THESE ARE the particular influences that have shaped me. Other, larger events shaped my generation. Those of us who survived those changes, and were able to advance more than we retreated, may have had advantages not shared by many young people starting out today. Of course it always helps to have good genes and DNA, and to come from families that function normally. But we also grew up in school systems that actually taught us something and imprinted us with a code, which helped move us along the path toward being useful citizens. And for most of us, our religious upbringing gave us an acceptance of a Higher Being in one form or another, at the core of our beliefs.

Of the events that shaped us, some came to us as a legacy; some we actually lived through. One of the biggest was World War Two, which has proven to be both a blessing and a curse to my generation. The blessing was that the Greatest Generation preserved our freedoms and our way of life, lifted us out of a severe depression on a wave of prosperity, and moved us into a role of world leadership. The curse is that it was the last Good War—the last with moral clarity, an easily identified and demonized enemy, unprecedented national unity in mobilization and rationing, pride in those who served in uniform (shown by the blue star flags hung by the families of those who fought and the gold star flags by the families of those who died), and welcome home victory parades for those lucky enough to return from overseas. Every war should be fought like that.

After World War Two, I learned about war at the knees of my cousins, who’d fought at the Battle of the Bulge in Europe and all over the Pacific—on the ground and in the air. A few years later, my older brother was drafted and fought in Korea. Their war stories were remarkable: sometimes gory and horrible, but always positive in the end. It was like winning the Big Game against your archrival—always clean and always good. So this was my generation’s legacy: World War Two was the way you fight a war. And all throughout our four decades of service, this notion kept getting reinforced. Former Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger’s famous 1984 statement of doctrine about the six criteria for the use of military force88 is a recipe for refighting World War Two—not for fighting the Operations Other Than War (OOTW) that we face today. In fact, if you read the Weinberger Doctrine and adhere to every one of its tenets, you will be able to fight no war other than World War Two.

I JOINED the Marines in 1961 and officially retired on September 1, 2000.