From Joint Force to Unified Command

No one asked me, but I believe that eventually the armed forces of the United States will become a single entity. Different services from the component down to the fire team will maintain identity and special esprit de corps. However, the uniforms and ranks will be unified, and all will share one name: the United States Armed Forces. The unarmed military forces – the Public Health Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – will continue apart from them, perhaps until the time when Earth benefits from a common government.

 

Marine Corps "Fat Albert" rocket-assisted take-off, one of the
Navy's "Blue Angels" team. (left) US Army C-12 Huron (right). 

We are already moving in that direction with the concept of the joint force. And it is nothing new. It is a common quip that the Army has more boats than the Navy and more aircraft than the Air Force.  It not quite true, but it does underscore the fact that all of the services have operated their own cross-environmental platforms. This probably originated with the Battle of Myle (260 BCE). The Romans defeated the Carthaginians when they changed a sea battle into a land battle by dropping planks so that their soldiers could cross onto the enemy ships.

US Armed Forces as a whole must be multi-mission capable; interoperable among all elements of US Services and selected foreign militaries; and able to coordinate operations with other agencies of government, and some civil institutions.Multi-Mission Capable. Our forces must be proficient in their core warfighting competencies and able to transition smoothly from a peacetime posture to swift execution of multiple missions across the full spectrum of operations. …
 Some situations demand the unique capabilities of only one Service, but most will call for capabilities from all Services. The skillful and selective combination of Service capabilities into Joint Task Forces provides US commanders great flexibility in tailoring forces to meet national objectives given specific circumstances.http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/nms/joint.htm

US Air Force Boats. The "Tyndall Navy" has provided electronic
support of missile tests since 1957. The USAF also floats
the Rising Star, a Thule-class tugboat.

 Joint Base San Antonio (JBSA) is a United States military facility located in San Antonio, Texas, USA. The facility is under the jurisdiction of the United States Air Force 502d Air Base Wing, Air Education and Training Command (AETC). The wing's three Mission Support Groups perform the installation support mission at the three bases that form JBSA.

The facility is a Joint Base of the United States Army Fort Sam Houston, the United States Air Force Randolph Air Force Base ,Lackland Air Force Base and Martindale Army Airfield , which were merged on 1 October 2010.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Base_San_Antonio

Joint Base Charleston … is a United States military facility located partly in the City of North Charleston, South Carolina and partly in the City of Goose Creek, South Carolina . The facility is under the jurisdiction of the United States Air Force 628th Air Base Wing, Air Mobility Command (AMC). The facility is an amalgamation of the United States Air Force Charleston Air Force Base and the United States Navy Naval Support Activity Charleston, which were merged on 1 October 2010.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Base_Charleston

US Army's Spearhead theater support vessel (TSV).
Commissioned 2002-2005. One of 127,793 Army vessels.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_United_States_Army) 

 WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Oct. 2, 2009) -- An Army installation in New Jersey and two in Virginia officially transformed Thursday to become part of new joint bases.

 Near the nation's capital, the Fort Myer Military Community joined forces with the Marine Corps' Henderson Hall, Va., to form Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall. The Army will manage installation functions there. The new joint base also includes Fort McNair in the District of Columbia.
 In central New Jersey, Fort Dix combined forces with Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst and McGuire Air Force Base to form Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst. At the new "super base," the Air Force will run installation management operations, acting as a sort of city manager to control basic infrastructure functions.
 Finally, in southern Virginia, Fort Story joined up with Naval Mid-Atlantic Region at Naval Station Norfolk to form Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, with installation management provided by the Navy.
https://www.army.mil/article/28260

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Building a Team in Fact and Fiction

Still Riding the Gray Planet

Hurricane Tejas

TXSG Basic Non-Commissioned Officers Course

The Purse of Eratosthenes

For about 10 years in the 1990s, I worked on assembling a collection of ancient coins worth about a day's wages from the towns and times of Greek philosophers. I was inspired by an episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos, "Backbone of the Night." Although I discovered that I lack the passions of a true collector for rarity, condition, and completeness, I was rewarded with explorations in ancient history and the opportunity to learn enough classical Greek to do my own translations.

