If the skills and attributes desired in an officer in peacetime, when serving on the staff, or on attaining senior grade were added up, the list would be quite lengthy. But for the junior leader in combat, as Lord Charles McM. Moran discovered during World War I, the “simplest virtues” sufficed: “When . . . I search the pages of my diary, which is concerned with the personal leadership of platoons, companies, and the battalion itself, for the particular qualities which give to a few dominion over their fellows I can discern only the simplest virtues.”1 Lee Kennett, in his study of the World War II GI, provides a succinct yet comprehensive summary of those virtues: “G.I.s did not hesitate to point out the qualities they looked for in those who led them: They wanted officers—and noncoms—who led by example, who had confidence in themselves, and who knew their jobs; but they also wanted leaders who knew and cared about the men, shared jokes and hardships with them, and were careful to keep them informed and to explain the purpose of their missions.”2 What men wanted and deserved, then, were tactically and technically proficient leaders who took care of them and shared in their privations and dangers. Simple virtues indeed, though easier listed than realized. Memoirs of American soldiers and junior leaders from World War I through the Vietnam War provide eloquent testimony to the importance of these virtues.
TACTICAL AND TECHNICAL PROFICIENCY
The expertise required to lead a platoon or company in combat is more complex than most laymen appreciate. The leader must be able to deploy his men tactically and have a working knowledge of his unit’s weapons and equipment. Bill Mauldin, in his version of the attributes desirable in a combat leader, placed expertise at the top of the list: “The ideal officer in any army knows his business. . . . He is saluted and given the respect due a man who knows enough about war to boss soldiers around in it.”3 Such expertise was essential because men’s lives hung in the balance, as Frederick Downs, a platoon leader during the Vietnam War, noted: “The chain of command was counting on the officer for the success of the mission and the men were counting on the officer to survive the mission. The men did not give a hoot in hell whether the officer came from West Point, ROTC, or the moon. They wanted the officer to keep them alive and not do anything stupid.”4
The skills a leader needed obviously varied by type of unit, but they generally included, according to William Darryl Henderson, a “proven ability to carry out a tactical plan, to arrange for and adjust artillery, to demonstrate professional expertise with weapons, to navigate well, and to provide medical care and supplies.”5 Successful leaders understood the importance of this “expert power,” as Henderson calls it, in gaining the confidence of the men. The platoon leader Michael Lee Lanning, on the day of his promotion to first lieutenant in Vietnam, understood that green second lieutenants were sometimes the “brunt of jokes” and were “often portrayed as naive bumblers.” But if that “bumbling” second lieutenant had paid attention during his training, then he was likely to be “the most knowledgeable soldier in the platoon. . . . His abilities to call in artillery, air, and dust-offs [medevac helicopters] were qualities not to be joked about.”6
Before a lieutenant could call in artillery, airstrikes, or medevac helicopters, however, he had to know precisely where he was. Lanning realized that “the easiest way to lose the confidence of the men was not to know the unit’s location at all times.”7 One of those long-standing lieutenant jokes is that there is nothing more dangerous than a second lieutenant with a map and compass. But for the men whose officer was inept at using these tools, the joke was not funny. For example, the doughboy Joseph D. Lawrence, before departing for officers’ candidate school, learned how not to lead a night patrol from his platoon leader, nicknamed “Mr. Hook” because “he was awkward in his movements.” Within minutes of leaving friendly lines, “we were lost. Being lost in no-man’s-land was no joke.” They encountered a barbed-wire entanglement, not knowing if it was on the friendly or enemy side of the lines, and Mr. Hook “got badly entangled.” The men freed their intrepid leader without incident and proceeded. Just before dawn they finally found friendly lines, whereupon Mr. Hook boldly marched his patrol straight through a gap in the wire, only to be met by cursing British troops who informed him that his unannounced arrival had almost been greeted with a burst of machine-gun fire. The British soldiers had held their fire only because they had been told that lost doughboys were stumbling around in no-man’s-land.8
Soldiers had a low tolerance for a leader’s incompetence because mistakes cost lives. Yet as Private Eugene B. Sledge pointed out, all jokes aside, the men were sympathetic to the plight of the new lieutenant: “The new officers bore a heavy burden. . . . [Being] faced with heavy responsibilities and placed in a position of leadership amid hardened, seasoned Marine combat veterans . . . was a difficult situation and a terrific challenge. . . . No one I knew in the ranks envied them in the least.”9 The men also understood that no new leader, regardless of how well trained, possessed all the skills and knowledge that he would need in combat. They therefore responded favorably to leaders who admitted that they did not know everything, displayed a willingness to learn, and listened to the advice of their veteran soldiers.
