Where the unit does include a Psychological Warfare team, a duality of control arises. This requires good sense to keep in balance. The commander possesses absolute command and responsibility for the movement, protection, and operations timing of the team which happens to be attached to his unit. He should not presume to interfere in the special propaganda instructions flowing down to the team from superior Psychological Warfare echelons. Because of the pressing needs of propaganda operatives for news and for order-of-battle intelligence, it is normally desirable that they have their own signal facilities and that their routine operational communications short-circuit normal military channels. Otherwise, the unit's signal facilities will be overloaded with messages important to the Psychological Warfare team, but useless to the unit as a whole. Such absurdities as the encipherment and decipherment of routine enemy news digests should by all means be avoided. On the other hand, the command and administrative messages should go through normal military channels. In the Galahad operation against the Japanese in North Burma, in which Merrill's Marauders participated, such a double set of communications channels took a long time to develop.
Where the small-unit commander does not possess professionally trained and equipped Psychological Warfare facilities, he should no more expect to engage in offensive Psychological Warfare than to undertake chemical warfare with improvised materials. It becomes his responsibility to turn to liaison.
Field Liaison.
For example, a well trained liaison officer might receive a call from a regimental or battalion commander. He would find that the commander desired leaflets to be used in a particular tactical situation. He should be able to explain what standard ready-prepared leaflets were available, what delay would be involved in making up special leaflets, and what quantities of leaflets would be advisable. Turning back to his home headquarters, he should be able to present the commander's case to the leaflet printers or the public-address team, and should help the propaganda people in understanding the commander's problems.
Mechanics of Liaison.
Radio Support.
... the first attempt to coordinate artillery, leaflet and radio propaganda. The station had learned the location of the billets of various [Nazi] units in the town, together with the names of their key personnel. With this information, a "game" was arranged with the artillery. One day, at a certain time, these units were addressed by name and their members were told to go outside their buildings and five minutes later they would receive a message. Precisely, five minutes later, leaflet shells released the messages advising surrender. The ability of the Americans to do things like that impressed the German soldiers with their hopeless position more than words.
Obviously, such an operation required close contact with the enemy, plus known possession of standard-wave radio receivers by enemy personnel.