Military Review English Edition September-October 2014 | Page 92

U.S. Army Photo by Sgt. Joshua Edwards, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment

or reconciling warring
tribes, may find themselves in a cube all day
re-formatting PowerPoint
slides, preparing quarterly
training briefs, or assigned
an ever-expanding array
of clerical duties….The
consequences of this
terrify me.3
While Gates may have been
referring mainly to potential issues
related to retaining proven warriors
that find themselves in an unchallenging and boring peacetime environment, it is the loss of the warrior
spirit that these leaders shared
within the Army that is the greatest
cause for concern.

U.S. Army 1st Lt. Joseph Brockbank (middle), 4th Squadron, Combined Task Force
Dragoon, walks with a member of the Afghan Uniformed Police after engaging with local
village elders 16 December 2013, at Kandahar Province, Afghanistan.

Photo by Master Sgt. Kap Kim, Combined Joint Task Force-10 PAO

The Warrior Spirit and
the Warrior Ethos

Retired Master Sgt. Christopher Corbin, a wounded warrior with Troops First, takes a last
look around before departing Forward Operating Base Fenty, Afghanistan, 10 July 2014.
90

To properly define the warrior
spirit it is necessary to break the
term apart and define its individual
components. Warrior is a term synonymous with soldier in contemporary times. Military professionals
are comfortable with this definition
of warrior while spirit may be defined in several different ways.
The Google definition of spirit
is “the nonphysical part of a person
that is the seat of emotions and
character.”4 A further definition of
spirit is “the principle of conscious
life.”5 Combining these two definitions provides an understanding of
spirit as the nonphysical principle
that guides emotions and character.
When packaging these two individual components of the warrior
spirit, the definition produced is as
follows: a soldier guided by nonphysical principles of emotions and character. The nonphysical principles
alluded to, embodied in the Army’s

September-October 2014  MILITARY REVIEW