For those that don't know it, discipline is both the cornerstone and the keystone of how one manages large and very large groups of 18-25 year old men. That's how one houses 1000 men under canvas in a wilderness all sharing the same goal and all striving to meet that goal. It's not 'counselling' or 'parenting', or 'sharing feelings.'
Since the UCMJ didn't apply to those young men I'm willing to bet that the older forms of discipline prevailed. There are people who don't really understand that some people, roughly 10% of any group, are more trouble than they're worth and they work very hard to make life unbearable for their fellows and their bosses. I wish my grandfather had kept his journals from that time. It would be interesting to see how it worked in practice and just how much leeway a commander was given to rid himself of the 10% who are 90% of the problem.
I don't know why it reminds me of the 'ruptured duck'. As I recall, the United States had something like 12,000,000 men under arms by August of 1945. That could be off because after VE day they were bringing home millions of men from Europe and demobilizing them while still fighting against Japan. It was an extraordinary accomplishment and not something we could replicate today.
Infantry losses back then were horrendous but what we call infantry today bears almost no resemblance to the infantryman of the last 6 or 7 wars. We've welded hi-tech to firepower and to endless training to produce something quite different and considerably more lethal.
It's been kind of interesting watching the lethality of both the Army and Air Force advance in leaps and bounds while the Navy's has actually slipped dramatically and rapidly behind our peers in Russia and China. There is still, even today, not one single Admiral who would venture a single critical word about the dismal and total failures that are the DD1000 class ships and the Littoral Combat Ship classes. It brings to mind the Emperor's new clothes story.
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| Two turkeys each alike equipped with 1 whole 57mm Gun and nothing else |
5 comments:
odd ducks the both of them. NRA was good for the country as a whole. got some things done that needed doing. maybe not done right but done instead of just talking about it. gave young men a sense of purpose. and when war came and the draft, the lot of them were probably right there in the front of the line when needed.
so, just how much in the way of authoritarian discipline do you think was involved, what with lacking the UCMJ type of rules??
Think back to the old army. As a 2nd Lt. at Fort Bragg the army assigned him a maid, a groom and a house keeper. The houses you see at Fort Myer that now show that 4 star and 3 star and 2 star generals were his as a captain before the war. My father showed me one of the houses now occupied by 2 three star generals was his dads when he was young before the War. I guess what I'm saying is that it was a very different era and everybody forgot it. One of the reasons I enjoyed reading, "Once An Eagle". It captured perfectly that era between the Great Wars.
Discipline wise? Think great brutality for minor offenses in order to stave off the major ones and most especially to instill the lesson.
Some people have strange faith in the LCS. I had someone tell me that with the muscles that can be bolted into an LCS, an LCD would win a shootout with The Big Badger Boat.
In 13 years they haven't really fashioned a way to build on a bolt on Harpoon but the killer is they have ZERO air defense and zero missile defense. They were built as toast and every single person who signed off on their build should be shot.
I completely concur. Shoot them, pour encourager les autres.
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