Myths and the Marines: A Softening of the Corps?
Men in battle require morale-building myths as much as ammunition. Myths help them cope with danger, when the instinct for self-preservation would drive them toward safety. Successful units generate a powerful mythology, supported by slogans, rituals and ceremonies. Israeli paratroopers, the French Foreign Legion, British Guards regiments and of course the U.S. Marines all embrace these general myths: We’re the bravest and best fighters around; we never retreat; we never abandon our comrades, and we’ll fight to the death if ordered, knowing it won’t be a useless sacrifice.
The problem for the Marines since Oct. 23, 1983, when a truck bomb in Beirut killed 220 of them--along with 21 other American servicemen--is that the myths haven’t been working. There was the much exaggerated but still disturbing sex-for-spying scandal among the embassy guards in Moscow. And there were the political shenanigans of Marine Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, in violation of all corps traditions.
The feeling that something had gone wrong was central to the decision last spring by then-Navy Secretary James H. Webb Jr., once a Marine company commander in Vietnam, to nominate Gen. Alfred M. Gray Jr. as the new commandant and successor to Gen. P.X. Kelley. Gray is not a Pentagon insider but a “mustang,” up from the ranks by virtue of combat experience. He is bringing fresh ideas and energies to a force that, still burdened by the Vietnam trauma, has been satisfied to play it safe, raking in its share of the Reagan largess.
Self-satisfaction can be dangerous. It obscures reality for a parochial military subculture that has sold itself and the world on three legends:
Legend No. 1 : That Marines triumph out of sheer bellicosity, a Rambo’s delight in battle, for mowing them down along with the legendary Lt. Gen. Lewis B. (Chesty) Puller. The reality is that Marines are not immune to the terrors of battle; the corps’ remarkable achievement lies in building cohesion, comradeship and unit pride to help overcome those terrors.
Legend No. 2 : That every Marine is a rifleman above all, even the cooks and clerks always ready to bolster the trigger-pullers in the line. The reality is that many Marines rarely see a rifle once basic training is over: The ratio of front-line to support troops is 1 to 8. The infantry has been quietly neglected in favor of high-tech weaponry; restoring infantry priority through advanced and refresher training is Gray’s highest priority.
Legend No. 3 : That the corps is a small, low-cost band of brothers--”The Marines Need a Few Good Men”--lean and mean, with sharp teeth and a minimal tail that makes it a $9-billion taxpayer’s bargain in fighting power. The reality is that the 197,000-strong corps is noticeably larger than the British army and a fourth the size of the U.S. Army--neither so small nor so elite as commonly thought. There are more than 9,000 sisters among the brothers--women Marines whose role is still uncertain, and whose presence tempers the macho behavior associated with male bonding and has resulted in female harassment. And there is plenty of rank, with 20,000 officers and 30,000 senior noncommissioned officers to supervise and direct.
Of the 197,000, there are only 23,000 trigger-pullers--the ones who lay fire on the enemy. So the Marines are no freer than anyone else from the masses of noncombat troops required for complex weapons and global supply lines. These legends, which Hollywood and the media took up decades before John Wayne hit the beach at Iwo Jima, blind many Marines to problems and criticisms. Neither self-examination nor intellectualism have been Marine priorities: Marine connections to academia are not strong, and relatively few Marine officers take advanced degrees.
The trend away from combat and toward mere soldiering is inevitable for any fighting force in peacetime. Rather than Rambo or John Wayne, many Marines are closer to Robert Duvall in “The Great Santini,” a middle-aged pilot with a wife, a station wagon and adolescent children. The old way to counter this weakening of bonds was to discourage marriage, wall off the troops on base and wink at beer and brawling on Saturday night--to keep the boys feisty. That won’t work today. Some 44% of the Marines are married; they have 210,000 dependents. The benefit is stability and maturity, the solidarity fostered by the ideal of the corps as a family that cares for its own. The cost is the trend toward settling down, forgetting the bayonet while going for pay, benefits and promotion.
So Gray sharply criticizes both the careerist obsession with advancement and the “homesteaders,” those Marines who hang on for years at a post, jogging religiously but losing their fighting edge in the daily round. He jokes indignantly about Marines who have been in Washington long enough to become attractions on visitor tours and those who moonlight selling real estate. The computer will finger the ones who have been on post more than three years. Gray warns: “Don’t send out your laundry: you’re going to move--and starting from the top.”
The Marines at Beirut saw themselves as peacekeepers, neutral and even-handed. Psychologically unprepared for combat, they were caught flat-footed. Gray is trying to change attitudes with new policies. One cue is his predilection for camouflage battle dress: Even his personal cards are camouflaged. Another is the School of Infantry, to which every Marine recruit will go after basic training, along with squad and platoon noncommissioned officers for hands-on combat training.
Many Marine Corps infantry units have not been at full strength in either numbers or rank. The ambitious got the message: Promotion comes quicker anywhere but the infantry, which everyone praises but no one supports. Gray is changing that. Highly trained, 100%-manned infantry units are vital if the Marines are to fulfill their role as a Third World fire brigade with a maximum speed and a minimum of casualties. So Gray is filling out the units, systematizing and increasing training and seriously considering raising combat strength by adding a fourth rifle company--possibly from the reserves--to each infantry battalion.
He is also much concerned with maneuver warfare, the great watchword of the military reform movement that was influential until recently. Maneuver has not been especially important for the Marines, whose role as assault infantry superseded all else. “You know what you do in the corps?” said one retired Marine officer. “You hit the beach, you run straight up it, you kill all the bad guys and then you dig in and put up a cocky sign for the Army coming ashore: ‘You are landing, courtesy of 1st battalion, 9th something-or-other.’ Nobody thinks about maneuver.” Gray sees “the beachhead” as merely the first stage of operations that may require further penetration inland; he wants the Marines to be ready for it, especially as Third World countries acquire high-performance weapons that could savage congested beachheads.
Since the Civil War, U.S. conflicts have been characterized by weight: of manpower, firepower, wealth, equipment. This worked well against modern, industrial states but failed in Vietnam. Gray spent time in Vietnam, enough time to decide that American military action is far less likely in Europe than in the Third World. The Marines are likely to be the spearhead; his task is to prepare them wisely, realistically and not necessarily traditionally.