The Unit First - Keeping the Promise of Cohesion - Christopher C. Straub - 1988

8/3/2019 The Unit First - Keeping the Promise of Cohesion - Christopher C. Straub - 1988

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At [iCurne Airport, Antmcrp, liulgium, member,, ol tht IMth "I~nai F)Itta I o n emb ark on IC - 1 0 H nn110 oairkra tt tor an at t umin cw\r.(IS A ir I lr7r( 11oto h/, s~t,?II Sergean~t Ro t'~ ar,nhaIiU.


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KEEPING TH-E PROMISEOF COHIESION

Christopher C. ta l

1988NA ] 1,NAL- DEFE~EUN5L R~T PRFSSWASHINGTON, DC

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National Defense University Press Publications. Iin, rca-i i kirwrkn oiwldge and in t rm discns-irn, NIK ViIrcs- pu bhlic'iog hif-tjects relating to US national stucuritv. l ath Nvar, IT) ill, rt titl tN ational Defense Uni ver~sitv, th rough t he Instt uti tc r Naitin.0 -"tri tL'iStud ies, hosts aborut t%%o oze/n Sen ior I-v i xv- %v w c nizaint 11 ziWrrs&'arch onl national srcurit~v s-.NI PLIre-' puhloi.ic tic hc-t 'this resea rchiIn add ition, th Pwo-s pubirhic t-spci itali orI d!;tinguished %writing.n national st-cunt,, trom Authlors tit~trde tht* Unix r-vsi tv , neis' edit ions of out -oI- print d efun st si and hook bs -cd ,itconfterences concerning national set-,rit,, afair,.Opinions, COncIluioS10, and rvtommr-ndatwton us p u-.d or :lokvithin are solvly those oit the author anld do no(t necuvsarilv rcipresuntthe %views,.f the National D~efense Unison-it, thu I)cpartnicn t otDefense, or an v OthuLr 6overnmunt agency. ( leared to r publit rcleasi.distribution unlimnited,Proofreadf bt, William A. Palmer, Jr., Chultenham, MI), utnder contractDAH C32-s7-A-AW14.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataStraub, Christopher C.,

The unit first.Bibliography p.1 United States, Army- Personnel management. 2- United Mates.

Army--Unit cohesion. 3. Combat. 1. Title,P3"23.S77 1988 355.6)1l'973 87-24726First printing: March 1988


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CONTENTSF( w'zvord i.1

1. COHESION: ITS PROMISE 32. HOW WE GOT THIS WAY 19

3. THE INDIVIDUAL COMES FIRST 41

4. THE FRUITS OF CURRENT POLICY 37

5. Rx: PUT THE UNIT FIRST 85

6. CONVERSION OF THE SPIRIT 119

Notes 137

Bibliograph, 147

The Author 133v ii


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FOREWORDFOR THE LAST FORTY YFARS, the US Armv hasassigned its soldiers on an individual basis-not asmembers of a unit. Supporters of this personnel svs-tem point out its clockwork efficiency, its economy,and its mirroring of replacement needs in time ofwar. Not all observers, however, believe that such apersonnel system serves us as well as it should.Lieutenant Colonel Christopher C. Stroub arguesthat the current Army personnel system fails to nur-ture an element necessary for units to fight well:cohesion, that bonding together of soldiers into acoherent fighting unit.

Lieutenant Colonel Straub shows that theArmy's personnel system is a reflection of culturalvalues-particularly American individualism, senseof fair play, equity, and the importance of careeradvancement. Although US forces performed well inprevious wars, experience during the Vietnam con-flict suggests that our personnel policies did not fos-ter cohesion in that era. In a future war, we may notbe able to count on superior technology, firepower,industrial might, and sheer numbers to compensatefor a lack of cohesion. Straub tells us that we willneed the added combat power promised byincreased cohesion.

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FoloR[Wo)RThis book proposes the adoption o, a unit-basedpersonnel system. From the work of its staffresearchers-the largest group of organizational psv-

chologists in the free world-the US Army under-stands the value of units that remain coohesiveamidst the stre's, confusion, and destruction of thebattlefield. The Army's tests of a regimental svs-tem-wherein each soldier remains in the same regi-ment his entire career-and its successful"COHORT" project, for example, are first stepstoward improved cohesion. Although the nextstep-a unit-based personnel system-will not beeasy, says the author, it should help realize thepromise of battlefield success inherent in the conceptof unit cohesion.

BRADI.EY C. FIOSMERLieutenant General, LIS Air ForcePresident,National Dejl*Ose Uniiversity

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1. COHESION: ITS PROMISE

ilitary professionals and their civilianI"#Ilbosses need reminding periodically thai1J Allone of their principal duties to the nation is

to field units that fight well. This book is intended assuch a reminder. It is not enough that tl,e defense es-tablishment equips these units well, although choos-ing and paying for the best equipment are dauntingtasks. It is not enough that these units master themost advanced doctrine, although sound doctrine isindispensable and the creation of it occupies manybright minds. It is not enough that these units beswiftly transported to the battle, or that they, haveabundant supplies. Beyond all these prerequisites ofsuccess in war, the unit must fight well.

To fight well presupposes that at least most ofth4e soldiers in a unit have chosen to fight at all, thatthey individually have the will to fight. Then the indi-vidual wills must combine into a fighting team, ateam that has practiced and whose members haveconfidence in each other and in team performance.Because confidence, teamwork, and will are humanattributes, in the military division of labor it is thepersonnel system that should supply or produce ornurture these qualities, just as the logisticians should

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till LN\IlI 1-:IsLSsupply a11111utllition alnd th e tdOtiida', hreate the c-trine. The personnel svstelm recruit, pe ple, gre tup,,them into units, promotes, and develops them, andmoves them to fill Service needs,. HIe wa v t-hy dothese things can flster or inhibit the &-uJilitiC, that s.,Idiers and units 11.L1st have if nlllil, r-, to) tilglt w\Cll, itunits are to be cohe,,ive tin,11der ,lrt,,ss.Appreciation of the personnel sytem'l, pi\oita!role in combat sulCCessI; iS no0t netW. *\fte r ver',y wrsince World War 11, anhalstS inside and Ouitside' theServices have noted deficiencies in the will to tight ()individuals or in the fighting qualities, of ulnits, andhave tied these deficiencies to personnel m11lanage-ment policies. The passivity and lack of cohlesion thatcharacterized most units in the latter stages of theVietnamlr war provided vivid examples of the effect ofpersonnel policies (such a,, the twelve-month tour,individual rotation, inequitable conscription, and si\month command tellu-es) oIn unit fighting qualities.In the decade that followed, a spate of historical stud-ies illuminated the relationship between the person-nel system and fighting power, and the LUS Armyaltered personnel policies so fighting qualities wotulddevelop in units, and cohesion became the fashion.BV 1982 it seemed that the Army at last understoodthat by recruiting and training soldiers in a group, bykeeping soldiers together in units longer, by givingunits precedence over individuals, the fighting powerof units would grow.

We understood, and we still understand. Andyet we act as though we do not. Our hesitant, tenta-tive moves toward stronger units are overlaid on a4


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( Mq 1ll)\: 1:-, l lpersonnetl ,stem in w hic basic im-11ptij ht,no t chlanged sinc, thi beginning of World War II. It i,an ironic stale of affairs that tilt.e US military embraccethe importalnce Of Unit cohusion, Vet lail to Make thitfindalmental hanges in pe'rsionnel policy ntecdd tobuild that cohesion. Comietic changes and improve-nments oil t' C marins Of tihe plersonnl yVStelm iaenot altered the fact that today, is in every year since1940, the personnel svstenm is indi\-iduil-ctentered.and that therefore units cannot develop their tfull no-tential to be coilesive. Cleairi' there arte forces sup-porting tile personnel system 4atu< tpto that ark Vevnmore powerful than our all-but-unanimlou.S belief inthe combat payoff of cohesion. One of ill\mpurposes,here is to analvze the forces arraved against coheSion1and to show how firmly they are rooted in our cultureand history, but first we should examine tile rationalefor developing cohesion through unit-centered per-sonlnel policies, to demonstrate tihat this trip is Irullvnecessary .

When the Army Research Inlstitute', Fort Knw,.researchers docunlented the positive relationship be-tween tank gunnery results and tank crew stabilitv in1978, 1they provided scien1tific support for a long-heldcommon belief-that a team fu i nctions better tihelonger it stays togi lher, especially it key individualteam members, in that case tank crmmnanders lndgunners, do not change roles. Leaders have longsought to retain the same soldiers in the samle team orunit not only to avoid the necessity of recruiting andtraining new soldiers but also for tihe effectiveness ofa team that stays together over time. Fhe efforts


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"ITHE UNI IFI[


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high-turnover rates attest to the increased capability,unit pride, and training savings of thi low-turnoverunits. One US Army division commander whoserved as a lieutenant in a 1950s "'(vrrcop'' cavalrvregiment in Germany that had very low cadre turn-over sa's that the best single way to increase readi-ness is to adopt a policy, rotation-by-battahon, thatincreases personnel stability. 1is experience con-vinces him that units with a relatively stable, un-changing membership require less training tomaintain proficiency., As a corollary, a stable unitcould use the training time and monev' thus saved toincrease its capabilities in other ways.

