So You Want to Be an Adviser

Brigadier General Daniel P. Bolger, U.S. Army

Download the PDF Download the PDF

A joint Advisory Support Team, Habbaniyah, Iraq, 2005.

Your ideal position is when you are present and not noticed.

—Lieutenant Colonel T.E. Lawrence, 19171

The last thing I ever expected was to go to war in my 27th and 28th years of service. Oh, sure, I’d done the shadow-boxing in the Korean Demilitarized Zone in 1990 and in Haiti for a few days in 1995, but those hardly counted. Like most Americans, I hadn’t heard much about this Osama bin-Laden individual and his ilk, though I’d watched as our embassies were attacked in Iran, Lebanon, Kenya, and Tanzania; had seen the Marines pay the ultimate price one ugly Sunday in 1983; and knew what had happened in Mogadishu on another Sunday 10 Octobers later. I definitely understood that Saddam Hussein had his fingers in some of this rotten stuff, aside from the outrages he had inflicted on his own suffering people. Of course, I knew all of that, at least as some kind of barely noticed backdrop, heat lightning playing on the horizon of a summer evening. So off I went to Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) rotations and joint duty and various exercises, all great experiences, and all pretty familiar to anyone in our Army in the 1980s and 1990s. But America’s terrorist enemies had their timetables regardless of mine or yours. On 11 September 2001, they moved with horrific results. This time they hit our home, and hit us hard. We have been at war since that bright September morning.

If you look at the beginning of the latest Quadrennial Defense Review, you’ll see this flat declaration: “The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war.”2 The passive voice might be kind of awkward, but I think we all get that one quite clearly. This Long War, the Global War on Terror, World War IV, or whatever you want to call it, has fully encompassed all of us in uniform. It will do so for many years to come. Such a stark reality carries some freight.

Our enemies are cunning, ruthless, and numerous. They move in the dark corners of many regions of the world. They lash out on their schedules, not ours. Because of those characteristics, they defy conventional solutions. Smacking such foes with Aegis cruisers or armored brigades or F-22A Raptors may work now and then, in the same sense that if you hammer mercury blobs you get smaller and smaller blobs. But the mercury will still be there, and if left intact, it will come back together. The goal here is to destroy the terrorists, not disperse them. That takes presence and persistence in a lot more places and times than we can fill with troops, planes, and ships. Even an aspiring hyperpower has limits.

So we have needed and will continue to need help. Fortunately, we have that, and in great numbers. We have more countries working with us in Afghanistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa, and other theaters than we had in the Korean War. Some can keep pace with us step for step, like the British, Australians, and Danes. Others fill distinct military roles or work in key locations, like the Koreans, the Czechs, and the Georgians, among many others. But the bulk of the folks out with us are local friends. In today’s major theaters, most of the fighting is done by Afghans and Iraqis.3 They have signed on, but they could use our help. The Coalition is willing, but sometimes the flesh is weak.

That’s where I came in, old enough but of some use, I guess. Like many, I got the call to join this Long War not with U.S. forces, but with Iraqis. If I ever thought somebody might need me for the real thing, I sure never expected it to be with foreign troops. All my life I had read about advisers like Lieutenant Colonel T.E. Lawrence in Arabia, General Joe Stillwell in China, and Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann in Vietnam.4 I couldn’t help but notice that these famous ones were often eccentric, regularly frustrated, and commonly came to unpleasant ends. I resolved right then and there not to be famous, and I’m happy to say I’ve succeeded very well in that aim. Your goal as an adviser is to make your counterpart famous, not you.

A combat adviser influences his ally by force of personal example. You coach, you teach, and you accompany in action. Liaison with friendly forces becomes a big role, and you ensure independent ground-truth reporting to both your counterpart and your own chain. Finally, an adviser provides the connection and expertise to bring to bear fires, service support, and other combat multipliers. All accolades go to the leader you support. That, at least, is the idea.

