Ernest Graves
That was invaluable to me in getting an insight about how they were doing things. I
have always concerned myself with this question: how does what you are doing stack
up with what can and should be done? How can you know the answer to this question?
I'm not talking about "efficiency." But if you're out there with a bunch of men, nothing
human is perfect. In fact, everything human is quite imperfect. You don't know what
standards you should be trying to achieve. If nobody is shaving, should they be shaving
or not? You may say, "Well, hell, if you were a good commander, you would know."
Q:
You confronted that in the 1282d.
A:
Right, the same problem. It's endless. How do you know? You shouldn't be draining
the energy of your people doing a lot of stuff that's a trial to them if it's not
contributing to doing better.
A lot of the things we do in military discipline are done because they create a frame of
mind and an esprit which produces results. We put everybody in the same uniform and
make them cut their hair. We do all these things because the personal discipline
involved in these things produces a better effort than if everybody is allowed to lie
around sloppy.
History has proven that. You can go back to Alexander or you-name-it. You can read
about it in the Bible. We know from human affairs that this is the case. But that doesn't
necessarily solve the problem for the commander on the ground at a particular time.
What things are important? What standards need to be achieved?
Some things are easy. You're not going to lie and cheat. You don't want rapes. You
don't want automobile accidents. Some things you know. But there are a lot of more
subtle things that you don't know.
Maybe you're so preoccupied with the lying, cheating, rapes, drugs, and automobile
accidents, that you never get around to the refinements. People have argued that that
was the case in Vietnam.
Q:
It's certainly possible.
A:
In the 34th Engineer Group, when I was there, that was not the case. We had some
chance to make judgments about what was important and what wasn't.
Heading over there, I had this thought, although I had come out of my command of the
44th Engineers with a pretty good idea about what you should and should not do. But
after all, that was after I had been in Korea a year. I wasn't worried about how things
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