The Armed Forces Officer Part 9

Some tended to be so over-reclusive that they almost missed recognition; others were hail-fellow-well-met in any company.

Their methods of work reflected these extreme variations in personal type, as did the means they used to draw other men to them, thereby setting a foundation for real success.

Part of their number commanded mainly through the sheer force of ideas; others owed their fortune more to the magnetism of dynamic personality.

In a few there was the spark of genius. All things seemed to come right with them at all times. Fate was kind, the openings occurred, and they were prepared to take advantage of them.

But the greater number moved up the hill one slow step at a time, not always sure of their footing, buffeted by mischance, owning no exalted opinion of their own merits, reacting to discouragement much as other men would do, but finally acc.u.mulating power as they learned how to organize the work of other men.

While a young lieutenant, Admiral Sims became so incensed, when the United States would not take his word on a voucher, that he offered to resign.

General Grant signally failed to organize his life as an individual prior to the time when a turn of the wheel gave him his chance to organize the military power of the United States in war.

General Sherman, who commanded the Army for almost 15 years, was considered by many of his close friends to be a fit subject for confinement as a mental case just prior to the Civil War.

General Meade, one of the sweetest and most serene of men in his family relationships, lacked confidence in his own merits and was very abusive of his a.s.sociates during battle.

Admiral Farragut, whose tenderness as an individual are marked by the 16 years in which he personally nursed an invalid wife, was so independent in his professional thought and action that both in and out of the Navy he was disqualified as a "climber." He got into wretched quarrels with his superiors mainly because he felt his a.s.signments afforded him no distinction. The Civil War gave him his opportunity.

Admiral John Paul Jones, though an unusually modest man, was as redoubtable in the boudoir as at sea, and it would be hard to say which type of engagement most caught his fancy.

General Winfield Scott, as firm a commander as ever drew on a glove, plagued the service with his petty bickering over rank, seniority, and precedent.

They were all mortal. Being human, they had their points of personal weakness, just as any newly appointed ensign or second lieutenant also has weak spots in his armor, and sometimes views them in such false proportion that he doubts his own potential for high responsibility.

There is not one perfect life in the gallery of the great. All were moulded by the human influences which surrounded them. They reacted in their own feelings, and toward other men, according as their personal fortunes rose and fell. They sought help where it could be found. When disappointed, they chilled like anyone else. But along with their professional talents, they possessed, in common, a desire for substantial recognition, accompanied by the will to earn it fairly, or else the nation would never have heard their names.

All in all it is a multifarious gallery. If we were to pa.s.s it in review, and then inspect it carefully, it would still be impossible to say: "This is the composite of character. This is the prototype of military success. Model upon it and you have the pinnacle within reach."

The same thing would no doubt hold true of a majority of the better men who commanded ships, squadrons, regiments, and companies under these commanders, and at their own level were as superior in leadership as the relatively few who rose to national stature because of the achievements of the general body.

The same rule will apply tomorrow. Those who come forward to fill these same places, and to command them with equal or greater authority and competence, will not be plaster saints, laden with all human virtue, spotless in character and fit to be anointed with a superman legend by some future Parson Weems. They will be men with a human quality, and a strong belief in the United States and the goodness of a free society. They will have some of the average man's faults, and maybe a few of his vices. But certainly they will possess the qualities of courage, creative intelligence and physical fitness in more than average measure.

What we know of our great leaders in the current age should disparage the idea that only a superman may scale the heights. Trained observers have noted in their personalities and careers many of the plain characteristics which each man feels in himself and mistakenly believes is a bar to preferment.

Drew Middleton, the British correspondent, wrote of Gen. Carl "Tooey"

Spaatz: "This man, who may be a heroic figure to our grandchildren, is essentially an unheroic figure to his contemporaries. He is in fact such a friendly, human person that observers tend to minimize his stature as a war leader. He is not temperamental. He makes no rousing speeches, writes no inspirational orders. Spaatz, in issuing orders for a major operation involving 1,500 airplanes, is about as inspiring as a groceryman ordering another five cases of canned peas."

In the files of the Navy Department there is a picture of Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, the famed commander of Task Force 58, coming on board a flagship to take command of a force of carriers. Officers and men are lined up at spick-and-span attention. The Admiral himself appears as a little man in a rumpled khaki uniform, tieless and wearing an informal garrison cap. Under his arm is a book, and in the photograph the t.i.tle can be read as "Send Another Coffin." Mitscher liked detective stories; he didn't like ceremonial pomp.

An interviewer who called on Gen. Ira C. Eaker when he was leading 8th Air Force against Germany found "a strikingly soft-spoken, sober, compact man who has the mild manner of a conservative minister and the judicial outlook of a member of the Supreme Court. But he is always about two steps ahead of everybody on the score, and there is a quiet, inexorable logic about everything he does." Of his own choice, Eaker would have separated from military service after World War I. He wanted to be a lawyer and he also toyed with the idea of running a country newspaper. In his off hours, he wrote books on aviation for junior readers. On the side, he studied civil law and found it "valuable mental training."

On the eve of the Guadalca.n.a.l landing, Gen. A. A. Vandegrift's final order to his command ended with the stirring and now celebrated phrase: "G.o.d favors the bold and strong of heart." Yet in the afterglow of later years, the Nation read a character sketch of him which included this: "He is so polite and so soft spoken that he is continually disappointing the people whom he meets. They find him lacking in the fire-eating traits they like to expect of all marines, and they find it difficult to believe that such a mild-mannered man could really have led and won the b.l.o.o.d.y fight." When another officer spoke warmly of Vandegrift's coolness under fire, his "grace under pressure," to quote Hemingway's phrase, he replied: "I shouldn't be given any credit. I'm built that way."

The point is beautifully taken. Too often the man with great inner strength holds in contempt those less well endowed by nature than himself.

While there are no perfect men, there are those who become relatively perfect leaders of men because something in their makeup brings out in strength the highest virtues of all who follow them. That is the way of human nature. Minor shortcomings do not impair the working loyalty, or growth, of the follower who has found someone whose strengths he deems worth emulating. On the other hand, to recognize merit, you must yourself have it. _The act of recognizing the worthwhile traits in another person is both the test and the making of character._ The man who scorns all others, and thinks no one else worth following, parades his own inferiority before the world. He puts his own character into bankruptcy just as surely as does that other sad camp follower of whom Thomas Carlyle wrote: "To recognize false merit, and crown it as true, because a long tail runs after it, is the saddest operation under the sun."

Sherman, Logan, Rawlins and the many others. .h.i.tched their wagons to Grant's star because they saw in him a man who had a way with other men, and who commanded them not less by personal courage than by patient work in their interest. Had Grant spent time brooding over his civilian failures, he would have been stuck with a disorderly camp and would never have gotten out of Illinois.

The n.o.bility of the private life and influence of Gen. Robert E. Lee and the grandeur of his military character are known to every American school boy. His peerless gifts as a battle leader have won the tribute of celebrated soldiers and historians throughout the English-speaking world. Likewise, the deep religiosity of his great lieutenant, Stonewall Jackson, the latter's fiery zeal and the almost evangelical power with which he lifted the hearts of all men who followed him, are hallmarks of character that are vividly remembered in whatever context his name happens to be mentioned.

If we turn for a somewhat closer look at Grant it is because he, more than any other American soldier, left us a full, clear narrative of his own growth, and of the inner thoughts and doubts pertaining to himself which attended his life experience. There was a great deal of the average man in Grant. He was beset by human failings. He could not look impressive. He had no sense of destiny. In his great hours, it was sweat, rather than inspiration, dogged perseverance, rather than the aura of power, which made the hour great.

Average though he was in many things, there was nothing average about the strong way in which he took hold, applying ma.s.sive common sense to the complex problems of the field. That is why he is worth close regard. His virtues as a military leader were of the simpler sort which plain men may understand and hope to emulate. He was direct in manner. He never intrigued. His speech was homely. He was approachable. His mind never deviated from the object. Though a stubborn man, he was always willing to listen to his subordinates. He never adhered to a plan obstinately, but nothing could induce him to forsake the idea behind the plan.

History has left us a clear view of how he attained to greatness in leadership by holding steadfastly to a few main principles.

