Bryan Strawser

I am currently around 200 pages into Rick Atkinson’s excellent book An Army at Dawn about the US and British Armies in the Second World War. It’s quite an insightful look into a nation learning to grow warriors, men trying to become combat leaders, and generals learning – sometimes at the cost of much blood – how to wage war on another nation.

The book has helped me with some perspective on recent events in my own life. As stressed and concerned as we get about things from time to time – personal events, family events, company events – I still get to go home at the end of the day, I still have a job, I’m still alive… these men could be dead at the end of their day – every day.. and they would have to live with that for more than three years from 1942 through the end of the war in 1945.

When I think about things in that context, what I have to deal with every day doesn’t seem like that big of a deal.

After leaving where we were before we left ofr here, not knowing we were coming here from there, we couldn’t tell whether we had arrived here or not. Nevertheless, we now are here and no there. The weather here is just as it always is at this season. The people here are just like they look.

An Army at Dawn, Page 197

In today’s world, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that one man can make a difference. Paul Ray Smith is on the way to becoming the first serviceman to receive the Medal of Honor since MSG Gary Gordon and SFC Randall Shughart fought their last battle in Mogadishu on October 3, 1993. 

According to the citation, his actions killed 20 to 50 Iraqis, allowing the American wounded to be evacuated, saving the aid station and headquarters (as well as possibly 100 American lives). Fellow soldiers credit Smith with thwarting the advance of well-trained, well-equipped soldiers from the Special Republican Guard, which was headed straight for the 2-7 Task Force’s headquarters (Tactical Operations Center), less than a half-mile away. [Strategy Page]

September 1st, 1939 was the first day of a war that would last for 2,174 days, and it brought the first dead in a war that would claim an average of 27,600 lives every day, or 1,150 an hour, or 19 a minute, or one death every 3 seconds….

From An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson.