Uniformed services

“ Our Nation salutes our employers and business leaders who, often at their own expense, back their employees who serve in the National Guard and Reserve. As President, I will continue to focus on providing our men and women in uniform and their families with access to the services, benefits, and care they so deserve. I encourage all Americans to join with our employers in facilitating the service our national guardsmen and reservists provide to our Nation and honoring the sacrifices they make in defense of our security. ”

“ And the best and most brilliant among this scanty supply are being drawn upon more and more for aerial work, and for all that increasing quantity of highly specialised services which are manifestly destined to be the real fighting forces of the future. We cannot spare the best of our officers for training conscripts ”

“ For this purpose the drum beats to quarters; when all repair to their several stations, and, under the instruction of the several officers, go through the ordinary operations attendant upon that branch of discipline. No persons, of whatever description, females excepted, are exempted from being appointed to some post, where their services may be efficient. The military officers are allotted to commands on the poop, fore-castle, waist, &c.; having under them such cadets and recruits as may be on board ”

“ Unlike the Military and Naval, the Medical, and the Commissariat Services, and unlike even the Indian Civil Service, the public establishments of this country, though comprising a body of not less than 16,000 persons, are regulated upon the principle of merely departmental promotion. Each man’s experience, interests, hopes, and fears are limited to the special branch of service in which he is himself engaged. ”

“ The advantages and disadvantages of retaining certain personnel management and advisory services functions at the large civilian centers under local command authority to include on-site control of staffing of positions filled through internal or external recruitment processes, employee management relations, labor force planning and management, and managing workers compensation programs. ”

“ Perhaps our most serious problem was to consolidate the organization of our universal service system. Each battalion area—and there were several hundreds, required an officer and at least one sergeant-major as duly qualified administrators and instructors; each brigade area wanted a reliable staff. ”

“ Root recommends that officers of the National Guard, or officers of former volunteers, be permitted in their vacations to study with regular army officers at West Point, and at the army post schools, so that we may never again be caught without competent officers for volunteer regiments. ”

“ New officers in new uniforms swaggered in every public meeting place, bands of music played martial airs at every street corner and volunteers sky-larked and paraded in all sorts of impossible uniforms and with every form of theatric display. But system and order were absolutely lacking, and the adjutant-general's office, littered with blanks and well-nigh knee deep with papers, was the most helpless spot in the welter of confusion. All the material for a respectable army was at hand, but how to form it into an effective force was more than anyone seemed to know. ”

“ The soldier having acquired that degree of confidence of his officers as to be appointed first sergeant of the company, should consider the importance of his office; that the discipline of the company, the conduct of the men, their exactness in obeying orders, and the regularity of their manners, will in a great measure depend on his vigilance. ”

“ I feel assured that a system of discipline, subordination, and police has been established in the army, which reflects much credit upon its General, and does no less honor to the officers and soldiers than to our country. ”

“ The Government forces consist of about 160 men and boys, with very imperfect military training, and of whom about forty are officers. They are organized as infantry. There are also about 600 citizens enrolled as a reserve guard, who may be called upon in case of an emergency, and about 150 police. ”

“ A commander's military police responsibilities received greater recognition in 1821 when the War Department tried, through a series of general regulations, to establish a uniformity of organizations within the Army. Article 58 of these regulations, entitled "General Police," outlined the duties of military police and recommended that commanders select personnel of superior intelligence and physical ability to perform these duties. ”

“ It is this intimacy of officers and men that keeps many National Guard organizations from reaching greater efficiency.
Men have served through a whole term of enlistment in the regular Army without realizing how friendly a really good and capable officer always feels toward the really good enlisted men under his command. ”

“ The strictest discipline on duty, a certain friendly good-fellowship off duty—these are the relations between officers and men of the Guards, as, of course, they are between officers and men right through the British Army. In the field the Guards officer is a guardian to his men. He is eternally preoccupied with their comfort in the trenches and in the billets; he furthers their sports and games, often out of his own pocket; he takes a general interest in their welfare. ”

“ I would make the police service a profession in the same sense that the army is now a profession. Let its rank and file be composed of enlisted men who would be subject to discipline and dishonorable dismission for proper cause, in accordance with appropriate regulations adopted for the government of the force, but who could not be otherwise discharged. Let the officers be gentlemen trained to their profession, men holding a commission as honorable and desirable as that held by a military officer and subject to similar conditions. ”

“ The force is officered from the regular Army, and so highly is the service esteemed that an officer who obtains a commission in the Civil Guard ipso facto loses a step. Very great care is exercised both in their selection and in recruiting the rank and file. ”

“ Such a measure is in this country unavoidably necessary, where none but people of the lowest class enlist as soldiers in the army; without such an interval between the officers and the rank and file, discipline could not be maintained. Therefore, if a young man is seen in the uniform of an American officer, it may with confidence be inferred that he is in every respect fit to maintain his place in the best society. ”

“ It is absolutely necessary that this department should be better organized hereafter, as soldiers are induced to go forward and into battle with much more confidence, when they know that it is enabled, through good management, to remove them with care and kindness, if sick or wounded, to places where they can be properly attended to. ”

