In the seventeenth century Marshal Maurice de Saxe rediscovered cadenced marching which, along with the hard-surfaced roads of France, had remained buried since the time of the Romans. He reinstituted precision marching and drill within military bodies, and by that action changed European armies from straggling mobs into disciplined troops. The effects of that reform have been felt right down to the present. Baron von Steuben, the great reorganizer of the forces in George Washington's Army, simply built upon the principles which de Saxe had set forth one century earlier. These two great architects of military organization founded their separate systems upon one controlling idea—that if men can be trained to think about moving together, they can then be led to move toward thinking together. De Saxe wanted keen men, not automatons; in that, he was singular among the captains of his day. He started the numbering of regiments so that they would have a continuing history and thereby benefit from esprit de corps. He was the first to see the great importance of battle colors and to standardize their use. Of his own military opinions he wrote: "Experts should not be offended by the assurance with which I deliver my opinions. They should correct them; that is the fruit I expect from my work."
Now to take a look at von Steuben. He was the drillmaster of the American Revolution, but he was also its greatest student of the human mind and heart. He wrote the drill regulations of the Army, and as he wrote, committed them to memory. Of his labors he said: "I dictated my dispositions in the night; in the day I had them performed." But he learned the nature of the human material for which he thought these exercises were suited by visiting the huts of the half-clad soldiers of Valley Forge, personally inspecting their neglected weapons and hearing from their own lips of their sufferings. His main technic in installing his system was to depend upon the appeal of a powerful example; to allay all doubt of exactly what was wanted, he formed a model company and drilled it himself. He was a natural man; troops warmed to him because of an unabashed use of broken English and his violently explosive use, under stress, of "gottam!" which was his only quasi-English oath. In countenance he was strikingly like Gen. George S. Patton and there were other points of resemblance. A private soldier at Valley Forge was impressed with "the trappings of his pistols, the enormous holsters of his pistols, his large size, his strikingly martial aspect." But while he liked to dine with great men at his table, he chose to complete his list with officers of inferior rank. Once at Valley Forge he permitted his aides to give a dinner for junior officers on condition that none should be admitted that had on a whole pair of breeches. This was making the most of adversity. While wearing two stars and serving as Inspector General of the Army, he would still devote his whole day to the drilling of a squad of 10 or 12 men to get his system going. To a former Prussian associate he wrote this of Americans: "You say to your soldier, 'Do this!' and he doeth it; but I am obliged to say, 'This is the reason that you ought to do that,' and then he does it."
This was the key to the phenomenal success of his system. Within 6 weeks after he began work at Valley Forge, the Continental Army was on a new footing of self-confidence. His personal diligence in inquiring into the conduct of all officers toward their men, and his zeal in checking the accoutrement and carriage of every soldier established within the Army its first standard of inspection. Officers began to divide their scant rations with their men so that they would look better. But though he drilled the men of Valley Forge in marching and maneuver, Steuben paid no attention to the manual of arms, and let that wait until after he had gone into battle with these same forces. He explained why in these words: "Every colonel had introduced a system of his own and those who had taken the greatest pains were naturally the most attached to their work. Had I destroyed their productions, they would have detested me. I therefore preferred to pay no special attention to this subject until I had won their confidence." To take hold at the essential point and postpone action on the relatively unimportant, to respect a worthy pride and natural dignity in other men, and finally, to demonstrate that there is a better way in order to win men's loyalty and to use loyalty as the portal to more constructive collective thought—all of these morals shine in this one object lesson. The most revealing light upon the character of Steuben comes of the episode in which he had one Lieutenant Gibbons arrested for an offense, which he later learned another had committed. He then went before the Regiment. It was raining hard, but he bared his head and asked Gibbons to come forward. "Sir," he said, "the fault which was committed might, in the presence of an enemy, have been fatal. Your Colonel tells me you are blameless. I ask your pardon. Return to your command."
Mistakes will occur. Tempers will go off half-cocked even among men of good habit. Action will be taken on impulse rather than full information, despite every warning as to its danger. But no officer who has ever done serious injustice to a subordinate can do less than Steuben did, if he wants to keep respect. Admiral Halsey wrote about how he had once relieved one of his Captains in battle, found months later that he had misjudged him, and then tried by every means within his power to make redress.
The main connecting link between the perfecting of group action in training and the end product of unity and economy of operations in battle has never been better than imperfectly expressed even by such masters as de Saxe and von Steuben, who felt it by profound instinct. The time-honored explanation is that when men accustom themselves to obeying orders, the time ultimately arrives when they will obey by habit, and that the habit will carry over into any set of circumstances requiring response to orders. This has the quality of relative truth; it is true so far as it goes, but it undersells the major values.
