Let’s skip M.I. traditions for a moment. Can you think of anything sillier than letting yourself be fired out of a spaceship with nothing but mayhem and sudden death at the other end? However, if someone must do this idiotic stunt, do you know of a surer way to keep a man keyed up to the point where he is willing than by keeping him constantly reminded that the only good reason why men fight is a living, breathing reality?
In a mixed ship, the last thing a trooper hears before a drop (maybe the last word he ever hears) is a woman’s voice, wishing him luck. If you don’t think this is important, you’ve probably resigned from the human race.
The Tours had fifteen Naval officers, eight ladies and seven men; there were eight M.I. officers including (I am happy to say) myself. I won’t say “bulkhead thirty” caused me to buck for O.C.S. but the privilege of eating with the ladies is more incentive than any increase in pay. The Skipper was president of the mess, my boss Captain Blackstone was vice-president—not because of rank; three Naval officers ranked him; but as C.O. of the strike force he was de facto senior to everybody but the Skipper.
Every meal was formal. We would wait in the cardroom until the hour struck, follow Captain Blackstone in and stand behind our chairs; the Skipper would come in followed by her ladies and, as she reached the head of the table, Captain Blackstone would bow and say, “Madam President…ladies,” and she would answer, “Mr. Vice…gentlemen,” and the man on each lady’s right would seat her.
This ritual established that it was a social event, not an officers’ conference; thereafter ranks or titles were used, except that junior Naval officers and myself alone among the M.I. were called “Mister” or “Miss”—with one exception which fooled me.
My first meal aboard I heard Captain Blackstone called “Major,” although his shoulder pips plainly read “captain.” I got straightened out later. There can’t be two captains in a Naval vessel so an Army captain is bumped one rank socially rather than commit the unthinkable of calling him by the title reserved for the one and only monarch. If a Naval captain is aboard as anything but skipper, he or she is called “Commodore” even if the skipper is a lowly lieutenant.
The M.I. observes this by avoiding the necessity in the wardroom and paying no attention to the silly custom in our own part of the ship.
Seniority ran downhill from each end of the table, with the Skipper at the head and the strike force C.O. at the foot, the junior midshipmen at his right and myself at the Skipper’s right. I would most happily have sat by the junior midshipman; she was awfully pretty—but the arrangement is planned chaperonage; I never even learned her first name.
I knew that I, as the lowliest male, sat on the Skipper’s right—but I didn’t know that I was supposed to seat her. At my first meal she waited and nobody sat down—until the third assistant engineer jogged my elbow. I haven’t been so embarrassed since a very unfortunate incident in kindergarten, even though Captain Jorgenson acted as if nothing had happened.
When the Skipper stands up the meal is over. She was pretty good about this but once she stayed seated only a few minutes and Captain Blackstone got annoyed. He stood up but called out, “Captain—”
She stopped. “Yes, Major?”
“Will the Captain please give orders that my officers and myself be served in the cardroom?”
She answered coldly, “Certainly, sir.” And we were. But no Naval officer joined us.
The following Saturday she exercised her privilege of inspecting the M.I. aboard—which transport skippers almost never do. However, she simply walked down the ranks without commenting. She was not really a martinet and she had a nice smile when she wasn’t being stern. Captain Blackstone assigned Second Lieutenant “Rusty” Graham to crack the whip over me about math; she found out about it, somehow, and told Captain Blackstone to have me report to her office for one hour after lunch each day, whereupon she tutored me in math and bawled me out when my “homework” wasn’t perfect.
Our six platoons were two companies as a rump battalion; Captain Blackstone commanded Company D, Blackie’s Blackguards, and also commanded the rump battalion. Our battalion commander by the T.O., Major Xera, was with A and B companies in the Tours’ sister ship Normandy Beach—maybe half a sky away; he commanded us only when the full battalion dropped together—except that Cap’n Blackie routed certain reports and letters through him. Other matters went directly to Fleet, Division, or Base, and Blackie had a truly wizard fleet sergeant to keep such things straight and to help him handle both a company and a rump battalion in combat.
