INTO THE CRADLE OF CIVILIZATION: Letter From a Country Marine Recruit

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Letter From a Country Marine Recruit

Dear Ma and Pa, I am well. Hope you are. Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up quick before all of the places are filled. I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m. but I am getting so I like to sleep late. Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot, and shine some things. No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay. Practically nothing. Men got to shave but it is not so bad, there's warm water. Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, etc. but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food, but tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit by the two city boys that live on coffee. Their food plus yours holds you til noon when you get fed again. It's no wonder these city boys can't walk much. We go on "route marches", which the platoon sergeant says are long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it's not my place to tell him different. A "route march" is about as far as to our mailbox at home.

Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks. The country is nice but awful flat The sergeant is like a school teacher. He nags a lot.

The Captain is like the school board. Majors and colonels just ride around and frown. They don't bother you none. This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing. I keep getting medals for shooting. I don't know why. The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head and don't move, and it ain't shooting at you like the Higgett boys at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don't even load your own cartridges. They come in boxes. Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training. You get to wrestle with them city boys. I have to be real careful though, they break real easy. It ain't like fighting with that ole bull at home. I'm about the best they got in this except for that Tug Jordan from over in Silver Lake.
I only beat him once. He joined up the same time as me, but I'm only 5'6" and 130 pounds and he's 6'8" and near 300 pounds dry. Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before other fellers get onto this setup and come stampeding in.

Your loving daughter,
Gail

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: Name: Hotty Toddy!; Location: Iraq

The host is a Naval officer and Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) logistician embedded with the II Marine Expeditionary Force in the al Anbar Province (Western Iraq), and a huge Ole Miss fan!

"My logisticians are a humorless lot...they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay."

-- Alexander the Great

"Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are here to help them, not win it for them. Actually, under the very odd conditions of Arabia (SWA), your practical work will not be as good as perhaps, you might think it is."

-- T. E. Lawrence

I don't know what the hell this "logistics" is that Marshall is always talking about, but I want some of it. - Admiral E. J. King

The Logistician

Logisticians are a sad and embittered race of men who are very much in demand in war, and who sink resentfully into obscurity in peace. They deal only in facts, but must work for men who merchant in theories. They emerge during war because war is very much a fact. They disappear in peace because peace is mostly theory. The people who merchant in theories, and who employ logisticians in war and ignore them in peace, are generals.

Generals are a happy blessed race who radiate confidence and power. They feed only on ambrosia and drink only nectar. In peace, they stride confidently and can invade a world simply by sweeping their hands grandly over a map, point their fingers decisively up train corridors, and blocking defiles and obstacles with the sides of their hands. In war, they must stride more slowly because each general has a logistician riding on his back and he knows that, at any moment, the logistician may lean forward and whisper: "No, you can't do that." Generals fear logisticians in war and, in peace, generals try to forget logisticians.

Romping along beside generals are strategists and tacticians. Logisticians despise strategists and tacticians. Strategists and tacticians do not know about logisticians until they grow up to be generals--which they usually do.

Sometimes a logistician becomes a general. If he does, he must associate with generals whom he hates; he has a retinue of strategists and tacticians whom he despises; and, on his back, is a logistician whom he fears. This is why logisticians who become generals always have ulcers and cannot eat their ambrosia. - Unknown Author

To wage war, you need first of all money; second, you need money, and third, you also need money. - Prince Montecuccoli

Logistics..."embraces not merely the traditional functions of supply and transportation in the field, but also war finance, ship construction, munitions manufacture and other aspects of war economy." - Lt Col George C. Thorpe, Pure Logistics, 1917

The supreme excellence is not to win a hundred victories. The supreme excellence is to subdue the armies of your enemies without even having to fight them. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics. - General Dwight D. Eisenhower

Logistics comprises the means and arrangements which work out the plans of strategy and tactics. Strategy decides where to act; logistics brings the troops to this point. - General Antoine Henri Jomini, Precis de l'Art de la Guerre (The Art of War), 1838

Logistics is the "practical art of moving armies." - General Antoine Henri Jomini

Experience has taught me that manufacturers are now as necessary to our independence as to our comfort. - Thomas Jefferson

Seldom will all logistics principles exert equal influence; usually one or two will dominate in any given situation. Identifying those principles that have priority in a specific situation is essential to establishing effective support. - Joint Pub 4-0, Doctrine for Logistics Support of Joint Operations, Sep 25, 1992

To inquire if and where we made mistakes is not to apologize. War is replete with mistakes because it is full of improvisations. In war we are always doing something for the first time. It would be a miracle if what we improvised under the stress of war should be perfect. - Admiral Hyman Rickover

A little neglect may breed mischief: for want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider was lost. - Benjamin Franklin

You realize when shoeing the horse that the shoe may be thrown--possibly causing the horse to run, so you have a mule on standby to get the rider to the war. - Capt John P. Laverdure, Scott Air Force Base, HQ Air Mobility Command, 1996

