any collection of individuals._ Lacking it, and the common standard of
justice which is one of its chief agents, men become more and more
separate units, each fighting for his own rights. Yet paradoxically,
if an organic unity is to develop within any body of free men, drawn
from a free society to serve its military institutions, and if the
fairest use is to be made of their possibilities, the processes of the
institution must embody respect for the dignity of the individual, for
his rights, and not less, for his desire for worthwhile recognition.
The profile of every man depends upon the space which others leave
him. "Of himself," said Napoleon, "a man is nothing." But every man
also contributes with his every act to the level of what his group may
attain. One of the foremost leaders in the United States Navy in World
War II said this about the integrity of personality: "Every person is
unique. Human talents were never before assembled in exactly the same
way that they have been put together in yourself. Nothing like you
ever happened before. No one can predict with accuracy how you will
grow in your particular combination of skills if allowed complete
freedom of movement." If there is one word out of place in that
statement, it is "complete;" no one has complete freedom but a
buccaneer, and it is for the exercise of it that organized society
swings him from a gibbet. It is only when personal freedom of action
operates within an area limited by the rights and welfare of others
that subordination, in its best sense, takes place. To direct a body
of men toward the acceptance of this principle, so that thereby they
may attain social coherence as a group and greater strength of
personal character, is the most solid contribution that an officer can
make to the arms of his country.
He can succeed in this without being godlike in wisdom or pluperfect
in temper. But it is necessary at least that he be interesting, and
that he know how to get out of his own tracks, lest he be over-run by
his own organization. Whatever his rank, _it is impossible for any man
to lead if he is himself running behind_. This bespeaks the need of
constant study, the constant use of one's personal powers and the
exercise of the imagination. As men advance, that which was good soon
ceases to be good simply because something better is possible. Once
men begin to acquire a sense of organization, they also come to take
the measure of those who are over them. They will then move
instinctively toward the one man who possesses the greatest measure
of social energy. The accolade of leadership is not inherent in the
individual but is conferred on him by the group. It does not always
follow that a man can develop an influence with others which is
proportionate to his talents and capacity for work. Leadership in work
is a main requirement, but if the group does not warm toward the
appointed leader, if its members can not feel any enthusiasm about
him, they will be hypercritical of whatever he does.
History confirms, and a study of the workings of the human mind
supports one proposition which many of the great captains of war have
accepted as a truism. "There are no bad troops: there are only bad
leaders." Taking on percentage what we already know of our average
American raw material, as it had proved itself in every war, and as it
has been studied in such a laboratory as the camp at Cape Sabine, no
exception can be taken to that statement. On the other hand, we know
equally well that leadership can be taught and it can be acquired.
Much of our best material lies fallow, awaiting a hand on the
shoulder, and the touch of other men's confidence, before it can step
forward. This is not because men with a sound potential for leading
must necessarily have an outward air of modesty among their major
virtues, but because a man--particularly a young man--cannot gain a
sense of his power among his fellows except as they give him their
confidence, and vivify his natural desire to be something better than
the average. There is no indication that at any stage of his career
Gen. George S. Patton was an outwardly modest man. But in reviewing
the milestones in his own making, he underscored the occasion when
General Pershing, then commanding the Punitive Expedition into Mexico,
supported Lieutenant Patton's judgment against that of a major. These
are his words: "My act took high moral courage and built up my
self-confidence." It would seem altogether clear, however, that
Pershing had more than a little to do with it. Col. W. T. Sherman had
to be kindled by the warm touch of Mr. Lincoln and steeled by the
example and strong faith of Gen. U. S. Grant before he could believe
in his own capacity for generalship. We all live by information and
not by sight. We exist by faith in others, which is the source toward
knowing greater faith in ourselves.
About the elements of human nature, it is good that an officer should
know enough that he will be able to win friends and influence people.
