and to refrain from loose living of any sort, are acts of the will.
They require self-denial, and a foregoing of that which may be more
attractive, in favor of the thing which should be done. Granted that
there are a few individuals who are so thin-blooded that they never
feel tempted to digress morally, men in the majority are not like
that. What they renounce in the name of self-discipline, at the cost
of a considerable inner stress, they endeavour to compensate by their
gains in personal character. Making that grade isn't easy; but no one
who is anyone has yet said that it isn't worthwhile. In the armed
services there is an old saying that an officer without character is
more useless than a ship with no bottom.
In the summing up, the strength of will which enables a man to lead a
clean life is no different than the strength of purpose which fits him
to follow a hard line of duty. There are exceptions to every rule.
Many a lovable rounder has proved himself to be a first-class fighting
man. But even though he had an unconquerable weakness for drink and
women, his resolution had to become steeled along some other line or
he would have been no good when the pay-off came.
Putting aside for the moment the question of the vices, and regarding
only the gain to moral power which comes of bodily exercise and
physical conditioning, it should be self-evident that the process
which builds the muscle must also train and alert the mind. How could
it be otherwise? Every physical act must have as its origin a mental
impulse, conscious or unconscious. Thus in training a man to master
his muscles we also help him to master his brain. He comes out of
physical training not only better conditioned to move but better
prepared to think about how and why he is moving, which is true
mobility.
In military organizations, "setting-up" and other formation exercises
are usually a drag and a bore. Men grumble about them, and even after
they are toughened to them, so that they feel no physical distress,
they rarely relish them. The typical American male would much rather
sit on his pants along the sidelines and watch someone else engage in
contact sports. It's almost the national habit. Despite our athletic
prowess, about 56 percent of American males grow to manhood without
having ever participated in a group game.
But no matter how great the inertia against it, there must be
unremitting perseverance in the physical conditioning of military
forces. For finally, it is killing men with kindness to relax at this
point. If life is to be conserved, if men are to be given a fair
chance to play their parts effectively, the physical standards during
training cannot be less than will give them a maximum fitness for the
extraordinary stresses of campaigning in war.
When troops lack the coordinated response which comes of long, varied
and rigorous exercises, their combat losses will be excessive, they
will lack cohesion in their action against the enemy, and they will
uselessly expend much of their initial velocity. In the United States
service, we are tending to forget, because of the effect of
motorization, that the higher value of the discipline of the road
march in other days wasn't that it hardened the muscles, but that,
short of combat, it was the best method of separating the men from the
boys. This is true today, despite all of the new conditions imposed by
technological changes. A hard road march is the most satisfactory
training test of the moral strength of the individual man.
At the same time, to senselessly overload men for road marching hurts
them two ways. It weakens their faith in the sense of the command,
thereby impairing morale, and it breaks down their muscle and tendon.
Enough is known about the average American male to provide a basic
logistical figure. He stands about 5 feet 8 inches, and weighs about
153 pounds. The optimum load for a man is about one-third of body
weight, the same as for a mule. That means that for a training march,
approximately 50 pounds over-all, including uniform, blankets and
everything, is the most that a man should be required to carry. If he
gets so that he can handle that load easily, over let us say a 10-mile
road march, then the thing to do, further to build up his power, is
not to increase the weight that he carries, but to lengthen the march.
Military men have known that this is the underlying principle for
better than half a century. But the principle has not always been
observed.
There is another not infrequent cause of breakdown--the leader who
makes the mistake of thinking that every man's limit is the same as
his own. Some come into the officer corps fresh from the stadia and
cinderpaths of the colleges, in the pink of condition. They take
charge of a group of men, some not yet seasoned, and others somewhat
older and more wind-broke than themselves. They shag them all over
the lot at reveille or take them on a cross-country chase like a smart
rabbit trying to outrun hounds. The poor devils ultimately get back,
some with their corks completely pulled, a few feeling too nauseated
to eat their breakfast, and others walking in, feeling whipped because
they couldn't keep up with the group.
When an officer does this kind of thing thoughtlessly, he shows
himself to be an incompetent observer of men. When he does it to show
off, he deserves to be given 10 days in the electric chair.
_It is the steadiness and the continuity of exercise, not the working
of men to the point of exhaustion and collapse, which keeps them
upgrading until they are conditioned to the strain of whatever comes._
To do it the other way around simply makes them hospital patients
before their time, and fills them with resentment against the service.
In the nature of things, the officer who has been an athlete can fit
himself into this part of the program with little difficulty and with
great credit, provided he acts with the moderation that is here
suggested. The armed services put great store by this. A man with a
strong flair for physical training can usually find a good berth.
