The Pillars of Generalship

JOHN M. VERMILLION

A review of the spate of literature on the operational level of war

. published within the past two or three years suggests that the Army
(at least those officers writing on the subject) is finally agreeing on how the
term should be defined. Working definitions of the concept generally argue
that the operational level of war encompasses the movement, support, and
sequential employment of large military forces in the conduct of military
campaigns to accomplish goals directed by theater strategy.'
Just as the Army has been able to perceive more clearly what
warfare at the operational level entails, so also has it .observed that the
requirements of leadership at that level differ in some important respects
from leadership at the tactical level. Indeed, the term operational art implies
that the commander at this echelon requires special talents. To identify these
special requirements should be a matter of high concern not only to those
who aspire to command at the operational level, but also to all field-grade
officers who might be staff officers at operational-level headquarters.
If it is advisable, then, to learn about the unique demands of
leadership at the operational level, where does one look for instruction? The
ideal circumstance is to serve with a latter-day Clausewitzian genius per-
sonally and directly. Commanders with transcendent intellectual and
creative powers are rare, however, so to have a chance to observe a genius
personally is nearly impossible. A second way, open to all, is through study
of the sequence and tendencies of past events and the key personalities who
drove them. The present essay rests mainly on this method. As a matter of
plain fact, though, most US Army officers do not read military history with
a critical eye. The majority of officers look for a third way.
The Army has tried to provide just such a third way. In Field
Manual 22-999, Leadership and Command at Senior Levels (forthcoming

2 Parameters
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Prescribed by ANSI Std Z39-18
this year), Army leaders have provided guidance for leadership and com-
mand at the large-unit level in the context of Air Land Battle as described in
Field Manual 100-5, Operations. Even the most biting critics must applaud
the hard work and serious study which obviously underpin the new manual.
Nonetheless, the work suffers badly precisely because of its sheer
exhaustiveness. Every significant utterance on leadership seems to have
found its way into the manual. It is full of lists, generally in threes. For
example, the. reader learns that senior leaders teach, train, and coach; that
they must possess certain attributes, perspectives, and imperatives; and that
they ought to possess three groups of skills-conceptual, competency, and
communications. Subdivisions of major headings also commonly occur in
threes, as in three types of attributes-standard bearer (read "example"),
developer, and integrator.
By the time one finishes wading through endless aJliterative lists of
traits desirable in the operational-level commander, he has had drawn for
him a commander with the piety of St. Paul, the intellect of Einstein, and
the courage of Joan d' Arc. In short, FM 22-999 lacks focus and a selective
sense of what is fundamentally important. To say everything is to say
nothing. The purpose of this essay is to draw sharper distinctions between
the junior and senior levels of leadership, and to offer a considered opinion
about what characteristics seem to be most essential to those commanders
whom, in Air Land Battle, we associate with the operational level of war.

On the Corporate Nature of Leadership

A false idea, namely that discussions about leadership need take
into account the leader only, has spread throughout the Army and slowly
influenced at least a generation of soldiers. The word leadership implies that
a relationship exists between the leader and something else. The "something
else," of course, is followers. By followers, however, I am not speaking of
the subordinate commanders or the men in ranks. Entire books have been
written on how various generals have inspired their troops to success in war.
Rather, in the present context, I am speaking of those followers who
comprise the general's staff-that immediate circle of assistants who act to
translate the commander's operational will into battlefield reality. Little
first-class work has been done to appraise the dynamics of leader-staff

Major John M. Vermillion is 03 Plans Officer in the 24th Infantry Division

(Mechanized), Fort Stewart, Georgia, Holder of a B,S. from ~he US Military
Academy and M.A. degrees from the University of South Carolina and Boston
University, he attended the regular course and the School of Advanced Military
Studies at FL Leavenworth before taking up his present assignment. Major Ver"
million has had infantry assignments in Vietnam, Korea, and Germany,

