Current Issues in Psychoanalytic Practice

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Chapter 16:
Generals Die in Bed

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in Psychoanalytic Practice, 3:2-4, 295-312, DOI: 10.1300/J256v03n02_17

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 Chapter 16:
Generals Die in Bed

For most of human history, and in large parts of the world

today, the average man had to contend with two horrendous
evils: slavery and warfare. If he was a slave he had to do his
master's bidding until death, which was bound to come soon,
especially since the slave became increasingly useless as he
got older.' If he was a conscript soldier, that too meant a
fairly early death.
It was generally estimated that up to 1800 the life span of
the average man was about thirty years. But that fails to take
into account the accidents of war and nature that decimated
entire populations. In the Black Death of 1347 (the bubonic
plague) perhaps one third of Europe perished. In Napoleon's
1812 campaign against Russia, of the 600,000 men who made
up the Grande Arrnee of that day, not more than one hun-
dred thousand got out alive.3
The facts concerning human sacrifice are frightful in the
extreme. In Assam in northeastern India when Rajah Nara
Narayna rebuilt his empire in 1565 A.D., he celebrated the
occasion by sacrificing 140 men, whose heads he offered to
Kali on copper plates since he did not have enough gold to go
around. When willing victims were lacking, any man of sound
health and body caught abroad after midnight might be
snatched away for the p ~ r p o s e . ~
As is well known, Cortez conquered millions of Mexicans,
with 600 men. One reason was that the Aztecs had been
slaughtering their subject populations to a degree that can
scarcely be apprehended today. Bernal Diaz, who chronicled
the conquest, stated that 100,000 heads were displayed on the
skull rack of Xocotlan, while Andres de Tapia claimed there
were 136,000 heads on the skull racks of Tenochtitlan.'
Numerous examples could be quoted to show that these
wholesale massacres were by no means confined to the past;
we have already seen that Hitler and Stalin between them
0 1987 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights resewed. 295
296 THE FORGOTTEN MAN

accounted for possibly 100 million deaths in the twentieth

century, mostly men.
The general who comes out of such a background is given
absolute right over the lives of millions of men. One Russian
general in World War 11 was contemptuous of the westerners'
caution in clearing minefields; his practice, he said, was to
send the men through and simply accept a certain number of
casualties. The Japanese fought to the last man; on Okinawa,
they stationed some 120,000 men in the last holding action of
the war, and not a single one survived.
War cannot be fought without the loss of lives. The general
must weigh the risk he is taking against the probable or possi-
ble casualties. Eisenhower, an extraordinarily modest gen-
eral, once commented that no man whose reputation rests
upon the sacrifice of thousands of men's lives can be too
proud of his achievement. But most generals care much less.
On the other hand the general at his best must also have a
capacity, often a genius, for leadership. H e must have con-
summate organizing ability and he must have a profound
command of the technology at his disposal. H e must also be
courageous beyond the call of duty and must have a cause for
which he is willing to die.
Since generals, like other men, are only human beings, they
alternate between these extremes-courage and loyalty,
leadership and the willingness to sacrifice other men's lives.
It is a byword that military history, with its share of glorious
triumphs and brilliant campaigns, is also full of incomprehensi-
ble costly blunders. Dixon, in his book on The Psychology of
Military Incompetence (1976), has aruged, with considerable
logic, that armies are constructed in such a way that the very
qualities which lead a man to get ahead in peacetime incapaci-
tate him for the rigors of war. In peacetime a man has to be
obedient, adhere to a rigid discipline, avoid original thinking
and conform to the code; in wartime in most respects he has to
be the exact opposite. Hence the disasters which have befallen
even the greatest generals, like Napoleon and the German
general staff in World War 11.
How does a general get his men to obey him, since blind
obedience is of the essence of military strategy? There has to
be a certain bond between the general and his men, a certain
unifying psychology which allows them to think in similar
 Reuben Fine 297

