Framing the American Warrior: Ethos and virtue in the U.S. Army, 2003-2014

Frames are powerful communication devices that can be constructed from organization discourse. When fully developed, frames can direct organization sensemaking so as to help organization members make sense of their membership in the organization as well as the organization's purpose in an otherwise chaotic environment. In 2003 the U.S. Army promulgated the Warrior Ethos Project, which included precise language around which to organize activity. This qualitative study considers the impact of the Warrior Ethos on the Army organization as a tool for framing and sensemaking by examining a set of texts produced by soldiers between 2003 and 2014. Specifically, this study asks, what themes did service members write about in their stories of U.S. soldiers? How closely did those themes correspond to aims of the Warrior Ethos Project and to historical conceptualizations of a warrior? Did a coherent frame emerge from the DVIDS texts during the period of the study? And in what ways did the frame or theme contribute to an organizational identity unique to the context of the time period of the study? Texts were coded and analyzed using NVivo 12 software. Analysis revealed the most prominent warrior virtues included teamwork, expertise, selflessness, grit, and leadership. Themes that emerged from all codes were: service, resilience, bonds, development, ethic, respect, regimen, and professional stewardship. This study concludes that the stories, and the virtues and themes they reflect, contribute to the construction of a three-dimensional warrior frame that has implications for the Army and public policy, and has found its way into the popular culture.

FRAMING THE AMERICAN WARRIOR: ETHOS AND VIRTUE IN THE U.S. ARMY, 2003 – 2014 by Richard Stowell A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Communication The University of Utah August 2019 Copyright © Richard Stowell 2019 All Rights Reserved The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of Richard Stowell has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: James Anderson , Chair 29 May 2019 Date Approved David Vergobbi , Member 29 May 2019 Date Approved Sean Lawson , Member 29 May 2019 Date Approved Mark Button , Member 29 May 2019 Date Approved Leonard Hawes , Member Date Approved and by Danielle Endres the Department/College/School of and by David B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. , Chair/Dean of Communication ABSTRACT Frames are powerful communication devices that can be constructed from organization discourse. When fully developed, frames can direct organization sensemaking so as to help organization members make sense of their membership in the organization as well as the organization’s purpose in an otherwise chaotic environment. In 2003 the U.S. Army promulgated the Warrior Ethos Project, which included precise language around which to organize activity. This qualitative study considers the impact of the Warrior Ethos on the Army organization as a tool for framing and sensemaking by examining a set of texts produced by soldiers between 2003 and 2014. Specifically, this study asks, what themes did service members write about in their stories of U.S. soldiers? How closely did those themes correspond to aims of the Warrior Ethos Project and to historical conceptualizations of a warrior? Did a coherent frame emerge from the DVIDS texts during the period of the study? And in what ways did the frame or theme contribute to an organizational identity unique to the context of the time period of the study? Texts were coded and analyzed using NVivo 12 software. Analysis revealed the most prominent warrior virtues included teamwork, expertise, selflessness, grit, and leadership. Themes that emerged from all codes were: service, resilience, bonds, development, ethic, respect, regimen, and professional stewardship. This study concludes that the stories, and the virtues and themes they reflect, contribute to the construction of a three-dimensional warrior frame that has implications for the Army and public policy, and has found its way into the popular culture. Dedicated to my wife, Esther, the most powerful warrior I know. TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................... viii 1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 1 Background ....................................................................................................................... 1 Problem Statement ........................................................................................................... 2 Reclaiming the Warrior .................................................................................................... 3 Ethos .................................................................................................................................. 5 Organizing Power of Ethos ............................................................................................... 6 An Ethos Statement in the Army .....................................................................................11 Significance ..................................................................................................................... 16 Assumptions .................................................................................................................... 17 Next Steps........................................................................................................................ 18 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ................................................................................... 19 Changes in Information Operations ............................................................................... 19 Theory............................................................................................................................. 28 Summary .........................................................................................................................42 3. METHODS ......................................................................................................................44 Texts ................................................................................................................................44 Research Questions .........................................................................................................46 Data Management ........................................................................................................... 47 Analytical Process .......................................................................................................... 48 Concluding Thoughts ...................................................................................................... 57 4. RESULTS ........................................................................................................................ 61 Description of the Data ...................................................................................................62 Analysis ...........................................................................................................................63 Concluding Thoughts ..................................................................................................... 90 5. IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS ....................................................................... 106 Executive Summary ...................................................................................................... 106 Themes and Frames ...................................................................................................... 109 Enacted Sensemaking ................................................................................................... 121 The Ethos in Society ...................................................................................................... 123 Future of Warrior Ethos................................................................................................ 131 Limitations and Next Steps........................................................................................... 134 Concluding Thoughts .................................................................................................... 135 APPENDIX ........................................................................................................................ 138 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................. 157 vi LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1 Number of Stories in the Sample by Year .....................................................................58 3.2 Parent and Child Codes in NVivo After Stage 3 ........................................................... 59 3.3 Parent and Child Codes in NVivo after Stage 5 ........................................................... 60 4.1 Frequencies of Child Codes and Aggregate Frequencies of Parent Codes ...................92 4.2 Aggregate Frequencies of Parent Codes .......................................................................93 4.3 Warrior Virtues Child Codes ........................................................................................93 4.4 Instances of Text Coded as “Teamwork” ......................................................................94 4.5 Instances of Text Coded as “Expertise” ........................................................................ 95 4.6 Instances of Text Coded as “Selflessness” ...................................................................96 4.7 Instances of Text Coded as “Grit” ................................................................................. 97 4.8 Instances of Text Coded as “Leadership” ................................................................... 98 4.9 Instances of Text Coded as “Honorific” .......................................................................99 4.10 Instances of Text Coded as “Training - WLC” ..........................................................100 4.11 Instances of Text Coded as “Connection” ................................................................. 101 4.12 Instances of Text Coded as “Resiliency” ................................................................... 102 4.13 Instances of Text Coded as “Ethos” .......................................................................... 103 4.14 Paragraphs that Support the Development Theme .................................................. 104 4.15 Paragraphs that Support the Ethic Theme ............................................................... 104 1. INTRODUCTION Background George Patton, in a 1931 article written for The Cavalry Journal, attempted to identify the key to victory in military engagements. Rejecting the contemporary tendency to reduce war to wholly scientific explanations, Patton nevertheless looked for the elements of success in war: inspiration, knowledge, and force (Patton, 2002). The first, for him, was the most elusive, but potentially the most decisive. While tactical and technical knowledge combined with superior numbers could often decide a battle, the charismatic leader could just as often motivate his (or her, as in Patton’s preferred case, Joan of Arc) troops to victory. Inspiration, properly applied in war, resulted in confidence, enthusiasm, endurance, abnegation of self, and loyalty. Together, these martial values constituted the “warrior soul” (Patton, 2002, p. 307). In his 36 years in Army service, Patton rose to the rank of general and became one of the most mythologized soldiers in American history. In many ways, he epitomized the warrior soul, yet he could never describe it more than indirectly: “It lurks invisible in that vitalizing spark, intangible, yet as evident as the lightning” (Patton, 2002, p. 303). Even if difficult to detect, the warrior soul was the most powerful variable in victory, but the subtext is just as important. Warriors were, to him, the steady, stable class of a society in flux. They embodied and perpetuated the virtues that became the basis for cultural norms important in defining a society and stabilizing it. 2 Patton’s ideas about the warrior soul have persisted. Three generations later, in 2000, another famed American general echoed Patton’s sentiments. General Eric K. Shinseki had been chief of staff of the United States Army for 4 months when he outlined his vision of a new American warrior (Shinseki, 2000). Mostly remembered as an introduction of what would be called “Objective Force,” Shinseki’s vision began with a call to invest in the people of the Army—personnel with the “physical, moral, and mental competence” that would give the Army the strength to win anywhere (Shinseki & Caldera, 2000). Shinseki offered Army values—loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and courage—as the centerpiece of transformation. In other words, equipment, tactics, and operational tempo could and would all change, but the moral and ethical soldier would remain a constant amid that change. Shinseki promoted the new warrior ethos over the course of his tenure as chief of staff, developing it into a program that would become integrated into a wide range of Army activities. It was further energized by the War on Terror, both within the American military and in the wider society (Coker, 2007). The themes that Patton identified— confidence, enthusiasm, endurance, abnegation of self, and loyalty—still contribute to the modern warrior ethos, along with others, fitted for contemporary circumstances. These themes have been promoted and developed by members of the Army as a way to describe their own purpose and make sense of their roles in the organization. Problem Statement The seemingly timeless interest in what makes a warrior, along with the Army’s own efforts to define itself as a community of warriors, provides the focus for this dissertation. The purpose of this study, then, is twofold: first, to identify and explain the warrior ethos that was constructed in the U.S. Army during the first decade of the 21st 3 century; and second, to consider the organizing work that the warrior ethos accomplishes (or that organization members hope it accomplishes) by way of producing a common vision of the responsibilities and shared expectations of organization members—U.S. soldiers. In this dissertation, I will explore and describe the Warrior Ethos program promulgated by the Army beginning in 2003 through the examination of a set of texts created by members of the Army and endorsed by the organization. These texts were designed, in part, to help Army personnel make sense of the changes happening in the organization at that time. This purpose calls on us to consider the changes in the environment and practices of war that summoned once again the paradigmatic warrior into military discourse, the concept of ethos and its specific appearance as the Warrior Ethos, and the organizing work in which this ethos engaged the framing and authenticating of membership. Reclaiming the Warrior Nearly 20 years ago, when Shinseki became its chief of staff, the U.S. Army was at a waypoint. For a variety of reasons, including a decade-long decline in manpower and changing expectations of how soldiers would engage their enemies in combat, it had collectively decided to redefine what it meant to be a soldier. Decline in manpower Between the end of the 1991 Gulf War and 2000, the Army’s total force went from almost 711,000 to just over 482,000, a reduction of nearly one-third (Coleman, n.d.). The Army saw the decline as inevitable, but Shinseki believed that a smaller force, with a new combat posture, could be just as lethal. Moreover, military reform efforts of the late 1980s and early 1990s tended to discount the importance of human capabilities of the military in favor of technological 4 developments (Kagan, 2019). Shinseki, an infantry officer who served in Vietnam, thought about the capabilities of the force in terms of people first. His desire for new equipment and better technology came at the service of the soldier, not in replacement of him. The shifts in priority would be communicated and clarified with an explicit warrior ethos. Expectations for combat Besides the manpower challenges the Army had to deal with at the beginning of the new century was the question of how those soldiers would be employed. By 2000, the Army had seen the threat of peer and near-peer threats decline, while a wider range of threats emerged. This new set of threats included irregular war, a type of conflict that involves nonstate actors, such as small-cell terrorism and urban insurgencies (White & Shinseki, 2001). Irregular war would require soldiers to be able to conduct a broad range of activities and require all soldiers to be prepared for the possibility of close combat. There was a clear need for a light, agile, well-trained corps of professional warriors that was capable of engaging the enemy in frontless battles with highly adaptive strategies and tactics. Taken together, these expectations for combat—the need to prepare all soldiers for close combat with increasing technology—raised a need to develop a standard ethos. It is to the concept of ethos and the Army’s development of the contemporary warrior ethos to which we now turn. 5 Ethos Though many material changes accompanied the Army transformation, leaders knew that language would play a major role in preparing the Army for the future. Developing a statement of ethos became a priority. Any discussion of ethos ought to begin with Aristotle, though it is important to note that military thinkers have appropriated the notion to suit their purposes. Ethos, as used in organization literature, refers to the “virtuousness” of an organization as a strategically ambiguous term that allows organizations to apply ethos flexibly. Both terms are fraught. Virtue, sometimes defined as an “excellence,” is used throughout this dissertation to denote qualities and skills that help soldiers better accomplish their purposes. Ethos is used to describe the spirit or motive than animates those qualities. Both virtues and ethos are used in the parlance of military tradition, which is to say much more loosely than scholars of philosophy would. Moreover, ethos in this tradition is sometimes at odds with an Aristotelian understanding of the notion of ethos. Still, it is necessary to look back to the foundation of ethos for the purposes of how it informs language use. Aristotle, in Rhetoric, describes three means of persuasion: logos, pathos, and ethos (Aristotle, 2004). Of the three, ethos was the most important. While logos had to do with sound argumentation, and pathos was concerned with a strong emotional appeal, ethos went to trust (Cherry, 1998). Synonymous with “character,” ethos is a component of argument from a place of authority. Listeners (or readers) ought to believe the speaker because they have earned the right to be believed. Ethos as habit Ethos, in the original Greek, denotes ‘‘moral character, nature, disposition, habit, custom” (Melé, 2012, p. 89). Halloran (1982) posits that the definition of character 6 originates in a more literal understanding of the original Greek as, “a habitual gathering place” (p. 60). His explanation conjures an image of a public square where ideas are exchanged and community norms are settled upon. “To have ethos is to manifest the virtues most valued by the culture to and for which one speaks” (Halloran, 1982, p. 60). Aristotle elaborated on his conception of ethos in Nicomachean Ethics: Again, it is from the same causes and by the same means that every virtue is both produced and destroyed, and similarly every art; for it is from playing the lyre that both good and bad lyre-players are produced. . . . This, then, is the case with the virtues also; by doing the acts that we do in our transactions with other men we become just or unjust, and by doing the acts that we do in the presence of danger, and being habituated to feel fear or confidence, we become brave or cowardly. (Aristotle, 2012, Book II Chapter I) In other words, ethos was developed by habit. Self-discipline and an adherence to norms of virtue contribute to that development. Ethos as virtue Aristotle left moral character a vaguely defined notion, referring only to “goodness.” Itemizations of the virtues of ethos are as diverse as the people who have proposed them and specific to the communities they describe. Virtues such as honesty, courage, and compassion are frequently cited norms that contribute to ethos, which, according to Hyde (2010) “is both a legitimating source for and a praiseworthy effect of the ethical practice of the orator's art” (p. 32). Barberis (2001) has argued that an ethos of public service relies primarily on virtue, and that the ethos born of it will engender more trust within the community as well as toward the community, resulting in greater virtue. Organizing Power of Ethos Since ethos is rooted in community, it offers a framework for action for the community and for its members. Mele (2012) contends that there are essentially two 7 ways to formulate organizations—as a nexus of contracts, and as a community of persons. The community of persons orientation sees organization members as selfdetermined agents who aim for an external good and who self-reflect. Put another way, by acting as an agent, members in an ethos-driven organization shape the organization and define themselves. Ethos in action For Aristotle, ethos gave small communities—organizations in our case—the means by which to direct common action for the good of society: If all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good. (Aristotle & Reeve, 2017, p. 2) Today we read of business ethics and corporate citizenship as a manifestation of Aristotle’s view. Paradoxically, a hallmark of modernity is a dispassionate neutrality, a resistance to taking a position or setting expectations for individual action based on a claim to morality (Barberis, 2001). Still, military communities have an interest in promoting actions that lead to a higher good because their function, in one sense, is to act on behalf of the larger community. Ethos as a framework for action Ethos in military organizations helps to define codes of conduct, just as it might in business and nonprofit firms. It also reduces the transaction costs associated with other forms of regulated and coordinated action, such as contracts and elaborate rule schemes (Coker, 2007). This function of ethos—a “buffer” as Barberis calls it—against extreme proceduralism in favor of moral decision-making, helps organization members give meaning to their actions, and also make sense of them (p. 116). In a bank or a school or a 8 retail store, the process of sensemaking might not have much impact. On a battlefield, it has a potentially enormous impact. The Warrior Identity [or ethos] enables a soldier to overcome fear and anxiety during the heat of battle and take action, it nurtures cohesion within a small group whose fates depend on each other and it delivers a predictable outcome to neutralize threats. The Warrior Ethos rescues order from chaos and reestablishes military effectiveness. (Debusk, 2011, p. 12) A code of conduct is one way that ethos in military organizations provides a framework for understanding action. For instance, in a complex attack by Taliban fighters on a small U.S. outpost in northeastern Afghanistan in 2009, Spc. Ty Carter defied rationality (and advice from his superiors) to aid his buddies pinned down by withering machine gun and rocket fire. According to his Medal of Honor citation: Spc. Carter reinforced a forward battle position, ran twice through a 100-meter gauntlet of enemy fire to resupply ammunition and voluntarily remained there to defend the isolated position…. With complete disregard for his own safety and in spite of his own wounds, he ran through a hail of enemy rocket propelled grenade and machine gun fire to rescue a critically wounded comrade who had been pinned down in an exposed position. (Congressional Medal of Honor Society, n.d.) Carter’s actions were not the result of rational deliberation, yet they made sense to him on some level that can be explained by ethos. Ethos as leadership Two related concepts important in modern organization studies emerge from a view of ethos. First is a philosophy of organizational leadership. Second is organizational loyalty. Analogous to the two views of organizations as either a site of contracts and agreements on one hand, or a community of persons on the other, are the corresponding views of leadership as either transactional or transformative (Hannah & Avolio, 2011; Melé, 2012). The transactional view requires that a leader enforce agreements and promote compliance to a rule set. Alternatively, the transformational view promotes cooperation 9 around a shared vision, and “operates through example, articulation of an energizing vision and challenging goals” (Melé, 2012, p. 92). Furthermore, because a well-developed ethos is more focused on personal development and a strong basis for independent decision-making, those organizations that rely on ethos tend to experience a greater degree of loyalty among members (Melé, 2012). Components of a warrior ethos Coker has identified three components of a universal warrior ethos: unquestioning service, humility despite achievement, and extreme courage (Coker, 2007, p. 21). Others have expanded on the list. Pressfield (2011), for instance, adds patience, self-command, the will to endure adversity, and love of and loyalty to one’s comrades. Shinseki, for his part, shied away from listing specific characteristics or virtues to be counted as contributing toward a modern ethos (except to say that ethos was related to values), but he understood that definition was important. After all, to a great extent, the strategy was a discursive exercise. To Shinseki, an ethos was more than mere words. They were “promises that soldiers make to one another” (Shinseki, 2009). Three promises inherent in the modern combat ethos have to do with loyalty, trust, and discipline. Loyalty An ethos of combat represents one of the most ancient contexts for Aristotle’s idea, and also draws heavily on the aspect of community. There are two levels of community, according to Stein, one in a broad sense and other in a strict sense. Broadly, ‘‘community can be talked about where there are not only mutual relationships between persons but further, where these persons form a unity and shape—a ‘we’’’ (1998, p. 248). In a strict sense, ‘‘a community entails a permanent community of life between persons 10 that affects them in the depth of their being and confers on them a lasting stamp’’ (1998, p. 249). Communities of warriors have frequently built on both levels. In their landmark study of the disintegration of the German Army at the end of World War II, Shils and Janowitz (1948) attribute a willingness to fight in the face of certain defeat to primary group cohesion above all else. Their conclusions were supported by Wong, Kolditz, Millen, and Potter 65 years later (Wong, Kolditz, Millen, & Potter, 2003). In a study of combat motivation among U.S. soldiers in the second Iraq War, the researchers identified the source of motivation to support unit missions came from “a social compact with the members of the primary group” (p. 10). Trust Communities large and small are ultimately built on trust, and ethos is a powerful broker of trust. When all community members adhere to the same fundamental beliefs of the nature of the work, explains Coker, transaction costs are lowered and the group is able to perform at a higher level. Trust is also a hallmark of highly reliable organizations (Cox, Jones, & Collinson, 2006; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2005). Here we take trust to mean “one party’s willingness to be vulnerable to another party based on the belief that the latter party is (a) competent, (b) open, (c) concerned, and (d) reliable” (Cox et al., 2006, p. 1125). This definition is consistent with Aristotle’s fundamental claim that ethos derives from credibility and reliability, two characteristics that are hard earned. Discipline There is a habitual nature to what warriors are expected to do. Habit can be viewed, in light of Aristotle’s description concerning ethos, from two perspectives—one 11 from which all members of the organization adhere to the same conventions, and another from which each member performs the same duties over and over without much thought. Discipline is the military analogy of the community of habit in Aristotle’s formulation. In the military, it is almost a cliché. Drill of a very few things marks the expertise with which members of the Army are expected to perform their duties. Pressfield asserts that in all cultures, a military ethos is defined primarily by discipline to a program of intense training that forges a warrior out of a mere person. A long-term regimen is often rewarded by a rite of passage into the community of warriors (Pressfield, 2011). Rites of passage do more to enforce habit. As Halloran points out, “ethos emphasizes the conventional rather than the idiosyncratic” (p. 60). Conventions are determined over generations and pay homage to the many who have gone before. Thus, the brotherhood extends deep into the past to solemnify conventions and habits. As a framework for action, and for individuals to make sense of that action, ethos in military communities often relies on leadership that is based in ethos, is steeped in a set of virtues that includes discipline, and results in loyalty to the leader and the group. These realities led the Army to invest in developing its own explicit statement of ethos. An Ethos Statement in the Army The events of September 11 had significant, immediate, and long-lasting effects on the Army. Among other things, the Army went from a ready force (“persuasive in peace”) to one on a war footing (Shinseki & White, 2003). The changes that the Army made after 9/11 combined with strategic changes already underway to change the way that the Army defined a soldier. 12 Objective Force The Army’s roadmap to move it toward the Objective Force, laid out by Shinseki a year earlier, became more pronounced after 9/11. Objective Force talk swept through the Army—mostly about “transformation,” leveraging technology and working smarter as an organization (Army Science Board, 2001; Winkler, 2003). It struck a chord because it met a need. The missions of the 1990s had convinced Army leaders that a major transformation was necessary to move the force from a Cold War capability to one that could answer to an asymmetric threat (Winkler, 2003). The increased operational tempo after 9/11 forced the Army to accelerate some phases of the Objective Force and abandon others, but one aspect that remained part of Shinseki’s, and the Army’s, vision was a focus on the essence of combat power—the capable soldier. Developing the soldier Pursuant to that focus, Shinseki convened a group to study how to essentialize and universalize the work of the American soldier. The group was called “Task Force Soldier,” and its primary job was a discursive one (Riccio, Sullivan, Klein, Salter, & Kinnison, 2004). Task Force Soldier presented a plan to the chief of staff called the “Warrior Ethos Implementation Strategy.” Shinseki’s successor, Gen. Peter Schoomaker, adopted it later that year (Task Force Soldier, 2003). The strategy included three goals: 1) flexible, adaptive, and competent soldiers comprising the Army’s Warrior Culture; 2) soldiers grounded in Army values and who “live the Warrior Ethos”; and 3) dedication to providing the climate, training, and equipment to develop and sustain said ethos. The Army concluded that a redefinition of the soldier also necessitated a shift in culture (Task Force Soldier, 2003, p. 2). A culture shift necessitated a shift in discourse, and for good reason—many leading scholars assert that discourse is the foundation upon 13 which organizational life is built (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2000; Fairhurst & Putnam, 2004). The discourse of change With these goals in mind, the task force recommended putting forward Armywide definitions of “soldier” and “warrior ethos” as well as publishing the Soldier’s Creed, with its subordinate lines that compose the Warrior Ethos. The motive for the project was a desire to inculcate an Army-wide spirit to fight that was aligned with the “character, sentiment, and beliefs commonly held by the American people” (Riccio et al., 2004, p. 1). As a result, the Army published a revised and updated creed—13 lines that outlined the U.S. soldier’s purpose and motive. The fourth through seventh lines (in italics) constitute the Warrior Ethos (in italics): I am an American Soldier. I am a Warrior and a member of a team. I serve the people of the United States, and live the Army Values. I will always place the mission first. I will never accept defeat. I will never quit. I will never leave a fallen comrade. I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills. I always maintain my arms, my equipment and myself. I am an expert and I am a professional. I stand ready to deploy, engage, and destroy, the enemies of the United States of America in close combat. I am a guardian of freedom and the American way of life. I am an American Soldier. The implementation strategy outlined ways the Ethos could be inculcated during initial entry training of soldiers by defining it more clearly, describing attributes derived from it, and then aligning training to those attributes. Doctrine began to refer explicitly to the Ethos. The 2001 update of the “Army’s keystone warfighting doctrine” was redesignated Field Manual 3-0: Operations, and cited “well-trained soldiers and units 14 fueled with the warrior ethos” as the key to victory. No previous version of the operations manuals mentioned the word “warrior” or the phrase “warrior ethos.” From discourse to action Beginning in late 2003, the Army implemented the Warrior Ethos program, which would become more tightly woven into the fabric of all doctrine, even getting itself into the title of universal combat skills text, Field Manual 3-21.5: The Warrior Ethos and Soldier Combat Skills in 2008. It, along with other doctrine that referenced the Ethos, was designed to relate basic soldier tasks as diverse as marksmanship, escaping from enemy custody, and reacting to a chemical attack, to the Ethos. In its introduction, soldiers were warned of the chaotic, relentless, and harrowing nature of combat. Then the reader was reminded to: Remember that you are not alone. You are part of a well-trained team, backed by the most powerful combined arms force, and the most modern technology in the world. You must keep faith with your fellow Soldiers, remember your training, and do your duty to the best of your ability. If you do, and you uphold your Warrior Ethos, you can win and return home with honor. (U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, 2013, p. xiii) All of these changes were being implemented as the U.S. Army conducted irregular operations in Afghanistan and began mobilizing for large-scale conventional war in Iraq. From Aristotle to Shinseki, ethos has come to be important to military communities because the work that military professionals perform demands a commitment to more than personal interest. It defines the character that military leaders have historically sought in their soldiers. It tells members of the military organization why they should act. The authors of the Warrior Ethos understood that American soldiers would use language to help them accept and make sense of a post-9/11 definition of reality (Phillips, Lawrence, & Hardy, 2004). They hoped they could influence some of the activities and 15 talk that facilitated that sensemaking. They also understood that the frameworks of organizational communication would have a major impact on how discourse would develop in the new environment. Ethos has always been important to military organizations, because military labor has historically required a higher level of commitment and discipline than other fields of endeavor (Coker, 2007; Pressfield, 2011). It is understandable that stability was a hallmark of the warrior soul for Patton, because the ethos of combat had been forged in ancient ways of combat. Pressfield (2011) contends that, because combat originated in hand-to-hand methods, an ethos developed that prized honor and valor as much as victory. Communicating organizationally is an important way for the military to sustain the ethos that helps it function under extreme conditions and expectations. Part of this organizational communication involves defining the ethos and what it means to participate in an ethos-driven culture. Quite another part is defining and reinforcing expectations around membership in the organization. Both aspects of organizational communication have tended to validate the Ethos. This dissertation connects to the processes of frameworks of understanding and sensemaking in organizational action by examining the organizational texts created by individual soldiers for distribution to other members of the organization. In the section that immediately follows, I will briefly detail the changes in Army information operations and then take up two bodies of theory—framing theory and enacted sensemaking theory—to direct an examination of the penetration of the Warrior Ethos into soldier discourse. 