As for actually advising a foreign military, in my case the new Iraqi Armed Forces, that has proven to be tremendously challenging and rewarding. My role was a very small one. I was a little cog inside a big effort that involved to some degree almost every person in uniform in Multi-National Force-Iraq. The acronyms and the line and box charts changed some over the year-plus I was there, but those amount to details, of interest only to purists. The important decision was the one made in mid-2004, when we got serious about creating a decent Iraqi military founded on trust between leaders and led.5

The way to do that seems simple to explain, but it has been hard to accomplish. To create an effective Iraqi military, you must accomplish three tasks:

  • Train and equip to a uniform standard. Taught initially by Coalition leaders and later by their own newly-certified instructors, Iraqi units have learned how to move, shoot, and communicate the right ways, and received the gear necessary to make it all work under fire. The enemy has similar weapons, but no legitimate training and poor discipline.
  • Partner each Iraqi organization with a similar Coalition formation, usually American, but in some areas Australian, British, Danish, El Salvadoran, Italian, Korean, or Polish. Day to day, this allows the Iraqi leadership to reach across culture and language barriers and act like their partner units, who work side-by-side with them on operations.
  • Provide a small team of combat advisers to live, train, and fight day and night with their Iraqi brothers. Before 9/11, this task would have been turned over to highly select, rigorously trained Special Forces. We have only so many of these tremendous quiet professionals, and they are fully engaged in all theaters, including Iraq. So the rest of us conventional types had to step up. Schooled in many cases by Special Forces experts, we had to learn (or relearn) our weapons and tactics fundamentals, absorb some cultural awareness, and get out to Iraq and get cracking. Our exceptionally flexible U.S. Armed Forces and our allies have done this well. The Iraqis have responded by rising to meet the high marks set by our young NCOs and officers.
In today’s major theaters, most of the fighting is done by Afghans and Iraqis. They have signed on, but they could use our help.

The people advising today’s Iraqi Armed Forces have learned to fight what T.R. Fehrenbach so rightly and ruefully called “this kind of war.”6 In the opening rounds of this enduring, twilight struggle, our wily enemies wear civilian clothes and strike with bombs and gunfire without regard to innocents in the crossfire. The battles feature short, sharp exchanges of Kalashnikov slugs and M-4 carbine bullets, the fiery death blossom of a car bomb, the quick, muffled smack of a wooden door going down and a blindfolded figure stumbling out at gunpoint. Dirty little firefights spin up without warning and die out in minutes. But the campaign in Iraq will last years, and will not be cheap in money or blood. Since the present advisory effort began to accompany Iraqi forces into action, we have lost 8 killed and 84 wounded.7 More sacrifices will come, and enemy AK bullets and roadside bombs don’t respect rank, service, component, nationality, age, branch, gender, or military occupational specialty.

So you want to be an adviser? If so, read on.

Everybody Fights

We have advisers of all types in Iraq, about 4,500 counting those with the new Armed Forces and the Police. About 3,500 advisers work in the field with Iraqi battalions, brigades, and divisions or with Police units. A few hundred advise at fixed logistics bases, schools, and training centers. A similar number help with Iraq’s small Navy and Marine unit and with the nascent Air Force. Some assist with the internal functions of the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Interior. But all share one fact: Everybody fights.

An Iraqi unit, with advisers, patrols the streets of Habbaniyah, 2005.

In Robert Heinlein’s science fiction classic Starship Troopers, his hard-bitten Mobile Infantry use that same slogan: Everybody fights.8 In Iraq, it means that every adviser must be ready to locate the armed hostile among a crowd of scattering civilians, administer an intravenous drip to a wounded buddy, move through an ambush by vehicle or on foot, and shoot to kill. While some places are safer than others, no place is immune from enemy attention. This is true for those with an Iraqi Infantry battalion, of course. But it also applies to ministry advisers driving to a meeting across town, school advisers headed out to escort Iraqi recruits to their next phase of training, or supply convoy advisers motoring down Iraq’s often-contested highways. There are better locales and worse ones—placid Zakho in the green Kurdish mountains to the north and squalid Ar Ramadi in sullen Al Anbar on the western Euphrates River stand far apart in every sense. But regardless of what the adviser came to do, he or she must show up ready to fight. We are all combat advisers.

In that role, advisers have to be physically tough. You need energy and stamina to spare in 120 degree heat when running down a street under fire, carrying that happy 80+ pounds of armor, ammunition, water, and other essentials. Regardless of how much fitness you bring to Iraq, if you don’t maintain it daily, it will grind down to nothing. If you’re over 30, that goes double. If you’re over 40, you had better be as ready to rumble as any 20-year-old. The Iraqis call us “the robots” because we keep going regardless of heat or hours on foot. It has to be that way. That means regular exercise in between operations and training evolutions. You are the primary weapon, and you need exercise to be fully effective.

