ARMY: Spurs Scar the Desks

Spurs Scar the Desk

The Army last week received a few well-chosen hard words from what is practically its own house organ. The weekly Army and Navy Register, potent service publication, complained: "Staff officers all too often are lacking in concrete knowledge of what troop duty really is, and they issue impractical orders because they do not know what it takes to get things done." Naming no names, the Register cited instances:

> The chief of staff at a headquarters recently involved in one of the worst fiascoes in all of our history was a man who boasted that he had never commanded troops in his life, not a battalion as a major, not a company as a captain, not even a platoon as a lieutenant. His lack of knowledge as to how orders are carried out and what actually has to be done to get them carried out consistently can properly be charged as one of the reasons for what might now be called a minor catastrophe in our military history.

> "An officer now in Washington has actually spent a great proportion of his time as aide-de-camp to several successive generals, and yet—from a small number of months of actual troop duty—he is perfectly free to tell the world 'how soldiers think' with such inaccuracy as to raise the eyebrows of men who have had long experience as actual company commanders."

Readers hoped they never found out who the officers were; but they also hoped the Army would find out pronto, and shunt them and their like right out of their swivel chairs—if not to limbo, to some spot where they could not risk soldiers' lives or the national security.