Grunts: Inside the American Infantry Combat Experience, World War II Through Iraq Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  CHAPTER 1 - Guam, July 1944: Amphibious Combat Against a Self-Destructive Enemy

  CHAPTER 2 - Peleliu, September 1944: Amphibious Combat Against a Clever, ...

  CHAPTER 3 - Aachen, 1944: Knocking ’Em All Down on a Politically Unrestrained ...

  CHAPTER 4 - Scenes from the Northern Shoulder of the Bulge: Men Against Tanks ...

  CHAPTER 5 - Operation Masher/White Wing: Air Mobility, Attrition, and the ...

  CHAPTER 6 - Counterinsurgency from the Barrel of a Gun: The Marine Combined ...

  CHAPTER 7 - Attrition and the Tears of Autumn: Dak To, November 1967

  CHAPTER 8 - Eleven Mikes and Eleven Bravos: Infantry Moments in the Ultimate Techno-War

  CHAPTER 9 - Grunts in the City: Urban Combat and Politics—Fallujah, 2004

  CHAPTER 10 - “Watch Out for IEDs!” Twenty-First-Century Counterinsurgent ...

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgements

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ENDNOTES

  INDEX

  Also by John C. McManus

  American Courage, American Carnage:

  The 7th Infantry Regiment’s Combat Experience, 1812 Through World War II

  The 7th Infantry Regiment:

  Combat in an Age of Terror, the Korean War Through the Present

  U.S. Military History for Dummies

  Alamo in the Ardennes:

  The Untold Story of the American Soldiers Who Made the Defense of Bastogne Possible

  The Americans at Normandy:

  The Summer of 1944—The American War from the Normandy Beaches to Falaise

  The Americans at D-Day:

  The American Experience at the Normandy Invasion

  Deadly Sky:

  The American Combat Airman in World War II

  The Deadly Brotherhood:

  The American Combat Soldier in World War II

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  First published by NAL Caliber, an imprint of New American Library,

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  First Printing, August 2010

  Copyright © John C. McManus, 2010

  Maps on pages 105, 131, 179, 243, 314, 340, 411, and 426 copyright © Rick Britton, 2010

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  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

  McManus, John C., 1965-

  Grunts: inside the American infantry combat experience, World War II through Iraq/John C. McManus.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-18917-7

  1. United States. Army. Infantry—History—20th century. 2. United States. Army. Infantry—History—21st century. 3. United States. Marine Corps—History—20th century. 4. United States. Marine Corps—History—21st century. 5. Combat—History—20th century. 6. Combat—History—21st century. I. Title.

  UA28.M39 2010

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  To Michael and Mary Jane McManus, who made all of this possible

  To Charles W. Johnson, who taught and led like a great general

  To the infantry sergeants, lieutenants and captains of multiple

  generations who paid in blood, tears and anguish to teach us the

  lessons we all should heed

  Grunt: A United States Army or Marine foot soldier; one who does

  routine unglamorous work

  —MERRIAM-WEBSTER DICTIONARY

  Introduction

  Facing Our Fears

  THE MOST POWERFUL, EFFECTIVE WEAPON in modern war is a well-trained, well-armed, and well-led infantry soldier. To some this assertion might seem naive, simplistic, or even antiquated, perhaps an appropriate statement to make back in Washington’s or Wellington’s day, but surely not in our own era of dynamic technical sophistication. After all, how can the average foot-slogging grunt with a rifle in his hands possibly compare with the malevolent power of technology’s deadly birthlings? Indeed, the variety of modern space-age weapons is impressive: nuclear bombs and missiles with the power to destroy civilization; deadly gases and biological concoctions that could eradicate human life as we know it; super aircraft carriers; nuclear-propelled and nuclear-armed submarines; high-performance fighter aircraft; intercontinental bombers; computer and electronic eavesdropping technology; net-war computer hackers with the power to paralyze information-age economies; laser-guided smart bombs and unmanned combat aircraft, not to mention the bevy of land weapons (artillery, tanks, missiles, and so on) that tower over the infantryman like an NBA center over a toddler.

  Each one of these weapons exudes a tantalizing, magic-bullet simplicity to fighting and winning wars. In other words, the side with the most sophisticated and deadly weapons should automatically win. The newer the technology, the more devastating the weapon, the more antiquated the infantry soldier should become. This self-deceptive thinking is nothing new. In ancient times, generals expected the chariot to sweep foot soldiers from the battlefield. In medieval times, the mounted knight and artillery would do that j
ob. Later, in World War I, machine guns, frighteningly accurate artillery, and poison gas were supposed to make the infantryman obsolete. Of course, the rise of aviation created a powerful new brand of techno-vangelism. In the 1930s, air power enthusiasts, such as Giulio Douhet and Hap Arnold, argued that henceforth fleets of airplanes would bring war to the enemy’s homeland, destroying his economy and his will to make war, thus negating any real need for armies.

