'Once an Eagle' in Our Woke World

A Gifted Military Thinker Makes His GOTD Debut

Editor’s Note: I am very pleased and excited to publish the first piece at God of the Desert Books by James Jay Carafano, a tremendously thoughtful, kind, erudite writer who has regularly influenced my understanding of war and foreign policy for over a decade now. Subscribe to Carafano’s substack here and follow him on Twitter here. - DMS

Before the dawn of time, that would be the year 2013 when Netflix released its first original content series (House of Cards), people watched something called t-e-l-e-v-i-s-i-o-n.

In that bygone age, when most of us watched the same shows, media could deliver a sudden, simultaneous, adrenalin shot to our popular culture, a shared experience that we all talked about, everywhere from playgrounds to water coolers. Such was a new media invention of the day—the “mini-series.”

In 1976, ABC transformed television with Rich Man, Poor Man, a 12 part-serialization of an Irwin Shaw novel. Then there was the production based on Alex Haley’s Roots (1977), that at one point snagged 70 percent of the national television audience on one night. In between NBC sandwiched another megahit Once an Eagle.  

Like the others, Once an Eagle was based on a big book. Anton Myrer’s novel weighed in at over 1,300 pages in the original 1968 hardback edition.

Media Past as Culture War Prologue

The mini-series of the 1970s are a gold mine of popular culture.

Rich Man, Poor Man was a meditation on class.

Roots revisited slavery and race.

Once an Eagle was a journey through the modern military experience, following two Army officers Sam Damon, a selfless soldier, and Courtney Massengale, a self-serving poser, from the First World War to Vietnam.

To the American people, rubbed raw over the brutal experience of the war in Southeast Asia as well as the turmoil of the civil rights protests, the anti-war movement, and the counter-culture revolution, the series was a cathartic experience. Much like the movie Patton (1970) this kind of military story found a wide audience. There was something for everyone.

For instance, liberals thought the Oscar-winning film about the famed World War II general, George S. Patton, was an anti-war movie. Conservatives found the movie patriotic and pro-military. Popular culture united audiences in their ambivalence over the American military.

The response to Once an Eagle was much the same. There was a strong “war is hell” theme that resonated with the left. There was also the service and sacrifice of soldiers and their families that spoke to the patriotic right. In the end, everybody watched.

Where Once an Eagle had its greatest impact was on American military culture. During Vietnam, the armed forces stumbled from one of the most honored institutions in the nation to one of the most derided. The book, and the public reaction to the mini-series, came as that trend began to reverse. By the end of the Reagan presidency, polling showed that the armed forces were again the most admired part of our government.

Over fifty years later, Once an Eagle remains central to the debate over military culture, with arguments over whether it should still be on the Army professional reading list to debating if Sam Damon should still be considered a respectable model for military leaders? 

While these contemporary disputes might not have much to say about how wars have changed, it has a lot to say how the culture wars are changing us—and our armed forces.

A World Turned Upside Down

Once is Eagle is an important cultural marker because its fiction is suffused with real history.

If there was a consistent theme in Myrer’s tome it was that a good man was a man. Instead of being, masculinity was definitional to a worthy life—an idea considered wholly unremarkable to post-war Americans.

During World War II, Damon and Massengale both serve in the Southwest Pacific, the battlefield Myrer pictured in the novel as the deepest, dark crucible of war and the one most revealing of what made a man.

The commander, the mercurial, colorful, and controversial General Douglas MacArthur believed the Australians failed to eject the Japanese from Papua New Guinea because they lacked sufficient determination. Australian claims that Americans dropped their weapons and ran from battle the first time they faced the enemy. One officer wrote, “I am damn disgusted with this whole mess and my close association with English and Australians during the past month doesn’t make me like them any better ─ they would cut my throat.”  Doubts over the trust, cooperation, and commitment among Allies were complicated and intertwined with cultural differences and moral taboos, while cold rational calculations of national interests were colored by desire, jealousy, prejudice, and suspicion.  Issues of manhood, sexual conquest, and illicit liaison added a volatile component to the testing of American mettle.

When Damon and his friend Ben Kissler return from the fictional battle of Moapora (really the battle of Buna) they sample the temptations and tensions of wartime Australia. Sex is never far from the issue at hand. Both strike up friendships with young Australian nurses. While the couples are in a bar, Sam has an angry confrontation with a loutish British officer who questions the fighting qualities of American soldiers. Later, Ben has an affair. In contrast, to the sexual escapades of the fighting GIs in Australia, Massengale’s impotence, which is revealed at this point in the novel, excludes him from being a sympathetic figure or an acceptable hero. 

