Chapter 15

THE MISSION

There is a main reason why the word "mission" has an especial appropriateness to the military services and implies something beyond the call of duty. The arms of the United States do not advance simply through the process of correct orders being given and then executed with promptness, vigor, and intelligence.

That is the greater part of the task, but it is by no means all. Military systems reflect the limitations and imperfections of their human material. Whatever his station, and experience, no man is wise enough and all-seeing enough that he can encompass every factor in a given problem, take correct judgment on every area of weakness, foresee all of that which has not yet happened, and then write the perfect analysis and solution for the guidance of his subordinates.

The perfecting of operations, and the elimination of grit from the machinery, therefore become the concern of _all_, directing their thought and purpose to the doing of whatever needs to be done to further the harmony and efficiency of the establishment, taking personal action where it is within their province, or calling the matter to the attention of higher authority when it is not. In this direct sense, every ensign and second lieutenant has a personal responsibility for the general well-being of the security structure of the United States. This is fact, and not theory. In World War II, many of the practical ideas which were made of universal application in the services were initiated by men of very junior rank. But the extent to which any man's influence may be felt beyond his immediate circle depends first of all upon the thoroughness with which he executes his assigned duties, since nothing else will give his superiors confidence in his judgments. It is only when he is exacting in small things, and is careful to "close the circuit" on every minor assignment, that he qualifies himself to think and act constructively in larger matters, through book study and imaginative observation of the situation which surrounds him. At this stage, an officer is well on the road to the accomplishment of his general mission.

When an order is given, what are the responsibilities of the man who receives it? In sequence, these:

To be certain that he understands what is required.

To examine and organize his resources as promptly as possible.

Fully to inform his subordinates on these points.

To execute the order without waste of time or means.

To call for support if events prove that his means are inadequate.

To fill up the spaces in the orders if there are developments which had not been anticipated.

When the detail is complete, to prepare to go on to something else.

Lt. Gen. Sir Frederick Morgan, who planned the invasion of Normandy, put the matter this way: "When setting out on any enterprise, it is as well to ask oneself three questions. To whom is one responsible? For precisely what is one responsible? What are the means at one's disposal for discharging this responsibility?"

Nothing so warms the heart of a superior as that, on giving an order, he sees his subordinate salute, say "Yes sir," then about face and proceed to carry it out to the hilt, without faltering or looking back. This is the kind of man that a commander will choose to have with him every time, and that he will recommend first for advancement.

On the other hand, clarification of the object is not only a right but a duty, and it cuts both ways. Orders are not always clear, and no superior is on firm ground when he is impatient of questions which are to the point, or resentful of the man who asks them. But it is natural that he will be doubtful of the man whose words show either that he hasn't heard or is concerned mainly with irrelevencies. The cultivation of the habit of careful, concentrated listening, and of collected thought in reading into any problem, is a principal portal to successful officership.

To say that promptness and positiveness in the execution of a mission are at all times major virtues does not imply that the good man, like an old fire horse, moves out instantly at the clang of a bell. Soundness of action involves a sense of timing. Thoroughness is the way of duty, rather than a speed which goes off half-cocked. There is frequently a time for waiting; there is always time for acute reflection. The brain which works "like a steel trap" exists only in fiction. Even such men as General Eisenhower, or Admiral Nimitz, or for that matter, Gen. U. S. Grant, have at times deferred decision temporarily while waiting for a change in tide or circumstance to help them make up their minds. This is normal in the rational individual; it is not a sign of weakness. Rather than to cultivate a belief in one's own infallibility, the mature outlook for the military man is best expressed in the injunction of the Apostle Paul: "_Let all things be done decently and in order._" Grant, wrote of the early stage of his advance on Richmond: "At this time I was not entirely decided as to how I should move my Army." From the pen of General Eisenhower come these words: "The commander's success will be measured more by his ability to lead than by his adherence to fixed notions." Thus, in the conduct of operations not less than in the execution of orders, it is necessary that the mind remain plastic and impressionable.

