KNOWLEDGE OF YOUR MEN

An admiring contemporary spoke of Paul G. Hoffman, the director of the European Recovery Program, as “the kind of man who if tossed through the air would always pick out the right trapeze.”

Within any military organization, there is always a number of such men, enlisted and commissioned. They know how and where to take hold, even in the face of a totally unexpected and unnerving situation, and they have what amounts to an instinct for doing the right thing in a decisive moment.

If it were not so, no captain of the line would ever be able to manage a company in battle, and no submarine commander would be able to cope with an otherwise overwhelming danger. These men are the foundation of unit integrity. The successful life of organization depends upon husbanding, and helping them to cultivate, their own powers, which means that their initiative and vigor must never be chilled by supercilious advice and thoughtless correction.

They will go ahead and act responsibly on their own when given the confidence, and if they want it, the friendship, of their commander. But they cannot be treated like little children. The lash will ruin them and the curb will merely subdue that which needs to be brought forward. As in handling a horse with a good temper and a good mouth, nothing more is needed than that gentle touch of the rein which signals that things are under control.

From where the executive sits, the main secret of building strength within organization comes of identifying such men, and of associating one’s authority with theirs, so it is unmistakable in whose name they are speaking and acting. One of the acid tests of qualification in officership is the ability properly to delegate authority, to put it in the best hands, and thereafter to uphold them. If an officer cannot do that, and if he is mistrustful of all power save his own, he cannot command in peace, and when he goes into battle, his unit strength will fragment like an exploding bomb, and the parts will not be rewelded until some stronger character takes hold.

Command is not a prerogative, but rather a responsibility to be shared with all who are capable of filling up the spaces in orders and of carrying out that which is not openly expressed though it may be understood. Admittedly, it is not easy for a young officer, who by reason of his youth is not infrequently lacking in self-assurance and in the confidence that he can command respect, to understand that as a commander he can grow in strength in the measure that he succeeds in developing the latent strength of his subordinates. But if he stubbornly resists this premise as he goes along in the service, his personal resources will never become equal to the strain which will be imposed upon him, come a war emergency. The power to command resides largely in the ability to see when a proper initiative is being exercised and in giving it moral encouragement. When an officer feels that way about his job and his men, he will not be ready to question any action by a junior which might be narrowly construed as an encroachment upon his own authority. Of this last evil come the restraints which reduce men to automatons, giving only that which is asked, or less, according to the pressing of a button.

There are other men who have as sound a potential as these already-made leaders, but lack the initial confidence because they were not constructively handled in earlier years. They require somewhat more personal attention, for the simple reason that more frequent contact with their superiors, words of approval and advice as needed, will do more than all else to put bottom under them. They must be encouraged to think for themselves as well as to obey orders, to organize as well as to respond, if they are to become part of the solution, rather than remaining part of the problem, of command. If left wholly to their own devices, or to the ministrations of less thoughtful subordinates, they will remain in that majority which moves only when told. It takes no more work, though it does require imagination, to awaken the energies of such men by appealing to their intelligence and their self-interest, than to nauseate them with dull theory, and to cramp them by depriving them of responsibility.

Careful missionary work among these “sleepers” is as productive as spading the ground, and sprinkling a garden patch. When an officer takes hold in a new unit, his main chance of making it better than it was comes of looking for the overlooked men. He uses his hand to give them a firm lift upward, but it will not be available for that purpose if he spends any of his time tugging at men who are already on their feet and moving in the right general direction.

In the words of a distinguished armored commander in our forces: “To the military leader, men are tools. He is successful to the extent that he can get the men to work for him. Ordinarily, and on their own initiative, people run on only 35 percent capacity. The success of a leader comes of tapping the other 65 percent.” This is a pretty seasoned judgment on men in the mass, taking them as they come, the mobile men, the slow starters, the indifferent and the shiftless. Almost every man wants to do what is expected of him. When he does not do so, it is usually because his instructions have been so doubtful as to befog him or give him a reasonable excuse for noncompliance. This view of things is the only tenable attitude an officer or enlisted leader can take toward his subordinates. He will recognize the exceptions, and if he does not then take appropriate action, it is only because he is himself shiftless and is compassionate toward others of his own fraternity.

It is the military habit to “plow deep in broken drums and shoot crap for old crowns,” as the poet, Carl Sandburg, put it. As much as any other profession, and even possibly a little more, we take pride in the pat solution, and in proof that long-applied processes amply meet the test of newly unfolding experience. But despite all the jests about the Gettysburg Map, we wouldn’t know where we’re going if we couldn’t be reasonably sure of where we’ve been.

