Leave No Man Behind . . . (But leave 8 if you have to)

Last month I wrote about the somewhat abbreviated ending of the first book in the WEB Griffin’s The Corps series of books. Well I just finished Call to Arms, the second in the series, and the ending was vastly different. 

First, the end is not abbreviated. In fact the entire book leads up to the climactic ending quite well. So from a story and book point of view, this second was far better paced and set up than the first. 

Sadly, the actual real world events that inspire the end are completely messed up. 

The Raid on Maikin Island was the Marine Raider’s first mission. It reads like a Ranger Mission. So many of the problems they run into are so similar to the problems we ran into in the Rangers regarding our missions. There must be a moral in there somewhere about missions in general, about how no one can get it right, about the intricacies of dealing with soldiers and the unknown. 

I remember we had a very serious briefing one day in the Rangers about the Mogadishu mission Blackhawk Down. We were constantly discussing and reviewing that mission to determine what we could do better as a battalion. We were told that if it came down to it, if ordered, we should leave wounded and dead Rangers on the battlefield to complete the mission. The Ranger Creed clearly states “I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy.” The ole, never leave a man behind. 

The message of “leave fallen Rangers” did not resonate and soon, the entire idea of addressing that was scrapped. 

The Maikin Island raid should have taken notes. They left 8 Marines behind. Sure they had trouble with their exfil, and sure you’re dealing with a bunch of young, gung-ho Marines, but leaving 8 behind isn’t acceptable in my view. The main character even takes it quite well in the book. In my mind, anyone who had left behind 8 of 140 or so men, should be immediately fired. The whole thing was a gigantic failure. 

the last line was about the 8 Marines who were left behind being executed by their captors by having their heads cut off. It’s as a far more powerful ending than the first book in the series.