WHY MARINES FIGHT.

“Why Marines Fight” is the latest from James Brady, former infantry officer, decorated veteran of the Korean War and prolific writer of tales of the Corps.

Why do Marines fight? Why do they fight the way they do? These are baffling and oft-asked questions. Brady finds no single answer, yet marvels at the similarity of the answers he hears from Marine combat veterans.

Brady asked Marine veterans of World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq, “Why do Marines fight? What do they fight for?” Each responded with vignettes, often violent and sometimes bittersweet accounts of war as they saw it and remembered.

In 1916 Edgar Lee Masters wrote “Spoon River Anthology,” a collection of post-mortem autobiographical “epitaphs” of 244 former citizens of the fictional Spoon River. It is still read today. “Why Marines Fight” is Brady’s “Marine Corps Anthology.” In reading Brady’s anthology, one finds that fact can be as poignant as fiction. What a good writer he is!

Brady canvassed the Corps, talked to veterans from every clime and place and across the decades to select nearly 40 interviews for publication.

He narrates the stories and adroitly transitions from one combat veteran to the next. Most are everyday people. Some are more notable Marines, including United States Senator and combat wounded Marine Captain James H. Webb Jr. and his son, Lance Corporal Jim Webb, an infantry veteran of Iraq; Lieutenant General George R. “Ron” Christmas, USMC (Ret); former Marine fighter pilot and Yankee baseball star Jerry Coleman; LtGen Bernard E. “Mick” Trainor, USMC (Ret); New York City Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly; U.S. Senator John W. Warner; Medal of Honor winner Hector Cafferata; and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace.

“Hear them, listen to the voices: these are the Marines, the hard men [and a woman] who fight our wars, unscripted and always honest,” writes Brady.

Senator Jim Webb, who won the Navy Cross, Silver Star, two Bronze Star medals and the Purple Heart in Vietnam, is an experienced and eloquent writer who states: “Combat was the most apolitical environment I’ve ever been in. … My greatest motivations were the traditions of the Marine Corps and my feelings of accountability to the Marines I led.”

World War II veteran Capt John C. Chapin, USMCR (Ret), an author of Marine historical works, put it more simply: “Why I fought? (1) Everyone I knew enlisted. (2) USMC mystique. I knew the proud traditions. (3) Endless hard training prepared me. I knew I was going to beach assaults and combat. (4) Pride in men I trained. I could not let them down. So I led them.”

George Peto, a veteran of Guadalcanal and Okinawa, acknowledged that some might see the obvious answer as to why Marines fight is for their country. “But the last thing a Marine in a firefight thinks of is home. He is trying to survive. Number one, he worries about his fellow Marine to his left and right. Without them his chance of surviving is small, so you definitely fight for your buddies.”

Peto went on to state that “for the last … days of WW II, I was driven by pure hatred, and the realization that I could get killed. The glory part of war was gone. I fought for revenge.”

Then there is Joe Owen, a decorated Korean War veteran, who cautions, “Fear is basic to combat. You must not let it take hold.” And that in the Corps, “Leadership takes over, top to bottom.”

Gen Pace said, “Every Christmas I’ve sat down … and listed ‘reasons to stay’ and ‘reasons to go,’ … I always end up with the same bottom line on the ‘stay’ list. ‘You owe more than you can pay.’ ”

Brady draws heavily on his experience in Korea and interviews many of the Marines he fought beside from 1951 to 1952 as a platoon leader with “Dog” Company, 2d Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment. He writes: “For many of us, the war we fought had been the single most significant event of our lives.”

But for Marines, war and the Corps that sends them to battle is much more. Can soldiers, airmen and sailors fight as well? Of course, and history is resplendent with the valor of these men and women. Yet, there is that which sets the Corps apart—unique among fighting organizations as it demands and receives the love of its men and women. Almost impossible to comprehend and captured only in glimpses.

One can draw on the British bard Rudyard Kipling who could have been speaking of the Corps when he wrote: “I have eaten your bread and salt. I have drunk your water and wine. The deaths ye died I have watched beside, and the lives ye led were mine.”

“Why do Marines do these things?” Brady asks. “Why do we fight? And just why fight so well? Are we simply mercenaries, fifteenth-century Italian condottieri five hundred years out of sync? At a time when people are fed up with war, you may ask if anyone really cares why soldiers answer the call? It’s not as if we were important, the skeptic remarks, not as if we were the serious men who run hedge funds.” Brady has his own take on the wars Marines have fought since WW II. As a combat veteran he’s entitled to it.

Does James Brady answer the question of why Marines fight? Perhaps.

What’s more important is that as a nation we are indebted to Brady and his fellow Marines. English author and journalist George Orwell wrote in the first half of the last century, “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

WHY MARINES FIGHT.

By James Brady.Published by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

320 pages. Stock #0312372809.

$22.45 MCA Members. $24.95 Regular Price.