Morality: A Military Necessity

Is it ok to be in the military and be moral? The answer is yes.

In the early 1950s, my ship left San Diego for the Western Pacific. We had eighteen “boots” aboard. The captain decided that these young men needed to be protected, and should be informed of the facts of life. It was a three-pronged effort. The exec talked to the men in a fatherly sort of way about their mothers, their sisters, their hometown girlfriends, and their wives. This nostalgia was to protect them from waywardness. An “assigned” chaplain talked with them about absolute morality and sin. And finally, the medical officer and the corpsman taught them about condoms and “past event cleansing.” … The training had left out the effects of peer pressure…

This essay was first written for the U.S. Naval Institute Prize Essay Contest. Because of the gross moral lapses in the U.S. military in the last few decades, I thought I should prepare it for distribution to our future leaders. It is dedicated to the future military leadership of the United States.

– James I. Wilson