A 'Dear and Sacred' Memorial Day

By Bill Doughty–

Col. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., in a profound speech 236 years ago in Keene, New Hampshire, said he hoped generations of Americans would continue to remember and honor Memorial Day, a day of commemoration that arose over time from the ashes of the Civil War. Would a divided nation heal completely?

It took a while for the Union and Confederacy to agree on a national day of commemoration. Veterans steeped in the stench and sounds of battlefields often did not want to remember, according to author John Keegan in "The American Civil War: A Military History" (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009). "That was a dimension of the war never to be commemorated."

Less than a century later, Adm. Nimitz would have the same feeling about commemorating the attack on Pearl Harbor. He was at first against any commemoration.

USS Bennington (CVA-20) passes the wreck of USS Arizona (BB-39) in Pearl Harbor on Memorial Day, 31 May 1958. Bennington's crew is in formation on the flight deck, spelling out a tribute to Arizona's crewmen who were lost in the 7 December 1941attack on Pearl Harbor by Imperial Japan. (NHHC)

As for the Civil War, according to Keegan, "there was no catharsis after 1865." While "Decoration Day" started with gravesites, including those at Arlington, decorated with flowers on various days, "Memorial Day" eventually became a reality for northern states on May 30, yet the south could not agree and for a time continued to commemorate three different dates.

Keegan contends, rightly, that the Civil War was the crucible that cemented a nation in a commitment to harmony. Here's what it meant for the warriors who fought on the righteous side of the Constitution –– and ultimately against slavery:

"There was no more graphic means of apprehending the power of the state than to stand in the line of battle, a voluntary act with unintended consequences. Men who performed the act and survived the consequences were transformed as citizens. They became pillars of the republic and pillars of their communities. It is often overlooked that hundreds of thousands of Americans of the Gilded Age had been touched by fire and hardened by it. Antebellum American had been a gentle society. Postbellum America was a nation as well as a society and one hardened by the Civil War to embark on a rendezvous with greatness."

Marbury, Gilbert A., drummer, Company H, 22d New York Infantry. (Natl. Archives)

In "The Civil War: A Narrative III, Volume 3: Red River to Appomatix" (Random House, 1974), historian and author Shelby Foote writes that years later, veterans of the terrible Civil War would gather to honor their fallen comrades:

"Once a year at least –– aside, that is, from regimental banquets and mass reunions, attended more and more sparsely by middle-aged, then old, then incredibly ancient men who dwindled finally to a handful of octogenarian drummer boys, still whiskered for the most part in a clean-shaven world that had long passed them by –– these survivors got together to honor their dead."

Earlier in the book Shelby Foote reminds us that Holmes, as a young Army captain, brashly yelled at President Abraham Lincoln, "Get down, you damn fool" when 6-foot-4 Lincoln stood above the parapets observing the battle near Washington (D.C.).

Twenty years after yelling at the president, Holmes gave remarks on that Memorial Day in 1884. Foote tells us:

"He began by expressing his respect, not only for the veterans gathered to hear him, but also for the men they had fought, and he told why he felt it. 'You could not stand up day after day, in those indecisive contests where overwhelming victory was impossible because neither side would run as they ought when beaten, without getting at last something of the same brotherhood for the enemy that the north pole of a magnet has for the south, each working in an opposite sense to the other, but unable to get along without the other.' Such scorn as he felt he reserved for those who had stood aside when the call came for commitment. 'I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.' Memorial Day was for him and his listeners 'the most sacred of the year,' and he believed it would continue to be observed with pride and reverence. 'But even if I am wrong, even if those who are to come after us are to forget all that we hold dear, and the future is to teach and kindle its children in ways as yet unrevealed, it is enough for us that to us this day is dear and sacred.… For one hour, twice a year at least — at the regimental dinner, where the ghosts sit at table more numerous than the living, and on this day when we decorate their graves — the dead come back and live with us. I see them now, more than I can number, as once I saw them on this earth.' He saw them, and he saw what they stood for, even now in the midst of what Mark Twain had dubbed the Gilded Age. 'The generation that carried on the war has been set aside by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire. It was given to us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing. While we are permitted to scorn nothing but indifference, and do not pretend to undervalue the worldly rewards of ambition, we have seen with our own eyes, beyond and above the gold fields, the snowy heights of honor, and it is for us to bear the report to those who come after us.”