ways. If this does not exist, mutiny or defeat will result; such
was the fate of the French army in World War I1 which could
easily have defeated the Germans at various stages, but
lacked the will to fight.
In their examination of Civil War strategy, McWhiney and
Grady (1982) have reviewed the thinking of the Southern gen-
erals; their book is appropriately titled Attack and Die.The
Southerners, as the master race they felt themselves to be,
were quite willing to charge even strongly defended positions,
and their generals were quite willing to order them to do so.
The result was one disastrous defeat after another, defeats so
bloody that the army had to fall back on a more defensive
strategy after 1863. Thus one of the major causes of their de-
feat was that they displayed more courage than intelligence.
Why are men, ordinarily so careful of their lives, so willing
to die in battle? Not even the strictest discipline could force
the suicidal tactics so often seen in war. The extreme in the
twentieth century is the kamikaze planes of the Japanese in
which the pilot became a human bomb, intent on crashing
into the enemy ship and losing his life. For these suicidal
missions the Japanese at the end of the war still had 20,000
men ready to die, more men than planes. There must be some
kind of denial of reality or a belief in magical or divine inter-
vention (kamikaze means "divine wind") to spur men on.
Then again many men, in almost any army, have drilled into
them that their highest achievement is to die for their coun-
try. MacArthur, in World War 11, repeatedly and unnecessar-
ily exposed himself to enemy fire, convinced that to die in
battle is man's greatest glory. Such psychology is a reversion
to the primitive belief that life involves kill or be killed.

EISENHOWER: AN AMERICAN HERO6

Although they all have certain traits in common, every out-

standing military commander also has a unique individuality
of his own. Dwight Eisenhower, who finally toppled Hitler's
dream of a 1000-year Reich, in an age when brilliant feats
were almost an everyday occurrence, was distinguished
chiefly for his diplomatic tact and his consummate mastery of
the techniques of warfare. He was widely loved because he
298 THE FORGOTTEN MAN

was not arrogant (like MacArthur) or unapproachable (like

Montgomery) or flashy (like Patton) and never risked the
lives of his men unnecessarily.
As with so many others, Eisenhower's career reached its peak
in later life. Born in 1890, one of seven sons, to poor farmers
with a Mennonite background, he went to West Point and fol-
lowed a military career. Nothing unusual came out in his back-
ground, yet when World War I1 broke out General Marshall
passed over 366 senior officers and appointed Eisenhower com-
mander-in-chief of the allied forces.'
In this role Eisenhower faced two problems. One was the
need to make so many egotistical men, like de Gaulle and
Churchill, work smoothly in the grand alliance. The other was
to bring the pressure of his enormous superiority in men and
material to bear on the Germans, slowly and methodically.
He managed both, and with great skill.
First came the invasion of North Africa in 1942. Then came
his greatest test, the invasion of Europe. Resisting all pres-
sures, especially the Russian, to attack prematurely, Eisen-
hower bided his time and finally launched the great invasion
on June 6, 1944. In less than a year Germany was defeated
and Hitler was dead.
A n example of the tact Eisenhower used to handle the
allied commanders is seen in his relationship with Montgom-
ery. Flush from his great victory at el Alamein in 1942, when
he turned back the German general Rommel, Montgomery
wanted to end the war quickly by a quick punch into Ger-
many across the Rhine. H e was so egotistical that he never
even visited staff headquarters; everybody had to come to
him. Eisenhower preferred the slow prodding piecemeal as-
sault of the German forces. Finally, and apparently primarily
in order to placate Montgomery, he put aside enough forces
for an attack on Arnhem in Holland; the result was a disaster.
Montgomery remained an excellent battle commander but his
strategic ideas were never again given serious attention."
After the war, Eisenhower was the lion of the hour, par-
ticularly beloved by the veterans because he had been the
most human of the generals. In 1952 he ran for the presidency
and held it for two terms, in spite of a heart attack, ileitis and
a minor stroke. As a president he was in no way distinguished
but he was always well liked. One biographer says of him:
 Reuben Fine 299

"Dwight David Eisenhower was not born great, nor did he

achieve greatness. But when greatness was thrust upon him
he met the challenge."g

GEORGE PATTON: THE BRILLIANT NARCISSIST''

George Patton was one of the most admired generals in the

U.S. Army, and also one of the most controversial. H e was
born in California in 1885, the grandson of a Confederate
officer who had died of battle wounds in the Civil War. With
other military men as ancestors, it was only natural for Patton
to seek a career as an army officer. In 1909 he graduated from
West Point.
But Patton was no ordinary officer. He was determined to
become a great man. A t one point he wrote his parents:

I have to, do you understand, got to be great. It is no

foolish child dream. It is me as I ever will be . . . I would
be willing to live in torture and die tomorrow if for one
day I could really be great."

