A COMBINED STAFF
By Captain J. M. Scammell, Inf. R. C, U. S. Army
Due to the national situation in the United States, geographical and general, and to national policy, future wars of the United States must be expected to include operations overseas, both of attack and defense, which will require active cooperation and will be more or less successful as that cooperation is more or less complete.
This quotation is taken from an address delivered before the Army War College in 1907 by Admiral (then Commander) H. S. Knapp, U, S. N. Since that time our military and naval operations in the World War have conformed to the above prediction.
Victory crowned our arms; while the cooperation between General Pershing and Admiral Sims was more than harmonious—even cordial—a study of the evidence submitted before the Senate Investigating Committee proves that the absence of a common doctrine did much to weaken the effect of our participation, and that thereby the war was prolonged and treasure and lives uselessly expended. Thus the record of the Hearings of the Senate Committee enables us to verify the second part of Admiral Knapp's prediction.
Had we, instead of having Allies to establish for us our bridgeheads, had to force for ourselves a landing and to have protected our own communications, as the British were forced to do at Gallipoli, this absence of a common doctrine and of a common plan would probably have had equally disastrous consequences. To-day, considering the military weakness of Mexico, and not only the historic good feeling that has endured upon our northern frontier, but also the prevalence of a mutual conviction and determination that this cordiality must and shall continue to exist, the statement of Admiral Knapp takes on an even more intense form. We may accept as an axiom that all our future wars must be combined overseas operations. And yet practically nothing has been done to define the relationship that should exist between the army and the navy in the problems of strategy, logistics, command and tactics involved in overseas operations.
Of this cooperation, in the same address above alluded to, Admiral Knapp said:
Neither the army nor the navy is self-sufficient, but each is the complement of the other in the national defense, and consequently cooperation, potential or actual, is always necessary.
This problem of cooperation has been solved in various times by various peoples in various ways. In antiquity there existed no distinction between military and naval command. Soldiers embarked upon ships and became sailors and marines. Brasidas was equally at home upon the quarterdeck of a trireme or upon the quarterdeck of a horse. Caesar, better than any other, embodies the normal Roman conception of command in war; he was neither a general nor an admiral, but a Roman Governor given military powers which he exercised brilliantly against the enemies of the republic when they made war on land, and with equal brilliance against them on sea if they took to salt water. Even as late as the time of Cromwell, generals commanded fleets as well as armies, and Blake was "A sort of a bloomin' cosmopolouse—soldier an' sailor too."
To-day the rule of all the powers, save the warlike but unmilitary Anglo-Saxons is that expressed by General von Janson: "One man should be in command, naturally the senior officer."
This was also the rule in Great Britain until the royal power was broken. The English "Fear and dread of Kings" led to a deep suspicion of the military as a bulwark of tyranny—so deep that even to-day it is used as a bobbly-jock in Parliament and Congress alike to hush the crying public: "The goblin of militarism will get you if you don't watch out." Of course it was the mercenary soldiery, and foreign mercenaries at that, which threatened the liberties of our fathers; de Vigny has shown how absurd it is to fear that an army which is the citizens can overthrow their own liberties, and yet of all the powers, we alone, the English and the Americans, do voluntarily retain the professional army. Thus it is purely because of historical influence, because originally it was desired to weaken the cooperation of the two services for political reasons, that to-day we retain the weakest type of command. The disadvantages of this divided command are and have been acknowledged, studies have been made of how to minimize them and the first steps have been taken to overcome them.
Admiral McCully stated to the Naval War College in 1911:
When the two services have a clear understanding of each other's point of view, much will have been accomplished, but even then it will be only by mutual and unselfish concessions that fortunate results may be anticipated.
And that:
Cooperation between naval and military men…can only be attained through decisions arrived at during peace, free from the friction and irritation that might ensue if required in the stress of an emergency, when action may be imperative.
Admiral Knapp expressed his conclusion that:
Cooperation has its foundation head at the seat of government, where operations will usually be planned and ordered. From there the spirit of cooperation should extend throughout the services to the last private and landsman.
It is doubtful in the extreme if there can be found any soldier or sailor who will deny the truth of any of the above statements. And yet to-day the number of those in either service who have had the opportunity or the leisure to study the problems of the other is small, and above all, there is no guarantee that any of these favored few will be those chosen for the supreme command when war is upon us.
A solution of these difficulties was proposed by Major W. W. Harts, U. S. M. C, in a lecture before the Naval War College in 1912. It included five points as follows:
I. Regulations should be adopted, perhaps by a joint board, as extensive as practicable, to be embodied in the official books of regulations of the army and navy, which will expressly outline the duties of each branch of the country's military forces and limit its sphere of action and authority in all joint operations whenever differences in jurisdiction are likely to arise.