Lieutenant Howard Matthias, on taking command of a veteran marine platoon in Korea, was one of those green, young officers wise enough to listen to his platoon sergeant, who had broken in enough lieutenants to know how to advise without offending or embarrassing: “Sgt. Miller not only quietly carried out his orders but also provided me with common sense guidelines for my behavior. He seldom recommended any specific actions but would drop subtle hints as [to] what might be best.”10
After operating without a lieutenant for some time, Sergeant Ralph Zumbro’s tank platoon in Vietnam got a new leader, Joe Somolik, who immediately impressed the tankers, not with his expertise but with his desire to learn:
This officer, Lieutenant Joe, was not normal by any standards. He insisted on a crash course in crew duties, as well as a Vietnam indoctrination. So for a week, the Assassin [the platoon leader’s tank] hardly stopped as he put himself through all of the crew positions, learning the tasks of loader, gunner, and driver, as well as of tank boss. He spent his evenings either with the crews, listening to them recount savage battles, or with the officers in the command bunker, learning the tricks of getting helicopter supplies delivered on time, and how to deal with infantry commanders.11
Lieutenant Somolik’s apparent ignorance of tank-crew duties might raise questions about what he and his instructors at Fort Knox had been doing during Armor Officers’ Basic Course, but Somolik probably knew more about fighting a tank than he let on. The crew drills allowed him to get to know his men and to assess their abilities while also sharpening his own skills.
Captain Richard D. Camp, upon taking command of a rifle company in Vietnam, had never been in combat before, but he did have five years’ experience as a marine infantry officer. Like Somolik, however, he prudently took an unobtrusive approach: “I decided to wait and see how good they [his men] were or if their techniques were better than my ideas.” Camp was impressed with what he saw but knew from his training that a few of the things they were doing were wrong. His mortarmen, for example, insisted that in the field, the bipods for their 60-mm mortar tubes were “just a lot of extra weight, so we fire them free hand.” Rather than put a stop to this “unmitigated bullshit” out of hand, however, Camp asked his self-proclaimed mortar aces to hit a tree outside their company position. The result: “They never landed one anywhere near that tree.”12 Bipods were humped in the boonies forthwith.
At the other extreme from the officer who admitted his inexperience and displayed a willingness to learn was the one who tried to hide his lack of skills behind a mask of bluster and authoritarianism. Private Richard E. Ogden’s marine squad leader in Vietnam, “Chicken Foot” Trudeau, was a classic example: “The squad was a mockery in the field and training. He was incapable of taking advice. . . . His egomania and insensitivity got him into hot water. . . . The pressure was on him, and he attempted to conceal his insecurities by yelling and screaming all the time.”13
An unskilled leader was bad enough, but a martinet who refused to acknowledge his shortcomings or learn from his mistakes was doubly dangerous. Paul Sponaugle, a squad leader in the Pacific in World War II, pointed out that veteran combatants were desperate men playing a deadly game and that they had no time for petty authoritarianism at the front: “Good soldiers, the ones who made it through all the rotten things, were tough and used to killing. If a leader they didn’t respect gave them a foolish order just to show them who was in charge, he was taking his life in his hands.”14
Captain Neal, Lieutenant Philip Caputo’s company commander in Vietnam, was a humorless authoritarian who never accompanied his platoons into the field. His marines were exhausted from the grueling routine of nightly patrols and defending the company’s base camp, within which Neal slept comfortably in his tent. He suddenly decided one day that an in-ranks, parade-ground-style rifle inspection was in order, thus yielding to the incompetent leader’s penchant for doing what he knows how to do, no matter how inappropriate. His men not only considered this inspection blatant harassment but also extremely dangerous because they were a tempting target for enemy mortarmen as they stood in ranks. Fortunately, the enemy did not open fire, but Caputo’s fellow platoon leader predicted that Captain Neal was not long for this world: “You know, I think the skipper’s nuts. Somebody’s going to put a bullet in the back of his head one of these days.” Caputo responded, “Whoever does, I hope they give him the Congressional Medal of Honor . . . the war’s bad enough without having to put up with that goddamned tyrant.”15
The men were not opposed to discipline, as long as it was not simply harassment coming from an insecure, incompetent officer trying to assert himself. Lieutenants Harold P. Leinbaugh’s and John D. Campbell’s company commander, Captain George Gieszl, “never mollycoddled” the men and was a “tough, fair taskmaster,” but he “never asked his men to do anything that he could not do—and Gieszl could do almost everything the army asked of a leader.”16 A competent leader did not have to resort to harassment to maintain discipline and control, as exemplified by Arthur Neumann, the sergeant in charge of Robert G. Thobaben’s battalion aid station: “He never tried to harass or intimidate anyone. He rarely used profanity and was never rude or cruel. Like any outfit, we had a clown, a goof-off, a neurotic, a psychotic, and a con man, but Neumann seemed able to handle them all.”17
TAKING CARE OF THE MEN
The competent leader earned respect because his skill directly translated into saved lives. Technical and tactical competence alone, however, was not enough. The leader also had to take care of his men, which in its most basic form meant doing everything reasonable to ensure that they were fed, clothed, sheltered, equipped, and rested. Though soldiers were adept at scrounging or foraging, ultimately they had little control over what they ate, when they rested, and where they went. Thus, they expected the army to provide for their needs, and their leaders had what Jonathan Shay calls a “fiduciary responsibility” to do so: “The vast and distant military and civilian structure that provides a modern soldier with his orders, arms, ammunition, food, water, information, training, and fire support is ultimately a moral structure, a fiduciary, a trustee holding the life and safety of that soldier.”18
