That Others Might Be Free

June 1918, France.

The Allied reserve in this part of the line comprised seven French and two other tired British divisions. It was pitifully inadequate. The Germans, with their vast superiority in numbers and morale, overran them. To the further astonishment of the attackers, the bridges over the Aisne were intact. On their flank, near Soissons, some French resistance was developing, but the center continued to gape wide open. By dusk that Thursday they had advanced ten miles and were on the Vesle. The French capital was eighty miles away. In the morning they crossed the Vesle, whose fine bridges were also undamaged, and surged onward, hobnail boots thumping and feldgrau trousers swishing weirdly in the sunshine. By May 30, when Soissons fell, they had overrun five French lines. On June 3 they were back on the Marne for the first time in nearly four years, the tip of their salient at a place called Château-Thierry. Churchill wrote Clementine: “The fate of the capital hangs in the balance—only 45 miles away.”

At this point, writes Cyril Falls, the British military historian, ‘something astonishing happened. Up the Marne came marching new men. They were two divisions only, but they strode proudly through the flotsam and jetsam always present on the fringe of a stricken battlefield….They were fine-looking men and even the rawest had a soldierly air.’ The first Americans had arrived. Their vanguard was a brigade of U.S. Marines, an odd mix of tough professionals and Ivy League students who, like their Oxford and Cambridge counterparts of 1914—most of whom were now dead or maimed—had enlisted the week after their country entered the war. As they formed their line of battle an elderly French peasant shouted at them: “La guerre est finie!” “Pas finie!” a Harvard undergraduate shouted back, giving the sector its name. For five days the marines held five miles of Pas Finie against the gray enemy columns which came hurtling across the wheat field. Then they counterattacked, driving five divisions of Germans back through a boulder-strewn, gully-laced forest called Belleau Wood. Only one in four survived unscratched. More than a hundred were decorated for heroism. The French remained the wood for them. Six days later doughboys recaptured the village of Vaux, on the other side of Château-Thierry. The crown prince ordered a halt and then a general withdrawal.

Thus ended the last of [German General] Ludendorff’s sledgehammer blows. Early in July he launched a Friedensturm, or peace offensive, sending fifty-six divisions in a pincer movement around Reims. But [French General] Foch had developed new defensive tactics, posting thinly held forward positions to confuse the enemy and then decimating the advancing German infantry with precise artillery strikes. Moreover, ten thousand American soldiers were now disembarking every day. They reached Reims in strength, and the Germans, after initial successes, were thrown back. Returning from the front, Churchill told an audience at the Central Hall, Westminster: “When I have seen during the past few weeks the splendour of American manhood striding forward on all the roads of France and Flanders, I have experienced emotions which words cannot describe.”

The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Visions of Glory, 1874-1932

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Today is Memorial Day, a day set apart to honor and mourn the approximately 1.19 million Americans who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Should the day be like any other of past years, social media will be replete with sincere, well-intentioned exhortations to remember those who died for our freedom—home of the free because of the brave, as the saying goes.

But to speak of American independence and freedom is to tell only part of the story of its military, and not the larger or more recent part. The war for American independence was fought in two parts, each of which ended a long time ago in Virginia: the first, in 1781, at Yorktown; the second, in 1865, at Appomattox. The bulk of the uniformed soldiers who have died since have given up their lives a long, long way from home fighting wars that, if lost, would do nothing to alter America’s laws, system of government, or territorial holdings.

Not every foreign engagement has aged or advanced our global position so well as World War I or World War II, each of which we joined years after fighting began; it is not just reasonable but important to question what came of our involvement in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, and elsewhere. We are going through an isolationist period, where enthusiasm for foreign engagement is at a low ebb. It isn’t the first time, and that it has happened before doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen now: if we were too slow to commit to the world wars, we were too fast to commit to other conflicts. Bellicosity in Washington has clear downsides, the steepest of which are borne by soldiers—and, on occasion, the citizens of other countries—not the politicians and national security officials who send them abroad to die.

But—and perhaps because there is a place in me still unsullied by modern cynicism, still Americanist American—I cannot think of American soldiers, and especially of their involvement abroad, without thinking of John 15:13: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Forget the politicians for a moment: the honored dead buried in cemeteries in Arlington, Normandy, Manila, and around the world gave their lives for their friends—not just their American friends, but their non-American friends.

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Once I get this article out, I’m going to head outside and do a diet version of the “Murph,” a Crossfit workout named for Lieutenant Michael Patrick Murphy of the United States Navy. Lieutenant Murphy, a Navy SEAL, died in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan on June 28, 2005. Murphy was the commander of a four-man reconnaissance team tasked with surveilling a top Taliban leader. The team, dropped off by helicopter in a remote, mountainous area near the Pakistan border, encountered a group of local goat herders. Unable to verify any hostile intent from the herders, the SEALs let them go.

From Murphy’s Medal of Honor citation, signed by President George W. Bush: shortly after releasing the herders, the team was attacked by “...between 30 and 40 enemy fighters….Demonstrating exceptional resolve, Lieutenant Murphy valiantly led his men in engaging the large enemy force. The ensuing fierce firefight resulted in numerous enemy casualties, as well as the wounding of all four members of the team. Ignoring his own wounds and demonstrating exceptional composure, Lieutenant Murphy continued to lead and encourage his men. When the primary communicator fell mortally wounded, Lieutenant Murphy repeatedly attempted to call for assistance for his beleaguered teammates. Realizing the impossibility of communicating in the extreme terrain, and in the face of almost certain death, he fought his way into open terrain to gain a better position to transmit a call. This deliberate, heroic act deprived him of cover, exposing him to direct enemy fire. Finally achieving contact with his headquarters, Lieutenant Murphy maintained his exposed position while he provided his location and requested immediate support for his team. In his final act of bravery, he continued to engage the enemy until he was mortally wounded, gallantly giving his life for his country and for the cause of freedom. By his selfless leadership, courageous actions, and extraordinary devotion to duty, Lieutenant Murphy reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”

“For the cause of freedom.” It wasn’t his freedom, his family’s freedom, or any American’s freedom that he was fighting for—it was for the freedom of people 6,700 miles from his hometown on Long Island.

Lieutenant Murphy died in Afghanistan, not France or an island in the South Pacific. We don’t think of our involvement in Afghanistan the same way we think of what we did during the first half of the twentieth century, nor should we. But thinking of Murphy and others who, like him, gave their lives in conflicts many now decry gets to the heart of who the day is about: America’s fallen soldiers, not its politicians.

So, today, I think of what it means to be from a country of extraordinary means, of extraordinary natural defenses and resources, and of an extraordinary cultural heritage, and that there have been so many Americans not content to simply enjoy those benefits for themselves—who were willing to die to extend them to others.

Addendum

The “Murph” consists of a mile run, 100 pullups, 200 pushups, 300 squats, and another mile run, all done while wearing a weighted vest (20 pounds for men, 14 pounds for women). The current world-record holder is Alec Blenis, a strength and endurance coach based in Minneapolis, who completed the challenge in 2021 in just 32 minutes and 41 seconds.

I don’t own a weight vest—hence my version being the “diet Murph.” I last tried it in 2020; it took me probably three Blenises. My first mile was fast—too fast. As it turns out, though it may be possible to run fast and then immediately go into high-rep calisthenics exercises, it was not then possible for me, and the first half hour of my Murph was mostly spent wheezing on the couch. We’ll see if the passage of five years has changed anything.