The regular Navy doubtless feels that, like the poor, it ever has the reserve with it. In this truth, doubly true in time of national emergency, we find extenuation for the unending discussions that have found their theme in the relations of the regular and reserve forces and the training problem.
To those whose service dates back to the happy-go-lucky days in the various state naval militias and who have passed successively and successfully through the shifting status of the National Naval Volunteer and the Class Two, Reserve Force, the present orderly policy toward the reserve is a revelation and a satisfaction. The decommissioned destroyers gave the reserve a mission. The destroyer crew as a unit of organization fitted the average reserve fleet division as to numbers and administrative workability. The annual inspection of all units by a regularly constituted board, the gunnery competition, and the insistence upon practice cruising as units tend not only to maintain efficiency, but markedly to advance the standards under which the reserve serves. And finally, the influx of a corps of college trained junior officers, largely technical graduates, from the naval R.O.T.C. schools gives great promise for the future.
With so satisfactory a frame set-up, attention may now be directed toward hanging the detail upon it, and answering some of the fundamental questions which appear for settlement, in agreement with that basic framework. Not the least of these is the determination of the surest and most productive means of making a seagoing sailorman out of a reserve who goes to sea but fifteen days a year.
The subject is as broad as the Navy itself. In the interest of reaching a destination with our discussion, we shall have to limit it to reserve fleet divisions training on destroyers, although much of the argument is equally pertinent to unattached officers cruising on larger ships or doing their trick at office work ashore.
Having a given number of fleet divisions, totaling a given number of officers and men, precisely what is the most profitable employment of the force during its required annual cruising? This question brings into the picture the two types of reserve training cruises now in vogue and injects another major quandary. Shall our reserve spend these valuable days as supplemental complements on regular ships of the fleet or shall they officer and man their own reserve ships, under the supervision and guidance of regular officers detailed as inspector-instructors? Here is the rock upon which U.S.S. “Reserve Policy” breaks up, for every one involved has ideas from a slightly different slant, on the proper handling of the good ship in her distress. Obviously, the evidence is not one-sided for, when all has been threshed over, it will be found that there is “much to be said on both sides.”
Plainly and without argument, the purpose of all reserve training is the development of a force of officers and men who can take their places in the fleet or the shore establishments, in time of national emergency with a minimum of delay and a maximum of value. In a day when the first strategical and logistical moves are made before the declaration of war and when the control of the sea is often determined, even predetermined, before the fleet leaves its base, there is no time for recruiting parties and naval tailors and training stations to make ready the reserve force. Under our forced naval economies, there must be an augmented reserve without which the regular service would be fatally crippled in numbers, at least. This then is the yardstick which must be applied fearlessly and without exception, step by step, to each phase of the basic problem. If each partial decision measures closely to this standard, the total policy should not be far in error for, mathematically at any rate, the whole is equal to the sum of all the parts.
As may be anticipated, the observations to be made respecting the training of the officers of the reserve are somewhat different from those regarding the enlisted men. This divergence arises, of course, from the greater difficulty encountered in securing and training officer personnel and the greater responsibility which naturally devolves upon the reserve officer in active duty.
Considering the enlisted reservist first, what are the advantages of his performing his training cruise in a regular ship? As a member of a supplemental crew of a regular ship, he is made to “fleet in” with a corresponding rating in the regular complement. Good or bad, he learns how the duties of his rate are performed in the regular establishment. He steps into a billet in a ship’s company that is thoroughly shaken down and working. The first week of his cruise is not wasted in finding himself and in trying to carry on with others who, like himself, are in the throes of a shakedown.
At emergency drills the first day out, some of the regular crew are at hand to carry out the details and to form the nucleus to which the reservist attaches himself. He joins in the work about decks or below with those who know where things are stowed and how tasks are accomplished in acceptable seagoing fashion. The commissary is set up and the messes organized. He finds himself assigned to one of these and becomes a very real part of the ship’s company as soon as he has had his first meal with them. In every department, from the bridge to the engine-room, he meets an experienced pattern which, it must be hoped for his welfare, is all that a pattern should be. At any rate he learn his duties precisely in the way that the Navy in time of emergency would insist upon the performance of those duties.
There may be many and other good ways of accomplishing those same duties, but a reservist is more valuable to the Navy, if he knows the Navy way of turning the trick. Above all he breathes an atmosphere of orderly discipline which is painfully lacking, even on the best intentioned reserve vessel; not that the reserve officer is less severe in his insistence on obedience. His discipline is frequently more severe but less effective than that of the regular who is in a position of greater security as regards authority, and has less need of impressing that authority upon his people.
The situation of the reserve officer cruising on a regular ship differs in detail and degree only. He, like all of us, admires ability wherever it is encountered and, particularly, in a specialty in which one is of rather indifferent standing. This very human characteristic finds expression during reserve cruises in the desire of the reservist to make the best possible showing in comparison with the regular of corresponding rank. If he is assigned to a berth in which he is not quite at home, he will buckle down or bone up or do whatever one does to gain proficiency, and he is forever afterwards a better reserve for the experience. He may not admit it to himself, much less to others, but every reservist worthy of his stripes does perform better in competition with regulars in regular ships than he does among fellow- reservists in a reserve ship.
The reserve officer training in a regular ship is exposed to a broader program than he would encounter in a reserve ship. His experience during the two weeks aboard cuts across the work of the Navy as a whole and gives him an insight into many duties and situations which would neither arise nor be apparent on board a reserve ship. Cruising in regular ships offers him the advantage of seeing ships operating in company, a feature generally denied a reserve ship which most commonly cruises solo. Experience in steaming in formation, simple tactical movements, signaling, and guard duty may then be superimposed upon the usual schedule of drills, without overloading it with such work. Competitive inspection of ships and personnel, no less than competitive athletics, build morale and add tremendously to the interest. In time of national emergency, the reserve ship would lose its solo individuality and become submerged for administration and operation, in a division and squadron organization in which this experience would be invaluable and most essential.
The reserve aboard a regular ship absorbs the traditions of the naval service, as he would not in a reserve ship. Shop talk may be proscribed about the wardroom table, but in the informal contacts which are inevitable in the restricted quarters in a destroyer, he rubs elbows with those who are skilled in his avocation, and unconsciously a technical osmosis is set up. Officers from other ships come aboard with their problems, and he hears these discussed. He begins to talk the language. Withal, he makes acquaintances among the officers, many of which carry on through his reserve service with continuing pleasure and helpfulness. The reserve no longer suspects that he is a land species and somewhat of a curiosity, but begins to feel that he belongs to the ship. And a man who feels that he “belongs,” will do his best to merit the belief.
In all modesty, the regular should find something of value in having the reserve in his ship. Few progressive regulars who have had close contact with the reserve force now feel that the reserve is an expensive luxury and an unessential arm of the Navy. The opinion of the regular was not always such, for the simple reason that the reserve force of bygone days was ludicrously different from what it is today. No regular can witness the serious, well-intentioned application of the typical reserve to his duty, without feeling a satisfaction that some of his fellow-countrymen, at least, have recognized the importance of his profession to the nation and are devoting themselves to upholding his hands to the utmost.
What are the disadvantages of training reserves on a regular ship? There are of course drawbacks in reserve training in regular vessels, and they are not all objections from the angle of the reserve, by any means. From the point of view of the regular ship, orders to cruise reservists generally mean just that much more work. The schedules of employment of destroyers of both fleets are very busy-looking sheets of paper with their yard periods, their gunnery and torpedo practices, and their major joint operations. Reserve cruises, of course, mean cruising and commonly take the ships and their regular personnel away from their bases, at what would otherwise be, perhaps, their only open weeks in the year.
The case is known of a destroyer which had reserves on board for cruising during the very weeks last year when the ship’s company should have been training for their own short-range battle practice, yet the time of the regular officers and crew was taken up completely with the reserve instruction. On this very ship, the finest feeling prevailed and no gesture was made toward slighting the reserve training in any detail, although at the possible sacrifice of the ship’s gunnery standing. To have done one’s duty by the reserve is, nevertheless, scant comfort when low scores in gunnery are being posted in the fleet.
In order to berth fifty or sixty enlisted reserves, with the limited accommodations aboard a destroyer, as many of the regular crew as may well be spared are sent away on leave. So far as mere numbers are concerned, their vacancies are more than supplied by reserves but not with equal effectiveness in the matter of ship upkeep. The reserve, no matter how willing or how experienced, is not the equal, man for man, of the regular who knows his ship and has a definite cleaning station and maintenance duties, which he carries on with a minimum of supervision from his officers and section leaders. This, coupled with an aggravated cleaning problem arising from the crowded situation aboard and an unusual amount of time under way at sea, can result only in the ship running down in condition. If the ship finds herself slated for admiral’s inspection within a few days after her return to port, the enthusiasm for the reserve, in all its manifestations, fades perceptibly.
The details of ship routine and employment, in its relation to division and squadron organization, must go on uninterruptedly throughout the cruise, even though the ship is away from her unit. This is no small burden in itself under normal operations and with the full complement of officers aboard. It becomes increasingly heavy if two or three officers are absent on leave to make room for the reserve officers in the wardroom.