By the same token, the officer who has shunned sports in school,
either because he didn't have the size or the coordination, or was
more interested in something else, will frequently have an
understandable hesitation about trying to play a lead hand in anything
which he thinks will make him look bad. Of this comes much
buck-passing. There is often a singular courtesy between officers
within a unit, and they'll switch details, just to be friendly. So it
frequently happens that the man who has no great knack at leading in
exercise and recreation gets the mouse's share of it. And thereby the
whole point is missed. For it should be perfectly clear that the man
who has had the least active experience in this field is usually the
one in greatest need of its strengthening effects. His case is no
different than that of the enlisted man. If he has not kept himself in
good physical shape, his nerves will not be able to stand the strain
of combat, to say nothing of his legs.
It can be said again and again: _The highest form of physical training
that an officer can undergo is the physical conditioning of his own
men._ Nothing else can give him more faith in his own ability to stay
the course and nothing else is likely to give him a firmer feeling of
solidarity with his men. Study, and an active thirst for wider
professional knowledge, have their place in an officer's scheme of
things. But there is something about the experience of bodily
competition, of joining with, and leading men in strenuous physical
exercise, which uniquely invigorates one's spirit with the confidence:
"I can do this! I can lead! I can command!" Military men have
recognized this since long before it was said that Waterloo was won on
the playing fields of Eton. Bringing it down to the present, Gen. Sir
Archibald Wavell said: "The civil comparison to war must be that of a
game, a very rough and dirty game, for which a robust body and mind
are essential." Even more emphatic are the words of Coach Frank Leahy
of Notre Dame, an officer of the United States Navy in World War II:
"The ability to rise up and grasp an opportunity is something that a
boy cannot learn in lecture rooms or from textbooks. It is on the
athletic field primarily that Americans acquire the winning ways that
play such an important part in the American way of life. The burning
desire to emerge the victor that we see in our contact sports is the
identical spirit that gave the United States Marines victory at Iwo
Jima. If we again know war, the boys who have received sound training
in competitive athletics will again fight until the enemy has had
enough."
Men like to see their officers competing and "giving it a good college
try" no matter how inept, or clumsy they may be. But they take a
pretty dim view of the leader who perennially acts as if he were
afraid of a sweat or a broken thumb. In team sports, developing around
interorganized rivalry, the eligibility of an officer to participate
among enlisted men is a matter of local ground rules, or special
regulations. There is nothing in the customs of the services which
prohibit it. To the contrary, it has been done many times, and is
considered to be altogether within an officer's dignity. Where there
is a flat ruling against it, it is usually on the theory that the
officer, by competing, is robbing some enlisted man of his chance.
Need it be said that in any event, going along with the team, and
taking an active interest in its ups-and-downs, is not only a service
officer's duty, but a rewarding privilege, if he is a real leader? In
this respect, he has a singular relationship to any group that
represents his unit. He becomes part of their force, and his presence
is important not only to the team but to the gallery. It is not
unusual to hear very senior officers excuse themselves from an
important social function by saying, "I'm sorry, but my team is
playing tonight." That is a reason which everybody understands and
accepts.
As for the ranks, even among those men who have had no prior
acquaintance with organized sports, there is a marked willingness to
participate, if given just a little encouragement. This is one of the
effects of getting into military uniform. As someone said about
gunpowder, "it makes all men alike tall," and provides a welcome
release from former inhibitions. The military company is much more
tightly closed than any other. When men are thinking and working
together in a binding association, they will seek an outlet for their
excess spirits, and will join together in play, even under the most
adverse circumstance. During World War I, it was common to see
American troops playing such games as duck-on-the-rock, tag and touch
football with somebody's helmet in close proximity to the front.
Because no other equipment was available, they improvised. So it is
that in any situation, the acme in leadership consists, not in
screaming one's head off about shortages, but in using a little
imagination about what can be done.
The really good thing about the gain in moral force deriving from all
forms of physical training is that it is an unconscious gain. Will
power, determination, mental poise and muscle control all march
hand-in-hand with the general health and well-being of the man, with
results not less decisive under training conditions than on the field
of battle. A man who develops correct posture and begins to fill out
his body so that he looks the part of a fighter will take greater
pride in the wearing of the uniform. So doing, he will take greater
care so to conduct himself morally that he will not disgrace it. He
will gain confidence as he acquires a confident and determined
bearing. This same presence, and the physical strength which
contributes to it, will help carry him through the hour of danger.
Strength of will is partly of the mind and partly of the body. In
combat, fatigue will beat men down as quickly as any other condition,
for fatigue inevitably carries fear with it. Tired men are men afraid.
