Developing "staff work" in France--The younger men from Leavenworth
schools in the saddle--The inner ring of the expert--Building the
"best staff" at Langres--The obsession of promotion.
So it happened that the little band of regulars did not go out to
sacrifice in a body. They were scattered through the training camps as
instructors, and they directed the expansion of our army organization.
The officers of our General Staff in Washington had followed the
strategy of the war on the maps, and studied its larger tactical
problems in the light of such reports as were received. Their own
precepts and training led them to admire the German rather than the
French army system; a majority, thinking at first that Germany would
win, were accordingly impressed with the seriousness of our undertaking
when we entered the war. They hardly realized that the Canadians
and Australians, who were people of something the same character as
ourselves, had developed from raw recruits divisions and corps which
were without superiors. We had formed no plan for operating an army in
Europe. We seemed to be unfamiliar with the static details of trench
warfare, with the clothing and equipment required; otherwise all this
information would not have had to be sent back by the officers of our
pioneer force in France three months after our entry into the war.
The training camps being established, and munition plants under way at
home, we must prepare to command our forces when they were ready to
take the field. "Staff work" was supposed the most expert of all the
branches. In my first book I have already gone into the organization
of our staff in France, formed on the plan of European staffs. What I
have to add now comes in the light of later events, after the staff
had been tried in battle, and in the light of the days of peace, when
discrimination will not be misunderstood. In the early days in France a
progressive officer said to me: "We must not go too fast in elimination
of the unfit and promotion of the fit. It will upset the equilibrium.
We must wait on evolution." It was General Pershing who had to maintain
the equilibrium. He was a regular; and regulars regarded him as their
general. He had to depend upon the men who had rank; and upon trained
soldiers who knew the army system, in order to start his machine. One
day, someone remarked to him, "But this officer is in a rut, and a
winding rut, that does not permit him to see ahead, let alone over the
walls." The General replied: "But he's one of my broad-minded ones.
What do you think I do with my narrow-minded ones?"
Possibly the tests, ever so swift in war, were swifter in France than
at home. It was soon evident that some regular officers could rise to
their tasks, and that some could not. Some of them had fallen into
habits that did not permit long concentration of mind. They had not the
physical vitality to endure long hours of labor. They were obsessed by
small details, when they were suddenly given charge of a department
store instead of a little store with one clerk for an assistant. Some
were simply overwhelmed by their new burdens, or more possessed with
the pride of authority than its efficient exertion. They were the ones
who would show reserve officers that building a bridge or baking a
loaf of bread or putting up a crane or organizing a laboratory was a
different matter when you did it for the army. Some who had vitality
and concentration were hopelessly lacking in capacity for organization.
They were particularly impressed with their awful responsibility in
having to train reserve officers not only in combat but in the Services
of Supply. They would not admit that there was anything about the army
which a reserve officer could do as well as a regular. The capacity of
many for prolonged controversy over theory and for writing memoranda
was astounding; a result of the days of talking "shop" and speculative
discussion at the posts. Where naval officers have always a fleet
in being, and are always on a war footing--which means a successful
secretary of the navy if he will only sign the papers placed on his
desk--army officers had only an army in imagination, which meant that
a "successful" secretary of war must indeed be a great man.
From the first there was a struggle in France between two elements:
between the ruthlessly progressive and the reactionaries who were set
in traditions; between the able, energetic, ambitious, enduring, and
others who might have finer but not as aggressive qualities; between
the men who were sure of themselves and those who were not. For his
immediate advisers Pershing had to turn to the Leavenworth men, who had
been trained in the theory of a large organization and who had used it
as the basis of intelligent observation of the operations of the French
and British armies. A Leavenworth man believed in Leavenworth men. He
had enormous capacity for desk work which he had developed as a student
at Leavenworth. A scholastic preparation thus became the criterion for
practice in organization. Leavenworth men believed in the gospel of
driving hard work; of rewards for success, and merciless elimination
for failure--which is the basic theory of successful war.
