The Armed Forces Officer Part 24

This is the great phenomenon of war--greater than the atomic bomb or supersonic flight. Former bookkeepers emerge as demolitions men.

Divinity students become pharmacist's mates. School teachers operate tanks. Writing men turn into navigators. Woodsmen become lecturers.

Longsh.o.r.emen specialize in tactics. And all goes well.

Then when it is all over, and everyone gets back in his well-worn groove, the social scientists explain that these miracles occurred because under the stimulus of great fear and excitement which attends a period of national emergency, individuals will sublimate their main drives, and adjust temporarily to what would be otherwise an onerous personal difficulty. Sheer poppyc.o.c.k! Normal men do not feel pressed by fear simply because a state of war exists; their chief emotions change scarcely at all. These transformations occur only because the man had the potential all along, and with someone backing him up _and giving him the feeling of success_, his incentives became equal, at least, to anything he had known in his peacetime occupation.

That is the long-and-short of it. If our average man couldn't become a jack of many trades, and a master of several, the United States would never be able to meet a major war emergency.

For these reasons, service concepts of how men should be fitted to jobs do not develop around the simple notion that it is all a matter of putting a square peg in a square hole--which is the one best way to deny the peg any room for expansion. The doctrine is that _men are many sided, that they learn their own powers and likes through experiment, that they are ent.i.tled to find what is best for them, and that having found it, their satisfactions will still derive mainly from intelligent and interested treatment by their superiors_.

Every officer arrives sooner or later at the point where he has a direct hand in the placement of men. By way of preparation for that responsibility he should do two things mainly--learn all that he can from his superiors about its technical aspects, and in his own thinking, concentrate on principles to the exclusion of detail.

The fundamental purpose of all training today is to develop the natural faculties and stimulate the brain of the individual rather than to treat him as a cog which has to be fitted into a great machine.

The true purpose of _all_ rules covering the conduct of warfare and all regulations pertaining to the conduct of its individuals is to bring about order in the fighting machine rather than to strangle the mind of the man who reads them.

Thus in the a.s.signment of men to work within any military organization, no amount of perfection in the a.n.a.lysis of skills and apt.i.tudes can compensate for carelessness in their subsequent administration. The uniformed ranks are not mechanics, storekeepers and clerks primarily, but fighting men. This makes a difference. The optimum over-all results do not come from the care exercised in seeing that every man is placed at exactly the right job but from the concern taken that in whatever job he fills, he will feel that he is supported and that his efforts are appreciated. There is scarcely a good man who has served long within the profession without filling a half-dozen roles requiring vastly different skills. And looking back, what would the average one say about it? Not that he was happiest where the nature of the task best suited his hand, but happiest where his relations with his superiors gave him the greatest sense of accomplishment.

That is the human nature of the equation. We can let the economist argue that what a man puts into a job is largely dependent on what he takes out of it. And we can let the philosopher answer him that the fault in his proposition is that he has turned it the wrong way 'round. Regardless of which man has put the cart before the horse, there are two basic truths which outweigh the merits of the argument.

First. _All human progress has come of the willingness of a man at a particular time to undertake a job which no one had ever done before._

Second. _The main reward of any job is the knowledge that worthwhile work has been accomplished._

This last may sound like a corny maxim, but it's true. The reason maxims become corny is because they're true.

Despite all of the present-day emphasis on paycheck security as the mainspring of human action, the far stronger force which moves man as a social being is his desire for a secure place in the respect and affections of his a.s.sociates, including his chief or his employer.

Gary Cooper, playing in "The Cowboy and the Lady," used the line, "I aims, ma'm, to be high-regarded." Except for the few wrong-headed people, he was speaking for the whole human family.

The man who can get along without wanting or needing words of approval from other people is fit for a cell by himself, either padded or barred.

Loyalty in the ma.s.ses of men waxes strong in the degree that they are made to believe that real importance is attached to their work and to their ability to think about their work. It weakens at every point where they consider that there is a negative respect for their intelligence; the dignity in any work is not inherent in the job itself but in the att.i.tude of others toward it. Cabinet ministers, college presidents and industrial magnates will quit their jobs when they feel they no longer have the confidence of those to whom they are responsible. That experience is as demoralizing to great men as to the mine-run. Equally, the feeling of compensation which comes with any token of recognition is one of those touches of human nature which make all men akin. If men of genius and good works did not find n.o.bel prizes and honorary college degrees highly gratifying, this custom would have faded long ago. It is as rewarding to them to be called good at their job as it was to the New Jersey street sweeper who pushed his broom so diligently that he swept halfway into the next town before discovering his mistake.