In addition to th,' belief in stability based on thepersonal experience of leaders and the evidence inAmerican military history that cohesion derives fromstability, US professional military opinion has alsobeen influenced by foreign examples. Chief amongthese has be.,it the British experience. British militaryhistory from Agincourt right LIp to the retaking of theFalklands is a repeated tale of tightly knit, highlyskilled units that rely on cohesion to generate thefighting power needed to overcome numerically su-perior but less cohesive opponents. British cohesionhas been critically necessary when the blunders ofBritish generals placed units in desperate circum-stances. One example, often cited in the literature ofmilitary sociology, is the performance of the 2nd Scot-tish Rifles at Neuve Chapelle, France, in February1915.7 The regiment lost more than 73 percent of itsstrength, including all of its officers except for onelieutenant, in the course of a morning. Yet thtremainder of the regiment maintained high cohesion


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and discipline for two more dav's ot operations,. Once.withdrawn from combat for refitting, the regimient in-gested a full draft of replacements but ',till retainedl itstraditiolral cohesion, to Judge by subsequen-1t battle-.

British experiences like that of the 2nd ScottishRifles abound and have attracted the interest of for-eign militarv planners, Amnericans included, whoseek to replicate the intensity of British cohesion intheir own forces. StudyI of British units quickly leads,to the unique features of the British personnel sys-te:long-term voluntary service ra uhrt nresponsibilitv. placed on noncom missi oned officers,and careers spent in a single regiment. Some1L currei-itUS Army cohesion -bu1ildi ng personnel initiativessuch as regimental affiliation and battalion rotationare partly adaptations of British practice. Althoughcritics may note that British cohesion is a function ofthat country's social class structure, and that person-nel policies that serve Britain well do not suit a nationof our size, diversity, and worldwide commitments,nonetheless, the British unit-centered syvstem con-tinues to impress and attract us.

The US military has learned about the relation-ship between stability and cohesion from other for-eign countries. The personnel systemns of mostCommonwealth armies are much like the British, andthe cohesion developed by them has been apparentto the generations of Americans who have trainee.with Canadian units or been guests in an Australianmess. Americans have also noted the success of Is-raeli forces, some of whose reserve units enjoy excep-tional personnel stabilityi'l In the past, American

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Co l )\:v II,,lR~~icounterparts. Although the nineteenth centuiryFrench experience had few positive lessons abouthow to maintain unit stibility, the` thOughts of Cob0-nel Ardant du1 Picq on small-groulp cohiesion and thlesoldier's will to fight have influenced Americanssince World War l In setting a combat example thathelps build an American consensus tor personnelpolicies that create cohesion, however, the only for-eign experience that rivals the British one is that ofWorld War 11 Germany.Itas long seemed inappropriate to draw positivelessons from an ustteriy defeated army that devisedits policies under an immoral regime. Because ofthis kind of reasoning, understanding of the effec-tiveness of the Wehrmacht personnel systemn hasshortcomings of our own victorious but flawed per-growns onily sno mericand onlsensuc omparisonnwttel

sonnel system of the same era. The fact is, however,that we defeated the Germans in spite of, not becauseof , our personnel system, and even in defeat the Ger-man system was remarkably effective. The strongunit sfyartims of German soldiers reported by MorrisJanowitz and Edward A. Shils in their analrsis of Ger-man prisoner-of-war interviews contrast with the in-dividualism and weak sense of unit on the Americanside that is described in Stouffer's Aufericaweplher-In 1977 Trevor N. Dupuy measured German and Al-lied (US and British only) performance in seventM -eight World War i1ngagements and demonstratedthat on average the Germans were 20 to 30 percent

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THE UNIT FIRSTmore effective than their adversaries." Man for man,Wehrmacht forces generated more combat power,even in obviously hopeless situations. In 1982 Martinvan Creveld explained at least in part how they did it.He contrasted in detail the personnel policies of theUS and German armies of World War 1Iand showedthat the German stress on unit stability and con-tinuity produced cohesion and consequently greatercombat effectiveness.") Van Creveld made clear thatpersonnel management is a powerful tool for creatingor dampening the will to fight of individual soldiersand the fighting power of units.

The Wehrmacht personnel system described byvan Creveld was not very different from the Britishsystem so admired in America. Policies expressly fos-tered cohesion by creating stability. German soldierswere regionally recruited. Basic training was on a di-visional basis; that is, all soldiers destined for, say,the Panzer Lehr Division were trained in PanzerLehr's training depot by Panzer Lehr cadre. Thenewly graduated trainees moved to the front in"'march battalions" led by Panzer Lehr cadre whowere themselves rejoining their old outfit. On arrivalin the division rear area, the new soldiers-were allo-cated to replacement companies which exclusivelyserved one of the division's fighting regiments. In thereplacement companies, which were located in thedivision rear area, the new soldiers underwent fromtwo to five weeks of training taught by cadremenfrom the regiment they would soon join. Replace-ments joined their regiment only when the regimentwas pulled out of combat for rest and retraining. Asretraining proceeded, the replacements became10


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COHESION: ITS PROMISEbonded to the regiment's veterans and found theirniches in the unit.)

The German training and replacement systemwas not the sole means of building cohesion. TheGermans also strengthened the internal ties thatbound individuals into units by stressing the quality,stability, and authority of the leaders of those units.Access to officer status was limited; in terms of per-cent of the entire force, the Wehrmacht had less thanone half the officer positions of the US Army of theperiod.12 Officer prestige was correspondingly higherand was further enhanced by the presence of a largerproportion of the officer corps in combat units. Ger-man officers, like Israeli officers of more recent times,also took more than their share of casualties-an in-dication that they were leading from the front. Com-missions were granted on the basis of demonstratedleadership, not civilian education. Most officers werecommissioned from officer candidate school after aperiod of combat service as an enlisted man. Policyrequired that their first assignment as an officer bewith their old unit. Thus many new lieutenants ledplatoons under the battalion or regimental com-mander who had originally recommended them forofficer training.

Although often portrayed as an over-centralized,bureaucratic force, the World War II German Army infact usually delegated tactical decisions to the lowestlevels; given available communications and the widthof the front to be defended, central control wouldhave failed. Decisionmaking on personnel matterswas also delegated to the low level at which leaders

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I-TIHt UNIT FIRS Uand soldiers knew each other. In terms of current USArmy leadership theories, the World War 11 Wehr-macht was a "power-down" army. Commanders upthrough regimental level had far more authority thantheir US counterparts to reward, transfer, and punishtheir subordinates. Commanders also determinedeach soldier's job (the military occupational specialtyin US terms) and how he would be trained fo r it. Con-sequently German soldiers looked to their unitleaders, and not to an anonymous higher headquar-ters or some far-off personnel command, for the deci-sions that most affected their lives and their Servicecareers. The Germans similarly fostered authorityand stability in their noncommissioned leadership.After a periodic rotation to noncombat duty or afterrecovery from wounds, German NCOs and soldierswere returned to their former units, regardless of thelarger personnel situation. Conversely, US practice atthis time was to send "casuals," as such returningsoldiers were actually termed, to the unit that had adocumented shortage, without regard to whether thesoldiers had served in that unit before.

The German personnel system described by vanCreveld is appealing in its simplicity and its warfight-ing orientation, and especially attractive in its demon-strated payoff on the battlefield. The system gavepriority to the unit and the unit's success in battleover the careers and personal preferences of theunit's members. The German system also based itselfas much on an understanding of the "emotional ele-ment" of combat as on efficiency. 13 Even though now12


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COHESION: ITS PROMISEsome of the support for cohesion-building policies inthe US forces is based on study of the German experi-ence, there are limits to the usefulness of the Germansystem as a model for us. The German social systemproduced officer and NCO castes that had no parallelin the US Army. Germany was a totalitarian state,able to impose its will easily on soldiers with low ex-pectations about their ability to make personal deci-sions concerning military service. Germany was alsoengaged in a total war for survival, a war shared bythe civilians who were being bombed at home. Thesense of total war against great odds produced tenac-ity in German units, quite apart from the cohesionthat was developed through the way German soldierswere trained and assigned. Furthermore, the Germansystem was completely dedicated to the operationalside of war; it might not have been able to cope withthe logistical tail of US forces in World War II, muchless the logistical and technological complexities oftoday.