Shelby Foote

Foote makes a powerful statement about the context of the Civil War, one which perhaps can be applied in this era of COVID and feelings of division:

"...But the pride remained: pride in the segment reabsorbed, as well as in the whole, which now for the first time was truly indivisible. This new unity was best defined, perhaps, by the change in number of a simple verb. In formal as in common speech, abroad as well as on this side of its oceans, once the nation emerged from the crucible of that war, 'The United States are' became 'the United States is.'"

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. as Supreme Court justice.

This is a "dear and sacred" concept for what the United States is and continues to be: e pluribus unum – out of many, one. Those Americans willing to sacrifice their lives in a commitment to defending the Constitution are honored on Memorial Day.

In his speech, Holmes said, in words that President John F. Kennedy would echo nearly one hundred years later: "...It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return."

Holmes concluded his Memorial Day speech in 1884 this way: "I see beyond the forest the moving barriers of a hidden column. Our dead brothers still live for us, and bid us think of life, not death – of life to which in their youth they lent the passion and glory of the spring. As I listen, the great chorus of life and joy begins again, and amid the awful orchestra of seen and unseen powers and destinies of good and evil our trumpets sound once more a note of daring, hope, and will."

Naval Special Warfare Force Master Chief (SEAL) Bill King and his wife, Robin, lay a wreath on the Extortion 17 Memorial May 19, 2020, in observance of Memorial Day at the Naval Special Warfare Command Headquarters aboard Naval Amphibious Base Coronado. The Extortion 17 helicopter crash claimed the lives of 38 people, including 22 NSW personnel in Afghanistan Aug. 6, 2011. (MC1 Sean Furey)

Rediscovering Resilience – Finding USS Nevada

by Bill Doughty

According to U.S. Naval Institute and "Silver State Dreadnought," "USS Nevada (BB-36) was America's first modern battleship. When her keel was laid in 1912, kings and emperors still ruled much of the world. When she finally slipped beneath the waves in 1948, America was the undisputed global superpower."

Top of the foremast of USS Nevada (BB-36) (SEARCH)

This week the maritime team at SEARCH, a cultural resource management firm, announced discovery of USS Nevada, a warship "viewed as the epitome of American resilience and perseverance," according to a May 11 press release from SEARCH.

While the British Royal Navy had the first "dreadnought" and stayed ahead on developing mammoth battleships early in the century, the United States began catching up with the development of USS Oklahoma (BB-37) and USS Nevada during WWI. 

Crewmen exercising with one of the ship's casemate 5/51 guns, circa 1921. Taken by A.E. Wells, the Nevada's photographer. NHHC

USS Nevada's resilience and toughness are commemorated in a number of books.

John Keegan, in "The First World War" (Borzoi Book, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), focuses primarily on British dreadnoughts, but writes, "Oklahoma and Nevada achieved a remarkable compromise between speed, hitting-power and protection."

USS Nevada (BB-36), photographed in 1944. (Naval History and Heritage Command)

According to Philippe Caresse, in his beautiful coffee table book "The Battleships of the Iowa Class: A Design and Operational History,"* USS Nevada and its new 14-inch caliber guns –– along with fifteen other dreadnoughts –– propelled the U.S. Navy to become a leading force on the seas. "The United States emerged from World War I as one of the great naval powers, second only to the Royal Navy."

From an overview of "Silver State Dreadnought: The Remarkable Story of Battleship Nevada" by Stephen M. Younger (U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2018): "Nevada was revolutionary for her time: the first 'superdreadnought,' the first U.S. warship to be oil-fired, the first to have a triple-gun main turret, the first to have all-or-nothing armor. In World War I, she was based in Queenstown, Ireland, to provide protection for American convoys bringing troops to Europe. She survived the naval reduction treaties of the 1920s and was rebuilt in 1928 with the latest technology."

By December 7, 1941, the once cutting-edge Nevada was the oldest active battleship in Pearl Harbor on the day the Imperial Japan attacked Oahu. [USS Utah (BB-31/ AG-16) was designated as a target training ship.]

