Col. Douglas Macgregor on War Reality vs Call of Duty
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I'm here with Colonel McGregor and I wanted to ask you a question, something that a lot of folks in my audience are in, you know, millennial, Gen Z, you know, those younger people, most of my audience is in their 20s and 30s. So, of course, video games and movies are very popular. Call of Duty, one of the biggest franchises in the entertainment period, even grossing more revenue than a lot of movie franchises now. So you're someone who's a veteran. You've seen active combat movies.

And I think it's important to kind of go there right now because we

I think a lot of times when you look at especially social media in this recent conflict in Ukraine where people would just scroll through, they see a cat video and then they scroll through and they see someone getting bombed or in the middle of a field in Ukraine, a Russian or Ukrainian or a drone or something. And it's like almost desensitizing people at a pace that's pretty horrific. So when you think about that, the social media casualness, the video games,

where you always get more lives after you get shot. I mean, that's not the reality of war, is it? Is it a game when you look at it? No, no, real war is by no means a game. There's no question about that. And for everybody who goes into action and sees combat, they have a different experience. And I'll talk about mine very briefly, but first I'll share an incident with an officer who served under me as a lieutenant, then subsequently was in Iraq.

as a major and he was a battalion S3 and they had launched some sort of air mobile insertion with the goal of capturing Islamist fighters somewhere.

And it had gone rather well. And the battalion commander turned to his S3 and said, "Come on, Dave, let's go up there. I want to be part of this." And he said, "Yes, sir." So he said, "Come on, follow me." Well, he was standing there with a radio and some other gear with another soldier and said they had to get it together. He ran straight towards the objective and like three seconds later stepped on a mine and blew both of his legs off.

i stop and think about that someone goes there he lived and probably would not have lived in previous wars because nothing could have been done for him that quickly but we were able to save his life thank god but on the other hand he suddenly lost his legs with the loss of his legs when everything else that was important to him obviously and he did his duty and and he's not somebody who cries over this or anything else but that's that's a very stark experience and that

young man who was a major who then subsequently retired later on as a full colonel and never left him. He remembered that for the rest of his life. And what that does to you is you say to wait a minute, if we're going to do this, then let's make damn sure we know what we're doing, that we have control of ourselves as well as everybody else, that they're adequately equipped and trained, that we've looked at all the possibilities, we've taken all the precautions and we've done the best we can, then we launch.

And his point at the time was they really didn't know or expect to find any mines there. Now that happens in combat. You never know everything about everything, no matter what they tell you above you. And there's an old army expression, intelligence is always wrong. The Germans frequently said the same thing. Of course, they didn't know we had ultra, and so we knew where they were coming. Didn't make much difference in most cases. The Germans were still successful despite what we knew. But the point I'm trying to make is,

That's one kind of warfare. I was in a different kind of warfare. And it was the marriage in a very close and intimate way between men on armored fighting vehicles with tank guns, 120-millimeter smoothbore cannons and 50-caliber machine guns and 7.62-caliber machine guns and 20-millimeter automatic cannon and machine guns. There were lots of machine guns.

And you drill, you practice, because warfare for someone in an armored force like that that's moving across the desert or anywhere is a gunfight. It's literally you pull pistols and shoot first. You're probably going to live. But if you're watching and you're not sure and you're hesitant, you may die. Yeah.

And that's another reason why they talk about situational awareness and they want to build screens and tell everybody where they are. Well, that's helpful, but there's nothing better than the human knowledge that comes with formations and drills. So if you've practiced to move in a certain formation, then you know who is on your right and who is on your left and who is behind you. It's a mental challenge.

picture that is built up over time through habit. That's why you form formations and hold them together. Everybody becomes accustomed to everybody else. You know your strengths and weaknesses. I mean, I had one troop that could shoot the eyes out of a snake at 5,000 meters.

of nobody could do better but they weren't as good at maneuver on the other hand another troop that maneuvered brilliantly they weren't as good at gunnery i mean they were certainly good as it turned out but you you find these things and you know the differences in commanders and their personalities because whoever leads has profound influence on the people that he is leading yeah and if if the commander is a rough and ready tough aggressive character that rubs off on the soldiers

If the commander is more circumspect, deliberate and cautious, that rubs off. That's not bad because they both have their place. And at some points in time, one is better than the other. It doesn't mean one is always better than the other. So that plays into it. But in armor, where I was, you end up becoming very close with the four people that are on that tank with you or within the five, six or seven that may be with you inside a Bradley armored fighting vehicle.