Throughout the book Myrer is always heavy handed in crafting his villains. Massengale’s impotence is perhaps the cruelest blow of all.  As Harvard professor William Ian Miller wrote in Western culture, “so bound up is courage with manhood that it is nearly impossible to speak of without invoking male body parts or the word man itself.”  The root in Greek and Hebrew derive from their respective words for man or adult male.  The Latin for man vir is the root of virtus (courage, valor, manliness), from which is derived the modern word, virtue.  In short, notions of sex and war have a long heritage of shared values.

As in other aspects of the novel, Damon and Kissler’s time in Australia reflect Myrer’s interest in capturing previously ignored human experiences of the war, dark secrets that were overlooked in the first conventional histories of the conflict. Many veterans pushed these memories aside. In their minds World War II created a kind of geographic bachelorhood where sexual exploration and uninhibited behavior were given license by the circumstances of war—part of the adventure, a part that was expected to be left behind, a memory not publicly shared when the conflict was over.  Unmentioned, it was largely forgotten.

Myrer’s attention to sex is not surprising, considering that he wrote at the height of the sexual revolution when the open discussion of such subjects was no longer taboo. Myrer’s treatment of sex and war, however, is far from complete or honest. While Myrer is attentive to the essential sexual component the Army over there, there is no reference or even hint of homosexuality in the story, even though homosexuals have always been in the military, and despite the fact that the services had been officially intolerant of homosexuality. (Some have argued Massengale was gay, a contemporary interpretation offered in part to make him a more sympathetic figure, but it is impossible to believe that was the way Myrer saw the character.)

During World War II, the military developed a vast apparatus to purge homosexuals from the ranks, though enforcement was inconsistent under the pressures of manning the force. Ben Falls, who served in Papau New Guinea, told an Army psychiatrist that he was a homosexual, but the doctor thought he was trying to shirk combat and refused to classify him unfit for duty.  Jim Warren, a mail clerk in Papua New Guinea didn’t hide that he “was very blatantly gay.  He swished…he just laid it right out….but he did his job….none of the officers reported him They liked him! He was a nice guy.  He was a smart man, and somehow they seemed to respect his abilities and they didn’t care what he did with his sex life.” These kinds of story never made it far into contemporary fiction or the history books. 

While Myrer challenged some stereotypes, the MacArthur legacy, the virtuous GI; he reinforced others. Myrer’s attention to sex was titillating but not honest. In regards to the issue of mettle sex deserved greater and more serious attention as a part of the wartime experience. For most of history the compatibility of homosexuality and the armed forces was not considered much of an issue. Militaries were worried that soldiers act like soldiers. The association of homosexuality with cowardice, or the notion that military discipline would collapse because heterosexuals would feel threatened by gays (or even women serving in the ranks disguised as men) is a distinctly modern notion that contemporary novelists left largely unexamined.

Perhaps, Myrer chose to ignore the issue because by the time of his writings the sexual revolution had not yet embraced tolerance of homosexuality, a subject was still beyond the pale of mainstream literature. This made the incorporation of a sympathetic homosexual character into a war novel problematic. At the time, the notion that a character could manly and gay was unacceptable to the general American public. There was no place for the range of sexual experience in Myrer’s novel or public memory. For Myrer’s generation, homosexuality (religious beliefs aside) threatened manhood and manhood was an essential component of mettle. 

Today, many contemporary audiences would find the aversion of homosexuality reflecting the broader shift in public attitudes especially in regards to military service. Decades ago Australia, Canada, Israel, and most European countries have permitted gays to serve openly. The shift came more slowly in the American armed forces. Controversy erupted after President Clinton suggested that homosexuals be allowed to serve openly in the military demonstrated. Only in recent years has the United States followed others. Further, the US has opened-up combat roles to women and permitted transsexuals to serve in the armed forces.

In contrast, while contemporary audiences are more open about issues of sex and gender, they are less forgiving about matters of sexual violence and misconduct. This is another contrast with the sentiments of the greatest generation and the history that followed in its wake.

Men of Myrer’s era had conflicted views about sexual mores, still harboring vestiges of Victorian principles even as they came to grips with the liberating sentiments of the sexual revolution. A degree of infidelity was acceptable because it served as a mark of sexual attraction and added an acknowledgement of real experiences that occurred during the war. Even so, unlike Kissler, Damon remains faithful despite his strained relationship with wife Tommy, who directs all her affections to their son. Damon’s fidelity, however, despite suffering through a loveless marriage is essential.  It makes him a more virtuous hero.