All other disparities aside, there is yet a final ca-veat about the way the Wehrmacht managed its sol-diers: the German system was completely a wartimesystem whose sole purpose was the immediate taskof victory. Although we can learn from the Germanexperience that personnel policy can increase combatpower, the American purpose today in seeking a sys-tem that strengthens cohesion is much different: tobuild a system in peacetime, in the volunteer forces ofa democracy, that will result in cohesive combat unitsin war.

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t THE UNIT FIRSTn seeking foreign models for an American systemthat will build cohesion, we would do better to ex -amine the peacetime practice of other democracies.Even in the British system and in its Commonwealth

variations, however, we find the same first principleas in the totalitarian German wartime system: theprimacy of the unit over the individual. It is this prin-ciple that is the great sticking point in our efforts tobuild cohesion systematically.

The priority of unit over individual is aubiquitous feature of the current British system. Brit-ish soldiers can, and often do, spend most of their ca-reers with the same unit. They need not pursuepersonal career goals outside the unit, or "ticketpunch" in an effort to build a file with which to pro-gress through the NCO ranks; promotions are deter-mined in the unit by the soldier's own leaders, the"same eaders in the soldier's MOS and the other vitaldetails of the soldier's professional life. For manyBritish officers and NCOs, the most honored careergoal is to become commander or sergeant major oftheir unit. Within the unit, soldiers are not limited toperforming the tasks of a single, narrow specialty. In-stead they can be assigned to and trained for anyposition in the unit. It is quite common in British in-fantry battalions, for example, for a mortar sectionleader to be promoted and take up duties in a line in-fantry platoon, or vice versa. Change of stationmoves are made by the unit, on the unit's schedule,however, and not by the individual soldier. If themove involves a change of mission or a differentequipment type, the unit undergoes the appropriatetraining as a whole.14


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COHESION: ITS PROMISEAmerican planners have been attracted to the

British model in recent years. Consequently some ofthe cohesion-building initiatives of the US Armysince 1980 have British antecedents. The US regimen-tal system is the most obvious example. Another isthe COHORT (cohesion, operational readiness, andtraining) program in which soldiers stay together inthe same unit from the start of individual trainingright through return from overseas deployment. Inincreasing numbers (until 1987), entire battalion-levelunits moved between posts in the United States, Ger-many, and Korea. There is also a British flavor to the"power down" leadership initiat~'es of the 1980s,which have increased the authorit of battalion andcompany commanders on such decisions as whethera soldier should be discharged. As the capabilities ofthe NCO corps have risen in this decade, so have thepowers ot sergeants to run units and reward and dis-cipline soldiers. The direction of US Army personnelpolicy thus seems to be running toward the Britishmodel, but as I will show in the following chapters,these efforts at strengthening cohesion are isolatedand are not in consonance with the forty-year-oldfundamental principles of US military personnel pol-icy, which are still unchanged.

Uppermost in those principles is the primacy ofthe individual over the unit. It is a concept rooted inour national heritage and still legitimized (againststeadily accumulating negative evidence) by its ap-parent success in World War II. The primacy of theindividual underpins the individual replacement sys-tem which the Army will use in wartime and is alsothe fundamental assumption on which soldiers plan

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THE UNIT FIRSTtheir military careers. Underlying pervasive ad-herence to this principle is the main impediment tofollowing through on our collective conviction thatcohesion increases fighting power.

here are also secondary sources of resistance topolicy change. One is the belief that in the stressof a really serious fight, soldiers who have beenstrangers until that moment can nonetheless fight

well. There are historical examples to support thisview. Ad hoc units formed at random fought well inthe confusion of the Wilderness in 1864, and hastilyassembled groups of cooks and clerks repelled Ger-man armor assaults in the Ardennes in 1944.14 Duringthe battle for the Golan Heights in 1973, individual Is-raeli soldiers were hurriedly grouped into tank crews,matched up with reconditioned tanks, and thenformed into tank platoons and companies that wentimmediately into combat and won.15 Even thecohesion-conscious Wehrmacht was forced to createad hoc units and rush them into a breach, although theGerman leadership was not pleased with theresults. 16

Because real events suggest that soldiers canform effective units without prior shared experience,perhaps the will to fight can also have other sourcesthan cohesion, such as a belief in the cause, love ofcountry, hadted of the enemy, and pride in belongingto a larger corps (for example, Marine or airborne).Like the success in World War II of Army units thatwere supported by an individual replacementsystem, victories won by ad ho c units discount the16


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S~~Co}t IL-ON: I IS PRON1MIIvalue of making the major policy changes that wouldbe required to maintain personnel stability. If warscan be won without the cohesion that is generated bvkeeping soldiers together for a long time, the reason-ing goes, why make an extra effort toward achievingpersonnel stability?

An audible but minor complaint against greatlystressing cohesion holds that peacetime unit person-nel instability is good training for war, because thefrequent transfer of soldiers simulates the effect ofcombat casualties. According to this view, the trans-fers accustom both leaders and soldiers to what unitlife would be like in combat under the US Armv'sindividual replacement system. Leaders would findthe requirement to continually ingest and train re-placements to be similar to their peacetime trainingdilemma.

hese contentions allenging the pursuit of co -hesion, while interesting, are distinctly minorityJviews. The dominant belief on the subject, ex-

pressed in both the military and academic literature,is that there is a link between a unit's fighting powerand the amount of time that soldiers spend togetherin the unit. The need to lengthen that time and thusfoster cohesion is widely understood; acting on thatunderstanding, following through on the promisingstart of the early 1980s is more difficult. To do so, wemust withdraw from our policy of individualism tothe extent that we put the soldier's unit first. It is crit-ical, and the point of this entire commentary, that weunderstand and acknowledge the necessity of such a

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THE UNIT FIRSTchange and how it can be done. But it's importantfirst to see how America became so accustomed anddevoted to the primacy of the individual in militarypersonnel matters.

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J14A UNIT Pl1572. HOW WE GOT THIS WAY

lie scene in the passenger erminalof Travis Air Force|Base,California,on any day or night during the Wet-A izam war, epitomized the American militarly p,'rsonnel

systent in action. Gathered there for military flights to Wet-nam, the travelers clearly ha d a great deal in common. Allwere in uniform, mostly Army khaki; al l -were n fire thresh-old of an experience without parallel n theirlives. Yet, tojudge by behavior, the waitingpassengers were alienatedfrom one another. Most kevt to themselves. If theyt talked toeach other at all, it was to quietly in;roduce themselves toother individuals, usually of the same rank a:0d armi f Serv-ice, and usually in the roundabout, where-have-you-servedmanner of soldiers. An observerof this scene would surmisethat this wa s a greup of strangers.

The members of the group were wi., ng to board aplane in obedience to the calling of a roster by a sergeanttHey did not know. This wa s normal; they had been called asindividuals on rosters read out by strangersmany times be-fore, startingwith their draft boards or in the cases ofthe ca-reersoldiers in the group, with the anonymous personnelmanagers in some remote lieadquarterswho had "'levied"them for this combat assignment. All of the soldiers hadtraveled to Travis as individuals, most having taken someleave at home, and they ha d no expectation tlhat their trip to

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TIL UNI f FIP iVietilain would be ill anyztlinx,\ other than a ranldt'1lt ar-Sraltled ,i'roup.hey also understood that th dr gro p waSvery teminporarily asseibled, not thesti eltd to ctdure in itch

lou ger thian the tisht, antd that theij wouldi lit \'ii,'d to*hff'i lits in Vietm as individuals The ca-;eer soldiersknew this for certain: the iew privates as,; iumd it withoutbeiig told, based oil their con tact so far ajith the(ArnnY'sroster-hohch'rs.

So tit(' group Of strangers that altswet'rct'd thel rester an dboarded tile plane at Travis vent liketu didn't have muchnItOre cohtesion thai tithe crowd 01 1 tomorrow' s Wasthiititoii-to New York Eastern shuttle flight. Ito1nan nature beintwhat it is, however, little knots !offfiliationa begapi to takes/hape, even in the short du ration of the flight across the Pa-cific, Some of tile sceds of coil'sionl Were sown i, 1i1c initro-ductions offered in the Trmiis departuren. lounmie. Othersformnt'd in coll versa tion and pinochle gaules dn ring thie'flight. When the planestopped at Itlohtolhit or fuel, severalsoldiers headed off in search of a souvenir stand or the air-port cocktail lounge and, in tilt' adtventure of tihte search, be-came a small unit. Back in flight, casual interchangedeveloped into seriotus conversation. Frie' rdships formedand friends, no t strangers,shared the first view of tile aerialflares that hung in the Vietnamese night sktj, even tile firstsights and smells of Vietnam perceived in the shuttle busfront the airport to the replacement depot. lit t'ss thantwenty-four hours, strangershad started to cohere. Thenthe soldiers would ge t off the bus, line up, and revert tobeing individualsand strangersagain, through tite readingof aanotlher roster.