Patton was unusual in that he did try to excel at everything

he undertook. In the Olympics in 1912 he performed in the
modern Pentathlon, taking part in five gruelling events, and
finished fifth place among forty-three competitors.12 In World
War I he performed gallantly in battle and was wounded.
Between the two wars he worked hard to perfect his mili-
tary skills. H e became an expert in amphibious warfare, even
predicting the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He designed
the sabre used by the cavalry, invented a machine-gun sled to
give assaulting riflemen more direct support, devised a new
saddle pack, and improved the tank. H e had even learned
navigation and earned a license as an airplane pilot so he
could better direct the armed forces in those spheres.I3
Patton was a wealthy man; in addition, his wife was
wealthy in her own right. They had three children and a
seemingly happy marriage; all the children went into the mili-
tary or work related to the military.
Finally the chance of his lifetime came in World War 11.
After some brilliant action in North Africa, he was reassigned
300 THE FORGOTTEN MAN

to the Third Army, the most mobile branch of the American

forces that were to attack Europe. Once the second front was
opened, he again did spendidly, at one point forcing an unex-
pected general withdrawal of the Germans from Normandy
due to the speed of his armor. As a military man he was a
sensation.
Then came the dknouement. Once the war ended he was
appointed military governor of Bavaria, an assignment totally
foreign to his nature. All kinds of stories began to seep out
about him. H e had already attained unwanted notoriety in
Sicily by slapping two soldiers suffering from combat exhaus-
tion, calling them cowards. For this he was reprimanded by
Eisenhower and publicly apologized to the troops.14
In his post-war behavior he behaved in a disgraceful man-
ner. First he was reported to have said we fought the wrong
enemy, we should have fought the Russians. Then he let fly a
number of anti-Semitic remarks, together with a general ap-
preciation of the Nazis, who, he said, were after all like the
Republicans and the Democrats back home, just another
party. For the Jews in the concentration camps he liberated
he seemingly had nothing but contempt, agreeing with the
Nazi remark they were lower than animals. And then he dis-
obeyed orders by proceeding very slowly, if at all, with the
denazification process.'' Finally Eisenhower had no choice
but to remove him from his command. O n his way home he
had an automobile accident in December 1945 which broke
his neck; three weeks later he died in the army hospital at
Heidelberg.
Patton was a soldier in the old confederate tradition of
Attack and Die.A t one point he said he preferred to hit hard,
"even if I lose ten thousand men in one day instead of sailing
along and lose five hundred a day for twenty days."'6 At
another stage in his career, in 1919, he expressed his narcissis-
tic overestimation of the soldier. H e said:

We, as officers . . . are not only members of honorable

professions but are also the modern representatives of the
demi-gods and heroes of antiquity. Back of us stretches a
line of men whose acts of valor, of self-sacrifice and of
service have been the theme of song and story since long
before recorded history began. . . .
 Reuben Fine 301

Our calling is most ancient and like all other old things
it has amassed through the ages certain customs and tra-
ditions which decorate and ennoble it, which render
beautiful the otherwise prosaic occupation of being pro-
fessional men-at-arms: Killers (italics added)."

Thus Patton reveals the ambivalence which lies at the heart

of many generals. H e recognized he was a professional killer
but glorified this in various ways. When needed in the war he
did splendidly, though with little regard for the welfare of his
men. But once peace was established he wanted to go on
killing. He knew he had strutted his hour and would no
longer be heard from, a situation he did not want to tolerate.
Of him it could be said, as of many generals: "First in war,
but last in peace."

