A recent diary by Eternal Hope contained what I believe to be a (likely inadvertent) factual inaccuracy.
[The Republicans] are unwilling to rotate the troops home every 15 months … steps that Roosevelt did in World War II.
This error, taken in context, is just a small detail. I am not directly concerned with the error, but I am inspired to write just a little on the general topic of troop rotations.
Dad had a pretty impressive shelf of books when I was a kid. While I was public-schooled, I probably could have claimed to be home-schooled, just on the basis of reading most everything in the home library. There was the Encyclopedia Americana, the Time Life Nature and Science series, the Harvard Classics, and an impressive stack of paperbacks covering just about everything of interest to an adolescent, from WWII novels (Run Silent, Run Deep by Edward L. Beach; Battle Cry by Leon Uris; 70,000 to One by Quentin Reynolds) to, well, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female by Dr. Alfred Kinsey.
Some of the available reading material, however, was more disturbing. Among the less yellowed (almost contemporary) pages were titles such as The Pentagon Papers; and 365 Days, by Ronald J. Glasser.
This last book, 365 Days, had a formative impact on my adult view of combat and troop rotations. I knew from all the WWII stories that combatants were "in for the duration." There were no rotations. They might get some R&R, some time in London or Australia (if they were super lucky), but in general, they were in combat until the war was won. Or they were killed. It was harsh, but a man can potentially make his peace with that.
Vietnam-era policy seemed perverse, in that every draftee had a date certain that he would be on plane back to The World. When he was short, he would play it safe, and count the days... In my mind then, and now, I think it would be harder to believe and anticipate an end to one's rotation, than to know that I'm just in for the duration. I came away from reading the book thinking that the 365-day rotation was just a stupid policy built around a largely conscripted military. But here we are with a volunteer military, and we're playing the same tricks on those kids, telling them just to hold out until a date certain and then they can come home.
Except this time, it's more than 365 days. And the exact number of days is fungible. We lie and extend. And the total length of the war exceeded that of WWII some time ago, early last December 2006. Have we learned nothing from these head games we played with our troops 40, even 60, years ago?