Army - Stimulating Simulation

is seen by some as arrogance is instead a
manifestation of hard-won personal capability.
On the home front, some may accuse
him and his brethren of being radical
and extreme. He will take great satisfaction
in that and consider it a compliment
from those who are clueless. He is
not dangerous; he is just clear and uncompromising.
Over time, he may soften
the externals but internally, he remains
stark in his judgments.
He reads the various service publications
in his deployed outpost and reaches
a conclusion shared by his friends: No
amount of uniform change, headgear,
brassard or tool will make the slightest
difference in fighting efficiency, morale
or competence. What he is doing with
what he is wearing and holding are the
only items that develop, test and prove
true combat quality.
Unlike many, he will never wonder
throughout his life if he made a difference.
He knows he did. His last vision
will include the small circle of faces he
saw in a far distant place under trying
circumstances so long ago. He knows
that now but cannot say it.
He is an infantryman first and always
will be. Regardless of age, race, creed,
color, sex and national origin, if you
were with him, you are forever in his
mind and one of his deepest loves. It
doesn’t matter how long you served,
what rank you held or whether your
post-service goals were achieved. What
deeply matters is that you were part of
something larger than yourself, did your
very best, and gained personal associations
with him for a lifetime. What he
did and who he did it with are immutable
to death.
In later years, he will be humbled to
walk among his newer peers, and they
with him. The enemy and the terrain
will be different, but the service and the
character it creates are the same—points
appreciated by both. He and his brethren
throughout our history are truly the glue
that has bound our nation. ■
Col. Keith Nightingale, USA Ret., commanded
four infantry companies as well
as three battalions and two brigades.
His military career included two tours
in Vietnam; the Dominican Republic
and Grenada invasions; and the reconstitution
of Panama. He also served in
several classified counterterrorist Middle
East and Latin American operations.
He is the author of two books.
Millennials
Understanding This Generation and the Military By Capt. David Dixon
Where were you on 9/11? What were
you doing when you first saw that
unbelievable footage of passenger planes
crashing into the World Trade Center?
At what point did the awful reality of
that day dawn on you?
Sept. 11 is one of the most seminal
events in U.S. history and for many people—especially
those of us who have deployed
and fought in Afghanistan or
Iraq—it is the most seminal event to occur
in our lifetime. Understanding Sept.
11 and its cultural impact is crucial to
understanding almost every foreign policy
and military decision that has happened
since. Sept. 11 is critical not only
to understanding policy, but also to understanding
an entire generation: the
millennials, or those born in 1982
through 2004.
At first glance, the idea may seem absurd.
What does a group of Islamic extremists
flying planes into buildings have
to do with understanding a generation
often knocked for being entitled and
spending far too much time on their
smartphones? What do al-Qaida’s actions
on a beautiful Tuesday in September
have to do with the new soldiers in
my troop wanting to “friend” me, their
troop commander, on Facebook? The
answer isn’t obvious but with a little perspective,
it makes perfect sense.
Almost everyone understands that the
Vietnam War changed the country. Repeated
disconnects between what citizens
heard from the president and saw
on the evening news called into question
the reliability and trustworthiness of the
U.S. government. For the youth who
fought in Vietnam, questions about the
purpose and the bloody cost piled up
without answers and left a generation
bitter and cynical about the government,
the Army, the press—or all three. Understanding
the cultural impact of Vietnam
is a key to understanding the baby
boom generation.
So, too, with 9/11 and the millennial
generation. There have been other surprise
attacks in U.S. history—Pearl Harbor
comes to mind—but none has been
so visceral, so shared, as Sept. 11. The
entire country watched it happen in real
time on television. People filmed the
Twin Towers coming down, filmed other
people’s reactions to the attack, and
filmed their own reactions. Email and
cellphones collapsed distances of both
time and space. Everything was magnified,
expanded, analyzed and looped.
Sept. 11 happened in a continuous collective
“now” that was not possible before
the current age.
Many millennials say Sept. 11 was the
day they “grew up,” even though most
were in high school or elementary school
at the time. Is it any surprise that the
generation that came of age on that fateful
day was permanently imprinted—for
good and bad—by the experience?
Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel Extremely
Loud and Incredibly Close describes the
Sept. 11 experiences of one boy, but the
book’s title is relevant to an entire generation.
For millennials, the 9/11 attacks
were a cultural moment magnified in
their parents’ fear and shock and by the
national media’s relentless focus. For the
millennials, all history turns with that
September day as its axis.
They are a generation steeped in what
the Pentagon once called, in a moment
of remarkable honesty, The Long War.
Millennials are a wartime generation but
unlike the silent generation (born mid-
1920s through early 1940s) of World
War II and the baby boom generation
(born 1946 through 1964) of Vietnam,
millennials have been bombarded with
information about the dangers and messy
realities of warfare and its aftermath. In
World War II, news from the front was
March 2016 ■ ARMY 21