One of the Army's Lowest Points Ever

From Geoffrey Perret's There's a War To Be Won ...

"The 11,000 men who surrendered on Corregidor were, they soon discovered, not considered prisoners of war by their captors.  Instead, they were treated like a low form of life, on a par with parasites and vermin.  [Japanese Lt. Gen. Masaharu] Homma [commander of the main Japanese invasion force in the Philippines] threatened to murder all of them unless [Army Lt. Gen. Jonathan M.] Wainwright [commander of U.S. forces in the Philippines] ordered subordinate commanders throughout the Philippines to surrender themselves and their men.

"The Japanese put Wainwright in front of a microphone at a Manila radio station.  [Army Chief of Staff, General George C.] Marshall wanted someone who knew Wainwright well to listen in and tell him if the broadcast was genuine or a Japanese hoax.  J. Lawton Collins, recently appointed commander of the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii, had served for three years under Wainwright and admired him unreservedly.  Collins listened to the broadcast as Marshall requested.

"There was no doubt about it.  That was Skinny Wainwright, his voice dulled by exhaustion, choking with emotion as he ordered his men to surrender.  That was Skinny Wainwright, with his limp from a bad riding accident, always leaning on a stick when not in the saddle.  That was Skinny Wainwright, humiliated, defeated, heading for captivity and possibly a cruel death.  Collins sat by his radio that balmy evening in Hawaii, his round, boyish face wet with the tears shed for his friend." 

Revised FM 3-24 to Hit the Street Soon

Military to unveil new counterinsurgency field manual

by, Stars and Stripes

The part that has always intrigued me ...

"A large number of experts, including academics and active-duty and retired veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, provided input for the rewrite ..."

That's just totally outside my own frame of reference.  I wish it weren't.

 

Marshall, McNair, and Army doctrine

George C. Marshall became the Army Chief of Staff on 1 September 1939. Incidentally, this was the same day that the Germans overran Poland in a sign of things to come. The United States was not at war yet, but those who could discern the times knew that we soon would be. 

One of the first things General Marshal did—and he did a lot—was to completely, totally, from top to bottom—revamp Army doctrine. That’s right, one of his first concerns was the fundamental principles that would guide the Army in its pending war. He had to raise an Army practically from scratch, equip it, and then train it to fight a world war against a well established enemy. So he set about very early on to remake the Army’s intellectual base. 

He was in a hurry about it, too. 

"He shut down the War College and the Command and General Staff School at Leavenworth,” writes historian Geoffrey Perret. “Marshall wanted their instructors and students to get to work writing more than 150 new field manuals that would incorporate the most modern military doctrine. He hoped to get this task done in three months.” Three months! “'Impossible,’ said the general he asked to supervise it. Marshall retired him next day and turned to the commandant at Leavenworth, Brig. Gen. Leslie J. McNair."[1]

And I would bet my last dollar that Marshall’s fundamental concern was not the accessibility of those manuals, it was their content.


PS:  It took McNair four months instead of three.

---

[1] Geoffrey Perret, There's a War to be Won (New York, Ballentine Books, 1991), 24.

Vince Flynn

“[He] saw communism for the sham that it was--a bunch of brutes who seized power in the name of the people, only to repress the very people they claimed to champion.”
― Vince Flynn, American Assassin

From Goodreads.

Contractors and the Army

CONTRACTORS

This is not the guy
who posts this stuff

A-9. Contractors are not members of the Army profession; however, they provide valuable support and augmentation to the capabilities of the Profession of Arms and the Army Civilian Corps, both stateside and overseas. Hired under contractual terms for specific tasks of a specified duration, they provide essential skills and perform technical and administrative tasks that allow Army professionals to focus on their primary missions. Contractors are an important part of any current or future Army effort.[1]

Just in case you were wondering.  And I think I'm going to get myself one of those yellow hard hats, too.

---

[1] ADP 1, The Army (Headquarters, Department of the Army, September 2012), A-4.

Doctrine is About the Future

General Robert Cone, Former Commanding General of
the Army's Training and Doctrine Command

A common myth about Army doctrine is that it is necessarily oriented around current as opposed to future operations. Doctrine, say those who think this way, is about what the Army is doing today, with today’s capabilities, not about what we intend to do tomorrow with capabilities we don’t yet have. The basis for this way of thinking, essentially, is that anything dealing with future operations is conceptual, and "concepts," states the regulation that governs Army doctrine, "are not doctrine." (emphasis mine).

It is unfortunate that TRADOC Regulation 25-36, seems to underpin this way of thinking, that doctrine is about today and concepts are about tomorrow. To add an air of authority to its dogmatic assertion that "concepts are not doctrine," and that "after a concept is validated, it may become a basis for doctrine and force planning” (emphasis mine) the regulation cites a joint staff publication (CJCSI 3010.02), which is the Joint Operations Concepts Development Process, and TRADOC Regulation 71-20, Concept Development, Capabilities Determination, and Capabilities Integration. Interestingly, however, neither of these cited publications say anything about concepts not being doctrine.[1]

Patton on the Presidential Election of 1932

" ... I am completely disgusted with both political parties.  I cannot imagine two more spineless candidates, and at a time when the country needs backbone for more than brains.  I am glad I don’t vote as I certainly would not dishonor myself by casting one for either of the straw men we have to choose from.”[1]

Practically fits 2012 to a 'T.'

