The Chief was not happy. With both an elusive feeling of shame and a real and immediate feeling of distress, he was being driven to acknowledge a fact which he found to be as unpleasant as it was inescapable. Service in the post-war Navy was not the same as before. It was not very satisfying. And—admit it, oldtimer—the only real reason he had for hanging on was to protect his investment of seventeen year’s service.
The prospective retirement benefits, while they had exerted considerable weight, had not been the primary factor in shaping his decision to make a career in the U. S. Navy. For many years he had been pleasantly conscious of being well paid and provided for in return for following a mode of life which he had found to be attractive in itself. He had frequently advised uncertain youngsters not to choose a career in the Naval Service solely on the basis of the remuneration involved; he had told them that, if they did not have an affinity for the life, no reasonable amount of money could make it worth their while. That advice had been given sincerely and he believed it now more strongly than ever. It was a shock to find himself in much the same position as that against which he had advised. If he were ten years younger, he thought, he would call his service a bad investment and go on out; and having his share of human frailty, he would probably carry with him a sense of injury and become one more nameless citizen with an emotional bias against the “military.” Certainly a disquieting number of the younger men were doing so.
The old Chief did not feel that he could afford that gesture; nor, indeed, did he wish to. No man who had spent his most productive years in the U. S. Navy could ever willingly condemn it in general terms. Sentiment aside, he would seem too great a fool. The Chief sourly regarded the three year period still separating him from his retirement date, and those three years shaped up as a sort of endurance contest. He felt depressed and somehow at fault. It was a sad prospect.
Consider this chief in his collective thousands. Are his troubles inconsequential—or do they exist at all? Can their basic nature be established? What is their relation to the larger picture of the naval service generally? Finally, can practical measures be devised to minimize them?
Such an inquiry must be conducted warily. The field is that of human relations and behavior with its inherent pitfalls of subjective prejudice, over-simplification, and too easy generalization. Standard procedure would require a survey of conditions and attitudes to be made over a wide enough range and over a long enough period of time to avoid being misled by the local and temporary. All contributory factors should be considered and should be assigned their proper values. This paper can claim no such authority. Preliminary research was confined to general conversation over the coffee cups in a half-dozen CPO messes during the past two years (1947-48). Where unqualified statements are made and where positive conclusions are seemingly jumped at, it should be remembered that this report is hardly more than an expanded case history; that all conclusions are extremely tentative; and that suggested remedies are scarcely more than hopes.
In view of these qualifications restricting the general validity of this investigation, it will be well at the outset to fix upon which, if any, of the various annoyances involved are real beyond question. A diligent clearing away of the trivial and of the illusory reveals two vexations which stubbornly refuse to vanish. These may be defined as (1) the subjection to an apparently endless series of transfers, and (2) the difficulty of obtaining a duty assignment commensurate with training and ability.
The primary cause of these afflictions is obvious: we are engaged in operating four ships with three crews, so to speak. In the present state of the planet no Navy man will question the wisdom of that policy. It is a fact. The chief petty officer is especially subject to the consequent frantic shuttling about because, in many ratings, he is vastly in excess of allowance. Here at last is the crux of the matter. Here, too, is a. fact.
Facts cannot be shrugged off. The enlisted structure heads up in the chief petty officer whose function, within that structure, is traditionally and correctly regarded as being of critical importance. It is reasonable to infer that whatever contributes to loss of moral effectiveness among the chief petty officers will have secondary ill effects extending through the entire enlisted body. It is the central purpose of this inquiry to determine whether or not the facts established above have brought about a condition where such an adverse influence is demonstrably at work.
