Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom
by Jerry Boykin

List Price: $24.99  Hardback: 368 Pages
Publisher: Faithwords
Publish Date: July 29, 2008


Book Review
by Brian Grafton

Never Surrender is a “purpose-writ” book. The principal author, Lieutenant General William G. (Jerry) Boykin (Ret.), came to public attention in the US in late 2003, after he was linked with what was deemed (by the press) to be inappropriate commentary from a serving General officer in the US Army. Boykin’s alleged lack of propriety centred on comments he was deemed to have made while in uniform, which were presented by media as dangerous and inappropriate given his position as Commander of US Special Forces and later as deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence under Donald Rumsfeld.

Boykin, an avowed evangelical Christian, had been speaking at many church and inter-faith gatherings, at times while wearing full uniform. Whether from misunderstanding or misrepresentation – General Boykin implies both – his comments at some of these meetings, as reported by various media sources, were deemed inflammatory in the post-9/11 world, given the presence of US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. According to the media, General Boykin’s commentary ranged from God placing G W Bush in the White House, to allegations of hatred of Muslims, to hints that General Boykin favoured a crusade or holy war against the infidel, to suggestions he was training torturers at Abu Graib.

In response, General Boykin himself demanded an IG investigation into his conduct, and was ultimately cleared of all but the most trifling of charges brought against him. He was, in effect, exonerated by the office of the Inspector-General, and continued to serve until his retirement in 2007. I assume that is when – with Lynn Vincent – he began Never Surrender.

I don’t know the role of his co-author, Lynn Vincent, in the preparation of Never Surrender. Whatever her role, this is clearly Boykin’s book. It is written in the first person, and – though it is well-written, easy to read, and well-edited – suggests an author who is neither contemplative nor a stylist. It is notable for the brevity of each chapter it offers: there are 120 chapters in 350 pages, collected under 13 headings. I had a feeling I was reading after-action reports, though I knew that wasn’t the case. General Boykin is simply telling his story in his way.

He begins Never Surrender with 20 pages describing a meeting with Donald Rumsfeld in February 2003, when he was being considered for his third star, and covering the following eight months until the media storm broke in October. He ends the volume with a 40-page account of the events following the media attack on him, which ran into the summer of 2004. The other 290 pages of Never Surrender offer what is largely a narrative of his service years, combined with personal religious commentary and political assessments. The pattern is not unfamiliar: the charge; the case for the defence; the result. To this reader, this a professional soldier’s attempt to exonerate himself in the public eye. There have been less valid reasons for writing a book: General Boykin is claiming his day in court.

Nonetheless, Never Surrender is an unusual book. Part apologia, part biography, part military and political history, it touches on the often conflicting values of America that have been part of the news since John F. Kennedy was assassinated. For that reason alone, I would recommend it, though with perhaps a reminder that this is not an historical document but a personal one. Jerry Boykin and I are much of the same age, but our views of events of the past 45 years are often vastly divergent. His are informed by his profession and his faith; mine by my education and values. Never Surrender is also a somewhat fragmented book, in this reader’s opinion, in that links which General Boykin accepts between military service, faith in God, and political activity are, I think, more fully connected in Boykin’s mind than they might be in the minds of many others.

Essentially, Never Surrender (the title is taken, I assume, from the 11th statement of Special Forces Creed) offers a chance to see and examine the thoughts and actions of a professional, and clearly successful, officer in the US military. He meets many of the credentials of American manhood: physically big; a football player at college (Virginia Tech); ROTC. He has no problems with issues of race; he hates bullies; he hunted and fished with his father. He loves his country, and was drawn to the military life because of what he calls family tradition, but appears to this reader to be a sense of respect for the service and suffering of his father and uncles in World War Two. There is nothing wrong with any of those qualities or values: I list them because they define the man.

He was angered – a more appropriate word might be outraged – that he didn’t get the opportunity to serve in an active military capacity in Vietnam. When he finally arrived there, it was as an aide-de-camp rather than as a fighter. He was, in truth, a warrior first, and a military officer second, and was frustrated because he missed his chance to fight for his country in a “hot” war.

