Post by mcdisco on Apr 16, 2016 2:35:28 GMT -8
The preface of "The Marauders," a first-person account of a hard-luck commando outfit (code name Galahad) from the last world war, brings to mind Jocko's comments on the broader application of lessons learned in war to the struggles of everyday life.
The sensation of combat, for Ogburn, was:
The sensation of combat, for Ogburn, was:
the consuming sense of being unready, ill-equipped for what was demanded of you. Your soul rose up in protest against the terms of trial. This was not what you were meant for! Maybe others were meant for it, but not you. Not at this time, at this place, in this way. You were not prepared.
Nothing could have been better calculated than that experience to bring home to me a lesson that has to be learned. It was one I could wish had been imparted to me early in life. It was one I believe must have been understood in advance by those who gave Galahad its record of heroism.
It is this. Being unready and ill-equipped is what you have to expect in life. It is the universal predicament. It is your lot as a human being to lack what it takes. Circumstances are seldom right. You never have the capacities, the strength, the wisdom, the virtue you ought to have. You must always make do with less than you need in a situation vastly different from what you would have chosen as appropriate for your special endowments.
In one of the old letters I came upon a clue to what had been puzzling me. It was in a passage about the sensation of being under artillery fire. "Unless you've got something to keep you occupied while it's going on," I wrote, "you're a gone goose." Nothing had ever impressed me more with the importance of work. But it was the remark that "being shelled is like normal living with the film speeded up" that opened my eyes to what I had so long been groping for. It was not as an exception to life as it is ordinarily lived that the story of Galahad had its significance. The exotic properties were deceptive; I had been looking in the wrong direction. The experience of Galahad was in fact the common experience of mankind, compressed and intensified—with the film speeded up. That was why it mattered.
It is this. Being unready and ill-equipped is what you have to expect in life. It is the universal predicament. It is your lot as a human being to lack what it takes. Circumstances are seldom right. You never have the capacities, the strength, the wisdom, the virtue you ought to have. You must always make do with less than you need in a situation vastly different from what you would have chosen as appropriate for your special endowments.
In one of the old letters I came upon a clue to what had been puzzling me. It was in a passage about the sensation of being under artillery fire. "Unless you've got something to keep you occupied while it's going on," I wrote, "you're a gone goose." Nothing had ever impressed me more with the importance of work. But it was the remark that "being shelled is like normal living with the film speeded up" that opened my eyes to what I had so long been groping for. It was not as an exception to life as it is ordinarily lived that the story of Galahad had its significance. The exotic properties were deceptive; I had been looking in the wrong direction. The experience of Galahad was in fact the common experience of mankind, compressed and intensified—with the film speeded up. That was why it mattered.
Knowing what the combat soldiers of Galahad had to go through, you cannot but wonder how it was done. How are men equal to this? It is a good question. It is the crucial question. Is there anyone who in the course of his life has not had reason to ask it of himself: how can I make it? This is where Galahad has, I think, the relevance I spoke of. It is why I decided to try to write the story of what happened. As far as an answer can be supplied to the question of how it is possible to keep on going, Galahad seems to me to supply it.
