Tales: Keeping the Flame Alive and Passing the Torch

Mike Malone: Keeping the Flame Alive and Passing the Torch

by Howard Landon McAllister

Colonel Dandridge M. “Mike” Malone was a warrior-teacher in the classic mode. The man and his book are mentioned in one of the earlier Tales here. Mike was one of my heroes. I agreed with him on every sentence he wrote except one. I thought he was wrong, when he wrote that a unit should recover its combat dead even at the price of more dead men in the unit. I don’t buy that, and never did. Attacking at dusk to recover dead bodies being observed by enemy snipers from concealed positions is a losing proposition.

But that is my only critical note. Malone’s book, Small Unit Leadership—A Commonsense Approach, is still available today as a selection for Amazon’s Kindle or as a paperback. I like to believe that there are some present-day Wolfhounds or former Wolfhounds alive and walking around partly as a result of reading Mike Malone’s book.

Mike Malone also produced an audio allegory of the Vietnam War. Predictably enough, he named it Soldier. Here it is, delivered in the way we talked back in those days.

Webmaster's note: When adapting Major McAllister's content to the WolfhoundPack.org website, I could no longer access the audio file. I did find a presentation of the audio recording presented by Lt. Colonel J. D. Colin*, from the Office of Chief of Public Affairs, at Forces Command Center, Atlanta, Georgia. Lt. Colonel Colin added visuals to the audio, using a number of historical pictures from his own collection. You can watch this adaptation through the YouTube link below.

Mike Malone's Soldier Video Adaptation (YouTube)

* Name transcribed as heard from YouTube audio. Please contact the webmaster with any corrections. Thank you.