and you may not have much to say about where you die, but you can and you should try to pass the days in between as a good man.”

Albert Schweitzer advised: “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know; the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”

“She says you’ve got all kinds of soupy ideas about saving your country in a moment of great peril.

“She says you’ve got all kinds of soupy ideas about saving your country in a moment of great peril.

Can direct disobedience of orders be justified by circumstances?

If your leadership & tactical sense is better than your superior’s & if you are certain a battle would be lost if orders of that superior allowed to stand, you MIGHT be justified in seizing initiative yourself; BUT you

must be prepared to accept consequenses

We do everything in our power to proclaim our good intentions, our nobility of purpose, our loftiness of soul

We stubbornly, sublimely refuse to see man as he is, Sam—we’re so damned certain

about how he ought to be. We know how he ought to be—he ought to be American

It’s the kind of afternoon when all your sins come back and perch on your soul like vultures, picking and tearing …”

Read, think, disagree with everything, if you like—but force your mind outward. Promise me that.”

“Where are your insignia of rank?” Without taking his eyes from him Sam carefully removed his helmet, reversed it and held it so that the Captain could see, nearly effaced by mud and a maze of scratches, a large yellow lozenge. “Here.” Massengale’s lips parted in a frosty

smile. “I believe that’s contrary to regulations, isn’t it?” “I suppose it is,” Damon answered quietly, “but to tell you the truth I don’t give too much of a damn.”

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

He had been spared: had it been for a reason?

I was also spared several times during my year in Vietnam

there was something I couldn’t quite put together. My instinct told me—” “Oh, you run on instinct, do you?” “Yes, indeed.”

I’ve heard them. ‘He’s rough but he’s

square, he’s straight, he’ll go to bat for you any day of the week if you’ve got a solid beef.’

He read like a starving man in a granary,

and he retained what he read.

And if it had served him this well, it ought to be good enough for her.

What a mistake life is: you’re never ready for each thing that happens to you. And then I thought, No, that’s the marvel of it—if you were ready there’d be nothing to it at all, it would be like frogs in a pool, eating and propagating and swimming around

endlessly, nothing more than that … Pain makes you think, doesn’t it?”

That’s what life is, isn’t it? Struggle. Struggle to breathe, to grow, to learn, to be good.

“Every Army wife should know how to field-strip and clean small arms, at least.

“Honey, I’m a troop commander. I’m not a fancy dan, full of drawing-room charm and classical references and the right word at the right time and all that.”

“All but one.” Sam tapped his heart with two fingers. “He doesn’t care enough. About people. There’s something lacking there, some funny little—lack.”

We call it: The Principle of Pretending to Attack the East While Attacking the West. And once the attack is launched, unwavering decision. If you do these things, if you select the most

you select the most vulnerable spot in the enemy’s anatomy, isolate that particular element—you will have achieved tactical superiority over him at that moment in time, even though he may have an over-all strategic advantage …”

but that leadership is an obligation and not a mark of caste. We are the only army where the officers

live like the men.

Marine Corps

colonel named Buckman had told them amphibious assault was the most difficult of all operations—except amphibious withdrawal, which was even worse—and it was easy to see why.

Have got to jack them up, any way possible. Chow, shoes (but WHERE?), relief (ditto). But mostly Dad’s Force of Personal Example: they feel they’ve been left here to rot—

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.”

must come: a new heaven and a new earth—absurd and childish as it sounds; for unless it does come this will all be for nothing. All the blood and misery and destruction, all the sacrifice, for

nothing at all.

why am I this, here? Why am I me?”

“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 …”

If

I could have had one year with a man like Sam—just one year!—I’d thank my stars for all eternity.

Women were tricky creatures, tough to cope with on anything above what you might call the operational level.

show some frightened GIs a two-star general wasn’t too good to put his ass on the line with the

rest of them.

Jesus, he was the kind of general to serve under, they could say anything they wanted to. Even now, exhausted and outgunned, there he was, loading

They had puzzled and amused him, once he had even tried to talk several NCOs out of lugging so much junk around with them.

Now, with a single throb of rage and pity, he saw the desperate importance of these things: they provided an assurance of a man’s particularity in the midst of a murderous, press-drill uniformity, an uncaring system that was forced to treat him, willy-nilly, like one more white chip in an interminable poker game. “Death is not an individual matter,” Sam had said that last night aboard ship before the Wokai landing. “We like to think it is, but it isn’t.” Beaupré had fought the idea then, but now he understood. All dead were alike: all emptied, putrescent flesh was one. It was life that gave individuality, a bright sacredness …