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Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

por Robert Coram

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From the earliest days of his thirty-four-year military career, Victor "Brute" Krulak displayed a remarkable facility for applying creative ways of fighting to the Marine Corps. He went on daring spy missions, was badly wounded, pioneered the use of amphibious vehicles, and masterminded the invasion of Okinawa. In Korea, he was a combat hero and invented the use of helicopters in warfare. In Vietnam, he developed a holistic strategy in stark contrast to the Army's "Search and Destroy" methods--but when he stood up to LBJ to protest, he was punished. And yet it can be argued that all of these accomplishments pale in comparison to what he did after World War II and again after Korea: Krulak almost single-handedly stopped the U.S. government from abolishing the Marine Corps.… (más)
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Coram begins the begins his hagiography with an explanation of why Americans have an almost mythic view of the Marine Corps, a service that was close to extinction by the turn of the 20th century -- before Belleau Woods. The American Expeditionary Force under General Pershing was sent quickly to France to bail out the exhausted British and French. Ludendorf, the German General, was about to deliver a hammer blow in an attempt to break through the trench lines and reach Paris. Pershing had forbidden war correspondents from identifying individual Army units, but left an inadvertent loophole with the Marines. The Army despised the Marines, wondering why they even existed as a separate command. At Belleau Woods, however, the Marines, identified as such by Floyd Gibbons, the only correspondent, to go with them, magnificently held off and beat a substantially larger force of Germans, and soon all anyone could talk about was the glorious Marines.

Krulak was a Marine. How he got there was quite interesting, but inauspicious. He was a Jew (non-practicing who lied about his background--antisemitism was rife with signs on establishments reading, "no dogs or jews"), short (5'4"), been married (it lasted but 16 days before being annulled as both he and the bride lied about their names), lied about his age, and failed the entrance exam the first time. So why Annapolis? One reason was that his father realized that graduating from the Naval Academy would open many doors for his son.

At the academy, because of some "commercial" activity, expressly forbidden by Academy rules, he racked up a huge number of demerits, but thanks to his friendship and mentor, an instructor (and unrequited racist and anti-semite, but then that was the Marine ethos of the time), made it through. Krulak had invented an entire backstory for his biography wholly at odds with his Cheyenne, WY and Jewish reality. Had the Navy known of that fiction he probably would not have made it.

Ever since the British debacle at Gallipoli, it had become standard doctrine that amphibious landings were obsolete and would never be part of future actions. The Ellis Report, part of War Plan Orange, presciently predicted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the island hopping strategy that made winning the war in the Pacific possible. That strategy required a multitude of amphibious landings but the Navy had no craft that would work. Krulak was to be instrumental in fixing that.

He and his pregnant wife had been posted to Shanghai, where, in 1937, he took the initiative to watch the Japanese amphibious landings in their conquest of the Chinese mainland. He was stunned to see the radical design of their landing craft and realized the flat-bottomed, ramp-equipped boats were just what the Navy needed. He whipped off a report (he was still a lowly 1st Lieutenant) to Washington anticipating swift action on their designing and building similar craft. The optimism of youth.

The story of the development of the famous landing craft and the role played by Krulak and, in particular, by a Louisiana boat builder named Higgins, is fascinating. Both Higgins and Krulak had to overcome Navy inertia and bureaucracy to get the boats built and approved. ( seeThe Boat That Won the War: An Illustrated History of the Higgins LCVP by Charles Roberts, Jr.) Inter-service rivalry also played a part and the Navy never did adopt the design. It was all Marines. Without the mentorship of General Holland Smith, whom Krulak knew from the Academy, however, he probably would have been drummed out of the Corps years before. He was later instrumental in developing tactics for the nascent Marine helicopter program.

Krulak was prominent participant in the inter-service rivalries following WW II and I was surprised at the vicious enmity that existed between the Army, which tried to get the Marines disbanded and molded into the Army, and even the Navy, envious of their reputation. The Marines never forgave the Navy for deserting them at Guadacanal. One might make a case that some of the "Chowder Gang's" (the name given to the Krulak led opposition to unifying the services) actions bordered on insubordination in their efforts to thwart Truman's wishes. He was, after all, the Commander -in-Chief. Krulak's certitude in himself spilled over into his treatment of their children, the eldest of whom described their childhood as resembling that of the Great Santini.

Reading this book, it's impossible not to come away with the feeling that the Marines won WW I, the Pacific in WW II, and Korea and that Krulak personally saved the Marines from the Marine-hating Army. Then again, Truman, got into a lot of trouble for complaining that the Marines had a propaganda campaign to rival Stalin's. Perhaps he was right.

P.S. My granddaughter was a Marine M.P. as was her husband. ( )
  ecw0647 | Mar 12, 2022 |
Gift from Dorinda's mom and read during the fall of 2012 while at LOC. Very interesting look into the life of a very famous Marine General. Worth the read. He was very tough on himself and his boys and was responsible for so much growth and development in the Marine Corps.
  SDWets | Jan 30, 2021 |
Sometimes it gets monotonous reading biographies of military men - they're just ever-so-perfect, brilliant tacticians, ethical, creative, blah blah blah (and many times untrue). This is a *real* story of a not-so-perfect guy - in fact, practically a juvenile delinquent - who lied and cheated and drank and hid his past and had a zillion ordinary foibles, and made things happen in his life sometimes by ingratiating himself to some higher up or getting his way just because he knows the right guy. This is a believable story and, other than the fact that it was a little hard to hear about yet another unethical, borderline illegal, activity that Brute participated in, I'm glad I read (listened, actually) it and I highly recommend it to war/military buffs. The author clearly is biased towards Crulak (spelling?) and clearly was biased towards the Marines, so read it with that in mind, but it still was overall a great book. ( )
1 vota marshapetry | Oct 16, 2015 |
Esta reseña ha sido escrita por los Primeros Reseñadores de LibraryThing.
I received this through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.

The story of one of the legends of the USMC, if this book has a down fall, it is that the author treats his subject with a little too much regard. Reading a biography of any person, where very little of the negative aspects of a person are presented is a little lacking.
With that said, it is an enjoyable and quick read. If anything it would serve as a good introduction of how the USMC views its own history and legend. From Belleau Wood to Vietnam to the Marines fight for survival after the Second World War. ( )
1 vota mgreenla | Sep 4, 2011 |
Esta reseña ha sido escrita por los Primeros Reseñadores de LibraryThing.
If the U.S. Marine Corps is looking for a method of inculcating corps d’esprit in its ranks, Brute may be an effective tactic. But it is improbable that inquisitive officers or the learned public can derive much intellectual value from it.

Robert Coram’s entertaining narrative of the life of General Victor “Brute” Krulak is not so much an objective biography as it is an unabashedly sentimental ode to the Marine Corps. The book is saturated with obsequiousness. The first 16 pages are an homage to the Corps and Belleau Wood, a campaign fought when Krulak was but a child. The extended laudatory introduction is accompanied by a liberal distribution of acclamation throughout the story, and some, such as the first four pages of the chapter “Chowder,” are more tedious than others. Not only does Coram turn Brute into prodigious eulogy to the Marines, but he goes out of his way on countless pages to besmirch the U.S. Army. To the author, the Marines can do no wrong; they are a victim of bureaucratic parsimony and the Army’s clumsy lust for monopolistic power.

It is hard to take this biography seriously when Coram’s principle goal appears to be the ego inflation of one branch of the American military. Sadly, there is little substance to make up for the afore-mentioned malady. The author apparently based much of the narrative upon interviews conducted with Krulak in his extremely advanced age. Coram gently discounts the authenticity of some of Krulak’s recollections, but not too greatly. That would undermine the veracity of the entire biography. Coram does well explaining Krulak’s role in integrating Higgins boats and helicopters into the Corps’ arsenal. But it is more likely that there are more valuable and detailed treatments in other works.

If you want a bit of light reading on a military theme, Brute may satisfy your desires. But there is nothing scholarly about this missed opportunity to properly profile an influential commander. ( )
1 vota Cincinnatus | Jul 31, 2011 |
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Wikipedia en inglés (3)

From the earliest days of his thirty-four-year military career, Victor "Brute" Krulak displayed a remarkable facility for applying creative ways of fighting to the Marine Corps. He went on daring spy missions, was badly wounded, pioneered the use of amphibious vehicles, and masterminded the invasion of Okinawa. In Korea, he was a combat hero and invented the use of helicopters in warfare. In Vietnam, he developed a holistic strategy in stark contrast to the Army's "Search and Destroy" methods--but when he stood up to LBJ to protest, he was punished. And yet it can be argued that all of these accomplishments pale in comparison to what he did after World War II and again after Korea: Krulak almost single-handedly stopped the U.S. government from abolishing the Marine Corps.

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