Summer 1987 3
 in this
interaction. It is time to examine the evidence regarding leadership
sense and then to hold the findings up to the bright light of comm on sense.
The exercise of generalship today carries with it tremendous
to
difficulties. A division today is expected to cover a frontage comparable
As the numbe rs and varieti es of
that assigned to a corps in World War II.
machines and weapons have multiplied, so also have logistical requirements.
to be
The higher the echelon of command, the more the general has
responsible for, yet the less direct control he has over subordinate forces.
ranges
With the advent of night vision equipment and vehicles with longer
ittingly . Comm and
of operations, combat operations can proceed unrem
uous. While a
functions combine into a process that is progressive and contin
t
commander is exercising military command, he is responsible withou
which
respite for the. effective and vigorous prosecution of the operations
ion of the overal l
will achieve his objectives and contribute to the execut
ly. He must
mission. Obviously, no single man, unaided, can do this proper
have, as we have seen, a close circle of functional assistants.
But such a requirement is by no means new. From the middle of
too
the last century, the tasks of the general in command have been
vely, and the
numerous and too complex for anyon e man to manage effecti
that
general staff system thus gradually emerged. Helmuth von Moltke saw
and
the Industrial Revolution had let loose the powers to mobilize, equip,
pment deman ded the creatio n
direct enormous armies, and that this develo
"the Genera l Staff was
of a complex and highly professional staff. In fact,
army
essentially intended to form a collective substitute for genius, which no
as to
can count on producing at need.' '' The Army need not aim so high
ground ed in the fundam entals of the
produce geniuses, but generals solidly
"avera ge" genera l
profession. With a wise selection of subordinates, the
can have a successful command. On the other hand, history demon strates
when
conclusively that some of its most acclaimed generals have failed
stripped of their right-hand men.
Superior generals surround themselves with staff officers who
of
complement them by covering their blind spots. Consider the case
Napoleon Bonaparte, widely acknowledged to be the most esteemed soldier
er, the
who ever led troops into battle. Some histories depict Marshal Berthi
exalted clerk. Napole on
Emperor's chief of staff, as nothing more than an
tive langua ge,
from time to time spoke publicly about Berthier in such pejora
rity.
but this probably was a consequence of the Emper or's personal insecu
would endure the waspis h sting of his
Napoleon needed a chief of staff who
humili ation. The fact is, though ,
burning intellect, and, yes, even occasional
degree that he often
that Berthier's responsibilities were heavy, to such a
on
worked 20-hour days. He personally controlled the division of labor
he
Napoleon's staff, all finances, and all appointments. Most impor tant,
regard ing troop movem ents,
supervised the issue of all of Napoleon's orders
operations, and artillery and engineer employment.)

4 Parameters
 Napoleon was an operational-level planner nonpareil. Nonethe-
less, he needed someone with Berthier's energy, dedication, and retentive
capacity to translate broad instructions into polished orders fit to be
delivered to the corps commanders. Berthier had an exceptional talent for
drafting clear, concise orders. As David Chandler notes, "Bonaparte owed
much of his early success to the administrative talents of Berthier. '"
Only at the end, in 1815, did Berthier's worth to his Emperor
become clear. On I June 1815, during the Waterloo campaign, Berthier
reportedly committed suicide, possibly because of his inability to tolerate
any longer the rebukes of his commander. Napoleon thereupon was forced
to substitute Soult, an able corps commander. Almost immediately, "Soult
was to be responsible for perpetuating several mistakes and misun-
derstandings in the written orders he issued, and these, taken together,
account for a great deal of Napoleon's ultimate difficulties.'" At Waterloo,
Napoleon is said to have cried out, "If only Berthier was here, then my
orders would have been carried out.'"
In analyzing the dynamics of the Napoleon-Berthier relationship,
it seems fair to suggest that Berthier was not flashingly quick. He was a man
of deeply intelligent judgment rather than of brilliance. He was capable of
making Napoleon's desire, if not vision, his own, of knowing how the
Emperor wanted things to appear, then of being tough and stubborn enough
to make them turn out that way. He would dutifully execute every directive
concerning an operation, but without adding a single idea of his own, or
perhaps without comprehending the subtleties of the Emperor's thoughts.
Now, ponder how suitably Berthier met Napoleon's requirements.
Napoleon was a commander so knowledgeable and so quick to focus his
knowledge that even his apparently spontaneous reactions often emerged as
intricate and fully developed ideas. That capacity can paralyze a staff. The
interesting work of creation was done for them, and tedium does not stir the
imagination. It is likely that many minds sharper than Berthier's, not just
Soult's, would have failed precisely because the temptation to bring their
fertile imaginations to bear would have been irresistible.
During the 1807-1814 reorganization of the Prussian Army,
General Gerhard von Scharnhorst ordered reforms many effects of which
are still evident today. A regulation issued by Scharnhorst in 1810 was
perhaps the most influential. He made the chief of staff a full partner in
command decisions. By 1813 all Prussian commanding generals had chiefs
of staff with whom they were expected to form effective partnerships. One
of the most famous and effective of these teams was that of Gerhard von
BlUcher and his chief, Count Neithardt von Gneisenau. They were effective
because they complemented each other perfectly. Whereas BlUcher was a
"brave, charismatic, but impatient man," Gneisenau was his polar
opposite: cool, methodical, yet courageous and determined.' Gordon Craig
here elaborates on the inspired collaboration of Bliicher and Gneisenau:

Summer 1987 5
 Bliicher, who recognized his own shortcomings and the genius of his chief of
staff, relied implicitly on Gneisenau's judgement; and he was not wholly
joking when-while receiving an honorary degree at Oxford after the war-he
remarked: "If I am to become a doctor, you must at least make Gneisenau an
apothecary, for we two belong always together."·

In contrast to Napoleon and Berthier, in this case the chief developed the
plans and the commander executed them. The Gneisenau-Bliicher model of
teamwork remains the supreme example of its kind for the German army.

