"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" -- How it Worked in the 50s

All these old memories  inspire an Army story from my friend Ignoto

I was a company commander of a basic training company at Fort  Jackson in ’54.   We had one trainee – viperish guy in his upper 20’s who was a volunteer, not draftee, in one of the companies that cycled through basic training every eight weeks. First sergeant always walked through the barracks after lights out, checking on things, before he went to his quarters. He found the viper fast asleep, cuddled up behind a 17 year old little guy, draftee, barely able to read and write, just making it through basic.  He took the little guy aside who immediately confessed that  the viper had talked him into doing it. First sergeant said tell nobody nothing. Then he marched the viper into the woods outside the company area and beat the crap out of him. Mercilessly. Told him what it was like in Leavenworth Prison for people who did what he “done.” Found a civilian shirt and pants for him to put on, drove him out the gate to Fort Jackson, and sent him on his way. In other words, drove him AWOL. This saved the victim kid from a court martial that would have sent him to Army prison, probably killed him. ... I got a demerit for having an AWOL  but in basic training companies you always had a few at least  AWOLs.

For valuable prizes, say whether this story describes an act of (a) savagery or (b) compassion.  Discuss.  

Fn., Viperish?

McChrystal and the Bootlickers: Reprise

A bit more on that topic on which I have no competence whatever--McChrystal and the bootlickers. This from a friend of a friend,

I would angle that slightly: This was a career spec ops warrior who cut against the grain of the military bureaucracy and was not known for condoning weakness, in any form. I’m guessing that his mistake was allowing too many rough around the edges type on his staff who don’t give a damn who hears what they say, rather than attracting weak boot lickers. Generals are politicians and he forgot to make sure that his staff had some of those skills.

Interesting, but sounds a bit starry eyed to me. Just in general, guys who enjoy their rep as professional bad boys are more trouble than they're worth (my favorite example is here).

Meanwhile, my friend Ignoto points out that an awful lotta special ops types retire out at colonel, i.e., before they have to learn the ways of generalship (or because they can't). And I'm remembering my friend Rob who was a police lieutenant, shift commander. I asked him if he wanted to be a chief. Nah, he said. It's an entirely different job. Oh, and I remember Fletcher P. Daniels.

An Afterthought on McChrystal

Let's agree that I am pretty much the last guy on the planet to have useful insights into l'affaire McChrystal, but I do have one thought that I haven't seen on offer anyplace else.

That is; whatever his virtues, McChrystal strikes me as precisely the kind of guy who is going to attract yes-men and bootlickers eager to warm themselves in his alpha glow. This is one place where the MacArthur example may be relevant: the MacArthur apparatus was teeming with these bleating yea-sayers happy to do whatever they felt necessary to enjoy what they perceived (correctly?) to be their best protection in life.

The mere fact that he attracts these pipsqueaks is not McChrystal's fault (nor MacArthur's). The question is what he does with them: does he flic them off like a fragment of lint from his lapel? Or does he let them hang around and tell him (and everyone else) what a great man he is?

Never having enjoyed the luxury of a flock of toadies, I can't say how I would respond to the warm bath of constant approbation--I imagine it is pretty seductive. But it may that McChrystal's chief deficiency is that he didn't have the strength of character to tell them to buzz off; that instead he sat by and sniggered while they talked him into a career-ending punji trap.

Factoid: Generals

"There are currently 57 active-duty female generals in the US military..."

Link. Wonder how many male generals?

Update: Haven't yet come up with a full answer on generals, but I do find this (link) suggesting that there are 35 generals authorized in the Marine Corps. Beginning to remind me of the lion who escaped from the Washington Zoo--he stayed loose because he went to the Pentagon and ate a general a day and nobody ever missed them.

Broken Army?

Philip Carter of IntelDump is one of the ablest and most informed proponents of the meme that the Army is broken. Here's his latest installment, tapping a piece not otherwise readily available by James Kitfield, author of Prodigal Soldiers (link).