The junior leader directly controlled few material assets, but he nevertheless played a vital role in anticipating and requesting what his men would need to survive and to do their jobs. Lieutenant Hervey Allen considered the unglamorous business of taking care of doughboys to be one area in which junior leaders could make a difference: “The men expected to be fed, and they looked to the officers to feed them. To feed, clothe, equip, and pay the men,—that is about all a line officer can do anyway,—pictures of sword flourishers in battle notwithstanding.”19 Taking care of the men paid dividends in improved efficiency. Bill Mauldin offered an apt comparison: “An officer is not supposed to sleep until his men are bedded down. He is not supposed to eat until he has arranged for his men to eat. He’s like a prizefighter’s manager. If he keeps his fighter in shape, the fighter will make him successful.”20
Providing for the soldiers’ material needs was the most obvious but not the only aspect of taking care of the men. The caring leader also did his best to ensure fairness. Soldiering was hard work, and the trooper did not want to carry more than his fair share of the unit’s equipment or fill more than his quota of sandbags. More important, he did not want to take more than his share of the risks. Hence, the wise leader distributed the dangerous jobs as equitably as possible. Patrolling in World War II was one of those dreaded jobs that had to be assigned fairly, as far as Lieutenant Paul Boesch was concerned: “Somehow in the movies men always step forward briskly to ask for dangerous missions, but in the real infantry men looked on volunteering as an easy way to end a military career. While they might be fully willing to take on any task specifically assigned them, they had no desire to ask for trouble.” Boesch ensured fairness by “keeping a duty roster for patrols just as we kept duty rosters for other onerous tasks. Each man took his turn.”21
Another onerous task was being lead unit. In Albert French’s marine company in Vietnam, the commander was careful to rotate that dangerous job among his platoons. While on a mission one day, French estimated that it would be his platoon’s turn at point after the noon chow break, but for the moment he and his comrades enjoyed the coveted position of center platoon in the column: “You didn’t have to worry that much about booby traps or being the first to walk into an ambush.”22
Sharing the burdens and dangers seems simple enough, but it was complicated because certain individuals or units were better than others. Always putting the most skilled and experienced soldier on point, for example, might save lives when he spotted a booby trap or uncovered an ambush, but how fair was that to the point man? And using the best men helped to ensure the success of the mission, something of more than passing interest to the junior leader’s superiors. During World War II, Lieutenant George Wilson noticed that his commanders “used their most experienced men for the tough jobs.” He could see how this practice “might appear unfair to the men asked to undertake repeated risks,” but using the best men allowed for “a better chance of getting a difficult job done with the least losses.” Wilson accepted this method of assigning missions and even “used it myself,” even though he had personally been given so many “tough assignments” because of his proven track record that he was beginning to wonder “how many such jobs I could survive.”23
Unlike their leaders, the men tended to put fairness before mission, and they not only expected their leader to distribute burdens equitably, but they also counted on him to stand up to higher authorities if they perceived that orders from above were unfair, ill-conceived, or inappropriate. Henderson notes that the junior leader who went to bat for his men proved that he cared, even if he failed:
Cohesion occurs when . . . leaders act to protect the soldier from and to regulate relations with higher authorities. An example involves the situation when soldiers perceive orders or allocations from higher headquarters as being unfair or inadequate. The sergeant, platoon leader, or company commander who goes to higher headquarters and wins relief or who merely makes the attempt not only increases his influence among his soldiers but also significantly contributes to their sense of belonging to a group that can deal with an otherwise uncaring environment.24
During the fighting in the Philippines in World War II, Captain W. Stanford Smith’s regimental commander ordered him to employ his cannon company’s lightly armored, self-propelled artillery pieces in an assault, as if they were tanks. Two of the guns were promptly hit and three of Smith’s men killed. When the regimental commander again told him to carry out this maneuver, Smith was “incensed” and protested so vehemently that his colonel rescinded the order. Unknown to Smith, one of his sergeants had witnessed him “get really pissed off at the regimental commander and slam his helmet on the ground.”25 It was not long before the entire company knew that Smith had stood up for them.
The junior leader had to pick his battles with his superiors carefully, however. Morris Janowitz and Roger W. Little point out that although the men rightfully expected their leader “to defend them against arbitrary and unwarranted intrusion from above,” the junior officer was also “the final representative of coercive higher authority. For him to overidentify with his men would impair the system of authority.”26 The leader thus occupied a difficult middle ground between protecting his men and carrying out his orders. If he became unreasonably protective, it usually led to his relief from command for disobeying orders or, more commonly, for not carrying them out with sufficient speed and vigor because he feared for his men’s lives. The case of Lieutenant Johnson, Rudolph W. Stephens’s platoon leader, illustrates how difficult occupying that middle ground could be. As a leader in a war in Korea that by late 1952 was obviously stalemated, Johnson began faking what most of his men had come to consider senseless patrols: “[Johnson] was just as brave as the next man; he just wouldn’t waste a man’s life on some of those silly patrols, and his men respected him for his actions. No one in the platoon would rat on him for any reason. If there was some action against the enemy that would show some results, then he would give it all he had, but to throw away a life for nothing was out of the question.”27
From the perspective of his superiors, Johnson was disobeying orders and undermining discipline. Furthermore, it was not his place to decide if the patrols were “silly” or not. From the perspective of his men, he was being sensible with their lives in a war that was going nowhere. Too often, in the late stages of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, leaders found themselves in such unenviable, no-win situations.
