H.W. Crocker III - Dont Tread on Me: A 400-Year History of America at War, from Indian Fighting to Terrorist Hunting

C ONTENTS

For my father,

Harry W. Crocker Jr.
Teacher, Coach, Marine

and the father-in-law I never knew,

Louis J. Maricle
Colonel, U.S. Army

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations,
may she always be in the right; but
our country, right or wrong!

COMMODORE STEPHEN DECATUR, 1816

PROLOGUE

THE SUMMONS OF THE TRUMPET

T HE MEN OF Merrills Marauders (code-named GALAHAD) had already endured more than 50 percent casualtiesand it would get worse. General Frank Merrill himself had suffered a heart attack. The suffocating tropical heat; the long, exhausting marches through choking jungle; and the biting, stinging insects and leeches that blistered any exposed skin were annoyances. Worse were amoebic dysentery, malaria, scrub typhus, and starvation rations that enfeebled the men. And, yes, there were the Japanese, too.

The Marauders had expected to be withdrawn by now. They had been fought to breaking point. But General Vinegar Joe Stilwell needed them. He had to take and hold Myitkyina in northern Burma from the Japanese before the rainy season. President Roosevelt himself was demanding action in Burma. Stilwell knew that only the Marauders could do it: only theynot his Chinese troopswere tough enough, aggressive enough, skilled enough, and had the full support of the Burmese people.

Merrills remaining effectives, 1,400 men, spearheaded the offensive. What kept them going was Merrills promise that if they captured the airstrip at Myitkyina, he would have them flown out and given a party to cause taxpayers a shudderand given furloughs.1 But the march was worse than could have been imagined. The mountainous trail was a green hell, slippery with mud that sent pack mules sliding down ravinesdisappearing with the Marauders precious supplies. The ravages of bugs, fever, hunger, and thirst swarmed over already debilitated men who were forcing themselves to march into combat. Some of them simply couldnt go on and fell out. But most of them trudged, or even crawled, wearily forward, cursing their luck as men who had volunteered for the Marauders.

But they made itand on 17 May 1944 easily seized the airstrip and a ferry post on the Irrawaddy River. Yet there was no relief, no party awaiting them. They were asked to hang on; they had to help the Chinese take the town of Myitkyina, which the Japanese were rapidly reinforcing with thousands of men. The Marauders were so invalided that Stilwell wrote, GALAHAD is just shot.2 Merrill called his men a pitiful but still splendid sight.3

With those pitiful, splendid men, the Allies kept the airstrip and captured the town of Myitkyina on 3 August 1944. A week later, the unit was officially disbanded. Every member of Merrills Marauderswhich Marauder Colonel Charles N. Hunter considered the most beat uponregimental-sized unit that participated in World War II4was awarded a Bronze Star.

Still, it is reasonable to ask, what were American fighting men doing in Burma at all? Or for that matter, why were they in North Africa in 1805, in Vera Cruz in 1847, in Peking in 1900, in Nicaragua in 1932, or in Afghanistan and Iraq today? This book provides an answer. It is not a blow-by-blow account of every campaign and battle fought by the United States; it does not chart changes in military uniforms, technology, and organization; it is not based on riffling through previously undiscovered papers trying to ferret out new information. It is instead an argument about American history based on Americas wars. The argument, briefly stated, is that America is a country of practical, independent-minded people shaped by the frontier, an ambitious and well-meaning people who naturally carved out an empire of liberty.5

It is Americas desire for empire that explains her history, and why our founding fathers rebelled against the most liberal country in the world. Had America remained part of the British Empire what sort of future would have awaited us? Well, we might have institutions as repressive as those of Australiaor even Canada. But American leaders living in urban Philadelphia, near the wharves of Boston, and in the plantation houses of Virginia were not content to play second fiddle to bureaucrats, parliamentarians, or even the king in London. Americans wanted an empire of their own, where there would be no proclamation line barring expansion into Indian territory, no restrictionsmade in far-off Englandgoverning American trade and law, no shackles placed on what Americans would be allowed to do in furtherance of their own prosperity and self-governance.

The American fighting man has, of course, been the creator and protector of this empire. He began his career in the seventeenth-century Indian Warsand it is from these wars, and the development of Rogers Rangers, that American soldiers developed their unheralded strength in small-unit operations. As practical frontiersmen, they showed an early facility for stealthy long marches, sranger combat tactics, and stout fortifications erected overnight. In the War for Independence, American generalship capitalized on British mistakes and halfheartedness and inspired the Patriots to hang on until French intervention at Yorktown secured British defeat. As scions of Great Britain, the naval power par excellence, the muscular Americans took readily to the sea; and the young United States relied heavily on its superlative mastery of seamanship and naval gunnerystrengths that ensured its survival and prosperity in the tumultuous years after independence, when France, Great Britain, and North African pirates tried to circumscribe Americas commerce. And the Americans were not humble about carving out a continental empire, pushing aside Indians, Spaniards, and Mexicans. In fact, had Americas empire in the Southwest incorporated all of Mexicoas was easily on offer during the Mexican Warthe great tragedy of the War Between the States might have been avoided, with sectional friction diverted into continued expansion.

Imperium et libertas, empire and liberty, freedom to grow and expand, was Americas eighteenth- and nineteenth-century creed; and the refusal to be trammeled by Indians, the British, or any other impediment to carving out an empire of liberty carried over into the winning of the West, Teddy Roosevelts charge up San Juan Hill, the U.S. Marines raising the flag over Iwo Jima, and the Ranger patrols that hunt al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan. All of this is of a piece; none of it is a dramatic break with previous American history, because Americans have always been an active, expansionist, commercial people, ready to take up arms to defend their interests. Americans refused, from the beginning, to accept restrictions on trading freely with the world. They refuse today to be cowed by terrorism that wants to dictate whom America can befriend, and with whom we can conduct our commerce and broadcast our ideas. America will accept no chains that keep her from being herself and acting freely on the global stage.

Inevitably, the defense of this freedom has required military force. Even that deprecator of a standing army and a blue water navy Thomas Jefferson understood, writing in 1785, that Our commerce on the oceanmust be paid for by frequent war.6 In winning these wars, it is a commonplace that Americas strength has been her enormous industrial, financial, and technological capacity. But in Jeffersons time, America was not the industrial behemoth she would later become. Military hardware, industrial productivity, economic capital, and vanguard technology are all vitally important ingredients of American power. But Americas military success relies just as much on something far more basic: undaunted courage,7 the sort of courage learned fighting Indians in northern forests, Seminoles in Floridian swamps, Indian horsemen on the Great Plains, and vast numbers of Mexican legions formed up to attack a few Texicans.