Drachmon from Kyrene c. 550 BCE Zeus Ammon and Silphium
(About the size of US 5-cent nickel)

I discovered the town of Cyrene (Kyrene), near what is today Benghazi. Eratosthenes of Cyrene was the third Librarian of Alexandria (from 245 BCE) after Zenodochus and Callimachus. Circumference by Nicholas Nicastro (St. Martins 2008) reviewed on this blog (here) is a modern biography of Eratosthenes and his works. He was also a grammarian and historian. His other mathematical work includes a "sieve" to find prime numbers.  His biography is on Wikipedia, of course: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes  It is also repeated more succinctly here: 
http://www.math.wichita.edu/history/men/eratosthenes.html  
and more fully here:
http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Eratosthenes.html

The Hellenistic world was very much like our own time: held in tension by science and superstition, commerce and war, ecumenism and parochialism.

Kyrene was founded by Dorians from the island of Thera in 631 BCE. Its primary claim to fame was the presence of silphium. Silphium was discovered to prevent pregnancy. It was highly valued and eventually harvested to extinction, despite valiant attempts to cultivate it there and elsewhere. Not surprisingly, the history of Kyrene reflected many of the cultural trends of the times. Twice, it suffered from constitutional crises as factions in the assembly became gangs in the streets. Both times, the solution was to send to Athens for philosophers skilled at politics who created compromises. 

Obol or hemi-drachm. Demeter with Eagle killing snake.
(About half the size of a US dime.)

The town also was home to two women who married a Ptolemy: Berenike I and Berenike II. The constellation Coma Berenices was supposedly the hair  of Berenike II, offered to the gods for the safe return of Ptolemy III Euergetes from a war in Syria. "Veronica" is the latinized form of Berenike. 

Among the ancient philosophers, the Cyrenaics followed the teachings of Aristippos. The school was maintained and extended by his daughter, Arete, and her son, Aristippos. Though originally a student of Socrates, Aristippos asserted his own line of thought. He advocated seeking pleasure by adapting to circumstances. He gave up the safety of a city and traveled widely. To understand the consequences of that, remember that Diogenes the Cynic was captured by pirates and sold as a slave. It was not unusual for the times. There was no safety outside the city walls. Yet, the Alexandrians coined the word "cosmopolitan" for the universal citizen or citizen of the world, not tied to any one city, but comfortable anywhere.

Ptolemy II and Berenike I. Alexandria Mint.
(Bronze coin about the size of a US quarter)

Eratosthenes, the town of Kyrene, and the Library at Alexandria became a focus for my interests and one of the first articles I wrote about the numsimatics of the ancient world was “The Purse of Eratosthenes: the Coinage and Commerce of Cyrene,” The Celator, Vol. 8, no 1, (January 1994).  (Founded by Wayne G. Sayles, The Celator passed to a couple of other editors and publishers and then closed just a few years ago.)  

We quip and quote about the long run of history, which may or may not repeat itself to our doom. The fact is that the Library of Alexandria attracted savants from all across the Greek koinon ("union").  They developed their own distinct and universal dialect, in which, ultimately, the New Testament was written. When the house of Ptolemy fell on hard times, the library released many of its scholars to find their own ways. Rather than marking a nadir, it caused a secondary flourishing in the Hellenistic world as accumulated learning was cast to the winds to flourish wherever open minds were found.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
Happy Pi Day of the Century 
Bringing Philosophy to Athens - Aspasia of Miletos
Numismatics: History as Market 
Valentine's Day: Love and Money

Crimes of Conscience: Antigone and Stealing from the Public Library

The libraries at the University of Texas at Austin shelve 83 volumes by Ayn Rand. Of them, 30 have been stolen. Of those, eight are marked in the catalog as “Missing.” In other words, they left the shelves without being checked out. The others were just not returned by the last borrowers who effectively got away with their crimes.  I identify these facts as evidence of a deeper political problem, first posited 2500 years ago by Sophocles in his drama, Antigone.  More recent, and known well to admirers of the works of Ayn Rand, are the trial scenes from The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.  Not so famous, but cutting more deeply into the fabric of law is Ayn Rand’s courtroom drama, Night of January 16^th. The question is whether or not you have a duty to obey the law.

It is important to understand, first, that Ayn Rand was opposed to duty.

The meaning of the term “duty” is: the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire or interest. – “Causality versus Duty,” in Philosophy: Who Needs It?