MACARTHUR: AMERICAN CAESAR'^

Like Patton, MacArthur was also a man of contradictions,

one man in war and another in peace, though he pulled
surprises both ways. He was born in 1880, to a professional
army officer who had performed heroically in the Civl War.
In fact, the senior MacArthur's exploits became an integral
part of his son's personality. The greatest was a charge up
the hill at Chatttanooga, in a battle situation where the
Union forces were pinned down by strong Confederate
forces on higher ground. Unexpectedly the eighteen-year old
Lieutenant MacArthur led 18,000 men u the hill and to
everybody's surprise defeated the enemy.& The incident is
important because all through his military life MacArthur
was careless of his personal safety and many have remarked
it was a miracle he came out alive.
After the Civil War, Arthur MacArthur was sent to the
west to fight the Indians so that his son's entire childhood was
spent in a completely military atmosphere. H e worshipped his
father, never considered any career other than the army. In
1900 his father was named military governor of the Philip-
pines, a post his famous son was to occupy thirty-five years
later. Douglas adored his father, never believed he could
302 THE FORGOTTEN M A N

outdo him, and was completely happy in the Army, notwith-

standing the ups and downs he experienced there.
In 1903 young Douglas graduated from West Point with the
highest grades ever recorded up to then. H e played a signifi-
cant role in three wars. In the first world war he headed the
Rainbow Division which saw more action in France than any
other American unit, and was decorated for bravery; again
his indifference to his own welfare was conspicuous.
Between wars he distinguished himself as superintendent of
West Point, later as Chief of Staff. In 1937, at the age of
fifty-seven, he resigned from the army's active list only to be
recalled a few years later when the war broke out.20 H e was
commander of the Philippines when the Japanese attacked
Pearl Harbor; here occurred one of his major blunders. Even
though he had been informed of the Japanese attack, he did
nothing about the safety of the three hundred planes parked
on the ground and they were promptly destroyed by the alert
Japanese." MacArthur himself was sent to Australia after a
holding effort at Bataan gained some time.
The evaluation of MacArthur's true role in the Pacific War is
made difficult by his arrogance, egotism and megalomania, all
qualities which no one doubted existed in him. Of the 142
communiques issued by him during the first three months of the
war, 109 mentioned only one solider-Douglas M a c ~ r t h u r . ~ '
Although he claimed full credit for the island-hopping strategy
that defeated the Japanese, the Navy thought differently, main-
taining that the strategy was a naval decision. When the Philip-
pines were invaded, the command was still divided between
MacArthur and the Navy, with what might have been poten-
tially disastrous results. With the average GI, MacArthur's
arrogance made him immensely unpopular, although he was
probably more careful of lives than any other American senior
officer. In any case it is known he was opposed to the military
concentration on Europe which the allied high command had
decided.
The Korean war, his third, also had its highs and lows for
him. When the Korean-American effort seemed doomed, he
engineered a landing at Inchon behind the Korean lines,
which changed the course of battle at once. But then, certain
the Chinese would do nothing, he extended his lines to the
Chinese border and when they attacked, the Americans expe-
 Reuben Fine 303

rienced bloody defeats. By that time he was seventy-one and

it was odd that an active field command be given to a man of
that age, but his reputation was phenomenal. After the Chi-
nese entered the war though, his reputation slipped. He
wanted to bomb the Chinese mainland. He wanted to spread
a cobalt barrier between Korea and China, thus introducing
tactical nuclear weapons into warfare for the first time with-
out thinking through the consequences. H e issued interviews
to journalists without consulting Washington. Finally Truman
had no choice but to dismiss
After Korea there is little to relate. MacArthur hoped for a
presidential nomination, but it was never to be. The greatest
surprise was his proposal in 1955 to outlaw war. H e died in
1964 at eighty-four.
To evaluate the man is difficult. Everyone agreed he was
extremely vain and self-righteous; in his memoirs he wrote he
had never given a command that he regretted. H e was also,
unlike other generals, quite concerned about his men, espe-
cially after the defeat at Bataan, and he was willing to take
any risks they took. In this respect, his identification with his
father's phenomenal feat at Chattanooga, and later battle
wounds in the Civil War, was obviously very strong. But his
grandiosity was unbelievable. A t one point he said his major
advisers now boiled down to two men: George Washington,
who founded the country, and Abraham Lincoln, who saved
it.2' Which one he fantasied he was, he did not say.
In his personal life he was, like so many military men,
rather shy of women. His first marraige to the wealthy Louise
Brooks broke up after a few years. Then he took a Eurasian
mistress he kept hidden. Finally in 1937 he married his second
wife, Jean, by whom he had one son; this marriage, made late
in life, seems to have brought him considerable happiness.
Yet the greatest paradox of all is that his supreme achieve-
ment was the drafting of the new Japanese constitution. He
modestly wrote: "It is undoubtedly the most liberal constitu-
tion in history, having borrowed the best from the constitu-
tions of many c o ~ n t r i e s . "The
~ ~ constitution provided for
equal rights for women at a time our country did not, it
uprooted militarism, created a democratic society and was in
fact exemplary in many different ways. What he did for Japan
during his occupation is also remarkable. After two years
304 T H E FORGOTTEN M A N

