(Cross-posted at Historiblography)

Reporting from the front in WWII, Ernie Pyle was most impressed by the degree to which American soldiers weren't natural warriors. War had come, and they had simply faced it."They just went," Pyle wrote. In a running commentary on the dignity of the everyman, Pyle described citizens who fought reluctantly and looked forward to getting the job done."They were American boys who by mere chance of fate had wound up with guns in their hands sneaking up a death-laden street in a strange and shattered city in a faraway country in a driving rain. They were afraid, but it was beyond their power to quit. They had no choice. They were good boys."

This sort of narrative surely speaks to a longstanding piece of American myth, but it also points to an important reality regarding the development of the U.S. military for WWII: Faced with a challenge, a small standing army grew rapidly as Americans rushed (with considerable nudging) to the ranks.

And so I've been struck -- struck forcefully, for the obvious reasons -- by reports that the U.S. Army is currently flailing miserably behind a growing failure to recruit new soldiers. Most seriously, an army deeply entangled in a grinding and persistent conflict is having very little success at recruiting combat troops."As of the end of March, 7,800 infantry soldiers had been trained at Fort Benning, compared with a target of 25,541 for fiscal 2005." (Fiscal 2005, if I'm not mistaken, ends on June 30.) These are stunning numbers.

Compare and contrast: In WWII, a small standing army grew rapidly; in 2005, an enormous standing army is adrift, and slowly shrinking away. Americans are simultaneously embracing a new militarism -- witness the most recent Democratic presidential candidate saluting and reporting for duty, or the Republican president striding across an aircraft carrier deck in a flight suit, two images that would have baffled a certain ex-general by the name of Eisenhower -- while aggressively declining to serve in the military or to let their children serve. Tens of millions of Americans appear to support the war in Iraq, and this year the U.S. Army has been unable to find 10,000 Americans to serve as riflemen in it.

I very much hesitate to use the phrase historically unprecedented, and I look forward to hearing arguments against, but it seems like this might be a good time to think about using it. The U.S. military projects force around a world in which its power is unmatched; a parallel army of chest-thumping, war-hungrybloggers and columnists celebrate American power; and Fort Benning can't keep its drill sergeants busy.

In a series of posts at his blog, Mark Grimsley has discussed the standing of military history in the contemporary academy. In a milieu defined by the embrace of social history, the story (at least the perceived story) of generals and statesmen has been marginalized as passe. But it seems to me that current events suggest the degree to which military history is social history: The way a society lives is the way it fights. When historians look back at 2005, I suspect that some will make a great deal out of a war that was widely supported and widely avoided. We can draw the picture of an entire culture, living soft and talking hard. Everyone wants to eat, but nobody wants to cook.