Document created: 21 June 04
Air University Review,
January-February
1970
Lieutenant General Hunter Liggett awards Distinguished Service Crosses, 10 November 1918, France.
The recent appearance of Edward M. Coffman’s briskly written one-volume history of the United States in World War I* affords the occasion to ask a provocative question: What does that now archaic conflict have to say that is relevant to the present generation of Air Force officers? It is a fair assumption that the vast majority of those on active duty today not only have no direct personal memory of the war but have never given it much serious study. While many may have read accounts of World War I aces in combat, one suspects these narratives have usually been more inspirational than significant for the insights they provided the serious professional.
There are, however, a number of reasons why an ambitious professional should find it rewarding to study the national experience in World War I. To begin with, the relatively small scale and limited duration of our participation in that great conflict make it convenient for investigation. Moreover, the record is both full and largely available. The archival sources are now well organized and for the most part readily accessible, while a large number of biographies, memoirs, official histories, and specialized monographs have been published to shed further light upon the archival materials. As a consequence, despite the lapse of time, it is now possible to investigate the events of 1917-1918 in satisfying depth. Finally, virtually all the principal actors have left the stage, so critical analysis may proceed without those restraints which tend to inhibit free discussion when the pivotal figures are still on active duty and echeloned uncomfortably close above those who wish to undertake an objective appraisal.
Coffman’s well-written study is firmly based on wide research. He made effective use of the latest specialized monographs as well as hitherto untapped archives. Unaccountably, the book is undocumented, a practice always annoying when encountered in a scholarly work designed to be used as well as read. The author does make some amends for this omission by providing an extensive and discursively annotated bibliographical essay of considerable utility. But a one-volume survey of World War I, no matter how great its merits, cannot escape from its limitations of scale; in the space at his disposal, the best the author can do is introduce some of the significant issues without pretending to treat them in depth. It is perhaps the mark of Coffman’s success that he does in fact draw attention to a large number of vital matters even if he himself cannot treat them fully.
Consider, for example, an anecdote the author relates about Eddie Rickenbacker. After his first five kills, the ace was laid up in a hospital for an extended stay. Instead of fretting at the unwonted inactivity, he used his time to “sort through his experiences” in an effort to perfect his dogfighting technique. He did so with such success that he subsequently went on to twenty-one more victories. For the concerned professional officer, the clue is unmistakable. The particulars of Rickenbacker’s improved tactics are no longer relevant. But what is important is the fact of his intensive creative reflection on his earlier experience. In just such episodes as this, Coffman’s volume has much to offer. He throws out hints and suggestions; it is up to the perceptive reader to pursue them. And nowhere is this more pointedly revealed than in the author’s many allusions to the development of staff operations during the war.
Because military staffs today are so large and so complex, it is difficult to recall that scarcely a generation has passed since the concept of the modern staff was first introduced in the United States. Although the War Department General Staff was formally instituted through legislation sponsored by Secretary of War Elihu Root after the Spanish-American War, it took many years of painful experience to make that instrument truly effective. The Army Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, helped by supplying officers trained to apply the new methodology. At best, however, the output from Leavenworth was small, and the graduates for the most part were junior officers. The chiefs of staff and division heads under whom the newly trained men served did not always appreciate the full implications of the new instrument in their hands. It was not so much a case of resisting innovation as it was a failure to grasp the potentialities present. Those at the top were often slow to see that the day of the authoritarian personality was over. Just as the captain of industry on the economic front was giving way to the modern corporate organization, so too in the military the concept of command was changing. Secretary Root’s insistence upon replacing the designation “Commanding General” with “Chief of Staff” was a symbolic recognition of the new mode. Whereas the former literally exercised his authority directly and personally, the latter would speak authoritatively only as the agent of his civilian superiors; and in relation to the staff he would preside rather than command.
The development of the staff as an efficient instrument was further retarded by the active resistance of the several supply bureaus. Ever since the Civil War these agencies had enjoyed a largely independent status. They reported directly to the Secretary and enjoyed powerful support in Congress, generated by the patronage at their disposal, especially in the form of supply contracts. The long rear-guard action fought by the bureaus to delay the imposition of genuine coordination by the War Department persisted well into 1917. Nonetheless, the fledgling General Staff did make a significant beginning in developing rudimentary techniques for studying problems, defining policies, setting standards, and coordinating actions. These were decidedly useful skills, but they were far from perfected when the nation plunged into World War I.
The coming of war nearly scuttled the General Staff. It was undermanned to begin with and still further weakened when forced to supply a cadre for General Pershing’s American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) staff. Still more officers accepted assignments (with the hope of rapid promotion) in the divisions of the newly forming National Army. This process of disintegration at the moment of crisis suggests a significant failure in conception. The General Staff was structured to cope with the normal flow of peacetime business without thought for the realities of mobilization—a shortcoming by no means confined to that particular staff or that particular war. The result, of course, was a serious loss of efficiency.