The far inferences of these things should be reasonably clear to every officer of the fighting establishment. It makes little difference whether a man is digging a ditch or is working up a loading table for an invasion: what he thinks about his work will depend in large measure upon the att.i.tude of his superiors. He will develop no great conviction about what he is doing except as it is transmitted to him.

_The fundamental cause of any breakdown of morale and discipline within the armed service usually comes of this, that a commander or his subordinates transgress by treating men as if they were children or serfs instead of showing respect for their adulthood._

The requirements of modern war are such that we certainly do not want to turn out one man exactly like another, or turn the majority into mechanical men, capable of one set function. But the rule applies to officers as well as men. The greater freedom which is needed has nothing to do with social behavior or privilege. It is the freedom to think boldly and originally for the common good, for, to quote Kant again: "What one learns the most fixedly and remembers the best is what one learns more or less by oneself."

Thus in the matter of sizing up men, judging of their capacities and trying to get them rightly placed, the need is not a formula, since no formula will work. It is only by keeping principles uppermost in our thoughts that the greatest measure of common sense will prevail in our actions. That is what is needed, rather than clairvoyant powers, or a master's degree in psychology, if the service officer is to handle personnel efficiently. There are no great wizards in this field: there are only men who know more about the human nature of the problem than others because they have had a zest for meeting humanity and have built a text out of what others have told them.

The job begins by the search for data on the individual--all of the data that may be obtained. It goes on from that to sitting down with the subject, getting him to open up and talk freely about himself, what he has done, what he would like to do with his life, and his reasons for so feeling, et cetera. But the information from all sources has to be balanced against one's impression of the outer man, not just what he says but how he talks, the degree of his attentiveness, his bearing, his eye, his self-control. The decision is made on the basis of all these reckonings. This is common sense in action, and the only alternatives to it are to act upon a hunch or purely emotional grounds; one might, with better reason, determine another man's fortune by the flip of a coin.

Let's see briefly how the method works out in practice.

If the record shows that a man is a bad speller, careless about punctuation, not interested in writing, non-experienced at clerks.h.i.+p, and something of a rough diamond in his nature, he would be a bad bet for the administrative side, or in supply work, or in a communications role, though with a little polis.h.i.+ng, and provided that he seems self-a.s.sured and is what we would call a "likeable" man, he might become a capital leader of a tactical group.

On the other hand, the man who says he had tried in vain to develop a manual skill, but has always been clumsy with his hands, and is supported in what he says by the records of his service, isn't necessarily excluded from becoming a good weapons or demolitions man, if he seems strong in body and nerve, though he would hardly do for a mechanic's berth, or a carpenter's a.s.sistant or as a radio repairman.

Weapons and demolitions require strength, carefulness and good sense rather than great dexterity.

Take the man who is uncommunicative, or morose or unusually shy. From the day that he starts his service, his superiors should do their best to help him to change his ways; these ingrown men are roadblocks to group cooperation. But if he does not pick up and become outgiving, he hasn't the quality of a junior leader and there is no point in wasting s.p.a.ce by sending him to any school or course out of which it would be expected that duties as an instructor would devolve upon him.

However, there is one word of extreme caution on this point. For as long as 6 months after entering service, some men are under abnormal constraint because they are in a new element, and feel a little frightened inside. Whether this is the case is to be judged best by getting full information on the man. If the record shows that he had led his cla.s.s in college, managed an athletic team, headed a debating team in high school, been the main wheel in a boy's club or a Scout troop, or led any kind of group, this is to be taken as a sign that the potential is there and that he is a sleeper. The most common error made in the services is that we are p.r.o.ne to underscore that a man was a lieutenant in a cadet company while taking no note of the file who had greater prestige in other activities because of his natural qualities as a leader.

These are only a few average samples of personnel handling, and of elementary reasoning. As Mother Goose might say, if the list had been longer, the case still wouldn't have been stronger. Far more profitably, we can dig a little deeper into the subject of principles.

In two senses, every decision as to the placing of men in the armed service is a moral decision, and therein it differs from average civilian responsibility. What is best for the man has always to be measured against the ultimate security and fighting objects of the establishment.