Montgomery, Patton, and Rommel

Soon after World War II, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery was
asked to enumerate his requirements for a good general. He listed nine
items. The first was "Have a good chief of staff. "9 And so he did,
throughout the war. In his own work, The Path to Leadership, Montgomery
referred to a good chief of staff as a "pearl of very great price." iO
As did the other generals mentioned thus far, Montgomery chose
the men who worked for him. He insisted upon his right to install soldiers of
his own chOOSing in all key positions. Shortly after Dunkirk, Montgomery
described his plan to get the 3rd Division on its feet. He called together his
staff and the senior officers in every unit in the division and announced who
was to take command in each case. He personally and unilaterally, without
waiting for War Office approval, appointed all commanders down to
battalion. In Nigel Hamilton's words, Montgomery's "essential drive was to
get the 'right man for the right job' .... [This was,] together with his
unique ability to abstract the essentials of any problem, the touchstone of
his genius as a commander. The conduct of battle had borne out how
dependent a commander is on his subordinate officers.''''
Montgomery tried to hold on to the same staff as he progressed in
rallk through the war; in this endeavor he was reasonably successful. The
mainstay of most general staffs, but of Montgomery's in particular, was the
chief of staff. The Field Marshal was fortunate to have had Major General
Francis de Guingand serve him in this capacity for the better part of the war.
De Guingand's comments about his old boss are intriguing in that they
explode the usual public image of Montgomery. According to de Guingand,
Montgomery naturally tended to be rash and impetuous, not deliberate and
wholly rational. The main business of his chief of staff was not to carry out
detailed staff work or to make decisions in the absence of the commander,
but to "keep Bernard's two great virtues [will and discipline] in tandem.""
When the War Office thrust an unwanted chief on Montgomery, the in-
variable result for the command was mediocrity or failure.
Instructively, the single greatest failure with which Montgomery is
associated, the Dieppe raid, occurred during a period of flux in his staff. In

6 Parameters
 March 1942 during his tenure as commander, South-East Army, his chief of
staff, Brigadier John Sinclair, was transferred over Montgomery's op-
position. The commander then turned to the War Office with a personal
request for "Simbo" Simpson to replace Sinclair. London refused him not
only in this request, but also in his bid for two other staff officers on whom
he had depended heavily in earlier assignments. At this time he was denied
the strong steadying influence of a de Guingand, and the predictable out-
come was a too-quick acceptance of an ill-conceived plan. It seems highly
likely that had de Guingand been present, he would have checked Mont-
gomery's essential rashness: "There was ... a fatal vacuum at this critical
moment: and Bernard, as the one soldier-apart from Brooke-who
possessed the undisputed prestige and authority to scrap the project,
tragically agreed to undertake the raid.''''
The qualities and talents necessary to be a good staff officer are far
different from those necessary to be a good commander. George Patton's
career as well as. any underscores this point. In the truest sense, Patton was a
"general" officer. He abhorred involvement with details; indeed, few great
commanders come to mind who felt otherwise. Patton was temperamentally
unsuited to the role of staff officer. In his staff assignments he received poor
efficiency reports for his performance. J4 The point is that at the operational
level, no matter how brilliant the commander, the most glittering conception
will go awry if it is not undergirded by the grinding hard work of his staff,
which must churn out empirically correct movement tables, time-distance
calculations, and logistical data.
Patton demanded that he be permitted to select his staff. Although
this mode of operation did not conform to the methods of the US Army
replacement system, Patton, for whatever reason, got away with making
these decisions himself. When he arrived in England to assume command of
Third Army, he shocked the staff then in place by announcing that he was
moving them out to make room for his own men. All those he brought on
had served with him in North Africa and Sicily; most had backgrounds in
Patton's 2d Armored Division. The man who held Patton's staff together,
Brigadier General Hugh Gaffey, has been termed "a staff officer of
genius."" Gaffey held the post as Patton's chief of staff until the early
autumn of 1944, when Patton sent him down to command 4th Armored
Division, and eventually a corps. Gaffey's replacement was Brigadier
General Hobart Gay, a longtime cavalry associate of Patton. According to
historian Hubert Essame, "Both were equally competent in the exercise of
their intricate craft, ... both were in the mind of their master. " 16
As one would expect, Patton had an excellent relationship with the
staff, making it a personal policy never to interfere with them on matters of
minor detail. Like many outstanding German commanders, but unlike some
of his American counterparts, Patton promoted an open and frank dialogue
between his staff and himself. They did not hesitate to disagree with him.