All armies are looking either back at the last war or ahead to the
next. One element, leaning back on its oars, considers the lessons of
the last war, if it were won, as setting all precedents for present
policy. Another, usually the men who were not in the last war except as
captains and lieutenants, considers that new conditions will again set
new precedents in the next war. The officers in the forties in the days
of the war with Spain and the Philippine rebellion, who chafed at the
Civil War traditions of their seniors, now had command of divisions,
while in the Great War the Leavenworth men who were in the thirties and
forties were pushing up from below. If the later generation lacked rank
on this occasion, it had power in France as the result of Leavenworth
and the new staff system, while promotion by selection called its
ambition.
Leavenworth graduates sat in the seats of the mighty on the right
and left hand of the Commander-in-Chief; the tables of organization
were of their devising; the orders signed by the Chief of Staff,
which the divisional and the corps generals and all the generals
of the Services of Supply had to obey, originated from this inner
circle in the barracks buildings at Chaumont, which was surrounded
with professional mystery. Divisional and corps chiefs of staff were
Leavenworth men in touch with the inner circle. The disrespectful
thought of these officers as the Leavenworth "clique"; but it was not
the fashion to do much thinking aloud about them, such was their power.
They did not think of themselves as a clique; not even the members of
a secret society think of themselves in that way. They were a group
of veterans, who if they had not the scars won in battle--we had had
no great battles since the Civil War--had burned the midnight oil and
played the war game together. They had, as volunteers, in order to
learn their profession, when the people of the country knew no more of
their existence than if they had been in a monastery, gone through a
post-graduate course as rigorous as West Point itself. They thought of
themselves as apostles, their voices unheard in a land saturated with
pacifism and indifference, who, in fasting, prayer, and industry, had
studied the true gospel in their holy of holies. They alone had conned
the pages of the sacred books behind the altar where the regular army
kept the sacred fires burning.
"War is the greatest game on earth," as one of them said. In this
thought they had the same reason for enthusiasm in study as a chemist
in his experiments or an architect in his building. In their school
in the wheat fields of Kansas they were manipulating in theory forces
which made a hundred million dollar corporation an incidental pawn.
But they were dealing with the imaginary, and the managers of the
corporation with the real. When the war came all their forces of
imagination became real.
To be a "Leavenworth man" meant a title to staff position, which you
must take whether you wanted it or not. There were many excellent
officers who never went to Leavenworth; officers who were masterly
company, battalion, and regimental commanders, and who had the quality
of natural leaders. They did not want to train for the staff. They
preferred the line. Their ambition, nursed through the years of
service, with never an assignment to Washington, was to make sure of a
command in the field if war came.
"I had rather lead a battalion of infantry than be chief of staff of
an army," as one of them said. Another said, early in the war, "I'm
all for the Leavenworth men to do the chessboard work, but we'll find
that they have studied so much that some of them don't know how to make
decisions when they are dealing with a real instead of a paper army.
I don't envy them. I obey their orders. I'll make a good regiment;
that is all I ask--let me be with troops." He was right in saying that
the men who stood high at Leavenworth ran the danger of being too
academic for practical war, as surely as the best students at college
are unfitted for practical business life. Yet all criticism of the
Leavenworth coterie runs foul of the question: "What should we have
done without them in France?" If you have to build a great bridge and
there is no engineer who has ever erected one, why, it would be better
to choose a man who had been through a first-class engineering school
to make the plans, than to choose the contractors who got out the stone
or sunk the caissons, or the financiers who furnished the funds. Every
Leavenworth man had pet ideas of his own, as the result of his study,
which he sought to apply when authority came to him, with inevitable
interference with team-play. He had all the enthusiasm of a graduate of
the Beaux-Arts who is given a million-dollar appropriation to build a
state capitol as his first assignment.
In relation to our little army with its scattered posts, their
problem in making a great army organization was much the same as the
transformation of Japan from medievalism to modernism, or amalgamating
and improving all the small plants of individual business of fifty
years ago in a year's time into a modern trust. The thing required
broad vision. Some of them possessed it, but not all, even if they
were Americans. Such was the loyalty of graduates to Leavenworth
that I have heard them say that it was the best staff school in the
world. A French officer might respond: "Perhaps, but we have had
more opportunities for practice in handling large bodies of troops."