It is advisable to take up separately the logical consequences of the numerical disproportion of chief petty officers. One of these is the overcrowding of available living space, which occasionally produces a congestion surpassing that prevailing in time of war. This consequence, being physical and of minor importance, may be dismissed. Of greater concern is the insecurity of duty which now obtains in the service. Too often a chief is not given time to develop a sense of personal identity with his ship or with his station in that ship before being ordered to another. He may be granted ample scope to exercise his technical proficiency, but he has small chance to exert that moral guidance by precept and example which he knows to be the real reason for the preferential status attaching to his rating. The exercise of leadership, in the best sense of that word, demands sustained effort extending over an appreciable period of time. On the short term it is as futile as is its counterpart in some civilian activities. Official recognition has long been accorded to the desirability of relatively long tours of duty. In pre-war days a man was required to complete a year of service in his ship before he was permitted to request a transfer. Such requests, moreover, were frequently disapproved by the Commanding Officer “in the interests of permanency of personnel aboard this vessel.” The disregarding of those interests tends to create, among the men who are subject to continual short terms of duty, an attitude comparable to that of passengers on a transport. Any ship seems to be just another Chaumont bound for, but never arriving on, a China Station that is lost somewhere over the rainbow.
Of final and most pointed concern is the differentiation of status among chief petty officers which becomes unavoidable when they are in considerable excess of allowance aboard a given ship. Where five chiefs are assigned to a single station, one of them must be in charge. Whether he is selected on the basis of seniority in service, of seniority on the station, of professional competence, or for any other reason, the result is necessarily unsatisfactory. The man who has been given charge has the duty of impressing his will on the junior chiefs to an extent that neither he nor they can relish. These latter, relegated to duties more properly pertaining to petty officers first or second class, become victims of something resembling frustration which may make itself evident- in any of several ways. Where one may accept his lot cheerfully and make the best of it, another may suffer a general loss of interest. Where one may constitute himself the champion of the other enlisted men and lead them in a chorus of complaints and destructive criticism, another may relieve his feelings by the converse course of pushing around the non-rated men. In most cases these junior chiefs’ attitudes will consist of a fluid and unpredictable mixture of those mentioned. The human spirit will not yield a precise analysis.
The over-all result, however, is found to be anything but indeterminate. Influences radiating from this group of men, that is, the chief petty officers who are by force of circumstance excluded from the duties and responsibilities suited to their training, tend to lower the standards of all chief petty officers. This tendency, accentuated by the transient nature of duty now current, is reflected in a wider tendency toward increased discontent and slack discipline noticeable in all levels of the enlisted order.
The corps spirit of the chief petty officers is waning. The once well defined boundary between the CPO and the other enlisted men is becoming less definite. The outer semblance, in the form of a distinctive uniform and separate living and messing arrangements, is unchanged; the inner substance, a particular way of living and thinking, is wearing perilously thin. What is being lost is an intangible something compounded of attitudes and relationships and conditioned responses, something probably ultimately undefinable in exact terms. It is no less real, for all that. Its inherent sources are an inward awareness of being a necessary and important part of a larger whole and an outward prestige that is the general acknowledgement of that necessity and importance. Neither of these attributes can exist without the other. There is a difference of spirit between a chief whose position affords him full realization of what has been called “the instinct of workmanship,” and a chief who knows that he is “spare gear.” Any seaman apprentice can sense that difference. To say that pay and privilege is all-important in respect to maintenance of morale is to show a lack of understanding of the ideals of military organization. It must be emphasized that in these circumstances the chief petty officer loses, in the same measure, both the will and the ability to perform his traditional function.
Visible evidence of deteriorating principle is plentiful. Bearing and behavior are not what they were. Chiefs show up poorly turned out for personnel inspection. Chiefs are summoned to Captain’s Mast and muster with the restricted men. Chiefs sit in their quarters while their work suffers until, to the embarrassment of all concerned, they must be driven to their stations.
These statements do not refer to any separable group but are true to some extent of all chief petty officers. The causal conditions, although at a given time they may apply with varying force to different individuals, nevertheless affect them all. The constant pressure of these conditions has led to a competitive striving for advantage that brings out some of the least admirable qualities of the men engaged in it. This struggle for preferment has brought an addition to the U. S. Navy’s unofficial vocabulary, the word “wheel,” which in its connotations is an ugly word.
