I have some thoughts about a small volume which I borrowed from my father's bookshelf.
My father's bookshelf is an interesting collection. It is fairly equal parts money management, military strategy and story, Christian living, and a little science and odd nonfiction. In it I see a probably incomplete but compelling (I keep using that word, and I'm not sure it means what I think it means) picture of my dad: smart, efficient, military and reverent. In my mind, the word military ought to mean the three other things; yet it must be stated this way because it does not mean that to everyone.
The book in question is an extended essay called, "The Soldier's Load and the Mobility of a Nation." It was written in 1949 by a Colonel S. L. A. Marshall (and what is it with Colonels and Generals having two middle names? Is that just a 20th century thing or a military family thing?), regarding the fact that a fair amount of the outrageous losses in military history came from the fact that men were literally carrying too much weight into battle. While a bit of the essay was particulars (should a soldier really be carrying 200 rounds of ammo?), there were so many sentences that caught me as useful and motivating to a person who has zero intention of being in the military herself (this is another story entirely, for another day maybe). Shall we?
The very acme of leadership comes of the ability to lift the powers of the average man-in-the-ranks to the highest attainable level and hold them there. I want to pin this on my wall and send it to every leader I know: the teachers, the coaches, the politicians, the parents. It seems to me one of the things that should be very obvious but when we are lost in the bureaucracy of life it is easily forgotten that that is what we are supposed to do. Leadership is not climbing to the top of the dog pile and staking my flag. It is the service of lifting our respective groups to their highest level and helping them stay there.
There can be true economy of men's powers in war only when command reckons with man as he is and not as it would like him to be. Don't get angry at your kid for "acting like such a child." But know that he is capable of training, and no matter what, keep going. This sentence gives me hope about the kindness of God because he knows precisely who we are and what we are capable of, and since he is good, we can trust him absolutely in everything he sends our way. Harder done than said! But absolutely true.
The chief, having reached the top rung of the ladder, is all too ready to forget everything that really counts on the field of war. Pretty sure this is privilege. Pretty sure I am a twerp if I don't give on every occasion that I can. I don't know what to do about it except to say what Sarah Bessey taught me this week: "I know, I'm sorry, I hope I learned to be kind." To keep going and to do better next time.
The strength of an army cannot be counted in bodies but in the numbers of men who are spiritually willing and physically able to pick up and move on forward fighting. The Church, anyone? Your business or school or community or family? Yourself and the hours in your day? Egads.
We are rarely willing to strip down to the minimum military and personal essentials - which we must do if we are to fight and survive. We invariably carry more food, more munitions, more everything into combat than there is any reason to believe we will use. I've been reading through the Gospels this month and thinking a fair amount about how often Jesus told people to leave everything - their homes, their possessions, their family - and follow him. And I wonder if I could do it. And I wonder if I own too much stuff. And I wonder how or when - what would cause me to change that. And if any good would come of a change. Anyway.
(We possess) the illusion that American resources are practically inexhaustible.
In war, we must focus on speedier delivery of a greater volume of a more efficient fire at the decisive point. Nothing else wins in the end. It is impossible to have an efficient fighting front when the rear is extravagant and logistically unsound. There's an argument to be said about using a war metaphor for your life and whether it is good or bad, but at this particular point it seems quite motivating. What is the battle I am fighting? Am I focused on "the decisive point"? Or am I joking off at the back, "extravagant and logistically unsound"?
No soldier worth his salt is afraid of sleeping cold for a night or two, and no good man will become mutinous if he has to go hungry for a day. I am afraid that I am not worth my salt and that I am rather mutinous in my cozy lifestyle. I kid you not, as I was taking a break from reading to get a highlighter or a glass of water, I turned my thermostat up two degrees as I walked by. Egads.
To give men useful work to do and use intelligence in keeping them at it is to bring out the best that is in them. I'm also reading Little Women at the moment and this is a heavy theme in that work: that if our lives are to be worthwhile, then we better put ourselves to work at something industrious and worthwhile or waste away, body and spirit, as we rot in the dregs of our bonbons and trashy novels.
We must work to make an army that prides itself on its ruggedness and puts personal strength above personal comfort. Another one to pin on my wall - or better yet, my forehead or my thermostat.
The moral resolution of the force is best fostered by turning from dreams of quiet contentment and the easy life to thoughts of overcoming great obstacles. Every vigorous man needs some kind of contest, some realization of resistance overcome, before he can feel that he is making the best use of his faculties. One argument for using a war metaphor for normal life, or at least investing in something that really matters. This is humanity.
All of war is a gamble and its chief rewards go to the player who, weighing the odds carefully as he moves from situation to situation, will not hesitate to plunge when he feels by instinct that his hour has arrived. This is a game not for fools or suckers but for those who have the courage to dare greatly.