If you do not like History, close this now. I warned you in the final post of Genesis, then in the title, and I am not warning you again!

Every negative comment about what is taught or happened is fact you can verify if you are willing to actually look it up. The one argument I had with an antiwar lunatic that cracked me up was when he replied 'It may be fact, but that doesn't make it the truth!'

Think about it, then if you're still not sure why it was so damn funny, look up the words fact and truth, then get back to me.

My late mother was an interesting person. Like myself, she was a writer, and instead of merely answering a question (Mom, why is the sky blue?) her reply was always, 'If you wanna know, read a book for Christ's sake!'. The first time I asked about dinosaurs, read a book, why the Nazis were so bad, read a book. Should I hate others because of their skin color? That was a talk right up there with the birds and the bees.

I can thank my mother for an eclectic reading regimen I have followed ever since, and for me getting my butt kicked by my older sister because I called her a Diplodocus. Twice actually, when she found out the name means 'double beam' as in wide load...

I have always loved history, and made military history something I studied on my own. One reason, is as I said in Genesis, history is only interesting if you hear it from people who lived it. The other reason was even at eleven, I knew we couldn't have been right every time we got into a war, and one of my grade school history teachers repeated an old quote that made me curious; 'History is written by the winners'.

Take it from someone who has studied it longer than most of you have been alive; not counting the Revolution there were only three wars we fought in our history were we were wholly in the right; as in it needed to be fought, and the bad guys were definitely wrong. PM me, and I'll tell you which. The list might surprise you. I'll warn you now, only one of them was fought in the last century.

Modern history taught in junior high school up until college has as much in common with what happened as a fairy tale does to real life. Part of the problem is the process for when new textbooks are chosen.

The public, meaning the citizens, have a say in it, and every jot and tittle of a new text can be challenged. As an actual example you can look up, the Mississippi board of education (Followed by their state legislature) decided to claim that all of our history prior to the War Between the States was a fabrication created by those damn Yankees. That slavery had never been widespread, and it was all a lie. They passed a law, then ordered the libraries and schools to strike all such references in texts. So Uncle Tom's Cabin among other works were removed from the shelves to keep their children from learning about it.

Don't laugh! They did the same in the mid 19th century deciding that Pi is exactly three to make it easier for kids to study Math.

Add to that the fact that the people who teach history before the college level are rarely well versed in it, and are told to follow the text book.

When I wrote Return From Exile, I made a Jedi that still remembered the carnage of her war, unlike Revan. When I posted Dxun Memories here (in 2010, two years after I did at Lucasforums) I received only two reviews. One pretty much accused me of creating a Mary Sue, because Marai was more knowledgeable about ground tactics, and the Mando'a in general.

I had a reason for that. I see Revan as a tactical genius, but as a Naval Officer. Marai was, and is a ground pounder. Two different skill sets. Follow on here.

The US Marines who are still the premier group on this planet when it comes to hostile landings knows exactly how bad it can be when you hit a hostile shore. Just look at every landing in the Pacific from Guadalcanal to Inchon. While technically part of the US Navy, they have been their own service most of the last century, just expecting the bus driver (The Navy) to deliver them to their destination, and supply the tools of the trade when they did. The Navy buys their equipment, and as WEB Griffin points out in the Corps Series, it means after the Navy gets everything they need, the Marines get their needs met.

Like still still manufacturing and issuing the Springfield '03 while the Army had already proven the Garand. Of course that meant they ended up with the Brewster Buffalo the Navy no longer wanted instead of the F4F-3 Wildcat on Midway. 13 out of 20 Buffalo pilots died facing the Zero while four of the six pilots in the Wildcats there scored kills, (along with a lot of those Buffalo pilots as one final sacrifice) and more importantly, made it back to fight another day. The commander of the Marine pilots at Midway didn't climb into one of the Wildcats. Major Floyd Parkes went into battle leading the others in a Buffalo, and according to the Official Naval History, was one of the first American pilots (Perhaps the only one in truth, after all that history is propaganda) to be strafed in his parachute after bailing out. They also had to wait during Guadalcanal for the Army to reinforce them in October of 1942 before they finally had tanks.