There is no quicker way to lose a battle than to lose it on the road
for lack of preliminary hardening in troops. Such a condition cannot
be redeemed by the resolve of a commander who insists on driving
troops an extra mile beyond their general level of physical endurance.
Extremes of this sort make men rebellious and hateful of the command,
and thus strike at tactical efficiency from two directions at once.
For when men resent a commander, they will not fight as willingly for
him, and when their bodies are spent, their nerves are gone.
Looking after the welfare of men, however, does not connote simply
getting them into the open air and giving them a chance to kick the
ball around. The services are pretty well organized to provide their
personnel with adequate sport and recreational facilities, and to
insure an active, balanced program, in any save the most exceptional
circumstance. Too, the provisions made for the creature comforts of
men are ample, experience-tested, and well-regulated.
It is not so much that a young officer needs to have book instruction
about the detail of these things. Such is the system that they can
hardly escape his notice, any more than he can escape knowing where to
get his pay check and by which path he goes to the barbershop.
What counts mainly is that he should fully understand the prime
importance of a personal caring for his men, so that they cannot fail
of a better life if it is within his power and wisdom to lead them to
it.
Once the principle is grasped, and accepted without any mental
reservation, time and experience will educate him in the countless
meetings of situations which require its application.
There are times and situations which require that all men be treated
identically, for the good of organization. There are also occasions
when nothing else suffices but to give the most help, the most
encouragement, the most relief to those who are most greatly in need.
Grown men understand that, and the officer, approaching every
situation with the question in his mind: "What does reason say about
what constitutes fair play in this condition?" cannot go far wrong in
administering to the welfare of those who serve under him.
_It is moral courage, combined with practice, which builds in one a
delicate sense of the eternal fitness of things._
One example: Under normal training conditions, it would be fair play,
and the acceptable thing, to rotate men and their junior leaders to
such an onerous task as guard duty. But if a unit was "dead beat"
after a hard march, and an officer, pursuing his line of duty, walked
among his men, inspecting their blistered feet and doing all he could
to ease each man's physical discomfort, he would then be using
excessively poor judgment if he did not pick out the men most
physically fit to do whatever additional duty was required that night.
But infinite painstaking in attending to the physical welfare of men
is not more important than thoughtful attention to their spiritual
wants, and their moral needs. In fact, if we would give a little more
priority to the latter, the former would be far more likely to come
along all right.
The average American enlisted man is quite young when he enters
service, and because he is young, he is impressionable. What his
senior tells him becomes a substitute for the influence and teaching
that he shed when he left his home or school. That need not mean a
senior in age! _He looks to his officer, even though the latter may be
junior in years, because he believes that the man with rank is a
little wiser, and he has faith that he will not be steered wrong._
Despite all the publicity given to VD, American kids don't know a
great deal about its reality, and even though the greater number of
them like to talk about women, what they have to say rarely reveals
them as worldly-wise.
If an officer talks straight on these subjects, and believes in what
he says sufficiently to set the good example, he can convince his
better men that the game isn't worth the candle, and can save even
some of the more reckless spirits from a major derail.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
KEEPING YOUR MEN INFORMED
Nobody ever told the South Sea savage about the nature of air in
motion. He had never heard of wind and therefore could not imagine its
effects. Thus when he heard strange noises in the treetops and there
was a howling around certain headlands, while other headlands were
silent, he could believe only that the spirits were at work. He would
strain his ear to hear what they had to say to him, and never being
able to understand, he would become all the more fearful.
It all sounds pretty silly. And yet civilization is a great deal like
that. We pride ourselves today in saying, particularly within the
western nations, that men and women are better informed than ever
before in the history of the world. What we really mean by that is
that they are overburdened with more kinds of fragmentary information
than any people of the past. They know just enough about many major
questions of the day that either they are driven to the making of
fearful guesses about the unknown, or they try to close their minds to
the subject, vainly seeking consolation in the half-truth, "What I
don't know can't hurt me."
Therein lies a great part of the problem. For it is a fair statement
that if all of the mystery could be stripped from such a complex topic
as the nature of atomic power, so that men everywhere would understand
it, universal fear would be displaced by universal confidence that
something could be done, and society would be well along the road
toward its control.
In World War I, the men who had the least fear of the effects of gas
warfare were the gas officers who understood their subject right down
to the last detail of the decontamination process and the formula for
dichlorethylsulphide (mustard gas). The man to whom the dangers of
submarine warfare seem least fearsome is the submariner. Of all hands
along the battle line, the first aid man has the greatest calm and
confidence in the face of fire, largely because he has seen the
miracles worked by modern medicine in the restoring of grievously
wounded men. The general or the admiral who is most familiar with the
mettle of his subordinate commands will also have the most relaxed
mind under battle pressure.