---

[1] George S. Patton, quoted in Stanley P. Hirshson, General Patton: A Soldier’s Life (New York: Harper Collins, 2002), 206.

The Latest from Rick Atkinson

The Guns at Last Light, Rick Atkinson's new book covering the last year of the European war, from Normandy to Berlin, will be published in May 2013.  

The Guns Last at Last Light will be the third in Atkinson's Liberation Trilogy.  The first two volumes were ...

An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943

The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944,

Rick Atkinson

Atkinson is also the author of several other books on military history ...     

     In the Company of Soldiers

     The Long Gray Line

     Crusade

Communications in War

“Logistics and communications,” writes historian, Carlo D’Este, “are the vital supporting cast of waging successful war; to lack for either is to court failure.”  This quote is taken from D’Este’s telling of the story of the Allied forces’ stall at the tail end of the Normandy Campaign in World War II.  Contributing to the sputtering advance of the four Allied armies was General Eisenhower’s (and others’) neglect of his logistics and his communications.[1]

“Eisenhower’s hands were tied by both. His logisticians determined how far his armies could advance, and his signals officers, who controlled the flow of communications into and out of SHAEF, determined how well and how fast he could communicate with his subordinates.”[2]  Pretty straightforward stuff.

When Ike moved his forward headquarters in early September 1944 from “Shellburst,” just inland of the Normandy beaches, to Granville, at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula, he was, for a crucial time, cut off from the forces under his command.  “In effect,” explains D’Este, “he was incommunicado, a serious problem for any commander but a potentially fatal flaw for the one exercising supreme command.”[3]

At the end of his story D’Este makes the doctrinal application, “A headquarters that is uninformed and unable to communicate cannot exercise command and control over operations, and is essentially useless.”[4]

This is exactly the kind of historical anecdote that, if applied to, say, an emerging doctrinal publication on signal support to operations, would make it more readable, understandable, and militarily useful.  Some would resist merely on account that the story is from World War II, and is almost 70 years old.  But a fundamental principle is a fundamental principle, is it not? And an illustration of a fundamental principle teaches like nothing else can.

I mean, for what other reason do we write doctrine?

---

[1] Carlo D'Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002), 592.

[2] Ibid., 593.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

Old Age

Dr. Thomas Sowell

“Age gives you an excuse for not being very good at things that you were not very good at when you were young.” 

― Thomas Sowell, The Thomas Sowell Reader

Army Writing

I discovered a handbook once published by the Army's Training and Doctrine Command called the "Action Officer's Guide: Staff Writing." It's actually a very useful little pamphlet. It's purpose was to help action officers avoid bad writing. In it, the author, a gentleman by the name of John Beckno, counsels against what is described in a politically correct manner as "bureaucratic writing." "While some bureaucratic writing is good," he says, "much of it is turgid, passive, and confusing."

He might also have added that it is 'bromidic,' 'inane,' 'boring,' 'dull,' 'stilted,' 'affected,' 'stuffy,' 'ponderous,' 'unclear,' 'leaden,' 'dismal,' 'uninteresting,' tedious,' 'monotonous,' 'dry,' 'unexciting,' 'mind-numbing,' and 'lifeless.' But then, that would have been bad staff writing.

For all we know, Mr. Beckno could have been describing a random doctrine publication; but he was, in fact, addressing all types of writing which may fall within the purview of a typical action officer.

"In spite of efforts to eradicate it," writes the expert, "poor writing still survives."

But how can this be so?

Beckno lists five reasons ...

• "It's embedded in the bureaucracy." Embedded is the right word. It's a deep problem, part of the culture. As new people enter the service they conform to this horrible way of writing just as though they thought it mandatory, like the bad haircuts.

Happy Birthday John -- I Wish

John H. Edinger, Jr., 1940-2010
(Photo: John H. "Jack" Edinger, III)

John would have been seventy-three years old today. I tried to always send him a card. His birthday follows so closely behind Christmas and New Years that it kind of sneaked up on me and I had to rush to find a card. As often as not, if memory serves, my card was late. 

Along with the card I also generally bought him a book. Books were about the only kind of gift from me that he appreciated. It was a challenge to find one that he had not already read or knew about. Memorable are the occasions when I got him one that he really enjoyed. He would tell me all about it, many times over the breakfast table at some greasy spoon, in Mount Airy where he lived or else here in Augusta. Whenever Connie and I visited him and Mom—or whenever the two of them visited us—John and I always went out for breakfast. It seems we did just about all our talking over sausage and eggs, grits on some mornings and hash browns on others, sometimes a little bacon, or a stack of pancakes, and gallons and gallons of coffee.