Summer 1987 7
What was best for Third Army carne first. George Patton did not play
hunches. He had the wisdom to rely on his staff for sound advice, and they
consistently gave it to him. His G-2, Colonel Oscar Koch, for example, was
felt by many to have the most penetrating mind in the US Army in the in-
telligence field. Koch always had available for Patton the best, most ac-
curate intelligence estimates to be found at any level of command. Patton's
famous 90-degree turn from the Saar bridgehead to the Ardennes has
received countless well-deserved accolades in history texts, but seldom are
we reminded that at bottom the action was made possible by a dutiful staff
officer. It was Koch who persuaded his commander before the fact that
planning should commence at once to deal with the situation which would
arise if the Germans staged an attack in the Ardennes area.17 Patton was
served equally well by other members of the staff. His primary logistician,
Colonel Walter J. Muller, was known throughout the European Theater as
"the best quartermaster since Moses." 18
As for Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's success in North Africa,
David Irving suggests six reasons. One pertained to his good equipment, two
to Rommel's individual talents, and three took note of the high-quality
personnel who worked for him." Like Patton and Montgomery, Rommel
"appropriated" his Panzer army staff. Without question, this was one of

Patton'S staff included Colonel Walter J. Muller, called "the hest

quartermaster since Moses." Shown here is part of the "Red Ball
Express" that fueled Patton's armored advance.

8 Parameters
the most remarkably competent staffs assembled in modern times. Siegfried
Westphal, later a general officer in command, was the operations officer
and a man for whom Rommel had the highest professional respect. F. W.
von Mellenthin, destined to wear two stars before the war's end, ran the
intelligence section. More than anyone else, Alfred Gause, Rommel's chief
of staff, was "in the mind" of the commander. He could anticipate with
near-perfect accuracy what Rommel needed and when he needed it. Gause
stayed on as Rommel's chief from early 1941 until April 1944, at which time
Rommel's wife, as a result of a petty domestic dispute with Gause and his
wife, prevailed upon her husband to release Gause. Rommel selected Hans
Speidel to succeed Gause. Observe that in this instance, too, the commander
chose a man whose temperament, intellect, and personality were nearly
opposite his own. The highly literate, sophisticated Speidel was "a useful
complement to Rommel's own one-track mind.""
Operational leadership is a corporate endeavor, not individual,
and it requires full complementarity between the commander and his staff.
Sadly, as obvious as this point may appear, it is ignored with frightening
regularity by those charged with preparing the US Army's official
pronouncements on the subject of leadership.

The Concerns of War

Getting right down to the basics, what are the essential things that
the operational-level commander must cause to happen if he is to be suc-
cessful in war? They are two in number. First, information must be com-
municated from the commander to his instruments of war, that is, his troops
and weapons. Second, physical force must be applied against the enemy by
these instruments of war in a manner calculated to produce the desired
result. Let us discuss these two concerns in order.
Before a general can begin to communicate the wherewithal to win
victories, he must prepare himself for the task. One of the most difficult
parts of such preparation, especially in combat, is to find time to think
problems through fully in order to make sound decisions and to plan future
operations. Montgomery termed these respites "oases of thought." He
believed fervently that the senior combat leader "must allow a certain
amount of time [each day] for quiet thought and reflection."" He
habitually went to bed at 2130, even amid tough battles. Patton as well as
Montgomery made time to reflect and think ahead. Each lived apart from
his main headquarters in the company of a small group of officers and
noncommissioned officers. Each let his chief of staff handle the details, and
never allowed himself to do so. 22
Noting that he had seen too many of his peers collapse under the
stresses of high command, Sir William Slim insisted that he "have ample
leisure in which to think, and unbroken sleep."" His permanent order was

