There Will Be War Volume I, page 27
This is the mistake so often made by those who despise the military, and because they despise it refuse to understand it: they fail to see that few are so foolish as to give their lives for money; yet an army whose soldiers are not willing to die is an army that wins few victories.
Yet certainly there have always existed mercenary soldiers.
We can piously hope there will be no armies in the future. It is an unlikely hope; at least history is against it. On the evidence, peace is a purely theoretical state of affairs whose existence we deduce because there have been intervals between wars. But I did not speak contemptuously when I spoke of pious hopes; nor do I find it an irony that the Strategic Air Command, whose commanders hold leashed more firepower than has been expended by all the armies of all time, has as its motto “Peace is our profession.” Most of those young men who guard us as we sleep believe in that, believe it wholeheartedly and give up a very great deal for it. I too can piously hope for peace; that we shall heed the advice of the carol we sing annually and “hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angels sing.”
There is no physical reason why the human race should not endure for a hundred billion years; and on that scale our history is short, and all we have learned is little compared to what we shall one day know. There may well be a secret formula for peace, and certainly I hope we will find it.
But to hope is nothing. When Appius Claudius told the Senate of Rome that “If you would have peace, be thou then prepared for war” he said nothing that history has not repeatedly affirmed. It may be wrong advice. Certainly there is an argument against it. But I think there is no argument at all against a similar aphorism: “If you would have peace, then understand war.”
Which is to say, understand armies; understand why men fight; understand the organization of violence.
And that, at last, brings us to this book.
Military science fiction is a highly specialized art form. It is attempted often, but there are few writers who know science, society, and the military well enough to write a good story of war in the future.
This is unfortunate: although science fiction, like all literature, must entertain and divert if it is to have readers, it often has a serious purpose as well: to look at future societies, and the impact of technology on history. Any attempt to look in the future while ignoring war and the military is probably doomed to failure: if five thousand years of recorded history have given us no formula for controlling violence and greed, we would be fortunate indeed if this generation has fought the war to end all wars; if the armies that exist today were the last this planet will ever see.
The United States lost the Viet Nam War precisely because we attempted to fight it as if we were using Legionnaires, mercenary soldiers responsible only to the President and the Executive branch of the government. There was no declaration of war, and no attempt to involve the American people. President Johnson was afraid that a declaration of war would take attention and funds away from his Great Society programs.
The result was disaster. The American people have always regarded the Army as their own; it belongs to the Congress, not to the President. The Constitution treats the Army differently from the Naval Forces; we might possibly have sent the Marines into Viet Nam without involving the population, but never the Army. It’s even doubtful about the Marines. In truth, the United States has no Legions, no professional soldiers of the Landsknecht tradition.
Even so, our Army did well in Viet Nam. It never lost a battle, except with the American news media. Take the Tet Offensives as an example: only in Hue did we take heavy casualties, for only there did the enemy manage to take possession of any important real estate. By the time Tet ended, the Viet Cong was all but destroyed; it was one of the most decisive victories in history. Yet the news media insisted on portraying it as “tragedy” and defeat.
The truth is that the US Army won its battles; that the “counterinsurgency” actions were totally successful; and that the Viet Cong—the guerillas—were capable of making life miserable for the people of Viet Nam through their savage acts of terrorism; but the Republic of Viet Nam never fell to guerrillas. It fell to four North Vietnamese Army Corps of regulars; to an invasion of armored divisions from the north; and to a lack of ammunition and supplies. The Republic of South Viet Nam fell to an invasion—and was defeated by the Congress of the United States, which deliberately refused to allow the President to enforce the Geneva accords.
In fact, though, we had lost much earlier than that. We lost in 1965, when we defeated the guerillas, but failed either to take North Viet Nam or to isolate the battlefield. We tried to defeat hornets by swatting them hornet at a time; a tactic that cannot possibly work. You must either burn the nest or retire behind window screens.
Either strategy would have been feasible. Given the later importance of the Chinese Alliance to the United States, it may be that a ramps-down invasion of North Viet Nam was politically undesirable; but certainly there would have been no great difficulty in building a barrier from the Mekong to the Sea, and, if necessary, extending the barrier further west. Any nation capable of building the Panama Canal in the early part of the century could build minefields, tank traps, barbed wire entanglements, military roads, watchtowers—an Asian equivalent of the Soviet Wall along the Czech-German border.
Yet we did not; and we have not yet seen the result of bringing home a defeated army.
As I write this, the Pentagon is studying the 1982 campaigns: the Falklands debacle, and the Israeli incursion into Lebanon. Two things stand out:
First, without high technology, you cannot wage successful war. You must have electronics and missiles, and they must work.
Second, without good soldiers; without leadership, and initiative, and steadfast devotion to duty; without what we once called professionalism and the military virtues; all the sophisticated equipment in the world cannot save you.
In other words, we learn from the latest wars what we might have learned from history.
History has never been kind to wealthy republics. We can hope we are an exception.