As a unit of the fleet, the destroyer is naturally involved in engineering and other competitive set-ups, which carry over and through the reserve cruising period and have their influence upon the effective employment of the ship for reserve instruction. If the fuel-oil restrictions hold the ship down to a low but economical speed and limit the amount of steaming allowed for gunnery training, the value of the cruise for reserve experience is diminished precisely to that extent. It would seem narrow policy to cramp the effectiveness of the training, which is all too short at best; far better to refuse orders to a suitable number of reserve officers and to supply those who do go with sufficient fuel for their training. Fortunately, at times the fuel competition is waived or extra oil allowances are made for that purpose; but so long as a destroyer is definitely a part of the fleet organization, she cannot be allowed to step out of character.
From the point of vantage of the reserve, also, there are handicaps in training on a regular ship, imaginary in the minds of some and very real in others. First of all, the reserve officers and men alike have to sell themselves and their abilities, as it were, to the regular personnel aboard. A certain number of reserve officers with a certain number of stripes and a certain number of men with certain marks on their sleeves come over the side. The attitude of the regular is usually to take these ranks and rates at their face values until they have demonstrated clearly that they cannot be quoted at par. Knowing nothing of the education, experience, or ability of this group abruptly placed under his charge for training, that is all that may be reasonably expected of him.
That some of these reserve officers and men have unusual capabilities along particular lines is not apparent at once, nor can it ordinarily be demonstrated even in a fifteen- day contact. The reservist is more apt than not to be unbalanced in his experience and abilities, and in that respect quite unlike the regular with his well-rounded training acquired from diversified duties and assignments.
The regular officer prides himself in not choosing duty and in holding himself ready for any detail which the day may bring forth. The reserve officer does some things exceptionally well, perhaps; some, not so well; and some, not at all. This diversity of skill may be extremely embarrassing, since the reserve officer, if he is the right sort, is as loath to admit his ability in his better lines as he is to mention his limitations in others. This results in the regular commanding officer having to organize his force in a hit-or-miss fashion. It is not unreasonable that there should frequently be misfits.
There is also the inherent weakness that the regular officers, knowing their regulars by name and reputation, are too apt to call upon their own men for the performance of special and emergency tasks. The reservist, bubbling over with enthusiasm and willingness, may miss the opportunity to jump into the situation, for the simple reason that the order was passed to the regular alongside. There is apparently no ready means of avoiding this situation, for the regular officer, desiring to get something done promptly, leans heavily from mere force of habit upon those whom he knows. All of us would do the same, but meanwhile the reservist has missed a valuable bit of training.
The same is true of the hesitancy of the regular officers to relinquish their responsibility and, consequently, their authority to the reserve officers temporarily on board, particularly the responsibilities of command. Obviously, there can be no division of authority or responsibility. A casualty or a fatality would roost upon the regular’s shoulders under all circumstances, even though a reservist were in responsible charge at the time. From personal experience, it must be said that the regular officers have bent every effort to meet this difficulty, through discussing problems and situations with their reservist understudies and inviting suggestions and recommendations. Nevertheless, they properly maintain the right to make the final decision and the reserve commander is never in command.
This retaining of control by the regulars at times carries down to the details of ship’s organization. A junior reserve officer may, unwittingly, give an order which completely overturns the standing procedure on the ship. The regular enlisted personnel promptly recognize that the order is contrary to doctrine and go for confirmation to the regular officer from whom they usually take orders. A tense situation develops. In flagrant cases, there has resulted a tacit understanding about the ship that the regular enlisted personnel are not to heed the orders of the reserve officers until the regular officers have seconded the motion, as it were. Such an impasse is disastrous to the discipline of both the regular and the reserve complement. Of course, properly schooled reserve officers know the import of orders in which there might be a difference of practice among ships. In case of doubt they inquire first and not only avoid such predicaments but also save their professional dignity.
When the regular ship in which the reserves are training is part of an operating unit of the fleet, the objection is often raised that the fleet routine demands too much attention, and the reserve training too little. Not being allowed to proceed independently, time is wasted in securing permission to do things, in awaiting the movements of other ships of the unit, and in having to do what the rest of the unit is doing. Any remaining time is then available for the special training program. It is also objected that while instruction is being given to one or two officers in ship handling, the rest of the personnel are being neglected. With a proper schedule of exercises, this lack of attention to the reserve instruction may be obviated to some degree.
The introduction of reserves on a regular ship obviously implies a change in training methods about decks, at the battery, and in the engineering department. It may be claimed that the regular Navy has worked out the best methods of instruction from its long experience in the handling of green men, and that the approved methods should be followed by the reserve. This would be well could the reserve have the benefit of the navy instruction methods throughout the year. To wave aside all that the reserve has been taught throughout the rest of the year just to be “regular” for two weeks out of that year should not be thought desirable, unless the method of reserve instruction is grossly at fault in fundamentals. The enlisted reserve is quite different in type, though not in quality, perhaps, from the enlisted regular. This may go far to justify the instruction methods which the reserve has built for itself.
The last-minute revision of training methods is particularly disastrous in gunnery instruction. Team work at the battery cannot be built anew in a week’s training immediately preceding the actual firing for record. This may account for the fact that the naval reserve gunnery trophy for the last two seasons has been won by reserve ships, under the guidance of a particularly capable inspector-instructor who had been able to carry through the year preceding the target practice the same system of training which gun crews were to use on their summer cruise.
Next, what are the advantages of training reserves on board reserve ships? In a reserve ship manned by reservists misfits in detailing for duty do not develop. The reserve commanding officer and his executive are intimately acquainted with the specific abilities and ambitions of each officer and man attached to their unit. Without hesitation they decide that one of their number is to navigate and that another is to be gunnery officer. The section leaders likewise appreciate the peculiarities of their men for specific billets. The organization of the reserve ship may thus be built around the known characteristics of the personnel. If in time of national emergency this tailor- made, specially fitted reserve unit is in fact to report and serve as a unit, no defect is apparent. Such, however, would probably not be the case. If the unit is to be distributed in active duty here and there, to fill all manner of vacancies in the regular establishment, the specialized training of the individuals of such a unit is a very real defect.
This cutting and fitting of duties to personnel, while it results in a better organized ship’s company for the moment, only tends further to unbalance the experience of officers and men alike. Patently this is not sound, for the reserve should be encouraged to round out his experience in such a manner as to give him assurance in all the requirements of his rank or rate.
In recognition of the criticism of many that a reservist on board a regular ship does not receive appropriate responsibility, reservists on board a reserve ship carry all the burden that is passed to them, and there are no regulars to share or to monopolize it. The task may not be as well done by the reserve who is singled out for the job, but it is done after a fashion, and the training of the reserve has been advanced by the incident. The next time the duty comes to him his performance will be more skillful.
With the reserve ship away from entangling obligations to flag officers and squadron and division commanders of the regular establishment, schedules of drills and methods of instruction may be drawn closely to meet the requirements essential for training. Only those things need be done which are deemed of advantage to the reserve. The presence of the regular inspector-instructor is of assistance to the reserve commander in making suggestions regarding omissions of desirable exercises and the correction of flagrant errors.
At times a reserve ship is provisionally assigned to a regular unit of the fleet, for purposes of control, but with the “permission granted to proceed on duty assigned.” This situation is ideal from the point of view of a limited amount of tactical ship handling in formation, coupled with the opportunity of breaking away from it when it is found to interfere with the other features of the schedule. A regular ship would not have this flexibility which offers the advantage of being able to cruise in the manner which is deemed best for reserve experience and training. If it is desirable, the reserve ship may stand out to sea for navigating work. It is frequently authorized to make a power run at high speed for the instruction of the engineering force. It is generally permitted to absent itself from regular bases where the congestion at anchorage and ashore is an unnecessary handicap. None of these special privileges could be had by a regular ship performing its routine duties in its division.
Finally, what of the disadvantages of training reservists on board reserve ships? The reservist in a reserve ship has no one to understudy. The reserve officers, granted that they are trained up to the last detail of navy method, would be insufficient in number to instruct a ship’s company of individuals in their individual duties. An officer may correct errors that occur in his presence, but he can know nothing of the many things which are going wrong at the same time in other parts of the ship.
The reserve officers should be too busy learning things on their own part to devote all of their time to the instruction of their men, as trained and experienced regular officers may do for their divisions. This results in the enlisted reservist’s shifting for himself, but perchance ineffectively performing anything which he sees to do, with such occasional instruction as may be bestowed upon him by his officers.
The average reservist is full of enthusiasm for the service, else he would not forego his vacation ashore, as he too frequently must, if not his civil job itself, to make the cruise with his fleet division. He is anxious to acquire the tricks of his avocation, but it is an age-old trade in which decades of experimentation have been boiled down in the fires of application. It is an utter waste of human effort for the reservist to reopen and rediscover all this on his own part, for the mere satisfaction of developing his resourcefulness. We are not training Robinson Crusoes who are to exercise their initiative in overcoming obstacles on desert islands, but carefully finished gears which are to turn over noiselessly in a huge and very complicated machine at a time when it is under excessive strain.