The British and French staffs thought that our men were worthy of the
highest praise; but they thought that our staff was inexperienced and
sophomoric. They would not have been averse, as we know, to taking over
the staff direction of our army, which, considering the feeling of the
line toward the staff on all occasions, would have led to additional
inter-allied friction. Relations would be smoother by having the
resentment of the men who bore the brunt of casualties directed into
home channels.
The Leavenworth men, thinking as army officers and for the army, did
not wish to yield power. They wanted to establish a staff system and
a tradition for a large American force, in the hope that universal
service would be accepted and continued, making the system permanent.
Where were they to get the host of additional staff officers required
for the armies, the corps, and the divisions in battle? A few student
observers could be sent to the British and French staffs; but not a
sufficiently large number when any outsider was in the way in the
crowded quarters of a series of dugouts, or the ruined houses of a
village. Moreover, Leavenworth wanted no system half British and half
French, but one suited to our own army for all time. Leavenworth was
always thinking of our military future. Following our national bent
for excellence and this thought of the future, which led us to aim for
the best gas mask, the best aeroplane motor, the best machine-gun, the
best gas, the best of everything, Leavenworth proposed to make the best
staff. To this tendency of ours to seek perfection the Allies might
reply: "Perfection is all very well; but we have tested equipment, and
a staff system the result of three years' trial, and time is valuable
against the German."
Just as the West Point system, which takes the "plebes" in hand, was
being applied in our training camps, so Leavenworth staff college was
reproduced in France in the ancient city of Langres, near Chaumont,
which had been a fortress in many wars. Here regulars worked beside
reserves, while the regulars had no special privileges except the
first choice of horses to ride. Here they were to learn how to solve
the tactical management of troops in action, the technique of all
the different G's of the staff: G-1 and G-4, which had to do with
transport and supply; G-2, which had to do with intelligence; G-3, with
operations, and G-5, with training.
There was much to teach in that three months' course. How long will it
take to reach all the units of a division, billeted in ten villages in
an area of ten square miles, with an order for movement? How will it be
sent? How will it be written after consultation with G-1, who knows the
transport available? Which units will march out first? How long will
it take to entrain those going by train? If the motor transport, and
the horse-drawn transport, too, have to go overland, what roads will
they take to reach their destination? Have the drivers their maps? In
making a relief in the trenches, how long will it take to march up and
complete the task?
Four German prisoners say one thing, four another, and three another.
Take their reports in connection with aeroplane reports and general
observation. What is your decision as to the enemy's strength on your
front? Two additional divisions are suddenly brought into your sector.
How are you to feed them? An attack is planned to pinch out a salient.
How long is to be your artillery preparation? What its character? What
points will you cover with the corps artillery fire? What with the
divisional howitzers? There is your map with the information in G-2's
possession for G-3 to consider in working out details. The infantry
must be preceded by a barrage worked out with a mathematical accuracy,
that will be practicable for the gunners and the infantry. All the
fundamentals of technical knowledge were what arithmetic, algebra and
geometry, and the strength of materials are to a bridge builder, in
solving the problems presented to civilians, lawyers, engineers, and
scholars of ages from twenty-five to forty-five, who worked them out
and went to recitation in a school-room where they sat at little desks,
as they did in boyhood days.
The number of hours of study a student put in at Leavenworth had been
a test of capacity--the reason for Leavenworth's existence. While
officers who did not take the course were regarded somewhat in the
light of outsiders, "We'll show these cits what it is to work," as one
regular said. Langres was a very sweatshop in scholastic industry.
It was a combination of learning and an infinite amount of clerical
detail for men many of whom were used to having their details looked
after by clerks. British and French officers, acting as instructors and
lecturers, elucidated the problems on the blackboard. As one saturated
with war on the Western Front listened to preachment of fundamentals, I
was impressed with how much the average man who has not seen war, and
has taken his conception of it from a soldier charging or firing a gun,
had to learn before he had the a b c's of modern war.