Logistics Planning - The wisdom to realize when working on plan A, you'll run into conflicts in executing plan B and being properly prepared, and successfully executing plan E. - Capt John P. Laverdure, Scott Air Force Base, HQ Air Mobility Command, 1996

Lean forward. It's always better to fall on your face than on your backside. - M. Cox

Behind every great leader there was an even greater logistician. - M. Cox

The programs of training and exercises form the final test of logistics readiness. Since the majority of junior officers and enlisted men in the logistics services are specialized in a technical field, sound technical training is their fundamental preparation for war. In addition, however, specific attention must be paid to the development of fundamental discipline, leadership, and personal versatility which are so vital to efficient logistics service under wartime conditions. - RADM Henry E. Eccles, USN, Ret, Logistics in the National Defense, 1959

Logistics...in the broadest sense, the three big M's of warfare--material, movement, and maintenance. If international politics is 'the art of the possible,' and war is its instrument, logistics is the art of defining and extending the possible. It provides the substance that physically permits an army to live and move and have its being. - James A. Huston, The Sinews of War: Army Logistics 1775-1953, 1966

Logistics...as vital to military success as daily food is to daily work. - Captain A.T. Mahan, Armaments and Arbitration, 1912

The ideal for all military forces is to reduce their logistical requirements to necessities only. - Air Force Manual 1-1, Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United States Air Force, Essay T, March 1992

Logistics sets the campaign's operational limits. - Joint Pub 1, Joint Warfare of the U.S. Armed Forces, November 1991

The essence of flexibility is in the mind of the commander; the substance of flexibility is in logistics. - Rear Admiral Henry Eccles, U.S. Navy

Logistics must be simple--everyone thinks they're an expert. - Anonymous

My logisticians are a humorless lot...they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay. - Alexander

Logistics: The Profession - As a business professional with a vested career interest in the field of logistics, you are a part of a highly dynamic profession: current global developments and technological innovations are impacting logistics today as never before. While the logistics function's contributions to a firm's competitive strength have often been "invisible" in the past, many factors have coalesced to heighten its importance and visibility in the 1990s and beyond. - CLM-National What It's All About

Throughout the struggle, it was in his logistic inability to maintain his armies in the field that the enemy's fatal weakness lay. Courage his forces had in full measure, but courage was not enough. Reinforcements failed to arrive, weapons, ammunition and food alike ran short, and the dearth of fuel caused their powers of tactical mobility to dwindle to the vanishing point. In the last stages of the campaign they could do little more than wait for the Allied advance to sweep over them. - Dwight D. Eisenhower, British Army Doctrine Publication, Volume 3, Logistics (June 1996) p. 1-2

As we select our forces and plan our operations,....(w)e must understand how logistics can impact on our concepts of operation...Commanders must base all their concepts of operations on what they know they can do logistically. - Lt Gen Alfred M. Gray, Jr., Marine Corps Gazette (July 1987)

The tactics...no, amateurs discuss tactics,.... Professional soldiers study logistics. - Tom Clancy, Red Storm Rising

Do not touch anything unnecessarily. Beware of pretty girls in dance halls and parks who may be spies, as well as bicycles, revolvers, uniforms, arms, dead horses, and men lying on roads -- they are not there accidentally. - Soviet infantry manual, issued in the 1930's

One of the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine... - From a Soviet Junior Lt's Notebook

The best tank terrain is that without anti-tank weapons. - Russian military doctrine.

...At a prewar diplomatic conference, the Nazi Foreign Minister Ribbentrop "sniffed" to Eden and Churchill that if there was another war, the Italians would be on Germany's side! To which Churchill supposedly replied: "that seems only fair, we had them last time!"...

The reason the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices it on a daily basis. - from a post-war debriefing of a German General

Pearl Harbour Radio Operator: "Is there anything that we can provide?" Response from Marine Commander on Wake Island: "Send us more Japs!" ... Said to be one of the last radio transmissions received from the Marines on Wake Island before it fell to the Japanese, 1941.

In 1836, the Creek and Seminole Indian tribes in Georgia and Florida were waging war against the United States. The U. S. Army had its hands full. The Fifth Commandant of the Marine Corps offered the services of a regiment of Marines for duty with the Army. Henderson placed himself in command and, taking virtually the entire available strength of the Corps, left for the extended campaign after tacking a terse message on his office door which read: "Have gone to Florida to fight Indians. Will be back when War is over. - A. Henderson , Col. Commandant

Don't tell mom I'm a pilot, she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse - Bumper sticker

Artillery is the King of battle: the King cannot swim, however, which is why we need you guys. (USMC artillery specialist to a group of Navy officers in an Amphib Warfare Indoc course.)

Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum - Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe.

To throw bombs from an airplane will do as much damage as throwing bags of flour. It will be my pleasure to stand on the bridge of any ship while it is attacked by airplanes. - Newton Baker, US minister of defense (1921)

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Letter From a Country Marine Recruit

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