Staff officer

“ SCENE THIRD.—AN ELEVATED PLATEAU, DOTTED WITH HEAVY OAKS, WEST OF THE PROPHET'S TOWN. Enter three of HARRISON'S staff Officers.
1ST OFFICER. Well, here's the end of all our northward marching!
2ND OFFICER. A peaceful end, if we can trust those chiefs Who parleyed with us lately.
3RD OFFICER. Yes, for if They mean to fight, why point us to a spot At once so strong and pleasant for our camp? ”

“ Of the departmental staff, the assistant adjutant-generals and assistant inspector-generals are denominated the 'general staff,' because their functions extend through all branches of the organization, while the other officers are confined exclusively to their own departments.
The chief of staff is a recent French imitation. The first officer assigned in that capacity was General Marcy, on the staff of General McClellan, in the fall of 1861. ”

“ Suffice it to say that at present the hardest of all problems is to keep line and staff in economical balance. Staff departments then may within themselves exercise line functions. This grows rather from necessities imposed by size than from inherent nature of function. The first staff officer was an adviser and exercised no authority, except that of polite inquiry, because there was no one whom he could properly command. ”

“ General, field and staff officers habitually mounted; formation of staff; drawing and returning saber. General, field, and staff officers are habitually mounted. The staff of any officer forms in single rank, 3 paces in rear of him, the right of the rank extending 1 pace to the right of a point directly in rear of him. Members of the staff are arranged in order from right to left as follows: General staff officers, adjutant, aids, other staff officers, arranged in each classification in order of rank, the senior on the right. ”

“ The organization of such a department depends entirely upon the number of applicants and employees with which it must deal and the character of the work to be done. Suppose, for example, we have a factory with two thousand employees, seventy-five per cent of them skilled, fifteen per cent of them unskilled, and ten per cent office employees. The work of such a department could be very well carried on by one employment supervisor, one assistant supervisor, one clerk and record-keeper, and part of the time of one stenographer. The employment supervisor is a staff officer. ”

“ Apart from the fact of there being the inspector or chief officer for the whole district, with a certain permanent staff, each company might be considered as a separate brigade, having its own chief officer and staff, and independent organization, the organization of the companies, however, being identical. A company comprises 1 chief officer, 1 second officer, 1 doctor, 2 ambulance men and 6 orderlies, a staff in charge, and the three sections have respectively 1 lieutenant, 1 deputy-lieutenant and 40 men for the fire service section ”

“ Service in the staff office of a division or army corps alternates with employment on the great general staff, so that the officer whose diligence and ability have opened for him the staff career, and whose performance secures his periodical return to it, passes through the various stages of regimental service, of service on the general staff of the great constituent units of the army, and of employment in the great central agency of direction. ”

“ Officers of the headquarters staff should know the position of every division or detachment each night; their composition and strength, and the names of their commanders, etc.
In communicating orders to others, staff-officers must speak and write in the name of their generals. They must remember that they have no power of themselves to confer favors, and that all patronage rests with the general. In theory they are merely his agents, and, although, in practice, officers of importance have much in their power, they should be careful to prevent its being generally known. ”

“ If I were your president I would ask authority of the board of directors, a staff body, to say, as a line officer, to you, also of the line, that as chief operating official you are the only passenger conductor with whom the executive and staff departments will normally deal; that your tenure of office depends quite as much upon your ability to prevent stealing as to prevent accidents. To the auditor I would say that he is responsible for certifying to the integrity of all components of your operations by proper examinations after the fact ”

“ These remarks, relative to the requirements for an effective staff, pertain to all grades of organization. The staff officers at the headquarters of the army organize general arrangements and supervise the operations of subordinate officers of their department at the headquarters of corps; these have more detailed duties, and, in their turn, supervise the staffs of the divisions; the duties of these again are still more detailed, and they supervise the staffs of brigades ”

“ After having become a commissioned officer in the staff or line, the young officer is promoted gradually from grade to grade, usually according to relative rank, except in time of war, when, for especial reasons, the brighter men are pushed [Pg 841] forward because of their exceptional fitness for command or other important work. The officers remain in the service until they are sixty-two years old, unless they resign before that time, and then are retired under three-quarter pay until they die. ”

“ It may be said that a Staff can take the advice of specialist officers who are attached to it for that purpose. But there is a danger that the specialist advice may never reach the heads of the Staff. Human nature being what it is, the safest procedure is to place the specialist officer where his voice must be heard, i.e. to give him a position on the Staff, for one must legislate for the average individual and for normal conditions of work. ”

“ This officer at home cannot be the same person as the general in the field; for the two duties must be carried on in two different places at the same time. The two functions, moreover, correspond to two different arts or branches of the military art. The commander in the field requires to excel in generalship, or the art of command; the head of the supply department at home requires to be a skilled military administrator in the sense not of a wielder of discipline or trainer of troops, but of a clever buyer, a producer and distributor on a large scale. ”