Advisers who intend to fight must be experts with weapons and communications. In one of those unexpected clashes, you may well be the first with a chance to engage, and you need to hit what you shoot at. Even well-trained Iraqi units have only been shooting to our standards for a year or so, so you and your fellow advisers will usually be the best shots in your convoy or patrol. Additionally, you will have the vital communications for supporting fires, attack helicopters, and aerial medical evacuation. You need to be able to load and troubleshoot all kinds of radios and computer tracking systems. There won’t be a “commo guy” anywhere near when the bad day comes. You don’t want to have 30 Iraqis looking at you with disgust when you can’t raise the Apache helicopters during some backstreet gunfight.

Iraqi Special Police commandos going through small arms training prior to a counterinsurgency operation, November 2005.

Most importantly, “everybody fights” reinforces the basic tie between leaders and led. Because all of us, adviser and Iraqi, are brothers, we all come back, every time. You cannot promise your fellow advisers or your Iraqi counterparts that they won’t get hurt or even killed. But you can assure them that you will bring them all home. This is a fundamental difference between this Iraqi Army and the ones we shattered in 1991 and 2003. In the present Iraqi forces, we all go out and come home together. That essential truth makes the whole thing work. It is the big edge we have over brave but brittle enemy elements.

Fight to Sustain. Sustain to Fight.

Today’s Iraqi forces have been trained and equipped to a recognized standard. Even without Coalition advisers and partner units, they would still fight—for about 12 hours. In our proper determination to rush trained Iraqi battalions into action in 2005, we consciously did not build combat support and combat service support organizations beyond a bare minimum of training centers and rudimentary base camps.9 As the campaign continues, that has to change. For advisers, much of the day-to-day work involves the mundane but critical building of habits in accounting for people, accounting for things, and then maintaining what you have.

Accounting for people sounds easy enough. In our Army, it is. But all our Soldiers are literate and educated, and we have many experienced sergeants who willingly and effectively take charge of “their” Soldiers and keep track of them. On operations or at home station, we hold ourselves responsible for the location and condition of our subordinates every day and every night, on or off duty. It is a very rare day in the U.S. Army when a sergeant doesn’t look each private in the eye.

Though the Iraqis inherited a similar approach during the British League of Nations Mandate era of 1920-1932, years of Soviet military influence and Saddam’s oppressive meddling corroded the NCO corps. The form remained, but the substance was long gone. Americans who engaged Iraqi units in 1991 and 2003 found that Iraqi officers seldom knew the whereabouts of their conscripts, many of whom legged it for home at the first chance. In the Saddam era, the drill roll allowed officers to draw pay in cash for all the names on the roster, so a rather casual air about actually having men to pay could be profitable for leaders who knew how to keep a secret. And anyone who survived as an Iraqi Army officer from 1979-2003 definitely knew how to keep a secret. Some also kept a lot of excess dinar (Iraqi currency).10

You cannot promise your fellow advisers or your Iraqi counterparts that they won’t get hurt or even killed. But you can assure them that you will bring them all home.

To be effective in war, this had to change. Thus, teaching Iraqi NCOs to account for their people became the first big step. In some cases, this meant finding Iraqis educated enough to keep a notebook. Saddam’s disdain for education had cruelly torn apart a previously fine public school system and left many adults illiterate. In the new Iraqi Army, to be an NCO, you must be able to read and write Arabic and do basic arithmetic.11 Accountability starts with keeping count, and that is indeed a learned skill.

Once an Iraqi sergeant knows how to run his roll call, the new Army’s close contact between leaders and led helps keep things straight. Advisers offer a separate and reliable cross-check on current Iraqi muster rolls. The Iraqis still pay their men in cash once a month, but now there are numerous checks and counter-checks by various echelons to prevent siphoning off of funds. These measures include channels for enlisted complaints and an active inspector-general program.12 Along with a full signed and witnessed by-name roll-up of every man paid for duty, Iraqi units must return money intended for men who have been killed or deserted. (In a country that no longer compels military service, not all stay to finish their nominal 2-year enlistment.) With advisers watching and helping, units know who they have and who they don’t have. This information then allows the Iraqi training centers to enlist and graduate the right numbers and skills in replacement troops, and get them to the units that are running short.

