Ditto!
Posted on 03/27/2002 7:05:44 PM PST by JohnHuang2
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, the guy who saved our nation during the Civil War, probably wouldn't make major in today's Army. He was mule-skinner abrasive, enjoyed his sauce and wasn't exactly what you'd call a pretty face.
Today most generals and admirals are highly attractive smooth talkers with some sort of master's degree and a Ph.D. in how to work the corridors of power.
But while these uniformed central-casting smoothies know how to schmooze for funds for their latest silver-bullet project, they unfortunately don't know how to fight guerrilla wars.
The Somali debacle, and now the recent major foul-up in Afghanistan, prove in spades that our warrior class has lost out to a professional-management culture that's virtually destroyed our armed forces, less the Marine Corps – which is slowly veering in that direction as well.
Long before the first regular American soldier headed to Vietnam, the hardened vets who'd slugged it out on hundreds of killing fields knew the post-World War II ticket-punching personnel system was on its way toward destroying the leadership needed to win America's future wars.
Going, going, gone were the days when lieutenants like Frank Gunn stayed with a regiment from the first shot of the war until the last. Gunn led a platoon and company in Africa, was a major by '43 in Sicily, skippered a battalion in France the next year, and by the end of the war, at the ripe old age of 24, was commanding the storied 39th Regiment fighting across Germany. General Gunn, now retired, became skilled at his trade down in the mud with the soldiers he loved and would have died for – and they, in turn, followed him to hell and back. Gunn never got caught up in the type of career management that produced the current lot of Perfumed Princes. He learned to soldier by listening to his old sergeants and being with the troops.
In Vietnam, officer leaders were churned almost as quickly as customers at Starbucks. Ticket-punching was in, and leading from the front was out. The Washington personnel chiefs' agenda was to use the war as a training vehicle for officers so they'd have blooded leadership when the big fight with the Soviets exploded.
Post-Vietnam studies concluded ticket-punching was a major cause of our failure, and that the personnel system desperately needed surgery. But nothing was done, and over the years the cancerous system disabled our senior officer corps and is now infecting our proud NCOs. Their foremost concern always used to be for the welfare of their troops and how sharply their unit was trained, not what kind of rating they got on a report. My First Sergeant in Italy took great pride in showing us 'cruits the chain scars from his time in a Georgia prison. But with his fifth-grade education, the old Top could still run a lean-and-mean company of soldiers.
Afghanistan was going just fine while the old-pro Special Forces sergeants, chiefs and captains were running the fight. But when Perfumed Princes like Maj. Gen. Franklin Hagenbeck – with his M.S. degree in exercise physiology (but no combat experience) and Pentagon punches such as director for politico-military affairs for global and multilateral issues (I kid you not) under his shiny general's belt – took over the fighting with the conventional, non-mountain-trained 10th Division, our Army came away with that Vietnam Heartbreak Ridge look: high body count without many bodies and too many friendly casualties.
A fine sergeant in Kuwait says it all: "My generals worry about what kind of engraved Buck knives to buy to give as gifts to the foreign generals, do we have enough potpourri-scented Pledge to make sure our mahogany desks are dust-free, color ink for our laser printers, oh and let's not forget the staffers have to eat better than the rest of the Army, so we have to plan at least one big dinner function so the fat-cats can get fatter. I've seen these generals cancel a visit to troops training in the desert so they could drink coffee and have lunch with another general visiting from the War College. Where are their damn priorities?"
Really? And is that where you got all of your Civil War knowledge? From novels?
Neville Powell! I had to read that twice before I got it. :)
Hackworth was the journalist who was on his way to interview Mike Boorda -- the CNO who committed suicide.
Walt
You mean other than the fact that he beat every Southern general sent against him? If Grant was that bad then what does it say about his opponents?
Grant was absolutely a great general. He was a master of maneuver warfare as he showed in the Vicksburg campaign, and bested Lee when attrition was called for. Lee himself complimented Grant, so criticisms of Grant's generalship are always lame.
But YOU know that. :)
The American way of war owes a LOT to the way Grant did things.
Walt
Generally concur with your post but Montgomery was/is the most overrated general of all times.
His "Victory" at El Alamein came against a foe whom he outnumbered 2-1 in manpower 4-1 in tanks, 3-1 in planes, and 10-1 in artillery -- and the Axis forces ran out of gas!
In Normandy, the inability of his forces to achieve their D-day objectives brought on a bloody battle of attrition where he was losing three men to each German casualty. His Operation Goodwood resulted in the loss of 470 tanks in four days for little gain after tremendous aerial bombardment.
