It wasn’t until the latter half of the 1800s that the @USArmy would clearly define the duties and responsibilities of Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs). Without a “job description” it is difficult to know what to train and equally difficult to measure effectiveness.
Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a Prussian General who helped the Continental Army establish and maintain order and discipline, as well as supply and training methods, compiled a manual of arms and tested this approach during the 1770s.
There were 5-6 pages dedicated to “Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops of the United States” in this manual written in 1778. Over a century later, in 1909, a dedicated NCO Manual was written, and it had grown to 417 pages.
“These chapters included forms to fill out and maintain, a description of duties, what should and should not be done, customs of service, and things of special interest.”
There were 2 ½ pages on discipline, stressing “the role of punishment in achieving discipline” with an effort to “reform the offender” and thereby prevent problems.
“Repeatedly in this section and others, it stressed that the treatment of [junior personnel] should be uniform, just, and in no way humiliating.”
Of all roles NCOs fill, the role of the “guardian of standards” is the one least affected by changes throughout society and the Army.
“When NCOs teach discipline today, they pass along to their soldiers the same idea… taught at Valley Forge: that for everything a soldier does there is only one acceptable standard.”
“As the guardian of standards, the noncommissioned officer must ensure that every soldier in his or her charge meets that single standard of excellence.”
“Noncommissioned officers must discipline others by first disciplining themselves. They know what standards of conduct are acceptable, and they hold themselves to those standards.”
“NCOs must discipline themselves to present a positive example at all times. They must keep themselves prepared in the tactics and techniques of their fields.”
“If NCOs present a negative example, for whatever reason, they encourage their subordinates to violate accepted standards of conduct. Serious discipline problems will soon develop.”
Modern NCOs have many more options than in the past with regard to upholding standards and disciplining violations. Approaches to directive and nondirective counseling, for example, can help soldiers self-correct before it becomes necessary to involve more formal approaches.
There are cases where individual discipline is good but collective discipline, as a whole unit, is poor.
“The unit remains nothing more than a group of individuals… If collective discipline develops, however, the unit takes on a character all its own.”
Units with collective discipline benefit from collective pride. No one has to ask how something should be done – everyone knows.
“The unit accomplishes its tasks and missions efficiently. The unit seems to drive itself, so that officers and NCOs are hardly visible.”
We'll talk more about NCOs on Saturday 🙂
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Operation Chastise was a night bombing raid carried out by the @RoyalAirForce on the evening of 16 May 1943. This raid is also referred to as the Dambusters Raid because the bombers were targeting several dams in the Ruhr industrial area, in western Germany.
The Möhne Dam, the Sorpe Dam, and the Eder Dam. Destruction would affect hydroelectric power plants as well as the industries depending on the water. There was also potential for flooding cities and nearby areas if the dams were broken.
It seems like it’s about time for a #TankTwitter thread, so today we will talk about the first, largely intact, Tiger I captured by the Allies.
The Tiger I was a heavy tank that provided Hitler’s army with the first armored fighting vehicle to feature a mounted 88mm gun. It was big and scary, and it was expensive, both to build and to maintain, which is partly why only a little over 1300 were built.
On Tuesday we talked about the Battle of Sidi Bou Zid, and that thread also served as a primer for the third episode of the accompanying #WhyWeFight1943 podcast.
“In their January attacks Axis units puzzled Allied commanders by limiting their own advances and abandoning key positions. Soon, however, the enemy displayed more determination.”
On Tuesday, we talked about the secret multi-day trip that President Roosevelt took from the White House on 9 JAN to Casablanca, arriving on 14 JAN, in order to attend a highly classified series of meetings with his British counterpart, Winston Churchill.
This conference involved both FDR and Churchill, and their most trusted senior staff and senior military leaders. During the meetings they established the way forward for the Allies in this war, mapping out “the grand strategy for both the European and the Pacific Theaters.”
George Patton was put in command of the Western Task Force, which sailed from the east coast of the US right to Morocco for Operation Torch. The other two task forces sailed from the UK.
Patton was on the USS Augusta, which was under the command of Admiral Hewitt (next to Patton in the picture). That little pouch on the front of Patton's belt is actually a police handcuff pouch but Patton used it for a compass.
Everyone knows that the United States used two atomic bombs in the Pacific in World War II, and that the US was the only nation in the war to use this new type of weapon. This week we will take a look at the efforts to create these bombs.
The Manhattan Project technically ran from 1942 until 1946, but the American effort itself had actually started in 1939, and we had British counterparts already working on nuclear weapons development by the time the United States jumped on that train.⚛️