Therefore, it is as well to say now that from all of the careful searching made by the armed services as to the fighting characteristics of Americans during World War II, not a great deal was learned in addition to what was already well known, or surmised. The criteria that had been used in the prior system of selection proved to be substantially correct; at least, if it had faults, they were innate in the complex problem of weighing human material, and were beyond correction by any rule of thumb or judgment. Men were chosen to lead because of personality, intelligence at their work, response to orders, ability to lead in fatigues or in the social affairs of organization, and disciplinary record. In combat these same men carried 95 percent of the load of responsibility and provided the dynamic for the attack. But in every unit, there was almost invariably a small sprinkling of individuals, who having shown no prior ability when measured by the customary yardsticks of courtesy, discipline and work, became strong and vital in any situation calling for heroic action. They could fight, they could lead, they knew what should be done, they could persuade other men to rally around, and by these things, they could command instantly the previously withheld respect of their superiors.

Neither the scientific nor the military mind has yet been able to provide the answer as to how men of this type so indispensable to the fighting establishment in the thing that matters most, though lacking in strong surface characteristics can be detected beforehand, and conserved, instead of being wasted possibly in a labor or housekeeping organization.

All concerned recognize the extreme importance of the problem, and would like to do something about it. What is as yet not even vaguely seen is the large possibility that the problem might be self-liquidating if all junior officers became more concerned with learning all they could about the private character and personal nature of their subordinates. This does not mean invading their privacy; but it implies giving every man a fair chance to open up and to talk freely, without fear of contempt. It means studying the background of a man even more carefully than one would read a map, looking for the key to command of the terrain. These are usually repressed men; many of the foreign-born are to be found among them; they cover up because of pride, but they are not afraid of physical danger. Once any man, and particularly a superior, gets through the outer shell, he may have the effect of a catalyst on what is happening inside. If such men did not have basic loyalty, they would never fight. When at last they give their loyalty to an individual, they are usually his to command and will go through hell for him.

There was an Oklahoma miner named Alvin Wimberley in 90th Division during World War I. On the drill field, he could do nothing correctly. He couldn’t step off on the left foot; he would frequently drop his piece while trying to do right shoulder. Solely because his case was unfathomable, his platoon leader asked that he be taken to France with the unit instead of separated with the culls. At the front, Wimberley immediately took the lead in every detail of a dangerous sort, such as exploding a mine field, or hunting for traps and snares. His nerve was inexhaustible; his judgment sure. There was, after all, a simple key to the mystery. Wimberley had led a solitary life as a dynamiter, deep under ground. He was frightened of men, but danger was his element. When he saw other men recoil at the thing which bothered him not at all, he realized that he was the big man, though he only stood 5 feet 3 inches in issue socks.

To know men, it is not necessary to wet-nurse them, and no officer can make a sorrier mistake than to take the overly nice, worrying attitude toward them. This, after all, is simply the rule of the well-bred man, rather than an item peculiar to the code of the military officer. But it is a little less becoming in a service officer than in anyone else, because, when a man puts on fighting clothes in the name of his country, it is an insult to treat him as if he were a juvenile.

In any situation where men need to know one another better, someone has to break the ice. Where does the main responsibility lie within a military unit? True enough, the junior has to salute first, and in some services is supposed to say, “Good morning!” first, though beating a man to the draw with a greeting is one way to win him.

However, the main point is this: unless an officer has himself been an enlisted man, it is almost impossible for him to know how formidable, and even forbidding, rank at first seems to the eyes of the man down under, even though he would be loath to say so.

Many recruits have such a mistaken hearsay impression of the United States military system, that it is for them a cause for astonishment that any officer enjoys free discussion with them. They feel at first that there is a barrier there which only the officer is entitled to cross; it takes them a little while to learn better.

But in the continuing relationship, it is the habit of the average well-disciplined enlisted man to remain reticent, and talk only on official matters, unless the officer takes the lead in such way as to invite general conversation. For that matter, the burden is the same anywhere in the service in relations between a senior officer and his subordinates, and the former must take the lead if he expects to really know his men.

Many newly joined officers believe, altogether mistakenly, that there is some strange taboo against talking to men except in line of duty, and that if caught at it, it will be considered infra dig. There is always the hope that they will remain around long enough to learn better.