Administrative details are not simple in an army spread through many light-years in hundreds of ships. In the old Valley Forge, in the Rodger Young, and now in the Tours I was in the same regiment, the Third (“Pampered Pets”) Regiment of the First (“Polaris”) M.I. Division. Two battalions formed from available units had been called the “Third Regiment” in Operation Bughouse but I did not see “my” regiment; all I saw was PFC Bamburger and a lot of Bugs.
I might be commissioned in the Pampered Pets, grow old and retire in it—and never even see my regimental commander. The Roughnecks had a company commander but he also commanded the first platoon (“Hornets”) in another corvette; I didn’t know his name until I saw it on my orders to O.C.S. There is a legend about a “lost platoon” that went on R&R as its corvette was decommissioned. Its company commander had just been promoted and the other platoons had been attached tactically elsewhere. I’ve forgotten what happened to the platoon’s lieutenant but R&R is a routine time to detach an officer—theoretically after a relief has been sent to understudy him, but reliefs are always scarce.
They say this platoon enjoyed a local year of the flesh-pots along Churchill Road before anybody missed them.
I don’t believe it. But it could happen.
The chronic scarcity of officers strongly affected my duties in Blackie’s Blackguards. The M.I. has the lowest percentage of officers in any army of record and this factor is just part of the M.I.’s unique “divisional wedge.” “D.W.” is military jargon but the idea is simple: If you have 10,000 soldiers, how many fight? And how many just peel potatoes, drive lorries, count graves, and shuffle papers?
In the M.I., 10,000 men fight.
In the mass wars of the XXth century it sometimes took 70,000 men (fact!) to enable 10,000 to fight.
I admit it takes the Navy to place us where we fight; however, an M.I. strike force, even in a corvette, is at least three times as large as the transport’s Navy crew. It also takes civilians to supply and service us; about 10 per cent of us are on R&R at any time; and a few of the very best of us are rotated to instruct at boot camps.
While a few M.I. are on desk jobs you will always find that they are shy an arm or leg, or some such. These are the ones—the Sergeant Hos and the Colonel Nielssens—who refuse to retire, and they really ought to count twice since they release able-bodied M.I. by filling jobs which require fighting spirit but not physical perfection. They do work that civilians can’t do—or we would hire civilians. Civilians are like beans; you buy ’em as needed for any job which merely requires skill and savvy.
But you can’t buy fighting spirit.
It’s scarce. We use all of it, waste none. The M.I. is the smallest army in history for the size of the population it guards. You can’t buy an M.I., you can’t conscript him, you can’t coerce him—you can’t even keep him if he wants to leave. He can quit thirty seconds before a drop, lose his nerve and not get into his capsule and all that happens is that he is paid off and can never vote.
At O.C.S. we studied armies in history that were driven like galley slaves. But the M.I. is a free man; all that drives him comes from inside—that self-respect and need for the respect of his mates and his pride in being one of them called morale, or esprit de corps.
The root of our morale is: “Everybody works, everybody fights.” An M.I. doesn’t pull strings to get a soft, safe job; there aren’t any. Oh, a trooper will get away with what he can; any
private with enough savvy to mark time to music can think up reasons why he should not clean compartments or break out stores; this is a soldier’s ancient right.
But all “soft, safe” jobs are filled by civilians; that goldbricking private climbs into his capsule certain that everybody, from general to private, is doing it with him. Light-years away and on a different day, or maybe an hour or so later—no matter. What does matter is that everybody drops. This is why he enters the capsule, even though he may not be conscious of it.
If we ever deviate from this, the M.I. will go to pieces. All that holds us together is an idea—one that binds more strongly than steel but its magic power depends on keeping it intact.
It is this “everybody fights” rule that lets the M.I. get by with so few officers.