But before WWII, landing on a hostile shore had been something the Navy did because sometimes they had to, not because it was their primary mission. If that doesn't make sense, watch or read the Hornblower Series (I'd suggest the British TV series to get the 'this is a Marine landing?' out of your system). In fact there was only two major landings by the USMC before WWII, One was at Veracruz to seize the dock to allow the Army troops transported to be unloaded in the Mexican-American war and the other was Tripoli (As in the first line of the hymn, From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli), when the Marines landed to take the city from the land side to end that war (1803). It wasn't until half way through WWII that the Navy actually started teaching their officers more than 'go here, and drop the troops' at Annapolis. Case in point what I patterned Dxun on. Operation Pestilence, the Guadalcanal invasion.

After Midway, the US knew they had to strike and strike hard. But as I pointed out in Dxun Memories (And wax lyrical about in Return From Exile, the next one) Our troops were fighting two wars. One against the Axis, and the other at the upper echelon against the other services trying to steal the funding they needed. When MacArthur in Australia suggested that we invade Rabaul, the Navy (who didn't want the Army to win the war without them), split the South Pacific into two sections about 1000 miles apart, SWPOA [Southwest Pacific Operations area](MacArthur) and COMSOPAC (Commander, South Pacific), which was an all Navy show. Then Nimitz received orders from CNO Earnest King; take Guadalcanal (At the far western edge of COMSOPAC), leaving MacArthur sitting there doing nothing for almost two years.

If you had asked anyone who knew the state of the US military, and especially the Marines who would have to lead that ground attack in June of 1942, they would have told you we couldn't have successfully invaded the Hawaiian Islands, even unopposed. Compared to their manning in 1939 (a little over a thousand officers and just over 13,000 'other ranks', the Corps had grown by 1000%, meaning that some old hand, some were well trained, but most were barely out of boot camp. As an example, it wasn't until 1941 that the Marine corps Commandant rated a rank higher than Major General (A division Commander. Lieutenant General commands a Corps [three divisions] in the Army)

While the Marines themselves pointed at all of the problems, especially not enough fully trained Marines to guarantee victory, it went ahead anyway.

The preparations were a farce, cargo improperly loaded back in the states (By Naval hands) had to be reloaded to conform to Marine needs. The Longshoremen Union in New Zealand refusing to move it except during Union sanctioned hours, meaning these troops had to reload it correctly (Called Combat Loading. PM me to understand the difference) the rehearsal in Fiji only highlighting the flaws. Every problem ignored by the high command. Then when they arrived at their targets, the Navy refused to supply men to shift cargo from the boats to dumps on shore which was standard procedure. Not enough ramp style landing craft (So famous [and what the war movies portray] later in the war, and at Normandy), causing problems moving trucks artillery and the engineering equipment destined to complete that runway that never even got off the ships.

But on 7 August 1942, Jack Fletcher led the fleet that hit Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Gavutu islands. We landed almost unopposed on Guadalcanal and grabbed the airfield they were building by the second day, but less than eight hours after that, Fletcher send an urgent message to Pearl Harbor, claiming that he had lost too many aircraft (He had all three of our operational carriers in the Pacific at the time; Enterprise[90 aircraft], Saratoga [78 aircraft] and Hornet[90 aircraft]. over 250 aircraft. His losses were 19, only 14 of them fighters. If you want to argue that Hornet was alrrady there, it's even worse, 270 aircraft.) and was short on fuel and had to withdraw. He informed Marine General Archibald Vandergrift of this at 1830 of that same day, 9 August.

Six hours later, came the 1st Battle of Savo Island (there were 4) after this 'I can't stay any longer' claim had been made, (not before as the Navy's official history records it) and using that as an excuse, the Navy sailed away with everything not already on the beach. Of the 1st Marine Division (16,000 men), 11,000 men had gotten ashore with less than half of their supplies, and none of their heavy artillery. Three thousand men that had taken Tulagi, and Gavutu (2800+ survivors of the 2nd Battalion 1st Division, the 2nd Raider Battalion, and 1st Parachute Battalion, both added to the 1st Marine Division so we're talking 21,000 total assigned) had to be shuttled from those islands to the main force using the few boats that had been abandoned when the Navy ran.