The opposite of the overprotective leader was the one who volunteered for dangerous missions or carried out orders in a reckless manner because of his love of fighting or simply from personal ambition. John Dollard’s survey of American veterans of the Spanish Civil War revealed, to no one’s surprise, that they believed “a commander worthy of respect will take no unnecessary risks with men’s lives.”28 Leaders who, in the men’s estimation, were heedless of lives gained reputations as “glory hounds.” Sergeant Warren Avery’s platoon leader in Korea was typical: “He was a real gung-ho second lieutenant who was going to make first lieutenant even if it killed us. The lieutenant was constantly volunteering us for patrols, or to advance on the point each time the company was in the attack.”29
In contrast to Sergeant Avery’s platoon leader was Lieutenant James Brady, whose sergeant said on Brady’s departure to become executive officer of his company in Korea: “You know, Mr. Brady, when you come up to us I was afraid. I thought you was gonna try to win medals with this platoon. That scared me. But you didn’t, and that was a good thing. We liked having you as platoon leader.”30
Sometimes a gung-ho leader was not out to enhance his career or reputation but was simply green and overeager. Most leaders, if they lived long enough, learned the virtues of caution. Captain Camp, in one of his first missions as a company commander, led a platoon-sized patrol deep into “Indian country” in Vietnam, in search of enemy rocket sites. Only after returning unscathed did he reflect on what a dangerous risk he had just taken. Camp vowed to exhibit more prudence in the future: “I realized that I needed to start getting concerned about my attitude; I might have allowed my enthusiasm to lead us all into a situation in which we would have needed help. The thwarting of my impulsive enthusiasm proved to be a valuable early lesson, for I soon realized that the same sort of emotional response had killed my predecessor and, no doubt, countless others.”31
The leader who cared for his men was not only frugal with their lives but also went out of his way to keep them informed. Given the soldiers’ combat parochialism, they had little interest in the wider war, but they cared a great deal about what was happening within the microcosm of their platoon and company. Junior leaders often knew little themselves about what was going on, but they usually knew more than the men. The wise leader told his soldiers as much as possible, because information about an upcoming move or mission reduced uncertainty, which in turn reduced anxiety. The army officer Joseph J. Ondishko pointed out that the “absence of information” is one of the conditions that fosters panic in troops: “Fears arise from matters they don’t understand—keep men informed.”32
The leader who consistently passed on what he knew also gained his men’s trust. They perceived that he was playing it straight with them, even if the news was not all good, as Elmar Dinter observes: “The groups take a burning interest in everything that directly affects their future. This is precisely the kind of information that a clever leader will be able to obtain. . . . If his information proves to be accurate, and if he passes it on without twisting it, then a kind of trust will be created.”33
The leader who went to the trouble of keeping his men informed helped to dispel their nagging conviction that they were just ciphers or expendable cogs in a large, impersonal machine. Soldiers resented being treated like sheep or kept in the dark. Klaus H. Huebner, although a captain, was consistently left out of the information loop, perhaps because he was a noncombatant. Like all soldiers, he resented not knowing what was to happen next. In North Africa in World War II, he found himself on a train “to where, no one again seems to know. That’s what I like about the Army; you never know anything. You are just a serial number, you do what you are told, and it’s as simple as that.”34
Sometimes security precautions or a lack of time precluded passing on information, but the leader who explained what he could showed his men that he cared. The simple act of just talking to a soldier about anything helped establish trust, as long as the conversation was sincere. Captain “Ack Ack” Haldane, who commanded Private Sledge’s marine company, was a beloved skipper because his interest in the men was genuine. During a footmarch while training for the upcoming assault on Peleliu in World War II, Haldane asked Sledge, then a fresh replacement, about his background and family and then “moved along the column talking to other men as he had to me. His sincere interest in each of us as human beings helped to dispel the feeling that we were just animals training to fight.”35
Captain Charles B. MacDonald, as a green replacement commander of a veteran infantry company, typically worried that his men would not accept him. He knew he had made the grade when he inadvertently overheard one of his men talking about him to another soldier: “He doesn’t seem scared to come around and see you once in a while, no matter where the hell you are. He seems to care what happens to you.”36
Leaders like MacDonald and Haldane genuinely cared, and the soldiers sensed it and reciprocated. Lieutenant George William Sefton wisely observed that bonhomie and artificial familiarity, on the other hand, did not win trust: “I learned never to underestimate the intelligence of my men. They will see through bluff and bluster, perceive and resent any cavalier attitude. . . . They will respect you in direct ratio to the consideration you exercise on their behalf.”37
