But the priceless advantage which may be instilled in the military crowd by a proper training is that it also possesses the means of recovery. That possibility—the resolution of order out of chaos—reposes within every file who has gained within the service a confidence that he has some measure of influence among his fellows. The welfare of the unit machinery depends upon having the greatest possible number of human shock absorbers—men who in the worst hour are capable of stepping forward and saying: "This calls for something extra and that means me." The restoration of control upon the battlefield, and the process of checking fright and paralysis and turning men back to essential tactical duties, does not come simply of constituted authority again finding its voice and articulating its strength to the extremities of the unit boundary. Control is a man-to-man force under fire. No matter how lowly his rank, any man who controls himself contributes to the control of others. A private can steady a general as surely as a cat can look at a king. There is no better ramrod for the back of a senior, who is beginning to buckle, than the sight of a junior who has kept his nerve. Land battles, as to the fighting part, are won by the intrepidity of men in grade from private to captains mainly. Fear is contagious but courage is not less so. The courage of any one man reflects in some degree the courage of all those who are within his vision. To the man who is in terror and bordering on panic, no influence can be more steadying than that of seeing some other man near him who is retaining self-control and doing his duty.
The paralysis which comes of fear can be lifted only through the resumption of action which will again give individuals the feeling of organization. This does not mean ordering a bayonet charge, or the firing of a volley at such-and-such o'clock. It may mean only patting one man on the back, "talking it up" to a couple of others, sending someone out to find a flank, or turning one's self to dig-in, while passing the word to others to do likewise. This is action in the realest sense of the term. Out of reinvigorating men toward the taking of many small actions develops the possibility of large and decisive action. The unit must first find itself before doing an effective job of finding the enemy. Out of those acts which are incidental to the establishing of order, a leader reaffirms his own power of decision.
Such things are elementary, and of the very nature of the fire fight. While there is much more to be said about the play of moral forces in the trial and success of the group under combat conditions, most of it is to be learned from other sources, and it is the duty of every officer to study all that he can of this subject, and apply it to what he does in his daily rounds.
There is no rule pertaining to the moral unifying of military forces under the pressures of the battlefield which is not equally good in the training which conditions troops for this eventuality. For the group to feel a great spiritual solidarity, and for its members to be bound together by mutual confidence and the satisfactions of a rewarding comradeship, is the foundation of great enterprise. But it is not more than that. Unaccompanied by a strengthening of the military virtues and a rise in the martial spirit, a friendly unity will not of itself point men directly toward the main object in training, nor enable them to dispose themselves efficiently toward each other on entering battle.
It does not make the military man less an agent of peace and more a militarist that he relishes his membership within a fighting establishment and thinks those thoughts which would best put his arms to efficient use. The military establishment neither declares nor makes war; these are acts by the nation. But it is the duty of the military establishment primarily to succor the nation from any great jeopardy.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ENVIRONMENT
The saying of the Old Sergeant that, "It takes a war to knock the hell out of the Regular Army," applies as broadly to war's effects upon the general peacetime establishment.
In the rapid expansion of the armed service which comes of a national emergency, nothing seems to remain the same. Old units fill up, and change their character. By the time they have sent out three or four cadres of commissioned and enlisted leaders to form the base for entirely new organizations, little remains of the moral foundation of the parent unit except an honored name.
Promotion is rapid and moves are frequent among the higher commanders. No sooner does a man feel fairly settled under a new commander, and confident that he will get along, than he looks up to see someone else filling the space.