But it is folly to believe that he should pursue his studies in this
subject until he habitually looks at men as would a scientist putting
some specimen under a powerful microscope.
Self-consciousness is by no means a serious fault in anyone confronted
by a new set of responsibilities, and working among new companions.
There is scarcely an officer who has not felt it, particularly in the
beginning, before he is assured in his own presence. But if the
greater part of the officer corps were ever to become absorbed in the
business of taking men apart to see what makes them tick, thereby
superinducing self-consciousness all down the line, an irremediable
blight would come upon the services. There is no need to look that
deeply. What matters mainly is that an officer will know how men are
won to accept authority, how they can be made to unify their own
strength, how they can be helped to find satisfaction and success in
their employment, how the stronger men can be chosen for preferment
from among them, and finally, how they can be conditioned to face the
realities of combat.
The chronicles of effective military leadership date back to Gideon
and his Band. Therefore any notion that it is impossible for an
officer to make the best use of his men unless he is armed with all
available research data and can talk the language of the philosopher
and modern social scientist is little more than a twentieth century
conceit. To seek and use all pertinent information is commendable, but
truth comes of seeing all things in their natural proportion. To know
more than is necessary blunts one's own weapons. The application of
common sense to the problem is more vital than the possession of an
inexhaustible store of data which has no practical bearing upon the
matter at hand. As was said by a philosopher three centuries ago: "It
is remarkable in some that they could be so much better if they could
but be better in some thing."
CHAPTER TWELVE
GROUP NATURE
In the same way that knowledge of individual nature becomes the key to
building strength within the group, an understanding of crowd nature
is essential to the preservation of the unique power within the group,
particularly under conditions of extreme pressure.
Whereas the central object of a training discipline is to raise a
safeguard against any military body reverting to crowd form under
trial by fire, history shows that paralysis both of leadership and of
the ranks, obliviousness to orders, forgetfulness of means of
communication, disintegration and even panic are the not uncommon
reactions of military forces when first entering into battle.
From Bunker Hill and Brandywine down to Pearl Harbor and the fight at
Kasserine Pass, the American battle record shows that our own troops
are by no means immune to these ill effects, and that our peace time
training needs, therefore, always to be reappraised with a critical
eye to the main issue.
Any of these unsteadying reactions can be prevented, or at least
minimized, by training which anticipates the inevitable disorders of
battle--including those who are of material sort as well as the
disorders of the mind--and acclimates men to the realities of the
field in war. All may be averted if leadership is braced to the shock
and prepared to exercise strong control. Indeed, it is a truth worthy
of the closest regard that the greater number of the disarrangements
which take place during combat are due to leadership feeling a
tightening of the throat, and a sticking of the palate, and failing to
do that which the intellect says should be done.
To take any action, when even to think of action is itself difficult,
is the essential step toward recovery and the surmounting of all
difficulty. It is not because of a babel of mixed voices and commands
that military bodies not infrequently relapse into helplessness and
stagnation in the face of the enemy. From that cause there may occur
an occasional minor dislocation. Their total effect is trivial
compared to the failures which come of leadership, at varying levels,
failing promptly to exercise authority when nothing else can resolve
the situation. Among the commonest of experiences in war is to witness
troops doing nothing, or worse, doing the wrong thing, without one
commanding voice being raised to give them direction. In such
circumstance, any man who has the nerve and presence to step forward
and give them an intelligent order in a manner indicating that he
expects to be obeyed, will be accepted as a leader and will be given
their support.
For this reason, under the conditions of modern battle, the coherence
of any military body comes not only of men being articulate all down
the line but of building up the dynamic power in each individual. It
is a thoroughly sound exercise in any unit to give every man a chance
to take charge, and give orders in drill, or other limited exercises,
once he had learned what the orders mean. By the same token, it is
good practice for the junior leader to displace a file in a training
exercise, and become commanded for a time, to sharpen his own
perspective.