  The advent of nuclear weapons at the end of World War II seemingly elevated the “victory through air power” theory to an axiomatic level on par with Newton’s scientific findings on gravity. Indeed, the mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki barely had time to dissipate before a new flock of futurists proclaimed this latest revolution in warfare. From now on, they claimed, wars would be fought by a combination of nuclear-armed airmen and push-button technicians collectively raining untold waves of destruction on the enemy’s populace. “The day of the foot soldier is gone forever,” one such visionary wrote in 1946. “He is as extinct as the dodo bird. Yet this rather elementary fact seems to have escaped the notice of the hide-bound traditionalists who still cling tenaciously to their predilection for swarming masses of foot soldiers.” Writing a few months later, another self-styled seer (an infantry officer, no less!) agreed that “the days of the ground arms are ending. Warfare has changed. The scientists have taken over strategy and the military men have got to understand this sooner or later. The days of battles, as we know them and . . . have fought them, are gone forever.”1 I must risk posing an acerbic—or at least uncomfortable—question: How did those prognoses work out? The answer is obvious. They could not have been more wrong if they had said elephants fly better than birds.

  Predictions regarding the demise of the foot soldier are always wrong because they are based on theory, not actual events. There is an old saying that rules are meant to be broken. Well, I would argue that theories are meant to be debunked, especially in relation to warfare. As a historian, I am, quite frankly, not interested in the theoretical world of jargon-packed war college papers, geopolitical treatises, and predictions about next war wonder-weapons or scenarios. Instead, I am interested in finding out what actually happened, understanding why it happened that way, and perhaps coming to some kind of conclusion on what this might bode for the future. This book, then, is about realities of the modern battlefield, not theories about it. On the basis of historical study, I can say this with absolute certainty: From World War II through the present, American ground combat soldiers, especially infantrymen, have been the lead actors in nearly every American war, at the very time when new weapons and technology were supposed to make them obsolete.

  Thus, even in modern war, more is usually less. Since World War II, no one has, thankfully, ever used nuclear weapons. Instead, nukes settled into a useful role as a terrifying deterrent, assuring potential antagonists mutual destruction if they were ever actually employed. Their existence probably dissuaded the Cold War superpowers from making all-out war on each other. Both the Soviets and the Americans understood the pointlessness, and the horrible consequences for humanity, of nuclear war. The same has largely been true for every other nuclear power (of course, nuclear-equipped, fanatical, extra-national terrorists would probably have no such compunctions). Saddam Hussein notwithstanding, chemical and biological weapons have also largely been absent from the modern battlefield. I am not arguing that this absence places them beneath consideration. I am simply saying that their existence does not negate the infantryman’s vital importance. The same is true for the other techno-rich weapons I listed above. The armadas of bombers, ships, subs, missiles, and aerial drones, in spite of their staggering array of ordnance, and important though they are, have still never yet replaced the ground soldier as the primary agent of warfare. From the invasion beaches of Guam in 1944 to sweaty patrols in twenty-first-century Iraqi heat, the guy with boots on the ground and a weapon in his hand almost always takes the lead in carrying out the war aims of Washington policymakers, not to mention determining their success or failure. This is the pattern of recent history.

  The American Love Affair with Techno-War

  Since the beginning of World War II, no group of people or nation-state has invested more money, energy, and sheer hope in technology as a war winner than the United States. The belief that technology and machines can win wars of their own accord was prevalent as long ago as World War II and it still persists, arguably in even stronger form, in the twenty-first century. In 1947, S. L. A. Marshall, the noted combat historian, wrote: “So strong was the influence of the machine upon our thinking, both inside and outside the military establishment, that . . . the infantry became relatively the most slighted of branches.” The country paid a high price in blood and treasure for this oversight in World War II, but very little changed in subsequent decades. In 2006, another erudite military analyst, Ralph Peters, wrote something eerily similar to Marshall’s passage: “Too many of our military and civilian leaders remain captivated by the notion that machines can replace human beings on the battlefield. They cannot face . . . reality: Wars of flesh, faith and cities.” Marshall and Peters both understood that flesh-and-blood human beings win wars. Machines and technology only assist them.2

  Shrinking from the horrifying reality of war’s ugly face (more on that later), Americans have a tendency to think of war as just another problem that can be addressed through technology, economic abundance, or political dialogue. 3 These are American strengths so it is only natural that Americans would turn to them in time of need. Nor is there anything inherently wrong with the idea of maximizing these considerable American advantages. But there is something more at work here. Reared in the comfort of domestic peace and prosperity, most modern Americans cannot begin to comprehend that, more than anything else, war is a barbaric contest of wills, fought for some larger strategic purpose. Victory in combat usually comes from the resolve of human beings, not the output of machines. Yet, the modern American war-making strategy invests high hopes in the triumph of genielike superweapons and technology. To some extent, this is because Americans took the wrong lesson from World War II. They erroneously believed that victory in World War II came mainly from Allied matériel, technological, and manpower superiority. This created a zealotlike faith that these advantages would guarantee victory in any future conflict.

