{"id":34220,"date":"2016-02-05T03:00:02","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T08:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=34220"},"modified":"2016-02-04T12:03:19","modified_gmt":"2016-02-04T17:03:19","slug":"military-discipline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/02\/05\/military-discipline\/","title":{"rendered":"Military discipline"},"content":{"rendered":"

Retired Colonel Ted Campbell<\/a> has some thoughts on the Canadian military:<\/p>\n

Nothing in what follows is, in any way at all, intended to minimize the importance of quantities ~ quantities of people, quantities of dollars and quantities of ships, tanks and aircraft ~ but it is intended to stress that there IS<\/em> a qualitative<\/em> measure to national defence: how much must, always, be balanced with how well. Indeed, sometimes, \u201cnot really well<\/em>\u201d can be offset by \u201clots of men (and women), money and materiel<\/em>\u201d and, equally, often \u201cnot enough people or equipment<\/em>\u201d can be offset by \u201cable to get 100% out of every person and every bullet<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many years I have preached that we, Canadian sailors, soldiers and air force personnel need to be<\/strong> four things ~ we need to have four attributes <\/em>~ and we need to be those four things in a specific order. We<\/strike> They, now, need to be:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Tough;<\/li>\n
  2. Superbly disciplined;<\/li>\n
  3. Very well trained; and<\/li>\n
  4. Adequately equipped.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Now, a few years ago some friends suggested, and I agreed, that I needed to \u201cbookend\u201d those four things with two more; they also need to be:<\/p>\n

      \n
    • Well led; and<\/li>\n
    • Properly organized<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      I agreed and revised my list accordingly […]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

      And on the differences between a “typical” military organization and a properly disciplined one:<\/p>\n

      Discipline <\/em>starts on the parade square, and Canadian military men and women take a back seat to no-one when it comes to pomp and circumstance, but \u201creal\u201d military discipline is self discipline and it comes from doing what needs to be done when one is near exhaustion, in the dark, in the cold, and when no one is looking \u2026 I remember, some years<\/strike> decades ago, when I was a junior officer, I was escorting a foreign visitor into our unit. As we drove in the main gate a trumpet call sounded over the loudspeakers; \u201cwhat\u2019s that?\u201d our guest asked. \u201cThe lunch signal,\u201d I replied, \u201cwe\u2019re just in time for lunch.\u201d As we drove past the transport lines we both observed many soldiers washing vehicles, loading stores, repairing armoured personnel carriers and so on \u2026 \u201cwhy aren\u2019t they breaking for lunch?\u201d our guest asked. \u201cThey\u2019re not finished yet,\u201d I answered, \u201cthey\u2019ll be off for their lunch as soon as they\u2019re done their work.\u201d \u201cIn our army,\u201d he said, \u201cthey would have just dropped their tools and run for the lunch line.\u201d \u201cOh, \u201d I responded, \u201cnot here. This is our<\/strong><\/em> army and these fellows know what has to be done and they\u2019ll do it without being told or watched.\u201d We were, in fact, discussing the fundamental difference between a very large, very well equipped and very average army, on the one hand, and a small, adequately equipped but very well disciplined Canadian army on the other. Discipline <\/em>certainly starts with sergeants bellowing orders on the parade square, but in a good army it is exemplified by individual soldiers doing the hardest jobs, in the worst of circumstances, alone and without supervision. It doesn\u2019t really matter if the task is \u201csquare bashing,\u201d a lonely, dangerous, standing patrol at night, or the loneliness, even in a crowd, of command at sea; whatever the task, a tough, superbly disciplined<\/strong><\/em> Canadian sailor, soldier or aviator can do it, and do it right, the first time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Retired Colonel Ted Campbell has some thoughts on the Canadian military: Nothing in what follows is, in any way at all, intended to minimize the importance of quantities ~ quantities of people, quantities of dollars and quantities of ships, tanks and aircraft ~ but it is intended to stress that there IS a qualitative measure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[448,572],"class_list":["post-34220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-military","tag-canadianforces","tag-leadership"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8TW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34220"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34223,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34220\/revisions\/34223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}