When I joined the Army in the last years of the Cold War, I first reported to Fort Dix, New Jersey, to attend the regular enlisted basic training. (This was before I allowed the Army and an act of Congress to make me an “officer and a gentleman.”) Our basic training company, while it contained a few misfits, as any group of 120 or so young men will, was mostly made up of two types: Lean, tough rural kids, and lean, tough, urban and suburban kids. We rural kids were lean and tough from years of farmwork and choring. The urban and suburban kids were lean and tough mostly from sports and youths spent outdoors, riding bikes, playing, and so on.
Through that eight-week course, there was one overlying theme we were never allowed to forget: Our training was intended to make us warfighters; our primary goal was to close with and destroy the enemy by fire, maneuver, and shock effect.
A lot…
