ESPRIT

To proceed toward a better understanding of esprit and its part in the building of military forces, it is necessary to look beyond the organization and consider the man.

The life of any socially upright individual is organized around only a few basic loyalties and the degree of satisfaction which he derives from existence can usually be measured in terms of his service to them. He is loyal first to himself, for failing that, he fails in loyalty to all else. If he cannot acquit himself ably for his own sake, he cannot do honor to anything less personal. Along with loyalty to self come loyalty to our beliefs, loyalty to family, loyalty to country, loyalty to friends, and loyalty to humanity in general.

Stated as a factual and not as an ideal matter, the interesting and important thing that happens to a man when he enters military service is that, the moment he takes the oath, loyalty to the arms he bears ranks first on the list, above all other loyalties. To get ahead, to serve himself well, he must persevere in ways that are most useful to the organization. If the circumstances of his family are reduced because of this new loyalty, his means of compensating them is to strive for such honor as may come to him through service to the United States. In his life, service to country is no longer a beautiful abstraction; it is the sternly concrete and unremitting obligation of service to the regiment, the group or the ship’s company. He parts with old friends and finds new ones.

In this radical reorientation of the individual life and the arbitrary imposition of a commanding loyalty is to be found the key to the esprit of any military organization. Too long esprit has been regarded as something bequeathed to the unit by the dead hand of tradition. There is nothing moribund about it. It is a dynamic and vital substance conducted to the living by the living. We can banish from our minds the idea that esprit is what the regiment, the ship or the company gives the man because of some spark which its past deeds and the legends thereof have lighted in him. Esprit, at all times, is what the unit gives the man, in terms of spiritual force translated into constructive good. Considering what the unit has taken from him initially, its obligation is great indeed.

To see this clearly, we need to look once again at what happens to the individual when he puts on the uniform. The basis of his life changes in broad and fundamental ways. His legal status is changed; the extent and intensity of his obligations are magnified. He puts aside the banner of individualism for that of obedience. Yet in the words of Chester Barnard: “Scarcely a man, I think, who has felt the annihilation of his personality in some organized system, has not also felt that the same system belonged to him because of his own free will he chose to make it so.”

To that must be added the further thought that while the military service is antecedent to the individual who enters it, that individual is also in a sense antecedent to the service. He becomes a factor in the equation which expresses the achievement or the failure of the service in its particular mission. The thoughtful commander will give careful regard to that relationship. One man cannot make or break an Army or a Navy, but he can help break it, since each service at all times derives its nature from the quality and wills of its men. General Harbord, in The American Army in France, expressed it this way: “Discipline and morale influence the inarticulate vote that is constantly taken by masses of men when the order comes to move forward a variant of the crowd psychology that inclines it to follow a leader. But the Army does not move forward until the motion has carried. ‘Unanimous consent’ only follows cooperation between the individual men in ranks.”

But we can go one step beyond General Harbord’s suggestion that the multiplied individual acceptance of a command alone gives that command authority. It is not less true that the multiplied rejection of a command nullifies it. In other words, authority is the creature rather than the creator of discipline and obedience. In the more recent experiences of our arms, under the stresses of battle, there are many instances of troops being given orders, and refusing to obey. In every case, the root cause was lack of confidence in the wisdom and ability of those who led. When a determining number of men in ranks have lost the will to obey, their erstwhile leader has ipso facto lost the capacity to command. In the final analysis, authority is contingent upon respect far more truly than respect is founded upon authority. In the words of Col. G. F. R. Henderson: “It is the leader who reckons with the human nature of his troops, and of the enemy, rather than with their mere physical attributes, numbers, armament and the like, who can hope to follow in Napoleon’s footsteps.”

Esprit then is the product of a thriving mutual confidence between the leader and the led, founded on the faith that together they possess a superior quality and capability. The failure of the spirit of any military organization is less frequently due to what men have forgotten than to what they can’t forget. No “imperishable record” of past greatness can make men serve with any greater vigor if they are being served badly. Nor can it sustain the fighting will of the organization so much as one mil beyond the radius within which living associations enable men to think great thoughts and act with nobility toward their fellows. Unless the organization’s past conveys to its officers a sense of having been especially chosen, and unless they respond to this trust by developing a complete sense of duty toward their men, the old battle records might as well be poured down the drain, since they will not rally a single man in the hour of danger. Said Col. LeRoy P. Hunt in a mimeographed notice to his troops just prior to the Guadalcanal landing: “We are meeting a tough and wily opponent but he is not sufficiently tough and wily to overcome us because We Are Marines.” (The capitals are Hunt’s.)

