discipline, nor proof that their training at arms is satisfying a
legitimate military end. The old game of follow-the-leader has no
point if the leader himself, like the little girl in a Thomas Hardy
novel, is balked by insuperable obstacles one-quarter inch high. _All
military forces remain relatively undisciplined until physically
toughened and mentally conditioned to unusual exertion._ Consider the
road march! No body of men could possibly enjoy the dust, the heat,
the blistered foot and the aching back. But hard road marching is
necessary if a sound foundation is to be built under the discipline of
fighting forces, particularly those whose labors are in the field. And
the gain comes quickly. The rise in spirits within any organization
which is always to be observed after they rebound from a hard march
does not come essentially from the feeling of relief that the strain
is past, but rather from satisfaction that a goal has been crossed.
_Every normal man needs to have some sense of a contest, some feeling
of resistance overcome, before he can make the best use of his
faculties. Whatever experience serves to give him confidence that he
can compete with other men helps to increase his solidarity with other
men._
It must be accepted that discipline does not break down under the
strain of placing a testing demand upon the individual. It is sloth
and not activity that destroys discipline. Troops can endure hard
going when it serves an understandable end. This is what they will
boast about mainly when the fatigue is ended. A large part of training
is necessarily directed toward conditioning them for unusual hardship
and privation. They can take this in stride. But no power on earth can
reconcile them to what common sense tells them is unnecessary hardship
which might have been avoided by greater intelligence in their
superiors. When they are overloaded, they know it. When they are
required to form for a parade two hours ahead of time because their
commander got over-anxious, or didn't know how to write an order,
again they know it! _And they are perfectly right if they go sour
because this kind of thing happens a little too often within the
command._
Within our system, that discipline is nearest perfect which assures to
the individual the greatest freedom of thought and action while at all
times promoting his feeling of responsibility toward the group. _These
twin ends are convergent and interdependent for the exact converse of
the reason that it is impossible for any man to feel happy and
successful if he is in the middle of a failing institution._ War, and
all training operations in preparation for it, have become more than
ever a problem of creating diversity of action out of unity of
thought. Its modern technological aspects not only require a much
keener intelligence in the average file but a higher degree of
initiative and courageous confidence in his own judgments. If the man
is cramped by monotonous routine, or made to feel that he cannot move
unless an order is barked, he cannot develop these qualities, and he
will never come forward as a junior leader. _On the other hand, the
increased utilization of the machine in military operations, far from
lessening the need of mutual support and unified action, has increased
it._ One of the hazards of high velocity warfare is that reverse and
disaster can occur much more swiftly than under former systems. Thus
the need for greater spiritual integration within forces, and
increased emphasis upon the values of more perfect communication in
all forms, at the same time that each individual is trained to
initiate action for the common good. Only so can the new discipline
promote a higher efficiency based on a more steadfast loyalty of man
to man. In the words of Du Picq, who saw so deeply into the hearts of
fighting men: "If one does not wish bonds broken, one should make them
elastic and thereby strengthen them."
The separate nature of military service is the key to the character of
the discipline of its several forces. In the United States, we have
fallen into the sloppy habit of saying that a soldier, bluejacket,
airman, coast guardsman or marine is only an American civilian in
uniform. The corollary of this quaint notion is that all military
organization is best run according to the principles of business
management. The truth of either of these ideas is to be disputed on
two grounds: both are contrary to truth and contrary to human nature.
An officer is not only an administrator but a magistrate, and it is
this dual role which makes his function so radically different than
anything encountered in civil life--to say nothing of the singleness
of purpose by which the service moves forward. Moreover, the armed
service officer deals with the most plastic human material within the
society--men who, in the majority, the moment they step into uniform,
are ready to seek his guidance toward a new way of life.
However, these fancies are but tangential aspects of a much larger
illusion--that the Armed Services of the United States, since they
serve a democracy, can better perfect themselves according to the
measure that they become more and more democratic. Authority is
questioned in democratic countries today, not only in government, but
in industry, the school, the church and the home. But to the extent
that military men lose their faith in its virtue and become amenable
to ill-considered reforms simply to appease the public, they
relinquish the power to protect and nurture that growth of free men,
free thought and free institutions which began among a handful of
soldiers in Cromwell's Army and was carried by them after the
Restoration to the North American mainland. The relation of the
military establishment to American democracy is as a shield covering
the body. But no wit of man can make it a wholly "democratic"
institution as to its own processes without vitiating its strength,
since it progresses through the exercise of unquestioned authority at
various levels.
