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He tells me that for the last few years my mind has been a swamp—stagnant, fetid, seeping in every direction. Now it’s time for my mind to be a river—raging, channeled, and therefore pure. I like it. I tell him I’ll try to keep this image in mind. He talks and talks, and as long as he’s talking, I’m OK. I’m in control. His advice feels like an oxygen cup on my mouth.
Find one thing you can improve on—late-night eating, skipping breakfast—and make that change. Find small ways to improve; they all add up. You will feel so much better, your performance will show it, and before too long, the small changes become a way of life.
Jump Attack
Tim S. Grover
But Almond was MacArthur’s boy, the true loyalist, headstrong and arrogant, determined to make the reality of the Korean battlefield fit the dreams of the commander in the Dai Ichi. That was why the ongoing confrontation between Almond and Smith was so important—it was really a struggle between MacArthur and Smith, with Almond as a self-important, highly impatient middle man, demanding that the men under him follow orders that were essentially conceived in madness, while Smith played the unfortunate role of the subordinate officer, charged with representing the battlefield as it actually was, and protecting the lives of his men if at all possible. Ordered to go north toward the Yalu as fast as he could (the words “barrel through” were sometimes used), Smith systematically tried to undermine his orders. The area in which his division was to operate and dominate the Chinese contained one thousand square miles, filled with rugged mountains, in freezing temperatures. He was absolutely convinced that the Chinese were there in large numbers, and he did not intend to fragment his division in the way that Almond demanded. When the Chinese struck, which he was quite sure they were going to do, he did not want his regiments so poorly dispersed that they were unable to support one another. He tried to impress Almond with the fact that the superior power of the First Marine Division came from using it as a whole, but he felt that, whatever Almond’s other skills, listening to subordinates was not one of them. As such, Smith fought his orders as best he could for as long as he could. He slow-walked them when he could and came perilously close to out-and-out insubordination to a superior known for the explosive quality of his temper. Had he been an Army officer and not a Marine, there is no doubt that Almond would have relieved him. In the end, because he was so careful and obstinate, he not only saved the First Marines from total destruction, but saved Almond’s command as well.
The Coldest Winter
David Halberstam
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