Although a leader’s concern had to be genuine, much of the process of exhibiting it was straightforward enough. He ensured that his men were rested and resupplied, duties were equitably shared, and as much information as possible was passed on. Beyond that, however, taking care of the men was anything but a disinterested, mechanistic process. The junior leader lived with his men and got to know them. He could not be dispassionate about ordering them to do something that might get them killed. Herein lies one of the greatest burdens of junior leadership in combat, one stressful enough to contribute significantly to junior-officer breakdowns, according to Leo H. Bartemeier: “The officer patients . . . manifested attitudes of care and appreciation for their men. . . . It was clear, too, that they had suffered a good deal, emotionally, from the necessity of leading and ordering their men on and on to death, mutilation, and psychiatric disablement.”38
The leader had to care about his men while somehow steeling himself against the inevitable losses, an emotional dilemma not easily resolved. Perhaps, as Frederick Downs suggests, the most that a junior leader could do was to be aware that sooner or later he would have to face that traumatic dilemma: “Even if the officer does his job perfectly, he will lose men. He will make mistakes that will kill men. He will lead his men out to face the enemy knowing full well some will die. That’s his job. Some combat officers will not be able to assume such responsibility for very long. Some will handle it well.”39
Downs would be the first to admit that this advice is easier given than internalized. His first wounded soldier had a knee shattered by a Viet Cong grenade. As Downs cradled the man’s head while the medic bandaged him, “I felt my own tears well up at the impact of seeing one of my men, a man I was responsible for, hurt and bleeding.”40 One of Lieutenant Wilson’s men was accidentally run over and killed by an American tank during the fighting in Normandy. This especially senseless death was the second casualty in his platoon since he had taken over, and he realized that he would not last long if he dwelled on each loss: “I knew then I’d never survive if I let myself get tied in with every case. It was vital for me to build some sort of protective shield within myself and concentrate only on what had to be done in the present and how to do it. I forced myself to suppress all thoughts of prior losses and gruesome mental pictures of the tragedy of war.”41
Only the truly callous leader could be insensitive to the loss of his own men. Most coped by adopting some version of Wilson’s sensible recommendation to focus on the job at hand. The leader had a responsibility to those still alive and could do nothing about the dead. If he believed that his mistakes had caused those deaths, however, the weight of guilt could be oppressive. Captain Camp accompanied one of his squads on a routine daytime patrol in Vietnam. On the way back to base camp, the squad proceeded by the easiest and most obvious route, moving down a road. Smitty, the squad leader’s radioman, was abruptly mangled before Camp’s eyes by a command-detonated mine and mercifully died shortly thereafter. Camp was devastated because he knew they should not have been on that road: “Inside, for all the years since, I have carried the image of Smitty’s death deep inside me as a sign of my frailty. I knew it then, clearly, that I never should have let the patrol proceed up that open roadway. I could have said something sooner. I should have. If ever a group of Marines was ambush bait, that patrol on that open road leading out from that village was the best example I ever heard about. . . . I knew better.”42
SHARING THE HARDSHIPS AND DANGERS
The leader not only had to order the men he cared for into harm’s way, but he also had to be willing to take the same risks himself. The men did not respect a leader who would not share their dangers and hardships. Lieutenant Matthias understood that “respect was given more openly to the officer that would live the life of the ‘grunt’ on line. This meant eating, sleeping, and struggling the same as the other men.”43 Sergeant Nat Frankel pointed out that only by living like their men could leaders appreciate what they were going through: “What is the difference between an officer for whom we would die and another whom we would just as soon kill? It is, in the long run, the extent to which they share the common lot of their men. Are they distant, protected, scrubbed clean, sterile? If so, they are nothing but computers issuing indifferent orders. Or are they accessible, exposed to the gamut of danger and misfortune, with dirt in their fingernails and an instinctive understanding of and respect for our view of the world? If so, they become one with their units.”44
In the combat zone, junior leaders had little choice but to live as their men did. Nevertheless, officers still enjoyed some privileges, which the wise leader was careful not to abuse. During World War II and the Korean War, officers were allowed a hard-liquor ration while the men were not. The officers had to pay for the liquor, and it did not always arrive on schedule, but the ration was a potential source of GI resentment. MacDonald and his officers turned potential discontent into a morale booster, however, by sharing the liquor: “The bottles were passed among all the men of the platoons until they were exhausted, which was accomplished rather rapidly, and we wondered at letters to the editor in the Stars and Stripes complaining about officers getting whiskey rations when enlisted men did not.”45
Leaders also had transportation at their disposal, but during a grueling, fourday march in the summer heat of France, Charles F. Minder’s company commander dismounted and marched with his men. He even carried the straggling Minder’s pack for a while to allow him to catch up: “The Captain did other wonderful things for the fellows. I saw him give a couple of fellows some water from his own canteen. He walked his horse instead of riding him, and that’s something that few officers would do.”46 Captain Gieszl, Leinbaugh’s and Campbell’s company commander, also marched with his men: “He was always fair, and that made all the difference. He didn’t take advantage of his jeep on marches. He marched further than the rest of us, moving back and forth along the column.”47