Henderson Field, the reason they were there, and later what kept them alive, was completed using captured Japanese equipment, and Marines that should have been protecting it working with hand tools to get it ready for even minimal use. They could thank the original Japanese Naval construction troops (450 compared to the soon to be 13,000 plus Marines) for most of the food they had, and the equipment down to picks and shovels to finish the job.

While the Marines performed miracles, the Navy dithered. There were two months where supplies and reinforcements were run in using small groups of APDs (WWI destroyers with half their engines ripped out. Called High Speed transports, though that was only if you compared them to a standard Merchant ship of the time, and a Battalion [600 men] needed 4 APDs) that would offload and run like hell before they were seen, dumping barrels of fuel for the planes and making the Marines take the few boats they had to tow it ashore, then moving them by hand.

COMSOPAC, Robert Ghormley who was now in charge, sent a desperate message on 16 October 1942 saying his forces were wholly inadequate (A direct quote), and he needed reinforcements. But he wasn't asking for more troops, he was asking for more ships, and his wish list read like a kid at Christmas asking for the moon and the Green cheese that went with it. He was relieved, and William 'Bull' Halsey took over. He didn't whine, he supplied the marines, fought the battle he had been given with what he had, and he won. He was one of the first Admirals who didn't just say 'do it' and blame the Marines if they failed due to their lacking supplies. Every landing he commanded from the start was later used to teach later cadets how to do it right the first time.

Back in 1945, they made a John Wayne movie Named Back to Bataan. As they were shooting it, the POWs held in a POW camp there at Cabanatuan had just been rescued by a daring Army Ranger raid. Those actual POWs were dragooned into shooting a scene for the end of the movie where they were marched past the cameras, and as faces were shown, their names were given.

If we remade the Movie Guadalcanal Diary today, the men who finally turned the islands over to the army in November would have looked like those real POWs. Of the survivors of the First Marine Division (about 11,000), 70% had malaria, and the average man had lost 22 pounds. Picture being starved enough that you go from 176 (My average weight now) to 154 in about two months.

They won because they wouldn't give up, fought even while they starved, and gave us a victory our high command didn't deserve. The Marines have a tradition of victory, and they can name exactly three times in the last 230 years where they lost a battle. My favorite song in this new Millennium is 'I'm proud to be an American', because it doesn't praise our nation, it praises all of those brave men that died so I could write this without being told by my own government that I don't have the right to say it.

As much as I would like to say, as John Paul Jones did, 'my country right or wrong', I have learned of too many time when my country, my government was wrong.

While the background of Dxun Memories, all of the stupid officers and even more stupid decisions might read like I had made it up from wholecloth, (Defined as pretty much out and out lies) the situations I portray did happen in reality. I had more than five centuries of history where idiot officers expected the Moon from their troops and won anyway.

For the interim between the Mandalorian Wars and when Revan came against them, think of this:

As a student of history, the things about the US that has always bothered me are that we tend to start a war wholly inadequate, Rush production and training to get what's needed into the field throwing half trained men into the battle, and by luck, win. Then once peace sets in rush away from a war footing so fast I'm surprised the Nation doesn't suffer from permanent whiplash, and that when we do, the bean counters make sure the warriors we might need later aren't around for long. As I had them do with Karath, the men who fought and survived end up on the sidelines as fast as you can say 'you're a reserve officer, we're cutting back to just the professionals' so we can be just as inept the next time around.

When a war starts, we promote the warriors because we have to, but back in Washington the senior bean counters have a little list with the ranks the warriors had attained before the war is marked. This is called the Permanent Rank; adjusted by the time since it was created to determine what rank they would attain in peace time if the war had not happened. After the war, it's what you go back to. As an example, George Armstrong Custer, who had only reached 1st lieutenant before the War Between the States began, and by Gettysburg was a Major General in command of a Cavalry division, was returned to his permanent rank of Major at war's end, and died at the Little Big Horn 11 years later as a mere lieutenant colonel in command of a single regiment. After all, we don't need as large an army in peace as we do in war, right?

In Griffin's 'Brotherhood of War' a Captain that has already commanded an independent force in Korea, and is now a Chief Staff to a Division (A Major's slot) is dumped not because he can't do the job he's doing, but because he hasn't been everything the Army expects him to be by that time, (such as VD officer, Entertainment officer, Mess officer, and the nauseating list goes on) while there are men back in the States that are considered qualified for that position without ever seeing combat because they have done this.