His chance would come in 1977, when, as a Captain, he was given a chance to prove himself capable of joining what would become Delta Force. His acceptance into Delta Force – he came close to being rejected on at least two counts, of which more later – provided him with a military career which allowed him to be a warrior without a “hot” war. He was part of the unsuccessful attempt to rescue the American Embassy staff from Tehran after the Iranian revolution. He was part of the US response to the likes of Noriega, Escobar, and various thugs and brigands in places as far apart as Somalia, Serbia and Granada. He was perhaps involved in other events, though these are the ones he mentions. However complete his descriptions of his activities, the years battling counter-insurgents tell a tale of a somewhat typical American committed to battle for his country. Nothing wrong with that commitment. Jerry Boykin, whether as a Lieutenant or as a Lieutenant General, is the kind of man a country may be glad to have when diplomacy fails.

It would be interesting to discuss the effectiveness of Delta and other special forces in the actions he describes. Some missions were clearly successful, and some were not (though General Boykin is not comfortable with talking about failure). Based on the actions he describes, Delta seems to be a largely effective force, though not invariably so. Sometimes, Delta troops seem to have messed up in minor ways. When they ran into major failures – whether they can be considered defeats or not – Boykin offers some interesting evaluations, though where the blame for such failures might rest is a different matter, and has no place in this review. In General Boykin’s narrative, Delta Force never really failed, despite some nasty setbacks. I have no means of disagreeing with him, despite my own definition of success or failure. In the narrative, Boykin offers some insight into the role and commitment of Delta, and attempts to explain the relationship between Delta and the many other “special” forces of the US military. That is interesting in itself, and makes Never Surrender a volume worth reading.

Sadly, such a discussion has no place in this review. Delta Force, far from being the message of Never Surrender, is simply the medium. In this reader’s eyes, General Boykin’s aim is not to demonstrate his commitment to or belief in the US military. His career does that at any rate: he doesn’t need to broadcast his success, and I don’t sense any desire in him to aggrandize his time with the US Army, or even the Army itself.

This leads us to three issues where any review faces hard times: General Boykin’s understanding of God; General Boykin’s concern for the United States as it moves into the 21st Century; and the place of the military in protecting the values of the United States. Never Surrender, after all, has a sub-title: A Soldier’s Journey to the Crossroads of Faith and Freedom. That sub-title is crucial to any understanding of what the author has set out to do. In truth, it is very hard to separate faith and freedom, let alone their place in America in the early years of the 21st century. They are the weak points of Boykin’s arguments, in my assessment, but they are central to his argument.

In Never Surrender, General Boykin argues by implication that he keeps himself outside politics. To some extent, he’s right: his service spanned the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush Jr. – over 30 years of (often active) service. Nevertheless, it is clear that he feels – despite the role of the military in the US as subservient to the President – that there are times when the CinC should simply allow the military to “do their job”. To take one example, let’s look at the Iran hostage situation of 1979:

“On November 4, 1979, hundreds of Iranian students, led by a small hardcore group, poured over the embassy walls, breached the buildings, and took sixty-six Americans hostage. Ordered to stand down by their diplomatic superiors, Marine Corps embassy guards never fired a shot.” (p. 108) “As [Delta] planning began, the knowledge that the Iranians could begin executing hostages at any moment haunted us. … But we were pretty sure we’d have time to come up with a better plan. Because unless the Iranians forced his hand by executing a hostage, none of us thought Jimmy Carter had the guts to order us in” (p. 111) “I was disappointed in Jimmy Carter. I knew he was a man of faith, and I didn’t understand his interpretation of his God-given responsibility to defend the defenseless.” (p. 123)

It wasn’t just President Carter he criticized, of course. Here is his assessment of the Mogadishu assault now known because of a movie as “Black Hawk Down”:

“I’m not suggesting our Bakara operation was perfect. Still, I recognize that we executed a completely successful mission. We were outnumbered by thousands, yet completed our mission and achieved an overwhelming victory. But even today I wonder if we could have achieved that at considerably less cost if the Clinton administration had listened to the commanders on the ground.” (p. 289)

He also grew to believe that politicians might distort any reality to maintain their position – a view that may not differ from many potential readers of this volume. He focuses on the misdirection of Janet Reno’s testimony after the Waco disaster as an example:

“…Congress called Janet Reno on the carpet. …Reno told the panel that before authorizing FBI’s assault, she consulted both the current and former commanders of Delta Force, Colonel Jerry Boykin and Colonel Pete Shoomaker. And she left it at that. She did not go on to say that Pete and I declined to give our opinion on the plan she authorized, nor that we stated we would have conducted a very different operation. And so her testimony left the impression that we concurred with the plan. Some folks call that a ‘lie of omission.’ Where I come from, they just call it a lie.” (pp. 246-7)

