Who was Sam Damon?

The real life model for the most famous fictional character in American military history.

Once an Eagle was a big book. Anton Myrer’s novel weighed in at over 1,300 pages in the original 1968 hardback edition. In 1976, NBC turned it into a major TV mini-series.

Once an Eagle had its greatest impact on American military culture. During Vietnam, the armed forces stumbled from one of the most honored institutions to the one most often derided. The popularity of the book and the public reaction to the mini-series, came as that trend began to reverse. By the end of the Reagan presidency, polling showed that the armed forces were again the most admired part of us.

Over fifty years later, Once an Eagle remains central to the debate over military culture, with arguments over whether it should still be on the Army professional reading list to debating if Sam Damon should still be considered a respectable model for military leaders? 

Once an Eagle was a journey through the modern military experience, following two Army officers Sam Damon, a selfless soldier, and Courtney Massengale, a self-serving poser, from the First World War to Vietnam.

Damon’s life most closely parallels General Matthew Bunker Ridgway (1895 to 1993). Massengale most lines up with General Maxwell Davenport Taylor (1901 to 1987). That said, the author said he drew on multiple models for his characters.

Ridgway commanded combat troops in Europe and Korea and later served as Army Chief of Staff and an advisor in Vietnam.

In the novel, Damon and Massengale are in the Southwest Pacific. During World War II, Ridgway and Taylor served in Europe. So what gives? We think we know.

Why the Pacific? During World War II, Myrer served in the Pacific. He always considered that theater the deep, dark crucible of war that tested men’s souls—ditto for James Jones in his novel The Thin Red Line (1962).

Myrer put his fictional hero Sam Damon in the role of a senior American commander in Papua New Guinea. He was, like Generals MacArthur and Blamey (the American and Australian senior commanders),—an old school warrior, a veteran of World War I. Damon’s fictional career also paralleled many real-life generals who soldiered through the long interwar years with tours at dusty American garrisons and exotic assignments overseas including Asia. Myrer assigned Damon a tour of duty observing the Chinese fighting the Japanese occupation.

In the novel, Damon wondered at his own selection for the China assignment. “He wasn’t cut out for this kind of work,” telling himself,  “Massengale could do it, he’d be superb at it – this was just his meat, sitting by and watching the events unfold, crisis and countermove, making trenchant observations and witty analogies…Only Massengale wouldn’t have taken the detail in the first place.”  To the Army the Asia-Pacific was always a backwater.  

But, Damon was told, they wanted “a line man,” someone who could trek with the guerillas in Manchuria and scrutinize operations against the Japanese first hand.  And, so he went.

Damon’s adventures in China were punctuated by hardship, privation, and desperate combat action ─ a view of war from the ground up.  There was scant discussion of tactics and strategy.  Even a casual mention of Clausewitz was dismissed by Damon’s host. Rather the lessons of the campaign emphasized taking the measure of men, echoing China’s own military philosopher, the ancient Sun Tzu’s most famous dictum, “Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.”

Why was that important? Knowing war first hand from the ground-up, what it meant to men in battle was important—and not just in fiction. Many of the most effective senior American commanders in World War II had combat experience in the First World War and meaningful operational assignments during the interwar years.

Damon’s fictional China adventures were rooted in real life.  For example, Marine Colonel Evans F. Carlson was an observer with the Chinese Communists during the war with Japan.  He drew on these experiences to create an elite guerilla unit “Carlson’s Raiders” that conducted the raid on Makin Island, one of the first land battles of the Pacific War.  Carlson was impressed by the fighting spirit of Chinese soldiers, even borrowing the cry Gung-Ho (teamwork) for the motto of his unit. Unfortunately, the Makin raid was a disaster and  the colonel and his unconventional methods were shunted aside and combat techniques in the Pacific focused on more traditional and doctrinally correct approaches to war. 

There were a number of senior American officers who served in Asia during the interwar years including Robert “Ike” Eichelberger, Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower (who served on MacArthur’s staff in the Philippines), and Maxwell Taylor. General Joseph “Lightning Joe” Lawton Collins started his combat career fighting on Guadalcanal and was later shifted to the European Theater.

So who was Damon in World War II? In this part of the novel, Damon’s character most closely resembles Eichelberger who would lead the US forces in Papua New Guinea, spearheading the assault on Buna. (Want to know the real history of this campaign? There is a book for that.)

“Ike” Eichelberger in the Pacific.

In Myrer’s fictional village is called Moapora (not Buna) and the task of rooting out the Japanese is assigned to Damon’s old commander “Westy” Westerfeldt.  The campaign does not go well and Westy asks for Damon. Sam jumps at the offer. 

The war he finds is far removed from the strategic musings of generals. The division had already been in battle for some time with little to show for its efforts. Westy was exhausted, ill, depressed, and indecisive. The troops languished in their foxholes ─ sick, demoralized, threadbare, and half-starved. The enemy entrenched itself on commanding ground that could only be approached head on in brutal, costly frontal assaults.

Myrer patterned the fictional battle of Moapora on the real life engagement at Buna village on the Northeast coast of Papua New Guinea. If MacArthur served in part as a model for Massengale, the hero of Buna and the man the author most likely patterned Damon after was Eichelberger. In a letter to West Point Superintendent, Sidney B. Berry, Myrer listed Eichelberger among the leaders he most admired. In the novel, it is Eichelberger who recommends Damon for promotion to general after the division’s success at Moapora.

The real-life Eichelberger belonged to the Damon generation.  He graduated from West Point in 1909, where he also picked up the nickname “Ike.” Like Damon, he served in the Punitive Expeditionary Force into Mexico (1916-1917), his first experience with real combat. 

Like real-life generals such as Marshall, Eisenhower, and Ridgway and the fictional Damon, Eichelberger also found a caring, respected, and professional mentor and father-figure who nurtured his development as a leader. Marshall had Pershing. Eisenhower’s was Fox Connor. Ridgway was schooled by Marshall. Damon’s mentor was a fictional General named Caldwell. Eichelberger’s was General William  S. Graves. 

The book is fiction. Why does it matter? It mattered to Myrer, who was both revolted by war and obsessed with understanding leaders who would risk everything, their health, their families, their careers, in the selfless service of the their nation.