Nevada had a prominent role in the attack. It was the one battleship that attempted to sortie, made it into the channel, and nearly got out of Pearl Harbor before having to beach at Hospital Point, near the harbor entrance.

The attack started as a shock early on a Sunday morning during colors.

"The first 'Kate' torpedo plane raced in so low over Nevada that it shredded the half-hoised ensign with cannon fire," Rear Adm. Edwin T. Layton writes in "And I was There" (Konecky & Konecky, 1985).

Ens. Joseph K. Taussig, Jr., 21, had the forenoon watch that day, and he had been responsible for ensuring the right size flag was flying. Now, with Lt. Cmdr. Francis J. Thomas the senior officer present, Taussig was the acting air defense officer. 

In "Dec. 7 1941: The Day the Japanese Attacked Pearl Harbor" (Wings Books, 1991) Gordon Prange (with Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon) describes early action:

Nevada heads down channel past Navy Yard's 1010 Dock, under air attack.

"The Nevada was preparing to get underway when a torpedo struck her port bow, at about frame 40 ... Taussig was at his battle station when a missile went through his thigh and hit the ballistics computer in front of him. In the shock, Taussig felt no pain. He observed in a detached way that his left foot had lodged under his left armpit. Despite all efforts to remove him to a battle dressing station, 'he refused to leave ... and insisted on continuing his control of the AA battery and the continuation of fire on enemy aircraft.' This promising young officer survived, but he spent the rest of World War II in the hospital recovering from his wounds received at Pearl Harbor."

Prange writes, "Very few ships could retaliate as promptly and effectively as the Nevada."

In "At Dawn We Slept" (Penguin Books, 1981) Prange writes, "Tales of heroism far beyond the call of duty abounded on Nevada, as on every ship in Pearl Harbor." Prange notes, "Nevada had been under partial steam when the first wave struck, and at 0850 the battleship got underway."


He describes the destruction along Battleship Row and out in the harbor:

"By now Pearl Harbor was a hellpit of smoke –– gray, brown, white, lemon yellow, black, and again black –– acrid, foul, mushrooming billows erupting skyward, folding in and opening out like a mass of storm clouds. Out of this pall came a sight so incredible that its viewers could not have been more dumbfounded had it been the legendary Flying Dutchman –– Nevada, heading into the channel, a hole the size of a house in her bow, her torn flag rippling defiance."

The action drew the attackers like murder hornets toward the battleship, away from the tanker USS Neosho (AO-23), which was escaping to Merry Point.

In his "Dec. 7, 1941," part of a Pearl Harbor trilogy, Prange recounts how the slow-moving Nevada attracted attackers as it "doggedly plunged toward escape. The opportunity not only to bag a battleship but to cork the channel made the Nevada the target of a lifetime."

USS Nevada (BB-36) beached and burning after being hit forward by Japanese bombs and torpedoes. The ship's pilothouse area is discolored by fires in that vicinity. The harbor tug Hoga (YT-146) is alongside Nevada's port bow, helping to fight fires on the battleship's forecastle. Note channel marker bouy against Nevada's starboard side. Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the U.S. National Archives.

The Sailors aboard Nevada, with help from two tugboats, helped beach the battleship, keeping the critical harbor open. Author Ian Toll describes how the ship's bow was "thrust into a grove of algaroba trees."

In the first chapter of his "Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942" (W.W. Norton & Company, 2012), Ian W. Toll describes the horrific aftermath and a growing resilience:

"Sailors returned to the stricken battleships with galvanized steel buckets, and began the grisly task of collecting the remains of their slain shipmates. 'I recall finding severed knee joints as well as shoulder fragments and torn, burning body torsos, all unidentifiable because of their burned.condition,' remembered Seaman Charles Sehe of the Nevada.
Though the shock of the raid was still fresh in everyone's minds, the survivors made a concerted effort to raise their collective morale. Music helped: on the waterfront at Ford Island, a jukebox blared 'I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire,' and on the battleship Maryland, the ship's band performed on deck while the repair teams worked. The crew of the Nevada agreed on a new nickname: the 'Cheer-Up Ship.' Signs on her deck proclaimed: 'We'll Fight Again' and 'Cheer Up the Cheer-Up Ship.' The crisis tended to bring out the best in the malingerers, the lazy men, even the prisoners in the brig, who were ordered out of their cells and put to work. Everyone pitched in. 'Things were so bad at Pearl Harbor,' Seaman Mason recalled, 'that even the chiefs were working.'"