cholera was wiped out, TB deaths were down by 88 percent,

diphtheria by 86 percent, and typhoid fever by 90 percent. It
was estimated he had saved 2.1 million Japanese lives through
the control of communicable diseases.26
At a reunion of the Rainbow Division in 1935 this most
paradoxical of men said of the soldiers who had fallen in
France:

They died unquestioningly, uncomplaining, with faith

in their hearts and on their lips the hope that we would
go on to victory. . . . They have gone beyond the mists
that blind us here, and become part of that beautiful
thing we call the spirit of the unknown soldier. In cham-
bered temples of silence the dust of their dauntless valor
sleeps, waiting, waiting in the Chancery of Heaven the
final reckoning of Judgment Day. "Only those are fit to
live who are not afraid to die."
They will tell of the peace eternal
And we would wish them well,
They will scorn the path of war's red wrath
And brand it the road to

His biographer calls him "American Caesar"; perhaps had

the social circumstances been different he might have gone on
to a career like Julius Caesar's. There was clearly a strong
identification with his hero-father, whom he strove all his life
to emulate. (His brother also entered the military service but
died of appendicitis in 1923.) Yet along with this identifica-
tion there lurked the brilliant love-shy little boy who also
wanted other things in life than could be summed up in the
phrase: kill or be killed. Was he in the end a happy man?

ULYSSES S . GRANT:
AMBIVALENT SAVIOR OF THE U N ~ O N ~ ~

Ulysses Grant, the commander of the union armies in the

Civil War, also presents a paradoxical history. Born in Ohio
in 1822, the son of a tanner, he was reared in poverty and
uncertainty. His father Jesse was always struggling to estab-
lish himself. When his children (there were six in all) were
 Reuben Fine 305

grown, he both expected them to sustain him and doubted

they could be relied on to do so. He did not feel secure until
his son was in the White House.
Grant's mother has always been an enigma to historians.
She was stolid, unemotional and uncommunicative. When a
reporter tried to interview her during Grant's presidency, she
acted as if she had not heard him. Even stranger, she did not
come to her son's inauguration as president.29 Grant's unemo-
tional exterior seems to have derived from his mother.
Even the name with which he had gone down in history is
not his real one. His parents named him Hiram Ulysses
Grant. But when he entered West Point someone slipped and
wrote Ulysses S. Grant; this was good enough for him. H e
never bothered to correct it.30The story is typical of the man's
stolidity and total lack of emotion.
With no clear-cut ambition in life, Grant finally decided to
enter West Point when he was seventeen. H e was a mediocre
student, as well as a rather withdrawn young man. At West
Point he made no permanent friendships. Drawing and horses
interested him more than anything else. H e also fell in love
with the sister of his roommate, Julia Dent.
For the future liberator of the slaves, it was an odd match,
since the Dents traced their ancestry back to the old South
and Julia's father still had slaves. But this meant nothing to
Grant at the time. His engagement to Julia lasted several
years and they were finally married in 1848.31
In the meantime he served in the Army although he said
quite candidly: "A military life had no charms for me."32 The
Mexican war of 1848 woke him up as he saw battle, noted
men were killed and maimed. In his Memoirs he reports the
war with startling simplicity: "After the battle the woods was
strued with the dead. Waggons have been engaged drawing
the bodies to bury. How many waggon loads . . . would be
hard to guess. I saw three."33 No feelings, no reactions, no
comments.
After several years of soldiering, he saw no future in it and
resigned his commission in 1854.34There followed years of
struggling to establish himself in business with no real success.
His last try before the Civil War was in Galena, Illinois,
where he opened a leather goods shop. H e did not prosper, at
thirty-seven he considered himself a f a i l ~ r e . ' ~
 306 THE FORGOTTEN MAN