This next rostert- was usually for-sonietjtijig as inl-nocuous as billeting arrangemt'ets n thet replacmenc/t depot,20


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Ihi\\ W1 (A)t H~Xva'iit'r tit' soldie rs would stali for' 01l1t a h'-w d111 t'bc!retrovie/it to the~ir (lt'vtntno unit. A\'oit, in a (cic ImmiortI,coiu'swze .,roups would surt'tw 1k' tortmblg inl thfi/t, Illflit ifllt'5 hall am I on ctaijiIs w sotldit r, () totkil a ,Iii Itho~ter. And ju~st its sureily tilt rouips zvouldi be , dtoMiued, Illlt'e jwstinig of thet mat't whystt, tellIn a'hich svdolir wicrti besftteor alkhit ulii'sio

lbie gnroups repah'd smuotleig eUwqot IN ronioniidecterwined its the soldiers; mni~'ht think. TIhe' ReplactinetDepot was n'epotWdiO to I/it rnpqu 'wf ofthit din'si)ums andcorps it served. On a partficular diay, thet I1st In fan rb' I ivli-suom, say/, twt'tied more'iu', r'eplacement'i Iart ilierymein (0 acertat n Srade, MhI. the 9thi lnfNiori tiz'isoi wa , s/torttInaiii infati trijnteti and a few, niechan ics So tilt'rosters were

Coinposed inl response to filit' imipt'nttii'es 4 tassiucafon bii1skill and , rad', but f/ilt effect of dis tri butig sohliclrs thiswart was to divide tilt, groiup ait the~ Rep lacemtent OIle;of inttothjose who would have at hard wear and thosec who would riskand stiffer little. All faced twt'li'-nmouth eotertuinous ton raill would receive f/ilt, santte ''hostile fitc-'' pay,. albtost tiltwould lie honored with tile saimt' decorationis tor, inetritoriotis service,'' hut the differenices in discomfort anid don-~,'er wvoild be profound. Vihese differe'nces were, based it, i,+'skills (MOS). and to at lesser extent ii 'gradt'. Sonic in at,'roupi-the infantit ry or a rmor cet/is ted tinet antd juttior of-ficers--Woutld st'rve a ' ear oI'f Serious physiscal and mentWalstress and interintftcut Contact with t/il' enetnul/. Dihet wouldilive in thet jungle, and awak great disance ciirryipn, /tcaviloads, anti It'e rt'st of it. Others in the group would tyipc atidp~ass paper in ajr-oltdiioedhintl iuldintgs, sleep on Wiatisheets, and run icno risks grtater tihan flthose p osed by ovot'itt-dullgence inl legal and illegal inttoxicantis. St ill others a 'it dhame tours fat/bug between thee ot ext ret'S

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IHif UNII FIRSrAs these very dissimilar toiirs of dutyi progressld,

resen tmeints would siirface. Pie comtinbat soldiers wouldeventually become aware of the ushti life led 1,Y the clerks,and would both envy and despise them. Fhe rear echtclonsoldiers would sense this, would also perceive their lack ofwar-figliting status, and would provide le-s than their besteffort to support the combat troops. The rear area soldiersmiyght at the sawe time fall prey to self-pit4i, !boredom, amiddrug abuse. In retrospect it would seem almost inconce'il-able to the soldiers in our group that theiy had been friendsback at tle Replacement Depot, had ever faced the rosterhlolders and the unknowns of this combat touir toetlher.Whien they meet again for the trip back to the United States,th ii~ghit tot remember that they had ever stood togetheras friends.

,he personnel system of the Vietnam era had acertain genius for attacking cohesion, for break-ing up groups, for creating division, and formaking soldiers into isolated individuals. In retro-spect it seems a cruel system. But it was not, as we

might wish, merely one of many brief aberrations ofthat aberrant period in our military history. The per-sonnel system of the late 1960s was directly de-scended from the way we organized soldiers to fightthe previous wars of this century. Its twin pillarswere dominance of the individual and the urge toclassify. In its essential, underlying principles it is thesystem in effect today and the system we will fightthe next war with.

In examining how we got this way, one finds asingle common thread stretching through the military22


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Hot VNI Go I TIlus WAYpersonnel systems used in this century's wars: pri-macv of the individual. This trait is seen first of all inthe decisions of the leadership in each war to moveindividuals, rather than units, into and out of theconflict. In carrying on its business, the leadershipwas not consciously obeying some theory of social or-ganization. The secretaries of war and chiefs of staffwho determined or approved these systems werepragmatists who wanted to accomplish a concretemission. They sought systems that worked, that wereeffective. Such systems had first to overcome th,- lackof pre-war preparation that was the American normand enable the force to expand quickly. Then the sys-tems had to be operationally effective, able to sustainthe force created. Depending on the length of thewar, the systems also had to be politically effective;they had to function without damaging the supportfor the war from the American public or Americansoldiers. Requirements for both kinds of effectivenesshave shaped today's personnel system.

In World War I, it was an overwhelming opera-tional problem that put roster readers in front of for-mations of soldiers at training camps in the UnitedStates and France. Because War Department plannerschose to activate and man forty-two new divisions be-fore creating a replacement pool, divisions aireadv incombat saw their strength drop toward the point ofineffectiveness. To solve the problem, GeneralPershing directed that soldiers be transferred fromlater-arriving divisions to the divisions already en-gaged. The shortages thus created were filled bymore mass transfers of soldiers away from divisionswith a still lower priority. In the nineteen months

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THE UNIT FIRSTduration of the war, some divisions were stripped ofmost of their soldiers three times. ILeaving one's divi-sion did not necessarily damage tactical cohesion,provided that the smaller unit, the soldier's immedi-ate environment, remained intact, bitt divisions withtheir generals, insignia, slogans, and geographicalroots have their own air of power and permanence.Sudden involuntarv transfers such as those that oc-curred ir, World War I must have been destabilizingeYperiences at the very least for the soldiers.

Once in battle, of course, some soldiers sufferedwounds. Casualties who recovered from theirwounds were reassigned to whatever unit had ashortage, not necessarily to their former units.2 Wecan surmise that American soldiers in World War Imust have become quite adept at removing and re-placing their unit insignia.

The need for the personnel system to be politi-cally effective was not paramount in World War I.Although the lottery method used in conscriptionwas a gesture in that direction, an assurance that in-dividuals were equal in the face of random selection,the war was too short and America's war aims tooquickly realized for the war to need political shoringup by means of the military personnel system. Thenation's war leaders in subsequent conflicts, how-ever, have not had it so simple. The difficulty of theirtasks is reflected in the manning systems they chose.

General Marshall and his planners knew beforethe beginning that World War 11 would be a long war.They needed to raise a large force while avoiding thehaste that caused problems in World War I; they24


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IOm WINGo I Tis Wv,\)iweded to aizurc a rcplaccment fOo-'' from the verybeginning, and they needed to man the force in a waythat would not alienate the American people over thecourse of a long conflict. Most of all, their personnelsystem had to be operationally effective. The systemthey designed embodied industrial thought on theuse of manpower as a resource that was typical of thetime.

The World War I failure to plan fo r replacementshad embarrassed the Army, quite possibly the reasonthat personnel doctrine during the inter-war periodstressed replacements. In 1923, Army doctrinewriters envisioned a continuous flow of individual re-placements to the forward area who would proceedautomatically to the units with the greatest short-ages. 3Army plannershad an industrial vision of peo-ple as a resource, people being accounted for andreplaced in the same way that the individual parts ofa tank or an airplane are. The era of gigantism, inwhich huge industrial projects promised an escapefrom the Depression, could understand this way ofmaking war. In the world that imitated and honoredHenry Ford's method of organizing for production, itmade sense to equate soldiers with the raw materialsflowing into the great factories of that era. Like theflow of industrial work, this modern personnel sys-tem promised financial and managerial efficiency.The Army took this system to war in 1941. And justas Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times captures the alien-ation of the worker dehumanized in the 1930s indus-trial system, so the isolated, disconnected AmericanGI of World War 1I reflects the individual-centeredpersonnel system of the period.