Hole in the ship's port side from a Imperial Japan Type 91 aerial torpedo.

As a matter of fact, Navy chiefs were among the true heroes of USS Nevada as the Sailors "fought their ship" during the attack.

This is from the extensive U.S. Pacific Fleet Battle Force action report filed Dec. 15, 1941: "Chief Boatswain E. J. Hill, U.S. Navy, killed in action, is deserving of the highest commendation possible to be given for his skill, leadership and courage. At the height of the attack he led his line handling details to the quays, cast off the lines under fire, and then swam back to the ship. Later, while on the forecastle attempting to let go the anchors, he was blown overboard and killed by the explosion of several bombs. His performance of duty and devotion to duty was outstanding."

Chief Hill was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously.

The battle force action report described some of the damage: "... It is apparent that the Nevada suffered at least six (6) bomb hits and one torpedo hit. It is possible that as many as ten bomb hits may have been received by the Nevada, as certain damaged areas are of sufficient size to indicate that they were struck by more than one bomb. However, direct evidence is not available to determine the exact number."

Entering Drydock # Two, at Pearl Harbor Navy Yard, 18 February 1942. Sunk as a result of damage received in the 7 December 1941 Japanese air raid, she was refloated on 12 February 1942. Note oil staining along her hull, marking her waterline while she was sunk. (NHHC

After Sailors, salvage teams and shipyard workers performed miracles, BB-36 was temporarily repaired. The battleship made it to the West Coast in April 1942 to receive "permanent repairs and improvements, including a greatly enhanced anti-aircraft gun battery," according to the Naval History and Heritage Command.

After assisting in the Attu landings in May 1943, Nevada steamed to the Atlantic to provide firepower for the Normandy Invasion in June 1944 and Europe operation in the summer and fall. "The battleship then returned to the Pacific, where she assisted with the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1945. Though damaged by a suicide plane on 27 March and by an artillery shell on 5 April, Nevada remained in action off Okinawa until June 1945," according to NHHC.

Forward 14/45 guns of USS Nevada (BB-36) fire on positions ashore, during the landings on Utah Beach, 6 June 1944. (National Archives)

With the end of the war came the end of Nevada's active service as a combat warship, and the resilient unsinkable "Cheer-Up ship" headed back to Hawaii. "She was too old for retention in the post-war fleet, and was assigned to serve as a target during the July 1946 atomic bomb tests at Bikini, in the Marshall Islands," NHHC reports. "That experience left her damaged and radioactive, and she was formally decommissioned in August 1946."

In "Silver State Dreadnought," Stephen Younger writes, “On a sunny day in 1948, Nevada was towed off the coast of Oahu and used for target practice. After five days of pounding by everything the Navy could throw her, Nevada was dispatched by a torpedo.”

Director of the Naval History and Heritage Command Rear Adm. (ret.) Samuel Cox, quoted in the SEARCH press release, said, "USS Nevada serves a reminder that our sailors have a long, terrific tradition; her fighting spirit proved the U.S. Navy remains tough in difficult times. When the circumstances appear to be at their worst, our Navy remains at their best.” Cox gave a keynote address at the commemoration ceremony at the USS Nevada memorial at Pearl Harbor, Dec. 8, 2016.

Allen Bodenlos, then 90, a Pearl Harbor survivor who served on the battleship USS Nevada, salutes during the National Anthem, Dec. 8, 2010. Pearl Harbor survivors gathered with sailors, families and friends at the Nevada Memorial at Hospital Point, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. (Photo by MC2 Mark Logico)

According to SEARCH, USS Nevada was located 65 nautical miles southwest of Pearl Harbor at a depth of over 15,400 feet. "The mission was jointly coordinated between SEARCH’s operations center and one of Ocean Infinity’s vessels, Pacific Constructor. Pacific Constructor set sail for a range of commercial tasks in the Pacific in early 2020, ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of the global health crisis, the ship has remained at sea on a range of taskings."

