KNOWING YOUR JOB

In one of his little-known passages, Robert Louis Stevenson did the perfect portrait of the man who finally failed at everything, because he just never learned how to take hold of his work.

It goes like this: “His career was one of unbroken shame. He did not drink. He was exactly honest. He was never rude to his employers. Yet he was everywhere discharged. Bringing no interest to his duties, he brought no attention. His day was a tissue of things neglected and things done amiss. And from place to place and from town to town he carried the character of one thoroughly incompetent.”

No one would say that the picture is overdrawn or that the poor devil got other than his just deserts. In the summing up, the final judgment that is put on a man by other men depends on his value as a working hand. If he has other serious personality faults, they will be overlooked as somewhat beside the point, provided that he levels with his job. But if he embodies all of the surface virtues, and is shiftless, any superior with sense will mark him for the discard, and his coworkers will breathe a sigh of relief when he has gone on his way.

Within the armed services, the tone of grudging admiration is never missing from such altogether familiar comments as:

“He’s a queer duck but he has what it takes.”

“We can’t get along with him but we can’t get along without him.”

By such words, we unconsciously yield the palm to the man who, whatever his other shortcomings, excels us in application to duty. One of the worst rascals ever raised in Britain said that while he wouldn’t give a farthing for virtue, he would pay 10,000 pounds for character, because, possessing it, he would be able to sell it for much more.

Is it possible then that men of thoroughly good intentions will neglect the one value which a knave says is worth prizing? Not only is it possible; it happens every day! We see officers of the armed establishment who, thinking themselves employed all day, would still, if they had to make an honest reckoning of the score after tattoo sounded, be compelled to say that they had done exactly nothing. Lacking some compelling duty, they may have read several hours mechanically, neither studying what was said, making notes, nor reflecting on the value and accuracy of it. Such papers as they signed, they had glanced over perfunctorily. If any subordinate approached them with some small matter, they reacted by trying to get rid of him as quickly as possible. When they entered the company of their fellow officers, they partook of it as little as they could, not bothering to enter vigorous conversation, failing to make any note of the character and manner of their associates, and learning not at all from the words that were said.

It is all good enough, and yet strangely it is neither good nor is it enough. That idea of what life in the officer corps is meant to be simply cannot stand up under the pressures of modern operations. True enough, assignments do not all have the same level of work requirement, and one is sometimes handed a wide open opportunity to goldbrick. But taking advantage of it is like the dope habit; the more that it is sniffed, the greater becomes the craving of the nervous system. It is harder to throw off sloth than to keep it from climbing onto one’s back in the first place. And finally, the truth of the matter is this, that there is never any assignment given an armed service officer which entitles him to waste any of the working hours of his day. Though he be marking time in a casual depot or replacement center, there still awaits his attention the entire range of military studies, through which he can advance his own abilities. And if he is not of a mind for tactics, map-reading, military law, and training doctrine, it still follows that the study of applied psychology, English composition, economic geography and foreign languages will further his career. Just as a rough approximation, any officer’s work week should comprise about 50 percent execution and the other half study, if he is to make the best use of his force. The woods are loaded with go-getters who claim they are men of action and therefore have no need of books; that they are “the flat-bottoms who can ride over the dew.” Though they are a little breezier, they are of the same bone and marrow as the drone who is always counseling halfspeed. “Don’t sweat; just get by; extra work means short life; you’re better off if they don’t notice you.” This chant can be heard by anyone who cares to listen; it’s the old American invitation to mediocrity. But while mediocre, as commonly used, means “indifferent, ordinary,” it also has in old English the odd meaning “a young monk who was excused from performing part of a monk’s duties.” And that, too, fits. It is always worthwhile to ask a few very senior officers what they think of these jokers who refuse to study. They will say that the higher up you go, the more study you have to make up, because of what you missed somewhere along the line. They will say also that when they got to flag or star rank, things didn’t ease off a bit.

But not all wisdom is to be found in books, and at no time is this more true than when one is breaking in. What is expected of the novice in any field is that he will ask questions, smart ones if possible, but if not, then questions of all kinds until he learns that there is no such item as reveille oil and that skirmish line doesn’t come on spools. For on one point there should be no mistake: the newly appointed officer is a novice. Though many things go with the commission, the assumption that he is all wise to all ways of the service, and will automatically fit into his element as neatly as a loaded ship settles down to its Plimsoll’s mark, just isn’t among them. Within the services, seniors are rarely, if ever, either patronizing or intolerant of the greenness of a new officer; they just stand ready to help him. And if he doesn’t permit them to have that chance, because he would rather pretend that he knows it all, they will gradually become bored with him because of the manifest proof that he knows so very little.

Wisdom begins at the point of understanding that there is nothing shameful about ignorance; it is shameful only when a man would rather remain in that state than cultivate other men’s knowledge. There is never any reason why he should hesitate, for it is better to be embarrassed from seeking counsel than to be found short for not having sought it.