Finally came the war and with it his great chance. But the
road from Galena to the general who cut the Confederacy in
two at Vicksburg in 1863 was still a long and hard one. The
quiet man, wearing an old jacket, slouching and watching,
was thought by fools to be a no-account and was represented
by others as a drunk. But Lincoln was glad to finally find a
general who would fight.
In February 1862 Grant scored the first Union victory by
capturing Fort Donelson. After some vicissitudes he con-
tinued by capturing Vicksburg in July 1863; at the same time
Meade repulsed Lee at Gettysburg. For all practical purposes
the South was defeated but determined to fight on to the end.
Finally, in early 1864, Grant was appointed lieutenant gen-
eral and placed in charge of all the Union armies. He held
Lee at bay, while Sherman went on his famous march through
Georgia. Not long after, the was over. Grant was the hero.
H e was a curious hero. It was Sherman who had devastated
the South, with his laconic comment: "War is hell." It was
Meade who had defeated Lee. Yet there was evidently a need
in the country to glorify one man as preeminently responsible
for victory, and Grant was that man.
Although he later became president for eight years, his
mission in life had been accomplished in these few years of
war. H e was the general who had saved democracy, and in
1865 the United States was almost the only democracy in the
world. Since the 19th century was also the century when Eu-
ropeans by the millions streamed into free America in search
of better lives, Grant also became their hero. When he finally
did make a world tour after leaving the presidency he was
lionized wherever he went.36
After some years in the War Office, he ran for the presi-
dency in 1868 and was overwhelmingly victorious. He served
for two terms, until 1877. These years are generally regarded
by historians as the most corrupt and shameful among presi-
dential administrations.
To begin with, there was the matter of enforcing the victory
by freeing the slaves and seeing to it they remained free. At
first military governments in the southern states did lead to
. black legislatures and some black prosperity. But the ruling
race in the South would not give up, and it was not long
before the new amendments were defied in one way or
 Reuben Fine 307

another, and blacks who became too prominent were syste-

matically murdered. Many times the only solution was to have
Grant send in troops though he was always reluctant to do so.
By the end of Grant's tenure, in 1877, the attempts at Recon-
struction were virtually over, and the blacks entered another
long period of agony. Grant did not seem to care.
On top of that there were the scandals. Grant did not bene-
fit from the widespread corruption that followed the war,
though some of his friends and relatives did. Again he was
not eager to prosecute, even though he said: "Let no guilty
man escape." It was an era of robber barons and corruption
in legislative halls all over the nation, which did not let up for
another twenty-five years. One Cabinet officer after another,
as well as Grant's personal friends and associates, was impli-
cated in cheating the government of hundreds of thousands of
dollars, in some cases, millions. Grant stuck loyally to his
friends, as though dealing with old school chums, not with the
national interest. By 1875 the vice-president called Grant "the
millstone around the neck of our party that would sink it out
of sight. "37
As we look at the historical record, we gain the impression
that Grant, lost in his glorious self-image as the savior of the
Union, cared about little else. His marriage was on the whole
a happy one; there were four children. The welfare of the
country involved social and economic considerations beyond
his comprehension, as they would be for a later general,
Dwight Eisenhower. The only project that emanated from his
imagination was the annexation of Santo Domingo; he saw
that as a place where blacks could go if the did not get along
here. But the Senate would not allow this. X
H e did not survive long after he left office. His hopes for a
third term were obviously unrealistic. In 1884 he developed a
cancer of the throat; the next year he died. Before his death
he completed his Memoirs. His military exploits are covered
in this book; his presidential years are omitted.
Lincoln valued him because he was willing to fight without
too much regard for losses. Yet this willingness to fight may
have come out of his lack of emotion as much as his military
ingenuity. Whatever happened, Grant was always unmoved.
Garfield said of him once: "His imperturbability is amazing. I
am in doubt whether to call it greatness or
308 THE FORGOTTEN M A N