Obviously, for some admirers of the works of Ayn Rand, the prospect of a free copy of one of her books was stronger than any irrational duty to the public order. However, it is also true that Rand’s dictum above must be placed in its proper context because she was far more eloquent in her condemnation of “looters” and substantially incisive in her praise for their antithesis, the producers.  Moreover, the moral and political aspects of her philosophy of Objectivism were primarily about the positive virtues of production, creation, and active reason, against which are revealed the negative, destructive, and empty actions of the irrational and non-productive.

The essential question here is: “What justifies stealing from the public library?” It leads to a far wider set of questions and actions. I assert that if it is acceptable to steal Atlas Shrugged from the library, then it is acceptable to take a tree from a public park, or a computer from city hall, or the President’s limousine from the White House.  And, ultimately, it would be acceptable to take anything from anyone who accepted any public benefit, whether a social security check, “land bank” payments for not growing crops, sending their children to public schools, or (of course) borrowing books from the public library (and returning them).

Some libertarians claim that it is moral to steal from the library, or any other government entity, because their assets all come from taxation, and taxation is theft. When you steal a library book, you only take back what was yours in the first place. This also applies by extension to stealing back what was yours from any business that benefits from government subsidies, whether General Motors or Tesla, Inc., a local hospital, or the florist whom you spot coming from the library.

Moving right along, for a philosophical Objectivist (or simply an “admirer” of the works of Ayn Rand), such justifications extend to their irrational mystical altruist collectivist neighbors. The theory is that anyone who goes to church or votes for Democrats is fair game, especially when the risks are very low.  Your neighbors who are tax looters or welfare moochers stole from you first; you are just taking back what was yours. If you can get away with it, why not?

Among the many accurate and precise tools of logic that Ayn Rand employed in her expositions was identifying the error of context dropping. In terms of the social consequences of personal morality, it is the error of moral equivalency. It also a powerful tool in Objectivism that moral success begins in metaphysics and epistemology.  So the moral failing of the looter of the library begins with errors in metaphysics and epistemology. Ayn Rand called it “reifying the zero” i.e., attempting to make a “something” out of nothing.  (See “Axiomatic Concepts” in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology.) Stealing a copy of Atlas Shrugged from the library is not the moral equivalent of buying one from a bookstore.

The primary concern is not whether the owner of the bookstore sends her children to a government-subsidized daycare center, but where you got the money with which you bought the book.  If you did not buy the book at all, if there was no earned money exchanged, then the failure was yours long antecedent to the gross action of mere acquisition of the book.

It is a perhaps curious fact, revealing the nature of the subject, that generally and historically philosophy is about the individual: you and your place in the universe. Even the weak ones and bad ones attempt some answers to the same question: How do I know what to do? We know many exceptions: Plato’s Republic, the social priesthood of Auguste Comte, Marxism-Leninism, …  But they stand out as exceptions within the 2600-year history of philosophy. Ayn Rand consciously built her philosophy of Objectivism to be the ultimate expression of that discovery: your best experience of your own life.

In Sophocles’ Antigone, the heroine was so outraged by the desecration of her brothers’ bodies, whatever their crimes against the city, that she disobeyed the commands of the tyrant Creon, in full acceptance of the consequences. In The Fountainhead, Howard Roark is prepared to go to prison if he  fails in his appeal to the creative spirit within each of the jurors.  In Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden refuses to hand over his metal and tells the government that he cannot stop their trucks and guns if they come to take it. And he is willing to go to prison rather than to acquiesce in the theft of his property.  In Night of January 16^th Karen André has committed or conspired in so many crimes that the play does not even come close to a bill of indictment. She makes no appeal to a higher law or a greater good or a better morality. She does not explain herself at all: no outsider’s opinion is consequential to her.

On the other hand, the hooligan who steals a copy of Atlas Shrugged from the public library makes no public statements, issues no manifesto, and stands not in defiance of authority but slinks away with loot.  It might be informative for a bold privateer to wheel several shelving carts out the door while distributing leaflets condemning the philosophical and economic fallacies of “public goods.” (And when the campus police arrive, he should have a clever cloaking device unless he intends to go to jail for his beliefs.) But that is not the case. Instead, other people whose taxes have paid for goods and services are deprived of the benefit of their bargain by a third party. We call that theft.