The one thing Montgomery was master of was spin control. He pretended that all of what was happening was his plan (as if getting the British in a WWI type battle of attrition was a good plan); unfortunately for Montgomery's memory the paper trail is not there to back up his ex post facto claims.
See "Churchill and the Montgomery Myth" by R.W. Thompson where Thompson suggests that Montgomery's ideas didn't advance one whit from 1918 until the day he died.
Not meaning to bust your chops; Montgomery and his apologists are a sore point with me.
Walt
Monty's performance in France in 1944 is certainly less than stellar, but I blame Ike for that, not Monty. When Patton broke out of the bocage in August of 44, Ike should have opportunistically supported the drive of the Third Army across the mid-section of France. He could have used Monty as a "pivot point" and surrounded the entire German army (the Schlieffen Plan -- in reverse!). Monty could always be counted on to not give any territory -- he just couldn't be counted on to take any, at least in a timely manner.
Anyway, I'm glad Monty held the numerical and material edge over Rommel in 1942 -- if he hadn't, things in Africa might have gotten quite sticky indeed.
Since I was researching Grant, those two battles weren't mentioned. If you're writing about Lee, I don't think those two battles say much about him since Burnside and Hooker were fairly inept commanders.
I would have thought that the book should have given more praise to Lee but he threw away his troops at Gettyburg in a way that Grant never did.
Maneuver warfare is a buzz phrase popularized in the 80's by retired Air Force Col John Boyd. The concepts are ageless.
The idea of maneuver warfare is to confuse your enemy and make his own actions appear more and more useless or even counter-productive. To illustrate this, Col Boyd came up with the concept of the 'OODA loop'. This inelegant term stands for Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action.
If you can see what the enemy is doing, orient your activities to that, decide what to do and act faster than he, then his operations will tend to come unglued. Take the German campaign in France, 1940.
The Germans approach the Muerse (sp) river. The French, with their World War One mentality, figure it will take five days for the Germans to bring up siege guns to blast an assault crossing. The Germans 'bring up' 1,500 Stuka dive bombers and cross the same day. The Frogs are flummoxed. Their OODA cycle was totally disrupted and things came totally unravelled on them. It wasn't unusual for French brigade HQ's to pick up their land line phones (The Frog army having eschewed radios) and heard someone on the other end speaking German.
Lee's Chancellorsville campaign and Grant's maneuvering around Vicksburg also had their opponents asking, "which way did they go?"
Maneuver warfare also posits seeking different centers of gravity, rather than strength to attack. If you are fighting a mechanized foe, can a raid or air strike wreck a bridge he depends on for supply? Can a clever use of terrain blunt an enemy or magnify your capabilities? All successful infantry commanders are very serious students of terrain. N.B. Forest comes to mind. Omar Bradley is often thought of as plebian, but he kept a scale map of all of Europe in his trailer on a scale to show promnent terrain features. Crazy George Patton was also a master of maneuver warfare techniques. His "hold 'em by the nose while you kick 'em in the ass!" was a MW manifestation. Patton also was bold enough to take risks that he knew his tactical air power could recoup. Patton made prodigious use of his reconnasiance assets. This all pertains to his campaign in France. After that, MW techniques were hard to apply as the terrain he was in defintely favored the Germans, as did the weather, Montgomery (g) and supply.
Fight smart, is the MW way.
The OODA loop concept is often hard to see in the historical record, because one good iteration means you won't need a second.
Walt
My mama could have done the same thing.
Rommel ended El Alamein with 35 tanks. I think Montgomery had something like 800. His "pursuit" was tardy in the extreme. One Amercian oberver said the 8th Army approached the Mareth line (Rommels' Tunisian defenses) with all the speed and grace of a pachyderm.
Walt
Thank the Russians. Without them, Montgomery would never have won a thing. :)
Walt
Ditto!
It's been about 15 years since I was exposed to the MW thing.
Grant clearly was doing MW when he smashed CSA forces in his campaign that culminated with the siege and surrender of Vicksburg.
Just getting on the east side of the river was an MW technique.
Sherman's abandoning his supply lines and burning Atlanta was too. Certainly Hood never expected such a thing, and swept up through AL to Nashville to whack the unwhackable -- supply lines that didn't exist. Sherman was definitely inside Hood's OODA loop.
Walt
Yeah, that's all great stuff, but the OODA Loop concept helps you examine history with an eye to seeing what Napoleon, Patton, Rommel, Grant or whomever was doing and see HOW what they did was in fact maneuver warfare.
Col Boyd passed away a couple of years ago. When MW first burst onto the scene, he was sort of the 'inventor' as I recall.
Walt
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