Accounting for equipment naturally comes next. In Saddam’s Iraq, the sclerotic socialist economy ensured that all things held in common got about the same loving care as the highway medians in many big U.S. cities—they were used, abused, and dumped upon. Military gear fell into the same category. Because it belonged to “the people,” fixing it, cleaning it, or turning it back when finished were only priorities to the extent that anyone from Baghdad checked up. Combined with dozens of major arsenals bulging with every kind of weapon and ammunition, there always seemed to be plenty of gear in the old Army, yet with typical socialist dysfunction, distribution somehow always failed to move the supplies.

Supply works quite differently in the present Iraqi military. As with personnel, advisers play key roles in establishing procedures to issue and track weapons, personal equipment, unit items, and expendable supplies. The daily tempo of operations provides a lot of incentive for an Iraqi rifleman to have a functional AK-47 with 7 magazines, body armor, a helmet, and so on. Our NCO advisers have been instrumental in teaching the value of pre-combat and post-combat inspections. Moreover, because each Iraqi Soldier gets checked regularly, losses are found swiftly and result in punishment and reimbursement similar to what might happen for negligent loss in our Army.13 American lieutenants and sergeants who have long cursed the paper mountain of hand receipts and statements of charges have renewed their faith that the surest way to keep track of anything is to assign it to someone and then hold him responsible to keep it.

Of course, having a weapon, truck, or radio is only part of the answer. The rest involves keeping it functional. Here, our advisers have been happily surprised by the innate ingenuity of Iraqis, who are incredible tinkerers and shade-tree mechanics. Just as some of the best-kept 1957 Chevrolets on Earth putter the streets of Communist Havana, so Iraqis groaning under Saddam’s Ba’athist socialist workers’ paradise learned how to keep everything ticking damn near forever. Iraqi equipment maintenance tends to be long on fixing and running and short on log-books and paper trails, which probably suits them given their consistent pattern of operations. As more complex weapons like tanks and heavy machineguns replace simple AK-series weapons and Nissan pick-ups, the service and repair schedules will require more documentation.

In fighting to sustain the new Iraqi Armed Forces, training has been the glue. Only the best militaries train during combat, but if you don’t do that, you won’t stay good for long. On any given Sunday in the fall, even as the games play on the field, you’ll see the National Football League’s kickers on the sidelines, practicing and practicing kicks into a net. On summer days in Major League baseball, throwing “on the side” in the bullpen is part of the routine for ace pitchers, and every batter takes his practice swings. So it is in war. Iraqi units must eke out shooting, communications, combat life-saving, and tactical battle drills as part of mission preparation or, in quieter areas, in dedicated training cycles. As with the cascade of hand receipts, the drudgery of cranking out a decent training schedule, so onerous Stateside, has become an important and transferable adviser skill. To stay in the fight at maximum capability, Soldiers and units must train every day. In an Army that used to shoot a few bullets a year under Saddam, firing hundreds of rounds a day on ranges has been nothing short of revolutionary. The overmatch pays off in firefights every time.

Set the Example

At heart, Soldiers are hero worshipers. All of us have somebody who inspires us to keep going when we’d rather quit. While Hollywood makes much of the “kick in the ass” method, in reality, with everyone carrying loaded rifles, bullying proves pretty thin gruel. Threatening someone with a court martial in a firefight provokes smirks—who wouldn’t rather go hang out in a warm, safe courtroom than the deadly alleys of Baqubah? No, under fire, you follow the guys who know what they are doing, the ones who show by physical example what to do next. There is a reason the big statue in front of Infantry Hall at Fort Benning depicts a leader upright, with rifle in hand and arm raised, hollering “Follow me!”

Iraqi officers and NCOs today don’t just send out patrols or raids. They lead their men out. That directly reflects the strong influence of our advisers.

In a good American unit, the characters living out “follow me” are also the ones wearing stripes and bars. Building a cadre of great leaders in the new Iraqi Army has not been easy. Saddam pretty well rooted out, smashed down, and killed or jailed anyone with a streak of initiative or charisma. The organization chart for Saddam’s Iraq was simple: a dot (him) and a line (27 million cowering subjects). Tough squad leaders, able company commanders, shrewd sergeants major, and competent colonels did not need to apply.