Summer 1987 9
not to be distur bed unless there arose a crisis no one else could handle. As
with any other aspect of combat, commanders must train in peacetime to do
well what war will demand. Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall gave
this personal training their devout attention. While Superintendent at West
POint, MacArthur often worked in his quarters study until 1200 or 1300
instead of going to his office, where he might be distracted. Years later, in
the Philippines, he had a standing daily appointment at a Manila movie
house for a 2100 showing. He did not care what was playing; he fell asleep as
quickly as he sat down. He found moviegoing a convenient way to unburden
himself, to undergo a daily psychic housecleaning.
Similarly, during his World War II years as Army Chief of Staff,
General Marshall usually left his office by 1500 each day and rarely made
any important decisions after that hour. Fully aware that his decisions could
make the difference between life and death for large numbers of field
combatants, he strove to be as mentally and emotionally prepared as
possible to make good decisions. In short, periods of rigorously protected
solitude are enormously important to the general in command. If the mind is
the key to victory, the general must tend and exercise his mind with a view to
its health just as he would his body. This recommendation is not often heard
in the US Army.
Combat orders express the commander's desires. History and
common sense demonstrate that clarity, conciseness, and rapidity of
dissemination are the measures of a good order. At the operational level the
general must possess the power, derived from clarity of expression only, to
knife through thick layers of command to be understood. Superior com-
manders at the operational level almost universally have been guided by a
concern and talent for clear literary exposition. This does not mean that they
must be able to facilely toss off arcane knowledge, but merely that they
appreciate the strength of words carefully and economically employed. Even
when the commander leaves it to principal staff assistants to actually write
out the order, as Napoleon did with Berthier, he still must assure that such
orders are prepared in dear, simple language. Commanders who com-
nilmicate well orally and in writing are likely to have developed this ability
over long years of wide reading. Indeed, we may take as axiomatic the
proposition that great leaders are great readers.
Conciseness and rapidity of dissemination go hand in hand. More
often than not, the unit that acts first wins. This means that time and the
saving of it should be at the core of the orders-generating process. Failure in
timely issuance of orders is a cardinal error. Fortunately, the leader may
avoid this error by following the principle that all orders must be as brief
and simple as possible.
Many World War II commanders issued oral orders exclusively.
General Heinz Gaedcke, a combat commander with considerable experience

10 Parameters
 on the Russian front, followed the practice of most German generals in
giving oral orders. In his opinion, "To actually operate using formal written
orders would have been far too slow. Going through the staff mill,
correcting, rewriting, and reproducing in order to put out a written order
would have meant we would have been too late with every attack we ever
attempted."" General Gaedcke added that while serving in the postwar
German army, he pulled out of the archives some of his orders from the first
Russian campaign. He remarked on this occasion that the new generation of
officers probably would find inconceivable the running of a field army with
such a small staff and on the basis of such simple, brief instructions: "It was
a most peculiar feeling to see the orders, all very simple, that I had written in
pencil so that the rain wouldn't smear them-and each had the radio
operator's stamp to confirm that they had been transmitted.""
The Sixth Army commander, General Balek, whom General
Gaedcke served for a time as chief of staff, declared that he could present a
five-minute oral order which would last a good commander eight days."
Asked after the war about his technique for giving orders, General Balek
replied: "Even my largest and most important operations orders were [oral].
After all there wasn't any need for written orders. As division commander, I
forbade the use of written orders within my division.""
The clever commander will discover many ways to reduce the time
it takes to communicate direct, unambiguous instructions to his subor-
dinates . Working toward this goal should be a main objective of the
operational-echelon commander.
Ironically, one of the toughest tests facing the commander is
deciding when not to communicate, i.e. in deciding when to control and
when not to. If successful fighting units of the 20th century have proved
anything, it is that operations must be decentralized to the lowest level
possible. Because the operational commander cannot do everything himself
(in fact, he rarely will control combat units directly), he must delegate ex-
tensively. Commanders might profit from the example of General Ulysses S.
Grant, who pledged never to do himself that which someone else could do as
well or better. He "trusted subordinates thoroughly, giving only general
directions, not hampering them with petty instructions."28 Sir William Slim
spoke for a legion of successful senior commanders when he summarized the
compelling case for decentralization:

Commanders at all levels had to act more on their own; they were given greater
latitude to work out their own plans to achieve what they knew was the Army
Commander's intention. In time they developed to a marked degree the
flexibility of mind and a firmness of decision that enabled them to act swiftly
to take advantage of sudden information or changing circumstances without
reference to their superiors .... This acting without orders, in anticipation of

Summer 1987 11
 orders, or without waltmg for approval, yet always within the overall
intention, must become second nature ... and must go down to the smallest
units. 2~