This leads to a point, which it is better to state here than anywhere
else. In all military instruction pertaining to the weapons and
techniques of war, the basis of sound indoctrination is the teaching
that weapons when rightly used will invariably produce victory, and
preventive measures, when promptly and thoroughly taken, will
invariably conserve the operational integrity of the defense. It is
wrong, _dead wrong_, to start, or carry along, on the opposite track,
and try to persuade men to do the right thing, by dwelling on the
awful consequence of doing the wrong thing. Confidence, not fear, is
the keynote of a strong and convictive doctrine.
In war, in the absence of information, man's natural promptings
alternate between unreasoning fears that the worst is likely to
happen, and the wishful thought that all danger is remote. Either
impulse is a barrier to the growth of that condition of alert
confidence which comes to men when they have a realization of their
own strength and a reasonably clear concept of the general situation.
Man is a peculiar animal. He is no more prone to think about himself
as the central figure amid general disaster than he is to dwell
morbidly upon thoughts of his own death. Left in the dark, he will get
a certain comfort out of that darkness, at the same time that it
clouds his mind and freezes his action. Disturbed by bad dreams about
what might happen, he nonetheless will not plan an effective use of
his own resources against that which is very likely to happen. Only
when he is given a clear view of the horizon, and is made animated by
the general purpose in all that moves around him, does he understand
the direction in which he should march, and taking hold, begin to do
the required thing.
It is almost gratuitous that this even needs to be stated. No high
commander would think of moving deliberately into the fog of war if
he was without knowledge of either the enemy or friendly situation.
Even to imagine such a contingency is paralyzing. But in their nervous
and spiritual substance, admirals and generals are no different than
the green men who have come most recently to their forces. Such men
can not stand alone any more than can the recruit. They draw their
moral strength and their ability to contend intelligently against
adverse circumstance largely from what is told them by the men who
surround them. That is why they have their staffs. They could not
command even themselves if they were deprived of all information.
Toward the assuring of competent, collected action, the first great
step is to remove the mystery. This is a process which must be
mastered in peacetime, if it is to stand the multiplied strains of
war. What mystery? Let it be said that it surrounds the average file
on every hand, even though the average junior officer does not realize
it, while at the same time he himself is completely mystified by much
that transpires above him. For example, we all like to throw big words
about, to air our professional erudition; and we do not understand
that to the man who does not know their meaning, the effect is a
blackout which makes even the simplest object seem formidable. To
illustrate, we can take the word "bivouac," common enough in military
parlance, but rare in civilian speech. When green men are told, "We
are going into bivouac," and they are not sufficiently grounded in the
service to know that this means simply going into camp for the night
without shelter, their instinctive first thought is, "This is another
complex military process that will probably catch me short." Similarly
if told that they are detailed "on a reconnaissance mission along the
line of communications with a liaison function," they could not fail
to be "flummoxed." And if then instructed to take a BAR up to the MLR
and follow SOP in covering a simulated SFC party, they wouldn't be far
from justified if they blew their tops, and ran shrieking from the
place.
These are horrible examples, put forward only to illuminate a fairly
simple point. Exaggerated though they may be, something of the same
sort happens in almost every installation nearly every day. The
difference is only in degree. _Every man in the service has an
inalienable right to work and to think in the clear._ He is entitled
to the why and the wherefore of whatever he is expected to do, as well
as the what and the how. His efficiency, his confidence and his
enthusiasm will wax strong in almost the precise measure that his
superior imparts to him everything he knows about a duty which can be
of possible benefit to the man. Furthermore, this is a two-way
current. Any officer who believes in the importance of giving full
information in a straight-forward manner, and continues to act on that
principle, will over the long run get back more than he gives. But the
chump who incontinently brushes off his subordinates because he thinks
his time is too valuable to spend any great part of it putting them on
the right track dooms himself to work in a vacuum. He is soon spotted
for what he is, and if his superiors can't set him straight, they will
shrug him aside.
These are pretty much twentieth century concepts of how force is
articulated from top to bottom of a chain of command. Yet the ideas
are as old as the ages. Ecclesiastes is filled with phrases pointing
up that clarification is the way of strength and of unity. "All go
unto one place." "Two are better than one." "Woe to him that is alone
when he falleth." "A threefold cord is not quickly broken."
"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." "Folly is
set in great dignity." "Truly the light is sweet." Great commanders of
the past have reflected that knowledge is the source of the
simplifying and joining of all action and have pondered how better to
resolve the problem. But it is only in our time that this great
principle in military doctrine has become rooted deep enough to stay,
because the technological complexity of modern war is such as to
permit of no other course.