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July 12, 2006

Gardens of Stone

Vietnam was popular fodder for movies from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. War pictures are thought to be good box office material, what with all the shooting and explosions and whatnot, and more highbrow directors could use Vietnam to tell more plot-oriented stories. Of the various films, the only one that really spoke to me was the 1987 Francis Ford Coppola film, Gardens of Stone.

Unlike most Vietnam films I've seen, Gardens of Stone barely shows us any of Vietnam. The film is instead set with the 3d Infantry Regiment, The Old Guard, at Arlington National Cemetary, where business was very good during Vietnam. The plot centers around the relationship between a young soldier named Jackie Willow (D.B. Sweeney), newly arrived to the Old Guard and eager to head to Vietnam where the fighting is, and his platoon sergeant, SFC Clell Hazard (James Caan), who has served two tours in Vietnam and now only wants to go to Fort Benning to teach at the Infantry School. Hazard served with Willow's father, so he naturally drawn to the young man, and he attempts to teach the young soldier why he doesn't want to go back to Vietnam and why Willow shouldn't be so eager to go.

The larger story, at least to me, is the film's portrayal of the damage that was done to the Army by the Vietnam war. Tens of thousands of the Army's best died during the war, and tens of thousands of more saw their careers cut short by wounds suffered there. At the same time, the war's unpopularity led to significant protests against the military. ROTC was expelled from numerous college campuses, reducing the Army's ability to bring in officers from some of the country's top colleges. Soldiers branded as 'baby killers' (true story: in college a fellow student stopped me one day while I was wearing my dress greens and asked why I wanted to kill babies.) and war criminals made the profession of arms a far less attractive one, reducing the Army's recruiting and retention and forcing us to accept soldiers of markedly lower caliber than we really needed. By the late 1970s, in the wake of the damages wreaked by the Vietnam war, officers did not dare to enter some barracks without carrying a sidearm. Drug use was rampant, and discipline was breaking down in some units.

The Army recovered, eventually. Significant pay increases made military service a better option for many prospective soldiers. A resurgence of patriotism under President Reagan helped recruiting by removing some of the stigma of military service. Army leaders opened the National Training Center in California and made training the force a priority. By the time I came along in 1988, the Army was a proud and professional force. The years following the end of the Cold War and the peace dividend were hard, as funding was often scarse and a lot of good soldiers left, but we still held onto a solid cadre of officers and NCOs who understood the value of discipline and training. By the late 1990s, we could see evidence of problems seeping in as recruiting standards were allowed to slip to meet targets as the strong economy made military service less attractive, but we were confident in our ability to train the raw material we were given and make them into good soldiers over time.

The standards continued to slip, however, particularly as the peacetime Army transitioned to an Army at war. Armies run on manpower, so stop-loss was back in force, and we started admitting non-high school graduates. Putting soldiers out of the service became much more difficult, as the Army brass wanted to make sure that commanders were making every effort to retain as many soldiers as possible. Promotion requirements began to slip; promotion to Sergeant, once seen as the biggest transition for enlisted troops as they moved from soldier to NCO, became almost automatic. Officers began leaving in great numbers. (When I was selected for promotion to Captain, the selection rate was 89%, meaning almost nine in ten eligible officers were selected for promotion. Last year the selection rate to Major was 96%, even though the Army needs far fewer Majors than it does Captains.) Gang activity is reported to be a rising problem in military units, although I have no personal experience of any such thing in my service. And reports of atrocities in Iraq will only serve to further damage the Army by making it less likely we can recruit the kind of high-quality soldiers we need.

The war in Iraq will end, and probably sooner rather than later. Even assuming President Bush can defy public opinion for the last two years of his term, by late 2008 the pressure to leave will be impossible to resist, and if the U.S. is still in Iraq in force at that time, the candidate who promises the fastest way out of Iraq will be our next President. Whether we leave in an orderly fashion after turning security over to the Iraqis, or with the last few men out rushing to a helicopter with insurgents on their heels, I don't see a significant U.S. presence in Iraq past 2009.

At which point I wonder what kind of Army we will have. I don't think it will be anything close to the damage we saw after the Vietnam war; we're coming from a much stronger base, and I don't think Iraq has been nearly as damaging to morale as Vietnam was. Conversely, I don't think the damage is easy to repair, either. We have lost a great many good soldiers, to death, to casualties, to getting out rather than face a third tour in Iraq. We haven't recruited the same quality of soldiers that we have in the past, meaning it will be harder to find young leaders to take the place of those we've lost. And our equipment base is going to be a big mess, exacerbated by the fact Congress isn't going to want to spend the kind of money it will take to repair and replace the damaged gear. That's not even considering the fact the M16 dates to the Vietnam era, the M1 Abrams was developed in the late 1970s, and the M2 Bradley in the early 1980s, with no systems in the works to replace any of them.

The Army will survive. I'm not trying to suggest for a moment that we're doomed. But as I look around the institution I love and extrapolate current trends forward a few years, I think the young Captains and Lieutenants I see will have a significant challenge waiting for them in the wake of this war.

Here's to us, and those like us. Damn few left.

Cross-posted at Obsidian Wings.