One also wondered if all the hard work were always to the purpose.
Practical Allied officers, who were always polite, thought that the
students did so much grinding that they became dull and stale; we were
trying to teach them too many generalities. A knowing regular said
one day to a reservist: "You are too serious. The thing in the army
is to make a show at this sort of gymnastics,--then use your common
sense when you reach the front." This was in kind with a remark of one
regular officer about another, whose information had led us astray: "I
know him--a regular West Point trick. You must pretend you know, and be
very definite in the pretense. That often gets over." It seemed to me
one of the faults of the West Point system.
The regulars had the advantage at Langres in that they had been
ingrained in the military instinct, which is what is called the
mathematical sense in a schoolboy who finds mathematics easy; but if
the instinct were only that of cadet days and of company drill, and
their minds had not grown, they suffered from the little learning
which is a dangerous thing. Though the average Leavenworth man--not in
all cases a class A man--did not see, despite the Canadian example,
how anyone could become a staff officer in a few months when you had
to study at Leavenworth for years, it soon became evident that some
of these reserve officers with finely trained minds, used to the
application and competition of civil life, were showing themselves
the superior of the regulars. This in the scholastic sense, without
considering practice in action. There was one Leavenworth man I knew
who, though a master at solving problems in the classroom, seemed
unable to solve any problem in action. Beside the Langres school we
had a school of the line, and a candidates' school where men who had
shown their leadership as privates in combat might be educated in
theory for commissions. The reserve graduates of Langres were being
sent out in the spring and summer of 1918 to be assistants in the G
sections of army and corps and divisions. In a few instances they
even became chiefs of section of division staffs. They were promised
that one day they might wear the black stripe of the General Staff on
their sleeves as the reward of efficient service. "Doping the black
stripe" was the slang phrase for the grind at Langres. One day the
reserve graduates might also have promotion, and one day, too, the
reserve officers, captains and lieutenants and a few majors of the
line, arriving with the divisions from the training camps--as our
organization grew and was knit together--might also have promotion.
About this time promotion was becoming a form of intoxication with
the regulars. They must be cared for first; in due course, after the
reservists became soldiers, the reservists would have their turn.
New tables of organization were being devised which called for more
high-ranking officers. Without rank the work could not be done, said
his chiefs to the Commander-in-Chief, who once greeted one of them with
the remark: "How many lieutenant-colonels must become colonels in order
to do this job?" The regulars kept apart from the reserves, forming a
group in their own world. In their messes the talk ran on promotions:
each new list brought its tragedies for men who found themselves
jumped, and its triumphs for those who had jumped them. If you were
not frequently promoted, it was taken as a sign that you were not
"making good." Promotion depended upon the good will of your superior,
and sometimes, naturally and humanly, upon the fact that you might
have served with him at an army post. Promotion became unconsciously
corrupting. Some younger men who received their stars after swift
passage through the lower grades hardly bore their honors with the
equanimity of their elders. One chief of staff I knew had a Napoleonic
grandeur. He hedged himself about with the etiquette of royalty. If he
had been presented with a three-cornered hat of the kind that Napoleon
wore, he would have accepted it in all seriousness. Unhappily his work
was not of the Napoleonic standard. There was another chief of staff
who was just the same man as a brigadier-general that he had been as a
major. He never seemed busy; his work was always in order; his tactics
were successful. He knew how to win men to his service, how to delegate
authority. Had he been given command of an army he would have carried
on in the same imperturbable fashion.
"It will be hard on some of us regulars," he remarked, "when we wake
up the 'morning after' and find ourselves majors back in the good old
Philippines."
Naturally, in this environment, the reservists caught the contagion of
promotion. If promotion were the criterion of having done your "bit,"
well, then, what would your friends think of you if you returned with
the same rank you had when you left home? When you did return, you
found that your friends could not remember whether you had been a major
or a colonel. They were relieved if they might call you "mister" or Tom
or George. It didn't matter to them what kind of insignia you had as
long as you had been "over there," doing your bit. They had perspective
which was hard to preserve in France.