16 Significance Organizationally, the United States Army is relevant. It commands the attention of the nation’s most elite policy makers and influencers, as well as the veneration of a majority of Americans (Gallup, 2017). As a governmental department, it enlists financial support of enormous sums from taxpayers. As a military force, it wields the power to redraw international borders. Just over one million persons strong, the U.S. Army is indeed a force to be reckoned with, not only on the battlefield but in politics, economics, and culture. Though the interest in warriors is evident in Hollywood, popular culture, and mass media, scholars have not adequately explored the relation between strategic organizational discourse in the Army and the warrior ethos that seems to propel its members forward. The discussion that this study is intended to generate is a pragmatic one because the Army touches so many facets of American life. Even if fewer Americans have direct contact with the Army than at any point since before World War II, the Army’s influence runs deep through Hollywood, military-corporate partnerships, ROTC programs on college campuses, and sports, to name a few examples. Army leaders enjoy the respect of America’s corporate, nonprofit, and political leadership class, and many officers go on to serve on boards of directors and trustees after retirement. More obviously, as long as the Army remains involved in combat, where soldiers’ lives are sometimes just a variable in a decision matrix, its leaders will have enormous influence on citizens and their families. Given the organization’s significance, its personnel and practices are significant. Of equal significance is the cultural implications of war in our society. This dissertation does not argue about armed force as an instrument of state power. Rather, it begins an exploration of the discourse of warriors in the Army first and by implication, in our society. Whether organized violence achieves the aims our civilian and military 17 leadership intend is interesting, but not the issue in this study. Instead, my attempt with this dissertation is to explain how the Army talks about warriors at an organizational level, in an effort to identify the warrior frame that was constructed in the first decade of the 21st century in the U.S. Army. Assumptions As is the case with many qualitative studies, this dissertation makes several assumptions. Soldiers representing soldiers This study relies on soldier-produced texts for most of its findings. I will proceed on the assumption that the soldiers who produced these texts represented their own values and beliefs and the legitimate perspectives of the soldiers they wrote about. This assumption is supported by the wide variety of writing styles evident in the texts. The assumption also makes a claim about the Army—that there is little to no censorship or propagandizing beyond the typical framing that is reasonable and acceptable in public relations for large, broad-based organizations in Western democracies. Army representing the military I also make the assumption, perhaps better described as a shorthand, that the policies and practices of the Army can be fairly described and interpreted as the policies and practices of the American military. I recognize the uniqueness of each of the armed services (Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps), but the descriptions that follow are of the Army alone. 18 Next Steps Having described the components of and the communicative power of ethos in general and the Warrior Ethos in specific, this dissertation will proceed with a discussion about the circumstances of the Army in the early 2000s, including the many changes in information operations strategy and doctrine that affected the way the Army shared public information. Following that, I will review the literature on two major lines of theory that inform the study—framing theory and enacted sensemaking theory. Following the literature review, I will describe the data and methods I used to answer research questions. A description of the findings will follow. Finally, the dissertation will conclude with a discussion of the implications of the findings both for communication researchers and for military professionals. 2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND When the U.S. Army promulgated the Warrior Ethos, it was in the midst of perhaps the most significant transformation in the history of the institution (Department of the Army, 2003; Stowell, 2014). The Army found itself fighting two major land campaigns against enemies it had not—by some accounts—properly prepared to fight (Hinnebusch, 2007). It was attempting to prosecute a large war without the manpower or the sacrifice of the civilian population that had been the hallmark of previous operations (Bacevich, 2013). It was recalibrating gender roles in an accelerated way, including the reality of women serving in combat, and it was attempting to reconstitute itself as a dynamic fighting force appropriate to immersion warfare with its rapidly changing conditions and combatants. At the same time, for a variety of reasons, the Army was implementing new information operations doctrines and tactics. Amid this convergence of change, the frame that developed out of the Warrior Ethos helped shape how the Army viewed itself by influencing the way the Army reported and distributed information through its public information operations, and these messages had an observable effect on members of the organization that can be explained through the lens of enacted sensemaking. Changes in Information Operations Planners of war have long realized the importance of controlling information. Sun Tzu wrote that “all warfare is based on deception” (Tzu, 2014, p. 11). Homer’s Trojan 20 Horse, Washington’s spies, and Germany’s coordination with Lenin during World War I are all episodes that point to military commanders understanding that the way information is perceived by civilians and soldiers alike—be they friendly or enemy—can have a material effect on the outcome of a campaign (Mcmeekin, 2017). Information has been called both a resource and a weapon in war (Brunetti-Lihach, n.d.), and has been fought over and with by the U.S. Army since its creation nearly two and a half centuries ago. Proceeding apace in the last part of the 20th century, information operations (IO) has become more relevant in the American military, which has had a pronounced influence on the way the Army conducts public affairs operations. Public affairs is the function of producing and distributing commanders’ information to public audiences, including soldiers, their families, and the American people. It “fulfills the Army’s obligation to keep the American people and the Army informed and helps to establish the conditions that lead to confidence in America’s Army” (Department of the Army, 2011, p. 1). It is a major component of the Army’s larger information operations. Background of U.S. information warfare Information operations is a relatively new term, and so represents a new perspective on how information is used to achieve military ends (Ventre, 2012). In many ways, the complex of ideas, tactics, and materiel that constitute IO was ushered in by the information revolution of the 1980s and 1990s (Molander, Mesic, Wilson, Mussington, & Mesic, 1998). Current U.S. military doctrine defines IO as: the integrated employment, during military operations, of information-related capabilities in concert with other lines of operation to influence, disrupt, corrupt, or usurp the decision making of adversaries and potential adversaries while protecting our own. (Department of Defense, 2012, p. ix) 21 In other words, IO as it is now understood regards information—including public opinion—on the same terms as territory to be seized and held. It follows that an objective of IO is to deny the enemy the same (Latimer, 2001). A tactic that the Army uses to accomplish that goal is to produce supportive, yet credible, information for the public— and lots of it. That task falls to public affairs professionals. Post-World War II information operations The lesson of the Allied victory in World War II was that industrial might could overwhelm the enemies of the United States. That conclusion failed to hold in Korea and in Vietnam. Moreover, the experience of the U.S. in Vietnam convinced some American military professionals that even the best weapons and fighting doctrine could not make up for a domestic population that was unsupportive of military aims or personnel (Trainor, 1992). Therefore, a new focus, spurred on by the post-Vietnam move to an AllVolunteer Force, was made toward better public relations at home. No longer would the military—particularly the Army—take for granted the support of the American public (Bailey, 2009). Information operations in the 1990s: RMA During the 1980s, American military theorists and planners had championed network-centric warfare in which friendly forces achieve information superiority in order to make decisions faster and foreclose effective decision-making of the enemy (Cebrowski & Garstka, 1998). The 1991 Gulf War had vindicated the investment in surveillance, reconnaissance, and networked command and control systems that interfaced directly with combat systems and soldiers. After the Gulf War, some of these theorists declared the U.S. to be in the midst of a “military-technical revolution,” which was later commonly referred to as the 22 “Revolution in Military Affairs,” or “RMA” (Lawson, 2008). The RMA had two important effects on IO. First, the emphasis on network-centric warfare as a paradigm among military theorists forced a reconceptualization of the “battlefields” of earlier wars to the “battlespace” of the coming ones (Department of the Army, 2001). The latter term underscored the multidimensional nature of conflict and allowed for extra-physical dimensions. Second, it stood as a call to the Army to use its technological superiority against potential future military threats, which included asymmetric ones (Sullivan & Coroalles, 1995). As a result, in the latter half of the 1990s, the military began to integrate IO into all of its operations. Those operations, according to the 2001 Army Field Manual 3-0: Operations, describe how “commanders manage their information resources, combine their judgment with the knowledge of their staffs and subordinates, and use information systems to understand their battlespace better than their adversaries or enemies do” (Department of the Army, 2001, p. 215). Throughout this time, the term “information warfare” itself had been evolving, sometimes offering the possibility of a new kind of warfare, but following the trends of the Information Revolution (Molander et al., 1998). Military theorists at various times included in the set of IO intelligence gathering, surveillance, command and control networks, psychological operations, electronic warfare, public affairs, and even civil affairs. One senior officer identified five disciplines of IO: psychological operations, deception, operational security, electronic warfare, and computer network operations (Metz, Garrett, Hutton, & Bush, 2006). By the end of the decade, the Army had its own doctrinal definition for IO: “actions taken to affect adversary, and influence others’ decision-making processes, information and information systems while protecting one's own information systems” (Department of the Army, 2001, p. 27). One component of IO in this new, integrated set of information activities was public affairs. 23 Public affairs as combat support This expansive view of IO presented the Army with the opportunity to view public affairs activities as part of the larger mission set: Army Public Affairs is an integral part of all military missions across the operational continuum. Everything that the Army does to accomplish its mission—both good and bad—occurs within today’s Global Information Environment. (Department of the Army, 1997, p. 10) Public affairs evolving The Army’s public affairs operations began during World War I, when a young Douglas MacArthur was assigned as the Army’s first designated public affairs officer. During the first World War, Stars and Stripes was born, fully funded by the military and authored by service members (Hammond, 1989). In the 1930s, MacArthur, as Army chief of staff, promoted public affairs so that it was a viable operation when the U.S. entered World War II. By 1945, it achieved its own directorate in the War Department. Hammond (2012) describes the World War II period as a cooperative one between Army public affairs and civilian news media. That relationship deteriorated during the Korea conflict, partly due to the fact that resources—both for the American military and the civilian media—were much more limited than had been for the war a decade earlier. The Vietnam conflict proved an even tougher war to sell for Army public affairs officers. Scholars continue to debate the media’s role in the outcome of Vietnam, but a consensus of sorts has emerged around the idea that the civilian media became more critical and confrontational as the war waged on, which exposed weaknesses in the Army’s public affairs program (Hammond, 1989). Public affairs officers were unable to counter the increasing number of unpopular stories in the civilian press, at least to the Army’s satisfaction. 24 Still, after Vietnam, the Army did little to overhaul its public affairs operations. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, public affairs remained siloed relative to other warfighting functions. Moreover, the Army tended to avoid relying on the civilian press to meet its IO objectives. In the spectacular Desert Storm operation, for example, civilian media were relatively scarce on the battlefield (Miracle, 2003). General Wesley Clark, speaking a dozen years after the fact, lamented that: We had a 1st Armored Division tank battle that was just incredible, perhaps the biggest armored battle ever, but not a single image was reported or documented for history by the press. (Isaacson & Jordan, 2003) Clark surmised that the lost opportunity resulted from mistrust between the military and civilian media that had festered since the Vietnam era (Miracle, 2003). Information warfare was at this time a “supporting but relatively low-profile element of U.S. military strategy and doctrine” (Molander et al., 1998, p. xix). However, IO began to evolve as the military developed a larger information systems framework that had been central to the RMA. For example, the 1997 public affairs field manual warned commanders to “ensure that public affairs operations are synchronized with other combat functions” (Department of the Army, 1997, p. 124). It also offered a new assessment of the battlespace in a way that valued credibility and transparency like never before. Moreover, it presented a view of the of the media as both threat and opportunity: “The impact of new communications technologies on the conduct of operations is equal to that of emerging weapons technologies” (Department of the Army, 1997, p. 10). In the late 1990s, the United States began to focus on strategic information warfare, partly because the conventional threat once posed by the Soviet Union had subsided, and partly as a result of the rise of foes who would have to rely on asymmetrical tactics (Molander et al., 1998). The Army made some adjustments to its public affairs doctrine with an eye toward flexibility to respond to those potential threats. 25 At the same time, the Defense Department made two significant moves to coordinate strategic public information. Public affairs in the Global War on Terror Army public affairs The first move the Army made was to formalize its public affairs operations with Army Regulation 360-1: The Army Public Affairs Program, issued in 2000. An Army regulation is a permanent directive that sets forth missions, responsibilities, and policies; delegates authority; and sets objectives to ensure uniform compliance with policies. AR 360-1 told the organization that Army public affairs now had the imprimatur of the secretary of the Army and represented public policy, rather than a best practice. Second, in 2001, the Army updated its operations manual and renaming it Field Manual 3-0: Operations. In FM 3-0, public affairs was confirmed as a component of IO and was described as a “shaping operation” (Department of the Army, 2001, p. 228). This was a subtle but significant acknowledgment that public opinion had a direct effect on combat effectiveness. Shaping was put to the test early in the Afghanistan campaign in 2001 as military planners saw unconventional forces like the Taliban meet some of their strategic goals by putting resources into their own shaping efforts (Metz et al., 2006). These victories came in the information war even as the Taliban suffered tactical defeats on the battlefield. Importantly, under the new doctrine, public affairs professionals had the responsibility to provide assessments of the impact of military operations on civilians, neutrals, and others within the battlespace. 26 Defense department coordination The Department of Defense made two related moves around the same time. In a directive dated September 27, 2000, the Secretary of Defense issued the “Principles of Information” (Department of Defense, 2017). The principles reframed the relationship between the civilian press and the military, making it clear that both institutions served the common good. The principles convey a level of transparency and cooperation that was in stark contrast to the climate of the Vietnam era. For instance, one of the principles reads: “Information will not be classified or otherwise withheld to protect the U.S. Government from criticism or embarrassment” (p. 11). Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers said regarding the principles: We must organize for and facilitate access of national and international media to our forces, including those engaged in ground operations. Our goal is to get it right from the start, not days or weeks into an operation. We will commit communications systems and trained joint public affairs teams to facilitate the international press getting a firsthand look at coalition operations. (Miracle, 2003, p. 42) The Army’s public affairs posture, though initially passive in Afghanistan, quickly fell in line with the new Defense Department principles (Miracle, 2003). Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) paved the way for a full-blown application of a more expansive and engaged public affairs strategy in Iraq. In the opening stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), approximately 500 journalists, photographers, and news crews were embedded within U.S. and British military units (Miracle, 2003). Reporters had unprecedented access to front line soldiers and senior officers. The media embed program was judged by the Defense Department and the media alike to have been a success, according to a report by the Institute for Defense Analyses (Wright & Harkey, 2004). The program was a direct extension of the Principles of Information. 27 Defense Visual Information Distribution System Civilian media were not the only ones who were getting the Army’s stories to the public. Hundreds of servicemembers—mostly from the Army—deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in public affairs roles. A typical brigade (2,000 to 4,000 soldiers) had six public affairs personnel assigned (Brown, n.d.). A division (three to five brigades) typically had a press camp or a public affairs detachment of up to 20 personnel, in addition to a division public affairs officer and a deputy. Also, a number of broadcast operation detachments operated independently through the theaters during OEF and OIF. Early on in Iraq, the Defense Department created the Defense Visual Imagery Distribution System (DVIDS). It launched in 2004 to supply the civilian press with military-produced video footage (Stahl, 2013). It quickly became a clearinghouse for photos and text stories as well. By the end of 2004, there were nearly 1,800 videos, more than 5,300 photos, and just over 770 news stories uploaded to DVIDS by service members in the field. Considering that, at the height of the troop surge, around 21 brigades and three divisions were in Iraq, public affairs personnel can be estimated to have been 250 or more at any given time, many of whom had the production of stories and other public information as their main mission (Global Security, n.d.). Slightly lower numbers would have been deployed to Afghanistan. Information operations generally, and public affairs operations specifically, were at the heart of the U.S. Army’s strategies in the two major campaigns of the 21st century and resulted in thousands of information products created and distributed by the Army. These products have shed light on how the Army, through its public affairs professionals, put the Warrior Ethos to use in constructing a framework for understanding their work as members in the organization. 28 Theory Two bodies of theory have informed this study: framing theory, which scholars have used to help researchers understand how media and other purveyors of information attempt to shape public opinion by the way information is organized; and enacted sensemaking theory, which helps explain how organization members make sense of chaotic and changing environments. These theoretical approaches to organization information will help explain how and, to a lesser degree, why the Army initiated a deliberate shift in the way it presented the modern warrior to its members. Framing Frames, by one definition, are deliberate attempts to make particular pieces of information more relevant than others (Moscato, 2017); by another, they are simply principles for organizing information (Reese, Gandy, & Grant, 2001). The term is often used in a general way using these definitions, as in having a “frame of mind” or “frame of reference.” Frames and framing, though, have more precise meanings for communications scholars that help them identify how organizations make sense of new phenomena and ideas (Hertog & McLeod, 2001). Background and origins As a field of scholarly inquiry, framing evolved within two separate but related traditions. Media studies investigated the effects mass media had on public opinion and discourse while sociology explored how human beings and groups of humans interacted based on how they interpreted messages designed for such interactions. Let’s look at the sociological origins of framing first. 29 Framing for interpretation Gregory Bateson first defined a “frame” in the terms relevant to this study as “a spatial and temporal bounding of a set of interactive messages” (Bateson, 1972, p. 197). His work was concerned with how humans perceive reality, and thus interact with the world, based on the frames that their perceptions constructed for them. He described the function of a frame as a message within a communication that gives the audience instructions for how to understand it (Bateson, 1972). Message production and reception in this sociological tradition is an interactive process, but these early explorations were more concerned with frames as interpretive devices. A frame, to the sociologist in the 1970s, involved the assembling of a narrative from often unrelated events by grouping them within a bounded concept in order to interpret or make sense of the world. More often than not, framing processes are implicit and ongoing. A message producer may offer suggestions for how the receiver should interpret or make sense of the message, but different phenomena are at play when that interpretation occurs. Frames for understanding the world Another sociologist, Erving Goffman, also used the concept of frames as a way to understand how people make sense of the information around them, whether delivered by the media or encountered in their everyday routines (Goffman, 1974). “Frameworks,” as Goffman called them, rendered what would otherwise be considered meaningless into something meaningful. In the sociological realm, frameworks were not linguistic devices per se, but they certainly depended on language for their development. Moreover, according to his explanation, frames were often socially constructed or shared. Goffman distinguished natural frames from sociological ones. The former identify and help explain occurrences 30 that are constrained only by natural phenomena, while the latter provide explanation of events that “incorporate the will, aim, and controlling effort of an intelligence” (1974, p. 22). Intelligent beings, chiefly humans, Goffman pointed out, have agency that can be manipulated and influenced. If individuals and groups relied on frames to make their world comprehensible, then scholars wondered if those frames could be strategically created or manipulated to influence choice and behavior. It seemed logical to media scholars that sociological frames could be shaped by mass media. Sociology’s contribution was to isolate many of the common frames constructed as a consequence of social activity and to point out their unreliability as true reflections of reality. Their unreliability notwithstanding, frames stabilize an individual’s perception by helping them make sense of what is going on around them, specifically in their “stream of activity.” Frames, according to Goffman and Bateson, help individuals navigate their social world, which occurs around them in as if an ongoing stream. Communication is the central component to this stream of being as individuals employ communication activities to variously compare themselves to others, negotiate their place in a situation, and present themselves to the world. These actions all depend on how much information one allows to enter into the decision or transaction—the result of a frame. Frames as a variable in decision-making During this same period, psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky had been working on a host of projects related to the same idea, though they were less interested in how frames were constructed than what influence they had on human choice. They ultimately placed their studies and conclusions under the label “Prospect Theory” (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; Schittenhelm, 2016). 31 Kahneman and Tversky identified language frames that called out anomalies in human decision-making. For example, when subjects were given a choice between getting $1000 with certainty or having a 50% chance of getting $2500, they more often chose the certain $1000 in preference to the uncertain chance of getting two-and-a-half times as much. However, when the same people were confronted with a certain loss of $1000 versus a 50% chance of no loss or a $2500 loss, they more often chose the risky alternative (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). In other words, people tend to be more conservative about risk when the choice is framed as a gain, but riskier when it is framed as a loss. The way information is presented has an enormous impact on the way it is interpreted—in fact, individual interpretation of framed material often eludes rational decision-making (Tversky & Kahneman, 1986). Such a claim was born out in various experiments with the way that equivalent choices were framed. The researchers concluded that the time-honored principle of invariance—the axiom of decision theory that says the preference order between prospects should not depend on the manner in which they are described—often failed with only slight adjustments to language used to describe them. “Making decisions is like speaking prose,” wrote Kahneman and Tversky, whose work showed just how important communication is to the study of frames (Kahneman & Tversky, 1984, p. 341). These studies had profound impacts on the field of economics (and consequently won Kahneman a Nobel Prize in economics) but also underscored the importance of language choice in framing effects. They are still cited frequently in communication articles about framing (Borah, 2011). 32 Framing in production of content The early work in framing theory by sociologists and psychologists foreshadowed more practical inquiries about how frames might be used by those who create messages in mass communication. Producers of media content make a variety of editorial decisions that can influence media consumers’ interpretation of information. Decisions include what to cover, how much time or space to dedicate to a topic, and what order to present topics (Terkildsen & Schnell, 1996). When those decisions are made, media members have choices about how to present, or frame, an issue. Studies about frames in news media trace their genealogy to Walter Lippman’s Public Opinion (1922), but increased in frequency in the 1970s, after the publication of an article by McCombs and Shaw in the journal Public Opinion Quarterly. “The AgendaSetting Function of Mass Media” compared topics on the minds of undecided voters in a presidential election to the topics favored by media in their coverage of the election (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Due to the high correlation of the two agendas, the authors concluded that media have a significant influence on the topics that voters think about. Framing scholarship has been abundant since McCombs and Shaw first explored the media’s influence over public opinion and has led scholars to look for other variables and related explanations in a search for more precision. Related ideas include agendasetting, priming, and bias. Agenda setting McCombs and Shaw coined the term “agenda setting” to describe the essence of their conclusions about how members of the news media make decisions about news presentation and established it as a subdiscipline in media studies. Agenda setting proposes that media consumers think about the things that the media creators want them to think about (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). It is the most elemental view of framing. 