To begin with, I am an alumnus of the Naval Command Course for Senior Foreign Officers, at the U. S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island. In Newport they told me my presence was due to being such an outstanding officer, though my conscience tells me that my term as a student at the College came about because:
1. I happened to be “available at the right time”;
2. My Chief of Naval Personnel does not think I’m the type of individual who would spend most of his time with Zsa Zsa Gabor or Kim Novak, instead of with Mahan and Naval Warfare publications.
Now the course is completed, and travelling back on a slow boat to the other side of the Atlantic, I have ample time to reflect on my “academic year.”
What struck me first of all at the Naval War College is the “freedom of thought and opinion.” There is no effort on the part of the War College Staff to influence one’s opinion in a certain direction or to try to convince people that certain things are right and others are not. This objectivity is reflected on the presence of students at the War College not only from the navies, but also from the other services and various government departments. All students are encouraged to wear civilian attire in order to help give them the feeling that regardless of rank and status they, as students, are equal.
He who goes to the War College in the expectation that now he can just sit back, devour a flood of revolutionary and very advanced theories, and do nothing else, will be disappointed. He will be presented with a lot of information, but it is up to him to draw his conclusions and to throw them in for discussion instead of keeping them for himself. A student at the War College must be prepared to give spiritually. It is important for new arrivals to keep this in mind, lest initially they be disappointed.
The Naval Command Course has some distinct advantages above others. The most fascinating aspect of this course—for the existence of which we must thank Admiral Arleigh Burke, present U. S. Chief of Naval Operations—is that each student is of a different nationality. Being a member of a NATO Navy, and of one of the Allied navies during the last war, I’m used to working together with navies other than my own, and I’m also used to attending courses with students of other NATO nations, but never before have I formed part of a class of 26 students, each one of them from a different country. When I looked around me in the conference room during my first days at the War College, I wondered how we would ever be able to get along with each other as one group, for there really are some differences between a Brazilian and a Norwegian, a Spaniard and a Colombian, an Argentine and a Dane, a Chinese and an Ecuadorian, a Cuban and an Australian, a Canadian and a Greek, a Thai and a German, an Italian and a Korean, a Japanese and a Peruvian, a Filipino and a Chilean, a Portuguese and a Pakistani, a Frenchman and a Uruguayan, a Venezuelan and a Dutchman. It looked like a bit of United Nations on this side of the Iron Curtain, displaced to Newport. However, throughout the first half of the course and perhaps aided by the invisible bonds which tie all mariners together, we became friends to such an extent that we could afford to pull each other’s leg without being afraid of “getting mad.” For instance, it rapidly became the custom for a student who was late, or forgot something, to get hearty applause from his classmates, accompanied by remarks like “Well done, Italy,” or “You can’t beat the Dutch.”
This proves the validity of two principles: individuals can get along much better and easier than nations; and common surroundings create common interests and tend to eliminate national differences.
The U. S. officers attached to the Naval Command Course staff have to adjust themselves also and “get their bearings” in this conglomerate. Because surely as much as we had to get used to each other, they had to get used to us and we to them. They no doubt will have muttered to themselves, as we did in the beginning, “I wonder how we’ll make out with this crowd.”
It was interesting to hear—prior to showing an instructional film—the officer delivering the lecture apologize to the Japanese student that, as the film was made during the war, there are some rude comments in it about the Japanese, while thereupon the Japanese student laughed and remarked: “You should have seen some of the pictures we had about you in those days!”
The German student in my class had been a U-boat commander. He torpedoed Ark Royal in the Mediterranean and later became a prisoner of war of the Americans and spent considerable time in a P.O.W. camp in Arizona. The Australian student served on a destroyer sunk by a German bomber, and the Canadian student was on a ship put out of action by an Italian X-craft. I was a P.O.W. of the Japanese, first in Java and then in Osaka, Japan, where I had the privilege to observe how effective the U. S. carrier air strikes were against Japan, as I happened to be in a target area.