That changed with the new Army’s emphasis on cohesive volunteer units in which leaders and led share hardships. Iraqi officers and NCOs today don’t just send out patrols or raids. They lead their men out. That directly reflects the strong influence of our advisers.

The adviser does not command his Iraqi counterpart, though if the local leader is not cutting it, we can and do push that up the chain for action. Iraqi units are under tactical control of Coalition (usually American) commanders, and as such, cowardice and incompetence can’t be tolerated. Iraqi senior leaders will let their subordinate officers and NCOs learn and make mistakes, minus the “two Cs”—corruption and cowardice. If an Iraqi gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar, he’s out. But just as important, probably more so from a moral aspect, the new Army’s leadership will dispassionately cut away any officer or NCO who will not leave the base or move to the sound of the guns.

This emphasis on leading in action has had consequences, mostly good. Iraqi units follow their leaders. They stand and fight. They recover their dead and wounded, and they will not quit—all marks of very good troops indeed. But they have also taken some noteworthy leader casualties, from sergeant through general.14 The Iraqis stay at it, though.

This ethos strongly depends on what the adviser says and does, especially what he or she does. Given that most adviser teams at battalion level amount to a dozen or so people, it’s physically impossible to accompany every foot patrol or stand on every checkpoint. But it is not only possible, but expected, that the adviser share the hardship of operations daily. Where goes the adviser, so goes the counterpart. We’ve seen this time and time again. Our Arabic could always improve, and Iraqi English can make strides, but in the end, example remains the strongest form of leadership.

Although the “follow me” tenet definitely comes first, there is a lot more to setting the example than that critical primary principle. An adviser speaks and acts, even appears and assumes, that whatever he or she does, the Iraqis will do. If the adviser fires regularly at the range, does physical training daily, and checks gear carefully before and after operations, the Iraqis will do likewise. Conversely, no matter what you say, even in pitch-perfect Arabic, if your actions are otherwise, don’t expect results. If you tell the Iraqi company commander to eat with his men and then slip over to the U.S. dining facility each noon, don’t be surprised at the outcome.

Setting the example is the hardest thing an adviser does. It means he or she is always being watched and mimicked, for good or ill. Because even the greatest actors and professional players need their own space, ensure that you and your team have a small area that can be designated, when appropriate, “advisers only.” The Iraqis understand privacy, and they know that at times you and your partners need to go “English secure” to discuss operations, training, personalities, or the NCAA March Madness brackets. But after your spots of “me time,” get back out there. The Iraqis are watching . . . and learning.

Strength and Honor

In the popular film Gladiator, the Roman General Maximus greets his legionaries by banging his breastplate and sounding off with “Strength and Honor.”15 Had the filmmakers wanted to go with Latin, he would have said “Integritas,” which we often translate as “integrity.” But the term implies more than that.

At the Roman Army’s daily inspection (yes, they did that too), when his centurion walked the ranks, each legionary would bash his metal breastplate with his right fist, striking over his heart and shouting “Integritas.”16 This meant that he was armed and ready to fight. He’d completed his pre-combat checks. He was ready in body, and also in his Soldier’s heart, in spirit, for the rigors of the march, the perils of a siege, or the uncertain fortunes of battle against Germans, Picts, or Parthians. The clang on the breastplate showed he had his combat weapons and armor, not the flimsy parade versions. The loud, confident report and the fist to the heart demonstrated that the Roman Soldier stood ready to use his arms for the right purpose—honor.

“Strength and Honor” summarizes the role of the adviser. The former Iraqi Army had strength in numbers, tanks, howitzers, and personnel. But it lacked heart. The innate evil of the Saddam regime could intimidate men into the front lines, but absent an honorable relationship between leaders and led, few stood the test of battle. Today, Iraqi battalions do fight with strength and honor, energized by the strong and steady examples of many American and other Coalition sergeants and officers.

So you want to be an adviser? Pick up your rifle and let’s go. It’s a long war.


