Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground

To the memory of Marine 1st Lt. Joshua Palmer of Banning, California, born November 28, 1978, killed in action April 8, 2004

And to all the other U.S. Marines killed or wounded during the fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, in April 2004

Major Victor Joppolo, U.S.A., was a good man…. We have need of him. He is our future in the world. Neither the eloquence of Churchill nor the humaneness of Roosevelt, no Charter, no four freedoms or fourteen points, no dreamer’s diagram so symmetrical and so faultless on paper, no plan, no hope, no treaty—none of these things can guarantee anything. Only men can guarantee, only the behavior of men under pressure, only our Joppolos.

—John Hersey, A Bell for Adano, 1944

Imperialism moved forward, not as a result of commercial or political pressure from London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, or even Washington, but mainly because men on the periphery, many of whom were soldiers, pressed to enlarge the boundaries of empire, often without orders, even against orders.

—Douglas Porch, professor at the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island, 1996

In a campaign against Indians, the front is all around, and the rear is nowhere.

—Erasmus D. Keyes, Fifty Years’ Observation of Men and Events, 1884