Many of his criticisms are directed at Democratic presidents, and I was tempted to see this as a right-wing assault on the left. That may still the case, but General Boykin’s issues with elected officials takes a very strange turn very early in his volume, when he is under the strain of the first accusations concerning his inappropriate comments. What I quote may explain, ultimately, why General Boykin wrote Never Surrender. The episode must have been devastating:

“[On October 15, 2003, my feelings]…were bad enough. But I had no idea of the national firestorm that lay ahead – that pundits would concoct outright lies – such as that I had said the terror war was ‘a continuation of the Crusades,’ or that I had issues instructions on how to torture the detainees at Guantanamo Bay – and that I would face criminal charges based on those lies. I had no idea that within days, Muslim extremists across the globe would begin issuing death threats against me and my family, and that George W. Bush, my commander-in-chief, would stand in the White House Rose Garden and, without even an investigation, publicly disavow me.” (p. 20)

I may be wrong is sensing a hint in that passage of Peter’s denial of Christ: Never Surrender gets a reader thinking that way. But for a man like Boykin, whose life has been dedicated to his country and its values, a public disavowal by the President must have been shattering.

This leads, inevitably, to General Boykin’s central issue: the place of God in his world. In all honesty, were this not the central issue of Never Surrender, I would not raise it: it is distasteful, at the least, to examine another man’s faith.

The sad thing is that whatever relationship exists between General Boykin and his God has little or no meaning outside his own beliefs. He offers dozens of examples which demonstrate to him that God was offering him support and direction. He offers instances where he went to either his pastor or, more often, to his mother for spiritual guidance and support. He offers examples of God’s intervention in human conduct. Sadly, none of them carries much weight as evidence of or support for his behaviour, commitment or values. Nothing he writes in this vein will convince anyone who is not already an evangelical believer that his values are valid or make sense.

This is not to say that his faith does not define him, in his own eyes. Clearly, it does. I mentioned earlier that he almost failed entry to Delta. But Boykin’s challenge went back before that, to the challenges of Ranger School. After a very bad failure during a Ranger exercise, Boykin was shattered:

“…Now, very silently, I began to pray, asking God to help me get through the course. Up until that point, I trusted God mainly with my spiritual well-being, the security of my eternal soul – ‘fire insurance,’ as the old joke goes. For everything else, I now realized, I had been depending on myself, on my own mental abilities, my atheleticism, my determination. But when I failed that patrol, I suddenly understood I had been relying too much on myself and not enough on God. For me, that was the beginning of a life lived relying on God moment by moment. I began Ranger school a colossal failure. I ended it as an honor graduate.” (p. 47)

If Jerry Boykin – and since we’re talking about his relationship with his God, he is just one more soul seeking redemption – feels God has given him the guts to complete the Ranger course, then I have no complaints. It doesn’t mean that his description is either accurate or correct,of course, but it works for him.

More interesting, in my opinion, are the two very interesting revelations during his attempts to become part of Delta Force. The first deals with the brutal marches demanded of the possible candidates: timed individual hikes from point A to point B, with no assistance. At one point, Jerry is exhausted, in pain, and in trouble. Let him describe his response:

“One day during the course, I found myself on top of a mountain, hopelessly lost. I sat down, shed my ruck, and looked up toward heaven. ‘Lord, I don’t know where I am, but You do,’ I prayed. ‘Now I ask You to guide me to where I need to go.’ Then I stood, put my rucksack back on, and walked off the mountaintop straight to my RV.” (p. 74) “In the freezing mountains of North Carolina, I learned to rely on God. When my legs felt made of pig iron, when I knew I couldn’t take another step, I felt His strength. Many, many times, when I was unsure of which way to go, when the terrain blurred into sameness and my map meant nothing, I sensed Him shepherding me in a literal wilderness. When life gets tough, every man draws from a different well of strength, but I am not ashamed to say I depended on God.” (p. 78)

According to Jerry, God got him through the physical testing for inclusion in Delta. He also almost got Boykin rejected. At the end of a two-hour psychological evaluation which, according to Jerry, was “the last weight in the balance, the factor that would tip the sales for me or against me at the Commander’s Board” (p. 80), the psychologist offered this evaluation:

“’Captain Boykin, from my analysis of your test data, I believe you rely too much on your faith and not enough on yourself,’ he said. ‘I’m going to recommend against your being a part of this organization.’ … That was on a Friday. The commander’s board was scheduled for Monday. Miserable, …I talked it over with Lynne [his wife: ed.]. Then Mom assured me she’d been praying for me. That Sunday morning, I went to our little church and during the service, I really began to pray. ‘Lord, I don’t know what Your will is, whether I’m to be part of this unit or not, but I’m relying on You to lead me,’ I said. I left there that morning with peace in my heart, knowing that whatever happened would be God’s will.” (pp. 80-1)

On the Monday, then-Captain Boykin was, of course, accepted into Delta Force despite the psychological evaluation.

