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.

It is folly to attempt to oversimplify that which is of its nature complex. War cannot be made less intricate by conjuring everyone to return to kindergarten and henceforth use only one-syllable words. No such counsel is here intended. The one thought worth keeping is that the military system, as we know it, will prove far more workable, and its members will each become a stronger link in the chain of force, if all hands work a little more carefully toward the growth of a common awareness of all terminology, all process and all purpose.

Once pronounced, the object also requires to be seen in due proportion. The principle does not entail that a corporal must perforce know everything about operation of a company which concerns his captain, to be happy and efficient in his own job. But it does set forth that he is entitled to have all information which relates to his personal situation, his prospects and his action which it is within his captain’s power to give him. A coxswain is not interchangeable with a fleet admiral. To “bigot” him (make available complete detail of a total plan) on an operation would perhaps produce no better or worse effect than a slight headache. But if he is at sea in both senses of that term with no knowledge of where he is going or of his chances of pulling through, and having been told of what will be expected of him personally at the target, still has no picture of the support which will be grouped around him, he is apt to be as thoroughly miserable and demoralized as were the sailors under Columbus, when sailing on and on, they came to fear that they would override the horizon and go tumbling into space.

Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan wrote of the policy applied at his COSSAC planning headquarters during World War II: “Right down to the cook, they were told what had happened, what was happening, along with their part in it, and what it was proposed to do next.”

Paraphrasing Montaigne, President Roosevelt told the American people during a great national crisis that the main thing they need fear was fear itself. In matters great and small, the fears of men arise chiefly from those matters they have not been given to understand. Fear can be checked, whipped and driven from the field when men are kept informed.

The dynamics of the information principle lies in this simple truth. We look at the object through the wrong end of the telescope when in the military service we think of information only as instruction in the cause of country, the virtues of the free society and the record of our arms, in the hope that we will make strong converts. These are among the things that every American needs to know, but of themselves they will not turn an average American male into an intelligent, aggressive fighter. Invigorated action is the product of the free and well-informed mind. The “will to do” comes of the confidence that one’s knowledge of what requires doing is equal to that of any other man present.

This is the controlling idea and all constructive planning and work in the field of information is shaped around it.