Editor's Introduction to:
RANKS OF BRONZE
by David Drake
David Drake is one of a very select group who can write realistic military science fiction. His HAMMER’S SLAMMERS has a deservedly high reputation. Until recently Drake made his living as a lawyer and didn’t write very much, which was a real pity, for he understands much. After the success of HAMMER’S SLAMMERS, Drake’s stock with publishing types has risen high. On the basis of several book contracts he has decided to entertain the innocent rather than prosecute the guilty, for which we may all be properly grateful…
“Gold may not get you good soldiers,” said Niccolo Machiavelli, “but good soldiers can always get you gold.” The merchant princes in this story understand that all too well.
RANKS OF BRONZE
by David Drake
The rising sun is a dagger point casting long shadows toward Vibulenus and his cohort from the native breastworks. The legion had formed ranks an hour before; the enemy is not yet stirring. A playful breeze with a bitter edge skitters out of the south, and the Tribune swings his shield to his right side against it.
“When do we advance, sir?” his First Centurion asks. Gnaeus Clodius Calvus, promoted to his present position after a boulder had pulped his predecessor during the assault on a granite fortress far away. Vibulenus only vaguely recalls his first days with the cohort, a boy of eighteen in titular command of four hundred and eighty men whose names he had despaired of learning. Well, he knows them now. Of course, there are only two hundred and ninety-odd left to remember.
Calvus’ bearded, silent patience snaps Vibulenus back to the present. “When the cavalry comes up, they told me. Some kinglet or other is supposed to bring up a couple thousand men to close our flanks. Otherwise, we’re hanging…”
The Tribune’s voice trails off. He stares across the flat expanse of gravel toward the other camp, remembering another battle plain of long ago.
“Damn Parthians,” Calvus mutters, his thought the same.
Vibulenus nods. “Damn Crassus, you mean. He put us there, and that put us here. The stupid bastard. But he got his, too.”
The legionaries squat in their ranks, talking and chewing bits of bread or dried fruit. They display no bravado, very little concern. They have been here too often before. Sunlight turns their shield-facings green: not the crumbly fungus of verdigris but the shimmering sea-color of the harbor of Brundisium on a foggy morning.
Oh, Mother Vesta, Vibulenus breathes to himself. He is five foot two, about average for the legion. His hair is black where it curls under the rim of his helmet and he has no trace of a beard. Only his eyes make him appear more than a teenager; they would suit a tired man of fifty.
A trumpet from the command group in the rear sings three quick bars. “Fall in!” the Tribune orders, but his centurions are already barking their own commands. These too are lost in the clash of hobnails on gravel. The Tenth Cohort could form ranks in its sleep.
Halfway down the front, a legionary’s cloak hooks on a notch in his shield rim. He tugs at it, curses in Oscan as Calvus snarls down the line at him. Vibulenus makes a mental note to check with the centurion after the battle. That fellow should have been issued a replacement shield before disembarking. He glances at his own. How many shields has he carried? Not that it matters. Armor is replaceable. He is wearing his fourth cuirass, now, though none of them have fit like the one his father had bought him the day Crassus granted him a tribune’s slot. Vesta…
A galloper from the command group skids his beast to a halt with a needlessly brutal jerk on its reins. Vibulenus recognizes him—Pompilius Falco. A little swine when he joined the legion, an accomplished swine now. Not bad with animals, though. “We’ll be advancing without the cavalry,” he shouts, leaning over in his saddle. “Get your line dressed.”
“Osiris’ bloody dick we will!” the Tribune snaps. “Where’s our support?”
“Have to support yourself, I guess,” shrugs Falco. He wheels his mount. Vibulenus steps forward and catches the reins.
“Falco,” he says with no attempt to lower his voice, “you tell our deified Commander to get somebody on our left flank if he expects the Tenth to advance. There’s too many natives—they’ll hit us from three sides at once.”
“You afraid to die?” the galloper sneers. He tugs at the reins.
Vibulenus holds them. A gust of wind whips at his cloak. “Afraid to get my skull split?” he asks. “I don’t know. Are you, Falco?” Falco glances at where the Tribune’s right hand rests. He says nothing. “Tell him we’ll fight for him,” Vibulenus goes on “We won’t let him throw us away. We’ve gone that route once.” He looses the reins and watches the galloper scatter gravel on his way back.
The replacement gear is solid enough, shields that do not split when dropped and helmets forged without thin spots. But there is no craftsmanship in them. They are heavy, lifeless. Vibulenus still carries a bone-hilted sword from Toledo that required frequent sharpening but was tempered and balanced—poised to slash a life out, as it has a hundred times already. His hand continues to caress the palm-smoothed bone, and it calms him somewhat.
“Thanks, sir.”
The thin-featured tribune glances back at his men. Several of the nearer ranks give him a spontaneous salute. Calvus is the one who spoke. He is blank-faced now, a statue of mahogany and strap-bronze. His stocky form radiates pride in his leader. Leader—no one in the group around the standards can lead a line soldier, though they may give commands that will be obeyed. Vibulenus grins and slaps Calvus’ burly shoulder. “Maybe this is the last one and we’ll be going home,” he says.