British author Ed Nash posted this tribute video of the discovery and brief history of USS Nevada on YouTube:

“The physical reality of the ship, resting in the darkness of the great museum of the sea, reminds us not only of past events but of those who took up the challenge of defending the United States in two global wars,” James Delgado, SEARCH’s senior vice president and the lead maritime archeologist on the mission, said. “This is why we do ocean exploration, to seek out these powerful connections to the past.”


* Caresse's loving tribute to Iowa Class Battleships honors "these marvels of naval technology from another age" with fascinating facts and hundreds of photos. The careers of USS New Jersey (BB-62), USS Iowa (BB-61), USS Missouri (BB-63) and USS Wisconsin (BB-64) –– younger cousins of Nevada –– are standout chapters in this book that explores armament, power and propulsion, technical characteristics, battle honors, and other topics. USS Nevada, once the height of modern maritime innovation, was replaced by newer battleships that became obsolete as naval aviation, other surface ships and submarines played a more prominent role.

When Noble Warriors Go to War

Review by Bill Doughty––

Warriors must be prepared for what they'll encounter in combat as well as what they'll experience before and especially after.

Karl Marlantes's "What It Is Like to Go to War" (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011) is "dedicated to the Marines I served with in Viet Nam, those who came home and those who didn't, and to all combat veterans who fought and are fighting with noble hearts –– all."

How to find and develop a "noble heart" is part of Marlantes's quest in this excellent book of advice, life sketches, and philosophy –– all punctuated by you-are-there whipsaw jungle combat. Scholar-warrior Marlantes earned the Navy Cross, the Bronze Star, two Navy Commendation medals for valor, two Purple Hearts and ten air medals.

He deals with his own post-traumatic stress disorder and some personal and family issues in painful soul-baring book that is both enlightening and brutal. "The Marine Corps taught me how to kill but didn't teach me how to deal with killing."

But this book is not just for warriors and their families, it is also for people in power who send their nation's sons and daughters to war.

"All conscientious citizens and especially those with the power to make policy will be better prepared to make decisions about committing young people to combat if they know what they are about to ask them," Marlantes writes.

Marine veteran Karl Marlantes discusses ethics with students, staff and faculty at the U.S. Naval War College, May 16, 2017. (Photo by MC2 Jess Lewis)

"War is society's dirty work, usually done by kids cleaning up failures perpetuated by adults." 

He asks us to remember how many times the United States has been involved in violent conflicts –– more than a dozen times –– since Vietnam: Cambodia, Iran, Lebanon, Libya, Panama, Grenada, Gulf War I, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Not counting the ongoing war with Islamist terrorists, or intervention in Somalia, or assisting Saudi Arabia in the Yemeni civil war, "We've aided and abetted killing in the Falklands, El Salvador, Afghanistan (when the Russians were there), Angola, and Israel/Palestine," Marlantes reminds us. "We are a very aggressive and warlike nation."

"Noble hearts" may not always be aligned with noble causes, either. Marlantes asks us to consider communist revolutionaries in Russia, early Baathists in Iraq, rebels of the American Civil War Confederacy, Germans of the Third Reich. "No professional warrior should be ignorant of Nuremberg."

Gen. William Westmoreland (Khe Sanh), Col. Oliver North (Iran-Contra), and George W. Bush (Iraq invasion), as examples in this book, were warriors or leaders who may have believed they were fighting for a right cause for the right reasons, though history shows how wrong they were.

Marlantes describes the concept of pseudo-speciation: creating a false species of another human being, creating "the other" so it becomes easier to kill. Marlantes warns, "The warrior has to be very careful about whom the politicians make out to be devils."

His advice: Question motives and loyalty. Increase consciousness. Contemplate intentions of right and wrong. And know when violence is justified. Defenders should go to war only to protect others from violence, Marlantes says. "Using violence other than to protect makes a person a bully or a murderer."

Which is not to say there are no justifiable uses of military power when diplomacy fails. "As long as there are people who will kill for gain and power, or who are simply insane, we will need people call warriors who are willing to kill to stop them," he writes.



"Warriors must always know the people they are protecting and why. They must undertake the personal responsibility for deciding when to kill and for what higher cause. This implies a commitment to a cause beyond self-interests, or even national interest alone." A noble warrior ethos requires introspection and wisdom.