And when you fight, you learn more about everybody. Because I remember the one thing I've seen that came closest to the reality, not in terms of showing blood and gore and all that business, because that's all there. We all know that. It's a film called In Harm's Way. And towards the end of the film, they go into a surface battle at sea. And the reserve officer asks his friend, who is a rear admiral,

what's what's a surface battle like and he ends John Wayne kind of size and he got this from somebody who'd been in action it was put in a film for that reason and he kind of looked back and he said well it's really a lot of men aboard ships behind guns we're all scared and frightened ready to fight and kill a lot of other men behind guns and in ships who are also scared and frightened

well then how does this ever happen it's because even though you may be afraid what separates the good professional soldier from the weakling the coward or somebody who just doesn't know better and runs is this ability to suppress your fear

And that's not easy. It's best if you have several days of exposure and get confidence in yourself and what you're doing, then you fight infinitely better. Not everybody has that opportunity. That put the Germans in North Africa and Italy way ahead of us because they'd been in combat many, many times. They had experience. It took us time to get the experience so that you understand that not every round that is shot at you is meant for you.

then just because you go out there to fight doesn't mean you're doomed to die. Somebody's going to die. Somebody always dies. And some number of people die. Doesn't mean everybody dies. So you learn to suppress these kinds of things. And for me, it was really driven home just how horrific and final death on the battlefield can be when we lost a Bradley. This was struck by a 30 millimeter round from BMP gun.

And it was kind of a freak because it didn't strike the armored chassis. It struck a missile that was in the launcher above the vehicle. And it just so happened that the hatch below where the driver was, was about this far open. When normally when you fire, it's always closed and in combat, but they'd been at it for several hours and they were tired. They need some fresh air and there was nothing happening.

So he opened the hatch and at the point in time when you thought nothing was happening and it was safe, boom, this round goes, hits the tow missile, the blast goes down into the vehicle. And there were a total of five people involved, two, one was killed, three were wounded, one made it out with light wounds. There were six wounded that day badly, but not horrifically. And you had to see what was left and it was nothing.

because the vehicle then caught fire and it had a high aluminum content in the metal so the the turret actually burned down into the vehicle so when you looked at it the top of the vehicle no longer had a turret it was flat and that later on caused problems because we at night we weren't even sure whose vehicle that was but that man ended up his remains were placed

in a plastic bag about this size. And that's all that went back. And I met his parents, his father and stepmother. I felt terrible. And his father happened to be a Lutheran minister. And I said, I'm so sorry because we did everything we could. We trained everybody. You know, I didn't think something like this would happen. And he said, look, he was very proud to be there. He wanted to be there. And indeed I subsequently got letters, which I, one of which I put in a book,

the last one that he wrote talking to his family, that he was glad he was there with his friends. And that's very important. You know, you're with people that are not just next door, they're your friends. And he was confident and he was proud and he loved his family. And he signed the letter. And I put it in the book, Warrior's Rage, which came out many years ago because it was so moving to me. He was in many respects, the archetypal soldier from the United States. He was not perfect.

But he was a good, solid person. He had strong moral values. He actually loved and cared about his country. He fought willingly with the people near him. He was not a murderer. He shot and killed as was necessary. He wasn't taking great comfort or feeling important about himself because he was killing other human beings. He did his job.

to the best of his ability and he lost his life. And at the time, I think his troop commander, Captain Sardiano, very good man who subsequently retired as full colonel, good man. He said, "There is no victory without sacrifice." And Sergeant Mueller paid the price for all of us. And that was about right. Well, this is a total stark. When you hear those stories and the details and the human cost

of war, it changes the whole paradigm. And it's important to make sure that people who have the decision-making power, which ultimately is the American people, should be very vigilant in how they send people off. Well, we have to make sure it's for the right thing and it's for something that's really vitally important to us. This is not a throwaway. You know, soldiers are not throwaways. They're living, breathing human beings.