As for rushing away from it; in 1950, the US military was in a shambles. Acting in Truman's behalf to make the military more cohesive, the second Secretary of Defense, Louis Arthur Johnson in 1948 and 49 slashed defense budgets looking only at redundancy and cost, not what was necessary to carry out their mission. He told the Marines that since we'd never have to do another amphibious landing (According to Chief of Staff of the Army Omar Bradley), that they were nothing more than an over glorified Naval Police force, and since the Air Force could bomb anywhere on the planet with nuclear weapons, we didn't even need the Navy.

So when the Koreans attacked in July of 1950 (On my birth date but three years before I was born), Truman asked all of the Joint Chiefs what we could do. The Air Force suggested using Nukes and blowing the entire peninsula off the map because tactical air was a thing of the past as far as they were concerned. The navy told him flat out that thanks to having most of their ships in mothballs or already scrapped, they could not even blockade the Koreans, and would need time to even gather the ships before they could transport additional troops, or even supply the men already there. Though they could suggest a non-nuclear tactical response with carriers and Marine pilots.

The Army had some understrength divisions with few tanks, but none that could stand up to the T34, because the heavier tanks that could were stateside or in the Philippines in storage; Japan (Where our army for the Pacific was stationed, except for about a thousand in Korea orignally), had bridges too weak to support them. It would take a sealift to rival Normandy to get men there faster. None of our armed forces even had a tithe of people who had seen combat; the bean counters had seen to that.

As for the Marines, they had gone from about six divisions in 1945, to two half strength divisions in 1950. They had to combine both of those just to have the division that later fought in Korea. Even then they had almost lost their ground attack aircraft because the Air Force could do that job. As history showed, Johnson, and Truman, were dead wrong, and our men paid for it with their lives.

We did it again after the Gulf war, when Clinton and his minions raped the Defense budget for the 'peace dividend'. It was stated in the Press that in 2002, the US military did not have the sea and airlift necessary to have pulled Desert Storm again. Without the prepositioned weapons in Saudi and Kuwait, we'd be still waiting to fight Saddam (Though Operation Iraqi Freedom was only partially legal. Again, PM me if you want the truth).

The scene in Dxun Memories where Marai comments on the training regimen used by her Division (But not her own Battalion) are right out of what the Soviet Union was doing right up until the Berlin Wall fell; with set piece training battles where the units succeed in their mission with casualties within about 5% of what they would have anticipated, ammunition expended within the norms, and in almost exactly the time allotted for the maneuver, right out of what their officer handbooks said should happen if everything went right. Worse for them, we knew it.

As someone once said, the first law of war is Murphy's Law. Our own services got wake up calls during wargames before WWII. In 1935, the Pacific fleet fought a war game where the Red Force (Japan) was going to strike at Pearl Harbor, with the carriers and escorts of that fleet simulating an attack after the fleet sortied to engage. Blue force (All of the other surfaces ships) would try to stop them. The Red commander struck at dawn with full deck strikes while blue force was still in harbor warming up to depart. The referees stated that every ship in harbor was sunk before they could sail. The admirals in charge ignored it as a fluke. The Japanese would declare war first, right?

In 1936 in I think it was Mississippi, the Army had a war game with equally matched forces. One side had a man named George Patton in charge of their tanks. Standard doctrine then was that tanks supported infantry (Look at the design of the M3 tanks, the A [Lee] had a light machine gun in the turret while the B [Grant] had a 37mm cannon, both with a 75mm side mount to shoot up bunkers). Patton had read a book by Hans Guderian (The father of the Blitzkrieg) and without orders formed his tanks as a unit with infantry supporting them. He blew through the men facing him, raced across country with the enemy trying to figure out what he was doing, and twelve hours into a three day game, he captured the enemy headquarters, and it was over. He was ordered back to his start line. The reason? He cheated.

The second law of war; if you wanted a fair fight, take up boxing, not the military.

But it goes on even now. Watch the movies Heartbreak Ridge and Down Periscope, and you see modern American officers doing the same damn thing.

For me this is going to be both hard and fun. You see, I never recreated a battle of Midway to precede Dxun, and now I have to.