Weakness in any part may logically be expected to make itself felt through the entire organism. On taking a more general view, one of the first points to claim attention is the comparatively large proportion, in many ship’s companies, of youngsters with less than two years of service. These men are plastic material for the impression of whatever mood and spirit is prevalent. Too often the mood is one of fretful discontent and the spirit is one of adolescent rebellion. Not infrequently a situation is encountered reminiscent of Kipling’s:
We was rotten ’fore we started—we was never disciplined;
We made it out a favour if an order was obeyed. Yes, every little drummer ’ad ’is rights an’ wrongs to mind,
So we had to pay for teachin’.
The theme needs no elaboration.
A competent chief petty officer, confronted with such an attitude among his men, should have little difficulty in correcting it. Primarily, he must impress them with his own devotion to the ideals of which they are indifferently aware and which they hold in low esteem. Secondly, he must win their respect for himself which will tend to include respect for his attitude. These objectives must be achieved by dealing with the men on an individual basis, exercising strict impartiality, constraint of praise and blame, maintenance of a just and consistent control, and all the other ethical principles known in their sum as leadership. Space does not permit a detailed account of how a small group of men may in this way be brought gradually to a mood of quiet satisfaction in their work and to a spirit of loyalty to the ideals of the service. The story is well known and is as old as military life. Equally well known is the fact that in general only the chief petty officer or his equivalent is concerned with small enough groups of men to be enabled to exert the moral force necessary to accomplish it. The acknowledgement of this fact is implicit in his traditional appellation, “backbone of the Navy.”
Note well that the chief petty officer must feel honestly the devotion which it is his duty to instill in others, and that he must gain the respect of those others for himself if his example is not to be wasted and the process to be a failure. These requirements are most easily met when the CPO, considered symbolically and collectively, maintains his prescribed status and material condition above reproach. That this is not the case, due to the present excess of CPO ratings, has been established. The individual chief, under this handicap, frequently encounters difficulties that are insuperable. The fallen estate of the chief petty officer is indeed a part of the larger picture and it is a prior part.
Here perhaps is a reason for the conceded failure to achieve satisfactory indoctrination of the men on two year enlistments. If so, it augurs ill for the success of any scheme of universal military training in which the U. S. Navy may have a part. It is easy to understand that a promising petty officer first class may choose to leave the Navy because he feels that there is no hope of his making chief for many years to come. It is not so easy, but possibly more important, to understand that he may not feel sufficient attraction toward making chief to make it worth the waiting for.
To sum up: the disproportional number of chief petty officers has an adverse effect on their morale and on their prestige; this effect is, at least in the negative sense, a causal element in the unwholesome attitude toward military life displayed by a disturbing number of the first cruise men. A problem is posed.
Possible solutions suggest themselves at once. The simplest is to do nothing. In time, as the older men continue to transfer to the Fleet Reserve and the younger men continue to leave the service, the number of chief petty officers will dwindle until it comes into the correct ratio to the total enlisted strength. This solution, perhaps because of its obvious appeal, makes two unwarranted assumptions. The first is that there is no qualitative difference between the younger chiefs who leave the service and those who elect to “stick it out.” A little reflection will make it clear that the men who are not content to continue indefinitely at work demanding less than all of their ability and experience are the very ones whose retention in the service is most desirable. The second assumption is that the sorry condition remarked on earlier, which may well intensify before real recovery begins, is not a matter of serious concern. This belief is at least questionable.
Why not sever the Gordian knot with a selective elimination designed to bring all ratings within allowances and at the same time to retain the most desirable men? To this proposal both legal and moral objections may be made of such cogency that it must be considered impractical.