Personality plays a part in the ability to command, both under training conditions and under fire. But though a man be a veritable John Paul Jones or Mad Anthony Wayne in the time of action, his hardihood will never wholly undo any prior neglect of his men. While men may be rallied for a short space by someone setting an example of great courage, they can be kept in line under conditions of increasing stress and mounting hardship only when loyalty is based upon a respect which the commander has won by consistently thoughtful regard for the welfare and rights of his men, and a correct measuring of his responsibility to them.

There are a few governing principles, and before considering their application in detail we should think first about the file. He is a Man; he expects to be treated as an adult, not as a schoolboy. He has rights; they must be made known to him and thereafter respected. He has ambition; it must be stirred. He has a belief in fair play; it must be honored. He has the need of comradeship; it must be supplied. He has imagination; it must be stimulated. He has a sense of personal dignity; it must not be broken down. He has pride; it can be satisfied and made the bedrock of his character once he gains assurance that he is playing a useful and respected part in a superior and successful organization. To give men working as a group the feeling of great accomplishment together is the acme of inspired leadership.

In the degree that the disciplinary method and the training procedure of the military service, and the common sense of his superiors, combine to nourish these satisfactions in the individual, esprit de corps comes into being and furthers his advance in the practice of arms and his potential usefulness as a fighting man. He becomes loyal because loyalty has been given to him. He learns to serve an ideal because an ideal has served him. For it is to be remembered that it is always the Army, the Navy or the nation that disengages the man from his old moorings, but it is the regiment or the ship’s company which gives him a fresh anchor and enables him to feel secure again. The service cancels out the man’s old life; the unit gives him a fresh start in a new environment, which may prove salutary or utterly damnable, as the man and the unit together make it. Where there is enlightened leading, neither can fail the other. The majority of men, so long as they are treated fairly and feel that good use is being made of their powers, will rejoice in a new sense of unity with new companions even more than they will mind the increased separation from their old associations. The ability to adjust is itself a landmark of success in the life of a normal individual.

This is the primary gift of the organization to the man and the primary advantage of its relationship to him. Once it has given the file a sense of belonging, it restores his balance. It is this feeling of possession which is the beginning of true esprit. Without it, the man becomes a derelict. Indeed, we may go so far as to say that the man who lacks it, and does not aspire to it, will almost invariably be unsuited for combat or any military responsibility of consequence, not because he is disrespectful of tradition, but because he is a social outcast with no sense of duty to his fellows.

Referring once again to the list of satisfactions due the man, it will be noted that they differ little, if at all, from the demands of his spirit before he has put on the uniform. But there should be marked also the vital difference that whereas a complex of social and economic forces and of totally disconnected influences contribute to his outlook so long as he is a civilian, the measure of his satisfactions is almost wholly in the hands of the organization once he has raised his right hand and taken the oath of military service to country. The condition of his health, the amount of his pay, the organization of his leisure time, his diet, his sleeping habits, his sex problems, even the manner in which he shaves and wears his hair, are matters of organizational concern. Within the new company, he may either attain greatly, or miserably fail. It should speak to him with the voice of Stentor, the bronze voice of 10,000 men meaning the thousand or so who are still with the ship, the group or the regiment, and the thousands who are in the shadows but who once served it well, thereby inspiring those who follow to give an extra portion of service to their fellows. Unless tradition has that effect upon the living, it will not produce esprit, but military “mossbackism.”

What does this imply in terms of practical application? Simply that the custodianship of esprit must ever be in the hands of the officer corps. When the heart of the organization is sound, officership is able to see its own reflection in the eyes of the enlisted man. For this simple reason: insofar as his ability to mould the character of troops is concerned, the qualifying test of the leader is the judgment placed upon his military abilities by those who serve under him. If they do not deem him fit to command, he cannot train them to obey. But if they see in one man directly over them a steady example, the strongest of their number will model after him, instead of sagging because of weakness elsewhere in the command structure.