"Committing troops as warriors," Marlantes writes, "requires a sober assessment of whether or not using coercive violence to accomplish a change in commonly accepted law is moral, particularly if those who don't agree with us aren't threatening us," he says. Can wrongs be righted, can disagreements be resolved without violence? Marlantes gives South Africa as an example; apartheid was defeated without military conflict.

Marlantes refers to thinkers, authors, books and myths to help develop "noble warriors" and enlighten us all: Joseph Campbell, Jane Goodall, Eric Hoffer, Inazo Nitobe, Tim O'Brien, T. E. Lawrence, Clausewitz, Sophocles, Yeats, Norman MacLean, Alice Miller, John Bradshaw, Adele Faber, Mahabharata and Bhagavad Gita, Grail legend, Viking warrior poetry, Illiad, and Táin Bó Cúailnge.

Never give up boot camp training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island. (Photo by LCpl. Ryan Hageali)

It's not just about reading and thinking, though. Tough physical and mental training is necessary, as well, especially in order to manage risk:

"The primary reason you don't make sound judgments in combat is that you too often are exhausted and numbed. There is little that can be done about this except training under extreme duress to learn how to function at such times –– one very strong reason why I deplore ignorant attempts by civilians and noncombat veterans to make boot camp more 'humane.' There is nothing humane about dead kids because someone cracked under pressure."

In his lead-in to Chapter 5, "The Enemy Within," he warns of the need to recognize repressed and despised weaknesses of character that can cause petty acts: "In the crucible of war those same weaknesses and petty acts can lead to consequence of immense horror and evil." 

He discusses My Lai and other atrocities and issues he had to confront, in some cases decades later.

Marlantes offers advice about how the military approaches spirituality and also recommends incorporating the "explosion of knowledge about psychology and brain chemistry into its training programs."

He advocates for spiritual contemplation and reflection incorporated in training and even right before and after combat –– more "Gunny" philosophy and psychology; less military chaplaincy and religion.

"What It Is Like to Go to War" examines concepts like killing, guilt, numbness, lying, loyalty, heroism and home, among others. He helps us define "warrior," too.

Warriors, he says, must choose sides as they make an individual commitment to the mission. "Individuality must not be suppressed even though individual action is subordinated." And, they must make an a fundamental additional choice –– willingness to risk death or maiming resulting from using violence against violence.

"The first decision, choosing sides, means taking on the warrior spirit. People who take on the warrior spirit become metaphorical warriors they are like warriors in certain aspects, but they are not warriors. This choice is serious enough, often entailing commitments of great personal sacrifice. A prime example is a government or corporate whistle-blower. The second decision, however, choosing to use violence to protect someone else against actual and intended violence, a choice that usually also entails danger to the lives and psyches of the people who choose the violent path, moves one from being a metaphorical warrior to being a warrior in deed. Warriors are prepared to kill people."

Karl Marlantes at the U.S. Naval War College (Photo by MC2 Jess Lewis)

In addition to being ready to kill another human being, warriors must be prepared for –– and even willing to embrace –– seeming incongruous feelings of guilt, joy, shame, fear, exhilaration and grief in order to achieve "transcendence."

Transcendence helps the individual return to society after combat.

"The warrior of the future will need to know how to enter and exit both worlds, if not with ease, then at least without permanently disintegrating his or her personality." With nobility and a noble heart must come humility and an open mind.

"The more we recognize the feelings of transcendence and the psychological and spiritual intensity of war, the easier it will be to prevent their appeal from clouding our judgment about going to war the next time," Marlantes concludes in this indispensable book.

"Without the integration of the positive and negative sides of the war, the experience isn't transmitted in any practical and meaningful sense, and we will continue to seek the glory of war unchecked by wisdom about all the costs of war."

U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Robert Swift presents the Marine Corps flag during an Honor Guard practice session at Joint Base Charleston - Weapons Station, S.C., June 21, 2017. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Thomas T. Charlton)

(Marlantes's book "Matterhorn" is on the Navy Reads "50 for 50" post –– Fifty books to honor the half-century commemoration of the Vietnam War: "Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War" by Karl Marlantes. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2010. "The light died. Voices were silenced. Darkness and fear replaced light and reason. The whisper of a leaf scraping on bark would make heads turn involuntarily and hearts gallop. The surrounding blackness and the unseen wall of dripping growth left no place to run. In that black wet nothingness the perimeter became just a memory. Only imagination gave it form.")