Progress comes of making the most of our strengths rather than looking
for ways to repair weaknesses. This is true in things both large and
small. The platoon leader who permits himself to be bedeviled by the
file who won't or can't keep step cannot do justice to the ambitions
of the 10 strongest men beneath him, upon whom the life of the
formation would depend, come an emergency. To nourish and encourage
the top rather than to concentrate effort and exhaust nerves in trying
to correct the few least likely prospects is the healthy way of growth
within military organization.
Not all men are fitted by nature for the precisions of life in a
barracks. They may accept its discipline while not being able to
adjust to its rhythm. The normal temptation to despair of them needs
to be resisted if only for the reason experience has proved they
sometimes make the best men in combat. There are many types which fit
into this category--the foreigner but recently arrived in America,
the miner who has spent most of his years underground, the boy from
the sticks who has known only the plough and furrow, the woodsman, the
reservation Indian, and the men of all races who have had hard
taskmasters or other misfortune in their civilian sphere, and expect
to be hurt again. It is not unusual for this kind of material to show
badly in training because of an ingrained fear of other men. At the
same time, they can face mortal danger. _To harass the man who is
trying, but can't quite do it, therefore cuts double against the
strength of organization. It may ruin the man; it may also give his
comrades the feeling that he isn't getting a decent break._
The military crowd requires, above all, maturity of judgment in its
leaders. It cannot be patronized safely. Nor can it be treated in the
classroom manner, as if wisdom were being dispensed to schoolboys.
When it has been remiss, it expects to catch unshirted hell for its
failings, and though it may smart under a just bawling out, it will
feel let down if the commander quibbles. But any officer puts himself
on a skid, and impairs the strength of his unit, if he takes to task
all hands because of the wilful failings of a minority. Strength comes
to men when they feel that they are grown up and as a body are in
control and under control, since it amounts to the same thing; it is
only when men unite toward a common purpose that control becomes
possible. In this respect, the servant is in fact the master of the
situation, fully realizes it, and is not unprepared to accept
proportionate responsibility.
It is a sign of a good level of discipline in a command when orders
are given and faithfully carried out. But it is a sign of a vastly
superior condition when men are prepared to demand those orders which
they know the situation requires, if it is to be helped. No competent
subordinate sits around waiting for someone else to give impulse to
movement if his senses tell him that things are going to pot. He
either suggests a course of action to his superior, or asks authority
to execute it on his own, or in the more desperate circumstances of
the battlefield, gives orders on his own initiative. To counsel any
lesser theory of individual responsibility than this would leave
every chain of command at the complete mercy of its weakest link, and
throughout the general establishment, would choke the fount of
inspiration which comes of the upward thrust of energy and of ideas.
This latter characteristic in the masses of men composing any
organization is the final statement of moral responsibility for
success. Within military forces, an element of command is owned by
every man who is doing his duty with intelligence and imagination.
That puts him on the side of the angels, and the pressure which he
exerts is felt not only by his subordinates but by those topside who
are doing less. Many a lazy skipper has snapped out of it and at last
begun to level with his organization because he felt the hot breath of
a few earnest subordinates on his neck. Many a battle unit has held to
ground which it had been ready to forsake because of the example of an
aid man who stayed at his work and refused to forsake the wounded.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower was thinking on these things when he said
during World War II: "There is among the mass of individuals who carry
rifles in war a great amount of ingenuity and efficiency. If men can
talk naturally to their officers, the product of their resourcefulness
becomes available to all." But the art of open communication requires
both receiving and sending, and the besetting problem is to get
officers to talk naturally to men.