In one of the toughest trades in the world of affairs that of the foreign correspondent initial dependence upon one’s professional colleagues is the only certain stepping stone to success. A man arrives in strange country feeling very much alone. His credentials lack the weight they had at home. The prestige of his newspaper counts for almost nothing. Even the name of his home city stirs little respect. The people, their ways, their approaches and their taboos are foreign to him. This sweeping environmental change is crushing to the spirit; it would impose an almost insuperable moral handicap if the newcomer could not go to other Americans who have already worked the ground, ask them how the thing is done, seek their advice about dealing with the main personalities, learn from them about the facilities for processing copy, and soak up everything they have to say about private and professional procedures. Then as the ropes grow gradually familiar in the grasp, confidence and nervous energy come flooding back.

Surely there is a close parallel between this experience and that of the journeyman moving from the familiar soil of civilianism to the terra incognita of military life. But there is also the marked difference that everyone he meets can tell him something that he needs to know. More particularly, if he has the ambition to excel as a commander of men, rather than as a technician, then the study of human nature and of individual characteristics within the military crowd become a major part of his training. That is the prime reason why the life of any tactical leader becomes so very interesting, provided he possesses some imagination. Everything is grist for his mill. Moreover, despite the wholesale transformation in the scientific and industrial aspects of war, there has been no revolution in the one thing that counts most. Ardant du Picq’s words, “The heart of man does not change,” are as good now as when he said them in an earlier period of war. Whatever one learns for certain about the nature of man as a fighting animal can be filed for ready reference; the hour will come when it will be useful.

We have emphasized the value of becoming curious, and of asking questions about what one doesn’t know, and have said that even when the questions are a little on the dumb side, it does no harm. But the ice gets very thin at one point. The same question asked over and again, like the same error made more than once, will grate the nerves of any superior. It is the mark of inattention, and the beginning of that “tissue of things neglected and things done amiss” which put Stevenson’s oddball character in the ditch. When an officer lets words go in one ear and out the other like water off a duck’s back, to quote the Dutch janitor, he is chasing rainbows by rubbing fur in the wrong direction.

Ideally, an officer should be able to do the work of any man serving under him. There are even some command situations in which the ideal becomes altogether attainable, and a wholly practicable objective. For it may be said without qualification, that if he not only has this capability, but demonstrates it, so that his men begin to understand that he is thoroughly versed in the work problems which concern them, he can command them in any situation. This is the real bedrock of command capacity, and nothing else so well serves to give an officer an absolutely firm position with all who serve under him. As said elsewhere in this book, within the armed establishment, administration is not of itself a separate art, or a dependable prop to authority. When administrators talk airily of things that they clearly do not understand, they are simply using the whip on the team without having control of the reins.

However, the greater part of military operation in present days is noteworthy for the extreme diversity and complexity of its parts, and instead of becoming more simplified, the trend is toward greater elaboration. It is obviously absurd to expect that any officer could know more about radio repair than his repairman, more about mapping than his cartographical section, more about moving parts than a gunsmith, more about radar than a specialist in electronics and more about cypher than a cryptographer. If the services were to set any such unreasonable standard for the commissioned body, all would shortly move over into the lunatic fringe. Science has worked a few wonders for the military establishment but it hasn’t told us how to produce that kind of man.

Plainly, there must be a somewhat different approach to the question of what kind of knowledge an officer is expected to possess, or the requirement would be unreasonable and unworkable.

The distinction lies in the difference between the power to do a thing well and that of being able to judge when it is well done. A man can say that a book is bad, though not knowing how to write one himself, provided he is a student of literature. Though he has never laid an egg, he can pass fair judgment on an omelette, if he knows a little about cookery, and has sampled many good eggs, and detected a few that were overripe.

“He who lives in a house,” said Aristotle, “is a better judge of it being good or bad than the builder of it. He can say not only these things, but wherein its defects consist. Yet he might be quite unable to cure the chimney, or to draw out a plan for his rooms which would suit him better. Sometimes he can even see where the fault is which caused the mischief, and yet he may not know practically how to remedy it.”

Adjustment to a job, and finally, mastery of it, by a service officer, comes of persistent pursuit of this principle. The main technique is study and constant reexamination of criteria. To take the correct measure of standards of performance, as to the value of the work itself, and as to the abilities of personnel, one must become immersed in knowledge of the nature, and purpose, of all operations. There is no shortcut to this grasp of affairs. The sack is filled bean by bean. Patient application to one thing at one time is the first rule of success; getting on one’s horse and riding off in all directions is the prelude to failure. All specialists like to talk about their work; the interest of any other man is flattering; all men grow in knowledge chiefly by picking other men’s brains. Book study of the subject, specialized courses in the service schools, the instructive comments of one’s superiors, the informed criticism of hands further down the line and the weighing of human experience, at every source and by every recourse, are the means of an informed judgment. It was the scientist, Thomas Huxley who reminded us that science is only “organized common sense.”