What is 'Upside of Down' in COVID?

Review by Bill Doughty––

What if you could go back in time to hear warnings and advice about a global catastrophe?

We can. 

"The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization" by Thomas Homer-Dixon (Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 2006) teaches us about "catagenesis" –– catastrophe followed by creativity and, eventually, renewal.

His book opens with a bizarre scene from history (just twelve years before the 1918 Great Influenza pandemic, by the way): San Francisco, April 19, 1906, after the U.S. Army had to blow up, using dynamite and artillery fire, damaged buildings including millionaires' mansions. Out of the ashes and expenses of the San Francisco earthquake and fire came "a wave of events that would sweep around the world and, years hence, help create the Federal Reserve System of the United States."

Written during oil shortages, growing terrorism and increasing threats from climate change –– including devastating fires in southern California in 2003 –– Professor Homer-Dixon shows the way toward resilience through innovation.

Now, much more than a decade later, Homer-Dixon's analyses, warnings and recommendations can apply to the catastrophe we're living through in 2020.

Here are some of his warnings:

• Pandemics: "The codes of devastating diseases, including smallpox and the 1918 Spanish Flu are now publicly available, and the machines that allow biologists to mutate the genes of common viruses to make them more lethal, or even to construct viruses from scratch, can be found in laboratories around the world."
• Climate: "At least for a while, we can generate great wealth for ourselves by drawing down nature's capital –– by overusing our soils and forests, overfishing the oceans, and pouring immense quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Eventually, though, when nature's capital nears exhaustion, this reckless behavior will catch up with us, because overstressed ecosystems can lose their resilience and suddenly collapse. In some cases they already have..."
• Stressors: "The population, energy, environmental, climate, and economic stresses affecting our world are just like tectonic stresses: they're deep, invisible, yet immensely powerful; they're building slowly; and they can release their force suddenly without warning."
• Growth: "That's the real problem, because there's no sign we're about to give up our commitment to growth. Meanwhile, our energy consumption is pushing the limits of supply, and our output of waste, especially of carbon dioxide, is pushing Earth's natural systems beyond their thresholds of resilience."
• Leadership: "People will want reassurance. They will want an explanation of the disorder that has engulfed them –– an explanation that makes their world seem, once more, coherent and predictable, if not safe. Ruthless leaders can satisfy these desires and build their political power by prying open existing cleavages between ethnic and religious groups, classes, races, nations, or cultures." (Us and them; the Other.)

Professor Thomas Homer-Dixon (homerdixon.com)

A failure to recognize the threats –– and embrace opportunities for creative renewal ––can bring about total collapse, as Homer-Dixon shows in his brilliant examples from Ancient Rome.

Roman society depended on slave labor and a Ponzi scheme of creating wealth by conquering and exploiting other territories. Significant wealth inequality contributed to the decadence and destruction of Rome, especially when hundreds of wealthy landowners evaded paying taxes, and the empire exceeded its energy requirements.

While we may see a temporary over-abundance of oil at the moment, particularly in these early weeks and months of the novel coronavirus pandemic, we must realize the finiteness of fossil fuels and the existential threat and danger of growth for growth's sake.

He advises to "keep it simple," rely on science, and go with granularity when it comes to intelligence and national defense. 

A U.S. Marine assigned to Marine Corps Intelligence Schools, Navy and Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center, attends class at Naval Base Dam Neck, Virginia Beach, Va., Jan 17, 2017. The school provides intelligence language training and remote sensor system operators in order to provide technically proficient Marines to the operating forces and supporting establishments. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Laura Mercado)

"The intelligence and defense agencies of countries used to focus their resources mainly on tracking, assessing, and responding to threats from large agglomerations of military force, like armies massed along borders, naval fleets at sea, and missiles in their silos," Homer-Dixon writes. "Today such agencies have to pay much more attention than before to small groups and even single persons."

Another stuttering, uncommon, but perfect word in "The Upside of Down" is "concatenating" –– chained together and reinforcing each other in entirely unexpected ways.