Captain Gieszl, by actually marching farther than his men, was doing more than just sharing the hardships. He was setting the example. The smart leader not only respected the soldier’s view of the world by sharing it, as Sergeant Frankel suggested, but also set the standards to be achieved in that world. He could only do so through personal example. Lieutenant Brady provided a time-honored rule of leadership as he stood last in line behind his platoon at a showerpoint in Korea: “You sent the enlisted men first if it was something pleasant, chow or a shower; you went first yourself if it wasn’t. The rules were so simple once you learned them.”48
Simple to learn, perhaps, but the rules were not always easy to live by. Sometimes the junior leader had to summon his last reserves of strength and resolve to continue to set the example. During the abysmal Korean winter of 1950–1951, Lieutenant Joseph R. Owen and the other leaders in his marine rifle company exerted a maximum effort to keep the exhausted men scrabbling up and down the slippery, frozen hills: “The officers and NCO’s earned their pay. When the men faltered we coaxed and cajoled, cursed and threatened. We pulled some men to their feet, and we spelled the machine gunners, mortarmen, and ammo carriers, carrying their heavy loads ourselves.”49
Sharing dangers and hardships allowed the leader to set the example and to understand what his men were going through, but there was an even more basic reason for risk taking. He had to expose himself to danger in order to do his job. He had to observe the enemy so that he could direct his unit’s fire and movement, call for artillery or air support, and report the situation to higher headquarters. He had to position weapons personally to provide covering fire or when organizing a defense. He had to leave the safety of his own foxhole at night to check his unit’s position. He was often called upon to lead a patrol or raid.
The men were well aware that the leader had to place himself in danger to do his job under fire. Robert Sanders’s company commander was nicknamed “Rabbit,” not because he was scared, but because he was a fast mover in a firefight:
If you had a sharp company commander, he could take just one glance and tell what was happening. If you had one that got his face buried down in the fucking ground, soon as that shit started coming in, he was trying to hide from the heat, then your whole unit could get killed right there. Rabbit never got down on the ground. Half the time he was the only motherfucker up, checking things out. Where was the automatic weapons fire coming from? Where was the main body of the ambush? Then he would give you orders to move in—in the right direction!50
Leaders certainly paid the price for taking such risks. A platoon leader in Lieutenant Alfred S. Bradford’s battalion died in a firefight when he raised his head to look around. Someone remarked that “he shouldn’t have stuck his head up,” but a veteran lieutenant responded, “Sometimes, . . . when you’re the leader, you’ve got to.”51 Junior leaders died or were wounded with appalling frequency in the performance of their duties. Lieutenant James Hamilton Dill was not surprised to learn that many of the artillery sergeants in his battery in the Korean War refused battlefield commissions: “New lieutenant of artillery equaled instant forward observer. Too many of those who accepted appointments were promptly killed in action.”52
The men appreciated the risks that their leaders took, but they also expected it. The junior leader who looked after himself first was despised, not only because he was not sharing the same dangers that he was ordering his men into but also because he was not doing his job effectively. Captain Staley, commanding a company of doughboys in Lieutenant Lawrence’s battalion, never left the safety of his dugout: “Captain Staley’s confinement to his dugout, a Germanbuilt, concrete dugout, became known throughout the battalion.” His cowardly behavior left his men in the forward trenches leaderless. Lawrence, leading the platoon next to Staley’s company, found himself doing double duty because Staley “did not visit his line. I was the only officer to whom his men could look for instructions.”53
Bob Stiles, during the fighting on New Britain in the Pacific in World War II, learned that men died when leaders failed to lead. Stiles, a battalion scout and sniper, was advancing with a platoon when they came under friendly artillery fire. He tried to find the platoon leader to have him radio back to lift the fire. A sergeant told Stiles that the lieutenant was in his usual location during an advance: “He’s way back—keeping his eye out for stragglers, he tells us.” Stiles knew that men had died needlessly as a result: “Well, hell, his job is to be on the lines and relaying the position of the forward men to our artillery so they can lift their elevation on the guns. If someone isn’t doing this, the men up forward have their ass out in the cold.”54
Leaders who abdicated their responsibilities quickly lost the respect of their men and usually did not last long. One of Lieutenant Owen’s mortar squad leaders panicked during a Chinese night attack in Korea, abandoning his mortar and telling his men to run for it. The next morning, the squad leader admitted his error and begged for another chance, but Owen knew that the damage was irreversible: “I can’t give you another chance. Your men don’t respect you. You report to the CP. They’ll give you orders from there.”55
Although some leaders failed out of fear, far more braved the dangers of combat and fulfilled their responsibilities, earning the trust and respect of their men in the process. The soldiers were looking for a particular type of bravery, however. Impulsive, reckless behavior, no matter how courageous, was not what they wanted in a leader. Recklessness might get them killed. The leader who remained cool and unflappable in the midst of chaos, on the other hand, inspired confidence and obedience. In times of danger, men wanted someone to tell them what to do, and only a level-headed leader with his emotions in check could make the correct decisions.