By decentralizing control to low tactical echelons, the operational com-

mander implicitly places heavier weight on his overall intent and lighter
weight on detailed orders, thus speeding up the processes of information
flow and decisionmaking. The benefits of decentralization are easy to
identify. Nonetheless, many in the US Army remain uncomfortable with the
practice of issuing mission orders and allowing subordinates broad decision
authority within the context of the commander's intent. Among many
explanations for this uneasiness, a significant one involves the poor fit of
decentralized control with present leadership doctrine. By spotlighting the
commander, by exalting his image to the neglect of the follower, the Army
subtly and unwittingly has engendered the erroneous notion that the wheel
of command will turn only on the strength of the commander.
The final facet of the communication function with which the
operational-level commander must be ready to cope is uncertainty, am-
biguity, or "noise" (Clausewitz's "friction"). It is astonishing that anyone
can perform well as a general in wartime command. Crucial decisions have
to be made under "conditions of enormous stress, when actual noise,
fatigue, lack of sleep, poor food, and grinding responsibility add their
quotas to the ever-present threat of total annihilation."JO Even during the
Iranian rescue mission, when some of these conditions did not exist, the
sources of friction were plentiful and potent. The Holloway panel in-
vestigating the failure of the mission concluded that "the basic weakness
displayed by [the Joint Task Force Commander's] staff" was that his
"planners were not sufficiently sensitive to those 'areas of great uncertainty'
that might have had a shattering impact on the rescue mission."" The goal
is to be like Grant, "for whom confusion had no terror .""
General Archibald Wavell claimed that the first essential of a
general is robustness, which he defined as "the ability to stand the shocks of
war."" The general, Wavell wrote, will constantly be at the mercy of
unreliable information, uncertain factors, and unexpected strains. In order
to cope in this environment, then, "all material of war, including the
general, must have a certain solidity, a high margin over the normal
breaking strain."" He can develop this toughness only by spending most of
his peacetime training in the art and science of warcraft. One cannot expect
to play a rough game without getting dirty. The Germans played many
rough and dirty games during the interwar years, and as a result were
generally better prepared than the Allies. In any event, the friction of war,
producing a surfeit of "noise" and a welter of incomplete, erroneous, or
conflicting data, stresses to the uttermost a commander's ability to keep his
thoughts focused and his communications selective and germane.

12 Parameters
Delivering Force on the Objective
After communications, the next fundamental concern in war-
fighting involves bringing armed force effectively to bear upon the enemy.
Force will be applied most effectively if the operational-level commander
ascertains, preferably before hostilities begin, the condition he wants to
obtain at the end of the conflict. Only if he understands the end he seeks will
he be able to prepare a clear statement of intent. No coherent campaign is
possible without a lucid vision of how it should conclude. Evidence suggests
that planners sometimes do not tend to this crucial first decision.
Students in the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort
Leavenworth recently participated in an eight-day Southwest Asia wargame.
The pertinent part of the scenario portrayed a takeover by anti-American
rebel forces of several key cities in Iran, mostly in the southern part of the
country. The rebels threatened to seize the Persian Gulf ports, and thereby
shut down oil cargo out of the Gulf. Twenty-plus Soviet divisions from three
fronts entered Iran in support of the rebels. In response to the threat to its
national interests as expressed by the Carter Doctrine, the United States
deployed a Joint Task Force to assist the loyalist Iranian forces. Ground
forces consisted of roughly five and one-half Army divisions under the
control of a field army headquarters plus one Marine Amphibious Force.
SAMS students decided early in the planning that their mission, to
"defeat" rebel and Soviet forces in Iran and to facilitate the flow of oil out
of the Persian Gulf, needed clarification. What was the defeat criterion?
Restore Iran's national borders? Destroy all Soviet and rebel forces within
the borders of Iran? Or should they emphasize the second part of the
mission statement, to facilitate the West's and Japan's access to Persian
Gulf oil? Answers to such questions make a mighty difference. In the ab-
sence of a National Command Authority player cell, the students judged
that NCA intent was to optimize chances for the uninterrupted flow of oil,
consistent with means. With this understanding, they concentrated on
securing the vital Gulf ports of Chah Bahar, Bushehr, and Bandar Abbas.
The ground commander (in this exercise, the notional US Ninth Army
commander) determined that he would attempt to drive out, or prevent from
entering, any enemy forces in an area centered on Bandar Abbas and cir-
cumscribed by an arc running roughly through Shiraz, Kerman, and Bam,
some 250 miles away. This decision made sense in three important respects.
First, in the ground commander's opinion, the US force was too small to
fight much superior enemy forces across the vast entirety of Iran itself.
Second, with almost no infrastructure from which to establish supply
operations, to move farther than 250 miles inland would have been
logistically unsupportable. Third, this course of action permitted friendly
forces to exploit the excellent defensible terrain of the Zagros Mountains.
Fourth, a secure enclave would be available from which to launch attacks to