Within military organization, to refuse an order is unthinkable, though to muster a case showing why some other order would serve in its place is not undutiful in an individual subordinate, any more than in a staff. By the same rule, insistence that an order be carried out undeviatingly, simply because it has been given, does not of itself win respect for the authority uttering it. Its modification, however, should never be in consequence of untempered pressure from below. To change or rescind is justified only when reestimate of all of the available facts indicates that some other order will serve the general purpose more efficiently.

Taking counsel of subordinates in any enterprise or situation is therefore a matter of giving them full advantage of one's own information and reasoning, weighing with the intellect whatever thought or argument they may contribute to the sum of considerations, and then making, without compromise, a clean decision as to the line of greatest advantage. To know how to command obedience is a very different thing from making men obey. Obedience is not the product of fear, but of understanding, and understanding is based on knowledge.

On D-day in Normandy, Lt. Turner B. Turnbull undertook to do with his platoon of 42 men a task which had been intended for a battalion; he was to block the main road to enemy forces pressing south from the Cherbourg area against the American right flank. In early morning he engaged a counterattacking enemy battalion, supported by mortars and a self-propelled gun at the village of Neuville au Plain. The platoon held its ground throughout the day. By dusk the enemy had closed wide around both its flanks and was about to cut the escape route. Turnbull had 23 men left. He said to the others, "There's one thing left to do; we can charge them." Pfc. Joseph Sebastian, who had just returned from reconnoitering to the rear, said, "I think there's a chance we can still get out; that's what we ought to do." Turnbull asked of his men, "What's your judgment?" They supported Sebastian as having the sounder idea. In a twinkling Turnbull made his decision. He told the others to get set for the run; he was losing men even while he talked; he ordered that the 12 wounded were to be left behind. Corp. James Kelly, first aid man, said he would stay with the wounded. Pfc Sebastian, who had argued Turnbull into a withdrawal, volunteered to stand his ground and cover the others with a BAR. Corp. Raymond Smitson said he would stay by Sebastian and support him with hand grenades. Sgt. Robert Niland started for one of the machine guns, to help Smitson and Sebastian in covering the withdrawal, but was shot dead by a German closing in with a machine pistol before he could reach it. The 16 remaining survivors took off like so many shots fired from a pistol, at full speed but at intervals, to minimize the target. All got back to their Battalion, though Turnbull was killed in action a few days later. Their 1-day fight had preserved the flank of an Army. For economy of effort, and power of decision, there is not a brighter example in the whole book of war.

To encourage subordinates to present their views, and to weigh them in the light of reason, is at the same time the surest way to win their confidence and to refine one's own information and judgments. However, to leave final decision to them in matters which are clearly in the area of one's own responsibility, is fatal to the character of self and to the integrity of the force.

Any officer is one among many. Behind the smallest unit is the total power of the combined services. In the main, effectiveness develops out of unity of effort. To commit one's force to desperate, unhelped enterprises, when there is support at hand which may be had for the asking, may be one road to glory, but it is certainly not the path to success in War. The Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava was made immortal by Tennyson's poem, but it was as foolhardy as asking a troop of Boy Scouts to capture Gibraltar. In battle, a main obligation of those who lead is to make constant resurvey of the full horizon of their resources and means of possible support. This entails in time of peace the acquisition of a great body of knowledge seemingly unrelated to the administration of one's immediate affairs. It entails, also, facing forthrightly toward every task, or assignment, giving it a full try, sweating out every obstacle, but not being ashamed to ask for help or counsel if it proves to be beyond one's powers. _To give it everything, though not quite making the grade personally, is merely an exercise in character building. But to have the mission fail because of false pride is inexcusable._

The prayer that Sir Francis Drake wrote down for his men as he led them forth to a great adventure might well be repeated by any leader in the hour when he begins to despair because in spite of his striving he has not gained all he sought: "O Lord God, when Thou givest to thy servants to endeavour any great matter, grant us also to know that it is not the beginning, but the continuing of the same until it is thoroughly finished, which yieldeth the true glory."

The courage to start will carry a man far. Under the conditions of either war or peace, it is astonishing how many times all things come in balance for the man who is less fearful of rebuff than of being counted a cypher. One of Britain's great armored leaders, Lt. Gen. Sir Giffard Martel, digested the lesson of his whole life experience into this sentence: "If you take a chance, it usually succeeds, presupposing good judgment." Finally, it comes to that, for the willingness to accept calculated risks is of the essence of effective personal performance within the military profession. There must be careful collection of data. There must be weighty consideration of all known and knowable factors in the given situation. But beyond these things, what?