33 In their study, for instance, McCombs and Shaw categorized campaign coverage into major and minor news items according to a number of selection criteria, including the length of the story and prominence on the newscast or on the printed page. When voters answered questions about which items were most important in the election, their responses were nearly perfectly correlated to the major-minor categorizations (McCombs & Shaw, 1972, p. 181). Since that landmark study, media scholars have explored various functions of agenda setting. Humphrey (1993) categorized the universe of agenda setting studies into media agenda setting, public agenda setting, and policy agenda setting according to the dependent variable of the study. Some studies, for example, sought to explain the news media role in agenda setting, while other studies aimed at explaining the way a particular policy came to be understood. All of the studies, however, shared a concern with how public opinion is brought to bear on the functioning of democratic decision-making (Humphrey, 1993, p. 69). Scholars have variously described “second-level agenda setting” as the media’s attempt to influence audience’s views about more particular things (Littau & Stewart, 2015), as the media’s attempt to emphasize attributes of the objects of their coverage (Kiousis, Mitrook, Wu, & Seltzer, 2006), and as the media’s attempt to tell consumers “how to think” about content (Moon, 2013). The persistence of agenda setting as a line of inquiry demonstrates the predominance of news media studies in framing scholarship; the variety of work on agenda setting and the creation of second-level agenda setting shows how interested communication scholars are in how media forms messages intended for public consumption, particularly those messages related to major public policy. 34 Priming, bias, and other related concepts Agenda setting has led media scholars to pose additional questions about how media choices influence public opinion. How do media consumers form standards for judgment about issues, and can media make choices that alter those judgments (Brewer, Graf, & Willnat, 2003)? These and other questions have resulted in new theoretical constructs such as priming and bias. Priming has origins in cognitive psychology—specifically memory studies (Scheufele, 2000). When they receive and process information, individuals develop memory traces that are sometimes activated by new information. Those memory traces can prime the judgments and attitudes about this new information. Priming occurs when media messages linger in the minds of individuals and shape their attitudes toward subsequent messages (Iyengar & Kinder, 2010). Those lingering messages are said to prime audiences by activating particular cognitions. The priming cycle begins with a media frame (Domke & Wackman, 1998). Bias—the slant or distortion that is sometimes evident in the messages that media produce—is another related line of scholarship that implicates framing. Entman (2007) has described three specific types of media bias. Distortion bias is “news that purportedly distorts or falsifies reality” (p. 163). Content bias occurs when media favors one message over another. Decision-making bias refers to the motivations of journalists who produce biased content. (Any discussion of bias, of course, makes the implicit assumption of bias-free texts, choices, and decisions. That assumption is of uncertain veracity.) Framing generally, and agenda setting, priming, and bias specifically, define the most-traveled terrain in media effects studies. Framing is the idea that connects them all and has moved scholarship forward. It is the central theoretical claim of this dissertation. 35 Importantly, Rogan (2010) reminds us that frames are linguistic devices that individuals use to articulate their conceptualization about an issue or a problem. Frames as a heuristic Frames, then, have been used as an interpretive tool in studies of news media, politics, and economics. A frame can be read broadly as any “central organizing idea for making sense of relevant events” (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989, p. 157). In Kahneman’s and Tversky’s studies, that central organizing idea was how to convey risk. Both Goffman and Bateson, for their part, drew on language from psychology that described how humans categorize and make sense of stimuli around them and incorporate them into “schemata.” Often enough, the concept is applied more specifically to a bounded set of problems analogous to an academic discipline—economics, news media, or politics—and understood and studied according to conventions specific to that discipline. For example, Rabin (1998) has used the concept of framing to show how individuals tend to value goods more once they possess them, even if possession is only a communicated fact, rather than a fact in practice. Fuller and Rice (2014) used framing to show that during one high-profile management-labor dispute, news coverage predominantly reported procedural conflict over substantive conflict. Schemer et al. (2012) demonstrated that value frames presented by competing sides in a policy debate resonated more deeply with voters who shared those values expressed in the news frame. Frames, in the vast majority of the literature, are used to ultimately help explain decisions. Media scholars often use frames to measure effects, which requires them to examine frames in content production in order to answer questions about interpretation. According to Entman, a well-developed frame performs four functions: problem definition, causal identification, moral judgment, and remedy promotion (Entman, 1993, 36 2007). Although his formulation of a proper frame is fairly strict, it is a useful way to ask questions about what content producers accomplish, either implicitly or explicitly, with the frames they construct. Psycho-socio divide Whether the topic is media or economics, however, the divide in approaches to framing can be considered along a psychological-sociological divide (Borah, 2011). In other words, studies interested in the construction of narratives (content production), such as news stories, can be considered sociological in nature, in part because frames are often settled upon as a negotiation of group norms, be it in a newsroom, a political body, or an organization. In this context, frames are often analogous to culture. On the other hand, communication scholars want to know what effects framed messages have on media consumers. Studies that look at effects of frames (content interpretation) can be generally thought of as psychological. The psychological-sociological fault line loosely grouped the major disciplines that used framing as an analytical tool: political science and public policy, economics, and news media studies. Whereas the former two tended to look at frames of cognition—patterns of cognition developed in the mind of the individual—framing studies around news media looked at both, with an emphasis on sociological frames (Borah, 2011). Divisions are not so cut and dry, though. By the mid-1990s, after more than 2 decades of work on framing in the humanities and social sciences, Entman concluded that it was a ‘‘fractured paradigm’’ (Entman, 1993, p. 51). Matthes (2009), in a metastudy of frame analyses, demonstrated just how fractured it was (and continues to be). He highlighted four dimensions of variety in framing studies: definitions, frame type, use 37 of theory, and methods of analysis. In each dimension, he concluded that a consensus had yet to be reached. The psychological-sociological divide is not as deep or wide as it may appear. Frames, even if they originate in the mind of the individual, must be manifest through language if they are to mean anything at all. The mere exercise of describing them makes framing a discursive activity. Moreover, the sociological forces at work in creating frames at production sites is a result of an earlier psychological force that helps individual creators form them in their minds. All frames are, to some extent, cultural. Framing the Warrior Ethos The concept of framing consistently offers a way to describe the power of a communicating text (Entman, 1993). Members of the U.S. Army produced thousands of texts after 2003 in an effort to meet strategic information objectives. The Warrior Ethos emerged from these texts as a frame to help the Army, its content producers, and consumers of its information to understand what those strategic objectives were and how they were delivered. The framing concept is useful for studying the Warrior Ethos because a frame is a tool for organizing discourse. Frames “structure; that is, they impose a pattern on the social world, a pattern constituted by any number of symbolic devices” (Reese et al., 2001, p. 17). Moreover, they give government officials tools of political influence over the public (Entman, 2003). They would put that tool to use, in part, through the Army’s vast, and growing, network of public affairs professionals. As much as the efforts to frame resulted in particular types of stories emerging from the Army for public consumption, these stories also had an effect on members of the Army, according to the theory of enacted sensemaking. 38 Enacted sensemaking While framing theory gives scholars a way to describe how messages fit inside a particular theme, enactment theory, or enacted sensemaking (sensemaking for short), helps explain what organization members do with those messages. More specifically, it helps explain how actors interpret, respond to, and create their environments. Advanced primarily by Karl Weick, sensemaking describes what individuals do and think when things happen. Background and orientation Sensemaking theory was born from a reinterpretation of the modern organization, from a view of it as a collection of structures to one of processes. As members of organizations, individuals perpetually engage in formation processes (Deetz, 1982). In his introduction of enactment, Weick (1969) acknowledged that chaos and flux often reigned over order and routine. Enactment and sensemaking have helped organization and management scholars understand how organizations and their members respond to various stimuli, particularly crises (Weick, 1993; Weick, 2010). Moments of chaos and crisis, though, are often opportunities for organizations to audit communication routines and can reveal frames at work (Weick & Sutcliffe, 2005). Enacting to make sense Enactment explains how people, and groups, attain continuity and coordination. According to Weick (1969) organizations are in flux, and members employ rules to make sense—and communicate that sense—as they go about their organizational business. Rules are framed. 39 Weick is concerned with how organization members bring about organizational structure by making sense of their world. The theory is counterintuitive in several ways. First, it contends that people think by acting (Weick, 1969, 1995). Second, that sensemaking often happens retrospectively. Third, it maintains that the environment in which individuals act is a function of their sensemaking and subsequent actions (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld, 2005). To the first point, members of an organization have to do something before they really know what that something is. “Action precedes cognition and focuses cognition” (Weick, 1988, p. 307). People think by acting. Then the language used to describe that thinking emerges. The second point follows from the first. Actors don’t know what they’ve done until they have time to process it using language. That process sometimes comes long after having taken action. Moreover, enacted sensemaking holds that actors can’t really see things in their world without the language available to them to describe it (Coutu, 2003). The third point is that the enacted environment is a product of the first two points. Actors often don’t see things that they can’t make sense of. In cases that they do see new things, they are placed within a pre-existing framework—however limited—to help them make sense of it. That doesn’t mean that there are not real things in the environment, but that “their significance, meaning, and content is [questioned]” (Weick, 1988, p. 307). The real environment is real only to the extent that people can describe it and act upon it—both highly dependent and subjective notions. Social aspects of sensemaking Sensemaking doesn’t contend that the environment isn’t real. Instead, it treats the environment as complex and dynamic, in a balance that is interfered with and 40 restored continually. Another way of putting is that the environment can’t be taken for granted by actors because the reality things in the environment depend on how people perceive them and make sense out of them (Weick, 2010). Moreover, actors have great freedom in the way they decide to perceive their surroundings. However, Weick does concede that sensemaking is, for the most part, a social endeavor (Weick, 2001). Actors make sense of their environments because they talk about it with other actors. The things they make sense of are mostly interactions: “Raw talk is the data on which… sensemaking operates” (Weick, 1977, p. 280). In complex organizations, like the Army, that talk can be influenced, directed, and manipulated. The Warrior Ethos is one such attempt to direct organizational talk, or discourse. Textual aspects of sensemaking One feature of enactment and sensemaking is that people can sense more if they have greater capacity to respond. Soldiers, for example, will sense and see more in their environments if they have greater skills and more developed frameworks to deal with the stimuli (Weick, 1988). Frameworks are created through talk and texts. Labels Labeling is a mechanism that helps organization members build a framework for understanding. A label, or a category, is language put to use by people to retrospectively make sense of their environment. By necessity, a label must deflect more than it reflects (Weick, 2010). In other words, a label leaves out more information about what it is designed to categorize than it includes, because a label is useful only insofar as it discriminates against the ideas, actions, or objects outside the set. In this way, labels simplify, but they also restrict understanding. Still, they help individuals and teams 41 make sense of the organization in which they are involved, even as they foreclose on alternative ways of thinking (Coutu, 2003). Take, for example, an image captured by an Army public affairs professional that depicts soldiers in training while deployed to Kosovo. It bears the caption: U.S. soldiers from Multinational Battle Group East participated in the tactical combatives course at Camp Bondsteel, Kosovo, Aug. 6-17, 2012. The advanced course is designed to instill the U.S. Army's Warrior Ethos… (Wagner, 2012, p. 1) The text from the Warrior Ethos follows. Whether the soldiers depicted in the photo really were thinking about the Warrior Ethos is one matter that could be empirically settled using standard research methods. For this discussion, let’s presume that they were. Enactment would have us believe that the soldiers framed their actions according to the labels of the Warrior Ethos: mission first, victory, defeat, fallen comrade, etc. However, it would also claim that these soldiers, at least retrospectively, didn’t conceive that they were doing something else, like just having fun, or learning how to put an enemy into submission because the course was designed to teach about the psychological benefits of physical domination. Labeling is an important aspect of sensemaking because, according to Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld (Weick et al., 2005), “sensemaking occurs when a flow of organizational circumstances is turned into words and salient categories” (p. 409). The enacted environment Enacted environments contain real objects such as reactors, pipes, and valves. The existence of these objects is not questioned, but their significance, meaning, and content is. The environment is a place where decisions are made and order is imposed on chaos. It is immediately around the individual actor, but it also scales up and down. Taylor and Van Every (2011) describe a conventional view of organizational change as top-down. The Army certainly is, if anything, conventional. Paradoxically, the 42 theory that I propose will guide my dissertation reflects a “bottom-up” view of organizational change (p. 208). Enactment complements the explanations that discourse scholars propose, because people do not use language primarily to make accurate representations of perceived objects but, rather, to accomplish things (Alvesson & Kärreman, 2000). When put to use alongside frames created by the Warrior Ethos, enactment theory gives power to just how transformative the ethos has been. Framing theory and enactment theory, taken together, give this study, and the questions it poses, context and an appropriate perspective to craft answers from the data. Summary For over 100 years, the Army made use of information distribution to help it achieve its goals, both on combat and peacetime. Its information operations strategies, tactics, and doctrine went through significant changes beginning in the 1990s and culminating just after the 9/11 attacks. A significant result of these changes was the integration of public affairs activities integrating with combat operations just as two major land campaigns were beginning. In Afghanistan and Iraq, public affairs soldiers deployed and wrote texts in support of Army information operations objectives. These texts are well-suited to interpret through the lens of framing theory, which has been developed since the 1970s. Framing theory is appropriate because the question this study posed gets at meaning, rather than a topic. Framing helps researchers identify a field a meaning defined by a set of texts and leads to an analysis of what components, or themes, are more relevant for shaping that meaning. Framing theory also leads to a discussion of how soldiers incorporated the themes from the generated frame to make sense of their circumstances. The theory 43 known as enacted sensemaking has been described as a way to explain how people interpret, respond to, and create their environments in a social and communicative way. Next, I will describe the texts I used for the study and the methods I employed to extract data from them, beginning with a description of the research questions that guided the analysis. 3. METHODS This study is a content analysis, intending to discover the use of the Warrior Ethos as a framing device in the production of texts written by U.S. Army soldiers and as a framework for sensemaking among members of the Army for whom these texts were, in part, written. Identifying a frame and analyzing it for relevant implications requires intense study of the language of the texts. A content analysis is a qualitative approach that allows a researcher to focus on characteristics of language with particular attention to context and meaning of the texts (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005). The content analysis in this study was done over several stages using a software tool designed for textual analysis called NVivo. Texts The texts I examined were all produced by soldiers, both enlisted and officers. They are a good source of data for this study because they reflect a view of reality by the writers (soldiers) and by the subjects of their stories (also soldiers). They are the rough equivalent of news articles produced for a wire service, available for redistribution by any entity in the world, but also shared via the DVIDS website, a repository specific to that purpose. Though it is possible that some texts on DVIDS are written by service members not trained by the Defense Department, the overwhelming majority of writers have military occupation specialties in public affairs—titles such as “public affairs specialist,” “combat correspondent,” and “print journalist” (Department of the Army, 2010). 45 Enlisted personnel and public affairs officers in the Army have been writing about the Army since World War I with the publication of Stars and Stripes (Hammond, 2012). The Army Information School was established in 1946 to train Army journalists, and in the early 1990s, the services consolidated their public information operations training with the establishment of the Defense Information School (DINFOS) (Defense Information School, n.d.). Personnel trained at DINFOS have produced thousands of texts, photos, video products, and compilations over the years, most of which were meant for relatively local audiences in garrison or theaters of operations overseas. With the launch of DVIDS in 2004, military public affairs personnel were able to expand their reach to a worldwide audience. Military professionals trained in public affairs and visual information occupation specialties gain access to DVIDS through their military units. Units establish a presence on the platform. That means, for instance, the First Cavalry Division has its own unit profile on DVIDS, through which account administrators at the unit level can authorize additional public affairs soldiers to join the unit on DVIDS as a contributor. Upon registration and approval by unit administrators, each service member who can produce content is given an account on the platform and is then able to upload. DVIDS identifies anyone who uploads content to the database as a “storyteller.” Storytellers are responsible for the accuracy of the content and the metadata that are tagged to it. Data set I selected all DVIDS texts (alternatively called “stories”) created between 20 November, 2003 and 31 December, 2014. The database contains 54,907 documents within that date range. I then searched those documents across the word “warrior” (and its alternate forms). The search returned 6,205, (11.3 percent) separate written 46 documents created by military public affairs professionals that made at least one reference to the word “warrior.” From the set of 6,205, I selected the first six and then every 10th story for a sample of 627. Table 3.1 presents the number of stories entered into the data set by the date of publication. The selected stories ranged from soldiers in Iraq delivering medical magazines to a skin art contest held at a forward operating base in Iraq; these Army journalists had a great deal of freedom in what they produced. They wrote about warriors in specific ways, from simply referring to the post-9/11 soldier as a warrior, to describing the tradition and genealogy of warriors in traditional cultures. They sometimes invoked the warrior ethos explicitly, but more often alluded to more generalized notions of a warrior spirit or tradition. Not every writer was strategic in their use of the term “warrior,” but many stories were crafted to tease out meaning. Themes emerge. Taken together, the stories appeared to construct a warrior frame. Research Questions Four questions guided this study. RQ1: What themes did service members write about in their stories of U.S. soldiers? RQ2: How closely did those themes correspond to aims of the Warrior Ethos Project and to historical conceptualizations of a warrior? RQ3: Did a coherent frame emerge from the DVIDS texts during the period of the study? RQ4: In what ways did the frame or theme contribute to an organizational identity unique to the context of the time period of the study? These questions all required qualitative analysis of a large set of texts to answer in a meaningful way. Question 1 aims at outlining the contours of the discourse of 47 warriors generated by the subjects of warrior talk—the soldiers of the U.S. Army. The data I gathered were the best set of data that could provide a reasonable approximation of how soldiers wrote, and therefore talked and thought, about themselves during the period of the study. Research Question 2 offers up evidence about the effectiveness of strategic organizational messaging in the U.S. Army during the first decade of the 21st century. This is important because if the frame exists, the logical follow up is to find out the source or origin of the frame or elements of it. Question 3 narrows in on the purpose of the study—namely, did themes form a frame as described in the literature on framing theory? Question 4 ties findings consistent with framing theory to concepts of organizational identity and sensemaking. It is this question, and its answer, that offers the most insight into implications for the members of the U.S. Army during the period of the study and beyond. Data Management One of the challenges of this study was sorting and archiving a large number of individual texts. I downloaded each text individually from the DVIDS website as a portable digital file (PDF). Each file represents a single story written by a single service member. I saved each text, naming it by date of production followed by the story title. For example, a story written by Sgt. Mark Miranda titled “Push it forward: Human Resources soldiers train to process mail” was published to DVIDS on 14 August, 2012. The file is named “20120814 Push it forward_ Human Resources soldiers train to process mail.” I thus had a chronological list of all the stories. To sort and analyze the stories, I used NVivo 12 Professional (hereafter NVivo), a software tool that helps researchers to aggregate, code, and analyze textual data. The entire set of 627 texts was imported to an NVivo project. After that, NVivo was used as 48 the primary data management tool of all the stories. For example, when I wanted to find a story with a specific key word, or one that was produced on a specified date, I performed the search within the NVivo project. Analytical Process The search for a frame, by its definition, is a search for elements of a narrative. It involves labeling, categorizing, and generalizing into themes. That work, given a large set of texts, requires coding. For this dissertation, I developed a preliminary list of codes, that was informed by my work with the literature on ethos. With these preliminary codes I ran basic descriptive analyses and began several cycles to discover themes, categories, and narratives to help answer the research questions. Unit of analysis Anderson (2012) recommends that a unit of analysis be selected to ensure that the entirety of the text is engaged in the coding process. The unit of analysis could be a topic, a theme, an idea frame, a paragraph, a sentence, or any other boundaried segment of text. This study uses the paragraph as the unit of analysis to ensure that the entirety of the texts was coded. I selected the paragraph as the unit because this study is less interested in keywords and phrases, and more interested in ideas and themes. Because these texts adhere basic journalistic conventions, the average paragraph length is relatively short—35 words. Some paragraphs develop ideas that are important, while many of the paragraphs introduced a single-sentence quote given by a subject of the story. In each case, the idea coded is more important to the purpose of the study than any single key word or phrase. 49 The coding process Saldaña (2009) defines a code as a “word or short phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language-based or visual data” (p. 15). In this study, I followed what can roughly be described as a combination of holistic coding and descriptive coding over five stages. Codes in this study consisted of parents and children. A parent code is one that groups other codes. For instance, the preliminary “ethos” code was independent of all other codes in the beginning stages of the analysis. Later on, as I discovered more and more references to ethos, I made additional codes to better describe that part of the text. “Ethos” went from a single, independent code to a parent code of “mission first,” “no defeat,” “never quit,” and never leave a fallen comrade.” The four subcodes are called child codes in NVivo and hereafter in this dissertation. The use of parent and child codes is useful because I can aggregate frequencies of children in the group or analyze them separately. By design, units could be coded at either a parent or a child code. For instance, Ethos was applied to paragraphs that dealt with ethos in a general way, or a “warrior spirit,” as some of them do. However, if the paragraph referred to the notion of “mission first,” then it go coded at the “mission first” child code. NVivo allows analysis based on aggregation of children nodes, so that a running count of “Ethos” codes included all instances of coded at the parent and children codes. Stage 1: Preparatory work and preliminary coding My first step with the data was to create a preliminary list of codes. This was partly accomplished through previous study of the Warrior Ethos and ethos in general (Section 1, pp. 4–12). For example, I anticipated that the texts would reveal themes related to discipline, sacrifice, courage, and the like. To get additional possible codes, I 50 compiled a set of secondary data sources, which consisted of 20 journal articles, news items, and speeches related to the Warrior Ethos. With this small set, I used NVivo to run a frequency query on the word “ethos” and created a word tree diagram from the result. A word tree is a graphical representation of all the phrase roots and stems on the word frequency query. In the secondary data set, for instance, the word tree revealed the following verbs that most frequently preceded “warrior ethos”: applies, becomes, calls, concerns, compels, describes, echoes, ensures, gives, grounds, instills, moves, and reflects. It also showed several words and phrases that were used in close relation to “warrior ethos:” teamwork, sacrifice, training, and resilience. This simple analysis helped me to generate the preliminary list of codes: “discipline,” “ethos”: “leadership,” “sacrifice,” “selflessness,” “training,” and “transformation.” Stage 2: Holistic coding In order to discover the most common themes and issues of the data set, I next performed a round of holistic coding, which represented an attempt to grasp big ideas rather than analyzing specific lines of text (Saldaña, 2009). In this stage of coding, I conducted a search of the word “warrior” across all texts in the data set to see what ideas corresponded. This step was equivalent to a walkthrough of a home before an official inspection. I looked for themes in paragraphs that contained “warrior” or were adjacent to such paragraphs. Performing this holistic step validated themes that I had already recognized. “Discipline,” for instance, was a preliminary code, but related themes of hard work, persistence, and training emerged during this stage. Anticipating themes of the Warrior Ethos, I already had an early code for “ethos,” but the way it was presented in the stories 51 was more complex and robust than I had expected. This first pass hinted that I might need to explore that theme more deeply, or from a different perspective. I also began to see new themes and patterns emerge in this stage, such as the use of the term “warrior” as an honorific, the pattern of competition, and the theme of sacrifice. When I came across a paragraph with such a reference, I would create a new code. Other themes were more surprising, like genealogy. I created a code for it. When I discovered “warrior” used in proximity to the description of a change process in one of the texts, I created a code for “transformation,” and so on. At this time, I had no way to know whether these new codes would be relevant in the findings, but I coded them in the event that they would. Holistic coding also exposed some stories as unimportant to the study. For instance, many texts used the word warrior to designate a place, as in “Forward Operating Base Warrior.” In fact, 87 stories used the word “warrior” in this way. When I came across the word in this instance, I coded the entire paragraph as “facility.” I followed a similar pattern in references to units (33 stories), equipment (31 stories), and exercises (19 stories). Stage 3: Descriptive coding and splitting Having identified several codes from my preliminary analysis and holistic coding, I reread every story to perform descriptive coding on the entire text. Coding in this stage focused on attributes or characteristics at a more precise level, and included the distinct processes of code splitting and simultaneous coding. These processes resulted in greater precision of codes and clarity of the most important themes. Rereading entire stories more carefully, looking for deeper descriptions of warriors meant that I had to make more subjective decisions. For instance, references to 52 leadership of a soldier wasn’t necessarily a description of warriors, I knew. I created codes based on a simple rule—that the paragraph (a) contained the word “warrior” or (b) related somehow to a description of soldiers as warriors. Usually a reference to a martial value was coded. The list of codes included warrior as an honorific, as a namesake, and as a modifier for things like competition and training. There were codes for soldier demographics because I anticipated that warriors were framed differently among different groups. I coded a paragraph as one of four demographic categories—female, officer, noncommissioned officer, or junior enlisted—if the story made explicit mention of soldiers as a member of the group in connection with their warrior status. Finally, I used actions as a code, anticipating that specific child codes would emerge as I went through this stage of coding. One action that did emerge was that of warriors protecting civilians. At first, I didn’t know if this would be a major theme, so it simply got coded as an action (as it turned out, actions in a general sense did not emerge as a significant finding). Coding the entire set of texts would reveal more actions, such as peacemaking actions and recreation actions. Saldaña recommends splitting codes during descriptive coding (Saldaña, 2009). Splitting results in more codes, but since the codes refer to fewer units of text, they tend to be more precise. This helped me to overcome the simplicity of, for instance, the “ethos” code. As mentioned, I split it into each of the four tenets of the Warrior Ethos, giving more description to each of the paragraphs thus coded. Since splitting increases the possibilities of codes for a given paragraph, it forced me to read the stories more carefully so I could be sure I coded it in the most precise way. It was sometimes difficult to identify paragraphs that should have been coded “I will never accept defeat” until I realized that it was just another way of saying “victory,” a notion frequently referenced in 53 the stories. I also split the “training” code into general training; “warrior tasks and drills,” a reference to a particular set of doctrine-defined training requirements; and “Warrior Leaders Course,” a standardized course for noncommissioned officer candidates. Additionally, I split the “honorific” code into general honorific, “citizen” (referring, in the parlance of the Army, to reservists and National Guardsmen), and “wounded and fallen.” In other words, a “citizen-warrior” in these stories referred to a member of the Army Reserve or the Army National Guard, and a “fallen warrior” was one who died while in service. At this stage, I also identified many more characteristics of a warrior and made codes for each of them. Since each code represented a warrior attribute, I created a parent code called “Attributes.” Specific descriptors became child codes: “strength,” “intelligence,” “courage,” and “hard work.” To these I added some of my earlier codes from the first round of descriptive analysis like “team work” and “sacrifice.” Because the unit of analysis was the paragraph, which is a structural and not an ideational form, a single paragraph could have more than one code. In fact, simultaneous coding made some advanced analysis available that would have been impossible if codes were mutually exclusive. Some examples of simultaneous coding were a training event (coded as “training”) that described an episode of knowledge sharing (coded initially as “intelligence”). During this stage of descriptive coding, I also discovered that some of the stories made no productive mention of warriors. These included the stories that only mentioned facilities, equipment, units, and exercises, plus a few others. At the conclusion of the stage, 415 of the 627 texts remained in the set, with the following codes, shown in Table 3.2. 