Other things being equal, the prospect for any man’s progress is largely determined by his attitude. It is the receptive mind, rather than the oracle, which inspires confidence. General Eisenhower said at one point that, after 40 years, he still thought of himself as a student on all military questions, and that he consciously mistrusted any man who believed he had the full and final answer to problems which by their nature were ever-changing.

But priggishness about knowledge is not more hurtful than is the arbitrary use of it to limit action. To rule by work rather than to work by rules must be the abiding principle in military operations, for finally, when war comes, nothing else will suffice. In peacetime, absolute accountability is required, because dollar economy in operations is a main object. This entails adherence to rigid forms, time-consuming, but still necessary. In many of war’s exigencies, these forms frequently have to be swept aside, to bring victory as quickly as possible and to save human life. In the book, “General Kenney Reports,” that great air commander spoke at one point of a difficulty in one of his combat groups. “It was a lot of hard-working earnest kids, officers and enlisted men, who were doing the best they could under poor living and eating conditions. But their hands were tied by the colonel in command whose passion for paper work effectually stopped the issuing of supplies and the functioning of the place as an air depot should. He told me that he thought ’it was about time these combat units learned how to do their paper work properly.’ I decided that it would be a waste of time to fool with him so I told him to pack up to go home on the next plane.”

Though this is a tragic example of wrong-headedness, it is by no means unique. The profession moves ahead, and national security advances with it, because of men who have the confidence and courage to toss the rule book out the window when it doesn’t fit the situation, and who dare to trust their own decisions and improvise swiftly.

But in all walks of life, this willingness to take hold of the reins firmly is by no means common among men in relatively subordinate positions who can play it safe by falling back on “SOP.”

But there is also a far wider vista than that which is to be viewed only within the services themselves, and its horizons are almost infinite. The American way in warfare utilizes everything within the national system which may be applied to a military purpose toward the increase of training and fighting efficiency. Much of our potential strength lies in our industrial structure, our progress in science, our inventiveness and our educational resources. Toward the end that all of these assets will be given maximum use, and every good idea which can be converted to a military purpose will be in readiness to serve the nation when war comes, there must be a continuing meeting of minds between military leadership and the leaders and experts in these various fields during peace.

That union cannot be perfected, however, unless there is a sufficient number of men on both sides of the table who can think halfway into the field of the man opposite. Just as the civilian expert in electronics, airplane manufacture or motion picture production needs to know more about the military establishment’s problem and requirements if he is to do his part, the service officer with whom he is dealing needs to be informed on industry’s resources, possibilities and limitations if he is to enable the civilian side to do its part well. The same for science. The same for education, and all other backers of the fighting force.

An enlightened Englishman, D. W. Brogan, in a book written during World War II, “The American Character,” gave us this thought: “The American officer must think in terms of material resources, existing but not organized in peacetime and taking much time and thought and experiment by trial and error to make available in wartime. He finds that his best peacetime plans are inadequate for one basic reason: that any plan which in peacetime really tried to draw adequately on American resources would cause its author to be written off as a madman; and in wartime, it would prove to have been inadequate, pessimistic, not allowing enough for the practically limitless resources of the American people limitless once the American people get ready to let them be used. And only war can get them ready for that. The American officer can draw then, but not before, on an experience in economic improvization and in technical adaptation which no other country can equal.”

This is true to the last syllable, and it means in essence that unless the American officer can think of the whole nation as his workshop, and along with his other duties, will apply himself as a student, seeking to understand more and more about the richness and the adaptability of our tremendous resources, neither he nor the country will be relatively ready when war comes.

There is a last point to be made on the matter of attitude. The most resolute opposition to changes in any system usually comes from those who control them. That is universally true, and not peculiar to military systems; but the services are foremost in recognizing that, as a consequence, the encouragement of original thought at the lower levels is essential to over-all progress.

All depends upon the manner. We can ponder the words of William Hazlitt, “A man who shrinks from a collision with his equals or superiors will soon sink below himself; we improve by trying our strength with others, not by showing it off.” They are good so far as they go, but something new should be added. There is a vast difference between contending firmly for ideas that seem progressive when one is reasonably sure of one’s data, and the habit of throwing one’s weight around through a mistaken belief that this of itself manifests an independence of spirit which inspires respect.

Truculence can never win the day. Restraint, tolerance, a sense of humor and of proportion and the force of logic are the marks of the man qualified for intellectual leading. Within the services, even though he has no great rank, there is practically nothing he cannot carry through, if his proposals have the color of reason and propriety, and if he will keep his head, keep his temper, and keep his word.