In the seventeenth century Marshal Maurice de Saxe rediscovered
cadenced marching which, along with the hard-surfaced roads of France,
had remained buried since the time of the Romans. He reinstituted
precision marching and drill within military bodies, and by that
action changed European armies from straggling mobs into disciplined
troops. The effects of that reform have been felt right down to the
present. Baron von Steuben, the great reorganizer of the forces in
George Washington's Army, simply built upon the principles which de
Saxe had set forth one century earlier. These two great architects of
military organization founded their separate systems upon one
controlling idea--that _if men can be trained to think about moving
together, they can then be led to move toward thinking together_. De
Saxe wanted keen men, not automatons; in that, he was singular among
the captains of his day. He started the numbering of regiments so that
they would have a continuing history and thereby benefit from _esprit
de corps_. He was the first to see the great importance of battle
colors and to standardize their use. Of his own military opinions he
wrote: "Experts should not be offended by the assurance with which I
deliver my opinions. They should correct them; that is the fruit I
expect from my work."
Now to take a look at von Steuben. He was the drillmaster of the
American Revolution, but he was also its greatest student of the human
mind and heart. He wrote the drill regulations of the Army, and as he
wrote, committed them to memory. Of his labors he said: "I dictated my
dispositions in the night; in the day I had them performed." But he
learned the nature of the human material for which he thought these
exercises were suited by visiting the huts of the half-clad soldiers
of Valley Forge, personally inspecting their neglected weapons and
hearing from their own lips of their sufferings. His main technic in
installing his system was to depend upon the appeal of a powerful
example; to allay all doubt of exactly what was wanted, he formed a
model company and drilled it himself. He was a natural man; troops
warmed to him because of an unabashed use of broken English and his
violently explosive use, under stress, of "gottam!" which was his only
quasi-English oath. In countenance he was strikingly like Gen. George
S. Patton and there were other points of resemblance. A private
soldier at Valley Forge was impressed with "the trappings of his
pistols, the enormous holsters of his pistols, his large size, his
strikingly martial aspect." But while he liked to dine with great men
at his table, he chose to complete his list with officers of inferior
rank. Once at Valley Forge he permitted his aides to give a dinner for
junior officers on condition that none should be admitted that had on
a whole pair of breeches. This was making the most of adversity. While
wearing two stars and serving as Inspector General of the Army, he
would still devote his whole day to the drilling of a squad of 10 or
12 men to get his system going. To a former Prussian associate he
wrote this of Americans: "You say to your soldier, 'Do this!' and he
doeth it; but I am obliged to say, 'This is the reason that you ought
to do that,' and then he does it."
This was the key to the phenomenal success of his system. Within 6
weeks after he began work at Valley Forge, the Continental Army was on
a new footing of self-confidence. His personal diligence in inquiring
into the conduct of all officers toward their men, and his zeal in
checking the accoutrement and carriage of every soldier established
within the Army its first standard of inspection. Officers began to
divide their scant rations with their men so that they would look
better. But though he drilled the men of Valley Forge in marching and
maneuver, Steuben paid no attention to the manual of arms, and let
that wait until after he had gone into battle with these same forces.
He explained why in these words: "Every colonel had introduced a
system of his own and those who had taken the greatest pains were
naturally the most attached to their work. Had I destroyed their
productions, they would have detested me. I therefore preferred to pay
no special attention to this subject until I had won their
confidence." To take hold at the essential point and postpone action
on the relatively unimportant, to respect a worthy pride and natural
dignity in other men, and finally, to demonstrate that there is a
better way in order to win men's loyalty and to use loyalty as the
portal to more constructive collective thought--all of these morals
shine in this one object lesson. The most revealing light upon the
character of Steuben comes of the episode in which he had one
Lieutenant Gibbons arrested for an offense, which he later learned
another had committed. He then went before the Regiment. It was
raining hard, but he bared his head and asked Gibbons to come forward.
"Sir," he said, "the fault which was committed might, in the presence
of an enemy, have been fatal. Your Colonel tells me you are blameless.
I ask your pardon. Return to your command."
