An All-Time Great Marine
Max Boot reviews Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak by Robert Coram at the Wall Street Journal.
Via Amazon: From the earliest days of his thirty-four-year military career, Victor “Brute” Krulak displayed a remarkable facility for applying creative ways of fighting to the Marine Corps. He went on daring spy missions, was badly wounded, pioneered the use of amphibious vehicles, and masterminded the invasion of Okinawa. In Korea, he was a combat hero and invented the use of helicopters in warfare. In Vietnam, he developed a holistic strategy in stark contrast to the Army’s “Search and Destroy” methods-but when he stood up to LBJ to protest, he was punished. And yet it can be argued that all of his these accomplishments pale in comparison to what he did after World War II and again after Korea: Krulak almost single-handedly stopped the U.S. government from abolishing the Marine Corps.
Krulak’s combat exploits, while distinguished, were far too brief to put him in the company of Medal of Honor winners such as Lewis “Chesty” Puller or Dan Daly.
This is a pretty glaring error on the part of Mr. Boot. Chesty was not a Medal of Honor recipient.
You are right, no Medal of Honor but he did earn five awards of the Navy Cross.
Far more important than racking-up valorous awards was LtGen Vic Krulak’s vision and influence.
Whether helping early on though his observations in pre-war China with Japanese landing craft, which would see him assisting in design of the Higgins Boat or having a hand in writing the original Marine Corps Small Wars Manual, Victor Krulak was never a man without a mission.
The end of World War II, saw the Corps faced the grim reality with its continued survival in doubt, and it was to Krulak that the CMC looked, to successfully spearhead the fight for the Corps’ survival.
Toward the end of the Generals career, having exhibited past physical courage and never been found wanting, Krulak displayed the moral equivalent, at the probable cost to his career as a future CMC, choosing to tell LBJ behind closed doors what his commander-in-chief didn’t want to hear.
This was a man for all seasons: in war, between wars, out of uniform, and it would seem, even after death.
Anecdotally, thanks for the opportunity to respond about a remarkable individual, whom I once stood in front of(as instructed, my eyeballs never looked down). : )