In the book and miniseries Band of Brothers, “Easy ” Company (E Company/506th Airborne Infantry Regiment) is led through Normandy and Operation Market-Garden (the invasion of the Netherlands) by Dick Winters – the protagonist and real-life hero of the story. After Market-Garden, Winters is promoted to battalion executive officer; he’s replaced by another excellent officer, who is shot and gravely wounded by a nervous sentry. That officer, in turn, is replaced by a Lieutenant Dike.
In the book (and, as narrated in the movie by Dike’s first sergeant, Litman, in the miniseries), it’s revealed that “Lt. Dike’s biggest problem wasn’t that he made bad decisions. It’s that he made no decisions at all”.
During the Battle of the Bulge, at the defense of Bastogne, the competence of his platoon leaders and NCOs – the sergeants and corporals who do most of the moment-by-moment leadership – saved the company.
But after the Bulge, during the long series of counterattacks to drive the Germans back out of Belgium, Dike’s inadequacy as a combat leader led to a crisis. In a counterattack to retake the town of Foy, Belgium, Dike’s led the company into an exposed positi0n, halfway between the shelter of the woods and the town full of Germans. Raked by machine gun fire, pummeled by concealed artillery, and needled by snipers concealed in the town ahead who alone kill or wound six of the soldiers, the company was in a bad positi0n; to retreat would lead the company back across open ground and lead to needing to do the whole thing over again. To advance would involve casualties and a very tough fight with some very skilled German defenders. And to stay in place involved getting shot or blown up at the Germans’ leisure.
Dike made one decision – an ineffective half-measure sending a platoon on a fruitless, pointless flanking maneuver that led to casualties and nothing much else – and then froze up. Winters, watching from not far behind, ordered Lieutentant Speirs, the aggressive, Scottish-born platoon leader who would carry the company through the rest of the war, to take the company. He made the tough but instant decision; attack. Get into the town. Root the Germans out and get the battle over.
It cost casualties – but fewer than the company lost as it floundered about in the field, waiting for a definitive decision. It was a tough call, one that could have ended in disaster to be sure. But it carried the day.
I have no idea whatsoever what prompted me to think of that.
Could have been yesterdays announcement by Dear Leader that he will be sending 30K troops to the Afgan theatre. I contend that Obama’s procrastination and the insufferable time he took to act makes him infinitely more reminiscent of Dike than Speirs.
Band of Brothers is the about the best mini-series I have ever watched. I can hardly wait till next spring when Hanks, Speilberg, and HBO show their newest mini-series “The Pacific”. It’s also a 10 part series about the WWII fight with the Japenese.
I love how you mentally unbalanced wingnuts fault the president for actually getting as much information as possible and giving some thought to whether he should commit 34,000 troops to fight in a war on the other side of the earth. Very unwingnutty, of course, but Angryclown wonders exactly what damage to U.S. interests you suppose is the result.
Considering the president went on TV to announce his new Afghanistan policy last night after what you kooks call “dithering,” I’m surprised the most you attempt in response is an oblique, unrelated post like this one.
Angryclown thinks it’s cause you got nothing.
Scott,
This’ll show you how closely I follow these things; this was the first I’d heard of The Pacific. Been in production for two years, you say? Zowie!
But I’m thrilled to see it’s at least partially based on Helmet For My Pillow by Robert Leckie. I read that, as well as several of Leckie’s other books (Battle of Iwo Jima and Delivered From Evil, if I recall correctly.
I love how you mentally unbalanced wingnuts fault the president for actually getting as much information as possible and giving some thought to whether he should commit 34,000 troops to fight in a war on the other side of the earth.
“Getting as much information as possible?”
Just about everyone at the Pentagon above 2nd Lieutenant/Ensign has served over there. He has six different US intelligence operations feeding him information. He had enough “information” to fire McTiernan and hire McCrystal. He needed no political or international backing – everyone in the world north of Michael Moore’s IQ already supported the war, left or right.
What’s the hard part?