For example, it is dead wrong, even in time of peace, to commit tactical leaders.h.i.+p to the hands of the man whose moral force clearly falls short of what is required on the field of war, no matter how congenial he may be. And it is just as wrong to let a blabbermouth work his way into security channels, even though the hour is such that he can do no immediate harm.

What importance should be attached to a man's estimate of his own capabilities? It is always pertinent, but it is by no means decisive.

This is so for two reasons, the first being that the majority of men tend to over-sell themselves on the thing they like to do, and the second, that very few men know their own dimensions. Almost consciously, men resist the thing that they do not know, because of premonitory fears of failure. When the Armored Force School was first organized in 1941, a private from a unit stationed in Georgia was arbitrarily a.s.signed to take the radio course. He protested, saying that he did not like anything about the field and therefore had no talent for it. But his commander sent him along. Within 1 week after arriving at Fort Knox, he was operating at a faster rate than any man in the history of the Army. Every service could tell stories of this kind; they are not miracles; they are regular features of the daily show.

At the same time, the man who volunteers for a particular line of duty--especially if it is a hard duty--already has one mark in his favor. The fact that he wants to do it is one-half of success. Before turning him down, there must be a substantially clear showing that he lacks the main qualifications. It must be a _compelling_ reason, rather than the overweening excuse that it is more convenient to keep him where he is. In any case, he should be thanked for coming forward, and earmarked as a good prospect for the next likely opening.

There is a slack saying in the services that "the good man never volunteers." That is an outright canard. The best men still do.

In job placement, mistakes are inevitable. Any authority in this work will say so. Every experienced man who has had conspicuous success in picking the right men, and in getting scores of individuals started up the right ladder, will also shudder a little as he recalls his particularly atrocious blunders. Outward appearances are so greatly deceiving! The prior estimates placed on men are so frequently highly colored or outright dishonest!

As to the making of mistakes, it is just not enough to comment that they have value, provided one has sufficient breadth to learn from hard experience. What is vastly more important is that the mistake, once made, will not be needlessly compounded. That is a normal, human temptation. The att.i.tude, "I don't care if he is a chump; he's my chump," has nothing in its favor. Yet it becomes a point of pride in some men that they will not admit their judgments are fallible.

Consequently, having chosen the wrong man for a given responsibility, they will sustain him there, come h.e.l.l or high water, rather than make public acknowledgement of error.

With what result? Mainly this, that for the sake of the point, they win, with it, the contempt of their other subordinates. For there is something very childish about this form of weakness, though it is a failing not unknown in many men otherwise qualified for high responsibility. To put it plainly, _no man_ has the moral right to suffer this upon any organization he is professing to serve.

The advice of one's subordinates, as to the placement and promotion of men with whom they are in close contact, is not to be followed undeviatingly. Men play favorites: they will sometimes back an individual for no better reason than that they "like the guy." Too, each small group leader, even the best one, will work to advance the interests of his own men, because so doing is part of his own buildup.

Unless decisions are made from a central point of view, the subordinate who talks the most convincingly will get an extra portion of favor for his men, and jealousies will wrack the organization.

There is one last point. No officer can progress in fitting men to jobs except as he becomes better informed about job requirements. This is an essential part of his education. There is no administrative technique which is separate and apart from knowledge of how basic work is performed in the fields which have to be administered. A great many officers resist this truth, but it is nonetheless valid.

What is eternally surprising in the fighting services is how the aggressive questing for knowledge continues to pay large dividends, and leads, in the average case, to a general forgiveness of one's little sins and vices.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

AMERICANS IN COMBAT

The command and control of men in combat _can_ be mastered by the junior leaders of American forces short of actual experience under enemy fire.

It is altogether possible for a young officer his first time in battle to be in total possession of his faculties and moving by instinct to do the right thing, provided that he has made the most of his training opportunities.

Exercise in the maneuvering of men is only an elementary introduction to this educational process. The basic requirement is a continuing study, first of the nature of men, second of the techniques which produce unified action, and last, of the history of past operations, which are covered by an abundant literature.

Provided always that this collateral study is sedulously carried forward by the individual officer, at least 90 percent of all that is given him during the training period becomes applicable to his personal action and his power to lead other men when under fire.

Each service has its separate character. The fighting problem of each differs in some measure from those of all others. In the nature of things, the task of successfully leading men in battle is partly conditioned by the unique character and mission of each service.

It would therefore be gratuitous, and indeed impossible, to attempt to outline a doctrine which would be of general application, stipulating methods, techniques, etc., which would apply to all Americans in combat, no matter in what element they engaged.