Most societies, it seems, praise the idea of tenacious or dogged determination. We make idols of those who persevere when the odds seem stacked against them. Once upon a time we sang songs of their deeds and nowadays create made-for-TV movies extolling their virtues. There may even be an action figure in the making, right? Complete with kung-fu grip!
On the other hand, the historical example of individuals and groups hanging on way past the obvious point of no return, and losing everything in the process, is something we pity, isn’t it? We look down on these folks, to a certain degree, as not being able to adequately assess the situation they were in and adjust their thinking accordingly. But do we really appreciate just how thin the line is that separates the one from the other?
Take any number of fairly modern examples of determined resistance and examine the near instantaneous effect upon our own psyche. We’re still doing Stalingrad movies, right, the Soviet all-or-nothing resistance against the undefeated German army? If you don’t know what I’m talking about go check out “Enemy at the Gates”, a loose—but well done—adaptation of the book by the same title highlighting the exploits of Soviet sniper Vasily Zaytsev. Will any of you who watched it ever forget the scene where every other Soviet soldier is handed a rifle? The others receive a few bullets and the unit is instructed “The one with the rifle shoots. The one without follows him. When the one with the rifle gets killed, the one without picks up the rifle and shoots!” Crazy, right?
Battle of the Bulge, Khe Sanh, Caesar at Alesia, Admiral Yi at Myeongnyang, we love these stories, don’t we? Love the saga of the underdog who wins against all odds. Refuses to quit. Forces by sheer will, it seems, reality to conform to their ideation of hope.
And yet, what of those who adopt the exact same course of action but fail? Those who follow the glowing path offered by hope, and yet, for whatever reason or reasons, fall short? Why is it we don’t necessarily treat them the same way. Why is it we pity them and their romantic ideas instead of offering them the same veneration? We don’t place Custer on the same shelf, do we, even though he too fought insurmountable odds? We write books instead on why he shouldn’t have done what he did.
We shake our heads at the Carthaginian refusal to surrender their city to the Romans during the 3rd Punic War, though they successfully held out for three years. We sigh when we imagine the doomed defenders of Masada watching the Roman siege ramp grow day-by-day, one basket of dirt at a time. We nodded knowingly at the inevitable result of Georgian resistance to Russian threats in 2008. But we don’t hold any of these up as models to emulate. We don’t idealize their efforts and contributions for the simple reason that they didn’t succeed.
Never mind that when Caesar’s men built a second set of siege works around Alesia—facing outward to ward off a relieving Gallic army—he was surrounded and outnumbered by at least three-to-one. Forget that when U.S. Marines stubbornly held their positions at Khe Sanh they too were surrounded, with enemy artillery on the hills encircling them, with little hope of survival let alone relief. Laugh off the decision to place a single U.S. airborne division with few anti-tank weapons, in the path of Germany’s last great armored drive of WWII. Or disregard the fact that the last remaining 13 ships under Admiral Yi’s command at Myeongnyang were only there at all because they’d fled the previous battle—oh yeah, that’s who you want to have your back when facing 130 enemy warships!
These examples, historical lessons in the power of determination, could each just as easily have gone the other way. Caeasar’s men could have been overrun, the great Roman’s head preserved as a trophy in Vercingetorix’s meeting hall. The Marines could have been slaughtered where they stood precipitating a Cold War crisis for the United States in 1968. The 101st Airborne Division, scratching out shallow, frozen fighting positions at Bastogne, should have been steamrolled by the juggernaut German Panzer Corps. And the tiny remnant of Korea’s once vaunted navy could have easily succumbed to the overwhelming odds stacked against them, offering their entire Western coast to the invaders as a result. Had any of these outcomes occurred, we’d have placed them in that second column, under the “nice try” heading . . . and books would have been written about why each failed. These events were indeed near-run things, and none of the historical outcomes would have been the odds-on favorite beforehand, and yet . . .
Don’t get me wrong, we do seem to have an odd preoccupation with doomed resistance, don’t we? We still get teary-eyed reading of the Spartan last stand at Thermopylae. Feel a sense of regret faced with stories of the resistance and ultimate demise of the Great Plains tribes of the American West. We get a tinge of something we maybe can’t explain very well when reading of the Battle of Shiroyama, inspiration for “The Last Samurai”, or watch a film like “Letters from Iwo Jima”. But very, VERY few walk away from those scenes—from those stories—saying “I want to be like that.” No, we all want to be the guy or gal who swings for the fences, one run down in the ninth inning with two outs and two strikes and a man on second, and knocks it out of the park. Nobody wants to be the one still holding the bat, standing there staring down at their shoes while the opposing team celebrates around them, and yet in baseball, the difference can be as simple as one pitch . . . one swing . . . one play.
The simple truth is the difference between a Caesar and a Custer might not be as great as we like to imagine. A leader’s success is often closely tied to a willingness to take and manage risks. Risks are, by their very nature . . . well . . . risky, and when engaging in a contact sport such as combat, the side effects of losing can be both brutal and long-lasting. Death, destruction, and loss of personal or political freedom all spring to mind! And yet, were Caesar not willing to accept the insane risks he did, would we still be talking about him today? Likely not, if for no other reason than being beheaded by a vengeful Gallic warlord does have a tendency to put the brakes on any Roman political ambition.
It seems, then, that the difference between whether we classify something as brilliant or stupid, the product of gritty determination or blind stubbornness, comes down to the end result. It’s a pity the commander on any given historical battlefield couldn’t peek ahead a couple chapters, but that’s just not how life works. They were each forced to make the best decision they could with the resources and information available to them at the time. We can and do judge them afterward—based mostly upon their degree of success—but in that one moment, the decision was theirs to make and, right or wrong, they made it.
The same is true for each of us, right? Every day we make decisions, some of which may impact our lives far into the future. Each day we take risks that either pay off or come back to bite us in the butt. In the moment of decision, trying to determine which path leads to which outcome can be nerve-wracking, but the old saying “nothing ventured, nothing gained” remains a truism that every single one of the leaders mentioned above—whether historically successful or ultimately a failure—would echo.
Risk is always with us, and success or failure in any given endeavor seems to balance as if on the sharpened edge of a sword, ready to fall one way or the other as the result of a capricious gust of wind. Yet managing risk remains a leadership task the value of which cannot be overemphasized. Caesar did it through intense training, the Marines and the 101st through an uncommon esprit de corps, and Yi through unflinching personal courage, setting the example for his men to follow. These are the things that separate military leaders from “Great Military Leaders”, whether 50 or 2,000 years ago.
And so, on this 242nd anniversary of the signing of the United States’ Declaration of Independence, we recognize the long-shot bet that brought this nation into existence. We acknowledge the group of farmers and shop owners with little military experience and even less material support dedicated to a fight against all odds to secure an independent nation. On this day we honor their sacrifices, and with the benefit of hindsight can appreciate how near-run a thing our own war of independence really was . . . and just how easily it could have gone the other way.
Happy 4th of July!
M. G. Haynes