At Belmont, his first small action, he showed nothing to indicate that he was competent as a tactician and strategist. But the closing scene reveals him as the last man to leave the field of action, risking his life to see that none of his men had been left behind.

At Fort Donelson, where he had initiated an amphibious campaign of highly original daring, he was not on the battlefield when his army was suddenly attacked. He arrived to find his right wing crushed and his whole force on the verge of defeat. He blamed no one. Without more than a pa.s.sing second's hesitation, he said quietly to his chief subordinates: "Gentlemen, the position on the right must be retaken."

Then he mounted his horse, and galloped along the line shouting to his men: "Fill your cartridge cases quick; the enemy is trying to escape and he must not be permitted to do so." Control and order were immediately reestablished by his presence.

At Shiloh, the same thing happened, only this time it was worse; the whole Union Army was on the verge of rout. Grant, hobbling on crutches from a recent leg injury, met the mob of panic-stricken stragglers as he left the boat at Pittsburgh Landing. Calling on them to turn back, he mounted and rode toward the battle, shouting encouragement and giving orders to all he met. Confidence flowed from him back into an already beaten Army and in this way a field near lost was soon regained.

The last and best picture of Grant is on the evening after he had taken his first beating from General Lee in the campaign against Richmond. He was newly with the Army of the Potomac. His predecessors, after being whipped by Lee, had invariably retreated to safe distance.

But this time as the defeated army took the road of retreat out of the Wilderness, its columns got only as far as the Chancellorsville House crossroad. There the soldiers saw a squat, bearded man, sitting horseback, and drawing on a cigar. As the head of each regiment came abreast him, he silently motioned it to take the right-hand fork--back toward Lee's flank and deeper than ever into the Wilderness. That night for the first time the Army sensed an electric change in the air over Virginia. It had a man.

"I intend to fight it out on this line" is more revealing of the one supreme quality which put the seal on all other of U. S. Grant's great gifts for military leading than everything else that the historians have written of him. He was the epitome of that spirit which moderns call "seeing the show through." He was sensitive to a fault in his early years, and carried to his tomb a dislike for military uniform, caused by his being made the b.u.t.t of ridicule the first time he ever donned a soldier suit. As a junior lieutenant in the Mexican War, he sensed no particular apt.i.tude in himself. But he had partic.i.p.ated in every engagement possible to a member of his regiment, and had executed every small duty to the hilt, with particular attention to conserving the lives of his men. This was the school and the course which later enabled him to march to Richmond, when men's lives had to be spent for the good of the Nation. In more recent times, one of the great statesmen and soldiers of the United States, Henry L. Stimson, has added his witness to the value of this force in all enterprise: "I know the withering effect of limited commitments and I know the regenerative effect of full action." Though he was speaking particularly of the larger affairs of war and nation policy, his words apply with full weight to the personal life. The truth seen only halfway is missed wholly; the thing done only halfway had best not be attempted at all. Men can be fooled but they can't be fooled on this score. They will know every time when the bolt falls short for lack of a worthwhile effort. And when that happens, confidence in the leader is corroded, even among those who themselves were unwilling to try.

There have been great and distinguished leaders in our military services at all levels, who had no particular gifts for administration, and little for organizing the detail of decisive action either within battle or without. They excelled because of a superior ability to utilize the brains and command the loyalty of well-chosen subordinates. Their particular function was to judge the mark according to their resources and audacity, and then to hold the team steady until the mark was gained. So doing, they complemented the power of the faithful lieutenants who might have put them in the shade in any I. Q. test. Wrote Grant: "I never knew what to do with a paper except put it in a side pocket or pa.s.s it to a clerk who understood it better than I did." There was nothing unfair or irregular about this; it was as it should be. All military achievement develops out of unity of action. The laurel goes to the man whose powers can most surely be directed toward the end purposes of organization. _The winning of battles is the product of the winning of men._ That apt.i.tude is not an endowment of formal education, though the man who has led a football team, a cla.s.s, a fraternity or a debating society is the stronger for the experience which he has gained. It is not uncustomary in those who have excelled in scholarship to despise those who have excelled merely in sympathetic understanding of the human race. But in the military services, though there are niches for the pedant, character is at all times at least as vital as intellect, and the main rewards go to him who can make other men feel toughened as well as elevated.

