Fatigue Management

of operational effectiveness in subordinate units, commanders and troops.
Hence, the commander is required to monitor and prevent the impact of
fatigue on all personnel, in order to avoid operational failure, fratricide
(friendly fire incidents) and other preventable accidents, serious breakdown
in cohesion and morale, and high rates of combat stress casualties.
There are more tired corps and division commanders than
there are tired corps and divisions.
General George S. Patton
War As I Knew It, 1947
The only time a soldier becomes so exhausted as to feel
incapable of further action is when the officer in charge
succumbs to fatigue.
Report by 16 Bde, cited in
Gavin Long, The Final Campaigns
The Added Burden of Command. Commanders at all levels are generally
more prone to fatigue than their troops for a variety of reasons. One dimension
of this susceptibility to fatigue is the increased responsibilities and stressors
that are characteristic of command, such as decision-making, fear of one's own
incompetence or misjudgement and loneliness due to a relative lack of
support. Commanders are often faced with tasks and ethical dilemmas for
which they may have no specific training or experience. As noted previously,
tasks that require mental effort are generally more tiring than purely
physical work. Many command responsibilities involve complex mental
processes such as tactical and operational planning, battlespace visualisation
and coordination of operational duties. All these challenges, responsibilities
and task characteristics exacerbate fatigue in the commander through
increased effort and stress and by competing for time that should be devoted to
sleep.
For the officer and N.C.O. there are in addition the long
reconnaissance, the difficult patrol, the conference at
someone else's headquarters and the effort of looking
cheerful and confident in the face of almost impossible
tasks.
W. B. Russell
The Second Fourteenth Battalion, 1948
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