In contrast, philanders were unacceptable models for the Myrer’s white knight. General Matthew Ridgway’s life (one model for the Damon character) paralleled the Damon family in that his wife also grew estranged from Army life, unlike Tommy, however, Peggy divorced Matthew Ridgway shortly after the war. Another stereotype for Myrer’s fictional hero, General John Galvin, was an even less likely match on this score.  His penchant for philandering was legendary and his attitude towards sex casual. When the police complained after arresting one of his troops for having sex in public, Galvin threatened to give the man a medal.

General Robert “Ike” Eichelberger, on the other hand, matched Damon’s old-fashioned vision of marriage and fidelity. When he first returned to troops after leaving West Point in 1941, before being appointed I Corps commander, Eichelberger took command of the newly formed 77th Infantry Division. He recalled:

The enlisted men assigned to the division at first might have seemed a bitdiscouraging. It just happened that they were at the bottom of the barrel… students from New England and young, married farmers from upper New York state. The average age of these draftees was about 32 years instead of perhaps 22 in the other units. This proved to be an actual advantage because these men were more mature and desirous of learning the art of war and what they were going to be up against.

These soldiers, Eichelberger found, contrasted with his impression of soldiers in the regular and National Guard divisions. “They were out on a lark,” he reflected, “and it was the young men who went a hotel room in a good hotel and then fill it with their comrades and prostitutes.”  After becoming corps commander, Eichelberger took it upon himself to stamp out such behavior.

Divorce and scandal were common enough in military service.  Occasionally a career might be slowed or derailed by such occurrences.  Ridgway, for example, was denied a position a postwar position at the Pentagon out of fear his recent divorce might draw undo attention. 

Moral standards in the military, however, seemed to reflect the same kinds of attitudes as were emerging in Hollywood, by the men and women who contracted to bring the image of the military to the screen. John Wayne’s film career, like Ridgway’s film service proved to great a burden on his marriage. In 1944 as his career rose in prominence, principally by playing American war heroes, he divorced his wife and for a time was briefly married to a young prostitute he had befriended in Mexico in 1941. 

Like America’s real war heroes, in times of trouble, the American public largely overlooked these failings, as long as they were not flaunted or widely publicized. Their manliness had been earned, and in that, they were granted a degree of sympathy and indulgence from the American public denied to mere political figures. Thus, the public preferred to ignore the stories of the alleged infidelities of military heroes, but remained rabid consumers of tales of political sex lives.

Today modern mores are far less tolerant sexual abuse—including the high-profile spate of attacks of sexual abuse made against a wide array of public figures that occurred in 2017.  This, however, is far from the sensibilities of the men and women of World War II—who for an understanding of history happened have to be judged on the terms of the times.

The American conception of mettle, despite the sexual revolution, changed very little over the course of the decades when postwar military history was written.  Most expected their heroes to be both manly and virtuous. In this respect, Eichelberger was the real life personification of Sam Damon. Eichelberger’s personal life was beyond reproach. During an assignment in Panama in 1913 he met and married Emma  “Em” Grudger, the daughter of the Chief Justice of the U.S. controlled Canal Zone.  

Unlike, Sam and Tommy, Eichelberger and his wife never went through a period of estrangement. As historian and family friend Jay Luvaas wrote, “she was always his companion, confidante, and ardent champion.” Luvaas collected and published Eichelberger’s wartime letters to his wife. Intended in large part to enhance the general’s reputation which had been largely eclipsed by the public’s obsession with the history of the war in Europe, the work is perhaps most valuable for illustrating the remarkable relationship between Eichelberger and his wife. 

The strength of their bond is not just evident in the wartime letters. Broadcaster William Dunn recorded in the memoirs meeting Eichelberger and the general asked, “in one of your broadcasts mention that you have seen me and that I and my staff are all in good health. Miss Em or one of the wives will hear you….” Dunn reminded that Eichelberger that the censors would never permit it. Ike shook his. “What’s the good being a general?” The anecdote is another reminder of how his beloved wife was never from his thoughts.

In retirement Eichelberger recalled “my thoughts turn many times to the army wives who have been forced to suffer through long absences in World War I and II.” He had left Em for both wars. During the Second World War they said a twilight good-bye at the Hotel Fairmont in San Francisco before Eichelberger flew to Australia. From Buna on the eve of battle, he wrote Em, “I am doing the work for which I have been trained and for which I left West Point. You must be a soldier’s wife and hope for all good things.”  Em, in turn, never appeared to resent the fact that her Ike had given up the safety, security, and prestige of commanding the academy for the personal and professional risks of fighting in an obscure theater under the shadow of MacArthur.