It’s clear that General Boykin believes he became part of Delta Force because of God’s will. I’m skeptical by nature, so I find myself wondering what other factors were in play. What weight was really given to the psychological assessment? How well had he done on the rest of the evaluation course? Did Colonel Beckwith, the man charged with creating Delta Force, see something more than the accumulation of data concerning Captain Boykin?

Despite the importance General Boykin places on his faith and his God, and the central role he sees Him playing in his life, the inevitable impression one gains from this military biography is that the man found a place in the US Army which fitted his personality. Tough, active, principled, capable: those are terms which describe General Boykin very well. I can see why he got his third star. He was also part of one of the more invisible parts of the military; he was not being called on to become the public voice of Army activities, because groups such as Delta, Special Forces and the like are more effective without the spot-light of public scrutiny.

At the same time, there are qualities in which he he appears to be weak: diplomacy, reflection, and an understanding of values outside his own framework come to mind. From what he implies in Never Surrender, he was aware of at least some of his weaknesses.

As is the case with many, the events of 9/11 were both a shock and an affront to General Boykin. His description of his situation probably echoes those of many other senior military men in the aftermath of 9/11:

“As a soldier with a thirty-year track record, I wanted to be part of whatever military response America launched. I wanted to be on the battlefield in Afghanistan, doing my part to strike back against this outrageous attack on my country. Still, in the months that followed, I reluctantly accepted that my role was to train and prepare young men and women to go to war. Soon, though, I began to receive requests – from churches, civic groups, and other private organizations – to speak to civilian audiences, and I saw another role taking shape: to encourage Americans and help them understand this new war.” (p. 312)

Somewhere, for a reason I cannot quite catch from the text of Never Surrender, this commitment was, in my opinion, side-tracked, and became something else:

“No matter where I spoke, though, the main message I brought my audiences was that America’s biggest battle was right here at home against societal enemies, many of them triggered by the so-called Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. The ‘Revolution’ – which depended heavily on a rejection of traditional morality – and often on an outright rejection of God – had broken its every promise. Instead of liberty and equality, it had delivered broken families, irresponsible fathers, impoverished mothers and children, rampant addition, violence, disease, and death. I asked people to recognize that our country was now locked in a spiritual battle for its own soul. ‘Fight with me!’ I would say, urging Christian audiences to pray for justice, for the safety of our troops, and for our civilian and military leaders. As it turned out, there were quite a few folks in influential places who decided that was some kind of war crime.” (p. 313)

In a new and very public arena, General Boykin came out fighting. That isn’t really a surprise: engagement and action were part of his strength, his desire, and his specialty. It was the worst decision of his life. Had he accepted his role to train and prepare younger folk to exercise their military skills in the same way he had, he would never have faced the media assault he did in October 2003.

He committed only one “crime” I can think of, and it was no war crime. He stepped outside his own skill-set and applied his faith as a solution to an issue of which he was ignorant. The crime, in my opinion, is either naivety or stupidity. He would have been better remaining behind the anonymity his entire military career had given him.

Final assessment of Never Surrender? This is definitely worth reading, but not if you are easily agitated by unsubstantiated or opinionated views of the world. General Boykin doesn’t impress me with the subtlety of his argument or the scope of his thinking. Pesonally, his argument concerning the presence of his God in any decisions of his life leave me unimpressed. But if you enjoy “insider” information about the more secretive units of the US military, or want more information about some of the “minor” ops of the US Army, Never Surrender will interest you. If you are an evangelical Christian, the volume will be supportive and revelatory. If you are simply to the political right or left in the US, Never Surrender will provide vast horizons for debate – even with yourself. I think it’s a very interesting read.

I would not invite General Boykin to my home for dinner, and I believe the feeling would be reciprocated. But I come away from his book with some respect for his career, and some sadness that – somehow – he overstepped himself after 9/11.

Review by Brian Grafton (bg@briangrafton.com).

 

* Views expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent those of MHO.