54 Stage 4: Case classifications During the previous stage, I noticed that the “competition” pattern presented itself in two distinct ways. Some paragraphs were coded at competition because they contained a description of a competitive lifestyle for soldiers, similar to the way a paragraph might describe soldier life as fraternal. Most of the stories that had a competition code, however, were written about a formal competition event. Therefore, in these stories, most paragraphs were coded at “competition.” That signaled to me that the stories about competition events were of a different category than the other stories, and I was interested in exploring competitions more deeply. A similar pattern emerged for stories that had rich interview data about combat experiences. Using the case classification feature in NVivo, I assigned these stories to special cases called “competition” and “combat experiences,” respectively. Assigning a story to a case classification puts it in a subset for separate analysis. Case classifications have another powerful feature—they can take attribute data about each instance in the case for additional attention. For competition stories, I entered values for level (local, regional, and national) and component (active, National Guard, or Army Reserve). For combat stories, I entered attribute data for date and theater (Afghanistan, Iraq, or other). I hoped these classifications would give me some insight into how warriors were framed with respect to the various categorical divisions. These stories were also coded at all other codes as appropriate. For example, a story about a competition was put into that case classification, but also contained codes for “courage” or “strength” if the content of the paragraphs warranted the code. Stage 5: Clarification and consolidation In the final stage, I proceeded with more careful rereading of the texts and (a) clarified many of the codes and (b) began the process of “lumping,” or combining similar 55 codes to reduce the overall number of codes. I also (c) coded irrelevant paragraphs as “no-code” to ensure that I had engaged all of the material. Clarification was an important step because many of the codes described similar things in various ways. Professionalism, as an example, was a vague notion that included lots of codes dealing with individual soldiers’ work ethic, but also encompassed a view of the all-volunteer force as a fully trained one of experts who could pass along that expertise. I enlarged the “professionalism” code to include paragraphs that corresponded to acting in a professional manner or maintaining professional standards. Conversely, I restricted the “resourcefulness” code to paragraphs that dealt with solving problems in a way that didn’t align to training and doctrine and made sure to put the latter into the “training” code. I also the new code “grit,” which included all of the paragraphs mentioning hard work and persistence. I also made sure the case classifications were consistent. After this final review, 56 stories about competition remained in that case. I refined the combat experiences classification to make it more precise and meaningful, devising three rules for inclusion into the classification: 1. The story must refer to hostile action that took place during the time frame of the study, 2. Combat must be a central feature of the story (mentioned in the lead or in more than one direct quote) 3. The story must reflect a first-hand account of the event These rules reduced the number of stories in the combat classification to six, but the subset would be a more valid reflection of how soldiers perceived combat action. The final step in clarification was to rename some of the codes. “Attributes of a Warrior” became “Warrior Virtues,” for instance. Many of the virtue codes were abbreviated, too. “Thinking/ Education/ Mental Development” became “Intellect/ 56 Education.” “Expertise/ Sharing Knowledge/ Experience” became simply “Expertise/ Experience.” Distinct from clarifying is “lumping.” Lumping codes together or looking for patterns in the codes is an inductive approach to summarizing and condensing the data (Thomas, 2006). For instance, “Respect” only had two references. On reexamination, it was clear that they were better described by the “legacy” code. I combined “discipline” with “commitment/ dedication” in the “attributes” parent code and I grouped “tradition” with “legacy/ genealogy” in the “connection” parent code. Lumping at this stage resulted in a reduction of the total codes by about 50%, but each code had more units of data to make the analysis more powerful. Some codes didn’t consolidate. Codes that remained without children were: “competition,” “Proper Exit,” “sexual assault,” and “Wounded Warrior Project.” “Competition” included references to an element of competition that was not part of a formal competition event. “Proper Exit” refers to a program that brings soldiers who were wounded on the battlefield back to the theater of operations one last time as a way to honor them and help them achieve closure to a traumatic event. References about sexual assault were few, but distinct enough to merit a code, and the Wounded Warrior Project features in several stories. After the clarification and consolidation stage of coding, the following codes remained for analysis, listed in Table 3.3. Analytic memos Throughout the coding process, I wrote analytic memos to reflect on coding choices, emerging themes, and concepts in the texts, all while comparing them with the theory that undergirded the study and the research questions that propelled it. 57 These memos became a blog of sorts on the coding and analyzing process and helped me track the subtle changes that I was making in my approach. Because so many of the texts were similar, it also helped me take note of my high-level thoughts. An example of an analytic memo early in the coding process is: Not everything in these texts relates to warriors or the warrior discourse. For example, a text “20140812 Three Army _ohana_ prepare for the All-Army Softball Team tryouts” mentions competition, but that competition isn’t referent to the warrior ethos. Other texts do mention competition as an action of warriors. There is a proximity rule that I need to follow to some degree: if mention of “warrior” isn’t close to other parts of the text that look code-able, then I shouldn’t code them as warrior talk. The big question is, is the inclusion of other items in the same document as mention of a unit, for example, count as proximity? These memos helped me craft questions for an external auditor of the study and gave me specific things to think about before continuing the process the next day or the next week. Concluding Thoughts Coding is the fundamental act in this study, tying together the texts, the research questions, and the theory. Using the right codes, informed by hundreds of hours of literature review and iterations of the coding process itself, a powerful analytical tool like NVivo helped me tease out important information from a large set of texts. My set began with 627 stories and was reduced— through various coding stages and techniques—to 415 in-depth accounts of soldier experiences, written by soldiers in the moment and location they are describing. They are powerful because they reflect soldiers’ points of view and they are products of institutional processes in the Army. In the next section, I will describe my findings from the analysis of these texts and their codes. 58 Table 3.1 Number of Stories in the Sample by Year Year of Publication Number of Stories 2005 2006 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2 7 14 34 46 69 67 68 109 107 111 59 Table 3.2 Parent and Child Codes in NVivo After Stage 3 Parent Code Characteristics Child Code Courage Discipline Teamwork Thinking Strength Humble Selflessness Expertise Leadership Persistence Resourcefulness Professionalism Commitment Preparedness Ethos Mission First Never Accept Defeat/ Victory Never Quit Never Leave a Fallen Comrade Outcomes of Warrior Ethos Individual outcomes Individual transformation Organizational outcomes Organizational transformation Honorific Citizen Wounded and Fallen Namesakes Units Facilities Equipment Exercises Resiliency Resiliency Training Recovery and Healing Soldier Demographics Junior Enlisted Female Soldiers Male soldier Officers NCOs Actions Actions on Habit Reactions to Surprise Training Recreation Honor to Represent Ethos Legacy and Genealogy Family Competition Victory Sexual Assault 60 Table 3.3 Parent and Child Codes in NVivo After Stage 5 Parent Code Warrior Virtues Child Code Preparedness Confidence/ Pride Humility/ Feelings of Inadequacy Selflessness/ Service to Others and Community Professionalism Courage/ Valor Grit Teamwork/ Esprit de Corps Leadership/ Mentorship Intellect/ Education Commitment/ Discipline Resourcefulness Expertise/ Experience Strength/ Toughness/ Battle-hardened Ethos Mission First Never Quit Never Accept Defeat/ Victory Never Leave a Fallen Comrade Training Warrior Tasks and Drills Warrior Leaders Course Honorific Citizen Wounded and Fallen Connection Family Legacy and Genealogy Fraternity Resiliency Resiliency Training Reintegration Recovery and Healing Soldier Demographics Junior Enlisted Officers Female Soldiers NCOs Male soldier Actions Protecting Recreation Peacemaking Transformation Competition Proper Exit Sexual Assault Wounded Warrior Project Organizational Transformation Individual Transformation 4. RESULTS Data collection and coding of more than 400 texts resulted in a wide range of themes that relate to the warrior, the Warrior Ethos, and the warrior frame. Prominent in the body of texts are virtues of an idealized, modern U.S. soldier that reinforce notions inherent in the Warrior Ethos: teamwork, expertise, service to community and country, and leadership; training; social connection; and competition. Many of these are not components of a new warrior frame but are tried and true ways of framing discourse about soldiers in service of the state. They are, however, presented in a new context, thus representing what Cooren calls, “another next first time” for understanding what makes a warrior and how American warriors set group expectations through institutionalized texts (Cooren, 2010, p. 161). This section begins with an overview of the data, followed by an analysis of the most pronounced warrior virtues. I then explore warrior themes that were not so obvious by descriptive analysis. Finally, I examine two special story categories—stories about formalized soldier competitions and stories written about combat experiences. In that analysis, I provide a comparison of the two categories using the warrior themes as a heuristic. 62 Description of the Data Texts Out of the 627 texts selected for analysis at the outset of this study, 32 were eliminated because they made no productive mention of warriors or warrior themes. Of the 585 that remained, 170 were removed from the set because they contained only superficial mentions of warriors, as in names of facilities (e.g., Forward Operating Base Warrior), equipment (e.g., OH-58 Kiowa Warrior), units (e.g., Warrior Battalion), or operations and exercises (e.g., Operation NETT Warrior). The remaining 415 went through five stages of coding and are the basis of the primary analysis. A subset of 56 stories was entered into a special case classification called “competition” in which the entire story was coded within that classification. Similarly, a smaller subset of six stories was entered into a special case classification called “combat.” Combat and competition stories were also coded at the paragraph level to the various codes as appropriate. For example, a story could be classified as a case of “combat,” but also have paragraphs coded at “grit,” “resiliency,” or any other code. The final 415 stories are listed in the Appendix as they were entered into NVivo and are assigned a number, 1–415. Throughout this section and the next one, I will cite those stories by their number. Codes The 415 stories provided approximately 5,810 paragraphs for the paragraph unit of analysis data set. About one third of these paragraphs had relevant and meaningful references to warriors or the warrior themes. The remaining two thirds of the paragraphs were coded as “NC” (no code) and were removed from all further analysis. The resulting data set then is approximately 1,920 paragraphs taken from 415 texts and coded by 48 63 codes. The final codes listed in the previous section are shown in Table 4.1 along with the number of references (coded paragraphs) across all the stories. Analysis Analysis of a data set this complex can follow several different paths. I chose two: analysis based on the frequency of codes in use and, therefore, considered the most important in the interpretation of the texts and analysis based on the similarity of the texts grouped with sets of codes; those similarities were considered to reveal the underlying themes that percolated through the stories. Analysis by frequency of use Table 4.2 shows all parent codes and their aggregate frequencies. In other words, the sum of all child codes under the parent “warrior virtues” is 583. The three most prominent parent codes, as measured by code frequency, are “warrior virtues,” “honorific,” and “training.” Less prominent, but still significant, parent codes are “connection,” “resiliency,” and the “Warrior Ethos.” Each analysis proceeds by providing a table showing the frequency of each child code and a discussion of the code in question. The analysis is illustrated in each case with representative text. Warrior virtues During the period of the study, U.S. Army soldiers were in Iraq and Afghanistan (primarily) doing many things. The wide range of activities was often conveyed under the rubric “warrior” activities. These stories mentioned warriors in a variety of ways, from competitors in “warrior games,” to “postal warriors” making sure deployed soldiers received packages on time while on forward operating bases in Iraq. These references to soldiers as warriors were justified discursively with frequent associations to martial 64 attributes and virtues. Nearly every story in the set had a unit of text coded at a virtue. Virtues accounted for 31% of all coded units. The “warrior virtues” code has 15 child codes. Table 4.3 presents the 15 codes and the number of stories in which they appeared. In the subsections that follow, the meaningfulness of each of the child codes will be analyzed and illustrated through selections of the texts so coded. Teamwork As Table 4.3 shows, the most common virtue mentioned in stories about warriors is teamwork. Teamwork, as a code, included anything that dealt with soldiers working together toward a team goal, esprit de corps, building productive or meaningful relationships, or the concept of trust as it relates to the labor the soldiers performed. Vitell and Singhapadki (2017) define esprit de corps as the spirit of commitment shared by members of a team. It goes to trust and relationships that contribute to trust. Synonymous to esprit de corps is “unit cohesion,” which has long been the study of scholars interested in how soldiers perform (Wong, 2006). Shils and Janowitz’s landmark study on unit cohesion of the Wehrmacht during World War II concluded that combat effectiveness was a function of unit cohesion. Cohesion depended on interpersonal relationships among soldiers above all else. Examples of texts coded for teamwork are shown in Table 4.4. Evidence of the importance of cohesion, trust, and relationships is found in the above paragraphs. In the first excerpt in the table, the writer mentions cohesion and its importance to mission success for soldiers. Cohesion is something that begins in training—long rotations of training—and is “cemented,” signifying that cohesion is hard earned, or cured through a process. The implication is that soldiers work toward cohesion and see it as part of the act of becoming a warrior. 65 Cohesion is a prerequisite for team-building. “[Sanders] … put a lot of Soldiers in the right places and built a fine team. I plan to continue fine tuning that as the mission here requires.” The comment implies that relationships take time and effort to build, and that they are at least as important as systems or competence for organizational investment. When a soldier says, “I think we'd all agree that if we were going outside the wire, we'd want you with us,” he conveys a deep trust between the speaker and his soldiers. It is the kind of trust that is required when soldiers perceive that their safety, and even their lives, are sometimes in the hands of their teammates. Warriors trust, according to these stories, but they also make themselves trustworthy. Ants are known for cooperation and heavy lifting. The comparison by the speaker in the fourth selection in the table is one of every warrior doing his job so that others can do theirs. It is the basis of trust and cohesion among teams—knowing that your comrade will be in a position to help you out. For the archetypal warrior, that means saving a buddy’s life. Individual ants work hard, but an ant colony is the archetype of a team. Expertise Expertise is the second most frequently coded child of the virtues, with 77 coded units in 55 stories. The code was applied to any unit that referred to a soldier’s experience or sharing expertise with others. These coded units indicate that the Army thinks of its members as well-trained, competent professionals. The self-description as highly competent has not always been used freely. During Vietnam, and even as recently as on the eve of 9/11, some military observers worried about low levels of professionalism and expertise in the Army (Snider & Watkins, 2000). Snider and Watkins argued nearly 2 decades ago that the Army was bureaucratizing at the expense 66 of developing expert knowledge. Examples of texts in the “expertise” code are shown in Table 4.5. The developing warrior frame seems to be a response to earlier worries. “They’re going to learn some type of skill that’s going to help them in their day-to-day warrior skills,” is emblematic of an insistence that members of the Army continually learn. A warrior, according to these stories, is always developing and extending expertise. That development comes from warriors putting themselves into difficult and new situations. Rebecca Cassady, the subject of the story, “Not your average teacher,” was an Army Reserve captain who brought her expertise as a civilian educator to various combat zone situations. She was “not a stranger in the Middle East,” the story goes, suggesting that her expertise brought an adroitness to the environment in which the military had asked her to operate. It further suggests that no environment will be beyond her expertise. To extend the logic, no battlefield situation is a match for American warriors. That claim has been an important one since 9/11, having been used to blunt worries about continued involvement in foreign operations. Many of the stories dealing with warrior expertise are about training foreign troops: “Tactically, they know how to fight, and they're not afraid to fight. They are tough. They are very willing to go out and do what needs to get done.” The third excerpt demonstrates the requirement that warriors can pass along their expertise to Afghan or Iraqi troops who are allied to the U.S. military. That ability, of course, requires American troops on the ground in those places. Beginning with Operation New Dawn in Iraq in 2010 and the final year of Operation Enduring Freedom, the stories emphasize the leadership of allied troops, backed by the expertise of American warriors. 67 Selflessness “Selflessness” is the third most frequently coded attribute across the data set, with 66 coded units in 50 separate stories. Patton called it “abnegation of self” and it is a virtue that appears consistently in the literature about ethos. It continues to frame how warriors are viewed and view themselves. Examples of texts coded for selfless service are shown in Table 4.6. Selflessness was expressed in three main ways across the stories. Gratitude for the support of communities on the home front was typical in the stories. Acknowledgement of service in the face of great risk, and a willingness to do hard things on behalf of a community also appeared. Perhaps the epitome of selflessness is showing gratitude for gratitude. “You can't ask for more than to be supported, and anytime anybody ever comes up to me and says, ‘Thank you for your service,’ I always make sure to say, ‘Thank you for your support.”’ It’s an attribute that, when practiced and communicated well, pays dividends for the institution. Maintaining a good relationship with the American taxpayer was part of the rationale for developing an organizational ethos in the early 2000s. Cultivating relationships with stakeholders, moreover, is the central aim of public relations, which falls to Army Public Affairs. Facing risk willingly shows up in the stories. Acknowledgment of risk is sometimes presented as soldiers remember one of their comrades in death. This is the case with the dining facility (DFAC) named in honor of Sgt. Bull in the second excerpt above. The circumstances of combat deaths are not important in these stories. There is little mention of how the sacrifice contributed to strategic, or even tactical, objectives. The calculus of a combat death isn’t contextual. There is no senseless death in these stories. All have meaning, though much of the meaning goes unstated. Risk isn’t only about the casualties; it is ever-present to the soldiers in these 68 stories, which often reference soldiers as family members who have left their spouses and children and are currently in harm’s way. The ones who didn’t die “put aside personal peace and affluence with the hope that there is more to life than mere selfish endeavor.” The soldiers in these stories were selfless because they were serving others. Community was described locally more than nationally. Soldiers were less often described as serving their nation than their town or county or parish: “We weren’t soldiers, but neighbors.” Grit Hard work is another common way these stories justify the use of the warrior label. Mentions of working hard or persisting were coded at “grit.” They usually described it in terms working long shifts, performing difficult tasks, or operating far from home. However, it is not only hard work; this theme incorporates notions of perseverance in the face of difficult circumstances and continuing on despite setbacks. Examples of paragraphs coded against “hard work” are shown in Table 4.7. Missions running eight hours, with long days, typify the appeal that these stories make with respect to the hard work theme. It parallels the second tenet of the Warrior Ethos (I will never quit), perhaps performing the function of normalizing long shifts. Working long and hard at a monotonous task is cause for praise in the stories. Perseverance is another dimension to hard work. It’s not about taking the hill, it’s about taking it as the enemy tries to force you off it. “Unfaltering perseverance in the face of adversity” is the standard for warriors because in war, adversity will come, as the second excerpt demonstrates. The Army has an interest in encouraging perseverance. It applies to almost every facet of soldier life, including physical fitness, as the third except 69 shows. A persistent soldier is not just living a Sisyphean nightmare. Instead, they face a an opportunity to challenge themselves and prepare. Leadership Leadership is a term used vaguely throughout the stories. “A leader is a person who displays qualities that inspire others to strive for personal excellence,” said one recent graduate from a leadership class described in Story 99. It highlights the first of five ways that leadership is described across all stories: as an inspiration to soldiers, leading from the front, being an example, being in charge, and commitment to the mission and the organization. Examples of paragraphs coded at “leadership” are shown in Table 4.8. “Leading from the front” is a bit of Army jargon, but it communicates an important principle: Leading from the front puts a leader in harm’s way. The command sergeant major who is the subject of the story “1ACB CSM coach, role model for Soldiers” is described as a mentor to soldiers. He instills pride in them. As he leads them, much like an ancient colonel leading his column into battle, he is in a vulnerable position and reminds followers that leadership is risky. Leadership is also about setting an example, so that new leaders take less risk than their predecessors. Soldiers are engaged in action, to be sure, but in a large organization, Army leaders are asked to model very conventional and conservative behavior to maintain organizational norms and standards. “The role of a NCO leader” is one that enforces standards of dress, behavior, and demeanor. These stories also promote the notion that Army leadership is about taking charge, a word that has a historic military connotation. Taking charge is about taking account. It also implies charging at an enemy or a challenge. “Battle-tested… warriors” 70 will lead subordinates through challenges, according to the third excerpt in the table. Leaders hit the challenge head-on. Finally, leadership is about commitment. “She’ll do whatever she can for her soldiers” reflects a leader’s commitment to a cause and her team. The modern American warrior, according to these stories, is a committed one. Civilians who read these stories are, in effect, asked to continue supporting the Army because the Army will support them. Other virtues The 10 least frequently used codes were coded to a combined 249 units of text across 200 stories. Though not as pronounced in the stories, they contributed in important ways to the themes discussed later in this section. Warrior as honorific The word “warrior” is used throughout these stories as an honorific title and as a synonym for soldier 251 times in 188 stories. As an example, in a profile story about a U.S. Army chaplain quotes its subject: We have the best Army on planet Earth. Our Soldiers are great Americans, true patriots, professional and disciplined. To watch these warriors in action makes me feel like a little boy standing on the sidelines of the NFL all-star Pro Bowl game. (Story 39) In another story about two bronze star recipients (Story 75), a battalion commander said, “Today we are going to recognize some soldiers that exemplify a long tradition of heroes and warriors that take care of each other and bring an honor to our battalion and regiment.” Although authors used warrior as a general honorific, they also used it to specify two subgroups of warriors: reservists and Guardsmen as “citizen-warriors” and combat 71 casualties as “wounded and fallen warriors.” These are important distinctions based on the number of unique occurrences. Texts referred to “warriors” in a general way 73 times, to “citizen-warriors” 46 times and to “wounded warriors” 133 times. Examples of stories that include paragraphs in the “Honorific” code are shown in Table 4.9. Citizen-warriors Members of the Army Reserve and Army National Guard are set apart as a special category of warrior in many of these stories. They are called “citizen-warriors” as a way to acknowledge their status as part-time soldiers. It is not a very precise description, though, for several reasons, not least of which is that citizenship refers to a very particular legal status that is not at all relevant to one’s status as a soldier, part-time or otherwise. (In fact, one story in the set is about a soldier who became a U.S. citizen while serving in the Army.) Moreover, many reservists and Guardsmen are full-time, the equivalent of active-duty soldiers in terms of obligation and pay. More than in previous wars, however, the Army relied on reserve and Guard units to meet manpower requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan. The political toll of these demands was significant and giving them special acknowledgement was a simple but important move for the continued support of the communities from where these units came. It included an acknowledgment of their competence. In texts that mentioned “citizen-warriors” specifically apart from warriors in general, the “expertise” code was used most frequently. These references make clear the attempt of Army leaders—many of the references are quotes from high-ranking officers, noncommissioned officers, and civilian leaders—to include reservists and Guard members in the War on Terror narrative. For example, At a White House event hosted by President Obama in 2012 organized to honor Air and Army National Guard members, a senior enlisted service 72 member said, “I'm proud of our Citizen-Warriors’ service and the contributions they've made. When America calls out the National Guard, they are calling the nation's finest men and women” (Story 174). Wounded warriors More than one-fifth of the stories (n=94) contained references to wounded warriors or “fallen” warriors. These warriors are ones who were killed or injured while in Army service. Few of the stories give much detail about the circumstances of the injury or death. Instead, they fall into two main categories—accounts of memorial services and remembrance events, and stories about overcoming injury and healing. Stories about memorial services were often the first-hand account of a ceremony held by a local community (usually in theater) to remember soldiers killed in action. For example, a story titled, “Fallen ‘Dagger’ Brigade Soldier remembered for generosity, dedication to fellow Soldiers” describes a memorial service held at Joint Security Station Loyalty in Baghdad in 2011. The fallen warrior died from wounds he suffered in an attack on his unit, according to the story. The story is mainly dedicated to extolling the virtues of the dead: He took the same attitude to the fight… He never backed down from wanting to go on patrol. I always felt good knowing in the back of my mind that he had my back. I believe he instilled that warrior spirit in all those he served with. (Story 136) Some stories relate belated or anniversary memorials, like the story titled, “4th Brigade takes day to thank, honor fallen, wounded warriors.” It describes a ceremony held stateside after the redeployment of a combat brigade in honor of the 16 killed and 250 wounded during the brigade’s tour in Afghanistan: The ceremony was followed by a luncheon to honor the paratroopers and Gold Star family members that traveled from around the country to spend the day with the Fury family. In the last and most emotional ceremony of the day, a memorial for the battle fallen warriors was unveiled, the symbol of the U.S and Afghanistan 73 unified command team and brigade colors on one side and a picture of each paratrooper killed in action on the other. (Story 239) These stories place special emphasis on sacrifice and represent an attempt to bring meaning to each life lost. Wounded warriors are treated with as much respect as fallen ones in the stories, with a particular emphasis on organizational efforts at rehabilitation, both physical and emotional. Warrior transition units and warrior recovery facilities sprung up during the latter half of the 2000s, presumably to address the two-headed problem of wounded warriors. On one hand, the Army was responsible for the physical care of its employees who had been injured on the job, and on the other hand, it had a problem with the optics of wounded soldiers. Stories about treatment plans and programs tended to highlight financial commitments made on behalf of severely