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TH E UNnT FIRSlKnowledge of the failings of the personnel sys-

tern in World War 1, even replacement plav in the1941 Louisiana maneuvers,4 did not prevent repeti-tion of the replacement shortfall and its attendantturbulence once World War 11 was under wa'. Re -placement requirements for the Army in World WarII were again miscalculated. Consequently during1943 and 1944, tens of thousands of infantrymenwere transferred out of the units they had known andtrained in and were placed in divisions that wereeither already overseas or were about to go overseas.In the February 1944 removal of replacements fromdivisions in training, the average affected divisionlost over 4,100 soldiers.' Again, roster calls upset theassumptions of soldiers who thought they had founda home, but once soldiers did reach a combat unitoverseas, they stayed in it "for the duration." Theunit itself experienced the same situation; apart fromthe brief rest periods that could be spared in the Euro-pean theater and the train-ups between island as-saults in the Pacific, units were in combat continuallyuntil victory was achieved. Individual replacementsissued from replacement depots took the places ofcasualties.6 After recovering from their wounds, for-mer casualties joined the replacement stream andwere assigned to whichever unit had "a valid requisi-tion," that is, had convinced the personnel managersthat a shortage existed and should be filled.

The force that won World War I1used this per-sonnel system, but apart from the coincidence thesystem has little to recommend it. It made the war anendurance contest but in many cases denied soldiers26


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How WEi Got Tn's WAYthe cohesion that encourages endurance. As anony-mous ciphers in the replacement stream, new sol-a diers lost their motivation, skills, and physicalfitness. 7 They often joined their units while the latterwere in active combat, permitting little opportunityfor integration into the unit before they were underfire. For example, Okinawa alone received 13,200 re-placements during active operations.8 The relentlesscontinuity of combat operations, especially in the Ital-ian theater, made soldiers feel that they and theirunits were being ground down.9 Signs of anomie be-came widespread. In January 1944, 76 percent of theUS Army casualties in Italy were due to "sickness, ac-cident, or exhaustion"--hardly indicators of high mo-rale. "IPsychiatric casualty rates of 120 to 150 percentper year were not uncommon in infantry units inItaly. II In the Army as a whole there were more than320,000 discharges for psychiatric reasons in WorldWar 11. 12

rmy leaders recognized in 1943 that the per-sonnel system was deficient in providing co-hesion and a will to fight, but under thepressure of worldwide operations few changes were

made. One change, the introduction of an individualrotation policy, may have eased psychic stress, but italso hurt cohesion. In December 1943, the War De-partment directed theater commanders to return onepercent of their strength per month to the UnitedStates, starting in March 1944, against the promise ofone-for-one replacements.'-" Theater commanders setrotation criteria; in Italy rotation was by "merit,"

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I

VITHE UNIT FIRSTestablished by an individual's time in combat,wounds, and decorations. 14 This first, modest rota-tion program reveals more than the leadership'sconcern for the political as well as operational effec-tiveness of the personnel system; it marks new con-cern for equity for the individual as a guiding, if notdominant, principle in the manning of the force.

The rotation program is also evidence, if any fur-ther is needed, of the leadership's lack of conscious-ness about unit cohesion and the effect of theirpolicies on it. Consider: in the winter of 1943-44,when US forces were heavily committed around theworld and were not enjoying unlimited success, whywould the Army want to pull away from their unitsthe bravest and most experienced combat soldiers,the de facto leaders of their squads and platoons, andreplace them with untried strangers? In so doing theArmy was unwittingly saving that equity to individ-uals, the perception of soldiers and of their families athome that the Army was fair, was more importantthan the performance of its units in battle. The Armyhas been sending that message in its individual rota-tion policies ever since.

Individual rotation systems diminish a unit'seffectiveness whenever a key individual leaves (andin a good unit everyone is key), but they also damagecohesion before anyone leaves. As soon as the rota-tion policy is announced, soldiers who are eager toget out of action (in other words, virtually everyone)start defining themselves in terms of the rotation cri-teria: how many medals or days each soldier is awayfrom rotation. Soldiers become that much more28


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How WE GoTi Tfiis WA Xpreoccupied with their personal status, and less withthe unit, and the unit becomes less cohesive. Exam-pies from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam prove*, the point.

* The Army ran World War 11 demobilization on anindividual, not unit, basis. Once hostilities termi-nated in August 1945, the Army instituted a pointsystem to determine which soldiers would be re-turned first to the United States. Personnel officescomputed an Adjusted Service Rating (ASR) for eachsoldier, based on the time the soldier had spent over-seas, his decorations (no distinction was made be-tween decorations and no credit was given theCombat Infantryman's Badge), and his number ofchildren."5 During the demobilization conducted un-der this policy, the integrity of many units shatteredas roster readers shuffled soldiers about on the basisof the soldiers' ASRs. Restless over the pace of demo-bilization and unrestrained by their now-vanishedunit environment, soldiers held mass demonstrationsin Europe and the Orient in January and February1946.16 The troops had been mostly idle; they hadbeen supervised by leaders unknown to them; theyhad reverted from being members of units to beinguniformed individuals, and their indiscipline shouldhave surprised no one. But discipline and unit cohe-sion were not favored by Army policy; equity to indi-viduals was. According to the War Department pressrelease of 10 May 1945 that announced the demobiliz-ation point system, "in this whole program, theArmy has put the emphasis on the individual becausewe felt that was the only fair way in which to carryout demobilization." With an end to fighting,

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THE UNIT FIRSTpolitical effectiveness ceased being one of the person-nel system's purposes and became its sole purpose.Unless soldiers, their parents, and their congressmanbelieved in the fairness of the demobilization pro-gram, the political damage would be long lasting.

n the aftermath of World War 11, tht Army recog-rnized need for improvement in its wartime person-Jnel system. In 1947, the leadership convened aboard that excoriated the individual-centered replace-ment system and recommended unit-centered alter-natives.' 7 But in Korea, just three years later, theArmy repeated one of its World War II mistakes: indi-vidual rotation. In a limited war of uncertain dura-tion, the political effectiveness of the personnelsystem-how it affected the nation's will to wage theconflict-took on added importance. Fairness to theindividual soldier was viewed as the key. Initially,the sole rotation criterion was six months of Koreanservice. Then, beginning in the fall of 1951, a pointsystem was instituted that provided for a faster rota-tion for combat soldiers than for support troops. Asoldier's time in Korea was calculated into Con-structive Months of Service (CMS). One month in acombat position equaled four CMS; one month in asupport unit earned two CMS. A year later, the cate-gory of "intermediate combat" was added, earningCMS at a three-to-one rate."8 This system providedpersonnel managers with a record-keeping challengeand had the normal negative effect on cohesion thatis produced by individual rotation. Soldiers defined

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How WE GOT THIS WA Ythemselves more as individuals building up points inthe rotation game than as unit members.

Army leaders in Korea saw the lack of cohesionin their combat units and sought to counter it with aunit replacement program. Four-man teams of rifle-men were trained together, moved together throughthe replacement system, and assigned to the samecombat unit. The effect of the team packets is unclear.The teams were not always kept together once theyarrived in the combat unit." The war had becomestatic, and other key factors in cohesion, such asqualified NCOs in sufficient numbers, were lacking.

The Vietnam war provides the most recent exam-ple of an individual rotation policy, but the twelve-month tour did not serve as the only cause of theweakening of US ground forces' cohesion and fight-ing will that marked the later years of that conflict.Other causes included the disappearance of the NCOcorps, poor officer leadership, opposition on thehome front, and, most important, failure of the seniormilitary leadership to articulate a winning strategy.These causes were all evident to the troops at the timeand deepened the normal cynicism of combat sol-diers. The twelve-month tour was thus only one ofthe handicaps under which US forces in Vietnam la-bored. But because it defined the key event in sol-diers' lives (DEROS: date of return from overseas) inindividual terms, because it forced units continuallyto accommodate themselves to the departure of vet-erans and the arrival of green troops, because it gavesoldiers little reason to care about the outcome of the

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THE UNIT FIRSTwar, because it prevented the accumulation of cem-bat experience, the individual rotation policy in Viet-nam was a disaster. 20

Or was it? Measured in terms of operationaleffectiveness, the twelve-month tour was a handicap,but considered in terms of political effectiveness, itmay have been a necessity, even a success. As inKorea, it would not have been fair to commit a force"for the duration" when the duration, while un-known, was thought to be an awfully long time, andthe United States was applying only limited force: farfairer to both conscripts and careerists for all to rotatethrough Vietnam on a fixed tour of duty, and farmore palatable to the parents of soldiers, and, by ex-tension, to the larger public without whose supportthe war would stop. The Vietnam rotation policy isanother example of the military leadership choosingpolitical effectiveness (equity to individuals) overoperational effectiveness in designing a personnelsystem.

The twelve-month tour may have been necessaryfor another reason. In the view of Charles C. Moskos,the fixed tour maintained the war's legitimacy forsome soldiers by removing them from combat beforethey could sense the long-term futility of their efforts.Knowing they would be out of the war in a yearregardless of other circumstances, soldiers couldavoid pondering the larger issues. Moskos believesthe rotation policy thus fostered "a collective commit-ment to justify American sacrifice." 2' In other words,the rotation policy aimed at a political goal.32


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Elm-tWE Gor THis WAYIn the last three wars, we have had personrel

systems designed for political effectiveness. Becausea perception of fairness to individuals is key in theAmerican context, individuals are the system'sbuilding blocks. This is one reason why our systemcan fairly be termed "individual-centered." But theprimacy of the individual is not solely based in con-cern for equity. The way we mai, our forces reflectsthe society and culture of America, the countrv morededicated to individualism and more concernedabout the fate of the individual than any, other.