The course was for a considerable part made up of individuals who were at war against each other when they were junior officers, a fact which certainly gave some interesting aspects to the group discussions. This particularly came to the fore during a very interesting part of the curriculum, the international law studies, for which the War College staff had secured the assistance of a group of specialists—from either side of the Atlantic—of world fame in this field. Incidentally, it did my heart good to note their various acknowledgements to Grotius’ work; too bad we could not have him present. Concurrent to the series of lectures given by these professors, we (that is, all students of the College) and the specialists were divided into discussion groups, and each student was allotted a more or less knotty problem (several of which were historic cases) in the field of international law and subsequently had to present his views to the group, while the specialists listened in and gave their critique. Even the professors’ views on some of the solutions presented were not invariably in accord. This effective presentation of international law caused me to study various aspects more thoroughly than ever before (even while I prepared myself for the examination required by my navy), as one naturally is keen to present a good case in front of an international audience.
Never have I had such ample opportunity to exchange views with so many people from all over the world; this alone makes the course already worth its while. The Naval Command Course provides a much better opportunity to establish relations with other navies and services than any other I could think of. During the year together, working at the same problems and sharing rooms during orientation visits, friendships are built up which would not be made otherwise, friendships which will pay their dividends sooner or later. My Australian colleague, for instance, is now stationed in Bangkok, Thailand, as services attache of the Australian Embassy. In that capacity it is most important to him that his Thai friend from the Naval Command Course is now stationed at Thai Naval Headquarters. This is just one example among many.
The “research and presentation program,” which runs throughout the academic year concurrently with the program of lectures, group discussions, and operation problems, contributes to the knowledge of international affairs. This program directs each student to prepare a paper on his own country and another paper on a current world problem, which he can choose himself. Naturally most students choose a subject which either directly or indirectly affects their own country or service, so that the things they learn through their research are useful to their future career. As every student has to make an oral presentation of his paper to the class and the staff, it is easy to understand that each one of us, and here I include the staff, could amply enrich his knowledge of world affairs and widen his vision considerably.
Then, although many of the navies represented on this course have their own war and staff colleges, none of them can provide such a wide opportunity for learning as this War College does, with its vast staff of experienced officers, with its enormous libraries, and with its unique Naval Electronic Warfare Simulator. Few navies—other than the U. S. Navy—could ever afford an electronic mammoth like the NEWS, which costs 7.5 million dollars and requires some thirteen electronic technicians to keep it running, and all this just to provide the opportunity for the students to play complicated war games at action speed—or more—with the inclusion of the latest weapons systems.
Another distinct advantage of this course for us, naval officers of smaller countries, whose defense is to a larger or smaller extent tied in with that of the U. S. through treaties like NATO and SEATO, or bilateral agreements, is that we acquire a thorough understanding of the way the U. S. Navy works, and the U. S. Government, and last but not least, how U. S. naval officers think, what they are like, and what their professional standards are. Naturally there are also less favorable factors; one of these is caused by what I call the “mutual admiration society.”
In such an international gathering we do not understand each other as well as we understand our own countrymen. We don’t want to offend each other and therefore tend to be reluctant to tell the truth. When, for instance, a lecturer is not doing very well or when the staff thinks that a presentation of a particular student is below standard, we are afraid to be as frank about it as we would be among our own naval countrymen. Luckily during the course, while students and staff are getting to know each other better, this lack of frankness tends to wear off, but does not disappear altogether.
Another handicap is that of security. With such a wide variety of students from countries all over the world, the line naturally has to be drawn at a lower level than, say, in a class of students of NATO nations. This restriction can result in odd situations such as that when a countryman of mine, who serves on SACLANT staff, arrived at the War College as a member of the SACLANT briefing team and delivered a Top Secret lecture to the Command and Staff Course, to which I, as a member of the Naval Command Course, could not listen. Nevertheless, it is surprising how much classified information is released to this course. It certainly looks to me as though an effort has been made here by the U. S. Navy Department to go as far as it possibly can. In addition, officers of flag and general rank have made most interesting and surprisingly frank “off the cuff” remarks during their lectures. In general, I am surprised anyway at the amount of information concerning the U. S. armed forces and its arsenal of weapons which is continuously being released to the general public.
A third handicap is that of language. The official language of the course is English, a language foreign to the majority of the students. And just the knowledge of some words, sufficient for normal conversation, is not enough. The student has to listen to a great number of lectures, a considerable part of which are delivered by professors from other colleges in the United States, who don’t always elect to speak more slowly or clearly because some foreign officers happen to be in the audience at Pringle auditorium; neither do these professors always express themselves in simple language. A foreign student’s papers have to be written in English and the questions arising in his mind during lectures have to be formulated in English and often for an English-speaking audience looking on curiously to learn what “that fellow from abroad” has to say. In fact I found one has to think in English, and a student arriving here with only a “basic” knowledge of this language instead of a thorough one, has a serious handicap, as many remarks made by lecturers will either escape his attention or fail to make their point. Naval ministries concerned should send only those officers who, besides being broad-minded and intelligent extroverts, are also capable of speaking, writing, and thinking good English, as otherwise they will hold back the other students.
Finally, there is the drawback of the varying standards of professional knowledge. One cannot expect that a student of the Swedish or Iranian Navy, for example, will have the same background of general naval experience and professional knowledge as a student of the Canadian or Australian Navy. Students from navies which were actively engaged during the last World War and subsequently joined NATO are bound to have more experience and a higher standard of professional knowledge (and also a better idea of the way the U. S. Navy operates) than are students from navies of countries which remained neutral and did join NATO. For the former, publications like ATP 1, ATP 2, and the like are “old news”; for the latter, they are something of a mystery.
This lack of common background necessarily requires that the staff must ensure that everybody in the course has solid common knowledge concerning modern naval warfare and the way the U. S. Navy operates, and this indoctrination inevitably requires time. Nevertheless, had I free choice, I would still prefer to attend a course like this instead of one for NATO officers exclusively for the simple reason that one learns so much more about what is going on in various parts of the world which one rarely thinks about.
It is revealing to note throughout the course that the U. S. Navy actively takes an interest in the smaller navies of the Free World and considers it worthwhile to improve the training of their officers and to increase mutual understanding between their senior officers, because even armed forces of the size maintained by the United States cannot defend the Free World alone. The U. S. Navy needs the assistance of smaller navies, especially for escort work and coastal operations.
Here is a real opportunity for study for senior officers of smaller navies, as to how their navy could be best equipped, not only from its national viewpoint, but from the viewpoint of a more integrated defense of the Free World against the cancerous infiltration of Communism.
The series of operations problems presented in the second half of the course, after the Christmas holidays, provide an excellent training ground for officers who will be appointed to international staffs. For each one of these problems the class is divided into two opposing teams. The staff usually appoints an admiral, a chief of staff, and an operations officer for each team, while the other students are given assignments by “their admiral.”
When you are appointed admiral of the purple, blue, or whatever team of the Naval Command Course Class, you’ll learn something, let me assure you, about planning in an international staff, especially if in reality you are about the most junior man on the team, as I was. The situations in these “Op-prob’s” are so chosen that they coincide as closely as possible with the actual situation in the area under consideration and, needless to say, the presence of students coming from countries in that area is invaluable.
Then, last but not least, I think that courses of this nature, like any other international gathering with a common goal, tend to weaken the strength of the worst enemies of the Free World nations—egoism and mutual distrust—because we get to know each other better. I would like to make it clear at the end of my reflections that this article is not a deliberate piece of propaganda for this course on my part. It flowed out of my pen spontaneously and I have endeavoured to present for the future student a fair picture of the pros and cons as I see them. It is up to him to make the course interesting!
I think the staff of the War College has done an excellent job for us. The manner in which we students from abroad were welcomed into navy family life and the typical American hospitality extended to us were beyond criticism.
Looking back over the past, I can only say that I consider myself privileged to have been a student at the U. S. Naval War College in Newport, R. I.
Commander van Rees had served as a junior officer in HNMS cruiser Java and was attending the Radio School at Soerabaja when he was captured by the Japanese in March 1942 and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner. He has had extensive experience in communications and was Commanding Officer of the Netherlands Naval Communications School, 1955-58. Currently he is Commanding Officer of one of the post-war constructed, 2,500-ton destroyers, HMNS Gelderland.