injured soldiers: FORT HOOD, Texas, June 6, 2012—Fort Hood Warrior Transition Brigade’s new $62 million campus to take care of the Army’s wounded, injured and ill soldiers is officially open. In June 6 ribbon-cutting ceremonies held in front of the new five-story barracks, Lt. Gen. Donald Campbell, III Corps commanding general, said the new Warrior Transition Brigade (WTB) campus demonstrates the Army’s long-term commitment in caring for soldiers in Transition and their Families. “We’re proud to say that we’re opening up a wonderful facility today,” Campbell said. “It’s the total care commitment the Army has in taking care of wounded warriors and their Families to make sure they continue to heal and to continue serving this great country in a number of fashions either in uniform or back into their community as a great civilian that had a great experience in our wonderful Army.” (Story 206) Some of these stories take a personal view and highlight success. In the story “Wounded soldier now in mentoring role as WTB Platoon Leader” (Story 141), Sgt. 1st Class Brent Boodoo is the protagonist who overcomes brain trauma to become a leader at a warrior transition unit. “So many people and programs helped me,” the 37-year old married father of three said. “I wanted to mentor future WTs (warriors in transition) and show them that there is life after an injury and that there are programs available to help them.” 74 Soldiers like Boodoo are presented as the standard, foreclosing on the possibility of soldiers out of reach of the Army’s rehabilitation programs. Paragraphs coded at “wounded and fallen” were similar to those coded at “selflessness.” This, perhaps, is unsurprising given what would qualify a soldier to be considered wounded or fallen with respect to the codes in this project. The code did not differentiate between wounded and fallen (killed in combat). Training The “training” code applied to 156 units of text across 100 stories. References to warriors and the warrior way often inhere training. These texts make the association explicit, advancing the argument that training is a primary activity of the warrior. Less than 2 years after the implementation of the Warrior Ethos, in fact, the Army renamed its basic-level noncommissioned officer course (formerly Primary Leadership Development Course, or PLDC) to the Warrior Leader Course (WLC). The name change emphasized the wartime requirements of noncommissioned officers. “We have taken the lessons learned from our deployments and incorporated them into our revised leadership course,” said Col. David Abramowitz, commandant of the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy at the time (Army News Service, 2005, p. 1). Many of the text references were to the new WLC, as shown in Table 4.10 There were 19 unique stories that referenced WLC. They told of completing a challenge, advancing in levels of responsibility, and developing leadership, as in the third excerpt from the table above: “An NCO has to constantly dedicate himself to being a better NCO, a better leader, a better warrior.” Warrior Leaders Course was not the only formalized training associated with the developing warrior frame. In 2009, the Army published the Soldier’s Manual of Common Tasks: Warrior Skills Level 1, a 646-page book designed to guide individual 75 training at every level of the organization. The Army identified Warrior Tasks and Battle Drills (WTBD) that enhance a Soldier’s readiness to fight on the battlefield. Warrior Tasks are a collection of individual Soldier skills deemed critical to Soldier survival. Examples include weapons training, tactical communication (Department of the Army, 2009) The inside cover of the book displayed the Soldier’s Creed with the Warrior Ethos in bold text. The emerging warrior frame was clearly a component in larger strategic training objectives in the Army at the time. Social connection Warriors, according to these texts, are defined in part by the bonds they form with other warriors. There is much talk of a “warrior family,” and other such social connections in these stories. I identified three distinct types of connection in the stories that became the codes “Family,” “Fraternity,” and “Legacy and Genealogy.” Examples of units coded at “connection” are shown in Table 4.11. Social connection codes underscore and emphasize the importance of teamwork as part of the warrior frame. It also coincides with a stanza in the Warrior Ethos: “I will never leave a fallen comrade.” Family was the most commonly referenced connection. It was usually marked by leaders reminding soldiers to honor and rely on their families as a means of support. Connections of legacy and genealogy refer to any paragraph that appealed to remembering earlier generations as a source of warrior pride or power. Sometimes, it was a unit’s history or legacy that was invoked, but often, it was ethnic or national history. Fraternity was the least referenced type of connection, which appeared in 15 stories. The “fraternity” code was reserved for portions of text that showed a deeper 76 connection than the “teamwork” code. Whereas teamwork displayed a collaborative relationship, even if intimate, it was one born of obligation. Fraternity, on the other hand, implied or stated a bond that would outlast and outlive the work relationship, as in the case when Tammy Duckworth’s buddy stayed at her hospital bedside. Resiliency Resiliency appeared in 45 separate stories, with 73 coded units. The majority of these codes were to the child code, “recovery and healing,” which had 41 references in 28 stories. Other child codes are “reintegration,” “resiliency training,” and “moral evaluations.” These stories increased in frequency toward the end of the period of study, even proportionally outpacing the number of total stories. Examples of units coded at “resiliency” are shown in Table 4.12. Stories about resiliency mentioned physical and emotional healing. They are about bouncing back, and show the warrior as one who can’t be defeated, reinforcing the Warrior Ethos. “Fit to fight” is a story about the 113th Combat Stress Control Detachment who deployed to Afghanistan to help build resiliency among combat troops. Their mission to “regroup, reset, and return to duty service members” summarizes the recovery child code. Reintegration to a healthy civilian lifestyle is a smaller dimension of resiliency, demonstrated in the third excerpt. Warrior ethos Because the purpose of this study began with an interest in the Warrior Ethos, I was interested in whether these texts emphasized and reiterated the tenets of the Ethos. “Ethos” was the parent to the four tenets of the Army’s Warrior Ethos, but it was also the code assigned to ethos used in a general way, as in the “warrior spirit.” Eighty stories 77 mentioned either the Warrior Ethos specifically, or an ethos or warrior “spirit” generally. The “ethos” code referred to 37 units of text in 32 stories. “Mission first” was coded to 23 units in 21 stories, “never accept defeat” to 27 units in 24 stories, “never leave a fallen comrade” to nine units in nine stories, and “never quit” to six units in four stories. Examples of units coded at “ethos” are shown in Table 4.13. The first excerpt exemplifies how ethos appears in a general way in some of the stories. Other excerpts show ways in which the Army’s Warrior Ethos is manifest: “we have a great bunch of soldiers” ready for a “huge mission” is putting the mission first. “This organization accomplished the impossible” is an example of never accepting defeat. Never leaving a fallen comrade is evident in “We should never leave a soldier behind,” and Manny, from the last excerpt, shows a “never-quit” attitude while trying to attain his life goal of becoming a professional boxer. Leadership was the warrior virtue most closely associated with the “Warrior Ethos” codes. “Teamwork” and “expertise” were also closely related. The associations are not totally surprising—they are consistent with the way soldiers have long talked about ethos. Patton’s list included variations of leadership and teamwork. Expertise is perhaps a modern version of discipline. Observers may tend to think of discipline as enforcement of or obedience to a system of order. Perhaps that view is becoming anachronistic, and a more nuanced view of discipline, read as “a field of study to dedicate oneself to,” is more appropriate to today’s warrior. Analysis by similarity Following the descriptive analysis by coding frequency, I performed a cluster analysis, which shows the degree of similarity among codes by examining the coded paragraphs. Starting with an arbitrary code, the analysis compares the paragraphs grouped under that code with the paragraphs group under every other code to determine 78 its most similar pair. Similarity is determined by Jaccard’s coefficient (“NVivo 11 for Windows help: About cluster analysis,” n.d.). Pairs of codes with more similar paragraphs are clustered together on a dendrogram, while dissimilar pairs are displayed farther apart. Because the cluster analysis reveals code similarity, it can show similarities of ideas that might not be evident in the way the codes themselves are organized. The first cluster analysis showed, for instance, that the “social organization” codes (“roles,” “routines,” “relationships,” “rituals,” and “rules.”) were similar to “respect.” Because they were coded to only a few units of text, I reexamined all texts so coded and decided to recoded to “victory,” “service,” and “discipline.” “Peacemaking” and “protecting” were reevaluated on the same rationale—they had few paragraphs assigned, they were similar, and they seemed to stand apart from other major ideas. I determined, upon reexamination, that those actions were really manifestations of warrior virtues and the various tenets of the Warrior Ethos. I recoded, as appropriate. I reran the cluster analysis several times, each following the pattern of looking more closely at codes that didn’t quite fit. “Actions on habit,” for instance, described actions that were performed as a result of proper training, so they were recoded at “training.” After the fourth round of reexamination and clustering, the dendrogram shown in Figure 4.1 represented the clusters. Cluster analysis directs the analyst to consider the basis of the similarity within the pairs of codes (and the pairs of pairs, etc.) in order to determine the point at which similarity and difference are in some useful balance. I reached that balance at the fourth level of similarity (moving down from singularity). At that point, I could identify themes that accommodated the codes grouped under each branch and distinguished each branch from the others. 79 There are eight branches at the fourth level, which correspond to eight themes that organize the data and the various codes. Those themes are (from top to bottom on the dendrogram in Figure 4.1) development, regimen, bonds, ethic, resilience, professional stewardship, respect, and service. Those themes help guide the following analysis. Warrior themes Though the frequency of codes was an indicator of the relative importance of various discursive elements used throughout these stories, they do not in themselves adequately describe the discourse or form the frame. The codes—particularly the warrior virtue codes—identify topics, whereas the use of various topics in context reveals deeper themes. The cluster analysis mentioned above revealed eight themes that, taken with the warrior virtues, help to identify the frame that these stories collectively construct: service, resilience, bonds, development, ethic, respect, regimen, and professional stewardship. Service As demonstrated in the analysis of the virtues code, “selflessness” was a prominent virtue mentioned in the stories. The service theme incorporates the virtue of selflessness and persistence. Figure 4.1 shows four codes grouped together to form the theme of service: “citizen,” “selflessness,” “grit,” and “strength.” The warriors in these stories combined service with a toughness that that is both charming and endearing. In a story titled “Kerchief is Strong” (Story 303), Sgt. Margaret Kerchief is quoted as having said: I’m a military brat; my dad served for 30 years. There was a lot of camaraderie in my family growing up; it was just something I had to go for, it just became a natural fit. 80 The story goes on: For centuries, men and women have fought to preserve freedoms, but what is that driving force behind their commitment to serve? Kerchief said “What makes her strong” is her family. Her strength and her service are tied together with the sinews of family. The story presents her service as an obligation of strength. This theme includes the service of part-time soldiers as described earlier, and somehow, almost, their service is deemed more meaningful. Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughn celebrated a recruiting milestone in 2008 by saying about grateful Americans: They can see what the National Guard means to this nation. They understand it. They're all about service to the country anyway. They understand the uniqueness of the Guardmember as a citizen-warrior that's spread all the way across this country, and I think they truly value that association and what it means to this great country of ours. (Story 55) Resilience Resilience as a theme includes the ideas incorporated in the “resiliency” code. The cluster analysis groups the four “resiliency” codes into two pairs. Bonds Warriors, according to these texts, are defined in part by the bonds they form with other warriors. Fraternity was paired with the stanza in the Warrior Ethos, “I will never leave a fallen comrade,” in the cluster analysis. The bonds theme also includes the code “recreation.” Recreation references were often about team-building activities: During the tournament the Wounded Warriors forgot about their disability and learned a new sport or found out that they can still play hockey in a different way. Also they had fun doing some team building. They all had smiles on their faces; it was like they were kids again. (Story 277) 81 The strong bonds during the formative phase of making a team might be the same thing that keeps the team close during chaotic moments that trigger the ethos of never leaving anyone behind. Development Another important theme incorporated codes that dealt with improvements to self and the organization. Improvements were usually realized through training, often written about in general terms, but sometimes described precisely as “warrior tasks and drills.” Additionally, a few units of text (n = 15) deal with the rather imprecise notion of transformation. Many more paragraphs were explicitly about training. Excerpts from stories about training that support the development theme are shown in Table 4.14. Stories describe ad hoc training as well as large, choreographed training exercises. The aim is always the same—to help soldiers learn, possibly to “save their lives.” Presumably, the learning will result in achieving some strategic goals. The second excerpt features warrior skills, which will mold soldiers into warriors. In another story, the sergeant major of the Army “emphasized what Army leaders call the ‘Warrior Ethos’ and the mantra, ‘Every Soldier is a rifleman,’ as the keys to individual transformation.” Ethic An organizational ethic seems synonymous with an organizational ethos, and it is, outside these texts. Because the stories reflected the Army’s Warrior Ethos, however, “ethos” takes on additional meaning. An ethic, in a lay sense, refers to the motivations of organization members. The cluster analysis showed that confidence, pride, and a neverquit attitude drive soldiers. Paradoxically, these concepts are related to humility. Units 82 that demonstrate these notions as contributory to the ethic theme are shown in Table 4.15. Confidence is an organizational value in the stories. It rests on a foundation of preparedness, evident in the first excerpt in the table. Confidence translates into the Warrior Ethos tenets “I will never quit” and “I will never accept defeat,” the second of which is a line synonymous with victory. These stories employ the rhetoric of victory in everything the warrior does: “This organization accomplished the impossible.” Confidence in abilities to accomplish a mission instills pride in the organization’s ability to do so. However, is also shows humility, as in the gratitude conveyed in the third excerpt. Victory does not come without cost. Pride in the organization often means demonstrating feelings of inadequacy to be a part of the cause. Respect Though coded only twice explicitly, respect is inherent in much of the text. Put another way, respect is not advanced as a warrior virtue, but it is evident as a theme in stories about warriors. Respect for other warriors and for the institutions that support them are evident in these stories. Respect emerges in two main ways—in use of “warrior” as an honorific, and in the social connections of family and legacy. The “honorific” code was described and analyzed earlier. It is closely related to the notion of legacy. “Warriors” becomes a quasi-class in these stories that one can earn her way into. In that sense, it becomes a warrior family, and thus implicates the ideas inherent in family, genealogy, and legacy. Apart from bonds with warriors in the present, warriors in these stories nurture connections to the past, which marks a deep respect for tradition and those who came before. There is discursive evidence of a “warrior family” and a deference to legacies. 83 The “family” code had 50 separate references across 41 stories, nearly 10% of the set. It was usually marked by leaders reminding soldiers to honor and rely on their families as a means of support. One story recounted a cavalry unit that invited spouses to participate in warrior activities. The unit executive officer explained: “Our goal with the event was to introduce our family members to our unit tradition and our customs, and to give them a better feel for what their spouses do on a daily basis. “Today is also about family bonding,” he continued. “Bringing our families together is very important for the unit. It builds a sense of pride and belonging to a good organization and builds 'esprit de corps.” (Story 57) To the cavalry warriors, strength and effectiveness came from family support. Similarly, the “legacy/ genealogy” code referred to any paragraph that appealed to remembering earlier generations as a source of warrior pride or power. Sometimes, it was a unit’s history or legacy that was invoked, but often, it was ethnic or national history. The Cavalry Scouts hold dearly onto their traditions and honor the strong history of which they are made from. It could be seen with the wearing of their decorated Stetsons, decked with braid ends, acorns and sabers or their earned Spurs, shining with the colors of either silver for promotion or gold for combat. The Strike Brigade's Cavalry Scouts are no different. To them having such traditions are [sic] a privilege and an honor. (Story 91) Both family and legacy are markers of respect that guide behavior. Mentions of family and legacy remind soldiers to follow examples already set and encourage a kind of conservatism across the organization. Regimen The theme that brings together to most codes in the cluster analysis can best be summarized as regimen. This theme includes the focus demanded of a “mission-first” mentality that has found its way into the Warrior Ethos. It also includes expertise, one of 84 the virtues described earlier, as well as the virtues of preparedness, resourcefulness, professionalism, commitment, and courage. A story about military wives exemplifies the mission-first attitude of the Warrior Ethos: Many women will do just about anything for their family. Soldiers will do just about anything to make the mission a success. For Soldiers who are wives, commitment is more than a wedding vow; it is a pledge to see a promise through, no matter where it takes them. (Story 10) The paragraph conveys the idea of doing anything to be successful, and success is defined by organization standards. Col. James Snyder, in a story about his new command of an Army medical brigade, said “mission focused leadership and a genuine effort to take care of the Soldier…is what my Soldiers can expect of me.” The mission first attitude requires a focus on what the mission requires. It also requires intense preparation, both physical and mental. “Wolfhound joined Army for excitement” is a story about Tommy Smith, who joined the Army in 2006: On the flight to Kuwait, Smith said he felt a little anxious and full of anticipation as to what it would be like once he arrived in Iraq. Even though he had these thoughts he was able to take strength in knowing he knew his job, and knew it well. He is always ready for any mission, just says 'roger' and moves out. He is also very handy with tools, he chips in where ever he can," said Sgt. 1st Class Raymond Zwicker, a native of Modesto, Calif., and Smith's platoon sergeant. (Story 44) Being prepared is a component of regimentation. There were 36 unique references at the “preparedness code across 29 stories. These paragraphs are indicative of a respect for process, and even of the enemy in combat: Berhane encouraged the students to keep working hard and to train the Soldiers in their units the skills they learned. He stressed to always be ready to take the fight to the enemy. “The enemy is still out there ready to strike. (Story 30) 85 Related to preparedness, resourcefulness is about putting forth effort when preparedness falls short. Warriors have to expect plans to come up short, and to be able to improvise or dig deep to overcome a challenge: “We presented the soldiers with challenges to make the training harder, to make the soldiers overcome the obstacles and face adversity on a daily basis throughout the training,” said Wilson. “This type of training improves the soldiers’ skill set and makes them more resilient to the challenges.” (Story 238) Resourcefulness had 47 references across 36 stories. As a virtue, it is part of the respect theme because, like “mission first,” it marks an esteem for organizational purpose. Professionals ensure continuity of organization goals and processes. Professionalization ensures stability. Twenty-four stories contained 28 units coded at “professionalism.” They were about enforcing organization standards or raising one’s own: The [4-227th] Soldiers all liked him, because he was a fair individual. If we didn't meet his standards he would let us know. He corrects you if you do something wrong, but when Soldiers do something good, he is the first one there to praise them. (Story 9) They also imply a right fit. The soldiers described in stories coded at “professionalism” talked about doing the right thing or being in the right place, as if they were meant for it. When something fits, it works reliably. The Army is presented as a highly reliable organization staffed by a comfortably regimented cadre of warriors. Twenty-one stories contained 24 units coded at “commitment.” These paragraphs included anything related to dedication and discipline, as well. All three notions are components of the regimen theme. Stories described achievement of or working toward a goal after sticking to a plan. They are also about soldiers’ belief in those plans, which implies a respect, again, for process and dedication to the leaders who devise plans and define processes. In a story titled “Education, commitment will get Guard through changing times,” Gen. Craig R. McKinley told a group of soldiers and airmen: 86 The only thing our adversaries want us to do is grow tired, grow weary, go broke and just throw in the towel. That’s not the American spirit, that’s not the American nation that you represent, and so we won’t give them that satisfaction over time. (Story 129) Commitment, to the warrior, is discipline. Finally, respect is put into action through courage. “Valor” accounted for 22 coded units across 21 stories. It included mentions of traditional battlefield courage, common in stories about soldiers receiving awards: “Someone once said, the difference between being courageous and not being courageous is the last decision you make,” said O'Neill, after pinning the medal on Sullivan. “When you're in a really tough spot, and you're scared, and there are a lot of things going on around you, those decisions can be very, very clear or they can be very muddled.” (Story 1) Courage also shows up when soldiers acknowledge risk: “Knowing what the CMT does for the other Soldiers in their battalion keeps them on the roads, regardless of the threat.” When soldiers press on in the face of risk, it is because they respect the system that asks them to do so. Professional stewardship The final warrior theme, according to the cluster analysis, is stewardship of the warrior profession. It incorporates the “leadership” code as well as the “WLC” code. Stewardship is perhaps the most significant of the warrior themes from a framing perspective because it can have the effect of directing organizational behavior in a way that is most closely related to organizational maintenance. Competition and combat Thirteen percent (n = 56) of the stories are about formal competition events called “Best Warrior Competitions.” That rate is evidence of the importance of competition to the American warrior. There were seven times more stories about 87 competition than about combat engagements (n = 6). Both types of stories were designated as special cases for analysis. Because formal warrior competitions have become increasingly common, according to this data set, I wondered what competitions had to say about U.S. soldiers’ identities as warriors. In this subsection, I will describe the relationship between competitions and combat experiences according to the warrior virtues and themes already discussed. Warriors in competition Best Warrior Competitions (BWC) were created just prior to the period of this study. The coincidence of the beginning of BWCs and the Warrior Ethos project at the first part of the previous decade seemed to be another piece of evidence that the Army was making attempts to renew a warrior ethos. Formal BWCs are important because they draw an analogy to combat. According to Story 184, “Louisiana native wins Army Reserve Medical Command Best Warrior Competition,” the “Best Warrior Competition was developed by retired Sergeant Major of the Army Jack Tilley in 2002 as a test of a soldier’s physical endurance, military knowledge, and mental perseverance.” Yet they are not coordinated or directed centrally by the Army, but rather executed by local commands. Twenty-nine of the stories were about active-duty competitions, 21 were about reserve component competitions, and six were about National Guard competitions. In a typical arrangement, soldiers in a particular unit or geographic area were invited to compete. In most cases, they would have qualified or been nominated by a senior soldier to participate. Competitions took place, usually at the brigade level (21 of the 56 stories were about competitions at a brigade level or smaller). Other stories were about higher level competitions (divisions for active-duty soldiers, state level for Guardsmen) in which top competitors qualified at the lower levels. Eventually, they 88 could advance to an Army-wide or a component-wide competition, where the winner would be crowned “Army Best Warrior.” A few of the stories were about joint competitions, where Army winners would compete against winners from other services. The most prominent virtues coded in stories about competition were “grit” and “resourcefulness.” In one story, a competitor described the challenge of preparing in advance of the competition. “It’s hard, you end up burning the candle at both ends of the wick. I get up before school and I work out. I usually go for a run,” said Manella. “If I have time I’ll try to work out between work and school.” Manella works out at least twice a day on top of randomly studying throughout the day. “Sometimes my girlfriend will flip through the study guide and ask me questions. I have a study guide at work so I can study and flip through the pages,” said Manella. “I study all the time even on weekends.” (Story 292) As the warrior frame was coming into focus during this time, competitions were becoming a way to recognize warriors in an environment that could be controlled. They were designed to be microcosms of Army life, or combat, or something in between: During the competition, soldiers tested their Army skill sets, completing an Army Physical Fitness Test, board interviews, a 16-kilometer ruck march, several urban warfare simulations, and a marksmanship competition. One of the toughest tests was completing a nine-line medevac request that required soldiers to radio for a Black Hawk helicopter and tactically load their casualty onto the aircraft for evacuation. “The nine-line medevac and the actual helicopter coming in was something that I have never experienced,” said Spc. Donald Olson, of Marysville, Wash., an intelligence analyst with the 364th ESC. “It was exciting to see the fruits of your labor, an actual helicopter come in, and extract our casualty,” Olsen added. (Story 191.) Dominant themes, overwhelmingly so, in the competition subset are regimen and service. The discipline, commitment, and resourcefulness that mark the regimen theme are apparent in these stories. Service is manifest in the hard work it takes competitors to prepare. Perhaps to summarize the purpose of these events, from Army leaders’ 89 perspective: “This competition gives me a chance to demonstrate that I live by the Warrior Ethos” (Story 184). Warriors in combat Though few in number, the stories about combat experiences are rich in detail and description. The six stories are remarkably diverse. One is about a brigade receiving an award for valor during their service in Iraq. Another is about a combat engagement in Afghanistan. Another is about a division’s return to Iraq for another deployment. There is a story about a master sergeant recovering from deep wounds while in his deployments. One is about an engineer company’s memorial for a soldier who was killed in combat, and the final one recounted a soldier’s award of the Purple Heart. These stories mirror the competition stories in the regimen theme. Particularly pronounced is the mission-first attitude that these stories portray: "Upon dismounting immediately after the explosion, I notified my vehicle commander and my gunner, of the enemy forces I spotted, and let my team know that I was taking two Sky soldiers with me and I told my team, I am going to capture this guy," said Young, native of Washington D.C. (Story 109) The quote is emblematic of the ethos that drives a warrior to accomplish a task at almost any risk. It is closely related to courage, another component of the regiment theme. In Story 222, a battalion commander reminds his soldiers that sometimes valor comes at a steep cost: “We told you what to expect and that the mission you would embark contains significant risks. You have experienced the brutality of war. You have tasted it and you have lived it,” remarked [Lt. Col. Michael] Cleveland. “Sgt. McClain was a brave warrior who led the way. He knew the risks and he gave his best, ultimately giving his life.” Sgt. Kyle McClain was killed by an explosion while conducting a route clearance mission in Afghanistan in 2012. 90 The combat stories differ from the competition stories in their emphasis on the respect theme. There are paragraphs coded to legacy—remembering and honoring soldiers who have fought and died before—and much more to the “wounded warrior” honorific. These codes suggest a tone and style that is carefully crafted to guard combat experience from criticism, either from within the Army or from outside the organization. Concluding Thoughts From 415 separate texts, I coded almost 6,000 paragraphs. With so many coded units, I was able to run several analyses using NVivo software that helped me identify important patterns in how soldiers talked and wrote about themselves, and how the warrior frame emerged from that discourse. A hierarchy analysis is a descriptive analysis that revealed the relative frequency of all the codes in order to understand the topics of the stories. A cluster analysis helped me to see the patterns of ideas that those topics informed. Together, the hierarchy and cluster analyses informed a deeper examination of the texts to begin to outline the warrior frame. The stories used warrior virtues to describe warriors. The most prominent virtues in the stories were teamwork, expertise, selflessness, hard work, and leadership. These virtues reflect an ideal soldier in the U.S. Army and identify the values that have high organizational power. Teamwork, for instance, is the most important of the virtues, based on frequency, and fairly describes priorities that the Army places on cooperation and collaboration. Leadership, likewise, is a salient organizational value—the way it is communication and perceived has an effect on the stability and order of the organization. The cluster analysis revealed themes that the mere frequency of the codes could not. Themes composed codes independently of their topical associations. For instance, the service theme related the warrior virtues of selflessness and hard work to the way 91 part-times soldiers were given the warrior honorific. Other themes were resilience, bonds, development, ethic, respect, and regimentation. Having identified important warrior virtues and themes, in the next section, I will review where I began at the outset of this study, including the problem statement and research questions. Then, I will briefly answer those questions and summarize the method and findings in terms of the questions that directed the study. Those answers will lead to a discussion of how the warrior frame organizes the Army, provides direction for the enactment of the warrior ethos, and informs cultural sensibilities and expectations. Then, I will discuss policy implications and possible next steps for research. 