Americans resist the forced grouping of militarylife. Their ancestors fled from the lands of mass ar-mies and chose, in acts of great individualism, to de-termine their own futures in a challenging new landand culture. So when the US military requires thatthey temporarily lose their identity in a uniformedcrowd, Americans do so reluctantly. They may admitthe necessity of being in the crowd, but they prefer tobe treated as individuals. They can also individi allycommunicate their displeasure, using the meansprovided by a democracy protective of individualrights. Therefore, it is very much in the Americancharacter and tradition for the military to stress theindividual when manning the force, and to manageand issue orcers to individuals rather than to units.This is the case even when the nation is united intotal war; some sociologists have concluded that indi-vidual self-interest was the dominant orientation ofAmericans toward the military during World War L.'

Deep seated in the reason for the primacy of theindividual in our system, dedication to equality lies at

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THE UNIT FIRSTthe heart of our democratic tradition. The Declarationof Independence, this nation's fundamental docu-ment, proclaims egalitarianism as the natienal faithand as the principle that justifies our separate andunique nationhood. The Declaration ignores artificialgradations between men and asserts there is to beequality before God and in the rights that all men en-joy. The Constitution affirms egalitarianism. All sub-sequent American history could be explained as anextension and development of egalitarianism and itsever-wider application in American life. Militaryorganization and its requirement for soldiers tosurrender some rights and form into masses contra-dict the egalitarian ideal. Nevertheless, by designingindividual-centered personnel systems the militaryhas tried to adhere to the nation's founding and stilldominant principle.

American egalitarianism extends to the sharingof burdens. Not only do individual rotation systemswith fixed criteria satisfy our hunger for equality; therandomness of individual selection also gratifies us. Ifwe know that the burden can't be shared bv all (be-cause the forces can't get that big), our egalitarian in-stincts want the duty to fall at random, as in a draftlottery. Because it contains so many apparently ran-dom elements, decisions about the military job, wartheater, and unit that seem to the soldier (when an-nounced by the roster readers) to be the product of nomore than throws of the dice, the individual replace-ment system appeals to our egalitarianism. Randomselection is democratic, the American way. 23

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"The military job classification system also ap-peals to our egalitarianism. Classification addressesthe individual and theoretically gives each individualthe opportunity to do the job he wants. The practiceof classification, including descriptions of militaryjobs and tests for incoming soldiers to determinewhich jobs they should be trained for, began inWorld War I and was refined in World War I1. In itsessential principles it has been with us ever since.Judging by the stress we place on classification, theimportance we give it in assigning and promoting sol-diers, and the exacting detail with which we write jobdescriptions, we reveal some of our belief in the pri-macy of the individual. But we also reveal anotherbasic value: faith in technology and industrial efficiency. If past wartime practice is indicative, our de-votion to these values is greater than our devotion tocohesion and the will to fight in our combat units.

Classification complements our individualismbecause it responds to the needs and wishes of indi-viduals. Through interviewing and testing, the WorldWar I classification system (and all others since) de-termined a recruit's prior trade, if any, and placedhim in a parallel military job. 24 Belief in the appropri-ateness of this permeated the Army; if the classifiersmissed a soldier with needed civilian skills and puthim in a combat arm instead of an equivalent civiliantrade, he might still be shifted to a job that used thecivilian skill when he got to his unit. The 4th Divisionin World War I, for example, routinely vetted all itsnew replacements and puiled out those with neededcivilian skills.2 ' The process was repeated in WorldWar II. The Army's motive was to take advantage of

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THE UNIT FIRs-civilian skills already present in the force, savingtraining time and money in the bargain, and also toshow soldiers the Army's concern (which was gen-uine) for their satisfaction. Both goals seem unexcep-tionable. In fact, however, this aspect of classificationhurt combat units by removing potentially superiorsoldiers from the fighting jobs. Soldiers with thebrains and ambition to acquire a civilian trade, per-haps by working themselv..s up the apprenticeshipladder of a craft union, were likelier to be outstandinginfantrymen (and leaders of other infantrymen) thansoldiers without such achievements. So the US Armyunwittingly used its classification system to removepotential leaders from the combat arms.

American use of aptitude test scores in WorldWar 11 had a similarly ambivalent effect. Soldiers withhigh test results were usually assigned to noncombatspecialties. The branch of Service with soldiers hold-ing the highest average scores was the FinanceCorps. The branches with the greatest percent of low-scoring soldiers were engineers, field artillery, andinfantry.2 6 So data produced by the classification sys-tem, both test scores and information on soldiers' ci-vilian skills, were used to strengthen the Army'ssupport functions. The parallel consequence, thenumbe; of high-quality conscripts not being limitless,was weakness in the combat units. Soldiers who hadproven their determination or leadership ability in ci-vilian life were placed in support functions, while thefront-line units that most needed these qualities de-pended on the leftovers and those who slippedthrough the classification system. Soldiers with thebrains and confidence to succeed in the decision-36


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Sttl~H~nWI.:G(;):I IIb W,%'filled environment of, for example, the riflemen in-stead made their contribution to victory in Air Corpsmotor pools. This system did not serve the Army'sfighting power well, although it no doubt gratifiedthe soldiers whose skills and intelligence were re-warded with rear-area jobs.

The classification svstem had another defect; itadded fuel to resentment of the rear bv the front.Placement of the privileged in safe and comfortablejobs (and those smart enough or well enough placedin civilian life to land a support job during war art,privileged, and the combat soldiers know it) flies inthe face of a core egalitarian principle, the equalsharing of burdens. But because the permanence ofthe classification system required soldiers to performthe same kind of job throughout their wartime serv'-ice, the rotation of soldiers between front and rearthat might have bridged this chasm did not occur inany of America's last four wars.

Every war includes resentment of the rear areatroops by the front-line combatants, but feelings wereespecially hard among US forces in World War 11.2' Arotation policy between the echelons might have soft-ened resentments and increased the quality of sup-port as well as the morale of combatants. Somesupport positions might have been suitable for com-bat soldiers recovering from wounds, or in need of abreak, and commanders would have appreciated theflexibility of being able to draw replacements fromsupport units as well as from the replacement pool.The speciality classification system foreclosed these

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TH E UNIT FmRSTpossibilities in World War I1, and they stayed closedin Korea and Vietnam.

he classification system appeals to our egalitari-anism, but it also sprang naturally from ourindustrial experience, from the system of indus-trial organization that reached its height in the inter-

war years and continued to dominate US heavy in -dustry until the 1980s. It is part of this Henry Ford vi-sion of life to narrowly define each worker's duties,place equally narrow limits on his responsibilities,and exert the sum of these workers' various tasks(many times repeated) on an assembly line. Workersaccepted the limits of their jobs, and accepted alsothat their narrowly defined jobs with very limitedresponsibility must necessarily be boring andrepetitious. In fact, workers viewed lack of respon-sibility, the lack of involvement with the success orfailure of the greater enterprise, as one of the positiveaspects of their work. 21 Labor unions defended thc-narrowness of their members' specialties; in work-rules disputes they fought for the right of workers inone particular specialty not to do any work inanother.

The old industrial system was inflexible, and rec-ognit--n is now general that it was inefficient, too. Inthe few places where it survives at all today, it isclearly in its twilight. But it ruled industrial life inAmerica and Europe for most of this century, and inWorld War I and World War 11 , it was the modernway to organize. The enormously complex function-ing of a division in battle was more understandable as38


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How WE rGOHIs WAYa factory, an assembly line at which 16,000 workersdid their many distinct tasks, which in sum equaledthe division mission. So manpower specialists ana-lyzed military jobs and described the tasks in each jobin precise detail, the training centers taught the tasksto soldiers, and soldiers were assigned to positions inunits that had been coded for that specific job. Jobs inthe same field but at greater levels of responsibilitywere differentiated by "pay grade" or "skill level," amore scientific way of saying "rank."

The classification of the force into specializedjobs had, and still has, much to recommend it: man-agerial and financial efficiency for the Army from cen-tral control of the training of new soldiers, whichcould prevent shortages or surpluses of specialtiesfrom developing, and satisfaction and motivation forthe soldier, who took his place in a skill-based hier-archy similar to what he had left behind in civilianlife. In fact, given the decision to operate anindividual-centered personnel system, the classifica-tion into specialties was a necessity. But it had itsdrawbacks, even amid the success of World War 11.Classification weakened cohesion by putting thedemonstrated leaders in support jobs. It weakenedthe fighting power of units by classifying the smartsoldiers into the rear area and less-capable soldiersinto harm's way. It created friction between combattroops and those charged with their support. But werigidly adhered to a precise classification system inevery war since 1917, and we still do today.