Lord Moran noticed that the successful British leader in World War I possessed “phlegm”: “Alone in its influence over the hearts of men I place phlegm—a supreme imperturbability in the face of death which half amused them and half dominated them—the ultimate gift in war.”56 Successful leaders avoided overreacting in the midst of carnage and confusion. The greatest praise a leader could receive from his soldiers was that he was “cool” under fire, as was Colonel William J. Donovan, who commanded Father Francis P. Duffy’s infantry regiment in World War I: “‘Cool’ is the word the men use of him and ‘Cool’ is their highest epithet of praise for a man of daring, resolution and indifference to danger.”57 Albert M. Ettinger’s mortar sergeant was “cool as a cucumber” under fire and “always out front directing the mortar fire.”58 Coolness remained a valuable asset in later wars as well. The machine-gun platoon leader in Allen R. Matthew’s marine battalion in World War II was “as cool under fire as he was on the parade ground.”59 Lieutenant Owen admired one of his fellow platoon leaders in the Korean War who was tactically savvy and, more important, “never seemed to get ruffled, and he wasn’t a shouter.”60 Tim O’Brien’s platoon leader, despite his nickname “Mad Mark,” was “not a hysterical, crazy, into-the-brink, to-the-fore” type. “Rather, he was insanely calm. He never showed fear. He was a professional soldier, an ideal leader of men in the field.”61
Conversely, the leader who could not maintain a calm and confident demeanor spread fear and doubt. Marine Robert Leckie looked at his commander’s face after the company’s first nerve-racking night in the jungles of Guadalcanal, and he was rattled by what he saw: “I peered at the captain. Anxiety was on his face as though carved there by the night’s events. It startled me. Here was no warrior, no veteran of a hundred battles. Here was only a civilian, like myself.”62 Many leaders were as green and anxious as Leckie’s company commander, but the smart ones understood that they had to conceal those anxieties from the men. Captain Charles Rigaud was as inexperienced as the marines in his weapons company when they were ambushed by the Japanese on Guadalcanal. His men began falling back without orders, at which point Rigaud stood up in the midst of the firing, and according to John Hersey, “by a combination of blistering sarcasm, orders and cajolery” got the men “in a mood to fight again.” Hersey was sure that the young captain was as scared as everyone else, but he never showed it: “I am certain that all along, Captain Rigaud was just as terrified as the rest of us were, for he was eminently human. And yet his rallying those men was as cool a performance as you can imagine. I could feel my own knees tremble; I could see the rifle shake in the hands of the man nearest me. But I kept quite close to Captain Rigaud and I could not see a single tremor.”63
In Vietnam, Lieutenant Lanning likewise comported himself calmly in his first serious firefight. He was scared, but he instinctively understood that he could not show signs of faltering: “I was frightened—actually, scared as hell is a better description. Still, I remained calm on the radio and delivered my instructions with confidence. Nobody panicked. Everybody did his job.”64
The successful combat leader had to exhibit coolness under fire and a willingness to take risks in the normal course of his duties, but his men did not expect him to take unnecessary risks simply to prove his bravery. Herbert Spiegel, who served as an infantry battalion surgeon in World War II, noted that replacement officers nevertheless felt a sometimes fatal need to do just that: “It was not surprising that some of these leaders acted in a foolhardy way just to convince themselves and the men that they were not afraid. Nor was it surprising that physical casualties among them was very high.”65
The leader took enough risks just in doing his job, and as Michael D. Doubler points out, the men much preferred a live leader they trusted to a dead hero: “Men in the ranks thought it was foolhardy when officers needlessly exposed themselves to danger. Soldiers instinctively knew the importance of keeping key leaders alive and often asked them not to lead the way in hazardous situations.”66 Sometimes “follow me” was necessary, but not always. Doubler cites an example from Mac-Donald’s World War II memoir. During a night advance in the Battle of the Bulge, MacDonald decided to take the lead of his company column to expedite matters. His sergeant stopped him: “Goddamit, Captain, . . . you’ve got to stay farther back. At least get some scouts out front.” The chastised MacDonald took up a more appropriate position behind his lead platoon: “His admonition reminded me that it was foolish for me to lead the column. The foolish days of ‘leading’ one’s troops into battle were past, even though correspondents persisted in telling of daring generals who preceded their troops, firing from the hip or brandishing a bayonet.”67
Leaders did not have to tempt fate. Coolness under fire, not foolhardy bravado, was what the men expected. A dead leader could not issue the orders so critically needed in the midst of battle.
