“I feel a fundamental crippling incuriousness about our officers. Too much body and too little head.”
T.E. Lawrence, Letter to B. Liddell Hart, 1933
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Good piece on the important role of soon-to-be senior enlsited advisors over at FTGN by Mike Burke.
As a SGM/CSM, you have the freedom to move throughout the formation and interact with all its members. Through discussion, you will be presented with innovative ideas, policy suggestions, and command culture insights. Through reflection, you will be better equipped to identify issues and envision how to implement changes.
The First Sergeant Blues – From the Green Notebook
Despite a deeply instilled fear of interacting with senior enlisted from my days as a junior enlisted soldier, I always make it a point to seek them out in my organization to get feedback before making a decision – especially, but not exclusively – when it comes to personnel. The advice is almost always spot-on, and usually leads to taking a course of action different from what I had originally intended.
My office floor is littered with good ideas rightfully shot to shreds by much wiser NCOs.
In the few instances where I’ve been witness to an officer choosing not to heed the advice of a senior enlisted advisor (at any echelon), it always went badly. That experience, earned over time (and often from seeing the same thing over and over) is invaluable.
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Over the holiday break, I read two articles anchored to the Roman era to explain current issues with the modern military.
At Small Wars Journal, John Bolton writes in the Price of Professionalism that our All-Volunteer Force dangers the American republic through separating the soldier and the citizen.
Bolton writes:
“The AVF, by disconnecting the military from society, enabled a generation of American militarism, highlighted by the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Since the AVF, American foreign policy has become overly militarized and simultaneously devoid of public consideration. These two factors are cancerous to the functioning of the American Republic. The AVF created a military unimaginable by the Founders and unfamiliar to its people.”
In the Autumn 2015 issue of Parameters, Jason Warren compares the (successful) modern Army officer to the Roman Centurion – a tactically proficient leader of a roughly company-sized group of soldiers. That is, our officer career path selects and promotes those officers who demonstrate tactical proficiency at the company level, without ever really developing or selecting those who show promise for strategic thinking.
The “centurion” model is one that is very easy to see inside of a Brigade-sized element, but once outside of the Brigade, it is precisely those officers who performed well at the tactical level who move on to strategic positions, often without the advanced education one would expect would be necessary to perform in those roles.
Warren writes:
Army promotion soon became linked to the command of standing units, the vast majority of which operated below the strategic level. This linkage contributes to the development of an astrategic officer corps, in which some officers may disbelieve military leaders have a role in formulating military strategy.
And…
The tactical dominion eventually became king of the realm for post-Korean War promotion, which the training revolution elevated to the throne. Summer 2004 in Iraq found Casey upon a tide of sinking strategy and he believed the war was lost before Petraeus temporarily righted the ship. Petraeus’ surge of forces was but a current of success upon an ocean of failure. Petraeus’ preference for well-educated subordinates and officer broadening soon receded with his departure to the CIA, in an Army culture hostile to non-tactical endeavors.
Both articles are worth reading in their entirety. Bolton’s article tackles a much larger issue and weaves around, while Warren’s article is much more focused on the promotion of “centurion”-like Army officers.
As an aside, I still find it odd and a little off-putting that we still lionize all things antiquity. Given our unhealthy obsession with Spartans which I think is now giving way to the Vikings, I would bet many officers nod approvingly at being associated with centurions, even though the purpose of the article was to point out how ultimately limiting that is.
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I have this theory that as an OCS or ROTC officer, by the time you make Captain you will have pieced together the major themes of your corresponding year group’s experiences at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Over the course of the past four years, I’ve learned more than anyone would ever care to learn about what went on at USMA between 2008-2012, simply by virtue of being around a lot of West Point officers and hearing them recount their stories.
In the wake of the now infamous pillow-fight-gone-viral, I began chiding fellow officers for the behavior of cadets, asking probing questions about what the hell is going on over there. From more than a few officers, I got a response similar to “you should have seen what happened on the night Osama bin Laden was killed.” Talking to them individually, they’d simply say it was a crazy night and there were lots of chants of “U-S-A!” But if there was more than one West Pointer in the room, more of the story came out. It is like a dull aura that lingers between them begins to glow and become alive. They suddenly become nostalgic for their alma mater and they become more animated. One starts telling the story and others jump in, filling out details that are being left out, constantly trying to one up the other with something crazy that happened.
For this particular story, it was a late Sunday evening. Cadets were getting ready for the next day, many of them studying for final exams. The semester was coming to a close. A bunch of them would be commissioning shortly to officially join the Army and contribute their piece to the Global War on Terrorism. Just about everyone who has told me this story takes no responsibility for starting it. As they tell it, they either got a text or call from a friend telling them to come outside or that “something was going on,” or they heard the ruckus outside and went to investigate themselves. Cadets began gathering outside. American flags and chemlights appeared. Impromptu chants of “U-S-A!, U-S-A!” broke out all over the campus.
The cadets made their way as a group to the superintendent’s home, which is located right on campus. The superintendent, mind you, is a 3-star General (Lieutenant General). The cadets cheered (SUUUUPPEEE! SPEEECCCCHH!) and eventually the superintendent emerged, leading the cadets in a chant of “U-S-A!” and a rendition of the ROCKET. A bullhorn is passed up to the superintendent who then goes on to say it is a night to celebrate, but it is also a night to remember those who are still in the fight and all of those who died in the past decade. He then gently urges to the cadets to head back to the barracks to laughs and boos.
A bold cadet shouts “NO SCHOOL TOMORROW!”
Another cadet shouts “FUCK AL-QAEDA!” to the “oohs” and a muffled “too much” from another cadet.
Things are getting out of control. There’s a struggle happening between the senior officers’ desire to allow the cadets to celebrate (and them wanting to celebrate themselves) and measuring the event with a dose of discipline, respect, and maturity.
The night continues to spin. The cadets move about en masse, hurling toilet paper around. Green chemlights are waved and thrown as at a rave. Small fires burn casting an eerie glow over the cadets.
Someone douses a printer in lighter fluid, sets it ablaze, and sends it out a window.
The cadets sing the Star-Spangled Banner.
I imagine classes resumed pretty much as normal the next morning. Such a strange place, where in the evening things can be completely out of control, and the next morning, order and discipline.
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Carrying the Gun 