- Reaction score
- 5,769
- Points
- 1,260
Two loosely connected points:
An old chum, MGen (ret'd) Clive Addy (late of the RCAC), explained, some years ago, that we had a problem with what he called "macho thuggery." The CAF, he suggested, needs "tough guys" but the toughness needs to be both
of a certain, cheerful type and well focused.
Some tie later I adapted one of my own thoughts (from the 1970s) into a notion that said we might want to consider the business of soldiering by describing the attributes of a soldier. The "good soldier," I suggested, was six things:
four of them had to be in a certain order and the other two could be "bookends."
My six things that a good soldier must be are:
Well led;
Tough;
Superbly disciplined;
Well trained;
Adequately equipped; and
Properly organized.
The four attributes: tough, superbly disciplined, well trained and adequately equipped, I argued, needed to be in that specific order because toughness is an innate quality, we, the military, can hone and shape and focus it but we cannot teach it. But toughness, especially Clive Addy's "macho thuggery," is only useful to us when it is paired with discipline. I always used the term "superbly disciplined" because I remember it from a long lost magazine article about the change of command (control, actually) of the Canadian Army circa 1960; the article referred to "the small but superbly disciplined Canadian Army." I heard similar words again and again when I was under training in the UK and the US. Those countries may have thought that we could have done "more" in terms of numbers of soldiers, tanks, guns, etc but they were certain that we were the "best," the ne plus ultra in the quality business. And their definition of quality was, essentially: discipline. Training is, I hope, obvious, but the other qualitative attribute upon which foreign officers always commented was the high standards to which we were trained. Another thing I saw, in my own service, was that good equipment helps, but the best equipment in the world is less than useful if it isn't in the hands of tough, superbly disciplined, well trained soldiers. Again and again I saw Canadians, and others, produce the desired results with only barely adequate equipment while others, with more and better kit, failed.
The other two attributes deserve a word each:
I have dealt with "properly organized" el;sewhere. There is no "right" answer but there are wrong ones and I believe we are less than adequately organized now.
"Well led" means, in my mind, that the leaders are tougher, even better disciplined and even better trained than their subordinates and they, the leaders are 'equipped' with the right administrative tools to help the soldiers do their very best.
My :2c:
An old chum, MGen (ret'd) Clive Addy (late of the RCAC), explained, some years ago, that we had a problem with what he called "macho thuggery." The CAF, he suggested, needs "tough guys" but the toughness needs to be both
of a certain, cheerful type and well focused.
Some tie later I adapted one of my own thoughts (from the 1970s) into a notion that said we might want to consider the business of soldiering by describing the attributes of a soldier. The "good soldier," I suggested, was six things:
four of them had to be in a certain order and the other two could be "bookends."
My six things that a good soldier must be are:
Well led;
Tough;
Superbly disciplined;
Well trained;
Adequately equipped; and
Properly organized.
The four attributes: tough, superbly disciplined, well trained and adequately equipped, I argued, needed to be in that specific order because toughness is an innate quality, we, the military, can hone and shape and focus it but we cannot teach it. But toughness, especially Clive Addy's "macho thuggery," is only useful to us when it is paired with discipline. I always used the term "superbly disciplined" because I remember it from a long lost magazine article about the change of command (control, actually) of the Canadian Army circa 1960; the article referred to "the small but superbly disciplined Canadian Army." I heard similar words again and again when I was under training in the UK and the US. Those countries may have thought that we could have done "more" in terms of numbers of soldiers, tanks, guns, etc but they were certain that we were the "best," the ne plus ultra in the quality business. And their definition of quality was, essentially: discipline. Training is, I hope, obvious, but the other qualitative attribute upon which foreign officers always commented was the high standards to which we were trained. Another thing I saw, in my own service, was that good equipment helps, but the best equipment in the world is less than useful if it isn't in the hands of tough, superbly disciplined, well trained soldiers. Again and again I saw Canadians, and others, produce the desired results with only barely adequate equipment while others, with more and better kit, failed.
The other two attributes deserve a word each:
I have dealt with "properly organized" el;sewhere. There is no "right" answer but there are wrong ones and I believe we are less than adequately organized now.
"Well led" means, in my mind, that the leaders are tougher, even better disciplined and even better trained than their subordinates and they, the leaders are 'equipped' with the right administrative tools to help the soldiers do their very best.
My :2c: