It is the 70th anniversary of the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. Thank God we have living Americans still among us who remember that terrible morning.  Cherish them, and if you have access to any of them, ask them about it.  While you still can.

Of the many enduring lessons of December 7, 1941, none resonates more than the importance of preparedness.  As a nation, we must remember that constant vigilance is not just the price of freedom, but the price of survival itself.

As individuals, we can practice that in microcosm.  As I mentioned in my last entry, my sweetheart’s grandson is with us for the week. He’ll be going through Marine boot camp this coming year, and we’re trying to give him a running start on the small arms side. Great warriors of WWII, from Col. John George in the Pacific Theater to Audie Murphy in the European, owed much of their success (and their survival!) in combat to the fact that they had both been serious shooters before the events of 12/7/41 put them in uniform fighting for their country.

In the last few days, the grandson has been briefed on the takedown, reassembly, and assorted subtleties of the M16/M4/AR15 platform by a recently retired Command Sergeant Major of the US Army Special Forces, and a Navy vet Colt armorer. They did the same for him with the Beretta M9 pistol, and shared their wisdom as to successful military life. A top Class III weapons specialist got the kid up and running with full auto.  So far he has qualified, though not yet made Expert and earned a Rifleman patch, at an Appleseed rifle event.  I tender my personal, deepest thanks to all who helped.

He shot a 588 out of 600 on a pistol course today with the Beretta and military ball ammo, extraordinary for someone new to the gun, but the kid is a quick study and implements instructions remarkably well.  The AR15 is already becoming an extension of his hands, and he is putting the 5.56mm NATO bullets where he’s told to put them. I have a couple more days with him, and the already four-figure count of spent brass is going to multiply on the long range shooting bays here.

In macrocosm for nations, in microcosm for individuals, the rule holds true: bad things are less likely to happen to those prepared to deal with those bad things. The warning of Santayana remains valid: those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.

It’s a good time to hug an American who wore, or wears, our nation’s uniform, and to say the never-trite, “Thank you for your service.”

 

The young man gets his first taste of full auto fire with HK MP5 submachine gun, courtesy of a local Class III dealer.

1 COMMENT

  2. A thought on firearms training for young folks. Check out your high school or college for a shooting team (either intramural or varsity) to join. Most teams are more than willing to accept total newbies. You’ll learn to shoot and have a team experience that you can take with you after college. And BTW, there are some schools that offer scholarships for those with skills !

    Second thought is that I have struggled with the concept of an all volunteer military. I know all the arguments against the draft. Heck I lived thru all the Viet Nam war protests. I get it. But my current opinion is that the mandatory UNIVERSAL draft would be more of a plus to this nation than not. I just don’t see how we as a nation can allow LESS THAN 1% of the nation to defend us. That is just not fair.

  3. I think that this young man will be much better prepared to take one military service, than the average young American, due to your help and guidance.

    I wounder, however, if the same apples to the rest of the young people going into today’s armed services?

    When I went through Navy boot camp, in 1954, we were issued drill rifles of the 1903 Springfield, and qualified with the Garand M1 rifle and the Model 1911 .45 Government pistol, and as you mentioned, most of us already owned, used and knew how shoot other types of rifles and pistols. Although the M1 was new to me, I had already owned a M-1911 in .38 Super before enlisting.

    I also remember listening to FDR, giving his “Day of Infamy” speech on Dec. 7, 1941, and although I was a little too young to understand exactly what had happened, I knew something serious and bad was going on.

    Personally, I do not have very much hope for today’s generation ever learning the same beliefs and standards as my generation did, but I hope they will somehow manage to learn enough to struggle on and to keep America a somewhat “Free” country, at least until I pass on, and maybe beyond?

  4. @Paul Edwards: Certainly there are many of us who will try, though belonging to the younger generation, I have even less hope of it lasting that long unless some serious turn around happens soon.

    @Long Island Mike: How about a combination of the US and Swiss models? How about volunteer enlistment, but mandatory *training* for all able bodied, and take the Swiss model to the Nth degree: send us home with M4s (or equivalent) to keep at home in case of an invasion.

  5. What a wonderful start you are giving this young man. I hope you will occasionally update us on his progress. God bless our troops, past, present and future!

  7. I was born almost exactly one year after Pearl Harbor and I have come to understand and appreciate its significance. I also recognize that we lost very close to the same number of Americans on 9/11. Mas, you said it perfectly “we must remember that constant vigilance is not just the price of freedom, but the price of survival itself”. Evil is still around and among us and we must stay aware and prepared. The Princess’ grandson is a lucky lad indeed to be exposed to the best in class of mentors regarding weaponry. His attentiveness to this rich learning environment will prepare him for his future duties as guardian of our constitutional values. I wish him the very best.

  8. As a vietnam vet and father of a Marine veteran of Iraq I can assure anyone that todays military is not only up to the task of defending this country, but are far better trained and equipped than we were during my time or anytime previously. My son did 3 tours of duty in Iraq and his life was saved by the body armor that is now standard issue. I can assure anyone with any doubt that todays young men and women will not only fight but will lay down their life for this nation, the same as past generations have. Your grandson is a true American and is as courageous as anyone one of us that has taken the oath to defend this country before him. You have a lot to be proud of Mas, and so does he. Semper Fi

  9. A special thanks to all who have served and are serving. Like I have said many times some folks are gifted when it come to firearms as is your grandson. Just as with a professional sports figure. What they do comes easy to them where others struggle.

  10. @Winston Smith: I’ll take almost any construct. Swiss, Israeli, old school US, there are lots to draw upon. Young human beings are built to bond in groups, understand hierarchies, and be altruistic towards the clan including sacrificing their life if needed. Males yearn to scrap and fight. We are only a few thousand years from primitives. We spent a million years on the plains of Africa as social animals. Our present society is doing nothing to answer the DNA screaming at us. The result is a twisted and mal-formed expression in our youth. Joining gangs, drug addictions, socially and self destructive behaviors.

    So if I had the power, I’d put in place, like you said, some sort of national mandatory training. It could be in lots of forms but 1 or 2 years would be fine. I don’t want to PO anyone but its more than just guns. Its the whole experience of discipline, right from wrong, rules, and leadership. A Marine without a gun, and stripped naked as a Jay bird is still a Marine. Same with any service. That transformation is not in the trigger finger but takes place between the ears.

    I suggest that it is the above that made the WWII generation, the GREAT generation. You have to keep in mind that at its height, there was something like 15 Million men in the service. This at a population of 150 million. So basically of the 75 million males, a huge percentage of young males were trained and educated by the military. I remember my dads stories of guys from the rural south who never wore shoes before training with him in basic. How the military taught guys how to wipe their butts with toilet paper. It instilled some level of respect for authority across regional, economic and cultural lines. I suggest that had a enormous effect in America’s prosperity and leap forward for the next 30 years. We desperately need to get an even larger population under control or we’ll spin apart.

    Just my thoughts…

  11. Pearl Harbor and 9/11: Lessons in foreign policy still not learned.

    On to the subject of the draft/training…

    I actually like the idea – the problem I have, though, is that it seems to run squarely against the idea of a free country. Doesn’t that seem wrong? To force the entire population to undergo training that they never volunteered for? Even worse if it’s for instilling values – that’s one thing that the government is terrible at. In the end, it only teaches one value – follow orders, never question the higher-ups. After all, the military is not by any means the nation’s source of moral instruction.

    Personally, while I have the utmost respect for our servicemen, I think that the military’s role in society is greatly exaggerated. It is not the source of the greatness of the WWII generation, the generation itself is. They volunteered and sacrificed – the military did not teach them that. The reason for society’s state today is not the lack of military training, but the decay of morality and traditional values.

  12. Long Island Mike:
    I like the idea of many more Americans having the experience but I am just not sure how to make your idea work. The active force is about 1.4 million (including all ranks, a fair number of those are NOT privates). A bit over 2 million males reach military age annually. The requirements on the force to provide 2 million kids annually (let alone the nearly 4.5 million if you included females) with the type of experience you are talking about would be crushing. You are talking about housing, feeding, paying (in some fashion, if nothing else you are paying their healthcare bills for a couple of years, then giving them GI bill and VA benefits) and providing training space, ammunition, adult supervision, etc.

    You might be able to do other service programs but the experience you talk of, 1-2 years or being completely subordinated, well, tis not the season to be talking about any increases in the budget of anything let alone something that would require a massive budget increase and be a potential severe distraction to the force. As a matter of fact if you make it a two years and included females then you would have 8 million privates in uniform at any one time. Following classic norms you would have to have more squad leaders (NCOs) then we have people of all ranks in the entire active Army.

    In the words of many people when Clinton wanted to lift the ban on gays in the military, “The military is not a social program.”

  13. Long Island Mike:

    I agree that some sort of mandatory national training would be a socially positive force. However, it would need to have a military structure. Joining the Peace Corps or a domestic equivalent isn’t like going through boot camp.

    Although military training had an effect, I think the Greatest Generation was influenced mostly by growing up during the Great Depression. Much of the social conflict we see today is between materialism and spiritualism. I am tempted to define a materialist as someone who has been poor, hated the experience and is determined not to repeat it. A spiritualist is someone who has never been poor and believes poverty results from bad luck or rich people’s hogging everything rather than bad personal decisions. Examples are industrialists versus environmentalists and the Tea Party versus the Occupy Wall Street crowd.

    Your comment about the fraction of the population in uniform during WWII reminded me of some data I dug out of the internet to compare that war to Iraq and Afghanistan. My numbers are sufficiently uncertain that I won’t argue with anyone who comes up with different ones.

    After you account for the greater population today than during WWII, 25 times as many people were in uniform then as opposed to now and 60 times as many were killed or wounded.

    After you account for inflation and the difference in GDP, WWII cost 10 times as much as Iraq and Afghanistan. WWII cost the United States’ entire GDP for two and a quarter years. Iraq and Afghanistan have cost 21% of one year’s GDP.

    Suffering among the enemy was worse then than now. The Axis countries lost 5% of their total population killed and 3% wounded. Germany suffered the worst with 9% killed and 6% wounded. (It was better to be on the winning side. 0.3% of Americans were killed during WWII and 0.5% were wounded.) By comparison, 2% of Iraqis and Afghanis have been killed. I don’t have data for their wounded.

    I wonder what today’s politicians and activists would do if faced with a conflict on the scale of WWII.

  14. Mas,

    You are right as usual. It is good to be prepared. If something bad happens to me, and I am unprepared, I panic. If something bad happens to me, and I am prepared, I panic less.

    Here are my ideas on a USA defense force. Basically the Swiss plan, but volunteer, not mandatory. Some men are born warriors. They should be full-time military men and train the rest of us. Men and women of any age WHO WANT TO TRAIN should be given military training. They should provide their own guns and ammo. Private arms will be superior to GI stuff. Plenty of patriots will volunteer to defend this country. Those who don’t want to fight will support us with transportation, food and equipment.

    This force will be for defending the 50 states. It will not be the world’s police force. When Germany invades France, that is France’s problem, not ours. We will avoid foreign entanglements. We will use the tactics of Sun Tzu. These tactics were used by George Washington to defeat the British, they were used by the gooks to defeat us, and they are now being used by ragheaded camel-jockeys to keep us from victory in the Middle East.

    If we encounter an enemy using nuclear weapons, then of course, we would simply push buttons and let our missiles fly. America is too big to conquer, just like Hitler and Napolean found out that Russia is too big to conquer. Oh yes, I forgot. We do need a navy for the Atlantic, and one for the Pacific.

  15. Back when I was on active duty, one of the guys who worked for me brought in a boot camp training manual that had belonged to his father in WWII. It consisted almost entirely of pictoral drawings with almost no text. This was because of the vast numbers of new troops that were functionally illerate. It was really interesting to see.

    Chief Cryptologic Technician, U.S. Navy (Ret)
    Active duty JAN 61 – OCT 81

  16. Lotsa good discussion here, don’t stop now!

    One point, though, from the ragheaded camel jockey here. I’d appreciate it if ethnic invective such as “gook” could be left out in the future.

    Thanks,
    Mas

  17. Congrats on the grandson again, Mas. Let’s again pray that the bullets will continue to do away from him.
    Re: service, some sad facts are that with the absence of male role models, lack of exercise, “voodoo” medicine for the ADHD meds, etc. there are many di-incentives and disqualifiers from active duty. from “Not my baby!” to overmedicated at age 3 to 350 lbs. in high school, the pool of those qualified gets smaller. I say that as the father of 3 men, the middle one a 3rd Class GM on a frigate that has bullets come his way; the bookends are a Grammy-winning vocalist and a college student smarter than 99 percent of applicants to Yale. When he’s done with school he wants to look at JAG. Point is, I know my kids, and I’m a nurse, so I see others’ kids. So stay proud of your grandson; he may be some kid’s role model and not even know it!

  18. Mas,

    About the name-calling; I didn’t mean any harm. I simply have fun trying to sound like R. Lee Ermey! Also, you could have edited out my “offensive” words, and I would have been fine with that. You are right. Anyone in the world can read these posts.

    Keep writing your blogs. I am learning A LOT.

    Mighty Whitey
    WASP
    Honkey
    Jive Turkey
    Hah! Hah! Hah!

  19. No problem, Dave. I’ll take your word it was all in fun. On principle, I don’t like to edit anybody, and fortunately have only very rarely had to do so here.

  20. Winston Smith:

    “..Volunteer enlistment, but mandatory *training* for all able bodied, and take the Swiss model to the Nth degree: send us home with M4s (or equivalent) to keep at home in case of an invasion.”

    I really, really like this idea for the most part- but it has some serious problems:

    1) It’s a really smart idea, so the current administration is completely incapable of approving it. (This isn’t a joke. For example, watch how fast the Idiot in Chief will veto the concealed carry reciprocity bill IF- and that’s a huge IF- the Senate approves it.) I don’t have much hope for future administrations approving it either, to be frank.

    2) Costs will be prohibitively high, unless you make all but the completely indigent citizens pay for training in whole or at least in part (which I don’t favor either because I also don’t accept the Unconstitutional Obamacare mandate either).

    Here’s my “pipe dream” revision: one-time training available for ages 16-21 (anyone over 21 with no prior military training is also allowed from, say, 5 years after policy takes place). Training is not mandatory but is STRONGLY encouraged just like drug abuse avoidance and higher education. Able-bodied MEN will have to pay for training; women and the physically disabled get the training free. Everyone has to pay for their rifle, but at a substantial discount AND they are not required to buy one at the end of their training. Instructors’ requirements, in addition to safety and marksmanship competence, will be good-standing members of the local community of the people they train. Think of it as an Appleseed on steroids, if you will.

  21. -“those who do not learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”

    Sterile weapons anyone? Weren’t all the Anti-Air guns unloaded with the ammo “safely” locked away during the attack on Pearl Harbor? Fast forward to post 9/11 and weren’t most of the troops at airports walking around with sterile weapons (no ammo on their persons)?

    I suppose empty weapons make decent bludgeons?

    In regards to military training/service. I’d be in support of that. Doubt it’d happen any time soon.

    Here’s a radical idea, how about offering basic firearm safety courses in K-12 etc? Think there was a teacher just this year that taught firearms safety and even defensive shooting…I’ll have to find that article. I want to say it was in Arizona or New Mexico…