WHEN THE “SIMPLEST VIRTUES” ARE LACKING
The relative importance of sharing hardships and dangers, taking care of the men, and possessing technical and tactical competence is difficult to assess because these qualities are interrelated. A platoon leader lacking tactical expertise, for example, probably did not possess the confidence to remain cool under fire. A leader without physical courage most likely lacked the moral courage to stand up for his troops’ welfare. The leader who did not care about his men felt little compunction to share their hardships or lead by example.68
Lest the aspiring junior leader despair over not possessing these virtues in ample abundance, he could take heart from knowing that he did not need to be a budding Napoleon. Elmar Dinter notes that in the stress of combat, “the only things that many group members require of their leaders are clear orders and a will to succeed.”69 In short, men in danger craved a little leadership. They tolerated some flaws and weaknesses as long as their leader took counsel, learned from his mistakes, and had his heart in the right place. Lieutenant Sefton, as he made his way through the fields of Normandy in search of his outfit on D-Day, collected lost paratroopers from a mix of units. His lack of an inspiring plan of action did not seem to bother his wards: “I did not encounter anyone who failed to ask, ‘Lieutenant, what’s your plan?’ Nor did I find one who seemed dissatisfied with my answer, ‘Follow me.’ At the very least, it kept them from remaining alone in the dark.”70
Though it is difficult to assess what constituted a minimal level of leadership proficiency, it is not at all hard to determine what happened in a unit whose commander clearly lacked the virtues of leadership. Units with incompetent or uncaring leaders suffered excessive casualties, low morale, and poor cohesion. Roy R. Grinker and John P. Spiegel concluded that poor leadership led to increased psychological strain and breakdown: “Bad leadership and lack of faith in . . . commanding officers have an immensely deteriorating effect upon morale. In the American army, where the relation between the officers and the enlisted men is more personal than traditional, the officer must win the confidence of his men. If this has not been accomplished, the psychological strain on each individual is greatly increased.”71
An experienced leader like Captain Gerald P. Averill, who was commissioned from the ranks and led combat soldiers in two wars, understood firsthand what poor leadership could do to men’s confidence: “Marines are trained to believe in their leaders, both non-commissioned and commissioned officers alike. If those officers show weakness or fear or, worse still, a lack of interest in the safety and welfare of their troops, the individual Marine loses not only confidence in his leaders but also in himself, and that lack of confidence is transmitted to his peers.”72
Considering how dangerous and stressful it was to lead soldiers in combat, what possessed men to want to do it? As demanding as the job was, leading soldiers was not without its compensations. Junior leaders derived intense pride and satisfaction from their men’s accomplishments. Sometimes that satisfaction came from knowing that long hours of training had paid off. Captain Smith’s cannon company, in one of its first combat missions, helped to break up a Japanese night attack with well-placed artillery fire: “That kind of precision fire in the middle of the night under adverse conditions could only come from gun crews who were both highly skilled and conscientious. I was proud of them.”73
Lieutenant Owen found himself in charge of a mortar section that, like the rest of the Seventh Marine Regiment, had been hastily patched together during the Korean War and fleshed out with called-up reservists. As it turned out, he had five weeks to train his men, most of whom knew nothing about mortars, before hitting the beach at Inchon. They proved up to the challenge, and after a few weeks of combat Owen was proud of his salty marines. Following a successful nightlong defense in which his mortars had played a prominent role, Owen asked his sergeant to ring up the company commander on the telephone: “I wanted to tell him that we had just saved battalion’s ass, and that Baker-One-Seven [B Company, First Battalion, Seventh Marines] had the best goddamn mortar section in the regiment. Just as I had promised him at Camp Pendelton.”74
The junior leader could take pride not only in his men but also in himself. He had trained and led them and had proven his abilities under fire. Lieutenant John A. Sullivan was thrust into combat as soon as he arrived at his company in Korea. Like most green replacement leaders, he worried about how he would perform. When his platoon rotated off outpost duty a few days later, his men picked up his gear without being asked and carried it. Sullivan’s platoon sergeant explained that they did so because they had accepted him as their leader: “You took care of them, and they’re going to take care of you.” Sullivan was bursting with pride: “‘Now I’m a platoon leader,’ I said to myself. It felt good. It was worth the shit of the past few days, for whatever I had been trying to prove to myself was proven beyond all doubt.”75
The combat leader who was competent and caring was rewarded with a loyalty and devotion for which the word “touching” does not begin to do justice. After his platoon had successfully beaten off a Viet Cong attack, Lieutenant James R. McDonough prepared to lead one of his squads on a counterattack. He was deeply moved by the men’s willingness, despite the obvious danger, to follow him: “As the squad lined up . . . , I looked at their young faces tightened to stifle the fear building up inside their bodies. . . . No words of complaint from any of them. They were American infantrymen and would do the job they were asked to do. . . . I felt proud to be with them and glad to share their company. Their qualities of moral and physical courage, of unselfish dedication to each other amid the difficult jobs they were called upon to do, marked them in my mind as among the noblest of human beings.”76
To experience just one such moment of unquestioned loyalty and devotion in the face of danger, as Lieutenant Caputo did when his platoon executed a flawless attack under heavy enemy fire, was reward enough: “And perhaps that is why some officers make careers of the infantry, why they endure the petty regulations, the discomforts and degradations, the dull years of peacetime duty in dreary posts: just to experience a single moment when a group of soldiers under your command and in the extreme stress of combat do exactly what you want them to do, as if they are extensions of yourself.”77