Very unwingnutty, of course, but Angryclown wonders exactly what damage to U.S. interests you suppose is the result.
The kind of damage that always happens when liberals try to fight half a war. Like in Vietnam, where LBJ tried to fight a guerrilla war with a Cold War Army (after Kennedy abandoned Ike’s sensible, Special Forces-run counterinsurgency war), but shied away from using that same Cold War army to do the mission it could have carried off quickly and effectively – invading the North; a quagmire ending in defeat.
Clear enough?
Considering the president went on TV to announce his new Afghanistan policy last night after what you kooks call “dithering,” I’m surprised the most you attempt in response is an oblique, unrelated post like this one.
Oh, I did a direct, related post earlier. Have no fear (or, given the existence of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and I, “have less fear” as the case may be).
Angryclown thinks it’s cause you got nothing.
Nothing but misgivings and that sinking feeling that we have a Chicago alderman trying to learn national leadership on the job. You got it.
Obama was getting as much information as possible? Do you mean by meeting with General Petraeus (sp?) only once in the first eight months of his Presidency?
Sorry, AC, I don’t call that “getting information.” I call that “ignoring the problem and hoping it goes away.”
At least he’s got more potential than that part-owner of the Texas Rangers. He does know how to read and stuff.
Good point, Bubba.
The only “information” PBO was “gathering” was from Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Howard Dean.
he’s got more potential
Potential? You mean, that intangible thing that people have and need to reach and accomplish whatever their destiny is?
He got elected!
He has no more need for “potential”! There is no promotion from his current job (other than an ascent to deific status which, much has some of his followers no doubt believe is possible, is really outside the scope of this posting).
He needs to start delivering on whatever “potential” he has.
Soon.
At least he’s got more potential than that part-owner of the Texas Rangers. He does know how to read and stuff.
Well, Chairman Zero hasn’t released his transcript from Columbia, so we don’t know about the “stuff”, but here is a link comparing W with John Kerry, who also served in Vietnam and looks French.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/06/07/politics/main700170.shtml
Reading another variant of the angryclown “at least he’s better than Bush” “argument” makes me thing angryclown has nothing.
How do we know Obama knows how to read, AC? Unlike W, Obama hasn’t released his college transcripts. He certainly doesn’t make a practice of reading the bills he signs, and actively discourages Congress from doing so.
Our first functionally illiterate President. I’m so proud. And scared.
Troy, that’s been obvious for years.
Re: The liberation of the Low Countries.
I once worked with an engineer who told the following story:
He was a boy of about ten years old towards the end of the 2nd world war and living in Amsterdam. He and the other children would play on the rooftops of buildings because they weren’t allowed on the streets.
One day he heard the sound of approaching American airplanes and he raced to the edge of the rooftop just in time to see a trio of American fighter-bombers, flying below the level of the rooftops, flash past him and make a surgical strike on the Gestapo headquarters at the end of the avenue.
This, he said, is what made him want to become an American. We could have taken out the building with a high altitude bombing run but that would have killed civilians. Instead we chose the more difficult but more humane option.
I had a vendor who moved back to Pennsylvania, where his wifes family is from and to the same town where Winters is from. He was a huge military history buff, as am I, and since everyone in town knew everyone else, he and his brother-in-law wrangled a visit to the good major’s farm. As he told me they spend several hours there, saw the boot with the bullet hole, and all.
But the best part was in the course of the conversation the subject of physical training came up and Winters said he had still been a runner up until his 80th birthday. His remark was to the effect,”you turn 80 an you just loose a step”.
A side note for another good series of personal stories from the airborne war in Europe check out Donald R Burgett, especially “Seven Roads to Hell”
To extend Bubbas comment the president spoke with his hand picked general (McCrystal) only once in the first 70 days after he assumed command in Afghanistan. This was late september. You would think as CinC whose entire future rests on the outcome would want to at least have a weekly briefing from the general. Bet he does not followup until well after the the surge lite is well along. That is not leadership.