I know more about this than I want to, because I asked a foolish question in Military History and got stuck with an assignment which forced me to dig up stuff ranging from De Bello Gallico to Tsing’s classic Collapse of the Golden Hegemony. Consider an ideal M.I. division—on paper, because you won’t find one elsewhere. How many officers does it require? Never mind units attached from other corps; they may not be present during a ruckus and they are not like M.I.—the special talents attached to Logistics & Communications are all ranked as officers. If it will make a memory man, a telepath, a senser, or a lucky man happy to have me salute him, I’m glad to oblige; he is more valuable than I am and I could not replace him if I lived to be two hundred. Or take the K-9 Corps, which is 50 per cent “officers” but whose other 50 per cent are neodogs.
None of these is in line of command, so let’s consider only us apes and what it takes to lead us.
This imaginary division has 10,800 men in 216 platoons, each with a lieutenant. Three platoons to a company calls for 72 captains; four companies to a battalion calls for 18 majors or lieutenant colonels. Six regiments with six colonels can form two or three brigades, each with a short general, plus a medium-tall general as top boss.
You wind up with 317 officers out of a total, all ranks, of 11,117.
There are no blank files and every officer commands a team. Officers total 3 per cent—which is what the M.I. does have, but arranged somewhat differently. In fact a good many platoons are commanded by sergeants and many officers “wear more than one hat” in order to fill some utterly necessary staff jobs.
Even a platoon leader should have “staff”—his platoon sergeant.
But he can get by without one and his sergeant can get by without him. But a general must have staff; the job is too big to carry in his hat. He needs a big planning staff and a small combat staff. Since there are never enough officers, the team commanders in his flag transport double as his planning staff and are picked from the M.I.’s best mathematical logicians—then they drop with their own teams. The general drops with a small combat staff, plus a small team of the roughest, on-the-bounce troopers in the M.I. Their job is to keep the general from being bothered by rude strangers while he is managing the battle. Sometimes they succeed.
Besides necessary staff billets, any team larger than a platoon ought to have a deputy commander. But there are never enough officers so we make do with what we’ve got. To fill each necessary combat billet, one job to one officer, would call for a 5 per cent ratio of officers—but 3 per cent is all we’ve got.
In place of that optimax of 5 per cent that the M.I. never can reach, many armies in the past commissioned 10 per cent of their number, or even 15 per cent—and sometimes a preposterous 20 per cent! This sounds like a fairy tale but it was a fact, especially during the XXth century. What kind of an army has more “officers” than corporals? (And more non-coms than privates!)
An army organized to lose wars—if history means anything. An army that is mostly organization, red tape, and overhead, most of whose “soldiers” never fight.
But what do “officers” do who do not command fighting men?
Fiddlework, apparently—officers’ club officer, morale officer, athletics officer, public information officer, recreation officer, PX officer, transportation officer, legal officer, chaplain, assistant chaplain, junior assistant chaplain, officer-in-charge of anything anybody can think of—even nursery officer!
In the M.I., such things are extra duty for combat officers or, if they are real jobs, they are done better and cheaper and without demoralizing a fighting outfit by hiring civilians. But the situation got so smelly in one of the XXth century major powers that real officers, ones who commanded fighting men, were given special insignia to distinguish them from the swarms of swivel-chair hussars.
The scarcity of officers got steadily worse as the war wore on, because the casualty rate is always highest among officers…and the M.I. never commissions a man simply to fill a vacancy. In the long run, each boot regiment must supply its own share of officers and the percentage can’t be raised without lowering the standards—The strike force in the Tours needed thirteen officers—six platoon leaders, two company commanders and two deputies, and a strike force commander staffed by a deputy and an adjutant.
What it had was six…and me.
TABLE OF ORGANIZATION
“Rump Battalion” Strike Force—
Cpt. Blackstone
(“first hat”)
Fleet Sergeant
C Company—“Warren’s
Wolverines”
1st Lt. Warren
D Company—“Blackie’s
Blackguards”
Cpt. Blackstone
(“second hat”)
1st plat.—
1st Lt. Bayonne
2nd plat.—
2nd Lt. Sukarno
3rd plat.—
2nd Lt. N’gam
1st plat.—
(1st Lt. Silva, Hosp.)