One of these levels is the plane on which an ensign or second
lieutenant conducts his daily dealings with his men. George Washington
left behind these words, which are as good today as when he uttered
them from his command post: "Whilst men treat an officer as an equal,
regard him no more than a broomstick, being mixed together as one
common herd, no order nor discipline can prevail." Out of his
experience in the handling of deck divisions during World War II,
Edmund A. Gibson, Boatswain's Mate, First Class, also said something
which, put alongside Washington's words, brings the whole subject of
officer-man relationships into clear focus: "Speaking for Navy men, I
am certain that they are entirely without any feeling of inferiority,
social or otherwise, to their officers. If superiority or inferiority
of any kind enters into their contemplation at all, it is in the shape
of a conviction, doubtless a wrong one, that every serviceman, as a
professional warrior, is above the narrow interests which obsess the
civilian."
Those who have served both as officer and under-officer well
understand the appropriateness of these two ideas, each to the other,
that the superior position of the officer must be preserved for the
good of the service, but that this engages recognition of the
individual equality of the enlisted man. They know, if they have
observed well and truly during their service in the ranks, that the
highest type enlisted man wants his officer to act the part, maintain
dignity and support the ideals which are consonant with the authority
vested in him by the Nation. But this same man at the same time
expects his officers to concede him his right to a separate position
and to respect his privacy. It is a pitiable eminence that is not well
founded upon sure feeling for the value of its own prestige and the
importance of this factor at all levels.
In the military service of the United States, there is always room for
firm and forthright friendship between officer and man. There is room
for a close, uniting comradeship. There is room for frank intellectual
discussion and the exchange of warm humor; no man goes far if he is
all salt and no savor. There is room for that kind of intimacy which
enables each to see the other as a human being, know something of the
other's emotions and help clear the atmosphere for honest counsel on
personal and organizational problems.
But there is no room for familiarity, since as in any other sphere, it
breeds contempt. When it occurs, respect flies out the window, the
officer loses part of his command authority and discipline breaks
down. Familiarity cannot obtain between the superior and the
subordinate without the vice of favoritism entering into the conduct
of organizational matters, even though the former is guilty only of an
over-zealous goodwill and the latter is otherwise sensible to the
interests of the unit. The chief damage comes from the effect upon all
others. It is when all the bars are let down that men communicate
those inner failings which a greater reserve would keep under cover.
Familiarity toward a superior is a positive danger; toward a
subordinate, it is unbecoming and does not increase his trust. In
excess, it can have no other effect than a breach of confidence on
both sides.
Changes in the environmental situation do not alter the natural
proprieties of this relationship between any two men, the one having
higher authority and the other having the obligation of obedience.
Under the conditions of modern war, the two not infrequently may be
required to work together as a unit, almost apart from the influence
of organizational discipline. Hardship and necessity may compel them
to extend the limit of personal accommodation to each other. They may
go into battle together. They may sleep in the same bed or foxhole.
They may drink from a common bottle and draw upon each other for the
means to keep going. But in adapting one's course according to the
rigors of any unconventional situation, authority is maintained only
through the exercise of a higher sense of responsibility. However, the
rule is applied according to the circumstance, the rule itself remains
inflexible.
Officers and men working together as a compact team, in any type of
military operation where success, and coordinated action in the face
of danger, depend mainly upon the moral resources within one small
group, develop a closer camaraderie and become less formal than is
normal elsewhere throughout the services. The close confinement in
which tank forces, airplane crews and submarine crews must operate
would stifle morale and torture nerves otherwise. Whatever the
patience of men under such conditions, sooner or later they get on
each other's nerves. Therefore that system of relationships is best
which is least artificial and most relaxing to the spirit of the
natural man. But to construe this as a deviation from the standards of
discipline is to mistake the shadow for the substance.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
MORALE
To grow in knowledge of how to win a loyal and willing response from
military forces, there must first be understanding of the springs of
human action, what they are, and how they may be directed toward
constructive ends. This done, the course which makes for the
perfecting of forces during peacetime training need only be extended
to harden them for the risk and stress of war.
The mainspring is morale. The meaning of the word is already known in
a general way to every man who has qualified for officership, so it is
hardly necessary to redefine it. A World War II bluejacket said it
this way: "Morale is when your hands and feet keep working when your
head says it can't be done." That says it just as well as anything
written by du Picq or Baron von Steuben. Nothing new need be added.
The handiest beginning is to consider morale in conjunction with
discipline, since in military service they are opposite sides of the
same coin. When one is present, the other will be also. But the
instilling of these things in military forces depends upon leadership
understanding the nature of the relationship.