On a crowded interdependent planet, hurricanes, financial crises, droughts, and disease outbreaks can have devastating impacts. This warning in "The Upside of Down" comes from fourteen years ago!:

"Our world's tight connectivity also promotes the rapid spread of disease. In fact, we are now seeing a negative synergy between the massive size of the human population and its internal connectivity that helps new diseases –– like HIV/AIDS, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and perhaps soon avian influenza –– develop and propagate around the planet faster than ever before. Collectively, humankind now makes up one of the largest bodies of genetically identical biomasses on Earth: all of us, taken together, weigh nearly a third of a billion tons. Combined with our proximity in enormous cities, and our constant travel back and forth across the globe, we're now a rich environment –– just like a huge Petri dish brimming with nutrients –– for the spread of disease."

And in our globally connected but complex ecosystem of a world we are led to another "new" word (or at least new use of a word): "Panarchy" –– a theory that "helps us see our world's tectonic stresses as part of long-term global process of change and adaption. It also illustrates the way catastrophe caused by such stresses could produce a surge of creativity leading to the renewal of our global civilization." Resilience!

Navy Chief William Imfeld of USS Shoup (DDG 86) inspects a foreign fishing boat's freezer
for an Oceania Maritime Security Initiative with the Coast Guard in 2018. (MC2 W. Collins III)

The devastating effects of overfishing in the world's oceans has led to international agreements and the hope for more cooperation on the global commons. Although not included in this book, but as an example of ingenuity in the face of necessity, the U.S. Coast Guard operates in coordination with the U.S. and Canadian navies and other entities, including Canada's Department of Oceans and Fisheries, to help enforce international laws and treaties.

Homer-Dixon writes, "Economists in particular say that human beings if given the right incentives, are smart enough to solve just about any problem that comes their way." He notes the irony of the morbid incentives that exist in dwindling numbers of fish that become worth more due to their very scarcity.

Crewmembers of U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Sequoia (WLB 215) stand with members of Oceans and Fisheries Canada before boarding vessels in the Western Pacific Ocean July 30, 2018. The crews boarded vessels to ensure compliance with Western and Central Fisheries Convention regulations.
(U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Amanda Levasseur/Released)

How can we incentivize good behavior as we harness the ingenuity of humans who want to see balance, ethics, critical thinking, science, and cooperation in our progress forward?

(By the way, while this book –– with its extensive notes and fascinating references to history and science –– gives us a snapshot from the past, Homer-Dixon offers more recent commentaries and perspectives, including some essays about the novel coronavirus, on his website, including his Pandemic Log, where he examines the science, economics and prospects of COVID-19.)

C.S. "Buzz" Hollings (Wikipedia)

In "The Upside of Down" we meet some fascinating people, including Crawford S. "Buzz" Holling, "one of the world's great ecologists." Homer-Dixon takes us to Florida's Gulf Coast to meet Holling, one of the creators of panarchy theory, and discuss adaptive cycles of growth, collapse, regeneration, and then growth again.

Holling, who passed away last August at the age of 88, was a proponent of resilience in the face of deep collapse. He predicted a "rare and major 'pulse' of social transformation" –– much like punctuated equilibrium in evolution –– on scale with the shift from hunter-gatherers to agricultural settlements, the industrial revolution, and global communication connectivity, including through the internet and World Wide Web.

Holling advised, "The only way to approach such a period, in which uncertainty is very large and one cannot predict what the future holds, is not to predict, but to experiment and act inventively and exuberantly via diverse adventures in living." Perhaps we can consider Holling's words in contemplating a new normal after COVID-19.

Homer-Dixon said, "We'll see shortly that exuberant experimentation is essential to social resilience." Renewal can come, but "we need to prepare to turn breakdown to our advantage when it happens –– because it will."

The San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and financial panic of 1907 led to the formulation of the Federal Reserve System, which has acted as a "backstop" for rich countries' economies. The Great Depression led to creation of the Social Security System. It could be argued that the First World War led to women's right to vote and both world wars helped integrate societies and ignite the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.

What will we, as world citizens, bring about in COVID-19's aftermath?

The U.S. Navy Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels, and the U.S. Air Force Air Demonstration Squadron, the Thunderbirds, conduct a flyover April 28 to honor frontline COVID-19 responders and essential workers with a formation over New York City. (Photo by MC3 Omar Rubi)