"Rand fans" are not the only people given to "crimes of conscience." The Roman republican martyr Cato the Younger (Marcus Porcius Cato, Uticensis) became a symbol for Christians and ultimately republicans of the Enlightenment. But, again, Cato the Younger took his own life rather than submit to Gaius Julius Caesar. It remains that the jihadi who kill themselves while they kill others in suicide attacks claim obedience to a higher law, also. But their actions are not  morally equivalent because the consequences are not morally equivalent.

Do you have a duty to obey the law? In the explicit sense identified by Ayn Rand, that a duty is an obligation that supersedes self-interest, you do not. But that begs the question: What is self-interest? Rand devoted herself to answering that question. If you do not understand why productively earning the money with which to buy a book is in your self-interest while the easy pickings of the public library are not, you need to do some reading.  It is a common error in our common education that we want even our “story problems” to be short, when in fact, the most important aspects of living well require more than a slogan to explain.

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Employee Theft 

Dishonest Scientists: Who is the Guardian? 

Alternatives to Prison  

Newton versus the Counterfeiter  

Forgery and Fraud in Numismatics  

TDEM 2017 Texas Emergency Management Conference

Laurel and I attended the 2017 Texas Department of Public Safety Division of Emergency Management annual conference in San Antonio. Although it is a four-day show, we were there just for Thursday, May 18. We started with the exhibit hall and attended two break-out sessions. These are some of the vendors whom I met.

Dr. Deb Zoran is the operations supervisor of
VET outreach of Texas A&M University.
They coordinate animal rescue during disasters and emergencies.

John Taylor and Hannah Coffey of BOLD Planning,
one of the providers of mitigation and remediation plans for
organizations that do not have adequate in-house emergency planning.

Sean Scott developed the Red Guide handbooks.
They are available in English and Spanish.

Keith Blaylock of eXpress Sandbag System
did not bring the proprietary machinery with him.
However, I found the sandbags to be portable,
standardized, and stackable.
And he said that he could produce
1000 per hour all day long.

Michael Shanks of LRad explained
that his sound output speakers will cover
huge, city-sized areas with good clarity
for voice notification in times of emergency.

Mike Ross does apps and he has them for
emergency management. In the age of the
smartphone it is an easy and effective way
for jurisdictions to get the word out --
the right information...
from the right source.

Vanessa Forté of ProPac brought a wide range of
pre-packaged emergency supplies from
first aid kits to food and drink for
one person or large groups.

Mark Mathiesen of On the Mark Weather is one of several
commercial meteorologists with his own brand of applied theories.
When I reviewed and edited contracts for TDEM in 2014,
I was surprised to learn that the government agency, NOAA,
as respected as it is, is not the leading edge, and only tells you
what they tell everyone in a wide area all at the same time.
Dr. Mathiesen specializes in micro-events:
he can tell you if your school could be hit. 

Of course, there were many more to be met.  My friends from Intermedix and WebEOC were there. So were the folks from STEAR, the State of Texas Emergency Assistance Registry for people who want to be helped when getting help is a matter of life and death. I met Major Ernest Branscum of the Salvation Army several times during the day as we toured the exhibit hall. I was happy to be able to add my name to the contact list for the local chapter of the Association of Continuity Managers.   

On Thursday, May 18, at 4:00 PM, Laurel and I attended an excellent session on Insurance Fraud. The presenters were Lt. David Taylor (Compliance) and John Plent (Consumer Protection) from the Catastrophe Response Team of the Insurance Fraud unit of the Texas Department of Insurance. Just to note: The Department of Insurance is one of about 20 state agencies and departments that has its own sworn and weaponized peace officers. As explained below, when on the streets, talking to roofing contractors, he has the full law enforcement authority of any police officer in Texas.

In the aftermath of a disaster, swarms of unlicensed contractors appear, soliciting business, and being paid with money from insurance settlements. The work is uneven in quality. Sometimes, the “contractors” take a “down payment” and never return. Occasionally, they take a partial payment, do partial work, then leave, with a promise to return, which puts the matter out of the criminal law and into civil law.