This point is irreducible. Though an officer have absolute confidence in himself, and though he have an instinct amounting to genius for the material things of war, these otherwise considerable gifts will avail him little or nothing if his manner is such that his troops remain unconvinced of his capacity and doubtful of his power to maintain command in periods of extreme trial. He will fail because he has not sufficiently regarded the LAW OF PERSONALITY LOOKS, ACTIONS, WORDS.

Among military men, there has been much mistaken praise for the virtue of “mechanical obedience.” There is no such thing. Men think in their smallest actions; if this were not so, it would not be possible to lead them. What has been blindly termed “mechanical response” requires perhaps a higher concentration of will than any other type of action, and hence of thought itself, since the two are inseparable. The forces in which this characteristic was outstanding have been those which were led with the highest degree of intelligence and of understanding of human nature. For unity of spirit and of action, which is the essence of esprit de corps, is of all military miracles the most difficult to achieve.

Yet its abiding principle is simple. It comes of integrity and clarification of purpose. The able officer is not a Saul waiting for the light to strike him on the Damascus road, but a Paul having a clear understanding that unless the trumpet give forth a certain sound at all times, none shall prepare himself for the battle.

Given such officers, the organization comes to possess a sense of unity and of fraternity in its routine existence which expresses itself as the force of cohesion in the hour when all ranks are confronted by a common danger. It is not because of mutual enthusiasm for an honored name but because of mutual confidence in one another that the ranks of old regiments or the bluejackets serving a ship with a great tradition are able to convert their esprit into battle discipline. Under stress they move and act together because they have imbibed the great lesson, and experience has made its application almost instinctive, that only in unity is there safety. They believe that they can trust their comrades and commanders as they would trust their next of kin. They have learned the necessity of mutual support and a common danger serves but to bind the ranks closer.

But the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong. The newest unit one born only yesterday is as susceptible to a vaulting esprit as any which traces its founding to the beginnings of the Republic. Led by those who themselves are capable of great endeavour, who are quick to encourage and slow to disparage, and are ever ready to make due acknowledgment of worthy effort and to let men know wherein they are forging ahead, any military organization serving our flag will come to count this among its strengths.

There are no tricks to the building of esprit. Its techniques are those which come naturally in the course of stimulating the interest of ranks in all of the great fundamentals of the military profession, rather than selling short their intelligence, and taking it for granted that they want nothing beyond the routine of work, liberty, mess call, and payday.

But there is one pitfall. Toward the growth of esprit, the attitude, “My organization first, and the rest nowhere,” never pays off. It begins with the idea, “The service first, and my unit the best in the service.” In all human enterprise, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The citizen who thinks most deeply about his country will be the first to share the burdens of his community and neighborhood. The man who feels the greatest affection for the service in which he bears arms will work most loyally to make his own unit know a rightful pride in its own worth. Among all of the military services from out of the present and past, none has been more faithful to this principle than the United States Marine Corps. Among its members, being a Marine is the thing that counts mainly; after that comes service to the Regiment or Battalion. Even the other services marvel at the result. Though they take due pride in their own virtues and accomplishments, they still regard the esprit of the Marine with admiration, and more than a little envy. What is the secret? Perhaps it is this, that the Corps emphasizes the rugged outlet for men’s energies, and never permits its members to forget that the example of courage is their most precious heritage.

Six years after his defeat at Wake Island, the things that remained uppermost in the mind of Col. James P. S. Devereux, as he put together the story of the most tragic hours of his life, were the heroisms of the individuals who had been trained in a tradition to which he had fully committed his own purpose. One incident of that day, typical of many, is best related in Devereux’s own words.

“Master Sergeant J. Paszkiewicz, a Marine for 20 years, was caught in the first blast at the airfield. Bombs shattered his right leg. He started crawling off, dragging his smashed leg limply behind him. The second wave of bombers came in. Paszkiewicz reached a little pile of wreckage and found what he wanted, a piece of wood. With a little fixing it could serve as a crutch. The bombs were dropping again. Paszkiewicz started hobbling off. He seemed to be going the wrong way. Somebody tried to help him, but he wasn’t having any. Lieutenant David D. Kliewer saw him stumbling along on his makeshift crutch, giving first aid to the wounded or trying to make a dying man a little easier.”

Could a man give that much, and could his superior, Devereux, have remembered it so vividly from amid his own personal trials, unless both had been inspired by the traditions of the Corps?