What Makes a General?

DURING the past few years my desultory wanderings around in the Army of the United States have been often troubled by the haunting question: “What makes a General tick?” Other officers — and indeed, I believe, enlisted men down to the ranks of military untouchables— have been concerned with the same problem. Some answers are obvious enough. The power of decision, fortitude, knowledge of men and terrain, education — all these contribute to a General Officer’s reputation and usefulness. This I am sure is true. Such qualities would contribute to an insurance agent’s reputation and usefulness. But they do not quite explain the achievement of some General Officers and the failure of others.

I have a few tentative thoughts on the subject, which I submit only as partial answers to this question. My researches, it is fair to say, were handicapped at the start by the fact that certain Generals regarded them with disfavor or felt that they were, on the whole, unnecessary, “ Let the record speak for itself” seemed to be their position. Other Generals, approached with due reverence, developed such curious symptoms that I could only assume that the rattling noises connected with their activities had little to do with ticking in the precise or clock-like sense.

One salient fact obtrudes, however. It is almost impossible for Generals or Admirals to explain — in the sound American tradition — the reasons for their greatness. They are debarred, in the nature of things, from the customary and graceful gesture to which we have become accustomed. The business or financial tycoon who has spent the last thirty or forty years extracting gold from the teeth of his neighbors may properly be interviewed by an enterprising reporter and questioned as to the reasons for his great success in life. It is good and acceptable practice for these outstanding men to state with a becoming modesty that they feel they owe everything to their dear old mothers or their wives.

But it would obviously be difficult for an Admiral, if you asked him how he sank an enemy battleship instead of the coal barge he was evidently aiming at, to say that all credit should be given to the little old lady in the gingham dress and old-fashioned shawl back home. And take the case of a General who had just won a most sanguinary battle by ordering his troops to march north when they should by all signs of the zodiac have marched south, thus causing inextricable confusion among the enemy ranks who were marching to the east when they should have been marching west (this error having been due to a slight confusion on the part of the meteorologists, who failed on that particular morning to observe even the approximate position of the sun).

How could such a General, arriving in a drawing room imbrued with gore and carrying a fine Virginia ham on the broken shaft of his saber, say with any propriety, “I learned all I know about fighting from that best friend and severest critic, my wife”? Such a statement would imply the possession on the part of his lady of combative or aggressive qualities which it is quite impossible for any gentleman to associate with American Womanhood. If, therefore, highranking officers are handicapped in the articulateness which is permitted to the owners of blocks of tenements, one can only fall back for an estimate of their greatness on: (a) the historians and military critics; (6) the actual results of their activities and operations; (c) their public relations and the effect of same on the public; and (d) the sober and considered reports of what they did and why they did it.

I have been, in a small, furtive way, if not an historian or military critic, at least a student on the fringes of those useful professions. I cannot speak for my honored confreres; but as for myself, I know that my weightiest opinion could be put in anybody’s eye and never be noticed. Nor are my confreres, for the most part, wholly successful. After the campaign they may arrange their maps with arrows pointing here and there, and topographical features indicated, and the order of battle shown as of different days. That’s all very well, but it doesn’t present the problem of the officer engaged on the spot. How can a retrospective analyst estimate the values of decisions determined under the wild uncertainties that confront a commander in the “fog of battle”?

If a soldier is to be judged solely by the outcome of the battle, by the crude event, what are we to say about the many instances when the result has been determined by causes which have nothing or little to do with the character or capacities of the commander? Failure of subordinates, changes in the weather— a hundred elements may determine success or failure in a battle or a campaign. Naturally the odds are on an overwhelming, disciplined force, led by an experienced soldier, as compared to the brief gestures of a herd of buffoons and Punchinellos captained by Wamba the Witless. But even then the gods may intervene with an unexpected charge of elephants or an unforeseen eclipse of the moon.

Most after-the-event historians have erred heavily in ascribing wisdom and virtue to the victor and his troops and a kind of village imbecility to his opponents. This is not the truest form of praise. There are, of course, noteworthy exceptions. One method is to credit the enemy with high military virtue but to insist that they would have been defeated but for a lost cigar, or a runaway horse, or some other act of God.