_Quiet resolution._

_The hardihood to take risks._

_The will to take full responsibility for decision._

_The readiness to share its rewards with subordinates._

_An equal readiness to take the blame when things go adversely._

_The nerve to survive storm and disappointment and to face toward each new day with the scoresheet wiped clean, neither dwelling on one's successes nor accepting discouragement from one's failures._

In these things lie a great part of the essence of leadership, for they are the const.i.tuents of that kind of moral courage which has enabled one man to draw many others to him in any age.

It is good, also, to look the part, not only because of its effect on others, but because from out of the effort made to _look it_, one may in time come _to be it_. One of the kindliest and most penetrating philosophers of our age, Abbe Ernest Dimnet, has a.s.sured us that this is true. He says that by trying to look and act like a socially distinguished person, one may in fact attain to the inner disposition of a gentleman. That, almost needless to say, is the _real_ mark of the officer who takes great pains about the manner of his dress and address, for as Walt Whitman has said: "All changes of appearances without a change in that which underlies appearance, are without avail." All depends upon the spirit in which one makes the effort. By his own account, U. S. Grant, as a West Point cadet, was more stirred by the commanding appearance of General Winfield Scott than by any man he had ever seen, including the President. He wrote that at that moment there flashed across his mind the thought that some day he would stand in Scott's place. Grant was unkempt of dress. His physical endowments were such that he could never achieve the commanding air of Scott, but he left us his witness that Scott's military bearing helped kindle his own desire for command, even though he knew that he could not be like Scott.

Much is said in favor of modesty as an a.s.set in leadership. It is remarked that the man who wishes to hold the respect of others will mention himself not more frequently than a born aristocrat mentions his ancestor. However, the point can be labored too hard. Some of the ablest of the Nation's battlefield commanders have been anything but shrinking violets; we have had now and then a hero who could boast with such gusto that this very characteristic somehow endeared him to his men. But that would be a dangerous tack for all save the most exceptional individual. Instead of speaking of modesty as a charm that will win all hearts, thereby risking that through excessive modesty a man will become tiresome to others and rated as too timid for high responsibility, it would be better to dwell upon the importance of being natural, which means neither concealing nor making a vulgar display of one's ideals and motives, but acting directly according to their dictations.

This leads to another point. In several of the most celebrated commentaries written by higher commanders on the nature of generalship, the statement is made rather carelessly that to be capable of great military leadership a man must be something of an actor. If that were unqualifiedly true, then it would be a desirable technique likewise in any junior officer that he too should learn how to wear a false face, and play a part which cloaks his real self. The hollowness of the idea is proved by the lives of such men as Robert E.

Lee, W. T. Sherman, George C. Marshall, Omar N. Bradley, Carl A.

Spaatz, William H. Simpson, Chester A. Nimitz, and W. S. Sims. As commanders, they were all as natural as children, though some had great natural reserve, and others were warmer and more outgiving. They expressed themselves straightforwardly rather than by artful striving for effect. There was no studied attempt to appear only in a certain light. To use the common word for it, their people did not regard them as "characters." This naturalness had much to do with their hold on other men.

Such a result will always come. He who concentrates on the object at hand has little need to worry about the impression he is making on others. Even though they detect the c.h.i.n.ks in the armor, they will know that the armor will hold.

On the other hand, a sense of the dramatic values, coupled with the intelligence to play upon them skillfully, is an invaluable quality in any military leader. Though there was nothing of the "actor" in Grant, he understood the value of pointing things up. _To put a bold or inspiring emphasis where it belongs is not stagecraft, but an integral part of the military fine art of communications._ System which is only system is injurious to the mind and spirit of any normal person. One can play a superior part well, and maintain prestige and dignity, without being under the compulsion to think, speak and act in a monotone. In fact, when any military commander becomes over-inhibited along these lines because of the illusion that this is the way to build a reputation for strength, he but doubles the necessity that his subordinates will act at all times like human beings rather than robots.