Movement throws a haze over the enemy camp. At this distance it is impossible to distinguish forms, but metal flashes in the viridian sunlight. The shadow of bodies spreads slowly to right and left of the breastworks as the natives order themselves. There are thousands of them, many thousands.
“Hey-yip!” Twenty riders of the general’s bodyguard pass behind the cohort at an earthshaking trot. They rein up on the left flank, shrouding the exposed depth of the infantry. Pennons hang from the lances socketed behind their right thighs, gay yellows and greens to keep the lance heads from being driven too deep to be jerked out. The riders’ faces are sullen under their mesh face guards. Vibulenus knows how angry they must be at being shifted under pressure—under his pressure—and he grins again. The bodyguards are insulted at being required to fight instead of remaining nobly aloof from the battle. The experience may do them some good.
At least it may get a few of the snotty bastards killed.
“Not exactly a regiment of cavalry,” Calvus grumbles.
“He gave us half of what was available,” Vibulenus replies with a shrug. “They’ll do to keep the natives off our back. Likely nobody’ll come near, they look so mean.”
The centurion taps his thigh with his knobby swagger stick. “Mean? We’ll give ’em mean.”
All the horns in the command group sound together, a cacophonous bray. The jokes and scufflings freeze, and only the south wind whispers. Vibulenus takes a last look down his ranks—each of them fifty men abreast and no more sway to it than a tight-stretched cord would leave. Five feet from shield boss to shield boss, room to swing a sword. Five feet from nose guard to the nose guards of the next rank, men ready to step forward individually to replace the fallen or by ranks to lock shields with the front line in an impenetrable wall of bronze. The legion is a restive dragon, and its teeth glitter in its spears; one vertical behind each legionary’s shield, one slanted from each right hand to stab or throw.
The horns blare again, the eagle standard slants forward, and Vibulenus’ throat joins three thousand others in a death-rich bellow as the legion steps off on its left foot. The centurions are counting cadence and the ranks blast it back to them in the crash-jingle of boots and gear.
Striding quickly between the legionaries, Vibulenus checks the dress of his cohort. He should have a horse, but there are no horses in the legion now. The command group rides rough equivalents which are…very rough. Vibulenus is not sure he could accept one if his parsimonious employees offered it.
His men are a smooth bronze chain that advances in lock step. Very nice. The nine cohorts to the right are in equally good order, but Hercules! there are so few of them compared to the horde swarming from the native camp. Somebody has gotten overconfident. The enemy raises its own cheer, scattered and thin at first. But it goes on and on, building, ordering itself to a blood-pulse rhythm that moans across the intervening distance, the gap the legion is closing at two steps a second. Hercules! there is a crush of them.
The natives are close enough to be individuals now: lanky, long-armed in relations to a height that averages greater than that of the legionnaires. Ill-equipped, though. Their heads are covered either by leather helmets or beehives of their own hair. Their shields appear to be hide and wicker affairs. What could live on this gravel waste and provide that much leather? But of course Vibulenus has been told none of the background, not even the immediate geography. There is some place around that raises swarms of warriors, that much is certain.
And they have iron. The black glitter of their spearheads tightens the Tribune’s wounded chest as he remembers.
“Smile, boys,” one of the centurions calls cheerfully, “here’s company.” With his words a javelin hums down at a steep angle to spark on the ground. From a spear-thrower, must have been. The distance is too long for any arm Vibulenus has seen, and he has seen his share.
“Ware!” he calls as another score of missiles arc from the native ranks. Legionaries judge them, raise their shields or ignore the plunging weapons as they choose. One strikes in front of Vibulenus and shatters into a dozen iron splinters and a knobby shaft that looks like rattan. One or two of the men have spears clinging to their shield faces. Their clatter syncopates the thud of boot heels. No one is down.
Vibulenus runs two paces ahead of his cohort, his sword raised at an angle. It makes him an obvious target: a dozen javelins spit toward him. The skin over his ribs crawls, the lumpy breadth of scar tissue scratching like a rope over the bones. But he can be seen by every man in his cohort, and somebody has to give the signal…
“Now!” he shouts vainly in the mingling cries. His arm and sword cut down abruptly. Three hundred throats give a collective grunt as the cohort heaves its own massive spears with the full weight of its rush behind them. Another light javelin glances from the shoulder of Vibulenus’ cuirass, staggering him. Calvus’ broad right palm catches the Tribune, holds him upright for the instant he needs to get his balance.
The front of the native line explodes as the Roman spears crash into it.
Fifty feet ahead there are orange warriors shrieking as they stumble over the bodies of comrades whose armor has shredded under the impact of the heavy spears. “At ‘em!” a front-rank file-closer cries, ignoring his remaining spear as he drags out his short sword. The trumpets are calling something but it no longer matters what: tactics go hang, the Tenth is cutting its way into another native army.
In a brief spate of fury, Vibulenus holds his forward position between a pair of legionaries. A native, orange-skinned with bright carmine eyes, tries to drag himself out of the Tribune’s path. A Roman spear has gouged through his shield and arm, locking all three together. Vibulenus’ sword takes the warrior alongside the jaw. The blood is paler than a man’s.