The shortcomings of the General Staff in the early months of the war, while acute, are best appreciated in contrast to what had gone on before. In 1917 there was no repetition of the episode at Tampa in 1898, when the expedition for Cuba was reduced to utter chaos as uncontrolled units rolled down the single-track railway to become hopelessly entangled at the ill-equipped port of embarkation. But a relatively better performance still left much room for improvement as an inexperienced staff, inadequate in numbers, worked with rudimentary procedures to cope with problems on an unprecedented scale. Although the numbers may seem minuscule today, expansion from the 3000 motor trucks on hand in 1917 to 85,000 by the end of the war represented a major challenge in terms of staff techniques to insure quality, standardization, etc. Today’s officer may smile condescendingly when he reads of the 300,000 horses and mules purchased by the Army. But the problems confronting a staff in establishing specifications, prescribing procurement procedures, recruiting skilled buyers, and coping with ever present imponderables bear a striking similarity whether the object in question be a mule or an F-111 aircraft.
After the arrival of General Peyton C. March as Chief of Staff, there was a
notable improvement in the War Department. The mountains of mail that had
accumulated¾bags of unanswered letters
piled in the corridors¾were cleared
away, and the staff began to perform as a smoothly functioning machine. Mr.
Coffman, who has written an excellent biography of March,1 accords
him much of the credit for this achievement. He was indeed an aggressive
leader, but one wishes the author had devoted more pages to a discussion of
just how the general accomplished the wonders attributed to him. Moreover,
it is pertinent to observe that while March did get the job done, in the
process he transformed the conception of the General Staff. What had started
out as an informing and coordinating body, leaving the doing to the arms and
services, became under March an operating body itself. Study it is remarkable
that detailed studies of this wartime transformation of the General Staff are
almost entirely lacking.2
Even more surprising, perhaps, is the absence of scholarly studies dealing with development of the staff within the AEF. Here again, in a one-volume survey Coffman cannot make good the shortcoming, but he does give some clues to the areas where deeper analysis would prove rewarding. Although Pershing was not a Leavenworth graduate, he had been exposed to the staff school influence through extension courses and association with the school’s products. Impressed, he surrounded himself in France with men who were Leavenworth-trained. The impact of the Staff College on the AEF was unmistakable, the most visible evidence being in Pershing’s decision to establish a staff school at Langres. What is more, he revealed the high value he placed on the work done there by requiring his divisions to send officers to Langres even though every last one of them was desperately needed for the training period before moving into action on the front. Unaccountably, Coffman scarcely mentions Langres. Here again, no serious student of military affairs has ever undertaken a study in depth of the school at Langres, its curriculum, or the role played by the trained men it turned out.
To argue that the practices and procedures of so remote a day are now passé, if not entirely obsolete, is to miss the point. However much the form may change, there remains an enduring core of ideas. Consider, for example, this practice evolved by General Pershing: As each fresh division of the AEF arrived from the United States, it was ordered to a training area. As soon as it was settled down, Pershing would order the division commander to the headquarters at Chaumont. First, there were personal conferences with the Commanding General, designed to establish a human bond, a rapport, between the unit commander and his chief. Then the former was directed to go down into the staff sections at headquarters and look over the shoulders of the officers engaged there. Whenever possible, he was encouraged to spend as much as a week, moving from personnel to intelligence, to operations, to supply, etc. (The G’s had not then been established as such.)
Pershing’s objective, of course, was to make the division commander see his future problems from the headquarters point of view. When up at the front commanding his division (in those days a force of more than 28,000 men), it was fatally easy for a commander to become highly critical of those swivel-chair staff officers back at headquarters for their failure to respond instantly to an entirely reasonable request for, let us say, the assignment of a new brigade commander to replace a casualty. After no more than a brief exposure to the functioning of personnel at Chaumont, however, the visiting major general could scarcely fail to become more understanding. His request, he would realize, was only one of several under consideration. And experienced brigade commanders were not to be had. To move up a regimental commander would mean separating a colonel from the men with whom he had trained, just when they were moving into action as a smoothly functioning team. A highly effective regimental commander might prove to be an inept brigade commander for some time to come, at least until he mastered the implications of the new weapons and new organizational relationships under his control in the larger organization.
By requiring his division commanders to observe the staff in action¾reconciling conflicting claims, coping with imponderables, weighing alternative options, and making expedient tradeoffs, whether in personnel, in operations, or in supply¾Pershing did much to improve the effectiveness of his commanders at the front. The example may be remote in time and may wear an outmoded brown uniform with a choker collar, but it speaks a message that not only is timely but fairly cries out for emulation.
