Analyzing the hallowed ground

Despite looming midterms, heavy workloads and late-night cram sessions, 42 bleary-eyed students and staff members woke up before the sun to meet in the lobby of Robertson Hall at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday morning.

The group, which included Wilson School graduate students and undergraduates from a wide array of concentrations, munched away at bagels and gulped down coffee as they prepared themselves for the annual staff ride to Gettysburg, Pa., with the Center for International Security Studies.

CISS, led by Wilson School professors John Ikenberry and Aaron Friedberg, was founded in spring 2009 by the University and the Wilson School. Through conferences, research projects and more, the center aims to give participants a venue to study national and international security. Staff rides like this one are led by Ikenberry and Friedberg.

Gettysburg, the site of the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil, was chosen as a trip location for its strategic importance. Through seven stops at different parts of the battlefield, students relived the battle and re-planned the battle from different generals’ points of view.

After a three-hour bus ride that included a screening of “Gettysburg,” a movie based on the book “Killer Angels” by Michael Shaara, which participants were asked to read, the group stepped onto the hallowed grounds of Gettysburg battlefield.

Once on the battlefield, students separated into pre-assigned groups with their leaders. The leaders, according to Strategic Education Initiative Director Michael Hunzeker GS, who is largely responsible for running the program, were either senior graduate students or undergraduates who had participated in the staff rides before.

The trip included seven stops, each representing a different significant point in the three-day battle. At each stop, one of the groups gave a presentation on military strategy and the turning tides of the battle and discussed counterfactual strategy.

Despite the strong winds, presenters shouted over the gales and encouraged participants to use the weather to imagine the tens of thousands of men and horses who were merging onto the field from different directions in the midst of battle.

In addition to the groups, participants were also split into two main teams led by Col. Rob Abbott, a career Marine officer, and Dr. Charles McKenna, a career Army infantryman, West Point professor and the dean of academics at the United States Marine Corps Command and Staff College.

During the event, Abbott and McKenna encouraged participants to not only analyze the battle itself but to ponder the human dynamics of fighting a war as well.

In battles, they explained, the outcomes are affected by a number of factors, not just by who has the better weapons or the most men.

Abbott also noted that the outcome of the battle was affected by the “phenomenon of unfired weapons.” In the 1800s, he explained, it was cumbersome, time-consuming and dangerous to load a weapon, yet, of the 25,000 muskets recovered from the battlefield, thousands of them were loaded but had not been fired.

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The theory behind this discrepancy, Abbott said, is that “humans are not inclined to kill each other.”

The leaders of the program also explained that the personalities of commanders can actually affect how a battle is fought, and its outcome.

“Was [Gen. Robert E.] Lee too stubborn for his own good?” McKenna asked. “Was he in fact asking more of them than they were capable of producing?”

This problem, McKenna added, did not die out at the end of the Civil War but continues to be a dilemma that military leaders face today.

The discussion was open to trip participants, who also began to question whether the battle’s leaders actually had the option of withdrawing from the engagement.

“If you’ve come this far, what message do you send to your own troops and your enemy if you withdraw?” Marian Messing GS asked. Such a withdrawal, she noted, could have “psychological consequences [that] could be too deleterious.”

Participants compared this dilemma to the one faced by the United States in its current involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a closing speech at the 1863 restaurant at the Wyndham Gettysburg, Hunzeker explained that these connections, and the applicability of the lessons of Gettysburg to the modern American state, were the primary reason that CISS organizes the annual trip.

The trip, he explained, though voluntary, was “not free” for students. The process of engagement included a number of tasks that most students are not willing to make time for, including additional reading, group meetings and giving up an entire Saturday with an early-morning start.

The trip aims to “study decision making, not just in combat,” he said.

In closing, Hunzeker encouraged participants to remember the cost of war and the lessons that could be learned from the violent battle at Gettysburg.

“You’re not going to remember the details,” he said. “What I hope you take away from this is … how hard it can be to make decisions under duress.”

“War, combat and conflict are not the precise weapon we think it is,” Hunzeker continued, noting that it’s citizens’ responsibility to “know what the military is doing … and challenge those decisions.”

In particular, he recalled the story of a battalion colonel he had worked with who had lost 55 men. This colonel, he said, stood in the living room of one of his fallen marines as he looked at the pictures lined up on the mantel.

“Safeguard hundreds of pictures,” Hunzeker said to the group.

The staff rides are financed by CISS and are led by Ikenberry and Friedberg. According to Hunzeker, the trip was nearly financially independent of the University and, specifically, the Wilson School. “The Woodrow Wilson School is more like the academic parent of CISS,” he said.

The Center paid for all expenses, including the early morning breakfast and lunch boxes catered by Olive’s that students wolfed down on the bus between stops. A prix fixe dinner was served at the 1863 restaurant.

Demand for the trip was high this year, according to Hunzeker. However, almost everyone who wanted to participate was able to, as several students dropped out after learning of the early departure time.

“We took almost everybody off the waitlist,” said Hunzeker. “It was on a first-come, first serve basis.”

Albert Lin ’15, a potential physics major, signed up for the trip after hearing about it through Mathey College, despite its early morning start. “I thought it would be interesting,” he said.

Michael Bacon ’15 signed up for the trip after receiving an email announcing it from Princeton ROTC, of which he is a member.

“I’m considering being a history major, and I’m especially interested in military history,” Bacon said. He added that he was attracted to the trip’s focus on military history and battle strategies.