An Officer.......

"Paul J. Adam" wrote in message
news
In message , ArtKramr
writes
Here are some more caveats from my training. When you issue and order to
a
subordinate there are only three answers allowed. They a
1. YES SIR
2. NO SIR
3. NO EXCUSE SIR

I can see why that would work for your situation. That regime would be
moderately disastrous for the officer training I went through, however.

The overriding rule was "What would my CO want me to do if he was here?"
The classic example given (apologies for discourse...)

snip good example

Because Rupert knows what his overall mission is (to seize that bridge
intact!) he can ask "What would my CO tell me to do if he could see what
I see now?" and hopefully decide to lead 1 Platoon in a snap attack on
the bridge, driving off the sappers before they complete their
demolitions and hoping to be relieved before an enemy counterattack.

Excellent example of why the commander has to explain his intent, and its
overriding importance compared to the actual ordered tasks, Paul. Art won't
admit it, but even during his day the "orders are orders" mentality was
generally eschewed (by good leaders) in favor of meeting the more important
intent behind the orders. Your example is a little bit remindful of a case
where US units did push forward to seize a bridge that they were no
specifically directed to gain...a little place called Remagen mught stir
even Art's faded memories.



Remember that I wasn't in the Air Force. I was in the Army Air Corps,
emphasis
on ARMY and went through a full schedule of combat infantry training as
well as
flight school and as an officer as well.. Good thing too because during
the
Battle of the Bulge we were all issued M-1 Carbines and thrown into the
line
along with the XXX Corps. And I never ever heard any long discussions
involving diverse opinions on what we should do. Orders were issued and
were
followed without question. We knew what we should do and we did it.

Did you know what your unit was meant to achieve, or were you just told
just "sit in this hole and cover these arcs and shoot anyone in feldgrau
not waving a white flag"?

Seriously - we've worked hard to get to "mission command", which is
where on the one hand you have your orders but on the other you know
what you're meant to be achieving and what the Big Picture (typically
two levels up) is. You don't rewrite your orders but you _do_ understand
that the real world changes faster than your CO can keep giving you
updates.

Again, the key phrase: "if my commander was here with me now, what would
he want me to do?"

And
remember we won that war so maybe we knew something back then that the
military
has forgotten since.

We've been fairly successful over here since 1945.

The one doing the forgetting in this case is not the US (or UK) military
establishments, that is quite obvious.

Brooks