Mistakes will occur. Tempers will go off half-cocked even among men
of good habit. Action will be taken on impulse rather than full
information, despite every warning as to its danger. But no officer
who has ever done serious injustice to a subordinate can do less than
Steuben did, if he wants to keep respect. Admiral Halsey wrote about
how he had once relieved one of his Captains in battle, found months
later that he had misjudged him, and then tried by every means within
his power to make redress.
The main connecting link between the perfecting of group action in
training and the end product of unity and economy of operations in
battle has never been better than imperfectly expressed even by such
masters as de Saxe and von Steuben, who felt it by profound instinct.
The time-honored explanation is that when men accustom themselves to
obeying orders, the time ultimately arrives when they will obey by
habit, and that the habit will carry over into any set of
circumstances requiring response to orders. This has the quality of
relative truth; it is true so far as it goes, but it undersells the
major values.
The heterogeneous crowd is swayed by the voices of instinct. Properly
trained, any military unit, being a homogeneous body, should be swayed
by the voice of training. Out of uniformity of environment comes
uniformity of character and spirit. From moving and acting together
men grow to depend upon, and to support, each other, and to
subordinate their individual wills to the will of the leader. And if
that were all that training profited them, they would rarely win a
battle or a skirmish under modern conditions!
Today the supreme value of any training at arms which fixes habit is
that, under conditions of absolute pressure, it enables men to take
the primary steps essential to basic security without too great taxing
of their mental faculties and moral powers; this leaves their senses
relatively free to cope with the unexpected. The unforeseen
contingency invariably happens in battle, and its incidence supplies
the supreme test of the efficacy of any training method. Surprise has
no regard for the importance of rank; in combat any unit's fortune may
pivot on the judgment and initiative of the file who has last joined
it. Therefore the moral object in training is stated without any
qualification in words once used by a wise Frenchman, Dr. Maurice
Campeaux: "_It should be the subordination of the individual's will to
the leader's, and not its surrender or destruction._" All training at
all levels has a dual object--to develop us all as leaders of men and
followers of leaders. Its technics are most perfect when they serve
evenly these parallel purposes. In consequence, when any officer
thinks only on: "What is policy?" rather than: "What should policy be
for the good of the service?" he has trained his sights too low.
Even in modern warfare, however, there are exceptional circumstances
in which success is altogether dependent upon the will and judgment of
the leader, and undeviating response to his orders. The commander of a
buttoned-up tank is the master of its fortunes, and what happens for
better or worse is according to the strength of his personal control.
Within a submerged submarine during action, the situation is still
more remarkable. Only one man, the commander of the ship, can see what
is occurring, and he only with one eye; the resolving of every
situation depends on his judgment as to what should be done. Yet those
who have the surest knowledge of this service have said that the main
problem in submarine warfare is to find a sufficient body of officers
who will rise superior to the intricacies of their complicated
machines, and will make their own opportunities and take advantage of
them. That is hardly unique. The same quality is the hallmark of
greatness in any individual serving with a combat arm. The military
crowd will double its effort for a leader when success rides on his
coattails; but he needs first to capture their loyalty by keeping his
contracts with them, sweetening the ties of organization, and
convincing them that he is a man to be followed. His luck (which
despite all platitudes to the contrary is an element in success)
begins when his men start to believe that he was born under a lucky
star. But they are not apt to be so persuaded unless he can make his
outfit shine in comparison with all others. The best argument for
establishing a low VD score and a high disciplinary and deportment
record within any unit is that it convinces higher authority that the
unit is well run and is trying, and is therefore entitled to any extra
consideration that may be requested. All who have been closely
identified with the inner working of any higher headquarters in the
American establishment know that it works this way. On the other hand,
the fundamental idea is almost as old as the hills. Turning back to
Cicero, we will find these words: "Neither the physician nor the
general can ever, however praiseworthy he may be in the theory of his
art, perform anything highly worthwhile without experience in the
rules laid down for the observation of all small duties." The Old
Roman added that between men nothing is so binding as a similarity of
good dispositions.