Summer 1987 13
the northwest should the NCA subsequently decide upon a more ambitious
and aggressive course.
The SAMS students' decision is not offered as an approved
solution. It did not even provide for securing the Iranian oil fields, at least
not initially. Rather, it is used to illustrate the importance of establishing the
ends of the campaign. Shortly after the SAMS exercise, the students visited
each of the operational-level headquarters actually assigned a comparable
mission. Ominously, when questioned about the ends they hoped to achieve,
four headquarters responded with four different answers. The reason for
their differences was that they had never gotten together to agree on ends
before allocating means and drawing up plans.
After he decides the end he seeks, the next question the commander
must confront is "How do I sequence the actions of the command to
produce the desired conclusion to the conflict?" The short answer is that he
must think through a series of battles and major operations which will
constitute the campaign. He must weigh probabilities and risks and the
challenges of battle management. This is anticipation. Good intelligence
analyses will help him immensely, as will an in-depth knowledge of the
enemy and his psychological predispositions. Despite the imponderables, he
must fashion his thoughts into a convincing, coherent outline for a cam-
paign plan. He presents the outline, representing his vision of how the
campaign is to unfold, to the staff for refinement.
Although the commander need not be perfectly prescient, it helps
immeasurably if his vision matches reality with reasonable fidelity. Planning
at the operational level is tougher than at the tactical level because there is a
narrower margin for error. The commander had better make the right
decisions most of the time and on the big issues because once large for-
mations are set in motion, it is nearly impossible to cause them to halt or
change directions quickly. As Colonel Wallace Franz has written:
"Operational (large) units, once set in motion, do not conform readily to
later modifications. There must be the fullest realization that any adaptation
of means cannot be immediate and instantaneous.""
Like a member of a football kickoff team, the forces being em-
ployed at the operational level must move down field at top speed with
controlled fury. While charging hard, and under the threat of being knocked
off his feet from multiple directions, each player must be capable of moving
rapidly out of his assigned lane of responsibility if conditions change
radically, for example, if the returner has run past him and is going toward
the other side of the field. To carry the analogy a step further, if all has gone
well for the kickoff team, they will have disrupted the opposition's timing
by clogging all eleven potential running lanes. When this situation develops,
the opposition's set play collapses and the runner must freelance. If my team
is much smaller than the opponent's, I have to rely on quickness, rapid
thinking, hit-and-run tactics, and deceptive moves (all of which together

14 Parameters
define Air Land Battle doctrine's "agility") to give me the advantage I want.
But all the agility in the world will not be sufficient to guarantee
victory. In the real world, it is not unusual for the commander's ideal
operational end to exceed his actual operational resources. And it is in
recognizing this disconnect that the commander's art must be most acute.
The 18th-century English neoclassicists believed that the an-
tithetical forces of reason and passion struggled for possession of a man's
personality. On the actual battlefield the same struggle constantly is being
enacted in the mind of the commander. Commanders are sorely tempted to
allow emotion to cloud good judgment in decisionmaking. The art lies in
realizing when and to what extent to let emotions intervene, to sense when it
is proper to discard reason and turn to passion, to let the heart rule the head.
Stated differently, the internal conflict is between will and judgment. The
force of will usually counsels "can" to the commander while judgment may
signal a "cannot."
Nearly every treatise on generalship speaks of the tremendous
importance of the will to prevail. The truth of this observation is obvious.
The flip side of tenacity, though, is obstinacy. More serious lapses of
generalship may have occurred because of a failure to distinguish between
tenacity and obstinacy than for any other reason. The general must ever be
conscious of the true limitations and capabilities of his forces. As S. L. A.
Marshall rightly claims:

The will does not operate in a vacuum. It cannot be imposed successfully if it

runs counter to reason. Things are not done in war primarily because a man
wills it; they are done because they are do-able. The limits for the commander
in battle are defined by the general circumstances. What he asks of his men
must be consistent with the possibilities of the situation."

The way a general understands what his forces can or cannot do is

through what Sir John Hackett terms the principle of total engagement. By
this he means that the general somehow completely fuses his own identity
with the corporate whole of his men." He reaches this state by being a
participant in combat, not merely a prompter. In discussing the 1915
Turkish siege of British forces in Kut, India, Norman Dixon furnishes an
example of a general who was a prompter and no more. The British com-
mander, Major General Townshend, stayed apart from his soldiers. He had
no sense of the true condition of his four weak brigades. As a consequence,
his reports lied regarding casualties, food supplies, medical aid, and
estimates of Turkish strength." In all, some 43,000 British soldiers
needlessly became casualties because their commander lost all physical and
emotional contact with his fighting troops. Only when the commander
achieves a total moral fusion with his troops will he be able to sense whether
they are being asked to do the impossible.