The heterogeneous crowd is swayed by the voices of instinct. Properly trained, any military unit, being a homogeneous body, should be swayed by the voice of training. Out of uniformity of environment comes uniformity of character and spirit. From moving and acting together men grow to depend upon, and to support, each other, and to subordinate their individual wills to the will of the leader. And if that were all that training profited them, they would rarely win a battle or a skirmish under modern conditions!
Today the supreme value of any training at arms which fixes habit is that, under conditions of absolute pressure, it enables men to take the primary steps essential to basic security without too great taxing of their mental faculties and moral powers; this leaves their senses relatively free to cope with the unexpected. The unforeseen contingency invariably happens in battle, and its incidence supplies the supreme test of the efficacy of any training method. Surprise has no regard for the importance of rank; in combat any unit's fortune may pivot on the judgment and initiative of the file who has last joined it. Therefore the moral object in training is stated without any qualification in words once used by a wise Frenchman, Dr. Maurice Campeaux: "It should be the subordination of the individual's will to the leader's, and not its surrender or destruction." All training at all levels has a dual object—to develop us all as leaders of men and followers of leaders. Its technics are most perfect when they serve evenly these parallel purposes. In consequence, when any officer thinks only on: "What is policy?" rather than: "What should policy be for the good of the service?" he has trained his sights too low.
Even in modern warfare, however, there are exceptional circumstances in which success is altogether dependent upon the will and judgment of the leader, and undeviating response to his orders. The commander of a buttoned-up tank is the master of its fortunes, and what happens for better or worse is according to the strength of his personal control. Within a submerged submarine during action, the situation is still more remarkable. Only one man, the commander of the ship, can see what is occurring, and he only with one eye; the resolving of every situation depends on his judgment as to what should be done. Yet those who have the surest knowledge of this service have said that the main problem in submarine warfare is to find a sufficient body of officers who will rise superior to the intricacies of their complicated machines, and will make their own opportunities and take advantage of them. That is hardly unique. The same quality is the hallmark of greatness in any individual serving with a combat arm. The military crowd will double its effort for a leader when success rides on his coattails; but he needs first to capture their loyalty by keeping his contracts with them, sweetening the ties of organization, and convincing them that he is a man to be followed. His luck (which despite all platitudes to the contrary is an element in success) begins when his men start to believe that he was born under a lucky star. But they are not apt to be so persuaded unless he can make his outfit shine in comparison with all others. The best argument for establishing a low VD score and a high disciplinary and deportment record within any unit is that it convinces higher authority that the unit is well run and is trying, and is therefore entitled to any extra consideration that may be requested. All who have been closely identified with the inner working of any higher headquarters in the American establishment know that it works this way. On the other hand, the fundamental idea is almost as old as the hills. Turning back to Cicero, we will find these words: "Neither the physician nor the general can ever, however praiseworthy he may be in the theory of his art, perform anything highly worthwhile without experience in the rules laid down for the observation of all small duties." The Old Roman added that between men nothing is so binding as a similarity of good dispositions.
Within the military crowd, and granting to each the same quality of human material, the problem of achieving organic unity in the face of the enemy is one thing on a ship, and quite another among land-fighting forces. Loyalty to the ship itself provides an extra and incisive bond among naval forces. Given steadiness in the command, men will fight the ship to the limit, if only for the reason that if they fail to do so, there is no place to go but down. The physical setting of duty is defined by material objects close at hand. The individual has only to fit himself into an already predetermined frame. He knows when he is derelict, and he knows further that his dereliction can hardly escape the eye of his comrades. The words: "Now Hear This!" have the particular significance that they bespeak the collected nature of naval forces, and the essential unifying force of complete communications.
If the situation were as concrete, and the integrating influences as pervading among field forces as in the Navy, land warfare would be relieved of a great part of its frictions. Except among troops defending a major fortress with all-around protection, there is no such possibility. Field movement is always diffusing. As fire builds up against the line, its members have less and less a sense of each other, and a feeling that as individuals they are getting support. Each man is at the mercy of the contact with some other file, and when the contact breaks, he sees only blackness in the enveloping situation. Men then have to turn physically back toward each other to regain the feeling of strength which comes of organization. That, in brief, is the mathematical and psychological reason why salients into an enemy line invariably take the form of a wedge; it comes of the movements of unnerved and aimless men huddling toward each other like sheep awaiting the voice of the shepherd. The natural instincts intervene ever in the absence of strong leadership. Said the French General de Maud'huy: "However perfectly trained a company may be it always tends to become once again the crowd when suddenly shocked."