92 Table 4.1 Frequencies of Child Codes and Aggregate Frequencies of Parent Codes Name Warrior Virtues Commitment Confidence Valor Expertise Grit Humility Leadership Preparedness Professionalism Resourcefulness Respect Selflessness Strength Teamwork Intellect Code d Units 583 24 17 22 76 49 25 49 36 28 47 2 64 19 110 13 Ethos Mission First Never Accept Defeat, Victory Never Leave Fallen Comrade Never Quit 102 23 27 9 6 Actions Actions on Habit Peacemaking Protecting Recreation 36 10 4 5 17 Soldier Demographics Female Soldiers Junior Enlisted Male Soldiers NCOs Officers 62 13 6 1 34 8 Name Honorific Citizen Wounded and Fallen Code d Units 251 46 132 Training Warrior Tasks and Drills WLC 156 39 23 Connection Family Fraternity Legacy and Genealogy 114 50 18 46 Resiliency Moral Evaluations Recovery and Healing Reintegration Resiliency Training 73 1 41 8 12 Transformation Individual Transformation Organizational Transformation Social Organization Relationships Rituals Roles Routines Rules 15 8 7 Sexual Assault 3 Wounded Warrior Project 7 9 1 0 3 4 1 93 Table 4.2 Aggregate Frequencies of Parent Codes Parent Code Coded Units Number of Stories Warrior Virtues Honorific Training Ethos Connection Resiliency All Other Codes 583 251 156 102 114 73 96 233 188 100 80 71 45 75 Child of the “Virtues” Code Coded Units Number of Stories Teamwork Expertise Selflessness Grit Leadership Resourcefulness Preparedness Professionalism Commitment Valor Humility Strength Confidence Intellect Respect 112 77 66 49 56 47 37 28 39 22 25 19 17 13 2 74 55 50 41 40 36 30 24 24 21 19 18 15 11 2 Table 4.3 Warrior Virtues Child Codes 94 Table 4.4 Instances of Text Coded as “Teamwork” Text Story Title and Number The cohesion needed for the unit’s upcoming deployment started forming throughout two rotations to the Yakima Training Center, Wash. and one to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., and was further cemented by the road march, he said. Stryker soldiers complete historic ‘Manchu Mile’ (231) “[Sanders] built a good team,” Spiva said. “He put a lot of Soldiers in the right places and built a fine team. I plan to continue fine tuning that as the mission here requires.” 1ACB CSM coach, role model for Soldiers (9) “I think we'd all agree that if we were going outside the wire, we'd want you with us,” said O'Neill. Task Force Baghdad Medic Receives Bronze Star (1) “Basically we are like a colony of ants. We have Soldier ants who are the warriors – when they make contact with the enemy they are like a blunt instrument," Valledor explained. “And we have the CMT Soldiers who are like the worker ants – they are the silent, heavy lifters. We (the colony) could not survive without them.” Consequence Management Team keeps Soldiers rolling (14) 95 Table 4.5 Instances of Text Coded as “Expertise” Text “Each soldier plays an important part, whether it’s being squad leader, part of an aid and litter team, or even a pace man,” Lee said. “They’re going to learn some type of skill that’s going to help them in their day-to-day warrior skills.” Story Title Artillery battalion stays 'Battle Ready' on infantry tactics (234) This is not the first time Cassady has served as a battle captain, nor is she a stranger to the Middle East; as an active duty Soldier in 2003, she served at Baghdad international airport for a year. Cassady said that her experience in the military is reflected daily in her teaching standards. Not your average teacher (29) “Tactically, they know how to fight, and they're not afraid to fight. They are tough. They are very willing to go out and do what needs to get done,” Blackwelder said. ANA continues to train, lead with support of Soldiers (19) “What I hope they took away is they became more proficient in their individual warrior tasks and battle drills, but also that they gained confidence in the map reading. I hope it was a team-building experience for them,” said Boyd. “I hope what they took away was the troop leader process for relying on their Soldiers and having a successful mission and being able to take that back to the unit and implement tasks, conditions and standards and troop leading procedures at the unit level.” Ready Warrior prepares Soldiers for future operations (387) 96 Table 4.6 Instances of Text Coded as “Selflessness” Text “To come here today and be a National Guard member, to have been deployed, to have served 'over there' and to have the respect of our communities, of our peers, of the other services, of celebrities like the ones that we saw today, you can't ask for more. You can't ask for more than to be supported, and anytime anybody ever comes up to me and says, 'Thank you for your service,' I always make sure to say, 'Thank you for your support.” Story Title Teamwork drives National Guard recruiting; Army's October numbers exceed goal (55) “Today we name this DFAC in honor of Sgt. Bull because it is important to sustain the memory of the sacrifice that he made and the sacrifice made of all our fallen heroes," Lt. Col. Bradley White, Brigade Support Battalion commander, said. "Sgt. Bull and the other fallen heroes of OEF IX have added meaning to our lives. They have given all. They put aside personal peace and affluence with the hope that there is more to life than mere selfish endeavor.” 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division remembers fallen Soldier in Memorial Day dedication (72) “We weren’t [serving as] soldiers,” Conley described with emotion. “We were in uniform, but we were going to an area that needed our help. Around 60,000 Guardsmen converged on a devastated city to help save our neighbors. That’s what it’s all about!” GED Plus graduates inspire Army National Guard’s top enlisted leader (254) 97 Table 4.7 Instances of Text Coded as “Grit” Text "Our average mission runs six to eight hours, and our average day runs 10-12 hours," Wood said. "We normally go to the gym after dinner for physical training and then get our down time and try to do the things normal people do." The MPs enjoy what they do and take a lot of pride in their missions. Story Title "One of the many things that make me proud of Adam is his unfaltering perseverance in the face of adversity," said Vanbrek. "If I know anything about Adam's life, it is that it has been anything but easy, but the one thing that constantly impresses me about Adam is his ability to rise above whatever challenges he is facing and never lose sight of his end goals." Corporal exemplifies Year of the Noncommissioned Officer (67) Spade stressed to soldiers who may be struggling to meet their goals, “Don’t give up. If it was easy, then anyone could do it.” He also mentioned how important it was for senior leaders to set the example. Atterbury programs keep Soldiers fit (133) “There is no easy day in combat; you never know what is going to happen when you step outside the box,” said Sgt. 1st Class Adam Wilson, noncommissioned officer in charge of the ITR lanes. “The best way to be prepared for combat is to challenge the soldiers.” Soldiers enhance their warrior skills prior to deployment (238) Military police play vital role in war (11) 98 Table 4.8 Instances of Text Coded as “Leadership” Text “He is the epitome of what a Soldier is," said 1st Sgt. J. D. Sellers, a native of Ballston Spa, N.Y., and the acting command sergeant major for 4-227th. "He lives the Army Values and instills pride in the Soldiers working for him, the Soldiers he mentors and even Soldiers that he comes in contact with. He is definitely a lead-from-the-front NCO.” Story Title "While it is important that you are inducted into the Corps, it is even more important that you now assume the role of a NCO leader in your formation," he said. Newly Promoted Inducted into Corps (43) “You are battle-tested, you are warriors, you are experienced leaders, committed leaders, and I know without a shadow of a doubt that you will lead our soldiers and airmen through this change,” she said. “They have a deep sense of commitment and a warrior spirit, and it’s …that warrior spirit that allows us to be so successful in what we do as a National Guard.” Education, commitment will get Guard through changing times (129) “She’ll do whatever she can for her soldiers,” said Taylor. “You talk to her soldiers and her soldiers love her to death. They would do anything for her; follow her anywhere.” Trooper focus (228) 1ACB CSM coach, role model for Soldiers (9) 99 Table 4.9 Instances of Text Coded as “Honorific” Text “We gather today not only to mourn the loss of our fallen brothers and sisters in arms, but to also honor and celebrate the lives in which these great Americans lived,” Davis said as he began his remarks. “We gather to comfort each other and to be inspired by the example these warriors have left for us all.” Story Title Families, friends remember the lives of the fallen (21) “This is a Reserve command,” Flynn said, emphasizing that all of USACAPOC(A)'s Soldiers are warrior-citizens living and working throughout America. “As the Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations command, this event is a Civil Affairs operation. Coordinating logistics, supplies and resources to give back to a community. That is what Civil Affairs does.” The Randy Oler Memorial Operation Toy Drop (58) The Spartan Soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, 87th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), along with other units based at FOB Shank, came together and provided the Wounded Warriors with a variety of activities to make their visit memorable Wounded Warriors visit Spartan Soldiers (359) 100 Table 4.10 Instances of Text Coded as “Training - WLC” Text “Soldiers stationed in Kosovo at Film City in Pristina and at Camp Bondsteel, had a chance to make 2009 Year of the NCO count by completing either their Warrior Leader Course requirement or improving on their leadership skills at the Basic Non-Commissioned Officer Course.” Story Title Seasoned Sergeants. What does it mean to be an NCO? (79) “With a straight face and professional look, Spc. Luis Rodriguez, an ammunition team chief with 3rd Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, walked across the stage to receive the Fort Hood Warrior Leader Course Commandant Challenge award, at Howze Theather, July 22.” ‘Black Jack’ Soldier wins commandant challenge (116) “Warrior Leadership Course provides them with the basics of leadership. In order for them to become strong leaders, it’s something they are going to have practice on back at their units, and it’s a continual process,” said Shepardson. “An NCO has to constantly dedicate himself to being a better NCO, a better leader, a better warrior.” Operational environments change but skills and values taught at WLC remain concrete (227) 101 Table 4.11 Instances of Text Coded as “Connection” Text “Honor and support your families,” said Snyder, “adhere to the chain of command and most importantly be proud of who you are, what you do, and who you represent.” Story Title New commander challenges Warrior Medics (42) The Cavalry Scouts hold dearly onto their traditions and honor the strong history of which they are made from. It could be seen with the wearing of their decorated Stetsons, decked with braid ends, acorns and sabers or their earned Spurs, shining with the colors of either silver for promotion or gold for combat. The Strike Brigade's Cavalry Scouts are no different. To them having such traditions are a privilege and an honor. Strike honors cavalry tradition with its first spur ride (91) “The day I was shot down she volunteered to accompany me to Landstuhl [Regional Medical Center],” said Duckworth. “And you have to understand what it's like to one minute be flying missions and to know that a buddy has been hit and may be dying, and then to volunteer to accompany that person. And, she went to Landstuhl solely to sit next to my bed in case I woke up so that I would see a friendly face.” Military women continue to break down barriers (65) 102 Table 4.12 Instances of Text Coded as “Resiliency” Text When injured, each soldier will encounter unique struggles, which is why the WTB [Warrior Transition Battalion] is equipped with programs to help motivate them toward recovery and success. Story Title Warrior Care Month (400) The program’s mission is to regroup, reset, and return to duty service members who have experienced moderate to severe combat operational stress reactions. It is designed to enhance their resiliency, self-management, and coping skills. The major goal for staff is to create therapeutic environment that will maximize the return to duty rate of service members. Fit to fight: how the military restores its own (198) “I want to work with other wounded Soldiers and show them that when once you get hurt, time doesn’t stop. I see a lot of people who are hurt get down on themselves and they just slowly start fading away,” he said. He plans to become an adaptive reconditioning trainer, since it was sports that brought him out of himself after his injuries and after he realized he was off of the fast track in his Army career. Soldier tours 9/11 Museum to revisit day that changed his life (366) 103 Table 4.13 Instances of Text Coded as “Ethos” Text “The otter is believed to be the one who brought the tribe their water during the rebirth ceremony of tribal legend,” said Gay. The emblem at the top of the staff represents the warrior spirit, and a bell hung near the top is for the fallen warriors. Story Title War Staff Represents Native Americans Military Service (214) “There is a huge mission ahead of us and we have a great bunch of Soldiers,” said Boffardi, who also said that he hopes the deployment to Iraq goes well. Alaskan unit trains on crew served weapons, close quarter combat (45) “This was the theater’s most important area of operation,” he said. “This organization accomplished the impossible… there has been no more patriotic or meaningful display of our national values than what your troopers were involved with in Afghanistan. I am privilege to have led our nation’s treasures, your sons and daughters.” 4th Brigade takes day to thank, honor fallen, wounded warriors (239) “We should never leave a soldier behind, whether he or she is ‘over there’ or ‘over here,’” said Kendall. “We hope our music reminds our wounded warriors of something or someone that makes them feel good.” Loud and proud: 143rd ESC 'rock out' for Wounded Warriors (248) Looking forward, Manny hopes to continue his pursuits in all aspects of his life. “I’ve made mistakes and I still do now,” said Thompson. “But if there’s something I want to accomplish, I’m going to accomplish it.” Warrior-citizen turns warrior-boxer (257) 104 Table 4.14 Paragraphs that Support the Development Theme Text “The Soldiers learn a great deal from these scenarios,” DeLoach said. “The skills they learn here will save their lives.” Story Title Camp Buehring Training (20) As part of their training here, Soldiers sharpen their warrior skills as they go through different scenarios and situations where trainers evaluate their military occupational skills and soldiering skills. Before the unit deploys, they must satisfactorily complete the necessary tasks. Army Reserve Soldiers prep for deployment to Afghanistan (56) His ability to reach out and want to make other people feel good is an amazing quality. This isn't to take anything from the other warriors, but I think we will all leave here changed [by him]," said Kell. Evolving wounded warrior program returns to Iraq with plans for more (94) Table 4.15 Paragraphs that Support the Ethic Theme Text Soldiers said they are confident and well-prepared, and they are ready to represent their units and the 18th CSSB against the top Soldiers from six other battalions across northern Iraq at the board. Story Title Germany-based sustainment Soldiers master battalion board (68) “This was the theaters most important area of operation,” he said. “This organization accomplished the impossible… there has been no more patriotic or meaningful display of our national values than what your troopers were involved with in Afghanistan. I am privileged to have led our nation’s treasures, your sons and daughters.” 4th Brigade takes day to thank, honor fallen, wounded warriors (239) "[In last night's service, we members of] the brigade gave Brigade holds memorial these men our respect and gratitude for their devotion, for 32 lost in 2009 (93) service and sacrifice," said Prosser. "May we all remember how important their lives were to us. Our ranks might be lighter but our hearts will always be full with pride for serving with such men." 105 Figure 4.1 Dendrogram of Codes Clustered by Similarity 5. IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS Warrior identity is a complex matter for soldiers who served during the first decade of the 20th century. By reading and coding stories written by Army public affairs professionals about those soldiers, I was able to identify warrior virtues that contributed to a warrior identity and go toward constructing a warrior frame as an organizational tool. In this section, I will review the purpose of the study and then summarize the method and findings. Next, I will answer the research questions more deeply by examining them in terms of the themes and frames described in the previous section. Those answers lead to a discussion of how the warrior themes and frames have contributed to the construction of a warrior discourse within and outside the Army organization. The discourse has implications for the institution and for the wider society, and I will examine some of those implications before proposing what might be in store for the Warrior Ethos in the near- and medium-term. Finally, I will conclude this dissertation with a discussion of some of the study’s limitations and steps for additional research. Executive Summary This study began with an interest in how U.S. Army soldiers defined their membership in a warfighting organization given the seemingly intense cultural fascination with war and warriors. The events of 9/11 resulted in a mobilization of 107 American soldiers who produced thousands of texts about their activities and operations. Those texts presented an opportunity for study that turned a mere interest into a research program. Problem statement The twofold purpose of this study proposed in the beginning of this dissertation was first, to identify and explain the warrior ethos that was constructed in the U.S. Army during the first decade of the 21st century; and second, to consider the organizing work that the warrior ethos was intended to accomplish by way of producing a common vision of the responsibilities and shared expectations of organization members, i.e., U.S. soldiers. Research questions Qualitative work should be informed by an aesthetic (Silverman, 1997). A somewhat vague and certainly a subjective notion, it has to include the idea of meeting standards of being interesting and compelling. A well-designed and well-executed research program will be pleasing to the reader and the scholar. That requires honest answers to a set of intriguing questions. Four specific questions directed this study. 1. What themes did service members write about in their stories of U.S. soldiers? 2. How closely did those themes correspond to aims of the Warrior Ethos Project and to historical conceptualizations of the warrior? 3. Did a coherent frame emerge from the DVIDS texts during the period of the study? 4. In what ways did the frame or theme contribute to an organizational identity unique to the context of the time period of the study? 108 Summary of method The data upon which this study relies were a large set of texts produced by members of the Army who were trained to tell stories about the Army, soldiers, and their various activities. The stories were all produced between 2003 and 2014. They represent, on one hand, a collective attempt at strategic messaging because their production was directed by Army authorities and they were aligned to Army interests. On the other hand, they reflect the voices, perspectives and concerns of the thousands of soldiers who wrote them or are represented in them, making them a legitimate reflection of how organization membership was perceived. Of more than 6,000 stories that mentioned the term “warrior,” I selected a sample of 415 for a detailed analysis. The stories were each individually saved and coded using NVivo, a software tool designed for qualitative analysis of textual data. I performed coding in five distinct stages in order to identify important themes relating to the construction of the warrior. The stories were reduced to roughly 1,920 paragraphs coding at 48 different codes. In addition to being coded, 56 stories were categorized as specific to warrior competition events, and six were categorized as specific to combat experiences. Summary of findings Analysis based on the research questions proceeded along two lines—by frequency and by similarity. Frequency identified the most important codes in use and similarity allowed the emergence of the underlying concepts that constituted the textual frame. The most frequent parent code was warrior virtues. The most frequently referenced virtues were teamwork, expertise, selflessness, grit, and leadership. “Warrior” was used as an honorific in 45% of the stories, often as a general title. In many instances, it was used to identify reservists (citizen-warriors) and casualties (wounded and fallen 109 warriors). Training, social connection, resiliency, and ethos also appeared frequently. The units of text were also clustered by coding similarity, which revealed eight major themes of a warrior identity: development, regimen, bonds, ethic, resilience, professional stewardship, respect, and service. These themes aligned to the Warrior Ethos in some obvious respects, but in other ways, the association is deeper and more abstract. The themes and virtues also contributed to three dimensions of a distinct warrior frame: the reluctant warrior, the expert part-time warrior, and the undefeated wounded warrior. The three frames have in common the themes of strength, expertise, and above all, a call to duty. The frame dimensions also have all combined to form a developing identity of the U.S. Army soldier as one who can overcome any challenge. A more detailed discussion of these answers follows the executive summary. Themes and Frames Organizational discourse is not defined by numbers of codes or frequencies of words, so much as how the words and phrases coalesce into themes that find their way into organizational talk. The way organization members talk about their membership begins to define what they understand that membership to mean. In the subsections that follow, I will discuss how the themes from the stories inform sensemaking in the Army and form a frame that guides organization action. Themes As institutional texts, the stories that composed the data set for this study represent the institution’s values and priorities. The themes I identified are one way to categorize those values and priorities. Research Question 1 (What themes did service members write about in their stories of U.S. soldiers?) has a simple answer on its face. 110 The themes, after all, can speak for themselves. A second-order question offers greater insight—what institutional values and priorities do the themes represent? A basis of the themes has already been described in the previous section. The organizing work those themes represent is the purpose of this section. Themes describe the use to which warriors put their virtues. Mostly, they can be viewed under the rubric of organizational maintenance. Service, for instance, gives warriors a purpose for organization action. In fact, the actions are sometimes described in irrational terms so as to emphasize the theme. A quote attributed to Pres. Ronald Reagan highlights the point. The story was written in 2009 to commemorate the anniversary of an airline accident that resulted in the death of 248 soldiers: Who else but an idealist would choose to become a member of the Armed Forces and put himself or herself in harm's way for the rest of us? Who but the idealist would go to hard duty in one of the most troubled places of the world and go not as a matter of conquest, but as a force that existed to keep the peace? (Story 92) Service is measured against the ideals of comfort, safety, security, prosperity, and stability. The theme normalizes behavior that demands a sacrifice of many of those ideals. Resilience performs a similar function. It sets expectations that, despite discomfort, violence, insecurity, scarcity, and instability, warriors will continue to labor on behalf of the organization. Warriors develop themselves and their profession through regimentation and strong bonds. Bonds and rituals of respect maintains a warrior class by enforcing rules about behavior and decorum. Together, the eight themes work at stabilizing the organization and, perhaps the society that supports it. Research Question 2 (How closely did those themes correspond to aims of the Warrior Ethos Project and to historical conceptualizations of the warrior?) also has a prima facie answer in addition to a second-order one. The most prominent virtues (teamwork, expertise, selflessness, grit, and leadership) are all consistent with the 111 Warrior Ethos. “I will always place the mission first,” for example, overlaps with expertise, grit, and leadership. “I will never leave a fallen comrade” overlaps with teamwork and leadership. Themes, too, are associated with the Warrior Ethos in some obvious ways. “Mission first,” in the cluster analysis, appeared as a component of the service theme. “I will never leave a leave a fallen comrade,” unsurprisingly, contributed to the bonds theme. “Never quit” and “never accept defeat” contributed to the theme of ethic. Every code was associated with a theme, though, so simply pointing out the associations doesn’t take the discussion very far. A second-order question might: How does refusing to quit or accept defeat contribute to an organizational ethic? Alternatively, why does the Army continue to enforce the ethic to which they contribute? The ethic described in Section 4 is also associated with confidence and pride. With that, it seems clear that the theme works to keep the Army in an offensive posture. All the talk of defending freedom and preserving the American way of life aside, warriors, in the modern U.S. construction, take an aggressive posture to spread Americanism and fight for American interests abroad. Still, these writers did not write explicitly to endorse the Warrior Ethos, but the people they wrote about and the stories they told indirectly corresponded to its tenets. It is evidence that the stories, though produced under the imprimatur of the Army and its senior leadership, developed the themes organically. In other words, the themes demonstrate how soldiers make sense of the Warrior Ethos from a bottom-up point of view. The second part of Research Question 2 (How closely did those themes correspond to historical conceptualizations of the warrior?) has a similar answer. The correspondence between a historical and modern notions of the warrior is quite high. Military historians and military professionals of the past have consistently talked about 112 warriors in terms of discipline, selflessness, esprit de corps, and respect. They may have used different terms, but the sentiment is roughly the same. Duty, for instance, is an ancient value embedded in the ethos of warriors of the past. Today that translates into service, which is perhaps a word more in vogue. One glaring exception is the virtue of courage. Historically a foundational piece of the warrior ethos, it nevertheless did not appear very often in these stories. I will address that inconsistency in the subsection, “Future of Ethos.” Frames A well-developed frame, recalling Entman’s four criteria, must define a problem, identify its cause, make a moral judgment, and suggest a remedy. The answer to Research Question 3 (Did a coherent frame emerge from the DVIDS texts during the period of the study?) requires us, once again, to dig a little deeper. On first appraisal, the warrior frame identified in this study doesn’t seem to be fully developed, because no problem is obvious in the frame. And without a clear problem, it is impossible to determine a cause. The warrior frame identified in these stories does make a moral judgment, not surprisingly. Simply, the warrior is a force for good in American society. Just as Patton described it, the warrior spirit is what wins: “Wars are fought with men, not weapons. It is the spirit of the men who fight, and the spirit of the men who lead, which gains the victory” (Patton, 2002, p. 43). The remedy (in search of a problem, it would seem) is to continue to invest in the people of the U.S. Army. These stories certainly aim at that. Looking back gets us closer to a problem definition. If the aim of these stories is to invest in the people of the Army, then it follows (or precedes) that the people of the Army, properly trained, are to the benefit of the society. If that is the case, then it is implied that the American soldier is at risk of losing the public’s support. The last time 113 the Army suffered from a lack of public support was in the immediate wake of the Vietnam War. The cause thus becomes clear: military strategists and leaders in the late 1990s and early 2000s were afraid to resurrect the ghosts from the Vietnam era that had been haunting them for a generation. Peter Schoomaker, Shinseki’s successor as Army chief of staff, did not serve in Vietnam. In fact, all senior leaders in the Army during the period of this study entered service after that conflict had ended. One of those leaders, Brig. Gen. Billy Don Farris, said to a group of soldiers at his retirement ceremony: “Soldiering is a special calling. . . . The American people view the American soldier with a sense of awe, tremendous respect and enormous trust” (Story 295). None of those descriptors would have been generally true of the Army and its conscript soldiers of the 1970s (and are not true of everyone now). The frame revealed in texts written in the 9/11 generation were as much an answer to the questions, problems, and contradictions of the Vietnam era as they were to those posed in contemporary times. The warrior of the early 2000s was an attempt for the Army to collectively make sense of membership in the Army of the present by looking through the lens of an Army of the past. The specific frame dimensions are an answer to Research Question 4 (In what ways did the frame or theme contribute to an organizational identity unique to the context of the time period of the study?). The data show evidence of three dimensions of a distinct warrior frame: the reluctant warrior, the expert part-time warrior, and the undefeated wounded warrior. The three frames have in common the themes of strength, expertise, and a call to duty; but strength isn’t manifested on the battlefield as much as in interpersonal relationships. A strong warrior, according to the frame, is a part of a team—a fire team, a military unit, the Army organization, or the country. They demonstrate strength by navigating difficult circumstances—sometimes a battlefield 114 dilemma, but often a difficult emotional period or physical or psychological injury. They always deserve respect (not pity) because the warrior of these frames willingly took on risks. They didn’t do so eagerly; rather, they were called upon in a moment of need and responded to that call. Framing theory tells us that the way an issue is framed has a significant impact on the way individuals interpret the meaning of a message. Fairhurst and Sarr (1996) declare that leaders of organizations have the responsibility to frame with an eye toward an organizational vision. The stories I examined were, in effect, the result of a visiondirected effort by Army leaders between 2003 and 2014 to aid soldiers’ sensemaking of the organization to which they had given, or were giving, so much. The frame dimensions contributed to a construct of a warrior that led to a warrior discourse in the U.S. Army. That discourse helped members of the organization makes sense of what was going on around them and was powerful enough to translate into a warrior discourse far outside the bounds of the Army organization. The three dimensions of the warrior frame are shown in Figure 5.1. Reluctant warrior Warriors in the post-9/11 era were reluctant, according to the frame. That doesn’t mean that they did not want to serve. In fact, the events of 9/11 resulted in a modest surge in enlistments (Dao, 2011). Moreover, the wars of the post-9/11 era were fought entirely with volunteers. Reluctance, in this context, means that they were not motivated by fighting, according to the stories. Instead, they were motivated by a sense of helping the community. A reluctant warrior is a humble one. Though few of the stories mentioned humility per se, it is the dearth of mentions of heroism and valor that bespeak the humility theme. A warrior’s actions speak for themselves. The frame has been long in the 115 making, but recently refined. In the story commemorating the airline accident, Pres. Reagan spoke repeatedly of warriors as “idealists” who reluctantly went about the globe trying to pitch in to solve complex problems (Story 92). He went on to say “And that's exactly what these brave men did over their six-month deployment in the Sinai. Besides peacemakers, they were warriors, fierce in their martial expertise” (p. 1). Members of the Army could count on leaders speaking on their behalf. There is no advantage in American politics to criticizing personnel in the military. One implication of the reluctant warrior is that he follows orders. Obedience was not a prominent theme in the data, mainly because it was implied. The idea of obedience is found throughout the service theme and items so coded. Warriors serve when their civilian leadership calls on them to do so. Phrases like “the call of duty” demonstrate the point: “The fallen came from 11 different states and from all walks of life to answer the call of service,’ Cone said, emphasizing their diversity” (Story 90). The warriors of the post-9/11 era would not have rushed off to war but for a sense that the community (could be the nation at large or a more localized community) had asked them to serve. A quiet unease about the public’s affirmation of the military often underlies the reluctance. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2005 to 2007, was quoted in one of the stories as telling assembled service members deployed to Iraq: “Sometimes, when you are serving overseas and you watch some of the things on television, you could get to the point where you ask yourself ‘do we still have the support of the American people?’ and the answer is absolutely.” The story went on: Comparing the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan with his own experiences as a young lieutenant in Vietnam, Pace said “there is a very distinct difference between what is happening right now and what happened during Vietnam with regard to the Armed Forces of the United States. In Vietnam it seemed to me. . . that our country was not able to distinguish between the war and the warrior. 116 “That is no longer true in my opinion,” continued Pace. “Even those at home who have concerns about the war are supportive of you as individuals and your dedication to keeping them safe, and they understand that and appreciate that. People come up to me all of the time. . . and stop me and say thank you—not to me as an individual but because they recognize me and ask me to pass on to you their appreciation. So, my thanks come not only from me personally but, more importantly, from so many of your fellow citizens who truly understand and appreciate what you are doing. There is zero doubt in my mind that what you are doing is important to our nation.” (Story 6) Reluctance, perhaps, was enacted because of senior leaders’ experiences in or memories of Vietnam. The stories reflect it. The reluctant warrior is framed as one who serves as a calling, who realizes that the calling can only come from civilian leaders and their constituents, and who is ever mindful that public support is never to be taken for granted. Expert part-time warrior National Guardsmen and reservists are framed as experts and professionals who are capable of conducting war as well as active duty soldiers. In stories about “citizenwarriors” authors cited their expertise more than any other virtue. The end of Vietnam coincided with the commencement of the All-Volunteer Force, which ushered in a host of challenges as well as opportunities to make the Army more professional. Though operations in the 1980s and 1990s were small enough that they did not demand large and lengthy deployments from reservists, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did (Bonds, Baiocchi, & MCDonald, 2010). The part-time warriors of the stories I examined represent the common citizen—teachers, police officers, and physicians. The stories emphasize that they represent the community, performing a two-part rhetorical function. First, as the warriors are experts (and honorable, and admirable, and all sorts of other commendable things), they reflect those attributes of their 117 communities, thereby endearing members of those communities to the Army and its members. Second, as the suppliers of warriors, communities are implicated in the work the warriors do, making Army commitments more politically defensible. Giving them special acknowledgement was also a simple but important move for the continued support of the communities from where these units came. References to citizen-warriors make clear the attempt of Army leaders—many of them are quotes from high-ranking officers, noncommissioned officers, and civilian leaders—to include reservists and Guard members in the War on Terror narrative. For example, Leon Panetta, then serving as secretary of defense, told a group of assembled National Guardsmen, I come here with a deep respect for the contributions of the Citizen-Warriors of the National Guard… It has long been my belief that our democracy depends on the willingness of people to serve—people who dedicate themselves to a greater cause and who are willing to fight. (Story 168) The association of citizen-warriors with expertise could be an attempt to minimize concerns over perceived ineffectiveness of reservists in combat, and to push back on the claims of the time that the military was ill-prepared for campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan specifically because it relied on reservists for a protracted war. The expert part-time warrior, as a dimension of the warrior frame, was an answer to another fear—that the American public would grow disillusioned by an increasing reliance on reserve troops to fight wars that were becoming themselves less popular. Whether or not this fear was justified, it was real (Gold, 2004). To push back against criticism that (a) Guard and reserve troops were poorly trained and outfitted, and (b) that active-duty soldiers and commanders lacked confidence in reservists, Army leaders emphasized the seamless working relationship and the Guard’s and reserves’ ability to perform at a high level. As he took command of the U.S. Army Reserve Command in 2012, Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Talley made the point: 118 “Never in our nation’s history has the Army Reserve been more indispensable to America’s Army. For after a decade of war, the Army Reserve has evolved into a central part of the total force. With streamlined deployable forces and CitizenSoldiers they embody the Warrior spirit.” “Our Army Reserve soldiers and civilians are truly ‘Twice the Citizen’,” he said. (Story 212) A story about a toy drive in North Carolina made a similar point about the reserve unit’s expert operating ability” “This is a Reserve command,” [Capt. Mark] Flynn said, emphasizing that all of USACAPOC(A)'s Soldiers are warrior-citizens living and working throughout America. “As the Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations command, this event is a Civil Affairs operation. Coordinating logistics, supplies and resources to give back to a community. That is what Civil Affairs does.” (Story 58) The frame is powerful, and likely to be promoted by the Army, because it is part of an elegant solution to the vexing problem of manpower costs. Fielding a full-time Army is expensive but fielding a reserve force is less so. Since 2014, the Army has emphasized its “one force” policy. in September 2015, General Mark A. Milley, Army chief of staff, said: There is only one Army. . . we are not 10 divisions, we are 18 divisions. We’re not 32 brigades; we’re 60 brigades. And we’re not 490,000 Soldiers; we are 980,000 Soldiers. . . . We cannot conduct sustained land warfare without the Guard and the Reserve… It is impossible for the United States of America to go to war today without bringing Main Street—without bringing Tennessee and Massachusetts and Colorado and California. We just can’t do it… It is one Army, and we’re not small—we’re big. We’re very capable. And we’re very capable because of the reserves, we’re capable because of the National Guard. (Pint et al., 2017, p. 9) Milley’s comments were in contrast to his predecessor’s remarks that the National Guard was not so nearly interchangeable with the active-duty component (Jordan, 2014). In 2014, Gen. Ray Odierno said the “active component is more expensive. It brings you a higher level of readiness because they're full time. . . . They're trained and ready to do things at a higher level because they spend every day focused on that” (p. 1). Though true, his remarks drew fire from Guard and Reserve elements who 119 pointed to exceptional performance by reserve forces during the previous decade. His comments likely would have not raised an eyebrow 20 years before. In 2014, however, Odierno was up against the well-developed frame of an expert part-time soldier. Undefeated wounded warrior Wounded warriors appear in nearly one-fifth of all the stories in the data set. Many of the stories featured wounded warriors, who continued to display the warrior spirit even after service, because they were still fighting a kind of war. They are the ultimate teammates, having given something for the greater good—maybe a limb, innocence, or a lifetime of peaceful rest. More than the number of texts is important, however. These warriors are portrayed as continuing the fight after combat. They are always cast as victors in combat and in life after combat as well. The prominence of “Operation Proper Exit” shows just how committed the Army is to frame them as exiting theaters of war on their own terms. The wounded warrior has become almost a class of warrior that elevates its members in status. They receive extra recognition for their sacrifices, but at the same time need additional support in order to thrive. There is no list of grievances in the stories. Instead, triumph is the theme that predominates. Wounded warriors are presented as grateful; they “love and care for each other” (Story 17). Wounded warriors are a special kind of warrior because they have a direct claim on larger team victories: “Iraq today is nothing like it was in 2005 and 2006, and that’s because of you,” [Command Sgt. Maj. Joe] Altman told James and the rest of the wounded warriors. “Our Soldiers are safer, more secure and are able to advise and assist the Iraqis, due to your hard work and sacrifice.” (Story 131) It is of a piece with the respect that warriors give to their forebears, as coded at “legacy and genealogy.” In effect, wounded warriors are elevated in status to the 120 pantheon of warriors from previous generations and wars. They are beyond reproach; their motives and tactics are beyond criticism. Some of the stories were about the resources dedicated to rehabilitating wounded soldiers. Warrior transition units, often organized as battalions, were presented as typical military units in many respects—soldiers go to morning formations, wear uniforms, and work standard shifts. Their work was different, though. They had to engage in therapy, but it was work designed to achieve a military end. The frame casts theses warriors as strong and resilient. Wounded warriors have proven that they are tough because they are survivors. They take on new challenges, like the wounded warriors who participate in the “Ride 2 Recovery,” a cycling challenge created to give wounded service members a fun way to rehabilitate physically and mentally: “This ride gives wounded warriors the opportunity to have a physical challenge, as well as to face the mental challenges [faced by many] soldiers that have served our country,” said Debora Spano, Ride 2 Recovery spokesperson. (Story 190) These types of programs are tough, and they tap into the indomitable spirit that the wounded warriors in these stories possess. There is no room for pity. To the contrary, the frame asks readers to see them as simply moving on to face new challenges. Staff Sgt. Krisell Creager-Lumpkins, a soldier in a warrior transition unit, tried out for the Warrior Games, a sort of Olympics for wounded service members: “The process has been incredibly exciting,” Creager-Lumpkins said. “Just trying out, giving myself something to work toward, and seeing the small payoffs and improvements every day was the best part for me.” Creager-Lumpkins’ determination to heal and improve set an example for other soldiers recovering from injury, said 1st Sgt. Barry White, senior enlisted leader, Company A, Fort Carson WTB. “It is nice to see a soldier in the WTB pushing herself as hard as Staff Sgt. Creager-Lumpkins,” White said. “After an injury, many people will set limits on themselves. She is pushing past those limits and showing a lot of character.” (Story 200) 121 Even in death, warriors are powerful because only their virtues survive them in these stories: “He was a great NCO, he always did everything with enthusiasm which made me enthusiastic. I gained a lot from his leadership style because it encouraged me to do my best,” said Pfc. Charles Schreckenbach, a Beckley, W.Va., native, now a field artilleryman with 2nd Platoon, C Battery. (Story 144) And: “It was never hard to understand why Staff Sgt. Mowery was an amazing man,” said Pfc. Peter Bendza. “He took each and every one of us under his wings and comforted us when we needed it, taught us knowledge, and held us when we seemed like we could not take it anymore. He was always there for us, he was there for me.” (Story 155) The frame of the undefeated wounded or fallen warrior will likely continue, moving the Army to address concerns about the lingering health impacts the post-9/11 wars have had on the force. Suicide among veterans is considered to be an ongoing crisis, and the frame has contributed to a view of the issue as one that is impeding military capability. Enacted Sensemaking In Section 2, the theory of enacted sensemaking was proposed as a way to conceptualize how the warrior frame works to help members of the Army organization coordinate action amid change. As the Army situates itself in a dynamic and chaotic environment, rules must be established for action to make sense to the actors. Warrior themes and frames are practical constructs for soldiers in the U.S. Army. Recalling some key points of enacted sensemaking, action precedes understanding, sensemaking is social, and social rule construction often relies on texts and the labels they communicate. The stories I examined in this study are particularly poignant examples of the first point. Army activities go on whether soldiers write about them or 122 not. In the early 2000s, however, the Army decided that writing about them a lot would advance its strategic goals. Yet soldiers were not told what to write about. Certainly, there is public affairs guidance that would be similar to a civilian news editor telling a reporter what topics would be interesting, but neither the themes nor the frames were given to Army public affairs professionals as a way to organize their storytelling. Rather, the frame and themes followed the actions of the soldiers that public affairs professionals wrote about in an iterative institutional dialogue. The first point is connected to the second—that discourse of the warrior is a social creation. Brotherhood, family, and teams are replete in the data. Moreover, references to brotherhood, family, and teams are part of a process of “coming up with a plausible understanding—a map—of a shifting world; testing this map with others through data collection, action, and conversation; and then refining, or abandoning, the map depending on how credible it is” (Ancona, 2012, p. 3). The stories are a result of many iterations of action, then talk to make sense of that action. Making sense doesn’t only refer to how individuals perceive the reality around them, though it does that. It also, and perhaps more importantly, refers to the collective sense of large groups engaged in collective action. These stories are the products of a highly dialogic process of action and talk. That dialogue might go something like this. A soldier deploys, then that soldier converses with family and comrades about what is going on. In the next iteration, a public affairs professional embeds with the soldier to record a story (action), then they discuss what the story means to themselves and others. In a third action-talk iteration, the story gets written, edited, and published; then other soldiers and stakeholders read it and discuss it. The conversations, stories, and metaphors begin to cycle back and influence the strategic message formation that Army public affairs leaders engage in. Some of the stories emphasize what seem to be talking points. In fact, it is likely that they were. 123 Public affairs professionals collect information and compile it into a story on one end of the operation. On the other end, public affairs officers devise elaborate public affairs guidance that is often vetted at the Pentagon (Department of the Army, 2000). These guidance documents are distributed to commanders so that when specialists and sergeants interview them (or civilian media, for that matter), they can speak to strategic messages. Those strategic information decisions determine where to direct the storytellers, and the subjects begin to talk in terms approved by the organization. The set of stories thus represents discourse that has been highly refined. Language is fundamental to the process of sensemaking. The labels that help people describe and define their environment, in the context of this study, are the themes identified in Section 4. Those themes make up the frame through which members of the Army made sense of their situations. The Ethos in Society One measure of significance of the warrior frame is to see how it has pervaded first, the organization and second, the wider society in which the organization is situated. The power of the frame should, then, result in observable changes in behavior for organization members and perhaps changes in policy, as well. I will explore some of those changes below. Constructs of frame A frame isn’t determining. Instead, the language that contributes to the frame is also informed by the frame in a constitutive process. This happens as soldiers talk about their experiences and the discourse penetrates outward. Those outside the organization begin to talk about soldier experiences similarly, reinforcing how soldiers talk about 124 themselves. A thousand variables are at play, and many things can disrupt the process making the discourse turn this way or that. Still, a frame acts as an inclusionary device as well as an exclusionary device. The three frame dimensions that I have identified give members of the Army ways to include and exclude information and interpretations as they make sense of what it means to be a soldier in the U.S. Army. Fairhurst and Sarr (1996) propose five language forms that turn frames into meaning-making tools: metaphors, jargon, contrast, spin, and stories (p. 100). All five are present in the data of this study. Take, for instance, metaphor: “Basically we are like a colony of ants. We have Soldier ants who are the warriors —when they make contact with the enemy they are like a blunt instrument," Valledor explained. “And we have the CMT Soldiers who are like the worker ants —they are the silent, heavy lifters. We (the colony) could not survive without them.” (Story 14) These language forms give shape to the themes in order to construct the warrior. Through storytelling, soldiers are encouraged to approximate the ideal soldier in all they do, whether they are involved in close combat or preparing food for warfighters. The warrior frame, in its varying dimensions, helps soldiers make choices about what to include in the discourse. A warrior is reluctant, expert, and undefeated. Period. When soldiers talk about themselves, there is no room for talk about not knowing something. A warrior is an expert. This has real consequences, good and bad. On the good side, false expertise can instill confidence in subordinates. In combat, perhaps, confidence just might be the thing that helps a unit accomplish a task. On the bad side, when warriors fit their talk into an expertise frame, they foreclose on alternatives. They might avoid asking questions that reveal ignorance about an operation. The tendency promotes an attitude of deference that, when taken to the extreme, could lead to violations of rules of engagement or worse. The Army has controls for this, but they are in tension with the frame and the discourse the frame promotes. 125 The dimension of reluctance would exclude talk that would signify a desire to fight or to kill. The American people, to include the civilian leaders of the Army, are not interested in a force that delights in bloodshed. This is why certain comments by current Secretary of Defense James Mattis get so much attention: “Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet” (Conway, 2016, p. 1 ). The contrast within the statement is an effective attention-getting construction, but it also runs counter to what we expect of our soldiers (Mattis was not an Army soldier but a Marine). The undefeated wounded warrior constructs a discourse that is easy to identity by its rosy and antiseptic character. In these stories, there are no tragedies other than what the enemy has inflicted. Wounded warriors are never victims of Army negligence or malfeasance. And though the Army officially recognizes the challenge of some of the consequences of 10 years of irregular war (including the suicide crisis), it is presented as proactive in rehabilitating and reintegration wounded warriors. This is not entirely accurate, either; it might even result in slow response to serious organizational needs, as the VA medical service crisis would attest. It could also play the role of foil to critics of veteran care and the policies that led to the wounds in the first place. The central idea of all the dimensions shown in Figure 5.1 is the call to service. In former times, this would have been referred to as “duty.” It includes talk about responsiveness, obedience, and a desire to protect. It is the discourse that guards against charges of poor war planning and mistakes in execution, say friendly fire incidents or civilian casualties. Mistakes happen in war, after all, and don’t blame the soldier because he was just following orders. The warrior meme The frame translates to popular culture in a variety of ways. From Jedi in a far-off galaxy in the past to depictions of real soldiers fighting contemporary wars, movies are 126 often the biggest purveyors of the warrior frame. In a scene from the film Jack Reacher (Cruise et al., 2012), a civilian police officer consults the title character, who had served as a U.S. Army military policer officer in Iraq: “So what does an Army cop do mostly, break up bar fights?” “No, I did what you do, pretty much. With one minor difference.” “What’s that?” “Every suspect was a trained killer.” Never mind the reality that military police officers don’t investigate murder. The salient point here is that all soldiers are portrayed as expert killers and should be regarded differently. Other works of fiction depict warriors as MacGyver-like experts who can survive on anything and defeat any enemy by outfoxing them. Perhaps this frame dimension goes back to the Revolution, when American soldiers did outfox their better trained and better equipped British enemies. In media, we often see the American who is outmatched by his foe except in intellect and problem-solving. Undefeated warriors are all around in the discourse. In the musical The Greatest Showman ( Mark, L., Chernin, P., & Topping, J., 2017), a group of misfits help a fictionalized P.T. Barnum find success in show business by attracting middle class audiences to see their oddities. Led by a heavy bearded woman, a small person, an albino, a tattoo-covered man, and a beautiful biracial girl begin to feel like they have found a home in Barnum’s circus. At an event designed to take Barnum mainstream, they hope to celebrate with Barnum and his new friends, only to discover that Barnum is embarrassed by them. The group loses its confidence briefly, then begins to sing an anthem: Another round of bullets hits my skin. Well, fire away ‘cause today, I won't let the shame sink in. We are bursting through the barricades and 127 reaching for the sun. We are warriors! Yeah, that's what we've become! The outcasts have been knocked down, more than once; but they get back up, comparing themselves to soldiers. As they sing, they march, first past the respectable crowd in the theater whose sensibilities Barnum didn’t want to offend by having them mingle, then into the streets where mobs taunt them. They are unafraid to confront. Reluctance finds its way into media portrayals of warriors. Comic-book heroes are almost always reluctant to use their powers or skills until forced to do so by a villain and are often pressed into service by a populace demanding action. In one of the most successful films ever, Black Panther, the title character epitomizes the reluctant warrior. He does not want his kingdom to engage in offensive and expensive wars abroad. At home, he only fights to defend his kingdom from a challenger when it becomes clear that he has to in order to save face. Before he assumes the throne, Prince T’Challa, the Black Panther-to-be, must accept challenges to the throne from the various tribes of the kingdom, in ritual combat. One challenger presents himself and they fight, per protocol. At one point in the battle, the Black Panther has the challenger at his mercy: T’Challa: “Yield! Don't make me kill you.” Challenger: “I would rather die!” T’Challa: “You have fought with honor! Now yield! Your people need you.” Here the warrior-prince is loath to take life, even as his kinghood relies on it. Meanwhile, nearly the entire crowd assembled to watch the coronation is chanting, “T’Challa! T’Challa! T’Challa!” They adore their future king because he is victorious, but also because he extends mercy. He wins reluctantly. For regular troops, reluctance is the analog to the magnanimity of a king or potentate. They are only a few examples, but the warrior frame abounds in popular media and culture. Perhaps as warriors become so personal, the wars they fight become more 128 distant and less terrible. The warrior and the citizen Distance is one achievement of the warrior frame, though perhaps it was inadvertent. If one of its consequences is, as I have claimed, that the modern warrior is positioned to preserve American hegemony, then they have done so by concealing or distancing warrior problems from citizens. And if the military’s goal was to promote American hegemony during Vietnam, it quickly learned that its ability to act freely in that regard was constrained by public opinion to a degree. In the post-9/11 era, the Army has done a better job, by exploiting the frame, of maintaining a healthy relationship with the civilian citizenry. These two seem to be in tension always, and in balance currently. While soldiers operate abroad doing warrior things, the stories get told and the frame is put to use. As Army activity increases (more deployments, more casualties, more diplomatic problems), that relationship deteriorates. But of soldiers aren’t abroad at all, then the frame is less useful and less accurate. This balance is important to maintain for the Army and for the citizenry. The United States would not be well served by a force that didn’t acknowledge the constraints placed upon it, and warriors that act outside the frame do not engender goodwill with ordinary citizens. The risk of the latter is greater. There is little to no criticism in the stories I examined, minimizing the opportunity for citizens to reflect on the activities of soldiers. A free press certainly gives opportunities for criticism, but if the warrior frame becomes misaligned with the frames civilian media use, then the relationships the Army has invested so much to build could disintegrate. 129 Policy considerations A warrior frame also has implications for public policy because the Army is so intertwined with the central functions of government. An undefeated, reluctant, and expert part-time warrior frame serves the interests of the state. Budget considerations have always been a source of consternation for those who want to develop and wield military power. In the U.S. system of government, in which civilian leaders of the military in the executive branch have to ask for funding from civilians in another branch, the frame game is well played, specifically with regards to pay and benefits for soldiers, an increasing reliance on reservists, and growing concern for reintegrating wounded warriors into society. A reluctant warrior is useful for hawks because the frame implies that ground troops are a last resort. Since soldiers are reluctant (they answer the call to service) the government must supply them with the best equipment, give them the best training, and offer them and their families the best benefits. The frame will tend to make it easier to increase pay and benefits for military members and their families. Military Times (Shane III & Copp, 2019) reported that President Trump will propose the largest pay increase for military service members in 10 years in fiscal year 2020. This proposal follows the largest pay increase in 8 years. Regarding that increase, Trump told service members during a visit to Iraq, “We can’t play cheap with our warriors or military. We can’t play cheap with victory. And we’re not going to” (Shane III, 2018). The expert, part-time warrior frame is often employed in policy discussions about the use of reservists as a budget-relief measure. Odierno’s concerns about the training of reservists notwithstanding, the National Guard has powerful allies and lobbyists who have been successful in persuading lawmakers to direct more resources toward the statebased reserve force (Freedberg, 2013). Additionally, as the reserve forces reputation as a credible alternative to active duty forces continues to increase along with their combat 130 capabilities, the lines between the two forces will continue to blur. Within the last decade, voices within the military have advocated folding the Army Reserve into the more politically powerful Army National Guard (Abramowitz, 2013). In the 1970s, the Abrams Doctrine resulted in a greater reliance on reserve formations for large mobilizations of the Army. The prepondering view is that the Abrams’s force restructure following Vietnam was to ensure wide support for future wars because a large mobilization of Reserve and Guard elements would require such support (Crane & Gentile, 2015). Expert warriors, part-time or otherwise, also drive a fascination with special operations. The allure of special forces is obvious in popular media, but it extends to the political realm, as well. Mission sets have increased significantly for special operations forces over the past 20 years, a trend that looks likely to continue (Congressional Research Service, 2019). Training for special operators is intense and expensive. Not all soldiers qualify. However, the move toward special operations will continue and is likely to drive a desire among politicians and voters to accelerate that move. Special forces operations have the appearance of a cleaner, more efficient type of warfare that pits profound expertise against U.S. enemies in a way that will reduce large footprints in overseas theaters and reduce combat casualties. It will also strengthen the frame that all soldiers possess a significant level of expertise. An undefeated warrior frame continues to be put to use by advocates of veterans’ health care. Tensions often emerge after wars between veterans’ advocates and the government agencies charged with providing those resources. The frame makes it difficult to argue against more resources, even in an objective debate about how to use resources wisely. Its effectiveness, paradoxically, relieves some of the pressure on government agencies—mostly agencies under the auspices of the Department of Veterans Affairs—as nongovernment organizations increasingly take up the cause of 131 veterans. For example, during Superbowl week in 2018, a team of wounded veterans defeated a team composed of former professional football players in an exposition game. The wounded warriors were celebrated in terms of the undefeated frame: After hitting a landmine and rolling his truck in August 2003, Cain lost his right leg and suffered severe nerve damage to his left leg. After more than 60 surgeries and multiple bouts of physical therapy in an attempt to save his left leg, he came to the decision to amputate. “I have absolutely no regrets for anything I did. I am out here playing football, playing ice hockey and running marathons,” Cain said. “There’s really nothing that can stop me or slow me down.” Once a warrior, always a warrior. (Curry, 2018) Charities, lobbying organizations, and fraternal associations will continue to promote the frame to serve their own organizational interests, which often align with the interests of veterans. At a more practical level, the frame has had an impact on the way soldiers act, even if evidence to support that claim is scant in this study’s data set. To get the organizational benefits that framing and sensemaking imply, Army leaders should free up public affairs professionals to do more storytelling, similar to the way many news media outlets incorporate first-person accounts and commentaries. Flexible storytelling would result in more stories told that are more authentic. More authenticity would result in greater transparency and greater trust in the institution. Future of Warrior Ethos Absence of courage What might be most surprising is what does not appear in the stories. There are very few references to courage, which is a virtue that appears prominently in the ethos literature. There might be two reasons for this. First, the Army is becoming more mechanized and high-tech. Shinseki’s hopes about making his transformation a people- 132 first endeavor notwithstanding, every attempt at reform brings more technology, which tends to reduce the need for human decision-making even while it decreases the risks of death and injury. Smart weapons, greater surveillance and force protection, and better defensive measures keep our soldiers safer than ever before, but they also decrease the opportunities (for lack of any better word) for battlefield heroics. That is certainly not to say that heroes are absent