His biographer offers this evaluation with which we can

well concur:
Grant did not make war for reasons or in ways that
ennoble the civil War. H e did not rise above limited
talents or inspire others to do so in ways that make his
administration a credit to American politics. If Ulysses
Grant was, in any measure, the concentration of all that
is American-and we still believe in democracy, his story
is troubling. In fact, it suggests that we must rethink both
the worth of war and the uses we make of politics . . .40

THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO FOUGHT IN VIETNAM~'

It is all very well for a Patton to say generals are the de-
scendants of the demi-gods, or for a MacArthur to urge that
to die in battle is the most glorious way to end life; the fact is
that they live on to a reasonable age while many thousands of
the men they commanded die young. For the average soldier
war is a situation in which he is confronted with the most
primitive of human predicaments: kill or be killed. How does
this average soldier react?
On this score there is very little material. But in the most
unpopular war America has ever fought, the war in Vietnam,
there has been considerable study of the reactions of the aver-
age GI. A recent book edited by Mark Baker, offers a series
of interviews with the survivors of Vietnam. We would like to
quote some of these interviews.
On Initiation
1was in Johns Hopkins Medical School at the time. As
a prank, somebody cut one of the fingers off the cadaver
I was working on and kept it. When 1went to run in the
cadaver, I couldn't account for the finger.
I knew who'd done it. So the next day, while he was
doing a dissection on the leg, I took the arm of his ca-
daver and snuck it out. I put it in an ice chest and drove
out to the Beltway around Baltimore. At a toll booth, I
stuck the frozen arm out the window with some money
in the hand and left the toll attendant with the arm.
 Reuben Fine 309

This got back to the president of the school, who was

Dwight Eisenhower's brother, Milton, a real fucking
hawk. H e told me to take a leave of absence to recon-
sider my commitment to medical school. I thought that
was probably a good idea. I said, "Great." A week later
I had my draft notice. They turned me right in to the
B~ard.~'
It's just a little town where I grew up. I played some
football and baseball like everybody else. I was kind of a
hard-ass in school. I didn't know how good I had it then.
I took little odd jobs and saved up enough money to buy
an electric guitar and an amplifier. I started playing in a
band.
Near the end of high school, everybody's saying, "What
are you going to do? What are you going to do?" I didn't
know. I said, "I'm going to join the service." After I gradu-
ated, I went into the Marine Corps. They were supposed to
be the best. T o me, they were. They helped me grow up. I
grew up in Vietnam4'
After we got in boot camp, they ask you to put down
on some form why you joined the Marine Corps. I put
down, "To Kill." In essence, that's what the fuck I
wanted to do. But I didn't want to kill every fucking
body. I wanted to kill the bad

Baptism of Fire

I saw where the fire was coming from that first time I
got shot at. It was like a barn. I ran in there, knocking
over shit, looking for the guy, but I couldn't find him. I
seen fresh tracks leading to another hooch which was
like a little barber shop-There were four gooks stand-
ing there. I throw them all up against the wall. I got my
M-16 out.
My sergeant comes up. "What are you doing?" he
screams. "You can't do that."
"What d o you mean? One of these God damn bas-
tards was shooting at me and I'm going to find out which
one did it."
"No, you can't do that."
31 0 THE FORGOTTEN MAN

"What, are we playing games?" H e made me leave.

