It’s Called "Basic" for a Reason

March 31, 2002

by Charles E. Perry

There is a method to turn civilians into soldiers which has been used since Roman Centurions practiced it to turn farm boys into Roman Legions. You take the civilians, abuse them, stress them, break them down, then, in the process of teaching them weapons and tactics, you build them back up. You give them pride in their unit. Teach them discipline and instill in them the belief that their unit is the best unit in the army. It’s a brutal, dehumanizing way of training, but it works. So you have to wonder why some people want to change it.

Today in the army, physical standards have been relaxed so as not to embarass the female recruits. Trainees are given "time out" cards for when the stress gets to be too much, as stupid an idea as I have ever heard since one of the reasons for the stress is to weed out those who can’t take the stress of combat before they actually get there. Do these people figure the enemy will honor time out cards? I doubt it. But let’s take a look at a real life example of why humanizing basic training is a stupid idea.

After World War II, the army decided to humanize basic. Company commanders were stripped of their authority to impose punishment, short of a courts martial, and Sergeants were told to become "one of the boys" than authoritarian figures. Discipline, essentially, went out the window. The trainees who graduated from basic training programs looked like soldiers. They dressed like soldiers. They carried the weapons of soldiers. But they weren’t soldiers, not by a long run.

Along came Korea, and these boys were asked to fight. They did fine against the North Korean Army, which was underequipped and undertrained, pushing them back to the Yalu River, but against a real army, they got their butts kicked. That army belonged to the Chinese. The Chinese were not better equipped than the Eighth Army. Their soldiers were not smarter. Their tactics were not better. But they had something the Eighth Army lacked: discipline and comradeship. When the Chinese Army hit the UN line, the Eighth Army folded. It collapsed and it ran, and it bled itself white doing so.

Contrast this with the Marines in Korea. The Marines had avoided the urge to humanize basic. When the Chinese wave rolled over the Eighth Army, the Marines at Chosan held because they knew that holding was the safest thing to do. As a consequence, they were cut off, trapped in enemy territory, and they had to engage in a fighting withdrawal. That’s never an easy thing to do. It can easily become a rout and lead to the destruction of the entire force. But the Marines did it, in good order, bringing out their dead and wounded with them, fighting every step of the way.

When General Ridgeway arrived to take command, the Eighth Army had lost contact with the enemy, and wasn’t in any hurry to get it back. They were no longer sending out patrols, and the Chinese positions were indicated on the map by a vague oval to the north of the UN positions. The men of the Eighth Army were not the men who had swept Rommel from the desert. They were not the men who had hung tough at Bastonge, but Ridgeway knew they could be the equal of those men - if they were taught how.

So Ridgeway taught them, in combat and at great cost, what they should have learned in basic. The Eighth Army rose from the ashes of its own funeral pyre, and fought it’s way back to the parallel. By the time they were done, they were soldiers. When human wave attacks came at them, they held, because they had learned that holding was the safest thing to do. They had discipline. They had pride of unit. They had esprit. They were the tough, cynical Legions every great power needs, but they had paid a huge price in blood for the learning.

We seem to have forgotten that lesson. After Korea, the army tightened up on basic again and started turning out real soldiers instead of parade ground fakes. But, once again, come the cries to make the army more humane, to ease up. The one thing I know for certain is that someday, in the near future no doubt, we will again pay a large price in blood for our stupidity.

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Charles E. Perry is a freelance writer living in Michigan. He has done a variety of things in his life, including Ward Supervisor at the State of Michigan's Maximum Security Mental Facility. His degree is in accounting, but he discovered writing and now spends his time hunched over a keyboard, hollow-eyed, looking for just the right word. Perry is the author of "How Government Should Work: A Look at the Federalist Papers and the Constitution of the United States," currently pending publication.

Send the author an E mail at Perry@ConservativeTruth.org.

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