Sublime

The Marine philosophy is to recruit for attitude and train for skills. Marines believe that attitude is a weapon system. We searched for intangible character traits: a quest for adventure, a desire to serve with the elite, and the intention to be in top physical condition.

In addition to the landing force, the fleet carried more than two hundred thousand tons of supplies, half of which were munitions. John C. H. Lee, it was said, always doubled whatever his staff thought the Army needed “just in case.”

Leavenworth’s “applicatory method” drew heavily upon military history to analyze the quandaries faced by an army’s high command and to devise solutions under rapidly changing conditions. Students learned, through map exercises, to plan and control the movement of troops from afar.

Lieutenant General Walter Krueger, Eisenhower’s new commander, was an amalgam of Fox Conner and Kenyon Joyce—a military intellectual who relished leading troops in the field. Universally regarded as “a soldier’s soldier,” Krueger was a combat infantryman at heart. He was also widely respected as one of the Army’s best educated and most perceptive