Lacking a mentor, the reserve who is worth while will find a way to do the tasks that come to hand, but he is not apt to hit upon the best way, even after several efforts. He will tie some kind of a knot for a given purpose and it may not slip, but if there is a better knot for that purpose, he has missed just that much of the nicety of his adopted trade through not having been told how and what to do.
The objections just raised against reserve training on board reserve ships are minimized in those particular and fortunate instances where the reserve officers are thoroughly trained, and where, as is the growing situation, the reserve division has cruised year after year as a unit, and is thus able to carry over its past year’s shakedown to the next year’s cruise. These objections are minimized where the reserve unit has a destroyer at its disposal for a week-end cruising throughout the year and can take its summer cruise on board a vessel with which it is acquainted.
There are, of course, many reserve units with veteran chief petty officers and skilled leading men, in which a green recruit can learn a great deal in a short time. It is but human that those who can advocate only reserve training on board reserve vessels should ever feel that they are attached to units of this fortunate type. It would be a happy solution of all of our training problems were every reserve unit of that rare sort. There must inevitably be a tendency of a reservist among reservists to excuse ignorance, to let down on little inefficiencies, and to ignore minor transgressions. It may be nothing more than laxity in relieving the deck or in inspecting the liberty party, but it is such inconsequential factors that pull a ship down in smartness.
Thus we come to the conclusion which might have been anticipated from the start, that there is no one answer that holds under all conditions. The choice between the two training systems depends upon a number of factors which are widely variable among fleet reserve units. Most of us have cruised under both of these systems and have had favorable and unfavorable experiences with both. A strongly officered reserve unit, with well-trained enlisted personnel, summer training on board a reserve ship which it has had for week-end cruising throughout the year will do far better than it will, temporarily, on board a regular ship. A poorly officered reserve unit, with untrained enlisted personnel, by all means needs summer training in a regular ship, particularly where they would otherwise be required to go out in a reserve ship with which they were not acquainted. Inexperienced junior officers, above all others, need cruising in a regular ship to learn “what it is all about.” A tour of battleship duty gives an invaluable background to all officers before they become too enamored of the dungaree navy.
All the evidence points to the value for both strong and weak units, of making available a suitable ship for occasional night drilling and frequent week-end cruising. Aside from the training value which goes far to explain the difference between the strong and the weak, the use of a training ship results in a growing pride in the ship which they nominally possess, a pride which carries over to the summer cruise. Then we shall not have the spectacle of tattooed sailormen hoisting diminutive model whaleboats with string tackles or brawny firemen fiercely stoking pasteboard boilers in some dry-land armory. What would John Paul Jones say to such kindergarten exercises?
In general, the enlisted reservist is relatively less trained and experienced in his rate than is the reserve officer in his rank. Because of this, the enlisted reservist gains more from cruising on board a regular ship. Conversely, the reserve officer probably gains more from a cruise on board a reserve ship, although he needs occasional duty in a regular ship to keep him informed on developments and improvements in navy practice. After all, the training of the reserve officer personnel, because it is the more exacting, should be favored.
The success of either system is dependent absolutely and entirely upon the frame of mind which the reserves and regulars alike hold toward the scheme and toward each other. Reserves in a reserve ship with a regular inspector-instructor can secure training of real value. So can reserves in regular ships with a complement of regular officers and men aboard. The coordination of effort and the cooperation of spirit are the essentials.
The reserve must remember that he is following the Navy as an avocation and, at best, is devoting but a few days out of a busy year to playing at a very exacting profession. Men who were specifically educated for that profession and whose life work it is must be accepted as knowing more of its intricacies than an enthusiastic amateur. While he is in the role, the reservist must forget his position ashore and must do his bit to fit himself into his station in the reserve force.
The regular, must remember also, that the reservist is not a regular and, therefore, must not be expected to exhibit the full degree of skill which the Navy rightfully demands of the corresponding rank and rate in the regular establishment, although the regular should insist upon the highest degree of performance procurable from the reservist.
It is profoundly to be urged that the policy of naval economy shall not be permitted to cripple the reserve force, through unduly withholding training appropriations. With the personnel of the regular establishment shrinking daily, the relative importance of the organized reserve force rises. The personnel of the reserve units should be strengthened by every means practicable. The allotment of petty officers should be somewhat greater than for a unit of similar size in the regular service, if the reserve is to be the nucleus of a greatly expanded force in time of national emergency. Inducements should be kept attractive for the reserve enrollment of former regulars, whether officers or men, and for keeping up an even flow of new entries from civil life and the colleges. With such training expended upon such personnel, should the need ever again arise, there will be ready to come over the side a reserve force worthy of the title.