“ Each brigade has a lieutenant-commander, and each battery a sub-lieutenant, chief petty officer, first and second-class petty officers, buglers, &c., while the staff includes a lieutenant-instructor, first-class petty officer instructor, surgeon, bugle-major, and armourer. ”

“ The officer in charge is in regimentals, erect, apparently looking straight ahead, but the side glance of his eye is on the recruit on his right, his hands in trouser pockets, a nonchalant upward tilt of his head, while a stub of a pipe lends companionship as he steps into a new and compulsory chapter of his life. ”

“ In the clothing, messing, equipment, and every other branch of the interior economy, improvements were introduced to promote the health and comfort of the soldier, and the efficiency of corps; and the establishment of confidential inspection reports facilitated the accomplishment of these objects, by furnishing the Commander-in-Chief, and the authorities under him, with the means of forming a correct judgment of the state of each corps in all its details,—of [103] correcting what was wrong,—of supplying what was deficient, and of ascertaining the merits and capabilities of the officers. ”

“ LIEUTENANTS AND SUB-LIEUTENANTS.
There are four of these in each squadron, and they take in turn the "weekly service" (service de semaine) . As such they must be, or ought to be, present at "stables," drill, &c. Let us quote again from the ""Service Intérieur": "They must maintain perfect order in their peloton [company] excite emulation among their men, advise union" [the only union I ever saw was in the hatred all the men felt against them] , "develop the love of service, and always show an impartial example of justice." ”

“ It will surprise those who know nothing of war, and even many military men, when I mention how many soldiers are lost, I may say, to the service, taken out of the ranks of corps to be employed as non-combatant clerks, servants or bat-men, horse-keepers or grooms, &c. The head-quarters and staff sweep off numbers in this way beyond belief. The general officers and staff of divisions and brigades, including engineer officers, staff surgeons, commissariat, &c. ”

“ If, upon marches, guards, or in quarters, different corps of the Army happen to join or do duty together, the officer highest in rank of the line of the Army, Marine Corps, or militia, by commission, there on duty or in quarters, shall command the whole, and give orders for what is needful to the service, unless otherwise specially directed by the President, according to the nature of the case. ”

“ The Commanding General desires to detail for temporary or permanent duty the best officers of the army, for the organization, instruction and discipline of this corps. With their aid, he is confident that the corps will render important service to the Government. It is not established upon any dogma of equality or other theory, but as a practical and sensible matter of business. The Government makes use of mules, horses, uneducated and educated white men, in the defense of its institutions. ”

“ It is one of the duties of the general staff to attend to the material well-being of the troops, so as to secure their being at all times in condition to march or to fight. The heads of the several departments specially concerned with this care can work efficiently only in so far as they are kept in touch of the military situation. ”

“ There is not a man who has been drilled as a volunteer but may be serviceable to the community in a variety of ways at home, by supplying the place of regular soldiers in mounting guard as sentries, acting as “orderlies” for transmitting orders between the government officers and head-quarters, as assistants in the hospital service, as extra clerks in the commissariat and other departments, and in serving as a military police. ”

“ Thus, no inspector-general was allowed to a brigadier, but when commanding a division or other organization larger than a brigade, he was permitted to detail an officer of the line for the very necessary and responsible duty. The aides are authorized to carry oral orders and to explain them, to call for and to bring oral reports, and as the general's confidential and official representatives they should be of the most intelligent and soldierly men of their grade. ”

“ The assets that make the Military Police Corps so valuable in contemporary battlefield doctrine are actually quite similar to those possessed by the Marechaussee Corps in the Revolutionary War. While traveling a difficult road to organizational permanence and recognition as an organic element of the Army's fighting team, military police have along the way carefully adapted their mobility and communications capability to a myriad of new duties and responsibilities, leaving the corps ready to assume greater responsibilities and duties in the Army of the future. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The raising of the immense volunteer force necessitated a great increase in the staff departments, and large numbers of persons from civil life have been appointed into the volunteer staff in the Adjutant-General's, Judge-Advocate's, Quartermaster's, Commissary, Medical, and Pay Departments. The ordnance duties are performed by officers detailed from the line, and engineer duties by regiments assigned for that purpose. A large number of additional aides-de-camp were also authorized, forming that branch of duty into a department. ”

“ Once every month the commandant should make a general inspection of his regiment, examine into the state of the men, their arms, ammunition, accoutrements, necessaries, camp utensils, and everything belonging to the regiment, obliging the commanding officers of companies to account strictly for all deficiencies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ All sick and disabled soldiers will be left in these hospitals. Surgeons in charge of hospitals will report convalescents as fast as they become fit for duty. Each corps commander will detail an intelligent and good drill officer, to remain behind and take charge of the convalescents of their respective corps; officers so detailed will organize the men under their charge into squads and companies, without regard to the regiments they belong to; and in the absence of convalescent commissioned officers to command them, will appoint non-commissioned officers or privates. ”