The TDI catastrophe teams help people work with insurance adjusters; and they can assist insurance companies in the field. They work with consumers to help with insurance claims. Lt. Taylor and Mr. Plent come to your town to mitigate (and ideally prevent) violations and victimizations. They start by meeting with city officials. They acknowledge that after a severe storm which has taken lives, mitigating insurance fraud might not seem highly important. However, they have found law enforcement and other city officials to be very helpful. If the city has regulations, they say, then make sure that all solicitors are registered and licensed. Drive the streets; and where you see roofers working or knocking on doors, ask to see their papers. Municipalities should run background checks for outstanding warrants and sex offender registration. Their primary advice is to homeowners is to never accept a solicitation. You, the customer, should drive the process by seeking out reputable companies and getting competitive bids.

We have no state-level licensing of contractors here in Texas. However, we do have the Roofing Contractors Association of Texas and the Building Officials Association of Texas (BOAT at www.boatx.org). In fact, BOAT was one of the vendors at the TDEM conference. 

Read about the fraud team here

http://www.tdi.texas.gov/news/2017/tdi05012017.html

Watch one of their videos here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upqmuWlT8o8

At 2:30 PM on May 18, Laurel and I attended a disjointed, lackluster session on cyber security.  Despite our abiding professional involvement in computer security, this one put us both to sleep. The presenter was David Morgan (CISSP, CNSS NSA Security), who is a cybersecurity officer and information security manager at the Texas Department of Public Safety. He certainly seemed well qualified from his time in the Marine Corps to his experience as a visiting professor at several colleges and universities. The bottom line is that the content of his presentation did not meet the criteria set by the title of his talk, "Cyber Security - A Critical Component for Emergency Management." 

Everything we do in response to a disaster or a community event depends on computers, from smartphones to laptops. To coordinate our efforts, we bring WebEOC into community shelters. Some at this conference had special responsibilities for the emergency bands such as TICP (Texas Interoperability Communication Package) and MARS (Military Affiliate Radio System). David Morgan did not tell us how to secure any of them, or how to detect an intrusion.

Laurel and I were most interested in knowing about how computer hackers have disrupted emergency response. Aside from mentioning the recent incident in Dallas -- (Dallas Morning News here among very many others) -- in which the weather sirens sounded at midnight, he had nothing to say. 

Hackers have been changing traffic lights since at least 2003, though the ability to do so was known in the 1980s. (See Wired from 2005 here.) Recently, the Surprise, Arizona, city 911 was taken out by a hacker (See Washington Times story here.)  Bear in mind, though, that the infamous “Operation Sundevil” from 1990, which alleged that hackers had broken into the nationwide 911, was exposed and disgraced.  (See  “Operation Sundevil” in Wikipedia here and “Jefferson in Mirrorshades” in a hacker archive here. )  None of that was in this  presentation. 

David Morgan did allude to the existence of viruses, worms, trojans, and spyware, but did not differentiate among them, or tell us how to detect, mitigate, remediate, or prevent them. He did say that the Macintosh operating system is easily given to viruses because it is based on Unix, which is the operating system in which viruses were invented. David Morgan defined “Zero day” as the source of unknown vulnerabilities. He explained a “root kit” by saying that if you are “root” then you own the system.

All of that being as it may, I personally benefited by learning about Shodan.io. Coming to work the next day, I visited the site, read about it on Wikipedia, and made a note to myself to follow up. 

  

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS
BSides Austin 2016
InnoTech 2015
CERT: Community Emergency Response Team
The Living Fish Swims Under Water

ANOC: Advanced Non-commissioned Officer Course

On the weekend 10-12 March 2017, I completed the Advanced Non-Commissioned Officer Class (ANOC) of the Texas State Guard. Although the J-7 (Joint Training directorate) at headquarters likes to maintain the fiction that their orders and guidance ensure that training is the same for everyone, in fact, it depends a lot on who commands in the classroom.

My third class, BNOC, was dedicated to us: we were all BNOC. However, the second class I completed, Primary Leadership Development (PLDC), was, like this one, held in a joint force, cross-component environment. We did not train with them; but we all socialized after hours. So, I benefited from the opportunity to compare and contrast this ANOC with a previous session for another group. The courses were compatible, but not identical.

We all studied the meaning of Leadership, the principles of Supervision, and the application of Leadership Behavior. We all had lessons in Counseling and Mentoring. We all engaged in exercises in applied Creative Thinking. We placed all of that into a narrative of Teamwork based on Management Principles, tempered by Risk Management. The specifics of the PowerPoint slides and the practical exercises were different for us.

