Without Mission
Stegenga, James A.
Without Mission Military Men, by Ward Just. Alfred A. Knopf. 256 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by James A. Stegenga Not mortally, perhaps, but seriously wounded, the profession of arms is yet another...
...But, however diverse, almost to a man they share one common set of attitudes...
...military strategy and doctrine, though Just touches on these matters in his discussion of the Army's search for a mission...
...Fourth, lack of a meaningful role to play...
...He wrote "We Shall Be All/' a history of the International Workers of the World...
...Army, its institutions, its doctrines, and its traditions, to be destroyed just to win this lousy war...
...There seem to be four major sources of discontent: First, the war, with its repeated dangerous tours and constant battlefield frustrations...
...ALFRED WERNER is the eminent art critic and author of books on Degas, Modigliani, and Chagall...
...STEPHEN E. AMBROSE, Eisenhower professor of history at Kansas State University, has written six books on military history...
...THE REVIEWERS BARTON J. BERNSTEIN, associate professor of history at Stanford who Js now on leave at the Center for Advanced Study at the University of Illinois, edited "Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration...
...As a book of fair and sensitive insights into the man in the Army uniform, Just's book well deserves a place on the same shelf with some of the works his bibliography lists: J. Glenn Gray's The Warriors, Samuel Huntington's The Soldier and The State, and Morris Janowitz's The Professional Soldier...
...Almost pathetically, a confused and rejected Army, longing to be useful and respectable again, casts about for something to do next...
...Reviewed by James A. Stegenga Not mortally, perhaps, but seriously wounded, the profession of arms is yet another casualty of the war in Southeast Asia...
...In the unlikely event of full-fledged thermonuclear holocaust, the infantry or tank commander would be as helpless as the rest of us...
...The stultifyingly rigid hierarchy, conformist pressures, anachronistic spit and polish, low pay, tyranny of doctrinal orthodoxy, deification and isolation of the generals, anti-intellectualism, constant rotation to develop the "generalist," maddening promotions procedures—all seem almost calculated to insure mediocrity and to drive out the talented...
...in fact, it has tarnished the military's "can-do" image, damaged more reputations than it has enhanced, demoralized most of our soldiers, and intensified the accelerating civilian attack on all things military...
...Nor does he deal extensively with waste, incompetence, and corruption, though his reporting of the saga of the Sheridan tank makes it seem about as much an unnecessary, unworkable, and excessively expensive gadget as the TFX, ABM, or C-5A...
...Military response to revolution in the underdeveloped world doesn't seem to work...
...A general quoted by Ward Just sadly and angrily recognizes the damage that has been done: "I will be damned if I will permit the U.S...
...Second, the civilians, both those who run things and those who excoriate the soldiers for decisions the soldiers had no part in making...
...Without glamorizing them, Military Men is a sympathetic, often affectionate, portrayal of the whole range of U.S...
...Finally, this is not the book to read for an explanation of current U.S...
...Ward Just, a perceptive journalist with The Washington Post, has given us an impressionistic picture of what these battered military men are thinking and feeling...
...The longest war in our history has not produced any genuine heroes and few proud pages for the official battle unit histories...
...They emerge in some respects an amazingly diverse lot: fools and geniuses, clods and poets, smooth managers and rough iconoclasts...
...JAMES A. STEGENGA teaches international relations at Purdue University and is the author of several books on military affairs...
...In such a journalistic treatment, the roots of this common sullen mood are not systematically set forth, but they may be gathered together from various parts of the book...
...Possible new "missions" like cleaning up the American landscape are unexciting to most old soldiers, even demeaning to some...
...Even those of us with less of a stake in the future of the Army ought to be at least interested, if not concerned, with the soldiers' views...
...Career military men as a group are unique, perhaps, in despising the Establishment, the peaceniks, and the apathetic majority in between...
...MELVYN DU-BOFSKY is professor of history at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee...
...they are nearly all sad, confused, angry, alienated...
...Third, The System...
...Army men, from the beginners—draftees, West Point plebes, and shiny new lieutenants—to the "lifers"—top sergeants, colonels, generals...
...Just's book is not another analysis of the military-industrial complex and its insidious militarizing of domestic politics and foreign policy...
Vol. 35 • June 1971 • No. 6
