Copyright by John T. Reed

In recent years, I have heard certain military personnel, usually Marines, bragging that they never leave a comrade behind—even a dead comrade.

Let’s think about that.

For one thing, I call it a “purported” policy because I am not sure it is the official policy of the Marines or any other unit. I even wonder if it is a Marine policy that has been proclaimed by Marine privates without consulting with the Commandant of the Marine Corps. If so, the Commandant has not been quick enough or loud enough at correcting the notion that the Marines never leave a dead comrade behind.

The U.S. Army Ranger Creed says, in part, “I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy.” Who wrote the Ranger Creed and whether it is official Army policy is not discussed on that Ranger.org Web page. (See my article on Rangers for other details about that training.)

I wonder if the “policy” has not been denounced by the leaders of the Marine Corps or Rangers or whoever because they fear it would make them look bad. The “existence” of such a “policy” may have achieved “fact” status. That is, so many people may regard it as a fact that the leaders of the Corps or Rangers do not have the guts to say it was never the case. Or maybe it is the case. I cannot be sure of that.

Fog of war

For one thing, such a policy must contend with the fog of war. A policy that says the Marines or Rangers or whatever other unit never leave a dead comrade behind suggests a black-and-white situational certainty that rarely exists in war. During combat, it is hard to tell whether a comrade has been left anywhere and/or whether such comrade is dead.

The comrade in question may have gone to the bathroom, literally. That happened to my patrol in Ranger School once. A guy took a potty break in a bush while the patrol was moving. When he finished, he bolted out of the bush at full speed. We thought he was the enemy and machine gunned him—with blanks. We might have thought he was not where he was supposed to be because he was dead in slightly different circumstances.

A missing soldier may be with another U.S. unit because of the fog of war. He may have been wounded and taken himself to the rear or been taken to the rear.

He may not be immediately available because he is still within the American lines, but not visible to those looking for him. That is, his nearby, relatively safe position may be obscured by a bush or tree or log or mound of dirt.

Also, how do you tell when a missing comrade has been captured by the enemy and removed to their rear area? You could lose a lot of men trying to find his nonexistent dead body in the vicinity of the enemy.

What about a comrade who goes nuts and commits suicide by one-man frontal assault? Do his surviving comrades have to mimic his insanity and do likewise to retrieve him?

In short, whether a comrade is “behind,” that is, lying out near the enemy in a location that the U.S. unit is about to retreat from is often extremely hard to determine when guns are shooting, explosives are going off, smoke and dust and noise are everywhere, and all hell is generally breaking loose.

Enemy tricks

If I were the enemy and knew some U.S. units had a policy of never leaving a dead comrade behind, I would try to make the Americans believe they were doing just that to lure them into an ambush. For example, put a dead Iraqi out in the open dressed in an American uniform. If we truly NEVER leave such a comrade behind, we would have to fall for that trap. During World War II, the Japanese often lured Americans to their deaths or tried to by pretending verbally to be wounded, not dead, Americans. They did not pretend to be dead Americans because we had no such never-leave-a-dead-comrade-behind policy then.

Is this the way it has always been?

I was a kid in the late 1940s and early 1950s. World War II had just ended. The movies were often war movies about World War II. I remember many a World War II movie with a scene where a group of Americans was retreating from the enemy and one of their comrades was wounded to the point that he was slowing them down.

“Go on without me. I’ll hold them off as long as I can.” he says. “Are you sure,” his healthier comrades ask. Maybe they initially refuse to leave him and he has to argue strenuously to get them to go. Whatever the details, they ultimately leave him some extra ammo and grenades and, sitting rather than standing because of his leg wounds, he turns toward the pursuing enemy as his comrades say good bye and run away. When the enemy appears, he blasts away until, outnumbered, he is killed by them. His comrades escape safely because of his delaying action. He subsequently is posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor or Navy Cross or some such for his heroism.

As I grew older, went to West Point then to Vietnam, I still never heard of any “We never leave a fellow Marine [or other military person] behind” policy. I do not believe there ever was such a policy.

Then, recently, around the late 1990s, I began hearing that the Marines never leave a dead comrade behind. When writing this article, I learned of the Ranger Creed that says the same. Maybe they don’t anymore, but I would be amazed if that has been their policy in the past.

Worth the risk?

The most obvious problem with such a policy is the risk to the live Marines, Rangers, or other military personnel in the unit in question. Let’s say that a group of Marines knows for certain that a dead comrade is lying in the vicinity of the enemy some yards forward of their Americans’ position. According to the policy, they must advance toward the enemy to retrieve the dead body.