Perhaps there is no perfect solution to this problem. Nonetheless, there may be ways to minimize its clearly undesirable effects. It is essentially a problem of finding suitable employment for a reasonably small number of men. Congressional criticism has been heard recently in reference to the rising ratio of civilian employees of the Armed Forces to the men in uniform. Are there not instances where such civilian employees might be replaced by these excess and unwanted chief petty officers?
At first glance it would seem that such a program embodies the ancient fallacy of robbing Peter to pay Paul. The lesser evil of impermanence of duty springs from the general lack of sufficient personnel to man all the ships in service. While the greater evil of the invidious distinction among CPO’s will be abated by employing some of the surplus ratings as proposed, there is the corresponding certainty of intensifying the lesser evil. However, the favorable effect will be measured by the ratio of the number of CPO’s so employed to the total number of excess CPO’s; the correlative unfavorable effect will be measured by the ratio of the number of CPO’s so employed to the total number of petty officers in the ratings in which CPO’s are in excess of allowance. It is readily seen that the first ratio must be considerably the greater of the two. Hence there must be an initial favorable effect to be derived from such a course. Whether it would obtain until all surplus CPO’s were placed, or whether it would increase to a maximum at a prior point, must be determined largely by trial and error.
Turning to possible conflict with established policy, it must be admitted that the suggested disposition of personnel might encroach on spheres set up by long usage if pursued in an indiscriminate way. Much of this danger would be avoided if the area of employment were restricted to overseas bases and occupational groups where political considerations would not figure greatly. If in addition it were presented as a strictly temporary expedient, designed to cope with a situation of limited duration, no really significant opposition should be aroused. As the attrition of time made a place for them, the men involved could be reabsorbed in the Fleets and the entire episode could be written off as post-war readjustment.
Precedent is not lacking. At one time the administrative structure of Guam was staffed largely with naval personnel. There was even an experimental farm managed by a Warrant Machinist assisted by a Chief Boatswain’s Mate. Although this and other less extreme instances may have seemed incongruous to a naval traditionalist, it is not on record that the personnel assigned to such extra-military activities failed in the discharge of their duties. There is no reason to suppose that U. S. Navy men are any less versatile at present.
It would be no great task to institute parallel surveys, one to determine where the surplus CPO’s might be usefully employed, and the other to discover such special skills and abilities as exist among these men which might fit them for such employment. Whether or not the outcome provided adequate relief, the knowledge that such surveys were being made, or that active consideration of any kind was being given to this problem, would administer a much needed tonic to the presently ailing spirits of the chief petty officer.
PROTECTING HIS INVESTMENT
Contributed by LIEUTENANT COMMANDER ALBERT H. BLUM
U. S. Naval Reserve
In March of 1943 I was assigned to an LST which was part of the second convoy of amphibious craft to cross the Atlantlc. During the crossing we learned that we were being followed by submarines. We had had many “red” alerts during the voyage which brought us to battle stations repeatedly. Necessarily, we were rather tense over a long period of time.
Approaching the African coast, on the night in question, I had the dogwatch on the bridge. It was a black, foggy night and visibility was very bad. Upon being relieved of my watch, I proceeded to the wardroom for a cup of coffee. An officer friend of mine, to whom I was indebted in the munificent sum o cents, also had just come off watch. As we were sitting in the wardroom, relaxing, the buzzer w ent off calling all hands to battle stations. Hurriedly we donned our life preservers and raced through the passageways and the series of black curtains set up to maintain absolute blackout. .
We stumbled out on deck and the inky blackness enveloped us. Coming out of the light into the darkness caused us to grope about a bit. Everyone was particularly taut and tense; we had experienced a definite sub contact the preceding day. Quickly the tension and strain was dissipated when my friend grabbed my arm and shouted, “One minute, All I am going into the same life-boat with you. I must protect the 87 cents you owe me!”
(The Proceedings will pay $5.00 for each anecdote submitted to and printed in, the Proceedings).