Our ANOC instructor was a Marine. Only about half of us in the TXSG are prior federal military. (I am not. ) While Marines can be found in the Medical Rangers, the Air Component, and the Army Component, most of them are (of course) in the Maritime Regiment. Technically, that is the uniform that I wear. However, I am not in TMAR; I am a clerk in the command group. But I knew our instructor. And in real life, he is a high school mathematics teacher. So, this class went well for me.

Non-commissioned officers are the backbone of the military and the reason our military is the best trained, most professional, and most respected in the world. First-line supervisors execute the day-to-day operations with precision whenever and wherever duty calls. Foreword, Army FM  7-22.7

One of our lessons was on the Abilene Paradox. No one really wanted to go to Abilene, but each of them thought that everyone else did, so they each went along with what they misperceived the consensus to be.

In the other ANOC that I observed the new high-ranking sergeants directed us lower non-coms in close order drill. In this class, the instructor called the commands. However, his lessons included several ways to achieve those troop movements. He even taught us “counter march, right about” which, rolling caissons or not, is not a proper command – but is cool to do and see done.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Primary Leadership Training

Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course

Armies Without Weapons

Money is Speech

Start the Presses!

A Nation of Immigrants and Aliens

Enjoying Season 1 of Mork and Mindy has given me an opportunity to revisit 1978. To say that times have changed is to warp past the expansion of Daylight Savings and the appearance of telephones that take selfies. 

In one episode, Mork met a Russian musician who was here studying the cello.  The Russian told Mork that all aliens in the United States must register. I forgot about that. Then I remembered the public service announcements on television. It is a lot more complicated now.  (See here https://www.uscis.gov/)  But if you read the laws, special, organized registration of aliens goes back at least to 1924 though the Alien Acts of 1798 were no laughing matter. (See here:  https://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ourdocs/Alien.html )

Nanu nanu!

Distrust of unwanted immigrants goes back to 1492, but your sense of irony must have been removed at birth if you do not pause at the distinction between Native Americanism and  American nativism. Will the last one in please close the door?

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Monsters from the Id

The Scientific Method

Still Riding the Gray Planet

Syriaphobia: the latest fad in collectivism

A Century of May Days

The Internationale

(Billy Bragg's Lyrics)

Stand up all victims of oppression,

For the tyrants fear your might.

Don't cling so hard to your possessions,

For you have nothing if you have no rights!

Let racist ignorance be ended;

For respect makes the empires fall.

Freedom is merely privilege extended

Unless enjoyed by one and all!

http://www.businessinsider.com/
garrett-bauer-matthew-kluger-arrested-insider-trading-2011-4

So come brothers and sisters

For the struggle carries on.

The Internationale 
Unites the world in song.

So comrades come rally

For this is the time and place.

The international ideal

Unites the human race.

http://www.berliner-mauer-gedenkstaette.de/en/
pix/bild_the_berlin_wall.jpg

Let no one build walls to divide us,

Walls of hatred nor walls of stone.

Come greet the dawn and stand beside us;

We'll live together or we'll die alone.

In our world poisoned by exploitation,

Those who have taken now they must give.

And end the vanity of nations

We've but one earth on which to live!

http://a.abcnews.com/images/International/2014-June-02-GTY_Tank_Tiananmen_Square_140602_16x9_992.jpg

And so begins the final drama

In the streets and in the fields.

We stand unbowed before their armor

We defy their guns and shields.

When we fight provoked by their aggression

Let us be inspired by like and love;

For though they offer us concessions

Change will not come from above!

Songwriters: Stephen William Bragg / Petrus Christianus De Geyter / Eugene Edme Pottier

The Internationale lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

(I find it ironic that The Internationale is protected by intellectual property laws, and that the rights are not owned by Billy Bragg, but by Sony.  It's a brave new world.)

Previously on NecessaryFacts

Happy May Day, Comrades (2015)

Capitalist Culture

Karl Marx and the Dustbin of History

Labor Day Celebrates Productivity

Success of the WEIRD People

Workers' Paradise Promised an End to Money

The Syrian Quagmire

Building a Team in Fact and Fiction

The Devil’s Brigade and The Dirty Dozen are two stories from World War II about creating a cohesive combat unit from differing, antagonistic, or hostile individuals. Both novels were adapted for cinema. The all-star cast and tighter plot of The Dirty Dozen made it the more memorable of the two. Arguably realistic, if not real, The Dirty Dozen was fiction, whereas The Devil’s Brigade is history.