There are two ironclad priorities in military operations:

1. accomplishment of the mission
2. the welfare of the men

in that order.

The mission

The commander of the unit must first accomplish his mission. It is hard to imagine a circumstance where retrieving a dead body at risk to the remaining men in the unit constitutes the best way to accomplish the unit’s mission.

The mission typically is to defend a portion of the larger unit’s perimeter or to advance upon a particular section of the enemy’s position according to a particular schedule (thus the oft-heard “synchronize your watches” admonition in war movies). In rarer cases, the unit may be conducting a reconnaissance patrol in which case they are the eyes of the larger unit and must ascertain the dispositions of the enemy and report them accurately and promptly to the higher headquarters.

About the only mission that would allow retrieval of a dead body would be the latter reconnaissance mission. One man could be sent to the rear to report on the enemy dispositions. The unit in question, thus off duty as far as accomplishment of the mission was concerned, could go to priority 2 and take the actions that would maximize the welfare of the men.

Dereliction of duty

When the mission is the more common defend or attack type, going off to retrieve a dead body would be abandonment of the mission, dereliction of duty. It could result in loss of the battle and dramatically increased allied casualties. Units depend on each other to accomplish their individual missions. Accomplishing your unit’s mission must always be assumed to be a life-or-death matter and generally the unit is expected to accomplish the mission or die trying—literally.

There was a good illustration of that in the movie Gettysburg where a Union unit had the responsibility of defending the flank on Little Round Top. They did so bravely until they ran out of ammunition. Then their commander ordered them to fix bayonets and charge down the hill at the Confederate soldiers. Amazingly, this maneuver caused the Confederates in question to surrender to Union soldiers pointing unloaded guns at them. Both sides had bayonets.

My point here is that they certainly were not off retrieving the body of a dead comrade. They had no such choice to make, no such option. Their mission was to defend the flank, period.

Welfare of the men?

Retrieving a dead comrade, by definition, does nothing for the welfare of the deceased. But it is welcomed generally by the living in the sense that they would want their bodies recovered if it were they who got killed. However, that does not necessarily mean they agree that risking their own lives to retrieve the dead man is a wise, calculated risk.

But is the psychological benefit of such knowledge sufficiently valuable to the living that they should risk serious injury or even death to achieve it?

Absolutely not.

“Welfare of the men” refers, by definition, to the living men. Their welfare is certainly not served by risking their lives. It is appropriate to risk the men’s lives and even to expend them to accomplish the mission because of the larger good. It is also appropriate, within reason, to risk the lives of the men to rescue a wounded or trapped comrade. But risking the men’s lives to retrieve the body of a dead comrade would violate the accomplishment-of-the-mission imperative in most cases and the secondary welfare-of-the-men imperative in all cases.

Never say ‘never’

Bottom line: never say “never.”

The obviously correct policy would be to retrieve bodies whenever possible as long as it can be done without jeopardizing accomplishment of the mission or the welfare of the remaining living members of the unit.

I suspect that there never was an official policy that prohibited levaing a dead comrade behind. But it is quite clear that large numbers of military personnel and the public believe there is such a policy.

End it

If there is, it should be ended immediately. If there is not such a policy, the leaders of the military need to communicate that immediately to all members of the military units that purport to have such a policy, as well as to the public. Until they do, not only are mens’ lives unnecessarily in danger, but so are the more important priorities: accomplishment of the mission and the welfare of the men.

It may be that this “policy” has been invented only by the lowest level Marines or members of other “elite” units as part of their never-ending, one-upsmanship competition with the other services or units.

Do you doubt that the Marines would do such a thing?

During Vietnam, Army soldiers had one-year tours. Marines had 13-month tours. I know of no reason for this other than interservice one-upsmanship. When I wondered aloud how many Marines died during that one-up thirteenth month, a Marine I was talking to said something to the effect of no one because they were all sent to a rear area during that month. In that case, I again ask, what was the point, if not mere one-upsmanship?

Important life-and-death, military doctrine and policy should not be set by adolescent privates and corporals seeking bragging rights in local taverns. Neither should it be set by Hollywood scriptwriters seeking phony drama. Such policy must be set only by the top brass in the Marine Corps and other units who might have claimed a “never leave a dead comrade behind” policy.

If we are going to have a policy on such things, it should be to make retrieving of dead comrades’ bodies third in priority and subordinate to accomplishment of the mission and the welfare of the living members of the unit.

John T. Reed

Link to information about John T. Reed’s Succeeding book which, in part, relates lessons learned about succeeding in life from being in the military

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