Every generation, someone says a new invention like machine guns, airplanes, or nuclear weapons means old military lessons no longer matter. warontherocks.com/school-of-…

Samuel Wilkeson Jr.’s dispatch from Gettysburg melded grief and duty into a singular force that remains a seminal piece of American reportage. nyti.ms/4jaw9nG

Even before the 9/11 attacks, Col. Richard "Rick" Rescorla was a decorated war hero with a Silver Star from his actions in Vietnam. 25 years ago today, Rescorla saved 2,687 people and paid the ultimate sacrifice. Here’s how it happened. 🧵

#Expand tf out of proposing to your wife at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine

🇺🇸 163 Years Ago Today, June 30th, 11:00 AM General Buford’s main cavalry division enters Gettysburg from the south. Local civilians inform Buford that Confederate infantry had approached the western edge of town just two hours prior. Recognizing the strategic value of the local road network, Buford rides out personally to inspect the ridges west of the town. He determines that holding this high ground is vital and orders his troopers to prepare defensive positions.

"No soldier on either side gave a damn about the slaves." - Shelby Foote

Even crazier that we don’t have 30 movies about the Civil War. Of course I know why we don’t, but it’s still ridiculous. You could make a movie just about Antietam or Chancellorsville or Shiloh. You could make a Band of Brothers style thing following the course of the whole war and it would be phenomenal. In a just world Stonewall Jackson would have his own prestige awards bait biopic. But that will never happen in a million years.

This should be on everyone’s Memorial Day reading list.

What’s your favourite painting of Napoleon?

This is a horrible idea/initiative IMO. COVID taught us this. Learning sciences. But more importantly centuries of military service that there are cohesive & career bonding properties of physical shared experiences. taskandpurpose.com/news/army… Soldiers/officers that bonded in schools are later at key locations together in war. A school is a shared experience for those that do it together and with any that attended the same experience. For the U.S. Army, from the American-Mexican war until now...leaders that know each other personally from a shared experience or that have a shared memory of a place/experience. Trying to save money by cutting presence at CGSC, Captains Course, really any institutional school and foundational shared experience is a bad idea with down stream impacts on performance. The military is not a civilian institution. We have drastically different goals. This is the thesis of my book Connected Soldiers. A belief of improving a soldier's individual experiences at the cost of cohesion and combat effectiveness.