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The Duality of the American Military Tradition A Commentary Several years ago, an ad man called from Milwaukee to ask me to check out an advertisement that he had just written. Rather than calling up images of scantily clad maidens or cute infants, he wanted to exploit the American military tradition to encourage people to purchase his product. The blurb he read to me included a list of five or six famous American battles. I have forgotten all but one—Dunkirk— because that, understandably, struck a jarring note. When I told him that Dunkirk was not an American battle, he pressed me at length. Why wasn’t it? Weren’t there American participants in it? and so on. I held my ground until he finally hung up. I never saw the finished ad but, a few days later, I received in the mail a coffee cup with the logo of the ad agency emblazoned on its side. I tell this story not to point out the difficulty in changing a madeup mind or to boast of having received a token compensation for my expertise (a rare occurrence as we historians all know), but to illustrate the rather shaky grasp that Americans have of their country’s military tradition. As one might expect, the chairman of the Senate Military Affairs Committee in August 1940 demonstrated a firmer grasp of this tradition when he tried to calm the fears of those Americans who were concerned about the condition of our armed forces after the German army had taken France out of the war. Senator Robert R. Reynolds of North Carolina emphasized that Americans are different from other peoples because “our boys learn to shoot from the time they put on knee pants.” By way of illustration, he pointed out that the mountaineers in his state “draw a bead on a squirrel a hundred yards away and aim at the right eye . . . [if they hit him in the body,] they think that is unsportsmanlike.” Why should we be worried about the German blitzkrieg? He went on to say: “I am not . . . ‘afear’d’ of 26 THE EMBATTLED PAST Hitler coming over here, because if he does, he will get the worst licking he ever had in his life, because our boys have been trained to shoot.”1 Aside from his assumption that the United States would not become involved in World War II unless invaded, and his obvious lack of understanding of modern warfare, Bob Reynolds certainly showed a clear understanding of a basic tenet of the American military tradition—that the citizenry could be depended upon to defend this country. And, of course, they have throughout our history. Since World War II, many Americans have relied too much on the movies for their knowledge of military tradition. After all, John Wayne did fight, on the screen, heroically from the Alamo, through the Civil War and Indian Wars, and as a sailor, soldier, and marine in World War II before he finally wound up in the Special Forces in Vietnam—all without ever actually being in the service. If the fans paid close attention to his roles, however, they should have noticed that in several of his films he was not an amateur civilian springing to arms to save the day, but a long-serving professional soldier, sailor, or marine. It is unlikely that Wayne’s sympathetic portrayals of the hardbitten , old Cavalry Captain Brittles in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and the relentlessly tough Marine Sergeant Stryker in Sands of Iwo Jima caused any of his viewers to reexamine whatever notions they had about the American military tradition. But, at least, these characters did point up a different aspect of that tradition. Indeed, there is a duality of the American military tradition. Russell F. Weigley, the distinguished historian who has written so much and so well on the American army, succinctly explained why in his History of the United States Army: “A history of the United States Army must be, however, a history of two armies. Inheritance from England, geography, and democratic ideology have given the country two: a Regular Army of professional soldiers and a citizen army of various components variously known as militia, National Guards, Organized Reserves, selectees.”2 Wars naturally dominate the military tradition. Significant issues are involved, large numbers of the populace are in uniform, lives are at stake, and the sacrifices are great. In peacetime, veteran organizations and other patriotic groups dedicate themselves to commemorating the wars...

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