Once an Eagle as Professional Obligation

If you groaned at this title, you might be the problem.

Every Army officer can recite the basics: Sam Damon rises from enlisted soldier to general across three wars, embodying selfless leadership while his foil Courtney Massengale schemes his way up through careerism and politics. This synopsis of Once an Eagle has been drilled into military consciousness for over fifty years. But knowing the plot isn't the same as understanding why this Vietnam-era novel maintains an iron grip on professional military education—or whether it should.

I make two contentions for Army readers: The first is that you are duty-bound to read this book, but not duty-bound to like, agree with, or otherwise sanctify its contents. The second is that this book's enduring influence reveals more about how we approach professional development than about leadership itself.

The Obligation to Engage

It is a fair generalization to say that there are two groups of Army officers who have not read this book. The first are the set of people who dislike reading and may have been repelled by the length of the book (1,312 pages, in paperback form). The second are readers who are not intimidated by the book's length, but who nevertheless refuse to read it.

The first group should remember that Once an Eagle is a work of fiction, and is certainly a more immersive and enriching experience than the many shallow leadership books that populate most professional reading lists. This group might embrace reading it as a personal challenge—even an exercise in willpower—in today’s attention economy. Once an Eagle is not Message to Garcia—it’s going to take some work to finish.

The second group should read Once an Eagle because it is Army canon. Readers can—and should—criticize the book and its place atop so many reading lists, but they cannot slay the sacred cow without having read it in its entirety. Many officers that I have spoken to over the years refuse to read the book as a demonstration of intellectual independence. However, refusing to read the book as an Army officer is merely a form of intellectual laziness.

There is likely no single book that has been more widely read across the Army and Marine Corps than Once an Eagle. Like it or not, this is probably the most single influential work on leadership in the Army. An intellectually serious officer must question why this is the case—and the only way to start is to do the reading. Understanding the profession requires understanding its cultural touchstones, even—or especially—when we disagree with them.

Photo courtesy of ThriftBooks.

The Danger of Prescribed Meaning

I suspect that this book is so popular in part because there are so many themes to take away from it. Because the book has been so heavily prescribed for so long, it seems that there are some assumptions regarding the scope, power, and number of 'takeaways.' Readers who open the book confident that it contains no insight whatsoever are likely to come away with their assumptions confirmed. Likewise, those who assume that this book provides a career's worth of leadership advice may come away satisfied. Both readings are simplistic.

If your interpretation of the enduring lesson of Once an Eagle is that an officer should be Sam Damon, for better or for worse, then I believe that you read the book, but that you didn't think about it. If we are interpreting the book to mean that Army officers "should be just simple, hardworking country boys who don’t understand all this staff stuff," I think that we are guilty of a shallow interpretation of Myrer's work.

Damon and Massengale are not real—they are composites of many officers who served in World War II, but most critically they are abstractions. The characters are cast in deep relief so the distinctions between the two are clearer. To treat them as models for emulation or avoidance is to mistake caricature for character. The book works as literature precisely because these figures are extremes, not because they represent achievable or even desirable leadership archetypes.

Once an Eagle as Rorschach Test

The book functions as a professional Rorschach test: What you see in it reveals as much about your position, experience, and assumptions as it does about Myrer's intent. A company commander might see validation of tactical excellence and care for soldiers. A staff officer might see unfair demonization of intellectual work. A senior leader might see the complexities of navigating bureaucracy and politics. Each reading is valid, yet incomplete.

Others may find deeper meaning where I see shallow lessons, and that divergence is precisely the point. Even if you read the book and come away believing that the operative lesson is to 'be Sam Damon', this should force a deeper consideration of why the book is so widely prescribed. If we assume officers aren't capable of greater nuance, what does that say about our profession? In this case, it isn't necessarily our fault, since this book has been fed to us as a summation of Army leadership.

As is the case with most information, we don't grasp the real insights until reflection, discussion, and—ideally—debate. One of the great things about literature is that we all find different meaning after reading the very same words. When I read Once an Eagle, I don't see models for leadership. I think that we are sometimes too quick to grasp for the most obvious or most readily-available lesson.

The Real Professional Obligation

The danger lies not in reading Once an Eagle, but in accepting without question whatever lesson we're told it contains. The book's persistence on reading lists for over fifty years suggests it serves a purpose beyond its literary merit or leadership insights. Perhaps that purpose is simply to provide a common reference point for discussion about military professionalism. Perhaps it's to perpetuate certain institutional values, for better or worse.

What matters is that we engage with it critically. An Army that reads the same book for generations but never evolves its interpretation is an Army that has stopped thinking. The question isn't whether Once an Eagle belongs on reading lists—it's whether we're reading it as scripture or as a starting point for serious professional discourse.

Your duty isn't to like Once an Eagle. Your duty isn't to become Sam Damon. Your duty is to understand why this book has shaped your profession—and to decide whether it should continue to do so.

---

Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Richmond is an active-duty Army Special Forces officer. A member of the Army’s Advanced Strategic Planning and Policy Program, he is a graduate student in political science at UC San Diego.