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THE UNIT FIRST,lassification fit nicely with the dominant in-dustrial trend of the'mid-twentieth century.

! But it appealed to soldiers (and retains itspower to this day) because it caters to the individual.Like random selection and individual rotation and re-Splacemnt schemes, classification em bodies the long-standing American cultural preference for the indi-vidual. This bias has driven the military personnel

system in our recent wars, but under its impetus unitcohesion withered. Now we shall examine whatforms this bias takes in current personnel policy, andwhether today's personnel system accommodates orsuppresses it.

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TJU UNIT rJEST3. THE INDIVIDUALCOMES FIRST

-lie primacy of the individual continues to be theToperative principle of the Army's personnel svstem. This is not to say, however, that the Army'sleaders have been oblivious to the system's failings.

After each war in this century, the Army analvyedhow the wartime force was manned. After WorldWar I1and again after Vietnam, the analysts par-ticularly criticized the deleterious effects of the war-time replacement systems. In this decade the Armyhas again analyzed its experience, concluded that sta-bilizing soldiers-keeping them together in the sameunit for longer periods-is a way to build cohesion,and has altered some policies accordingly.'

The most sweeping changes grow from the twinpillars of the New Manning System: affiliation of allsoldiers with a regiment, and formation of some unitsthat serve for over a three-year period from basictraining through overseas service to inactivation.Successful overseas unit moves of company-sizedunits have led to further experimental moves of bat-talions. The Army has changed personnel policies tobuild stability in other ways: by facilitating soldiers'

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TH E UNIT FIRSTreturn to a "home base" in the United States follow-ing overseas duty, by eliminating many reasons forindividual soldiers not to move overseas with theirunits, and by pressing to minimize moves from oneinstallation to another. So the Army has by no meansstood pat in defense of the manning system of thepast. It accepts the merits of cohesion, it recognizesthe link between cohesion and personnel policy, andconsequently, it has made some bold changes. Bu tthe Army's move forward is doomed to achieve onlysmall improvements on the margin unless the per-sonnel system's fundamental principle, the primacyof the individual over the unit, is reversed. A look atthe current system shows that while the unit hasmade some gains in the past five years, the individualis still dominant.

he most important evidence of today's primacyof the individual is found in the most importantelement of the personnel system: wartime re-placement planning. The New Manning System's ini-

tiatives are intended to make units more cohesive inpeacetime: they are not a new way to man the force inwar. The Army's wartime replacement system is stillan individual replacement system whose featureswould be familiar to soldiers of the last three wars.Training will be centralized (not performed by rearelements of the combat unit to which the soldier isdestined), and soldiers will move forward through re-placement units to eventually arrive in the combatunit which has previously made known its shortages.Rosters will have the same vital role as in prior wars42


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TH E INDIVIDUAL COMES FIRST(although these rosters will be composed with the aidof machines), and the whole process will have the airof democratic randomness that is part of our culture.It will also probably be as alienating to soldiers and asdamaging to cohesion as the replacement systemswere in the last three wars.-

Like its predecessors, the replacement system inthe next war will assign individuals, not units. Likeits predecessors, it will apply individuals to the con-flict in much the same way that ammunition or spareparts are applied, and thus will hew to the industrialview of war that informed our national effort in theworld wars. Like its predecessors, it will not toleratesurpluses or shortages; it will be a financially andmanagerially efficient system. And if, like most of itspredecessors, it is the replacement system used by avictorious Army, we will be spared of having to countwhat it cost us in fighting power.

The wartime replacement system's structure iswith us now in the peacetime individual replacementsystem by which the great majority of soldiers are as-signed. Central personnel managers apply the Armyleadership's policy and resource priority decisions toa computer program which processes informationabout vacancies, job specialties, priorities, and indi-vidual preferences and then emits assignment in-structions for individual soldiers. 3 That the process isautomated and modern should not obscure the factthat individuals, not units, are managed by it. Ahandful of unit moves under the auspices of the NewManning System notwithstanding, most permanent-change-of-station moves in the Army are made

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"THEI UNII FIRSrindividually. Individual soldiers learn from rosters(or, in the case of career soldiers, from "assignmentmanagers" at the central personnel headquarters)that the Army orders them to move. The soldier maythen choose to obey, and go with his family and pos-sessions to the designated new place and unit. Or hemay resist the order by arguing (often successfully)that movement should be delayed or that an alternatedestination might suit him and the Army better.

When assignment orders have been received, theindividual's ability to avoid obeying the orders-to bedeleted from orders, or to have compliance deferredfor a certain period-can help or hurt cohesion in twoways. First, it will cause similar orders to be issued tosomeone else who has usually spent less time in hispresent unit than the deleted individual. Second, ifthe orders are part of a unit move, a stranger willhave to be quickly substituted in place of a knownquantity, the deleted soldier. The Army's resistanceor acquiescence to deletions and deferrals becomes ameasure of the relative strengths of concern for eq-uity for the individual on the one hand and unit cohe-sion on the other.

Until recently, equity for the individual held theclear edge: "no shows," that is, soldiers who hadbeen ordered to a particular installation but who gotthemselves deleted or deferred from the orders, werea major problem. In 1984, the commander of Armycombat forces in the United States reported that only60 to 70 percent of the NCOs ordered to join his unitsthat year actually "showed." 4 Partly in response tothe instability caused by "no shows," Army policy

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THE INDIVIDUAL COMES FIRS!concerning individual movement orders has gottentougher. In recent years cohesion has been gettingthe upper hand as the number of reasons for a soldierto be deleted cr deferred from orders has shrunk toonly the most serious domestic, legal, or medicalproblems. The entire category of "operational dele-tion or deferment," a way of saying that a soldier istoo important in his present duties to be moved, hasbeen eliminated. 5

Once a move is complete, tour length-theperiod of time a soldier spends in his new unit-vi-tally affects cohesion. As an important contributingfactor, stability has long been a key Army goal in set-ting tour length policy, but for reasons essentially notrelated to cohesion. By stability the Army means asoldier staying on the same US installation or in thesame overseas theater, not necessarilv in the sameunit. 6 In this context the purpose of stability is to savemoney on moves, not to enhance cohesion. The De-fense Department lists stability as one of its goals inregulating personnel assignments, but in its directiveto the Services on this subject, the Department statesits primary goal to be "an equitableassignment systemto enhance career attractiveness [my emphasis].-"Army tour length policy also explicitly gives equitypriority over stability," and the Army has created acomplex structure to evaluate individual claims of eq-uity. 9 Equity in tour length means a commitmentfrom the Army that aH l soldiers in the same theaterand same category by rank and family status servethe same amount of time, e.g., eighteen months inEurope or twelve months in Korea for first-termunaccompanied soldiers. Other factors, such as what

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TH E UNIT FIRSTkey mission or training the soldier's unit is scheduledto perform, or when the unit as a whole is returningto the United States, or what effect the loss of this ke ysoldier at a crucial time will have on the unit, are lessimportant than the principle that all such soldiersmust have precisely equal tours of duty. Nowhere inthe system is the priority of unit cohesion enunciated.In assigning and moving soldiers, our system stilldeals in terms of "each," and still stresses fairness toindividuals above units.

Another source of instability that threatens theformation of cohesive units is the necessary dedica-tion that American soldiers have to their personal ca-reers. Soldiers rise in knowledge, responsibility, andrank as an individual matter in our Army, just as inour larger society. Although the soldier may benefitfrom the counsel of his seniors in the unit and mayget some credit for his unit's accomplishments, hetreads a career path of his own plotting. In fact, theArmy enjoins him to plot it.w"The consequences forpersonnel stability and unit cohesion are severe.

Career success for most soldiers requires move-ment between units, to schools, and to nonunit du-ties (e.g., recruiting sergeant or staff officer) as thesoldier gets experience and demonstrates his talentsin a variety of environments. The experience acquisi-tion process is called "professional development";this term is often used by personnel managers to jus-tify a particular assignment. The demonstration oftalent in a variety of environments is recorded in a fileof reports that forms the basis of future decisions onwhether the soldier should be promoted. Because46


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TH E INDIVIDUAL COMIES FIRS!senior NCOs and all officers are promoted by personson central boards who in most cases do not knowthem personally, these files are vital. Many soldiersbelieve that many years of reports from one unit, nomatter how glowing the reports may be, do not makeas strong a file as equally glowing reports from a vari-ety of units performing different missions. ScIdierswho stay on one installation for an extended periodare tagged as "homesteaders" and suffer profession-ally. The imperative of the career encourage-: the am-bitious soldier to move, and move often. In thismanner, frequent moves weaken unit cohesion. Theeffect is made more acute when, as is often the -ase,the ambitious departing soldier is also a leader, eitberby rank or among his peers.