2nd plat.—
2nd Lt. Khoroshen
3rd plat.—
2nd Lt. Graham
I would have been under Lieutenant Silva, but he left for hospital the day I reported, ill with some sort of twitching awfuls. But this did not necessarily mean that I would get his platoon. A temporary third lieutenant is not considered an asset; Captain Blackstone could place me under Lieutenant Bayonne and put a sergeant in charge of his own first platoon, or even “put on a third hat” and take the platoon himself.
In fact, he did both and nevertheless assigned me as platoon leader of the first platoon of the Blackguards. He did this by borrowing the Wolverine’s best buck sergeant to act as his battalion staffer, then he placed his fleet sergeant as platoon sergeant of his first platoon—a job two grades below his chevrons. Then Captain Blackstone spelled it out for me in a head-shrinking lecture: I would appear on the T.O. as platoon leader, but Blackie himself and the fleet sergeant would run the platoon.
As long as I behaved myself, I could go through the motions. I would even be allowed to drop as platoon leader—but one word from my platoon sergeant to my company commander and the jaws of the nutcracker would close.
It suited me. It was my platoon as long as I could swing it—and if I couldn’t, the sooner I was shoved aside the better for everybody. Besides, it was a lot less nerve-racking to get a platoon that way than by sudden catastrophe in battle.
I took my job very seriously, for it was my platoon—the T.O. said so. But I had not yet learned to delegate authority and, for about a week, I was around troopers’ country much more than is good for a team. Blackie called me into his stateroom. “Son, what in Ned do you think you are doing?”
I answered stiffly that I was trying to get my platoon ready for action.
“So? Well, that’s not what you are accomplishing. You are stirring them like a nest of wild bees. Why the deuce do you think I turned over to you the best sergeant in the Fleet? If you will go to your stateroom, hang yourself on a hook, and stay there!…until ‘Prepare for Action’ is sounded, he’ll hand that platoon over to you tuned like a violin.”
“As the Captain pleases, sir,” I agreed glumly.
“And that’s ano
ther thing—I can’t stand an officer who acts like a confounded kaydet. Forget that silly third-person talk around me—save it for generals and the Skipper. Quit bracing your shoulders and clicking your heels. Officers are supposed to look relaxed, son.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And let that be the last time you say ‘sir’ to me for one solid week. Same for saluting. Get that grim kaydet look off your face and hang a smile on it.”
“Yes, s—Okay.”
“That’s better. Lean against the bulkhead. Scratch yourself. Yawn. Anything but that tin-soldier act.”
I tried…and grinned sheepishly as I discovered that breaking a habit is not easy. Leaning was harder work than standing at attention. Captain Blackstone studied me. “Practice it,” he said. “An officer can’t look scared or tense; it’s contagious. Now tell me, Johnnie, what your platoon needs. Never mind the piddlin’ stuff; I’m not interested in whether a man has the regulation number of socks in his locker.”
I thought rapidly. “Uh…do you happen to know if Lieutenant Silva intended to put Brumby up for sergeant?”
“I do happen to know. What’s your opinion?”
“Well…the record shows that he has been acting section leader the past two months. His efficiency marks are good.”
“I asked for your recommendation, Mister.”
“Well, s—Sorry. I’ve never seen him work on the ground, so I can’t have a real opinion; anybody can soldier in the drop room. But the way I see it, he’s been acting sergeant too long to bust him back to chaser and promote a squad leader over him. He ought to get that third chevron before we drop—or he ought to be transferred when we get back. Sooner, if there’s a chance for a spaceside transfer.”
Blackie grunted. “You’re pretty generous in giving away my Blackguards—for a third lieutenant.”
I turned red. “Just the same, it’s a soft spot in my platoon. Brumby ought to be promoted, or transferred. I don’t want him back in his old job with somebody promoted over his head; he’d likely turn sour and I’d have an even worse soft spot. If he can’t have another chevron, he ought to go to repple-depple for cadre. Then he won’t be humiliated and he gets a fair shake to make sergeant in another team—instead of a dead end here.”
Starship Troopers Page 21