I have just read with much pleasure War Years with Jeb Stuart, by Lt.-Col. W. W. Blackford, C.S.A., published by Charles Scribner’s Sons, with a Foreword by Dr. Douglas S. Freeman in which that authentic authority states: “Every line of this narrative . . . has the ’feel’ of the Cavalry Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia.” Indeed it is an exciting story written by a brave staff officer who was Stuart’s intimate friend. The style is so colorful that it gives the effect of having been modernized by expert editing. There are certain passages, however, which have considerable importance in our evaluation of great generals. For example, in discussing the Battle of Gettysburg, he adds a new footnote to history by saying: —

There is a great deal of luck in war. Circumstances sometimes seem to combine, for or against, in a way that sets at naught all calculations, and at the Battle of Gettysburg half a dozen things may be enumerated, any one of which might have given us the victory if we had been “in luck” at the time. It is not within the scope of these pages to give a history of the battle, but I wish to record one circumstance which came under my own observation, one which I can but think had a good deal to do with its loss, and a circumstance I have never heard alluded to since.
In the supreme hour of battle the Commander in Chief is the soul of an army, that is, if he is worthy of the army he commands. This being so, anything which affects his physical condition at that time must have a powerful influence upon events. We all know the desperately weakening power of severe diarrhea, and this General Lee had, as I know.

It is interesting to note that there has always been a group of military historians willing to wager their reputations that Napoleon would have been victorious at Waterloo had he not been indisposed by a “stomach complaint,” doubtless a euphemism for General Lee’s painful disability. It is a disturbing thought that the fate of nations may depend on the ill-advised consumption of a slice of salami or a second-rate bottle of beer. But, after all, the Captains and the Kings are Human, and that is enough on that point.

It is easy enough for lesser human beings to make fun of those in high places. Chesterton said somewhere that it was not particularly amusing if an ordinary citizen fell down on the street, but that there was a certain high comedy if a bishop stepped on a banana peel.

In the preceding flippant remarks about Generals, I have obscured the profound and deep respect which I and every other citizen should feel for a number of our military commanders. It is impossible to think of General Eisenhower without veneration for his wisdom and fortitude, or of General Krueger in the Pacific, or General Omar Bradley and General Devers and others in the war with Germany. These are men of such stature and character that they will always be remembered with admiration and respect.

There is, however, a book which every American should read — General Marshall’s The Winning of the War in Europe and the Pacific: Biennial Report of the Chief of Staff of the United States Army, 1943 to 1945, to the Secretary of War (Simon and Schuster). This is the document of a really great man. General Marshall would have been eminent in any field, but it was the great good fortune of the United States and her allies that he should have been in a position which was more important than his official title would indicate. A man of great modesty, he so impressed his personality and wisdom on the Joint and Combined Chiefs of Staff that it would be almost impossible to overestimate his importance in this dreadful global struggle. His report is not only lucid in its historical summary of events — although necessarily some of the reports are technical in nature — but his thinking and decisions are those of a very wise, virtuous, and noble man. There is so much to quote from the book that quotation becomes impossible. Two or three things strike this reviewer as importantly significant. Much has been said of the overlarge drafts made on American manpower by the Army. The following quotation is one of the most striking things in General Marshall’s report : —

It is remarkable how exactly the mobilization plan fitted the requirements for victory. When Admiral Doenitz surrendered the German Government, every American division was in the operational theaters. All but two had seen action; one had the mission of securing the vital installations in the Hawaiian Islands; the other was an airborne division in SHAEF Reserve. To give General Eisenhower the impetus for final destruction of the German armies of the west, two divisions, already earmarked for future operations in the Pacific, the 86th and 97th, were halted on the West Coast in February, rushed across the United States and onto fast ships for Europe. When these troops left the New York Port of Embarkation there were no combat divisions remaining in the United States. The formed military forces of the nation were completely committed overseas to bring about our victory in Europe and keep sufficient pressure on Japan so that she could not dig in and stave off final defeat.

The significance of these facts should be carefully considered. Even with two-thirds of the German Army engaged by Russia, it took every man the Nation saw fit to mobilize to do our part of the job in Europe and at the same time keep the Japanese enemy under control in the Pacific. What would have been the result had the Red Army been defeated and the British Islands invaded, we can only guess. The possibility is rather terrifying.

In this book, General Marshall never fails to give credit to the extraordinary heroism of our British and Russian allies, and the praise for the extraordinary efforts of our own forces is wisely judged. But perhaps General Marshall’s most important contribution is contained in his final chapter, “For the Common Defense,” in which he outlines what in his considered opinion must be done to avoid the possibility, or probability, of another and more terrible war. Here he writes, it seems to me, with sheer wisdom as a man who knows more about the subject than any other American living, and I find his arguments utterly incontrovertible. That argument is what we need to read and consider deeply. And while doing so, it might be well to pause for a moment and to give thanks to the Deity who watches over the destiny of this Republic that such a man was in that particular place at that particular time.