To convey the idea that an officer must by ingrained habit dispose himself to take action only after he has arrived at an exact formula, pointing exclusively in one direction, would mean only that under the conditions of war he could never get off his trousers-seat. For such fullness of information and confidence of situation are not given to combat commanders once in a lifetime.

It is customary to treat "estimate of situation" as if it were pure mathematical process, pointing almost infallibly to a definite result. But this is contrary to nature. The mind of man does not work that way, nor is it consistent with operational realities. Senior commanders are as prone as even the newest junior lieutenant to labor in perplexity between two opposing courses of action during times of crisis, and then make their decisions almost with the abruptness of an explosion. _It is post-decision steadiness more than pre-decision certitude which carries the day._ A large part of decision is intuitive; it is the byproduct of the subconscious. In war, much of what is most pertinent lies behind a drawn curtain. The officer is therefore badly advised who would believe that a hunch is without value, or that there is something unmilitary about the simple decision to take some positive action, even though he is working in the dark.

The youthful Col. Julian Ewell of the 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment, reaching Bastogne, Belgium, on the night of December 18, 1944, with only his lead battalion at hand, insisted that he be given orders, even though higher headquarters could tell him almost nothing about the friendly or enemy situations. He got his orders, and with the one battalion moved out through the dark to counter-attack. So doing, he stopped cold the German XXXXVII Panzer Corps, and compelled Hitler to alter his Ardennes plan.

To grasp the spirit of orders is not less important than to accept them cheerfully and keep faith with the contract. But the letter of an instruction does not relieve him who receives it from the obligation to exercise common sense. In the Carolina maneuvers of 1941, a soldier stood at a road intersection for 3 days and nights directing civilian traffic, simply because the man who put him there had forgotten all about it. Though he was praised at the time, he was hardly a shining example to hold up to troops. Diligence and dullness are mutually exclusive traits. The model who is well worth pondering by all services is Chief Boatswain L. M. Jahnsen who on the morning of Pearl Harbor was in command of the yard garbage scow YG-17. She was collecting refuse from the fleet when the first Japanese planes came over. As the West Virginia began to burn, Jahnsen headed his scow into the heat and smoke and ordered his men to man their single fire hose. The old assignment forgotten, with overheated ammunition exploding all around him, he stood there directing his men in all that could be done to lessen the ruin of the fleet.

Within the services, a special glory attends those whose heroism or service is "above and beyond the call of duty." But they owe their fundamental character to the millions of men who have followed the path of duty above and beyond the call of orders.

Whatever the nature of an officer's assignment, there are compensations. The conventional attitude is to speak disparagingly of staff duty, sniff at service with a higher administrative headquarters as if it were somehow lacking in true masculine appeal, and express a preference for duty "at sea," "with troops" or "in the field." Although most of this is flapdoodle, it probably does no more harm than Admiral William F. Halsey's grimace over the fact that he once "commanded an LSD--Large Steel Desk." He is a poor stick of a military man who has no natural desire to try his hand at the direct management of men, if for no better reason than to test his own mettle. Even the avowed specialist is better equipped for his own groove if he has proved himself at the other game.

Staff work, however, has its own peculiar rewards. Chief among them are the broadening of perspective, a more intimate contact with the views, working methods and personality characteristics of higher commanders and the chance to become acquainted with administrative responsibility from the viewpoint of policy. Although it sounds mysterious and even forbidding, until one has done it, the procedures are not more complex nor less instructive than in any other type of assignment.

There are no inside secrets about what goes here that is different, or will not work equally well elsewhere. The staff is simply the servant of the general force; it exists but to further the welfare of the fighting establishment. Those within it are remiss if they fail to keep this rule uppermost. Consequently, no special attitude is called for, other than an acute receptiveness. The same military bearing, the same naturalness of manner which enable an officer to win the confidence and working loyalty of his men will serve just as well when he is dealing with higher authority.