in today’s wars, only that the bar is higher and harder to hurdle. Second, the move toward high technology is putting a premium on technical expertise, rather than on valor in close combat. At least in Iraq and Afghanistan, where traditional measures of military strength drastically favored American soldiers, engagements were won and lost on intelligence and surprise, rather than on sheer will to win. Of course, there are exceptions, but those exceptions don’t appear prominently in this data set. The absence of courage in these stories is problematic for the construction of a warrior, at least when measured against historical descriptions of warriors and traditional notions of warrior virtues. Nearly all military thinkers who have pondered the warrior ethos or spirit have placed “courage,” “valor,” or “bravery” high on the list of warrior virtues, yet these semi-official texts barely mention any of those. Very reasonable explanations might exist, but if modern warriors are not framed to be courageous, can they be considered warriors at all? This study has made the claim that these stories are constitutive. That is, they reflect how organization members perceive their membership in the Army, and they also help shape those perceptions. Following that claim, the modern warrior frame suggests that U.S. soldiers can be effective warriors without courage—a notion that would be incomprehensible to Patton, and maybe even Shinseki. Contemporary leaders might say that courage is implied by other virtues, but the evidence is not there. In fact, discipline, an important component of a warrior ethos, might be at odds with courage. In modern 133 bureaucratic warfare, discipline seems to be more prized than courage. There is certainly a tension between the two. Discipline, in a practical sense, replaces courage on the battlefield. When commanders can rely on their troops’ discipline, they do not have to hope that their troops are courageous. That paradox exposes a fragility of the entire Warrior Ethos program. If discipline is inculcated at the expense of virtues that require independent action, what is the point of an ethos in the first place? Return of reform President Trump announced late last year that he intends to nominate the current Army chief of staff, General Mark Milley, as the next chairman of the joint chiefs. Milley, by some accounts, is a visionary who wants to lead the Army through another transformation (Gouré, 2019). Milley foresees conflicts against “high-end adversaries” like China and Russia, instead of irregular conflict against adaptive, networked guerilla elements. It is the inverse of the problem that Shinseki saw 20 years ago, but their solutions are remarkably similar, involving immense modernization to address the threat of networked warfare on a massive scale between near-peer belligerents (Freedberg, 2016). “We are on the cusp of a fundamental change in the character of ground warfare,” Milley said, prophesying of combat that “is going to be intensely lethal, the likes of which the United States Army, the United States military, has not experienced. . . since World War II” (Freedberg, 2016). It hearkens to the close combat that helped to prompt the Warrior Ethos project in the first place. The aim of the Warrior Ethos, contended Army leaders, was to “compel soldiers to fight through all adversity, under any circumstances, in order to achieve victory” (Training and Doctrine Command, 2013, p. 1). It appears as if change will be a constant in the Army. 134 As change proceeds, ethos can help organization members make sense of and sort through it. The Warrior Ethos remains a powerful organizing framework for the Army. As the Army continues to contend with adapting to an environment in which resources are scarce, it will rely on a professional ethos to navigate the unexpected that comes with change and scarcity. Limitations and Next Steps This study represents one way to examine the warrior frame in modern military texts. There are others. The data set had limitations, to be sure. As approved U.S. Army material, it represents a quasi-official interpretation of soldier activities. Books and blogs written by soldiers offer another set of data to examine the same questions. Those texts contain, no doubt, a less-varnished version of reality, for good or bad. Studying those texts, along with interview data, would advance this line of inquiry and get closer to answering the question, how does the warrior frame influence actions of soldiers? The coding process, too, had limitations. Codes reflected the biases of the author. Other coding procedures could have resulted in different or additional conclusions. One that comes immediately to mind is to code for Fairhurst and Sarr’s language forms as they relate to warriors or the Warrior Ethos. How interesting and informative would it be to know to what extent Army leaders relied on spin, jargon, or contrast in their attempts to make sense of the Warrior Ethos! Related lines of inquiry are available that would complement this study. The source and implications of the civilian-military divide continues to perplex many. Also, there is a continued dispute in and out of the military about whether the abolition of the draft is, on balance, good or bad. A qualitative research program about what the civilianmilitary divide is, precisely— the depth and extent of the divide and its relationship to the all-volunteer force— would be helpful for military leaders and policy makers. Also, 135 given the frequency that comparisons between reserve forces and active-duty troops have been made, a study examining the comprehensive performance of reservists in comparison with active-duty soldiers in operations in the post-9/11 era would answer many of the question that continue to face those who have to make important decisions about how to best structure U.S. military forces and pay for them. It is my hope that scholars will continue to examine warrior discourse and the Warrior Ethos, for two different reasons. The first is that the warrior discourse pervades broader discourses, and the implications of those discourses go to what we value as a society. Second, the Warrior Ethos has been a powerful organizational tool. Understanding how and why could be valuable to other organizations. Modern organizations tend to be governed by contract, bureaucracy, and policy. A move toward a more ethos-driven culture will result in better decision makers. Concluding Thoughts The Army does an important work for the nation, sometimes at a tremendous cost in blood and treasure. Though this study was not prescriptive, it offers some advice to Army leaders. The warrior frame, in its various dimensions, is effective as far as it goes. Public support for the military remains strong, as does esteem for individual warriors. The frame could be incorporated into the way Army public affairs professionals operate. Teaching soldiers about frames and how they work does not run the risk of raising an Army of propagandists. Army public affairs soldiers are already in service to the Army, rather than to the common good or some other standard that guides civilian journalists. However, soldiers who understand the power of their work might do better work. Moreover, the Army should invest more into training for these professionals. Their stories could have broader reach if they were researched and written better. 136 Additionally, an explicit statement of ethos has been an effective way to influence strategic messages as well as sensemaking messages. Of the former, the Warrior Ethos is often used as boilerplate, shorthand, and talking points to help explain Army activities. To the latter, when a concise message is integrated into strategic messaging and training, as the Warrior Ethos has, it can form the basis of perception of many other activities by organization members at any level. Soldiers and civilians, poets and philosophers have long contemplated what makes a warrior. I do not presume that this small study has answered a question that has generated so much thought, passion, and wonder over the ages. For a brief moment in the history of the U.S. Army, however, we have perhaps a bit more clarity about how American warriors made sense of that very question. 137 Figure 5.1 Dimensions of the Warrior Frame APPENDIX Stories used in the Final Analyses Story Number File Name (Publish Date and Story Title) 1 20050815 Task Force Baghdad Medic Receives Bronze Star 2 20051201 SMA shares vision of Army with Soldiers at Drum 3 20060522 Warrior Brigade celebrates dedication to the Army 4 20060609 Gator change 5 20060814 2-4 Infantry completes mission in Zabul province_ refits at KAF 6 20060815 Gen. Pace visits Camp Liberty, assures troops they have support 7 20061006 Best Warrior Competition Mystery Events Go Almost as Planned 8 20061028 2nd BCT, 1st Inf. Div. arrives in Baghdad 9 20061115 1ACB CSM coach, role model for Soldiers 10 20070213 Military wives go the extra distance 11 20070215 Military Police play vital role in war 12 20070226 Iraqi troops graduate from Warrior Leader Course 13 20070228 Mission “Critical” Looking into the 24-hour medical operations of the Contingency Aeromedical Staging Facility 14 20070313 Consequence Management Team keeps Soldiers rolling 15 20070322 Paratroopers receive combat awards 16 20070405 2-5-6 MiTT celebrates Iraqi NCO Graduation after week-long training 139 17 20070416 MND-B leader spends an _ordinary day spent with extraordinary Soldiers_ 18 20070506 First Army Commander’s Warrior Challenge Challenges Soldiers 19 20070531 ANA continues to train, lead with support of Soldiers 20 20070618 Camp Buehring Training 21 20071021 Families, friends remember the lives of the fallen 22 20071029 Hard Working Soldier Remembered at Memorial 23 20071112 _Warrior_ receives Bronze Star for Valor 24 20071117 7th SB celebrates Native American heritage 25 20071123 Aaron Tippin gets Kuwait rockin’...in a Country type of way 26 20071206 203rd BSB welcomes new company commander 27 20071210 76th IBC hits Camp Atterbury running 28 20071228 Lancers bridge cultural gaps as security improves 29 20080118 Not your average teacher 30 20080228 NCO Academy students _leave to lead_ 31 20080303 Stryker Soldier serves proudly in Iraq_ Massachusetts Soldier proud to be part of war effort 32 20080328 Balkans Bound 33 20080423 IA, Warriors search for caches 34 20080508 Vanguard Brigade receives Valorous Unit Award 35 20080515 Army bands to undergo transformation to modular structure 36 20080524 Wolfhound makes difference training Iraqi army soldiers 37 20080610 First Team’s command sergeant major reflects on his new assignment 38 20080616 Training to save lives an officer’s wish for his troops 39 20080617 Chaplain jumps Blue to Green 40 20080625 “Behind bars for good” SAMC volunteers work to benefit MDA 140 41 20080707 U.S. Army Reserve Command “Best Warrior” Competition underway 42 20080712 New commander challenges Warrior Medics 43 20080721 Newly Promoted Inducted into Corps 44 20080730 Wolfhound joined Army for excitement 45 20080804 Alaskan unit trains on crew served weapons, close quarter combat 46 20080809 Warrior Soldiers train IA on vehicle maintenance skills 47 20080826 Troops team together to fight against electronic warfare 48 20080830 Warrior Soldiers build camaraderie through stress relief 49 20080904 IA soldiers graduate maintenance class 50 20080908 Warriors build tradition of fine leadership, create commanders on the ground 51 20080919 Public Affairs Officer’s life celebrated 52 20081020 Rashid’s Sons of Iraq transition to the responsibility of the government of Iraq 53 20081025 Strykehorse Soldiers work with Iraqi Security Forces in Falahat 54 20081031 U.S. Army Parachute Team to Graduate first Wounded Warrior_ largest number of female candidates in Assessment _amp_ Selection 55 20081112 Teamwork drives National Guard recruiting: Army’s October numbers exceed goal 56 20081119 Army Reserve Soldiers prep for deployment to Afghanistan 57 20081129 Troopers’ spouses “earn their spurs” 58 20081208 The Randy Oler Memorial Operation Toy Drop 59 20081222 Army Chief of Staff visits Forward Operating Base Warrior Soldiers 60 20090101 Bountyhunters, Iraqi Security Forces repo remnants of Sab al Bour’s violent past 61 20090211 Wounded warrior looks to future 141 62 20090214 Sustainment Warriors develop Junior Non-Commissioned Officers 63 20090225 Joint Security Station Sheikh Marouf handed over to Iraqi army 64 20090228 The M2 .50 cal: Over 80 years of service and counting 65 20090319 Military women continue to break down barriers 66 20090322 Mortal combat life-saver_ Soldier helps save lives despite own battles 67 20090323 Corporal exemplifies _Year of the Non-commissioned Officer_ 68 20090422 Germany-based sustainment Soldiers master battalion board 69 20090507 “No Slack” Soldiers test their mettle during Iron Platoon Competition 70 20090507 Tae Bo comes to Camp Ramadi 71 20090527 Multi-National Corps-Iraq trains Soldiers to be _resilient_ 72 20090602 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division remembers fallen Soldier in Memorial Day dedication 73 20090602 Belton leaders visit 15th Sustainment Brigade’s Hood 74 20090602 Concrete team leaves Iraq for Afghanistan 75 20090603 “Iron Knights” award medals to combat veterans 76 20090614 Army reserve unit provides dental care to Pine Ridge 77 20090622 VIP Visit 78 20090716 Greywolf Soldiers compete in grueling four day competition 79 20090716 Seasoned Sergeants. What does it mean to be an NCO_ 80 20090717 Admiral Mullen awards five Purple Heart medals to Soldiers 81 20090720 No break in training 82 20090819 A Hero’s Welcome: 82nd Airborne Veterans go all out to bring wounded warriors to convention in Indianapolis 83 20090912 62nd Trans. Co. Soldier of the Quarter winner 84 20090914 Third Army partners with Kazakhstan Army during Steppe Eagle 142 85 20090925 Guard offers resiliency training to service members, families 86 20091012 Wounded warriors visit Contingency Operating Base Speicher, Iraq 87 20091015 Psychological Operations Command (Airborne) Commander Joins Wounded Warrior Project Soldier Ride 88 20091030 Big trucks, big dreams 89 20091109 Cavalry troops awarded combat spurs 90 20091110 Hood, nation pay tribute to victims of post shooting spree 91 20091202 Strike honors cavalry tradition with its first spur ride 92 20091208 Strike to remember fallen Soldiers of tragic crash in Gander, Newfoundland 93 20100101 Brigade holds memorial for 32 lost in 2009 94 20100102 Evolving wounded warrior program returns to Iraq with plans for more 95 20100115 Bastogne Warriors Battle Through Scenarios 96 20100120 Soldier’s Beloved Car Restored 97 20100121 _Hailstorm_ Soldiers roam at night with Iraqi forces 98 20100125 Indiana’s top NCO answers his own call to duty for one last mission 99 20100204 Academy Graduates Latest Soldiers for the NCO Corps 100 20100213 Mississippi Guardsmen visit ancient ruins 101 20100220 Veterans Seek Donations for World War II Memorial 102 20100224 Soldier recognized for achievements 103 20100308 Container inspector embodies 'Warrior Pride' 104 20100401 Reservist’s classes help promote fitness to troops at Arfijan 105 20100501 Afghan leader's course commences 106 20100503 Behavioral Health Course 107 20100507 International top rugby referee sees it all 143 108 20100512 UFC comes to Troops 109 20100523 Sky soldiers dodge attacks, capture insurgent and save a child 110 20100614 Wounded warrior returns to Iraq, finds closure 111 20100615 Big Red One warrior returns to Iraq 112 20100616 4th MEB Soldier to compete for III Corps Soldier of the Year title 113 20100624 Diligent Soldiers step up as leaders 114 20100628 Soldiers climb first rung of leadership ladder 115 20100701 The Long Road to Recovery: Falcon Paratrooper Beats Cancer and Expectations 116 20100722 ‘Black Jack’ Soldier wins commandant challenge 117 20100727 NGB Chief, governors visit troops in Middle East 118 20100731 Every dog has its day, including military working dogs 119 20100909 Fort Irwin’s top fighters throw down 120 20100916 CAR answers questions, addresses enlisted troops’ concerns 121 20100918 “Virtual Installation” becomes a reality in Pittsburgh 122 20100923 Patriot Academy holds 2nd Graduation Ceremony 123 20101002 Vietnam Veteran inspires service members at COB Adder 124 20101006 Cadets experience combat simulation during Ranger Challenge 2012 125 20101020 18th Engineer Soldiers battle it out in competition 126 20101030 USD-C Soldiers, civilians raise funds, awareness for breast cancer research 127 20101110 Cavalry Soldiers maintain electronic communications 128 20101119 18th CSSB ‘Warhammers’ shine during ESPN Veterans Day event 129 20101119 Education, commitment will get Guard through changing times 130 20101128 Getting your mail this Holiday Season 144 131 20101222 Wounded Warriors return to Iraq, find closure in Anbar 132 20110113 Preparation key to convoy support mission 133 20110119 Atterbury programs keep Soldiers fit 134 20110121 Army program helps Soldiers, units find ‘new normal’ after deployment 135 20110122 Long Knife Brigade honors fallen comrades 136 20110129 Fallen ‘Dagger’ Brigade Soldier remembered for generosity, dedication to fellow Soldiers 137 20110210 Iraqi physical therapists train at Walter Reed 138 20110227 Planning key to successful convoy missions 139 20110308 Combat stress control soldier, working dog inducted into Order of the Spur 140 20110316 PTF Duke rehabilitates Soldiers with brain injuries 141 20110325 Wounded soldier now in mentoring role as WTB Platoon Leader 142 20110401 Bikers help runners hit the road at Camp Clark 143 20110408 Organizations help bring comfort, support to service members 144 20110416 Cold Steel Battery bids farewell to fallen warrior 145 20110417 C Battery artillerymen receive help from the skies 146 20110421 ‘Long Knife’ Soldier named US Division-North Soldier of the Quarter 147 20110429 875th Replacement Company Returns from One-Year Stateside Mobilization 148 20110520 Sibayan: Swimming Superman 149 20110521 Top war fighters unite at Warrior Games 150 20110618 National Guard soldiers promote combatives 151 20110625 Mud run tests strength, endurance 152 20110628 Third Army announces NCO of the Year 153 20110706 Seabees upgrade Wounded Warrior care center on KAF 145 154 20110717 Fort Knox teen baseball player mentored by former baseball greats 155 20110726 Remembering the fallen 156 20110802 Military police training military police 157 20110803 99th RSC honors `superior` Army civilian 158 20110810 _Dagger’ SHARP training a framework for change 159 20110814 642d completely dedicated and always responsive 160 20110818 The foundation of his sacrifice 161 20110828 ‘Resolute’ warrior burns his mark during deployment 162 20110911 9_11, ten years later 163 20110915 56th Signal sets up communications in the field 164 20110916 Extensive training prepares Oregon Army National Guard soldiers for mobilization 165 20110926 Bringing them home 166 20110927 Warrior spirit, working lunch_ 530th CSSB hosts Afghan leaders, discuss future projects 167 20111025 Generator mechanic keeps COB Adder flowing 168 20111108 JSLC: Strongest-ever National Guard vital to war effort, Panetta says 169 20111115 Keeping soldiers in the game 170 20111210 WWE pays tribute to the National Guard with visit to Fayetteville Armory 171 20120220 TF Gold Geronimo soldiers, Paktya PRT wage epic snow fight at Gardez 172 20120224 Mardi Gras Afghanistan Engineer District-South style 173 20120224 ‘Packhorse’ loads up on special skills training 174 20120227 Nation’s gratitude_ White House recognition includes National Guard members 175 20120306 100 reasons to do one good thing 146 176 20120309 Soldiers, commander take part in 1000 pounds challenge 177 20120315 Right on target_ Archers aim for spot on Army Warrior Games team 178 20120316 309th Mobile Augmentation Company Welcome Home Warrior Ceremony Press Release 179 20120316 39th's Best Compete for 2012 Arkansas Best Warrior 180 20120323 Chili cook-off spices up life at JBLM 181 20120325 Civil Affairs Battalion welcomed home by their community 182 20120328 _Saber_ soldiers show off their skills to Austin City Officials 183 20120330 352nd Civil Affairs Command finds its best warrior 184 20120403 Louisiana native wins Army Reserve Medical Command Best Warrior Competition 185 20120409 A-OK_ Last of Oklahoma Guardsmen leave Afghanistan 186 20120410 Hand-cycling clinic a new start for wounded Soldiers, veterans 187 20120410 Transportation commander awards ‘Resolute’ warriors for Deep Freeze 188 20120411 Healing a family affair for Fort Hood WTB’s homebound soldiers 189 20120411 Qualification done right 190 20120419 Division West soldiers ride for wounded warriors 191 20120426 To be the best 192 20120430 Cowboy ‘Boots on Ground’ - Toby Keith tours Afghanistan, performs for deployed troops 193 20120502 Afghans own the Arghandab 194 20120502 Wounded Warrior opens family ranch_ free to all veterans 195 20120503 'An honor to perform' at JBLM 196 20120504 2nd Infantry Division determines Best Warrior 197 20120505 Darkness turns into light_ Nevada National Guard Engineer unit conducts nighttime demolition training 147 198 20120505 Fit to fight: how the military restores its own 199 20120505 Fitness Center for Wounded Warriors 200 20120508 Fort Carson soldier competes in 3rd annual Warrior Games 201 20120509 First-term soldier and seasoned NCO win CAPOC Best Warrior 202 20120517 JMTC Warrior Leader Course forges international Soldier partnerships 203 20120531 Egyptian commandant shares language learning insight 204 20120602 I Corps Honor Guard takes part in Le May “America’s” Car Museum grand opening 205 20120604 Regional Best Warrior Competition 206 20120606 Fort Hood Warrior Transition Brigade’s $62 million campus opens 207 20120606 Regional Best Warrior Competition 208 20120606 United States Army Medical Command reviews its service animal policy 209 20120607 No longer suffering in silence 210 20120608 486th soldier earns sergeant stripes while battling cancer 211 20120609 Greater Green Bay welcomes 432nd home 212 20120609 Talley takes command of Army Reserve 213 20120612 Black Hills hosts realistic improvised explosive device scenarios 214 20120623 War Staff Represents Native Americans Military Service 215 20120718 Citizen first, then a soldier 216 20120719 Drive for perfection 217 20120720 Best Warrior competitor desires to serve his community 218 20120727 Ramrod Battalion honors Vietnam War Hero 219 20120728 US Army takes first place in Island Wide Cook Off 220 20120731 110th Chem. Bn. Soldier’s earn rite of passage 148 221 20120801 Forging Steel: The nine month transformation of Spc. Dean Johnson into a steel warrior 222 20120806 1433rd Engineer Company remembers Sgt. Kyle McClain 223 20120809 Dauntless Warriors feel the squeeze during Operation Gauntlet 224 20120814 Push it forward_ Human Resources soldiers train to process mail 225 20120821 Best of the Guard honored at Arlington Hall 226 20120821 Wainwright range dedicated to World War II hero 227 20120824 Operational environments change but skills and values taught at WLC remain concrete 228 20120830 Trooper focus 229 20120907 Army Gen. Frank Grass becomes 27th chief of the National Guard Bureau 230 20120908 Bagram runners race to raise resources for wounded warriors 231 20120913 Stryker soldiers complete historic ‘Manchu Mile’ 232 20120914 MARS Task Force memorial stone unveiled on Fort Bragg 233 20120925 Alaska Infantrymen host G.I. Jane Day 234 20120926 ‘Battle Ready’ brings battalion back to basics 235 20121004 Hood medics recognized as experts 236 20121012 56th MMB launches Medicine Warrior Leader Challenge 2012 237 20121017 Artillery battalion stays _Battle Ready_ on infantry tactics 238 20121017 Soldiers enhance their warrior skills prior to deployment 239 20121102 4th Brigade takes day to thank, honor fallen, wounded warriors 240 20121110 561st RSG holds Best Warrior Competition 241 20121110 Reservist, student, worker looks to become Ranger 242 20121112 Rakkasan veterans stay connected, reach out to new generation 243 20121120 Fort Hood WTB soldier's dedication to disabled vets earns him DOD Disability Award 149 244 20121204 Taking the Wounded Warrior recovery process a step further 245 20121207 Pearl Harbor vets honored during ceremony at Intrepid Museum 246 20121212 Operation Warfighter soldier awarded Purple Heart in Surprise Ceremony 247 20121213Arctic Wolves graduate Northern Warfare Training Center’s inaugural Master Arctic Trainer Qualification Course 248 20121214 Loud and proud: 143rd ESC 'rock out' for Wounded Warriors 249 20130104 Fallen combat engineer remembered by CTF 4-2 250 20130112 Medevac training helps to sharpen skills 251 20130118 Task Force Marshall 252 20130128 Medics welcome new commander 253 20130128 Warrior born of two nations 254 20130201 GED Plus graduates inspire Army National Guard’s top enlisted leader 255 20130205 3-2 SBCT uncases colors 256 20130208 MAPET course brings importance of Army Values to Fort Hood 257 20130208 Warrior-citizen turns warrior-boxer 258 20130210 Texas Army, Air Guard battle in 1st joint Best Warrior Competition 259 20130214 Albanian Special Operations Forces transfer of authority 260 20130223 Centurion CrossFit hosts hero workout, honors fallen soldier 261 20130306 British army officer pays tribute in an EOD bomb suit 262 20130306 Wounded warrior, hero reunited at Camp Arifjan 263 20130313Battlekings return victorious 264 20130314 Operation War Fighter in Tulsa District 265 20130314 Soldier versus winter in the 372nd Engineer Brigade Best Warrior Competition 266 20130316 Warriors strive to be the best 150 267 20130317 479th FA soldiers compete in Bataan Memorial Death March 268 20130317 Marching through the sands of time 269 20130318 Junior troopers test their skills for coveted badge 270 20130323 Combined efforts bring leadership course to deployed soldiers 271 20130324 Winamac native competes in ‘Best Warrior Competition’; IUPUI student competes in ‘Best Warrior Competition’; Hobart soldier competes in ‘Best Warrior Competition’ 272 20130327 446th AES trains for casualty movement 273 20130329 Army Reserve general offers inspiration through achievement during Women’s History Month 274 20130401 Bayonet 6 sends_ Readiness and the fiscal environment 275 20130402 Fort Leonard Wood’s best warriors 276 20130411 Providers, Lakewood Elementary celebrate Old Glory Day 277 20130418 Army Corps civilian builds up Wounded Warriors with sled hockey program 278 20130418 Team RWB runs to support bombing victims 279 20130423 Motivation key to winning Best Warrior Competition 280 20130504 Observer Controller Trainers 281 20130504 Rigger claims first place in Best Warrior Competition 282 20130509 Honoring a hero 283 20130515 Football legend shows support to wounded, ill or injured service members at Warrior Games 284 20130525 Third Army ARCENT competition defines the best 285 20130605 Incoming! ‘Raiders’ take cover during indirect fire drill 286 20130614 Afghan generals visit Army Reserve leadership 287 20130621 Victim … Survivor … Warrior 288 20130624 Wounded warrior benefits from Warrior Transition Unit 289 20130626 Army Reserve sergeant motivates and leads by example 151 290 20130626 From a boy to a man 291 20130627 Army Reserve soldier trains to teach and lead 292 20130627 From TBI to Best Warrior competitor 293 20130628 Tail wagging for Marechaussee Medal 294 20130628 The ultimate two-man team 295 20130628 ‘Soldiering is a special calling’_ GO retires after three decades of service to the nation 296 20130703 Synchronizing strategy_ 143rd ESC sustains victory at CPX-S 297 20130713 SC National Guard Chaplain Corps gets new leadership 298 20130721 Junior enlisted soldiers rising as leaders 299 20130803 Operation Sustainment Warrior 2013 Initial Press Release 300 20130805 Army chaplains support Army Reserve soldiers during OSW 2013 301 20130809 443rd Transportation Company conducts CSTX 302 20130819 From Special Forces to practical tooth care 303 20130820 Kerchief is Strong 304 20130827 Completed USACE project is new home for Afghan warriors 305 20130827 Construction warriors build tactical skills 306 20130827 Tucker Takes Charge As New First Army Commander 307 20130901 ‘Messengers’ embark on mission to Kuwait for Operation Spartan Shield 308 20130904 Adventure for returning soldiers 309 20130904 Betrayal of Trust (Part 2 of 2) 310 20130915 Fragile daughter changes soldier’s life 311 20130926 Carson hosts Army PT study 312 20130926 Training event prepares support soldiers for missions 313 20131008 Military police celebrate 72nd regimental birthday 152 314 20131017 210th Fires Brigade NCO wins WLC Leadership Award 315 20131025 Bobcats’ win post tournament Commander’s Cup 316 20131104 Developing leaders through teamwork 317 20131106 Are You Medic Enough_ 318 20131107 42nd FiB sweats for vets 319 20131112 Resiliency, key for single-parents in the military 320 20131114 Fort Hood celebrates Native American, Alaskan Native History Month 321 20131121 Devens describes NCO's role in ROK-US alliance 322 20131124 A well-rounded soldier 323 20131204 Combatives program builds tactical, resilient troops 324 20131206 Operation Homefront toy distribution 325 20131210 2nd Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment adds new location to advising mission 326 20131214 Commander and chief 327 20131218 Inaugural Warrior Artillery Fitness Challenge tests combat fitness 328 20131218 Operation Proper Exit_ Wounded warriors return to find closure 329 20140127 Multi-purpose MPs carry out air assault training 330 20140128 Lightning Warriors leave Fort Hood, deploy for missions overseas 331 20140202 Soldier in Focus_ Medic honors our fallen soldiers 332 20140206 Sappers continue to enhance lifesaving and warrior skills while deployed 333 20140224 364th ESC soldiers compete to be the best 334 20140224 Euphonium player receives coveted leadership award 335 20140228 So you think you can soldier 336 20140319 Fellowship with families of 'Fallen Warriors' 153 337 20140326 In a world full of gaps they are a bridge_ Huntington District employees honored by President’s Volunteer Service Award 338 20140327 3rd Special Forces Group Valor Awards Ceremony 339 20140328 Leading Warhorse 340 20140329 Nevada soldiers participate in best warrior competition 341 20140401 Reflecting back on a successful deployment 342 20140405 The Road to JRTC_ B Battery, 101-FA 343 20140407 Wolfhound takes it to the enemy 344 20140410 Chief of the US Army Reserve holds town hall on Fort McCoy 345 20140417 Medics achieve ultimate award for competence 346 20140421 Hawaii Army Guardsmen exchange more than military expertise with Indonesian army NCOs 347 20140430 NCOs Brawl To Be The Best 348 20140501 335th Signal Command returns to American soil 349 20140501 FTX caps off monthlong training 350 20140501 Road to sponsorship_ Building teamwork, rapport 351 20140501 Top NCO, Soldier crowned 352 20140503 Master Resiliency Training from Wounded Warrior 353 20140509 USAJFKSWCS soldiers compete for top honors 354 20140512 Remembering ‘Honor and Courage’ this Memorial Day 355 20140513 Taking the scenic route_ Traveling across Afghanistan to deliver goods 356 20140516 Bronze Star Medal presented to Army Reserve lawyer and judge in his civilian courtroom 357 20140520 Medics earn Army’s toughest badge 358 20140526 Fort Bliss remembers 359 20140528 Wounded Warriors visit Spartan Soldiers 154 360 20140601 Mission accomplished 490th Signal Company (TIN) returns to America 361 20140609 4th Brigade Combat Team welcomes new Patriot Command Team 362 20140610 Groundbreaking set for new Intrepid Spirit Center at Fort Hood 363 20140610 Train as you fight 364 20140612 Adaptive reconditioning offers Soldier new sports path 365 20140615 Proudly saluting after 70 years 366 20140618 Soldier tours 9-11 Museum to revisit day 367 20140619 MMA all-stars bring combatives experience to KMC 368 20140620 Engineer Soldiers compete for top 369 20140624 Staff Sgt. Jeremy Maglott competes in the 2014 Army Reserve Best Warrior Competition 370 20140625 Don't Believe the Hype 371 20140625 Soldier Braves Inner Storm 372 20140625 The Protector 373 20140626 The Big Boys 374 20140627 Top Army Reserve chemical unit recognized with Sibert Award 375 20140701 Tree climber tapped USARC Best Warrior runner-up 376 20140714 Warriors lend helping hand 377 20140717 Paralegal Warrior Training Course Begins 378 20140720 One team_ building bonds through IED defeat 379 20140722 DC National Guard unit conducts _Warfighter_ training to sharpen leadership skills 380 20140722 Marines, Soldiers reap benefits of Warrior Exercise 381 20140723 Army Total Force trains together at Warrior Exercise ‘14 382 20140724 Army Reserve Engineers Practice Demolition at WAREX 383 20140804 1st Cavalry Division, KISD strengthen partnership 155 384 20140805 Comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable 385 20140811 189th IN trainers work with Calif. Guard Transportation Unit at NTC 386 20140812 Three Army “ohana” prepare for the All-Army Softball Team tryouts 387 20140822 Ready Warrior prepares Soldiers for future operations 388 20140828 FORSCOM announces 2014 NCO-Soldier of the Year 389 20140904 Fighter, survivor_ Soldier battles cancer, moves on to _next big thing_ 390 20140911 And the winner is…._ 391 20140911 Honor, gratitude, vigilance 392 20140912 MEDIA ADVISORY_ Army Reserve to host 9_11 Remembrance Ceremony honoring fallen Soldiers 393 20140915 Phantom Warrior Week 394 20140925 SMA Visit BWC 395 20140929 Carson hosts Warrior Games 396 20141003 Pilot, safety director, bishop: Jangro retiring after 42 years 397 20141017 A more lethal, flexible and agile Army 398 20141017 The literary adventures of Spc. Cynthia A. Rodriguez 399 20141102 228th Theater Tactical Signal Brigade conducts Best Warrior Competition 400 20141103 Warrior Care Month 401 20141110 Georgia National Guardsmen making a difference in the Americas 402 20141111 Brig. Gen. 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