Notes

  1. Lieutenant Colonel T.E. Lawrence, British Army, “Twenty-Seven Articles,” The Arab Bulletin, 27 August 1917, Article Number 8. Lawrence’s Article Number 15 is often quoted in the present war: “Do not try to do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than that you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not to win it for them. Actually, also, under the very odd conditions of Arabia, your practical work will not be as good as, perhaps, you think it is.”
  2. United States, Department of Defense, Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 6 February 2006), v.
  3. In Iraq in March of 2006, we fielded about 130,000 Americans, about 15,000 or so other Coalition troops, and over 230,000 Iraqi Soldiers and Police.
  4. All three men have their share of biographers, most notably the enigmatic Lawrence. For those interested, I recommend these books: Michael Asher, Lawrence: The Uncrowned King of Arabia (Eastbourne, East Sussex, UK: Gardners Books, Ltd., 1999); Barbara Tuchman, Stillwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1970); Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1988). Lawrence, Stillwell, and Vann have been depicted in movies, with Lawrence rating the full epic treatment in the acclaimed Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Stillwell a small part in Steven Spielberg’s ill-received comedy 1941 (1979), and Vann taking center stage in the Home Box Office production of A Bright Shining Lie (1998), based on Sheehan’s book.
  5. Many consider the formation of the Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq (MNSTC-I) in June of 2004 to be a critical development that organized and accelerated good preliminary work done by combat units and earlier advisory entities. See, for example, Anthony H. Cordesman, Iraqi Security Forces: A Strategy for Success (Westport, CT: Praeger Security International, 2006), 64, 66.
  6. T.R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1963), 59. Fehrenbach’s wonderful history of the Korean War also offers his strong opinions on how and why America must prepare for and fight limited wars. A veteran of the Korean War and an accomplished author and journalist, Fehrenbach continues to write today.
  7. Brigadier General Daniel P. Bolger, U.S. Army, “Notes on Commanding General, Multi-National Force-Iraq Military Transition Team Update,” 16 March 2006. The count runs from 1 September 2004, when Iraqi forces trained by MNSTC-I began to carry out combat operations.
  8. Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1959), 4. In the book, the full motto reads: “Everybody drops. Everybody fights.” In the 1997 movie Starship Troopers, directed by Paul Verhoeven, this became “Everybody fights. Nobody quits.” The key point in both the novel and the movie is that in the Mobile Infantry, there could be no rear echelon. To use current U.S. Army terms, all had to possess the Warrior Ethos. Today’s war without fronts demands no less.
  9. Cordesman, 231.
  10. Ibid., 10-12.
  11. Republic of Iraq, Joint Headquarters, Policy 1-11: Enlisted Promotions (Baghdad: Ministry of Defense, 28 July 2005), 2. This policy requires a primary school certificate for advancement to sergeant and a high school certificate for promotion to the three senior NCO ranks, the equivalent of the U.S. Army ranks of Sergeant First Class, Master Sergeant/First Sergeant, and Sergeant Major/Command Sergeant Major.
  12. Republic of Iraq, Joint Headquarters, Policy 1-5: Accountability of Personnel (Baghdad: Ministry of Defense, 29 May 2005), 1-2, 3, 5. Page 5 refers specifically to cross-checks for payroll purposes.
  13. Republic of Iraq, Joint Headquarters, Policy 4-2: Equipment Management Procedure (Final Draft) (Baghdad: Ministry of Defense, 8 August 2005), 1-2.
  14. For example, on 6 March 2006, Major General Mobdir Hatem Hasyah al-Dulime, commanding the 6th Iraqi Army Division, was killed in action alongside his men in West Baghdad.
  15. Ridley Scott, dir., Gladiator (Hollywood, California: Dreamworks SKG, 2000).
  16. For references to this tough Roman discipline, see Flavius Vegetius Renatus, The Military Institutions of the Romans, trans. Lieutenant John Clarke, British Army, on-line at http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~madsb/home/war/vegetius/, accessed 26 March 2006, in particular the chapter “The Arms of the Ancients.” Former U.S. Marine Corps Commandant General Charles C. Krulak often referred to this practice in speeches on leadership and discipline. See, for example, General Charles C. Krulak, USMC (Ret.), “Remarks at Joint Service Conference on Professional Ethics,” 27 January 2000, on-line at http://www.appleseeds.org/krulak_integrity.htm, accessed 26 March 2006.

 

Brigadier General Daniel P. Bolger, U.S. Army, was assigned to the Multi-National Transition Command-Iraq in 2005-2006. A 1990 graduate of the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, he has served with the 24th Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia, the 2d Infantry Division in Korea, and the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

 

Back to Top

March-April 2006