  Hence, ever since, the United States has had a persistent tendency to invest too many resources in air power and sea power, sometimes to the detriment of ground power. For instance, in fiscal year 2007, the Army and Marine Corps collectively received 29 percent of Defense Department budget dollars even though they were doing almost all of the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. The technology-rich Air Force and Navy received over 54 percent of the funding. In late 2008, even in the midst of two major ground wars, congressional leaders and Pentagon security “experts” were still talking about cutting, in future budgets, the ground forces in favor of wonder-weapon technology. Bing West, a leading American military commentator, even claimed that, as of 2006, the American armed forces contained more combat aircraft than infantry squads, “and more combat pilots than squad leaders.” This in spite of the fact that, based on intelligence intercepts, insurgents in Iraq feared American infantry soldiers much more than American technology. One result of this misappropriation of resources was the sad spectacle of overstretched, overworked ground troops going into combat in Iraq without adequate personal armor or weapons.4

  I want to state quite clearly that I am not arguing, in some sort of reactionary, antediluvian way, that modern technology, cutting-edge machines, firepower, sea power, and air power are unimportant for national security. All of these things are of tremendous importance. No serious person could possibly argue that the United States would have won World War II and prevailed in the Cold War without a preeminent navy and air force, not to mention a qualitative edge in weaponry, automation, engineering, economic largesse, communications, and supply. No rational individual would ever c
laim that there is no need for a navy or an air force, so why does anyone, for even a moment, confer any semblance of legitimacy on the view that ground combat forces are obsolete, especially when history proves that notion so absolutely wrong? It should be obvious to everyone that air, sea, and ground power are all vital. Indeed, Americans wage war most effectively when the services cooperate and fight as a combined arms team.

  So, to be absolutely clear, I am not howling at the rise of the technological moon, pining away for a preindustrial time when small, well-drilled groups of light infantrymen decided the fate of empires. I am simply saying that, throughout modern history, no matter how advanced weaponry has become, the foot soldier has always been the leading actor on the stage of warfare. Further, I am contending that the sheer impressive power of techno-war leads to an American temptation to over-rely on air power and sea power at the expense of ground combat power. The problem is not the emphasis on technology. The issue is simply too much of a very good thing, to the exclusion of what is truly vital, at least if we are to consider actual history, not just theory. Embracing an expensive new brand of techno-war while impoverishing land forces is foolish and self-defeating, but it is too often the American way of war. Time and again since World War II, American leaders have had to relearn one of history’s most obvious lessons—wars are won on the ground, usually by small groups of fighters, who require considerable logistical, firepower, and popular support.

  The question, then, is who supports whom. Modern American military strategists too often have fallen under the sway of the erroneous idea that ground forces only exist to support air forces or navies. That is exactly backward. 5 In 1950, Bruce Palmer, one of the leading Army intellectuals of the post-World War II era, wrote with succinct, prescient simplicity: “Man himself has always been the decisive factor in combat. Despite the devastating power of modern weapons, there are today no valid reasons to doubt the continued decisive character of the infantryman’s role in battle. All indications are that the infantry will decide the issue in the next war as they did in the last.”6 Subsequent history proved him exactly right. Since World War II, nearly every American conflict has been decided on the ground, Kosovo being the lone, and debatable, exception. Even in the Gulf War, with the impressive, and devastating, performance of coalition air forces, the ground army had to carry out the actual job of pushing Saddam’s armies out of Kuwait. So, at the risk of belaboring the point, we must consider not the theoretical but what has actually happened in recent wars. I realize that just because events unfolded one way in the past does not guarantee they will happen the same way in the future. That is quite true. But surely the patterns of past events indicate some level of probability that those same patterns will hold true in the future. If ground soldiers were of paramount importance in every previous conflict, isn’t it reasonable to assume that they will remain important in any future war? After all, human beings are terrestrial creatures. They live on land, not in the air or sea. Doesn’t this simple fact indicate a strong likelihood that land is the main arena of decision in war?