As to discipline, until recent years, military forces tended to stress
the pattern rather than the ideal. The elder Moltke, one of the great
masters of the military art, taught his troops that it was of supreme
importance that they form accurately in training, since the perfection
of their formations would determine their efficiency in battle. Yet in
the Franco-Prussian War, these formations proved utterly unsuited to
the heavily wooded terrain of the theater, and new ones had to be
devised on the spur of the moment.
This is the familiar story. It was repeated by United States forces in
World War II during the Normandy hedgerow fighting and the invasions
of the Central Pacific atolls. Troops had to learn the hard way how to
hit, and how to survive, in moving through jungle or across the
mountains and desert. When that happened, the only disciplinary
residue which mattered was obedience to orders. The movements they had
learned by rote were of less value than the spiritual bond between one
man and another. The most valuable lesson was that of mutual support.
And unless this lesson was supported by confidence in the judgment of
those in authority, it is to be doubted that they were helped at all.
Finally, that confidence is the _sine qua non_ of all useful military
power. The moral strength of an organic unity comes from the faith in
ranks that they are being wisely directed and from faith up top that
orders will be obeyed. When forces are tempered by this spirit, there
is no limit to their enterprise. They become invincible. Lacking it,
however, any military body, even though it has been compelled to toe
the mark in training, will deteriorate into a rabble under conditions
of extraordinary stress in the field, as McDowell's Army did at Bull
Run in the American Civil War, and as Hitler's Armies did in 1945
after the Rhine had been crossed at Remagen.
In its essentials, discipline is not measured according to how a man
keeps step in a drill yard, or whether he salutes at just the right
angle. The test is how well and willingly he responds to his superiors
in all _vital_ matters, and finally, whether he stands or runs when
his life is at stake. History makes this clear. There are countless
examples of successful military forces which had almost no discipline
when measured by the usual yardsticks, yet had a high battle morale
productive of the kind of discipline which beats the enemy in battle.
The French at Valmy, the Boers in the South African War, and even the
men of Capt. John Parker, responding to his order on the Lexington
Common, "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war,
let it begin here," instance that men who lack training and have not
been regimented still may express themselves as a cohesive force on
the field of fire, provided that they are well led.
If we will accept the basic premise that discipline, even within the
military establishment of the United States, is not a ritual or a
form, but is simply that course of conduct which is most likely to
lead to the efficient performance of an assigned responsibility, it
will be seen that morale does not come of discipline, but discipline
of morale.
True enough, our recruits are given a discipline almost from the
moment that they take the oath. Their first lesson is the necessity
for obedience. They are required immediately to conform to a new
pattern of conduct. They respond to disciplinary treatment even before
they learn to think as a group and before the attitude of the group
has any influence upon them. Discipline bears down before morale can
lift up. Momentarily, they become timid before they have felt any
pain. These first reactions help condition the man to his new
environment. They are in part demoralizing, but on the upswing he
begins to realize that half the fun in life comes of seeing what one
can do in a new situation. The foundation of his morale is laid when
he begins to think of himself as a member of the fighting
establishment, rather than as a civilian. Thereafter all that is done
to nourish his military spirit and to arouse his thirst for
professional knowledge helps to build his moral power.
But follow the man a little longer. The time quickly comes when he
knows his way around in the service. His earlier fears and hesitations
are largely gone. He acquires strength and wisdom from the group. He
becomes able to judge his own situation against an attainable standard
within the service. He is critically conscious of the merits of his
superiors from what he has himself experienced and what others tell
him. He knows what is boondoggling and what is not.
From that point on, discipline has little part in alerting the man or
in furthering the building of his moral power. That which moves him
mainly is the knowledge that he is a personal success, and that he
belongs to an efficient unit which is in capable hands. Certain of the
outer signs of discipline, such as the cadence of the march or snap in
the execution of the manual, he may subconsciously reenforce his
impression of these things. But if he feels either that he is an
outsider or that the club isn't worth joining, no amount of spit and
polish will alter his opinion.