Although both Pershing and March displayed a real appreciation for the importance of developing a highly skilled staff, neither of them ever possessed one fully adequate to the task. In Washington as well as in Chaumont, there was a notable weakness in logistical planning. Coffman’s account of the AEF 100-division plan affords some disturbing glimpses of this serious defect. Once again, however, a full account of how the AEF staff actually went about formulating the 100-division scheme and how the General Staff undertook to test its feasibility is yet to be written.
Despite Pershing’s genuine appreciation of the need for strong staff support and the sound foundation he laid for it in the school at Langres, there were, as Coffman points out, many staff failures in the AEF. Time and again he alludes to the tragic consequences of faulty liaison and improper planning of logistical considerations. Much of the trouble, he suggests, stemmed from want of formal staff training for division commanders. If nothing else, by providing a uniform doctrine and a common vocabulary, formal staff training facilitates cooperation within the enormously complex machine called an army. Even if the doctrine officially adopted is in some respects defective when measured against an ideal standard, by its uniformity alone it fosters success.
Given the critical importance of staff work in the present-day military organization, why have there been so few serious studies dealing with one facet or another of this vital function? We have a plethora of unit histories describing combat actions at great length, but we usually lack even the most elementary narratives of how major programs were actually formulated. Admittedly, such topics are less dramatic than military engagements, and fewer individuals are directly involved, so there is no ready market or subscription list. In terms of long-range impact, however, who is to deny the significance of undramatic staff procedures?
Surely there is a place for many more books and articles in professional journals dealing with the inner mechanics of staff work at every echelon. When an officer is newly assigned to Headquarters USAF, where can he turn, after plowing through the regulations and manuals, for some historical examples to illustrate the process in realistic fashion, adding some of the human dimensions and intangibles that inevitably arise to vex the neat simplicities of the regulations and manuals? These official sources, essential as they undoubtedly are, bear about as much similarity to reality as do grammar-school civics textbook descriptions of a state legislature in action. Even merely descriptive accounts of how various staff sections actually function are hard to find. Analytical studies are scarcer still. How seldom does one encounter the published memoirs of a retired officer containing significant insights on the art of leadership as it involves relating to and taking maximum advantage of the available staff. The need to develop doctrine for the effective functioning of a staff is no less acute than the need to perfect tactical doctrine; but this kind of activity is now sadly¾one might even say scandalously¾neglected.
There is, admittedly, a considerable literature, generated by students of public administration and others, bearing on the subject of staff activity. And some of this can be studied with great benefit by military officers. But we still need case histories and narratives of personal experience to illuminate the particulars of the military variants in organization and administration. The range of possibilities is infinite; sometimes a study of even the most prosaic detail of administrative mechanics can lead to fruitful insights. By way of illustration, one has only to recall the article which appeared some time ago in the Air University Review on the subject of headquarters messenger service and the in-basket/out-basket time lag.3 Or, at another level of interest, it is worth speculating on what benefits might flow from a series of articles in which a number of experienced officers explained just how they normally go about the business of preparing a staff study. The results might be decidedly stimulating, or, perhaps, embarrassing.
In sum, then, Mr. Coffman’s one-volume study, for all the limitations inherent in any such abbreviated survey, reminds us that World War I is still an inviting and rewarding field for study. And whatever else he accomplishes with his book, he certainly highlights the need for more probing investigations of the staff process. By encouraging historians and others to study the primitive forms of institutions that have become exceedingly complex, we may better understand our plight today. And if such explorations induce even a few of our officers to record their reflection on how they do the staff job and how it might be done better, Mr. Coffman’s efforts will have been well rewarded.
*Edward M. Coffman, The War To End All Wars: The American Military Experience in World War I (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968, $9.75), xvi and 412 pp.
Durham, North Carolina
Notes
1. Edward M. Coffman, The Hilt of the Sword: The Career of Peyton C. March (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966).
2. For one of the few exceptions, see E. M. Coffman, “The Battle against Red Tape: Business Methods of the War Department General Staff 1917-18,” Military Affairs, Spring 1962, pp. 1-10.
3. Major James M. Wheeler, “The Paperwork Processing Dilemma,” Air University Review, XVIII, 2 (January-February 1967), 84-90.
Dr. Irving Brinton Holley, Jr. (Ph.D., Yale University) is Professor, History Department, Duke University, and a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, in which he takes an active part. He enlisted in the Army, rose to staff sergeant as an instructor in aerial gunnery, was commissioned from Officer Candidate School, and served as a gunnery officer in the First Air Force and in technical intelligence at Headquarters Air Materiel Command. He was on the faculty of the Industrial College of the Armed Forces from 1945 until he accepted an appointment at Duke in 1947. Professor Holley is the author of Ideas and Weapons (1953) and Buying Aircraft: Air Material Procurement for the Army Air Forces, a volume in the official history, The United States Army in World War II, as well as of numerous articles and reviews in professional journals.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this
document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression,
academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official
position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air
Force or the Air University.
Home Page | Feedback? Email the Editor