There were actually strong parallels between Eichelberger’s marriage and MacArthur.  MacArthur, in fact, passed through all the stereotypes of Army life including a failed marriage to a socialite who had become disenchanted with military life and an a secret exotic mistresses. MacArthur, relationship with his second wife, however, was deep and enduring reflecting many of the same characteristics as the relationship between Eichelberger and Em. In fact, MacArthur’s image as a loving husband and father did much to solidify his stature as an American hero. 

In the post war world, the icon of the virtuous soldier is a powerful component of the American vision of its military. This, in part, explains why sex scandals concerning non-heroic figures, incidents involving officers and noncommissioned officers not widely known to the American public, draw serious media attention. In the 1990s, Tailhook, the accusations against General Joe Ralston, the Kelly Flynn case, the courts martials of Army Sergeant Major Gene McKinney and General David E. Hale, and the sexual misconduct in basic training at Aberdeen Proving Grounds all made headlines, that eclipsed equivalent stories in the civilian sector. The more recent, situation faced by General David Petraeus who was compelled to resign as director of the CIA demonstrates, the expectation of virtue among military men remains high. This cultural icon is more long standing and stronger than contemporary intolerance of sexual abuse and misconduct which has pervaded American society in the last few years.

Through the swinging sixties, the turmoil of Vietnam, and the Reagan revolution, cultural trends increasingly affected how we thought about military service. But in a similar manner to an increased sensibility towards issue of race in the postwar era, sex and gender are not filters that will force us to completely reinterpret history. Combat was no more all about sex than the war was all about racism. Seeing toxic masculinity as the force that drove war and violence in World War II is imposing how some see the contemporary world on the past. 

While issues of sex and fidelity were important elements in the formation of postwar memory they played no role in battle and surviving the trial by fire. As the writer Paul Fussell noted, on the battlefield soldiers were “too scared, hungry, busy, tired, and demoralized to think about sex at all.   Indeed, the front was the one place that was sexless.”  No conception of manhood could survive the war without proving the test of battle—not just the bedroom.

The Great War and Culture Wars

Masculinity survived to the end of Cold War as still a respectable way to see the world. For example, one of the most popular books of the 1990s was Robert Bly’s Iron John, a defense masculinity that logged 62 weeks on the best seller list.

But now, the times they are a changing.

Would any major studio remake Once an Eagle today without some major rewrites? I doubt it.

One of the tenets of today’s woke is revisiting the past primarily to reveal the systemic flaws of the present, including “outdated concepts of gender and race. This was most famously done in the 1619 Project. World War II has also been a particular target of woke.

In the woke world, the notion of masculinity is simply destructive patriarchy and completely unacceptable. Since the virtues of masculinity are the foundation of the good man in Once in Eagle, the story would literally have to be turned on its head for a contemporary woke audience. Everything virtuous would become tainted. Every perversity exalted.

This is not just a problem for fiction. Leftist political leaders today are trying realign the military with woke and its having a deleterious impact on the force.

The woke wave in the armed forces is particularly insidious because its couched as just being fair and equitable, disguising an agenda of radical cultural transformation obliterating gender, religion, American values, and Constitutional liberties.

Woke is not just bad for culture. It is also undermining the military. The effort to draft women in the military is a case in point. Allowing individuals with gender dysphoria to serve in the military is also problematic for operational reasons. Dismissing issues of religious liberty, not on operational grounds, but because they conflict with political and cultural preferences is also debilitating to military service.

Woke is corrupting everything, making both fiction and the real world worse.

In truth, a Sam Damon would have served perfectly honorably in the modern world, adopting to changes that integrated the armed forces, allowed women to serve, and didn’t care about soldiers sexual preferences—if the culture of selfless military service remained untainted by political whims; if every soldier was judged by their abilities not assigned cultural identities; if success was defined by being trained and ready to fight—not make a cultural statement.

Masculinity is not patriarchy. Myrer was right when he wanted to distill in his book something that makes for the best of us when we are faced the worst of it.

Damon’s quest of honorable, selfless service, garbed in the uniform of traditional masculinity, is worthy of remembrance and a sequel. The theme of this new show ought to be let soldiers be soldiers not leftist liberal icons more obsessed with Drag Queen shows at the Officer’s Club than drills on the rifle range.