“ Staff officers ought to be men of talents and of great enterprise and perseverance, and should possess even a certain knowledge of what is considered business, both in a civil and military point of view, which would render them capable of ascertaining and calling forth the various resources of a country. They should also be well acquainted with military police duties, or the best [Pg 132] modes of exercising military law, in all its bearings, and to enable them to do this with advantage to the army, and to the country, they should have attached to them an intelligent mounted police corps. ”

“ Some of the superior officers have set the example by abandoning the dearly-loved cigar, and a Prussian officer's mess has decidedly no attractions for the gourmet.
"Teacher and leader in every department is the officer. This implies that he is superior to his men in knowledge, experience, and strength of character. Without fearing responsibility, every officer in all circumstances however extraordinary is to stake his whole personality for the fulfilment of his mission, even without waiting for orders." ”

“ The staff is simply the servant of the general force; it exists but to further the welfare of the fighting establishment. Those within it are remiss if they fail to keep this rule uppermost. Consequently, no special attitude is called for, other than an acute receptiveness. The same military bearing, the same naturalness of manner which enable an officer to win the confidence and working loyalty of his men will serve just as well when he is dealing with higher authority. ”

“ The importance to the Army of a competent Staff can be judged from the above account of their duties. The Staff forms the nervous system of the Command. The better trained the Staff, the more free will the General be to concentrate his attention on the situation, and his Subordinate Commanders to carry out his plans with co-operating intelligence. Good Staff Officers, it has been well said, are eyes, ears, and hands to their Chief. ”

“ A good system must as far as possible relieve the general from these cares of management, so that he can keep his mind free to study his instructions and watch his foe. Accordingly side by side with that distribution of authority among the combatant units which facilitates the exercise of the general command is an organization upon similar principles of the administrative services. The supervision of each branch is in the hands of an executive officer in the entourage of the general. ”

“ There must also be an administrative officer at home, whose function will be to procure and convey to the army in the field all that it requires—food, ammunition, clothing and pay, fresh men and fresh horses to replace casualties. ”

“ In this way authority and responsibility are graduated throughout the army corps. Every commander above the rank of captain deals with a body composed of units with the interior affairs of none of which he meddles, except in the case of failure on the part of the officer directly responsible. The higher the commander and the greater his authority, the more general becomes the supervision and the less the burden of detail. The superior prescribes the object to be attained. The subordinate is left free to choose the means, and is interfered with only in exceptional circumstances. ”

“ Field Officers, are such as command a whole regiment; as the colonel, lieutenant colonel, and major.
Staff Officers, are all those officers who are not attached to companies in a regiment; whose duties extend over the whole; or a large section, such as a brigade or division; such as the quarter master general, and the adjutant and inspector general, brigade officers, and aids-de-camp, also the quarter masters, adjutants, the physicians, surgeons, and chaplains. ”

“ Free from the pressure of other cares and responsibilities an officer in this position would be more likely to see clearly and judge coolly than one overloaded with work and distracted with the thousand worries of command. This is the division of labour according to kind, which gives each sort of work to a man specially trained for its performance. ”

“ If the commander of a large force moves from his stated position he must leave a senior officer of his staff to represent him on the spot and to forward urgent communications to him in his changed position. In the case of a small force a commander who vacates his stated position must arrange to leave a runner in the position stated as his headquarters, in order that messages may reach him without delay. ”

“ Promotion in the staff corps is dependent upon seniority, though relative rank in the lower grades in some corps somewhat depends upon promotion of line officers of the same length of service, and accounts for the existence of staff officers in the same grade having different ranks. ”

“ Every Officer in charge of a Station is to be answerable for the Office and Buildings, and the Company’s Property there. He is also to be responsible for the faithful and efficient discharge of the duties devolving upon all the Company’s Servants at the Station. ”

“ Numbers of zealous, meritorious, and valuable officers have made the duties of the general staff objects of special study; have embraced the staff as a branch of the profession in which under existing laws they are entitled to promotion for merit and long service, just as the line officers have a right to promotion in their branch. ”

“ Most of these officers do not derive their rank from their position on the staff, but it has been given them in the volunteer organization, or pertains to them in the line of the regular or volunteer army. All the department officers (meaning all except aides) have a number of assistants, and the general officers have staffs and aides of their own, to which they are entitled by law. The total number of officers on duty at the headquarters may amount to fifty or more, and there is plenty of work for all of them during a campaign. ”

“ A member of the Task Force may designate a senior level official who is a full-time officer or employee of the member's department, agency, or office to perform the member's functions on the Task Force. ”

“ For, my boy, the unit system of organization on the Harriman Lines, of which you have read more or less, is primarily a substitution of the modern chief of staff idea for the grown, dwarfing, irrational government by chief clerks. [1]
The unit system of organization requires that an official, whether the head of the unit or an assistant, shall, when absent on the line, be represented at headquarters by the senior or chief assistant of the unit. Such senior or chief assistant is in effect, though not in name, the chief of staff. ”

“ In the office likewise, a non-commissioned officer superintends each department of the work and reports either directly, or through a senior non-commissioned officer, to the officer of engineers in charge. ”