You may have seen the following TV spot: A soldier is running alone across the desert, carrying a backpack but no rifle. Helicopters swoop overhead. A squad of soldiers runs past, moving in the direction opposite that of the lone runner. Voiceover: "Even though there are 1,045,690 soldiers like me, I am my own force. . . . The might of the U.S. Army doesn't lie in numbers. It lies in me. I am an Army of One."
To anyone with the slightest acquaintance with military life, this recruiting ad is very peculiar indeed. One of the most fundamental truths about soldiering is that, with a few partial exceptions like snipers, a single warrior acting alone is of very little use to the cause he is fighting for. Ground warfare is carried on by units, of which the smallest that has much practical value is the platoon.
A great deal of military training is directed towards creating and maintaining unit cohesion. Parade-ground drill, for example marching, turning, and manipulating weapons in formation-which seems very pointless when you first have to do it, is designed to make you understand that the very movements of your body belong to a larger organism: the squad, the platoon, the company. An Army of One? How is that supposed to work?
For more than 20 years, the principal recruiting slogan of the U.S. Army was "Be all you can be," which the trade journal Advertising Age ranked as second on its list of "Top Ten Jingles of the Century," after the McDonald's line "You deserve a break today." I had always thought "Be all you can be" about as far as military recruiters could reasonably go to accommodate the sensibilities of a narcissistic age without completely taking leave of reality..................
