re: #25 Kragar

In the USMC, we have the buddy system drilled into from boot camp. You never go anywhere alone, or let a fellow Marine go off on his own. Either the Army is so lax they don’t have similar rules, or someone in his unit dropped the ball or didn’t care that Bergdahl was vulnerable.

Just finished a long overdue reading of Sledge’s _With the Old Breed_. He made a great deal of how important esprit de corps was to his unit and how that helped them stand up to what were essentially unbearable conditions.

(The book is about the personal experiences of a marine during the invasions of Peleliu and Okinawa during WW2. Considered one of the better first person narratives about the experience of war.)