"Get out of here, Sonny, You can't do that shit. You
ask them. If they talk to you, they talk to you. You can't
push them around."
"But, Sarge, they're shooting at me!"
"I don't care. You just can't do it."
"What a place this is going to be."45

Grunts

In the mornings in the Nam, when you wake up, you

always see the sun coming up. It's really beautiful, but
it's cool then and that's when you really want to sleep.
You come down off the hill and there's big rice pad-
dies all around the bottom of the hill. Maybe 10 percent
of the company gets across them to the far tree line and
somebody opens up on us.
I'm running and running and running. I'm getting
dinged at over and over again. Guys are falling, not from
getting hit so much as sliding in the mud. It must last at
least five minutes. That's a long time to be running with
all that shit strapped to you.
I turn around and say, "Jesus Christ, man, cut it the
fuck out."
Crack, crack, crack. And you're helpless. A guy gets
wounded and you don't hardly want to pick the poor
fucker up, because you can't make it across the field
yourself. But you do pick him up.
You got a base fire set on the sniper, artillery goes on
the son of a bitch and he's still dinging at you, the cock-
sucker. You're so tired that you just want to lay down in
the rice paddy. The only reason you didn't was because
most of the guys got off their fucking ass and kept mov-
ing. If they had laid down, I probably would have too.46

Martial Arts

There was this prostitute that came in. I don't remem-

ber the exact story, but I think she had been with a
couple of GI's and was caught robbing them. Anyway,
two guys had been killed. She had been shot, but had
 Reuben Fine 311

survived. She was on our ward. She was about the same
age as me-early twenties. I said to a friend of mine,
"Jesus, she's going to die. I hope to hell she doesn't die
on my shift, because I don't want to have responsibility
for trying to resuscitate her. I don't give a shit what
happens to her.
This guy was really cool. H e said, "Why do you feel
that way?"
"I hate her guts. Whether somebody uses a hooker or
not, you're all in the same game and you got to pay the
consequences. Only the guys already paid and she might
as well pay too." I just hated her. . . .
She died eventual1 , but not because I didn't do some-
thing. But it's hard. -??'

Victors

I know Marines that made more gooks than they killed,

just by treating them bad. It's funny when you don't ex-
pect to get mercy from anyone, you're very reluctant to
show it. So you really breed hideous people over there,
for the cause of National Defense. If you sit down here on
t h e couch, it seems ugly. At the time, they weren't ugly.
They were the things to do. Considering what else was
going on this was n ~ t h i n g . ~ '

Victims

Everybody there smoked marijuana with a few excep-

tions. There were the big drinkers. If you tended to
drink, well, you drank, and if you smoked, you really
smoked. Everybody did it to extremes, just to get their
act together to face the ward the next day or whatever
they had to do. By the time I left, I knew doctors who
had done heroin. I knew two nurses who went home
hooked on heroin.
I tried it about a dozen times. Although I liked the
high, I puked my guts out every time. It was a great
high. You know that feeling when you're nodding out
and you can't keep your head up.49
 THE FORGOTTEN M A N

Homecoming

When I came back about six of us were walking

through the airport and a girl-maybe eighteen or nine-
teen, about the same age as me really-she asked me
how many women and children did I kill. I told her,
"Nine. Where's your mother at?" I thought it was great
fun putting her down like that. But inside I felt, "Gees,
why is she treating me like that?"
I though I would come home as a war hero, you know.
I didn't really want to be a war hero, but I thought I'd
get a lot of respect, because I'd done something for my
country. Somewhere deep in my psyche I thought that
people would react to what I'd done, and say, "Hey,
good job. Good work."
My family did. "Hey, great. How many people did
you kill?" That wasn't right either. I didn't tell them
when I was getting home, because I didn't want a party.
But it happened anyway. I couldn't stay at that. I hung
out an hour or two. Then I went out with my friends and
got fucked up out of my face.50

Nothing could more graphically depict the lot of the aver-

age soldier in war than these verbatim quotes. Accidental
entrance into the service, fighting without quite knowing how
or why, the only women available thieving prostitutes, drugs
all over the place, killing and being killed. Nor is this war any
different from any other. Such has been the lot of the average
man throughout history-forgotten, terrorized and murdered.

SUMMARY

Most of our study of the military mind, as is most of the

literature, is confined to the generals. A number have been
examined in critical detail. Considerable variability is noted,
with regard to their achievements, their personal lives, their
attitudes to war and their evaluation of themselves. Some
excerpts have been cited from the stories of young men in
Vietnam, which illustrate the fact that the lot of the average
soldier caught in combat has always been bleak.