He is able to recognize a right and reasonable discipline as such,
even though it causes him personal inconvenience, because he has
acquired a sense of military values. But if it is either unduly harsh
or unnecessarily lax, he likewise knows it and wears it as a
hairshirt, to the undoing of his morale. Though the man, like the
group, can be hurt by being pushed beyond sensible limits, his spirit
will suffer even more sorely if no real test is put upon his abilities
and moral powers. The greater his intelligence, the stronger will be
his resentment. That is a law of nature. The enlightened mind has
always the greatest measure of self-discipline but it also has a
higher sense of what constitutes justice, fairplay and a reasonable
requirement in the performance of duty. If denied these things, he
will come to hold his chief, his job, and himself in contempt. The
greater part of man's satisfactions comes of activity and only a very
small remnant comes of passive enjoyment. Forgetting this rather
obvious fact in human nature, social reformers aim at securing more
leisure, rather than at making work itself more satisfactory. But it
need not be forgotten in the military service.
Even to those who best understand the reasons for the regimenting of
military forces, a discipline wrongfully applied is seen only as
indiscipline. Invariably it will be countered in its own terms. No
average rank-and-file will become insubordinate as quickly, or react
as violently, as a group of senior noncommissioned officers, brought
together in a body, and then mishandled by officers who are ignorant
of the customs of the service and the limits of their own authority.
Not only are they conscious of their rights, but they have greater
respect for the state of decency and order which is the mark of a
proper military establishment than for the insignia of rank. It is
this firm feeling of the fitness of things, and his unbounded
allegiance to an authority when it is based on character which makes
the NCO and the petty officer the backbone of discipline within the
United States fighting establishment. Sergeant Evans of "Command
Decision" was an archtype of the best ball carriers among them. In a
sense, they remain independent workmen, rather than a tool of
authority, until the hour comes when they fall in completely with
someone their own nature tells them is good. In the past, we have not
always made the wisest use of this latent strength. The normal desire
of the veteran who has won his stripes by hard service is to support
his officers and reduce the friction down below. Whatever is done to
lessen his dignity and prestige damages morale and creates new
stresses in the relations between the officer corps and the ranks.
When he is rebuffed, either because those above him are indifferent to
his pride or are unaware that he is their chief advocate among the
men, the military machinery loses its cushion and becomes subject to
increasing shock. Said a newly arrived lieutenant to an old sergeant
of the 12th Cavalry: "You've been here a long time, haven't you?" "Yes
sir," replied the sergeant. "The troop commanders, they come and they
go, but it don't hurt the troop."
To comment on these things, however, is to emphasize once again the
supreme importance of the judgment of the officer in dealing with all
of his military associates in such way that he will support that
native pride, without which a man cannot remain whole, and at the same
time direct it toward the betterment of the organization. To lecture
troops about the importance of morale and discipline serves no earthly
purpose, if the words are at odds with the general conditions which
have been imposed on the command. They impose their values only as
reflection of the leader's entire thought concerning his men. At the
same time, there is this to be remembered, that even when things are
going wrong at every other level, men will remain loyal and dutiful if
they see in the one junior officer who is nearest them the embodiment
of the ideals which they believe should apply throughout the service.
That is the main object lesson in that remarkable novel written around
a World War II Navy auxiliary, "Mister Roberts." But it holds just as
true in our ground and air forces as for those afloat.
Morale comes of the mind and of the spirit. The question is how it is
to be developed. Admiral Ben Moreell has stated a formula in
understanding terms by his explanation of what made the Seabees
notable for competence and devotion to duty during World War II. This
is what he said: "We used artisans to do the work for which they had
been trained in civil life. They were well led by officers who 'spoke
their language.' We made them feel that they were playing an important
part in the great adventure. And thus they achieved a high standard of
morale." The elements underscored by Admiral Moreell deserve special
note.
Satisfaction in a work program.
Mutual confidence between leaders and ranks.
Conviction that all together were striving for something more
important than themselves.
True, that was wartime, and the challenge was apparent to all
concerned. But the principles hold good under any and all conditions,
and can be applied to any organization by the officer who approaches
his task with enthusiasm and imagination. The mission of keeping the
world at peace, through a moral strengthening of the security
structure of the United States, is a more difficult objective than
that which confronted fighting forces after Pearl Harbor. In his book,
"World War: Its Cause and Cure," Lionel Curtis stated our problem in
its broadest and most challenging terms: "Civilization began with a
war between freedom and despotism: we are now fighting its latest
campaign, and our task is to make it the last."
Under training conditions or in combat, the mental ills and the
resulting moral and physical deterioration which sometimes beset
military forces cannot be cured simply by the intensification of
disciplinary methods. It is true that the signs of a recovery will
sometimes attend the installation of a more rigid, or less rigid,
discipline. This onset is in fact usually due to the collateral
influence of an increased confidence in the command, whereby men are
made to feel that their own fortunes are on the mend. Then discipline
and morale are together revitalized almost as if by the throwing of an
electric switch.