The Dirty Dozen is iconic, but the movie was sanitized for Hollywood’s audiences.  I believe that the book could not have been published ten years before landmark Supreme Court cases on obscenity and pornography released literature from the confines of Puritianism. (See Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184, 1964; and Citizen’s Guide to Federal Obscenity Laws here.) In addition, characters were renamed, and two characterizations were merged. The story remains compelling.  Like everyone, I knew about The Dirty Dozen as a movie. Having seen it a few times, I watched it again, and when the credits rolled, I saw the author’s name.  So I looked for the book and found it at the UT library.  It is very much different from the movie.  You can find an excellent synopsis comparing the book to the cinema production on the blog, From Novel to Film here. 

I saw Devil’s Brigade in the DVD stacks at the city library and figured that it was just a knock-off of The Dirty Dozen. I was pleasantly surprised.  And, more to the point, the credits listed the novel. Googling revealed the book, but finding it at a library was harder.  I finally ordered two copies in hardcover first edition (2^nd printing) on Amazon.  After reading it (carefully), I gave them to two of my officers, one for Christmas, the other for separation.  Then, further digging on WorldCat revealed the U.S. Naval Institute edition; and I am a USNI member. So, I bought my own copy from them.

The Devil's Brigade by Robert H. Adleman and George Walton, 

(1^st eds. Corgi 1968 (ppb); Transworld 1968). 

Naval Institute Press, 2004; ppb $21.95.  

(Not pictured: The Dirty Dozen 
by E. M. Nathanson (Random House, 1965).

“The first special service forces of World War II were known as the Devil's Brigade. Ferocious and stealthy combatants, they garnered their moniker from the captured diary of a German officer who wrote, "The black devils are all around us every time we come into line and we never hear them." Handpicked U.S. and Canadian soldiers trained in mountaineering, airborne, and close-combat skills, they numbered more than 2,300 and saw action in the Aleutians, Italy, and the south of France.  

“Co-written by a brigade member and a World War II combat pilot, the book explores the unit's unique characteristics, including the men's exemplary toughness and their ability to fight in any terrain against murderous opposition. It also profiles some of the unforgettable characters that comprised the near-mythical force. Conceived in Great Britain, the brigade was formed to sabotage the German submarine pens and oil storage areas along Norway's coast, but when the campaign was cancelled, the men moved on to many other missions. This World War II tale of adventure, first published in hardcover in 1966 and made into a movie not long after, is now available in paperback for the first time.” – USNI Press.

The salient difference between the two stories is that the twelve outlaws never gelled into a real team.  Although some did find redemption in death, collectively they never achieved the sense of brotherhood that makes one man give his life to save another. In my opinion, the movie version of The Devil’s Brigade overplayed the myth of transformation. These were not a bunch of American losers who were dragged upward to British standards. And the Canadians were not an amalgam. (They came from two different components with three – or four – different uniforms.) The fact that each of the soldiers was individually acculturated by previous training to the warrior’s ethos allowed the brigade to discover and exploit its internal strengths.  Finally, in both the book and the film, the commander’s solution was firmly rooted in laissez faire: he let them work it out; and they did. That, too, occurred in the movie version of The Dirty Dozen in the shaving scene, though the book was different.

In modern real life, military teams are built from the ground up, making each member always responsible for someone else.  But even as boot camp “tears you down to build you up” some ineffable factor of personality may be unalterable. The problem remains salient: some people never learn the important lessons. In the original Dirty Dozen the Georgia cracker, Archer Maggot, and the disgraced Black lieutenant from Louisiana, Napoleon White, never rise above their differences before being dropped together in an unresolved scene after the attack on the chateau.  In the movie version of The Devil’s Brigade, the Canadians and Americans find a common cause in a barroom brawl with some lumberjacks. After that, and one other leveling scene in the mess hall, the men find personal reasons to buddy-up across the components.  

Our component has been planning a complex exercise for over a year. To evaluate the actors and their actions, we have a white cell. When we met last weekend, two friends from different units were chatting.

“What are you working on?” 

“I’m on the white cell.”

“What’s that?”

“Do you remember The Dirty Dozen? I have George Kennedy’s role.”

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