II. Combined maneuvers involving embarkation and debarkation should be as frequent as practicable and the regulations above mentioned vitalized periodically by the results.
III. Provisions should be made for exchanging officers in time of war so that in all joint operations a selected officer of the navy should be found on the staff of the commanding general and similarly a representative of the army would be attached to the staff of the naval commander-in-chief.
IV. A standardization is desirable between the two services whenever practicable, including organization, ceremonies, badges, signals and equipments.
V. Several officers should be exchanged in times of peace in maneuvers, war 6ollege conferences and target practice. All subjects of defense involving both services should be examined by joint boards. The interesting phase of the above proposals, as well as those of other writers, is that they implied but did not expressly advocate the organization which alone could have the influence and the authority to bring these consummations to pass. Major Robert E. Wyllie, C. A. C, in an address on "Cooperation between Army and Navy," in 1916, carried his arguments to their ultimate conclusion:
"In times of war," he said, "or of maneuvers, in all joint operations, the interchange of staff officers, and of observers, will be invaluable, and all such operations should he planned and controlled by a combined General Staff."
The same year a committee met at the Naval War College by direction of the President of the College, Rear Admiral Austin M. Knight, to consider the subject of cooperation between the army and the navy. The committee was composed of the following officers:
Captain C. S. Williams, U. S. Navy.
Colonel J. W. Ruckman, C. A. C, U. S. Army.
Commander C. T. Vogelgesang, U. S. Navy.
Major G. C. Thorpe, U. S. M. C.
Lieut. Colonel John P. Haines, C. A. C, U. S. Army.
The first three signed the majority report. The last two signed minority reports which, "agree to all essential points of the report except that both favor placing the Coast Artillery under the Navy Department." Therefore we are justified in concluding that the following extract represents the unanimous opinion of the above committee:
2. The Ideal Organization to Secure Cooperation
It is an axiom of war that all operations of forces, both naval and military, should be confined within the frame of a joint plan of operations, well conceived and definite in its scope. This of course implies a control higher than that of the individual commander of the naval forces and the commander of the military forces—a control properly vested in a great general staff composed of officers of both services and acting as advisers to the highest executive authority of the nation.
It is therefore the mission of a great General Staff in effect to direct the operations ashore and afloat. Such staff should therefore properly be composed of officers of the army and navy—the officers for this purpose must therefore be most carefully chosen. The most competent and intelligent naval officer will not properly fill his place on such a staff unless he is familiar with the conceptions of warfare on land, nor would the most competent and intelligent army officer properly fill his place on such a staff unless he were familiar with conceptions of warfare on the sea.
This report was approved by Admiral Knight on July 6, 1916, and by naval operations on November 23 of the same year.
This is the proposal which has been since put forth in England and which was referred by Lloyd George to the Imperial Conference. It is a proposal which the organization of the Royal Air Force into a separate third service in the British Empire makes still more urgent. The awkward features of fighting two separate campaigns in the same theater of operations as disclosed by the Dardanelles Report, serves to indicate how still more embarrassing three separate campaigns might be.
Such a combined staff, the original plan of organization carefully worked out but regarded as provisional and to be modified through the lessons of experience, would be a powerful asset in many ways.
In the first place there would be gathered together officers capable of determining the proper relations between military and naval aviation; there would be found officers capable of determining such vexed problems as the relative value of battleships, torpedo-planes and submarines; and there would exist a body able to determine and initiate a common doctrine.
There an historical section could compile and classify, and a planning section utilize, the facts of history which would lead to a book of regulations laying down the tactical principals to be followed by each service in landing operations. A combined staff would give a simple organization rather than the present clumsy, expensive and inefficient machinery for ordering combined maneuvers to test and try out these regulations. Such a body could with equal ease and equal certainty prescribe the liaison officers to be exchanged. A combined staff would also provide a suitable source to which the President, the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy could have recourse for advice. With such a staff, would it have been likely that, as happened at one period in the recent war, the War Department and the Navy Department would have different policies?
So radical a departure from our usual practice will doubtless take a long time to bring about. The public must be educated to support it, and perhaps too the army and the navy. There may be also prejudices and interests to be overcome. That it will come inevitably some day, cannot be doubted. Meanwhile, since the first step, the exchange of army officers to the Naval War College and of naval officers to the Army General Staff College, has already been taken, the next step, the exchange of observers and staff liaison officers ought to be demanded and ordered. Then, in case of war, we would have at least a substitute of some value and a source of mutual understanding and of coordination; and, when the combined staff becomes a reality, we shall have officers ready and partially qualified to serve upon it, and to devise a common doctrine.