Soldiers enhance their promotion potential notonly tirough successful duty in a variety of environ-ments but also in a variety of jobs. Their broadenedexperience is, of course, far more than an aid to pro-motion; it strengthens the Army's capability to oper-ate in future roles and conflicts that are as vetunforeseen. Co~nmenting on possible exclusive con-centration by intantry leaders in one or another ofthat branch's specialties, then-Major General John W.Foss, while the Chief of Infantry, said,To be ready when called on to do battle, they (infantry-men) should be trained and experienced in several spe-cialties-mechanized, airborne, air assault, motorized, andthe like. We cannot afford to have infantry offi,_ers andnoncommissioned officers hold views so narrow and sospecialized that they cannot serve effectively in differenttypes of infantry units around the world; vet we must rec-ognize the- each does have specific training standards tortoday's job. I

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TH E UNIT FIRSTNo infantry regiment includes more than one of thesespecialties. Thus soldiers can gain the broader experi-ence which they and the Service need only by movingto another unit.

Higher staffs also levy their share of officers andNCOs for duty that is seen as professionally enhanc-ing, along with such other extra-unit functions as at-tending Service schools, advising reserve and ROTCunits, and recruiting and training new soldiers. Selec-tion for the latter role, that of drill sergeant, indicatesspecial career potential. But like all the duties thatpromise professional development, becoming a drillsergeant means individual selection and individualmovement away from the unit. Illustrating this point,the path of the drill sergeant merits examination be-cause it typifies the way the individual-centered per-sonnel ethic forms and breaks up groups.

Once arrived at the training center where he willperform his new duties, the new drill sergeant firstattends Drill Sergeant School for several months. Th eschool is stressful and the students, more often thannot, form some friendships and a sense of class unity.At graduation, the class disperses. The graduates in-dividually report to training companies throughoutthe installation, in which they serve for two years.About eleven drill sergeants work together closelyand intensely in each training company. Personalbonds form among these eleven NCOs, despite thebroad differences in their previous units, MOSs, andprofessional backgrounds. At the end of their stintsas drill sergeants, they will individually be ordered toother duties scattered across the Army, and not48


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I III I\VI\ IIt~ \I Vt,1lif


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THE UNIT FIRsTWhether a soldier is promoted by the strength of

his file as measured by an Army-wide board, orwhether he is a more junior soldier whose locally de-termined promotion is affected by specialty-relatedlimits imposed by Army headquarters, there is a con-sequence for cohesion: soldiers look beyond theirunit leaders for fundamental decisions about their fu-tures and for judgments about their potential. Th eleader's authority weakens, and the importance ofthe unit environment diminishes in the soldier'seyes. To those who would protest that commanderscan influence promotion by the efficiency reportsthey write, there are two responses: the effect of anefficiency report is exceedingly delayed, and the re-ports are so inflated (especially for NCOs) that a poorreport has become too blunt an instrument to be usedexcept in extrem is.

Centralized promotions emanate from on highwithout reference to the unit's current needs. Theyconsequently cause unplanned moves, and thus addto instability. Policy forbids moving a soldier betweeninstallations as a consequence of promotion, and thisgives commanders latitude in retaining promoted sol-diers in their old jobs. But it is human nature for thenewly promoted soldier to want to serve in a job thatequates to his new rank, and commanders want tooblige, and thereby make the point to the other sol-diers that rank accompanies responsibility. The ca-reer imperative also favors a move; another report inthe old job but at a higher rank would not improvethe file. So although promotions almost never entail amove to a new station, they do bring about jobchanges and unit changes. In an artillery battalion at50


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: "I'HHL INDIVIDUAL COMIs FIRSi4Fort Riley, for example, seven staff sergeants ap-

peared on the list (centrally determined in Wash-ington) for promotion to sergeant first class. Therejoicing was general, but five of the sergeants left thebattalion to fill openings elsewhere in 'he highergrade. Each of these sergeants had been the chief of agun section and a key leader in the unit. 2

The centralized control of individual assign-ments has the same effect on cohesion as centralizedpromotions. The soldier sees clearly that a decision ofparamount importance to him and his family is not tobe made by the leaders he knows, but by a computeroverseen by a stranger in Washington. Not sur-prisingly, the soldier tries to influence the stranger;he seeks advice from him, and makes his preferencesknown. In a more cohesive environment the com-mander might be the source of such advice, andmight contribute to the decision. In the present sys-tem, often the most help the local commander cangive a soldier facing reassignment is to provide him agood telephone with which to call Washington.

Selections of soldiers for school by central boardscan similarly harm unit cohesion. Not only does theappearance of the list begin a domino-like series ofunplanned moves, the Army gives school attendancepriority over stability goals, which means that a sol-dier on a schools list whose unit is preparing to gooverseas will go to school rather than proceed withhis unit and attend school later.'" Given the contribu-tion the schools have made to the quality of the forceand given the traditional reluctance of commandersto send their best NCOs to school, the payoff of the

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*FML UNriI FIRsiArmy policy has probably counterbalanced the"damageto cohesion. Nonetl eless, the unseen costshould be acknowledged.

The Army prefers schools as the solution to al-most every problem in soldier knowledge. But be-cause the school svstem is individual-centered, theeffect on cohesion goes beyond just the selection ofindividuals to attend. The great majority of courses inService schools are like the Drill Sergeant School I de-scribed: the students are being educated as individ-uals. Students may share the stress of the course,students may form cohesive associations (even forminto ad hoc units) during the course, but their successin the course will be measured individually. Most im -portant, when they graduate, the former studentswill move as individuals to assignments around theworld. In only a few courses, such as the Ranger De-partment's Light Leaders Course at Fort Benning,Georgia, do the soldiers attend as part of their unit. Inthis course, which all cadre of light infantry battalionsattend as a unit, soldiers learn and practice new skillsin the unit context. The students also bring the cohe-sion which already existed in the u,nit to bear on thecourse, and the stressful portions of the coursestrengthen and deepen that cohesion. Finally, thestudents stay in the unit in their familiar roles afterthe course ends. The Army's gain is not merely anumber of smarter soldiers but also a more capableand cohesive unit. Regrettably, very little Armyschooling falls in this cohesion-enhancing category.

Like the pervasive belief in the primacy of the in -dividual, the industrial theories of organization that52


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TH E INDIVIDUAL COMES FIRSThark back from Henry Ford's time continue in force inthe current personnel system. Other than the war-time replacement system, the current complex anddetailed job classification apparatus is one of the mostpotent holdovers from World War IL-and one of themost damaging to cohesion. We in the Army con-tinue to define jobs with exquisite precision, and nowthere are 396 of them, called military occupationalspecialties (MOS). Only the most hidebound laborunions make such narrow specifications of workers'duties, or present such a vertical career path, as doesthe MOS system.

The infantry provides some examples. In thesame infantry battalion are soldiers who engage theenemy with rifles, machine guns, and light antitankrockets, soldiers who engage the enemy with heavyantitank rockets, and soldiers who engage the enemywith mortars. These three different groups of soldierswill be managed in different MOS through their firstseven pay grades (i.e., most of their careers). Theycan expect to be promoted at different rates and paiddifferent bonuses at reenlistment, solely on the basisof MOS. These distinctions obtain even though theheavy antitank gunner, as a practical matter, must beable to do al l the tasks his rifleman colleagues can do,and even though the antitank rocket is a simpleweapon that is more easily mastered than the rifle-man's family of weapons. The indirect-fire weaponsinfantryman, the soldier who serves the mortar, la-bors under a similar division of the infantry'sfunctions. At higher ranks, when he calculates firingdata for the mortar, his work differs considerablyfrom that of his light weapons and antitank peers in

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S ~THE UNrT FIRSTi the infantry battalion. But at the entry level the newS~mortarman learns his duties on the mortar fairlySquickly--often in less than a week's training, in mylS~experience. In both cases, entry level as well as moreS~senior, the mortarman's skills on the mortar are over-S~laid on his competence in light weapons infantry. Asin the case of the antitank gunner, and for everyoneelse in the infantry battalion, the indirect-fire crew-man is a light weapons infantryman with additionalskills. Picturing the infantry battalion as a tree, thebranches--mortar skills, antitank rocketry, medical,or communications skills--spread out from the singletrunk of light weapons infantry, yet the Army hasde

The Unit First - Keeping the Promise of Cohesion - Christopher C. Straub - 1988

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Transcript of The Unit First - Keeping the Promise of Cohesion - Christopher C. Straub - 1988