Cartoons are rare in Military Review. So you can understand my pleasant surprise when I saw this sketch of the toy soldier pegged to double-time. Who was this retired Army colonel who spent about four-thousand words in the mid-60s critiquing the Army’s work fetish? I lived the grind he described:
Our staffer runs each action through a succession of chiefs, amending his script on order as he goes, putting this in and taking that out, often winding up with pretty much the same thing with which he started.
Fifty years later, it still lands. “The Professional Automaton
” turned me on to the works of Col. Anthony Wermuth, and in those works, I found tremendous range. Not a one-trick pony, Wermuth’s writings ranged in focus from nuclear weapons, to the infantry’s place on the battlefield, to the Army’s people. And his forms ranged too, from sketches and satire, to poetry, to lengthy academic pieces.
Want to know more about range? Check out this #ArmyAuthor profile of Col. Anthony Wermuth.
Thanks for this find. Much holds true nearly 60 years later. Be patient.