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By Col (Ret) John C. Eggenberger, OMM, CD
No matter the culture of the host society, successful armies have always conducted their affairs in much the same way. The nature of the host culture, be it capitalistic, socialist, liberal, conservative, communist, or whatever “ism” – has little appreciable impact upon what successful armies do, or the way they do it. What occurs on the battlefield, pure and simple, is what imposes the structure and the ethos of an Army. And, the battlefield is unforgiving! To impose change to an Army that deflects from battlefield fundamentals is to herald defeat instead of victory.
Wherever a successful army goes, it must create, improvise and adjust its affairs to meet ever-changing threats. A good army must do so in the absence of the immediate embrace of the nation, and Canada’s fighting army does this within the entity of the Regiment, it’s more visible and relevant family in battle.
To be successful, a deployed fighting Canadian army formation brings with it a set of “rules” (both stated and unstated) and “Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)” which originate within the Regiment. They guide and orchestrate the “way to do things”. The SOPs and rules enable the army formation to predict, continually maintain and restore its “society” in the face of unfriendly and dangerous circumstances often far away from home.
This structure affords discipline and unit cohesion, both critical human factors that enable the army formation to meet and defeat the enemy of its nation. The habits and predispositions generated by these rules and SOPs in turn reinforce specific sets of values and sentiments, in sum – the army’s ethos.
Armies that forget these principles, or nations that compel their army to mirror too closely the value of the individual at the expense of the army “team”, a normal social pattern of our nation, are courting disaster. This importance of the individual before that of the team is at variance with the way successful armies do business on the battlefield.
For example, the power of punishment for commanding officers in Canada’s army was recently severely curtailed – and the army has been obliged to adopt a style of justice more akin to the civilian system. Oft forgotten in these changes is that the fundamental purpose of a military code of discipline is to oblige behavior on the battlefield.
To be effective, the punishment for conduct that is against good order and discipline must be awarded quickly, firmly and fairly, within the regiment – for all to see. The objective is to return the soldier to a disciplined state to fight. These fundamentals of a successful army on the battlefield may be at risk in Canada’s present army.
Interventions from the nation that change the rules and SOPs so as to deflect from the fundamentals are to be avoided. On the battlefield there can be no doubt that orders given by a superior must be obeyed. The recent introduction of “whistleblower” 1-800 numbers, and the like, deflects the authority within the chain of command. This could be disastrous to the team and its soldiers on the battlefield.
The document Duty with Honour, recently issued under the authority of the Chief of the defence staff, presents what should be an overall military ethos for Sea, Land and Air elements of the Canadian Armed Forces. It sensibly links the values of military ethos to the larger notion of what the Canadian culture is about. It rightly does so to ensure that our military values are consistent with the wishes of Canada.
Duty with Honour appears to have met this goal in relation to the values that Canadian military folk should uphold. Unfortunately the document says little about how these values are to be generated or shaped. In fact, how these values are shaped in an army is not addressed in any detail. Equally troubling is the omission of the critical role of the Regiment in shaping these values for our soldiers.
Also, Duty with Honour is dangerously silent on the reality that it is the job of the officer to authorize the SOP/Doctrines and so on – but it is the job of the NCOs to enact these – “the NCOs get the job done.” It is the NCOs who have “eyeball contact” with the soldiers; it is the NCO who ensures that the training is carried out such that the ethos needed to meet and beat the enemy is maintained.
This fundamental fact seems often missed – and the Army continues to do so at it peril. It is not enough to preach to the soldiers about the values they must uphold. The soldier must be provided an action plan that can frame his daily actions to inculcate these values within every soldier such that they become second nature.
A group’s ethos is generated by its habits and predispositions which shape its values and sentiments. For our army, other things, “rules” and “SOPs” generate habits and predispositions for the soldiers in the formation. A behavior from a soldier that must be ordered so as to be observed is not a habit. Habits and predispositions that are done in the absence of an order are often referred to as “self-discipline”. Self-discipline is the product of ethos and vital to military success. So the ingrained habits ought to be such that initiatives (predispositions) to solve new threats are not difficult to present, or introduce.
Fundamental to success in developing the army ethos are daily/weekly/monthly…routines that assure that appropriate soldier’s habits and predispositions are developed before, during and after battle in the following categories: care of body, fit to fight, care of kit, weapon and equipment, attending to, and responding to orders, care of team member, teamwork, conduct in training, in garrison and on the battlefield.
These fundamentals must first be assimilated by a soldier in the context of a regimental infantry section and as part of a platoon. This is so that, sooner or later, all soldiers must be able to fight themselves out of trouble as a unit, on foot – as have recent US Army transport units in Iraq. Furthermore, soldiers who have not been taught to fight as a team at one time or other cannot learn “on the spot” how to do so. Unprepared, they will be captured or killed.
But, it is the use of the personal weapons: the rifle, the pistol, the grenade, that buttress the ethos of the soldier, and especially Infantry so vastly different from the ethos of any other group. Each soldier acquires through specific actions (habits – predispositions) the values of Duty – Loyalty – Integrity – Courage – in the face of an enemy that is intent on killing him (her).
The army needs rules and standard operating procedures that assure that routine habits and predispositions are consistent with values and sentiments needed for success on the battlefield. And, these are consistent with the primary aim of the Canadian Army: to close with and destroy the enemy.
Clearly for Canada, this objective is best achieved through a strong Regimental system – that without interference from a central authority and long, long ago – developed the ethos that soldiers exhibited the values of Duty – Loyalty – Integrity – Courage. But these values are not likely to emerge in our soldiers with the continued erosion of authority of the chain of command, at regimental and senior NCO level.
Diminishing the power of the regimental system deflects from the values enunciated in the document Duty with Honour. If not reversed, these recently introduced changes in Regimental practices will someday surely find the Army defeated instead of victorious.
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