Summer 1987 15
Leadership in War: Summing Up
Doctrine on leadership ought to talk about leadership in war. This
is not the case with present manuals. Field Manuals 22-100 and 22-999 speak
mostly about personal attributes desirable in a leader. The problem with so
much emphasis on personal qualities is that even if the key ones could be
identified, a leader probably cannot adhere to them all at the same time or
all the time. Let us also recall that those commonly acclaimed as "great"
leaders are not necessarily good men. It is possible to be morally blemished
and still be a highly effective combat commander.
There is no simple set of rules by which to establish the pillars of
generalship. One rule in any set, though, is that the good general must be
adept at the art of choosing competent and compatible subordinates,
especially his chief of staff. The Army can modify its personnel system to
permit senior commanders to select their own staffs. Surely the devising of
such a system is within man's ingenuity. This is a must-do requirement if the
Army is serious about developing warcraft as something distinct from
witchcraft. Every superior combat commander in modern times has relied
on the brilliant staff work of men he has hand-picked to assist him. Surely
there is a lesson in this observation. Chief executive officers of all large
corporations choose their own principal subordinates. No university
president in his right mind would attempt to assign the nine assistants to the
head football coach, nor for that matter would any head coach worth his
salt accept such a proposition. The quality of the great majority of today's
Army officers is superb. The issue, then, is not so much whether competent
officers will surround the senior commander, but whether he will have
officers around him who best complement him. Under the Department of
Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, CINCs of unified and specified
commands will have veto authority over officers nominated for assignment
totheir staffs. This is a step in the right direction.
Having selected an able staff, the commanding general in combat
must then look to his communicating. He should pay special attention to
carving out of his schedule time to think; to issuing simple, unambiguous
orders; to decentralizing control to the lowest levels possible; and to
developing a tolerance for the uncertain and the unexpected. With respect to
the delivery of force, the operational-level commander must furnish a clear-
sighted vision of the conditions he wants to obtain at the conclusion of the
campaign. Based upon an accurate understanding of the capabilities and
limitations of the forces he commands, he must conjure a sequence of ac-
tions that will bring to fruition the desired outcome. Finally, the commander
must be able to discern with certain knowledge the fine distinctions between
tenacity and obstinacy.
In the final analysis, US Army operational-level leadership doc-
trine must step away from preachments on the Boy Scout virtues writ large,

16 Parameters
and toward the genuine requirements of wartime command. It must also
abandon the idea that the general should and can master all the skills
practiced by those subordinate to him; that time has long since passed.
Instead, he should spend his precious time preparing to make the kinds of
decisions war will require him to make, thereby strengthening the pillars of
his generalship against the day they must bear the awful weight of war.

NOTES

1. Gregory Fontenot, "The Promise of Cobra: The Reality of Manchuria," Military Review, 65
(September 1985), 54. Fontenot credits Lieutenant Colonel Harold R. Winton for this definition of the
operationallcvei of war.
2. B. H. Liddell Hart, The German Generals Talk (New York: Morrow, 1948), p. 19.
3. David Chandler, The Campaigns oj Napoleon (New York; Macmillan, 1966), p. 373.
4. Ibid., p. 56.
5. Ibid., p. 1021.
6, Gunther E. Rothenberg, The Art oj War in (he Age 0/ Napo/eon (Bloomington: Indiana Voiv.
Press, 1980), p. 210.
7. Ibid., p. 192.
8. Gordon A. Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army (London: Oxford Volv. Press, 1955), pp.
62-63.
9. Harvey DeWeerd, Great Soldiers a/the Second World War (London: R. Hale, 1946), p. II7.
10. Bernard L. Montgomery, The Path to Leadership (New York: Putnam, 1961), p, 247.
II. Nigel Hamilton, Monty: The Making of a General, 1887-1942 (New York: McGraw-Hill.
1981), pp. 405-06.
12. Ibid., p. 553.
13. Ibid.
14. Hubert Essame, Patton: A Study in Command (New York: Scribners, 1974), pp. 23"24.
15. Ibid., p. 121.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., pp. 216, 225.
18. Ibid., p. 122.
19, Davjd Irving, The Trail of the Fox (New York: Avon, 1978), pp. 170-71.
20. Ibid., p. 406.
21. Montgomery, pp. 249-50.
22. Essame, p. 40.
23. William Slim, Defeat Into Victory (London: Cassell, 1956), p. 213.
24. Translation of taped conversation with Lieutenant General Heinz Gaedcke, Battelle
Laboratories, Columbus, Ohio, 1979, p. 38.
25. Ibid., p. 37.
26. Translation of taped conversation with General Hermann Balek, Battelle Laboratories,
Columbus, Ohio. 1979. p. 26.
27. Ibid., p. 25.
28. J. F. C. Fuller, Grant and Lee (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1957), p. 74.
29. Slim, pp. 541-42.
30, Norman Dixon, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence (New York: Basic Books. 1976),
p.32.
31. Paul B. Ryan, The Iranian Rescue Mission (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press. 1985). p.
76.
32. Fuller, p. 75.
33. Archibald Wavell, Generals and Generalship (New York: Macmillan, 1941), p. 41. Reprinted
with other works in US Army War College's Art of War Colloquium series, December 1983,
34. Ibid., p. 42.
35. Wallace Franz, "Maneuver: The Dynamic Element of Combat," Military Review, 63 (May
1983), p. 5.
36. S. L. A. Marshall. Men Against Fire (1947; rpt. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1978). p. 175.
37. Hackett, p. 228.
38. Dixon, pp. 95"99,

Summer 1987 17